him with an affection as beautiful as rare. Never did a Rugby lad write of Arnold as Milton of Thomas Young. How long the latter’s preceptorship lasted cannot be determined with precision. ‘It certainly closed,’ writes Professor Masson, in that truly awful biography of his, ‘when Young left England at the age of thirty-five, and became pastor of the congregation of British merchants settled at Hamburg.’
As one of the leaders of the Presbyterian party, Dr. Thomas Young became Vicar of Stowmarket in due time. He was one of the Smectymnian divines. As it is not every schoolboy who knows what the term means, let me explain who they were. Two or three hundred years ago people were much more controversial than they are now, and very fierce was the battle on the subject of the relative claims, from a Scriptural point of view, of Prelacy or Presbytery. One of the most distinguished champions of the former was Dr. Hall, Bishop of Norwich—a simple, godly, learned man, who deserves to be held in remembrance, if only for the way in which he got married. ‘Being now settled,’ he writes, ‘in that sweet and civil county of Suffolk, the uncouth solitariness of my life, and the extreme incommodity of that single housekeeping, drew my
thoughts, after two years, to condescend to the necessity of a married state, which God no less strangely provided for me; for walking from the church on Monday, in the Whitsun week, with a grave and reverend minister, I saw a comely and modest gentlewoman standing at the door of that house where we were invited to a wedding-dinner, and inquiring of that worthy friend whether he knew her, “Yes,” quoth he, “I know her well, and have bespoken her for your wife.” When I further demanded an account of that answer, he told me she was the daughter of a gentleman whom he much respected—Mr. George Whinniff, of Brettenham; that out of an opinion he had of the fitness of that match for me he had already treated with her father about it, whom he found very apt to entertain it. Advising me not to neglect the opportunity, and not concealing the just praises of the modesty, piety, good disposition, and other virtues that were lodged in that seemly presence, I listened to the motion as sent from God, and at last, upon due prosecution, happily prevailed, enjoying the comfortable society of that meet-help for the space of forty-nine years.’ A young clergyman so good and amiable ought to have fared better as regards the days in which his lot was passed. Hall
should have lived in some theological Arcadia. As it was, he had to fight much and suffer much. In those distracted times he was all for peace. When the storm was brewing in Church and State, which for a time swept away Bishop and King, he published—but, alas! in vain—his ‘Via Media.’ ‘I see,’ he wrote, ‘every man to rank himself unto a side, and to draw in the quarrel he affecteth. I see no man either holding or joining their hands for peace.’ Bishop Hall was the most celebrated writer of his time in defence of the Church of England. Archbishop Laud got him to write on ‘The Divine Right of Episcopacy,’ nor could he have well placed the subject in abler hands. This was followed, after Laud had fallen, with ‘An Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament,’ in which treatise he vindicated the antiquity of liturgies and Episcopacy with admirable skill, meekness, and simplicity, yet with such strength of argument that five Presbyterian divines clubbed their wits together to frame an answer. These Presbyterian ministers were—Stephen Marshal, then lecturer at St. Margaret’s, whom Baillie terms the best of the preachers in England; Edmund Calamy, who had long been a celebrated East Anglian preacher, first at Swaffham, then at Bury
St. Edmunds, who, as we all know, refused a bishopric when offered him, and whom, therefore, at any rate, his adversaries must allow to have been sincere; Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow. To this reply was given the name of Smectymnuus—a startling word, as Calamy calls it, made up of the initial letters of these names. This work, which was published in 1641, gave, says Dr. M’Crie, the first serious blow to Prelacy. It was composed in a style superior to that of the Puritans in general, and was, by the confession of the learned Bishop Wilkins, a capital work against Episcopacy. Dr. Kippis says, ‘This piece is certainly written with great fierceness and asperity of language,’ and quotes, as evidence, some strong things said against the practice of the prelates. But Neal, who has given a long account of the work, states that, if the rest of the clergy had been of the same temper and spirit with Bishop Hall, the controversy between him and the Smectymnian divines might have been compromised.
Stowmarket, as I have said, had the honour of being placed under the pastoral care of one of these Smectymnian divines. He came there in March, 1628, on the presentation of Mr. John
Howe, a gentleman then residing in the town, and a man of wealth, whose ancestors had been great cloth-manufacturers in that place and neighbourhood. Since the time of Edward III. the cloth manufacture had been very active in Suffolk, and it is little to the credit of its merchants that we find them, in 1522, petitioning for the repeal of a royal law which inflicted a penalty against those who sold cloth which, when wetted, shrunk up, on the plea that, as such goods were made for a foreign market, the home-consumer was not injured. Stowmarket, when I was a lad, had reached its climax in a pecuniary sense. In the early part of the present century it was spoken of as a rising town. Situated as it was in the centre of the county, it was a convenient mart for barley, and great quantities of malt were made. Its other manufactures were sacking, ropes, and twine. Its tanneries were of a more recent date, as also its manufactory of gun-cotton, connected with which at one time there was an explosion of a most fatal and disastrous character. In 1763 it was connected with Ipswich by means of a canal, which was a great source of prosperity to the town. Up to the time of the great Reform Bill, it was the great place for county meetings, and for the nomination of the county representatives. In our
day it has a population of 4,052. When I was a lad it was one of the first towns to welcome the Plymouth Brethren into Suffolk, and they are there still. The Independent Chapel for awhile suffered much from them. The pastor was a very worthy but somewhat dry preacher. His favourite quotation in the pulpit, when he would describe the attacks of the enemy of God and man, was
‘He worries whom he can’t devour
With a malicious joy.’
Suffolk had its great lawyers as well as Norfolk. The first to head the list is Ranulph de Glanville, a man of great parts, deep learning, for the times, eminent alike for his legal abilities and energetic mind. He was said, by one account, to have been born at Stowmarket. It is certain he founded Leiston Abbey, near Aldborough, and Bentley Priory. As Chief Justice under Henry II. he naturally was no favourite with Richard I., who deprived him of his office and made use of his wealth. He lived, however, to accompany Richard to the Holy Land, and died at the siege of Acre. His treatise on our laws is one of the earliest on record. It must be remembered also that Godwin, the author of ‘Political Justice,’ and ‘Caleb Williams,’ a novel still read—the husband of one gifted