Oh, Absalom, my son, my son,
Thou wouldst not have died,
Hadst thou a periwig on!
—That barber is no more, and I know not what has become of his sign. As an object lesson in history, undying interest attaches to Framlingham Castle and its adjacent church. The castle must have been one of the largest in England. As our Quaker poet, Bernard Barton, wrote—
Still stand thy battlemented towers,
Firm as in bygone years;
As if within yet ruled the powers
Of England’s haughtiest peers.
When I first knew the castle it was used as a poor-house. The home of the Bigods and the Howards is utilised in this way no longer. The castle hall is now devoted to the recovery of small debts and other equally local matters. In the good old times the nobles settled debts, small or great, in a much easier way.
The church was erected by one of the Mowbrays, and the tower, which is a handsome one, and from the top of which, on a clear day, you get a view as far as Aldeburgh, contains a clock presented by Sir Henry Thompson, our great surgeon, in memory of his father, a highly-respected inhabitant of Framlingham, who did much for the Congregational cause in that town. “Sir Henry Thompson was my Sunday School teacher,” said an intelligent tradesman to me, “and I have the book in which he signed his name as having taken the Temperance Pledge.” Framlingham—let me state by way of parenthesis—early gave in her adhesion to the Temperance movement. In the cemetery there is a monument to a worthy inhabitant of the name of Larner. He was the great Apostle of Temperance in the Eastern Counties. “He was for years,” Mr. Thomas Whittaker writes, in his Life’s Battles in Temperance Armour, “the man of Suffolk, the moving power, the undaunted spirit, the unwearied defender; and when it is remembered how special were the difficulties and how numerous the foes, the way in which he brought the whole district under his influence, and even to treat him with loving respect, it is the more remarkable. When he died the heart pulsation seemed to stop.” Out of the world as Framlingham is, and old-fashioned as is the town even to this day, there is a good deal of life in it, and especially so in religious matters. Including the college chapel, there are nine places of worship in it, for a population not much over two thousand. As far as I can make out, the Salvation Army here, as elsewhere, has helped to thin the attendance at most of the existing places of worship. If they can show a more excellent way it is rather a reflection upon the existing pulpits of the place. In spite of the Salvation Army, I met a man in the street who complained to me that Framlingham was dull. “You see, sir,” said he, “we are in an agriculturists’ district, and the farmers ha’n’t got any money.” It seems to me that they ought to have—at any rate, the public has to pay quite enough for its beef and mutton, and such farming produce as butter, and milk, and eggs. One odd thing in Framlingham is a tomb in a garden, which you pass on your way from the station, which preserves the memory of one Thomas Mills, a native, who seems to have made money, which he bequeathed to charitable purposes. Normans and Saxons seem to have had between them a good deal to do with Framlingham Castle and Church. At one time or other one of the parsons connected with the place was Catholic and Protestant, and thus went with the times. At a later period one had a more sensitive conscience, and was one of the ejected. Framlingham, like most English towns, seems to have been inhabited by all sorts and conditions of men. But its castle ought to be a rare place for excursionists to visit, and the country round is rich in rural charms. In the world, Framlingham, now that its castle is a ruin, and the power of the feudal lords gone, does not seem to have done much. It has had its day, and that day with its lords and ladies, and fighting men, must have been a grand one. Perhaps it’s as well that they
Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waiting.
IX.
SUDBURY.
In the year 1727 there was born in Sudbury, and baptized in the Independent Meeting there, Thomas Gainsborough, one of the earliest and the greatest of English painters. The family were Dissenters, and in the meeting-house, now under the care of the Rev. Ira Bosely, who seems very happy and successful in his new sphere of labour, are the memorials of two of them who were buried in the graveyard attached. There are two bequests of the Gainsborough family for the support of the minister for the time being, of which the present incumbent made favourable mention when I saw him the other day, in the comfortable manse attached to the meeting-house. One of the items in the ancient account-book seemed to be curious. It was as follows: “Four shillings for tobacco.” I have only to assume in the good old times our pious ancestors had an idea of Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Services, and for that purpose possibly the tobacco had been acquired. Be that as it may, we may be sure the Gainsborough family were as remarkable as any that then attended on the means of grace. In person, Mr. Gainsborough’s father is represented as a fine old man, who wore his hair carefully parted, and was remarkable for the whiteness and regularity of his teeth. According to the custom of the last century he always wore a sword and was an adroit fencer, possessing the fatal facility of using the weapon in either hand. He introduced into Sudbury the straw trade from Coventry, and he managed to keep it in his own hands. He had a large family of five sons and four daughters. One of the latter married a Dissenting Minister at Bath. One son, John, was a great mechanical genius, and invented wings, by means of which he essayed to fly, but, to the amusement of the spectators, found himself, instead of soaring into the air, dropped in a ditch by the way. Humphrey Gainsborough, the painter’s second brother, settled as a Dissenting Minister at Henley-on-Thames. Of him, the celebrated Edgeworth, the father of the equally celebrated daughter, says he had never known a man of a more inventive mind. Thomas, the artist, must have inherited something of his artistic skill from his mother, for she herself loved to paint fruit and flowers, but with the boy, painting became the one great object of his life, and he was always at it, even when he should have been studying at the ancient grammar school where he was a pupil; and thus it is Sudbury has two great men to boast of—Thomas Gainsborough, the artist, and Simon de Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was beheaded by the populace in Wat Tyler’s rebellion, and whose skull is still shown you in St. Gregory’s Church. I have known many thick skulls in East Anglia, but surely that of the martyred Archbishop must have been one of the thickest to have lasted all this time.
Sudbury was the painter’s studio. It is now a clean, well-built, and slightly uninteresting provincial town, with a population of about eight thousand. But, said a commercial traveller to me, as I was deploring the barrenness of the land, “It is a good place for business.” It lies in the flat country of the valley of the Stour, a river which expands into a lake when the waters are out. When Gainsborough was a boy it was ancient and picturesque—and dirty. At any rate it is thus described in a poem written by Daniel Herbert, one of the old Noncons., a bunting manufacturer, and occasional preacher in the old meeting-house, who tells us
I live at Sudbury, that dirty place,
Where are a few poor sinners saved by grace.