In another letter he says:—
I lately brought home Mr. Melling and Mr. Worsley from evening prayers to drink a dish of tea in your remembrance ... good son, look now before you to consider how precious your time is, and how to improve yourself, to consider the design and end proposed in your education, to fit you for sacred orders, which ought most considerately to be undertaken ... whatever books you read, be sure to read Dr. Hammond upon the Psalms and Lessons, with Dr. Whitby every day; it is not every young scholar hath them, but you have, and shall want no necessary thing I can buy you. I was reading, the other evening, the 2nd lesson; Hebrews vi., 7, 8, made a deeper impression on my mind now, after receiving the holy sacrament on Good Friday and Easter day, than I ever noted in them before, which may be applicable to you. In your case, when the good education bestowed upon youths designed for the ministry bringeth forth herbs meet for them to whom it is dressed, it receiveth God’s blessing; but if thorns and briars, &c. Reading this, I applied it so on you, who I then thought of, but on myself as in my own case.
No wonder that with such counsel from such a father, the young undergraduate should have become imbued with a spirit of piety that influenced every action of his future life. But that father was soon to be taken from him. In August, 1711, Edward Byrom, whose health had been failing for some time, passed away at the comparatively early age of fifty-five, and on the twenty-first of the same month was laid to rest by the side of his fathers in the Jesus chantry, then called the Byrom chapel, in the old church of Manchester—the church in which in life he had so often delighted to worship.
In December, 1711, young Byrom took his B.A., and in his exuberant joy he thus writes from Cambridge to his confidential friend, John Stansfield, the assistant manager of his late father’s place of business in London, whom he frequently commissioned to purchase books for him:—
I would fain have nothing hinder the pleasure I take in thinking how soon I shall change this tattered blue gown (the undergraduate’s gown, which was then, as now, blue) for a black one and a lambskin, and have the honourable title of Bachelor of Arts. Bachelor of Arts! John, how great it sounds! the Great Mogul is nothing to it. Ay, ay, sir, don’t pride yourself upon your fine titles before you have them. Are you sure of your degree? Can you stand the test of a strict examination in all these arts you are to be bachelor of? Has not one of your blue gowns been stopped this week for insufficiency in that point already, and do you hope to escape better? Why, sir, you say true, but I will hope on, notwithstanding, till I see reason to the contrary.—Yours, J. B.
The “black gown,” the “lambskin,” and the “honourable title” were gained notwithstanding, and the vacation which followed was spent by the young Bachelor of Arts with his widowed mother and sisters in his Lancashire home at Kersall. His sister, Sarah (Mrs. Brearcliffe), in a letter to John Stansfield, writes—
Brother John is most at Kersall: he goes every night and morning down to the water side and bawls out one of Tully’s orations in Latin, so loud they can hear him a mile off; so that all the neighbourhood think he is mad, and you would think so too if you saw him. Sometimes he thrashes corn with John Rigby’s men, and helps them to get potatoes, and works as hard as any of them. He is very good company and we shall miss him when he is gone, which will not be long to now; Christmas is very near.
From orating on the banks of the Irwell, and “threshing corn with John Rigby’s men,” Byrom returned to his studies at Cambridge. His lively and cheerful disposition made him popular with his brother collegians, and secured for him many friendships. He was, too, a welcome visitor in the house of the master of Trinity, Dr. Richard Bentley—the great Bentley; one of his most intimate associates was the doctor’s nephew, “Tom,” and he was also on friendly terms with the doctor’s young and fascinating daughter, Joanna—“Jug,” as she was familiarly called—if, indeed, they did not entertain something more than friendly feelings towards each other. In July, 1714, we find him writing to his old friend Stansfield as to his prospects of a fellowship, and in the following month he writes to his brother Edward, who was then in London:—
I have wrote to Mr. Banks to desire his interest at fellowships, but must leave it to you to direct it and send it to him.