Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

This episcopal connection of Wisbech Castle led to its becoming, in the reign of Elizabeth, the final scene of that pathetic and lingering tragedy, the fate of the old Catholic Hierarchy of England. Such of that hierarchy as were alive at Elizabeth's succession were, with one exception, deposed for refusing the Oath of Supremacy, to the number of fifteen. Shortly afterwards they were imprisoned, not by any process of law but by the Royal fiat, and continued under more or less severe restraint for the rest of their lives. This was wholly on account of their religion. Lord Burghley, a hostile witness (in his Execution of Justice in England[251]), testifies to their blameless characters, describing them as "faithful and quiet subjects," "persons of courteous natures," "of great modesty, learning and knowledge," "secluded only for their contrary opinions in religion, that savour not (like those of the seminary priests) of treason."

Yet, though thus inoffensive, their doom was grievously heavy. Committed, to begin with, to solitary confinement, in what Froude calls "the living death of the Tower" and other London prisons, for three or four years, they were afterwards quartered (singly) on the Protestant prelates, who were stringently ordered by the Council to prevent them from communication, either by word or letter, with anyone, and to see that they had neither paper to write withal, nor books to read (except Protestant ones). Thus deprived of every intellectual, social, and religious solace, "pining away in miserable desolation, tossing and shifting from one keeper to another," they one by one drooped and died. But all remained steadfast to their Faith; and finally the "obstinate" survivors were, in 1580, closely imprisoned, along with others in like case, in Wisbech Castle.

Here they were under the charge of Cox, the new Protestant Bishop of Ely, who writes of them as "sworn against Christ," and boasts that "if walls, locks, and doors can separate them from out-practice they shall not want a sufficient provision of each." "Nor let it be thought, as some bishops have reported, that I mind to make trade by over-ruling such wretches." The "trade" was handed over to a favourite servant, to make what he could out of the unhappy prisoners (who, like all prisoners in those days, had to be supported by their friends), subject only to providing out of his takings £80 per annum for the upkeep of two Protestant preachers, "who are well able to set down God's anger" against Popery. These preachers (amongst whom one regrets to find "Lancelot Andrewes of Pembroke Hall") were ever and anon to pester the "recusants" with denunciatory discourses in the castle hall. "And the recusants shall be conveyed thither by a secret way, without seeing any; and they shall have a secret place for themselves to be in, to hear and not be seen.... This is the holy ordinance of God."[252]

Kept with this rigour the Confessors lingered on, year after year, till death set them free. The latest to be released were Thomas Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1584, and Feckenham, the last Abbot of Westminster, who died in 1585. Both are buried (as the Parish Registers testify) in Wisbech churchyard.

The castle was sold by the See of Ely in 1783, and has since been almost wholly pulled down. Nearly at the same date a young man, born at Wisbech, was beginning those efforts which have reflected glory on his native town, and have revolutionised public opinion throughout the civilised world. The man was Thomas Clarkson, and the cause to which he devoted his life was the abolition of slavery. That institution, up to his time, was regarded as a very foundation of the earth. Rooted in the furthest past of man's history, and as world-wide as it was ancient, the idea of questioning its place in the eternal fitness of things never occurred even to philanthropists. A virtuous man would treat his slaves kindly; but as for not having such, he would as soon have scrupled at having sheep and oxen, or at employing hired servants.

It was left for young Clarkson, while a student at Cambridge, to realise that the time was come when, if the human conscience was to make any further progress in enlightenment, this hoary iniquity must, root and branch, be abolished. On a steep hillside above Wade Mill, in the road between Cambridge and London, a monument by the wayside still marks the spot where he dismounted from his horse, and, kneeling on the ground in the fervour of youthful enthusiasm, solemnly vowed to God that for this holy object he would live and, if need be, die.

At once he set to work. Gathering a band of like-minded friends round him (mostly belonging to the so-called Clapham Sect, who were then inaugurating the great Evangelical Revival)—Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay, Babington, Thornton, Buxton, Cropper, and the rest—he started an agitation in and out of Parliament, which carried all before it. The Slave Trade was abolished in 1807; on August 1st, 1834, slavery itself ceased throughout the British Empire; the example of Britain was followed by other European Powers; and finally, in 1864, after a last desperate struggle for existence in the American Civil War, it was cast forth from its last stronghold in the United States. If practised at all now, it is practised under some feigned name and elusive system. No civilised man dare any longer proclaim himself an avowed slave-driver. Well indeed does Clarkson deserve the monument which Wisbech has erected to her glorious son.

At Wisbech, till the reclamation of the neighbouring Washes, Cambridgeshire (or rather the Isle of Ely) possessed an actual strip of seaboard extending from Wisbech town northward to the county boundary between Tydd St. Mary and Tydd St. Giles. This strip was itself reclaimed ground, but of far earlier date, due to the era of Roman civilisation in Britain. The old coast-line, as has been said, is still marked for us by a massive embankment extending from Sutton, in Lincolnshire, to Wisbech, and thence to King's Lynn, in Norfolk—an embankment sufficiently old to have given its name to the ancient villages along its course. The designations of Walsoken, West Walton, Walpole St. Peter, and Walpole St. Andrew, all testify to this sea wall having been already in existence when the East Anglians, in the fifth century, first took possession of the land.