In this region of eastern England villages are found bearing names derived from the Saxon. I have called this parish Haddenham cum Stonea. The syllable ham comes from the Saxon, and means a dwelling, hence our word home. The syllable ea, in Stonea, means water.
Said the dissenting minister, “There is no part of England where the people are freer and more independent in thought than in these eastern counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdon, and parts of Cambridge and Lincoln.” And he inferred that from these counties our Pilgrim fathers must have sprung. About fifty miles from the parish I describe lies the city of Boston, from which came Mr. Cotton, the preacher in whose honor our own city of Boston was named.
“The last struggles of the Anglo-Saxons against the Normans were in these counties,” said one. “At Ely, then an island in the centre of the fens, Hereward fortified himself for a while, and made the last struggles against the Normans.”
An acquaintance who had visited America remarked to me that the district of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, where we were, is typically agricultural; that there are very few resident gentry; therefore the social life of this region more resembles that of the United States than does that of most other sections of England.
In this county of Huntingdonshire was born Oliver Cromwell, and at its town of St. Ives he lived. In this section he probably raised his celebrated soldiers called Ironsides. But the conservatives of England do not admire Cromwell. About twenty years ago in his native county it was found impossible to raise means to erect his statue.[169]
On this side of the county are no county families bearing the title Esquire. ⸺ Farrar, Esq., north of us, is a great landed proprietor, with an income of about two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. The Earl of S. and the Duke of M. are also large landed proprietors. The Duke of Bedford owns an estate in Thorny Fen of perhaps ten to fifteen thousand acres. My friend who tells me this thinks that the estate, however, is in another county from this. He understands that the duke expects each tenant to take one thousand acres and to keep a hunter. The duke is a liberal in politics.
The subject of politics was alluded to in the opening of this article, in the remarks of Jackson, the carpenter. Another acquaintance said, “If you go to a nobleman or great landed proprietor to rent a farm, you must be deferential and, as a general thing, you must vote on his side. If a man is a liberal, he must go under a liberal landlord; and if a tory, under a tory. Perhaps one-third of the House of Lords are liberals,” he added.
Benton, the farmer, did not tell me his political opinions. He said that the ballot is secret. But he added that a man’s political opinions have not now anything to do with renting the land.
But a person whom I afterward met in Manchester said that the agricultural districts were in the main thoroughly tory, the farmers being dependent on the landlords. He added that the late Lord Derby used to say, “Tell me what the landlords are and I will tell you what the vote will be.”
Haddenham cum Stonea has declined in population. In 1840 the parish had nearly one thousand four hundred inhabitants. It now has about one thousand. Many went to America; now many go north into the manufacturing regions. Nor are these two villages alone in this. Jackson, the carpenter, told me of one where he had lived which, at the last census, had three hundred and thirty people. Twenty years back, he said, it had over five hundred.