About the year 1806 he was presented to the living of Foston le Clay in Yorkshire through Lord Holland’s interest. He had to build a parsonage “without experience or money,” and to make a journey with family and furniture “into the heart of Yorkshire—a process, in the year 1808, as difficult as a journey to the back settlements of America now.” He had, moreover, to turn farmer, since the living consisted of 300 acres of land and no tithe. The local Squire was shy of him as a Jacobin, but finally they became fast friends. He used to “bring the papers, that I might explain the difficult words to him; actually discovered that I had made a joke, laughed till I thought he would have died of convulsions, and ended by inviting me to see his dogs.”
He was advised to employ oxen on his farm, which, however, turned out a failure; but their names deserve remembrance, for they were christened Tug and Lug, Haul and Crawl. He looked after his men through a telescope, and gave orders with a speaking-trumpet. He records “that a man-servant was too expensive” for him, so “I caught up a little garden-girl, made like a milestone, christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler.” She became “the best butler in the county.” Bunch is described as pacing up and
down before her master’s door, saying, “Oh, ma’am, I can’t get no peace of mind till I’ve got master shaved.” This meant “making ready for him with a large painter’s brush, a thick lather in a huge wooden bowl.” A visitor at Foston records:—“Mr Smith suddenly said to Bunch, who was passing, ‘Bunch, do you like roast duck or boiled chicken?’ Bunch had probably never tasted either the one or the other in her life, but answered, without a moment’s hesitation, ‘Roast duck, please, sir,’ and disappeared. I laughed. ‘You may laugh,’ said he, ‘but you have no idea of the labour it has cost me to give her that decision of character.’”
Poor Bunch used to be told to repeat her crimes, and gravely recited, “Plate-snatching, gravy-spilling, door-slamming, blue-bottle-fly-catching, and curtsey-bobbing.” The blue-bottle crime was standing with her mouth open and not attending. Curtsey-bobbing was “Curtseying to the centre of the earth, please, sir.”
One little fact is worth recording. In 1825 a meeting of clergy was held in Yorkshire to petition Parliament against the emancipation of the Catholics. Sydney’s was the only dissentient voice. No doubt in those days it was hard for a Liberal parson to get preferment, and George III. was right in his prophecy that Sydney would never be a bishop. But in January 1828 the Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, bestowed on Sydney a stall then vacant at Bristol. This was not of much importance from a pecuniary point of view, but it broke the “spell which had
hitherto kept him down in his profession.” [183] In the autumn of that year he preached toleration to the Mayor and Corporation of Bristol, the “most Protestant civic body in England.” About the same time he exchanged his living in Yorkshire for that of Combe Florey near Taunton.
In 1831 (i., p. 290) Lord Grey appointed him to a Prebendal Stall at St Paul’s in exchange for the inferior one at Bristol. With regard to ecclesiastical preferment, he wrote to Lady Holland (8th October 1808): You “may choose to make me a bishop, and if you do I . . . shall never do you discredit, for I believe it is out of the power of lawn and velvet, and the crisp hair of dead men fashioned into a wig, to make me a dishonest man; but if you do not, I am perfectly content, and shall be ever grateful to the last hour of my life to you and to Lord Holland.” And to Lady Mary Bennett, July 1820, p. 200: “Lord Liverpool’s messenger mistook the way, and instead of bringing the mitre to me, took it to my next-door neighbour, Dr Carey, who very fraudulently accepted it. Lord Liverpool is extremely angry, and I am to have the next!”
And to Murray: “I think Lord Grey will give me some preferment, if he stays in long enough; but the upper parsons live vindictively. The Bishop of --- has the rancour to recover after three paralytic strokes, and the Dean of --- to be vigorous at
eighty-two. And yet these are men who are called Christians!”
In the following letter to Lord John Russell (3rd April 1837, p. 399) he is for once in a way egoistic:—