At Crowland also (still in the Fens) was a great and rich abbey, a good part of the magnificent ruins of the church of which are still standing, one corner or part of it being used as the parish church, by the worms, which have crept out of the dead bodies of those who lived in the days of the founders;
“And wond’ring man could want the larger pile,
Exult, and claim the corner with a smile.”
They tell you, that all the country at and near Crowland was a mere swamp, a mere bog, bearing nothing, bearing nothing worth naming, until the modern drainings took place! The thing called the “Reformation,” has lied common sense out of men’s minds. So likely a thing to choose a barren swamp whereon, or wherein, to make the site of an abbey, and of a benedictine abbey too! It has been always observed, that the monks took care to choose for their places of abode, pleasant spots, surrounded by productive land. The likeliest thing in the world for these monks to choose a swamp for their dwelling-place, surrounded by land that produced nothing good! The thing gives the lie to itself: and it is impossible to reject the belief, that these Fens were as productive of corn and meat a thousand years ago, and more so, than they are at this hour. There is a curious triangular bridge here, on one part of which stands the statue of one of the ancient kings. It is all of great age; and everything shows that Crowland was a place of importance in the earliest times.
From Crowland to Lynn, through Thorney and Wisbeach, is all Fens, well besprinkled, formerly, with monasteries of various descriptions, and still well set with magnificent churches. From Lynn to Holbeach you get out of the real Fens, and into the land that I attempted to describe, when, a few pages back, I was speaking of Holbeach. I say attempted; for I defy tongue or pen to make the description adequate to the matter: to know what the thing is, you must see it. The same land continues all the way on to Boston: endless grass and endless fat sheep; not a stone, not a weed.
Boston, Sunday, 11th April, 1830.
Last night, I made a speech at the playhouse to an audience, whose appearance was sufficient to fill me with pride. I had given notice that I should perform on Friday, overlooking the circumstance that it was Good Friday. In apologising for this inadvertence, I took occasion to observe, that even if I had persevered, the clergy of the church could have nothing to object, seeing that they were now silent while a bill was passing in Parliament to put Jews on a level with Christians; to enable Jews, the blasphemers of the Redeemer, to sit on the bench, to sit in both Houses of Parliament, to sit in council with the King, and to be kings of England, if entitled to the Crown, which, by possibility, they might become, if this bill were to pass; that to this bill the clergy had offered no opposition; and that, therefore, how could they hold sacred the anniversary appointed to commemorate the crucifixion of Christ by the hands of the blaspheming and bloody Jews? That, at any rate, if this bill passed; if those who called Jesus Christ an impostor were thus declared to be as good as those who adored him, there was not, I hoped, a man in the kingdom who would pretend, that it would be just to compel the people to pay tithes, and fees, and offerings, to men for teaching Christianity. This was a clincher; and as such it was received.
This morning I went out at six, looked at the town, walked three miles on the road to Spilsby, and back to breakfast at nine. Boston (bos is Latin for ox) though not above a fourth or fifth part of the size of its daughter in New England, which got its name, I dare say, from some persecuted native of this place, who had quitted England and all her wealth and all her glories, to preserve that freedom, which was still more dear to him; though not a town like New Boston, and though little to what it formerly was, when agricultural produce was the great staple of the kingdom and the great subject of foreign exchange, is, nevertheless, a very fine town; good houses, good shops, pretty gardens about it, a fine open place, nearly equal to that of Nottingham, in the middle of it a river and a canal passing through it, each crossed by a handsome and substantial bridge, a fine market for sheep, cattle, and pigs, and another for meat, butter, and fish; and being, like Lynn, a great place for the export of corn and flour, and having many fine mills, it is altogether a town of very considerable importance; and, which is not to be overlooked, inhabited by people none of whom appear to be in misery.
The great pride and glory of the Bostonians, is their church, which is, I think, 400 feet long, 90 feet wide, and has a tower (or steeple, as they call it) 300 feet high, which is both a land-mark and a sea-mark. To describe the richness, the magnificence, the symmetry, the exquisite beauty of this pile, is wholly out of my power. It is impossible to look at it without feeling, first, admiration and reverence and gratitude to the memory of our fathers who reared it; and next, indignation at those who affect to believe, and contempt for those who do believe, that, when this pile was reared, the age was dark, the people rude and ignorant, and the country destitute of wealth and thinly peopled. Look at this church, then; look at the heaps of white rubbish that the parsons have lately stuck up under the “New-church Act,” and which, after having been built with money forced from the nation by odious taxes, they have stuffed full of locked-up pens, called pews, which they let for money, as cattle- and sheep- and pig-pens are let at fairs and markets; nay, after having looked at this work of the “dark ages,” look at that great, heavy, ugly, unmeaning mass of stone called St. Paul’s, which an American friend of mine, who came to London from Falmouth and had seen the cathedrals at Exeter and Salisbury, swore to me, that when he first saw it, he was at a loss to guess whether it were a court-house or a jail; after looking at Boston Church, go and look at that great, gloomy lump, created by a Protestant Parliament, and by taxes wrung by force from the whole nation; and then say which is the age really meriting the epithet dark.
St. Botolph, to whom this church is dedicated, while he (if saints see and hear what is passing on earth) must lament that the piety-inspiring mass has been, in this noble edifice, supplanted by the monotonous hummings of an oaken hutch, has not the mortification to see his church treated in a manner as if the new possessors sighed for the hour of its destruction. It is taken great care of; and though it has cruelly suffered from Protestant repairs; though the images are gone and the stained glass; and though the glazing is now in squares instead of lozenges; though the nave is stuffed with pens called pews; and though other changes have taken place detracting from the beauty of the edifice, great care is taken of it as it now is, and the inside is not disfigured and disgraced by a gallery, that great and characteristic mark of Protestant taste, which, as nearly as may be, makes a church like a playhouse. Saint Botolph (on the supposition before mentioned) has the satisfaction to see, that the base of his celebrated church is surrounded by an iron fence, to keep from it all offensive and corroding matter, which is so disgusting to the sight round the magnificent piles at Norwich, Ely and other places; that the churchyard, and all appertaining to it, are kept in the neatest and most respectable state; that no money has been spared for these purposes; that here the eye tells the heart, that gratitude towards the fathers of the Bostonians is not extinguished in the breasts of their sons; and this the Saint will know that he owes to the circumstances, that the parish is a poor vicarage, and that the care of his church is in the hands of the industrious people, and not in those of a fat and luxurious dean and chapter, wallowing in wealth derived from the people’s labour.
Horncastle, 12th April.