East Anglia: Personal Recollections and Historical Associations

If you turn to the life of Dr. Adam Thompson, of Coldstream, the man who had the most publicly to do with the fall of the monopoly, there can be no doubt on this head. Though specially interested in the English patents, Mr. Childs was aware that the one for Scotland fell, to be renewed sooner by twenty years, and he kept dunning Joseph Hume on the subject, who, Radical Reformer, at that time had his hands pretty full. Mr. Childs had got so far as to have his Committee, and to get the evidence printed. What was the next step? Dr. Thompson’s biographer shall tell us. ‘Mr. Childs had been looking out for a Scottish Dissenting minister of proved ability, zeal, and influence, who should feel the immense and urgent importance of the question, and after mastering the unjust principles and the injurious results of the monopoly, should testify to these before the Committee, in a weighty and pointed manner, and effectively bring them also before the ministers and people of Scotland. He fixed upon Dr. Thompson, and the letter in which he wrote to the Doctor to prepare for becoming a witness was the beginning of a ten years’ copious correspondence, the first in a series of many hundreds of very lengthy letters, in which Mr. Childs, with great shrewdness, sagacity, and vigour, and with perfect confidence of always being in the right, acted as universal censor, pronouncing oracularly upon all ecclesiastical and political men and organs, expressing unqualified contempt for the House of Lords, and very small satisfaction with the House of Commons, showing no mercy to Churchmen, and little but asperity to Dissenters, and denouncing all British journals as base or blind except the Nonconformist.’ Only two of these letters are published in Dr. Thompson’s biography. I give one, partly because it is interesting, and partly because it is characteristic. Unfortunately, of all John Childs’ letters to myself, written in a fine, bold hand, exactly reproduced by his son and grandson, so that I could never tell one from the other, I have preserved none. Childs thus wrote to Dr. Thompson, July 15th, 1839:

‘My dear Friend,

‘You will be happy to know that I went into Newgate this morning with my friend Ashurst, and heard their pardon read to the Canadians. They were released this afternoon, and Mr. Parker and Mr. Wixon have been dining with me, and are gone to a lodging, taken for them by Mr. A., where they may remain till their departure on Wednesday. I have just sent to Mr. Tidman to inform him they will worship God and return thanks in his place to-morrow, if all be well. How wonderfully God has appeared for these people! My dear friend, when I first saw them in January all things appeared to be against them, but all has been overruled for good.

‘At the time you left on Monday evening, Lord John was making known to the House of Commons, in your own words, the plan proposed by yourself, and adopted by him, to my amazement. Most heartily do I congratulate you on the termination of the event, so decidedly honourable to yourself in every way. I do not expect you will approve of all that I have done, but I felt it to be my duty to address a letter to the Pilot on the subject, calling attention to the liberty taken with you, and the manner in which you were humbugged when in concert with the London societies, and the absolute triumph of your cause when conducted with single-handed integrity, intelligence, and energy. If it shall happen that you do not approve of all I have said, I am sure you ought, because without you, and with you, if you had left it to the fellows here, Scotland’s Dissenters would have now appeared the degraded things which, on the Bible subject, the English Dissenters have appeared in my eyes for some years past. It is due to you. I was fairly rejoiced when I saw Lord John’s declaration, because I could see from his answer to Sir James Graham that he meant the thing should be done. Scotland ought to have a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving, and as I said to a friend to whom I wrote in Edinburgh, “You ought to have a monument – the Thompson monument.” “That, sir,” the guide would say, “is erected to honour a man by whose honest energy and zeal Scotland was freed from the most degrading tyranny – that of a monopoly in printing the Word of God.” The tablet should bear that memorable sentence of yours on the first day of your examination, “All monopolies are bad.” Of all monopolies religious monopolies are the worst, and of all religious monopolies a monopoly of the Word of God is the most outrageous.’ Alas! I have heard nothing of the Thompson monument.

Such a man was John Childs. One more busy in body and brain I never knew. That he was disposed to be cynical was natural. Most men who see much of the world, and who do not wear coloured glasses, are so. Take the history of the Bible monopoly. The work of its abolition was commenced by John Childs, of Bungay, carried on and completed as far as Scotland was concerned by Dr. Adam Thompson, while the British public in its usual silliness awarded £3,000 to Dr. Campbell, on the plea – I quote the words of the late Dr. Morton Brown, of Cheltenham – that, ‘God gave the honour very largely to our friend, Dr. Campbell, to smite this bloated enemy of God and man full in the forehead.’ The bloated enemy, as regards Scotland, was dead before Dr. Campbell had ever penned a line. As regards England, I believe it still exists.

It must have been about 1837 that the name of John Childs, of Bungay, was made specially notorious by reason of his refusal to pay Church-rates, and when he had the honour of being the first person imprisoned for their non-payment. He was proceeded against in the Ecclesiastical Courts, and as his refusal to pay was solely on conscientious grounds, he did not contest the matter. The result was, he was sent to Ipswich Gaol for the non-payment of a rate of 17s. 6d., the animus of the ecclesiastical authorities being manifested by the endorsement of the writ, ‘Take no bail.’ It was the first death-blow to Church-rates. The local excitement it created was intense and unparalleled. In the House of Commons Sir William Foulkes presented several petitions from Norfolk, and Mr. Joseph Hume several from Suffolk, on the subject. One entire sitting of the House of Commons was devoted to the Bungay Martyr, as Sir Robert Peel ironically termed him. The Bungay Martyr had however, right on his side. It was found that a blot had been hit, and it had to be removed.

The excitement produced by putting Mr. Childs into gaol was intense at that time all over the land. ‘I beg to inform you,’ wrote a Halesworth Dissenter, Mr. William Lincoln, to the editor of the Patriot, at that time the organ of Dissent, ‘that my highly-esteemed and talented friend, Mr. John Childs, of Bungay, has just passed through this town, in custody of a sheriff’s officer, on his way to our county gaol, by virtue of an attachment, at the suit of Messrs. Bobbet and Scott, churchwardens of Bungay, for non-payment of 17s. 6d. demanded of him as a Church-rate, and subsequent refusal to obey a citation for appearance at the Bishop’s Court.’ Naturally the writer remarked: ‘It will soon be seen whether proceedings so well in harmony with the days of fire and faggot are to be tolerated in this advanced period of the nineteenth century.’ When, in due time, Mr. Childs obtained his release, the event was celebrated at Bungay in fitting style. I find in a private diary the following note: ‘This day week was a grand day at Bungay. I heard there were not less than six or seven thousand people there to welcome his return, and the request of the police, that the greatest order might be observed, was fully acted up to. Miss C. did not enter Bungay with her father. I suppose when she found so great a multitude of horsemen, gigs, pedestrians and banners, they thought it better for the young lady and the younger children to retire to the close carriages. Mr. C. during his imprisonment had letters from all parts of the kingdom.’ I remember the leading Dissenters came to Bungay with a piece of plate, to present to Mr. Childs, to commemorate his heroism. A dinner was given by Mr. Childs in connection with the presentation. At that dinner, lad as I was, I was permitted to be present. I had never seen anything so grand or stately before; and that was my first interview with John Childs, a dark, restless, eagle-eyed man, whom I was to know better and love more for many a long day. I took to Radical writing, and nothing could have pleased John Childs better. I owed much to his friendship in after-life.

In 1833 the Church-rate question was originally raised in Bungay, and many of the Dissenters refused to pay. The local authorities at once took high ground, and put twelve of the recusants into the Ecclesiastical Court. They caved in, leaving to John Childs the honour of martyrdom. At the time of Mr. Childs’ imprisonment he had recently suffered from a severe surgical operation, and it was believed by his friends impossible that he could survive the infliction of imprisonment. The Rev. John Browne writes: ‘A committee very generously formed at Ipswich undertook the management of his affairs, and when they learned at the end of eleven days’ imprisonment that he had undergone a most severe attack, indicating at least the possibility of sudden death, they sent a deputation to the Court to pay the sum demanded. The Court, however, required, as well as the money, the usual oath of canonical obedience, and this Mr. Childs refused to give. He was told by his friends that he would surely die in prison, but his reply was, ‘That is not my business.’ But it seems so much had been made of the matter by the newspapers that Mr. Childs was released without taking the oath. Charles Childs, the son, followed in his father’s steps. At Bungay the Churchmen seemed to have determined to make Dissenters as uncomfortable as possible. Actually five years after they had thrown the father into prison, the churchwardens proceeded against the son, having been baffled in repeated attempts to distrain upon his goods, and cited him into the Ecclesiastical Court, where it took two and a half years to determine whether the sum of three shillings and fourpence was due. At the end of that time the judge decided it was not, and the churchwardens had to pay Mr. Childs’ costs as well as their own, which in the course of time amounted to a very respectable sum. Charles Childs, who died suddenly a few years since, and who never seemed to me to have aged a day since I first knew him, was truly a chip of the old block. He was much in London, as he printed quite as much as his father for the leading London publishers. An enlightened patriot, he was in very many cases successful in resisting the obstacles raised from time to time by party spirit or Church bigotry. On more than one occasion he conducted a number of his workmen through an illegally-closed path, and opened it by the destruction of the fences, repeated appeals to the persistent obstructions having proved unavailing. He was a man of scholarly and literary attainments, a clever talker, well able to hold his own, and during the Corn Law and Currency agitation he contributed one or more articles on these subjects to the Westminster Review, then edited by his friend, the late General Perronet Thompson, a very foremost figure in Radical circles forty years ago, always trying to get into Parliament – rarely succeeding in the attempt. ‘How can he expect it,’ said Mr. Cobden to me one day, ‘when, instead of going to the principal people to support him, he finds out some small tradesman – some little tailor or shoemaker – to introduce him?’ Once upon a time the Times furiously attacked Charles Childs. His reply, which was able and convincing, was forwarded, but only procured admission in the shape of an advertisement, for which Mr. Childs had to pay ten pounds. The corner of East Anglia of which I write rarely produced two better men than the Childs, father and son. They are gone, but the printing business still survives, though no longer carried on under the well-known name. By their noble integrity and public spirit they proved themselves worthy of a craft to which light and literature and leading owe so much. It is to such men that England is under lasting obligations, and one of the indirect benefits of a State Church is that it gives them a grievance, and a sense of wrong, which compels them to gird up their energies to act the part of village Hampdens or guiltless Cromwells. All the manhood in them is aroused and strengthened as they contend for what they deem right and just, and against force and falsehood. Poets, we are told, by one himself a poet,

 
‘Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.’
 

Nonconformists have cause especially to rejoice in the bigotry and persecution to which they have been exposed, since it has led them by a way they knew not, to become the champions of a broader creed and a more general right than that of which their fathers dreamed. It is easy to swim with the stream; it requires a strong man to swim against it. Two hundred years of such swimming had made the Bungay Nonconformists strong, and gave to the world two such exceptionally sturdy and strengthful men as John and Charles Childs. I was proud to know them as a boy; in advancing years I am prouder still to be permitted to bear this humble testimony to their honest worth. It is because Nonconformity has raised up such men in all parts of the land, that a higher tone has been given to our public life, that politics mean something more than a struggle between the ins and the outs, and that ‘Onward’ is our battle-cry.

Of the young men more or less coming under the influence of the Childs’s, perhaps one of the most successful was the late Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward, Librarian to her Majesty. When I first knew him he was in a bank at Norwich. Thence he passed to Highbury College, and in due time, after he had taken his B.A. degree, settled as the Independent minister at Wortwell, near Harleston, in Norfolk. There he became connected with John Childs, and, amidst much hard work, edited for the firm a new edition of ‘Barclay’s Universal English Dictionary.’ In 1860, on the death of Mr. Glover, who had for many years filled the post of Librarian to the Queen at Windsor Castle, Mr. Woodward’s name was mentioned to the Prince, in reply to inquiries for a competent successor. Acting on the advice of a friend at head-quarters, Mr. Woodward forwarded to Prince Albert the same printed testimonials which he had sent in when he was a candidate for the vacant secretaryship of a large and popular society, and to those alone he owed his appointment to the office of Librarian to the Queen. An interview took place at Windsor Castle, which was highly satisfactory; but before the appointment was finally made, Mr. Woodward informed Her Majesty and the Prince that there was one circumstance which he had omitted to mention, and which might disqualify him for the post. ‘Pray, what is that disqualification?’ asked the Prince. ‘It is,’ replied Mr. Woodward, ‘that I have been educated for, and have actually conducted the services of an Independent congregation in the country.’ ‘And why should that be thought to disqualify you?’ asked the Prince. ‘It does nothing of the sort. If that is all, we are quite satisfied, and feel perfectly safe in having you for a librarian.’ Am I not justified in saying that at one time Bungay influences reached far and near?

CHAPTER VI.
A CELEBRATED NORFOLK TOWN

Great Yarmouth Nonconformists – Intellectual life – Dawson Turner – Astley Cooper – Hudson Gurney – Mrs. Bendish.

When David Copperfield, Dickens tells us, first caught sight of Yarmouth, it seemed to him to look rather spongy and soppy. As he drew nearer, he remarks, ‘and saw the whole adjacent prospect, lying like a straight, low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it, and also that if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast-and-water, it would have been much nicer.’ He adds: ‘When we got into the street, which was strange to me, and smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tallow, and saw the sailors walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place injustice.’ In this opinion his readers who know Yarmouth will agree. Brighton and Hastings and Eastbourne might envy Yarmouth its sandy beach, where you can lead an amphibious life, watching the fishing-smacks as they come to shore with cargoes often so heavy as to be sold for manure; watching the merchant-ships and yachts that lie securely in the Roads, or the long trail of black smoke of Scotch or northern steamers far away; watching the gulls ever skimming the surface of the waves; or the children, as they build little forts and dwellings in the sand to be rudely swept to destruction by the advancing tide. In the golden light of summer, how blue is the sky, how green the sea, how yellow the sand, how jolly look the men and handsome the women! What health and healing are in the air, as it comes laden with ozone from the North Sea! You have the sea in front and on each side to look at, to walk by, to splash in, to sail on. The danger is, that you grow too fat, too ruddy, too hearty, too boisterous. As we all know, Venus was born out of the sea, and out there on that eastern peninsula, of which Yarmouth is the pride and ornament, there used to flourish bonny lasses, as if to show that the connection between the ocean and lovely woman is as intimate as of yore. Yarmouth and Lowestoft owe a great deal to the Great Eastern Railway, which has made them places of health-resort from all parts of England; and truly the pleasure-seeker or the holiday-maker may go farther and fare worse.

I was a proud boy when first I set foot in Yarmouth. How I came to go there I can scarcely remember, but it is to be presumed I accompanied my father on one of those grand occasions – as far as Nonconformist circles are concerned – when the brethren met together for godly comfort and counsel. It is true Wrentham was in Suffolk, and Yarmouth was in Norfolk, but the Congregational Churches of that quarter had always been connected by Christian fellowship and sympathy, and hence I was taken to Yarmouth – at that time far more like a Dutch than an English town – and wonderful to me was the Quay, with its fine houses on one side and its long line of ships on the other – something like the far-famed Bompjes of Rotterdam – and the narrow rows in which the majority of the labouring classes were accustomed to live. ‘A row,’ wrote Charles Dickens, ‘is a long, narrow lane or alley, quite straight, or as nearly so as may be, with houses on each side, both of which you can sometimes touch with the finger-tips of each hand by stretching out your arms to their full extent. Many and many a picturesque old bit of domestic architecture is to be hunted up among the rows. In some there is little more than a blank wall for the double boundary. In others the houses retreat into busy square courts, where washing and clear-starching are done, and wonderful nasturtiums and scarlet-runners are reared from green boxes filled with that scarce commodity, vegetable mould. Most of these rows are paved with pebbles from the beach, and to traverse them a peculiar form of low cart, drawn by a single horse, is employed.’ This to me was a great novelty, as with waggons and carts I was familiar, but not with a Yarmouth cart – now, I find, replaced by wheelbarrows. In Amsterdam, at the present day, you may see many such quaint old rows. But in Amsterdam you have an evil-smelling air, while in Yarmouth it is ever fresh and crisp, and redolent, as it were, of the neighbouring sea. The market-place and the big church were at the back of this congeries of quays and rows, and the sea and the old pier were at quite a respectable distance from the town. I fancy the Yarmouth of the London bathers has now extended down to the sandy beach, and the rough and rude old pier has given place to one better adapted to the wants and requirements of an increasingly well-to-do community. Far more Dutch than English was the Yarmouth of half a century ago, I again say.

As to the Yarmouth Independent parson, I shall never forget him. He was a very big man, with great red cheeks that hung over his collar like blown bladders, and was always on stilts. He preached in a big meeting-house, now no more, the pillars of which intercepted alike the view and the sound. One winter evening he was holding forth, in his usual heavy style, to a few good people – with whom, evidently, all pleasure was out of the question – who came there, as in duty bound, and sat like martyrs all the while, and all were as grave as the preacher, when a wicked boy rushed in and, in a hurried manner, called out, ‘Fire! fire!’ The effect, I am told, was electrical. For once the good parson was in a hurry, and moved as quickly and spoke as rapidly as his fellows; but never had there been so much excitement in his chapel since he had been its pastor. Once, I remember, he came to town, and dropped in at the close of a party rather convivially inclined, in the Old London Coffee House. As the reverend gentleman advanced to greet his friends, a London lawyer, with all the impudence of his class, muttered, in a whisper intended to be heard, and which was heard, by everyone, ‘Yarmouth bloater.’ The good man said nothing, but it was evident he thought all the more, as the group were more or less tittering over the fitness of the comparison. The lawyer who made the remark was also the son of a London minister, and, therefore, might have been expected to have known better. I fear the Yarmouth minister never forgave him. Well, it only served him right, as he had a horrible way of making young people very uncomfortable. ‘Well, Master James,’ said he to me on one occasion, when all the brethren had come to dine at Wrentham, and when I was admitted, in conformity with the golden maxim in all well-regulated family circles, that little children were to be seen and not heard (perhaps in our day the fault is too much in an opposite direction), ‘can you inform me which is the more proper form of expression – a pair of new gloves, or a new pair of gloves?’ Of course I gave the wrong answer, as I blushed up to the ears at finding myself the smallest personage in the room, publicly appealed to by the biggest. He meant well, I dare say. His only object was to draw me out; but the question and the questioner gave me a bad quarter of an hour, and I never got over the unpleasant sensation of which he had unconsciously been the originator in my youthful breast.

At that time Yarmouth people were supposed to be a little superior. They were well-to-do, and lived in good style, and, as was to be expected, considering the sanitary advantages of the situation, were in good health and spirits. They got a good deal of their intellectual character from Norwich, which at the time set the fashion in such matters. In 1790 two societies were established in that city for the private and amicable discussion of miscellaneous questions. One of these, the Tusculan, seems to have devoted the attention of its members exclusively to political topics; while the Speculative, although it imposed no restrictions on the range of inquiry, was of a more philosophical character. William Taylor was a member of both, and it is difficult to say whether he distinguished himself most by his ingenuity in debate, by the novelty of the information which he brought to bear on every point, or by the lively sallies of imagination with which he at once amused and excited his hearers. The papers read by himself embraced an infinite variety of subjects, from the theory of the earth, then unillumined by the disclosures of modern geologists, to the most elaborate and refined productions of its rational tenants, and he was seldom at a loss to place on new ground or in a fresh light the matter of discussion introduced by others. Writers of every tongue, studied by him with observant curiosity, stored his retentive memory with materials ready to be applied on every occasion, moulded by his Promethean talent into the most animated and alluring forms. As a speaker and converser he was eminently characterized by a constant flow of brilliant ideas, by a rapid succession of striking images, and by a never-failing copiousness of words, often quaint, but always correct. A similar society was formed at Yarmouth, under the auspices of Dr. Aiken, at which William Taylor also occasionally attended. The Rev. Thomas Compton has given the following description of these visits: ‘We were, moreover, sometimes gratified by the presence of our literary friends from Norwich. I have there repeatedly listened to the mild and persuasive eloquence of the late Dr. Enfield. A gentleman, too, still living, who has lately added to his literary fame by a biographical work of high repute (I scarcely need add that I allude to Mr. W. Taylor) would sometimes instruct us by his various and profound knowledge, or amuse us with his ingenious paradoxes.’ When we recollect how at this time the poetical puerilities of Bath Easton flourished in the West, we may claim that Norwich and Yarmouth, if not as favoured by fashion, had at any rate a claim to intellectual reputation at least quite equal to that city of the ton. Dr. Sayers, whose biography William Taylor had written, and whose ‘Dramatic Sketches of Northern Mythology’ had created a great sensation at the time, was of Yarmouth extraction.

The Rev. Mr. Compton writes: ‘In Yarmouth, where I lived at this time, and where Lord Chedworth was accustomed to pay an annual visit, there was then a society of gentlemen who met once a fortnight for the purpose of amicable discussion. Our members – alas! how few remain – were of all parties and persuasions, and some of them of very distinguished attainments. A society thus constituted was in those days as pleasant as it was instructive. The most eager disputation was never found to endanger the most perfect goodwill, nor did any bitter feuds arise from this entire freedom of opinion till the prolific period of the French Revolution. On this subject our controversies became very impassioned. The present Sir Astley Cooper, then a very young man, was accustomed to pass his vacations with his most excellent father, Dr. Cooper, a name ever to be by me beloved and revered. It was the amusement of our young friend to say things of the most irritating nature, I believe – like Lady Florence Pemberton in the novel – merely to see who would make the ugliest face. Thus circumstanced, it was not in my philosophy to be the coolest of the party.’ We can well imagine the consequences. There was a row, and the literary society came to grief. As time went on matters became worse instead of better, and the town was split up into parties – Liberal or the reverse, Church or Dissent, but all of one mind as regards their views being correct; and as to the weakness or wickedness of persons who thought otherwise. The evil of this spirit knew no bounds, and the demoralizing effect it produced was especially apparent at election times. When Oldfield wrote his ‘Origin of Parliaments,’ the town, he tells us, was under the influence of the Earl of Leicester, and was for many years represented by some of his Lordship’s family. The right of election was in the burgesses at large, of whom there were at that time one thousand. The Reform Bill did little to improve the state of affairs; it led to greater bribery and corruption and intimidation than ever, and now, as a Parliamentary borough, Yarmouth has ceased to exist. ‘Sugar,’ it seems, was the slang term used for money, and the honest voters were too eager to get it. Alas! in none of our seaport towns is the standard of morality very high. Yarmouth, at any rate, is not worse than Deal. In old days the excitement of a Yarmouth election much affected our village. It lasted some days. The out-voters were brought from the uttermost parts of the earth. As there were no railways, stage-coaches were hired to bring them down from town; and when they changed horses at Wrentham, quite a crowd would assemble to look at the flags, and the free and independents on their way to do their duty, overflowing with enthusiasm and beer.

Sir Astley Cooper was much connected with Yarmouth in his young days, when his father was the incumbent of the parish church. Some of his boyish pranks were peculiar. Here is one of them: ‘Having taken two pillows from his mother’s bed, he carried them up the spire of Yarmouth Church, at a time when the wind was blowing from the north-east; and as soon as he had ascended as high as he could, he ripped them open, and, shaking out their contents, dispersed them in the air. The feathers were carried away by the wind, and fell far and wide over the surface of the market-place, to the great astonishment of a large number of persons assembled there. The timid looked upon it phenomenon predictive of some calamity; the inquisitive formed a thousand conjectures; while some, curious in natural history, actually accounted for it by a gale of wind in the north blowing wild-fowl feathers from the island of St. Paul’s.’ On another occasion he got into an old trunk, which the family had agreed to get rid of as inconvenient in the house. In this case he had to pay the penalty, when he emerged from the chest in the carpenter’s shop. The men, who had complained terribly of its weight, were not inclined to allow young Astley to get off free. One of Astley’s tricks had, however, a good motive, as it was intended to cure an old woman of her besetting sin – a tendency to take a drop too much. In order to cure the old woman of this weakness, he dressed himself as well as he could to represent the sable form of his satanic majesty. Alas! instead of being surprised, the old lady was too far-gone for that, and listened with tipsy gravity to the distinguished visitor’s discourse. In her case it was true, as Burns wrote: