East Anglia: Personal Recollections and Historical Associations

‘All roofless now the stately pile,And rent the arches tall,Through which with bright departing smileThe western sunbeams fall.* * * * *‘Tradition’s voice forgets to tellWhose ashes sleep below,And Fancy here unchecked may dwell,And bid the story flow.’

Ah! what was that story? How the question puzzled my young head, as I walked in the sandy lane that led from my native village! How insignificant looked the little church built up inside! What had become of the crowds that at one time must have filled that ancient fane? How was it that no trace of them remained? They had vanished in the historical age, and yet no one could tell how or when. Nature was, then, stronger than man. He was gone, but the stars glittered by night and the sun shone by day, and the ivy had spread its green mantle over all. Yes! what was man, with his pomp and glory, but dust and ashes, after all! How I loved to go to Covehithe and climb its ruins, and dream of the distant past!

Here in that eastern point of England it seemed to me there was a good deal of decay. Sometimes, on a fine summer day, we would take a boat and sail from the pretty little town of Southwold, about four miles from Wrentham, to Dunwich, another relic of the past. According to an old historian, it was a city surrounded with a stone wall having brazen gates; it had fifty-two churches, chapels, and religious houses; it also boasted hospitals, a huge palace, a bishop’s seat, a mayor’s mansion, and a Mint. Beyond it a forest appears to have extended some miles into what is now the sea. One of our local Suffolk poets, James Bird (I saw him but once, when I walked into his house, about twelve miles from Wrentham, having run away from home at the ripe age of ten, and told him I had come to see him, as he was a poet; and I well remember how then, much to my chagrin, he gave me plum-pudding for dinner, and sent me to play with his boys till a cart was found in which the prodigal was compelled to return), wrote and published a poetical romance, called ‘Dunwich; or, a Tale of the Splendid City;’ and Agnes Strickland also made it the subject of her melodious verse, commencing:

‘Oft gazing on thy craggy brow,We muse on glories o’er.Fair Dunwich! Thou art lonely now,Renowned and sought no more.’

Never has a splendid city more utterly collapsed. After a long ride over sandy lanes and fields, you come to the edge of a cliff, on which stand a few houses. There is all that remains of the Dunwich where the first Bishop of East Anglia taught the Christian faith, and where was born John Daye, the printer of the works of Parker, Latimer, and Fox, who, in the reign of Mary, became, as most real men did then, a prisoner and an exile for the truth. He has also the reputation of being the first in England who printed in the Saxon character. In the records of type-founding the name of Daye stands with that of the most illustrious. When the Company of Stationers obtained their charter from Philip and Mary, he was the first person admitted to their livery. In 1580 he was master of the company, to which he bequeathed property at his death. The following is the inscription which marks the place of his burial in Little Bradley, Suffolk:

‘Here lyes the Daye that darkness could not blynd,When Popish fogges had overcast the sunne;This Daye the cruel night did leave behind,To view and show what bloudie actes were donne.He set a Fox to write how martyrs runneBy death to lyfe, Fox ventured paynes and health.To give them light Daye spent in print his wealth,But God with gayne returned his wealth agayne,And gave to him as he gave to the poore.Two wyfes he had partakers of his payne:Each wyfe twelve babes, and each of them one more,Als was the last increaser of his store;Who, mourning long for being left alone,Sett up this tombe, herself turned to a stone.’

Unlike Covehithe, Dunwich has a history. In the reign of Henry II., a MS. in the British Museum tells us, the Earl of Leicester came to attack it. ‘When he came neare and beheld the strength thereof, it was terror and feare unto him to behold it; and so retired both he and his people.’ Dunwich aided King John in his wars with the barons, and thus gained the first charter. In the time of Edward I. it had sixteen fair ships, twelve barks, four-and-twenty fishing barks, and at that time there were few seaports in England that could say as much. It served the same King in his wars with France with eleven ships of war, well furnished with men and munition. In most of these ships were seventy-two men-at-arms, who served thirteen weeks at their own cost and charge. Dunwich seems to have suffered much by the French wars. Four of the eleven ships already referred to were captured by the French, and in the wars waged by Edward III. Dunwich lost still more shipping, and as many as 500 men. Perhaps it might have flourished till this day had if not been for the curse of war. But the sea also served the town cruelly. That spared nothing – not the King’s Forest, where there were hawking and hunting – not the homes where England nursed her hardy sailors – not even the harbour whence the brave East Anglians sailed away to the wars. In Edward III.’s time, at one fell swoop, the remorseless sea seems to have swallowed up ‘400 houses which payde rente to the towne towards the fee-farms, besydes certain shops and windmills.’ Yet, when I was a lad, this wreck of a place returned two members to Parliament, and Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield not one. Between Covehithe and Dunwich stood, and still stands, the charming little bathing-place of Southwold. Like them, it has seen better days, and has suffered from the encroachments of the ever-restless and ever-hungry sea. It was at Southwold that I first saw the sea, and I remember naturally asking my father, who showed me the guns on the gun-hill – pointing seaward – whether that was where the enemies came from.

Southwold appears to have initiated an evangelical alliance, which may yet be witnessed if ever a time comes of reasonable toleration on religious matters. In many parts of the Continent the same place of worship is used by different religious bodies. In Brussels I have seen the Episcopalians, the Germans, the French Protestants, all assembling at different times in the same building. There was a time when a similar custom prevailed in Southwold, and that was when Master Sharpen, who had his abode at Sotterley, preached at Southwold once a month. There were Independents in the towns in those days, and ‘his indulgence,’ writes a local historian, ‘favoured the Separatists with the liberty and free use of the church, where they resorted weekly, or oftener, and every fourth Sunday both ministers met and celebrated divine service alternately. He that entered the church first had the precedency of officiating, the other keeping silence until the congregation received the Benediction after sermon.’ Most of the people attended all the while. It was before the year 1680 that these things were done. After that time there came to the church ‘an orthodox man, who suffered many ills, and those not the lightest, for his King and for his faith, and he compelled the Independents not only to leave the church, but the town also. We read they assembled in a malt-house beyond the bridge, where, being disturbed, they chose more private places in the town until liberty of conscience was granted, when they publicly assembled in a fish-house converted to a place of worship.’ At that time many people in the town were Dissenters; but it was not till 1748 that they had a church formed. Up to that time the Southwold Independents were members of the Church at Wrentham, one of the Articles of Association of the new church being to take the Bible as their sole guide, and when in difficulties to resort to the neighbouring pastor for advice and declaration. Such was Independency when it flourished all over East Anglia.

A writer in the Harleian Miscellany says that ‘Southwold, of sea-coast town, is the most beneficial unto his Majesty of all the towns in England, by reason all their trade is unto Iceland for lings.’ In the little harbour of Southwold you see nowadays only a few colliers, and I fear that the place is of little advantage to her Majesty, however beneficial it may be as a health-resort for some of her Majesty’s subjects. It is a place, gentle reader, where you can wander undisturbed at your own sweet will, and can get your cheeks fanned by breezes unknown in London. The beach, I own, is shingly, and not to be compared with the sands of Yarmouth and Lowestoft; but, then, you are away from the Cockney crowds that now infest these places at the bathing season, and you are quiet – whether you wander on its common, till you come to the Wolsey Bridge, getting on towards Halesworth, where, if tradition be trustworthy, Wolsey, as a butcher’s boy, was nearly drowned, and where he benevolently caused a bridge to be erected for the safety of all future butcher-boys and others, when he became a distinguished man; or ramble by the seaside to Walberswick, across the harbour, or on to Easton Bavent – another decayed village, on the other side. Southwold has its historical associations. Most of my readers have seen the well-known picture of Solebay Fight at Greenwich Hospital. Southwold overlooks the bay on which that fight was won. Here, on the morning of the 28th May, 1672, De Ruyter, with his Dutchmen, sailed right against those wooden walls which have guarded old England in many a time of danger, and found to his cost how invincible was British pluck. James, Duke of York – not then the drivelling idiot who lost his kingdom for a Mass, but James, manly and high-spirited, with a Prince’s pride and a sailor’s heart – won a victory that for many a day was a favourite theme with all honest Englishmen, and especially with the true and stout men who, alarmed by the roar of cannon, as the sound boomed along the blue waters of that peaceful bay, stood on the Southwold cliff, wishing that the fog which intercepted their view might clear off, and that they might welcome as victors their brethren on the sea. I can remember how, when an old cannon was dragged up from the depths of the sea, it was supposed to be, as it might have been, used in that fight, and now is preserved at one of the look-out houses on the cliff as a souvenir of that glorious struggle. The details of that fight are matters of history, and I need not dwell on them. Our literature, also, owes Southwold one of the happiest effusions of one of the wittiest writers of that age; and in a county history I remember well a merry song on the Duke’s late glorious success over the Dutch, in Southwold Bay, which commences with the writer telling —

‘One day as I was sitting stillUpon the side of Dunwich Hill,And looking on the ocean,By chance I saw De Ruyter’s fleetWith Royal James’s squadron meet;In sooth it was a noble treatTo see that brave commotion.’

The writer vividly paints the scene, and ends as follows:

‘Here’s to King Charles, and here’s to James,And here’s to all the captains’ names,And here’s to all the Suffolk dames,And here’s to the house of Stuart.’

Well, as to the house of Stuart, the less said the better; but as to the Suffolk dames, I agree with the poet, that they are all well worthy of the toast, and it was at a very early period of my existence that I became aware of that fact. But the course of true love never does run smooth, and from none – and they were many – with whom I played on the beach as a boy, or read poetry to at riper years, was it my fate to take one as wife for better or worse. In the crowded city men have little time to fall in love. Besides, they see so many fresh faces that impressions are easily erased. It is otherwise in the quiet retirement of a village where there is little to disturb the mind – perhaps too little. I can well remember a striking illustration of this in the person of an old farmer, who lived about three miles off, and at whose house we – that is, the whole family – passed what seemed to me a very happy day among the haystacks or harvest-fields once or twice a year. The old man was proud of his farm, and of everything connected with it. ‘There, Master James,’ he was wont to say to me after dinner, ‘you can see three barns all at once!’ and sure enough, looking in the direction he pointed, there were three barns plainly visible to the naked eye. Alas! the love of the picturesque had not been developed in my bucolic friend, and a good barn or two – he was an old bachelor, and, I suppose, his heart had never been softened by the love of woman – seemed to him about as beautiful an object as you could expect or desire. One emotion, that of fear, was, however, I found, strongly planted in the village breast. The boys of the village, with whom, now and then, I stole away on a birds’-nesting expedition, would have it that in a little wood about a mile or two off there were no end of flying serpents and dragons to be seen; and I can well remember the awe which fell upon the place when there came a rumour of the doings of those wretches, Burke and Hare, who were said to have made a living by murdering victims – by placing pitch plasters on their mouths – and selling them to the doctors to dissect. At this time a little boy had not come home at the proper time, and the mother came to our house lamenting. The good woman was in tears, and refused to be comforted. There had been a stranger in the village that day; he had seen her boy, he had put a pitch plaster on his mouth, and no doubt his dead body was then on its way to Norwich to be sold to the doctor. Unfortunately, it turned out that the boy was alive and well, and lived to give his poor mother a good deal of trouble. Another thing, of which I have still a vivid recollection, was the mischief wrought by Captain Swing. In Kent there had been an alarming outbreak of the peasantry, ostensibly against the use of agricultural machinery. They assembled in large bodies, and visited the farm buildings of the principal landed proprietors, demolishing the threshing machines then being brought into use. In some instances they set fire to barns and corn-stacks. These outrages spread throughout the county, and fears were entertained that they would be repeated in other agricultural districts. A great meeting of magistrates and landed gentry was held in Canterbury, the High Sheriff in the chair, when a reward was offered of £100 for the discovery of the perpetrators of the senseless mischief, and the Lords of the Treasury offered a further reward of the same amount for their apprehension; but all was in vain to stop the growing evil. The agricultural interest was in a very depressed state, and the number of unemployed labourers so large, that apprehensions were entertained that the combinations for the destruction of machinery might, if not at once checked, take dimensions it would be very difficult for the Government to control. When Parliament opened in 1830, the state of the agricultural districts had been daily growing more alarming. Rioting and incendiarism had spread from Kent to Suffolk, Norfolk, Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Huntingdonshire, and Cambridgeshire, and a great deal of very valuable property had been destroyed. A mystery enveloped these proceedings that indicated organization, and it became suspected that they had a political object. Threatening letters were sent to individuals signed ‘Swing,’ and beacon fires communicated from one part of the country to the other. With the object of checking these outrages, night patrols were established, dragoons were kept in readiness to put down tumultuous meetings, and magistrates and clergymen and landed gentry were all at their wits’ ends. Even in our out-of-the-way corner of East Anglia not a little consternation was felt. We were on the highroad nightly traversed by the London and Yarmouth Royal Mail, and thus, more or less, we had communications with the outer world. Just outside of our village was Benacre Hall, the seat of Sir Thomas Gooch, one of the county members, and I well remember the boyish awe with which I heard that a mob had set out from Yarmouth to burn the place down. Whether the mob thought better of it, or gave up the walk of eighteen miles as one to which they were not equal, I am not in a position to say. All I know is, that Benacre Hall, such as it is, remains; but I can never forget the feeling of terror with which, on those dark and dull winter nights, I looked out of my bedroom window to watch the lurid light flaring up into the black clouds around, which told how wicked men were at their mad work, how fiendish passion had triumphed, how some honest farmer was reduced to ruin, as he saw the efforts of a life of industry consumed by the incendiary’s fire. It was long before I ceased to shudder at the name of ‘Swing.’

The dialect of the village was, I need not add, East Anglian. The people said ‘I woll’ for ‘I will’; ‘you warn’t’ for ‘you were not,’ and so on. A girl was called a ‘mawther,’ a pitcher a ‘gotch,’ a ‘clap on the costard’ was a knock on the head, a lad was a ‘bor.’ Names of places especially were made free with. Wangford was ‘Wangfor,’ Covehithe was ‘Cothhigh,’ Southwold was ‘Soul,’ Lowestoft was ‘Lesteff,’ Halesworth was ‘Holser,’ London was ‘Lunun.’ People who lived in the midland counties were spoken of as living in the shires. The ‘o,’ as in ‘bowls,’ it is specially difficult for an East Anglian to pronounce. A learned man was held to be a ‘man of larnin’,’ a thing of which there was not too much in Suffolk in my young days. A lady in the village sent her son to school, and great was the maternal pride as she called in my father to hear how well her son could read Latin, the reading being reading alone, without the faintest attempt at translation. Sometimes it was hard to get an answer to a question, as when a Dissenting minister I knew was sent for to visit a sick man. ‘My good man,’ said he, ‘what induced you to send for me?’ ‘Hey, what?’ said the invalid. ‘What induced you to send for me?’ Alas! the question was repeated in vain. At length the wife interfered: ‘He wants to know what the deuce you sent for him for.’ And then, and not till then, came an appropriate reply. This story, I believe, has more than once found its way into Punch; but I heard it as a Suffolk boy years and years before Punch had come into existence.

One of the prayers familiar to my youth was as follows:

‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,Bless the bed that I lie on;Four corners to my bed,Four angels at my head;Two to watch and one to pray,And one to carry my soul away.’

An M.P., who shall be nameless, supplies me with an apt illustration of East Anglian dialect. It was at the anniversary of a National School, with the great M.P. in the chair, surrounded by the benevolent ladies and the select clergy of the district. The subject of examination was Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on an ass’s colt. ‘Why,’ said the M.P. – ‘why did they strew rushes before the Saviour? can any of you children tell me?’ Profound silence. The M.P. repeated the question. A little ragamuffin held up his hand. The M.P. demanded silence as the apt scholar proceeded with his answer. ‘Why were the rushes strewed?’ said the M.P. in a condescending tone. I don’t know,’ replied the boy, ‘unless it was to hull the dickey down.’

Roars of laughter greeted the reply, as all the East Anglians present knew that ‘hull’ meant ‘throw,’ and ‘dickey’ is Suffolk for ‘donkey,’ but some of the Cockney visitors present were for a while quite unable to enjoy the joke.

It is to be feared the three R’s were not much patronized in East Anglia, if it be true that some forty or fifty years ago, in such a respectable town as Sudbury, it was the fashion for some fifty of the leading inhabitants to meet in the large bar-parlour of the old White Horse to hear the leading paper of the eastern counties read out by a scholar and elocutionist known as John. For the discharge of this important duty he was paid a pound a year, and provided with as much free liquor as he liked, and there were people who considered that the Saturday newspaper-reading did them more good than what they heard at church the next day.

In some cases our East Anglian dialect is merely a survival of old English, as when we say ‘axe’ for ‘ask.’ We find in Chaucer:

‘It is but foly and wrong wengingTo axe so outrageous thing.’

In his ‘Envious Man,’ Gowing made ‘axeth’ to rhyme with ‘taxeth.’ No word is more common in Suffolk than ‘fare’; a pony is a ‘hobby’; a thrush is a ‘mavis’; a chest is a ‘kist’; a shovel is a ‘skuppet’; a chaffinch is a ‘spink.’ If a man is upset in his mind, he tells us he is ‘wholly stammed,’ and the Suffolk ‘yow’ is at least as old as Chaucer, who wrote:

‘What do you ye do there, quod she,Come, and if it lyke yowTo daucen daunceth with us now.’

An awkward lad is ‘ungain.’ A good deal may be written to show that our Suffolk dialect is the nearest of all provincial dialects to that of Chaucer and the Bible, and if anyone has the audacity to contradict me, why, then, in Suffolk phraseology, I can promise him – ‘a good hiding.’

I am old enough to remember how placid was the county, how stay-at-home were the people, what a sensation there was created when anyone went to London, or any stranger appeared in our midst. From afar we heard of railways; then we had a railway opened from London to Brentwood; then the railways spread all over the land, and there were farmers who did think that they had something to do with the potato disease. The change was not a pleasant one: the turnpikes were deserted; the inns were void of customers; no longer did the villagers hasten to see the coach change horses, and the bugle of the guard was heard no more. For a time the Eastern Counties Railway had a somewhat dolorous career. It was thought to be something to be thankful for when the traveller by it reached his journey’s end in decent time and without an accident. Now the change is marvellous. The Great Eastern Railway stands in the foremost rank of the lines terminating in London. It now runs roundly 20,000,000 of train miles in the course of a year. It carries a larger number of passengers than any other line. It carries the London working man twelve miles in and twelve miles out for twopence a day. It is the direct means of communication with all the North of Europe by its fine steamers from Harwich. It has yearly an increased number of season-ticket-holders. On a Whit Monday it gives 125,000 excursionists a happy day in the country or by the seaside. In 1891 the number of passengers carried was 81,268,661, exclusive of season-ticket-holders. It is conspicuous now for its punctuality and freedom from accidents. It is, in short, a model of good management, and it also deserves credit for looking well after the interests of its employés, of whom there are some 25,000. It contributes to the Accident Fund, to the Provident Society, to the Superannuation Fund, and to the Pension Fund, to which the men also subscribe, in the most liberal manner, and besides has established a savings bank, which returns the men who place their money in it four per cent. It is a liberal master. It does its duty to its men, who deserve well of the public as of the Great Eastern Railway itself; but its main merit, after all, is that it has been the making of East Anglia.

CHAPTER II.

THE STRICKLANDS

Reydon Hall – The clergy – Pakefield – Social life in a village.

As I write I have lying before me a little book called ‘Hugh Latimer; or, The School-boy’s Friendship,’ by Miss Strickland, author of the ‘Little Prisoner,’ ‘Charles Grant,’ ‘Prejudice and Principle,’ ‘The Little Quaker.’ It bears the imprint – ‘London: Printed for A. R. Newman and Co., Leadenhall Street.’ On a blank page inside I find the following: ‘James Ewing Ritchie, with his friend Susanna’s affectionate regards.’ Susanna was a sister of Miss Agnes Strickland, the authoress, and was as much a writer as herself. The Stricklands were a remarkable family, living about four or five miles from Wrentham, on the road leading from Wangford to Southwold, at an old-fashioned residence called Reydon Hall. They had, I fancy, seen better days, and were none the worse for that. The Stricklands came over with William the Conqueror. One of them was the first to land, and hence the name. A good deal of blue blood flowed in their veins. Kate – to my eyes the fairest of the lot – was named Katherine Parr, to denote that she was a descendant of one of the wives of the too-much-married Henry VIII., and in the old-fashioned drawing-room of Reydon Hall I heard not a little – they all talked at once – of what to me was strange and rare. Mr. Strickland had deceased some years, and the widow and the daughters kept up what little state they could; and I well remember the feeling of surprise with which I first entered their capacious drawing-room – a room the size of which it had never entered into my head to conceive of. It is to the credit of these Misses Strickland that they did not vegetate in that old house, but held a fair position in the world of letters. Miss Strickland herself chiefly resided in town. Agnes, the next, whose ‘Queens of England’ is still a standard book, was more frequently at home. The only one of the family who did not write was Sarah, who married one of the Radical Childses of Bungay, and who not till after the death of her husband became respectable and atoned for her sins by marrying a clergyman. Kate, as I have said, the fairest of the whole, married an officer in the army of the name of Traill, and went out to Canada, and wrote there a book called ‘The Backwoods of Canada,’ which was certainly one of the most popular of the four-and-sixpenny volumes published under the auspices of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. Our friend was Susanna, who wrote a volume of poems on Enthusiasm, and who seemed to me, with her dark eyes and hair, a very enthusiastic personage indeed. The reason of her friendship with our family was her deeply religious nature, which impelled her to leave the cold and careless service of the Church – not a little to the disgust of her aristocratic sisters, who, as of ancient lineage, not a little haughty, and rank Tories, had but little sympathy with Dissent.. Susanna was much at our house, and when away scarcely a day passed on which she did not write some of us a letter or send us a book. Then there was a brother Tom, a midshipman – a wonderful being to my inexperienced eyes – who once or twice came to our house seated in the family donkey-chaise, which seemed to me, somehow or other, not to be an ordinary donkey-chaise, but something of a far superior character. I have pleasant recollections of them all, and of the annuals in which they all wrote, and a good many of which fell to my share. Like her sister, Susanna married an officer in the army – a Major Moodie – and emigrated to Canada, where the Stricklands have now a high position, where she had sons and daughters born to her, and wrote more than one novel which found acceptance in the English market. The Stricklands gave me quite a literary turn. When I was a small boy it was really an everyday occurrence for me to write a book or edit a newspaper, and with about as much success as is generally achieved by bookmakers and newspaper editors, whose merit is overlooked by an unthinking public. Let me say in the Stricklands I found an indulgent audience. On one occasion I remember reciting some verses of my own composition, commencing,