In the religious world the change in East Anglia has been immense; the Church was weak, now it has become strong. In most of the villages were good Dissenting congregations, but the landlords set their faces against the Dissenters – “pograms” was what they were contemptuously called – and the landlord’s lady had no mercy on them. The good things in the hall were only reserved for those who attended the parish church. At that time we had two bishops; both resided in Norwich. One was the Bishop of the Diocese; the other was the Rev. John Alexander, who preached in Princes Street Chapel, where the Rev. Dr. Barrett has succeeded him – a man universally beloved and universally popular, as he deserved to be. As for the clergy of that day, I fear many of them led scandalous lives: there was hardly one when I was a boy, within reach of the parish where I was born, whom decent women, with any serious thoughts at all, could go to hear, and consequently they, with their families, went to the nearest Independent Chapel, where it was a sight to see the farmers’ gigs on the green in the chapel yard. They go to the Church now, as the clergyman is quite as devoted to his high calling and quite as earnest in his vocation as his Independent brother. Bishop Bathurst had let things slide too much, as was to be expected of a man whose great complaint in his old age was that they had sent him a dean who could not play whist. Bishop Stanley’s wife complained to Miss Caroline Fox how trying was her husband’s position at Norwich, as his predecessor was an amiable, indolent old man, who let things take their course, and a very bad course they took. It was in his Diocese – at Hadleigh – the Oxford movement commenced, when in 1833 the Vicar, the Rev. James Rose, assembled at the parsonage – not the present handsome building, which is evidently of later date – the men who were to become famous as Tractarians, who had met there to consider how to save the Church. It was then in danger, as Lord Grey had recommended the Bishops to put their house in order. Ten Irish Bishoprics had been suppressed; a mob at Bristol had burnt the Bishop’s palace; and in Norwich the cry had been raised for “more pigs and less parsons.” One of the leaders of the Evangelical party resided at Kirkley. The Rev. Francis Cuningham – afterwards Rector of Lowestoft – had established infant schools, which were then a novelty in East Anglia. His wife was one of the Gurneys, of Earlham, a great power in Norfolk at that time. Joseph John was well known in London philanthropic circles and all over the land, especially in connection with the anti-Slavery and Bible Societies; and at his house men of all religious parties were welcome. At that time, Clarkson, the great anti-Slavery advocate, had come to Playford Hall, near Woodbridge, there to spend in quiet the remainder of his days. In all East Anglian leading towns Nonconformity was very respectable, and its leading men were men of influence and usefulness in their respective localities. It was even so at Bury St. Edmund’s in Mr. Dewhurst’s time. His son, whom I met with in South Australia holding a position in the Educational Department, told me how Rowland Hill came to the town to preach for his father. As there were no railways the great preacher came in his own carriage, and naturally was very anxious as to the welfare of his horses. Mr. Dewhurst told him that he need have no anxiety on that score, as he had a horsedealer a member of his church, who would look after them. “What!” said Rowland Hill, in amazement, “a horsedealer a member of a Christian Church; whoever heard of such a thing?” From which I gather that Rowland Hill knew more of London horsedealers than East Anglian ones. I can well remember that many of the old Nonconformist pulpits were filled by men such as Ray of Bury St. Edmund’s, Creak of Yarmouth, Elvin of Bury (Baptist), Notcutt of Ipswich, and Sloper of Beccles, a friend of Mrs. Siddons. A great power in Beccles and its neighbourhood was the Rev. George Wright, the father of the celebrated scholar, Dr. Aldis Wright, of Cambridge, who still lives to adorn and enlighten the present age. Some of the old Nonconformist chapels were grotesque specimens of rustic architecture. This was especially so at Halesworth, which had a meeting-house – as it was then called – with gigantic pillars under the galleries. It was there the Rev. John Dennant preached – the grandfather of the popular Sir John Robinson, of The Daily News, a dear old man much given to writing poetry, of which, alas! posterity takes no heed. The charm of the old Nonconformist places was the great square pews, lined with green baize, where on a hot Sunday afternoon many a hearer was rewarded with – I can speak from experience – a delightful snooze. The great exception was at Norwich, where there was a fine modern Baptist Chapel, known as “the fashionable watering-place,” where, in 1837, the late William Brock had just commenced what proved to be a highly-successful pastoral career.
As to the theology of the cottagers in East Anglia at that time, I can offer no better illustration of it than that given by Miss Caroline Fox of a cottage talk she had somewhere near Norwich. She writes, “A young woman told us that her father was nearly converted, and that a little more teaching would complete the business,” adding “He quite believes that he is lost, which, of course, is a great consolation to the old man.”
Literature flourished in East Anglia in 1837. Bulwer Lytton, an East Anglian by birth and breeding, had just published “Paul Clifford,” and was about to commence a new and better style of novel. Norwich had long been celebrated for its Literary Society, and one of the most remarkable of the literary men of the age was George Borrow, author of the “Bible in Spain,” the materials for which he was then collecting, and who spent much of his life in East Anglia, where he was born. He was five years in Spain during the disturbed early years of Isabella II., and he travelled in every part of Castile and Leon, as well as the southern part of the Peninsula and Northern Portugal. Again and again his adventurous habits brought him into danger among brigands and Carlists, as well as Roman Catholic priests, and he experienced a brief imprisonment in Madrid. At Norwich also was then living Mrs. Opie – as a Quakeress – after having spent the greater part of her life in London gaiety. A lady who met her in Brussels says she spoke with much enthusiasm of the eminent artists, who, in her part of the world – videlicet, the Eastern Counties – had become men of mark. Of her husband, who had been dead many years, she said playfully that if neither Suffolk nor Norfolk could boast of the honour of being his birthplace, he had done his best to remedy the evil by marrying a Norwich woman. At Reydon Hall, rather a tumble-down old place, as I recollect it, lived the Stricklands, and of the six daughters of the house five were literary women more or less successful. Of these the best known was Agnes, author of “The Lives of the Queens of England,” which owed much of its success to being published just after the Princess Victoria had become Queen of England.
It was amusing to hear her talk, in her somewhat affected and stilted style, of politics. She was a Jacobin, and hated all Dissenters, whom she sneered at as Roundheads. With modern ideas she and her sisters had no sympathy whatever. There never was such an antediluvian family. All of them were very long-lived, and must have bitterly bewailed the progress of Democracy and Dissent. I question whether the “Lives of the Queens of England” has many readers now. Near Woodbridge, as rector of Benhall, lived the Rev. J. Mitford, an active literary man, the editor of The Gentleman’s Magazine, and of some of the standard works known as Pickering’s Classics. As a clergyman he was a failure. It was urged in his defence, by his friends, that his profession had been chosen for him by others, and that when it was too late for him to escape from the bonds which held him in thrall he made the discovery that the life that lay before him was utterly uncongenial to his tastes and habits. His life, when in Suffolk, writes Mrs. Houston, author of “A Woman’s Memories of World-known Men,” must have been a very solitary one. For causes which I have never heard explained, his wife had long left him, and his only son was not on speaking terms with the Rector of Benhall. In his small lodgings on the second floor in Sloane Street, he was doubtless a far happier man than, in spite of his well-loved garden and extensive library at Benhall Rectory, he ever, in his country home, professed to be. But perhaps the most notable East Anglian author at the time was Isaac Taylor, of Ongar, whose books – “The Natural History of Enthusiasm” and “The Physical Theory of Another Life” – were most popular, and one of which, at any rate, had been noticed in The Edinburgh Review. In a private letter to the editor, Sir James Stephen describes Taylor “as a very considerable man, with but small inventive but very great diffusive powers, possessing a considerable mastery of language, but very apt to be over-mastered by it – too fine a writer to write very well; too fastidious a censor to judge men and things equitably; too much afraid of falling into cant and vulgarity to rise