Lackington’s kindness to his own relatives, and to the poor, was one of his best qualities. In fact, he declares in 1791 that he would have retired from business five years previously if it had not been for the thought of his poor relations, many of whom were helpless, and whom he felt bound to relieve and protect. Besides supporting his “good old mother“ for many years, he says, ”I have two aged men and one aged woman whom I support: and I have also four children to maintain and educate; ... many others of my relations are in similar circumstances and stand in need of my assistance.” He also made provision for the support of the very aged parents of his first wife, Nancy.
On abandoning business he left his third cousin George Lackington at the head of the firm, while he and his wife went to live at Thornbury in Gloucestershire, in order to be in the neighborhood of the Turtons, his wife’s relations. He bought two estates in Alvestone, on one of which was a genteel house, where he lived in good style for several years. Here he employed his time in visiting the sick and poor, and sometimes in preaching. For he had now returned to the faith of a Christian, and threw himself with his accustomed ardor into all kinds of religious work. His contrition for the severe and ungracious things he had said of the Wesleyans in the first editions of his “Memoirs” was evidently very deep. He acknowledges in plain terms that he owed to them all his early advantages, and the moral and mental awakening which opened before him a new path in life. He says, in the introduction to his last edition of his book, “If I had never heard the Methodists preach, in all probability I should have been at this time a poor, ragged, dirty cobbler.... It was also through them that I got the shop in which I first set up for a bookseller.”
He built a small chapel at Thornbury on his own estate, where the Wesleyan ministers regularly officiated. In 1806 he removed to Taunton, where he resided for about six years, built a chapel at a cost of £3000, adding £150 a year for the minister.
On the decline of his health in 1812, he went to live by the seaside at Budleigh Sulterton, in Devonshire. Here also he erected a chapel which cost £2000, and endowed it with a minister’s stipend of £150 per annum.
James Lackington died of paralysis in the seventieth year of his age, on the 22d of November, 1815, and was buried in the Budleigh Churchyard. None will deny the successful bookseller the right to the Latin motto with which he has adorned the frontispiece to the first edition of “Memoirs and Confessions,” viz., Sutor ultra crepidam feliciter ausus.[7]
CHAPTER III.
REV. S. BRADBURN
THE SHOEMAKER WHO BECAME THE PRESIDENT OF THE WESLEYAN CONFERENCE.
“I was a poor ignorant cobbler.”—Samuel Bradburn, Life of Samuel Bradburn, p. 227.
“During forty years Samuel Bradburn was esteemed the Demosthenes of Methodism.”—Abel Stevens, LL.D., quoted on title-page of Life of S. B.
“I have never heard his equal; I can furnish you with no adequate idea of his powers as an orator; we have not a man among us that will support anything like a comparison with him.... I never knew one with so great a command of language.”—Dr. Adam Clarke.
“The generous and noble-minded Samuel Bradburn, whose ability as a public speaker was all but unrivalled.”—Rev. Thomas Jackson, President of the Wesleyan Conference.
SAMUEL BRADBURN.
In the winter of 1740 the press-gang men were busy at their abominable work in most of the maritime and inland towns of England, and, among other places, Chester seems to have sent certain unwilling recruits to make up the rank and file of the army, and replenish the navy of His Majesty King George II. Many are the tales of cruelty which belong to this miserable period in the history of our army and navy. Thousands of able-bodied men were carried away by main force from their peaceful occupations, from home and friends, and everything that was dear to them, and compelled to do duty for their country in foreign climes. Sons, husbands, fathers of families, steady, honest, industrious, law-abiding citizens, or worthless waifs and strays, it mattered not—all who might be of service, and could be easily caught, were seized and hurried off to the nearest military or naval depot, and were soon lost sight of by their distressed relations, and were, perhaps, never heard of again until their names were reported in the list of killed and wounded in battle. Now and then the life of enforced military or naval service was tolerable and even pleasant from a soldier’s or sailor’s point of view and ended happily enough with an honorable discharge and pension. A wretched beginning had not always a wretched course and a miserable ending, for the Briton of those days was a much-enduring creature, and had strong notions about “serving his country,” and soon learned to tolerate and even enjoy a condition of things which, to say the least, was unjustifiable and tyrannical.
An incident connected with the life-story of the subject of this sketch will illustrate some of the worst features of the system referred to, and show the sort of hardship and injustice to which “the free and noble sons” of Britain were exposed up to a time almost within the memory of men still living. Two men sat drinking and chatting in a friendly manner in an ale-house