Rural Rides — Eastern Tour Part 1

EASTERN TOUR.

"You permit the Jews openly to preach in their synagogues, and call Jesus Christ an impostor; and you send women to jail (to be brought to bed there, too), for declaring their unbelief in Christianity."

--_King of Bohemia's Letter to Canning, published in the Register, 4th of January, 1823. _ _Hargham, 22nd March, 1830. _ I set off from London on the 8th of March, got to Bury St. Edmund's that evening; and, to my great mortification, saw the county-election and the assizes both going on at Chelmsford, where, of course, a great part of the people of Essex were met.

If I had been aware of that, I should certainly have stopped at Chelmsford in order to address a few words of sense to the unfortunate constituents of Mr. Western.

At Bury St. Edmund's I gave a lecture on the ninth and another on the tenth of March, in the playhouse, to very crowded audiences.

I went to Norwich on the 12th, and gave a lecture there on that evening, and on the evening of the 13th.

The audience here was more numerous than at Bury St. Edmund's, but not so numerous in proportion to the size of the place;

and, contrary to what has happened in most other places, it consisted more of town's people than of country people.

During the 14th and 15th, I was at a friend's house at Yelverton, half way between Norwich and Bungay, which last is in Suffolk, and at which place I lectured on the 16th to an audience consisting chiefly of farmers, and was entertained there in a most hospitable and kind manner at the house of a friend.

The next day, being the 17th, I went to Eye, and there lectured in the evening in the neat little playhouse of the place, which was crowded in every part, stage and all.

The audience consisted almost entirely of farmers, who had come in from Diss, from Harleston, and from all the villages round about, in this fertile and thickly-settled neighbourhood.

I stayed at Eye all the day of the 18th, having appointed to be at Ipswich on the 19th.

Eye is a beautiful little place, though an exceedingly rotten borough.

All was harmony and good humour: everybody appeared to be of one mind;

and as these friends observed to me, so I thought, that more effect had been produced by this one lecture in that neighbourhood, than could have been produced in a whole year, if the Register had been put into the hands of every one of the hearers during that space of time; for though I never attempt to put forth that sort of stuff which the "intense" people on the other side of St. George's Channel call "_eloquence_," I bring out strings of very interesting facts; I use pretty powerful arguments; and I hammer them down so closely upon the mind, that they seldom fail to produce a lasting impression.

On the 19th I proceeded to Ipswich, not imagining it to be the fine, populous, and beautiful place that I found it to be.

On that night, and on the night of the 20th, I lectured to boxes and pit, crowded principally with opulent farmers, and to a gallery filled, apparently, with journeymen tradesmen and their wives.

On the Sunday before I came away, I heard, from all quarters, that my audiences had retired deeply impressed with the truths which I had endeavoured to inculcate.

One thing, however, occurred towards the close of the lecture of Saturday, the 20th, that I deem worthy of particular attention.

In general it would be useless for me to attempt to give anything like _a report_ of these speeches of mine, consisting as they do of words uttered pretty nearly as fast as I can utter them, during a space of never less than two, and sometimes of nearly three hours.

But there occurred here something that I must notice.

I was speaking of _the degrees_ by which the established church had been losing its _legal influence_ since the peace.

First, the _Unitarian Bill_, removing the penal act which forbade an impugning of the doctrine of the Trinity; second, the repeal of the _Test Act_, which declared, in effect, that the religion of any of the Dissenters was as good as that of the church of England; third, the repeal of the penal and excluding laws with regard to the _Catholics_;

and this last act, said I, does in effect declare that the thing called "the _Reformation_" was _unnecessary_.

"No," said one gentleman, in a very loud voice, and he was followed by four or five more, who said "No, No." "Then," said I, "we will, if you like, put it _to the vote_.

Understand, gentlemen, that _I do not say_, whatever I may think, that the Reformation was unnecessary; but I say that _this act amounts to a declaration_ that it was unnecessary; and, without losing our good humour, we will, if that gentleman choose, put this question to the vote."

I paused a little while, receiving no answer, and perceiving that the company were with me, I proceeded with my speech, concluding with the complete demolishing blow which the church would receive by the bill for giving civil and political power for training to the bar, and seating on the bench, for placing in the commons and amongst the peers, and for placing in the council, along with the King himself, _those who deny that there ever existed a Redeemer_; who give the name of _impostor_ to him whom _we worship as God_, and who boast of having hanged him upon the cross.

"Judge you, gentlemen," said I, "of the figure which England will make, when its laws will seat on the bench, from which people have been sentenced to suffer most severely for denying the truth of Christianity; from which bench it has been held that _Christianity is part and parcel of the law of the land_; judge you of the figure which England will make amongst Christian nations, when a Jew, a blasphemer of Christ, a professor of the doctrines of those who murdered him, shall be sitting upon that bench; and judge, gentlemen, what we must think of _the clergy_ of this church of ours, _if they remain silent_ while such a law shall be passed."

We were entertained at Ipswich by a very kind and excellent friend, whom, as is generally the case, I had never seen or heard of before.

The morning of the day of the last lecture, I walked about five miles, then went to his house to breakfast, and stayed with him and dined.

On the Sunday morning, before I came away, I walked about six miles, and repeated the good cheer at breakfast at the same place.

Here I heard the first singing of the birds this year; and I here observed an instance of that _petticoat government_, which, apparently, pervades the whole of animated nature.

A lark, very near to me in a ploughed field, rose from the ground, and was saluting the sun with his delightful song.

He was got about as high as the dome of St. Paul's, having me for a motionless and admiring auditor, when the hen started up from nearly the same spot whence the cock had risen, flew up and passed close by him.

I could not hear what she said; but supposed that she must have given him a pretty smart reprimand; for down she came upon the ground, and he, ceasing to sing, took a twirl in the air, and came down after her.

Others have, I dare say, seen this a thousand times over; but I never observed it before.

About twelve o'clock, my son and I set off for this place (Hargham), coming through Needham Market, Stowmarket, Bury St. Edmund's, and Thetford, at which latter place I intended to have lectured to-day and to-morrow, where the theatre was to have been the scene, but the mayor of the town thought it best not to give his permission until the assizes (which commence to-day the 22nd) should be over, lest the judge should take offence, seeing that it is the custom, while his Lordship is in the town, to give up the civil jurisdiction to him.

Bless his worship!

what in all the world should he think would take me to Thetford, _except it being a time for holding the assizes_?

At no _other_ time should I have dreamed of finding an audience in so small a place, and in a country so thinly inhabited.

I was attracted, too, by the desire of meeting some of my "_learned friends_" from the Wen; for I deal in arguments founded on the _law of the land_, and on _Acts of Parliament_.

The deuce take this mayor for disappointing me; and, now, I am afraid that I shall not fall in with this learned body during the whole of my spring tour.

Finding Thetford to be forbidden ground, I came hither to Sir Thomas Beevor's, where I had left my two daughters, having, since the 12th inclusive, travelled 120 miles, and delivered six lectures.

Those 120 miles have been through a fine _farming country_, and without my seeing, until I came to Thetford, but one spot of waste or common land, and that not exceeding, I should think, from fifty to eighty acres.

From this place to Norwich, and through Attleborough and Wymondham, the land is all good, and the farming excellent.

It is pretty nearly the same from Norwich to Bungay, where we enter Suffolk.

Bungay is a large and fine town, with three churches, lying on the side of some very fine meadows.

Harleston, on the road to Eye, is a very pretty market-town: of Eye, I have spoken before.

From Eye to Ipswich, we pass through a series of villages, and at Ipswich, to my great surprise, we found a most beautiful town, with a population of about twelve thousand persons; and here our profound Prime Minister might have seen most abundant evidence of prosperity; for the _new houses_ are, indeed, very numerous.

But if our famed and profound Prime Minister, having Mr. Wilmot Horton by the arm, and standing upon one of the hills that surround this town, and which, each hill seeming to surpass the other hill in beauty, command a complete view of every house, or, at least, of the top of every house, in this opulent town; if he, thus standing, and thus accompanied, were to hold up his hands, clap them together, and bless God for the proofs of prosperity contained in the new and red bricks, and were to cast his eye southward of the town, and see the numerous little vessels upon the little arm of the sea which comes up from Harwich, and which here finds its termination; and were, in those vessels, to discover an additional proof of prosperity; if he were to be thus situated, and to be thus feeling, would not some doubts be awakened in his mind; if I, standing behind him, were to whisper in his ear, "Do you not think that the greater part of these new houses have been created by taxes, which went to pay the about 20,000 _troops_ that were stationed here for pretty nearly 20 years during the war, and some of which are stationed here still?

Look at that immense building, my Lord Duke: it is fresh and _new_ and fine and splendid, and contains indubitable marks of opulence;

but it is a BARRACK; aye, and the money to build that barrack, and to maintain the 20,000 troops, has assisted to beggar, to dilapidate, to plunge into ruin and decay, hundreds upon hundreds of villages and hamlets in Wiltshire, in Dorsetshire, in Somersetshire, and in other counties who shared not in the ruthless squanderings of the war.

But," leaning my arm upon the Duke's shoulder, and giving Wilmot a poke in the poll to make him listen and look, and pointing with my fore-finger to the twelve large, lofty, and magnificent churches, each of them at least 700 years old, and saying, "Do you think Ipswich was not larger and far more populous 700 years ago than it is at this hour?"

Putting this question to him, would it not check his exultation, and would it not make even Wilmot begin to reflect?

Even at this hour, with all the unnatural swellings of the war, there are not two thousand people, _including the bed-ridden and the babies_, to each of the magnificent churches.

Of adults, there cannot be more than about 1400 to a church; and there is one of the churches which, being well filled, as in ancient times, would contain from four to seven thousand persons, for the nave of it appears to me to be larger than St. Andrew's Hall at Norwich, which Hall was formerly the church of the Benedictine Priory.

And, perhaps, the great church here might have belonged to some monastery; for here were three Augustine priories, one of them founded in the reign of William the Conqueror, another founded in the reign of Henry the Second, another in the reign of King John, with an Augustine friary, a Carmelite friary, an hospital founded in the reign of King John; and here, too, was the college founded by Cardinal Wolsey, the gateway of which, though built in brick, is still preserved, being the same sort of architecture as that of Hampton Court, and St. James's Palace.

There is no doubt but that this was a much greater place than it is now.

It is the great outlet for the immense quantities of corn grown in this most productive county, and by farmers the most clever that ever lived.

I am told that wheat is worth six shillings a quarter more, at some times, at Ipswich than at Norwich, the navigation to London being so much more speedy and safe.

Immense quantities of flour are sent from this town.

The windmills on the hills in the vicinage are so numerous that I counted, whilst standing in one place, no less than seventeen.

They are all painted or washed white; the sails are black; it was a fine morning, the wind was brisk, and their twirling altogether added greatly to the beauty of the scene, which, having the broad and beautiful arm of the sea on the one hand, and the fields and meadows, studded with farm-houses, on the other, appeared to me the most beautiful sight of the kind that I had ever beheld.

The town and its churches were down in the dell before me, and the only object that came to disfigure the scene was THE BARRACK, and made me utter involuntarily the words of BLACKSTONE: "The laws of England recognise no distinction between the citizen and the soldier; they know of no standing soldier: no inland fortresses; no barracks."

"Ah!"

said I to myself, but loud enough for any one to have heard me a hundred yards, "such _were_ the laws of England when mass was said in those magnificent churches, and such they continued until a _septennial_ Parliament came and deprived the people of England of their rights."

I know of no town to be compared with Ipswich, except it be Nottingham;

and there is this difference in the two; that Nottingham stands high, and, on one side, looks over a very fine country; whereas Ipswich is in a dell, meadows running up above it, and a beautiful arm of the sea below it.

The town itself is substantially built, well paved, everything good and solid, and no wretched dwellings to be seen on its outskirts.

From the town itself, you can see nothing; but you can, in no direction, go from it a quarter of a mile without finding views that a painter might crave, and then, the country round about it, so well cultivated;

the land in such a beautiful state, the farm-houses all white, and all so much alike; the barns, and everything about the homesteads so snug: the stocks of turnips so abundant everywhere; the sheep and cattle in such fine order; the wheat all drilled; the ploughman so expert; the furrows, if a quarter of a mile long, as straight as a line, and laid as truly as if with a level: in short, here is everything to delight the eye, and to make the people proud of their country; and this is the case throughout the whole of this county.

I have always found Suffolk farmers great boasters of their superiority over others; and I must say that it is not without reason.

But, observe, this has been a very _highly-favoured county_: it has had poured into it millions upon millions of money, drawn from Wiltshire, and other inland counties.

I should suppose that Wiltshire alone has, within the last forty years, had two or three millions of money drawn from it, _to be given to Essex and Suffolk_.

At one time there were not less than sixty thousand men kept on foot in these counties.

The increase of London, too, the swellings of the immortal Wen, have assisted to heap wealth upon these counties; but, in spite of all this, the distress pervades all ranks and degrees, except those who live on the taxes.

At Eye, butter used to sell for eighteen-pence a pound: it now sells for nine-pence halfpenny, though the grass has not yet begun to spring; and eggs were sold at thirty for a shilling.

Fine times for me, whose principal food is eggs, and whose sole drink is milk, but very bad times for those who sell me the food and the drink.

Coming from Ipswich to Bury St. Edmund's, you pass through Needham-market and Stowmarket, two very pretty market towns; and, like all the other towns in Suffolk, free from the drawback of shabby and beggarly houses on the outskirts.

I remarked that I did not see in the whole county one single instance of paper or rags supplying the place of glass in any window, and did not see one miserable hovel in which a labourer resided.

The county, however, is _flat_: with the exception of the environs of Ipswich, there is none of that beautiful variety of hill and dale, and hanging woods, that you see at every town in Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent.

It is curious, too, that though the people, I mean the poorer classes of people, are extremely neat in their houses, and though I found all their gardens dug up and prepared for cropping, you do not see about their cottages (and it is just the same in Norfolk) that _ornamental gardening_; the walks, and the flower borders, and the honey-suckles, and roses, trained over the doors, or over arched sticks, that you see in Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent, that I have many a time sitten upon my horse to look at so long and so often, as greatly to retard me on my journey.

Nor is this done for show or ostentation.

If you find a cottage in those counties, by the side of a _by lane_, or in the midst of a forest, you find just the same care about the garden and the flowers.

In those counties, too, there is great taste with regard _to trees_ of every description, from the hazel to the oak.

In Suffolk it appears to be just the contrary: here is the great dissight of all these three eastern counties.

Almost every bank of every field is studded with _pollards_, that is to say, trees that have been _beheaded_, at from six to twelve feet from the ground, than which nothing in nature can be more ugly.

They send out shoots from the head, which are lopped off once in ten or a dozen years for fuel, or other purposes.

To add to the deformity, the ivy is suffered to grow on them, which, at the same time, checks the growth of the shoots.

These pollards become hollow very soon, and, as timber, are fit for nothing but gate-posts, even before they be hollow.

Upon a farm of a hundred acres these pollards, by root and shade, spoil at least six acres of the ground, besides being most destructive to the fences.

Why not plant six acres of the ground with timber and underwood?

Half an acre a year would most amply supply the farm with poles and brush, and with everything wanted in the way of fuel; and why not plant hedges to be unbroken by these pollards?

I have scarcely seen a single farm of a hundred acres without pollards, sufficient to find the farm-house in fuel, without any assistance from coals, for several years.

However, the great number of farm-houses in Suffolk, the neatness of those houses, the moderation in point of extent which you generally see, and the great store of the food in the turnips, and the admirable management of the whole, form a pretty good compensation for the want of beauties.

The land is generally as clean as a garden ought to be; and, though it varies a good deal as to lightness and stiffness, they make it all bear prodigious quantities of Swedish turnips; and on them pigs, sheep, and cattle, all equally thrive.

I did not observe a single poor miserable animal in the whole county.

To conclude an account of Suffolk, and not to sing the praises of Bury St. Edmund's, would offend every creature of Suffolk birth; even at Ipswich, when I was praising _that place_, the very people of that town asked me if I did not think Bury St. Edmund's the nicest town in the world.

Meet them wherever you will, they have all the same boast; and indeed, as a town _in itself_, it is the neatest place that ever was seen.

It is airy, it has several fine open places in it, and it has the remains of the famous abbey walls and the abbey gate entire; and it is so clean and so neat that nothing can equal it in that respect.

It was a favourite spot in ancient times; greatly endowed with monasteries and hospitals.

Besides the famous Benedictine Abbey, there were once a college and a friary; and as to the abbey itself, it was one of the greatest in the kingdom; and was so ancient as to have been founded only about forty years after the landing of Saint Austin in Kent.

The land all round about it is good; and the soil is of that nature as not to produce much dirt at any time of the year; but the country about it is _flat_, and not of that beautiful variety that we find at Ipswich.

After all, what is the reflection now called for?

It is that this fine county, for which nature has done all that she can do, soil, climate, sea-ports, people; everything that can be done, and an internal government, civil and ecclesiastical, the most complete in the world, wanting nothing but to _be let alone_, to make every soul in it as happy as people can be upon earth; the peace provided for by the county rates;

property protected by the law of the land; the poor provided for by the poor-rates; religion provided for by the tithes and the church-rates;

easy and safe conveyance provided for by the highway-rates;

extraordinary danger provided against by the militia-rates; a complete government in itself; _but having to pay a portion of sixty millions a year in taxes, over and above all this; and that, too, on account of wars carried on, not for the defence of England_, not for the upholding of _English liberty and happiness_, but for the purpose of crushing liberty and happiness in other countries; and all this because, and only because, a septennial Parliament has deprived the people of their rights.

That which we _admire_ most is not always that which would be _our choice_.

One might imagine, that after all that I have said about this fine county, I should certainly prefer it as a place of residence.

I

should not, however: my choice has been always very much divided between the woods of Sussex and the downs of Wiltshire.

I should not like to be compelled to decide; but if I were compelled, I do believe that I should fix on some vale in Wiltshire.

Water meadows at the bottom, corn-land going up towards the hills, those hills being _Down land_, and a farm-house, in a clump of trees, in some little cross vale between the hills, sheltered on every side but the south.

In short, if Mr. Bennet would give me a farm, the house of which lies on the right-hand side of the road going from Salisbury to Warminster, in the parish of Norton Bovant, just before you enter that village; if he would but be so good as to do that, I would freely give up all the rest of the world to the possession of whoever may get hold of it.

I have hinted this to him once or twice before, but I am sorry to say that he turns a deaf ear to my hinting.

_Cambridge, 28th March, 1830. _ I went from Hargham to Lynn on Tuesday, the 23rd; but owing to the disappointment at Thetford, everything was deranged.

It was market-day at Lynn, but no preparations of any sort had been made, and no notification given.

I therefore resolved, after staying at Lynn on Wednesday, to make a short tour, and to come back to it again.

This tour was to take in _Ely_, Cambridge, St. Ives, Stamford, Peterborough, Wisbeach, and was to bring me back to Lynn, after a very busy ten days.

I was particularly desirous to have a little political preaching at Ely, the place where the flogging of the English local militia under a guard of German bayonets cost me so dear.

I got there about noon on Thursday, the 25th, being market-day; but I had been apprised even before I left Lynn, that no place had been provided for my accommodation.

A gentleman at Lynn gave me the name of one at Ely, who, as he thought, would be glad of an opportunity of pointing out a proper place, and of speaking about it; but just before I set off from Lynn, I received a notification from this gentleman, that he could do nothing in the matter.

I knew that Ely was a small place, but I was determined to go and see the spot where the militia-men were flogged, and also determined to find some opportunity or other of relating that story as publicly as I could at Ely, and of describing the _tail_ of the story; of which I will speak presently.

Arrived at Ely, I first walked round the beautiful cathedral, that honour to our Catholic forefathers, and that standing disgrace to our Protestant selves.

It is impossible to look at that magnificent pile without _feeling_ that we are a fallen race of men.

The cathedral would, leaving out the palace of the bishop, and the houses of the dean, canons, and prebendaries, weigh more, if it were put into a scale, than all the houses in the town, and all the houses for a mile round the neighbourhood if you exclude the remains of the ancient monasteries.

You have only to open your eyes to be convinced that England must have been a far greater and more wealthy country in those days than it is in these days.

The hundreds of thousands of loads of stone, of which this cathedral and the monasteries in the neighbourhood were built, must all have been brought by sea from distant parts of the kingdom.

These foundations were laid more than a thousand years ago; and yet there are vagabonds who have the impudence to say that it is the Protestant religion that has made England a great country.

Ely is what one may call a miserable little town: very prettily situated, but poor and mean.

Everything seems to be on the decline, as, indeed, is the case everywhere, where the clergy are the masters.

They say that this bishop has an income of L18,000 a year.

He and the dean and chapter are the owners of all the land and tithes, for a great distance round about, in this beautiful and most productive part of the country; and yet this famous building, the cathedral, is in a state of disgraceful irrepair and disfigurement.

The great and magnificent windows to the east have been shortened at the bottom, and the space plastered up with brick and mortar, in a very slovenly manner, for the purpose of saving the expense of keeping the glass in repair.

Great numbers of the windows in the upper part of the building have been partly closed up in the same manner, and others quite closed up.

One door-way, which apparently had stood in need of repair, has been rebuilt in modern style, because it was cheaper; and the churchyard contained a flock of sheep acting as vergers for those who live upon the immense income, not a penny of which ought to be expended upon themselves while any part of this beautiful building is in a state of irrepair.

This cathedral was erected "to the honour of God and the Holy Church."

My daughters went to the service in the afternoon, in the choir of which they saw God honoured by the presence of _two old men_, forming the whole of the congregation.

I dare say, that in Catholic times, five thousand people at a time have been assembled in this church.

The cathedral and town stand upon a little hill, about three miles in circumference, raised up, as it were, for the purpose, amidst the rich fen land by which the hill is surrounded, and I dare say that the town formerly consisted of houses built over a great part of this hill, and of, probably, from fifty to a hundred thousand people.

The people do not now exceed above four thousand, including the bedridden and the babies.

Having no place provided for lecturing, and knowing no single soul in the place, I was thrown upon my own resources.

The first thing I did was to walk up through the market, which contained much more than an audience sufficient for me; but, leaving the market people to carry on their affairs, I picked up a sort of labouring man, asked him if he recollected when the local militia-men were flogged under the guard of the Germans; and, receiving an answer in the affirmative, I asked him to go and show me the spot, which he did; he showed me a little common along which the men had been marched, and into a piece of pasture-land, where he put his foot upon the identical spot where the flogging had been executed.

On that spot, I told him what I had suffered for expressing my indignation at that flogging.

I told him that a large sum of English money was now every year sent abroad to furnish half pay and allowances to the officers of those German troops, and to maintain the widows and children of such of them as were dead; and I added, "You have to work to help to pay that money; part of the taxes which you pay on your malt, hops, beer, leather, soap, candles, tobacco, tea, sugar, and everything else, goes abroad every year to pay these people: it has thus been going abroad ever since the peace; and it will thus go abroad for the rest of your life, if this system of managing the nation's affairs continue;" and I told him that about one million seven hundred thousand pounds had been sent abroad on this account, _since the peace_.

When I opened, I found that this man was willing to open too; and he uttered sentiments that would have convinced me, if I had not before been convinced of the fact, that there are very few, even amongst the labourers, who do not clearly understand the cause of their ruin.

I

discovered that there were two Ely men flogged upon that occasion, and that one of them was still alive and residing near the town.

I sent for this man, who came to me in the evening when he had done his work, and who told me that he had lived seven years with the same master when he was flogged, and was bailiff or head man to his master.

He has now a wife and several children; is a very nice-looking, and appears to be a hard-working, man, and to bear an excellent character.

But how was I to harangue?

For I was determined not to quit Ely without something of that sort.

I told this labouring man who showed me the flogging spot, my name, which seemed to surprise him very much, for he had heard of me before.

After I had returned to my inn, I walked back again through the market amongst the farmers; then went to an inn that looked out upon the market-place, went into an up-stairs room, threw up the sash, and sat down at the window, and looked out upon the market.

Little groups soon collected to survey me, while I sat in a very unconcerned attitude.

The farmers had dined, or I should have found out the most numerous assemblage, and have dined with them.

The next best thing was, to go and sit down in the room where they usually dropped in to drink after dinner; and, as they nearly all smoke, to take a pipe with them.

This, therefore, I did; and, after a time, we began to talk.

The room was too small to contain a twentieth part of the people that would have come in if they could.

It was hot to suffocation; but, nevertheless, I related to them the account of the flogging, and of my persecution on that account; and I related to them the account above stated with regard to the English money now sent to the Germans, at which they appeared to be utterly astonished.

I had not time sufficient for a lecture, but I explained to them briefly the real cause of the distress which prevailed; I warned the farmers particularly against the consequences of hoping that this distress would remove itself.

I

portrayed to them the effects of the taxes; and showed them that we owe this enormous burden to the want of being fairly represented in the Parliament.

Above all things, I did that which I never fail to do, showed them the absurdity of grumbling at the six millions a year given in relief to the poor, while they were silent, and seemed to think nothing of the sixty millions of taxes collected by the Government at London, and I asked them how any man of property could have the impudence to call upon the labouring man to serve in the militia, and to deny that that labouring man had, in case of need, a clear right to a share of the produce of the land.

I explained to them how the poor were originally relieved; told them that the revenues of the livings, which had their foundation in _charity_, were divided amongst the poor.

The demands for repair of the churches, and the clergy themselves; I explained to them how church-rates and poor-rates came to be introduced;

how the burden of maintaining the poor came to be thrown upon the people at large; how the nation had sunk by degrees ever since the event called the Reformation; and, pointing towards the cathedral, I said, "Can you believe, gentlemen, that when that magnificent pile was reared, and when all the fine monasteries, hospitals, schools, and other resorts of piety and charity, existed in this town and neighbourhood; can you believe, that Ely was the miserable little place that it now is; and that that England which had never heard of the name of _pauper_, contained the crowds of miserable creatures that it now contains, some starving at stone-cracking by the way-side, and others drawing loaded wagons on that way?"

A young man in the room (I having come to a pause) said: "But, Sir, were there no poor in Catholic times?"

"Yes," said I, "to be sure there were.

The Scripture says, that the poor shall never cease out of the land; and there are five hundred texts of Scripture enjoining on all men to be good and kind to the poor.

It is necessary to the existence of civil society, that there should be poor.

Men have two motives to industry and care in all the walks of life: one, to acquire wealth; but the other and stronger, to avoid poverty.

If there were no poverty, there would be no industry, no enterprise.

But this poverty is not to be made a punishment unjustly severe.

Idleness, extravagance, are offences against morality;

but they are not offences of that heinous nature to justify the infliction of starvation by way of punishment.

It is, therefore, the duty of every man that is able; it is particularly the duty of every government, and it was a duty faithfully executed by the Catholic Church, to take care that no human being should perish for want in a land of plenty; and to take care, too, that no one should be deficient of a sufficiency of food and raiment, not only to sustain life, but also to sustain health."

The young man said: "I thank you, Sir; I am answered."

I strongly advised the farmers to be well with their work-people; for that, unless their flocks were as safe in their fields as their bodies were in their beds, their lives must be lives of misery; that if their sacks and barns were not places of as safe deposit for their corn as their drawers were for their money, the life of the farmer was the most wretched upon earth, in place of being the most pleasant, as it ought to be.

_Boston, Friday, 9th April, 1830. _ Quitting Cambridge and Dr. Chafy and Serjeant Frere, on Monday, the 29th of March, I arrived at St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire, about one o'clock in the day.

In the evening I harangued to about 200 persons, principally farmers, in a wheelwright's shop, that being the only _safe_ place in the town, of sufficient dimensions and sufficiently strong.

It was market-day; and this is a great cattle-market.

As I was not to be at Stamford in Lincolnshire till the 31st, I went from St. Ives to my friend Mr. Wells's, near Huntingdon, and remained there till the 31st in the morning, employing the evening of the 30th in going to Chatteris, in the Isle of Ely, and there addressing a good large company of farmers.

On the 31st, I went to Stamford, and, in the evening, spoke to about 200 farmers and others, in a large room in a very fine and excellent inn, called Standwell's Hotel, which is, with few exceptions, the nicest inn that I have ever been in.

On the 1st of April, I harangued here again, and had amongst my auditors some most agreeable, intelligent, and public-spirited yeomen, from the little county of Rutland, who made, respecting the _seat in Parliament_, the proposition, the details of the purport of which I communicated to my readers in the last Register.

On the 2nd of April, I met my audience in the playhouse at Peterborough;

and though it had snowed all day, and was very wet and sloppy, I had a good large audience; and I did not let this opportunity pass without telling my hearers of the part that their _good_ neighbour, Lord Fitzwilliam, had acted with regard to the _French war_, with regard to _Burke and his pension_; with regard to the _dungeoning law_, which drove me across the Atlantic in 1817, and with regard to the putting into the present Parliament, aye, and for that very town, that very Lawyer Scarlett, whose state prosecutions are now become so famous.

"Never," said I, "did I say that behind a man's back that I would not say to his face.

I wish I had his face before me: but I am here as near to it as I can get: I am before the face of his friends: here, therefore, I will say what I think of him."

When I had described his conduct, and given my opinion on it, many applauded, and not one expressed disapprobation.

On the 3rd, I speechified at Wisbeach, in the playhouse, to about 220 people, I think it was; and that same night, went to sleep at a friend's (a total stranger to me, however) at St. Edmund's, in the heart of the Fens.

I stayed there on the 4th (Sunday), the morning of which brought a hard frost: ice an inch thick, and the total destruction of the apricot blossoms.

After passing Sunday and the greater part of Monday (the 5th) at St. Edmund's, where my daughters and myself received the greatest kindness and attention, we went, on Monday afternoon, to Crowland, where we were most kindly lodged and entertained at the houses of two gentlemen, to whom also we were personally perfect strangers; and in the evening, I addressed a very large assemblage of most respectable farmers and others, in this once famous town.

There was another hard frost on the Monday morning; just, as it were, to _finish_ the apricot bloom.

On the 6th I went to Lynn, and on that evening and on the evening of the 7th, I spoke to about 300 people in the playhouse.

And here there was more _interruption_ than I have ever met with at any other place.

This town, though containing as good and kind friends as I have met with in any other, and though the people are generally as good, contains also, apparently, a large proportion of _dead-weight_, the offspring, most likely, of the _rottenness of the borough_.

Two or three, or even _one_ man, may, if not tossed out at once, disturb and interrupt everything in a case where constant attention to _fact_ and _argument_ is requisite, to insure utility to the meeting.

There were but _three_ here; and though they were finally silenced, it was not without great loss of time, great noise and hubbub.

Two, I was told, were _dead-weight_ men, and one a sort of _higgling merchant_.

On the 8th I went to Holbeach, in this noble county of Lincoln; and, gracious God!

what a _contrast_ with the scene at Lynn!

I knew not a soul in the place.

Mr. Fields, a bookseller and printer, had invited me by letter, and had, in the nicest and most unostentatious manner, made all the preparations.

Holbeach lies in the midst of some of the richest land in the world; a small market-town, but a parish more than twenty miles across, larger, I believe, than the county of Rutland, produced an audience (in a very nice room, with seats prepared) of 178, apparently all wealthy farmers, and men in that rank of life; and an audience so _deeply_ attentive to the dry matters on which I had to address it, I have very seldom met with.

I was delighted with Holbeach; a neat little town; a most beautiful church with a spire, like that of "the man of Ross, pointing to the skies;" gardens very pretty; fruit-trees in abundance, with blossom-buds ready to burst; and land, dark in colour, and as fine in substance as flour, as fine as if sifted through one of the sieves with which we get the dust out of the clover seed; and when cut deep down into with a spade, precisely, as to substance, like a piece of hard butter; yet nowhere is the _distress_ greater than here.

I

walked on from Holbeach, six miles, towards Boston; and seeing the fatness of the land, and the fine grass and the never-ending sheep lying about like _fat hogs_, stretched in the sun, and seeing the abject state of the labouring people, I could not help exclaiming, "God has given us the best country in the world; our brave and wise and virtuous fathers, who built all these magnificent churches, gave us the best government in the world, and we, their cowardly and foolish and profligate sons, have made this once-paradise what we now behold!"

I arrived at Boston (where I am now writing) to-day, (Friday, 9th April) about ten o'clock.

I must arrive at Louth before I can say _precisely_ what my future route will be.

There is an immense fair at Lincoln next week; and a friend has been _here_ to point out the proper days to be there; as, however, this Register will not come from the press until after I shall have had an opportunity of writing something at Louth, time enough to be inserted in it.

I will here go back, and speak of the country that I have travelled over, since I left Cambridge on the 29th of March.

From Cambridge to St. Ives the land is generally in open, unfenced fields, and some common fields; generally stiff land, and some of it not very good, and wheat, in many places, looking rather thin.

From St. Ives to Chatteris (which last is in the Isle of Ely), the land is better, particularly as you approach the latter place.

From Chatteris I came back to Huntingdon and once more saw its beautiful meadows, of which I spoke when I went thither in 1823. From Huntingdon, through Stilton, to Stamford (the two last in Lincolnshire), is a country of rich arable land and grass fields, and of beautiful meadows.

The enclosures are very large, the soil red, with a whitish stone below; very much like the soil at and near Ross in Herefordshire, and like that near Coventry and Warwick.

Here, as all over this country, everlasting fine sheep.

The houses all along here are built of the stone of the country: you seldom see brick.

The churches are large, lofty, and fine, and give proof that the country was formerly much more populous than it is now, and that the people had a vast deal more of wealth in their hands and at their own disposal.

There are three beautiful churches at Stamford, not less, I dare say, than three [_quaere_] hundred years old; but two of them (I did not go to the other) are as perfect as when just finished, except as to the _images_, most of which have been destroyed by the ungrateful Protestant barbarians, of different sorts, but some of which (_out of the reach_ of their ruthless hands) are still in the niches.

From Stamford to Peterborough is a country of the same description, with the additional beauty of _woods_ here and there, and with meadows just like those at Huntingdon, and not surpassed by those on the Severn near Worcester, nor by those on the Avon at Tewkesbury.

The cathedral at Peterborough is exquisitely beautiful, and I have great pleasure in saying, that, contrary to the _more magnificent_ pile at Ely, it is kept in good order; the Bishop (Herbert Marsh) residing a good deal on the spot; and though he _did_ write a pamphlet to justify and urge on the war, the ruinous war, and though he _did_ get a _pension_ for it, he is, they told me, very good to the poor people.

My daughters had a great desire to see, and I had a great desire they should see, the burial-place of that ill-used, that savagely-treated, woman, and that honour to woman-kind, Catherine, queen of the ferocious tyrant, Henry the Eighth.

To the infamy of that ruffian, and the shame of after ages, there is no _monument_ to record her virtues and her sufferings; and the remains of this daughter of the wise Ferdinand and of the generous Isabella, who sold her jewels to enable Columbus to discover the new world, lie under the floor of the cathedral, commemorated by a short inscription on a plate of brass.

All men, Protestants or not Protestants, feel as I feel upon this subject; search the _hearts_ of the bishop and of his dean and chapter, and these feelings are there;

but to do _justice_ to the memory of this illustrious victim of tyranny, would be to cast a reflection on that event to which they owe their rich possessions, and, at the same time, to suggest ideas not very favourable to the descendants of those who divided amongst them the plunder of the people arising out of that event, and which descendants are their patrons, and give them what they possess.

From this cause, and no other, it is, that the memory of the virtuous Catherine is unblazoned, while that of the tyrannical, the cruel, and the immoral Elizabeth, is recorded with all possible veneration, and all possible varnishing-over of her disgusting amours and endless crimes.

They relate at Peterborough, that the same sexton who buried Queen Catherine, also buried here Mary, Queen of Scots.

The remains of the latter, of very questionable virtue, or, rather, of unquestionable vice, were removed to Westminster Abbey by her son, James the First; but those of the virtuous Queen were suffered to remain unhonoured!

Good God!

what injustice, what a want of principle, what hostility to all virtuous feeling, has not been the fruit of this Protestant Reformation; what plunder, what disgrace to England, what shame, what misery, has that event not produced!

There is nothing that I address to my hearers with more visible effect than a statement of _the manner in which the poor-rates and the church-rates came_.

This, of course, includes an account of _how the poor were relieved in Catholic times_.

To the far greater part of people this is information _wholly new_; they are _deeply interested_ in it; and the impression is very great.

Always before we part, Tom Cranmer's church receives a considerable blow.

There is in the cathedral a very ancient monument, made to commemorate, they say, the murder of the abbot and his monks by the Danes.

Its date is the year 870. Almost all the cathedrals, were, it appears, originally churches of monasteries.

That of Winchester and several others, certainly were.

There has lately died, in the garden of the bishop's palace, a tortoise that had been _there_ more, they say, than two hundred years; a fact very likely to be known; because, at the end of thirty or forty, people would begin to talk about it as something remarkable; and thus the record would be handed down from father to son.

From Peterborough to Wisbeach, the road, for the most part, lies through the _Fens_, and here we passed through the village of Thorney, where there was a famous abbey, which, together with its valuable domain, was given by the savage tyrant, Henry VIII.

, to John Lord Russell (made a lord by that tyrant), the founder of the family of that name.

This man got also the abbey and estate at Woburn; the priory and its estate at Tavistock; and in the next reign he got Covent Garden and other parts adjoining; together with other things, all then _public property_.

A

history, a _true history_ of this family (which I hope I shall find time to write) would be a most valuable thing.

It would be a nice little specimen of the way in which these families became possessed of a great part of their estates.

It would show how the poor-rates and the church-rates came.

It would set the whole nation _right_ at once.

Some years ago I had a set of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (Scotch), which contained an account of every other _great family_ in the kingdom; but I could find in it no account of _this_ family, either under the word Russell or the word Bedford.

I got into a passion with the book, because it contained no account of the mode of raising the birch-tree; and it was sold to _a son_ (as I was told) of Mr. Alderman Heygate; and if that gentleman look into the book, he will find what I say to be true; but if I should be in error about this, perhaps he will have the goodness to let me know it.

I shall be obliged to any one to point me out any printed account of this family; and particularly to tell me where I can get an old folio, containing (amongst other things) Bulstrode's argument and narrative in justification of the sentence and execution of Lord William Russell, in the reign of Charles the Second.

It is impossible to look at the now-miserable village of Thorney, and to think of its once-splendid abbey; it is impossible to look at the _twenty thousand acres_ of land around, covered with fat sheep, or bearing six quarters of wheat or ten of oats to the acre, without any manure; it is impossible to think of these without feeling a desire that the whole nation should know all about the _surprising merits_ of the possessors.

Wisbeach, lying farther up the arm of the sea than Lynn, is, like the latter, a little town of commerce, chiefly engaged in exporting to the south, _the corn_ that grows in this productive country.

It is a good solid town, though not handsome, and has a large market, particularly for corn.

To Crowland, I went, as before stated, from Wisbeach, staying two nights at St. Edmund's. Here I was in the heart of the Fens.

The whole country as _level_ as the table on which I am now writing.

The horizon like the sea in a dead calm: you see the morning sun come up, just as at sea; and see it go down over the rim, in just the same way as at sea in a calm.

The land covered with beautiful grass, with sheep lying about upon it, as fat as hogs stretched out sleeping in a stye.

The kind and polite friends, with whom we were lodged, had a very neat garden, and fine young orchard.

Everything grows well here: earth without a stone so big as a pin's head; grass as thick as it can grow on the ground; immense bowling-greens separated by ditches; and not the sign of dock or thistle or other weed to be seen.

What a contrast between these and the heath-covered sand-hills of Surrey, amongst which I was born!

Yet the labourers, who spuddle about the ground in the little _dips_ between those sand-hills, are better off than those that exist in this fat of the land.

_Here_ the grasping system takes _all_ away, because it has the means of coming at the value of all: _there_, the poor man enjoys _something_, because he is thought too poor to have anything: he is there allowed to have what is deemed _worth nothing_; but here, where every inch is valuable, not one inch is he permitted to enjoy.

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.