Reminiscences of Bateman Brown, J.P.
Author: Bateman Brown
Date: 2015-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

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Introduction.

*   *

The following pages were written by Mr. Bateman Brown, J.P., chiefly from memory, and were published in a series of articles in the Peterborough Advertiser. He had kept no diary and commenced to make his notes on December 17th, 1895, when he was 72 years of age, and he carries his record down to 1896. As, however, since then he has continued the same active, strenuous life, it is to be hoped that some day he will complete his record.

In his long and useful career there are no doubt many incidents which have been omitted, and which could well be added in a subsequent edition.

There is, for instance, the reference to Mr. Potto Brown in “Lord Brampton’s Reminiscences.” Lord Brampton’s work had not appeared when Mr. Bateman Brown made his notes, otherwise he would have been {6} able to have dealt with the matter himself. But Lord Brampton tells a story concerning Huntingdon in which he credits Mr. Potto Brown with certain remarks, which everyone who was familiar with him would know were foreign to his nature. Mr. Bateman Brown has his own views as to how Lord Brampton made the mistake, and desires insertion of the note below.*

The Editor of the Peterborough Advertiser desires to take this opportunity of tendering his thanks to Mr. Bateman Brown for the interesting series of articles he was enabled to publish, and also for his consent to permit their reproduction in a more permanent form.

July, 1905.

[*My solution of the Lord Brampton incident is, that it was my father who was under cross-examination first, and it was the other prosecutor on hearing it, took fright and went off to the hotel and uttered the oath to the ostler while he was putting his pony in the trap, anyhow, my father was not the man to be afraid of a cross-examination, and he certainly never uttered a profane oath in his life. He rather enjoyed being under cross-examination, always saying you never need fear if you intended to speak the truth.—Bateman Brown.]

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CHAPTER I.

Early Life.—A Memorable Flood.—Early Education.—Anecdotes About my Grandfather, William Brown.—Repartee.—Turning the Tables.—A Sacrifice.—Quaker and Prayer Book.—Gigs.—Coaches.—Children’s Punishments.—Medical Incidents.—Going to Huntingdon Grammar School.—Boys Who Played the Tyrant.—News by Coach.—A Courageous Act.—School Discipline.—Second Period at Huntingdon Grammar School.—Burking.

I was born at Houghton, near Huntingdon, in the house formerly occupied by my grandfather, William Brown, and at my birth by my parents, Potto and Mary Brown, on the ninth of April, 1823.

This year, 1823, was locally remarkable as being the year of the Great Flood in November following my birth. The water had been rising for some days, and on the Saturday a number of men were engaged to strengthen the bank between Wyton and Bank’s End. Arrangements had been made that if the bank broke, the church bell was to be tolled to warn the inhabitants; about midnight on Saturday the bank did break, {8} the escaping water flooding nearly all the houses, in my father’s to the top bar of the grate in the dining room, where it remained for several days. It was a strange sight for my eyes to look upon; my father, being Overseer of the Poor, had to take the cottagers dinners to and from the bakehouse on a large wagon horse. Some people went about in boats.

Mrs. Biden, who kept a Ladies’ Boarding School in the old house on the “Green,” would not believe that the bank would break, and did not remove her furniture and carpets upstairs, and, therefore, she suffered considerable damage.

An amusing incident occurred in connection with the flood; Mr. Joseph Goodman—my father’s partner, who was then unmarried, and was a lodger at my father’s, and who slept in the attic, was in the habit of throwing his linen over the banisters into the front hall on a Sunday morning to be aired by the servants—pitched it over as usual, forgetting the flood until he heard it go splash in the water.

I learnt to read and spell under the tuition of my aunt, Olivia Brown, my father’s youngest sister, who resided at that time with her parents, William and Elizabeth Brown, in the house on Houghton Hill, which at that time belonged to Thomas Seekings, of St. Ives, as also the adjoining wind mill. He was a member of the “Society of Friends,” as were my grand-parents and parents. I remember the old man well, {9} and can recollect that he wore bright shoe buckles to fasten his shoes. He also had a son named George, who used to come to the mill with the miller’s cart, and used to crack his whip at me, and was the terror of my life.

I used to stay with my grand-parents and aunt to receive instruction, and while there learnt to both read and spell. I judge it cannot have been a difficulty with me to learn the rudiments, because I have no recollection of acquiring the two arts named.

After my grandfather became blind, he would sometimes be accompanied to meetings by his servant, “Mary Mayfield,” who, when at home, would often sing hymns to him; at a missionary meeting at the Congregational Chapel, St. Ives (Rev. J. K. Holland, minister)—at the close of the meeting—he wished a particular hymn sung, and attempted several times to start the tune himself, but not succeeding because his throat was rough, he exclaimed, “I can’t sing; I have the ‘scrawnches.’” Then, turning to his servant, he said, “Poll, you start the tune.” She, being too abashed, was silent, when he exclaimed again, much to the discomfiture of the maid and amusement of the audience, “Poll, why don’t you start the tune?”

My grandfather was humorous and quick at repartee. On one occasion, on going into the ball of St. Paul’s, London, the custodian, noticing by his costume that he was a {10} Quaker, said, “You will never go so near heaven again.” My grandfather quickly replied, “Not in thy company, friend.” On another occasion a fast young farmer was showing my grandfather a sample of wheat with a great many wild oats in it. My grandfather said he would not buy it in consequence. The young man had just bought a new dressing machine, and retorted, in an off-hand way, “I will pass it through my dressing machine, which will soon take the wild oats out.” My grandfather said, “Friend, thee had better pass thyself through thy own machine.” On another occasion—my grandfather was always accompanied by a dog—Thomas Seekings said to him, “William Brown, I cannot think how thee can like to have a great dog go about with thee wherever thee goes.” The retort came, “Thomas Seekings, I cannot think how thee can like to go about everywhere without having a great dog go about with thee.”

On another occasion he was in the commercial room of the White Hart Hotel, Wisbech. It appears it was contrary to the rules of the room to take a dog in or play at cards. The said great dog was spread out full length on the hearthrug. Presently one of the card players espied it, and rang the bell. When the waiter came the gentleman said to him, “Take that dog out.” The waiter did not relish the job, so he looked at the dog and then at my grandfather, who at once told the dog to go. When {11} the gentlemen had settled down to their game again my grandfather rang the bell, and when the waiter came, said, “Waiter, take those cards out.” The gentlemen had not only the good taste not to resent it, but to reply, “We stand corrected, sir.”

On another occasion the following circumstances occurred, to understand which I must say my grandfather was a great smoker, and he had a meerschaum pipe with a very large bowl, and wherever he went he was always smoking this great pipe. One day, on the stones in the High Street, St. Ives, he reprimanded a man who was a great drinker, and said, “You make a god of your mug.” The man quickly retorted, “You make a god of your pipe.” My grandfather immediately threw his meerschaum pipe down on the stones, and smashed it to pieces, and abandoned the habit of smoking. I suppose old smokers would know that required force of character to do.

Another singular circumstance, especially at that period, remembering he was a Quaker, was he used to carry a Church of England Prayer Book about with him in his pocket. He was one day on the coach running between Cambridge and London, and a gentleman, seeing by his costume that he was a Quaker, began to quarrel with my grandfather, saying, “You Quakers quarrel with the Prayer Book, and yet you have never read it.” He let him fall into a trap by saying, “Friend, have thee read Barclay’s Apology for the Quakers?” The gentleman {12} said, “No; I don’t want to.” My grandfather, pulling the Prayer Book out of his pocket, said, “I always read a collect out of this every day of my life, and thee have found fault with the Quakers for knowing nothing about them.” I remember my grandfather teaching me a collect from the Prayer Book.

At this period, say about 1832, omnibuses were quite new in London, the lowest fare being sixpence. The only cabs were gigs on two wheels, to hold two passengers, the driver sitting on a seat overhanging the wheel on the right hand side.

To obtain a light you had a tinder-box, which was filled with tinder, made from charred linen. Then you held a piece of steel in one hand, and struck a piece of flint, which was held in the other hand, holding the flint over the tinder-box, so that the sparks might fall on the tinder and light it. Then you had a long match, which had previously been dipped in brimstone, and, applying it to the ignited tinder, you obtained a light. In 1896 it is difficult to realise there were no lucifer matches in 1832.

Coaches, 1830. This was just before the railways, and so many coaches ran through Huntingdon that one saddler is said to have made a good living by restoring lashes to the coachmen’s whips, which had come off en route.

Concerning punishments of children, I remember once my grandfather was going to give an exhibition with a little magic lan-{13}tern, which I was forbidden to be at for some trivial naughtiness. I thought then the punishment was out of all proportion to the offence, and the fact that I have recollected it for more than 65 years proves that it was so.

My grandfather kept a small boy as groom, who slept in the house. In his bedroom was a large box, which he was strictly forbidden to open. One night his curiosity got the mastery over him, when he was terribly alarmed to find the box contained a human skeleton.

My grandfather used to draw teeth for the villagers, and on one occasion a man came to the house to have a tooth drawn. He had a very large mouth, and, upon his opening it very wide, my grandfather,who was naturally very facetious, exclaimed, “Friend, thee need not open thy mouth so wide; I am going to stand outside to draw it.” The man’s name was Richard Leech; I knew him well.

I judge that I ceased to be taught by my aunt and went to Huntingdon Grammar School at about six years of age. My father took me himself and said to the master, Mr. John Fell, “I place my son unreservedly into your hands, to do with him as you think proper.” I remember the first thing my Master did was to produce a New Testament and turn to the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel and get me to read a few verses to put me through my paces, with which he seemed satisfied.

{14} A few days after my arrival, a small boy, named Pooley, came, and, being my age and size, the old housekeeper, by name Blewitt, got us both together and said, “You two boys must be good friends, because you are of the same size.” The other boys took a different view, saying, “You two boys must fight to see who is master, because you are of the same size.”

This school at this time had about 100 boys in it, of ages ranging from 6 to 17. I might say here it was a bad plan to send small boys to mix with much older ones, because of the tyranny practised by the big boys. One illustration: One amusement was to pile a lot of coals on the fire, put on the blower, and, when the fire was very bright, place a boy back to the fire and half-roast him.

Another incident, more harmless, but very annoying when frequently repeated, was in the bedroom for a big boy to wait until a little boy was asleep, whom they knew slept with his mouth open, and then to run a tallow candle into his mouth—when they knew he would shut his mouth and set his teeth into the candle. I was frequently experimented upon in this way.

I remember when at this school being awakened to be told the coach had arrived from London bringing the news of the death of George IV. (1830); also the death of William IV. (1837).

I recollect the news coming from London that the Reform Bill had been passed by the Lords (1832).

{15} A Radical butcher in the town got a ladder and scaled All Saints’ Church tower and placed the Liberal flag (blue) on it. Mr. Fell sent his servant to go and take it down. He returned and said he could not, as the man had drawn the ladder up on the tower after him. One cannot realise now the courage it required to do such a thing then, in the Tory town of Huntingdon.

The Grammar Schoolroom then consisted of two rooms—one above and one below. The smaller boys were taught in the upper room by a junior usher (there were four masters altogether). When we could not say our lessons we were sent down by a monitor into the lower room to be caned by the headmaster. Sometimes we would file in in a string of about a dozen. The chastisement consisted of each boy, one after the other, having to hold out his hand and receive about eight severe strokes on it; then a severe caning on the back.

I may say here that there was no teaching given or explanation of the lesson by the masters. If it were a Latin translation, and we failed to construe an intricate passage, we had no remedy, no assistance, but were caned as just described.

It was most unjust and unwise so to treat any boys. As far as I can remember, while in the upper room, I did my lessons neither better nor worse than my school fellows.

One day a monitor told the usher that some boy had been talking in school. At {16} the time I was busy learning my lesson, when I received an unexpected box on the ear, upon which the monitor said, “It was not Brown, sir, but so-and-so,” the usher having misunderstood the name. The only redress I got was a remark from the usher that the next time I deserved chastisement I should have it remitted because of the above mistake; such was the justice as administered at the Huntingdon Grammar School.

It might not have been unfair if my next deserved punishment were passed over because of the above mistake, but I have no recollection that such was the case.

After taking a prize at Christmas in the upstairs school, I was, after the holidays, advanced into a higher class, which was the junior one in the downstairs school. My troubles now began, troubles which rendered my life for the next two years almost unbearable. After events proved that I was promoted into a class in which the Latin author the class had to translate into English was beyond my powers. Therefore, as no assistance was given by the master, I was turned back, when heard again was flogged upon the second failure and kept in school during the play hours. It was also the custom to give us a column of dictionary to learn by heart, in which some word occurred that we did not know the meaning of. By this process it was possible to get into debt several lessons in going up to say one. To cut this matter short, for the last two years of my school life at this school, I was con-{17}fined in the school all the time, never being in the playground. I expect this was about from ten years of age to 12, when my misery was cut short by my removal to another school.

My punishment was not exceptional. The present Professor Foster, of Cambridge, son of Mr. Foster, surgeon, of Huntingdon, was once flogged so severely that he fainted. Afterwards when he was flogged he would say, “I feel faint; I must complain to my father again,” and so his correction was mitigated. Only yesterday (the 17th December. 1895, in conversation,) Mr. Goggs, stationer, Huntingdon, referred to the severity at that time of the chastisements, as does also a farmer of Wistow, named Dorrington.

After events, I consider, proved that the cause of my being unable to learn my lessons rested with the master and not with myself.

Before leaving this subject I must mention another difficulty we had in saying our lessons, even if we knew them fairly well. The master had a raised desk, ascended by two steps. When the class went up to translate he came out of this desk, went up the two steps outside, with his back against it, the class formed a semi-circle, and he stood with a long bamboo cane in his hand, ready to bring it across the shoulders of the first one who made a trip. Having one eye on the cane, and the other on the book, did not help one to construe a difficult sentence.

{18} Another favourite way of helping us to construe was to get hold of a small piece of a boy’s back hair and give what he called a “lugging.” To such an extent was this done that I had two bald places on my head, which my friends at home at first thought was ringworm.

I thought then, I think now, that my father was remiss in not knowing what was going on and remedying it.

About 1830 to 1832. Owing to the difficulty doctors had in obtaining subjects for dissection, persons could get a large price for bodies; consequently, graves in churchyards were frequently being robbed, the robbers going by the name of “body-snatchers.” Then two people, of the name of Burke and Hare, took to killing people, the process being, if they met a person in a dark street, to put a pitch plaster over the mouth and nose of the victim, which effectually prevented any cries for help. This practice gave rise to the name of “Burking.”

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CHAPTER II.

School Punishments.—Asiastic Cholera in Hunts.—The First Photograph.—Removal to the New School at Epping, Essex.—Audacity Saved Them.—How I Left Epping School.—Coaching Incidents.—Some Discomforts of Coaching.—My Father, Potto Brown, and his Interest in the Education of the People.—A Sad Incident.—Boyhood of Well-known County Residents.—A Trying Ordeal.—A Boys’ Duel.—Boys and Their Mischief.

My punishments, as I have shown, were in connection with lessons. When I deserved I the rod, through good luck and caution combined, I always escaped, as the following two or three incidents will show.

The boys were forbidden to go off the premises. One dark evening (there was no gas), another boy and myself went to the north end of the town for nothing worse than a stroll. On coming back, getting near to the entrance gates of the school premises, near the confectioner’s shop, I suggested to my companion we should cross to the other side of the street, under the shadow of All Saints’ Church (I was always cautious), but he said I there was no danger. I, however, crossed {20} over; he did not, but ran right into the headmaster, who said, “Have you leave to be out?” He replied boldly, “Yes, sir.” The next question came, “Who gave you leave?” He hedged by saying, “Did you ask if I had leave? I misunderstood you the first time; No, I had not leave.” He was marched on to the premises by the master. I proceeded, undetected, went down the Grammar School Lane, and entered the School back-way, where I found my companion smarting under the castigation he had received for the double crime of going out of bounds without leave and telling a lie. He was vexed with me most unreasonably because he was caught and I escaped.

On another occasion a new boy had come to the school, so about half-a-dozen of us one evening took him into Princess Street, tied a string to him, and attached the other end to the knob of a front door bell. We then rang the bell and ran away. This boy ran also, and pulled, of course, the wire of the bell machinery down. The string must have also broken, as we escaped without detection.

At the end of 1831 the cholera had been gradually crossing the Continent of Europe, and in 1832 it became epidemic in this country, being first imported into Sunderland from Holland. It soon spread all over the country, and caused great loss of life. Locally, it was very bad at Wisbech, Upwell, Outwell, Nordelph, March, Chatteris, Somersham, St. Ives, Fenstanton, and especially Ramsey. I believe at Fenstanton, out of a {21} population of a thousand, one hundred persons died. In Ramsey it was so fatal that some persons would not visit the town to conduct their usual business, and in the town itself persons would forsake their children when attacked, and grown-up children would forsake their parents.

There were two cases in Wyton, and, owing to the authorities getting quick burial, then burning everything in the house, the disease did not spread. I believe there were no cases in Huntingdon.

It is singular that when cholera visited England again, in 1848, 1849, 1853, 1854, it did not attack Somersham, St. Ives, Fenstanton, or Ramsey.

Photography was introduced about 1838 to 1840. My first likeness was taken in 1840, when I was seventeen years of age. I retain it still (in 1896).

After leaving Huntingdon Grammar School I was sent to one at Epping, Essex. This was a more private School, kept by two gentlemen, one a member of the Society of Friends, the other a Churchman. The latter was an M.A. of the University of Oxford. It was a first-class school, all the boys but one being the sons of the wealthier members of the previously-named Religious Society. I had a far better experience here than at the Huntingdon Grammar School; my lessons were no more trouble to me to learn than they were to the other boys. Indeed, there were two other boys in the class with me {22} whom I frequently assisted to translate their Latin and French lessons. I once, while at this school, heard Elizabeth Fry preach at the Friends’ Meeting-house, which the school regularly attended.

On one occasion when I had failed to say a lesson, as was customary on such occasions, I was placed with two other boys under a lamp in the hall of the house (the school-room was detached from the house). The lamp was an oil one, and, when it began to burn low, the boys used to send a message to the master, “Are we to go to bed, or have the lamp re-filled?” The usual answer came, “Go to bed.” One night we thought we would get to bed early, so we took the lamp out of its glass case, unscrewed the cap of the reservoir, and poured all the oil on to a glossy white mat, which laid at the drawing-room door, sent the usual question to the master, and received the usual answer, “Go to bed.” We expected there would be a jolly row in the morning, but the very audacity of the affair saved us. We were not even suspected, but the servants were blamed for spilling the oil. While at this school, I, with my brother, Geo. Wm. Brown, was called by the Master into his private room in the house, and informed that my uncle, William Brown, had died after a few days’ illness; which illness, being brief, we had not even heard of. Perhaps this was the first great trial of my life; my uncle lived at my father’s, and managed the farm for Mr. Goodman and my father. My father being so much from home on business, I was {23} much more intimate with my uncle than with him. My uncle slept in the same bedroom with me, and I used to go with him on the farm, and was much attached to him, which made the blow a very severe one. I remember at the previous seeding-time, my uncle came in the dining-room one day to dinner, and said to my mother, “Seeding is over once more. I have finished, the sowing, who can tell if I shall see the reaping?” He died before the nest harvest.

My stay at this Epping School terminated very abruptly from the following cause: The master, who was a “Friend,” had married a short time before the holidays, and his wife was jealous of the popularity of the other master with the boys, compared with her husband, and it appears that after the school had gone home for the holidays they had agreed to dissolve partnership, so that we did not return to the school at Epping. The master was named Richard Abbatt; the other was named Thomas Usmar. The latter opened a school at Croydon, and took nearly all the boys with him.

This closes the second period of my school life.

Just before the introduction of railways, coach travelling had arrived at a state of great perfection, roads were good, high hills having been cut through, and the surface of the roads was in excellent order, notwithstanding what would be thought in 1905 of a so-called quick journey to London in the “Thirties” and beginning of the “Forties.” {24} My father, Potto Brown, who went to London every other Monday, was called at three o’clock in the morning, drove to Cambridge, which took about two hours, the coach leaving the “Hoop” Hotel, Cambridge, at six, and arriving in London at 12 or one o’clock. The driver of this coach was a character. He would be on the box seat a few minutes before the clock struck six, and at the first stroke of the hour was off, waiting for no one. His coach was patronised chiefly by bankers, merchants, etc., who were anxious to be in London early. Therefore, the coachman, Joe Walton, especially studied them, and gave scant courtesy to ladies and gentlemen with heavy luggage.

One day when I, being only a big boy, was sitting on the front part of the coach, Walton was signalled by a gentleman, accompanied by his livery servant, to pull up, the gentleman saying, “Mr. Walton, have you room in front?” The front was full, and the reply came, “Get up behind, do you think I am going to nurse such a great calf as you all the way to London?” I think the gentleman came from the present Leys school, which was then a private mansion.

On another occasion Mr. Charles Tebbutt and myself were going from Cambridge to London. When we got off the coach at “Wade’s Mill” to breakfast, Walton said, “Mind you boys are back to the coach in time; I shall not wait for you.” We were up on the coach before he was, and we said, “Here we are, Mr. Walton,” expecting a {25} word of commendation, but he only said, “A good thing for you, or you would only have been left behind.” Walton was very strong in the arm; it is said on two occasions, when his horses were running away, he had broken a jaw in pulling them up. When the railway was opened to Broxbourne, the coach used to go on to the rail there on to a truck, and the inside passengers would remain in the coach. On the first occasion, Walton refused to get off the box, until they told him he would get his head taken off at the first arch. After the railway was opened to Cambridge, Walton used to go to London most days to take Messrs. Forster’s bankers’ parcel to town.

It is said that a Cambridge man in going out to India, met an acquaintance out there, and after mutual greetings were over, the first question put to the new arrival was “How is old Joe Walton?”

For more than a year after I commenced going to London on business, I travelled by the “Magnet” coach from the George Hotel, Huntingdon, and the coach took to the rail at Hertford.

I will give some of the discomforts of travelling then compared with now. Instead of a comfortable waiting-room, we went into the hotel tap-room; instead of foot warmers, we went into the stable and got ourselves some straw to put our feet in; when we got on the coach we had to be heavily clothed. I used to wear a pair of high cloth overalls with feet to them, lined with lambs’ wool, {26} also a great coachman’s coat, with five or six capes, and a stand-up collar to my ears, burying most of my face.

In connection with my first journey so equipped, I will mention the following amusing incident: My father had said to me before leaving home, “The coach does not profess to stop anywhere for breakfast, but while it is changing horses at Biggleswade, jump down as quick as you can, run to the bar, when you will find cups of hot coffee on the counter, snatch up a cup, lay the money down, and drink as fast as you can.” I acted my part to perfection, for the landlady stared at me and then said, “You are him.” “No, you are not him”; “Yes, you are him,” and then “I don’t know whether you are him or not.” “Well,” I said, “I am not him, but I am in his coat, and I am his son.”

Another inconvenience of coach-travelling was you had, to be sure of a seat, to book your seat one, two, or three days beforehand. You could not with any certainty start off on a journey at a moment’s notice—there was no telegraph. I have sometimes arrived at Huntingdon at 11 o’clock at night, and walked home to Houghton. My father before me, under similar circumstances, has arrived at Cambridge late, and walked home to Houghton (15 miles).

This closes the second period of my school life.

But it is a suitable place to make some allusion to the above subject. About a year or so before my leaving the Epping School, my {27} father and his partner, Mr. Joseph Goodman, had started a day school for the education of children of Houghton-cum-Wyton, in connection with the clergyman of the then united parishes; and a master and mistress, both members of the Church of England, were the teachers. They were Irish, and it appears some disagreement with the clergyman about the teaching of the Church catechism had arisen, a great revolution had taken place, and when I came home from Epping for the holidays, I found Mr. Sympson, the Church school master, dethroned, Mr. Francis Cross installed in his place, and Mr. Sympson carrying on the school in a new building in Wyton built by the clergyman. The original school, my father’s property, was occupied by Mr. Cross, and conducted on the method of the “British and Foreign School Society.” The clergyman’s school was carried on on the plan of the “National School System.” My father had consented, as an act of fairness to the clergyman, to give him time to build his own school before the final severance took place, so that both parties might start fair. I have recorded this educational matter here because it was at the time of my leaving the Epping School, and Mr. Francis Cross, whom I found on the scene when I arrived home from Epping, became a marked man in the parish. Indeed, I might say from an educational point of view, the “Father of the Parish.”

My father now decided not to send his two sons to boarding schools any more, but to educate my brother and myself at home under {28} a private tutor, and arranging to have other boys educated with us. Our first master had been educated for the Congregational Ministry, but, showing signs of pulmonary disease, he ceased to follow that profession, and became a tutor instead. I cannot give the exact date (now at once) of his advent, but I was about 14 years of age, which would make it about the year 1837. He was an unsuitable man for the post of schoolmaster, as he was “innocent” and “timid,” and not up to tricks and the pranks of a set of schoolboys. I have no opinion, on looking back, as to his capabilities, from a literary point of view, nor as to his fitness for the position. He was apparently a conscientious man, and I have no recollection of either liking or disliking him. He left rather suddenly, I think because he became attached to my aunt, Olivia Brown, and after looking at the matter from all points, she decided not to marry him. As events turned out, it proved a happy escape for her, provided his after life had not turned out different from what it was. I may as well finish his career here, as it was a melancholy one. Some time after leaving Houghton, he paid my father a visit, and borrowed a nag, and it afterwards turned out he proposed to the daughter of a clergyman, whom he eventually married. I lost sight of him for some years, when he turned up as curate, near Ely. He then had a considerable family of young girls, and appeared in very straitened circumstances. He had been living in Scotland. I believe while at the place near Ely, he drew a cheque on a bank where he had no account, {29} and so had to leave. He migrated to the neighbourhood of Maidstone, was committed to Maidstone Prison, and died there.

After our first tutor left, a Mr. John Watson held the office. I think, in addition to my brother, Fredk. Coote, a son of the late Mr. Wm. Coote, of St. Ives, was taught with us; Geo. Clark, a son of Mr. John Clark, of Houghton (for a short time); then Mr. Chas. Tebbutt, of Bluntisham, and Mr. Robt. Felkin, of Nottingham, a first cousin of Mr. Tebbutt’s.

Mr. Watson was also educated for the Congregational Ministry, but while at College, owing to some dispute with the authorities, he was requested to withdraw, and became a tutor instead of a minister. He was some sort of a protege of the Rev. T. Binney, of the Weigh House Chapel, London. He was well up to boys’ tricks. I presume he was well qualified to act as an instructor of youth, as regards his acquirements, but not as respects his disposition, for he was soured by the College incident, and was prejudiced against religious people generally, in fact, he was a regular misanthrope. He was a veritable genius; he could clean a clock, make a lady’s cap, sketch a landscape, and paint a likeness, etc. He had one great failing in the management of us, because on some disputed point about discipline, he would argue with us, and if he got the worst of the argument, would turn up angry. On the whole, as a tutor, I have now on looking back, no great fault to find with him. He occupied a difficult position, as he {30} had to please my mother as well as my father, and everyone knows that mothers are rather impatient of discipline inflicted by a comparative stranger on their offspring. As an American gentleman once said to me when in Switzerland, on seeing the death of one of his countrymen, “Peace to his ashes!”

While being taught under Mr. Watson, in order to teach us to speak in public, my father arranged for us to take up various questions for discussion, and after we had become proficient, he would invite several gentlemen of the neighbourhood to his house, and we had to perform before these gentlemen, which was a rather severe ordeal, but, as was intended, it had the effect of giving us confidence. On one of these occasions, the subject for discussion was the characters of Jacob and Esau. When we had finished the discussion, we asked for a half-holiday for the next day. Upon it being granted, the Rev. J. K. Holland said, “You have got more out of Jacob than his brother, Esau, ever did.”

One or two incidents: Fredk. Coote was a boy who, above everything else, liked to be correct, and to do the right thing. On one occasion, when riding on horseback together, he all at once found out my stirrup irons were a little rusty. He was much disgusted, and was ashamed to be riding with me. On another occasion, we had been ranging about the fields, and had got rather dirty perhaps, when, just as we were about to strike the St. Ives and Houghton footpath, he saw two ladies he knew. “Only think of the state I {31} am in,” he exclaimed; “those ladies are used to seeing me all right in costume, and I am accustomed to bow to them.” The reason I record these two little incidents, is because they lead up to another rather amusing one. We had a rather serious dispute over some matter; with an ordinary boy it would have led to a round or two with the fists until one or the other lad received sufficient punishment. Not so with Fred Coote; we must do the correct thing, and in every respect in the correct way, viz., fight a duel, but not with pistols. We retired to the field near our school, each of the combatants accompanied by his second to see fair play. The duel was to be with sticks, so we each cut a white or black thorn stick out of the hedge, and then placed ourselves, or were placed by our respective seconds, ready for the fray. Then at a given signal, we advanced up to each other, and each gave the other a severe castigation with the above mentioned thorns, until we both had had enough of it, and then left off by mutual consent, honour being satisfied. I think neither of us was considered by our seconds or the spectators to have received more punishment than the other, but, in fact, I, Bateman Brown, secured the most punishment, because unconsciously, while the seconds were arranging the preliminaries, having the knife in my hand with which I had cut the stick out of the hedge, I had amused myself in whittling the knots off my stick. Therefore my weapon did not inflict the same pain on my opponent as his did on me, with the thorns remaining on.

{32} As far as I can remember, this duel closed the dispute, and we were good friends afterwards. This boy, Fredk. Coote, was the younger brother of the late Eaden Coote, corn merchant, at St. Ives. He, Fred Coote, emigrated, I think, to Australia, and died there about the year 1893 or 1894. He came on a visit once to his old home, and was introduced to me by his brother in the street at St. Ives. I did not remember him.

We boys were a great annoyance to the neighbours who lived near our schoolroom. A Mr. Sharpe, who lived opposite, we used, when he was milking his cows in a barn back to the street, throw large stones at the shed, and so frighten the cows, and cause them to be likely to knock the pail over.

On one occasion we took a pailfull of water, attached a cord to it, tied the other end to the door handle, and then threw a large stone at the door. Events turned out exactly as we expected. Someone inside the room, quickly, in anger at the stone being thrown at the door, pulled the door open, knocking the pailfull of water all over herself, and flooding the living-room.

On another occasion, the eldest daughter, Eliza Sharpe, was to be married on the next day, and I took a pointed stick, charred it in the fire, and wrote with it on our window shutters, which were drab in colour, “Eliza Sharpe is going to be married to-morrow.” This way of announcing the happy event to the passers-by did not meet with the approval of the intended bridegroom, for he rushed out with a stick, and I only just suc-{33}ceeded in escaping into the schoolroom.

The good woman, Mrs. Ellis, who did the cleaning of our schoolroom, when we had been more troublesome than usual, would come to me, I suppose because I was the eldest, and say, “Mr. Beetman, the neighbours do say they must tell Master Potto, if you do not behave better.” Mrs. Ellis spoke Norfolk dialect and pronunciation.

I might say that Eliza Sharpe did not live long after her marriage, and was the first person buried in Houghton Chapelyard, and, I believe, Mrs. Joseph Goodman, the wife of my father’s partner, was the next.

{34}

CHAPTER III.

First Railway Journey.—Two Schools at St. Ives Built.—Methodical Philanthropic Work.—A High Character.—Church Rates.—Church Rate Question at St. Ives.—How an Uncontested Church Rate Used to be Made at Houghton.—Wyton Events.—Religious Work at Houghton.—The Dissenters and Their Work.—Lady Olivia Sparrow.—Building of Houghton Chapel.—The First Members.—Mr. Harcourt’s Advent to Houghton.

At the age of 17, say in the year, 1840, I was taken from school, and put in the mill to learn the milling business. About that time, or a little before, some fresh boys came to be educated with my brother, Mr. Geo. Brown, who was 3¾ years younger than myself:—The two sons of Mr. Dennis Paul, then of St. Ives, afterwards of Leicester; John Ekins, son of Mr. Longland Ekins, of Woodhurst; and Mr. Geo. Daintree, son of Mr. Robt. Daintree, of Fenton. They remained until my brother had finished his education, and the school was broken up in the summer of 1843.

{35} I think in the year 1840, before I went into the mill, my father, accompanied by Dennis Paul, took my brother and myself, and Mr. Paul was accompanied by one son, Dennis or John, also Mr. Chas. Tebbutt, a tour to the English lakes, also into Scotland. We went by coach to Nottingham, stayed one or two nights at Mr. Felkin’s house, and then on to Birmingham. Please note here, that the nearest railway then to Huntingdon was the London and Birmingham, which came within about four or five miles of the town of Northampton, at a place called Blesworth, so that the journey we made from Nottingham to Birmingham was the first journey I ever made by rail. The second day we went from Birmingham to Liverpool, then to Lancaster, where the railway at that time ceased. Then we went to Kendal by coach, after visiting the lakes; went to Carlisle by coach, then by coach from Carlisle to Glasgow. This was in the year 1840. How the railway has spread over the whole civilised world in something over 50 years! I will say nothing more about this tour, except that on our journey home we took the coach at Newcastle on a Friday morning at 11 o’clock, reached York about 9 p.m., and Huntingdon on Saturday at one p.m., a total of 36 hours for the journey from Newcastle to Huntingdon.

I will now resume with the Education question, at Houghton especially, but also at St. Ives. Mr. Francis Cross had, I think, at one time about 200 scholars; of course, principally the children of Houghton and Wyton, but, under Mr. Cross’s management, {36} the school gained such a local reputation that children came to it from the two Hemingfords, St. Ives, Godmanchester, Huntingdon, and Hartford. The sons of some tradesmen, as well as the children of labourers, received their education there, and when Mr. Cross died, in the year 1867 (January 19th), and it was advertised that a monument was to be erected to his memory in Houghton Chapel Yard, subscriptions came in from America and the Colonies and other parts of the world. To this day, men past middle age, but younger than myself, will say, “I was educated by Mr. Cross at the Houghton British School, and attribute much of my success in life to the education I there received.” I may say, in conclusion, “We shall never see his like again.”

The school, as I said before, was built by my father, and it was mainly supported by him.

Some time after the Houghton School was in operation, my father built the Boys’ School at St. Ives, then the Girls’ School (with additions, they are now both the St. Ives Board Schools). My father used to go all round the town of St. Ives, and could always collect sufficient money to carry on the schools efficiently. Sometimes someone would offer him a sovereign, and he would say, “I will only take 10s. of you; I think that is as much as you ought to give.” Mr. Botterill was the first master at the St. Ives School, and an excellent master he was. He afterwards became Agent to Mr. Geo. Day, {37} the grandfather of the present Mr. Dennis Day.

The schools were only “Voluntary” Schools, receiving no State aid; the Bible was taught, and religious instruction given; both Mr. Cross and Mr. Botterill being men making a religious profession. Children of both Church parents and children of Nonconformists were educated, and a religious difficulty had not even been thought of.

Before resuming the religious work that was carried on by my father, I will account for the fact that while Mr. Goodman, my father’s partner, was heart and soul with him in the religious work, he did not assist in either building the school or the chapel, nor did he take such a prominent part as my father in the management. The reason of the latter was that Mr. Goodman was a quiet, reading, studious man, more adapted for using the pen than the sword. As regards the former, I am certain that while my father gave largely on a fixed principle, Mr. Goodman gave less, but on an equally fixed principle. They were so much in accord that they would do nothing, religious, political, or philanthropic, without consulting each other. My father would say to Mr. Goodman, “God has only given me two children that I may have the more money to spend on religious effort. He has given you seven children, and it is your duty to hold your money tight, and provide for your family, so as to give them a strong position in the world as far as money can do.” I know for a fact on one occasion when my father was past {38} middle age, Mr. Goodman said, “You have now made sufficient money; there is no occasion for you to save any more.”

Mr. Goodman was a very strong Nonconformist, perhaps more so even than my father. He had great difficulty in making his mind up to pay a Church rate, not because of the injustice of taxing Nonconformists to pay for Church services, but because he took strong exception to Church teaching.

I remember on one occasion, when he was discussing the Church doctrines with some one in Mrs. Goodman’s presence, she said in my hearing, “Joseph, with your strong antipathy to the Church, I wonder we ever got married.” Dissenters then could only be married at Church.

When a Church was formed at Houghton, and the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was administered in the Chapel, my father, though holding the Quaker opinion on that subject, used to stay without communing, but Mr. Goodman used to walk out. Before leaving my remembrances of Mr. Goodman, I must record what a high character he bore, not only amongst his co-religionists, but the general public. I heard a gentleman say some years ago that at a public market-table his presence was sufficient to stop anyone from indulging in an unseemly jest or incident. In confirmation of this, the late Mr. William Hempstead, a Churchman and Conservative, told me that some one said in his hearing something derogatory to Mr. Goodman in the market-room upstairs at the “George,” at {39} Chatteris. Mr. Hempstead said, “What; what did you say? Say that again, and I will kick you downstairs.”

Church rates were a great grievance, also an injustice to Dissenters, because you not only had to assist in repairing the building which you did not use, but also to provide the bread and wine for the Sacrament, coals for warming, washing the parson’s surplice, in fact, all incidentals of a service in which you took no part. Among Dissenters there were two classes of objectors, one set bona fide having a conscientious objection to supporting Church services; the other having no conscientious objection, but declining to submit to an injustice. The first refused absolutely to pay the rate, the second either refused to pay or paid as circumstances dictated at the time.

There were two so-called Church rate martyrs, one a Mr. Baines, of Leicester, who went to gaol rather than pay the impost; the other—who also went to gaol—lived at Chelmsford in Essex.

It was always considered, up to some time in the Forties, that a majority of a parish or vestry assembled could either make or refuse to make a Church rate, but the inhabitants of Braintree in Essex (the Church having become dilapidated) declined to levy a rate for its restoration. The Church authorities took the question into a superior Court, which Court ruled that the parish was bound to keep the Church in repair. The effect of this decision gave the minority the power to levy a rate against the consent of the ma-{40}jority. Such a decision could not remain to rest there, so Mr. Coustauld, a wealthy silk manufacturer, took the matter into a higher Court, and got the first decision reversed.

During the period between the two decisions at St. Ives, which could always prevent a Church rate being levied, the Dissenters being stronger than the Church people, the churchwardens availed themselves of the minority decision, and attempted to collect the rate. Some paid and some would not. The Churchwardens, the late Mr. Martin Osborn, tried to coax my father into paying, but my father said, “I always pay when a majority vote a rate, but I will never pay a rate made by a minority.”

No one can form any idea of the excitement caused by a Church rate contest. It was only to be compared to the excitement of a Parliamentary election.

Here is the making of an uncontested Church rate at Houghton. A few parishioners would gather round the Communion table, most of them with their hats on, my father and Mr. Joseph Goodman amongst them. As soon as the clergyman came, they would all uncover excepting my father; he, having his Quaker scruples, would not uncover.

The Clergyman: I request you to take your hat off, sir.

Mr. Brown: I decline to take my hat off.

The Clergyman: I insist upon you taking your hat off.

Mr. Brown: If you insist I will take it off out of respect to you.

{41} The Clergyman: I do not wish it taken off out of respect to me.

Mr. Brown: I decline to take it off out of respect to the bricks and mortar.

My father remained covered. Next, one of the Churchwardens would propose a 6d. rate, knowing it would not be carried, then a 5d., 4d., 3d., and 2d. rate. Ultimately a penny rate was duly proposed and seconded, then Mr. Goodman would remark that the Church ought to pay for its coals, etc., the same as they did at the chapels. The Clergyman would say that was a very different thing. Mr. Goodman would then faintly ask if a halfpenny rate would not do, and the farce ended by a penny rate being agreed to.

The above proceedings, with little variations, were repeated at every Easter vestry.

The books were laid on the Communion table, and all the business of the vestry was there conducted.

Horne Took once took the duty for a short time at Wyton Church.

Charles James Fox, the celebrated Statesman, was married privately at Wyton Church.

The two parishes of Houghton and Wyton were ecclesiastically one, though having two Churches; there was only one clergyman and one rectory attached or near to Wyton Church. The Rector at the time I am now writing about (say from 1823 to 1846) was the Rev. E. P. (not to be confounded with his son, the Rev. E. P., who was {42} the first Rector of Houghton, after the two parishes were disconnected). He was a clergyman of the old school, called “High and Dry,” which has been described as caring less for the Flock than the Fleece. He also held another living, I believe at Coveney, near Ely. He would have a congregation on the average of about 25, in a population of from 700 to 800, and conducted the services in a formal manner, preaching the same sermon about every fifth Sunday. (I should have said his congregation of 25 included the Rector’s domestics). Such was the man that had the spiritual charge of a considerable sized parish.

My grandfather built, adjoining his house, a long, narrow building, afterwards called the “Tunnel,” because of its length, compared with its width, where he gathered a small Sunday school together, and he, and I presume his daughter, gave the children religious instruction. He afterwards handed over the school to the clergyman, who, as may be imagined from what I have related before, soon lost it all.

I must now state, that after events may be better understood, that the living of Houghton and Wyton was in the gift of Lady Olivia Sparrow, of Brampton Park, near Huntingdon. She was also a considerable landowner in the parish and Lady of the Manor, also owner of the water mills. She was a strong evangelical church woman of the most orthodox description, and was in much communication with Hannah Moore, the authoress, and others of that stamp. She {43} was also, of course, a State and Church Tory of the old school (the milder name of Conservative had not then been invented). Such was the lady under whom my father and Mr. Goodman held the mill and the farm. From the farm then they could be dismissed at six months’ notice, and from the mill at the end of every expiring lease. It must, therefore, be clear that both Mr. Goodman and my father were men who would act according to their consciences at the risk of losing both the occupations from which they gained their living. At a time when Mr. Goodman and Mr. Brown were about 40 years of age, Mr. Goodman said to my father, “We cannot continue here; we are too strong Dissenters in religion and Radical in politics to suit our landlady.” Mr. Goodman’s prophecy was afterwards partially fulfilled, though not in his lifetime.

To resume, my father, anticipating some trouble might arise with his landlady, to justify his after proceedings, had the congregation at Church counted for several Sundays.

I should say here, between the time of the Rector losing the Sunday School, as recorded, my father lent the “tunnel” to the Wesleyans, and they carried it on until Mr. Brown and Mr. Goodman took it over. Mr. Goodman was the first superintendent, and, I think, continued so until his death in the Autumn of 1844. I think the present Houghton chapel was erected in 1844. The first brick was laid by me, Bateman Brown, on the right-hand corner facing the Chapel. Among others pre-{44}sent was Mrs. Joseph Goodman, and she took the work people engaged on the work into the adjoining British Schoolroom, and presented each of them with a Bible.

Now at the present time, in the year 1896, what would be thought an intolerable piece of interference took place. The Rector came to my father, and said, “I insist, sir, that not another brick shall be laid to that building until I have seen your landlady on the matter.” Of course, my father did not take any notice of his threat, for such it was intended to be. My father heard nothing from his landlady, and nothing more from the Rector, but it was reported to my father by someone who knew what took place, that she said, “I decline to interfere, but you, sir, must, to hold your position in the parish, be more diligent and active in your work.”

Copy of the original document to be signed by all Church members on, admission to the Houghton Church, which was formed December 8, 1844:

Houghton, December 8, 1844.

We, the undersigned, having given ourselves to the Lord to be his people for ever, do hereby form ourselves into a Christian Society, specially to promote each other’s spiritual welfare and the eternal interests of all around us, solemnly promising before Almighty God, that by the assistance of His strength, we will walk with and towards each other, according to the rules of His most Holy Word. And we agree to welcome to our number all who, desiring to flee from {45} the wrath to come, seek for union with us, in order to promote the objects for which we are banded together:—James Harcourt (a); Francis Cross (d); Potto Brown (d); Wm. Tysoe (a); Elizabeth King (d); John Corbett (x d); Sarah Howell (x d); Mary Ashton x d); Francis Earl (x d); Luke Boutall (d); John Clark (x); William Freeman (x); Mary Bass (x d); William Cook; Jeremiah Sharp (a); Mary Allpress (x); Thos. Toon; Sarah Tysoe (x d); Margaret Ellis (d); Rowette Cunnington; Ann Clark (d); Mary Blott (d); Hannah Clark (d); Caroline Clark (a); Mary Lister (x); Jane Corbett (x d); Mary Brown (d); Rachael Burton (x); Francis Minney (x d) ; Elizabeth Perry (x d); Mary Clark (a); Frederick Clarke (d); William Johnson (d); Jane Boutall (d); Jane Leach (x d); Jane Cole (d); Elizabeth Johnson (x d); Isaac Wallington (d); Mary Ann Pailton (x d); Mary Ann Suiter; Emma Algood (x d); John Hunter; Sarah Hunter; Mary Ann Toon; Martha Hewes; Ann Sharp (a); Mary Argent (x); Mary Bull; Jane Slowe (x d); Mary Clark (x d); Ann Spinner; Margaret Stamford (d); John Pick (a); Butler Cole (x d); Thomas Hammond (d); Elizabeth Hart. I know that out of the 57 names, 32 are dead, and most likely some others who have left the village are also dead. This was in 1896. Out of 57, 22 have made a x because they could not write.

So the Chapel was completed in due course. At first the minister was a Mr. Augustus Smith, whose preaching and ministrations produced no effect upon the population, and {46} he left and became a High-Calvanist minister at the Crown Yard Chapel, St. Ives.

In the summer of 1844, Mr. Goodman and my father invited Mr. James Harcourt to become their minister, after hearing him preach some little time in the chapel, and satisfying themselves that he would be a suitable pastor. Up to his advent, we had continued to worship more or less at the Independent Chapel, St. Ives, under the ministry of the Rev. J. K. Holland, who was a man of considerable ability but cold-blooded in nature. Mr. Goodman and Mr. Brown were convinced that under his ministrations their young people were not likely to receive any religious impressions, so on or soon after Mr. Harcourt’s coming, they seceded from Mr. Holland’s chapel, and became attendants at the Houghton Chapel. At least my father did actually, and Mr. Goodman in intention, which intention was not carried out for the cause now to be explained.

{47}

CHAPTER IV.

Death of Mr. Joseph Goodman.—When there were no Chapel Goers In Houghton.—Great Events from Little Causes Spring.—Religious Liberty.—Lady Olivia Sparrow.—A Vow.—A Man who Decided not to Die.—Another Incident.—Indifference to What the World Might Say.—A Modest Minister of Offord.—Efforts to Curtail Influence.—Farming Profits Sixty Years Ago.

After Mr. Harcourt had accepted the invitation to become minister at Houghton, he returned to wind up affairs with his previous people, and Mr. Joseph Goodman died after a very brief illness, the particulars of which I will now record. I had now finished my apprenticeship in the mill, and used to accompany Mr. Goodman to St. Ives market. On one particular Monday, we were walking home from St. Ives together; it was near the end of September, and just as we got to the Houghton side of the bridge, over the brook on the footpath, Mr. Goodman looked at my clothing, and said he must have another and warmer great coat on before the next Monday as he felt chilly. He went home, and, I believe, never came out of the house again. He was attacked by some severe fever, and {48} died, as far as I can remember, in about a week, more or less. My father nursed him night and day, never leaving him. He was buried in the Chapel yard by the side of Mrs. Goodman, who had died two years previously. It was decided that Mr. Holland, his old minister, and Mr. Harcourt, his accepted new one, should conduct the service between them. Mr. Holland, when he found that to be so, absolutely declined to take any part whatever, and so Mr. Harcourt conducted the whole service. Mr. Goodman, in his last illness, besought my father to proceed with the religious work which they had planned to carry on together.

Since commencing these reminiscences, the Rev. James Harcourt has died at Leicester, after a brief illness, February, 1896, I believe in his 80th year. He was buried at Great Berkhamstead by the side of his first wife.

Mr. Harcourt began work at once. He was a man of strong determination and excitable temperament, but was powerful and persuasive as a preacher, having considerable pathos in his voice, and he soon began to carry his hearers with him. It must be remembered that up to now there were scarcely any chapel-goers in the parish; they were nominal members of the Church of England. It was said the only two labourers in the village making any profession of religion were a shepherd named Stowe, a Wesleyan, and a man name Billings, a High Calvinist, both of them equally good men, though so different in creed.

{49} In the course of time, a number of people became Church members, and a Rev. Mr. Pulsford came and held revival services, when more were candidates for Church membership, and before leaving Mr. Pulsford preached a sermon, subject: The Great Commission, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel, baptising, etc.” The effect of this sermon was a number became candidates for baptism by immersion on a profession of faith. So one Saturday, in the depth of winter, about eight, I do not know the exact number, were baptised in the river at Houghton Mill, the snow being fully three inches deep on the ground. One man, a millwright, who had not made up his mind before the ceremony commenced, was looking on from the top of the mill. At last he screwed up his courage, ran down before the ceremony was over, and was baptised in his working-clothes just as he was. His wife, who was the daughter of the Rector’s old coachman, was much annoyed with her husband, but afterwards she became a convert. A Church was now formed, and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was regularly administered.

The declaration made on admission to membership was so broad that Baptists and Quakers, if they desired, were eligible for membership.

Matters went on smoothly for about two years, when a crisis came, which led to consequences which the author of it did not foresee, and which ultimately led to an extension of our business as millers, and was indirectly the cause of the Free Church at St. {50} Ives being built, also Trinity Church, Huntingdon. A little prior to the events recorded above, the Squire of the Parish, Gilbert Ansley, who hitherto had been non-resident, married a lady who had come from a parish in a distant part of the country, where her brother was a clergyman of considerable influence, and she was his lay curate. She found her lot now cast where the Squire, from his having been non-resident, was comparatively nobody, and two persons engaged in trade in the village were people of the most influence, and, more dreadful still, were Dissenters of an advanced sort.

Now, owing partly to the cause just described, and Mrs. Ansley being very High Church, she took great exception to the whole course that was being adopted. It is not to be wondered at, when it is remembered that the converts were previously Church-goers, and to add to the lady’s annoyance they were, from her point of view, re-baptised, and in practice, if not in theory, the Church of England baptism was ignored. The consequence was, that she went to Lady Sparrow, our landlady, and stated that my father was not only the cause of all the dissent in the parish, but also in the whole neighbourhood. She also stated that all my father’s workpeople were compelled to go to chapel, and their children to the British School. I am bound to say in justice to her, that I think she believed it, for two reasons. Firstly, she thought, the people would not go to chapel instead of church {51} if they were not compelled; and secondly, she judged my father’s procedure by her own conduct, for all her own dependents were absolutely obliged by her to go to Church, and send their children to the National School; and she, no doubt, considered my father would think it right to support his principles in the same way as she thought it right to support hers.

But, now for the facts about the alleged compulsion. No power was used in reference to either the parents or children, the proof of which was that many of the persons in my father’s employ sent their children to the National School, and no pressure was put on them to induce them to remove the children to the other school. Many of my father’s workpeople were regular attendants at the National Church, and they were under no disability whatever in consequence. I state this of my own knowledge, for, being at the time 22 to 23 years of age, I was frequently deputed to pay their wages, I then taking a responsible and active part in the business It is perfectly true that a great many workpeople and others, besides those connected with my father, forsook their Parish Church because of the inefficiency of the Rector, as described previously, and went over to the Parish Church of Hemingford Abbots, where there was a very energetic, good, Christian man, who was also a very popular preacher, viz., the Rev. Mr. Selwin. Frequently there would be a company of 100 seen crossing the meadow to go to Hemingford Church, because they could get no spiritual benefit at {52} their own Parish Church. I may say here in passing, that Mr. Goodman and my father, prior to the time I am recording, would frequently go to hear Mr. Selwin, accompanied by their families, because no spiritual good was to be obtained from the Nonconformist Minister at St. Ives.

Lady Olivia Sparrow was willing and ready to believe Mrs. Ansley’s statements, and her ladyship was backed up in the course she had decided to take by many of the clergy in the neighbourhood. The consequence was that her steward had instructions to give my father notice to leave the farm in six months, the usual time before the law was altered. My father had several interviews with her ladyship in order to deny the statements Mrs. Ansley had made, and he besought her to come to the parish to investigate the truth or falseness of the charges brought against him, but she declined to do so. I believe he had two interviews with her, and she tried to make a bargain with him, and made two conditions, by which, if complied with, she would withdraw the notice, and let him continue in the occupation of the farm. The first was, part with the minister, Mr. Harcourt. The reply was, “I dare not; he has been much blessed by God in his work, and when I say that, you, as a Christian lady, will understand what that means.” The other condition was, “You must abandon your practice of calling on the parents of the absentee children to know the causes of their non-attendance at school.” My father refused to comply with that demand. Also, I may {53} say here that the six months’ notice to leave the farm was extended to 12 months, while these negotiations were going on.

As a last resource, my father memorialised her ladyship in a carefully-worded paper, which, it appears, she showed to Mr. Edward Fellowes, one of the Tory members for the County. It was reported to my father that after he had carefully read it through, he laid it down and said, “You must be careful, my lady; you have a dangerous man to deal with.” Note the word dangerous. Why? Because he did nothing more than follow the dictates of his conscience in seeking the religious well-being of his neighbours in the village where he lived.

Thanks to the depression in agriculture, and the consequent difficulty in letting farms, the large landowners cannot to the same extent exercise the arbitrary power they did formerly. And though I am a considerable loser, I do not altogether regret the depression.

I might state here that many landlords would not have a Dissenter as a tenant on their estates. Such was the fact with the colleague in Parliament of Mr. Edward Fellowes, viz., Mr. Thornhill, of Diddington. Mr. Fellowes, I think, made no distinction between Churchmen and Dissenters, but he expected all his tenants to vote for him.

Mr. Selwin, above named, at first took the same view as Mrs. Ansley, but when my father had an interview with him, and convinced him the charges were false, I have pleasure in recording he expressed sorrow for having {54} taken any part against my father, and said he would go to Lady Sparrow and use his influence to induce her to re-consider her decision. He did so, but without success.

Mr. Samuel Gurney, the great bill-broker, called upon her ladyship when she was staying in London at her hotel, but as soon as he put his head into the door of her sitting-room she exclaimed: “I know what you have come for, Mr. Gurney; it is about Mr. Brown and the farm. I have made a vow to God that he shall go out.” And go he did, at the expiration of the notice.

My father was much urged afterwards to show Lady Sparrow up in the Religious Press, but he said, “No, she is a Christian woman, she has made a mistake through being misled.” Some year or so afterwards, Lady Sparrow, though she never made any acknowledgment of having been in error, treated my father with considerable courtesy, and on one occasion employed him to negotiate to get someone in whom she was interested out of a difficulty into which he had fallen.

My father frequently in after times used to say to me, “It is impossible to approach Mrs. Ansley and be on good terms, but do not you let the dispute between her and me extend to the next generation, that is, between yourself and her children.”

Here is an incident showing how my father protected the poorer Dissenters if they suffered loss on account of their religion. A chapel was built in the village of Hartford, {55} and was then under the care of the Houghton Church. The clergyman at Hartford on one occasion gave blankets away, omitting to give any to the Dissenters. So my father first went to the clergyman and remonstrated with him for making such a distinction. He attempted to justify himself, and my father replied that he should immediately take steps to remedy the omission (without, however, telling him how). So he bought sufficient blankets to give every Dissenter one each. “Now,” he said, “I don’t think the parson has then bought double the number, and then gave every poor person in the parish, both Church people and Dissenters, one each. “Now,” he said, “I don’t think the parson has gained much for his Church by his partiality.”

My father, however, under ordinary circumstances, was very careful not to pauperise the people, or make them hypocrites by his charities (the case just recorded was an exceptional one). He used constantly to say to lazy or spend-thrift people, if they applied to him for relief, “No, if you will not work, neither shall you eat.” On one occasion a journeyman blacksmith in the village, a superior workman, came to my father to relieve him in his poverty brought on by his own conduct through drinking to excess. My father said he would not relieve such a reprobate. The man replied, “I shall die of starvation then.” They were talking on the Houghton Village Green, and my father said to him, “Lie down here and die at once; it is the best thing you can do.” {56} It seemed hard, but it had its effect, and for sometime after that the man kept steadily at work, instead of dying. My father made a good rule, however (I think it was a good one), in which he made no distinction in his charities, viz., if people of unworthy character fell ill or had become extremely old, he would relieve them, notwithstanding, because he would say, “However bad they have been, they cannot help themselves now.”

At the Board of Guardians my father would have refused the tramp relief, but the other Guardians were afraid the applicant would be unable to get work, and might die of starvation. So when the applicant said he was willing to work, but could not obtain it, my father would say, “Don’t relieve him, put the test to him; I will give him work.” The fact was, my father had a great heap of large stones picked off his farm at Wyton. The man had a tool supplied him, and was set to work to break them. As a rule they soon decamped, but on one occasion a tramp stopped the best part of a week. Talking to his foreman, my father said, “Dring, I am afraid this man is going to beat us, and stop on.” But, like the rest, he decamped at last. The test answered its purpose.

Perhaps no man was so absolutely indifferent as to what people said against him. On one occasion he said he was getting old. I replied, “What makes you think so? You seem very vigorous.” He replied, “Formerly, if people said anything reflecting in any way on my conduct, I did not care a bit, but now it annoys me.” Sometimes in the non-caring {57} period of his life someone would come to him in a towering rage and say, “You have been saying so-and-so about me,” expecting my father would say what he had said was true or deny he had said it. My father, however, would simply reply, “What then?” which made them boil over, if possible, more than ever. I do not think this was a trait in his character to be imitated.

On one occasion a good but very modest man, who was the Minister at the village of Offord, wishing to meet my father before he left home, drove over about breakfast time, and, instead of coming to the house, tied his horse to a rail, and then sat down and ate his breakfast which he had brought with him, under the wagon hovel. My father discovered and reprimanded him, for thinking so badly of him, as to suppose he would not entertain him. Then, in spite of the good man protesting he was not hungry, because he had just finished his breakfast, my father made him come into the house and eat another breakfast. The minister’s name was Flowers.

After the farm was given up, we continued in the occupation of the mill. The mill lease, on the occasion of the interview with Lady Sparrow, was about expiring, and she dropped some remark which led my father to suppose she would deprive him of the mill also, which led him to say so to her. She immediately replied, “I have no intention of depriving you of the tenancy of the mill.” My father at once took her at her word, and {58} said, “Then I may see your steward, Mr. Dent, and say I have your authority to tell him to take the necessary steps to renew the lease?” She replied “Yes,” and so the lease was renewed. In one of the above interviews her ladyship said something which caused my father to say, intending to convey to her that she was not as powerful as she might be over him in reference to the mill and the farm, “I was born, and have lived, in Houghton all my life, and in Houghton I shall continue until I die,” which caused her to say, “I do not wish to disturb you in the mill, but only to curtail your power in the parish.”

The farm, to re-let it, was taken out of the hands of the Steward and placed in Mrs. Ansley’s, but she did not succeed in finding a tenant, and it came back to the Steward, who let it to the late Mr. William Looker—his youngest son, Mr. John Looker, now holds it (January 7th, 1896), but he is intending to give it up next Michaelmas. Before leaving this subject, I must record one or two incidents connected with it. It came to my knowledge a day or two ago, (January, 1896), that one day my father went to his coachman, John Pick, and said, “Put your best clothes on quickly, and drive to Brampton Park as fast as you can.” John Pick states what was very unusual, my father did not open his mouth to speak once either going or returning. Some time afterwards the order came again, “Drive to Brampton Park.” Again my father did not utter a word going, but on returning, as soon as they were out of the Park, my father said, “John, it is all up.” I {59} presume my father thought his man knew what was going on, but John replied, “What is all up?; I don’t understand you,” and then my father explained what was up.

I may here say that the farm at that time produced an income of £700 per annum.

Such was the sacrifice some Dissenters had to make for their principles at that time.

{60}

CHAPTER V.

A Visitor from the United States.—Records of Ministers.—Mr. Spurgeon a Candidate for the Houghton Pastorate.—Anecdotes of Mr. Spurgeon.—Other Spurgeon Incidents.—What Houghton did for Mr. Spurgeon.—Sunday School Incidents.—Churches Amalgamate.—A New Era.—Building of Huntingdon Mill.—Curious Incidents, Then and Now.—Building Trinity Church, Huntingdon.

To resume the religious work. About the year 1850, my father, who wished certain persons to come under religious influence who had not been reached by Mr. Harcourt’s preaching, invited Mr. Finney, of Obertin College, U.S.A., to come to Houghton to conduct revival services, and gave him £100 to pay his expenses. My brother, G. W. Brown, accompanied by Mr. Harcourt, went to meet him at Southampton, and brought him straight to Houghton. Mr. Charles Finney was a remarkable preacher. There was little appeal to the feelings, but his sermons were nearly all logic, and the remarkable thing was that in a sermon, which required attention to follow him, the most educated and the most illiterate would be {61} influenced. He remained about six weeks, and then went to Birmingham, Leamington, and London before his return to America.

Soon after Mr. Finney’s departure, Mr. Harcourt, feeling that his work at Houghton was finished, moved to Luton, in Bedfordshire, and was succeeded in the ministry at Houghton by the Rev. John Hart, a hardheaded Scotchman. During Mr. Harcourt’s ministry a chapel had been built at Hartford, and was opened by the Rev. Mr. Mursell, of Leicester. Another also had been opened at Hemingford Grey by the Rev. Mr. Brock, and, during Mr. Hart’s ministry, Godmanchester Chapel was affiliated to the Houghton Church, as also the Baptist Church at St. Ives, the latter worshipping in the Public Institution. Mr. Hart’s work was not, perhaps, altogether as successful as Mr. Harcourt’s, but he did a good work. Fenstanton was also under Mr. Hart’s guidance.

After about seven years, Mr. Hart left and went to Guildford, in Surrey, and was instrumental in getting a new and handsome church and schoolrooms built, and died as recently as 1895. His work at Guildford continues to flourish under the ministry of the Rev. Mr. Houghton, formerly of Christ Church, near Bournemouth. Mr. Hart, while at Guildford, established a number of village preaching places, the same as at Houghton.

The Houghton religious work fluctuated after Mr. Hart’s departure under various {62} ministers, and for some years now the Rev. Henry Bell, formerly in connection with Mr. Hart’s village work, has been the minister.

When Mr. Harcourt left Houghton, Mr. Spurgeon, who was a very young man, living and preaching at Waterbeach, Cambs., came over to take the services at Houghton on Sunday—I presume, with some little idea, if he were invited by the people, to become the pastor. He was then very self-confident, I might say conceited, and very off-hand in his manner. For example, he informed us in the dining room, when the conversation happened to turn upon the Church of England, that the Bishop had been consecrating a piece of land for burial purposes in Waterbeach. He (Mr. Spurgeon) said he told his congregation on announcing that there would be a baptismal service during the week, that if they chose to attend it they would see him consecrate the Horsepond. I presume the candidates were going to be baptised in the village pond.

My father, when young men came to preach, would, if they were very modest and diffident, say to them after the service, “You did very well this morning; with study and practice, you will make a good preacher,” or words to that effect. If they were over-confident, he would lower their sails. When, after morning service, as soon as they reached the dining room, my father said to Mr. Spurgeon, “Young man, your sermon this morning was not calculated to do the least good”; that came as a wet blanket to him, {63} if, as was very likely, he expected commendation. Everyone who knew Mr. Spurgeon in after years would see how he altered by becoming more modest than in his youth, and how well he bore himself after he arrived to a position of great honour.

At a meeting held at Zion Chapel, Cambridge, Mr. Spurgeon, then a very young man and a tutor, made a speech, which was down upon a number of people, upon which the Rev. James Harcourt said, “Young man, if you dipped your arrows in oil instead of vinegar! I will say to you as David did to the young men, ‘Stay at Jericho until your beard is grown, and then you might speak with some authority.’ ”

Many anecdotes have been told of Mr. Spurgeon, some of which he repudiated, but it must be remembered that an audience who heard eccentric remarks would be much more likely to remember them.

I will now mention two things which Mr. Spurgeon said at a religious service, which I can vouch for, as I heard them myself. Mr. Spurgeon was preaching in a barn at Needingworth, near St. Ives, and had dined at a farmer’s before the afternoon, where he met a Mr. Bull, the leader of the choir. Before giving out the second hymn Mr. Spurgeon said, “I hope this hymn will be sung more melodiously than the other, as anyone would think from the noise you made that you had one of the Bulls of Bashan for your leader.”

On another occasion, preaching in a tent {64} in Needingworth, he stated in his sermon that some young preachers had no idea where to place the accent when reading. Instead of reading the words about the feeding of the five thousand, “they did eat and were filled,” they would read “they did eat and were filled!”

I once met two young men when on the Continent at Como, and they told me they had been stopping at a hotel in Chaivenna, and had there got into conversation with a gentleman and asked him, among other things, if he had ever heard Mr. Spurgeon preach, and what he thought of him—in fact, discussed Mr. Spurgeon pretty freely. At last they said the gentleman told them, “Why I am Mr. Spurgeon.” The young man said to me, “He was a jolly fellow; he laughed, and was not a bit offended.”

Once I met Mr. Spurgeon at the stone-laying or the opening of Willingham Chapel, I forget which. I was then limping about on two sticks from the effects of the gout, when Mr. Spurgeon said, “Does it not, my friend, make you very low-spirited? It does me.”

One very good trait in Mr. Spurgeon was that, as long as his strength would allow, he was always willing to go into the small villages to stone-layings or openings of chapels.

I think it was a fact that Mr. Harcourt was partly the cause, indirectly, of Mr. Spurgeon being thought of as the pastor of Park {65} Street Chapel, London. There had been a meeting at Cambridge, at which Mr. Harcourt was present; also Mr. Spurgeon, and a deacon from Park Street. Mr. Harcourt, I believe, in the train the next day, travelling with the deacon to London, referring to Mr. Spurgeon, said: “That is the man to be your pastor. He will make somebody in the time to come.” Mr. Harcourt’s prophesy was more than fulfilled.

For many years, say about 60, a Sunday School has been carried on in Houghton, formerly by the Wesleyans from St. Ives, a good man, named Canham, a master mason, coming over every Sunday until it was taken over, and Mr. Goodman became superintendent. My father succeeded Mr. Goodman, and now I have been a superintendent for many years, and my wife, Susanna Brown, since our marriage in 1848, has had the sole charge of the Infant School in a separate building. She is well qualified for the work, and, under her management, it has always been a great success, and has regularly been a feeder to the other school. She used to have about 40 little pupils until the village decreased in population, and now there are about 25. She educated several generations. The scholars have come from the parents of regular attendants at the Parish Church and from the chapel-goers indiscriminately. It is amusing sometimes when a burly man of middle age is passing to hear her say, “He was one of my infants.”

The older Sunday School at one time, even {66} when there was a Church Sunday School at Houghton, and another at Wyton, contained 200 children, and we have had a good staff of teachers from the villagers themselves. We have always endeavoured to give them good, sound religious instruction, founded upon the teaching derived from the Old and New Testament, and here, again, there has been no religious difficulty. The school now, with no other Sunday School in the two villages, has dwindled down to about 80, owing to the decrease of population. During my father’s life-time, he had a large class, a Bible class of big lads, or young men, and he used to say he could always retain them until they went courting—but he found that competition too much for him. This class was carried on successfully after my father’s death by Mr. Henry Goodman, of St. Ives. His daughter, Miss Ethel Goodman, came from St. Ives every Sunday to teach for some years.

Mrs. Toller, who was an excellent teacher, had also for some years a large Bible class of girls and young women up to her death, in 1894.

In the early times of Sunday School work, in the neighbourhood, in addition to a treat annually for the children, the parents in each village in which a school was in existence, would assemble once a year, having a tea and meeting in a tent afterwards, and at the meeting in the evening the claims of Sunday Schools were advocated, and the parents were impressed with the importance {67} of seeing their children sent regularly to school. The tents would be decorated in the various villages where the meetings were held with flowers and evergreens. Before tea, and between tea and the evening meeting, young ladies and gentlemen would play at various games. On one occasion, at Somersham, an annual meeting and dinner of a local benefit club had been held in a barn which, on the previous day, had been used for the Sunday school meeting, and the decorations and devices remained up. One device was, “Feed My Lambs.” A clergyman, the Rev. Edward Baines, of Bluntisham, remarked that he thought it ought to have been altered to “Feed My Lions,” and, by the way, in those times, compared with now, the men would eat a much more hearty meal.

After Mr. Hart left the services held in the St. Ives Institution ceased, and, on Mr. Holland resigning his position as minister of the Independent Chapel, the Rev. Thomas Lloyd became his successor, and Mr. Thomas Coote, of Fenstanton, with my father, after much negotiating with the old congregation at the Institution and Mr. Lloyd’s late congregation, succeeded in putting the two congregations together. It was not a union of Baptists and Congregationalists, because the Independent trust deed would not allow of that, but the Baptists had to consent to be absorbed, which they would not have done if they had not been too weak in money to carry on any longer a separate Baptist Church. The two churches, since being {68} mixed, have not worked without some friction, but it has proved to be the best thing to have done, all things considered.

From now a new era, in one respect, commenced. Nonconformist Chapels, or Meeting Houses, as they were formerly designated, had to be built to escape too public observation in retired lanes or yards. Such was the case with the Independent and Baptist Chapel at St. Ives, and the Wesleyan and Union Chapel at Huntingdon. The buildings also, partly from the same cause, and partly from principle, and also for cheapness, were either plain or unpretending, if not absolutely ugly. It was now thought that it was expedient to come into a more prominent position, and erect a better style of building. So the church standing on the Market Hill, St. Ives, was built in as commanding a position in the town as possible, and, instead of being called a Meeting House, was named “The Free Church, St. Ives,” to denote it was supported by the free gifts of its worshippers, and not by aid derived from the State. I cannot just now state the sums that were given towards its erection, but I know that Mr. Thomas Coote, of Fenstanton, and my father were considerable donors, and the leading Nonconformist inhabitants of the town were not behind hand, but were liberal contributors.

The clock, with an illuminated dial, was paid for by subscriptions from Church people and Nonconformists, and it is illuminated out of the public funds. The clergyman at {69} the time remarked that it was very nearly a Church Rate. He was the Rev. Mr. Forsbrook.

There were both political and religious reasons, rather than commercial, or in addition to business ones, for erecting the mill at Huntingdon, rather than elsewhere, which will be described more fully under the head of my commercial remembrances. In the spring of 1863, I removed to Huntingdon to live, upon the opening of the mill. Prior to this, the Huntingdon Nonconformists had taken steps to, at some time in the near future, erect a new chapel, and in a more prominent place than that one in Cook’s Lane, as the Grammar School Lane was then called, and they had already purchased the large house on the Market Hill, formerly occupied by the London and County Banks—a site certainly prominent enough, if that were an advantage, but there could not have been so much room on that site as where Trinity Church now is. Then it was too near All Saints’ Church. Our proximity to that might have been looked upon as ostentatiously antagonistic, which we had no desire to be; and, besides, the three ecclesiastical buildings of the town, from an architectural point of view (that is, the distant view) looked better being in different parts of the town than having them close together. But the site above named (now the Town and County Club) was abandoned, and ultimately was sold to Messrs. Fosters, Bankers, of Cambridge, for the sum of £500. Such was the position as regards the erecting {70} of a new place of worship when the mill was built, and Brown and Goodman became thereby connected with Huntingdon. Most likely, whether they had gone to the town or not, a new chapel would have been erected, but I think I may say, without presumption, it would not have been on the same scale or the same architecture as it now is.

A little information about the position Nonconformists occupied an the town from the beginning of the 19th century is necessary here for fully understanding what followed. There was always a tale, whether it was only a legend I know not, but it was said about the beginning of the century the church bells were rung because the last Dissenter had either died or left the town. But whether that was so or not, it shows the feeling that was supposed to exist on the part of Churchmen towards their Nonconformist fellow-townsmen. The following is no legend, but a well authenticated fact, that when the old property in Cook’s Lane was erected (now the British School) a gentleman outside the town was employed to purchase it, for fear, if it got wind that the Dissenters were purchasing it to build a chapel on, it would be impossible to buy it. The above-mentioned gentleman, though a stranger, did not think it wise to appear in the matter himself, but employed someone on the day of the sale whom he could trust to buy the property, and then it was knocked down to this individual; the Nonconformists considered they had lost the property {71} until they were told it was bought on their account. This gives some little insight into the feelings of the dominant party towards Nonconformists. There is a further illustration: Mr. Michael Foster, a leading and respected surgeon in the town for many years, returned as a Town Councillor by his fellow-townsmen, was, year after year, passed over from filling the office of Mayor because of his religious opinions, and I think I am correct in saying there had not been a Nonconformist Mayor since the time of Oliver Cromwell. This is now all changed, as will be explained under the political sketch.

After my living in Huntingdon, or immediately before, a fund was commenced towards building the new chapel. Certain gentlemen agreed that the Nonconformists of the town should raise amongst themselves £2,000, and get the remainder elsewhere, and, considering this was to be exclusive of what my father and myself were to give, it was a noble amount to raise, as there were no wealthy people connected with the congregation in the town. My father promised £1,000, and agreed to raise another £1,000 from gentlemen in the large towns of Lancs. and elsewhere; I gave £2,000; Messrs. Foster, bankers, Cambridge, £500; Mr. Samuel Morley, £500; and Mr. Coote, of Fenstanton, contributed. And then the site where Trinity Church now stands was, after considerable trouble and a great amount of bargaining, finally purchased. The building, with the land behind, stands on three or four properties, belonging to different individuals, and, {72} as soon as we had purchased one property, there was a danger of one of the other owners demanding an exorbitant price. The purchase at last was accomplished, and the centre building was a large, old inn or coaching house, “The Dolphin.” When the foundations were dug some French coppers were found, indicating that the French prisoners, during the great war at the beginning of the century, had stopped there on the way through to the Stilton Barracks. The having purchased the site on the Market Hill was of great advantage to us in procuring a new one, and, therefore, anyone who might have moved to prevent us getting a site, were only too anxious for us to obtain another one rather than the one on the Market Hill.

{73}

CHAPTER VI.

More about the Building of Trinity Church, Huntingdon.—Completion of the Work.—How Brampton was Started.—An Amusing Circumstance.—The British School at Huntingdon.—Political.—Deplorable Ignorance.–Taxes.–The Threshing Machine.—Bread Riots.—Reform Bill.—Repeal of the Corn Laws.—John Bright at Huntingdon.—Mr. Geo. Day and Protection.—Won a Pound of Sago!—A £50,000 Bazaar.

In spite of the proverb about “Letting sleeping dogs lie,” I must, in justice to my father on the one hand, and the Rev. Millard on the other, refer to the question of the Baptistry. I can do so the more freely because I made no condition in giving the money I did (and I gave more than my father) about the Baptistry, and I did not in any way sympathise with my father in the course he took. As regards my father, first, they were not obliged to accept the money if they did not approve of the conditions; further, remember, my father had been a Quaker, and he still held his old opinions as regards the ordinance of Baptism. Further still, he made no condition that there should not be a Baptistry on the premises, and he always considered that he lost his {74} farm merely owing to the Baptist services at Houghton.

Then, as regards Mr. Millard, the minister, he was most unjustly treated afterwards by several leading ministers of the denomination because he was a consenting party to accepting a donation to the church on the condition that a Baptistry was not in the Church proper.

Now mark, that deed before the building was commenced was read over to the late Mr. Charles Foster and the late Mr. George Foster, of Cambridge, both of them being Baptists, for their approval or otherwise, and neither of them took any exception to the conditions. The deed was also read over to the Rev. Dr. Brock, of London, and he did not object. Mr. Michael Foster had the deed read over to the above gentlemen, no doubt, for his own protection, in case anyone in the denomination should blame him afterwards.

It was some time after the completion of the Church that Mr. Millard was blamed by Mr. Brock (who, it appears, had forgotten that he had not objected to the deed, and so inconsistent are even the best of men that Mr. Brock afterwards took exception to the church because it had a spire—apparently forgetting that his own church had two spires).

Upon its being decided that the Church should be built, Mr. Tarring, sen., architect to the Congregational Chapel Building So-{75}ciety, was selected to draw and submit plans, and the work was commenced in the Spring of 1867, and was finished and opened in the autumn of 1868.

After the church was completed, a considerable debt remained; the purchase of the building site, the church itself, the party walls, organ, furniture, etc., etc., cost something over £11,000, and while the debt remained, some of the principal contributors connected with the church and congregation gave a yearly fixed sum to meet the interest on the debt. So it was decided to stop the continuance of this yearly burden, to make a great effort to extinguish the debt. Everyone nobly put their shoulders to the work, and the building was freed from all pecuniary responsibility. I gave another £1,000; my father, who was then in failing health, also promised £500 if he lived, but he died before the day came for finishing the matter up; and I paid also the £500 which he conditionally promised. My father had given £500 towards the purchase of the Trinity House, a residence for the minister, just before he died.

In concluding particulars about the erection of the church, I should like to say there were others in the congregation “who, according to their means,” gave quite as largely as did my father and myself.

More recently a debt has been cleared off Trinity House and the caretaker’s cottage.

So much for the material building. Some short record of the commencement of the {76} spiritual work in the town should be given. It must be very brief, as I do not know the commencement of it personally.

The late Rev. Mr. Wright (father-in-law of the late Rev. Millard) kept a school at the Old Slepe Hall, St. Ives. He was a Congregationalist, but was persuaded to give up the School and become the first pastor of the Church at Huntingdon, which church was conducted on the principle of a Union of Independents and Baptists. In fact, the deed was broad enough to give even Quakers an admission to membership, which, at that time, was very remarkable, and I think worthy of all praise. The late Mr. Foster, of Huntingdon, surgeon, and father of Professor Foster, of Cambridge, had come into the town as assistant, and afterwards as partner, to the late Mr. Wilson, surgeon (who was a staunch Churchman). Mr. Foster was a Baptist and an energetic worker in all church work. In conjunction with him and Mr. Dear, sen., Mr. Harrat, Mr. Miller, sen., Mr. Randall and Mr. Honey, a Church was formed, and became an agent of great good in the town, and was the means of forming the religious character of the next generation. Mr. Wright was succeeded by Mr. Millard, who became an active coadjutor with Mr. Foster and the others above-named. After a time Mr. Millard left, and went to London, but at the time the Huntingdon Mill was finished, and I, in consequence, removed from St. Ives to Huntingdon, he returned, and again became the pastor of the church. It provi-{77}dentially happened that Mr. Millard could not at first get a house in Huntingdon, and so went to live at Brampton, and, while residing there, began to preach on the Village Green. To that circumstance may be attributed the building of the Brampton Chapel.

The Huntingdon Church became a missionary church, a band of local preachers going into the villages, which ultimately led to chapels being built at Perry, Buckden, Stukeley, and Great Staughton. The latter place has been handed over to the St. Neots Church, being too distant from Huntingdon to be managed by the Huntingdon Church.

Mr. Millard, on his return to the County, became Secretary to the Baptist Union, and, as time went on, the work of the Union increased, so he gave up the pastorate at Huntingdon, and gave all his time to the Union. He ultimately had to retire, and became pastor of a Baptist Church at Derby, where he died. Mr. Millard was succeeded by the late Mr. Steadman Davies, then by the late Mr. Wells, and now Mr. Guiton is the pastor (1896).

An amusing circumstance took place at the recognition of one of the later ministers, illustrating what a power Mr. Foster was in the Church. Mr. Ridgley, the senior deacon at the time, was speaking, and, like all persons getting into years, spoke as though the past was better than the present, there not then being the same freedom of opinion as at present, saying, “Ah, when Deacon {78} Foster suggested anything, and Pastor Millard endorsed it, the matter was settled without any further discussion.” This is the old, old tale, that a good despotic government works with less friction than a more democratic one.

In conclusion, the Church has continued to prosper. Since the building was erected, a new fine-toned organ has taken the place of the new one, built by Holditch (which cost £500), and was placed in the church at the time it was opened. The latter, built by McConachie, cost about £750, and is paid for; two years ago the church was cleaned, decorated, etc., and also the lecture rooms and class rooms. This also has been paid for. The caretaker’s cottage was purchased and paid for, and the debt on Trinity House has been paid off, and all the village chapels are free of debt. The only debt now is on the alterations of the British School, which the Education Department compelled us to make, and it is hoped that will be cleared off during the next twelve months.

Up to 1871 there was no British School in Huntingdon. Up to the passing of the Act compelling everyone to be educated, the Huntingdon Nonconformists thought, as good citizens, they ought to take their share in the education of the masses. The present school was started, the old Chapel in the Grammar School Lane being its location, and from 1871 to 1896 (now) it has educated, and is educating, about half the children of {79} the town, the National School educating the other half. I don’t think there is any antagonism between the two sets of schools, though there may be friendly rivalry. The school building consisted of an efficient suite of rooms up to the requirements of the Education Department in 1896.

Up to the days of the Reform Bill of 1832, the Quakers, of which Society my grandfather was a member, were all Tories; out of gratitude, I presume, because they had received relief from disabilities from the Government of the day, which was generally Tory. My father has frequently told me that, when a little boy, upon hearing his father talk politics with some gentleman of his acquaintance, he would say to himself, “My father is all wrong; when I grow up I shall not be a Tory.”

As he was not educated in Liberal principles, they must have been indigenous. As regards myself, I have always been firmly, without any wavering, of the same political faith as my father.

It will be necessary, to fully understand the political position I am about to describe, to give a brief account of the period just before, and at the time of, the Reform Bill. The Test and Corporation Acts had only just been repealed, which Acts prevented anyone being a member of a Town Council who did not take the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, according to the rites of the Church of England, at least once a year, and, if that was not sufficient to exclude a Roman {80} Catholic, every Town Councillor, I believe, had to make oath on his acceptance of office that he did not believe in the “damnable doctrine of Transubstantiation.”

The masses of the people could neither read nor write, and those above them held the opinion that it would be dangerous to the State if it were otherwise, and they literally, incredible as it may appear now, did not know their right hand from the left; because, when being up as Militia men for training, the men would have a wisp of straw on one arm, and hay on the other; the Drill Sergeant, instead of calling out to left or right, would say, “Straw about,” or “Hay about,” as the case might be.

Then their home life was lamentable, owing not only to the high duty on corn, which, in bad harvests, would put wheat up to farmers’ prices, say 60s., 70s., 80s., 90s.,and 100s. per qr., and in my grandfather’s ledger we found flour once entered at 135s. per sack of 280 lbs.; then every article of food, wearing apparel, medicine, salt, leather, etc., etc., was heavily taxed, and, with the high price of wheat as named above, agricultural labourers’ wages were only 10s. per week.

About 1830 horse-power thrashing machines came in for thrashing the corn in the place of the flail. This caused the people to rise, and mobs would go about on dark nights to the farmers’ farmyards and break the machines.

At Wyton, Brown and Goodman received {81} a threatening letter, and though the machine was not broken, one night someone with a sharp instrument ripped up the flanks of three milch cows. The man was discovered, and transported for life.

At this period there were bread riots in the large towns, and people were shot down by the military. What was the remedy for this state of things? Free speech was scarcely allowed; the Government was in the hands of the aristocracy; the middle class were almost powerless; towns as small as Huntingdon, and much smaller, sent two members to Parliament, while towns like Manchester and Birmingham were not represented at all.

At last came the remedy in the shape of the Reform Bill of 1832, which infranchised the large towns and enabled the middle class to have a share with the aristocracy in the government of the country. This act of policy and justice was wrenched from the Tory party almost at the cost of a revolution. How the Lords, when the Commons sent up the Bill to them, refused to pass it, is a matter of history. It is generally understood that Lord John Russell, then the head of the Whig Government, was preparing to resort to force if the Lords had not yielded.

Mr. Goodman and my father, thinking that a revolution was impending, had fixed upon a place where to bury their money, etc.

With the exception of occasional bread riots, the country was quiet until about 1833 {82} to 1840, when some gentlemen in Manchester formed the Anti-Corn Law League, to agitate for the repeal of the Corn Laws. Richard Cobden and John Bright were two of the leading agitators. They were sent to Parliament to agitate the repeal of the Corn Laws in the House, and a powerful agitation commenced out of doors in all the principal towns of the Kingdom. A large conference was held at Manchester, at which 70 Nonconformist ministers attended as a deputation to strengthen the hands of the Repealers. The clergy of the Church of England gave no sign, their sympathies, as usual, going with the classes rather than with the suffering masses.

While this agitation was progressing, I remember the Authorities breaking up a large out-door meeting in London. I also saw the military being marched through London to the North-Western Railway Station at Euston Square, en route to put down bread riots in the large towns, and the populace shouting to the soldiers, “Surely you won’t shoot your starving fellow-countrymen in Lancashire.”

In the summer of 1843, the Anti-Corn Law League sent a deputation to the county town of Huntingdon. The meeting was held on the Common, between the town and the Gas Works, and was to have been addressed by Cobden and Bright, but the former did not come, having an attack of bronchitis. His place was filled by a gentleman named Moore, an Irish-{83}man. I must explain here that up to now these meetings were allowed by the county gentlemen to be held without the County party being represented. Therefore, the repealers had it all their own way, and upon a show of hands being demanded for the repeal of the Corn Laws, they would get an overwhelming majority. Now it was totally different in Hunts., owing to the great Liberal leader in the County, George Game Day, being a Protectionist; and, being also a good speaker, he offered to champion the County party. The consequence was, it was a real test of public opinion. You had on one side the County gentry, clergy, farmers, in fact, the whole Tory party; on the other side some labourers, shop-keepers, etc., who were not obtaining their living from the land. Wagons were placed on the ground, and the speakers on each side occupied their respective wagons. The Tories, as usual, had hired roughs, just under the speakers, to interrupt them. Mr. Moore lost his temper, through being disturbed so much. John Bright made a fine speech, though he was much interrupted. He was dressed in regular Quaker costume, and was speaking of the starving artisans in the large towns, when one of the disturbers shouted at him, “You look, old Broad-brim, as if you had a good dinner every day of your life.” The retort came sharp and quick, “Yes, my friend, I have; I am not standing here to advocate my own claims, but those of my starving countrymen.”

When Mr. George Day rose to speak, he {84} was greeted with a storm of hisses from his political friends. Not because he was about to advocate Protection, but because he did so from the Tory wagon, his friends feeling that he might have had one of the neutral wagons, as the Tories had prosecuted him only a few years before concerning some votes, and had tried to get him struck off the Rolls. When the show of hands was called for, I stood by the side of Mr. Robert Daintree, sen., of Fenton, a large farmer, and he said if he were the chairman he would not be able to say which side had the majority. Of course, the Chairman, being a Tory, ruled the Protectionists had it. On Monday morning all London was placarded with posters announcing “Great defeat of the Anti-Corn Law League in Hunts.” I remember following John Bright, with my father, along Princess Street to ask him to stop the Sunday over. He looked very fagged with his exertion, and preferred going back to London. The next day, Sunday, walking, as was customary after service at St. Ives, part of the way to Houghton with Mr. Day, he said, “I was hurt when my friends hissed me yesterday.” My father replied, “No one hissed louder than I did.”

A large meeting was held by the League in Covent Garden Theatre, at which I was present. The Rev. Dr. Croly, of the City of London School, brought down the house by saying “The last time I stood on these boards,” so and so. There were roars of laughter, because, standing on the stage, {85} the audience thought he had forgotten where he was standing; but he used the word “boards” as a joke.

Then there was also a large bazaar held in the same theatre, at which I was present with the Rev. James Harcourt. Amongst the amusements was a lottery, all prizes and no blanks, but the prizes were arranged to be such articles no one was likely to take them away, and you could, by paying half the value of the article drawn, put it back and draw again. I drew a wheelbarrow the first time, a looking glass in the second, and a pound of sago in the third.

Mr. Harcourt and myself then walked round to inspect the various stalls. While looking at a stall on our left, we made as though to go on, and then stopped. On our right, at a stall, was a very lively young Irish girl, and, seeing us hesitate, she exclaimed, “Come on, you need not be afraid of me,” and, dangling a pair of worked braces, said, “Do you want to buy a pair of the likes of these?”

This bazaar, I think, realised fifty thousand pounds.

The Protectionists held a large meeting in the Theatre to advocate their side of the question.

Somewhere about this time a General Election took place, which turned upon Protection v. Free Trade, and Sir Robert Peel was returned by a considerable majority to uphold the Corn Laws.

{86}

CHAPTER VII.

Repeal of the Corn Laws.—“String him up to the Lamp-post.”—Abolition of Church Rates.—Religious Liberty.—My Business Life.—A Fortnight’s Round.—Building the St. Ives Mill.—The Introduction of Novel Machinery.—Why the Huntingdon Mill Was Built.—The Way the Wind Blew.—Events Connected With the Building of Huntingdon Corn Exchange.—How I Became a Town Councillor and Mayor of Huntingdon.

I remember going with my father in Veasey’s Bank on a Thursday at St. Neots, when the late Mr. David Veasey was quite excited at Sir Robert Peel’s majority, and was rather taken aback when my father said he would use his majority to repeal the Corn Laws—which he afterwards did.

The final causes of the Corn Laws being repealed were first the potato famine in Ireland. Potatoes, to the Irish, being the staff of life, and the crop failing, the people died by thousands, and wheat in England went up to 120s. per quarter. Secondly, the League was becoming so powerful that the Government were compelled to either prose-{87}cute it as an illegal society, or grant the object for which it was formed. The Government wisely took the latter course. I say wisely, because events showed the wisdom of repealing the Corn Laws, for when in 1848, the year of the French Revolution and the flight of Louis Phillippe, and when nearly every crowned head in Europe had to flee, England, owing to the great grievance having being removed, remained quiet and tranquil during the Continental uprising.

After the Corn Laws were repealed, an agitation was got up by the Protectionists to restore them. Meetings were held in the Institution Hall, Huntingdon, which would also be attended by Free Trade gentlemen, and lively scenes would occasionally occur. I remember at one of the meetings, Mr. Pryme, of Wistow, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge, was speaking in favour of Free Trade, when an excitable farmer from Somersham (Mr. Ibbot Mason) kept shouting out to the audience, “String him up to the lamp-post,” “String him up to the lamp-post.” Then when Earl Fitzwilliam, who unsolicited attended the same meeting to uphold the cause of Free Trade, was speaking of the policy and the necessity of repealing the Corn Laws, because they were setting class again class, someone called out, “Why, instead of total repeal, should there not have been a fixed duty of 8s. per quarter.” “Ah, my friend,” the Earl replied, “that you ought to have accepted when it was offered you, but it is too late now.” Lord John Russell, when at the head of the {88} Whig Government, had suggested a compromise of an eight-shilling duty. This the Country Party had refused, almost with indignation.

At the Fen Office in Ely, the farmers painted on the door or wall, “Farmers, pay no more tithes and taxes”; meaning until the duties were restored. A large meeting was held in Ely Corn Exchange, when Mr. Edward Ball, M.P. for Cambs., was making a violent speech. He asked, “Of what use is a cheap loaf, if a man has no money to buy it with?” and he went on to say that the Fen labourers, since the repeal of the Corn Laws, were reduced almost to shadows. There was a group of great burly labourers near the speaker, and one of them shouted, “That is a lie.”

Church Rates used to cause very exciting contests, and were good object lessons to young Nonconformists as to what the Church would do where the Civil Authority gave it the power. A majority in vestry could either refuse or make a rate. A very strong contest took place at St. Ives about the year 1842, the Rev. Fosbrooke being Vicar. One voter was fetched home from Paris on the Church side, and several watermen voters from Bedford. The vestry meetings were held in the Parish Church, and on this occasion the Vicar made the remark that the Church was rotten at the foundations, meaning that the soil being, through frequent funerals, higher up the walls than formerly, so making the walls damp. Mr. Dennis Paul, of St. Ives, {89} caused much amusement among the Nonconformists present by saying in his speech that he quite agreed with the Vicar that the Church was rotten at the foundations, but in a different sense from what the Vicar meant. After a heavy poll, and every effort the Church party could make, the Nonconformists were victorious.

After a Church Rate Abolition Bill had been carried several times in the House of Commons, but always thrown out in the Lords, the measure at last became law. As it now stands (1896) it is remarkable that it is framed on the same lines as the town of Huntingdon had previously by mutual consent established it. Afterwards came the admittance of Nonconformists into the National Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. They were previously debarred because they were compelled to subscribe their assent to the 39 Articles, and had also to attend the College Chapel. Next came the right to bury, with service conducted by their own minister, in the Parish Churchyard (1880). So, step by step, have Nonconformists from, say, 1830 to 1896, fought and obtained a large measure of religious liberty from which they were formerly debarred.

The restoration and re-decoration of the Churches in this locality have nearly all been done since the compulsory rate was done away with, and the Church on the whole has been the greatest gainer. Quite recently the Church at Little Stukeley, between 1892 and 1896, has been restored at a cost of {90} about £1,000, a practical lesson as to what the voluntary principle can do.

As mentioned previously, I left school at 17 years of age, and went into the mill at Houghton, to learn the business of a corn miller. My hours were from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. I was called at 4 o’clock, and if not in the mill at 5 was fined the same as the workmen. (The workmen’s hours were from 5 to 7, half an hour out for breakfast, one hour for dinner, and half an hour for tea). For 2½ to 3 years I was engaged “dressing” the mill-stones, a very tedious and monotonous work, but at that time very essential for a master to learn in order not to be dependent upon the men. Part of the time I acted as foreman; also as flour-dresser and grinder. When about 21 years of age, or a little before, my father sent me to Mr. Robt. Dixon’s mill at Wicham Bishops, Essex, in order to see a change in the art of milling. Afterwards I went to a Mr. Henry Hicks’, at Chelmsford, and while there to Messrs. Marriage, of Bloomfield Mills, Chelmsford. On leaving there, being in my 22nd year, I began to accompany Mr. Joseph Goodman, my father’s partner, to market, and occasionally went alone to one or two of the least important markets. In 1844, owing to the death of Mr. Goodman, I began to take a very active part in the management of the business. My father, after going round with me to the London bakers once, began to send me alone occasionally, and very soon he and I went alternate journeys; that is, my father, and I with him, would call on the bakers, and the {91} next time I would go alone, until very soon I generally went, and my father only occasionally. It may be interesting in the future for me to record how my business-time was occupied at this period. Therefore I will describe a fortnight, all other fortnights being the same.

Monday morning by coach to London (1844—1845). On arrival, to Mark Lane. Monday evening to tea with my relative, Mr. Joseph Sterry, in the Borough. After tea to an outlying customer in the New Cut, Lambeth, then to my hotel, “The Green Dragon,” Bishopsgate. Tuesday morning: Bishopsgate, Curtain Road, Shoreditch, Hackney Road, Commercial Road, Shadwell, the Minories, then to “The Green Dragon,” about one o’clock, to dinner. After dinner over London Bridge to Tooley Street, Bermondsey, and Dock Head; then off to St. George’s Church in the Boro’; along Union Street to Blackfriar’s Road, Waterloo Road, over Waterloo Bridge, to Clare Market, Long Acre, Seven Dials, to Oxford Street, and then would get on an omnibus (my first ride during the day), and go to my hotel. Wednesday: Take an omnibus to Edgware Road, make calls and get back to Mark Lane; then sometimes go home in the afternoon by coach, reaching Huntingdon at 10 or 11 p.m., according to the state of the roads. Thursday, to St. Neots; Friday, to March and Chatteris; Saturday, to Huntingdon Market. Monday in the next week to St. Ives Mar-{92}ket, Tuesday in the mill and posting the books; Wednesday to Ramsey; Friday to Chatteris; Saturday to Huntingdon Market. So it will be seen I was kept well employed, as during this time I also looked after the manufacture of the flour in addition. The above was the routine with the exception of an occasional holiday, especially to go skating when there was ice.

Between 1849 and 1850 I was occasionally urging my father to build a mill, as I felt no security as to the tenure of the Houghton Mill, under Lady Sparrow, as, to say the least, I was in politics no less Radical than my father, and was also quite as strong a Nonconformist. His reply was, “Leave well alone; I have done well in business up to now, and sons will sometimes launch out in business and lose the father’s savings.” But though he said this, he had, with characteristic forethought, bought a site, on which the St. Ives Mill now stands. Soon after he was ejected from the farm.

In 1853 my father decided to build the mill at St. Ives. He had previously (in 1846) gone over to France to inspect the French mode of manufacture and had become acquainted with Messrs. Darblay, the large French millers, and also with Messrs. Feray, the engineers, who had erected Messrs. Darblay’s mill, and finally decided to employ Messrs. Feray to erect, or, rather, make the machinery for the St. Ives Mill, the steam engines being built by Messrs. Hall, of Dartford, Kent (who were also the {93} manufacturers of sporting gunpowder). The French mills were automatic; that is, when you shot the wheat out of the farmer’s sack into a deep chamber, at the top of the mill, it was not handled any more until it was shovelled out of the flour-chamber into the sacks.

On the old system the wheat, after passing through the cleansing machine, was delivered into sacks, then sent up by the sack tackle, and shot into a chamber over the stones; then, when ground, was delivered into a trough, then was put into sacks, sent up by the sack tackle, and shot into a bin over the flour-dressing machines. On the automatic system all this labour was saved, as described above. At this time, 1854, there was, perhaps, only one corn mill automatically working in England, and the engineer who put in the machinery had, like my father, visited Messrs. Darblay’s mill. The mill was the City Mill, Blackfriar’s Bridge, London, and the engineer was Mr. Bovil, brother to the barrister, afterwards the judge.

It was quite a new departure for an Englishman to go to another country to obtain machinery, and the only unfavourable criticism that was ever made was the main machinery which drove the mill stones was too light for the work it had to do; but to show how contrary to fact that was, the mill was built to drive 12 pair of stones, four more pair were added, making 16, and yet {94} this machinery never broke or became strained.

The building the mill became a success, mainly owing to adopting the system of dressing the flour through a slowly-revolving silk mill, instead of a wire cylinder, with six or eight fast revolving brushes inside. The flour was so superior to other millers’ flour it obtained a large demand at remunerative prices, and for several years we had a difficulty at times to supply the flour fast enough to meet the demand.

About 1862 my father and myself had a conversation about the desirability of erecting a mill at Huntingdon, in order to strengthen both the Nonconformists and the Liberal party in the County town. We should not have increased our business merely for the sake of increasing our money, and we were perfectly aware that, from a commercial point of view, London or some other large port would have been the place to build another mill, but our main object was as above stated, so the mill was built and opened in 1863, when I left St. Ives and removed to Huntingdon. A circumstance took place in connection with my hiring a house, which shows how the Tory party had been used to exercise arbitrary power in the town. I hired the house where Mr. Sweeting now lives (1896) of Mr. Charles Sweeting, who, I believe, acted on account of his niece, Miss Sweeting. We agreed for rent, etc., and Mr. Sweeting put the matter into a lawyer’s hands to be drawn up. A week or {95} so afterwards, Mr. Toller, our cashier, who had been in Huntingdon, said to me on his return, “I thought you had hired Mr. Sweeting’s house.” I said, “So I have.” Mr. Toller said, “Why, there is a fresh notice put up on the shutters to say the house is to be let.” On the following Monday I called on Mr. Sweeting at his residence in London, and only stated this new notice was put up. Mark, I said nothing more; but he understood what it meant, and exclaimed, “Mr. — does not want you to come into the town to live; but I mean you to have the house, and I shall take the drawing up of the agreement out of Mr. Blank’s hands and place it in another agent’s,” which he did.

This confirmed what Mr. Foster had said, “The Tory party in the town will not knock you down with a sledge-hammer; you are too powerful for that; but they will try to beat you by diplomacy.” He might have said trickery!

After getting into the town to reside, the first thing that occurred showed how I was to be (to use a modern term) “boycotted.” A vacancy happened in the Local Government Board, and my political friends, without consulting me, nominated me to fill the vacancy. When the Board refused to elect me of course they were within their rights, but it showed which way the wind blew.

In consequence of the above action, and being fully persuaded that if I wished to hold any public office I should have to fight {96} for it, in connection with Mr. Charles Veasey, and the Liberal party in the town generally, we decided in the following November to fight for seats in the Town Council. Mr. Veasey that year was a retiring Councillor. I, with three others, was nominated. The struggle was a severe one; the Tories, with the then Lord Sandwich at their back, put out all their strength, and the means employed were not creditable to either party. The result was, Mr. Veasey retained his seat by a very small majority, and I failed to get in by five votes.

An incident occurred which was to be regretted. Lord Sandwich walked across the Market Hill, through the crowd, to vote, when a working man knocked his billy-cock hat off. His Lordship, by the advice of his agent, took steps to summon him for assault, and the man would have been sat upon, but Mr. Henry Goodman put himself in communication with the man, saying, “It was very wrong of you to knock his Lordship’s hat off; you must apologise. If the apology is not accepted, then I will provide Counsel to defend you.” The man sent the apology; it was not accepted, and Counsel was provided for the man’s defence. Then better thoughts prevailed, for, upon reflection, the Earl’s advisers remembered he would have to appear in Court and be cross-questioned, when something not very creditable to his Lordship would come out, viz., that just before the election he had given notice to all his allotment holders to quit, {97} and placed the re-letting of them in the hands of the Conservative candidates, so the prosecution was dropped like a hot chestnut.

Prior to the events just recorded, Lord Sandwich, on the advice of his agent, in order to neutralise the effect the mill might have, and to get control of the market, built a Corn Exchange in his own hotel yard (The Fountain), and would only let it for one year at a time, retaining the right at the end of every year to refuse to renew the ticket of any one ticket-holder. We, Brown and Goodman, considered that this was aimed at us, so we decided that, as we now had a right to stand on the Hill, which might lapse if we left and went into the Corn Exchange for a year, and we might fall between two stools, not to go into the Exchange, but continue to buy on the Hill.

Over this affair a public dinner was given to Lord Sandwich and a number of farmers signed “a round robin” that they would not show us any corn on the Hill. We maintained our position, and now (1896) the Exchange for some years has ceased to be used as a Corn Market.

The year following the Municipal Contest, the late Mr. Desboro said to me one day, “There is a vacancy in the Town Council. Are they going to let you in?” I said, “Not this time.” He replied, “You had better take some friend with you to the Town Clerk.” I replied, “Will you go?” and he went, and in the interview told the Clerk {98} that if I were not allowed to go in Mr. D would vote for me, and ask his dependents to do the same. This settled the matter, and so I became a member of the Town Council.

On my having a printed book of oaths put before me, which oaths every Town Councillor was required to take, one was to the effect that I would do nothing to the injury of the Established Church. I replied that I was not required to take that, upon which the Town Clerk, who ought to have been impartial, most improperly, I think, said, “Then you intend doing something prejudicial to the Church?” I replied, “I object to take it on the ground that the law does not require me to take it, as it has been repealed.” The Town Clerk, though a lawyer, was ignorant of the fact. The next time the book was produced for someone to take the oath, that particular oath was crossed out.

In 1871 I was elected Mayor, Mr. Foster, surgeon, having previously been elected to that office; he, I think, being the first Nonconformist Mayor since Cromwell’s time. I would here remark that one piece of injustice was redressed which we had in view of getting removed when we selected Huntingdon as the place to erect the mill.

I gave the usual banquet at my residence, and, towards the close of dinner, one of the guests, Mr. Foreman, received and read a telegram to say that Mr. Thomas Baring, the Borough Member, was dead. So an {99} election came on at the commencement of my year of office. Sir John Karslake was the Conservative candidate, and Mr. Arthur Arnold, the present Chairman of the London County Council (1896), the Liberal. There had not been a serious contest for many years. Being Mayor, I was strictly neutral, of course. Mr. Arnold was defeated, but he fought a good fight, and learnt much about the local politics and ways of going-on of the Tory party.

{100}

CHAPTER VIII.

First Election Under the Ballot.—Made a Magistrate.—Other Mayoral Elections.—Mayor of St. Ives—My Retirement to Hemingford.—Amusements and Travels.—Boating.—Skating.—Skating on Whittlesey Mere.—Cycling.—Touring.

This was the first election under the ballot. The principal polling clerk, a Conservative, remarked to me when nearly through the polling, that the machinery for conducting the voting under the ballot worked much smoother than under the old system of open voting.

On the day of nomination at this election, it turned out that Arthur Arnold’s address was wrongly described in the book of voting papers. I asked Sir John Karslake if he would agree to take no advantage of the mistake afterwards, if he were defeated. He replied that he would make no such promise as he had a right to avail himself of every irregularity that had or might occur. He also said in addition he had no right to pledge his supporters, so I turned to the official and asked if there were time before the day of voting, to get the papers taken and new {101} ones printed. He replied “Yes, if they are taken by special messenger to London and the printer works day and night.” I said “Then it shall be done”, and so the new polling papers arrived in Huntingdon in time for the election, and no irregularity remained.

After Sir John was elected, Parliament was dissolved, and he came down for re-election, and was returned unopposed. In the new Parliament he was made Attorney-General, and came again for re-election, so that during my year of office, there were 3 Parliamentary, and 2 municipal elections.

At the Wool Fair Luncheon, held in the Corn Exchange, Huntingdon, the Mayor always presiding, Sir John Karslake was to propose my health as Mayor of the town (I had then gone through half my year of office). He stated among other complimentary things, that he understood I had made a good Borough Magistrate, and that it would be a graceful act if Lord Sandwich were to place me on the Commission of Peace for the County. Mr. Arnold, after leaving Huntingdon, had written to the “Daily News” to say that there was not a single Nonconformist Magistrate in the County (My father was dead) and the Mayor of Huntingdon was in every way suited to occupy the position. The next morning, the “London Standard” had an article or paragraph, saying it was all very well for Mr. Arnold to praise the Mayor of Huntingdon. It was no doubt because he had been his {102} political partisan during the election. One of my friends said I ought to reply to it as it it was an imputation that I was not impartial in conducting the public business of the town. My answer was, “I shall not take any notice of it as there is not a Tory in the town to question my impartiality.”

The next morning a letter appeared in something like this style from Mr. Arnold:—“What right had you, Mr.Editor, to say that I singled out Mr. Brown, because he was my partisan? I named him because he was not my partisan.” During my year of office, during the summer, I received a letter from the Lord Lieutenant (Lord Sandwich), placing me, or rather nominating me, as a suitable person to be placed in the Commission of Peace for the County, and so at first as regards the Mayoralty, now as regards the Magistracy, the purpose for which we built the mill was obtained.

As my year of office began to expire, the dominant party began to look for my successor. Amongst them was a grocer of the name of Arthur Ashton, an old inhabitant, and a strong Conservative, but as they had never had any Mayor below the social position of a doctor, banker, brewer or merchant, they would not entertain the idea of a small grocer being placed in the office. So they tried to make use of me, to keep Mr. Ashton out, the same way as formerly someone had been used to keep Mr. Foster out. So they waited upon me to request me to be Mayor for another year. I told them I declined to stand again, especially as it was {103} to stand in some other person’s way. After seeing me several times, and not being able to move me, they stated that they should elect me, so on the 1st. November, Ashton and Brown were proposed, and I obtained the majority of votes; upon which I announced that I declined to accept the honour. The Town Clerk informed them that I was Mayor pro tem., that they could do nothing more that day, but must adjourn to a day in the next week to elect a Mayor. When the day came, Ashton was again nominated, and as no one else was proposed, and he received a sufficient number of votes to make his election legal, he became the new Mayor. So another prejudice was done away with, and the evil of someone accepting office to exclude another person was also knocked on the head. Since then the Council has elected a Nonconformist draper, Mr. J. S. Smith, and this year (1896), they have elected him again for the second year.

I have been Mayor of Huntingdon four times, and during the Queen’s Jubilee year was elected Mayor of St. Ives, and attended in that capacity the ceremonial in Westminster Abbey, accompanied by the Mayor of Godmanchester, Mr. Chas. Veasey, and the Mayor of Huntingdon.

In the autumn of 1876 I retired from the milling business, and left Huntingdon, and went to Hemingford House, Hemingford Abbotts, to reside, but in various ways, political, religious, and social, my connec-{104}tion with Huntingdon has continued. Having at Michaelmas, 1895, received notice from the owners of Hemingford House to terminate my tenancy, I purchased “Bridge House,” Huntingdon, of Mr. Chas. Veasey, and when alterations and additions are completed am going (if still living) to remove there at Michaelmas, 1896.

I was never great at athletic sports; indeed, with the exception of cricket, they had scarcely come in. During my youth, of course, living in the country, I learnt to ride on horseback, and did much of my local business as a miller in that way. But inheriting from my mother a timid disposition, I was always a nervous rider, always seeing danger a little before there was any, instead of, as with some persons, seeing danger when it was too late. But this temperament prevented me from becoming what would be called a bold rider, but it must not be supposed from the foregoing remarks that I did not enjoy or practise horse-exercise, as I rode with my companions much for amusement, and on a fortnightly business journey I used to ride 45 miles in the day. In swimming and bathing, my natural timidity again displayed itself, but it did not prevent my ultimately becoming a good swimmer, and with my various companions I used to disport myself in the mill-pond at Houghton, throwing ourselves into the stream of the water-wheel, sometimes face upwards, at other times face downwards. On one occasion my uncle, Mr. Wm. Richardson, of Sunderland, was in the mill office when the foreman said to him, “Master Bateman seems in his natural element disporting himself like a great porpoise.” In connection with swimming, I will record what imagination will do. Before ever going out of my depth, I had swam on one occasion nearly half-a-mile without stopping, so thinking after that exploit I might safely venture into deep water, I walked into the river on a shallow, having then a deep hole between me and the bank. Literally three or four strokes would have taken me across it, but knowing I was out of my depth, my courage forsook me, and down I went. When I came to the surface, of course, I swam out.

My father took considerable persuasion to buy us a boat, partly, perhaps, because of the expense, but much more, I think, of the danger—not to myself—but because he said that if we had a boat, his partner’s daughters would be sure to use it, and some calamity might befal them. I know on one occasion when he was about taking them on the water, he said to Mrs. Goodman, “I will take all the care possible of them, but if they tumble in, I am not going in after them at the risk of my own life.” (I am sure he would have done so in spite of his protestations). My father never did anything by halves. He bought two boats, and built a first-class boat-house at a total cost of one hundred pounds. The first boat, called a skiff, was built at Blackwall, and came on the deck of a ship to King’s Lynn, and then up the river in a barge. It still exists (I saw it yesterday, April 4, 1896), and it is fully {106} 55 years old. The other was a longer boat, and was either rowed with two pairs of sculls or a pair of long oars. My friend, Mr. Chas. Tebbutt, and self, were driven over to Cambridge, where it was purchased, early one morning, leaving Houghton about 4 o’clock and taking a boatman named Lines with us to steer and pilot us, as we did not know the route. We rowed the boat from Cambridge to Houghton in the day; we went down the Cam nearly to Ely, then through the Old West River to Earith. It was a hot day; the West River was full of weeds, we had a head wind, and I think we came to the conclusion it was the hardest day’s work we had ever done. Having had some bad public-house beer en route, that, combined with the heat, gave us both a bad headache. However, we had some tea at Earith, and afterwards bathed and completed our voyage in good trim, arriving at Houghton about 9 p.m. The boats were a great source of amusement, and, no doubt, tended to increase our health and strength. The boat-house still remains (1896), and has served, and is serving, the generation immediately after my brother and myself.

In skating I especially excelled, living near meadows constantly liable to be flooded, and also only about seven miles from the great Washes and still Fen rivers. My friend, C. T. Tebbutt, made many excursions which I will refer to in due course. I don’t know the exact age I began to learn to skate, but I should think at about 7. If it is not an Irish “Bull,” our skating ground {107} was where the low part of the paddock in connection with the “Cedars” now is, and also part of the garden belonging to the late Mr. Frederick James’ residence, both of which were disused gravel pits. We also used to skate on the piece of water called “Banks End” on the way to Hartford, and on the “Ashby’s Meadows,” nearer Hartford, now owned by myself. When the floods were high enough to run over the river bank between Wyton and Bank’s End, we could skate on those meadows, going over the ditches and through the hedges all the way from Wyton to Bank’s End. This was the case as recently as 1880, and last year, 1895, we could have good skating on these meadows, but not right through from one end to the other. Then, if the frost continued, the river would bear on “Houghton Wale,” and in severe long-continued frosts, could skate from St. Ives to Huntingdon. One severe winter I went up to Huntingdon one afternoon, not all the way by the river, but up the brook opposite “Ashby’s Meadow.” On coming back about 4 o’clock, crawling under the bridge we heard cries of distress from someone where we knew there was a large hole, which had been open all through the three months’ frost. I exclaimed to my friend, “There is someone in that hole.” We skated to the place as quickly as possible, and on arriving there found Thos. Watts, the grinder in Houghton Mill, in the hole, his legs drawn by the stream under the ice, and he holding the tips of his fingers only to the edge of the ice, and our motion caused the water to {108} splash into his mouth. We had to take our straps out of our skates, strap them together, fasten a stick to one end of the strap, and throw it to him. This took some time, as our straps were frozen in the holes of our skate-boards. Watts in the meantime kept saying, “Make haste, I cannot hold out much longer.” We soon rescued him, and he told us he had seen the last persons who were skating backwards and forwards go home for the night, he not having succeeded in making them hear his cries for help, and had quite given himself up for lost up to the time we appeared on the scene. He is alive now; lives at the top of Houghton Hill, and works the windmill situated between Hemingford Grey and Victoria Terrace (1896).

But the Great Skating expeditions were when we could get on to the Fen Rivers, and then, in a severe frost, we could skate to Welney, Chatteris, March, Wisbech, etc. Once I skated with C. P. Tebbutt and Neville Goodman to Whittlesey Mere. The Mere was belted with reed-beds and inlets or outlets were all alike, so that when wishing to return home it was difficult to select the right outlet.

On one occasion, being with my usual companion and friend (C. P. T.) on an expedition to Mepal, he left the side of the river, launching out into the middle, and soon skating off two nights’ frost on to one night’s, be went in all over, but fortunately escaped with a thorough wetting only. This was not the only occasion my friend, being very venturesome, found a watery resting-{109}place. One of the great charms of these expeditions was we ran some slight risk, and also the meeting of so many friends and acquaintances. When the Fen rivers did not bear, owing to their being in flood, we used to utilise the washes, which made splendid places for the sport of skating, and many an expedition might be recorded, sometimes a harmless adventure, we often getting an immersion in these shallow waters because in our passion for skating we would venture on the ice before it was safe. In succeeding seasons we would recount to each other over the evening fire our previous adventures and misadventures. When I became too old to skate, I have several times ridden my tandem tricycle from the Black Bridge, Hemingford, to St. Ives Staunch, and then back to Huntingdon. But of course this would only be in exceptionally severe winters. I rode my tricycle on the river the winter of 1894–5. This was the winter Mr. Fraser was drowned.

During my cycle touring I rode on a single machine (Singer’s, with head driving-wheel and up and down pedals) to Nottingham, about 76 miles, in two days. On another occasion I rode to Cromer, home via Norwich, Thetford, Newmarket, and Cambridge, on a single tricycle called “The Devon”; also rode on a single tricycle from London to Hastings in two days, machine called a “Rucker.” I rode also to Wickham Bishops, Essex, on a single; on a sociable with Rev. Thos. Great to Bristol, and on a sociable with the above gentleman to the {110} Isle of Wight and home, a round of 300 miles, riding every hill we came to en route and most on the Island; every morning rode up Union Street, Rhyde; also rode to Newport, Yarmouth, on to Fresh Water, taking every hill without dismounting. Several times rode to New Southgate on a single machine, 50 miles, in one day. Rode also on a tandem to Buxton, on to Chester, Birkenhead, and Liverpool, with Woods. Rode on a double machine with Woods to Coventry in one day; the way we went was 75 miles. I was 60 years of age when I rode to Coventry.

On one occasion, accompanied by my wife, I rode to Birmingham, paying a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Keep, taking 3 days to return; distance about 90 miles.

Since beginning to ride to now (1896) I have ridden 20,050 miles. I suppose I commenced riding about the year 1879, and most of the above distances were ridden between the years 1879 and 1893, as the gout has prevented me riding much the last three years. It must be remembered when above riding was done there were no pneumatic tyres, and the machines were much heavier than now.

As previously recorded, my first tour was to Scotland when 17 years of age. With the exception of an excursion to the seaside I went nowhere until, I think, in the autumn of 1848 my father took me to Paris, in company with C. P. Tebbutt. It was just after the Revolution, when the King, Louis Phillippe, fled to this country. We went to {111} see Messrs. Darblay’s mills at Corbeil, and lunched at their Paris house with Mr. Darblay, senr., Mr. Paul Darblay, his son, and Mr. Beranger, his son-in-law. The Darblay family in politics were Legitimists. During lunch someone said something about the Republic. The old gentleman remarked something in French. Misunderstanding what he had said, my father asked the son, who replied in English, “My father does say the Devil take the Republic!” Being put into English in very measured delivery, it sounded very amusing.

Large numbers of the National Guard were under canvas in the Tuilleries Gardens, and about seven in the evening a drum was beaten for all civilians to leave, and the military pushed us about a little because we made for an exit nearest our hotel and not the nearest one to where we were standing. On our return home, on landing on the pier at Dover there were a number of French soldiers who had crossed the Channel for a trip, and seeing some of their comrades on the steamer, they greeted them with the cry, “Vive la Republique.”

My next excursion was on my marriage in 1848, to the English Lakes and Scotland.

The next journey to the Continent was in the summer of 1854. The party consisted of Neville Goodman, Joseph and Susan Goodman (all since dead), and myself. We crossed to Ostend, then on to Cologne, up the Rhyne by steamer to Mayence, then by rail to Fribaug in the Breslau, where the next day we hired a carriage and drove {112} through the Black Forest to Schaffhausen to the Rhine Falls. The next day by coach to Zurich, then by steamboat to Coire, where we took the diligence to cross the Splugen Pass into Italy. We lunched at the village of Splugen, where there was a Russian gentleman, whom we made very angry by telling him that we should beat Russia (the Crimean War was then on). We stayed the night at Cheavenna, and the next day steamed along Lake Como to the town of the same name; then took an omnibus to the Camerlata railway station for Milan. Joseph Goodman had an ordinary butterfly net on a long stick, the end of which he put on the floor of the omnibus, the net itself flying in the wind. An Austrian Government official requested him to lower it, as it might be taken as a revolutionary signal by the populace. We thought how weak the Government must be to be so easily alarmed. It must be remembered that Lombardy then was under, to them (the Italians), the detested rule of Austria.

{113}

CHAPTER IX.

Jaunts Abroad.—Other Travels.—At the Pyramids.—Up the Nile.—Fingers Made Before Forks!—Incidents in Palestine.—The Dead Sea.—Cæsarea Phillippi.

On a steam boat on the Lake of Como was an Austrian gentleman in plain clothes, accompanied by his daughter, a very beautiful woman. Two Scotch officers said to us, “You see that man with his daughter; he’s a Government spy; he will have his eye on us English all the time we are in Milan”; and, sure enough, the next day he passed our hotel several times. When we entered the train at Camerlata, a military official took our passports from us, and gave us a printed paper in place of them on which was printed in several languages, “You must call at the police station within 24 hours after your arrival in Milan, or you will be liable to a fine or imprisonment.” Every small village we passed through we were compelled to show our passports; the surveillance was most annoying. Then the thorough overhauling of one’s luggage at the Customs House was no mere form, but a thorough searching, to be sure travellers had no political pamphlets.

{114} We spent the Sunday in Milan, and it was the hottest day I ever experienced in my life. On our return home a returned missionary from Jamaica told us that the heat that Sunday in England was equal to the average heat in Jamaica.

We crossed into Switzerland by the St. Gothard Pass in a hired carriage, the road the first day skirting the Lake of Lugano. My companions could not agree about the colour of the water, one saying it was one colour, another the other. It is said, “Onlookers see the most,” and it certainly was so in this case. I settled the latter for them by saying “It has been all the colours in dispute in turn, according to the surroundings on the bank changing—according to whether they were trees or stone.”

From Lugano we went to the Bellinzona, then to Airolo, where Neville, sometime before having found a large green lizard, and not knowing what to do with it, deposited it before we left the hotel in an urn standing on the sideboard. An American party having arrived just as we were leaving, we wondered how they would enjoy their tea flavoured with lizard!

We crossed the St. Gothard. Going from Airolo to the summit we saw a wagon laden with heavy goods. The drag-chain having broken, the weight behind the horses had pushed two of them into the roaring torrent, and they, with the harness, were being churned into mincemeat. The telegraph wires were also knocked down. From the {115} Furea we went to Lucerne, at which place I parted with my companions, I going by diligence to Berne (there were no railroads in Switzerland for more than ten miles in the whole country), from Berne to Vevey, on to Martigny, still by diligence over the Tete Noir, on horse to Chamounix, then by diligence to Geneva, Geneva to Dijon, and then by rail to Paris. All through the Jura the cholera was raging. One village was pointed out to us where most of the people had died.

On arriving in Paris I was joined by my wife, father, Mr. George Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Bates, of Godmanchester, and their two daughters. We saw the Emperor’s fete day, went to the mill-stone quarry town, etc., and then returned home.

My next journey was, I think, to Switzerland, in 1856, accompanied by my wife, and Miss Martha Ekins, afterwards Mrs. Arthur Ruston.

I have been to Switzerland about fourteen times in all, sometimes accompanied by the Rev. Thomas Lloyd, Congregational minister of St. Ives, once with my wife, Rev. John Hart, and the Rev. James Harcourt.

Another expedition was to Munich, Salsburgh, Ischyll, Gmunden, Linz, by the Danube to Vienna; then on to Buda-Pesth, the object of this journey being to inspect the large corn mills at this latter place.

I also visited Switzerland, Venice, etc., with Mrs. George Brown and her brother, {116} Mr. Walter Dixon, on another occasion (in 1865).

I also several times have visited South Italy, Rome, Naples, and Florence, once with my wife, Mrs. Crichton, and the late Rev. J. Steadman Davis, who was then my minister at Trinity Congregational Church, Huntingdon (in 1880).

My greatest tour was to Egypt and the Holy Land in 1875 and 1876, accompanied by my wife, Mr. Neville Goodman, and Mrs. George Brown. This journey occupied about six months.

We went to Brindisi, leaving that place at about 5 o’clock on a Monday morning, arriving at Alexandria at noon on Thursday. We went to see Pompey’s Pillar and the Needle, now on the Thames Embankment, but then (1876) lying in a dead ditch just outside the city.

From Alexandria by rail to Cairo, we were amused to see the flat-roofed houses, various new sorts of birds to us, and camels and beasts of burden. In one field we saw an ass and an ox yoked together ploughing, breaking the command given to the Jews in mercy to the weaker animal that they should not be so unequally yoked. We caught the first view of the Pyramids on our right hand before arriving at Cairo, and afterwards visited them; engaged a “Dahabeeah” for our Nile expedition of fully three months. Before leaving Cairo engaged a dragoman, by name “Ali Hassan,” a fine, tall, stout, hand-{117}some man, dressed in gay-coloured clothes. He was also very good-natured, but was naturally a timid man. Ali had been married three times, but had divorced his first two wives, the one because she quarrelled with his father, and the other because “he did not like the shape of her nose!” A man, unless he is a relative as near as a first cousin, never sees a woman’s face before he is married, so he did not know what his wife’s nose was like until after marriage. A man can divorce his wife when he likes by simply giving her a paper. He is then bound to find her three months’ sustenance, after which he is done with her entirely. I said to Ali Hassan “Should you know your first wife if you saw her in the street?” (veiled, remember). He replied, if walking behind her, he should know her among a thousand women. His third wife was a young girl about 14 years of age. I said, “You will divorce her some day.” He said, “Never; she is so pretty, and I love her so.” After leaving Cairo, we made the first 24 hours about 60 miles; then we were delayed by contrary winds at a place called Benisooef for five days. The neighbourhood of Renisooef was so like our Fens that I said if the palm trees were cut down, and anyone was taken there blindfolded, and the covering removed from their eyes, and they were asked where they were, they would say, “In the English Fens.” While there one night, a man on a trading Dahabeeah was killed while defending his boat and goods from the attack of a robber. From the above place {118} we went to Assiout, and took donkeys to see some tombs on the side of the town, the furthest off the river. It was an amusing ride; the stirrups, where the feet went in, were in the shape of ash pans, and the stirrup leathers were not a fixture, as with us, on each side of the saddle, but worked through the saddle, so that if you pressed on one side more than the other your leg went on that side. Coming back to the town, my donkey fell, and a man, being on each side of the donkey, lifted him and me up, as though we were one animal. In this town we saw about twelve prisoners being taken off to the Court to be tried. They were all chained together by the ankle, also with chains round their wrists; it was a pitiable sight. We stopped at some towns where there were public ovens to have the crew’s bread baked. After being baked, it was placed on the deck of our boat, and dried in the hot sun.

We stayed at Luxor, and while there visited the ruins at Thebes; also the tombs of the Kings; then to Karnack to inspect the ruins of the great temples there. We had our Consul, an Arab gentleman, to dinner; then we all went to see the howling Dervishes, and, when the performance began, were surprised to see our dragoman, Ali Hassan, was one of them. I said, “Why, Ali, you do not howl or bend your body as much as the others.” He only laughed, and appeared to think the affair a good joke. From Luxor we went to Assouan, and from there ascended the first Cataract, visited the {119} island of Philœ and its temples, then proceeded to the second Cataract, inspecting the great temple of Aboo Simbel on the way. Then we began to descend the stream, and, finally, reached Cairo in safety.

The next year a son of Mr. Frean, of the firm of Peak, Frean and Co., biscuit makers, went up the Nile in the same Dahabeeah as we had, viz., “The Rip-Van-Winkle,” and when he had got safely back to Cairo, and had, fortunately, removed all his belongings, it sunk at its moorings the same night. We knew it was an old one, but did not know it was so unseaworthy. From Cairo we went to Ismaila by rail, then took the little toy mail steamer to Port Said by the Suez Canal, slept at that place, and at four o’clock in the afternoon went in a Russian steamer to Jaffa, the ancient Joppa. We rode on horseback to Jerusalem, visited Bethlehem, Jericho, and the Dead Sea, then passed through the country to Bethel, Shiloh, Sheckem, Nain, Shunem, Nazareth, Tiberias, Sea of Galilee, the site of Capurnaum, Safed, Cæsarea Phillippi, Hashbeya, Rasheia, and so on to Damascus. Then to Baalbek and over the Lebanon to Beyrout; took steamer to Smyrna, train to Ephesus, afterwards to Athens, Constantinople, over the Black Sea to Varna, then partly by the Danube, partly by rail to Vienna, then to Paris, and so home.

While in Egypt we went one evening to dinner with a Sheik, a friend of our dragoman. He had sent a horse for me, and don-{120}keys for the others of the party. On arriving at his residence we were received with a salute of guns. The house looked like a good English outhouse. We went up a considerable number of steps into a high balcony, then into the dining room. There were no chairs, but a divan ran right round the room, and a circular table, about one foot high, was in the centre. Before dinner an attendant came with an ewer in one hand and a basin in the other. He had a belt round his waist, in which was a towel. We held our hands over the basin, and he poured the water from the ewer over them, dried our hands with the towel (“Except they wash oft they eat not”). The company consisted of our host, Neville Goodman, Susanna and Bateman Brown, the Mudir or Governor of the District, and a local Judge. We all sat or squatted round the circular table. The first course was a bowl of soup placed in the middle of the table, from which, with a spoon, each guest helped himself direct from the bowl into his mouth; second course, mutton chops, in centre of table, swimming in gravy. Our host took them one after the other by the bone and handed one in turn to each guest; third course, a large roast turkey. Our host had no carving knife and fork, but in place of those utensils pulled off joint after joint with his hands and passed them to his guests. Then he dug his fingers into the breast of the bird, detached a large piece of flesh, and gave it to me. This mode of carving was dexterously done; at the same time, it did not have the effect of {121} stimulating my appetite, but, on the contrary, rather disgusted me. Our host, noticing that I did not eat much, guessed the reason, and said, pointing to my wife, that she was a whole Arab; then, pointing with his mutilated forefinger (or trigger finger) to Neville Goodman, he said he was a half-Arab; and, pointing to me, he said I was no Arab at all.

To understand what the mutilated forefinger means, I must explain that the natives, to prevent being pressed into the military service of the Khedive, would cut off the first joint of the forefinger, which is used for pulling the trigger of a gun. It is said that in Ibrahim Pasha’s time they would actually put out one of their eyes to escape service. But he was level with them by forming a “one-eyed” regiment! After the above dinner, our host, for our amusement, provided a number of dancing girls to perform.

We returned across the open fields to our Dahabeeah by torchlight.

Mrs. G. W. Brown did not accompany us to the dinner, as she was tired out with the day’s excursion, as she had had a long day in visiting the tombs of the Kings. Indeed, when our dragoman announced this excursion to us on our return from our day’s work, we all felt sorry it had been planned for us. But, nevertheless, we should have been sorry to have missed the experience of what an Arab dinner party was like.

{122} Walking along a street in Jerusalem one day, we came upon a small corn market. When we appeared upon the scene, a woman was squatting on the ground with a bag tied around her neck, buying a measure of corn. A man was measuring it out to her as follows:—There was a heap of corn on the ground, from which he filled the measure with his hands. When it was half-full he took it up and shook it to make it settle. Then he added more corn to the measure, after which he knocked it with his knuckles. He not only filled the measure full, but filled it up until it formed a cone. Then he took a double handful of corn and poured it on to the cone. Some adhered, but the greater part fell to the ground; then he poured the measure of corn into the bag hanging on the woman’s bosom.

Of course, this reminded us of our Saviour’s words in the Sermon on the Mount, “Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, shall men give unto your bosoms,” though we never knew before that these words were descriptive of the manner of measuring corn in Palestine. In England the seller is not only in his own interest careful not to shake the bushel while measuring, but also, instead of piling it up, he strikes the corn off level with the top of the bushel with a straight-edged piece of wood or a roller, and that is not only a legal, but an honest, measure as between buyer and seller.

It is quite true what Murray’s Guide says: {123} “That the water is so buoyant you cannot sink in it.” Neville Goodman and I bathed in it. Not only could we not sink, but it was so buoyant that when we tried to swim we struck with our legs and hands in the air instead of the water. Neville afterwards swam across the Jordan.

Passing through Palestine, on getting to the backbone of a mountain, and looking before us, I said to Neville, “How much richer the land looks before us than that behind us.” He said, “Of course it is; that before us is the country of Ephraim.”

While at Jacob’s Well it came on a sudden thunderstorm. The hailstones were so large they hurt my knuckles almost as much as if someone had struck them with a stick, and in ten minutes a lowlying road we had crossed was a raging torrent. A poor native woman was in great distress because she had lost her child, and she was afraid it had been carried away by the torrent. The next day, as we were staying at Shechem, we went to enquire, and, fortunately, the woman had found her child.

A young English lady, who was accompanied by her brother, was ascending from the plain of Esdraelon into the mountains on which Nazareth is situated, and was pounced upon by some Bedouins, who robbed her of her money, watch, and jewellery, and afterwards her outer garments, her brother having gone on a little in advance of her, and so left her unprotected. A day or so afterwards, when we were encamped at Tiberias, {124} our Vice-Consul from Jerusalem had arrived there to examine 10 or 20 Arabs who had been taken into custody. The Consul was a Turk, and I am afraid, from an Englishman’s point of view, I gave him some very unconstitutional advice, “Hang them tonight, and try them to-morrow morning!” A six months’ residence amongst an inferior race certainly has a bad influence upon one as regards right and justice. We never heard whether the prisoners had the robbery brought home to them.

On arriving at the mid-day luncheon place, we found it in the possession of a company of armed civilians. When we sat down they took our water jar and helped themselves. Then they asked for some coffee, which we thought it policy to give them. They were out on an expedition to discover a murderer, the nearest of kin to the murdered person being amongst them.

On entering Cæsarea a murdered man was just being brought from the mountains into the village. His murderer had just become of age, and the dead man having killed the living man’s father 20 years previously, the son had discovered his father’s murderer and had just killed him, though he was a perfect stranger to him. So that custom of the nearest of kin avenging the murder of a relative has descended to the present time.

We called with the dragoman on the Sheik to ask for a guard of two or four soldiers for the night, as was usual, the Sheik being responsible for our luggage, etc., at {125} night. We were shown into a small room. He was not in, but presently arrived. It was his hour of prayer, so he took no more notice of us than if we had not been in the room. His attendant washed his hands, as previously described at a dinner in Egypt. Then the Sheik did his praying, and when it was finished appeared as if he had seen us for the first time, and enquired of our dragoman what we wanted. Then he asked if the Great Powers were going to partition Turkey. On our replying we thought not, the next question was, “Is England going to annex the country?” We said, “No”; then we asked why he put these questions. He replied because he had received instructions to press every able-bodied man into the Army. This was the year immediately preceding the war between Turkey and Russia. As we were afterwards going up the Danube, we saw fifty thousand Turkish soldiers under canvas (Spring of 1876).

When we came away Ali Hassan said, “I think that old Sheik is what you call in England a great swell.” I asked why, and he replied, “He neither shook hands nor gave you any coffee.”

One of the nights while we were encamped at Cæsarea our tent was broken into, but we awoke, so nothing was stolen. The thieves’ intention no doubt was to carry off our luggage.

{126}

CHAPTER X.

Abolition of Slavery.—Warm Times for Temperance Advocates.—Drinking Habits.—Inoculation and Vaccination.—How St. John’s Church was Built.—A Bit of an Authoress.—Appointment of the Roman Catholic Bishops.–A Jesuit Spy.—Lord John.—Never get in a Passion!—A Surprise. 100 Miles a Day.—An Amusing Incident.—“Obstinate as a Brown”!—A Skating Remembrance.—A Ministerial Incident.

Meetings for the abolition of slavery were held in the various towns of this county, the deputation making my father’s house their headquarters. Mr. John Scoble was the secretary, and on one occasion Mr. Geo. Thompson came as a deputation. The only time I saw Mr. Matthew Tebbutt (Mr. Chas. Tebbutt’s father) was when my father sent me to Bluntisham to take a note to him about an anti-slavery meeting to be held in the neighbourhood. The St. Ives people were great supporters of the movement, and it was said that any lecturer speaking an any subject at a meeting could always elicit cheers from his audience if he referred to the abolition of slavery.

{127} On one occasion Mr. Scoble was accompanied by a Mr. and Mrs. Stanton from America, they being in England to spend their honeymoon, and he acting as a deputation from the Society. When the party had all gone to a meeting at St. Ives one night, Mrs. Stanton and I were left at home. On the servant coming into the room with the tea things, and giving Mrs. Stanton the teapot and tea caddy, she said, “You must make tea; I do not know how to do it.” (She was one of the Woman’s Rights women!) Mr. Scoble did not like her, and I remember at family worship one night he prayed for her (or at her). They had been having a sharp controversial discussion just before prayer; the ladies present, Mrs. Joseph Goodman being one, thought Mr. Scoble was taking an unfair advantage over her to thus resume the discussion in his prayer. Mr. Scoble thought her religiously unorthodox.

Slavery was ultimately abolished, this country paying the planters 20 million pounds compensation.

The first lecturer on the Temperance Question who came into this neighbourhood was Jabez Inwards. He spoke in the Huntingdon Theatre, where St. John’s Church now stands, and so unpopular was the subject then that the audience peppered him with peas, shot from pea-shooters, and in various other ways interrupted him. After Mr. Inwards came Mr. Mason, who held good meetings in the neighbourhood, and it was in connection with his meetings that Mr. {128} Longland Ekins and his family became abstainers.

Mr. Harcourt used to get up meetings at Houghton feast. Sometimes more than one thousand people would sit down to tea, my wife taking a very active part in providing the tea with Mr. Harcourt. In fact the two managed the whole affair. The lecturers would be Thos. Whittaker, Paxton Hoad, and later, John B. Gough, from America.

A test as to a man being able to do heavy work without stimulants may now be recorded. A workman in Houghton who had been in the habit of drinking to excess became an abstainer, and as the hay and mowing time was just coming on, my father said to him, “The three other men with whom you will mow will say either that you are not doing your share of the work—(He replied “They shall not have cause to say that”)—or at the end of the season that the work without beer is killing you. I will give you a beefsteak every day, and be sure and be weighed both before you begin the mowing and when you leave off at the end of the season, both the hay and corn harvest.” The weighing machine showed that he had lost nothing in weight. His pals, however, not being able to say he had shirked the work, did say how bad he looked and that he was wasting away. He then stated, “I have not lost an ounce, but you know you have lost many pounds.” The foregoing was the result of “Beer v. Beef.” Not only was {129} this a good test, but the whole experiment was characteristic of my father. He afterwards would give his men, when they had an extra hard day’s work to do, beef-steak pies, going to them and saying, “You look very bad; you want one of my teetotal pills,” as he called the pies.

The temperance question, in addition to the above-mentioned educated speakers, produced working-men advocates who had been victims of the drink. There were two especially from Wisbech, great brawny navvies, who said as drinkers they had been guilty of every conceivable crime but murder, and nearly that. These men speaking to their fellows, and with considerable power, had a great effect, especially on the question of being able to do their work without beer, because it must be remembered that in the early days of teetotalism it was quite an open question as to whether men could do hard work without beer.

The anti-abstainers put out a cartoon showing what had befallen a teetotaler. On being dissected after death, his stomach was found to contain a large number of snow balls, which were said to have been the cause of his death.

Lecturing on temperance in the early days was sometimes very hazardous. Mr. Thos. Whittaker, on one occasion speaking at Bishop Stortford (the seat of the manufacture of malt), was followed by an infuriated rabble to his host’s house, into which he just managed to escape, they demanding that he {130} should be given up and declaring they would break into the house. If they had got at him, his life would have been sacrificed. This now (in 1896) seems almost incredible.

The drinking habits of the upper and middle classes were very bad. It was no uncommon thing at a dinner party for the guests to drink until they fell under the table, and it is recorded on one occasion (it being summer) a servant carried the party out and laid them on the lawn to get sober. A party at the market table at the Unicorn Inn, St. Ives, after dinner moved the table to one end of the room, chalked a ring on the floor, and had a game at marbles. On another occasion one athletic farmer jumped over the dinner table. These were respectable farmers of middle age. This was about the year 1840.

Once when I was there, say about 1845, there was a well-known farmer there named Jack Martin, who used to have strange sayings. Referring to someone who looked serious, he said he had “a face as long as his grandmother’s tombstone.” This Jack Martin, who had a pair of very large, black whiskers, was one Saturday at Huntingdon Market, and, having had too much wine, his companions persuaded him to sell them one of his whiskers for 2s. 6d. So they took him to the barber’s to have it shaved off. Of course the next day, when he was sober, and looked at himself in the glass and saw what an object he was, he had to shave its companion off.

{131} Such was the state of things at that time in the early Forties. Everyone must see there is a great improvement now compared with then.

Once at the dinner table at the Unicorn, a commercial gentleman, a stranger to the company present, addressing himself to my father, said, “I shall be happy to drink a glass of wine with you.” My father replied, “I do not take wine.” Then he tried me, receiving the same answer, then Mr. Tebbutt, and then some one else. At last the Chairman relieved him of the difficulty by saying, “I shall be happy to drink with you.” The commercial thought he had fallen in strange company.

Before vaccination became general, inoculation was much practised as a mitigation of the severity of small-pox. I was taken when about eight years of age by the late Dr. Ward, of Huntingdon, to a cottage in Houghton, where a brother and sister of about my own age were lying in bed with the small-pox, and was inoculated from them in the arm. In due course my arm rose; in fact I had a very mild attack of the disease, without being very ill, although as a precaution I was kept to my bedroom. I should say, before this inoculation my father made sure that the previous vaccination had been effectually done. Much objection is now taken by many persons to vaccination, because it may give a patient some other cutaneous disease. My feeling on the matter is that with proper care the risk is very {132} small. In my own case I have been re-vaccinated many times without coming to any harm. People of the present day do not realise what a terrible plague small-pox was prior to vaccination. I remember being at St. Ives one Sunday when a boy, the housekeeper at the Unicorn telling us that there were about ten persons going to be buried that night, and this, remember, in a town of only about four thousand inhabitants. In the streets of London, I suppose, about one person in every four you met would be pitted.

While we were being taught at home, my brother G. W. Brown fell ill; the doctor said it was intermittent fever. He lay on the sofa a day or two in the living room in constant contact with all of us. One day the housemaid said to my mother, “Master George has the small-pox.” My mother replied, “What makes you think so? He is not pitted.” “I smelt the odour of the disease, and, therefore, examined him carefully and found one small-pox mark on his body.” The doctor had to admit it was small-pox. None of us boys were told what it was; we went constantly into his bedroom, and, after a time, C. P. Tebbutt went home because he was a little unwell, and the doctor who attended him treated him for a mild attack of scarlatina. No one else in the house at my father’s took the disease, and, as stated above, G. W. Brown and C. P. Tebbutt had it so mildly that the nature of the complaint was scarcely to be recog-{133}nised. Of course, all in the house at the time, domestics and boys, had been vaccinated in their childhood.

It is recorded further back that Lady Olivia Sparrow ejected my father from the farm he occupied under her. At about the same time, she not liking the preaching of the Rector at All Saints’ Church, Huntingdon, purchased the theatre and built what is now called St. John’s Church. She put a Dissenting Minister as the pastor, because no clergyman would occupy it, as she refused to have it consecrated, so the Bishop could not, or would not, perform the ceremony unless she made it over to the Church, and she refusing to part with the ownership, it remained, I think, for her life, practically a Nonconforming place of worship. The reason she was afraid to give up the ownership was she was afraid that a High Church minister might get appointed.

During the time it was in her possession as described, she would not allow a Church to be formed or the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to be administered. The consequence was the flock with the minister retired, and held services in the public Institution, my father either paying part or the whole of the rent of the room. The congregation ultimately dispersed, and became absorbed as members of the Union Chapel.

This minister of Lady Sparrow’s had been formerly a member of the Society of Friends, and, unlike the generality of his co-religionists, he was a very innocent sort of man. {134} Having got into some small pecuniary sort of difficulty, her ladyship asked my father to settle the matter with the creditor. So he called upon the minister to learn particulars, and he told my father he had been served with a writ. My father naturally asked to see it, when he said he had burnt it. He thought that was the easiest way of getting rid of it, and appeared surprised when told that would not conclude the matter.

The father of Lord Herschel was Home Missionary to Lady Olivia Sparrow, and lived at the ornate cottage in Brampton, afterwards occupied by an auctioneer. I have, with my father, taken tea at Mr. Herschel’s and frequently saw him. The last time was when, being in Paris with my father, Mr. Herschel was passing through on his way to Jerusalem, as he said, to visit his poor brethren there. In personal appearance he was very dark with a regular Jewish countenance, and his wife was a tall, light-complexioned lady. I do not know if she was of Jewish extraction or not; she was very lady-like in appearance, and I should judge of a very amiable disposition. She was a bit of an authoress; living at the commencement of the Queen’s reign, she composed an ode. The first few lines I remember only ran as under:

“Victoria, Victoria, we hail thy gentle rule,
The friend and the patroness of every British school.”

Mr. Herschel, like my father, fell into disgrace with Lady Sparrow, and had to {135} leave. He became a Congregational minister, and built, or caused to be built, a Congregational Church at Paddington, where, I think, he continued to minister until his death.

For this to be a faithful record, I must mention a very peculiar, and, at the same time, very un-Christian, trait in Lady Sparrow’s character. If she parted with a dependent or agent on unfriendly terms, and they became worsted in consequence, she never showed signs of having forgiven them. If, on the contrary, they rose into a higher worldly position afterwards, she became friendly with them. Mr. Herschell and my father were illustrations of this defect in her character. The Rev. Burke, a blind gentleman, was chaplain to Lady Sparrow. He is still living, and is now (1896) Chaplain of the Huntingdon Union Workhouse.

Lady Sparrow was an illustration of the evils of lavish and indiscriminate giving. She by this means both pauperised and made hypocrites of the inhabitants of Brampton. It is stated that when some cottager saw her pass the window, she would get a Bible out and would be reading it when Lady Sparrow came to the door. I remember also that a former Rector of Hemingford Abbots, the Rev. Mr. Obins, committed the same error (he was the Rev. Selwyn’s immediate predecessor). By indiscriminate alms-giving, he made Hemingford one of the worst villages in the neighbourhood. My father knew him well, as also did I. He had a curate a very {136} popular preacher, whom, when my father first left the Society of Friends, he often used to go and hear. His name was Keyle, and he published a volume of sermons which I now have.

To return to Mr. Obins. He resigned his living in disgust, and some years afterwards was returning from Huntingdon to London, after a visit to Lady Sparrow, when my father, on getting into the railway carriage, and finding a gentleman he knew, began to talk to him. The subject of indiscriminate alms-giving came up, my father quoting Mr. Obins as an example. The gentleman: This is Mr. Obins sitting by the side of you. Not having seen him for many years, my father had quite forgotten him, and began to apologise. Mr. Obins replied, “No apology is necessary; no one is more conscious of the harm I did than myself.”

I may state, in conclusion of this subject, that the villages of Brampton and Hemingford Abbots were looked upon as the two worst villages in the neighbourhood, though they both had the advantage of evangelical clergymen in the parish.

I forget the exact year, but County meetings were held all over the county to protest against the appointment of Roman Catholic Bishops, and one was held at Huntingdon, the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Sandwich, in the chair. Mr. Thornhill, one of the M.P.’s for the County, Earl Fitzwilliam, and many of the county gentlemen {137} with their wives and families, were there. Incidents connected with the meeting as under:

After the Chairman’s speech, Earl Fitzwilliam spoke in favour of the resolution, but took occasion to remind the audience that there was such a principle as civil and religious liberty. In fact, he considerably moderated the strong Tory speeches of the speakers who preceded him. When Mr. Thornhill, M.P., began to speak, though he had his short speech written out in the crown of his hat, he stumbled and stammered, and, at last, though it evidently was not appropriate to the intended matter of his speech, but quite antagonistic to it, he made a great effort and blurted out, “Civil and Religious Liberty,” and then sat down. The amusing thing connected with the phrase coming from Mr. Thornhill was, he would not have a Dissenter on his estate!

Then the Rev. MacGee, Rector of Holywell-cum-Needingworth, made a flaming Orange-Protestant speech, mentioning amongst other things the “iniquitous nature” of the Roman Catholic canon law. Some of us Dissenters shouted out, “How about the canon law of the Church of England,” upon which Mr. MacGee, looking up into the gallery of the Court-house, where the meeting was being held, said, “I shall say what I like (pointing with his finger to one person there) in spite of the presence of that Jesuit spy.” Some of us Dissenters shouted out, “Shame, Shame,” for the individual named was no more Jesuit spy than he was. It is true he {138} was by birth an Italian, carrying on a jewellery business in the town of Huntingdon, and was the father of Mrs. Ingram, who is the mother of the present Mr. Wood-Ingram (1896).

Now comes the comic part of the meeting, for it had a comic side.

The High Church people at that period were universally styled “Puseyites,” that is, the members of the Church belonging to the Oxford Movement. Mr. Wallingford, a lawyer, of St. Ives, belonging to the Low Church School, accompanied by a Mr. Bagge, his step-father, had come to the meeting prepared to move a rider to the resolution censuring the Puseyites for their Roman Catholic teaching. I have no recollection of Mr. Wallingford’s speech, because it was so overshadowed by Mr. Bagge’s. Mr. Bagge rose, and, taking a manuscript out of his pocket, said, “I get excited on this subject, and therefore, with the permission of the meeting, will read my speech, for fear, if I spoke extempore, I should say something I should be sorry for afterwards.” First of all, speaking as a Dissenter, he said that if the Church of England had beaten us with cords the Church of Rome would beat us with scorpions. Then, alluding to the Puseyites in the Church, he read out quite gravely, “I would sooner send my children to be educated by a Polar bear or a hyena than by a Puseyite parson.” To those of us who knew Mr. Bagge, the statement was more amusing because we were aware of the fact that he had {139} no children. Then he gave the Roman Catholics their turn, saying (or, rather, reading), amongst other things, “they were liars in being born; indeed, he might say they were liars before they were born; they were liars through life, and liars through the article of death!”

I have no distinct recollection of the ending of the meeting; in fact, I left to go to my market-room at the George Hotel, it being Saturday, but I have no doubt the original resolution was carried without the rider.

I felt strongly at the time that the Roman Catholics had as much right to appoint Bishops of their own as the Wesleyans had to appoint Superintendents of Districts in connection with the Wesleyan Church, and an Archbishop in the person of the President of the Conference.

Though it is true that Lord John Russell carried an Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, public opinion did not endorse it, and it became a dead letter, and though, I think, the measure was never repealed, the Bishops have been in evidence ever since.

While the public mind was excited over the appointment of the Bishops, Lord John wrote a letter speaking of the rites of the Roman Catholic Church contemptuously, describing them as the mummeries of Popery. Speaking in metaphor, he was afterwards said to have scribbled “No Popery” on the wall, and then run away, because the law {140} against the Bishops was never put into operation. Mr. Wallingford many years afterwards told me the clergy never thoroughly forgave him the part he took at the above meeting, but gave him the cold shoulder. I presume this remark of his would not apply to the Evangelical School in the Church.

My father was once when quite a young man bathing with Mr. John Mayfield, who was considerably older than he, and who was a very provoking man. They quarrelled when in the water, and both getting into a passion, Mr. Mayfield got quickly out of the water, ran to a heap of clothes, and threw a garment in. My father ran to the other heap, and threw a garment in. So they continued, until at last my father throwing a pair of trousers in, a knife flew out of the pocket, which he recognised as his own. They then realised they had each been throwing their own clothes in the river. My father was so ashamed of his anger that he did not tell the tale till many years afterwards, when we were big boys, and then he told us the tale as a caution to us never to get into a passion.

Mr. John Mayfield had married one of my father’s sisters. He was a very curious and a very contradictory man. If you said white was white, he would say it was black. He was also very fond of practical jokes, and would wait an hour at a bedroom window to throw a basin of water over someone he was expecting to pass. On one occasion, at Sunderland, he and I went to the sea to bathe. {141} We undressed and deposited our clothes on the sands. Of course, it was natural for me to say, “I think the tide is coming in.” As might be expected by those who know him, he immediately said it was going out. I repeated I still thought it was coming in, and he then said he was sure it was going out. So we went in the sea and commenced our bathing. After a while I noticed the sea was much nearer our clothes than when we first went in the water, and so went out quietly, intending to let his clothes be washed away. But, unfortunately for my “little game,” he found out in time to save his garments, much to my chagrin, as I thought losing his clothes would have been a useful lesson to him.

My father, with all his natural ability, was slow, especially at acquiring book learning. Therefore, as a young man, some people thought him deficient in all mental or business acquirements. Mr. Mayfield would say he was only fit to be a rat catcher because he was fond of that pursuit, but the fact was my father had a good knowledge of natural history, acquired from observation.

One day (Mr. Mayfield, in addition to being my grandfather’s son-in-law, was also his business agent) my father heard them discuss which of the two that particular week should take the journey to Leicester to sell flour. Mr. Mayfield said to my grandfather, “Send Potto; trade is dull; there will be no business done, and he will do as well as anyone else.” My father took this to mean that {142} he was only good to be a “stop gap”; so true to the ability and determination which was so characteristic of him in after life, he said to himself, “If it is possible to be done, I will not leave Leicester without selling some flour.” It so chanced that the flour market was not nominally any better, yet there was one of those quiet indications amongst the buyers that it was going to be, and my father sold about one thousand sacks of flour. When he got home, and met his father and Mayfield together they said, “Well, Potto, how have you got on?” He replied, “All things considered, tolerably well.” “How much flour have you sold?” He said, “A thousand sacks?” The statement nearly took their breath away, because they did not know how the necessary wheat to make such a quantity of flour was to be bought and paid for. A thousand sacks would be equal, perhaps, to myself and partners afterwards selling thirty thousand.

In the coaching times, as mentioned previously, my father used to drive to Cambridge to take the coach for London. Although he and his man were positive they started in time, on one occasion they arrived in Cambridge one hour after the coach had started. The only way they could account for being late was that they had both gone to sleep, and that the horses had stood still for an hour!

On another occasion my father was staying with his relative, Joseph Storey, in the Borough, and the next morning was going home by the coach, which started from the {143} “Blue Boar,” Holborn. My father, on waking, found he had overslept himself, and that the coach ought to be just leaving the “Flower Pot,” Bishopsgate Street, where it stopped to take up passengers. So my father said to himself, “There is no telling what may have happened, I will take the coach and go to the “Flower Pot” as quickly as possible.” Upon arriving there, instead of saying to the people, “Of course the coach has gone,” he said, “Why has the coach not arrived from the ‘Blue Boar?’ ” They said, “We don’t know.” Presently it came up, and had been delayed by casting a tyre from the wheel while coming down Holborn Hill. Singularly enough, on another occasion a similar thing happened. My father was again late through oversleeping himself, and the coach was delayed coming down the hill by breaking the pole. Holborn Hill has been abolished by the making of Holborn Viaduct. Sometime in the end of the sixties, it was a very bad hill. On one occasion I was going up in an omnibus when, in the middle of the hill, a lady signalled to the ’bus to stop, which it did. But it got the mastery of the horses, ran back, and frightened the lady almost out of her senses. I sat next to the door, and the conductor said to me, “She will in future know better than to stop the omnibus in the middle of Holborn Hill.” I thought, with his superior knowledge of the danger compared with hers, he ought not to have responded to her signal to stop.

I think I have not recorded the following {144} circumstances in connection with my father’s journeys from Houghton to Leicester on horseback. On two journeys he found trade so bad that instead of stopping and calling on his customers, he rode home again the same day he arrived at Leicester, a distance of 100 miles in one day.

He was once breakfasting at an hotel in Leicester, and he ate the whole of a fowl, leaving the bone on his plate. The next journey he ate a whole fowl again, and being ashamed of his performance, he pocketed the bones. The waiter, on coming to clear the table, muttered to himself, but loud enough for my father to hear, “I thought you had a good appetite; the last time you were here you ate the whole fowl, but you have a better appetite this time, as you have eaten the bones as well.”

My father had a great amount of strength. He would sometimes, when he had sold the flour in London, come home by the coach, getting home by 10 p.m., and then would be on his horse at 5 the next morning, and arrive in Lynn (a ride of 50 miles) before the merchants had received their morning London letters, and so would have an opportunity of purchasing wheat from the merchants on better terms than if he had arrived later.

Here is a bathing incident: Mr. Mayfield and my father, getting Freeman Brown, my father’s youngest brother, took him to the river, and when they were all three undressed, threw him in deep water, repeating the operation, {145} and taking turns to swim in and fetch him out. My uncle Freeman told me on one occasion, after the two had thrown him in, my father and Mr. Mayfield disputed as to whose turn it was to fetch him out, he beginning to drown while the dispute was in progress. On another occasion, when he knew they were looking him up to go to the river, he hid himself between two haystacks that were built close together, but they discovered his hiding place, lugged him out, and served him as described above.

My father had notions of his own as regarded his health: He would not, on principle, put himself in competition in feats of strength with anyone, as he considered by so doing one might permanently sprain some important organ. The only exception was once, at the request of his father, under the following circumstances: Someone bathing in the river at Houghton Mill boasted to my grandfather how he could dive, and, jumping headfirst into the river, dived, as he thought, to perfection. But his body was to be seen under the water all the way he swam. My father coming on to the scene just at the time, his father said to him, “Strip, and show this man how to dive.” So he jumped in and swam under the water across the river so deep in the water that his body was not visible, much to the astonishment of the other gentleman. My father, on principle, never repeated the experiment. My father was also a bold rider, {146} but he never rode across country. Once an unmanageable horse had thrown some one in the Home Close, and my father attempted to ride it. But almost before he had placed himself in the saddle, the horse bolted, and made straight for the great poplar tree at the corner, close to Ware Lane. The horse fell, and no harm happened. But I have heard my father say he thinks if the animal had not fallen his brains might have been dashed against the poplar. The horse was sent to the fair to be sold. A few days afterwards he bolted, and ran right through a shop window.

One Christmas Day, my father having been to Woodhurst, the cob he was riding was very headstrong coming home, and when they got to the lane leading to King’s Ripton—it was then clay, being ungravelled—he ran away. My father said, “You started for your own pleasure; now you shall go for mine.” So instead of trying to stop him he urged him on, and was thrown. He laid insensible for he never knew how long. When he came to himself, he reflected that he might have lost something out of his pocket, which he would not be able to find in the darkness. So he cut a bough off a tree and stuck it in the ground at the spot, to indicate the place where he fell, intending to return the next morning to seek for anything he might have lost The cob was found at a farmer’s yard at King’s Ripton in the morning, and was taken to the “George” Hotel, Huntingdon, to be owned. The ostler at once said, “I know it; it is {147} Mr. Potto Brown’s.” The saddle was covered with clay; and, upon the accident being explained to some hunting gentlemen, they said no doubt the animal’s feet sticking in the clay, it could not pull them out, and the speed it was going caused him to turn a somersault, and thus the accident.

My father had gone to Stanstead, in Essex, to see some relatives, and they, to accommodate my father’s horse, turned their horse for the night into the grass close, and put his in the stable. It so chanced that some horse-stealers had hit upon that very night to steal his friend’s horse, and the consequence was, my father’s horse was stolen instead of his host’s.

I forget whether or not I have recorded the following. My father did not realise that he was stronger than the average of men, and therefore he thought anyone was lazy who would not do the same amount of work in a day that he did.

He also, without allowing for the size of a person’s frame, would say that everyone of a given height and under 21 years of age was lazy if he weighed over 10 stones. These two things caused it to be rather hard lines for those who were under his management.

I remember one Sunday, when I was about ten years of age, and, from slight indisposition, was in the doctor’s hands, some bees had swarmed, which necessitated the moving of a heavy stand. My father took hold of one end of it, and told me to take hold of the {148} other to lift it, and scolded me finely because I said, “I couldn’t.” During the altercation the doctor came, and he appealed to him, saying, “My son could lift that if he would, could he not?” The doctor said, “No; not if you were to offer him £10 to do it.” This proves how little my father understood what weakness was.

My father was once going to London by coach, when the horses ran away down a steep hill near Ware, called “Wade’s Mill,” The coach swayed so that he, sitting on the outside, could read the proprietor’s name on the coach-door, and the gentlemen on the corresponding side could also read the name, but the horses were pulled up without the coach being overturned.

Mr. Neville Goodman learnt the milling business at Houghton, living with my father, and the following incident illustrates the freedom that he allowed young people in their intercourse with him. Mr. Neville Goodman one day coming into the room late for tea, my father said, “As dilatory as a Goodman.” The retort came quick and sharp: “That is better than being as obstinate as a Brown!” I should say it was well understood that obstinacy was a characteristic of the Brown family. I remember in the early days of phrenology a person examined our heads as boys at my father’s one evening. After concluding with me, he said, “You have firmness developed almost to obstinacy.” I said, “Don’t qualify it; if you had said obstinacy, you would not have been out.”

{149} I once heard the late Mr. Goodman say (he was a Fenman), if about to cross a deep drain in skating on a meadow, where the ice was weak, the best way was to send all the lighter of the party over, and then the heaviest would lay down full length, and the light ones, being on the other side of the drain, would pull him (the heavy one) over. This was supposed to be a gain, because the weight of the body was spread over such a much larger surface than if one stood upright. I have a lively recollection of being served in that way over a deep drain at Mepal.

The drain was very deep, but both the ice and the water were clear, and being able distinctly to realise the depth made me very nervous. I never repeated the experiment! My opinion is that so dividing the weight over a large surface was not all gain, as the friction of the body on the ice was much greater than on taking a quick run over with skates. I think Mr. Goodman’s was more a correct way in theory than in practice.

Miss Phœbe Brown was my father’s eldest sister, and was a strict “Friend.” On one occasion, at the Cambridge Station, she got into the omnibus to go into the town. There was no one on the box, or at the horses’ heads. From some unexplained cause the horses bolted at full gallop into the town, but at last were stopped. My aunt alighted, and at once went down on her knees in the street and returned thanks to God for protecting her from what might have been a severe accident.

{150} My grandfather, having given up the milling business, I think at 50 years of age, walked the hospitals and qualified as a medical man. While so qualifying, he had such a bad attack of typhus fever that the doctors told him he must die. He replied, “I shall not.” They repeated, “You will,” and he then replied with considerable determination, “But I won’t,” and he did not. I suppose his strong will helped to save him. I have been told that his tongue was like a piece of leather.

At Chatteris, as soon as Mr. Gathercole came into the parish as Vicar, he began arguing with everyone. Amongst other things, he published in the form of a pamphlet a certain number of reasons why he couldn’t be a Dissenter: “Because they are liars; professed profaners, etc., etc.” Mr. Palmer, recognising it was not policy to refute them, simply printed a pamphlet giving the same reasons why he could not be a Churchman, and printed on the corner, and also headed it: “Answer a fool according to his folly.”

Mr. Gathercole had a parishioner, a farmer, whose wife was a Dissenter, and she went to chapel, taking her children with her. The farmer had a large square pew in the church, and would have no-one in it but himself. This annoyed the Vicar, so he told the farmer he ought to compel his wife to come to Church with the children. He taking no notice of this, the Vicar had the pew filled up with not the cleanest members of the congregation. This having no effect {151} he one week had the square pew divided into two. This brought things to a climax. The farmer, during the following week, meeting the Vicar in a place where no one could overhear them, said, “If the pew is not put back to its original state, before next Sunday, and you on the following Friday go to Chatteris Market-place, and I have my whip, I will make you look such a fool as you have never looked in your life before.” The Vicar, knowing his opponent as a man sure to fulfil his threat, had the pew at once restored to its former state.

Mr. Gathercole was brought up a Dissenter, and it was also said that he had been a shoemaker at one time. On one occasion, it being contract day at the Union Workhouse, Mr. Gathercole being present, specimen shoes were being examined. A Guardian looked at a shoe, and threw it across the table to Mr. Gathercole, saying, “You are a better judge of that article than I am.” This, of course, was very rude, but Mr. Gathercole’s own conduct brought this on himself.

The late Mr. Edward Miall, having once at Chatteris unintentionally said something libellous in his speech, Mr. Gathercole brought an action, and Mr. Miall was cast in heavy damages. Mr. Gathercole would make a habit when a meeting was held of being in the porch to see if he could lay hold of anything said about himself that was libellous.

On one occasion I was asked to preside at some controversial meeting at Chatteris. {152} Just before commencing to speak, someone on the platform said to me, “Mr. Gathercole has just come in the porch and can hear what you have to say about him.” I said, “All right, I shall never mention his name or allude to him.”

On another occasion Mr. Gathercole was in the train between Chatteris and St. Ives, apparently en route to London. Some lady, who got out of the same train, in the St. Ives omnibus said to the passenger, “I am told Mr. Gathercole was in the train, and I should like to have seen him. I have heard he is the plainest man in existence,” when a gentleman in the corner said, “I am Mr. Gathercole”!

I was once dining in the Commercial Room at the Lamb Inn, Ely. A commercial gentleman was also dining there, and he asked me what wine we should drink. I said, “I don’t take any.” When the soup and meat were done with, and the cheese was being put on the table, I said, “Where is the pudding?” The waiter replied, “There is none to-day,” upon which the commercial made the rude remark to the waiter, “I suppose you have to cut your coat according to your cloth,” implying, as I did not order wine, no pudding could be afforded.

On another occasion I was dining at the same hotel, when a commercial asked me “What wine do you drink?” I said, “None, but order for two and I shall pay half, the same as if I had drunk my share.” When the cloth was cleared, the gentleman said to the {153} waiter, “Bring coffee for this gentleman,” for which, when the bill came, he paid.

My father, at his London hotel, wishing to have proper attention, though not drinking wine, would always have a pint of sherry put on the table, and as he did not partake of it, he was treated as equal to the average customer in the eyes of the landlord. Such were some of the expedients that were resorted to by abstainers at hotels.

[Finis.]

Table of Contents

- Introduction
- Chapter I
- Chapter II
- Chapter III
- Chapter IV
- Chapter V
- Chapter VI
- Chapter VII
- Chapter VIII
- Chapter IX
- Chapter X