CHAPTER XVII.

SUFFOLK DURING THE REIGNS OF WILLIAM III., ANNE,

WE

AND GEORGE I.

E must not tarry over local rejoicings on account of the Revolution, but glance at an event in Ipswich in the middle of March, 1689, when Louis XIV. had declared war against the Dutch, and William, according to the treaty of Nimeguen, was sending troops to help them. Among those chosen for this service was that which is now the First of the Line, consisting largely of Scotchmen, punctilious as to any slight offered to their country. No act of the Estates at Edinburgh had as yet absolved them from their duty to James II. The service was in itself disliked, and when they learned that Schomberg was to be their Colonel, their temper grew worse. Sullenly they marched as far as Ipswich, to be embarked at Harwich for Holland. At this point mutiny broke out, concerted, it seems, by two Jacobite captains. After a brief period of disorder, in which the other officers were disarmed, the malcontents got the regiment, consisting of about 800 men, on the march. With four pieces of cannon, and, what was of equal importance, the military chest, they took their course northward by the old turnpike (I assume) through Claydon, Needham Market, Stowmarket, Haughley, Woolpit, and Bury, passing out of our county at Kentford into Cambridgeshire, the condition of which district at that time Macaulay seems

to me to have depicted as far worse than it really was. They finally surrendered near Sleaford, and the incident ends in the conviction of some of the ringleaders for high treason at the next Bury Assizes, William, with his usual politic clemency, sparing their lives.

The Irish troubles at that time brought into the east of England Dr. Rowland Davies, Dean of Cork, whose diary has been printed by the Camden Society. He sailed from that city on March 8, 1689, landed at Minehead on the IIth, and was in London at the time of the Ipswich mutiny, which, however, he does not mention. A fellowexile with him was Barry Love, from the same county, the ancestor of a family which has yet its representatives in Norfolk and Suffolk, who eventually became Minister of Yarmouth. It was to that town that Dean Davies betook himself, armed with introductions to Bishop Lloyd (not yet deprived), to Dean Sharp (afterwards Archbishop of York), and to many Yarmouth citizens. We are concerned with his journeyings rather than with his residence, for they show the manner of travelling. On July 1, at half-past three a.m., he took the coach for Yarmouth, at the Green Dragon in Bishopsgate Street, where he had slept, and at noon they had actually reached Bishop's Stortford, where they dined. The distance is a little over thirty miles, which, being divided by eight and a half, gives a velocity not sufficient (to use the words of Dickens's flyman) to render surrounding objects invisible, namely, about three and a half miles per hour. However the pace must have improved, for in the course of the day the vehicle had passed Newmarket, and reached Bury in time for the Dean to see St. Edmund's Abbey before he went to sleep. Next day he came on (by Ixworth, Botesdale and Scole Inn) to 'the place where we dined,' and so reached Yarmouth by half-past seven at night. When the Diary was edited in 1857, Mr. Caulfield, the editor, notes that the journey, which then took two days, could be performed in five hours. The Great Eastern Railway has reduced this to three hours and twenty minutes. The

Dean's residence at Yarmouth was not exactly what we should expect from a mourning exile, and the abundant good cheer provided by his hospitable friends appears to have produced sundry corporal disorders, which he could by no means trace to their origin. He gives a very lively account of the 'Water Frolic' at St. Olave's Bridge. At Burgh Castle he vexed not his soul with antiquarian inquiries, but ' viewed that pool of water which is on the top of one of the flankers.' In October he returned to London. The coach left Yarmouth at five a.m. In four hours they reached Broome (Norfolk), where Sir William Cook gave the travellers a glass of sherry as he joined the party. They dined at Harleston, at the cost of a shilling, and at six o'clock reached Botesdale, where, doubtless at the Crown, they supped at the cost of two shillings. Next morning they went on to Bury, where they 'changed a horse,' and so by Bishop's Stortford into Epping Forest by the persuasion of the coachman, where they stuck fast, but afterwards by hard driving reached London at seven o'clock. Returning in November to Yarmouth, he says: '16th. We eat in the morning at Scole Inn.' This hostelry still stands just over the Norfolk boundary, the White Hart, though its old glory has vanished. It was built by James Peck, merchant, of Norwich, in 1655, and engravings may still be obtained which portray the noblest signe post in England,' which reached across the road, and bore, among other objects, the Yarmouth arms supported by a lion. In 1690 the Dean left Yarmouth finally, travelling to London by the same route. His after history belongs to Ireland. He died at Dawstown, co. Cork, in 1721.

Another Suffolk traveller shortly after Dean Davies was Celia Fiennes, who rode through England on a sidesaddle. Her Diary was published in 1889.1 As became her name, this lady was a thorough Whig, and deplores the adherence of Beckle' to the exiled monarch. Here, we find, was 'a pretty bigg market Cross and a great 1 By Messis. Field and Tuer, The Leadenhall Press.

Market kept. There is a handsome stone built Church, and a very good publick Minister, whose name is Armstrong he preaches very well they say, notwithstanding the town is sad Jacobitish town. This chooses no parliamt men. . . . The ordinary people both in Suffolk and Norfolk knit much and spin, some wth ye Rock and fusoe as the French does, others at their wheeles out in the Streete and Lanes as one passes.'

Ipswich seems to have presented a very decayed appearance. She was here on Satturday, wch is their market day, and saw they sold their Butter by ye pinte, 20 ounces for 6 pence, and often for 5d or 4d; they make it up in a mold just the shape of a pint pot, and so sell it. . . . There is but 3 or 4 good houses in ye town, the town Looks a Little disregarded, and by enquiry found it to be thro' pride and sloth, for tho' the sea would bear a ship of 300 tun quite to ye Key, and ye ships of ye first Rate can Ride wth in two mile of the town, yet they make no advantage thereof by any sort of manufacture. . They have a Little dock, where formerly they built ships of 2 or 3 tun, but now Little or Nothing is minded save a Little ffishing for ye supply of ye town.'

Bury pleased her better. Here, she says,

'Ye Market Cross has a dyal and Lanthorn on y° top, there being another house pretty close to it high built wth such a tower and lanthorn also. This high house is an Apothecarys-at least 60 stepps up from the ground. . . . He is esteemed a very Rich man. He showed me a Curiosity a Herball all written out wth every sort of tree and herb dryed and Cut out and pasted on the Leaves; it was a doctor of Physick's work that lefted him a Legacy at his Death, it was a fine thing and would have delighted me severall days but I was passant.'

Archbishop Sancroft's non-jurancy took him back to his native Fressingfield in August, 1691. After Mary, as Regent, had ejected him from Lambeth, he existed for some six weeks in obscure lodgings in London, where he was cruelly interviewed by some tempter, probably

Jacobite agent, possibly Whig spy, with the object of drawing him into a plot. To this man he answered that he was very unfit to enter into any such business, and that he had resolved to 'go almost one hundred miles off into ye deepest Retiremt I could find.' Three days' journey brought him to the house, called Ufford Hall, where he first drew breath. He refused the services of Henry Wharton, who wished to be his chaplain, and if one may judge from his letters, he enjoyed his retirement. We read of him as punning in the winter on Fressingfield, which he calls Freezingfield, or rather Frozenfield, campus gelidus, vel potius gelatus, describing dryly his escape from Palsgrave Court in the Temple, receiving the visits of his neighbours, and soothing his troubled spirits in the shades of his ancestral elms. He never entered the parish church, of which he was then the patron, for he could not bear to hear the names of William and Mary in the service.

A very short time before his death he found in a Prayer-Book of the smallest print the Commendatory Prayer, and ordered it to be read. Many are the visitors who come to gaze on his monument outside the church, and read the text selected by himself, speaking of the lightning-like Second Advent, and the epitaph, still existing in manuscript in the Lambeth Library, which records his chequered life in noble and simple words, ending:

'THE LORD Gave, and the Lord hath TAKEN AWAY (AS THE LORD PLEASETH SO COME THINGS TO PASS); BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD.'

With him and others, William Lloyd, Bishop of Norwich, was ejected. His successor, Dr. John Moore, prebendary of the cathedral and Rector of St. Andrew's, Holborn, met with a cold reception from many of the Tory country gentlemen. In the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library is the mass of Sancroft's correspondence, sold by his nephews to the well-known Chancellor of Norwich. One letter from Mr. Glover, of Frostenden, throws some light