Transcribed from the 1812 W. G. Whittingham edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

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THE
HISTORY
OF
LYNN,

Civil, Ecclesiastical, Political, Commercial, Biographical,
Municipal, and Military,

FROM
THE EARLIEST ACCOUNTS TO THE PRESENT TIME,
INTERSPERSED
With occasional remarks on such national occurrences as may serve to
elucidate the real state of the town, or the manners, character,
and condition of the inhabitants at different periods.

TO WHICH IS PREFIXED
A COPIOUS INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT
OF ITS
Situation, Harbour, Rivers, Inland Trade and Navigation,
the Ancient and Modern State
OF
Marshland, Wisbeach, and the Fens,
AND
Whatever is most remarkable, memorable, or interesting, in other
parts of the adjacent country.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
BY WILLIAM RICHARDS, M.A.

Honorary member of the Pennsylvania Society, for promoting the Abolition
of Slavery, and the relief of free Negroes unlawfully held in bondage.

VOL. II.

LYNN:
PRINTED BY W. G. WHITTINGHAM,
AND SOLD BY R. BALDWIN; PATERNOSTER ROW; LONDON.

1812.

PART IV.
From the Reformation to the present time.

CHAP. I.

Miscellaneous remarks on the Reformation—its rise and progress on the continent—introduction into this island, and effects upon this town.

The reformation formed a new era in the history of the world, and was one of those mighty revolutionary events which have a most extensive and lasting effect on the affairs and destinies of mankind. But men have been ever since greatly divided in their ideas and judgments concerning it. While some have hailed it as a most happy, admirable, and glorious event, fraught with heaven’s choicest blessings, it has been deemed by others, and even by a large majority of the inhabitants of christendom, as an exceedingly unfortunate, pernicious, and execrable occurrence, which has produced all manner of mischief, and, like the opening of Pandora’s box, filled the world with calamities and miseries innumerable. The learned and the wise, as well as the illiterate and fly foolish, have been found among each of these opposite and contending parties: their respective opinions and allegations must therefore be entitled to a serious and candid hearing. But it is not intended here to go deeply or largely into this disputed subject: nor would it well accord with the plan or design of this publication. Some cursory hints, however, on a few of the most prominent facts will not, it is presumed, be either impertinent or uninstructive.

Section I.

Statement of different and opposite opinions respecting the reformation—with brief remarks.

The information, like the French revolution, seems to have been too much admired by its friends, and too much vilified by its enemies. The former, for the most part, perceive nothing in it but what is praise worthy and divine, and the latter nothing but what is detestable and devilish. The truth, probably, lies somewhere about midway between these two extremes, as is usual in most of the disputes that divide and agitate the world. The reformation had certainly some good points in it, as well as some very bad ones, that can never be too much reprobated and detested. Had they been all bad, its friends would have defended them, for they have actually and unblushingly defended its very worst points; [625a] and had they been all good, its enemies, on the other hand, would not fail to condemn them, for they have really done so with its very best parts, whose intrinsic or essential goodness and beneficial tendency are most obvious and demonstrable. [625b]

The friends of the reformation consider the original and chief actors in that great revolutionary work as excellent men, actuated by a right apostolical and christian spirit, with a view to the restoration of primitive christianity, and the promotion of the best interests of mankind. Their opponents, on the contrary, consider them in a very different light, and hold them up as persons of a disreputable character, who were actuated by very unworthy and base motives, from whose thoughts nothing could be further than the restoration of genuine christianity, or the promoting of real benevolence, philanthropy, or human happiness. It will not be safe to give implicit credit to either of these representations. There were, certainly, some good men concerned in the reformation, and there were also some very bad men concerned in it, whose misdeeds ought never to be palliated; and these were probably the most numerous and the most powerful, or the work, surely, would have been more worthy of our praise and admiration.

The reformation, in the judgment of its admirers, was eminently calculated to promote the cause of truth and virtue, and inculcate the practice of piety, morality, and all manner of good works. All this, however, is flatly contradicted by the champions of the opposite cause, who positively affirm that the doctrines of the reformers were, in the very nature of them, of an evil, immoral and impious tendency:—alluding to the grand Lutheran tenet of justification by faith without works, [626a] and to the famous Calvinian notion of predestination, as extending to all the deeds of men, bad and good, or that all human actions, even the very worst, originate in the Divine decrees, or will of God. [626b] This opinion of the evil tendency of the reformation, or of the reformed doctrine, they represent as further corroborated and established by undeniable facts, and authentic historical evidence; or in other words, by its immediate effects, or the very first fruits it produced wherever it did prevail.

Those who advocate the cause of the reformers say that their labours were abundantly fruitful of good works, and that their doctrine produced the happiest effects wherever it was received. But their opponents flatly deny it, and positively assert that the very reverse was actually the case: and they support their assertion, not only by referring to those long and bloody wars which resulted from the reformation, but also to the express testimony of credible witnesses, who affirm, that vice and immorality greatly increased wherever protestantism became predominant. Nor is it a little remarkable that these same witnesses are, for the most part, some of the very chief reformers; so that their evidence comes with a force that cannot well be resisted. Some of them belonged to the continent, and others to this kingdom; but we shall in this place bring forward only the former, reserving the latter till we come to exhibit the rise and progress of the reformation in this country.

We shall begin with Luther, whose testimony on this occasion is very strong and remarkable.—“The world (says he) grows worse and worse. It is plain that men are much more covetous, malicious, and resentful, much more unruly, shameless, and full of vice, than they were in the time of popery.” [628a] “Formerly, when we were suduced by the pope, men willingly followed good works, but now all their study is to get every thing to themselves by exactions, pillage, theft, lying, usury.” [628b] “It is a wonderful thing, and full of scandal, that from the time that the pure doctrine was first called to light, the world should daily grow worse and worse.” [628c]—The testimony of Bucer, another celebrated reformer, is to the same effect. “The greater part of the people” (says he) “seem only to have embraced the gospel, in order to shake off the yoke of discipline, and the obligation of fasting, penance, &c., which lay upon them in the time of popery; and to live at their pleasure, enjoying their lust and lawless appetites without controul. They therefore lend a willing ear to the doctrine that we are justified by faith alone and not by good works, having no relish for them.”—[628d] Musculus also, another eminent reformer, is said to have borne much the same testimony. [628e]

Calvin’s evidence in this case seems also to be equally forcible and decisive: “Of so many thousands (says he) seemingly eager in embracing the gospel, how few have since amended their lives? Nay, to what else does the greater part pretend, except by shaking off the heavy yoke of superstition to launch out more freely into every kind of lasciviousness?” [629a] Thus said Calvin. When the character of the reformation is duly and thoroughly considered, and especially that of Calvin’s own doctrine, it is no great wonder that such effects should follow. It would have been much more wonderful if they had not followed; at least, when we further consider the abominable conduct, the vile and bloody deeds that were sanctioned by the same reformer’s own example. Had he been a different sort of man, these unsightly fruits of his labours might have led him to doubt the soundness of his faith, or suspect that his creed did not altogether tally with the doctrine that is according to godliness. But from him it could not be expected.

Another testimony of no small weight in this case, and which must not be here omitted, is that of the celebrated Erasmus, one of the greatest luminaries and most eminent characters of that age, who has been reckoned among the principal authors of the reformation as well as restorers of literature. Let us listen then to his evidence on this subject: “What an evangelical generation is this? Nothing was ever seen more licentious and more seditious. Nothing is less evangelical than these pretended gospellers. [629b] Take notice of this evangelical people, and shew me an individual amongst them all who from being a drunkard has become sober, from being a libertine has become chaste. I, on the other hand, can shew you many who have become worse by the change. Those whom I once knew to have been chaste, sincere, and without fraud, I found, after they had embraced this sect, to be licentious in their conversation, gamblers, neglectful of prayer, passionate, vain, as spiteful as serpents, and lost to the feelings of human nature. I speak from experience.” [630]

Upon the whole, it seems impossible to evade the force of this evidence, or deny that vice and immorality increased where protestantism prevailed, and, consequently, that there must have been some radical and essential defect in that system from the very first: so that it must be the very height of folly, absurdity, and arrogance in our present pretended evangelical demagogues to attempt to hold it up to the people as a standard of unadulterated truth and model of christian perfection. It is remarkable enough that these good people, almost to a man, are very loud in their reprobation of the French revolution, although it might easily be proved that that same revolution was nearly, if not quite as honourable in its origin, and respectable in its progress as that which was excited and conducted by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and their coadjutors, and which they seem so much to admire, and so ready to commend and justify. While reprobating the Gallic revolution on account of the licentiousness and crimes it produced, they are not aware how much the protestant revolution is liable to the same imputation.

Section II.

The former subject continued, with occasional and brief remarks.

There does not seem on any point a greater difference of opinion between the admirers of the reformation and their opponents than that which relates to the real character of the reformers. Volumes have been written on both sides of the question: one party extolling them to the skies, as if they had been all perfect beings or angels of light, and the other degrading them to the lowest point, as if they had been no better than so many demons. Too much, no doubt, has been said both for and against them. We must not believe them to be quite so bad as some catholic writers have represented them; nor yet, on the other hand, altogether so good and perfect as they have been described by the generality of our protestant authors. What is unfounded on either side we wish to explode; but some apparently well established facts relating to the reformers, and not generally known among protestants, ought not here to be passed over unnoticed, as they are well calculated to correct the reader’s ideas, both as to the reformers and the reformation.

As to Luther, it seems to be the common opinion among protestants that he was convinced of the errors and corruptions of the church of Rome, and, of course, decidedly hostile to them before the appearance of Tetzel with his indulgences. But this opinion appears to be untenable. It is more likely that he had thought nothing about the said errors and corruptions before the arrival of that memorable vender of pardons; and that either wholly out of detestation of his extravagant and shameless pretensions, or partly also out of spite to the Dominicans, to which order he belonged, he then ventured to oppose that scandalous traffick, without any direct intention to declare against any others of the papal abominations, towards which it does not seem that he had yet begun to conceive any aversion.

Accordingly, he appeared for some years after, to have no mighty objection to any thing in the popish religion but the abuse of the traffick of indulgences; and even on that point he actually consented to observe in future a profound silence, provided the same condition were imposed on his adversaries. Nay he went still further, and proposed to write a humble and submissive Letter to the Pope, acknowledging that he had carried his zeal and animosity too far: and such a Letter he actually did write. He even consented to publish a circular Letter, exhorting all his disciples and followers to reverence and obey all the dictates of the Roman church. He declared that his only intention, in the writings which he had composed was to brand with infamy those emissaries who abused its authority, and employed its protection as a mask to cover their abominable and impious frauds. [632]

Such was the hostility to the pope and his cause, and such the anxiety for religious reformation which Luther manifested for some years after he had assumed the character of a reformer, or rather after the commencement of his quarrel with Tetzel and the Dominicans. Had Leo X. been wise and politic enough to accept his proffered submission, about the time of the conferences with Miltitz, he would, to all appearance, immediately and gladly have returned into the bosom of holy church, and, most probably, never have given his holiness or the world any further trouble on the score of religious abuses and corruptions.

The haughty pontiff, however, instead of embracing the golden opportunity, and receiving readily and kindly his rebellious, but now repentant son, had recourse to the very opposite mode of proceeding. He fulminated his anathemas against him, had him solemnly excommunicated, declared an enemy to the church, and even to the holy Roman empire. Luther having now no alternative, was obliged to make virtue of necessity; and it is easy to see that he was actually forced to take that course which he afterwards pursued, and in the pursuit of which he displayed such wonderful address, and such extraordinary talents as have really immortalized his name. But as to real virtue, it seems hard to see or say how much of that there was in his opposition to the pope and church of Rome, except what is implied in the law of selfpreservation. Cromwell too, had that law on his side, to the full as much, perhaps, as Luther, even while engaged in what has been deemed the most criminal parts of his conduct, the dethronement of the king and attainment of the supreme power. But which of these two men was the most virtuous or most vicious, was the better or worse man, is a point that will not be presumed or attempted to be made here a subject of investigation. They certainly had, both of them, great talents and great defects.

Lutheran and other protestant writers have appeared not a little anxious to have Luther acquitted from the imputation of having opposed Tetzel out of spite to the Dominicans, or from resentment for the preference shewn them in the distribution or traffick of indulgences. We pretend not to say that that was the sole cause of his opposition; but that it might be partly the cause seems not at all improbable from what he himself has owned on other occasions. Thus he acknowledges that he had tried to persuade himself of there being no real presence of Christ in the sacrament, “on purpose to spite the pope, but that the words of scripture were too plain in favour of it.” Likewise, in his letter to the Vaudois, he says, “I have hitherto thought it of small consequence whether the bread remains in the sacrament or not, but now, to spite the papists, I am determined to believe that it does remain.” Thus also, writing against those who had presumed to alter the public service without his authority, he says, “I knew very well that the elevation of the sacrament was idolatrous, but 1 retained it out of pure spite to that devil Carlostadius.” [634] A very glaring and most odious trait in Luther’s character was the ungentlemanly and foul language in which he used to address his opponents, than which nothing could be more unbecoming in one who pretended to be engaged in, or anxious for the reformation of mankind, and the revival or restoration of genuine and primitive christianity. We have just now seen in what style he could speak of his quondam friend Carlostadius: “that devil Carlostadius:” and it seems he could be sometimes equally uncivil and foulmouthed when he had occasion to speak of Zuinglius and the rest of that party, who did not receive his favourite doctrine of consubstantiation, or the real presence; for whom he had no mercy, but consigned them all to everlasting perdition; just as his modern disciples, our present evangelicals, do to the poor Arians and Socinians.

As to the papists, it was not to be expected that he should be more civil or polite to them than to the Zuinglians. Accordingly, we are told that “the usual flowers of his speech, when addressing the pope and other catholic prelates, were: villain, thief, traitor, apostle of the devil, bishop of sodomites: and that the extent of his charity to them was to wish that their bowels were torn out, that they were cast into the Mediterranean sea or into the flames, and that they were hurried away to the devil. His treatment of the king of England, Henry VIII, with whom he had at one time a theological controversy, (though afterwards they grew into a better understanding with each other,) was not more respectful than his treatment of the pope. Luther makes no difficulty to call his royal antagonist, a Thomistical pig, an ass, a jakes, a dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying buffoon disguised in a king’s robe, a mad fool with a frothy mouth and a whorish face. He even addresses him as follows: You lie, you stupid and sacrilegious king.” [636a]

Another very unamiable and disgustful trait in Luther’s character was his assuming an extraordinary and apostolic dignity and authority, under the name or title of Ecclesiastes: “Martin Luther Ecclesiastes of Wittemberg.”—“It is not fitting, (said he,) that I should be without a title, having received the work of the ministry, not from man, or by man, but by the gift of God, and the revelation of Jesus Christ.” [636b] This was evidently putting himself upon a level, at least, with Peter and Paul, and the rest of the apostles, and claiming from professing christians the deference or submission due to them. Accordingly, “he plainly proclaims to the whole body of protestants, in case they presume to consult together and determine about their common belief, that he will return back to the ancient church, and revoke every word he had ever written or taught against it; telling them that even in acting right, when they acted without his authority, they were plunging themselves into the jaws of hell.” [636c]

It is not a little remarkable that this reformer pretended to have some extraordinary intercourse, not only with the Deity, but also with Satan. Accordingly, he has published to the world, not only that he held frequent communications with the devil, but also that he learned the most material part of the reformation, namely, the abolition of the mass from him. In his treatise on that subject there is an account of Satan’s appearing to him by night, and of a long dialogue that passed between them, in which Luther defends the mass, and the devil argues against it. The conclusion is that this new apostle yields to the motives suggested by his internal antagonist, and adopts the important reform which he proposes. We are also informed, that Luther in one of his Sermons, according to Cochleus, affirmed that he had “eat more than a bushel of salt with Satan;” and that in his Colloquies he describes himself as constantly haunted by the devil, who, he says, “sleeps nearer to me than my wife Catherine.” [637]

Luther bears testimony to the unfavourable effects of the reformed religion, not only upon his followers, (as we have seen before) but also upon himself. He says that whilst he continued a catholic monk he observed chastity, obedience and poverty; and that being free from worldly cares be gave himself up to fasting, watching, and prayer: whereas, after he commenced reformer, he describes himself as raging with the most violent concupiscence, to satisfy which he broke through his solemn vow of continency, in direct opposition to his former doctrine, by marrying a religious woman, who was under the same obligation. He then proceeded to teach what most people deem shameful and licentious lessons, such as the permission, in certain cases, of concubinage and polygamy, and that pestilential doctrine, which is the utter destruction of all morality, that there is no freedom in human actions—and that when the scripture commands good works, “we are to understand it to forbid them, because we cannot do them; that a baptized person cannot lose his soul, whatever sins he commit, provided he believe, inasmuch as no sin can damn except infidelity.” [638]

Section III.

Further remarks on the reformers and reformation—tenaciously adhered to, and retained the very worst part of popery, its intolerant, persecuting, and bloody spirit—the very first thing whose reformation or expulsion they ought to have attempted—its omission rendered their whole undertaking illfavored, preposterous, and ineffectual.

Defective in many parts as Luther’s character really was, he appears to have been, nevertheless, one of the best among the original and leading reformers. There seemed to be a frankness or unreservedness about him that was somewhat pleasing, and which it is not easy to discover in many of his coadjutors. He was also apparently not so bloodyminded as some of them were, at whose head, it is presumed, we may venture to place the apostle of Geneva, Calvin. This man (as is evinced by the tragical case of Servetus,) when his favourite dogmas were opposed, and his wisdom, learning, and infallibility set at naught, nothing would satisfy but the obstruction of his opponent: but Luther, (as appears from the affair of Carlostadius,) would be pretty well satisfied with the banishment only of those who happened so to offend him. The spirit of Luther, however, though less vindictive and diabolical than that of Calvin, was yet very dissimilar to that of Jesus Christ, whose followers they both professed themselves to be.

It seems to have been then the case, that those reformers who had gone the furthest from the church of Rome in doctrine, such as Calvin and the Swiss divines, who denied the real presence, were yet the nighest to that church in spirit: for they seemed more addicted to the practice of consigning to destruction those whom they deemed heretics than the Lutherans, though the latter did not depart near so far as the former from the grand popish doctrine of transubstantiation. Odd as this may be considered, it appears to be a fact; though to account for it may, perhaps, be attended with considerable difficulty. It cannot however, be supposed, that the denial of the real presence could have any tendency to make people more bloodthirsty, vindictive, or intolerant.

The reformers, in retaining the bigotry and intolerance, or the spirit of popery, retained in fact its very worst part, and what may be called its marrow and substance; which the world had most need to get rid of. All therefore that they did, or could do, in such a case, was only like giving a new edition, or an abridgment of an old and bad work, which still contained the essence of the former, and must, of course, have the same defective and evil tendency. They appeared like people undertaking the cure of a demoniac without casting out the demon, or pretending that the evil or scrophula may be healed and eradicated by the royal touch. In short, they began the work at the wrong end, and never meddled with that part at which they ought to have begun.

Their first work ought to have been to exhibit to the religious world the meekness and gentleness of Christ, and endeavour to bring those who professed to be his servants back to the spirit of his religion. Had they done so, and succeeded, their work would have beep more than half done. The rest would have followed of course, or, at least, with little comparative difficulty. For when men have once imbibed the spirit of the New Testament, it will not be very hard to persuade them to renounce such doctrines or practices as are not enjoined or countenanced in that sacred volume: and if any errors or misconceptions happen still to remain, they will become in a great measure harmless, through the influence of that divine spirit by which they are now led and governed.

The reformers in foisting into their system the impious and horrid principle of intolerance and persecution, gave it a most monstrous and shocking aspect, even more so than that of the centaurs, or minotaurs of ancient fable; for it was like joining God with the devil, or Christ with Belial. But nothing better, perhaps, could be expected from men who knew so little of the temper which christianity produces; and who never discerned the difference between the wisdom that is from above and that which is from beneath; or considered that Jesus Christ came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. For men who knew so little of the genius of christianity to take it upon them, as they did, to lord it over the faith of professing christians, was certainly a most gross and iniquitous piece of presumption.

The power which the reformers acquired was very great and formidable, and the authority which they sometimes assumed and exercised was not a little remarkable and extraordinary, as appears not only from the permission of concubinage, &c. already mentioned, but also from the Dispensation granted by Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, and five others, to the prince of Hesse Cassel to have two wives at a time, and which was afterwards published by a descendant of that prince. This was certainly taking a great deal upon them, and placing themselves, not indeed upon a level with the apostles, as was before observed, but much above them, even with the pope himself. Yet they seemed very angry with his holiness, calling him antichrist, and many other bad names. They appeared very desirous to pull him down, but had no manner of objection to do his work, or act the pope themselves when it suited them, and that was not unfrequently.

It is curious enough to hear these men inveigh against the intolerant and persecuting spirit of the church of Rome, at the very time when they themselves were manifesting the selfsame spirit, and pursuing the same tyrannical and murderous course which they so much condemned in the papists. In our own country, John Fox, the martyrologist, was employed in writing huge folios to describe the horrors of popish persecution, while his own protestant sovereign and her bishops and clergy were persecuting the poor puritans with unfeeling and relentless rigour. Protestants can see the hatefulness of persecution in the papists, but very often are quite blind to it in themselves, or those of their own party. [642] They can discern what is bad in their opponents, but overlook what is equally so in themselves.

Christianity, in its first aspect and fundamental principles, is a religion of peace and good will towards men, which forbids any to domineer over their brethren, or exercise authority over their consciences, and requires, in all things whatsoever, to do to others as we would they should do to us. But the reformers overlooked all this, and discovered either an entire ignorance of, or a fixed aversion to these godlike principles. In either case they must have been wretchedly qualified to reform and christianize the world, or form a religion worthy the reception of mankind. A religion, however, they would and did form, and never rested till they got it established by the civil power, and enforced by penal sanctions; and this rendered its native intolerance doubly pernicious and detestable.

“No religion” (says an excellent writer) “can be established without penal sanctions, and all penal sanctions in cases of religion are persecutions. Before a man can persecute he must renounce the generous tolerant dispositions of a christian. No religion can be established without human creeds; and subscription to all human creeds implies two dispositions contrary to true religion, and both expressly forbidden by the author of it. These two dispositions are, love of dominion over conscience in the imposer, and an abject preference of slavery in the subscriber. The first usurps the rights of Christ; the last swears allegiance to a pretender. The first domineers, and gives laws like a tyrant; the last truckles like a vassal. The first assumes a dominion incompatible with his frailty, impossible even to his dignity, yea even denied to the dignity of angels; the last yields a low submission, inconsistent with his own dignity, and ruinous to that very religion, which he pretends by this mean to support.” [644]

It is very remarkable, and no less true and disgusting, that protestantism was ushered into the world in the very spirit of the religion it strove to supplant. Yet its authors expected to be thought commissioned by heaven to do what they did, and clearly entitled to the gratitude and reverence of mankind, as well as their ready submission to their dictates and authority. But to one who has carefully examined the New Testament, they appear so very different from the first disseminators or propagators of christianity, that they can hardly be supposed to belong to the same cause or family. When Luther is seen banishing conscientious people who differed from him, and Calvin, and the Swiss reformers, burning or hanging them, and the French protestants, or Calvinists of France solemnly soliciting their popish sovereign to inflict severe punishment on those whom they were pleased to deem heretics: [645]—when one recollects these acts, and that they were all done in the name of the Lord, one is ready to sicken at the thought of the pretensions of the actors, to reform the world and restore christianity to its original state. Nor is it less disgusting to hear our flaming advocates for modern orthodoxy extolling these men, as models of christian sanctity, and unexceptionable or safe guides to pure, undefiled, and evangelical religion.

Section IV.

Brief account of the rise and progress of the reformation in this kingdom.

No sooner had the reformation begun to gain ground and spread on the continent than its effects began to be felt in this country. The court, or government was at first so far from being disposed to countenance it, that it seemed, on the contrary, quite determined to oppose and crush it. The sovereign himself appeared exceedingly hostile to it: which, from his known character, must have rendered the prospect of its admission and success here very dark and hopeless. So inimical was his majesty then to the cause of the reformers and so hearty in that of their opponents, that he actually took up his pen and wrote a book against Luther; for which important performance and acceptable service the pope thought proper to reward him, by conferring on him the dignified title of Defender of the Faith; a title which all his protestant successors have tenaciously, if not proudly retained to this day. This was the book which Luther answered in the rude and uncourtly manner before described. [646]

Our royal polemic did not long continue to be that fond and dutiful son of his holy father at Rome of which he had at first exhibited so fair and hopeful a promise. His Holiness not readily favouring his inclination, or gratifying his wish to be divorced from his first wife and marry another Lady, whom he liked much better, he disdainfully threw off that paternal yoke, renounced his connection with Rome, and became himself a great and violent reformer; so as to deserve to be placed in the very first rank among his contemporaries of that denomination. A mighty revolution ensued throughout his dominions: and though we cannot boast of the purity of the source whence it sprung, or of its being distinguished, (at least in the outset,) by much, if any, real virtue; yet it proved eventually of no small advantage and benefit to these nations: and Henry ought to be commemorated as one of the chief and most meritorious of all our royal benefactors.

One of the chief objects of Henry’s reformation, like that of Lather, seems to have been to spite the pope. He had also in view, no doubt, the gratification of his ambition and caprice, which in a mind like his must have been very powerful springs of action. Nor did he miss his aims: he fairly expelled the pope, obtained full scope for his caprice, boundless as it was, and actually acquired far more power than ever, for he now became a complete and uncontrouled despot in temporal, and a pope in spiritual affairs. The two other branches of the legislature, from whom alone any effectual or legal opposition could have arisen, were so far from daring or attempting to check his soaring career, or cross his capricious humour, that they readily and obsequiously concurred in constituting him supreme head both of church and state.

Having reached the utmost point of elevation, or pinnacle of power, he set about reforming the religion, and rectifying the faith of his subjects, after the example of his brother-reformers on the continent; and a most curious, grotesque, and strange piece of work he certainly made of it. Yet it is supposed to be the true foundation or groundwork of our present national establishment, and that Henry himself was the father, or first patriarch of the English protestant Hierarchy. Nor has our established church any just ground or reason, apparently, to disown him in that character, for he was perhaps as holy and good a soul as most of her succeeding patriarchs. But this point we pretend not to determine.

King Henry made his own faith or creed the standard or model for all his subjects, male and female, young and old, learned and unlearned. It was at the utmost peril of any of his subjects if their religion did not exactly tally with his; at least, if he happened to find it out. If shorter or narrower than his, it was at the peril of their lives; and the same again if it proved longer or broader. It must not vary a single inch, or even a hair’s breadth from his, or his majesty would deem it a most grievous offence, and a crime deserving capital punishment. Hence he is known to have put some to death for not going so far from Rome or popery as he did, and some again for going further; and both were occasionally burnt in the same fire, or at the same time. In short, it was then a sad and dismal time in this country, and Henry’s reformation must have been a most strange and terrible work.

Even the bishops and other religious functionaries, who generally fare better than most other people, could not then have a very pleasant time of it; especially the better sort of them, who could have wished to lead honest lives and act somewhat conscientiously, had they been quietly permitted so to do. To that class bishop Latimer is supposed to belong. He seemed more simple and downright than most of the rest, which might involve him in difficulties which his more wary brethren would naturally escape. Accordingly we find the correctness of his creed repeatedly called in question, and he got frequently into heretical scrapes, which he generally managed to get out of by abjuration: [649]—a method which some would be apt to deem not very creditable to his virtue or integrity, though in general looked upon as unimpeachable and of the first order.

“Admitting him” (says Milner to Sturges) “to have been conscientiously persuaded of the truth of the Reformation, was it consistent with christian integrity and virtue to dissemble his religion for twenty years together, and repeatedly abjure it, as he certainly did as often as he found himself threatened with any serious danger by adhering to it? Was it consistent with integrity and virtue to accept of one of the highest offices, the bishopric of Worcester, in a church which he so much reprobated, and even to take an oath of opposing, to the utmost of his power, all persons who dissented from, or were disobedient to it? But supposing you inclined to overlook all this, what will you say to the share he took in the religious persecutions both of Henry’s and of Edward’s reign? What excuse will you make for him when you find him sending christians and protestants to the stake for the very opinion which he himself holds?” [650] These are serious charges, and all apparently well-founded; but the chief and heaviest of them is his being a bloody persecutor. He was moreover one of our chief English reformers, on which account the above brief sketch of his character has been here introduced, along with the rest of his most conspicuous associates, to give the reader an opportunity to judge what veneration is due to their memory, or how well or ill they deserved of their contemporaries and of posterity.

Ridley is another of our protestant prelates that appeared at the head of our English Reformation. Dr. Sturges describes him as “active in the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs.” To which his keen and able opponent replies: “I think, sir, you will grant that he shewed rather too much activity in these affairs, to be consistent with integrity, after I shall have reminded you, that when bishop of Rochester in Henry’s days, and when bishop of London in those of Edward, he was as forward in persecuting protestants and anabaptists as Cranmer, Latimer, and the rest of the prelates were; and that he was one of the most zealous and forward of Dudley’s partisans in endeavouring to interrupt the regular succession of the throne, and in raising that rebellion which was attended with the loss of so much blood.” [651]

Hooper, another of our chief reformers, was much less active than Ridley in the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs. He was somewhat scrupulous about certain vestments and ceremonies; and he might have some scruples too on the subject of persecution: at least it is not in the present writer’s recollection that he was very forward, like the others, in harassing those who were called heretics. His character, however, seems not so indefectible as to entitle him to be held up as a mirror of evangelical soundness, or an object of universal admiration. He has been charged with being the founder of the sect called puritans, which proved so troublesome to our rulers in church and state for a whole century or more: but this is not mentioned here as a blemish in his character. The following circumstances are of a more blamable nature: 1. His obtaining and holding the bishopric of Worcester, in addition to his former bishopric of Gloucester, after having inveighed very strongly in his sermons against pluralities: 2. His consenting to wear the vestments, after having engaged the young king to write to Cranmer that they “were offensive to his conscience;” and his taking the oath of supremacy, after having made his patron, Dudley, write to the same prelate that “it was burdensome to his conscience,” when he found that he could not get promotion otherwise. [652a]

But in our English reformation, under Henry VIII, and Edward VI, the chief agent was confessedly archbishop Cranmer, whose character, as exhibited by eminent protestant writers, abounded with great and glaring blemishes. “The first remarkable circumstance we meet in the life of Cranmer is his privately marrying a woman of low condition, whilst he was fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, [652b] contrary to the engagements of his admission. He afterwards, when a priest, [and while his first wife was alive] married a second wife in Germany, by a much more flagrant violation of his vow of celibacy, and having brought her privately into England, he continued to live with her, in equal opposition to the laws of the church and of the land,” [and though he had assured the king that he had sent her home to Germany.] “Being a Lutheran in principle, as far back as the year 1529, he afterwards accepted the office of pope’s penitentiary, and when named to the archbishopric of Canterbury he was content to accept different bulls from the pontiff to take upon himself the character of his legate in England, and even to make a solemn oath of obedience to him, [652c] with an obligation of opposing all heretics and schismatics, that is to say, according to the received sense of the words, all persons of his own religious persuasion. In like manner he must have said mass, which, in his opinion, was an idolatrous worship, both at his consecration, and frequently at other times, during the fourteen years that he governed the church of England under Henry. He must also necessarily, from time to time, have ordained other priests to perform the same worship, and imposed upon them the obligation of that continency which he himself did not observe. In a word, we see his subscription still affixed to a great variety of doctrinal articles and injunctions, issued during that reign, which we know to have been in direct opposition to his real sentiments.”

“Every one knows that Cranmer owed his rise in the church to the part which he took in Henry’s divorce from queen Catherine of Arragon. Henry tired out with the opposition of Rome, and impatient to be united with his beloved Ann Boleyn, privately marries her Nov. 14, 1532, and Cranmer himself is one of the witnesses of the contract. [653a] On the 11th. of the following March this same prelate writes a letter to Henry, from “pure motives of conscience” as he declares, [653b] but from a preconcerted scheme as the fact proves, representing the necessity there was of determining the long depending cause between him and his queen, and demanding of him the necessary ecclesiastical jurisdiction to decide it. [653c] This being granted, he on the 20th of May pronounces a sentence of divorce between the royal pair, and authorises Henry to take another wife; [653d] six months after he himself had officiated as witness to his marriage with Ann Boleyn, and only four months before the latter was delivered of an infant who was afterwards queen Elizabeth. [654a] What a scandalous collusion in so important a matter of conscience and public example!”

“In less than three years however [his sacred majesty] grows weary of the consort whom he had moved heaven and earth to gain, [654b] and becomes enamoured of a new beauty. Nevertheless appearances must be saved; and therefore Cranmer presents himself as the ready instrument in smoothing the way to the gratification of [his sovereign’s] passions. After a feint effort to save Ann, to whose family he had such infinite obligations, in a cold adulatory letter to the king, which he wrote on the occasion, [655a] he lent all his aid to ruin and oppress her, permitting, if not persuading, her, (standing as she then did upon the verge of eternity) to confess what he knew to be false; [655b] and pronouncing a sentence of divorce, which contained that she had never been validly married to Henry, at the very time when she was lying under sentence of death for violating his bed by adultery!” [655c]

In the transactions relating to Ann of Cleves, Henry’s fourth queen, Cranmer’s conduct appears scarcely less dishonourable than in those relating to Ann Boleyn. Nor does it seem that the death of Henry produced in him any real or material amendment: so that there can be no validity in the excuse usually made for his former misconduct by ascribing it chiefly to that monarch’s despotic will. He appeared just as obsequious to the will of the protector Seymour as he had been before to that of Henry. “To gratify this he consented to set aside in a great measure the last will of his old master, of which he was the first-named executor. [655d] Having raised this ecclesiastical no less than civil idol to undue power, he was ready to pay homage to him with all the essential authority of the church, taking out a new commission for his archbishopric, under the pretext that his former power had expired with the deceased king, and professing to be a prelate no longer than the child Edward, or rather Seymour himself, should acknowledge him to be so.” [656a]

“Cranmer concurred no less in other [misdoings] and disorders of this infant reign, than he did in those stated above. He gratified Somerset by subscribing to the death warrant of his brother. He was afterwards as forward as any of the other courtiers in paying his homage to the rising power of Dudley, when he found the interest of the latter growing stronger than that of Seymour: and he carried his ingratitude to his deceased benefactor Henry, and his infidelity in the discharge of that prince’s last will, to such a length as to concur in excluding his two daughters from their lawful inheritance and right to the crown, in order to place it on the head of Dudley’s daughter-in-law, the lady Jane. If Elizabeth [therefore] had succeeded to the throne immediately after Edward, she would no more have spared Cranmer and Ridley than Mary did.” [656b]

“In conclusion, if Cranmer was burnt to death for heresy, instead of being beheaded for rebellion, [his advocates ought to] reflect, how many persons he himself, whilst he had power in his hands, had condemned to this punishment, on the selfsame accusation.” For it is undeniable that be was instrumental in the execution of many persons for religions opinions, and that some of them held the very tenets for which he himself afterwards suffered. “Though this part of his conduct has keen kept out of sight as much as possible, yet we have certain proofs of his having been one of the chief instruments, under Henry, in bringing to the stake John Lambert, Ann Askew, John Frith, and William Allen, [657a] for denying the real presence of Christ in the sacrament, besides a great number of anabaptists, &c. for their respective opinions.”

“In the reign of Edward VI, besides other most severe persecutions which he carried on against Gospellers, Anabaptists, and other sectaries, amongst whom two at least were Sacramentarians, he was the active promoter and immediate cause of the burning of Joan Knell, [657b] and George Paris or Van Parr, [657c] for certain singular opinions. Amongst those who escaped with their lives, a great part of them were forced to recant, through the fear of torments, and to carry lighted tapers and faggots, in testimony of their having merited burning. [658a] As to the fate of Joan Knell, or Butcher, commonly called Joan of Kent, (and whose innocent blood was evidently shed by the procurement of Cranmer,) Dr. Milner thinks that when it is considered with all its attendant circumstances, a more cruel and wanton act of persecution (he might have said murder,) is not to be found upon record. [658b] “The doctrine for which she suffered (he adds) was of an abstract nature, not calculated to gain proselytes or to occasion any public disturbances. She was barely accused of maintaining, that “Christ passed through the blessed Virgin’s body as water through a conduit, without participating of that body through which he passed.” [659a] For no other cause than persisting in this opinion, she was convented in the church of St. Paul, before archbishop Cranmer and his assistants, convicted and delivered over to the secular arm. We have the sentence that he pronounced on the occasion, which is rigorous beyond the usual terms; and we have a certificate of it, addressed to the king, in which instead of petitioning for mercy, in the usual style of such instruments, the convict heretic is expressly recommended “to receive due punishment.” Nor is this all, for the royal youth being unwilling to sign the warrant for her execution, Cranmer employs all his theological arguments to induce him to comply; amongst other things telling him that “princes, being God’s deputies, ought to punish impieties against God.” In the end Edward sets his hand to the warrant, but with tears in his eyes, telling Cranmer, that “if he did wrong, he (the said Cranmer) should answer for it to God.” At length, by a change in circumstances, the archbishop himself being condemned as a heretic to suffer that cruel death, to which he had condemned so many others on the same account, “he was far from imitating the firmness of the greater part of them.” [659b]

His recantation of his former or protestant principles, at Mary’s accession, is well known. The prevailing notion is, that it was the effect of “a momentary weakness,” or the act and deed of “an unguarded hour:” but that appears very far from being correct or true. On the contrary, “he is proved to have deliberately subscribed six different forms of recantation, at so many different periods, [660a] each one of which was more ample and express than the preceding one; and he remained during the whole five or six last weeks of his life, and until the very hour of his death, either a sincere catholic or an egregious hypocrite. At length finding that, notwithstanding so many retractations, he was upon the point of being executed, he revoked them all, and shewed a resolution at his death which he had exhibited in no one occurrence of his life.” [660b]

Section V.

View of the first fruits of the English reformation, or its immediate and subsequent effects on the public manners and morals—system defective—reasons for introducing these subjects into this work.

We have seen already what were the first fruits, or immediate effects of the continental reformation; and as our own reformation was only the counterpart of that, or, as we might say, its offspring, it was hardly to be expected but that the effects or fruits of both would be similar. We accordingly meet with undeniable evidence that that was really the case. Among those competent witnesses who describe the effects of the reformation in this kingdom, the first place or first hearing, no doubt, is due to that memorable prince who laid the foundation of it, Henry VIII. His majesty speaks very plainly and pointedly upon this subject, in a speech which he delivered to parliament the year before his death. Having then complained of the abuse which the people made of the permission he had granted them to read the scriptures in the vulgar tongue, by “their own phantastical opinions and vain expositions,” instead of consulting him their spiritual head, he goes on: “I am sure that charitie was never so faint amongst you, and vertuous and godlie living was never less, nor God himselfe amongst christians was never less reverenced, honored, or served.” [661]

“That the state of morality was not rendered better, but rather infinitely worse, in the following reign, when the protestant religion was fully developed and established, we have abundant and undeniable evidence in the confessions of the most zealous advocates and abettors of that cause. The following is bishop Burnet’s account of the state of morality under Edward VI: “The sins of England did at that time call down from heaven heavy curses on the land. They are sadly expressed in a discourse that Ridley wrote soon after, under the title of The Lamentation of England: he says that “lechery, oppression, pride, covetousness, and a hatred and scorn of all religion were generally spread amongst all people, but chiefly those of the higher ranks.” [662a]

Ridley’s fellow-bishop, Latimer, speaks still more openly as to one particular vice, in a sermon preached before the king, and quoted by Heylin. His words are these: “Lechery is used in England, and such lechery as is used in no other part of the world. And it is made a matter of sport, a trifle not to be passed on or reformed.” To remedy this he begs that the church may be reinstated in “her right of excommunicating notable offenders, by putting them out of the congregation.” [662b] In another of his court sermons he seems to glance at corruption in high places or offices—such as judges taking bribes: “I would wish,” (says he) “that of such a judge in England now we might have the skin hanged up. It were a goodly sight, the sign of the judge’s skin.” [662c]

“The laborious collector Strype, though a most zealous advocate for the cause of the reformation, yet draws the most frightful picture of the wickedness which prevailed throughout the nation after its first establishment that is to be met with in history. The account is too long to be here inserted at length, but it is comprised under the following heads: “The covetousness of the nobility and gentry; the oppression of the poor; no redress at law; the judges ready to barter justice for money; impunity of murders; the clergy very bad from the bishops to the curates; and above all, the increase of adulteries and whoredom. [663a] The historian Camden’s description of these times agrees with that of the former writers. He says, “The sacrilegious avarice of the times rapaciously seized upon colleges, chantries, and hospitals, under the pretence of superstition: whilst ambition and jealousy amongst the great, and insolence and sedition amongst the people, swelled to such a pitch that England seemed to be raging mad with rebellions, tumults, party zeal, &c.” [663b]

During the reign of Elizabeth, when Camden wrote, and when the reformation had arrived at full maturity, though the civil state of the realm was better regulated, yet in private life, as Dr. Milner observes, “the vices of individuals in every rank rose to the same height of profligacy as before.” In corroboration of this he refers to contemporary protestant testimonies. Stubbs, the author of a piece entitled “Motives to Good Works,” with an epistle dedicatorie to the lord major of London, an. 1596, asserts, among other things, that the observation of Luther, (quoted above, p. [628],) still holds good: and he further says; “For good works who sees not that they (the papists of former times) were far beyond us, and we far behind them.” p. 44. To the same effect speaks R. Jeffery, in his sermon at Paul’s Cross, an. 1604. Many other writers, particularly of the puritan party, have given similar testimonies in reference to the reign both of Elizabeth and also of her successor James. [664]

From the preceding facts or premises we may venture to affirm that the effects of the reformation on those who first embraced it were not such as might be expected, or such as would have appeared, had the religion which the reformers introduced been of divine origin, or the same with that which the apostles promulgated, and which is contained in the New Testament. The latter, like a good tree, produced good fruit; and its effects, wherever it prevailed, or was heartily received, were very different from those above described, and of the very opposite character. It must follow therefore, that the religion of the reformers was so radically and materially defective as not to be adapted to answer some of the chief or most important ends which the religion of Christ was designed to promote—and even that its whole scope and tendency were actually subversive of those very ends.

This will not appear very wonderful when it is considered what manner of spirit the reformers were of, or how their religion was constituted, and that they appear to have paid far more attention to the sayings and dictates of Athanasius and Jerom, Ambrose and Austin, and the rest of those old women called fathers, than they did to those of the apostles and evangelists, or even of Jesus Christ himself. Nothing therefore very good and excellent could be expected from them; nor indeed any thing superior to, or better than such a farrago as they did produce, or such articles, creeds, confessions, directories, formulas, &c. as they thought proper to impose on their disciples and followers. To have produced what was right good, and excellent, they must have drawn from a purer fountain, and partaken of another and very different spirit.

The reformation being destitute of the spirit of christianity, and full of that of popery, which constituted its grand defect, it could not possibly prove that blessing to mankind which it otherwise would have done. It usurped the same dominion over conscience as the old religion did, and persecuted with equal bitterness and violence those who dared to think and judge for themselves, and refused to yield obedience to its authority, or submit to its usurpation. It is difficult therefore to see on what that mighty reverence claimed for the names and memory of the reformers can be founded. Had they actually published and granted liberty of conscience to the people, and allowed every honest man to think and judge for himself, and to serve and worship God according to the conviction of his own mind—then, indeed, might love and gratitude and reverence be justly claimed to their memory, and their names be enrolled among the best and most eminent benefactors of their species. But such was not their conduct.—In fine, considering the spirit which they breathed and the effects which their doctrines produced, it seems impossible to look upon them as promoters of the religion of the New Testament, or promulgators of the genuine gospel of Jesus Christ.

But it may, and probably will be asked, Why introduce these subjects into the present work? To this we beg leave to answer: 1. Because they are in general ill understood, and supposed to be so by many who will probably peruse these sheets, to whom an attempt to place them in a right and true light would be, as it was thought, a reasonable and acceptable service.—2. Because we are now entering upon that part of the work which commences at the reformation, in which of course, many things will occur which have resulted from that event; an introductory sketch of which therefore seemed necessary for the right conception or illustration of such occurrences.—3. Because the discussion of these subjects here will enable the reader to perceive the living image and offspring of the original reformers in those of the present day who assume the character of evangelical, and sole promoters of vital religion. Their principles and spirit evince the stock whence they are sprung: and so also do those filial feelings so very visible in their readiness at all times to defend or palliate the very worst actions of those reformers, and even the murderous deeds of a Calvin and a Cranmer.—4 Because it afforded the author an opportunity to bear his testimony against some of the greatest existing evils that have sprung from the reformation, bigotry and intolerance; which have ever since, even in this protestant country and town, and among most of our tolerated sects, usurped the place of religious liberty, and trampled upon the sacred rights of conscience.

Section VI.

Further remarks on the effects of the Reformation, especially as they appeared in this town.

The effects of the reformation were very great and remarkable, not only on those who were rationally proselyted to it, or who received it upon conviction, but also on them who went with the tide without exercising their reason or troubling their heads at all about the comparative merits of the two religions. Neither party had their morals improved, but on the contrary rendered much more dissolute by the change, as we have already seen. The same event had likewise effects no less visible and remarkable on the very aspect or appearance of both town and country; as must necessarily have been the case from the dissolution and demolition of so many religious houses, and the suppression and expulsion of such a multitude of monks, friars, and nuns, who must have had no small influence in preserving social order, regulating the morals, and restraining many of the vicious propensities of the community.

In fact, the licentiousness which appears to have resulted from the reformation is seemingly to be ascribed to the three following causes—1. The real, apparent, or supposed loose tendency of certain leading doctrines of the reformers, as was observed before.—2. The suppression of the religious houses, whose inhabitants used to be the means of promoting public decency, and checking the influence of licentious principles. [668]—3. The revolutionary character of the reformation. All great revolutions, from their very nature, tend to weaken the ties, and loosen the bands which preserve the good order of society and strengthen the moral habits of its members.—It may be reasonably concluded that each of these causes had a material effect on this town and country at the memorable era of reformation, and long after.

We can discover no appearance or indication that the character or disposition of the Lynn people was further christianized, mollified, or any way improved by that extraordinary event; but rather the contrary. Among the principal transactions left upon record as having taken place here since the reformation, one of the first is “the burning of a Dutchman in the Market place for heresy.” This is said to have happened in the year 1335, and so at an early period of our protestantism. It is remarkable enough that the only instance that occurred in this town of putting a man to death for heresy, or burning him for his religion, happened after the reformation, or since the town became protestant; which shews that people may bear that honourable name and at the same time be very far from humanity and righteousness.

The poor hapless sufferer had probably fled to England and made choice of Lynn as a place of refuge from the persecution which then raged in his own country. He might be induced to take this step from the favourable reports he had heard at home of the generosity and hospitality of our nation towards strangers, and particularly the oppressed and friendless. If such was actually the case, he found himself at last miserably disappointed, and learnt by dear bought and bitter experience, that however abundant the liberality and tender mercies of England and of Lynn might be towards some descriptions of oppressed or distressed people, yet that they by no means extended to those called heretics:—an appellation which has too often meant no more than that those branded with it differed from the ruling or predominant party, and were consigned by them to the ill opinion and detestation of the public.

The deplorable fate of this friendless stranger must stamp indelible disgrace on the memory of his brutal murderers? and it shews what little reason Lynn then had to congratulate itself on its change from popery to protestantism. We have no account what the dreadful heresy was, with which this unpitied victim to protestant bigotry and persecution was charged, and for which he suffered. Whatever it was, it could not be very dangerous or alarming; for as he was a foreigner there could be no danger of his disseminating it here among a people of whose language he can be supposed to have little or no knowledge. In short, every feeling heart must be shocked at the aggravated atrocity of this diabolical deed.

It is sad and mortifying enough to think how much this town has been under the influence of religious bigotry and intolerance, and the most pitiful narrowmindedness almost ever since. The harmless Quakers were here imprisoned and cruelly treated, and the Baptists were harassed in the most unjust and shameful manner even after the revolution. Poor creatures, most wrongfully branded with the odious name of witches, were here also for no short period since the reformation, subjected to rigorous prosecutions and capital punishments. These facts are now just glanced at, but shall be more fully related hereafter in the course of the work.

Unfavourable as some of the reformed doctrines undoubtedly were to moral improvement, it cannot be said to be the case with all of them. Some were evidently of the opposite tendency, as were also some of the romish doctrines. But they could not be expected to produce the desired effect unless they were extensively promulgated; and that does not appear to have been the case in this country, at least till a long while after the commencement of the reformation. It was one of the great and glaring defects of the reforming system in England, that it did not provide a sufficient number of religious or public instructors in lieu of those of the old religion who had been suppressed and silenced at the dissolution of the monasteries and other religious houses, or in consequence of their aversion to the new order of things. These are known to have been very numerous, but the number of the reformed ministers, or protestant clergy, who were appointed to succeed them and supply their places as public instructors, appears to have been very inconsiderable; comparatively at least: and, what is not a little remarkable, they were also, for the most part, far less competent than their predecessors for the charge they undertook. In such circumstances, and with such a ministry, it might be expected that vice and licentiousness would increase and abound.

The state of things at Lynn, at, and long after the reformation, does not appear to have been at all favourable to moral and religious improvement. Before that period the town abounded with religious and moral instructors, such as they were, who certainly contributed in no small measure to preserve social order and public decency; and when they were afterwards superseded, their successors did not appear to greater advantage. They were not their superiors in abilities, and they were far inferior to them in number, and probably no less so in the public estimation, and the weight and extent of their influence over the minds of the inhabitants at large, especially those of the middling and lower orders, who constituted the main body or majority of the inhabitants. For among these there did not appear to be many then, as there had been formerly, who were dissatisfied with the old order of things, and anxious for a religious revolution. [672]

Before the reformation the number of ecclesiastics or religious functionaries at Lynn was very considerable, amounting perhaps to sixty or seventy at least. Of them fifteen belonged to the Austin Convent, twelve to the Dominican, ten to the Franciscan, and eleven to the Carmelite: making in all forty eight. To these may be added the monks of the Benedictine Priory, those who belonged to the Convent de Penitentia, and to the College of Priests, amounting, it may be supposed, on a moderate computation, to twenty or thirty more. Such a number as seventy or eighty, or even sixty clergymen, or public teachers of religion, for this town, would now be thought too large of all reason and conscience. But they were no fewer here before the reformation, if indeed they were so few; and the influence of such a number of ghostly guides and instructors, to restrain immoral excesses, and preserve public decency and social order, must certainly have been very considerable.

At the reformation they were all silenced and suppressed. They were also succeeded, when successors could be found, (which was not always the case) [673] by men who had renounced the spiritual supremacy of the pope, and acknowledged that of the king, which was always an indispensible requirement and qualification. But very generally, it seems, throughout the nation, the protestant successors of the priests, monks, and friars, were poor hands, and ill qualified to instruct and enlighten the people; [674] and such, it is probable, were those who succeeded in this town. There is reason to think that their number too was very small, not exceeding perhaps three or four, or half a dozen at most, which, considering also their deficiency in other respects, was not likely to render them in the eyes of the public of any thing like equal consideration with their expelled predecessors. The state of society therefore could not be expected to be much benefited or improved, or the progress of the reformation facilitated and advanced by their ministration.

To supply the wants or defects, and remedy in some measure the insufficiency of that new race of clergy, the Book of Homilies was composed and introduced; portions of which were directed to be read in the churches instead of sermons. This seems to have been a wise and commendable contrivance, as things then stood. The generality of the clergy were not allowed to preach, owing, it is presumed, to their known or supposed incapacity, or insufficiency to perform that task properly, or to edification. Those of a superior class, who were judged equal to that task, were allowed to take out licences to empower or authorize them to preach to the people. Their preaching was extempore, or without book, as had always been the case before, in this as well as every other country. They could not therefore be objected to on that account.

But it so happened that their preaching did not give general satisfaction; owing, perhaps, partly, if not chiefly, to its containing what Burnet calls “very foul and indiscreet reflections on the other party;” [675a] (meaning the papists;) a party which still contained a large majority of the nation, with not a few of its first families. However that was, the sermons gave great offence, and the preachers were much blamed. Complaints against them were made to the king, “by hot men on both sides,” [675b] as the writer above mentioned expresses himself. On what ground those of their own side, the protestants, objected to their preaching, it is not easy to discover: nor does it appear to be very material. They must however have been rather unfortunate, to incur the displeasure of their friends as well as their enemies. But what makes this of most importance is what resulted from it, and which we will now proceed to relate.

Of the charges and accusations brought against those preachers it is very probable that not a few were utterly unfounded and false, the offspring of envy and malice. Others might be mere misrepresentations or exaggerations, proceeding from unintentional mistake or strong prejudice. But as the discourses referred to and complained of were delivered extemporaneously or off hand, the accused could not easily and effectually disprove what their accusers had alleged against them, as they could do little more than oppose their own word or testimony to those allegations, which was not likely to prove always satisfactory to their superiors. In order therefore to justify themselves, and be secure in future from misrepresentation and false accusation, they came generally to write and read their sermons. [676] This was the beginning of preaching from notes, and thus was the reading of sermons introduced among the clergy of the church of England, which has universally prevailed there ever since, with the exception of the puritans in former times, and those called evangelical clergy in the present day.

This practice seems to be still confined to the clergy of the church of England, and the English presbyterians; which may account for the small effect the ministry of either has on the lower orders of the community. By the Scotch Presbyterians, or the church of Scotland it has never been adopted, nor would it be deemed, beyond the Tweed, worthy the name of preaching: all there is extempore, or from memory; yet the common people there are of far superior morals, and infinitely better informed than those of this country; which furnishes at least a strong presumption that the ancient practice is abundantly preferable to the other in its tendency, aptitude, or adaptation to attract the attention, impress the minds, improve the manners and character, and promote the moral and religious proficiency of the lower ranks of society, which constitute the great body of the nation.

Such was the practice of the Lollards, or Wickliffites formerly, when they brought half the nation over to their way of thinking; such also was the practice of the puritans and nonconformists afterwards, whose success was by no means inconsiderable, notwithstanding the grievous opposition and persecution which they had to encounter: and such, we all know, has been and is the practice of the popular dissenters and methodists of the present day, who seem to bid fair soon to bring two thirds of the thinking and serious part of the nation to enlist under their banners. In short, we know of no preaching, but what has been extempore or without book, that has ever made very deep impression, or produced any mighty and salutary effect upon the minds of the common people. If therefore this kind of preaching were to cease, or be discontinued among us, there is every reason to believe that the lower orders of our countrymen would soon become heathenized, barbarized, and brutalized to a most deplorable degree; and that the profession of religion would ere long be confined within narrow limits, and to a comparatively small party among our middling classes.

This modern device, or, as it may be called, the English mode of promoting religious knowledge by reading sermons, which excludes half the nation from almost any chance of receiving instruction, has yet had its warm admirers and encomiasts among us, who have not failed most lavishly to congratulate or compliment their dear country on the important result of this contrivance, in the unequalled number of English printed sermons, of a cast and merit superior to those of any other nation. Now allowing all this to be true, and that the generality of the clergy have aimed at excelling in the same way in all their unprinted discourses, must it not follow that they have taken pains to compose such elaborate productions as will be, after all, of little or no use to the greatest part of those who have been committed to their charge? This seems to be one reason why so many are seen to withdraw from the church and resort to the conventicle. May it not be said therefore, that the practice in question, or this change which commenced at the reformation, has proved unfavourable, not only to the interest of the common people of this country, but even to that of the established church itself?

As to this town, at and for some time after the reformation, it does not seem likely, from the character of that event, and the complexion and small number of the reformed successors of the priests, monks, and friars, that it derived much, if any, moral or intellectual improvement from that change. Its few officiating protestant clergymen, with their humdrum reading of homilies or illsuited sermons, could prove but poor substitutes for the numerous friars that preceded them, whose preaching, like that of our modern methodists, &c. was always animated and energetic, directed chiefly and powerfully to affect the feelings, and move and rouse the passions of their auditors: and it was delivered in a plain familiar style, and a language suited to the weakest understanding and meanest capacity. Here the friars excelled, and here the preachers of our modern popular sects excel also, and succeed abundantly, like their prototypes. [678]

It seems very probable, though it may be thought not a little strange, that the impression and influence of moral and religious principles have never been so general or extensive among the common people of this town and country since the reformation, as they were before, in the time and by means of the friars. They used to go about unweariedly, and dispense their precepts to all ranks of people, in a language suited to every capacity, so that those of the lowest condition appear to have been as much the objects of their attention, and as completely under their discipline as any of the rest. This cannot be said to have been the case at any one period with our established protestant clergy. One half, if not two thirds of those committed to their charge have generally lain beyond the range of their ministry, with little chance of deriving any benefit or advantage from their labours. They would therefore have remained from generation to generation in a state of mere barbarism or heathenism, but for the laudable exertions of some of our religious sectaries, who yet have been always viewed by our rulers with an evil eye, when they certainly ought to have been looked upon with approbation and gratitude, as richly entitled to their good opinion and encouragement.

We know of no period in the history of this town, from the reformation to the present time, when a great majority of its population was not involved in deplorable and heathenish darkness. Nor do we know of any period when the town was favoured with a more respectable clergy than those who officiate in the churches here at present. Yet the state of the town, even now, appears to answer to the above description; though there are here several dissenting chapels, besides the established places of worship, which are all well attended. In fact, more than two thirds of our population, at this very time, notwithstanding all the labours and efforts of our established and dissenting ministers, appear still to remain as destitute of any sense of religion as if religion had been actually abolished, or as if a law had passed to prohibit the public profession of it.

As to our churches and chapels, though they may be thought by some too numerous and too spacious, yet they are certainly very inadequate to the want or accommodation of the inhabitants, in case they were generally disposed to attend the public worship. The present writer has lately learnt and ascertained, that but little more than one third of our population could be held or accommodated for the purposes of religious worship in all these places. [680] How very unreasonable therefore must those little jealousies be which our religious parties too often manifest towards each other, as if religion had been no more than a trade, and they thought it allowable to vilify their brother-tradesmen in order to draw more customers to their own shops. This evil spirit has been more manifest and predominant here of late years among Dissenters than among Churchmen.

Section VII.

Effects of the reformation at Lynn further exemplified—dissolution of the convents, chapels, and gilds—suppression and expulsion of the monks and friars—the consequences.

It seems very probable, and even morally certain, that all the inhabitants of this town, before the reformation, were in the habit of paying attention to religious institutions and observances, or to the externals of the religion that was then in vogue. The numerous friars and other religious functionaries would not fail to keep them to that, as they had, without doubt, sufficient inclination, influence and power so to do. From this state of things we may reasonably conclude that a change for the worse would, and actually did take place after the reformation, when so many convents and chapels were shut up, which were before much resorted to: in consequence of which the bulk of the people were necessarily deprived of any fair chance or opportunity to attend upon, and profit by the public ministrations of their new or protestant pastors: and this, as was before observed, has really been the case here to this day.

The shutting up and demolition of the chapels must have been a very strange, impolitic, and unaccountable measure; and the suppression of the gilds was perhaps not much less so. The former measure deprived more than half the inhabitants of an opportunity to receive public instruction, or to attend public worship; and the latter dissolved and abolished a number of fraternal institutions, or friendly societies, of long standing, most of which, if not all, seem to have been very harmless, and many of them apparently of the same useful tendency as our modern benefit clubs, whose general utility is unquestionable, and universally acknowledged. Were our present government to abolish or prohibit these, it would certainly be, not only an unjustifiable deed, but a real and very serious grievance. How much less so the suppression of the Gilds may have been, it is perhaps not very easy to determine. Though the possessions of some of these Gilds were very considerable, yet they were all sequestered, and no part of them, that we know of applied to any public advantage, or real benefit to the community. [682] As it was with the sequestration of the possessions of the gild companies, so it was also with that of the possessions of our convents, or different religious orders. They were lavishly bestowed and thrown away on a certain royal minion, or court favourite, of the name of Eyre, from whom they soon passed into different hands as regardless as himself of the public welfare. Had a due regard been paid to the public good, these possessions might have been laid out, or applied, so as to form such foundations and establishments as might have proved of great and lasting benefit to the community, and amply compensate for any detriment that accrued to the lower ranks of society, or to the public morals, from the expulsion of the friars, or shutting up of their houses. But Henry was not the only sovereign of these realms who appeared more bent upon the gratification of his own caprice and waywardness than the promotion or advancement of the public weal.

The poor of this town must have sustained a most serious loss by the expulsion of the monks and friars and the sequestration of their revenues; which deprived them of their best friends, at whose houses they were entertained, not only with moral and religious instruction, but also with food for their bodies. For it is well known that the monasteries and convents were eminent for their hospitality, and furnished the poor with their chief support in those days. The friars also were very remarkable for the attention which they paid the poor and the rest of the common people, over whom they maintained no small influence, even in seasons of public commotion, distraction and anarchy. It is no wonder therefore that those of the lower orders long regretted their disappearance, and had songs composed to celebrate the superior felicity of the times when the country was honoured with their residence. [684a]

We know of but two periods at which Lynn appears to have materially suffered from the circumstance of unoccupied or empty houses. One of those periods is the present, when the number of such houses amounts to some scores, owing to the extreme pressure of burdens brought upon the inhabitants by the inexcusable misdoings of some of their own townsmen. [684b] The other period was at the reformation, or after the dissolution of the monasteries, when all the convents in this town with many chapels and other religious houses were shut up, and afterwards demolished; so that the people, for the most part, were left without places where they might attend public worship and receive religious instruction; which must have proved very unfavourable to the public morals, from its obvious and powerful tendency to deprave and barbarize those who were so situated.

Previously to the actual dissolution of the monasteries, &c. a formal surrender and resignation, and also a confession, generally took place. This was solemnly declared to have been done voluntarily, though the contrary was well known to have been the fact. These deeds of surrender are still in being, with some also of the confessions; but most of them are said to have been destroyed in Mary’s reign: it being then, probably, in contemplation, if circumstances would admit, to restore those places to their former occupants.—The instruments or deeds of surrender from Lynn are supposed to be still extant in the Augmentation Office. But as the present writer has not seen them, he can only guess what their tenor was from such as have fallen in his way, which he has met in Burnet’s History of the Reformation, and Martin’s History of Thetford.

The work last mentioned contains a copy of the surrender of the Dominican Convent at Thetford, addressed “To all the Faithful in Christ,” and solemnly declaring that “the Prior and Convent of the House or Priory commonly called The Black Friars and Convent of the same, with unanimous assent and consent, with minds deliberate, and with our free will and certain knowledge, and for certain just and reasonable causes, our souls and consciences in a special manner moving, freely and of our own accord have given, granted, and by these presents do give, grant and restore, release and confirm to the most illustrious prince, our lord Henry VIII, by the grace of God of England and France king, defender of the faith, lord of Ireland, and on earth supreme Head of the English church, all our said Priory or House called the Black Friars, in Thetford aforesaid, together with all and singular the messuages, gardens, tofts, lands, tenements, meadows, feeds, pastures, woods, rents, reversions, services, mills, &c. &c.”

This Surrender was dated 30. Henry VIII, and subscribed by the Prior Richard Cley, Robert Baldry, Edward Dyer, Edmund Palmer, and two more.—“Those mercenary monks (says Martin) were obliged by royal authority to resign what they valued most upon earth, and declare the will of their sovereign to be the motion of their own minds; whereas their possessions were extorted from them contrary to their wishes and inclinations. They acquired their wealth by hypocrisy, and parted with it under the influence of the same principle.” [687] But he should have remembered that hypocrisy of much the same sort was displayed by the corporations, or the different cities and boroughs, in the reign of James II, in the surrender of their respective charters: and the hypocrisy of the latter was perhaps much less excusable than that of the poor friars, because they were in much less peril.—The mayors and aldermen ran no risk of hanging, but several of the others were actually hanged, for refusing to surrender and play the hypocrites.

A copy of the Surrender of the Carmelites in Stamford has been preserved by Burnet, and is as follows—

“Forasmuch as we the Prior and Friers of this House of Carmelites in Stamford, commonly called the White Friers in Stamford, in the County of Lincoln, do profoundly consider that the perfection of Christian living doth not consist in some Ceremonies, wearing of a white Coat, disguising ourselves after strange fashions, dockying and becking, wearing Scapulars and Hoods, and other-like Papistical Ceremonies, wherein we have been most principally practised and noseled in times past; but the very true way to please God, and to live a true Christian Man, without all hyprocrisy and feigned dissimulation, is sincerely declared to us by our Master Christ, his Evangelists and Apostles; being minded hereafter to follow the same, conforming ourselves to the will and pleasure of our supreme Head, under God, on Earth, the King’s Majesty; and not to follow henceforth the superstitious traditions of any forinsecal potentate or power, with mutual assent and consent, do submit ourselves unto the mercy of our said Sovereign Lord, and with the Like mutual assent and consent do surrender,” &c. [688]—signed by the Prior and six Friers.

The poor monks and friars and nuns, previously to their expulsion, were forced to play the hypocrites and tell lies to save their necks, which was certainly very hard upon them. But rulers have seldom minded or commiserated hardships of that sort. With whatever they ordain or impose they always expect a ready compliance, however unreasonable in itself, or however hard it may bear on the consciences of their subjects. The above religious orders, by falsely declaring that they surrendered voluntarily and of their own accord, saved their lives, but lost their livelihood. A few abbots &c. were provided for; but thousands of friars and nuns were turned out into the wide world pennyless; which must have been very inhuman and cruel. We are assured that the arts flourished in the convents to the last. Many of the abbots and other heads of houses had been terrified, persuaded, or bribed, as it is said, to surrender their trusts. Three only (those of Colchester, Reading and Glastonbury) resisted to the last, and fell by the hands of the executioner. [689]

With respect to Lynn, it does not appear that the heads of the houses or convents, or any of the brethren, made the least difficulty to surrender in the form and manner prescribed to them. They therefore ran no risk of the gallows: they saved their lives, but lost their living; for they were turned adrift and thrown upon the wide world. Many of them, and of their fellow sufferers, had a pretty good chance of obtaining subsistence by their own ingenuity; for they had among them some excellent penmen, some notable carvers, some admirable embroiderers, some intelligent gardeners; and, in short, some that excelled in every useful art, and in all handycraft employments. There they had greatly the advantage of our modern clergy, many of whom, it is to be feared, know little beyond what appertains to the occupation of sportsmen or foxhunters, which would afford but a poor prospect of subsistence, if they had nothing else to depend upon.

Moreover, we must reckon among the most striking and memorable effects which the reformation had upon Lynn the very visible and degrading change it produced in the aspect or appearance of the town, reducing it, as it evidently did, to a most mean and paltry object, compared to what it was previously to that event. For the demolition and disappearance of so many stately edifices, which had long been the pride and boast of the inhabitants, must have had a most strange, humiliating and transforming effect upon the place, both with respect to its external aspect, or as it appeared without from the adjacent country, and also as it looked within, to those who passed through its streets, or observed it internally. It must have looked somewhat like a town that had undergone a close and successful siege, and which had been left half demolished and ruined by a victorious and exasperated enemy. In short, the present Lynn, or this town since the reformation, must have always made a far inferior, or much meaner figure than the former or papal Lynn, with its four large and stately convents, adorned with lofty towers, and ranged along the whole town from south to north. Besides them we must also reckon the Benedictine Priory, the convent of the friars de Penitentia, the College, the churches or chapels of St. John, St. James, St. Catherine, St. Anne, those of our Lady at the Bridge and on the Mount, and undoubtedly other venerable structures, whose sites and very names are now forgotten and unknown.

In fine, there were perhaps not many towns in the kingdom, if indeed there were any at all, whose appearance underwent a greater change than this, at, and in consequence of the reformation. Had two persons, a papist and a protestant, who remembered the town in its former state, now visited and jointly surveyed it, one would have been apt to take up his lamentation and pronounce Ichabod! its glory is departed! while the other would be no less apt exultingly to exclaim “Babylon is fallen, is fallen!”—But a third person, accustomed to view things with the eyes of a christian philosopher, would have given way to neither lamentation nor exultation, but would have considered the whole as the natural effect of a mighty revolution, and an additional proof of the changing and perishing nature of all human productions and sublunary magnificence.

CHAP. II.

History of Lynn for the first hundred years after the reformation; or rather, from the dissolution of the monasteries to the meeting of the long parliament and commencement of the civil wars.

In the preceding account of the immediate effects of the reformation upon this town little or nothing occurs that appears of a very pleasing or favourable nature. No symptoms are discernable of either moral or intellectual improvement. The town had become protestant, but superstition and ignorance still remained, and licentiousness and barbarism seemed rather to increase than diminish. The former religious functionaries or instructors were expelled, and they were succeeded by men less competent than themselves for the tuition or instruction of the people: and therefore it was not to be expected that the latter should be better taught, or further enlightened under their guidance and management. On the contrary, we may suppose them to have gone in a retrograde rather than in a progressive direction: and so it seems really to have happened. In fact, very little appears to have been done here of reformation work, or for the advancement of protestantism during the long period now under consideration, besides the expulsion of the monks and friars and demolition of their Houses. Of that little, some account shall be given in the following section.

Section I.

Statement of the progress of protestantism, or of the most remarkable and memorable acts or works of reformation which took place at Lynn during the first century after its renunciation of the papal supremacy.

The first fruits of the reformation at Lynn seem to be the burning of the Dutchman before mentioned, and hanging, sometime after, a certain friar, of the name of William Gisborough. The former suffered for what was called heresy, but we cannot find what the crime was that was laid to the charge of the latter. It seems most probable however, that it was denying the king’s spiritual supremacy, or maintaining that the pope, and not his majesty, was the supreme head of the church. This was a crime, or heresy, which Henry never would tolerate, after he had set up for himself in competition with the Roman pontiff, as a kind of antipope, or pontifex maximus of England. Many a luckless wight was put to death, during the latter part of his reign, for no other fault, or offence, but that of being unconvinced of his majesty’s right and title to be on earth the supreme head of the English church. They could not, it seems, help their scruples; and therefore it was, surely, very hard and cruel to put them to death. But kings and courtiers are seldom disposed to be very tender, or shew much mercy to those who do not think well of their pretensions, however doubtful, unreasonable, or absurd they happen to be: and they come not unfrequently under one or other of these denominations.

In Edward’s reign, very little if any reformation work appears to have been carried on at Lynn. At his death we are told that Lord Audley came here and proclaimed Lady Jane Grey queen of England; which seems to imply that this town was favourable to her succession. However that was, her succession was frustrated, and she came soon after to an untimely and tragical end, though she appears to have been worthy of a better fate.—Mary succeeded; in whose reign the very name of reformation was exploded: its favourers were persecuted with the utmost rigour, hundreds of them suffered at the stake, and a still greater number fled their native country, and found an asylum in foreign parts, where they staid till the storm was blown over, or, in other words, till Mary was no more. She was succeeded by a sovereign that was more favourable to a certain description of reformation and reformers, though in other respects of an equally intolerant and unamiable character.

At the accession of Elizabeth the pope was again discarded, and her majesty assumed the character of reformer and supreme head of the church. The protestant exiles now returned home, and resumed the arduous task of reforming their countrymen, though from what is known to have been the conduct of too many of them while abroad, it would seem that they ought first of all to have reformed themselves. They rapidly obtained preferment in the church, and many of them were promoted to the vacant sees, some of whom soon became most bitter persecutors of the poor puritans and other protestant sectaries:—so little good effect had their former sufferings upon them, and so far was their experience of the bitterness of persecution from disposing them to refrain from being themselves concerned in the same bloody and detestable work.

The effect of the new order of things was soon felt at Lynn, and the inhabitants were furnished with convincing proofs that the new was once more to supersede and triumph over the old religion. In the first year of this queen’s reign, “the rood lofts,” we are told, “and the images that were upon them, were taken down from all the churches in this town.” There surely could be no great harm in this. The harm, if there was any, must lie in its being done before the people had been convinced of the inutility and impropriety of setting up such images and retaining them in their churches. The work certainly should have succeeded and not preceded the people’s conviction of its reasonableness and propriety.

At the same time, or in the course of the same year 1559 “The steps,” as we further learn, “were taken from the altars in this town, and the ground, at the upper, or east ends of all the churches levelled with that in the other parts of them.”—All this seems to have been a courtly or royal mode of reforming: for it appears to have been done before the inhabitants were convinced of its necessity, or knew any thing about the meaning of it. It was done, no doubt, by royal authority; and that is reason enough for any thing, in the eyes of most courtiers and statesmen. It was, however, a preposterous mode of proceeding, as it was beginning the work at the wrong end, and treating the people as if they had not been rational beings, but were to be brought under discipline and made to obey their masters or managers just like all other cattle. But mankind have been treated pretty much in the same way in all ages.

The year following, (1560,) “several gentlemen came here,” (as it is said,) “by order of the privy council, to take the state of St. James’s church, but were opposed and resisted by the corporation.” Whether the object of those gentlemen, in taking the state of the said church was to have it repaired and refitted for a place of worship, or something else, we are not told. If the former the corporation was probably to blame in resisting them, as there seemed to be need enough for an additional place of worship, if it was thought desirable that the inhabitants should more generally attend at such places. Nor is it very easy to conceive how the corporation durst resist them, if they were indeed authorised by Letters from the privy council to do what they proposed. In short, the circumstance is involved in too much obscurity and uncertainly to allow our hazarding any decided opinion upon it.

The next year, (1561,) “many popish relics and mass books are said to have been burnt here, in the market place.” This, probably, was also premature; being done, in all likelihood, before the inhabitants were sufficiently enlightened and satisfied of the inutility or perniciousness of those books and relicks. The articles thus destroyed were seemingly such as had belonged to this town, and had been, till then, carefully preserved here. It is not very clear that the destruction of them could be of any material advantage to the cause of the reformation: it only serves to shew the spirit and complexion of Elizabeth’s reforming system.—About seven years after the date of this last transaction, another very similar to it occurred here: for we are told under 1568, “This year several vestments, popish relics, strings of beads, and crucifixes, were brought from Tilney to Lynn, and burnt in the open market.” This seems to indicate that Tilney was a very noted place for that kind of ware before the reformation: but it was now, as we may suppose, entirely deprived of them, so as to be reduced, in that respect, upon a level with the rest of its neighbours. This, however, would not have signified much, had the people been carefully instructed and rationalized. But that really appears have been exceedingly and shamefully neglected at Lynn and the parts adjacent for a very long period after the accession of Elizabeth, as we shall endeavour to shew in the following Section.

Section II.

Observations on the slow progress, or low state of protestantism, and of intellectual and moral improvement at Lynn during the period under consideration.

During no one part of the long century which we are now reviewing does it appear that this town had any great taste or desire for reformation. It was forced upon it at first, rather than sought for or desired; and it was submitted to out of pure loyalty, or profound deference to his majesty’s royal will and better judgment, as would, probably, have been the case had he appointed Mahomet, instead of the pope, or himself, to be the Head of the church. Be that as it might, it seems pretty evident that Lynn remained in a very dark and unimproved state from the era of the reformation till towards the middle of the seventeenth century, if not much longer. It bore indeed the name of a protestant town, but its faith, its morals, and its manners, appear not to have been at all superior, or more estimable than they were when it was a popish town, or remained under the papal jurisdiction. Thus it has often happened, that large communities as well as individuals have borne the honourable names of christians and protestants while they remained as far from the kingdom of heaven, or from the light and influence and spirit of the New Testament as the most superstitious romanists, or blindest heathens.

In the early part and near the commencement of this period, Baret, a native of this town, as was before mentioned, renouncing popery, embraced protestantism, and became a very laborious and famous preacher. But it was Norwich, and not Lynn that reaped the benefit of his labours; a pretty plain indication of the very low estimation in which eminent protestant preachers were then held among our ancestors. Had they highly appreciated the labours of such instructors, there can be little doubt but they would have invited and encouraged him to settle here: nor is it less probable that he would in that case have preferred his native town to any other place. But as there is not the least appearance of its being thought of getting him to settle here, it is very natural to conclude that Lynn was then no way zealous in the cause of reformation, and felt no kind of anxiety for introducing and establishing an able protestant ministry: and the same we presume continued to be the case for a very long season afterwards.

About the latter part of the reign of James I, or the beginning of that of his successor, the pious, learned, and memorable Samuel Fairclough became lecturer of this town: and he is the only protestant preacher that we know of among the Lynn clergy, during this long period, who set himself in good earnest, and with any prospect of success, about civilizing the town or reforming the inhabitants. But a host of enemies rose against him, which soon obliged him to desist and retire. The whole body of publicans and sinners, (and among the latter, without doubt, the manufacturers of strong beer, or the brewers, [699]) became decidedly hostile to him; for it was found that great numbers of those who formerly used to spend their Sundays at the alehouses, now discontinued that practice, and attended Fairclough’s ministry. This was very alarming to the votaries of the great goddess Diana, of Lynn. Like the Ephesian craftsmen, they perceived that their beloved craft, by which they got their wealth, was in imminent danger, and therefore it was high time to bestir themselves, and make such an outcry and uproar against this troublesome preacher as would oblige him to desist and decamp.

What greatly promoted and insured the attainment of their wishes was, that the diocesan, Dr. Harsnett, with his spiritual (or rather diabolical) court took the same side. The other clergy of the town were also supposed, out of envy, to do the same, underhand. The pretext for this spiritual interference was, that the preacher did not use the sign of the cross in the ceremony of christening; which, however disorderly some might deem it, had certainly nothing in it of moral turpitude. Had the whole ceremony been omitted, as well as that idle appendage, there would have been, perhaps, no mighty loss to any body, except to the preacher himself, who, in that case, it may be supposed, would have sustained some loss. In short, this preacher of righteousness was driven away by the violence and threatening aspect of the opposition that had been raised against him, and which to him and friends appeared irresistible. He removed to Clare in Suffolk, a more christianlike place, where, and in the adjacent parts, he long continued eminently useful, as well as greatly and deservedly respected. The Lynn people by expelling him prolonged the duration of their own blindness and barbarism.

Section III.

The fast of Lent rigidly enforced and strictly observed at Lynn to the very close of this period, a further proof of the dark and unreformed state of the town—additional observations.

That the observance of Lent was rigorously enforced and religiously regarded here as late as the reign of Charles I, admits of no manner of doubt. None, but those whose cases absolutely required it, were allowed here to taste of flesh meat during all that season. In such cases licences were applied for to the parish-minister, and obtained, provided the cases came well attested. But a strict charge was given not to exceed the bounds, or time, specified in the licence, without acquainting the minister, in order to have the licence renewed and continued. Of this we have sufficient evidence in the old parish-book of South Lynn, where, under the date of 1632, there is the following memorandum, in the hand writing of Mr. Man, who was then the minister of that parish.

“A Copy of a License for eating flesh in time of childbed, to the wife of goodman Sowell of South Lynn, blacksmyth, according to law, during the time of her sickness, granted the 14. of March 1633, and now eight dayes after, her sicknes still continuing, registered hereunder as followeth”—

“Forasmuch as the wife of goodman Sowell of South Lynn (being a member of the Borough of King’s Lynn) in the county of Norfolk, blacksmith, now lying in childbed, is by the testimony of the midwife and her said husband and others, testified to me to be very weak and sick; these are therefore, upon her and friends very earnest request, so far as in me is, and according to the statute in that behalf provided, for the better recovery of her former health and strength again, to signify that by me the minister of the said parish, she is licensed, the time of Lent notwithstanding, to eat flesh: Always provided that the said license continue no longer in force than only for the time of this her present sicknes: And if this her present sicknes shall continue above the space of eight days next after the date hereof, that then I be certified thereof further to perform and do therein as law requireth. In witness whereof the day and year above written I have hereunto sett my hand and seale

By me John Man cler. minister ibid: [702a]
In the presence of me Tho. Lilly churchwarden.” [702b]

The duty of the Lynn Clergy must have been much greater then, especially during the time of Lent, than it is at present; for it may be supposed that these applications for licences were not few or unfrequent: and if they were obliged to do this work for nothing, it must have been still harder upon them. However that was, this practice seems to have continued till the civil wars broke out, or till the town was besieged and taken by the Earl of Manchester, when it was strongly garrisoned by the parliament, and made to undergo a civil as well as religious reformation. This appears to have been the greatest and most thorough reformation this town ever underwent, or experienced; at least, since the days of Henry VIII: for the long parliament, like his majesty, seldom did things by halves, but generally carried on with energy and effect whatever they took earnestly in hand.

It may very safely be concluded that the religious observance of Lent was discontinued at Lynn from the time referred to till the restoration, when it seems to have been again revived, both here and throughout the kingdom, among all true churchmen. For it appears to have been one of those choice and invaluable blessings which Charles II, (that most sacred, and most religious sovereign, as his bishops and clergy used to call him,) restored to us at his return from exile. Accordingly, we find, by the public prints and records of that period, that his majesty from the beginning of his reign, or first arrival, was attentive to this point. Among other plain indications of this is a striking passage in the Mercurius Publicus, of February 21, 1661, (a flaming weekly court paper of that time,) which is worded as follows.

“London Feb. 16.—We are commanded to give Notice of a malicious Slander against the good government of the city of London for observation of Lent according to law and his Majesties Proclamation: some malecontents suggesting that the company of Fishmongers have confessed they are not able to supply the market with fish sufficient for this occasion; (and therefore that the late proclamation will be recalled) which is so false and bottomles a fiction that the most vigilant Lord Maior hath assured the Lords of his Majesties Privy Council how the company of fishmongers do not only undertake to furnish the market with plenty and variety of good and wholesome fish, but to sell fish cheaper by twopence in a shilling; which is more than sufficient to stop the mouths of all that are averse to our good and wholesome laws (made upon so long experience, and so necessary for the common good and safety of this Island) which yet deprive none of the benefit of dispensation, whose condition really requires other dyet, such as are aged, or infants, women with child, sick persons, and such whose health and constitution is known to be prejudiced by continuall eating fish; for all whom the Law hath provided Licences and Dispensations to eat Flesh.” [704]

Here Charles appears in the character of a religious king, to which he, of all men living, had, perhaps, the least pretension. Yet his bishops and clergy unblushingly gave him that title, and would frequently mention him, even in their addresses to the Deity himself, under the same appellation, and under one still stronger—“Our most religious king!” So much for the bishops and clergy of those days. But it was in Scotland that his majesty’s religious and reforming character, at least in respect to the strict observance of Lent, was exhibited in the most striking light. This may be inferred from the following curious document in the above mentioned Court-newspaper of Feb. 26. 1662, which, though somewhat extraneous and out of place, the author hopes the reader will excuse his introducing it here, as he knew of no fitter place for its insertion.

“Edinburgh 12. Febr. 1662.—Forasmuch as the not keeping of Lent and Fish days, conform to several Acts of Parliament and late Act of Council of the sixth of February 1662, hath been occasioned by not exacting the penalties therein contained from the contraveeners, who, upon hopes of impunity, may still continue disobey the saids Acts, to the great prejudice of the kingdom: Therefore the Lords of his Majesties Privy Council have thought fit to cause intimat publickly at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh, that none presume nor take upon hand to contraveen the saids Acts; with certification if they failize, the pains and penalties therein contained shall be exacted with all rigour: and that they will crave an account of all Magistrates and other Ministers of Justice, who are intrusted to procure obedience to the saids Acts, and give notice of the offendors within their respective bounds, as they will be answerable; and for that effect to cause, of new again, intimat the aforesaid Act; whereof the tenor follows—The Lords of His Majesties Privy Councill taking to their consideration the greatest advantage and profit will redound to all the Leiges of this kingdome, by keeping the time of Lent and the weekly Fish dayes, viz. Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, and discharging of all persons to eat any flesh, during that time and upon the saids dayes; or to kill or sell in the Marcats any sort of Fleshes which are usually brought at other times, whereby the young brood and store will be preserved; so that hereafter the hazard of scarcity and dearth may be prevented, and the fishes, which by the mercy of God, abound in the salt and fresh waters of this kingdome, may be made use of for the food and entertainment of the Lieges, to the profit and encouragment of many poor families who live by fishing; the improvement whereof hath not been looked to these many years by gone, which hath been occasioned by the universal allowance of eating flesh and keeping of Mercats at all ordinary times without any restraint, against which many laudable Laws and Acts of Parliament have been made, prohibiting the eating flesh during the said time of Lent or upon the saids Fishdays, under the pains therein contained. Therefore, Ordains and Commands, that the time of Lent, for this year, and yearly hereafter, shall begin and be kept as before the year of God 1640, and that the saids weekly Fishdays be strictly observed in all time coming. And that no subject of whatsoever rank, quality or degree (except they have a special Licence) presume to eat any flesh during the said time of Lent, or upon the saids three weekly Fishdayes; and that no Butchers, Cooks, or Hostlers, kill, make ready or sell any flesh, either publickly in Mercats or privately in their own houses, during the said time or upon the saids dayes, under the penalties following, to be exacted with all rigour, viz. For the first fault 10l; for the second 20l; and for the third fault 40l; and so to be multiplied according to the oft contraveening of the said Act, to be exacted and payed, the one half to the king’s Majesty, and the other half to the delators. Likeas, for the surer exacting of the said pains, they give power and warrand to all Magistrates within Burghs, and all Sheriffs, Stewards, and Bailies within their several Jurisdictions, to enquire after the contraveeners and to pursue them before the Lords of Privy Council, or such others as shall be appointed or delegat for that effect. And ordains Heraulds, Macers, or Messengers at Arms, to make publication hereof at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh, and other places needful, and that these presents be printed that none pretend ignorance.

Pet. Wedderburne Cl. Sti. Concillii.”

The above may serve as a sample of the manner in which that father of his people, king Charles II, managed, disciplined, and educated his Caledonian children. It was severe enough; but he sometimes far exceeded this specimen of his paternal attention; especially when he had some of the most obstreperous of those children of his hunted with bloodhounds, like wild beasts. This, as we learn from Laing’s excellent History of Scotland, was sometimes actually the case in that memorable reign. Having been naturally led to these digressions by the circumstance of the strict and religious observance of Lent in this town till near the middle of the 17th century, (which shews the small progress protestantism had made here down to that period,) we shall now resume the thread of our history.

Section IV.

Observations on other occurrences relating to Lynn during the period under consideration.

Lynn appears to have been several times visited, during this period, by the plague and other destructive diseases; and there is great reason to be thankful that it has not in more modern times experienced the like awful visitations. In 1540 the town is said to have been so severely afflicted with hot burning agues, (or intermittent fevers) and fluxes, that no Mart was kept here that year; which shews that the disorder must have raged to a terrible degree, and proved a most severe scourge to the town. The plague also was here three or four different times within this period. The last of them was in 1636, when it raged so violently and dreadfully that the markets were discontinued, and wooden houses or sheds were set up under the town-walk for the reception of the diseased, especially those of the poorer sort. It must have been a most awful season, and the present generation ought to rejoice in having escaped such calamities.—In 1598 also there was here a very great and destructive sickness: but it is not said of what sort or description it was: only we are told, that the mortality was so great, from March to July, that three hundred and twenty persons were buried in St. James’s Church Yard. To whatever cause it is to be ascribed, it seems to be a fact, that this town has been much healthier for the last 140 years than it was during the period of which we are now treating. There is a natural cause, no doubt, for that difference, though it may not be a very easy matter, perhaps, to discover it, or point it out.

It may be here further observed, that it was within this period the parish of All-Hallows, or All Saints, otherwise South Lynn, became a part or member of this Borough; being before a separate parish or hamlet, subject to the jurisdiction of the sheriff of the county. This union, or incorporation was first effected in 1546, by a Licence from the king, and afterwards fully confirmed by the Charter of Philip and Mary, in the fourth year of their reign. From that period it has ever been under the jurisdiction of the mayor, as an integral or indivisible part of the borough. Yet it has been long after, (if not down quite to our time,) treated by the corporation somewhat like a step-daughter, or as regular governments (as they are called,) are too apt to treat ceded or conquered places. Of this some remarkable instances have occurred at different times, and especially in the reign of Charles II, when the South Lynnians were very wrongfully involved in a most vexatious law-suit with the mayor and corporation, about the Long Bridge, which ended unfavourably to the latter, as has been also the case with our corporation law-suits, not unfrequently since that period. The above cause was tried at Thetford in 1672 before Sir Matthew Hale, who was exceedingly severe on the conduct of the mayor and corporation in that affair.

Many events are mentioned as having occurred at Lynn, during this period, of whose circumstances we are left very much in the dark: among them are the following—in 1562, Sir Nicholas Le Strange (according to one old MS.) “began a suit against Lynn for the House of Corpus Christi:” but we are not told either where that house stood, or what was the ground of that knight’s claim to it, or yet how the suit terminated.—In 1567 St. Margaret’s spire is said to have been shot down by a Dutch ship that then lay in the harbour, as were also several little crosses and ornaments on different parts of the church.” But we cannot learn how all this happened; whether designedly, or otherwise, or what was its result. In 1575 Henry Wodehouse, vice admiral of Norfolk is said to have arrested two Fly-Boats at Lynn, by process, which he delivered to the mayor, who refusing to serve them, brought great trouble on himself and several others.” This also is related so baldly, that it is impossible to form any adequate idea of the affair. Of much the same sort is what we read under 1587, “Sir Robert Southwell, being admiral of Norfolk, with several commissioners and justices, sat at Lynn and held a court of admiralty, at which sixteen pirates were condemned, and most of them executed at Gannock.” It is in vain we enquire into the particular case or circumstantial history of those pirates: all we can learn is that there were so many then tried and condemned here, and that Gannock was in the mean time the place of execution.

The following Lynn occurrences of this period are somewhat more luminous than the preceding ones. In 1576 queen Elizabeth visited Norwich; but it does not appear that her majesty deigned to honour Lynn with her royal presence. The corporation, however, went to meet her majesty. It is not said where, but we may suppose it to have been at Norwich, where her highness appears to have made some stay. At that interview, wherever it took place, our corporation presented their gracious sovereign with “a rich purse, finely wrought with pearl and gold, containing an hundred old angels of gold;” the whole valued at 200l. a sum equal, perhaps, to 2 or 3,000l. of our money. This, no doubt, was very handsome, and a proof of the sterling loyalty, as well as of the wealth and liberality of our corporation. What our virgin queen thought of this specimen of Lynn loyalty and homage, we are not told: but if the same had been done to her renowned grandfather, Henry VII, when he visited this town, we may be very sure that it would have proved highly acceptable and gratifying, as he is well known to have been a most ardent lover of money. His grand-daughter was in some things very different from him. Nor are we quite certain, though the gift was very handsome, that her majesty did not on this occasion laugh in her sleeve at the vanity and ostentation of the donors, who appear to have given her too much reason for so doing. She is also understood as not entertaining, in general, a very exalted opinion of the sagacity of her corporations, or the wisdom of the ruling and leading men of her cities and boroughs, who in her different excursions would sometimes sadly expose their folly, and excite in no small degree her contempt and derision. [712]

In, or about 1582, it is said, “that certain lusty young fellows began to set up ringing again, which for sometime had been disused; divers of the aldermen, meaning to silence them, occasioned a great disturbance, which turned to the mayor’s disadvantage, and was the cause of spending a great deal of money.” For aught we know, the mayor and aldermen might be very right on this occasion. Where there is a great deal of ringing it is certainly a very serious nuisance to the inhabitants, especially those who live near the steeples.—It is probable that those lusty young fellows belonged to some wealthy families, which enabled them to make so effectual a stand against the mayor and aldermen. Be that as it might, this circumstance may serve to shew what serious results may proceed from very frivolous causes, and how easily a parcel of idle fellows may sometimes disturb the tranquillity of a whole town, and bring every thing into the utmost confusion.

In 1587 the wife of one John Wanker and the widow Porker were both carted here for whoredom: and we further learn, that the sin of whoredom was deemed so detestable then, both at Lynn, and Norwich, that whoever were guilty of it were publickly exposed fastened to a cart and driven through the whole town.—This must be highly honourable to the moral character of both places at that period, and furnishes a favourable idea of the state of society here in the mean time. But alas! how very different must have been the character of Lynn then, from what it is at present, when it is said to abound with that sort of sinners more than any other place of its size, and when that vice seems no longer detested, or thought to have any moral pravity or turpitude attached to it: and as to the interference of magistrates, that seems to be entirely out of the question. After all, it seems to be a fact, that the unexampled burdens under which the people now lie, have contributed in no small degree to bring things to this sad pass.

The year 1558 was rendered remarkable in the annals of this town, by an order, as it is called, which was then made, “that on every first Monday in the Month there should be a meeting at a certain house, consisting of the Mayor, some of the aldermen and common Council-men, and the preachers, in order to settle peace and quietness between man and man, and to decide all manner of controversies: and it was called, The Feast of Reconciliation.”—This certainly looks well, and seems to reflect honour on the memory of the projector or projectors of it, as well as those who afterwards devoted their time for so useful and laudable a purpose. It is certainly much to be wished that every town and district was furnished with a similar institution; which, if properly conducted, would not fail to prove of very important benefit to the community. This therefore is here recorded as forming a favourable trait in the character of the magistrates and ministers of this town in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth.—But, alas! those very people, at the same time, were persecuting, burning, and hanging, (and we may add, murdering) poor ignorant, friendless and harmless old creatures, under the name of witches!—Of this very dark shade, (which together with the preceding favourable trait exhibit so deplorable an inconsistency of character,) we shall take some further notice hereafter.

In the next reign, (that of James I,) the obtaining of a royal Charter, and the recovery of the alienated revenues and possessions belonging to the Gaywood hospital, (of the latter of which we have spoken already) seem to have constituted the principal and most memorable transactions that appertain to this history. Besides which scarce any thing occurred worthy of being here recorded, unless it be the erection or establishment (in 1617) of a Library in the Vestry of St. Nicholas’s Chapel: which appears to have been the first institution of the kind in this town since the dissolution of the convents. [715] So that for about eighty years, or ever since the reformation, the character of the town as a literary, or bookish place, must have been at a miserable low ebb. We need not wonder therefore at the extreme ignorance that seemed to have prevailed here in the mean time. This library is said to have been founded by the mayor, burgesses, &c. The library in St. Margaret’s Church is said not to have been founded till about fourteen years after. How extensively useful these bibliothecal collections proved we have not the means of ascertaining. At any rate, they were creditable to those by whom they were projected and promoted.

Upon the accession of Charles I, one of the first and most remarkable circumstances that appear to have occurred here was the erection of St. Anne’s Fort, on which were mounted, as we are told, “several great pieces of ordnance, sent from London and planted here for the defence of the town.” This some, perhaps, would be apt to construe as ominous of the subsequent troubles of that reign, of which this town appears to have had its full share: for having declared against the parliament, it was by their forces closely besieged and taken, and afterwards laid under contribution, and strongly garrisoned. As to the Fort, we cannot find that it proved of any material use to the town in that time of danger: nor does it appear to have been ever calculated for the defence and protection of the place, or for any other purpose but to please little or full-grown children, who are naturally fond of ribands and rattles. [717]

About the beginning of 1637, “an order came from the archbishop (Laud) to this town, that the ground at the east end of the churches should be raised; the communion table (or altar) placed at the upper end of the churches, under the east windows; and that they be decently railed in, and steps made to ascend thereto.”—This was evidently undoing what Elizabeth and her reformers had done at the beginning of her reign; for the ground at the upper or east end of the churches was then ordered, as we have seen, to be levelled with that in the other parts of them. That queen and her prelates were certainly quite high enough in their notions about these matters, and yet we see that they come not nearly up to Charles and Laud. Neither of these had any dislike to popery, provided they could be themselves at the head of it. Nor would it be a very easy matter to point out the time when the spirit of popery was more predominant, than it was in the church of England in the detestable reign of the first Charles, and under the vile administration and superintendence of archbishop Laud. The latter was a sworn and mortal enemy to both civil and religious liberty, as the whole tenor of his conduct shews. In short, he was no less superstitious, than intolerant, tyrannical, and cruel, as this order which he sent to Lynn, and many other parts of his conduct clearly evince: and he may be very safely said to have contributed largely to accelerate the ruin of the cause which he had espoused, and the downfal of the church of which he was unworthily the chief metropolitan.

Laud has been often represented as very learned: but it was paying learning but a poor compliment, as it appears to have done little, or rather nothing at all towards humanizing him, or softening his hard heart, and subduing the bigotry, intolerance, and unfeelingness, which were in him so preeminently conspicuous and predominant. Severities and terrors which most of the vulgar or unlearned protestant persecutors would have deemed sufficient, could not satisfy him: cropping or cutting off the ears, and slitting the noses of those who openly objected to his proceedings, were among his favourite forms of discipline, and what passed with him as justifiable and wholesome severities. His atrocities at last recoiled upon him with a vengeance, and he became the unpitied victim of his own system of terror and tyranny.

CHAP. III.

Account of reputed Witches, of this and subsequent periods, at Lynn and some other places—inexcusable severity of their sufferings—brutality of their persecutors—barbaric stupidity and infatuated credulity of the people and their rulers.

The existence of witches was formerly a part of the creed of the good people of Lynn, as well as of the rest of their countrymen. It was not a mere mental error, which would have made it, at least in a great measure, harmless, but it was a practical error of a most horrid nature, for it issued in the persecution and murder of not a few wretched, friendless, and innocent beings, who were no more in league with satan and the powers of darkness than their persecutors and judges, or even half so much. These legal murders were once very common in this country, even since the reformation: so that many hundreds, if not thousands of them have been perpetrated under the sanction of our protestant government, and in the sacred name of justice, and of our sovereign lord the king. This town, as was before observed, is among the places where this innocent blood has been spilt, and where the names of law, justice, and royalty, have been shamefully prostituted to justify those foul and murderous deeds. We shall now proceed to give a sketch of the part which our townsmen of other times appear to have taken in this detestable business.

Section I.

A sketch of the history of the prosecution and murder of divers poor harmless creatures, falsely denominated witches, at Lynn, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Before the reformation, and since in popish countries, the cognizance of reputed witches, and suppression of what is called witchcraft, pertained to the inquisitors. Luiz de Paramo, a Spanish inquisitor, who wrote a most curious book in defence of the holy office, [720] declares that in the course of 150 years, (from 1485, if we are not mistaken) the inquisition had burnt 30,000 witches, which he evidently thought a most meritorious deed, for which the pious actors were entitled to the gratitude and veneration of posterity, and himself, who had been very active in the same way, to the praise of having deserved well of his country and of all Christendom.

After the reformation, the business, in these kingdoms, was taken up by such zealous protestants (conformists and nonconformists) whose spirit pretty much resembled that of the Spanish Inquisitors, and who appear to have been equally unchristianlike. Their zeal against what they called witchcraft was unbounded; and whenever they could fix that stigma upon any one, he could have little chance of escaping with his life. This country has therefore been highly infamous for the punishments inflicted, and the barbarities exercised upon those hapless beings whom our ignorant, superstitious, and savage ancestors used to brand with the odious names of witches and wizards. We might well be called to blush for those execrable deeds of our forefathers, if there were not others belonging to ourselves which no less loudly call for blushing.

Lancashire, it seems, has been noted for its reputed witches, and so has Warboys and other places in Huntingdonshire. Nor has this town been unproductive of persons who bore the same name, or had the hard fate of lying under the same imputation.—The first of these, that has fallen within the knowledge of the present writer, was Margaret Read, who is said to have been burnt here for witchcraft, in 1590.—Poor creature! She was certainly murdered! by the magistrates! by what was called the law of the land, and in the venerable and sacred name of justice! Such acts, however, have been but too common in all ages, in all countries, and even in what are called protestant states. England was then such a state, but that did not always secure the people from injustice and oppression, or prevent in all instances the rulers and magistrates from shedding innocent blood.

About eight years after, that is, in 1598, one Elizabeth Housegoe was executed here on the same account: but whether she was put to death by burning, or by hanging, does not appear. Whichever it was, it was a most horrid and detestable deed, and would lead one to shudder at the barbarous character of our ancestors, but for certain existing circumstances, which seem too clearly to indicate that we are not yet got so far beyond them in civilization and humanity as we are apt sometimes to conceive. Our boasted superiority in those respects over all modern nations, may also be suspected to be much less real than imaginary.

Mary Smith is the next name that occurs among this description of hapless sufferers at Lynn. She is said to have been burnt [723a] here, on the 12th. of January 1616, for witchcraft, which she was accused of having practised upon divers persons by means of a vocal contract with the devil. The poor creature, who no doubt was insane, acknowledged the truth of these foolish accusations; which acknowledgement, probably, formed the chief, if not the only proof of her guilt: and Alexander Roberts, styling himself preacher of God’s Word at King’s Linne, in the same year published a treatise on Witchcraft, in which the story of this Mary Smith, this pitiable victim of the stupid ignorance and savage superstition of our ancestors, is related. [723b]

While their hands were still red and poluted with the innocent blood of this poor defenceless woman, our magistrates went about establishing a Library in the town, which seems indeed to have been very much wanted among them: and we have already given them credit for that undertaking. But its inconsistency with the other part of their conduct is so manifest and glaring (especially if we join with it their laudable feast of reconciliation,) that one is apt to wonder that they should be capable of acting such different parts, or of being the performers of actions so totally dissimilar and heterogeneous. It must however be owned that the inconsistencies of the human character are sometimes very strange, unaccountable, and surprising.

After the last mentioned affair we hear no more of these horrid doings at Lynn till 1645, when Dorothy Lee, and Grace Wright, as Mackerel informs us, were hanged here for witchcraft. But we suspect that this is misdated, and that this bloody scene did not take place till the following year, (1646) as it appears, from the Town Records, that on the 11th. of May, that year, it was “ordered that alderman Thomas Rivett be requested to send for Mr. Hopkins, the Witch-discoverer, to come to Lynn, and his charges and recompense to be borne by the town.” We may presume that he did not hesitate to come, and that it was in consequence of his coming the prosecution and execution of those poor unhappy creatures took place. It must have been a sad time when such arch-villains as this Hopkins were caressed by the magistrates, and employed to assist them in the administration of justice!—Of him we shall hereafter give some further account.

Those two women were probably the last that were put to death here for witchcraft: but great numbers suffered afterwards for the same imaginary crime in other parts of the kingdom, to the great disgrace of both the makers and the administrators of our laws. Even till within these sixty or seventy years, if we are not mistaken, there have been instances among us of poor defenceless beings doomed to capital punishment for the same pretended offence: and though our legislators and rulers seem no longer to have any faith in the existence of witches, yet the common people in many places are as much in that belief as ever, and would be very glad, no doubt, to have the old sanguinary laws still put in execution. A melancholy instance of the present existence of such a superstitious belief among our country people occurred but about two years ago at Great Paxton in Huntingdonshire, of which we shall, perhaps, in another place take some further notice.

Section II.

Brief account of some of the principal witch-finders, or witch discoverers, as they were sometimes called, those pests of society, who were a disgrace to the country and to the age in which they lived.

It would appear perhaps incredible, that those infernal beings called witch-finders should ever have been tolerated and encouraged in any country calling itself christian and protestant, had we not seen characters no less detestable and diabolical countenanced, caressed, and patronised in such countries. The execrable reign of Charles II swarmed with Spies and informers, whose talents were employed to promote religious uniformity, and suppress liberty of conscience. Like the witch finders, they were countenanced by the magistrates, patronized by the gentry, and enriched by the wages of unrighteousness, and the ruin of innocent persons and families. Our own time has seen such wretches, and poor Ireland has been not a little prolific of them. Even among our financial or revenue agents some of the same family have made their appearance, which some are apt to consider as an evil and a grievance of no small magnitude. If our own time has abounded with such characters, and if they have been really countenanced and cherished by rulers and magistrates, we must not be too severe upon our ancestors for the course which they pursued in regard to those called witches and witch-finders: for we do not seem to have yet gone so far beyond them in wisdom and virtue as we are sometimes apt to think.

Among those called witch-finders, the first place seems due to Matthew Hopkins, of Maningtree, in Essex, who has been already mentioned, as invited here by the magistrates, to assist them in the discovery, or detection and conviction of witches, and the suppression of witchcraft. This man, as we are told, was witch-finder for the associated counties, (Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk,) and hanged in one year no less than sixty reputed witches in his own county. The old, the ignorant, and the indigent; such as could neither plead their own cause nor hire an advocate; were the miserable victims of this wretch’s avarice and villany. He pretended to be a great critic in special marks; which were only moles, scorbutic spots, or warts, which frequently grew large and pendulous in old age, but were absurdly supposed to be teats to suckle imps. His ultimate method of proof was by tying together the thumbs and toes of the suspected person, about whose waist was fastened a cord, the ends of which were held, on the banks of a river, by two persons, in whose power it was to straighten or slacken it. Swimming, upon this experiment, was deemed a full proof of guilt; for which king James, (who is said to have recommended it, if he did not invent it,) assigned the following sage reason: “That as such persons have renounced their baptism by water, so the water refuses to receive them.” Sometimes those who were accused of diabolical practices were tied neck and heels and tossed into a pond. If they floated they were consequently guilty, and therefore taken out and burnt: if they were innocent they were only drowned. The experiment of swimming was at length tried upon Hopkins himself, in his own way, and he was in the event condemned, and, as it seems, executed as a wizard; [727] an end or retribution which he appears to have richly merited. But how far he was (if at all) convinced of that, at his exit, we are not informed. If we are not mistaken, there was also, about the same time, a noted witch-finder at Ipswich, who found pretty full employment, but as we have no account either of his mode of proceeding or exploits, or yet of his exit, we can say no more about him.

At the time when the belief and detestation of witchcraft were universal in this country there can be no doubt but the number of our pretended witch-finders was very considerable. It may be fairly supposed that there were more than one for every county, and even that they were no less numerous than our modern mountebanks and quack doctors. Some of them, however, would, in the natural course of things, outshine the rest, or far excel them in point of reputation or celebrity. Such a one was Hopkins, and such a one was that famous Scotchman, whose name we cannot at present make out, who found so much employment, in the way of his vile vocation, on this, as well as on the other side of the Tweed. Of him a curious account is given in a book entitled, England’s Grievance, &c. by Ralph Gardiner, Gent. of Chirton, in Northumberland. London: printed in 1655. Reprinted in 1796. Where we have the following information.

“In or about the year 1649 or 1650, the magistrates of Newcastle upon Tyne sent two of their sergeants, namely Thomas Shevel, and Cuthbert Nicholson, into Scotland, to agree with a Scotchman, who pretended knowledge to finde out witches by pricking them with pins, to come to Newcastle, where he should try such who should be brought to him, and have 20s. a-piece for all he could condemn (or convict) as witches, and free passage thither and back again: [i.e. have his expenses borne to and fro.] When the sergeants had brought this witch-finder on horseback to town, the magistrates sent their bellman through the town ringing his bell, and crying, all people that would bring in any complaint against any woman for a witch, they should be sent for and tryed by the person appointed. Thirty women were [accordingly] brought into the town-hall and stript, and then openly had pins thrust into their bodies, and most of them was (were) found guilty by him, and set aside.

“The said reputed witch-finder acquainted colonel Hobson that he knew women, whether they were witches or no, by their looks; and when he was searching a personable and good-like [or good looking] woman, the said colonel replied and said, Surely, this woman in none, and need not be tryed: but the scotchman said she was, for the town said she was, and therefore he would try her; and presently, in sight of all the people, laid her body naked to the waste, [waist] with her cloaths over her head; by which fright and shame all her blood contracted into one part of her body, and then he ran a pin into her thigh, and suddenly let her coats fall, and then demanded whither she had nothing of his in her body, but did not bleed? But she being amazed, replied little. Then he put his hands up her coats and pulled out the pin, setting her aside, as a guilty person and child of the devil, and fell to try others, whom he made guilty.”

“Colonel Hobson perceiving the alteration of the foresaid woman, by her blood settling in her right parts, caused her to be brought again, and her cloaths pulled up to her thigh, and required the scot to run the pin into the same place, and then it gushed out of blood, and the said scot cleared her, and said she was not a child of the devil. So soon as he had done, and received his wages, he went into Northumberland to try women there, where he got of some 3l. a-piece. But Henry Ogle Esq. a late member of parliament, laid hold on him, and required bond of him, to answer the sessions, but he got away for Scotland, and it was conceived, if he had staid, he would have made most of the women in the north witches, for money.”

The poor Newcastle women, whom this wretch had set aside and pronounced guilty, were put in prison till the assizes, when 14 of them, and one man, were condemned, and afterwards executed: all solemnly protesting their innocence. Their names are mentioned at page 115 of the said book. The truth of the above account is attested by three persons, whose names it is needless to insert here.—As to the infamous witch-finder himself, we are told that “he was afterwards taken up in Scotland, cast into prison, indicted, arraigned, and condemned for such like villanie exercised in Scotland: and on the gallows confessed he had been the death of above 220 women, in England and Scotland, for the gain of 20s. a-piece, and beseeched forgiveness, and was executed.”

The author of the work from which this account is extracted, indignantly inquires, “by what law the magistrates of Newcastle could send to another nation for a mercenary person to try women for witches? and set the bellman to cry for them to be brought in?—and give 20s. a piece to the former to condemn them?” These queries we know not how to answer, but by supposing that the whole was a lawless, as well as a most iniquitous, barbarous, and scandalous business. The magistrates of Newcastle certainly appear on this occasion a vile and infamous crew, whose memory ought to be held up to the horror of perpetual detestation. How much better the magistrates of Lynn would have appeared, had we so particular an account of their proceedings, when they sent for Hopkins, it is impossible now to say. Their conduct, to say the least of it, appears sufficiently dark and despicable.

While we feel and express a just indignation against the witchfinders, as well as against the spies and informers and such like miscreants, we ought not to forget how much the existence, sufferance, and employment of them reflect on the character of the rulers and magistrates of those days, and even of the nation, or public at large; for had these been sufficiently enlightened and humanized, those detestable wretches had never been encouraged and employed, or even endured in the country. How baleful and deplorable therefore must intellectual blindness or ignorance be in any community? how desirable, important, and necessary for all descriptions of men, is the true knowledge of their respective rights and duties! Had our magistrates and legislators always possessed that knowledge, and acted accordingly, our annals had never been disgraced, as they are, with the recital of so many acts of injustice and oppression, or with such shocking accounts of the torturing, burning, and hanging of so many reputed criminals, under the misapplied and odious names of witches, heretics, and blasphemers.

Section III.

Additional observations on Witchcraft, and on the absurd and superstitious notions entertained by our ancestors concerning witches, as well as their deep-rooted and deadly antipathy against all those whom they considered as such.

That the world abounded in former ages, and from the remotest periods, with jugglers and other sorts of artful impostors, who pretended to the knowledge of future events and other secrets, and so supported themselves and acquired great names by working upon the weakness, or imposing upon the credulity of mankind, is well known. Being of different sorts they went under different names, according to their respective pretensions, or peculiar, apparent, or professed modes of proceeding. Hence we speak of them under the various appellations of magicians, sorcerers, diviners, conjurers, witches and wizards, &c. each, or most of which denote a certain distinction of character or operation. [732] There were among them from the earliest times ventriloquists and consummate jugglers, well skilled in the arts of dexterity, or slight of hand tricks, and their operations served, (as real miracles did with the true prophets,) to gain credit to their declarations and pretensions. Thus their high and solemn professions, with the aid of gastriloquy, legerdemain or juggling, obtained credit in the world, so as to establish their character or fame, and perpetuate the delusion. Falshood assumed the name or place of truth, and fiction that of reality: and those who were thus taken in, or imposed upon, have always with difficulty been undeceived.

Formerly the names of magicians, sorcerers, witches, &c. were appropriated to those only who avowed or professed themselves to be such; but latterly, or in more recent times, they seem to have been chiefly, if not entirely appropriated to those who did not make such an avowal or profession, and who even disclaimed any such imputation or pretension. And, what is exceedingly remarkable, those who were uncommonly knowing, and those who were uncommonly ignorant became now equally the objects of suspicion, and were of course included under one or another of those appellations; as if extraordinary intelligence and extraordinary stupidity equally indicated an alliance or confederacy with the devil. Such men as Roger Bacon and Galileo, the most enlightened of their species, were more than suspected to be sorcerers, and multitudes of poor creatures, mostly old women, who were no way distinguished from the rest of the community, except by their extreme poverty, or extreme ignorance, have been treated in the most brutal manner, and in the end burnt or hanged, under the opprobrious name of witches—in the infamy of which conduct, as we have shewn, this town is deeply implicated.

Before the reformation there was, it seems, in this country a regular board of justice, for the constant apprehension and conviction of magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, witches, &c. and a warrant is said to be still extant for the seizing of one Thomas Northfield, professor of divinity, and sorcerer, with all his books and instruments. [734a] This double character, of conjurer and divine, exhibits the poor fellow in a queer kind of light, as a sort of amphibious animal. What he was as a divine, it is impossible now to ascertain. He might be eminent, or he might not. [734b] But his being also a sorcerer or conjurer, in the usual acceptations of those words, seems no way entitled to credit; so that his lying under that imputation, or his being so reputed, was merely the effect of the blind superstition which then prevailed, and which usually ascribed every appearance of superior genius or intelligence to a diabolical inspiration.

After the reformation, the rage against witches and sorcerers underwent no abatement. New laws were enacted against them, and reputed offenders were prosecuted with the utmost rigour. The most learned of our sovereigns, (Henry VIII. and James I.) not only strongly believed in the existence of such offenders, but likewise held them in the greatest abhorrence: Hence by statute 33 Henry VIII, c. 8. witchcraft and sorcery are made felony without benefit of clergy; and by statute 1 Jac. 1. c. 12. it is enacted, “that all persons invoking any evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit; or taking up dead bodies from their graves to be used in any witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; or killing, or otherwise hurting any person by such infernal arts; should be guilty of felony without benefit of clergy, and suffer death. And if any person should attempt by sorcery to discover hidden treasure, or to restore stolen goods, or to provoke unlawful love, or to hurt any man or beast, though the same were not effected, he or she should suffer imprisonment and pillory for the first offence, and death for the second.” These acts (judge Blackstone says) “continued in force till lately, to the terror of all ancient females in the kingdom: and many poor wretches were sacrificed to the prejudice of their neighbours and their own illusion; not a few having, by some means or other, confessed the fact at the gallows. But (he adds,) all executions for this dubious crime are now at an end. Accordingly it is with us enacted by statute 9 Geo. II. c. 5. that no prosecution shall be carried on against any person for conjuration, witchcraft, sorcery, or inchantment. [736a] But the misdemeanor of persons pretending to use witchcraft, tell fortunes, or discover stolen goods by skill in the occult sciences, is still deservedly punished with a year’s imprisonment, and standing four times in the pillory.” [736b]

Thus it appears that it was not till the last reign that the sanguinary laws against witchcraft &c. were repealed in this country; so that we had enjoyed the light of the reformation full 200 years before we discerned the injustice and bloodguiltiness of those laws, or even the folly and absurdity of believing that those poor, ignorant, defenceless women, whom we were pleased to call witches, had actually sold their souls and bodies to the devil, and had in exchange obtained from him the power of working miracles. For we always imputed to our witches a supernatural power, which we deemed one of their essential characteristics: and we firmly believed that they could fly, or ride in the air upon broomsticks, change themselves into the form of other animals, injure their neighbours in their persons or property, by their looks, their thoughts, or their wishes, &c. Now, if not only the public at large and the juries, but even the judges and legislators could believe all this, what wonder is it if some of the poor old women could do so too, as they are said to have sometimes made such a confession? Their confession, however, appears to have been often, if not always, the mere effect of terror and confusion. [737] Poor hapless creatures! without a friend in the world to take their part, or speak a word in their behalf; terrified also and confounded beyond measure by the presence of their judge and the awful apparatus of a court of Justice, they would confess any thing that might be urged upon them, and all without thought or reflection, or even knowing what they said.

It is not unworthy of observation that witches were formerly, even by our legislators, classed with heretics, and witchcraft went under the name of heresy, being deemed a species of that offence, and subjected to the same punishment, that of burning. It might quite as well have gone under the name of rebellion or high treason, or any other crime, for it has as much affinity with them, to the full, as it has with heresy. It is astonishing how often, or how commonly it is that human laws and governments are characterized by ignorance, absurdity, injustice, cruelty, folly and madness. So unfortunate in general has the world been in its rulers, that most of them have proved its greatest enemies, though often extolled to the skies, for every imaginable excellence, by the vile sycophants that surround them, and the vermin of every province and district who live and fatten on their oppressive and rapacious devices.

Section IV.

Summary view of the whole subject—account of proceedings against witches in this country till the repeal of the laws that chiefly affected them—hints on the present state of the nation in regard to this and its kindred delusions.

The proper idea of witchcraft, it is presumed, has been already very plainly suggested; but lest it should not seem sufficiently clear to our readers in general, it may be proper to attempt here a more explicit definition. We say therefore that witchcraft is a supernatural power which persons were supposed to obtain the possession of by entering into compact with the devil. It was believed that they had given themselves up to him body and soul; and that he engaged on his part that they should want for nothing, and that he would avenge them upon all their enemies:—also, that as soon as the bargain was concluded, the devil delivered up to the witch an imp, or familiar spirit, to be ready at a call and do whatever it was directed. By the assistance of this imp and the devil together, [that is, of both the young devil and the old one,] the witch, who was almost always an old woman, was enabled, as it was firmly believed, to do very marvellous feats—even to transport herself in the air, on a broomstick or a spit, to distant places to attend the assemblies or meetings of the witches; for, according to this belief, or way of thinking, the witches, (like some of our modern sects,) actually had their assemblies, associations, or general conferences, at which the devil himself always presided. It was also believed that they were enabled to transform themselves into various shapes, particularly to assume the forms of cats and hares, in which they most delighted; to inflict diseases on whomsoever they thought proper; and to punish their enemies in a variety of ways. [739] These ideas of witchery could not obtain belief among the heathens, as they had no knowledge of our devil.

Under popish darkness and delusion these views of witchcraft universally obtained in Europe till the 16th century, and the doctrine maintained its ground with tolerable firmness till after the middle of the seventeenth, and even till the former part of the eighteenth century, when it was obliged to give way to more rational views of things. Vast numbers of reputed witches were here, in protestant and evangelical England, convicted and condemned to be burnt every year; and a man who had the hardihood to deny the doctrine, or doubt of its truth, would be at once suspected of atheism, and perhaps run the risk of being burnt, if not for downright witchcraft, yet at least for advocating the cause, and being the agent of his Satanic majesty. [740]

Of the methods of discovering witches, one was to weigh the supposed criminal against the church bible, which, if she was guilty, would preponderate. Another method was by making her attempt to say the Lord’s Prayer; this no witch was able to repeat entirely, but would omit some part or other: all witches did not hesitate at the same place; some leaving out one part and some another.—It was also believed that witches always said their prayers backwards.—Teats, though which the imps suckled, were indubitable marks of a witch: these were always raw, and also insensible; and, if squeezed, sometimes yielded a drop of blood. A witch could not weep more than three tears, and that only out of the left eye. This want of tears was, by the witchfinders, and even by some judges, considered as a very substantial proof of guilt. Swimming a witch, as was before observed, was another kind of popular ordeal generally practised: for this she was stript naked, and cross bound, the right thumb to the left toe, and the left thumb to the right toe. Thus prepared, she was thrown into a pond or river, in which, if guilty, she could not sink; for having, as was said before, by her compact with the devil, renounced the benefit of the water of baptism, that element, in its turn, renounced her, and refused to receive her into its bosom.

The trial by stool, another method for the discovery of witches, was thus managed: having taken the suspected witch, she was placed in the middle of a room upon a stool or table, cross legged, or in some other uneasy posture; to which if she submitted not, she was bound with cords: there she was watched, and kept without food or sleep, for twenty four hours; for it was believed that they should within that time see her imp come and suck. A little hole was therefore made in the door for the imp to come in at: and lest he should come in a less discernible shape, they that watched were taught to be frequently sweeping the room, and, if they saw any spiders or flies, to kill them; if they could not kill them, then they might be sure they were imps.

If witches, under examination or torture, would not confess, all their apparel was changed, and every hair of their body shaven off with a sharp razor, lest they should secrete magical charms to prevent their confessing. Witches were believed to be most apt to confess on Fridays.—The two following expedients, or fiery ordeals, are also mentioned, as used to extort confession: the first, burning the thatch of the house of the suspected witch; the other, burning any animal supposed to be bewitched by her, as a hog or ox. These, it was held would force a witch to confess, [742] in spite of her teeth, or of the devil.—Our ancestors, strange as it may seem, persisted in the belief and practice, or observance of these horrid monstrosities till within the memory of some of the present generation. Nor had they perhaps relinquished or abandoned them quite so soon, but for the laudable exertions of such men as Locke and Addison, and their enlightened contemporaries.

Our kings, courtiers, and legislators were all believers in witchcraft, and hearty approvers of the existing laws against that reputed crime. One of the former, and deemed the wisest of that sacred order, and the Solomon of his day, (James I,) wrote a book in defence of that belief, and of subjecting witches to capital punishment; and when Reginald Scott, the first of our countrymen who ventured to dissent froth the popular creed and write on the other side of the question, published his book, his majesty ordered it to be burnt by the common hangman. The whole nation approved of the royal and magnanimous deed, and poor Scott passed for a notorious heretic.—It is not a little mortifying and humiliating to the dignity and pride of man, that the same stupid and absurd notions about witchcraft were among the articles of the creed of the great lord Bacon and his most enlightened contemporaries, as well as of their wise sovereign, and the whole body of the mobility or national rabblement. The poor witches, of course, had then almost terrible time of it; as much so, probably, to the full, as in the darkest days of popery.

Under Charles I, the Common-wealth, and succeeding reigns, the public opinion on this subject continued unchanged, and the judicial proceedings against witches went on as before. If they exceeded at any particular period, we presume it must have been under the Common-wealth, when the witch-finders appear to have been in full employment, and at the height of their prosperity. But we can hardly give credit to the account which Dr. Zachary Grey said he had seen, of between 3 and 4000 persons who suffered death, in the British dominions, for witchcraft, from the year 1640 to 1660. The spirit which then predominated and reigned, was certainly violent enough, and bore cruelly hard on the poor creatures who were accused of witchcraft: but such a number of victims in so short a space of time, is surely too excessive and extravagant to be credited. It is however greatly to be regretted that the leaders of that interesting period adhered in this particular to the creed of their ancestors, and were so stupidly in the dark as they appear to have been on this and some other subjects.

It does not appear, as far as the present writer has discovered, that any of the judges, till after the revolution, shewed the least inclination to discountenance the prosecution of reputed witches, or the prevailing and popular notions about witchcraft. Even Sir Matthew Hale went with the stream of public opinion, and was among those oracles of the law who passed, without hesitation, the sentence of death on those whom the verdict of a jury pronounced guilty of that reputed crime. Sir John Holt and Sir John Powel, to their immortal honour, appear to have been the first of our English judges who viewed this pretended offence with minds superior to vulgar prejudice. The conduct of the former, on a certain trial for that offence, is said to have been such as put an end to all similar prosecutions in that part of the country, and even throughout the kingdom. [744] But the law was not repealed or altered in his time.

As to the latter, (Judge Powel,) we hear of two different trials for this offence before him. At one of them, a witness gave evidence that the prisoner at the bar could fly: on which the judge asked the poor woman, if it really was so, and she answered in the affirmative; when the judge, with a promptitude of expression which evinced the superiority of his understanding, told her, so she might if she would; he knew of no law against it. How this trial ended we are not told; but we may be very sure that his lordship did all he could to get the prisoner acquitted. The other trial for witchcraft before him was that of Jane Wenham, at Hertford, March 4. 1712. The prisoner was charged with having bewitched several persons, and had the weakness, it seems, sometime before the trial, to confess herself guilty of the alleged crime: and though she afterwards accounted for this confession, as arising from terror, it appears to have had considerable influence on the minds of the jury, in spite of the endeavours of the humane judge to explain and invalidate the evidence brought against her. She was accordingly brought in guilty; but the judge reprieved her, and the queen soon after pardoned her.

One of the principal witnesses against the prisoner on this trial, as well as one of the principal writers in the controversy to which it gave rise, was Mr. Bragge, vicar of Hitchin. This gentlemen, in his evidence on the trial, declared, on “the faith of a clergyman,” that “he believed the prisoner to be a witch:” whereupon the judge told him, that, therefore, “on the Truth of a Judge, he took him to be no conjurer.” After she was pardoned, a gentleman in the country provided her an apartment over his stables, sent her victuals from his table, and suffered her to attend on his children: and we are informed that she was ever after looked upon by the family as an honest, good natured woman. [747a] Here we will venture to add that the conduct of the judge and the queen was as just and commendable as that of the prosecutors and the jury was vile and infamous.

In 1716, about four years after the above trial, came on at Huntingdon, for the same offence, before judge Wilmot, the trial of Mary Hicks and Elizabeth her daughter, nine years of age. They were, it seems, the wife and favourite child of a substantial farmer, who had them apprehended, and became himself, most unnaturally, the principal prosecutor. The child had practised some silly illusions on her father’s weakness, and the mother had had recourse to the antiquated folly of killing her neighbours in effigy. On this the suspicion of their being witches was founded. A confession on their part, not only corroborated that suspicion, but was taken as a full proof of their guilt: “and judge Wilmot suffered them to be hanged, upon that confession, four years (says Mr. Gough,) after his wiser brother, (judge Powel,) ventured his own life to save that of the old woman at Hertford.”

About twenty years after the date of this disgraceful and tragical trial, the 9th. of Geo. II, the old laws which made witchcraft a capital crime were happily repealed. How many more of such prosecutions or executions took place within those twenty years we are not able to say. [747b] But it does not appear that the inhabitants in general, or the lower orders of the community which constitute the bulk of the nation, have ever yet been fully satisfied with the repeal of those laws. Hence they have been often ready to take the business into their own hands and proceed in a summary and very savage way against those whom they have thought proper to deem or denominate witches. A shocking case of this kind occurred at Fring in Hertfordshire as lately as 1751, when one Ruth Osborn, a reputed witch, fell a victim to the stupid credulity and abominable prejudice of a frantic mob: and though several of the ringleaders in that bloody and brutal transaction were afterwards hanged, yet the blind and superstitious belief that produced it remained still in the country, and is, even now, in many, if not in most parts of the kingdom as strong as ever.

But little more than two years ago, as was observed before, one Ann Izzard, a poor, honest, industrious woman, of Great Paxton in Huntingdonshire, was very near meeting the same fate with the above Ruth Osborn. Two or three young women in the neighbourhood having fits, some people there gave out, that they were bewitched, and the suspicion fell upon Ann Izzard: a loaded cart sometime after, oversetting on its return from St. Neot’s market, while the same woman was in company, that accident was ascribed to her witchery. This confirmed and established the public opinion of her being actually a witch, and immediately set the whole parish in an uproar: “She has just overturned a loaded cart with as much ease as if it had been a spinning wheel,” was echoed from one end of it to the other. Men, women, and children raised their voices and exclaimed, “we have now sufficient proof of her guilt—this last act in open day speaks for itself—she is the person that does all the mischief; and if something is not done to put a stop to her baseness there will be no living in the place.”—Nor did this fit of phrensy terminate till they had made two attacks upon her, which, atrocious as they appeared to rational and enlightened people, where considered, by themselves as not only justifiable but highly meritorious. They were proceeding to still greater atrocities, which she escaped through the interposition of some of her more humane neighbours, who took her under their protection, and had the offenders prosecuted. [749]

But let us not suppose that it is only in Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire that this stupid belief in the existence of witches still maintains its ground among us: there every reason to conclude, for all our boasted advancement in knowledge, that a large majority of our population is still subject to this stupidity, and strong in the faith of witchcraft. It is much to be wished we could here make an exception in favour of Norfolk, and particularly of Lynn. But it cannot be done. A great part of this county is known to be exceedingly dark and heathenish; and the vicinity of this town may be said to be much in the same predicament. Even of the town itself the majority of the population appear to be in a miserable low estate, in point of moral as well as religious cultivation. It is therefore not to be wondered at if a belief in such things as witchcraft and conjuration should be here still very common and prevalent.

The author presumes that there is no need to apologize for the length of these historical strictures on witchcraft; the belief of it being, even now, so general among us. As he deems it a vulgar error, or popular delusion of a most disgraceful character, and pernicious tendency, he wished to expose it with effect, which he thought he could not do more briefly. He has long observed, with regret, how tenaciously a large proportion of the population of this town and country still adhere to their old blind prejudices; and he would gladly contribute, as far as he can, towards weakening that adherence. The success, indeed, of all efforts in this way seems almost hopeless; our countrymen’s progress here, from darkness to light, having been hitherto so exceedingly slow and sluggish. A belief in the existence or reality of conjuration and witchcraft, and in the almost boundless power and dominion of a malignant being, called the devil, is yet, even now in the nineteenth century, among our deep-rooted delusions. That it is really so, might be exemplified and proved from many undeniable facts, as well as some very recent and striking occurrences. [751] But we will now dismiss the subject, and proceed to another division of the work, where new scenes will present themselves to our view.

CHAP. IV.

History of Lynn, from the meeting of the long parliament, and the commencement of the civil war, to the Restoration.

The long parliament, during the first years of its existence, exhibited, perhaps, a body of national representatives, the most respectable in point of talents and integrity, that this country could ever boast of, or has at any time produced. Between the patriotism of that assembly and the despotism of the court; there was certainly a most visible and striking contrast. The difference between these patriots and the government, arose from the oppressive proceedings of the latter, and their flagrant encroachments upon the rights and liberties of the people. The patriots heartily espoused the people’s cause; but as their oppressors would not listen to reason, or cease from their tyranny, and give security for their future good behaviour, an appeal was made to the sword, which produced the civil war, of which, together with its memorable effects or consequences, especially as they affected, or related to this town, we shall now proceed to lay before the reader a brief account, which will enable him to form some idea of the principal occurrences of that period.

Section I.

Hints relating to some occurrences here, anterior to the breaking out of the war—Lynn declares for the king—its previous conduct charged with duplicity—siege and surrender of the town—subsequent events.

Among the arbitrary measures of the government, which affected this town previously to the commencement of the war, was the levying of Ship-money. In 1634, the town is said to have been assessed towards a ship of 800 tons, with 260 men; but it does not appear what was the amount of the assessment. Two years after, however, (Nov. 6. 1637,) we learn, from the corporation books, that “the town was assessed 200l. for a ship of war.” This sum may be supposed nearly, if not quite equal to 2000l. of our money. We mean not to say that it was excessive or exorbitant: it was certainly arbitrary, and therefore illegal and objectionable. But by the heads of the town, if we may judge by their subsequent conduct, it was not deemed a serious grievance, or perhaps any grievance at all; for they declared for the court, and against the party which opposed those lawless exactions.

In the succeeding years, previously to the commencement of the war, the town appears to have been closely and carefully guarded, so that none were allowed to enter without permission: hence we find in 1639, the mayor appointing “two warders for the day time, one to stand at the South, and the other the East-Gate;” and the same to continue, “so long as he shall think fitting these dangerous times.” In 1640 and 1641, the town may be supposed guarded no less vigilantly; in the beginning of 1642, it was, it seems, further fortified, and furnished with seven pieces of brass cannon from London. In the early part of the same year, captain Sherwood of Norwich, at the head of a troop of dragoons, came close under St. Catherine’s Wall, by the East-Gate, and demanded admittance, but was denied, says Mackerel, “by the mayor and townsmen”—but we presume it must have been rather by the governor; who, at that time, if we are not mistaken, was Sir Hamon L’Estrange, the father of the afterwards famous Sir Roger.

The three gates were now furnished with draw-bridges, and the town, from its situation and the repairs bestowed on its fortifications, must have been pretty strong. The parliament also thought it a place of no small consequence, and therefore it was besieged and taken at an early stage of the war, by the earl of Manchester, one of their commanders, at the head of a very respectable and formidable force, well supplied with artillery. The town held out near three weeks; for the siege began on August 28. and the place surrendered on the 16th. of September. Of this memorable siege and surrender, the following account is extracted from Rushworth’s Historical Collections, vol. 5. p. 283, which it is hoped will not prove unacceptable to the reader.

“The town of Lynn Regis (says Rushworth,) advantageously situated on an arm of the sea, had for a long while fortified itself, on pretence of neutrality, and for their own defence; but afterwards shewed themselves wholly for the king: wherefore the earl of Manchester being made the parliament’s major-general, for the associated counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, &c. resolved to reduce it; and in order thereunto, seized the town of Old Lynn, and there planted ordnance, which much annoyed them in the other town. And two approaches were made, one by the causeway that leads to the South, and the other to the East-gate.” [Against the latter,] “The besieged made a brisk sally, and at once fired two houses in Gauwood, [Gaywood] intending to have destroyed the whole town, that the enemy might not have quarters there. But that party were beaten in, and the rest of the houses preserved. The besiegers summoned in pioneers, from all the neighbouring parts, and by degrees brought their approaches within half musket shot: and had begun from a battery on a hill, near to the end of the town, next the sea, and resolved upon storming the town, both by land and water, having provided many boats and ladders for that purpose. But then received a letter from the town, intimating their willingness to capitulate: and so a treaty was agreed on, to be had by eight persons of a side. Those for the earl of Manchester were, Sir John Pargrave, Col. Russel, Col. Walton, Mr. Philip Calthorpe, Mr. John Pickering, Mr. Gregory Gosset, Mr. John Spilman, and Mr. William Goodz. For the town Sir Hamon L’Estrange, Sir Richard Hovell, Mr. Clinch, Mr. Dereham, Mr. Pallet their recorder, Mr. Hudson the mayor elect, Mr. Leek, and Mr. Kirby: Between whom, after a long debate, it was agreed to this effect,—1. That the town, with the ordnance, arms, and ammunition be delivered to the earl, and he to enter the town.—2. That the gentlemen strangers in the town, shall have liberty to depart, with every man a horse, sword and pistols.—3. That the townsmen shall enjoy all rights and privileges appertaining to them, with free trading as far as may consist with law.—4. All prisoners on both sides to be set at liberty.—5. That the desires of the town touching certain of their ships taken by the parliament frigates, shall be represented by the earl, to the parliament and the earl of Warwick.—6. That neither the persons nor estates, of any inhabitants or strangers now resident in Lynn, shall be molested for any thing past, or done by them since the earl of Manchester’s coming into these parts.—7. That, for preventing of plundering, the town shall raise and pay ten shillings a man, to all private soldiers under the earl’s command, and a fortnight’s pay to the officers.—8. and lastly, That Sir Hamon L’Estrange, Sir Richard Hovell, Capt. Clinch, Mr. Recorder, Mr. Dereham, and Mr. Leek, remain as hostages, until the conditions be performed.”

“The same night, part of the Earl’s forces took possession of the town; and the next morning his lordship made his entry, and sent 500 men to Hull. Soon after be withdrew the rest of his forces into Lincolnshire, leaving Col. Walton governor of Lynn.”

Here it may be observed, that the forces that besieged and took Lynn, consisted solely of infantry: the cavalry attached to this army had remained in Lincolnshire, under the command of Cromwell, who was now beginning to distinguish himself as a soldier. But neither he nor his cavalry, were present at this siege, though some people have thought otherwise, for no better reason, seemingly, than the idle presumption that Cromwell must have been concerned in all the notable transactions of that memorable period.

Among the remarkable occurrences which took place here during this siege, the following has been found in a certain MS. account of the town—

“On Sunday the 3rd of September, in the afternoon, and in the middle of the sermon, came a shot of 18lb weight in at the window over the west door of St. Margaret’s church, and took the middle pillar a great part off, and broke it in many hundred pieces, dispersing them in all directions, all over the church. One piece of the stone, fell into a seat at the lower end of the church, where five men set, [sat,] and split the board before them, on which they laid their books; but no harm was done to them. The preacher, a reverend divine, named Mr. Hinson, left his sermon and came out of the church, and all the people departed in a most confused manner; [759a] some leaving their hatts, some their books, and some their scarves; but, praised be God, no further hurt was done to any person.” [759b]

Near three months after the surrender of Lynn, the following order of both houses was issued, bearing date December 9th 1643—

“Forasmuch as the Earl of Manchester, in his articles of agreement with the town of king’s Lynn, remitted the offence in reference to himself and his array while they lay before the town; but touched upon no private injuries done by the malignants to the well-affected: it is this day ordered by the Lords and Commons that such persons as did take any of the goods of the well-affected, by themselves or such as they appointed, or did any damage to their houses or mills, or any other ways, shall make restitution to all such well-affected persons as have been damnified, according to the greatness of their losses. And that Col. Walton, governor of King’s Lynn, Mr. Percival and Mr. Toll, members of the House of Commons, [for that town,] shall examine what damage hath been done to the well-affected, and appoint such as have done them injury to make them reparation accordingly: and if any of them shall refuse to make such reparation, that the said governor, Mr. Percival, and Mr. Toll, shall have power to sequester so much of the estates of such malignants as will make the reparation, and assign it to those that have been damnified.” [760a]

Hence it appears, that the town was then divided into two great political parties, the most powerful of which approving, and even admiring the corruptions and insanities of the Court: how far the case is similar or dissimilar at present, we need not say.

Sometime after the above order was issued by the two Houses, a party of royalists, at the head of which was young L’Estrange, afterwards the noted Sir Roger, formed a plan for surprising the town and recovering it for the king, who had granted him a commission, constituting him its governor, in case of success. But the design was betrayed by two of his confederates, though both bound by an oath of secrecy: which shews what trusty and choice hands they were. L’Estrange was consequently seized, tried by a court-martial, and condemned to die as a traitor. The sentence however was not executed. He remained in prison from 1644 till 1648, when he luckily escaped, and sometime after got out of the kingdom, where he remained, as was said before, [760b] till the autumn of 1653, when he succeeded in making his peace with the Protector: after which he lived in this country unmolested to the day of his death, when he was at a very advanced age.

About two years after L’Estrange’s adventure, we find the following notice taken of this town in a Public Paper, called “The Weekly Account,” of Wednesday May 6. 1646—It is an order of Parliament dated April 31. and thus worded—“Whereas the town of Lynn Regis hath suffered very much by the Lord Paulet, It is ordered that reparation should be made to the said town, according to their Petition, out of his estate.”—The Weekly account was a quarto news-paper, of one sheet, “containing certain special and remarkable passages from both Houses of Parliament, and collections of several Letters from the armies.”—We no where else meet with any account or intimation of damages sustained by Lynn from Lord Paulet: but the fact cannot be doubted. The town, it appears, had complained to Parliament, and petitioned on the occasion. Could that petition be found, it would, no doubt, cast some light upon this dark part of our history.

It is very certain that this town was no small sufferer during that revolutionary period, as appears from the Journal of the House of Commons in Rushworth’s Historical Collections, Vol. 7. p. 1217, where we find the following passage—“Saturday, August 5, 1648. The House was informed that the town of Lynn Regis did want much repair, being ruined by these times of war. The House ordered 2000 oaks for reparation thereof.” This conduct of the parliament, or then House of Commons looked well, as it indicated some regard for justice. We seldom, if ever, meet with similar instances in the conduct of the other, or opposite party. It is not very usual with crowned heads, or their minions, to think much of making reparation for injuries, much and devoutly as it is to be wished, that it always formed a prominent and essential part of their character.

For the remaining years, down to the restoration, this town appears to have remained tranquil, and pretty loyal to the constituted authorities, or new order of things. It seems also to have soon surmounted its former sufferings, [762a] and to have fast advanced in wealth and prosperity. We discover no particular symptoms of disaffection here within those years, unless it was about 1650, when there was an insurrection of the royalists in this county, and a major Saul, a worthy gentleman, as an old MS. says, was hanged here in the Tuesday market place, for being concerned, it seems, in that affair.

About the same time, or within the same year, one Dorothy Floyd, (or Lloyd,) also was hanged here, as the same old MS. says, for Witchcraft: which we now just mention, as we had overlooked it before, in our account of those who unhappily suffered at Lynn for that reputed or imaginary crime. [762b]

Section II.

Cromwell in much request at Lynn about the commencement of this period—the reason of it conjectured—his visit here, and that of Fairfax—character or quality of the then parliamentary representatives of the town—how chosen—paid by their constituents—demur on that score—payment enforced by parliament: &c.

The reputation and influence of Cromwell appear to have been very considerable in these parts before the breaking out of the war. In his native county of Huntingdon, and that of Cambridge, he was evidently well respected; and especially in the Isle and Fens and parts adjacent. In the direction and management of the drainage and other affairs of the Fens his interest appeared scarcely inferior to that of the earl of Bedford, if it did not sometimes exceed it. He appears to have been at the head of the opposition to that nobleman, to which party this town then belonged, as well as that of Cambridge, which Cromwell represented in parliament. The service which he had rendered to his party must have procured him their good opinion: and this, together with his general reputation, might be the reason of his being treated here with uncommon distinction.

In the spring of 1643, and but a few months before the Siege we find him invited here by the mayor and corporation; and the following order is still extant in their books—“March 20th. ordered a free entertainment at the town charge, by Thomas Gurling Esq. mayor, for Col. Cromwell and those gentlemen of his equipage, according to the invitation of Mr. Mayor, in answer to a Letter he received from Col. Cromwell.”—In the same books, a few weeks after, was inserted the following memorandum—“April 17. Mr. Mayor was allowed 5l. for his preparations for the entertainment of Col. Cromwell.” [764] This was at an early period of the war, before the town had ventured to declare for the king, and when they appeared desirous of keeping fair with the parliament, or being treated on the footing of neutrality. But whatever might be its policy, it was a very undignified conduct, as must always be the case where duplicity or hypocrisy forms the leading feature. The event shews that a different conduct would have answered better:—agreeable to the old adage or maxim, that “Honesty is the best Policy.”

The burgesses or representatives sent by this town to the short parliament, which met in the spring of 1640, as well as those sent to the long parliament, which met the ensuing autumn or winter, were chosen from among its principal and responsible inhabitants; which seems to have been strictly proper and unexceptionable.—The representatives in the former or short parliament were Mr. Wm. Doughty and Mr. Tho. Gurlyn, the two senior aldermen; those in the latter, or long parliament, were Mr. John Percival and Mr. Tho. Toll; who were also chosen from among the aldermen. To each of those representatives their constituents allowed five shillings a day for their trouble, while they attended their duty in parliament. With this trifling allowance, while it was paid, the recipients appear to have been quite satisfied. But their constituents soon grew tired of it, and withheld it from them, which occasioned the interference of parliament, as appears by the following order.

“October 15. 1642—It is this day ordered by the Commons, now assembled in parliament, that the mayor, aldermen, and common counsell of the town of King’s Lynn, in the county of Norfolk, shall pay and allow, out of the town stock, as formerly, unto John Percevall [765a] and Tho. Toll, their burgesses for this present parliament, as large an allowance, per diem, as they have hitherto [765b] allowed any of their aldermen that have been burgesses in parliament for that towne, notwithstanding the freemen [765c] of that town had their voyces in the choice of the said John Percevall and Tho. Toll to be their burgesses in the present parliament. If the mayor of Lynn can shew any cause to the contrary wee shall be ready to hear him.”

The Corporation appear to have been pretty much at a loss how to act in this affair. No public notice appears to have been taken of it from the middle of October till the beginning of January. On the 2nd. of that month the Corporation had a meeting on the occasion, when the above order was taken under consideration. On the next day they met again, when it was resolved and ordered that the following Letter or address should be presented to the House of Commons, by way of answer.

“We the Mayor, Aldermen, and Comon Councel, whose names are hereunto subscribed, doe in all humbleness represent unto your grave wisdoms, That as heretofore no parliamentary wages have been paid before the parliament ended, [766] nor then out of the town stock, but by the Freemen and Inhabitants, saving that of late time, meerly of bounty not of dutye, the burgesses were diversely rewarded by the representative body, so in like humbleness we represent the now impossibility of performance of the said order, in respect wee have not at present (nor had at any time since notice of the said order) any Town-Stock at all, nor are likely to have any for many years to come, for that our revenues are not sufficient to defray the necessary charges wee annually disburse for the ordinary maintenance of the town, whereunto wee are tyed, besides the extraordinary expences which unavoidably do and will daily fall upon us for the safety of our town in especiall, and of the kingdom in generall, all which wee humbly refer to your high Justice and Honorable Consideration.”

As this address was a mere shuffle, it was not likely to impose upon parliament, or prove ultimately of any avail to the corporation. They affected however, to be still desirous of keeping fair with that body; and accordingly treated Cromwell and his company, when they visited the town, two or three months after, with marks of most respectful attention. [767] But that was probably a piece of downright finesse on their part, to gain time and bring the plot which they were forming, or their plan of future resistance to greater ripeness and a fairer chance of success. Even their withholding from their two members the usual allowance for their attendance in parliament may be naturally supposed to have resulted from the design of declaring for the king and against the parliament: and this design was put in execution the ensuing summer, which brought on the siege and other events already noticed.

The Corporation evaded the payment of the said daily allowance to their two members for a whole year or more: but it was not forgotten by the parliament, who sometime after the siege, appear to have put them again in mind of it. Accordingly we find that the following memorandum stands yet in the corporation-books—“Nov. 24. (1643,) ordered that five shillings per diem be paid to John Percevall and Tho. Toll, burgesses in this parliament, from the time they went to parliament to this day.” Thus the affair ended; and our representatives, it is presumed, continued to receive the like allowance afterwards, till the restoration. But it does not appear, or is at all likely to have been the case any longer, as to this town, though it might elsewhere. [768] At the period of which we are speaking, it was, probably, pretty general. Had it been universal, and so continued to this day, it would, no doubt, have been a very happy circumstance for these kingdoms. Our House of Commons, in that case, would have felt more for the country than it has generally done in these latter times: not to say that the people too had been then more careful in the choice of their representatives.

As to the two last elections, already glanced at, that for the short and that for the succeeding long parliament, they appear to have differed from each other in this, that the former was the act or deed of the corporation alone, and the latter that of the whole body of freemen, as is the case (at least nominally) at present. Succeeding elections seem to have exhibited similar diversity. In Cromwell’s first parliament, that of 1653, it does not appear that Lynn had any representatives. It is therefore likely that there was here then no previous election. In the second protectoral parliament, which met in 1654, this town was represented as usual; but how the election was conducted does not seem very clear, though it appears most probable that the freemen at large had no share in it, as may perhaps be concluded from the following memorandum in the town-books—

“1654 July 21. Ordered that 4l. 15s. expended by Mr. Mayor on the day of the election of the burgesses to serve in parliament for this corporation be paid by the chamberlain.”

That the election for the members sent to the 3rd protectoral parliament (that of 1656,) was managed by the corporation solely seems pretty evident from the following note in the town books—

“1656. August 18th. This day general John Desborow and major general Philip Skippon are chosen in this house to serve as burgesses for this borough in his Highness next parliament upon the 17th September next, according to a precept directed to Mr Mayor from the Sherife, and ordered that their charges be paid by this House.”

In the election of the members who represented Lynn in the protector Richard’s parliament the corporation appear to have exercised the same arbitrary power as before, of being sole electors. Several of the other freemen at the same time desired permission to poll, but were not allowed. At the election which took place in April 1660 the freemen again applied for permission to vote which, after some hesitation, was acceded to, and the members were then chosen by the general body of free burgesses. [769]

Thus we see how things formerly stood in this town, as to the state of political liberty, or the freedom of election. Former times appear not to have been very pure in those respects, any more than the present. In looking to our ancestors for much political rectitude or public virtue, we are often most sadly disappointed. It is now frequently made a subject of complaint or reflection, that our present members are chosen, in fact, by two or three individuals; but the same seems to have been almost always the case ever since the reformation, and revolution, as well as before. The freemen at large are indeed said to have a voice in the election of our members; but it is all a joke, while freedom of acting, or voting without constraint or control is totally out of the question. It is well known at what risk most of our pretended freemen would vote freely at our elections, and how much it has cost some of them before now for presuming so to do. All this however must be very wrong, if our constitution ought to be in practice what is it in theory.

Section III.

Maintenance of the clergy—state of the public morals and manners—mode and progress of reformation at Lynn, under the Common-wealth and Protectorate.

Of the Lynn clergy during this period Dr. Arrowsmith and Mr. Horn appear to have been by much the most eminent. The former we think was one of the ministers of St. Margaret’s parish. That his character, as a divine, stood very high, appears from his being appointed one of the Assembly of Divines, which was convened in 1643, and which appointment put an end probably to his residence here. He became afterwards Master of Peter-House in Cambridge. Mr. Horn must have settled here after the departure of Dr. Arrowsmith; not as his successor, however; for he was the minister of South Lynn, and held that situation till after the restoration, when we find him among those two thousand worthies, commonly called the “Ejected Ministers.” As minister of Alhallows or South Lynn, he laid his income at 80l. a year, a sum equal to 5 or 600l. at least, of our money. This comfortable situation and ample income he gave up, to preserve a good conscience; an instance and a proof of integrity which must endear his memory to all honest and good men.

The clergy of St. Margaret’s parish had probably as good an income as their brother of Alhallows, but the exact amount of theirs we have not the means of ascertaining. But in the town-books there is the following memorandum dated December 18. 1637 “Lionell Gatford minister to have 50l. yearly and a dwelling house, provided he agree not to meddle in the election of church wardens or parish clark.”—This 50l. was equal to 3 or 400 of our pounds, so that the liberality of the corporation to their minister at that period must have far exceeded what we understand it to be at present. As the said 50l. was over and above, or exclusive of the vicarial dues, and what we call surplice fees, the minister’s income must have been what may be called very decent and handsome at the period of which we are now treating.

After this town had been reduced under the dominion of the parliament it soon began to put on a religious and puritanical appearance. The publicans and those who frequented their houses were now obliged to be very particularly upon their guard, and at their peril to observe a decency of behaviour. Those who were guilty of tippling were fined, as were also the occupiers of the public houses where those offences were committed. Profane swearing was also punished in like manner, as well as loitering in the time of divine service on the Lord’s day. [774a] A strict attention to these matters began to be paid by the magistrates very shortly after the reduction of the town; and they appear to have pursued the same course pretty regularly thenceforward till the restoration. The town accordingly, soon assumed a decorous and respectable appearance. It was no longer disgraced as before by drunkenness, riot, or profane swearing. In fact, it was in a manner regenerated; and might with a good deal of propriety be denominated a christian town. The Lord’s Day was observed with remarkable decorum and solemnity; and on the Thursdays, in lecture time, the shops were kept shut up, to the end the people and their servants might the better attend the hearing the word of God. [774b] On the whole, this town appears to have been for the greatest part of this period as well governed as at any one time either before or afterwards.

The love of tippling appears to have been then in Lynn one of the greatest obstacles to the reformation of the people. The town was full of petty pot-houses, a great many of which were private and unlicensed. Even as late as 1657 we find no less than 40 or 50 of these private and unlawful places of resort heavily fined by the magistrates. This was, at the time, complained of, as a grievous oppression, and is so still represented in some of the existing MS. accounts of that period; which shews how unwilling the people were to forsake their immoralities, tho’ their rulers obliged them to do so outwardly. The restoration followed soon after, and we need not wonder that the profaneness and profligacy, then introduced and restored, proved highly acceptable and pleasing to the majority of the Lynn people, who now found themselves pretty well freed from most of the former troublesome checks upon immorality and licentiousness.

Of the persevering exertions of our magistrates, during this period, to check the prevailing propensity of the lower orders to tippling, profane swearing, and the like irregularities, many instances occur in our old records. Of several of those instances, in 1644, some notice has been taken already. Others are recorded as having occurred in 1645, [775] but a far greater number in the following year, (1646,) [776] which seems to indicate the uncommon zeal and vigilance of the then chief magistrate, or chief magistrates, for they seem to have occurred partly in the mayoralty of Edward Robinson, and partly (but chiefly) in that of Thomas Toll, one of the members for the town, who appears to have stood high here then in the public estimation.

In some of the succeeding years the attention of our magistrates appears to have been no less engaged in these corrective measures. 1651 was one of those years. Bartholemew Wormell was then mayor; at least for the first nine months of it; and he seems to have trod pretty much in the steps of his brother Toll. The offences that came under his cognisance seem to have exceeded in number rather than fallen short of those committed during the mayoralty of the latter. They were of various sorts; such as swearing, tippling, excessive drinking, keeping unlicensed alehouses, travelling on the Lord’s day, &c. By the distance between one and another of the years of remarkable delinquency and coercion, it would seem that the irregularities were checked for a time, but would afterwards break out afresh, with increasing force, like water pent up, or impeded in its course by a dam. At the distance of five or six years the vigorous interference of the magistrates appears always to have become necessary. 1645, 1651, and 1657, were the most remarkable years for the interposition of the municipal power to correct the existing abuses.

The last of those years (1657) was exceedingly remarkable for the number of petty pot-houses, or private drinking places then discovered in the town. They amounted seemingly to near fifty, for such a number of persons appear to have been then fined, “for selling beer without licence.” Vice seems to have then skulked into those places of private resort, and no longer cared to shew its face in public. Most of our misdoings appear to have been then confined to those petty and private pot-houses, and but one misdeed occurs within that year which would seem to have been committed elsewhere; and the same is recorded in these words—“Received of Mr. James Davey, which he levied upon an offender for prophaneing the Lord’s day, 10s.”—In short, one cannot help concluding that the town was then, in point of outward decency, much superior to what it is in the present day. We are not quite sure that there were then any common breweries here: and if there were, it is not probable that they were the property of magistrates.

Nor did the improvement which then took place in the town consist merely in the outward deportment or appearance of the inhabitants, but it seems to have also extended to the temper and disposition of a great many of them; as appears from the numerous acts of humanity and deeds of charity which are found to have been then promoted and performed here, beyond any preceding or subsequent period that we know of. The sufferings and distresses of their fellow creatures, far and near, at home and abroad, were then viewed, or listened to, at Lynn with sympathetic and commiserating attention, as is evinced by the numerous collections which then took place here for the relief of such sufferers and objects of distress and misery. The statement below in reference chiefly to the years 1653 and 1654, will give the reader some idea of the good character of our ancestors at the time of which we are treating. [779]—In short, we know not of any period when Lynn abounded more than it did then, in acts of charity and humanity, in works of mercy and fruits of righteousness; or when it made, on the whole, a more christian-like appearance: notwithstanding the immoral propensities of many of the inhabitants, and the adherence of not a few of the rest to superstitious or fanatical delusions.

Section IV.

Miscellaneous remarks, or a cursory view of divers other matters relating to this town, within, or about the same period.

Nothing, perhaps, exhibits more strikingly the wide difference between that time and the present, than the then defective state of postage, or letter-carriage, between this town and London. Had any one then foretold that we should ever have a mail-coach or mail-cart, or any other conveyance to bring letters from London, or carry them thither daily, it would have passed as an idle tale, no more credible or probable than bishop Wilkins’ notion or supposition of the probability of future intercourse between our world and the moon. The former fact, however, has been realized. But at the period of which we are speaking Letters used to arrive here from London or were conveyed thither from this town once a week, and that by a foot messenger.

Accordingly we have the following article, or memorandum in the corporation books, No. 8. under the year 1638, 9—“Feb. 11th. Richard Harrison and Richard Smith are chosen to be two foot posts for this town of Lynn to London interchangeably by turns every week, and to have 30s. each, from the town, per annum.” From the then mode of carrying on trade one may easily conceive that the intercourse between the two places was very small, and the letters conveyed to and fro very few, compared to what is the case at present. But the wages or salary of these postmen is not a little remarkable:—sixty shillings a year for going afoot every week to London! Neither the generosity nor even the justice of the town seems to shine here. Who would undertake such a service now for sixty guineas a year? Yet we are not sure that the shilling of that time was altogether as valuable as our guinea. It must however have been pretty nearly so: and within our own memory, even in this best of reigns, the guinea’s value has been reduced to seven shillings, if not lower. But on this subject we need not to enlarge.

In 1642 a measure was adopted, in the Hall, which must needs be creditable to the memory of its then members. The affair is thus expressed in the corporation books, under that year, or rather in the book of Extracts before mentioned—“October 9th. Ordered that the Charters shall be read by the town-clerk, in English, that those of this House may the better understand what they are sworn to maintain.” This seems very reasonable and very right, and indicates something like an earnest wish in the body corporate to avoid perjury, and to act conscientiously and honorably in their official capacities, or as municipal functionaries. How expedient it might be at this present time to have a motion made in the Hall to the same effect, or to have a similar measure adopted there, it is not for us to determine. But we cannot help suspecting that some, if not the majority of our present corporate body are to the full as ignorant of the contents of their charters, and of what they are sworn to maintain, as ever their predecessors were, who adapted the measure, or passed the order in question.

Our body corporate at the period of which we are treating, and long after, entertained very different ideas on some points from those of their successors of the present day: and that difference was not, perhaps, more remarkable on any point than on the course to be taken with such of their own members, or brethren, who ceased to be residents in the town, or became absentees. Formerly the non-residence of members was on no account allowed, or connived at. Aldermen, common-council-men, and even the recorder, as well as town-clerk and chamberlain, were required to be all residents: and whenever they ceased to be so, or happened to become absentees, they were always forthwith discharged, or cut off, as rotten and useless members. The necessity of this our corporation used formerly to insist upon, as what a due regard for the good government and prosperity of the town, as well as the very nature of their respective oaths and offices rendered indispensible. In short, it seemed to be their unanimous and invariable opinion that the nonresidence of any one of their fraternity was insufferable, and inconsistent with both honour and honesty, and of course with the character of a gentleman.

Their successors of the present time view the subject in another and a very different light. Our absentees are now very numerous, and seem to be daily on the increase. They consist already of several aldermen and common council men, with the recorder himself at their head—[783] all honourable men, no doubt: though we cannot help suspecting that their predecessors, of other times, would have bestowed upon them another and a somewhat more degrading appellation, and especially upon the rest of the brotherhood who quietly suffer their nonresidence, or allow them to retain their membership while they remain absentees. It is now a common complaint, that, owing to these absentees, the corporation business is much obstructed, so that it is often very difficult, and sometimes impossible to get what is called a Hall: yet no one, it seems, has the honesty, or the courage to move for the expulsion of those worse than useless members, as would always have been the case heretofore. This obvious symptom of declension and depravity in this corporation, may serve, perhaps, to illustrate what is said to be also actually the case on our great national theatre, or throughout the empire.

How these matters, or this case, stood formerly will appear from the following samples, out of the corporation books—“February 17th (1644, 5) This day it is agreed by order of this House, that Gregory Turnall, late one of the common-councell here, by reason of his absenting himself from the Hall (tho’ he hath often been required) be discharged our society.”—again—“1647, February. 14. This day it is agreed upon, that for that Mr. Richard Davy, late one of the common-councel of this House, is now gone to live at Yarmouth, therefore this House doe discharge him of the same place.” again—“March 16th. 1659. Nathaniel Atwood discharged from the office of a common-councell-man, having long absented himselfe, and being employed in the navy.”—again—“1661, October 25. Forasmuch as Mr. William Keeling, one of the aldermen of this burgh, hath a long time absented himselfe from this burgh, and from attending the service as alderman of this burgh, although he hath been thereto often requested, and is now at present absent out of the town, whereby the service of this burgh is very much impeded, to the great damage of the said burgh; it is thereupon this day ordered, that the said Wm. Keeling be discharged from being an alderman of this burgh.”—again—“November 28. 1673. This day Mr. Giles Alden (by reason of his being very much absent from this society, whereby the business of this corporation is much impeded and neglected) is by the mayor and aldermen discharged from being one of the common-councell of this burgh.”—again,—“September 29. 1728. Ordered that Robert Britiffe Esq. Recorder of this burgh, be discharged of his attendance as Recorder, for his neglect of duty and nonresidence.”—These extracts plainly shew what was the practice of our corporation formerly, in regard to such of their members as happened to become nonresidents or absentees, and how very different that practice was from that which prevails at present. The reader is now left to judge which is the most proper or reasonable, the former or the present practice.

At the period we are now reviewing, a roasted swan seems to have been in great request at our Lynn entertainments: hence we read under the date of Sept. 24. 1649—“Granted to John Bird, a lease for seven years of three ferry rights, at 10l. per annum, and a brace of swans well fatted to the mayor.” But the ferryman, probably, found it difficult sometimes to get, or to fatten those large birds; in which case the mayor might be expected to condescend to accept of an equivalent. Something like this accordingly occurs under the date of March 15. 1657, “Ordered that the chamberlain pay to the mayor for the time being 40s. on the 1st of January yearly, in liew of a brace of fatted Swanns usually delivered to the mayor by the person who hired the Ferry rights.”—The taste of our countrymen has undergone a great change since; and the Swan no longer appears upon our tables.

At the beginning of this period there were here no more than six corn-meters, but on the 14th. November 1653 they were increased to ten, which seems to indicate our trade, and particularly the corn trade, as well as the agriculture of the country to have been then in a state of progression.—The town seems also to have had then a greater intercourse with the country on its eastern than on its southern side; which we may infer from the following article in the corporation books, dated April 4. 1653: “Ordered that Henry Bloye, the Southgate porter, shall have the Tolls of that Gate at 1l. 5s. a year; and James Browne, the porter at the East-gate, shall pay for the Tolls of that Gate 1l. 15s. a year, during the pleasure of this House.”—The East gate is supposed still to retain a similar superiority.—It is somewhat remarkable that in those days the town-clerks of Lynn, as well as the recorders, were regular barristers: accordingly we find it noted in the corporation records, “December 6. 1652—This day Thomas Ulber Esq. councellor at Law is chosen Town-clerk, in the room of John Williamson Esq. councellor at Law, discharged.”—Our corporation must have been then well furnished with legal knowledge. In later times all our town-clerks were below the degree of barristers. [787]

On the 3rd of July 1657 the tolls of the East and South Gates, (as appears from the town-books,) were let for 15l. a year, which seems to shew that they were now much more productive than in 1653, when they were let for only 3l. a year. It is very natural to infer from this, that the trade of the town, or its intercourse with the country had much increased during those years.—On the 18th of July in the next year, (1658, as we learn from the same source) St. James’ church yard was ordered to be a burying place for the parish of St. Margaret’s, for one year, “there not being room in St. Margaret’s church-yard:”—but it seems rather unaccountable how making St. James’ church yard the parish burying-place for one year could materially alter the case as to the want of room in St. Margaret’s church-yard, or furnish more room there for burying at the end of that term than there was at the beginning of it. It might however be here suggested by way of query, if it would not have been quite as well, on a recent occasion, and far better in point of expense, to have made use again of St. James’ church yard (including the south side) instead of forming the new burying ground?—at least, till the times proved more favourable; which, it is to be hoped, will be the case in the next reign, if not sooner.

The period we are now reviewing, and the review of which we are now about to conclude, was perhaps the most remarkable of any in the history of this town, as well as that of England and of Britain. Nor does it seem to have been more remarkable for any thing than for the exertions then made to reform the morals and manners of the great mass of the people. But those exertions were generally too rough and violent, and therefore more calculated to make hypocrites than sincere converts, as must always be the case when such works are carried on by coercive means, rather than by rational persuasion, or upon right christian principles. Accordingly our reforming magistrates, by way of reclaiming their townsmen from their tippling propensities, and bringing them from drunkenness to sobriety, had recourse to fines and imprisonment, which as was before observed, fell sometimes very heavy upon the publicans, no less than six and thirty of whom were imprisoned in the course of one year, as we learn from one of our old MS. accounts. These measures excited a violent prejudice against our reformers, and against the reformation itself. Fining was called plundering, and imprisonment, passed for persecution and tyranny. But the restoration brought things back into the old channel, and relieved our publicans and tipplers from these hardships.

CHAP. V.

History of Lynn from the Restoration to the Revolution.

Between the period which we have been last reviewing and that which we are now entering upon there was confessedly a very wide and glaring dissimilarity: no two periods could well exhibit a more obvious and striking contrast. The spirit of puritanism predominated in the former, and that of libertinism, or, in other words, of licentiousness and profligacy in the latter. The rulers of the nation, in the former period, were men of sobriety and gravity, in the latter they were dissipated and dissolute. The former appeared to have for their aim the amendment or improvement of the national manners and morals, the latter the very reverse, for they were actually the promoters and patrons of all manner of depravity, of every thing that was vile, profligate, or flagitious. The two brothers, Charles and James, and their ministers, were certainly some of the vilest wretches that providence ever sent to punish and plague and curse a sinful nation.

As to Cromwell, it is pretty much the fashion to decry and vilify him, as a dissembling villain, a base hypocritical knave and usurper: but no one need to envy the discernment, penetration, or sagacity of those men who cannot perceive that his moral character was not below that of either the first or second Charles, and that his character as a statesman, and his talents for government, were infinitely superior to those of either of them, or of any of their kindred. No proof has ever been produced that he was a greater dissembler, or a more unprincipled wretch than those two princes; and it might perhaps without much difficulty be shewn, that, in comparison with either of them, he was really an honest, virtuous, great and good man.—As to what is deemed his greatest crime, that of compassing the king’s death, the great law of self-preservation will certainly plead much in extenuation of that act; for it is now very well known that Cromwell was previously in possession of good and absolute proof that it was the king’s intention to sacrifice him, in case he could bring the treaty then on foot between him and the parliament to a successful termination. The intercepted Letter to the queen convinced Oliver that he had no chance for his life, if the king reascended the throne. He therefore resolved to prevent that, and save his own life by sacrificing that of the king. [790] This was very natural, and few men would have done otherwise.

Section I.

Cursory remarks on the Restoration—its memorable effects—great joy manifested here on the occasion—several remarkable rejoicings at Lynn in the course of this period.

The Restoration was one of those revolutionary events which occur in the history of this country. It was effected, says one of our historians, “without any effusion of blood.” But what is more to be wondered at, is, that whereas so much blood had been spilt to compel Charles I. to come to terms with his people, towards which it is certain he at last made large concessions, Charles II. should be received without any conditions at all. Upon this bishop Burnet, in the History of his own times, observes, that Hale, afterwards lord chief justice, did move that a Committee might be appointed to look into the propositions that had been made, and the concessions that had been offered by the late king, and from thence digest such propositions as they should think fit to be sent over to the king. As such a motion was foreseen, Monk was instructed how to answer [or overrule] it. He accordingly told the House, that he had information of such numbers of incendiaries still in the kingdom, that if any delay was put to the sending for the king, he could not answer for the peace either of the nation or army: and as the king was to bring neither army nor treasure with him, either to fright or corrupt them, propositions might be as well offered to him when he should come over; so moved for sending commissioners immediately. This was echoed with such a shout all over the House, that Hale’s motion was no more insisted on. To the King’s coming without conditions, says the bishop, may well be imputed all the errors of his reign. [792a] To allow him so to return and ascend the throne was certainly a flagrant proof of the folly and pusillanimity of the convention parliament, and of the baseness of that spirit which then predominated among out ancestors.

Such a tide of extravagant joy overspread the nation upon the king’s arrival, as in the end very much hurt and debased the morals of the people, and introduced an almost universal dissoluteness of manners, which was encouraged and propagated by the ill example of the king and the court. From the enthusiasm and fanaticism, which prevailed in the former period, the nation fell now into the opposite extreme of licentiousness and immorality; one or the other of which extremes being always the consequence of men’s not governing themselves by reason. [792b] Thus the country had no great cause to congratulate itself on the blessed effects of the restoration of royalty, or the revival of the old order of things. No nation in Europe could be more depraved and licentious than the English in the reign of Charles the second.

Much pains were taken, before his majesty’s arrival, to represent his character in the most favourable and respectable light. Though the first born of profligacy and scoundrelism, he was reported, by his faithful and thorough-paced agents, as the very mirror of wisdom, of virtue, and of piety. These reports were not more industriously or artfully circulated than they were readily and generally believed, so that we need not wonder if the country in general looked upon the arrival of Charles as the commencement of the golden age, or of the reign of a heaven-born prince. Such seems to have been actually the case. The confidence the people had in the king, says Kimber, from the extraordinary good opinion they had been prepossessed with in his favour, and their transports of joy at being delivered from the late confusions and distractions, by means of his restoration, will account for the excessive complaisance that was shewn to the court at the beginning of this great event, so that the parliament could scarce deny the king any thing. To the ill use made of this confidence is to be imputed the opposition which the court met with afterwards.

Our ecclesiastical historian Neal, speaking of the restoration, says,

“Here was an end of those distracted times which our historians have loaded with all the infamy and reproach that the wit of man could invent. The puritan ministers have been decried, as ignorant mechanicks, canting preachers, enemies to learning, and no better than public robbers. The universities were said to be reduced to a meer Munster, and that if the Goths and Vandals, and even the Turks, had overrun the nation they could not have done more to introduce barbarism, disloyalty, and ignorance. Yet in these times, and by the men who then filled the university chairs, were educated the most learned divines and eloquent preachers, such as the Stillingfleets, Tillotsons, Bulls, Barrows, Whitbys, and others, who retained a high veneration for their learned tutors after they were ejected and displaced. The religious part of the common people have been stigmatized with the character of hypocrites, their looks, their dress and behaviour, have been represented in the most odious colours; and yet one may venture to challenge these declaimers to produce any period of time since the reformation, wherein there was less open profaneness and impiety, and more of the spirit as well as the appearance of religion. Perhaps there was too much rigour and preciseness in indifferent matters; but the lusts of men were laid under a visible restraint; and though the legal constitution was unhappily broken, and men were governed by false politicks, yet better laws were never made against vice, or more rigorously executed. The dress and conversation of people was sober and virtuous, and their manner of living remarkably frugal. There was hardly a single bankruptcy to be heard of in a year, and in such a case the bankrupt had a mark of infamy upon him that he could never wipe off. Drunkenness fornication, profane swearing, and every kind of debauchery, were justly deemed infamous, and universally discountenanced. The clergy were laborious to excess in preaching and praying, and catechising youth and visiting their parishes. The magistrates did their duty in suppressing all kinds of games, stage-plays, and abuses in publick-houses. There was not a play acted on any theatre in England for almost twenty years. The Lord’s day was observed with unusual reverence; and there were a set of as learned and pious youths training up in the university as had ever been known. So that if such a reformation of manners had been obtained under a legal administration they would have deserved the character of the best of times.”

“But when the legal constitution was restored, there returned with it a torrent of debauchery and wickedness. The times which followed the restoration were the reverse of those that preceded it; for the laws which had been enacted against vice for the last twenty years being declared null, and the magistrates changed, men set no bounds to their licentiousness. A proclamation indeed was published against those loose and riotous cavaliers, whose loyalty consisted in drinking health and railing at those who would not revel with them: but in reality the king was at the head of these disorders, being devoted to his pleasures, and having given himself up to an avowed course of lewdness; his bishops and chaplains said, that he usually came from his mistresses apartments to church, even on sacrament days.”

Yet he was, on earth, the supreme head of the church, and that church the best constituted in the world. It must need, surely, be well, extremely well constituted (and so must any body) not to be contaminated, disordered, or distracted with, or by such a head.

“Nothing was to be seen at court but feasting, hard drinking, revelling, and amorous intrigues, which engendered the most enormous vices. From court the contagion spread like wild fire among the people, in so much that men threw off the very profession of virtue and piety, under colour of drinking the king’s health: all kinds of old cavalier rioting and debauchery revived; the appearances of religion which remained with some, furnished matters of ridicule to libertines and scoffers. Some, who had been concerned in the former changes, thought they could not redeem their credit better than by deriding all religion, and telling or making stories to render their former party ridiculous. To appear serious, or make conscience either of words or actions, was the way to be accounted a schismatick, a fanatick, or a sectarian; though if there was any real religion during the course of this reign, it was chiefly among those people. They who did not applaud the new ceremonies were marked out for presbyterians, and every presbyterian was a rebel. The old clergy who had been sequestered for scandal, having taken possession of their livings, were intoxicated with their new felicity, and threw off all the restraints of their order.—Such was the general dissoluteness of manners that attended the deluge of joy which overflowed the nation upon his majesties restoration.” [796a]

As to Lynn, at and subsequently to the restoration, it appears to have largely shared the general joy and other effects produced by that memorable event. When we consider the extreme rigour of the former government or governors of this town, [796b] in attempting fines and imprisonment to restrain the tippling and other vicious and licentious propensities of the inhabitants, we cannot much wonder at the excessive joy which the restoration excited here, as it was very natural to expect that that event would effectually remove those severities, and introduce a more lax and indulgent system. How long the first transports of joy lasted we are not able exactly to ascertain; but that they were at their height on the first royal birth day, the 29th of May 1660, we may very reasonably presume. On that day the town was all festivity and triumph. Among the curiosities that graced that memorable carnival were 300 young maids, or lasses of the town, dressed all in white, and parading through the principal streets. [797] Whether this may, or may not be considered as an emblem of the predilection of the sex for Charles, or that of Charles for the sex, we will not take upon us to say. That it was a whimsical contrivance seems very evident; and that it was peculiar to this town appears more than probable, as we do not recollect having heard of any thing like it elsewhere on that day, or on that occasion.

This was certainly one of the most gladsome seasons that Lynn ever witnessed: but it was not the only season of that description that occurred here during the period now under review. There are others of the same kind that ought here not to pass unnoticed. One of these was in the spring of 1680, on account of the arrival of the duke of York from Scotland, and the discomfiture of the Whigs or petitioners, (or the king’s rejection of the petitions of the people for the assembling of parliament,) and, of course, the success and triumph of the Tories or court party, then called Abhorrers, as they professed to abhor such petitioning, and approve of the king’s governing without parliaments. On these interesting accounts there was much rejoicing at Lynn; and

“on the 30th of April that year, the following Address was read in the Hall, and signed the same day by every one of that House: and the mayor, (Giles Bridgeman) was desired to commend the same to the hands of the right honorable the Earl of Yarmouth (Lord Lieutenant of the County) to be presented by him to his Majesties.”

“To the King’s most excellent Majestie,

Dread Sir,—Wee your Majesties Dutifull and Loyall Subjects, the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, and Common-Councell of your Majesties ancient burgh of Lenn Regis, on behalf of ourselves and other the free Burgesses and principal inhabitants here doe in all humility prostrate ourselves at the feet of your most sacred Majestie, and in all duty acknowledge the infinite benefits wee of this burgh, with all other, the liedge people of this your Majesties Kingdom of England by your happy government and royall conduct next under God enjoye, and more particularly wee give your Majestie an oblation of our duty and thankfullness in your pious and resolute support and maintenance of the religion established by the Lawes of this kingdome in the Church of England in your couragious conserving the Regalities of your Crowne against insolent petitions, and protecting the lawfull liberties and freedoms of your subjects. And with our souls we bless Almighty God in the return of your royall brother, the Duke of Yorke, to your Majesties most Gracious presence, and doe cheerfully profess to maintaine and defend your Majesties most Royall person your Heirs and lawfull successors in your and their just rights,

May it please your Majestie

Your natural Liegemen.”

In this remarkable and curious Address to the Throne, what choice matter of joy, thankfulness, congratulation, and triumph is exhibited on the part of the Addressers! The King appeared resolved to govern despotically, or without a parliament. Many of his subjects had petitioned and prayed him to call or assemble a parliament. He had rejected those petitions and prayers with disdain. The Lynn Corporation address him on the occasion, congratulating, praising and extolling him to the skies for acting the despot and turning a deaf ear to the prayers and supplications of his aggrieved subjects. For such royal doings, and for the arrival and presence of the Duke of York at court, which presence had always been a curse to the nation, the corporation of Lynn congratulated their profligate sovereign, and offered to stand by him at all events. Moreover, they exhibit, all the while, a most sanctimonious appearance, and profess with all their souls to bless Almighty God for what was one of the greatest curses of their oppressed country.—So much for this royal and notable Address from Lynn. [800]

As to the accession of James to the throne, it appears to have been contemplated at Lynn with no small pleasure and satisfaction, and the day on which that memorable event was announced here to have been a day of uncommon rejoicing. We accordingly find the following note in the Town Books, “Febr. 10th. (1685) King James II. proclaimed with all due solemnities and signalls of Joy and Gladness.” Four days after was “ordered an Address to the King’s Majestie.” But having never seen a copy of this Address the present writer cannot give a particular account of its contents. He cannot however doubt but it was in the usual style of Lynn Addresses to that monarch.

Another season of extraordinary festivity and exultation at Lynn occurred in 1686. It was on no less interesting an occasion than the erecting of the statue of the sovereign in the Tuesday Market place. We accordingly read, in Mackerell’s “Chronological Account” of the town, of “great rejoicings here that year, at the setting up of the statue of king James II.” His majesty (as well as king John) seems to have been long the object of the admiration of the Lynn people. They admired him while Duke of York, and after his accession to the throne they never rested till they had set up his image or statue in the most public and conspicuous part of their town. Of this royal and memorable affair Mackerell has given the following information in another part of his work—

“An account of King James IId’s statue, and the Rejoicings at the setting up of the” [same.]

“On the 13th day of April 1686. which was the anniversary of their majesties coronation, the same was kept with all due solemnity; the mayor, aldermen, and the rest of the body, meeting in their formalities in the Guild-Hall, after Divine Service at the church, proceeded from thence attended with musick, to the great Market-place; in the middle whereof, by the Gentlemen and other Loyal Inhabitants of the corporation, was then erected the Effigies of his Sacred Majesty upon a Pedestal, with several carvings and embellishments, inclosed with a Pallisade of Iron, under inscribed,

Non Immemor
Quantum Divinis Invictiss. Principis
Jacobi II.
Virtutibus debeat
Hanc Regiæ Majestatis Effigiem
Æternum Fidei et Obsequii
Monumentum, Erexit
S. P. Q. L.
Anno Salutis 1686.

In English

“Not forgetting how much is due to the Divine Virtues of the Victorious King James the Second, the Senate and People of Lynn, as a lasting Monument of their Faith and Loyalty, have erected this Statue of his Royal Majesty, in the year of our Lord One Thousand Six Hundred and Eighty six.

“N.B. The King, Queen, and the rest of the Royal Family’s Healths were drank; and the Day was concluded with Ringing of Bells, Bonfires, all sorts of loud Musick, Fire works, discharging the Great Guns, with all other Demonstrations of Joy and Loyalty.” [803]

Such is Mackerell’s account of the extraordinary festivities and rejoicings at Lynn on this great and important occasion. It was, no doubt, worth recording, and it may still be worth preserving here, if it were only for this special reason, that it may help to give us just ideas of the general character of corporations, and of their proceedings. Here is a Statue erected to one of the vilest of human beings; and here are virtues, and even Divine Virtues! ascribed to one who was as devoid of every thing of that kind as the very devil: and here is an Inscription denominating the erection of the Statue a Lasting Monument of Faith and Loyalty; and yet this boasted faith and loyalty, and lasting Monument, lasted only about three or four years. The Statue was pulled down mutilated, decollated, disfigured, dismembered, and buried in dirt and rubbish, where it remains to this day.

There was here also a remarkable exhibition of joy and gratitude, as well as loyalty, in 1687, excited, it seems, by his majesty’s royal and memorable Declaration, and the consciousness of its being the duty of every member of the Church of England to defend and support him with their lives and fortunes.—The following Address to the Throne was accordingly agreed upon and ordered to be sealed with the common Seal, September 19. 1687.—

“Great Sir,—The known principles of the Church of England being such as oblige every member thereof with their Lives and Fortunes to defend and maintain your Majestie Your Royall Prerogative with all other rights belonging to your Majesties Imperiall Crown, makes us at this time humbly to begg your Majesty to receive this further attestation, not in the least doubting of the peaceable enjoyment of our religion under Your Majesties most sacred protection, returning our most hearty and humble thanks for Your Majesties late repeated Assurance thereof, expressed in Your Majesties late gracious Declaration.”

Such was the Address which was sent at that time from Lynn. But his sacred majesty soon found that the boasted principles of the Church of England were not sufficient to secure to him the attachment of his subjects and the quiet possessions of his throne, unless he relinquished those favourite projects of his which appeared hostile to that church. For the very next year a very alarming defection took place, and the majority of those of that communion became inimical to his government. Even the Life and fortune men forsook him, and beheld his downfal without concern or commiseration. So false did that description of his subjects prove to him, and so unavailing also in the end did he find even the great orthodox doctrine of passive obedience and nonresistance, which had been the favourite doctrine of the Church of England during the whole of his brother’s reign.

A few months after the last mentioned affair took place in January 1688, a fresh occasion of rejoicing was presented to the Lynn people. This was the annunication of the queen’s pregnancy; which proved not a little satisfactory and gratifying to our corporation, as appears from the following note in their books:

“January 26. Ordered and agreed that Sunday the 29th Instant being appointed by his Majestie a day of Thanksgiving for her Majesties being happily with child, the several members of this House doe attend Mr. Mayor (Robert Sparrow Esq.) in their formalitys at morning and evening service, to render thanksgiving to Almighty God for so signall a blessing, and after evening service to repair to the Custom House to drink the king’s health with a Bonefire.”

On the 2nd. of the following July, the Gentlemen and good people of Lynn were furnished with matter of still higher gratification, by the knowledge of her majesty’s safe delivery, and the birth of a prince [805] who would be likely to inherit his royal sire’s faith, piety, sapience, and sublime virtues. This important intelligence, as might be expected, was very joyfully received, and occasioned the immediate assembling of the corporation. In that assembly, or meeting, was proposed and voted an Address to his Majesty, of which the following is a copy:

“Great Sir—Wee Your Majesties Dutifull Subjects crave leave of Your Majesty and your Royall Consort that we join with Your Majestie in offering our most humble and hearty thanks to God Almighty in sending Your Majestie a Sonn and a Prince, and farther we begg of your Sacred Majestie to accept our Cordial thanks for your Majesties late favor to the body of this Corporation, [806] and also for your Princely condescension and affection by both your gracious Declarations, not only extending to the Church of England but to all other your peaceable and loyall Subjects, Assuring us by Your royall word you will stand by us, whereby we are not only obliged but resolved, when your Majestie shall think fitt to call a Parliament, wee will endeavour to elect such members as shall make your Majesty happie and Your Subjects easie, and shall pray for Your Majestie’s long and peaceable reigne over us. In witness whereof we have fixed our Town Seale the 2nd of July in the 4th year of your most gracious reign, Anno Domini 1688.”

In conclusion, it is presumed that we are fully warranted to affirm, that Lynn has never been more attached to any of our sovereigns than to King John and King James the second; and that even his present majesty, with all his shining virtues, is not more, if so much beloved here as those two monarchs were. It may perhaps be difficult to account for it, yet it seems unquestionably to be the fact, that of all the princes that ever swayed the British Sceptre, none ever shared more largely in the affection admiration, and veneration of the good people of this town than those three potentates. Nor have there been any other reigns under which our townsmen seemed more ready to congratulate themselves on the superior happiness they enjoyed, or the transcendent benefits and blessings they derived from the throne.

Section II.

Brief account of divers other remarkable circumstances relating to Lynn during this same period—decay of trade—increase of poor—Anmer coal, &c.

After Charles’ restoration, or accession to the throne, it was not to be expected that he should remain long unaddressed by this town. Accordingly we find that within the very first month of his actual reign, (June 16. 1660,) a congratulatory Address to him was voted and ordered in the Hall; and moreover, “that the Fee farm rents formerly paid from this town to the Crown, and lately purchased by the mayor and burgesses, amounting to 41l. 6s. 2d. be restored to his majestie.” Having never seen this Address, or any copy of it, we can give no particular account of its contents; but we need not to doubt but it teemed with servility, or was in no small degree of a fawning, crouching or cringing cast. As to the Feefarm rents which belonged to the Crown, but had been lately purchased by the Mayor and burgesses, and were now restored to his majesty, they appear to require no comment, or farther elucidation in this place. The restoring of them to his majesty was a matter not of choice but of necessity: and in purchasing them the Corporation evidently gained a loss; but to what amount we cannot say, having never learnt how much was paid for them.

A week after, (on the 23rd of the same month,) our Corporation agreed and ordered, that Oliver’s Charter confirming the priviledges [of the town] be cancelled. This also appears to have been a matter of absolute necessity; but whether so or not, that charter would be of no further use to the body corporate. Oliver’s day was now past, and whatever had sprung from him, if it did not actually disgrace the character of the holder or owner, yet was no longer held in any manner of estimation. That there is a copy now extant of this Charter of his we have not learnt.