The chapters of which this little work consists originally appeared in the Christian World Magazine, where they were so fortunate as to attract favourable notice, and from which they are now reprinted, with a few slight additions, by permission of the Editor. In bringing out a second edition, I have incorporated the substance of other articles originally written for local journals. It is to be hoped, touching as they do a theme not easily exhausted, but always interesting to East Anglians, that they may help to sustain that love of one’s county which, alas! like the love of country, is a matter reckoned to be of little importance in these cosmopolitan days, but which, nevertheless, has had not a little share in the formation of that national greatness and glory in which at all times Englishmen believe.
One word more. I have retained some strictures on the clergy of East Anglia, partly because they were true at the time to which I refer, and partly because it gives me pleasure to own that they are not so now. The Church of England clergyman of to-day is an immense improvement on that of my youth. In ability, in devotion to the duties of his calling, in intelligence, in self-denial, in zeal, he is equal to the clergy of any other denomination. If he has lost his hold upon Hodge, that, at any rate, is not his fault.
Clacton-on-Sea,
January, 1893.
| CONTENTS. |
| CHAPTER I. a suffolk village. |
| Distinguished people born there—Its Puritans and Nonconformists—The country round Covehithe—Southwold—Suffolk dialect—The Great Eastern Railway | 1 |
| CHAPTER II. the stricklands. |
| Reydon Hall—The clergy—Pakefield—Social life in a village | 37 |
| CHAPTER III. lowestoft. |
| Yarmouth bloaters—George Borrow—The town fifty years ago—The distinguished natives | 54 |
| CHAPTER IV. politics and theology. |
| Homerton academy—W. Johnson Fox, M.P.—Politics in 1830—Anti-Corn Law speeches—Wonderful oratory | 89 |
| CHAPTER V. bungay and its people. |
| Bungay Nonconformity—Hannah More—The Childses—The Queen’s Librarian—Prince Albert | 122 |
| CHAPTER VI. a celebrated norfolk town. |
| Great Yarmouth Nonconformists—Intellectual life—Dawson Turner—Astley Cooper—Hudson Gurney—Mrs. Bendish | 153 |
| CHAPTER VII. the norfolk capital. |
| Brigg’s Lane—The carrier’s cart—Reform demonstration—The old dragon—Chairing M.P.’s—Hornbutton Jack—Norwich artists and literati—Quakers and Nonconformists | 185 |
| CHAPTER VIII. the suffolk capital. |
| The Orwell—The Sparrows—Ipswich notabilities—Gainsborough—Medical men—Nonconformists | 226 |
| CHAPTER IX. an old-fashioned town. |
| Woodbridge and the country round—Bernard Barton—Dr. Lankester—An old Noncon. | 252 |
| CHAPTER X. milton’s suffolk schoolmaster. |
| Stowmarket—The Rev. Thomas Young—Bishop Hall and the Smectymnian divines—Milton’s mulberry-tree—Suffolk relationships | 283 |
| CHAPTER XI. in constable’s county. |
| East Bergholt—The Valley of the Stour—Painting from nature—East Anglian girls | 311 |
| CHAPTER XII. east anglian worthies. |
| Suffolk cheese—Danes, Saxons, and Normans—Philosophers and statesmen—Artists and literati | 320 |
