Pages from Volume II, Rows 97-105 UNPDF

GREAT YARMOUTH

159

Row No. 97 , from Middlegate Street to King Street, called

Barnes' Row in the 17th century; afterwards (in 1785) Buck Row; and

more recently Bell's Row, the house at the south-east corner having

been for many years the residence of Mr. Samuel Bell, solicitor. The

name of B ELL has existed in the town* and neighbourhood f from an

early period. Samuel Bell was the son of John Bell, sometime collector

of customs and a leading politician, who had an estate at Hopton in

Suffolk 1 , which descended to the above-named Samuel Bell, and by

him the house was greatly improved by building some fine rooms in

front. J He died there, suddenly, in 1844, aged 75. § 2

Mr. William Tooke, who resided at Thompson near Watton, Norfolk, and whose large

fortune the philologist expected to inherit. He however only got a legacy of £500, the bulk

going to the testator's great nephew, Mr. Basely of Norwich, who thereupon adopted the

name of Tooke, and under a previous agreement admitted Horne Tooke and Colonel

Harwood, another expectant, to participate.

* Thomas Bell was one of the lessees of the horse ferry in 1414, the rent of which

was fourteen marks. Michael Bell petitioned the privy council for redress in 1603, his

ship having been boarded in the Seine and robbed of two hundred marks worth of goods,

he complained that great cruelties had been committed on the crew. William Bell was

quarter-master to a troop of horse raised in 1648 for the defence of the town. He

disclaimed arms in 1664.

f Sir Robert Bell was returned to Parliament for King's Lynn in 1562, and the next

year was appointed counsel for the town of Great Yarmouth, with the annual fee of 40s.

for life. In 1577 he was made Lord Chief Baron. Fatal advancement! for in July following

when trying a prisoner at Oxford, for having uttered scandalous words against the queen,

he caught a fatal malady from the stench of the prisoners. After this "black assize," as it

was called, it was customary for the judges to carry with them into court a nosegay of

sweet-smelling herbs as a preventative to infection; and this practice prevailed at the

sessions at Yarmouth until Serjeant Merewether was appointed recorder in 1832, when it

was discontinued. There was a portrait of Sir Robert Bell in the possession of the late

Miss Bell, of North Runcton; and another belonging to the Rev. H. Creed of Mollis. The

latter has been engraved.

t The house at Hopton was subsequently occupied by Major-General Cock 3 (see

ante, p, 113), who died there in 1861, aged 69. It was next the residence of Rear-Admiral

Sir James Hanway Plumridge 4 , K.C.B., who died there in 1863, aged 76. For his conduct

as a midshipman at Trafalgar he was promoted. After many years of active service he was

sent out as third in command of the Baltic fleet in 1854 under Sir Charles Napier; and

ultimately he commanded a detached squadron. He was thrice married; and had a

posthumous son, born four days after his own decease. He was succeeded in the

occupation, of the above-mentioned house by Charles Cory, Esq., town clerk. (See vol.

i, p. 64, and ants. p. 33).

t He was a Captain, in the Local Militia in 1804; and a fine portly man.

1 The house is Hopton Hall, at which I was privileged to live for a few years, until the

property crash of 1989, when the astronomic mortgage interest rate imposed by Mrs

Thatcher and Nigel Lawson (17%) made it untenable. Major General Cock is buried at the

old ruined church of St Margaret; Plumridge altered the house somewhat, and erected the

whalebone arch – see RRH.

2 Sam Bell sold the site and stables on which was build St Peter’s Church in Yarmouth. At

Hopton Hall a century later, much of the house, in 1929, was destroyed by fire, then re-built

by Dr Peers, who raised money by selling off the land to the south of the house, which

became a woodyard. After the fire, some parts of the marble mantelpieces were saved, and I

have now re-used those pieces for a fireplace, in the restoration of the “Orangery” at Filby,

in 1991. (see RRH) Mr. Steward, who purchased the house after myself; in about 1998,

when the woodyard became bankrupt, reacquired this land for Hopton Hall.

3 Cock’s memorial is a raised tomb made of substantial slate, still to be found (1994) south

of the ruined church at Hopton.

4 It was Plumridge who erected the whalebone arch in the garden of Hopton Hall, as seen

photographed (1991) in RRH.

Palmers Addenda: Samuel Bell – amusing anecdotes were told of “Lawyer Bell” (Samuel

Bell’s father John was known as “Lawyer Bell”, but Palmer assigns this to Samuel). On one

occasion Mr Penrice bespoke a Turbot for dinner party, but when it was caught and brought,

he refused to pay the exorbitant price demanded for it. The fishermen consulted lawyer Bell,

who lived on the opposite side of the street (surely John Bell of Row 97) The latter kept the

fish as fee for his advice, and sent it to Mr.Penrice, and afterwards helped to eat it. Had he

lived in the 17 th century, he might have been classed among “the best breed of lawyers” who

according to Peter Heylin’s fables , published in 1680, the Norfolk people were noteable

wranglers well versed in the quirks of the law, and consequently created more work for the

assizes than almost all the rest of the court circuit. (Continued at bottom of next page.)

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In Row No. 97, resided Thomas Bly, who died in 1820, aged 91.

In early life he entered the royal navy, and was present at the execution

of Admiral Byng at Portsmouth in 1757; a sad tale which he was fond

of repeating when old and blind.* Mrs. Bly had also her story, which

may be said to "bridge time" in a marvellous manner. Her grandmother

on her marriage was presented with a pound of tea, then a rare and

expensive article, and one that she had heard much of but had never

tasted. Another present for the marriage feast was a ham. It was argued

that if two such articles, so good in themselves, were boiled together,

each would be improved; so the experiment was made. The ham

flavoured by the tea was served up by itself; and the liquor with the tea

leaves appeared in a soup tureen! It is to be remembered that novelties

in good cookery are only attained by observation. The proper time for

boiling potatoes, on their introduction into England from South

America, was only arrived at by the carelessness of a servant in

forgetting the boiler. Pepys tells us he first tasted tea in 1660.

William Bell, another son of the collector, died in 1796 of yellow

fever in Jamaica, aged 23. Charles Bell, solicitor, had a good

collection of engravings, which were sold by auction. John Bell, the

sculptor is a son of the above-named Samuel Bell, and was born in

the Yarmouth house. Anne, a daughter of Samuel Bell, married

Alfred Landes, Esq., and died at Frank Ville, Upper Canada, in

1870. The Yarmouth family bore sa., a fesse erm., between three

bells arg.

* There was a great outcry throughout the country, especially

at the out-ports, against Byng, who was supposed to have tarnished the brightness of

England's glory by his incapacity and want of daring. The case against him was put in the

following epigram:—

(continued from prev. note) But then it was observed that this disposition

had brought some reputation with it, in the laws of England, as furnishing the

courts of England with many an eminent man, and yielding generally the

best breed of lawyers.

" If you believe what Frenchmen say,

" Byng came, was beat, and ran away;

" Believe what Byng himself hath said,

" He fought and conquer'd—and then fled!

" To fly when beat is no new thing,

" Thousands have done 't as well as Byng;

"But no man did before Byng say,

He conquered—and then ran away,"

An elegy after the death of the admiral ends thus:—

"Thy foes must own—and while they own admire,

"O Byng! thy calm composure at thy end;

" Too late thou victim to thy country's ire,

" unbiass'd reason shews herself thy friend,"

GREAT YARMOUTH

161

Row No. 98, which led from King Street to Dene Side, no longer

exists, having been absorbed by the mansion erected by T HOMAS

P ENRICE , Esq., on his accession to the large fortune bequeathed to him.

by Lord Chedworth. This house, which extended from St. George's

Plain to Row no. 94, already mentioned, was probably the finest house

ever erected in a country town for the residence of a private gentleman.

It was built under the advice and direction of Mr. James Hakewill.* Mr.

Penrice had previously resided in a smaller house occupying part of the

same site, and in it he was accustomed to receive for many years an

annual visit from Lord Chedworth. This nobleman was the only son of

the Hon. and. Rev. Thomas Howe, Rector of Great Wishford and

Kingston Deverel in Wiltshire, third son of John Howe, first Lord

Chedworth (who died in 1742), the latter being the son of John Howe,

Esq., Paymaster-General of the Forces in Queen Anne's reign, and heir

of Sir Richard Howe of Wishford, Bart. The Hon. and Rev. Thomas

Howe married a daughter of Thomas White, Esq., of Tatting-stone near

Ipswich; and on his death in 1776, the future Lord Chedworth with his

mother removed to Ipswich, a place to which he became greatly

attached and never quitted. In 1781, on the death of his uncle, he

succeeded to the estates and family honors, f "He was a person of mean

external appearance," says Crompton, "so much so indeed as to be

sometimes exposed in consequence to very odd indignities," Just before

his accession to the title, an untoward event occurred upon the stand at

Epsom Races which probably had considerable influence on his future

habits of life. In this, his "utmost need," he was much indebted to Mr.

Penrice, who exerted himself warmly and energetically on his behalf,

and then commenced a friendship which continued without interruption

until Lord Chedworth's death in 1804, when he had completed his 50th

year. Lord Chedworth, who was "well versed in every branch of elegant

and polite literature," greatly enjoyed his visits

* This eminent architect died in 1843, aged 64. A view of the house, with a ground

plan, has been published (see RRH).

t John Thynne, second Baron Chedworth, married one of the two daughters and

co-heir of Sir Philip Parker Morley Long, Bart ., of Arwarton in Suffolk, who died

in 1741, and she brought that estate to her husband. See Page's Suffolk, p. 4.

VOL. II.

162

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

to Yarmouth, where he met with, several literary men then residing

here, among whom may he mentioned Dr. Aikin, Dr. Cooper (then

Minister of the Parish), the Rev. Richard Turner, Dr. Schomberg, Mr.

Alderson, Mr. Maurice, Mr. Morgan, Mr. Simms, Mr. Urquhart, the

Rev. Wm. Leigh, D.D.,* the Rev. Thomas Crompton, and many others.

To Crompton we are indebted for the publication of a series of letters

received by him from Lord Chedworth, extending from the year 1780

to 1795. In the former year Crompton was made assistant-surgeon to

the East Norfolk Militia, in which regiment Mr. Penrice was surgeon.

He however soon left the military-medical profession for the church,

and through the intervention of Mr. Penrice came to Yarmouth, and was

appointed by Dr. Cooper to be his curate. Crompton afterwards

obtained the Curacy of Belton in Suffolk, where he resided for some

years; and subsequently held the living of Nettleton near Bath, pre-

sented to him by Lord Chedworth. f Before the French revolution,

Crompton had been esteemed by Lord Chedworth as "too much of a

whig." This he could endure, as his lorship was an ardent admirer of

Fox; but when Crompton, frightened at the horrors by which the same

was attended, changed his politics and went over to Mr. Pitt, the regard

which Lord Chedworth had for him began to waver. Writing in

* He was Dean of Hereford and Rector of Plumstead with Witton and Brundall

annexed from 1779 until his death at his lodgings in Yarmouth in 1807.

f Crompton was a curate at Stowmarket when he was engaged in the like capacity

for Yarmouth; and he walked the distance between the two places. Being an enormously

fit man, capable, like Mark Lemon, of playing Falstaff without stuffing, he found this

undertaking both hot and fatiguing, and he could not resist the temptation of sundry pots

of beer at wayside inns. This indulgence increased his heat and clouded his judgment, and

he crossed the bridge to his new cure in his shirt sleeves, his coat and vest being

suspended on a stick over his shoulder. His wit and humour soon gained for him a

welcome at the best tables, and he became an especial favorite with Lord Chedworth. His

corpulency rendered him indolent, and he always made his wife carve at dinner, for said

he, is she not my help-mate ?" He had some shelves so constructed that he could take

down any book he required while reclining on his sofa. "You see I am quite

philosophical," said he to a friend who found him so employed. "Fill-a-sofa-cal I should

say," was the reply. In 1795 Crompton preached a sermon at St. Nicholas Church (Mark

xvi v. 15), which was published, in post quarto, "by desire." He ultimately resided in

London where he died.

GREAT YARMOUTH

163

1793 he says, "I dined with Dr. Aikin a few days ago, when I told him

you were become a vehement tory. He spoke very handsomely, and said

you used to be a very good whig." Indeed the earnestness with which

Crompton defended his new opinions, greatly offended Lord

Chedworth, and ultimately a cessation of intimacy ensued; nevertheless

by his will Lord Chedworth left Crompton £ 1,000 "in token of perfect

amity." In one of his lordship's letters (2nd Sept., 1787) he says, “ With

my visit to Yarmouth I was beyond measure delighted; I now absolutely

pine for the pleasant conversation I enjoyed there. You can hardly

conceive the pleasure I receive from the conversation of Richard

Turner. Dr. Aikin I consider as a most elegant scholar, and a very high

literary authority." After expressing his acknowledgments for the

kindness and civility he had received from Dr. Cooper, he proceeds to

state what he did not like, viz. :—(1) The pavement, which he said

"deserved to be indicted," a defect not remedied until twenty years

afterwards. (2) The deep sand between the bathing house and the jetty.

(3) The postmaster charging a half-penny for the delivery of each letter

to strangers. (4) The booksellers charging 13s. for a Bellendus, when

the price was 12s.; (5) and their charging 13d. for a quire of paper,

which might be got elsewhere for 1s. Lord Chedworth was a great

admirer of Shakespere, and wrote a number of criticisms on his works,

a selection of which appeared in print after his lordship's death, and.

copies were privately distributed. "I have lately bought Malone's

Shakespere (for so in spite of everything that may be urged against it I

shall always pronounce and write)," says Lord Chedworth in a letter to

Crompton, under date 28th Feb., 1791, and am writing notes as I go

along. The greater part of my notes are no more than judgments on the

emendations and explanations proposed." Lord Chedworth's principal

estate was at Stowel in Gloucestershire, which after his death was

purchased by Sir William Scott, Judge of the Admiralty Court, and

from it he took his title when created a peer. Lord Chedworth, by his

will, the particulars of which are given in the Gentleman's Magazine,

for 1804, left very numerous legacies to persons in nowise related to

him, many belonging to the theatrical profession, but the bulk of his

fortune, which was comprised in the residue, he

164

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

bequeathed to Mr. Penrice, whom he made an executor with Mr.

Richard Wilson. There is an engraved portrait of Lord Chedworth.*

Mr. Penrice having erected the house above mentioned, furnished

it with a valuable and well-selected library, and with a collection of

pictures by the old masters, of great rarity and beauty, chiefly obtained

by the dispersion of the Orleans Gallery. He died at Narford Hall in

1816, when on a visit to his son-in-law, Andrew Fountaine, Esq., and

was buried in the church of Redenhall, Norfolk, near his father, an

eminent surgeon of Harleston, the son of another eminent surgeon in

Westminster, who claimed to be a descendant of an ancient family of

his name in Worcestershire, a branch it is supposed of a still more

distinguished family long seated at Penrice Castle in Glamorganshire,

whose heiress had carried that property into the family of Lord Hansel,

f His widow continued to reside in the above-mentioned house until her

death in 1829, aged 68. There is a portrait of Mr. Penrice by Lawrence,

and one of his wife by Opie. They had a numerous family. John

Penrice, Esq., the eldest son, served in the army, and when a Captain in

the 15th Hussars was taken prisoner and confined for some time at

Verdun. j He married Maria Catherine, eldest daughter of Herbert

Newton Jarrett, Esq.,§ of Great Bromley Lodge, Essex, then residing at

Hobland Hall, Suffolk, by whom he had a numerous family. He was a

magistrate for the county of Norfolk, and, having purchased an estate at

Witton near Norwich,

* Lord Chedworth bore or., a fesse betw. three wolves' heads couped sa., a crescent

for difference. The supporters were a lion arg ., pelletted gu. and an angel, ppr.; and for a

crest, a dexter arm erased below the elbow, in armour, lying fesse-ways, and holding a

scimitar erect ppr ., pierced through a boar's head couped sa.

f The arms of Penrice confirmed to Mr. Penrice of Harleston were—party per pale

indented arg. and gu.; and for a crest, a pair of wings erect arg.; and subsequently a grant

was made to his son of the above arms with a canton added bearing a wolf's head, couped

sa.; and for a crest, a wing elevated surmounting another arg., the former charged with

two mullets of six points in pale gu. The ruins of Penrice Castle, standing in a

luxuriously-wooded park, are now the property of C. E. Hansel Talbot, Esq., M.P. for,

and Lord Lieutenant of the County of Glamorgan.

t Monsieur l'Abbe Clonet, the present Librarian of the College at Verdun, among his

extensive collections towards a complete history of that celebrated town and fortress, has

hauled into his archaeological net many anecdotes of the Englishmen detained there by

order of the Emperor Napoleon.

§ Mr. Jarrett was maternally descended from the Protector Cromwell.

GREAT YARMOUTH

165

died there in 1844, aged 57.* Thomas Penrice, the second son, was a

Captain in the 16th Lancers, and served under the Duke of Wellington

in the Peninsula campaign. He purchased in 1820 Kilvrough House and

a considerable estate in Glamorganshire, which he entailed upon his

nephew, Thomas Penrice, Esq., the present possessor. He died

unmarried. The Rev. Charles Penrice, the third son, was Rector of Little

Plumstead with Witton, f and died there in 1846, aged 57, unmarried. Of

the daughters, Hannah, the eldest, married Andrew Fountaine, Esq;., of

Narford, Norfolk, who was High Sheriff of this county in 1829; t and

Mary, the younger, married Thomas Trench Berney, Esq., of Morton,

Norfolk, who filled the same office in 1813, and died in 1869. In 1844

the above-mentioned house was dismantled, the library was dispersed,

and some of the pictures, which had adorned its walls, were sold by

Christie and Manson, at the following prices:— Israelites drawing water

from the rock, by Bassano, 70 guineas; A Market, by Bassano, 90

guineas; The Virgin nursing the Infant Christ, by Coello, 205 guineas; A

View of Venice, by Cannaletti, 500 guineas; A Group of Flowers, by

Van Os, 190 guineas; a companion picture, 170 guineas; A Repose, by

Titian, formerly in the Justiniani Gallery, 200 guineas; Hawking party

going out, from the Orleans Gallery, purchased by the late Mr. Parrer

for 206 guineas; Le Lendemain des Noces, from the collection of the

Marquis de Brunois, engraved by Le Bas, purchased by Mr. Newingher

for 550 guineas; A Landscape, by Gasper Poussin, from the Lancilotti

Palace at Rome, purchased by Mr. Ward for 390 guineas; The Flight

into Egypt, by Claude, purchased by Mr. Cope for 760 guineas;

Peasants before a Cabaret, by Teniers, from the Orleans Gallery,

purchased by Mr. Parrer for 860 guineas; Lot and his Daughters, by

Guido, formerly in the Lancilotti Palace, and brought to England by the

Marquis of

* He was presented with the freedom of the borough of Yarmouth in 1829.

f He succeeded the Rev. Paul Colombine, D.D., who had been presented on the

death of the Dean of Hereford, and who died in 1821, aged 91, at the house of his son-in-

law, William Mason, Esq., of Necton. The late Lieut.-Col, Mason, who commanded the

East Norfolk Regiment of Militia, was the doctor's grandson.

t He died in 1834, aged 64; his wife predeceasing in 1830. The arms of the ancient

family of Fountaine of Narford (DeFontibus) are or., a fesse gu, betw. three elephants'

heads erased sa.; and for a crest, an elephant's head ppr,

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THE PERLUSTRATION OF

Lansdowne, engraved at Rome by Carego in 1771, purchased for

£1,600, now in the National Gallery; Susannah and the Elders, by

Guido, from the same palace. It has been twice engraved, and was

knocked down at 900 guineas, and is now in the National Gallery; An

Interior, by Adrian Ostarde, described in Smith's catalogue No. 57,

engraved by Le Brunn, purchased by Mr. Farrer for 1,300 guineas. The

Woman taken in Adultery, attributed to Titian, sold for 600 guineas. The

Judgment of Paris, by Rubens, painted for Cardinal Richlieu, and

formerly in the Orleans Gallery (see Smith's catalogue No. 748),

engraved by Lommelin, Couche, and Woodman, was purchased for the

National Gallery for 4,000 guineas.* The house itself was sold and

taken down. Part of the site is now occupied by a Congregational

Chapel, and the rest by houses and shops and a building erected by Mr.

J. H. Harrison, called St. George's Hall. f Such is an illustration of the

vicissitudes of houses.

A house in this direction, fronting St. George's Plain, was in the

last century the residence of David Urquhart, Esq., Agent Victualler for

the Navy. He married Judith, daughter of the Rev. William Lacon,

Prebendary of Ely (whose wife was the only daughter of J. Rooke,

Esq.), and by her had a son who married Miss Ives of Yelverton, and

their son was Ives Urquhart, Esq t

Row No. 99 , from Middlegate Street to King Street, called Castle

Row, because it was in the immediate vicinity of the castle mentioned

in

* The above, for the rarity and excellence of its pictures, was probably the best

private collection ever made in a provincial town. In the first half of the present century

Yarmouth was peculiarly rich in pictures, collected by or in the possession of Mr.

Dawson Turner, Mr. Dover Colby, Mr. Paget, the Rev. John Homfray, Mr. J. D. Palmer,

Capt. Gunthorpe, Mr.William Hammond, Mr.W. Yates, and others; all of which have

been dispersed. Many of the pictures in the above collections are enumerated in Druery's

Historical and Topographical Notices. See ante. vol. i., pp. 220, 307.

f The site upon which this hall is erected was formerly occupied by a house

belonging to the Negus family. See vol. i., p. 257.

t Mr. David Urquhart died at Hobland Hall in 1774, aged 57 In Belton Church there

is a tablet of black marble to his memory, bearing his shield of arms— quarterly first and

fourth or., three boars' heads couped gu., armed and langued or., within a bordure gu.

And sa., second and third party per fesse indented erm. and az. , and for a crest, a boar's

head as in the arms. He had a brother, George Urquhart, of Gray's Inn, barrister at law.

GREAT YARMOUTH

167

vol. i., p. 91.* In 1758 the corporation granted a lease of "a piece of ground,

garden, and premises in the Castle Row" to Christopher Sayers. At the north-

east corner of this row is a public house recently rebuilt as a liquor shop and

called the Jamaica Stores, which in 1789 belonged to William Austin, and was

called the King of Prussia; and afterwards the North Country House, and had

an evil reputation.

In a neighbouring house resided the old family of C ASTELL . In 1309 died

Nicholas Castell, Esq., and was buried at the White Friars. Abraham Castell

took a leading part in the affairs of the town in the time of Charles I., but

appears to have been alarmed at the execution of that monarch, for at the next

assembly he resigned his place. He re-entered the corporation, and signed the

address to Richard Cromwell; but turning with the tide, was named in the

charter of Charles II., and filled the office of bailiff in 1661 and 1672. f He died

in 1682, leaving two sons. Abraham, the elder, served the office of bailiff in

1673, and married Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Suckling, Esq., of Woodton, t

* The view there given is taken from the Cottonian Map 1 alluded to in the Prefatory

Note, p. vi. The pedigree of Talbot of Bashall referred to in vol. 1, p. 92, will be found in

Whitaker's' Craven, p. 25. The pedigree of Bardolf, to whom the castle passed from the

Gournays, is among the Spelman M.S.S. at Keswick, vol. 121, p. 8. Swathings (vol. i., p.

92) is no longer a Norfolk parish, but is included in parts of Hardingham, Letton,

Cranworth, and Kimberley.

f Susan, his sister, married Richard Wenman, sometime Alderman of Norwich, and

sheriff in 1667. A family of this name resided at Ipswich.

t Sir John Suckling, descended from a family which had held lands at Woodton in

Norfolk in the 14th century, was a privy councillor to James I., and one of the

commissioners named in the warrant for collecting a forced loan at Yarmouth in 1628. In

a letter to the Bishop of Norwich, advocating the right of the corporation to the

appointment of ministers, Sir John, in return for "sundry courtesies received," speaks of

Yarmouth as a town which he had "long loved and well wished for." S. p. 836. Suckling

bore party per pale gu. and az., three bucks trippant or., and for a crest, a stag courant or.,

with a sprig of honeysuckle in his mouth. The above-named Robert Suckling was, by

Anne Wodehouse of Kimberley his first wife, the great-grandfather of the mother of

Nelson. John Suckling, who kept the Wrestlers' Inn (vol. i., p. J 86), is said to have been

carried from a field of battle by his wife. His elder brother, Robert Suckling, who very

late in life succeeded to the family estate at Woodton, was the maternal grandfather of the

historian of Suffolk. He was called by his intimate friends "The old battle of Minden." Ex

inf. Capt. Barry Girling. He had been a cornet in the 1st Dragoon Guards, and afterwards

a Captain in the

1 see RRH for full detail of the Elizabethan pictorial “map”.

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High Sheriff of Norfolk in 1664, by Margaret, his second wife,

daughter of Sir William D'Oyley, Bart., of Shottisham. John Castell, the

second son, was also named in the charter of Charles II., and both he

and his father were of the deputation by which all charters were

surrendered into the king's hands. He married Anne, daughter of

Charles Legard, Esq., of Anlaby in Yorkshire,* by Theophila his wife,

daughter of John Coke, Esq., of Holkham. He left four sons, all of

whom left Yarmouth where the family became extinct . They were

Lords of Thrigby and Patrons of the living there, which they sold in

1710 to Mr. Smith of Yarmouth. They also held lands at Ormesby; and

the Rev. Abraham Castell, Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge, voted

for a freehold in Ormesby at the general, election in 1714 in favor 1 of

Sir Ralph Hare and Sir Jacob Astley, standing on different interests.

The houses fronting Middlegate Street, between this row and the

next No. 101, were early in the last century the property of Benjamin

Dowson, who died in 1716. That at the south-west corner of this row

was afterwards (in 1759) the property of Nathaniel Palmer, is now

divided into two occupations. The next house south was, in 1759,

conveyed to Samuel Paget; at which time there was a large yard at the

back called Foxes Yard, and a "lading" called '' Fox's Hole." The next

house south was, in 1741, the property of Thomas Ellys, who died in

1761, aged 63 ; and in 1774 of John Emms.

Row No. 100, from South Quay to Middlegate Street, called

Fuller ’ s South Row. At the north-west corner is the house which, as has

been stated, was conveyed to the Rev. Benjamin Wymberley Salmon,

West Norfolk Militia, and died in 1812. He married Susanna Webb, said to be the

representative of Inigo Jones, by whom he had three sons. Robert George, the eldest, a

Captain in the Royal Artillery, killed at Guadalope, died s.p.; Maurice William, the

second son, an Officer in the Royal Navy, died in 1820 s.p.; and John Thomas, the

youngest son, Rector of Shipmeadow, having died in 1803, leaving two daughters only,

the male line of this ancient family became extinct , whereupon the Rev. Alfred Inigo Fox,

son of the eldest daughter of Robert and Susanna Suckling who had married Alexander

Fox, assumed the name of Suckling by royal license in 1820, and from him the line is

continued.

*The Legards of Yorkshire bore arg. on a bend, betw. six mullets pierced gu., a

cross patié or. Sir John Legard was one of those who, associating themselves under

Lord Fairfax, surprised York, and facilitated General Monk's march out of Scotland

1 Victorian English spelling.

GREAT YARMOUTH

169

who died here in 1821, aged 78.* It was afterwards purchased by John

Fisher Costerton, Esq., who was water bailiff from 1814 to 1835, when

the office was abolished. He is in the commission of the peace for

Suffolk. f The above-mentioned house was subsequently occupied by

Mr. John Bessey Hylton, a member of the town council, who, while

attending a public meeting at the Town Hall on the subject of the fish

Wharf's Bill in 1866, suddenly fell from, his chair speechless, and died

in a few hours.

At the south-west corner is a public house, formerly belonging to

Mallett's Brewery 1 , successively called the Rampant Horse, the Custom

House, and the Sons of Commerce. t On the south side of the row, and

extending to the next, is a large red-brick substantially-built house,

which was erected in the 17th century by William Spooner, Esq., who,

in 1692, married Jane, daughter of Thomas Scarlet 2 ,§ merchant, when

he put it in settlement. ¶ He served the office of bailiff in 1699, and of

* He was presented to the Rectory of Caister in 1781, and held it for forty years.

There is a portrait of him "engraved at the request of the inhabitants of East and West

Flegg, in token of respect for his character and their gratitude for his exertions as a

magistrate;" and in 1811 they presented him with a piece of plate of the value of 100

guineas. He was the son of the Rev. John Salmon, Rector of Hardwick with Sholton in

Norfolk, "by Elizabeth his wife, one of the daughters and co-heirs of Bevel Wymberley,

Esq., of Long Sutton in Lincolnshire. She was "distinguished for the urbanity of her

manners and the amiableness of her disposition," and died in 1793, in her 90th year. This

family bore sa., three salmons haurient or. ; and for a crest, a man's arm, in armour, sa .,

purfled or., is suing out of a cloud ppr., and holding a falchion of the last. Mary Anne, the

wife of the Rev, B. W, Salmon, died in. 1809 aged 70. Their son, W. Orton Salmon, who

was in the Bengal Civil Service and President of the Central Board of Revenue in British

India, died at Cromer in 1828.

f In P. C., p. 362, there is a list of water bailiffs from the earliest times.

t Early in the 18th century it was the property of Peter Master, who died in 1767,

leaving it to his wife, Joan, who died in 1782, aged 82. Jacob Master, an alderman and a

considerable grocer, was found dead in his bed on the 15th of December, 1763, aged 63.

He was a very honest man. Susanna, his daughter, who died in 1791, aged 37, married

Capt. John Bell, who died in 1795, aged 44. Their son, John Master Bell, many years a

partner in the house of Williams and Co., died at his residence No. 147, King Street, in

1837, aged 58.

§ Scarlet of East Dereham bore chequy or. and gu., a lion ramp, sa., a canton az.

Papworth's Ordinary, p. 101.

¶ The ingenious widow Spooner was an adept in shell-work and cuttings in paper,

and her productions were much prized in the last century.

1 Mallett lived at 43 King Street, see RRH.

2 Palmer’s Addenda: Scarlett – in 1634, Nicholas Scarlett conveyed houses in Great

Yarmouth to Thomas Fenn by deed, penes Coleman, 33 High Street, Bloomsbury.

VOL. II.

170

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

mayor in 1713 ; and died in 1722, aged 67, leaving considerable estates

at Billockby, Hemsby, and Winterton. "When this house was erected it

was open to the Quay, It has long been converted into a sailmaker's

warehouse; but vestiges of it’s former importance still remain.

At the north-east corner is an old house (No. 169), which in 1687

was in the possession of Thomas Browne, son of Thomas Browne of

Southtown and afterwards of Lound, who in 1704 conveyed it to John

Morris, "chirurgien." 1 The latter dying in 1729, aged 55, left it with

other property* to his son, Thomas Morris, who dying in 1735, aged 34,

devised it to his brother, John Morris, of whom we shall have occasion

to speak, after whose death in 1778 it was sold; and ultimately at the

commencement of the present century it became the property of the

Nightingale family. f

Row No. 101 , from Middlegate Street to King Street. Between

this Row and Row No. 102 there is a large house fronting Middlegate

Street (now divided into two occupations, No. 21 and 22), which early

in the 18th century was built by Jacob Arnold, beer brewer. t He

* Among which was "the feeding of the Churchyard of St. Nicholas," and also "the

Priory of Yarmouth," both having been then lately leased to him by the Dean, and

Chapter of Norwich. See vol. i, p. 63.

f An adjoining house, hold under the same title, was at one time called the Three

Mackerels. Mary, daughter of the first-named John Morris, married Joseph Baker. See

ante. p. 152.

t The name is probably derived from arnolldr —"old eagle." John Arnold was Bailiff

of Yarmouth in 1662. His widow married "the reverend and famous William Bridge" (see

ante, p. 36). A family of this name flourished at Lowestoft from an early period. Capt.

Thomas Arnold 2 , R.N., was a distinguished officer who served under Lord Torrington on

the coast of Sicily in the war against Spain, and who as First Lieutenant of the Superb

boarded and captured the Spanish admiral's ship, Royal Philip, in 1718, which vessel soon

afterwards blew up with most of her crew on board. The flags then taken were for many

years displayed on festive occasions. Capt, Arnold resided in Yarmouth, where he died in

1738, aged 58, leaving a son who went round the world with Commodore Anson. Thomas

Arnold, the distinguished head-master of Rugby, was descended from the Arnolds of

Lowestoft. For two generations his immediate ancestors had been settled at Cowes in the

Isle of Wight, where his father, William Arnold, filled the office of Collector of Customs.

The latter died in 1801, aged 53, and was buried at East Cowes, where there is a laudatory

epitaph to his memory. In 1788 the master of a Yarmouth trader, called

1 chirurgien is a surgeon, the same word still being in use today, (2007) in

the degree awarded, i.e., Ch.B., stands for “Batchelor of Chirurgery”.

2 Palmer’s Addenda: Matthew Arnold, a brother of the famous master at Rugby

school, was chaplain of the forces at Gosport, was drowned in Stokes Bay, 1820, and

buried at Whippenhaw.

GREAT YARMOUTH

171

married Mary, one of the two daughters and co-heirs of Thomas

Harpley, who had previously established a brewery here, the buildings

connected with which extended a considerable way eastward. In 1740,

on the marriage of Martha, their only child, with Robert Gimingham of

South Walsham, beer brewer, Arnold made a settlement of this property

in her favour. He died in 1752, aged 64. The issue of the above

marriage was Robert Gimingham the younger,* who in 1775 sold the

brewery to William Mallett, who died in the following year, aged 63,

leaving two sons, William Langham Mallett 1 , who died in 1779 s.p.,

and Joshua Mallett. To the former he devised a messuage near the

North Gate, and to the latter his brewery and the public houses attached

to the same, two of which were the Keel (afterward the Griffin) and the

Dolphin and Crown. Joshua Mallett married Marion, daughter of the

Rev. Robert Caley, Rector of Belton, and died in 1781, aged 28, leaving

two daughters who both died young and unmarried, and the family

became extinct . f Harriott, the last survivor (then residing at Bath), sold

the brewery in 1802 to F. R. Reynolds, Esq., who afterwards erected

new brewery premises on the Denes; and the old buildings in these rows

were turned to other uses.

After the death of Joshua Mallett, the above-mentioned house was

purchased by John Reynolds, Esq., a solicitor, who filled the office of

mayor in 1781 and again in 1784, and died in 1799, aged 60.

the Arnold, was murdered by his crew. Three of the men, sleeping together at the Thirteen

Cantons near Irongate, were overheard boasting of the deed, whereupon the landlord

caused them to be taken into custody. The Arnolds of Yarmouth and Lowestoft bore sa., a

chev. arg. betw. three dolphins naiant of the same; and for a crest, on a wreath a dolphin

naiant arg.

* He had a son, Robert, who, after serving under articles to Mr. Spurgeon, was

admitted an attorney and practised in London, where, it is said, he dissipated a

considerable fortune. Returning to Yarmouth he was made Inspector of Corn Returns, and

died in 1819, aged 75. It was a popular belief in England that a husband could legally sell

his wife, provided the transaction took place in open market, the woman having a halter

round her neck; and in an (not so) amusing article in Chambers' Journal, entitled Better

Half Barter, numerous instances are given. It is related of Gimingham that in his day of

prosperity he "bought" the wife of a Yarmouth fisherman for one hundred guineas,—the

highest sum a wife was ever sold for. The attempt to sell a wife is now by law a

misd eanour, and a man was convicted of this offence in 1837.

em

t Mallett is probably a corruption of Malet, an old Suffolk name.

1 see also RRH - 43 King Street, re Mallett the brewer.

172

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

This family of R EYNOLDS descended from William Reynolds, a small

landed proprietor at Wenhaston in Suffolk, who died in 1678, leaving a son,

William Reynolds of Wissett, who died in 1716, having had, with other

children, Thomas Reynolds,* who married Mary, daughter of Benjamin

Thirteen, and died in 1755, leaving several sons, of whom John Reynolds

(above named), the youngest, married Ann, daughter of James Pain of King's

Lynn. Having served under articles to Thomas Harmer and Thomas Miller, two

eminent attornies in Yarmouth, he settled here in 1760 as a solicitor, and

practised with much success for many years. He was the political agent for the

Hon. Charles Townshend, who represented the borough in Parliament for thirty

years, being returned no less than eight times, and who only resigned his seat on

being created Lord Bayning in 1797. His lordship kept up a constant

correspondence with Mr. Reynolds, and appears to have held him in much

esteem, f In 1789 the corporation voted twenty-five guineas to be expended in

plate and presented to Mr. Reynolds, "in consideration of his great and

persevering pains and trouble" in supporting the right of the corporation to

appoint coal-meters; which places they were accustomed to sell at considerable

prices. The arms used by this family are arg: a chev. lozengy gu. and az.; on a

chief of the third a cross formée fitchée between two mullets or. Crest, a hand

holding a roll. He left two sons, John, who died at Fort St. George in the East

Indies in 1814, and the above-named F. R. Reynolds, of whom hereafter; and

five daughters, one of whom married Mr. Charles Nichols, another Mr. Samuel

Crowther, and the others died unmarried,

At the south-east corner of Row No. 101 is a house which, in the early

part of the present century, was occupied by the widow of Thomas Burton,

Esq., afterwards by Charles Symonds, Esq. (see vol. i., p. 334), and now by Mr.

David Gooch, pawnbroker. j In this row resided

* He had a small estate at Bramfield in Suffolk, which remained in the family

for many years, and was sold by Mr. Stephen Reynolds in 1832. Betty, only

daughter of the above Thomas Reynolds, married in 1754 Daniel Winter, son of

John Winter of Chediston in Suffolk.

f See P.C ., p. 223, where some of these letters are published.

j Here, as elsewhere, pawnbrokers still exhibit three golden balls as a sign of

GREAT YARMOUTH

173

Gamaliel Fair, the father of the Viscountess Dudley and Ward

mentioned in vol. i., p. 83. There are persons living who remember her;

and by then she is described as having been remarkably beautiful. In

her prosperity she was kind to and mindful of her poor relations. After

leaving the service of the butcher she became a mantua maker, as a

dressmaker was then called, and went to London, where her fortunes

culminated in her marriage with Lord Dudley and Ward, which is said

to have been brought about by her having, while receiving the

attentions of his lordship, attracted the notice of George IV., when

Prince of Wales, and matrimony being the only means of carrying off

the prize.

Row No. 102 , from Middlegate Street to King Street, called

Packet Office Row, because at the south-west corner is a house (now

No. 23) which was occupied as an office for the packet boats which

plied between

their trade. They are supposed by some to represent the three bags of gold mentioned in

the legend of St. Nicholas (see P. C, p. 113); but others believe that they are derived from

the three golden halls borne on the shield of the princely house of Medici, from whose

states in Lombardy came originally most of the dealers in pawns, and the money lenders

who congregated in Lombard Street and originated, out banking houses. Bills of exchange

were invented and introduced into this country by the Lombards. We find them in use in

Yarmouth as early as 1293; for in that year John de Lombard sued Michael de Shardeburg

for detaining from the Society of Lucca 13s. 4d., which he had received at the hands of

Guydo de Lombard, and had "made to him a certain writing which required payment at

the Nativity of our Lord in the 22nd year of King Edward." Judgment was given for the

plaintiff, who recovered the money with 8d. for damages. Pawnbroking or the pledging of

goods was also practised very early in this borough; for we find by the rolls that in 1296

"William de Elsyngham appeared against John Le Blake for unjustly detaining a certain

cup of maplewood (ciphus de Mazere) of the value of 16s., which cap had been stolen

from Elsyngham's house. Blake pleaded, that Distil, the plaintiff's wife, had pledged the

cup for 7s., which money ought to have been paid at the Feast of St. John the Baptist, but

was not, and therefore he had a right to retain the cup. The jury found for the defendant,

and the unfortunate husband not only lost his valuable Mazer bowl but was "amerced for a

false claim." Another instance occurs in 1327, when Simon de Notingham (chaplain)

complained that Roger de Worstead detained a book belonging to him called a Portehors

of the price of four marks. The defendant pleaded that the book had been given to him by

William de Worstead, whom he called to prove the same; but it appearing that the plaintiff

had merely left the book with him in pledge for 10s., it was ordered to be delivered up on

payment of that sum. As the chaplain could not raise the money, the book was placed in

the custody of Robert de Drayton, one of the bailiffs, and heard of no more.

174

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

this port and Cuxhaven during the revolutionary war with France. In 1795 it

was arranged that all mails for the continent, except for Spain and Portugal,

should for the future be conveyed from Yarmouth to Cuxhaven on the Elbe;

whence the post branched off in two directions, one with letters for Holland,

Frankfort, Switzerland, and Italy by way of Bremen; the other with letters for

Germany and the North of Europe, passing through Hamburgh.

At the north-east corner is a large house, standing back, and now divided

into two occupations, which in the early part of the last century was the

property and residence of Samuel Errington; and passed from him to the Rev.

Francis Turner (vol, i., p. 305), who, for the long period of forty-nine years, was

one of the Ministers of St. George's Chapel; for then there were two. He also

held the Rectory of St. James' and All Saints with St. Nicholas, South Elmham

in Suffolk.* He was for sixteen years Master of the Yarmouth Grammar School.

On the 9th of October, 1746, being the day appointed for a general thanksgiving

"for the suppression of the late unnatural rebellion," Mr. Turner preached a

sermon at St. Nicholas' Church, which was printed by request. His last sermon

at St. George's Chapel was on the 31st of January, 1790, when he took for his

text, "it is appointed unto all men once to die." Three days afterwards he

accidentally fell into the cellar of a house in King Street (No. 51), then occupied

by his son, the Rev. Richard Turner, the door of which had been left open, and

broke his leg, from the effects of which he died in two days, aged 73. f 1 He

left

* In 1776 Mr. Turner had leave to enclose the ground in front of this house, which had

previously been open,

f There is a portrait of the Rev. F. Turner when young, by Ferguson "the philosopher;"

and a miniature in his later years; both in the possession of Francis Worship, Esq., who

also has some of his M.S. sermons written in a peculiarly clear, open, and decided hand.

An elegy on his death soon after appeared in. the Norfolk Chronicle, as was very usual in

those days. A few of the lines will suffice.

" Come then ye mourners, and deplore his death,"

"He trod the paths of virtue whilst on earth,"

"And as he liv’d a pattern to mankind,"

"His loss is felt by those he left behind."

The widow of the Rev, Francis Turner died in 1795, aged 76.

Warner, in his Literary Recollections, vol. i., p. 119, relates a very similar circumstance.

1 This might seem a severe consequence from a fracture, but is actually a common

terminal event for elderly persons after accidents even in 2007. A fractured hip may

well lead to death in a day or two, (even with treatment), and a fractured shaft of

femur from an accident can cause fatality due to internal bleeding and surgical shock.

GREAT YARMOUTH

175

four sons, Francis of whom hereafter, James and Richard already

mentioned (vol. i., p. 305, and vol. ii., p. 25), and Joseph. The last, who

was the second son, was entered at Pembroke College, Cambridge,

where he came out senior wrangler in 1767, and was in 1770 elected a

fellow of that college, of which he became master in 1784 ; and in the

following year proceeded to D.D. per literas regias. He was tutor to his

college when Mr. Pitt was a student; and in 1787 obtained from the

Crown the Rectory of Sudborne with Orford in Suffolk, and in 1790 the

Deanery of Norwich. He died in 1828, aged 82. Although a ripe scholar

and a well-educated man he occasionally made use of familiar Norfolk

words, one of which, it is said, was the last he uttered. Being in a very

feeble state, his servant left him saying he would return with some tea.

''Ah, do Bor,''* said the dean, but when it was brought he had expired.

There is a portrait of him by Dawe, and an etching by Mrs. Dawson

Turner. He married in 1793 Miss Derbishire, a niece of the previous

Dean of Norwich. Upon the death of the Rev. Francis Turner the

above-mentioned house became the property of his son, the Rev.

Richard Turner, who resided in it until 1800, when, through the

influence of the dean 1 , he was presented to the Incumbency of the

Parish, whereupon he sold the house to his brother-in-law, Thomas

Dade, Esq., who had married Sarah, f the only daughter of the Rev.

Francis Turner.

The family of D ADE flourished in Norfolk and Suffolk from an

early period, their principal seat being at Tannington in the latter

county, where they held an estate from the 16th down to the

commencement of the present century, when it was absorbed by the

Adairs of Flixton, who removed from the family house (built of red

brick in the Tudor style) many wood carvings, two fine mantel pieces,

and several family portraits, all of which are now in Flixton Hall. t

John Dade,

stance. The Rev. William Jackson, Vicar of Christ Church, Hants, preached one Sunday

from the text, "In the midst of life we are in death," with his customary vigor, and two

days afterwards was found dead in his bed.

* One of the most characteristic of Norfolcisms, applied, according to Forby, to

males of all ages, as Mor was to females.

f She died in 1823, aged 74, and was buried in the Parish Church.

t In Tannington Church there is a handsome mural monument, upon which the arms

of Dade— gu., a chev. betw. three garbs or ., are impaled and quartered with those

1 Palmer’s Addenda: Dean Turner – his widow died in 1841, aged 81.

176

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

buried in, Witton Church, by his will dated in 1505, ordered the old roof

of the church to be taken down, the walls helped, and a new roof made

after the pattern of Little Plumstede:” and "because," says he, "I am not

able to lead it, I will that it be reeded at my cost."* In 1668 Thomas

Dade was named in a Royal Commission to enquire into the necessity of

obtaining an Act of Parliament for the maintenance of the Haven of

Great Yarmouth. Thomas Dade of Hedenham in Suffolk, known to have

been a member of the Tannington family, died in 1781, aged 81, and

Hannah his widow in 1799, aged 93. They were the parents of the

above-mentioned Thomas Dade, f The Rev. Thomas Dade, eldest and

only surviving son of the latter, was a Fellow of Caius College,

Cambridge, and was in 1820 presented to the living of Bincombe with

Broadway in Dorsetshire, where he died in 1860, aged 83, without issue

male. The Rev. Charles Robert Dade of the same family tree, who

married Miss Powell in 1801, was one of the Ministers of St. George's

Chapel from 1791 to 1802, when he was presented to the Rectory of

Denver in Norfolk by Caius College, Cambridge, which he held till his

death in 1821, aged 56, when he was succeeded by the Rev. Samuel

Colby Smith. His daughter married the Rev. Jonathan Matchett, Minor

Canon of Norwich Cathedral, and their daughter married J. B. Morgan,

Esq., of Norwich.

The next possessor was Mr. Charles Nichols, who here established

and

of Butler, Yallop, Cornwallis, Wingfield, Gurneys, Tilney, Vere, and

some others, all emblazoned; and on a brass they impale those of

Buckton, Braham, Tye, Tyrrell, and Samford. Twelve copies of the

monumental inscriptions have been printed, one of which with a

M.S. memoir of the family, drawn up by the Rev. Herbert Frere, is

in the possession of F.Worship, Esq.

* Some of the churches in Norfolk and Suffolk are thatched to

this day, (indeed remain so, 2007)

f In 1708 he voted at the county election for Astley and Coke.

In 1793 Mr. Dade, with Mr, W. Palgrave, were selected by the merchants and shipowners

of Yarmouth to attend upon Mr. Pitt, who had, by letter to the mayor, desired a con-

ference with two persona acquainted with the trade of the town. Dr. Stephen Lushington,

at that time one of the borough members, writing from All Souls, Oxford, on the 11th of

December, 1807, says, "I have this day received a letter informing me that Mr. Francis

Dade has been appointed third mate of the Calcutta."

GREAT YARMOUTH

177

conducted for many years a large boarding and day school. The entrance to

the schoolroom, at the back of the house, was from Row No. 101.*

Row No. 102 is also called Williams Row, because the house at the

south-east corner was long the property and residence of John Hanbury

Williams, Esq., whose only daughter and sole heir, Elizabeth, married

the Rev. Edward Barker Frere, f who died in 1864, aged 82. His widow

died in 1871, aged 76.

* He was a native of Harleston; and when at school there his ability attracted the

attention, of Mr. Tilney, the master, who induced him to give up the trade for which ho

wag intended and tales the position of usher. As such he became acquainted and formed a

friendship with Dr. Vince, afterwards Master of St. John's College, Cambridge. The latter

was a poor boy at Fressingfield, whose intelligence pleased the neighbouring farmers so

much that they subscribed and put him to school at Harleston, and afterwards means were

found to send him to Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship and became master of

his college. Mr, Nichols was a good scholar, and took great pains to ground his pupils

well in Latin and Greek. Upon the passing of the Municipal Corporation Act in 1835, his

consistent adherence to the whig party was recognised by the insertion of his name in the

new commission of the peace for the borough. He died in 1843, aged 75, s.p.; after having

for some years enjoyed his otium cum dignitate. There is an excellent portrait of him by J.

P. Davis. Cotman, the painter, etched for him a shield of arms— arg ., a chev. m., charged

with three crescents erm. , betw. three foxes' heads and a canton sa. ; but the plate is lost.

Of former school masters and teachers the following may be mentioned: Richard

Rawlyns was “ a Professor of Arithmetic in Great Yarmouth,” and author of a practical

treatise on that art, which he published in 1656. There is an engraved portrait of him by

Gaywood, a disciple and imitator of Hollar. Robert Hartstone, teacher at a private school

in Yarmouth in 1725, published at Norwich an essay towards a more advantageous

method of educating youths designed for business. William Wetherill, who died in 1789,

aged 77, was an eminent teacher of mathematics; and he and his father kept a school at

Yarmouth for the long period of 121 years. Among those who taught the French language

in Yarmouth may be mentioned M. Ventouillac, a native of Calais, a man of considerable

literary attainments; and the author and editor of many works of great merit. In 1830 he

was appointed Professor at King's College, London, and died in 1834. Another teacher of

the French language was M. Vlieland. He was greatly incensed when, in an action

brought against him, the opposing counsel called him Mr. Flyland. His sister was burnt to

death at Yarmouth in 1870. The French master at Mr. Nichols' school in 1811 was M.

Beziers, an Emigré of considerable learning. He composed some commendable Latin

verses upon the king's recovery. He must often have been pained by the thoughtless leers

of the school boys, bred in hatred of all Frenchmen.

t He was the son of Edward Frere, Esq., by Mary his wife (born in 1749), who was

V OL . II.

178

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

This family of FRERE trace their descent in a direct line from John Frere of

Thurston in Norfolk, who lived in the early part of the 14th century. Alexander Frere, who

died circa 1471, purchased lands at Occold in Suffolk, * and resided there. John, his son,

settled at Wickham in the same county, and became possessed of Wickham Abbey, which

still remains in the family. f In 1598 they purchased an estate at Finnington in Suffolk.

John Frere of Wickham and Finnington married Mary, daughter of John Barker, Esq., of

Shropham Hall, Norfolk, t and

the daughter of John Barter, Esq., of Shropham, Norfolk, by Elizabeth his wife (born in

1709), daughter of Benjamin Engle, Esq. (already mentioned vol. i., p.249), by Elizabeth

Futter his wife. The last-named lady died in 1741, aged 76, and is buried in Carbrooke

Church, Norfolk. The Futters held lands at Brisingham and Thurston in Norfolk and at

Stanton in Suffolk in the 16th. century. They also obtained the suppressed college, the

college manor, and the impropriate Rectory of Thompson in Norfolk, in the reign of

Queen Elizabeth. After the death of John Futter, about the year 1735 (the last of his race

at Thompson), the college and manor were sold to Mr. Cator, and part of the college lands

to Mr. Thomas Barker, who was descended from the old family of Barkeres or Barker of

Thompson. Futter bore sa., a swan arg. between two branches or, Elizabeth, daughter of

the above-named Edward Frere, married Henry Barker, Esq., and died at Yarmouth in

1871, aged 85. The trade of a wine and spirit merchant carried on at the back of the above

house was established by Mr. Warmington (of whom we shall presently have occasion to

speak) in 1760. With him was associated the above-named Mr. Williams; and with the

latter, at subsequent periods. Mr. J. M. Bell, already mentioned (ante. p. 169), and Mr. C.

H. Christmas became partners in the firm; the business ultimately devolving upon the sons

of Mr. Frere. Mr. Williams 1 and Mr. Bell married two sisters named Lyall of Dilham in

Norfolk. The name of Williams occurs at an early period. In 1578 Nicholas Williams, a

Yarmouth merchant, had a certificate that 2; 00 quarters of wheat delivered by him at

Waterford were for the provision of the garrison there. (State Papers.)

* Thomas Frere, a younger son of Alexander, remained at Occold, and some of his

descendants settled at Harleston in Norfolk, one of whom was Tobias Frere, who

represented Norfolk in Cromwell's Parliament. This branch terminated with an heiress,

who married Francis Longe, Esq., of Spixworth. There is a monument in Redenhall

Church to the memory of the above-named Tobias Frere, who died in 1655, with this

inscription :—

" His corps lyes here, his souls like to a dove,

" Finding small rest below, ascends above."

f A branch of this family settled at Barbadoes in the 17th century, and has become

extinct , the last being Applewhaite Frere, who died in London in 1830, unmarried.

t Elinor, their daughter, married Sir John Fenn of East Dereham, the editor of the

“Paston Letters,” and was a high-minded and accomplished woman.

1 Palmer’s Addenda: in 1637, William Williams and Alles his wife, and Elizabeth

Williams had license to pass into New England, and there inhabit and remayne . They

went out in the Rose of Yarmouth, Andrews master, and with them Henry Skerry,

Katherine Rabey, and Richard Leeds. The following persons went to New England in the

Mary Anne of Yarmouth, William Goose master: Margatet Neave and Rachel Dixon,

grandchild, Abraham Toppan and Susanna his wife with two children, Peter and

Elizabeth, and one maidservant, Francis Goodin, John Borowe and Anne his wife, and

William Gault.

GREAT YARMOUTH

179

had issue John Frere of Roydon in Norfolk and of Finnington in Suffolk.

He was High Sheriff of the latter county in 1776, when it is said he

composed a high tory sermon which his chaplain preached for the

edification of a whig judge. He was M.P. for Norwich, in 1799, and died

in 1807, aged 67, having married Jane, only child of John Hookham,

Esq., of Beddington in Surrey, a rich London merchant, by whom he had

several sons, the eldest of whom was the Right Hon. John Hookham Frere,

sometime Ambassador at Madrid, and the personal friend of Pitt and

Canning. William, the fourth son, was a serjeant-at-law, Master of

Downing College, Cambridge, one of the Chairmen of Quarter Sessions

for Norfolk, and Recorder of Bury St. Edmund's. He died in 1836, aged

60. The seventh son was the Rev. Temple Frere, Rector of Boydon,

Chaplain to the House of Commons, and Prebendary of Westminster.*

Edward Frere, who was a brother of the above-named John Frere of

Roydon, and a Major in the West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, died at

Yarmouth in 1819, aged 77. The armorial bearings of this family

recorded in 1664 were— or., two leopards' faces re-

gardant in pale gu, between two flanches of the latter;

but, as borne by Sheppard Frere in 1739, the colours

were reversed, and the coat now used is gu., two

leopards' faces in pale or. between two flanches of the

latter; and a martlet with which the first coat was

charged is now omitted. For a crest this family bears

—out of a ducal coronet an antelope's head arg.,

armed or., with the ancient motto, Frere ayme frère. The derivation of the

name from frère, a brother, is obvious; but it may also be traced to Freyr,

the Norse name of the deity symbolizing the sun. Freyr, was goddess of

love.

At the west end of Row No. 102, on the north side, there is a house

which still retains the original wainscotting and carved mantel pieces.

* Temple Frere, his eldest son, an under graduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, was

drowned in the Cam in 1810, aged 22, when endeavouring to save the life of a fellow

collegian. His younger brother perished in 1839 by the burning of the school at which he

was placed.

f There is a short pedigree of Frere of Sawbridgeworth, commencing in 1197, in

Cussan' s Herefordshire, p, 79. The descent of John Frere, for four generations, may be

seen in the Visitation Book for Suffolk in 1664, in the possession of the College of Arms.

180

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

Row No. 103 , from South Quay to Middlegate Street called

Custom House Row. The large house at the south-west corner was

erected early in the 18th century by J OHN A NDREWS ,* reputed to be

“ the greatest herring merchant in Europe.” He had built his fine house

up to the verge of his frontage, and then found that he could not reach

the front door without placing the steps beyond the limit, and he

therefore applied to the corporation, for leave to do so. A great feud,

however, existed at that time between Andrews and the corporation ; for

the former had disputed the right of the latter to a revenue which they

derived from the re-sale of herrings, denominated "Heighning money."

f They therefore refused his request, and with exquisite irony suggested

that he could get into his grand house by means of a portable ladder, as

the quakers then did at their meeting house. J Eventually a close

* The name of Andrews had previously been connected with the town. In 1402,

James Andrews Attorney of the Townsmen of Great Yarmouth was “inhibited not to

withdraw from, the Exchequer until he had paid the King xxl the Profer for the Ferm and

Issues of the said Town. He withdrew, the said xxl being unpaid”. Thereupon the Sherif of

Norfolk was commanded by "Writ of the Exchequer, "to attach James Andrews for the

Contempt, and in the mean time to levy the xxl on "the lands and chatells of the

Townsmen (de terris & catallis pr æ dictorum Hominum. " The Sherif returned his Writ

endorsed thus, That James Andrews was not found in his Bailywick; And that he had

taken of the lands of the Men and Bailifs (Hominum & Ballivorum) of the said Town

goods to the value of xxl ; which goods remained in his bands for want of Buyers; And

that as soon as the said goods were sold, he “would answer the money to the king”.

Afterwards, the Townsmen of Yarmouth Homines vill æ pr æ dict æ exhibited to the Court

a Tally of payment, testifying that “they had paid the said xxl into the King's Exchequer.

And so they were Quit.” John Andrews, son of John Andrews of Great Yarmouth and

Susan his wife, daughter of John Atwood, was buried in the Church of St. George,

Tombland, Norwich, in 1673. John Andrews, Alderman of Norwich, on the 30th of May,

1649, proclaimed the Act for abolishing Kingly Government; but in 1660 he signed the

letter from the gentry of the county and from the City of Norwich to General Monk, in

which they said how deeply they were "affected with the sense of their sad distractions

and divisions," and begged him to re-call the secluded members.

f See an account of this custom in P. C. , pp. 87, 88. The suit between the corporation

and Andrews was never brought to a judicial decision in consequence of the death of the

latter; but the custom was allowed to fall into disuse, the Court of Exchequer having held

that " it was unlawful to set a price, or make any restrain or demand, or to take a toll upon

any sea fish brought into the realm by any British subject."

t Extracted from the corporation Assembly Book, vol. xi., p. 107.

GREAT YARMOUTH

181

porch was permitted) entered by steps on each side, which, remained till the

present century, when it gave place to the present open portico with iron

palisades. Andrews died in 1747, aged 72, unmarried, and left all his wealth to

Thomas Martin, who had been has confidential clerk. The next of kin disputed

the will and a suit in chancery was instituted, in the progress of which, in order

to propitiate the Lord Chancellor, Martin foolishly sent his lordship a bank note

of £20. He was immediately required to show cause why he should not he

committed to prison for contempt of court; but in consideration of his then

filling the office of mayor, and in regard to the public business of the borough,

Martin was excused upon asking pardon of the chancellor, paying the costs, and

giving £20 to the poor debtors then in the Fleet prison.* Martin was a man of

profuse habits, and dissipated a great part of the fortune thus unexpectedly

acquired. He had sufficient influence to obtain the appointment of Collector of

Customs, although he had never previously been in the service of the Crown,

and in 1784 he was induced to resign office "to the intent that Thomas Dade,

merchant, might be appointed collector" in his room; and thereupon, in

acknowledgment of such complaisance, Dade entered into a bond to pay Martin

an annuity of £200 during his life. Such was the jobbery in vogue in the "good

old times;" to which the present system of promotion in the Civil Service of the

Crown presents a favorable contrast. Martin died in 1792, having attained the

advanced age of 90 years. He had been for some time the " father of the

corporation," as the eldest member was termed; and was so much liked by that

body that, on the day of his funeral, they assembled on the Quay, and, as a mark

of respect, followed his remains to the grave. f He left an only son, the Rev.

Thomas Martin, Rector of Colkirk in Norfolk from 1769 to 1816, by whom

what remained of the large estate left by Andrews was sold and a daughter who

married James Jones of Fakenham.

* Sec, 2, Russell and Mylne's Reports, p. 674.

t In 1769 Elizabeth Martin, who at that time was a domestic servant in the above-

mentioned house, was tried, convicted, and executed 1 for the murder of her illegitimate

child. This was probably the last occasion upon which a woman was hanged in Yarmouth;

but, as we have seen (ante. p. 145), it was not the first. In a book of expenses belonging to

the town, council there is this entry :—1663. Paid Goose the hangman for executing two

women, £3.

1 Palmer’s Addenda: execution – 16 th September 1769, sister Sally and cousin Molly

Elmly came to town at half past eleven and these two, mother, Jack, and I went to the

North Denes, out of the North Gate, and there at one o’clock, Elizabeth Martin was turned

off after about a quarter of an hour’s praying with Mr.White. This is the first person I ever

saw hanged: Youell’s Diary.

182

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

After the death of (Elizabeth) Martin the house above mentioned

was occupied for some time by the Rev. John Love* ; and in 1802 it

was purchased by government and converted into a Custom House, f

During the middle ages "the king's customs," or some portions of

them, were frequently "farmed" by private persons, whereby the Crown

obtained a certain revenue and was relieved of the trouble, uncertainty,

and expense of the collection. J Thus we find that in 1326 the King

assigned unto John Perebrowne, the celebrated Yarmouth admiral (vol.

i., p. 202), the customs on wool exported. One means of supplying

Edward III. with money to carry on his wars in France, was by granting

him for a limited time the right of pre-emption of wool, and the profit

obtained by such monopoly was equivalent to the sum voted. In 1338

the king had 20,000 sacks granted to him, and orders were forwarded to

London, Sandwich, Ipswich, Hull, Newcastle, and other places, to send

all their wool to Yarmouth, there to be delivered to the king's agents,

Robert Howell and Robert Watford.§ In 1327 Thomas Jerningham,

High Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, received £10 from the Collector of

Customs at Yarmouth, the acknowledgment for which, is among the

Exchequer Records. In the 13th century corn was exported from

Norfolk to the Continent; and by a record in the Exchequer we have an

account of the quantity shipped to Gascony in 1297. In time of war a

sharp look-out was kept to prevent supplies being sent to the king's

enemies. In the reign of Richard I., Yarmouth was fined two hundred

marks for permitting this illicit traffic. ¶ On the other hand, letters

* See vol. i., p. 384. Admiral Sir John Lawford, K.C.B., who married Mr. Love's

wife's sister, died in 1842, aged 86. He was First Lieutenant of the Nimrod, 98, in Lord

Rodney's victory of 1782.

f There is an engraved view of this house in Preston's Picture of Yarmouth.

t Farming particular taxes was practised down to a late period. In 1804 Robert

Wiltshire Esq., the farmer of the post-horse duty at £15,000 per annum, complained that

he had no means of checking post horses on Caister Road, there being no toll bar; and he

petitioned the corporation to allow a collector to be employed at the "White Gate."

§ Rymer ii., p. 1054. Among the Exchequer Records are three indentures (dated in

1231) certifying the lading of certain vessels with wool for exportation at Yarmouth in

the presence of the Warden of the Cocket and the Collector of Customs.

¶ Gardiner's Dunwich, pp. 7-37.

GREAT YARMOUTH

183

patent were constantly sent to the Sheriff of Norfolk, directing him to provide

and carry corn to Yarmouth, thence to be exported for the use of the king's

army. In 1307 the collectors of the new tax of 3d. in the pound at Yarmouth

were directed to pay the amount to William Lewat, in part payment of a debt;

due to him from the king. When the Crown was in need of money, if was no

uncommon thing to anticipate the revenue by borrowing on the credit of the

customs. Thus, in 1370, John de Stalham, one of the collectors of the king's

customs, was sent with, letters of privy seal to Hugh Fastolf, Bailiff of

Yarmouth, "to borrow money for the King's use." In the same year John

Nouseley, valet, was sent into Norfolk with letters of the Lord Treasurer,

directed to the Collectors of the King's Customs and Subsidies at Yarmouth, to

obtain "money for payment of the wages of divers seamen, and for the hire of

ships for carrying armed men and the king's provisions to Orwell for the "king's

passage beyond sea" and the king's sergeant came to Yarmouth to retain ships

for the passage of our lord the king."* Appointments in the customs were made

a reward for political or personal services; and the duties were frequently

allowed to he performed by deputy. In 1447 Ralph Waderwyke was appointed

Comptroller of the Customs at Yarmouth, he having taken Count Dolfemond, a

French officer, prisoner. In 1483 John Smyth was made "Comptroller of the

Great and Little Customs" at Yarmouth. On the accession of Henry VIII.,

Richard Lloyd, Groom of the Chamber, was appointed searcher; and in 1513

Nicholas Yoo, Groom of the Chamber, was named, to the same office during

pleasure, with a moiety of forfeitures. In 1515 Roger Bromfeld was appointed

searcher; and in 1518 William Robet was made comptroller, "and to perform the

office personally." In 1516 John Palmer was, as we have seen (ante. p. 75),

Collector of Customs. The Crown sometimes exercised the power of remitting

particular duties. Thus, in 1541, a letter was received addressed to “the

Customers, Comptroller,

* Pell Rolls. John Baker, Master of the Mary of Yarmouth, wag paid 6d. per

day, and twenty-four mariners 3d. per day each, with a reward of 6d. per week of the

king's gift for going into the king's service and protecting the King of Navarre from

Cherbourg to England," and for the passage of the same king returning to his own

country;'" and John Price of Yarmouth was ordered to pay the seamen of the North-

Sea fleet going to Calais to bring over the Duke of Lancaster and the lords there, £40.

184

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

and Searcher " at Yarmouth, to permit James Puttin, one of the Clerks

of the Board of Green Cloth, to send over from time to time all such

victual as he should provide for the soldiers and workmen at Calais and

Guisnes, without paying custom for the same. In the reign of Queen

Elizabeth the customer's fee at Great Yarmouth, paid by the Crown,

was £10, with a "reward" of £20. The comptroller's fee was £6. 6s. 8d.

with a reward of £6. 13s. 4d. In 1553 John Hughes was comptroller;

and in 1588 William Smythe became customer; and Henry Manship*

was made comptroller. In 1660 William Watts was made collector and

George Ward was appointed to the office of comptroller, void by the

death of William Barrett, f In 1689 Christopher Barrett was searcher,

and Francis Spendlove, comptroller.

*Transposed, the name is Shipman.

f State Papers, p, 197. In March, 1664, government received information that Watts, the

collector, and also one Thomas Willis, schoolmaster, frequently expressed great affection

for the " Godly party;" and said if they rose they should join them, and doubted not of

promotion in the army. State Papers, p. 533. Thomas Willis appears to have been a

relation and much in the confidence of Watts, who sent him to assure Capt. Baynes of

Holmby in Northamptonshire that if he miscarried the collector would conceal and send

him away. This was discovered by the government spy, who reported that "the people of

Yarmouth were crafty and jealous, insolent in the expectation of change, numerous and

high spirited, and those in public trust abet them in their villainy." Willis was

apprehended and confessed, whereupon the collector threw him into prison for debt, and,

says the spy, "intends to make him revoke his words. Willis, he adds, "was a great stickler

for toleration in religion, and strange things might be proved against him." The Yarmouth

family of Watts bore erm., on a chief gu., an annulet betw. two billets or.; and for a crest,

a demi. lion ramp, and regardant gu,, resting his left paw on a shield or. An old

emblazonment of these arms on vellum, penes mei, impales

those of Hewet. John Watts of East Dereham, who died in

1755, bore the same arms. Lydia Watts married Richard

Pillans, merchant, of Rotterdam, and on her tombstone at

East Dereham is this inscription :—

They in both countries who knew her;

Know their loss and mourn it

They who knew her not, have a real loss,

In wanting an example so worthy of imitation.

For some time after the restoration a sharp look out was

kept on the conduct of all men filling official situations.

Richard Bower, a confidential agent of the Crown,

writing from. Yarmouth, says,—"Wm. Watts, Collector

of Customs , is suspected of a hand in the plot

GREAT YARMOUTH

185

The following is a list of the Collectors of Customs at the Port of

Great Yarmouth from the time of the Restoration.

1660. W ILLIAM W ATTS .

1663. J OHN D AWSON .*

1679. R OBERT D OUGHTY .

1684. T HOMAS C LARKE f

1708. T HOMAS M OORE . J

1726. S AMUEL J ACOMB .

"last Midsummer, and contrived, by intercession of money, to have a stop put to his

examination by Lord Townshend. He cannot now clear his accounts, and the farmers of

the customs have ordered that he receive no more money till he has. He has lately been

very inquisitive after arms, and it is feared that he has a quantity somewhere. He is

buying houses, and has a scurrilous song on the nobility. He comes to church once a

month, but never receives the sacrament. State Papers, p. 99.

* In 1678 he had sent to him "His Majesty's Proclamation for the encouragement of

iron, wyre."

f His death on the 25th August, 1708, aged 68, was thus laconically reported to the

Commissioners of Customs:—" About 4 of ye clock this afternoon, Mr. Thomas Clarke, ye

collecter, departed this life." (Signed) Walter Saltonshall and Thomas Moore. He married

Mary, eldest daughter of John Haford of Haford in Worcestershire. The above-named

Walter Saltonshall was comptroller at Yarmouth for forty-seven years, and died in 1750,

aged 77. There is a latin inscription to his memory in the Parish Church, in which he is

described as " hujus portus nupor dignissimus controrotulator; morum candero, vit æ

probitate et nota in. Egenos et cognates charitare ornatissimus." In the chancel of

Somerleyton Church there was an inscription, to the memory of Bernard Saltonshall, son

of Richard Saltonshall of South Okendon in Essex, who died in 1631; with his arms - or.,

on a chev. betw. two eagles displayed sa ., crescent or.

t He died in 1724, aged 75, "after a week or ten days sickness." He was

descended from the Moores of Moorebay in Devonshire, who bore erm., on a chev. az.,

three cinquefoils, arg. John Moore, Rector of Knaptoft, married Eleanor Kirk of

Northampton, and by her had an elder son, John Moore, who died at Stamford in

1698, and a second son, Thomas Moore of Market Harborough, who by his wife, a

daughter of Edward Wright of Sutton Broughton in Leicestershire, had two sons,

the above-named Thomas Moore, Collector of Customs, and John Moore, who was

consecrated Bishop of Norwich in 1691, translated to Ely in 1707, and died in

1714. The collector's wife, Elizabeth, daughter of John Ramey, died in 1698,

aged 38. The bishop, by Rose his first wife, daughter of Nevil Butler, Esq., of

Barnwell Abbey, Cambridgeshire, left two sons, John Moore, who was principal

Registrar of Norwich, and Thomas Moore, who had a place in the London Custom

House, and three daughters, of whom Rose, the eldest, married Dr. Thomas Tanner,

Bishop of St. Asaph 1 . The latter prelate was therefore a nephew of the Yarmouth

collector. Before his preferment Dr. Tanner was for thirty years Chancellor of the

Diocese of Norwich, during which period he maintained a steady correspondence with

his nephew at Yarmouth, and many of these letters were in the collection of the late

1 Dr Tanner collected many documents relevant to Yarmouth, that were taken with him

when he moved to Oxford, and were bequeathed to the Bodliean Library there. On arrival,

the coach fell into the water off the Magdalen Bridge, but the documents were dried out,

and it is not known if any were lost. See next page.

VOL. II.

186

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

1734. T HOMAS C OOKE .* 1743. J AMES P OULSUM .

Dawson Turner, Esq. When, in 1732, seven cart loads of books and

papers belonging to Dr. Tanner were being removed from Norwich to

Christ Church, Oxford, they fell into a stream of water and received

great injury. Among them were three hundred volumes which had

belonged to Archbishop Sancroft. A large collection of M.S.S. relating

to Yarmouth, which belonged to Bishop Tanner, is now in the Bodleian

Library at Oxford 1 . Tanner bore arg. three blackamoors' heads couped,

and filletted gu. On the 17th of December, 1735, “news came that

Bishop Tanner had died on the 15th, to the great grief of all his friends

and relations.” Bishop Moore married, secondly, Dorothy, widow first

of Sir Michael Blacket, Bart., of Newcastle, and secondly of Sir

Richard Browne, Bart., and had issue. There is a portrait of this prelate

by Sir Godfrey Kneller, engraved by Faithorne. He was a noted

collector of books; and his library was purchased for six thousand

guineas by George I., and presented to the University of Cambridge.

* He filled the office of mayor in 1732. Edmund Cooke was named in the inquisition

of the 46 Edward III, to give evidence in the dispute respecting Kirkley Road. Edward

Cooke was one of the Justices for Norfolk who, in 1593, signed a letter to Queen

Elizabeth, soliciting her favor for Yarmouth, " which towne in tymes past had done good

service to her majesty's most noble progenitors by sea and land." In 1643 John Cooke, a

Norfolk justice, signed a requisition on the town for the payment of a weekly rate of £34

16s. 5d. for the support of the Parliamentary forces. Paul Cooke was a member of the

corporation in 1626; and in 1635 he was appointed to collect £940, then assessed on the

town for "ship money." William Cooke of Yarmouth had a freehold at Ormesby, for

which he voted in 1714 for Hare and Earle. At Felmingham, near North Walsham, a

family of this name occupied for several generations an old mansion, now pulled down,

called Rugge's Hall, from a former family of that name; the only fragment remaining

being a small portion of the ornamental carving which once adorned the mantel piece in

the great hall. The estate became the property of Lord Suffield. They were also for many

years tenant farmers of an estate at Bayfield belonging to Serjeant Best 2 , which on his

death passed to the Jodrells. Of this family were Robins Cooke and Corbet Cooke, sons of

Robins Cooke an extensive miller in Norfolk, who came to Yarmouth in the last century

and entered into the service of Messrs. Thomas Hurry & Co. They subsequently settled at

Liverpool, where as merchants and shipowners they acquired considerable fortunes. The

Cookes of Mileham, Norfolk, bore per pale az. (or arg.) and gu., three eagles displayed

counter changed. (Papworth's Ordinary, p. 326.) The Cookes of Broome in Suffolk bore

or., a chev. eng. gu,, betw. three cinquefoils az,, on a chief of the second a lion pass, arg.

In 1680 Sir William Cooke of Broome, Bart., had a conveyance of the house at the north-

east corner of the Old Broad Row, already mentioned (vol.i., p.274), from Richard

Wilcock, as a security for a bond debt due from his brothers, Stephen Wilcock of

Norwich, woollen-draper, John Wilcock of Yarmouth, merchant, and Daniel Wilcock of

Yarmouth, woollen-draper, which, with other bond debts, were made the subject of a

settlement on the marriage of his grand daughter, Mary Cooke, with Richard Freestone

(Freston), son of Anthony Freestone

1 Athough Palmer knew of the documents at the Bodliean, he does not seem to have

visited and seen them. One he would have particularly noted, is the second, different copy

of the “Hutch” map, that had apparently gone missing. Also there are such as a

manuscript book of the St Mary’s School, by Henry Manship, and the manuscript history

of Yarmouth by Parkin. The documents are not listed in his manuscript bibliography

(owned by Percy Trett, which I have copied and transcribed).

2 Palmer’s Addenda: Serjeant Best – held Bayfield as the second husband of the

widow of Henry Joddrell barrister at law – nee Weyland of Woodrising.

GREAT YARMOUTH.

187

1747. J AMES W ARD .*

1774. T HOMAS M ARTIN .

1791. J OHN B ELL . J

1825. T HOMAS G RANT . (Acting)

1827. N ICHOLAS J ICKLING .

1833. M ICHAEL C ULLEN C OTTON , ¶

of Mendham in Suffolk, descended from Sir Richard Freston, who

came of a Yorkshire family connected with the Wentworths, and who

in 1537 obtained from the Duke of Suffolk, the grantee, a conveyance

of the Priory of Mendham.—See Gentleman’s Magazine for 1808 and

1836, the Antiquarian Itinerary, and Davy's Architectural Antiquities.

Freston bore az. , on a fess. or. , three leopards' faces gu . Among the

bonds above mentioned was one of the above-named Robert Doughty

(1679) and another of John Wiggett, merchant, of Yarmouth. Ex inf.

G. W, Carthew, Esq.

* See vol. i., p. 257. In 1761 some reams of elephant paper were put up for auction,

the consignee refusing to pay the duty. The biddings ran up to £2 12s. 6d. per ream,

which raised a suspicion, whereupon the reams were opened and were found to contain a

large assortment of French lawns.

f He was not of the family of Baker already mentioned. He bore

for his arms— arg., a castle between three keys erect sa., which coat

still remains on his gravestone in Yarmouth churchyard. He was

elected to fill the office of mayor in 1754, at a time when parties in

the corporation were very evenly balanced; and was only chosen

after a protracted "lay." Fourteen of the eighteen aldermen backed

the mayor, but eighteen of the common councilmen opposed him,

leaving him with seventeen, supporters only in that body, there being

one vacancy which was the cause of the contention. The mayor

summoned three assemblies to transact the business of the town, which the opposing

eighteen common councilmen refused to attend unless the mayor would pledge himself to

proceed in the first instance with the election of a common councilman, which he feared

to do lest the hostile majority of one should be increased to two. The mayor threatened

them with a Writ of Mandamus, but the malcontents turned the tables by obtaining one

themselves, which compelled the mayor to fill up the vacancy. Richard Baker again filled

the office of mayor in 1769, being then Collector of Customs, and died in 1774, aged 72,

J In 1798, while the custom-house officers were unloading goods from a detained

ship, a cask, purporting to contain coffee-mills, burst, and was found to be full of broad

swords, engraved with the words "Liberty and Equality."

§ He had been a major in the army. He resided at Browston Hall. He exchanged his

collectorship for that of Sydney in Australia with his successor.

f He was of an Irish family, and married Jane, daughter of G.W. Poley, Esq., of

Boxsted; was promoted to Hull and Greenock; and died in 1863.

1 I find this fascinating, that Victorian spellings are as the American versions, and

those English versions that we so cherish are those that have been altered, not the other

way round.

1743. J OHN P EELE .

1765. R ICHARD B AKER . f

1784. T HOMAS D ADE .

1804. W ILLIAM P ALGRAVE .

1826. D AVID D AVIS (Acting)

1828. J OHN G EORGE G IBBS §

188

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

1834. S AMUEL P RICE E DWARDS .* 1841. R ICHARD B ELL . f

1848. F REDERICK C ASSELL . 1849. R OBERT W HITE .

1853. J OHN R ICHARDSON 1 . 1856. W M . J AMES R EDPATH . J

1858. W ILLIAM S TRIKE .§ I860. W M .C HRIGHTON M ACLEAN .

George Clements, author of Clements Customs Guide, was for a short,

time acting collector. He died in 1855, aged 54.

The east end of Row No. 103 was widened by the late Richard

Ferrier, Esq., to afford better access to a brewery there which he had

purchased. At the north-west, corner is a public house called the Royal

Exchange, which in the 17th. century was the property of Sir Thomas

Medowe, Knt., and was subsequently purchased by John Patteson, Esq.,

of Norwich; and is now the property of Steward, Patteson, & Co.

The family of P ATTESON have long held property in Yarmouth.

William Patteson lost his fortune by adhering to Charles I., and after the

defeat of the royal cause, settled at Birmingham. Their first connection

with Norwich was by the marriage of Henry Patteson, his son, with a

lady named Colborne of that of city. ¶ Their son, Henry Spark

Patteson, settled in Norwich about the end of the 17th century; where

his descendants have ever since remained. He married Catharine,

daughter and co-heiress of the Rev. Edmund Wace, Rector of Hill-

borough in Norfolk ; || and died at Norwich in 1765. He had two sons,

* He resided at Browston Hall, and was one of the first Directors of the Eastern

Counties Railway Company. He was promoted to the collectorship of Liverpool.

f He was of the well-known family of the Bells of Northumberland. He died

in 1848, s.p.

J He had been collector at Banff, and was promoted successively to Portsmouth

and Leith.

§ He was removed to Waterford

¶ Edward Colborne filled the office of Sheriff of Norwich in 1717, and was mayor

id 1720, He administered justice impartially, was just in his dealings, very literal

to the poor, and a good neighbour, as his epitaph in the Parish Church of St. Peter

Mancroft informs us. He died in 1720. This family bore arg., a chev. betw. three

bugle horns sa., garnished or.

|| He was of the ancient, but now extinct, family of W ACE of Feltwell in Norfolk. In

1609 James I. granted the Bishop's Manor there to Robert Wace Esq.; and on the

pavement in the chancel of the Parish Church is a slab of black marble with an

inscription to the memory of John Wace, who died in 1672. He married Catherine

Cardwell. They bore barry of six arg , and gu., which arms the Pattesons quarter. The

1 Palmer’s Addenda: John Richardson died 29 th November 1874, at New

Wandsworth, aged 83.

GREAT YARMOUTH

189

Henry Spark Patteson and John Patteson. The latter married Mary

Lander of Catfield, and died without issue. The former married Martha

Fromanteel, of an old Dutch family settled in Norwich, and now

extinxt.* Of this marriage there were two sons, John and Henry. The

former married Elizabeth, only child of Robert Staniforth, Esq., of

Manchester, by Catharine his wife, a daughter of the Rev. John Dossie,

Vicar of Sheffield (by a second marriage), who was of an old refugee

family, f He filled the office of Mayor of Norwich in 1788;

Rev. W. F. Patteson has a pedigree of Wace, with copies of their monumental

inscriptions; and also a portrait of the Rev, Edmund Wace, who died in 1734, aged 87,

having been Incumbent of Hillborough for 52 years. The Rev. George Wace was in 1701

presented to the Rectory of Billockby near Yarmouth by George England, Esq., of the

latter place.

* The arms of Fromanteel, as they appear on the family plate, were— vert., four bars

arg., over all a lion ramp, guard, crowned gu . Daniel Fromanteel was Sheriff of Norwich

in 1719, and mayor in 1725. He died in 1731, aged 53, "very much esteemed both in his

public and private character."

t She had two brothers, Robert and William Dossie, to whom, as both died unmarried,

she became sole heir, whereupon she adopted the arms of Dossie— sa., three eagles rising,

two and one, or.— now quartered by the Pattesons. William Staniforth, brother of the

above-named Robert Staniforth, married Mary, the sole surviving child of Dr. Cox Macro

of Little Haugh, Norton, Suffolk; and having no family she left her fortune to her

husband, who made Elizabeth, his brothers daughter, his heir; by which means many

portraits of the Macro, Cox, and Staniforth families came to the Pattesons, several of

which are now in the possession of the Rev. W. F. Patteson. Some account of the Macro

family has been given in vol. i., p. 166. The arms of Cox, impaled with those of Macro on

the family plate, are arg., three cocks gu,, two and one, crowned or., and on a chief az., a

rose of the second between two ostrich feathers of the first; and for a crest, a cock gu.,

ducally crowned or. Dr. Cox Macro married Mary, daughter of Mr. Godfrey, who was of

the privy purse to Queen Anne. The Godfrey arms are sa., a chev. between three pelicans'

heads erased, vulning themselves or., being those of the Godfreys of Lidden 1 in Kent; and

appear impaled with those of Macro on a coat exquisitely done on vellum in 1731 at

London by Matthew Birchinger, who was born without hands or legs, June 3, 1674, in the

Marquisite of Anspach, near Nuremburg, as a note at the foot written by himself informs

us, and which adds that he had been "four times married, having had fourteen children, of

whom three sons and five daughters were then living." Above the shield is the device of a

hand holding an open book with the motto, Disco et dedisco, sometimes used by the

doctor instead of the Macro crest, and above all is written—

" Tho' hands and fief; by nature I'm denyed,

"This great defect is by my art multiplied."

It is in the possession of the Rev. F. W. Patteson, who has also a portrait of Mr. Brewster,

one of whose daughters married Francis Longe of Spixworth,

1 Lydden is just west of Dover at the bottom of a very steep hill, where I used as a

teenager, to hitch rides up on my bicycle, by grabbing a hold onto the back of a slow

moving lorry. Now the main road is a dual carriageway direct to the docks at Dover, and

Lydden is by-passed.

190

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

and in 1802 was returned to Parliament, for the Borough of Minehead.*

In 1806 he was returned at the head of the poll for the city of Norwich,

and was re-elected in the following year. He took an active and

independent part in Parliament, especially upon the subject of the Corn

Laws. On the breaking out of the revolutionary war with France he, at

the request of government, raised a regiment of volunteers of which he

was appointed Lieut.-Colonel; and when they were merged into a

regiment of local militia, he became Colonel-Commandant, f He died in

1833, aged 77, having had by the above-mentioned marriage six sons,

of whom the eldest, John Staniforth Patteson, was Lieut-Colonel of the

East Norfolk Regiment of Militia, and filled the office of Mayor of

Norwich in 1823. J He died in 1832, leaving two sons, the Rev. John

Patteson, Rector of Thorpe next Norwich, and Henry Staniforth

Patteson, Esq., who is one of the Haven Commissioners. The arms of

this family are arg., on a fesse sa. three fleur de lis or.; and for a crest, a

pelican on her nest vulning herself, both or. §

Row No. 104, from South Quay to Middlegate Street, formerly

called Swanard's Row. ¶ At the south-west corner is a house long the

property

* Although there were but 139 voters the contest lasted for five days,

f When, in 1803, he had the command of all the volunteers assembled at Yarmouth

to oppose an expected invasion, he received from government a sealed packet containing,

as he was informed, the names of certain suspected persons who were to be seized the

moment a French soldier landed. As no such event happened the missive was returned

unopened. There is a portrait of him in St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich, by Beechy; and

another in the possession of the Rev. W. F. Patteson; and there is an engraved portrait.

j His portrait, by Beechy, hangs in St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich; and there is also an

engraved portrait.

§ The second, third, and fifth sons of John and Elizabeth Patteson died in their youth.

Their fourth son, Robert Dossie Patteson, a Captain in the 8th Regiment of Infantry,

served at Walcheron, was at Corunna, followed the Bute of Wellington throughout the

Peninsular war, and fell before Fort Erie in 1814. The sixth and youngest son is the Rev,

William Frederick Patteson, Incumbent of St. Helen's, Norwich, and Honorary Canon of

Norwich Cathedral, for whom the late Duke of Gloucester, when on a visit to his father,

stood godfather, the other sponsors being Henry Jodrell, Esq., M.P. for Yarmouth, and the

Lady Elisabeth Hobart. The principal residence of the family at Norwich was the house in

Surrey Street, now occupied by Sir Samuel Bignold.

¶ Possibly the swanard, or keeper of the town swans, may have resided in it, (See

vol. i., p. 194,)

GREAT YARMOUTH

191

and residence of Nathaniel Palmer, solicitor, who died in 1854, aged

75.* It was subsequently purchased, and for some years resided in by

G EORGE S IMON H ARCOURT , Esq., who devoted himself with untiring

energy to the establishment of the Yarmouth Sailors' Home. f

At the north-east corner of Row No. 104 is a house which in 1749

was the property of Abel Clifton, t who filled the office of water bailiff

* Henry Palmer, his eldest son, filled the office of town clerk from 1848 to 1850,

when he resigned. He died in 1871, aged 63.

f He descended from Philip Harcourt of Wigsell, brother of Simon first Viscount

Harcourt, ancestor of the Earls Harcourt, who became extinct in 1830. He was the only

son of John Simon Harcourt of Ankerwyche, near Staines in Buckinghamshire, sometime

M.P. for Westbury, by Elizabeth Dale, his wife, daughter of Major Henniker, and

granddaughter of John, first Baron Henniker. Mr. G. S. Harcourt was a magistrate, and a

Deputy Lieutenant for Bucks, filled the office of High Sheriff in 1S34, and sat in

Parliament for that county from 1837 to 1841. He married, first, Jessie, daughter of John

Rolls, Esq., of the Hendr, Monmouth, and, secondly, Gertrude Charlotte, daughter of

George Lucas, E SQ ., of Newport Pagnell, Bucks; and died in London in 1871, aged 64.

His eldest son by the first marriage, Capt. Harcourt of the 20th foot, married Harriet, third

Daughter of Admiral Sir J. H. Plumridge 1 , K.C.B. (See ante, p. 159.) The estate of

Ankerwyche was acquired by the marriage of Sir Philip Harcourt, who died in 1688, with

Elizabeth, daughter and sole heir of John Lee, Esq. Runimede and Magna Charta Island

are included in it. The Harcourts bore gu., two bars or.; and for a crest, out of a ducal

coronet or., a peacock close ppr. This crest, which Mr. Harcourt had engraved on his

visiting cards, led to a whimsical mistake. Calling one day at the barracks where an Irish

regiment had recently arrived, he left his card with a servant, who, when be presented it to

his master, in answer to the enquiry as to who had called, observed, "faith! colonel, I

believc he's a poulterer!" A pedigree of Harcourt of Ankerwyche will, be found in

Lipscomb's Bucks, vol. iv., p. 589.

f Abel Clifton married a daughter of Leonard Mapes, Esq., of Rollesby. A family of

the name had been of some continuance in Yarmouth, filling municipal offices. At the

Norfolk election in 1714 four of the name voted for freeholds in Yarmouth in favor of

Astley and De Grey. Josiah Clifton, living in 1687, married Mary, only child of Thomas

Fenne, by Mary his wife, who was one of the three daughters and co-heirs of James

Cheny, whose other daughters were Abigail, married to Edmund Edgar, by whom, she

had an only son, Henry Edgar, and Judith, who married James Collingwood, by whom

she had an only son, William Collingwood, who went to reside at North Shields.

Elizabeth Clifton, daughter of the Rev. Samuel Wright (who died in 1729), died in 1802,

aged 95. Robert Clifton, master mariner, died in 1868, aged 85. In early life, upon the

breaking out of the war with France, while on shore at Newcastle, he was seized by a

press-gang, taken on board a man-of-war and compelled to serve for several years until

invalided; and he afterwards returned to the merchant service.

1 Admiral Plumridge of Hopton Hall

192

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

from 1756 to 1765, when he died, aged 66. Abel Clifton, his son, sold

the house in 1785 to R OBERT W ARMINGTON , Esq., who began life as

errand boy in the household of Mr. Urquhart, at that time Navy Agent

and Store Keeper at Yarmouth, who after a time took the lad into his

office, where his capacity for business and sagacity, combined with

good conduct, gained for him the confidence of his master, through

whose assistance Mr. Warmington eventually established himself as a

wine merchant,* and ultimately succeeded to Mr. Urquhart's appoint-

ments. He also became agent for packets plying between this port and

Cuxhaven; which afforded, during the great war with France, one of the

few means of communication with the continent, f In his office (p. 173)

were frequently stowed away bars of gold, boxes of coin, and other

treasure in course of transit; and on these occasions the premises were

well guarded by soldiers. He was also Vice-Consul for Prussia and

Denmark, and represented other powers with whom Great Britain was

at amity. In 1781 the corporation passed a resolution to admit to the

freedom of the borough any person married to the daughter of a

freeman. Warmington, who had married Elizabeth, daughter of the

above-named Abel Clifton, thereupon, with other gentlemen opposed to

the corporation in politics, claimed to be admitted on payment of £50;

but this the corporation refused to do, and rescinded their vote.

Warmington threatened a Mandamus, whereupon they admitted him,

and afterwards elected him a member of their body corporate, and he

filled the office of mayor in 1790, and again in 1808. He was agent at

Yarmouth for Lord Nelson; and in that capacity received, in 1800, from

the hero of the Nile, £50 for distribution among the poor; and he

* See ante, pp. Ill, 178. There are two parishes called Warmington, one in

Northamptonshire, the other in Warwickshire. John de Warmington and William de

Warmington were successively Rectors of Haddiscoe in Norfolk from 1318 to 1327.

f These packets (in 1798) were the Prince of Orange, Capt. Bridge, who afterwards

commanded a packet from Harwich, the Prince of Wales, Capt. Hearne, the Courier,

Capt. Flyn, the Diana, Capt. Philip Deane (who died in 1801), King George, Capt. P.

Deane, jun., Prince of Wales, Capt. A. Deane, Express, Capt. Dell, Carteret, Capt.

Hammond, Earl of Leicester, Capt. Thompson, Diana, Capt. Osborne, and the Prince

of Wales, Capt. Sutton. A packet sailed from Yarmouth every Sunday and Thursday

at 9 a.m.; two packets returning weekly from Cuxhaven. There was also a by-boat

called the Duke of York, plying between Yarmouth and Hamburgh.

GREAT YARMOUTH

193

had in his possession many letters from that great man. Warmington is

described as being a very gentlemanly looking personage of the old

school; but very irritable in temper, which was excusable as he was "a

martyr to the gout."* 1 He died in 1812, aged 73, and having no

surviving child, he bequeathed his ample fortune principally to the

Urquhart family and to his friend and partner, Mr. John Hanbury

Williams. He gave £500 to the Fisherman's Hospital, and left other

charitable legacies. f Warmington devised the above-mentioned house

to his friend, the Rev. John Forster, who thenceforth resided in it till his

death in 1837, aged 86. J He was a son of the Rev. Thomas Forster,

Rector of Halesworth, who died in 1785. The former in 1782 was

instituted to the Vicarage of Tunstead with Sco Ruston in Norfolk, in

succession to his elder brother, the Rev. Samuel Forster, D.D.,§ to which

*Times are changed since the following verses of an old song were applicable;—

His Worship the Mayor, sat long in his chair,

" While the toasts went to and fro ;

he made his nose shine, By drinking port wine, —

" And the gout was in his great toe."

f Mr. Thornton Fisher, who died in 1861, aged 91, was Mr. Warmington's clerk; and

afterwards Master of the Charity School. A man named Hammond, who lived in Friar's

Lane, married a woman in the service of Mr. Warmington. Returning home to dinner one

day, he, as a rough joke, squeezed a hot potatoe in the left hand of his wife, who being

greatly enraged seized a knife and stabbed her husband to the heart, killing him on the

spot.

J Warmington also left him a small garden on the south side of Row No. 106, now

belonging to Mr, J. H. Harrison.

§ He was Head Master of the Free School at Norwich from 1785 to 1811, the

reputation, of which he greatly increased, for his talents and scholarship were peculiarly

well adapted to the instruction of youth. He drew many of his pupils from Yarmouth

families. He married early in life Miss Turenne, a lady of French extraction, by whom

(besides a son) he had one surviving daughter, Louisa, who married Admiral Sir Edward

Barry, K.C.B. Dr. Forster died at his Rectory of Shotley in Suffolk in 1843 , aged 90.

There is an engraved portrait of him, and a picture by Opie. Sir Edward Berry was well

known in Yarmouth, and was presented with the freedom of the borough. He died s.p. in

1831, aged 62. He thus describes his share in the battle of Cape St. Vincent, in a private

letter to Dr. Forster. " You cannot conceive how happy I am in having had a share on the

glorious 14th. We engaged close; and I had the honor of jumping on board the San

Nicholas, 84 guns, and hauling down her colours with my own hands. Sword in hand I

again led on ; and

1 The drug treatment of gout is some help these days in reducing the onset, but severe cases

still occur with gross mutilation of joints.

V OL . II.

194

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

preferment their father had been presented in 1746. This cure he held for

the long period of fifty-five years, father and sons serving it for nearly a

century. He resided neither at Tunstall nor at Gorleston, of which latter

parish he was for many years curate in the absence of the vicar; so lax

was ecclesiastical discipline in those days. Tall, and gentlemanlike in his

appearance, always scrupulously dressed in black with ecclesiastical

boots reaching to the knees, a ripe scholar, and a good conversationist,

Mr. Forster's society was sought after by his numerous friends. He had

many amusing peculiarities, one of which was that he never began a

story, however problematical, without prefacing it with the words "I

give you my honour that"—so and so. In 1817 he was appointed one of

the Ministers of St. George's Chapel, which preferment he held until

1832. He was buried at Gorleston, He married a daughter of Mr. Thomas

Wall (vol. i., p. 241). His only son, who was of Trinity Hall, Cambridge,

died vita patris in 1833, aged 25. Mr. Forster left two daughters, the

elder of whom, Maria, married the Rev. Thomas Smart Hughes; and the

younger, her cousin, the Rev. Thomas Wall.*

Row No. 105 , from Middlegate Street to King Street. In the centre

of an open plain, extending from Row No. 101 to Row No. 109, and

bounded by the town wall towards the east, a Chapel of Ease was

"from her boarded the ship which I now command. The admiral died of his wounds

the same evening. The brave Commodore Nelson was with me," Thompson

Forster, the eldest brother of the Rev. John Forster, was President of the Royal

College of Surgeons, and died in 1830, aged 83. William, eldest son of Thompson

Forster, a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, died of wounds received in the battle of

Trafalgar in 1805.

* Mr. Hughes was first a fellow of St. John's College, next of Trinity Hall, and

finally of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He obtained a prize for a Latin ode on the

death of Nelson, and for a Greek ode on the death of Pitt. In 1820 he published

Travels in Sicily, Greece, and Albania, illustrated with plates from drawings by

Cockerel. He had previously obtained the prize for the Seatonian poem, and was

subsequently elected Hulse Christian Advocate. In 1827 he was appointed a

Prebendary of Peterborough, and besides many other perferments, finally obtained

the Perpetual Curacy of Edgeware in Middlesex, where he died in 1847. He

compiled a continuation of Hume and Smollett's History of England, and was the

author of several theological works. His numerous collections in literature and art

were dispersed after his death.

OREAT YARMOUTH.

195

erected in 1714, and dedicated to St. George.* From the time of the

reformation and the consequent suppression of the conventual churches,

the want of a place, for public worship at the south part of the town had

been much felt. It was for a time partially met by converting the Dutch

chapel into " a house for morning prayer," as will presently be stated ;

but at the commencement of the 18th. century a very strong desire

prevailed in favor of building an Episcopal Chapel of Ease; and at last

the corporation took the initiative and obtained an Act of Parliament for

that purpose, which provided for the maintenance of two ministers by

an import duty on coals. To Major England, Major Ferrier, Capt. Artis,

Capt. Wakeman, and Mr. Nathaniel Symonds, were principally

intrusted the duties of a committee of management. A contract was

entered into with Messrs. Price and Son, who proposed to erect a

building in imitation of the Church of St. Clement Dane in the Strand,

but no architect was employed, and the edifice produced, especially

externally, exhibits many incongruities, and has been compared

irreverently to a duels: sitting. The interior is commodious and not

without elegance. There was originally a large east window, which in

1732 the corporation ordered to be bricked up, and a "large handsome

door" inserted, "the upper part to be glazed to give light to the vestry."

The vane, representing St. George and the Dragon, which surmounts the

cupola, is a good specimen of open ironwork. The total cost of St.

George's Chapel was £5,861. f

The ceremony of consecration caused many anxious thoughts. A

petition, "fairly engrossed and sealed with St. Nicholas' seal," was

* At all times and on all occasions, persons are found whose delight it is to oppose

and obstruct; and the selection of this site met with so much opposition that the

corporation had to indemnify the contractor against any suit which might be commenced

against him for levelling the ground.

t Among the contributors to the building fund was Dr. James of Cambridge, who

gave £20. The brass chandelier 1 , suspended at the east end, was presented by Thomas

Grimstone. Sundials, which still remain, were put up "for a direction to him who keeps

the clock;" the king's arms were placed above the mayor's seat; and a convenient place

was found for " displaying the royal standard on proper days;" which however is not now

done. There is in this chapel a “vinegar” Bible, printed in 1717, and so called because in

the heading of St. Luke's Gospel, chap. 20, that word is inserted for " vineyard," and this

error gives the edition a fictitious value.

1 Two small brass chandeliers from St George’s Chapel were retrieved by Peter

Howkins, which I purchased from him, and have hung at “The Orangery”, Filby, since

2002.

196

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

presented to the Bishop of the Diocese (Dr. Trimnell, afterwards Bishop

of Winchester), by a deputation who were empowered "to settle the

preliminaries," and who expended in so doing £3. 0s. 4d. A day for the

ceremony having been appointed, the "Right Reverend Prelate," as he

was styled, and his attendants, were received by and entertained at the

house of the mayor (Major England), at an expense to the corporation of

£60; and as the bishop had “ come from London expressly to consecrate

the chapel,” he was presented with, plate of the value of fifty guineas,

instead of wine to that amount as had previously been voted. The

members of the corporation waited upon the bishop at the mayor's

house "in their formalities," and that nothing might be wanted to give

solemnity to the occasion; the committee gave an order" to get Mr.

Mayor's Row (No. 108), the Old Post Row (No. 107), and the gangway

to the chapel door, cleansed against the consecration."* Mr. Bennet was

paid the modest sum of 20s. for teaching the chapel clerk to sing psalms

with the true nasal twang; and £5 for his trouble in setting psalms on

Sundays." f

Originally iron palisadoes were within ten feet of the building; but in 1816

a public subscription was entered into, by means of which the trees planted on

each side of the chapel were enclosed. t In 1827 a workman employed in

repairing the roof of the chapel fell in with part of the ceiling, during the lime

of divine service. The top of the organ broke his fall, but the instrument

received considerable injury.

At the south-west corner of Row No. 105 is a dwelling house, which in

1773 was devised by Mary Gibbons of Yarmouth, spinster, with estates at

Ludham and Catfield in Norfolk, to her nephew, Meadows Frost of Castle

Rising, Norfolk (son of Meadows Frost, who died in 1782, aged 74), who by

his will made in 1794 gave the same to his children, Meadows Frost of

Gibraltar, "sea-merchant," Thomas Gibbons Frost, Francis Aylmer Frost, and

James Garrett Frost of Warrington,

*Both, these rows were then unflagged.

f A list of the Ministers of St. George's Chapel will be found in P. C, p. 366.

There is only one name to add; that of the Rev. Edward Curtis Kemp, sometime

Hector of Whissonsett and Horningtoft, Norfolk,

t Some years since a drunken man, by some means or other, hooked his chin

upon one of these palisadoes, and was found dead next morning.

GREAT YARMOUTH

197

miller; and they sold the property Daniel Meadows of Norwich married Judith,

daughter of Edmund Frost of Hunston Hall, Suffolk, who died in 1700, aged

68. Frost bore arg., a fesse, between three trefoils az.

On the north side of Row No. 105,

towards the west end, is an arched-stone

doorway of great antiquity, placed in a wall

of smoothed flints, in which two low filled-in

arches can still be traced. Nothing is known

of the building to which they belonged.*

Immediately fronting St. George's

Chapel is a large house, recently converted

into a grocer's shop, which in the last century

was the property of William Fisher, Esq.,

who in 1800 sold it to William Gould, Esq.,

afterwards Lieut.-Colonel of the Yarmouth

Local Militia. f From him the house above

mentioned soon afterwards passed to the

Rev. S AMUEL L OVICK C OOPER , who was one

of the Ministers of St. George's Chapel from 1802 until his death in 1817.

The family of C OOPER from whom he

descended, was long settled at Hingham in Norfolk.

Samuel. Cooper of Hingham married Henrietta

Maria, daughter of Thomas Newton; of Norwich,

by Cassandra his wife, daughter of Sir Thomas

Jermyn of Rushbrook in Suffolk. Samuel Cooper,

their son, settled in Norwich, where he practised as

a surgeon with great success; and was a man of

considerable literary attainments. He

* An engraving is here given of this doorway, the

venerable appearance of which has been recently destroyed by an injudicious coating of

whitewash.

f When this force was disbanded, Colonel Gould retired to Bury St. Edmund's,

where he died in 1836, aged 75. There is a pedigree of Gould of Suffolk in Coll. arm.

t This Thomas Newton is believed to have been a nephew of Sir Isaac Newton 1 ;

1 Palmer’s Addenda: Newton – genealogical memoranda concerning

the family of Sir Isaac Newton 2 were privately printed in 1871. It is

related that the heir at law of Sir Isaac Newton was a dissolute

fellow who very soon wasted his patrimomy, and falling when

drunk with a tobacco pipe in his mouth, it broke and ended his life

at the age of thirty years.

2 It is amazing how Newton managed to get his theory of gravity

accepted, other countries, especially France never accepted his

ideas of attraction at a distance. The existence of zero gravity only a

few miles from the earth’s surface, and the fact of two earth tides

per day, are just two facts that fly in the face of Newton’s famous

Theory. Instead, see copresumy (google search) on the internet.

198

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

passed the evening of life at the parsonage house at Yarmouth, but died

at Dunston in Norfolk in 1785, aged 74, and was buried in St. Stephen's

Church, Norwich, in which city and parish he had been "per multos

annos civis et incola," as his epitaph informs us. He married Maria,

daughter of William Lovick, Esq., an Alderman of Norwich, who died

in 1784. Of this marriage there were two sons, Samuel and William.*

Samuel, the elder, born at Norwich in 1740, was educated at the Free

School there, whence he proceeded to Magdalen College, Cambridge,

was senior wrangler of his year, and became a fellow of his college.

Soon after his ordination, and being then only twenty-one years of age,

he married Maria Susannah, one of the daughters and co-heirs of James

Bransby, Esq., of Shottisham in Norfolk, f by Anne Maria his wife, one

and it is said that the philosopher was much attached to his great niece, and had her

frequently to stay with him. She received her christian names from the queen of Charles

I.; and was the survivor of twenty-one children. The queen in her exile is said to have

privately married Sir Henry Jermyn of Rushbrooke, created Baron Dover and Earl of St.

Albans, who died in 1683, s.p. Certain it is that the Newtons had the Lordship and Manor

of Edgefield, Ellingham in Norfolk previously belonging to the Jermyns.

* The latter settled in London and became Surgeon to Guy's Hospital, which post he

resigned in 1800; and was succeeded in that office by his celebrated nephew. He made

frequent visits to Yarmouth, where his varied and animated conversation caused young

Astley Cooper to conceive the desire of repairing to the great metropolitan scene of

action; and he did so in 1794, being then only sixteen years of age.

f Son of James Bransby, Esq., barrister-at-law, who resided

at Needham in Norfolk, son of Robert Bransby, Esq,, of

Harleston, steward to the Duke of Norfolk. Some account of

the ancient family of Bransby has been given (vol. i., p.

360). By the. above marriage the descendants of the Rev.

Dr. Cooper became the representatives of the elder branch

of the Bransbys, and entitled to quarter the arms of the latter

family. An annual payment of £5, charged upon the

Shottisham estate, was given by the will of Thomas Bransby

in 1730 for distribution by the churchwardens of Reddenhall

with Harleston every Christmas day. During Dr. Cooper's

incumbency it was paid by him. Similar sums were given to

the poor of Shottisham All Saints and Shottisham St. Mary.

A portrait of Mrs. Bransby and of her daughter, who married the Rev. Mr. Duyer, Rector

of Shottisham, and a portrait of the latter, are all in the possession of W.

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of the daughters and co-heirs of James Paston, Esq., of Harleston in

Norfolk, who claimed to be next heir male of the Pastons, Earle of

Yarmouth. Cooper by his marriage forfeited his fellowship, but was

compensated with the Rectory of Morley in Norfolk, to which he was

presented by his father-in-law in 1765. Two years afterwards he

received the Rectory of Yelverton in Norfolk from the crown; and the

corporation of Norwich bestowed upon, him the Curacies of Mundham

and Seething. When of sufficient standing he took his degree of D.D.,

and in 1781 the Dean and Chapter of Norwich appointed him Perpetual

Curate of Great Yarmouth. He held all these preferments until his death

in 1800, aged 59 (see vol. i., p. 168). His widow, soon after the doctor's

death, left Yarmouth, and died at the residence of her son, Bransby

Cooper, Esq., at Furney Hill, Gloucestershire, in 1807, aged 69. Her

talents and virtues endeared her not only to her family and friends, but

excited the admiration of such men as Lord Chedworth and Dr. Parr.

The former in one of his letters says, "I shall always think of her with

respect as a truly good woman," and in a note he adds, "I am quite sure

that no one who knew Mrs. Cooper will withhold belief in my assertion,

that she was one of the best of women; assuredly the very best that I

have ever known;" and Dr. Parr says that "in the retrospection of his

intimacy with her, he had more satisfaction than had been afforded him

by his acquaintance with any of the sex since." At the table of the Duke

of Sussex, Dr. Parr said to Mr. R. Bransby Cooper, "Sir, your

grandmother, who was a Bransby, was one of the most gracious and

graceful of women. Every one loved her—and for myself I can say,

“Heu! quanto minus est cum aliis versari—quam, tui meminisse.” Mrs.

Cooper was the authoress of many works, which at the time she wrote

them enjoyed considerable reputation. They were "all composed with

the ardent desire of promoting the influence of Christian morality."

Bransby Francis, Esq., of Norwich, who has also portraits of members of the Carey

and Parrot families, with whom there were intermarriages. In Shottisham Old Hall,

when possessed by the Bransbys, there was an old painting of a hawking party, with

portraits of a D'Oyley and his hawker, who was a D'Urban. In consequence of the.

above descent, the children of the Rev. Dr. Cooper quartered the arms of Bransby

and Paston with their own. Some of the Cooper family had another descent from

the Pastons, as we shall see presently.

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Her best novels were The Wife, or Caroline Herbert, and the Exemplary

Mother. Her story books for children were very popular in their day.

Her celebrated son, Sir Astley Cooper, always treated her with great

respect and affection; and no doubt her influence was very beneficial

in forming the disposition of his mind and character. Dr. Cooper was

generally held in high respect and esteem, by his parishioners, but

there were some among his clever opponents in politics and religion,

who ridiculed the pomposity of his manners and the platitudes in his

writings. His large private fortune enabled him to maintain the

hospitality of the parsonage in a way previously unknown. He was

always desirous of gathering round his table men of literature and

science; and possessing the feelings and habits of a gentleman, he was

strict in his attention to all the rules of good breeding. His pen was

very prolific. Pamphlets, sermons, and definitions on behalf of Church

and State followed each other in rapid succession, but none have

secured a permanent existence. He once wrote some poems in imitation

of Cowper's Task, upon which Dr. Parr penned the following satirical

epigram:—

* He sold Shottisham Old Hall with part of the Bransby estate to the late

Mr. Henry Francis of Norwich. When the house was partly dismantled by him,

there was discovered a totally unknown and unsuspected walled-up room, which had

no traces of external windows, but in which were found many full-length portraits

of the Bransby family. These Mr. Francis took to Norwich, and placed in the dining

room of his house in Surrey Street; what became of them is unknown.

To Cowper's Tasks, see Cooper's Tasks succeed,

" That 'twas a task to write — but these, to read."

In the discharge of his parochial duties Dr. Cooper was assiduous. To

the poor he was liberal; and we are told by his biographer that "on

the slightest intimation, from, the parish clerk he hastened at once to

visit the sick and pray with the penitent”. It is believed that he once

refused an Irish Bishoprick, not without the expectation of an English

one; but the latter, the wits of the day said was a for-lorn (lawn) hope.

Robert Bransby Cooper, the eldest son of Dr. Cooper, inherited

through his mother the estates of the Bransby family at Shottisham,

and Stoke Holy Cross near Norwich.* He married, in 1784, Anne,

daughter and heir of William Purcell, Esq., of Dursley in Gloucester-

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shire, by whom, he had an elder son, Purnell Bransby Cooper

Stancombe Park, Gloucestershire, who in 1805 assumed, by royal sign,

manual, the surname, and arms of Purnell only; and married in, 1813

Charlotte, daughter of Nathaniel Clifford, Esq., of Frampton Court. Mr.

R. B. Cooper was for many years M.P. for the city of Gloucester; and

died in 1845, aged 83. There is a portrait of him by Sir Thomas

Lawrence, which has been engraved. William Howman Cooper, the

third son, died unmarried in 1834, aged 70. Astley Paston Cooper,* the

fourth son, after becoming one of the most eminent surgeons of this or

any other country, was created a baronet in 1822, and died at his seat of

Gadebridge in Herts in 1841, aged 73, s.p. f Beauchamp Newton

Cooper, the fifth and youngest son, married Frances, sole heir of the

Rev. James Adams of Jenkins in Essex. j Of the daughters of

* His godfather was Sir Edward Astley, Bart., of

Melton Constable, at that time member for Norfolk,

grandfather of Jacob, Lord Hastings. It will be re-

membered that Sir Philip Astley, father of Sir Edward,

married an heiress of the Bransby family, see vol.i., p.

361, where, by a misprint, the field of the coat of Bransby

is made az. instead of arg.

f His character has been described as that of a

thorough Englishman, pre-eminently distinguished by

simplicity, courage, good nature, and generosity. His

exertions in the pursuit of science were almost

unprecedented; but he know that their results would

permanently benefit his fellow creatures, advance his

noble and beneficent profession, secure to himself a pre-eminence both at home and

abroad, and transmit his name with honor to posterity. In a personal and social, point of

view Sir Astley Cooper was uniformly amiable, honorable, high spirited, and of

irreproachable morals. His manners fascinated all who came in contact with him; and his

personal advantages were very great. Tall and portly, yet well proportioned like most of

his family,—of graceful carriage, of a presence unspeakably assuring —with very

handsome features, wearing ever a winning expression, and animated by the extraordinary

lustre and penetration of the eyes,—of manners bland and courtly,—without a tinge of

sycophancy or affectation, and the same to all classes of his fellowmen, he commanded

universal admiration and respect. There is a portrait of him by Sir Thomas Lawrence,

which has been frequently engraved.

f They had two children, Frances Matilda and the Rev, Charles Beauchamp

Cooper, Rector of Morley in Norfolk, who was a posthumous child; and they are the

only Coopers of this family now resident in Norfolk. The Rev. C. B. Cooper married

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Dr. Cooper, Marianne, the eldest, married the Rev. Christopher

Spurgeon, Rector of Harpley and Bircham, in Norfolk, but within two

years afterwards succumbed to consumption 1 ; a disease which had

proved fatal to many females of the Cooper family.

The Rev. Lovick Cooper, the occupier of the above-mentioned

house, was the second son of Dr. Cooper. He married Sarah Leman,

youngest daughter and co-heir of Thomas Rede, Esq., of Beccles;* the

other daughter, as has been seen, having married the Rev. R. Turner. He

was presented to the Rectory of Inglesthorpe in Norfolk, by his father,

in 1787; and to the Rectory of Barton All Saints in Norfolk, by his

father-in-law, in 1799, Although not what would now be considered as

an active divine, Mr. Cooper was much respected by his congregation,

and beloved by his family. He possessed a voice both powerful and

harmonious; and acquired considerable reputation as a preacher. Mrs.

Cooper, his wife, possessed mental faculties of a high order. Her

vivacity and the brilliancy of her wit enabled her to shine greatly in

society; where, however, she was sometimes an object of fear with

those against whom her sarcasms were directed. The sharpness of her

repartees and the eccentricities of her expressions and similes were a

source of great

Harriet Harvey, who died in 1866, leaving an only child, Charlotte Elizabeth, who

married the Rev. Frederick Blackett De Chair, and has issue.

* He married Theophila, one of the daughters and co-heirs of William Leman of

Beccles, who was the grandson of John Leman of Charsfield in Suffolk, by Theophila his

wife, only daughter and co-heir of Robert Naunton of Letheringham in Suffolk, by Mary

his wife, who was the daughter and co-heir of Arthur Coke of Bramfield in Suffolk,

second surviving son of Chief Justice Coke, by Bridget his wife, daughter and heir of John

Paston of Huntingfield in Suffolk, second son of Sir William Paston of Paston. The above-

named Robert Naunton was great grandson of William Naunton of Alderton in Suffolk, by

Elizabeth his wife, eldest daughter of Sir Anthony Wingfield of Letheringham., K.G.; and

through her a descent is traced to the Bohuns and Plantagenets. By the marriage of the

above-named Sir Anthony Wingfield with Elizabeth, sister and co-heir of John de Vere,

Earl of Oxford, and daughter of Sir George de Vere, by Margaret his wife, daughter and

heir of Sir William Stafford, two other descents are deduced from the Plantagenets. The

ancient family of Wingfield has already been mentioned (vol. i., p. 110). In the Church of

St. Martin in the Fields there is a monument to the memory of Catharine, daughter of Sir

Thomas Wingfield of Letheringham— “è familia Equestri, gloria et antiqua nobilitate ad

modum insigni”- and wife of Francis Bacon of Shubland. She died in 1660. The arms of

Bacon impale those of Wingfield.

1 Tuberculosis of the lung; extremely common until the advent of sulphonamides. TB

is now common again in poor countries; in combination with AIDS, and especially in

Soviet prisons, where the organism has acquired resistance when the inmates are released,

not then being able to afford to buy and continue the necessary drug combinations for

effective treatment.

GREAT YARMOUTH

203

amusement to her brother-in-law, Sir Astley Cooper, who frequently invited to

his house (when the lady and her husband paid their annual visit in town) some

one alike distinguished, that he might enjoy the wordy conflict which generally

ensued. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Cooper resided in London, where

she died in 1823. They had a numerous family.

Bransby Blake Cooper, the eldest son, was born at Yarmouth in 1792. He

entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman on board the Stately, 64, of which ship

Admiral Fisher, whom we shall presently have occasion to mention, was then

first lieutenant. After being stationed for some time off the Texel, watching the

Dutch fleet during the winter, he became sick of the service, and retired from it.

By the advice of his uncle, Sir Astley Cooper, he studied medicine, and in 1812

joined the Royal Artillery as an assistant-surgeon, and in that capacity was

present at the battles of Vittoria, the Pyrenees, Neville, Orthes, and Toulouse,

and also at the seige of St. Sabastian. Subsequently he became Senior Surgeon

of Guy's Hospital, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He married Mary Anne,

only daughter of John Keeling, Esq., of Broxbourne, Herts; and died suddenly

at the Athenaeum Club in 1853. There is a portrait of him by Eddis, which has

been engraved. Rede Cooper, the second son, born at Yarmouth in 1794, took

holy orders, and in pursuance of the will of his maternal uncle assumed, by

royal sign manual, the name and arms of Rede only. With other estates (some of

which had been inherited from the Wingfields and the Nauntons, as we shall see

farther on) he succeeded to the Manor of Ashmans near Beccles, which had

long been a property of the Rede family. He married in 1821 Louisa, daughter

and co-heir of Benjamin Henshaw, Esq., of Moor Park, Essex, and by her had

four daughters, one of whom married Loftus Tottenham, Esq.; and another,

Major Fowke of the Royal Engineers, the designer of the South Kensington

Museum. The widow of the Rev. Rede Rede died in 1870, aged 73.* Henry

Cooper, the

* Spelman wrote a book on Sacrilege, in which he endeavoured with some success

to prove that a curse fell on the descendants of those who had converted ecclesiastical

property to secular uses, and that such property seldom continued long in a direct line,

Letheringham Priory was granted to the Nauntons when in their fullest pride and

greatness. For want of an heir it passed to the Lemans, and for

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THE PERLUSTRATION OF

third son, died in 1817, aged 20 years. Astley Paston Cooper, the fourth

son, was born at Yarmouth in 1798, and became the second baronet by

virtue of a special limitation, in the patent granted to his uncle. He

married Elizabeth Harriet, only child of William Rickford, Esq., many

years M.P. for Aylesbury, and they had issue, with other children, the

present and third baronet.* The Rev. Thomas Lovick Cooper, the fifth

and youngest son, Rector of Empingham near Stamford and of

Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire, was born at Shottisham Old Hall, and

married, for his first wife, Emily Mary Swinfen, only surviving

daughter of Sir Thomas Durrant, Bart., of Scottowe, Norfolk; f and for

his second wife, Harriette, the eldest daughter of Jacob Ricardo, Esq. J

Lovick Emilius Cooper, his son, by the first marriage, an Ensign in the

Rifle Brigade, was killed in the Dilkousha Palace at Lucknow in 1858 .§

Of the daughters of the Rev. S. Lovick Cooper, Maria married

Henry Loftus Reade, Esq., of Rathbeg, in the county of Wexford;

Marianne Charlotte married Nathan Lewis Younge, Esq.; Anne married

Charles Aston Key, Esq., F.R.S., and had issue the present Admiral

Astley Cooper Key, the first Governor of the Royal Naval College at

Greenwich; and Frances Anne, who married, first, Frederick Tyrrell,

Esq., F.R.S. (who died in 1843, aged 46), and, secondly, Sir Charles

the same reason to the Redes, and in like manner to this son of the Cooper family, who

took that name but had no male issue ; and seven successive families, possessors of

Letheringham Priory, became extinct in the direct male line.

*Their eldest daughter married the Rev. James Wharton of Gilling near

Richmond in Yorkshire, son of the Rev. William Wharton, by Charlotte his wife,

sister of the first Earl of Zetland, and brother to John Wharton, Esq., the owner of

Skelton Castle in Yorkshire.

f This family of Durrant flourished in Rutlandshire and Derbyshire from an

early period. William Durrant settled in Norfolk in the early part of the 17th

century. Davy Durrant, his grandson, father of the first baronet (the above-named

Sir Thomas Durrant being the second), had a daughter, Susannah, who married Sir

Randal Ward of Bixley, already mentioned (vol i., p. 189).

t Brother of David Ricardo, Esq., the celebrated financier.

§ There is a stained-glass window to the memory of this gallant young officer

over the grand entrance of Westminster Abbey, and his name is on the Raglan

monument standing in the sanctuary. The younger son, an officer in the 12th foot,

died in 1867. The Rev. T. Lovick Cooper has one surviving daughter, Sophia

Gertrude Paston.

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205

George Young, Garter Principal King of Arms, who died in 1869, aged

74. Lady Young survives.

The arms borne by this family of Cooper are— vert., a fess

embattled or, j betw. two pheons in chief and two thighbones in base

Salter wise arg.; and for a crest, out of a mural crown arg., a spear erect

ppr., tasletted gu., surmounted by two palm branches, in saltier vert.

They appear on Dr. Cooper's monument in the Parish Church.

Originally there were three pheons, but, to perpetuate the Newton

descent, Dr. Cooper obtained a grant authorising him to substitute two

thighbones for the pheon in base. In the annexed plate the arms of

Cooper are quartered with those of Lovick, Jermyn, Bransby, and

Paston, and impale those of Durrant.

Mention has already been made (vol. i., p. 109) of the ancient

family of R EDE , a name probably derived from "Reed (Reda) in

Suffolk, where the de Redes held lands in the time of Henry III. Robert

Rede, son of Thomas Rede and Theophila his wife (already mentioned),

married Charlotte, daughter of Sir Wm. Anderson, Bart., of Lea in

Lincolnshire. He built the mansion at Ashmans near Beccles as a family

residence, instead of the venerable manor house which dated from the

time of Queen Elizabeth. The Redes of Ashmans claimed to be

collateral descendants of Chief Justice Sir Robert Rede, the founder of

the Rede Professorship and one of the executors of Henry VII. The date

of his death (1518) appears in a fine copy of the Salisbury Missal, now

in the University Library, Cambridge, printed on vellum by Pynson,

London, in 1520, probably used in the chantry of Chydingstone which

he built.

The family of L EMAN traced their descent from John Leman of

Gillingham in Norfolk and Beccles in Suffolk, who lived in the reign of

Edward VI. His son, Sir John Leman Knt., founded the Free School at

Beccles; he was Sheriff of London in 1606 and Lord Mayor in 1616,

and died in 1632, leaving no issue; but the family was continued by his

elder brother, William Leman, Portreeve of Beccles in 1590. Third in

descent from him was the above-mentioned John Leman of Charsfield,

who died in 1688. Second in descent from him was William Leman of

Beccles, who married Sarah, daughter of Thomas Leman of Brampton

(who died in 1717), by Eleanor his wife, daughter of Robert

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THE PERLUSTRATION OF

Cuddon of Shaddingfield, thus uniting the two surviving branches of

this ancient family, but they left no male issue. Susan, one of the

daughters and co-heirs, married William Orgill of Beecles, and their

son, the Rev. Naunton Thomas Orgill, assumed the name and arms of

Leman by royal license in 1808, and died in 1837, leaving issue. They

bore arg., a fess betw. three dolphins emb. arg. ; and for a crest, a lemon

tree.*

The family of N AUNTON was of great antiquity in the county of

Suffolk, having been seated at Rendlesham soon after the conquest.

Hugo de Naunton, in the time of Edward II., married Eleanor, daughter

of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, f by whom he had issue Hugo de

HEDINGHAM CASTLE.

Naunton, from whom descended the Letheringham branch. This family

was also seated at Alderton in Suffolk from a very early period. Its

most distinguished member was Sir Robert Naunton. He commenced

his career under the patronage of the Earl of Essex, the favorite of

Queen Elizabeth; afterwards, through the influence of Villiers, he was

made Secretary of State by James I. in 1618, upon which occasion

* The Suffolk family also bore a pelican feeding her young or. See Mould's

Heraldry of Fish, p. 32, and Burke's Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies. There is a

pedigree of Leman of Gillingham in Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, vol. ii., p. 414.

t The De Veres, Earls of Oxford, had large possessions in Suffolk; but their

principal stronghold was Hedingham Castle in Essex, the keep of which, built in the

reign of Henry I, still remains entire. It is the property of L. A. Majendie, Esq.

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207

he was knighted. He died in 1635 without male issue, his only son,

James, to whom James I. was godfather, having died an infant. There

was a monument to this child at Letheringham Priory, of which there

was a drawing in the collection of Craven Ord, Esq., taken before the

shameful destruction of the chapel. The epitaph, written by the bereaved

father is a very pathetic one. It thus commences—

Here lyes the boy, whose infancy was such

as promised more than’s parents durst desire;

Yea, frighted them by promising too much

For earth to harbour long, as reaching higher.

Sir Robert Naunton married Penelope, daughter and sole heir of Sir

Thomas Parrot,* by the Lady Dorothie, daughter of Walter, Earl of

Essex, by the Lady Lettice his wife, afterwards the celebrated Countess

of Leicester. Sir Robert Naunton removed from the paternal residence at

Alderton to Letheringham Priory (Within about three miles of Wickham

Market), which had previously belonging to the Black Canons, and had

been granted in 1553 to Elizabeth, third daughter of Sir Anthony

Wingfield, K.G., and then the widow of William Naunton of Alderton.

Penelope, the only surviving child of Sir Robert Naunton by the above

marriage, became the wife (first) of Paul, Viscount Bayning; and

afterwards of Philip, fifth Earl of Pembroke, but her issue eventually

failed. The Letheringham estate devolved on William Naunton, Esq.,

the brother of Sir Robert; and with his descendants it continued until

1758, when William Naunton, dying without issue, left it to his next

heir. This led to a protracted and expensive law suit which was

ultimately determined, (in 1775) in favor of William Leman, Esq.,

whose grandfather had (as we have seen) married Theophila, the only

daughter and heir of Robert Naunton. A copy of the proceedings, and

judgment in this suit, are in the possession of the Rev. T. Lovick

Cooper, who also has the original pedigree of Naunton on vellum, with

all the emblazonments from Lupus, Earl of Chester, to the time of

James I. (nearly twenty feet long), with the

* The Bransby family had at Shottisham a table of The Matches of the Honorable

faculty of Perrott since the Conquest, with emblazonments of their arms. It : is now in the

possession of Mr. Bransby Francis of Norwich.

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THE PERLUSTRATION OF

great coat of Naunton containing thirty-two quarterings. It is in perfect

preservation, and devolved to the family with the title deeds to the

Naunton estates.* The Rev. Rede Rede had in his possession several of

the finest pictures which had been in the gallery of portraits of the

Naunton and Wingfield families, visited and described by Horace

Walpole. Naunton bore sa., three martlets arg.

After the death of the Rev. Lovick Cooper, the house above

mentioned was purchased by George Penrice, Esq., M.D., who resided

in it until his death in 1843, aged 67. He filled the office of mayor in

1837, and was a magistrate for the borough. He married Anna, only

child of David Simpson, Esq., of Southtown . J She survived her

husband, and died in 1869, aged 82, leaving a numerous family. §

The "Mount" standing without the town wall, immediately to the

east of St. George's Chapel, remained in the possession of the

corporation until 1837, when they gave it as a site for a Town Hospital,

which was

* While the dispute as to the succession to the Letheringham estate was going on,

the Priory Church was suffered to run to ruin, and was pulled down in 1789. The stained

glass, containing the armorial bearings of many a noble family, was taken out and

dispersed; the curious and costly monuments, including those of Sir Robert Naunton and

Sir Anthony Wingfield, were defaced, and ultimately beat into powder and sold. See

Nichol's Leicestershire, vol. iii., part 1., p. 518; Gough's Sepulchral Monuments; Memoirs

of Sir Robert Naunton, p. 20; and Notes and Queries, 24 th Sept., 1853. What fragments of

the above monuments escaped were formed into a pyramid erected by the Rev. William

Clubbe in the garden of his vicarage at Brandeston, He was the son of the Rev. John

Clubbe, the facetious author of The History and Antiquities of Wheatfield. The name of

Clubbe still flourishes in Suffolk. Some curious letters from Sir Richard Naunton to the

Marquis of Buckingham, lately published by the Camden Society, were found by the

Hon. G. M. Fortesque, on coming into possession of Dropmore in 1864, under the will of

Lady Grenville, heiress and sole representative of the Pitts of Boconnoe, in an old box in

a carpenter's shed, marked "useless," but which contained a large quantity of family

papers and documents.

f In this gallery was a very curious portrait of Sir Robert Naunton, which has been

engraved by Cooper from a rare print by Pass. This portrait was lent by Mrs. Tottenham

to the Kensington Exhibition of National Portraits.

j His wife, whose maiden name was Withers, must have been very beautiful, if we

may believe an exquisite miniature of her by Miles.

§ There is a portrait of Dr. Penrice. George, his eldest son, a Captain in the Bengal

Artillery, died at Philor in India in 1848; and Henry Penrice, another son, who was in the

Commissariat Department, died in 1842, aged 22.

GREAT YARMOUTH

209

then erected upon it, the necessary funds being provided by voluntary

contributions.* There had been a lookout erected upon this mount in

1774, which, before the denes were built upon, commanded a good view

of the roadstead. As a compensation for the demolition of this favorite

resort of a few "old salts," a circular white-brick tower lookout was

erected. It soon fell into disuse, and is now annexed to the Hospital. A

small portion of the wall, which surrounds and supports the mount, may

still be seen in the passage leading from St. George's Road to St. Peter's

Plain. Formerly when an inhabitant was elected a member of the

corporation he was required to pay a sum of money to a fund called

"The Members' Contribution Fund," the object of which was to provide

for the widows and children of deceased members who might be in

need. On the passing of the Municipal Corporation Act in 1835, this

fund was by a decree of the Court of Chancery appropriated as an

endowment for the Yarmouth Hospital, and was employed in the

purchase of £1,361 consols, invested in the name of the Accountant

General. With this exception the Hospital has been erected and

supported entirely by voluntary subscriptions. The south wing was

added in 1854 at a cost of £800 supplied by an unknown benefactor.

The palisadoes in front were erected in 1868 by means of a subscription

entered into for that purpose.

Row No. 106, from South Quay to Middlegate Street. At the north-

west corner is the Town House, the ground floor of which was long

occupied as an office for the collection of the town dues f on shipping

* In the Board Boom are portraits of William Steward, Esq., and Benjamin Dowson,

Esq., two of the principal promoters.

f All ports are vested in the crown as part of the royal prerogative, unless granted

by charter; and, according to Lord Hale, the soil of a port may belong either to the

crown or to the grantee. At Yarmouth both the port and the soil thereof became

vested in the corporation by virtue of the charter of King John; and consequently

the municipal body became entitled to port dues payable by usage or prescription.

One of these dues was that for "measurage," being a charge of 2d. per last upon all

corn and grain exported. The right of the corporation was disputed by Christopher

Eaton 1 (already mentioned vol. i., p. 232), on whose behalf it was contended that a

consideration for the payment must be shewn; but Chief Justice Mansfield held,

when the case was argued before him on demurrer in Trinity Term, 1763, that the

1 Merchant, of 51 North Quay, see RRH.

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THE PERLUSTRATION OF

and merchandize, and hence until 1835 it was called the Water-Bailiff's

Office,* and from that period until 1867 the Port-Dues Office; but those

dues having been surrendered to the Haven Commissioners, the above

apartment has since been occupied by the Accountant to the Town

Council. Here also the Ballast Master had his office. f The room above,

fronting the Quay, for some years occupied as an office by the Haven

Commissioners, is now used as a Reading Room attached to the Public

Library, which is on the same floor behind.

The history of the site is interesting. Early in the 14th century there

stood here "a fair, ancient, and stately house," belonging to Thomas de

Drayton, a man, we are told by Manship, not only "of great account" in

Yarmouth but famous throughout England."

The family of D RAYTON was very numerous and powerful in

Yarmouth during the 14th century. William de Drayton and Richard de

Drayton were bailiffs in 1284. Thomas De Drayton, the son of

sinking and maintenance of the port was a sufficient consideration, and that prescription

was equivalent to a grant creating a toll or duty, and the right of the corporation was

thereby established. See Burrow's Reports, vol. iii., p. 1402.

*The water bailiff was an officer, first appointed in 1313, whose duty it was to

collect all dues payable to the corporation and hand them to the chamberlains, who in

former times sat for two hours daily to receive them, and were in fact the treasurers of the

corporation. In 1491 the salary of the water bailiff was fixed at £1. 13s. 4d. a year; and he

was required to carry the sword before the mayor wherever he went; a duty which he

continued to perform till the latter half of the last century. He was required to provide

himself with "a tufted gown," which should differ from those worn by the Serjeants-at-

mace, but should not be like a common-councilman's gown. Previous to 1632 the water

bailiff had been annually elected by the inquest on St. John's Day; but from that date the

corporation took it upon themselves to appoint him. In 1676 the corporation came to the

resolution of allowing Samuel Smith, late water bailiff, forty shillings per quarter for life,

" in regard he left a good employ for the town's service, and wasted the greater part of his

estate whilst he continued in it." The power and emoluments of the water bailiffs

gradually increased as the chamberlains ceased to take any active part in the collection of

the revenue, until, by the passing of the Municipal Corporation Act in 1835, the office

was abolished, and the then bailiff was granted a compensatory annuity, which he still

enjoys.

f It has been seen that the corporation were the owners of the soil as well as of the

port, and consequently they were entitled to ballastage, or the exclusive right of providing

ships frequenting the port with ballast. This privilege was of late years let to the highest

bidder, and at one time produced £800 a year, forming a considerable item in the

municipal revenue.

GREAT YARMOUTH

211

Robert de Drayton, burgess to Parliament for Yarmouth, in 1326, was in

1330 one of the farmers of the king's customs at Yarmouth. In 1332 he

filled the office of bailiff, and was re-elected seven times, but not in

successive years. In 1335 being then one of the bailiffs, he received a

royal mandate to send ships to capture and destroy some vessels of war

belonging to the Scots then lying at Calais. In the same year he was

elected to represent the town in Parliament; and again in 1336, 1355,

and 1356. In 1338 the North-sea fleet, under the command of that

"bright ornament of chivalry," Sir Walter Manny, K.G., assembled in

Yarmouth Roads and conveyed the Earl of Lancaster to Antwerp with

troops for the King. On the 28th of July in that year, Thomas de

Drayton was made Admiral of the North, and was commanded to

collect ships, men, and stores, and send them to sea for the protection of

vessels laden with wool proceeding to the king in Flanders. Great feuds

then existed between the men of Yarmouth and those of the cinque

ports, which often led to deeds of violence and bloodshed. In 1342

Thomas de Drayton and others were fined 1,000 marks "for sundry

trespasses and other misdeeds by them upon the sea coast "enormously

perpetrated," as the king's mandate to the Sheriff of Norfolk expressed

it. In 1351 Drayton purchased a moiety of the lastage at Yarmouth. He

died in 1359, having previously made a grant of ground to the Convent

of Grey Friars. Jeffery de Drayton, by his will made in 1374,

bequeathed 6s. 8d. towards "the support of the Light of Corpus Christi

to be carried about the town for visiting the sick;" and he also gave £40,

a very large sum in those days, "to be distributed in masses and alms

deeds for his soul." This family has long been extinct.

During the middle ages the chief export was wool ; for the English

were a pastoral and not a manufacturing people. They sent large

quantities to Flanders, where it was made into cloth; so, quoth Matthew

Paris, "the ribs of all people throughout the world were kept warm by

these fleeces." In 1317 the above-mentioned house was made the Mart

house, the wool sent to Yarmouth for exportation being lodged there in

a warehouse secured by the king's staple or lock. For the convenience

of collecting the king's revenue, certain towns were named from which

212

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alone goods could be exported;* these were called staple towns, of

which Yarmouth was one; and this is ample proof of her importance at

that early period. f It was then the practise, as we have seen, for the

crown to let the custom duties to private persons, and as Drayton was for

some time "customer," his house was then called the "Custom house."

The “high house called the Town house” passed, from Drayton to

Thomas Damett 1 , a man who took a very leading part in municipal

affairs for upwards of thirty years. In 1576 he was appointed one of the

commissioners to settle the differences which had arisen between the

Bailiffs of Yarmouth and those of the Cinque ports, touching the holding

of the free fair and matters connected, therewith. The importance of this

commission may be gathered from the fact that there were fifteen

commissioners, two of whom were judges of the superior courts, two

serjeants-at-law, and the rest gentlemen of position, In the following

year, when serving the office of bailiff, it was expected that Queen

Elizabeth would pay a visit to the town. Damett met Sir Nicholas Bacon,

then lord keeper, at Mettingham Castle, and "desired his favor for the

town." He also waited upon the queen on her arrival in Norwich, and

arrangements were made for the reception of her majesty at Yarmouth; J

but unfortunately the plague breaking out at Norwich, the royal progress

was stayed. The queen however sent the Earl of Leicester, Lord

Burleigh, Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Henry Sidney, Lord President of

Wales, and others of her retinue to Yarmouth, where they were "right

royally feasted" at the Priory. Advantage was taken of the visit to

petition her majesty to confirm to the town the exclusive right of buying

and selling herrings and other merchandize within seven leuks of the

town, and letters confirmatory were sent from the Privy

* Merchants of the staple, as they were called, enjoyed a monopoly; and one

who had built “a fair stone house" with his profits put this "posie " upon it:—

I thank God, and ever shall,

Who sent the sheep that paid for all.

f The word staple came to be applied to all such goods as constituted the

principal trade of a place. Thus we call the herring fishery the staple trade of

Yarmouth, although it has no connection with the original meaning of the phrase,

J On her way from Norwich to Yarmouth it was arranged that the queen

should sleep at the bishop’s house at Ludham 2 .

1 It was expounded (by Paul Rutledge) that Thomas Damett was the

author of Yarmouth’s earliest History, the “Foundation and Antiquitie

of Great Yarmouth” see Norfolk Archaeology, “Thomas Damet and the

Historiography of Great Yarmouth”, Norfolk Archaeology, vol.xxxiii,

(1965) p.119. However, there are signed examples of Damet’s

handwriting in existence, with many of the letters differently written. I

questioned Rutledge why these documents would be by the same man,

yet differently written, but he had no answer. Expert opinion is now

that in those days, it was a great skill and very difficult, to write.

Therefore the any scribe in past centuries took great care over their

letters and would never be expected to write differently at different

times. It must be stated with some certainty that Thomas Damet was

NOT the author of the “Foundation and Antiquity of Great Yarmouth”.

2 Palmer’s Addenda has almost a complete page additional

concerning the Bishop’s House at Ludham. So as not to affect the

pagination, this addition is at the end of this volume.

GREAT YARMOUTH

213

Council to the Sheriff and Justices of Suffolk; whereupon the

inhabitants of Gorleston, Lowestoft, and Aldborough, petitioned to have

such letters repealed. Damett then, went to London, taking with 'him the

town's charters; and exerting himself so effectually that a decree was

obtained from, the Privy Council confirming the privileges of the town.

In 1584 he was returned to Parliament for the borough; and again the

following year. The Yarmouth people have always been self-reliant;

and having vainly asked the government for a vessel of war to protect

their fisheries, they in 1586 fitted out a vessel of their own, well armed;

and that she might have lawful authority, Damett applied to the

admiralty for a commission.* At this time a misunderstanding arose

between Mr. Grice, the other Member for the Borough, and his "Eight

Worshipful and very indifferent good friends the bailiffs," as he styles

them, as to a promise said to have been given by Damett to the Earl of

Leicester, that Jeffery Whitney should be appointed sub-steward with

an annuity of £40 for life; and at the next election neither were returned.

Damett, however, soon regained the confidence of the corporation, who

were then the only electors, and in 1592 he was again sent to Parliament.

In the same year he was re-elected bailiff; and during his year of office

obtained from the crown a remittance of the fee-farm rent in consideration

of the heavy outlay which the town had made in constructing a new

haven. In 1601 Damett, in his place in Parliament, made a very exciting

speech upon the subject of the Dunkirk privateers. He demanded to

know how it happened that numbers of her majesty's subjects had been

"spoiled, robbed, beaten, wounded, taken prisoners, tortured, racked,

carried away, imprisoned, ransomed, fined, and some executed, in time

of peace;" adding, " I dare boldly say they have done England

*Privateering was at this time carried on to a great extent. We are told by Fronde,

vol. 6, p. 19, that English privateers, not being particular about creeds, plundered Dutch

merchantmen; and he gives the following instance from the Flanders M.S.S. In 1574

Cornelius Williamson of Dort, sailing out of Yarmouth harbour, had his vessel boarded

and the crew roughly handled. They were tied with ropes and cast into the sea and greatly

tormented to discover if they had money. Cornelius himself was hanged by the neck ‘till

he was nearly dead, and then stripped naked, weighted with stones, and cast a depth of

twenty feet into the sea until he confessed. These pirates then took his money, all the

seamen's clothes, and stripped the ship of her anchors, cables, victuals, and stores.

214

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"more hurt since they began than all France either in the time of Henry

VIII. or Queen Mary." On the accession of James I., Damett was again

returned to Parliament; and in this year he was deputed to ride to

London on the subject of a dispute which the town then had with the

officers of customs, and to reply in person to a letter which had been

received from Lord Buckhurst, then Lord High Treasurer*. The subject

matter in dispute was, curiously enough, referred by his lordship to the

Bishop of Norwich and other commissioners, and a committee had to

wait upon them at Norwich; after which Damett again went to London

respecting the fees exacted by the custom-house officers, and to consult

counsel about a "riot committed by the Lowestoft men." In 1602 he

again filled the office of bailiff, having previously been engaged in the

controversy as to the right of the men of Yarmouth to fish on the coast

of Denmark. He was also instrumental in obtaining from the Earl of

Nottingham, Lord High Admiral of England, a surrender of his

jurisdiction from Winterton Ness to Easton Ness, and a charter from

James I. confirming to the bailiffs all admiralty jurisdiction within those

limits; which surrender Damett and Sir Ralph Crewe, then recorder, at

an assembly of the corporation formally deposited among the records of

the town. In Parliament he appears to have been a supporter of the royal

authority; for, in 1610, after the speech of the Lord High Treasurer, the

somme of which was, says a member in his private journal, to perswade

us to supplie the king's wants by subsidies, Mr. Damett, Member for

Great Yarmouth, stoode up and moved in generall that we would supplie

the king's wants, but after a long sitting the house agreed to defer the

debate till morning. He retired to Rishangles in Suffolk, where he died.

By his will he gave four dwelling houses to the corporation, to hold as

alms houses for ever, to be for dwellings for such poore seamen's

widowes of that towne, whose husbands dyed leaving unto them a child

or more, and leaving unto them no habitation, to rest in freely att the

daye of his decease. His will discloses what must have been, a secret

grief to this prosperous man—the skeleton in the cupboard. His only son

and heir had gone from him, and was reported to be dead. Damett

directed all the residue of his real estate to be sold and the pro-

GREAT YARMOUTH

215

ceeds distributed in numerous legacies, unless his son should "come to

the sayd towne of Yarmouth within tenn years," when he was to have

all. The son never appeared and the family became extinct.*

In 1580 Damett conveyed the above-mentioned house to the

corporation, and it has ever since been applied to public purposes. The

upstair room was, in Mauship's time, let to the king's officers and

farmer's deputies "to receive all subsidies, customs, and other his

highnesses duties," which at that time amounted to £3,000 a year. f

Manship quaintly informs us that in 1593, by the "forward carefulness

and careful forwardness" of the then chamberlains, "a fair turret" was

erected on the roof of the Town House, in which was placed a dial or

horologue of great beauty. t The roof, which was flat, was covered with

lead, and here every Sunday evening, during the summer season, after

prayers, the waits were accustomed to sound forth "upon several

consorts of instruments, most melodious and delightful music." § In

the ware-

t Clocks were at this time extremely rare, and the keeping them in order was a work

of much cost and trouble. In the Cathedral expenses for Exeter in 1425, there is this

entry:—"Paid John Woolston and John Umfray, riding with two horses to Barnstable,

there to seek Roger Clockmaker, for mending the clock (viz.), going, remaining there,

and returning with Roger aforesaid, and his horse for three days, v s, iij d . for the hire of

two horses for three days, ii s. A portable day and night dial," made by Humphrey Cole in

1676, in the possession of Octavius Morgan, Esq., bears this inscription:—

" as time and houres passeth awaye,

"so doeth the life of man decay;

"As tyme can be redeemed with no coste,

" Bestowe it well, and let no hour be lost"

§ The waits were musicians appointed and maintained by the corporation; and were

provided with gowns and badges. They played before the corporation when

* The above name, pronounced as a dis-syllable, sounds like an imprecation, but

there was another Yarmouth family whose name was simply Dam, Roger atte Dam had a

vessel called the Edmund, commanded by Edmund Pennorel, which formed part of the

fleet of Edward III. when he invaded Brittany in 1342. There was also in the same

squadron a vessel called the Bencyt, of which Roger do Dam was part owner. This name

was, no doubt, derived from the port of Dam in Holland. A family of this name held lands

at Linstead in Norfolk, and bore sa., a chev. erm. betw. three dolphins or.

f Within the present century the custom duties at Yarmouth have exceeded £60,000 a

year.

216

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house behind was the king's beam for weighing goods and

merchandize.

When the protestants, driven out of Inlanders in great numbers by

the persecution of the Duke of Alva, sought a refuge in Yarmouth, they

required a place where they could assemble and worship God in their

own way and in. their own tongue; and for this purpose the corporation

allowed them the use of a chamber at the back of the Town house,

which chamber thereupon obtained the name of the "Dutch Church."

They were required to take charge of the clock outside the building,

whereby the latter acquired the name of "the Dutch clock," which it

retained until its removal a few years since.

Yarmouth, as we have seen (vol. i., p. 10), was frequented by the

Flemings at a very early period; and fishermen of that nation were

among the first settlers. An inundation of the Low Countries in the

reign of Henry III, caused great numbers of artizans to take refuge in

England, and many landed at Yarmouth; some penetrated to Norwich,

and a colony established themselves at Worstead, where they

introduced a manufacture which took its name from that place. They

likewise re-established the art of building in brick, of which Worstead

Church remains a specimen. Edward III. greatly encouraged the coming

over of these people, so remarkable for their skill and industry,

especially in the making of cloth, which art they introduced into

Norwich. In 1361 a, ship laden with cloth, belonging to merchants of

Norwich and Yarmouth, valued at 2,000 marks, was overtaken by a

storm and driven into a port of Norway. For safety the crew

that body went to church in state on "scarlet" days. Like others of their calling

they were not always "harmonious" in any sense of the word. In 1753 Antonio

Pizzolato, an Italian, probably thinking he knew something of music, offered him-

self to supply a vacancy, but his petition was rejected. They were in great request

at Christmas, as a month previous to that festival they were accustomed—

" During the winter's night,

" By moon or lanthorn light,

" Through hail, rain, frost o snow,

r

Their wonted rounds to go."

The custom is still kept up,—

But now, alas! to hear their music,

" Suffices to make me and you sick."

The word is conjectured to be derived from, the old German wacht, a vigil or watching.

The term wayghtes was also used to signify a wind instrument like a hautboy 1 usually

played by these musicians.

1 Oboe

GREAT YARMOUTH

217

carried the cargo on shore, where it was seized by the King's officers.

Edward III. immediately demanded restitution, which was speedily

granted. In 1440 a return was made of all "aliens" then residing in

Yarmouth, which is still preserved among the Exchequer Records; but

their number did not greatly increase until the fanatical zeal, of Philip

II., drove shoals of protestants from the Low Countries to these shores,

where they were kindly and hospitably received. As many as three

hundred settled in Yarmouth, where they conducted themselves

peaceably and lived godly and orderly lives. Moreover they "used the

feat and trade of fishing after the manner of their own country," and

taught the inhabitants how to prepare, pack, and brand the herring as

had been practised in Holland; whereby the fishing trade of the port was

greatly increased.* In 1568 Queen Elizabeth granted letters patent

under which they were authorized to dwell in the town and pursue their

avocations. f Their number so greatly increased that the townspeople

became jealous of them; and in 1574 the corporation published some

very stringent restrictions with which these industrious men were

obliged to comply.

Considerable opposition indeed began to be exhibited against these

foreign artizans, and in 1569 Anthony Nolloth of Yarmouth associated

himself with other persons from divers parts of the country, and "with

arms offensive," such as "hand gounes " and "pistoletets," assembled at

Norwich and endeavoured to excite a rising of the people for the

"expulsion of strangers," threatening when they had the power to "hang

up" all that would not take part with them. This was called

Throgmorton's conspiracy. It was discovered in time; and its leader with

two others were hanged. Queen Elizabeth, who always professed to be a

friend and protector of the protestant exiles, wrote a letter on this

occasion to the citizens of Norwich, expostulating against their jealousy

of those who had contributed so greatly by their still and

We art indebted to the Mornings for the introduction, of many flowers

previously unknown, such as the gilly-flower, carnation, and Provence rose; and for

an improved culture of the Tulip. They also brought over many vegetables previously

little known, in England, as carrots, celery, and cabbages.

t The original is now in the hands of Mr. T.G . Bayfield of Norwich.

V OL . II.

218

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industry to the prosperity of that place. She enjoined, them to treat with

favour the poor men of the Dutch nation who, for their religion had fled

hither, so long as they lived quietly, and obediently to God's true

religion and her majesty's laws, "for no one Christian man, in charity,"

is bound to help another; especially those who suffer affliction for the

"gospel's sake."*

The massacre on St. Bartholomew's day in 1572 sent thousands of

French Huguenots into England, some of whom settled in Yarmouth

and more at Norwich, where they founded families which still flourish. f

* The Dutch, as might naturally be expected, were expert in "water works." We have

seen that in the 16 th century a Dutch engineer was consulted as to Yarmouth harbour (vol.

i., p. 117). About 1626 Vermuyden came over to do some drainage works in

Cambridgeshire, bringing with him a considerable following - who, escaping from the

persecutions in the Low Countries, found convenient homes in the Great Level of the

Fens. We occasionally meet with evidence of the residence among us of old Dutch

families in unexpected places. Thus at Castle Hedingham in Essex there is, in the Parish

Church, a very curious monument in commemoration of the noble family of Van Heyla,

removed from the ancient church of All Hallows, London (when that building was

demolished in 1766), at the cost of Peter Muilman of London, merchant, and of Kirby

Hall in Castle Hedingham. This monument, which was originally erected in 1608, is

adorned with ten emblazoned shields of arms of Flemish families—the Castellans,

Gulsfelins, Broyes, Dallerds, Jeush, Blemes, &c. The Dutch continued to frequent

Yarmouth until 1665, when war was proclaimed against Holland "in the ordinary manner,

and not with the solemnity used in other places," for it was not popular.

f it has already been noticed, (vol. i., p. 396) that the art of printing was introduced

into Norwich in the time of Queen Elizabeth by the Dutchman, Anthony de Solon or

rather (as he printed it) de Solempne. The productions of this early press are of the utmost

rarity. Strype, in his Life of Archbishop Grindal (p. 185 ed. Oxford), mentions a book, De

Operibus Dei, as having been printed at Norwich. Among the books bequeathed to

Trinity College, Dublin, by Archbishop Usher, there are three early Norwich specimens

of printing. The first is a metrical version of the Psalms in Dutch, 1568; the next is a

curious Dutch Calendar with historical notices, one of which mentions the opening of the

Dutch Church at Norwich under the authority of the Queen, on the 24th of December,

1565, and on the title page are the royal arms encircled by a garter, with Godt bewaer de

conignine Elisabeth ; and the third is a Dutch version of the New Testament. All three are

perfect and in excellent preservation. There is also in the Bodleian Library a “broadside”

printed at "Norwich" by Solempne in 1670, containing Certayne versis writtene by

Thomas Brooke Getleman, in the tyme of his imprysonment, the day before his deathe, who

sufferyd at Norwich the 30 th of August, 1570; but so completely had topography 1 died out,

that

1 I assume that this is a misprint for “Typography”. This particular entry is more

suggestive that perhaps Palmer did visit the Bodliean Library.

2 Palmer’s addenda: for topography, substitute typography (!)

GREAT YARMOUTH

219

The renewal of the persecution of the protestants by Louis XIV., and

the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, caused a fresh arrival of refugees

in this country, among whom were some of the most learned, skilful,

and scientific men in France. Their descendants have become blended

with the people of the country of their adoption; and many have attained

to high rank and great distinction. It is not easy to trace out families of

Dutch and French descent in Norwich or Yarmouth, because it was

customary for them to adopt an English translation of their names—or

the foreign name was corrupted.*

In 1600 the corporation determined that the Dutch Church was "a

place convenient for morning prayer," and ordered that prayers should

he read there every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning

at five o'clock, from the 1st of February to the 1st of November, and at

six o'clock for the remainder of the year; and that sermons should also

be preached there; the Dutch still occupying the building on Sundays. A

few years later the corporation, disappointed in their endeavour to

nominate Brinsley to the incumbency, appointed him lecturer, and in

1628 assigned him the Dutch Church in which to preach. The Bishop of

Norwich however prohibited Brinsley from preaching anywhere in the

town; and as the Dutch Church had never been consecrated it was

ordered to be shut up. In 1681 a war broke out with Holland; and such

Dutch families as still remained then left the town never to return.

Subsequently the corporation again conceived the idea of using this part

of the building as an Episcopal Chapel, and the consent of the

Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Norwich having been

obtained, it was converted to this purpose, but in a short

in 1701 Burgess declared his Observations (ante. vol. i. p. 395) to be "the first book ever

printed and published" at Norwich; so that the productions of Solempne's press must at

that time have been of extreme rarity. In 1709 The Divine Physician was published in

Norwich, a copy of which is in the possession of the Editor.

* Thus Le Fevre frequently became Smith; Le Roy, King; Le Monnier, Miller; and

Le Jeune, Young; while others underwent a change, as Jansen to Johnson, Bosch into

Bush, Baert into Beart or Beard, and Hock into Hook; but some genuine foreign names

remain among us, as Van Neck, Koppel, Tyssen, Spiller, Brock, Martineau, and many

others. Mr. W. Durrant Cooper has published in the Sussex Archaeological Collections a

valuable paper on this subject.

220

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time, the funds failing, it was again shut up. In 1702 a design was entertained of

again using the above-mentioned room for episcopal services; but it was

abandoned in favor of building St. George's Chapel. In 1736 the corporation,

ordered this part of the Town House to be fitted as a Theatre.*

The history of the stage at Yarmouth has already been traced (vol. i., p.

353), but a few more notes may here be added. Garrick made his debut under

the name of Liddel, in the character of Othello at the Ipswich Theatre, which

stands on the site of the Duke of Suffolk's house, in which Lady Jane Grey was

born. In Humphrey Repton's Odd Whims and Miscellanies, vol ii., p. 135, there

is a prologue spoken at the opening of the Yarmouth Theatre in 1786 by

Scraggs the manage in the character of a pilot. It is not worth inserting. f

William Capon,

* Among the M.S.S. possessed by the Town Council of Norwich, is a petition, of the

16th century from the mayor, sheriffs, and others of that city to the Lords and Commons,

praying that an Act might he passed to prevent prayers of interludes from coming there, as

they took a large portion of the earnings of the poor operatives, so as to cause great want

to their families and a heavy charge to the city; and about the same time, Richard Jackson

of Nottingham was committed for allowing players to sound their trumpets and play

within his house without a license. In 1623 the Corporation of Norwich complained to the

Privy Council that the city was "much pestered and disquieted'' "by several companies of

players, tumblers, dancers upon ropes, and the like;" whereupon the council considering

that by such "means and devices the purses of poor servants and apprentices, and of the

meaner sort of people were drained and emptied," authorised the Mayor of Norwich not to

suffer any such companies to exercise their feats and devices within the city; and in 1640,

being informed that the city was " much offended and molested with players," the mayor

was empowered to cause them "to forbear playing and depart the city," and on their

refusal to "commit them to ward." The public announcement of performances by means

of hand-bills did not come into general practice until three centuries after the invention of

printing. The arrival of the "players" was made known by the sound of trumpets, and the

titles of the intended "plays" were cried by the bellman in Yarmouth down to the present

century. Tate Wilkinson, writing in 1790, says that at Norwich the presence of the

comedians was announced "by beat of drum." Strolling players who frequent fairs still

make their presence known by the sound of trumpets and drams.

f Repton was an eminent landscape gardener, who resided at Aylsham in Norfolk,

where he was buried in 1818. There is an engraved portrait of him. His son, George

Stanley Repton, married in 1817 the Lady Elizabeth Scott, daughter of Lord Chancellor

Eldon.

GREAT YARMOUTH

221

an eminent scene-painter, employed at Yarmouth, was born at Norwich in

1757, and died in 1827. There is an engraved portrait of him. Miss Goddard, a

promising actress on this stage, died in 1801, aged 25, from over exertion, and

was buried at St. Peter's Mancroft. Bellamy,* the actor and manager, has

already been mentioned (vol. i., p. 355), Harley, who commenced his career

with this company, went to Covent Garden. David Fisher, an actor attached to

the Suffolk company, was a teacher of music and dancing at Yarmouth. There

is an engraved portrait of him. He was buried at Woodbridge.

In 1758 the Town House ceased to be used as a Custom House, the

business of the customs being then removed to the house of Mr. James Ward

(see vol. i, p. 257). The turret and leaden roof were removed in 1780.

A Public L IBRARY was instituted in 1803, the first promoters being

Dawson Turner, Esq., Dr. Girdlestone, the Rev, John Homfray, and the Rev. E.

Walford, and in 1808 the corporation granted the use of the upper front room

and also the late Theatre for the purposes of a Library; but the latter, not being

required, was in 1814 let to the “Musical Society,” then established, who

converted the Theatre into a spacious Concert Room. After flourishing for some

years the Musical Society was broken up on the removal of William Palgrave,

Esq., its principal promoter, to the Collectorship at Dublin. The room was

afterwards converted to the purposes of a Commercial Club, which however did

not long exist. The books were then removed into the east room, and the west

room was let to the Haven Commissioners for an office. In 1858 the Town

Council granted a new lease of the premises; and then the Haven

Commissioners were dispossessed, and the west room converted into a Reading

Room in connection with the Library, f

*The name is probably Bel-ami.

f Books have their vicissitudes. Some years after this Library was established, Mrs.

Morgan, then, residing at Mutford, had from it a volume of Sir William Temple's works,

which, intending to return, she put into a box containing also a ball dress for a young

lardy in Yarmouth, and intrusted the whole to a carrier; probably not so trustworthy as

Dickens' inimitable Barkis, who traversed the same road. The box never reached its

destination, and some time afterwards the missing book was found at the bottom of a

well, with many of its pages soiled and illegible. Unwilling to

222

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

All the property on the north side of Row No. 106, extending as far

as the Town House, west, belonged in the 16th century to John

Crowland,* who married Alice, sole heir of Robert Love, merchant.

Also “the key or wharf to the same pertaining, containing in breadth ten

yards, with a lane leading from the said messuage to the great gate.”

On the south side of this row there was, in the reign of Queen

Elizabeth, an old building called Ruggs Hall. f The Bransbys had

property here which passed to the Astleys of Melton Constable. J

Fronting the Quay, and occupying the space between Rows No. 106

and No, 108, there is a fine house, which was erected early in the

present century for William Palgrave, Esq., Collector of Customs. An

ancient messuage stood on this site, which in the 16th century was the

property of John Cowldham. He was the son of Allen Cowldham,

bailiff in 1559, who died in 1582, and lies buried in Lowestoft Church,

with this epitaph over him:—

" Of age he was thre skore and tene,

"He lyved well in the sight of all men."

John Cowldham, the son, was bailiff in 1578, 1587, 1596, and 1607. He

died in 1620, aged 84, childless, and the family became extinct. The

house was then sold to John Ufflet of Herringfleet, whose son, John

Ufflet, in 1644, conveyed it to Thomas Barrett, it being then a tavern

put the widowed lady to the expanse of replacing it, the library Committee allowed the

damaged pages to he copied in M.S., from a volume lent for the purpose by Mr. Dawson

Turner; which was done in a very beautiful manner by Mr. Walter, then a clerk in the

office of Messrs. Thomas Hurry and Co.

* For the exigences of state it was sometimes the practice, previous to the 17th

century, for the sovereign to raise money by the issue of what were called Privy Seals,

which were directed to certain selected persons, authorising them to collect the money

required by way of a forced loan. James I., standing upon his prerogative, issued such

Privy Seals in 1611; one of which was directed to John Crowland, then, an Alderman of

the Borough. His name stood first, as such, in the charter granted by that king.

f A younger branch of the Staffordshire family of Rugge came into Norfolk in the

time of Edward III., and produced William Rugge, Bishop of Norwich (in 1536), and

Richard, his brother, Mayor of that City. They bore gu., a chev. eng. betw. three mullets

pierced arg.

j There is a pedigree of this family in Dugdale's Warwickshire, vol. i., p. 19.

GREAT YARMOUTH

223

called the Three Cranes. It next passed into the possession of Sir

George England, Knt , who settled it on his fourth son, Joseph England,

on his marriage, in 1673, with Clara Vanderlane, a Dutch lady. Joseph

England died in 1674, at the early age of 25; and had a posthumous and

only son, Joseph, who died an infant. The Three Cranes reverted to his

heir-at-law, George England, Esq. (eldest son of Sir George England,

Knt.), who, dying in 1702, devised it to his brother, Benjamin England,

Esq. (of whom we shall have occasion to speak), with remainder to his

nephew, George England. Esq., by whom this house was probably

disposed of.

The rise and fall of this family of E NGLAND is very remarkable.

The first we hear of is William England, pulley maker, who married in

1611 Martha, sister of John Lucas, and died in 1635, leaving four sons,

William, George, John, and Joseph. William, the eldest, died in 1689,

"on the high seas." George England, the second son, upon the breaking

out of the civil war, took a decided and active part in favor of the

Parliament, and brought in plate to the value of £24 for the defence of

the town; and "for the ordnance at the Crane" the store of gun powder

was kept at his house ; not a very pleasant arrangement! In 1648 "in

regard of the distractions, dangers, and troubles of the times," a standing

committee was appointed to consider the best means of ensuring the

safety of the town, and England with many others subscribed the

Solemn League and. Covenant.* The execution of Charles I. alarmed

England, who, at the next corporation assembly, resigned his alderman's

gown; and although some others who did the like were continued in

their places by order of a committee of Parliament, he was not. In 1653

Oliver Cromwell was proclaimed Lord

* The object of this important document, so often referred to in these pages, was to

declare that the forces raised by the Parliament were for their just defence, and that of the

true protestant religion and the liberty of the subject against the forces raised by the king;

and it contained a promise to assist the former. It was, says Clarendon, a more direct

denouncement of war against the king, than had been in plain terms before avowed, and

was designed as a distinguished mark to know friends from enemies. Plate was brought

in, as we have seen, by those willing to aid the Parliament; and taken from those who

were not. Among the Tanner M.S.S. 1 , lxii., p. 489, there is a letter from the Lady

Margaret Paston, addressed to Sir John Potts in 1643, relative to the sale of her plate " for

the service of the state."

1 Presumably now with the other Tanner items, in the Bodleian Library.

224

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

Protector in Yarmouth Market Place, and a firm government having

been established, England re-entered the corporation, and in 1557 was

chosen to fill the office of bailiff. At the Michaelmas feast in that year

"several passages of speech," as they are politely termed in the minute

of proceedings, took place between the newly-inaugurated Chief

Magistrate and the Cinque Port Bailiffs, which led to ulterior

proceedings; and the corporation being satisfied that England had only

intended to uphold the rights of the town, resolved to stand by him and

save him harmless. The protector died before England's year of office

had expired, and on the 6th of September following England called an

assembly, and read the following document, dated the 4th of September,

which he had received from the Council of State :—

" After our hearty commendations. Whereas it has pleased the most wise. God, in his

providence, yesterday, about four of the clock in the afternoon, to take out of this world

the most serene and renowned Oliver, late Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, to the

unspeakable grief of our hearts and the invaluable loss of these nations. But in this sore

affliction it doth much relieve our spirits that his said late highness in his life tyme,

according to humble petition and advise, did appoint and declare the most noble and

illustrious lord, the Lord Richard, eldest son of his said late highness, to succeed him in

the government of these nations, a person who has given such eminent testimony of his

faithfulness and great affection " to the course of God and the publique interest of these

nations, as giveth us abundant cause of rejoycing that the Lord hath provided such a

succession to undertake the government, in whose prudence and moderation we may

acquiesce, and under whom we have not only hopes but much confidence that the Lord

will make these nations happy. We, therefore, of the Privy Council, together with the Lord

Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of London, the officers of the army, with numbers of

principal gentlemen, have, with one full voice and consent of tongue and heart, this day

published and proclaimed the said noble and illustrious Lord Richard to be rightfully

Protector of this Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions

and territories thereto belonging. To whom we acknowledge all fidelity and constant

obedience according to law, and the humble petition and advice with all hearty and

humble affection, and therefore have thought fit to signify the same unto you, willing and

requiring you to assemble the magistrates of your town immediately on receipt thereof,

and to cause his said highness to be proclaimed, according to the form here enclosed

(mutatis mutando), with such solemnity as becomes a business of such a nature, and to

take all due care for the preservation of the peace, and securing the same against all

insurrections and disturbances that may be made by evil-minded men upon the change."

England supported the pretentions of Richard, who was thereupon proclaimed protector

in succession to his father; and the corporation

GREAT YARMOUTH

225

voted that very remarkable and quaintly expressed address to "his

highness," which has already been mentioned. The pure republicans

were however opposed to an hereditary protectorship; and there was a

still stronger party who were in favor of a restoration of the ancient line

of kings. Some disturbances took place, and “differences” arose

between Bailiff England and the “soldiery,” whereupon the former was

summoned to appear before the Council of State in London; and the

corporation sent up a "certificate" in which England was, greatly

commended and declared to be well affected to the Commonwealth, and

a confident hope was expressed that if the matter were investigated by

Lieut.-Col. Style, or any person of known fidelity to his highness the

Lord Protector, it would be attended with a satisfactory result. At last

finding that Richard was unable to hold his position, and that anarchy

would probably ensue, England no longer opposed the restoration, and

his name was inserted as an alderman in the charter granted by Charles

II. In 1667 he was chosen bailiff, and in 1671 he was selected to be

chairman of a committee appointed to make preparations for the

reception of his majesty; and in this capacity he so pleased the king that

he conferred upon England the honor of knighthood. He died in 1677,

aged 62, and was buried in the north aisle of the Parish Church, where

there is a long and laudatory inscription in latin, on metal, to his

memory, styling him Vir amplissimus — Gariensis honor et gloria, &c.

At the Herald's Visitation in 1664 England disclaimed his right to arms;

but after his knighthood he thought better of this distinction, as other

men have since done, and obtained the grant of a very splendid coat—

gu., three lions pass, in pale arg., each charged on the

shoulder with an ermine spot; and for a crest, a lion's

head erased, charged in like manner.* George

England, the knight's eldest son, also a member' of the

corporation, was returned to Parliament for the

borough in 1679. He sat in eight successive

Parliaments, and represented the town for

*Sir George England had two daughters. Sarah, the older,

married, first, William Burton, Esq., (see vol. i., p. 387); secondly, John Fowle,

Esq., of Norwich, son of Thomas Fowle of Burnham in Essex (who bore arg.,

a chev. sa., on a chief

Vol. II.

226

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

twenty years including the Conventual Parliament of 1688, in which year he

was also appointed, sub-steward, and three years later he succeeded to the

recordership. He died in 1702, aged 59, leaving his estates to his brother

Benjamin for life, with remainder to his nephew, George, the son of his brother

Thomas, the second son of Sir George England, who had died in 1693, aged 48.

This Thomas England was bailiff in 1674 and 1689. He married Anne, daughter

of Thomas Bulwer, Esq., of Buxton, by Anne his wife, daughter of Robert

Marsham, Esq., of Stratton Strawless. Over his grave are the arms of England

impaling Bulwer— sa., on a chev. or., betw. three eagles close regardant arg., as

many cinquefoils gu.,* George England, the son of Thomas, and the heir of his

uncles, George and Benjamin, and in whom centred the great wealth of this

family, filled the office of mayor in 1715, and entertained the Bishop of

Norwich and his attendant clergy at the consecration of St. George's Chapel. He

was returned to Parliament in 1709 in the place of Col. the Hon. Roger

Townshend, who had been elected in the previous year (the first of the

Townshend family who secured a seat for the borough), and had died suddenly.

At the general election in 1710 England was again returned, after a contest with

the Townshend family, the numbers on the poll being—

FERRIER ................. 278 TOWNSHEND ........... 231

ENGLAND ................ 269 ELLYS ......................... 173

Ferrier and England were of " the honest church party," which meant

of the second three mullets pierced or., by Elizabeth, daughter of Matthew Elliston

of Hedingham in Essex; and thirdly, Edmund Thaxter, Esq. Anne, the other

daughter of Sir George England, married William Burleigh, Esq.., of Norwich, who

died in 1681, and was buried in the cathedral. Burleigh bore arg., a lion ramp sa.,

surmounted by a fesse chequy or. and sa. Elizabeth, daughter of John and Sarah

Fowle, and grandchild of Sir George England, married Samuel Fuller, Esq., and died

in 1742. (See ante. p. 149.)

* The Bulwers are a family "of good antiquity and repute" in the county of

Norfolk. They are now represented by William Earle Lytton Bulwer, Esq., of

Heydon, Norfolk, who was born in 1799. Both his younger brothers became peers.

Henry, an eminent diplomatist, was created Lord Dalling of Wood Dalling in

Norfolk, and died in 1872, s.p.; and Edward, the youngest, the distinguished

novelist, poet, and dramatist, was in 1866 made Baron Lytton of Knebworth, an

estate to which he succeeded on the death of his mother, who was the heiress of the

ancient; family of Lytton of Knebworth. He died in 1873.

GREAT YARMOUTH

227

that they were supporters of Dr. Sacheverel,* then at the height of his

ephemeral popularity; and they were returned, said their friends,

“notwithstanding all the undermining tricks usual to the whigs.” The

names of Ferrier and England are inserted in the "true and exact" list of

those "worthy patriots" who had remedied the evils committed by the

then late ministry; and "to their eternal honor" had "supported and

retrieved the credit of the nation" and "preserved the Church of England

from being overthrown by fanatics." Mr. Ferrier's name appeared in

every division in favor of the doctor. In 1713 England was again

returned with Ferrier; and at the Norfolk election in 1714 he voted for

Hare and Earle, the tory or jacobite candidates. He was usually styled

Major England, from the rank he held in the Yarmouth Fusileers. He

was chairman of the building committee for the erection of St. George's

Chapel and also for building the new Town Hall. His profuseness was

such that his large estates were inadequate to meet his expenditure; and

the result occurred which had been feared by his prudent uncle

Benjamin who in his will desired that the fortune left to his nephew

might not be "squandered." Major England had two sons, George and

Thomas, and one daughter, Anne. On the first he entailed all the landed

estates which remained; and to each of his other children he bequeathed

£3,000, but it soon appeared that his personal property was insufficient

to pay his debts, and a suit was instituted in Chancery under which the

whole of his estates were sold. The eldest son died (prior to 1742),

leaving a widow named Veneranda Maria Elizabetta, who concurred in

these sales. "Tom England," a poor imbecile, who died in Yarmouth

Workhouse in 1854 was said to be the last of the race—and now

" An empty name is all that's left behind."

The Stokesby estate, which formed part of the England possessions,

had been purchased in 1710 of Clere Wyndham, Esq., having come to

the "Wyndhams from the Cleres of Ormesby. Clere Wyndham was the

last of this branch of his family. He retired to Holland, where he died

*The Rev. Mr. Palmer having prayed for the doctor in the Queen's Chapel at

Whitehall, "as for a person under persecution," was suspended by the Bishop of

London, at the instance of the whig government 1 .

1 This is the sort of political interference in “democratic” life, that

persists to day, and which may need a bloodless revolution to

eliminate. See RRH.

228

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

in 1712, s.p. After England's death it was sold for £16,000 to the Hon.

Horatio Townshend, whose only daughter, Letitia, became Countess of

Exeter. On her death, without issue, it passed to her cousin and heir,

Viscount Townshend, who sold it to Vice-Admiral Sir Charles

Saunders, K.G.* by whom it was devised to his neice 1 , Anne Kensey,

who married Dr. Huck . f He took the name of Saunders, and by his wife

left two daughters, the Viscountess Melville and the Countess of

Westmoreland. The latter had the Stokesby estate settled upon, her; but

soon after her marriage an arrangement was made under which it was

divided and sold. The lordship of the manor of Billockby and the

patronage of the advowson had been in the England family for upwards

of a century. In 1730 George England, Esq., presented.

In 1730 the Three Cranes tavern was sold by Barry Love, Esq., to

John Wallis, merchant, by whom it was brought into settlement on the

occasion of the marriage of his son, John Wallis, in 1732, with Mary,

daughter of Samuel Killett, Esq. John Wallis, the father, died in 1746,

aged 77. The son was inaugurated as mayor on the 29th of September,

1761, and died on the 3rd of October following, when, says his epitaph,

" the town lost a virtuous magistrate and an honest man." From the

Wallis family the Three Cranes passed in

*This distinguished admiral purchased in 1762 the Gunton estate in Suffolk, which,

as we shall presently see, had been the property of the Luson family. He was First

Lieutenant of Lord Anson's ship in the South Seas. In 1747 he commanded the Yarmouth,

64, and in that vessel assisted in Lord Hawke's victory. He carried out General Wolfe to

Quebec, and brought home General Townshend. In 1766 he became First Lord of the

Admiralty. The opponents of the Walpole and Townshend interest in the borough were

desirous of securing 30 popular a person as a candidate on their side, and in 1768 he was

invited to contest the borough, but although "nothing could be more flattering," and

entertaining the " highest sense of the honour done him," he declined the invitation,

having no wish to endanger his election for Heydon, a close borough then under the

influence of Lord Anson, in order to contest a place "where he might probably have the

weight of ministerial influence to encounter," At the general election in 1774 his friends

in Yarmouth, on the morning of the election, nominated him without his knowledge, and

he polled 216 votes to the 310 recorded for Townshend and Walpole. He died in the

following year, being then Member for Heydon 2 , The Gunton estate passed with his other

property, and was sold in 1802 to Thomas Fowler, Esq., who built the new hall there.

f He was descended from a Westmoreland family seated in that county.

1 Spelled this way in the original.

2 Heydon is a tiny village between Norwich and Holt, well worth a visit. It is entirely

landlocked, there being only one road in, and the same road back out. The last

houses built there date more than a hundred years old, and it has been used as a film

set for its originality. Some of the gardens, and those of Heydon Hall, are open one

day in mid summer. The Earle Arms , is well worth a visit.

GREAT YARMOUTH

229

1775 to James Turner, Esq., already mentioned,* who, when admitted a

partner in. the firm of Gurneys and Co., of Norwich, closed the tavern

and converted the premises to the purposes of a bank. f The banking

business having been removed to the Hall Plain, the old house was

purchased in 1807 by Samuel Barker, Esq. (vol. i., p. 399), who

removed the Three Cranes, and erected on the site a spacious mansion

for the residence of William Palgrave, jun., Esq., who had married his

daughter. j

The P ALGRAVES of Norwood Berningham have already been

mentioned (vol. i., p. 168). There is a village in Suffolk so called

(Palegrana in Domesday); but Blomefield says (vol. viii., p. 92) that

they took their name (as originally spelt) from Pagrave, a town in the

Hundred of South Greenhoe in Norfolk, of which John de Pagrave was

lord, temp. Henry II. He acquired the lordship of Berningham Norwood

by marrying the heiress of the ancient family of Hetherset. John

Palgrave, "a learned and upright magistrate, descended from many

worthy ancestors of great authority in the county," as his epitaph

informs us, "comended his spirit to hys Redemer" in 1611, being then

erf

f Up to this period the Three Graces had been one of the principal taverns in the

town. Ives, writing in 1735, says, "Father signed articles for Lulman's estate at the Three

Cranes." It seems that, in 1763 the Norwich stage started from this house, for in that year

William Aston, a woolcomber at Gorleston, finding the coach had left the Cranes,

hastened to overtake it, but when he reached the White Horse, fell down and expired. The

last landlord at the Crane was Snow, a famous maker of turtle soup for the corporation

feasts. He afterwards kept the Apollo Gardens out of the north gate.

j See vol. i., p. 402. It is said that the sum of £1,000 was paid for the site, The

"bricks with which, the now house was erected were manufactured on the Holkham

estate, and were presented by T. W. Coke, Esq;, (afterwards Earl of Leicester), with

whom the Palgraves, father and son, were long on terms of political and social inter-

course. In a series of letters addressed by the Rev. Wenman Langton, Rector of Warham

in Norfolk from 1789 to 1837, to Mr. Palgrave, and now in the possession of his

grandson, Thomas Palgrave, Esq., frequent allusion is made to visits paid by Mr. Palgrave

to Mr. Coke at Holkham, especially during the time of the annual sheep shearing, when

that eminent agriculturist was, for many years, accustomed to receive numerous

illustrious and distinguished guests, including the late Dukes of Gloucester and Sussex,

and that great scholar, Dr. Parr. Mr. Langton, when taking

* See vol. i., p. 305. His daughter married, in 1801, Philip Lewis Powell, Esq., of

Hav ordwest.

230

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

80 years of age,* leaving an only son, Sir Augustine Palgrave, Knt.,

who when Sheriff of Norfolk in 1617 caused a great dispute to arise

between Chief Justice Montagu and John Mingay, Esq., Mayor of

Norwich, by advising the former to take the chair "at the Preaching

Place in the Green Yard," which innovation his worship would not

submit, and the point having been decided in favor of the latter, the

sheriff "got a wigging" from the chief justice. John Palgrave of

Norwood Berningham was created a baronet by Charles I. in 1641. He

married Elizabeth, daughter of John Jenny, Esq., of Gunton, Norfolk;

and was succeeded by his son, Sir Augustine Palgrave, who married,

first, Barbara, daughter of Cotton Gascoigne, Esq., of Islington; and,

secondly, Catherine, daughter of Sir William Spring, but had no issue

by either. He married, thirdly, the eldest daughter of Sir Richard Howe,

Bart., of Wishford in Wiltshire, and by her had one son, Sir Richard

Palgrave, third baronet, who died unmarried in 1732, when the title

became extinct . When the elder branch of the Palgraves of Pulham, who

claimed to be the next heirs male, became extinct in the male line, the

representation of this ancient family is believed to have devolved on the

Palgraves of Yarmouth, who traced their descent from the Rev. Robert

Palgrave of Bealings in Suffolk, who, it is asserted, was

leave of the latter in 1800, asked, "What shall I say to Mr. Palgrave ?" "What,

Old Palgrave ?" cried the doctor, "why, say he is my brother, and his wife is my

sister." The doctor stood godfather to the first-born son of Mr. Wm, Palgrave, jun.,

and the child was named William Parr, but died young. Parr presented the

father, who like himself was a great smoker, with a tobacco stopper made out of the

" Shakespeare tree." The doctor was much in Yarmouth, and in whatever company

he happened to be, always insisted upon smoking a pipe after dinner; and when the

time came would say to his servant, "John, bring me my smoking-coat!"

* The stately monuments in Norwood Berningham Church were some years

since thoroughly repaired at the expense of the late Dawson Turner, Esq., Thomas

Palgrave, Esq., and other members of the Palgrave family. Hetherset bore, az ., a

leopard saliant or.

f Ursula, the only daughter of the first baronet, married Samuel Smith of

Colkirk; and on the death of Sir Richard Palgrave a suit was instituted in the Court

of Chancery, under which their four grand-daughters, Mrs. Bendish, Mrs. Offley,

Mrs. Sparrow, and Mrs. Pett were declared to be co-heirs; and the estates were ordered

to be sold and the proceeds divided among them. The estate of Norwood Berningham

passed by sale to the Windhams of Felbrigge.

GREAT YARMOUTH

231

the third son of William Palgrave,* fourth son of Thomas Palgrave by

Christian, his wife, daughter of John Sayer of Pulham, and which said

Thomas Palgrave was the son of Thomas Palgrave of Pulham, who died

in 1545, son of Robert Palgrave of Gunton, Norfolk, second son of John

de Palgrave of Norwood Berningham by Sybilla de Hetherset his wife.

The Rev. Robert Palgrave settled in Yarmouth, where he died in 1737,

aged 81. Robert Palgrave, his son, married Hannah Bacon, and died in

1741, leaving a son, Thomas Palgrave, who married Mary Manning of

Southtown. He entered the service of the East India Company, and

commanded one of their ships. He was one of the elder brethren of the

corporation of the Trinity House; and retiring to Yarmouth purchased

an estate at Coltishall in Norfolk, where he died in 1775, aged 62 years.

William Palgrave, his elder son, married Elizabeth, daughter of Robert

Thirkettle of Flegg Burgh, Norfolk, f He filled the office of mayor in

1782, and again in 1805, and took a leading part in polities; strenuously

supporting the principles of Mr. Coke of Holkham, and the pretensions

of the Anson family to the representation of the borough in Parliament.

Having retired to his estate at Coltishall, he died there in 1822, aged

77. t William Palgrave,

* The other sons were Thomas Palgrave, who was the father of Thomas Palgrave,

Esq., M.P. for the City of Norwich "in the reign, of the la te Queen Anne of ever "blessed,

memory;" William Palgrave, who was the great grandfather of the Rev. William Palgrave,

Rector of Palgrave, who died in 1799; John Palgrave; and Richard Palgrave of Heacham.

Of the same family were William Palgrave, Esq., M.D., an eminent physician at Norwich,

who died in 1742 (as appears "by an inscription on a mourning ring in the possession of

the Yarmouth family), s.p., and was buried at Pulham; and William Palgrave, son of

Austin Palgrave of Pulham, who was surgeon of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital from

its opening in 1771 to his death in 1777. He was buried at St. Philip's, Bristol. The Rector

of Palgrave was also for forty years Rector of Thradeston in Suffolk. He made a valuable

collection of antiquities when travelling in Italy; and was the friend and correspondent of

Gray the poet, who often visited him. His elder brother assumed the name of Sayer, and

married Miss Mary Tyrrell of Gipping, afterwards Lady Haselridge.

f She died in 1805, aged 57. Some account of this family of Thirkettle has been

given in Vol i., p. 177. They bore gu., a maunch arg ., ensigned with a fleur-de-lis of the

first, and a chief of the second; which arms appear on some plate in the possession of the

Palgrave family.

t There is a portrait of him commenced by Sir Thomas Lawrence and finished by

Lane. The Coltishall estate was purchased by W. D. Palmer, Esq., and by him

232

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

his eldest son, already mentioned (vol. i., p. 402), filled the office of

mayor in 1814.* He removed to Dublin on being promoted to the

collectorship in that city, and died there in 1839, aged 69 years. His two

surviving sons, Thomas Palgrave, Esq., J.P. of Llansandfraed near

Conway, North Wales, and Charles Palgrave, Esq., of Dublin, claim to

be heirs male to the Palgraves of Norwood Berningham. f The arms

borne by this family are az., a lion ramp. arg. ; and for a crest, a

leopard's head regard, ppr. William Palgrave, the elder, had two other

sons who attained manhood, namely, Robert Palgrave who, after dis-

tinguishing himself at Cambridge, accepted the office of Registrar of

the High Court of Admiralty at Gibralter, where he died of yellow fever

in 1804; and Thomas Palgrave, who resided for some time at Norwich.

The daughters were Elizabeth, who in 1799 married the Rev. Thomas

Powys t of Fawley, Bucks, Rector of High Roding in Essex, and died in

1842, aged 70 years. Mary, who married Dawson Turner, Esq. (See vol.

i., p. 308.) Eleanor, who became the second wife of the

devised to his grandson, P. P. Kemp, Esq., "who has over since resided at the Manor

House. The Bure being navigable to Coltishall, that place at an early period became of

some importance; forming as it did a centre of traffic for the supply of the neighbouring

district. By a charter granted in 1231 the natives of Coltishall "were for ever released

from villainage or compulsory servitude, which was a substantial good at a time when the

lower class of countrymen were the property of the lords of the soil and transferred with

it.

* The inquest which elected him "laid from Monday noon until Wednesday

afternoon" before they could agree.

f William Barker, the elder son, died unmarried at Dublin in 1851, aged 57. Robert,

another son, a surgeon at Liverpool, died unmarried in 1841. He made very extensive

genealogical researches into the early history of the Palgrave family. John, a third son,

died unmarried at Yarmouth in 1868. Elizabeth Matilda, the elder daughter of the

collector, married John Kerr, Esq., Collector of Customs at Bristol. They both died in

1869, he being in his 82nd year. He was the son of John Kerr, who commanded a packet

stationed at Falmouth, by Anne his wife, daughter of James Royall, Agent at Yarmouth

for the Corporation of the Trinity House, James Kerr, who died at Hastings in 1853, aged

43, having previously resided at Harleston in Norfolk, and afterwards at Coventry, and

who was a native of Yarmouth, bequeathed £50 a piece to the Hospital, the Church

Restoration Fund, and Priory National Schools. Gent. Mag., vol. iv. N. S., p. 654.

t He died in 1817, aged 49, leaving a numerous family. Powys bore or., a lion's

gamb., gu., between two cross crosslets fitché, gu.

GREAT YARMOUTH

233

Rev. Christopher Spurgeon of Harpley, and died in 1836, aged 62.

Anne, who married Edward Rigby 1 , Esq.,* and, after surviving her

husband more than half a century, died in 1872 in her 96th year,

Katherine, who married William Simpson, Esq., f Treasurer of the

County of Norfolk and Town Clerk of Norwich, who died in 1834, and

his widow in 1849, aged 68 years; and Jane, who married Watford

Taylor, Esq., of Coltishall, t and died, in 1857, aged 73.

In 1826 the above-mentioned house was purchased by Capt.

Samuel Costerton, R.N., who died in London in 1872, aged 85.§ In

1829 it was sold to G. D. Palmer, Esq., and was conveyed by the

executors of his will to John Parkinson Hall, Esq., the present

proprietor. ¶

Previous to the last sale, the above-mentioned house was for some

years occupied by Samuel Charles Marsh., Esq., who filled the office of

* He was born at Chowbent near Leigh in Lancashire, in which county the name

prevails; and bore arg ., a cross botonné sa., charged with five mallets of the first. He settled at

Norwich, where he married a Beevor, by whom he had two daughters. His sister married

Dr. Parry of Bath, and became the mother of Sir Edward Parry, the Arctic voyager, who

married a sister of the first Lord Stanley of Alderley. Dr. Rigby died at Harwich in 1821,

aged 74. By his second marriage, with Miss Palgrave, he became the father of twelve

children. The elder son, Edward Rigby, who became a physician of eminence, was twin-

born in 1804 with his sister, Anne, who married Carl George de Wahl of Wattel in

Esthonia. Dr. Rigby, the son, succeeded Dr. Gooch (whom we shall have occasion to

mention), as physician to the Lying-in-Hospital, and in 1841 was appointed Examiner in

Midwifery at the London University in succession to Sir Charles Locock. He published

several medical works, and would probably have acquired the highest honors of his

profession had not his career been cut short by death in 1861. He left no male issue. Maria

Justinia, another daughter of Dr. Rigby, the father, married Robert de Rosen, Baron in

Esthonia; and Elizabeth, another daughter, married Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, President

of the Royal Academy. Lady Eastlake, who before her marriage was much in Yarmouth,

has published Letters from the Baltic; and has written several charming articles in the

Quarterly Review.

f Simpson bore or., on a chief gu ., three crescents arg,

t He was connected with the Watford family of Long Stratton, Norfolk.

§ He married in 1815 Mary Ann Elizabeth Thorndike, widow of Samuel Thorndike

of Ipswich, and daughter of Thomas Underwood. Lieut. James Thorndike, son of James

Thorndike, Esq., of Ipswich, died in 1814, aged 23, from the effects of the “Walcheron

fever."

¶ Son of John Hall of Coggeshall, who died here in 1869, aged 84.

1 Palmer’s addenda: an account of a family called Rigby, with pedigree, will

be found in the History of Goosnagh , Lancashire, p.141. Members of this

family served in the Parliamentary army.

Vol.II

234

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

mayor in 1843, and again in 1852. He was the eldest son of Samuel

Clarke Marsh, Esq., of Norwich, who died in 1834, by Anne his wife,*

only daughter of W. D. Palmer, Esq., and widow of Robert Dey Kemp 1 ,

Esq., who died in 1802 (in which year he was married), aged 25 years. f

Mr. S. C. Marsh took an active part in promoting the Volunteer

movement, and became Major-Commandant of the Yarmouth Artillery

Volunteers. On resigning his command in 1862 he was presented with

the model of a silver field-piece standing on a plateau. He died in

1863, aged 52, and was buried at Swardestone. J

* There is a portrait of her by Lane. She died in 1856, aged 75.

f He descended from Nicholas Kemp who hold lands at Swardestone in Norfolk, where

he died in 1617, and was buried in the church there. Sixth in descent from him was John

Kemp of Swardestone, who married Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. Turner of Mulbarton and

cousin of the Very Rev. Joseph Turner, Dean of Norwich. By the

marriage mentioned in the text, Mr. H. D. Kemp had one child

only, Robert Palmer Kemp, Esq., of Coltishall who is a Magistrate

for the Borough of Great Yarmouth and for the County of Norfolk.

The arms of Kemp are gu., three garbs within a bordure eng. or.

and for a crest, a garb. or .; being the same as those borne by the

Kemps of Gissing, Norfolk, a family which has exhibited a

remarkable instance of the vicissitudes of fortune. Sir William

Robert Kemp of Gissing, Bart., traces a lineal descent from the

Lady Eleanor Plantagenet (Great-grand-daughter of Henry III.), who married Richard

Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel.

J The family of M ARSH had been of long continuance in Norwich. Robert Marsh

was mayor of that city in 1731, and died in 1771 at the advanced age of 92 years. He was

an Alderman of the Grocers' Company, who in 1732 presented him with his portrait

painted by Heins, now in St. Andrew's Hall. He and his brother were common carriers; a

business of considerable importance and profit-before the prevalence of stage coaches and

the introduction of railways. Messrs. Robert and Isaac Laughton Marsh and Sons had

establishments at Norwich and Cambridge. Some idea of the extent of their business may

be gathered from the fact that in 1803, when an invasion was expected, they offered to

furnish government with 100 horses, 12 broad-wheeled waggons with 24 men to guide

and guard the same, 24 flat-bottomed boats with the men and horses usually employed

therewith, 4 blacksmiths with travelling forge, 2 wheelwrights, and 2 collar makers, to be

employed wherever their services might be required, at an hour's notice. Mr. I. L. Marsh

died at Norwich in 1834, in his 90th year. James Marsh, Esq., grandfather of Mr. S. C.

Marsh, filled the office of Mayor of Norwich in 1804. Of the same family was Charles

Marsh, Esq. (known as Major Marsh, of whom the late Mr. S. C. Marsh had a portrait),

who, through the influence of Lord Erskine, obtained

1 Palmer’s addenda: R.D.Kemp , described in the Norfolk Chronicle as “a young man

highly esteemed by his extensive connections”

GREAT YARMOUTH

235

The Quay opposite the above-mentioned house was as far back as

the 16th century called the Crane Quay; and on it stood a public crane,

which is depicted on the Cottonian Map we have frequently referred to.

Manship informs us that the first crane was "a very large and spacious

engine," erected in 1528 by Richard Bishop,* who being eligible for the

office of bailiff but free from ambition (which of all passions is the

strongest, and is like the shirt to the body, the last that is put off; for we

are by nature greedy of rule), declined to serve that office, and instead

thereof agreed to erect a crane. This crane was blown down in 1826,

and another was built; and since then, a third the last being of greater

power but simpler construction. f From the

an appointment to India, in 1804. He was a contribute to the Cabinet, published at

Norwich in 1795 by a " Society of Gentlemen.' ' "What a pity it is says Mrs. Opie, writing

in that year, that the Cabinet is dangerous. I should have enjoyed it else so much. I admire

what is already written." Major Marsh was also the supposed author of The Clubs of

London, published in 1828. This family bore sa. a cross fretty betw. four horses' heads

arg.; and for a crest, a horse's head arg

* Christiana, daughter and heir of Richard Bishop, married Richard Davie of Easton

in Norfolk. Henry Davie, their second son, was Sheriff and Alderman of Norwich. He

married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Webb of Ixworth, Suffolk; and their son, William

Davis of Great Ellingham, married Margaret, daughter of Thomas Gournay of West

Barsham, and they had a daughter, Mary, who married Sir Roger Potts, Bart., whose

daughter and eventually heir, Susan, married Matthew Long of Dunston. The present

family of Long of Dunston is not descended from this marriage, all the issue of which is

extinct ; but from Judith, the sister of Matthew Long, who married Henry Davy of

Swardestone, and their descendants assumed the name of Long. The ancient arms of Long

of Dunston are arg., three pales sa., on each three leopards' heads or.; and for a crest, on a

hill is vert. a greyhound pass., collared and chained or. Some account of the Yarmouth

family of B ISHOP has already been given (see vol. i., p. 109). William Bishop who, in the

reign of Edward VI., subscribed £40 towards the sustentation of the haven (being nearly

four times as much as any other member of the aldermanic body), also advanced £23 to be

devoted to the same purpose, receiving in pledge "one cope and one vestment of cloth of

gold with the awbe and the amess thereunto belonging," the property of the church. He

died in 1531, leaving by his will £40 more "for the use of the haven." The arms of this

family were quartered, as we have seen, by Sir Charles Potts of Mannington, the fifth

baronet and the last of his race, who was fourth in descent from Sir John Potts the royalist,

who successfully contested the representation of Yarmouth in 1660, (See vol. i., p. 38, and

ante. p. 100.) Mannington Hall is now a seat of the Earl of Orford 1 .

t Cranage was a due levied by the corporation to defray the expenses of maintaining

the crane. This was one of the public places at which it was usual to

1 Mannington Hall in 2007 is in possession of Lord Walpole, together with the

original seat of the Walpoles (where Nelson visited), Wolterton Hall.

236

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

crane were measured the "seven leuks," to which extent the exclusive privilege

of Yarmouth as to the buying and selling of herrings during the free fair was

limited; whereby the long dispute between that town and Lowestoft was finally

settled. By the 31 Edw. III. c. ii., none should buy or sell herrings in Kirkley

Road during the Free Fair at Yarmouth; and the 46 Edw. III. limited this

prohibition to seven leuks, but united Kirkley Road to Yarmouth. It was

contended on the part of Lowestoft that Kirkley Road was a mile south of

Lowestoft, and distant ten miles from Yarmouth, and therefore beyond the

limits; whilst on the other hand it was insisted that the latin word leuca signified

more than a mile, that the seven leuks were to be admeasured from the haven's

month, and that Kirkley Road, wherever situate, was united to Yarmouth. If

these pretentions could have been maintained, the Lowestoft herring fisheries

would have been at the mercy of Yarmouth; they were therefore strenuously

opposed by Lowestoft, and the contention between the two towns continued for

two centuries, during which there were repeated appeals to the courts of law, the

king in council, and both Houses of Parliament; and occasionally physical force

was used which sometimes resulted in bloodshed. At last in 1597 an Act of

Parliament was passed which decided that leuca was a mile of eight furlongs,

and directed that the seven miles should be measured from the Crane Quay.

This settled the question for a time; but in 1659 the people of Yarmouth revived

the dispute, and in 1660 they took the law into their own hands and actually sent

"a vessel of war, with a flag on her main topmast head, having twenty-five men

on "board, armed with swords, half pikes, muskets, and great store of stones,"

into Kirkley Road, there to ride at anchor, and "by virtue" of a commission,

under the hands of the Bailiffs and the Justices of the Peace and the Seal of the

Town prevent the delivery of herrings at or near Lowestoft during the time of

the Free Fair at Yarmouth. The names of the audacious men who signed this

remarkable document were Nicholas Cuttinge* and James Symonds, bailiffs,

make proclamations. By the Haven Act of 1866, the crane is now vested in the

Haven Commissioners.

* Some notice has already been taken (vol. i., p. 357) of the family of Cutting.

The Rev. Leonard Cutting, who went to New England, preached at the Episcopal

GREAT YARMOUTH

237

and John Carter, George England, and John Woodroffe, justices of the peace. A

speedy appeal on the part of Lowestoft was made to the Iring in council, and

after the opinion of the attorney-general had been taken, the case was carried to

the House of Lords where it was heard at the bar, and a point of law arising, the

same was referred to the judges; and ultimately the House decided that the

Sheriffs of Norfolk and Suffolk should make a new admeasurement of the seven

miles from the Crane Key, within which the people of Yarmouth should have

their privileges and no farther, On the 27th of May, 1662, seven county justices

with other "gentlemen, of quality" assembled at the bridge foot at nine o'clock

in the morning to witness the admeasurement. The Under-Sheriff of Suffolk was

there, but they had to wait ‘till eleven o'clock before the Under-Sheriff of

Norfolk, Mr. Roger Smith of Norwich, put in an appearance. At first he said in

excuse that his chief "was at his house thirty miles distant and not in health,"

but, after a conversation with the bailiffs, he pretended to expect him and

desired to have the business suspended as long as possible. The morning being

far spent the under-sheriffs were urged on the part of Lowestoft to begin the

admeasurement, but Smith "made several cavils," declaring the order of the

house was "not of sufficient validity" to dispose of other people's rights, and

that the only mode of composing the differences was by a trial at common law."

Moreover he asserted that the whole river from the bridge to the haven's mouth

(fully two miles) was the "Crane Quay," and that the admeasurement might be

taken from the latter place. The county justices having satisfied themselves that

the Crane Quay was the place where the crane stood, required the under-sheriffs

to commence measuring from the crane itself, but he of Norfolk "continued

obstinate," and went to dinner with the bailiffs. At three o'clock in the afternoon

he was again requested to commence the admeasurement, but Smith, being by

this

Churches at Hampstead and Oyster Bay in Long Island. He settled at the former place in

1766, and took a wife from his French Huguenot family of Pintart. They had a son,

William Cutting, who about the year 1800 married Gertrude, daughter of Walter

Livingston, Esq., who was of the elder branch of that distinguished American family.

Their second son, Francis Brockholst Cutting, the eminent New York advocate, died in

1870.

238

THE PERLUSTRATION OF

time elevated by good cheer, “returned many unhandsome answers,”

whereupon, after the delay of an hour, the friends of Lowestoft

determined to make the admeasurement by the Under-Sheriff of Suffolk

alone, assisted by "two surveyors of honest reputation and sufficient

ability" and a "sub-surveyor." They commenced at the crane, and were

"obstructed" by Smith as far as the South Gate, and were followed by

"great multitudes with much insolence, provoking language, and many

disturbances, no magistrate appearing to disperse them." At last the task

was completed half an hour before sunset. The contemptuous behaviour

of Smith having been reported to the House of Lords, he was taken into

custody by the serjeant-at-arms; and having been brought to the bar he,

upon his "marrow-bones," begged pardon for the "scandalous words "he

had uttered against the honor and dignity of that high court, and was

then discharged on payment of his fees.* Thus was this long dispute

finally settled, but Yarmouth retained her admiralty jurisdiction as far as

Easton Ness, including Lowestoft and Kirkley Road, until the passing of

the Municipal Corporation Act in 1835.

A family named C RANE has been of long continuance in the town.

In 1370 Thomas Crane was one of the parties examined before

Reginald de Eccles and Edmund Gurnay, two of the king's justices,

upon the vexed question of the annexation of Kirkley Road. In 1461

Thomas Crane was Prior of Yarmouth. In 1596 "a serviceable ship for a

man-of-war for the town" was procured of Gilbert Crane on hire; and

before going to sea she was valued by "four honest men" at £425, that

the town might know what they had to pay "in case any misfortune

should happen, to her." In 1624 Thomas Crane was named as one of the

"delinquents" who had exported herrings in "stranger bottoms" contrary

to the navigation laws then in force. He was a member of the

corporation, and in 1626 acted with those who resisted the attempted

* Formerly any one brought before either House of Parliament had to kneel at

the bar. In 1750 a Mr. Murray not heeding the speaker when he roared out "on,

your knees, sir, on your knees," was sent to Newgate, where he remained until a

prorogation. On another occasion a printer having in this posture begged pardon,

on rising deliberately wiped his knees and then significantly exclaimed "What a

---- dirty house this is 1 ." This act of humiliation has not been exacted of late years.

1 Swear words or oaths then were very different to now. Such as “gadzooks”

might have been uttered, so it would help to have the blank filled in!

GREAT YARMOUTH

239

change of local government so often referred to. Three years later the

corporation ejected Alderman George Hardware, the leader of the

opposite faction, from their body, and elected Crane to fill his place; but

Hardware having appealed to the Privy Council, the corporation were

compelled to reinstate him and to dismiss Crane, who in his turn

appealed to the Privy Council. They directed that he might "continue to

sit in his seat at church and be restored to his place of alderman

whenever a vacancy happened." This occurred soon after, and in 1633

he was elected bailiff. When the civil war broke out he contributed to

the value of £35 in “plate, pieces of eight, and gold rings,” and was

made treasurer of the fund. In the following year he was again chosen

bailiff; and in 1644 was named one of the commanders of the local

militia in a commission issued by the Earl of Manchester; and in 1648

he signed the Solemn League and Covenant. In 1650 the corporation

presented him with a piece of plate for the great pains taken by him for

the town in the office of treasurer of the orphan's fund.* He adhered to

his party when they were in extremis, for he voted for the election of

Miles Corbet in 1660. Bailiff Burton having been by Act of Parliament

declared incapable of holding any office in the corporation, Thomas

Johnson was on the 3rd of September elected to serve in his stead for

the short residue of the official, year; but it so happened that Johnson,

died on the 23rd of September, and Thomas Crane was elected for the

remaining six days, He died before the end of the year, and was buried

in the chancel of St. Nicholas' Church, f

* It was the practice of the corporation to receive sums of money put into their hands

by executors and others, or bequeathed by will, for the safe keeping of the same and the

payment thereof to the parties entitled at the proper times; acting in fact as trustees of the

funds so entrusted to them. Crane in 1651 was entrusted with one of the keys of the great

chest in the guildhall. It was also customary for the corporation to grant annuities to

persons desirous of "sinking" their money; and in 1772, in consideration of £100, they

agreed to pay Mrs. Bridget Bendish and her daughter £9 a year for their lives.

f The corporation at this time were accustomed to take a fee of £10 for permitting an

interment in the Parish Church; and on this occasion they were pleased to reduce the same

in favor of both Johnson and Crane. A family in Suffolk of the name of Crane bore arg., a

fess. betw. three crosses crosslet fitched gu.; and for a crest, a crane ppr. Another in

Norfolk bore or., on a chev. betw. three cranes rising az., three cinquefoils of the field.