In most of its local features, as well as in its commercial, civil, and moral interests, the town has, no doubt, greatly improved since the period to which the close of the preceding chapter refers. Navigation and intercourse with other inland places have been facilitated; and trade, adapting itself to existing circumstances, has been extended. More efficient municipal regulations, and advancing civilization, have contributed to the preservation of order, and led to an extension of privileges to the inhabitants. Considerable progress has been made towards an improved system of prison discipline. {34} Schools, public and private, have, in some degree, tended to raise the tone of society, to soften the obdurate, and to tame the rude. The attachment to cruel, sensual, and frivolous amusements has abated, and a regard to the pursuits of literature and science has become perceptible. Nor can it be reasonably doubted that the exercise of an evangelical ministry in the separate congregation of the Independents, for nearly two centuries, and the labours of Christian ministers of other denominations, have been productive of incalculable moral, intellectual, and religious advantages to the town and neighbourhood. The aspect of the place must have been very different when Mary succeeded to the crown of England. The parish church and its “beautiful gate,” were then _more_ beautiful than at present. The tower, still the characteristic local feature of the town, was fresh and fair from the hands of the architect. Besides the wealthy abbey, there had been many contributors to the erection of these buildings, who had evinced a zeal in the completion of them worthy the imitation of protestants. But there is reason to believe that to those features a strong contrast was presented in the generally mean appearance, the gross ignorance, and moral deformity of the town. Coarse rushes, produced by the common lands with an abundance sufficiently indicative of an almost worthless soil, furnished the carpet and the covering of most of the dwelling-houses. {35a} Superstition prevailed in the public services of the sanctuary. The “men of wyrship” appear to have been greatly deficient in forbearance and liberality, while a large portion of the inhabitants were boisterously tenacious of civil rights, which they were scarcely competent to manage. {35b} The seal of the late corporation of Beccles Fen bears such a representation of the gaol, existing in 1584, as leaves no room to question the account of “one having _hewed_ himself out of it.” {36}