East Anglia: Personal Recollections and Historical AssociationsRitchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
History
East Anglia: Personal Recollections and Historical Associations
Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
East Anglia (England)
Let me now give an anecdote of Dr. Bathurst, the Lord Bishop of Norwich,
too good to be lost. It is told by Sir Charles Leman, who described him
in 1839 as gradually converting his enemies into friends by his uniform
straightforwardness and enlarged Christian principle. One of his clergy,
who had been writing most abusively in newspapers, had on one occasion
some favour to solicit, which he did with natural hesitation. The Bishop
promised all in his power and in the kindest manner, and when the
clergyman was about to leave the room he suddenly turned with, ‘My lord,
I must say, however, I much regret the part I have taken against you; I
see I was quite in the wrong, and I beg your forgiveness.’ This was
readily accorded. ‘But how was it,’ the clergyman continued, ‘you did
not turn your back on me? I quite expected it.’ ‘Why, you forget that I
profess myself a Christian,’ was the reply.
Of a later Bishop—Stanley—whom I can well remember, a dark, energetic
little man, making a speech at Exeter Hall, we hear a little in Caroline
Fox’s memories of old friends. In 1848 she writes: ‘Dined very
pleasantly at the palace; the Bishop was all animation and good humour,
but too unsettled to leave any memorable impression. I like Mrs. Stanley
much—a shrewd, sensible, observing woman. She told me much about her
Bishop, how very trying his position was on first settling at Norwich;
for his predecessor was an amiable, indolent old man, who let things take
their course, and a very bad course too, all which the present man has to
correct as way opens, and continually sacrifice popularity to a sense of
right.’
The following anecdote of Miss Fox and her friends calling at a cottage
in the neighbourhood of Norwich is too good to be lost. ‘A young woman,’
she writes, ‘told us that her father was nearly converted, and that a
little more teaching would complete the business,’ adding, ‘He quite
believes that he is lost, which is, of course, a great consolation to the
old man.’ That story is racy of the soil. It is in that way the East
Anglian peasantry who have any religion at all talk; they have no hope of
a man who does not feel that he is lost. Well, there are many ways to
heaven, and that must comfort some of us who still believe that man was
made in the image of his Maker, a little lower than the angels, crowned
with glory and honour, and not destined to an eternity of misery for the
sins of a day.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SUFFOLK CAPITAL.
The Orwell—The Sparrows—Ipswich notabilities—Gainsborough—Medical
men—Nonconformists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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