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)
He lived at No. 4, South Quay, and it was there, so it is said, that the
resolve was made that King Charles should die.
He is gone, but his room still remains unaltered—a large wainscoted upper
chamber, thirty feet long, with three windows looking on to the quay,
with carved and ornamented chimney-piece and ceiling. A great obscurity,
as was to be expected, hangs over the transaction, as even now there are
men who shrink from lifting up a finger against the Lord’s anointed.
Dinner had been ordered at four, but it was not till eleven, that it was
served, and that the die had been cast. The members of the Secret
Council, we are told, ‘after a very short repast, immediately set off by
post—many for London, and some for the quarters of the army.’ Such is
the account given in a letter, written in 1773, by Mr. Mewling Luson, a
well-known resident in Yarmouth, whose father, Mr. William Luson, was
nearly connected the Cromwell family. Nathaniel Carter, the son-in-law
of Ireton, was in the habit of showing the room, and relating the
occurrence connected with it, which happened when he was a boy. Cromwell
was not at that council. He never was in Yarmouth; but that there was
such consultation there is more than probable. Yarmouth was full of
Cromwellites. In the Market Place, now known as the Weavers’ Arms, to
this day is shown the panelled parlour whence Miles Corbet was used to go
forth to worship in that part of the church allotted to the Independents.
Miles Corbet was the son of Sir Thomas Corbet, of Sprouston, who had been
made Recorder of Yarmouth in the first year of Charles, and who was one
of the representatives of the town in the Long Parliament. The son was
an ardent supporter of the policy of Cromwell, and, like him, laboured
that England might be religious and free and great, as she never could be
under any king of the Stuart race; and he met with his reward. ‘See,
young man,’ said an old man to Wilberforce, as he pointed to a figure of
Christ on the cross, ‘see the fate of a Reformer.’ It was so
emphatically with Miles Corbet. Under the date of 1662 there is the
following entry in the church-book:
‘1662.—Miles Corbet suffered in London.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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