Within _two_ days of the wife's death Crabbe fell ill of a serious malady, worn out as he was with long anxiety and grief. He was for a few days in danger of his life, and so well aware of his condition that he desired that his wife's grave "might not be closed till it was seen whether he should recover." He rallied, however, and returned to the duties of his parish, and to a life of still deeper loneliness. But his old friends at Belvoir Castle once more came to his deliverance. Within a short time the Duke offered him the living of Trowbridge in Wiltshire, a small manufacturing town, on the line (as we should describe it today) between Bath and Salisbury. The value of the preferment was not as great as that of the joint livings of Muston and Allington, so that poor Crabbe was once more doomed to be a pluralist, and to accept, also at the Duke's hands, the vicarage of Croxton Kerrial, near Belvoir Castle, where, however, he never resided. And now the time came for Crabbe's final move, and rector of Trowbridge he was to remain for the rest of his life. He was glad to leave Muston, which now had for him the saddest of associations. He had never been happy there, for reasons we have seen. What Crabbe's son calls "diversity of religious sentiment" had produced "a coolness in some of his parishioners, which he felt the more painfully because, whatever might be their difference of opinion, he was ever ready to help and oblige them all by medical and other aid to the utmost extent of his power." So that in leaving Muston he was not, as was evident, leaving many to lament his departure. Indeed, malignity was so active in one quarter that the bells of the parish church were rung to welcome Crabbe's successor before Crabbe and his sons had quitted the house! For other reasons, perhaps, Crabbe prepared to leave his two livings with a sense of relief. His wife's death had cast a permanent shadow over the landscape. The neighbouring gentry were kindly disposed, but probably not wholly sympathetic. It is clear that there was a certain rusticity about Crabbe; and his politics, such as they were, had been formed in a different school from that of the county families. A busy country town was likely to furnish interests and distractions of a different kind. But before finally quitting the neighbourhood he visited a sister at Aldeburgh, and, his son writes, 'one day was given to a solitary ramble among the scenery of bygone years--Parham and the woods of Glemham, then in the first blossom of May. He did not return until night; and in his note-book I find the following brief record of this mournful visit: "Yes, I behold again the place, The seat of joy, the source of pain; It brings in view the form and face That I must never see again. The night-bird's song that sweetly floats On this soft gloom--this balmy air-- Brings to the mind her sweeter notes That I again must never hear.