In this emergency, Burney was offered and accepted the place of organist at Lynn, whither he removed in 1751, and where he spent the nine following years. His stipend was fixed at £100 a year, a handsome sum for those days, and he largely added to it by giving music lessons in the town, and in many of the great houses of Norfolk. The qualities which had stood him in good stead in London proved equally acceptable to the country gentlemen of East Anglia. ‘He scarcely ever entered one of their houses upon terms of business without leaving it on terms of intimacy.’ His journeys to Houghton, Holkham, Kimberley, Rainham and Felbrig were performed on the back of his mare Peggy, who leisurely padded along the sandy cross-roads, while the rider studied a volume of Italian poetry with the aid of a dictionary which he carried in his pocket. As Burney’s income grew, his family also increased. After his third child, Frances, came another daughter, Susanna; next a second son, who was called Charles, and then a fourth daughter, Charlotte. The keen breezes from the Wash helped to brace his spare person, and though constant riding about the country in winter was not desirable exercise, Burney gradually reconciled himself to his provincial lot, which he enlivened by laying plans for his ‘History of Music,’ corresponding with the Grevilles and other old friends, and commencing an acquaintance by letter with Dr. Johnson. In 1759, however, he gained some general reputation by his musical setting of an ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, which was performed with much applause at Ranelagh Gardens; and, stimulated by the exhortations which reached him from various quarters, he prepared to resume his career in the capital. Foremost in urging the step was Samuel Crisp, whom he had met and taken for his mentor at Wilbury House, and of whom we shall have more to say presently. To settle for life among the foggy aldermen of Lynn, wrote Crisp, would be to plant his youth, genius, hopes and fortune against a north wall. Burney took the warning, and in 1760, having sufficiently recruited his constitution, he returned to London with his wife and family.