Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
Came to the Grove (Mr. Withers's), near Holt, along with Mr. Clarke.
Through _Norwich_ to _Aylsham_ and then to _Holt_. On our road we passed
the house of the late _Lord Suffield_, who married Castlereagh's wife's
sister, who is a daughter of the late Earl of Buckinghamshire, who had
for so many years that thumping sinecure of eleven thousand a year in
Ireland, and who was the son of a man that, under the name of Mr.
Hobart, cut such a figure in supporting Lord North and afterwards Pitt,
and was made a peer under the auspices of the latter of these two
heaven-born Ministers. This house, which is a very ancient one, was,
they say, the birth-place of Ann de Boleyne, the mother of Queen
Elizabeth. Not much matter; for she married the king while his real wife
was alive. I could have excused her, if there had been no marrying in
the case; but hypocrisy, always bad, becomes detestable when it resorts
to religious ceremony as its mask. She, no more than Cranmer, seems, to
her last moments, to have remembered her sins against her lawful queen.
Fox's "_Book of Martyrs_," that ought to be called "the _Book of
Liars_," says that Cranmer, the recanter and re-recanter, held out his
offending hand in the flames, and cried out "that hand, that hand!" If
he had cried out _Catherine! Catherine!_ I should have thought better of
him; but it is clear that the whole story is a lie, invented by the
protestants, and particularly by the sectarians, to white-wash the
character of this perfidious hypocrite and double apostate, who, if
bigotry had something to do in bringing him to the stake, certainly
deserved his fate, if any offences committed by man can deserve so
horrible a punishment.--The present LORD SUFFIELD is that Mr. EDWARD
HARBORD, whose father-in-law left him 500_l._ to buy a seat in
Parliament, and who refused to carry an address to the late beloved and
lamented Queen, because Major Cartwright and myself were chosen to
accompany him! Never mind, my Lord; you will grow less fastidious! They
say, however, that he is really good to his tenants, and has told them,
that he will take anything that they can give. There is some sense in
this! He is a great Bible Man; and it is strange that he cannot see,
that things are out of order, when _his_ interference in this way can be
at all _necessary_, while there is a Church that receives a tenth part
of the produce of the earth.--There are some oak woods here, but very
poor. Not like those, not near like the worst of those, in Hampshire and
Herefordshire. All this eastern coast seems very unpropitious to trees
of all sorts.--We passed through the estate of a Mr. Marsin, whose house
is near the road, a very poor spot, and the first really poor ground I
have seen in Norfolk. A nasty spewy black gravel on the top of a sour
clay. It is worse than the heaths between Godalming and Liphook; for,
while it is too poor to grow anything but heath, it is too cold to give
you the chirping of the grasshopper in summer. However, Mr.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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