Sudbury, Suffolk

“ From Sudbury in Suffolk, an honest plain Countryman gives us a Letter, in which telling us of a great many Barns blown down, Trees, Chimneys and Tiles, he tells us in the Close, that their Town fared better than they expected, but that for all the neighbouring Towns they are fearfully shatter'd. ”

“ Pickwick left by the Norwich coach. "Eatanswill," as we have seen, being a small borough near Bury St. Edmunds, and on the Norwich coach route, as was Sudbury, the latter's claim gains strength indeed, if it does not actually settle the question. At any rate, no other small borough could be named with any assurance that Dickens had it in his mind. Indeed, in the year 1834, there were only four Parliamentary boroughs in Suffolk, viz. Sudbury, Ipswich, Bury St. ”

“ It is worth the while to make a voyage up this stream, if you go no farther than Sudbury, only to see how much country there is in the rear of us; great hills, and a hundred brooks, and farm-houses, and barns, and hay-stacks, you never saw before, and men every where, Sudbury, that is Southborough men, and Wayland, and Nine-Acre-Corner men, and Bound Rock, where four towns bound on a rock in the river, Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Concord. Many waves are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh, the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes waving ”

“ I have heard the pleasant author of that pleasant story, ‘Crewe Rise,’ remark that the worthies of Suffolk count in greater numbers than the worthies of any other county. If worthiness be “greatness,” in the sense of Jonathan Wild, Suffolk may envy Surrey such a son as Robert Fielding.
The father of this incomparable youth was a cavalier squire, with something like £500 per annum to nourish his dignity. “Bob” was early entered at the Temple, where he behaved like a Templar; was too idle to study the constitution of England, but very actively worked at the ruin of his own. ”

“ They were incorporated in 1553 under the name of the mayor, aldermen and burgesses of Sudbury, and charters were granted to the town by Elizabeth, Charles II. and James II. Its constitution was reformed by the act of 1835. It was represented in parliament by two burgesses from 1558 till its disfranchisement in 1844. The lord of the borough had a market and fair in the 13th century, and three fairs in March, July and December were held in 1792. Markets still exist on Thursdays and Saturdays. ”

“ Those who imagine Suffolk to be a flat and uninteresting county, with no charms for the eye and no associations worth speaking of, are much mistaken. There are few lovelier rivers in England than the Orwell, on which Ipswich stands, up which river the fiery Danes used to sail to plunder all the country round, and on the banks of which Gainsborough learned to love Nature and draw her in all her charms. ”

“ A mile or two further the road is no better than a street; and when it at last gets out into fields across the Brent, the shades of building begin to close upon it again beside Wembley Park, its gaps of green soon becoming more and more filled up by the spasmodic growth of Sudbury, which seems uncertain whether it wants to tack itself on to Wembley or to Harrow. To the north is designed for it a new growth styled the Sudbury Model Garden City, whose placarded promises appear in the fields through which the highway turns shirkingly along the side of Harrow Hill. ”

“ It would be a long list that which gave even the names of the baronial halls in this grand historic county, and it would far exceed our space to give details of its ancient monuments—Roman, Saxon, Danish, and Norman—to say nothing of those that have descended to us from the still earlier Britons, many relics of whom are yet to be found in the neighbourhood. Suffolk is, indeed, if less graced by natural beauties than some other of our English shires, rich among the richest of them in antiquities and in traditions, while it has a high and prominent place in British history. ”

“ But if Monk Soham has no history, its church, St Peter’s, is striking even among Suffolk churches, for the size of the chancel, the great traceried east window, and the font sculptured with the Seven Sacraments. The churchyard is pretty with trees and shrubs—those four yews by the gates a present from FitzGerald; and the rectory, half a mile off, is almost hidden by oaks, elms, beeches, and limes, all of my father’s and grandfather’s planting. Else the parish soon will be treeless. ”

“ There is surely no more beautiful avenue in the kingdom than this, whose trees interlace their branches overhead in the shape of a true Gothic arch, and really form that similitude to a cathedral nave of which we often hear but in avenues so very, very rarely see.
At the crossing of the little Kennett we finally leave Cambridgeshire and come into Suffolk. On the Suffolk side stands the “Red Lodge” inn, a solitary old house on the heaths that again resume, and continue until the chalk is changed for a gravelly soil at the summit of the rise called Chalk Hill. ”

“ At Canterbury they destroyed the archbishop's goods, and on the 12th sacked his manor-house at Lambeth. Sudbury was with the king and the other ministers in the Tower, and the rebels by their messengers demanded that he should be delivered up to them, declaring that he and the other ministers were traitors, and being specially hostile to him because they were excited against him by John Ball. ”

“ In July 1377 he crowned Richard II., and in 1378 John Wycliffe appeared before him at Lambeth, but he only took proceedings against the reformer under great pressure. In January 1380 Sudbury became chancellor of England, and the revolting peasants regarded him as one of the principal authors of their woes. ”

“ And how is my Lord Howick, born and bred up in Northumberland, to know how to judge of a population suitable to Suffolk? Suffolk is a county teeming with production, as well as with people; and how brutal must that man be who would attempt to reduce the agricultural population of Suffolk to that of the number of Northumberland! ”

“ That description fits Sudbury admirably and faithfully, but does not by any means fit either Ipswich or Norwich, the two other claimants, and the evidence of Mr. C. Finden Waters, a one-time proprietor of the "Rose and Crown" at Sudbury, makes it almost certain that Sudbury was the place Dickens had in mind.
Mr. Waters, in 1906, devoted much time and research in order to establish his claim, and in March, 1907, read a paper, setting forth in detail the various points which led him to that conclusion, to the members of a then newly formed coterie who called themselves "The Eatanswill Club." ”

“ I find very little remarkable on this side of Suffolk, but what is on the sea-shore as above. The inland country is that which they properly call High Suffolk, and is full of rich feeding grounds and large farms, mostly employed in dairies for making the Suffolk butter and cheese, of which I have spoken already. Among these rich grounds stand some market towns, though not of very considerable note; such as Framlingham, where was once a royal castle, to which Queen Mary retired when the Northumberland faction, in behalf of the Lady Jane, endeavoured to supplant her. ”

“ It cannot mould the barren and stubborn soil to any ideal human shapes, or develop upon it any rich harmonious human life, such as I inhale always, with immense satisfaction, in this reposeful and beautifully wrought land of Suffolk. ”

“ Edmunds to give the bishop his title; and Bury St. Edmunds scorned to submit to the richer but less aristocratic Ipswich. So in desperation the diocese had to be called ‘St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich.’
To look at an Ordnance map one would say that Suffolk was very flat and eminently agricultural. The highest hill I could find was 402 feet above the sea; seldom does the land rise over 200 feet. Yet a motor drive [Pg 85] in Suffolk gives one the sensation of having been on a switchback railway. One is never on the level, and some of the little ascents and descents are very sharp. ”

“ The Hawkesbury is a noble river, particularly opposite to Windsor Lodge, the house, or rather mansion, of the owner of the Green [Pg 388] Hills around. If real worth and talent, if public and private benevolence, with the most expansive views of men and things, together with acts of such virtue and dignity as speak the spirit of true nobility, could be found in any one, they existed in the mind and heart of that youth, who left the shores of old England a simple, single-minded Suffolk farmer’s son, to become a man of wealth and goodness in a distant land. ”

“ The news of what was passing in the city produced a rapid change of policy in the Tower. Many of the very counsellors, who the day before had set their hands to resolutions to stand by the Lady Jane, hastened to be present at the proclamation of Queen Mary, and despatched messengers to that princess, humbly soliciting her pardon for their offences. Suffolk, as much dejected as he had before been exalted, proceeded to his daughter’s apartments, ordered all the ceremonials of royalty to cease, and admonished her to bear, with what patience she could, a return to private life. ”

“ The French contrived to find occasion for extorting a promise to surrender all the English possessions in Anjou and Maine, a concession that was to prove fatal to Suffolk and his policy. Still for the time his success was complete, and his position as the personal friend of the young king and queen seemed secure. Humphrey of Gloucester died in February 1447, within a few days of his arrest, and six weeks later Cardinal Beaufort died also. Suffolk was left without an obvious rival, but his difficulties were great. ”

“ SOUTHWELL, Sir RICHARD (1504–1564) , courtier and official, born in 1504, was descended from a family long settled in the east of England. His grandfather, Sir Richard Southwell of Barham Hall, Suffolk, acquired Woodrising in Norfolk by his marriage with Amy, daughter and coheiress of Sir Edmund Wichingham (cf. Paston Letters) . He left two sons ”

“ In the London of to-day the heads of some of our greatest establishments are Suffolk men. We all know the stately pile in Holborn, once Meekings’, now Wallis’s, where all the world and his wife go to buy. Mr. Wallis hails from Stowmarket, and the man who fits up London shops in the most tasty style, Mr. Sage, of Gray’s Inn Road, was a Suffolk carpenter, who, when out of work, with his last guinea got some cards printed, one of which got him a job, which ultimately led on to fame and fortune. ”

“ The dining-room has a fine Jacobean chimney-piece and modern Corinthian pillars. There is a great chimney-piece in another room, which was an altar in a church at Rome. All is huge, and seemed very comfortless.
“It has been a most happy visit to the Suffolks, with whom one is completely at home. As Lady Suffolk says, though they have often wished to be rich, they have been much happier for being poor, for they have all been obliged to do their part in the house and place, and all that has to be carried on there, and so it is to them not only the scene of their life, but of their work.” ”

“ In this part, which we call High Suffolk, there are not so many families of gentry or nobility placed as in the other side of the country. But it is observed that though their seats are not so frequent here, their estates are; and the pleasure of West Suffolk is much of it supported by the wealth of High Suffolk, for the richness of the lands and application of the people to all kinds of improvement is scarce credible; also the farmers are so very considerable and their farms and dairies so large that it is very frequent for a farmer to have £1,000 stock upon his farm in cows only. ”

“ In the first place, we see that the shaded districts lie in a broad band across England from north-east to south-west, from the East Riding of Yorkshire to Dorset and the east part of Somerset.
Secondly, we see that there is a perfectly sharp line of demarcation between the shaded and the non-shaded area, running through Suffolk, Essex, passing through London, and along the border between Surrey and Kent. This line becomes indefinite as it passes through the Weald of Surrey and Sussex, but its termination can be traced in the part of Sussex which lies on the southern slope of the South Downs. ”

“ We have what is not usually the case, the poet’s own account of them, he having written thus to a correspondent in England: “‘The Wayside Inn’ has more foundation in fact than you may suppose. The town of Sudbury is about twenty miles from Cambridge. ”

“ His wealth added to the envy of his enemies, for, to his inherited Yorkshire and Lincolnshire lands, his marriage with Catherine, daughter and heir of Sir John of Wingfield, added a great Suffolk estate, where, fortifying the manor-house of the Wingfields, he made his chief seat. In 1385 he was created earl of Suffolk, a grant from the Crown giving him the castle and honour of Eye with other East Anglian lands formerly held by the Ufford earls. In 1386 the opposition, led by Gloucester, the king’s uncle, pulled him down. ”

“ How long the Suffolks have been associated with the county after which they are named is unknown, but they are mentioned in 1586 in Camden’s Britannia. With an average height of about 16 hands they often have a weight of as much as 2000 ℔., and this may explain the appearance which has given rise to the name of the Suffolk Punch, by which the breed is known. The Suffolk is a resolute and unwearying worker, and is richly endowed with many of the best qualities of a horse. The Suffolk Stud-Book and History of the Breed, published in 1880, is the most exhaustive record of its kind in England. ”