Suffolk

“ Oh, Suffolk! it is frightful to be the bondslave of a woman—a fickle, inconstant woman. But between the depths of love and hate is but a step; and I can pass from one to the other.”
“Do nothing rashly, my dear liege,” said Suffolk; “nothing that may bring with it after-repentance. Do not be swayed by those who have inflamed your jealousy, and who could practise upon it. Think the matter calmly over, and then act. And till you have decided, see neither Catherine nor Anne; and, above all, do not admit Wolsey to your secret counsels.”
“You are his enemy, Suffolk,” said the king sternly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lord Suffolk, you and I must talk of that event.
York. My Lord of Suffolk, within fourteen days
At Bristow I expect my soldiers; ⁠328
For there I'll ship them all for Ireland.
Suf. I'll see it truly done, my Lord of York.
Exeunt. Manet York. York. Now, York, or never, steel thy fearful thoughts,
And change misdoubt to resolution: ⁠332
Be that thou hop'st to be, or what thou art
Resign to death; it is not worth th' enjoying.
Let pale-fac'd fear keep with the mean-born man,
And find no harbour in a royal heart. ”

“ I am not sure that before entering the county of Suffolk in the early part of August, I had been conscious of any personal relation to it save my share in what we all inevitably feel for a province enshrining the birthplace of a Copperfield. The opening lines in David’s history offered in this particular an easy perch to my young imagination; and to recall them to-day, though with a memory long unrefreshed, is to wonder once more at the depth to which early impressions strike down. ”

“ Are you the butcher, Suffolk? where's your knife?
Is Beaufort term'd a kite? where are his talons? ⁠196
Suf. I wear no knife to slaughter sleeping men;
But here's a vengeful sword, rusted with ease,
That shall be scoured in his rancorous heart
That slanders me with murther's crimson badge. ⁠200
Say, if thou dar'st, proud Lord of Warwickshire,
That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey's death.
War. What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him? ⁠203
Queen. He dares not calm his contumelious spirit,
Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,
Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suffolk (371) , eastmost county of England, fronts the North Sea between Norfolk (N.) and Essex (S.) ; is a pleasant undulating county with pretty woods and eastward-flowing streams (Waveney, Aide, Orwell, Stour, &c.) ; long tracts of heathland skirt the coast; agriculture is still the staple industry, wheat the principal crop; is famed for its antiquities, architecture, historic associations, and long list of worthies. Ipswich is the county town. ”

“ The dull neglected peasant, sunk in matter, insolent, gross and servile, makes a startling contrast to our own long-legged, long-headed, thoughtful, Bible-loving ploughman. A week or two in such a place as Suffolk leaves the Scotsman gasping. It seems impossible that within the boundaries of his own island a class should have been thus forgotten. Even the educated and intelligent who hold our own opinions and speak in our own words, yet seem to hold them with a difference or from another reason, and to speak on all things with less interest and conviction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Protestants of Suffolk are godly men and true. Though others of our countrymen have lost their way in darkness, even as we, my lord, did lose our road to-night, theirs is the light and glory.’
‘Did I move them, Gashford ?’ said Lord George. ”

“ One never need be bored, after all, when “composition” really rules. It rules in the way the brown hamlet really disposes itself, and the grey square tower of the church, in just the right relation, peeps out of trees that remind me exactly of those which, in the frontispieces of Birket Foster, offered to my childish credulity the very essence of England. Let me put it directly for old Suffolk that this credulity finds itself here, at the end of time, more than ever justified. ”

“ The King whose favor he never lost sentenced Suffolk to five years' exile. On May 1, 1450, the Duke set sail for France, but the ship on which he embarked was intercepted by a royal man-of-war, Suffolk was compelled to go on board, and on the following day was taken into a small boat and beheaded. His body was cast upon the beach at Dover. The sanguinary deed was probably due to Richard of York, his mortal enemy.—John de la Pole (1442-91) second Duke of Suffolk, only son of the preceding, regained the ducal title in 1455. ”

“ The former route is mainly through the retired Suffolk byways, not in the best condition, but bordered by charming country. Nowhere did we see a more delightful brick-and-timber house than the old manor at Brent Eleigh, though it has degenerated into a mere farm tenement rather better cared for than usual. What a [Pg 20] world of quaint and ancient beauty there is in its many red-tiled gables surmounted by great clustered chimneys, its double mullioned windows and its black-oak and red-brick walls, splashed here and there with clinging masses of ivy. ”

“ After remaining six weeks at Imst, Suffolk received a message, promising him the aid of three to five thousand men for a period of one, two, or three months if necessary. Leaving his steward Killingworth to arrange details with Maximilian, he repaired to Aix-la-Chapelle with letters from the emperor in his favour to the council of that town. After Suffolk's departure Maximilian raised difficulties in performing his promise. But Suffolk was at length informed that Maximilian had persuaded the Count of Hardeck to lend Suffolk twenty thousand gulden. ”

“ We play with it as with the answerless question, the question of the spirit and attitude, never again to be recovered, of the little city submerged. For it was a city, the main port of Suffolk, as even its poor relics show; with a fleet of its own on the North Sea, and a big religious house on the hill. We wonder what were then the 323 apparent conditions of security, and on what rough calculation a community could so build itself out to meet its fate. It keeps one easy company here to-day to think of the whole business as a magnificent mistake. ”

“ Sixteen rebels at least were executed in Suffolk, and still more in Norfolk.
On the breaking out of a fierce quarrel between John of Gaunt [q. v.] and his former ally, Henry Percy, first earl of Northumberland [q. v.] , Suffolk attended the council at Berkhampstead in which the duke brought his charges against the earl, and, on the latter being ordered under arrest, Suffolk joined with Warwick in acting as his surety (Walsingham, ii. 44; Chron. Angliæ, p. 329) . Northumberland now became the favourite of the London mob, and Suffolk won back his old popularity. ”

“ Suffolk played a prominent part with reference to the peasants' revolt of 1381. When Geoffrey (wrongly called John) Litster [see Litster, John] rose in revolt at North Walsham, and marched on 17 June towards Norwich, Suffolk was staying at one of his Norfolk manors, probably Costessey, which is very near the line of march and about four miles from Norwich. He was so popular with the commons that they formed the design to seize him and put him at their head. Suffolk was at supper when he first learnt the sudden approach of the rebels. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To a Suffolk or Norfolk man it is, of course, especially attractive. The reader will go through these pages without being wearied by application. They form a pleasant and entertaining contribution to county literature, and “East Anglia” will, we should think, find its way to many of the east country bookshelves.’—Suffolk Chronicle.
‘The book is as readable and attractive a volume of local chronicles as could be desired. Though all of our readers may not see “eye to eye” with Mr. ”

“ A summary of Ufford's extensive fiefs in Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and London is given in ‘Calendarium Inquisitionum post mortem’ (ii. 300) . The possession of the castles of Framlingham, Eye, and Orford with extensive estates in Central Suffolk, gave him an exceptionally strong position in that county. ”

“ Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, vastly outnumber those which have been observed in all other parts of England, from which it would seem that these countries were more populous, or the people more advanced in the arts, than in the rest of the island, or possibly they may have been the manufacturing district of the period. ”

“ There was no one so proper as himself; but he suspected the fidelity of the Council, and was unwilling to remove himself to a distance from them; he therefore recommended the Duke of Suffolk, the father of Lady Jane, to the command of the expedition. The Council, who were anxious to get rid of Northumberland in order that they might themselves escape to Mary's camp, represented privately that Suffolk was a general of no reputation, that everything depended on decisive proceedings in the outset, and that he alone was the man for the purpose. ”

“ Henry summoned a Parliament to meet, not, as usual, at Westminster, but at Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, where the conspirators would be in the midst of the favourite's retainers. The measures which were adopted were ominous of some serious design. The knights of the shire were ordered to come in arms. The king was conveyed to the town under strong escort, and the men of Suffolk were placed in numerous bodies round the royal lodgings. All the avenues to the town were guarded during the night by pickets of soldiers. ”

“ Norfolk and Suffolk are carucated counties, but while in the other carucated counties it is usual to express the smaller quantities of land in terms of the bovate (8 bovates making one carucate) and to say nothing of acres, in East Anglia, on the other hand, it is uncommon to mention the bovate—in Suffolk we may even find the virgate [1591] —and men reckon by carucates, half-carucates and acres. ”