Sunbury-on-Thames

“ Yet how short seems the past to the recollection of each mortal man! how long, and wide, and interminable, is the cloudy future to the gaze of imagination!
Many years had passed since the eventful night recorded in our last chapter; and to the boy, Wilton Brown, all that memory comprised seemed but one brief short hour out of life's long day.
The Earl of Sunbury had fulfilled what he had undertaken towards him, exactly and conscientiously. He was a man, as we have shown, of kindly feelings, and of a generous heart: although he was a politician, a courtier, and a man of the world. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In half an hour every man in Sunbury, owning a good pair of legs, and even a number of women and boys, set forth to search the roads and fields, for it was hard sometimes to tell which was which, in the direction of Hanworth. This was no small proof of the good-will and brave humanity of our neighbourhood; for any of these people might have lost themselves in the numb frost, and the depth of drift ”

“ The mob on Tower Hill demanded Sudbury; Sudbury was to be delivered to them; give them Sudbury. The awful glare of fire shone into the Tower casements, and the King looked out and saw the houses of many of his nobles being burnt to the ground. The Savoy was on fire, Westminster added flames to colour the waters of the Thames, and fire was seen to rise from the northern heights. Richard was but a boy, and so hard a trial found him almost unequal to the strain it imposed. ”

“ In a ‘Visitation of Middlesex’ dated 1634 he was described as ‘of Sunbury.’ According to the same authority he had two children—a son Francis, who married a lady named Cory; and a posthumous daughter, Posthuma, who married a man named Speare. ”

“ Yet busy, smoky, and in some spots ugly and squalid as it is, Sunderland hardly deserves the censure that has been heaped upon it as a town where “earth and water are alike black and filthy,” through whose murky atmosphere the blue sky seldom shows itself, and whose architectural features are utterly contemptible. Sunderland has a number of fine buildings and handsome thoroughfares, and a large part of the town is lifted clear of the dingy streets by the wharves and river-bank. ”

“ He retired, then, to the inn, where, for the first time during all his many visits to London, he had taken up his residence; and there, pacing up and down the room, he thought bitterly over Lord Byerdale's proposal. The situation offered to him was far inferior to what he had been led to expect; and he evidently saw, that the demeanour of the Earl himself would render every circumstance connected with it painful, or at least unpleasant. Yet, what was he to do? There were, indeed, a thousand other ways of gaining his livelihood, at least till the Earl of Sunbury were set free ”

“ In 1801 Sunbury was described as “a seaport in Liberty County, favoured with a safe and convenient harbour,” as being “a very pleasant, healthy place,” and promising without doubt to become “a port of commercial consequence.” “It is resorted to,” says Sibbald, “by many persons during the Summer months; it has an Academy under an able instructor.” [229]
The most famous institution of learning in Southern Georgia, for many years, was the Sunbury Academy. It was established by an act of the Legislature assented to [213] the first of February, 1788. ”

“ So the broad pale Thames is loved not like the tawny springs of Tyne:
⁠Choice is clear between them for the soul whose vision holds in fee
⁠Here the limitless north-eastern, there the strait south-western sea.
Choice is clear, but dear is either; nor has either not in store
Many a likeness, many a written sign of spirit-searching lore,
⁠Whence the soul takes fire of sweet remembrance, magnified and blest. ”

“ Chertsey, next up the river, took on the work. Like Westminster—though, by tradition, a few years later than Westminster—its foundation goes back to the birth of England. Its history is known in some detail, and is full of incident, so that it may be called the pivot upon which, presumably, turned the development of the Thames Valley above London for two hundred years. Its site is worth noting. The rich, but at first probably swampy, pasturage upon the Surrey side was just such a position as one foundation after another up and down England settled on. ”

“ Mountainous, with great amount of fertile land, watered by the Susquehanna River and tributaries. Chief industry is coal mining.
County seat, Sunbury, population 15,721, on site of a populous Indian village named Shamokin, occupied variously by different tribes; in 1745, the town contained about fifty houses and three hundred inhabitants; the Six Nations used it as a tarrying place for their war parties against the Catawbas of the South. ”

“ It is, moreover, in touch with much beautiful Surrey scenery and within easy reach by water of many picturesque riverside villages, such as Thames Ditton, much frequented by boating men and anglers, and East Molesey on the junction of the Mole with the Thames opposite Hampton Court, a favourite resort of holiday-makers in the summer, when the towing-path is lined with gaily decorated house-boats and pleasure-crafts of great variety are constantly passing up and down stream. ”

“ In England, young Sumner, only feeling himself standing on the threshold of life, was received like a man of already achieved distinction. Every circle of a society, ordinarily so exclusive, was open to him. ”

“ South England is everywhere fertile, everywhere well watered, and nowhere divided, as is the North, by long districts of bare country, or of hills snowbound in winter, or of morass. Its forests, though numerous, have never formed one continuous belt; even the largest of them, the Forest of the Weald, between the downs of Surrey and Kent and those of Sussex, was but twenty miles across—large enough to nourish a string of hunting villages upon the north and the south edges of it; but not large enough to isolate the Thames Valley from the southern coast. ”

“ Thus the Earl of Sunbury, though, Heaven knows, no man on earth could be less childish in his keen and calculating thoughts, or in all his ordinary habits and occupations, yet found a relief, and an enjoyment, in talking with the boy, in eliciting all his fresh and picturesque ideas, and in marking the train and course which thought naturally takes before it is tutored to follow the direction of art. ”

“ Sumner loved England — had loved her as long as he lived — from a feeling of consanguinity, for the treasures of literature she had given to the world, for the services she had rendered to human freedom, for the blows she had struck at slavery, for the sturdy work she had done for the cause of progress and civilization, for the many dear friends he had among her citizens. Such was his impulse, and no man was more incapable of pandering to a vulgar prejudice. ”

“ Sunderland, situated on a tongue of land, descending steeply to the river, is not seen till it be nearly approached, and offers an handsome entrance through a street of modern houses, a new creation grown out of the improving trade of the place. ”

“ Lord Somers, the only man to whom he would listen, was (according to Cunningham) ‘in constant fear of his bringing all things into confusion by his boldness and inexperience. Sunderland soon began to discredit the old whigs and to form new ones, and endeavoured to raise contention among the nobility, to dictate to the queen, to impose upon the parliament and people, and to ensnare Mr. Harley.’ During 1708 his indiscreet interference in the Scottish elections gave great uneasiness to Marlborough and Godolphin, and even caused the duchess to remonstrate. ”

“ Sunderland was certainly startled at his face.
"Who spoke to me?" asked William thickly.
"The Prince of Orange," answered the Earl, "cannot fail before anything—the King of England must not——"
"Fail?" muttered the King. "Fail? Have I failed? They put too much upon me. Did they tell you of the Queen? My enemies may be satisfied now, for I shall never lift my head again——"
"The Queen," said Sunderland, "will not depart in peace unless she leaveth you calm. Sire, for her sake will you not recall your ancient courage?" ”

“ Quin was tried and acquitted. (Cunningham, abridged.) The Pope's Head Tavern was in existence in 1756.
THE OLD SWAN, THAMES-STREET,
Was more than five hundred years ago a house for public entertainment: for, in 1323, 16 Edw. II., Rose Wrytell bequeathed "the tenement of olde tyme called the Swanne on the Hope in Thames-street," in the parish of St. Mary-at-hill, to maintain a priest at the altar of St. Edmund, King and Martyr, "for her soul, and the souls of her husband, her father, and mother:" and the purposes of her bequest were established ”

“ Sunderland had been uneasy from the first moment at which his name had been mentioned in the House of Commons. He was now in an agony of terror. The whole enigma of his life, an enigma of which many unsatisfactory and some absurd explanations have been propounded, is at once solved if we consider him as a man insatiably greedy of wealth and power, and yet nervously apprehensive of danger. ”

“ Nor is this river-strand to be despised when the winds of “chill October” have stripped the trees and left but bare branches, which look mournful and desolate to those who know only the Thames of sunshine and boating flannels. The stream runs brown, brimming, and turbid, as it swirls along laden with a burden of russet leaves. The angler, happily, can follow his museful sport in all seasons, and to him, as to other contemplative men, the river has attractions in autumn not smaller than those of summer, though different. ”

“ With Sunderland, along with Richard Talbot and Henry Jermyn (afterwards Lord Dover) [q. v.] , he formed a sort of secret inner council, and it was by the machinations of this cabal that Sunderland eventually supplanted Rochester in the king's confidence; at the same time the king entrusted to Petre the conversion of Sunderland. James recognised in him ‘a resolute and undertaking man,’ and resolved to assign him an official place among his advisers. ”

“ He must needs bestir himself in obedience to the high behest. The performance of this task is the special mission of great men. It was without doubt Sumner’s, for he stood for the manhood of the North, of the slave, of the Republic. For this he toiled strenuously all his life long. It shines in every paragraph of that memorable speech, and of the shorter one in defence of the New England clergy made at midnight on that black Thursday of May, which closed the bitter struggle and consummated the demolition of the old slave wall. ”

“ There is a quiet, solemn, lapping of the waters; barges at rest, sailing ships at anchor, a yacht lying here and there, break the line of the sky with their tapering masts and their sails partially furled; a belated steam-tug pants upward, with asthmatic breath, and from either shore comes the dull regular throb of half-suspended life. The Lower Thames is never so imposing as in the night-time, when the moon is pouring down long streaks of light on the throbbing waters, and even the brown piles of the river bank seem tinged with gold. ”

“ He may have thought, with good reason, that, though little confidence could be placed in Sunderland's professions, much confidence might be placed in Sunderland's situation; and the truth is that Sunderland proved, on the whole, a more faithful servant than a much less depraved man might have been. He did indeed make, in profound secresy, some timid overtures towards a reconciliation with James. ”

“ Many a hot anti-slavery zeal had cooled under the social blandishments with which the South knew so well how to impregnate the atmosphere of the national capital, and many a high courage had given way before the haughty assumption and fierce menace of Southern men in Congress. Mr. Sumner had to pass that ordeal. He was at first petted and flattered by Southern society, but, fond as he was of the charms of social intercourse, and accessible to demonstrative appreciation, no blandishments could touch his convictions of duty. ”

“ Sunderland's day to our own. But though William showed his own political genius in understanding and adopting Sunderland's plan, it was only slowly and tentatively that he ventured to carry it out in practice. In spite of the temporary reaction Sunderland believed that the balance of political power was really on the side of the Whigs. ”

“ Coming in from the eastward, the bright colouring of the lightship marking the part of the river committed to the charge of an Admiral (the Commander-in-Chief at the Nore) accentuates the dreariness and the great breadth of the Thames Estuary. But soon the course of the ship opens the entrance of the Medway, with its men-of-war moored in line, and the long wooden jetty of Port Victoria, with its few low buildings like the beginning of a hasty settlement upon a wild and unexplored shore. The famous Thames barges sit in brown clusters upon the water with an effect of birds floating upon a pond. ”