Fragments of Two Centuries: Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King. Alfred Kingston
debates in which the facts can be read up from various almanacks. The meaning of it is of course that good nature between man and man and good sense in general society are most productive of happiness.
The following is quoted of a different type:—
"Which of the three learned Professions—Law, Physic, or Divinity—has been most useful to Society?—Law 7, Physic 1, Divinity 9."
This was rather hard upon the doctors, it must be confessed, but, then, society had no reason to be very grateful to a class of men who in those days dealt so largely in bleeding, blistering and purging! It would be interesting to know what sort of a vote would be given on such a question now. Probably it would be found that the doctors had pulled up a bit during the last hundred years.
Here is another on the State and individual opinion:—
"Has the State a Right to take Cognizance of any Opinions whatever, either civil, political, or religious?—A, 6; N, 12."
The following shows the financial insecurity of the times:—
"Ought country Banks to be encouraged in Great Britain"—A majority of more than two to one were of opinion that they ought not! This was in 1791.
There were, of course, topics of a more strictly controversial kind, bearing upon tithes, Church Establishment, Test Acts, &c., the discussion of which was natural enough to a body constituted as the Royston Book Club was, chiefly of Dissenting ministers and wealthy adherents in their congregations. I have, however, quoted enough to show that it was not merely a sectarian conventicle, but a forum for intellectual debate in its fullest sense. Upon this point the following three questions may be added:—
"Is there any foundation in fact for the popular Belief of Ghosts and Apparititions [sic]?—J. Phillips.—Y, 15; n, 26."
If fifteen men of education voted for the Ghosts can we wonder at the stronghold they had among the common people, and that it has taken the hundred years which have elapsed to get them generally disestablished?
"Whether Old Bachelors ought to be most pitied, envied or blamed?"—No verdict, probably the bachelors were in pretty full force and resented the liberty implied by the question!
"Whether Good Sense, with a deficiency of Good Temper, or Good Temper with a deficiency of Good Sense, be preferable in domestic life?—W. Nash.—12 in favour of Good sense, 14 Good Temper."
That the debates were often characterised by considerable freedom of thought and utterance is evident from other sources, as when the gifted young barrister of Bury St. Edmunds (Henry Crabb Robinson) by his outspoken sentiments in one of the debates, and admitted leanings to Godwin's philosophy, brought down the reproof from the great Robert Hall upon his friend Mr. William Nash, for receiving the young barrister of freedom of opinion on friendly terms into his family at Royston. But the family of the quiet and eminently respectable country lawyer appear to have had no cause to regret the enduring friendship of the brilliant young conversationalist, who afterwards became an intimate friend of Wordsworth, Southey the Laureate, and the Lake School, with Goethe, Madame de Staël, and many other great names in the world of letters and art, and even had the offer of the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Sax Weimar.
At such a time, however, these debates did make a good deal of stir, in fact "as the members were credited with holding what at that time were called dangerous principles, their meetings used to cause a great excitement in the place."
The peculiarity of these debates was the prevailing discussion of general principles. The region of practical politics for many of the coming questions was as yet almost half-a-century off, and having no effective means of influencing many matters which did, nevertheless, touch their daily lives very closely, they turned their attention inwards to the mental exercise of debating abstract questions of high philosophy and of morals.
The Book Club continued its meetings at the Green Man from 1761 until 1789, in which year it was "agreed to go to the Red Lyon," and from that time, during the remainder of the last and the earlier years of the present century, it continued to meet at the Red Lion, in the same room, curiously enough, which had accommodated the old Royston Club, and the two extremes of social and public life I have indicated, were in turn brought under the same roof! To many of the old habitués of the place under the older institution this use of their place of meeting by "traitors, republicans and levellers," as they would have called them, would have been little short of desecration, and that it was possible for two such institutions to have existed for some time at least side by side, can only be explained by the fact that one was an institution reflecting the prevailing belief of the town at that time, while the other brought together many of the county families of the old order.
The only person living who ever attended one of the Book Club's debates, I believe, is Mr. Henry Fordham, who can just remember attending one meeting at the Red Lion towards the end of the Club's debating period.
Have we degenerated since the period of this stiff and vigorous debating of our great grandfathers? Would it be possible now to bring together forty or fifty ladies and gentlemen all eager for debating questions of moral philosophy, and public justice? Has the age of plain living and high thinking completely deserted our local life, and left us comparatively high living and plain thinking instead? The conditions of life have so greatly changed that the comparison need not be pressed home, yet these are questions which naturally arise after a glimpse at the old Royston Book Club.
That the education of that day was very exact is afforded by the announcement of Mr. Jeremiah Slade, the keeper of a boarding school at Fowlmere in 1766, which reads:—"Young gentlemen genteely boarded and instructed in the art of true and correct spelling, and of right pronunciation; reading English with a true emphasis, writing all the most useful hands with accuracy and freedom and elegance; arithmetic in all its branches in the most concise manner with its application to trade and commerce," &c., &c.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PAROCHIAL PARLIAMENT AND THE OLD POOR-LAW.
In these days, when so much is heard in favour of coming back to the Parochial area as the unit of local government, it may be of interest just to glance back at the condition of things when, in the last century, the parish vestry was almost omnipotent, and controlled all sorts of things, from a pauper's outfit, or from marrying a pauper, to the maintenance of the fire engine, the repair of the Church, and the wine used at the Communion! The oldest materials I have found available for obtaining a glimpse of the Parochial Parliament at work, both in Royston and neighbouring parishes, have been the Royston parish books, and sundry papers and accounts which have come under my notice belonging to neighbouring parishes.
It was customary for everyone attending a vestry to sign his name or make his mark, a good old custom worth continuing in every parish vestry—and it was no uncommon thing to find from a dozen to fifteen names entered. Parish business was not in those days the dry affair it often is in these days of "getting together a quorum." If the truth must be told, our forefathers in the good old times had a way of preventing its being "dry," and the parish accounts I have no doubt in every village in the district as well as in Royston, still record the unvarnished tale! The custom was for the clergyman to announce in Church on Sunday the day and hour of meeting of the vestry—generally on a Monday—and also the subject which was to engage the attention of the vestry. Monday morning came and with it the tolling of the bell to summon the vestry, but this was only the letter and not the spirit of the Local Parliament, which was forthwith adjourned from the Church to a more convenient and also more congenial time and place, viz., at six o'clock in the evening "at the house of William Cobb, at the sign of the Black Swan," or some other name and house as the case might lie.
The general practice