se; the
Church was weak, now it has become strong. In most of the villages were
good Dissenting congregations, but the landlords set their faces against
the Dissenters--"pograms" was what they were contemptuously called--and
the landlord's lady had no mercy on them. The good things in the hall
were only reserved for those who attended the parish church. At that
time we had two bishops; both resided in Norwich. One was the Bishop of
the Diocese; the other was the Rev. John Alexander, who preached in
Princes Street Chapel, where the Rev. Dr. Barrett has succeeded him--a
man universally beloved and universally popular, as he deserved to be.
As for the clergy of that day, I fear many of them led scandalous lives:
there was hardly one when I was a boy, within reach of the parish where I
was born, whom decent women, with any serious thoughts at all, could go
to hear, and consequently they, with their families, went to the nearest
Independent Chapel, where it was a sight to see the farmers' gigs on the
green in the chapel yard. They go to the Church now, as the clergyman is
quite as devoted to his high calling and quite as earnest in his vocation
as his Independent brother. Bishop Bathurst had let things slide too
much, as was to be expected of a man whose great complaint in his old age
was that they had sent him a dean who could not play whist. Bishop
Stanley's wife complained to Miss Caroline Fox how trying was her
husband's position at Norwich, as his predecessor was an amiable,
indolent old man, who let things take their course, and a very bad course
they took. It was in his Diocese--at Hadleigh--the Oxford movement
commenced, when in 1833 the Vicar, the Rev. James Rose, assembled at the
parsonage--not the present handsome building, which is evidently of later
date--the men who were to become famous as Tractarians, who had met there
to consider how to save the Church. It was then in danger, as Lord Grey
had recommended the Bishops to put their house in order. Ten Irish
Bishoprics had been suppressed; a mob at Bristol had burnt the Bishop's
palace; and in Norwich the cry had been raised for "more pigs and less
parsons." One of the leaders of the Evangelical party resided at
Kirkley. The Rev. Francis Cuningham--afterwards Rector of Lowestoft--had
established infant schools, which were then a novelty in East Anglia.
His wife was one of the Gurneys, of Earlham, a great power in Norfolk at
that time. Joseph John was