The large spire steeple, which formerly stood upon that they call the Tower-Church, was blown down by a great storm of wind many years ago, and in its fall did much damage to the church.
The government of this town is by two bailiffs, as at Yarmouth: Mr. Camden says they are chosen out of twelve burgesses called Portmen, and two justices out of twenty-four more. There has been lately a very great struggle between the two parties for the choice of these two magistrates, which had this amicable conclusion, namely, that they chose one of either side; so that neither party having the victory, tis to be hoped it may be a means to allay the heats and un-neighbourly feuds, which such things breed in towns so large as this is. They send two members to Parliament, whereof those at this time, are Sir William Thompson, Recorder of London, and Colonel Negus, deputy-master of the horse to the king.
There are some things very curious to be seen here, however some superficial writers have been ignorant of them. Dr. Beeston, an eminent physician, began, a few years ago, a physick garden adjoining to his house in this town; and as he is particularly curious, and as I was told exquisitely skilld in botanick knowledge, so he has been not only very diligent, but successful too, in making a collection of rare and exotick plants, such as are scarce to be equalld in England.
One Mr. White, a surgeon, resides also in this town; But before I speak of this gentleman, I must observe, that I say nothing from personal knowledge; Tho if I did, I have too good an opinion of his sense to believe he would be pleased with being flattered, or complimented in print: But I must be true to matter of fact; This gentleman has begun a collection, or chamber of rarities, and with good success too. I acknowledge I had not the opportunity of seeing them; But I was told there are some things very curious in it, as particularly a sea-horse carefully preserved, and perfect in all its parts; two Roman urns full of ashes of human bodies, and supposed to be above 1700 years old; besides a great many valuable medals, and antient coins. My friend who gave me this account, and of whom I think I may say he speaks without byass, mentions this gentleman, Mr. White, with some warmth, as a very valuable person in his particular employ, of a surgeon, I only repeat his words; «Mr. White», says he, «to whom the whole town and country are greatly indebted and obliged to pray for his life, is our most skilful surgeon». These I say are his own words, and I add nothing to them but this, that tis happy for a town to have such a surgeon, as it is for a surgeon to have such a character.
The country round Ipswich, as if qualifyd on purpose to accommodate the town for building of ships, is an inexhaustable store-house of timber, of which now their trade of building ships is abated, they send very great quantities to the kings building-yards at Chatham, which by water is so little a way, that they often run to it from the mouth of the river at Harwich in one tide.
From Ipswich I took a turn into the country to Hadley, principally to satisfy my curiosity, and see the place where that famous martyr, and pattern of charity and religious zeal in Queen Marys time, Dr. Rowland Taylor, was put to death; the inhabitants, who have a wonderful veneration for his memory, shew the very place where the stake which he was bound to, was set up, and they have put a stone upon it, which no body will remove; but it is a more lasting monument to him that he lives in the hearts of the people; I say more lasting than a tomb of marble would be, for the memory of that good man. will certainly never be out of the poor peoples minds, as long as this island shall retain the Protestant religion among them.; how long that may be, as things are going, and if the detestable conspiracy of the Papists now on foot, should succeed, I will not pretend to say.
A little to the left is Sudbury, which stands upon the River Stour, mentioned above; a river which parts the counties of Suffolk and Essex, and which is within these few years made navigable to this town, tho the navigation does not (it seems) answer the charge, at least not to advantage.
I know nothing for which this town is remarkable, except: for being very populous and very poor. They have a great; manufacture of says and perpetuanas; and multitudes of poor people are employd in working them; but the number of the poor is almost ready to eat up the rich: However this town, sends two members to Parliament, tho it is under no form of government particularly to itself, other than as a village, the head magistrate whereof is a constable.
Near adjoining to it, is a village calld Long-Melfort, and a very long one it is, from which I suppose it had that addition to its name; it is full of very good houses, and, as they told me, is richer, and has more wealthy masters of the manufacture in it than in Sudbury itself.
Here and in the neighbourhood, are some antient families of good note; particularly here is a fine dwelling, the antient: seat of the Cordells, whereof Sir William Cordell was Master of the Rolls in the time of Queen Elizabeth; but the family is now extinct; the last heir, Sir John Cordell, being killed by a fall from his horse, died unmarryd, leaving three sisters coheiresses to a very noble estate most of which, if not all, is now centerd in the only surviving sister, and with her in marriage is given to Mr. Firebrass, eldest son of Sir Basil Firebrass, formerly a flourishing merchant in London, but reducd by many disasters. His family now rises by the good fortune of his son, who proves to be a gentleman of very agreeable parts, and well esteemed in the country.
From this part of the country I returned north-west by Lenham, to visit St. Edmunds Bury, a town of which other writers have talkd very largely, and perhaps a little too much: It is a town famd for its pleasant situation and wholsome air, the Montpelier of Suffolk, and perhaps of England; this must be attributed to the skill of the monks of those times, who chose so beautiful a situation for the seat of their retirement; and who built here the greatest and in its time, the most flourishing monastery in all these parts of England, I mean the monastery of St. Edmund the Martyr: It was, if we believe antiquity, a house of pleasure in more antient times; or to speak more properly, a Court of some of the Saxon or East-Angle kings; and, as Mr. Camden says, was even then calld a royal village; tho it much better merits that name now; it being the town of all this part of England, in proportion to its bigness, most thronged with gentry, people of the best fashion, and the most polite conversation: This beauty and healthiness of its situation, was no doubt the occasion which drew the clergy to settle here, for they always chose the best places in the country to build in, either for richness of soil, or for health and pleasure in the situation of their religious houses.
For the like reason, I doubt not, they translated the bones of the martyrd King St. Edmund, to this place; for it is a vulgar error to say he was murtherd here; his martyrdom, it is plain was at Hoxon or Henilsdon, near Harlston, on the Waveney, in the farthest northern verge of the county; but Segebert, King of the East Angles, had built a religious house in this pleasant rich part of the country; and as the monks began to taste the pleasure of the place, they procured the body of this saint to be removd hither, which soon encreasd the wealth and revenues of their house, by the zeal of that day, in going on pilgrimage to the shrine of the blessed St. Edmund.
We read however, that after this, the Danes under King Sweno, over-running this part of the country, destroyed this monastery and burnt it to the ground, with the church and town; but see the turn religion gives to things in the world; His son King Canutus, at first a pagan and a tyrant, and the most cruel ravager of all that crew, coming to turn Christian; and being touchd in conscience for the soul of his father, in having robbd God and His holy martyr St. Edmund, sacrilegiously destroying the church, and plundering the monastery; I say, touchd with remorse, and, as the monks pretend terrifyd with a vision of St. Edmund appearing to him, he rebuilt the house, the church, and the town also, and very much added to the wealth of the abbot and his fraternity, offering his crown at the feet of St. Edmund, giving the house to the monks, town and all; so that they were absolute lords of the town, and governed it by their steward for many ages. He also gave them a great many good lordships, which they enjoyd till the general suppression of abbies, in the time of Henry VIII.
But I am neither writing the history, or searching the antiquity, of the abbey, or town, my business is the present state of the place.
The abbey is demolishd; its ruins are all that is to be seen of its glory: Out of the old building, two very beautiful churches are built, and serve the two parishes, into which the town is divided, and they stand both in one church-yard. Here it was, in the path-way between these two churches, that a tragical and almost unheard of act of barbarity was committed, which made the place less pleasant for some time, than it usd to be, when Arundel Coke, Esq; a Barrister at Law, of very antient family, attempted, with the assistance of a barbarous assassin, to murther in cold blood, and in the arms of hospitality, Edward Crisp, Esq; his brother-in-law, leading him out from his own house, where he had invited him, his wife and children, to supper: I say, leading him out in the night, on pretence of going to see some friend that was known to them both; but in this churchyard, giving a signal to the assassin he had hird, he attacked him with a hedge bill, and cut him, as one might say, almost in pieces; and when they did not doubt of his being dead, they left him: His head and face was so mangled, that it may be said to be next to a miracle that he was not quite killed: Yet so Providence directed for the exemplary punishment of the assassins, that the gentleman recoverd to detect them, who, (tho he out-lived the assault) were both executed as they deservd, and Mr. Crisp is yet alive. They were condemned on the statute for defacing and dismembring, called the Coventry Act.
But this accident does not at all lessen the pleasure and agreeable delightful shew of the town of Bury; it is crouded with nobility and gentry, and all sorts of the most agreeable company; and as the company invites, so there is the appearance of pleasure upon the very situation; and they that live at Bury, are supposed to live there for the sake of it.
The Lord Jermin, afterwards Lord Dover, and since his lordships decease, Sir Robert Davers, enjoyd the most delicious seat of Rushbrook, near this town.
The present Members of Parliament for this place are, Jermyn Davers, and James Reynolds, Esquires.
Mr. Harvey, afterwards created Lord Harvey, by King William, and since that, made Earl of Bristol by King George, livd many years in this town, leaving a noble and pleasantly situated house in Lincolnshire, for the more agreeable living on a spot so compleatly qualified for a life of delight as this of Bury.
The Duke of Grafton, now Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, has also a stately house at Euston, near this town, which he enjoys in right of his mother, daughter to the Earl of Arlington, one of the chief ministers of State in the reign of King Charles II. and who made the second letter in the word CABAL; a word formd by that famous satirerist Andrew Marvell, to represent the five heads of the politicks of that time, as the word SMECTYMNUS was on a former occasion.
I shall believe nothing so scandalous of the ladies of this town and the county round it, as a late writer[3] insinuates: That the ladies round the country appear mighty gay and agreeable at the time of the fair in this town, I acknowledge; one hardly sees such a show in any part of the world; but to suggest they come hither as to a market, is so coarse a jest that the gentlemen that wait on them hither, (for they rarely come but in good company) ought to resent and correct him for it.
It is true, Bury-Fair, like Bartholomew-Fair, is a fair for diversion, more than for trade; and it may be a fair for toys and for trinkets, which the ladies may think fit to lay out some of their money in, as they see occasion. But to judge from thence, that the knights daughters of Norfolk, Cambridge-shire, and Suffolk, that is to say, for it cannot be understood any otherwise, the daughters of all the gentry of the three counties, come hither to be pickd up, is a way of speaking I never before heard any author have the assurance to make use of in print.
The assembled he justly commends for the bright appearance of the beauties; but with a sting in the tayl of this compliment, where he says, They seldom end without some considerable match or intrigue; and yet he owns, that during the fair, these assemblees are held every night. Now that these fine ladies go intriguing every night, and that too after the comedy is done, which is after the fair and raffling is over for the day; so that it must be very late: This is a terrible character for the ladies of Bury, and intimates in short, that most of them are whores, which is a horrid abuse upon the whole country.
Now, tho I like not the assemblies at all, and shall in another place give them something of their due; yet having the opportunity to see the fair at Bury, and to see that there were indeed abundance of the finest ladies, or as fine as any in Britain, yet I must own, the number of the ladies at the comedy, or at the assemblee, is no way equal to the number that are seen in the town, much less are they equal to the whole body of the ladies in the three counties, and I must also add, that tho it is far from true, that all that appear at the assemble, are there for matches or intrigues, yet I will venture to say, that they are not the worst of the ladies who stay away; neither are they the fewest in number, or the meanest in beauty, but just the contrary; and I do not at all doubt, but that the scandalous liberty some take at those assemblees, will in time bring them out of credit with the virtuous part of the sex here, as it has done already in Kent and other places; and that those ladies who most value their reputation, will be seen less there than they have been; for tho the institution of them has been innocent and virtuous, the ill use of them, and the scandalous behaviour of some people at them, will in time arm virtue against them, and they will be layd down as they have been set up, without much satisfaction.
But the beauty of this town consists in the number of gentry who dwell in and near it, the polite conversation among them; the affluence and plenty they live in; the sweet air they breathe in, and the pleasant country they have to go abroad in.
Here is no manufacturing in this town, or but very little, except spinning; the chief trade of the place depending upon the gentry who live there, or near it, and who cannot fail to cause trade enough by the expence of their families and equipages, among the people of a county town. They have but a very small river, or rather but a very small branch of a small river, at this town, which runs from hence to Milden-Hall, on the edge of the Fens. However, the town and gentlemen about, have been at the charge, or have so encouraged the engineer who was at the charge, that they have made this river navigable to the said Milden-Hall, from whence there is a navigable dyke, calld Milden-Hall Dreyn, which goes into the River Ouse, and so to Lynn; so that all their coal and wine, iron, lead, and other heavy goods, are brought by water from Lynn, or from London, by the way of Lynn, to the great ease of the tradesmen.
This town is famous for two great events, one was that in the year 1447, in the 25th year of Henry the VIth, a Parliament was held here.
The other was, That at the meeting of this Parliament, the great Humphry, Duke of Glocester, regent of the kingdom, during the absence of King Henry the Vth, and the minority of Henry the VIth, and to his last hour, the safeguard of the whole nation, and darling of the people, was basely murthered here; by whose death, the gate was opened to that dreadful war between the Houses of Lancaster and York, which ended in the confusion of that very race, who are supposed to have contrived that murther.
From St. Edmunds Bury I returned by Stow-Market and Needham, to Ipswich, that I might keep as near the coast as was proper to my designed circuit or journey; and from Ipswich, to visit the sea again, I went to Woodbridge, and from thence to Orford, on the sea-side.