Chapter IV: The Palace and Wolsey

Very effective must the grouping of minster and palace have been before the latter was suffered to sink into decay; and even now its dismantled walls and gables, clad in ivy and moss and lichen, add considerably to the picturesqueness of the scene. The only building near the church--it lies on the south side--a walk of some twenty to five-and-twenty yards would take the archbishops from their postern or garden gate to the south transept door. Its plan is best described as a quadrangle with battlemented walls and round turrets at intervals for defence. In the valuation made in the sixteenth century it is called “a goodelie Mansion House of the Bishoppe builded of timber and stone, and the most of stone, adjoynenge to the Collegiat Churche there wiche House is well and sufficientlie repayred.” On the side remote from the church was a small park, now fields, and traces of the fish pond are clearly visible; and three larger parks belonging to the archbishops were in the neighbourhood.

The State apartments were to the east, the living rooms to the south, the offices to the north, and the chapel and great hall were on the north side adjoining the churchyard. It is difficult to fix the exact spot where the different rooms were situated, but on the east side the great window near the church belonged to the chapel, and that at the other end to the library. The remains belong to two distinct periods, for some roll mouldings and other work show that part of the walls, the buttresses, and the lower part of the chimneys are of the fourteenth century; and Dugdale is probably correct in telling us that Archbishop Thoresby, a prelate of taste and munificence, built a new palace about 1360. The great windows and the upper part of the chimneys belong to a later time, and are perhaps due to that magnificent prelate, Cardinal John Kempe, whose arms of three corn sheaves (in allusion to his father, a husbandman of Rye in Sussex), supported by an angel, are still preserved in the walls. The great hall is usually ascribed to Kempe, but experts date the chimney earlier. Some very interesting carved stonework has been inserted in the wall opposite the church.

Its decay dates from the Civil War. Archbishop Williams fled into Wales and died there. The royal garrison inflicted grave injury, and no later archbishop repaired it. A private dwelling-house was built inside the walls; the hall became the local session-house, and the site of the offices first a bowling-green, and then a garden. Dr Trollope, bishop suffragan of Nottingham, purchased the freehold from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and commenced a partial restoration with the intention that it should once again become the residence of the bishop of the diocese, but in this he failed. It now belongs to the bishopric of Southwell; and Dr Ridding has made additional restorations.

It has been seen that Alfric Puttoc, Gerard, Corbridge and the two Booths died here, as did Sandys afterwards; and the more doubtful Aldred (1069) and Godfrey de Ludham (1266) are also cited. Where some of the archbishops died and were buried is so uncertain that it is not surprising to find York and Southwell both mentioned. And even Robert Holgate, who died in 1556, is assigned to Southwell, though, as he had been deprived and was in disgrace, this is not likely.[29] The one archbishop who has made the greatest mark in the history of the whole roll is also the one whose movements at Southwell are the best known.

With Wolsey as “perhaps the greatest political genius whom England has ever produced,” Southwell has nothing to do. He was Archbishop of York as he was Bishop of Winchester and Abbot of St. Albans, and held other preferments, in order to support his great state out of the multiplied revenues. He never set foot in his diocese until after his fall, and the manner of his coming was in this wise:

As the king’s Prime Minister, his arrogance had angered the nobles, his taxes the people, his mode of life, setting “the clergy ill example,” had weakened his prestige, and the affair of Anne Boleyn was his ruin. On the adjournment of the special court, he repaired with Campeggio to Grafton in Northamptonshire (19th Sept. 1529). Henry received him graciously; but Wolsey knew how the king had been prejudiced against him, for no preparations had been made for him, and was resolved on retiring from politics. Supping that night with the Lords of the Council, the following conversation was held:--

_Wolsey_--It were well done if the king would send his chaplains and bishops to their cures and benefices.

_Norfolk_--Yea, marry, and so it were for you, too.

_Wolsey_--I would be contented therewith very well, if it were the king’s pleasure to grant me licence, with his favour, to go to my benefice of Winchester.

_Norfolk_--Nay, to your benefice of York, where consisteth your greatest honour and charge.

_Wolsey_--Even as it shall please the king.

Farnham would have been too near Windsor to suit his enemies: and he was not even allowed to retire quietly to York, while his son, Thomas Wynter, was compelled to resign his stall of Norwell Overhall and his other preferments.

Almost persecuted to death, and stripped of everything but his archbishopric, Wolsey was at length suffered to go north, and reached Southwell on the Thursday after Low Sunday 1530. As the palace required repairs, he occupied the house of a non-resident prebendary for five weeks until Whitsuntide. He was then sixty years old.

A pamphlet published six years later, quoted by Bishop Creighton, gives an interesting account of the way he discharged his duties.

“Who was less beloved in the north than my lord cardinal before he was amongst them? Who better beloved after he had been there awhile? He gave bishops a right good example how they might win men’s hearts. There were few holy days but he would ride five or six miles from his house, now to this parish, now to that, and there cause one or other of his doctors to make a sermon unto the people. He sat amongst them, and said mass before all the parish; he saw why churches were made; he began to restore them to their right and proper use; he brought his dinner with him, and bade divers of the parish to it. He inquired whether there were any debate or grudge between any of them. If there were, after dinner he sent for the parties to the church and made them all one.” George Cavendish, his gentleman usher, speaks to a similar effect of his kindness to rich and poor, and his endeavours to patch up quarrels. “He made many agreements and concords between gentleman and gentleman, and between some gentlemen and their wives that had been long asunder and in great trouble, and divers other agreements between other persons; making great assemblies for the same purpose, and feasting of them, not sparing for any costs, where he might make a peace and amity; which purchased him much love and friendship in the country.” The Whitsuntide of 1530 must have offered an exceedingly brilliant spectacle; for people would come from far and near, not only to attend the procession and synod, but to get a glimpse of the once all-powerful cardinal in his fallen estate.

Cavendish relates that on the night of the Wednesday after Whitweek he had just fallen asleep when he was disturbed by a message that two travellers were at the gate demanding an instant interview with the archbishop from the king. He went down, and found Brereton, a gentleman of the privy chamber, and Wrotherly, and directed the porter to admit them into his lodge.

When Cavendish had aroused Wolsey, the king’s emissaries had their interview in the latter’s private dining-room. “After long talk they took out of a male a certain coffer covered with green velvet, and bound with bars of silver and gilt, with a lock of the same, having a key which was gilt, with the which they opened the same chest; out of the which they took a certain instrument or writing, containing more than one skin or parchment, having many great seals hanging at it, whereunto they put more wax for my lord’s seal; the which my lord sealed with his own seal, and subscribed his name to the same.” This document was either a transfer to the king of some property that had escaped forfeiture, or of the French king’s pension, which Henry was determined to have. The messengers were refreshed with wine and cold meat, and went away directly afterwards, refusing Wolsey’s offer of a bed, and grumbling to themselves because he only gave them four sovereigns each, which, says Cavendish, was more than he could then afford. The next day, Corpus Christi, in spite of his night’s rest having been disturbed, Wolsey sang high mass in the minster. He left Southwell at the end of the summer for Scrooby and Cawood. He had intended to be enthroned in York minster, but was arrested before the day fixed for the ceremonial. He died at Leicester Abbey on November 30th the same year.

=The Beginning of the Reformation.=--In 1540 the chapter, wisely advised, surrendered their estates to the king. Things went on just as before, until by a special Act (Private Acts, 33 Henry VIII. c. 10) it was provided that the church and chapter shall stand in the same perfect state “as it was or stood the first day of June in the 32nd yere of the reigne of our sovereign lord the king, or at anie time before, and shall remaine, continue and be for ever, a perfecte bodie corporate.” It was declared to be the head and mother church of the town and county of Notts, and everything was returned. Henry had no political objection to establishments like Southwell: they did not support the authority of the Pope in the way the abbeys did. In sparing the chapter, some say the king was influenced by Cranmer, a native of the county; others that the leading men of the county pleaded, while an inscription in the nave gives the credit to Archbishop Lee. The changes made were the abolition of the papal authority, the omission of the Pope’s name in the service books, and the reciting of the Litany in English, with one chapter in English from the Old Testament, and another from the New; and in these changes everyone acquiesced.

A bishopric of Southwell, with jurisdiction over Notts and Derby, was actually projected at this time, with Dr Richard Cox (afterwards Bishop of Ely) as the _private first_ prelate of the new see. The old endowments, with some fresh additions, altogether valued at £1003 per annum, were set aside for this purpose. But it was not to be; either the extravagance of Henry or the rapacity of his courtiers prevented the allocation of any of the confiscated church lands; and Southwell was destined to wait and become one of the Victorian bishoprics.

=The First Interregnum.=--In the autumn of 1545 the first Chantries Act was passed (37 Henry VIII. c. 4), by the provisions of which not only chantries but colleges were conferred upon the king in order to pay the debts his extravagance had contracted. The Court of Augmentations, to which was entrusted the alienation of the different estates, left Southwell alone, as the list of 1547 shows that the prebendaries and other clergy were in the full enjoyment of their benefices. But a similar Act passed at the beginning of Edward VI.’s reign involved the whole of the Southwell properties; and the chapter became moribund. Some of the clergy were pensioned; but vested interests were not generally recognised. On the petition of the parishioners, the minster was continued as the parish church; and the sacrist prebendary, John Adams, was made vicar of Southwell at a stipend of £20 a year, with his vicar-choral, Matthew Fort, and the old parish vicar, Robert Salwyne, as “assistants to the cure,” with £5 a year each.

=The Restoration of the Chapter=.--The greater part of the property had been obtained by Northumberland, Lady Jane Grey’s father-in-law, and afterwards went to John Beaumont, Master of the Rolls. By an Act of 1557 this property reverted to the Crown in payment of Beaumont’s debts. What follows is very much of a mystery, but some of the prebendaries went back: and an action was brought against them in the Court of Exchequer for trespass. The judgment delivered was remarkable; it was decided that the Private Act exempted the chapter from the later Chantry Acts of Henry and Edward. The simplest explanation is that suggested by Mr Leach: Mary wished to restore the chapter and the church lands, and the action at law was collusive.

Shortly after Mary died, and during the reign of Elizabeth this decision of the Court of Exchequer was upheld in the numerous suits brought by the chapter to recover different fragments of their estates. Eventually almost the whole were recovered. The vicars-choral were reduced to six, of whom one was to be parish vicar and a second the master of the Grammar School. The chantry priests were abolished, their property being retained by the chapter, and their house let on lease in various tenements; but provision was made for the priests, and a lease of 1574 stipulates for the life interest in their respective lodgings of the two who still remained. Being illiterate, they had been unable to find other preferment, and with a pension of £4 and the use of their old rooms they were mercifully allowed to spend the rest of their lives where they had formerly served.

Archbishop Sandys (1577-1589) was held in high esteem by the queen, and was constantly consulted by her. As he had to organise both diocese and province, as well as attend the council, Southwell was his most central palace, and there he made his home. Through his instrumentality a fresh body of statutes was drawn up. Provisions were made for divine worship three times a day, for study and preaching, and one of the canons was to deliver at least two theological lectures in English during the week. The prebendaries were to preside in turn, and were to elect a vicar-general from amongst themselves. This officer exercised all jurisdiction over the peculiar not specifically reserved for the chapter or the residentiary. But as the chapter had no permanent chief, and no means were provided for enforcing residence, the statute became a dead letter, and the vicars-choral, or minor canons as they came to be called, were promoted by the chapter to benefices in their gift, and also became pluralists.

King James passed through Southwell on his accession, travelling from Scotland to London, and was greatly astonished at finding so large a church in so small a town. When a member of his suite pointed out that he had just seen two larger ones in Durham and York, the king answered peevishly in his Scotch accent, “Vary weel, vary weel, but by my blude this kirk shall justle with York or Durham, or any kirk in Christendom.” It may have been the impression derived from his visit, when the chapter greeted him with a loyal address, which caused him to issue letters-patent, confirming the chapter in their disputed estates, and so putting an end to the incessant, if always successful, legislation.

=The Saracen’s Head and Charles I=.--Situated at the junction of the roads from Mansfield, Newark, and Nottingham, this famous inn was conveyed by Archbishop Arundel to John Fysher in 1396. It is so covered with plaster that it is impossible to assign any date to the building; but it appears never to have been rebuilt, only repaired from time to time. The east side faces the street, and with the outbuildings surrounds a courtyard, entered under an archway with oaken doors. Internally it contains long rambling passages; but the great point of attraction is the coffee-room in which Charles I. is traditionally said to have given himself up to the Scotch army. It is two rooms thrown into one; the ceiling is papered, but the wainscotting remains on the walls; and although the windows have been altered, the old settles beneath are left. The long passage over the archway leads to the King’s Room, also two thrown into one, in which Bishop Selwyn passed a night, and composed some halting rhymes. The inn is associated with the Whitsuntide feasts, and with supposed royal visits from Edward I. and Edward III., who were more likely to have rested at the palace.

It is a typical old posting-house; and there is no reason whatever to doubt the story that Charles here, as distinct from the palace, met the Scotch commissioners, as it has been handed down uninterruptedly.

In the spring of 1646 the affairs of the king were desperate; and on 23rd March he sent a message through Montreuil, the French “resident in Scotland,” for the leaders of the Scotch army. Montreuil was at Southwell, and the army was besieging the royalist castle of Newark. Charles hoped that as the Scotch feared the length to which matters were tending, he could more easily make terms with them than with the Parliamentary party. On the evening of 26th April he misled his council by telling them that he was going to London to treat; and at three in the morning, accompanied by Ashburnham and his chaplain, Dr Hudson, and disguised as Ashburnham’s servant, with hair and beard trimmed, secretly left Oxford.

The forlorn monarch at one time entertained the idea of escaping by sea from Lynn; but this was abandoned; and Hudson went to Montreuil at Southwell to urge him to get conditions from the Scotch that would satisfy the king. Turning westward the king reached Stamford on the evening of 3rd May; and staying there, still in disguise, he set out on the night of the 4th, and reached the Saracen’s Head at Southwell at 7 A.M. on the morning of 5th May, where he was received by Montreuil. At Southwell, says Mr S.R. Gardiner, “he fancied himself a guest; but the days of his captivity had in fact begun.” The negotiations which followed may best be described as a game at bluff, Lothian (on the part of the Scotch) and the king each trying to overreach the other; and when Charles finally gave himself up, Montreuil and the Scotch alike believed him pledged to Presbyterianism, while Charles fully trusted that his life and person were safe. The same day he was removed to Kelham Hall, where David Leslie, the commander of the army, had his headquarters. The action of the king in giving himself up was a complete surprise for the Scotch leaders, who wrote to the Parliament from Southwell that it made them feel like men in a dream.

Bishop Selwyn is wrong in supposing that Charles slept in the king’s room: unless he there took such necessary rest as he was able after his arrival; but just as likely he made use of Montreuil’s bedroom, which appears to have been the back part of the present coffee-room. Neither is there anything to show that he slept there the previous year after Naseby, when “he wandered helplessly in search of fresh forces.” That he did stay at the Saracen’s Head, however, seems certain. The palace was already in a state of dilapidation, and Charles still in disguise as Ashburnham’s servant. No house was in itself more likely; and the account dates from the time. As he passed under the archway of the hostelry with Lothian and his Scotch escort to the Kelham road, he was but beginning the initial stage of that sad journey which was to end only on the scaffold at Whitehall, and convert the life-story of this able but untrustworthy sovereign into the most pathetic of any king in English history.

=The Second Interregnum=.--During the Civil War and the Commonwealth the prebendaries were compelled to vacate their stalls and seek refuge where they could: the usual services were prohibited, and a great deal of injury inflicted on the statues both outside and in. A warrant was issued to pull down the nave and all parts not actually required for worship. Edward Cludd, who had purchased Normanton Park, a man of influence in the Parliamentary party, saved the building from demolition. He was a justice of the peace, and celebrated marriages under an oak in his park, that was called after him. He lived to see the restoration, and was buried in the church. When the chapter was restored in 1660, nearly all the stalls were found to be vacant, and the king filled most of them up by royal mandate without waiting for the new archbishop.

On the fifth of November 1711, a storm, with thunder and lightning, passed over the town, accompanied by a high west wind. The conical roof of the south-west tower took fire, and the flames spread, injuring the roof of the nave. It spread along the nave to the central tower, melting the bells, and destroying the organ. Beyond this the annals of the church and town possess little or nothing further of interest.

In 1780 the buildings in the Vicars’ Court were pulled down, and the present houses erected in their place. The large one at the end was for the prebendary in residence; and the two on either side for four of the minor canons; the parish vicar and Grammar School master being provided for elsewhere. Four years later Booth’s chapel was pulled down, and the Grammar School removed to the old house of the chantry priests, where the red brick building now stands.

One prebendary (in residence for three months every four years), and even that frequently by proxy, was considered sufficient, and so continued to the end.

=Some distinguished Prebendaries=.--Some members of the chapter, after the Reformation, became distinguished, and are deserving of notice. =Lancelot Andrewes= (North Muskham, 1589-99) is still remembered for his Sermons, Devotions, and Manual for the Sick. At the same time that he held his Southwell stall, he held another at Westminster, and was master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He afterwards became Dean of Westminster, and in succession Bishop of Chichester, Ely, and Winchester. On the death of Bancroft, the bishops met and agreed to recommend Andrewes for the primacy; but he was passed over in favour of a far inferior man, George Abbot, owing to the Scotch favourites that had the ear of King James. Andrewes was the first preacher of his day, though the puns in his sermons would excite the laughter of a modern congregation. He was looked up to for his high character; and in learning and administrative ability ranked higher than any of his brother prelates, and was renowned as a controversialist against Bellarmine. He found time to keep his residence at Southwell, and became attached to it. Some of his family settled there, but died out in the eighteenth century.

The other prebendary who calls for notice owes his name and fame to different circumstances altogether.

=William Mompesson= (Normanton, 1671-1709) was a son of the rector of Eakring, and was living at Southwell at the time Monk passed through on his way from Scotland. The year after the plague he was vicar of the lonely parish of Eyam, to the north of Bakewell, in the Derbyshire Peak. In the April of 1666 the contagion was conveyed to Eyam in some patterns of tailors’ cloth, and rapidly spread. His wife urged him to leave, but he declined; and she remained, their infant son and daughter being sent to Barnburgh Rectory, in Yorkshire, a Southwell benefice held by a relative. Mompesson proposed to the Earl of Devonshire to be responsible for no parishioner crossing the parish boundary, provided that food was left at stated places. This arrangement was faithfully carried out, and the contagion did not spread to any other village. Mompesson, wisely abandoning the church, held the services on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, underneath a curiously-formed rock hard by, that is still pointed out. His wife died--there is a monument to her in the churchyard,--and no less than four-fifths of the people. A new burying-ground had to be marked out in the heath above the village before the cold weather of late autumn finally stopped the ravages of the pest. There can be no doubt that the influence and devotion of this one man isolated the plague, and kept it strictly confined to the one small village. Archbishop Sterne gave him the well-earned stall of Normanton; and the chapter elected him their vicar-general. He succeeded his father at Eakring, and was buried there, refusing the deanery of Lincoln.

The virulence of the pest at Eyam may be gathered from the fact that, ninety-one years later, five labourers, digging on the extemporised burial-ground, contracted a putrid fever, of whom three died, as well as other parishioners. The infant son, who was removed from Eyam, became prebendary of Oxton and Cropwell, and succeeded his father as vicar-general. It is to be regretted that this name is now extinct in the county.

A number of other prebendaries rose to high preferment. =Matthew Hutton=, like Andrewes, a master of Pembroke college, became Archbishop of York in the reign of Elizabeth. In the next century =Robert Snowden= became in succession bishop of Carlisle, Bristol, and Chichester; =John Jegon= obtained Norwich, and made his brother Thomas (also a prebendary) archdeacon and canon residentiary in his diocese; =Robert Sanderson=, a noted casuist, and one of the few prebendaries who survived the Civil War, was appointed to the throne of Lincoln at the Restoration; and =William Jackson=, after holding Dunham for thirty-two years, was Bishop of Oxford in 1812. We now come to a more distinguished inhabitant.

=The Burgage Manor House and Byron=.--Byron is always interesting, and an account of his connection with Southwell may be useful. On her son’s accession to the title and estates, Mrs Byron was too poor to afford to live at Newstead, which was let; and after staying for a time at Nottingham and other places, in 1804 she took the Burgage Manor House at Southwell--the white house on the green coming up from the station. Here Byron came first from Harrow for the summer holidays of this year, at the age of sixteen. In 1805 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was generally at Southwell during the vacations up to June 1807, after which we have no more traces of him. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe saw him in the Eton and Harrow match of 1805, on the old Dorset Square Lord’s Ground, and afterwards described him to Tennyson as big for his years and moody-looking, and remembered to have seen him, “bat in hand, limp back to the Pavilion, having just lost his wicket, and evidently not over-pleased.” At Southwell, the future poet played cricket and bathed in the Greet, and, accompanied by John Pigot, made a visit to Harrogate with his two dogs “Nelson” and “Boatswain.” He would have been happy enough but for the usual quarrels with his mother, in one of which, to escape the poker, he took refuge in flight, keeping his address secret from Mrs Byron. While in hiding from her, he wrote to young Pigot: “Without doubt the dames of Southwell reprobate the pernicious example I have shown, and tremble lest their _babes_ should disobey their mandates, and quit their mammas on any grievance.” But so far from blaming him, Southwell took his side, and in spite of constitutional shyness he was a decided favourite.

Not only the young medical student, John Pigot, but his sister Elizabeth, attracted Byron; and although the affection never ripened into a passion, Miss Chaworth was too recent--the young lady had the rare knack of overcoming his shyness, and in the Pigots’ house he felt at home, and went in and out as he pleased. One day Miss Pigot happened to read something of Burns to him, and in the talk that followed was surprised to find that Byron also composed verse. He recited to her the two short pieces to be found at the beginning of the “Hours of Idleness,” “In thee I fondly hoped to clasp,” and “When to this airy hall”; and shortly afterwards, urged partly by his friend and partly by his own budding ambition, commissioned Ridge of Newark to print a hundred copies of his juvenile efforts, which was duly done in November 1806. Miss Pigot lived some forty years after her friend’s death, and is still well remembered. His letters to her (including the earliest published) are in Moore’s life; and she is the Eliza of his youthful verse.

Another friend, nearly twenty years his senior, was the Rev. John Thomas Becher, already incidentally referred to in treating of the nave transepts. He was a son of the vicar-general, and afterwards succeeded his father. Byron presented Becher first with a copy of his little volume; and the result was remarkable. His friend, after reading the verses, initiated a discussion carried on in verse; and so unfavourable was Becher’s criticism, that the whole, with the exception of one or two copies which could not be recalled, were that same night committed to the flames. Many of them reappeared in “Hours of Idleness” the next year; and all, or nearly all, eventually in the complete editions of his works published by Murray. Mr Becher advised his friend to study the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton, and not to waste his time in devouring the current light literature. He also urged him, but without success, to cultivate the county magnates, and to mix more in general society. Byron’s answer may be found in the “Hours of Idleness.” In reality, the lord of Newstead was too proud and too shy to mix freely with the county world without making what he thought a sufficient display. Thomas Moore regretted that the young genius was so soon removed from Mr Becher’s influence; and expressed the opinion that, had he remained longer at Southwell, his after-life might have been free from vice.

In writing the “Hours of Idleness” he kept late hours. His first visit in the morning was to Miss Pigot, to whom he read the production of the previous night. He then went on to the Bechers’ and other houses. His evenings were given by preference to the Pigots, and he and Miss Pigot were accustomed to play and sing together such songs as the “Maid of Lodi.” Among his verses with a local tinge are some lines addressed to Miss Houson, who was alarmed one day at the sound of a bullet he had fired in his mother’s garden; the prologue to some private theatricals, a “Reply” to his friend, John Pigot; and the often-quoted punning epitaph on the drunken carrier. When he was seriously ill, and wrote his “Adieu,” he referred to the Greet--

Streamlet! along whose rippling surge
My youthful limbs were wont to urge,
At noontide heat, their pliant course;
Plunging with ardour from the shore,
Thy springs will lave these limbs no more,
Deprived of active force.

But the associations of the minster failed to make any impression on him; and the subject is ignored alike in his verse and letters. The silly affectation with which he bemoaned the quietness and dulness of the town has been constantly quoted; what he really thought was something quite different, and is conveyed in a letter to a friend named Dallas, written in 1811, whom he advised to settle there.

“Now, I know a large village, or small town, about twelve miles off [Newstead Abbey] where your family would have the advantage of very genteel society, without the hazard of being annoyed by mercantile affluence; where _you_ would meet with men of information and independence; and where I have friends to whom I should be proud to introduce you. There are, besides, a coffee-room, assemblies, etc. etc., which bring people together. My mother had a house there for some years, and I am well acquainted with the economy of Southwell, the name of this little commonwealth.”[30]