Chapter I: Introduction

Three personalities interest us in reading the novel of _Margaret Catchpole_--the author, the heroine, and the author's mother, in whose service the real Margaret Catchpole was employed. Neither the author nor his mother has been the subject of much biographical effort, although Richard Cobbold was an industrious novelist, poet, and essayist for a long period of years, and wrote this one book that will always, I think, be read. His mother, Elizabeth Cobbold, made some reputation as a writer of verse, and is immortalized for us in Charles Dickens's Mrs. Leo Hunter. Fortunately we have a sketch of her by one Laetitia Jermyn, dated 1825, and attached to a volume of _Poems_, published at Ipswich in that year.[1] Laetitia Jermyn tells us that Elizabeth's maiden name was Knipe, and that she was born in Watling Street, London, about 1764, her father being Robert Knipe of Liverpool. In 1787 she published a little volume of verse entitled _Six Narrative Poems_, which she dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, evidently by permission. It is clear that in girlhood she had made the acquaintance of the great painter. Her biographer says nothing about her being an actress, but it is a tradition in Ipswich that this was for a time her profession. In 1790 she was married at Liverpool to William Clarke, a Portman of the borough and Comptroller of the Customs of Ipswich, who was apparently about sixty years of age and in very delicate health. The sprightly young wife wrote the following lines to her husband on St. Valentine's Day, soon after their marriage:--

Eliza to William this Valentine sends,
While ev'ry good wish on the present attends;
And freely she writes, undisturb'd by a fear,
Tho' prudes may look scornful, and libertines sneer.
Tho' tatlers and tale-bearers smiling may say,
"Your Geniuses always are out of the way,"
Sure none but herself would such levities mix,
With the seriousness suited to grave twenty-six.
A Wife send a Valentine! Lord, what a whim!
And then of all people to send it to him!
Make love to her husband! my stars, how romantic!
The Girl must be certainly foolish or frantic;
But I always have thought so, else what could engage
Her to marry a man who is twice her own age?
While the tabbies are thus on my motives enlarging,
My sentiments William may read in the margin.

On the wings of old Time have three months past away
Since I promis'd "to honour, to love, and obey,"
And surely my William's own heart will allow
That my conduct has ne'er disagreed with my vow.
Would health spread her wings round my husband and lord,
To his cheeks could the smiles of delight be restor'd;
The blessing with gratitude I should receive,
As the greatest that Mercy benignant could give;
And heedless of all that conjecture may say,
With praise would remember St. Valentine's day.

I quote this valentine at length because it is a fair sample of the quality of our poet's efforts. At the end of the eighteenth century, and far into the nineteenth, a rhyming faculty of this kind was quite sufficient to make a literary reputation in an English provincial town, and in the case of Mrs. Clarke it was followed up by the writing of a novel, _The Sword_, published at Liverpool in 1791. It is interesting to find the name of Roscoe the historian among the subscribers for this book. In the same year--within six months of her marriage--the writer lost her husband.

The interest of Elizabeth Knipe's life, however, begins for us when very shortly after this she became the wife of John Cobbold, of the Cliff Brewery, Ipswich. Cobbold was a widower. He had already had sixteen children, of whom fourteen were then living. When it is remembered that by his second wife he had six more children it will be seen that there was a large family, and it is not surprising therefore that the Cobbold name is still very much in evidence in Norfolk and Suffolk, and particularly in Ipswich. "Placed in the bosom of this numerous family", writes her biographer, "and indulged in the means of gratifying her benevolent and liberal spirit, 'The Cliff' became the home of her dearest affections, the residence of taste, and the scene of hospitality." One need not complain of the lady that she was not very much of a poet, for she had otherwise a versatile character. In addition to being, as we are assured, a good housekeeper, she was, if her self-portraiture be accepted, a worker in many fields:--

A botanist one day, or grave antiquarian,
Next morning a sempstress, or abecedarian;
Now making a frock, and now marring a picture,
Next conning a deep, philosophical lecture;
At night at the play, or assisting to kill
The time of the idlers with whist or quadrille;
In cares or amusements still taking a part,
Though science and friendship are nearest my heart.

Laetitia Jermyn tells us much about her charity and kindness of heart, her zeal in behalf of many movements to help the poor, and she dwells with enthusiasm upon her friend's literary achievements.[2] But the scope of this Introduction to her son's book does not justify devoting more attention to the mother, although her frequent appearance in Margaret Catchpole's partially true story demands that something be said about her "mistress". Elizabeth Cobbold died in 1824. Her husband outlived her for eleven years. John Cobbold (1746-1835) traced back his family in the direct line as landowners in Suffolk to a Robert Cobbold, who died in 1603. He was a banker as well as a brewer, and lived first at "The Cliff" and afterwards at "Holywells", which has ever since been the seat of the head of the family. It was the fourteenth child of his first marriage--Henry Gallant Cobbold--who was saved from drowning by Margaret Catchpole.

It was Richard Cobbold, one of the six sons of the second marriage of John Cobbold, who was the author of this story. When he was born he had ten nephews and nieces awaiting him, the children of his brothers and sisters of the first family, and he was at school with his own nephew, who was just a fortnight younger than himself. The nephew was John Chevallier Cobbold, who for twenty-one years represented Ipswich in Parliament. For this information I am indebted to a grandson[3], who also sends me the following anecdotes:--

When John Cobbold--the father of twenty-two children--was High
Sheriff, he once persuaded the Judge to come to dine with him on
condition that there should be no one to meet him except his (J.
C.'s) own family. When the Judge was shown into a drawing-room full
of people, he was very angry, and said loudly before the company,
"Mr. Cobbold, you have deceived me." Explanations followed, and the
Judge was introduced to the various members of the family.

Elizabeth Cobbold was in the habit of saying that when she married
her husband she found no books in the house except Bibles and
account-books.

Brewing was such good business in those days that John Cobbold was
able to give to each of his two youngest sons (twenty-first and
twenty-second children) a University education, and to buy for each
of them a church living worth L1,000 a year.

Richard Cobbold was educated at Bury St. Edmunds and at Caius College, Cambridge, was destined for the Church, and when he married he was a curate in Ipswich[4], but his father obtained for him the living of Wortham, near Diss, where he was Rector from 1825 until his death in 1877. He was also rural dean of Hartismere. Several years after celebrating his golden wedding--Dr. Spencer Cobbold informs me--he and his wife died within a day or two of each other; the survivor did not know the other was gone; both were buried at the same time. Of the three sons who survived, one became Rector of Hollesley, another was the father of the well-known amateur footballer, W. N. Cobbold, and the third was the Fellow of the Royal Society, to whom I have already referred, and to whose son I am indebted for so many interesting facts.

That Richard Cobbold was not particularly honoured in his own country may be gathered from many quarters. One writer speaks of his "little vanities, his amusing egotisms, and his good natured pomposity". It was clearly not Suffolk that helped to make his fame, if we may accept one of the few printed references to him that I have been able to find:--

I confess I never knew a Suffolk man at home or abroad who would
take any pride in being the fellow countryman of this clerical
novel-writer; but in different parts of England I have seen reason
to believe that our division of the eastern counties has a place in
the minds of many thousands of people only by reason of the Rev.
Richard Cobbold and his works, that the ancient town of Ipswich,
which we hail from as if it were a niche in the temple of fame, has
never been heard of except as the scene of some of the chief
adventures of Margaret Catchpole.[5]

Other books are assigned to our author in the catalogues, but I doubt if one of them survives other than _Margaret Catchpole_, which not only survives, but is really a classic in its way. One story, indeed, _Freston Tower_, held the public for a time almost as well as the present book, but I imagine it has ceased to command the attention even of the most remote village library, where indeed it was long ago worn threadbare.[6] Essentially our author is a man of one book, and many adventitious circumstances helped him here. It was no small thing that the heroine should actually have been a native of the very district in which the writer lived. She was not merely a vivid tradition of his boyhood, but had been in the service of his mother and had stolen from his father the horse that gave her so unpleasant a notoriety. Here was a romance ready to hand, which needed but to be set down in passably good writing to attract attention. It might have been worse written than it was by this worthy clergyman and would still have secured readers. How much is truth and how much is fiction in the story will never be known. If Mr. Cobbold had an abundance of documents about this girl Margaret Catchpole and her affairs, inherited from his parents, he must have destroyed them. He claims in the course of the story that, as Margaret three times saved the life of a member of Mr. Cobbold's family, it is not surprising that the records of her life should be so strictly preserved among them. But these records do not appear to exist any longer. It is doubtful if they ever did exist. The author probably worked from family traditions rather than from documents. He possessed, in addition, a genuine imaginative faculty.

Such documents as do exist do not amount to enough to justify the author's declaration that here is "a perfectly true narrative". Mr. Frank Woolnough, of Ipswich[7], courteously informs me that a letter by Margaret Catchpole, written only a few days before she sailed to Australia, and the lyre bird that she sent to her mistress about a year after her arrival, are the two curiosities of the Museum most eagerly inquired after by strangers. Here is the letter in question:--

ipswich May 25th 1801
honred madam

i am sorrey i have to inform you this Bad newes that i am going
away on wedensday next or thursday at the Longest so i hav taken
the Liberty my good Ladey of trobling you with a few Lines as it
will Be the Larst time i ever shall trobell you in this sorrofoll
Confinement my sorrows are very grat to think i must Be Banished
out of my owen Countreay and from all my Dearest friendes for ever
it is very hard inded for any one to think on it and much moor for
me to enduer the hardship of it honred madam i should Be very
happey to see you on tuesday Befor i Leve englent if it is not to
much trobbell for you for i am in grat confushon my self now my
sorrowes are dobbled i must humbly Beg on your Goodness to Consider
me a Littell trifell of monney it wold Be a very Grat Comfort to
your poor

unhappy searvent
Margreat Catchpole

How small a matter a sentence of death for horse-stealing was counted in the closing years of the eighteenth century may be gathered from the fact that the contemporary newspaper report of 1797 runs only to five lines, as follows:--

"Margaret Catchpole, for stealing a coach horse, belonging to John
Cobbold, Esq., of Ipswich (with whom she formerly lived as a
servant), which she rode from thence to London in about 10 hours,
dressed in man's apparel, and having there offered it for sale was
detected."

Undoubtedly one of the characteristics of the book that give it so permanent a place in literature is the circumstance that it preserves for us a glimpse of the cruel criminal law of the eighteenth century. Hanging for small offences went on for years after this, until, indeed, public opinion was revolted by the case of the young married woman who in Ludgate Hill lifted a piece of cloth from the counter. She hesitated and then put it down again. But she had been seen, and was arrested, tried, condemned, and hanged, although it was clearly proved that her husband had been seized by a press-gang and that her babe cried for bread. After this time came a reaction against the death penalty for theft. Margaret, then, was more fortunate than that unhappy woman and than the more celebrated Deacon Brodie, who was hanged in Edinburgh, the city which he had adorned as a Councillor, for a house-breaking theft which brought him four pounds or less. She doubtless owed her escape to the powerful influence of the Cobbolds.[8]

_Margaret Catchpole_ is the classic novel of Suffolk. That county of soothing landscape and bracing sea has produced greater books; it has given us more interesting authors than Richard Cobbold. Within its borders were written the many fine poems of George Crabbe, the many attractive letters of Edward Fitz Gerald. The remarkable paraphrase from the Persian known to all the English speaking world as _The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_ was composed here. But, although many latter-day novelists have laid their scenes in these pleasant places, made memorable by the art of Constable, not one has secured so fascinating a topic or so world-wide an audience. Margaret Catchpole is one of the few heroines of fiction of whom one loves to remember that she was real flesh and blood.

CLEMENT SHORTER.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Poems by Mrs. Elizabeth Cobbold, with a Memoir of the Author._ Ipswich: Printed and sold by J. Raw in the Butter Market, 1825.]

[Footnote 2: The three most talked of books by Elizabeth Cobbold were:--_The Mince Pye_, an Heroic Epistle, humbly addressed to the Sovereign Dainty of a British Feast, by Caroline Petty Pasty, 1800. _Cliff Valentines_, 1813. _An Ode to the Victory of Waterloo_, 1815. The suggestion is made in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ that she was descended on the mother's side from Edmund Waller the poet, but this is exceedingly improbable.]

[Footnote 3: Dr. Spencer Cobbold, of Batheston, Somerset, a grandson of Richard Cobbold, and the son of T. Spencer Cobbold, M.D. (1828-1886), the distinguished helminthologist, who was the youngest F.R.S. of his day. He had made some original investigations concerning Entozoa, and was the author of many books on "Parasites" and kindred subjects.]

[Footnote 4: At the Tower Church. He lived at St. Margaret's Green.]

[Footnote 5: _Public Men of Ipswich and East Suffolk_, by Richard Gowing. Ipswich: W. J. Scopes, 1875.]

[Footnote 6: The following books by Richard Cobbold are in the British Museum Library:--

_Valentine Verses, or Lines of Truth, Love, and Virtue_ 1827

_A Sermon on Matthew xiv_ 1829

_The Spirit of the Litany of the Church of England._
A Poem 1833

_The History of Margaret Catchpole, a Suffolk Girl._
2 vols. 1845

_Mary Anne Wellington. A Soldier's Daughter,
Wife and Widow._ 3 vols. 1846

_Zenon the Martyr._ 3 vols. 1847

_The Young Man's Home, or The Penitent's Return_ 1848

_The Character of Woman._ A Lecture 1848

_A Voice from the Mount_ 1848

_A Sermon on Genesis i. 3_ 1849

_Conversations between J. Rye and Mr. Parr_ 1848

_The Comforter, or Short Addresses from the Book of
Job_ 1850

_A Father's Legacy._ The Proverbs of Solomon in
Prose and Verse 1850

_Freston Tower, or The Early Days of Cardinal
Wolsey._ 3 vols. 1850

_Courtland_: a Novel. By the Daughter of Mary
Anne Wellington. 3 vols. 1852

_The Union Child's Belief_ 1855

_J. H. Steggall. A Real History of a Suffolk Man_ 1857

_Canticles of Life_ 1858
]

[Footnote 7: The Secretary of the Borough of Ipswich Museum and Free Library.]

[Footnote 8: The punishment of death for horse-stealing was abolished in 1832, but in 1833 a little boy of nine who pushed a stick through a cracked window and pulled out some painters' colours worth twopence was sentenced to death. Since 1838 no person has been hanged in England for any offence other than murder. See Spencer Walpole's _History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815_.]

CONTENTS

PAGE

DEDICATION xvii

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xix

CHAPTER

I. EARLY SCENES 1

II. THE TEMPTATION 26

III. MISFORTUNES 34

IV. DECEIT 47

V. WILD SCENES 56

VI. HARVEST-HOME 71

VII. THE CONFLICT 83

VIII. DISAPPOINTMENT 100

IX. EVIL WAYS 115

X. THE PARTING 120

XI. THE LAST INTERVIEW 131

XII. THE WELCOME VISIT 137

XIII. POVERTY AND PRIDE 152

XIV. A CHEERFUL CHANGE 166

XV. THE NEW PLACE 175

XVI. BRIGHT HOPES 187

XVII. ALTERCATION AND EXPLANATION 191

XVIII. THE RECONCILIATION 197

XIX. THE ALTERATION 206

XX. CHANGE OF SCENE AND CHANGE OF PLACE 219

XXI. GUILT AND CRIME 244

XXII. PREPARATION FOR TRIAL 268

XXIII. TRIAL AND CONDEMNATION TO DEATH 277

XXIV. THE REPRIEVE AND REMOVAL 290

XXV. THE ESCAPE 297

XXVI. PURSUIT AND CAPTURE 309

XXVII. SECOND TRIAL, AND SECOND TIME
CONDEMNED TO DEATH 317

XXVIII. TRANSPORTATION 338

XXIX. BANISHMENT 351

XXX. REPENTANCE AND AMENDMENT 370

XXXI. CONCLUSION 407

SUPPLEMENT BY THE AUTHOR, A.D. 1858 413

TO

THE MARCHIONESS OF CORNWALLIS

Most Noble Lady,

Assured that this simple narrative, the most remarkable events of
which are still fresh in your Ladyship's memory, will be found far
more interesting to the public than many highly-wrought works of
fiction, and that to none will it prove more acceptable than to
your Ladyship, who for many years resided in this county, beloved
and respected by all who knew you, for the encouragement you
afforded to every amiable virtue; to you it is dedicated, with
sincere respect, by your Ladyship's humble and devoted servant,

RICHARD COBBOLD.

_Rectory, Wortham, near Diss, Suffolk._

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

Independently of this simple history being a relation of facts, well known to many persons of the highest respectability still living in the county of Suffolk, it is hoped that an instructive lesson may be conveyed by it to many, who may not yet have seen the necessity of early and religious instruction.

These pages will prove, in a remarkable manner, that, however great may be the natural endowments of the human mind, yet, without the culture of religious principles, and the constant discipline of the Holy Spirit, they will never enable their possessor to resist the temptations of passion, but will be as likely to lead to great crimes as to great virtues.

It will be seen that, from the want alone of the early impressions of religion, the heroine of these pages fell into errors of temper and passion, which led to the violation of the laws of God and man; but that, after the inculcation of Christian faith and virtue, she became conspicuous for the sincerity of her reformation and for an exemplary life: that, though it pleased God to grant her 'a place of repentance', yet it was through such bitter sorrows and sufferings of mind and body as she most devoutly desired others might be spared.

The public may depend upon the truth of the main features of this narrative: indeed, most of the facts recorded were matters of public notoriety at the time of their occurrence. The author who here details them is a son of the lady with whom this extraordinary female lived, and from whose hands he received the letters and the facts here given. He is persuaded that much will be found in the history of Margaret Catchpole highly worthy of praise and imitation; and, if that which is unworthy shall only be taken as a warning example, he humbly hopes that the public will be both gratified and benefited by the publication.

_Rectory, Wortham._

THE HISTORY

OF

MARGARET CATCHPOLE