It was to the Brewsters that the village was indebted for the ministry of the Rev. John Phillip, who married the sister of the pious and learned Dr. Ames, Professor of the University of Franeker. Calamy tells us that by means of Dr. Ames, Mr. Phillip had no small furtherance in his studies, and intimate acquaintance with him increased his inclination to the Congregational way. Archbishop Abbot, writing to Winwood, 1611, says: ‘I have written to Sir Horace Vere touching the English preacher at the Hague. We heard what he was that preceded, and we cannot be less cognisant what Mr. Ames is, for by a Latin printed book he hath laden the Church and State of England with a great deal of infamous contumely, so that if he were amongst us he would be so far from receiving preferment, that some exemplary punishment would be his reward. His Majesty had been advertised how this man is entertained and embraced at the Hague, and how he is a fit person to breed up captains and soldiers there in mutiny and faction.’ One of Dr. Ames’s works, which got him into trouble, was entitled ‘A Fresh Suit against Ceremonies,’ a work which we may be sure would be as distasteful to the Ritualists of our day as it was to the Ritualists of his own. One of his works, his ‘Medulla Theologiæ,’ I believe, adorned the walls of the paternal study. There is, belonging to the Wrentham Congregational Church Library, a volume of tracts, sixty-seven in number, of six or eight pages each, printed in 1622, forming a series of theses on theological topics, maintained by different persons, under the presidency of Dr. Ames; and I believe a son of the Doctor is buried in Wrentham Churchyard, as I recollect my father, on one occasion, had an old gravestone done up and relettered, which bore testimony to the virtues and piety and learning of an Ames. Thus if Mr. Phillip was chased out of Old England into New England for his Nonconformity, some of the good old Noncons remained to uphold the lamp which was one day to cast a sacred light on all quarters of the land. That some did emigrate with their pastor is probable, since we learn that there is a town called Wrentham across the Atlantic, said to have received that name because some of the first settlers came from Wrentham in England.

Touching Mr. Phillip, a good deal has been written by the Rev. John Browne, the painstaking author of ‘The History of Congregationalism in Suffolk and Norfolk.’ It appears that his arrival in America was not unexpected, as the Christian people of Dedham had invited him to that plantation beforehand. He did not, however, accept their invitation, but being much in request, ‘and called divers ways, could not resolve; but, at length, upon weighty reasons concerning the public service and foundations of the college, he was persuaded to attend to the call of Cambridge;’ and, adds an American writer, ‘he might have been the first head of that blessed institution.’ On the calling of the Long Parliament, he and his wife returned to England, and in 1642 we find him ministering to his old flock. So satisfied were the neighbouring Independents of his Congregationalism, that when, in 1644, members of Mr. Bridge’s church residing in Norwich desired to form themselves into a separate community, they not only consulted with their brethren in Yarmouth, but with Mr. Phillip also, as the only man then in their neighbourhood on whose judgment and experience they could rely. In 1643 Mr. Phillip was appointed one of the members of the Assembly of Divines, and was recognised by Baillie in his Letters as one of the Independent men there. The Independents, as we know, sat apart, and were a sad thorn in the Presbyterians’ side. Five of them, more zealous than the rest, formally dissented from the decisions of the Assembly, and afraid that toleration would not be extended to them, appealed to Parliament, ‘as the most sacred refuge and asylum for mistaken and misjudged innocence.’ Mr. Phillip’s name, however, I do not find in that list; and possibly he was too old to be very active in the matter. He lived on till 1660, when he died at the good old age of seventy-eight. In the later years of his ministry he was assisted by his nephew, W. Ames, who in 1651 preached a sermon at St. Paul’s, before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, ‘On the Saint’s Security against Seducing Sports, or the Anointing from the Holy One.’ It is to be feared, in our more enlightened age, a good Wrentham Congregational minister would have little chance of preaching before a London Lord Mayor. Talent is supposed to exist only in the crowded town, where men have no time to think of anything but of the art of getting on.

Other heroic associations – of men who had suffered for the faith, who feared God rather than man, who preferred the peace of an approving conscience to the vain honours of the world – also were connected with the place. I remember being shown a bush in which the conventicle preacher used to hide himself when the enemy, in the shape of the myrmidons of Bishop Wren, of Norwich, were at his heels. That furious prelate, as many of us know, drove upwards of three thousand persons to seek their bread in a foreign land. Indeed, to such an extent did he carry out his persecuting system, that the trade and manufactures of the country materially suffered in consequence. However, in my boyish days I was not troubled much about such things. Dissent in Wrentham was quite respectable. If we had lost the Brewster family, whose arms were still to be seen on the Communion plate, a neighbouring squire attended at the meeting-house, as it was then the fashion to call our chapel, and so did the leading grocer and draper of the place, and the village doctor, the father of six comely daughters; and the display of gigs on a Sunday was really imposing. Alas! as I grew older I saw that imposing array not a little shorn of its splendour. The neighbouring baronet, Sir Thomas Gooch, M.P., added as he could farm to farm, and that a Dissenter was on no account to have one of his farms was pretty well understood. I fancy our great landlords have, in many parts of East Anglia, pretty well exterminated Dissent, to the real injury of the people all around. I write this advisedly. I dare say the preaching in the meeting-house was often very miserably poor. The service, I must own, seemed to me often peculiarly long and unattractive. There was always that long prayer which was, I fear, to all boys a time of utter weariness; but, nevertheless, there was a moral and intellectual life in our Dissenting circle that did not exist elsewhere. It was true we never attended dinners at the village public-house, nor indulged in card-parties, and regarded with a horror, which I have come to think unwholesome, the frivolity of balls or the attractions of a theatre; but we had all the new books voted into our bookclub, and, as a lad, I can well remember how I revelled in the back numbers of the Edinburgh Review, though even then I could not but feel the injustice which it did to what it called the Lake school of poets, and more especially to Coleridge and Wordsworth. Shakespeare also was almost a sealed book, and perhaps we had a little too much of religious reading, such as Doddridge’s ‘Rise and Progress,’ or Baxter’s ‘Saint’s Rest,’ or Alleine’s ‘Call to the Unconverted,’ or Fleetwood’s ‘Life of Christ’ – excellent books in their way, undoubtedly, but not remarkably attractive to boys redolent of animal life, who had thriven and grown fat in that rustic village, on whose vivid senses the world that now is produced far more effect than the terrors or splendours of the world to come.

The country round, if flat, was full of interesting associations. At the back of us – that is, on the sea – was the village of Covehithe, and when a visitor found his way into the place – an event which happened now and then – our first excursion with him or her – for plenty of donkeys were to be had which ladies could ride – was to Covehithe, known to literary men as the birthplace of John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, in Ireland. In connection with donkeys, I have this interesting recollection, that one of the old men of the village told me. At the time of the Bristol riots, he remembered Sir Charles Wetherall, the occasion of them, as a boy at Wrentham much given to donkey-riding. In the history of the drama John Bale takes distinguished rank. He was one of those by whom the drama was gradually evolved, and all to whom it is a study and delight must remember him with regard. His play of ‘Kynge John’ is described by Mr. Collier as occupying an intermediate place between moralities and historical plays – and it is the only known existing specimen of that species of composition of so early a date. Bale, who was trained at the monastery of White Friars, in Norwich, thence went to Jesus College, Cambridge, and was expelled in consequence of the zeal with which he exposed the errors of Popery. However, Bale had a friend and protector in Cromwell, Henry VIII.’s faithful servant. On the death of that nobleman Bale proceeded to Germany, where he appears to have been well received and hospitably entertained by Luther and Melancthon, and on the accession of Edward VI. he returned to England. In Mary’s reign persecution recommenced, and Bale fled to Frankfort. He again returned at the commencement of Elizabeth’s reign, and was made prebend of Canterbury, at which place he died at the age of sixty-three. Covehithe nowadays is not interesting so much as the birthplace of Bale, as on account of its ecclesiastical ruins, which are covered with ivy and venerable in their decay. The church was evidently almost a cathedral, and surely at one time or other there must have been an enormous population to worship in such a sanctuary; and yet all you see now is a public-house just opposite the church, a few cottages, and a farmhouse. A few steps farther bring you to the low cliff, and there is the sea ever encroaching on the land in that quarter and swallowing up farmhouse and farm. Miss Agnes Strickland, who lived at Reydon Hall – a few miles inland – has thus sung the melancholy fate of Covehithe:

 
‘All roofless now the stately pile,
And rent the arches tall,
Through which with bright departing smile
The western sunbeams fall.
 

* * * * *

 
‘Tradition’s voice forgets to tell
Whose ashes sleep below,
And Fancy here unchecked may dwell,
And bid the story flow.’
 

Ah! what was that story? How the question puzzled my young head, as I walked in the sandy lane that led from my native village! How insignificant looked the little church built up inside! What had become of the crowds that at one time must have filled that ancient fane? How was it that no trace of them remained? They had vanished in the historical age, and yet no one could tell how or when. Nature was, then, stronger than man. He was gone, but the stars glittered by night and the sun shone by day, and the ivy had spread its green mantle over all. Yes! what was man, with his pomp and glory, but dust and ashes, after all! How I loved to go to Covehithe and climb its ruins, and dream of the distant past!

Here in that eastern point of England it seemed to me there was a good deal of decay. Sometimes, on a fine summer day, we would take a boat and sail from the pretty little town of Southwold, about four miles from Wrentham, to Dunwich, another relic of the past. According to an old historian, it was a city surrounded with a stone wall having brazen gates; it had fifty-two churches, chapels, and religious houses; it also boasted hospitals, a huge palace, a bishop’s seat, a mayor’s mansion, and a Mint. Beyond it a forest appears to have extended some miles into what is now the sea. One of our local Suffolk poets, James Bird (I saw him but once, when I walked into his house, about twelve miles from Wrentham, having run away from home at the ripe age of ten, and told him I had come to see him, as he was a poet; and I well remember how then, much to my chagrin, he gave me plum-pudding for dinner, and sent me to play with his boys till a cart was found in which the prodigal was compelled to return), wrote and published a poetical romance, called ‘Dunwich; or, a Tale of the Splendid City;’ and Agnes Strickland also made it the subject of her melodious verse, commencing:

 
‘Oft gazing on thy craggy brow,
We muse on glories o’er.
Fair Dunwich! Thou art lonely now,
Renowned and sought no more.’
 

Never has a splendid city more utterly collapsed. After a long ride over sandy lanes and fields, you come to the edge of a cliff, on which stand a few houses. There is all that remains of the Dunwich where the first Bishop of East Anglia taught the Christian faith, and where was born John Daye, the printer of the works of Parker, Latimer, and Fox, who, in the reign of Mary, became, as most real men did then, a prisoner and an exile for the truth. He has also the reputation of being the first in England who printed in the Saxon character. In the records of type-founding the name of Daye stands with that of the most illustrious. When the Company of Stationers obtained their charter from Philip and Mary, he was the first person admitted to their livery. In 1580 he was master of the company, to which he bequeathed property at his death. The following is the inscription which marks the place of his burial in Little Bradley, Suffolk:

 
‘Here lyes the Daye that darkness could not blynd,
When Popish fogges had overcast the sunne;
This Daye the cruel night did leave behind,
To view and show what bloudie actes were donne.
He set a Fox to write how martyrs runne
By death to lyfe, Fox ventured paynes and health.
To give them light Daye spent in print his wealth,
But God with gayne returned his wealth agayne,
And gave to him as he gave to the poore.
Two wyfes he had partakers of his payne:
Each wyfe twelve babes, and each of them one more,
Als was the last increaser of his store;
Who, mourning long for being left alone,
Sett up this tombe, herself turned to a stone.’
 

Unlike Covehithe, Dunwich has a history. In the reign of Henry II., a MS. in the British Museum tells us, the Earl of Leicester came to attack it. ‘When he came neare and beheld the strength thereof, it was terror and feare unto him to behold it; and so retired both he and his people.’ Dunwich aided King John in his wars with the barons, and thus gained the first charter. In the time of Edward I. it had sixteen fair ships, twelve barks, four-and-twenty fishing barks, and at that time there were few seaports in England that could say as much. It served the same King in his wars with France with eleven ships of war, well furnished with men and munition. In most of these ships were seventy-two men-at-arms, who served thirteen weeks at their own cost and charge. Dunwich seems to have suffered much by the French wars. Four of the eleven ships already referred to were captured by the French, and in the wars waged by Edward III. Dunwich lost still more shipping, and as many as 500 men. Perhaps it might have flourished till this day had if not been for the curse of war. But the sea also served the town cruelly. That spared nothing – not the King’s Forest, where there were hawking and hunting – not the homes where England nursed her hardy sailors – not even the harbour whence the brave East Anglians sailed away to the wars. In Edward III.’s time, at one fell swoop, the remorseless sea seems to have swallowed up ‘400 houses which payde rente to the towne towards the fee-farms, besydes certain shops and windmills.’ Yet, when I was a lad, this wreck of a place returned two members to Parliament, and Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield not one. Between Covehithe and Dunwich stood, and still stands, the charming little bathing-place of Southwold. Like them, it has seen better days, and has suffered from the encroachments of the ever-restless and ever-hungry sea. It was at Southwold that I first saw the sea, and I remember naturally asking my father, who showed me the guns on the gun-hill – pointing seaward – whether that was where the enemies came from.