Brontës (174 page)

81.
I have been unable to trace any contemporary references to Miss Davy. Henry Dixon's memoirs state that Jowett had rooms in a house hired by his master (the doctor) and that Patrick occupied these in Jowett's absence: H.N. Dixon, ‘Reminiscences of an Essex Country Practitioner a Century Ago',
Essex Review
, xiv (1915), 6.

82.
The Parish Church of Saint Mary Magdalene: Some Notes for Visitors
, 4.

83.
Wethersfield United Reform Church, 2pp. typescript notes: MS D/NC 31/2, ERO.

84.
Dixon, ‘Reminiscences of an Essex Country Practitioner a Century Ago', 6. The parish registers confirm that Jowett only officiated in church between late July and early October each year unless he was without a curate and unable to find a substitute.

85.
Registers of Marriages 1754–1813 and of Baptisms and Burials 1801–12, St Mary Magdalene, Wethersfield: Microfilm T/R 132/3, ERO.

86.
Ibid.

87.
Ibid.; Dixon, ‘Reminiscences of an Essex Country Practitioner a Century Ago',
Essex Review
, xiii (1914), 195. Patrick's first burial, a 12–year-old boy, took place on 26 October 1806; thereafter he performed an average of 3a month, rising to 8 during the typhus epidemic in December: Registers of Baptisms and Burials 1801–12, St Mary Magdalene, Wethersfield: Microfilm T/R 132/3, ERO.

88.
A board in the church at Wethersfield records details of the Dorothy Mott charitable fund which was set up in 1759. Patrick's presence is not recorded at any of the meetings of the vicar and churchwardens regarding the charity lands, distribution of coals etc.: Churchwardens' Books, St Mary Magdalene, Wethersfield: MSS D/P 119/8/5 and D/P 119/8/6, ERO.

89.
‘Reminiscences of an Essex Country Practitioner a Century Ago',
Essex Review
, xiii (1914), 198.

90.
Venn, iv, 573.

91.
‘Georgian Colchester: Social History',
Victoria County History of Essex, ix, The Borough of Colchester
(1994), 169–75. I am grateful to Beryl Board for making her material available to me before publication.

92.
Register of Marriages, St Peter's Church, Colchester: Microfilm D/P 178/1/8, ERO. Only the marriage register contains the officiating minister's name: Patrick's name does not appear there but L&D, 31 say he took duty there. Storry signed the Letters Testimonial Patrick needed for his promotion to Dewsbury: see below, p.34.

93.
PB,
Si Quis
, 26 July 1807: MS 10326/138 no.5item 3, Guildhall [L&D, 31]; Joseph Jowett, Certificate, 14 July 1807: MS 10326/138 no.5item 1, Guildhall [L&D, 31].

94.
PB, Letters Testimonial, n.d.: MS 10326/138 no.5item 3, Guildhall [L&D, 30–1].

95.
Patrick sent the papers expressing the vain hope that ‘his Lordship will not look upon it as too late': PB to the Secretary of the Bishop of London, 29 July 1807: MS 10326/138 no.5item 5, Guildhall [L&D, 31–2].

96.
I have been unable to find any contemporary reference to Mary Burder. For the facts I have therefore followed the account given by her daughter Mrs Lowe in Augustine Birrell,
The Life of Charlotte Brontë
(London, 1887), 18–23, though I have reservations about its accuracy.

97.
Ibid., 20.

98.
PB to Mary Burder, 1Jan 1824: MS n.l. [
LRPB
, 50].

99.
PB to Mary Burder, 28 July 1823: MS n.l. [
LRPB
, 47].

100.
Birrell,
The Life of Charlotte Brontë
, 22–3.

101.
Mary Burder to PB, 8Aug 1823: MS n.l. [
L&L
, i, 65;
LRPB
, 343, wrongly dated to 18 Aug].

102.
I am indebted to Donald Hathaway, who
lived at Broad Farm until he was 18, for the description of the house which was demolished in the 1950s to make way for a now-abandoned American air base. £230 10d was the capital valuation of the farm: Wethersfield Tithe Award, 22 Dec 1842: MS D/CT 393A, lot 791–841, ERO. Haworth Parsonage, by comparison, was revalued at £10 13s in 1851, having previously been worth only £7: PB, Account Book, [
c
.1845–61]: MS BS 173 p.12, BPM.

103.
Wethersfield Tithe Award, 22 Dec 1842: MS D/CT 393A, lot 766–868, ERO. I am grateful to Rita Norman of Wethersfield for her assistance in identifying The Park today.

104.
Mary Burder to PB, 8 Aug 1823: MS n.l. [
L&L
, i, 64].

105.
PB to Mary Burder, 1 Jan 1824: MS n.l. [
LRPB
, 49].

106.
Mary Burder to PB, 8Aug 1823: MS n.l. [
L&L
, i, 64].

107.
Residence Register: MS C27.1, SJC.

108.
PB to Mary Burder, 1Jan 1824: MS n.l. [
LRPB
, 50].

109.
Patrick's absence at Glenfield is suggested by the fact that Jowett had to get the curate of Finchingfield to take a marriage on 20 September and a burial on 21 September. Someone else deputized on 11 October but Patrick was back by 18 October when he took a burial service: Register of Baptisms and Burials 1801–12 and Register of Marriages 1754–1812, St Mary Magdalene, Wethersfield: Microfilm T/R 132/3, ERO. Robert Cox was admitted as a sizar at St John's in March 1803 but transferred to Queens' College on 1January 1804, graduating from there in 1806: ordained in 1807 he became rector of Broughton Astley in Leicestershire: Venn, i, 161. John Barnwell Campbell, who came from South Carolina, was admitted as a pensioner at Queens' in 1804 and graduated in 1808: ibid., 501.

110.
PB to Revd Mr Campbell, 12 Nov 1808: MS p.2, Princeton [
LRPB
, 24]. The quotation is from St Paul to the Corinthians, ch. 6, v.14. Significantly, Patrick used it again in his little book
The Cottage in the Wood
(1815): his pious cottager Mary rejects an atheist's marriage proposal with these words: ‘I shall follow the directions of God, and he says, “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath right-eousness with unrighteousness?” … Whatever religious person marries one that is not religious, breaks an express commandment of Scripture; and who can expect that God will make these labours end well, that have such a bad beginning? Every truly converted character, who would make advances in piety, and become wiser and happier, must have a partner of similar views and feelings, who, at all times, will prove a
help
rather than a
hindrance
': PB,
The Cottage in the Wood
, 26–7[
Brontëana
, 111–12]. Campbell was an obvious confidant for Patrick who remarked in this letter, ‘In some things, our lots in life are nearly similar; both as respects our late love affairs, & our voluntary exile from our Dear Homes; though I believe, literally speaking, it is not voluntary': PB to Revd Mr Campbell, 12 Nov 1808: MS p.2, Princeton [
LRPB
, 24].

111.
Although I cannot prove Mary attended Wethersfield Congregational chapel at this time the many Burders at Great Yeldham, Castle Hedingham and Finchingfield were all Nonconformists and her four daughters, born 1825–30, were all baptized there according to the Essex IGI. Mary herself married the Revd Peter Sibree, minister of the chapel, in 1824 and moved to the manse only a couple of doors down the village green from St George's House.

112.
Mary Burder to PB, 8Aug 1823: MS n.l. [
L&L
, i, 64].

113.
PB to Mary Burder, 1Jan 1824: MS n.l. [
LRPB
, 49].

114.
PB to Revd Mr Campbell, 12 Nov 1808: MS p.2, Princeton [
LRPB
, 24].

115.
‘Patrick Brontë was once my greatest friend', Nunn told his niece Maria Tipton in 1857 when he learned she was reading Mrs Gaskell's
Life of Charlotte Brontë
. The next morning he brought out a thick bundle of letters, telling her that they were from Patrick and referred to his spiritual state, that he had read through them again and would now destroy them: Clement K. Shorter,
The Brontës: Life and Letters
(London, 1908), i, 25 n.2.

116.
PB to Mary Burder, 1Jan 1824: MS n.l. [
LRPB
, 50].

117.
PB to Mrs Burder, 21 Apr 1823 and to Mary Burder, 28 July 1823: MSS n.l. [
LRPB
, 45, 47].

118.
Register of Baptisms and Burials 1801–12 and Register of Marriages 1754–1812, St Mary Magdalene, Wethersfield: Microfilm T/R 132/3, ERO. L&D, 40 confuse the date of the burial with the date of registration.

119.
Pigot & Co.,
National Commercial Directory
(1822), 378–9;
Shropshire Gazetteer
(Wem, 1824), 144, 671; George Evans,
Wellington: A Portrait in Old Photographs and Picture Postcards
(Market Drayton, 1990).

120.
R. M. Baxter, ‘A History of Wellington' (1949): typescript in LSL, Shrewsbury.

121.
Shrewsbury Chronicle
, 6 Jan 1809 p.2.

122.
Wellington Presentation Papers and Deeds: MS B/A/3, Lichfield; Venn, ii, 449. In Marjorie McCrea,
A History of the Parish Church of All Saints Wellington, Shropshire
(Wellington, 1987), 3, 23 Eyton is wrongly described as third son of Robert Eyton, vicar of Ryton [
sic
], Shifnal and his dates at Wellington as 1803–22 instead of the correct 1802–23.

123.
Venn, ii, 449; W[illiam] M[organ], ‘A Short Account of the late Rev John Eyton, A.M. Vicar of Wellington, Shropshire',
The Cottage Magazine
(Apr 1823), 109–12; Charles Hulbert,
The Manual of Shropshire Biography; Chronology and Antiquities
(Shrewsbury, 1829), 17. Eyton's ‘Sermon preached on the occasion of the late Naval Victory [Trafalgar]' (1805) was the first publication of Edward Houlston, Wellington's bookseller and printer: Philip A. Brown, ‘Houlstons of Wellington Shropshire – a well known publishing house in early Victorian times',
Shropshire Magazine
, Apr 1959, 15.

124.
Evans,
Wellington: a Portrait in Old Photographs and Picture Postcards
, 55.

125.
McCrea,
A History of the Parish Church of All Saints Wellington, Shropshire
and personal observation.

126.
W[illiam] M[organ], ‘A Short Account of the late Rev John Eyton, A.M. Vicar of Wellington, Shropshire', 112–13. Eyton's ill-health obliged him to give up his formal duties and spend the winter of 1822–3con-valescing in Portsmouth where he died aged 45: his obituary, written in Bradford on 9 February 1823 by Patrick's friend and fellow-curate, Morgan, was published by Patrick's next vicar, John Buckworth, in
The Cottage Magazine
(1823), 109–14.

127.
Register of Baptisms and Burials 1801–12 and Register of Marriages 1754–1812, St Mary Magdalene, Wethersfield: Microfilm T/R 132/3, ERO. The accent had now become ‘Brontēe'.

128.
Assessment for the Relief of the Poor of Eyton, 25 May 1809: MS at St Catherine's Church, Eyton. Three baptisms and 10 marriages were carried out by John Eyton and William Morgan respectively: I am grateful to Miss McCrea for this information from the Eyton parish registers.

129.
Shrewsbury Chronicle
, 10 Feb 1809 p.3; 26 May 1809 p.3; 9June 1809 p.3; 16 June 1809 p.3. The Revd John Waltham was a leading Evangelical: a memoir of his life stated ‘if the path of our reverend friend, both as a Christian and a Minister, was as the shining light; the end of his path was as the perfect day':
The Cottage Magazine
(1815), 30–4.

130.
Shrewsbury Chronicle
, 27 Oct 1809 p.3.

131.
Ibid., 3Nov 1809 p.3. A Lancasterian school was run along the lines established by the founder, Joseph Lancaster, and employed older pupils to assist the teacher by instructing younger ones.

132.
H.E. Forrest,
Old Churches of Shrewsbury
(Shrewsbury, 1920), 101.

133.
Ibid.; M. L. Charlesworth,
A Choice of Churches
(Shrewsbury, n.d.); Hulbert,
The Manual of Shropshire Biography
, 26.

134.
C. A. Hulbert to L. Hainsworth, 20 Aug 1885: MS BS ix, H p.1, BPM; Kenneth G. Kinrade, ‘The Remarkable Career of Charles Hulbert',
Shropshire Magazine
(Nov 1956), 18–20 and (Dec 1956), 17–19.

135.
Prior to his ordination, Fennell was the first head of the newly established Woodhouse Grove School for the sons of Methodist ministers: see below, pp.54–5.

136.
The date of Morgan's appointment is deduced from his signatures in the Register of Marriages, All Saints' Church, Wellington: MS at All Saints', Wellington. For Morgan's career see Michael Walker, ‘William Morgan, B.D. 1782–1858',
BST
:30:3:213–30.

137.
For Fletcher I have followed the account of him given in the ‘Lives of Eminent Christians' series published in
The Cottage Magazine
(1825), 9–18, 289–300, 325–32, 361–9, 397–404 and (1826), 1–9, 37–44, 73–81, 109–19, which draws largely on the biographies by Gilpin and Cox.

138.
Ibid. (1825), 368–9; (1826), 115; Joshua Gilpin,
The Portrait of St Paul: or the True Model for Christians and Pastors, Translated from a French Manuscript of the late Revd John William de la Flechère, vicar of Madeley, with an Account of the Author
(Shrewsbury and London, 1790), 2 vols. Patrick dedicated a poem ‘To the Rev J Gilpin, on his improved edition of the Pilgrim's Progress': PB,
Cottage Poems
, 87–93 [
Brontëana
, 87].

139.
William Morgan,
The Parish Priest: Pourtrayed in the Life, Character and Ministry of the Rev. John Crosse, A.M.
(London, 1841), 8.

140.
Ibid., 8–9.

141.
W. Matthews, ‘Charlotte Brontë',
The Methodist New Connexion Magazine
(London, 1889), 208; Morgan,
The Parish Priest
, 13, 130.