Hannah More (British edition 1888)/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
THE BLAGDON PERSECUTION.
Mrs. Baker's death was not the only trouble that befell the zealous sisterhood in these years. Old friends were passing away in London; Horace Walpole, a friend of twenty years, died in 1797, Edmund Burke the same spring, both during the two months which were all Hannah could spare to Mrs. Garrick and the Porteous family. While at Fulham, she saw the wedding of the eldest daughter of George III. with the Duke of Wurtemberg. She observes: "As I looked at the sixteen handsome and magnificently dressed royals sitting around the altar, I could not help thinking how many plans were perhaps at that very moment formed for their destruction, for the bad news from Ireland had just arrived."
These were anxious years, both politically and morally, and there were serious troubles in the Mendip world. Betsy Baker became unsatisfactory after her mother's death, and it was a relief when she married.
Then Young, the Nailsea master, who seems to have been an excellent but injudicious man, contrived to affront the farmers, so that they insisted on his removal, though they had no distinct accusation to bring against him; and when the ladies refused, they did all they could to discourage attendance at his classes, and at length he was transferred to Blagdon, where the Misses More had been warmly invited by the Rector, Dr. Crossman, and the Curate, Mr. Bere, to open a school. The damp of the place brought on spasms in Hannah's face; she fainted, and, in her fall, dashed her face against a stone wall, injuring herself severely; and was so far from recovered, when Mr. Wilberforce brought his bride to Cowslip Green, that he insisted on carrying her off to Bath for a short course of the waters, leaving, as she said, "poor Patty to work double tides." Wedmore, not far from Cheddar, was taken in hand. There the farmers lived in actual terror from the miners; but the principal landlord of Wedmore, Mr. Barrow, declared that no school was wanted, for when the people gamed or rioted in the churchyard on Sunday, he sometimes went and cursed and swore at them a little, and, as he was overseer, they then dispersed always. His wife decidedly held that "The poor in a loomp are bad." She said that Providence intended the poor to be servants and slaves, it was ordained that they should be ignorant and wicked, and we could not alter what was decreed.
On the Sunday before the school was to be opened there was a curious scene. The clerk read out a paper signed John Barrow, summoning all opposed to the school to meet on Friday at the church, and the clergyman read another calling on parents and children to meet for the opening of the school on Sunday. Not a creature would sign the paper prepared against the school. A person on whose estate the despot had a mortgage answered, "Mr. Barrow, though I am much in your power, I am still a man!" To all his commands he received the same answer, and, after furiously abusing the curate, he declared that the opening of the school would be the beginning of a revolution like the French. "It is all over with property," he cried in the spirit of Tennyson's farmer. "If property is not to rule, what is to become of us?"
There was no place in which to keep Sunday-school except the church, and as Barrow prevented that from being used the school had to meet under an apple tree; but there a new difficulty arose, for while the children were being taught to sing Watts's hymns, a farmer ran down to the clergyman who was assisting, crying, "Oh, Sir, I am afraid this must be Methody."
It appears that the Methodists had once preached under an apple tree of his mother's, which had soon after died. On this the wise-acres of the parish called a vestry meeting, and agreed that since Methodist preaching blighted the apple trees, it must be banished with rotten eggs. A fortune-teller was consulted whether the singing were really Methodistic, and sagely made answer that, if the hymns were not, the tunes were, since they were not in Farmer Clap's book! However, the Misses More, finding the curate and the poor really anxious for the schools, built a house, with the aid of their supporters, Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Thornton.
Having finished the tracts, Hannah was writing another book dealing with the upper classes, called Strictures on Female Education. Hitherto her troubles had been all local, from the ignorance of the petty tyrants of the fields, the failure of her instruments, or disappointment in her pupils, but this book brought her into more serious difficulties. It was one of those works which it seems inevitable that a thoughtful woman should contribute to the good influences on her own generation. It was full of good sense; indeed, it is amusing to see how similar were the errors of the former generation to those of our own time. There is, for instance, a protest against abridgments and compendiums that might serve the present day, and again, a chapter called "On Definitions" has a capital protest against exaggerated language. "A tradesman may not be the most good-for-nothing fellow that ever existed, merely because it was impossible for him to execute in an hour an order which required a week;" a lady may not be "the most hideous fright the world ever saw," though the make of her gown may have been obsolete for a month; nor may one's young friend's father be a monster of cruelty, though he may be a quiet gentleman who does not choose to live at watering places, but likes to have his daughters at home with him in the country.
We are in the habit of looking on the youth of our grandmothers as a time of subjection, but we find that Hannah avers that "among the improvements of modern times, and they are not a few, it is to be feared that the growth of filial obedience cannot be reckoned," and proceeds to dwell on the lack of discipline and obedience just as she might do in the present day. She is very anxious to persuade mothers to educate their children themselves, and to promote innocent pleasures. "'To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven,' said the wise man, but he said it before the invention of baby balls; an invention which has formed a kind of era, and a most inauspicious one, in the annals of polished education. This modern device is a sort of triple conspiracy against the health, the innocence, and the happiness of childhood."
One strong chapter was on "Sensibility," a fashion gone out at the present day, but which was supposed to be the chief grace of young ladies, who were taught to consider that feebleness was their charm, and to "cherish a species of feeling which, if not checked, terminates in excessive selfishness," and the writer complained that "the poets, who, to do them justice, are always ready to lend a helping hand when any mischief is to be done, have contributed their full share towards confirming these feminine follies."
The latter part of the book dealt with deeper questions, not condemning a share in public amusements for grown persons, but discouraging them, and making the test of their lawfulness, whether we can ask a blessing on our enjoyment from our Maker, and thank him for it.
Then follows a wise chapter on "Worldly Spirit," and lastly a statement of the primary doctrines of Christianity, laying very great stress upon the corruption of human nature, and the necessity of a change of heart and life in building up the Christian character, and ending with a dissertation on the duty and necessity of Prayer.
That this somewhat unguarded statement as to the mischief done by the poets occasioned an attack from Peter Pindar, which Bishop Porteous called gross and coarse ribaldry, rancour and profaneness, mattered little; but it was a greater injury that the connection with Wilberforce, at a time when all efforts against slavery, either black or white, were suspected as revolutionary, excited bitter sneers from the Anti-Jacobin Review. It was still more distressing that an old friend and neighbour, Archdeacon Daubeny, was alarmed at the latter chapters of her book, which he considered to have a strong flavour of Calvinism. Indeed, considering that the authoress believed herself a thorough church woman, they are curiously lacking in any reference to church ordinances or means of grace. She had said nothing not borne out by the Articles and Liturgy; the point was what she had not said. However, she wisely made no attempt to argue publicly with the Archdeacon, and his letters were not answered. The serious thing was that the rumour of these attacks, on religious and political grounds, stirred up her only half-conquered enemies in the more reluctant parishes to an endeavour to put an end to her work among them.
It began at Wedmore—which was a "peculiar" under the patronage of the Chapter of Wells. The farmers presented a petition against the schools, with the statement that the master had called the Bishops dumb dogs, and said that all who went to church without hearing him would go to hell. The Bishop, Dr. Moss, knew and valued the good ladies, and invited them to dine whenever they passed through Wells. But Wedmore was a "peculiar" where he had no power, and it is impossible not to remark that there is never a mention throughout all the parish work of a Confirmation nor of a visit from a Bishop.
The Dean of Wells was for the time prejudiced by his attorney, who declared that the ladies taught "French principles," and who was employed by Barrow to take legal measure against them for teaching without a licence.
Of course, this came to nothing. Old Bishop Moss, who was nearly ninety, used to say, "When I hear it is Miss Hannah More, I know it is all right." But this had little effect. An opposition school was started at Wedmore, and the children driven to it by the parish officers. The poor clung closely to their benefactresses, and on the obnoxious master being removed, and a mistress sent in his place, things began to mend. But the signal had been given for revolt, and a still worse opposition broke out at Blagdon, whither the Misses More had been so urgently invited by the rector, Dr. Crossman, who lived at Bath, and the curate, Mr. Bere, who was rector of Butcombe, it having been apparently the habit of the clergy to live anywhere but in their own parishes.
The disturbance began in the winter of 1799-1800, while the sisters were wintering at Bath. Mr. Bere had adopted Socinian opinions, and preached a sermon which shocked Young, the schoolmaster, who had been removed from Nailsea for imprudent zeal. He seems to have used some expressions which offended the curate, and in the midst of a serious illness at Bath, Hannah received a letter peremptorily demanding that the Monday classes for adults should be discontinued, and Young himself be dismissed on the plea that he had permitted extemporary prayer. The matter was looked into, and Hannah, who had no love for dissent, and knew as she expressed it that "vulgar people will make their religion vulgar," discontinued the classes and rebuked Young.
All was quiet for a year and a quarter, and Hannah and Patty went together to London, where they made their usual round of visits. They called on Lady Elgin at Carlton House, where Hannah saw
the pretty little Princess Charlotte, then three years old. She had great delight in opening the drawers, uncovering the furniture, curtains, lustres, &c., to show me. For the Bishop of London's entertainment and mine the Princess was made to exhibit all her learning and accomplishments; the first consisted in her repeating the "Little Busy Bee"; the next in dancing very gracefully, and in singing "God Save the King," which was really affecting, all things considered, from her little voice. Her understanding is so forward that they really might begin to teach her many things. It is perhaps the highest praise to say that she is exactly like the child of a private gentleman, wild and natural, but sensible, lively, and civil.
In the midst of this sojourn at Fulham, a letter arrived from Mr. Bere, peremptorily demanding the suppression of the schools, and containing from an inhabitant an affidavit taken by himself, as a Justice of the Peace, against Young's personal character, adding that this was only a specimen, as he had taken many more of a similar description.
The Bishop of London and Hannah's other friends were infinitely shocked at this attack, and she knew this affidavit to be that of a weak-minded lad whom she had often assisted. She wrote to Sir Abraham Elton, of Clevedon Court, who was at once a clergyman and magistrate, and who was much better known to Bere than to herself. His investigation completely cleared the master, and the return of the ladies was prosperous. The Dean of Wells had become their friend, and gave them warm support at Wedmore, and Sir Abraham, at the Shipham Festival, before twelve clergymen, preached a sermon which had a great effect. Indeed, as Mr. Bere was threatening the Misses More with penal statutes, Sir Abraham returned the compliment by showing him to what he had rendered himself liable by his open defiance of the doctrines of the Church. His championship turned public opinion for the most part in their favour; but at Yatton the opposition was so determined that the school had to be removed to Chew Magna, "populous, ignorant, and wicked."
Unfortunately, the rector, Dr. Crossman, instead of coming to inquire in person, sent for his curate to explain, and, by the advice of Bishop Moss, Hannah More gave up the school. She was, perhaps partly in consequence of this strain, ill with an ague that lasted seven months.
Sir Abraham Elton, however, continued his gallant championship, preaching again at the Cheddar Club feast, where seventy gentry gathered, including Mr. Tudway, the member for Wells. Patty laments having to act like the rest of the world, and give a dinner to those who did not want it, and only tea to many hundreds who had no dinner at home.
It was almost a triumph; and Dr. Moss wrote most kindly to her; but Wedmore was as troublesome as ever, and the farmers actually presented the two sisters at the Archdeacon's Visitation for teaching without a licence, declaring they would never rest till they had worried the ladies out of the parish. Nevertheless, Patty went bravely the round of all the parishes, holding the feasts and making the little addresses, while her sister was too ill for the exertion.
Sir Abraham at last obtained from the Bishop the thirteen affidavits which the curate of Blagdon had taken against Young. Of them Hannah wrote to Wilberforce—
She was even accused of making her schools pray for the French, while she was actually exerting herself in behalf of the Somersetshire volunteers. At Shipham, when there was an alarm of the French landing at Fishguard,—
The rugged miners poured to war from Mendip's sunless caves,
and the male population were actually met marching to the defence of Bristol. The ladies of Barley Wood had even offered their house as a station for the troops if required.
Sir Abraham Elton re-examined the oath-takers, and with such effect that the Lord Chancellor Loughborough advised the bringing an action for libel against the slanderers; but she held fast by the rule she had chosen for herself, "The King's command is, 'Answer him not.'" In point of fact, in five years' time, no less than five of these accusers had been prosecuted for libels against other persons.
Bishop Moss, on the exposure of Bere's behaviour, with the full concurrence of the rector, withdrew his licence, and requested Miss More to restore the school, which she did; but though Bere was only a curate, there was no displacing him. He would not resign house or church, threatened a law-suit, and an appeal to the Archbishop; and Dr. Moss, who was timid and feeble, actually yielded to the storm and let the man remain, so that the school was again broken up, and Blagdon soon fell back into its previous habits.
There was all the time a war of pamphlets between the curate and the baronet. The silence of Miss More having been mentioned as a sign that she had no defence to make, Sir Abraham cited the famous silence of Scipio when accused of treason to the Commonwealth. Bere's rejoinder was: "You have prostituted the name of Scipio and rendered that of Hannah More supremely ridiculous. In sooth, Sir, the queer and humorous figure your Scipio in petticoats offers to the mind's eye mocks gravity into hysterics. You are not made for sportive tricks. You have done your cause no good by your disgraceful freak." Again, he boasted, "Look ye, Sir Abraham, I am descended in direct line from Gwyn ap Glendour ap Cadwallader ap Styfimog—and so on up to Adam, sound men and true."
Nine clergymen, among them the Bishop's son and his chaplain, issued pamphlets in her defence, and when the two sisters went to London, she was received with increased affection at Fulham. Bishop Horsley and all the persons most distinguished for their excellence eagerly testified their sympathy and indignation. Alexander Knox, one of the most orthodox of men, spoke of the attack as a national disgrace. The persecution seems to have been directed upon her in consequence of Wilberforce's desire for peace with France, as well as of his great crusade against the Slave Trade. In the temper of the times such sympathies were thought to savour of revolution, and any attempt to improve or elevate the lower classes was held to be suspicious; and thus the Anti-Jacobin Review disgraced itself by personal attacks on two such women as Hannah More and Sarah Trimmer, and on Bishop Porteous as their supporter. The pamphlets were immeasurably scurrilous, one even asserting that the Cheap Repository Tracts ought to be burnt by the common hangman; another declared that Hannah was in love with two officers and an actor, not knowing, perhaps, that she was in her sixtieth year.
Early in 1802 Bishop Moss died, and Hannah took the first opportunity of writing to his successor, Dr. Beadon, a full and dignified statement of her principles and her system, together with a history of the persecution, which she "attributes in great part to the defenceless state of her sex," and to her declared resolution to return no answer.
"I am assured by those who have carefully read the different pamphlets against me, that whilst I am accused in one of seditious practices, I am reviled in another as an enemy to liberty; in one of being disaffected to Church and State, in another of being a Ministerial hireling and a tool of Government. Nay, the very tracts are specified for which 'the venal hireling' was paid by Administration (by Mr. Pitt, I think). In one I am charged with praying for the success of the French, in another with fomenting by my writing the war with France, and savagely triumphing at every victory of what the author calls 'these friends to the general amelioration of human society.' I am accused of delighting in a war 'which we madly carried on, which began in iniquity and ended in disgrace.' In one place of 'not believing one word of Christianity,' in another of idolising the Athanasian Creed, which the author advises me, 'to order myself to be wrapped in as a winding sheet.'"
She goes on to describe her plan of instruction for the children. "They learn on week days such coarse works as may fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety. I know no way of teaching morals but by teaching principles, and of inculcating Christian principles without a good knowledge of Scripture. I own I have laboured this point diligently. My sister and I always teach them ourselves every Sunday, except during our absence in the winter. By being out about thirteen hours, we have generally contrived to visit two schools the same day, and carry them to their respective churches." As to the mistakes of her teachers, she allows that she had sometimes erred in her choice, and "the most vigilant prudence could only discharge such as proved to be improper." She adds, "I need not inform your Lordship why the illiterate when they become religious are more liable to enthusiasm than the better informed. They have also a coarse way of expressing their religious sentiments, which often appears to be enthusiasm when it is only vulgarity or quaintness. But I am persuaded your Lordship will allow that this does not furnish a reason why the poor should be left destitute of religious instruction. . . . Can the possibility that a few should become enthusiastic be justly pleaded as an argument for giving them all up to actual vice and barbarism?"
The new Bishop returned a hearty and kindly answer, wishing Miss More all success, and promising his protection and every encouragement he could give. From that time the persecution began to die away. Mr. Bere sank into obscurity, and when he died, in 1814, was recollected as having done nothing for the good of either his own parish or that of which he had taken charge.
Yet at Bath the personal scandals were slow to die out, and even within the last twenty years slanders against this blameless woman have been repeated.