Chapter IX (2)

In one of his letters to Mrs. Byrom he speaks of meeting with Whitefield, the great preacher and founder of the Calvinistic Methodists, who had then just returned from a visit to the American settlement of Georgia, when it was proposed to sing a hymn; and he remarks, “If I was to sing with ’em, it must (be) nearer homeward than Georgia. The tune that I should sing would be something like this, I believe:—

Partner of all my joys and cares,
Whether in poverty or wealth,
For thee I put up all my pray’rs;
Well heard if answer’d by thy health.

Long absence, cruel as it is,
Content still longer to endure,
If ought conducive to thy bliss
The tedious torment could procure.

Joyous or grievous my employ,
Absence itself would give relief,
Could I but give thee all the joy,
And bear myself alone the grief.

Lost in this place of grand resort,
Though crowds succeeding crowds I see,
Quite from the city to the court—
’Tis all a wilderness to me!

Amidst a world of gaudy scenes
Around me, glittering, I move;
I wander, heedless what it means,
Bent on the thoughts of her I love.

Still I usurp that sacred sound
Too often and too long profan’d;
When shall I tread the happy ground
Where love and truth may be obtained?

Let me and my beloved spouse,
With mutual ardour, strive to quit
False, earthly, interested vows,
And Heaven into our hearts admit.

There let th’ endearing hope take place,
Though parted here to meet above
In a perpetual chaste embrace,
United, Jesu! in thy love!”

It was during the time of these visits to London that the wordy war arose between the admirers of Handel and his great Italian rival Bononcini, which Byrom ridiculed in a witty epigram that will remain famous for all time:—

Some say compared to Bononcini
That Mynheer Handel’s but a ninny.
Others aver that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a candle;
Strange all this difference should be
’Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee.

Its publication created quite a sensation in the literary world; the wits of the day attributed it to Swift, and he has been often credited with it in later times. Handel’s biographer, M. Victor Schoelcher, thus refers to it—“Swift, who admired nothing, and who had no ear, wrote an epigram upon the subject,” and adds, “the angry injustice of the nobles” who were in league against the great composer was “far preferable to the empty eclecticism of the Dean of St Patrick’s.” The question of authorship is, however, easily disposed of by a reference to Byrom’s journal, in which, writing under date, Saturday, June 5, 1725, he says:—

“We went to see Mr. Hooper, who was at dinner at Mr. Whitworth’s;
he came over to us to Mill’s Coffee House, told us of my epigram
upon Handel and Bononcini being in the papers.... Bob came
to supper; said that Glover had showed him the verses in the
_Journal_, not knowing that they were mine.”

And so the years went round. The summer months he usually spent with his family and kindred in Lancashire; looking in now and then at the “College;” discussing learnedly with Dr. Deacon, Clayton, Thyer, and other of the local _literati_; paying court to Lady Bland; spending the day with “Mother Byrom” at Kersall; dining with “brother Byrom at the Cross” (Edward Byrom’s, in the Market Place); “drinking a dish of tea with sister Brearcliffe” at her stately house in Spring Gardens; or taking an evening walk “after sermon by the river side by Strangeways with Mr. Leycester and Dr. Mainwaring;” for Strangeways Walk, as it was called, was then a pleasant tree-shaded lane, with the pleasaunce belonging to Hunt’s Bank Hall, the residence of Mr. Clowes, and the stately woods of Strangeways Park on the one hand, and verdant meadows and pastures reaching down to the banks of the pure and sparkling Irwell on the other. In London his time was pretty well occupied with his pupils, the brief intervals of leisure being spent in social intercourse with his Lancashire and Cambridge friends, writing epigrams, disputing on religious doctrines, attending meetings at the (Royal) “Society,” “making merry at the Mitre,” and lamenting the shortcomings of his laundress.

The practice of reporting was not then universally popular, and Byrom occasionally met with a humorous adventure. “Orator” Henley, whom Pope has immortalised—

The great restorer of the good old stage,
Preacher at once and zany of his age.

objected to his sermons being reported on the ground that “he might have his discourses printed against him.” He threatened to turn out the “chiel amang them takin notes,” and when Byrom would not desist, even when the “manager” offered to return the shilling he had paid for admission, “went on so much faster than usual that he took the only way to stop me,” thus effectually getting rid of the unwelcome attentions of the inexorable shorthand writer. On another occasion when Byrom exercised his talents in assisting the High Church party to oppose the application to Parliament for an Act to establish a workhouse in Manchester for the employment of the poor, a scene occurred which is best related in his own words. A subscription had been raised in the town to defray the cost of erection, and it was proposed that the house should be managed by twenty-four guardians, eight to be nominated by the Whigs, eight by the Tories, and the remainder by the Presbyterians. Dr. Peploe, the Whig Bishop of Chester, who was also warden of Manchester, undertook to present the Bill for forming the guardians into a corporation; but the Tory and High Church party offered a strong opposition to the scheme. Through some delay the measure was defeated in the first session of Parliament, and on being reintroduced in the succeeding year it was opposed by Sir Oswald Mosley, of Ancoats, who, fearing that his interests as lord of the manor might be prejudiced, had, in the meantime, caused a large building to be erected for the purpose near Miller’s Lane—the present Miller Street. Byrom, whom the Whigs denounced as an incendiary and threatened to pull to pieces, was very active in supporting the Tory opposition, and gave evidence before the Commissioners. He appears on the same occasion to have occupied himself in taking shorthand notes, when the scene occurred which he thus describes in a letter dated February 20, 1731:—

I must tell you to get another petition ready to offer to the
House that a body may write shorthand in the cause of one’s
country. I have ventured to stand the threats of a complaint
and the danger of a committee in defence of that natural right
of exercising the noble art which I have acquired. At the last
committee but one I was threatened by a Scotch knight (Sir James
Campbell) whom I provoked to execution of his said valiant
threatening yesterday, for in the midst of Serjt. Darnel’s reply
out he comes at the instigation of one Brereton, and suddenly and
loud pronounces these terrible words—_To oadur, oardur, I speak
to oadur; I desair to knaw if any mon shil wrait here that is
nut a clairk or solicitur?_ and an universal silence ensuing I
was going to speak for myself but a member of my acquaintance
winking that I had better not, I repressed my rising indignation.
Nobody said anything to the knight’s query, only Sir Ed. Stanley
(M.P. for the county of Lancaster, and afterwards eleventh Earl of
Derby) hinted that there was no great harm done; and my friend the
serjeant himself said that the gentleman was famous for writing
shorthand, and for his part he was under no apprehension by his
taking down anything he should say, and so returned to his matter;
and the apparition of danger vanished; but if these attacks upon
the liberty of shorthand men go on I must have a petition from all
countries where our disciples dwell, and Manchester must lead ’em
on.

On the 12th May, 1740, Byrom’s elder brother, Edward, the “Brother Byrom at the Cross,” died unmarried, when John, the poet and stenographer, became the head of the family and owner of the estates at Kersall.

Mr. Espinasse, in the first of his admirable series of “Lancashire Worthies,” says that Byrom’s biographers “do not give the precise date of the death of his elder brother, Edward.” The information is supplied in the stenographer’s “Shorthand Journal,” in which occurs this entry:—

May 12th (1740).—Edward Byrom, of Kersall, elder son of Edward
Byrom, of Manchester, and Dorothy, daughter of John Allen, of
Redivales, near Bury. He was born March 4th, 1686, and died May
12th, 1740.

By his acquisition of the family estates at Kersall, Byrom was placed in a position of comfortable independence, and able to relax from the drudgery of teaching shorthand, though it was some time before he could be induced to withdraw from London and its pleasant society to settle down in quiet retirement in Manchester. Two years after this addition to his fortune he received the welcome intelligence from Lord Morton that the crowning act of all his anxieties—the Act securing to him for a period of twenty-one years the exclusive right of publishing his “Art and Method of Shorthand”—the nation’s testimony to the merits of the system—had passed the House of Lords and received the royal assent; an Act which, singular to say, appears to have been obtained without any cost.

From this time his journeyings to London became less and less frequent, and his life seems to have been passed for the most part in his native town in a calm round of social and domestic enjoyment, his playful fancy finding vent in squib and pasquinade, and in sparkling epigrams, an easy and unshackled style of versification for which he had a special aptitude. Not the least popular of his effusions was the one directed against the farmers or tenants of the Grammar School Mills, Messrs. Yates and Dawson, who had involved the town in the costs of a lawsuit because the inhabitants had refused to observe the old feudal monopoly and grind all their corn, grain, and malt at the mills:—

Here’s Bone and Skin,
Two millers thin,
Would starve the town, or near it,
But be it known
To Skin and Bone
That Flesh and Blood can’t bear it.

The point of the epigram was in the allusion to the professions of Yates and Dawson, _Skin_ being Joseph Yates, a barrister, the father of Sir Joseph Yates, one of the Judges of the Common Pleas; and _Bone_, Dr. Dawson (Byrom’s relative), a well-known medical practitioner in the town, and the father of the ill-fated “Jemmy Dawson,” the hero of Shenstone’s pathetic ballad. He also, on the occasion of the Pretender’s visit to Manchester, wrote the lines which have since become almost as famous as his epigram on Handel and Bononcini:—

God bless the King! I mean the faith’s defender;
God bless (no harm in blessing) the Pretender;
But who Pretender is, or who is King,
God bless us all—that’s quite another thing.

The period was one of great political excitement. The men of Manchester, who a century previously had barricaded their town and defied the soldiers of Charles the First, became jubilant on the restoration of monarchy in the person of his son, and, to prove their loyalty, caused the conduit in the market place to flow with claret and the gutters to swell with strong beer; their sons were noted for their Jacobite proclivities, and nowhere did the young Pretender receive a heartier welcome than in the old Puritan town where, as has been said by a popular writer (Dr. Halley), “the orange plumes seemed to have grown pale and faded into white feathers before the bright colours of the Stuart tartan.” The barbarous severities with which the rebellion of 1715 was crushed had only served to perpetuate and increase the feeling of bitterness against the Whig Government, and this feeling was intensified by the religious feuds that sprang up in the town. The Tories and High Churchmen, though they had taken the oath to King George and desired to maintain the Protestant succession, were for the most part Jacobites, while the Low Churchmen and Nonconformists were staunch partisans of the house of Brunswick—the one proclaimed the divine right of kings, and the other was equally zealous in upholding the “Glorious Revolution.”

Byrom’s intimate friend, Dr. Deacon, a nonjuring minister, who had incurred the suspicions of the Government through his supposed connection with the former rebellion, and on that account had removed to Manchester, where he combined the profession of theology with the practice of physic, assembled a congregation of nonjurors at his house in Fennel Street, adjoining the present “Dog and Partridge”—the “Schism Shop,” as it was irreverently called—while Joseph Owen, a fierce Presbyterian polemic, declaimed with angry invective against the clergy of the “Old Church” for their alleged sympathy with the nonjuring divine. The quarrel became fiercer than ever, and the coarse sermons of Owen were answered by the satire and clever epigrams of Byrom:—

Leave to the low-bred Owens of the age
Sense to belye and loyalty to rage,
Wit to make treason of each cry and chat,
And eyes to see false worship in a hat.

Meetings of the rival factions were regularly held at the different taverns in the town, the “Angel” in Market Street Lane being the head-quarters of the Whigs, and the “Bull’s Head,” opposite Phœbe Byrom’s in the Market Place, the resort of those disaffected to the reigning family; “John Shaw’s,” too, a “public” in the Old Shambles, kept by a veteran trooper, who in his campaigns abroad had acquired the art of brewing punch of unrivalled quality, and who was as famed for the discipline and the autocratic rule he maintained as for the excellence of the beverage he brewed, received under its hospitable roof the more thorough-going Church and King men and supporters of the Stuart cause.[45] Byrom was a frequent attender at the convivial gatherings at “John Shaw’s,” and the only portrait of him in the later years of his life that has been preserved, was one taken by stealth by his friend Dorning Rasbotham, “after spending an evening at Shawe’s Coffee House,” prefixed to the Leeds edition of his poems, and reproduced in Gregson’s “Fragments.”

[Note 45: “John Shaw’s” eventually assumed the character of an organised club, and after an uninterrupted career of a century and a half it still remains in a flourishing state, and is as convivial in its “green old age” as in the days when John Shaw cracked his whip, and with loud voice and imperative tone exclaimed, “Eight o’clock, gentlemen, eight o’clock,” and his serving maid, Molly, followed with her mop and bucket ready to expedite the movements of the loiterer, should the cracking of the whip have failed to “speed the parting guest.” The club has an official staff elected annually and with much mock formality, and what Dr. Johnson calls “obstreperous merriment,” and the members, who are true “Church and Queen” men, assemble once a month under the shadow of the “Mitre” to discuss punch and politics, and drink old wine, and the traditional old toasts, omitting, however, the very suggestive one of the King “over the water.” Among the most treasured relics in the possession of the club, and which now adorn the room where the members assemble, are the original portraits in oil of the autocratic and inflexible John and Molly Owen, his prime minister, and factotum—the Hebe of the house, and the veritable china bowl in which John brewed his seductive compound.]

Byrom’s pen was ever at the service of his political friends, and the “Laureate of the Jacobites,” the “Master Tool of the Faction,” as he was indifferently styled, was more than a match for his Whig antagonists. Imbued, however, with strong religious feelings, there was little of bitterness in his compositions; the shaft of ridicule was never envenomed, his playful wit and genial good-humoured satire telling with far greater effect than the coarse and angry invectives with which he was at times assailed. If he was ready to lampoon a foe, he never lacked the courage to rebuke a friend. This is evidenced by his well-timed admonition against swearing, “addressed to an officer in the army,” Colonel Townley, the commander of the regiment raised in Manchester in the service of the Pretender:—

O that the muse might call, without offence,
The gallant soldier back to his good sense,
His temp’ral field so cautious not to lose;
So careless quite of his eternal foes.
Soldier! so tender of thy prince’s fame,
Why so profuse of a superior name?
For the King’s sake the brunt of battles bear;
But, for the King of King’s sake do not swear.

In his early youth Byrom had manifested strong Jacobite tendencies, but in the interval between the two rebellions—the Sacheverel riots of ’15 and the rising of ’45—his political opinions, if in no degree modified, had become much less demonstrative, and his Jacobitism was under the control of a possessor sufficiently cautious to prevent its imperilling his family interests or endangering his personal safety. His daughter “Beppy” was then a young lady of three-and-twenty; following her father’s example she had set up a diary, and some of the entries in her journal, with a letter written by Byrom to his kinsman and friend, Mr. Vigor, furnishes the most circumstantial and entertaining accounts of the Pretenders visit to Manchester extant. The doctor’s gossiping daughter was an ardent Jacobite, though a very prudent one, her sentimental devotion to the Stuart cause being most pronounced when personal danger was remote, the fair young diarist having little scruple in designating the wearers of the white cockade “rebels” when peril was at hand. For all that, her “Diary” is very entertaining. Apart from the vivid portraiture of the excitement and consternation into which the Manchestrians were thrown by the presence of the rebel army, it is impossible to read it without feeling that you are listening to the sprightly chat of the lively and unsophisticated writer.

On Tuesday, the 25th of November, news came that Prince Charles Edward had marched his forces into Lancashire. The town was in a state of great excitement. The Presbyterians and Whigs deemed it prudent to get out of the way; the militia, which had been very valiant before the approach of the rebels, followed the example; the wealthier householders removed their families into the country; and even furniture and provisions were conveyed to places of more assured safety. On the afternoon of Friday, the 28th, Sergeant Dickson, a dashing young Scotchman, with his sweetheart and a drummer, entered the town and proclaimed the Chevalier King; and on the following morning the Prince with the main body of his army joined them, and encamped in St. Ann’s Square. “Manchester,” says Ray, in his “History of the Rebellion,” “was taken by a sergeant, a drum, and a woman, who rode to the market cross on horses with hempen halters on, where they proclaimed their King.” Here is “Beppy” Byrom’s version:

Tuesday (November) 28.—About three o’clock to-day came into
town two men in Highland dress, and a woman behind one of them
with a drum on her knee, and for all the loyal work that our
Presbyterians have made they took possession of the town, as one
may say, for immediately after they were ’light they beat up for
volunteers for P(rince) C(harles).... They were directly joined by
Mr. J. Bradshaw, Mr. Tom Sydall, Mr. Tom Deacon, Mr. Fletcher, Tom
Chaddock; and several others have listed, about 80 men by eight
o’clock, when my papa came down to tell us there was a party of
horse come in. He took care of me to the Cross, when I saw them
all. It is a very fine moonlight night.... My papa and uncle are
gone to consult with Mr. Croxton, Mr. Fielden, and others how to
keep themselves out of any scrape, and yet behave civilly (a very
prudent procedure in such a crisis). All the justices fled, and
lawyers too, but coz. Clowes.

Friday, 29th.—They are beating up for the P.; eleven o’clock we
went up to the Cross to see the rest come in; then came small
parties of them till about three o’clock, when the P. and the
main body of them came; I cannot guess how many.... Then came
an officer up to us at the Cross, and gave us the manifesto
and declarations. The bells they rung, and P. Cotterel made a
bonfire, and all the town was illuminated, every house except Mr.
Dickinson’s (the house in Market-street-lane, where the Prince
took up his quarters, and thenceforward known as the Palace). My
papa, mama, and sister, and my uncle and I walked up and down
to see it. About four o’clock the King was proclaimed, the
mob shouted very cleverly, and then we went up to see my aunt
Brearcliffe, and stayed eleven o’clock making St Andrew’s crosses
for them; we sat up making till two o’clock.

Colonel Townley, a member of the great Catholic family of that name, who had arranged for the Prince’s reception in Manchester, and had engaged several of the principal residents for officers, speedily mustered and enrolled a regiment in the service of the Prince. Each recruit received a white St Andrew’s cross, which cost little, and a _promise_ of five guineas, which, as they were never paid, cost less. In the next entry the enthusiastic young Jacobite describes her impressions of the “yellow-hair’d laddie,” and the way in which her father made homage to him:—

Saturday, 30th (St. Andrew’s Day).—More crosses making till twelve
o’clock; then I dressed up in my white gown and went up to my aunt
Brearcliffe’s, and an officer called on us to go see the prince.
We went to Mr. Fletcher’s and saw him get a horseback, and a noble
sight it is [no wonder that amid such excitement the young lady
got a little “mixed” in her moods and tenses]. I would not have
missed it for a great deal of money. His horse had stood an hour
in the court without stirring, and as soon as he got on he [_i.e._
the horse, not the prince] began a dancing and capering as if he
was proud of the burden, and when he rid out of the court he was
received with as much joy and shouting almost as if he had been
King, indeed I think scarce anybody that saw him could dispute it.
As soon as he was gone the officer and us went to prayers at the
old church at two o’clock by their orders, or else there has been
none since they came. Mr. Shrigley read prayers; he prayed for the
King and Prince of Wales, and named no names. Then we called at
our house and eat a queen cake, and a glass of wine, for we got
no dinner; then the officer went with us all to the Camp Field
to see the artillery; called at my uncle’s and then went up to
Mr. Fletcher’s, stayed there till the prince was at supper, then
the officer introduced us into the room, stayed awhile and then
went into the great parlour where the officers were dining, sat
by Mrs. Stark(ey); they were all exceeding civil and almost made
us fuddled with drinking the P. health, for we had had no dinner;
we sat there till Secretary Murray came to let us know that the
P. was at leisure and had done supper, so we were all introduced
and had the honour to kiss his hand; my papa was fetched prisoner
to do the same [another testimony to the doctor’s discretion], as
was Dr. Deacon; Mr. Cattell and Mr. Clayton [two of the Old Church
clergy who were less cautious] did it without; the latter said
grace for him; then we went out and drank his health in the other
room, and so to Mr. Fletcher’s, where my mamma waited for us (my
uncle was gone to pay his land tax) and then went home.

December 1st.—About six o’clock the P. and the foot set out,
went up Market-street Lane and over Cheadle ford; the horse was
gathering together all forenoon; we went up to the Cross to see
them, and then to Mr. Starkey’s, they were all drawn up in the
Square and went off in companies, Lord Elcho’s horse went past
Baguley.

What follows is matter of history.

The Stuart, leaning on the Scot,
Pierced to the very centre of the realm,
In hopes to seize his abdicated helm.

The Pretender’s cause was soon lost, the progress of his army being as brief as it was disastrous. Hearing, on their arrival at Derby, that the Duke of Cumberland with an army of veterans was in the neighbourhood, and distrusting the skill of their own officers, they returned northwards, their vanguard reaching Manchester on the 9th of December, where the regiment which Colonel Townley had raised only a few days before was disbanded, though some of the more resolute supporters of the Prince pushed on to Carlisle, where, after a feeble effort to hold the city, they were compelled to surrender. Chaplain Coppock was executed in the border city, wearing his canonicals; ten of the others, including a son of Dr. Deacon, and the adjutant, Syddal, whose father had given up his life in the same cause thirty years previously, and Beppy Byrom’s cousin, Jemmy Dawson, were executed on Kennington Common. The heads of Deacon and Syddal were sent to Manchester and fixed upon spikes on the top of the Exchange,[46] to be reverenced by friends and execrated by foes, an exhibition that called forth the following lines:—

The Deel has set their heads to view,
And stickt them upon poles;
Poor Deel! ’twas all that he could do
Since God has ta’en their souls.

[Note 46: In the accounts of the Constables of Manchester occurs this entry—1745. Sept. 18: Expenses tending the sheriff this morn, Syddal’s and Deacon’s heads put up, £00, 01, 06.]

In Manchester the suppression of the rebellion of ’45 was hailed with delight by the partisans of the house of Brunswick; the church bells rang throughout the day, bonfires blazed at night, and orange-coloured ribbons were flaunted in the streets as gaily as the Stuart tartan had been only a few months before. That day must have been a sorrowful one for Byrom and his enthusiastic daughter, for they could hardly have escaped the insults of the Hanoverian mob when Dr. Deacon’s house was attacked and that of poor widow Syddal demolished.

The ill-feeling engendered by these events was of long duration, and the toast of “The King” was not unfrequently a cause of angry disputation. The adherents of the exiled dynasty continued their meetings, though they usually assembled in secret, and their movements were carefully watched by the local authorities, suspected persons being required to take the oath of allegiance to the reigning monarch and abjure Popery and the Pretender. Some of the more prominent sympathisers took alarm and fled, among them being Clayton, the chaplain of the Collegiate Church, who was said to have offered public prayers for Prince Charles in one of the streets of Salford. Byrom, in describing this period, says—

We ourselves were many of us fugitives; and had we not met with
some kind asylum towns, might have wandered among the inhospitable
hills, like the present mountaineer rebels.

His Journal shows that at this time he was frequently away from Manchester, and not unfrequently endeavouring through the influence of his former patrons to obtain a mitigation of the punishment of such of the Manchester rebels as had survived the thirst of Whiggish vengeance, but were yet undergoing imprisonment. Thus he wrote to his wife (June 18, 1748):—

On Friday the 10th of June I had been asked to meet Mr. Folkes at
Mr. Ch. Stanhope’s, where I found likewise Lord Linsdale, D(uk)e
of Mountague, and Mr. Stanhope’s brother, Lord Harrington, with
whom we passed the dinner and an hour or two after very agreeably.
They asked me a great many questions about the Pretender, and
circumstances when he was at Manchester, &c., and I told them what
I knew and thought without any reserve, and took the opportunity
of setting some matters in a truer light than I suppose they had
heard them placed in, and put in now and then a word in favour
of the prisoners, especially Charles D, (Charles, youngest son
of Dr. Deacon, who had acted as secretary, and superintended the
recruiting of the Manchester regiment). They were all very free
and good natured, and did not seem offended with anything that
I took the liberty to enlarge upon. When Mr. Folkes came away,
about seven o’clock, I came with him, and he said that what had
passed might possibly occasion young D.’s liberty, that they were
not violent in their tempers, and that he took notice that they
listened very much to what I had been telling them of Manchester
affairs. I was much pleased with the openness of conversation
which we had upon several subjects; and as Mr. St(anhope) had
made me promise him some verses that I had lately writ, I added
a Latin copy to his brother the Viceroy of Ireland, which I
brought him yesterday, for he had sent a servant for me to dine
with again, and then we had Lord Harrington, Lord Baltimore, D.
of Richmond and a lady—Lady Townshend—and somebody else—oh, Sir
John Cope. The Duchess of R. should have been there, but the
Duke made an excuse for her. As we had a lady, however, and one
(as Mr. St. had hinted to me) of great wit and politeness, who
stayed the afternoon, complaisance to her turned the conversation
upon suitable subjects, so that I could not well introduce the
fate of Ch. D. &c. before the D. of R. who is one of our present
kings,[47] as I wanted to do. Mr. St. had read the Latin verses
and given them before dinner, and the Duke might have seen them if
he would, but the lady and the Latin did not suit politely enough,
and there was no urging anything untimely, or else I could have
been glad to have heard what he would have said about the lot of
the imprisoned.... One can only try as occasion offers, what mercy
can be got from trying.

[Note 47: The Duke of Richmond was at the time one of the Lords Justices for the administration of the Government during the absence of George II.]

He did try, and on the 23rd July he again writes:—

I have heard nothing new about Ch. Deacon. I sent him (Mr.
Stanhope) a copy of the petition representing his case, and some
further urging of my own. By a report not being made, I understand
that the judges have made no report, which I am surprised at if
that be the real meaning.

In a subsequent letter (August 4, 1748) to his “Dear Dolly” (his younger daughter, Dorothy, then a maiden of 18) he sends a translation of the verses, that young lady, as he says, not being “so book-learned as to understand them in the original.” They are as creditable to the heart as to the head of the writer for the evidence they afford of his unswerving fidelity to a friend in adversity. The following lines are a fair specimen:—

Three brothers—I shall only speak the truth—
Three brothers, hurried by mere dint of youth,
Precautious youth, were found in arms of late,
And rushing on to their approaching fate.

One, in a fever, sent up to be tried,
From jail to jail, delivered over, died;
Sick and distressed, he did not long sustain
The mortal shocks of motion and of pain.

* * * * *

The third was then a little boy at school.
That played the truant from the rod and rule;
The child, to join his brothers, left his book,
And arms, alas! instead of apples took.

Now lies confined the poor unhappy lad—
For death mere pity and mere shame forebad—
Long time confined, and waiting mercy’s bail.
Two years amidst the horrors of a jail.

I spare to mention what, from fact appears.
The boy has suffered in these fatal years;
Pity, at least, becomes his iron lot;
What ruin is there that a jail has not?

He is my countryman, my noble lords,
And room for hope your genius affords;
Be truly noble; hear my well-meant prayer.
And deign my fellow citizen to spare.

In the letter accompanying the English verses, he says:—

I have not such good hopes as I had of the young boy being set at
liberty upon whose account they were made; he has some enemies
or other that have represented him in so ill a light that I much
question at present if he will meet with the favour which has been
so long expected except affairs shall take a turn with relation to
him (other) than I was told they had done. But I am not sorry I
have spoken my thoughts about him as opportunity offered.

On “Prince Charles’s Birthday” (November 30th), he writes to his daughter Beppy:—

Mr. Nanny, a Welsh gentleman, told me he had heard that Ch. Deacon
was set at liberty; but such a world of false reports have gone
about him that I can only wish this may prove true.

And on the 3rd of January following, writing to his wife, he remarks:—

I was taken ill so that I could not go into Southwark to
enquire after Charles Deacon as I thought of, nor have I had
any opportunity since, nor can I learn anything of the truth or
falsehood of the report of his going abroad.

The report was unfortunately but too true, for the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ (v. xix., p. 41) records that on the 11th January Charles Deacon, with William Brettargh, also of the Manchester regiment, were conveyed from the new gaol, Southwark, to Gravesend, for transportation during life.

With the expatriation of this hapless youth may be said to have closed the darkest and most sorrowful page in Manchester’s annals. In that sanguinary chronicle of ruthless savagery there was perhaps no more melancholy episode than the misfortunes of the nonjuring divine of Fennel Street, who lost three of his sons in the Pretender’s cause. Thomas Theodorus, the eldest, as already stated, was executed, and his head fixed on the Manchester Exchange; Robert Renatus died in prison while awaiting trial, and Charles Clement, as we have seen, was sent beyond seas. The father passed into his rest on the 16th February, 1753. He lies in the north-east corner of St. Ann’s Churchyard, where his raised altar-tomb may still be seen with an inscription setting forth that he was “the greatest of sinners and most unworthy of primitive bishops.”

There is a tradition current that the heads of Thomas Deacon and Tom Syddal, after being exposed for some time on the Exchange, were one night surreptitiously removed by Mr. Hall, a son of Dr. Richard Edward Hall, who resided in a large house at the top of King Street, and that they were secretly buried in the garden behind his residence. This garden with the rookery in it, which reached down to the present Chancery Lane, existed within the recollection of the present generation, and it is said that on the death of Mr. Hall’s last surviving sister, Miss Frances Hall, in 1828, the grim relics of mortality were by her expressed desire exhumed and buried in St. Ann’s Churchyard. It was to Dr. Hall, the father, whilst paying his addresses to the lady whom he afterwards married, that Byrom sent the following epigram:—

A lady’s love is like a candle snuff,
That’s quite extinguished by a gentle puff;
But, with a hearty blast or two, the dame,
Just like a candle, bursts into a flame.

It was very shortly after the event just related that Byrom received the first intimation of his son’s having formed an attachment for the lady who became his wife, Eleanor, daughter of William and sister of Domville Halsted, of Lymm, the representatives of an ancient and honourable family in Cheshire, who had been owners of the Domville moiety of Lymm from the time of Edward III., when it was inherited from Agnes de Legh, the common ancestress of the Domvilles, Halsteds, and the Leghs of Adlington and Lyme. The letter written on the occasion to Mrs. Byrom is so thoroughly characteristic of the man that we make no apology for reproducing it:—

Tuesday night, Feb. 28, 1748-9.

My dearest love: I received this afternoon the potted hare from
Mr. Wilkinson, which Tedy mentioned in his last letter, together
with thy letter concerning Miss Halsted. &c., which has thrown me
into a great but really very loving concern, for the consequence
of an affair in which the family happiness so much depends. As I
am quite a stranger to the young lady, and have no remembrance of
having ever seen her, I cannot judge how I should like her person
and behaviour; but for my beloved son’s sake, I should wish her
possessed of every qualification that might justly be agreeable
to thee, his sisters, uncle, aunts, and friends, as well as to
himself. I guess by the contents of thy letter that he has made
his addresses to her, and his Aunt A. (Mrs. Byrom’s sister Anne)
has given her a good character, which does not seem to amount to
any absolute approbation; his uncle, too, seems neither for it nor
against it; what his aunts say of it, thou dost not hint at, by
which I presume that they suppose that he is determined himself,
and they would not disoblige him by making any objection to his
choice. For my part, if my son be inclined to marry, I can only
wish that he may make a proper choice; but whether he has or not,
it is not in my power to determine, nor in my will to oppose his
inclination, without cause, for I love him too well not to consent
with great readiness to anything that others of his friends who
heartily interest themselves in his happiness should approve
of; but at present their approbation seems only to be negative,
and his uncle’s “What will his father say to it?” does not seem
to impart any great encouragement. His father would gladly hope
that his son, in a thing of this consequence, might so behave as
to please all his relations, and thereby acquire a title to his
father’s approbation, who, considering him as the only youth of
the name at present, would wish them all to assist, encourage or
prevent him as their love and judgment shall find occasion to show
itself in his favour. As to fortune, report but seldom lessens it,
though it has hardly much increased it, I suppose, in Miss H.’s
case; but as to that, though it is undoubtedly a very prudential
consideration, yet the qualities which the lady herself may or
may not have, may make her a good wife with less than she has,
or a bad one with a great deal more. I am full of wishes, hopes,
and fears, and can think of nothing else at present than to refer
myself to thy sentiments, which I wish thee to give me, and my son
to be so much master of himself as to act on this occasion with
all necessary discretion. I wish that whenever he marries he may
meet with one that he may have as just reason to love, honour, and
cherish as his father has his Valentine, whom he begs to take all
possible (care) of a life and health so dear to him, who is, with
hearty prayers to God for her and hers—hers and theirs.

J. BYROM.

To Mrs. Eliz. Byrom, near the Old Church in Manchester, Lancashire.

With the exception of an occasional journey to London, and a visit now and then to his _alma mater_, Cambridge, the remaining portion of Byrom’s life was passed in comparative quietude, sometimes at the pleasant rural retreat at Kersall, “that quiet place of yours,” as his loving sister Phœbe, in one of her letters, styles it, and where, as she says, she “was very glad to be a bit from the hurry of the market place;” but oftener enjoying the society and pleasant gossip of his friends in the snug parlour of his comfortable dwelling at the corner of Hunter’s Lane—that quaint black and white house with a curious raised walk in front, the outlines of which the pencil of that industrious antiquary, Thomas Barrit, has happily preserved to us. The struggles of his earlier years gave a zest to the comforts of domestic life, and in his _otium cum dignitate_ he whiled away the hours, poetising on subjects grave and gay; now and then ridiculing with good humoured banter some Presbyterian zealot or recalcitrant Whig, though always in a spirit calculated to soften asperity; and occasionally retaliating upon his Hanoverian opponents in some _jeu d’esprit_ or sparkling epigram, to the great delight of the _beaux-esprits_ who met in social intercourse at the Bull’s Head—a house that still remains, and the gruff countenance of whose ancient sign may yet be seen over the archway leading to the inn-yard and the old-fashioned and much-frequented parlour. The great truths of Christianity had from his earliest years made a deep impression on his mind, and many of his writings are characterised by strong religious feeling; indeed, it was the spirit of piety breathed into his poems that led to his being accounted a mystic by the mere lukewarm professors, a reproach that was, however, undeserved. His religion was without gloom, and by no means inconsistent with the maintenance of habitual cheerfulness. His utterances are marked by a manly, nervous style; his imagination was fertile, and his imagery happily conceived, though there is sometimes a lack of smoothness that suggests the idea that his effusions were hastily penned—the impromptu utterances of the man of genius with the happy facility of versification. Some of his pieces—the once popular “Three Black Crows[48]” for example—were written for the annual speech days at the Free Grammar School; he was, too, the first writer who employed as a literary vehicle the broad, racy vernacular of Lancashire, which in later times has been used with such signal success by Bamford, and Waugh, and Brierley. One of the happiest specimens of the playfulness of his muse was the poetical epistle “On the Patron Saint of England,” addressed to Lord Willoughby, the President of the Society of Antiquaries, and which Samuel Pegge, the antiquary, was at such pains to refute; but perhaps the one by which he will be best remembered is the ever popular Christmas hymn, “Christians, Awake,” which John Wainwright, the organist of the “Old Church,” at Manchester, set to music, the tune being called after his native town, “Stockport.”

[Note 48: It has been frequently stated that the story of the “Three Black Crows” was inspired by the London edition, but in a recent communication to the Manchester Literary Club, Mr. John Evans has proved conclusively, from a letter in Byrom’s own handwriting, that it was founded on a story related to him by Dr. John Taylor.]

Byrom outlived most of the friends of his youth, and maintained the natural cheerfulness of his disposition throughout his last lingering illness until, in the words of his obituary notice, “the scholar, the critic, the gentleman, became absorbed in the resigned Christian.” He died at the old house at Hanging Ditch, on the 26th September, 1763, having attained the ripe old age of 72, and three days later his remains were interred in the Byrom Chapel, on the south side of the “Old Church.” Strangely enough, there is no monument or other sepulchral memorial to mark his resting place or perpetuate his name; the register of burials is the only record, and that is brief indeed:—

1763.—September 29. Mr. John Byrom.

A tribute to his memory in Latin verse from the pen of his friend and correspondent, William Cowper, of Chester, M.P., appeared in the newspapers of the time, of which the following is a translation:—

No, much-loved friend! this breast can never lose
The dear remembrance of thy pleasing form,
Thy gentle manners, and thy placid mien;
The smile of innocence, th’ unstudied grace
Of honest countenance, th’ high-season’d wit,
The copious stores of conversation sweet,
Which to my ravish’d ears so oft supplied
Luxurious banquet, whilst th’ indulgent flow
Of thy rich genius filled my thirsty mind.
But who can tell the gifts of innate worth,
The bosom beating to the cries of woe,
The heart of soft benignity, wherein
True honour, piety, and faith have fix’d
Their everlasting mansion? Who can trace,
Alas! the portrait of such excellence
In any other mortal mind but thine?

In violation of the “Woollen Act,” a statute made famous by the allusions of Pope and Dryden, he was buried “in a shirt, shift, sheet, or shroud not made of sheep’s wool,” and, consequently, a direction was issued by “John Gore Booth, Esquire, one of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace,” to the constables of Manchester to levy the sum of £6 by distress and sale of his goods and chattels.

Mrs. Byrom survived him several years, and died on the 21st December, 1778, at the age of 78; of his children three died in infancy, and three survived him—two daughters and a son. Elizabeth—Beppy, as she was familiarly called—the first-born, and the gossiping chronicler of the fatal ’45, died in 1801, her sister Dorothy having died three years previously, both unmarried. Edward Byrom, the eldest and only surviving son, succeeded as heir. Of this worthy son of a worthy sire we need say little; his biography has been undertaken by an able writer, and with such a congenial theme as the projected “Memorials of St. John’s” we may rest assured that the accomplished editor of the “Old Church Clock” will do ample justice to his memory. He was born on the 13th June, 1724, and baptised at the old church on the 24th of the same month. On the death of his uncle, Edward Byrom, in 1740, he became devisee in fee of his estates, and in the spring of 1750 he added to his worldly wealth the fortune he acquired by his marriage with Miss Halsted, already referred to, a marriage that, in accordance with the fashion of the times, is thus chronicled in the _Chester Courant_ of the 6th March in that year:—

A few days ago, Mr. Edward Byrom, son of Dr. Byrom, was married
to Miss Halsted of Limm, co. Cest., a lady of great merit and a
handsome fortune.

He took up his abode in the large detached house in Quay Street, now occupied by Dr. Blackmore, and which continued to be the residence of his grand-daughter, Miss Atherton, up to the time of her death, in 1870. Mr. Grindon, in his pleasant volume, “Manchester Banks and Bankers,” says: “There is a legend that he removed thither on account of the delicate health of his little Nelly, the atmosphere of Quay Street being purer than that of the town,” and he adds, “the house was obviously intended to be the first of a row. Mr. Byrom preferred that it should stand alone, arranging also for the preservation in perpetuity of the meadow in front, which served as a playground for the children.” The house was Mr. Byrom’s own, and in all probability its erection was begun by his uncle, Edward Byrom, shortly before his death, for in the “Shorthand Journal” there occurs the entry:—

1741.—Thursday, August 11th or 12th. Dined at new house in Quay
Street; ... We came from Macclesfield yesterday—Mrs. Byrom, Beppy,
Dolly, David and I.

The neighbourhood was then unbuilt, and formed a pleasant suburb of Manchester, but with the increase of trade the tide of population spread in that direction; new streets were laid out, houses were built, and the locality became what might be called the “Court-end.” The house has survived the mighty changes that time has wrought; it stands alone, as it did in Byrom’s days; the remnant of the old garden and orchard are there, and the “meadow” in front still struggles to look green, but its sylvan beauties are only a memory of the past.

With the increase of the population came the necessity for a new church, and on the 28th April, 1768, Edward Byrom laid the foundation stone of St. John’s—so named in compliment to his father—which was consecrated on the 7th June in the following year. Little more than two years later he joined Messrs. Sedgwick, Allen, and Place, in establishing the first bank in Manchester, the doors of which were opened on the 2nd December, 1771, under the style of Byrom, Sedgwick, Allen, and Place. It occupied the site of Messrs. Hunt and Roskell’s shop in St. Ann’s Square, and the name is perpetuated in Bank Street, leading from it. Less than seventeen months after, Edward Byrom was laid to rest, his death occurring on the 24th April, 1773, at the early age of forty-nine. Under his will the Quay Street property passed to his daughter Ann, who became the wife of Henry Atherton, of the Middle Temple, the issue of the marriage being an only daughter, the estimable and much-honoured Miss Eleanor Atherton, the foundress of Holy Trinity Church, in Hulme, and the last representative in a direct line of the Byrom family, who died at the old home in Quay Street, on the 12th September, 1870, at the age of eighty-eight. In accordance with the provisions of her will, the greater portion of her property, including the Kersall estates, passed to her godson, Mr. Edward Fox, who, in accordance with her expressed desire, assumed the name and arms of Byrom—the arms John Byrom was so proud of, and of which he made such frequent mention in his Journal:—

Some sire of ours, beloved kinsfolk, chose,
The hedge-hog for his arms; I would suppose
With aim to hint instruction wise, and good,
To us descendants of his Byrom blood.
I would infer, if you be of this mind,
The very lesson that our sire design’d.

* * * * *

At last the hedge-hog came into his thought,
And gave the perfect emblem that he sought.
This little creature, all offence aside,
Rolls up itself in its own prickly hide,
When danger comes; and they that will abuse,
Do it themselves, when their own hurt ensues.