Brontës Page 6

  With a population of 8,000 people scattered over a wide area of countryside around the town, church business was brisk and Patrick would have found his time considerably more taken up with formal duties than at Wethersfield. This was particularly the case as John Eyton’s health was already beginning to fail. Frequently he was unable to take any duty at all and even on the occasions when he attempted to conduct some part of the service, he would often be obliged to desist and hand over to his curate.126 For this reason he employed not one, but two curates in his populous parishes. In the single year that Patrick spent at All Saints’, there were 164 burials and 271 baptisms. As the registers were kept by the parish clerk and did not give the acting minister’s name, it is impossible to tell at what proportion of these services Patrick personally officiated. From the marriage register, however, where the minister himself filled in the details, we can see that out of the fifty marriages performed throughout 1809, nearly half were performed by Patrick who, in the press of business, had begun to adopt a more hurried accent in the spelling of his name.127

  Though All Saints’ dominated parish life, there were also duties to take at the tiny red brick church of St Catherine at Eyton on the Weald Moors. Built in 1743 as a chapel of ease, and practically engulfed by the barns and farmyards of the prosperous farm next door, the little church served a population of nearly 400 souls. The duties here were obviously much lighter and seem mainly to have been taken by the other, more senior curate, though on 25 May Patrick, together with the churchwarden and overseer of the poor, made and signed an assessment for the relief of the poor in the parish of Eyton.128

  There were other clerical duties throughout the year. Wednesday, 8 February, had been set aside as a day of national fast and humiliation; these expressions of public mortification were held irregularly throughout Patrick’s career as a response to moments of national crisis. Shops and mills were shut, special services were held in churches and personal penitence was expected to be observed; it was hoped that public contrition for the sinful state of the nation would appease God’s wrath and avert the danger. On i June there was an important meeting at Wellington of all the contributors to the fund for the relief of clergymen’s widows and orphans in the archdeaconry of Salop to host and organize; and on 11 June the annual sermons for the benefit of the Sunday schools at Wellington were preached by the Reverend Mr Waltham of Darlaston in Staffordshire, raising the enormous sum of £72 14s. 7½d. in collections.129

  Undoubtedly the most memorable event, though, was the celebration on 25 October of the fiftieth anniversary of George III’s accession. In Shrewsbury, John Nunn preached a sermon on the text ‘Let the king live for ever’ to the mayor and aldermen of the town and bonfires on all the hills in the area, including the Wrekin, were clearly visible.130 In Wellington, the inhabitants were ‘second to none in manifestions of loyalty and temperate joy’. Every house was brilliantly illuminated, the poorer inhabitants being generously supplied with candles for the purpose by Thomas Eyton; the squire’s own house was resplendent with the motto ‘Fear God Honor [sic] the King’ formed out of variegated lamps. In addition to the Wrekin bonfire, there was a display of fireworks and a commemorative subscription raised enough money to buy four oxen, the meat being distributed among the poor. Not to be outdone by his father, the Reverend John Eyton committed himself to the establishment of a Lancasterian school at Ketley as a permanent memorial of the jubilee.131

  The increased scale and scope of Patrick’s duties at Wellington would have provided a much-needed distraction from his personal unhappiness. So, too, would his burgeoning friendships in the unusually close-knit clerical community of Shropshire. His old college friend, John Nunn, was only ten miles away, a distance short enough to walk along the banks of the slow, wide Severn though there were several coaches a day, if he could afford the fare. Patrick must have visited him many times, for he made other friends in Shrewsbury too. There was Nunn’s vicar, Thomas Stedman, an Oxford man, who had been at St Chad’s since 1783.132 It was during his incumbency that the church had been completely destroyed when its tower fell on to the nave. Stedman was responsible for the quite remarkable new church which replaced it, designed by the same George Steuart who had built All Saints’ at Wellington and very similar to it in style, apart from its one aberration, the largest circular nave, at one hundred feet in diameter, in England. Stedman, like John Eyton, was also a writer, the author of several tracts and sermons and editor of the letters of Orton and Stonehouse.133

  Another literary friend from Shrewsbury was Charles Hulbert, the antiquarian and historian of Shropshire, whose house Patrick visited regularly. Hulbert was a man of many parts; originally from Manchester he had set up Shrewsbury’s one and only cotton factory in 1803 but he was also a Methodist Circuit Steward, a preacher on the Shrewsbury circuit which included Wellington.134 Hulbert must have been one of the first of Patrick’s many Methodist friends. Another, whose friendship was to help shape Patrick’s future, was John Fennell, master of the day school at Wellington. Though he was later to choose ordination into the Established Church, Fennell, like so many of the clergymen in this area, was also a follower of the Wesleys.135

  The closest, if perhaps not the most important, of Patrick’s new friends was his fellow curate at All Saints’, William Morgan. A Welshman, and five years younger than Patrick, he had been at All Saints’ since 1806. The two men shared more than their duties, both being ambitious and enthusiastic by temperament and intensely committed to their faith. Morgan was also a friend of Hulbert and Fennell, later marrying the latter’s daughter. He introduced Patrick to many new friends, including Samuel Walter, the curate whose place Patrick had taken on his promotion to Madeley, some six miles away.136

  Madeley, though undistinguished as a town, was a place of immense spiritual significance, the inspirational source and guiding light which bound together all these men and profoundly affected their lives. It was the home of the aged widow of John Fletcher,137 the great charismatic preacher who had been vicar of Madeley from 1760 till his death in 1785. Born John William de la Flechère at Nyon in Switzerland in 1729, he had spent most of his adult life in England. Among the hard-drinking and often violent workers in the collieries and ironworks around Madeley he had become a byword for saintly personal piety. He was fearless in his denunciation of sin, assiduous in his itinerant preaching and so generous in his charity that his household frequently found itself without either money or food. An intimate friend of both John and Charles Wesley, he was the author of a number of books and tracts which had had an enormous impact on the Evangelicals and the Methodists alike. With his insistence on the need for conversion to faith, his rebuttal of the Calvinistic doctrine of the Elect and his affection for St Paul, Fletcher became the model and inspiration for the many young clergymen, including Patrick, who converged on his home.

  In 1781, only four years before his death, he married the woman he had loved for many years, Mary Bosanquet. As his widow, she faithfully continued his work long after his death and still held open house for all the many disciples to whom he had been such an inspiration. Like him, she worked hard to secure committed Evangelicals for the northern counties of England, where the growth in population consequent upon the Industrial Revolution, much of it in new towns outside the old centres of population, had far outstripped the number of churches established there and where, therefore, there was a crying need for ministers.

  At John Fletcher’s house, and in his widow’s company, Patrick found comfort and encouragement for his professed purpose in life. He met other like-minded men, such as Joshua Gilpin, vicar of Wrockwardine, the pretty red sandstone village less than two miles from Wellington. Gilpin was a devoted follower of Fletcher, had lived in his house before his own ordination and been present at the great man’s deathbed. He had translated from its original French and published in two volumes John Fletcher’s treatise The Portrait of St Paul, appending his own account of the life of its author and, when Patrick met him
, was working on a new edition of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.138 Patrick’s own vicar, John Eyton, who had introduced William Morgan to Mary Fletcher, was a frequent visitor, as were Samuel Walter, Eyton’s former curate, and John Fennell, the schoolmaster who was also John Fletcher’s godson.139

  It is possible, too, that Patrick met at Madeley Mary Fletcher’s lifelong friend, John Crosse, who had been vicar of Bradford, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, since 1784. Patrick later told William Morgan, when the latter was writing his biography of Crosse, that he considered ‘Mr C[rosse] and Mrs F [letcher] as very similar to each other in their Christian simplicity, zeal, and manner of speaking to their friends, on the leading subjects of religion’.140

  John Crosse, like so many of this circle, was firmly attached to the Arminian school of theology and a strong supporter of John Wesley, whom he had allowed to preach from his own pulpit. After the Methodists had withdrawn from the Church of England and become a separate sect in 1812, he actually considered resigning his living and joining them as a minister, only being dissuaded on the grounds that his usefulness would be greater as vicar of Bradford.141 ‘Usefulness’ was the watch-word of the Evangelicals, implying activity and commitment, and it is significant that as early as 1804 Patrick had similarly been marked out as someone who had a ‘desire for usefulness in the ministry’.142

  Patrick was entirely at home in this atmosphere and as long as he lived, even after the Methodists had separated from the Church of England and it was no longer fashionable or even really acceptable to support them, he continued to maintain cordial relations with Methodists in general and Wesleyans in particular. After the emotional traumas of having to give up Mary Burder, it was no doubt a relief to find spiritual comfort and support in the Madeley circle.

  Through his contacts here, if not from John Crosse himself, Patrick learnt that Bradford was one of the fastest growing parishes in terms of population and one of the least well served in terms of clergymen in the country. He had always wanted to live and work in Yorkshire,143 which was regarded by the Evangelicals as a sort of ‘Promised Land’ of opportunity: the Bradford area now became an obvious and attractive choice. The first vacancy there that was brought to his attention was the post of curate in Dewsbury, an industrial town near Bradford. The vicar of Dewsbury, John Buckworth, was not yet the semi-permanent invalid he later became but, like John Eyton, his health was already suffering from the zeal with which he carried out his duties and he was in desperate need of support. He was anxious to secure someone committed to Evangelical beliefs and Patrick was therefore offered, and accepted, a post as his assistant.144

  The decision was not entirely simple, however, for Patrick was once more at a crossroads in his life and had to make a decision that would determine his future. Just before he accepted Dewsbury, he had a letter from James Wood, his old tutor at St John’s, offering him the post of chaplain to the governor of Martinique in the West Indies.145 The island, a French colony, had recently been captured by the British, placing virtually all the West Indies under British rule. The appointment of a governor (and his chaplain) was therefore a new one, resulting from military success in the war against Napoleon. The position would offer prestige, excitement (as Martinique was still in the war zone) and an opportunity to be ‘useful’ converting the Negroes and attempting to work towards the abolition of slavery, a cause dear to Evangelical hearts.

  It is not clear whether Patrick had solicited Wood’s aid in trying to find another post, or whether Wood, remembering his former pupil’s Evangelical commitment, simply thought he would be a suitable man for the job. The letter took some three weeks to find him, which suggests that the latter explanation was the more likely. When Patrick eventually replied at the end of November 1809, it was with two questions: was the post likely to be permanent and would he receive any salary in advance that would enable him to pay for the expense of his voyage? The questions were extremely pertinent and Wood’s answers, which are not known, may have been the deciding factor in Patrick’s decision.146 In any event, Martinique lost its potential chaplain and Yorkshire gained the father of its most famous family.

  Patrick performed his last marriage at Wellington on 18 November 1809, though he no doubt continued his other duties until his departure on 4 December.147 His residence in Wellington had been very brief, less than a year, but the spiritual influences and the friendships of the Madeley circle were to remain with him for life. William Morgan, who, like John Fennell, was soon to follow Patrick to Yorkshire, presented him with a practical farewell present: a leather-bound volume of Sermons or Homilies appointed to be read in churches on the flyleaf of which he wrote:

  The Reverend P. Bronte’s Book – Presented to him by his Friend W: Morgan as a Memorial of the pleasant & agreeable friendship, which subsisted between them at Wellington, – & as a Token of the same Friendship, which, as is hoped, will continue for ever.148

  Armed with his letters testimonial from Wethersfield, signed by Joseph Jowett, Robert Storry and John Thurlow, vicar of Gosfield, and from Wellington, signed by John Eyton, Joshua Gilpin and Thomas Stedman,149 Patrick set off for Yorkshire.

  Chapter Two

  THE PROMISED LAND

  The fell hand of the twentieth century has destroyed most of the Dewsbury that Patrick Brontë knew. Its once proud and separate identity has been lost, swallowed up in the vast and characterless urban sprawl which oozes southwards from Bradford and Leeds. Today, its most dominant feature is the road system – a Gordian knot of flyovers, dual carriageways and underpasses apparently designed to prevent anyone either entering or leaving the town. The shabby remnants of late Victorian municipal splendour are dwarfed by the concrete stanchions of modern bridges. Despite recent regeneration schemes, there are still too many semi-derelict mills, empty warehouses and demolition sites which are a depressing foretaste of the town centre. Yet in December 1809, when Patrick arrived, Dewsbury was a distinct entity, a town with a venerable history and a prosperous future in the boom years of the late-nineteenth-century wool trade.

  Dewsbury lies in a natural basin, on a loop in the River Calder which flows wide and deep down towards the Yorkshire coast. Surrounded then by fields and woods, the town had an open and pleasant aspect. Dotted about the hill tops overlooking it were many small villages which have now become indistinguishable parts of the Kirklees district. The town was built of grey stone, long since blackened with soot, and had many fine buildings, all of which have been demolished. There were some beautiful medieval buildings, including the large, timber-framed fourteenth-century vicarage, with its rows of tiny stone mullions and its huge chimneys, and, just behind it, a stone moot hall dating from the thirteenth century or even earlier. There was a late-seventeenth-century manor house and, at Crow Nest, a mid-eighteenth-century mansion set amid parkland. Most of the architectural splendour of the town dated from the prosperous years of the eighteenth century. Three free schools had been founded by local philanthropists, including the Wheelwright Charity school for boys and girls. Great improvements in communications also took place over these years. Two new bridges were built over the Calder to replace the ferries, two new canals had been constructed to make the river navigable down its entire length and three turnpike roads connected the town to Halifax, Elland and Wakefield.1

  The mid-eighteenth century had also seen the rebuilding of the medieval parish church. Tradition had it that All Saints’ had been founded by Paulinus on a preaching mission to the Northumbrians in 627. In fact, Dewsbury lay within the old British kingdom of Elmet and it seems most likely that the story evolved from the preservation of Paulinus’ altar in a monastery at Dewsbury after a devastating Welsh raid on a nearby Northumbrian royal palace in 633. The monastery had disappeared by 1066, but fragments of ninth- and tenth-century stone crosses and gravestones were still preserved in All Saints’ when Patrick came. In consequence of the church having once been a minster, sending out priests to serve the outlying communities, many churches in
the West Riding, including those of Bradford and Huddersfield, still paid tithes to Dewsbury.2

  The town itself had a rapidly growing population which, in 1811, stood at 5,059; the parish also included the 7,539 inhabitants of Soothill, Ossett and Hartshead-cum-Clifton, which were separately administered by their own clergymen, subject to the vicar of Dewsbury.3 The textile trade dominated the town. At least five mills had been established as early as the 1780s, their numbers increasing rapidly after the invention of the steam loom in 1807, but a large proportion of the population still produced cloth on hand-looms in their own homes.4

  As in both Patrick’s previous parishes, there was a very strong element of religious nonconformity. John Wesley had preached there in 1742 on the first day of his tour of Yorkshire and thereafter both he and his brother were regular visitors. The Methodists had established their own meeting house in 1764 but remained on good terms with the vicar and his congregation. There were also several small Moravian settlements in the area. They seem to have been tolerated, if not actively encouraged, by the Anglicans, though their relations with the Methodists, whom they saw as rivals, were less happy.5

  In Dewsbury, Patrick had his hands full. John Buckworth performed a marriage on the day his new curate arrived, 5 December 1809, but thereafter the full burden of the church offices was carried almost singlehandedly by Patrick. In the sixteen months of his curacy he personally performed nearly 130 marriages. Four hundred and twenty-six baptisms were carried out in the parish church, most of them during the Sunday services or on church festivals. Most onerous of all was the number of burials. At first these averaged around twenty a month, but then they rose sharply: from October 1810 to February 1811 there were over fifty a month, peaking at seventy-three in November when, on two occasions, there were eight burials in one day.6 Almost two-thirds of the burials occurred within the last six months of Patrick’s curacy, suggesting that Dewsbury had suffered one of the outbreaks of typhus or influenza which periodically struck the population. There was immense hardship at this time, the failure of the harvest adding to the problems of industrial depression and unemployment.