must have exerted considerable influence in the maintenance of those brilliant seasons which were so frequent at that period.
Lavish Expenses of the Candidates - Bishop & Thorpe's great failure
Yet, general as was the sorrow of the townsfolk to learn that Mrs. Camac had lost her aged and devoted husband, the depression soon wore off in the midst of other excitements. The 17th of the same month was the 51st birthday anniversary of the Duchess of Kent, and this occurrence was celebrated at St. Leonards with a grand archery meeting, followed by a dinner and a ball. In those days of loyal demonstrations and fashionable reunions the prize-meetings of the St. Leonards toxophilites were of a gay and enthusiastic character, and were sometimes attended by now fewer than from four-hundred to five-hundred persons. One of such meetings was that of 1837, as as neither St. Leonards nor Hastings could boast of a local newspaper at that time, the following report, with emendations by the present writer, may help my readers to imagine what those meetings were like, whilst the meeting itself may be thus made to put forth a claim to be numbered among the numerous demonstrations of that eventful year.
The assembly of electors and non-electors at Coghurst Hall on Nov. 13th (described in Chap. XVII,) reminds me of the still larger gathering at Fairlight Hall, which, by invitation of the Rt. Hon. J. Planta, M.P., had there assembled on the 8th of August. It was my privilege to be one of the guests as the humble representative of one of Mr. Planta's political supporters; and even at this distance of time the enjoyment which I experienced is as fresh as ever in y memory. Dinner, tea, music and other entertainments were provided for nine-hundred persons, but it was estimated that at least a thousand partook of the hospitality, whilst several additional hundreds were allowed on the grounds as spectators. The right honourable gentleman and his lady were almost ubiquitous in attentions on their guests, and their general affability and kindness were acknowledged by all. The expenses of that fête must have been very considerable, and it must have required much time and labor thereafter to restore the house and grounds to their normal condition. But all that expense and trouble paled before the enormous expenses to which the several candidates had been put during the previous election. Even Mr. Planta's election bill, notwithstanding the resolution of his committee to return him with as little expense as possible, was said to be £2,400. That Mr. Planta was betrayed in this respect, not by his real friends, but by those pseudo-friends - those "hangers-on," who sought to obtain pecuniary benefits wherever there was a chance, will be shown by-and-by.
And here let me repeat in other words what I have before intimated in the earlier part of this history - namely, that my own Liberal proclivities and personal associations together with the opposite Toryism of my family and their associates, gave me an insight of political movements on both sides which have not only tended subsequently to keep my own political views within moderate bounds, but also to restrain me from running into excesses of opinion on one side or the other when treating of the political portions of this history.
It was said by the liberals that Mr. Planta had been assured that his expenses would not exceed £500, whereas - if the sum here stated was correct - the total was nearly five times that amount. It was further stated that Mr. Planta's ribbon bill would make a considerable inroad on £500, one claim alone - that of an All Saints' draper - being for £86. The Radicals were by no means surprised to hear of this, because they knew too well the large amount which had been levied on their own candidate by the same draper on a previous occasion. Not to go further into those expenses at present, it should be satisfactory to find that in the recent equally sharp contest and in an immensely larger constituency the candidates' expenses are declared to be only about £1100 and £1400 respectively. This would seem to show that the Hastings of 1880 has made great strides in electioneering economy over the Hastings of 1837.
There may still be a few persons living who have cause to remember one event in 1837 with sadness - namely the failure of Messrs. Bishop and Thorpe, the then well-known solicitors of High street. Their liabilities were of large amount, and as many of their creditors were comparatively poor people, the occurrence was looked upon as of serious import. Mr. Anthony Harvey, I believe, was appointed to assist Mr. Scrivens in arranging the complicated affair, but with a result, as I understand, that brought little relief to the sufferers. A question obtruded itself on my mind. Had my deceased father any part or lot in the affairs of Messrs. Bishop and Thorpe? If it were so, the answer ought to have come that the money transaction between the parties had taken place too many years anterior to the break-up of the establishment not to have nullified all chance of such a result; and an answer of that character should have been strengthened by the knowledge that the gentleman to whom the amount was to be paid through the agency of Messrs. Bishop and Thorpe (or Mr. Bishop alone), was too great a gambler and too often in quest of the "needful" to allow his money to remain long in the hands of solicitors. To go into trivial details of this sort may seem to be hardly in keeping with the title of my subject; but as a "picker-up of inconsiderate trifles," I must relate the associations as they occur to me, even at the risk of their relevancy being questioned. A document lies before me, from which I make the following extract:-
MEMORANDUM - That Mr. T- B- - on the 6th day of March, 1824, paid Mr. Bishop, attorney, Hastings, - pounds and - shilling[1]s, for Sir Godfrey Webster, the Lord of the Manor of Barnhorne, in the Parish of Bexhill, in the County of Sussex, for the Common of Pasture or Run of 22 acres of Bexhill Down, - for ever.
Whether Sir Godfrey never received the money from Mr. Bishop's office, or, by some, hocus-pocus, the engagement was cancelled, two years later, by the death of him to whom the above acknowledgment was given, it hardly comes within my power to decide; but the one thing certain is that neither the latter nor his heir have enjoyed the "Run of 22 acres" thus covenanted for "for ever," and the lesson learnt from such miscarriage of justice is that of "the glorious uncertainty of the law".
The name of Bishop recalls to mind a curious coincidence which was related in a newspaper paragraph in the same month and year as the occurrence of Bishop and Thorpe's bankruptcy. It is this:- "The late W. Bishop, Esq., of this town, and the late Mr. Edlridge, of Sedlescombe, were both born on the same day in the same parish; they were both baptised on the same day and in the same church; they both died on the same day, were buried on the same day, and were carried to the same churchyard in the same hearse." This, of itself, is a remarkable cluster of coincidences, but to me it receives an additional interest in the fact that whilst I am revising this portion of my story, it is made known to me that another member of the Bishop family died only a few days before - namely, June 4th, 1896. Her name was Mary Ann, the widow of Nicholas Henry Rowsell, solicitor, and the last surviving daughter of John Bishop, Esq., of 7 The Croft, Hastings, and late of great Saunders, Sedlescomb. A sister of the deceased lady - Miss Fanny Bishop, died at her residence, 7 The Croft, Hastings, on Jan. 14th, 1891, where also the father ended life on the 5th of October, 1870. The ages at death of the father and two daughters, were 79, 76, and 73, respectively. Great Saunders at Sedlescombe was the seat of Mr. Bishop for a good many years, and that parish was their home from before the commencement of the parish register in 1588. The William Bishop first alluded to as the Hastings attorney, was married to Miss Puttick, of Tillington, in 1798, and it was also from Tillington that Mr. Shadwell, another Hastings solicitor, married a lady in 1788. Henry Bishop, also a Hastings solicitor, was married to the eldest daughter of William Thorpe, of the same profession; hence the connections of the two families. William Bishop died on the 6th of June, 1837 - the year now under review - and Henry Bishop died at Islington on May 2nd, 1866.
Thus a reminiscent connection of the Bishops of Hastings and Sedlescombe as the outcome of a curious coincidence in the births, lives, deaths and burials of Messrs. Bishop and Eldridge; and as this coincidence has carried my readers metaphorically on their wings to Sedlescomb, it will not be far, either geographically or imaginatively, to pass from Sedlescomb to Battle. At the latter place, then, on the 19th of June, there was a terrific explosion in the bowing up of Mr. Charles Lawrence's powder-mill. The roof of the building was carried away and the fragments were scattered in all directions. The explosion was accidental, and as the workmen were all away from the mill at the time, there was no sacrifice of life. The report of the explosion was so loud as to be heard at St. Leonards and Hastings, and much was the general wonderment as to the cause of it. There had been even a worse explosion of the kind some nine or ten years before, the exact date of which I do not recollect. I was at the time on the Priory Farm, witnessing the gathering in of the wheat harvest, and like many other persons, was startled by what seemed to be a heavy stroke of distant thunder or the booming of some mighty gun. Having thus alluded to two notable events at Battle, and previously to a notable gentleman in the person of Sir Godfrey Webster, who lived at Battle, it will be convenient here to briefly notice another striking event connected with that place and personage. On the 3rd of July, 1837, there were grand doings at Battle as a celebration of Sir Godfrey's birthday. The bells of the church rang merry peals, and salvoes were fired from some brass cannons belonging to Sir Godfrey's mother. The town band played its best music, and Lady Webster entertained all the work-people. The festivities closed in the evening with a grand display of fireworks at the Abbey, to witness which all the townspeople had a free invitation.
I have said that during harvest time, nine or ten years previous to the explosion of the Battle power-mill on the 19th of June, 1837, there was even a worse explosion of the kind at the same place; and although I could not at the moment of writing extract from my memory a more precise date, I am now enabled to fix the period as ten years by the following items which appears in my collectanea or imperfect diary of events.
"Saturday, Sept. 1st, 1827, - A little boy, named Mannington, run over by a waggon, near Carswell's mill, on the West Hill, Hastings. His mother was sister to one of the men who was killed a few days previously by the terrific explosion at the Crowhurst powder-mills, the report of which I heard whilst I was gleaning in Foster's field." This field, I may explain, was that which is now the site of Devonshire terrace.
When, in the preceding chapter I noticed the resolution to sell the St. Leonards poor-house, it would have been apropos to notice a similar resolution in connection with the poor-house of St. Mary-in-the-Castle, which was situated on the opposite side of York buildings, and immediately contiguous to the timber or ship yard of Messrs. Ransom and Ridley. It was on the 15th of November - a month after the St. Leonards meeting - that the parishioners of the Castle parish met to take into consideration the best mode of disposing of the old poor-house and ground. A resolution was then passed restricting the purchaser to build only one storey above the ground floor. As soon as this arrangement became generally known there was an outcry against the resolution, it being argued that such a foolish restriction reduced the value of the ground to a moiety of its otherwise prospective value. This gave rise, I believe, to a second meeting, when it was determined to transmit the resolution to the Poor-law Commissioners, with a prayer for their approval. A counter-memorial was then sent by the aggrieved parishioners, and the answer returned was to the effect that the Guardians might exercise their own discretion as to whether -
- ↑ An explanation of old currency and coinage may be found at the following website Pre-decimal currency, accessdate: 16 June 2022
