11. Not the Place It Has Been

 

Muston Cross, November 2006

 

Belvoir Castle c. 1830 after rebuilding C. Stanfield A.R.A. engraved by E. Findon

 

West Allington Church

 

Belvoir Castle Today

 

View of Trowbridge by C. Stanfield engraved by E. Findon

Crabbe did recover, though the illness left him weak. He joked about his condition in his letters, ‘ I never was a stout fellow, but oh! my poor shrunken limbs and hollow features …I looked in the glass this morning … it is a very respectable looking old, sick face, chop-fallen, to be sure.’ (1) Relieved of the constant sorrow of Sarah’s condition, by November he sounds almost light hearted, writing to Dr Gordon; ‘I am almost ashamed to send so small a basket of those yellow apples … I proposed this fine morning to have been at Sedgebrook, but my sons persuade me that the balloon to be launched from Nottingham this day will with the present wind come near the Vale of Belvoir … I wait.’(2)

On the 16th of November 1813 Crabbe received a letter from the Duke of Rutland suggesting that he should exchange his living at Muston for a living at Trowbridge in  Wiltshire, then a manufacturing town. The Duke’s motive was principally the desire to give Muston to Henry Byron, a cousin of the poet, Lord Byron. Crabbe replied the next day, expressing himself by no means reluctant to leave Muston: ‘Muston is I confess my lord, not the place it has been to me, nor should I be sorry to leave it…‘ However Crabbe goes on to explain to the Duke that the exchange of livings would leave him out of pocket. ‘Pardon this prolixity, my lord! It becomes me to be explicit: … Muston, of late improved and yet, as land, improvable, pays me in composition for £340 excluding the tithe of the Gorse and two or three occupations of small value and not regularly nor fully paid for. Add to these the Glebe which is underated at £30 and the tithe of 26 acres of land your Grace indulges me in for my convenience, and on the whole Muston may fairly rank as a rectory worth an annual £400; West Allington which I hold with Muston by dispensation is worth at present but £150 which at the expiration of a lease having 5 years to come, will advance I believe £50 or 60…’ (3)

Grateful numbers
Crabbe was neither particularly mercenary, nor particularly keen to stay in Muston, but he clearly did not see why he should be displaced to Trowbridge, where the work would be harder, and suffer financially, just to suit the Duke’s convenience. Crabbe appealed to the Duke to ‘procure me the additional advantage which would enable me to leave a situation where I am in truth a solitary with a social mind, an hermit without an hermit’s resignation.’  (4)

Negotiations about the exchange of livings were protracted and complex. They were interrupted in January by celebrations at Belvoir of the baptism of  Lord George Manners by his cousin the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Prince Regent, the Duke of York and a substantial section of the aristocracy were in attendance and John Thoroton,  now the Duke’s chaplain and rector of Bottesford, was knighted. Crabbe wrote some verse for the occasion, but was only invited to dinner. He reported to Dr Gordon: ‘mine was not the very great day, when John Thoroton became Sir John, when Lady Welby and the Prince Regent renewed their acquaintance by youthful manoeuvers almost too violent for her ladyship, when my own verses were (privately I hope) read…The Prince Regent slept early and retired’(5) His hope that his ‘grateful numbers’ were not really broadcast is understandable:
Accept the homage grateful numbers pay,
Exulting all in this triumphant day
When all in one event rejoice,
And mine is as the public voice –
An echo to the general joy
That thanks thee for the noble boy!

The child died in June.

Six months of agitation
Meanwhile, life went on as usual. ‘Nothing has occurred in Sedgebrook and Allington,‘ he told Dr Gordon. ‘I found the usual congregation on Christmas day and am to administer to my sick friend poor Miss Francis [Francis Turney] on Sunday. I was surprised to find on going to Mr Robinson’s [John Robinson, Crabbe’s tenant farmer at West Allington] that more than six months had elapsed since I was there last. Six months of such agitation to me …’
Crabbe had begun to wonder if he would ever leave his ‘hermit’s life’ in Muston’s ‘patched and pieced’ rectory. In December he wrote: ‘ I cannot direct my man to buy a pig, nor my maid to make a purchase in Grantham, without the question occurring; “how long am I to be in this place?” and though I think the answer might be “as long as I live”, yet till that be made certain all other things remain equally indeterminate.'(6)

Eventually, all was arranged to Crabbe’s satisfaction. He exchanged Muston and West Allington for Trowbridge and Croxton Kerrial. Crabbe prepared to leave Muston without much regret. According to his son, he ‘felt the change produced by the late event in every part of the house … His garden had become indifferent to him …’. Nor were most of his parishioners conspicuously sorry to see him go: ‘ besides, that diversity of religious sentiment … had produced a coolness in some of his parishioners, which he felt the more painfully, because … he was ever ready to to help and oblige them all by medical and other aid to the utmost extent of his power. They carried this unkind feeling so far as to ring the bells for his successor, before he himself had left…’ (7)

References
(1) Letters, Letter to Mrs Althea Lewis, 25th Oct. 1813.
(2) Life p. 202.
(3) Letters, Letter to John Henry Manners, Fifth Duke of Rutland, 17th Nov. 1813.
(4) Letters, Letter to John Henry Manners, Fifth Duke of Rutland, 23rd Nov. 1813
(5) Letters, Letter to Dr Gordon, Dean of Lincoln, 14th Jan. 1814.
(6) Letters, Letter to Dr Gordon, Dean of Lincoln, 31st Dec. 1813.
(7) Life p. 203.