Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Eighth - From Tudor Torture to Georgian Gaol - Chapter VIII

Alas and alack for the passing of Sir Thomas Browne who shuffled off this mortal coil on 19th Oct. 1682, his seventy-seventh birthday. 

He was laid to rest in the chancel of St.Peter Mancroft, the magnificent church dominating Norwich's marketplace and close to Browne's own house on Haymarket (now long gone and replaced by the Pret-a-Manger where we hold forth with our Georgian-style leftist political Breakfast Club every Saturday … at least we did until Covid and hopefully will again). 

I like to think of us sharing a coffee in the great man's drawing room though for all I know our table may have been in his privy.

Sir Thomas Browne's statue in the Haymarket; one pigeon on his head, another taking off from the burial urn he studies. He often wears a traffic cone as a hat at weekends, this being a university city. Photo, courtesy Old Dive.

Polymath and physician, his study of Norfolk Saxon cremation urns ("Urne Buriall") goes wandering wonderfully way off topic as he ponders just about every subject under the sun, as indeed do most of his books. He wrote in a style best described as "all his own" … ludicrously labyrinthine language that takes overblown purple prose right over the top into the ultra-violet. I love his style and thoroughly enjoy chewing my way through his words and ideas.

Joy and Thom ponder the enigma that is the Thomas Browne Quincunx installation in the Haymarket. Photo, courtesy Old Dive.

He wrote a multi-volume de-bunking of "vulgar errors" called Pseudodoxia Epidemica, which you can read for free online and is a real hoot as he lays into Pliny and Aristotle and all manner of others, refuting such commonly held beliefs as "That a bever, to escape the Hunter bites off his testicles or stones, whether garlic affects magnetism, or why storks live only in republics"

Some mannequins and a busker appear nonplussed by another part of the Quincunx installation.

Photo, courtesy Old Dive.

Browne was a prolific producer of neologisms - the Oxford English Dictionary lists four-thousand one-hundred and thirty-one words coined by him. Where would we be without Browne's electricity, computer, holocaust, medical, prairie, suicide, cenatory (relating or pertaining to dinner), hallucination, selection, approximate, cadaverous, follicle, inflammable, sarcophagy or indeed retromingent (animals which urinate backwards)? He may have believed in alchemy and fairies but the man was mighty!

And then, alas, he was dead … but his wonderful books remain in print to this day. His genius and captivating oddity still inspire and the recent volume by Hugh Aldersey-Williams, "The Adventures of Sir Thomas Browne in the 21st Century" is a delight.

While Browne was ruminating on life, the universe and everything, the Stuart Restoration's reaction against Cromwell's attempt at workers' rights got into full swing among Norwich's great and good. In 1674, one Elisha Philippo, a French soap boiler was somehow chosen High-Sheriff of Norfolk. His brother Onias took advantage of the troubles in France to bring over a quantity of Huguenot silk-weavers, who he set up in "a great house out of Pockthorpe Gates" (basically a sweatshop), intending to profit from them by undercutting the local weavers' already criminally low wages.

Somewhat inevitably, "this occasioned a mutiny, which came to that height, that the mob brake open one of their houses, and misused a woman so, that she died in two or three days after; the pretence was, that these people would underwork them; however the French that dwelt there were forced to quit the street that night."

"The poor being still discontented at the French that were left in the city, took occasion to assemble at the execution of Eliz. Brooks on the Castle-Hill, and coming in a large body into the market place, declared that the French came to underwork them, and that they would then quit the city of them, and accordingly going to Mr. Barnham's, in St. Andrew's parish, they pulled them and their goods out of their houses, abused their persons, &c. until the trained bands were raised to appease them, whence the principals were taken, and made to pay dear for their folly."

Mob rule seemed the norm in Norwich and London. Blomefield again: "A boy about 16 years old, named Hipkin, condemned for felony, was reprieved by the judge; however Allen the gaoler, finding a great resort of people to see him, caused a gallows to be erected, set three several days for his execution; but disappointing them, they pulled down the gallows, and burnt them, and brake his windows, and beat him; and if they had not been quelled by reading the proclamation (the Riot Act), they had pulled down his house to the ground."

Also during this time, both the smallpox and the Duke of York visited the city, though which was the least welcome is a matter of conjecture …

Next time, a brief but welcome break at the theatre before James the Second rears his ugly head. Popery and Revolution ahoy!

Sources:

Acts and Monuments: Foxe: Old Dive's 1621 edition. 

The History of the Reformation of the Church of England: Gilbert Burnett: Old Dive's 1730 edition.

Clark's Lives - The Marrow of Ecclesiastical History: Samuel Clark: Old Dive's 1675 edition.

A  Discourse - Wherein is Examined What is Particularly Lawfull During the Confusions and Revolutions of Government: Anthony Ashcam: 1648 (Old Dive's copy which discusses what the hell to do if you're about to execute the king) in three parts (which influenced the policies of the Protectorate)

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: published 1753 to 1775 

Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part II: c.1345 to Modern: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

Cromwell, Our Chief of Men: Antonia Fraser: 1973

Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn with Life: H. B. Wheatley: 1906: 4 Vols

Samuel Pepys' Diaries: H. B. Wheatley: 1911: 8 Vols (expurgated) bound in a rather lovely cornflower blue

The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Latham and Matthews: Folio Soc. Limited Edition: 11 Vols (unexpurgted)

Narcissus Luttrell's Diaries (ongoing transcription project by Old Dive)

The Interregnum, 1648 - 1660, Studies of the Commonwealth, Legislative, Social and Legal: F. A. Inderwick; 1891 (an exceedingly good read, despite the dull title; I lucked onto an inscribed and signed first edition for next to nothing … yay!)

Notable Historical Trials: Vol 2 of 4: Chapter III: The Trial of Charles I: Justin Lovell (ed) 1999

The History of England Vol 3: Civil War: Peter Ackroyd: 2014

The Printed Plans of Norwich 1558-1840, A Carto-Bibliography: Raymond Frostick: 2002 

Norwich Cathedral - Church, City and Diocese: 1096 - 1996: Various Eds. 1996

Norwich Cathedral Close: Roberta Gilchrist: 2005 

Norwich Since 1550: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004 

Norwich - The Growth of a City: Barbara Green & Rachel M R Young: Norfolk Museums Service: 1981

Norwich Houses Before 1700: Vernacular Architecture, Vol 14: 1983

The Oxford History of England: Volume IX "The Early Stuarts 1603 - 1660" Godfrey Davies (ed): 1937

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume X "The Later Stuarts 1660 - 1714" Sir George Clark (ed): 1934