He knew he was meant for Mistress Mercy Maris from the moment he set eyes on her, there in the Worcester parlour of her great-aunt, Mrs. Owen. Six years younger than himself at twenty-two, with a good humour and a fresh complexion, she had been the bright jewel that he’d feared he was without the means to purchase. He’d but recently proposed to sixteen-year-old Jenny Jennings, yet upon being rebuffed had raised his siege and had considered himself pleased in her continuing friendship. The impulse that had possessed him, though, on that recent occasion, was as nothing to the passion that he felt towards Miss Maris, which had struck him like a very thunderbolt. He had persisted in his suit, unable to do otherwise, and found to his delight that his affections were reciprocated. They’d been wed upon the 29th day of November in 1730 at Upton-on-Severn, and his new wife had arrived to live with him here at Northampton, joining in enthusiastically with all his works despite the meanness of the neighbourhood. The local people had been models of good cheer and helpfulness, for all the squabbling that would break out between what may have been a dozen different Nonconformist creeds. Indeed, both he and Mrs. Doddridge found their congregation most agreeable despite the reputation it had earned for insurrection and unrest, this quiet nook where the most seditious of the ‘Martin Marprelate’ broadsides had been pseudonymously writ and published in the previous century. Had not Sir Humphrey Ramsden stated that Northampton was “a nest of puritans” in correspondence with John Lambe, describing the townspeople as “malignant, refractory spirits who disturb the peace of the church.”? And yet it was in this shire that churchgoers first insisted, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, upon hymn-singing at their ceremonies, where before were only chanted psalms. It was a good place, in its way a place holy as any other, and his wife and he were well to be here, although Mary Wills the prophetess had told him that their first attempt to bear a child would end in sadness. Still, perhaps on this occasion she should be proved wrong. After all, regarding his position on determinism, he stood …
He stood in the darkening church at Castle Hill and wept; gazed through a quivering salt lens at the small gravestone set amongst the floor tiles under the communion table. He’d believed the crying to be done with, and this sudden bout surprised him. It had no doubt been occasioned by the pamphlets, recently delivered from their printing company, one of which he held now in between his trembling hands. “Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children recommended and inforced, in a SERMON preached at NORTHAMPTON on the DEATH Of a very amiable and hopeful CHILD about Five Years old. Published out of compassion to mourning PARENTS By P. DODDRIDGE, D.D. Neve Liturarum pudeat: qui viderit illas. De Lachrymis factas sentiat esse meis. OVID. LONDON: Printed for R. HETT, at the Bible and Crown, in the Poultry. MDCC XXXVII. [Price Six-Pence.]” It had been writ more in tears than ink and now the former splashed down, further to dilute and blotch the latter. It was …
It was not, perhaps, so splendidly appointed as was the academy at Harborough, standing here in Sheep Street with the mouth of Silver Street just opposite, but Doddridge thought that in its practice it was quite the best in England. He and Mercy and their four surviving children had resided comfortably enough down at his previous establishment upon the corner of Pike Lane and Marefair, but with fresh students arriving every week to study scripture, mathematics, Latin, Greek or Hebrew it was evident that the Dissenting institution’s newer and considerably larger premises would be required to hold them all. He hoped …
He hoped it was his tolerance that had acquired for him so many worthy friends. His church enjoyed an amiable acquaintance with the Baptist ministry in College Lane, and in his private life he counted Calvinists, Moravians and Swedenborgians alike among his fellows. He stood now in George Row on a March morn in 1744, with his most valued and unlikeliest companion by his side. Mr. John Stonhouse had led an eventful, reckless life and had at one point even penned a tract attacking Christianity. One evening, on his way to rendezvous with a loose woman, he had stopped to hear the famous Philip Doddridge speaking and upon the spot renounced his former ways, becoming a most steadfast ally of the doctor’s cause and helping him inaugurate a town infirmary, the first outside of London, which was the occasion that had called them to George Row upon this blustery morning. From the …
From the dark November sky above him firework flowers shed burning cream-and-cobalt petals in a rain on the Sheep Street academy, brightly illuminated by a horde of candles that had been arranged to spell out “KING GEORGE, NO PRETENDER”. Doddridge had been long aware how lucky the Dissenters were under this Hanoverian monarch, and had warned his congregation to be wary of a Stuart resurgence that might re-establish Catholic oppression. Now, though, in 1745, the threat was more than hypothetical, with Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the pretender to the British Throne, raising his standard at Glenfinnan and then marching south and into England. Doddridge, warned six years before of this eventuality by Mary Wills of Pitsford, was prepared. Enlisting his good friend the Earl of Halifax, he’d galvanised a parliament apparently indifferent to the Young Pretender’s threat and raised a force more than a thousand strong that had two hundred cavalry, most of them garrisoned here at Northampton. The Pretender, who had counted on strong Jacobite support that had not been forthcoming, was reputedly further discouraged by the news of armed men waiting just a little further south. He had already started his retreat back towards Scotland and, presumably, eventual ruin, hence these splendid bonfire celebrations. He rejoiced in …
He rejoiced in God’s great providence as he lay dying in the little country house a few miles outside Lisbon. He and Mercy, aided by donations from the kindly folk of Castle Hill, had been sent forth on a recuperative voyage to Portugal when his health, never sturdy, had at last begun to comprehensively decline. That sunlit country, in 1751, was famed for its good weather and for the restorative effects of its environment, though their advisers in Northampton clearly had not known that late October marked, traditionally, the commencement of the annual rainy season. Now it was approaching three o’clock on the black morning of the twenty-sixth. He listened to the downpour drumming on the roof and fancied that the end would not be long. Mercy herself was ill, a victim of the climate, and he knew that she could not assist him though she wanted to with all her heart. He thanked God for that loyal and beloved woman who had so enriched a goodly number of the forty-nine years he had spent on Earth. He thanked God for his life, its every triumph and reversal, for allowing him to further the Dissenting cause to the remarkable extent he had, forcing the church to recognise its Nonconformist brethren, and all this accomplished from the lowly mound where stood his humble meeting-house. Mercy was sleeping next to him. He heard the rain, and felt her breath upon his cheek. He closed …
He closed his eyes. Michael was under the impression that ghosts didn’t sleep, but then he’d thought that about eating until he’d been served the tea and fairy-cake. Sinking into a pinkish drowse he idly supposed that while dead people didn’t really need a meal or nap, they probably indulged in both things now and then, just for the simple pleasure of it. He could still hear all the other voices in the sunny kitchen, but they sounded far away and nothing much to do with him. He felt somebody — probably one of the Doddridge ladies — take the cup and saucer from his slackening grip before he spilled it on the floor. He’d either eaten his cake or already dropped it, but he didn’t know which and it didn’t matter.