CHAP. VI.

A self-taught musician.

201

valleys sing;' and in the following year he gained the first prize from the Huddersfield Glee Club, for his 'Sisters of the Lea.' His other anthem, 'God be merciful to us,' and the 103rd Psalm, written for a double chorus and orchestra, are well known. In the midst of these minor works, Jackson proceeded with the composition of his oratorio,—“ The Deliverance of Israel from Babylon.' His practice was, to jot down a sketch of the ideas as they presented themselves to his mind, and to write them out in score in the evenings, after he had left his work in the candle-shop. His oratorio was published in parts, in the course of 1844-5, and he published the last chorus on his twenty-ninth birthday. The work was exceedingly well received, and has been frequently performed with much success in the northern towns. Mr. Jackson eventually settled as a professor of music at Bradford, where he contributed in no small degree to the cultivation of the musical taste of that town and its neighbourhood. Some years since he had the honour of leading his fine company of Bradford choral singers before Her Majesty at Buckingham Palace; on which occasion, as well as at the Crystal Palace, some choral pieces of his composition, were performed with great effect.*

Such is a brief outline of the career of a self-taught musician, whose life affords but another illustration of the power of self-help, and the force of courage and industry in enabling a man to surmount and overcome early difficulties and obstructions of no ordinary kind.

* While the sheets of this revised edition are passing through the press, the announcement appears in the local papers of the death of Mr. Jackson at the age of fifty. His last work, completed shortly before his death, was a cantata, entitled The Praise of Music.' The above particulars of his early life were communicated by himself to the author several years since, while he was still carrying on his business of a tallowchandler at Masham.

CHAPTER VII.

INDUSTRY AND THE PEERAGE.

"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,

That dares not put it to the touch,

To gain or lose it all.”—Marquis of Montrose.

"He hath put down the mighty from their seats; and exalted them of low degree."

W

St. Luke.

E have already referred to some illustrious Commoners raised from humble to elevated positions by the power of application and industry; and we might point to even the Peerage itself as affording equally instructive examples. One reason why the Peerage of England has succeeded so well in holding its own, arises from the fact that, unlike the peerages of other countries, it has been fed, from time to time, by the best industrial blood of the country-the very "liver, heart, and brain of Britain." Like the fabled Antæus, it has been invigorated and refreshed by touching its mother earth, and mingling with that most ancient order of nobility-the working order.

The blood of all men flows from equally remote sources; and though some are unable to trace their line directly beyond their grandfathers, all are nevertheless justified in. placing at the head of their pedigree the great progenitors of the race, as Lord Chesterfield did when he wrote, "ADAM de Stanhope-EVE de Stanhope." No class is ever long sta

CHAP. VII.

Fall of old families.

203

tionary. The mighty fall, and the humble are exalted. New families take the place of the old, who disappear among the ranks of the common people. Burke's 'Vicissitudes of Families' strikingly exhibit this rise and fall of families, and show that the misfortunes which overtake the rich and noble are greater in proportion than those which overwhelm the poor. This author points out that of the twenty-five barons selected to enforce the observance of Magna Charta, there is not now in the House of Peers a single male descendant. Civil wars and rebellions ruined many of the old nobility and dispersed their families. Yet their descendants in many cases survive, and are to be found among the ranks of the people. Fuller wrote in his 'Worthies,' that "some who justly hold the surnames of Bohuns, Mortimers, and Plantagenets, are hid in the heap of common men." Thus Burke shows that two of the lineal descendants of the Earl of Kent, sixth son of Edward I., were discovered in a butcher and a toll-gatherer; that the great grandson of Margaret Plantagenet, daughter of the Duke of Clarence, sank to the condition of a cobbler at Newport, in Shropshire; and that among the lineal descendants of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Edward III., was the late sexton of St. George's, Hanover Square. It is understood that the lineal descendant of Simon de Montfort, England's premier baron, is a saddler in Tooley Street. One of the descendants of the "Proud Percys," a claimant of the title of Duke of Northumberland, was a Dublin trunk-maker; and not many years since one of the claimants for the title of Earl of Perth presented himself in the person of a labourer in a Northumberland coal-pit. Hugh Miller, when working as a stone-mason near Edinburgh, was served by a hodman, who was one of the numerous claimants for the earldom of Crauford-all that was wanted to establish his claim being a missing marriage certificate; and while the work was going on, the cry resounded from the walls many times in the day, of" John, Yearl Crauford, bring us

204

Peerages founded by trade. CHAP. VII.

anither hod o' lime." One of Oliver Cromwell's great grandsons was a grocer on Snow Hill, and others of his descendants died in great poverty. Many barons of proud names and titles have perished, like the sloth, upon their family tree, after eating up all the leaves; while others have been overtaken by adversities which they have been unable to retrieve, and sunk at last into poverty and obscurity. Such are the mutabilities of rank and fortune.

The great bulk of our peerage is comparatively modern, so far as the titles go; but it is not the less noble that it has been recruited to so large an extent from the ranks of honourable industry. In olden times, the wealth and commerce of London, conducted as it was by energetic and enterprising men, was a prolific source of peerages. Thus, the earldom of Cornwallis was founded by Thomas Cornwallis, the Cheapside merchant; that of Essex by William Capel, the draper; and that of Craven by William Craven, the merchant tailor. The modern Earl of Warwick is not descended from the "King-maker," but from William Greville, the woolstapler; whilst the modern dukes of Northumberland find their head, not in the Percies, but in Hugh Smithson, a respectable London apothecary. The founders of the families of Dartmouth, Radnor, Ducie, and Pomfret, were respectively a skinner, a silk manufacturer, a merchant tailor, and a Calais merchant; whilst the founders of the peerages of Tankerville, Dormer, and Coventry, were mercers. The ancestors of Earl Romney, and Lord Dudley and Ward, were goldsmiths and jewellers; and Lord Dacres was a banker in the reign of Charles I., as Lord Overstone is in that of Queen Victoria. Edward Osborne, the founder of the Dukedom of Leeds, was apprentice to William Hewet, a rich clothworker on London Bridge, whose only daughter he courageously rescued from drowning, by leaping into the Thames after her, and eventually married. Among other peerages founded by trade are those of Fitzwilliam,

CHAP. VII.

Richard Foley-nailmaker.

205

Leigh, Petre, Cowper, Darnley, Hill, and Carrington. The founders of the houses of Foley and Normanby were remarkable men in many respects, and, as furnishing striking examples of energy of character, the story of their lives is worthy of preservation.

The father of Richard Foley, the founder of the family, was a small yeoman living in the neighbourhood of Stourbridge in the time of Charles I. That place was then the centre of the iron manufacture of the midland districts, and Richard was brought up to work at one of the branches of the trade—that of nail-making. He was thus a daily observer of the great labour and loss of time caused by the clumsy process then adopted for dividing the rods of iron in the manufacture of nails. It appeared that the Stourbridge nailers were gradually losing their trade in consequence of the importation of nails from Sweden, by which they were undersold in the market. It became known that the Swedes were enabled to make their nails so much cheaper, by the use of splitting mills and machinery, which had completely superseded the laborious process of preparing the rods for nail-making then practised in England.

Richard Foley, having ascertained this much, determined to make himself master of the new process. He suddenly disappeared from the neighbourhood of Stourbridge, and was not heard of for several years. No one knew whither he had gone, not even his own family; for he had not informed them of his intention, lest he should fail. He had little or no money in his pocket, but contrived to get to Hull, where he engaged himself on board a ship bound for a Swedish port, and worked his passage there. The only article of property which he possessed was his fiddle, and on landing in Sweden he begged and fiddled his way to the Dannemora mines, near Upsala. He was a capital musician, as well as a pleasant fellow, and soon ingratiated himself with the iron-workers. He was received into the