History of the Johnstones, 1191-1909, with ... - Electric Scotland

BIRMINGHAM 247
the balls at the Assembly Rooms and the excellent hunting in the neighbourhood,
and when it troubled itself little about politics and returned no member
to Parliament. Sutton Coldfield, seven miles distant, was an ancient town, with
a parish extending many miles over parks and halls, and between them Aston,
a country village, with its Elizabethan Manor-house and picturesque old Church,
filled with Holt, Holden, Caldecott, and Bracebridge tombs. On the west
side Edgbaston Hall and Park, two miles away, had been bought from the
heiress of the Middlemores, married to Lord Falconer, by an East Indian
nabob, Sir Richard Gough. It was a noble effort for so small a town when it
planned that fine structure St. Philip's for its second church, now the Cathedral.
It had been ten years building when the money fell short, and Sir Richard
Gough applied to Sir Robert Walpole to ask for assistance from the King, who
gave £600 ; and, in gratitude, the Gough crest—the boar's head— still surmounts
it. The Blue-coat School was founded at the same time, to bring up the children
of impecunious members of the Church of England, and the same names appear
on both committees. But the chief manufacturers and the richest people were
Nonconformists— notably most of the Lunar Society—and there was a large
sprinkling of Romanists, who were quietly allowed to maintain their priests and
places of worship in the district, at a time when their very existence was
contrary to law. Even in 1791 neither Romanists nor Nonconformists could
sit in Parliament or hold any office under Government, yet paid church rates
and the enormous taxes of the day. They had their own schools and colleges,
for they could not enter Oxford or take degrees at Cambridge ; and the public
grammar schools, from Eton downwards, were entirely directed by Churchmen
and taught by clergymen.
It was not strange if the interests of the Nonconformists were not those
of Churchmen, and if they viewed the downfall of the Established Church and
of monarchy in France with a hope that it might bring about some amendment
in British law as regarded themselves. Those in Birmingham organised a
dinner to be held at Dadley's Hotel in Temple Row on the second anniversary of
the capture of the Bastille. The tickets were 5s., including a bottle of wine, and
about twenty-three toasts were to be drunk. The usual loyal ones, then, "The
Prosperity of the glorious form of Government ratified in France on July 14,
1790," "The Majesty of the People," "The Rights of Man," "The United
States : May they ever enjoy the liberty they have so honourably acquired," and
ten more, all desiring peace with France and the whole world ; yet no one was
more shocked and astonished than Dr Priestley, the promoter of this dinner,
when Louis XVI. and his Queen were guillotined.
The majority of Englishmen had not forgotten nor forgiven the American
Secession, and the whole prosperity of Birmingham was bound up in its
manufacture of implements of war ; so the working class was easily made to
believe that it would starve if there was a long peace.
As Edward Johnstone's mother was of a Nonconformist family, he had
many dissenting acquaintances, which had long included Dr Priestley ; but
among his intimate friends were the Rector of St. Philip's, Dr Spencer, at whose