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

VISITORS 277
outside world, as they were nearer the town. When Birmingham had neither
a Mayor nor a Member, it was customary to select an influential resident near
Birmingham, and to ask him to receive a distinguished foreigner when he was
desirous of seeing the world-renowned manufactories. Englishmen and Scotsmen
came with introductions. Two old Roman roads cross Warwickshire and
the central position of Birmingham in coaching and posting days brought
everyone through it who was going from London to Wales, Derby and the
North-West, yet the town was still so unimportant that in 1820 it was seriously
proposed that the London coach should leave the Birmingham mail bags at
Stonebridge to save the long hill which leads up to it.
Dr Johnstone's father had obtained, through Sir William Pulteney, a commission
for an Irving ; and a more humble member of that warlike clan, but
who became more celebrated—the Rev. Edward Irving—stayed at Edgbaston
Hall on his way to pay his first visit to London. His striking appearance,
real religious enthusiasm, and great eloquence deeply impressed all who met
him, and subsequently made a convert of the only surviving daughter of the
house to the "Catholic Apostolic Church" when she stayed in London with
some friends of her stepmother's, and with them attended his services. After
her death a voluminous correspondence with Irving on religious subjects was
burned. It rather cooled his friendship with her father, but he was always
warmly received at Monument House by the John Johnstones, where he met
their son-in-law, Dr Hook, who, in a published letter, has left a testimony to
his sincerity, though he calls " Irvingism " the High Church gone mad. Henry
Carey, Thomas Carlyle, and his brother John were also visitors at the Monument
and at Edgbaston Hall.
Dr John Johnstone in 1815-16 took the young Russian Grand Dukes,
Nicholas, afterwards Emperor, and Michael, who each gave .£100 to the
Hospital, round that admirable institution when it stood in Summer Lane
the younger talked agreeably, but the elder was shy and silent— perhaps not
a good English scholar.
Gladstone, the future Lord Sherbrooke, the Peels, Lawleys, Adderleys,
and many other Eton and Winchester boys, afterwards noted, travelled to
Birmingham on the top of the coach and breakfasted in the early morning
at the " Hen and Chickens." Lord Sherbrooke and his brothers generally
broke their journey here for a few days to visit their cousins, the Websters, at
Penns. Young Gladstone, with characteristic impatience, seems to have con-
ceived a horror of Birmingham, from the weary wait in New Street till the
Liverpool coach was ready to start.
There was living in Birmingham at that time an adventurer, Andrew
James Cochrane, eighth son of the eighth Earl of Dundonald. He took the
name of Johnstone when he married Georgiana, daughter of the third Earl of
Hopetoun, so his son and daughter appear in the long entail of the property
now owned by Mr Hope Johnstone. He had served in the army in India,
when he was made a Colonel in 1797, and Governor of Dominica. "His rule
was marked by tyranny, extortion, and vice. He drove a brisk and profitable