As it was, the distress brought a repeat of the problems of 1812. The number of mechanized mills had increased rapidly since then and skilled workers like the croppers, to take only one example out of many, found that out of a total of 3378 men employed in the trade in 1817, a third were unemployed and a further third were only partly employed.47 It was no surprise when the Luddites began to meet again and there were fears of a general insurrection. In June, ten Dewsbury men were arrested for plotting rebellion, including the former keeper of the Yew Tree Inn at Roberttown and a card maker from Hightown, both of whom must have been known personally to Patrick. It turned out that the ‘plot’ was simply the wild talk of desperate men and that the main ‘plotter’ was actually a government agent provocateur.48 Nevertheless, it was a time of deep concern for Patrick and he would have had to redouble his efforts to ensure that those who needed charity received it.
At the parsonage, the even tenor of life was undisturbed by the turmoil in the country. Maria was pregnant again, though this did not restrict her social activities as it might have done in the more prudish Victorian age. She continued to take tea with Elizabeth Firth each week and doubtless met the other ladies of the township on a regular basis too. In March, a new visitor came to stay with the Brontës. Miss Thomas, as Elizabeth Firth noted, came to stay on 18 March and remained for at least two months.49 Her relationship to the household is not known. She cannot have been a servant or nurse to assist in Maria’s latest confinement, as this did not occur till the end of June, by which time she appears to have left; nor would Miss Firth of Kipping House have admitted Miss Thomas to her tea drinkings, visits and rambles around Thornton unless, like Elizabeth Branwell, she was a lady of some social standing. It is unlikely that she was a governess, as the Brontës’ eldest child, Maria, was only just three years old and not yet ready for schooling. The only alternatives left are that she was either a relative, most likely from Penzance, or a friend from either Penzance or the Hartshead area.
On 11 May, Patrick persuaded Miss Thomas, Elizabeth Firth and her guest, Miss Fanny Greame, who was a relative of her stepmother, to begin attending the Sunday school as teachers.50 Patrick was particularly anxious to nurture his Sunday school, which was still in its infancy. Despite his best efforts, it attracted only a hundred pupils, whereas the four Dissenting Sunday schools in his chapelry taught 770 children between them. The strength of the Dissenting interest meant that Patrick was hamstrung in his efforts to finance the school and had to rely on the voluntary contributions of his congregation. Nevertheless, he battled on, introducing the new method of instruction recommended by the National Society and persuading his better-educated parishioners to act as teachers.51
On 12 May, he and Mr Firth travelled together to Wakefield, some twenty miles away, to vote for a new registrar for the West Riding. The election took place in the courthouse at Wakefield and was, at this period of limited suffrage, only open to gentlemen possessing freehold property worth at least one hundred pounds a year and clergymen with salaries worth a similar amount. Both Patrick and Mr Firth voted for the Tory, Mr Scott, who had to withdraw from the election the following Friday when it became clear from the poll that he could not win.52
In the early hours of the morning of 26 June 1817, the latest Brontë arrived on the scene. For Maria, and more especially for Patrick, this was a particularly welcome moment, for this child was the long-awaited and much-wished-for son. In honour of the occasion the boy was given two names, Patrick, after his father, and Branwell, after his mother’s maiden name, though at first there appears to have been some confusion over which name came first. The day after his birth, his three sisters, Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte, were invited down to Kipping House to join a large party of ladies who, no doubt, made much of the little girls.53 It did not take long to sort out their brother’s name and, for the first time in the Brontë family, there was no delay in baptizing the child: on Wednesday, 23 July, John Fennell performed the ceremony at the Old Bell Chapel and Patrick Branwell Brontë acquired his God-given name. His godparents were Elizabeth Firth’s father and stepmother.54
Branwell’s safe arrival into the world must have been an even greater cause for thankfulness when, on 6 November, the much-loved Princess Charlotte of Wales, only daughter of the Prince Regent, died giving birth to a stillborn son. Her death was seen as a national tragedy and there seems to have been a genuine sense of personal loss throughout the country, reflected in the newspaper coverage of her death and funeral. It was announced that everyone was expected to go into general mourning, which would include the formal adoption of mourning dress, and Patrick, in common with other ministers of the Established Church, had to deck his pulpit in black cloth. On 19 November, when she was buried, all the shops and places of business had to close for the day and the churches opened in their stead, holding special services and tolling muffled bells to mark her passing.55
The day Princess Charlotte died, Patrick had escorted Elizabeth Firth to Bradford to attend a missionary meeting tea at the house of Mr Lambert, a prominent Bradford churchman; the following day, they were privileged to hear Legh Richmond, the popular Evangelical, preach at the Church Missionary meeting.56 On 12 November, five days after the meeting, there was a more informal gathering of Evangelicals at Kipping House: Patrick and his fellow founder of the Bradford Bible Society, Samuel Redhead, were invited to dinner with the Firths; there they met the Firths’ visitors, the Reverend James Franks and his wife, of Sowerby Bridge, whose son, James Clarke Franks, then enjoying a prestigious career at Patrick’s old college at Cambridge, was later to marry Elizabeth Firth.57 The year ended with the news from Hartshead that Thomas Atkinson had married Frances Walker on 23 December and that the pair had set up home in Mirfield at Green House, an elegant small mansion more suited to their affluence than Patrick’s old homes at Lousy Thorn and Clough House.58
The new year, 1818, was marked throughout the Bradford district with the spectacular Bishop Blaize festivities. These were held once every seven years to celebrate the patron saint of woolcombers and included special services in the places of religious worship, colourful processions through the streets of the towns with the participants marching under the banners of their particular part of the woollen trade and dinners in the inns and public houses.59
For Patrick, this mood of celebration was to continue throughout the year. The April issue of Blackwood’s Magazine, a national journal, carried the following advertisement in its monthly list of new publications: ‘The Maid of Killarney, or Albion and Flora; a modern tale; in which are interwoven some cursory remarks on religion and politics, 12mo. 3s.6d.’60 Though no author was mentioned in the advertisement – nor, indeed, in the book itself – this was Patrick’s most ambitious literary project to date. A novella, substantially longer than anything he had previously published, it boasted the imprint of Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, one of the small publishing houses based in Paternoster Row, London.61 Curiously, given Patrick’s preoccupations of the previous sixteen years, it is the most Irish of all his works. It is set in contemporary Ireland which is seen through the eyes of the appropriately named English hero, Albion. The beauties of the Irish lakes and mountains are evocatively painted in a detail which must reflect personal knowledge though Killarney, on the most southwestern tip of Ireland, could hardly be further away from Patrick’s home in County Down. Similarly, the pitiable poverty of the Irish peasant is described at length and with the accuracy of personal observation.
On the title page, Patrick cited several lines from his favourite classical poet, Horace, suggesting that he wished to instruct while amusing his readers. In his Preface he quoted, once again, his favourite apostle, St Paul, to explain how as an author, ‘though following at an immense distance, he has endeavoured to walk in the footsteps of him of Tarsus, who became all things to all men, that he might by all means save some’.62 He continued with a candid explanation of his choice of anonymity:
Perhaps he is not altogether insensible
to praise or blame; and this might have been one reason why he preferred being anonymous, that at a safer distance, and through a wary loop-hole, he might so behold the fate of his little work, that whatever it might be, he who intended no harm, might receive none.63
Another reason for the anonymity might have been that The Maid of Killarney is actually a love story and, though the Evangelical teachings familiar from his earlier works feature prominently, the general impression is that Patrick’s characters and the development of his plot interested him just as much as, if not more than, his didactic purpose. The conscientious clergyman was clearly being seduced by the ‘real, indescribable pleasure, such as he could wish to taste as long as life lasts’64 of literary composition for its own sake.
Nevertheless, the book is, as its full title suggests, an excuse for the exposition of Patrick’s religious and political views. The hero, in order to make him a fit husband for the pious and lovely Flora but at the prompting of his dying father, undergoes conversion, ‘that change, without which no man shall see the kingdom of heaven’.65 The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge is compared, unfavourably, with the British and Foreign Bible Society in a powerful simile; the former is like the River Thames, flowing through and enriching its own London, but the latter is like the Nile, with countless tributaries, winding its irresistible course through different climates and nations until, ‘disdaining its prescribed limits’, it floods over the delta and brings riches to all. Playing at cards, dancing and the ‘meretricious ornament’ of the stage are all attacked as murderers of time, though not an evil in themselves.66
The most important arguments, however, are reserved for the discussion of Roman Catholic Emancipation. Though Patrick allows the virulent anti-Catholic sentiments of Dr O’Leary to be overthrown by the more moderate arguments of Albion and Captain Loughlean, it is clear that he did not think Catholics should be allowed to vote or sit in Parliament because their loyalty to the king would be continually compromised by their loyalty to the pope. His dislike of the practice of Catholicism is illustrated throughout The Maid of Killarney, but particularly at the beginning, where there are savage caricatures of an Irish wake and of the village priest who refuses to allow his parishioners to read the Bible: ‘He says such like books are not fit for any but larned men like himself; and that all ignorant people who read them turn crack-brained, and full of vagaries, and die harryticks.’67 For an Evangelical, the Catholic reliance on the priesthood rather than on individual effort to read the Bible was totally repugnant. Though Patrick later changed his mind on Roman Catholic Emancipation, he never lost his dislike of Catholicism itself.68
In his political arguments, Patrick proved more liberal – surprisingly so for a man who is always branded a rampant Tory. Perhaps the most important of his arguments concerned the system of criminal justice which, in his opinion, required a thorough overhaul. The law should be universally obeyed, but to be obeyed it had to be universally understood. This was simply impractical, given the impenetrable phraseology of the law and the obscurity of legal documentation. Its delays and its great expense put it beyond the reach of the ordinary man.
Consider, moreover, the inadequacy of punishment. A man will be hanged for stealing a fat sheep, though he be hungry; – he will incur no greater punishment for murdering twenty men! In the name of common sense, what is the necessary tendency of this? Most undoubtedly, the man who robs, will find it [in] his interest to murder also, for by so doing, he will be more likely to prevent discovery, and will, at all events, incur no greater punishment. It has always been a sorrowful reflection to me, when I have heard of robbers being hanged on the evidence of the person robbed, that in all probability they came to their melancholy end, through that little remains of conscience, and tenderness of heart, which they still possessed, and which prevented them, even at their own peril, from imbruing their hands in their fellow creatures’ blood.69
Patrick was to return several times to this theme and despite feeling, on occasion, that he was a lone voice crying in the wilderness, he campaigned vigorously to get the criminal law reformed and its savagery moderated.70
The Maid of Killarney is Patrick’s most important literary work, not only because it contains his views on so many subjects dear to his heart, but also because it was to have a tremendous influence on his children. They would imitate his style, particularly his inclusion of poems as songs in the text, and borrow his characters, especially the lovely Flora who, together with her harp, provides the model for many of the heroines of the juvenilia.71 Many passages from The Maid of Killarney, on subjects as diverse as describing the beauties of the landscape or singing the praises of the Duke of Wellington, could just as easily have been written by one of the Brontë children.
One of the first sales was to Elizabeth Firth, who purchased the book in May though apparently she did not read it till the following October. She was more preoccupied with reading the Remains of Henry Kirke White, which she seems to have taken up on the recommendation of Patrick, after he had walked with her and Fanny Outhwaite to Ogden Kirk, midway between Denholme and Halifax.72
On 30 July, Maria Brontë gave birth to yet another daughter, the fifth of her six children. Perhaps because the baby was sickly (though there is no indication of this in any of the sources), she was christened within three weeks of her birth, the shortest lapse of time for any of the Brontë children. William Morgan performed the baptism at the Old Bell Chapel on Thursday, 20 August; his wife, Jane, and her parents, the Fennells, are said to have been the baby’s godparents and one of them presented the baby with a delicate white china christening mug with her name spelt out in gilt lettering around it, ‘Emily Jane Bronte’.73 It is appropriate that the most singular of the Brontë children should have been given a name unique in the family; there were neither Branwells nor Brontës named Emily, though her second name – and again she was unique in being the only one of Patrick and Maria’s daughters to merit two forenames – was inspired by her godmother, Maria’s cousin.
Patrick was invited to dinner at Kipping House on the eve of the christening and Jane Branwell Morgan, who had clearly come to stay for the ceremony, called in to renew her old friendship with Elizabeth Firth.74 Perhaps the two ladies urged Patrick to get extra help for Maria who, with five infants all under five years of age, could no longer manage with just one nursery maid to aid her. Nancy Garrs was therefore promoted to the position of cook and assistant housekeeper, and her younger sister, Sarah, who had also been trained at the Bradford School of Industry, came to take her place as nursemaid.75
The remainder of the year was a busy time for Patrick. There were the usual annual meetings in Bradford of the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews in October and Legh Richmond returned to preach at the beginning of November.76 More time-consuming and of more importance locally was the complete renovation of the Old Bell Chapel, which Patrick began in the late autumn of 1818. The gallery at the east end of the chapel had become unsafe and had to be closed. For many years it had housed the singers and instrumentalists who provided the church music because there was no organ; the churchwardens’ account books show that there were two treble violins, one tenor violin and a violoncello belonging to the chapel, plus some half-dozen manuscript music books, ranging from Holroyd’s Psalmody to Purcell’s Te Deum. The musicians were, naturally enough, somewhat disgruntled at being brought down from the sanctuary of their gallery to sit in a pew under the parson’s eye. Perhaps it was in an attempt to placate them that new music books were purchased for the singers and the old ones, under the supervision of Elizabeth Firth, were repaired.77
Most of the expenditure went on work on the fabric of the building, repairing and making good the neglect of many years. On 10 November Elizabeth Firth made a special visit to the chapel to see ‘the angel’, presumably a new or at least newly restored statue or painting.78 On completion of the work a new board was installed at the entrance to the chape
l which declared to all: ‘This Chapel was repaired and beautified, A.D. 1818. The Rev. P. Brontë, B. A., Minister. Joseph Robertshaw, Joseph Foster, John Hill, John Lockwood and Tim Riley, churchwardens.’ Under the names was painted a royal coat of arms, surmounted by the letters ‘G.R.’, and at the very bottom, in small lettering, ‘Painted by Thomas Rembrandt Driver’.79 Perhaps the death of Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, on 17 November, after a long illness, inspired this gesture of loyalty, particularly as the chapel was closed on the day of her funeral when Patrick should have preached a funeral sermon on her behalf.80
The new year, 1819, began quietly enough with an invitation to tea on 8 January at Kipping House for the three oldest Brontë children, Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte.81 In March there was an important occasion for the chapelry: a large party of about sixty young people was taken to Bradford to be confirmed in the parish church. As they reached Bradford – a distance of some four miles – the weather turned against them. Patrick was concerned, particularly as they still had to walk back to Thornton after the ceremony. He therefore went into the Talbot Hotel, just off the top of Darley Street, and ordered hot dinners to be prepared and waiting for the whole party as they came out of church. Thus fortified, and having sheltered from the worst of the storm, the young people returned safely to Thornton. This unexpected act of kindness was long remembered in the parish.82
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