Let me begin by telling you a story told in the 19th century that features Coggeshall. The writer says
My grandfather remarked that there was formerly a wood in what I think he called Honeywood Park, which was a very memorable place to him. In that wood he had groaned and wept before the Lord while under the burden of sin and under a tree of oak, then only a sapling, he had received the grace of faith and entered upon the enjoyment of peace with God.It was a lonely spot, but henceforth it was to him no other than the house of God and the very gate of heaven. Often he resorted thither and praised the name of the Lord. Some time after this happy event, having to go from Coggeshall to Halstead (an 8 mile journey north), his route was over the hallowed spot. On the night previous he dreamed very vividly that the devil appeared to him, and threatened to tear him in pieces if he dared to go along that footpath and pray under the oak as he had been wont to do. The evil one reminded him that there was another way through the farmyard, and that if he took the farmyard path all would go well with him. When my grandfather awoke, the impression on his mind was overpowering, and he reasoned thus with himself, 'Whether it be a dream or really a temptation from Satan, I cannot tell, but, anyhow, I will not yield to it, but will show the devil that I will not do his bidding in anything, but will defy him to his face.'My grandfather, then a young man, went on cheerily enough till he came to the stile where two paths diverged, then a horrible fear came upon him and he felt his heart beat fast. Suppose he really should meet the archfiend and should find him too strong for him, what then? Better take the farmyard path. No, that would be yielding to Satan, and he would not do that for ten thousand worlds. He plucked up courage and tremblingly pressed on. The stile was leaped, the narrow tract through the wood was trodden with resolution mingled with forebodings. The oak was in sight, the sweat was on his face, the pace was quickened, a dash was made, and the tree was grasped, but there was no Satan there. Taking breath a moment the young man uttered aloud the exclamation, ' Ah, cowardly devil, you threatened to tear me in pieces and now you do not dare show vour face!' Then followed a fervent prayer and a song of praise, and the young man was about to go on his way when his eye was caught by something shining on the ground. It was a ring, a very large ring, he told me, nearly as large as a curtain ring, and it was solid gold; how it came there it would be hard to guess. Enquiries were made, but no claimant ever appeared, and my grandfather had it made into my grandmother's wedding-ring in memory of the spot so dear to him.Year by year he continued to visit the oak tree on the day of his conversion to pour out his soul before the Lord. In the course of time modern improvements swept away the wood and the oak, and on (my grandfather's) last visit to the spot it was covered with growing wheat. However, he knelt down to pray, as was his custom, but the prayer was interrupted in a most ludicrous manner. He had scarcely begun to offer praise when the voice of a farm labourer was heard close by crying out in alarm, "Maister, there be a creazy man a-saying his prayers down in the wheat over thay're."This startled the suppliant and made him beat a hasty retreat. Jacob must wrestle somewhere else; the man of God looked at the spot and went his way, but in spirit he still raised an altar in that Bethel, and praised the God of his salvation. He has gone to his rest after having fought a good fight, but the prayers of Honeywood Park are blessing his children and his children’s children, to the third generation at this very hour. To them and all the world his testimony is, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,” and equally does he instruct us to “Bless the Lord and forget not all his benefits.” It were well if all of us were as decided to overcome temptation, let it come as it may. To indulge in that which may even seem to be sin is evil - to strive against its very appearance is safety. Forgive, gentle reader, the egotism which made me think this odd story might have an interest beyond my own family-circle; it is no small pleasure to remember such a grandsire, and to recall an incident in his life is pardonable.
If you cannot guess, the author is C H Spurgeon (1834-1892) who himself was born in Kelvedon, three miles south of Coggeshall. He is referring to his paternal grandfather James Spurgeon (1776-1864) with whom he lived for the first few years of his life.
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The little town of Coggeshall lies on an east west Roman road in Essex, between Braintree and Colchester, on the Blackwater River. With over 300 listed buildings and a thriving antiques trade, it fair teems with history. Founded in Roman times, the settlement is recorded in the famous Domesday Book of 1086. In 1140 King Stephen (c 1092-1154) founded an abbey there. A pair of carvings in the parish church are said to represent him and his Queen Matilda (c 1105-1152). Since 1256 a weekly market has taken place there under a charter granted by Henry III (1205-1272).
The parish church, St Peter-ad-Vincula (St Peter in chains), occupies the site of an earlier Norman church. One of the largest churches in Essex. The present church was built in the first quarter of the fifteenth century with wealth accrued in the wool or cloth trade and is in late Gothic perpendicular style; its large size testament to Coggeshall's affluence at the time. It once vied with Chelmsford to be the Cathedral.
The first reference to an incumbent, John the Vicar, goes back to the taxation of the Borough of Colchester in 1286. He was the first in a long line of vicars and curates to serve the parish.
My interest in Coggeshall began last year when I was asked to contribute to a new historical conference called the Essex Conference. I was aware that John Owen (1616-1683) had served in Coggeshall and that he was preceded by other Puritans. In the end I gave a paper on Owen's predecessor Obadiah Sedgwick (c 1600-1658). When I visited Coggeshall and read further about it I discovered that it was a place with a very interesting history, certainly after the Reformation. Today I simply want to highlight certain individuals in its history. We trust that it will be profitable.
Thomas Hawkes martyr d 1555
We begin with the Marian martyr Thomas Hawkes. In Coggeshall today, on Market Hill, there is a blue plaque on a house called Constantines (named for a later resident Richard Constantine who lived there in the reign of James I). The house was the home of Thomas Hawkes who is described as a Protestant martyr who was burnt at the stake at Vicarage Fields, 10 June, 1555. Vicarage Field is still an open place, just outside the town.
Hawkes was apparently from a pious family who gave him a good education. While still young he was sent to London to serve as a page in the court of the Protestant king, Edward VI (1537-1553). As he grew older he was noted as a personable man with gentle manners. Following the fashion of the court, when he reached adulthood he entered the service of the Earl of Oxford, where he remained for some time, being popular with all members of the household.
When Edward died after six brief years as King, everything changed and to hold to the reformed faith became a dangerous thing to do. Rather than change his faith, Hawkes decided to return home. By this time he was married and soon a son was born to them. He did not want to have the child baptised by a Roman priest so he put off the baptism for three weeks. When his enemies heard about it they became suspicious and had him brought before the magistrate on charges of unsoundness in religion. After a local hearing, before Lord Oxford, he was sent to London and put into the hands of Edmund Bonner (1500-1569), Bishop of London.
When brought before Bonner, he was asked why he had not had the child baptised. He replied that he believed that he was doing better for the child than by taking it to a priest. He is reported to have said to Bonner when ordered to recant, "No my lord, that I will not, for if I had a hundred bodies I would suffer them all to be torn in pieces rather than I will abjure and recant."
After a good deal of argument, the bishop asked if he would have his child baptised according to the form found in the service-book of Edward VI. Hawkes replied that it was the very thing he desired from his soul. The question, however, was merely a device to expose his Protestant sympathies so he was sent as a prisoner to the Gate-house, Westminster. The keeper was told to watch him carefully and not permit anyone to speak with him.
During his time in prison various attempts were made to get him to recant. They argued with him and gave him books to read. They took him to hear Roman sermons. It was all to no avail. His constant reply was that he was no changeling. At last the bishop summoned him, with several others, to appear publicly in the consistory court at St Paul’s, where the charges against him were read and he was urged to recant, otherwise he would be sentenced to death. To this he firmly replied, that he would rather suffer death than renounce his faith in the gospel. The sentence of condemnation against him was then read against him and five others and he was sent back to prison.
While waiting in prison he was allowed to see his friends, many of whom called on him. Some of them asked him if it would be possible for him to give them some token to show that a man could suffer the fire without despairing. Hawkes promised, “by the help of God, to show them that the most terrible torments could be endured in the glorious cause of Christ and his gospel, the comforts of which were able to lift the believing soul above all the injuries men could inflict.” He agreed to do this by lifting up his hands toward heaven, before he died, as a signal to his friends.
Soon after, Hawkes was led to the place of execution. After being fastened to the stake with a chain, he addressed the crowd, pointing out to Baron Richard Rich (1496-1567), Lord Chancellor and the one who had led him to the stake, the sin and dreadful consequences of shedding innocent blood.
After he had prayed, the flames were kindled around him, and soon blazed with such fierceness that his speech was taken away by their violence. His frame shrunk and they thought he was dead but then suddenly, remembering the promise he had made, he held his hands high above his head, and, as if in an ecstasy of joy, clapped them together three times!
The people watching were apparently awe-struck and speechless to see this unexpected signal from someone they thought already dead. His friends remembered the promise and were convinced of the wonderful power of faith to support believers through every trial. No doubt his witness was a powerful one, long remembered.
Other martyrs
Other Coggeshall Protestants were martyred. These were Nicholas Chamberlain and William Bamford (aka Butler), both weavers, and John Wallet and Thomas Osmond, both fullers. Chamberlain was burnt at Colchester on the June 14, Osmond at Manningtree the next day and Bamford at Harwich the day after that. Two women were also condemned to death, Cicely Warren and Christianna Pepper, but were shown clemency by Cardinal Pole (1500-1558). Thomas Brodehill and Richard Web, both weavers, and a fuller called Thomas Osborne recanted at the last minute and did penance in the parish church.
There is earlier evidence of a Protestant spirit in Coggesall, where fragments of the translation of Wycliffe's Bible appear to have been extensively circulated. Shortly after the accession of Henry VIII (1491-1557), two men from the area, William Sweeting and James Brewster, a carpenter, servants of the Earl of Oxford, were burnt for reading the Gospel of Matthew and denying orthodox doctrines.
In 1532, Foxe says, "the image of the crucifix was cast down and destroyed in the highway by Coxhall (Coggeshall)." This is probably an image that stood near the Abbey Bridge. Foxe says this, "on the testimony of Gardner himself" that is Robert Gardner of nearby Dedham, who had joined three other men in burning the rood at Dovercourt, on the Essex coast, for which his companions were hung in chains, but he himself escaped by fleeing,
Thomas Peaycocke d 1580
Other evidence of the impact of the Reformation exists in the parish church, where there is a slab with the brass figure of a man in a long civil gown, hands folded in the posture of prayer. A scroll from his mouth reads only fayth justifyeth. Around the ledge a fillet of brass is inscribed Here lyeth buried Thomas Peaycocke, the sonne of Robert Peaycocke, who departed this life the xxvith day of December, 1580, and left behinde him two Daughters, Johan, and Anne, wch Thomas Peaycocke Dydd gyve cc pounds to buy land for the continuall relief of the poore of Coxall for ever.
Thou mortal! man yt wouldest attayne The happie hauen of heavenly rest,
Prepare thyself of graces all; Fayth and repentance are the best.
Mary Honeywood 1511-1620
The Honeywood family were an important family in Coggeshall in days gone by. Robert Honeywood (1525-1576) lived at the family’s ancestral home at Charing, near Maidstone, Kent. His wife, Mary Honeywood (nee Atwater or Waters) is the subject of a Honeywood family story, a story you will find related by Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) and recorded also in that great Puritan book The mystery of providence by John Flavel (c 1627-1691). Fuller says he had the story from Thomas Morton, Bishop of Durham.
During the early years of Queen Mary, Mary Honeywood was a Protestant sympathiser. For a time she was inflicted with deep depression or “religious melancholia” and all attempts by ministers to comfort her proved unsuccessful. The story goes that one day, holding an expensive Venetian glass in her hand, she exclaimed: “I am surely damned as this glass is broken”, whereupon she hurled it violently to the floor. However, instead of shattering, the glass rebounded whole and unscathed. This was a turning point for it is recounted “that at last God shot comfort like lightning into her soul which once entered ever remained therein so that she led the remainder of her life in spiritual gladness.”
The nineteenth century historian Bryan Dale in his Annals of Coggeshall says "The fragments of the Venetian glass, broken some years ago, are still preserved" but it is not clear where.
Another claim to fame she has is that she corresponded with the martyr John Bradford (1510-1555). When Bradford was in prison she wrote to him, and three letters are extant which he wrote to his "dear sister in the Lord," as well as one to her sister Joyce, the wife of Humphrey Hales of Canterbury. She was present when Bradford was burned in Smithfield. So great was the crowd that she had her shoes trodden off her feet, and was obliged to go barefoot to St Martin's before she could buy a new pair.
Her husband died in 1576, and in 1605 her son Robert purchased Marks Hall. a country house now demolished, near Coggeshall, where she resided during the latter part of her life. She died in May 1620, aged 93. In the chancel of Marks Hall church there used to be a marble statue of a woman kneeling with an open book before her, and an inscription that reveals that she had lived to see 367 living descendants – 16 children; 114 grandchildren; 228 great grandchildren and nine great-great grandchildren. It also says that "She led a most pious life, and in a Christian manner died here at Markshall in the 93 yeare of her age, and the 44 of her widowhood". The monument was removed before the church's demolition in 1933 and re-sited in the Sacristy of the Coggeshall parish church. She had spent the last years of her life at Marks Hall but is buried next to her husband at Lenham, Kent. Her grandson, Dr Michael Honeywood, used to relate that he was present at a dinner given by her to a family party of 200 of her descendants.
Many paintings of her exist, usually with either a wine glass or a prayer book in her hand. There is one in Colchester Castle Museum.
Obadiah Sedgwick c 1600-1658
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries some few Coggeshall incumbents were Puritans. Most famous is John Owen but he was preceded by Obadiah Sedgwick, another fine Puritan. Obadiah Sedgwick served in Coggeshall 1639-1647. Born near the end of Elizabeth I's reign he lived through the reigns of James I and Charles I and died before the end of Cromwell's Protectorate, 1553-1559. He was born in Marlborough, Wiltshire and was the son of Joseph Sedgwick (b c 1575), vicar of St Peter's, Marlborough, a Puritan who later moved a short distance north to Ogbourne St Andrew.
Obadiah was the third of eight children. Preceded by Elizabeth and John, he was followed by Margaret (who died in infancy), Abigail, Sarah, Joseph and Jane. John Sedgwick (1601?-1643) followed a similar career path to Obadiah, becoming Rector of St Alphege's, London Wall, in 1641, having served as Obadiah's curate in Coggeshall after his studies in Cambridge. In 1643 he died and was buried at St Alphage’s, the funeral sermon being given by Presbyterian Puritan Thomas Case (1598-1682). A younger brother, Joseph Sedgwick (1634-1702), also became a preacher after studying in Cambridge. He outlived all his brothers and sisters.
We know nothing of Sedgwick's early education but he was educated at Queen's College, Oxford from June, 1619, later moving to Magdalen Hall (now merged with Hertford College) a hotbed of Puritanism since the 1560s. He gained his BA, May 1620 and his MA, January 1623.
Having taken religious orders, in 1624 he became chaplain to military leader Horace Vere, first Baron Vere of Tilbury (1565-1635) whom he accompanied to the Netherlands, where the Thirty Years War showed no signs of abating. A manuscript letter exists in the British Museum from Sedgwick to Lady Vere, a great friend to several Puritans. Sedgwick may have been recommended to Vere by Puritan minister John Davenport (1597-1670). Barbara Donagan (ODNB) says they corresponded at this time and that they were "part of a network of reform-minded clergy".
Vere had previously been in the Palatinate having been personally commissioned by James I to defend his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Frederick V (1596-1632), King of Bohemia, in a Protestant uprising against King Ferdinand (1578-1637).
Interestingly, in his will Sedgwick bequeaths to his son "one piece of gold plate given to me by the King and Queen of Bohemia and two other pieces of plate". Gerald Mick says he would have "witnessed first hand Lord Vere's remarkable ability to deliver his troops from seemingly hopeless circumstances through his calm, wise and brave leadership."
In 1626, on the recommendation of Anthony Kingscot (d 1654), Sedgwick became tutor to Kingscot's cousin Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676) later to become Lord Chief Justice. Hale was a Puritan sympathiser, though at that time he was struggling very much between the temptations of the flesh and thoughts of becoming a minister. In January 1630 Sedgwick gained an Oxford BD.
Sedgwick's first preferment in the church was as lecturer and curate at St Mildred's, Bread Street, London, one of many churches later lost to the Great Fire of 1666. Lectureships so beloved of the Puritans, aimed to be independent of the bishops but Sedgwick's Puritanism got him into trouble with Bishop of London, William Juxon (1582-1663), who had him removed in 1637, the only London minister he was able to treat this way.
Sedgwick found refuge in Essex, in Leez Priory, Little Leighs, near Chelmsford, with Robert Rich, the second Earl of Warwick, (1557-1658) known as the good Earl of Warwick and the son of the very man who had led Thomas Hawkes to the stake. Leez Priory became a frequent haunt. Rich was an English colonial administrator, an admiral, a Puritan by conviction and a friend of Cromwell. Donagan says of Sedgwick "in person he appears to have possessed the sociability that Warwick valued in his clerical friends".
In 1638 lawyer and diarist Robert Woodford (1606-1654) wrote of Sedgwick's preaching
Blessed be thy name Oh Lord for so good an instrument in thy church Lord bless his labours and endeavours to thy glory and the salvation of souls for the Lord's sake.
Just over a year later, in July, 1639, Sedgwick was presented by Rich to the vicarage of Coggeshall. While there, he and his wife Priscilla Goddard, who he had married back in Wiltshire in July 1638, had a son called Robert, born 1641. He lived only 11 days. Beaumont says that they also had Francis (1640) and Susannah (1642). Sedgwick had been widowed twice before he married Priscilla. With his first wife Joane Fellow who he married in 1630 he had three children - Obadiah, Frances and Joseph. Joane died in 1635, when he married Judith Langley, to whom Susan was born. Judith also died a short way into the marriage.
Donagan says Sedgwick was said to be uxorious, ie excessively fond of one's wife. In the judgement of his enemies, she says, he was "a sensual and voluptuous man" which is no doubt unfair.
For 11 years, from 1629-1640, Charles I had ruled without Parliament but in 1640 Parliament was recalled - first a short three week Parliament then the Long Parliament, which was to last 20 years. One of the first ways the change affected Sedgwick was that he regained his lectureship at St Mildred's.
He went on to be a member of the Westminster Assembly and Rector of St Paul's, Covent Garden. A portrait exists. It was engraved by William Richardson from the work of an unknown artist. Thomas Athow created a water colour portrait from this engraving in the 19th century. It shows a thin faced man in clerical dress with moderately long wavy hair under a skull cap and a generous moustache but no beard.
When his health began to fail, Sedgwick wanted to resign from his St Paul's rectorate. This he did in 1656, when a successor was found - another great Puritan, Thomas Manton (1620-1677). Manton is sometimes mistakenly referred to as Sedgwick's son-in-law.
It appears from his will that by this time he had become a man of property, being lord of the manor of Ashmansworth, Hampshire, purchased in 1649 and left to his eldest son Obadiah. He also had land in Albourne, Sussex. He retired back to Marlborough, where he died at the beginning of January, 1658 being buried near his father, in the chancel of Ogbourne St Andrew. In his will he left 40 books and money to his wife; land, books, money and plate to Obadiah; money to his daughters and son and to his sisters, niece and brother-in-law. The 'godly poor' of Covent Garden were also remembered.
In his lifetime and immediately after as many as 20 works by Sedgwick appeared, some single sermons and some full length books. Donagan says
The style of his printed sermons is clear and easy, less bloodthirsty than that of many of his contemporaries, but marked by vivid images: God's special providence, he said, 'clasps the Church, as the fethers of the hen doth the chicken' (Haman's Vanity, 15, 16).
Works produced in the Coggeshall days include Christ's counsell to his languishing Church of Sardis or the dying or decaying Christian, etc. (1640) The doubting believer a treatise on assurance (1641) England's preservation or a sermon discovering the only way to prevent destroying judgements: preached to the Honourable House of commons at their last solemne fast, being on May, 25, 1642 It expounds the only way to escape judgement. Haman's vanity a sermon displaying the birthless issues of church-destroying adversaries preached to the Commons in 1643 explains how enemies of the church's attempts to destroy it are ultimately thwarted by God. An ark against a deluge (1644) is another Parliamentary sermon. It discusses the nature of fear (the flood) and hope (the ark). It explains that when trials come, it is normal to be moved with fear - but in preparation for a flood, it is necessary to build an ark. We must fear enough to take action but have hope enough not to despair. The nature and danger of heresies (1647) which asks three central questions: What is God without truth? What is all the goodness of the gospel without truth? And what is the fabric of man’s salvation without truth? A church is never closer to death than when it gives up its claim to the only truth. Also in 1647 he published a catechism A short catechisme being a briefe instruction of the most ignorant, before the receiving of the Sacrament of the Lords Supper.
John Owen 1616-1683
Owen moved to Coggeshall in 1647, having begun his ministry 40 miles north in Fordham. In 1644 he had married Mary Rooke (d 1675) a native of Coggeshall. Three daughters were born to them between 1647 and 1648, while in Coggeshall - Mary who died in infancy, Elizabeth and another Mary.
In Coggeshall, Owen served congregations of around 2000, Sunday by Sunday, the population being swollen at the time by an influx of Flemish tradesmen and attendance being required by law. Shortly after his arrival, Parliamentary forces led by General Thomas Fairfax (1612-1671), came to recover Colchester from the Royalists and rescue a group of Parliamentarians trapped within the town. They maintained a strict siege for close on ten weeks, based in Coggeshall. It was at that time that a lifelong friendship developed between Owen and Fairfax, who introduced him to Cromwell, who then appointed Owen as an army chaplain, despite his strong desire to remain in Coggeshall.
It is while he was in Coggeshall,in 1647, that Owen wrote his outstanding defence of Limited Atonement The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. It was also in this period that he became Congregationalist in his understanding.
William Dyke
Before Sedgwick and Owen there was a William Dyke, who appears to have had Puritan sympathies. The Victorian historian George Beaumont believes this is the same man as the one that Benjamin Brook (1776-1848) in his Lives of the Puritans calls Daniel Dyke. It is more likely that Daniel was William's son. Daniel was born in Hempstead, Essex, between Haverhill and Saffron Walden, and educated at Cambridge. When the anti-puritan three articles of Archbishop Whitgift (1530-1604) appeared in 1583, Dyke appears to have been suspended by Bishop Aylmer (1521-1594) and driven out of Essex. He then ministered in St Albans, dying in 1614. Several of his works were published posthumously by his better known brother, Jeremiah Dyke (1584-1639). He collected Daniel's works and published them in two volumes in 1635.
Others after Dyke and before Owen
Various men followed Dyke in Coggeshall, including the leading Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688). Before he was imposed on the church, two other Puritans were driven out, according to Bryan Dale - Laurence Newman (d 1599) and Thomas Stoughton (1567-1622). From 1609 a John Dodd was presented to the living, remaining until his death in 1639. His wife Martha died in 1630. Their son Nehemiah, another Puritan, appears to have been John's curate for some time. mary-Millicent Egan in her study of Laudianss, Puritans and Laity in Essex c 1630-1642 says that one problem the Dods faced was
that there were many in the congregation more radical than themselves. Amongst this group were the wife of Edmund Frost, who refused in the summer of 1625 to come to church to give thanks for the birth of her child, John Davis, who refused to kneel to receive the communion, and the unnamed churchwardens of November 1633, who were presented to the archdeaconry court 'for suffering one Mr Anger to preach in their church without showing his licence or subscribing his name to the church book'.
Probably a reference to the Puritan preacher John Angier.
Beaumont references an interesting note he found that says of this John Dodd
I have often heard it reported of holy Mr Dodd, yt. when one, inraged at his close convincing doctrine, pick't a quarrell with him, smote him on ye face and dashed out two of his teeth, this meek servant of CHRIST spat out the teeth into his hand and said, 'See here you have knocked out two of my teeth and that without any just provocation, but on condition that I might do your soul good, I would give you leave to dash out all the rest.'
Despite often being identified with the John Dod (c 1549-1645) known as Decalogue Dod, a minister in Oxfordshire, this is probably not the case, although both were Puritans.
Egan also says that there were Brownists (ie radical separatists) in Coggeshall at the beginning of the seventeenth century and names William Pennocke, Daniel Pennocke and Moses Ram.
Thomas Lowrey and John Sams
Next to the Coggeshall parish church is the Woolpack Inn, which goes back as far as the 14th century. On it a blue plaque announces that in 1665 it was the home of the Rev Thomas Lowrey, ejected minister of the Church of England and that the inn was registered as a place of worship in 1672.
Lowrey was a Scotsman. He succeeded a Mr Meighen, who was sequestered at Great Braxted not far from Coggeshall. He went on to Market Harborough, Leicestershire, early in 1649, declining the opportunity to be lecturer at Maldon, to which he had been appointed in June, 1649.
He preached the funeral sermon for the man who became minister of the Independent church John Sams (d December 1672), saying
Observe, First, Life is one of the primest flowers that grows in nature's garden. Secondly, It is God that is the fountain and spring of life. Thirdly, Length of life, and satisfaction with it, is a further blessing which God bestows upon his godly people Although the departure of our reverend friend and brother ought to be matter of greater sorrow than I see among you; yet God honoured him with a double crown, a crown of long life on earth, and I question not but with a crown of salvation in heaven.
At the close of a funeral sermon for a Mrs Brockwell he said that
She was in his opinion a pious, prudent, profitable, sober and peaceable woman. If she was not so good, and so pious and prudent as she did show for, you that are without a fault throw the first stone at her. Though her life might be somewhat obscure and reserved, yet I cannot but think 'the root of the matter' was in her. Then whatsoever things are honest, and lovely, and of good report, that were in her, let us do, and the God of peace shall be with us.
His own funeral sermon was preached in 1681 by Robert Gouge, who we shall mention next. [10]
Robert Gouge c 1629-1705
Robert Gouge was a Puritan and an ejected minister, the father of the better known Thomas Gouge. (Isaac Watts rated the latter as one of the three greatest preachers he knew in his youth, with John Howe and Joseph Stennet). Robert Gouge was born at Chelmsford and educated at the grammar school there. He went on, in 1647, to Christ's College, Cambridge. His patron may have been one of the Mildmays, Sir Henry Mildmay (c 1585-1654) of Moulsham and Woodham Walter or his better-known cousin and namesake, Sir Henry Mildmay the regicide (d 1664), MP for Maldon, 12 miles south of Coggeshall, where, after university, Gouge became master of the grammar school and town preacher.
Gouge remained at Maldon until in 1652 when he was offered the rectory of St Helen's, Ipswich. His patron was now the influential puritan Robert Duncon (1594-1670), three times bailiff of Ipswich. Gouge was not prepared to conform in 1662 and was ejected from his living.
He and his wife, Katherine, remained in Ipswich about ten years but then moved, with their sons Robert and Thomas, to Coggeshall to pastor the Congregationalist church that gathered at the inn. They lived in a house at the upper end of Stoneham Street. Two years later he hired a barn in East Street belonging to Isaac Hubbard, a deacon of the congregation, and converted it into the meeting-house where he ministered for the rest of his life. The Faith of Dying Jacob, several sermons which he preached on Hubbard's death, was published in 1688.
Gouge must have been affected by the death of his more eminent son, Thomas Gouge, in 1700, and Calamy says he suffered from some sort of dementia. He died at home in Stoneham Street in October 1705, and was buried in Coggeshall.
James Spurgeon 1778-1864
We referred at the beginning to James Spurgeon, Spurgeon's grandfather. He was born near Coggeshall, at Halstead, Essex, on September 29, 1776. As a boy he was seriously inclined and while still a youth joined the Independent church at Halstead. He served as an apprentice in Coggeshall and was accepted as a member of the church there. He was under the pastoral care of a Jeremiah Fielding. Fielding managed to split the church before his retirement in 1818.
Having followed a secular calling until he was 26 James Spurgeon felt inclined to give himself to the work of the ministry full time. He entered Hoxton Academy in 1802 and after two years' study, he was called to a small church in Clare, Suffolk. Although the congregation was quite small when he went there, he was able to take things forward and in September, 1806, he was formally appointed pastor.
The church continued to prosper under his ministry but four years later he received a call from the Independent church at Stambourne, Essex. His predecessor there was a Mr Beddow who, like his predecessors had served a long time (so much so that in 200 years the church would have only four ministers). In May, 1811 he was recognised as their pastor. Like his predecessors James Spurgeon also served long in the village, remaining pastor over the church for more than half a century of peace, happiness and successful labour.
In his eighties he said "I have not had one hour's unhappiness with my church since I have been over it." Invitations from other churches came but the love, harmony and prosperity that prevailed in Stambourne always led him to decline.
Two footnotes
We will end with two sort of footnotes.
The grandson C H Spurgeon was once preaching when he said this
Our very speech should be such that our citizenship should be detected. We should not be able to live long in a house without men finding out what we are. A friend of mine once went across to America, and landing, I think, at Boston, he knew nobody. But hearing a man say, when somebody had dropped a cask on the quay, "Look out there, or else you will make a Coggeshall job of it," he said, "You are an Essex man I know, for that is a proverb never used anywhere but in Essex - give me your hand." And they were friends at once.
The saying "A Coggeshall job" was used in Essex from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century to mean any poor or pointless piece of work, after the reputed stupidity of its villagers. The stories say that there was grass growing on the church roof, so the villagers winched a cow up to the church roof to crop the grass; that a rabid dog bit a wheelbarrow and so the villagers chained the wheelbarrow up, in case it went mad; that when there was not enough wind for the village’s two windmills, they knocked one of them down. During the Napoleonic Wars, ordered to raise an army of volunteers, Coggeshall's one consisted of 20 officers and three privates.
As we have seen, despite their perhaps undeserved reputation, many from Coggeshall or with Coggeshall connections far from being stupid were people who loved and served the Lord and we ought to do likewise.
Then finally, if you live in Coggeshall today and want to hear the gospel then you will find it difficult. There is a small Grace Baptist work in Halstead and evangelical churches in Witham and Colchester. There are also evangelical Anglicans in Fordham and Braintree, I understand.
Paper given at the Evangelical Library
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