His Parentage; Remarks on Pedigrees and Ancestors
My dear Children, — In commencing this Letter I have one advantage which saves me time and trouble. I have not to trace a long and proud lineage. If any great and illustrious individuals have been found among my ancestors, they have not been ascertained, in my family, in my own time.* But were I mean enough to feel any mortification here, I could not console myself. Lord Bacon has remarked that they who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is under ground. When one of Lord Thurlows friends was endeavouring to make out his relationship to the
* Through the courtesy of the Rev. J. Ward, Rector of Wath, near Ripon, we have been favoured with a considerable list of persons of the name of Jay, baptized, married, and buried at Milton Lislebon, in Wilts. There is one marriage that may have been that of Mr. Jay’s father and mother: “1751, May 13, William Jay and Sarah Smith;” but we have no means of deciding the question. Mr. Jay has said very little of his parents. A Rev. Charles Jay was vicar of that parish in the year 1733, and died there 1761.
Mr. Waylen, of Etchilhampton, also has furnished many notices of the family of Jay in Wiltshire, extending back for nearly three centuries; but from which of them Mr. Jay of Bath descended, or whether from any of them, all authorities are silent, and probably William Jay was as ignorant as ourselves.
secretary, Cromwell, whose family had been settled in the county adjoining Suffolk; he replied, ^’Sir, there were two Crom wells in that part of the country — Thurlow the Secretary, and Thurlow the Carrier; I am descended from the latter.” We have read of a man who, in prospect of his promotion, being asked concerning his pedigree, answered that “he was not particularly sure, but had been credibly informed that he had three brothers in the ark;” — but one of our most distinguished poets of obscure origin surpasses this, in his epitaph: —
“Princes and heralds, by your leave,
Here lie the bones of Matthew Prior;
The son of Adam and of Eve, — Can Nassau or Bourbon go higher?”
My parents were very respectable, that is, they were poor and religious: religious, not precisely according to the theory and discipline of a particular party (for as yet there was in the place no society formed on professedly evangelical principles, nor had the preaching of such doctrines as yet been heard there); but really and practically religious; exemplifying the morality of the gospel under the influence of piety, or the fear and love of God; poor, not abjectly and dependently, but able, by frugality and diligence, to support themselves, and to bring up a family in the decencies and even comforts of village life.
My father was the son of a small farmer, but he himself was a mechanic, working at the business of a stone-cutter and mason. There was nothing remarkable in him as to talent, or in my dear mother. They were both persons of slender education, but of good solid understanding, and of much common sense; upright, conscientious, kind, tender, charitable according to their means; and much beloved and esteemed in all the neighbourhood. I was their fourth and only male child; but there were four daughters, all of whom are ‘’ gone the way of all the earth.”
Three of them married in humble life but to husbands sober, industrious and much more affectionate and attentive to their wives than many I have seen in superior conditions, and among those who are often called (for what reason God only knows)” the better sort of people.’’ The other, and who had a considerable share of wit and cleverness, was united to a man of property; and who possessed more capacity and knowledge than perhaps half the whole population of the place beside.
The presbyterian minister on whom we attended was a Clarkean Arian, (but he never dealt much in doctrine,) a very dry and dull preacher, but a lovely character, and exceedingly tender-hearted, kind, and generous; denying himself almost to a fault, that he might have, out of his contracted income, to give to him that needeth; and wherever misery was, there was he. From my earliest remembrance, he kindly and gently noticed me; and when I was able to read, he presented me with the two first publications I ever called my own. These were “Wattss History of the Old and New Testament,” and ^^Bunyans Pilgrims Progress,^^ and never shall I forget my feelings at the receipt of them; for books (what a change has since taken place!) were then very scarce in villages; at least few came in my way. The schooling of the village was of course very limited, and had nothing to awaken or expand the mind beyond the common elements of reading, writing, and vulgar arithmetic. In this humble education I shared; but I can say nothing more: to any literary or intellectual advantage or excitement I was a stranger.
It is perhaps commonly supposed that if a man is destined to make a little figure in the world, he gives some indication of it in childhood and even in infancy. Is this always true? or is it true generally? It is said the bull-calf and the he-lamb begin to push and to butt before their horns appear. But
metaphors alone prove nothing. Our Saviour speaks of some seeds, which fell on superficial soil, and forthwith they sprang up because they had no deepness of earth: and the larger and more solid and durable trees are slower in their growth than more common ones. Thus the oak is longer in its rearing and maturing than the poplar or osier. Doth not mind both act and show itself according to particular periods, or rather occurrences, which seize and press and excite it?
However this may be, to compare little things with greater, I know both from report and experience, that your father exhibited nothing like this early precociousness. I can well remember with what pains I acquired reading; and my oldest sister observed, when questioned concerning my first years,” We thought he never would have learned.^^ But when the difficulty by which I was depressed, and for which I was often reproached, was overcome, and I felt encouragement and praise, I soon made some progress, and soon wished to make more: but what opportunities or helps did my situation afford? It may be asked if I remember whether at an early season I had any workings of mind not growing naturally out of my condition, but having a seeming reference to my subsequent rising in life? I answer, I had, and not a few; though it would not be easy to describe them. But I always felt a strange love of withdrawing myself from my playmates and roving alone; and while pausing among the scenes of nature, of surrendering myself to musings which carried me away, and often left me lost, in doing or enjoying something indistinctly different from what I had ever actually witnessed. Our dwelling, which was my father’s own property, consisting of a double tenement, too large for a cottage, had attached to it a proportionate garden and orchard. It was situated about an equal distance from Lord Arundels, Wardour Castle; Pithouse, the seat of Mr. Bennet; and Fonthill, then the splendid mansion of Mr. Beckford. The village in which it stood was wide and varied,, and abounded with lovely and picturesque aspects —
“And the sweet interchange of hill and vale and wood and lawn.”
It is impossible to express the intense pleasure I felt from a child in the survey of the rural scenery, while standing on the brow of an eminence, or seated upon the upraised root of a branching tree, or walking through a waving field of com, or gazing on a clear brook with fish and reeds and rushes. How vividly are some of those spots impressed upon my memory still; and how recoverable, at this distance of time, are some of the rude reflections so early associated with them!
Yet what probability was there that such a change as I have experienced would ever take place? No efibrt, no purpose of my own, or of my relatives, had the least concern in it. It resulted purely and entirely from the providence of God; and as it was not only so unlikely in itself, but so eventful, and such consequences hinged upon it, I will endeavour to state the case as it was, fairly and simply, without straining to magnify the remarkable into supernatural, or the extraordinary into miraculous. But this must be the subject of the next Letter. In the mean time,
I am, &c.