Birth and Parentage
John Angell James, fourth child but eldest son of Joseph and Sarah James, was born at Blandford Forum in Dorsetshire, on the 6th of June 1785. Blandford Forum lies pleasantly in the valley of the Stour, and in the heart of a beautiful country. Its name suggests the antiquity of its origin, but the whole town was twice burnt to the ground during the eighteenth century, and there is not an old-looking building in the place. There is no cathedral or castle to fill the hearts of the children with romance; no market-cross, with stories about reformers or martyrs; not even an ancient street, with quaint windows and carved doors, and wonderful legends about the Tudors or the Commonwealth. It is one of those quiet respectable boroughs, with a population of four or five thousand people, common enough in the south and west of England, which appear to persons accustomed to the hurry and weariness of the great centres of manufacturing and commercial activity to lie in perpetual slumber. At one time large quantities of wire buttons were made at Blandford, and Mr James’s father, who was a draper, was engaged in the manufacture. Old-fashioned Dorsetshire folk still think that Blandford buttons are the only buttons that a gentleman should wear on his linen, — Mr James was faithful to this superstition to the last, — but Birmingham has long ago almost extinguished the trade.
LITE OF JOHN AXGELL JAilES.
The inhabitants of Blandford have time for reading and reflection and pleasant social intercourse; they are intelligent and cultivated. The more aflluent people have not won their wealth by shrewdness and hard work, but inherit the occupations and position of their fathers. If this stationary condition gives less stimulus and excitement to life, it gives more tranquillity; if it produces less vigour, it secures more simplicity and refinement. From the quiet country towns of England come some of the highest and best elements of our national character.
Mr James was born in Sahsbury Street, four doors from the BeU Inn, in the house now occupied by Mr Frampton. Within two years his parents removed to the house in the same street adjoining the Bell, and there remained to the end of their days. The exterior of this second residence, with which, of course, all Mr James’s recollections of his early life were connected, remains very much as it was in the days of his childhood; the interior has been considerably altered. He says: —
AiitoWo- I have nothing to boast of as regards the distinctions of earthly graphical, yg.^^^jpy none of titled rank and fame can be found in the line of my ancestry; but, what to a Christian is of far greater honour, some of God’s nobility were among them. I am descended from an old Dorsetshire family, and once had in my possession, but have unfortunately lost it, a bst of my pious progenitors on my father’s side for two hundred years back. They were not men of wealth, but belonged to the yeomanry of the country, and lived principally in the neighbourhood of Dorchester. One of them was upon the jury at “the bloody assizes” of the ferocious and sanguinary Judge Jefferies,* and, with his feUow-jurors, received the menaces of that ermined tiger if they did not do their duty; by which he meant, consi.gn by wholesale to the gallows the objects of his fury. My grandfather was a native of Swauage, a man of simple, earnest, and consistent piety. He endured the persecution of ridicule and
There is a tradition in the family that at the very time he was sitting on the jury at Dorchester he had some of the unfortunate fugitives concealed in his ovm house. — Edit. opposition for las religion. A young clergyman, who took delight AutoWoin annoying him while engaged in his family devotions, afterwards was brought to see the folly and wickedness of his conduct, and called on the aged saint with his confession and humiliation. At one period of his life he was bailiff for a gentleman in Berkshire, and not unfrequently fell in with George the Third during his residence at Windsor, who familiarly addressed him as “Farmer James.” I never saw him but once, and that was across the street, for his last visit to Blandford was when we had the small-pox, and as he had never gone through the disease, he durst not venture into the house.
Before the young clergyman just referred to had an opportunity Editorial, of making a personal apology to the good man whose devotions he had interrupted, he wrote a letter to a lady at Swanage, in which he expresses his sorrow for his fault. The letter was written from Loxley, near Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. An extract from it may be interesting.
“I have head the unspeakable happiness to have my views entirely changed with, regard to the religious sentiments I preached when at Swanage town.
“I can say, — I am happy to publish it, — I, who was once a persecutor of the truth as it is in Jesus, now preach it; and I ever will, till my last dying breath. I have already met with much opposition in boldly declarmg the truth as it is in Jesus; believe me, I don’t deceive you with a lie. Jesus has wonderfully revealed Himself to my soul; and I know in whom I do believe. It is too long to enter into particulars. I am a brand plucked out of the fire — I am a monument of Divine love. Though a gazing-stock to my relations and all my neighbours, suffice it to say, that I now in this manner abjure and reject the doctrine of heathen morahty I preached in Swanage church, and in various parts of England. I preach nothing now but the gospel of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, who is wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption to every soul of man that has the transport and glory to believe in Him. I am as yet in the Church Establishment, but do not know how long I shall remain in it. I have the interest of my Saviour warm in my heart. I have the love of God abundantly shed abroad in me. I care not, I fear not, any change of time or fortune....
LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JASIES.
“I have done an injury to the cause of Clurist in Swanage. I now write this to you and them. I entreat your and their pardon. I did it in ignorance and unbelief. My conscience won’t be easy till I have confessed the whole to you. Oh, I am not ashamed to confess it to all the world. I persecuted the cause of Christ at Swanage, but God has wonderfully stopped me in the midst of my blmd and mad career, and wonderfully revealed Himself to my soul. Oh, the heights, depths, and riches of God’s grace! I beg pardon also of an old gentleman whose door I violently assaulted when he was in family prayer. I entreat that gentleman’s pardon in this letter. I tell the people of Swanage that I have been building them up in their own righteousness, but now I declare unto them, that will not do, nor make satisfaction to the justice, the unchangeable justice, of God, and there is no hope but in a Saviour alone. I once more confess my faults to you, to them, to all the world, and to Heaven, without prevarication or reserve. I beg your and the people of God’s forgiveness. I entreat your and their prayers for me, as you and all the people and children of God have mine.”
Autoliio- My father was quite an ordinary man, somewhat handsome in gi.itpaoa. pgj,gQj, j[yj; not of strong intellect. He had very little influence, and took comparatively little pains, in the formation of his children’s characters. Yet he was kind to us, and concerned for our happiness, and generally sought our welfare. He was of a peaceable disposition, and fond of my mother. He was a regular attendant at public worship, but till the close of life made no profession of religion; and, I regret to say, did not, beyond attendance at meeting, give much evidence of a spiritual and renewed mind. In the evening-tide we hope it was light, and he joined the Independent church at Blandford. He died of diabetes in the fifty-ninth year of his age, about five years after my mother.
Of her I have a happy recollection. I knew very little of her ancestors. Her father was a builder in Blandford, and I was shewn one large building which he erected. She was brought up under the care of a Mr and Mrs Angell, from whom I derived my cognomen. Mrs Angell was her aunt. Mr Angell was a respectable tradesman, a hatter, in Blandford, and retired from business with what at that time was a competency for a small genteel family. Of the religious character of this couple I know nothing: but I believe they were General Baptists, as my mother was of this Auiobio.
. giaphical.
denomination.
From some of the books which formed their library, I think they must have been Arians. I never knew Mr AngelL He died before I was born. But I have a recollection of his vrife, or, at any rate, of some scenes connected with her residence, her life, and death. One of the first things that I remember very vividly, was my being taken by my mother to the window to see her funeral as it passed our house. My sister Harriet, Mrs Keynes, was adopted by her when a child, and lived with her till her death. At her decease she bequeathed her whole fortune, amounting to about four thousand poimds, to my mother.
My mother was a woman of sweet, loving, peaceable, and gentle disposition, a general favourite, and deservedly so, but not possessed of an enlarged mind. She was a woman of sincere piety, without much theoretical knowledge. Her heart was beyond her head, as is the case, I believe, with many of God’s children. She was a woman of prayer, and so fervent in her private devotions, that she could be heard far beyond the precincts of her closet. This was injudicious, but it was not confined to her, for I fell into the same fault in the early part of my religious history, and occasioned some remarks, if not ridicule, by it. This is hardly “shutting the door” and praying to our Father in secret. I remember her taking me into her chamber, and pouring her fervent and pious breathings over my infant head. And who can tell how much of all that follows in my history is to be traced up to a mother’s prayers? How important a part in the working out of the great scheme of human redemption and the salvation of a lost world will, when the Divine scheme shall be revealed, appear to have been borne by pious mothers!
His father’s letters, a considerable number of which I have had Editorial the opportunity of reading, (of his mother’s none are preserved,) and all the traditions which linger about Blandfo’rd, strongly confirm the accuracy of Mr James’s account of his parents. The old man was a Nonconformist of the type of the last century, rather
LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAMES.
stiff and narrow, and cherishing small respect for the rites and customs of the Episcopal Church. Being up in London one spring to sell his buttons, he was greatly annoyed because “yesterday being called Good Friday, of course no business was done, so that I may reckon a day lost.”
The pursuits of a draper seemed to him much more real and substantial than the work of a preacher. When one of his younger sons wished to become a minister, his father earnestly reminded him that it was possible to serve God as a tradesman, that a man may be as much in the path of duty while attending to secular concerns as while preaching the gospel, that perhaps the lad’s anxiety to be a minister had been caught from the zeal of a friend, and would soon cool, that there were sisters not yet settled in life whose interests must be thought of, that old age was coming upon himself, that “the business here at Blandford or that at Komsey” would have to be given up if this desire to become a minister were not abandoned. And thus he argued down the passion of his son to do the noblest work in which God can employ the noblest of His servants. When John Angell James first longed to leave business and devote his ardent nature to the preaching of the love of Christ, his father urged similar objections. Suppose they had been successful!
Towards the end of the old man’s days many troubles came upon him; and so his heart was softened. His children rejoiced to see that the close of their father s life was enriched with a grace which its earlier years had not known.
Of his mother, who was perhaps descended from one of the younger brothers of the great Admiral Blake, it was always a delight to him to speak. Mrs Angell, under whose care she was brought up, was a most excellent and pious person, and her adopted child inherited her goodness. Between the Angells and the Jameses there was an alliance of old standing. In the churchyard of the little village of Ower Moigne, there are many tombstones on which the names stand together; and when not long ago an heir was wanted for large estates at Brixton and elsewhere, belonging to the Angells, the connexion between the two lines excited a good deal of curiosity and interest.
Mrs James, as the autobiography has already indicated, was a Baptist, but there has never been a Baptist congregation at Blandford, and she worshipped with her husband in the Independent meeting-house in Salisbury Street; and there they both lie buried. She died in 1807, aged fifty-nine, and he, at the same age, in 1812. There is a stone to their memory on the outer wall of the chapel, and filial love has inscribed upon it the afiectionate and reverential words —” Their childken shall kise up and call them
BLESSED.”