Henry Campkin - Two Sussex archaeologists: William Durrant Cooper and Mark Antony Lower

Henry Campkin

Published by Good Press, 2020

EAN 4064066062484

LEWES:
PRINTED BY GEO. P. BACON.

Within the brief space of a quarter of a year the Sussex Archological Society has sustained a heavy loss in the death of two of its earliest, ablest, and most hard-working members. William Durrant Cooper died at his residence, 81, Guildford Street, Russell Square, London, on the 28th December, 1875; his old and intimate friend and fellow-labourer in the field of local and extra-local Archology, Mark Antony Lower , followed him to the grave in the ensuing March, 1876, dying on the 22nd of that month; and the remains of both are laid among their kindred, in two quiet churchyards in the ancient Sussex county town, where one of them spent so many of his early years, and the other, migrating from his native village, spent the prime of his life.

Chapters (not individually listed)

The year 1812, in the very dawn of which the subject of this imperfect sketch first saw the light, was one of the most eventful, most memorable years of the nineteenth century. In that year, as is well known, "the scourge of Europe," the first Napoleon, was at last effectually checked in his career of conquest and confiscation. In England the high price of provisions and scarcity of work, and the distress and discontent consequent thereon, led to continuous local disturbances and riotings, and the wholesale destruction of machinery. Unhappy rioters, or so-called rioters, were hanged, half-a-dozen or more at a time. On one occasion, eight poor ignorant wretches were thus disposed of at Manchester, one of them being a miserable woman, whose sole offence was the stealing of a few potatoes. In 1812, too, a cabinet minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons. And if to this it be added that the United States of America declared war against England, and in several instances compelled English ships, after hard fights, to strike their flags to their transatlantic assailants, it will be seen that, taking it altogether, the year 1812 was as gloomy and unpromising a one as a human being could well choose or have chosen for him for his entry upon the theatre of life.

Mr. Cooper's ancestry may be traced back to Thomas Cooper, of Icklesham, a Sussex squire of the seventeenth century. Thomas Cooper, his eldest great-grandson, also of Icklesham, who married, in 1787, Mary, daughter of Thomas Collins, of Winchelsea, had six sons and two daughters. The second of these six sons was Thomas Cooper, who, born in May 1789, married Lucy Elizabeth, great-granddaughter of Samuel Durrant, of Cockshot, Hawkhurst, Kent; and the eldest son of this marriage was William Durrant Cooper , who was born in High Street, in the parish of St. Michael, Lewes, on the tenth of January, 1812. The first cadet of this family, who settled in Lewes, would seem to have been William Cooper, the second of the great-grandsons of the first-named Thomas Cooper, of Icklesham. He became an eminent solicitor in Lewes, and dying in 1813, was succeeded in his practice by his nephew, Thomas Cooper, the father, as just stated, of the subject of this notice. This William Cooper was perhaps the only member of the legal profession who espoused the Liberal side of politics in Lewes. His residence was in Saint Anne's parish, and being well-nigh as independent in pocket as he was in politics, and endowed, moreover, with a spice of humour as well, he could afford to indulge in a practical joke upon his electioneering opponents, without counting its cost too nicely. In connection with Sir Henry Blackman, these two being the chief supporters of what was called the independent party in Lewes, he brought forward Mr., afterwards Sir James, Scarlett , and subsequently Lord Abinger, on the first occasion that eminent lawyer, then a flaming Whig, and afterwards a more flaming Tory, contested, unsuccessfully, the old parliamentary borough, which then had the privilege of returning two members. With no greater success Mr. Scarlett ventured on a second contest. On the first of these contests (1812) he lost his election by nine votes. On the second (1816) he was in a minority of nineteen.

After the 1812 contest Mr. William Cooper, incensed at the conduct of all the butchers of the town, who, like all the lawyers of the town, except himself, voted against his chosen candidate, hit upon the novel vengeance of opening an opposition butcher's shop in Saint Anne's, painting over it, in conspicuous letters, " William Cooper, Butcher ," and under-sold the blue-aproned trade in their own commodities, at the rate of one penny per pound a consideration in those dear days until they capitulated, and, as the story goes, promised to support his candidate at the next election; a pact which, if entered into, can hardly have been adhered to, as we see above that Mr. Scarlett found at that next election the majority against him had increased from nine to nineteen. Possibly, Mr. William Cooper having died in 1813, the butchers aforesaid deemed themselves released by his death from the performance of their forced promise.

William Durrant Cooper took his first Christian name, from his great-uncle, the just-mentioned practical joker, who was his godfather; his second name, being, as already stated, his mother's maiden name. He received his education at the Grammar School, Lewes, whose head-master, for all the latter time of his stay there, was Dr. George Proctor, afterwards principal of Saint Elizabeth's College, Guernsey, and now the venerable Chaplain to the Fishmongers' Almshouses at Bray, near Maidenhead, Berks. While subject to Dr. Proctor's direction, this local Grammar School attained a high character, and under him, Mr. Cooper, for whom his tutor always entertained a high regard, early showed great intelligence, and made rapid progress in his studies. But from this ancient seminary, his only alma mater, he was perhaps too prematurely taken, for he was not more than fifteen years of age when he was articled as clerk to his father, and during his articles, although he may not literally have realised Pope's couplet, and have been

"A clerk foredoomed his father's soul to cross,
Who pens a stanza, when he should engross,"

he yet exhibited an early bias towards literature, but the severer Clio modern scholiasts write the name Cleio rather than those of her sisters who dallied with poetry in its various forms, was the Muse to whom his youthful heart was vowed, and unto whom, through life, his multifarious labours were chiefly dedicated. History history in its topographical and archaeological phases was the study in which he delighted, and he was not out of his teens ere the history and antiquities of his native town and county engaged his constant and serious attention, and as time rolled on, he made himself familiar with those of most of the Sussex families of any local importance. He not only materially assisted Mr. Horsfield in the compilation of his History of Sussex, but, while he was not an author on his own account, at so early an age as his friend Lower, still, by the time he had completed his twenty-second year, that is in 1834, he had contributed a valuable supplement to Mr. Horsfield's work, under the title of