Its inhabitants were then a gallant race,
republican in politics, Puritan in creed. Twice besieged by Goring
and Lumford, it had twice repelled the Royalists with loss. It was
the centre of Monmouth's rebellion and of Jeffrey's vengeance; the
suburb of Tangier, hard by its ancient castle, still recalls the
time when Colonel Kirke and his regiment of "Lambs" were quartered
in the town. But long before the advent of the Kinglakes its glory
had departed; its manufactures had died out, its society become
Philistine and bourgeois--"little men who walk in narrow ways"--
while from pre-eminence in electoral venality among English
boroughs it was saved only by the near proximity of Bridgewater. A
noted statesman who, at a later period, represented it in
Parliament, used to say that by only one family besides Dr.
Hamilton Kinglake's could he be received with any sense of social
or intellectual equality.
Not much, however, of Kinglake's time was given to his native town:
he was early sent to the Grammar School at Ottery St. Mary's, the
"Clavering" of "Pendennis," whose Dr. Wapshot was George Coleridge,
brother of the poet.
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