In the churchyard of Hadleigh there are no monuments which require description. There is, however a curious inscription on a headstone on the south-east side leading to the market-place regarding the name and fame of one John Turner, a blacksmith, who died 1715.
My sledge and hammer lie declined, My bellows have quite lost their wind; My fire’s extinct, my forge decayed, My vice is in the dust all laid; My coal is spent, my iron gone, My nails are drove, my work is done; My fire-dried corpse lies here at rest, My soul smoke-like is soaring to be blest.
Hadleigh has seen better days. At one time it flourished by reason of its cloth trade; then it took to making silk, and up to recent times it did a great trade in malt.
I would not live in Hadleigh all my life, but it is certainly a quiet corner into which to creep, and houses are to be had a bargain, considering, after all, how near it is to town. I can’t find that Hadleigh has given birth to any great men. It may be that they may come in time. One distinguished personage born there, Bishop Overall, was one of the translators of the Bible, and wrote that part of the Church Catechism which treats of the Sacraments. Another, William Alabaster, wrote a play called _Roxana_, which was so pathetic when acted at Trinity College, Cambridge, that it drove a young woman quite out of her wits. No wonder our Puritan forefathers had a horror of the stage.
One of the most eminent men born in Hadleigh, was Dr. Reeve, whose monument is in the Octagon chapel, Norwich, written by the earliest of English German scholars. William Taylor still records his worth and fame, a student at the University of Edinburgh, he became intimate with Francis Horner, and helped to write in the early numbers of the _Edinburgh Review_. In 1802, he was elected a member of the far famed Speculative Society. In London, where he went to continue his professional studies, he frequently met Coleridge, and the elder Disraeli at dinner. In the spring of 1805, while travelling on the continent—a place then rarely visited by the English, he saw Napoleon on the morrow of Austerlitz—was introduced to Haydn—was present when Beethoven conducted Fidelio—heard Humboldt relate his travels—and Fichte explain his philosophy. Thus, as life opened around with him, with the most brilliant prospects, he died at his father’s house Hadleigh, in September, 1814. It was his son, who for a while was the editor of the _Edinburgh_.