made “Jacky,” she averred, to turn in his grave.  Crabbe seems, however, to have shown so much good-feeling and forbearance in the matter that the old lady, after grimly boasting that she could “screw Crabbe up and down like a fiddle,” was ultimately friendly, and her share of her brother’s estate came in due course to Crabbe and his wife.  Moreover, the change of tenancy at the Hall was anything but satisfactory to the village generally.  Mr. Tovell had been much given to hospitality, and that of a convivial sort.  Such of the neighbours as were of kindred tastes had been in the habit of “dropping in” of an evening two or three times a week, when, if a quorum was present, a bowl of punch would be brewed, and sometimes a second and a third.  The substitution for all this of the quiet and decorous family life of the Crabbes was naturally a hoary blow and grave discouragement to the village reveller, and contributed to make Crabbe’s life at starting far from happy.  His pursuits and inclinations, literary as well as clerical, made such company distasteful; and his wife, who had borne him seven children in nine years, and of these had lost four in infancy, had little strength or heart for miscellaneous company.  But there was compensation for her husband among the county gentry of the neighbourhood, and notably in the constant kindness of Dudley North, of Little Glemham Hall, the same friend who had helped him with money when twelve years before he had left Aldeburgh, an almost penniless adventurer, to try his fortune in London.  At Mr. North’s table Crabbe had once more the opportunity of meeting members of the Whig party, whom he had known through Burke.  On one such occasion Fox expressed his regret that Crabbe had ceased to write, and offered his help in revising any future poem that he might produce.  The promise was not forgotten when ten years later The Parish Register was in preparation.

During his first year at Parham, Crabbe does not appear to have undertaken any fixed clerical duties, and this interval of leisure allowed him to pay a long visit to his sister at Aldeburgh, and here he placed his two elder boys, George and John, at a dame school.  On returning to Parham, he accepted the office of curate-in-charge at Sweffling, the rector, Rev. Richard Turner, being resident at his other living of Great Yarmouth.  The curacy of Great Glemham, also within easy reach, was shortly added.  Crabbe was still residing at Parham Lodge, but the incidents of such residence remained far from pleasant, and, after four years there, Crabbe joyfully accepted the offer of a good house at Great Glemham, placed at his disposal by his friend Dudley North.  Here the family remained for a further period of four or five years.