Norwich, Norfolk, UK
Church of St Miles Coslany
Monument to Edmund †1784 and Elizabeth †1793 Hooke. Marble West wall, north. Commissioned by their son Edmund Hooke. Attributed to John Ivory
All the memorials had been removed from the church at the time that Simon Knott visited in 2016 (www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norwichmiles/norwichmiles.htm), but the photograph taken by George Plunkett (georgeplunkett.co.uk Medieval city churches St Miles interior view west [2236] 1938-03-31) shows it in its original setting, before being replaced higher up to accommodate the new platform. That this extremely grand monument was planned as a larger pendant to that of his wife’s sister, Martha Wilson, was also commissioned by his son, another barrister Edward supports the view that, although unsigned, it too must be by John Ivory. Here the central urn has been replaced by a portrait bust. This shows Hooke with a serious lined face staring straight out. He wears a wig with curls and his lawyer’s costume, with books and a scroll resting on the base of the portrait bust under a winged angel with a foreshortened crown. The characterization is comparable to, but more vivid than, that of the earlier profile view on the medallion to Dr Thomas Moore, a collaboration with de Carle in Norwich Cathedral. Here the larger oval inscription is wreathed in garlands and set against a background warm marble similar to that in the monument to his sister in law, Martha Wilson.
The long inscription outlines Hooke’s distinguished career as a barrister and member of the Middle Temple noting that he had been sheriff in 1744 and had married Elizabeth Wilson, whose father was a manufacturer, who out lived him by nine years. The inscription draws attention to his role in dealing with the food riot in September 1766. The riot was prompted when a ‘butter woman’ had raised her price from 8d to 9d per pint. A mob damaged the market, and then to moved onto the New Mills, and then bakers and brewers. This was part of a wider pattern of discontent resulting from poor harvests here and abroad the previous year. This had prompted widespread anger that millers and grain farmers were keeping back or exporting their stock for greater profit and to drive up prices. The anger was shared by many middling people but fear that giving in to the rioters would encourage further disruptions often prompted firm action. The mayor, John Patteson, read the riot act, but armed citizens confronted the rioters, and the ring leaders were tried by a special commission and while eight were condemned to death, only two were executed.
Opinions about treatment of the rioters differed; Lord Barrington, the secretary of war, who had ordered militia to the city, wrote: ‘Pray hang as many of your prisoners as possible.’ The mayor referred to the prisoners as ‘unhappy convicts’ and, as the inscription notes, Edmund Hooke defended them without fee. If Lord Barrington’s letter mirrored one end of the spectrum of responses, those of John Patteson and Edmund Hooke that of the middling sort whose ‘sense of a moral economy’ extended distrust of rioters to those who used their economic power for profit.
Frank Meeres, A History of Norwich, Chichester, 1998, pp.99-10; Adrian Randall, Riotous Assemblies: Popular Protest in Hanoverian England, Oxford, 2006, pp. chapter 5 esp.
detail of winged angel heads
Norwich, Norfolk, UK
Church of St Miles Coslany
Monument to Edmund †1784 and Elizabeth †1793 Hooke. Marble West wall, north. Commissioned by their son Edmund Hooke. Attributed to John Ivory
All the memorials had been removed from the church at the time that Simon Knott visited in 2016 (www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norwichmiles/norwichmiles.htm), but the photograph taken by George Plunkett (georgeplunkett.co.uk Medieval city churches St Miles interior view west [2236] 1938-03-31) shows it in its original setting, before being replaced higher up to accommodate the new platform. That this extremely grand monument was planned as a larger pendant to that of his wife’s sister, Martha Wilson, was also commissioned by his son, another barrister Edward supports the view that, although unsigned, it too must be by John Ivory. Here the central urn has been replaced by a portrait bust. This shows Hooke with a serious lined face staring straight out. He wears a wig with curls and his lawyer’s costume, with books and a scroll resting on the base of the portrait bust under a winged angel with a foreshortened crown. The characterization is comparable to, but more vivid than, that of the earlier profile view on the medallion to Dr Thomas Moore, a collaboration with de Carle in Norwich Cathedral. Here the larger oval inscription is wreathed in garlands and set against a background warm marble similar to that in the monument to his sister in law, Martha Wilson.
The long inscription outlines Hooke’s distinguished career as a barrister and member of the Middle Temple noting that he had been sheriff in 1744 and had married Elizabeth Wilson, whose father was a manufacturer, who out lived him by nine years. The inscription draws attention to his role in dealing with the food riot in September 1766. The riot was prompted when a ‘butter woman’ had raised her price from 8d to 9d per pint. A mob damaged the market, and then to moved onto the New Mills, and then bakers and brewers. This was part of a wider pattern of discontent resulting from poor harvests here and abroad the previous year. This had prompted widespread anger that millers and grain farmers were keeping back or exporting their stock for greater profit and to drive up prices. The anger was shared by many middling people but fear that giving in to the rioters would encourage further disruptions often prompted firm action. The mayor, John Patteson, read the riot act, but armed citizens confronted the rioters, and the ring leaders were tried by a special commission and while eight were condemned to death, only two were executed.
Opinions about treatment of the rioters differed; Lord Barrington, the secretary of war, who had ordered militia to the city, wrote: ‘Pray hang as many of your prisoners as possible.’ The mayor referred to the prisoners as ‘unhappy convicts’ and, as the inscription notes, Edmund Hooke defended them without fee. If Lord Barrington’s letter mirrored one end of the spectrum of responses, those of John Patteson and Edmund Hooke that of the middling sort whose ‘sense of a moral economy’ extended distrust of rioters to those who used their economic power for profit.
Frank Meeres, A History of Norwich, Chichester, 1998, pp.99-10; Adrian Randall, Riotous Assemblies: Popular Protest in Hanoverian England, Oxford, 2006, pp. chapter 5 esp.
detail of winged angel heads