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Muston and the seminary were the main strength of the church. To be sure the doctor and the landlord of the "Angel" professed devotion to the Establishment, but they were never inside the church, except just now and then, and were charitably excused because of their peculiar calling. The rest of Cowfold was Dissenting or "went nowhere."
The woods of Belvoir, and the rural charms of Parham and Glemham, had not dimmed the memory of the sordid little fishing-town, where the spirit of poetry had first met him, and thrown her mantle round him. And now the day had come when the mandate of the bishop could no longer be ignored. In October 1805, Crabbe with his wife and two sons returned to the Parsonage at Muston.
Another was, that he was not in trade, and although he objected to be confounded with his neighbours who stood behind counters, the Church did not altogether suit him, because there Mr. and Mrs. Muston and the seminary stood in his way.
He visited Parham on executor's business, and on his return found that he had made up his mind "to place a curate at Muston, and to go and reside at Parham, taking the charge of some church in that neighbourhood."
Crabbe waited on the Chancellor with the letter, but Thurlow was, or affected to be, annoyed by the request. It was a thing, he exclaimed with an oath, that he would not do "for any man in England." To the rectory house of Muston, Crabbe brought his family in February 1789.
It has been alleged that the people are the descendants of a colony of refugee Lombards; but M. Muston, and others well able to judge, after careful inquiry on the spot, have come to the conclusion that they bear all the marks of being genuine descendants of the ancient Vaudois.
Later, again, in the work the rector of the parish is described, and the portrait drawn is obviously that of Crabbe himself, as he appeared to his Dissenting parishioners at Muston: There is a touch of bitterness in these lines that is unmistakably that of a personal grievance, even if the poet's son had not confirmed the inference in a foot-note.
Crabbe was released from her long disease. On the north wall of the chancel of Muston Church, close to the altar, is a plain marble slab recording that not far away lie the remains of "Sarah, wife of the Rev. George Crabbe, late Rector of this Parish." Within two days of the wife's death Crabbe fell ill of a serious malady, worn out as he was with long anxiety and grief.
When he preached his first sermon at Muston in the year 1789 my mother foreboded, as she afterwards told us, that he would preach very few more: but it was on one of his early journeys into Suffolk, in passing through Ipswich, that he had the most alarming attack." This account of matters is rather mixed.
One prelate of distinction devoted his triennial charge to the subject, and a general "stiffening" of episcopal good nature set in all round. The Bishop of Lincoln addressed Crabbe, with others of his delinquent clergy, and intimated to him very distinctly the duty of returning to those few sheep in the wilderness at Muston and Allington.
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