Gorleston Pageant

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Adjacent to reservoir near the railway station (Gorleston) (Gorleston, Norfolk, England)

Year: 1908

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 8

Notes

19–23 August 1908

  • 19–21 August at 2.15pm and 6.15 pm and 22–23 August at 3pm.
  • Gorleston is now part of the county of Norfolk; in 1908, however, it was part of Suffolk.

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Pageant Master: Phillips, Forbes
  • Assistant Pageant Master: Reverend H.F. Davidson and Mr Arthur Challis
  • Director: B. Chase and Mr Eglinton
  • Mistress of the Robes: Mrs Perrett
  • Dramatic Adviser: H. Beerbohm
  • Stage Manager: Mr Bernard Chase
  • Master of the Horse: T. Cook
  • Secretary: Mrs Shields

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

Names of script-writer(s) and other credited author(s)

  • Phillips, Forbes

Names of composers

  • Hunn, W.R.

Numbers of performers

1000

Financial information

There were financial guarantees of £1300. The pageant made a profit on its first day.

Object of any funds raised

In aid of the local church

Linked occasion

700th Anniversary of the granting of the Great Yarmouth Charter

Audience information

  • Grandstand: Yes
  • Grandstand capacity: n/a
  • Total audience: 12000 - 24000

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

10s 6d–1s.

Associated events

n/a

Pageant outline

Period I. British

Episode One. Part of Gorleston and the Druidical Temple, c. 56 AD

The narrator, a queenly figure, is accompanied by maidens in scarlet robes. She enters and recites a prologue. Ygraine, a British Princess, guides two awe-struck Romans to the Temple of the Druids. Britons of different tribes rush in, quarrelling. A procession of Druids enter. A messenger brings news of the defeat of the Britons. The Druid Wizard selects a maiden for sacrifice to appease the gods. She is defended by her husband.

Episode Two.

Boadicea enters in her Chariot, stopping just short of the crowd. The Arch Priestess predicts the fall of Rome.

Episode Three.

The Roman governor Suetonius Paulinus demands an audience with Queen Boudicea, who refuses to surrender. The Romans pay tribute to her bravery and exit. There is a dramatic clash between Druids demanding the sacrifice of children, which the Queen staunchly opposes.

Episode Four.

A call to battle sounds and the Romans are defeated, rendering the sacrifices unnecessary.

Period Two. Roman

Episode Five. The Forum in Rome

There is a scene of decadence and mockery of the Romans. Lucius complains that he is being punished for drowning his slave, blaming Christians.

Episode Six.

Sosthenes, a slave trader, enters with East Anglian slave children who are lashed and put up for sale. The Monk Gregory offers money—then himself—but he is refused. The Roman empress offers instead a gold cross and Gregory accepts the task of returning the children to Britain.

Period Three. Saxon

Episode Seven. East Anglia, c.640

King Siegebert [Sigeberht II] enters with courtiers in pursuit of a hunt. The King accepts Christianity, granting religious freedom for his subjects. His brother Oswy compares the new religion to that of the Danes.

Episode Eight.

Monks enter in a procession and chanting Latin followed by St Fursey [Fursa]. Aelgar attempts to stab him. Fursey spares Aelgar who is converted; Fursey anticipates a new church.

Period Four. Plantagenet

Episode Nine. A.D. 1208

Processions of Bailiffs, Clerks, Burgesses and Priors of Yarmouth and Gorleston; followed by the Bishop of Norwich, King John and Queen Isabella with Bishops, Barons, Knights Templar and Retinues. King John has granted a Charter to Yarmouth but, cunningly, has not signed it. The Bailiff implores the King to do so. The Master of the Knights Templar, played by pageant master and script-writer Phillips, suggests the townsmen be granted more rights (anticipating Magna Carta). The King, insulted, departs and the Master of the Templars is acclaimed by the crowd, accepting that his role is to be a fight for patriotism and liberty: ‘Now we must arise and fight, or be cut down as traitors…Array your forces, and stand firm for England and England’s sons!’[1] He and the order ride around the arena on horseback. The narrator suggests the influence of Magna Carta on history.

Period Five. Restoration.

Episode Ten.

A madrigal introduces merry-making with morris and maypole dancing, players, acrobats, minstrels, old English games and a performing bear. King Charles enters. ‘Here’s a Health Unto His Majesty’ is sung, followed by ‘God Save the King’.

Key historical figures mentioned

n/a

Musical production

n/a

Newspaper coverage of pageant

Yarmouth Mercury
Cambridge Independent Press
Nottingham Evening Post
Western Daily Press
Daily Mirror
Hull Daily Mail
Mid Sussex Times
Northampton Mercury
Leamington Spa Courier
Diss Express
Daily News
The Times

Book of words

The Gorleston Pageant. Great Yarmouth, 1908.

Other primary published materials

n/a

References in secondary literature

  • Eccleston, A.W. Gorleston. Great Yarmouth, 1950. At 77.
  • Harrison, Richard and Harrison, Tom. Celebrate Gorleston!: stories behind the 1908 pageant and the Millennium Manuscript. Great Yarmouth, 2011.

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Copy of Book of Words in Great Yarmouth Library
  • Norfolk Records Office, Norwich, Newspaper cuttings relating to the Gorleston pageant, Reference MC 879/1, 799X5

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

The Reverend Forbes Phillips, who staged the first major pageant in Norfolk, has a strong claim to be one of the most colourful and improbable in pageantry (a field with strong competition). Phillips was the Vicar of Gorleston, a position he held from 1893 until his death in 1917. Aside from his dramatic and literary tendencies—writing plays and books under the name Athol Phillips—Phillips had an erratic approach to his mission. A.W. Eccleston has described him as ‘An outstanding preacher but marred by outbursts including some unorthodox views on the Resurrection which shocked his flock and caused sensational comments in the local and national Press.’1 In fact, Phillips had engaged in a lengthy debate in the Daily Mirror disputing the physical nature of Christ’s resurrection.2

Phillips was referred to in national newspapers, which warmed to his antics, as the ‘Smacksmen’s Parson’ who enjoyed drinking and carousing with local sailors. Regularly brought before local and county magistrates on the grounds of libel, slander, vandalism and assault, he was also known as the ‘Fighting Parson’. Indeed, Phillips was incarcerated for 21 days in 1906 for refusing to pay local school rates, on the ground that non-Church schools also received public money.3 He once attacked the offices of the Yarmouth Mercury and horsewhipped its editor due to an unflattering cartoon. On one occasion, he was brought before the magistrates for forcibly breaking up a meeting by a rival sect with help of a posse of sailors.4 Phillips was deeply popular with seafarers, founding the North Sea Church Mission, which provided a floating fisherman’s church on a ship at sea.5

In 1906, Phillips was assaulted by a man hired by one of his churchwardens (another had been a co-defendant involved in a complex plot to ridicule him, involving anonymous Valentine’s Day cards, which had predictably ended in an acrimonious court case). Over several years, Phillips suffered a number of burglaries at the church, probably instigated by members of his flock. One one such occasion, the Reverend decided to lay in wait, armed with a revolver and became famous in the national press: ‘After midnight two men emerged from the gravestones, and one of them commenced to tamper with the door. The Vicar called upon the men to hold up their hands, but they both bolted among the tombs, and he fired his revolver.’6 Though at least one of the men was hit, they managed to escape in a car (at that time a very rare thing).7 The picture one gets of Phillips is of an eccentric, unpredictable and violent Vicar, popular with a congregation of sailors but engaged in a protracted war with prominent figures from the local community, who were constantly playing practical jokes on him. If nothing else, this provided the recipe for a deeply entertaining pageant.

Forbes Phillips had previously staged a number of performances in Gorleston, founding a musical and dramatical society in 1902. The following year, he staged a Children’s play which included historical tableaux, Darkness and Dawn. A small pageant in Potter Heigham in 1907 was attended by Phillips and many other members who would form the nucleus of the Gorleston Pageant committee, and at a meeting in September 1907 the pageant was decided upon.8 Phillips succeeded in securing Boadicea’s chariot from the St Albans pageant for the extremely reasonable price of £40 and quickly raised the guarantee fund of £1300.9 The vicar was keen that his pageant offer an historically accurate account, reading some twenty or thirty books in reference solely to the Saxon episodes. A friend allegedly spent over a month researching the dress for a Saxon peasant and Missionary Monks—two characters out of thousands!10 A number of hostile commentators wrote to the Yarmouth Mercury suggesting that the Gorleston Pageant would simply ‘fizzle out’. And despite Phillips’s painstaking homework, some even would go on to take him to task for a lack of historical accuracy—for instance complaining about the clean-shaven druids.11 The Reverend accused these people of being ‘Croakers’, refuting their points at great length—a portent of the utter farce that was to come.

At a lecture at the beginning of April 1908, which featured a performance of specially-composed pageant music, Phillips called on ‘those who felt disposed to be ancient Britons, Roman soldiers, etc., or desired to be sacrificed, to volunteer their services.’12 Somewhere between three and four thousand people had initially applied to take part in the pageant, though only a thousand were successful, which Phillips subsequently believed to be the reason for local hostility.13 Having chosen his players, he announced that

all classes are represented. Clergy and gentry, the professional man and the mechanic, army men, naval men and fishermen, all working with the utmost good humour and fellowship. The great lesson of mutual dependence is learned and that is good as it teaches each class to respect the other.14

He had a point. The cast chosen was indeed drawn from a wide range and number of locations, including local schools, Eton, Harrow, Westminster, St. Albans Ladies College, and the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham. Royal Garrison Artillerymen from Yarmouth acted as a cohort of Roman soldiers and naval personnel appeared as torchbearers. 

On 15 August, the Yarmouth Mercury described the following scene of excitement in anticipation of the coming Pageant:

There is hardly anything in Gorleston…that is not now smitten with the Pageant fever. The streets are becoming gay with the appearance of characters representing our forefathers…mail clad knights of the 12th Century scurrying along riding a twentieth Century cycle or motor, while others cause a stir riding on horseback in the streets. Druids and monks, with savage Britons and stern Romans join in a friendly chat, while smoking the cigarette or pipe of modern civilisation.15

Behind the scenes, however, all was not well. The Pageant was supposed to be held at the Gorleston Recreation Ground. However, on discovering that proceeds would go directly into the church funds instead of being distributed among local charities, as had been advertised, there was significant disquiet,16 and the Council refused to allow the Pageant to be held there. Significantly, Forbes Phillips had, in June of that year, appeared before the High Court charged with improperly claiming a bequest of £1500 for the ‘North Sea Church Mission’ whose good works and even existence were highly dubious and whose funds would apparently go directly to Phillips and his friends. The court found against the defendant, claiming that the work of the charity remained wholly obscure.17

There was thus widespread belief among many on the Council that Phillips had recently attempted to make improper use of charitable funds, and that the proceeds raised by his Pageant would likewise go to unspecified, even shady purposes. Faced with the opposition of many on the Council, and the unavailability of the recreation Ground, the Pageant was moved in late June to the less-than-ideal location of a small site just outside the town limits (and thus the Council’s jurisdiction), near the local reservoir. The Yarmouth Mercury initially sided with the Council, suggesting that the profits should go to the local hospital: ‘If the Committee feel a little sore about the Corporation’s decision last week, they must not forget that the ground was placed at their disposal on conditions which they themselves suggested, and exception was taken to their not filling them literally’.18 It shifted its view the following week, however, suggesting that a nearby town might offer the Pageant a new venue and thus take all the glory, before endorsing the new location—the ‘picturesque grounds of the Gorleston reservoir’—in a barely-credible manner: ‘there is no doubt’, the paper felt, ‘that the pageant will be a wonderful memory for some generations.’19 Its assessment of Phillips was that ‘The men do rally to the Vicar of Gorleston. With all his faults he gets hold of the men.’20

Despite the obvious hostility from the Council and the inauspicious site, the Pageant was a great success, attracting huge crowds. The first performance was opened by the local MP Arthur Fell, attracting large crowds—including the actress Ellen Terry. One commentator, A. Scott Barrowdale, who had visited from London, was exuberant in his praise:

May I say that I saw Winchester and Dover, generally admitted to have been the best held so far, St. Alban’s running these close, and Pevensey and Bury deserve high praise. All have been good… but to my thinking Gorleston has beaten them all. I went three times, and was more and more pleased. All the other pageants seemed to be taken up with endless processions and doll-like posings. There was nothing in the nature of contrast. In the Gorleston Pageant we had life.21

The Times was a less effusive, suggesting that the performance was a little ‘lacking in the elaborate detail of spectacular effect and in the numerical strength of dramatis personae which have been the distinguishing features of recent pageants’, going on to call it ‘creditable’, praising the ‘effective grouping’ and ‘great dramatic skill’.22 The Times held out the greatest praise for the episode which featured King John granting the town charter to Great Yarmouth in 1208, during which the wicked king is lectured by the Master of the Knights Templar—who anticipates the rights that would be conferred by Magna Carta—before being acclaimed wildly by the assembled townspeople. This, the newspaper declared, was ‘one of the most stirring scenes in the pageant’, being ‘enthusiastically applauded’.23 The great hero and champion of English democracy was none other than Phillips, who had written the part of Master of the Knights Templar for himself, and who rode around the arena lapping up the applause. One might find it odd that the Reverend chose to play the Master of an order which was subsequently suppressed on the grounds of gross heresy and corruption, but the scene appears to have gone down well. The Daily Mirror greatly enjoyed it, acclaimiung ‘the reverend writer of the play’ as ‘the central figure in a really good piece of acting.’24

Despite a heavy thunderstorm which flooded parts of the town, Phillips continued the pageant’s run for two further days, with reduced admission to allow working-class citizens to see the Pageant (such generosity was easily possible, since the event had covered its expenses on the first day).25 It would appear that Phillips had confounded his many critics in putting on a spectacular event whilst showing up his rivals on the Council for refusing to host the Pageant. Unfortunately, his inability to withstand a taunt, combined with his love for a platform meant that he was drawn into an acrimonious spat with a number of anonymous correspondents (possibly his local foes), which achieved nothing except show him in an extremely bad light.

The first letter came on 29 August and was written by an ‘Ancient Briton’. Repeating a number of the prior criticisms of the Pageant, the correspondent wrote:

Now that the Pageant is over, and nothing can change the impressions of the civilised world, will someone explain why the Iceni were represented mainly by schoolboys, not remarkable for sturdiness… Why was the memory of the great tribe insulted by this caricature when Gorleston is full of men who would, with the aid of a few sheepskins, shame the men of Borneo. The Iceni were not a wild horde, but fairly disciplined warriors, capable of good strategy in the field.26

The anonymous author went on to criticize the accuracy of several other scenes, pointing out that King John gave the Yarmouth Charter freely and that the citizens, rather than overpowering him with military threats, merely offered him a large enough bribe. ‘Ancient Briton’ concluded that:

I am not indulging in carping criticisms, but merely pointing out that a dramatic jumble, however beautiful, is not history; and when the glamour of loveliness and colour passes away, even schoolboys may smile at seniors who write with charming disregard for time and truth.27

Whilst this might seem fairly weak stuff, Phillips responded in fiery fashion the following day. Aside from rigorously documenting the accuracy of his decision to use Celtic children, Phillips proceeded to compare the comments made by ‘Ancient Briton’ to the favourable reviews that the Pageant had received from the public, local, and national press: ‘I strongly advise “An Ancient Briton” to cease troubling his head over Pageants, and give his mind over to gas fitting, or something kindred, which will make less demand upon his brain.’ Crucially, Phillips presumed (or pretended to) that his interlocutor was of low social class.28

Unfortunately, the vicar was forced then to engage with critics on two fronts, as others weighed in with different objections. E.W. Green accused him of plagiarising and slightly altering dialogue from a poem by William Cowper, ‘Regions Caesar never knew’ (from ‘Boadicea and her daughters’).29 Nellie C. Case weighed in subsequently, accusing Phillips of being either ‘an ignoramus’, or else of being guilty of ‘double inspiration’ and inadvertently echoing Cowper’s line.30 At the same time, ‘Ancient Briton’ responded in fine form: ‘I am not surprised to find the master of the Pageant advising me to go in for “gas.” The word is familiar to him, and his own inexhaustible supply, though never illuminating, is harmless. Occasional explosions, like that of last week, result in mirth, not alarm.’ After a lengthy excursus on his own military prowess, in which he described himself ‘as a Buonaparte, compared with the Vicar and his advisers’, ‘Ancient Briton’ offered the following rather back-handed compliment: ‘I hasten to assure him [Phillips] that I enjoyed the pageant. I think it was the finest thing ever produced in Gorleston… I shall never see another like it: at least I hope not.’31 ‘Ancient Briton’ subsequently suggested certain passages were lifted, and changed slightly, from Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimages, suggesting that ‘Instances of what some persons call literary indebtedness are growing a little too fast for the strength of a reputation never too robust. But that is the worst feature of modern education. Men, as well as children, seem to possess the cream-jug order of intellect, and merely pour out what has been poured in’. Further charges of plagiarism were made by Case, who suggested that the second scene featuring Boadicea contained lines lifted from the St Albans Pageant (1906).32

In his subsequent ripostes to these criticisms, Phillips resorted to ad hominem attacks on his three assailants. (In this he was aided by ‘Master Mariner’, who compared them to ‘flies buzzing round an elephant’.33) Phillips criticized their anonymity, and guessed at their potential professions, describing ‘Mr Bottle’ thus:

I know him chiefly through his work in patching up public-houses and designing minor improvements. Of course all his attempts at architecture are original – or I hope they are; but I fail to see his qualifications as a literary critic, and no sane person could charge him with deep thinking. I am somewhat disappointed that he does not see the humour of the situation, but humour is not strong among the adherents of little Bethel…34

Simultaneously, Phillips accused his interlocutor of a disreputable profession (though it is possible he knew his assailant), whilst condemning him as a follower of a small religious sect. In his second missive, after Bottle had pointedly withdrawn from the conversation, Phillips claimed victory over a man of supposedly lower social class: ‘As patcher up of public houses his work has always interested me. When he plunged into the subject of Pageantry, of course he could not expect to swim for long.’35 Phillips went on to argue that the Pageant had now past, comparing his critics to ‘blind people discussing pictures in an art gallery’, and comparing their opinion unfavourably with the Times’ (arguably) favourable review.36

Both ‘Ancient Briton’ and Nellie Case took exception to this, with the latter suggesting that ‘the Vicar has betrayed himself in letters of abuse and innuendos—a stale device to divert attention from my attack. I invite him to prove those innuendos he has made, or of the many things he may imagine against me. Until he does, I must withdraw from this correspondence.’37 ‘Ancient Briton’, however, was made of sterner stuff:

he has called me a gasfitter, a prospective inmate of the workhouse infirmary, and an old jack tar, resting. I don’t mind. ‘Tis all a game; but why did he refrain from calling me a county-court bailiff, a furniture broker, or a turf commission agent? The allusions wouldn’t fill me with unpleasant memories. I might, if I choose to engage in a slanging match, call someone a literary buccaneer, who advertises an insignificant name with the persistence of a pill-maker.38

The whole sorry story rattled on, with Phillips suggesting that ‘Perhaps if “Ancient Briton” consulted a good medical man something could be done for him’, and ‘Ancient Briton’ accusing Phillips of ‘gross perversions’ and ‘shameless self-publicity’, displaying ‘the learning of a beadle’ and ‘contempt for his flock’.39 ‘Ancient Briton’ also criticised the refusal of the Vicar to publish the financial receipts of the Pageant, suggesting mockingly that Gorleston’s result would eclipse the £9410 raised by the St Alban’s Pageant and would ‘astonish those who will one day be entitled to peruse the balance sheet’, silencing ‘the croakers… for ever and ever.’40 He went on to complain that ‘by ear-marking the “profits” for a purpose which may be postponed indefinitely, or accomplished by imperceptible degrees, the public were told to mind their own business’.41 This echoed an earlier letter on 12 September from ‘Young Briton’, who whilst stressing he was ‘no croaker’, highlighted that the former churchwarden at Phillips’s church, Mr Bulmer, had never published any accounts.42

In his final response, Phillips went on to accuse his nemesis of being ‘a washer-woman’ who ‘would pass for a certain type of man. Now there is nothing to be ashamed of being a washerwoman, but the washtub does not strike me as being the best vantage point for discussing art.’43 Continuing this conceit, Phillips remarked that ‘representations have been made to me that my letters have caused “Ancient Briton” to neglect the wash-tub, and her assistant… has given cause for great anxiety to his friends. My letters were only intended as gentle banter. How could one be serious or even angry with such rudimentary ignorance? But their effects are serious it would appear, therefore, I say no more at present.’44 This was to be the last of the exchange, however: presumably stung by the mounting accusations of financial impropriety, Phillips called on his former churchwarden Bulmer to hand over the church accounts, initially suggesting that he already had done so and subsequently claiming that he was taking legal action to retrieve them.45

What are we to make of this extraordinary epistolary exchange? Phillips responded to only one of the accusations—that the pageant was historically inaccurate in some of its detail—and did so imperfectly. At no point did he respond to the suggestion that he had taken text from at least three separate sources without crediting any; nor did he address the issue of what funds the pageant had raised and for what purpose they would be used. The money raised by virtually all pageants went to charitable causes. Whilst it was not uncommon for such proceeds to go church restoration funds, the lack of a separate financial committee at Gorleston, combined with Phillips’s recent court appearance with regards to the false bequest, made his decision to withhold details of the Pageant finances particularly suspect. His responses to all accusations resorted to name-calling of the sort far below what would be expected from a man of God; he accused his assailants of having dubious professions that, in his view, excluded them from making any criticism of him or his work.

E.P. Thompson wrote on the ‘Crime of Anonymity’ in the collection Albion’s Fatal Tree (1975), arguing that literate working-class dissenters were able to use unsigned correspondence as a means of protest or to threaten the ruling elite, particularly with threats against property or person, and that these threats exerted a kind of power beyond merely the risk of one’s property being destroyed.46 ‘Ancient Briton’ was able to portray himself both as possibly a performer (or, as Phillips suggested, a rejected one), and as the voice of the common man, exposing Phillips’ potential corruption, and certainly bad grace. ‘Ancient Briton’ at times overreached himself/herself in pursuing Phillips, resorting for the last month or so of the exchange to puerile name-calling and verbal fencing, rather than continuing to expose Phillips’s failings. Despite Phillips’s constant assertions that ‘Ancient Briton’ was of low social status, it seems certain that he was in fact one of the prominent figures in the town who had engaged in a long-running dispute with the vicar, and may even have been a former (or even current) church warden.

Whilst Phillips came off by far the worse from the exchange, he too pursued a strategy of sorts, citing the Times, the local newspaper and popular acclaim against his anonymous tormentor, evidently hoping to push ‘Ancient Briton’ into revealing their identity. (Phillips’s caution in explicitly naming someone was no doubt a consequence of the incident two years previously when he had wrongly accused a man—C.A. King, an insurance agent and accountant—of sending him Valentine’s Day cards.47) Something must also be said about the Great Yarmouth Mercury, which saw fit to continue publishing the unseemly correspondence throughout, perhaps knowing that Phillips was likely to self-combust when given the oxygen of publicity. One can be fairly sure that after the horse-whipping incident, the newspaper held an unfavourable view of Phillips.

One unfortunate effect of the correspondence, which Richard and Tom Harrison suggest should be passed over in silence,48 was to leave a bitter memory of the pageant. ‘Ennui’ and ‘Greater Briton’ had previously criticized all participants for descending into the ‘cockpit of personality’, the latter writing of ‘Ancient Briton’ that while ‘Ancient he may be—his jokes are, anyhow—but Briton’ he was not, ‘since to be British is to love fair play’, and lamented that ‘It is a pity that the pageant, which gave enjoyment to so many, and for which so many worked like Britons, loyally and well, should have been the cause of so much unbridled rancour.’49

What had been a thoroughly well-enjoyed and successful event was now inevitably associated with questions of plagiarism, financial impropriety, and general bad-graces from its organiser, the Master Knight Templar himself. Phillips’s reputation had by this point passed into infamy, and his lengthy outburst was unlikely to have dramatically shifted anyone’s opinion of him. In November 1909, the Gorleston Church tower was re-dedicated after restoration to the lifeboatmen of the town who had lost their lives at sea.50 Phillips briefly reported on the First World War from Boulogne for the Daily Express in September and October 1914.51 He died in 1917, having seemingly managed to avoid further controversy.52

Footnotes

1. ^ A.W. Eccleston, Gorleston (Great Yarmouth, 1950), 78.
2. ^ Daily Mirror, 16 February 1906, 6; 1 March 1906, 7; 2 March 1906, 7; 5 March 1906, 7; 7 March 1906, 7.
3. ^ Hampshire Advertiser, 14 April 1906, 2 and 14 September 1906, 4.
4. ^ Hull Daily Mail, 1 March 1899, 4; Salisbury Times, 3 March 1899, 6.
5. ^ R.H.W. Miller, One Firm Anchor: The Church and the Merchant Seafarer, an Introductory History (Cambridge, 2012), 174.
6. ^ Western Times, 21 September 1906, 7.
7. ^ Eccleston, Gorleston, 78-9.
8. ^ Richard Harrison and Tom Harrison, Celebrate Gorleston! Stories behind the 1908 pageant and the Millennium Manuscript (Great Yarmouth, 2011), 11.
9. ^ Ibid, 13-4.
10. ^ Ibid., 15; Yarmouth Mercury, 21 March 1908, 3.
11. ^ Harrison and Harrison, Celebrate Gorleston!, 31.      
12. ^ Yarmouth Mercury, 11 April 1908, 3.
13. ^ Harrison and Harrison, Celebrate Gorleston!,  15.
14. ^ Ibid, 17.
15. ^ Quoted in ibid, 29.
16. ^ Ibid, 20-1.
17. ^ The Times, 1 June 1908, 4. There is some evidence that Phillips did work with the North Sea Church Mission, though its activities were obscure: Miller, One Firm Anchor, 155, 174.
18. ^ Yarmouth Mercury, 20 June 1908, 5.
19. ^ Ibid., 27 June 1908, 5 and 1 August 1908, 7.
20. ^ Ibid., 8 August 1908, 3.
21. ^ A. Scott Barrowdale, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 5 September 1908, 2: cutting in Norfolk Record Office, File MC 879/1, 799X5
22. ^ The Times, 20 August 1908, 9.
23. ^ Ibid.
24. ^ Daily Mirror, 20 August 1908, 5.
25. ^ Harrison and Harrison, Celebrate Gorleston!, 53.
26. ^ ‘Ancient Briton’, Letter, Yarmouth Mercury, 29 August 1908, 7.
27. ^ Ibid.
28. ^ Forbes Phillips, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 5 September 1908, 2: cutting in Norfolk Record Office, MC 879/1, 799X5
29. ^ E.W. Green, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 5 September 1908, 2, cutting in ibid.
30. ^ Nellie C. Case, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 12 September 1908, 2, ibid.
31. ^ ‘Ancient Briton’, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 12 September 1908, 2, ibid.
32. ^ ‘Ancient Briton’, and Nellie C. Case, Letters to Yarmouth Mercury, 26 September 1908, 5, cutting in ibid.
33. ^ ‘Master Mariner’, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 3 October 1908, 3.
34. ^ Forbes Phillips, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 3 October 1908, 3, cutting in Norfolk Record Office, MC 879/1, 799X5.
35. ^ Forbes Phillips, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 3 October 1908, 3, cutting in ibid.
36. ^ Ibid.
37. ^ Nellie C. Case, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 10 October 1908, 2, cutting in Norfolk Record Office, MC 879/1, 799X5
38. ^ ‘Ancient Briton’, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 10 October 1908, 2, cutting in ibid.
39. ^ ‘Ancient Briton’, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 7 November 1908, 7, cutting in ibid.
40. ^ ‘Ancient Briton’, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 10 October 1908, 2, cutting in ibid.
41. ^ ‘Ancient Briton’, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 7 November 1908, 7, cutting in ibid.
42. ^ ‘Young Briton’, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 12 September 1908, 3.
43. ^ Forbes Phillips, Letter to Yarmouth Mercury, 14 November 1908, 7, cutting in Norfolk Record Office, MC 879/1, 799X5.
44. ^ Ibid.
45. ^ Forbes Phillips, Letters to Yarmouth Mercury, 5 December 1908, 5 and 19 December 1908, 3.
46. ^ E.P. Thompson, ‘The Crime of Anonymity’, in Dorothy Thompson, ed., The Essential E.P. Thompson (New York, 2001), 378-431. For a broader description of the subject, see Carolyn Steedman, ‘Threatening Letters: E. E. Dodd, E. P. Thompson, and the Making of ‘The Crime of Anonymity’, History Workshop Journal, published online August 2016.
47. ^ Eccleston, Gorleston, 77-8.
48. ^ Harrison and Harrison, Celebrate Gorleston!, 58.
49. ^ ‘Ennui’ and ‘Greater Briton’, Letters to Yarmouth Mercury, 17 October 1908, 2.
50. ^ The Times, 30 November 1909, 12.
51. ^ Daily Express, 2 September 1914, 3
52. ^ Eccleston, Gorleston, 80.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Gorleston Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1351/