A SCIENTIFIC HOME MISSIONARY. 165 



first intention was to continue his relation with the university, and 

 divide his work between Cambridge and Hitcham; but, finding that 

 the duties of the latter place did not permit his absence, he took up 

 his residence there in 1839. How different was the sphere of exertion 

 upon which he had now entered will be apparent when we glance at 

 the condition of the inhabitants of the parish when he first went among 

 them. 



The village of Hitcham consisted of one long, straggling street, and 

 the parish contained rather more than a thousand persons, scattered 

 over some 4,000 acres of land. The property of the parish was assessed 

 at $30,000 a year, yet there was only a dame-school in the place. The 

 unemployed and vagabond laborers were so numerous that the poor- 

 rate in 1834 amounted to $5,000 equal, it was said, to over $6 for 

 each man, woman, and child, in the village. The people were sunk to 

 almost the lowest depths of moral and physical debasement. Igno- 

 rance, crime, and vice were rife, and the worst characters were addicted 

 to poaching, sheep-stealing, drunkenness, and all kinds of immorality. 

 The less vicious were more fond of idleness than work, and lolled about 

 the road-sides, dead to all sense of moral shame, so long as they could 

 live at the parish expense. Parish relief or charity was .not unfre- 

 quently levied by bands of forty or fifty able-bodied laborers who had 

 been in the habit of intimidating the previous rector into instant com- 

 pliance with their demands. The houses of the poor were described as 

 having been many of them little better than hovels, in which the com- 

 mon decencies of life could hardly be carried out. The church was 

 almost empty on Sunday, and but little respect was paid to its ordi- 

 nances. The previous rector had been satisfied with discharging his 

 usual Sunday duties, and left the people to themselves during the week. 



Such was the field which Prof. Henslow left Cambridge to culti- 

 vate. He went there as a missionary, to reclaim it from inveterate 

 heathenism, which still passed under a Christian name. His difficulties 

 were of the most formidable kind, and he had to grapple with them 

 single-handed, for there were no influential persons in the parish either 

 to cooperate in his work, or to encourage him in pursuing it. The 

 parties with whom he had to deal were the farmers who rented the 

 land from the landlords, and the laborers whom the farmers employed. 

 The farmers are represented as having been intellectually raised but 

 little above their laborers, as ignorant, obstinate, and prejudiced, and 

 they doggedly opposed the new rector in all his schemes, and threw 

 every possible obstacle in his way. But he was not a man to flinch 

 from what he had undertaken, and, coolly estimating the difficulties 

 of the situation, he set himself to work to reclaim his flock from their 

 degradation, to industry, sobriety, independence, and self-respect. It 

 was obvious enough that the inculcation of moral and religious lessons 

 would have been utterly lost upon them would have been like throw- 

 ing pearls before swine because men must be civilized before they 



