ance is evident from other sources, as when the gifted
young barrister of Bury St. Edmunds (Henry Crabb Robinson) {31} by his
outspoken sentiments in one of the debates, and admitted leanings to
Godwin's philosophy, brought down the reproof from the great Robert
Hall upon his friend Mr. William Nash, for receiving the young
barrister of freedom of opinion on friendly terms into his family at
Royston. But the family of the quiet and eminently respectable country
lawyer appear to have had no cause to regret the enduring friendship of
the brilliant young conversationalist, who afterwards became an
intimate friend of Wordsworth, Southey the Laureate, and the Lake
School, with Goethe, Madame de Stael, and many other great names in the
world of letters and art, and even had the offer of the Chancellorship
of the Duchy of Sax Weimar.

At such a time, however, these debates did make a good deal of stir, in
fact "as the members were credited with holding what at that time were
called dangerous principles, their meetings used to cause a great
excitement in the place."

The peculiarity of these debates was the prevailing discussion of
general principles. The region of practical politics for many of the
coming questions was as yet almost half-a-century off, and having no
effective means of influencing many matters which did, nevertheless,
touch their daily lives very closely, they turned their attention
inwards to the mental exercise of debating abstract questions of high
philosophy and of morals.

The Book Club continued its meetings at the Green Man from 1761 until
1789, in which year it was "agreed to go to the Red Lyon," and from
that time, during the remainder of the last and the earlier years of
the present century, it continued to meet at the Red Lion, in the same
room, curiously enough, which had accommodated the old Royston Club,
and the two extremes of social and public life I have indicated, were
in turn brought under the same roof! To many of the old habitues of
the place under the older institution this use of their place of
meeting by "traitors, republicans and levellers," as they would have
called them, would have been little short of desecration, and that it
was possible for two such institutions to have existed for some time at
least side by side, can only be explained by the fact that one was an
institution reflecting the prevailing belief of the town at that time,
while the other brought together many of th