Protestant Exiles from France/Book First - Chapter 11 - Section VIII
VIII. Professor Pryme, M.P.
Francis, nephew of Rev. Abraham De la Pryme, was born in 1702; he was twice Mayor of Hull, and died 7th July 1769. He had dropped the prefix de la (as explained in my Chapter VI.), so that his son was known as Christopher Pryme, Esq., of Cottingham (Yorkshire). Mr. Christopher Pryme was born in 1739, and married Alice, daughter of George Dinsdale, Esq., residing at Nappa Hall, and sister of Rev. Owen Dinsdale, Rector of Welford. Mr. Pryme died in September 1784, at the comparatively early age of forty-five, from the effects of a fall from his horse; he was buried at Ferriby.
George Pryme, his only child, was born at Cottingham, on 4th August 1781, and was thus only three years of age at his father’s death; but his mother lived a widow for sixty years. His school education was at Hull, under Rev. Joseph Milner. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1799, and in January 1803 he took his degree of B.A. with honours, coming out as sixth wrangler — an honour due to his intelligence and accuracy as a mathematician, for he avoided cramming and late hours. During his faithful and industrious under-graduate career, he cheered his leisure hours with poetic composition, and produced prize Latin poems in 1801 and 1802, for each of which he received a University medal. In 1804 he won Dr. Claudius Buchanan’s prize for an original Greek Ode. He became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, on 1st October 1805, and proceeded to the degree of M.A. in July 1806.
Mr. Pryme adopted the profession of a barrister, and was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn, on the same day as Lord Campbell, 15th November 1806. In order to supply a desideratum in academic education, he began to lecture on Political Economy at Cambridge in March 1813, and continued to do so for fifty years. He published at Cambridge, in 1823, “An Introductory Lecture and Syllabus to a Course delivered in the University of Cambridge on the Principles of Political Economy.” On 21st May 1828 the University conferred on him the title of Professor of Political Economy; he published a third edition of his Introductory Lecture and Syllabus in 1852, and a “fourth edition, corrected,” in 1859; he continued to lecture till 1863. He had published at Cambridge in 1818, a “Counter-Protest of a Layman in reply to the Protest of Archdeacon Thomas.”
Professor Pryme was elected one of the M.P.’s for the borough of Cambridge in December 1832 (population, 14,300; number of voters, about 245). He was twice re-elected by the largely increased constituency, and retired from Parliament at the dissolution in 1841. He was a useful member of the House of Commons, and spoke clearly and sensibly; he was sometimes called upon to preside when the House was in Committee on a non-official legislator’s Bill. He wrote, chiefly from memory, some of his experiences in the House.[1] In 1834 he printed for private circulation a Memoir of the Life of Daniel Sykes, M.A., Recorder of Hull, and late M.P. for Beverley. In 1838 he published “Jepthah and other Poems.” His “Autobiographical Recollections” were edited by his daughter after his death.
His country house was Wistow, in Huntingdonshire. He had married, in 1813, Jane Townley Thackeray, daughter of Thomas Thackeray, late surgeon in Cam bridge, and sister of Dr. Frederick Thackeray, physician in Cambridge. He had two children, Alicia (Mrs. Bayne), and Charles De la Pryme, Esq., of the Inner Temple, M.A. of Cambridge, barrister-at-law. It is to be regretted that Professor Pryme was not a more prolific author. He was a man of great natural powers and of varied learning, a successful barrister, and a competent professor. He had a strong veneration for his old Protestant ancestors, and revived the true spelling of their surname in the person of his son. He died at Wistow, being the senior member of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, on the 2d December 1868, aged eighty-seven.
The following verses appeared in print more than thirty years ago:—
I saw her first in beauty’s pride,
As from my gaze she turned aside;
I marked her brightly beaming eye,
As in the dance she glided by;
I heard her voice’s genial sound
That shed a joy on all around,
Nor thought, till then, there was on earth
A heart so full of love and mirth.
Again I saw her beauteous face,
But gone was all its cheerful grace;
And there was sorrow in her eye,
And more than sadness in her sigh.
She smiled less sweetly than before,
For a sister’s sombre veil she wore;
And in a convent’s dreary cell
Had bid the world and hope farewell.
And once again I met her gaze,
There was no smile of former days;
No sombre convent-veil was there
To mock the maniac’s vacant stare.
And on that priest I heard her call,
Who lured her from her father’s hall,
And that bright happy English home,
Before her thoughts had strayed to Rome.
Cambridge.
- ↑ Mr. Pryme’s recollections arc incorrect as to my late father, Sir Andrew Agnew, when he professes to describe the passage, through the House of Commons in Committee, of his Bill for the better observance of the Day. He has mixed up in his memory Sir Andrew’s Hill (which never reached the Committee stage), and another Hill brought in by Mr. J. S. Poulter, M.P. for Shaftesbury. The facts are these :— Having failed to get a second reading for his own Hill, which was intended to provide rest for all the working classes, Sir A. Agnew gave way to Mr. William Peter, M.P. for Bodmyn, and to Mr. Poulter, each of whom brought in a partial Bill against Sunday trading. Mr. Poulter’s Bill passed the second reading and got into Committee; but the House, by so-called amendments, put a fool’s cap upon it, so that Sir A. and his friends joined in throwing it out at the reporting stage. It was probably Mr. Poulter who said that he felt himself in bondage to the Lord’s Day Observance Society, although Mr. Pryme’s recollections attribute the saying and the sensation to Sir Andrew Agnew (erroneously, I am certain, because Sir A.’s views were rather in advance of that Society).