1855, History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Suffolk
Lowestoft chapter, page 561
Samson Arnold Mackay, the natural son of Captain Arnold, died at Doughty's Hospital, in Norwich in July 1843, aged 78. He was born in Haddiscoe, in Norfolk, and apprenticed to a shoemaker at Walton, in Suffolk. The first subject that called his attention from his useful but humble occupation, was the crag deposit of this county, and in his endeavour to account for the sinister turn of the whelks and other shells found in the different strata, he was led to contemplate those systems of cosmogony which ascribe a greater antiquity to the earth than the sacred records. He had long been known to many of the scientific persons in the kingdom, and was remarkable for the originality of his views upon the very abstruse subject of mythological astronomy, in which he exhibited great sagacity, and maintained his opinions with extraordinary pertinacity.
In 1822, he published his first part of Mythological Astronomy, and gave lectures to a select few upon the science in general; and in 1825, his Theory of the Earth, and several pamphlets upon the antiquity of the Hindoos. His room in which he worked, took his meals, slept, and gave his lectures, was a strange exhibition of leather, shoes, wax, victuals, sketches of sphinxes, zodiacs, planispheres, geographical maps, &c.
The two poor widows noticed at page 173, as being executed at Bury for witchcraft, were natives of Lowestoft. Their names were Rose Cullender and Amy Duny, and their chief accuser was Samuel Pacy, a fanatical dissenter, who imagined that they had bewitched his two daughters.
The parish church (St. Margaret) is inconveniently situated about half a mile west of the town, and is thought to have been placed at that distance to protect it from being undermined by the sea, which at the time of its erection, approached much nearer to the cliff than it does now. It is nearly 183 feet in length, 57 in breadth, and 43 in height, and has at the west end a square tower, surmounted by a leaded spire rising to the height of 120 feet. It is a handsome structure in the perpendicular or later style of English architecture, and the aisles are separated from the nave and chancel by two rows of handsome pillars. A stately porch on the south side forms the principle entrance, and has on its ceiling an ancient symbol of the Trinity, and over it a room, called the Maid's Chamber, as tradition says, from two sisters who resided in it several years in religious seclusion, before the Reformation. It is also said that theses sisters caused two wells to be sunk at their expense, between the church and the town, for the use of the inhabitants. A screen formerly separated the nave and the chancel, and over it was the rood loft.
The chancel is remarkably neat and elegant, being repaired and beautified by the Rev. John Tanner and the Rev. John Arrow, two late vicars, who died in 1760 and 1789. The latter erected a new altar piece, enclosed the communion table with handsome iron railing, and opened out the lower part of the east window, which had been bricked up. This window is now filled with stained glass, which was presneted about 30 years ago by Mr. Robert Allen, an ingenious gentleman of Lowestoft, who executed it himself.
The font is very ancient and round it are two rows of saints, which were much injured in 1644 by Dowsing, the parliamentary church spoliator, who tore up all the brasses from the grave stones, except for a few which escaped his notice. In 1778, a gallery was erected at the west end of the middle aisle; and in 1780, a good organ was placed in it. The church contains many handsome monuments, and was rebuilt, except the tower, in the fourteenth century by the prior of St. Bartholomew, in London, to whose monastery Lowestoft was appropriated by Henry I. In the middle of the chancel is a stone with the effigy of a bishop carved upon it. This is all that remains of the monument of Thomas Scroope, bishop of Dromore, in Ireland, and vicar of Lowestoft, who died here in 1491, aged nearly 100 years.
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