The 37th Vicar
Dr Edward Reynolds wrote the General Thanksgiving in the Book of Common Prayer and was to become Bishop of Norwich. His wife gave a collection of fine Communion plate in his memory which is displayed in All Saints' on civic occasions.
The 40th Vicar
The Reverend John Conant was incumbent at the time of the Great Fire in 1675. He was soon to become Archdeacon of Norwich Cathedral.
John Bales
Thought to have lived through three centuries until 1706 when he died at the age of 127. His epitaph is written on a tablet at the west end of All Saints'.
'John Bales, born in this town. He was above 126 years old & had his hearing, sight & memory to ye last. He lived in 3 centuries & was buried ye 14th of Apr 1706.'
John Clare
In 1841 the Pastoral poet, John Clare, was admitted to the Northampton lunatic asylum now known as St. Andrews Hospital. Born in 1793 at Helpston in Northamptonshire, Clare began writing in his early years. In 1820, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery was published by Taylor & Hessey. In the same year the Marquess of Exeter, of Burghley House granted him 15 guineas a year for life and his career blossomed. The last 23 years of his life were spent in Northampton and it was his habit to walk to All Saints' Church to sit under the portico and compose. From time to time he would write verses and give them to passers by, in exchange for some chewing tobacco. For the bicentenary of his birth in 1993, a bronze bust by Tom Bates was commissioned for the Narthex of the Church.
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost.
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest - that I loved the best -
Are strange -nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.