That description fits Sudbury admirably and faithfully, but does not by any means fit either Ipswich or Norwich, the two other claimants, and the evidence of Mr. C. Finden Waters, a one-time proprietor of the “Rose and Crown” at Sudbury, makes it almost certain that Sudbury was the place Dickens had in mind.

Mr. Waters, in 1906, devoted much time and research in order to establish his claim, and in March, 1907, read a paper, setting forth in detail the various points which led him to that conclusion, to the members of a then newly formed coterie who called themselves “The Eatanswill Club.”  It appears that this evidence established the fact that Dickens visited Sudbury in 1834.  On the 25th and 26th July in the same year, a Parliamentary by-election took place there, the incidents of which, as reported by the Essex Standard of that period, coincided remarkably with those recorded in connexion with the “Eatanswill” election in The Pickwick Papers.  In 1835, Dickens visited Ipswich for The Morning Chronicle, and reported the election at that place.  It is now tolerably certain that he went on to Sudbury for a similar purpose.

A further point is, Mr. Pickwick left by the Norwich coach.  “Eatanswill,” as we have seen, being a small borough near Bury St. Edmunds, and on the Norwich coach route, as was Sudbury, the latter’s claim gains strength indeed, if it does not actually settle the question.  At any rate, no other small borough could be named with any assurance that Dickens had it in his mind.  Indeed, in the year 1834, there were only four Parliamentary boroughs in Suffolk, viz.  Sudbury, Ipswich, Bury St. Edmunds and Eye.  Ipswich, Mr. Pickwick visited after the “Eatanswill” election, and does not hesitate to describe it under its right name.  Moreover, the claims of Ipswich have been relinquished by even local literary men, who in 1905 actually proved that town to be topographically impossible and named Sudbury as the original.  Bury St. Edmunds is the place to which Mr. Pickwick travelled after leaving “Eatanswill,” and as that borough figures prominently in the book undisguised, it cannot be that.  Eye is off the Norwich coach road, and no one has ever suggested that it has any claim to the honour.  Sudbury alone, therefore, remains as presenting all the main features required for the original.

[illustration:  The “Rose and Crown,” Sudbury.  From a photograph]

In 1834 the “Rose and Crown,” Sudbury, was the headquarters of the “Blue” candidate, and so its claim to be the original of the “Town Arms,” Eatanswill, would seem to be well made out; and so serious and certain were the citizens of Sudbury on the point that they established an “Eatanswill Club” there, and revived the Eatanswill Gazette devoted to “Pickwickian, Dickensian and Eatanswillian humour and research.”