Why did Samuel Richardson's ‘Pamela’ thrill the villagers ? What did they do?

A group at Slough in England were very pleased to hear that ‘Pamela’, the heroine of Samuel Richardson’s popular novel, had got married in their village. Though Pamela was just a character of the novel, the people rushed to the Parish Church and begun to ring the church bell identifying themselves with the village wedding.Pamela is also special because it is an epistolary novel.