land; and he lives on still, not advanced, | ods of living which has made that kind of not degenerate, the ablest though the existence seem so impossible, that half most useless of his kind. Birmingham is the younger men who read this paper, or great, but it has not yet discovered every the article in the Times, will deny that it truth about the destiny of man; and there was common. Either the statement is are fractions of humankind whose govern- false, they think, or everything was much ing impulses western Europe as little cheaper, or such a family so supplied must comprehends as it foresees the future. have had resources which it concealed, Imagine a clan which prefers sand to and which it would be matter of curiosity mould, poverty to labor, solitary reflection to discover. to the busy hubbub of the mart, which will not earn enough to clothe itself, never invented so much as a lucifer-match, and would consider newspaper-reading a disgraceful waste of time. Is it not horrible, that such a race should be? more horrible, that it should survive all others? most horrible of all, that it should produce, among other trifles, the Psalms and the Gospels, the Koran and the epic of Antar? From The Spectator. THE SMALL SQUIRES OF A CENTURY SINCE. Of the truth of the statement there can be no doubt at all. Not only is the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries full of descriptions of such people, but the older men among us, if they knew as lads much of any country-side, can remember instances of such houses so supported, and greatly respected, though beginning to exhibit clear signs of final decay, and to be pitied as failing families. Their houses were beginning to look neglected, they themselves to be bitter about money and the "times," and their dependents to relate legends, mostly false, of former state and glory, when "t'owd Madam" used to walk about in the cool of the evening, and the house was EVERYWHERE in rural England we are "properly kep up." They are gone now, toid there used to exist families possessed almost entirely, though a few may linger of small freeholds, sometimes not exceed on in corners of the North Riding and of ing two or three hundred acres, who were Devon; but they survived into this cenaccounted, and in most respects actually tury, when, indeed, for a few years the were, gentlefolks. They lived on in their extraordinary price of corn momentarily old houses for generations, without visible gave them spirits; and they were a most decline, enjoying the respect of all around worthy class, whose disappearance, even them, marrying their daughters to neigh-in these days of land bills, is worth a moboring squires, sending their sons into ment's thought. the professions, especially the Church and the army, keeping up something of dignity in their social lives, and sometimes developing sons who became known to mankind. Richard Clive, Lord Clive's father, was, we imagine, a man of that sort. They were not yeomen, these men, but gentry, proud of pedigree, exact upon heraldry, jealous of consequence, and most punctilious in fulfilling all require ments of "position," as they understood them. They never seemed unhappy, they seldom went about afoot, they lived fairly well as to meat and drink, and "they hunted, and they hallooed, and they blew their horns also," like any of Caldecott's mirth-inspiring heroes. Yet they had but minute properties, occasionally not exceeding two hundred acres of farm-land, with a worthless bit of moor, or marsh, or "chase," thin grass, keeping a sheep per ten acres — besides. And how on earth did they manage to live so? What is the precise nature of the change which has coine over English society and meth meat Of their existence there is no doubt; nor is the explanation to be sought in the comparative cheapness of things, or in the presence of unsuspected resources. A few things were much cheaper, being the most serious item; and after meat, education; and after education, the keep of horses; but many things were much dearer, and these squires bought so little, that they were little benefited, except as to their dinners and their stables, by a low range of prices. Nor were their hidden resources, though they usually existed, at all considerable. Such squires habitually tried to marry and did marry girls with small portions, sums in cash varying from £1,500 to £3,000, which were invested at rather high interest, often seven per cent.; and they received small legacies from female relatives jealous for "the family," which, again, were well "put out; " and they obtained contributions from sons and cousins who prospered in the colonies and India and the "City," in a way which we 66 Не suspect is very unusual now. Clive was the squire possessed, because the sufnot a solitary instance of this kind, though frage being so limited his vote was imporhis wealth was so unusual; and the relatant, and the county member had patrontive in the City, even if he were, as Pope age would live as a gentleman even says "meek, and much a liar," was proud now, dine with anybody he liked, send out of the squire, who held his head so high his sons into the world, marry his daughand spoke out so audaciously, and he did | ters fairly well, and carry his head a little him, especially as to investments, many a high besides. He must not, indeed, go good turn. The secret did not, however, to London above once in ten years, or consist in the possession of resources omit to save his best clothes, or drink apart from the estate, any more than it wine habitually, or buy many books, or did in the low price for which madam indulge in any costly "taste whatever; could purchase the week's supply of meat. but then, the poorer squire did none of The explanation consists, we believe, these things. Respect came to him, as substantially in this: that apart from his on professional grounds it now comes to horseflesh, which so greatly helped his the fairly beneficed clergyman, without dignity, and which is now quite beyond any special reference to his means. reach, the life of the poor English squire was obliged, indeed, by opinion to pay his who was accepted as a gentleman could, way, and to be ready now and again with were social conditions the same, be lived a bit of his hoard for his daughters' dowsuccessfully and happily even now. When er, and to acquire a certain quantity of judged by the proper standard, he was valuables £200 will purchase a good not so very poor. His manor-house paid many spoons and ladles and punch-bowls no rent, and served as the farmhouse as - and to keep up a certain amount of well; he farmed himself, and knew his rough hospitality; but if he did these business as well as any rival; he had a things, his income was not his neighbors' ready market for his corn and his beasts great consideration. He rode. He beamong the millers and the butchers longed to the gentry. He had a pedigree. around, who had no London dealers to He had lived in one house till it became traffic with, and though they sold cheap, traditional that he should live there, and gave the squire comparatively a better stories older than his people were carried wholesale price than the producer gets in the alehouse conversation to his credit. now-it is not the beast, but the meat, Men of undoubted wealth and position which is so dear and his two hundred treated him as an equal, and even if they acres produced him, in meal or malt, a had names and influence in London, were rent, say, of 18s., and a farmer's profit of very slow to offend a class which they 12s. an acre, or 30s. in all. That is, the knew, if irritated, could and would dislittle squire had £300 a year, and a good pose of the county seat. The sense of house, which needed, or at any rate got, durability and political power, together very little repair-there was literally no with the respect of his neighbors, then plumber's bill very little new furniture, indicated by many external signs, such and no "doing up," except once in a life- as precedence in entering and leaving time, when the bride came home. That church, and the use of squire and bride brought usually from £105 to £140 "madam" instead of "Mr." and "Mrs.," a year—say, in capital, £1,500 to £2,000 gave him independence and boldness, and and the squire had £2,000 more laid made his pride in heraldic distinctions aside-old "family savings"-yielding and claims of family anything but ridicu seven per cent., bringing his total income, lous. with no deductions, and no allowance for the brother or uncle who lived with him and paid something, to £545 or £590 a year. That seems very little, because men compare the ancient petty squire with the modern squire of £2,500 a year, but it is not so little, if we compare him with his true analogue, the rector in a rather remote district, with a good rectory house, and £550 left after paying for his curate, and his subscriptions, and official "gifts" in charity. The rector with that clear income, a wife who can manage, and the means of putting out his sons - which The little squire possessed, in fact, as the beneficed rector alone in England perhaps still does, that kind of respect, that equality with all but the very first that "position as it is now called which is, after all, the result for which money is so much valued, and which to men without means, unless they have some special intellectual distinction or some unusual claim of family, is now so rarely given. There was no particular need to save, for the eldest son would enjoy the same estate, and the member would give some chance or other to the and is the pleasant and cheap home of the Englishman from every part of the earth; but, meanwhile, the man who was the special product of that life has wandered out of it forever. Travellers say you meet him still in Holstein and Mecklenburg, and in that North Holland which nobody sees; but he has gone from England, and all the agricultural shows in the world will not bring him back. From The Saturday Review. A SQUIRE'S NOTE-BOOK IN THE SEVEN TEENTH CENTURY. others; and as little need to spend, for spending produced no increase of "position," and exceedingly little of comfort. What could a Somersetshire squire, with a family legend of three hundred years, no carriage, because there were no roads, no tailor, except the man who, once in twenty years, supplied a blue coat, as he now supplies a dress uniform to an officer, and no upholsterer, want to buy? He lived pleasantly from week to week, as a rector with such an income and such moderate wishes, and an hereditary freehold in his living, would, we contend, live now, and he lasted in the land, because there was nothing to tempt him out of it. What was there better for him than the old, plentiful house, half manor, half farm, To those who like to know how properand his light daily work, and his weekly ties grew, devolved, and were managed by meeting with the neighbors, and the re- our ancestors, nothing is more attractive spect of all around him, that he should than the discovery of some ancient record, wander out into the unknown? Let the in the family chest or lumber-room, which, younger sons do that, and let him devote by an incredible piece of good fortune, himself to keep all things as they were. has survived the inroads of housemaids The poor squire cannot live so now, be- and rats. One of these antique treasures cause with small means he does not ob- has just fallen into our hands, and for tain the respect, and the world is careless practical men it is quite worth a barrel of of pedigree, and the member is indepen- flint and stone instruments adapted to the dent of him, and can give his sons no use of beings something between Bush"provision," and the education which men and Yahoos. This said record conprevails with Civil Service Commission- sists of about ninety pages of stiff paper ers is most costly, and all around, thick loosely stitched together by thongs of as flies, are rivals who have money, and leather and covered with a thicker matecan get so much out of it in comfort, and rial now embrowned by age and dust. It freedom, and locomotion, and even intel- is not exactly a diary, for chronological ligence, that he feels that if he stayed on, order is defied. Neither is it a mere book he should be like a vegetable among liv- of accounts, made up of pounds and shiling things. He makes, therefore, no ef- lings and little else that can appeal to hufort to resume his old position, his squire- man sympathies. The owner appears to dom, but settles on the outskirts of a have used it for the purpose of entering town, and boasts of his family, or lives all the details of the receipts and expendi abroad in Italy or rural France. Or hap-ture of his not inconsiderable estates, and piest of all, he betakes himself to a colony, and there repeats on a broader scale the old home life. Returned colonists tell us that, except the pushing vulgarian of distinct mental force, nobody does better in New Zealand or Victoria than the "impoverished" gentleman, if he is only young enough to accept new seasons, new ways, new grasses, and new drinks, and will root himself in the old way to one place. It is not, however, mere want of means which deters the poor squire from trying to live as squire, but a changed world, which, if he tried the old course, would hold him hardly a gentleman, and which has abandoned the old, simple, restful, narrow life, for a more feverish and more vivid one. The old life will come back, some day, maybe, when England has been fairly beaten in the race, he was further in the habit of recording in it, just as they happened, the events which diversified his life in country and in town. We should state that in the reign of Elizabeth there was a certain prothonotary of the court of common pleas, who acquired an estate in Lincolnshire that had belonged to the monastery of the Blessed Mary of York. This property had been sold by Henry VIII. to a family, in whose possession it remained for forty-five years, after which, eventually, it passed to Richard Brownlow the aforesaid prothonotary. He had two sons, William and John, created baronets by Charles I. in 1641. The writer of our memoir, Sir John Brownlow, was born in 1594, married Alice Pultuney of Misterton, in Leicestershire, in 1621, and died sine prole in 1679. His estates then went to his grandnephew, was given for £976 per annum, but in all probability the outgoings were considerable, seeing that in another account of Sir John's own estate, £1,724 were disbursed out of £2,376 received. If any doubt could ever have arisen as to the politics of the author, it would at once be solved by the loan made to the king two years after the Restoration. Charles wanted £500 within fourteen days, and it was raised and paid by the writer in oneseventh of that time. Indeed, there was always a large store of coin placed in bags and deposited in the family chests also Sir John Brownlow. He possessed | the above end, of from 12s. to £2 10s., a house at Isleworth, twelve miles from Corpus Christi College only gave Is. 3d. London ; a mansion in Drury Lane; and to the above village dominie. The folestates in Lincolnshire, near Grantham, lowing entries afford some clue to the rather more than a hundred miles from value of landed property. £5,500_repreLondon. Three different stewards, Car-sented eighteen years' purchase; £19,000 diff, Batchelor, and Richard Fullalow, appear to have collected and accounted for rents, and occasionally other large sums passed through the hands of one John Smith. If the rents for those times were considerable, so, on the other hand, were the outgoings. Out of £3,933 more than £850 were disbursed; out of £566 nothing remained but one guinea: and out of £444 only 11 135. Id. But to some of those balance sheets are appended careful notes which show that divers other items had still to be accounted for or recovered. Poles of wood or Maypoles had been sold for several pounds; one hun-at Isleworth or in Lincolnshire. Coin of dred wethers fetched more than a pound apiece; oats and barley brought in more than 30; one Mr. Greenberrie was to pay £70 at May Day; wood, old and new, realized a good price; and there are constant entries showing that Sir John was quite alive to the necessity of being just to himself as well as generous to others. The prices of skilled and unskilled labor and of articles and stock are noteworthy. The doctor's fee for attendance on "my wyfe was Ios.; when Cardiff fell ill, Batchelor felled an acre for him, and might, we should think, have "stubbed Thornaby Waste." In one bag of 100 95. 2d. were wanting; but Cardiff, we are happy to state, made good the deficiency. Jack Sayle was a long time paying his debt. Smeton might be permitted to have the grass mowed off the bowlinggreen, for so we interpret the herbe au jeu de boule. A beast that died of the "gargol" about September 6, sold for nearly 3; a pair of gloves cost 35. 6d., and a ribbon is. 6d. Kerbie_cow pasture was to be disposed of at Lady Day, and the thorns were to be grubbed up. Timothy Dove had a second presentation to two parts of the rectory at Rip pengale. In a lease of eleven years the tenant had permission to plough for eight years, but not for the last three. 20s. a year was the honorarium attached to the duty of reading prayers twice every week to the poor at the almshouses; and various contributions, including one from Sir John himself, made up the school master's stipend of £17 a year. We re mark that while Sir John Wray, Richard Nelthorpe, gent., Sir P. Tirwhit, H. Luddington, and others contributed sums to The the Protector's time to the amount of two horse in his woods; he founded alms- of one worthy Doctor Waldron in his houses; he made presents to high and letter of July 14, 1666. Failing this there low; on one occasion his liberality took the was another prescription too long to quote. form of silver candlesticks and snuffers; To feed bees properly you are to get on another he gave tankards; and then, roasted apples, bean flower, and bay salt, again, he paid the rent of a house for his or else sop toasts of bread in strong ale "Cosen Smith " for life. Antiquarians and put them into the hive. For the may regret to learn that men had made biting of any venomous creature, hold a oatmeal at Grantham "where Bacon hot iron to the place affected or a coal dwelt; " but the house, believed to be a of fire; and a piece of briony root worn horse-mill, had disappeared at the time of about one will cure and prevent the cramp, this memoir and a stable had also gone while mare's milk drank by women every with it. The following items of legal ex- morning in March and April will tend to penses are shown in a trial in the Court conception. There are other curious enof Common Pleas, the result of which is tries, but our space is running short, and not very clear. The cause of action was when we have noted that one line coma claim for "tith of hay and corne" grow- memorates the death of Nicholas the ing in a certain parish, and it was brought cooke, and the very next that of the under the statute of Edward VI. One Duchess of Dudlie, we come to the last and-twenty jurors appeared and received entry of all, which has a tinge of sadness five pounds each, besides their dinners. and yet fittingly closes a record over Serjeant Maynard no doubt the same which Thackeray would have moralized. who told William III. that, if it had not It is as follows, spelling and all: "My been for his Majesty, he would have sur- deer wyfe dyed at Isleworth on tuesday vived the law as well as the lawyers the 27th of June 1675, between one and had for his fee at the trial "6 ginnies," twoe at noone: exceeding suddenlie (no and "at other tymes, three ginnies." But cause for it appearing), being 68 years of Serjeants Baldwin, Turner, and Browne age as was apprehended or very near it. also had their 3 and 4 ginnies, and other | The corps being very well embalmed in fees, at odd times; and there were fees a very good cofin was removed, late in in court of £4 10s., the charges of wit- the evening, about 10 o'clock, toward Lonnesses, and the bill of Mr. Grange don and broght to my house in Drurie who solicited," which amounted to eight Lane on the 30th of June following, and pounds all but sixpence. There is, too, on the 5th of Julie after, was carried a memo which we interpret to mean that, towards Belton and there was buried on of the twenty-one jurymen, the nine who the 7th of Julie, where I also intend to were not wanted and were not sworn need lye." A note adds that the age was probanot have had as much as the twelve good bly seventy-two. The writer survived his and true men who sat on the trial; 3 partner, and died without issue some four apiece might have served the former. years afterwards. A solid monument In this sentiment the reader will no with the effigies of this excellent couple doubt concur. We find that to prevent attests their virtues, and we may be perlethargis or apoplexy, there was nothing mitted to doubt whether any brief diaries like some sneezing-powder, made of dried or loose memoranda kept in this age of betony, tobacco, and a little musk. This, bustle, excitement, and perhaps shams, with blisters on the neck, a warming-pan will, if revealed in the year 2081, excel held to the head, and oil of amber to the this record in interest and solid worth. nostrils and temples, was the prescription CHARLES EDWARD STUART, COUNT D'AL- | kirk, Preston-Pans, and Culloden, a pair of BANIE, ob., at sea, Dec. 24, 1880. The will of Charles Edward Stuart, Count d'Albanie, was proved on the 16th ult. by Lord Lovat, as the attorney of the Countess Sobieska de Platt, the daughter and residuary legatee, the personal estate being sworn under a nominal sum. The testator bequeaths to the Marquis of Bute the Highland Claidh-mor (Andrea Ferrara) worn by his (testator's) grandfather, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, at the battles of Fal- | steel pistols inlaid with silver, and the dirk worn by his said grandfather at the ball given at Holyrood on the eve of the battle of PrestonPans, and which he opened with the Countess of Wemyss; and to Lord Lovat the large twohandled sword made by Cosmo Ferrara, firstly belonging to the Italian General Patrici Colonna, and afterwards to his said grandfather, and two pistols formerly belonging to Rob Roy, 1715. Illustrated London News. |