Wife to Mr. Milton Read online

  This Archbishop’s disgrace was the cause that the Arminians, or near-Papists, whose leader was Bishop Laud, swam up so easily into power when King James died. The Arminians held that the King ruled by Divine right and that if he commanded anything which his subjects might not perform because it was against the Law of God, yet they must obey without resisting or railing. Archbishop Abbot held a contrary view, and declared that Almighty God must not be made a lackey to any King or prince whatsoever; yet because of his unlucky day’s hunting he could not maintain his point, and I think his heart was broken, though he lived a great while longer. Thus the more moderate, or orthodox, clergy were left without their natural leader, which was the reason that they contended so weakly against the Arminians. Then, the Arminians pressing on with their plans for the entire subjection of the three Kingdoms to the King’s religious authority, presently war was provoked in each of the three in turn; and all because (as the Tyrrells said) a priest had gone hunting that should have continued at his devotions.

  Coursing of the hare did not please me, this being such a shy, gentle beast; and at home I reared one that my brother James had taken as a leveret from a place called Pole Cat End. I kept its fur sprinkled with a powder to make the house-dogs retch if they came too close, so my hare had a long life. Hawking I loved, and the fiercest of the gerfalcons that we kept was mild with me. My brother Richard had a hobby-hawk, with which he used to catch larks, but larks are petty game, and I liked better to ride across the stubble-fields in autumn and hilloo when partridge was sprung. At the first whir of wings my gerfalcon would stir strongly on my fist, though the hood kept him from fluttering his wings; and then I would whip off his hood and cast him into the air, and gallop after. How I cried with delight as my falcon soared and stooped and struck at the tumbling partridge; and I would praise him in very fanciful language when the quarry was safely in my falconer-bag, and he back again on my glove. I abhorred the sport of killing birds with shot blasted from a fowling-piece. Though falcons cost so dear and are marvellous troublesome to keep, yet hawking is a gentle and natural sport; and the use of gunpowder against wildfowl I find both unnatural and nasty.

  How much I loved dancing is already sufficiently told, and I taught dancing to my little sisters and brothers, for that is the most healthy exercise known, and makes children grow up strong and graceful. I taught them the customary dances of the parish and new foreign dances as I learned them. On church holidays, whenever there was merry-making and sport beyond the usual, as at Hocktide and Michaelmas, we children of the Manor would be found on the Green dancing with the sons and daughters of our tenants, to show them our good affections.

  When I was seven years old the Book of Sports had been read in our church, by order of King Charles, enjoining certain innocent recreations upon the people. In some godly parts of England this order was ill received by the Puritans, or precisians, who held it to be a profanation of the Lord’s Day; but with us there was no outcry raised nor low muttering heard, except that on a Sunday (some time later) a young man named Messenger, who had gone to London some years before this to learn the trade of his uncle, a boot-maker, came back again a journeyman, and behaved very uncivilly at the morning service. It was not that he uttered any indecent railing, for he knew that the least word spoken in interruption of the curate, while he conducted the service, was common brawling and a breach of the peace. Yet he came in late, wearing rusty black, and stood in the aisle, under the round arch that leads to the chancel, with his face towards the pulpit, and lounged about there with his hat upon his head, during the singing of a psalm. Then when the curate began to preach upon the text “Why hop you so, you high hills?” and drew from it an encouragement for our country jigs and morrices, he fidgeted with his feet, coughed loudly as if to drown the curate’s voice and at last turned upon his heel and with a rude clatter went out into the porch. Then when the sermon was done and the blessing given, and all the people came out of church, he lay in wait for the curate at the vestry door, where he asked him in a boorish tone: “Is not Dancing a Jezebel? Is not your striped Maypole an Idol? Come, come, Sirrah, answer me! Would you have these poor souls dance the Devil’s morrice into Hell and be lost eternally? How did John the Baptist lose his head but that a whore danced a jig? For what purpose did King Hezekiah hew down the groves, but that they were filthy clusters of heathenish Maypoles?”

  The curate, for all his faults, knew his rights as a servant of the Church, and he also knew the Bible better than this poor leather-aproned, black-thumbed rogue who had, I suppose, got by heart some book of Anabaptistical or Antinomian sermons, mumbling and tumbling the pages over between his tasks as he sat in the back room of his uncle’s shop in Ludgate. The curate answered him that, as King David had danced before the Ark, which was God’s former habitation, so should we all dance before his present habitation, the Church, and serve Him with timbrels and dancing; and none should hinder us.

  Up then came my father, who having dozed through the service, as was his custom, had not noted the man’s insolence until too late. He asked the curate whether the sexton and he had any charge to make against the fellow; being in the mood to listen to it.

  The curate answered: “This man, your Worship, has asked me questions which, though they were phrased unceremoniously, cannot be construed as a breach of the peace. Yet, as I believe, he thinks that our striped Maypole is an Idol.”

  My father shook his head at this and, going out again to the Green, he called to all the people there: “Hey, good folk, here is one who having come into your Church with his hive upon his head, now alleges your Maypole to be an Idol. I pray you not to make an Idol of him instead.” With that he winked plainly at them and went away and left them to their sport, taking the curate with him to absolve him of blame should any riot ensue, and also calling for the constable.

  Tom Messenger had already vexed our people with his sneers and groans and godly vapourings, but they had not dared to do their do against him. Now that they were licenced, as they judged, to make sport of him, they clapped their hands for joy. Some held him fast while the others prepared themselves for dancing. It was the day that they called Robin Hood Ale, and the custom was for the young men to shoot with their cross-bows at a mark, and the one who shot closest, he was Robin Hood. His merry men led him to an arbour built in the churchyard, where sat Maid Marion, who bestowed a prize upon him and one or two kisses; and then all got drunk together and feasted in common upon pies and pasties and cold meats fetched from every house. But first, after sitting so long in the cold Church, they would all warm themselves with dancing at the Maypole. The Maypole they crowned with a garland of flowers and tied ribbons to the head of it, thereafter dancing around and in and out, weaving and unweaving the ribbons.

  Since now their old Maypole was accounted a mere idol, they tied Tom Messenger’s arms to his sides, garlanded his tall hat, put a stopper of rags in his mouth, and made a new Maypole of him: for they set him at his own height from the ground on the stump of a stone pillar standing at the corner of the Green, and tied his feet with ropes to the pillar in such manner that he could not leap off. Then they danced around him for a full half-hour to the sound of tabor and pipe. My father, watching from an upper window of the house, presently came out with the constable and clapped his hands for silence, at which the music ceased. Then he sighed and said: “O good people, what is this I see? Does this pragmatical fellow seek to bring contempt upon the Sports ordained by His Majesty, setting himself up as a Maypole in a public place and exhorting you to make an idol of him, to the great danger of the peace?” Then he cried to Tom Messenger: “O Tom, Tom, up so high above me, are these the ill fruits of your seven years’ apprenticeship in London? Is this a fit return of gratitude to me who gave you five shillings and a great piece of cheese for your journey thither? Must you now come back to the place of your birth and corrupt old customs, setting yourself up above other men better than yourself and exalting your horn?”

  But Tom cou
ld answer nothing, for his mouth was stoppered.

  Then said my father: “Well, Tom, were it not for the kindness that I have towards Goodwife Messenger, your widowed mother, and towards your uncle Dick who is an honest man and a good maker of boots, I would see that you were this afternoon committed to the jail at Oxford to be tried at the Assizes. However, I have bowels of compassion and would not bring disgrace upon the town. Tom, you are free.”

  Tom Messenger was taken down from the pillar, and given a can of ale for his refreshment, and thereafter kept his mouth shut, though he would not consent to shoot at the mark with the other men, nor join in the dances or the vaulting with the pole.

  So much for sport, of which I had no stint in those days, for my mother gave me certain set tasks in the house, and when these were done, I was free to use my leisure time in what manner soever I pleased, though I must always tell her where she might find me, and in whose company. I rose early even in winter and being a quick worker finished my tasks soon, and my mother did not take advantage of my quickness to lay more upon me that I could readily perform.

  Now, as to other matters. My father had the Manor first from the Bromes, who had it from King Henry VIII, by whom it was taken from the monks of Osney when their Abbey was dissolved. He leased it for a term of fifty-one years, paying the Bromes the better part of the £3,000 that my mother had brought him at her marriage, and thereafter a chief-rent of £5 a year. The estate and the house were of an annual value of near £300, which was a comfortable sum, and he also held freehold and leasehold property at Wheatley, together worth at least £100 more. He made divers improvements to the Manor-house, which was somewhat ruinous when he took possession, and beautified the gardens; and he loved field sports and company, so that his expenses always overran his income by a fifth or a tenth part.

  However, he had come to Forest Hill with a good sum of money in his hand and was confident that what was spent would return with usury. The old walls of the house, where they were not of dressed stone, he pargetted with good plaster of lime mixed with cow-dung; and a skilled man from Norwich drew interlinked scrolls and ribbons upon it while it was wet, and filled the intervals with painted pictures of roses, thistles and fleur-de-lis; and vine-leaves with large grapes hanging from beneath them; also an anchor, and (filling the gable-ends) winged cherubim; and our first ancestors, decently clad, disputing together beside the Tree of Knowledge where the Serpent straggled among the boughs.

  The garden he filled with all manner of fruits trees and with yew and box fantastically cut, and dug fish-pools, and made arbours with tiled roofs facing the south. He also laid out a walk with juniper bushes on either side; which walk, if one stood in the middle of it (where there were steps down to the fish-pool) and if one looked to the right and left hand along it, appeared perfectly straight; yet this was a deception, since from neither end could a person be seen approaching from the other. We had twelve bee-houses, among them one with sides of talc, like a lantern, so that one might stare in and watch the bees at their labour. We had two great hedges of lavender; and of damask-roses a great many bushes, the leaves of which we used to conserve with sugar; and a bed of clove-pinks, which we used for making cordial liquor of sack and for flavouring hydromel. There was an orchard next the garden, and a herb-garden, also a hop-ground with the hop-kiln built beside it.

  In the backside of the house were the stables, the sheep-pens, the pig-styes, the hen-houses, the cattle-sheds, and the sheds for the carts and wains; and also great stacks of firewood, and of timber, and heaps of stripped oak-bark for tanning; and great piles of hurdles, of which two men with frammers wove a dozen a-piece every day, working at nothing else. These hurdles were chiefly made for sale to sheep farmers of the Downs, where hurdling is scarce. My father employed about the house and garden, on the land and in the woods, some twenty grown persons. Our bakehouse and brewhouse were always in a bustle, for there we baked and brewed for all the poor people of the town, in return for a small payment.

  My father and mother were well loved, for it never could be said of them that they ate the bread of idleness or that they refused charity to the needy and naked. Nor could they be accused of neglecting the Church or failing to support it; for my father at his own charge set up two great buttresses below the bell-gable; and he oversaw the curate that he did his duty by the parish. This bell-gable is pierced for three bells, yet there were never hanging in it, within living memory, more than two bells only. There is a song made of these bells of St. Nicholas, how they challenge and overbear those of all the other churches near by, of which Holton has three, Stanton St. John five, and Wheatley six:

  Holton sends her challenge still:

  “Who rings best?

  Who rings best?”

  Forest Hill, high on the Hill,

  Proclaims abroad “We two,”

  Stanton answers with a will,

  “Nay, ’tis we who do.”

  Wheatley now takes up the tale,

  Ringing valiant down the vale,

  “Who doubts that we ring best?”

  Forest Hill will yet prevail:

  “We two; we two; we two.”

  In religion my father was for swimming with the tide. He desired no innovation, yet what the King ordained, on the advice of his bishops, why, let it pass, he cared not. His family was native to the Dominion of Wales, where the old religion was professed for a great many years longer than in England; and I guessed that he was brought up in it as a child. But he would tell us little of his life and circumstance before he married my mother, no more than that he was descended in a true line from certain Welsh princes; from which I judged that his family, though gentle, was exceeding poor. From his handiness with the axe when he gave instructions to his woodmen I judged also that he had done much labour in his youth that was below the dignity of a gentleman. My Aunt Jones would tell us nothing of her childhood, neither.

  The Manor land was red land, very fat, and well watered by the stream that rises near Red Hill. About two-thirds of it was pasture or coppice, and the rest tillage. We tilled as early in the year as possibly could be, and dressed the fields—of which the great field at Lusher’s would in a good year bring forth wheat worth £50 as it stood—with half-rotted manure from the mixen in the yard, twelve loads upon each statute acre. We also strewed on wood-ashes from the bakehouse and refuse from the brewhouse; and sometimes old woollen rags, got for very little from the Oxford halls and colleges, for these woollens were so sated with a well-rectified salt, left behind by the steam of the boys’ bodies, that they made an acceptable manure for the land.

  In Forest Hill the order of crops is this: first the barley, next the peas or beans, and last the wheat or mislan, after which we let the field lie fallow a year. The wheat comes last, for this very good reason that wheat, when it follows the dung-cart on rich land, is more liable to turn smutty; though against the smut my father would wash the seed in brine. He never stinted the land of seed, sowing four bushels of wheat or mislan or peas to each acre, with proportionably more of beans, And he would say:

  One for the pigeon,

  One for the crow,

  One to rot,

  And one to grow.

  He would not let his seedsmen use their customary single cast, sowing the land at one bout, but would have them sow it twice, at two different bouts, casting the seed from furrow to ridge and afterwards from ridge to furrow.

  We use the foot plough with a broad-fin share, the horses going in a string and keeping the furrow, to avoid poaching the land; and we cover the seed over with a bull-harrow armed with five-and-twenty iron tines. Our reaping is done with a smooth-edged hook, not with the sickle as in most counties; and we lay the corn in small handfuls all over the field that it may dry the sooner. After two days we bind it in very loose, small sheaves, and shock it rafter-wise, ten sheaves to a shock, in a manner that will marvellously bear out the rain.

  Barley, which we sow always when the elm leaf is big as a mouse’s ear, we c
ount as ripe when it hangs the head, and has yellowed; we mow it with a scythe that has no cradle, and we never bind it, but only rake it together and let it lie so for a day or two to ripen the grain and wither the weeds. We cock it with a fork of three prongs, the cocks being well topped and of middling size; for great cocks take in more rain and often do not dry without breaking, and then must needs be pulled all to pieces, which cannot be done without loss. Beans and peas we also cut with the scythe, and gather them in wads, and cock them: only with this difference between them that we use no rake for gathering together the loose stalks, but take them up with the hand, the rake being apt to beat the beans out of the pods. We bring the harvest home in a two-wheeled long cart, having the shafts and hoops over the wheels, and this will take a heavy and broad load, as well as a waggon almost. These methods and customs are far different from what I have since observed in the country places near London.

  To preserve our ricks of corn against rats and mice, we set them on platforms resting upon stones about two foot high, called standers, with rounded cap-stones upon them, past which vermin cannot climb. We thresh with the flail, unless the wheat be very smutty, when we whip it first, striking the corn (by a handful at a time) against a door set on its edge, and binding up each sheaf again; which way is troublesome and tedious, but the smut-balls are by this means not broken, as when they are struck with a flail, and by the strength of a good wind the wheat will be left clean. We winnow the chaff from the seed either in the field by casting it up into the wind with shovels: or else in the barn with a leaved fan that artificially causes wind.