right than to a seat in the House of Commons.  Jack was not to be moved from his purpose, but gave orders to have a similar apportionment made in most of the neighbouring villages, and then inviting the assistants to a party at his house, he had them sworn in as vestrymen, telling them, that in future they had the same right to a seat at his board as the best of John’s ushers had.  Here again, however, he found he had run his head against a wall, and that he was not the mighty personage he took himself for; for, on a complaint to the justices of the peace, a dozen special constables were sent down, who tore up the posts, removed the ropes, and demolished all Jack’s inclosures in a trice.

These frequent defeats rendered Jack nearly frantic.  He now began to quarrel even with his best friends, not a few of whom, though they had gone with him a certain length, now left his house, and told him plainly they would never set foot in it again.  He burst forth into loud invectives against Martin, who had always been a good friend to his penny subscriptions, and more than once had come to his assistance when Jack was hard pressed by Hugh, a dissenting schoolmaster, between whom and Jack there had long been a bloody feud.  Jack now denounced Martin in set terms; accused him of being in the pay of Peter, with whom he said he had been holding secret conferences of late at the Cross-Keys; and of setting the Squire’s mind against him (Jack)—­whereas poor Martin, till provoked by Jack’s abuse to defend himself, had never said an unkind word against him.  Finding, however, that, with all his efforts, he did not make much way with the men, Jack directed his battery chiefly against the women, who were easily caught by his sanctimonious air, and knowing nothing earthly of the subject, took for gospel all that Jack chose to tell them.  He held love-feasts in his house up to a late hour, at which he generally harangued on the subject of the persecutions which he endured.  He vowed the justices were all in a conspiracy against him; that they were constantly intruding into his grounds, notwithstanding his warnings that spring-guns were set in the premises; that on one occasion a tall fellow of a sheriff’s officer had made his way into his house and served him with a writ of fieri facias even in the midst of one of his assemblies, a disgrace he never could get over; that he could not walk ten yards in any direction, or saunter for an instant at the corner of a street, without being ordered by a policeman to move on; in short, that he lived in perpetual terror and anxiety—­and all this because he had done his best to save them and their children from the awful scourge of deboshed and despotical ushers.  At the conclusion of these meetings he invariably handed round his hat, into which the silly women dropped a good many shillings, which Jack assured them would be applied for the public benefit, meaning thereby his own private advantage.