Lady Chadgrove was no exception to the general rule of careful household managers; and whilst her lord and master went hunting or hawking in the fresh morning air, or shut himself up in his library to examine into the accounts his steward laid before him or concern himself with some state business that might have been placed in his hands, she was almost always to be found in the offices of the house, looking well after the domestic details of household management, and seeing that each servant and scullion was doing the work appointed with steadiness and industry.

There was need for some such careful supervision of the daily routine, for the large houses in the kingdom were mainly dependent upon their own efforts for the necessaries of life throughout the year.  In towns there were shops where provisions could be readily bought, but no such institution as that of country shops had been dreamed of as yet.  The lord of the manor killed his own meat, baked his own bread, grew his own wheat, and ground his own flour.  He had his own brewery within the precinct of the great courtyard, where vast quantities of mead and ale were brewed, cider and other lighter drinks made, and even some sorts of simple home-grown wines.  Chad boasted its own “vineyard,” where grapes flourished in abundance, and ripened in the autumn as they will not do now.

Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the change that has passed upon our climate by slow degrees than a study of the parish records of ancient days.  Vineyards were common enough in England some hundreds of years ago, and wine was made from the produce as regularly as the season came round.  Then there were the simpler fruit wines from gooseberries, currants, and elderberries, to say nothing of cowslip wine and other light beverages which it was the pride of the mistress to contrive and to excel in the making.  Our forefathers, though they knew nothing of the luxuries of tea and coffee, were by no means addicted to the drinking of water.  Considering the sanitary conditions in which they lived in those days, and the fearful contamination of water which frequently prevailed, and which doubtless had much to do with the spread of the Black Death and other like visitations, this was no doubt an advantage.  Still there were drawbacks to the habit of constant quaffing of fermented drinks at all hours of the day, and it was often a difficult matter to keep in check the sin of drunkenness that prevailed amongst all classes of the people.

At Chad the gentle influence of the lady of the manor had done much to make this household an improvement on many of its neighbours.  Although there was always abundance of good things and a liberal hospitality to strangers of all sorts, it was not often that any unseemly roistering disturbed the inmates of Chad.  The servants and retainers looked up to their master and mistress with loyalty and devotion, curbed their animal passions and wilder moods out of love and reverence for them, and grew more civilized and cultivated almost without knowing it, until the wild orgies which often disgraced the followings of the country nobility were almost unknown here.