work, or of red brick with large casemented bow windows; a porch with seats in it and over it a study:  the eaves of the house well inhabited by swallows, and the court set round with hollyhocks; near the gate a horse-block for mounting.  The hall was furnished with flitches of bacon, and the mantelpiece with guns and fishing-rods of different dimensions, accompanied by the broadsword, partisan, and dagger borne by his ancestor in the Civil Wars.  Against the wall was posted King Charles’s Golden Rules, Vincent Wing’s Almanac and a portrait of the Duke of Marlborough; in his window lay Baker’s Chronicle, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Glanvill On Apparitions, Quincey’s Dispensatory, The Complete Justice, and a Book of Farriery.  In a corner by the fireside stood a large wooden two-armed chair with a cushion, and within the chimney corner were a couple of seats.  Here at Christmas he entertained his tenants, assembled round a glowing fire made of the roots of trees; and told and heard the traditionary tales of the village about ghosts and witches while a jorum of ale went round.  These men and their houses are no more.’

The farmer, in some parts at all events, was becoming a more civilized individual; the late race had lived in the midst of their enlightened neighbours like beings of another order[480]; in their personal labour they were indefatigable, in their fare hard, in their dress homely, in their manners rude.  The French and American War of 1775-83 was a very prosperous time, and the farmer’s mode of living greatly improved.  Farmhouses in England, it was noticed, were in general well furnished with every convenient accommodation.  Into many of them a ’barometer had of late years been introduced’.  The teapot and the mug of ale jointly possessed the breakfast table, and meat and pudding smoked on the board every noon.  Formerly one might see at church what was the cut of a coat half a century ago, now dress was spruce and modern.[481] As a proof of the spirit of improvement among farmers, Marshall instances the custom in the Midlands of placing their sons as pupils on other farms to widen their experience.  ’Their entertainments are as expensive as they are elegant, for it is no uncommon thing for one of these new-created farmers to spend L10 or L12, at one entertainment, and to have the most expensive wines; to set off the entertainment in the greatest splendour an elegant sideboard of plate is provided in the newest fashion.’[482] As to dress, no one could tell the farmer’s daughter from the duke’s.  Marshall noticed that in Warwickshire the harness of the farmer’s teams was often ridiculously ornamented, and the horses were overfed and underworked to save their looks.  Before enclosure the farmer entertained his friends with bacon fed by himself, washed down with ale brewed from his own malt, in a brown jug, or a glass if he was extravagant.  He wore a coat of woollen stuff, the growth of his own flock, spun by his wife and daughters, his stockings came from the same quarter, so did the clothes of his family.