There was, as we say, blood, or something else, that kept up John’s spirit, so that he went abroad now and then, in as gentleman-like a way as could be wished, although Lewis Baboon used to sit sneering at him sometimes as he passed; but John minded him not a rush.
Now it happened, that John and Lewis had about the same time taken in part of the west-common, and though their fields were not contiguous, they could not agree about their marches. Many meetings they had to settle them, but all to no purpose, for none of them knew well what he would be at. The common saying was, that Lewis wanted to get all the land in the country, and you needed only to tell John so much, in order to put him in a downright foam of rage and fury. However this be, Lewis tormented his own people enough, with making them stick in posts and stakes in different parts of the common; and when John asked him what he meant, he said, They were only rubing posts for his cows to scratch themselves, in case they strayed so far. But other people told John, that Lewis would some day or other claim every bit of that ground as his own, by virtue of those stakes, if he was not checked in time. Accordingly, John sent him some angry message about them, and Lewis in return, begged leave to present his compliments to John, and allured him, that the thing in the world he wished most, was to live in good terms with his honoured friend and neighbour John Bull. Mean time, some of John’s cow-herds met with a fellow or two belonging to Lewis, and after a great deal of bad language, painful to repeat, they came to blows, and made a great noise, which brought John and Lewis too, to see what was the matter. John, indeed, happened to be in his barge that afternoon, on the lake to the west of his house, which he affected to call his own fish-pond, and Lewis too being on his way to the common, their barges unhappily met, when John, without any more ado, took up an oar, and aimed a blow at Lewis Baboon’s brains, You damn’d, insidious, fair-tongued villain, this is all your doing, with your stakes and your posts, and your covetousness for land, which nobody will possess under you, you damned, oppressive, squeezing rascal. My dear John, says Lewis, what is the matter? The matter, you scoundrel! With that John aimed another blow; but their barges ran foul of one another, and he fastened on Lewis Baboon’s wig, tore his bag, and threw it in the water; in short, before you could count six, there was not a hat nor a wig to be seen in the whole boats-crew, of either side. History says, that Lewis had like to have been drowned outright, and was glad to get home with his head broken in many places, and cursing John Bull, for the most rash, cholerick, blunder-headed fellow, that ever was known in the world.
CHAP. II.
What sort of fellows John and Lewis were in use to employ to keep their orchards, and their poultry.
History tells us many lies, if this was the first time that John and Lewis came to blows; and Sir Humphrey Polisworth may think to conceal it if he will, but many a time has Lewis, in his youth, lost his hat and his wig in scuffles with John, and as often has John come home with a broken pate, though very few people durst tell it to his wife or his mother. In short, these two had been troublesome rogues to one another time out of mind; and at the time of which we are now speaking, there was no such thing as law or justice in the whole country. If you could keep your own, it was well; if not, it did not signify complaining; two or three stout fellows at your back, a brace of pistols, or a blunderbuss, was a better title to an estate than the best conveyance in the world. Whilst you thought yourself sure of your lands, two or three fellows in the neighbourhood would be disputing who should have it; and of Lord Strutt, Lewis Baboon, Squire South, Nicholas Frog, John Bull himself, and all the gang of them, there was not one to mend another, they did not mind blowing out one another’s brains one farthing; they had got honourable names for thieving, robbing, and house-breaking, such as policy, conquest, and invasion; and if you lived in their neighbourhood, they were sure to leave you nothing, unless you could handle a cutlass, or fire a blunderbuss, and kept friends with some one or other of them, who protected you for his own sake, or that he might take all you had at a more convenient time. God help the poor milk-sop that trusted to the goodness of his cause.
This made every body look about him; and John among the rest, for many a day, had as stout a family of young fellows as any in all the neighbourhood, and would not take an affront or an injury from any man. His boys were for the most part sober, peaceable fellows within doors; but if there was any noise heard over-night among the poultry in the orchard, or the workshop, it needed only the bark of a dog to bring a score of them into the court, and from every corner of John’s house you could hear nothing but striving who should be out first. Every body had his cutlass, or his carabine at his bed’s-head, and it is hard to say which they were most jealous of, their father’s honour, or the preservation of his estate. It was the pride of John’s heart in those days, to see his boys hardy and resolute, and he hated a sneaking, puny, pewling fellow, like the devil.
In this humour John lived for many a day; but many changes happen which nobody looks for; people persuaded him by degrees, that if he had money enough there was nothing else worth minding. From this hopeful maxim, he even neglected sending his children to school, locked up their cudgels and cricket-batts, and would not let one of them touch a gun, for fear they should hurt themselves. He had got by heart all the stories that ever his nurse had told him, about the accidents which happen at rough play, or in handling firelocks, and would repeat them sometimes, till his wife and his mother were quite ashamed of him.
It would require the pen of a great historian to tell how this great change was brought about. Some people said, that John was old and began to doat; others said, that it was all owing to an old nurse who lived about the house; but alas, they do not tell us how John came to be directed by old women, or what was the reason that some of John’s neighbours were grown worse than even he was at this time. Lewis Baboon was grown from a spruce forward gallant, a mere priest-ridden, whore-ridden, flimsey periwig-making old fool. Lord Strutt could never be got out of his bed before eleven o’clock in the morning; and Nicholas Frog would rather have taken ready money for a farthing-candle, than see his best friend return from the grave. One stout man could have chaced a hundred of them into the sea, and yet these damned fellows contrived to be very troublesome for all that, by means of a device of which the devil himself was certainly the author. In their younger days they were all ready enough at a blow, yet as they and every body about them, had some other business besides fighting, they could not well quarrel when they were otherways engaged; but they came at last to keep people on purpose to fight, and as nobody cared what became of these fellows, they would send them out for the turn of a straw, to play the devil in all the neighbourhood; and the rest of the people at home trusting to them, became mere milk-sops and old women.
An historian of great credit affirms, that this practice was grafted on that of keeping a game-keeper; and for this reason it is, that although there be many more of them in every house than are necessary to keep the game, they are nevertheless known under the title of game-keepers even unto this day. In former times, continues he, every father of a family and his children, were sportmen more or less. It mattered not who started the game, they could all shoot without distinction; and it mattered as little what part of the house a thief attempted to break in upon, the first man he met thought himself obliged to defend the premises. But when they grew lazy, spiritless, and purse-proud, they must needs keep their game-keepers like lords, and each according to his estate, got as many as he could well maintain, and those he employed not only to knock down a hare, or a partridge, now and then, for the master’s table, but to them he entrusted the whole defence of his estate inclosed and common, barn-yards, orchards, and kitchin-grounds, and it was thought presumption in any body else to do any thing besides running away when any body attempted to disturb the house. Lewis Baboon would have kept you forty or fifty at a time, and this when nobody was meddling with him, as he said, to guard his poultry, and attend him to church.
These fellows did nothing from morning to night, but first turn upon one heel, and then upon another, put a gun sometimes to their hip, sometimes to their nose, sometimes to their shoulder; and, in short, played so many antic tricks with a musket, that few or none of them could remember or distinguish its real use. But they bilked their landlords, cursed, swore, and bullied, wherever they went, and in many houses where such fellows were kept, nobody durst say his life was his own for them.