Like Addison’s Sir Roger de Coverley, the Willey Squire lived a father among his tenants, a friend among his neighbours, and a good master amongst his servants, who seldom changed. He feasted the rich, and did not forget the poor, but allowed them considerable privileges on the estate; and there are a few old people—it is true there are but few—who remember interviews they had with the Squire when going to gather bilberries in the park, or when sent on some errand to the Hall. An old man, who brightened up at the mention of the Squire’s name, said, “Remember him, I think I do; he intended that I should do so. I was sent by my mother to the Hall for barm, when, seeing an old man in the yard, and little thinking it was the Squire, I said, ‘Sirrah, is there going to be any stir here to-day?’ ‘Aye, lad,’ says he, ‘come in, and see;’ and danged if he didn’t get the horse-whip and stir me round the kitchen, where he pretended to flog me, laughing the while ready to split his sides. He gave me a rare blow out though, and my mother found half-a-crown at the bottom of the jug when she poured out the barm.” “Did you ever hear of his being worsted by the sweep?” said another. “He was generally a match for most, but the sweep was too much for him. The Squire had been out, and, being caught in a storm, he called at a public-house to shelter. Seeing that it was Mr. Forester, the customers made way for him to sit next the fire, and whilst he was drying himself a sweep came to the door, and looked in; but, seeing the Squire, he was making off again. ‘Hollo,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘what news from the lower region?’ ‘Oh,’ replied the sweep, ‘things are going on there, Squire, much as they are here—the gentlemen are nearest the fire!’” A third of our informants remarked: “He was one of the old sort, but a right ’un. Why, when there was a bad harvest, and no work for men, after one of them war times, and the colliers were rioting and going to break open the shops, to tear down the flour mill, and do other damage, the old Squire was the only man that could stop them—he had such influence with the people. The poor never wanted a friend whilst old George Forester lived. There were plenty of broken victuals to be had for the fetching, a tankard of right good ale, with bread and cheese, or cold mutton, for all comers.”
The years 1774–1782 were periods of local gloom and distress, when haggard hunger and ignorant force banded together to trample down the safeguards of civil rights, and armed ruffians took the initiative in violent scrambles for food. The cavalry were called out, and fierce battles were fought in the iron districts, where the rioters sometimes took refuge on cinder heaps, which supplied them with sharp cutting missiles. In 1795 the colliers and iron-workers being in a state of commotion, were only prevented from rising by assurances that gentlemen of property were disposed to contribute liberally to their relief, and thousands of bushels of Indian corn were obtained by the Squire and others from Liverpool to add to the grain procurable in the neighbourhood to meet immediate necessities. A meeting of gentlemen, farmers, millers, and tradesmen was held at the Tontine Hotel, on the 9th of July in that year, to consider the state of things arising out of the scarcity of corn and the dearness of all other provisions, at which a committee was formed for the immediate collection of contributions and the purchase of grain at a reduction of one-fourth, or 9s. for 12s. Mr. Forester at once gave notice to all his tenants to deliver wheat to the committee at 12s., whilst he himself gave £105, and agreed to advance £700 more, to be repaid from the produce of the corn sold at a reduced price. Such were the wants of the district, the murmurs of the inhabitants, and the distinctions made between those who were considered benefactors, and others who were not, that fear was entertained of a general uprising; and application was made to Mr. Forester, both as a friend and a magistrate. He assumed more the character of the former, and his presence acted like magic upon the rough miners, who by his kindness and tact were at once put into good humour. Having brought waggons of coal, drawn with ropes, for sale, the first thing the Squire did was to purchase the coal: he then bought up all the butter in the market, and purchased all the bread in the town, he emptied the butchers’ shops in the same way, and advised the men to go home with the provisions he gave them.
We are quite aware that it might be said that Squire Forester was not a model for imitation; and it might be replied that no man ever was, altogether, even for men of his own time, much less for those of one or two generations removed, always excepting Him whose name should never be uttered lightly, and in whom the human and divine were combined. He had sufficient inherent good qualities, however, to make half a dozen ordinary modern country gentlemen popular; still his one failing, shared among the same number, might no less damn them in the eyes of society.
Some would, no doubt, have liked Dibdin’s heroes better if he had been less truthful, by making the language more agreeable to the ear, by substituting, as one writer has said, “dear me” for “damme,” and lemonade for grog; but such critics are what Dibdin himself called “lubbers” and “swabs.” In the same way, some would be for toning down the characters of Squire Forester and Parson Stephens; but this would be a mistake: an artist might as well smooth over with vegetation every out-cropping rock he finds in his foreground. We might say a great deal more about the old Squire, and the Willey Rector too, but there is no reason why we should say less. If we err, we err with the best and gravest writers of history, who, without fear or favour, wrote of things as they found them; and those who are familiar with the writings of men of the past—such as the Sixth Satire of Juvenal, will admit that men like Squire Forester were examples of modesty. Men of all grades, every day, are brought in contact with much that might more strongly be objected to in the public Press; and there is no reason why the veil should not be raised in order that we may view the past as it really was.
The fact is, the Squire found the atmosphere of the times congenial to his temperament. A very popular Shropshire rake and play writer, Wycherley, had done much to lower the tone of morality by representing peccadilloes, not as something which the violence of passion may excuse, but as accomplishments worthy of gentlemen,—his “Country Wife” and “Plain Dealer” being examples. Congreve followed in his wake, with his “Old Bachelor,” which may be judged by its apothegm:—
“What rugged ways attend the noon of life;
Our sun declines, and with what anxious strife,
What pain, we tug that galling load—a wife!”
A fair estimate of the looseness of the time may be formed from another representation:—
“The miracle to-day is, that we find
A lover true, not that a woman’s kind;”
and from the fact that even Pope, in his “Epistle to a Lady,” out of his mature experience could write—