Look to the towered chimnies, which should be
The wind-pipes of good hospitalitie:——
Lo, there th'unthankful swallow takes her rest,
And fills the tunnel with her circled nest."[85:B]
That it was no very uncommon thing for country-gentlemen to spend their Christmas in London at this period, is evident from a letter preserved by Mr. Lodge, in his Illustrations of British History; it is written by William Fleetwood, afterwards Queen's Serjeant, to the Earl of Derby; is dated New Yere's Daye, 1589, and contains the following passage:—"The gentlemen of Norff. and Suffolk were commanded to deprte from London before Xtemmas, and to repaire to their countries, and there to kepe hospitalitie amongest their
neighbours.[86:A]" The fashion, however, of annually visiting the capital did not become general, nor did the character of the country-squire, such as it was in the days of Shakspeare, alter materially during the following century.[86:B]
The country-clergyman, the next character we shall attempt to notice, was distinguished, in the time of Shakspeare, by the
appellation of Sir: a title which the poet has uniformly bestowed on the inferior orders of this profession, as Sir Hugh in the Merry Wives of
Windsor, Sir Topas in the Twelfth Night, Sir Oliver in As You like It, and Sir Nathaniel in Love's Labour's lost. This custom, which was not entirely discontinued until the close of the reign of Charles II., owes its origin to the language of our universities, which confers the designation of Dominus on those who have taken their first degree or bachelor of arts, and not, as has been supposed, to any claim which the clergy had upon the order of knighthood. The word Dominus was naturally translated Sir; and as almost every clergyman had taken his first degree, it became customary to apply the term to the lower class of the hierarchy. "Sir seems to have been a title," remarks Dr. Percy, "formerly appropriated to such of the inferior clergy as were only readers of the service, and not admitted to be preachers, and therefore were held in the lowest estimation, as appears from a remarkable passage in Machell's MS. Collections for the History of Westmoreland and Cumberland, in six volumes, folio, preserved in the Dean and Chapter's library at Carlisle. The Rev. Thomas Machell, author of the Collections, lived temp. Car. II. Speaking of the little chapel of Martindale in the mountains of Westmoreland and Cumberland, the writer says, 'There is little remarkable in or about it, but a neat chapel yard, which, by the peculiar care of the old reader, Sir Richard[89:A], is kept clean, and as neat as a bowling-green.'