Memorials of old Derbyshire

by Unknown

Seeing so many Gallants now are dead?”

—was often with his father-in-law at Renishaw; and William Sacheverell, who afterwards distinguished himself so highly in Parliament, and served as a Lord of the Admiralty under King William, rode over occasionally from Morley to see his sister, Mrs. Sitwell. William Simpson, a city lawyer, came down in October, 1662, January, 1662–3, and again, bringing with him a copy of the King’s Speech to the Parliament, in June of the same year; and in the following September, “Cozen Franceys,”[95] as appears by a gap in the correspondence, followed by the expression of a hope that he was “well got home,” enjoyed the country air for two or three weeks in Derbyshire. There are casual references also in the letter-book to country neighbours who called and dined at Renishaw, as, for instance, John Bradshaw, of Brampton Hall, a cousin of the regicide, in September, 1662; Lionel Copley, of Rotherham, in July, 1665; and John Magson, of Worksop, a rich merchant, whose fortune is estimated in one of these letters at twenty-five or twenty-six thousand pounds in January, 1662–3, and November, 1664. The last was probably a Quaker, as Mr. Sitwell addresses him without ceremony by his Christian name and surname.

The household to be provided for was not a large one, and in many respects it was self-sufficing. The finer German table linen, damasked with hunting scenes, which came in soon after the Restoration, had hardly yet found its way into the midland counties, and rough table-cloths were still made in the house. Flaxen and hempen sheets, pillowbears and window curtains, and woollen blankets, were woven by the maid-servants; and I notice that in 1678–80, two stone of flax, two of hemp, and two of wool, were purchased every year for use at Renishaw. By the maids also the mattresses of the heavy four-poster beds were stuffed with feathers from the fold. Cloth sufficient to provide two suits of livery apiece for five or six men was bought at about four shillings a yard at Mr. Newton’s shop in Chesterfield, and made up in the house by John Staynrod, the village tailor. Wheat for bread, and oats for the oatcakes, so much favoured in Derbyshire, were grown on the farm, and ground with querns in the house as flour was needed; and ryebread was also eaten, probably by the servants. Pickling, preserving, and salting,[96] and the concoction of currant and gooseberry wines, were carried on under the supervision of the housekeeper; and baking, churning, and cheese-making at the ovens and dairy in the kitchen court. Ale in the cask or bottled, and November ale, and beer of various denominations—strong beer, small beer, stale beer, bottled beer, March beer, and Christmas beer—were brewed in large quantities, and about sixty-eight hogsheads represent the annual consumption.[97] The practice of laying in large quantities of salt beef and mutton at the commencement of November had already been abandoned by the richer classes, and fresh meat was eaten all the year round. From the home farm, orchards, and river, meat, fish, eggs, milk, cream, vegetables, and fruit were supplied; turkeys and fowls were bred there, and game could be obtained in any quantity from the woods, and pigeons from the dovecote. Salt fish from Scarborough or Hull was bought in Chesterfield for the Friday dinners. Wax candles for the hall and parlours were procured from George Hattersley, a chandler in the village, at the cost of four or five shillings a dozen; and tallow candles for the bedrooms were made in the house. Soap, in the form of “washing balls,” was manufactured at the farm at the cost of a shilling a dozen, and about fifty-two dozens represent the annual consumption. Pit coals were obtained from Eckington Marsh at half-a-crown a load, the carting being done upon “boon days” by Mr. Sitwell’s tenants. Groceries were bought in Chesterfield, a groom or footman being sent over on horseback, or a commission given either to the carrier or to one of the little company of “market folks” who trudged over from the village on each succeeding Saturday. At the last-named town there was an apothecary (Wood), a furniture shop (Shentall), and a bookseller (Crofts). Cases of knives for the table could be bought at six shillings in Sheffield from James Stainforth, who in 1662 served as Master Cutler. A chirurgeon (John Fleming) resided at Eckington, but on one occasion a poor boy, in whom Mr. Sitwell had interested himself, was sent over with the carrier to Nottingham for the great Dr. Thoroton’s advice.

But though a country house, at least in regard to the common necessaries of life, was supplied from the demesne, and did not as now depend upon shops in the village and neighbouring town, it is surprising to find how many small luxuries were ordered in London or even imported from the Continent. The packhorses of Hemingway, the Sheffield carrier, were constantly burdened with Westphalia hams at tenpence the pound, capers at the same price, and currants for the daily pudding; with newspapers and books, writing paper, French hats for Mr. Sitwell’s grandchildren, bottles of cinnamon water, orange flower water, strong water, and Rosa solis, and runlets of various wines. From London Mr. Sitwell procured also his own dress and that of his son, tobacco at eighteen shillings and sixpence a box, and silver plate. As might have been expected from one of the older generation, he was fond of good sack, which he ordered in London or on occasion from the “Angel” Inn at Chesterfield; but he supplied himself also with barrels of tent wine and malago from Spain, where one of his sons was a merchant. From that country also chests of oranges and lemons, and barrels of olives and of raisins, were forwarded to him. Sugar, on one occasion, he imported from Barbadoes, but it proved to be too coarse for his use. Chests and barrels too heavy for one horse to carry were sent by Nottingham wagon, or by way of the Humber and Trent to Bawtry, and thence by road to Renishaw. Letters from London to Renishaw were posted on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and arrived in time to be answered on Fridays and Tuesdays. The charge was threepence for postage, and fourpence to the “foot-post” from Chesterfield, and if carried to the posthouse they seldom failed.

I must not pass away from the subject of housekeeping without saying something about the extraordinary cheapness of meat, and especially of game, at this period. In the Renishaw “house-book” for 1671, a price is set against all the articles supplied from the farm or bought in the village. A veal is valued at ten to twelve shillings, a mutton at six to ten, a lamb at five to six, a beef at £3 15s. to £4 4s., a porket at ten to eleven shillings, and pigs at from 1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d. each. Chickens could be had for threepence and fourpence, pullets at sixpence, ducks at fourpence to eightpence, geese, capons, and turkeys at a shilling, pigeons at elevenpence or one shilling a dozen, and rabbits at sixpence to 1s. 2d. a couple. Partridges and teal were eightpence a brace, woodcock eightpence to a shilling, wild ducks a shilling, plovers fourpence to sixpence, and snipe fourpence. Cheeses were eightpence to tenpence each, and butter was fourpence a pound. Household loaves, not of white bread, were a shilling each, and flour for manchet or for the kitchen 1s. 3d. a peck.

Acquaintances Meeting in London.

According to Macaulay, not one gentleman in a hundred travelled once in seven years beyond the nearest market town; but the truth is that the country squires were often upon the road, and few who lived within five days’ journey of London failed to visit it occasionally. In Derbyshire, from the end of November until the beginning of April, the highways were impassable for wheels and very unpleasant for horsemen, and even April is said in one of these letters to be “too soon, for the ways will be bad.” Mr. Sitwell rode up to London every spring, usually in the last-named month or in May, and he sometimes visited it a second time in August. His plans were laid a month or six weeks in advance, and a week or ten days before starting a box or trunk of clothes was sent on by carrier. He left Renishaw at seven o’clock in the morning, attired in a riding suit, top boots, a horseman’s cloak, and a “mounteroe,” or Spanish travelling cap, of velvet. Pistols were borne in the holsters, for Sherwood was a noted haunt of highwaymen, and behind him rode a footman in livery, carrying his portmantle (it contained clean linen, a nightdress, nightcap, and change of clothes) and hatcase upon the saddle. The first night was spent at Nottingham, after a ride of thirty miles through the forest; the second at Harborough (twenty-eight miles); the third at Dunstable (thirty-five miles); the fourth in London (thirty miles). The charges incurred by himself, his man and horses, in riding up, amounted on one occasion to £1 13s. 6d., and in returning to £1 1s. 6d., and one horse was killed in the journey. In London, Mr. Sitwell frequented the “Greyhound” Inn in Holborn, next door to “Furnival’s” Inn, and there he paid about eight shillings and fourpence a week for chamber rent and washing, and eighteen shillings and eightpence for hay and corn for his horses. Food and minor expenses came to about £1 6s. 8d. a week. While in town, he met his friends at the Royal Exchange, and dined with them at one of the many taverns near it; strolled about in Gray’s Inn Walks; went by water to Westminster—his cousin, Roger Allestry, was a Member of Parliament; supplied himself with clothes, books, silver plate and tobacco from the various shops; visited his son, the scapegrace John, who was in the silk trade, being apprenticed to Nicholas Delves, Esquire;[98] and on Sundays attended divine service at St. Andrew’s, Holborn, or St. Paul’s. He had business also to attend to, for on one occasion I find him paying a sum of £200 “att the Southe Porche of St. Paule’s, London.” Sometimes, I suppose, he walked in Hyde Park, or visited Whitehall, where the King and Queen dined in public; but there is no evidence that he had any taste for the theatre, the cockpit, or the coffee-houses. His stay in the “Metropolitan City” usually lasted for a fortnight or three weeks, and the total cost of the visit was about twelve pounds, though as much more was often laid out upon various purchases.

Upon the ignorance and illiterateness of the country squires, Lord Macaulay is never tired of dwelling. He tells us that their language and pronunciation were “such as we should now expect to hear only from the most ignorant clowns,” and that a gentleman “passed among his neighbours for a great scholar if Hudibras and Baker’s Chronicle, Tarlton’s Jests, and the Seven Champions of Christendom lay in his hall window among the fishing rods and fowling pieces.”

Equally ill-founded, as far as I can judge, is the historian’s attack upon the “gross uneducated country gentleman,” and his assertion that in Charles the Second’s time a knight of the shire had seldom a library as good as may now be found in a servants’ hall or a tradesman’s back parlour. For the class of which he writes was at least well schooled, and few country houses were without a little collection of books upon the classics, divinity, law, and current politics. Mr. Sitwell had received an excellent education, as is evidenced by a Latin manuscript in his handwriting upon the art of logic, and several Greek and Latin schoolbooks still preserved at Renishaw. In his will, he thought his “printed books” equally worthy of mention with the pictures and maps, the wainscot, ceiling, and glass in his house at Renishaw. From the books still remaining there, and from an old catalogue taken in 1753, it is possible to reconstruct his library, and to form an opinion upon his tastes and the extent and limits of his reading. Upon the shelves in the study cupboards, Homer and Aristotle, and most, if not all, of the greater Latin writers, were represented. For divinity, there were Fox’s Acts and Monuments; Usher’s Chronology, Annals, and Body of Divinity; the Works of Tertullian, Polycarp, Eusebius, Ignatius, Chrysostom, Justin Martyr, and St. Augustine; Leigh’s Critica Sacra; Corneille’s Livre de l’imitation de Jesus Christ; Meditationes de vita Christi, by Vincentius Brunus; the Methoda Theologiæ of Andreas Hyperius; Justus’ Lipsius De Cruce; Crellius’ Of one God; Culverwell On the Light of Nature; Hakewell’s Apology; Jewel’s Apologia Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ; Durell’s View of the Reformed Church; A Defence of the Catholic Faith, by Grotius; Dr. Fenton’s Six Sermons against the Church of Rome; Spencer On Prodigies; Hammond’s Fundamentals, and his volume on God’s Grace and Decrees; a History of the Inquisition; Whittaker’s Controversial Tracts of 1588; Bilson’s Anti-Christian Rebellion of 1585; Wigand’s Jack of both Sides, published in 1591; and Fuller’s History of the Holy War. Law was represented by Coke’s Institutes; Pulton’s Statutes, and his works on the King’s Peace and on Offences and Misdemeanours; Scobell’s Acts of Parliament; Rastell’s Statutes; the Institutes of Justinian; an Explicatio Juris inter Gentes, and the Civiles Doctrinæ of Lipsius; History by Daniel’s Wars of York and Lancaster; Rushworth’s Historical Collections; Sleidan’s History of the Four Empires of Antiquity; and a Historia Universale, published at Venice in 1605. Literature by Bacon’s Essays and his Latin Works; the Colloquies and Praise of Folly of Erasmus; the Princeps of Machiavelli; Milton’s Defensio Populi Anglicani; and King Charles’ Works. Other books worth mentioning were Boquet’s Discours execrable des Sorciers, and his Histoire de Faust; a Life of Tycho Brahe; Galen’s Medicine; Descartes’ Philosophy; Galileo’s Systema Cosmicum; Harvey’s De Generatione Animalium and De Cordis et Sanguinis Motu; Burgersdijck’s Philosophia Moralis; Gassend’s Astronomy; Alsted’s Physica Harmonia; Baker’s Arithmetic of 1607; Tacquet’s Mathematics; Oughtred’s Trigonometry; Butler’s Rethorick; Keckerman’s Logic, and the Logic of Molinæus; Wright’s Theory of Navigation; Bosse’s L’Art de Perspective; Mendez Pinto’s Voyages, translated by Cogan; Hornus de Originibus Americanis; Corderio’s Colloquies; an Introduction to Geography; a book on the Art of Speaking, and another, published in 1639, on the Actions of Gunnery. Tied up in parcels were a number of pamphlets relating to the Civil War and Restoration, and including the Bishop of Worcester’s Sermon on the Coronation of Charles II., Cotton’s Panegyrick on the King, A Noble Salutation to Charles Stewart, and A Plea for a Limited Monarchy, published in the same year. Dr. Gardiner’s Assize Sermon of 1653 must not be forgotten, in which he speaks of his “honoured friend and patron,” Mr. Sitwell, as a “cordial friend to Religion and Learning, Piety and Sobriety”; nor Evelyn’s Sylva, in which the owner of Renishaw is once mentioned, for he had supplied the author with information concerning the giant oaks of the Rivelin and Sherwood. The library as a whole is that of a practical man who wished to make the best of both worlds, and to whom the classics, divinity, law, politics and science were the only subjects worthy of serious attention. Milton had not yet published his Paradise Lost, and to the country squire of that day literature meant the classics, and English poetry and prose were a world unknown.