[84] All these courts and gardens are shown in a map of 1756, which gives also a small sketch of the house.
[85] The practice of archery was still considered a useful physical exercise for boys. In July, 1665, Starkye paid a shilling for a bow and arrows for Timothy Treeton, the orphan son of a substantial Eckington yeoman and then fourteen years of age.
[86] Letters from Mr. Sitwell’s sons at Aleppo and Seville always reached him at Christmas. The business of keeping Christmas seems to have ended with Twelfth Night. On December 22nd, 1662, Mr. Sitwell arranges to meet a former steward, Robert Haigh, “on Munday next after the Twelfth day.”
[87] The last mention I have found of rent capons is in a lease of 6th April, 1713, whereby Mr. Sitwell’s grandson and namesake lets to Thomas Staniforth a small farm at the Ford. Staniforth, in addition to the rent, was to pay “one good Rent Capon every Christmas.” Before the middle of the eighteenth century the practice of entertaining tenants at Renishaw had gone out, and on the 17th January, 1746–7, Francis Sitwell pays to Isaiah Dixon, who kept an ale-house at Eckington, his “Bill for entertaining my tenants last Christmas.”—See Fam. Min. Gent., ii., 841.
[88] He had been Proctor of Cambridge University in 1649, and after the Restoration was a chaplain to the King. Dr. Gardiner was a fine preacher, as may be seen from his sermon in praise of Derbyshire, quoted in the History of Ashbourne, 1839, page 204. A copy of his Assize sermon, entitled “Moses and Aaron brethren,” and dedicated to George Sitwell, Esquire, High Sheriff of the County of Darbie, may be seen in Sir Henry Bemrose’s library. Francis Sitwell had been his pupil at Corpus Christi. See also Master’s History of Corpus Christi College and the Gentleman’s Magazine for April, 1776.
[89] So harvest suppers were called in Derbyshire. The labourers at Renishaw were sometimes entertained earlier in the year:—
£ s. d.
“30 June, 1666. For 20 men’s Dinners att Stones att 8d. per man 0 13 4
”For ale then 0 6 8.”
Ellen Stones (her husband was a blackmith) kept an alehouse in Eckington. At these dinners or suppers John Hunt, who was the oldest labourer in Mr. Sitwell’s employment, took the chair.
[90] Lyson’s Derbyshire, 257.
[91] It was the common practice at this time to dine in the parlour, but at some houses meals were still served in the hall. Henry Hastings in Charles the First’s time certainly used his parlour for this purpose (see Lord Shaftesbury’s Autobiography), and the Sacheverells at Barton did so in 1680. In an inventory of Furniture at Renishaw, taken in 1698, “the long table” appears in the hall and not in the Great Parlour, and in the latter room was an old harpsichord. Mr. Sitwell and his son may sometimes have dined in the Little Parlour in cold weather when they were alone, but undoubtedly the hall was the proper dining-room of the house.