For it was not merely the English democracy that so hated the notion of a standing army, but the country squires were among its stoutest opponents, since, as officers of the militia, it reduced them at once to an inferior military position. The young officer of Queen Anne’s time appears in the provinces as a gentleman from whom the superior airs and graces of a man of the world, familiar even with Continental usages, are to be looked for, and no doubt resented by the country bucks. Brawls on this account with civilians were fairly frequent. The hospitable squire himself seems to accept with equanimity a slightly patronising attitude from his military guest. For the virtue of his daughters he lives in a constant state of alarm while the terrible captains, lieutenants, and ensigns, with their fine uniforms and insinuating worldly ways, are in the neighbourhood. It must be admitted that the ladies themselves give some cause for this anxiety.
But to return to our muttons. Several of the older families of Wiltshire spring from the cloth manufacture which flourished so early in that great wool-producing country. Others arose from like sources and died out after a few generations of squiredom, leaving no memory but that emblazoned upon the walls of their parish church, and maybe some gem of a small Tudor or Jacobean manor-house now occupied by a big sheep-farmer of more sumptuous life and habit than the builder. Wilts, Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, and Salop, in whole or part, I may say at once, are more particularly in my mind in these pages, for the excellent reason that I know them more intimately than any of those other portions of England which could be taken as typical for the purpose in hand. But I feel tolerably confident that what can be said of Worcester or Wilts will apply to Yorkshire or Norfolk. The extremities of the country, on the other hand, may be not inaptly illustrated by the ancient tag, or one may fairly say ‘brag,’ of the always rather money-worshipping and comfort-loving Englishman:
‘A squire of Wales, a Knight of Cales,
And a laird of the North Countree:
A yeoman of Kent, with his yearly rent,
Could buy them out all three.’
Here again is the whimsical lament of a Cromwellian sequestrator on the Welsh border:
‘Radnorsheer, poor Radnorsheer!
Never a park and never a deer,