POCKET ALMANACKS AT RENISHAW. 1 97 



private expenditure. In December, 1697, some two years after 

 his wife's death, he sold his horses and live stock, let Renishaw 

 for a term of three years to Mr. Sympson, and came on the 7th 

 January, 1698, to reside with his brother, Francis Sitwell, 

 merchant, at his house in Dyer's Court, Aldermanbury, London. 

 His friends in the country, in accordance with a social usage 

 which I never seen mentioned elsewhere, presented him before 

 parting with half-crowns " to be drunk " in London with mutual 

 acquaintances. Upon his arrival, he sought out " Cosen 

 Sacheverell's taylor," made the customary bargains with barber 

 and laundress, carried out a few small commissions for his friends, 

 bought some lottery tickets, and learnt a receipt for boot polish, 

 which is closely followed by " a cure for your corns." " Wagon's 

 Coffee House, near the House of Lords," was probably that to 

 which he attached himself, unless he had already joined "Will's 

 Coffee House, in Fuller's Rents, Holbourn," the address to which 

 his letters were directed during later visits to London. In 

 January of the following year he took lodgings at ;^2 los. od. per 

 quarter at Mrs. Pocock's, in Cursitor's Alley, and arranged to 

 board with his Aunt Plumptre. On October the 21st, 1703, he 

 took chambers, at the rent of six shillings a week, at Mr. Carlton's, 

 a barber who, I believe, lived next door to the King's Arms 

 Tavern, in Basing Hall Street, and here he continued to reside 

 during many of his later visits to London. The mania for 

 lotteries seems to have been in full swing in London in 1698, but 

 they were going out of fashion a year or two afterwards, and the 

 almanacks for 1720 and 1721 seem to indicate by their silence 

 that the wild speculation, which culminated in the South Sea 

 Bubble, had no attractions for the prudent and the well-informed. 

 Country gentlemen in the seventeenth century were educated 

 with a tlioroughness which is absolutely unknown amongst their 

 descendants. Francis Sitwell, when only four years and one 

 month old, was sent with Richard Townrow (probably a poor boy 

 of the village) to Mr. Cooke's day school. Five years later, in 

 1 69 1, he was being educated at the time-honoured grammar 

 school of Chesterfield, and paid ten pounds yearly to the school- 



