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do to this very part of the country—evidently to part of Peterchurch itself. The 
title of Vaughan’s book is preceded by several bits of verse in praise of the 
author by his friends, and the book is addressed to the “‘ Right Hon. William, 
Earle of Pembroke, K.G.” Extract 1 :—‘‘I purpose to raise a golden world in 
the golden vale in Herefordshire (being the pride of all that country). . . 
being richest, yet from want of employment, plentifullest of poor in the kingdom 
- five hundred poor within 1} miles of my house spin flax, hempe, and 
hurdes. . . . . In May, June, July, make whey, curdes, butter-milk, and 
such belly provision. As mountes or moles hunt after worms, so these idelers 
live intolerable by other means. . . . . . August, September, October, — 
gather eares of corne, and do much harme. . . . . Ihave seen 300 leazers or 
gleaners in one gentleman’s cornfield at once . . . . They follow spoyle not 
like soldiers but like thieves. . . . They pillage rye, barley, pease and oats, 
&e. . . . . Atsame time robbe orchards, gardens, hopyards, and crab-trees, 
and what by begging and stealing they do maintain themselves through November, 
December, January. Not one of them has five shillings to buy bale of flaxe. 
Some run to Hereford to fetch some. . . . and bring } bushel of corne 3 or 4 
miles off. . . . tohelpe their miseries. I have reared my mill governed by 
a little bastard brooke . . . . and I built it in spite of envious persons.” 
Now Gentlemen, I believe I may state how that one of Vaughan’s houses was 
where Hinton Farm now is—200 or 300 yards from Peterchurch Church. There 
was an old mantel-piece in that house in my time, bearing, I think, a rough 
sculpture of his arms—three boys’ heads, wreathed round their necks with many 
snakes, and hisname, The bastard brooke, he speaks of, was doubtless the little 
river Dore. . . . . The mill, I have thought, most probably was on the 
stream just opposite my former, and the present vicar’s, house at Peterchurch. 
Well, wherever the mill was, he says he proposes to build close to it places for 
every trade, and now comes a long list, ending with two vittelers, with the sign 
of the Green Dragon and Talbot, and that he means engaging two thousand 
persons in the commonwealth. Nor was Vaughan mindful only of the temporal 
well-being of his neighbours, but he had a care for their spiritual welfare also, 
and sought out a famous preacher, to be maintained for his mechanicals. . . . 
‘* A benefice being voyde neere unto mee (which I take to be Peterchurch), I got 
presentation for a young minister of good witte and good memory, and a pretty 
dribble of learning.” . . . This he adds a little later on. ‘‘ There was not 
two sermons in the Golden Vale this 500 years, until my Lord his Grace of 
Canterbury that now is.” . . . He tells a story of how an old monk on 
dissolution of Abbey of Doier expounded in this place, without license, but made 
such a mess of his preaching that ‘‘at his end he left neither Protestant, Puritan, 
nor Papist, but a few more inclined to masses than sound religion. Then comes, 
to stop this state of things, a parson on the scene, who has four services a year in 
each church” . . . meaning, as far as one can gather, Dorstone or Peterchurch. 
After this he gets a young parson in to help him, and has eight services in each 
church, seven early. He speaks of this preacher venturing his life 16 times over 
great river Wye and down huge hill, clearly the Dorstone hill. 
