HISTORY OF HARTING. 2OI 



I fear, be all over the country. My blessing a/ends all ; 

 my head is so distracted I cannot answer my dearest 



child's letter I am, dear Mr. Caryll, 



" Y r - affectionate Mother, 



" M. MOLYNEUX. 



" Y e Bailife say'd he was to come again on another 

 account w ch - is Harper. 



" For Mr. Caryll, at Lady Holt, near Midhurst." 



The starved garrison of Lady Holt still held out. 

 Mutton, Hunt wrote word, was 3|d. a pound, for there 

 was a terrible mortality among the sheep in 1754.* 

 Butter was 7fd. per pound, and boiling peas (the 

 usual diet of the poor from the days of Piers Plowman) 

 8s. per bushell. The discreet shopkeepers of Petersfield 

 began to limit the credit of Lady Holt. " M rs - Peace 

 will let us have a few candles and some soap, but she 

 has a very small quantity, the reason is as she told me 

 as she can't get tallow, nor any other persons in Peters- 

 field, the cattle being so poor. She begs your Hon r - 

 will please to order her money, for she is in great want." 

 Yet Caryll was ordering fifty ton of hay of Farmer 

 Blackmore at 403. per ton, as they sold it in Harting. 



Mr. Weaver computes from documents at Uppark, 

 that between the years 1746 and 1762, the debts of 

 John Caryll amounted to upwards of .30,000, and 

 that 53 judgments were entered in the King's Bench 

 against him. The first sale of the Caryll land took 

 place in 1755, after an Act of Parliament had been 

 obtained, which reversed the entail. Caryll had no 

 male heir. Lady Dorothy's only children were a son 

 who died young, and a daughter, who never married. 



* The sheep " dye very fast and some of them fatt, and most 

 in good case. Farmer Barnard has sent above a score here for 

 the doggs : Farmer Clarke, a week ago, had lost upwards of 100 

 more than during 17 years he had held the farm. Many fawns 

 and young deer have died at Lady Holt." Hunt to Caryll, 

 April, 1754. 



