CHAPTER IV 

 A TENANT FARMER 



A good type — Hope for the tenant farmer — A race of yeomen — An ancient 

 home — The farmer's sire — Old hunting days — Sir Thomas Mostyn — 

 Griff Lloyd, a hunting parson — Some famous masters of hounds — 

 A farming start — Capital put into the land — Hereford cattle — Holding 

 wool — '34 port — Walnuts and cowslip wine — Home-brewed ale — The 

 wallet and bottles — Recreations — The market ordinary — Hard times 

 — Racing and coursing — Idiosyncrasies — A well-spent life. 



HE died in the year 1897, ^^ the age of seventy- 

 eight, a type of those substantial tenant farmers 

 of the shires who, about the middle of the last century, 

 may be said to have reached the height of their pros- 

 perity. For full five-and-twenty years bad times, changed 

 conditions of agriculture, and foreign competition have 

 dealt heavily with the once prosperous tenant farmers ; 

 and yet I think there are signs that they have seen the 

 worst of the bad times, and are slowly turning the 

 corner. Rents have been greatly reduced ; corn has 

 shown brief signs of better prices ; expenses have 

 been everywhere cut down ; and now vacant farms are 

 more in demand than they have been for years past. 

 I believe there is yet hope for the tenant farmers, who, 

 with the faults and failings of poor humanity, have yet 

 so many good points. Take them all round, there is 

 not in Britain a cleaner-bred, cleaner-living, more 

 honest, manly, and straightforward class of men than 

 this. Certain types of civilisation we can well afford 

 to spare ; it is needless to name them, they are numer- 

 ous enough. But we can ill spare the tenant farmer. 



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