A TENANT FARMER 



The subject of this sketch, whom I will call John 

 Weston, was born in the year 1819 in a midland shire 

 — that of Northampton. In that shire his ancestors had 

 been since Henry VII.'s time mainly yeomen farmers, 

 occupying their own land. But, as Macaulay pointed 

 out long ago, the yeoman has, since Charles II.'s 

 reign, been a steadily vanishing race. John Weston's 

 father was the last of a family of these sturdy yeomen. 

 He lived in his own house, and farmed two hundred 

 acres of his own land. In that ancient sandstone 

 house, with its mullioned windows, low yet spacious 

 rooms, and the date 1651 carved above its front door- 

 way, was born John Weston, one of a numerous 

 family of children. The old gentleman, his father, lived 

 plainly yet comfortably. He was one of the old port-wine 

 school, and when, at rare intervals, he entertained some 

 of his neighbours after a coursing meeting or the like, 

 his excellent cellar must, by his son's account, have 

 suffered heavily from the assaults of the two and three 

 bottle men of that period. The old gentleman was a 

 famous shot, and with a neighbour commanded most 

 of the partridge-shooting for miles around. His long- 

 barrelled duck gun hung for many a long year in the 

 kitchen of John Weston. 



Hunting was always a passion with John Weston, 

 and one of the earliest of his recollections was the 

 meet of foxhounds in front of his father's house. The 

 hounds were then hunted by Sir Thomas Mostyn, a 

 Welsh baronet, and Sir Thomas and his long-skirted 

 huntsman, Tom Wingfield, never faded out of his 

 recollection. Nor did old Griff Lloyd, a stout, ruddy- 

 faced Welsh clergyman, cousin to Sir Thomas, a 

 survival of the port-wine-drinking, hunting parsons 

 of the eighteenth century, who loved the chase better 

 than he loved anything else in the world, and, despite 



35 



