"OTHER TIMES, OTHER MANNERS " 231 



They doctored them, made their wills for them, hid 

 their goods for them, when they were likely to be 

 seized by the sheriffs officer ; and Archdeacon 

 England, the rector of West Stafford, was no excep- 

 tion to the rule. He was a great breeder of horses. 

 What is now the outer kitchen-garden, was then 

 covered by a long row of tumbledown stables or 

 sheds, in which the main business of his life was 

 carried on. How he discharged his archidiaconal 

 functions I do not know ; but, anyhow, he was very 

 fond of asking his neighbours to take his Sunday duty 

 for him. " England expects every man to do his 

 duty," was an echo from Trafalgar which reached his 

 little village, and acquired new significance, and a 

 double meaning, in the minds of his parishioners and 

 of the neighbouring clergy. When some one taxed 

 him with the obvious inconsistency between a sermon 

 which he had just heard him preach and his daily 

 practice, he promptly answered, with shrewd sense, 

 " Don't you do as I do, but do as I tell you." The 

 most sturdy, and not the least respectable of the 

 inhabitants of his parish, like those of the surroun- 

 ding villages, Knighton, Warmwell, Woodsford, 

 Tincleton, were all, on occasion, smugglers. They 

 would work in the fields through a long summer's 

 day ; start, at dusk, for the cliffs of Ringsted or 



