By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 



207 



continue for ever, and call the lands after their own name." But 

 whatever the origin of the names one thing 1 is certain, that they 

 speak to the history of the parish, and that they are, and ever will 

 be, mixed up in that history. Therefore they demand a record. 1 



Our Occupations and Amusements. 



We have very few manorial records, and I judge of our ancient 

 customs partly from the facts recorded in our parish registers and in 

 our manorial leases, and partly from analogous facts recorded of 

 neighbouring parishes. 



I have elsewhere given some account of the population of our 

 parish up to the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, and I 

 find that after that time our society was made up of the gentry or 

 nobility at the manor house, the parson and the yeoman, and of 

 the hand-working classes. We had a succession of husbandmen, 

 blacksmiths, masons, bakers, tailors, shoemakers, grocers, carpenters, 

 and agricultural laborers, with now and then a clothier, a weaver, 

 a maltster, a shearing-man, and even a fiddler. 



So I imagine that up to the beginning of this century our parish 

 was fairly self-contained and self-supporting, even down to our 

 amusements. 



Fiddling was one of our amusements, evidently, and so was cock- 

 fighting; and we can well imagine the excitement in the parish 

 when, in 1656, Parson Allambrigge pitted his cock against Chris- 

 topher Morris', and afterwards iecorded his victory in the registers. 

 Probably, too, we had the game of " nyne holes/'' forbidden at one 

 time, but still surviving in " pitch penny/'' 



Our amusements now are perhaps more varied. Our squires, in 

 Mr. Blinman and Mr. Long's time, kept harriers and greyhounds, 

 but their kennels even are now removed and give protection to the 

 more profitable fowl-yard. Our nearest pack of hounds — the Duke's 

 — pays us an occasional visit, but our country is a terra ignota in this 

 respect to most sportsmen, and our squires resort to the more ignoble 

 pursuit of shooting. Rabbits to them are happily vermin, and hares 

 and partridges are scarce ; but tame birds are turned out to become 



Appendix P. 



