ridges, it being never levelled since it was ploughed;
they used round sand bowls, and it had a banqueting-house
like a stand, a large one built in a tree. He
kept all manner of sport-hounds that ran buck, fox,
hare, otter, and badger, and hawks long and short
winged; he had all sorts of nets for fishing:
he had a walk in the New Forest and the manor of Christ
Church. This last supplied him with red deer,
sea and river fish; and indeed all his neighbours’
grounds and royalties were free to him, who bestowed
all his time in such sports, but what he borrowed to
caress his neighbours’ wives and daughters,
there being not a woman in all his walks of the degree
of a yeoman’s wife or under, and under the age
of forty, but it was extremely her fault if he were
not intimately acquainted with her. This made
him very popular, always speaking kindly to the husband,
brother, or father, who was to boot very welcome to
his house whenever he came. There he found beef
pudding and small beer in great plenty, a house not
so neatly kept as to shame him or his dirty shoes,
the great hall strewed with marrow bones, full of
hawks’ perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers,
the upper sides of the hall hung with the fox-skins
of this and the last year’s skinning, here and
there a polecat intermixed, guns and keepers’
and huntsmen’s poles in abundance. The
parlour was a large long room, as properly furnished;
on a great hearth paved with brick lay some terriers
and the choicest hounds and spaniels; seldom but two
of the great chairs had litters of young cats in them,
which were not to be disturbed, he having always three
or four attending him at dinner, and a little white
round stick of fourteen inches long lying by his trencher,
that he might defend such meat as he had no mind to
part with to them. The windows, which were very
large, served for places to lay his arrows, crossbows,
stonebows, and other such like accoutrements; the corners
of the room full of the best chose hunting and hawking
poles; an oyster-table at the lower end, which was
of constant use twice a day all the year round, for
he never failed to eat oysters before dinner and supper
through all seasons: the neighbouring town of
Poole supplied him with them. The upper part
of this room had two small tables and a desk, on the
one side of which was a church Bible, on the other
the Book of Martyrs; on the tables were hawks’
hoods, bells, and such like, two or three old green
hats with their crowns thrust in so as to hold ten
or a dozen eggs, which were of a pheasant kind of
poultry he took much care of and fed himself; tables,
dice, cards, and boxes were not wanting. In the
hole of the desk were store of tobacco-pipes that
had been used. On one side of this end of the
room was the door of a closet, wherein stood the strong
beer and the wine, which never came thence but in
single glasses, that being the rule of the house exactly
observed, for he never exceeded in drink or permitted
it. On the other side was a door into an old chapel


