to make all possible resistance to the tax. Lord
Bute's personal unpopularity increased enormously, and a shoal of
squibs, caricatures, and pamphlets appeared, in which he was held up to
ridicule and contempt. One caricature represented him as 'hung on the
gallows over a fire, on which a jack-boot fed the flames, and a farmer
was throwing an excised cyder barrel into the conflagration. In rural
districts he was burnt under the effigy of a _jack-boot_, a rural
allusion to his name.'

An amusing story is told of Lord North in connection with this tax. Not
long after it had been imposed, he and Sir Robert Hamilton came to Ashe,
near Axminster, on a visit--Lord North, then a Lord of the Treasury,
distinctly uneasy as to the risk of coming into Devonshire, for the
county was still seething with dissatisfaction against the Government.
'He was one day thrown into great alarm by a large party of reapers,
who, having finished cutting the wheat of the estate, approached the
house with their hooks in their hands, shouting the usual cry, "We
have'n! we have'n!" The portentous words Lord North applied to himself,
and, pale with terror, considered himself a dead man. Sir Robert
Hamilton seized a sword, and was sallying forth to repulse the visitors,
when, meeting a member of the household, an explanation took place, by
which the fears so unconsciously excited were removed.'

It was a most ancient custom in the West--indeed, it is said to be a
remnant of the pagan rite of dedicating the first-fruits to Ceres--to
set aside either the first armful of corn that was cut or else some of
the best ears, and bind them into a little sheaf, called a 'neck'. A
fragment of the vivid description given by Miss O'Neill in 'Devonshire
Idyls' must be quoted: 'The men carried their reaping-hooks; the sheaf
was borne by the old man. Bareheaded he stood in the light of the moon.
Strange shadows flecked the mossy sward on sundown as he held the
first-fruits aloft and waved his arms.

'"We ha'un!" cried he, and the cry was long and wailing. The strange
intimation fell on the ear like an echo from pagan days. One could fancy
the fauns and weird beings of old had taught the cadence to the first
reapers of earth. "We ha'un!" cried he, and all the men in the circle
bowed to the very ground.... "We ha'un!" cried Jonas again, and again
the reapers bowed and waved. Then the old men took up another strain, at
once more jubilant and more resonant, and with an ind