ee the rattling of
trenchers, and hear the gurgling of bottles, at the first table, of the
noble family, and such stray nobility as came there; at the second
table, of knights and honorables--at the second 'first table' in the
hall of 'Sir Ralph Blackstone, Steward; the Comptroller, the Master of
the Horse, the Master of the Fish Ponds, my Lord Herbert's Preceptor,'
and such gentlemen as were under degree of a knight--these all being
'plentifully served with wine.' Of the second table there is no note of
much wine, but it still had 'hot meats from my Lord's table,' and at it
sat the Sewer with gentlemen waiters and pages to the number of
twenty-four--and even now we are not yet come to the vulgar. For at the
_third_ table sat my Lord's Chief Auditor, his Purveyor of the Castle,
Keeper of the Records--Ushers of the Hall--Clerk--Closet Keeper--Master
of the Armory--and below these divers Masters of the Hounds--Twelve
Master Grooms of the Stables, Master Falconer--Keepers of the Red Deer
Park--and below these yet one hundred and fifty 'footmen, grooms, and
other menial servants.'

Bright gleams vanish--the stately dinner parties grow dim, Masters of
Horses and Hounds go to battle, the plate is melted down, and all is sad
and sere. The young lord is sent by King Charles abroad, and
Parliamentary Fairfax comes thundering at the gate, where admittance is
refused by the venerable old marquis. Fairfax besieges boldly and is
gallantly attacked by repeated sallies. I had rather the Puritans, with
whom all my head goes, and with it half my heart, had behaved better
than they did on this occasion. For after the venerable old marquis had
fought nobly and surrendered on honorable terms, I am sorry to say he
was most dishonorably treated, the conditions of capitulation being
disgracefully violated, and the old marquis put in close prison, where
he soon died in his eighty-fifth year.--Well, well--there was abundance
of such false faith and dark villany on both sides ere the war was over.
Be it remembered that these same nobles had kept the honor too closely
to themselves, and ridiculed it out of life quite too sharply in the
'base mechanicals' to fairly expect mastery in gentility from them. And
in these same Partingtonian Biographies, I am often inclined to suspect
that the lions do some of their own carving.

Puritans sequestered and smashed the estate right and left--lead sold
for six thousand pounds, woods cut down and sold for on