demolished all
Jack's inclosures in a trice.

These frequent defeats rendered Jack nearly frantic. He now began to
quarrel even with his best friends, not a few of whom, though they had
gone with him a certain length, now left his house, and told him plainly
they would never set foot in it again. He burst forth into loud
invectives against Martin, who had always been a good friend to his
penny subscriptions, and more than once had come to his assistance when
Jack was hard pressed by Hugh, a dissenting schoolmaster, between whom
and Jack there had long been a bloody feud. Jack now denounced Martin in
set terms; accused him of being in the pay of Peter, with whom he said
he had been holding secret conferences of late at the Cross-Keys; and of
setting the Squire's mind against him (Jack)--whereas poor Martin, till
provoked by Jack's abuse to defend himself, had never said an unkind
word against him. Finding, however, that, with all his efforts, he did
not make much way with the men, Jack directed his battery chiefly
against the women, who were easily caught by his sanctimonious air, and
knowing nothing earthly of the subject, took for gospel all that Jack
chose to tell them. He held love-feasts in his house up to a late hour,
at which he generally harangued on the subject of the persecutions which
he endured. He vowed the justices were all in a conspiracy against him;
that they were constantly intruding into his grounds, notwithstanding
his warnings that spring-guns were set in the premises; that on one
occasion a tall fellow of a sheriff's officer had made his way into his
house and served him with a writ of _fieri facias_ even in the midst of
one of his assemblies, a disgrace he never could get over; that he could
not walk ten yards in any direction, or saunter for an instant at the
corner of a street, without being ordered by a policeman to move on; in
short, that he lived in perpetual terror and anxiety--and all this
because he had done his best to save them and their children from the
awful scourge of deboshed and despotical ushers. At the conclusion of
these meetings he invariably handed round his hat, into which the silly
women dropped a good many shillings, which Jack assured them would be
applied for the public benefit, meaning thereby his own private
advantage.

Jack, however, with all his craze, was too knowing not to see that the
women, beyond advancing him a few shillings at a time, would do little
for his c