nger_,
1858, p. 184.

[562:A] Old Churches, i. 25.

[562:B] 1772.

CHAPTER LXXII.

THE REV. DEVEREUX JARRATT.

THE REV. DEVEREUX JARRATT was born in the County of New Kent, Virginia,
in January, 1733, of obscure parentage. His grandfather, an Englishman,
had served during the civil wars under Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex,
and hence probably was derived the Christian name of the grandson. His
grandmother was a native of Ireland. His father was a carpenter, and
from the manner in which he and his family lived, some idea may be
formed of the condition of the common people in that day. Their food
consisted of the produce of the soil, except a little sugar, which was
used only on rare occasions. Their clothes were all of maternal
manufacture, except hats and shoes, and these last were worn only in the
winter. They not only used no tea or coffee themselves, but they knew no
family that did use them. Meat and bread and milk constituted the diet
of that class. They looked upon the gentry as a superior caste. Jarratt,
in his autobiography, describing his early days, says: "For my part, I
was quite shy of them, and kept off at an humble distance. A periwig in
those days was a distinguishing badge of gentle-folk, and when I saw a
man riding the road near our house with a wig on, it would so alarm my
fears and give me such a disagreeable feeling, that I dare say I would
run off as for my life." He lived to see society reduced to the
opposite, and, in his opinion, worse extreme of republican levelling,
insubordination, and irreverence. His early education was confined to
reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic, some short prayers, and the
church catechism. Upon his father's death, Robert, the eldest son,
inherited the land, and Devereux's share of the personal property was
twenty-five pounds, Virginia currency, which he was to receive when he
should reach the age of twenty-one. The relative value of money was four
times greater then than it was fifty years afterwards. A good horse
could be bought for five pounds, and a good cow and calf for a pistole,
or three dollars and sixty cents. At eight or nine years of age young
Jarratt was sent to school, and so continued, with great interruptions,
for three or four years. By this time he had learned to read the Bible
indifferently, to write a sorry hand, and had acquired some knowledge of
arithmetic, and this closed his educational curriculum. Being placed now
under th