s soon as the
vicar's foot was thrown across its back; nor would the rein be drawn in
the nine miles between Northiam and the Vicarage door. Debt was the
man's proper element; he used to skulk from arrest in the chancel of
his church; and the speed of Captain may have come sometimes handy. At
an early age this unconventional parson married his cook, and by her he
had two daughters and one son. One of the daughters died unmarried; the
other imitated her father, and married "imprudently." The son, still
more gallantly continuing the tradition, entered the army, loaded
himself with debt, was forced to sell out, took refuge in the Marines,
and was lost on the Dogger Bank in the war-ship _Minotaur_. If he did
not marry below him, like his father, his sister, and a certain
great-uncle William, it was perhaps because he never married at all.

The second brother, Thomas, who was employed in the General Post Office,
followed in all material points the example of Stephen, married "not
very creditably," and spent all the money he could lay his hands on. He
died without issue; as did the fourth brother, John, who was of weak
intellect and feeble health, and the fifth brother, William, whose brief
career as one of Mrs. Buckner's satellites will fall to be considered
later on. So soon, then, as the _Minotaur_ had struck upon the Dogger
Bank, Stowting and the line of the Jenkin family fell on the shoulders
of the third brother, Charles.

Facility and self-indulgence are the family marks; facility (to judge by
these imprudent marriages) being at once their quality and their defect;
but in the case of Charles, a man of exceptional beauty and sweetness,
both of face and disposition, the family fault had quite grown to be a
virtue, and we find him in consequence the drudge and milk-cow of his
relatives. Born in 1766, Charles served at sea in his youth, and smelt
both salt-water and powder. The Jenkins had inclined hitherto, as far as
I can make out, to the land service. Stephen's son had been a soldier;
William (fourth of Stowting) had been an officer of the unhappy
Braddock's in America, where, by the way, he owned and afterwards sold
an estate on the James River, called after the parental seat; of which I
should like well to hear if it still bears the name. It was probably by
the influence of Captain Buckner, already connected with the family by
his first marriage, that Charles Jenkin turned his mind in the direction
of the navy; and i