st Anglia the race is quite extinct. In
our meeting-house at Wrentham, when I was a lad, there were several such.
I am afraid there is not one there now. The sons and daughters have left
the old rustic houses, and gone out into the world. They have become
respectable, and go to church, and have lost a good deal of the vigour
and independence of their forefathers. In all the East Anglian
meeting-houses fifty years ago such men abounded. Of a Sunday, with
their blue coats and kerseymere knee-breeches, and jolly red laces, they
looked more like country squires than common farmers. They drove up to
the meeting-house yard with very superior gigs and cattle. In their
houses creature comforts of all known kinds were to be found. Tea--a
hearty meal, not of mere bread-and-butter, but of ham and cake as
well--was served up in the parlour, with a glass or two of real
home-brewed ale, amber-coloured, of a quality now unknown, and which was
wonderfully refreshing after a long walk or drive. Then, if it were
summer, there was a stroll in the big garden, well planted with
fruit-trees and strawberry-beds, and adorned with flowers--old-fashioned,
perhaps, but rich, nevertheless, in colour and perfume. In one corner
there was sure to be an arbour, all covered with honeysuckle, such as
Izaak Walton himself would have approved; and there, while the seniors
over their long pipes discussed politics and theology, and corn and
cattle, the younger ones would make their first feeble efforts, all
unconsciously, perhaps, to conjugate the verb 'to love.' Outside the
church organizations these old yeomen lived and died. There was a
flavour of the world about them. They would dine at market ordinaries,
and perhaps would stop an hour in the long room of the public-house,
where they put up their horses, to smoke a pipe and take a drop of
brandy-and-water for the good of the landlord. Now and then--sometimes
to the sorrow of their wives, who were often church-members--they would
join, as I have indicated, in a song of an objectionable character when
severely criticised. Perhaps their parson would be much exercised on
their behalf; but surely the noble spirit of humanity in these old
yeomen, at any rate, was as worthy of admiration as the Puritanic faith
of the past--or as the honest doubt of the present age. If I mistake
not, the fine old yeoman to whom Bernard Barton referred lived not far
from Seckford Hall.

Woodbridge has some claim