Bernard Barton goes on to describe the deceased yeoman as a diligent attendant at the meeting-house, a frequent and serious reader of the Bible, and the head of an orderly and well-regulated house. He is described as knowing Dr. Watts’ hymns almost by heart, and as singing them on Sunday at meeting with equal fervour and unction. Bernard Barton feared in 1847—the date of his epistle—the breed of such men was dying out. It is to be feared in East 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.