Priestley says of his father Jonas that he had uniformly better spirits than any man he ever knew, and by this means was as happy towards the close of life, when reduced to poverty and dependent upon others, as in his best days. These facts are not without interest as serving to account for much that we shall have occasion to note in the character and temperament of the subject of this biography. Fieldhead, the house in which he first saw the light, had been occupied by the family for several generations. It was a small two-storey building, built of stone and slated with flag, similar in character to many of the houses still standing in the district, the long, low windows in the upper storeys betokening that they were formerly occupied by weavers. It was last lived in by Martha Priestley (Mrs Crouch), but on the death of her husband in 1786 was abandoned by the family, and, falling into decay, was pulled down about fifty years ago. The Priestleys were a simple, sober, honest, God-fearing folk, staunch Calvinists, and deeply religious. Jonas Priestley was a manufacturer of “home-spun”—a weaver and cloth dresser—two trades now distinct but then practised in common—who took his week’s work on ass-back, on roads little better than bridle-paths, to the Sunday market in Leeds. He was of a class characteristic of the district. These hand-loom weavers, who lived in the hill country lying to the west of Leeds, were generally men of small capitals; they often annexed a small farm to their business, or possessed a field or two on which to support a horse and cow, and were for the most part blessed with the comforts without the superfluities of life. During five or six days of the week they dwelt in their own little village, among trees and fields, taking no thought of the outside world and contenting themselves with the homely gossip of their farmstead or hamlet. On market day they came into the town in shoals, clad in their quaint corduroy breeches, broad-brimmed hats, and brass-buttoned coats of antique cut, bringing their produce on pack-horses, to await the visits of the merchants—the commercial aristocracy of Leeds, then a town of some 16,000 or 17,000 inhabitants—who were the agents through which the outer world received its supply of Yorkshire woollen goods. They were a shrewd, careful race, somewhat stolid and slow of speech and not given to great mental briskness or activity, keenly appreciative of the blessings of liberty and usually in sympathy with the political party to whom the cause of liberty was for the moment entrusted; sober, godly souls for the most part; regular in their attendance at public worship, and upon the whole preferring the plebeian zeal of the Chapel to the aristocratic repose of the Church.[2] [Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF PRIESTLEY.] And what a world it was in which they thus serenely dwelt apart.