This little estate descended to my grandfather, who married Miss Biggs of Stockton, and, at his death, it came, considerably encumbered, to my father, in the year 1774, the year after I was born. Finding, during the life time of his father, that this was a very poor property to live upon as a gentleman, he turned his mind to business, and to the improvement of his fortune. He married at the age of forty-one to Miss Powell who was only nineteen, the eldest daughter of a respectable farmer of Week near Devizes, and went to live at Widdington, in the parish of Upavon, a lone farm situated upon Salisbury Plain, not within one mile of any other house whatever. The 6th day of November, 1773, gave birth to the author of these memoirs, and as I was the first born, my father having a great deal of the old family pride about him, the event was commemorated in a very memorable and extraordinary manner. It was the custom of the country to celebrate the birth of a child by inviting the friends and neighbours to partake of a _sugar-toast_ feast, which consisted of toast well baked, sliced in layers, in a large bowl, interspersed with sugar and nutmeg, well soaked in boiling ale, or what was called in that country, good old October. My father as soon as he was about to marry, anticipating the natural result, prepared and provided two hogsheads of real stingo for the occasion, it being brewed exactly fifteen bushels to the hogshead, which he liberally determined should be devoted to celebrate the happy event, which was literally carried into effect. I have very often heard those who were present, and who participated in the good cheer and rejoicing, mention these circumstances. It was usual, in that part of the country, upon these occasions, to have a day fixed and set apart for the feast, when all the neighbours were invited to partake and drink to the health of the good lady in the straw, and long life to the little stranger. But upon this occasion my father set no bounds to his joy, and determined to keep it up, which he did, till the whole to the last hoop of the stingo was gone. I have heard the nurse say that she toasted bread from morning till night for a fortnight, and that in the whole there could not have been less bread used than what was made from two bags of flour. The 6th of November was annually celebrated as long as my father lived, by a dinner which he gave to his neighbours and friends, and one thing was never forgotten, which was a bumper toast to the memory of Colonel Thomas and Miss Margery Hunt; which generally concluded by the production of the sword, which Charles the second took from his side and presented to the Colonel on his arrival in France, which my father with great pride exhibited to his friends, frequently accompanied by some part of the foregoing narrative.