Houses and gardens such as those which I have just described can hardly have been the work of coarse and illiterate men. Their beauty and appropriateness, to which Lord Macaulay was blind, are recognised by the better taste of to-day. One can see that they were planned with infinite care and contrivance, every natural peculiarity of site, climate, and outlook being turned to account, and that the country squires who built them were thinking not merely of their own selfish enjoyment, but of future ages. In the marriage indenture of Mr. Sitwell’s eldest son in 1656, one of the considerations mentioned is that the said messuage and lands “may be settled and established in the name and blood of the said George Sitwell the ffather, soe long as it shall please God to continue the same.” From such phrases one learns not only the old builders’ pride in their houses, but the spirit which animated them, and which alone can inspire good work in building and laying out. Renishaw was a quieter place than it had been ten years before, when Mrs. Sitwell was alive, and the house full of young people; but its owner, though he “hated ill-husbandry,” still kept a plentiful house. He was constantly visited by various relations and friends, and throughout the summer neighbouring gentlemen would occasionally ride over to dinner and bowls, and Yorkshire acquaintances call and drink at the gates, or rest their horses for an hour or two on the way to London. Mr. Sitwell’s eldest son, and his daughters and sons-in-law, were often with him, and Christmas especially, when the hall was decorated with holly and ivy, and the Chesterfield and Staveley fiddlers came over, and there was dancing in the great and card playing in the little parlours, was a time of entertainment and family reunion.[86] The preparations for Christmas and the New Year began early in November with the brewing of a couple of hogsheads of “Christmas beer” and the manufacture of “a brawne”—a mighty dish, for it is valued in the household book at £2, the price of four muttons or forty turkeys. When that season had arrived, the fat hogs were killed, gifts were made to the servants, and money distributed among the poor of the parish; turkeys, fowls, and rolls of brawn were sent as “tokens” to absent friends; the tenants came with their rent capons,[87] were regaled in the hall with beer, beef, mince pie, and plum porridge, and spent the evening in boisterous games; and a doe was usually sent over from Sheffield Park as a present from the Duke of Norfolk. It appears by one of these letters that Francis Sitwell and his wife and children were always expected from Gainsborough at Christmas, and no doubt the Wigfalls came across in the evenings from their house a few hundred yards away, the Burtons and Stones from Mosborough, and Dr. Gardiner,[88] whom Mr. Sitwell had presented to the living of Eckington eight years before, brought his children from the rectory.