Supper, the second “state meal”[92] of the day, must have been early too; and after a pipe of tobacco, a tankard of ale, and a game of cards or shovel-board in the great parlour, the evening finished with family prayer. On Sundays, the old coach, with its two bay mares, took Mr. Sitwell and his son down to church at Eckington; there, in the large square family pew by the second pillar on the right of the nave, with the servants ranged behind them, they listened to the village fiddlers and Dr. Gardiner’s learned but lengthy sermon; and when service was over, they carried the doctor and his wife back to dinner at the hall. Mr. Sitwell was a good judge of horses (in 1666 he was buying horses for Lord Ogle’s troop), and took some trouble in the breeding of them;[93] his peace-offering of four pheasants to the Duke of Newcastle in January, 1664–5, shows that he shot with a fowling-piece; the use of two coursing similes in the letter-book suggests that he may have kept greyhounds; and it is likely enough that he occasionally rode with Lord Frecheville’s staghounds,[94] for the pale of Staveley Park bordered upon his demesne. He was certainly an active man in spite of his years, and fond of an outdoor life. [89] So harvest suppers were called in Derbyshire. The labourers at Renishaw were sometimes entertained earlier in the year:— £ s. d. “30 June, 1666. For 20 men’s Dinners att Stones att 8d. _per man_ 0 13 4 ”For ale then 0 6 8.” Ellen Stones (her husband was a blackmith) kept an alehouse in Eckington. At these dinners or suppers John Hunt, who was the oldest labourer in Mr. Sitwell’s employment, took the chair. [90] Lyson’s _Derbyshire_, 257. [91] It was the common practice at this time to dine in the parlour, but at some houses meals were still served in the hall. Henry Hastings in Charles the First’s time certainly used his parlour for this purpose (see Lord Shaftesbury’s Autobiography), and the Sacheverells at Barton did so in 1680. In an inventory of Furniture at Renishaw, taken in 1698, “the long table” appears in the hall and not in the Great Parlour, and in the latter room was an old harpsichord. Mr. Sitwell and his son may sometimes have dined in the Little Parlour in cold weather when they were alone, but undoubtedly the hall was the proper dining-room of the house. [92] Lyson’s _Derbyshire_, v. [93] A payment of £1 in February, 1666–7, “about a horse’s leaping,” is recorded in Starkye’s account-book.