His chief serious employment was the care of his property. He examined samples of grain, handled pigs, and on market days made bargains over a tankard with drovers and hop merchants. His chief pleasures were commonly derived from field sports, and from an unrefined sensuality.... His table was loaded with coarse plenty, and guests were cordially welcome to it. But as the habit of drinking was general in the class to which he belonged, and as his fortune did not enable him to intoxicate large assemblies daily with claret or canary, strong beer was the ordinary beverage. The quantity of beer consumed in those days was indeed enormous, for beer then was to the middle and lower classes not only all that beer now is, but all that wine, tea, and ardent spirits now are; it was only at great houses, or on great occasions, that foreign drink was placed on the board. The ladies of the house, whose business it had commonly been to cook the repast, retired as soon as the dishes had been devoured, and left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco. The coarse jollity of the afternoon was often prolonged till the revellers were laid under the table. Mr. Lecky observes:-- Among the poor ... the popular beverage was still ale or beer, THE USE OF WHICH--especially before the art of noxious adulteration was brought to its present perfection--HAS ALWAYS BEEN MORE COMMON THAN THE ABUSE. The consumption appears to have been amazing. It was computed in 1688 that no less than 12,400,000 barrels were brewed in England in a single year, though the entire population probably little exceeded 5,000,000. In 1695, with a somewhat heavier excise, it sank to 11,350,000 barrels, but even then almost a third part of the arable land of the kingdom was devoted to barley. More bluntly, of course, than Macaulay, did that scourge of iniquity, Jeremy Collier, express himself. Satirising dinner invitations, he writes:-- If the invitation was sent in a letter, and the truth spoken out, it must run in the tenor following: ‘Sir, if you please to do me the favour to dine with me, I shall do my best to drink you out of your limbs and senses, to make you say a hundred silly things, and play the fool to purpose, if ever you did it in your life. And before we part you shall be well prepared to tumble off your horse, to disoblige your coach, and make your family sick at the sight of you. And all this for an opportunity of showing with how much friendship and respect I am _your humble servant_.’ That the delights of the table were the one thing needful is well illustrated by a cross-examination recorded by Mr. Jeaffreson[168]:--