It can hardly be said that among the inhabitants a very high state of civilisation prevailed. If thrifty and industrious, they were certainly not very refined, nor blessed with “pregnant wits,” as good Hugh Oldham affirmed, nor yet remarkable for their moral excellence. Boisterous and laughter-loving, they delighted in outdoor games and uproarious sports,—the wild merriment of the day being oftentimes followed by the wilder merriment of the evening. Bull-baiting, wrestling, and cock-fighting were the leading diversions, “unlawful gaming” and “lewdness” were frequently complained of, and the ale-houses, to which the more dissolute resorted, were the scenes of riots and feuds that not only caused annoyance and scandal to the more well-disposed, but endangered the public peace to a greater degree than we can now easily conceive. Under such circumstances it is hardly surprising that they should have entertained little reverence for their spiritual pastors, many of whom, by the way, were only a degree less ignorant and disorderly than themselves, for in those days the curate of Stretford kept an ale-house, the rector of Chorlton eked out a scanty subsistence by doing a little private pawnbroking, while the parson of Blackley was “passing rich” on a stipend of £2 3s. 4d. a year. Such was the Manchester of which Dee had become the ecclesiastical head. However apathetic he may have been as to the spiritual affairs of the parishioners committed to his care, he was by no means wanting in energy when his own temporal interests were concerned. Scarcely had he taken up his abode at the College than we find him entertaining at dinner two influential tenants—Sir John Byron, of Clayton, and his son, and bargaining with them about the price of hay before the grass was actually grown. A month later he records the “possession taking in Salford,” and he quickly found himself in litigation with the College tenants of some of the lands there. The tenants were a source of trouble, and oftentimes disturbed the even tenor of his way, while the collecting of his tithes was not unfrequently a cause of anxiety also. He complains of being “occupied with low controversies, as with Holden of Salford, and the tenants of Sir John Biron, of Faylsworth,” of “much disquietnes and controversy about the tythe-corn of Hulme,” of the “Cromsall corne-tyth” being “dowted of and half denyed,” and then “utterly denyed,” and of his riding to Sir John Byron “for a quietnes,” and “to talk with him abowt the controversy between the Colledg and his tenants.” Notwithstanding these unhappy disputations he had some pleasant days. Thus, on the 26th June (1596), as he tells us—