The Londoner, too, may have been of that wealthy city connection who lived gorgeously, and, as we know, not merely entertained the higher nobility and men of wit and fashion, but were often welcomed guests at the tables of the great. Such a man’s outlook on life and knowledge of the world must have been in inverse ratio to that of most country squires of that day. He probably spoke the Court English, the sound and quality of which one would give much to hear, whereas the other’s speech is shrouded in no such mystery, for it was unquestionably in most cases the dialect of his county, more or less modified. But provincial towns as well as London produced citizen squires. Some, no doubt, had an inherited right to armorial bearings, having regard to the number of cadets of landed families who went into trade. But if not they assumed arms, often indeed while still burghers, and heraldic experts tell us that this procedure was regarded as a perfectly legitimate one, so long as they did not annex some already in use; nor was any suggestion of misplaced vanity thereby involved. That there were diverse kinds of country squires in those times goes without saying. A lord, too, was then a lord indeed! We have ample evidence that there are certain conspicuous but untitled families, both of Tudor and Norman origin, of wider culture, a Court connection, and in closer touch with the outside world. We may never know how these diverse elements regarded one another. Probably there is not much to know. Rural Society had not yet acquired a big S in the modern sense. The forms and ritual which gave the ladies of a later day opportunities for snubbing one another were not yet. They were all much occupied in domestic cares, and furthermore there were no roads as we understand the word. When they migrated to their town houses or lodgings in Exeter, Shrewsbury, or Worcester for a short winter season, as was the custom of many, the burgesses, as such, could hardly have been excluded from their company, for so many of them were relations. It is curious to note, too, how during Marlborough’s wars a professional army began to introduce a new social element, though a very small one, into provincial centres. In this connection _The Recruiting Officer_ is distinctly illuminating. For Farquhar writes from his own experience as an officer quartered in Shrewsbury, to whose inhabitants, or rather ‘To all friends round the Wrekin,’ he dedicates the play.