This John Mounsey had an income of £800 a year, and the chief efforts of his life, which lasted over ninety years, were directed to keeping his expenses down to £30. In short, he was a miser of the most unabashed type. He was endowed with immense physical strength, of which, unlike his money, he grudged no expenditure in the pursuit of the over-mastering passion of his life. He rowed his own slate and timber down the lake to market, and toiled all day at the hardest manual tasks. When compelled to visit Penrith or elsewhere on business, he slept in neighbouring barns to save a hotel bill. He had his stockings shod with leather, and always wore wooden shoes. He is reported on one occasion, while riding by the lake, to have dismounted, stripped, and dived into it after an old stocking that caught his eye. Rather than buy a respectable suit for funerals, markets, and the like, he used to force the loan of them from his tenants, who were also under agreement to furnish him with so many free meals a year. Ever fearful of being robbed, he used to secrete his money in walls and holes in the ground, a practice which occasioned many exhilarating hunts for treasure-trove among the idle. His last luxury was putting out to the lowest tender the drawing of his will. The Patterdale schoolmaster, with a bid of ten-pence, obtained the contract. His son, however, closed the dynasty with honour, when the forbear of the present owner bought the royal domain and a good deal more beside, and planted those beautiful wild woods along the western margin of Ullswater that are the delight of every visitor, and above all of those for whom mountain and lake offer too strenuous adventure.