The grandfather of Thomas Wanless had been a small Warwickshire yeoman, whom the troublous times towards the latter end of the last century, family misfortunes, and the pressure of the large landowners, had combined to reduce in circumstances. His son Jacob had, therefore, found himself in the position of a day labourer on the farms around Ashbrook, raised above his fellow labourers only by the fact that he could sign his name, and that, through his wife, he owned a small freehold cottage with about a quarter of an acre of garden in the village. His unusual literary accomplishments, and his small possession did little to relieve him from the common miseries which pressed more or less on all, but most, of course, on the lowest class, during the years that succeeded the "glorious" Napoleonic wars. The winter of 1819, therefore, found him wrestling with the bitter energy of a hungry despair to get bread for a family of six children. The task proved too much for him, and he was reluctantly driven to let his oldest boy Thomas go to work on the Whitbury farm for a shilling a week. Thomas had been trying to pick up some inkling of the art of reading at a dame's school in the village, but had not made much progress--could, when thus launched on the world, do no more than spell out the Sermon on the Mount, or the first verses of the 1st chapter in John's Gospel, and ere a year was well over he had forgotten even that. There were no demagogues in those days disturbing peaceful villages with clamours for education; no laws prohibiting the labour of little children at tasks beyond their strength. The squires, the parsons, and the larger farmers had the law in their own hands, and combined to keep the lower orders in ignorance, giving God thanks that they had the power so to do. The sporting parson of Ashbrook of that day even thought it superfluous to teach those d----d labourers' brats the Catechism. He appeared to think his duty done when he had stumbled through the prayers once a week in church. That, at least, was the range of his spiritual duties. For the rest, he considered it of the highest moment that his tithes should be promptly paid; that all poaching should be summarily punished, and that the hunting appointments of the shire should always be graced by his presence. It was also a point of duty with him always to vote true blue, and never to miss a good dinner at any aristocratic table within his reach. He would say grace with fervour, and drink the good wines till his face grew purple and his eyes bloodshot. If he had another mission in life, it was to do his best to divert in sublime disregard of merit or human wants, the charity which some reluctantly contrite sinner of former days had left for the poor of the parish, to the use of creatures who had excited his good feeling by their obsequiousness.