The good dame's harangue was interrupted by discovering that, during her absence from home, her maid Susan had neglected her dairy to indulge in a flirtation with the plough-boy, and had been detected in the fact of conveying to him a stolen can of ale. The difficulty of conducting a small household according to the unerring rule of right, diverted Dame Humphreys from proceeding in her plan of reforming state-abuses; and her complaints of the tricks and evasions of servants, furnished Dr. Beaumont with a good opportunity of hinting how impossible it was for Kings to find ability and integrity in all the agents they were compelled to employ. Early the ensuing morning, Dr. Beaumont and his sister prepared to depart. The former, with his staff in his hand and Bible under his arm, looked like another Hooker setting out on his painful pilgrimage; but the care of Dame Humphreys had secured for him his own calash, and stored it with the most portable and valuable of his goods. The farmer himself fastened to it the sure-footed old horse, which had been for years the faithful companion of their journeys. "They gave him to me yesterday," said Humphreys, "instead of my cart-horse, which they took away. But Jowler was worth twice as much; yet that's neither here nor there. Your Reverence has a right to old Dobbin, and nobody else shall have him. And as to your rents, as you never was a bad landlord in the main, I'll try if I can't now and then send you a trifle; for I don't see that these new people have any right to what they take." "Hush, hush," said Dame Humphreys, "His Reverence yesterday bade us behave well, and do our duty to every body." "So I will," returned Humphreys; "but I hate your new laws, and your taxing men, and your arrays and assessments, which take your horses out of your team, and your money out of your pocket, and nobody knows what for. I believe Master Davies is no better than a worldling, for he talked yesterday about raising my rent, and if that's his humour, I'll be even with him; for I'll go and hear Priggins directly." "Priggins," said one of the by-standers, "is a fine man, with a good voice, and tolerable action; but he is nothing to the serjeant-major of Sir William Brureton's rangers, who preached at the drum-head at Bolton, and made the whole town declare against Lord Derby." "Tell me of no serjeants-majors nor Prigginses," said Dame Humphreys, "we shall never edify under any body as we did under the good old Doctor." This conversation passed among the villagers, after the Beaumonts, with dejected but submissive hearts, had taken their silent departure from Ribblesdale. [1] Many of these circumstances are copied from Bishop Hall's "Hard Measure." He greatly leaned to the Puritans in doctrine; and, in discipline was a noted opposer of Archbishop Laud. [2] This list is taken out of a much more numerous one cited by Lord Cobham. CHAP. XI.