The landlords of the inns were men of light and leading, and were
specially selected by the magistrates for the difficult and responsible
positions they had to fill; and as many of them had acted as stewards
or butlers--at the great houses of the neighbourhood, and perhaps had
married the cook or the housekeeper, and as each inn was required by law
to provide at least one spare bedroom, travellers could rely upon being
comfortably housed and well victualled, for each landlord brewed his own
beer and tried to vie with his rival as to which should brew the best.
Education was becoming more appreciated by the poorer people, although
few of them could even write their own names; but when their children
could do so, they thought them wonderfully clever, and educated
sufficiently to carry them through life. Many of them were taken away
from school and sent to work when only ten or eleven years of age!
Books were both scarce and dear, the family Bible being, of course, the
principal one. Scarcely a home throughout the land but possessed one of
these family heirlooms, on whose fly-leaf were recorded the births and
deaths of the family sometimes for several successive generations, as it
was no uncommon occurrence for occupiers of houses to be the descendants
of people of the same name who had lived in them for hundreds of years,
and that fact accounted for traditions being handed down from one
generation to another.
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