Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/573

Rh diluted with milk and having considerable quantities of some white curdy substance floating about in it, which had a tendency to settle at the bottom of the glass. The secret of its composition lay in the nature of the ferment employed, called "grout." At one time white ale was a common drink in South Devon; now it is as dead as Ashburton Pop and John Dunning. John Cooke's father was a plasterer and "hellier"—i.e. slater—but turned publican and maltster, and kept the tavern in which his son was born. John's grandfather brought the water into the town to the East Street conduit. At the age of fifteen his mother, then a widow, put John apprentice to Chaster, a saddler in Exeter, and on the death of Chaster, Cooke succeeded to the business at the age of twenty-one, and was highly esteemed in the county for the excellence of his work and his knowledge of how to fit the back of a horse. He made saddles for Lord Rolle, Sir Stafford Northcote, Sir John Duntze, Sir Robert and Sir Lawrence Palk, Sir Thomas Acland, and last, but not least, for Lord Heathfield. "His lordship was allowed to be one of the best judges of horses and definer of saddlery in the kingdom; his lordship's saddle-house consisted from the full bristed to the demi-pick, Shafto, Hanoverian, to the Dutch pad-saddles; and from the snaffle, Pelham, Weymouth, Pembroke, Elliott, Mameluke, and Chifney bridles. His lordship's saddle and riding-house was a school for a saddler and dragoon."

Cooke breaks into rhyme:—