Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/273

 1922 SEVENTEENTH EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 265 The country gentry, as a rule, had but little ready money at their disposal, but lived upon the rents and profits of their estates in land, and were anxious to secure matrimonial alliances with heiresses for themselves or for their sons, and if the younger sons were not successful in this direction they would either settle down in or near their birthplace as farmers or gamekeepers, or migrate to towns as apprentices to trade. 1 Pope has the caustic lines Boastful and rough, your first son is a squire, The next a tradesman, meek and much a liar, Tom struts a soldier, open, bold and brave, Will sneaks a scriv'ner, an exceeding knave. 2 Sir John Fitzjames, knight, of Leweston (d. 1623) was well- to-do, and a leading county magnate ; yet he settled his five younger sons as tenant farmers on portions of his estate, and some years later one descendant, Grace Fitzjames, was married to Hugh Hardy, another, Joane Fitzjames, to John Granger, both of yeoman' stock, and a third, Francis Fitzjames, in his old age espoused Sarah Best, who kept the village inn. 3 Any fall in station which may have happened to the sons of the poorer clergy was, in fact, the common fate of the younger sons or descendants of younger sons of country gentlemen. In Dorset a yeoman family is still found that of Daubeny which has an unbroken descent from the Conquest and earlier ; and the village of Minterne still retains descendants of a branch of the Napiers (created baronets in 1641) springing from a junior line of the esquire owner at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Thomas Fuller remarks that some who justly own the surnames and blood of Bohuns, Mortimers and Plantagenets, (though ignorant of their own extractions), are hid in the heap of common. . . people, where they find that under a thatched cottage, which some of their ancestors could not enjoy in a leaded castle, contentment with quiet and security. 4 1 These examples, and many others, occur in the Bristol Apprentice Rolls: Edward, son of Henry Sidnam of Steeple Ashton, gent., 1651, to a grocer. Thomas, son of William Baskerville of Garway, gent., 1651, to a soap-boiler. John, son of Henry Lyte of Lytes Gary, 1653-4, to a woollen-draper. Knightly, son of Sir Anthony Elmes of Greens Norton, knight, 1657, to a linen- draper. Robert, son of Robert Minors of Treago, esq., 1668, to a grocer. John, son of John Harbin of Newton, esq., 1670, to a mercer. John, son of John Scudamore of Kentchurch, esq., 1680-1, to a merchant. 2 Moral Essays, i, 11. 151-4. 3 The same Sir John Fitzjames appointed John Wilkinson, parson of Babcary, Somerset, to be one of the overseers of his last will, and bequeathed to him ' so much of finest cloth as will make him a large cloak with sleeves, as ministers do use to weare '. He was commissioned to preach the funeral sermon. 4 Worthies, ed. 1811, I. xv. 45, ' Of Shire Reeves or Shiriffes '.