.
His house was perfectly of the old fashion, in the midst of a large
park well stocked with deer, and near the house rabbits to serve
his kitchen, many fish-ponds, and great store of wood and timber; a
bowling-green in it, long but narrow, full of high ridges, it being
never levelled since it was ploughed; they used round sand bowls, and
it had a banqueting-house like a stand, a large one built in a tree.
He kept all manner of sport-hounds that ran buck, fox, hare, otter,
and badger, and hawks long and short winged; he had all sorts of nets
for fishing: he had a walk in the New Forest and the manor of Christ
Church. This last supplied him with red deer, sea and river fish; and
indeed all his neighbours' grounds and royalties were free to him, who
bestowed all his time in such sports, but what he borrowed to caress
his neighbours' wives and daughters, there being not a woman in all
his walks of the degree of a yeoman's wife or under, and under the
age of forty, but it was extremely her fault if he were not intimately
acquainted with her. This made him very popular, always speaking
kindly to the husband, brother, or father, who was to boot very
welcome to his house whenever he came. There he found beef pudding and
small beer in great plenty, a house not so neatly kept as to shame him
or his dirty shoes, the great hall strewed with marrow bones, full of
hawks' perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers, the upper sides of
the hall hung with the fox-skins of this and the last year's skinning,
here and there a polecat intermixed, guns and keepers' and huntsmen's
poles in abundance. The parlour was a large long room, as properly
furnished; on a great hearth paved with brick lay some terriers and
the choicest hounds and spaniels; seldom but two of the great chairs
had litters of young cats in them, which were not to be disturbed,
he having always three or four attending him at dinner, and a little
white round stick of fourteen inches long lying by his trencher, that
he might defend such meat as he had no mind to part with to them. The
windows, which were very large, served for places to lay his arrows,
crossbows, stonebows, and other such like accoutrements; the corners
of the room full of the best chose hunting and hawking poles; an
oyster-table at the lower end, which was of constant use twice a day
all the year round, for he never failed to eat oysters before dinner
and supper through all seasons: the neighbouring town of Pool