bout to bear false
witness.[F]

There were no more quarrels between my Grandmother and her Director.
Thenceforth Father Ruddlestone ruled over her; and one proof of his
supremacy was, that she forewent the use of that Common Prayer-Book of
our Anglican Church which had been her constant companion. From which I
conjecture that, after long wavering and temporizing, even to the length
of having the Father in her household, she had at length returned to or
adopted the ancient faith. But although the Substance of our Ritual was
now denied her, she was permitted to retain its Shadow; and for hours
would sit gazing upon the torn-off cover of the book, with its device of
the crown and crossed axes, in sad memory of K. C. 1st.

A most mournful Christmas found her still growing whiter and weaker, and
nearer her End. At this ordinarily joyful season of the year, it was her
commendable custom to give great alms away to the poor,--among whom at
all times she was a very Dorcas,--bestowing not only gifts of money to
the clergy for division among the needy, but sending also a dole of a
hundred shillings to the poor prisoners in the Marshalsea, as many to
Ludgate, and the Gatehouse, and the Fleet,--surely prisons for debt were
as plentiful as blackberries when I was young!--and giving away besides
large store of bread, meat, and blankets at her own door in Hanover
Square: a custom then pleasantly common among people of quality, but
now--when your parish Overseer, forsooth, eats up the very marrow of the
poor--fallen sadly into disuse. They are for ever striking Poor's Rates
against householders, and will not take clipped money; whereas in my day
Private Charity, and a King's Letter in aid from the pulpit now and
then, were enough; and, for my part, I would sooner see a poor rogue
soundly firked at the post, and then comforted with a bellyful of bread
and cheese and beer by the constable, and so passed on to his
belongings, than that he should be clapped up in a workhouse, to pick
oakum and suck his paws like a bear, while Master Overseer gets
tun-stomached over shoulder of veal and burnt brandy at vestry-dinners.
For it is well-known, to the shame of Authority, that these things all
come out of the Poor Rate.

Ere my Grandmother was brought so low, she would sit in state on
almsgiving morning, which was the day after Christmas; and the more
decent of her bedesmen and bedeswomen would be admitted to her presence
to pay their duty, and