s only an occasional
visitor, for his principal residence was fifty miles off, at Williamstrip,
near Fairford. (He had acquired Netheravon by his marriage with Miss
Beach.) The church was empty, and the curate in charge likened his
preaching to the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The condition of
the village may best be judged from a report made to Mr. Hicks-Beach by his
steward in 1793. Nearly every one was dependent on parochial relief. Not a
man earned ten shillings a week. A man with a wife and four children worked
for six shillings a week. A girl earned, by spinning, four shillings a
month. Idleness, disease, and immorality were rife; and, as an incentive to
profitable industry, a young farmer beat a sickly labourer within an inch
of his life.

Mrs. Hicks-Beach referred this uncomfortable report on the condition of her
property to the newly-installed curate, requesting his opinion on the cases
specified. The curate replied with characteristic vigour. One family owed
its wretched condition to mismanagement and extravagance; another to
"ignorance bordering on brutality"; another to "Irish extraction, numbers,
disease, and habits of idleness." One family was composed of "weak, witless
people, totally wretched, without sense to extricate them from their
wretchedness"; a second was "perfectly wretched and helpless"; and a third
was "aliment for Newgate, food for the halter--a ragged, wretched, savage,
stubborn race."[8]

The squire and Mrs. Hicks-Beach, who seem to have been thoroughly
high-principled and intelligent people, were much concerned to find the
curate corroborating and even expanding the evil reports of the steward.
They immediately began considering remedies, and decided that their first
reform should be to establish a Sunday-school. The institution so named
bore little resemblance to the Sunday-schools of the present day, but
followed a plan which Robert Raikes[9] and Mrs. Hannah More[10] had
originated, and which Bishop Shute Barrington[11] (who was translated to
Durham in 1791) had strongly urged on the Diocese of Sarum.[12] Boys and
girls were taught together. The master and mistress were paid the modest
salary of two shillings a Sunday. The children were taught spelling and
reading, and, as soon as they had mastered those arts, were made to read
the Bible, the Prayer Book, and Mrs. More's tracts. The children attended
church, sitting together in a big pew, and, in hot weather, had their
lessons