s till we were fairly out of the
door, made their obeisances as we passed."

In this glimpse we miss the genial face of Sir Roger, but there is
nothing in it inconsistent with the village squire of the Spectator,
Indeed, Mr. Trollope says of the old squire, "He was a good man too,
was old Adolphus Meetkerke; a good landlord, a kindly natured man, a
good sportsman, an active magistrate, and a good husband."

He was evidently a regular attendant to his magisterial duties on the
Royston Bench, for his clean, linear, and well-written signature turns
up frequently in the Royston parish books. The Meetkerkes descended
from a famous Dutchman, Sir Adolphus Meetkerke, who was at one time
ambassador to England.

{124}

Before the Tithe Commutation Act was passed, a very curious piece of
work in the harvest field was the paying of the parson by the tithe man
going round among the shocks of corn and placing a green bough in every
tenth shock, &c., for then the tithe was collected in kind--the tenth
shock, hay-cock, calf, lamb, pig, fowl, pigeon, duck, egg, the tenth
pound of butter, cheese, and so on through all the products of the
land. The inconvenience of this clumsy system was often greatly felt,
when a farmer was compelled to delay the carting of his corn simply
because the tithe man had not been round to set out the tithe corn,
while on the other hand it was obviously impossible for the clergyman
to get the work all done at once to suit all parties, and thus when a
Commutation Act came it was a great relief alike to the clergyman and
the farmers and landowners, and did away with a longstanding cause of
strife and litigation, especially in a town like Royston, where a
farmer might have tithable produce in several parishes.

Sometimes the tithe owner found an attempt to impose upon him some of
the lean kine, and that the tenth of its kind had a way of differing
somewhat from the other nine! When, for instance, in the last century,
Canon Weston was away in Durham, his curate, at Therfield, on going to
Brandish to tithe the ringe-wood, found the woodman over anxious for
him to begin counting at a certain spot, where the cutting commenced,
but suspecting that the ringes had been cooked a little, the wily
curate examined them and found every tenth, from the woodman's way of
counting _fell upon a very thin ringe_! Remonstrances followed and the
"tenths" were made up to the same condition of plumpness as the rest,
and the c