e what I may have won from the Bible or Master William
Shakespeare, whom, in the face of common opinion, I do value highly. In
short, I am an ignoramus, but pretty well for a yeoman.

My father being of good substance, at least as we reckon in Exmoor, and
seized in his own right, from many generations, of one, and that the
best and largest, of the three farms into which our parish is divided
(or rather the cultured part thereof), he John Ridd, the elder,
churchwarden, and overseer, being a great admirer of learning, and well
able to write his name, sent me his only son to be schooled at Tiverton,
in the county of Devon. For the chief boast of that ancient town (next
to its woollen staple) is a worthy grammar-school, the largest in the
west of England, founded and handsomely endowed in the year 1604 by
Master Peter Blundell, of that same place, clothier.

Here, by the time I was twelve years old, I had risen into the upper
school, and could make bold with Eutropius and Caesar--by aid of an
English version--and as much as six lines of Ovid. Some even said that
I might, before manhood, rise almost to the third form, being of a
perservering nature; albeit, by full consent of all (except my mother),
thick-headed. But that would have been, as I now perceive, an ambition
beyond a farmer's son; for there is but one form above it, and that made
of masterful scholars, entitled rightly 'monitors'. So it came to
pass, by the grace of God, that I was called away from learning,
whilst sitting at the desk of the junior first in the upper school, and
beginning the Greek verb [Greek word].

My eldest grandson makes bold to say that I never could have learned
[Greek word], ten pages further on, being all he himself could manage,
with plenty of stripes to help him. I know that he hath more head than
I--though never will he have such body; and am thankful to have stopped
betimes, with a meek and wholesome head-piece.

But if you doubt of my having been there, because now I know so little,
go and see my name, 'John Ridd,' graven on that very form. Forsooth,
from the time I was strong enough to open a knife and to spell my name,
I began to grave it in the oak, first of the block whereon I sate, and
then of the desk in front of it, according as I was promoted from one to
other of them: and there my grandson reads it now, at this present time
of writing, and hath fought a boy for scoffing at it--'John Ridd his
name'--and done again in 'wink