_Born 1551. Died 1650._
By SHAFTESBURY.
Mr. Hastings, by his quality, being the son, brother, and uncle to
the Earls of Huntingdon, and his way of living, had the first place
amongst us. He was peradventure an original in our age, or rather the
copy of our nobility in ancient days in hunting and not warlike times;
he was low, very strong and very active, of a reddish flaxen hair, his
clothes always green cloth, and never all worth when new five pounds.
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 Poole
supplied him with them. The upper part of this room had two small
tables and a desk, on the one side of which was a church Bible, on the
other the Book of Martyrs; on the tables were hawks' hoods, bells,
and such like, two or three old green hats with their crowns thrust
in so as to hold ten or a dozen eggs, which were of a pheasant kind
of poultry he took much care of and fed himself; tables, dice, cards,
and boxes were not wanting. In the hole of the desk were store of
tobacco-pipes that had been used. On one side of this end of the room
was the door of a closet, wherein stood the strong beer and the wine,
which never came thence but in single glasses, that being the rule
of the house exactly observed, for he never exceeded in drink or
permitted it. On the other side was a door into an old chapel not
used for devotion; the pulpit, as the safest place, was never wanting
of a cold chine of beef, pasty of venison, gammon of bacon, or great
apple-pie, with thick crust extremely baked. His table cost him not
much, though it was very good to eat at, his sports supplying all but
beef and mutton, except Friday, when he had the best sea-fish as well
as other fish he could get, and was the day that his neighbours of
best quality most visited him. He never wanted a London pudding, and
always sung it in with 'my part lies therein-a.' He drank a glass of
wine or two at meals, very often syrrup of gilliflower in his sack,
and had always a tun glass without feet stood by him holding a pint
of small beer, which he often stirred with a great sprig of rosemary.
He was well natured, but soon angry, calling his servants bastard
and cuckoldy knaves, in one of which he often spoke truth to his own
knowledge, and sometimes in both, though of the same man. He lived to
a hundred, never lost his eyesight, but always writ and read without
spectacles, and got to horse without help. Until past fourscore he
rode to the death of a stag as well as any.
15.