chamber stairs door, and nobody in ye room but he and I. No, it was ye end of ye table next ye parlour.
"April 26th, 1709. I bought a salmon-trout of William Lindfield of Grubbs, in Bolney, which he caught ye night before in his net, by his old orchard, which was wounded by an otter. The trout weighed 11 lbs. and 1/2; and was 3 foot 2 inches long from end to end, and but 2 foot 9 inches between ye eye and ye forke." There is also a record of a salmon trout being caught at Bolney early in the last century, which weighed 22lbs. and was sent to King George IV. at Brighton.
I must quote a prescription from the diary:—"To cure the hoopingcough:—get 3 field mice, flaw them, draw them, and roast one of them, and let the party afflicted eat it; dry the other two in the oven until they crumble to a powder, and put a little of this powder in what the patient drinks at night and in the morning." Mice played, and still play in remote districts, a large part in the rural pharmacopeia. A Sussex doctor once told me that he had directed the mother of a boy at Portslade to put some ice in a bag and tie it on the boy's forehead. When, the next day, the doctor asked after his patient, the mother replied briskly:—"Oh, Tommy's better, but the mice are dead."
The Stapley family ate an oatmeal pudding made in the following manner:—
Of oats decorticated take two pound,
And of new milk enough the same to dround;
Of raisins of the sun, ston'd, ounces eight;
Of currants, cleanly picked, an equal weight;
Of suet, finely sliced, an ounce at least;
And six eggs newly taken from the nest;
Season this mixture well with salt and spice;
Twill make a pudding far exceeding nice;
And you may safely feed on it like farmers.
For the receipt is learned Dr. Harmer's.
Richard Stapley's diary was continued by his son Anthony
