Leicester."[1] He was come of a family distinguished for centuries in both Church and State. "The most remote ancestor named in the records of the family was Leverrettus, Thane of the King, and King's Chancellor in the reign of Henry II., presented to the rectory of Bakewell, in the county of Derby, in the year 1158." The Grange farm was 440 acres in extent, and Bakewell's father, who had always the reputation of being one "of the most ingenious and able farmers of his neighbourhood," died in 1773, when he was 88 years old, and when Bakewell was 47. It is thus possible that some part of Bakewell's work may have been traceable in knowledge, thought, or action to his father. At least, in their improvements, other than those connected with stock-breeding, there was a clear continuity.
Prothero, in his "Pioneers and Progress," tells us that Robert Bakewell "resembled the typical yeoman who figures on Staffordshire pottery, 'a tall, broad-shouldered, stout man, of brown-red complexion, clad in a loose brown coat and scarlet waistcoat, leather breeches, and top boots.' In his kitchen he entertained Russian princes, French and German royal dukes, British peers, and sightseers of every
- ↑ The information about Bakewell is drawn mostly from a paper by W. Housman in The Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England for 1896.
