When Charles the First was King by J.S. Fletcher

It would appear most fitting to the proper usages that, before going further, I should tell you something about our family and the mode of life we kept in my younger days, and also some particulars of our neighbours and friends, and likewise of our enemies, of whom you will hear no little before this history closes. And to begin with my own family first -- we Dales are of an ancient race, and have lived at Dale's Field certainly since the time of the Conquest, and, I doubt not, even before that. That we are proud of our ancient birth and of the fact that age after age we have tilled our own land, goes without saying. It is, I think, an innocent pride, and not of the nature of that vainglory which we are commanded as good Christians to eschew.

There were four of us in family at Dale's Field: my father, John Dale; my mother, Susannah Dale; my sister Lucy, and myself. To speak of my father first. He was a great man, a man of tall stature and broad shoulders, and his face was of the colour of a rising sun, red and healthy, and tanned with exposure to wind and rain and summer heat. A right hearty man he was, and was never known to refuse his meals. A healthy appetite, indeed, he always had, as most men have who, like him, are out of their beds and about their business ere ever Sol hath risen from the eastern horizon. Up and about was he at five in summer and six in winter, and would roundly rate any man that came to stall or stable a minute later than those hours. For he himself was abed by nine o' the clock, and could not understand why a man wanted more than eight hours' sleep. Once up, he would bustle about from stable to mistal, from barn to rickyard, urging on his men with cheery voice or honest scolding -- for he was a scrupulously fair master, and praised or blamed as need arose -- and seeing the day's labour fairly commenced, until half-past seven, when breakfast was served in our great kitchen, and master and men sat down together. A custom, indeed, it hath always been in our family, and one which I have religiously preserved, for all under the roof to eat together, according to their various station of life. Thus my father and mother sat at a cross-table with Lucy and myself, and the men were placed in order at long tables set out on either side of the great kitchen. Nor did the meat served at our table differ from that served at our servants', for it was my father's opinion that master and man, who shared the toils of the land, should also share the produce thereof, wherefore no man of ours was ever stinted of beef or beer or bread.