Explore "The Breeches Bishop" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In that age of gallantry, the reign of Charles the Second, it was customary when a gentleman drank a lady's health to throw some part of his dress into the flames, in order to do her still greater honour. This was well enough for a lover, but the folly did not stop here, for his companions were obliged to follow him in this proof of his veneration by consuming a similar article, whatever it might be.
About the latter part of the seventeenth century, there was living at Aldersferry, in the Soke of Godsport in Hampshire, a worthy clergyman of the name of Barnabas Winthrop. The little living of St. Ascham's-a perpetual curacy in the Archdeaconry of Winchester-supplied the moral and material needs of this amiable man; his granddaughter, Miss Joan Seabird, kept house for him; and never were cream and ripe fruit happier in contact than were these two playful and reasonable intellects in their relations of child and sage.