try to set down in order, God sparing my life and memory. And they who
light upon this book should bear in mind not only that I write for the
clearing of our parish from ill fame and calumny, but also a thing which
will, I trow, appear too often in it, to wit--that I am nothing more
than a plain unlettered man, not read in foreign languages, as a
gentleman might be, nor gifted with long words (even in mine own
tongue), save what I may have won from the Bible or Master William
Shakespeare, whom, in the face of common opinion, I do value highly. In
short, I am an ignoramus, but pretty well for a yeoman.

My father being of good substance, at least as we reckon in Exmoor, and
seized in his own right, from many generations, of one, and that the
best and largest, of the three farms into which our parish is divided
(or rather the cultured part thereof), he John Ridd, the elder,
churchwarden, and overseer, being a great admirer of learning, and well
able to write his name, sent me his only son to be schooled at Tiverton,
in the county of Devon. For the chief boast of that ancient town (next
to its woollen staple) is a worthy grammar-school, the largest in the
west of England, founded and handsomely endowed in the year 1604 by
Master Peter Blundell, of that same place, clothier.

Here, by the time I was twelve years old, I had risen into the upper
school, and could make bold with Eutropius and Cæsar--by aid of an
English version--and as much as six lines of Ovid. Some even said that
I might, before manhood, rise almost to the third form, being of a
persevering nature; albeit, by full consent of all (except my mother),
thick-headed. But that would have been, as I now perceive, an ambition
beyond a farmer's son; for there is but one form above it, and that made
of masterful scholars, entitled rightly "monitors". So it came to
pass, by the grace of God, that I was called away from learning,