Nitrogen-fixing vetches, used as a kind of green manure and called ‘phatches’ by Oglander, were to be grown and turned into the ground to improve it. Ferns (‘verons’) were to be cut in June, still green, and laid as a mulch on the garden. A hop garden could give you £50 an acre if ‘in good grownd, well-ordered and Dounged’ but it had to be carefully looked after: ‘You must digge him in October, … you must Cutt him in ye beginninge of March. Pole him and hill him in Aprill.’21 Nutrients needed to be recycled to keep the system healthy and new resources carefully taken: ‘Cutt for thy Brewinge and Baking Bush faggots but preserve those Bushes in whome thou findest younge trees to growe or lyke to growe.’22 Goats were a mistake ‘for it is ye harmfullest beast that is, he spoyleth all wood and younge trees, and quicksett hedges.’23 (He wrote that, but it was the voice of experience, as the account books show that he bought and sold them.) Rooks were to be killed and hung up and ‘skarekrowes’ made to keep them away.24
Land for Oglander was not just an inheritance, a money-making machine or a financial asset. It was, at root, a living organism, a system of life, over which he presided and to which the existence of his family and name was indissolubly wedded. ‘Be sure whatsoever misfortune befalls thee’, he told those listening descendants, ‘sell not thie land which wase with mutch Care and paynes provided and kept for thee and have continued so many adges in thie name. Rather ffeede on bredd and water then to be the confusion of thie howse.’25
This intensely personal understanding of his family’s history is allied to a demotion of the individual’s role within it. The lands might have been kept for the Oglanders, one by one in succession across time, but it was not for any of them to interrupt the stream. The river mattered more than the people floating on it. Benefit and service, personal gain and loyal behaviour were, in this world, indistinguishable. ‘Erect som tenementes in Great Whitefield for to place there Labourers for to do the Servyce that thou must have of Necessitie as Mowers, Hedgers, Threshers and the lyke. So shalt thou have thie turne served and improve the Lande.’26 Do the right thing and you would gain from it. Nowhere was that more important than within the walls of Nunwell itself: ‘Above all thinges love thie Wyfe and Children otherwyse thou canst nevor love thie home and then all thinges will be distastfull unto thee, but if thou lovest them thou wilt love thie home and not mutch respect other companie.’27
None of this was sentimental. There was an entirely canny understanding of the need for self-interest, and for a sane evaluation of other people’s motives. ‘Lend monyes to thie frynde: but be Bownde [stand surety] for none. It is ye best poynt of Good husbandrie; observe itt.’28
That was also why children needed educating properly. It was no good to your children to send them out ill equipped into a difficult world. He employed private tutors for them at home, including one called Mr Adams who taught them dancing29 and another astronomy (part of the Virgilian syllabus: the turning of the year could not be understood without a knowledge of the stars), and set up a grammar school in Newport in the Isle of Wight, to which they were sent. He knew that each needed educating in his own way: one to be his heir, another into holy orders and an intellectual life at Oxford, a third into business in London. His eldest son, George, was ‘well red in Common and Statute Lawes, Logike, History, Philoshye, the mathematickes, and all other good partes’.30 Sir John would help his children on their way but it was no good them imagining they could ride in on their inheritance:
Above all poyntes of good howsbandri be sure (if God bless yee with Children) to bringe them all up in vocations make none of them Bird-catchers or doggdrivors. Settle them in a coorse of life and then lett them shift, alwayes provided that thou assist them as farr as thy estate will permit.31
He was a type who has almost entirely disappeared: utterly embedded in the details of his land and place, at home negotiating with mowers or threshers, with paying a man ‘1 shilling for cutting ye Bull, 4 shillings for killing seven porkers and a Beef’32 for ‘grubbinge the grove’ or ‘drayninge the Cuttes’,33 but for whom those were the foundations not the limits of his life.
He was a highly political man, a deep conservative if no adulator of cavalier grandeur or any kind of mystical, royal absolutism. When, in January 1642, the King made an armed raid on the House of Commons in an attempt to arrest his five leading opponents, Parliament sent round a ‘Protestation’ for signatures in their support. Oglander’s name was at the head of that list.34 He was in that way a deep constitutionalist. Since his father’s death in 1609, he had been part of the government of the Isle of Wight, a Justice of the Peace and then Deputy Lieutenant, the man in charge of the military forces on the island. He had spent three years as the Deputy Governor of Portsmouth and personal authority was as natural a part of his idea of himself as any orchard, dairy herd or poultry pen. The island was his parish and he felt towards it something of what he felt towards Nunwell: a place in which he was the natural-born governor. ‘If thou hast not Somm Commande in thy cowntery, thou will not be estemed of ye Common Sort of people, whoe hath more of feare, then love in them.’35
He was certain of this: only gentlemen of his kind were capable of command and knew the meaning of honour. No Oglander should ever court the people who were dependent on them
or thinke to tye them to thee eyther by favours or ye belly. I knowe, and have seene them, that have bene hyghly obleyged to somm Gentlemen, yet to gayne 5 s[hillings] they woold Cutt there throates. Never thinke to binde them to thee by benefites. Gratitude and they (I mean ye Common Sort) are as farr asounder as Virtue and Vice.36
It was an unsentimental view. Many of his tenants held their land from him by copyhold, a form of tenure which often involved paying rent in the form of work on the landlord’s fields, usually at harvest time, when many hands were needed to get the crop in. In return, the landlord was bound to provide them with food and drink. Oglander didn’t think the deal worth it and recommended to his descendants that they ignore the copyhold provisions and hire people in the open market to do the work. It was much better to pay people 3s. 9d. the acre to reap a crop than to compel them to do it in return for the breakfast and drink it was customary to provide, ‘for they will both scamble thie wheate and eate up more then the other will cost thee’.37
This commercial, rational, sceptical, loving, traditional, attentive and proud set of attitudes could all be bound up in the one word husbandry. In Oglander’s spelling of it – variations on ‘howsbandry’ – it embeds the idea that the house, conceived of as a family in a building with its attendant lands and people, was the defining focus of gentry life. Everything was part of one world. ‘If thou wouldst have good and handsome children,’ he wrote to his descendants, making the connections plain, ‘have as much Care of thy wife, as of thy Mares. Breed not on a Crooked Deformed stocke.’38 If a man thought only of the money which a rich ugly wife would him bring as a dowry, he was depriving his children and grandchildren of the happiness and beauty it was his duty to give them.
That sustained connectedness across categories is the lasting quality of Oglander’s account books. His own idea of himself is indistinguishable from the idea of his family-in-its-place, conceived of as a single hyphenated reality. He was his ancestry and his posterity. ‘Reade all thie Awncestors bookes of accoumptes,’ he told his descendants. ‘It may be thou mayst find soomwhat owt of them that will be worth thie labour. I have fownd it so.’39 But he was also his relationships with his neighbours. He was the just government of the island. He was the view from his windows. His love for his wife, children, uncles and cousins was a form of self-love, as if his entire being was distributed among the structures that framed and supported him. He thought of himself as a figure in a landscape. ‘Wouldest thou feign see me, being dead so many years since?’ he asked his descendants from beyond the grave.
I will give thee my owne Carracter. Conceive thou sawest an Aged, somwhat Corpulent Man of middle stature, with a white Beard and somwhat big Muchatoes, riding in
Blacke or some sad coullored clothes from Westnunwell up to ye West Downe and so over all the Downes to take the Ayre, Morning and Eveninge, and to see there his ffattinge Cattell, on a handsome midlinge blacke stone-horse [a stallion], his hayre graye and his complexion very Sangwine, and, as Tully sayde, Nunquam Minus Solus, quam Cum Solus.40
Never less alone than when alone. Sir John Oglander lived in a crowd of others, dead and alive, present and yet to be born, sustained by a blithe sense of that continuity across space and time. The soil in which he grew was the community of gentility but it was no bowl of sugar babies. The Isle of Wight, like any gentry community, was full of mutual supervision and judgement and Oglander made a list of verdicts on his fellow ‘gents of Owre countrey’. Here, in the privacy of his own book, very few of them came up to the mark.
Woorsely of Aschey his many vayne tryckes argued an unsettled brayne
Mr Rychards lived and dyed a dissembler
Sir John Meux was of a homely behaviour, as nevor havinge any breedinge or good naturals
Sir John Leygh was an honest gentilman, active and handsome, but no artist, nor overmutch beholdinge to Nature.
Dennis and Lislie … drowned by overmutch drynckinge.
Woorseley of Aschey, Cheeke of Motson, sold theyre patrimonie, and left ye Island.
Thomas Cheeke, a lewde sonn of a discreete fathor, solde Motson to Mr Dillington 1623
Sir John Meux wase the veryest clown (of a gentleman) that evor the Isle of Wight bredd. As he was destitute of learninge, soe of humanitie and civillitie;
Sir William Meux wase as well a quallified gentleman as anie owre countery bredd; but of no sprite, for in my presence Sir Edward Dennis too mutch braved him.41
The other gentry families on the Isle of Wight provided a set of educative tales. Not steady (‘stout’ is one of Oglander’s favourite praise words), not brave, not educated, not generous, not prudent, not honest and not naturally gifted: the life of a gentleman was surrounded by tiger traps. Fall into any one and you fell below the approval horizon. But the really loathsome outsiders were those who were systematically ungentlemanly, above all courtiers who ‘promise mutch and p’forme nothinge, and for that hated of all’. The lawyers came a near second, who ‘with theyre stirringe up of swytes [suits] betwene ye ffermors and Yeomandrie, they [have] utterlye undon ye whole communalitie’.42
Communality comes near the heart of Oglander’s understanding of where value lay. By the 1630s, he was already nostalgic for a past in which no one ever moved:
Owre ancestors lived here soe quietly and securelie, beinge neythor troubled to London nor Winchester, soe they seldome or nevor went owt of ye island, insomutchas when they went to London (thynkynge itt a East India voyage) they always made theyre willes.43
When Oglander was writing that, the age of rooted innocence was long gone. ‘Mutamur’, he wrote in the margin next to it, ‘We are changed.’
‘Ye whole gentry of ye countrey’ – that was the idea Oglander loved, a community which stretched not only to his own neighbours and friends but across the generations, both those that came before and those still to come. But he was no stick-in-the-mud. He understood and accepted the realities of social change. ‘There are people between fermor and gentleman on the iland,’ he wrote. This was no caste system and social mobility was an accepted reality. His best friend, Mr Emanuell Badd, ‘wase a very poor mans Sonn’. As a boy he had been apprenticed to a shoemaker ‘but by god’s blessinge and ye losse of 5 wyfes’, he became rich and bought lands throughout the island. ‘He wase a very honest man, and a very good ffrynd of myne.’44 The accumulation of wealth and the acquisition of land could provide a route into gentility.
But there were others in this tight, mutually supervising world whom Oglander was more reluctant to admit to the charmed circle. The ironically named knights ‘weare nevor accoumpted any Gentlemen’, Oglander told his descendants in case there was any uncertainty later on. ‘I knewe well Michaell Knyght, the fathor of this Thos. now livinge, who woold nevor be called other then Goodman Knyght.’ ‘Goodman’ was a yeoman farmer’s title. It was his son, ‘this Thomas, now livinge,’ who had the pretensions, married ‘one of ye dawghtors of Page, of Sevington, a rytch ffermor, and in tyme he (gettinge wealth) may tourne Gentleman.’45
There were also the ‘Gardes’, whom Oglander spotted as being on the rise: ‘Becawse ye Gardes nowe begin to growe rich in owre Island, I thought it fitt to sett here downe their Pedigree, that aftor adges maye know them bettor.’46
Of all his neighbours, only Sir John Leigh (even without much talent, let alone education) was without blame or blemish.
He wase a Gentleman of ye most temperatest diott that evor I knewe, contented and satisfied with a small mattor eythor of meate or drinke. At ye ordinarye with us, he woold not eate above 3 or 4 bittes of meate, and proportionabelie of dringe. I wase with him in ye Commission of ye Peace [as a Justice] 20 yeres, and most of that time noe other butt our selves in ye Island; he wolld nevor differ in opinion, butt of a milde and good Natur; no scholler, nor mutch redd, but verie paynefull [careful], and willinge to doo what good he Could, very pitifull and mercifull; in his lattor tyme weepinge at every disaster.47
Leigh was a man of honour and sensibility, of moderation and loving-kindness: the model on which Sir John Oglander at least in public aimed to follow.
If you walk today on the downs above Nunwell, taking the grassy path where the turf is no more than skinned over the chalk, the route Oglander and his handsome black horse would have taken day after day, on his way to Newport, or to visit the Worsleys at Appuldurcombe or the Leighs at North Court or the Chekes at Mottistone, you see a country below you which is not unlike the one he would have seen. To the south, beyond other distant downs and the wet valleys between them, are the grey waters of the Channel, the realm of opportunity and threat. Clifford Webster, the Isle of Wight archivist and historian of the Oglanders, reckons that in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the family was set on its way by William Oglander, Sir John’s father, financing pirate ships in the English Channel and sharing in the profits. This semi-official privateering, encouraged by Elizabeth but later suppressed under James, preyed on the passing Spanish traffic, a kind of armed commerce in which most of the Isle of Wight gentry invested. That alone, as Webster has written, can explain the sudden wealth and spate of land acquisitions made by John Oglander and his father, William, in the 1590s and early 1600s. Little of the world portrayed in his notebooks would have been possible without it.
To the north, beyond the thorny combes and dark absorbent woods of the downland edge, is the world which that piracy made possible: a wide span of fields and hedgerows, nearly all of which, in this view, belonged to the Oglanders. Hedgerow oaks, some shattered by lightning, stand above the fields like pom-poms. At the very foot of the downs is the brick and pale Bembridge limestone of Nunwell itself, smoke curling up from its chimneys past the white-painted dormers and huge Cornish slates which John Oglander records in his notebook as having bought himself.
This Grand Circle prospect shaped Oglander’s world view. It is a surveying platform. On almost every ride out from Nunwell he would have taken these high roads and drunk in a vision of the island, set in the waters of the Channel to one side, the milky Solent on the other. It is steep but elegant country, with an easy roll to it, knowable and lovable as one place. Buzzards cruise over the woods and ivy climbs the oaks in a way Oglander would not have admired. The fields are orderly. Cattle are grazing on the chalky turf. On the down tops, the plough-softened remnants of Bronze Age tumuli scarcely protrude above the sheep-nibbled grass, and in early summer the streamside woods are full of bluebells and woodspurge. At their feet, glossy blades of hart’s tongue fern reach down to the waters of Nunbrooke, the stream from which Nunwell draws its supply. It is a world complete in itself. Who would not have dreamed of being king of it?
That vision of completeness, so richly addressed in the notebooks, broke down and
shattered in the last two decades of Oglander’s life.
By 1630, John had seven surviving children, four boys and three girls. George, the eldest, and the boy of whom he was proudest, was twenty-one. He had left Merton College in Oxford and gone to Middle Temple, as his father had done, to acquire the outlines of the law. The others were en route to productive lives, either at Winchester or at Oxford. Ann, his eldest daughter, was now sixteen, deeply loved by her father, who claimed she ‘wase famous far and neere for her handsomnes, and was called Tre-bell-Anna’. She was ‘as hansome a Gentilwoman as euor this Isle Bred, and the handsomest that evor came owt of the famely of ye Oglanders’.48
John himself had been a good husband and his financial situation was good:
When I went to the Parliament the 17th of March 1628 I left in the hole behind my bed’s head in the parlour chamber, in a trunk, in gold – £2,400
In the white box in my study, in gold – £220
I carried up to London with me, in money – £60
In my study I left my book of accounts, in which appear all my money debts and estate whatsoever.49
In George, his heir, Sir John could look forward to a glorious future for the family. He was not faultless, ‘somewhat given to Choller but of a manlicke disposition’ and something of a dandy, in love with fine clothes. He flirted with girls – his father tried to steer him towards Elizabeth Hobart, the daughter of a distinguished Norfolk judge, largely because her promised marriage portion of £4,000, all of it ‘in ready gold’,50 was so enormous, but nothing came of it. George ran up debts, which his father paid off, and didn’t always attend to his work. ‘Nothinge could Comfort mee more then to here yt you had settled your Selve to ye studdye of ye Lawe’, his father urged him in March 1631. George was to ‘catch time by ye fourlocke, and make better Use of those pratious houres’.51 But John loved him immoderately and trusted him with the matchmaking for his wonderful sister Ann, or Nan, with whom Oglander was offering a dowry of £1,000.
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