Some exchanges brought land enough within their
power to make drainage feasible, and Ulick started the idea that it
would be better to locate the almshouses at the top of the hill, on
the site of Madame Belmarche's old house, than to place them where
Tibb's Alley at present was, close to the river, and far from church.
Mr. Kendal's plans were unpopular, and two or three untoward
circumstances combined to lead to his being regarded as a tyrant. He
could not do things gently, and had not a conciliating manner. Had
he been more free spoken, real oppression would have been better
endured than benefits against people's will. He interfered to
prevent some Sunday trading; and some of the Tibb's Alley tenants who
ought to have gone at midsummer, chose to stay on and set him at
defiance till they had to be forcibly ejected; whereupon Ulick O'More
showed that he was not thoroughly Anglicised by demanding if, under
such circumstances, it was safe to keep the window shutters unclosed
at night, Mr. Kendal's head was such a beautiful mark under the lamp.
If not a mark for a pistol, he was one for the disaffected blackguard
papers, which made up a pathetic case of a helpless widow with her
bed taken away from under her, ending with certain vague
denunciations which were read with roars of applause at the last beer
shop which could not be cleared till Christmas, while the closing of
the rest sent herds thither; and papers were nightly read;
representing the Nabob expelling the industrious from the beloved
cottages of their ancestors, by turns, to swell his own overgrown
garden, or to found a convent, whence, as a disguised Jesuit, he
meant to convert all Bayford to popery.
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