The mistress of the house usually joined and set them right in politics, for she had been brought up in Plymouth during the French war, and had learned the old-fashioned Tory doctrine, and to think any other politics sinful.

But all those high subjects of politics and religion were discussed with fitting respect; for that society--young and old--had a deep sense of religion, and the parents encouraged the younger members to visit and instruct the workmen and their families who were employed in the large cloth manufactories of the Sheppards; so that it came to pass that every man, woman, and child was taught or helped to teach others, for in those days very few of the working-people, at least in that part of England, could read at all.

A lending library was attached to the mills.

A large Sunday school was formed, chiefly for the children of the workpeople, and additional services were undertaken by the curate--a second sermon on Sundays besides one on Thursday evenings, where the families of the neighbourhood attended, and as many of the servants as could be spared.
There, be sure, was no big talk on the primary obligation of orthodoxy, no attempts to proselytise.

But all classes of that primitive people valued his preaching, and farmers and their labourers, the workmen of the factories, as well as their masters, took advantage of it.