Whilst Richard combined teaching with his new public duties, Mary bore her fifth baby, Alfred Ebenezer, on July 5^th, 1809. He was baptised at Heathfield and so, too, was Simon Peter, born on December 23^rd, 1810.

Richard had much with which to keep his mind occupied: his public duties; his school, for which he never seems to have experienced difficulties in finding pupils; his garden, whose fruit and vegetables were an essential part of any countryman’s income; surveying and map-making, which he was teaching himself; sketching and decorative lettering; reading; and smoking his pipe, which he did not renounce for another ten years. Meanwhile Mary coped with the housework, the laundry, the cooking and the care of three young children. Like any other lower-middle class housewife of her day, she wanted a servant.

The Chiddingly Vestry had a near inexhaustible supply of these – its pauper children.Some of these it lodged in the parish Poor House; others it “put out” to various householders as servants, or, more rarely, as apprentices to the age of 21. Each householder accepting a parish child received an agreed amount for board, lodging and clothing. The system had been in operation since at least 1769, the number of children “put out” varying as the local economy boomed or sagged and the number of paupers increased or decreased proportionately. From 1800 to 1808 the average of children “put out” annually was 9.5. 1808 was a “bad” year with thirteen children “put out”, but worse was to follow. In 1809 the number was sixteen; in 1810, nineteen; in 1811, sixteen. In 1812 the Vestry was still hard pressed, with at least fourteen children to “put out”, and for the first time it turned to Richard Lower. In January or February of that year the Assistant Overseers, the two officers nominated by the Vestry but appointed by the Justices to serve for one year, arranged with Richard for him to board Elizabeth Deacon for twelve months as from March 25^th. Elizabeth was twelve years old.

Then, it seems, came the first recorded friction betweenRichard Lower and the Chiddingly Vestry, for something upset either the Overseers or the Vestry as such. In the Chiddingly“Register of Children Put Out”, the agreement was first written as “Elizabeth Deacon put out to Richard Lower from the 25^th March 1812 to the 25^th March 1813 and he is to have 1/- pr. wk with her and the Parish to cloathe her.” Then someone crossed out the last five words – “the Parish to cloathe her” – drew a line across the page and underneath wrote “Richard Lower to cloathe her for the whole year for £2, which he has to take.”

“Which he has to take”! Those words suggest the conclusion of an acrimonious argument. Probably Richard’s attitude added to the acrimony. He was better educated than most, probably all, of the Vestry’s members; his tongue could be sharp and sarcastic; and he was a Dissenter, who did not worship at the parish church. It sounds as though someone, metaphorically at least, ended the argument by shaking his fist under Richard’s nose, saying “your wife wants a servant. All right, take it or leave it!” Richard took it.