al. No one knows what talk they held
there, but on his lordship's dying, in 1712, of wounds received in a duel
in Hyde Park, Rachel Rosewarne produced a deed, which the widow's lawyers
did not contest, and entered Hall as its mistress, with her son Charles--
then five years old.

Rachel Rosewarne died in 1760 at the age of seventy-six, leaving a grim
reputation, which survived for another hundred years in the talk of the
countryside. While she lived, her grip on the estate never relaxed.
Her son grew up a mere hind upon the home-farm. When he reached
twenty-five, she saddled her grey horse, rode over to Looe, and returned
with a maid for him--one of the Mayows, a pale, submissive creature--whom
he duly married. She made the young couple no allowance, but kept them at
Hall as her pensioners. In the year 1747, Charles (by this time a man of
forty) had the temerity to get religion from the Rev. John Wesley.
The great preacher had assembled a crowd on the green by the cross-roads
beyond Parc-an-hal. Charles Rosewarne, who was stalling the cattle after
milking-time, heard the outcries, and strolled up the road to look.
Two hours later he returned, fell on his knees in the outer kitchen, and
began to wrestle for his soul, the farm-maids standing around and crying
with fright. But half to hour later his mother returned from Liskeard
market, strode into the kitchen in her riding-skirt, and took him by the
collar. "You base-born mongrel!" she called out. "You barn-straw whelp!
What has the Lord to do with one of your breed?" She dragged him to his
feet and laid her horse-whip over head and shoulders. Madam had more than
once used that whip upon an idling labourer in the fields.

She died, leaving the estate in good order and clear of debt. Charles
Rosewarne enjoyed his inheritance just eleven years, and, dying in 1771 of
_angina pectoris_, left two married daughters and a son, Nicholas, on whom
the estate was entailed, subject to a small annual charge for maintaining
his mother.

In this Nicholas all the family passions broke out afresh. He had been
the one living creature for whom Madam Rachel's flinty breast had nursed a
spark of love, and at fourteen he had rewarded her by trying to set fire
to her skirts as she dozed in her chair. At nineteen, in a fit of
drunkenness, he struck his father. He married a tap-room girl from
St. Austell, and beat her. She gave him two sons: the elder (named
Nicholas, after his