DAME THE SIXTH: SQUIRE PETRICK'S LADY
By the Crimson Maltster
Folk who are at all acquainted with the traditions of Stapleford
Park will not need to be told that in the middle of the last century
it was owned by that trump of mortgagees, Timothy Petrick, whose
skill in gaining possession of fair estates by granting sums of
money on their title-deeds has seldom if ever been equalled in our
part of England. Timothy was a lawyer by profession, and agent to
several noblemen, by which means his special line of business became
opened to him by a sort of revelation. It is said that a relative
of his, a very deep thinker, who afterwards had the misfortune to be
transported for life for mistaken notions on the signing of a will,
taught him considerable legal lore, which he creditably resolved
never to throw away for the benefit of other people, but to reserve
it entirely for his own.
However, I have nothing in particular to say about his early and
active days, but rather of the time when, an old man, he had become
the owner of vast estates by the means I have signified--among them
the great manor of Stapleford, on which he lived, in the splendid
old mansion now pulled down; likewise estates at Marlott, estates
near Sherton Abbas, nearly all the borough of Millpool, and many
properties near Ivell. Indeed, I can't call to mind half his landed
possessions, and I don't know that it matters much at this time of
day, seeing that he's been dead and gone many years.
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