Appendix C - Holograph Fragment of Chapter 5 (c. 1830)

Summary

HOLOGRAPH fragment of an early draft of Chapter 5 of Crotchet Castle (c. 1830).

One page, folded down the middle.

Location: Pierpont Morgan Library, Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 4361).

The next neighbour of M^r Crotchet was

Squire Steeltrap Steeltrap Fitz-Treadmill

Esquire a great game-preserver and justice

of peace. This worthy with his the help of his

clerk Maresnest and his head gamekeeper Dogspike

and his solicitor Kiteclaw contrived to be the

terror of the peasantry whom he had stripped of

their common rights & stopped out of their old

footpaths paths, not even leaving them a strip of

green for cricket: in return for which kindness they

never lost an opportunity of pulling down his

fences cutting off the heads of his young plantations

& treading on the eggs of his birds. and s Dogspike

had been several times grievously bat beaten and

Kiteclaw had even been waylaid and left haff

haf half-dead in a ditch. The S Somebody

was always punished for these outrages: generally

somebody who was not guilty: which added to

the number of the aggrieved and emboldened the

former perpetrators to a repetition of their exploits.