Francis Peck

“ Sir Thomas said, you are old now, and almost past your labour. I will give you the running of my kitchen as long as you live.. He answered, Sir, you have a numerous family; I have been used to live retired; give me leave to build a home of one room for myself in such a field, and there, with your good leave, I will live and die: and if you have any work that I can do for you, I shall be ready to serve you. Sir Thomas granted his request, he built his house, and there continued to his death. ”

“ Sir Thomas had a curiosity to know what book the man read; but was some time before he could discover it; he still putting the book up if any one came toward him. However, at last, Sir Thomas surprised him [1] , & snatched the book from him, & looking into it, found it to be Latin. Hereupon he examined him, & finding he pretty well understood that language, he enquired, how he came by his learning? Hereupon the man told him, as he had been a good master to him, he would venture to trust him with a secret he had never before revealed to any one. ”

“ For I find , by Philpot, that Sir Thomas Moyle did not purchase the estate of Eastwell ‘till about the year M,D,XLIII, or IV.We may therefore reasonably suppose, that, upon building a new house on his purchase, he could not have come to live in it until; M,D,XLVI and that his workmen were continued to build the walls about his gardens and other conveniences off form the house. And till he came to live in the house he could not [well] have [an] opportunity for observing how Richard Plantagenet retired with his book. ”