Drakestone eBook

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Among the commoner sort of folk, both of the town and the country, with whom my tale has to do, you will rarely find the word belong used as others use it; so that when it was said that the Yewdales had not originally belonged to the land you are to understand that what was meant was that the Yewdales had not originally owned it That later they did own it, and, as I believe, legally enough, was beyond dispute; yet there were the two meanings to the word, and of the two to take it literally was the better. And since these Yewdales, who did not belong to the land either in appearance or nature, are better worth talking about than the Drakes, who did (of whom I am one), I will set down here in the beginning the most that can be said for these latter, and so have done with it.

By inherent right of Intake, part at least of the land should have remained Drakes' land, for the first John Drake - to begin somewhere, though he may have been the tenth of his line for all anybody now knows - had taken it from the barren moor.