In dealing with the Hall House, I decided not to sacrifice the Seventeenth Century work in order to restore the Fourteenth, though the restoration would have been of interest. There was originally a hall, with a screen across it, and a gallery projecting out beyond the screen on corbels. Subsequently the floor of the gallery was carried on across the hall, and the front of the gallery was carried up to the roof, thus making two rooms upstairs, and two down below, divided by the screen. These four rooms are useful, and the hall would have been very useless, as no courts are held for Wreyland manor now. My great-great-grandfather Nelson Beveridge Gribble was lord of Wreyland manor, but always lived in this house--Yonder Wreyland--and never at the Hall House. I believe he held Court Baron and Court Leet and View of Frankpledge in the Lower Parlour here; and it must have been unpleasantly crowded, if the Homage and the Tithing came here in full force. * * * * * The last sitting of the court was held on 14 February 1871. I have printed the record of the sittings from 1437 to 1441, from 1479 to 1501, and from 1696 to 1727, _Wreyland Documents_, pp. 1-88, and have said there (pp. i-c) all I have to say about the history of this manor. In 1898 I became a tenant of a manor in which admission is “by the verge.” The verge is a wooden staff or rod; and the steward of the manor holds one end, and the tenant holds the other, while they say the operative words. I thought the ceremony would be interesting, and might be picturesque; so I went myself, instead of doing it by deputy. The scene was a solicitor’s office of the most prosaic kind with type-writers and telephones. The steward was seated at an American desk; and, when I looked round for the verge, he said, “I haven’t got a stick, but this ’ll do.” And he took up a pencil (made in Austria) and held it out to me. There was a pleasant old house at Becky Fall, burnt down on 18 April 1875, and rebuilt as one sees it now; and I have a full-length portrait of my great-great-great-grandfather, John Langworthy, sitting in the porch there. He has been described as “reading his bible, and looking as if he didn’t believe a word of it,” but it really is a law-book. The painter was Thomas Rennell. There are many pictures of his in Devonshire, mostly labelled Reynolds by mistake for Rennell. Sir Joshua and he were fellow-pupils in Hudson’s studio in London, but had not much in common afterwards.