Thomas took great offence at John’s insult to his wife: but soon afterwards he himself thrust her out of doors, and she, getting in again, “he beat her and threw her again into the street; and all the neighbours could not get him to take her in again, yet again she was conveyed into the house, and at X of the clock at night, he being bare-legged searched and found her and then fell again a-beating of her, so that my mother lying sick on a pallet was fain to creep up, and felt about the chamber for Thomas his hosen and shoes; and crept down the stairs with them as well as she could, and prayed him to put them on lest he should catch cold. So my mother stood in her smock more than an hour entreating him for the Lord’s sake to be more quiet: so that at this time my mother took such a cold that she never rose after, but he and his wife went to bed and agreed well enough.” Then began a long wrangling about the will, the minister who attended her much misliking it, and Thomas and his wife neglecting no device to keep the poor mother to the will. Her son-in-law, Rolfe, a priest, also tried to persuade her to do justice to John, but “she always bade him hold his peace, or else speak softly, for her son’s wife was in one corner or other hearkening, and she should have a life ten times worse than death if Thomas or his wife should know of any such talk.” Soon after this the brothers professed to patch up the quarrel, and John mustered courage himself to entreat his mother to put him back for £10, and he read her the 133rd Psalm, asking her to persuade Thomas to read it too, “which she said she dared not do. The psalm beginneth thus: ‘Behold how pleasant and joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together and to be of one mind,’ &c., and this is a special note to be marked; all the time that I was talking with her, to break me of my talk she lay as she had been more afeared than of death, lest her son Thomas or his wife should hear any of our talk. And still she cried to me: ‘Peace, she cometh; speak softly; she is on the stairs hearkening,’” &c. Still the storm raged round the unhappy woman’s couch; her brother, and the overseer of the will, both protested against its provisions. But in vain; at last she died, worn out and embittered, we may very well imagine, by the broils of her last days on earth. Truly a pitiable tale, but perhaps not unparalleled. We may still read how £5 only was given to John, for the will is extant. It suggests what feuds and sorrows lie behind the phrases of many a will.