"The document is rather amusing, dated 1470, and is apparently the rough copy of a complaint or information by this Richard against Robert Willoughby, who lived across the water at Beer Ferrers, of injuries done to him at sundry times. This paper which is remarkable for its wonderful spelling and for the careful way in which every hostile act is estimated at its money value, contains no less than thirteen items or charges, each specifying some distinct outrage on the part of the said Willoughby and his followers, numbering on one occasion '_three score persons, in form of war arraied, with jackes, salettes, bowys, ar'ws, and byelys, who at various times and places contrewayted the said Richard to have mordered him and with force of armes made a great affray and assawte upon him and his servants sometimes to the gret jeperdy and dispayre of his liff_,' always to his hurt and damage of so many pounds. And on another occasion attacked Cotehele House itself and carried off a very miscellaneous collection of articles to the hurt and damage of the said Richard of a great many pounds; and at other times took divers of his servants and kept them for a week at a time in prison at '_Bere Ferrers_,' and '_bete_' and grievously wounded others, especially one William Frost, to the hurt and damage to the said Richard of £20 and more. It is a curious fact that fifteen years later this Willoughby (as Lord de Broke) and Richard Edgcumbe held high places together in the court of Henry VII." Richard Edgcumbe had a narrower escape however from the vengeance of Richard III., after the suppression of Buckingham's revolt, in which he was a partizan, being strongly attached to the fortunes of the Red Rose. A party of armed men in Richard's interest, headed according to tradition by Sir Henry Bodrugan, otherwise Trenoweth, of St. Gorran in Cornwall, an adherent of the White Rose, made search for him in his own beautiful home of Cotehele. Carew describing the event says, "he was driven to hide himself in those his thick woods, which overlook the river, what time being suspected of favouring the Earle of Richmond's party, against King Richard the III., he was hotely pursued, and narrowly searched for. Which extremity taught him a sudden policy, to put a stone in his cap, and tumble the same into the water, while these rangers were fast at his heeles, who looking downe after the noyse, and seeing his cap swimming thereon supposed that he had desperately drowned himselfe, gave over their farther hunting and left him at liberty to shift away, and ship over into Brittaine: for a grateful remembrance of which delivery, hee afterwards builded in the place of his lurking, a Chapell."