However the settlers did not object to patenting new lands. These could be paid for in English coins, Spanish pieces of eight, or in tobacco, if metallic money was not to be had. Kirton was ousted from his office, in 1673, because for some time he had failed to remit the quit-rents. Before this Kirton and Dale had quarreled and Dale had ceased to act as an agent. Thomas Kirton probably had few friends in the Northern Neck. The fact that he married Anna, the widow of Dick Cole, tells quite a lot about him. She was despised and feared by her neighbors because of her slanderous tongue. Kirton's home was in Westmoreland County, near the Northumberland boundary. He probably remained in the Northern Neck, for in 1686 he informed the Westmoreland court that its records were "somewhat delayed and the transfers through time and carelessness were scarcely legible." The court directed him to transcribe all the records in one book. For this he was paid 2,000 pounds of tobacco and cask, if he finished the work by 1688. _HANNA AND THE HORSESHOE_ In early days the horseshoe was believed to have a magic potency. When butter was slow in coming, a heated horseshoe was thrown into the churn. A horseshoe was also believed to keep off witches. Doubtless most of the early settlers of the Northern Neck had one nailed over the threshold. An instance of the belief in the power of the horseshoe is found in the seventeenth century records of Northumberland County. From three sworn statements filed in that county, "April ye 11, 1671," let us reconstruct the strange happenings that were reported. The story starts on board a vessel at sea, bound home to the Northern Neck from a trip to the Barbadoes. ("I Edw: Le Breton deposeth that being aboard of our ship & Mr. Edward Cole talking then and there of severall psons (persons) & among all ye rest of Mrs. Neall, Hanna Rodham, daughter of Matthew Rodham, and wife of Christopher Neall.") We can imagine Le Breton and Cole in their ship's cabin relaxing a bit as they neared home--two mariners dressed in loose breeches and jerkins of canvas or frieze, with their warm Monmouth caps and outer garments swaying on the pegs where they hung and the swinging lanthorn casting crazy shadows over all. Perhaps a bottle of the West Indies rum had loosened the tongue of Edward Cole as he told of "a certyne time some yeares past" when "there grew difference" between himself and the family of Hanna Neall. "She then," continued Cole, "made a kind of prayer that he nor none of his family never prosper and shortly after his people fell sick & much of his cattle dyed." When Edward Cole arrived home from the Barbadoes he found his wife ill and the "suspition of Doctor S----, & others was that his wife was under an ill tongue, & if it was soe he concluded yt (yet) it was Mrs. Neall by reason of imprecations made by her & yt indeed he thought soe," and "he did accuse Mrs. Neall of it alsoe."