sometimes they have musique go before them. So back home again, and to
supper, and in comes Piggott with a counterfeit bond which by agreement
between us (though it be very just in itself) he has made, by which I
shall lay claim to the interest of the mortgage money, and so waiting with
much impatience and doubt the issue of to-morrow's Court, I to bed, but
hardly slept half an hour the whole night, my mind did so run with fears
of to-morrow.

14th. Up, and did digest into a method all I could say in our defence, in
case there should be occasion, for I hear he will have counsel to plead
for him in the Court, and so about nine o'clock to the court at the
Lordshipp where the jury was called; and there being vacancies, they would
have had my father, in respect to him, [to] have been one of the Homage,
but he thought fit to refuse it, he not knowing enough the customs of the
town. They being sworn and the charge given them, they fell to our
business, finding the heir-at-law to be my uncle Thomas; but Sir Robert
[Bernard] did tell them that he had seen how the estate was devised to my
father by my uncle's will, according to the custom of the manour, which
they would have denied, first, that it was not according to the custom of
the manour, proposing some difficulty about the half-acre of land which is
given the heir-at-law according to custom, which did put me into great
fear lest it might not be in my uncle's possession at his death, but
mortgaged with other to T. Trice (who was there, and was with my good will
admitted to Taylor's house mortgaged to him if not being worth the money
for which it was mortgaged, which I perceive he now, although he lately
bragged the contrary, yet is now sensible of, and would have us to redeem
it with money, and he would now resurrender it to us rather than the
heir-at-law) or else that it was part of Goody Gorum's in which she has a
life, and so might not be capable of being according to the custom given
to the heir-at-law, but Will Stanks tells me we are sure enough against