TROUBLOUS TIMES. 285 



gorge, nor from the nature of the ground can anything 

 of the kind have ever existed. 



This particular spot was probably seized upon by 

 those anxious, for their own purposes, to identify every 

 spot mentioned in the novel because the ruins were 

 there. 



There can be no doubt that they are the ruins 

 of the old Badgworthy farmhouse and cottages 

 mentioned above in Chapter XL, one of which 

 was already in ruins in the fifteenth century. 



Sheep-stealers there probably were, and they may 

 have taken up their abode in the ruins, but John 

 Ridd and Lorna must be put down as creations of 

 the novelist, while to the same source must be 

 ascribed the calling out of the militia of two counties 

 to try to exterminate the robbers. We know that 

 the moor was crowded with sheep, rother beasts, and 

 horse beasts — tempting, no doubt, to the dishonest, 

 but they would not have been there had they not 

 been reasonably safe ; moreover, as reported by the 

 Commissioners in 1651, the fifty-two free suitors of 

 Withypool drove the moor for the forester nine times 

 a year. If the fifty-two free suitors of those days 

 were anything like their descendants of to-day, the 

 writer's good friends and neighbours at Withypool, 

 they would not have been long in routing out any 

 band of a strength at all likely to have inhabited the 

 Doone Valley. 



Whether the lease to the Marquis of Ormonde was 

 extended, or for how long, is not quite clear, but in 



