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The historical Jan Tregeagle was a magistrate in the early 17th century, a steward under the Duchy of Cornwall, and was known for being particularly harsh; darker stories circulated as well, that he had murdered his wife or made a pact with the Devil. As a lawyer he was a peculiarly nefarious agent, and very hard upon the tenants.

Life
John Tregagle

John Tregagle was the son of John Tregagle, who was the lessee of Boswellick in the parish of St Allen. The father applied to the of, but was declared ignoble.

John's mother was foster mother to John, born 1606, the son of Richard Roberts of Truro. Richard Roberts bought the estate of Lanhydrock in 1620, and the Tregagles evidently mioved there with them.

John became a lawyer, and at some point was appointed steward to the Roberts family.

Roberts, the leading Presbyterian in Cornwall, accompanied the parliamentary army when it entered cornwall in 164, and was blamed for visiting the war on the conty 9by whom?]

He used the opportunities created by disturbed time to acquire a large estate - it measured 30,000 acres in 170, and most of this had been acquired in his tmee. Hewas created earl of radnor in.

Folklore
Many legends have grown up around him, and he has evolved into Cornwall's version of Faust, having bargained his soul for power, fame and success. One story goes that sometime after his death, a case was going through the courts in which the defendant had illegally obtained some land. The defendant, sure that the dead Tregeagle could not testify against him, cried, "If Tregeagle ever saw it, I wish to God he would come and declare it!" To the court's astonishment, Tregeagle materialised in the witness box and testified that he had forged some crucial document or other. Justice having been done, the court would not countenance sending him back to Hell, and so set him a series of impossible tasks to while away the time until Judgment Day. He was set the task of dipping the water out of Dozmary Pool with a limpet shell, but decided to escape to Roche Rock before being set another task, weaving ropes from the sand of Gwenor Cove.

Tregeagle's dismal fate inspired "The Ballad of the Haunted Moor," in which "the soul Tregeagle, a deathless soul/Flies from the Pool with a shriek, a shriek!" 

A later John Tregagle (1673–1712) was MP for Mitchell in 1697.