Poor, mad, puzzled Farmer George is in his final decline and an Age is dying with him. He is to be succeeded by his perverse, erratic, deluded elder son, who believes still in the Divine Right of Kings, not appreciating that any respectable god would turn his face away from him.

The country is in turmoil, everything changing since the long wars ended. Only the Land seems still to be the same.

Major Nathaniel Perry, Lord Palfrey, believes even the fields of old Dorset must succumb to modernity. His tenantry seems to disagree. The scene is set for a long, slow dispute.