Cradock Nowell: a tale of the New Forest is a three-volume novel by R. D. Blackmore published in 1866. Set in the New Forest and in London, it follows the fortunes of Cradock Nowell who is thrown out of his family home by his father following the suspicious death of Cradock's twin brother Clayton. It was Blackmore's second novel, and the novel he wrote prior to his most famous work Lorna Doone.
The story introduces twin brothers, Cradock and Clayton Nowell, whose nurse forgets which is the elder, the rosette by which she had distinguished them having fallen to the ground. She settles it to her own satisfaction, and the boys grow up under the care of their father, Sir Cradock Nowell, and their father’s friend, John Rosedew, the rector. Cradock falls in love with love Amy Rosedew, the rector's daughter. When the brothers are on the threshold of adulthood, an unwelcome guest comes in the person of a regimental surgeon, who had attended at the birth of the twins, and he discovers the mistake of the nurse.
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