Twitter users might not be so ready with their tweets had they risked the drastic punishments meted out to pamphlet publishers in the 1640s. Here is gossip for the nation, while in Farnham, Surrey, gossip fuels rivalries and domestic conflicts. And into this arrives Charity, an unwilling newcomer. Who, the gossips ask, is she? Why has she come? Which young man is she attracting? What will her choices be?