A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon
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Title: A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon
being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall
Author: S. Baring-Gould
Release date: March 8, 2015 [eBook #48439]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK OF THE WEST. VOLUME 1, DEVON ***
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* * * * *
A BOOK OF THE WEST
VOL. I.
DEVON
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
THE TRAGEDY OF THE CÆSARS
THE DESERT OF SOUTHERN FRANCE
STRANGE SURVIVALS
SONGS OF THE WEST
A GARLAND OF COUNTRY SONG
OLD COUNTRY LIFE
YORKSHIRE ODDITIES
FREAKS OF FANATICISM
A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES
OLD ENGLISH FAIRY TALES
A BOOK OF NURSERY SONGS
AN OLD ENGLISH HOME
THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW
THE CROCK OF GOLD
[Illustration: SWEET HAY-MAKERS]
A
BOOK OF THE WEST
BEING AN INTRODUCTION
TO DEVON AND CORNWALL
BY S. BARING-GOULD
VOL. I.
DEVON
WITH THIRTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
1899
PREFACE
In this "Book of the West" I have not sought to say all that might
be said relative to Devon and Cornwall; nor have I attempted to
make of it a guide-book. I have rather endeavoured to convey to
the visitor to our western peninsula a general idea of what is
interesting, and what ought to attract his attention. The book is
not intended to supersede guide-books, but to prepare the mind to
use these latter with discretion.
In dealing with the history of the counties and of the towns, it
would have swelled the volumes unduly to have gone systematically
through their story from the beginning to the present; it would,
moreover, have made the book heavy reading, as well as heavy to
carry. I have chosen, therefore, to pick out some incident, or some
biography connected with the several towns described, and have
limited myself thereto.
My object then must not be misunderstood, and my book harshly judged
accordingly. There are ten thousand omissions, but I venture to
think a good many things have been admitted which will not be found
in guide-books, but which it is well for the visitor to know, if he
has a quick intelligence and eyes open to observe.
In the Cornish volume I have given rather fully the stories of the
saints who have impressed their names indelibly on the land. It has
seemed to me absurd to travel in Cornwall and have these names in
the mouth, and let them remain _nuda nomina_.
They have a history, and that is intimately associated with the
beginnings of that of Cornwall. But their history has not been
studied, and in books concerning Cornwall most of the statements
about them are wholly false.
I have not entered into any critical discussion concerning moot
points. I have left that for my "Catalogue of the Cornish Saints"
that is being issued in the _Journal of the Royal Institution of
Cornwall_.
There are places that might have been described more fully, others
that have been passed over without notice. This has been due to no
disregard for them on my part, but to a dread of making the volumes
too bulky and cumbrous.
Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to many kind friends who have
assisted me with their local knowledge, as Mrs. Troup, of Offwell
House, Honiton; the Rev. J. B. Hughes, for some time Head Master
of Blundell's School, Tiverton, and now Vicar of Staverton; Mr. R.
Burnard, of Huckaby House, Dartmoor, and Hillsborough, Plymouth, my
_alter ego_ in all that concerns Dartmoor; Mr. J. D. Enys, whose
knowledge of things Cornish is encyclopædic; Messrs. Amery, of
Druid, Ashburton; Mr. J. D. Prickman, of Okehampton; and many others.
S. BARING-GOULD
LEW TRENCHARD HOUSE, DEVON
_June, 1899_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE WESTERN FOLK 1
II. VILLAGES AND CHURCHES 30
III. HONITON 43
IV. A LANDSLIP 60
V. EXETER 68
VI. CREDITON 79
VII. TIVERTON 101
VIII. BARNSTAPLE 122
IX. BIDEFORD 134
X. DARTMOOR AND ITS ANTIQUITIES 155
XI. DARTMOOR: ITS TENANTS 176
XII. OKEHAMPTON 208
XIII. MORETON HAMPSTEAD 225
XIV. ASHBURTON 248
XV. TAVISTOCK 266
XVI. TORQUAY 289
XVII. TOTNES 310
XVIII. DARTMOUTH 323
XIX. KINGSBRIDGE 337
XX. PLYMOUTH 352
ILLUSTRATIONS
SWEET HAY-MAKERS _Frontispiece_
From a photograph by Mr. Chenhall, Tavistock.
CLOVELLY FISHERMEN _To face page_ 16
From a photograph by the Rev. F. Partridge.
SHEEPSTOR " 30
From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.
HOLNE PULPIT AND SCREEN " 38
From a photograph by J. Amery, Esq.
HONITON LACE " 51
From specimens kindly lent by Miss Herbert, Exeter,
and Mrs. Fowler, Honiton. Photographed by the Rev.
F. Partridge.
HIGH STREET, EXETER " 68
From a photograph by the Rev. F. Partridge.
A COB COTTAGE, SHEEPWASH " 80
From a photograph by the Rev. F. Partridge.
EAST WINDOW, CREDITON CHURCH, BEFORE
"RESTORATION" " 82
From a sketch by F. Bligh Bond, Esq.
TIVERTON " 101
From a photograph by Mr. Mudford, Tiverton.
QUEEN ANNE'S WALK, BARNSTAPLE " 122
From a photograph by the Rev. F. Partridge.
CHAPEL ROCK, ILFRACOMBE " 128
From a photograph by Wellington and Ward, Elstree.
HARTLAND SMITHY " 134
From a photograph by the Rev. F. Partridge.
CLOVELLY " 151
From a photograph by the Rev. F. Partridge.
STAPLE TOR " 155
From a photograph by James Shortridge, Esq.
RIPPON TOR LOGAN STONE " 160
From a photograph by J. Amery, Esq.
BROADUN POUNDS " 165
BARROW ON CHAGFORD COMMON " 166
Drawn by R. H. Worth, Esq.
LAKEHEAD KISTVAEN " 168
From a photograph by R. Burnard, Esq.
URN FROM KISTVAEN " 172
Drawn by R. H. Worth, Esq.
VIXEN TOR " 176
From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.
LOWER TARR " 182
From a photograph by J. Amery, Esq.
TAVY CLEAVE " 197
From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.
TAW MARSH " 208
From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.
YES TOR " 212
From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.
THE CALCULATING BOY " 232
From a miniature in the possession of Miss Bidder.
GRIMSPOUND " 239
From a plan by R. H. Worth, Esq.
J. DUNNING, LORD ASHBURTON " 252
From a painting by Sir J. Reynolds.
OLD OAK CARVING, ASHBURTON " 258
From a photograph by J. Amery, Esq.
BRENT TOR " 266
From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.
ON THE DART " 310
From a photograph by the Rev. F. Partridge.
DARTMOUTH CASTLE " 323
From a photograph by the Rev. F. Partridge.
GRAMMAR SCHOOL, PLYMPTON " 354
From a drawing by F. Bligh Bond, Esq.
IN PLYMPTON " 354
From a drawing by F. Bligh Bond, Esq.
SUTTON POOL " 358
From a photograph by the Rev. F. Partridge.
ALMS-HOUSES, S. GERMANS " 366
From a drawing by F. Bligh Bond, Esq.
DEVON
CHAPTER I.
THE WESTERN FOLK
Ethnology of the Western Folk--The earliest men--The
Ivernian race--The arrival of the Britons--Mixture of
races in Ireland--The Attacottic revolt--The Dumnonii--The
Scottic invasion of Dumnonia--The story of the Slave of the
Haft--Athelstan drives the Britons across the Tamar--Growth of
towns--The yeomen represent the Saxon element--The peasantry
the earlier races--The Devonshire dialect--Courtesy--Use
of Christian names--Love of funerals--Good looks among the
girls--Dislike of "Foreigners"--The Cornish people--Mr. Havelock
Ellis on them--The types--A Cornish girl--Religion--The
unpardonable sin--Folk-music--Difference between that of Devon
and Cornwall and that of Somersetshire.
It is commonly supposed that the bulk of the Devonshire people are
Saxons, and that the Cornish are almost pure Celts.
In my opinion neither supposition is correct.
Let us see who were the primitive occupants of the Dumnonian
peninsula. In the first place there were the men who left their
rude flint tools in the Brixham and Kent's caverns, the same people
who have deposited such vast accumulations in the lime and chalk
caves and shelters of the Vézère and Dordogne. Their remains are
not so abundant with us as there, because our conditions are not as
favourable for their preservation; and yet in the Drift we do find
an enormous number of their tools, though not _in situ_, with their
hearths, as in France; yet sufficient to show that either they were
very numerous, or what is more probable, that the time during which
they existed was long.
This people did not melt off the face of the earth like snow. They
remained on it.
We know that they were tall, that they had gentle faces--the
structure of their skulls shows this; and from the sketches they
have left of themselves, we conclude that they had straight hair,
and from their skeletons we learn that they were tall.
M. Massenat, the most experienced hunter after their remains, was
sitting talking with me one evening at Brives about their relics. He
had just received a volume of the transactions of the Smithsonian
Institute that contained photographs of Esquimaux implements. He
indicated one, and asked me to translate to him the passage relative
to its use. "Wonderful!" said he. "I have found this tool repeatedly
in our rock-shelters, and have never known its purport. It is a
remarkable fact, that to understand our reindeer hunters of the
Vézère we must question the Esquimaux of the Polar region. I firmly
hold that they were the same race."
A gentle, intelligent, artistic, unwarlike people got pressed into
corners by more energetic, military, and aggressive races. And,
accustomed to the reindeer, some doubtless migrated North with their
favourite beasts, and in a severer climate became somewhat stunted.
It is possible--I do not say that it is more than possible--that the
dark men and women found about Land's End, tall and handsome, found
also in the Western Isles of Scotland and in West Ireland, may be
the last relics of this infusion of blood.
But next to this doubtful element comes one of which no doubt at all
exists. The whole of England, as of France, and as of Spain, was
at one time held by a dusky, short-built race, which is variously
called Iberian, Ivernian, and Silurian, of which the Basque is the
representative so far as that he still speaks a very corrupted
form of the original tongue. In France successive waves of Gaul,
Visigoth, and Frank have swept over the land and have dominated it.
But the fair hair and blue eyes and the clear skin of the conquering
races have been submerged by the rising and overflow of the dusky
blood of the original population. The Berber, the Kabyle are of the
same race; dress one of them in a blue blouse, and put a peaked cap
on his head, and he would pass for a French peasant.
The Welsh have everywhere adopted the Cymric tongue, they hug
themselves in the belief that they are pure descendants of the
ancient Britons, but in fact they are rather Silurians than Celts.
Their build, their coloration, are not Celtic. In the fifth century
Cambria was invaded from Strathclyde by the sons of Cunedda;
fair-haired, white-skinned Britons, they conquered the North and
penetrated a certain way South; but the South was already occupied
by a body of invading Irish. When pressed by the Saxons, then the
retreating Britons poured into Wales; but the substratum of the
population was alien in tongue and in blood and in religion.
It was the same in Dumnonia--Devon and Cornwall. It was occupied
at some unknown time, perhaps four centuries before Christ, by the
Britons, who became lords and masters, but the original people did
not disappear, they became their "hewers of wood and drawers of
water."
Then came the great scourge of the Saxon invasion. Devon remained
as a place of refuge for the Britons who fled before the weapons of
these barbarians, till happily the Saxons accepted Christianity,
when their methods became less ferocious. They did not exterminate
the subject people. But what had more to do with the mitigation of
their cruelty than their Christianity, was that they had ceased to
be mere wandering hordes, and had become colonists. As such they
needed serfs. They were not themselves experienced agriculturalists,
and they suffered the original population to remain in the land-the
dusky Ivernians as serfs, and the freemen, the conquered Britons,
were turned into tenant farmers.
This is precisely what took place in Ireland. The conquering
Gadhaels or Milesians, always spoken of as golden-haired, tall
and white-skinned, had subdued the former races, the Firbolgs and
others, and had welded them into one people whom they called the
Aithech Tuatha, _i.e._ the Rentpaying Tribes; the Classic writers
rendered this Attacotti.
In the first two centuries of our era there ensued an incessant
struggle between the tenant farmers and the lords; the former rose
in at least two great revolutions, which shows that they had by no
means been exterminated, and whole bodies of them, rather than be
crushed into submission and ground down by hard rents, left Ireland,
some as mercenaries, others, perhaps, to fall on the coasts of
Wales, Devon, and Brittany, and effect settlements there.
When brought into complete subjugation in Ireland, the Gadhelic
chiefs planted their _duns_ throughout the country in such a manner
as to form chains, by which they could communicate with one another
at the least token of a revival of discontent; and they distributed
the subject tribes throughout the island in such a manner as to keep
them under supervision, and to break up their clans. As Professor
Sullivan very truly says, "The Irish tenants of to-day are composed
of the descendants of Firbolgs and other British and Belgic races;
Milesians, ... Gauls, Norwegians, Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Normans, and
English, each successive dominant race having driven part at least
of its predecessors in power into the rent-paying and labouring
ranks beneath them, or gradually falling into them themselves, to be
there absorbed. This is a fact which should be remembered by those
who theorise over the qualities of the 'pure Celts,' whoever they
may be."[1]
[1] Introduction to O'CURRY (E.), _Manners and Customs of the
Ancient Irish_, 1873, I. xxiv.
The Dumnonii, whose city or fortress was at Exeter, were an
important people. They occupied the whole of the peninsula from the
river Parret to Land's End. East of the Tamar was Dyfnaint, the Deep
Vales; west of it Corneu, the horn of Britain.
The Dumnonii are thought to have invaded and occupied this territory
about four centuries before the Christian era. The language of the
previous dusky race was agglutinative, like that of the Tartars and
Basques, that is to say, they did not inflect their substantives.
Although there has been a vast influx of other blood, with fair hair
and white complexions, the earlier type may still be found in both
Devon and Cornwall.
Then came the Roman invasion; this affected our Dumnonian peninsula
very slightly; Cornwall hardly at all. When that came to an end, a
large portion of Britain had fallen under the sway of the Picts,
Saxons, and Scots. By Scots are meant the Irish, who after their
invasion of Alba gave the present name to Scotland. But it must be
distinctly understood that the only Scots known in the first ten or
eleven centuries, to writers on British affairs, were Irish.
In alliance with the Picts and Saxons, Niall of the Nine Hostages
poured down on Britain and exacted tribute from the conquered
people. In 388 he carried his arms further and plundered Brittany.
In 396 the Irish supremacy was resisted by Stilicho, and for a while
shaken; it was reimposed in 400. In 405, Niall invaded Gaul, and was
assassinated there on the shores of the English Channel.
In 406 Stilicho a second time endeavoured to repel the
Hiberno-Pictic allies, but, unable to do much by force of arms,
entered into terms with them, for Gildas speaks of the Romans as
making confederates of Irish. Doubtless Stilicho surrendered to them
their hold over and the tribute from the western part of Britain.
And now I must tell a funny story connected with the introduction of
lap-dogs into Ireland. It comes to us on the authority of Cormac,
king-bishop of Cashel, who died in 903, and who wrote a glossary of
old Irish words becoming obsolete even in his day.
"The slave of the Haft," says he, "was the name of the first lap-dog
that was known in Erin. Cairbre Musc was the man who first brought
it there out of Britain. At that time the power of the Gadhaels
(Scots or Irish) was great over the Britons; they had divided Albion
among them into farms, and each of them had a neighbour and friend
among the people." Then he goes on to say how that they established
fortresses through the land, and founded one at Glastonbury. "One
of those divisions of land is Dun Map Lethan, in the country of the
Britons of Cornwall." This lasted to A.D. 380.
Now Cairbre was wont to pass to and fro between Britain and Ireland.
At this time lap-dogs were great rarities, and were highly prized.
None had hitherto reached Ireland. And Cairbre was desirous of
introducing one there when he went to visit his friends. But the
possessors of lap-dogs would on no account part with their treasures.
Now it happened that Cairbre had a valuable knife, with the handle
gold-inlaid. One night he rubbed the haft over with bacon fat, and
placed it before the kennel of the lap-dog belonging to a friend.
The dog gnawed at the handle and sadly disfigured it.
Next morning Cairbre made a great outcry over his precious knife,
and showed his British host how that the dog had disfigured it. The
Briton apologised, but Cairbre promptly replied, "My good friend,
are you aware of the law that 'the transgressor is forfeit for his
transgression?' Accordingly I put in a legal claim to the dog." Thus
he became its owner, and gave it the name of Mogh-Eimh, or the Slave
of the Haft.
The dog was a bitch, and was with young when Cairbre carried her
over to Ireland. The news that the wonderful little beast had
arrived spread far and wide, and the king of Munster and the chief
king, Cormac Mac Airt (227-266) both laid claim to it; the only way
in which Cairbre could satisfy them was to give each a pup when
his lap-dog had littered. So general was the amazement over the
smallness and the beauty of the original dog, that some verses were
made on it, which have been preserved to this day.
"Sweet was your drink in the house of Ailil (King of Munster)!
Sweet was your meat in the house of Cormac!
Fair was your bread in the house of Cairbre!
O doggie, Slave of the Hilt!"
It was probably during the Irish domination that a large portion of
North Devon and East Cornwall was colonised from the Emerald Isle.
But to return to the Saxon conquest. When Athelstan drove the
Britons out of Exeter and made the Tamar their limit, it is not to
be supposed that he devastated and depopulated Devon; what he did
was to destroy the tribal organisation throughout Devon, banish the
princes and subjugate the people to Saxon rule.
The Saxon colonists planted themselves in "Stokes" mostly in the
valleys. The Celts had never been anything of a town-building
people; they had lived scattered over the land in their _treffs_ and
_boths_, and only the retainers of a chieftain had dwelt around his
_dun_.
But with the Saxons, the fact that they lived as a few surrounded
by an alien population that in no way loved them, obliged them to
huddle together in their "Stokes." Thus towns sprang into existence,
and bear Saxon names.
It is probable that the yeomen of the land at the present day
represent the Saxon; and most assuredly in the great body of the
agricultural labourers, the miners, and artisans, we have mainly a
mixture of British and Ivernian blood.
Throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed till this present century,
there can have been no easy, if possible, passage out of the
labouring community into that of the yeoman class--hardly into
that of tenant farmer; whereas the yeomen and the tradesmen, wool
merchants and the like, were incessantly feeding the class of
_armigeres_, squires; and their descendants supplied the nobility
with accretions.
There is, perhaps, in the east of Devon a preponderating element of
Saxon, but I have observed in the Seaton and Axminster district so
much of the dark hair and eye, that I believe there is less than is
supposed, and that there is a very large understratum of the earlier
Silurian. Perhaps in North Devon there may be more of the Saxon.
West of Okehampton there is really not much difference between the
Devonian and the Cornishman, but of this more presently.
It is remarkable that the Devonshire dialect prevails in Cornwall
above a diagonal line drawn from Padstow to Saltash, on the Tamar;
west of this and below it the dialect is different. This is probably
due to the Cornish tongue having been abandoned in the west and
south long subsequent to its disappearance in the north-east. But
this line also marks the limits of an Irish-Gwentian occupation.
The dialect is fast dying out, but the intonation of the voice will
remain long after peculiar words have ceased to be employed.
The "z" has a sound found nowhere else, due to the manner in which
the tongue is turned up to the palate for the production of the
sound; "ou" and "oo" in such words as "you" and "moon" is precisely
that of the French _u_ in "lune."
Gender is entirely disregarded; a cow is a "he," who runs dry, and
of a cock it is said "her crows in the morn." But then the male
rooster is never a cock, but a stag.
The late Mr. Arnold, inspector of schools, was much troubled about
the dialect when he came into the county. One day, when examining
the school at Kelly, he found the children whom he was questioning
very inattentive.
"What is the matter with you?" he asked testily.
"Plaaze, zur, us be a veared of the apple-drayne."
In fact, a wasp was playing in and out among their heavily oiled
locks.
"Apple-drayne!" exclaimed Mr. Arnold. "Good gracious! You children
do not seem to know the names of common objects. What is that bird
yonder seated on the wall?" And he pointed out of the window at a
cock.
"Plaaze, zur, her's a stag."
"I thought as much. You do not know the difference between a biped
and a quadruped."
I was present one day at the examination of a National School by
H.M. Inspector.
"Children," said he, "what form is that?"
"A dodecahedron."
"And that?"
"An isosceles triangle."
"And what is the highest peak in Africa?"
"Kilima Ndjaro."
"Its height?"
"Twenty thousand feet."
"And what are the rivers that drain Siberia?"
"The Obi, the Yenesei, and the Lena."
Now in going to the school I had plucked a little bunch of
speedwell, and I said to the inspector, "Would you mind inquiring of
the children the name of this plant?"
"What is this plant?" he demanded.
Not a child knew.
"What is the river that flows through your valley?"
Not a child knew.
"What is the name of the highest peak of Dartmoor you see yonder?"
Not a child knew.
And this is the rubbish in place of education that at great cost is
given to our children.
Education they do not get; stuffing they do.
They acquire a number of new words, which they do not understand and
which they persistently mispronounce.
"Aw my! isn't it hot? The prepositions be runin' all hover me."
"Ay! yü'm no schollard! I be breakin' out wi' presbeterians."
The "oo" when followed by an "r" has the sound "o" converted into
"oa"; thus "door" becomes "doar."
"Eau" takes the sound of the modified German "ü"; thus "beauty" is
pronounced "büty."
"Fe" and "g" take "y" to prolong and emphasise them; thus "fever"
becomes "feyver," and "meat" is pronounced "mayte."
"F" is frequently converted into "v"; "old father" is "ole vayther."
But on the other hand "v" is often changed to "f," as "view" into
"fü."
The vowel "a" is always pronounced long; "landed" is "lānded,"
"plant" is "plānt." "H" is frequently changed into "y"; "heat" is
spoken of as "yett," "Heathfield" becomes "Yaffel," and "hall" is
"yall."
"I" is interjected to give greater force, and "e" is sounded as
"a"; "flesh" is pronounced "flaish." "S" is pronounced "z," as in
examples already given. "O" has an "ou" sound in certain positions,
as "going," which is rendered "gou-en." "S" in the third person
singular of a verb is "th," as "he grows," "a grawth," "she does" is
"her düth."
Here is a form of the future perfect: "I shall 'ave a-bin an' gone
vur tü dü it."
There is a decided tendency to soften harsh syllabic conjunctions.
Thus Blackbrook is Blackabrook, and Matford is Mattaford; this is
the Celtic interjected _y_ and _ty_.
This is hardly a place for giving a list of peculiar words; they
may be found in Mrs. Hewett's book, referred to at the end of this
chapter, and collected by the committee on Devonshire provincialisms
in the _Transactions of the Devonshire Association_.
As a specimen of the dialect I will give a couple of verses of a
popular folk song.
"The gügü es a purty burd,
'Er zingeth as er vlieth;
'Er bring'th güde tidin's,
'Er tell'th naw lies;
'Er zucketh swate vlowers
Tu kaype 'er voice clear,
An' whan 'er zingeth gügü
Tha zummer drāeth near.
"Naw āll yu vair maidens
Wheriver yü be,
Your 'earts dü nat 'ang 'em
On a zicamore tree.
The layfe it will wither,
The mores (roots) will decay;
Ah me, I be waistin'
An' vaydin' away."
The Devonian and Cornishman will be found by the visitor to
be courteous and hospitable. There is no roughness of manner
where unspoiled by periodic influx of strangers; he is kindly,
tender-hearted, and somewhat suspicious. There is a lack of firmness
of purpose such as characterises the Scotchman; and a lively
imagination may explain a slackness in adhesion to the truth. He
is prone to see things as he would like them to be rather than as
they are. On the road passers-by always salute and have a bit of
a yarn, even though personally unacquainted; and to go by in the
dark without a greeting is a serious default in good manners. A
very marked trait especially noticeable in the Cornish is their
independence. Far more intimately than the inhabitants of any other
part of England, they are democrats. This they share with the Welsh;
and, like the Welsh, though politically they are Radicals, are
inherently the most conservative of people.
It is a peculiarity among them to address one another by the
Christian name, or to speak of a man by the Christian name along
with the surname, should there be need to distinguish him from
another. The term "Mr." is rarely employed. A gentleman is "Squire
So-and-so," but not a mister; and the trade is often prefixed to the
name, as Millard Horn, or Pass'n John, or Cap'n Zackie.
There is no form of enjoyment more relished by a West Country man
or woman than a "buryin'." Business occupations are cast aside when
there is to be a funeral. The pomp and circumstance of woe exercise
an extraordinary fascination on the Western mind, and that which
concerns the moribund person at the last is not how to prepare the
soul for the great change, but how to contrive to have a "proper
grand buryin'." "Get away, you rascal!" was the address of an irate
urchin to another, "if you gie' me more o' your saāce you shan't
come to my buryin'." "Us 'as enjoyed ourselves bravely," says a
mourner, wiping the crumbs from his beard and the whiskey-drops from
his lips; and no greater satisfaction could be given to the mourners
than this announcement.
On the other hand a wedding wakes comparatively little interest; the
parents rarely attend.
The looks of Devonshire and Cornish lasses are proverbial. This
is not due to complexion alone, which is cream and roses, but to
the well-proportioned limbs, the litheness of form, uprightness of
carriage, and to the good moulding of the features. The mouth and
chin are always well shaped, and the nose is straight; in shape the
faces are a long oval.
I am not sure that West Country women ever forget that they were
once comely. An old woman of seventy-five was brought forward to be
photographed by an amateur: no words of address could induce her to
speak till the operation was completed; then she put her finger into
her mouth: "You wouldn't ha' me took wi' my cheeks falled in? I just
stuffed the _Western Marnin' News_ into my mouth to fill'n out."
Although both in Devon and Cornwall there is great independence and
a total absence of that servility of manner which one meets with in
other parts of England, it would be a vast mistake to suppose that a
West Country man is disrespectful to those who are his superiors--if
he has reason to recognise their superiority; but he does not like
a "foreigner," especially one from the North Country. He does not
relish his manner, and this causes misunderstanding and mutual
dislike. He is pleased to have as his pass'n, as his squire, as a
resident in his neighbourhood, a man whom he knows all about, as to
who were his father and his grandfather, as also whence he hails. A
clergyman who comes from a town, or from any other part of England,
has to learn to understand the people before they will at all take
to him. "I have been here five years," said a rector one day to me,
a man transferred from far, "and I don't understand the people yet,
and until I understand them I am quite certain to be miscomprehended
by them."
The West Country man must be met and addressed as an equal. He
resents the slightest token of approach _de haut en bas_, but he
never presumes; he is always respectful and knows his place; he
values himself, and demands, and quite rightly, that you shall show
that you value him.
The other day a bicyclist was spinning down the road to Moreton
Hampstead. Not knowing quite where he was, and night approaching, he
drew up where he saw an old farmer leaning on a gate.
"I say, you Johnnie, where am I? I want a bed."
"You'm fourteen miles from Wonford Asylum," was the quiet response,
"and fourteen from Newton Work'us, and fourteen from Princetown
Prison, and I reckon you could find quarters in any o' they--and
suitable."
[Illustration: CLOVELLY FISHERMEN]
With regard to the Cornish people, I can but reiterate what has
already been said relative to the Western folk generally. What
differences exist in character are not due to difference of race,
but to that of occupation. The bulk of Cornishmen in the middle and
west have been associated with mines and with the sea, and this is
calculated to give to the character a greater independence, and
also to confer a subtle colour, different in kind to that which is
produced by agricultural labour. If you take a Yorkshireman from
one side of the Calder or Aire, where factory life is prevalent,
and one from the other side, where he works in the fields, you will
find as great, if not a greater, difference than you will between
a Devonshire and a Cornish man. Compare the sailors and miners on
one side of the Tamar with those on the other, and you will find no
difference at all.
There will always be more independence in miners who travel
about the world, who are now in Brazil, then in the African
diamond-fields, next at home, than in the agricultural labourer, who
never goes further than the nearest market town. The mind is more
expanded in the one than in the other; but in race all may be one,
though differing in ideas, manners, views, speech.
I venture now to quote freely from an article on Cornishmen that is
written by an outsider, and which appeared in a review.
"The dweller in Cornwall comes in time to perceive the constant
recurrence of various types of man. Of these, two at least
are well marked, very common, and probably of great antiquity
and significance. The man of the first type is slender,
lithe, graceful, usually rather short; the face is smooth and
delicately outlined, without bony prominences, the eyebrows
finely pencilled. The character is, on the whole, charming,
volatile, vivacious, but not always reliable, and while
quick-witted, rarely capable of notable achievement or strenuous
endeavour. It is distinctly a feminine type. The other type is
large and solid, often with much crispy hair on the face and
shaggy eyebrows. The arches over the eyes are well marked and
the jaws massive; the bones generally are developed in these
persons, though they would scarcely be described as raw-boned;
in its extreme form a face of this type has a rugged prognathous
character which seems to belong to a lower race."
Usually the profile is fine, with straight noses; and a well-formed
mouth, with oval, rather long face is general, the chin and mouth
being small. I do not recall at any time meeting with the "rummagy"
faces, with no defined shape, and ill-formed noses that one
encounters in Scotland.
There is a want of the strength and force such as is encountered in
the North; but on the other hand there is remarkable refinement of
feature.
I had at one time some masons and workmen engaged upon a structure
just in front of my dining-room windows, and a friend from
Yorkshire was visiting me. The men working for me were perhaps fine
specimens, but nothing really extraordinary for the country. One,
a tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed mason, my friend at once designated
Lohengrin; and he was the typical knight of the swan--I suspect a
pure Celt. Another was not so tall, lithe, dark, and handsome. "King
Arthur" was what my friend called him.
The writer, Mr. Havelock Ellis, whom I have already quoted,
continues:--
"The women are solid and vigorous in appearance, with
fully-developed breasts and hips, in marked contrast with the
first type, but resembling women in Central and Western France.
Indeed, the people of this type generally recall a certain
French type, grave, self-possessed, deliberate in movement,
capable and reliable in character. I mention these two types
because they seem to me to represent the two oldest races of
Cornwall, or, indeed, of England. The first corresponds to
the British neolithic man, who held sway in England before
the so-called Celts arrived, and who probably belonged to the
so-called Iberian race; in pictures of Spanish women of the best
period, indeed, and in some parts of modern Spain, we may still
see the same type. The second corresponds to the more powerful,
and as his remains show, the more cultured and æsthetic Celt,
who came from France and Belgium.... When these types of
individual are combined, the results are often very attractive.
We then meet with what is practically a third type: large,
dignified, handsome people, distinguished from the Anglo-Saxon
not only by their prominent noses and well-formed chins, but
also by their unaffected grace and refinement of manner. In many
a little out-of-the-world Cornish farm I have met with the men
of this type, and admired the distinction of their appearance
and bearing, their natural instinctive courtesy, their kindly
hospitality. It was surely of such men that Queen Elizabeth
thought when she asserted that all Cornishmen are courtiers.
"I do not wish to insist too strongly on these types which
blend into one another, and may even be found in the same
family. The Anglo-Saxon stranger, who has yet had no time to
distinguish them, and who comes, let us say, from a typically
English county like Lancashire, still finds much that is
unfamiliar in the people he meets. They strike him as rather
a dark race, lithe in movement, and their hands and feet are
small. Their hair has a tendency to curl, and their complexions,
even those of the men, are often incomparable. The last
character is due to the extremely moist climate of Cornwall,
swept on both sides by the sea-laden Atlantic. More than by
this, however, the stranger accustomed to the heavy, awkward
ways of the Anglo-Saxon clodhopper will be struck by the bright,
independent intelligence and faculty of speech which he finds
here. No disguise can cover the rusticity of the English rustic;
on Cornish roads one may often meet a carman whose clear-cut
face, bushy moustache, and general bearing might easily add
distinction to Pall Mall."
There are parts of Devon and of Cornwall where the dark type
prevails. "A black grained man" is descriptive of one belonging to
the Veryan district, and dark hair and eyes, and singular beauty
are found about the Newlyn and St. Ives districts. The darkest type
has been thrust into corners. In a fold of Broadbury Down in Devon,
in the village of Germansweek, the type is mainly dark; in that of
North Lew, in another lap of the same down, it is light. It has
been noticed that a large patch of the dusky race has remained in
Bedfordshire.
The existence of the dark eyes and hair and fine profiles has been
attempted to be explained by the fable that a Spanish vessel was
wrecked now here, now there, from the Armada, and that the sailors
remained and married the Cornish women. I believe that this is
purely a fable. The same attempt at solution of the existence of the
same type in Ireland and in Scotland has been made, because people
would not understand that there could be any other explanation of
the phenomenon.
I have been much struck in South Wales, on a market day, when
observing the people, to see how like they were in build, and
colour, and manner, and features to those one might encounter at a
fair in Tavistock, Launceston, or Bodmin.
I positively must again quote Mr. Havelock Ellis on the Cornish
woman, partly because his description is so charmingly put, but also
because it is so incontestably true.
"The special characters of the race are often vividly shown
in its women. I am not aware that they have ever played a
large part in the world, whether in life or art. But they are
memorable enough for their own qualities. Many years ago, as a
student in a large London hospital, I had under my care a young
girl who came from labour of the lowest and least skilled order.
Yet there was an instinctive grace and charm in all her ways and
speech which distinguished her utterly from the rough women of
her class. I was puzzled then over that delightful anomaly. In
after years, recalling her name and her appearance, I knew that
she was Cornish, and I am puzzled no longer. I have since seen
the same ways, the same soft, winning speech equally unimpaired
by hard work and rude living. The Cornish woman possesses an
adroitness and self-possession, a modulated readiness of speech,
far removed from the awkward heartiness of the Anglo-Saxon
woman, the emotional inexpressiveness of the Lancashire lass
whose eyes wander around as she seeks for words, perhaps
completing her unfinished sentence by a snap of the fingers.
The Cornish woman--at all events while she is young and not
submerged by the drudgery of life--exhibits a certain delightful
volubility and effervescence. In this respect she has some
affinity with the bewitching and distracting heroines of Thomas
Hardy's novels, doubtless because the Wessex folk of the South
Coast are akin to the Cornish. The Cornish girl is inconsistent
without hypocrisy; she is not ashamed of work, but she is very
fond of jaunts, and on such occasions she dresses herself, it
would be rash to say with more zeal than the Anglo-Saxon maiden,
but usually with more success. She is an assiduous chapel-goer,
equally assiduous in flirtations when chapel is over. The pretty
Sunday-school teacher and leader of the local Band of Hope
cheerfully confesses as she drinks off the glass of claret you
offer her that she is but a poor teetotaller. The Cornish woman
will sometimes have a baby before she is legally married; it is
only an old custom of the county, though less deeply rooted than
the corresponding custom in Wales."[2]
[2] _The New Century Review_, April, 1897.
The Cornish are, like the Welsh, intensely religious, but according
to their idea religion is emotionalism and has hardly enough to do
with morality.
"So Mr. So-and-So is dead," in reference to a local preacher. "I
fear he led a very loose life."
"Ah! perhaps so, but he was a sweet Christian."
Here is something illustrative at once of West Country religion and
dialect. I quote from an amusing paper on the "Recollections of a
Parish Worker" in the _Cornish Magazine_ (1898):--
"'How do you like the vicar?' I asked. 'Oh, he's a lovely man,'
she answered, 'and a 'ansome praicher--and such a voice! But
did 'ee hear how he lost un to-day? Iss, I thought he would
have failed all to-wance, an' that wad have bin a gashly job.
But I prayed for un an' the Lord guv it back to un again, twice
as loud, an' dedn't 'ee holler! But 'ee dedn't convart me. I
convarted meself. Iss a ded. I was a poor wisht bad woman. Never
went to a place of worship. Not for thirty years a hadn't a
bin. One day theer came word that my brother Willum was hurted
to the mine. So I up an' went to un an' theer he was, all scat
abroad an' laid out in scritches. He was in a purty stank, sure
'nuff. But all my trouble was his poor sowl. I felt I must get
he convarted before he passed. I went where he was to, an' I
shut home the door, an' I hollered an' I rassled an' I prayed to
him, an' he nivver spoke. I got no mouth spaich out of him at
awl, but I screeched and screeched an' prayed until I convarted
myself! An' then I be to go to church. Iss, we awl have to come
to it, first an' last, though I used to say for christenings an'
marryin's an' berrin's we must go to church, but for praichin'
an' ennytheng for tha nex' wurld give me the chapel; still, I
waanted to go to church an' laive everybody knaw I wur proper
chaanged. So I pitched to put up my Senday go-to-mittun bonnet,
an' I went. An' when I got theer aw! my blessed life 'twas
Harvest Thanksgivin', an' when I saw the flowers an' the fruit
an' the vegetables an' the cotton wool I was haived up on end!'
And heaved up on the right end she was."
The table of Commandments is with the Cornish not precisely that
of Moses. It skips, or treats very lightly, the seventh, but it
comprises others not found in Scripture: "Thou shalt not drink any
alcohol," and "Thou shalt not dance."
On Old Christmas Day, in my neighbourhood, a great temperance
meeting was held. A noted speaker on teetotalism was present and
harangued. A temperance address is never relished without some
horrible example held up to scorn. Well, here it was. "At a certain
place called ----, last year, as Christmas drew on, the Guardians
met to decide what fare should be afforded to the paupers for
Christmas Day. Hitherto it had been customary for them to be given
for their dinner a glass of ale--a glass of ale. I repeat it--at
public cost--a glass of ale apiece. On that occasion the Guardians
unanimously agreed that the paupers should have cocoa, and not
ale. Then up stood the Rector--the Rector, I repeat--and in a loud
and angry voice declared: 'Gentlemen, if you will not give them
their drop of ale, I will.' And he--he, a minister of the gospel
or considering himself as such."--(A shudder and a groan.) "I tell
you more--I tell you something infinitely worse--he sent up to the
work-house a dozen of his old crusted port." (Cries of "Shame!
shame!" and hisses.)
_That_, if you please, was the unpardonable sin.
If we are to look anywhere for local characteristics in the music
of the people in any particular part of England, we may surely
expect to find them in the western counties of Somerset, Devon, and
Cornwall. These three counties have hitherto been out of the beaten
track; they are more encompassed by the sea than others, and lead
only to the Land's End.
And as a matter of fact, a large proportion of the melodies that
have been collected from the peasantry in this region seem to have
kept their habitation, and so to be unknown elsewhere.
I take it for granted that they are, as a rule, home productions.
The origin of folk-song has been much debated, and it need not
be gone into now. But it would be vain to search for local
characteristics in anything that has not a local origin.
In folk-song, then, we may expect to see reflected the
characteristics of the race from which it has sprung, and, as in the
counties of Devon and Cornwall on one side and Somersetshire on the
other, we are brought into contact with two, at least, races--the
British and the Saxon--we do find two types of melody very distinct.
Of course, as with their dialects, so with their melodies, the
distinctions are sometimes marked, and sometimes merged in each
other. The Devonshire melodies have some affinity with those
of Ireland, whilst the Somersetshire tunes exhibit a stubborn
individuality--a roughness, indeed, which is all their own.
Taking first the Devonshire songs, I think one cannot fail to
be struck with the exceeding grace and innate refinement which
distinguish them. These qualities are not always perceptible in the
performance of the songs by the untutored singers; nor do the words
convey, as a rule, any such impressions, but evident enough when
you come to adjust to their proper form the music which you have
succeeded in jotting down. It surprises you. You are not prepared
for anything like original melody, or for anything gentle or
tender. But the Devonshire songs are so. Their thought is idyllic.
Through shady groves melodious with song, the somewhat indolent
lover of Nature wanders forth without any apparent object save
that of "breathing the air," and (it must be added) of keeping an
open eye for nymphs, one of whom seldom fails to be seeking the
same seclusion. Mutual advances ensue; no explanations are needed;
constancy is neither vowed nor required. The casual lovers meet and
part, and no sequel is appended to the artless tale.
Sentiment is the staple of Devonshire folk-song; it is a trifle
unwholesome, but it is unmistakably graceful and charming. Take such
songs as "By chance it was," "The Forsaken Maiden," "The Gosshawk,"
"Golden Furze;" surely there is a gush of genuine melody and the
spirit of poetry in such tunes.
In some respects the folk-song of Devonshire is rather
disappointing. There is no commemoration, no appreciation, of her
heroes. The salt sea-breeze does not seem to reach inland, save to
whisper in a wailing tone of "The Drowned Lover," or the hapless
"Cabin Boy." Sea-songs may be in her ports, but they were not born
there.
Nor are the joys of the chase proclaimed with such robustness as
elsewhere, any more than are the pleasures and excitements of the
flowing bowl. This may be attributed to the same refinement of
character of which I have spoken.
A pastoral and peace-loving community will not be expected to
develop any special sense of humour. Devonshire is by no means
deficient in it, but it is of a quiet sort, a sly humour something
allied to what the Scotch call "pawky," of which "Widicombe Fair"
is as good an example as can be had. Of what may be called the
religious element, save in Christmas and Easter carols, I have never
discovered any trace.
The Rev. H. Fleetwood Sheppard, who has spent ten years in
collecting the melodies of Devon and Cornwall, says of them, "I have
found them delightful, full of charm and melody. I never weary of
them. They are essentially poetical, but they are also essentially
the songs of sentiment, and their one pervading, almost unvarying
theme is--The Eternal Feminine."
When we pass into Somersetshire the folk-music assumes quite a
different character. The tenderness, the refinement have vanished.
Judging from their songs, we might expect to find the Somersetshire
folk bold, frank, noisy, independent, self-assertive; and this
view would be quite in keeping with their traditional character.
In Shakespeare's time bandogs and bull baiting were the special
delight of the country gentry,[3] and Fuller describes the natives
of Taunton Dean as "rude, rich, and conceited." If one turn to the
music, "Richard of Taunton Dean," or "Jan's Courtship," "George
Riddler's Oven," and the like, are in entire keeping with the
character of the people as thus depicted. There is vigour and _go_
in their songs, but no sweetness; ruggedness, no smoothness at all;
and it is precisely this latter quality that marks the Cornish and
Devonshire airs.
[3] See M. DRAYTON'S _Polyolbion_ on this.
Take such a tune as that to which the well-known hunting song of
Devon, "Arscott of Tetcott," is wedded. The air is a couple of
centuries older than the words, for the Arscott whom the song
records died in 1788, though we can only trace the tune back
to D'Urfey at the end of the seventeenth century. The music is
impetuous, turbulent, excited, it might be the chasing the red
deer on Exmoor; the hunt goes by with a rush like a whirlwind to a
semi-barbarous melody, which resembles nothing so much as that of
the spectral chase in Der Freischütz.
But Somersetshire song can be tender at times, though not quite
with the bewitching grace of Devonia. There is a charming air which
found its way from the West up to London some sixty years ago, the
original words of which are lost, but the tune became immensely
popular under the title of "All round my hat," a vulgar ditty sung
by all little vulgar boys in the streets. The tune is well worth
preserving. It is old, and there is a kind of wail about it which is
touching.
But who were the composers of these folk-airs? In the old desks in
west galleries of churches remain here and there piles of MS. music:
anthems, and, above all, carols, the composition of local musicians
unknown beyond their immediate neighbourhood, and now unknown even
by name.
A few years ago I was shown such a pile from Lifton Church. I saw
another great library, as I may call it, that was preserved in the
rack in the ceiling of a cottage at Sheepstor, the property of
an old fiddler, now dead. I saw a third in Holne parish. I have
seen stray heaps elsewhere. Mr. Heath, of Redruth, published two
collections from Cornwall and one from Devon, the latter from
the Lifton store in part, to which I had directed his attention.
I cannot doubt that some of the popular tunes that are found
circulating among our old singers--or to be more exact, were
found--were the composition of these ancient village musicians.
Alas! the American organ and the strident harmonium came in and
routed out the venerable representatives of a musical past; and the
music-hall piece is now driving away all the sound old traditional
melody, and the last of the ancient conservators of folk-song makes
his bow, and says:--
"I be going, I reckon, full mellow,
To lay in the churchyard my head,
So say--God be wi' you, old fellow!
The last of the zingers is dead."
NOTE.--For the history of Devon: WORTH (R. N.), _History of
Devonshire_. London, 1886. For Devonshire dialect: HEWETT(S.),
_The Peasant Speech of Devon_. E. Stock. London, 1892. For
Devonshire folk-music: _Songs of the West_. Methuen. London,
1895. (3rd ed.) _A Garland of Country Song_. Methuen. London,
1895.
For most of what has been said above on the folk-songs of Devon
I am indebted to the Rev. H. Fleetwood Sheppard, who has made it
his special study.
CHAPTER II.
VILLAGES AND CHURCHES
Devonshire villages not so picturesque as those of Sussex and
Kent--Cob and stone--Slate--Thatch and whitewash--Churches
mostly in the Perpendicular style--Characteristics of
that style--Foliage in stone--Somerset towers--Cornish
peculiarities of pinnacles--Waggon-headed roofs--Beer and
Hatherleigh stone--Polyphant--Treatment of granite--Wood-work
in Devon churches--Screens--How they have been treated by
incumbents--Pulpits--Bench-ends--Norman fonts--Village
crosses--How the Perpendicular style maintained itself in the
West--Old mansions--Trees in Devon--Flora--The village revel.
A Devonshire village does not contrast favourably with those in
Essex, Kent, Sussex, and other parts of England, where brick or
timber and plaster are the materials used, and where the roofs are
tiled.
But of cottages in the county there are two kinds. The first, always
charming, is of _cob_, clay, thatched. Such cottages are found
throughout North Devon, and wherever the red sandstone prevails.
They are low, with an upper storey, the windows to which are small,
and the brown thatch is lifted above these peepers like a heavy,
sleepy brow in a very picturesque manner. But near Dartmoor stone
is employed, and an old, imperishable granite house is delightful
when thatched. But thatch has given way everywhere to slate, and
when the roof is slated a great charm is gone. There is slate and
slate. The soft, silvery grey slate that is used in South Devon
is pleasing, and when a house is slated down its face against the
driving rains, and the slates are worked into patterns and are
small, they are vastly pretty. But architects are paid a percentage
on the outlay, and it is to their profit to use material from a
distance; they insist on Welsh or Delabole slate, and nothing can
be uglier than the pink of the former and the chill grey of the
other--like the tint of an overcast sky in a March wind.
[Illustration: SHEEPSTOR]
I once invited an architect to design a residence on a somewhat
large scale. He did so, and laid down that Delabole slate should be
employed with bands of Welsh slate of the colour of beetroot. "But,"
said I, "we have slate on the estate. It costs me nothing but the
raising and carting."
"I dislike the colour," said he. "If you employ an architect, you
must take the architect's opinion."
I was silenced. The same day, in the afternoon, this architect and I
were walking in a lane. I exclaimed suddenly, "Oh, what an effect of
colour! Do look at those crimson dock-leaves!"
"Let me see if I can find them," said the architect. "I am
colour-blind, and do not know red from green."
It was an incautious admission. He had forgotten about the slates,
and so gave himself away.
The real objection, of course, was that my own slates would cost me
nothing. But also of course he did not give me that reason.
Where the slate rocks are found, grauwacke and schist, there the
cottages are very ugly--could not well be uglier--and new cottages
and houses that are erected are, as a rule, eyesores.
However, we have in Devon some very pretty villages and clusters of
cottages, and the little group of roofs of thatch and glistening
whitewashed walls about the old church, the whole backed by limes
and beech and elm, and set in a green combe, is all that can be
desired for quiet beauty; although, individually, each cottage may
not be a subject for the pencil, nor the church itself pre-eminently
picturesque.
The churches of Devonshire belong mainly to the Perpendicular style;
that is to say, they were nearly all rebuilt between the end of the
fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries.
Of this style, this is what Mr. Parker says: "The name is derived
from the arrangement of the tracery, which consists of perpendicular
lines, and forms one of its most striking features. At its first
appearance the general effect was usually bold and good; the
mouldings, though not equal to the best of the Decorated style,
were well defined; the enrichments effective and ample without
exuberance, and the details delicate without extravagant minuteness.
Subsequently it underwent a gradual debasement: the arches became
depressed; the mouldings impoverished; the ornaments crowded, and
often coarsely executed; and the subordinate features confused
from the smallness and complexity of their parts. A leading
characteristic of the style, and one which prevails throughout its
continuance, is the square arrangement of the mouldings over the
heads of doorways, creating a spandrel on each side above the arch,
which is usually ornamented with tracery, foliage, or a shield. The
jambs of doorways are generally moulded, frequently with one or more
small shafts."
The style is one that did not allow of much variety in window
tracery. The object of the adoption of upright panels of glass was
to allow of stained figures in glass of angels filling the lights,
as there had been a difficulty found in suitably filling the
tracery of the heads of the windows with subjects when these heads
were occupied by geometrical figures composed of circles and arcs
intersecting.
In the west window of Exeter Cathedral may be seen a capital
example of "Decorated" tracery, and in the east window one in the
"Perpendicular" style.
Skill in glass staining and painting had become advanced, and the
windows were made much larger than before, so as to admit of the
introduction of more stained glass.
Pointed arches struck from two centres had succeeded round
arches struck from a single centre, and now the arches were made
four-centred.
Foliage in carving had, under Early English treatment, been
represented as just bursting, the leaves uncurling with the breath
of spring. In the Decorated style the foliage is in full summer
expansion, generally wreathed round a capital. Superb examples of
Decorated foliage may be seen in the corbels in the choir at Exeter.
In Perpendicular architecture the leaves are crisped and wrinkled
with frost.
In Devonshire the earlier towers had spires. When the great wave
of church building came over the land, after the conclusion of the
Wars of the Roses, then no more spires were erected, but towers with
buttresses, and battlemented and pinnacled square heads. In the
country there are no towers that come up to the splendid examples in
Somersetshire; but that of Chittlehampton is the nearest approach to
one of these.
In the Somerset towers the buttresses are frequently surmounted by
open-work pinnacles or small lanterns of elaborate tabernacle work,
and the parapets or battlements are of open tracery; but in Devon
these latter are plain with bold coping, and the pinnacles are well
developed and solid, and not overloaded with ornament. Bishop's
Nympton, South Molton, and Chittlehampton towers are locally
described as "Length," "Strength," and "Beauty."
A fine effect is produced when the turret by which the top of the
tower is reached is planted in the midst of one side, usually the
north; and it is carried up above the tower roof. There are many
examples. I need name but Totnes and Ashburton.
A curious effect is produced among the Cornish towers, and those
near the Tamar on the Devon side, of the pinnacles being cut so as
to curve outwards and not to be upright. The effect is not pleasant,
and the purpose is not easily discoverable; but it was possibly done
as being thought by this means to offer less resistance to the wind.
The roofs are usually "waggon-headed." The open timber roof, so
elaborated in Norfolk, is not common. A magnificent example is,
however, to be seen in Wear Gifford Hall. But cradle roofs do exist,
and in a good many cases the waggon roofs are but ceiled cradle
roofs. A good plain example of a cradle roof is in the chancel of
Ipplepen, and a very rich one at Beaford.
The mouldings of the timbers are often much enriched. A fine example
is Pancras Week. The portion of the roof over the rood-screen is
frequently very much more elaborately ornamented than the rest. An
example is King's Nympton, where, however, before the restoration,
it was even more gorgeous than at present. The waggon roof presents
immense advantages over the open timber roof; it is warmer; it is
better for sound; it is not, like the other, a makeshift. It carries
the eye up without the harsh and unpleasant break from the walling
to the barn-like timber structure overhead.
Wherever white Beer stone or rosy Hatherleigh stone could be had,
that was easily cut, there delicate moulding and tracery work was
possible; but in some parts of the county a suitable stone was
lacking. In the neighbourhood of Tavistock the doorways and windows
were cut out of Roborough stone, a volcanic tufa, full of pores,
and so coarse that nothing refined could be attempted with it.
Near Launceston, however, were the Polyphant quarries, the stone
also volcanic, but close-grained and of a delicate, beautiful grey
tone. This was employed for pillars and window tracery. The fine
Decorated columns of Bratton Clovelly Church, of a soft grey
colour, are of this stone. The run of the stone was, however,
limited, and was thought to be exhausted. It was not till the
Perpendicular style came in that an attempt was made to employ
granite. The experiment led to curious results. The tendency of
the style is to flimsiness, especially in the mouldings; but the
obduracy of the material would not allow of delicate treatment, and
the Perpendicular mouldings, especially noticeable in doorways, are
often singularly bold and effective. A _tour de force_ was effected
at Launceston Church, which is elaborately carved throughout in
granite, and in Probus tower, in Cornwall. For beauty in granite
work Widecombe-in-the-Moor tower cannot be surpassed; there the
tower is noble and the church to which it belongs is mean. In using
Ham Hill stone or Beer stone, that was extracted in blocks, the
pillars, the jambs of doors and windows were made of several pieces
laid in courses and cut to fit one another. But when the architects
of Perpendicular times had to deal with granite there was no need
for this; they made their pillars and jambs in single solid blocks.
A modern architect, bred to Caen stone or Bath oolite, sends down
a design for a church or house to be erected near Dartmoor, or in
Cornwall, and treats the granite as though it came out of the quarry
in small blocks; and the result is absurd. An instance of this
blundering in treatment is the new east window of Lanreath Church,
Cornwall, designed by such a "master in Israel" as Mr. Bodley. The
porch doorway is in six stones, one for each base, one for each
jamb, and two form the arch. The old windows are treated in a
similar fashion--each jamb is a single stone. But Mr. Bodley has
built up his new window of little pieces of granite one foot deep.
The effect is bad. Unhappily, local architects are as blind to local
characteristics as London architects are ignorant of them. So also,
when these gentry attempt to design hood mouldings, or indeed any
mouldings, for execution in granite, they cannot do it--the result
is grotesque, mean, and paltry: they think in Caen stone and Bath,
and to design in granite a man's mind must be made up in granite.
In Cornwall there are some good building materials capable of
ornamental treatment, more delicate than can be employed in granite.
Such are the Pentewan and Catacleuse stones. The latter is gloomy in
colour, but was used for the finest work, as the noble tomb of Prior
Vivian, in Bodmin Church.
As stone was an intractable material, the Devonshire men who desired
to decorate their churches directed their energies to oak carving,
and filled them with very finely sculptured bench-ends and screens
of the most elaborate and gorgeous description.
So rich and elaborate are these latter, that when a church has to be
restored the incumbent trembles at the prospect of the renovation of
his screen, and this has led to many of them being turned out and
destroyed. South Brent screen was thus wantonly ejected and allowed
to rot. Bridestowe was even worse treated: the tracery was cut in
half and turned upside down, and plastered against deal boarding--to
form a dwarf screen.
"What will my screen cost if it be restored?" asked a rector of Mr.
Harry Hems.
"About four hundred pounds."
"Four hundred pounds! Bless me! I think I had best have it removed."
"Very well, sir, be prepared for the consequences. Your name will go
down to posterity dyed in infamy and yourself steeped in obloquy."
"You don't mean to say so?"
"Fact, sir, I assure you."
That preserved the screen.
Then, again, some faddists have a prejudice against them. This has
caused the destruction of those in Davidstow and West Alvington.
Others, however, have known how to value what is the great treasure
in their churches entrusted to their custody, and they have
preserved and restored them. Such are Staverton, Dartmouth, Totnes,
Harberton, Wolborough. That there must have been in the sixteenth
century a school of quite first-class carvers cannot be doubted, in
face of such incomparable work as is seen in the pulpit and screen
of Kenton. But if there was good work by masters there was also some
poor stuff, formal and without individual character--such as the
screens at Kenn and Laneast.
The pulpits are also occasionally very rich and of the same date as
the screens. There are noble examples of stone pulpits elaborately
carved at South Molton, Bovey Tracey, Chittlehampton, and Harberton,
and others even finer in wood, as Holne, Kenton, Ipplepen, Torbrian.
[Illustration: HOLNE PULPIT AND SCREEN]
Among churches which have fine bench-ends may be noted Braunton,
Lapford, Colebrook, Horwood, Broadwood Widger (dated 1529), North
Lew (also dated), Plymtree, Lew Trenchard, Peyhembury.
Several early fonts remain of Norman style, and even in some
cases perhaps earlier. The finest Norman fonts are Stoke Canon,
Alphington, S. Mary Steps (Exeter), Hartland, and Bere Ferrers. In
the west, about the Tamar, one particular pattern of Norman font was
reproduced repeatedly; and it is found in several churches. There
are a number of village crosses remaining, a very fine one at South
Zeal; also at Meavy, Mary Tavy, Staverton, Sampford Spiney, Holne,
Hele, and some extremely rude on Dartmoor.
There was a churchyard cross at Manaton. The Rev. C. Carwithen, who
was rector, found that the people carried a coffin thrice round it,
the way of the sun, at a funeral; although he preached against the
usage as superstitious, they persisted in doing so. One night he
broke up the cross, and removed and concealed the fragments. It is a
pity that the cross did not fall on and break his stupid head.
It is interesting to observe how late the Perpendicular style
maintained itself in the West. At Plymouth is Charles Church,
erected after the Restoration, of late Gothic character. So also
are there aisles to churches, erected after the Reformation, of
debased style, but nevertheless distinctly a degeneration of the
Perpendicular.
In domestic architecture this is even more noticeable.
Granite-mullioned windows and four-centred doorways under square
hoods, with shields and flowers in the spandrels, continued in use
till the beginning of the eighteenth century.
A very large number of old mansions, belonging to the squirearchy of
Elizabethan days, remain. The Devonshire gentry were very numerous,
and not extraordinarily wealthy. They built with cob, and with
oak windows, or else in stone with granite mullions, but neither
material allowed of great splendour. A house in granite cost about
three times as much as one of a like size in brick.
The mansions are too numerous to be mentioned. One who is desirous
of seeing old houses should provide himself with an inch to the
mile Ordnance Survey map, and visit such houses as are inserted
thereon in Old English characters. Unhappily, although this serves
as a guide in Cornwall, the county of Devon has been treated in a
slovenly manner, and in my own immediate neighbourhood, although
such a fine example existed as Sydenham House, it remained
unnoticed; and the only two mansions indicated in Old English were a
couple of ruins, uninhabited, that have since disappeared. Where the
one-inch fails recourse must be had to the six-inch map.
Devonshire villages and parks cannot show such magnificent trees as
the Midlands and Eastern counties. The elm grows to a considerable
size on the red land, but the elm is much exposed to be blown
over in a gale, especially when it has attained a great size. Oak
abounds, but never such oak as may be seen in Suffolk. The fact is
that when the tap-root of an oak tree touches rock the tree makes no
progress, and as the rock lies near the surface almost throughout
the county, an oak tree does not have the chance there that it does
in the Eastern counties, where it may burrow for a mile in depth
without touching stone.
Moreover, situated as the county is between two seas, it is
windblown, and the trees are disposed to bend away from the
prevailing south-westerly and westerly gales. But if trees do not
attain the size they do elsewhere, they are very numerous, and the
county is well wooded. Its rocks and its lanes are the homes of
the most beautiful ferns that grow with luxuriance, and in winter
the moors are tinted rainbow colours with the mosses. The flora is
varied with the soil. What thrives on the red land perishes on the
cold clay; the harebell, which loves the limestone, will not live on
the granite, and does not affect the schist.
The botanist may consult Miss Helen Saunders' "Botanical Notes" in
the _Transactions of the Devonshire Association_; Miss Chaunters'
_Ferny Combes_; and the appendix to Mr. Rowe's _Dartmoor_.
The village revel was till twenty years ago a great institution, and
a happy though not harmless one. But it has died out, and it is now
sometimes difficult to ascertain, and then only from old people,
the days of the revel in the several villages. In some parishes,
however, the clergy have endeavoured to give a better tone to the
old revel, which was discredited by drunkenness and riot, and their
efforts have not been unsuccessful. The clubs march to church on
that day, and a service is given to them.
One of the most curious revels was that at Kingsteignton, where a
ram was hunted, killed, roasted, and eaten. The parson there once
asked a lad in Sunday School, "How many Commandments are there?"
"Three, sir," was the prompt reply; "Easter, Whitsuntide, and the
Revel."
Another, where a sheep was devoured after having been roasted whole,
was at Holne. At Morchard, the standing dish at farmhouses on Revel
day was a "pestle pie," which consisted of a raised paste, kept in
oval shape by means of iron hoops during the process of baking,
being too large to be made in a dish. It contained all kinds of
meat: a ham, a tongue, whole poultry and whole game, which had been
previously cooked and well seasoned.
The revel, held on the _réveil_ or wake of the saint of the parish,
was a relic of one of the earliest institutions of the Celts. It was
anciently always held in the cemetery, and was attended by funeral
rites in commemoration of the dead. This was followed by a fair, and
by a deliberative assembly of the clan, or subdivision of a clan, of
which the cemetery was the tribal centre. It was the dying request
of an old Celtic queen that her husband would institute a fair above
her grave.
CHAPTER III.
HONITON
One long street--The debatable ground--Derivation of the
name--Configuration of the East Devon border--Axminster--The
Battle of Brunnaburgh--S. Margaret's Hospital--Old camps--S.
Michael's Church--Colyton--Little Chokebone--Sir George
Yonge--Honiton lace--Pillow-lace--Modern design--Ring in the
Mere--Dunkeswell.
"This town," said Sir William Pole in 1630, "is near three-quarters
of a mile in length, lying East and West, and in the midst there is
one other street towards the South." The description applies to-day,
except only that the town has stretched itself during two hundred
and eighty years to one mile in place of three-quarters. A quarter
of a mile in about three centuries, which shows that Honiton is not
a place that stands still.
It is, in fact, a collection of country cottages that have run to
the roadside to see the coaches from London go by, and to offer the
passengers entertainment.
The coach-road occupies mainly the line of the British highway, the
Ikenild Street, a road that furnished the chief means of access to
the West, as the vast marshes of the Parret made an approach to the
peninsula from the North difficult and dangerous.
And the manner in which every prominent height has been fortified
shows that the whole eastern boundary of the county has been a
debated and fiercely contested land, into which invaders thrust
themselves, but from which they were hurled back.
Honiton is on the Otter (_y dwr_, W. the Water) a name that we find
farther west in the Attery, that flows into the Tamar. Honiton does
not derive from "honey," flowing with milk and honey though the land
may be, but from the Celtic _hen_ (old), softened in a way general
in the West into _hena_ before a hard consonant.
We have the same appellative in Hennacott, Honeychurch, and
Honeydykes, also in Hembury, properly Henbury, and in Hemyock.
Perhaps the old West Welsh name for the place was Dunhen, or
Hennadun, which the Saxons altered into Hennatun or Honeyton.
The singular configuration of the eastern confines of Devon and
Dorset has been ingeniously explained. Till 1832 the two parishes
of Stockland and Dalwood belonged to the county of Dorset, although
surrounded entirely by Devon. In 710 a great battle was fought by
Ina, King of the West Saxons, against Geraint, King of the Dumnonii,
the West Welsh, on the Black Down Hills, when Geraint was defeated
and fled. Then Ina built Taunton, and made it a border fortress
to keep the Britons in check. Simultaneously, there can be little
doubt, the men of Dorset took advantage of the situation, made an
inroad and secured a large slice of territory, possibly up to the
Otter.
Ina was succeeded by inert princes, or such as had their hands
engaged elsewhere, and the Devonians thrust themselves forward,
retook Taunton, and advanced their borders to where they had been
before 710.
It has been supposed that on this occasion they were unable to
dispossess the Dorset men from their well-fortified positions at
Stockland and Dalwood, but swept round them and captured the two
camps of Membury and Musbury. The possession of these fortresses
would thrust back the Dorset frontier for some miles to the east of
the Axe. So matters would remain for a considerable period, such
as allowed the boundaries to become settled; and when the final
subjugation of Devon took place, this tract to the east of the Axe
remained as part of the lands of the Defnas, while the Dorsaetas
retained the islet which they had so long and so successfully
defended. It was not till eleven hundred and twenty years had
elapsed that the Devon folk could recover these points.[4]
[4] DAVIDSON, "The Saxon Conquest of Devonshire," in the
_Transactions of the Devonshire Association_, 1877.
Axminster was the scene of a great battle in the reign of Athelstan,
in which five kings and seven earls fell. The minster, as a monastic
colony, had been in existence before that, but Athelstan now endowed
a college there for six priests to pray for the souls of those who
fell in the battle.
Now, what battle can that have been? In the register of Newnham
Abbey is a statement made in the reign of Edward III., that the
battle took place "at Munt S. Calyxt en Devansyr," and that it
ended at Colecroft under Axminster. S. Calyxt is now Coaxdon.
The only great battle that answers to the description was that of
Brunanburgh, fought in 937.
It was fought between Athelstan and the Ethelings, Edmund, Elwin
and Ethelwin, on one side, and Anlaf the Dane, from Ireland, united
with Constantine, the Scottish king, on the other. It is this latter
point which has made modern historians suppose that the conflict
took place somewhere in the North.
But, on the other hand, there are grave reasons for placing it at
Axminster.
First, we know of no other battle that answers the description.
Then, during the night before it, the Bishop of Sherborne arrived
at the head of a contingent. The two younger Ethelings who fell
were transported to Malmesbury to be buried; clearly because it
was the nearest great monastery. And it seems most improbable that
Athelstan should have endowed Axminster that prayers might there be
offered for those who fell in the battle, if Brunanburgh were in
Northumberland. The difficulty about Constantine may thus be solved.
Constantine had been expelled his kingdom by Athelstan, and had
taken refuge in Ireland. He had, indeed, been restored, but when he
resolved on revolt, he may have gone to Dublin to Anlaf, and have
concerted with him an attack on the South, where the assistance
of the Britons in Devon and Cornwall might be reckoned on, whilst
the North British would rise, and the Welsh descend from their
mountains.
The story of the battle is this, as given by William of Malmesbury.
The Danes from Dublin, together with Constantine and a party of
Scots (Irish), came by sea, and fell upon England. Athelstan and his
brother marched against them. Just before the battle Anlaf, desirous
of knowing the disposition of the English forces, entered the camp
in the garb of a gleeman, harp in hand. He sang and played before
Athelstan and the rest, and they did not recognise him. As they were
pleased with his song, they gave him a largess of gold. He took the
money, but as he left the camp, he put it under the earth, as it did
not behove a king to receive hire. This was observed by a soldier,
who at once went to Athelstan and informed him of it. The king
said angrily, "Why did you not at once arrest him and deliver him
into my hands?" "My lord king," answered the man, "I was formerly
with Anlaf, and I took oath of fidelity to him. Had I broken that,
would you have trusted me? Take my advice, O king, and shift your
quarters."
This was good advice, and Athelstan acted on it, but scarcely had he
shifted his quarters than Werstan, Bishop of Sherborne, arrived, and
he took up the ground vacated by the king.
During the night Anlaf made an attack and broke through the
stockade, and directed his course towards the king's tent. There
he fell on and killed the bishop, and massacred the Sherborne
contingent. The tumult roused the king, and the fight became
general, and raged till day. Great numbers fell on both sides, but
in the end Anlaf was defeated, and fled to his ships. The only trace
of the name Brunanburgh is in Brinnacombe, under the height whereon
traditionally the fight raged; and Membury may be the place where
the king was fortified. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls the place
Brumby: _B_ and _M_ are permutable letters.
Honiton has not many relics of antiquity about it. Repeated fires
have destroyed the old houses; the High Street still retains its
runnel, confined within a conduit, with square dipping-places at
frequent intervals. The street runs straight down hill to the bridge
and across the Giseage, and up again on the road towards Exeter. The
town is completely surrounded by toll-gates; the tolls collected do
not go to pay for the maintenance of the roads, but to defray a debt
incurred by removing buildings, including the ancient shambles, from
the middle of the street early in the century. This accounts for the
street being particularly wide.
The Dolphin, the principal inn, is supposed to still possess some
portion of the ancient building once belonging to the Courtenays,
whose cognisance is the inn sign.
S. Margaret's Hospital is one of the points of interest, and is
picturesquely pretty. It was intended as a leper hospital, but is
now used as almshouses. It was built and endowed by Dr. Thomas
Chard, the last abbot of Ford.
One thing no visitor should fail to see, and that is the superb
view from Honiton Hill. It commands the valley of the Otter,
with the town beneath, and the old earthworks of Hembury Fort,
Buckerell Knap, and Dumpdon towering above. The flat-topped hills
and the peculiar scarps are due to the formation being greensand.
These scarps may be observed in process of shaping at the head
of every combe. The church of S. Paul in the town is modern and
uninteresting. It occupies the site of an old chapel of All Hallows.
The parish church is S. Michael's on the hill, and this contains
points of interest. The fifteenth-century screen is of carved
oak, and stretches across nave and both aisles. The church was
formerly cruciform, but north and south aisles were added to nave
and chancel. Probably it formerly had a central tower. Four carved
beams now support the roof where the tower should be, and bear
sculptured bosses, representing an angel, a bishop, a priest, and a
man in armour. Two finely carved capitals in the chancel carry the
sentence, "Pray for ye souls of John Takel and Jone his wyffe." They
were liberal benefactors to the church and the town.
The view from the churchyard is magnificent. On a suitable day
Cosdon Beacon on Dartmoor is visible. A row of cypresses in the
churchyard was transplanted from the garden of Sir James Shepperd
(d. 1730).
In old times the parsons of Honiton were supposed to have been
addicted to field sports, perhaps unfairly, just as one hunting
abbot gave a bad name to all the abbots of Tavistock. Barclay, in
his _Ship of Fools_, says:--
"For if any can flatter and beare a hawke on his fist,
He shall be made parson of Honington or of Clist."
There is much deserving of visit within reach of Honiton, Colyton
with its fine church, and the tomb of "Little Chokebone," a good
monument, long supposed to be that of Margaret, daughter of William,
Earl of Devon, and Katherine his wife, seventh daughter of Edward
IV., who was supposed to have been choked by a fish-bone in 1512.
But there is evidence that the lady lived long after the date of her
presumed death. What also tells fatally against the identification
is that the arms of Courtenay are impaled with the royal arms,
surrounded by the bordering componée, the well-known token of
_bastardy_. Now this belonged to the Beauforts, and the tomb is
either that of Margaret Beaufort, wife of Thomas, first Earl of
Devon, of that name, or else of one of their daughters.
Of Colcombe House, the great Courtenay, and then the Pole seat,
but a fragment remains. At Colyton is the Great House, a fine old
building, once the residence of the Yonges. The last of the family,
Sir George Yonge, was wont to say that he came in for £80,000 family
property, received as much as his wife's jointure, obtained a
similar sum in the Government offices he enjoyed, but that Honiton
had "swallowed it all" in election expenses. And when he stood for
the last time there, in embarrassed circumstances; because he could
not bribe as heavily as formerly, one of the burgesses spat in his
face. He died in 1812, aged eighty, a pensioner in Hampton Court,
and his body was brought down very privately to Colyton from fear of
arrest for debt. Another old house is Sand, the seat of the Huyshe
family.
[Illustration: HONITON LACE]
Honiton has become famous for its lace, although actually the
manufacture does not take place to any considerable extent in the
town, but in villages, as Beer, Branscombe, Ottery, etc.
In the beginning of the sixteenth century Honiton was a centre of
a flourishing trade in bone-lace, but how it was introduced is
very uncertain. It has been supposed, but not proved, that Flemish
refugees came to Honiton and introduced the art, but one does not
quite see why they should have come so far. There is an inscription
on a tombstone in Honiton churchyard to James Rodge, bone-lace
seller, who died July 27th, 1617, and bequeathed to the poor of the
parish the benefit of a hundred pounds. A similar bequest was made
in the same year by Mrs. Minifie, a lace maker, so that both lace
dealer and maker may have carried on their business for thirty years
before they died.
In the latter part of James I.'s reign Honiton lace is frequently
mentioned by contemporary writers. Westcote, in his _View of Devon_,
1620, says, "At Axminster you may be furnished with fine flax-thread
there spunne. At Hemington and Bradnich with bone-laces now greatly
in request." Acts were passed under Charles I. for the protection of
the bone-lace makers, "prohibiting foreign purles, cut works, and
bone-laces, or any commodities laced or edged therewith;" and these
benefited especially the Devonshire workers, their goods being close
imitations of the much-coveted Flemish pillow-laces.
Pillow-lace was preceded in England, as elsewhere, by darned netting
and cut-work. A fine example of the ancient English net embroidery
may be seen on the monument, in Exeter Cathedral, of Bishop
Stafford, who died in 1398.
The pillow was introduced in the early part of Elizabeth's reign,
and at first coarse thread-laces of geometrical design were worked
on to it. Plaited and embroidered edgings, or _purles_, for the
ruff, worked in silk, gold and silver wire, or thread came next, and
formed the staple article during the first half of the seventeenth
century. The patterns were imitated from Italian cut-work and
reticella, with some marked peculiarities of workmanship and detail,
such as the introduction of stars, wheels, and triangles, which are
only found on English laces. The sculptor of Lady Pole's monument in
Colyton Church (1623), evidently copied the bone-lace on her cape
from a specimen of Devonshire make, and equally characteristic of
the ancient patterns of the county is the probably plaited lace on a
tucker and cuffs that adorn the effigy of Lady Doddridge in Exeter
Cathedral (1614). Illustrations of these interesting examples of
early Devonshire workmanship are given in Mrs. Palliser's "History
of Lace."[5]
[5] "Antique and Modern Lace," in the _Queen_, 1874. The last
chapter is devoted to Honiton Lace.
There is another very fine specimen in Combe Martin Church, the
effigy of Judith Hancock (1637). The figure is life-size, and the
dress is covered with point-lace and looped with points of ribbon.
The reason of the coarseness of early lace was that pins were
rare and fetched a high price, and the humble workers in cottages
employed fish-bones about which to twist their threads, stuck into
the parchment in the shape of the pattern. The bobbins were made of
"sheeps' trotters." It is now very difficult to procure specimens of
this fishbone-lace.
The lace produced by James Rodge and his contemporaries had large
flowing guipure patterns, united by _bride_ picotees, the latter
worked in with the Brussels ground. _Brides_ are the small stripes
or connection of threads overcast with stitches which bind the
sprigs together. The English lace-makers could not make this
exquisite stitch with the thread that England produced, and the
thread was brought from Antwerp. At the end of last century it cost
from £70 to £100 per pound. Old Brussels lace was made on pillows,
while the modern Brussels is worked with needles.
The visitor to Honiton, Beer, or any village around may see
lace-making on pillows. The women have round or oval boards, stuffed
so as to form a cushion, and placed on the knees of the worker: a
piece of parchment is fixed over the pillow, with the pattern drawn
on it; into this the pins are stuck through holes marked for the
purpose. Often as many as four hundred bobbins are employed at a
time on a pillow. Many of the "bobbins" and "turns" to be seen in
Devonshire cottages are very old: the most ancient are inlaid with
silver. On some, dates are carved, such as 1678 or 1729. On some,
Christian names are cut, such as John and Nicholas; probably those
of the sweethearts of the girls who used them. Jingles, or strings
of glass beads, may be seen hanging to them, with a button at the
end, which came from the waistcoat of the John or the Nicholas who
had given the bobbin as a keepsake. What life-stories some of these
old bobbins could tell![6]
[6] The _Devon and Exeter Gazette_, December 31st, 1885.
Children began to make lace as early as four years old; indeed,
unless early trained to the work their hands never acquire deftness.
Board schools and compulsory education are destroying the ability to
work as of old, as well as too often killing the desire for work in
the hearts of the children.
Boys and girls were formerly taught alike, and in some of the
seaside villages fishermen took up their pillows for lace-making
when ashore.
_Guipure à bride_ and scalloped-border laces in the Louis XIV. style
were followed by laces grounded with Brussels _vraie réseau_. In
the working of the latter, Devonshire hands were decidedly superior
to their Continental rivals. This beautiful ground, which sold at
the rate of a shilling the square inch, was either worked in on the
pillow after the pattern had been finished, or used as a substratum
for lace strips to be sewn on. The detached bouquets of the Rococo
period, and the Mechlin style of design towards the end of last
century, eminently suited the Devon lace-workers, as dividing the
labour. Each individual hand could be entrusted with the execution
of a floral design, which was repeated mechanically. The superior
finish of the Honiton sprigs between 1790 and 1815 was mainly due to
this, but it was fatal to all development of the artistic faculty
and to general deftness. During this period Honiton produced the
finest laces in Europe. What greatly conduced to the improvement of
Honiton lace was the arrival of Normandy refugees at the outbreak of
the French Revolution in 1793. The Normans were quicker and sharper
than the Devon workers, and they stirred them up to great advance in
their work. They taught them to make trolly lace, which is worked
round the pillow instead of on it; and through their example the
Devonshire women gave up the slovenly habit of working the ground
into which they had slipped, and returned to the old double-threaded
_réseau_, or ground like the old Flemish, the flowers worked into
the ground with the pillow, instead of being _appliqué_.
Honiton lace made in proper fashion with sprigs was formerly paid
for by covering the work with shillings.
There is a curious notice of Honiton lace in a note by Dr. James
Yonge; who "was again at Honiton, April 23rd, 1702," and witnessed
the rejoicings in celebration of the coronation of Queen Anne.
"Saw a very pretty procession of three hundred girls in good
order, two and two march with three women drummers beating, and
a guard of twenty young men on horseback. Each of the females
had a white rod in her hand, on the top of which was a tossil
made of white and bleu ribband (which they said was the Queen's
coleurs) and bone-lace, the great manufacture. Then they had
wandered about the town from ten in the morning [it was eight in
the evening when he saw them] huzzaing every now and then, and
then wearing their rodds. Then they returned at nine, and then
break up very weary and hungary."[7]
[7] Quoted in "Some Seventeenth Century Topography," _Western
Morning News_, May 9th, 1876.
Taste declined during the latter part of last century, and some
of the designs of Honiton lace were truly barbarous--frying-pans,
snails, drumsticks, and stiff flowers. But there were always some
who did better. At the beginning of this century all taste was
bad. Bald imitations of nature prevailed, without any regard to
the exigencies of art. Roses and other flowers were worked in
perspective; it was thought sufficient to servilely copy nature and
leave grouping to chance.
Queen Adelaide had a dress made of Honiton lace. By her desire all
the flowers were copied from nature, and the first letter of each
spelt her name.
Amaranth.
Daphne.
Eglantine.
Lilac.
Auricula.
Ivy.
Dahlia.
Eglantine.
The present Queen also had her wedding-dress of Honiton lace, and it
cost a thousand pounds.
Unhappily, design sank very low. Perhaps the lowest stage of
degradation in design was reached in 1867, when a Honiton lace
shawl sent to the Paris Exhibition from Exeter received a prize and
commendation. Nothing can be conceived worse. That it should have
been rewarded with a medal shows that either the judges pardoned
the ineptitude in design for the sake of the excellence of the
work, or else that they themselves stood on the same level of
artistic incompetence which then prevailed. Since then, happily,
design has been more studied. There is still a good deal of very
sorry stuff produced--as far as artistic design is concerned--but
at the same time there is much faithful copying of good antique
work. All old work is not good; there were bad artists in the past,
but the general taste was better than it is now. I was once in the
shop of one of our foremost furniture dealers and decorators in
town, when a young married couple came in to choose curtains and
carpets for their new home. I had been talking with the head of the
establishment about artistic furniture, and he had shown me carpets,
curtains, and wall-papers, such as no designer in the fifteenth,
sixteenth, or seventeenth centuries would have blushed to produce.
The young couple passed all these samples by--blind to their merits,
and pounced on and chose some atrocious stuff, bad in colour and
bad in art. When they were gone, the proprietor turned to me: "You
see," he said, "the public is still uncultivated; we are forced
to keep rubbish in our trade to satisfy those whose taste does
not rise above rubbish." Now it is the same with regard to lace.
There is badly designed lace as well as that which is as good as
anything drawn by a great master in the past. Let the public eye be
discerning to choose the good and reject the evil, and then the poor
lace-workers will not be set to produce stuff that never ought to
have time, labour, eyesight devoted to it.
There are some trades that are hurtful to those employed in them.
The lace-making by machinery at Nottingham is said to induce
decline.
The following letter I have received on the subject of the Honiton
lace-workers:--
"They are most certainly not a short-lived lot--until within the
last eight or nine years Mrs. Colley was the youngest worker
I knew, and she is fifty-one; Mrs. Raymond is sixty-four.
There are a good many over sixty, and several still at work
over seventy. I have never had cases of decline come under my
notice, and if there was any I must have known it. Until the
fresh impetus was given to the trade by exhibitions, the younger
workers stopped learning, and there was no school, so that the
trade depended on the old ones, and all have to commence the
work from five to seven years of age. I think it may fairly be
assumed to be at any rate not injurious to health, and judging
from the age to which they continue to work, not to the sight
either."
Thus the buyers of lace can do it with a safe conscience.
There is a woman's name associated with Devon, who was a great
landed proprietress and an heiress, and this was Isabella de
Fortibus. She was sister of Baldwin, Earl of Devon, a De Redvers,
and on his death, without issue, she inherited the splendid estates
of the earls of Devon, and became Countess of Devon in her own
right. She, however, also died without issue in 1292.
On Farway Common, near Honiton, three parishes meet, and there were
incessant disputes as to the boundary. Isabella decided it thus. She
flung her ring into the air, and where it fell that was to be the
point of junction for Gittisham, Farway, and Honiton. The spot is
still called "Ring-in-the-Mere." Such at least is the local legend
accounting for the name.
In the neighbourhood of Honiton are the ruins of Dunkeswell Abbey,
but they are reduced to a gateway only. It belongs to Mrs. Simcoe,
of Walford Lodge, Dunkeswell, a handsome house built about the end
of last century by General Simcoe, famous in the American Revolution
as the commander of Simcoe's Rangers. He was Governor of San Domingo
at the time of the insurrection, and afterwards Governor-General
of Canada. Mrs. Simcoe possesses interesting relics connected with
him, as well as Napoleonic relics that belonged to her father,
Lieut.-General Jackson, _aide-de-camp_ to Sir Hudson Lowe at St.
Helena.
Mohuns-Ottery, once a great seat of the Carews, was burnt down in
the beginning of this century, and all that remains of the mansion
are three arches. The Grange, Broadhembury, has been more fortunate;
it has a magnificent oak-panelled room, with ghost stories attached,
and there are those alive who declare that they have seen the ghost.
The church possesses, among other points of interest, a curious
window with projecting corbels that represent the spirits of the
good in happiness within, and the spirits of the bad without in
discomfort--not to put too fine a point on it, as Mr. Snagsby would
say.
There are several fine fortifications, as already said: Dumpden,
accessible only on foot, and Hembury are the most important.
Books to be consulted:--
ROGERS (W. H. H.), _Memorials of the West_. Exeter, 1888.
FARQUHARSON (A.), _The History of Honiton_. Exeter, _n.d._, but
1868 (_scarce_).
For the Axe Valley: PULMAN (G. P. R.), _The Book of the Axe_.
London, 1875.
CHAPTER IV.
A LANDSLIP
The chalk beds on sand--The subsidence of 1839--The great
chasm--Present conditions--The White Cliff--Beer quarries--Jack
Rattenbury.
There are a good many more curious things to be seen in England than
is generally supposed, if we will but go out of the highways to look
for them. Certainly one of the most extraordinary and impressive is
the great landslip between the mouth of the Axe and Lyme Regis; one
which even extended further west beyond the estuary. On this bit of
coast, where Devonshire passes into Dorset, the cliff scenery is
very fine. The White Cliff is a magnificent headland that possesses
the peculiarity of appearing to lean over preparing to slide into
the waves, owing to the inclination of the varicoloured strata of
which it is composed. To understand the phenomenon which occasioned
the subsidence of a whole tract of coast with the alteration of the
coastline, something must be said of the cause of the catastrophe.
The chalk bed striped with lines of glistening black flints is
superposed upon a bed of what is locally termed fox earth, a bed of
gravel or sand that intervenes between it and the clay beneath. Now
the rain that falls on the chalk downs infiltrates and, reaching the
sand and unable to sink through the clay, breaks out in land springs.
But where the chalk cliffs start sheer out of the sea, there the
springs ooze into the sea itself, and, dissolving the texture of
the sandy bed, resolve it into a quicksand, liable at the time of
great floods to be washed out from under the superincumbent chalk.
Should this take place, there is no help for it, but down the chalk
bed must go. If you were lying on a bed, and the mattress under your
feather bed were pulled away, you would descend, sinking to a depth
equivalent to the thickness of the subtracted mattress. That is
plain enough.
Now all along the coast to the east of Lyme Regis there is an
undercliff--evident tokens of a subsidence of this description which
has taken place at some time. When this undercliff has been eaten up
by the sea, and a fresh face of crag exposed, then again there will
occur a displacement, a pulling out of the mattress, and down will
go the chalk above with all the houses and fields upon it. But the
sea has not as yet done more than nibble at this undercliff.
It was not quite so to the west of Lyme. There sheer cliffs of
glistening white rose above the pebbly shore, so abruptly and with
such slight undulations, that several miles ensued before it was
possible for those on the height to descend to the beach. Naturally,
where the rain-water percolated through the chalk it formed no
valleys with streams.
Thus the cliffs stood--for no one knows how long--till the end of
December, 1839.
Previous symptoms of the approaching convulsion were not altogether
wanting. Cracks had been observed for more than a week opening along
the brow of the Downs, but they were not sufficiently remarkable to
attract much attention, as such fissures are by no means uncommon
on this bit of coast. However, about midnight of December 24th, the
labourers of Mr. Chappel, the farmer who occupied Dowlands (about a
quarter of a mile inland from the brow of the cliff, and over half
a mile from the nearest points of the approaching convulsion) were
returning from a supper given them by their employer, whereat the
ashen faggot had been burnt according to custom, and were making
their way to their cottages, situated near the cliff. Then they
noticed that a crack which crossed their path, and which they had
observed on their way to the Christmas Eve supper, had widened, and
that the land beyond had sunk slightly. Nevertheless they did not
consider the matter of great importance, and they went to their
homes and to bed. About four o'clock in the morning they were roused
by their houses reeling, by the concrete floors bursting and gaping,
and the walls being rent. They started from their beds in great
alarm, and about six o'clock arrived at the farm to rouse their
master; they had found their escape nearly cut off, as the crack had
widened and the land on the sea side had sunk considerably, so that
they had, with their wives and children, to scramble up--and that
with difficulty, and, in the darkness, with no little danger.
Happily all escaped in time.
During Christmas Day there was no great change; parties of the
coastguard were stationed on the Downs throughout the ensuing night
to watch what would happen.
About midnight a great fissure began to form which ran in almost
a direct line for three-quarters of a mile. This fissure rapidly
widened to 300 feet, descending, as it seemed at first, into the
very bowels of the earth, but as the sides fell in it finally was
choked at a depth of 150 feet.
One James Robertson and a companion were at that hour crossing the
fields which then extended over this tract, and stumbled across a
slight ridge of gravel, which at first they thought must have been
made by some boys, but one of them stepping on to it, down sank
his leg, and his companion had to pull him out of a yawning chasm.
Next moment they saw that the whole surface of turf was starred and
splitting in all directions, and they fled for their lives. The
sound of the rending of the rocks they described as being much like
that of the tearing of cloth or flannel. Two other members of the
coastguard, who were stationed on the beach, now saw something begin
to rise out of the sea like the back of a gigantic whale; at the
same time the shore of shingles on which they stood lifted and fell,
like the heaving of a breast in sleep. The water was thrown into
violent agitation, foaming and spouting, and great volumes of mud
rushed up from below. The great back rose higher and ever higher,
and extended further till at last it formed a huge reef at a little
distance from the beach. This ridge was composed of the more solid
matter, chert and other pebbles, that had been in the sand under
the chalk, and which by the sinking of the chalk was squeezed out
like so much dough. It remained as a reef for some years, but has
now totally disappeared, having been carried away by the waves.
As the great chasm was formed, the masses from the sides falling
in were, as it were, mumbled and chewed up in the depths, and to
the eyes of the frightened spectators sent forth flashes of light;
they also supposed that an intolerable stench was emitted from the
abyss. But this was no more than the odours given out by the violent
attrition of the cherty sandstone and chalk grinding against each
other as they descended.
Throughout the 26th the subsided masses of the great chasm continued
sinking, and the elevated reef gradually rising; but by the evening
of that day everything had settled very nearly into the position in
which it remains at present, although edges have since lost their
sharpness and minor rents have been choked.
A writer whose reminiscences have been recently published describes
briefly the aspect of the place after the sinkage.
"I rode over to see this huge landslip. The greater part of a
farm had subsided a hundred feet or more. Hedges and fields,
with their crops of turnips, etc., were undisturbed by the fall,
and broken off sharply from the ground a hundred feet above.
There was a rather dislocated ridge on the shore, which formed
a sort of moraine to the slip. On this part were some cottages
twisted about, but still holding together, and having their
gardens and even their wells attached; yet the shock of the
falling mass had been so great as to cause the upheaval of an
island off shore."
The aspect of the landslip on the farms of Bindon, Dowlands,
Rousdon, and Pinhay at present is full of interest and of
picturesque beauty. Ivy has grown luxuriantly and mantles the crags,
elder bushes have found the sunk masses of rock suitable to their
requirements, and in early summer the air is strong with the scent
of their trusses of flowers, and in autumn the whole subsidence is
hung with thousands on ten thousands of shining black clusters of
berries. Above a sea of foliage the white cliffs shoot out in the
boldest fashion, and out of the gorge start horns, pinnacles of
chalk of the most fantastic description. The whole is a labyrinth of
chasms, not to be ventured into with good clothing, as the brambles
grow in the wildest luxuriance and are clawed like the paws of a
panther. But, oh! what blackberries may be gathered there--large,
sweet, luscious as mulberries. Moreover, the whole sunk region is
a paradise for birds of every description, and not a step can be
taken that does not disturb jackdaws, magpies, warblers of every
kind. One of the cottages that went down has been rebuilt with the
old material. As already said, it descended at least a hundred feet
with its well. The well still flows with water; that, however, is
not now marvellous--how it was that it held water previously is the
extraordinary fact.
At the extremity of the landslip the visitor will see that there
is still movement going on, but on a small scale--cracks are still
forming and extending through the turf. It may be safely said that
the landslip between the mouth of the Axe and Lyme Regis is one of
the most interesting and picturesque scenes to be found in England.
There is a good deal more in the neighbourhood to be seen than the
landslip at Rousdon and Pinhay. If the cliffs be explored to the
west of the mouth of the Axe, they will be found to well repay the
visit. The splendid crag of the White Cliff towers above the sea,
showing the slanting beds of the cherty matter below the dazzling
white of the chalk, and from their inclination giving to the whole
cliff an appearance of lurching into the waves. Beyond this is Beer,
a narrow cleft in the hills, in which are fishermen's cottages, many
of them very picturesque, and above them rises a really excellently
designed modern church.
A walk up the valley leads to the famous Beer quarries that have
been worked for centuries. This splendid building-stone lies below
the chalk with flints. There are eight beds, forming a thickness
of twelve feet four inches, resting on a hard, white, calcareous
rock five or six feet thick, which reposes in turn on sandstones.
There is very little waste from these quarries, which are carried on
underground; and all that is seen of them are the yawning portals
in a face of white cliff. But a shout at the entrance will summon
a workman, who will conduct the visitor through the labyrinth
underground. The roof is sustained by large square pillars formed by
portions of the workable beds left standing.
The stone is nearly white, and chiefly composed of carbonate of
lime, with the addition of some argillaceous and silicious matter,
and a few scattered particles of green silicate of iron. When first
quarried this stone is somewhat soft, and is easily worked, but it
rapidly hardens on exposure.
Opposite the new quarry are the mounds that mark the site of the old
quarry, from which the stone was extracted for Exeter Cathedral. The
subterranean passages there are now blocked, but during the time of
the European war they were much used by smugglers, who abounded in
Beer. The _Memoirs of Jack Rattenbury_, the most notorious of these,
were published at Sidmouth in 1837, but are not of conspicuous
interest. Beer Head has suffered from landslips, and is broken into
spires of rock in consequence.
Books on the Landslip, and on Seaton:--
CONYBEARE and DAWSON, _Memoir and Views of Landslips on the
Coast of East Devon_, 1840. A very scarce work.
HUTCHINSON (P. O.), _Guide to the Landslip near Axmouth_.
Sidmouth, 1840.
DAVIDSON (J. B.), "Seaton before the Conquest," in _Transactions
of Devonshire Association_, 1885.
MUMFORD (G. F.), _Seaton, Beer, and Neighbourhood_. Yeovil,
_n.d._
CHAPTER V.
EXETER
The river Exe--Roman roads--The Saxons in Devon and
Exeter--Saxon and British Exeter--The Battle of
Gavulford--S. Boniface at Exeter--His persecution of Celtic
missionaries--S. Sidwell--Bishop's seat transferred to
Exeter--S. Olave's Church--The Cathedral--Its merits and
demerits--Ottery S. Mary--Excursions from Exeter--Fingle
Bridge--Fulford--Ecclesiological excursions.
Exeter, the Isca Dumnoniorum of the Romans, was the Celtic Caer
Wisc; that is to say, the caer or fortress on the Usk. The
river-name has become Exe; it derives from the Celtic word which
signifies water, and which we have in whiskey and Usquebaugh, _i.e._
fire-water.
The same word has become also Ock. Thus the Ockment River at
Okehampton, a few miles down, becomes the Exe, at Exbourne; and a
tributary of the Exe is the Oke, that flows into it near Bampton.
There have been but few Roman remains found in Exeter, and it
can never have been an important settlement. Several Roman roads
converge on it and radiate from it.
The great Fosseway, that ran from Lincoln through Leicester,
reached it. It struck from Honiton, by Rockbeare and Clyst Honiton,
and shows its antiquity by being the bounds of Broadclyst
and Rockbeare, Sowton and Pinhoe parishes. It entered Exeter by
Heavitree. Another Roman road from Lyme Regis enters Exeter by
Wonford, where it joins the Fosseway. This road also proclaims
its high antiquity by being a parish boundary. From Exeter an
ancient road ran direct for Launceston: it is called in places the
Old Street. It branched at Okehampton, and a road ran thence to
Stratton, in Cornwall.
[Illustration: HIGH STREET, EXETER]
The Fosseway continued to Moreton Hampstead, and crossed Dartmoor,
where it has served as the equator of that desolate region; all
above it is esteemed the northern half, all below the southern half
of Dartmoor. Further it has not been traced.
Another road, the Ridgeway, ran from Exeter to Totnes, and thence
has been followed to Plympton Castle.
Whether these roads proceeded far in Cornwall cannot now be
determined.
That these ways were possibly pre-Roman, but improved by the
conquerors of the world, is probable. Hard by the roadside at
Okehampton, in 1898, was found a hoard of the smallest Roman coins,
all of the reign of Constantine the Great. It had probably formed
the store of a beggar who "sat by the wayside begging." He hid it
under a rock, and probably died without having removed it. About 200
coins were found, all dating from between A.D. 320 and 330.
The Saxons must have crept in without violent invasion, across
the Axe, rather than through the gaps in the Black Down and
Exmoor--for to the north, as already said, the vast morasses
were a hindrance--and have established themselves without violent
opposition by the riversides. Their manner of life was unlike that
of the Britons. The latter clung to the open highlands, their
_Gwents_ as they called them, clear of trees, breezy downs; whereas
the Saxons, accustomed to forests, made their stockades in the flat
_hams_ and _ings_ by the rivers, in _worths_ and on _hangers_.
Very probably the Dumnonii suffered their intrusion with reluctance,
but they did not venture on forcible resistance, lest they should
bring down on themselves the vengeance of Wessex.
When, however, the Saxons had established themselves in sufficient
numbers, they had their headquarters in Exeter; but there they did
not amalgamate with the natives. The Saxon town was quite apart
from that occupied by the Britons, or West Welsh, as they called
our Dumnonians. That part of Exeter which contains dedications to
Celtic saints was the British town, as was also Heavitree,[8] with
its daughter churches of S. Sidwell and S. David; but the Saxons
occupied where now stands the Cathedral; and each settlement was
governed by its own laws. It was not till 823 that Egbert, by a
decisive battle at Gavulford (_Gafl_ a holdfast, and _ffordd_
a road), established Saxon supremacy. He apparently drove the
Devonshire Celts back along the Old Street, or Roman road, past
Okehampton, till they made a stand at Coombow (_Cwm-bod_ = the
habitation in a combe). There the hills close in on the road on both
sides, and the way branched to Lydford. Commanding both roads is
Galford Down; there the Britons threw up formidable entrenchments,
or, what is more probable, occupied an earlier camp that remains
intact to the present day. Here they made a desperate stand, and
were defeated; after which the king, Egbert, cast up a _burgh_
beyond the old _dun_, which gives its second name to the place,
Burleigh, or Burgh-legh. The last relics of the independence of the
Dumnonian kingdom disappeared after Athelstan's visit in 926 and
928. A relic of this visit may be seen in Rougemont Castle, Exeter,
where the Anglo-Saxon work--notably some herring-bone masonry, and
windows rudely fashioned without arches--remains.
[8] Names of places, as Heavitree, Langtree, Plymtree, take the
"tree" from the Welsh "tref," a farm or habitation. Heavitree is
Tre-hafod, the summer farm.
A Saxon school had been established in Exeter before A.D. 700, to
which S. Boniface, or Wynfrith as he was then called, had been sent.
He was a native of Crediton, then a Saxon stockaded settlement, and
over the palisades, as a boy, he had looked with scorn and hatred
at the native Britons occupying the country. When he was in Exeter
he, in like manner, regarded the native Christians with loathing as
heretics, because they did not observe Easter on the same day as
himself, and perhaps with accentuated hate, because he knew that
they had possessed Christian teachers and Christian privileges three
centuries before his own people had received the Gospel. Perhaps
also his German mind was offended at the freshness, vivacity, and
maybe as well the fickleness of purpose of the native Celt. This
early acquired aversion lasted through life, and when he went into
Germany and settled at Mainz, to posture as an apostle, he was
vexed to discover that Celtic missionaries had preceded him and had
worked successfully among his Teutonic forefathers in their old
homes. Thenceforth he attacked, insulted, and denounced them with
implacable animosity, and did his utmost to upset their missions and
supplannt them with his own. Virgilius, an Irishman, with a fellow
Paddy, Sidonius, was at Salzburg, and Virgilius was bishop there.
Boniface beat about for an excuse to get rid of them both. He found
that the bishop, having discovered that one of his priests had been
accustomed to baptise using a bad Latin formula, had acknowledged
this man's baptisms as valid, for the will was present: the fault
was due to ignorance of the Latin tongue. Boniface, hearing of this,
laid hold of it with enthusiasm, and denounced Virgilius at Rome.
Pope Boniface, however, took the side of the Irishman against his
over-zealous henchman.
Mortified at this rebuff, Boniface lay in wait to find another
excuse for ruining Virgilius. He ascertained presently that the
Irishman taught that the earth was round, and that there was an
antipodes to those living in Germany. Now the Irish schools were
the most learned in Europe, and Irish saints had sailed far into
the west over the Atlantic: they had formed their own opinions
concerning the shape of the world. Boniface wrote to the Pope to
denounce the doctrine of Virgilius as "perverse and unjust, uttered
against God and his own soul."
This doctrine Pope Zacharias hastened to condemn as heretical.[9]
Virgilius had to go to Rome to justify his opinion before ignorant
Latin ecclesiastics--with what results we do not know.
[9] In my _Lives of the Saints_, written in 1874, I accepted M.
Barthélemy's view, that Virgilius held that there were underground
folk, gnomes; but I do not hold this now, knowing more than I then
did of the learning of the great Irish scholars, and of the voyages
made by the Irish. The earliest gloss on the _Senchus Mor_ says,
"God formed the firmament around the earth; and the earth, in the
form of a perfectly round ball, was fixed in the midst of the
firmament."--I. p. 27.
Athelstan came to Exeter in 926, and drove out the British
inhabitants. He built towers and repaired the old Roman walls; he
it was who founded the monastery of SS. Mary and Peter, afterwards
to become the Cathedral; and, we are told, he gave to it relics of
S. Sidwell. This was a local saint, of whom very little is known,
save that she was the sister of Paul, who became abbot and bishop
of Léon, in Brittany. She had two sisters, Wulvella and Jutwara,
called also Jutwell and Eadware. Though the names seem Saxon, they
are corruptions of Celtic originals. Wulvella became an abbess at
Gulval, near Penzance, where she entertained her brother as he was
on his way to Armorica. Sidwell is supposed to have been a martyr,
possibly to Saxon brutality, but this is very uncertain, as her
story has not been preserved. She has as her symbols a scythe and
a well--"canting" symbols framed from her name. Her brother Paul
founded a church that still retains his name, in the British portion
of Exeter.
The bishop's seat had been at Crediton: the Saxon bishops did not
like it. There were no walls there, and the Danes made piratical
excursions. So Bishop Leofric induced Edward the Confessor to move
the seat to Exeter, and this was done by Edward in person, in 1050.
In Fore Street is an odd misshapen little church, S. Olave's. This
was endowed by Gytha, sister of Sweyn, the Danish king, and wife
of Earl Godwin. She was the mother of Harold. She is said to have
endowed it (1053) that prayer might be offered for the soul of her
husband, and in honour of Olaf, King of Norway, who had fallen in
battle in 1030. As S. Olaf fought against the Danes, and it was
through the machinations of Canute that he came to his end, it
is hard to see how a Danish lady should have felt any enthusiasm
about Olaf, who was regarded as a saint and martyr by the national
Norwegian party, which was bitterly opposed to the Danish. I suspect
that the church already existed, and was dedicated to S. Gwynllyw
of Gwent, who at Newport was also converted into Olave, by the
English-speaking colonists. Both Gwynllyw and Olaf were kings, and
it is noticeable that S. Olave's Church is in the British portion of
Exeter. When William the Conqueror arrived before the city, Gytha,
who was within the walls, escaped and took refuge in Flanders.
William gave the church, with her endowments, to Battle Abbey. But
I am not writing a history of Exeter. For those who desire to learn
its story in full, I must refer them to the work of Mr. Freeman.
The Cathedral is disappointing, and that because it is built, not of
the warm, red sandstone that abounds in the neighbourhood, and is
very good building material, but of Beer stone, which is cold and
grey. It has another defect: it is too low; but this was determined
by the towers. When it was resolved to rebuild the Cathedral, it was
decided to preserve the Norman towers, employing them as transepts.
This settled the business. The church could not be made lofty; and
on entering the western doors the visitor is at once disappointed.
He feels a lack of breathing-space; the vaulting depresses him.
The architectural details are not to be surpassed, but the whole
effect is marred by the one mistake made at the outstart. One cannot
wish that the towers had been removed, but one does regret that
they were allowed to determine the height of nave and choir. The
choir was begun by Bishop Quivil, in 1284, when also the great and
incomparably beautiful windows were inserted in the towers. The nave
was finished by Bishop Grandisson, in 1369, the year of his death.
Grandisson was a friend of the detestable John XXII., one of the
Avignon Popes; and John appointed his intimate to Exeter in total
disregard to the rights of the chapter to elect. He was consecrated
at Avignon. Hitherto almost all the bishops had been local men.
Grandisson was a man very Romanly inclined, and appointed to a see
that was redolent with Celtic reminiscences. He did not relish
these. Whenever he had the chance of rededicating a church he
endeavoured to substitute a patron from the Roman calendar in place
of the British founder. He drew up a Legendarium, a book of Lessons
on Saints' Feasts to be used in the Cathedral Church, and ignored
nearly every saint whose name was not approved by admission into the
Latin martyrology.
"The Church of Exeter is a remarkable case of one general
design being carried out through more than a hundred years.
It was fixed once for all what the new Saint Peter's should
be like, and it grew up after one general pattern, but with a
certain advance in detail as the work went westward. Bishop
Grandison, when the church was about half built, said that when
it was finished it would surpass in beauty all churches of its
own kind in England and France. Whatever he meant by '_genus
suum_,' the prediction was safely risked. As far as outline
and general effect goes, the Church of Exeter forms a class by
itself."--FREEMAN.
A more remarkable church than the Cathedral of Exeter is that of
Ottery S. Mary, also built by Grandisson. It is, of course, not by
any means so large. It gave, perhaps, the original type to Exeter,
for there also the towers have been employed as transepts, and was
begun in the Early English style. But there a stateliness and an
originality of effect are reached that Exeter cannot approach.
There the side aisles have but lancet windows, and a flood of light
pours down through the very original clerestory lights. There is
no east window. What the general effect must have been before the
levels were wantonly altered at the "restoration" one can now hardly
surmise. But the church, in spite of this and some odiously vulgar
woodwork, is one of the most striking in England, and perhaps the
boldest in originality of conception.
The Guildhall, in High Street, is a good example of Elizabethan
architecture, in bad stone.
A beautiful excursion may be made from Exeter to Fingle Bridge,[10]
on the Teign, where the river winds between the hills densely
wooded with coppice, that close in on each other like the fangs of
a rat-trap. With this may be combined Shilstone cromlech, the sole
perfect specimen of the kind remaining in the county, and once but a
single member in a series of very remarkable monuments.
[10] _Ffin_--limit, _gal_--the level land, _i.e._ in comparison with
the Dartmoor highlands.
The Teign is frowned down on by several strongly fortified camps.
Fingle should be seen when the hills are clothed in flowering
heather, as though raspberry cream had been spilt over them. White
heather may be picked there.
Fulford House is a quadrangle in a sad state of dilapidation;
originally of Tudor architecture, but disfigured by bad alterations
in the Prince Regent's days, when cockney Gothic was in vogue. In
the house is a bad portrait of the "Royal Martyr," presented by
Charles II., and one of "Red Ruin," a spendthrift Fulford. In the
hall is some superb carved panelling, early Tudor.
Exeter may be made a centre for ecclesiological excursions of no
ordinary interest. Dunchideock Church has a well-restored screen;
but by far the richest carved oak rood-screen in the county is
that of Kenton, where also the pulpit is of incomparable beauty.
The carver employed thereon was a man of no common talent, and the
work is one of brilliant execution. There is much difference in
the carving in the county--some is common, mechanical; that in the
Kenton screen and pulpit is of the very finest quality.
In the little church of S. Mary Steps, in Exeter, may be seen
a portion of the screen removed from S. Mary Major when that
monstrosity was erected. At Plymtree the screen bears on it
contemporary portraits of Prince Arthur (son of Henry VII.) and
Cardinal Morton. That of Bradninch has on it paintings of the
Sibyls, the Doctors of the Church, and the Legend of S. Francis.
Pinhoe was the scene of a great battle with the Danes in 1001. They
had come up the Exe, and burned Pinhoe, Broadclyst, and some of
the neighbouring villages. Levies in Devon and Somerset met them,
but were defeated with great slaughter. The church contains a fine
coloured screen with the vaulting-ribs and gallery. The alms-box is
curious: it represents a serving-man supporting himself with a stick
in one hand, the other extended soliciting alms.
East Budleigh should be visited for its fine bench-ends, some very
curious; one represents a cook roasting a goose; another a ship in
full sail. Their date is 1534. There is a screen, but not of first
quality.
Littleham, near Exmouth, has a good screen. Screens are the features
of Devonshire churches: a church was built to contain one. Without
it the proportions are faulty.
Books on Exeter:--
FREEMAN (E. A.), _Historic Towns: Exeter_. 1895.
NORTHY (T. J.), _Popular History of Exeter_. 1886.
JENKINS (A.), _History of Exeter_. 1841.
CHAPTER VI.
CREDITON
Red stone and red cob--Cob walls--The river Creedy--Birthplace
of S. Boniface--See of Crediton--The Church--Kirton
serge--Apple orchards and cider-making--Francémass--Apple
the basis of many jams--Song of the apple trees--The
picking of apples--"Griggles"--Saluting the apple
trees--The apple-crusher--Pomage--The cider-press--Apple
cheese--Cider-matching--Racking--Cider for rheumatism--A
Cornish cider song--John Davy--Seats near Crediton--Elizabeth
Buller and Frances Tuckfield--The Coplestone--The North Devon
savages--Lapford--Churches round Crediton--Rev. S. Rowe.
A curious, sleepy place, the houses like the great church built of
red sandstone, where not of the red clay or cob. But in the latter
case the cob is whitewashed. No house can be conceived more warm and
cosy than that built of cob, especially when thatched. It is warm
in winter and cool in summer, and I have known labourers bitterly
bewail their fate in being transferred from an old fifteenth or
sixteenth century cob cottage into a newly-built stone edifice of
the most approved style. As they said, it was like going out of warm
life into a cold grave.
The art of building with cob is nearly extinct. Clay is kneaded up
with straw by the feet, and then put on the rising walls that are
enclosed in a framework of boards, but this latter is not always
necessary as the clay is consistent enough to hold together, and
all that is required is to shave it down as the wall rises in
height. Such cob walls for garden fruit are incomparable. They
retain the warmth of the sun and give it out through the night, and
when protected on top by slates or thatch will last for centuries.
But let their top be exposed, and they dissolve in the rain and
flake away with the frost. They have, however, their compensating
disadvantage--they harbour vermin.
Crediton takes its name from the Creedy river that flows near
the town. The river is designated (_Crwydr_) from its straggling
character, crumbling its banks away at every flood and changing
its course. At a very early period the Saxons had succeeded in
establishing a settlement here, a _tun_, and here Wynfrith, better
known as S. Boniface, was born in 680. Willibald, a priest of
Mainz who wrote his life, tells us that his father was a great
householder, and of "eorl-kind," or noble birth. He loved his son
Wynfrith above all his other children, and for a long time withheld
his consent to his embracing the monastic life. During a serious
illness, however, when death seemed near at hand, he relented,
and Wynfrith was sent to school at Exeter. Thence he moved to
Nutschelle, where he assumed the name of Boniface. At the age of
thirty he was ordained. King Ina, of the West Saxons, honoured him
with his confidence, and he might have risen to a high office in
his native land, but other aspirations had taken possession of his
soul. No stories were listened to at his time in the Anglo-Saxon
monasteries with greater avidity than those connected with the
adventurous mission of Archbishop Willibrord among the heathen
Frisians, and Boniface longed to join the noble band beyond the sea.
The abbot opposed his design, but Boniface was obstinate, and with
three brethren left Nutschelle for London; there they took ship and
landed in Frisia in 716. But the time was unpropitious, and he was
forced to return to Nutschelle.
[Illustration: A COBB COTTAGE, SHEEPWASH]
Next year he went to Rome, and then the Pope urged him to establish
papal authority in Germany, which had been converted by Celtic
missionaries, who had their own independent ways, that were not at
all relished at Rome. Boniface, who hated the Celts and all their
usages, eagerly undertook the task, and he went into Thuringia.
He did a double work. He converted, or attempted to convert, the
heathen, and he ripped up and undid what had been done independently
by the Irish missionaries. In his old age he resumed his attempt to
carry the Gospel into Frisia, and was there killed, A.D. 755.
A Saxon see was established at Crediton about 909, and was given
three estates in Cornwall--Poulton, Lawhitton, and Callington. The
Bishop was charged to visit the Cornish people year by year "to
drive away their errors," for up to that time "they had resisted
the truth with all their might, and had disobeyed the Apostolic
decrees," that is to say, they clung to their ecclesiastical
independence and some of their peculiar customs.
Crediton remained the seat of the Romano-Saxon bishops till 1046,
when Leofric got the see moved to Exeter, where his skin would be
safer behind walls than in exposed Crediton.
The church, dedicated to the Holy Cross, is a very stately
building; the tower is transition Norman at the base. The rest is
Perpendicular, and a fine effect is produced by the belt of shadow
under the tower, with the illumined choir behind, which has large
windows. The east window was mutilated at the "restoration." It
was very original and delightful; it has been reduced to the same
commonplace pattern as the west window.
Crediton was a great seat of the cloth trade, and many of those
whose sumptuous monuments decorate the church owed their wealth
to "Kirton serge." Westcote says that the "aptness and diligent
industry of the inhabitants" (in this branch of manufacture) "did
purchase it a pre-eminent name above all other towns, whereby grew
this common proverb, 'as fine as Kirton spinning' (for we call it
briefly Kirton), which spinning was very fine indeed, which to
express the better to gain your belief, it is very true that 140
threads for woollen yarn spun in that town were drawn together
through the eye of a taylor's needle, which needle and threads were
for many years together to be seen in Watling Street, in London, in
the shop of one Mr. Dunscombe, at 'The Sign of the Golden Bottle.'"
Crediton is now a great centre of apple culture and cider-making.
The rich red soil lends itself admirably to the production of
delicious apples.
[Illustration: East Window of Crediton Ch:
before "restoration" FBB 1869
CREDITON CHURCH]
It is quite a mistake to suppose that any fruit serves for cider.
There are certain kinds that are vastly superior to others for this
purpose, as the Bitter-sweet, the Fox-whelp, the Kingston Black and
Cherry Pearmain; but the best all round is the Kingston Black.
When there is going up a general cry for legislation to ameliorate
in some way the condition of agriculture, it is a satisfaction to
think that one act of Government has had a beneficial effect on the
English farmer, if not throughout the land, at all events in the
West of England and in other cider-making counties, and that act was
the laying of heavy duty on foreign sparkling wines. Quite as much
champagne is drunk now as was before the duty was increased, but
unless we are very much mistaken some of that champagne comes from
the apple and not from the grape.
A story is told that a gentleman the other day applied to a large
apple-orchard farmer in the West of England for a hogshead or two of
his sparkling cider. The farmer replied that he was very sorry not
to be able to accommodate him as in previous years, but a certain
London firm had taken his whole year's "pounding." He gave the name
of the firm and assured his customer that he could get the cider
from that house. The gentleman applied, and received the answer:--
"SIR,--We are not cider merchants. You have made some mistake.
We are a firm of champagne-importing merchants from the
celebrated vineyards of MM. So-and-so, at So-and-so."
Well, the money goes into English pockets, into those of the
hardly-pressed and pinched English farmers. And cider is the most
wholesome and sound of beverages. So all is well.
There are, as may have been noticed, three cold nights in May--not
always, but often. At Crediton, and throughout the apple-growing
districts in North Devon, these are called "Francémass" or "S.
Frankin's days;" they are the 19th, 20th, and 21st May. When a frost
comes then it injures the apple blossom. The story relative to this
frost varies slightly. According to one version there was an Exeter
brewer, of the name of Frankin, who found that cider ran his ale
so hard that he vowed his soul to the devil on the condition that
he would send three frosty nights in May to annually cut off the
apple blossom. The other version of the story is that the brewers in
North Devon entered into a compact with the Evil One, and promised
to put deleterious matter into their ale on condition that the
devil should help them by killing the blossom of the apple trees.
Accordingly, whenever these May frosts come we know that his majesty
is fulfilling _his_ part of the contract, because the brewers have
fulfilled _theirs_ by adulterating their beer. S. Frankin, according
to this version, is an euphemism for Satan.
Our dear old friend, the apple, not only serves as a kindly
assistant to help out the supply of wine, but also forms the basis
of a good many jams. With some assistance it is converted into
raspberry and plum, but no inducement will persuade it to become
strawberry. It is certainly instructive to pass a jam factory in
October and thence inhale the fragrance of raspberries.
For some twenty or thirty years the orchards were sadly neglected.
The old trees were not replaced, there was no pruning, no cleaning
of the trunks, the cattle were turned into the orchard to gnaw and
injure the bark and break down the branches, no dressing was given
to the roots, and the pounding of apples was generally abandoned.
But thanks to the increased demand for cider--largely, no doubt,
to be drunk as cider, also, it is more than suspected, to be drunk
under another name--the farmers in Somersetshire, Devonshire,
Hereford, and Worcestershire have begun to cultivate apple trees,
and care for them, as a means of revenue.
In former days there were many more orchards than at present; every
gentleman's house, every farmhouse had its well-stocked, carefully
pruned orchard. Beer ran cider hard, and nearly beat it out of the
field, and overthrew the apple trees, but the trees are having their
good times again.
There is a curious song of "The Apple Trees" that was formerly sung
in every West of England farmhouse. It was a sort of Georgic, giving
complete instructions how apples are to be grown and cider to be
made. It is now remembered only by very old men, and as it has, to
the best of my knowledge, never appeared in print, I will quote it
in full:--
"An orchard fair, to please,
And pleasure for your mind, sir,
You'd have--then plant of trees
The goodliest you can find, sir;
In bark they must be clean,
And finely grown in root, sir,
Well trimmed in head, I ween,
And sturdy in the shoot, sir.
O the jovial days when the apple trees do bear,
We'll drink and be merry all the gladsome year.
"The pretty trees you plant,
Attention now will need, sir,
That nothing they may want,
Which to mention I proceed, sir.
You must not grudge a fence
'Gainst cattle, tho't be trouble;
They will repay the expense
In measure over double.
O the jovial days, &c.
"To give a man great joy,
And see his orchard thrive, sir,
A skilful hand employ
To use the pruning knife, sir.
To lop each wayward limb,
That seemeth to offend, sir;
Nor fail at Fall, to trim
Until the tree's life end, sir.
O the jovial days, &c.
"All in the month of May,
The trees are clothed in bloom, sir,
As posies bright and gay,
Both morning, night and noon, sir.
'Tis pleasant to the sight,
'Tis sweet unto the smell, sir,
And if there be no blight,
The fruit will set and swell, sir.
O the jovial days, &c.
"The summer oversped,
October drawing on, sir;
The apples gold and red
Are glowing in the sun, sir.
As the season doth advance,
Your apples for to gather,
I bid you catch the chance
To pick them in fine weather.
O the jovial days, &c.
"When to a pummy ground,
You squeeze out all the juice, sir,
Then fill a cask well bound,
And set it by for use, sir.
O bid the cider flow
In ploughing and in sowing,
The healthiest drink I know
In reaping and in mowing.
O the jovial days, &c."
This fresh and quaint old song was taken down from an ancient sexton
of over eighty near Tiverton.
The young apple trees have a deadly enemy in the rabbit, which loves
their sweet bark, and in a night will ruin half a nursery, peeling
it off and devouring it all round. Young cattle will break over a
hedge and do terrible mischief to an orchard of hopeful trees that
promise to bear in another year or two. The bark cannot endure
bruising and breaking--injury to it produces that terrible scourge
the canker. Canker is also caused by the tap-root running down
into cold and sour soil; and it is very customary, where this is
likely, to place a slate or a tile immediately under the tree, so as
to force the roots to spread laterally. Apple trees hate standing
water, and like to be on a slope, whence the moisture rapidly drains
away. As the song says, the orchard apples when ripe glow "gold and
red," and the yellow and red apples make the best cider. The green
apple is not approved by the old-fashioned cider-apple growers.
The maxim laid down in the song, that the apples should be "the
goodliest you can find," was not much attended to some thirty years
ago when orchards were let down; farmers thought that any trees were
good enough, and that there was a positive advantage in selecting
sour apples, for that then the boys would not steal them. It is now
otherwise; they are well aware that the quality of the cider depends
largely on the goodness of the sort of apple grown. The picking of
apples takes place on a fine windy or sunny day. The apples to be
pounded are knocked down with a pole, but those for "hoarding" are
carefully picked, as a bruise is fatal. After that the fallen apples
have been gathered by women and children they are heaped up under
the trees and left to completely ripen and be touched with frost. It
is thought that they make better cider when they have begun to turn
brown. Whether this be actually the case, or the relic of a mistaken
custom of the past, the writer cannot say.
All apples are not usually struck down--the small ones, "griggles,"
are left for schoolboys. It is their privilege to glean in the
orchard, and such gleaning is termed "griggling."
What the vintage is in France, and the hop-picking is in Kent and
Bavaria, that the apple-picking and collecting is in the cider
counties of England. The autumn sun is shining, there is a crispness
in the air, the leaves are turned crimson and yellow, of the same
hues as the fruit. The grass of the orchard is bright with crimson
and gold as though it were studded with jewels, but the jewels
are the windfalls from the apple trees. Men, women, and children
are happy talking, laughing, singing snatches of songs--except
when eating. Eat they must--eat they will--and the farmer does not
object, for there is a limit to apple-eating. The apple is the most
filling of all fruit. And yet how unlimited seems the appetite of
the boy, especially when he gets into an orchard! The grandfather of
the writer of this book planted an orchard specially for the boys of
the parish, in the hope that they would glut themselves therein and
leave his cider orchard alone. It did not answer; they devoured all
the apples in their special orchard and carried their ravages into
his also.
The farmer knows that the apple is tempting, and the apple-pickers
and collectors are allowed to eat--within limits. But he can afford
to be generous. In a good year how abundant is the supply on every
tree! How every tree resembles those that Aladdin saw in the
enchanted world underground laden with topaz and ruby!
There was a curious custom in Devon, now completely gone out, which
consisted, on Old Christmas Day, in going at night into an orchard
and firing blank charges from fowling-pieces at the apple trees.
It was supposed that this ensured there being a good harvest of
apples the ensuing year. In Somersetshire the wassailing of the
trees continued till within the memory of old folk. Sir Thomas
Acland related to Mr. Brand, in 1790, that in his neighbourhood on
Christmas Eve it was customary for the country people to sing a
wassail or drinking song, and drink the toast from the wassail-bowl
to the apple trees in order to have a fruitful year. And Herrick
alludes to this when he enjoins:--
"Wassaile the trees, that they may bear
You many a plum, and many a peare;
For more or lesse fruits they will bring,
As you do give them wassailing."
The wassail song was as follows:--
"Old Apple tree, we are come to wassail thee,
All for to bloom, and to bear thy flowers and fruit so free.
Wassail! wassail! all round our town;
Our cups are white and our ale is brown.
Our bowl is made of a good ashen tree,
And here's kind fellows as will drink to thee.
Hats full, caps full, five-bushel bags full,
Barns full, floors full, stables full, tallats full,
And the little hole under the stairs, three times three!
Hip, hip, hurrah! shout we."
When the apples are considered fit to pound, which is usually in
November, they are taken to the crusher. This consists of a large
circular stone trough with a rim about it, and in this rolls a
great stone wheel, set in motion formerly by a horse attached to
a "roundabout." The great wheel revolved and crushed the apples
to a pulp. The crushing was, however, also done by the hand, in
small quantities. There is, however, a method of cutting them small
between rollers. The machine is now commonly set in motion by water.
The pounded apple pulp is called pomage, or apple-mock (mash). The
apples are ground to one consistence, with kernels and skins. The
kernels give flavour, and the skins colour; or are supposed so to do.
The pulp is next conveyed to the cider-press, where it is placed in
layers, with clean straw or haircloths between the layers. Below
is the vat; in Devonshire and Cornwall commonly called the "vate."
Above are planks with a lever beam weighted, so as to produce
great pressure, or else they are pressed by means of a screw. The
pressing-planks are locally termed the "sow." The cider now begins
to flow. The first flow is by no means the best.
The pulp thus squeezed is termed the "cheese." This is pared down,
and the parings added to the block and again subjected to pressure.
The cider as it flows away is received in "kieves." No water
whatever is added to the apples. What comes away is the pure
unadulterated juice. When, however, the cider has been wholly
pressed out, then it is customary to make a hole in the "cheese"
and pour in some water, which is left to be absorbed by the spongy
matter. This is afterwards pressed out, and goes by the name of
"beverage." It is not regarded as cider. It is sharper in taste, and
is appreciated by workmen.
Outside old farms is often to be seen a huge block of stone, with a
ring at the top. This was the weight formerly attached to the beam.
The pressing of the "cheese" was anciently performed by men pulling
the wooden beam, weighted with the great mass of granite or other
heavy substance that pressed down the "sow." A later contrivance
was a wheel with a screw, by means of which far more pressure could
be brought on the "cheese." The cider that oozed out under pressure
ran out of the trough by a lip into a flat tub called a "trin;" or
into the "kieve." The great scooped-out stones in which the apples
were crushed were often of great size, as much as ten or even
twelve feet in diameter. The stone that rolled in them was termed
the "runner." Where much pains was taken with the cider, there the
several kinds of apples were crushed separately, and also pressed
separately. But the usual custom was to throw in all together
into the "chase" or crushing basin. In a good many places small
discarded "chases" may be seen. These were employed not for making
cider, but cider spirit, which was distilled. This is indeed still
manufactured in some places on the sly. In Germany it is largely
distilled and sold as "schnaps," and very fiery, nasty stuff it is.
The manufacturers of British spirits know the use of cider spirit as
a base for some of their concoctions.
Formerly a duty of ten shillings a barrel was imposed on the making
of cider, but this was repealed in 1830.
The "cheese" of the apples is of little value. It is given to pigs.
Keepers are glad of it for the pheasants they rear; and made into
cakes it serves as fuel, smouldering and giving forth a not very
aromatic smoke.
The juice of the apples is left in the "kieves" for a period that
varies according to the weather and the temperature, but generally
is from three to four days.
During this period fermentation commences, and all the dirt and
impure matter come as a scum to the surface. This head is skimmed
off as it forms. If this be not done, after a time it sinks, and
spoils the quality of the cider. The liquid, by fermentation, not
only develops alcohol, but also cleanses itself. The fresh, sweet
cider is of a thick and muddy consistency. By fermentation it
purifies itself, and becomes perfectly clear.
The cider is now put into casks. In order to make _sweet_ cider the
cask is "matched." A bucketful of the new cider is put in, then
brimstone is lighted in an old iron pot, and a match of paper or
canvas is dipped in the melted brimstone and thrust into the cask
through the bung-hole, which is closed. The fumes of sulphur fill
the vessel, and when the barrel is afterwards filled with cider
all fermentation is arrested. Sweet cider, if new, is often rather
unpleasant from the taste of the sulphurous acid.
This may be avoided by "racking," that is to say, the cider when
made may be turned from one hogshead to another at intervals,
whenever it shows signs of fermenting. This continuous "racking"
will arrest the progress of fermentation as effectually as
"matching."
The sweet cider is in far greater demand by the general public than
that which is "rough," but a West Country labourer will hardly thank
you for the cider that will be drunk with delight by the cockney. He
prefers it "rough," that is to say acid, the rougher the better,
till it almost cuts the throat as it passes down.
Unless bottled, cider is difficult to preserve owing to the
development of lactic acid. Moreover, in wood it turns dark in
colour, and if allowed to stand becomes of an inky black, which is
not inviting. This is due to having been in contact with iron.
It is bottled from Christmas on till Easter, and so is sold as
champagne cider; sometimes as champagne without the addition, we
strongly suspect.
The amount of alcohol produced by fermentation varies from five and
a half to nine per cent. In the sweet sparkling cider the amount
is very small, and it would take a great deal of it to make a man
inebriate.
Much difference of opinion exists as to the good of cider for
rheumatic subjects. The sweet cider is of course bad, but it is
certain that in the West of England a good many persons are able to
drink cider who dare not touch beer--not only so, but believe that
it is beneficial. Others, however, protest that they feel rheumatic
pains if they touch it.
The manufacturers of champagne cider very commonly add mustard to
the liquid for the purpose of stinging the tongue; but apart from
that, cider is the purest and least adulterated of all drinks.
In conclusion I will venture to quote another West of England song
concerning cider, only premising that by "sparkling" cider is not
meant that which goes by the name in commerce, but the homely
cask cider; and next, that the old man who sang it to the writer
of this article--a Cornish tanner--claimed (but the claim may be
questioned) to have composed both words and melody, so that the
song, though of country origin, is not very ancient:--
"In a nice little village not far from the sea,
Still lives my old uncle aged eighty and three,
Of orchards and meadows he owns a good lot,
Such cider as his--not another has got.
Then fill up the jug, boys, and let it go round,
Of drinks not the equal in England is found.
So pass round the jug, boys, and pull at it free,
There's nothing like cider, sparkling cider, for me.
"My uncle is lusty, is nimble and spry (lively),
As ribstons his cheeks, clear as crystal his eye,
His head snowy white, as the flowering may,
And he drinks only cider by night and by day.
Then fill up the jug, &c.
"O'er the wall of the churchyard the apple trees lean
And ripen their burdens, red, golden, and green.
In autumn the apples among the graves lie;
'There I'll sleep well,' says uncle, 'when fated to die.'
Then fill up the jug, &c.
"'My heart as an apple, sound, juicy, has been,
My limbs and my trunk have been sturdy and clean;
Uncankered I've thriven, in heart and in head,
So under the apple trees lay me when dead.'
Then fill up the jug, &c."
Near Crediton, at Creedy Bridge, was born John Davy, the composer of
the popular song "The Bay of Biscay." He was baptised on Christmas
Day, 1763, at Upton Hellions, and was an illegitimate child; but
he was tenderly brought up by his uncle, a village blacksmith, who
played the violoncello in Upton Hellions Church choir.
When in Crediton one day as a child with his uncle, he saw some
soldiers at the roll-call, and was vastly delighted at the music of
the fifes; so much so that he borrowed one and very soon learned
to play it. After that he made fifes with his penknife of the
hollow-stalked weeds growing on the banks of the Creedy, locally
called "bitters," and sold them to his playfellows.
A year later the chimes of Crediton made such an impression on this
precocious child, that he purloined twenty or thirty horseshoes from
his uncle's smithy, and the old fellow was sadly perplexed as to
what had become of them, till he heard a mysterious chiming from the
garret, and on ascending to it, found that John had suspended eight
of the horseshoes from the rafters so as to form an octave, and with
a rod was striking them in imitation of the Crediton chimes.
This story getting to the ears of the rector of the parish,
Chancellor Carrington, he felt interested in the child and showed
him a harpsichord, on which he soon learned to play. Davy also at
this time applied himself to learn the violin.
When Davy was eleven years old the rector introduced him to another
parson, named Eastcott, who possessed a pianoforte, an instrument
of recent introduction. With this the boy soon became familiar. An
effort was now made by these two kindly clergymen, and they placed
him with Jackson, the organist of Exeter Cathedral, with whom he
remained some years and completed his musical education.
He then went to London, where he was employed to supply music for
the songs of the operas of that day, and was retained as a composer
by the managers of the Theatre Royal until infirmities, rather
than age, rendered him incapable of exertion, and he died, before
he was sixty-two, in penury. It was due only to a couple of London
tradesmen, one of whom was a native of Crediton, that he was not
consigned to a pauper's grave. He wrote some dramatic pieces for
the theatre at Sadler's Wells, and composed the music for Holman's
opera of _What a Blunder_, which was performed at the little theatre
in the Haymarket in 1800. In the following year he was engaged with
Moorhead in the music of _Perouse_, and with Mountain in that of
_The Brazen Mask_. His last opera was _Woman's Will_. Some of his
songs have obtained a firm hold, as "Just Like Love," "May we ne'er
want a Friend," "The Death of Will Watch the Smuggler," which I have
heard a village blacksmith sing, and "The Bay of Biscay."
He was buried in St. Martin's churchyard, February 28th, 1824.
There are some fine seats and parks near Crediton: Creedy Park,
that of Sir H. Fergusson Davie, Bart.; that of Shobrooke, the seat
of Sir I. Shelly, Bart.; and Downes, the property of Sir Redvers
Buller. This latter place takes its name from the _dun_ which
occupied the hill-top between the Yeo and Creedy, which unite below
it. All traces of the old ramparts have, however, disappeared
under cultivation. There is a somewhat pathetic story connected
with Shobrooke and Downes. The latter belonged to William Gould,
and James Buller, of Morval, obtained it by marrying his eldest
daughter and heiress Elizabeth, born in 1718. The younger and
only other sister, Frances, married John Tuckfield, of Shobrooke
Park, then known as Little Fulford. This was in 1740, when she was
only eighteen. The respective husbands quarrelled about money and
politics, and forbade their wives to meet and speak to each other.
John Tuckfield was member for Exeter 1747, 1754, 1760, when he died.
The sisters were wont to walk every day to a certain point in the
respective grounds and wave their handkerchiefs to each other, and
they never met in this world again, for Elizabeth died in 1742.
There is not much of great interest in the neighbourhood of
Crediton. Perhaps the church that most deserves a visit is
Colebrook, with its curious wood carving and a fine original and
late piece of screen-work. There is also Coplestone Cross, a very
remarkable piece of early Celtic interlaced work, such as is not to
be found elsewhere in England except in Northumbria. It is mentioned
in a charter in 974, but it is far older than that. It stands at the
junction of three parishes, and has given a name to a once noted
family in the county, that comes into an old local rhyme, which
runs:--
"Crocker, Cruwys, and Coplestone,
When the Conqueror came were found at home."
But who the ancestors of these families were at the time of the
Conquest we have no means of knowing. Of the few English thegns who
retained their lands in Devonshire after the Conquest, not one is
recorded as holding any of the estates that later belonged to these
families. The cross is of granite, and stands 10 feet 6 inches high.
It is, unhappily, mutilated at the top.
At Nymet Rowland, near Crediton, the savages lived, to whom Mr.
Greenwood drew attention. They were dispersed by becoming a prey to
typhoid, when their hovel was torn down. The last of them, an old
man, lived the rest of his life and died in the parish of Whitstone
in a cask littered with straw, the cask chained to a post in an
outhouse. I have given an account of them in my _Old English Home_.
At Lapford is a fine screen, and the carved benches are deserving
of attention. Lapford was for long, too long, the place over
which "Pass'n Radford" brooded as an evil genius. I have told
several stories of him in my _Old Country Life_, under the name of
Hannaford. He has been sketched in Mr. Blackmore's _Maid of Sker_
beside Parson Froude, of Knowstone. The latter has been drawn
without excessive exaggeration.
At Down S. Mary the screen has been admirably completed from a
fragment by the village carpenter. There is a good screen at Bow.
A good walk through pretty scenery to Dowrish, an ancient mansion,
and once dating from King John's reign, but modernised in suburban
villa style. Though there is nothing remaining of interest in the
house, the view thence, stretching across the richly wooded land of
the new red sandstone to the heights of Dartmoor, will repay the
walk. For many years Crediton was the residence of the Rev. Samuel
Rowe, the Columbus of Dartmoor. He laboriously explored that region,
till then almost unvisited, and chronicled its prehistoric relics.
Although he was hopelessly involved in the pseudo-antiquarianism
of his period, and put everything prehistoric down to the Druids
and Phœnicians, yet his researches were most valuable, and he has
recorded the existence of many relics that have since disappeared.
His _Perambulation of Dartmoor_ was published in 1848. He had
indeed been preceded in 1832 by the Rev. Edward A. Bray, vicar
of Tavistock, but the visits of the latter to Dartmoor had been
confined to the immediate neighbourhood of the town of which he was
parson.
[Illustration: TIVERTON]
CHAPTER VII.
TIVERTON
Two-fords Town--The Seven Crosses--Numerous chapels--Tiverton
Church--Blundell's School--Parson Russell--Washfield--Sampford
Peverell Ghost--"Old Snow"--White Witches--Instance of
evil done by them--The Four Quarters--Machine lace--John
Heathcoat--Cullompton--Bampfylde Moore Carew--Bampton Pony
Fair--The Exmoor ponies.
Tiverton, or, as it was originally called, Twyford, takes its
name from being planted between the Exe and the Loman (Gael.
_liomh_, smooth or sluggish[11]), which are here fordable. It rises
picturesquely above the Exe, and the height when crowned with castle
as well as church must have presented a remarkably fine group of
towers. The main castle tower was, however, pulled down and left as
a stump about thirty-five years ago.
[11] The same in Loch Lomond and in Lake Leman, in the Lyme in
Dorsetshire, and the Leam by Leamington.
The castle was a great Courtenay stronghold, and occupied a site
that had doubtless been previously fortified. There is, however, a
large and strong earthwork, Cranmore, that occupies the height above
Collipriest and looks down upon the town.
At Hensleigh, a hamlet to the west of the town, is a spot called
"The Seven Crosses." The origin of this name is, according to a
generally accepted tradition, as follows:--
One day the Countess of Devon was taking her walk abroad in the
direction of Hensleigh, when she met a tailor descending the hill,
laden with a large covered maund, or basket. As he passed, she heard
a cry from the hamper. She stayed her steps and inquired what he was
carrying.
"Only seven puppies that I be going to drown in the Exe," was his
reply.
"I want a dog," said the Countess. "Open the hamper."
The tailor tried to excuse himself, but in vain. The Countess
insisted, and, on the lid being raised, seven little babes were
revealed.
"Alas, my lady!" said the tailor. "My wife gave birth to all seven
at once, and I am poor, poor as a church mouse. What other could I
do than rid myself of them?--they are all boys."
The Countess saw that they were lovely and vigorous babes, and she
made the tailor take them back to his wife, and charged herself
with the cost of their bringing up and education. When they were
sufficiently old she had them all sent to Buckfast Abbey, to be
reared for the priesthood, and in due time they were ordained and
became--that is, four of them--rectors of Tiverton (for Tiverton had
four together), and the three others their curates. As they were all
of a birth, they loved each other, and never disagreed; and that
was--so it is averred--the only instance within a historic period
that the rectors of the four portions of Tiverton have agreed, and
have got on smoothly with each other and with their curates. As the
seven hung together in life, in death they were not parted. All died
in one day, and were buried on the spot where the Countess of Devon
saved their lives, and there above their heads seven crosses were
reared, but not one of these remains to the present day.
Formerly there were in Tiverton parish eighteen chapels, of which
the only remains are found in a cottage at Mere, and a restored
chapel at Cove. Tidcombe Rectory was built by a former rector, named
Newte, on the graveyard of one of these chapels, and it is pretended
that none of the eldest sons of the Newte family have ever since
come of age, as a punishment for this act of profanation.
Tiverton Church, dedicated to S. Peter, represents three periods of
architecture. In the north aisle is a Norman doorway, with zigzag
moulding. The tower, a hundred feet high, is the most beautiful
feature--Perpendicular. The nave, chancel, and north aisle are
of early Perpendicular work; the south aisle, with its Greenway
chapel, dates from early in the sixteenth century. It was built by
John Greenway, a rich merchant of Tiverton, and running round it,
represented in relief, are twenty scenes from the life of our Lord,
beginning with the Flight into Egypt, and ending with the Ascension.
The roof of the south porch is also Greenway's work, and is very
fine. He and his wife Joan are represented over the door kneeling
in adoration. He died in 1529, but the chapel was built in 1517.
The exterior is covered with lavish enrichments--representations
of ships, wool-packs, men, and horses. Formerly this chapel was
separated from the south aisle by a richly-carved, gilt and coloured
screen of stone, containing paintings in panels. This was wantonly
destroyed in 1830, but the fragments were happily rescued by the
Earl of Devon and removed to Powderham. At the "restoration" in 1854
the rood-screen was also removed, but was secured by the Rev. W.
Rayer, rector of Tidcombe Portion, who had just purchased the whole
of the Holcombe estate from the Blewett family, and his son had it
restored and erected in Holcombe Rogus Church.
The screen was in a very worm-eaten condition, and its restoration
was a very expensive matter.
Blundell's Grammar School was founded in 1604, and was for many
years the leading school of Devonshire. Under Dr. Richards it
contained the largest number of pupils, 200, ever within the walls,
until the new buildings were erected on a suitable spot to the east
of Tiverton, where there are now 250 boys.
Dr. Richards was a good teacher, but a very severe disciplinarian.
Perhaps the most famous of his pupils, both as a clergyman and
sportsman, was the late John Russell, "Parson Jack" as he was
called. He was a great favourite as a schoolboy, and always showed
a considerable amount of shrewdness. With another boy, named Bovey,
he kept a scratch pack of hounds. Having received a hint that this
had reached the ears of Dr. Richards, he collected his share of the
pack, and sent them off to his father. The next day he was summoned
to the master's desk.
"Russell," said the Doctor, "I hear that you have some hounds. Is it
true?"
"No, sir," answered Russell; "I have not a dog in the neighbourhood."
"You never told me a lie, so I believe you. Bovey, come here. You
have some hounds, I understand?"
"Well, sir, a few--but they are little ones."
"Oh! you have, have you? Then I shall expel you."
And expelled he was, Russell coming off scatheless. I tell the
following tale because it was told in Blundell's School of Russell,
during his lifetime, as one of his pranks, but I mistrust it. I
believe the story to be as old as the twelfth century; and if I
remember aright, it occurs in one of the French Fabliaux of that
period.
Dr. Richards had some very fine grapes growing against his garden
wall, under the boys' bedroom windows. "Jack was as good as
his master," and the young scamp was wont to be let down in a
clothes-basket by night, by his mates, to the region of the grapes,
and to return with a supply when hauled up.
The Doctor noticed how rapidly his grapes disappeared, and learning
from his man John the cause, took his place under the vine along
with his gardener, who was ordered to lay hold of the boy in the
basket and muffle his mouth, lest he should cry out. This he did
when Russell descended; and Dr. Richards took his place in the
clothes-basket. The boys hauled away, wondering at the accession of
weight, but when they saw the Doctor's head level with the window,
panic-stricken they let go their hold of the rope, and away went
Doctor and basket to the bottom.
No bones were broken, and nothing came of it, the Doctor being
rather ashamed of the part he had played in the matter.
It was said of Russell, as Napoleon said of Ashton Smith, that he
was "le premier chasseur d'Angleterre." His love for sport made
him always a poor man. On one occasion he invited a young curate
to breakfast with him, and preach for him. After breakfast two
likely-looking hunters, perhaps a little screwy, were brought round
and steadily mounted.
"No time for going round by the road," said Parson Jack; "we will
ride to my church across country, and so save a couple of miles."
Off they rode. The curate presently remarked, "How bare of trees
your estate is," as they crossed lands belonging to Russell. "Ah!"
responded the sportsman "the hounds eat 'em." Coming to a stiff
gate, Russell, with his hand in his pocket, cleared it like a bird,
but looking round, he saw the curate on the other side crawling over
the gate, and crying out in piteous tones, "It won't open."
"Not it," was the reply, "and if you can't jump a gate like that,
I'm sure you can't preach a sermon. Good-bye."
But he was not only a mighty hunter, he was also an excellent parish
priest and a fine preacher, though not always depending on his own
sermons. He was ordered to preach at one of Bishop Phillpotts'
visitations. His sermon was good, and at the consequent dinner
the Bishop complimented him in almost exaggerated terms for "his
splendid sermon." Russell knew that the Bishop when most oily was
most dangerous, and suspected that he had recognised the sermon, so,
as always, ready, he said in returning thanks, "As to the sermon, my
lord, I quite agree with you. I have ever considered it as one of
Barrow's best." Needless to say, the Bishop collapsed.
I can cap that with another anecdote.
The late Dr. Cornish, of Ottery S. Mary, was pompous and
patronising. A curate under him, recently ordained, preached his
first sermon. In the vestry the vicar, swelling out, said, "For a
beginner it was not wholly bad." "Ah, Doctor, I must not take any
credit to myself. It is one of Bishop Andrews' finest discourses."
Needless to say that Doctor Cornish's stomach went in.
There have not been many conspicuous lights from Blundell's. Perhaps
the most famous of them is the present Archbishop of Canterbury.
The school has passed through many vicissitudes. By a Chancery
decision in 1846 all boarders were swept away and the school reduced
to seventeen boys. £10,000 were put into the lawyers' pockets in
defending the suit, whereby the school was reduced well-nigh to
bankruptcy. By another decision of the courts and at the cost of
another £10,000, boarders were restored, and new buildings were
erected. The old school has been altered into private dwellings.
Near Tiverton is Washfield, where there is a very fine Jacobean
screen with the arms of James I. upon it, and in the north aisle
those of Charles as Prince of Wales. It deserves a study. In this
church the old parish orchestra still performs on Sunday, or did so
till recently. There is here a curious church-house with an oriel
window.
Outside the churchyard was buried a squire of the parish, so wicked
that he was denied a place in consecrated ground. Three times were
Acts of Parliament passed to enable either sale of property or the
management to be taken from successive squires as one after another
was mad. Worth House has now passed away from the family of that
name, which has died out in the male line.
In 1810 much public interest was excited by a report of spiritual
manifestations at Sampford Peverell, five miles from Tiverton, and
the Rev. C. Colton published an account of them. They consisted of
the usual rappings, dealing of heavy blows, and the throwing about
the room of heavy articles. That these were produced by some cunning
servant-maid cannot be doubted. Mr. Colton, who vouched for the
truth of the phenomena, did not bear a good character; he ended his
days by suicide, after having been "unfrocked," and his last years
spent in gambling-houses.
That these tricks were at one time not unfrequently resorted to
is probable. The Germans give them as the work of a Poltergeist.
In my own neighbourhood, in or about 1852, a precisely similar
exhibition took place. Stones, cups, pans flew about a room,
and strange knockings were heard. Many people went to witness
them, and came away convinced that they were the work of spirits;
especially was it so with one yeoman, whose hat was knocked off
his head by the spirit. My father investigated the matter, and
came to the conclusion that the whole was contrived by a girl of
low intelligence but of much cunning. It is now, with the advance
of education, persons of a superior grade who are the dupes of
spirit-mediums. Education will not give brains, but it will varnish
emptiness.
At Tiverton lived, till a few years ago, "Old Snow," a rather famous
"white witch," to whom many persons had recourse, among others a
farmer who was a churchwarden and a well-to-do man. I knew him well,
and in 1889 believed him to be a doomed man, with a hacking cough,
worn to a shred, and bent by weakness. Having consulted all the
prominent doctors in the south of the county, he went in desperation
to "Old Snow." What the white witch did to him I cannot say, but I
can testify he was a changed man from that day, and is at present a
robust, hale man, looking good for another twenty or thirty years.
In an article I wrote on "White Witches" for the _Daily Graphic_ I
mentioned this case. Some days after I met the farmer. "Why," said
he, "you have put me in the papers." "So I have," I answered, "but
what I told was literally true." "True--aye," he said, "every bit.
Old Snow cured me when the faculty gave me up. _How_ he did it,
neither you nor I know."
The white witch is an institution that has not been killed by board
schools in the West, nor, as far as can be judged from the favour
in which he is still regarded, is he likely to die. A witch is
generally supposed to be the feminine of wizard, but in the West of
England "witch" is of common gender, and those in highest repute are
men. Their trade consists in prescribing for the sick, in informing
those who have been "overlooked" whose evil eye has influenced them
for ill, where lost articles are to be found, and how spells cast on
their cattle are to be broken.
A white witch is one who repudiates utterly having any traffic
with the Evil One. His or her knowledge is derived from other
sources--what, not specified. I had for many years as a tenant in
one of my cottages a woman who was much consulted as a white witch.
She is now dead, and her decease is a matter of outspoken regret.
The village inn frequently had guests staying there to undergo
a course of "blessing" from this woman. She was an ill-favoured
person, with a wall-eye, and one eye higher in her head than the
other. She was bent, heavy-featured, and stoutly built. A worthy
woman, scrupulously neat in her person, and who kept her cottage in
beautiful order. She certainly believed in her own powers, and as
certainly performed very remarkable cures, which it was not possible
to deny, though they might be explained. For instance, in the
hayfield in a parish four miles distant as the crow flies, eight by
road, a young man cut his leg with the scythe, and the blood spurted
out. At once the farmer dipped the man's handkerchief in the blood,
mounted one of his men on a horse, and sent him galloping to the
white witch, who took the kerchief, blessed it, and simultaneously
four miles off as the crow flies, the blood was stanched. The son of
the largest farmer in the place, a man who is worth his thousands,
was suffering from glandular ulcerations in the neck. The village
doctor attended him and did him no good. He consulted the principal
medical man in the nearest market town, also to no advantage. Time
passed and he was no better; he gave up consulting doctors, who sent
him in bills and left him rather worse than when they began on him.
At last he went to the white witch. Whether she "struck" his glands
or prescribed some herbs I cannot say, but what I do know is that
within a month the young man was perfectly well.
The woman, who was my tenant, was no conscious impostor, of that
I am convinced. What her secret was she would not communicate,
but most earnestly did she deprecate any communication with evil
spirits. Not only did the village innkeeper derive a certain
revenue from patients lodging in his house to be under treatment
by her, but the postmen of the neighbourhood also earned their
crumbs by carrying kerchiefs blessed by her to sufferers within
their districts. It was no uncommon sight to see a walking postman
careering along with arms extended holding a kerchief in each hand,
fluttering as he walked. It is held that the blessing is drawn out
of the material if it be folded, put in a pocket, and handled other
than most gingerly between finger and thumb.
When among the educated, the cultivated classes, we find belief
in faith-healing, and so-called "Christian Science," is it to be
wondered at that in classes lower down in the scale there should be
credulous persons who not only believe in white witches, but believe
in their own powers as white witches?
It is the same as in the Lourdes miracles; the imagination acts
on the nervous system, and that stimulates the body to throw off
disease. That is the true secret.
I cannot doubt but that in many cases herbs are employed that have
been sadly neglected ever since our doctors have gone in for mineral
medicines. The latter act violently, but the herbs slowly, and, in
many instances, more surely.
However, in the majority of cases the white witches are mere
impostors, and may do much harm, as in that I will now record, which
took place three years ago only. I shall, for obvious reasons, not
give the true names, nor indicate the locality.
A cattle dealer in 1896 had a daughter, who two years previously had
been a victim to influenza. This had affected her head and produced
profound melancholy. As doctors proved unavailing, the man went to
Exeter and consulted a white witch there. According to his statement
the witch showed him the face of a neighbour, Mrs. Thomas, in a
glass of water, and told him that his daughter was "overlooked" by
the person he saw. The white witch further informed him that the
individual who had "ill wished" his daughter passed his door every
day, but had hitherto never entered it, but that on the following
Saturday she would do so. The cattle dealer returned home, and, sure
enough, next ensuing Saturday Mrs. Thomas entered his house and
asked if he would take of her a little meat she had to spare, as she
had been killing a pig.
Next night the Thomases' house was set on fire. It was thatched, and
six persons slept under the thatch. By the merest chance Mr. Thomas
woke in the night, and hearing a strange sound went outside his
house to see what was the matter, and found his roof in flames. He
had barely time to rouse and bring forth his wife and family before
the roof fell in.
It was ascertained by the police that the thatch had been
deliberately fired. The incendiary had struck two matches, which
had failed, and in drawing the matches from his pocket had dropped
two halfpenny stamps. He had climbed on to a hedge to effect his
object, and the third match had ignited the thatch. But it was never
ascertained _who_ had done the deed.
A few years ago I wrote the little account of "Devonshire White
Witches" for the _Daily Graphic_ already referred to. This brought
down on me a copious shower of letters from all parts of England,
entreating me to furnish the addresses of some of our white witches,
as the correspondents had found it profitless and expensive to apply
to medical practitioners, and they were anxious to try the cures of
these conscious or unconscious impostors.
Tiverton parish was ecclesiastically divided into four quarters,
each under an independent rector, and all co-equally regnant in the
parish church. The arrangement was not happy--and led to constant
ruffles and conflict of opinion. The condition was so unsatisfactory
that the late Bishop of Exeter and present Archbishop carried an Act
to alter it.
Tiverton is a seat of machine-lace manufacture, introduced by Mr.
John Heathcoat in 1816.
Lace is said to have been brought into France by Mary de Medici from
Venice; and the making of this beautiful work of art rapidly spread
and took root in the Low Countries. Refugees from Flanders brought
it into England, when they settled at Cranfield, in Bedfordshire.
The lace made was Brussels point; the network was formed by bone
bobbins on a pillow, which held the threads, and the sprigs were
worked with a needle.
The introduction of machinery told heavily on the commoner and
coarser lace-making.
In the reign of George II., or about a hundred and fifty years after
the introduction of the first knitting machines, many additions
and improvements were made in them, and the so-called "tickler,"
guided by mere accident, was now applied for the first time to the
manufacture of lace. This attempt was succeeded by a "point-net"
machine, an invention that was nearly, but not entirely, successful.
In 1768 a watchmaker, named Hammond, applied the stocking-frame
to the manufacture of lace, but it worked slowly and without
accuracy. Attempts were made in various parts of the kingdom to make
fishing-nets by machinery, and a workman discovered, by observing
a child at play, the secret of the "bobbin and carriage," which
was first applied to the manufacture of fishing-nets. It was not,
however, till 1809 that Mr. Heathcoat patented his machine, which
combined the discoveries of the past with immense improvements of
his own.
The point-net frame had been invented in the early years of the
century. Attempts were made to produce a twist mesh. Heathcoat
divided the warp threads and put them on a beam, apart from the
transverse threads, which latter he wound upon thin bobbins, and
arranged them so that they could pass around and amongst the former.
This machine was, however, complex, having twenty-four motions to
the series for twisting the mesh, and four for the pins to secure
the twist when unravelling, but after the expiration of the patent
it was simplified so as to require only six, with two motions to
prevent the unravelment.
The introduction of mechanism threatening the manufacture at home
provoked grave riots in the counties of Nottingham, Derby, and
Leicester, headed by a weaver named Ludd, who gave his name to
the riots. The man himself was really insane. Troops of men went
about breaking machines and intimidating workers in the factories.
William Horsfall, a Marsden manufacturer, they murdered. This
was in 1813. Although peremptory punishment fell on the rioters,
still insecurity to life and property continued for some years,
and induced Mr. Heathcoat to transfer his frames to and start as
a manufacturer in Tiverton in 1816, and abandon his factory at
Loughborough. He brought with him as a foreman Mr. Asher, who had
been shot at and wounded in the back of his head by the rioters.
This transfer was so much loss to Loughborough and gain to Tiverton,
and that not temporary, but lasting, for what was begun in 1816 is
continued to this day in full vigour, finding employment for 1400
hands and 130 children. John Heathcoat's only child and daughter
married a solicitor named Amory, and their son was made a baronet
by Mr. Gladstone in 1874, a well-deserved honour, as, but for the
introduction of the lace manufacture, Tiverton would have sunk to
the position of a stagnant county town.
The Exe valley below Tiverton presents pleasant scenery, but nothing
fine. An excursion should be made to Cullompton in the Culm (Welsh
_cûll_, Gael. _caol_, narrow, slender) valley to see the interesting
church with its fine restored screen in all the splendour of colour.
Cullompton had the wit to preserve and cherish what Tiverton cast
away. Uffculme has also a screen; near this is Bradfield House, a
rare treasury of old oak carving. Culmstock has a stone screen,
which has stupidly been converted into a reredos.
Holcombe Rogus is a very fine specimen of an Elizabethan house and
hall. In the church is some beautiful cinque-cento carved screenwork
to the manorial pew.
At Bickleigh was born Bampfylde Moore Carew in 1693. His father
was the rector, and the son was educated at Blundell's School at
Tiverton, where he showed considerable ability. He and other boys
kept a pack of hounds, and as these, with Carew and others behind
them, once gave chase to a deer strayed from Exmoor over standing
corn, so much damage was done that the farmers complained.
Bampfylde Moore Carew was too great a coward to wait and take
his whipping. He ran away from school, and sheltered among some
gipsies. He contracted such a love for their vagrant life, and such
satisfaction in getting their applause for thefts that manifested
low cunning, that nothing would induce him to abandon their mode
of life and return to civilisation. At one time he postured as a
non-juring parson who had been forced to leave his rectory, and
preyed on the sympathy of the Jacobite gentry. Then learning from a
newspaper that a cargo of Quakers bound for Philadelphia had been
wrecked on the Irish coast, he disguised himself as a Friend, and
traded on the charity of the Quakers by representing himself as one
of those who had been rescued from the sea.
He was elected King of the Beggars on the death of Clause Patch,
who had reigned previously over the mendicants. At last he was
arrested, tried at the quarter sessions at Exeter, and transported
to Maryland, where he was sold to a planter, and as he tried to
escape an iron collar was riveted about his neck. He again escaped;
this time succeeded in getting among the Indians, who relieved him
of his collar. He stole a canoe from his benefactors, and got on
board a vessel sailing for England. What became of him is not known,
but he is thought to have died in obscurity in 1770, aged 77, but
where buried is unknown. The fellow was a worthless rogue, without a
redeeming quality in him.
The Bampton Fair is an institution that should not be passed
by unsought by the visitor to North Devon, if he be a lover of
horseflesh or a student of mankind. He will see there choice
specimens alike of Exmoor ponies and of North Devon farmers, and
will catch many a waft of the broadest dialect of the borders of
Somerset and Devon.
A writer in _S. Paul's Magazine_, December 12th, 1896, says:--
"As a dead-alive, archæologically interesting place, the Devon
Bampton on the Exe is a more or less desirable centre for the
angler and the hunting man, but ordinarily, in the eyes of the
unsporting, sane person, it is a useful hole to strive to avoid.
"Bampton Fair, however, is a celebration once to be seen by
every woman or man who has eyes, ears, and nose for novelty.
Such lowing of oxen, bleating of sheep, and assemblage of
agrestics and congregation of ponies! The side shows are naught.
Who cares for gingerbread, pasties, cockles, fairings, tipsy
yokels, trolloping hussies, and other attributes of Bœotia
let loose? The play's the thing--that is, the pony exhibition.
Nijni Novgorod is all very well--quite unique in its way; Rugby,
Barnet, and Brampton Brian fairs are things apart. But Bampton
Fair is absolutely _sui generis_. Exmoor ponies throng the
streets, flood the pavements, overflow the houses, pervade the
place. Wild as hawks, active and lissom as goats, cajoled from
the moors and tactfully manœuvred when penned, these indigenous
quadrupeds will leap or escalade lofty barriers in a standing
jump, or a cat-like scramble, whilst the very 'suckers' have to
be cajoled with all the Dædalian adroitness with which the Irish
pig has to be induced to go whither it would not."
The great sale of ponies formerly took place at Simonsbath, but it
was moved to Bampton in 1850, and is held on the last Thursday in
October.
"Seventy years ago," said a bailiff, "there were only five men and
a woman and a little girl on Exmoor, and that little girl was my
mother. She drew beer at Simonsbath public-house. There were a rough
lot of customers then, I promise you."
The moor was the property of the Crown, and it was leased in part to
Sir Thomas Dyke Acland since 1818, and was used for the rearing of
ponies and the summering of sheep.
There was a good deal of horse stealing in the early days of this
century. In spite of the severe laws on this sort of theft, and of
the Acland brand of the anchor, a good many ponies were spirited
away by the shepherds and disposed of in Wiltshire. The Acland breed
is pure, and can only be obtained from the Baronet. All the rest are
the result of crossing. Sir Thomas moved his stock away from Exmoor
to the Winsford Hills, and left only a dozen mare ponies to preserve
the line, when the father of the late Sir Frederick Knight rented
10,000 acres of the moor and added 6000 subsequently.
"An after-dinner conversation led Mr. Knight to consider the
great pony question in all its bearings. The party met at Sir
Joseph Banks's, the eminent naturalist. They discussed the
merits of the Dongola horse, which had been described as an
Arab of sixteen hands and peculiar to the regions round Nubia.
Sir Joseph proposed to the party to get some of the breed, and
accordingly Lords Headly, Morton, and Dundas, and Mr. Knight
then and there gave him a joint £1000 cheque as a deposit for
the expenses. The English consul in Egypt was applied to, and in
due course the horses and mares which he sent bore out Bruce's
description to the letter. In addition to their height, they
were rather Roman-nosed, with a very fine texture of skin, well
chiselled under the jowl, and as clean-winded as all their race.
About ten or twelve arrived, and Mr. Knight was so pleased
with them that he bought Lord Headly's share. His two sires
and three mares were then brought to Simonsbath, where he had
established a stud of seven or eight thoroughbred mares and
thirty half-breeds of the coaching Cleveland sort.
"The first cross knocked out the Roman nose as completely as
the Leicester destroys the Exmoor horn, but the buffy stood
true to its colour, and thus the type was never quite lost.
The half Dongolas did wonderfully well with the West Somerset,
which often came to Exmoor to draw for a fox, and they managed
to get down the difficult hills so well, and crossed the brooks
so close up with the hounds, that the vocation of the white-clad
guides on chase days gradually fell into disuse."[12]
[12] Condensed from "The Exmoor Ponies," by "DRUID," in _The
Sporting Magazine_, October, 1860.
The average height is 12½ hands, and bays and buffy bays with
mealy noses prevail; in fact, are in a majority of at least three to
one.
The older ponies live all through the winter on the hills, and seek
out sheltered spots for themselves during the continuance of wind
and rain. These favourite nooks are well known to the herdsmen,
who build up stacks of hay and straw, which are doled out to them
in times of snow. "Still, like honest, hard-working labourers, the
ponies never assemble at the wicket till they have exhausted every
means of self-support by scratching with their fore-feet in the snow
for the remnants of the summer tufts, and drag wearily behind them
an ever lengthening chain of snowballs."
A writer in _All The Year Round_ for May, 1866, says:--
"Throughout North Devon and Somersetshire and wherever ponies
are famed, the Exmoor breed have a great reputation, not without
reason, for they are not only hardy and sure-footed, but from
their earliest years the foals follow their dams at a gallop
down the _crees_ of loose stones on the steep moorland sides;
they are extraordinarily active and courageous. The writer once
saw an Exmoor, only 44 inches high, jump out of a pound 5 feet 6
inches in height, just touching the top bar with his hind feet."
Well, let a visitor go to Bampton Fair, and see the pranks of these
wild, beautiful creatures, and note as well the skill with which
they are managed by the men experienced in dealing with them. Such
a sight will remain in his memory, and when he gets back to town he
will have something to talk about at dinner, and if he has a bit of
descriptive power in him he will hold the ears of those who are near
him at table.
NOTE.--HARDING (Lt.-Col.), _The History of Tiverton_. Tiverton,
1845.
CHAPTER VIII.
BARNSTAPLE
The _stapol_ of Branock's district--The Irish settlers--Branock
badly received in South Wales--Situation of Barnstaple--Huguenot
refugees--Samuel Pepys's wife--Jacques Fontaine--French names
altered--Barnstaple the starting-point for Ilfracombe and
Lynton--The coast road--Exmoor--Combe Martin--The Valley
of Rocks--The Wichehalses of Lee--Brendon--S. Brendan's
voyages--Churches near Barnstaple.
This town was the _stapol_, port or mart, of the district of Barum,
Braun, or Brannock, an Irish saint, confessor, and son-in-law to
Brychan, King of Brecknock, who settled at Braunton, formerly
Llan-Brynach, then Brannock-stow. The northern cheek of Barnstaple
Bay is formed by a peninsula, the centre of which is this same
Braunton, where Branock had his monastic establishment. As
intimately associated with this district, a few words on him may be
allowed.
In the fifth century the whole of North Devon and North-east
Cornwall was invaded and occupied by Irish and half-Irish hordes.
Irish accounts relate that these invasions began about 378, and
continued till the reign of Dathi, 428.
[Illustration: QUEEN ANNE'S WALK, BARNSTAPLE]
The Irish had made themselves masters of Brecknock, where their
prince, Aulac or Amalghaid, claimed the throne in virtue of
his wife Marchell, daughter and heiress of the native Welsh king.
Brychan, the son, succeeded him; he had as tutor to his children
an Irishman named Brynach or Branock, who was his confessor, and
to whom he gave one of his daughters in marriage. Branock did not
have a pleasant time of it in South Wales, and he migrated to North
Devon, where, by some means, he obtained a grant of a considerable
tract of country.
His legend was extant at the time of the Reformation, and Leland,
Henry VIII.'s antiquary, who travelled in Devon and Cornwall, saw
it, and says it was full of fables about Branock's cow, his staff,
his well, and his serving-man, Abell.
Unhappily, this has been lost, and all we know concerning him is
from a Latin life, composed in Wales, that passes hurriedly over his
life elsewhere and relates mainly what took place when he returned
to South Wales. There he was very ill received, owing to the hatred
entertained towards the Irish. A woman--the author of the life does
not say as much, but we may suspect it, his wife--instigated a man
to assassinate him. Brynach was wounded, but not killed, and he had
to shift his quarters. He probably returned to Devon and died there.
Braunton Church contains some fine oak carving, and deserves a visit.
Barnstaple lies stretched along the bank of the Taw, and from the
river has a prepossessing appearance. There are, however, few
objects of interest in the town. The church of S. Peter, with a lead
spire that leans, is interesting internally from the many monuments
it contains of wealthy Barnstaple merchants.
A tall, good tower to Holy Trinity helps greatly to give dignity
to an otherwise unattractive town, made pre-eminently so by the
unsightliness of the ranges of suburban residences that line the
roads out of it.
But Barnstaple is important as having given shelter to a number
of refugees at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and their
descendants still live in the town, though under names that have
become much altered. Among these refugees was the family of St.
Michel, and Samuel Pepys married one of the daughters. The St.
Michels were of good family, of Anjou, but a son having taken up
with Huguenot religious notions, was disinherited, and came to
England. There he married the daughter of Sir Francis Kingsmill,
and had a son and daughter. He returned to France, but was in
very indigent circumstances, and during an absence from home his
children were removed to an Ursuline convent. St. Michel, however,
recovered them and fled with them and his wife to England, and
arrived at Barnstaple, but settled near Bideford. How Samuel Pepys
met Elizabeth St. Michel we do not know. He was married to her
before the justice of peace on December 1st, 1655, but as he always
observed October 10th as his wedding day it is probable that he,
like many another, had been secretly married by a priest of the
Church of England, and merely conformed to the law afterwards on
December 1st. She was fifteen only when Pepys married her, and the
young couple found an asylum in the family of Pepys's cousin, Sir
Edward Montagu, afterwards Earl of Sandwich. She was a pretty, but a
silly woman, and much inclined to jealousy, but indeed Sam gave her
good cause for that.
"1668-9, Jan. 12. This evening I observed my wife mighty dull,
and I myself was not mighty fond, because of some hard words
she did give me at noon, out of a jealousy at my being abroad
this morning, which, God knows, it was upon the business of the
Office unexpectedly; but I to bed, not thinking but she would
come after me. But waking by and by, out of a slumber, which
I usually fall into presently after my coming into the bed, I
found she did not prepare to come to bed, but got fresh candles,
and more wood for her fire; it being mighty cold, too. At this
being troubled, I after awhile prayed her to come to bed; so,
after an hour or two, she silent, and I now and then praying her
to come to bed, she fell out into a fury, that I was a rogue,
and false to her. I did, as I might truly, deny it, and mighty
troubled, but all would not serve. At last, about one o'clock,
she came to my side of the bed, and drew the curtains open, and
with the tongs red hot at the ends, made as if she did design to
pinch me with them, at which, in dismay, I rose up, and with a
few words she laid them down; and did
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