England, Picturesque and Descriptive Part 26

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUINS OF ROUGEMONT CASTLE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD HOUSES IN THE CATHEDRAL CLOSE.]

About eleven miles up the river Exe, before it has broadened out into the estuary, but where it flows through a well-marked valley and washes the bases of the cliffs, stands Exeter, a city set upon a hill. Here was an ancient "dun," or British hill-fort, succeeded by a Roman, and then by a Norman, castle, with the town descending upon the slope towards the river and spreading into the suburb of St. Thomas on the other side. The growing city now covers several neighboring hills and tributary valleys, one of the flouris.h.i.+ng new suburbs being named Pennsylvania. Upon the ridge, where was located the old hill-fort, there still remain in a grove of trees some scanty ruins of the Norman castle, while well up the slope of the hill rise the bold and ma.s.sive towers of Exeter Cathedral.

Unique among English munic.i.p.alities, this is essentially a hill-city, the ancient British name of Caerwise having been Latinized by the Romans into Isca, and then changed to Exanceaster, which was afterwards shortened into the modern Exeter. n.o.body knows when it was founded: the Romans almost at the beginning of the Christian era found a flouris.h.i.+ng British city alongside the Exe, and it is claimed to have been "a walled city before the incarnation of Christ." Isca makes its appearance in the Roman records without giving the date of its capture, while it is also uncertain when the Saxons superseded the Romans and developed its name into Exanceaster. They enclosed its hill of Rougemont, however, with a wall of masonry, and encircled the city with ramparts built of square stones and strengthened by towers. Here the Saxon king aethelstan held a meeting of the Witan of the whole realm and proclaimed his laws, and in the first year of the eleventh century the Danes sailed up to the town and attacked it, being, however, beaten off after a desperate struggle.

Two years later they made another attack, captured and despoiled it; but it rose from its ruins, and the townsmen afterwards defied the Norman as they had the Dane. William attacked and breached the walls, the city surrendered, and then he built Rougemont Castle, whose venerable ruins remain, to curb the stout-hearted city. It was repeatedly besieged--in the days of Stephen, Henry VII., and Henry VIII., the last siege during the quarrels preceding the Reformation lasting thirty four days, the defenders being reduced to eating horse-flesh. In the Civil War the Royalists captured it from the Parliamentarians, who held it, and it remained in the king's possession until after the defeat at Naseby, when Cromwell recaptured it. Charles II. was proclaimed at Exeter with special rejoicings. When William, Prince of Orange, first landed in England, he came to the valley of the Teign, near Newton Abbot, where the block of granite is still preserved from which his proclamation was read to the people. Three days later he entered Exeter, escorted by a great crowd of the townspeople. He went in military state to the cathedral and mounted the bishop's throne, with its lofty spire-like canopy, rich with the carving of the fifteenth century, while the choir sang the Te Deum, after which Bishop Burnet read his proclamation. He remained several days in Exeter, while events ripened elsewhere for his reception. Here many Englishmen of rank and influence joined him, and his quarters began to display the appearance of a court. The daily show of rich liveries and of coaches drawn by six horses among the old houses in the cathedral close, with their protruding bow-windows and balconies, gave the usually quiet place a palatial appearance, the king's audience-chamber being in the deanery. He remained here two weeks, and then left for London, the entire kingdom having risen in his favor and James having deserted the capital for Salisbury. This ended Exeter's stirring history. It afterwards grew in fame as a manufactory of woollens, but this has declined, and the chief industries now consist in the making of gloves and agricultural implements.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXETER CATHEDRAL, FROM THE NORTH-WEST.]

Exeter Cathedral is the most conspicuous feature in the view upon approaching the city, rising well above the surrounding houses, its two ma.s.sive gray towers giving it something of the appearance of a fortress.

This feature makes it unique among English cathedrals, especially as the towers form its transepts. The close is contracted, and around it are business edifices instead of ecclesiastical buildings. The exterior is plain and simple in outline, excepting the western front, which is a very rich example of fourteenth-century Gothic. A church is said to have been standing on its site and dedicated to the Benedictines as early as the seventh century, and it lasted until after the Norman Conquest. The Normans built a new church in the twelfth century, which contained the present towers, but the remainder of the structure was afterwards transformed as we now see it. The rich western facade consists of three stages, receding one behind the other; the lower is the porch, subdivided into three enriched arcades containing figures and pierced by three doorways. The second stage is formed above this by the ends of the nave and side-aisles, being terminated with a battlement flanked by small pinnacles about halfway up the nave gable. A fine window pierces this stage, and above it the remainder of the gable forms the third stage, also pierced by a window which opens over the battlement. The figures in the lower stage represent the kings of England, apostles, and saints. The interior of the nave discloses stone vaulting and Decorated architecture, with large clerestory windows, but a small triforium. The bosses of the roof, which presents an unbroken line, are seventy feet above the floor. One of the bays on the north side of the triforium is a beautiful minstrels' gallery, communicating with a chamber above the porch. The inner walls of the towers have been cut away, completely adapting them for transepts, the towers being supported on great pointed arches. In the large east window the stained gla.s.s commemorates St.

Sidwell, a lady murdered in the eighth century at a well near Exeter by a blow from a scythe at the instigation of her stepmother, who coveted her property. The cathedral is rich in monumental relics, and it has recently been thoroughly restored. Little remains of the ancient convent-buildings beyond the chapter-house, which adjoins the south transept.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE THRONE, EXETER CATHEDRAL.]

The older parts of Exeter present a quaint and picturesque appearance, especially along the High Street, where is located the old Guild Hall, a ponderous stone building, with a curious front projecting over the footway and supported by columns; it was built in the sixteenth century.

Sir Thomas Bodley, who founded the Bodleian Library of Oxford, was born in Exeter, and also Richard Hooker the theologian. Among its famous bishops was Trelawney (then the Bishop of Bristol), who was one of the seven bishops committed by King James to the Tower, and whose memory still lives in the West-Country refrain, the singing of which had so much to do with raising the English revolt in favor of the Prince of Orange:

"And shall Trelawney die?

And shall Trelawney die?

There's twenty thousand Cornish lads Will know the reason why."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MINSTRELS' GALLERY, EXETER CATHEDRAL.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GUILD HALL.]

TEIGNMOUTH AND TORBAY.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BABBICOMBE BAY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANSTIS COVE.]

From the estuary of the Exe the Devons.h.i.+re coast trends almost southward towards the mouth of the Dart, being everywhere bordered by picturesque cliffs. Nestling in a gap among the crags, under the protecting shelter of the headlands, is the little watering-place of Dawlish, fronted by villas and flower-gardens, and having to the southward strange pinnacles of red rock rising from the edge of the sea, two of them forming a fanciful resemblance to the human figure, being named the Parson and the Clerk. A storm recently knocked off a considerable part of the Parson's head. Upon their sides, piercing through tunnel after tunnel, runs the railway almost over the water's edge. Soon the cliffs are breached with a wider opening, and here flows out the river Teign, where is the larger watering-place of Teignmouth, which has frequently suffered from Danish and French invasions, but is now best known by having the longest wooden bridge in England spanning the river-estuary and extending seventeen hundred feet, with a swing-draw to permit vessels to pa.s.s. The valley is broad, with picturesque villas on either bank. Below Teignmouth the sh.o.r.es project into the sea at the bold promontory of Hope's Nose, which has Torbay on one side and Babbicombe Bay on the other. Here, around the sh.o.r.es of the bay on the southern side of the projecting cape, is the renowned watering-place of Torquay, which has grown enormously since it has become such a fas.h.i.+onable resort in recent years. Its beautiful scenery and sheltered position have made it a favorite home for invalids. Its name is derived from the neighboring hill of Mohun's Tor, where there are ruins of an abbey. To the north of the headland is the fine sweep of Babbicombe Bay, with a border of smooth sand beach backed by steep cliffs, above which is the plateau where most of its villas are built. To the south of the headland Torquay spreads around a fine park, with highlands protecting it on almost all sides, while farther to the southward the limestone cliffs are bold and lofty, one of them presenting the singular feature of a natural arch called London Bridge, where the sea has pierced the extremity of a headland. Upon the eastern face of the promontory of Hope's Nose, and just below Babbicombe Bay, another pretty cove has been hollowed out by the action of the waves, its sides being densely clothed with foliage, while a pebbly beach fringes the sh.o.r.e. This is Anstis Cove, its northern border guarded by limestone cliffs that have been broken at their outer verge into pointed reefs. Compton Castle, about two miles from Torbay, is a specimen, though in ruins, of the ancient fortified mansion of the reign of Edward III. It is of ma.s.sive construction, built of the native limestone, and part of it is now used as a farm-house. Following around the deeply-recessed curve of Torbay, its southern boundary is found to be the bold promontory of Berry Head, and here on the northern side is the old fis.h.i.+ng-port of Brixham, having Church Brixham built up on the cliffs and Brixham Quay down on the beach. It was here that the Prince of Orange landed in 1688, and a monument in the market-place commemorates the event, the identical block of stone on which he first stepped being preserved.

THE DART.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOTNES, FROM THE RIVER.]

Southward of this promontory is the estuary of the Dart, a river which, like nearly all the streams of Devons.h.i.+re, rises in that great "mother of rivers," Dartmoor, whence come the Tawe and the Teign, of which we have already spoken, and also the Torridge, the Yealm, the Erme, the Plym, and the Avon (still another of them). This celebrated moor covers an area of about one hundred and thirty thousand acres, stretching thirty-three miles in length and twenty-two miles in breadth, and its elevation averages seventeen hundred feet, though some of its tors, the enormous rocks of granite crowning its hills, rise considerably higher, the loftiest of these, the Yes Tor, near Okehampton, being two thousand and fifty feet high. The moor is composed of vast stretches of bog and stunted heather, with plenty of places where peat is cut, and having its streams filled with trout. Legend tells us that all manner of hill-and water-spirits frequent this desolate yet attractive region, and that in Cranmore Pool and its surrounding bogs, whence the Dart takes its rise, there dwelt the "pixies" and the "kelpies." The head-fountains of both the Dart and the Plym are surrounded with romance, as the cities at their mouths are famous in English history, and Spenser, in the _Faerie Queene_, announces that both Dart and Plym were present at the great feast of the rivers which celebrated the wedding of the Thames and Medway. The courses of the Dartmoor rivers are short, but with rapid changes. In the moorland they run through moss and over granite; then among woods and cultivated fields, till, with constantly broadening stream, the river joins the estuary or tidal inlet, and thus finds its vent in the ocean. Strangely enough, with these short streams there are high points on the Dartmoor tors from which both source and mouth of a river are visible at the same time. The Dart, with steadily-increasing flow, thus runs out of the moorland, and not far from its edge pa.s.ses the antique town of Totnes, where the remains of an ivy-mantled wall upon the hill is all that is left of Judhael's famous castle, which dates from the Norman Conquest. The surrounding country is remarkably picturesque, and is noted for its agricultural wealth. About two miles to the eastward is the romantic ruin of Berry Pomeroy Castle, founded upon a rock which rises almost perpendicularly from a narrow valley, through which a winding brook bubbles. It is overhung with foliage and shrubbery and mantled with moss and ivy, so that it is most attractive.

The great gate, the southern walls, part of a quadrangle, and a few turrets are all that remain of the castle, which suffered severely in the Civil War. Tradition states that the adjacent village was destroyed by lightning. This castle also dates from the Norman Conquest, and pa.s.sed from its original possessors, the Pomeroys, to Protector Somerset, the Duke of Somerset being the present owner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BERRY POMEROY CASTLE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BEND OF THE DART.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DARTMOUTH CASTLE.]

The Dart, which is a rocky stream above Totnes and a favorite resort of the fisherman and sketcher, becomes navigable below the town, and has a soft, peculiar beauty of its own that has made it often compared to the Rhine; but there is little comparison between them: the Dart has no precipitous cliffs or vine-clad hills, and no castle excepting at its mouth. From Totnes to Dartmouth is about twelve miles, through exquisitely beautiful scenery, especially where the river pa.s.ses the woods of Sharpham, the current narrowing to about one hundred and fifty feet, and flowing through an amphitheatre of overarching trees rising in ma.s.ses of foliage to the height of several hundred feet. The stream makes various sharp bends--a paradise for the artist--and finally it broadens out into an estuary like an inland lake, with a view over the intervening neck of land to Torbay, and beyond the coast-line at Exmouth and towards Portland. Thus we come to Dartmouth, the old houses built tier above tier on a steep hill running up from the harbor, while at the extreme point of the promontory, guarding the entrance to the estuary, is the little church of St. Petrox, with its armorial gallery and ruins of an ancient manor house, and the castle, consisting of a square and a round tower, coming down from Henry VII.'s reign, when it was built for coast-defence. On the opposite point of the harbor-entrance are the foundations of another castle, evidently built about the same time.

Dartmouth in early times was a port of great importance, and Edward III.

first gave it a charter under the name of Clifton-Dartmouth-Hardness.

Its merchants were then numerous and wealthy, and Coeur de Leon's crusaders a.s.sembled their fleet in the harbor in 1190. The French destroyed both it and Plymouth in 1377, and in 1403 the two towns, combining, ravaged the French coasts and burned forty s.h.i.+ps. The French retaliated the next year, but Dartmouth was too much for them, killing Du Chastel, the commander, and defeating his expedition. It suffered severely in the Civil War, and there are still traces of the land-fastenings of the iron chain stretched across the harbor to keep out the French.

THE PLYM.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DEWERSTONE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN BICKLEIGH VALE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD DOORWAY, AUGUSTINIAN PRIORY. PLYMPTON.]

Westward of the valley of the Dart is the valley of the Plym, also flowing out of Dartmoor. Two streams known as the Cad and the Mew join to form this river, and though they are of about equal importance, the source of the Cad is generally regarded as the true Plym head, while a crossing upon it is known as the Plym Steps. Both are rocky, das.h.i.+ng mountain-streams, and such are also the characteristics of the Plym after the junction until it enters its estuary. The Plym Head is within the royal forest of Dartmoor, about twelve hundred feet above the sea, and in the wild and lonely moorland. The stream flows by the flat summit of Sheeps Tor, one of the chief peaks on the southern border of the moor. Here in a hollow formed by overhanging rocks one of the Royalist Elfords, whose house was under the tor, sought refuge, and amused his solitude by painting the walls of the cavern, which is known as the "Pixies' House," and is regarded by the neighbors as a dangerous place for children, to whom these little fairies sometimes take a fancy. It is not safe, they say, to go near it without dropping a pin as an offering between the c.h.i.n.ks of the rock--not a very costly way of buying immunity. In Sheeps Tor churchyard in the valley below lies Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, who died near there in 1868. As the streams course down the hillside they disclose frequent traces of the rude stone relics left there by an ancient people, the chief being the settlement at Trowlesworthy, where there is a circular hut enclosure about four hundred feet in diameter, with stone avenues leading to it and the entrances defended by portions of walls. The stones are nowhere large, however, rarely exceeding five feet high. Then we come to Shaugh, where the rivers struggle through rocky ravines and finally join their waters.

The little Shaugh church crowns the granite rocks on one side, while on the other is the towering crag of the Dewerstone. This ivy-clad rock, which lifts its furrowed and wrinkled battlements far above the Plym, was the "Rock of Tiw," that powerful G.o.d of the Saxons from whom comes the name of Tuesday. Once, we are told, in the deep snow traces of a human foot and a cloven hoof were found ascending to the highest point of the rock, which His Satanic Majesty seems to have claimed for his own domain. From this lofty outpost of the moor, if he stayed there, our all-time enemy certainly had a wide lookout. On the one hand is a grand solitude, and on the other a hilly country stretches to the seaboard, with the river-valley winding through woods and fields, and Plymouth Sound and its breakwater in the distance. Here, below the junction of the two streams, are the scant remains of the old house of Grenofen, whose inmates lived in great state, and were the Slannings who so ardently supported King Charles. A mossy barn with ma.s.sive gables is the prominent feature of the ruins. The river runs down through the very beautiful vale of Bickleigh, and then under Plym Bridge, where it becomes broader and more tranquil as it approaches the head of the estuary. This region belonged to the priory of Plympton, and its Augustinian owners raised at the end of the bridge a small chapel where the traveller might pause for prayer before venturing into the solitudes beyond. The remains of this structure, however, are now slight. At Plympton St. Mary was the priory, and at Plympton Earl the castle of the Earls of Devon, a brook flowing between them to the river. Both stand near the head of the estuary, and are in ruins. The priory was the wealthiest monastic house in Devon, but the castle was only important as the head-quarters of Plymouth's Royalist besiegers in the Civil War. The priory was the nurse of the noted port of Plymouth, and its earlier beginnings can be traced to the fostering care of the Augustinians, who developed the fis.h.i.+ng-town that subsequently became the powerful seaport. Plympton, the old rhyme tells us, was "a borough-town" when Plymouth was little else than a "a furzy down." The priory was founded in the twelfth century, and was long patronized by the neighboring Earls of Devon. The Augustinians, legend says, were the first to cultivate the apple in Devons.h.i.+re, and the ruins still disclose the moss-grown "apple-garth." Little remains of the monastery beyond the old refectory doorway and walls. The town of Plympton Maurice is in the valley near by, famous as the birthplace of Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1723, but the house has been swept away, though the grammar-school in which his father taught remains. Reynolds is said to have made good use of the recollections of the grand scenery around his birthplace in furnis.h.i.+ng landscape backgrounds for his pictures. The town afterwards elected him mayor, though he rarely visited his birthplace, but in lieu sent the corporation his portrait painted by himself. Here begins the broad estuary known as the Laira, at the mouth of which stands Plymouth, the town covering the land between the Laira and the Hamoaze, the estuary of the Tamar, with its adjoining suburbs of Stonehouse and Devonport. Here are now a population of two hundred thousand, while the station is of vast importance as a government dockyard and barracks, with a chain of strong protecting fortifications for defence from attacks both by sea and land. Along the southern bank of the estuary extend the woods of Saltram, the seat of the Earl of Morley. Then we come to Cat.w.a.ter Haven, crowded with merchant-s.h.i.+ps, and the older harbor of Sutton Pool. Mount Batten on one side and Citadel Point on the other guard the entrance to the haven. It was here that the English fleet awaited the Armada in 1588; that Ess.e.x gathered his expedition to conquer Cadiz in 1596; and from here sailed the _Mayflower_ with the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620.

Plymouth harbor's maritime and naval history is, however, interwoven with that of England.

PLYMOUTH.

The port of Plymouth comprises what are called the "Three Towns"--Plymouth proper, covering about a square mile, Stonehouse, and Devonport, where the great naval dockyard is located. Plymouth Sound is an estuary of the English Channel, and receives the Plym at its north-eastern border and the Tamar at its north-western, the sound being about three miles square and protected by the great breakwater a mile long, with a lighthouse, and defended by forts. The Plym broadens into the Cat.w.a.ter, used as a haven for merchant-vessels and transports and capable of furnis.h.i.+ng anchorage to a thousand s.h.i.+ps at one time. The Tamar broadens into the Hamoaze, which is the naval harbor, and is four miles long, with sufficient anchorage-ground for the entire British navy. Sutton Pool is a tidal harbor now used by merchant-vessels. The coasts of Plymouth Sound are rocky and abrupt, and strong fortresses frown at every entrance. It is the naval dockyard that gives Plymouth its chief importance: this is at Devonport, which is strongly fortified by breastworks, ditches, embankments, and heavy batteries. The great dockyard encloses an area of ninety-six acres and has thirty-five hundred feet of water-frontage. There are here five docks and also building-slips, where the great British war-s.h.i.+ps are constructed.

Another enclosure of seventy-two acres at Point Keyham is used for repairing s.h.i.+ps, and a ca.n.a.l seventy feet wide runs through the yards to facilitate the movement of materials. Immense roofs cover the docks.

East of Devonport, divided from it by a creek, and adjoining Plymouth, is Stonehouse. Here are the great victualling yard, marine barracks, and naval hospital. The Royal William Victualling Yard occupies fourteen acres on a tongue of land at the mouth of the Tamar, and cost $7,500,000 to build. Here the stores are kept and naval supplies furnished, its great features being the vast government bakehouse, the cooperage, and the storehouses. Its front is protected by a redoubt, and to the eastward are the tasteful grounds of the Earl of Mount Edgc.u.mbe's winter villa. The marine barracks, which have the finest mess-room in England, will accommodate fifteen hundred men; the naval hospital, northward of Stonehouse, will furnish beds for twelve hundred. There are three thousand men employed about these great docks and stores, and they form the most extensive naval establishment in the world. Near Mount Wise are the Raglan Barracks, where there is a display of cannon taken from the Turks.

In Plymouth Sound is a bold pyramidal rock, the Isle of St. Nicholas, which is a formidable fortress. Mount Edgc.u.mbe is on the western sh.o.r.e, and on the eastern side is Plymouth's pretty park, known as the Hoe, where the old Eddystone Lighthouse will be set up. Having come down the Plym, we will now ascend the Tamar, past the huge docks and stores, and about five miles above see the great Albert Bridge, which carries a railway, at a height of one hundred feet, from the hills of Devon over to those of Cornwall on the western sh.o.r.e. It is built on nineteen arches, two broad ones of four hundred and fifty-five feet span each bridging the river, the entire structure being two thousand two hundred and forty feet long. Out in the English Channel, fourteen miles from Plymouth, is its famous beacon--the Eddystone Lighthouse. Here Winstanley perished in the earlier lighthouse that was swept away by the terrible storm of 1703, and here Smeaton built his great lighthouse in 1759, one hundred feet high, which has recently been superseded by the new lighthouse. The Eddystone Rocks consist of twenty-two gneiss reefs extending about six hundred and fifty feet, in front of the entrance to Plymouth Sound. Smeaton's lighthouse, modelled after the trunk of a st.u.r.dy oak in Windsor Park, became the model for all subsequent lighthouses. It is as firm to-day as when originally built, but the reef on which it rests has been undermined and shattered by the joint action of the waves and the leverage of the tall stone column, against which the seas strike with prodigious force, causing it to vibrate like the trunk of a tree in a storm. The foundation-stone of the new lighthouse was laid on a reef one hundred and twenty-seven feet south of the old one in 1878. It is built of granite and rises one hundred and thirty-eight feet above the rock, its light being visible seventeen miles: it was first lighted May 18, 1882.

TAVISTOCK.

A short distance up the Tamar it receives its little tributary the Tavy, running through a deep ravine, and on its banks are the ruins of Tavistock Abbey, founded in the tenth century and dedicated to St. Mary.

Orgarius, the Earl of Devons.h.i.+re, was admonished in a dream to build it, but his son Ordulph finished it. He was of great strength and gigantic stature, could break down gates and stride across a stream ten feet wide. They still preserve, we are told, some of Ordulph's huge bones in Tavistock Church. The Danes plundered and burned the abbey, but it was rebuilt in greater splendor, and its abbot sat in the House of Peers.

When it was disestablished, like Woburn it fell to Lord Russell, and it is now owned by the Duke of Bedford. The remains of the grand establishment, however, are but scanty, and its best memory is that of the printing-press set up by the monks, which was the second press established in England. The Duke of Bedford's attractive villa of Endsleigh is near Tavistock, and a short distance south of the town is Buckland Abbey, built on the river-bank by the Countess of Devon in the thirteenth century. This was the home of Sir Francis Drake, and is still held by his descendants. Drake was born in a modest cottage on the banks of the Tavy about the year 1539. North of Tavistock, on the little river Lyd, are the ruins of Lydford Castle, surrounded by a village of rude cottages. Here originated the "law of Lydford," a proverb expressive of hasty judgment:

"First hang and draw, Then hear the cause by Lydford law."

One chronicler accounts for this proverb by the wretched state of the castle jail, in which imprisonment was worse than death. At Lydford is a remarkable chasm where a rude arch is thrown across an abyss, at the bottom of which, eighty feet below, the Lyd rattles along in its contracted bed. This is a favorite place for suicides, and the tale is still told of a benighted horseman, caught in a heavy storm, who spurred his horse along the road at headlong speed to seek shelter in the village. Next day it was found that the storm had swept the bridge away, and the rider shuddered to think how his horse on that headlong ride through the tempest had leaped over the abyss without his knowing it.

THE NORTHERN COAST OF DEVON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MINEHEAD.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF DUNSTER.]

Exmoor is a broad strip of almost mountainous moorland extending through the northern borders of Somerset and Devon and down to the coast of Bristol Channel. Its hills descend precipitously to the sea, so that only small brooks flow northward from them, excepting the Lyn, which manages to attain the dignity of a river by flowing for some distance among the hills parallel to the coast. It was but recently that good roads were constructed across this lonely moor, and on its northern edge, where the craggy headland of Greenaleigh is thrust out into the sea, is the harbor of Minehead, with a little fis.h.i.+ng-village skirting its sh.o.r.es. A short distance inland, and seated at the bases of the steep Brendon Hills, which rise in sharp wooded slopes above its houses, is the little market-town of Dunster. On an outlying hill, projecting from the ma.s.s, the original lord of Dunster built his castle, perching it upon a rocky crag that Nature herself designed for a fortress. The Saxons called it their "Hill-tower." Its picturesque ma.s.s of buildings is of various dates, but much more modern than their early day, most of the present structure having been built in Queen Elizabeth's reign. The castle was held for King Charles in the Civil War, and besieged by the Parliamentary troops, whose commander sent this bloodthirsty message to its governor: "If you will deliver up the castle, you shall have fair quarter: if not, expect no mercy: your mother shall be in front to receive the first fury of your cannon." The governor promptly and bravely replied, "If you do what you threaten, you do the most barbarous and villainous act that was ever done. My mother I honor, but the cause I fight for and the masters I serve are G.o.d and the king.--Mother, do you forgive me, and give me your blessing, and let the rebels answer for spilling that blood of yours, which I would save with the loss of mine own if I had enough for both my master and yourself." The mother also without hesitation answered him: "Son, I forgive thee, and pray G.o.d to bless thee, for this brave resolution. If I live I shall love thee the better for it: G.o.d's will be done!" Whether the atrocious threat would have been put into execution was never decided, for a strong Royalist force soon appeared, routing the besiegers, capturing a thousand of them, and releasing the lady. But the castle was soon afterwards taken for the Parliament by Colonel Blake, subsequently the admiral. It was then demolished, and now the summit of the flat-topped hill, where formerly was the keep, is devoted to the peaceful amus.e.m.e.nt of a bowling-green, from which there are exquisite views of the Brendon Hills and far away over the Bristol Channel to the distant coast of Wales. It was at Dunster Castle that William Prynne was shut up a prisoner by Cromwell. Prynne had been pilloried, shorn of his ears, and imprisoned by King Charles I. for his denunciations of the court, and then indulging in the same criticism of the Protector, he was confined at Dunster. It is now the head-quarters for those who love the exciting pleasures of stag-hunting on Exmoor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON PORLOCK MOOR--THE ROAD TO OARE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DOONE VALLEY.]