Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts Part 19

It is not possible to follow the careers of others of his family, but a saying in the West Country ran: 'That a G.o.dolphin was never known to want wit, a Trelawney courage, or a Grenville loyalty.' Their love of adventure perhaps descended from an earlier Sir Richard Grenville, who puts forward his views in a poem called

SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE'S FAREWELL.

[Also ent.i.tled 'In Praise of Seafaring Men in Hope of Good Fortune, and describing Evil Fortune.']

Who seeks the way to win renown, Or flies with wings of high desert, Who seeks to wear the laurel crown, Or hath the mind that would aspire-- Let him his native soil eschew, Let him go range and seek a new.

Each haughty heart is well content With every chance that shall betide-- No hap can hinder his intent; He steadfast stands, though fortune slide.

The sun, quoth he, doth s.h.i.+ne as well Abroad as erst where I did dwell.

To pa.s.s the seas some think a toil; Some think it strange abroad to roam; Some think it grief to leave their soil, Their parents, kinsfolk, and their home.

Think so who list, I take it not; I must abroad to try my lot.

If Jason of that mind had been, The Grecians, when they came to Troy, Had never so the Trojans fooled, Nor ne'er put them to such annoy; Wherefore, who list to live at home, To purchase fame I will go roam.

Directly, Bideford suffered very little from the Civil War. In the early days the town was for the Parliament, and two forts were built, one on each side of the river; but after a defeat near Torrington, in the autumn of 1643, the citizens surrendered to the royal army. 'Their spirit for rebellion was considerably reduced,' says their special historian; 'they remained perfectly neutral to the dreadful end of that unhappy war.'

Unfortunately, it is not possible here to dwell upon the delightful minor annals of Bideford, such as the history of that stalwart pamphleteer, Dr Shebbeare, who, for his repeated attacks on the Ministry, was condemned to stand in the pillory at Charing Cross. The sentence was carried out, but not exactly in the usual manner, for 'Mr Beardmore, the under-sheriff, being a friend of the Doctor's, permitted him to stand unconfined on the platform of the pillory, attended by a servant in livery holding an umbrella over him.' It is lamentable that the authorities were sufficiently vindictive and small-minded to visit this act of friendly tolerance on Mr Beardmore with a fine of 50 and two months' imprisonment. Dr. Shebbeare was also imprisoned; but later in life the tide turned, and the King was persuaded to pension him with 200. As Dr Johnson was pensioned about the same time, with the same sum, the joke ran that the King had shown benevolence to a He Bear and a She Bear.

It is also impossible to do more than touch on the tragic episode of 1682--the trial of three unhappy women, Susanna Edwards, Temperance Lloyd, and Mary Trembles, who were accused of having practised witchcraft. Here are a few fragments of the evidence given at the trial.

A witness said that, while nursing a sick woman, a magpie fluttered once against the window, and that Temperance admitted that this 'was the black man in the shape of a bird.' Another time 'a grey or braget cat'

of rather mysterious movements was an object of suspicion, and Temperance was reported to have confessed that 'she believed it to be the Devil.' The evidence of a dead woman was brought forward, she having 'deposed that the said Temperance had appeared to her in the shape of a red pig.' Susanna Edwards, under strict examination, 'confesseth that the Devil hath appeared to her in the shape of a Lyon, as she supposed.'

Some of the questions put to the wretched 'witches' were simply grotesque, and reflect, as Watkins caustically observes, on the intelligence of the examiner. Temperance was asked:

'Temperance, how did you come in to hurt Mrs Grace Thomas? Did you pa.s.s through the key-hole of the door, or was the door open?...

'H. [the examiner]. Did you know any Marriners, that you or your a.s.sociates destroyed, by overturning of s.h.i.+ps or boats?

'TEMPERANCE. No! I never hurt any s.h.i.+p, bark, or boat in my life.

'H. You say you never hurt s.h.i.+ps nor boats; did you never ride over an arm of the sea on a Cow?'

To the north of Bideford is a little peninsula formed by the mouth of the Torridge on the east, the far wider estuary of the Taw on the north, and the open sea on the west. The whole course of the Torridge is very capricious. The source is within four miles of the sea, not far south of Hartland, and, at once turning inland, the stream takes a south-easterly direction till it reaches the first slopes that, rising out of the fertile country, mount gradually as they stretch towards the borders of Dartmoor. At this check the Torridge runs due east till, within a few miles of Okehampton, it turns in a great rounded loop, and flows north and slightly west to the north coast again.

The Taw's course is far more direct. It rises in Dartmoor, and, occasionally bending slightly to east or west, it makes a fairly straight way towards the north till Barnstaple is reached, and then, turning almost at a right angle, runs westward to the sea.

Following the strip of land along the west bank of the Torridge from Bideford, the road pa.s.ses Northam, and on the north-eastern point, at the meeting of the rivers, stands Appledore. Before reaching Northam, by diverging a little to the west, one arrives at the remains of an ancient castle, Kenwith Castle, known for a long time as Hennaborough or Henny Hill, where about A.D. 877 the Danes were valiantly driven back, after a furious battle, by King Alfred and his son. Hubba, the leader of the Danes, fell, and their magical banner, Reafan--the Raven--was taken.

According to one tradition, it was 'wrought in needlework by the daughters of Lothbroc, the Dane, and, as they conceived, it made them invincible.' Another account rather contradicts this, as it declares that the wonderful standard bore a stuffed raven, who 'hung quiet when defeat was at hand, but clapped his wings before victory.' All the legends, however, point to the faith of the Danes in the magical powers of the banner, and their chagrin on losing it must have been very great.

The Danes buried Hubba 'on the sh.o.r.e near his s.h.i.+ps, and, according to the manner of northern nations, piled on him a heap of copped stones as a trophy to his memorial, whereof the place took name Hubba-stone.'

Risdon speaks of the 'sea's encroaching,' and of the stones having been swept away by it before his day, but the name still clings to the spot where it stood.

A little fort at Appledore was built, it is said--but the authority is not infallible--at the same time that the forts were thrown up at Bideford, and towards the end of July, 1644, it was called on to make a defence. Barnstaple had suddenly rebelled against the Royalists, and the citizens resolved to take possession of the guns that commanded the river's mouth. Sir John Berkeley, writing what must have been an unsatisfactory letter to Colonel Seymour, in answer to a request for more men, speaks of the troops sent to help the defenders: 'Your desire and expectance of supply is most just and reasonable. Having been exhausted of men by the Prince, and having sent to the relief of Appledore, by His Majesty's command, 500 under Colonel Apsley ... I am not able to give you the least a.s.sistance at present.' And Sir Hugh Pollard, writing at the same time, mentions that Colonel Apsley's force will meet 'a many of Doddington's horse at Chimleigh, to the relief of the fort at Appledore, which is straitly besieged by those of Barnstaple.'

The garrison consisted of forty Cornishmen, and before the siege was raised they were 'much straitened both for dread and fresh water.' They were particularly badly off because 'a certain colonel, who is stigmatized covertly as "no Cornishman," had been entrusted with the victualling of the fort, but had neglected his duty.'

Close to the sea, on the west, lies Westward Ho!--a tiny (and modern) watering-place, named after Kingsley's famous book. Along the western sh.o.r.e as far as the Taw stretch Northam Burrows, covered for some distance by a fine elastic turf that is far-famed, and by patches of rushes. Beyond the golf-links the ground breaks into sand-hills, all hillocks and hollows of pure sand, soft and yielding, dented by every footstep, set with rushes and spangled with crane's-bill, yellow bedstraw, tiny purple scented thyme-flowers, and a kind of spurge.

Both sand-hills and common are protected from the sea by the well-known Pebble Ridge, which stretches for two miles in a straight line. It is a ma.s.s--fifty feet wide and twenty feet high--of large, smooth, rolled slate-stones, some being two feet across, though most of them are smaller.

Turning westwards along the coast, Lundy is often to be seen like a faint blue cloud on the horizon, especially when a softening haze hovers over the land--but on a clear day it is very distinct. And on a fine evening, when the dim blue twilight is creeping up on every side, it has the very air of an enchanted island against the radiant crimson that for a few moments spreads and glows in the west after sundown.

A little distance farther on is Portledge, 'the most antient seat of the name and family of Coffin,' says Prince; and he mentions a boundary deed between Richard Coffin and the Abbot of Tavistock, written 'in the Saxon tongue, which giveth good confirmation thereof.' Sir William Coffin was one of several Devons.h.i.+re gentlemen who were 'a.s.sistants' to Henry VIII in the tournaments of the 'Field of the Cloth of Gold,' being of great courage, and 'expert at feats of arms.' A story which is often told of him gives a good ill.u.s.tration of his strong will. While living on a property that belonged to his wife in Derbys.h.i.+re, Sir William chanced one day to pa.s.s a churchyard, and seeing a group of people standing about, he asked what was happening. Being told that 'they had brought a corps to be buried, but the priest refused to do his office unless they first delivered him the poor man's cow, the only quick goods left,' for a burial fee, he commanded the priest to read the service. But the priest declined to do so until he had received his fee. On this answer, Sir William 'caused the priest to be put into the poor man's grave, and earth to be thrown upon him; and he still persisting in his refusal, there was still more earth thrown in, until the obstinate priest was either altogether or well nigh suffocated.'

Prince is entirely delightful over this story. He goes on: 'Now, thus to handle a priest in those days was a very bold adventure;' as if to bury a priest alive was usually considered a pleasant amus.e.m.e.nt. Sir William, however, not only lived through the storm that the high-handed action raised, but actually succeeded in moving Parliament to pa.s.s an Act regulating the burial fees that might be asked of the poor. So our biographer finishes with the triumphant axiom: 'Evil manners are often the parent of good laws!'

Eleven miles west of Bideford is Clovelly. Here one feels, rather despairingly, that anyone who has seen this wonderful village can listen to no description of it; while to those who have never seen it, no description is of any value.

A road leads towards it through the Hobby, a wood overhanging the sea, which Kingsley describes as 'a forest wall five hundred feet high, of almost semi-tropic luxuriance.' The road was 'banked on one side with crumbling rocks, festooned with heath, and golden hawkweed, and London pride, like velvet cus.h.i.+ons covered with pink lace, and beds of white bramble-blossom alive with b.u.t.terflies; while above my head, and on my right, the delicate cool canopy of oak and birch leaves shrouded me so close that I could have fancied myself miles inland, buried in some glen unknown to any wind of heaven, but that everywhere between green sprays and grey stems gleamed that same boundless ocean blue.'

The village itself lies in a ravine of the rock, and the 'street' is so precipitous that the eaves of one house are on a level with the foundations of its next neighbour above. Kingsley and d.i.c.kens have written descriptions that, scarcely overlapping, seem to complete each other.

'I was crawling up the paved stairs, inaccessible to cart or carriage, which are flatteringly denominated Clovelly street; ... behind me a sheer descent, roof below roof, at an angle of 75, to the pier and bay, two hundred feet below and in front of me; another hundred feet above, a green amphitheatre of oak and ash and larch, shutting out all but a narrow slip of sky, across which the low, soft, formless mist was crawling, opening every instant to show some gap of intense dark rainy blue, and send down a hot vaporous gleam of suns.h.i.+ne upon the white cottages, with their grey steaming roofs and bright green railings packed one above another upon the ledges of the cliff; and on the tall tree fuchsias and gaudy dahlias in the little sc.r.a.ps of courtyard; calling the rich faint odour out of the verbenas and jessamines, and, alas! out of the herring heads and tails also, as they lay in the rivulet, and lighting up the wings of the gorgeous b.u.t.terflies, almost unknown in our colder eastern climate, which fluttered from woodland down to garden, and from garden up to woodland.'

The human element tinges the other sketch more strongly:

'The village was built sheer up the face of a steep and lofty cliff.

There was no road in it, there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level yard in it. From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white houses, placed opposite to one another and twisting here and there, and there and here, rose like the sides of a long succession of stages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up village or climbed down the village by the staves between, some six feet wide or so, and made up of sharp, irregular stones. The old pack-saddle, long laid aside in most parts of England, as one of the appendages of its infancy, flourished here intact. Strings of pack-horses and pack-donkeys toiled slowly up the staves of the ladders, bearing fish and coal, and such other cargo as was uns.h.i.+pping at the pier from the dancing fleet of village boats and from two or three little coasting traders. As the beasts of burden ascended laden, or descended light, they got so lost at intervals in the floating clouds of village smoke, that they seemed to dive down some of the village chimneys and come to the surface again far off, high above others. No two houses in the village were alike in chimney, size, shape, door, window, gable, roof-tree, anything. The sides of the ladder were musical with water, running clear and bright.

The staves were musical with the clattering feet of the pack-horses and pack-donkeys, and the voices of the fishermen urging them up mingled with the voices of the fishermen's wives and their many children.... The red-brown cliffs, richly wooded to their extremest verge, had their softened and beautiful forms reflected in the bluest water, under the clear North Devons.h.i.+re sky of a November day without a cloud. The village itself was so steeped in autumnal foliage, from the houses joining on the pier to the topmost round of the topmost ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a-bird's-nesting, and was (as indeed it was) a wonderful climber.'

The harbour is very small, but on a cliff-bound, dangerous coast it is one of the very few between Bideford and Padstow. Clovelly's great herring fishery used to be famous, but it is not now so large as it used to be.

Above the village, the beautiful park of Clovelly Court lies along the cliffs, looking over the wide distances of Bideford Bay; and on a fine day the Welsh coast may be seen. Inland, great forest trees tower above a miniature forest of bracken, and at the opening of a glade one may catch glimpses of the deer appearing and vanis.h.i.+ng again.

The Carys were in very ancient days settled at St Giles-in-the-Heath, but a branch of them came to Clovelly in the reign of Richard II. They were of the same race as the Carys of Torre Abbey, and the family of whom Lord Falkland is the head. John Cary, who acquired the property, was a distinguished character. As a Judge, 'he scattered the rays of justice about him, with great splendour.' He was called to show firmness and loyalty under the most trying circ.u.mstances, but, 'true as steel ...

the greatest dangers could not affright him from his duty and loyalty to his distressed master Richard II, unto whom he faithfully adhered when most others had forsaken him.' When the King had been deposed, 'this reverend Judge, unable and unwilling to bow like a willow with every blast of wind, did freely and confidently speak his mind.' So faithfully did he maintain King Richard's cause that, when Henry IV came to the throne, the Judge was banished the kingdom, and his goods and lands were confiscated. These, Sir Robert Cary, his son, recovered literally at the point of the sword, for a 'certain Knight-errand of Arragon,' of great skill in feats of arms, 'arrived here in England, where he challenged any man of his rank and quality.' Sir Robert accepted the challenge, and a 'long and doubtful combat was waged in Smithfield, London.' In the end the 'presumptious Arrogonoise' was vanquished, and Henry V, to whom Sir Robert's gallantry appealed, restored him 'a good part of his father's lands,' and granted him leave to bear 'in a field silver, on a bend sable, three white roses,' the arms of the conquered knight--the arms that the Carys still bear. The Clovelly branch of the family is now extinct.

A little to the south of Clovelly, and on high ground, are Clovelly d.y.k.es, the remains of an old camp, sometimes called British and sometimes Roman. It is large and circular, and the position was strengthened by three great trenches, about eighteen feet deep and three hundred feet long, which lie around it. The camp commands the only old road in the surrounding country.

About seven or eight miles to the west is the grand headland of Hartland Point. It is a narrow ridge that rises precipitously three hundred and fifty feet above the water, projects far out into the sea, and abruptly ends the coast-line to the west. The coast is very fine, but also most dangerous, and the cliffs, cleft here and there by great chasms, fall sheer down to needle-points of hard black slate rock jutting out into the sea.

The name of Herty Point, as it used to be called, was originally, says Camden, 'Hercules's promontory,' and this t.i.tle has given rise to 'a very formal story that Hercules came into Britain and killed I know not what giants.' Here Camden pauses in his description of the place, to consider whether there ever was a Hercules at all, and, if so, whether there were not really forty-three Hercules; and if this was not so, whether Hercules was perhaps 'a mere fiction to denote the strength of human prudence,' or, again, possibly a myth personifying the sun, and his labours the signs of the zodiac, 'which the sun runs through yearly.' On the whole, he decides that, at any rate, Hercules never came to Britain, but the name might have been given to the point by the Greeks 'out of vanity,' because 'they dedicated everything they found magnificent in any place to the glory of Hercules.'

Four miles south-east of the headland lies Hartland town. It has been briefly described as 'a very quiet street of grey stone cottages and whitewashed houses on a high and windy tableland.' Close by is Hartland Abbey, founded, according to tradition, by Githa, the wife of Earl G.o.dwin, and mother of Harold II, in honour of St Nectan; for she 'highly reverenced the man, and verily believed that through his merits her husband had escaped s.h.i.+pwreck in a dangerous tempest.' In the reign of Henry II, leave was given to Oliver de Dynant to change the community of secular canons into regular canons of St. Augustine's order, and to found a monastery for them. But between the successors of the founder and the canons matters did not always run smoothly; in fact, on one occasion, about a hundred years later, they actually came to blows in the church, as is made clear by an entry in the register of Bishop Brones...o...b.., for it records that the bishop had reconciled the church, 'which had been polluted by an effusion of blood in an affray between Oliver de Dinham and the canons.'

After the Dissolution the Abbey was bestowed by the King upon the Sergeant of his cellar, a man named Abbott. Parts of the Abbey remained unaltered and in good repair till the end of the eighteenth century, when, in building the present house, the unfortunate taste of the period destroyed the hall, which was over seventy feet long, and a portion of the cloisters, which were then still perfect. Parts of them, however, are still standing. The cloisters had been rebuilt at a very early date, for Dr. Oliver quotes an inscription which was over one of the arches that shows them to be the work of the Abbot John of Exeter, who resigned in 1329. Bishop Stapledon had found many defects in the structure of the Abbey, when he made his visitation in 1319, and had ordered them to be at once remedied. During the alterations made about one hundred and twenty years ago, the monument of a Knight Hospitaller was found, and within the last few years small pieces of carved stone have been dug up--amongst others, a Madonna's head with traces of blue and gold still upon it; a monk kneeling, and a knight and lady hand in hand. The Abbey is now the property of Sir Lewis Stucley.

Nearer the sh.o.r.e, and on high ground, is the church of St Nectan, whose tall pinnacled tower is a landmark to sailors. The tower is Perpendicular, but most of the church is late Decorated, and the north side has a Norman doorway. The great feature is the very beautiful screen which stretches across the whole church; but the cradle roofs are good, and there is other carving. On the pulpit is the figure of a goat with tusks, and the puzzling inscription, 'G.o.d save King James. Fines.'

The Norman font is curiously sculptured with grotesque faces that look down on to equally quaint faces on the pedestal--an allegory in stone which Mr Hawker of Morwenstow interpreted as the righteous looking down on the wicked.

Three or four miles farther on is the actual border-line, and here one must turn, although, looking south towards Widemouth Bay, it is irresistibly tempting to quote a few verses of rank doggerel, written on a s.h.i.+pwreck which happened there on November 23, 1824. The verses were probably inspired by terrible stress of emotion, and suggest the idea that they were written with a spar rather than with a pen; but no doubt they were for ever the joy and pride of their author.

'Come all you British seamen, That plough the raging main, Who fight for King and Country, And your merchants do maintain.