Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts Part 5

A winter traveller in pa.s.sing through the lanes near here recalls some beliefs of a past generation: 'The faint chimes of St Mary's in distant Ottery are playing their Christmas greeting over many a mile of moorland. We are pa.s.sing the old "cob" walls and grey-headed barns of a substantial farmstead. The c.o.c.ks will crow here all the night before Christmas Day, according to the beautiful legend of the county, to bid

'"Each fettered ghost slip to his several grave."

The very oxen at midnight will fall down on their knees before the manger. The next turn brings us to the Otter rus.h.i.+ng along some forty feet below with angry stream.' Almost at the mouth of the river is the village of Otterton, and here was a Benedictine Priory, founded in the reign of King John. The Prior of this little monastery had certain privileges. Amongst others, ten marks had to be subscribed among the tenants for 'a palfrey to be presented to a new Prior on his coming to reside in the midst of his flock, and every plough had to plough one acre of land for him annually.' He had the 'right of pre-emption of fish in all his ports, and the choice of the best fish.' Conger-eels were specially mentioned in a marginal note. Besides this, he claimed every porpoise caught in the sea or other neighbouring waters, but paid for it with twelve pence and a loaf of white bread to each sailor, and two to the master of the boat from which it was caught. Lastly, the Prior claimed the half of every dolphin. But no Prior is likely to have had many chances of a.s.serting this right.

The river runs into the sea by the charming little town of Budleigh Salterton; but it is more interesting to cross the water at Otterton, and pa.s.sing through the village of East Budleigh, nearly opposite, to go towards Hayes Barton, the house where Sir Walter Raleigh was born.

Fardell, near Ivybridge, was the ancestral home of the Raleighs, but Sir Walter's father settled at Budleigh. In front of the garden a swirling stream crosses a strip of green; and in the garden, at the right time, one may see the bees busy among golden-powdered cl.u.s.ters of candytuft, and dark-red gillyflowers, and a few flame-rose-coloured tulips, proud and erect. The house is very picturesque; it has cob walls and a thatched roof, and is built in the shape of the letter E; a wing projects at either end, and in the middle the porch juts out slightly.

The two wings are gabled; there is a small gable over the porch and two dormer ones over the windows at each side of it, the windows having lattice lights and narrow mullions. Dark carved beams above them show up well against the cream-coloured walls. The heavy door is closely studded with nails, and over it fall the delicate sprays and lilac 'b.u.t.terfly'

blossoms of a wistaria. The house has been little altered, and its outward appearance was probably almost the same in Sir Walter's boyhood as it is to-day.

In front of Hayes Barton is a hill covered with oak-woods, and to the west the ground begins to slope upwards to the high moorland of Woodbury Common. Sir Walter had a great affection for his boyhood's home, and later, in trying to buy it back, he wrote to the then owner: 'I will most willingly give you whatsoever in your conscience you shall deem it worth; ... for ye naturall disposition I have to that place, being borne in that house, I had rather seat myself there, than anywhere else.'

To realize Sir Walter at all adequately, he must be contemplated as soldier, sailor, statesman, courtier, explorer, poet, historian, Governor of colonies abroad and of very important offices at home--most of all as a seer, for his eyes discerned a light that did not dawn on his contemporaries. He and his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, foresaw 'that colonization, trade, and the enlargement of empire, were all more important for the welfare of England than the discovery of gold.' Major Hume, who is by no means over-prejudiced in Raleigh's favour, has said in his 'Life of Sir Walter Raleigh': 'To him is due the undying glory of having made the great northern continent of America an English-speaking country. With him it was no accident. The plan sprang fully formed from his great brain. He was greedy of gain, but he spent his money like water in this great project. He knew full well that there was no gold to reward him; that the profit, if any, must be slow, and must accrue mainly to the nation, and not to an individual; and yet he laboured on for thirty years in the face of defeat, disaster, contumely, and disgrace, in full faith and confidence that the great continent was by G.o.d's providence reserved for England.'

Raleigh's biographers have wondered at his immense knowledge of naval matters, and particularly of naval warfare, for the _Ark Raleigh_, which he had built after his own plans, was admitted to be the best s.h.i.+p in the fleet at the time of the Armada. Perhaps his genius for absorbing information developed very early, and Sir John Millais's picture of the two little boys, fascinated by the words of the sailor speaking to them of the breathless adventures he had fought through, the gorgeous sights that he had seen in the lands overseas, helps to explain it. Most West-Countrymen can tell a tale dramatically, as the sailor is telling it--the picture was painted at Budleigh Salterton--and it may be that, with Raleigh's amazing faculty for gathering knowledge, he learned enough of seamans.h.i.+p as he grew up to enable him to grasp and h.o.a.rd in his memory every detail of the subject as it came before him in later life.

It is impossible to judge any character of a past century without trying to realize in many questions of conduct the gulf that lies between the former point of view and our own, and whatever Sir Walter's faults were, his genius was incomparably greater. His failings were those of his age, and were more than surpa.s.sed by the shortcomings of several of Queen Elizabeth's very eminent statesmen. Raleigh left Oxford when he was only seventeen, and joined Mr Henry Champernowne's band of gentlemen volunteers who were fighting for the Protestant Princes in France. After six years' fighting he left the army and betook himself to the Middle Temple, where possibly he spent more time over lyrics than over the law, for a biographer, describing this period of his life, pa.s.ses over his legal acquirements, but says that 'his vein for ditty and amorous ode was esteemed most lofty, insolent, and pa.s.sionate.' He and Spenser were very congenial companions, and later Spenser, speaking of their great friends.h.i.+p, said: 'He pip'd, I sang, and when he sang, I pip'd.'

Sir Walter left the Temple for the sea, then went to fight in Ireland, and at the time of the Armada he was Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and responsible for the companies of tinners, who had turned to soldiering.

He planned one expedition after another to the New World, and sent them out mainly at his own expense, giving careful instructions to those in charge to observe carefully any plants or produce of any kind that might profit this country, whereas usually explorers searched eagerly for precious metals alone. It was due to these instructions that the potato was brought to England. Rumour for long maintained that Sir Walter actually brought back the plant himself, but, as a matter of fact, the credit of this is due to Heriot, a man of science employed by Raleigh.

He showed it with the other 'commodities' he had collected to Sir Walter, who took the potatoes with him to Ireland, and planted them in his new estate of Youghal.

And though it was most probably Sir John Hawkins who introduced tobacco into England, it certainly was Sir Walter who brought smoking into fas.h.i.+on. In parenthesis, a warning may be given that anyone who wanders from east to west along the south coast of Devon will be wearied beyond measure by the numbers of rooms, banks, porches, and gardens, shown as the identical spot 'where Sir Walter smoked his first pipe.' Dr Brushfield, in an exhaustive article on 'Raleghana,' counts only six places, but _they_ reach from Penzance to Islington, and one is in Ireland.

After the last dreary voyage, rendered fruitless by the contemptible double-dealing of James I, and during his trial, Sir Walter's self-possession and courage showed at their best. 'From eight in the morning till nearly midnight he fronted his enemies with unshaken courage. The bl.u.s.ter of Attorney-General c.o.ke roared around him without effect. "I want words," stormed the great prosecutor, "to express thy viperous treason."

'"True," said Raleigh, "for you have spoken the same thing half a dozen times over already."'

It was characteristic of his grand views of life that within the four walls of a prison he should undertake no less a work than the History of the World. The unfinished history shows a depth of learning and dignity of style, very wonderful in the writings of a man who spent his life in incessant and absorbing action. It must have been the vast number of the chances and changes of life he had seen around him, and himself experienced, that inspired him to write that splendid apostrophe: 'O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none have dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world have flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, _Hic jacet_.'

Not only in his visions of colonies was Raleigh far in advance of his time. Major Hume quotes his ideas on trade and commerce, the statesmans.h.i.+p displayed in his _Prerogative of Parliaments_, and his writings on the construction of s.h.i.+ps and naval tactics, to show that in each subject he had arrived at conclusions now generally accepted, but only discovered by the public long after his death. This biographer ends by describing him as 'perhaps the most universally capable Englishman that ever lived.'

Sir Walter's last lines were written a few hours before his death, in his Bible:

'Even such is Time, that takes on trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have.

And pays us but with age and dust; Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days.

But from this earth, this grave, this dust, The Lord shall raise me up, I trust!'

Following the coast, 'running eastward with many winding and waving creeks,' Sidmouth is soon reached. Westcote is philosophical over both Sidmouth and Seaton: 'In former times, very famous ports (and every place and man hath but his time).' Sidmouth was an important fis.h.i.+ng town several hundred years ago; it is now a popular watering-place, set among high red cliffs, amidst very pretty scenery, and favoured with a great deal of suns.h.i.+ne. Leading inland are very high and steep hills, different in shape from most of the hills in the neighbourhood, for they are neither rounded, pointed, nor sloping, but have a curious square, rather flat-topped look, and scarped sides.

Farther eastward, one comes to Brans...o...b.., a straggling village in a broad hollow where three valleys meet. A stream flows down each combe, and eventually all three join and run together into the sea at Brans...o...b.. Mouth. There is a great deal to admire in the steep sides and irregular curves, softened by the spreading woods in these valleys, and close to the sh.o.r.e a hill rises almost precipitously for six hundred feet.

A very short distance further on, the white cliffs of the tiny cove of Beer come into view. Beer is an exceptionally delightful village, because of its strong individuality. At the top of the inlet the houses are cl.u.s.tered irregularly in little offshoots, but the main street runs down a deep cleft narrowing towards the sea between white gleaming chalk cliffs such as are rare in this county. A rapid stream races down the side of the street, and, das.h.i.+ng over a rock at the edge of the beach, buries itself in the s.h.i.+ngle. Beer Head and the cliff that separates the village from Seaton run out into the sea, so that it is completely shut in, and from the water's edge it is impossible to see past those ma.s.sive walls standing against the sea and sky on either side. The cove is so small that one wonders it counts as a harbour at all, but the beach is covered with many small boats and several heavily-built trawlers. As I saw it, the water was a clear blue-grey, and some sea-gulls were placidly floating a few yards from land, rising and falling as the waves rolled in, and looking as if they must be buried by each one. From Beer Head there is a splendid view of the coast; to the east, beyond Seaton, the landslip, and Lyme Regis, the line stretches grey and dim in the distance towards Portland; westwards, beyond Sidmouth's red cliffs, one sees how the land bends southward to Budleigh Salterton, and still further south towards Exmouth.

The little in.o.btrusive haven of Beer was in every way convenient for smugglers, and was naturally much beloved by them. Not more than seventy or eighty years ago, all the people in the village were supposed to take a share in the perils and joys of the ventures whenever they got the chance. The greatest of their number was a certain Jack Rattenbury, who began his life at sea when he was nine years old. Five years later he had already decided, 'I wished to make a figure on the stage of life,'

and joined a privateering expedition. The s.h.i.+p was captured by the French, and Rattenbury taken prisoner. He escaped from prison, but not from Bordeaux, where for more than a year he was forced to stay, and he then sailed on his own account to America, and back to Havre, Copenhagen, and Guernsey. By the time he reached home again he was only sixteen! His life was an unceasing turmoil: smuggling, privateering, being impressed for the navy, and devising wiles for slipping away again, with the variation of being taken prisoner by French or Spaniards.

A steep road runs through lovely scenery from Ottery to Seaton. At intervals it pa.s.ses through woods, or looks down into the misty, green, undulating country northwards; then, climbing a ridge, the sea, framed in woods, is seen over little hollows in the distant cliffs to the south. The road crosses a common with a few knots of wind-swept fir-trees, and runs steeply down to Seaton. On the west side of the bay the cliffs are a creamy white; eastwards, the shades are chiefly buff and pale brown. The variety of their strata make the cliffs interesting to geologists, for here are found layers of different kinds of chalk, limestone, greensand, marls, chert, and interspersed lines of flints.

Seaton is a pleasant little town without any remarkable feature. In the church is this curious epitaph with the date 1633 A.D.:

JOHN STARRE . . . . . .

Starr on hie!

Where should a starr be But on Hie?

On the east side of Seaton is the flat wide Valley of the Axe. The river is broad and rather important-looking, but it makes a most inglorious exit into the sea, for a huge pebble ridge rises as an impa.s.sable barrier, and the river has to twist away farther east and run out obliquely through a narrow channel. Axmouth, on the farther side, is a pretty old-fas.h.i.+oned little village, the thatched whitewashed cottages forming a street that curves round almost into a loop, while a chattering stream runs between the houses. In the church is the figure of a tonsured priest, with chasuble, stole, and alb, supposed to be one of the early Vicars of Axmouth. At his feet lies a dog, and the legend goes that this was not merely the customary image of a dog seen on tombs, but the effigy of his own favourite, whom he desired to be buried at his feet; and as an indemnity for this order he left a piece of ground to be devoted to charitable purposes, called Dog Acre Orchard. Mr Rogers, in his 'Memorials of the West,' tells us that the name remains till to-day.

A very short distance beyond is the great landslip which fell in 1839, when about fifty acres of the cliff slid more than a hundred feet to the sh.o.r.e beneath, but in such a way that part of an orchard descended with its growing trees, and they continued to flourish at their new level.

More wonderful still, two cottages settled down on to the sh.o.r.e, without falling in pieces. The ground began to slide on the night of Christmas Eve, and by the evening of December 26 the great ma.s.s had fallen. To the west is a great chasm, and the cliff rises high on the seaward side.

Farther east, no cliff rises beyond the chasm, but little hillocks and sand-dunes slope unevenly to the beach. The undercliff has not in the least the barren look of an ordinary bit of waste ground touching the sh.o.r.e, but is covered with gra.s.s and thick undergrowth, oaks and hawthorns, and ma.s.ses of ivy, and beneath them the long spear-like leaves and scarlet-berried pods of the wild-iris.

If one returns to the Axe and begins to follow up its innumerable bends, one arrives opposite the little town of Colyton, which is not quite on the river. Mr Rogers says that the name comes from the British _Collh y tun_, and has the pretty meaning of 'the town where the hazels grow.'

Here is a fine church, chiefly Perpendicular, well known, among other reasons, for a richly carved tomb, on which is the effigy of a very small lady, a coronet on her head and a dog at her feet, with coats of arms hanging above. The figure was always known by the curious name of 'Little Choak-a-bone.' The old story said that the lady was the daughter of Lord Devon and his wife, Princess Katherine, daughter of Edward IV, and that she died because a fish-bone choked her. Now this has been corrected, and it is believed that the monument is of the wife of the fifth Earl of Devon, who lived nearly one hundred years earlier. But no disproof has been brought against the fish-bone!

Close to Colyton are the ruins of an old house of the Courtenays, Colcombe, which has been partly converted into a farmhouse. Here Princess Katherine occasionally lived during her widowhood. Colcombe suffered much in the Civil War, for it was garrisoned by Prince Maurice, who led his troops into several skirmishes with the enemy, and during one of these affairs (it is supposed) the Castle was burned down.

The poor people living near Colcombe must have had a very bad time, with energetic Royalist and Parliamentary troops on either hand. Some sad little entries at this time are quoted from the diary of a serge-maker of Colyton, in which he counts up what he lost in cloth through the inroads of the 'Lyme Men' (Parliamentarians), and the 'wostard woole'

and 'sarge' torn from him by 'Percy's men' (Royalists).

Unluckily, it is not possible to pause among the throng of interesting memories that are called up by almost every step of the way. One may not sketch the career of Dr Marwood, who journeyed to London from these parts and cured 'a certain n.o.ble Lord,' a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, but returned home because, 'finding himselfe much envyed by the Court physitians, he thought he was not safe there!'--a nave reflection on the doctors that reminds one of their contemporary Catherine de'

Medici's creature, Rene of Milan, who was popularly known as _l'empoisonneur de la reine_.

It is only possible to make a brief reference to a manor, nowadays a farm--Ashe, where the great Duke of Marlborough was born. Marlborough can hardly be called a son, but perhaps a grandson, of the county, for though Sir Winston Churchill was of Dorsets.h.i.+re, the Churchills were an old Devons.h.i.+re family, of whom one branch had migrated to the next county. Ashe was the home of the Duke's mother, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Drake, and here she returned when the Civil War was just ended, and the triumphant Parliamentarians were making themselves very objectionable, especially to such a fervent Royalist as her husband. Sir Winston was eventually forced to compound for so large a sum that it was convenient for them to live for some years with Lady Churchill's father.

There is, unfortunately, no s.p.a.ce to look at the very interesting history of the Bonvilles, the ruins of whose old house, Shute, in its beautiful park, among deer and woods and magnificent cedars, is close to Ashe. The t.i.tle became extinct in the Wars of the Roses, for the family suffered beyond recovery, and the last Lord Bonville had the overwhelming grief of losing his only son and grandson in the Battle of Wakefield. The great estates pa.s.sed to his little great-granddaughter, Cicely Bonville, who, more than forty years later, built the Dorset aisle in the church at Ottery St Mary.

The fine building, Newenham Abbey, stood close to the outskirts of the park, and Sir Nicholas Bonville was a great benefactor to the Abbey, but it was founded by two brothers, Sir William and Sir Reginald Mohun. The Abbey Church alone was three hundred feet in length and one hundred and fifty feet in breadth, and now of all the buildings, there remain but a few fragments of walls and the stonework of a chapel window.

Axminster, not a mile away, was in Leland's day 'a pratie quik Market Town.' It was the scene of one very interesting event, for here the Duke of Monmouth's followers first met the royal troops under the renowned General Monk, then Duke of Albemarle, and caused them to fly before their inferior undisciplined numbers. Albemarle dared not risk a battle, as he became alarmed by the temper of his troops, and feared lest they might go over to Monmouth if they did but catch sight of their beloved hero; for the General's troops belonged to the Devons.h.i.+re militia, and Monmouth was adored by all the country-people in the West. The General ordered a hurried retreat, without attempting any engagement, and Monmouth marched triumphantly to Taunton. The callous brutality of Sedgmoor, and the atrocious barbarities of the b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sizes following it, are too intolerable to think of. A ballad has been written called 'The Sorrowful Lamentation of the Widdows of the West', and one wonders whether its obsequious tone is due to the author being a partisan of James II, who expressed what he thought they ought to feel, or whether the verse-maker was one in their midst, who saw that there was indeed no spirit left in them. I quote a few of the verses:

'Alas! we Widdowes of the West, whose Husbands did rebell, Of Comfort we are dispossest, our sorrows did excell.

Here for their Crimes they lost their lives, Rebellion was the cause, And we confess, that was their wives, they did oppose the Laws.

When _Monmouth_ came ash.o.r.e at _Lime_, it was a Fatal Day; To carry on that base design, which did their lives betray; And many daily did presume to come unto his aid, _Bridge-water_, _Taunton_, _Dean_, and _Frome_, the Nation to invade.

We said it was a horrid thing, and pray'd them to forbear To take up arms against their king, who was the Lawful Heir, Yet like distracted men they run to cast their lives away, And we their Widdowes are undone; this is a dismal day.

Alas! we had no cause at all, our Laws was still the same, That we should to confusion fall, and hundreds thus be slain.

They knew not what they went about; confusion did attend, The Heavens would not bear them out, since they did thus offend.'

CHAPTER IV

Dartmoor