The Project Gutenberg eBook of Motor Tours in the West Country, by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Motor Tours in the West Country, by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell, Illustrated by R. De S. Stawell

MOTOR TOURS IN THE WEST COUNTRY

BY
MRS. RODOLPH STAWELL
AUTHOR OF “MOTOR TOURS IN WALES,” “MOTOR TOURS IN
YORKSHIRE,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATIONS

A RUN ACROSS SOMERSET

SUMMARY OF RUN ACROSS SOMERSET

Distances.

Roads.

Surface: from Clifton to Ilchester, poor; Ilchester to Crewkerne, fair; Crewkerne to Border, extremely good.

I
A RUN ACROSS SOMERSET

To most of us the very thought of the West Country is full of enchantment. In this grey and strenuous island, where a man must move quickly if he would be warm, this is the nearest approach to a Lotus Land—a land of green hills and hollows all lapped in an emerald sea, a land where the breezes are sleepy and scented, and the flowers grow because they want to see the view, and the sunshine is really encouraging, and the very rain is soft and kind. Even here the weather has its moods; but they are all lovable, and in any case cannot touch our happy memories. We who are but wayfarers, and have chanced to see the sun shining on the blue distances of Dartmoor, and warming the little sandy[4] coves of South Devon, and peering into the depths of the wooded valley of Lynmouth, and lighting up the dark granite of the Land’s End, may keep the remembrance of it unspoiled for ever. Like the figures on Keats’ Grecian Urn, our vision of sunny hours suffers no change. “For ever shalt thou love, and she be fair.”

Even in Somerset the spell begins to work. We feel at once there is no need for haste. We begin to loiter, and stray from the straight path, and saunter through the orchards of the “Summerland;” though all the time the thought of the Devon border is never absent from our minds.

Very slowly the car creeps over Clifton Suspension Bridge. The Avon, a long way below us, flows between its high red-and-white cliffs towards the Severn Sea, to whose shore we too are bound before we turn southwards and make our leisurely way to Exeter, through Cheddar, and Glastonbury, and Chard.

It is a fairly hilly road that takes us by way of Failand to Clevedon. The surface is a little rough, too, but this is unfortunately[5] a quality that is shared by many of the roads of Somerset. After passing through some pleasant scenery—here a dark plantation, and there a wide landscape bounded by the grey waters of the Bristol Channel, and here on the slope a pretty village—it leads us into the bright, clean, breezy streets that have been trodden by Coleridge and Thackeray and the Brookfields, by Tennyson and the Hallams.

When Coleridge came to Clevedon with his bride, and “only such furniture as became a philosopher,” there was no more than a village here. There was no esplanade, nor pier, nor bandstand to try his philosophy, when he took the one-storied cottage with the jasmine-covered porch and the tall rose that peeped in at the window, and settled there with the woman whom he loved “best of all created things” and by whom he was bored at the end of two months. Except in the matter of the jasmine on the porch, and the garden that contains—in the words of the sarcastic Cottle—“several pretty flowers,” there is little likeness between the Coleridge Cottage in the Old Church Road[6] and the poet’s “Valley of Seclusion.” Local tradition would have us believe, however, that this red-tiled cottage with the two sentinel trees is the very one that “possessed everything that heart could desire”—for two months; the one that was supplied at the philosopher’s request with a dustpan and a small tin kettle, a Bible and a keg of porter; the one in which poor Sara sat so often by herself, uncheered even by Mr. Cottle’s gift of “several pieces of sprightly wall-paper.”

In those days Clevedon Court, which we passed as we drove into the town, was really in the country, no doubt. It is still shaded and sheltered by trees, and its mellow walls, its stately arches and mullions and terraces, contrive to keep an air of academic calm in defiance of the highway that passes near them, and of the neat little villas that make modern Clevedon look so tidy. If we should chance to be here on Thursday we may see the gardens. The rare beauty of this ancient house is inevitably tinged with sadness now; but it was not sad, we may be sure, when boyish Brookfield did his wooing here, and Thackeray paced these paths, as novelists[7] use, with the visionary Henry Esmond at his elbow, and Tennyson walked with Arthur Hallam among the flowers, and there was as yet no tablet “glimmering to the dawn” in the dark church on the cliff.

Quite solitary still, and undisturbed by any sound but the faint murmur of the sea, is the grey church “by the broad water of the west” where Arthur Hallam lies. It must always have been a desolate, haunting spot, even before the song of the sea became a dirge and the old walls were consecrated anew to the memory of a poet’s sorrow. In those days, doubtless, the fragments of Saxon work and the moulding of the chancel-arch received more attention than now, when every eye wanders instantly to the white tablet on the wall of the south transept, and every foot is fain to stand where Tennyson stood with his bride, above the grave of Arthur Hallam and his father.

From Clevedon, turning inland to Wells, we cross a level land of orchards and meadows on a very poor surface, through Yatton with its curious church-tower, and Congresbury with its old cross-steps, and Churchill with its historic[8] name. Before us is the long shoulder of the Mendips, changing from blue to green as we pass Churchill and climb, on a road that suddenly becomes good, through a gap in the hills. There are fine views from these uplands, and here and there a glimpse, far behind us, of the Severn estuary. Very slowly we drive through the narrow, winding streets of Axbridge, shadowed by overhanging eaves and gables of every height and angle; and quickly through the level strawberry fields beyond, to Cheddar under the hills.

Cheddar Gorge is a surprising—almost a startling—place, and we must leave our highway for a little time to see it. From the village at the foot of the Mendips a road—and a very good road it is—climbs to the table-land above through a natural cleft between two mighty cliffs, which rise sheer from the roadway and stand out against the sky in a mass of towers and pinnacles. And all this sternness is softened and made beautiful by hanging draperies of green. Masses of ivy trail from crag to crag; high overhead the little birch-trees find a precarious footing on invisible ledges; every tiny cleft and ridge holds[9] a line of grass and wildflowers across the grey face of the cliff. Gradually, as the road sweeps higher, the towering sides of the gorge change into steep slopes of grass and fern, strewn with boulders and broken here and there by clumps of firs. The slopes become lower and lower, more and more open, till at last the landscape widens into undulating fields. Then we turn, and glide down again round curve after curve, while the grandeur grows, as the huge walls of the gorge close in upon us and reach their climax in the Pinnacle Rocks.

And deep in the heart of these wild cliffs is a strange, uncanny world. Surely in these caverns the gnomes ran riot till they were frightened away by an elaborate system of electric lighting and an exuberance of advertisement. It is plain that they have left Gough’s Cave, for it is more than a little artificial; but none the less there is an ethereal beauty in the myriad stalactites and stalagmites through which the light gleams so softly on roof and floor. As for the poor prehistoric man who guards the entrance of the cave that has served him for dwelling-house and[10] tomb, it is an indignity for him, I think, after his seventy thousand years or so of rest in the heart of the earth, to be set up thus in a glass case to grin at tourists.

Between Cheddar and Wells a pretty, winding, undulating road dips in and out of several red-roofed villages shaded by trees. In the distance the unmistakable outline of Glastonbury Tor is dark against the sky.

This is not the best way into Wells, for the cathedral is hidden. It is from the Shepton Mallet road that we may see “the toune of Wells,” as John Leland saw it nearly four hundred years ago, “sette yn the rootes of Mendepe hille in a stony soile and ful of springes.” It has not changed very much: the clergy here being secular, the Dissolution did not affect them, and Wells has never greatly concerned itself with worldly matters and has been all the more peaceful on that account. There have been disturbing moments, of course; as when Perkin Warbeck set up his claim, so confusing to the minds of quiet folk; and when the Parliament-men made havoc in the cathedral; and when Prince Maurice and his troops[11] were billeted on the town, to its great impoverishment; and when King Monmouth passed this way. But on the whole Wells has suffered little. Leland, when he visited the cathedral, entered the close by one of these gates that are standing to-day: came through the Chain Gate, under the gallery and past the great clock that was made by a monk of Glastonbury, or through Browne’s Gate from Sadler Street, or on foot through Penniless Porch in the corner, once the haunt of beggars; and saw Jocelin’s famous west front rising above the greensward, with the embattled deanery hard by; and passed from the market-place to the moated palace under the archway of Beckington’s “right goodly gatehouse,” the Bishop’s Eye. This fifteenth-century Bishop Beckington did much for the beauty and benefit of Wells; built, not only three gateways, but also “xij right exceding fair houses al uniforme of stone, high and fair windoid,” in the market-place, and set a conduit there, “for the which the burgeses ons a yere solemply visite his tumbe, and pray for hys sowle.”

We may visit his tomb ourselves. His dust[12] lies in the cathedral at the entrance to the choir, beyond that ugly inverted arch that was set up for safety’s sake in the fourteenth century; but in later days his tomb has been treated less reverently than of yore. Its carved and painted canopy stands broken and empty in the chapel of St. Calixtus, and in the south aisle of the choir is the rather ghastly tomb—bishop above and skeleton below—which the burgesses visited so gratefully. It is a rare and delightful custom here that allows one to walk alone through the choir and exquisite lady-chapel; to linger at will by the throne where William Laud and Thomas Ken have sat; to picture Lord Grey standing with drawn sword before this altar, to defend it from the rabble that followed Monmouth; to seek out Bishop Button’s tomb, which cured so many mediæval toothaches; to mount the long flight of footworn steps to the chapter-house, and rest beneath its lovely vault in silence. These same steps lead also to the gallery that was built by Beckington for the use of the priest-vicars, whose peaceful close is reached by a gateway of its own, outside the Chain Gate.

Beyond the cloisters is the palace: the fortified gatehouse, the towers and drawbridge that Ralph of Shrewsbury found it wise to set between himself and the citizens; the moat that is filled every day from St. Andrew’s Well; the shattered banquet-hall where Edward III. once ate his Christmas dinner; the great red dwelling-house that has passed for nearly seven centuries from hand to hand. “Many bisshops hath bene the makers of it, as it is now,” says Leland. It has had Wolsey for its master though not its inmate; it has been stolen by Somerset the Protector; it has been the home of Bishop Laud. Saintly Thomas Ken went from its seclusion for a little time to join the rest of the Seven Bishops in the wild uproar of their trial and acquittal, and later on was driven from its doors by William of Orange. Here is Ken’s summer-house, at the upper corner of the garden that he loved. Local tradition, whose wish is usually father to its thought, declares that he wrote his Evening Hymn in this little summer-house at the end of the terrace; but history, I believe, says otherwise. It is tradition, too,[14] that accuses Bishop Barlow of stripping the lead from the roof of the banquet-hall, whose great windows we see so plainly from this terrace. Barlow’s misdeeds at St. David’s have given him a well-deserved bad name; but, on this occasion only, he was more sinned against than sinning, for the palace and many other things were wrung from him by Protector Somerset, from whom they passed to one Sir John Gates. This vandal was the destroyer of the banquet-hall, and would probably have done more mischief than he did, if he had not been most justifiably beheaded.

It is behind the palace that we find the loveliest spot in Wells. Here, overlooked by sixteenth-century oriels, are the springs that long ago gave the city its name—the wells of St. Andrew, whose still surface has reflected for hundreds of years the beautiful east end of the cathedral. For hundreds of years, too, its waters have fed the moat. It is only at certain hours, of course, that strangers may walk in the palace garden; but the moat that circles it and the towers that guard it are visible to everyone. So[15] is the swan who rings for his dinner when it is late, with all the jerky impatience of a man in the same plight.

There is something that takes a hold on the imagination in the very dulness of the country that lies between Wells and Glastonbury. For the reason that this road with the rough surface is so level, and has such uninteresting surroundings, is that all this country was once the swampy land that lay round the Isle of Avalon. There is Glastonbury Tor before us, conspicuous for many a mile with its steep sides and crowning tower; and here on our left is the orchard-clad slope of Avalon itself, where “golden apples smile in every wood.”

Many, many pilgrims have come this way before us: have passed the great Tudor-rose and mullioned windows of the old stone court-house on the right, have stopped before the panelled front, the wreathed vines and carven beasts, of the “George” Inn, and have entered it beneath the painted arms of Edward IV. For this inn is the[16] New Guesthouse that Abbot Selwood built and embattled and made so fine, for such of the pilgrims as paid for their lodging.[1] It was Selwood’s successor, Abbot Bere, “a grave, wise, and discreet man, just and upright in all his ways,” who raised the grey Tribunal that has been in turn an abbot’s court-house, a boys’ school, and a lawyer’s office. Exactly opposite this house is the passage that leads to the abbey.

It is not in the stones of Glastonbury that we shall find her history; not in this soaring broken arch that leads our eyes and our hearts upwards; nor even in the splendours of arcading and moulding that are the glory of the Ealde Chirche, the chapel usually called St. Joseph’s, though it is really St. Mary’s. Many centuries before these walls were raised, many centuries before Norman hands ever laid one English stone upon another, the soil beneath our feet—this dust that is the dust of saints and kings—was held sacred by Saxon and Celt. “This place,” says Camden, “was by our Ancestors call’d the first ground of God,[17] the first ground of the Saints in England, the rise and fountain of all religion in England, the burying-place of the Saints, the mother of the Saints.”

The mind loses itself here in a cloud of legend. Dim forms of early saint and holy grail give place to visions, almost as dim, of St. Patrick and St. David and St. Bridget. Every holy man and woman came to Glastonbury, according to the chroniclers, sooner or later, alive or dead; so that the very floor, says William of Malmesbury, and the sides of the altar, and even the altar itself above and beneath, were laden with the multitude of relics. From Northumbria, from Ireland, from Wales, came the bones of the saints in search of safety: Paulinus and Aidan and Bede, and Hilda from her wild cliff by the North Sea, and David from his Rosy Valley in the west. How much of this is true we not know and need not greatly care, seeing that in any case the fact that gives interest and beauty to these stories is the fact of Glastonbury’s immense age and sanctity, the undoubted fact that it was “the first ground of the[18] Saints in England, the burying-place of Saints, the mother of Saints.” We may even be informed by some officious person that the real name of the Glastonbury Thorn is Cratægus oxycantha præcox, and that it will blossom at Christmas elsewhere; yet nothing can rob us of the picture of Henry VIII.’s lying and thieving commissioner, when he came hither to despoil and desecrate, carefully wrapping up two sprigs of the sacred thorn in a piece of white sarcenet, and sending them as a present to Thomas Cromwell; nor of that other picture of the zealous puritan, solemnly hacking the thorn-tree to death for the good of his soul.

When St. Dunstan was a boy, living here in the primitive monastery founded by King Ina, he dreamt that he saw, on this spot where we are standing among the ruins, a glorious fabric of “fair alleys and comely cloisters.” The splendours of his vision have come and gone, but we too may see them in dream: the mighty church with its towering arches, its many chapels, its marble floors and sapphire altar; the enclosing wall[19] with the two great entrances; the acres of domestic buildings—cloisters and dormitories, library and refectory, and the abbot’s stately lodging. Over there among the trees his kitchen still stands. The steam of much good cheer rose to its quaint octagonal roof when Henry VII. was here as the guest of that wise and discreet man, Abbot Bere; and when Leland visited his “especial friend,” Richard Whiting; and when Henry VIII.’s commissioner came on his mean errand, and found to his annoyance that the brethren were “so straight kept that they could not offend.”

It was not the magnificent building of Dunstan’s dream, but the simple church he knew, that was the burial-place of kings. He himself, as abbot, laid Edmund the Elder in his grave; and here in the monastery “which he ever loved beyond all others” lies Edgar the Pacific, “the flower and pride of all kings, the honour and glory of England,” and near him his grandson Edmund Ironside, who was merciful and kind, says Matthew of Westminster, “to the just persons in his kingdom, and terrible to the[20] unjust.… And all England mourned for him exceedingly.” And somewhere deep beneath the turf, near the spot where the high altar used to stand, is the dust of those bones and that golden tress of hair that some would have us believe were the actual remains of Arthur and Guinevere. Edward I. and his Eleanor believed it, and came to the great church here when it was new to gaze, adoring and credulous, at the skulls of their predecessors. But now our minds—like that of the blameless king himself—are “clouded with a doubt”: for the historic Arthur, we are told, died almost certainly in Scotland, and never came to the Island Valley of Avilion to heal him of his grievous wound.

The first Norman abbot of Glastonbury, Thurstan, set to work at once to improve the old building, and would have done more if his abbacy had not suddenly ended in an unseemly skirmish on the very steps of the altar. “He would have taught the monks amiss,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle severely. In point of fact he was resolved to abolish the use of Gregorian chants, to[21] the great scandal of the monks, and, like many another, thought that the introduction of the soldiery would have a convincing effect. “Rueful things happened there on that day,” says the chronicler, “for the French broke into the choir and threw darts towards the altar where the monks were collected, and some of their servants went upon the upper floor and shot down arrows towards the chancel, so that many arrows stuck in the crucifix which stood above the altar, and the wretched monks lay around the altar, and some crept under it … and they slew some of the monks and wounded many, so that the blood ran down from the altar on the steps.” Rueful things indeed!

The dogmatic Thurstan was removed, and a year later the monastery was burnt to the ground. It was then that this beautiful chapel began to rise, with all its profusion of ornament; and round it for hundreds of years the great abbey continued to grow slowly into the perfection of Dunstan’s dream. How great was the magnificence of it we may judge from the “dyverse[22] parcells” that were ultimately “delyvered until his Majestie”—the spoils of many shrines, gold and silver vessels, jewelled altars, and “the great saphire of Glastonburg.” Poor Abbot Whiting did his best to save them before he went to his death on Glastonbury Tor.

There is Glastonbury Tor before us, framed in the piers of the broken chancel-arch. It was to the summit of that hill that Richard Whiting, last Abbot of Glastonbury, who had been wont to travel in all the pomp of a prince, was dragged upon a hurdle to the gallows. Over the great gate through which his guests had so often crowded—sometimes five hundred in a day, they say—his head was set up, lest men should forget that the King loved “parcells of gilte plate” more than justice. For there was hardly a pretence of justice in the trial of Richard Whiting. Like the Abbot of Fountains, he hid the treasures of his abbey from the King’s commissioners, and, since he must be proved a traitor before these riches could be wrung from him, this act was called high treason. Neither his immense charities, nor his simple, saintly[23] life, nor even his submission to the Act of Supremacy could save him. It was with “businesslike brevity,” says Green the historian, that Thomas Cromwell “ticked off human lives.” “Item,” he wrote among his memoranda, “the abbot of Glaston to be tryed at Glaston and also executyd there.” So Richard Whiting was hanged and quartered at the foot of that tower that still stands upon the hill, and serves him for a monument.

I am not sure whether the main entrance to the abbey, over which Whiting’s head was set, was the vanished gateway on the north side, or the still existing entrance in Magdalen Street. We pass the latter as we drive out of the town. Its newly restored archway stands on the left, beside the house that was once the “Red Lion” Inn, and quite close to the modern market-cross that is so unusually graceful. Our road skirts the foot of Wearyall Hill, where once the sacred thorn-tree grew—the miraculous tree that had been, said the monks of Glastonbury, the staff of Joseph of Arimathea.

After a few minutes of level running we climb the Polden Hills—no very arduous work—and look down upon the wide green plain of Sedgemoor. It lies on our right as we glide down the hill, and stretches far away from us to Bridgwater. It was from some spot in that blue distance that “a volley of shot and huzzas” rang out into the night, when Monmouth and his peasant army made their futile attempt to “vindicate their religion, laws, and rights;” and it was far away across those level fields that Feversham’s grim line of gibbets rose on the following day. In all this peaceful country there was not a ditch from which some poor wretch was not dragged to make sport, later on, for Jeffreys: but the ditch that hid Monmouth himself was not here, but in Dorset. As we look out upon the scene of his undoing let us forget that distant ditch, and the weakness of an exhausted, starving man, and remember only that he made a gallant end. “I shall die like a lamb,” he said on the scaffold. “I have now no fear, as you may see by my face; but there is something within me which does[25] it, for I am sure I shall go to God. I will make no speeches: I come to die.”

Again the road is level, or nearly so; but, as is rare in level country, the surface is bad. We pass under the railway-bridge of the new Great Western line, and soon see Somerton on the crest of a hill. The road to Ilchester climbs the hill at the outskirts of the town, without actually passing through it; but it would be a pity to turn our backs on the ancient capital of the Somersœtas without a glance at its picturesque streets and old houses, whose mellow walls are so characteristic of Somerset. In the silent square that was once dominated by the castle, and is now made beautiful by an arcaded, stone-tiled market-cross, there is nothing to show that Somerton is a town of varied experiences. It has seen a vast amount of life, but prefers to say nothing about it.

Here where the “White Hart” stands, without a sign of age, once stood the palace of King Ina and his pious wife. Ina, King of the West Saxons, was “a rare example of fortitude,” we are told; “a mirror of prudence, unequalled in piety”—though he[26] ascended the throne, as the same chronicler delicately expresses it, “more from the innate activity of his spirit than any legitimate right of succession.” Active he certainly was: a conqueror of the British, a builder of monasteries and churches and castles. We meet the records of his activities at Wells and Glastonbury, at Taunton, and here in Somerton; and even when his determined Ethelburga had persuaded him to abdicate, with some reluctance, he continued to build in Rome. It was on this hill he chiefly lived and made his laws, I believe, but his castle was burnt by the destroying Danish princes, Hinguar and Hubba. On its foundations rose the later castle that served as a prison for King John of France; but even this has left no remnant but some thick masonry in the modest walls of the “White Hart.” In this scene of long past revelry and war there is hardly a sign of life. Somerton is inhabited, apparently, by one man, two children, and a cat.

Through cornfields and orchards and over Kingsdon Hill, on a surface that is gradually improving, we go on our way to a town that[27] is older still than Somerton, but by no means so attractive. Indeed, Ilchester has a very dull air, though it stands on the Fosse Way and has a few relics of its Roman origin. A little more than two hundred years ago, however, its sombre streets were lively enough on a certain August day, when gay young Monmouth rode through them on a carpet of flowers and scented herbs, and the crowd swept after him along the narrow ways. What schemes for the future were in his mind we cannot guess, but at this time—during his father’s life—there was nothing on his lips more treasonable than the smiles that made the people love him. He had come “into the country to divert himself,” and for a week or two all these lanes round Ilchester and Ilminster, Chard and Yeovil, were ringing with cheers. “God bless King Charles and the protestant Duke,” the people shouted, as he rode smiling between these hedges. For he, like ourselves, left Ilchester by the Roman road, which was probably even more badly kept in those days than in these. It has, of course, the charm—in a motorist’s eyes—of straightness, but the irregular fringe[28] of grass at the sides gives it an unkempt air that is unworthy of its origin, and it is only in patches that the surface is good. The abrupt hill on the left with the tower on its summit is the “sharp mount” that gave its name to Montacute.

We turn away from the Roman road by a lane that climbs a long hill between high hedges, and quickly runs down again. Below us, in a fold of the low hills, lies Crewkerne.

Joshua Sprigge, in his enchanting history, “compiled for the Publique good, and to be sold at the Parot in Paul’s Churchyard,” describes how the army of the Parliament came to Crookhorn by “ill and narrow” ways in a very hot season, “the foot weary with their long and tedious march, the carriage-horses tyred out;” and how, only an hour later, they left it again with all their weariness forgotten. “They leapt for joy that they were like to be engaged.” As they were following the enemy to Petherton it was probably by this very road that they marched away, probably on this very road that Fairfax and Cromwell came riding side by side.

We need not stay in Crewkerne even so long as they, for there is nothing to be seen except the church. There is hardly a church in Somerset that is not worth seeing, either for its beauty or its interest; but the church here is more than ordinarily stately. Like all the rest it is built of the stone whose grey and yellow tints make even the simplest cottage in Somerset a lovely thing, and add greatly to the beauty of this elaborate church, with its crockets and statues and niches, its embattled turrets and parapet, and all its intricate gargoyles. In an angle of the south transept is a curious recess such as I have never seen elsewhere, with a canopy and a stone seat. It is said to have been a hermit’s cell; but a hermit who frequented the outer wall of a large church must have been very fond of society.

Here we strike the London and Exeter road, and therefore the surface, which has hitherto been indifferent at best and at worst very bad, becomes almost perfect. As we climb the long hill of St. Rayne to the height that is ominously known as Windwhistle, the scenery grows very lovely: the[30] breezy road passes along a ridge, a wide park skirts the wayside, and to right and left the landscape sweeps away into the distance. Indeed, I have heard that at one point near Windwhistle inn—at the fourth milestone from Chard—it is possible on a clear day to catch a glimpse of the two seas, to north and south. A run of two miles on an easy downward gradient takes us to the “prepared” road that leads into the long, wide, sloping street of Chard; then a steep climb lifts us to the hilltops again; and a few minutes later we glide down into the soft green woods of Devon.

THE HEART OF DEVON

SUMMARY OF RUN ACROSS MID-DEVON

Distances.

Roads.

Surface: rather rough on the Moor; between Exeter and Launceston, variable; between Exeter and Plymouth, good.

II
THE HEART OF DEVON

To hurry in Devonshire is absurd. In the first place, it is contrary to the spirit of the country: no one does it. In the second place, it is impossible.

I cannot conscientiously recommend Devon as a motoring field for those who find great speed essential to their happiness, for to them the alternate use of the gear lever and the brake is apt to be exasperating. But to many of us the reduction of our average mileage is a small matter in comparison with certain important things; such as scarlet poppies in the corn, and high banks fringed with ferns, and cottages smothered in flowers, and wide purple moors, and the rippling of emerald seas, and the complete serenity that fills the heart in Devon.

Here, on the very border, there is a long rise and an extremely sharp turn, on the hill where Yarcombe stands. After this winding climb we run down easily through lovely wooded country into the straight, wide street of Honiton. This is a name that rouses deep emotion in every female heart, and to the female ear I will confide the fact that Honiton lace, as made to-day in Honiton, is perhaps more really beautiful than it has ever been; and there is a certain little upper room, not hard to find, where the enthusiast may watch swift fingers and flying bobbins. Except these filmy bramble-leaves and roses there is nothing of interest in Honiton. Sir William Pole summed it up three centuries ago, and his words describe it accurately to this day. “This towne is a very prety towne indifferently well bwilded, and hath his market on the Saterday.”

By the direct road Exeter is only fifteen miles away, but by making quite a short détour we may see the birthplaces of Coleridge and Sir Walter Raleigh, and catch a glimpse of the sea. A mile or two of splendid Roman road, and a shady lane,[35] take us to Ottery St. Mary and its famous church; the church, says Pole, that John Grandison, Bishop of Exeter, “bwilded in imitatinge of ye church of St. Peter’s in Exon, with ye cannons’ howses round about, standinge in a sweete wholsom advanced ground.” He did not actually “bwild” it, however, but rather enlarged it and made it collegiate, and left upon it the marks of that taste for splendour in which he indulged more fully at Exeter. Not only a great part of the fabric itself is his, but the painted reredos and the stone screen and the choir-stalls were his gifts. The pulpit is of a much more modern date; but it is the very same from which Coleridge’s father was in the habit of addressing his congregation in Hebrew, “the authentic language of the Holy Ghost.” The grammar-school in which the poet spent his childhood with his twelve brethren no longer exists; but we may still see the narrow lanes where little Samuel, a visionary already, curvetted on an imaginary horse and slew the enemies of Christendom as represented by the wayside nettle. And here, close at hand, is the[36] little Otter, and the “marge with willows grey” by which he loved to dream.

Long before Coleridge played his warlike games there were horsemen of a sterner sort riding hither and thither through these lanes. Fairfax spent a busy fortnight here, resting his army, “who never stood in more need of it,” but by no means resting himself: visiting the works at Broad Clyst, caring for his dying soldiers, and doing his best to make peace between King and Parliament. “To be general raised him onely to do more, not to be more than others,” said a man who was with him here. Where he lodged I do not know, nor the spot where he was presented with a “fair jewel” in the name of both Houses, in gratitude for the services “he performed for this kingdome at Naseby Battel.” It is certain, however, that a deputation brought it to Ottery, and “tyed it in a blue Ribband and put it about his neck.”

Sidmouth is only five miles away from Ottery, and lies so prettily between its two headlands that it is worth seeing, though the lanes that lead to it are hilly. It is[37] quite an old place, really. Its prettiness, however, does not at all depend upon its age, but on the ruddy cliffs that bound the bay, and the little brown stream that runs down through the shingle to the sea, and the tiny cascade that glitters in the sun, and the groups of boats that lie upon the beach. Yet, driving through the western part of the town, we see that Sidmouth after all is merely a typical watering-place. Here is the esplanade we know so well, and the row of bathing-boxes, and the shrill-voiced nursemaid with her shriller charge, and the dreaded pierrot. Beyond that western end rises the Peak Hill, and up its steep side lies our way.

It is steep indeed; both steep and very long. Before it is faced the hill-climbing powers of the car should be carefully considered, for the gradient at one point is at least one in five, and is extremely steep for a considerable distance. But from this height the blue bay and red rocks of Sidmouth look very lovely through the trees, and at the top of the hill there are colours enough on a sunny day to repay us for much climbing:[38] pale blue hills and a dark blue sea, and a wide expanse of varying greens, and to the left a red cliff, and to the right, perhaps, a patch of brilliant heather. Very carefully—for the lanes are narrow and steep—we run down the other side of the hill that has just been laboriously climbed, and reach the pretty street of Otterton, with its runnel and little bridges, and thatched cottages, and background of trees. We cross the Otter, and are soon in East Budleigh, the twisting, straggling village near which Sir Walter Raleigh was born.

In the grey church on the knoll above the street we may see the Raleigh arms, and with them the three “horsemen’s rests” that figure in so many shields—the arms of the great Grenvilles. The bench-end that bears them is the first on the left side of the aisle, and was carved early in the sixteenth century, when one of the Raleighs married Honor Grenville. Sir Walter’s mother, we need not doubt, sat in this pew many a time, for the Raleighs lived only a mile away at Hayes Barton. We can find the house quite easily, standing beside a little sloping green: a low,[39] gabled, grey house, with a thatched roof and a gay old-fashioned garden. There have been many changes here, of course, since that sixteenth-century baby first blinked at the world he was destined to explore; but even then this was a humble home for the daughter of the Champernownes, the mother of two great men. For through this heavy oaken door that swings slowly open to admit us has passed not only Walter Raleigh in his nurse’s arms, but also the Eton boy who was his big half-brother, Humphrey Gilbert. Of the life that was lived and the ideals that were taught under the gables of Hayes Barton we may perhaps guess something, not over rashly, from the last words of these two boys when they came to die, each his tragic death. “This,” said Sir Walter with a smile as he felt the axe, “is a sharp medicine that will cure all diseases.” “We are so near Heaven at sea as on land,” said Sir Humphrey as his last storm broke over him.

That Sir Walter loved this house, of which his father was only a tenant, we have good evidence; for when he was a[40] man he tried in vain to buy it. Here, in the room on the left side of the doorway, is a copy of the letter he wrote to Mr. Duke. “I will most willingly give you what so:ever in your conscience you shall deeme it worthe.… You shall not find mee an ill neighbore.… For the naturall disposition I have to that place, being borne in that howse, I had rather seat mysealf ther than any wher else.”

The little room where he was born, the room upstairs with the high ceiling and the latticed windows, has not been changed, they say. They say too—and for this one was prepared—that he smoked his first pipe in England in the room over the porch. Sir Walter’s first pipe had evidently some of the qualities of the widow’s cruse. Wherever his name is heard the tradition of the first pipe lingers. He smoked it, we are told, on a rock in the Dart, and beside a Devon fireplace, and in an Irish garden, and here at Hayes.

And now, returning first to East Budleigh, we go on our way to the Ever Faithful City by lovely woods of fir and beech, and wide[41] heaths, and hills and dales of richest green, with here a glimpse of sea and there a wealth of heather. Through Woodbury we go; and Clyst St. George, where the Champernownes lived; and Bishop’s Clyst, which was once Clyst Sachvill. The last of the Champernownes of Clyst was the unconventional Elizabeth, who married her first husband three days after her father’s death, and her second husband two days after her first husband’s death. “A frolic lady,” says John Prince. As for the Clyst that once belonged to the Sachvills and afterwards to the bishops, it changed hands in this manner. Sir Ralph Sachvill, being about to go to France in the service of Edward I., was in sore need of a large sum of money, and mortgaged the manor of Clyst to Bishop Branscombe of Exeter. The bishop, prudent man, forthwith built largely on the land, and made so many improvements that poor Sachvill, coming home from the wars with empty pockets, could not redeem his estate. So Clyst Sachvill became Clyst Episcopi, and the Bishops of Exeter visited it when they needed change of air. The[42] time came, however, when “as Brounscomb cuningly gott it, soe did Bishop Voisey wastefully loose it.”

It was by this road that we are travelling on, this very excellent road from Otterton, that the Duke of Monmouth once came riding into Exeter; and it was somewhere near Bishop’s Clyst, I think, that a curious spectacle met his eyes. Twenty thousand people came out to welcome him, “but that which was more remarkable,” says the historian—and who will deny it?—“was the appearance of a brave company of stout young men, all clothed in linen waistcoats and drawers, white and harmless, having not so much as a stick in their hands.” There were nine hundred or a thousand of these innocents drawn up on a little hill. The Duke reviewed them solemnly, riding round each company. Then the stout and harmless youths marched two by two, hand in hand, before him into the city.

The story of Exeter has no beginning. To Norman and Saxon, Roman and Celt, it was a fortified stronghold, the Gate of the West. For centuries it was the desire of kings, the[43] first thought of the invader, the forlorn hope of the rebel. Yet, as we drive through the dull suburb of Heavitree—which owes its grim name to the gallows—and pass into the heart of the town we see no sign of the walls that endured so many sieges, the walls that were built by Athelstane, that were attacked by Alfred, that fell before the Conqueror, that withstood Warbeck, that defended the cause of Charles: no sign of the towered archway that was once the entrance to Exeter and had Henry VII.’s statue above it: nothing to show us where poor Perkin, the king of straw, battered in his futile way upon the gate, “with casting of stones, heaving of iron barres, and kindling of fire,” nor where William the Conqueror, in ways that were not futile, battered so successfully—“although the citizens smally regarded him”—that it was believed “some part of the walls miraculously of his owne accord fell downe.” Nor is there any sign of the western gate that once stood at the further end of the High Street, the gate through which another William, seeking the same crown, came in a later century. Through this street, which Leland[44] calls the fairest in Exeter, the great procession of William of Orange swept in all its splendour of bright armour and banners. Here where we are driving they passed by: the English gentlemen on Flanders steeds; the two hundred blacks in embroidered fur-lined caps with white feathers; the two hundred men of Finland in bearskins and black armour, with broad flaming swords, very terrible to unaccustomed eyes; the motto of the cause—“God and the Protestant Religion”—fluttering on fifty banners borne by fifty gentlemen; the led-horses and the pages and the grooms; and the prince himself, all glittering in armour upon his milk-white palfry, surrounded by his running footmen and followed by a mighty host. The billeting of this host upon the citizens of Exeter, says an eye-witness in a Letter to a Person of Quality, “was done so much to the content and satisfaction of the inhabitants, and such just payments made for what the soldiers had, and such civil behaviour among them, without swearing and damning as is usual among some armies, that it is admiration to behold.”

Of this brave show that meant so much to England there is no relic left; but there is still a memorial to be soon of another kingly procession that once passed down this street. Perkin Warbeck, after “mightily and tempestuously,” but quite vainly, assaulting the walls of Exeter, was pursued by Henry VII. to Taunton, and “about midnight departed in wonderful celerity” to the sanctuary of Beaulieu. Then the King rode into Exeter in state, and in his gratitude unbuckled the sword that Perkin had not waited to see, and took the beaver from his head, and gave both sword and hat to the citizens in acknowledgment of their “lusty hearts and manly courage.” Here, in this old grey building that projects across the pavement on our left, we may see them still. In this fairest street of Exeter there is nothing now so fair as the Guildhall with the granite pillars and the massive door of oak and the fluted panelling of Tudor days. In the gallery above the great hall are the two swords that won the crown of England, so to speak: the simple sword of Edward IV. and the splendid gilded one of Henry VII.; and with them, cased in rich[46] embroidery, the black beaver hat in which Henry gained his easy triumph over Perkin. And among the pictures on the dark walls of the hall itself are two that have a special meaning in this place: Sir Peter Lely’s portraits of the young Duchesse d’Orléans and of the Duke of Albemarle. For it was in Exeter, in a house that has now vanished, that Charles I.’s daughter Henrietta was born; and when the Articles of Surrender were drawn up at Poltimore after the long siege, there was special provision made for the safety of the little princess; so that it was in a “fit and convenient carriage” that she started on that famous journey to Dover which she ended, to her great annoyance, in the disguise of a French peasant-boy. It was in Exeter, too, that young George Monk began his fighting career by thrashing the under-sheriff of Devon. The exploit drove him into the army, and when his talent for fighting had made him Duke of Albemarle the civic authorities let bygones be bygones, and set up his portrait here. Perhaps they recognised that the under-sheriff had richly deserved his chastisement.[2]

Unfortunately the same Articles that provided a convenient carriage for Princess Henrietta also decreed the destruction of Rougemont Castle, and there is nothing but a tower and a gateway left of the stronghold that Athelstane founded and William the Conqueror rebuilt. Yet even in this fragment there is one window, they say, of Saxon date, one window that has looked out on all the wild scenes that have been acted round the Red Mount. Exactly how many sieges this scrap of masonry has endured I do not know, nor how many crowned heads it has helped to shelter. William the Conqueror and Stephen took possession of it in person; Edward IV. and Richard III. visited it; and it was probably here that Henry VII. stayed when he came to Exeter at the time of the Warbeck rebellion, to try “the chief stirrers and misdoers.” “The commons of this shire of Devon,” he wrote to the Mayor of Waterford, “come daily before us in great multitudes in their shirts, the foremost of them having halters about their necks, and full humbly with lamentable cries for our grace and remission submit themselves unto us.”[48] In the same vivid letter he expresses a hope that Perkin’s wife will soon come to Exeter, “as she is in dole.” It is not from Henry himself that we learn, however, that when the poor lady actually arrived in this city he “wondered at her beauty and her attractive behaviour.”

When William of Orange rode into the town with all his retinue of blacks and Finlanders it was not to Rougemont that he came, for Fairfax had nearly altogether destroyed it. He slept at the deanery, and on the following day entered the cathedral in state. It has not altered since then. He saw the stately Norman towers as we see them, and like ourselves passed into the building through the vaulted porch and rich mouldings of the west doorway. Over his head was the splendid tracery that is over ours, and on each side of him were the clustered pillars that we see. “And as he came all along the body of the church the organs played very sweetly, and the quire began to sing Te Deum.” Whether that Te Deum rang quite true upon the vaulted roof is open to doubt, for the choir, apparently, sang it with much[49] reluctance and left the church hurriedly when their work was done, lest trouble should come of it. Meantime the prince sat down beneath the towering canopy of the throne that the bishop had deserted, and Burnet, standing at the foot of the pulpit, read aloud the declaration that gave England her liberties.

On the base of the throne are the painted effigies of the four bishops who made Exeter Cathedral what it now is: Warelwast, who built the towers; Quivil, who designed the Decorated building as it stands; Stapledon, who set up this carved and pinnacled throne, and the beautiful sedilia, and the “sylver altare” that has vanished; and Grandison the magnificent, who made the vaulted roof. Close at hand on the north side of the choir, with a restored canopy and a figure “very lively cut in the same stone,” is the tomb where Stapledon’s desecrated dust was laid. The enthroning of this bishop, says Carew the chronicler, was more than ordinarily splendid. Canons and vicars-choral in their habits led him to the throne, while “abundance of gentlemen of place and quality” followed after.[50] Very splendid, too, was his burial in this choir. There had, however, been a burial of another sort in London; for, having been made Keeper of the City by Edward II., he was attacked by the mob who took the part of Queen Isabel. They dragged him from his refuge in St. Paul’s, “and having grievously beaten and wounded him, haled him along the streets to the great cross in Cheap, where those sons of the devil most barbarously murdered him.” His headless body lay buried in a sand-heap till the Queen ordered it to be brought hither in great honour.

The “grave, wise, politic” Grandison, though much addicted to pomp, was personally simpler than the murdered bishop, who possessed no fewer than ninety-one rings. Grandison’s splendour was shown in hospitalities and lavish gifts to his cathedral. It owes much to him: among other things, I believe, the minstrels’ gallery that we see above us on our right as we walk down the nave—the gallery that was built, they say, in order that the Black Prince might be fittingly welcomed with music when he visited his duchy. The west front is Grandison’s, too.[51] He once defended it and the dignity of his office with a body of armed men, on an occasion when the Archbishop of Canterbury came on a visitation. Here at the west door the angry prelates faced each other. Grandison won the day, and the archbishop, says Fuller, died of a broken heart.

It was possibly owing to the presence of Fairfax, who reverenced all that was ancient and beautiful, that the soldiers of the Parliament did so little harm to the cathedral, beyond destroying the cloisters. How much else they destroyed in the close I do not know: it is certain that much has vanished, for in Leland’s day it had four gates, and was “environid with many fair housis.” There are still several fair houses in Cathedral Yard that have survived the Civil War, but not all of them have been admired by Leland. He did not see, for instance, the curious outline and picturesque bow-windows of “Mol’s Coffee House,” nor the panelled room that is emblazoned with the shields of heroes and statesmen, of Talbot and Somerset, of Cecil and Throgmorton, of Drake and Raleigh and Gilbert. Tradition[52] says that the bearers of these sounding names were wont to discuss the affairs of the nation in this room.

Before leaving Exeter we have a weighty matter to settle: our choice of a road. There are four ways of reaching Cornwall. Of these the shortest is by Okehampton to Launceston, and this has the advantage of passing through the bewitching village of Sticklepath: the best as regards surface is by Ashburton and Ivybridge to Plymouth: the most beautiful is the road that leads across the Moor by Moretonhampstead and Two Bridges to Tavistock: the most interesting and varied is the long way round by the coast, by Torquay and Dartmouth, Kingsbridge and Modbury. In the matter of hills the second of these roads is the least severe, and therefore on the whole I advise those who desire to reach Cornwall quickly to skirt the Moor upon the south; passing through Buckfastleigh, which has a new abbey on an old site, and Dean Prior, where Herrick lived so reluctantly, and Plympton, where old Bishop Warelwast died. There is no really steep gradient on this road, and though[53] near Exeter there is a long climb followed by a long descent, there are several surprising miles, near Plymouth, that are almost level. The surface is usually very good. The scenery is not so strikingly beautiful as on the other roads, but in places it is very lovely, and everywhere there are the special charms of Devonshire: the shadowing trees, the high banks and trailing ivy, the stone walls green with myriads of tiny ferns, the gardens full of sunshine and flowers. Dean Prior, where Herrick lived for many quiet years, singing in sweet measures “how roses first came red and lilies white,” and dreaming wistfully of “golden Cheapside” and his Julia—and others—seems at first sight an unlikely place to be hated. Indeed, I think his hatred of it and its inhabitants was merely a mood. The same kind of mood that made him hurl the manuscript of his sermon at his congregation made him describe his neighbours as

while all the time he was well aware that Robert Herrick was ruder than either. There were other days when he wrote very affectionately[54] of his little house and his placid life in this village where he has so long been lying at rest. There is an ugly modern monument to him in his church, but his grave and that of his housekeeper Prue are unmarked by any stone. The beautiful epitaph he wrote himself will serve them well:

The Plympton through which this road passes is not the birthplace of Sir Joshua Reynolds, but has an interest of its own in being the site of a monastery that was founded by Warelwast, the bishop who built the towers of Exeter Cathedral. When he was very old he came hither to die. But Plympton Earle is not a mile away; and most of us will find time to drive into the little town and pause for a moment by the old house with the colonnade, wherein a little boy used long ago to sit studying perspective “with avidity and pleasure,” or copying his sister’s sketches. Sir Joshua loved this place where he first held a pencil, and in after[55] years painted his own portrait for the town. The town sold it.

This road, then, is not without its attractions. Infinitely greater, however, are the charms of the two other alternative ways from Exeter to Cornwall—the one that bisects Dartmoor and the one that skirts the coast more or less closely. Those whose object is a short tour in South Devon I would advise to combine these two routes by driving from Exeter across the Moor to Tavistock, thence turning south to Plymouth on a splendid road through beautiful scenery, and returning to Exeter leisurely by way of Dartmouth and Torquay.

The traveller who chooses to leave Exeter by the Moretonhampstead road is likely to feel that he has chosen well.

Like all these roads that run towards the west it begins by crossing the river Exe, the river that for three centuries was commercially useless because two men quarrelled about a pot of fish. In the market of Exeter—so runs the story—three pots of fish were waiting to be sold one day, more than five hundred years ago. Upon this fish the retainer[56] of the Earl of Devon cast an appreciative eye at the very moment when the servant of the Bishop of Exeter had determined to buy it. In the fourteenth century there could be but one result of this coincidence. The matter, after a lively quarrel, was laid before the mayor, and he, with prudence that deserved to be more successful, apportioned one pot to each customer and the third to the market: whereupon the Earl of Devon revenged himself upon the corporation, against whom he already had a grudge or two, “by stopping, filling, and quirting the river with great trees, timber, and stones, in such sort that no vessel or vessels could passe or repasse;” and Topsham became the port of Exeter. Now Topsham was on the Earl of Devon’s land.

We go out of the town on a perfect surface, and although, of the twelve miles between Exeter and Moretonhampstead, there is only one that is level and eleven that are steep in varying degrees, the beauty that surrounds us leaves us with no breath for complaint. Whether we are climbing slowly to the summit of a ridge, with valleys dipping[57] deeply on each side and beyond the valleys fold on fold of wooded hills, or gliding down past Culver into the shade, or running softly through a little green glen, there is nothing but content in our hearts. Presently we cross the Teign upon an old stone bridge. Beneath us the river makes slow, soft music on its mossy stones; on each side the hills rise steeply; here and there a great red rock pierces the green and purple of the slopes; and as the road winds up the long hill through the woods we are shadowed by hazels and larches and birches, and the scarlet tassels of the mountain-ash hang heavily over our heads. When at last we finish the long climb Moretonhampstead lies below us. From this height it appears to be in a hollow, but after running down a steep hill for a mile and a half we find ourselves unexpectedly looking up to it.

Moreton is the best centre, I think, from which to see the Moor. Chagford is in a lovelier position, hemmed about with hills, and is larger and more ambitious, with electricity to light its streets; but it is not nearly so central as Moreton, which stands[58] at the junction of four good roads. Gray’s Hotel, though it makes no profession of smartness, is comfortable and clean, and has a capital new garage. The importance of staying in this neighbourhood for a day or two lies in the fact that there are several lovely places within a radius of a few miles which cannot easily be seen en route. Of course, those who prefer more stately quarters can use Exeter as their centre very comfortably.

It is not to us who move at various speeds from place to place—by motor-car, or bicycle, or train, or even on foot—that Dartmoor will reveal itself. Do not let us deceive ourselves. We may have driven on every road and every tortuous lane between the Teign and Tavistock, yet we need not dream that we know the Moor. That knowledge comes only with the slow years, only with the passionate love that begins in childhood and lasts for life.

That is no reason why we should not see as much of the Moor as we can, and love it dearly in our own poor fashion. There is much, very much of its beauty which he[59] who runs—and even he who motors—may read. And the most beautiful part of it, I think, is this eastern side.

Quite a short run from Moreton is to Bovey Tracey, Hey Tor, and Manaton. We drive out of the little town, as we drove into it, past the seventeenth-century almshouses, whose thatched roofs are supported on a row of granite pillars, and whose features are feebly reproduced on the opposite side of the street—a case in which imitation is very far from flattery. A narrow road follows the course of the Bovey through its pretty valley. At a point where road, rail, and river nearly touch one another a little by-way crosses a bridge to Lustleigh, which has a great reputation for beauty, and deserves it; for with its church and modern cross, its thatched cottages, its stream and little bridge, half hidden in their setting of woods and orchards, it is a very lovable village. Its spaces, however, are limited. Drivers of large cars must turn near the church under the elms, and see Lustleigh on foot, for there is no turning place further on, and the road beyond the village is impracticable.[60] Its beauty is very alluring, but its steepness is serious, and such is its narrowness that even a car of moderate size brushes the hedge on each side. It is far easier to return to the main road, or rather the main lane to Bovey, which has a good surface, though it is narrow and winding.

The fine church that stands above the street of Bovey Tracey was founded, it is said, by the Tracy who was one of Becket’s murderers, to atone for the deed by the convenient method of the Middle Ages. But all its splendour of carving and gilding, its painted screen and pulpit, its porch with the groined roof and grotesque bosses, are of a later century than the twelfth.

There is nothing here to see except this church and some restored stone crosses. For no one knows, I believe, where the cavaliers were quartered on that famous winter evening when Cromwell rode into Bovey with a band of horse and foot, and brought dismay with him. “The Enemy in Bovey,” says Joshua Sprigge, “were put to their shifts, yet through the darkness … most of the men escaped.” The shift the officers[61] made was an ingenious one. They were playing cards when Cromwell’s men marched up to their door, and with admirable presence of mind they flung the stakes out of the window. By the time the soldiers had finished picking up the money the royalists had escaped by the back door, and were beyond the river.

Almost as soon as we have crossed the same river we find ourselves on the fringe of the Moor, and begin to rise slowly on a fine curving road, through a scene that grows in beauty moment by moment. On one side are the sweeping lines and satisfying colours of the moorland, the heather and the yellow grass, the greens and browns of the bracken: on the other are all the graces of a copse of birch-trees. At every turn the view widens, till on the skyline Hey Tor appears, very sharp and dark. As the road sweeps round it the Moor is everywhere about us, an endless series of rounded hills, with the line of their curved shoulders broken here and there by jagged tors. Everywhere the rim of the landscape is blue beyond all experience. When green has[62] melted into grey, and grey has deepened into an indigo so strong that it seems no colour can be bluer, there is still beyond it a line of hills as purely, piercingly blue as the sky in June.

We run on between Saddle Tor and Rippon Tor over hill and dale, till we look down on the famous goal of a certain historic grey mare—Widdecombe-in-the-Moor; then past Hound Tor and round by the pretty village-green of Manaton to the woods through which the Becka’s waters dance and sing. Here by the wayside the car must wait a little time, while we are carried to fairyland on a magic carpet of moss. Long, long ago, say the fairies, this was a stony, barren slope. Some wild spirit of the storm had flung upon it a host of mighty boulders, which lay there bare and grey beneath the open sky. At last the fairies came, and wove their wonderful carpet of moss, soft and green, and laid it gently over the great stones and over the earth, and scattered their enchanted seeds upon the ground so that the tall trees rose thickly upon the hillside, and a mysterious, dusky[63] veil of leaves hid the river from the sky. Then the fairies made their home here; and we may walk with them through the woods to that strange fall that in summer is no waterfall, but a cascade of gigantic rounded stones, flung from the height in a confused mass, through which a thin stream trickles.

As we drive out of the dark and spellbound wood we suddenly find ourselves on a heathery hillside, all space and colour and light; and by a winding road we return to Bovey and Moretonhampstead.

Quite near to Moreton is one of those unforgettable places of charm so rare that they dwell in one’s mind for ever as types of beauty. This is Fingle Bridge, which crosses the Teign where the valley is narrow and its sides are high and very steep, and the brown river flows quickly among woods and beds of fern, and a huge slope, completely carpeted with heather, towers close at hand. The best road is by Sandy Park, and beyond that point even this is by no means good. In Drewsteignton, indeed, a prudent owner of any car that has more than a nine-foot wheel-base will get out and walk, for between[64] that delightful village and the Teign there is an extremely steep and narrow lane, with a surface that is chiefly made of stones both large and loose. There is, moreover, no good turning-place in the narrow gorge through which the river runs.

A longer run than either of these is through Bovey Tracey and Ashburton, and across the Moor to Two Bridges by a road whose hills are grimly described in the contour-book as “all highly dangerous.” The description is justified, and it cannot even be pleaded that the surface is good; but the sweeping moorland, and the woods that veil the hurrying Dart near Charles Kingsley’s birthplace at Holne, and the valley at Dartmeet, will compensate for much. From Two Bridges the road to Moreton is the same by which we must cross the Moor on our way to Tavistock.

It is no hardship to travel twice upon this road. The run from east to west, from Moreton to Tavistock, is one to repeat as often as may be, and to remember whenever life seems dull. It is a glorious run. The road is hardly ever level, of course, but the surface for the[65] most part is fairly good, and the hills, if steep, are straight. And from our feet a wide sea of fern rolls away on every side, billow beyond billow, till its waves break at last upon the rocks of a hundred tors. There are certain scenes that remain with one, a possession for ever. One of them is on the hill where Grimspound lies. A little by-road takes us quickly to the wild spot where neolithic man built himself this dwelling, with the object, doubtless, of keeping an eye upon his neighbours rather than that of enjoying the view. Whatever his motive he chose well. He saw this splendid panorama—a pageant of green and purple and indescribable blue. One thing only he did not see: the tragic thing that gleams so suddenly and whitely in the far distance, when a sunbeam chances to fall upon it—Dartmoor Prison.

When we have passed the stony stream and pack-horse bridge of Postbridge the scenery is less interesting for a mile or two, for this is the more civilised part of the Moor—a fact that has a brighter side in a comfortable luncheon at Two Bridges. Unless[66] we change our minds and take the beautiful road to Plymouth, we turn to the right here after crossing the stream, and leave Princetown and all its heavy hearts behind us on the left. When the highest point of this road is passed and the long descent begun, the scenery is again of that well-wearing kind that can be stored and put away for the winter. And if I pay scant attention to the vast host of most venerable relics with which Dartmoor is dotted—I had almost said crowded—this is not because neolithic man seems to me a person of little account, but because the study of his life and times is not one that can be taken up suddenly on a motor-tour. For one wayfarer who takes heed of the menhir, and the stone-row, and the pound near Merivale Bridge, there will always be a hundred to gaze eagerly from the hilltop at the long line of dark and rugged tors that stretches across the immense landscape, and at the gleaming Hamoaze on the left, and at the clear outline of Brent Tor Chapel on its rock, and above all at blue Cornwall meeting the blue sky. In the middle of this picture Tavistock[67] lies, and we run down into it on a splendid road.

The abbey that once gave renown to Tavistock has nearly vanished, but even its fragments—an archway and an ivy-covered tower—are enough to bring beauty and distinction into these pleasant streets. Ordgar, the man who founded it, was the father of Elfrida, the wicked Queen who gave her stepson a stirrup-cup, and had him stabbed while he was drinking it. It was in Tavistock or near it that she spent her childhood, and to Tavistock that Ethelwold was sent by the King, to see if her beauty deserved a crown. Ethelwold, seeing her, forgot all else and married her himself. “She is in noe wise for feature fitt for a king,” he told King Edgar. Then the King, whom men did not lightly deceive, came hither to Tavistock to judge for himself, and Ethelwold at bay told the truth to his wife, begging her—poor ignorant man!—“to cloath herself in such attire as might least set forth her lustre.” Elfrida smiled; and when her lord was gone arrayed herself in all she had that was most rich and beautiful, so that[68] “the sparkle of her fair look” made the King mad for love of her. The next day he took Ethelwold out upon the Moor to hunt, and left him there with an arrow through his heart; and after all Elfrida became a queen.

The abbey her father founded was famous, not only for its splendour, but also for its learning. Though nearly all its stones are gone there are still some of its documents to be seen in the church, and certain ancient books which were printed, I believe, in the printing-press of these progressive monks.

It was in the year after the monks were driven from their abbey that Francis Drake was born to bring fresh glory to Tavistock. At the end of a long, wide street his statue stands—the familiar figure by Boehm, all fire and energy, the “Francie Drake” we know. His ardent face is turned towards the town whose pride he must ever be; behind him is the ivy-covered gateway of Fitzford House. Through that embattled archway Sir Richard Grenville—“Skellum Grenville” as he was called—came home with his bride to her own house; the house[69] in which he afterwards shut her up, and “excluded her from governing the affaires within dore,” and even, it is reported, gave her a black eye. This was the Richard Grenville who was the King’s General in the West, and was described by the Parliament as “a villain and skellum.”[3] He raised an army in Cornwall “with most extrem and industrious cruelty” and brought it to this place; and I believe it was here that young Prince Charles stayed when he came to Tavistock and complained so bitterly of the weather. The soldiers of the Parliament afterwards sacked the house, of which nothing is now left but this gateway.

There may be some who have been led to think that they have but to drive a few miles from Tavistock to see the house that belonged to the earlier, and far greater, Sir Richard Grenville, the house of which an old writer says: “The abbey scite and demesnes was purchased by Sir Richard Grenvill, whereon hee bwilt a fayre newe howse, and afterward sold it unto Sir Francis Drake, that famous travailer, wᶜʰ made it his[70] dwellinge-plaice.” These I must sorrowfully inform that Buckland Abbey is no longer open to the public.

From the statue of that “famous travailer” we turn to the right upon a fine road, and presently, crossing the Tamar by a beautiful bridge, climb into Cornwall on a gradient of one in seven.

THE SOUTH COAST OF DEVON

SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH SOUTH-DEVON

Distances.

Roads.

III
THE SOUTH COAST OF DEVON

If our object in choosing to cross Devon by the coast road were simply to cling to the shore as closely as possible we should, of course, drive to Torquay by way of Dawlish and Teignmouth. But in that case we should miss the beautiful views of Exeter and the Moor from the slopes of Great Haldon, and the gorse and pines on the summit of Telegraph Hill, which most of us will think more desirable things than the beaches and lodging-houses of popular watering-places. It is true that no esplanade nor row of bathing-boxes can altogether spoil a Devon sea. It is also true that the last words of Endymion were written at Teignmouth; but as Keats, being unfortunate in the matter of weather, disliked the place[74] very heartily, we shall be following in his footsteps most truly if we are faithful to “Nature’s holy face.” Her face is very beautiful on the summit of Great Haldon.

We glide easily down the wooded slopes, with the wild outline of Dartmoor against the sky before us and the green valley of the Teign below us, and after an almost continuous descent of seven miles run into the uninspiring streets of Newton Abbot. Let us pause for a few minutes in Wolborough Street, and picture the scene that brought this little town for a moment into English history: the throng of troops; the crowding onlookers, half curious, half afraid; in the midst of them the keen face of the foreigner who had come to be their king; the prince’s chaplain, here where the stone is set, proclaiming William III.; and over all the pouring, drenching rain. At the outskirts of the town we may see the house that sheltered William from the weather that night, and has at various times sheltered many incongruous guests of note—Charles I. and “Steenie,” Oliver Cromwell and Fairfax. William was at Ford House without a host,[75] or the Courtenay who owned it at that time doomed it wiser to be absent; but when Charles I. was there Sir Richard Reynell’s hospitality was such that a hundred turkeys figured in a single menu.

Only five or six miles of a comparatively level road lie between Newton Abbot and Torquay. The valley through which we drive bears a familiar name, for it is in this Vale of Aller that the well-known pottery is not only made, but designed, in vast quantities. I think it must have been along this road that part, at least, of William’s wet and motley army marched through the mud from Brixham. As for the prince himself, his course must have been truly erratic if he slept at all the places in this neighbourhood that claim to have sheltered him.

Torquay is one of those rare watering-places that upset all one’s prejudices. Its houses are many and modern, its streets are populous; but the harbour under the hill is so snug, the sea so blue and bright, the boats so gay, the buildings so softly framed in trees and flowers, that the most churlish heart must be won. And near at hand the[76] little sheltered coves, and wild paths above the cliffs, and woods almost dipping into the sea are quite as peaceful as though there were no crowded little harbour on the other side of the hill. This harbour was not here, nor any town at all, when the Spanish Armada, as Kingsley says, “ventured slowly past Berry Head, with Elizabeth’s gallant pack of Devon captains following fast in its wake.” Only a few fishermen’s cottages were on the shore, and the empty walls of William Bruere’s abbey, and below the abbey “a peere and socour for fisshar bootes.” Indeed, even when the Bellerophon and the Northumberland rode on the blue waters of this bay together, and Napoleon sailed away to St. Helena, there were more trees here than houses.

To-day there are so many houses on this shore that there is hardly a gap between Torquay and Paignton. There is nothing to keep us in Paignton, for though it has an old church, and a tower that is called the Bible Tower out of compliment to Miles Coverdale, it has none of the charm of Torquay. Only a few miles away, however,[77] is a place of very definite charm. There is a better way than this, certainly, of seeing Totnes, but this hilly and not always very good road has the advantage of passing near the castle of Berry Pomeroy, one of the few ruins in Devonshire.

The peculiar spell of Berry Pomeroy lies, not in splendour of masonry nor grandeur of outline, but in the silence and romance of the deep woods in which the castle rock is closely wrapped. From the old church where Pomeroys and Seymours lie in their graves we run down noiselessly through the green shadows into a strange and dusky world of legend and far-off history. Through the towered gateway that fronts us generations of Pomeroys have ridden forth to defend or flout their various kings; and many a Seymour, coming homeward by this path, has lifted his proud eyes to the house his fathers built within the Norman wall. For when the last Pomeroy had “consumed his estate and decayed his howse,” he sold it to the Protector Somerset; and the Seymours who came after him raised the dwelling that is now a shell and was never[78] altogether finished, though very magnificent, according to John Prince, with curiously carved freestone, and stately pillars of great dimensions, and statues of alabaster, and rooms “well adorned with mouldings,” and a “chimney-piece of polished marble, curiously engraven, of great cost and value.” These splendid Seymours were descended from the Protector’s eldest son. “I believe,” said William III. to the last of them, “you are of the Duke of Somerset’s family.” Sir Edward bowed. “The Duke of Somerset, sir,” he said, “is of my family.”

It was to this very gate, I believe, after Henry de Pomeroy had taken up arms for Prince John, that Cœur-de-Lion’s sergeant-at-arms came on his sinister errand. Out of the gate, however, he never rode. He “received kind entertaynment for certaine days together,” says the historian, “and at his departure was gratified with a liberal reward; in counterchange whereof he then, and no sooner, revealing his long-concealed errand, flatly arrested his hoaste … which unexpected and ill-carryed message the gent took in such despite as with his dagger he[79] stabbed the messenger to the heart.” One cannot honestly regret it.

This is the kind of place where legend grows round history as naturally and quickly as the ivy grows over the stones. The walls themselves, it is easy to see, were raised by a magician; for the castle, seen from one side, is standing high upon a rock, while from the other it seems to be deep in a wooded valley. This is plainly due to a spell, and prepares the mind for tales of imprisoned ladies, and of wild horsemen leaping desperately into the chasm when they could no longer defend their castle from an angry king. It is only on emerging from the dim and haunted wood that one remembers regretfully how the last of the Pomeroys “decayed his howse”—so far was he from defending it—and sold it quite peacefully to the Duke of Somerset.

There was no very exciting rivalry, I suppose, between the castle of Berry, even at its best, and the castle that stands only about two miles away on the “high rokky hille” of Totnes; for the stronghold of Judhael de Totnais and William de Braose,[80] of Zouches and Edgecumbes, was the citadel of a walled town. If we climb the rocky hill in question—through the old east gate of the town, and past the fifteenth-century church and the hidden guildhall that was once a priory—we may see for ourselves how proudly the tower of Totnes once dominated the valley of the Dart. There is only a fragment of the keep standing now, and even in Henry VIII.’s time “the logginges of the castelle” were “clene in ruine.” The story of their decline and fall seems to be unknown, but I think the place must have been treated with some indifference by the Edgecumbes, who were, unless I am mistaken, rebuilding their beautiful house at Cothele when Totnes Castle came to them. If this were the case we could forgive them, and indeed be grateful for their absorption in the lovely treasure-house above the Tamar.

The various signs of age that make these steep streets so attractive must not make us forget that the antiquity claimed by Totnes is a far more venerable affair than any such thing of yesterday as a Norman[81] castle. It was on a certain stone in Fore Street that Brutus of Troy, father of all Britons, first set his adventurous foot when he discovered this island. So at least says Geoffrey of Monmouth in his brave, imperturbable way. Brutus, we must suppose, sailed up the Dart; or perhaps at that early date Totnes was on the coast. In any case it was the charms of these woods and waters that attracted the voyagers to land in the new island, and “made Brutus and his companions very desirous to fix their habitation in it.” That is easily understood.

We too shall do well to come to Totnes by water. It is the best way, and can be done by steamer from Dartmouth. As this, however, probably means the neglect of Berry Pomeroy, which is far more serious than the missing of Brixham, I advise every motorist whose car can travel without him to drive from Paignton to Totnes, and to send the car by road to Dartmouth while he himself goes thither by water. For the banks of the winding Dart are, in their gentle way, incomparable, with their soft woods hanging over the stream, and their[82] cornfields streaked with scarlet, and the little creeks where thatched cottages are clustered on the shore and white-sailed boats flutter beside the tiny quay. And among the trees of the left bank are Sandridge, the birthplace of John Davis, and Greenway, the home of the Gilberts, where Sir Humphrey lived before his widowed mother married Raleigh.

In the meantime those who drive their own cars must return to Paignton by road, and follow the railway to Brixham past Goodrington sands, where Charles Kingsley loved to spend the summer days searching for the orange-mouthed Actinia and dreaming of the Spanish Armada. There is not a spot upon this Devon coast but is the stuff that dreams are made of! Dreams of gallantry and war, of conquest and deliverance and wide adventure haunt us hour by hour as we pass from haven to haven, from Torquay to Brixham, and from Brixham to Dartmouth, and from Dartmouth to the climax of Plymouth Sound; with the great names of Drake and Gilbert and Hawkins, of Raleigh and Grenville[83] ringing in our hearts as we spin across the soil that bred them, and, shining below us, the green sea that carried them to their renown.

The sea was not green, but grey and misty, on the day that “the Protestant wind” blew William the Deliverer into Torbay. The fleet, says a letter written “on the first day of this instant December, 1688,” had met with “horrid storms,” but “was not so damnified as was represented by the vulgar.” It was here, in this harbour of Brixham—now hemmed in by busy quays, and crowded with trawlers whose flaming sails might well be meant to commemorate Orange William—it was here where the statue stands that the prince first stepped ashore. On his flag, as on the statue, was the motto of his family: I will maintain. The statue is not flattering—or so, at least, we hope—but its presence, with its calm promise of liberty, is not without dignity amid all the bustle of the fishing-fleet. The scene was busy enough that day, when William stood here with Burnet, and the guns roared, and the drums and hautboys[84] made music, and from every headland and housetop the people shouted their welcome; and, as the fog lifted, the fleet, lying out there beyond the breakwater, which was then unbuilt, “was a sight would have ravished the most curious eyes of Europe.”

William, and gradually all his regiments of horse and foot, climbed these narrow streets to the top of the hill. Though we take another road than theirs we by no means escape the climbing. Two slow miles, on gradients varying from one in twelve to one in ten, lead us to the point where we immediately begin to descend, on a rough steep road of sharp turns, which runs down to the shore of Dartmouth Harbour and the slip of Kingswear Ferry.

These are classic waters that lap upon the clumsy sides of the ferry-boat. We move slowly, and that is well, for there is much to see: much beauty of wooded headlands, of old streets drawing nearer, of boats and ships upon a blue-green sea. To the left are the two points that shelter the harbour, and on each its ruined tower, the guardians that did their work so long[85] and well, and perished in the doing of it: to the right the river winds away into the land and the old Britannia lies at rest, and the great buildings of the Naval College crown the hill. It was from this harbour, more than three hundred years ago, that the Sunshine and Moonshine sailed away to the North West Passage with John Davis and his “company of goodlie seamen, not easily turned from any good purpose;” and it was between those two green headlands that Francie Drake came home from “singeing the King of Spain’s beard” at Cadiz, with the San Philip and all her spoils behind him. Historic fleets have ridden at anchor in the shelter of these hills: ships for Cœur-de-Lion’s crusade; and for Edward III.’s siege of Calais no fewer than thirty-one, all furnished by Dartmouth; and on one grim occasion, at least, an unwelcome fleet from France, which left the town a ruin. Many years later another French ship came sailing in unsuspiciously with letters from the Queen, a few days after Dartmouth Castle had surrendered to Fairfax. The captain, when he heard the news, flung[86] the precious packet into the sea; “but God provided a Wave,” says the historian, “to bring it to the Boat that went out to seek it, and so it was brought unto His Excellency.”

Round the quays on the Dartmouth side of the harbour the queer old houses are huddled into streets that climb and twist and turn in bewildering irregularity. Crooked gables and overhanging eaves nod at one another across the way: the carved beams and corbels of the wider streets rouse memories of departed merchant princes: rows of young trees are planted by the waterside: and always, behind the trees, behind the gables, is a glimpse of the turquoise sea. Everywhere are signs of the splendid past: in the fourteenth-century church, with its magnificent screen and pulpit, and the tomb of John Hawley, “a riche marchant and noble warrior again the French men”: in the houses of the Butterwalk, with their heraldic beasts and granite pillars and mullioned windows, their moulded ceilings and carved chimney-pieces. It is worth while to climb a rickety staircase,[87] if only for the sake of hearing the Merry Monarch numbered among the saints.

A narrow shady lane near the shore of the harbour leads to the castle and the old church of St. Petrock. The oldest part of the fort, the round tower whence the chain passed across the mouth of the harbour to Kingswear Castle, is said to date from the time of Henry VII. There must have been some kind of fort here earlier than that, I suppose, for when the lively men of Fowey forfeited their chain of defence, we are told, Edward IV. presented it to Dartmouth. This castle changed hands twice during the Civil War. Prince Maurice took it and strengthened it, but could not save it from Fairfax. “Being Master of all but the Castle,” wrote the general, “I summoned that. The Governour was willing to listen unto me.… I can say I find it to be in the hearts of all here, in all integrity to serve you.”

The road from Dartmouth to Slapton Sands is almost entirely composed of astonishing hills. Only in Devon could hills so many and so fierce be compressed within so small a space. But only in Devon, surely, is the[88] coast at the same time so wild and so luxuriant, so stern and yet so tender; only in Devon can we look down from the clifftop through so soft a veil of trees, and see far below us sands so yellow and rocks so red, and the ripples of so very, very green a sea. This road that rises steeply out of Dartmouth is characteristically deep in the shade of rocky banks, and walls built of thin mossy stones. Long hart’s-tongues hang in clusters by the wayside, and every cranny of the walls is filled with tiny ferns. Having climbed to Stoke Fleming by a variety of steep gradients we promptly descend, by two miles of gradients nearly as steep, to the idyllic cove of Blackpool, whose golden sands once flowed with the blood of four hundred Frenchmen. They, and many more, had landed here; but the men of Dartmouth, who had not forgotten the sacking of their town, came swarming down these cliffs upon them, so that the survivors were glad to put to sea again. Another steep climb takes us up to Strete, and another steep descent to Slapton Sands.

Here is a dramatically sudden contrast![89] From the very foot of the hill the road runs, for two miles and more, over what is probably the most level strip of land in Devon. It is no more than a strip. Close beside it on the left runs the long strip of the sands, and close beside it on the right an equally long strip of water, the reedy mere called Slapton Ley. “There is but a barre of sand,” says Leland, “betwixt the se and this poole. The waite of the fresch water and rage of the se brekith sumtime this sandy bank.” It is along this bar of sand and shingle that our road runs. If we turn away from it for a few minutes, on the by-road that crosses the pool near the hotel, we shall see Slapton itself.

The village has no very striking beauty; but its steep little streets, its thatch and whitewash and flowers, its air of remoteness, its maidens with their pretty blue pinners and prettier faces, make it a very attractive place. Nor is it without distinction. Not only is it dignified by a thirteenth-century spire of extreme austerity, but it also has the remains of a collegiate chantry. The chapel tower, with its graceful arch and[90] fragment of groining, rises alone among the flowers of a lovely garden, where wild olive and camphor grow as serenely as the Devon apples that hang above them. It is a private garden, but as it skirts the road we may drive almost into the shadow of the tower. For several centuries, from the days of Henry II. to those of Henry IV., this generous soil belonged to a Guy de Brian. It was Joan Pole, the wife of the Guy de Brian of Henry III.’s time, who founded Pole Priory upon this spot: we have it on the word of a Pole. The later Brian who made it a college was one of the original Knights of the Garter, and a very versatile person, being Edward III.’s standard-bearer in “that notable fight he had with the French at Calais,” as well as an ambassador and an admiral-of-the-fleet. In the reign of Henry IV. this manor of Slapton became the property of Harry Hotspur’s crafty father; but to many of us the most stirring memory in this place is that of Sir Richard Hawkins, the third great sailor of his name. He bought Pole Priory—now corrupted into Poole—before he set sail on that adventurous voyage[91] that lasted so much longer than he expected. During the ten years of his absence, years of imprisonment in the South Seas and elsewhere, this was the home of his “dearest friend, his second self,” Judith, Lady Hawkins. For some reason—whether to impress the neighbours or because she suffered from rheumatism I do not know—this lady was in the habit of walking to church on three quarters of a mile of red velvet carpet. Possibly life was not very gay at Slapton at the end of the sixteenth century, and this mild ceremonial may have been a comfort to her. The time came when she sought another kind of consolation in her loneliness. The story goes [4] that when Sir Richard came home at last to Slapton he found a strange air of festivity astir in these precipitous streets. The red carpet was laid, we may be sure, from Pole Priory to the church, for when he asked what matter was afoot he found it was his Judith’s wedding-day. It was fortunate he came in time, for one cannot quite see Richard Hawkins in the part of Enoch Arden.

The main road to Kingsbridge pursues its level way between salt water and fresh till it reaches Torcross, a most desolate-looking village with a reputation for fishing. Here, sad to say, we must turn inland. The scenery between this point and Kingsbridge is no great matter, but there are some pretty villages, and Stokenham Church has a good screen. The road is fair, and the hills less formidable than usual.

There is no means of seeing, as a whole, this beautiful coast between Torcross and Plymouth, except on foot or from the sea; but most happily it is possible for motorists of inquisitive habits to find their way, here and there, to various little havens of the greatest charm. These, however, are all beyond Kingsbridge. Kingsbridge itself is a place of no particular attraction nor interest. It has a few picturesque corners and old houses, but its real claim on our affections is that the only way to Salcombe lies through it. Now a road that leads to Salcombe is something to be grateful for.

To those who do not know Salcombe, the six miles that lie between it and Kingsbridge[93] may be a little depressing. The road leads to no other place, and is preposterously hilly: the country is treeless and discouraging. To the uninitiated it may well seem, as they drive between the imprisoning hedges, that no compensation is likely to be forthcoming. But some of us know better. We reach the edge of the hill, and suddenly the sea, brilliant and soft—a sea of liquid jewels—is shining below us, lapping upon the sands of the little creeks; wooded slopes drop steeply to the rocks that fringe the shore; red and white sails flit about the harbour, dapper yachts lie at anchor in the shelter of the hill, wave-worn barges move heavily towards the land; Salcombe lies at our feet, clinging to the hillside, a tiny town of steep streets and shipwrights’ yards and little quays; and Bolt Head stretches out a long arm to protect it.

There was an evening, not very many years ago, when at the hour of twilight a yacht put out to sea over the bar of Salcombe Harbour, while the sound of the evening bell came clearly across the water. Up the estuary the lights were beginning to shine[94] out one by one through the dusk, and in the dark shadow of the headland the full tide silently “turned again home.” Lord Tennyson, who was on board the Sunbeam that night, has made Salcombe Bar dear to many who have never crossed it. He had been staying at the pretty house that stands on its own little promontory, hidden by trees, between the town and the bar. Here for some years lived Froude the historian among the orange-trees and tamarisks, and it was here he died.

This peaceful anchorage was very useful to pirates in the good old days. They hid safely behind Bolt Head and, when any unwary ship passed by, dashed out and plundered her. Henry VIII., though not above piracy himself, built a little castle for their undoing, upon a small precarious rock nearly circled by the sea. Here are its fragments still. Sir Edmund Fortescue strengthened it and called it Fort Charles, and held it very valiantly for Charles I.: so valiantly that it withstood Fairfax, and when it surrendered at last Fortescue was allowed to take the key with him.

To nearly every motorist, as he sits beside his tea-cup on the terrace of the Marine Hotel, or leans against the wall that keeps the sea out of the garden, it will occur at once that this harbour is an ideal place for motor-boating. This is truer than he knows. For these waters that ripple round the garden-walls of Salcombe pass on their way inland in various directions: up South Pool Creek to the thatched farmstead that has its feet nearly in the water at high tide; past Goodshelter to the old mill at Waterhead, and to Kingsbridge four miles away. And beyond the bar are all the little coves and bays of a lovely coast: Hope, where the high rocks entrap the sunshine and keep out the winds: Thurlestone, whose worldly ambitions are greater and whose charms are less: Bantham, between a curve of the Avon estuary and the sea, where the breezes are sweet with the scent of gorse, and worldly ambition seems altogether dormant. Even without a motor-boat we may see these little bays, each at the end of its own little lane; but only such motorists as are staying close at hand will care to explore lanes so narrow and winding and steep.

On our way back to Kingsbridge, however, to take the road to Plymouth, we shall see a narrow turn to the left, near West Alvington, which is a perfectly practicable means of cutting off a mile or two of dull country and avoiding a bad hill in Kingsbridge. As a whole the main road from this point to Plymouth is one of the best in South Devon, though there is a long and very steep descent at Aveton Giffard that is not marked on Bartholomew’s map, and a sharp rise in Modbury that is considerably steeper than the contour-book estimates. There is no very striking beauty of a large sort, but a great deal of the restful, wayside charm that makes Devonshire so comforting. There is no need to loiter on the road, for though it played its part in the Civil War—and indeed possibly on that account—there are few relics of its history to be seen. The bridge that crosses the sedges of the Avon at Aveton Giffard was once important enough to have a fort built on the hill for its defence; but none the less it was taken by the extremely irregular troops whose clubs and pickaxes and saws were wielded here for the Parliament.[97] Champernowne of Modbury was one of the builders of the fort, and one of the greatest sufferers from the “clubmen,” for his house, which stood on the top of Modbury Hill, was fortified and occupied by the royalists. “This Party of ours wᶜʰ was at Modbury,” wrote Sir Bevill Grenville to his wife, “indur’d a cruell assault for 12 howers against many thousand men.” One result of this cruel assault, which could have but one end, is that only a very small fragment of Court House is still standing.

We go on our way through Yealmpton and Brixton, on a surface that gradually becomes very rough, and cross the toll-bridge into Plymouth.

This is a name that stirs the blood of every true child of Britain. In the days of Elizabeth’s great sailors it was from Plymouth that Britannia ruled the waves. And to-day there is no end to the interest that this place holds for those who love the navy and the sea as is the wont of Englishmen; no end to the modern interests of port and harbour, of dockyard and battleship, nor to the crowding memories on Plymouth Hoe.

Here on the Hoe, with Drake’s statue beside us, and his island below us, and behind it those fair woods of Mount Edgecumbe on which Medina Sidonia cast a covetous eye, we are looking down at the channel through which all the gallant adventurers of the sixteenth century sailed out to their distant goals. This statue is the symbol of them.[5] “He was of stature low,” says John Prince of Francis Drake, “but set and strong grown; a very religious man towards God and his houses, generally sparing churches wherever he came; chaste in his life, just in his dealings, true of his word, merciful to those that were under him, and hating nothing so much as idleness.” The words fit the statue well. It was here where we are standing that he and the other captains played their memorable game of bowls, while the Armada called Invincible swept nearer and nearer. His ship and her half-fed crew lay down there in the Sound, under the lee of the island that has borne his name ever since that day, and the flagship, further out, “danced lustily as the gallantest dancer at Court.” Through[99] that channel he and the rest sailed out into the gale when their game was done, to do their thorough work. Many times he had sailed through it already on various quests of war and adventure—and, it must be owned, of pillage: and it was from this harbour, afterwards, that he went on the voyage that “was marred before it was begun, so great preparations being too big for a cover,” the voyage to Nombre de Dios Bay, where he lies “dreaming all the time of Plymouth Hoe.”

Very long and very stirring is the visionary pageant that rises before us here: the Black Prince, triumphant, sailing in with his prisoner, the King of France; poor Katherine of Aragon, landing here in an outburst of welcome; John Hawkins, setting forth on those dubious but gallant undertakings that the Queen called “private enterprise” and Hawkins called “the Queen’s business.” His son Sir Richard long remembered a scene that took place when he was a boy, under that green hill that faces us. A fleet of Spaniards, bound for Flanders to fetch a new bride for Philip II., dared to sail between the island and the mainland “without vayling[100] their top-sayles, or taking in of their flags; which my father Sir John Hawkins perceiving, commanded his gunner to shoot at the flag of the admiral, that they might thereby see their error.” They saw it quickly, and the matter ended with feasting.

Sir Richard’s own ship, too, takes part in the ghostly pageant, sailing close to the land to bid goodbye, for many more years than he suspected, to the throng that stood here on the Hoe to do him honour. Amid blowing of trumpets, and music of bands, and roaring of guns he left the harbour, with his thoughts full of the lady who took pleasure in red carpets. And it was there, below us, that the brave heart of Blake gave its last throb as he entered English waters—the heart that is buried, they say, in St. Andrew’s Church.

The long procession of adventurous ships winds endlessly on, past the island, and out of the harbour, and away into the world of the past. The ships of Frobisher and Gilbert, of Grenville and of Raleigh are there, and the Mayflower with the Pilgrim Fathers, and the ship of Captain Cook. And at the last I see a little ship sail in alone, and on her deck[101] a disappointed, disillusioned woman; the woman whom the French have never forgiven because, when they broke her heart, she omitted to repay them with smiles—the daughter of Marie Antoinette. The Duchesse d’Angoulême came hither from Bordeaux, in exile for the second, but not for the last time, with the marshals’ vows of fidelity and the news of their joining Napoleon still ringing in her ears together.

SOUTH CORNWALL

SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH SOUTH CORNWALL

Distances.

Roads.

IV
SOUTH CORNWALL

One approaches Cornwall diffidently: one leaves it with a sense of profound ignorance. There is no county, of course, of which any true knowledge can be gained in one visit, whether the visitor be a motorist, or a bicyclist, or that very superior person the pedestrian; but perhaps this is truer of the Duchy than of any other part of England. The knowledge of Cornwall is a special study with many branches, familiar only to Cornwall’s devoted sons. It is easy to love her beautiful face at first sight, and easy to learn the part of her history that is also the history of England, but behind and within these superficial things is the vast hoard of her local legends and traditions, and the bewildering story of her unnumbered[106] saints. A slight knowledge of tin-mining, too, were not amiss. One can only admit ignorance, and drive on happily.

Those who elect to approach the coast of Cornwall from Tavistock, through Callington and Liskeard, will travel on a fine road, which four times dips down to streams and forthwith climbs up again. On so hilly a road as this, one may depend on finding beautiful scenery. After passing through Liskeard the better road to take is the upper one by Morval, as it is less rough than the road that follows the Looe.

On the whole, however, I think the most satisfactory way to enter Cornwall is by Plymouth and Torpoint Ferry. Indeed, I would even suggest that those who have crossed the Moor to Tavistock should choose this route; for the road from Tavistock to Plymouth is magnificent in itself, and overlooks some of the finest views in Devon. And moreover the park of Mount Edgecumbe [6] is but a little way from Torpoint. It is true that beautiful Cothele is but a little way from[107] the Callington road; but Cothele is not open to the public, though by the kindness of Lord Mount Edgecumbe its granite walls and historic furniture may sometimes be seen. But Mount Edgecumbe, says John Prince, is “the most beauteous gentile seat in all those western parts.” The commander-in-chief of the Armada, looking at it from the sea, “was so affected with the sight thereof” that he determined to keep it for his share “in the partage of this kingdom.” His taste was better than his seamanship. The house that stands in this lovely park was built by the grandson of the builder of Cothele—a gentleman, according to Carew, “in whom mildness and stoutness, diffidence and wisdom, deliberateness of undertaking and sufficiency of effecting, made a more commendable than blazing mixture of virtue.” However commendable, he was less attractive, I think, than his grandsire, whom deliberateness of undertaking would not have saved when he was pursued by his enemies among the woods of Cothele. He pushed a large stone into the Tamar, and flinging his cap after it, hid among the trees. Richard III.’s messengers[108] of death, hearing the splash and seeing the floating cap, thought he was drowned and went away. “He afterwards builded in the place of his lurking a chapel.”

The road from Torpoint to Polbathick is excellent, and where it winds round the creeks of the Lynher estuary there are woods on the river’s very verge, as is the lovely custom beside these West Country waters. Across the valley is St. German’s, wherein are some of Cornwall’s most venerable memories and the home of the famous Eliot who died nobly in the Tower. At the fork just beyond Polbathick it is advisable to take the road to the right, for though it is a good deal the longer it is also a good deal the smoother, and avoids a pair of steep hills at Hessenford. The direct road is quite practicable, however, and those who choose it may take the opportunity of running down the wooded valley of the Seaton to the shore. On the other hand, if we go by the longer road we shall see more of the Looe estuary, which is far more beautiful.

To it the Liskeard road runs suddenly[109] down; then turns and follows it very closely to the sea. Even closer to the water is the little railway, which clings to the bank under the hanging trees, and at one point actually goes on its adventurous way in mid-stream. The water, gorgeous as a peacock’s breast, flows evenly between thickly wooded hills, and as the valley widens the town appears at the end of it, climbing its steep sides.

As one approaches a place that is a byword for beauty there is always a lurking fear of disappointment. But the fishing-towns of Devon and Cornwall are so disarming, so personal in their charm, that they never disappoint. Indeed, the trouble is rather that they win the heart too quickly. Each one in turn appears the ideal spot in which to settle for life. So is it here. As we cross the bridge that joins East Looe to West, and look down at the green timbers of the little quays and at the countless boats, or up at the many-coloured gardens above the road; as we drive round the point, and find the open sea rippling in upon a rocky shore, it seems obvious that this, and no[110] other, is the place to live in. The conviction lasts until we reach Polperro.

This we cannot do by way of the wide road that runs round Hannafore Point, for this ends abruptly opposite Looe Island. We must return to the bridge, and without crossing it take the road that rises on the left. As we mount the steep hill we see below us the meeting of the two rivers and their two wooded valleys, and behind us among the trees the scattered houses of the town. At a point about two miles from Looe we turn to the left, and run down a long and winding hill into a tiny green gorge, with steep sides rising almost from the roadway. It ends in the narrow street of Polperro. Here, at the beginning of the street, is the stable-yard of a little hotel, where standing-room may be found for the car. Beyond this point it is practically impossible for a large car to turn, for the twisted alleys of this cramped and cabined village are hardly more than paths, and owing to their contortions on the hillside are often broken by steps.

Why anyone should want to turn I cannot imagine; for this is certainly the place to live[111] in! We knew all about it, of course, before we came here: a thousand artists have painted it. Large numbers are painting it at this moment; a group at every corner. Since there are so many of them it is fortunate that artists—even amateurs—are among the few human beings who are not blots upon a landscape. They may give us lovely pictures of this place: of the headlands that clip the huddled houses so closely between them; and the stream that rushes under weed-grown walls to the sea; and the landlocked harbour with its crowd of little boats; and the cobbled lanes and whitewashed cottages and flights of footworn steps; and the flowers that brighten every narrow alley; and, best of all, the outer haven with its warm red rocks, and white sails reflected in the sea, and the stately outspread wings of innumerable gulls. Yet none but a magic picture could give us the magic of Polperro. For no one could paint this sea but a wizard whose medium was molten jewels, and no one can feel the spell of the place without the pathetic, haunting, insistent sound of the seabirds’ cry. Indeed, it is this sound that gives reality to Polperro. If it[112] were not for this one might think it had been designed and built for the use of artists. The fisher-folk who live here could tell a different tale; and the wild cry of the gulls reminds us of a sea that is not always green and glassy. Moreover, there was once a time, I believe, when it seemed as though Polperro had been designed and built for the use of smugglers.

Very reluctantly we climb out of the gorge and take our way to Lostwithiel by Pelynt and Lanreath, on a road of variable surface and everlasting hills. In Pelynt church is the restored crozier of Bishop Trelawny, whose threatened death, as we all know, determined twenty thousand Cornishmen to “know the reason why.” There are various monuments here too, some beautiful and all interesting, of Trelawnys and Bullers; and at Lanreath a lovely screen and a carved wood cover to a Norman font, and on the south wall a painted copy of Charles I.’s letter of thanks to the men of Cornwall. From the top of the first steep hill beyond Lanreath we see the rounded outlines of Braddock Downs before us, and at their feet the woods of Boconnoc. Over those grassy hills the soldiers[113] of the Parliament were pursued by the royalists. “They were possest of a pretty rising ground,” wrote Sir Bevill Grenville to his wife upon the day of the fight, “… and we planted ourselves upon such another against them within muskett shott; and we saluted each other with bulletts about two hours or more.… We chast them diverse miles … and we lost not a man. So I rest yours ever.” A year later these slopes were stained again—but not so darkly as the royalist honour—when the infantry of the Parliament, having surrendered, were shot down as they passed the King’s army unarmed, and were robbed of clothes and horses. The King himself at that time was staying at Lord Mohun’s place down there among the trees. We pass one of the gates presently, and skirt the park where Bevill Grenville’s men, “upon my lord Mohun’s kind motion,” were quartered by good fires under the hedge.

This park that we see over the fence has been owned by Mortains and Courtenays, Mohuns and Pitts. The last Lord Mohun did not, I fancy, spend much of his time[114] under these trees—preferring those of the Mall and of Richmond Park. When, after surviving three trials for murder, he died at last in his famous duel with the Duke of Hamilton, his widow sold Boconnoc to Thomas Pitt for half the sum, it is said, that he received from the Regent Orléans for the Pitt Diamond. It was here that the great Lord Chatham was born.

We run down a long hill into Lostwithiel. This is a place that has seen better days; for Henry III.’s brother, the Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, made it his headquarters in the rare moments when he was not trying to make up the quarrels of others nor fighting in his own, and even in the sixteenth century it was the “shyre towne.” Of the “ruines of auncyent buyldinges” that Leland saw there are only slight traces; but, if we cross the pretty old bridge that spans the Fowey and turn to the right at once, we may see “the little rownd castel of Restormel.” It is reached by a steep lane, and there is no turning-room at the top except in a private field.

“Only there remaineth,” says Carew, “an[115] utter defacement.” But indeed there is something more. This straight avenue of pine-trees with its carpet of turf, the double entrance across the moat, the heavy, gloomy ivy, give to Restormel that air of mystery and romance that seizes the imagination. Like its founder—the prince whose strange exotic name haunts Cornwall far more persistently than he ever did himself—like Richard, King of the Romans, this castle was more warlike than domestic. Only the “fair large dungeon,” or keep, and the “onrofid” chapel are left standing now on the mound that overlooks the valley so commandingly. It is a fine position; yet, though it was hastily strengthened for the Parliament, Sir Richard Grenville [7] took it for the King.

The road from Lostwithiel to Fowey is for the most part winding and stony, and extremely narrow. In places it is also very steep; and the hedges are high and comparatively uninteresting. But a road that leads ultimately to Fowey is entitled to do as[116] it pleases on the way. The last part of it is quite good.

On a very steep hill we creep slowly into “Troy Town.” We look out, over the sloping streets and the roofs of the houses and the church, at the blue harbour and the hill beyond it and all the busy traffic of the port. Over this hill, hundreds of years ago, the men of Normandy crept into Fowey in the night and fell to fighting in the streets, with a whole century of wrongs to avenge—a century of raids and robberies on the part of the truculent Gallants of Fowey. The spoils of French harbours had made the townsmen here “unspeakably rich and proud and mischievous.” So the Frenchmen came to Fowey “without the Foymen’s knowledge or notice,” and killed everyone they met, and burnt the town. Thomas Treffry—Hals calls him John—gathered some of the “stoutest men” round him in his new house of Place, and defended it; while his wife Elizabeth, like a true help-meet, mounted to the roof and poured molten lead upon the besiegers, with excellent effect. Place stands there still, below[117] us on the left; yet not the same that was besieged, since the tall tower is plainly of Victorian date, and the very beautiful bays that appear above the wall are Tudor. It was after this exciting experience that Thomas Treffry—or John—“builded a right fair and stronge embatelid towr in his house: and embateling al the waulles of the house in a maner made it a castelle: and onto this day”—and unto this—“it is the glorie of the town building in Faweye.”

If we stand close below the church tower, and look carefully at the stones above us, we shall see the familiar badge of the ragged staff, the cognisance of the Kingmaker. The Foyens, when Warwick allowed them to go on with their piracies, naïvely put his badge upon their new church in acknowledgment of his kindness, and persevered in their filibustering ways. Edward IV., however, subdued them by a most unkingly trick. His first messenger they returned to him shorn of his ears, “at which affront the King was so distasted” that he sent a body of men to Lostwithiel, the shire town, ostensibly to enlist volunteers. The Gallants, who never asked for anything[118] better than to fight the French, trooped to Lostwithiel at the summons of their King. They were all arrested; and the chain that guarded their harbour was given to Dartmouth. I believe there are two links of the chain still to be seen at Menabilly, behind the hill.

From the windows of the Fowey Hotel we can see, at Polruan, one of the square grey forts to which the ends of this chain were fastened. The ruins of the other are opposite to it. These valiant little forts have seen a good deal of service, and defended their port long after their chain was forfeited. There was a Dutch ship that came to this harbour-mouth one day in pursuit of an English fleet, and defied the forts in the insolence of her seventy guns—“to the great hurt,” says Hals, “of the Dutch ship … and the no small credit and reputation of Foy’s little castles.”

Fowey’s fighting reputation has always been great, since the day when she owned “sixty tall ships” and sent forty-seven of them to the siege of Calais. To see the harbour that has done so much for England[119] we must loiter in a boat beside the jetties and among the creeks; we must pass the dripping walls of gardens, and the flights of steps where the seaweed clings, and the houses whose back-doors open on the water; we must watch the lading of the ships with china-clay—ships from Sweden and Russia and France—and pause before the picture that Bodinnick makes on the hillside. It was to this hillside, says the story, that Sir Reynold de Mohun came to fetch his hawk, when it killed its quarry in the Fitzwilliams’ garden up there at Hall. Walking in the garden was the fair Elizabeth Fitzwilliam, and on the moment he lost his heart to her, and as she thought him “a very handsome personable young gentleman,” they became the first Mohuns of Hall. Whether they were really introduced by the hawk is doubtful, but they were certainly married—and that not merely once but twice: for the bishop divorced them against their will, and it was only by appealing to the Pope that they won leave to live happily ever after.[8]

Even if we cannot see all the bends and[120] creeks of the river from Fowey to Lostwithiel, we must at least take our boat between the woods and slopes of Pont Pill, where it is only at the water’s very edge that the ferns and heather yield to rocks and crimson weed. Landing at Pont, we may climb the steep hillside to Lanteglos Church among the orchards, and see the old stone cross beside the porch, and the wonderful bench-ends within, and the elaborately painted shields that bear so many famous arms. On this little lonely church, buried among the trees, things of beauty have been lavished, not only long ago but lately; carvings both old and new, and magnificent embroideries, and pavings of marble. There is no other church like this, I think: none, so small and simple and lonely, that has been so generously treated.

Fowey town is a maze of little streets; but when we have climbed out of them—with heavier hearts than seems reasonable—we drive away past the lodge of Menabilly on a very fair road. It will add little to the journey if we go round by Tywardraeth and see the old church, and the tombstone[121] of the prior whose monastery has so strangely vanished. A few carved stones in the churchyard are all that remains of the priory that was founded by William de Mortain, “a person of a malicious and arrogant spirit from his childhood.” It was well named Tywardraeth, the house on the sand, for great was the fall thereof; but why it has disappeared so utterly, and how, is curiously obscure. Gilbert tells the story of the last prior’s resignation—an edifying tale. Thomas Cromwell wrote to him a letter full of compliments, praising his virtues as a man and a prior, and telling him how deeply the King appreciated his services. These had been so unremitting, added Cromwell, that his Grace, being mindful of his age, would allow him to resign his post. To this Prior Collyns answered briskly that he was most grateful for the King’s kind thought, but as a matter of fact his health was excellent. So my Lord Privy Seal tried again. This time the astonished prior was informed that “the savour of his sins, crimes, and iniquities had ascended before the Lord, and that unless he immediately relinquished[122] an office he had most grossly abused a commission would inquire into his misdeeds and punish him accordingly.” This, Collyns understood. Here is his gravestone in the church, in the wall of the north transept; a slab of slate with a cross incised on it. Some old bench-ends have been made into a pulpit, and others inserted in new seats of pitch-pine; but these are not relics of the priory.

Leaving St. Blazey on the right, we run on through some lovely scenery to St. Austell, where a church-tower of wonderful splendour and richness rises from the dull streets of stuccoed and slated houses. Our road to Truro is wide and has an excellent surface, but one hill succeeds another with exasperating regularity and promptitude. The scenery varies from dulness to beauty: the villages seem, to eyes that have lately looked upon those of Devon, a little uninteresting, for we are in the land of the Celt. Thatched cottages are rare, but in Probus there are several of them clustered round the churchyard very prettily. This tower of Probus is the highest in Cornwall, and very rich in[123] sculptured stones: within the building are the granite pillars that are common to nearly all Cornish churches, and a screen whose Latin legend alludes to the two patron-saints St. Probus and St. Grace.

It is only a little way beyond Probus that we cross the head of the Falmouth estuary. By the rushy banks of this calm stream a little band of horsemen once settled weighty matters; for it was here, at Tresilian Bridge, that the royalist general, driven into a cul-de-sac by Fairfax, made his final surrender by the mouth of his commissioners. They met Ireton and Lambert at this spot, and the end of their meeting was the disbandment of the royal troops. The generals of the Parliament rode back to Fairfax by this road of ours, beside the banks of grass and rushes, and the mud-flats and the woods, and down the hill to Truro.

Except the cathedral there is little to see in Truro, and even the cathedral lacks the glamour of age, for, of the masonry, only the south aisle is part of the old church of St. Mary: the rest is new. The general effect of the inside of the building is fine, if a[124] little severe. There is, however, a very gorgeous baptistery in the south transept, whose coloured pavements and crimson font are in rather startling contrast to the prevailing austerity. The roof, I believe, came from the old church, with a few of the monuments. The tomb on which John Robarts and his wife are lying in such obvious discomfort must be the one, I think, that was repaired in the eighteenth century by a mason whose bill included these items: “To putting one new foot to Mr. John Robarts, mending the other, putting seven new buttons to his coat, and a new string to his breeches knees. To two new feet to his wife Phillipa, and mending her eyes.”

Those of us who are intending presently to drive through the country of the Grenvilles may be glad, when they come to Stratton and Kilkhampton, to have seen Kneller’s picture of Anthony Payne. It is here in Truro, on the staircase of the museum in Pydar Street: a burly figure in scarlet, with a face that tries to be fierce but cannot hide its tenderness and humour. This is Sir Bevill Grenville’s giant henchman, who[125] fought at his master’s side at Stratton and Lansdowne, and taught the children to ride and shoot.

A fine road leads from Truro to Falmouth, through hilly but beautiful country; by pine-woods, and distant views, and the green flats of the estuary, and a valley full of trees. Near pretty Perranarworthal we see, crossing a little gorge upon our right, one of the old wooden viaducts that have so nearly disappeared. In Penryn we cling closely to the estuary, following it to Falmouth Harbour. A hundred years ago the main road to Falmouth from London, as it passed through Penryn, “ran up and then down through streets so steep and narrow,” says a writer of that time, “as to make the safe passage of the mail-coach a wonder.” To-day, however, Penryn is one of the few towns in the West Country out of which we can drive on level ground.

When Sir Walter Raleigh came to stay with the Killigrews in their fine new house at Arwenack, he suggested to his host that he should make a town here, on the shore of this splendid harbour. The Killigrews were men[126] of action, and the town was built; to the acute annoyance of Penryn, which petitioned in vain against its upstart rival. We make our slow way through the narrow, crowded streets of the Killigrews’ town, and find the last remaining fragment of their house still “standing on the brimme within Falemuth Haven.” Only a crumbling wall is there, and a window, and on the hill the avenue by which the vanished Killigrews went in and out; nothing to show that Arwenack was the very source of Falmouth’s existence and the very core of her history. For with every concern of Smith-ike and Pen-y-cwm-wick and Falmouth a Killigrew was connected, from the day when they settled here in the fourteenth century till the day when the last of the name set up this pyramid that is beside us—not with the justifiable object of honouring the Killigrews, but for the astonishing reason that he thought it beautiful. He called it a darling thing. “Hoping it may remain,” he wrote, “a beautiful Imbellishment to the Harbour, Long, Long, after my desireing to be forgott.”[9]

No Killigrew is likely to be forgot. It was a Killigrew who gave the land on which Henry VIII.’s castle of Pendennis still stands out there upon the point; a Killigrew who helped to build it and became its first governor; a Killigrew who made Falmouth and fostered it; and the eagle of the Killigrews is borne to this day on the shield of the town. The Killigrews are not forgotten.

It was the round tower of Pendennis that brought Arwenack low. It is used as barracks now, and to see the old building we must have an order; but from the pretty shaded road that circles it we can see nearly all there is to be seen with the bodily eye. Yet if we pass through the grey stone gateway there are other things that we may see, perhaps: Henrietta Maria carried in upon her litter, “the most worne and weak pitifull creature in ye world,” seeking a boat to take her to France; her son a year later coming on the same errand: the Duke of Hamilton brought hither “to prevent his doing further mischief,” by order of the King for whom he lost his head a little later: Fairfax’s messenger[128] summoning Sir John Arundel to surrender his castle. “Having taken less than two minutes’ resolution,” answered old John-for-the-King, “I resolve that I will here bury myself before I deliver up this castle to such as fight against his Majesty, and that nothing you can threaten is formidable to me in respect of the loss of loyalty and conscience.”[10] Five months the garrison held out; and when at last the remnant of them filed through the gate—a pathetic procession of sick and starving men tottering out with flying colours and beating drums—they left no food behind them but one pickled horse.

The belief that the little room above the gate was used by Henrietta Maria is probably due to what might be called the law of local tradition; the law that masonry attracts picturesque associations in direct proportion to its own picturesqueness, and in inverse proportion to the quantity of building that survives. If one room only of an old castle remains, it is that room, according to local tradition, that was the scene of every event that ever took place in the castle. A gatehouse[129] is an improbable shelter for a queen in time of war. As for Prince Charles, there was once a tiny room in which he was reputed to have hidden. Here we have another invariable rule. Charles II. never occupied any place larger than a cupboard; and even in a fortress garrisoned by royalists he systematically “hid.” In this case even his reputed hiding-place is gone, and the legend has not as yet been transferred to the gatehouse; but if we enter the fort itself beneath the sculptured arms of Henry VIII., and mount the long staircase to the leads, we shall see below us on the shore the little blockhouse from which he escaped to France. On our left lies the crowded harbour with St. Mawe’s beyond it, and the round grey tower that was built at the same time as Pendennis: on our right is the bay of Gyllyng Vase, named William’s Grave in memory of the prince who was drowned in the White Ship. Headland stretches beyond headland; and far away on the horizon the Manacles show their cruel teeth.

During the siege John-for-the-King set fire to Arwenack lest the Parliament-men should[130] make a battery of it. It is a common saying that the Killigrews, in their loyalty, put a light to it themselves. But strangely enough the owner at this time was “ye infamous Lady Jane,” who had been divorced by Sir John Killigrew but kept possession of his house for her life—a curious state of things that definitely settles the question of the firing of Arwenack. It was this Lady Jane who gave the famous chalice to the town of Penryn, “when they received mee that was in great miserie.” It was not this lady, however—as is often said—but Dame Mary of Elizabethan days, who boarded the Spanish ship in a true Elizabethan spirit and took her cargo home to Arwenack.[11]

Although this harbour “ys a havyng very notable and famose,” it lacks the charm of Fowey and Dartmouth; and it is only in the upper reaches that the Fal has the beauty of the Dart. It is wisest to start from Falmouth. The hills at first are low and the estuary wide; but when Carrick Roads have narrowed into King Harry’s Reach and the river sweeps past us between the rolling[131] woods, we remember Hawker singing of his native Cornwall and “her streams that march in music to the sea.” We take our winding way past the ferry to which King Harry never came, past many alluring creeks, past Tregothnan—the home but not the house of Admiral Boscawen—and round the green banks of Woodbury, till we see Truro’s white cathedral against the sky.

When we finally drive away from Falmouth our most prudent course is to go out of the town past the recreation-ground, and take the road that leads to the Lizard by Constantine; for though the longer road by Helston is by far the better of the two, there are dark whispers heard in this neighbourhood, sometimes, of measured distances and other perils. We see on the left the by-road to Penjerrick, where Caroline Fox wrote her delightful journal and charmed so many men of mark; pass through Constantine, a village of solid stone houses, and thatch, and gardens, and run down into Gweek. It was here that Hereward the Wake twice rescued the Cornish princess from unpleasant suitors. The high green[132] walls of oak and ash that Hereward saw are further down the river, but this is the head of the tide where King Alef’s palace stood, and the champion of England slew the giant, and where now a brisk trade is carried on in bone-manure. Whatever may be the truth about Hereward, the last fact admits of no doubt.

The miles that lead to Lizard Town are of the sort that one remembers ever after with a thrill. It is rather a complex thrill, with contributions from the past and from the future and from the exhilarating present. The Marconi towers, slim fingers pointing skyward, are not without their influence on our pulses, with their hints of future conquests, and their message that the fairy-tale of to-day is the science of to-morrow. The road is broad and smooth and level, and lies between low hedges, and has the straightness that the motorist loves; beyond the waving tamarisks a flat land of green and purple stretches away to the horizon; for the first time in many days the car speeds over the plain at the pace she loves best; and the sea-wind rushes to meet us with its story of the Spanish Armada.

We slow down at last in Lizard Town, where the squalid little houses are smothered in flowers fit for a palace, blazing draperies of scarlet and rose—the climbing geraniums that in Cornwall grow, not as a favour, but because they enjoy it. Here it is perhaps best to leave the car, though it is perfectly possible to drive to the foot of the lighthouse, where there is room to turn. The first lighthouse that stood on this spot was built by one of the Killigrews of Arwenack, to the great displeasure of the people. He was robbing them of God’s grace, they naïvely complained—meaning the spoils of the wrecked.

Beyond the lighthouse are grassy slopes where it is good to sit alone among the sea-pinks. To right and left are long headlands and curving bays; on every side are masses of grey rock crowned with golden lichen; and beyond them the sea comes laughing from the South. And on a sudden we see the mighty crescent of the Armada, seven miles wide, sweep up the Channel to its doom, with the smoke of many guns flying before the gale, and with every man upon his knees.

It is a disappointment to learn that the track to Kynance Cove is too sandy for motors; but only a few miles further along the coast is the cove of Mullion, which is easily reached on quite a good road. Those who know Kynance declare it is more attractive than Mullion, but I think there must be some mistake about this, because it is not possible to be more attractive than Mullion. From the tiny harbour with its two sheltering piers a natural tunnel—passable only when the tide is low—leads through the rock to the sands of a little bay. Here the cliffs are high and wild, and masses of black rock rise sheer from the ripples of a blue-green sea, and in the caves the “serpentine” stones are red and green and pink and full of sparkles, like the stones of Aladdin’s cave. One can see at a glance that the superstition about Kynance Cove is quite without foundation.

From Mullion village we may either return to the Helston road at once, or drop down into Poldhu Cove, close under the Marconi towers. Hence we must climb on a good surface the very steep hill to Cury; for Gunwalloe[135] is a place to avoid, although much treasure, they say, lies hidden under the sands there, buried by long dead buccaneers. It is an unfortunate circumstance that the road is liable to be buried under the sands too.

The fine, wide road to Helston passes through dull country, but the little town itself, with its steep hill and many trees, must wear a brave air on every eighth of May, when the townsfolk are “up as soon as any day, O!” and dance off into the fields

This Furry Day has been corrupted into Flora Day; but Gilbert derives it very plausibly from foray, and declares that it celebrates a defeat of the Saxons, who attempted a raid on this coast. The original ceremonial included a foray on the neighbours’ houses.

From Kenneggy Downs we may turn aside on a very bad lane to see the curving sands of Prah and the grey tower of Pengerswick, the hiding-place, in Henry VIII.’s time, of a[136] certain homicidal Mr. Milliton. Some say he built it, but this seems an improbably risky thing to do. It is more likely that he occupied his enforced leisure in painting the elaborate pictures and moral verses that are now defaced. Few travellers will turn away from the fine high-road across Kenneggy Downs to attempt the deciphering of Mr. Milliton’s reflections; but it will not delay us to remember that John Wesley, exasperated by the “huge approbation and absolute unconcern” of the people in these parts, preached a sermon on the Downs, with a rare touch of humour, on the resurrection of the dry bones. In a few minutes we run into Marazion, and from the top of the hill first see, through a gap in the hedge, “the great vision of the guarded Mount.”

In starting forth upon a tour in Cornwall there are two things, I think, that one especially sets out to see; and in looking back it is the same two things that one especially remembers to have seen. One is Tintagel; but the spell of Tintagel is largely a matter of the imagination. The other is St. Michael’s Mount; and here,[137] though the imagination has much to feed upon in calmer moments, it is chiefly as a delight to the eye that it appeals to one in those first moments that are so far from calm. Little we care for Edward the Confessor and his monastery, or for any tale of battle and conspiracy, or for any legend of archangels, while the Mount shows as a blur of blue upon the pale, hot sky and in the mirror of the wet sands, and Penzance is veiled in a cloud of gold-dust save for the tall church-tower that rises from the mist, and the hills beyond the bay melt one into the other, and the rocks lie in a long red line across the foreground with a streak of piercing green at their feet. Yet it is hard to choose a moment and a point of view, and say, “This is the best.” At high tide or at low, in sunshine or at dusk, from near or far, from Marazion or from Newlyn, or framed between the red stems of the pines upon the hill, the Mount is always stately, mysterious, strong—always the Mount of the Archangel.

It is reached from Marazion by boat at high-water, or on foot by the causeway[138] when the tide is low. From the little harbour we climb, on a winding cobbled path among the trees and hydrangeas, the steep hill that so many have climbed on sterner errands: Henry de la Pomeroi, serving Prince John while the Lion was still safely caged; Lord Oxford and his men, disguised as pilgrims, entering the monastery with the help of pious words and seizing it with the swords they wore under their habits; the angry adherents of the Old Faith, charging up the hill with great trusses of hay borne before them, “to blench the defendants’ sight and deaden their shot.” Unfortunately there have been modern visitors nearly as turbulent as these; for which reason there is not much that we are allowed to see here to-day. We may go into the chapel where the monks once worshipped, and we may stand on the little paved terrace and look out over the parapet towards the shore, thinking of Lady Katherine Gordon, who surely stood here sometimes while her husband Perkin Warbeck was on his mad adventure. What were her thoughts of him as she stood[139] here? Did she know him to be an impostor? Did she think he was the King? Or did she only dream, and dream again, of that quick wooing up in Scotland by the boy of “visage beautiful”? “Lady,” he had said, “… what I am now you see, and there is no boasting in distress; what I may be, I must put it to the trial.… If you dare now adventure on the adversity I swear to make you partaker of the prosperity; yea, lay my crown at your feet.” To which the lady had made answer: “My Lord, … I think you, for your gentleness and fair demeanour, worthy of any creature or thing you could desire.… Therefore, noble Sir, repair, I say, to the master of the family.”

It was here at St. Michael’s Mount that they found her, when Perkin’s little fight was over and her own little bubble had burst.

A wide and level road takes us round the bay into Penzance, and up the hill whence Sir Humphry Davy looks down upon the street where he was born, and past the spot—now covered by the market-house—where Sir Francis Godolphin once tried in vain to make a stand against the Spaniards, and[140] on, beside the sea, to Newlyn. This is a name that is known wherever pictures are painted or beloved; and no wonder, for there is nothing in this harbour that an artist might not turn to good account. Here are fishing-boats reflected in the ripples, and piers hung with dripping seaweed, and lobster-creels and nets upon the shore; and beyond them is the high sea-wall with flowers in every cranny, and the steep street curving round the harbour, and the people whom so many painters have taught us to know. For all its charm and fame it has changed little since the sixteenth century. It is still a place with a business in life; still, as then, mainly a “fischar towne,” with “a key for shippes and bootes.”

Rejoining the main road to Land’s End, we pass through some pretty but very hilly country to Lower Hendra. Those who wish to see the Logan Rock must turn to the left here, and run down to the sea through St. Buryan, and finally walk for some distance across fields. Most people, I think, will keep to the high-road; but lovers of old churches will wish to turn aside to the[141] sanctuary of that “holy woman of Irelond,” St. Buriana. From this high ground, where the tall tower stands as a landmark visible for many miles, King Athelstane saw the distant Scilly Isles, and here he vowed to build a college if he should return safely after making the islands his own. This Perpendicular building dates, of course, from a far later century than his; but it was the church of the college he founded, and there were parts of the college itself still standing in Cromwell’s day.

St. Buryan is only four miles from Land’s End. They are rather dreary miles, by undulating fields and stone walls and the intensely melancholy little town of Sennan; but they end, all the more dramatically for their dulness, in the granite walls that guard our utmost shore. There is no dulness here.

Here there is no carpet of sea-pinks, nor splash of flaming lichen as at the Lizard, nor rocks fretted into fantastic shapes by the sea; but an imperturbable front of iron, an unyielding bulwark, a stern England that rules the waves. This is a fitting[142] climax to our coast. On each side of us cliff curves beyond cliff, and headland stretches beyond headland. To the right are the blue waters of Whitesand Bay, where Athelstane landed from the conquered Scilly Isles and John from unconquered Ireland, and far away Cape Cornwall bounds the view. With swelling hearts we stand on the cliff and look out over the buried land of Lyonesse, and beyond the Longships Lighthouse, to the wide seas on which Drake and Raleigh sailed away to the Spanish Main, and Rodney to victory, and Grenville to the death that made him deathless, and Blake to Teneriffe, and Nelson to Trafalgar. The salt wind blows in across those seas and sings in our ears:

NORTH CORNWALL

SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH NORTH CORNWALL

Distances.

Roads.

V
NORTH CORNWALL

“I believe I may venture to aver,” wrote Tonkin of Cornwall two hundred years ago, “that there are not any roads in the whole kingdom worse kept than ours.” This is not the case now. The main roads of Cornwall are excellent, and are far better kept than the average road of Somerset, for instance. No doubt the quickest way from Sennan to St. Ives is by Penzance and St. Erth Station; for this road, which is in the direct route from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s, leaves little to be desired. But the more interesting way is through St. Just, and Morvah, and Zennor. We cannot expect so good a surface here, yet from Sennan to Morvah, where the country is so much disfigured by mines that we are glad to[146] hurry, the road is capital; and it is only as the scenery becomes beautiful that the surface grows rough. There is a very steep descent beyond St. Just, followed at once by a climb of which the stiffest gradient is about one in five and a half.

It is in St. Just that we pass—on our left as we drive through the Bank Square—the ancient amphitheatre known as the Plân-an-Guare. Here, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, miracle-plays were acted on the level space in the centre, while the six tiers of seats that are replaced by the grassy bank were crowded with country-folk and miners. The plays were very popular, says Carew, “for they have therein devils and devices to delight as well the eye as the ear.”

There are none of these bizarre attractions, nor indeed anything else, to delight our eyes till we have passed Morvah. But from Morvah to St. Ives we have a lovely drive through a country of hills and heather, of bracken slopes and tors of granite—a little pattern cut from Dartmoor. At Trereen it will be well to leave the car and walk[147] across several fields to Gurnard’s Head, whence there is a fine view of the jagged coast. The massive granite steps that here serve the purpose of stiles are luxurious beyond the dreams of laziness.

The last part of this road is bad, but the wild green slopes remind us still of Dartmoor till we run down the long, steep hill into the town of St. Ives. This is quite as good a centre as Penzance from which to see the western end of Cornwall, for the Tregenna Castle Hotel, with its park and walled garden and its lovely outlook over the sea, is one of the most charming in the Duchy; and the place itself is unspoilt. Indeed, these little fishing towns of Cornwall seem to understand very well that their face is their fortune, so to speak; that their welfare depends, not on bandstands and esplanades, but on the beauty of their harbours and fishing boats and narrow streets. Here at St. Ives are the simple charms of Newlyn and the rest: the same little piers and clustered masts, the same contorted streets and the same artists.

It is well that Mr. Knill, when he set up[148] his crooked pyramid, did not place it too near the town. If we look back as we drive away we shall see, upon the skyline, the empty mausoleum of this unconventional mayor, who built his own tomb and arranged to be mourned with music and dancing at its base, but omitted to be buried in it. Some say he did not mean it for a tomb at all, but for a landmark to smugglers. This may be so, since at one time he certainly indulged in privateering—an enterprise into which, he explained, “he was hurried by the force of circumstances.” Perhaps the same explanation applies to his burial in London.

We drive on through the pretty, straggling village of Lelant to the port of Hayle. The rich colouring of the harbour and river here, the red and green flats, the brown and yellow sands, the crooked posts reflected in the water, and the flocks of gulls, are the last pleasing sights that we shall see for many miles; for the country through which we have to pass cannot have been beautiful in its best days, and is now made hideous by pit-heads and chimneys. Camborne is[149] big and ugly, with trams: Redruth is big and ugly, without trams: there is no other visible difference, nor any gap between them. But the compensation that motorists so often find in dull country is ours: this is the splendid highway that leads to John o’ Groat’s. We leave it when it turns towards Truro, but by that time our surroundings are less depressing. Above Zelah Hill we take the road that crosses Newlyn Downs, where the close carpet of heather somewhat restores our spirits, though nowhere till we reach Newquay is there any hint of the beautiful things that lie hidden in this neighbourhood. After crossing the railway we should not take the first turn to Newquay, but should wait for the second, where the signpost stands. We shall thus avoid two bad hills.

Newquay must have been a glorious place before its shores were black with people, and its steep red cliffs crowded with lodging-houses, and its jutting promontory crowned with a huge hotel. Even now, in spite of these things, its wears something of a queenly air. We have left behind us the slow ripples[150] of the southern sea: the fierce blue waves sweep in upon this grand coast with quite a different kind of dignity. But Newquay is too world-ridden to be really lovable. “How beautiful she must have been!” is a sad saying, whether applied to town or woman.

In its neighbourhood, however, are several noteworthy things. We have only a few miles to drive, by leafy lanes and frequent splashes, to a spot that the world has left untouched and that time has only made more beautiful, the house of the Arundels. The best way to Trerice is the lane by Kestle Mill. John Arundel of Trerice is a proud name that becomes monotonous in the annals of Cornwall, and is not unknown in those of England. It was here they lived, those warlike Arundels—old Jack of Tilbury the Admiral, and John-for-the-King, who made so gallant a fight at Pendennis. Though the Arundels owned Trerice even in Edward III.’s time, I do not think Old Tilbury ever saw this Elizabethan building, for he was an old man in the days of Henry VIII. It was probably his son who[151] built this lovely house at the foot of the hill, with the huge mullioned window and the moulded ceilings, and the oriel that overlooks the walled garden and its yew hedges. But John-for-the-King, we may suppose, has warmed himself before these splendid fireplaces, and has looked out through these windows at the flowers and pines, and has eaten his dinner at the great oak table now in the drawing-room. Some say he was a hard man. Possibly: for he lived in hard times. Yet one who knew him well called him “equally stout and kind.” “Of his enemies,” says Carew, “he would take no wrong nor on them any revenge. Those who for many years waited in nearest place about him learned to hate untruth.”

There was another branch of the family who, for their greater possessions, were known as “the great Arundels.” We may see their house at St. Mawgan. When approaching, from St. Columb Minor, the deep wooded hollow in which Lanherne stands close beside the church of St. Mawgan, one should take the most easterly of the two by-roads that lead to it. This hill, it[152] is true, is steep enough; but the other is steeper—one in five. Those who are going on to Bedruthan Steps or elsewhere will do wisely to climb out of the hollow on this same road, and go round by St. Columb Major, for the hill on the further side of St. Mawgan is the steepest of all!

Here in this seclusion, guarded by a triple defence of hills as well as by the dark woods and by their own high wall, live the nuns of Lanherne in the house of warriors. Not much of their dwelling is visible, of course, but the chapel may be seen, and one wing of the old house looks down, with many mullioned windows, on a gay little garden that all may enjoy. Below Lanherne is the church, with turreted tower and painted screen, and brasses and bench-ends, and shields of the Arundels.

As I said before, the shortest way to Bedruthan Steps is the longest way round—the way, namely, by St. Columb Major. The road by Mawgan Porth has an alluring look upon the map, but as a matter of fact comes to a sudden end in the sands; and I have heard a tragic tale of a car that[153] stuck fast there, and endured the humiliation of being dragged out by horses. At the junction of roads between the two St. Columbs is a gate into the woods of Lanherne, of whose loveliness this is the only glimpse we may have, since motors are not admitted to them. We turn to the left in St. Columb Major, past the grey church of St. Columba, a maiden who was, says Hals, “comparatively starved to death” in Gaul. Her church has had a chequered career. One of the pinnacles of the tower was again and again destroyed by lightning and rebuilt in vain, till the builders carved on it the words: “God bless and preserve this work.” I do not know if it escaped in the seventeenth century, when three schoolboys, by setting fire to some gunpowder, “made a direful concussion;” but only a few years later the steeple was again struck by lightning “and the iron bars therein wreathed and wrested asunder as threads.”

On a by-road that is of course hilly, but by no means bad, we rise on to Denzell Downs, with a wide view to the left and[154] a glimpse of Mawgan Porth in the distance. When, having left St. Eval on the right, we come to an isolated cottage, we must take the track that goes straight on; for the one that turns to the right has an endless number of gates, some steep hills, and a very rough surface, and is much the longer of the two. Even on the track we take there are gates enough to try the temper, but it soon leads to a field where we may leave the car. We walk down across the heather to the cliffs. These have not the iron severity of the Land’s End: the shale they are made of is friable, and has been carved into a thousand shapes—including a ridiculously life-like figure of Queen Bess—by the waves that fret and foam even on the stillest day. The wide bay lies below us with all its decorative arches and pinnacles and turrets, bounded by Park Head, long and grey; and in the distance Trevose Head makes the skyline. Two flights of steps are cut in the cliffs: one leading to the shore and the other to a cave.

And now, after all this pottering in the[155] narrow lanes about Newquay, there are many who will be craving for a comfortable run on an open road. These I advise to join the Truro and Bodmin road near St. Columb Road Station, and drive over a series of breezy heaths, on a good surface with no serious hills, to Bodmin: thence to follow the Fowey to Liskeard and run up to Launceston: and from Launceston to return to Bodmin across the moors. This is a fine run and a real refreshment.

There is no lack of history in Bodmin, the “dwelling-place of monks,” the burial-place of St. Petrock, once a cathedral city, and more than once the headquarters of rebellion. Yet, save the great church, there is little here to see. Very near Bodmin, however, though not on our direct road, there is a place of wonderful beauty, Lanhydrock. This park is rich in splendid trees, carpeted with fern, irregular and wild and lovely beyond the common lot of parks. As we sweep round a curve the gatehouse comes in view, with its arch and octagonal towers and pinnacles; behind it is the stately house, the mullioned windows and the battlements; and[156] between house and gateway, enclosed within a parapeted wall, lies the formal garden, the rows of tapering cypresses, and urns of flowers, and blossoming yuccas. When Essex stayed here with Lord Robarts, at the time that Charles I. was at Boconnoc, the gatehouse was not yet built; but he saw the north wing of the house as it now stands. After his desertion of his troops at Fowey, Lanhydrock fell into royalist hands, and for a short time was owned by Sir Richard Grenville, “the Skellum.”

We drive away by a magnificent double avenue of beeches and sycamores, and through a shady lane join the main road from Bodmin to Liskeard. This narrow valley of the Fowey is one of the loveliest strips of inland scenery in Cornwall. On every side of us are trees, close by the wayside, and hanging overhead, and clothing the high hills; and all the time, sometimes to left of us and sometimes to right, the brown stream hurries past us through the bracken. After we have crossed it for the second time the valley narrows and the woods close in, before we finally run out into open country. Between[157] Liskeard and Callington, as we have seen before, there are some fine views, but the hilly road is rather badly kept; and the same may be said of the country beyond Callington, which has the same variable scenery, and the same wide but bumpy road. A long rise takes us into Launceston through the square tower of the south gate.

Age after age this hill has had a fortress on it. First the Celt and then the Saxon made a stronghold of it, and finally, when William the Conqueror gave it to his half-brother, Robert de Mortain, there arose the Norman castle that was called Terrible. Of its terror little is left now, for one of its three defending walls is gone, and the ruined keep is so unsteady that no one is allowed to climb its stairs. Yet this tower among the blazing geraniums has not altogether lost its romance, as is the fate of most ruins that stand in public gardens; and the Tudor gateway of the outer ward, with its portcullis-groove and prison-cell, is picturesque enough. If we peer through these bars we shall see a tiny cell with mossy floor and weed-grown walls—the “noisesome den” that George Fox[158] the Quaker named Doomsdale, the prison in which he lay for months. “The commune gayle for all Cornwayle is yn this castel,” says Leland; and many distinguished prisoners have been here, though not all in this dark dungeon. Among these was Skellum Grenville, whose imprisonment had far-reaching results; for the men of Cornwall, as in the case of Trelawny, resolved “to know the reason why.” This was not because they liked him, but simply because he was a Cornishman. And a very good reason too.

In spite of all its strength Castle Terrible was several times taken in the Civil War. Finally it was seized by Fairfax, and kept. He came to Launceston at midnight, and many of the enemy escaped “by the darknesse of the night, and narrownesse and steepnesse of the wayes.” Those who were taken were amazed in the morning, when they were brought before the general, and “had twelve pence apeece given them, and passes to goe to their homes.”

When the Skellum’s brother Sir Bevill was here his troops were quartered in the church that is a few minutes’ walk from the castle,[159] the church that is surely unique in its effect of richness. For every one of its granite stones bears a device, sacred or profane, and round the base is a course of shields, with letters carved upon them to form an inscription. Over the south door are St. George and the Dragon, and St. Martin and the Beggar; and at the east end is a prostrate figure of the Magdalen, at which, by a curious disregard of a certain great saying, it is considered lucky to throw stones. Within the church is a sixteenth-century pulpit, a Norman font, and a good deal of modern carving. Of the priory that Bishop Warelwast founded at Launceston hardly anything remains, except the Norman arch that has been set in the doorway of the “White Hart.”

We have a fine drive back to Bodmin over the moors, where the hills are many but the road is good. There is no heather here, but a great expanse of grass and waving fern, and scattered stones, and slopes of gorse, and now and then, impressive in its loneliness, an ancient Celtic cross of granite by the wayside. We enter Bodmin by an[160] over-arching avenue, and pass out of it on the Wadebridge road, at the back of the asylum.

The short run to Wadebridge is through a lovely country of woods and valleys and rivers, on a road that is well-graded if hilly. There is little obvious attraction in Wadebridge itself, however, for at low tide the river winds through mud-flats that are not flat enough to be picturesque, and the famous bridge—“the longest, strongest, and fairest that the shire can muster”—is not as striking in fact as it appears in pictures. Like Bideford Bridge, it is said to be founded on sacks of wool. Its founder was one Lovibond, the vicar of this old church of Egloshayle that we see beside the river. We do not cross the bridge, but turn to the right on the road to Camelford; and a few minutes later pass near a British camp called Castle Killibury or Kelly Round. We are entering Arthur’s country—a land of shadowy legend, a land that has been peopled for us with a host of adorable, improbable figures, a land of disillusionment, but none the less of unconquerable romance. For this round[161] encampment by which we drive is thought to be one of the few authentic relics of the authentic Arthur, the Kelliwic of the Welsh Triads, a stronghold and court of the British prince who truly lived, and fought, and died of a grievous wound—but not at Camelford.

We are on our way now to the spot that was long believed, and is still believed by many, to be the scene of his last battle: Slaughter Bridge. We turn off to the left in the outskirts of Camelford on rather a rough road to Camelford Station, and there take a narrow lane on the right which leads in a moment to the little grey bridge with the grim name. There is grim truth behind the name, moreover, for if it was not here, but in Scotland, that Arthur died, there has been slaughter on a large scale on the rushy banks of this brook that sings so gaily. Here, in the ninth century, Britons and Saxons fought and died by thousands, and no one knows to-day who won the battle.

On the left is the old gateway of Worthyvale. A little way within it is a wooden shed, where we shall find a guide to show[162] us the ancient stone that does duty alternately as Arthur’s grave and his resting-place when he was wounded. Its age and position and probable origin are sufficiently romantic, for it is thought to be the tombstone of some warrior who was slain in the great battle. It lies now on level grass below the rocky bank, with the stream close beside it, and tree stems fringed with hart’s-tongues leaning over it. The path that leads to it is very steep and very slippery, and as one struggles down it the little barefooted guide prattles cheerfully of the ladies and old gentlemen who have, from time to time, fallen headlong into the stream.

From Slaughter Bridge a few miles, a few lanes, a few hills bring us, with hearts—even middle-aged hearts—beating a little faster than usual, to the very citadel and stronghold of that Land of Faery of which Arthur is the King.

Who can tell wherein the enchantment of Tintagel lies? Its crown of towers is gone; its glory is departed. Only, on the summit of the dark, steep island a few low walls, a doorway, and a window remain of the[163] mediæval castle that seems to have no history. Not a stone here speaks of Arthur. Yet it is of Arthur only that we think.

And if there is no fragment here of the castle where Arthur was born, neither have we any visions of the Table Round, nor of Guinevere and her ladies, nor of Launcelot, nor Galahad; for the King’s court was not here. Only La Beale Isoud we may see sitting in her bower upon this rock, and Tristram kneeling at her feet, and behind him Mark with the uplifted sword. This was the stronghold of the ancient Cornish Earls; and if Arthur was born here it was because his birth was the result of magic, and not because Uther Pendragon had any rights in this place. But since we are here in a world of legend we may surely take the legend of our choice. Let us forget the ugly tale of Uther and Igerne, and remember only how, after the thunders of the storm upon this shore—

There are the sands below us, the little bay in the curve of the cliff, the transparent sea that brought the mysterious King to his kingdom.

And because all is mystery here, because behind the veil there is so little that is solid, so little that we know, it is not in the sunshine of a summer day that Tintagel has the most meaning. It is when the mists are trailing on the sea, and the dark rock is wrapped in a cloud as impenetrable as the legends that shroud Arthur, and for a moment a passing gleam lightens the fog above our heads and shows the pale ghost of a castle-wall uplifted against the sky—it is then that Tintagel seems indeed to be the heart of the world of dreams, the most perfect symbol of the mingled mystery and truth of the story of Arthur.

More than three hundred years ago Carew gave his impressions of the island fortress. “In passing thither,” he says, “you must first descend with a dangerous declining, and then make a worse ascent by a path as everywhere narrow so in many places through his stickleness occasioning, as through his[165] steepness threatening, the ruin of your life with the failing of your feet. At the top two or three terrifying steps give you entrance to the hill.” Those who suffer from unsteady heads will feel this lively description to be most accurate as regards the island; but the castle on the mainland may be reached by a path which, though narrow and tortuous enough, does not occasion, nor even threaten, the ruin of one’s life. And from those crumbling twelfth-century walls we may walk along the cliff to the little grey church that has stood here, buffeted by every wind of heaven, since the days of the Saxons. Part of the Saxon masonry is still here, and an old font green with moss, and various ancient stones. What this bleak cliff has to bear in the way of sea-winds may be seen in the churchyard, where all the tombstones—thin slabs of slate—are strongly buttressed by masonry three times as thick as themselves. In a corner is the poetical grave of an Italian sailor drowned on this shore: an ordinary ship’s life-buoy nailed to a rough wooden cross.

We drive away through the pretty village[166] of Trevena, dip into the wooded and flowery dell of Bossiney on a steep and rather rough road, and soon run down into Boscastle among the orchards. The narrow gorge, where the village lies smothered in trees, ends in a little landlocked harbour, and high up on the hill to the left stands the church of Forrabury—the church whose bells, says the legend, are lying at the bottom of the sea with the bones of the blasphemous skipper who was bringing them to Boscastle. R. S. Hawker tells the story in “The Silent Tower of Bottreaux.” We cross the stream and begin a very long climb. This hill has a bad reputation; but its steepest gradient—one in six—is quickly past, and above it there is nothing very serious. After three miles of climbing we find some fine wide views; and as we drive between the high hedges on the rough road to Bude, catch glimpses of sea and headland on the left.

The charm of Bude, I imagine—and many people find it very charming—lies more in its surroundings than itself, more in the splendid coast and rolling sea than in the rather dull little town. The sands and boats[167] at the river-mouth are picturesque, and so is the “cross-pool,” where Hawker in his sealskin coat once masqueraded as a mermaid (of a somewhat full habit), to the sad confusion of the youth of Bude.

Far more attractive in itself is Stratton, hard by, with the dark church-tower raised above the street, and half its houses hidden by the trees. In this church with the fine roof and the granite pillars is buried, under a black marble slab elaborately inlaid with brasses, a Sir John Arundel of the sixteenth century; the father, I believe, of John-for-the-King. And in the north aisle, with no stone to tell the tale of his brave and faithful service, lies Anthony Payne, the tender-hearted giant who taught little boys to fish, and fought with the strength of ten by Bevill Grenville’s side, and wrote a letter for which alone, if for nothing else, he deserves an epitaph. When Sir Bevill died at Lansdowne Hill it was Anthony Payne who broke the news to Lady Grenville. “You know, as we all believe,” he wrote, “that his soul was in heaven before his bones were cold. He fell, as he did often tell us he wished[168] to die, in the great Stewart cause, for his country and his King. He delivered to me his last commands, and with such tender words for you and for his children as are not to be set down with my poor pen, but must come to your ears upon my heart’s best breath. Master John, when I mounted him upon his father’s horse, rode him into the war like a young prince as he is.… I am coming down with the mournfullest load that ever a poor servant did bear, to bring the great heart that is cold to Kilkhampton vault. O! my lady, how shall I ever brook your weeping face?”[12]

Down in the street we may find the house where this servant with the heart and tongue of gold was born and died. It was once a manor-house of the Grenvilles, but is now the “Tree” Inn, and shows little sign of age. Until lately there was a hole still in the ceiling through which Anthony Payne’s huge body was lowered after his death, since it was impossible to bring it down the narrow stairs; but now this room has been rebuilt. Fixed in the outer wall of the inn, however,[169] is a relic of the battle on Stamford Hill, where “ye army of ye rebells … receiued A signall ouerthrow by ye Valor of Sir Bevill Granville and ye Cornish army,” and where Anthony Payne was valiant as his master. Once this stone was on the battle-field, but the owner of the land was so greatly harassed by sightseers that in his rage he dug out the memorial and built a house upon the spot!

Here, as we drive out of Stratton on a fine curving road, is the green slope on our left where the desperate battle of Stamford Hill, and the landlord’s desperate act of self-defence, took place. It was on that hilltop that Sir Bevill’s valour won him a personal letter from the King, the letter that was found in his pocket when he was dead. “Keep this safe,” he had written on it; for the Grenvilles were “King’s men,” not perfunctorily but passionately. It is but a few miles, on rather a rough road, to Kilkhampton, where Sir Bevill and most of his house are buried.

Indeed, Kilkhampton Church is as it were the shrine of the gallant Grenvilles, and[170] deserves that high honour. A shady avenue leads from the modern lych-gate to the porch that was built by a Grenville and the Norman door through which so many Grenvilles have passed to their prayers, and so many have been carried to their graves: Roger, who for his lavish table was called the Great Housekeeper, and John the privateer, and Richard the Marshal and poet,[13] and Sir Bernard, son of the greatest of the Grenvilles and father of Sir Bevill. Sir Richard of the Revenge, as we all know, died “with a joyful and quiet mynde” on a distant sea, leaving behind him “an everlastynge fame of a valyante and true soldier that has done hys dutie as he was bounde to do.”[14] But Sir Bevill, thanks to Anthony Payne, lies in the vault of Kilkhampton, and with him is the wife who could not live long without him, and the boy who rode into the war like a young prince and became as ardent a royalist as his father.

Everywhere we see the Grenville arms:[171] the three strange objects that some call “horsemen’s rests,” and some call rudders, and some clarions. They are outside the south-east door, and in the chancel, and on one of the elaborately carved bench-ends, and on the old granite font, and in much magnificence of paint and gilding on the south wall. And here on the same wall is the ugly eighteenth-century monument to Sir Bevill, with its long epitaph. “A brighter courage and a gentler disposition were never marryed together,” said Lord Clarendon. A better memorial of his bright courage than this thing of gilt and marble is the well-worn helmet that hangs beside it; and of his gentle disposition we have proof enough in his own and his wife’s letters, with their engaging mixture of romance and domesticity. “Would God but grant you were home,” writes Lady Grenville, “till when my heart will never be quiett.” “The Plaisters you sent, I trust in God, hath done me much good.” “I pray you make haste and come home.… I am and still will be yours ever and only.… PS.—I pray you let your Coate be well ayr’d and lye abroad[172] awhile before you weare it. To my dearest and best Frend Mr. Bevill Grenvile, these.” “Beseeching God to encline yr heart to love her who will in spite of the divill ever be yrs immoveably.” “If you please to bestowe a plaine black Gownd of any cheape Stufe on me I will thanke you.”[15]

Not far from Kilkhampton is another church that some of us may care to see, though the long lane that leads to Morwenstow is by no means one that has no turning. Indeed, it would need some ingenuity to find room for any more corners in these narrow ways; but if progress is slow the country is attractive and the sea is before us, with flat-topped Lundy Island in the distance. We come rather suddenly on the church in its steep and narrow valley, with the tower darkly outlined against the blue sea, and a bold sweep of heather for background: the remote romantic glen where Morwenna the hermit had her cell near the sea, and died with her eyes fixed upon her native Wales: the glen of which Hawker wrote: “Here within the ark we hear only[173] the voices of animals and birds, and the sound of many waters.”

He must have heard the voices of a good many animals; for even when he went to church he was followed by nine or ten cats, they say, which wandered, while he was preaching, about this beautiful building with the Norman arches, and the chancel with the marble floor. Here at the foot of the pulpit is the grave of his wife, the devoted wife who was older than his mother. Morwenstow, in its utter loneliness, its wild beauty, its deep, full colouring, needs nothing to give it charm; but its name, probably, would be known to few if it had not had, for many years, a vicar whose eccentric, poetical, heroic nature made his name and his dwelling-place memorable. We can forgive his errant cats to a man who wrote verses so sonorous—and above all to a man who fought the wreckers as Hawker fought them here.[16] His dust is not in the church he loved and cared for; but his epitaph is on the lips of those who knew him.[174] “His door was always open to the poor,” they say.

The twisted lanes take us back to the main road, and on a splendid surface we cross the border into Devon.

NORTH DEVON

SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH NORTH DEVON

Distances.

Roads.

VI
NORTH DEVON

After a few miles of brisk running over the breezy heights of Welsford Moor we return to the steep, winding, narrow lanes that have grown so familiar, and pass slowly down the long hill to the woods of Clovelly. To the left is Clovelly Court, where the Careys lived, and the church where they were buried, and to the right is the turn towards the entrance of the Hobby Drive, and the garage where the car must be left.

There are two ways into the village. The shortest way is by the path that drops almost from our feet, as we stand by the gate of the beautiful Drive that motorists may not enter. Very soon this path that winds down the face of the cliff merges[178] into the village street, the famous street that we know so well, even if we have never seen it. For that very reason, because it is so well known, I would advise those who are here for the first time to follow the road to the left, and after a short walk that is almost painful—so steep is the way and so loose are the stones—to enter Clovelly at the bottom of the hill, near the quay. Here there is an unfamiliar and beautiful picture for one’s first impression of the loveliest village in England. Overhead are the trees that clothe all this hillside in sweeping draperies of green; the picture is framed in stems and ivy-grown rocks; clustered under the cliff are the irregular roofs of a group of cottages; a large boat is drawn up by the wayside; and towering in the distance is the soft mass of trees through which the Hobby Drive winds unseen. Almost at once we reach the little pier, and Clovelly, hanging between sky and sea, is facing us.

For some of its beauty one is prepared. The little white houses clambering up the precipitous hillside, the long, winding street[179] of cobbled stairs, the curving pier with its nets and poles and nights of steps, the jerseyed fishermen and pretty Devon faces, the boats that fill the harbour and the donkeys that climb the street, are all things that one has been taught to expect. But neither pen nor brush can give, in a single picture as we have it here, the extraordinary variety and brilliancy of their setting: the clematis that trails about the verandahs, the fuchsias and hydrangeas, pink and blue, that guard the doors, the crimson valerian that runs riot on the walls, the brown cliffs and ruddy rocks, the woods that roll from the skyline to the shore, and at their feet the little shining pools and many-coloured seaweed, and beyond them the long curve of Bideford Bay and the sea, unutterably blue.

“Now that you have seen Clovelly,” said Kingsley to his wife, “you know what was the inspiration of my life before I met you.” Here on the little quay he heard his father, the rector, many a time read prayers for the fishermen before they put to sea; and it was the sad teaching of Clovelly, where he saw so many men work and so[180] many women weep, that gave its pathos to the song of the Three Fishers. When his health was failing, it was the air of Clovelly that he pined for. He came to lodgings at the top of this winding street that we climb so laboriously, “the narrow, paved cranny of a street,” as he called it, and stayed there happily for weeks.

It would be easy to be happy here for weeks; but in the summer there is some difficulty in finding shelter even for one night. Fortunately Bideford is not far off, and when we have made our way slowly back to the high road there are only ten miles of a good surface between us and a comfortable hotel.

To reach it we must cross the famous bridge. This “very stately piece,” as an old writer calls it, has played a very prominent part in the history of the town. “A poore preste” began it, we are told, being “animatid so to do by a vision. Then al the cuntery about sette their handes onto the performing of it.” Sir Theobald Grenville, Lord of Bideford and Kilkhampton, a young ruffler who had lately been in trouble with the Church, made common cause with the bishop who had[181] ordered his excommunication, and after being duly absolved became “an especial furtherer” of the work. Grandison’s contribution took the form of indulgences; the rich gave their lands and the poor gave their time; and so the pride of Bideford arose on its foundation of woolsacks, and to this day gives distinction to a town that is otherwise rather in need of it. For wherever it was possible old things have been made new here. The old part of the Royal Hotel, once the house of a merchant prince, has been so carefully hidden that no one would guess it was there: the splendid panelling of the room where Kingsley wrote much of “Westward Ho!” has been painted: the church was rebuilt in the nineteenth century: even the tombstones have been tidied up and marshalled in rows round the churchyard wall. Within the church a few relics have survived: the Norman font, the remains of two screens, and the canopied altar-tomb of Sir Thomas Grenville, called the Venerable, who fought against Richard III. and was esquire of the body to Henry VII. The tombstone of the Indian who was brought home by the great Sir Richard[182] seems to have been lost or obscured by the redistribution of graves in the churchyard; but there is a modern brass on the south wall to Sir Richard himself, who lived here when he was not upon the high seas.

This is the only memorial, in his birthplace, to the greatest of the “men of Bideford in Devon;” but Charles Kingsley has a full-length statue at the end of the promenade. Kingsley, I imagine, would have preferred a different arrangement.

Two miles away to the west is Westward Ho! We shall see it under the hill if we drive out to Appledore, where the sands are very yellow and the sea is very blue. We shall also see a spot called Bloody Corner, which is said to be the burial-place of the scourge of Saxon England, Hubba the Dane, the devastator of Yorkshire, the marauder of our coasts, the rifler of monasteries. A slab of slate has been fixed in the wall on the right side of the road, and an inscription engraved on it by someone who was a lover of history, but no poet.

The shortest, but not the most direct way to Barnstaple from Bideford is by the coast[183] road, whence we see, across the brown and yellow sands, the river-mouth from which seven ships of Bideford sailed out to fight the Armada. This road is level, but extremely dusty in dry weather except near Barnstaple, where it has a “prepared” surface. The direct road over the hills is so steep in places that its directness is merely nominal; but here the scenery is lovely.

There is a third alternative: to drive up the Torridge valley, cross over by Winkleigh to the valley of the Taw, and follow that river to Barnstaple. This is a course greatly to be commended.

Especially on a hot afternoon this is one of the most desirable runs in Devon. From Bideford to Torrington the road is shaded nearly continuously by high banks of trees rising from the wayside: on the left the cool stream winds beside us. Torrington, on its abrupt hill above the river, must have been a place of dignity when its castle dominated the valley. Through these streets where we are driving Fairfax chased the royalists one night in the dark, after a long resistance “with push of Pike and butt end[184] of Musket”—chased them clean through the town and out of it to the bridges. This engagement, wrote the general, was “a hotter service than any storme this Army hath before been upon.” The royalists meantime had bribed “a desperate villain” to fire their store of powder in the church, lest the army of the Parliament should benefit by it; with the unexpected result that when “the Lead, Stones, Timber, and Ironwork of the Church were blowne up into the Ayre” two hundred royalist prisoners were blown up too. Hardly any of the Parliament-men were injured, though Fairfax himself had a narrow escape, and was obliged to return to “Master Rolls his house” for the night, “in regard the Quarter at Torrington was inconvenient, the Windowes broken in pieces, and the houses so shattered with the great blast that they could not performe a convenient shelter from the raine.” This church on our right among the trees replaced the one that was blown into the air so completely that hardly a fragment of the old building remains; and this street by which we pass through the town is the one[185] by which Fairfax rode back that night to Master Rolls his house. He went straight on to Stephenstone, but we turn away to the right on the road that skirts the castle hill and passes near the Waterloo obelisk.

We see little more of the Torridge; but this splendid Exeter road takes us through very lovely scenery; by woods, and beds of fern, and level heaths, and fields of meadowsweet, and rows of shady beeches, while for the last time our view is bounded by the beloved hills of Dartmoor. It is a curiously lonely road: hardly a village, and indeed for some miles hardly a cottage, breaks the solitude. Between the two valleys, as we pass through Winkleigh and bear round to the left to cross the Taw, the country is less beautiful and the surface rougher; but after the sharp turn at Morchard Road Station we have a splendid run to Barnstaple.

This is the most level road in Devon. This fact alone commends it to us, but there are many other facts to make it memorable: woods of oak, and larch, and mountain-ash, and chestnut-trees, not only shadowing us[186] but filling all the landscape: tall red fir-stems, and ferns beside the road, and wildflowers everywhere. All the way we follow the railroad, swinging past station after station, Eggesford and South Molton and Portsmouth Arms and Umberleigh, while the valley widens and narrows and opens out again; and all the time the Taw is close at hand, growing from a tiny stream between low banks of red earth and grass to a strong river rippling over the shingle, with trees dipping into its sunny waters.

Somewhere in Bishop’s Tawton lies the dust of the first Bishop of Devon. It was here that the see was originally fixed; but when the second bishop was murdered it was thought wise to move to a more central position at Crediton. Beyond the pretty village the estuary widens, and we see Barnstaple before us through the trees.

Barnstaple, says Mr. Warner of the eighteenth century, “is by far the most genteel town in North Devon.” This is a very happy word; though why a town whose history includes the days of Athelstane, a town that has had a castle and a priory and a[187] life by no moans dull, should be “genteel” when all is said, is hard to understand. The nice public gardens and open spaces, the air of clean prosperity, and the colonnade with the fluted pillars give it an eighteenth-century air, at latest. Yet, if we look behind the church with the crooked spire we shall find the brown stone grammar-school where Bishop Jewell and the poet Gay learnt their lessons; and in the narrow street near the Imperial Hotel are some almshouses whose granite pillars and beautiful moulded gutters date from 1627; and spanning the river is the “right great and sumptuus bridge of stone” that was “made long sins by a merchaunt of London caullid Stamford.” Nothing is left of the priory where Sir Theobald de Grenville was excommunicated with bell, book, and candle; nor of the castle that belonged at various times to Judhael of Totnes, and the Tracy who murdered Becket, and Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. Even at the beginning of the Civil War it was “a place of small strength,” and during the struggle it led a hard life. The Colonel Basset who defended it while it was[188] in royalist hands figures among John Prince’s Worthies. “This gentleman as to his stature was somewhat short, but of an high crest and noble mind. As to his religion he did not boast great matters, but lived them … he being as plain in his soul as he was in his garb, which he resolved should be proud of him rather than he of it.”

The road that crosses the hill between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe leaves the town by the suburb of Pilton, whose white houses and gaily painted shutters and high walls have rather a foreign air. There is a long but well-graded hill before us, and a surface that is not very good. Each flowery village is followed by another as gay, and each green valley leads into another as green, and still we climb higher and higher till we come to the heather. For a little time the scenery is dull; then the road winds down a deep valley, and we see Ilfracombe in a gorge below.

Ilfracombe, like everyone’s grandmother, was lovely when it was young. That, however, was some time ago, and at present its charms are a matter of taste. That thousands love its piers and pierrots is evident at[189] a glance, but some of us can only look sadly at its bluffs and sparkling sea, and long for the days that are no more. The change must have come very quickly, for only fifty years ago George Eliot thought Ilfracombe the loveliest sea place she ever saw, and found Tenby tame and vulgar after it. “But it would not do,” she adds, “for those who can’t climb rocks and mount perpetual hills; for the peculiarity of this country is that it is all hill and no valley.”

There are hills, and valleys, too, in astonishing numbers along this coast. The contour of the road between Ilfracombe and Porlock makes a sinister picture. But those thirty miles include some of the finest scenery in England; and by making them more than thirty, one may avoid some of the worst gradients without missing any of the beauty.

For the first few miles the road clings to the brow of the cliff, twisting round curve after curve, and mounting and falling and mounting again. All the colours of the rainbow are in the landscape. There are headlands of every shade of purple and red, foliage of every tint of green, shadows that[190] are intensely blue, sands that are really golden, and a sea of a colour that has no name. We swing round a curve and see the white houses of Combe Martin wedged between the brown cliffs, and a few minutes later we turn away from the sea and mount the long village street. Combe Martin may be defined as length without breadth; for though it is a mile and a half long it is in no place wider than two little houses. It has contributed in its day to the honour of its country, for Edward III. and Henry V., it is said, made use of the silver-mines of Combe Martin during their wars with France. Elizabeth gave cups of the same silver to her friends; but Charles I., though ingenious in the art of extracting the precious metals, sought here in vain.

The road, as it climbs up to Exmoor, grows rather rough. From Blackmoor Gate the direct way to Lynton is of course through Parracombe, where there are two hills of some renown, a descent and a climb. The inconvenience here is in the fact that the change from the downward to the upward gradient is in the middle of the village, and[191] a run is out of the question. None the less this hill, though steep, is quite practicable; but the still more famous hill between Lynton and Lynmouth thoroughly deserves its reputation, and, after personal experience, I strongly advise motorists to avoid it unless they have absolute confidence in the staunchness of their car, the power of their brakes, and the scope of their steering-locks. Its difficulty lies, not only in the gradient—though at one point that is steeper than one in four—but in the extremely acute angle that occurs at the steepest spot and makes it impossible, if there should chance to be so much as a wheelbarrow by the wayside, for a car of any size to turn without pausing. An added difficulty is the looseness of the surface, for the constant use of drags has ploughed the road into a mass of stones and sand. It is possible now to take cars on the “lift,” or funicular railway that runs up and down the cliff; but it seems to me that the simplest plan is to drive round by Simonsbath to Lynmouth. There is shelter there for both man and car; but those who prefer to stay at Lynton—and they are many—may leave[192] their cars at the bottom of the hill, and mount it themselves, with their luggage, in the cliff railway.

At Blackmoor Gate, then, instead of taking the road to Parracombe, we must go straight on till we turn to the left at Challacombe. The country is not inspiring. Technically, I suppose, this is part of Exmoor; but there is nothing in these undulating fields and hedgerows to suggest the hunting of the red deer by Saxon kings, or the jealous guarding of forest-rights by the Conqueror. For William, though he gave away these lands, was very strict about the hunting. “He loved the tall deer as though he had been their father,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. His love was like that of the little boy who was so fond of animals that he always went to see the pigs killed.

At Simonsbath there is a sudden outburst of beauty. The tiny village lies in a hollow among the fir-clad hills, and makes an idyllic picture with its stream and bridge; and here the road turns and winds up to a fine expanse of true moorland. It is sterner than Dartmoor. There is no luxuriance of bracken[193] here, nor acres of purple, but mile beyond grassy mile of stately, rolling hills, very austere at noonday, but in the light of a summer sunset transfigured into splendour. The new road to Lynmouth turns abruptly back upon the hillside, and on it we plunge into the green depths.[17]

If Nature is austere upon these hills, in the valley she is riotous. We seem to be dropping down and down into her generous heart, and, like the poet, we bless ourselves with silence. Far above us, as we wind beside the river, the tall sides of the valley are clear-cut against the sky; but just below the line of rock and heather the rich woods rise up and take triumphant possession of the hills, and fill every curve and hollow, and clothe the steep heights, and hang over the stream, and rustle by the wayside. We have dropped so suddenly and deeply into these green waves that we almost expect them to close over our heads. And as the road winds on we think at every corner[194] that all this beauty must come to a sudden end. Surely we have passed the climax: surely the next curve will take us out of this enchanted valley into the world we know. But the beauty does not end. It grows; and only finds its climax in the red and green headlands, and in the lovely village that lies between the hills where the valley ends in the sea.

Lynmouth below and Lynton above, when one recalls them, seem, like Clovelly, too good to be true. All the charms of Devon are here. Charms that elsewhere seem incongruous are here in accord; grandeur and homeliness agree together; the lion lies down with the lamb. Boats and heather are in the same picture; the cliffs are clothed with woods almost to the water’s edge. The two places cannot be compared; they are so different that neither is complete without the other. Some love best the boats and shallow pools and shaded river of Lynmouth; and to some the wide view from Lynton hill seems the fairest thing in England.

Wherever we stay ourselves, there is little to be gained by taking the car up the cliff.[195] The only roads that lead away from Lynton are the Parracombe road and the road to Hunter’s Inn, which is not open to motors—that wonderful road that runs through the wild Valley of Rocks, and past the Castle Rock with its fine views of the coast, and past Lee Abbey on its grassy plateau, and then for miles along the face of the cliff, with dense woods closing round it on every side, and, through the trees, hints of a blue sea very far below. This narrow way that is hung so high in air, and has so many sharp corners and steep pitches, is truly not a motoring road. It turns inland where a gap comes in the cliffs, and ends at Hunter’s Inn, in a narrow gorge that is sheltered from every wind.

From Lynton we look over the roofs of Lynmouth to Countisbury Hill and the red road that climbs it—apparently quite perpendicularly. Into the mind there steals a hope that this is not our road. But it is.

We may avoid it, of course, by going back to Simonsbath and taking the road through Exford and Whiddon Cross to Dunster—a road that is fairly good, if dull. But most of[196] us will think the loss of all the beauty of the moors and woods is too heavy a price to pay for ease of travelling. The lower part of Countisbury Hill, it is true, is quite as rough and nearly as precipitous as the hill to Lynton, but as we rise the surface becomes quite good, and the gradient is nowhere so steep as at the bottom. And from the top of the cliff we look away across the heather to the high uplands of Exmoor, and see below us on the right the green cleft in the hills that is the Doone Valley.

THROUGH SOMERSET AGAIN

SUMMARY OF SECOND RUN THROUGH SOMERSET

Distances.

Roads.

VII
THROUGH SOMERSET AGAIN

Porlock is a word of dread significance to those who are interested in the roads of England. A precipitous hill nearly three miles long, with a surface of sand and stones and several sharp corners—such is the vision that this name invokes. There is, however, not the least necessity to lower ourselves into Porlock on these alarming gradients. Near the top of the hill there is a private road that turns off to the left, and may be used for the sum of one shilling. It is narrow, and has a poor surface and two “hairpin” turns, but it is nowhere steep, and the woods through which it runs are entrancing. The car slips gently down among the birches and rowan-trees, and soon we see the bay below us with its dark grey beach, and Porlock under the hill.

The two roads join, and run into the village together, at the corner where the “Ship” Inn and the cottages round it, with their thatched roofs and porches and gay creepers, make a pretty picture with the green hill for background. Indeed, all Porlock is made of pretty pictures: an inland village could hardly be more decorative. There was a time when it was not an inland village, but a favourite landing-place for visitors of various nations but of one marauding aim. It does not to-day appear a promising field for a robber of any ambition, but time was, I believe, when it was quite a stirring place, with a royal palace and much prosperity. When the Danes landed here in the night they were routed to their ships with empty hands: but when, a hundred and fifty years later, no less a man than Harold Godwinson sailed in from his exile in Ireland, he was not content with plundering and burning Porlock itself, but made it a centre for expeditions. He built himself a fort here, whence he could comfortably raid the country that was afterwards his own kingdom. The French invasion of the seventeenth century[201] turned out to be a false alarm, but none the less the inhabitants arose as one man, armed themselves valiantly with scythes and pikes, and hurried away to Exeter to join William of Orange—which seems an original way of repelling invasion.

There is an interesting church here. The alabaster figures of a knight and his lady in elaborate headdresses represent Lord Harington of Aldingham and his wife, afterwards Lady Bonville; whose finely carved garments and faces have been thickly covered with deep-cut initials by those who love antiquities as the Conqueror loved the tall deer.

Those whose love of antiquities is of another kind will find it worth their while to run to the “Anchor” Inn at Porlock Weir, where every room is rich in ancient furniture and vessels of copper and brass. The road that leads to it is excellent, and so is the one that takes us on to Dunster, though the redness of its surface adds a new terror to dust. We pass through Allerford with a fine view of the hills and a glimpse of the old pack-horse bridge; but when we reach[202] the by-way to Selworthy we shall do well to turn aside. For this pretty lane, which is roofed with foliage as completely as a pergola, leads not only to an interesting church and a tithe-barn, but to a group of almshouses that is unequalled in its simple way: half a dozen thatched and gabled cottages ranged, not in a stiff row, but round a sloping green, with wild woods to shelter them, and walnut-trees to shade them, and hollyhocks and fuchsias to make them gay. Between them and the woods a tiny stream trickles through the moss, and over it a rough tree-stem has been flung to serve as bridge.

After a few more miles on the fine red road, with Dunkerry Hill conspicuous on the right, we see, first Minehead lying by the sea and spreading up the hill, and then the watch-tower of Dunster. A minute later we drive into the Middle Ages.

This street of Dunster makes one half in love with the feudalism that could produce so perfect a picture. On one side are the porch and archway of the “Luttrell Arms”; on the other the octagonal yarn-market, gabled[203] and tiled and mossy, with a little mullioned window in each gable; between them lies the straight, wide street; and in the background, dominating and protective, the castle towers are lifted high upon their wooded hill. Through all the centuries between the Conquest and to-day this castle has had no masters but the Mohuns and the Luttrells, and there is nothing in Dunster that is not connected, directly or indirectly, with one of these two ancient names. These buildings to right and left of us, for instance—this inn with the mediæval porch and the beautiful north wing, and this market-house that used to be the scene of “a very celebrate market at Dunstorre ons a wekes”—were both built by George Luttrell of the sixteenth century and repaired by George Luttrell of the seventeenth. And if we walk down the wide street and turn to the left we shall find the church of the Mohuns’ priory, the Benedictine priory that the first Mohun of Dunster founded, “pricked by the fear of God.”

It is a very notable church. “The late priory of blake monkes,” says Leland, “stoode[204] yn the rootes of the north-west side of the castelle, and was a celle to Bathe. The hole chirch of the late priory servith now for the paroche chirch. Afore tymes the monkes had the est parte closid up to their use.” Of late years the church has been restored to the form it had aforetimes, with the seats of the prior and monks, and the monastic choir. The very beautiful rood-screen with the canopy of fan-tracery, which was set up in the fifteenth century, forms the entrance to the parish choir: the choir of the monks is reached through the curious arch that is wider below than above—an arrangement made by the brothers themselves to allow room for their processions. Round about the high altar of the priory are monuments of the Luttrells. Thomas Luttrell, whose great Elizabethan memorial is in the south-east chapel, was the father of the man who rebuilt the castle and did so much for Dunster—George Luttrell, who kneels here in effigy; and the slab that now lies under the window of the south aisle once covered the grave of the Lady Elizabeth who, as a widow, bought the manor of Dunster from[205] the widow of Sir John de Mohun. On the north side of the altar is the alabaster figure, though probably not the tomb, of her son Sir Hugh, first Luttrell of Dunster, Great Seneschal of Normandy, Steward of the Household to Queen Joan, a warrior who won much renown in fighting the French and the great Glyndwr and the little Perkin Warbeck. Most of the Mohuns were buried at their abbey of Bruton, but here in the monks’ choir, under a canopy, is the figure of Dame Hawise, wife of the second Sir Reynold de Mohun.

Near the church are some remains of the monastic buildings: the refectory, the prior’s apparently impregnable barn, a couple of archways, and, in the vicarage garden, a lovely thirteenth-century dovecot with a tiled roof and hanging creepers.

Although the “glory of this toun rose by the Moions,” and though the memory of them is everywhere, it is so many centuries since they went away to Cornwall—to Hall near Fowey, and later to Boconnoc—that there are few actual relics of them left. Of the three castles that they built successively[206] upon the hill there remains little more than a gateway of the third, the gateway with the massive door and the mighty knocker of iron. It is just within the main entrance, and strangely enough was built by the husband of Dame Hawise, whose tomb is the only Mohun monument in the church. The castellated gatehouse itself is the work of the first Luttrell of Dunster. His descendants still live in the great red dwelling-house with the martlets of the Luttrells over the door, but by their kindness we are allowed, with a guide, to climb the steep path under the yew-hedge that is sixty feet high; and to see the strange half-tropical plants of the gardens, the cork-tree and the lemon-tree upon the wall; and then to climb still higher to the bowling-green and look out upon the park and the Severn Sea.

This was not always a bowling-green. It was here that the keep stood till great Robert Blake, as formidable on shore as at sea, brought all his batteries against it, and the Parliament finally dismantled it. The whole castle, indeed, would have been ruined[207] if it had not been wanted as a prison for poor Mr. Prynne. Some years earlier, while there was a royalist garrison in the castle, young Prince Charles was sent hither for safety; and here, as elsewhere, tradition has assigned a certain Red Room to him, for no other reason than that it contained a hiding-hole.[18]

There is a real delight, after all our experiences on the rough precipitous hills of Devon, in swinging away from Dunster on a good and level road—the road that is on the whole the best in Somerset. So pleasant is it that some, no doubt, will stoutly refuse to pause or turn aside for many a mile. For others, however, the lure of ancient stones is very strong; and these will leave the highway more than once between Dunster and Taunton. In Washford, for instance, there is a turn to the right that leads in a moment to the Abbey of Cleeve. Here in a rough field stands the gatehouse with the genial motto, Patens porta esto,[208] ulli claudaris honesto, and the statue of the abbey’s patron-saint, and upon the inner side the crucifix and the tablet with the builder’s name, Dovel. Poor William Dovel, last abbot of Cleeve, had a sore heart when he passed out under these pointed arches that he had raised for others, not himself, to use, and saw his own name overhead upon the masonry, and remembered all his loving, futile work upon the walls of his abbey. It was a poor Cistercian house, with a small income and no jewels nor golden chalices to tempt a king; but even trifling sums were acceptable to Henry, and though a thousand marks were offered for “his grasious goodnes,” the abbey was doomed. So William Dovel went forth of this gate, and with him “XVII prystes off very honest lyffe and conversation,” who “kept alwayes grett hospytalyte to the relyffe off the countre.” There is much of Dovel’s work in the buildings of the monastery. As we enter the garth the western cloister is on our left, with Perpendicular windows and mossy roof; facing us are the little pointed windows of the dormitory, and below them[209] the Early English doorway of the vaulted chapter-house. Dovel’s refectory, with timbered roof and carved finials, is reached by a staircase on the southern side of the quadrangle, and behind it in a little garden is a pavement of heraldic tiles, bearing the arms of many benefactors. Of the church hardly anything remains.

Our good road takes us on, through Williton, to the foot of the Quantocks, with the sea and the distant Welsh shore upon the left. Beyond the railway we bear round to the right and drive below the green and purple slopes of the hills that were loved and often trodden by Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Hazlitt, the hills on which the writing of the Ancient Mariner was planned. At Crowcombe among the trees there is a tall cross in the village, and a beautiful one in the churchyard, and a porch with fan-tracery. About three miles beyond this we may turn aside for a moment to Combe Florey, and see the old red manor-house of the Floreys with their three flowers over the gateway, and the village where Sydney Smith’s blue pills were a doubtful blessing,[210] and the church where he preached, and the vicarage on the hill, where he tried to impose upon his London visitors by fastening antlers to his donkeys’ heads. It was here that Henry Luttrell spent a day with him. “He had not his usual soup-and-pattie look,” wrote Sydney Smith, “but a sort of apple-pie depression, as if he had been staying with a clergyman.… He was very agreeable, but spoke too lightly, I thought, of veal soup.”[19]

At Bishop’s Lydeard is a church that is fine enough in itself to wile us from the highway. The bishop who gave it its name was the learned and literary Asser, who has told us himself how King Alfred asked for his friendship, which indeed seems to have been worth having. “He asked me eagerly to devote myself to his service and become his friend, to leave everything I possessed … and he promised he would give me more than an equivalent for it in his own dominions.” This manor of Bishop’s Lydeard was part of the equivalent he gave, when Asser, after some hesitation, left St. David’s and came[211] to be Bishop of Sherborne. Having forsaken the main road to see the splendid tower of this church, and the painted screen and bench-ends, and the tall cross in the churchyard, we may as well drive on a little further to the very foot of the wooded Quantocks, to the church and manor-house of Cothelstone. For many centuries this land was owned by the Stawells, who have left their cross-lozengy above the house-door and in the church; and in later years it became the home of Shelley’s blue-eyed daughter, Ianthe. As we pass the outer gateway, on which two of Jeffreys’ victims swung in Lord Stawell’s despite, we can catch a glimpse of the inner gatehouse and of the red-tiled roof and Jacobean doorway beyond. This is but a fragment of the old manor-house, for when that “loftie proud man,” Sir John, raised four troops for Charles I. he was sent to prison for it, and his house was brought low by Blake.

There is a letter still existing, yellow now with age and very fragile at the folds, in which Sir John’s bailiff writes to him piteously concerning this disaster. “The[212] cruell and base dealyng,” he says, “wch is now acted at Cothelstone doth astonish and amaze all people wch do either see it or heare of it; for they have now taken downe all the Leads of the house … and have already taken downe that part of the house wch is over against my Ladye’s garden.… I am very sorry that ther is occasion gyven me to make soe sadd a relation unto you.… I beseech God to send us better tymes.” It was in the eighteenth century that this restored wing of the old house passed to the Esdailes, ancestors of that Edward Esdaile who married Shelley’s daughter.

Behind the house is the church that was once the private chapel. It has some carved bench-ends and some old glass, but its special features are the two beautiful tombs in the south chapel: the finely carved figures of a fourteenth-century Stawell and his wife, with their painted shields below them, and the still more beautiful Elizabethan tomb with the effigies of marble. In a corner of the churchyard is a white stone “in sweet memory of Ianthe.”

Again we return to our high-road, and this time do not pause till we drive into the market-place of Taunton, the quiet centre of a country-town, where cabbages are bought and sold, and loitering cabmen smoke their pipes without a thought of Monmouth or of Jeffreys. Yet some of these very houses were wreathed with flowers at the coming of the foolish duke: here where the fountain is he stood and smiled while the pious maids of Taunton, made rebels by his handsome face, gave him a Bible, and a fine banner of their own working, “One would have thought the people’s wits were flown away in the flights of their joy.” Here he was proclaimed King James and called King Monmouth, and here his followers paid for their ill-placed devotion in torrents of blood. Into this market-place came Kirke and his Lambs with their victims in chains; and over there at the corner of Fore Street and High Street stood the “White Hart,” whose signpost was the gibbet. Hither came Jeffreys of the sinister face. “He breathed death like a destroying angel,” says Toulmin, “and[214] ensanguined his very ermines with blood. The victims remained unburied; the houses and steeples were covered with their heads, and the trees laden almost as thick with quarters as with leaves.” He went in to his monstrous work through that arch with the embattled towers; and passed on through the inner entrance of yellow stone, where Henry VII.’s shield and Bishop Langton’s are above the door. Within it is the great hall, with the timbered roof and the whitewashed walls that were hung with scarlet while Jeffreys, “mostly drunk,” stormed at his victims of the Bloody Assizes. The little girl—she was hardly more than a child—who had won Monmouth’s easy smiles by her speech among the June flowers in the market-place was ransomed with her schoolfellows; but her sister had seen the Judge’s face, and died of the terror of it.

Such are some of the memories of quiet, prosperous Taunton. Nor is the rest of its long history much more placid. The eighth-century castle of wood to which King Ina of the West Saxons called his “fatherhood, aldermen, and wisest commons, with the[215] godly men of his kingdom, to consult of great and weighty matters,” only survived for twenty-one years. In the twelfth century the Bishop of Winchester built another, which was improved and enlarged by his successors, and has partly weathered the many storms and stresses of its long experience: Wars of the Roses, invasion by Perkin, and the siege of the Civil War. Taunton held for the Parliament, consistently, but at the first not very stoutly. No sooner did the royalists come near the town, says Clarendon, than two “substantial inhabitants” were sent out to treat with the general; while the garrison settled the matter by departing, like Perkin on a former occasion from the same castle, “with wonderful celerity.” A year later, however, the Parliament took Taunton again, and making Blake its defender, kept it. For Blake, who afterwards summed up a sailor’s duty in memorable words—“It is not for us to mind state affairs, but to keep the foreigners from fooling us”—knew the duty of a soldier too. “As we neither fear your menaces nor accept your proffers,” he answered the summons to surrender, “so we[216] wish you for time to come to desist from all overtures of the like nature unto us.” Wyndham, Goring, Hopton, Grenville, all did their utmost in vain. It remained for Charles II.’s spite to ruin Taunton’s defences. The castle that defied the King was dismantled, and the town-walls utterly wiped away.

Of the Augustinian Priory that was founded by Bishop Giffard of Winchester and supported by so many noteworthy people—by Henry de Blois and the Mohuns, Montacutes and Arundels, William of Wykeham and Jasper Tudor—there is nothing left but a barn, the priory church of St. James, and the splendid chapel of St. Mary Magdalen, now the parish church. The graceful tower from which Macaulay looked out over a land flowing with milk and honey was shortly afterwards taken down, but the present one, with its three tiers of Decorated windows and its pinnacles and parapet, is exactly copied, it is said, from the original.

From Taunton we pass, through pretty undulating country, by way of Hatch Beauchamp to Ilminster. After the wild scenery of Devon this quiet land is not[217] exciting; but there are pleasant woods here and there, and the villages of Somerset need fear no comparisons with any in England. The towns are less attractive, except in the matter of churches. Ilminster, for instance, is clean and old-fashioned, but has no real beauty save the church of yellow stone with the fine tower. When Monmouth made his successful progress through this country in his youth, from hospitable house to flower-strewn town, he came to this church one Sunday morning from White Lackington. He saw the tower with the triple windows and Sir William Wadham’s fifteenth-century transepts; but the nave has been rebuilt since then, and betrays the fact. In the northern transept is the enormous tomb of the builder, inlaid with brasses; and near it is the ponderous but unlovely monument of Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, founders of Wadham College. They “lie both interr’d under a stately monument,” says Prince, “now much defaced, the greater is the pity, by the rude hands of children and time.”

At the outskirts of the town is Dillington House, where Mr. Speke entertained the[218] popular duke when he came to Ilminster. We pass the entrance to the park as we drive out upon the road to Yeovil—the park whose palings were broken down by the crowd that surged about Monmouth, when he rode in with his self-constituted bodyguard of two thousand horsemen. Our progress, if greeted with less enthusiasm than his, is quicker. We spin through dull scenery upon a splendid road till the bluff outline of Hamdon Hill comes into sight. For a moment we touch the Fosse Way, then swing slowly round the base of the hill through Stoke, and see St. Michael’s Tower above us on the right.

It was this sugar-loaf hill that prompted William de Mortain the swashbuckler to name his castle Montacute, when he built it where the tower now stands. His father Robert de Mortain, who had come successfully through many battles with the standard of St. Michael borne before him, regarded that saint as the particular patron of his family. It was he who dedicated “the guarded Mount” in Cornwall and gave the monastery to its namesake in Normandy, “for the health of his soul.” His son, whose piety was[219] peculiarly spasmodic, not only built his castle here, but founded the Cluniac priory whose lovely fifteenth-century gatehouse still stands at the foot of the hill. Everything at Montacute is lovely: this gatehouse with the oriel windows and the towers and creepers: the church with its many styles of architecture, from Norman to Decorated: the village square with its houses of warm yellow stone, and all its windows made beautiful with drip-stones and mullions: above all, the splendid Tudor front of Montacute House, and its formal, parapeted garden.

The Summer-land, as we leave it, is not beautiful, nor is Yeovil an interesting town. But the road is very good; the engine is singing softly; and as for us—we are remembering.

FOOTNOTES

[1] See “Wells and Glastonbury,” by T. S. Holmes.

[2] See Prince’s “Worthies of Devon.”

[3] German schelm.

[4] See “Plymouth Armada Heroes,” by M. W. S. Hawkins.

[5] It is a repliqua of the one at Tavistock.

[6] Open to the public on one afternoon a week, but not always on the same day.

[7] The King’s General in the West—more often called Granville: but as his family is so often mentioned in these pages I thought it best to keep to one form.

[8] “History of Dunster,” by Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte.

[9] “Old Falmouth,” by Miss S. E. Gay.

[10] “Pendennis and St. Mawe’s,” by Captain Oliver.

[11] “Old Falmouth,” by Miss S. E. Gay.

[12] “History of the Granville Family,” by Roger Granville.

[13] “History of the Granville Family.”

[14] “Copyed from oone accounte in Maisster Alston’s Seamanshyppe Booke.”

[15] From “History of the Granville Family.”

[16] See “The Vicar of Morwenstow,” by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould.

[17] Do not take the road to the left, marked Lynton on the signpost, for it goes down the notorious “Beggar’s Roost” hill, roughly one in three.

[18] Most of the facts relating to the history of Dunster are derived from Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte’s “History of Dunster.”

[19] “The Holland House Circle,” by Lloyd Sandars.

[221]

INDEX

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CASTLE ROCK, LYNTON	Frontispiece
	FACING PAGE
CHEDDAR GORGE	8
THE BISHOP’S EYE, WELLS	12
WELLS CATHEDRAL	14
ST. MARY’S CHAPEL (OFTEN CALLED ST. JOSEPH’S), GLASTONBURY	16
THE CHOIR, GLASTONBURY	22
MARKET PLACE, SOMERTON	26
SIDMOUTH	36
GUILDHALL, EXETER	44
CLOISTER, EXETER CATHEDRAL	50
[x]LUSTLEIGH	58
HOLNE BRIDGE	64
BUTTERWALK, DARTMOUTH	86
SLAPTON	90
SOUTH POOL CREEK, SALCOMBE	92
FORT CHARLES AND BOLT HEAD	94
DRAKE’S ISLAND, FROM THE HOE	98
LOOE RIVER	106
LOOE HARBOUR	108
STREET OF POLPERRO	110
POLPERRO	112
RESTORMEL CASTLE	114
BODINNICK FERRY	118
PONT PILL, FOWEY	120
ARWENACK AVENUE, FALMOUTH	126
[xi]KING HARRY’S FERRY	130
THE LIZARD	132
MULLION COVE	134
ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT	138
NEWLYN HARBOUR	140
THE LAND’S END	142
ST. IVES	148
TRERICE	150
GATEHOUSE, LANHYDROCK	156
TOWN GATE, LAUNCESTON	158
TINTAGEL	164
MORWENSTOW	172
CLOVELLY	176
STREET IN CLOVELLY	178
CLOVELLY HARBOUR	180
[xii]ON THE TAW	186
LYNMOUTH	192
VIEW FROM LYNTON	194
RIVER LYN	196
PORLOCK	200
DUNSTER	204
GATEHOUSE, CLEEVE ABBEY	208
TAUNTON CASTLE	214

	PAGE
I
A RUN ACROSS SOMERSET	1
II
THE HEART OF DEVON	31
III
THE SOUTH COAST OF DEVON	71
IV
SOUTH CORNWALL	103
V
[viii]NORTH CORNWALL	143
VI
NORTH DEVON	177
VII
THROUGH SOMERSET AGAIN	197

Clifton Suspension Bridge
Clevedon	11½	miles
Wells	25⅛	”
Ilchester	17⅝	”
Crewkerne	11	”
Devon Border	12	”
Total	77¼	miles

Exeter to Plymouth viâ Ashburton	44	miles
Exeter to Launceston viâ Okehampton	42	”

Exeter
Newton Abbot	16	miles
Torquay	7	”
Totnes	9	”
Dartmouth, viâ Brixham	16	”
Kingsbridge	15	”
Salcombe and back	13	”
Plymouth	20	”
Total	96	miles

Plymouth
Looe, viâ Horningtops	23	miles
Polperro	5	”
Lostwithiel	12	”
Fowey	7	”
Truro	22	”
Falmouth	11	”
Lizard	19	”
Penzance	28	”
Land’s End, viâ St. Buryan	12	”
Total	139	miles

Land’s End
St. Ives	19	miles
Newquay	33	”
St. Columb Major	7	”
(Bedruthan Steps and back	14	”)
Bodmin	15	”
Liskeard	14	”
Launceston	20	”
Back to Bodmin	22	”
Wadebridge	7	”
Tintagel	17	”
Bude	19	”
Morwenstow	11	”
Total	198	miles

Porlock
Taunton	30	miles
Ilminster	12¼	”
Yeovil	13¾	”
Total	56	miles