Baring-Gould Sabine
A Book of the West. Volume I Devon
At that moment he heard the tramp of horses, and saw John Fitz and four more galloping after him. So as not to seem to be running away Slanning remained on the spot, and on John Fitz coming up asked what he wanted. Fitz drew his sword and raved that he would revenge the insult offered him, and Slanning was forced to defend himself. He was wounded, and someone struck Slanning from behind, whereupon he staggered forwards and Fitz ran him through the body. Local tradition, and Prince in his Worthies, will have it that the affray took place at Fitzford Gate.
Nicolas Slanning was buried in Bickleigh Church, which, when "restored" and made desperately uninteresting, lost the great feature of Slanning's monument, which was fine, though of plaster. Now the inscription alone remains:
"Great was the lamentation that the country side made for the death of so beloved a Gentleman as Maister Slanning was."
John Fitz, then aged twenty-four, fled to France, where he remained until, by his wife's exertions, a pardon was procured for him, December 16th, 1599.
He returned home, and for a year or two led a blameless life – at least he did not murder any more of his friends – and at the coronation of King James I. was knighted.
Whether the honour conferred on him was too much for him, or whether there was a mad strain in his blood, cannot be said, but on his return from London he broke out into wild ways again. Finding the presence of his wife and only child a restraint on him, he turned them out of the house, and surrounded himself with dissolute companions, chief among whom was "Lusty Jacke, one whose deedes were indeed meane, whose good qualities altogether none."
In the summer of 1605 he received a summons to London to appear before the courts, in answer to a claim of compensation for their father's death made by the children of Nicolas Slanning. He set out attended by a single servant. He was a prey to terrors, particularly afraid of his father-in-law, Sir William Courtenay, who he knew was very incensed with him because of his behaviour to his wife, the daughter of Sir William. He had moreover been squandering money which had been settled on her by deed. Every day his fancies got more disordered, till he put up at Kingston-on-Thames, his last resting-place before reaching London; but there, a prey to alarms and fancies, he would not lie, and rode on to Twickenham, where he stopped at "The Anchor," a small hostelry kept by one Daniel Alley, whom he roused out of his bed about 2 a.m. The host, to accommodate him, was forced to surrender to him his own bed, and send his wife to sleep with the children. But the knight could not rest after he had lain down, and was heard crying out that he was pursued by enemies.
Very early, the host rose that he might go out and mow a field, but his wife entreated him not to leave the house. He laughed at her alarms, but she persisted, and a neighbour who was going to help in the mowing came in. Sir John Fitz started out of sleep on hearing voices, and persuaded that his fears were verified, rushed from his room in his nightgown, with his sword, and ran Alley through the body. He then wounded the unhappy wife, and finding the error into which he had fallen, finally mortally wounded himself. A doctor was sent for, but he tore off the bandages, and so died, lamented of none save Lusty Jack.
No sooner was he dead than the Earl of Northumberland hastened to buy the wardship of the little heiress, Mary Fitz, then nine years and one week old. At the time the Crown became the guardian of orphans whose lands were held in capite or direct from the Crown, and was wont to sell the wardships to the highest bidders. The guardian had complete control, to the exclusion of the mother, over the ward, and he could marry the ward as he liked, this also being generally an affair of money. As soon as Mary Fitz was twelve, the Earl, as she was a desirable heiress, disposed of her to his brother, Sir Allan Percy, aged thirty-one; she did not, however, live with her husband, but was placed under the charge of Lady Hatton. Sir Allan died in November, 1611, three years after, and then it was said: – "Sir Allan Percy is gone the way of all flesh, dying, his lady the way of all quicke flesh, having stolen out of my Lady Eliz. Hatton's house in London, in the edge of an evening, and coupled herself in marriage with Mr. Darcy, my lord Darcye's eldest son." This was on December 18th, 1611, just about a month after the death of husband number one. He was of her own age, and no doubt she found him to her liking; however, he lived only a few months after his marriage, and Lady Mary was again a widow, and was imposed (1612), hardly by her own choice, on Sir Charles Howard, fourth son of Thomas, Earl of Suffolk. So she had number three when scarcely sixteen. Sir Charles died in 1622; consequently they were together for ten years. She had two daughters by Sir Charles Howard, and a son, George Howard, is mentioned, but there is some doubt as to his parentage. In 1628 she took a fourth, Sir Richard Grenville, the younger brother of the gallant Sir Bevil. He was a very disreputable, bad-tempered, altogether ill-conditioned fellow. Lady Howard took good care, before accepting number four, to have her property well tied up to herself, so that he could not touch it. When he discovered this he was furious, and treated her with insolence and violence. By him she had two daughters, Elizabeth, who died early, and Mary.
The condition of family broil became at last so intolerable that she was forced to appeal to the justices of peace against him, and finally to endeavour to obtain a divorce, 1631-2. The revelations then made on both sides are not pleasant reading. If he was abusive, she did not keep her tongue shut behind her teeth.
The story of her further troubles during the Civil War, of Sir Richard's playing fast and loose with one party and then the other, of his masterful seizure of her house at Fitzford and her estates in Devon, need not here be told at length. She lived in London, and was put to desperate shifts for money. At last Sir Richard was thrown into prison, but escaped to France, 1646. Lady Grenville, or as she now called herself – for she held herself to be divorced – Lady Howard, at once returned to Fitzford, found it gutted and in a wretched condition, and set to work to cleanse, repair, and refurnish. Her son, George Howard, managed her business for her till his death in September, 1671, without issue. His mother, at this date very old, was probably bedridden; the shock of her son's death was too much for her, and she died a month later. Knowing her to be ill, her first cousin, Sir William Courtenay, hastened to her bedside, and, probably with the connivance of a trusted maid, Thomasine Wills, persuaded the old lady to make over to him all her landed estates, to the exclusion of her two daughters, who were alive and married. It was an infamous piece of roguery, and it brought no luck on the Courtenays.
Popular feeling was outraged and has revenged itself on her, who really was not so much to blame as Sir William Courtenay, in painting her in the blackest colours. She is popularly represented as having murdered her first three husbands, as conceiving a deadly hatred against her daughter Elizabeth, who apparently died early, but cannot be traced, and as not exactly walking but riding after death. When the clock strikes twelve every night she is supposed to start in a coach made of bones from the gateway of Fitzford House, drawn by headless horses; before the carriage runs a sable hound with one eye in the middle of his forehead. The spectral coach makes its way to Okehampton, where the hound plucks a blade of grass from the castle mound, and then the cortège returns to Fitzford, where the blade is laid on the threshold of the gate. This is Lady Howard's penance, and it will last till every blade of grass on the mound of Okehampton Castle hill has been plucked, which will not be till the crack of doom, as the grass grows faster than the hound can carry it off.
I frequently heard of the coach going from Okehampton to Tavistock when I was a boy; and there was a ballad about it, of which I was able to recall a few fragments, which I completed and published along with the original air in my Songs of the West. As a child I remember the deadly fear that I felt lest I should be on the road at night, and my nurse was wont to comfort me by saying there was no fear of the "Lady's Coach," except after midnight.
In the vicarage garden are some very early inscribed stones collected from the neighbourhood. There is no token on them that they are Christian. Their inscriptions are: —
1. Neprani fili Condevi
2. Sabini fili Maccodecheti
3. Dobunii Fabri fili Enabarri.
This latter has on it also in oghans Enabarr. The second has the test word Mac for Map or Mab, indicative of Irish occupation. Moreover Dechet was a name, probably of a sept or tribe in Kerry, where several stones inscribed with the same name are found.35
The third is interesting, for Dobun was a faber or smith. In Celtic organisation every tuatha or tribe had its chief smith, and every fine or clan had its smith and forge as well, all whose rights and dues were determined by law; moreover, the head smith of the tribe was a man of very considerable consequence, social and political.
Dobuni, in the third, is the Latin for the genitive Douvinias, also a Kerry name. A stone at Ballintaggart bears an inscription to a son of Dobunus, Muccoidovvinias. Another stone of another son is at Burnham, also in Kerry, in Lord Ventry's collection. Here, then, we have written and engraven in stone for our learning the record of an Irish settlement from Kerry in the neighbourhood of Tavistock. If S. Rumon preached there he could preach in Gaelic and be understood.
Of the abbey of Tavistock there are but poor remains. Betsy Grimbal's tower in the vicarage garden was a gate-house, and takes its name from a woman who was murdered there by a soldier. A porch into the refectory or abbot's hall is the dairy of the "Bedford Inn." Some fragments of the monastic buildings are united and converted into library and municipal buildings, but they are dominated and oppressed by an architectural monstrosity – an absurd Town Hall in nondescript style.
The Drake statue is of bronze, and fine, in front of the Fitzford gate, and possesses the bas-reliefs on the base, in which the replica on Plymouth Hoe is deficient. Sir Francis Drake was born at Crowndale, the first farm down the Tavy valley. The old house has been destroyed. The Drakes were of yeoman origin in Whitchurch, nothing more. They laboured to prove a kinship to the ancient family of Drake of Ash, but failed, and Sir Francis Drake was granted an entirely new coat of arms.
The story is told that Sir Francis and Sir Bernard, – the latter the head of the Ash family – had a heated quarrel over the matter in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Bernard objecting to the navigator assuming the wyvern gules.
"Well," said Bess, "I will give Sir Francis a new coat, a ship in full sail, with the wyvern turned head over heels at the poop."
But Sir Bernard was too important a man to be offended; she thought better of it, and gave Sir Francis the noble coat of a fess wavy between two pole stars.
The story is pronounced to be apocryphal.
Sir Francis became possessor by purchase of Buckland Abbey (1581), which is not only beautifully situated, but is interesting. It is, in fact, the cruciform abbey church converted into an Elizabethan mansion. The nave has been floored, and the drawing-room upstairs is in it; the hall below is also in part therein. There is here some splendid plaster-work. The choir was pulled down and a kitchen wing built at right angles. In the grounds are some remarkably fine tulip trees.
Buckland Monachorum Church is large, Perpendicular, but cold, and has a naked, unfurnished look internally from being without its screen.
There are two points on no account to be missed by a visitor to Tavistock, and both can be combined in one drive or walk – the Raven Rock above the Virtuous Lady Mine, opposite the point where the Walla falls into the Tavy; the other the better known Morwell Rocks. The former, hardly inferior to the other, but less known, is reached from the Bere Alston road.
At Morwell is the hunting-lodge of Abbot Courtenay, cousin of Bishop Grandisson, and appointed by him to Tavistock Abbey. It was a very unsatisfactory appointment. He alienated the property of the abbey, and allowed its buildings and discipline to fall into decay, and got the monastery into a debt equivalent to twenty thousand pounds of our money. All he cared for was sport, like the jolly monk in Chaucer's Prologue.
The quadrangle, which was in a singularly untouched condition, with hall and butteries and kitchens, was somewhat wantonly mutilated some fifty years ago and turned into farmhouse and cottages.
From Tavistock Lydford can be visited with ease. This was a very strong place at one time, a sort of inland cliff-castle, situated in a fork between ravines, with mounds and trenches drawn across the neck. The castle, an uninteresting ruin, occupies a natural mound artificially shaped; it was long the Stannary prison. The waterfall is graceful rather than fine, a steep slide of seventy feet in height in the midst of woods. From this the river Lyd should be ascended for three miles by a path through a ravine that grows in grandeur till it is spanned by a bridge. The ascent may well be continued to Kits Steps, another fall of a totally different character, much spoiled by refuse-heaps from an abandoned mine. From Lydford a visitor should take a walk across the shoulder of Hare Tor to the rocks of Tavy Cleave, perhaps the grandest scene on Dartmoor.
Another excursion is to be made to Brent Tor, a subaqueous volcanic cone, crowned by a little church. The base of the hill has been fortified. The banks are most perfect on the east. The view from the top of the tor is remarkably extensive and fine. Endsleigh, the country seat of the Duke of Bedford, is almost unsurpassed in England for beauty of scenery. Mary Tavy Church has a good new screen, and Peter Tavy a scrap of an old one and remains of a magnificent early Tudor pew, wantonly demolished.
From either Whit Tor may be ascended, a tor of gabbro, or volcanic traplike formation. The summit has been fortified. On Peter Tavy Moor is a fine circle of upright stones, and a menhir. Peter Tavy Combe should on no account be passed over unseen.
Note. – Books on Tavistock: —
Alford (Rev. D.), The Abbots of Tavistock. Plymouth, 1891.
Bray (Mrs.), The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy, 2 vols. new edition. London: Kent and Co., 1879. A valuable book for old stories and superstitions. Mr. Bray was also the first to explore Dartmoor for its antiquities. But all the rubbish about Druids must be put aside. When written in 1832 antiquaries knew no better; they talked and wrote nonsense on such subjects.
Evans (R.), Home Scenes; or, Tavistock and its Vicinity. Tavistock, 1846; now not easily procured.
CHAPTER XVI.
TORQUAY
As a health resort – The Palk family – Myths concerning the family – Its real history – The Cary family – Landing at Brixham of William of Orange – Kent's Cavern – Order of deposits therein – Churches in the neighbourhood – Haccombe – The Teign-head combes – Wolborough – The Three Wells – Aller pottery – Its story – Red mud.
This pleasant winter residence is now stretched from Paignton on one side to Marychurch on the other, with different climates in its several parts. Torquay is backed by a high ridge against the east, and consequently is sheltered from cutting winds from that quarter. S. Marychurch is on the top of the cliffs, and catches every wind. Paignton looks across the bay due east, and is therefore exposed to the most bracing of all winds. In Frying Pan Row, Torquay, one may be grilled the same day that at Paignton one may have one's nose and fingers turned blue.
A century ago Torquay was a little fishing village, numbering but a few poor cottages.
Torquay has benefited largely from the Palk family, but then the Palks also have benefited largely by Torquay.
A cloud of dust has been stirred up to disguise the humble, but respectable, origin of the family; and even Foster in his Peerage (1882), who is always accurate when he had facts placed before him, commences with "Sir Robert Palk, descended from Henry Palk, of Ambrook, Devon (Henry VII., 1493-4)." But Ambrook, which is in Staverton, never did belong to the Palks; it was the property first of the Shapcotes, and then of the Nayles. Sir Bernard Burke, in addition to the Ambrook myth, states that Walter, seventh in descent, married Miss Abraham, and had Robert, Walter (who was member for Ashburton), and Grace. The late Sir Bernard Burke was not remarkable for accuracy, and here he has floundered into a succession of blunders. The descent from Henry Palk, of Ambrook, is apocryphal; and Walter Palk never was member for Ashburton, or for anywhere else. Another false assertion made has been that the family are descended from a Rev. Thomas Palk, of Staverton, a "celebrated" Nonconformist divine, who died in 1693. Wills proved in the Court of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter disprove this.
The real facts are these.
Walter Palk, of Ashburton, married Grace Ryder, and by her means came in for a petty farm called Lower Headborough, close to Ashburton. He died in 1707, when his personal estate was valued at £160 10s. 5½d. His son Walter married Frances, daughter of Robert Abraham, a farmer in Woodland, and his pack-horses carried serge from Ashburton over Haldon to Exeter. This is probably the origin of the story commonly told that the first Palk was a carrier between Exeter and Ashburton. He had two sons: Walter, whose son, the Rev. Jonathan Palk, vicar of Ilsington, described his father as a "little farmer with a large family." The second son, Robert, born in 1717, was sent as a sizar to Oxford, by the assistance of his uncle Abraham. He was ordained deacon, and became a poor curate in Cornwall. On Christmastide he walked to Ashburton to see his father, and as he was returning on his way home, he stood on Dart Bridge, looking down on the river, when a gentleman riding by recognised him, drew up, and said, "Is that you, Palk?" He had been a fellow-student at Oxford. Palk had a sad story to tell of privation and vexation. The other suggested to him to seek his fortune under John Company in India, and volunteered an introduction. He went out, acting as chaplain to the Stirling Castle, and during the time he was in India, attracted the attention of General Lawrence, who in 1752 obtained for him an appointment as paymaster to the army, of which he had then assumed the command. But already by clever speculation Mr. Palk had done well; the new position enabled him to vastly enlarge his profits.
He next embarked in trade, and this also proved remunerative. He came back to England for the first time in 1759. Subsequently a difficulty arose in India. The Company were debating it at the old East India House in Leadenhall Street. What capable man could they find to do the difficult work before them? At last one of them exclaimed, "Gentlemen, you forget that we have Mr. Palk at home." "The very man!" He was sent out as Governor of Madras in 1763. In 1775 General Lawrence died, and left £80,000 to his old protégé.
The acquisition of the property about Torquay, at the time when it was a place of no consideration, was a shrewd stroke of business. Mr. Palk was created a baronet, and elected to represent Devon in Parliament. Subsequently, when the Rev. John Horne Tooke, a Jacobin, as it was the fashion to call Radicals of that day, was returned to Parliament, the House settled that it would not allow of clerical members being admitted, and this would have excluded Sir Robert Palk as well as Horne Tooke, but that Palk was only in deacon's orders.
Sir Robert did much for Torquay. Sir Lawrence continued to promote the material welfare of the place in every way available.
He constructed the outer harbour and new pier, which were completed in 1870, at an outlay of £70,000. Further attractions were afforded to visitors by the provision of recreation grounds and public walks. He also gave sites for new churches, and the modern town of Torquay has risen into a place full of beauty and attraction.
"Robert Palk's touch seemed to turn everything into gold. He realised it for himself, for his children, for his relatives, for his friends, and for his surroundings. He was an ancestor to look back upon, a forefather of whom any family might reasonably be proud."36
The other family attached to Torquay to which it must look is that of Cary, as ancient and noble as that of Palk is modern and humble. The nest of the family is Cary, on the river of the same name in S. Giles-in-the-Heath, Devon, but on the borders of Cornwall. It can be traced back like those of most men to an Adam – but an Adam Cary in 1240.
Torbay is noted as the place where Dutch William arrived in 1688. He landed at Brixham on November 4th, and, as the tide was out, he called for someone to carry him ashore, whereupon a little man named Varwell volunteered.
The local story is that the good folk of Brixham presented their illustrious visitor with the following address: —
"An' please your Majesty, King William,
You're welcome to Brixham Quay,
To eat buckhorn and drink Bohea
Along wi' we,
An' please your Majesty, King William."
But the story is of course apocryphal, as the prince was not a king, and tea was at a fabulous price.
The subsequent history of the "little man" who carried the king ashore is rather singular. Having a short ambling pony, he rode bare-headed before the prince to Newton and afterwards to Exeter, and so pleased him with his zeal that the prince bade him come to court, when he should be seated on the throne, and that then he would reward Varwell. The prince also gave him a line under his hand, which was to serve as a passport to the royal presence. In due time accordingly the little man took his course to London, promising his townsmen that he would come back among them a lord at least. When, however, he arrived there, some sharpers, who learned his errand at the tavern where he put up, made Varwell gloriously drunk, and kept him in this condition for several successive weeks. During this time one of the party, having obtained the passport, went to court, with the "little man's" tale in his mouth, and received a handsome present from the king. Our adventurer, recovering himself afterwards, went to the palace without his card of admission and was repulsed as an impostor, and returned to Brixham never to hold up his head again.
It is fair to say that the Varwell family entirely repudiate the latter part of the tale, and say that the "little man" did see the king and got a hundred pounds out of him.
The troops with the prince were obliged to encamp in the open air, but William got a lodging in one of the cottages.
Whitter, who was one of the attendants on the Dutch adventurer, has left a graphic account of the landing and subsequent march: —
"It was a cold, frosty night, and the stars twinkl'd exceedingly; besides, the ground was very wet after so much rain and ill weather; the soldiers were to stand to their arms the whole night; and therefore sundry soldiers went to fetch some old hedges and cut down green wood to burn therewith and make some fire. Those who had provision in their gnap-sacks did broil it at the fire, and others went into the villages thereabouts to buy some fresh provisions for their officers, but, alas! there was little to be gotten. There was a little ale-house among the fishermen's houses, which was so extremely thronged that a man could not thrust in his head, nor get bread or ale for money. It was a happy time for the landlord, who strutted about as if indeed he had been a lord himself."
The little ale-house is probably that now entitled the "Buller Arms." It was there William is said to have slept, and to have left behind him a ring that remained in the possession of the taverner's family till it came to one Mary Churchward, who died about 1860. It was stolen from her one night by a thief who entered her room whilst she slept, and it was never recovered.
On the morrow William and his Dutchmen with a few Scots and English marched to Paignton, and many people, mostly Nonconformists, welcomed him.
A gentleman, very advanced in age, in 1880 says: —
"There are few now left who can say as I can, that they have heard their fathers and their wives' fathers talking together of the men who saw the landing of William the Third at Torbay. I have heard Captain Clements say he, as a boy, heard as many as seven or eight old men each giving the particulars of what he saw; then one said a shipload of horses hawled to the Quay, and the horses walked out all harnessed, and the quickness with which each man knew his horse and mounted it surprised them. Another old man said, 'I helped to get on shore the horses that were thrown overboard, and swam on shore, guided by only a single rope running from the ship to the shore.' My father remembered one Gaffer Will Webber, of Staverton, who lived to a great age, say that he went from Staverton as a boy with his father, who took a cartload of apples from Staverton to the highroad from Brixham to Exeter, that the soldiers might help themselves to them, and to wish them 'God-speed.'
"I merely mention this to show how easily tradition can be handed down, requiring only three or four individuals for two centuries."37
What was done by the country folk was to roll apples down the slopes from the orchards to the troops as they passed.
The prince spent the second night at Paignton in a house near the "Crown and Anchor Inn," where his room is still shown.
Next day he with his troops marched to Newton, and he took up his quarters in Ford House, belonging to Sir William Courtenay, who prudently decamped so as not to compromise himself. A room there is called the Orange Room, and is now always papered and hung with that colour. At Newton the prince's proclamation was read on the steps of the old market cross, not by the Rev. John Reynell, rector of Wolborough, as is stated on a stone erected on the spot, but by a chaplain, no doubt the fussy and pushing Burnet. Reynell had also made himself scarce. From Newton the prince marched to Exeter.
One can tell pretty well what were the political leanings of squires and parsons at the period of the Jacobite troubles, for where there was zeal for the House of Stuart, there Scotch pines were planted; where, however, the Dutchman was in favour, there lime trees were set in avenues.
In Torquay Museum is an interesting collection of relics from Kent's Cavern. This is a cave in the limestone rocks that was first explored in 1824, when Mr. Northmore, of Cleve, near Exeter, visited it with the double object, as he stated, "of discovering organic remains, and of ascertaining the existence of a temple of Mithras," and he declared himself happy to say that he was "successful in both objects." An amusing example this of the egregious nonsense that was regarded as antiquarianism at the beginning of this century. He was followed by Mr. (afterwards Sir) W. C. Trevelyan, who was the first to have obtained any results of scientific value.
The Rev. J. MacEnery, a Roman Catholic priest, whose name must be for ever associated with the Cavern, visited it in the summer of 1825. The visit was a memorable one, for, devoting himself to what he conjectured to be a favourable spot, he found several teeth and bones; and he thus sums up his feelings on the occasion: —
"They were the first fossil teeth I had ever seen, and as I laid my hands on them, relics of extinct races and witnesses of an order of things which passed away with them, I shrank back involuntarily. Though not insensible to the excitement attending new discoveries, I am not ashamed to own that in the presence of these remains I felt more of awe than joy."
He communicated his discovery to Dr. Buckland, and from time to time dug into the deposits. At that and a long subsequent period the proper method of studying deposits of this kind was not understood, and the several layers were not distinguished. Trenches were cut that went through beds separated in age by many centuries, perhaps thousands of years, and no distinction was made between what lay near the surface and what was found in the lowermost strata. A proper examination began in March, 1866, and was continued without intermission through the summer of 1880 under the able direction of Mr. W. Pengelly, at a cost of nearly two thousand pounds.
Kent's Cavern gives evidence of a double occupation by man at a remote distance of time the one from the other. The upper beds are of cave-earth. Below that is the breccia, and in the upper alone are traces of the hyena found. In the lowest strata of crystalline breccia are rude flint and chert implements of the same type as that found elsewhere in the river-drift. In association with these were the remains of the cave-bear, and a tool was found manufactured out of an already fossilised tooth of this animal. The chert and flint employed were from the gravels that lie between Newton Abbot and Torquay.
Above the breccia is the cave-earth, in which flint implements are by far more numerous, and are of a higher form, some being carefully chipped all round. The earlier tool was fashioned by heavy blows dealt against the core of flint, detaching large flakes. But the tools of the second period are neatly trimmed. The flakes were detached, very often by pressure and a jerk, and then the edges were delicately worked with a small tool. A bone needle was also met with, and bone awls, and two harpoons of reindeer antler, the one barbed on one side and the other on both.
