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DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 
AND     STRANGE     EVENTS 


BY   THE   SAME   AUTHOR 

YORKSHIRE  ODDITIES 
TRAGEDY  OF  THE  CAESARS 
CURIOUS  MYTHS 
LIVES  OF  THE  SAINTS 

ETC.    ETC. 


G.  Clint,  A.R.A.,pinxt.  Thos.  Lnpton.  sculpt. 

MARIA    FOOTE,    AFTERWARDS   COUNTESS   OF    HARRINGTON,    AS    MARIA 
DARLINGTON  IN  THE  FARCE  OF  "A  ROWLAND  FOR  AN  OLIVER  "( 1824) 


DEVONSHIRE 
CHARACTERS 

AND    STRANGE    EVENTS 
BY  S.  BARING-GOULD,  M.A. 

WITH    55    FULL-PAGE   ILLUSTRATIONS 
REPRODUCED    FROM    OLD   PRINTS,   ETC. 


O  Jupiter  ! 
Hanccine  vitam  ?  hoscine  mores  ?  hanc  dementtam  ? 


i  (Act  IV). 


LONDON.     JOHN    LANE   THE   BODLEY    HEAD 
NEW    YORK:     JOHN    LANE    COMPANY     MCMVIII 


6*70 


PLYMOUTH  :    WILLIAM   BRENDON  AND  SON,   LIMITED,   PRINTERS 


PREFACE 

IN  treating  of  Devonshire  Characters,  I  have  had 
to  put  aside  the  chief  Worthies  and  those 
Devonians  famous  in  history,  as  George  Duke 
of  Albemarle,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  Sir  Francis 
Drake,  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  the  Coleridges,  Sir 
Stafford  Northcote,  first  Earl  of  Iddesleigh,  and  many 
another ;  and  to  content  myself  with  those  who  lie  on 
a  lower  plane.  So  also  I  have  had  to  set  aside  several 
remarkable  characters,  whose  lives  I  have  given  else- 
where, as  the  Herrings  of  Langstone  (whom  I  have 
called  Grym  or  Grymstone)and  Madame  Drake,  George 
Spurle  the  Post-boy,  etc.  Also  I  have  had  to  pretermit 
several  great  rascals,  as  Thomas  Gray  and  Nicholas 
Horner.  But  even  so,  I  find  an  embarras  de  richesses, 
and  have  had  to  content  myself  with  such  as  have  had 
careers  of  some  general  interest.  Moreover,  it  has 
not  been  possible  to  say  all  that  might  have  been  said 
relative  to  these,  so  as  to  economize  space,  and  afford 
room  for  others. 

So  also,  with  regard  to  strange  incidents,  some 
limitation  has  been  necessary,  and  such  have  been 
selected  as  are  less  generally  known. 

I  have  to  thank  the  kind  help  of  many  Devonshire 
friends  for  the  loan  of  rare  pamphlets,  portraits,  or  for 
information  not  otherwise  acquirable — as  the  Earl  of 


vi  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Iddesleigh,  Lady  Rosamond  Christie,  Mrs.  Chichester 
of  Hall,  Mrs.  Ford  of  Pencarrow,  Dr.  Linnington  Ash, 
Dr.  Brushfield,  Capt.  Pentecost,  Miss  M.  P.  Willcocks, 
Mr.  Andrew  Iredale,  Mr.  W.  H.  K.  Wright,  Mr.  A. 
B.  Collier,  Mr.  Charles  T.  Harbeck,  Mr.  H.  Tapley 
Soper,  Miss  Lega-Weekes,  who  has  contributed  the 
article  on  Richard  Weekes ;  Mrs.  G.  Radford,  Mr.  R. 
Pearse  Chope,  Mr.  Rennie  Manderson,  Mr.  M.  Bawden, 
the  Rev.  J.  B.  Wollocombe,  the  Rev.  W.  H.  Thorn- 
ton, Mr.  A.  M.  Broadley,  Mr.  Samuel  Gillespie  Prout, 
Mr.  S.  H.  Slade,  Mr.  W.  Fleming,  Mrs.  A.  H.  Wilson, 
Fleet-Surgeon  Lloyd  Thomas,  the  Rev.  W.  T.  Wella- 
cott,  Mr.  S.  Raby,  Mr.  Samuel  Harper,  Mr.  John 
Avery,  Mr.  Thomas  Wainwright,  Mr.  A.  F.  Steuart, 
Mr.  S.  T.  Whiteford,  and  last,  but  not  least,  Mr.  John 
Lane,  the  publisher  of  this  volume,  who  has  taken  the 
liveliest  interest  in  its  production. 

Also  to  Messrs.  Macmillan  for  kindly  allowing  the 
use  of  an  engraving  of  Newcomen's  steam  engine,  and 
to  Messrs.  Vinton  &  Co.  for  allowing  the  use  of  the 
portrait  of  the  Rev.  John  Russell  that  appeared  in 
Bailey's  Magazine. 

I  am  likewise  indebted  to  Miss  M.  Windeatt  Roberts 
for  having  undertaken  to  prepare  the  exhaustive  Index, 
and  to  Mr.  J.  G.  Commin  for  placing  at  my  disposal 
many  rare  illustrations. 

For  myself  I  may  say  that  it  has  been  a  labour  of 
love  to  grope  among  the  characters  and  incidents  of 
the  past  in  my  own  county,  and  with  Cordatus,  in  the 
Introduction  to  Ben  Jonson's  Every  Man  out  of  his 
Humour,  I  may  say  that  it  has  been  "a  work  that  hath 


PREFACE  vii 

bounteously    pleased    me ;    how    it  will    answer    the 
general  expectation,  I  know  not." 


I  am  desired  by  my  publisher  to  state  that  he  will 
be  glad  to  receive  any  information  as  to  the  where- 
abouts of  pictures  by  another  "  Devonshire  Character," 
James  Gandy,  born  at  Exeter  in  1619,  and  a  pupil  of 
Vandyck.  He  was  retained  in  the  service  of  the  Duke 
of  Ormond,  whom  he  accompanied  to  Ireland,  where 
he  died  in  1689.  It  is  said  that  his  chief  works  will  be 
found  in  that  country  and  the  West  of  England. 

Jackson  of  Exeter,  in  his  volume  The  Four  Ages, 
says  :  "  About  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  a  painter  in  Exeter  called  Gandy,  of  whose  colour- 
ing Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  thought  highly.  I  heard  him 
say  that  on  his  return  from  Italy,  when  he  was  fresh 
from  seeing  the  pictures  of  the  Venetian  school,  he 
again  looked  at  the  works  of  Gandy,  and  that  they 
had  lost  nothing  in  his  estimation.  There  are  many 
pictures  of  this  artist  in  Exeter  and  its  neighbourhood. 
The  portrait  Sir  Joshua  seemed  most  to  value  is  in  the 
Hall  belonging  to  the  College  of  Vicars  in  that  city, 
but  I  have  seen  some  very  much  superior  to  it." 

Since  then,  however,  the  original  picture  has  been 
taken  from  the  College  of  Vicars,  and  has  been  lost ; 
but  a  copy,  I  believe,  is  still  exhibited  there,  and  no 
one  seems  to  know  what  has  become  of  the  original. 

Not  only  is  Mr.  Lane  anxious  to  trace  this  picture, 
but  any  others  in  Devon  or  Ireland,  as  also  letters, 
documents,  or  references  to  this  artist  and  his  work. 


CONTENTS 


HUGH  STAFFORD  AND  THE  ROYAL  WILDING  i 

THE  ALPHINGTON  PONIES 16 

MARIA  FOOTE 21 

CARABOO 35 

JOHN  ARSCOTT,  OF  TETCOTT 47 

WIFE-SALES 58 

WHITE  WITCHES 70 

MANLY  PEEKE 84 

EULALIA  PAGE 95 

JAMES  WYATT 107 

THE  REV.  W.  DAVY ;       .  123 

THE  GREY  WOMAN .128 

ROBERT  LYDE  AND  THE  "FRIEND'S  ADVENTURE"        .       .136 

JOSEPH  PITTS 152 

THE  DEMON  OF  SPREYTON 170 

TOM  AUSTIN 175 

FRANCES  FLOOD         .       .       . 177 

SIR  WILLIAM  HANKFORD 181 

SIR  JOHN  FITZ 185 

LADY  HOWARD 194 

THE   BlDLAKES,   OF   BlDLAKE 212 

THE  PIRATES  OF  LUNDY .224 


x  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

PAGE 

TOM  D'URFEY    .                               238 

THE  BIRD  OF  THE  OXENHAMS 248 

"LUSTY"  STUCLEY 262 

THE  BIDEFORD  WITCHES 274 

SIR  "JUDAS"  STUKELEY 278 

THE  SAMPFORD  GHOST 286 

PHILIPPA  GARY  AND  ANNE  EVANS 292 

JACK  RATTENBURY .       .       .301 

JOHN  BARNES,  TAVERNER  AND  HIGHWAYMAN       .       .       .320 

EDWARD  CAPERN 325 

GEORGE  MEDYETT  GOODRIDGE 332 

JOHN  DAVY 351 

RICHARD  PARKER,  THE  MUTINEER 355 

BENJAMIN  KENNICOTT,  D.D 369 

CAPTAIN  JOHN  AVERY 375 

JOANNA  SOUTHCOTT 390 

THE  STOKE  RESURRECTIONISTS 405 

"THE  BEGGARS'  OPERA"  AND  GAY'S  CHAIR  ....  414 

BAMPFYLDE-MOORE  CAREW 425 

WILLIAM  GIFFORD 436 

BENJAMIN  R.  HAYDON 457 

JOHN  COOKE 478 

SAVERY  AND  NEWCOMEN,  INVENTORS 487 

ANDREW  BRICE,  PRINTER 502 

DEVONSHIRE  WRESTLERS 514 

Two  HUNTING  PARSONS 529 

SAMUEL  PROUT 564 

FONTELAUTUS $8l 

WILLIAM  LANG,  OF  BRADWORTHY 594 

WILLIAM  COOKWORTHY                          600 


CONTENTS  xi 


PAGE 


WILLIAM  JACKSON,  ORGANIST 608 

JOHN  DUNNING,  FIRST  LORD  ASHBURTON     .       .       .       .618 

GOVERNOR  SHORTLAND  AND  THE  PRINCETOWN  MASSACRE  .  633 

CAPTAIN  JOHN  PALK 700 

RICHARD  WEEKES,  GENTLEMAN  AT  ARMS  AND  PRISONER 

IN  THE  FLEET 709 

STEER  NOR'-WEST 718 

GEORGE  PEELE  726 

PETER  PINDAR 737 

DR.  J.  W.  BUDD 754 

REAR-ADMIRAL  SIR  EDWARD  CHICHESTER,  BART.       .        .  772 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


MARIA  FOOTE,  AFTERWARDS  COUNTESS  OF  HARRINGTON      Frontispiece 

From  an  engraving  by  Thomas  Lupton,  after  a  picture  by  G.  Clint,  A.R.A. 

TO   FACE   PACK 

HUGH  STAFFORD          .......        2 

From  the  original  painting  in  the  collection  of  the  Earl  of  Iddesleigh 

THE  ROASTED  EXCISEMAN,  OR  THE. JACK  BOOT'S  EXIT    .  .        4 

From  an  old  print 

THE  TYBURN  INTERVIEW  :  A  NEW  SONG     ....        8 

By  a  Cyder  Merchant,  of  South-Ham,  Devonshire.     Dedicated  to  Jack  Ketch 

THE  MISSES  DURNFORD.     THE  ALPHINGTON  PONIES       .  .       16 

From  a  lithograph 

THE  MISSES  DURNFORD.     THE  ALPHINGTON  PONIES  (Back  View)      18 

Lithographed  by  P.  Gauci.     Pub.  Ed.  Cockrem 

MARIA  FOOTE,  AFTERWARDS  COUNTESS  OF  HARRINGTON  .      22 

From  an  engraved  portrait  in  the  collection  of  A.  M.  Broadley,  Esq. 

CARABOO,  PRINCESS  OF  JAVASU,  alias  MARY  BAKER         .  .      36 

From  an  engraving  by  Henry  Meyer,  after  a  picture  by  E.  Bird 

MARY  WILCOCKS,  OF  WITHERIDGE,  DEVONSHIRE,  alias  CARABOO      44 

Drawn  and  engraved  by  N.  Branwhite 

ARSCOTT  OF  TETCOTT  ......      48 

From  the  picture  by  J.  Northcote,  R.A. 

OLD  TETCOTT  HOUSE  .  .  .  .  .  .  -54 

MARIANN  VOADEN,  BRATTON  .  .  .  .  .  -74 

MARIANN  VOADEN'S  COTTAGE,  BRATTON  .  .  .  -14 

A  VILLAGE  "  WISE  MAN"       .  .  .  .  .  -78 

MANLY  PEEKE  IN  HIS  ENCOUNTER  WITH  THREE  ADVERSARIES 
ARMED  WITH  RAPIERS  AND  POIGNARDS   .  .  .  .90 

JAMES  WYAT,  ;ETAT.  40  .  .  .  .  .  .108 

Reproduced  from  the  frontispiece  to  The  Life  and  Surprizing  Adventures  of 
James  Wyatt,  Written  by  Himself^  1755 

REV.  W.  DAVY  .  .  .  .  .  .  .124 

From  an  engraving  by  R.  Cooper,  after  a  picture  by  Wm.  Sharland 


xiv  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

TO   FACE   PAGS 

SLANNING'S  OAK          .  .  .  .  .  .  .188 

From  an  oil  painting  by  A.  B.  Collier,  1855 

FRONTISPIECE  TO  "THE  BLOUDIE  BOOKE  ;  OR  THE  TRAGICAL 
END  OF  SIR  JOHN  FITZ"  .  .  .  .  .  .192 

LADY  HOWARD  .  .  .  .  .  .  .194 

BlDLAKE  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .212 

THOMAS  D'URFEY        .......    238 

From  an  engraving  by  G.  Virtue,  after  a  picture  by  E.  Gouge 

FRONTISPIECE  TO  "A  TRUE  RELATION  OF  AN  APPARITION,"  ETC., 
BY  JAMES  OXENHAM  ......  248 

JOHN  RATTENBURY,  OF  BEER,  DEVONSHIRE,  "THE  ROB  ROY  OF 
THE  WEST  "  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  302 

From  a  lithograph 

EDWARD  CAPERN,  THE  POSTMAN- POET  OF  DEVONSHIRE  .     326 

From  a  painting  by  William  Widgery,  in  the  Free  Library,  Bideford 

CHARLES  MEDYETT  GOODRIDGE  IN  HIS  SEAL-SKIN  DRESS  .     332 

RICHARD  PARKER        .......     356 

From  a  drawing  by  Bailey 

B.  KENNICOTT,  S.T.P.    .......     370 

From  the  portrait  at  Exeter  College,  Oxford 

CAPTAIN  AVERY  AND  HIS  CREW  TAKING  ONE  OF  THE  ,GREAT 
MOGULS  ........  376 

From  a  drawing  by  Wm.  Jeit 

JOANNA  SOUTHCOTT     .......    390 

Drawn  from  life  by  Wm.  Sharp 

SILVER  PAP-BOAT  PREPARED  FOR  THE  COMING  OF  SHILOH, 
PRESENTED  TO  JOANNA  SOUTHCOTT  IN  JUNE,  1814  .  .  402 

From  the  original  in  the  collection  of  A.  M.  Broadley,  Esq. 

CRIB  PRESENTED  TO  JOANNA  SOUTHCOTT  IN  ANTICIPATION  OF 
THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  SHILOH  BY  BELIEVERS  IN  HER  DIVINE 
MISSION  AS  "A  GOODWILL  OFFERING  BY  FAITH  TO  THE  PRO- 
MISED SEED"  .......  402 

Reproduced  from  the  original  print  in  the  collection  of  A.  M.  Broadley,  Esq. 

MR.  GAY  ........    414 

From  an  old  print 

THE  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL,  BARNSTAPLE,  WHERE  GAY  WAS  EDUCATED    416 
GAY'S  CHAIR     ........    422 

BAMPFYLDE  MOORE  CAREW,  "KING  OF  THE  BEGGARS'"  .  .    426 

From  an  engraving  by  Maddocks 

W.  GlFFORD        ........      436 

From  an  engraving  by  R.  H.  Cromek,  after  a  picture  by  I.  Hoppner,  R.A. 

B.  R.  HAYDON  ........    458 

From  a  drawing  by  David  Wilkie 


ILLUSTRATIONS  xv 

TO  FACE  PAGE 
CAPTAIN  COOKE,  1824,  AGED  58        .....     478 

Drawn,  from  natute,  on  the  stone  by  N.  Whittock 

THE  NOTED  JOHN  COOKE  OF  EXETER,  CAPTAIN  OF  THE  SHERIFF'S 
TROOP  AT  SEVENTY-FOUR  ASSIZES  FOR  THE  COUNTY  OF  DEVON    482 

From  a  lithograph  by  Geo.  Rowe 

THOMAS  SAVERY  .......     488 

SKETCH  OF  NEWCOMEN'S  HOUSE,  LOWER  STREET,  DARTMOUTH, 
BEFORE  IT  WAS  DEMOLISHED          .....    494 

THE   CHIMNEY-PIECE  AT  WHICH  NEWCOMEN  SAT  WHEN  HE  IN- 
VENTED THE  STEAM  ENGINE          .....    494 

THE  STEAM  ENGINE,  NEAR  DUDLEY  CASTLE.     Invented  by  Capt. 
Savery  and  Mr.  Newcomen.     Erected  by  ye  later,  1712    .  .     496 

From  a  drawing    by   Barney.     Reproduced    by  kind    permission    of   Messrs. 
Macmillan  &  Co. 

ANDREW  BRICE,  PRINTER       ......     502 

Reproduced  by  kind  permission  from  a  print  in  the  possession  of  Dr.  Brushfield 

THE  WRESTLING  CHAMPION  OF  ENGLAND,  ABRAHAM  CANN        .     518 

From  a  drawing 

REV.  JOHN  RUSSELL    .......     530 

Reproduced  by  permission  of  the  Editor  of  Bailey's  Magazine 

THE   REV.    JOHN   RUSSELL'S   PORT-WINE  GLASS,   CHAMBERLAIN 
WORCESTER  BREAKFAST  SERVICE,  AND  BAROMETER      .  .     558 

Purchased  at  the  sale  of  his  effects  in  1883  by  Mrs.  Arnull  and  presented  by 
her  to  Mr.  John  Lane,  in  whose  possession  they  now  are 

SAMUEL  PROUT  .......    564 

From  a  drawing  in  the  possession  of  Samuel  Gillespie  Prout,  Esq. 

WILLIAM  COOKWORTHY  OF  PLYMOUTH       ....     600 

From  the  original  portrait  by  Opie  in  the  possession  of  Edward  Harrison,  Esq.. 
of  Watford 

MR.  JACKSON,  THE  CELEBRATED  COMPOSER          .  .  .    608 

From  an  engraving  after  J.  Walker 

LORD  ASHBURTON        .......    618 

From  an  engraving  by  F.  Bartolozzi,  after  a  picture  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 

HORRID  MASSACRE  AT  DARTMOOR  PRISON,  ENGLAND      .  .    648 

From  an  old  print 

PLAN  OF  DARTMOOR  PRISON  ......  650 

NORTH  WYKE    ........  710 

DR.  WOLCOT     ........  738 

DR.  JOHN  W.  BUDD     .......  754 

From  a  photograph  by  his  brother  Dr.  Richard  Budd,  of  Barnstaple 

REAR-ADMIRAL  SIR  EDWARD  CHICHESTER,  BART.  .  .    772 


DEVONSHIRE 
CHARACTERS 

AND    STRANGE    EVENTS 

HUGH    STAFFORD    AND    THE 
ROYAL   WILDING 


H 


UGH  STAFFORD,  Esq.,  of  Pynes,  born 
1674,  was  t^ie  last  °f  t^ie  Staffords  of 
Pynes.  His  daughter,  Bridget  Maria, 
carried  the  estate  to  her  husband,  Sir 
Henry  Northcote,  Bart.,  from  whom  is  descended  the 
present  Earl  of  Iddesleigh.  Hugh  Stafford  died  in 
1734.  He  is  noted  as  an  enthusiastic  apple-grower 
and  lover  of  cyder. 

He  wrote  a  "  Dissertation  on  Cyder  and  Cyder- 
Fruit"  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  in  1727,  but  this  was  not 
published  till  1753,  and  a  second  edition  in  1769.  The 
family  of  Stafford  was  originally  Stowford,  of  Stow- 
ford,  in  the  parish  of  Dolton.  The  name  changed  to 
Stoford  and  then  to  Stafford.  One  branch  married 
into  the  family  of  Wollocombe,  of  Wollocombe.  But 
the  name  of  Stowford  or  Stafford  was  not  the  most 
ancient  designation  of  the  family,  which  was  Kelloway, 
and  bore  as  its  arms  four  pears.  The  last  Stafford 
turned  from  pears  to  apples,  to  which  he  devoted  his 


2  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

attention  and  became  a  connoisseur  not  in  apples  only, 
but  in  the  qualities  of  cyder  as  already  intimated. 

To  a  branch  of  this  family  belonged  Sir  John  Stow- 
ford,  Lord  Chief  Baron  in  the  reign  of  Edward  III, 
who  built  Pilton  Bridge  over  the  little  stream  of  the 
Yeo  or  Yaw,  up  which  the  tide  flows,  and  over  which 
the  passage  was  occasionally  dangerous.  The  story  goes 
that  the  judge  one  day  saw  a  poor  market  woman  with 
her  child  on  a  mudbank  in  the  stream  crying  for  aid, 
which  none  could  afford  her,  caught  and  drowned  by 
the  rising  flood,  whereupon  he  vowed  to  build  the 
bridge  to  prevent  further  accident.  The  rhyme  ran  : — 

Yet  Barnstaple,  graced  though  thou  be  by  brackish  Taw, 
In  all  thy  glory  see  that  thou  not  forget  the  little  Yaw. 

Camden  asserts  that  Judge  Stowford  also  constructed 
the  long  bridge  over  the  Taw  consisting  of  sixteen 
piers.  Tradition  will  have  it,  however,  that  towards 
the  building  of  this  latter  two  spinster  ladies  (sisters) 
contributed  by  the  profits  of  their  distaffs  and  the 
pennies  they  earned  by  keeping  a  little  school. 

I  was  travelling  on  the  South  Devon  line  some 
years  ago  after  there  had  been  a  Church  Congress 
at  Plymouth,  and  in  the  same  carriage  with  me  were 
some  London  reporters.  Said  one  of  these  gentry  to 
another  :  "  Did  you  ever  see  anything  like  Devonshire 
parsons  and  pious  ladies?  They  were  munching  apples 
all  the  time  that  the  speeches  were  being  made. 
Honour  was  being  done  to  the  admirable  fruit  by  these 
worthy  Devonians.  I  was  dotting  down  my  notes 
during  an  eloquent  harangue  on  *  How  to  Bring  Re- 
ligion to  Bear  upon  the  People'  when  chump,  chump 
went  a  parson  on  my  left ;  and  the  snapping  of  jaws 
on  apples,  rending  off  shreds  for  mastication,  punc- 
tuated the  periods  of  a  bishop  who  spoke  next.  At  an 


HUGH    STAFFORD 
From  the  original  painting  in  the  collection  of  the  Earl  of  Iddesleigh 


HUGH   STAFFORD  3 

ensuing  meeting  on  the  '  Deepening  of  Personal  Reli- 
gion '  my  neighbour  was  munching  a  Cornish  gilli- 
flower,  which  he  informed  me  in  taste  and  aroma 
surpassed  every  other  apple.  I  asked  in  a  low  tone 
whether  Devonshire  people  did  not  peel  their  fruit 
before  eating.  He  answered  leni  susurro  that  the 
flavour  was  in  the  rind." 

Cyder  was  anciently  the  main  drink  of  the  country 
people  in  the  West  of  England.  Every  old  farm- 
house had  its  granite  trough  (circular)  in  which  rolled 
a  stone  wheel  that  pounded  the  fruit  to  a  "pummice," 
and  the  juice  flowed  away  through  a  lip  into  a  keeve. 
Now,  neglected  and  cast  aside,  may  be  seen  the  huge 
masses  of  stone  with  an  iron  crook  fastened  in  them, 
which  in  the  earliest  stage  of  cyder-making  were  em- 
ployed for  pressing  the  fruit  into  pummice.  But  these 
weights  were  superseded  by  the  screw-press  that  ex- 
tracted more  of  the  juice. 

In  1763  Lord  Bute,  the  Prime  Minister,  imposed  a 
tax  of  IDS.  per  hogshead  on  cyder  and  perry,  to  be 
paid  by  the  first  buyer.  The  country  gentlemen,  with- 
out reference  to  party,  were  violent  in  their  opposition, 
and  Bute  then  condescended  to  reduce  the  sum  and  the 
mode  of  levying  it,  proposing  45.  per  hogshead,  to  be 
paid,  not  by  the  first  buyer,  but  by  the  grower,  who 
was  to  be  made  liable  to  the  regulations  of  the  excise 
and  the  domiciliary  visits  of  excisemen.  Pitt  thun- 
dered against  this  cyder  Bill,  inveighing  against  the 
intrusion  of  excise  officers  into  private  dwellings, 
quoting  the  old  proud  maxim,  that  every  Englishman's 
house  was  his  castle,  and  showing  the  hardship  of 
rendering  every  country  gentleman,  every  individual 
that  owned  a  few  fruit  trees  and  made  a  little  cyder, 
liable  to  have  his  premises  invaded  by  officers.  The 
City  of  London  petitioned  the  Commons,  the  Lords, 


4  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  throne,  against  the  Bill ;  in  the  House  of  Lords 
forty-nine  peers  divided  against  the  Minister  ;  the  cities 
of  Exeter  and  Worcester,  the  counties  of  Devonshire 
and  Herefordshire,  more  nearly  concerned  in  the  ques- 
tion about  cyder  than  the  City  of  London,  followed  the 
example  of  the  capital,  and  implored  their  representa- 
tives to  resist  the  tax  to  the  utmost ;  and  an  indignant 
and  general  threat  was  made  that  the  apples  should  be 
suffered  to  fall  and  rot  under  the  trees  rather  than 
be  made  into  cyder,  subject  to  such  a  duty  and  such 
annoyances.  No  fiscal  question  had  raised  such  a 
tempest  since  Sir  Robert  Walpole's  Excise  Bill  in 
1733.  But  Walpole,  in  the  plenitude  of  his  power 
and  abilities,  and  with  wondrous  resources  at  com- 
mand, was  constrained  to  bow  to  the  storm  he  had 
roused,  and  to  shelve  his  scheme.  Bute,  on  the  other 
hand,  with  a  'power  that  lasted  but  a  day,  with  a  posi- 
tion already  undermined,  with  slender  abilities  and  no 
resources,  but  with  Scotch  stubbornness,  was  resolved 
that  his  Bill  should  pass.  And  it  passed,  with  all  its 
imperfections ;  and  although  there  were  different  sorts  of 
cyder,  varying  in  price  from  55.  to  505.  per  hogshead, 
they  were  all  taxed  alike — the  poor  man  having  thus 
to  pay  as  heavy  a  duty  for  his  thin  beverage  as  the 
affluent  man  paid  for  the  choicest  kind.  The  agitation 
against  Lord  Bute  grew.  In  some  rural  districts  he 
was  burnt  under  the  effigy  of  a  jack-boot,  a  rustic 
allusion  to  his  name  (Bute);  and  on  more  than  one  occa- 
sion when  he  walked  the  streets  he  was  accused  of  being 
surrounded  by  prize-fighters  to  protect  him  against 
the  violence  of  the  mob.  Numerous  squibs,  carica- 
tures, and  pamphlets  appeared.  He  was  represented 
as  hung  on  the  gallows  above  a  fire,  in  which  a  jack- 
boot fed  the  flames  and  a  farmer  was  throwing  an  excised 
cyder-barrel  into  the  conflagration,  whilst  a  Scotch- 


HUGH   STAFFORD  5 

man,  in  Highland  costume,  in  the  background,  com- 
mented, "  It's  aw  over  with  us  now,  and  aw  our 
aspiring  hopes  are  gone";  whilst  an  English  mob 
advanced  waving  the  banners  of  Magna  Charta,  and 
"  Liberty,  Property,  and  No  Excise." 

I  give  one  of  the  ballads  printed  on  this  occasion  :  it 
is  entitled,  "The  Scotch  Yoke,  and  English  Resent- 
ment. To  the  tune  of  The  Queen's  Ass." 

Of  Freedom  no  longer  let  Englishmen  boast, 

Nor  Liberty  more  be  their  favourite  Toast ; 

The  Hydra  Oppression  your  Charta  defies, 

And  galls  English  Necks  with  the  Yoke  of  Excise, 
The  Yoke  of  Excise,  the  Yoke  of  Excise, 
And  galls  English  Necks  with  the  Yoke  of  Excise. 

In  vain  have  you  conquer'd,  my  brave  Hearts  of  Oak, 
Your  Laurels,  your  Conquests  are  all  but  a  Joke  ; 
Let  a  rascally  Peace  serve  to  open  your  Eyes, 
And  the  d — nable  Scheme  of  a  Cyder-Excise, 
A  Cyder-Excise,  etc. 

What  though  on  your  Porter  a  Duty  was  laid, 
Your  Light  double-tax'd,  and  encroach'd  on  your  Trade  ; 
Who  e'er  could  have  thought  that  a  Briton  so  wise 
Would  admit  such  a  Tax  as  the  Cyder- Excise, 
The  Cyder-Excise,  etc. 

I  appeal  to  the  Fox,  or  his  Friend  John  a-Boot, 
If  tax'd  thus  the  Juice,  then  how  soon  may  the  Fruit? 
Adieu  then  to  good  Apple-puddings  and  Pyes, 
If  e'er  they  should  taste  of  a  cursed  Excise, 
A  cursed  Excise,  etc. 

Let  those  at  the  Helm,  who  have  sought  to  enslave 
A  Nation  so  glorious,  a  People  so  brave, 
At  once  be  convinced  that  their  Scheme  you  despise, 
And  shed  your  last  Blood  to  oppose  the  Excise, 
Oppose  the  Excise,  etc. 

Come  on  then,  my  Lads,  who  have  fought  and  have  bled, 
A  Tax  may,  perhaps,  soon  be  laid  on  your  Bread  ; 
Ye  Natives  of  Worc'ster  and  Devon  arise, 
And  strike  at  the  Root  of  the  Cyder-Excise, 
The  Cyder-Excise,  etc. 


6  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

No  longer  let  K— s  at  the  H— m  of  the  St— e, 
With  fleecing  and  grinding  pursue  Britain's  Fate  ; 
Let  Power  no  longer  your  Wishes  disguise, 
But  off  with  their  Heads— by  the  Way  of  Excise, 
The  Way  of  Excise,  etc. 

From  two  Latin  words,  ex  and  scindo,  I  ween, 
Came  the  hard  Word  Excise,  which  to  Cut  off  does  mean. 
Take  the  Hint  then,  my  Lads,  let  your  Freedom  advise, 
And  give  them  a  Taste  of  their  fav'rite  Excise, 
Their  fav'rite  Excise,  etc. 

Then  toss  off  your  Bumpers,  my  Lads,  while  you  may, 
To  Pitt  and  Lord  Temple,  Huzza,  Boys,  huzza ! 
Here's  the  King  that  to  tax  his  poor  Subjects  denies, 
But  Pox  o'  the  Schemer  that  plann'd  the  Excise, 
That  plann'd  the  Excise,  etc. 

The  apple  trees  were  too  many  and  too  deep-rooted 
and  too  stout  for  the  Scotch  thistle.  The  symptoms  of 
popular  dislike  drove  Bute  to  resign  (8  April,  1763),  to 
the  surprise  of  all.  The  duty,  however,  was  not  re- 
pealed till  1830.  In  my  Book  of  the  West  (Devon),  I 
have  given  an  account  of  cyder-making  in  the  county, 
and  I  will  not  repeat  it  here.  But  I  may  mention  the 
curious  Devonshire  saying  about  Francemass,  or  St. 
Franken  Days.  These  are  the  igth,  2Oth,  and  2ist 
May,  at  which  time  very  often  a  frost  comes  that 
injures  the  apple  blossom.  The  story  goes  that  there 
was  an  Exeter  brewer,  of  the  name  of  Frankin,  who 
found  that  cyder  ran  his  ale  so  hard  that  he  vowed  his 
soul  to  the  devil  on  the  condition  that  his  Satanic 
Majesty  should  send  three  frosty  nights  in  May 
annually  to  cut  off  the  apple  blossom. 

And  now  to  return  to  Hugh  Stafford.  He  opens  his 
letter  with  an  account  of  the  origin  of  the  Royal 
Wilding,  one  of  the  finest  sorts  of  apple  for  the 
making  of  choice  cyder. 

"  Since  you  have  seen  the  Royal  Wilding  apple, 
which  is  so  very  much  celebrated  (and  so  de- 


HUGH    STAFFORD  7 

servedly)  in  our  county,  the  history  of  its  being 
first  taken  notice  of,  which  is  fresh  in  everybody's 
memory,  may  not  be  unacceptable  to  you.  The 
single  and  only  tree  from  which  the  apple  was 
first  propagated  is  very  tall,  fair,  and  stout ;  I  believe 
about  twenty  feet  high.  It  stands  in  a  very  little 
quillet  (as  we  call  it)  of  gardening,  adjoining  to  the 
post-road  that  leads  from  Exeter  to  Oakhampton,  in 
the  parish  of  St.  Thomas,  but  near  the  borders  of 
another  parish  called  Whitestone.  A  walk  of  a  mile 
from  Exeter  will  gratify  any  one,  who  has  curiosity, 
with  the  sight  of  it. 

"  It  appears  to  be  properly  a  wilding,  that  is,  a  tree 
raised  from  the  kernel  of  an  apple,  without  having 
been  grafted,  and  (which  seems  well  worth  observing) 
has,  in  all  probability,  stood  there  much  more  than 
seventy  years,  for  two  ancient  persons  of  the  parish  of 
Whitestone,  who  died  several  years  since,  each  aged 
upwards  of  the  number  of  years  before  mentioned, 
declared,  that  when  they  were  boys,  probably  twelve  or 
thirteen  years  of  age,  and  first  went  the  road,  it  was  not 
only  growing  there,  but,  what  is  worth  notice,  was  as 
tall  and  stout  as  it  now  appears,  nor  do  there  at  this 
time  appear  any  marks  of  decay  upon  it  that  I  could 
perceive. 

"It  is  a  very  constant  and  plentiful  bearer  every 
other  year,  and  then  usually  produces  apples  enough 
to  make  one  of  our  hogsheads  of  cyder,  which  contains 
sixty-four  gallons,  and  this  was  one  occasion  of  its 
being  first  taken  notice  of,  and  of  its  affording  an 
history  which,  I  believe,  no  other  tree  ever  did  :  For 
the  little  cot-house  to  which  it  belongs,  together  with 
the  little  quillet  in  which  it  stands,  being  several  years 
since  mortgaged  for  ten  pounds,  the  fruit  of  this  tree 
alone,  in  a  course  of  some  years,  freed  the  house 


8  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

and   garden,    and   its    more   valuable   self,    from    that 
burden. 

"  Mr.  Francis  Oliver  (a  gentleman  of  the  neighbour- 
hood, and,  if  I  mistake  not,  the  gentleman  who  had 
the  mortgage  just  now  mentioned)  was  one  of  the  first 
persons  about  Exeter  that  affected  rough  cyder,  and, 
for  that  reason,  purchased  the  fruit  of  this  tree  every 
bearing  year.  However,  I  cannot  learn  that  he  ever 
made  cyder  of  it  alone,  but  mix'd  with  other  apples, 
which  added  to  the  flavour  of  his  cyder,  in  the  opinion 
of  those  who  had  a  true  relish  for  that  liquor. 

"  Whether  this,  or  any  other  consideration,  brought 
on  the  more  happy  experiment  upon  this  apple,  the 
Rev.  Robert  Wollocombe,  Rector  of  Whitestone,  who 
used  to  amuse  himself  with  a  nursery,  put  on  some 
heads  of  this  wilding  ;  and  in  a  few  years  after  being  in 
his  nursery,  about  March,  a  person  came  to  him  on 
some  business,  and  feeling  something  roll  under  his 
feet,  took  it  up,  and  it  proved  one  of  those  precious 
apples,  which  Mr.  Wollocombe  receiving  from  him, 
finding  it  perfectly  sound  after  it  had  lain  in  the  long 
stragle  of  the  nursery  during  all  the  rain,  frost,  and 
snow  of  the  foregoing  winter,  thought  it  must  be  a 
fruit  of  more  than  common  value  ;  and  having  tasted 
it,  found  the  juices,  not  only  in  a  most  perfect  sound- 
ness and  quickness,  but  such  likewise  as  seemed  to 
promise  a  body,  as  well  as  the  roughness  and  flavour 
that  the  wise  cyder  drinkers  in  Devon  now  begin  to 
desire.  He  observed  the  graft  from  which  it  had  fallen, 
and  searching  about  found  some  more  of  the  apples, 
and  all  of  the  same  soundness ;  upon  which,  without 
hesitation,  he  resolved  to  graft  a  greater  quantity  of 
them,  which  he  accordingly  did  ;  but  waited  with  im- 
patience for  the  experiment,  which  you  know  must  be 
the  work  of  some  years.  They  came  at  length,  and 


The     T  T  B  U  R  N    INTERVIEW: 
A    New    SONG. 


By  a  CYDER  MERCHANT,  of  South-Ham,  Devor.lliire. 

Dedicated     to     JACK    KETCH. 

To  the  Tune  A  Cobler  there  was,  &c. 


AS  Savcnn  from  Tnrfd  was  a  trudging  to  Town, 
Torell  his  tir'd  Limb?  on  the  Grafs  heftt  down  ; 
\\  !u  n  growling  his  Oatmeal,  he  turn'd  up  his  Eyes, 
And  ktnn'd  a  ttrangc  Pile  on  three  Pillars  wife. 

Derry  ri;:in,  *cc. 

Amaz'd  he  ftarts  ur>,  "  Thou  Thing  of  odd  Form, 
That  ftand'ft  here  defying  each  turbulent  Storm  ; 
What  art  thou  >  Thy  Oliicc  declare  at  my  Word, 
Or  thoulhaltnotcfcapethisltrongArm  and  broadSworJ." 

Quoth  the  Structure,  "  Altho'  I'm  not  known  unto  thec, 
'Ihy  Countrymens  Lives  have  been  '!  orten'd  by  me  ; 

In  &  Hand,  no  doubt,'  you  have  heard  of  my  Fame. ' 

Hern  rf«oi,  &c. 

When  arm'd  all  rebellious,  like  Vultures  you  role, 
A  Set  of  fuch  Sh.ilvags,  you  trl.;luen'd.the  Crows ; 
To  rid  the  tir'd  Landxrf  fuch  Vermin  as  you, 
1  groan'd  with  receiving  but  barely  my  f>ue. 

Deny  rf:-uv»,  &c. 

And  ftill  I'm  in  Hopes  of  another  to  come, 
For  Tyburn  will  certain  at  [aft  be  his  Home ; 
He'll  come  from  the  Summit  «f  Honour's  vail  Height, 
With  a  Star  and  a  Garter  to  dubb  me  a  Knight." 

Dc'-rs  dl-jL-n,  &c. 

••  My  Sword  lhall  fh  nit  proveall  tii  v  I  topcrarcin  vain"; 
•'    '  ying,  he  brandilh'd  it  high  in  the  Airr 

ftrait  a  Si'itch  Voice  cry'd  out — StKnuy  forbear  ! 

1"lerry  rfcier,  ivc. 

Phantom  that  f,>oke  now  aprrar'd  in  a  trice, 
And  to  tlit  fcar'd  Sco'irun  thus  give  his  Advice  : 
-  Calm  thy  Breali  that  now  boils   with  Vexation  and 
And  let  what  1  fpcak  thy  Attention  engage.         I  Rage, 


No  longer  with  Furv  purfue  this  old  Tree, 
His  Back  lhall  bear  Vengeance  for  YOU  and  for 
For  know,  my  dear  Friend,  the  Time  i,  at  Mar 
When  with  F.n;;,Jbme>i,  Tyburn  lhall  ihin  half  -li-.- 

The  Cafe  is  revers'd  by  a-gooJ  Kri< ••• 
All  Treafon  is  &gM>>  and  1  .ov.i!;-.  -,  oars  : 
Kofts,  Honour,  and  Profit  a'l  \ -:  .V.Y/:  await,     ' 
While  the  Natives  lhall  [rc.nMe  and  curie  thci 

The  War  is  no  more,  an.l  each  Sold 

The  Strength  and  the  Bulwark  oi     •  ,.j    .  in  \\ ; 

As  the  firti  Sacrifice  to  our  .-,    ,     :-...:        " 

Here  ended  the  Phantom,  an,!  f;:nk  i::  theGl  II 
While  the  blue  Flames  of  i  iell  ghr'd  terrible  roi 
When  tor  Lonofon young Sroww around  turn'd  hi 
Where  he  march'd  for  a  \'l  :CL-  in  the  anv-rait'd  E 


Ye  Nati. 
Your  In 
For' this 


nd; 
i  Kvcs, 


For  Thouf.inds ; 


oming  be 


Ah  !   haplefs  Old  England,  no  longer  be  merry. 
Since  /{ —  ha«  thus  tax'd  your  Beer,  C'vder  and  \ 
lx>ok  fullen  andfa.l,  for  now  this  i.  done, 
Xo  doublin  ihort  Time  they'll  tax  La*glii*g  an, 

Y.  t  let  the  Proud  Uird.  who  prefid-s  at  the  I  U 
Extend  his  Excite  to  each  Thing  in  the  Realm  : 
,.  Fax  on  Spn^-l^attr  I  think  would  be  right, 
For  Water,  'tis  known,  is  as  common 


Dei 


Twill     '    •  all  the  /  nd,  an 
Prorre,),  mv  good  l.iir  1.  nnd 
Reward  you  ;yr  laying  each  in 


%  my  Saul  that  will  do  ! 


HUGH   STAFFORD  9 

his  just  reward  was  a  barrel  of  the  juice,  which,  though  it 
was  small,  was  of  great  value  for  its  excellency,  and 
far  exceeded  all  his  expectations. 

"  Mr.  Wollocombe  was  not  a  little  pleased  with  it, 
and  talked  of  it  in  all  conversations  ;  it  created  amuse- 
ment at  first,  but  when  time  produced  an  hogshead  of 
it,  from  raillery  it  came  to  seriousness,  and  every  one 
from  laughter  fell  to  admiration.  In  the  meantime  he 
had  thought  of  a  name  for  his  British  wine,  and  as  it 
appeared  to  be  in  the  original  tree  a  fruit  not  grafted, 
it  retained  the  name  of  a  Wilding,  and  as  he  thought 
it  superior  to  all  other  apples,  he  gave  it  the  title  of  the 
Royal  Wilding. 

"This  was  about  sixteen  years  since  (i.e.  about  1710). 
The  gentlemen  of  our  county  are  now  busy  almost 
everywhere  in  promoting  it,  and  some  of  the  wiser 
farmers.  But  we  have  not  yet  enough  for  sale.  I  have 
known  five  guineas  refused  for  one  of  our  hogsheads  of 
it,  though  the  common  cyder  sells  for  twenty  shillings, 
and  the  South  Ham  for  twenty-five  to  thirty. 

"I  must  add,  that  Mr.  Wollocombe  hath  reserved 
some  of  them  for  hoard  ;  I  have  tasted  the  tarts  of 
them,  and  they  come  nearer  to  the  quince  than  any 
other  tart  I  ever  eat  of. 

"Wherever  it  has  been  tried  as  yet,  the  juices  are 
perfectly  good  (but  better  in  some  soils  than  others), 
and  when  the  gentlemen  of  the  South-Hams  will  con- 
descend to  give  it  a  place  in  their  orchards,  they  will 
undoubtedly  exceed  us  in  this  liquor,  because  we  must 
yield  to  them  in  the  apple  soil.  But  it  is  happy  for  us, 
that  at  present  they  are  so  wrapt  up  in  their  own 
sufficiency,  that  they  do  not  entertain  any  thoughts  of 
raising  apples  from  us  ;  and  when  they  shall,  it  must 
be  another  twenty  years  before  they  can  do  anything  to 
the  purpose,  though  some  of  their  thinking  gentlemen, 


io     DEVONSHIRE  CHARACTERS 

I  am  told,  begin  to  get  some  of  them  transported 
thither,  (by  night  you  may  suppose,  partly  for  shame 
and  partly  for  fear  of  being  mobbed  by  their  neigh- 
bours) and  will,  I  am  well  assured,  much  rejoice  in  the 
production. 

"The  colour  of  the  Royal  Wilding  cyder,  without 
any  assistance  from  art,  is  of  a  bright  yellow,  rather 
than  a  reddish  beerish  tincture  ;  its  other  qualities  are 
a  noble  body,  an  excellent  bitter,  a  delicate  (excuse  the 
expression)  roughness,  and  a  fine  vinous  flavour.  All 
the  other  qualities  you  may  meet  with  in  some  of  the  best 
South-Ham  cyder,  but  the  last  is  peculiar  to  the  White- 
Sour  and  the  Royal  Wilding  only,  and  you  will  in  vain 
look  for  it  in  any  other." 

Mr.  Stafford  goes  on  to  speak  of  his  second  favourite, 
the  White  Sour  of  the  South  Hams. 

"The  qualities  of  the  juices  are  precisely  the  same 
with  those  of  the  Royal  Wilding,  nay,  so  very  near 
one  to  the  other,  that  they  are  perfectly  rivals,  and 
created  such  a  contest,  as  is  very  uncommon,  and  to 
which  I  was  an  eye-witness.  A  gentleman  of  the 
South-Hams,  whose  White-Sour  cyders,  for  the  year, 
were  very  celebrated,  (for  our  cyder  vintages,  like  those 
of  clarets  and  ports,  are  very  different  in  different  years) 
and  had  been  drank  of  by  another  gentleman,  who  was 
a  happy  possessor,  an  uncontested  lord,  facile  princeps, 
of  the  Royal  Wilding,  met  at  the  house  of  the  latter 
gentleman  a  year  or  two  after  :  the  famed  Royal  Wild- 
ing* You  may  be  sure,  was  produced,  as  the  best  return 
for  the  White-Sour  that  had  been  tasted  at  the  other 
gentleman's  ;  and  what  was  the  effect?  Each  gentle- 
man did  not  contend,  as  is  usual,  that  his  was  the  best 
cyder  ;  but  such  was  the  equilibrium  of  the  juices,  and 
such  the  generosity  of  their  breasts  (for  finer  gentle- 
men we  have  not  in  our  country)  that  each  affirmed  his 


HUGH   STAFFORD  n 

own  was  the  worst ;  the  gentleman  of  the  South-Hams 
declared  in  favour  of  the  Royal  Wilding,  and  the 
gentleman  of  our  parts  in  favour  of  the  White-Sour.'* 

As  to  the  sweet  cyder,  Mr.  Stafford  despises  it.  "  It 
may  be  acceptable  to  a  female,  or  a  Londoner,  it  is  ever 
offensive  to  a  bold  and  generous  West  Saxon,"  says  he. 

Mr.  Stafford  flattered  himself  one  year  that  he  had 
beaten  the  Royal  Wilding.  He  had  planted  pips,  and 
after  many  years  brewed  a  pipe  of  the  apples  of  his 
wildings  in  1724.  Mr.  Wollocombe  was  invited  to  taste 
it.  "  The  surprise  (and  even  almost  silence)  with  which 
he  was  seized  at  first  tasting  it  was  plainly  perceived  by 
everyone  present,  and  occasioned  no  small  diversion." 
But,  alas  !  after  it  was  bottled  this  " Super-Celestial,"  as 
it  had  been  named,  as  the  year  advanced,  appeared  thin 
compared  with  the  cyder  of  the  Royal  Wilding,  and 
Hugh  Stafford  was  constrained  after  a  first  flush  of 
triumph  to  allow  that  the  Royal  Wilding  maintained 
pre-eminence. 

According  to  our  author,  the  addition  of  a  little  sage 
or  clary  to  thin  cyder  gives  it  a  taste  as  of  a  good 
Rhenish  wine  ;  and  he  advises  the  crushing  to  powder 
of  angelica  roots  to  add  to  cyder,  as  is  done  in  Oporto 
by  those  who  prepare  port  for  the  English  market.  It 
gives  a  flavour  and  a  bouquet  truly  delicious. 

At  the  English  Revolution,  when  William  of  Orange 
came  to  the  throne,  the  introduction  of  French  wines 
into  the  country  was  prohibited,  and  this  gave  a  great 
impetus  to  the  manufacture  of  cyder,  and  care  in  the 
production  of  cyder  of  the  best  description.  But  the 
imposition  of  a  duty  of  ten  shillings  a  hogshead  on 
cyder  that  was  not  repealed,  as  already  said,  till  1830, 
killed  the  industry.  Farmers  no  longer  cared  to  keep 
up  their  orchards,  and  grew  apples  only  for  home  con- 
sumption. They  gave  the  cyder  to  their  labourers,  and 


12  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

as  these  were  not  particular  as  to  the  quality,  no  pains 
were  taken  to  produce  such  as  would  suit  men's  refined 
palates.  The  workman  liked  a  rough  beverage,  one 
that  almost  cut  his  throat  as  it  passed  down  ;  and  this 
produced  the  evil  effect  that  the  farmers,  who  were 
bound  by  their  leases  to  keep  up  their  orchards,  planted 
only  the  coarsest  sort  of  apples,  and  the  higher  quality 
of  fruit  was  allowed  to  die  out.  The  orchards  fell  into, 
and  in  most  cases  remain  still  in  a  deplorable  condition 
of  neglect.  Hear  what  is  the  report  of  the  Special 
Commissioner  of  the  Gardeners'  Magazine,  as  to  the 
state  of  the  orchards  in  Devon.  "They  will  not,  as  a 
rule,  bear  critical  examination.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
Devonshire,  compared  with  other  counties,  has  made 
little  or  no  progress  of  late  years,  and  there  are  hun- 
dreds of  orchards  in  that  county  that  are  little  short 
of  a  disgrace  to  those  who  own  or  rent  them.  The 
majority  of  the  orchards  are  rented  by  farmers,  who  too 
often  are  the  worst  of  gardeners  and  the  poorest 
of  fruit  growers,  and  they  cannot  be  induced  to  improve 
on  their  methods."  The  writer  goes  on  to  say,  that  so 
long  as  the  farmers  have  enough  trees  standing  or  blown 
over,  to  bear  fruit  that  suffices  for  their  home  consump- 
tion, they  are  content,  and  with  complete  indifference, 
they  suffer  the  cattle  to  roam  about  the  orchards,  bite 
off  the  bark,  and  rend  the  branches  and  tender  shoots 
from  the  trees. 

"  If  you  tackle  the  farmers  on  the  subject,  and  in 
particular  strongly  advise  them  to  see  what  can  be  done 
towards  improving  their  old  orchards  and  forming  new 
ones,  they  will  become  uncivil  at  once." 

It  is  sad  to  have  to  state  that  the  famous  "  Royal 
Wilding  "  is  no  longer  known,  not  even  at  Pynes,  where 
it  was  extensively  planted  by  Hugh  Stafford. 

Messrs.     Veitch,     the    well-known    nurserymen     at 


HUGH   STAFFORD  13 

Exeter  and  growers  of  the  finest  sorts  of  apples,  in- 
form me  that  they  have  not  heard  of  it  for  many  years. 
Mr.  H.  Whiteway,  who  produces  some  of  the  best 
cyder  in  North  Devon,  writes  to  me  :  "  With  regard  to 
the  Royal  Wilding  mentioned  in  Mr.  Hugh  Stafford's 
book,  I  have  made  diligent  inquiry  in  and  about  the 
neighbourhood  in  which  it  was  grown  at  the  time 
stated,  but  up  to  now  have  been  unable  to  find  any 
trace  of  it,  and  this  also  applies  to  the  White-Sour.  I 
am,  however,  not  without  hope  of  discovering  some 
day  a  solitary  remnant  of  the  variety." 

This  loss  is  due  to  the  utter  neglect  of  the  orchards 
in  consequence  of  the  passing  and  maintenance  of  Lord 
Bute's  mischievous  Bill.  This  Bill  was  the  more  deplor- 
able in  its  results  because  in  and  about  1750  cyder  had 
replaced  the  lighter  clarets  in  the  affections  of  all  classes, 
and  was  esteemed  as  good  a  drink  as  the  finest  Rhenish, 
and  much  more  wholesome.  Rudolphus  Austen,  who 
introduced  it  at  the  tables  of  the  dons  of  Oxford,  under- 
took to  "  raise  cyder  that  shall  compare  and  excel  the 
wine  of  many  provinces  nearer  the  sun,  where  they 
abound  with  fruitful  vineyards."  And  he  further 
asserted:  "A  seasonable  and  moderate  use  of  good 
cyder  is  the  surest  remedy  and  preservative  against  the 
diseases  which  do  frequently  afflict  the  sedentary  life  of 
them  that  are  seriously  studious."  He  died  in  1666. 

Considerable  difference  of  opinion  exists  as  to  the 
advantage  or  disadvantage  of  cyder  for  those  liable  to 
rheumatism.  But  this  difference  of  opinion  is  due 
largely,  if  not  wholly,  to  the  kinds  of  cyder  drunk.  The 
sweet  cyder  is  unquestionably  bad  in  such  cases,  but 
that  in  which  there  is  not  so  much  sugar  is  a  corrective 
to  the  uric  acid  that  causes  rheumatism.  In  Noake's 
Worcestershire  Relics  appears  the  following  extract 
from  the  journal  of  a  seventeenth-century  parson. 


14  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"This  parish  (Dilwyn),  wherein  syder  [sic]  is  plentiful, 
hath  and  doth  afford  many  people  that  have  and  do 
enjoy  the  blessing  of  long  life,  neither  are  the  aged 
here  bed-ridden  or  decrepit  as  elsewhere,  but  for  the 
most  part  lively  and  vigorous.  Next  to  God,  wee 
ascribe  it  to  our  flourishing  orchards,  which  are  not 
only  the  ornament  but  the  pride  of  our  country,  yield- 
ing us  rich  and  winy  liquors. "  At  Whimple,  in  Devon, 
the  rectors,  like  their  contemporary,  the  Rev.  Robert 
Wollocombe,  the  discoverer  of  the  Royal  Wilding  a 
century  or  so  later  than  the  Dilwyn  parson,  were  both 
cyder  makers  and  cyder  drinkers.  The  tenure  of  office 
of  two  of  them  covered  a  period  of  over  a  century,  and 
the  last  of  these  worthy  divines  lived  to  tell  the  story  of 
how  the  Exeter  coach  set  down  the  bent  and  crippled 
dean  at  his  door,  who,  after  three  weeks  l  cyder  cure '  at 
the  hospitable  rectory,  had  thrown  his  crutches  to  the 
dogs  and  turned  his  face  homewards  "upright  as  a 
bolt."* 

The  apple  is  in  request  now  for  three  purposes  quite 
distinct :  the  dessert  apple,  to  rival  those  introduced 
from  America  ;  that  largely  employed  for  the  manufac- 
ture of  jams — the  basis,  apple,  flavoured  to  turn  it  into 
raspberry,  apricot,  etc.  ;  and  last,  but  not  least,  the 
cyder-producing  apple  which  is  unsuited  for  either  of 
the  former  requirements. 

In  my  Book  of  the  West  I  have  given  a  lengthy 
ballad  of  instruction  on  the  growth  of  apple  trees, 
and  the  gathering  of  apples  and  the  making  of 
cyder,  which  I  heard  sung  by  an  old  man  at  Wash- 
field,  near  Tiverton.  The  following  song  was  sung 
to  me  by  an  aged  tanner  of  Launceston,  some  twenty 
years  ago,  which  he  professed  to  have  composed  him- 
self:— 

1  Whiteway's  Wine  of  the  West  Country. 


HUGH   STAFFORD  15 

In  a  nice  little  village  not  far  from  the  sea, 
Still  lives  my  old  uncle  aged  eighty  and  three  ; 
Of  orchards  and  meadows  he  owns  a  good  lot, 
Such  cyder  as  his — not  another  has  got. 

Then  fill  up  the  jug,  boys,  and  let  it  go  round, 
Of  drinks  not  the  equal  in  England  is  found. 
So  pass  round  the  jug,  boys,  and  pull  at  it  free, 
There's  nothing  like  cyder,  sparkling  cyder,  for  me. 

My  uncle  is  lusty,  is  nimble  and  spry, 
As  ribstones  his  cheeks,  clear  as  crystal  his  eye, 
His  head  snowy  white  as  the  flowering  may, 
And  he  drinks  only  cyder  by  night  and  by  day. 

Then  fill  up  the  jug,  etc. 

O'er  the  wall  of  the  churchyard  the  apple  trees  lean 

And  ripen  their  burdens,  red,  golden,  and  green. 

In  autumn  the  apples  among  the  graves  lie  ; 

"  There  I'll  sleep  well,"  says  uncle,  "when  fated  to  die." 

Then  fill  up  the  jug,  etc. 

"  My  heart  as  an  apple,  sound,  juicy,  has  been, 
My  limbs  and  my  trunk  have  been  sturdy  and  clean  ; 
Uncankered  I've  thriven,  in  heart  and  in  head, 
So  under  the  apple  trees  lay  me  when  dead." 

Then  fill  up  the  jug,  etc. 


THE   ALPHINGTON    PONIES 

DURING  the  forties  of  last  century,  every 
visitor  to  Torquay  noticed  two  young  ladies 
of  very  singular  appearance.  Their  resi- 
dence was  in  one  of  the  two  thatched 
cottages  on  the  left  of  Tor  Abbey  Avenue,  looking 
seaward,  very  near  the  Torgate  of  the  avenue.  Their 
chief  places  of  promenade  were  the  Strand  and  Victoria 
Parade,  but  they  were  often  seen  in  other  parts  of  the 
town.  Bad  weather  was  the  only  thing  that  kept  them 
from  frequenting  their  usual  beat.  They  were  two 
Misses  Durnford,  and  their  costume  was  peculiar.  The 
style  varied  only  in  tone  and  colour.  Their  shoes  were 
generally  green,  but  sometimes  red.  They  were  by  no 
means  bad-looking  girls  when  young,  but  they  were  so 
berouged  as  to  present  the  appearance  of  painted  dolls. 
Their  brown  hair  worn  in  curls  was  fastened  with  blue 
ribbon,  and  they  wore  felt  or  straw  hats,  usually  tall  in 
the  crown  and  curled  up  at  the  sides.  About  their 
throats  they  had  very  broad  frilled  or  lace  collars  that 
fell  down  over  their  backs  and  breasts  a  long  way.  But 
in  summer  their  necks  were  bare,  and  adorned  with 
chains  of  coral  or  bead.  Their  gowns  were  short,  so 
short  indeed  as  to  display  about  the  ankles  a  good 
deal  more  than  was  necessary  of  certain  heavily-frilled 
cotton  investitures  of  their  lower  limbs.  In  winter  over 
their  gowns  were  worn  check  jackets  of  a  "loud" 
pattern  reaching  to  their  knees,  and  of  a  different 

16 


THE    MISSES    DURNFORD.      THE   ALPHINGTON    PONIES 
From  a  Lithograph 


THE   ALPHINGTON   PONIES  17 

colour  from  their  gowns,  and  with  lace  cuffs.  They 
were  never  seen,  winter  or  summer,  without  their 
sunshades.  The  only  variation  to  the  jacket  was  a 
gay-coloured  shawl  crossed  over  the  bosom  and  tied 
behind  at  the  waist. 

The  sisters  dressed  exactly  alike,  and  were  so  much 
alike  in  face  as  to  appear  to  be  twins.  They  were  re- 
markably good  walkers,  kept  perfectly  in  step,  were 
always  arm  in  arm,  and  spoke  to  no  one  but  each 
other. 

They  lived  with  their  mother,  and  kept  no  servant. 
All  the  work  of  the  house  was  done  by  the  three,  so 
that  in  the  morning  they  made  no  appearance  in  the 
town  ;  only  in  the  afternoon  had  they  assumed  their 
war-paint,  when,  about  3  p.m.,  they  sallied  forth  ;  but, 
however  highly  they  rouged  and  powdered,  and  how- 
ever strange  was  their  dress,  they  carried  back  home 
no  captured  hearts.  Indeed,  the  visitors  to  Torquay 
looked  upon  them  with  some  contempt  as  not  being  in 
society  and  not  dressing  in  the  fashion  ;  only  some  of 
the  residents  felt  for  them  in  their  solitude  some  com- 
passion. They  were  the  daughters  of  a  Colonel 
Durnford,  and  had  lived  at  Alphington.  The  mother 
was  of  an  inferior  social  rank.  They  had  a  brother, 
a  major  in  the  Army,  loth  Regiment,  who  was  much 
annoyed  at  their  singularity  of  costume,  and  offered  to 
increase  their  allowance  if  they  would  discontinue  it ; 
but  this  they  refused  to  do. 

When  first  they  came  to  Torquay,  they  drove  a  pair 
of  pretty  ponies  they  had  brought  with  them  from 
Alphington  ;  but  their  allowance  being  reduced,  and 
being  in  straitened  circumstances,  they  had  to  dispose 
of  ponies  and  carriage.  By  an  easy  transfer  the  name 
of  Alphington  Ponies  passed  on  from  the  beasts  to 
their  former  owners. 


i8  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

As  they  were  not  well  off,  they  occasionally  got  into 
debt,  and  were  summoned  before  the  Court  of  Re- 
quests ;  and  could  be  impertinent  even  to  the  judge. 
On  one  occasion,  when  he  had  made  an  order  for  pay- 
ment, one  of  them  said,  "  Oh,  Mr.  Praed,  we  cannot 
pay  now  ;  but  my  sister  is  about  to  be  married  to  the 
Duke  of  Wellington,  and  then  we  shall  be  in  funds 
and  be  able  to  pay  for  all  we  have  had  and  are  likely  to 
want !  "  Once  the  two  visited  a  shop  and  gave  an  order, 
but,  instead  of  paying,  flourished  what  appeared  to  be 
the  half  of  a  £5  note,  saying,  that  when  they  had 
received  the  other  half,  they  would  be  pleased  to  call 
and  discharge  the  debt.  But  the  tradesman  was  not 
to  be  taken  in,  and  declined  to  execute  the  order. 
Indeed,  the  Torquay  shopkeepers  were  very  shy  of 
them,  and  insisted  on  the  money  being  handed  over 
the  counter  before  they  would  serve  the  ladies  with  the 
goods  that  they  required. 

They  made  no  acquaintances  in  Torquay  or  in  the 
neighbourhood,  nor  did  any  friends  come  from  a 
distance  to  stay  with  them.  They  would  now  and 
then  take  a  book  out  of  the  circulating  library,  but 
seemed  to  have  no  literary  tastes,  and  no  special 
pursuits.  There  was  a  look  of  intelligence,  however, 
in  their  eyes,  and  the  expression  of  their  faces  was 
decidedly  amiable  and  pleasing. 

They  received  very  few  letters ;  those  that  did 
arrive  probably  contained  remittances  of  money,  and 
were  eagerly  taken  in  at  the  door,  but  there  was 
sometimes  a  difficulty  about  finding  the  money  to  pay 
for  the  postage.  It  is  to  be  feared  that  the  butcher 
was  obdurate,  and  that  often  they  had  to  go  without 
meat.  Fish,  however,  was  cheap. 

A  gentleman  writes:  "  Mr.  Garrow's  house,  The 
Braddons,  was  on  my  father's  hands  to  let.  One  day 


THE    MISSES    DURNFORD.       THE    ALPHINGTON    PONIES   (BACK    VIEW) 
Lithographed  by  P.  Ganci,     Pub.  Ed.  Coder  cm 


THE   ALPHINGTON   PONIES  19 

the  gardener,  Tosse,  came  in  hot  haste  to  father  and 
complained  that  the  Alphington  Ponies  kept  coming 
into  the  grounds  and  picking  the  flowers,  that  when 
remonstrated  with  they  declared  that  they  were  re- 
lated to  the  owner,  and  had  permission.  '  Well,'  said 
father,  '  the  next  time  you  see  them  entering  the  gate 
run  down  and  tell  me.'  In  a  few  days  Tosse  hastened 
to  say  that  the  ladies  were  again  there.  Father 
hurried  up  to  the  grounds,  where  he  found  them 
flower-picking.  Without  the  least  ceremony  he  in- 
sisted on  their  leaving  the  grounds  at  once.  They 
began  the  same  story  to  him  of  their  relationship  to 
the  owner,  adding  thereto,  that  they  were  cousins  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington.  'Come,'  said  father,  <I 
can  believe  one  person  can  go  mad  to  any  extent  in 
any  direction  whatever,  but  the  improbability  of  two 
persons  going  mad  in  identically  the  same  direction 
and  manner  at  the  same  time  is  a  little  too  much  for 
my  credulity.  Ladies,  I  beg  you  to  proceed.'  And 
proceed  they  did." 

After  some  years  they  moved  to  Exeter,  and  took 
lodgings  in  St.  Sidwell's  parish.  For  a  while  they  con- 
tinued to  dress  in  the  same  strange  fashion  ;  but  they 
came  into  some  money,  and  then  were  able  to  indulge 
in  trinkets,  to  which  they  had  always  a  liking,  but  which 
previously  they  could  not  afford  to  purchase.  At  a 
large  fancy  ball,  given  in  Exeter,  two  young  Oxonians 
dressed  up  to  represent  these  ladies ;  they  entered  the 
ballroom  solemnly,  arm  in  arm,  with  their  parasols 
spread,  paced  round  the  room,  and  finished  their 
perambulation  with  a  waltz  together.  This  caused 
much  amusement ;  but  several  ladies  felt  that  it  was 
not  in  good  taste,  and  might  wound  the  poor  crazy 
Misses  Durnford.  This,  however,  was  not  the  case. 
So  far  from  being  offended  at  being  caricatured,  they 


20  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

were  vastly  pleased,  accepting  this  as  the  highest 
flattery.  Were  not  princesses  and  queens  also  repre- 
sented at  the  ball  ?  Why,  then,  not  they? 

One  public  ball  they  did  attend  together,  at  which, 
amongst  others,  were  Lady  Rolle  and  Mr.  Palk,  son  of 
the  then  Sir  Lawrence  Palk.  Owing  to  their  conspicuous 
attire,  they  drew  on  them  the  attention  of  Lady  Rolle, 
who  challenged  Mr.  Palk  to  ask  one  of  the  sisters  for  a 
dance,  and  offered  him  a  set  of  gold  and  diamond  shirt 
studs  if  he  could  prevail  on  either  of  them  to  be  his 
partner.  Mr.  Palk  accepted  the  challenge,  but  on 
asking  for  a  dance  was  met  in  each  case  by  the  reply, 
"  I  never  dance  except  my  sister  be  also  dancing." 
Mr.  Palk  then  gallantly  offered  to  dance  with  both 
sisters  at  once,  or  in  succession.  He  won  and  wore 
the  studs. 

A  gentleman  writes:  "In  their  early  days  they 
made  themselves  conspicuous  by  introducing  the 
bloomer  arrangement  in  the  nether  latitude.1  This, 
as  you  may  well  suppose,  was  regarded  as  a  scandal ; 
but  these  ladies,  who  were  never  known  to  speak  to 
any  one,  or  to  each  other  out  of  doors,  went  on  their 
way  quite  unruffled.  Years  and  years  after  this,  you 
may  imagine  my  surprise  at  meeting  them  in  Exeter, 
old  and  grey,  but  the  same  singular  silent  pair. 
Then,  after  an  interval  of  a  year  or  two,  only  one 
appeared.  I  assure  you,  it  gave  me  pain  to  look 
at  that  poor  lonely,  very  lonely  soul ;  but  it  was 
not  for  long.  Kind  Heaven  took  her  also,  and  so  a 
tiny  ripple  was  made,  and  there  was  an  end  of  the 
Alphington  Ponies." 

1  They  are  not  so  represented  in  the  three  lithographs  that  were 
published  at  Torquay.  But  two  others  beside  this  correspondent 
mention  their  appearance  in  "  bloomers." 


MARIA   FOOTE 

"W"  F  there  was  ever  a  creature  who  merited  the 
sympathy  of  the  world,  it  is  Maria  Foote.  If 
there  was  ever  a  wife  who  deserved  its  com- 

-*-  miseration,  it  is  her  mother."  With  these  words 
begins  a  notice  of  the  actress  in  The  Examiner  for  1825. 

About  the  year  1796  an  actor  appeared  in  Plymouth 
under  the  name  of  Freeman,  but  whose  real  name 
was  Foote,  and  who  claimed  relationship  with  Samuel 
Foote,  the  dramatist  and  performer.  He  was  of  a 
respectable  family,  and  his  brother  was  a  clergyman 
at  Salisbury.  Whilst  on  a  visit  to  his  brother,  he  met 
the  sister  of  his  brother's  wife,  both  daughters  of  a 
Mr.  Charles  Hart ;  she  was  then  a  girl  of  seventeen, 
in  a  boarding-school,  and  to  the  disgrace  of  all  parties 
concerned  therein,  this  simple  boarding-school  maid 
was  induced  to  marry  a  man  twenty-five  years  older 
than  herself,  and  to  give  great  offence  to  her  parents, 
who  withdrew  all  interest  in  her  they  had  hitherto 
shown.  Foote  returned  to  Plymouth  with  his  wife, 
a  sweet  innocent  girl.  He  was  at  the  time  proprietor 
and  manager  of  the  Plymouth  Theatre ;  and  as,  in 
country  towns,  actors  and  actresses  were  looked  down 
upon  by  society,  no  respectable  family  paid  Mrs.  Foote 
the  least  attention,  and  although  the  whole  town  was 
interested  in  her  appearance,  it  regarded  her  simply 
with  pity. 

Deserted   by  the   reputable  of  one  sex,  she  threw 

21 


22  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

herself  into  the  society  of  the  other ;  and  in  Ply- 
mouth, her  good  humour,  fascinating  manner,  long 
silken  hair,  and  white  hat  and  feather  made  havoc 
among  the  young  bloods.  The  husband  was  too 
apathetic  to  care  who  hovered  about  his  wife,  with 
whom  she  flirted ;  and  she,  without  being  vicious, 
finding  herself  slighted  causelessly,  became  indifferent 
to  the  world's  opinion.  Her  elderly  husband,  seeing 
that  she  was  not  visited,  began  himself  to  neglect  her. 

The  produce  of  this  ill-assorted  union  was  Maria 
Foote,  ushered  into  the  world  without  a  friend  on  the 
maternal,  and  very  few  on  the  paternal  side,  who  took 
any  interest  in  her  welfare,  and  she  was  brought  up 
amid  scenes  little  calculated  to  give  her  self-respect, 
sense  of  propriety,  or  any  idea  of  domestic  love  and 
happiness. 

From  the  disappointment  and  weariness  of  mind  that 
weighed  on  the  slighted  wife,  Mrs.  Foote  sought  relief 
in  attending  the  theatre  nightly  and  acting  on  the 
stage.  Daily  and  hourly  seeing,  hearing,  and  talking 
of  little  else  but  the  stage,  as  might  be  expected,  a 
wish  to  become  an  actress  took  possession  of  the 
child's  mind  at  an  early  age. 

When  Maria  was  twelve  years  of  age,  her  mother 
was  so  far  lost  to  all  delicacy  of  feeling,  and  her  father 
so  insensible  to  the  duties  of  a  father,  that  he  suffered 
his  only  daughter  to  act  Juliet  to  the  Romeo  of  his 
wife. 

Plymouth  was  disgusted,  thoroughly  disgusted,  and 
whatever  claims  Mr.  Foote  had  before  to  the  notice  of 
some  private  friends,  they  now  considered  these  as 
forfeited  for  ever.  From  this  moment  a  sort  of  reck- 
less indifference  seemed  to  possess  the  whole  family. 
Nothing  came  amiss,  so  that  money  could  be  obtained ; 
and  Foote,  who  had  been  brought  up  as  a  gentleman, 


MARIA    FOOTE,    AFTERWARDS   COUNTESS    OF    HARRINGTON 
From  an  engraved  portrait  in  the  collection  of  A.  M.  Broadley,  Esq. 


MARIA    FOOTE  23 

and  his  wife  as  a  lady,  took  a  small  inn  in  Exeter,  in 
1811,  lost  his  wife's  fortune,  became  the  dupe  of  rogues, 
and  was  ruined. 

The  fame  of  Maria  Foote's  beauty  and  charm  of 
manner  had  reached  London,  and  in  May,  1814,  she 
made  her  first  appearance  at  Covent  Garden  Theatre, 
and  personated  Amanthis  in  "The  Child  of  Nature" 
with  such  grace  and  effect  that  the  manager  compli- 
mented her  with  an  immediate  engagement.  Young, 
beautiful,  intelligent,  and  with  natural  refinement,  she 
was  almost  the  creature  she  represented.  A  liberal 
salary  was  assigned  to  her,  and  the  managers  always 
considered  the  announcement  of  her  name  as  certain 
of  obtaining  for  them  a  crowded  house.  That  she  had 
no  pretensions  to  a  rank  higher  than  that  of  a  second- 
rate  actress  must,  perhaps,  be  allowed.  "  I  was  never 
a  great  actress,"  she  used  to  say  in  later  life,  "though 
people  thought  me  fascinating,  and  that  I  suppose 
I  was." 

She  was  always  dressed  tastefully,  looked  charm- 
ing, and  was  a  universal  favourite  among  the  lobby 
loungers.  A  writer  in  The  Drama  for  1825  says: 
"To  those  who  know  nothing  of  a  theatre,  it  may  be 
new  to  tell  them  that  an  interesting  girl  is  in  the 
jaws  of  ruin,  who  enters  it  as  an  actress,  unless 
watched  and  protected  by  her  family  and  friends. 
Constantly  exposed  to  the  gaze  of  men — inflaming  a 
hundred  heads,  and  agitating  a  thousand  hearts,  if 
she  be  as  Maria  was,  fascinating  and  amiable — sur- 
rounded by  old  wretches  as  dressers,  who  are  the 
constant  conveyers  of  letters,  sonnets  and  flattery  — 
dazzled  by  the  thunders  of  public  applause,  and 
softened  by  the  incense  of  a  thousand  sighs,  breathed 
audibly  from  the  front  of  the  pit  or  the  stage  boxes- 
associating  in  the  green-room  with  licensed  married 


24  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

strumpets,  because  she  must  not  be  affected  !  Or 
supping  on  the  stage,  after  the  curtain  is  dropped,  with 
titled  infamy  or  grey-headed  lechery! — Let  the  reader 
fancy  an  innocent  girl,  from  a  country  town,  plunged 
at  once  into  the  furnace  of  depravity — let  him  fancy 
her  father  sanctioning  her  by  his  indifference  or  help- 
ing her  by  his  example,  and  then  let  him  say,  if  she 
be  ultimately  seduced  and  abandoned,  whether  it  ought 
not  to  be  a  wonder  she  was  innocent  so  long." 

In  spite  of  an  education  that  never  cherished  the  best 
feelings  of  a  child,  Maria  had  a  far  sounder  under- 
standing than  her  parents,  and  an  instinctive  modesty 
that  withstood  the  evil  with  which  she  was  surrounded. 

In  the  summer  of  1815,  Maria  Foote  was  engaged  as 
a  star  to  perform  at  Cheltenham,  and  there  attracted 
the  attention  of  Fitzharding  Berkeley,  better  known  as 
Colonel  Berkeley.  This  gentleman  was  the  son  of 
Frederick  Augustus,  fifth  Earl  of  Berkeley,  by  Mary 
Cole,  the  beautiful  daughter  of  a  butcher  at  Gloucester, 
to  whom  he  was  married  in  1796.  The  Colonel  was 
born  in  1786.  The  Earl,  indeed,  affirmed  that  a  private 
marriage  had  taken  place  in  1785  ;  the  House  of  Lords 
disallowed  the  proofs,  in  consequence  of  which  one  of 
the  Colonel's  younger  brothers,  born  after  1796,  became 
entitled  to  the  earldom  ;  he,  however,  always  refused 
to  assume  the  title.  Colonel  Berkeley  was  an  enthusi- 
astic amateur  of  the  stage,  and  he  offered  his  services 
to  perform  at  the  benefit  of  Miss  Foote,  and  she  ac- 
cepted his  offer.  The  house  was  full  to  the  ceiling, 
and  Maria,  of  course,  felt  grateful  for  the  aid  thus  lent 
her.  After  thus  ingratiating  himself,  he  seized  the 
opportunity  to  plead  the  passion  with  which  she  had 
inspired  him.  The  old  Earl,  his  father,  had  died  in 
1 8 10,  and  the  Colonel  was  endeavouring  to  establish 
his  claim  to  the  earldom.  He  pleaded  with  her,  that 


MARIA    FOOTE  25 

till  his  claim  was  allowed  he  could  not  well  marry  her, 
as  such  a  marriage,  he  asserted,  would  prejudice  his 
suit  to  recover  the  forfeited  earldom  of  Berkeley,  but 
he  solemnly  vowed  his  intention  to  make  her  his  wife 
the  moment  that  he  could  do  so  without  injuring  his 
cause.  By  this  means  he  deluded  the  unfortunate  girl 
into  a  connexion  with  him  that  lasted  for  five  years, 
and  during  all  that  time  he  made  her  no  allowance 
beyond  the  payment  of  those  expenses  which  he  him- 
self had  led  her  to  incur,  and  the  presents  he  made  to 
her  did  not  in  all  that  time  amount  to  £100.  In  1821, 
Maria  bore  the  Colonel  a  child,  and  had  again  ex- 
pectations of  becoming  a  mother  in  1824,  and  in 
the  June  of  that  year  all  connexion  ceased  between 
them. 

In  the  spring  of  1823,  Mr.  Joseph  Hayne,  a  young 
man  of  fortune,  commonly  known,  from  the  colour  of 
his  coat,  as  "  Pea-green  "  Hayne,  saw  Maria  Foote  at 
Covent  Garden  Theatre,  was  struck  with  her  beauty, 
called  at  her  house  in  Keppel  Street,  and  invited 
Mr.  Foote  to  spend  some  days  with  him  at  Kitson  Hall 
in  Staffordshire,  one  of  his  seats.  The  invitation  was 
accepted,  and  there  Hayne  informed  the  father  that  he 
desired  to  pay  his  addresses  to  his  charming  daughter. 
Mr.  Foote  hurried  back  to  town,  and  as  Maria  was 
expecting  her  confinement,  sent  off  his  wife  with  her 
into  the  country  under  the  feigned  name  of  Forbes,  to 
remain  in  concealment  till  after  that  event. 

In  the  following  January,  Hayne  again  called  at 
Keppel  Street,  and  announced  to  Mrs.  Foote  that  he 
seriously  desired  to  be  united  in  marriage  to  her 
daughter.  Mrs.  Foote  informed  him  that  Maria  was 
engaged  to  be  married  to  Colonel  Berkeley,  and  that 
her  daughter  could  not  listen  to  his  suit  unless  the 
Colonel  failed  to  fulfil  his  promise.  Hayne  then  said 


26  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

that  he  was  about  to  go  into  the  country,  and  asked 
permission  to  escort  Mrs.  and  Miss  Foote  to  the  opera, 
and  to  tender  to  them  his  private  box.  To  this  the 
lady  consented.  As  it  happened,  Colonel  Berkeley 
with  a  Mr.  Manse  happened  to  be  in  the  pit  that  even- 
ing, and  the  Colonel  at  once  dispatched  his  friend  to 
the  box  to  request  Hayne  to  speak  with  him  in  the  pit. 
When  the  young  buck  came  to  him,  Berkeley  asked 
him  for  an  explanation  of  his  conduct  with  respect  to 
Miss  Foote,  and  desired  a  meeting  on  the  following 
day.  When  they  met  the  Colonel  disclosed  to  Hayne 
everything  relative  to  his  connexion  with  Maria  Foote, 
and  told  him  that  he  was  the  father  by  her  of  two 
children.  On  hearing  this  Mr.  Hayne  at  once  wrote 
to  the  lady  to  withdraw  his  proposal  of  marriage.  She, 
in  reply,  requested  an  interview  with  him  in  order  to 
explain  the  circumstances.  This  took  place  at  Marl- 
borough  in  the  presence  of  Mrs.  Foote.  The  young 
man  (he  was  aged  only  twenty-two)  was  moved  by  her 
sad  story,  and  on  his  return  to  town  found  that  his 
flame  had  not  been  quenched  by  the  revelation.  So  he 
penned  a  letter  to  Maria,  stating  that  his  feelings  re- 
mained unaltered,  and  begging  her  to  marry  him. 
After  some  negotiation  she  agreed  to  this,  and  at 
Hayne's  advice  the  children  were  sent  to  Colonel 
Berkeley,  who  had  asked  for  them.  Hayne  proposed 
to  settle  £40,000  on  Miss  Foote,  for  himself  and  her  to 
receive  the  dividends  during  their  joint  lives,  and  after 
the  death  of  the  survivor  of  them,  to  be  distributed 
equally  among  the  children  of  the  marriage,  if  any  ; 
and  if,  at  the  death  of  Mr.  Hayne,  his  wife  should 
survive  him,  but  have  no  children,  then  £20,000  was 
to  become  the  absolute  property  of  the  widow.  The 
day  for  the  wedding  was  fixed  to  take  place  on  the 
ensuing  4th  September,  and  "  May  God  strike  me 


MARIA   FOOTE  27 

dead,"  asseverated  the  young  man,  "if  ever  I  consent 
to  separate  myself  from  you,  dearest  Maria." 

A  few  days  later,  Mr.  Bebb,  "Pea-green"  Hayne's 
solicitor,  called  in  Keppel  Street,  at  Mr.  Foote's  house, 
and  left  a  verbal  message  to  the  effect  "that  Mr.  Hayne 
would  never  see  Miss  Foote  again."  Great  consterna- 
tion was  produced  in  the  family,  and  the  young  actress 
at  once  wrote  to  her  new  lover  to  entreat  an  interview 
and  an  explanation.  The  bearer  of  the  letter  encoun- 
tered Hayne  in  Bond  Street,  and  he  returned  with  the 
servant  in  a  coach  to  Keppel  Street.  Hayne  informed 
Maria  that  it  was  not  his  fault  that  he  had  acted  in  so 
strange  a  manner  towards  her  ;  that  it  had  been  his 
firm  intention  to  fulfil  his  engagement,  but  that,  on  his 
return  home  on  Sunday,  some  persons  had  first  plied 
him  with  liquor,  so  as  to  make  him  in  such  a  beastly 
state  of  intoxication  that  he  knew  not  what  he  did  ;  that 
they  afterwards  locked  him  up  in  a  little  back  room, 
from  which  he  had  only  that  moment  made  his  escape, 
which  his  exhausted  appearance  would  prove,  and  that 
when  he  met  the  servant  with  the  letter  he  was  on  his 
way  to  see  his  dearest  Maria.  The  explanation  was 
received,  a  reconciliation  was  effected,  and  as  "Pea- 
green  "  was  so  evidently  a  weak  young  man,  liable 
to  be  swayed  this  way  or  that  according  to  whom 
he  was  with,  it  was  resolved  that  a  special  licence 
should  at  once  be  procured,  and  that  the  marriage 
should  take  place  on  the  following  morning  at  nine 
o'clock. 

The  night  passed  anxiously  enough  on  the  part  of 
Miss  Foote,  who  realized  that  there  was  many  a  slip 
between  the  cup  and  the  lip.  At  length  the  morning 
arrived,  everything  was  prepared,  the  bride's  maid  was 
in  attendance,  as  were  also  Mr.  Gill,  the  lawyer  with 
the  marriage  settlement,  and  Mr.  Robins,  the  trustee ; 


28  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

but  the  bridegroom  did  not  turn  up,  or  send  any  notice 
that  he  was  kept  away.  The  parties  waited  till  three 
o'clock,  and  then  a  note  was  dispatched  to  him  at 
Long's  Hotel,  where  he  was  staying.  The  servant 
who  took  it  was  ushered  into  a  private  room,  and  was 
there  detained,  under  one  pretext  or  another,  for  a  con- 
siderable time,  and  was  finally  informed  that  Joseph 
Hayne,  Esq.,  had  gone  into  the  country,  to  his  seat  at 
Burdeson  Park,  Wiltshire.  For  six  days  did  the  young 
lady  wait  in  anxious  expectation  of  receiving  some 
communication  from  the  defaulting  bridegroom.  At 
length,  on  the  sixth  day,  she  wrote  to  him  a  distressed 
and  piteous  appeal.  To  this  she  received  an  answer : 
"  My  dearest  Maria,  you  are  perfectly  correct  when  you 
say  that  my  heart  and  thoughts  are  still  with  you." 
Hayne  then  stated  that  the  world  was  censorious,  that 
he  was  divided  between  love  for  her  and  esteem  for  his 
friends  and  dread  of  their  disapproval.  The  letter  then 
went  on  to  state,  "I  am  resolved  to  sacrifice  friends 
to  affection  ;  I  cannot,  will  not  lose  you." 

After  a  short  interval,  Hayne  returned  to  London  and 
called  on  Miss  Foote,  at  her  father's  residence,  and  they 
became  perfectly  reconciled,  and  the  28th  September 
was  finally  fixed  for  the  day  of  their  marriage.  This 
fell  on  the  Tuesday,  and  Monday  was  appointed  for 
the  execution  of  the  marriage  settlement.  On  Saturday, 
Hayne,  accompanied  by  Mr.  Foote,  went  to  Doctors' 
Commons,  and  there  procured  the  marriage  licence, 
which  Hayne  himself  delivered  into  the  hands  of  his 
intended  bride,  and  solicited  leave  to  wait  on  her  the 
following  morning.  But  instead  of  calling  himself, 
a  gentleman  named  Manning  appeared  at  the  house  of 
the  Footes,  and  brought  a  letter  from  Mr.  Hayne  to  the 
father  of  Maria,  which  stated  that  poor  Joseph  was  so 
wretched  as  to  be  unable  himself  to  call,  but  that  the 


MARIA    FOOTE  29 

bearer  would  explain  everything,  and  finally  concluded 
by  breaking  off  the  match. 

After  this,  Miss  Foote  received  another  letter  from 
Hayne  :  "  My  dearest  Maria, — We  know  each  other 
well ;  but  with  all  my  faults,  you  have  a  regard  for  my 
honour, — my  attachment  to  you  is  unabated.  I  entreat 
you  to  grant  me  an  interview  in  any  other  place  than 
Keppel  Street." 

To  this  letter  the  fair  Maria  replied:  "  Is  this 
the  way  of  proving  your  love  and  regard  for  me? 
To  my  honour  and  your  shame  be  it  spoken,  that  I 
am  now  suffering  under  a  painful  illness,  brought  on 
entirely  by  your  conduct ;  but  that  you  are  actuated 
by  the  advice  of  bad  counsels,  I  have  no  doubt.  I  will, 
however,  once  more  consent  to  see  you,  but  it  must  be 
in  the  presence  of  my  family  :  if  I  am  well  enough,  on 
Saturday,  at  one  o'clock,  it  will  be  convenient  to  me  to 
grant  you  an  interview."  In  reply  "  Pea-green  "  wrote : 
"  Farewell  for  ever. — Hayne." 

For  his  breach  of  promise,  Miss  Foote  brought  an 
action  for  damages.  The  Attorney-General  was  re- 
tained on  behalf  of  the  plaintiff;  and  Mr.  Scarlett  on 
behalf  of  the  defendant.  The  case  was  heard  on 
21  December,  1824. 

It  then  transpired  that  Mr.  Foote,  the  father,  had 
been  given  by  Mr.  Hayne,  to  secure  his  goodwill,  the 
sum  of  £1150;  that  Miss  Foote  had  received  presents 
from  the  defendant  to  the  value  of  £1000.  It  was 
shown  that  gross  deception  had  been  practised  on 
Hayne,  at  the  time  of  Maria's  expected  confinement, 
to  conceal  from  him  her  condition,  and  it  had  been 
represented  to  him  that  she  had  been  taken  into  the 
country  as  suffering  from  a  pulmonary  complaint. 

However,  after  he  had  learned  all  the  circumstances, 
and  knew  that  she  had  been  "  under  the  protection  "  of 


30  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Colonel  Berkeley  and  had  borne  him  two  children,  he 
renewed  his  offer  of  marriage.  Miss  Foote  demanded 
£20,000  damages.  The  jury,  after  a  brief  consultation, 
agreed  to  accord  her  £3000;  a  large  slice  of  which 
sum,  if  not  the  largest  portion  of  it,  was  eaten  up  by 
the  lawyers  employed  in  the  case  by  her. 

None  came  out  well  in  the  matter.  As  the  Attorney- 
General  remarked:  "  He  could  not  trust  himself  in 
using  language  he  thought  sufficient  to  express  his 
detestation  of  Colonel  Berkeley's  conduct."  Joseph 
Hayne  appeared  as  a  public  fop  who  did  not  know  his 
own  mind  from  one  day  to  another. 

Mrs.  Foote  was  revealed  to  be  a  scheming  un- 
principled woman,  but  Mr.  Foote  came  out  worst  of  all. 
As  The  Examiner  said  of  him:  "  There  is  scarcely 
a  family  living,  or  a  family  dead,  that  he  has  not  treated 
with  the  dirtiest  selfishness,  whatever  were  his  obliga- 
tions— spunging  till  he  was  insulted,  lying  till  he  was 
discovered,  puffing  till  he  was  the  butt  of  the  town. 
The  people  of  Plymouth  can  relate  a  thousand  instances 
of  this  description." 

Maria  Foote  came  out  best  of  all.  She,  brought  up 
by  such  detestably  mean  parents,  without  protection, 
exposed  to  temptation  at  every  turn,  was  more  to  be 
pitied  than  blamed.  This  the  town  felt,  and  when,  on 
5  February,  1825,  her  benefit  was  given  at  Co  vent 
Garden  Theatre,  the  house  was  packed.  The  Drama, 
or  Theatrical  Magazine,  says:  u  The  fullest  house  of 
this  season,  indeed  of  any  season  within  our  ex- 
perience, assembled  this  evening.  The  performance 
was  not  the  attraction  ;  the  overruling  anxiety  was  to 
be  present  at  the  reappearance  of  Miss  Foote.  A 
more  intense  interest  could  not  have  been  displayed  ; 
it  was  without  parallel  in  the  records  of  theatrical 
history.  For  many  weeks  past  every  seat  in  the  boxes 


MARIA   FOOTE  31 

— in  the  dress  circle — of  the  first  circle — in  the  slips — 
all  were  engaged,  and  would  have  been  engaged  had 
the  theatre  been  double  its  dimensions.  Even  part  of 
the  orchestra  was  appropriated  to  the  accommodation 
of  visitors  with  guinea  tickets ;  and  an  additional 
douceur  was  in  the  course  of  the  evening  given  even 
for  tolerable  sight-room.  Not  the  fraction  of  a  seat 
was  to  be  had ;  and  before  the  rising  of  the  curtain 
the  whole  interior  of  the  theatre  was  crowded  almost 
to  suffocation.  During  the  first  scenes  of  the  per- 
formance (The  Belle's  Stratagem}  little  else  was  heard 
than  the  din  and  bustle  consequent  on  the  adjustment 
and  regulation  of  places.  At  length,  at  an  advanced 
period  of  the  first  act,  Miss  Foote  appeared.  The 
utmost  stillness  prevailed  in  the  house  immediately 
previous  to  her  expected  entree  ;  she  at  length  appeared, 
and  was  received  with  a  burst  of  loud,  continued,  and 
enthusiastic  acclamation,  such  as  we  never  remember 
to  have  heard  or  known  to  have  been  equalled  at  any 
theatre.  All  the  persons  in  the  pit  and,  with  scarcely 
an  exception,  in  the  boxes  and  other  parts  of  the 
house,  stood  up  and  welcomed  her  return  to  the  stage 
with  the  most  marked  and  emphatic  kindness.  The 
waving  of  hats,  handkerchiefs,  was  resorted  to. 
There  was  something,  too,  in  the  manner  of  her 
appearance,  which  contributed  greatly  to  enhance, 
while  it  seemed  to  entreat,  the  indulgent  consideration 
with  which  the  audience  were  inclined  to  receive  her. 
She  advanced  with  downcast  look  and  faltering  step 
to  the  front  of  the  stage,  and  became  affected  even  to 
tears.  There  was  a  diffidence,  a  timidity,  and  a  truly 
distressing  embarrassment  in  her  mode  of  coming 
forward,  which,  together  with  her  beauty  and  the 
recollection  of  her  sufferings,  was  calculated  to  compel 
pity.  It  was  a  scene  which  did  equal  honour  to  the 


32  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

audience,  who  duly  appreciated  the  distress  of  her 
situation,  and  to  the  object  of  their  sympathy,  who 
gave  such  a  pathetic  attestation  of  her  consciousness 
of  it.  Many  ladies — and  there  were  many  present — 
could  not  refrain  from  tears.  Those  parts,  and  there 
were  several  throughout  the  play,  capable  of  being 
applied  to  Miss  Foote's  peculiar  situation,  were  seized 
on  by  the  audience,  and  followed  by  loud  plaudits. 
At  the  delivery  of  the  lines 

What  is  your  fortune,  my  pretty  maid  ? 
My  face  is  my  fortune,  sir,  she  said, 

a  burst  of  acclamation  was  sent  forth,  almost  equal  to 
that  which  greeted  her  entrance.  The  two  lines  which 
succeeded  were,  if  possible,  still  more  applicable  to 
recent  events,  which  have  occupied  so  much  of  the 
attention  of  the  Bar  and  of  the  public. 

Then  I'll  not  marry  you,  my  pretty  maid. 
There's  nobody  asking  you,  sir,  she  said. 

The  good-humoured  approval  that  followed  these 
lines,  which  was  in  no  degree  abated  by  the  arch  air 
with  which  Miss  Foote  gave  them,  cannot  be  con- 
veyed by  verbal  description.  At  the  expression  of  the 
sentence,  'This  moment  is  worth  a  whole  existence,' 
Miss  Foote  bowed  to  the  audience  in  grateful  acknow- 
ledgment of  the  reception  she  had  met  with.  Alto- 
gether Miss  Foote's  reappearance  has  been  most 
gratifying.  She  has  been  hailed  as  a  favourite  of  the 
public,  who  has  been  basely  lured  from  virtue,  but 
who  is  not  on  that  account  treated  as  an  alien  from 
its  path." 

The  total  receipts  that  evening  amounted  to  £900.  i6s. 
At  the  latter  end  of  1830,  Madame  Vestris  took  the 
Olympic  Theatre,  and  opened  it,  on  3  January  of  the 
following  year,  with  a  drama  on  the  subject  of  Mary 


MARIA   FOOTE  33 

Queen  of  Scots,  in  which  Miss  Foote,  who  appears 
for  a  time  to  have  been  in  partnership  with  her,  played 
the  heroine.  But  she  soon  after  quitted  the  stage, 
and  on  7  April,  1831,  was  married  to  the  eccentric 
Charles  Stanhope,  eighth  Earl  of  Harrington  and 
Viscount  Petersham.  He  was  aged  fifty-one  and  she 
aged  thirty-three.  They  had  one  daughter  ;  he  died 
in  1851,  and  she,  as  Dowager  Countess  of  Harrington, 
lived  until  27  December,  1867. 

Mrs.  Bancroft,  in  On  and  Off  the  Stage  (London, 
1888),  gives  us  a  pleasant  recollection  of  Maria  Foote 
in  her  old  age  as  Dowager  Countess  of  Harrington. 

"  My  father  had  known  her  slightly  when  she  was  in 
her  zenith,  and  would  often  speak  of  her  as  one  of  the 
loveliest  and  most  amiable  of  women.  He  would 
often  recall  not  only  the  charm  she  possessed  as  an 
accomplished  actress,  but  her  good-nature  to  every- 
body, high  and  low,  in  the  theatre.  .  .  .  My  mother 
had  never  met  Lady  Harrington,  but  she  soon  grew 
much  attached  to  one  who  became  a  true  friend  to  me, 
and  as  time  went  on  seemed  more  and  more  endeared 
to  me.  She  must  have  been  very  beautiful  when 
young,  being  still  extremely  handsome  as  an  old  lady. 
She  was  as  good,  too,  as  she  was  handsome  ;  and  I 
can  never  forget  her  kindness  to  me.  When  I  was 
once  seriously  ill  with  an  attack  of  bronchitis,  Lady 
Harrington  was  unwearying  in  her  attention  to  me, 
and  would,  day  after  day,  sit  by  my  bedside  reading  to 
me,  and  would  bring  with  her  all  the  delicacies  she 
could  think  of.  When  I  had  sufficiently  recovered  my 
strength,  she  sent  me  to  the  seaside  to  recruit  my 
health.  To  record  all  the  kindnesses  she  bestowed 
on  me  and  mine  would  fill  up  many  pages,  but 
my  gratitude  is  indelibly  written  on  my  heart.  She 
gave  me  a  portrait  of  herself,  as  Maria  Darlington  in 
D 


34  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

A  Roland  for  an  Oliver^  and  by  it  one  can  see  how 
lovely  she  must  have  been.  Among  her  other  gifts 
was  a  beautiful  old-fashioned  diamond  and  ruby  ring, 
which  she  told  me  was  given  to  her  by  the  Earl  when 
he  was  engaged  to  be  married  to  her.  .  .  .  Lady 
Harrington  was  much  attached  to  (her  old  butler) 
Payne,  and  also  to  her  maid,  who,  I  believe,  had 
been  in  her  service  since  she  was  quite  young,  and 
often  spoke  of  them  as  Romeo  and  Juliet.  I  recall 
many  a  happy  visit  to  Richmond  Terrace,  and  until 
her  last  illness  I  had  no  better  friend  than  Lady 
Harrington. 

"On  the  afternoon  of  Friday,  27  December,  1867, 
my  mind  was  unaccountably  full  of  thoughts  about 
her.  I  had  been  making  some  purchases  in  Regent 
Street,  and  on  my  way  home  in  a  cab  was  wondering, 
as  I  was  driven  through  the  crowd  of  vehicles,  if  I 
should  ever  see  her  in  her  well-known  carriage  again, 
with  its  snuff-coloured  '  Petersham  brown '  body,  the 
long  brown  coats,  the  silver  hat  cords  of  the  coachman 
and  footman,  the  half-crescents  of  white  leather  which 
formed  part  of  the  harness  across  the  foreheads  of  the 
horses. 

"  On  the  following  day  I  received  the  sorrowful  news 
that  Lady  Harrington  was  dead  at  the  time  I  had 
thought  so  much  of  her,  and  that  I  had  lost  a  friend- 
ship for  which  Time  can  never  lessen  my  gratitude." 


CARABOO 

ON    Thursday   evening,    3    April,    1817,   the 
overseer  of  the  parish  of  Almondsbury,  in 
Gloucestershire,  called  at  Knole  Park,  the 
residence  of  Samuel  Worall,   Esq.,  to  in- 
form him  that  a  young  female  had  entered  a  cottage  in 
the  village,  and  had  made  signs  to  express  her  desire 
to  sleep  there  ;    but  not  understanding  her  language, 
the  good  folk  of  the  cottage  communicated  with  the 
overseer,  and  he,  as  perplexed  as  the  cottagers,  went 
for   counsel   to   the   magistrate.     Mr.  Worall   ordered 
that  she  should   be  brought  to  Knole,  and  presently 
the   overseer    returned   with    a    slim    damsel,    dressed 
poorly  but  quaintly,  with  a  sort  of  turban  about  her 
head,  not  precisely  beautiful,  but  with  very  intelligent 
speaking  eyes. 

Neither  Mr.  nor  Mrs.  Worall  could  make  heads  or 
tails  of  what  she  said.  He  had  a  Greek  valet  who 
knew  or  could  recognize  most  of  the  languages  spoken 
in  the  Levant,  but  he  also  was  at  fault ;  he  could  not 
catch  a  single  word  of  her  speech  that  was  familiar  to 
him.  By  signs  she  was  questioned  as  to  whether  she 
had  any  papers,  and  she  produced  from  her  pocket  a 
bad  sixpence  and  a  few  halfpence.  Under  her  arm  she 
carried  a  small  bundle  containing  some  necessaries, 
and  a  piece  of  soap  wound  up  in  a  bit  of  linen.  Her 
dress  consisted  of  a  black  stuff  gown  with  a  muslin 

35 


36  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

frill  round  her  neck,  a  black  cotton  shawl  twisted  about 
her  head,  and  a  red  and  black  shawl  thrown  over  her 
shoulders,  leather  shoes,  and  black  worsted  stockings. 

The  general  impression  produced  from  her  person 
and  manners  was  favourable.  Her  head  was  small,  her 
eyes  black,  hair  also  black ;  the  forehead  was  low,  nose 
short,  in  complexion  a  brunette.  The  cheeks  were 
faintly  tinged  with  red.  The  mouth  was  rather  wide, 
teeth  pearly  white,  lips  large  and  full,  the  underlip 
slightly  projecting.  The  chin  small  and  round.  Her 
height  was  5  ft.  2  in.  Her  hands  were  clean  and  small 
and  well  cared  for.  Obviously  they  had  not  been 
accustomed  to  labour.  She  wore  no  ear-rings,  but 
the  marks  of  having  worn  them  remained.  Her  age 
appeared  to  be  twenty-five. 

After  consultation,  it  was  thought  advisable  to  send 
her  to  the  village  inn  ;  and  as  Mrs.  Worall  was  in- 
terested in  her,  she  sent  her  own  maid  and  the  footman 
to  attend  the  stranger  to  the  public-house,  it  being  late 
in  the  evening,  and  to  request  the  landlady  to  give  her 
a  private  room  and  a  comfortable  bed. 

The  young  woman  seemed  to  be  greatly  fatigued 
and  walked  with  difficulty.  When  shown  the  room  in 
which  she  was  to  sleep,  she  prepared  to  lie  down  on 
the  mat  upon  the  floor  ;  whereupon  the  landlady  put 
her  own  little  girl  into  the  bed,  so  as  to  explain  its 
purport  to  her  guest.  The  stranger  then  undressed 
and  went  to  bed. 

Next  morning  Mrs.  Worall  went  to  the  inn  at  seven 
o'clock  and  found  her  sitting  dejectedly  by  the  fire. 
The  clergyman  of  the  parish  had  brought  some  books 
of  travel  and  illustrated  geographies  to  show  her,  so 
that  she  might  give  some  clue  as  to  whence  she  came. 
She  manifested  pleasure  at  the  pictures  of  China  and 
the  Chinese. 


CARABOO  37 

Mrs.  Worall  now  took  her  to  Knole,  where  by  signs, 
pointing  to  herself  and  uttering  the  word  Caraboo,  she 
explained  to  her  hostess  that  this  was  her  name.  At 
dinner  she  declined  all  animal  food,  and  took  nothing 
to  drink  but  water,  showing  marked  disgust  at  beer, 
cyder,  and  meat. 

Next  day  she  was  conveyed  to  Bristol  and  examined 
before  the  mayor  and  magistrates,  but  nothing  was 
made  out  concerning  her,  and  she  was  consigned  to 
St.  Peter's  Hospital  for  Vagrants. 

There  she  remained  till  the  ensuing  Monday — three 
days — refusing  food  of  every  description.  On  that  day 
Mrs.  Worall  went  into  Bristol  and  visited  her  at  the 
hospital.  The  friendless  situation  of  the  foreign  lady 
had  in  the  interim  become  public,  and  several  gentle- 
men had  called  upon  her,  bringing  with  them 
foreigners  of  their  acquaintance,  in  the  hope  of  dis- 
covering who  she  was.  Caraboo  expressed  lively 
delight  at  seeing  Mrs.  Worall  again,  and  that  lady, 
deeply  touched,  removed  her  from  the  hospital  to 
the  office  of  Mr.  Worall,  in  Bristol,  where  she 
remained  for  ten  days  under  the  care  of  the  house- 
keeper. 

Daily  efforts  were  made  to  discover  her  language 
and  country,  but  without  effect.  At  last  a  Portuguese 
of  the  name  of  Manuel  Eynesso,  who  happened  to  be 
in  Bristol,  had  an  interview,  and  he  professed  that  he 
was  able  to  interpret  what  she  said.  The  tale  he 
revealed  was  that  she  was  a  person  of  consequence 
in  her  own  country,  and  had  been  decoyed  from  an 
island  in  the  East  Indies,  brought  to  England  against 
her  wishes,  and  then  deserted.  He  further  added  that 
her  language  was  not  a  pure  dialect,  but  was  a  mixture 
of  several  tongues  spoken  in  Sumatra.  On  this  Mrs. 
Worall  removed  Caraboo  to  Knole,  and  from  3  April 


38  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

to  6  June  her  hostess,  the  whole  family,  and  the 
domestics  treated  her  with  the  utmost  consideration 
and  regard. 

Among  the  visitors  at  Knole  was  a  gentleman  who 
had  made  many  voyages  in  the  East  Indies,  and  he 
took  a  lively  interest  in  the  girl,  and  conversed  with 
her,  partly  by  word  of  mouth  and  partly — when  at  fault 
for  words — by  signs. 

It  must  have  been  an  interesting  sight,  the  travelled 
gentleman  interrogating  Caraboo  and  taking  notes  of 
her  reply,  with  an  admiring  circle  around  of  the  family 
and  visitors,  wondering  at  his  linguistic  acquirements 
and  facility  of  speech  in  Oriental  tongues.  This  tra- 
veller committed  to  writing  the  following  particulars 
obtained  from  Caraboo. 

She  was  daughter  of  a  person  of  high  rank,  of 
Chinese  origin,  by  a  Mandin,  or  Malay  woman,  who 
was  killed  in  war  between  the  Boogoos  (cannibals)  and 
the  Mandins  (Malays).  Whilst  walking  in  her  garden 
at  Javasu  attended  by  three  sammen  (women),  she  was 
seized  by  pirates  commanded  by  a  man  named  Chee- 
ming,  bound  hand  and  foot,  her  mouth  covered,  and 
carried  off.  She  herself  in  her  struggles  wounded 
two  of  Chee-ming's  men  with  her  creese  ;  one  of  these 
died,  the  other  recovered  by  the  assistance  of  zjustee 
(surgeon).  After  eleven  days  she  was  sold  to  the 
captain  of  a  brig  called  the  Tappa-Boo.  A  month  later 
she  arrived  at  a  port,  presumably  Batavia,  remained 
there  two  days,  and  then  started  for  England,  which 
was  reached  in  eleven  weeks.  In  consequence  of  ill- 
usage  by  the  crew,  she  made  her  escape  to  shore.  She 
had  had  a  dress  of  silk  embroidered  and  interwoven 
with  gold,  but  she  had  been  induced  to  exchange  this 
with  a  woman  in  a  cottage  whose  doors  were  painted 
green,  but  the  situation  of  which  she  could  not  describe. 


CARABOO  39 

The  garments  she  now  wore  were  those  she  had  received 
from  the  cottager. 

After  wandering  over  the  country  for  six  weeks,  she 
had  arrived  at  Almondsbury.  She  spoke  of  her  mother's 
teeth  as  artificially  blackened  (i.e.  by  chewing  betel- 
nut);  her  face  and  arms  were  painted,  and  she  wore  a 
jewel  in  her  nose,  and  a  gold  chain  from  it  was  attached 
to  her  left  temple.  Her  father  had  three  more  wives, 
and  he  was  usually  borne  upon  the  shoulders  of  macra- 
toos  (common  men)  in  a  palanquin. 

She  described  the  dress  she  wore  at  home.  Seven 
peacock's  feathers  adorned  the  right  side  of  her  cap  or 
turban.  Upon  being  furnished  with  calico,  she  made 
herself  a  dress  in  the  style  she  had  been  accustomed  to. 
It  was  short  in  the  skirt,  the  sleeves  wide  and  long 
enough  to  reach  to  the  ground.  A  broad  embroidered 
band  passed  round  her  waist,  and  the  fringe  of  the 
skirt,  of  the  sleeves  and  the  bosom,  was  embroidered. 
She  wore  no  stockings,  and  was  furnished  with  sandals 
of  Roman  fashion.  She  sometimes  twisted  her  hair 
and  rolled  it  up  at  the  top  of  her  head  and  fastened  it 
with  a  skewer. 

During  the  ten  weeks  she  resided  at  Knole  and  in 
Bristol,  she  was  never  heard  to  pronounce  a  word  or 
syllable  that  at  all  resembled  a  European  tongue. 
Mrs.  Worall's  housekeeper,  who  slept  with  her,  never 
heard  on  any  occasion  any  other  language,  any  tone  of 
voice  other  than  those  she  had  employed  when  she  first 
entered  the  house. 

She  was  equally  constant  in  her  choice  of  food,  and 
showed  great  nicety  as  to  her  diet.  She  dressed  every- 
thing herself,  preferring  rice  to  anything  else,  did  not 
care  for  bread,  rejected  meat,  and  drank  only  water  or 
tea.  She  refused  a  pigeon,  which  she  called  a  rampuey 
that  had  been  dressed  by  the  cook ;  but  when  given 


40  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

a  bird  that  was  alive,  she  pulled  off  the  head,  poured 
the  blood  into  the  earth  and  covered  it  up,  then  cooked 
the  bird  herself  and  ate  it.  This  was  the  only  animal 
food  she  could  be  induced  to  touch,  except  fish,  which 
she  treated  in  the  same  manner. 

On  every  Tuesday  she  fasted  rigidly,  on  which  day 
she  contrived  to  ascend  to  the  roof  of  the  house,  fre- 
quently at  the  imminent  peril  of  her  life.  Ablutions  she 
was  particularly  fond  of;  she  regularly  knelt  by  the 
pond  in  Knole  Park  and  washed  her  face  and  hands 
in  it. 

After  three  weeks'  residence  at  Knole,  she  was  one 
morning  missing.  But  she  returned  in  the  evening 
with  a  bundle  of  clothes,  her  shoes  and  hands  dirty. 
Then  she  fell  seriously  ill. 

On  Saturday,  6  June,  she  again  took  flight.  She 
had  not  taken  with  her  a  pin  or  needle  or  ribbon  but 
what  had  been  given  to  her.  She  bent  her  way  to 
Bath,  and  on  the  following  Sunday,  Mrs.  Worall  re- 
ceived information  of  the  place  to  which  her  protegee 
had  flown.  She  determined  to  reclaim  her,  and  started 
for  Bath,  which  she  reached  on  Sunday  afternoon. 

Here  she  found  the  Princess  of  Javasu,  as  she  was 
called,  at  the  pinnacle  of  her  glory,  in  the  drawing- 
room  of  a  lady  of  the  haut  ton,  one  fair  lady  kneeling 
at  her  feet  and  taking  her  hand,  and  another  imploring 
to  be  allowed  the  honour  of  a  kiss. 

Dr.  Wilkinson,  of  Bath,  was  completely  bewildered 
when  he  visited  her,  and  wrote  to  the  Bath  Chronicle 
a  glowing  account  of  Caraboo,  in  full  belief  that  she  was 
all  she  pretended  to  be.  "  Nothing  has  yet  transpired 
to  authorize  the  slightest  suspicion  of  Caraboo,  nor  has 
such  ever  been  entertained  except  by  those  whose 
souls  feel  not  the  spirit  of  benevolence,  and  wish  to 
convert  into  ridicule  that  amiable  disposition  in  others." 


CARABOO  41 

Dr.  Wilkinson  resolved  on  going  to  London  to  con- 
sult the  Foreign  Office,  and  to  obtain  funds  for  the 
present  relief  of  the  Princess,  and  her  restoration  to 
her  native  land. 

Mrs.  Worall  left  Bath,  taking  Caraboo  with  her. 
But  the  wide  circulation  of  the  story  led  to  her  detection. 

On  the  following  Monday,  a  Mrs.  Neale  called  on 
a  Mr.  Mortimer,  and  urged  him  to  go  to  Knole  and  tell 
Mrs.  Worall  that  she  knew  the  girl  very  well,  for  she 
had  lodged  in  her  house  in  the  suburbs  of  Bristol.  At 
the  same  time  a  youth  arrived  from  Westbury,  a  wheel- 
wright's son,  who  had  met  her  upon  her  first  expedition 
to  Almondsbury,  and  remembered  seeing  her  at  a  public- 
house  by  the  roadside,  where  a  gentleman,  feeling  com- 
passion for  her  weariness,  had  taken  her  in  and  treated 
her  to  beefsteak  and  hot  rum  and  water. 

Mrs.  Worall  was  much  disconcerted,  but  wisely  said 
nothing  to  her  guest  of  what  she  had  heard,  and  took 
Caraboo  next  day  in  her  carriage  to  Bristol  under  the 
plea  that  she  was  going  to  have  Mr.  Bird,  the  artist, 
complete  the  portrait  of  the  princess  on  which  he  was 
engaged,  and  desired  a  final  sitting.  But  instead  of 
driving  to  Mr.  Bird's  studio,  the  princess  was  con- 
veyed to  the  house  of  Mr.  Mortimer,  where  she  was 
shown  into  a  room  by  herself,  whilst  Mrs.  Worall  had 
an  interview  with  Mrs.  Neale  elsewhere.  This  lady 
was  attended  by  her  daughter,  and  their  story  both 
surprised  and  confounded  the  kind  magistrate's  wife. 
After  a  protracted  discussion,  she  returned  to  Caraboo, 
and  told  her  plainly  that  she  was  convinced  that  she 
was  an  impostor.  When  Caraboo  heard  that  Mrs. 
Neale  had  denounced  her,  she  burst  into  tears  and  her 
fortitude  gave  way.  She  made  a  few  feeble  attempts 
to  keep  up  the  deception,  but  finally  made  a  full  con- 
fession. 


42  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Her  name  was  Mary  Baker.  She  was  born  at 
Witheridge  in  Devonshire  in  1791,  and  had  received 
no  education,  being  of  a  wild  disposition  and  im- 
patient of  study.  At  the  age  of  eight  she  was 
employed  spinning  wool  during  the  winter,  and  in 
summer  she  drove  her  father's  horses,  weeded  the  corn, 
etc.  At  the  age  of  sixteen  her  father  and  mother  pro- 
cured a  situation  for  her  at  a  farmhouse  with  a  Mr. 
Moon,  at  Brushford,  near  Witheridge.  She  remained 
there  two  years  as  nurse  and  general  help,  but  left 
because  paid  only  tenpence  a  week,  and  she  demanded 
that  her  wage  should  be  raised  to  a  shilling,  which 
Mr.  Moon  refused. 

Her  father  and  mother  were  highly  incensed  at  her 
leaving,  and  treated  her  so  ill  that  she  ran  away  from 
home  and  went  to  Exeter,  where  she  knew  no  one,  but 
had  a  written  character  from  her  former  mistress.  She 
was  engaged  by  a  shoemaker  named  Brooke  at  the  wage 
of  £8  per  annum.  But  she  remained  in  this  situation 
only  two  months.  She  spent  her  wage  on  fine  clothes, 
especially  a  white  gown,  and  went  home  in  it.  Her 
father  was  angry  at  seeing  her  dressed  in  white  like  a 
lady,  and  peremptorily  ordered  her  to  take  the  gown 
off.  She  refused  and  left,  returned  to  Exeter,  and  went 
about  begging.  She  wandered  to  Taunton  and  thence 
to  Bristol,  begging  from  house  to  house.  From  Bristol 
she  made  her  way  to  London,  where  she  fell  ill  with 
fever,  and  was  taken  into  St.  Giles's  Hospital.  There 
she  enlisted  the  pity  and  sympathy  of  a  dissenting 
preacher,  who,  when  she  was  well  enough  to  leave,  re- 
commended her  to  a  Mrs.  Matthews,  i  Clapham  Road 
Place,  and  with  her  she  tarried  for  three  years.  Mrs. 
Matthews  was  very  kind  to  her,  and  taught  her  to  read  ; 
but  she  was  a  strict  woman,  and  of  the  straitest  sect  of 
Calvinists.  One  day  Mary  heard  that  there  was  to  be  a 


CARABOO  43 

Jews'  wedding  in  the  synagogue  near  by,  and  she  asked 
leave  to  be  allowed  to  witness  it.  Her  mistress  refused, 
but  Mary  was  resolved  not  to  be  debarred  the  spectacle, 
so  she  persuaded  a  servant  in  a  neighbouring  house  to 
write  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Matthews,  as  if  from  a  friend  of 
hers,  to  say  that  she  was  hourly  expecting  her  confine- 
ment and  was  short  of  domestics  :  would  Mrs.  Matthews 
lend  her  the  aid  of  Mary  Baker  for  a  while  ?  Mrs. 
Matthews  could  not  refuse  the  favour  and  sent  Mary  out 
of  the  house,  and  Mary  went  to  the  synagogue  and  saw 
what  was  to  be  seen  there. 

Meanwhile,  Mrs.  Matthews  had  sent  to  inquire  how 
her  dear  friend  was  getting  through  with  her  troubles, 
and  expressed  a  hope  that  Mary  had  been  of  assistance 
in  the  house.  To  her  unbounded  surprise,  she  learned 
that  the  good  lady  was  not  in  particular  trouble  just 
then,  and  that  she  really  did  not  comprehend  what 
Mrs.  Matthews  meant  about  Mary's  assistance.  When 
Mary  returned  to  the  house,  having  seen  the  breaking  of 
the  goblet  and  heard  some  psalm  singing,  she  found  that 
a  storm  was  lowering.  Her  mistress  had  sent  for  the 
dissenting  minister  to  give  it  hot  and  strong  to  the 
naughty  girl.  To  escape  this  harangue  Mary  ran  away, 
wandered  about  the  streets,  and  seeing  a  Magdalen 
Reformatory,  applied  at  the  door  for  admission. 
"What!  so  young  and  so  depraved!"  was  the  ex- 
clamation with  which  she  was  received.  She  was 
admitted  and  remained  in  the  institution  some  time, 
and  was  confirmed  by  the  Bishop  of  London.  Then  it 
was  discovered  that  she  had  all  along  not  been  qualified 
for  admission,  and  was  expelled. 

She  then  exchanged  her  female  garments  for  a  boy's 
suit  at  a  Jew's  pawnshop,  and  started  to  walk  back  to 
Devonshire,  begging  her  way.  On  Salisbury  Plain  she 
fell  in  with  highwaymen,  who  offered  to  take  her  into 


44  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

their  company  if  she  could  fire  a  pistol.  A  pistol  was 
put  into  her  hand,  but  when  she  pulled  the  trigger  and 
it  was  discharged,  she  screamed  and  threw  the  weapon 
down.  Thereupon  the  highwaymen  turned  her  off,  as 
a  white-livered  poltroon  unfit  for  their  service.  She 
made  her  way  back  to  Witheridge  to  her  father,  and 
then  went  into  service  at  Crediton  to  a  tanner,  but  left 
her  place  at  the  end  of  three  months,  unable  further  to 
endure  the  tedium.  Then  she  passed  through  a  succes- 
sion of  services,  never  staying  in  any  situation  longer 
than  three  months,  and  found  her  way  back  to  London. 
There,  according  to  her  account,  she  married  a  foreign 
gentleman  at  a  Roman  Catholic  chapel,  where  the  priest 
officiated  to  tie  the  knot.  She  accompanied  her  hus- 
band to  Brighton  and  thence  to  Dover,  where  he  gave 
her  the  slip,  and  she  had  not  seen  him  or  heard  from  him 
since.  She  returned  to  London,  was  eventually  con- 
fined, and  placed  her  child  in  the  Foundling  Institution  ; 
then  took  a  situation  not  far  off  and  visited  the  child  once 
a  week  till  it  died.  After  a  while  she  again  appeared  at 
Witheridge,  but  her  reception  was  so  far  from  cordial  that 
she  left  it  and  associated  with  gipsies,  travelling  about 
with  them,  telling  fortunes. 

It  was  now,  according  to  her  account,  that  the  idea 
entered  her  head  of  playing  the  part  of  a  distinguished 
stranger  from  the  East,  and  when  she  quitted  the 
gipsies,  she  assumed  that  part — with  what  success  we 
have  seen. 

Mrs.  Worall  sent  into  Devon  to  ascertain  what 
amount  of  truth  was  in  this  story.  It  turned  out  that 
her  father  was  named  Willcocks,  and  was  a  cobbler  at 
Witheridge,  and  badly  off.  He  confirmed  Mary's  tale 
as  far  as  he  knew  it.  She  had  had  an  illness  when 
young,  and  had  been  odd,  restless,  and  flighty  ever 
since  ;  especially  in  spring  and  autumn  did  she  become 


MARY    WILCOCKS,    OF   WITHERIDGE,    DEVONSHIRE,    ALIAS   CARABOO 
Drawn  and  Engraved  by  N.  Branivhite 


CARABOO  45 

most  impatient  and  uncontrollable.  He  denied  that  he 
had  treated  her  cruelly,  but  he  had  taken  the  stick  to 
her  occasionally,  as  she  was  specially  aggravating  by 
throwing  up  every  situation  obtained  for  her  after  stay- 
ing in  it  for  but  a  short  while. 

Finally  Mrs.  Worall  got  her  embarked  on  board 
a  vessel,  the  Robert  and  Anne,  at  Bristol,  Captain 
Richardson,  under  her  mother's  maiden  name  of 
Burgess,  for  the  United  States,  in  the  hopes  that  she 
might  be  able  to  find  a  situation  in  Philadelphia. 

The  reason  why  she  was  entered  in  her  mother's 
name  was  to  prevent  her  from  being  overwhelmed  by 
the  visits  and  attentions  of  the  curious.  As  it  was,  the 
Earl  of  Cork  and  the  Marquess  of  Salisbury  obtained 
interviews,  got  the  girl  to  tell  her  story,  speak  her 
lingo,  and  doubtless  did  not  leave  without  having  put 
gold  into  her  palm. 

She  was  certainly  a  remarkable  character,  with  as- 
tounding self-possession.  Once  or  twice  the  house- 
keeper at  Knole  would  rouse  her  by  some  startling 
cry  or  call  when  she  was  asleep,  but  even  then  she 
never  passed  out  of  her  assumed  character. 

At  Bath,  the  lady  who  had  received  her  into  her 
house  proposed  that  a  collection  should  be  made  to 
defray  her  expenses  in  returning  home  to  Javasu. 
Bank-notes  were  thrown  on  the  table,  and  some  fell  off 
on  the  floor.  Caraboo  looked  on  with  stolid  indiffer- 
ence. If  she  picked  one  up  she  replaced  it  on  the  table 
without  glancing  at  the  note  to  see  how  much  it 
was  worth  ;  in  fact,  she  acted  as  if  she  did  not  under- 
stand that  bank-notes  were  other  than  valueless  scraps 
of  paper. 

She  was,  moreover,  insensible  to  flattery.  A  young 
gentleman  seated  himself  by  her  one  day  and  said, 
"  I  think  that  you  are  the  loveliest  creature  I  ever  set 


46  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

eyes  on  ! "     She  remained  quite  unmoved,  not  a  flutter 
of  colour  was  in  her  cheek. 

The  Greek  valet  mistrusted  her  at  first,  but  after  a 
while  was  completely  won  over  to  believe  that  she  was 
a  genuine  Oriental  princess.  She  was  entirely  free 
from  vicious  propensities  beyond  that  of  feigning  to 
be  what  she  was  not.  She  never  purloined  anything  ; 
never  showed  any  token  of  wantonness.  Vanity  and 
the  love  of  hoaxing  people  were  her  prevailing  pas- 
sions ;  there  was  nothing  worse  behind. 

So  over  the  blue  sea  she  passed  to  the  West,  and 
what  became  of  her  there,  whether  there  she  gulled 
the  Americans  into  believing  her  to  be  an  English 
countess  or  marchioness,  is  unknown. 

Of  one  thing  we  may  be  pretty  certain,  that  the 
gentleman  who  had  visited  the  Far  East,  and  who  pre- 
tended to  understand  her  language  and  thereby  drew 
out  her  history,  never  again  dared  to  show  his  face  at 
Knole. 

The  authority  for  this  story  is:  "A  narrative  of  a 
Singular  Imposition  practiced  ...  by  a  young  woman 
of  the  name  of  Mary  Willcocks  alias  Baker,  .  .  .  alias 
Caraboo,  Princess  of  Javasu."  Published  by  Gutch, 
of  Bristol,  in  1817.  This  contains  two  portraits,  one 
by  E.  Bird,  R.A.,  the  other  a  full-length  sketch  of  her 
in  her  costume  as  a  princess. 


JOHN    ARSCOTT,    OF   TETCOTT 


f~  ""^HE  family  of  Arscott,  of  Dunsland,  is  one  of 
the  most  ancient  in  the  county.  Its  certified 
pedigree  goes  back  to  1300,  when  they  were 
-^-  Arscotts,  of  Arscott,  in  the  parish  of  Hols- 
worthy.  The  elder  branch  remained  at  Dunsland,  one 
of  the  finest  houses  in  North  Devon,  or  rather  cluster 
of  houses,  for  it  consists  of  the  early  mansion  of  the 
reign,  at  latest,  of  Henry  VII,  probably  much  earlier, 
of  another  portion  erected  in  the  reign  of  James  I,  and 
of  a  stately  more  modern  mansion  erected  in  the  seven- 
teenth century.  Dunsland  came  into  the  possession  of 
the  Arscotts  through  marriage  with  the  heiress  of 
Battyn  in  1522.  In  1634  tne  heiress  of  Arscott  married 
William  Bickford,  and  it  remained  in  the  Bickford 
family  till  1790,  when  the  heiress  conveyed  it  to  her 
husband,  William  Holland  Coham.  In  1827  the  heiress 
of  Coham  conveyed  Arscott  and  Dunsland  to  her 
husband,  Captain  Harvey  Dickenson,  of  the  Madras 
Army,  whose  son  now  owns  the  estate  and  resides  at 
Dunsland. 

So  far  the  elder  branch.  The  junior  branch  of 
Arscott  was  settled  at  Tetcott  in  1550,  where  it  continued 
till  1783,  when  died  John  Arscott,  of  Tetcott,  the  last 
of  that  stock,  whereupon  the  Tetcott  estate  passed  to 
the  Molesworths  through  the  descendant  of  a  great- 
aunt. 

Tetcott    House — the    older — remains,    turned    into 

47 


48  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

stables  and  residence  for  coachmen  and  grooms.  A 
stately  new  mansion  was  erected  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Anne.  But  when  the  property  passed  to  the  Moles- 
worths  this  was  pulled  down,  and  all  its  contents  dis- 
persed. The  family  portraits,  the  carved  oak  furniture, 
the  china  fell  to  the  contractor  who  demolished  the 
mansion.  But  the  park  remains  with  its  noble  oak 
trees,  and  of  this  more  anon. 

John  Arscott,  of  Tetcott,  was  born  in  1718  or  1719; 
he  lived  all  his  life  at  the  family  mansion,  and  was  a 
mighty  hunter  before  the  Lord. 

On  the  presentation  of  Sir  W.  Molesworth,  Bart., 
the  Rev.  Paul  W.  Molesworth  was  presented  to  the 
living  of  Tetcott,  and  he,  in  1855,  succeeded  to  the 
baronetcy. 

In  the  register  of  Tetcott  he  made  the  following 
entry  in  Latin,  which  is  here  given  in  translation  :  — 

"Of  the  Rectors  who  preceded  me  I  know  almost 
nothing.  John  Holmes,  whose  name  appears  first  in 
the  list  of  Rectors,  was  inducted  by  '  Quare  impedit ' 
— to  use  the  legal  term — in  face  of  the  Bishop's  objec- 
tion. Of  this  I  was  assured  by  the  Rev.  G.  C.  Gorham, 
who  about  the  year  1848,  as  the  Bishop  of  Exeter — 
H.  Phillpotts — refused  to  institute  him  to  a  benefice  on 
account  of  his  unsoundness  on  Baptism,  attempted 
to  get  himself  instituted  compulsorily  in  the  same 
manner. 

"James  Sanxay,  whose  name  comes  lower  down  in 
the  list,  was  a  man  of  no  small  classical  learning,  as  is 
proved  by  his  editing  a  Lexicon  of  Aristophanes. 

"  I  have  heard  it  said  of  him,  that  on  the  title  page 
of  a  book  he  added  after  his  name  the  letters— O.T.D., 
and  on  being  asked  what  these  signified,  he  replied  : 
1 1  have  noticed  that  most  Authors,  when  publishing 
their  writings,  have  the  greatest  objection  to  their  bare 


ARSCOTT   OF   TETCOTT 


"  The  good  old  Squire  !  once  more  along  the  glen, 
Oh,  for  the  scenes  of  old  !  the  former  men  !  " 


.  S.  Hawke 


From  the  picture  by  y.  Northcote.  R.A. 


JOHN   ARSCOTT,    OF   TETCOTT  49 

name,  always  add  something  to  it,  such  as — F.R.S., 
LL.D.,  M.A.  So  to  keep  up  the  old  custom,  I  myself 
have  added  O.T.D.,  that  is— Of  Tetcott,  Devon.'" 

[Between  the  above  and  what  follows  a  leaf  has 
been  cut  out  of  the  register.  Perhaps  other  rectors 
were  told  of  on  this  missing  leaf.] 

"  Of  the  <  Lords '  who  have  held  the  manor  of  Tetcott 
in  an  unbroken  line,  there  are  not  many  surviving 
memories. 

"  I  have  heard  a  story  told  by  the  old  parishioners  of 
one  known  as  '  The  wicked  Arscott,'  so  named  because 
he  used  to  keep  poor  people  and  beggars  from  his 
doors  by  big  dogs.  He  still,  they  say,  pays  the 
penalty  of  his  cruelty  in  an  old  oak  near  the  Church. 

"  He  was  succeeded,  though  I  cannot  say  whether 
at  once  or  after  an  interval,  by  John  Arscott,  the  last 
of  that  name  in  Tetcott,  and  the  most  famous.  You 
will  find  him  described  with  no  small  literary  skill  on  a 
following  page.  He  was  benevolent  to  poor  children, 
and  a  generous  and  attentive  host.  He  kept  open 
house,  as  they  say,  thinking  more  of  love  than  of 
money.  An  eager  student  of  the  laws  of  nature,  and 
at  the  same  time  a  devoted  follower  of  the  chase, 
whether  of  stag,  or  fox,  or  any  other  such  beast,  he 
was  at  once  the  enemy  and  the  patron  of  dumb  animals. 
He  used  to  keep  a  toad  on  the  doorsteps  of  his  house 
with  such  care,  that  that  hateful  and  loathsome  animal, 
moved  by  such  unusual  kindness,  used  to  come  out  of 
its  hiding  place,  when  its  master  called  it,  and  take  its 
food  on  the  table  before  his  astonished  guests,  until  it 
lost  its  life  through  the  peck  of  a  tame  raven.  This 
fact,  I  believe,  has  escaped  the  notice  of  every  writer 
on  British  reptiles.  May  the  toad  be  reverenced  in 
Tetcott  for  ever.  Not  even  the  rapacious  spider  was 


50  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

forgotten.  For  when  one  had  spun  its  fatal  toils  in  a 
corner  of  a  pew  in  the  Church,  our  Knight  used  to 
bring  a  bottle  full  of  flies  into  the  sacred  building  itself, 
that  he  might  while  away  the  tediousness  of  Divine 
Service  by  feeding  his  Church  pet.  He  used  to  go  in 
an  old  soiled  coat  into  a  wood  where  the  ravens  nested, 
and  the  birds  would  come  down  and  settle  on  his 
shoulder,  looking  for  the  favours  of  a  bountiful 
hand. 

"When  he  had  to  go  to  the  neighbouring  town  of 
Holsworthy  on  judicial  business,  it  was  his  custom 
to  take  a  bag  containing  fighting  cocks.  The  present 
inhabitants  would  smile  at  such  a  proceeding,  but  a 
certain  simple  rudeness  is  excusable  in  our  fore- 
fathers. 

"  Nor  may  I  be  silent  about  an  irreverence  which  an 
otherwise  upright  man  used  to  show  in  the  House  of 
God.  He  would  accost  the  country  people  he  knew  in 
a  friendly  manner.  If  a  Clergyman  was  reading  the 
Bible  badly  [for  it  was  customary  for  a  Cleric  to  read 
the  Lessons  now  and  then]  when  he  finished  with, 
1  Here  endeth  the  second  lesson ' — our  Knight  would 
call  out,  'Thee'st  better  never  begun  it.'  He  would 
throw  apples  at  the  Priest  in  the  middle  of  Divine 
Service. 

"Like  Ajax  and  Peleus  and  other  heroes  he  was 
not  ashamed  to  woo  a  handmaid,  and  married  one  of 
his  father's  servants.  He  died  without  issue,  most 
widely  mourned.  His  estate  went  to  his  kinsman, 
William  Molesworth.  The  poor  people,  I  believe, 
still  cherish  the  memory  of  so  dear  a  man,  and  give 
his  name  to  their  little  ones  in  Baptism,  as  they  might 
the  name  of  a  Saint. 

"If  in  these  brief  narratives,  gathered  here  and 
there,  I  have  in  any  way  transgressed  the  rules  of 


JOHN   ARSCOTT,    OF   TETCOTT  51 

more  classical  Latin,  I  beg  the  kind  reader  to  pardon 
me.  If  in  any  way  I  have  departed  from  the  truth, 
I  have  done  so  unwittingly.  God  be  merciful. 

[John  Arscott  died  in  1788.]" 

Sir  Paul  W.  Molesworth  has  dealt  with  John  Arscott 
more  tenderly  than  that  man  deserved. 

A  modern  writer1  thus  describes  the  sort  of  man  that 
John  Arscott  was  :— 

"  A  familiar  figure  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  the 
country  squire,  familiar  the  long  wig,  long  coat,  silver 
buttons,  breeches  and  top-boots,  the  bluff,  red  face, 
the  couple  of  greyhounds  and  the  pointer  at  heel. 
When  not  hunting  the  fox,  the  popular  sport  of  the 
day,  he  settled  the  disputes  of  the  parish,  or  repaired 
to  the  nearest  ale-house  to  get  drunk  in  as  short  a 
space  of  time  as  possible.  Usually  he  only  drank 
ale,  but  on  festive  occasions  a  bowl  of  strong  brandy 
punch,  with  toast  and  nutmeg,  added  to  his  already 
boisterous  spirits.  On  Sundays  he  donned  his  best 
suit,  which  often  descended  from  father  to  son  through 
several  generations,  repaired  to  the  parish  church,  and 
entered  the  family  pew,  where  he  slumbered  during 
a  great  part  of  the  somewhat  dismal  service.  He 
seldom  went  further  than  his  own  country  town,  for  a 
journey  to  London  was  still  full  of  danger  and  dis- 
comfort. " 

Who  that  has  read  Fielding  and  other  novelists  of 
the  period  does  not  know  the  figure,  full-blooded, 
coarse  to  brutality,  with  a  certain  amount  of  kindli- 
ness in  his  disposition,  whose  talk  is  of  bullocks  or 
horses  or  dogs,  and  who,  after  the  ladies  had  with- 

1  M.  B.  Synge,  A  Short  History  of  Social  Life  in  England.  London, 
1906. 


52  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

drawn,  spent  the  rest  of  the  evening  at  his  hospitable 
table  singing  ribald  songs  and  telling  obscene  stories? 
I  possess,  myself,  a  little  book  in  MS.  of  the  after- 
dinner  stories  told  by  a  great-great-uncle,  that  has  to 
be  kept  under  lock  and  key,  so  unfit  is  it  for  perusal 
by  clean-minded  persons.  The  songs  were  from  Tom 
D'Urfey's  Pills  to  Purge  Melancholy,  or  other  collec- 
tions of  the  sort.  I  had  a  collection  of  them  that 
belonged  to  an  ancestress,  or  rather  near  kinswoman  of 
an  ancestor,  engraved  on  copper  plate.  I  gave  the 
volume  to  the  British  Museum.  It  was  not  a  book 
to  be  kept  on  one's  shelves  when  there  were  children 
in  the  house. 

John  Arscott  was  never  married,  or  if  he  did  marry, 
no  trace  of  such  a  ceremony  is  forthcoming.  He  lived 
with  a  certain  Thomasine  Spry  as  his  mistress.  If  he 
did  "make  an  honest  woman  of  her,"  it  was,  as  re- 
ported, on  his  death-bed.  She  survived  him,  and  was 
buried  at  Tetcott  in  1796,  aged  seventy-six.  They  had 
no  issue. 

Mr.  Hawker,  in  his  Footprints  of  Former  Men  in  Far 
Cornwall,  has  told  several  stories  of  John  Arscott's 
favourite,  the  last  of  the  jester  dwarfs,  Black  John, 
one  of  whose  jokes,  that  entertained  the  company 
after  dinner,  was  to  tie  together  by  the  legs  several 
live  mice  and  swallow  them  one  by  one,  and  then, 
by  means  of  a  string,  pull  them  up  from  his  interior 
parts  again.  Another  of  his  tricks  was  to  mumble  a 
sparrow.  The  living  bird  was  gripped  by  the  legs 
by  his  teeth,  and  then  with  his  lips  and  teeth  he  would 
rip  off  the  feathers,  till  he  had  plucked  the  unfortunate 
sparrow  bare.  A  couple  of  projecting  fangs  were  of 
especial  value  as  sparrow-holders  to  Black  John.  His 
hands  all  the  while  were  knotted  or  tied  behind  his 
back. 


i 


JOHN   ARSCOTT,    OF   TETCOTT  53 

One  evening  he  fell  asleep  by  the  hearth  in  the 
hall  at  Tetcott.  Suddenly  he  started  up  with  a  cry, 
"Oh,  Master,"  said  he,  "I  was  in  a  sog  [sleep]  and  I 
thought  I  was  dead  and  in  hell." 

"Well,  John,"  said  Arscott,  "and  what  did  you  see 
there?" 

"Sir,  everything  very  much  like  what  it  is  here  in 
Tetcott  Hall,  the  gentlefolks  nearest  the  fire." 

John  Arscott  had,  as  already  related,  an  enormous 
tame  toad  that  came  out  on  the  doorstep  to  be  fed  every 
morning,  and  went  by  the  name  of  "Old  Dawty." 
The  country  people  thought  that  it  was  John  Arscott's 
"familiar."  When  he  whistled,  the  creature  would  hop 
up  to  him,  and  leap  to  his  hand  or  to  his  knee.  One 
day  a  visitor  with  his  stick  killed  it ;  but  seeing  this 
Black  John  flew  at  him  and  knocked  him  down  and  be- 
laboured him  soundly.  John  Arscott  came  out,  and 
when  he  heard  what  the  visitor  had  done,  turned  on  his 
heel,  and  when  the  gentleman  had  picked  himself  up 
and  drew  near,  slammed  the  house  door  in  his  face. 

This  is  Mr.  Hawker's  version  of  the  story  of  the  end 
of  the  pet  toad,  which  is  at  variance  with  that  related 
by  the  Rev.  P.  W.  Molesworth,  whose  authority  is  more 
trustworthy  than  that  of  Mr.  Hawker,  a  gentleman 
given  to  romancing. 

"Black  John's  lair  was  a  rude  hut,  which  he  had 
wattled  for  a  snug  abode  close  to  the  kennels.  He 
loved  to  retire  to  it,  and  sleep  near  his  chosen  com- 
panions, the  hounds.  When  they  were  unkennelled 
he  accompanied  and  ran  with  them  on  foot,  and  so 
sinewy  and  so  swift  was  his  stunted  form  that  he  was 
very  often  in  their  midst  at  the  death." 

John  Arscott  had  another  follower  called  Dogget. 
"My  son  Simon"  or  simply  "Simon"  he  was  wont 
to  call  him.  He  also  ran  after  the  foxhounds. 


54  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

There  exists  a  fine  ballad  on  the  "  Hunting  of  Arscott, 
of  Tetcott,"  in  which  Simon  is  mentioned.  Mr.  Frank 
Abbott,  gamekeeper  at  Pencarrow,  but  born  at  Tetcott, 
informed  me,  concerning  Dogget : — 

"  Once  they  unkennelled  in  the  immediate  neigh- 
bourhood of  Tetcott,  and  killed  at  Hatherleigh.  This 
runner  was  in  at  the  death,  as  was  his  wont.  John 
Arscott  ordered  him  a  bed  at  Hatherleigh,  but  to  his 
astonishment,  when  he  returned  to  Tetcott,  his  'wife' 
told  him  all  the  particulars  of  the  run.  'Then,'  said 
Arscott,  '  this  must  be  the  doing  of  none  other  than 
Dogget :  where  be  he  ? ' " 

Dogget  was  soon  found  in  the  servants'  hall,  drinking 
ale,  having  outstripped  his  master  and  run  all  the  way 
home. 

The  ballad  above  mentioned  begins  as  follows  : — 

In  the  month  of  November,  in  the  year  fifty-two, 
Three  jolly  Fox-hunters,  all  sons  of  the  Blue, 
Came  o'er  from  Pencarrow,  not  fearing  a  wet  coat, 
To  take  their  diversion  with  Arscott  of  Tetcott. 
Sing  fol-de-rol,  lol-de-rol,  etc. 

The  daylight  was  dawning,  right  radiant  the  morn 
When  Arscott  of  Tetcott  he  winded  his  horn  ; 
He  blew  such  a  flourish,  so  loud  in  the  hall, 
The  rafters  resounded,  and  danced  to  the  call. 
Sing  fol-de-rol,  etc. 

In  the  kitchen  the  servants,  in  kennel  the  hounds, 
In  the  stable  the  horses  were  roused  by  the  sounds, 
On  Black-Bird  in  saddle  sat  Arscott,  "  To-day 
I  will  show  you  good  sport ;  lads,  hark,  follow,  away  !" 
Sing  fol-de-rol,  etc. 

To  return  to  Black  John.  His  wonted  couch  when 
he  could  not  get  back  to  Tetcott  at  night  was  a  bed 
among  the  reeds  or  fern  of  some  sheltering  brake  or 
wood,  and  he  slept,  as  he  himself  used  to  express  it, 
"rolled  up,  as  warm  as  a  hedge-boar,  round  his  own 


JOHN  ARSCOTT,  OF  TETCOTT     55 

nose."  One  day  he  was  covered  with  snow,  and  found 
to  all  appearance  dead.  He  was  conveyed  to  Tetcott 
and  put  in  a  coffin.  But  as  he  was  about  to  be  buried, 
and  whilst  the  service  was  proceeding,  a  loud  thumping 
noise  was  heard  within  the  coffin.  The  lid  was  re- 
moved, and  he  sat  up.  He  had  been  in  a  long  trance, 
but  the  funeral  ride  and  jolting  had  revived  him,  and, 
said  he,  "When  I  heard  the  pa'sson  say  *  Earth 
to  earth  and  dust  to  dust,'  I  thought  it  high  time  to 
bumpy." 

After  that  he  had  no  love  for  parsons  of  the  Church 
or  indeed  ministers  of  any  denomination,  for  every  one 
of  them,  he  said,  would  bury  him  alive,  if  they  could. 
Once  an  itinerant  Methodist  preacher  came  across  him 
and  asked  his  way.  Black  John  volunteered  to  show 
him  a  short  cut  across  the  park,  and  led  him  to  a  pad- 
dock, in  which  his  master  kept  a  favourite  bull.  He 
thrust  the  preacher  into  it  and  fastened  the  gate.  What 
ensued  is  matter  of  guess-work.  A  yell  and  a  bellow 
were  heard,  and  some  object  was  seen  projected  into 
the  air  over  the  hedge.  Soon  after  Black  John  appeared 
at  the  Hall  with  a  white  tie  in  his  hands,  which  he 
gave  to  his  master,  and  said,  "  This  be  the  vag-ends  of 
the  minister — all  I  could  recover." 

"When  gout  and  old  age  had  imprisoned  Mr. 
Arscott  in  his  easy  chair,  Black  John  nuzzled  among 
the  ashes  of  the  vast  wood  fires  of  the  hearth,  or  lay 
coiled  upon  his  rug  like  some  faithful  mastiff  watching 
every  look  and  gesture  of  his  master ;  starting  up  to 
fill  the  pipe  or  tankard  of  old  ale,  and  then  crouching 
again.  At  the  squire's  death  and  funeral,  the  agony  of 
the  misshapen  retainer  was  unappeasable.  He  had  to 
be  removed  by  force  from  the  door  of  the  vault,  and 
then  he  utterly  refused  to  depart  from  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  grave.  He  made  himself  another  lair,  near 


56  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

the  churchyard  wall,   and  there  he  sobbed   away  the 
brief  remnant  of  his  days." 

The  story  goes  that  on  one  long  and  tremendous 
chase,  Dogget  running  by  his  master's  horse — 

"  How  far  do  you  make  it?"  said  Simon  the  son. 
"  The  day  that's  declining-  will  shortly  be  done." 
"  We'll  follow  till  Doomsday,"  quoth  Arscott, — before 
They  hear  the  Atlantic  with  menacing-  roar. 

On  this  occasion  the  chase  continued  to  Penkenner. 

Through  Whitstone,  and  Poundstock,  St.  Genny's  they  run, 
Like  a  fire-ball,  red,  in  the  sea  set  the  sun. 
Then  out  on  Penkenner — a  leap,  and  they  go, 
Full  five  hundred  feet  to  the  ocean  below. 

In  this  memorable  run,  the  fox  went  over  the  cliffs 
and  the  hounds  after  him  ;  but  Arscott  and  the  rest  of 
the  hunters  drew  up,  and  though  he  lost  his  hounds, 
he  did  not  lose  his  life.  Penkenner  is  a  magnificent 
and  sheer  cliff,  west  of  St.  Genny's  Church.  A  deep 
cleft  is  on  one  side,  and  Crackington  Cove  on  the  other. 
There  was  no  possible  escape  for  the  fox.  As  to  the 
1 1  sons  of  the  Blue"  who  were  in  this  memorable  run 
with  Arscott,  of  Tetcott,  opinions  differ. 

The  versions  of  the  ballad  vary  greatly.  I  have  had 
a  copy,  written  in  1820,  with  explanatory  notes.  The 
date  of  the  song  is  sometimes  set  down  as  1752,  some- 
times as  1772.  The  "sons  of  the  Blue  "  are  taken  to 
have  been  Sir  John  Molesworth,  of  Pencarrow,  Bart., 
William  Morshead,  of  Blisland,  and  Braddon  Clode,  of 
Skisdon.  But  neither  Sir  John  Molesworth  nor  Mr. 
Morshead  was,  as  it  happens,  a  naval  man.  If  the  date 
were  either  1652  or  1672,  it  would  fit  an  earlier  John 
Arscott,  of  Tetcott,  who  died  in  1708;  and  Sir  John 
Molesworth  of  the  period  was  Vice-Admiral  of  Corn- 
wall ;  and  the  sons  of  the  blue  were  his  sons,  Hender, 
Sparke,  and  John.  The  second  John  Molesworth 


JOHN   ARSCOTT,    OF   TETCOTT  57 

married  Jane,  daughter  of  the  elder  John  Arscott,  in 
1704.  It  seems  probable,  accordingly,  that  the  ballad 
belonged  originally  to  the  earlier  John  Arscott,  and 
that  it  was  adapted  a  century  later  to  the  last  John 
Arscott.  The  melody  to  which  it  is  still  sung  at  the 
rent-audit  of  the  Molesworth  estate  at  Tetcott  is  a  very 
ancient  one,  which  was  employed  by  Tom  D'Urfey, 
in  his  Pills  to  Purge  Melancholy,  1719,  for  a  song 
entitled  "Dear  Catholic  Brother."  I  have  given  it  in 
my  Songs  of  the  West. 

Since  the  death  of  Arscott,  he  still  hunts. 

When  the  full  moon  is  shining-  as  clear  as  the  day, 
John  Arscott  still  hunteth  the  country,  they  say  ; 
You  may  see  him  on  Black-Bird,  and  hear  in  full  cry, 
The  pack  from  Pencarrow  to  Dazzard  go  by. 

When  the  tempest  is  howling-,  his  horn  you  may  hear, 
And  the  bay  of  his  hounds  in  their  headlong-  career ; 
For  Arscott  of  Tetcott  loves  hunting-  so  well, 
That  he  breaks  for  the  pastime  from  Heaven  or  Hell. 

The  belief  that  he  is  to  be  heard  winding  his  horn 
and  in  full  gallop  in  chase  through  the  park  at  Tetcott 
is  still  prevalent,  and  there  are  those  alive  who  assert 
positively  that  they  have  heard  and  seen  him. 

Curiously  enough  much  the  same  belief  adheres  to 
Dunsland,  and  there  one  of  the  Bickfords  is  thought  to 
be  the  Wild  Huntsman.  I  know  of  one  who  is  so  con- 
vinced that  he  and  his  hounds  rushed  past  her  through 
the  grounds  along  a  certain  drive,  that  nothing  after- 
wards would  induce  her  on  any  consideration  to  go 
along  that  drive  at  night. 


WIFE-SALES 


f  "*^HERE  is  no  myth  relative  to  the  manners 

and   customs   of   the    English    that   in    my 

experience  is  more  tenaciously  held  by  the 

-M^        ordinary  Frenchman  than  that  the  sale  of  a 

wife  in  the  market-place  is  an  habitual  and  an  accepted 

fact  in  English  life. 

It  is— so  far  as  my  experience  goes — quite  useless  to 
assure  a  Frenchman  that  such  transfer  of  wives  is  not  a 
matter  of  everyday  occurrence,  and  is  not  legal :  he 
replies  with  an  expression  of  incredulity,  that  of  course 
English  people  endeavour  to  make  light  of,  or  deny,  a 
fact  that  is '"  notorious." 

In  a  book  by  the  antiquary  Colin  de  Plancy,  on 
Legends  and  Superstitions  connected  with  the  Sacraments, 
he  gives  up  some  pages  to  an  account  of  the  prevalent 
English  custom.  I  heard  a  country  cure  once  preach 
on  marriage,  and  contrast  its  indissolubility  in  Catholic 
France  with  the  laxity  in  Protestant  England,  where 
"any  one,  when  tired  of  his  wife,  puts  a  halter  round 
her  neck,  takes  her  to  the  next  market  town  and  sells 
her  for  what  she  will  fetch."  I  ventured  to  call  on  this 
cure  and  remonstrate,  but  he  answered  me  he  had  seen 
the  fact  stated  in  books  of  the  highest  authority,  and 
that  my  disputing  the  statement  did  not  prove  that  his 
authorities  were  wrong,  but  that  my  experience  was 
limited,  and  he  asked  me  point  blank  whether  I  had 
never  known  such  cases.  There,  unhappily,  he  had 
me  on  the  hip.  And  when  I  was  obliged  to  confess  that 

58 


WIFE-SALES  59 

I  did  know  of  one  such  case,  "  Mais,  voila,  mon  Dieu," 
said  he,  and  shrugged  his  shoulders  with  a  triumphant 
smile. 

Now  it  must  be  allowed  that  such  sales  have  taken 
place,  and  that  this  is  so  is  due  to  rooted  conviction  in 
the  rustic  mind  that  such  a  transaction  is  legal  and 
morally  permissible. 

The  case  I  knew  was  this. 

When  I  was  a  boy  there  lived  a  tall,  thin  man  in  the 
parish  who  was  the  village  poet.  Whenever  an  event 
of  any  consequence  took  place  within  the  confines  of 
the  parish,  such  as  the  marriage  of  the  squire's 
daughter,  he  came  down  to  the  manor-house  with  a 
copy  of  verses  he  had  composed  on  the  occasion,  and 
was  then  given  his  dinner  and  a  crown.  Now  this 
man  had  actually  bought  his  wife  for  half  a  crown. 
Her  husband  had  led  her  into  Okehampton  and  had 
sold  her  there  in  the  market.  The  poet  purchased  her 
for  half  the  sum  he  had  received  for  one  of  his  poems, 
and  led  her  home  with  him  a  distance  of  twelve  miles, 
by  the  halter,  he  holding  it  in  his  hand,  she  placidly, 
contentedly  wearing  the  loop  about  her  neck. 

The  report  that  Henry  Frise  was  leading  home  his 
half-crown  wife  preceded  the  arrival  of  the  couple,  and 
when  they  entered  the  village  all  the  inhabitants  turned 
out  to  see  the  spectacle. 

Now  this  arrangement  was  not  very  satisfactory  to 
my  grandfather,  who  was  squire,  or  to  my  uncle,  who 
was  rector  of  the  parish,  and  both  intervened.  Henry 
Frise  maintained  that  Anne  was  his  legitimate  wife,  for 
"  he  had  not  only  bought  her  in  the  market,  but  had  led 
her  home,  with  the  halter  in  his  hand,  and  he'd  take  his 
Bible  oath  that  he  never  took  the  halter  off  her  till  she 
had  crossed  his  doorstep  and  he  had  shut  the  door." 

The  parson  took  down  the  Bible,  the  squire  opened 


60  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Burns' Justice  of  the  Peace,  and  strove  to  convince  Harry 
that  his  conduct  was  warranted  by  neither  Scripture  nor 
the  law  of  the  land.  "  I  don't  care,"  he  said,  "  her's  my 
wife,  as  sure  as  if  we  was  spliced  at  the  altar,  for  and 
because  I  paid  half  a  crown,  and  I  never  took  off  the 
halter  till  her  was  in  my  house  ;  lor'  bless  yer  honours, 
you  may  ask  any  one  if  that  ain't  marriage,  good, 
sound,  and  Christian,  and  every  one  will  tell  you  it  is." 

Mr.  Henry  Frise  lived  in  a  cottage  that  was  on  lives, 
so  the  squire  was  unable  to  bring  compulsion  to  bear 
on  him.  But  when  Anne  died,  then  a  difficulty  arose  : 
under  what  name  was  she  to  be  entered  in  the  register? 
The  parson  insisted  that  he  could  not  and  he  would  not 
enter  her  as  Anne  Frise,  for  that  was  not  her  legal 
name.  Then  Henry  was  angry,  and  carried  her  off  to 
be  buried  in  another  parish,  where  the  parson  was  un- 
acquainted with  the  circumstances.  I  must  say  that 
Anne  proved  an  excellent  "wife."  She  was  thrifty, 
clean,  and  managed  a  rough-tempered  and  rough- 
tongued  man  with  great  tact,  and  was  generally 
respected.  She  died  in  or  about  1843. 

Much  later  than  that,  there  lived  a  publican  some 
miles  off,  whom  I  knew  very  well ;  indeed,  he  was  the 
namesake  of  and  first  cousin  to  a  carpenter  in  my 
constant  employ.  He  bought  his  wife  for  a  stone  two- 
gallon  jar  of  Plymouth  gin,  if  I  was  informed  aright. 
She  had  belonged  to  a  stonecutter,  but  as  he  was  dis- 
satisfied with  her,  he  put  up  a  written  notice  in  several 
public  places  to  this  effect : — 

NOTICE 

This  here  be  to  hinform  the  publick  as  how  James 
Cole  be  dispozed  to  sell  his  wife  by  Auction.  Her 
be  a  dacent,  clanely  woman,  and  be  of  age  twenty- 
five  ears.  The  sale  be  to  take  place  in  the  New 
Inn,  Thursday  next  at  seven  o'clock. 


WIFE-SALES  61 

In  this  case  I  do  not  give  the  name  of  the  purchaser, 
as  the  woman  is,  I  believe,  still  alive.  I  believe — so 
I  was  told — that  the  foreman  of  the  neighbouring 
granite-works  remonstrated,  and  insisted  that  such  a 
sale  would  be  illegal.  He  was  not,  however,  clear  as 
to  the  points  of  law,  and  he  believed  that  it  would 
be  illegal  unless  the  husband  held  an  auctioneer's 
licence,  and  if  money  passed.  This  was  rather  a 
damper.  However,  the  husband  was  desirous  to  be 
freed  from  his  wife,  and  he  held  the  sale  as  had  been 
advertised,  making  the  woman  stand  on  a  table,  and 
he  armed  himself  with  a  little  hammer.  The  biddings 
were  to  be  in  kind  and  not  in  money.  One  man  offered 
a  coat,  but  as  he  was  a  small  man  and  the  seller  was 
stout,  when  he  found  that  the  coat  would  not  fit  him, 
he  refused  it.  Another  offered  a  "phisgie,"  i.e.  a 
pick,  but  this  also  was  declined,  as  the  husband 
possessed  a  "  phisgie"  of  his  own.  Finally,  the  land- 
lord offered  a  two-gallon  jar  of  gin,  and  down  fell  the 
hammer  with  "Gone." 

I  knew  the  woman  ;  she  was  not  bad-looking.  The 
new  husband  drank,  and  treated  her  very  roughly,  and 
on  one  occasion  she  had  a  black  eye  when  I  was  lunch- 
ing at  the  inn.  I  asked  her  how  she  had  hurt  herself. 
She  replied  that  she  had  knocked  her  face  against  the 
door,  but  I  was  told  that  this  was  a  result  of  a  domestic 
brawl.  Now  the  remarkable  feature  in  these  cases  is 
that  it  is  impossible  to  drive  the  idea  out  of  the  heads 
of  those  who  thus  deal  in  wives  that  such  a  transaction 
is  not  sanctioned  by  law  and  religion.  In  Marytavy 
parish  register  is  the  following  entry  : — 

1756.     Robert    Elford    was    baptized,  child    of 

Susanna  Elford  by  her  sister's  husband.  She  was 

married  with  the  consent  of  her  sister,  the  wife, 
who  was  at  the  wedding. 


62  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

In  this  instance  there  is  no  evidence  of  a  sale,  but 
we  may  be  sure  that  money  did  pass,  and  that  the 
contractor  of  the  new  marriage  believed  it  was  a  right 
and  proper  union,  although  perhaps  irregular  ;  and  the 
first  wife  unquestionably  believed  that  she  was  acting 
in  observance  of  a  legal  right  in  transferring  her 
husband  to  her  sister.  There  are  instances  in  which 
country  people  have  gone  before  a  local  solicitor  and 
have  had  a  contract  of  sale  drawn  up  for  the  disposal 
of  their  wives.  The  Birmingham  police  court  in  1853 
had  to  adjudicate  on  such  a  case,  and  the  astounding 
thing  in  this  instance  was  that  a  lawyer  could  be  found 
to  draw  up  the  contract.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the 
magistrates  administered  a  very  severe  reprimand. 
But  there  was  a  far  earlier  case  than  this,  that  of  Sir 
William  de  Paganel ;  the  lady  stoutly  and  indignantly 
resisted  the  transfer  and  appealed  against  the  contract 
to  the  law,  which  declared  the  sale  to  be  null  and  void. 

Mr.  Whitfeld,  in  his  Plymouth  and  Devonport,  in 
Times  of  War  and  Peace,  mentions  a  case  that 
occurred  at  the  former,  but  without  giving  the  date, 
of  one  John  Codmore,  who  was  indicted  for  burglary 
and  for  having  married  without  his  father's  consent,  and 
then  tiring  of  his  wife,  having  sold  her  for  five  pounds 
— which  was  a  large  sum  as  the  price  of  wives  went — 
to  a  miller.  In  December,  1822,  the  Plymouth  crier 
announced  to  all  and  singular  :  Oh  yes  !  Oh  yes  !  that 
James  Brooks  was  about  to  dispose  of  his  wife  by 
public  auction.  The  lady  was  advertised  as  young 
and  handsome,  and  as  likely  to  succeed  to  an  inherit- 
ance of  £700. 

Expectation  was  whetted  by  the  intimation  that  the 
lady  would  attend  the  sale  herself,  that  all  might  judge 
of  her  personal  charm,  and  that  she  would  be  mounted 
on  horseback.  A  curious  and  babbling  crowd  assem- 


WIFE-SALES  63 

bled  to  witness  the  transaction,  and  precisely  at  mid- 
day, according  to  the  announcement,  she  rode  up, 
attended  by  the  ostler  of  the  "  Lord  Exmouth."  The 
husband,  James  Brooks,  officiated  as  auctioneer.  The 
first  bid  was  five  shillings,  then  the  sums  offered 
mounted  to  ten  and  to  fifteen  ;  but  none  rose,  and  that 
slowly,  over  two  pound.  Whereupon  the  ostler  called 
out  " Three  pounds,"  and  she  would  have  been  knocked 
down  to  him  had  not  at  this  conjuncture  a  couple 
of  watchmen  intervened,  one  laying  hands  on  the  hus- 
band and  the  other  on  the  wife,  and  escorted  the  pair 
to  the  Guildhall,  followed  by  the  rabble. 

When  the  mayor  took  them  to  task,  the  husband 
declared  that  for  the  life  of  him  he  could  not  see  that 
he  was  doing  wrong.  He  and  his  wife  had  agreed  to 
the  sale,  as  they  had  not  lived  together  for  long,  and 
were  ill-assorted,  and  therefore  desired  fresh  partners. 
The  ostler  was  prepared  to  pay  twenty  pounds  for  her 
— three  pounds  down  and  the  balance  at  Christmas — 
and  the  woman  was  quite  agreeable.  What,  then,  was 
wrong?  He  assured  the  mayor  that  there  was  nothing 
"  below  board"  in  the  transaction;  the  auction  had 
been  "called  "  three  times  in  Modbury  Market,  and  the 
wife  also  considered  that  she  ought  and  would  like  to 
be  sold  in  a  public  fair. 

The  mayor  now  examined  the  woman.  She  admitted 
that  the  ostler  was  buying  her  in  at  a  reserved  price,  at 
which  she  had  valued  herself.  There  was  a  gentleman, 
a  Mr.  K.,  who  she  expected  would  have  attended 
and  bid  for  her,  and  with  whom  she  had  intended  to 
go.  But  Mr.  K.  had  not  turned  up,  much  to  her 
annoyance.  "I  was  very  much  annoyed,"  said  she, 
"to  find  that  he  had  not  kept  his  promise.  But  I  was 
so  determined  to  be  loosed  from  Mr.  Brooks,  that  when 
Mr.  K.  did  not  attend,  I  asked  the  ostler  to  buy  me 


64      DEVONSHIRE  CHARACTERS 

with  my  own  money,  unless  I  went  for  more  than 
twenty  pounds." 

The  justices  bound  them  over  in  sureties  to  be  of 
good  behaviour,  and  dismissed  them. 

In  1823,  an  army  sergeant  in  residence  in  Devonport 
Dock  tracked  his  faithless  wife  to  Liskeard,  and  there 
engaged  the  bell-man  to  announce  that  it  was  his 
intention  to  dispose  of  her  by  sale  to  the  highest  bidder. 
Procuring  a  rope,  he  placed  it  round  the  neck  of  his 
spouse,  and  led  her  unresisting  to  the  Higher  Cross, 
opposite  the  Market,  where  the  offers  were  taking  a 
spirited  turn  when  the  police  interfered.  In  the 
same  year,  William  Hodge  was  indicted  at  Plymouth 
for  putting  his  wife  up  to  auction,  and  William 
Andrews  for  purchasing  her.  It  was  shown  that 
Hodge  had  repeatedly  threatened  to  sell  his  wife,  that 
she  had  cheerfully  welcomed  the  proposition,  and 
that  Andrews  had  anticipated  the  transaction  of  the 
sale  by  abducting  her.  At  the  Quarter  Sessions 
"the  auctioneer"  was  conspicuous  by  his  absence; 
the  wife  pleaded  that  he  had  frequently  assaulted  her ; 
and  Andrews  was  condemned  to  prison  "by  way  of 
warning."1 

The  Rev.  W.  H.  Thornton,  vicar  of  North  Bovey, 
in  Devon  Notes  and  Queries,  Vol.  IV,  1906,  writes : 
"A  sale  may  apparently  be  effected  either  by  private 
arrangement  or  by  public  auction,  and  in  neither  case 
do  the  prices  obtainable  seem,  as  a  rule,  to  run  high. 
The  husband  naturally  considers  the  result  more  satis- 
factory if  a  good  sum  can  be  obtained  for  his  wife,  but 
when  the  course  of  matrimony  has  arrived  at  a  crisis, 
he  commonly  feels  that  it  is  better  to  accept  the  market 
price  of  the  day  than  it  is  to  lead  her  home  again  to 
resume  conjugal  life. 

1  Whitfeld,  Plymouth  and  Devonport,  in  Times  of  War  and  Peace, 
1890,  pp.  296-7. 


WIFE-SALES  65 

"My  attention  was  recently  called  to  the  matter, 
when,  in  March  of  this  year  (1906),  I  was  investigating 
in  North  Devon  a  remarkable  instance  of  suicide,  and 
a  still  more  remarkable  verdict  thereon.  My  informant 
was  an  old  poacher  and  fisherman,  and  speaking  of  the 
deceased,  he  said  casually  that  he  came  of  a  curious 
family,  and  that  he  himself  could  well  remember  to 
have  seen  the  dead  man's  grandfather  leading  his  grand- 
mother on  a  halter  to  be  sold  by  public  auction  in 
Great  Torrington  Market.  The  reserve  price  was,  in 
this  instance,  fixed  at  eighteen  pence,  but  as  no  one 
would  give  so  much  money,  the  husband  had  to  take 
his  wife  home  again  and  resume  matrimonial  inter- 
course. Children  were  born  to  them,  and  the  ultimate 
result  was  the  suicide. 

"  On  being  asked  whether,  in  such  instances,  the 
neighbours  generally  considered  the  transaction  legiti- 
mate, old  John  Badger  replied  in  the  affirmative ;  he 
declared  that  the  vendor  was  held  to  be  free  to  wed 
again,  and  the  purchaser  to  be  liable  for  the  main- 
tenance of  the  woman,  but  not  till  the  money  had 
changed  hands  over  the  bargain. 

"This  statement  reminded  me  of  a  case  which 
occurred  at  North  Bovey  shortly  before  I  became 
incumbent  of  the  living  in  1868.  This  can  easily  be 
verified.  A  man,  whose  name  I  can  give,  walked 
into  Chagford,  and  there  by  private  agreement  sold 
his  wife  to  another  man  for  a  quart  of  beer.  When 
he  returned  home  with  the  purchaser  the  woman  re- 
pudiated the  transaction,  and,  taking  her  two  children 
with  her,  went  off  at  once  to  Exeter,  and  only  came 
back  to  attend  her  husband's  funeral,  at  which,  unless 
I  am  mistaken,  I  officiated. 

"  Mr.  Roberts,  the  present  old  clerk  at  Wolborough, 
tells  me  that  he  has  heard  his  father  say  that  he  knew 


66     DEVONSHIRE  CHARACTERS 

of  several  instances  of  the  kind  now  under  considera- 
tion, but  that  he  does  not  think  that  in  South  Devon 
the  arrangement  was  often  considered  legal.  In  the 
north  of  the  county  people  were  less  enlightened." 

Devon  was  not  alone  the  scene  of  these  wife-sales, 
though  they  were  probably  more  common  there  than 
elsewhere.  Still,  there  is  evidence  that  such  trans- 
actions went  on  elsewhere,  and  one  or  two  instances 
may  be  quoted,  to  relieve  Devon  of  exclusive  discredit 
in  such  matters. 

The  story  is  well  known  of  the  Silesian  noble  whose 
house  was  raided  by  Tartars,  one  of  whom  carried  off 
the  nobleman's  wife  on  his  horse  behind  him.  The 
Silesian  looked  after  the  disappearing  bandit,  rubbed 
his  hands,  and  said,  "  Alas,  poor  Tartar!"  Doubt- 
less there  were  many  husbands  who  would  have  been 
glad  to  be  rid  of  their  wives  at  any  price,  even  for 
nothing  at  all. 

In  1815,  a  man  held  a  regular  auction  in  the  market- 
place at  Pontefract,  offering  his  wife  at  a  minimum 
bidding  of  one  shilling,  but  he  managed  to  excite  a 
competition,  and  she  was  finally  knocked  down  for 
eleven  shillings. 

In  1820,  a  man  named  Brouchet  led  his  wife,  a 
decent,  pleasant-looking  woman,  but  with  a  tongue  in 
her  mouth,  into  the  cattle  market  at  Canterbury  from 
the  neighbouring  village  of  Broughton.  He  required 
a  salesman  to  dispose  of  her,  but  the  salesman  replied 
that  his  dealings  were  with  cattle  only,  and  not  with 
women.  Brouchet,  not  to  be  beaten,  thereupon  hired 
a  cattle-pen,  paying  sixpence  for  the  hire,  and  led  his 
wife  into  it  by  the  halter  that  was  round  her  neck. 
She  did  not  fetch  a  high  figure,  being  disposed  of  to  a 
young  man  of  Canterbury  for  five  shillings. 

In    1832,    on    7    April,    a    farmer    named    Joseph 


WIFE-SALES  67 

Thomson  came  into  Carlisle  with  his  wife,  to  whom  he 
had  been  married  three  years  before  ;  he  sent  the  bell- 
man round  the  town  to  announce  a  sale,  and  this  attracted 
a  great  crowd.  At  noon  the  sale  took  place.  Thomson 
placed  his  wife  on  a  chair,  with  a  rope  of  straw  round 
her  neck.  He  then  said — according  to  the  report  in 
the  Annual  Register — "Gentlemen,  I  have  to  offer  to 
your  notice,  my  wife,  Mary  Anne  Thomson,  otherwise 
Williams,  whom  I  mean  to  sell  to  the  highest  and 
fairest  bidder.  Gentlemen,  it  is  her  wish  as  well  as 
mine  to  part  for  ever.  She  has  been  to  me  only  a  born 
serpent.  I  took  her  for  my  comfort,  and  the  good  of  my 
home  ;  but  she  became  my  tormentor,  a  domestic  curse. 
Gentlemen,  I  speak  the  truth  from  my  heart  when  I 
say  may  God  deliver  us  from  troublesome  wives  and 
frolicsome  women  !  Avoid  them  as  you  would  a  mad 
dog,  or  a  roaring  lion,  a  loaded  pistol,  cholera  morbus, 
Mount  Etna,  or  any  other  pestilential  thing  in  nature. 
Now  I  have  shown  you  the  dark  side  of  my  wife,  and 
told  you  her  faults  and  failings,  I  will  introduce  the 
bright  and  sunny  side  of  her,  and  explain  her  qualifi- 
cations and  goodness.  She  can  read  novels  and  milk 
cows  ;  she  can  laugh  and  weep  with  the  same  ease  that 
you  could  take  a  glass  of  ale  when  thirsty.  Indeed, 
gentlemen,  she  reminds  me  of  what  the  poet  says  of 
women  in  general : — 

Heaven  gave  to  women  the  peculiar  grace 
To  laugh,  to  weep,  to  cheat  the  human  race. 

She  can  make  butter  and  scold  the  maid  ;  she  can  sing 
Moore's  melodies,  and  plait  her  frills  and  caps ;  she 
cannot  make  rum,  gin,  or  whisky,  but  she  is  a  good 
judge  of  the  quality  from  long  experience  in  tasting 
them.  I  therefore  offer  her  with  all  her  perfections 
and  imperfections  for  the  sum  of  fifty  shillings." 

That  this  address  was  spoken  by  Thomson  is  most 


68  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

improbable — it  is  doubtless  put  into  his  mouth  by  the 
editor  of  the  Annual  Register;  it  was  not  to  his 
interest  to  depreciate  the  article  he  desired  to  sell. 
After  about  an  hour,  the  woman  was  knocked  down  to 
one  Henry  Mears,  for  twenty  shillings  and  a  New- 
foundland dog.  They  then  parted  company  in  perfect 
good  humour,  each  satisfied  with  his  bargain  ;  Mears 
and  the  woman  went  one  way,  and  Thomson  and  the 
dog  another. 

In  1835  a  man  led  his  wife  by  a  halter,  in  precisely 
the  same  way,  into  the  market  at  Birmingham,  and 
sold  her  for  fifteen  pounds.  She  at  once  went  home 
with  the  purchaser.  She  survived  both  buyer  and 
seller,  and  then  married  again.  Some  property  came 
to  her  in  the  course  of  years  from  her  first  husband  ; 
for  notwithstanding  claims  put  forth  by  his  relatives 
she  was  able  to  maintain  in  a  court  of  law  that  the 
sale  did  not  and  could  not  vitiate  her  rights  as  his 
widow. 

Much  astonishment  was  caused  in  1837  *n  the  West 
Riding  of  Yorkshire  by  a  man  being  committed  to 
prison  for  a  month  with  hard  labour  for  selling  or 
attempting  to  sell  his  wife  by  auction  in  the  manner 
already  described.  It  was  generally  and  firmly  believed 
that  he  was  acting  within  his  rights. 

In  1858,  in  a  tavern  at  Little  Horton,  near  Bradford, 
a  man  named  Hartley  Thompson  put  up  his  wife,  who 
is  described  by  the  local  journals  as  a  pretty  young 
woman,  for  sale  by  auction,  and  he  had  the  sale  pre- 
viously announced  by  sending  round  the  bell-man.  He 
led  her  into  the  market  with  a  ribbon  round  her  neck, 
which  exhibits  an  advance  in  refinement  over  the  straw 
halter  ;  and  again  in  1859,  a  man  at  Dudley  disposed 
of  his  wife  in  a  somewhat  similar  manner  for  sixpence. 
A  feature  in  all  these  instances  is  the  docility  with 


WIFE-SALES  69 

which  the  wife  submitted  to  be  haltered  and  sold.  She 
would  seem  to  have  been  equally  imbued  with  the  idea 
that  there  was  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of  in  the  trans- 
action, and  that  it  was  perfectly  legal. 

If  we  look  to  discover  whence  originated  the  idea,  we 
shall  probably  find  it  in  the  conception  of  marriage  as 
a  purchase.  Among  savage  races,  the  candidate  for 
marriage  is  expected  to  pay  the  father  for  his  daughter. 
A  marriageable  girl  is  worth  so  many  cows  or  so  many 
reindeer.  The  man  pays  over  a  sum  of  money  or  its 
equivalent  to  the  father,  and  in  exchange  receives  the 
girl.  If  he  desires  to  be  separated  from  her  he  has  no 
idea  of  giving  her  away,  but  receives  what  is  calculated 
to  be  her  market  value  from  the  man  who  is  disposed 
to  relieve  him  of  her.  In  all  dealings  for  cattle,  or 
horses,  or  sheep,  a  handsel  is  paid,  half  a  crown  to 
clinch  the  bargain,  and  the  transfer  of  coin  constitutes 
a  legal  transfer  of  authority  and  property  over  the 
animal.  This  is  applied  to  a  woman,  and  when  a  coin, 
even  a  sixpence,  is  paid  over  and  received,  the  receiver 
regards  this  as  releasing  him  from  all  further  responsi- 
bility for  the  wife,  who  at  once  passes  under  the  hand 
of  the  purchaser.  There  is  probably  no  trace  in  our 
laws  of  women  having  been  thus  regarded  as  negoti- 
able properties,  but  it  is  unquestionable  that  at  an  early 
period,  before  Christianity  invaded  the  island,  such  a 
view  was  held,  and  if  here  and  there  the  rustic  mind 
is  unable  to  rise  to  a  higher  conception  of  the  marriage 
state,  it  shows  how  extremely  slow  it  is  for  opinions  to 
alter  when  education  has  been  neglected. 


WHITE    WITCHES 

SOME   years  ago   I    wrote  a    little  account    of 
"  White  Witches"  in  the  Daily   Graphic,   in 
which  I  narrated  some  of  my  experiences  and 
my  acquaintance  with  their  proceedings.     This 
brought  me  at  the  lowest  computation  fifty  letters  from 
all  parts  of  the  country  from  patients  who  had  spent 
much  of  their  substance  upon   medical   practitioners, 
and,   like  the  woman  with  the  issue  of  blood  in  the 
Gospel,  "  had  suffered  many  things  of  many  physicians 
and  was  nothing   bettered,    but   rather   grew  worse. " 
These  entreated  me  to  furnish  them  with  the  addresses 
of  some  of  these  irregular  practitioners,  that  they  might 
try  them.     I  did  not  send  what  was  desired,  and  that  for 
a  very  good  reason,  that  I  regard  these  individuals  as 
impostors  and  the  occasion  of  a  good  deal  of  mischief. 

At  the  same  time  distinguez,  as  the  French  would 
say.  They  are  not  all  so,  and  I  have  seen  and  can 
testify  to  very  notable  and  undeniable  cures  that  they 
have  effected.  That  they  believe  in  their  powers  and 
their  cures  is  true  in  a  good  many  cases,  and  I  quite 
admit  that  they  may  be  in  possession  of  a  large  number 
of  valuable  herbal  recipes,  doubtless  of  real  efficacy. 
Some  of  our  surgeons  are  far  too  fond  of  using  the 
knife,  and  the  majority  of  them  employ  strong  mineral 
medicines  that,  though  they  may  produce  an  immediate 
effect,  do  injury  in  the  long  run.  I  take  it  that  one 
reason  why  our  teeth  are  so  bad  in  the  present  genera- 
tion is  due  largely  to  the  way  in  which  calomel  was 

70 


WHITE   WITCHES  71 

administered  in  times  past,  a  medicine  that  touches  the 
liver  but  is  rottenness  to  the  bones. 

What  Jesus  the  son  of  Sirach  said  centuries  ago  is 
true  still:  "  The  Lord  hath  created  medicines  out  of 
the  earth,  and  he  that  is  wise  will  not  abhor  them  .  .  . 
by  such  doth  he  heal  men,  and  taketh  away  their  pains. 
Of  such  doth  the  apothecary  make  a  confection " 
(Ecclus.  xxxvin.  4,  7,  8).  What  the  writer  meant  was 
herbs  and  not  minerals.  The  simples  employed  by  the 
wise  old  women  in  our  villages  were  admirable  in 
most  cases,  but  they  were  slow,  if  sure  of  action,  and 
in  these  days  when  we  go  at  a  gallop  we  want  cures  to 
be  rapid,  almost  instantaneous. 

But  the  professed  herbalist  in  our  country  towns  is 
very  often  not  a  herbalist  at  all,  but  a  mere  impostor. 
He  puts  up  "  herbalist"  on  a  brass  plate  at  his  door, 
but  his  procedure  is  mere  quackery. 

Moreover,  the  true  White  Witch  is  consulted  not  for 
maladies  only,  but  for  the  discovery  of  who  has  cast  the 
evil  eye,  "  overlooked  "  and  u  ill- wished  "  some  one  who 
has  lost  a  cow,  or  has  been  out  of  sorts,  or  has  sickness 
in  his  pig-sty.  The  mode  of  proceeding  was  amus- 
ingly described  in  the  Letters  of  Nathan  Hogg,  in  1847. 
Nathan  in  the  form  of  a  story  gives  an  account  of  what 
was  the  general  method  of  the  White  Witch  Tucker  in 
Exeter.  A  farmer  whose  conviction  was  that  disorders 
and  disasters  at  home  were  the  result  of  the  ill-wishing 
of  a  red-cloaked  Nan  Tap,  consulted  Tucker  as  to  how 
the  old  woman  was  to  be  " driven"  and  rendered 
powerless. 

I  modify  the  broad  dialect,  which  would  not  be 
generally  intelligible. 

When  into  Exeter  he  had  got 
To  Master  Tucker's  door  he  sot ; 
He  rung'd  the  bell,  the  message  sent, 
Pulled  off  his  hat,  and  in  he  went, 


72  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

And  seed  a  fellow  in  a  room 

That  seem'd  in  such  a  fret  and  fume. 

He  said  he'd  lost  a  calf  and  cow, 

And  com'd  in  there  to  know  as  how, 

For  Master  T.,  at  little  cost, 

Had  often  found  the  thing's  he'd  lost. 

Thereupon  the  farmer  opened  his  own  trouble,  and 
told  how  he  and  his  were  bewitched  by  Nan  Tap. 
And  as  he  told  his  tale,  it  seemed  so  sad  that  the  man 
in  the  room  bade  him  go  in  first  to  consult  the  White 
Witch. 

Now  this  fuming  man  was  employed  by  Tucker  to 
draw  out  from  the  gulls  what  their  trouble  was,  and 
there  was  but  a  sham  wall  of  paper  between  the  room 
where  the  interview  took  place  and  that  in  which  he 
received  the  farmer,  whom  he  greatly  astonished  by 
informing  him  of  all  the  circumstances  that  led  to  the 
visit.  The  remedy  he  prescribed  was  to  carry  a  little 
bag  he  gave  him,  in  which  were  some  stones,  and  to 
dash  water  in  the  direction  of  the  old  woman,  and  say, 
"I  do  it  in  the  name  of  Tucker,"  and  if  this  did  not 
answer,  he  was  to  put  a  faggot  up  his  chimney,  set  fire 
to  it,  and  say  a  prayer  he  taught  him  while  it  was 
burning.  We  need  not  follow  the  account  any  further. 

There  was  a  few  years  ago  a  notable  White  Witch  of 
the  name  of  Snow,  at  Tiverton,  who  did  great  business. 
In  a  case  with  which  I  am  well  acquainted,  he  certainly 
was  the  means  of  curing  a  substantial  farmer.  The  man 
had  caught  a  severe  chill  one  night  of  storm,  when  a 
torrent  threatened  to  inundate  his  house.  He  had 
stood  for  hours  endeavouring  to  divert  the  stream  from 
his  door.  The  chill  settled  on  his  chest,  and  he 
became  a  wreck ;  he  drew  his  breath  with  difficulty, 
walked  bent,  almost  double,  and  as  I  was  convinced 
would  not  live  out  the  twelve  months.  He  consulted 
the  most  famous  and  experienced  physicians,  and  they 


WHITE   WITCHES  73 

did  him  no  good.  Then  in  desperation  he  went  to 
"Old  Snow."  From  that  day  he  mended.  What  the 
White  Witch  gave  him  I  do  not  know ;  but  the  man  is 
now  robust,  hearty,  and  looks  as  if  many  years  were 
before  him. 

I  know  another  case,  but  this  is  of  a  different 
nature.  A  young  farmer,  curious  as  to  the  future, 
visited  a  White  Witch  to  learn  who  his  future  wife 
would  be.  Said  she — this  witch  was  a  woman,  and  an 
old  one  :  there  are  female  witches  who  are  young  and 
exercise  very  powerful  charms — said  she  :  "  Next  Sun- 
day, you  go  along  Narracott  lane,  and  the  first  young 
woman  you  see  pass,  look  her  well  in  the  face,  and 
when  you've  gone  by,  turn  your  head  and  look,  and  if 
she's  also  turned  her  head  and  is  looking  at  you,  that's 
the  one." 

"Well  now,"  said  this  farmer  in  later  years,  "it 
were  a  coorious  thing  it  were,  but  as  I  were  goin'  along 
thickey  lane  there  I  seed  Bessie  Baker,  and  I  turn'd, 
and  sure  enough  her  were  lookin'  over  her  shoulder  to 
me,  and  wot's  most  coorious  of  all— her's  my  missus 
now.  After  that,  don't  ee  go  and  tell  me  as  how  White 
Witches  knows  nothin'.  But  there's  somethin'  more 
to  the  tale.  I  heerd  afterwards  as  Bessie,  her'd  con- 
sulted old  Nan,  and  Nan  had  said  to  her,  'Go  along 
Narracott  lane,  and  the  first  man  as  you  sees,  when 
you've  past,  turn  and  look;  and  if  he's  lookin'  over  his 
shoulder  to  you,  that's  the  one.'  There's  facts;  and 
wi'  them  facts  staring  of  you  in  the  face,  don't  you  go 
and  say  White  Witches  is  nort." 

There  is  an  old  woman  I  know — she  is  still  alive.  It 
was  six  years  since  she  bought  a  bar  of  yellow  or  any 
other  soap.  But  that  is  neither  here  nor  there.  She 
was  esteemed  a  witch — a  white  one  of  course.  She 
was  a  God-fearing  woman,  and  had  no  relations  with 


74  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  Evil  One,  of  that  one  may  be  sure.  How  she  sub- 
sisted was  a  puzzle  to  the  whole  parish.  But,  then,  she 
was  generally  feared.  She  received  presents  from  every 
farm  and  cottage.  Sometimes  she  would  meet  a  child 
coming  from  school,  and  stay  it,  and  fixing  her  wild 
dark  eye  on  it,  say,  "  My  dear,  I  knawed  a  child  jist 
like  you — same  age,  red  rosy  cheeks,  and  curlin'  black 
hair.  And  that  child  shrivelled  up,  shrumped  like  an 
apple  as  is  picked  in  the  third  quarter  of  the  moon. 
The  cheeks  grew  white,  the  hair  went  out  of  curl,  and 
she  jist  died  right  on  end  and  away." 

Before  the  day  was  out,  a  chicken  or  a  basket  of 
eggs  as  a  present  from  the  mother  of  that  child  was 
sure  to  arrive. 

I  have  given  an  account  of  this  same  old  woman  in 
my  An  Old  English  Home,  and  will  here  add  a  few 
more  particulars  about  her.  She  possessed  of  her  own 
a  two-storied  house,  thatched,  built  mainly  of  cob,  but 
with  two  chimneys  of  brick.  Some  five-and-twenty 
years  ago  the  house  was  habitable  enough.  The 
thatch  had  given  way  in  several  places,  but  she  could 
not  or  would  not  have  it  repaired.  Perhaps  she  had 
not  the  means  ;  but  the  farmers  offered  her  straw,  and 
a  thatcher  would  have  done  the  work  for  her  gratis,  or 
only  for  her  blessing.  She  would  not.  "God  made 
the  sky,"  she  said,  "and  that  is  the  best  roof  of  all." 
After  a  while,  however,  the  roof  became  leaky  every- 
where. Then  she  sought  shelter  for  her  head  by  stuff- 
ing up  the  chimney  of  her  bedroom  fireplace  with  a 
sack  filled  with  chaff,  and  pushing  her  bed  to  the 
hearth,  she  slept  with  her  head  and  pillow  under  the 
sack.  But  access  to  this  bedroom  became  difficult,  as 
the  stairs,  exposed  to  the  rain,  rotted  and  gave  way, 
and  she  was  compelled  to  ascend  and  descend  by  an 
improvised  ladder. 


MARIAXN    VOAUEN,    BKA'f'ION 


MARIANN  VOADEN'S  COTTAGE,  BRATTON 


WHITE   WITCHES  75 

The  rector  of  the  parish  went  to  her  and  remon- 
strated at  the  dangerous  condition  of  the  tenement. 

'  *  My  dear, "  said  she,  '  '  there  be  two  angels  every  night 
sits  on  the  rungs  of  the  ladder  and  watches  there,  that 
nobody  comes  nigh  me,  and  they  be  ready  to  hold  up 
the  timbers  that  they  don't  fall  on  me." 

The  rector's  daughter  carried  her  some  food  every 
now  and  then.  One  day  the  woman  made  her  a  present 
of  some  fine  old  lace.  This  was  gratefully  accepted.  As 
the  young  lady  was  departing,  "  Old  Marianne  "  called 
after  her  from  the  bedroom  door,  * '  Come  back,  my 
dear,  I  want  that  lace  again.  If  any  one  else  be  so 
gude  as  to  give  me  aught,  I  shall  want  it  to  make 
an  acknowledgment  of  the  kindness."  The  lace  was 
often  given  as  acknowledgment,  and  as  often  re- 
claimed. 

After  a  while  the  ladder  collapsed.  Then  the  old 
woman  descended  for  good  and  all,  and  took  up  her 
abode  on  the  ground  floor — kitchen  and  parlour,  din- 
ing-room and  bedroom  all  in  one. 

Finally  the  whole  roof  fell  in  and  carried  down  the 
flooring  of  the  upper  story,  but  in  such  manner  that 
the  "planchin"  rested  at  one  end  against  the  wall, 
but  blocked  up  door  and  fireplace.  Then  she  lived 
under  it  as  a  lean-to  roof,  and  without  a  fire  for  several 
winters,  amongst  others  that  bitter  one  of  1893-4,  and 
her  only  means  of  egress  and  ingress  was  through 
the  window.  Of  that  half  the  number  of  panes  was 
broken  and  patched  with  rags.  As  the  water  poured 
into  her  room  she  finally  took  refuge  in  an  old  oak 
chest,  keeping  the  lid  up  with  a  brick. 

I  knew  her  very  well ;  she  was  a  picturesque  object. 
Once  she  and  I  were  photographed  together  standing 
among  the  ruins  of  her  house.  She  must  have  been 
handsome  in  her  day,  with  a  finely-cut  profile,  and 


76  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

piercing  dark  eyes.  She  usually  wore  a  red  kerchief 
about  her  head  or  neck  and  an  old  scarlet  petticoat. 
But  she  was  dirty — indescribably  so.  Her  hands  were 
the  colour  of  mahogany.  She  promised  me  her  book 
of  charms.  I  never  got  it,  and  this  was  how.  The 
huntsmen  were  wont,  whenever  passing  her  wretched 
house,  to  shout  " Marianne!  Marianne!"  and  draw  up. 
Then  from  amidst  the  ruins  came  a  muffled  response, 
"  Coming,  my  dears,  coming!"  Presently  she  ap- 
peared. She  was  obliged  to  crawl  out  of  her  window 
that  opened  into  the  garden  and  orchard  at  the  back 
of  the  house,  go  round  it,  and  unlace  a  gate  of 
thorns  she  had  erected  as  a  protection  to  her  garden  ; 
there  she  always  received  presents.  One  day  as  usual 
the  fox-hunters  halted  and  called  for  her ;  she  happened 
at  the  time  to  have  kindled  a  fire  on  the  floor  of  her 
room  to  boil  a  little  water  in  a  kettle  for  tea,  and  she 
left  the  fire  burning  when  she  issued  forth  to  converse 
with  the  gentlemen  and  extend  her  hand  for  half- 
crowns.  Whilst  thus  engaged  the  flames  caught  some 
straw  that  littered  the  ground,  they  spread,  set  fire  to 
the  woodwork,  and  the  room  was  in  a  blaze.  Every- 
thing was  consumed,  her  chest-bed,  her  lace,  her 
book  of  charms.  After  that  she  was  conveyed  to 
the  workhouse,  where  she  is  still,  and  now  is  kept 
clean. 

Once,  before  this  catastrophe,  I  drove  over  to  see 
her,  taking  my  youngest  daughter  with  me.  The 
child  had  breakings-out  on  her  face  ;  Marianne  noticed 
this.  "  Ah,  my  dear,"  said  she,  "  I  see  you  want  my 
help.  You  must  bring  the  little  maiden  to  me,  she 
must  be  fasting,  and  then  I  will  bless  her  face,  and  in 
two  days  she  will  be  well."  Her  cure  for  whooping- 
cough  was  to  cut  the  hair  off  the  cross  on  a  donkey's 
back,  fasten  it  in  silk  bags,  and  tie  these  round  the 


WHITE   WITCHES  77 

children's  necks.  "  You  see,"  she  said,  "  Christ  Jesus 
rode  into  Jerusalem  on  an  ass,  and  ever  since  then 
asses  have  the  cross  on  their  backs,  and  the  hair  of 
those  crosses  is  holy  and  cures  maladies." 

Although  I  did  not  obtain  her  book  of  charms, 
she  gave  me  many  of  her  recipes.  For  fits  one 
was  to  swallow  wood-lice,  pounded  if  one  liked,  better 
swallowed  au  naturel. 

For  Burns  or  Scalds. — Recite  over  the  place  : — 

There  were  three  Angels  who  came  from  the  North, 
One  bringing-  Fire,  the  other  brought  Frost, 
The  other  he  was  the  Holy  Ghost. 

In  Frost,  out  Fire  !     In  the  Name,  etc. 

For  a  Sprain. — Recite  :  "  As  Christ  was  riding  over 
Crolly  Bridge,  His  horse  slid  and  sprained  his  leg. 
He  alighted  and  spake  the  words :  Bone  to  bone,  and 
sinew  to  sinew !  and  blessed  it  and  it  became  well, 
and  so  shall  .  .  .  become  well.  In  the  Name,  etc." 
Repeat  thrice. 

For  Stanching  Blood. — Recite:  "  Jesus  was  born  in 
Bethlehem,  baptized  in  the  river  of  Jordan.  The  water 
was  wide  and  the  river  was  rude  against  the  Holy 
Child.  And  He  smote  it  with  a  rod,  and  it  stood  still, 
and  so  shall  your  blood  stand  still.  In  the  Name,  etc." 
Repeat  thrice. 

Cure  for  Toothache.  — "  As  our  Blessed  Lord  and 
Saviour  Jesus  Christ  were  walking  in  the  garden  of 
Jerusalem,  Jesus  said  unto  Peter,  Why  weepest  thou? 
Peter  answered  and  said,  Lord,  I  be  terrible  tormented 
with  the  toothache.  Jesus  said  unto  Peter,  If  thou 
wilt  believe  in  Me  and  My  words  abide  in  thee,  thou 
shall  never  more  fill  [sic]  the  pain  in  thy  tooth.  Peter 
cried  out  with  tears,  Lord,  I  believe,  help  thou  my 
onbelieve  [sic]." 


78  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Another  receipt  for  a  Sprain. 

2  oz.  of  oil  of  turpentine. 

2  oz.  of  swillowes. 

2  oz.  of  oil  of  earthworms. 

2  oz.  of  nerve. 

2  oz.  of  oil  of  spideldock  (?  opodeldoc). 

2  oz.  of  Spanish  flies. 

I  recommend  this  recipe  to  be  taken  to  an  apothecary. 
Order  it  to  be  made  up,  and  observe  his  face  as  he 
reads  it. 

Marianne  had  the  gift  of  stanching  blood  even  at  a 
distance.  On  one  occasion  when  hay  was  being  cut, 
a  man  wounded  himself  at  Kelly,  some  eight  miles 
distant,  and  the  blood  flowed  in  streams.  At  once  the 
farmer  bade  a  man  take  a  kerchief  dipped  in  his  blood 
and  gallop  as  hard  as  he  could  to  the  tumble-down 
cottage,  and  get  Marianne  to  bless  the  blood.  He  did 
so,  and  was  gone  some  three  hours.  As  soon  as  the 
old  woman  had  charmed  the  kerchief  the  blood  ceased 
to  flow. 

At  one  time,  now  thirty  to  forty  years  ago,  it  was 
not  by  any  means  uncommon  for  one  to  meet  the  village 
postman  walking  with  one  hand  extended  holding  a 
kerchief  that  was  sent  to  the  White  Witch  to  be  blessed. 
The  rag  must  touch  no  other  human  being  till  it  reached 
her.  Moreover,  at  my  own  village  inn,  people  from  a 
distance  frequently  lodged  so  as  to  be  able  to  consult 
the  White  Witch,  and  my  tenant,  the  landlady  of  the  inn, 
was  absolutely  convinced  of  the  efficacy  of  the  cures 
wrought. 

The  rector's  son  went  to  call  on  Marianne,  .and  she 
brought  out  for  him  a  filthy  glass  with  poppy  wine  she 
had  made,  thick  and  muddy,  and  offered  it  to  him. 
"I  am  almost  a  teetotaler,"  said  he;  "and  so  can  do 


A   VILLAGE    "WISE    MAN" 


WHITE   WITCHES  79 

no  more  than  just  sip  this  to  your  health  and  happi- 
ness," and  he  put  his  lips  to  the  glass. 

"Ah!  Mr.  Edward,  dear,"  said  she,  "I've  offered 
thickey  glass  o'  wine  to  some,  and  they'm  so  proud  and 
haughty  as  they  wouldn't  titch  it ;  but  you'm  no  so — 
and  now  my  blessing  shall  be  wi'  you  night  and  day — 
and  gude  fortune  shall  ever  attend  you — that  I  promise 
you." 

A  writer  in  Devon  Notes  and  Queries,  October,  1906, 
writes  : — 

"  Fifty-nine  years  ago,  two  years  after  breaking  my 
arm,  I  evidently  chilled  it  by  violent  exercise  and  per- 
spiring in  a  lengthened  snowball  battle  on  Northern- 
hay  (Exeter).  This  caused  a  large  surface  wound  which 
neither  doctor  nor  chemist  could  heal  for  months,  but 
I  had  to  renew  on  all  opportunities  daily  the  appli- 
cation of  bandages  wetted  with  Goulard's  Extract 
(acetate  of  lead  and  water).  Months  went  by,  still  no 
cure,  and  at  last,  in  sheer  despair,  my  mother,  who 
had  not  long  left  the  country  to  live  in  Exeter,  resolved 
to  take  me  to  a  Seventh  Son  whose  fame  was  current  in 
Exeter.  He  was  at  the  time  the  carrier  to  and  from 
Moretonhampstead.  He  saw  my  arm  as  he  stood  by 
his  wagon,  and  bade  my  mother  bring  me  the  follow- 
ing Friday,  when  something  was  said  over  the  wound, 
and  I  was  invested  with  a  small  velvet  amulet,  which  I 
believe  contained  the  leg  of  a  toad. 

"The  wet  bandages  were  continued,  and  from  that 
day  to  this  I  have  never  been  able  to  tell  which  effected 
the  ultimate  cure,  the  wet  bandages  or  the  toad. 

"  About  thirty  years  later  I  had  of  my  own  a  seventh 
daughter,  born  in  succession.  The  news  got  about, 
and  within  a  fortnight  we  had  two  applications  from 
troubled  mothers.  Would  we  let  our  dear  baby  lay  her 
hand  on  their  child's  arm  or  leg,  as  may  be,  for  it 


8o  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

would  not  harm  mine  and  might  cure  theirs  of  King's 
Evil? 

"  During  the  early  years  that  I  have  named,  there 
were  several  notable  white  witches  in  Exeter  who  took 
lots  of  good  fees  for  pretended  good  services.  Super- 
stition dies  slowly,  for  within  the  last  seven  years  a 
friend  of  mine  with  the  same  surname  as  the  White 
Witch  of  1840-50,  but  a  comparative  new-comer  to 
Exeter,  was  startled  by  an  application  of  which  he, 
knowing  nothing  of  old  wives'  stories  of  Devon,  could 
not  fathom  the  meaning  until  asking  the  writer  if  he 
could  explain.  About  1880  my  wife  was  met  at  the 
door  by  a  man  who  might  by  appearance  have  been 
a  small  farmer.  'Missus,  be  I  gwain  right?'  *  Where 
do  you  want  to  go?'  (A  little  hesitation.)  *  I  waant  to 
vind  thickey  wuman  that  tells  things.  My  cows  be 
wished  and  I  waant  to  vind  out  who  dood  it.'  So  he 
was  told  to  go  to  a  cottage  behind  Friars'  Green,  where 

old  Mrs.  had  a  crop  of  fools  for  clients  every 

Friday,  and  told  them  their  fortunes  by  tea-grounds 
and  cards,  much  to  her  and  their  satisfaction  ;  but  I 
certainly  was  amused  to  hear  my  wife  say,  '  Oh,  Jenny 
So-and-so,  Polly  What's-her-name,  and  various  others, 
and  I,  have  gone  there  lots  of  times,  and  had  our 
fortunes  told  for  twopence.'  " 

At  the  beginning  of  this  article  I  mentioned  a  farmer, 
a  tenant  of  mine,  who  professed  to  have  been  cured  by 
"  Old  Snow,"  of  Tiverton. 

Nine  years  after  this  I  wrote  the  article  on  our  Devon- 
shire White  Witches  in  the  Daily  Graphic.  This  was 
transferred  to  one  or  two  Plymouth  papers.  Shortly 
after  that,  at  our  harvest  festival,  the  farmer  turned  up. 
He  had  left  my  farm  and  taken  another  elsewhere  ;  but 
he  had  a  hankering  after  Lew  Trenchard,  and  at  our 
festival  he  appeared,  robust  and  hearty.  He  came  to 


WHITE   WITCHES  81 

me  and  said,  "  Why,  sir,  you  have  been  putting  me  in 
the  papers."  "Well,  old  friend,"  said  I,  "I  said  in 
it  nothing  but  what  was  true."  "  True,  aye,  aye,  sir, 
true  as  gospel.  The  doctors  in  Plymouth  and  Mr. 
Budd,  of  North  Tawton,  gave  me  up,  but  Old  Snow 
cured  me.  I  met  him  on  the  platform  of  Tiverton 
station,  and  told  him  my  case.  He  looked  me  hard  in 
the  eye,  and  said  some  words,  and  bade  me  go  home 
and  I  was  cured.  Well,  sir,  from  that  day  I  mended. 
You  see  now  what  I  am." 

A  friend  wrote  to  me:  "  In  1891,  my  head  man  had  an 
attack  of  influenza,  and  this  fell  on  his  nerves,  and  con- 
vinced that  he  had  been  ill-wished,  he  consulted  a 
White  Witch  at  Callington,  who  informed  him  that  he 
had  been  *  overlooked '  by  one  of  his  own  profession, 
and  that  he  had  applied  too  late  for  a  cure  to  be 
effected." 

Now  the  person  who  exhorted  him  to  have  recourse 
to  the  White  Witch  was  his  daughter,  who  was  mistress 
at  the  school  of  the  parish. 

The  man  eventually  recovered,  but  not  through  the 
aid  of  the  White  Witch. 

I  know  a  farmer,  a  God-fearing,  sensible  man,  and 
thriving  in  his  farm  and  piling  up  money,  to  whom 
recourse  is  continually  had  to  stanch  wounds,  and  to 
cure  abscesses,  by  striking  the  place  and  reciting  certain 
mystic  sentences. 

A  witch,  white  or  black,  must  communicate  the  secret 
of  power  to  one  of  an  opposite  sex  before  he  or  she  can 
die — that  is  well  known. 

That  in  many  cases  the  imagination  acting  on  the 
nervous  system  acts  curatively  "goes  without  saying." 
It  is  that  which  really  operates  in  the  faith  cures  and  in 
the  Lourdes  miracles.  What  a  bad  time  witches, 
white  or  black,  must  have  had  when  the  short  way  with 
G 


82  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

any  one  suspected  was  to  throw  her  into  a  pond  !  If 
she  sank,  why  she  sank  and  was  drowned,  but  had  the 
satisfaction  of  being  aware  that  her  character  was 
cleared,  whereas  if  she  floated,  she  was  a  convicted 
witch  and  was  burnt. 

I  am  not,  however,  sure  that  we  are  not  too  lenient 
with  the  professional  White  Witch  nowadays,  as  the 
following  incident  will  show.  I  do  not  name  the 
locality,  certainly  not  the  persons,  for  nothing  was 
proved. 

A  certain  cattle-dealer  three  years  ago  was  much 
troubled  because  his  daughter  who  had  had  influenza 
did  not  rally,  but  was  rather  strange  in  her  head.  He 
went  to  the  county  capital  to  consult  the  White  Witch. 
The  latter  showed  him  a  glass  of  water,  and  said  that 
the  person  who  had  overlooked  his  child  was  fair-haired 
and  stout.  Further,  that  she  had  never  been  inside  his 
doors,  but  that  she  would  enter  them  on  the  following 
Saturday. 

The  cattle-jobber  looking  into  the  glass  of  water 
thought  he  saw  a  face — it  was  that  of  a  woman  who 
lived  not  far  from  him.  What  he  really  saw  was,  of 
course,  his  own  reflected,  but  with  the  words  of  the 
witch  ringing  in  his  ears  and  guided  by  his  imagina- 
tion he  conceived  that  he  saw  a  neighbour. 

He  returned  home  full  of  conviction  and  wrath. 
Next  night  the  husband  of  the  fair-haired,  stout  woman 
woke  after  midnight,  and  heard  a  strange  crackling 
sound.  He  hastily  dressed,  and  went  outside  his  door, 
when  he  saw  that  the  thatch  of  his  house  was  in  flames. 
He  hastened  to  rouse  his  wife  and  family,  there  were 
six  who  slept  in  the  house,  and  he  had  barely  drawn 
them  outside,  before  the  roof  fell  in  and  the  cottage 
was  converted  into  one  great  bonfire.  By  the  merest 
accident  it  was  that  six  persons  were  not  burned  in  their 


WHITE   WITCHES  83 

beds.  Next  morning  the  police,  who  investigated  the 
matter,  found  evidence  that  the  house  had  been  wilfully 
and  deliberately  set  fire  to.  Some  one  had  stepped  on  to 
a  hedge,  and  had  lighted  three  lucifer  matches,  and  in 
drawing  them  from  his  pocket  had  drawn  out  and 
dropped  at  the  same  time  two  halfpenny  stamps.  The 
first  two  matches  had  failed.  The  third  took  effect. 
Who  had  been  the  incendiary  was  not  discovered. 

Of  course  the  circumstance  first  mentioned  may  be 
entirely  unconnected  with  the  second.  But  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  bitter  animosities  are  bred  by  the 
charges  of  "  ill-wishing  "  and  "  overlooking  "  which 
are  made  by  the  White  Witches.  They  are  far  too 
shrewd  to  name  names,  but  they  contrive  to  kindle  and 
direct  suspicions  in  their  dupes  which  may  lead  to 
serious  results. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  bring  these  cases  home,  and  on 
this  immunity  they  trade.  But  it  is  devoutly  to  be 
hoped  that  some  day  certain  of  these  gentry  will  be 
tripped  up,  and  then,  though  magistrates  can  no  more 
send  them  to  the  stake,  they  will  send  them  to  cool 
their  heels  in  gaol,  and  richly  they  will  deserve  the 
punishment. 


MANLY    PEEKE 


f  ~^HE  pirates  of  Algiers  had  for  some  years 
been  very  troublesome,  not  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean only,  but  also  along  the  European 

-^-  coasts  of  the  Atlantic.  Several  English 
vessels  trading  to  Smyrna  had  been  plundered,  and  the 
corsairs  had  even  made  descents  on  the  coasts  of  England 
and  Ireland  and  had  swept  away  people  into  slavery. 
James  I  proposed  that  the  different  Christian  powers 
should  unite  to  destroy  Algiers,  the  principal  port  of  these 
pirates.  Spain,  whose  subjects  suffered  most,  engaged 
to  co-operate,  but  withdrew  at  the  last  moment.  Sir 
Robert  Mansell  was  placed  in  command  of  the  English 
fleet,  but  provided  with  an  inefficient  force,  and  given 
strict  orders  from  the  timid  and  parsimonious  James 
not  on  any  account  to  endanger  his  vessels. 

On  24  May,  1621,  Sir  Thomas  sailed  into  the 
harbour  of  Algiers  and  set  fire  to  the  Moorish  ships 
and  galleys  ;  but  had  scarcely  retired — unwilling  to  fol- 
low up  the  advantage — when  "  a  great  cataract  of  rain  " 
hindered  the  spread  of  the  fire ;  and  the  Algerines 
succeeded  in  recovering  all  their  ships  with  the  excep- 
tion of  two,  which  burnt  to  the  water's  edge.  The  enemy 
brought  their  artillery  to  bear  on  the  English  fleet, 
mounted  batteries  on  the  mole,  and  threw  booms  across 
the  mouth  of  the  harbour.  Mansell,  hampered  by  his 
instructions,  dared  not  expose  his  vessels  further  and 
withdrew,  having  lost  only  eight  men  ;  and  returned  to 

84 


MANLY   PEEKE  85 

England.  Among  those  who  had  sailed  with  him  was 
Richard  Peeke,  of  Tavistock,  who  returned  home  much 
disgusted,  "My  Body  more  wasted  and  weather- 
beaten,  but  my  purse  never  the  fuller  nor  my  pockets 
thicker  lyned." 

Charles  I  came  to  the  throne  in  1625  ;  and  one  of  his 
first  acts  was  to  organize  and  start  an  expedition 
against  the  Spanish.  It  was  devised  for  the  sake  of 
plunder.  His  treasury  was  empty  ;  he  was  obliged  to 
borrow  £3000  to  procure  provisions  for  his  own  table. 
Plate  ships,  heavy-laden  argosies,  were  arriving  in  the 
port  of  Spain  from  the  New  World,  and  Buckingham 
suggested  to  him  to  fill  his  empty  coffers  by  the  capture 
of  these  vessels.  The  English  fleet  counted  eighty 
sail  ;  the  Dutch  contributed  a  squadron  of  sixteen  sail ; 
it  was  the  greatest  joint  naval  power  that  had  ever 
spread  sail  upon  salt  water — and  this  made  the  world 
abroad  wonder  what  the  purpose  was  for  which  it 
was  assembled.  Ten  thousand  men  were  embarked 
on  the  English  vessels,  and  the  command  of  both 
fleet  and  army  was  given  to  Sir  Edward  Cecil,  now 
created  Lord  Wimbledon,  a  general  who  had  served 
with  very  little  success  in  the  Palatinate  and  the  Low 
Countries.  This  appointment  of  a  mere  landsman  sur- 
prised and  vexed  the  seamen.  The  position  belonged  to 
Sir  Robert  Mansell,  Vice-Admiral  of  England,  in  case 
the  Admiral  did  not  go  ;  but  Buckingham  had  made 
the  choice  and  persisted  in  it.  The  fleet  set  sail  in  the 
month  of  October,  and  shaped  its  course  for  the  coast 
of  Spain. 

Richard  Peeke  had  remained  in  Tavistock  after  his 
return  from  Algiers  till  October,  1625,  when — "  The 
Drumbe  beating  up  for  a  New  Expedition  in  which 
many  noble  Gentlemen,  and  Heroical  Spirits,  were  to 
venture  their  Honors,  Lives  and  Fortunes  :  Cables  could 


86  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

not  hold  me,  for  away  I  would,  and  along  I  vowed  to 
goe,  and  did  so."  Peeke  entered  as  sailor  on  board  the 
Convertine,  under  Captain  Thomas  Porter. 

In  the  Bay  of  Biscay  the  ships  were  damaged  and  in 
part  scattered  by  a  storm.  One  vessel  foundered  with 
a  hundred  and  seventy  men  on  board.  This  was  the 
beginning  of  misadventure.  The  confusion  of  orders 
was  such  that  the  officers  and  soldiers  scarcely  knew 
who  were  in  command  and  whom  they  were  to  order 
about.  When  Wimbledon  got  in  sight  of  the  Spanish 
shores,  he  summoned  a  council  of  war,  the  usual  and 
dangerous  resource  of  an  incompetent  commander. 
His  instructions  were  to  intercept  the  plate  ships  from 
America,  to  scour  the  Spanish  shores  and  destroy  the 
shipping  in  the  ports.  But  where  should  he  begin? 
In  the  council  of  war  some  recommended  one  point, 
some  another ;  in  the  end  it  was  resolved  to  make  for 
Cadiz  Bay.  But  whilst  they  were  consulting,  the 
Spaniards  had  got  wind  of  their  approach,  and  prepared 
to  receive  them.  Moreover,  Wimbledon  allowed  seven 
large  and  rich  Spanish  vessels  to  sail  into  the  bay 
under  his  nose,  and  these  afterwards  did  him  much 
damage.  u  'Tis  thought,"  says  Howell,  who  had  many 
friends  with  the  expedition,  "that  they  being  rich 
would  have  defrayed  well  near  the  charge  of  our 
fleet." 

A  sudden  attack  on  the  shipping  at  Cadiz  and  Port 
St.  Maria  could  hardly  have  failed  even  now,  but  the 
blundering  and  incompetent  Wimbledon  preferred  to 
land  all  his  troops,  and  he  succeeded  in  capturing  the 
paltry  fort  of  Puntal,  whilst  his  fleet  remained  inactive 
outside  the  bay.  Then  he  moved  towards  the  bridge 
which  connects  the  Isle  de  Laon  with  the  continent,  to 
cut  off  communications.  No  enemy  was  visible ;  but 
in  the  wine-cellars  of  the  country,  which  were  broken 


MANLY    PEEKE  87 

open  and  plundered,  a  foe  was  found  which  has  ever 
been  more  dangerous  to  undisciplined  English  troops 
than  bullets  and  sabres.  The  men,  under  no  control, 
got  drunk,  and  became  totally  unmanageable ;  and  if 
the  Spaniards  had  been  on  the  alert  they  might  have 
cut  them  to  pieces.  Lord  Wimbledon  then  ordered  a 
retreat,  but  this  was  conducted  in  such  a  manner  that 
hundreds  of  stragglers  were  left  behind  to  fall  under  the 
knives  of  the  enraged  peasantry. 

Richard  Peeke,  not  being  a  soldier,  did  not  accom- 
pany the  army ;  but  at  midday  thought  that  he  might 
as  well  also  go  ashore  to  refresh  himself.  He  did  so, 
and  met  some  of  the  men  laden  with  oranges  and 
lemons.  He  inquired  of  them  where  the  enemy  was. 
They  replied  that  they  had  not  seen  a  Spaniard. 
Thereupon  "we  parted,  they  to  the  shippes,  I  forward, 
and  before  I  reached  a  mile,  I  found  three  Englishmen 
starke  dead,  being  slayne,  lying  in  the  way,  and  one, 
some  small  distance  off,  not  fully  dead."  Whilst  Peeke 
was  assisting  the  wounded  man,  a  Spanish  cavaliero, 
whose  name  he  afterwards  learned  was  Don  Juan 
de  Cadiz,  came  up  and  attacked  him,  but  Peeke 
flapped  his  cloak  in  the  eyes  of  the  horse,  which 
swerved,  and  Peeke  mastered  the  Don,  and  threw  him 
down.  The  Spaniard  pleaded  for  mercy,  and  Peeke, 
after  emptying  the  Don's  pocket  of  a  few  coins,  bade 
him  depart.  At  that  moment,  however,  up  came  fourteen 
Spanish  musketeers.  "Thus  farre,  my  Voyage  for 
Oranges  sped  well,  but  in  the  end  prooved  sower  sauce 
to  me."  The  musketeers  overpowered  Peeke,  and  the 
ungrateful  Don  stabbed  at  him,  "and  wounded  me 
through  the  face  from  eare  to  eare,  and  had  there 
killed  me,  had  not  the  foureteen  muskatiers  rescued  me 
from  his  rage.  Upon  this  I  was  led  in  triumph  into 
the  town  of  Gales  [Cadiz] ;  an  owl  not  more  wondered 


88  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

and  hooted  at,  a  dog  not  more  cursed.  In  my  being 
ledde  thus  along  the  streets,  a  Flemming  spying  me 
cryed  out  alowde,  Whither  do  you  leade  this  English 
dogge?  Kill  him,  kill  him,  he's  no  Christian.  And 
with  that,  breaking  through  the  crowde,  in  upon  those 
who  held  mee,  ranne  me  into  the  body  with  a  halbert, 
at  the  reynes  of  my  back,  at  least  foure  inches." 

He  was  taken  before  the  Governor,  who  had  him 
well  treated  and  attended  by  surgeons,  and  when  he 
was  better,  dispatched  him  to  Xeres,  which  he  calls 
Sherrys.  Meanwhile  his  captain,  Porter,  induced 
Lord  Wimbledon  to  send  a  messenger  on  shore  and 
offer  to  ransom  Peeke  at  any  reasonable  price  ;  but  the 
Spanish  Governor,  supposing  him  to  be  a  man  of  far 
greater  consequence  than  he  was,  refused  this,  and 
at  Xeres  he  was  had  up  on  15  November  before  a 
council  of  war,  consisting  of  three  dukes,  four  counts, 
four  marquesses,  and  other  great  persons.  Two  Irish 
friars  attended  as  interpreters.  These  men  had  been 
in  England  the  year  before  acting  as  spies  and  bringing 
to  Spain  reports  of  the  number  of  guns  and  troops  in 
Plymouth.  u  At  my  first  appearing  before  the  Lordes 
my  sword  lying  before  them  on  a  table,  the  Duke  of 
Medina  asked  me  if  I  knew  that  weapon.  It  was 
reached  to  me,  I  tooke  it,  and  embraced  it  in  mine 
armes,  and  with  tears  in  mine  eyes  kist  the  pomell  of 
it.  He  then  demanded,  how  many  men  I  had  kild 
with  that  weapon.  I  told  him  if  I  had  kild  one  I  had 
not  bene  there  now,  before  that  princely  Assembly, 
for  when  I  had  him  at  my  foote  begging  for  mercy, 
I  gave  him  life,  yet  he  then  very  poorely  did  me  a 
mischiefe.  Then  they  asked  Don  John  what  wounds 
I  gave  him.  He  sayd,  None.  Upon  this  he  was  re- 
buked and  told  that  if  upon  our  first  encounter  he 
had  run  me  through,  it  had  been  a  faire  and  noble 


MANLY    PEEKE  89 

triumph,  but  so  to  wound  me  being  in  the  hands  of 
others,  they  held  it  base." 

He  was  now  closely  questioned  as  to  the  fleet,  the 
number  of  guns  in  the  vessels,  the  fortifications  of 
Plymouth,  the  garrison  and  the  ordnance  there,  and 
was  greatly  surprised  to  find  how  accurately  the 
Council  was  informed  on  every  point. 

"  By  the  common  people  who  encompast  me  round, 
many  jeerings,  mockeries,  scorns  and  bitter  jests  were 
to  my  face  thrown  upon  our  Nation.  At  the  length  one 
of  the  Spaniards  called  Englishmen  gallinas  (hens)  ; 
at  which  the  great  lords  fell  a  laughing.  Hereupon 
one  of  the  Dukes,  poynting  to  the  Spanish  soldiers, 
bid  me  note  how  their  King  kept  them.  And  indeed, 
they  were  all  wondrous  brave  in  apparell,  hattes, 
bandes,  cuffes,  garters,  etc.,  and  some  of  them  in 
chaines  of  gold.  And  asked  further  if  I  thought  these 
would  prove  such  hennes  as  our  English,  when  next 
year  they  should  come  into  England  ?  I  sayd  no. 
But  being  somewhat  emboldened  by  his  merry  counten- 
ance, I  told  him  as  merrily,  I  thought  they  would  be 
within  one  degree  of  hennes,  and  would  prove  pullets 
or  chickens.  Darst  thou  then  (quoth  Duke  Medina, 
with  a  brow  half  angry)  fight  with  one  of  these  Spanish 
pullets? 

"  O  my  Lord,  said  I,  I  am  a  prisoner,  and  my  life  is 
at  stake,  and  therefore  dare  not  be  so  bold  to  adven- 
ture upon  any  such  action  ;  yet  with  the  license  of  this 
princely  Assembly,  I  dare  hazard  the  breaking  of  a 
rapier ;  and  withall  told  him,  he  was  unworthy  the 
name  of  an  Englishman  that  should  refuse  to  fight  with 
one  man  of  any  nation  whatsoever.  Hereupon  my 
shackells  were  knocked  off,  and  my  iron  ring  and 
chayne  taken  from  my  neck. 

"  Roome  was  made  for  the  combatants,  rapier  and 


90  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

dagger  the  weapons.  A  Spanish  champion  presents 
himselfe,  named  Signior  Tiago,  Whom  after  we  had 
played  some  reasonable  good  time,  I  disarmed,  as  thus 
— I  caught  his  rapier  betwixt  the  barr  of  my  poig- 
nard  and  there  held  it,  till  I  closed  in  with  him,  and 
tripping  up  his  heeles,  I  tooke  his  weapons  out  of  his 
hands,  and  delivered  them  to  the  Dukes. 

"  I  was  then  demanded,  If  I  durst  fight  against 
another.  I  told  them,  my  heart  was  good  to  adventure, 
but  humbly  requested  them  to  give  me  pardon  if  I 
refused,  for  I  too  well  knew  that  the  Spaniard  is 
haughty,  impatient  of  the  least  affront,  and  when  he 
receives  but  a  touch  of  any  dishonour,  his  revenge  is 
implacable,  mortall  and  bloody. 

"  Yet  being  by  the  noblemen  pressed  again  and 
again  to  try  my  fortune  with  another,  I  sayd,  That 
if  their  Graces  and  Greatnesses  would  give  me  leave 
to  play  at  mine  owne  Countrey  weapon,  called  the 
Quarter-staff e,  I  was  then  ready  there,  an  opposite 
against  any  comer,  whom  they  would  call  foorth  ;  and 
would  willingly  lay  doune  my  life  before  those  princes, 
to  doe  them  service,  provided  my  life  might  by  no 
foule  means  be  taken  from  me. 

"  Hereupon,  the  head  of  a  halbert  which  went  with 
a  screw  was  taken  off,  and  the  steall  [staff]  delivered  to 
me ;  the  other  but-end  of  the  staffe  having  a  short  iron 
pike  in  it.  This  was  my  armor,  and  in  my  place  I 
stood,  expecting  an  opponent. 

"At  last,  a  handsome  and  well- spirited  Spaniard 
steps  foorth  with  his  rapier  and  poignard.  They  asked 
me  what  I  sayd  to  him.  I  told  them  I  had  a  sure 
friend  in  my  hand  that  never  failed  me,  and  made  little 
account  of  that  one  to  play  with.  Then  a  second, 
armed  as  before,  presents  himselfe.  I  demanded  if 
there  would  come  no  more.  The  Duke  asked,  how 


: 


Three   to   One: 

Being,  An  Englifh-Spanifh  Combat, 

Performed  by  a   Wcfterne  Gentleman,  of  Tauyftoke  in  Deuonfhire, 

with  an  Englifh  Quarter-Staffe,  againft  Three  Spanifk 

Rapiers  and  Poniards,  at  Sherries  in  Spaine, 

The  fifteene  day  of  Nouember,  1625. 

Ln  the  Prefence  of  Dukes,  Condes,  Marqueffes,  and  other  Great 
Dons  of  Spaine,  being  the  Counfell  of  Warre. 

The  Author  of  this  Booko,  and  Actor  in  this  Encounter,  Richard Peccke. 


Printed  an  London  for  /.  T.  and  are  to  be  sold  at  his  Shoppe. 


MANLY    PEEKE    IN    HIS    ENCOUNTER   WITH   THREE   ADVERSARIES 
ARMED   WITH    RAPIERS   AND    POIGNARDS 


MANLY   PEEKE  91 

many  I  desired.  I  told  them  any  number  under  six. 
Which  resolution  of  mine  they  smiling  at  it  in  a  kind 
of  scorne,  held  it  not  manly  nor  fit  for  their  own 
honors  and  glory  of  their  nation,  to  worry  one  man 
with  a  multitude ;  and  therefore  appointed  three  only 
to  enter  the  lists. 

"The  rapier  men  traversed  their  ground,  I  mine. 
Dangerous  thrusts  were  put  in,  and  with  dangerous 
hazard  avoyded.  Showtes  echoed  to  heaven,  to  en- 
courage the  Spaniards,  not  a  shoute  nor  a  hand  to 
hearten  the  poore  Englishman  ;  only  Heaven  I  had  in 
mine  eye,  the  honour  of  my  Countrey  in  my  heart,  my 
fame  at  the  stake,  my  life  on  a  narrow  bridge,  and 
death  both  before  me  and  behind  me. 

"  Plucking  up  a  good  heart,  seeing  myself  faint  and 
wearied,  I  vowed  to  my  soule  to  do  something  ere  she 
departed  from  me  ;  and  so  setting  all  upon  one  cast,  it 
was  my  good  fortune  with  the  but-end  where  the  iron 
pike  was  to  kill  one  of  the  three ;  and  within  a  few 
boutes  after,  to  disarme  the  other  two,  causing  one  of 
them  to  fly  into  the  armie  of  soldiers  then  present,  and 
the  other  for  refuge  fled  behind  the  bench. 

"Now  was  I  in  greater  danger;  for  a  generall 
murmure  filled  the  ayre,  with  threatenings  at  me  ;  the 
soldiers  especially  bit  their  thumbes,  and  how  was  it 
possible  for  me  to  scape? 

"Which  the  noble  Duke  of  Medina  Sidonia  seeing 
called  me  to  him,  and  instantly  caused  proclamation 
to  be  made,  that  none,  on  paine  of  death,  should 
meddle  with  mee.  And  by  his  honourable  protection 
I  got  off.  And  not  off,  only,  with  safety,  but  with 
money,  for  by  the  Dukes  and  Condes  were  given  me 
in  gold  to  the  value  of  foure  pounds  tenne  shillings 
sterling,  and  by  the  Marquesse  Alquenezes  himself  as 
much  ;  he  embracing  me  in  his  armes  and  bestowing 


92  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

upon  me  that  long  Spanish  russet  cloake  I  now  weare, 
which  he  tooke  from  one  of  his  men's  backs  ;  and  with- 
all  furnished  me  with  a  cleane  band  and  cuffes." 

The  Spaniards,  nobly  appreciating  the  bravery  of 
their  captive,  and  discovering  that  instead  of  being  a 
man  of  great  consequence  he  was  a  mere  sailor  before 
the  mast,  and  not  likely  to  be  redeemed  at  a  great 
price,  resolved  to  give  him  liberty,  and  under  the 
conduct  of  four  gentlemen  attached  to  the  suite  of  the 
Marquess  Alquenezes,  he  was  sent  to  Madrid  to  be  pre- 
sented to  the  King.  During  Peeke's  stay  in  Madrid, 
which  he  calls  Madrill,  he  was  the  guest  of  the 
Marquess.  The  Marchioness  showed  him  great  kind- 
ness, and  on  his  leaving  presented  him  with  a  gold 
chain  and  jewels  for  his  wife,  and  pretty  things  for  his 
children.  On  Christmas  Day  he  was  presented  to  the 
King,  the  Queen,  and  Don  Carlos,  the  Infante. 

"  Being  brought  before  him,  I  fell  (as  it  was  fitt)  on 
my  knees.  Many  questions  were  demanded  of  me, 
which  so  well  as  my  plaine  witte  directed  me,  I  re- 
solved. 

"  In  the  end,  his  Majesty  offered  me  a  yearly  pension 
(to  a  good  vallew)  if  I  would  serve  him,  eyther  at  land 
or  at  sea ;  for  which  his  royal  favour,  I  confessing  my- 
self infinitely  bound,  most  humbly  intreated,  that  with 
his  princely  leave,  I  might  be  suffered  to  returne  into 
mine  own  Countrey,  being  a  subject  onely  to  the  King 
of  England  my  sovereign. 

"And  besides  that  bond  of  allegiance  there  was 
another  obligation  due  from  me,  to  a  wife  and  children. 
And  therefore  most  submissively  beg'd,  that  his 
Majesty  would  be  so  princely  minded  as  to  pitty  my 
estate  and  to  let  me  goe.  To  which  he  at  last  granted, 
bestowing  upon  me,  one  hundred  pistoletts,  to  beare 
rny  charges. 


MANLY   PEEKE      •  93 

"  Having  thus  left  Spaine,  I  took  my  way  through 
some  part  of  France,  and  hoysting  sail  for  England  I 
landed  on  the  23rd  day  of  Aprill,  1626,  at  Foy  in 
Cornwall." 

Whilst  Peeke  was  in  Spain,  Lord  Wimbledon  had 
been  blundering  with  his  fleet  and  army  worse  than 
before.  After  he  had  reshipped  his  army,  there  still 
remained  the  hope  of  intercepting  the  plate  fleet,  but 
an  infectious  disorder  broke  out  in  the  ships  of  Lord 
Delaware,  and  in  consequence  of  an  insane  order  given 
by  Wimbledon,  that  the  sick  should  be  distributed  into 
the  healthy  ships,  the  malady  spread.  After  beating 
about  for  eighteen  days  with  a  dreadful  mortality  on 
board,  and  without  catching  a  glimpse  of  the  treasure 
vessels  from  the  New  World,  Lord  Wimbledon 
resolved  to  carry  his  dishonoured  flag  home  again, 
"  which  was  done  in  a  confused  manner,  and  without 
any  observance  of  sea  orders."  The  plate  fleet,  which 
had  been  hugging  the  coast  of  Barbary,  appeared  off 
the  coast  of  Spain  two  or  three  days  after  his  departure, 
and  entered  safely  into  the  harbour  of  Cadiz.  More- 
over, whilst  he  was  master  of  these  seas,  a  fleet  of  fifty 
sail,  laden  with  treasure,  got  safe  into  Lisbon,  from 
Brazil.  With  the  troops  and  crews  dreadfully  reduced 
in  numbers,  with  sickness  and  discontent  in  every 
vessel,  and  without  a  single  prize  of  the  least  value, 
Lord  Wimbledon  arrived  in  Plymouth  Sound,  to  be 
hissed  and  hooted  by  the  indignant  people,  and  to  have 
his  name  of  Cecil  ridiculed  as  Sit-still.  This  sorry  and 
unsuccessful  expedition  which  had  cost  Charles  so 
much  was  a  grievous  blow  to  him.  A  thousand  men 
had  perished  in  the  expedition,  a  great  sum  of  money 
had  been  thrown  away,  and  the  whole  country  was 
roused  to  anger.  The  Privy  Council  was  convened 
and  an  examination  into  the  miscarriage  was  instituted, 


94  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

but  the  statements  of  the  officers  were  discordant,  their 
complaints  reciprocal,  and  after  a  long  investigation, 
it  was  deemed  expedient  to  bury  the  whole  matter  in 
silence. 

It  has  been  well  said,  that  the  only  man  who  of  the 
whole  expedition  came  out  with  credit  to  himself  and 
to  his  country  was  Richard  Peeke,  of  Tavistock,  who 
earned  for  himself  the  epithet  of  "  Manly." 

What  became  of  Peeke  afterwards  we  do  not  know ; 
in  the  troubles  of  the  Civil  War  he  doubtless  played  a 
part,  and  almost  certainly  on  the  side  of  the  Crown. 
The  authority  for  the  story  is  a  rare  pamphlet  by  Peeke 
himself,  entitled,  "  Three  to  One,  Being,  An  English- 
Spanish  Combat,  Performed  by  a  Westerne  Gentleman, 
of  Tavystoke  in  Devonshire,  with  an  English  Quarter- 
Staffe,  against  Three  Spanish  Rapiers  and  Poniards,  at 
Sherries  in  Spaine,  The  fifteene  day  of  November,  1625 
.  .  .  the  Author  of  this  Booke,  and  Actor  in  this 
Encounter,  Richard  Peeke"  There  is  no  date  to  it. 
This  has  been  reprinted  by  Mr.  Arber  in  his  English 
Garner,  and  large  extracts  have  been  given  by  Mr. 
Brooking-Rowe  in  his  article,  "  Manly  Peeke,  of  Tavi- 
stock," in  the  Transactions  of  the  Devonshire  Associa- 
tion, 1879.  Reprinted  also  as  supplement  to  Devon 
Notes  and  Queries,  1905.  I  have  not  in  the  above  ex- 
tracts strictly  confined  myself  to  the  spelling,  nor  have 
I  reproduced  the  capital  letters  employed  profusely  that 
are  somewhat  teasing  to  the  eye  of  the  modern  reader. 


EULALIA    PAGE 

MRS.  BRAY,  in  her  Borders  of  the  Tamar 
and  the  Tavy,  written  in  1832-3,  quoting 
a    letter    from    her    husband,    the    Rev. 
E.   Atkins   Bray,  to   Mr.    Lysons,  dated 
16  January,  1819,  tells  the  following  story  relative  to 
Judge  Glanville,  of  Kilworthy,  near  Tavistock  : — 

"The  Judge's  daughter  was  attached  to  George 
Stanwich,  a  young  man  of  Tavistock,  lieutenant  of 
a  man-of-war,  whose  letters,  the  father  disapproving 
of  the  attachment,  were  intercepted.  An  old  miser  of 
Plymouth,  of  the  name  of  Page,  wishing  to  have  an 
heir  to  disappoint  his  relations,  who  perhaps  were  too 
confident  in  calculating  upon  sharing  his  wealth, 
availed  himself  of  the  apparent  neglect  of  the  young 
sailor,  and  settling  on  her  a  good  jointure  obtained  her 
hand.  She  took  with  her  a  maid-servant  from  Tavi- 
stock ;  but  her  husband  was  so  penurious  that  he 
dismissed  all  the  other  servants,  and  caused  his  wife 
and  her  maid  to  do  all  the  work  themselves.  On  an 
interview  subsequently  taking  place  between  her  and 
Stanwich,  she  accused  him  of  neglecting  to  write  to 
her ;  and  then  discovered  that  his  letters  had  been 
intercepted.  The  maid  advised  them  to  get  rid  of  the 
old  gentleman,  and  Stanwich  at  length,  with  great 
reluctance,  consented  to  their  putting  an  end  to  him. 
Page  lived  in  what  was  afterwards  the  Mayoralty  House 
(at  Plymouth),  and  a  woman  who  lived  opposite  hearing 
at  night  some  sand  thrown  against  a  window,  thinking 

95 


96  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

it  was  her  own,  arose,  and,  looking  out,  saw  a  young 
gentleman  near  Page's  window,  and  heard  him  say, 

*  For  God's  sake  stay  your  hand  ! '     A  female  replied, 

*  Tis  too  late,  the  deed  is  done.'     On  the  following 
morning  it  was  given  out  that  Page  had  died  suddenly 
in  the  night,  and  as  soon  as  possible  he  was  buried. 
On   the   testimony,    however,    of   his    neighbour,    the 
body  was  taken  up  again  ;  and  it  appearing  that  he 
had  been  strangled,  his  wife,  Stanwich,  and  the  maid, 
were   tried   and   executed.     It   is  current    among    the 
common  people  here,  that  Judge  Glanville,   her  own 
father,  pronounced  her  sentence." 

In  another  place,  Mrs.  Bray  says  : — 

"  Respecting  Sir  John,  or  '  Old  Page,'  I  am  informed 
by  Mr.  Hughes  (who  is  well  acquainted  with  many 
locally  interesting  stories  and  traditions)  that  he  was 
an  eminent  merchant  in  his  day,  commonly  called 

*  Wealthy    Page.'      He     lived     in     Woolster    Street, 
Plymouth,  in  the  house  since  known  by  the  name  of 
the  Mayoralty.     It  stood  untouched  till  the  rebuilding 
of  the  Guildhall,  when  it  was  taken  down.     The  old 
house  was  long  an  object  of  curiosity  on  account  of  the 
atrocious  murder  there  committed.     Mr.  Hughes  like- 
wise tells  me  that  some  years  ago,   previous   to   the 
repairs   in    St.    Andrew's   Church,    Plymouth,    Page's 
coffin  was  discovered,   on   breaking  the  ground   near 
the    communion    table    for    the   interment    of    a    lady 
named  Lovell.     The  inscription  on  the  coffin  proved 
it  to  contain  the  body  of  the  *  wealthy  Page.'     It  was 
opened ;    the   remains   were    found    in    a    remarkably 
perfect  state,  but  crumbled  to  dust  on  being  exposed 
to  the  air.     So  great  was  the  curiosity  of  the  populace, 
that  during  several  days  hundreds  pressed  in  to  gratify 
it,  and  every  relic  that  could  be  stolen,  if  but  a  nail 
from  the  coffin,  was  carried  off." 


EULALIA   PAGE  97 

Judge  Glanville,  M.P.  for  Tavistock  in  1586,  was  the 
third  son  of  John  Glanville,  of  Tavistock,  merchant. 
The  family  had  been  settled  at  Holwell,  in  Whit- 
church,  hard  by,  where  they  had  been  tanners,  and 
though  the  house  has  been  pulled  down  and  rebuilt, 
yet  the  old  tan-pits  remain. 

Judge  Glanville  married  Alice,  daughter  of  John 
Skirett,  of  Tavistock,  and  widow  of  Sir  Francis 
Godolphin.  By  her  he  had  a  numerous  family,  but 
Mistress  Page,  whose  Christian  name  was  Eulalia,  is 
not  recorded  in  the  Heralds'  Visitation  as  one  of  them. 
This,  however,  is  in  itself  no  evidence  against  her 
having  been  his  daughter,  as  having  disgraced  the 
family  she  would  be  omitted  from  the  pedigree.  Thus, 
in  the  family  of  Langford,  of  Langford,  in  Bratton 
Clovelly,  Margaret,  daughter  of  Moses  Langford, 
born  in  February,  1605,  had  a  base  child  who  was 
christened  Hilary,  in  January,  1618,  when  she  was 
aged  thirteen,  and  married  Hilary  Hill,  of  Chims- 
worthy,  presumedly  the  father,  in  1619.  When  the 
family  recorded  their  pedigree  in  1620,  they  omitted 
Margaret  from  it  altogether. 

It  is  therefore  no  evidence  that  Eulalia  was  not 
Judge  Glanville's  daughter  that  her  name  does  not 
appear  in  the  recorded  pedigree.  We  shall  see  presently, 
however,  that  she  was  his  niece,  and  not  his  daughter. 

The  whole  of  the  portion  relating  to  Page  is  printed 
in  the  Shakespeare  Society *s  Papers,  II  (1845,  80-5). 
From  this  we  learn  that  Mrs.  Page  made  an  attempt 
to  poison  her  husband,  and  when  that  failed,  induced 
"one  of  her  servants,  named  Robert  Priddis  [i.e. 
Prideaux],"  to  murder  him,  and  "she  so  corrupted 
him  .  .  .  that  he  solemnly  undertook  and  vowed  to 
performe  the  task  to  her  contentment.  On  the  other 
side,  Strangwidge  hired  one  Tom  Stone  to  be  an  actor 
H 


98  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

in  this  tragicall  action."     The  deed  was  accomplished 
about  ten  o'clock  on  the  night  of  n  February,  1590-1. 

A  full  and  particular  account  of  the  murder  is  in 
"A  true  discourse  of  a  cruel  and  inhumane  murder, 
committed  upon  M.  Padge,  of  Plimouth,  the  nth  day 
of  February  last,  1591,  by  the  consent  of  his  own  wife 
and  sundry  others."  From  this  we  learn  that  a 
Mr.  Glandfeeld,  a  man  of  good  wealth  and  account 
as  any  in  the  county,  lived  at  Tavistock,  and  that 
he  favoured  a  young  man  named  George  Strangwidge, 
and  turned  over  to  him  his  shop  and  wares,  as  an 
experienced  man  in  business,  having  learned  it  in  the 
shop  of  Mr.  Powell,  of  Bread  Street,  London.  Mr. 
Glandfeeld  was  so  pleased  with  him,  that  he  proposed 
taking  Strangwidge  into  partnership  and  marrying  his 
daughter  to  him.  But  he  changed  his  mind,  being 
moved  by  ambition  and  avarice,  and  he  and  his  wife 
insisted  on  her  marrying  a  widower  named  Page,  of 
Plymouth,  an  elderly  man  and  a  miser,  and  as  Gland- 
feeld purposed  himself  removing  to  Plymouth,  he 
thought  that  it  would  be  best  to  have  his  daughter  near 
him.  This  daughter  was  with  difficulty  persuaded  to 
consent,  but  did  so  in  the  end.  The  result  was  that 
she  took  the  old  husband  in  detestation,  and  plotted  with 
Strangwidge  how  to  get  rid  of  him.  For  about  a  year 
she  made  sundry  attempts  to  poison  him,  but  his  good 
constitution  prevailed.  She  on  her  part  worked  on  one 
of  her  servants,  Robert  Priddis  or  Prideaux,  and  in- 
duced him  for  the  sum  of  £140  reward,  to  murder  the 
old  man.  On  the  other  hand,  Strangwidge  induced  one 
Tom  Stone  to  assist  in  the  deed,  also  for  the  sake  of 
payment.  "  These  two  instruments  wickedly  prepared 
themselves  to  effect  this  desperate  and  villainous  deed 
on  the  nth  February,  being  Wednesday,  on  which 
night  following  the  act  was  committed  ;  but  it  is  to  be 


EULALIA   PAGE  99 

remembered  that  this  Mistress  Page  lay  not  then  with 
her  husband,  by  reason  of  the  untimely  birth  of  a  child 
.  .  .  dead  born ;  upon  which  cause  she  kept  her 
chamber,  having  before  sworn  that  she  would  never 
bear  child  of  his  getting  that  should  prosper ;  which 
argued  a  most  ungodly  mind  in  this  woman,  for  in 
that  sort  she  had  been  the  death  of  two  of  her  own 
children. 

"  About  ten  of  the  clock  at  night,  Mr.  Page  being 
in  bed  slumbering,  could  not  happen  upon  a  sound 
sleep,  and  lay  musing  to  himself,  Tom  Stone  came 
softly  and  knocked  at  the  door,  whereupon  Priddis,  his 
companion,  did  let  him  in;  and  by  reason  that  Mistress 
Page  gave  them  straight  charge  to  dispatch  it  that 
night,  whatsoever  came  of  it,  they  drew  towards  the 
bed,  intending  immediately  to  go  about  it.  Mr.  Page, 
being  not  asleep,  asked  who  came  in,  whereat  Priddis 
leaped  upon  his  master,  being  in  his  bed,  who  roused 
himself  and  got  upon  his  feet,  and  had  been  hard 
enough  for  his  man,  but  that  Stone  flew  upon  him, 
and  took  the  kerchief  from  his  head,  and  knitting  the 
same  about  his  neck,  they  immediately  stifled  him  ; 
and,  as  it  appeareth,  even  in  the  anguish  of  death,  Mr. 
Page  greatly  laboured  to  put  the  kerchief  from  about 
his  neck,  by  reason  of  the  marks  and  scratches  which 
he  had  made  with  his  nails  upon  his  throat,  but  there- 
with he  could  not  prevail,  for  they  would  not  slip  their 
hold  until  he  was  full  dead.  This  done,  they  laid  him 
overthwart  the  bed,  and  against  the  bedside  broke  his 
neck  ;  and  when  they  saw  he  was  surely  dead,  they 
stretched  him  and  laid  him  on  his  bed  again,  spread- 
ing the  clothes  in  ordinary  sort,  as  though  no  such  act 
had  been  attempted,  but  that  he  had  died  on  God's 
hand. 

1  'Whereupon  Priddis  immediately  went  to  Mistress 


ioo  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Page's  chamber  and  told  her  that  all  was  dispatched  ; 
and  about  an  hour  after  he  came  to  his  mistress's 
chamber  door,  and  called  aloud,  '  Mistress,  let  some- 
body look  into  my  master's  chamber,  methinks  I  heard 
him  groan.'  With  that  she  called  her  maid,  who  was 
not  privy  to  anything,  and  had  her  light  a  candle, 
whereupon  she  slipped  on  a  petticoat  and  went  thither 
likewise,  sending  her  maid  first  into  the  chamber, 
when  she  herself  stood  at  the  door.  The  maid  simply 
felt  on  her  master's  face  and  found  him  cold  and  stiff, 
and  told  her  mistress  so  ;  whereat  she  bade  the  maid 
warm  a  cloth  and  wrap  it  about  his  feet,  which  she 
did  ;  and  when  she  felt  his  legs,  they  were  as  cold 
as  clay ;  whereat  she  cried  out,  saying  her  master  was 
dead. 

"  Whereupon  her  mistress  got  her  to  bed,  and 
caused  her  man  Priddis  to  go  call  her  father,  Mr. 
Glandfeeld,  then  dwelling  in  Plymouth,  and  sent  for 
one  of  her  husband's  sisters  likewise,  to  make  haste  if 
ever  she  would  see  her  brother  alive,  for  he  was  taken 
with  the  disease  called  the  pull  (palsy),  as  they  call  it 
in  that  country.  These  persons  being  sent  for  came 
immediately ;  whereat  Mistress  Page  arose,  and  in  a 
counterfeit  manner  swooned  ;  whereby  there  was  no 
suspicion  a  long  time  concerning  any  murder  per- 
formed upon  him,  until  Mrs.  Harris,  his  sister,  spied 
blood  about  his  bosom,  which  he  had  with  his  nails 
procured  by  scratching  for  the  kerchief  when  it  was 
about  his  throat.  They  then  moved  his  head,  and  found 
his  neck  broken,  and  on  both  knees  the  skin  beaten 
off,  by  striving  with  them  to  save  his  life.  Mistress 
Harris  hereupon  perceiving  how  he  was  made  away, 
went  to  the  Mayor  and  the  worshipful  of  the  town, 
desiring  of  them  justice,  and  entreated  them  to  come 
and  behold  this  lamentable  spectacle,  which  they  im- 


EULALIA    PAGE  101 

mediately  performed,  and  by  searching  him  found  that 
he  was  murdered  the  same  night. 

"  Upon  this  the  Mayor  committed  Priddis  to  prison, 
who,  being  examined,  did  impeach  Tom  Stone,  show- 
ing that  he  was  a  chief  actor  in  the  same.  This 
Thomas  Stone  was  married  upon  the  next  day  after 
the  murder  was  committed,  and  being  in  the  midst  of 
his  jollity,  was  suddenly  attached  and  committed  to 
prison  to  bear  his  fellow  company. 

"  Thus  did  the  Lord  unfold  this  wretched  deed, 
whereby  immediately  the  said  Mistress  Page  attached 
upon  murder,  and  examined  before  Sir  Francis  Drake, 
Knight,  with  the  Mayor  and  other  magistrates  of  Ply- 
mouth, who  denied  not  the  same,  but  said  she  had 
rather  die  with  Strangwidge  than  live  with  Page. 

"  At  the  same  time  also  the  said  George  Strang- 
widge was  nearly  come  to  Plymouth,  being  very  heavy 
and  doubtful  by  reason  he  had  given  consent  to  the 
murder;  who,  being  in  company  with  some  of  London, 
was  apprehended  and  called  before  the  justices  for  the 
same,  whereupon  he  confessed  the  truth  of  all  and 
offered  to  prove  that  he  had  written  a  letter  to  Ply- 
mouth before  coming  thither,  that  at  any  hand  they 
should  not  perform  the  act.  Nevertheless,  Mr.  Page 
was  murdered  before  the  coming  of  this  letter,  and 
therefore  he  was  sent  to  prison  with  the  rest  to 
Exeter  ;  and  at  the  Assizes  holden  this  last  Lent,  the 
said  George  Strangwidge,  Mistress  Page,  Priddis,  and 
Tom  Stone,  were  condemned  and  adjudged  to  die  for 
the  said  fact,  and  were  all  executed  accordingly  upon 
Saturday  the  2Oth  February  last,  1591." 

This  is  circumstantial  enough,  and  contemporary, 
and  it  shows  how  that  the  story  travelling  down  tradi- 
tionally has  been  altered. 

The  tract  above  quoted — we  have  modernized  the 


102  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

spelling — does  not,  however,  give  the  Christian  name 
of  Mistress  Page,  and  gives  us  the  name  of  her 
father,  Glandfeeld,  a  merchant  tradesman  of  Tavistock. 
Glandfeeld  is  the  same  as  Glanville,  just  as  Priddis  is 
the  same  as  Prideaux,  and  as  Grenville  appears  in  the 
registers  and  in  deeds  as  Grenfeeld  and  Greenfield. 

That  she  was  not  the  daughter  of  Justice  Glanville 
is  plain  from  the  above  account,  but  she  was  a  niece, 
for  Eulalia  was  the  daughter  of  Nicolas,  the  eldest 
son  of  John  Glanville,  merchant,  of  Tavistock ;  he 
and  another  brother,  Thomas,  were  in  trade  at  Tavi- 
stock, and  they  were  both  brothers  of  Judge  Glanville. 
This  we  learn  from  the  Heralds'  Visitation  of  Corn- 
wall for  1620,  where  Eulalia  is  entered  as  daughter  of 
Nicolas,  but  with  no  details  concerning  her. 

There  appeared  several  ballads  concerning  the 
tragedy. 

1.  "The  Lamentation  of  Master  Page's  wife  of  Pli- 
mouth,   who   being   enforced   by  her   parents   to  wed 
against   her   will,   did   most  wickedly   consent  to   his 
murther,  for  the  love  of  George  Strangwidge,  for  which 
fact  she  suffered  death  at  Bar[n]staple  in  Devonshire. 
Written  with  her  own  hand  a  little  before  her  death." 
This  is,  of  course,  untrue.     It  is  one  of  those  supposi- 
titious   confessions    written     by    the    common    ballad 
monger.     By  this  we  know  that  her  Christian  name 
was  Ulalia. 

2.  "  The  Lamentation  of  George  Strangwidge,  who 
for  consenting  to  the  death  of  Master  Page  of  Pli- 
mouth,  suffered  Death  at  Bar[n]staple."     In  this  occurs 
the  statement  that  she  was  the  daughter  of  "  Gland- 
field." 

O  Glandfield,  cause  of  my  committed  crime, 
Snared  in  wealth,  as  Birds  in  bush  of  lime, 


EULALIA   PAGE  103 

I  would  to  God  thy  wisdome  had  been  more, 
Or  that  I  had  not  entered  in  the  door  ; 
Or  that  thou  hadst  a  kinder  Father  beene 
Unto  thy  Child,  whose  yeares  are  yet  but  greene. 

The  match  unmeete  which  thou  for  much  didst  make, 
When  aged  Page  thy  Daughter  home  did  take, 
Well  maist  thou  rue  with  teares  that  cannot  dry. 
Which  was  the  cause  that  foure  of  us  must  dye. 

Ulalia  faire,  more  brig-ht  than  Summer's  sunne, 
Whose  beauty  hath  my  heart  for  ever  won, 
My  soule  more  sobs  to  thinke  of  thy  disgrace, 
Than  to  behold  mine  own  untimely  race. 

In  this  also,  as  will  be  seen,  Mistress  Page  is  Eulalia, 
and  her  father  Glandfield  is  said  to  have  been  rich. 

3.  "The  Sorrowful  Complaint  of  Mistress  Page  for 
causing  her  husband  to  be  murdered,  for  the  love  of 
George  Slrangwidge,  who  were  executed  together." 
This  contains  no  particulars  relative  to  her  relationship 
to  the  Glanvilles. 

It  may  at  first  sight  seem  strange  that  a  crime 
committed  at  Plymouth  should  be  expiated  at  Barn- 
staple,  but  the  reason  is  simple  enough.  In  Septem- 
ber, 1589,  the  plague  broke  out  in  Exeter,  and  it  was 
very  fatal  in  that  year,  according  to  Lysons.  Under 
ordinary  circumstances  the  murderers  of  Page  would 
have  been  tried  at  Exeter  ;  but  with  the  terrible  remem- 
brance of  the  "Black  Assize"  in  that  city  in  1586, 
when  the  judge,  eight  justices,  and  all  the  jury  except 
one,  fell  victims  to  the  gaol  fever  ;  and  the  plague  con- 
tinuing there,  the  assizes  of  1590  (o.s.)  were  removed 
to  Barnstaple. 

The  Diary  of  Philip  Wyot,  town  clerk  of  Barn- 
staple  from  1586  to  1608,  has  been  printed  by  Mr. 
J.  R.  Chanter  in  his  Literary  History  of  Barnstaple ', 
and  he  records  that  the  assize  was  held  in  1590  at 
Honiton  and  at  Great  Torrington,  "the  plague  being 
much  at  Exeter,"  and  he  gives  particulars  of  the  assizes 


104  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

held  at  Barnstaple  in  the  ensuing  March,  1591  (n.s.), 
and  he  terminates  thus  : — 

"The  gibbet  was  set  up  on  the  Castle  Green  and 
xvii  prisoners  hanged,  whereof  iiij  of  Plymouth  for  a 
murder." 

The  parish  register  gives  the  particulars  and  the 
names  : — 

"Here  ffolloweth  the  names  of  the  Prysoners  wch 
were  Buryed  in  the  Church  yeard  of  Barnistaple  ye 
syce  [assize]  week. 

"  March  1590-1. 

•  »•••• 

"George  Strongewithe,  Buryed  the  xxth  daye. 

"  Thomas  Stone,  Buryed  the  xxth  daye. 

"  Robert  Preidyox,  Buryed  at  Bishopstawton  ye  xxth 
daye." 

The  three  men  were  hanged,  but  Eulalia  Page  was 
burnt  alive,  as  guilty  of  petty  treason.  Moreover,  her 
uncle,  Justice  Glanville,  did  not  condemn  her  to  the 
stake.  He  was  serjeant-at-law,  and  was  not  made 
a  Justice  of  the  Common  Pleas  till  1598,  when  he  was 
knighted.  He  died  in  1600,  and  his  stately  monument 
is  in  Tavistock  Church. 

The  judge  who  sentenced  Eulalia  Page  was,  as 
Wyot  tells  us,  "  Lord  Anderson,"  who  tried  all  the  cases 
"and  gave  judgment  upon  those  who  were  to  be 
executed."  But  John  Glanville,  serjeant-at-law,  was 
present  at  these  assizes  ;  for  Wyot  gives  the  list  of  the 
lawyers  present  at  the  time,  and  he  names  "  Sergt. 
Glandyl "  as  lodging  at  Roy  Cades.  Glandyl  is  a 
mistake  for  Glandvyl. 

As  the  crime  of  Eulalia  Page  was  one  of  petty  trea- 
son, she  would  be  burnt  alive,  and  not  hanged.  Petty 
treason,  according  to  a  statute  25  Edward  III,  con- 
sists in  (i)  a  servant  killing  his  master  ;  (2)  a  wife  her  hus- 


i 


EULALIA   PAGE  105 

band  ;  (3)  an  ecclesiastic  his  superior,  to  whom  he  owes 
faith  and  obedience.  The  punishment  of  petty  treason 
in  a  man  was  to  be  drawn  and  hanged,  and  in  a  woman 
to  be  drawn  and  burned. 

Catherine  Hayes  was  burned  alive  in  1726  for  the 
murder  of  her  husband.  She  is  the  Catherine  whom 
Thackeray  took  as  heroine  of  the  story  under  that 
name.  In  1769  Susanna  Lott  was  burned  for  the 
murder  of  her  husband  at  Canterbury.  A  poor  girl, 
aged  fifteen,  was  burnt  at  Heavitree  by  Exeter,  in 
1782,  for  poisoning  her  master.  A  woman  was  burnt 
for  causing  the  death  of  her  husband,  at  Winchester, 
in  1783. 

A  writer  in  Notes  and  Queries,  August  10,  1850,  says  : 
"  I  will  state  a  circumstance  that  occurred  to  myself  in 
1788.  Passing  in  a  hackney  coach  up  the  Old  Bailey 
to  West  Smithfield,  I  saw  unquenched  embers  of  a  fire 
opposite  Newgate.  On  my  alighting,  I  asked  the 
coachman,  '  What  was  that  fire  in  the  Old  Bailey  over 
which  the  wheel  of  your  coach  passed?  '  '  Oh,  sir,'  he 
replied,  '  they  have  been  burning  a  woman  for  murder- 
ing her  husband.'" 

In  1790,  Sir  Benjamin  Hammett  in  the  House  of 
Commons  called  attention  to  the  then  state  of  the  law. 
He  said  that  it  had  been  his  painful  office  and  duty  in 
the  previous  year  to  attend  the  burning  of  a  female, 
he  being  at  the  time  Sheriff  of  London  ;  and  he  moved 
to  bring  in  a  Bill  to  alter  the  law.  He  showed  that  the 
sheriff  who  shrank  from  executing  the  sentence  of  burn- 
ing alive  was  liable  to  a  prosecution,  but  he  thanked 
Heaven  that  there  was  not  a  man  in  England  who  would 
carry  such  a  sentence  literally  into  execution.  The 
executioner  was  allowed  to  strangle  the  woman  con- 
demned to  the  stake  before  flames  were  applied  ;  but 
such  an  act  of  humanity  was  a  violation  of  the  law, 


106  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

subjecting  executioner  and  sheriff  to  penalties.     The 
Act  was  passed  30  George  III,  c.  48. 

Popular  tradition  has  erred  on  many  points.  It  has 
made  Eulalia  the  daughter  instead  of  the  niece  of  John 
Glanville,  it  has  represented  him  as  a  judge  to  try  her 
seven  years  before  he  was  created  a  judge.  Tradition 
will  have  it  that  after  the  sentence  of  Eulalia  he  never 
smiled  again.  That  is  possible  enough,  as  he  may 
have  defended  her  at  the  assizes,  and  may  have 
witnessed  her  execution. 

Information  concerning,  and  republication  of  tracts 
and  ballads  relative  to  the  murder  of  Page  are  in 
H.  F.  Whitfeld's  Plymouth  and  Devonport,  in  Times  of 
War  and  Peace,  Plymouth,  1900.  This  also  gives 
extracts  from,  and  mention  of,  plays  founded  on  the 
story. 


JAMES    WYATT 

JAMES  WYATT  was  born  at  Woodbury  on  the 
Exe  in  the  year  1707.     His  father  was  a  shoe- 
maker, but  James  lost  both  him  and  his  mother 
when  he  was  very  young.     He  had   a   brother 
and  two  sisters,  and  he  was  the  youngest  of  the  four. 
After  the  death  of  his  parents  his  eldest  sister  took  care 
of  him,  sent  him  to  school,  and  when  old  enough  to 
work  got  him  employment  on  a  farm,   where  he  re- 
mained till  he  was   fourteen   years   of  age  ;    but,   not 
liking  farm  work,  his  sister  apprenticed  him  to  a  wool- 
comber  and  dyer  at  Wembury.     His  master  was  a  very 
honest,  good-natured  man,  and  taught  him  his  busi- 
ness well,  and  this,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  sequel,  was 
of  the  highest  advantage  to  him. 

As  soon  as  his  time  of  apprenticeship  was  up  he 
entered  as  gunner's  server  on  board  the  York  man-of- 
war.  In  1726  he  went  with  Sir  John  Jennings  to 
Lisbon  and  Gibraltar.  Next  he  served  on  board  the 
Experiment  under  Captain  Radish  ;  but  his  taste  for 
the  sea  failed  for  a  while,  and  he  was  lured  by  the 
superior  attractions  of  a  puppet-show  to  engage  with 
the  proprietor,  named  Churchill,  and  to  play  the 
trumpet  at  his  performances.  During  four  years  he 
travelled  with  the  show,  then  tiring  of  dancing  dolls, 
reverted  to  woolcombing  and  dyeing  at  Trowbridge. 
But  a  travelling  menagerie  was  too  much  for  him,  and 
he  followed  that  as  trumpeter  for  four  years.  In  1741, 

107 


io8  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

he  left  the  wild  beasts  and  entered  as  trumpeter  on 
board  the  Revenge  privateer,  Captain  Wemble,  com- 
mander, who  was  going  on  a  cruise  against  the 
Spaniards.  The  privateer  fell  in  with  a  Spanish  vessel 
from  Malaga,  and  gave  chase.  She  made  all  the  sail 
she  could,  but  in  four  or  five  hours  the  Revenge  came 
up  with  her.  "  We  fir'd  five  times  at  her.  She  had 
made  everything  ready  to  fight  us,  but  seeing  the 
number  of  our  hands  (which  were  one  hundred  in  all, 
though  three  parts  of  them  were  boys)  she  at  length 
brought  to.  We  brought  the  captain  and  mate  on 
board  our  ship,  and  put  twelve  men  on  board  theirs, 
one  of  which  was  the  master,  and  our  captain  gave  him 
orders  to  carry  her  into  Plymouth."  Of  the  prize- 
money  Wyatt  got  forty  shillings.  The  capture  did  not 
prove  to  be  as  richly  laden  as  had  been  anticipated. 

We  need  not  follow  his  adventures  in  the  privateer, 
though  they  are  interesting  enough,  and  give  a  lively 
picture  of  the  audacity  of  these  venturers,  till  we  come 
to  his  capture.  The  Revenge  was  cruising  about  among 
the  Canary  Islands,  when  a  Spanish  vessel  ran  for 
Teneriffe  from  Palma,  and  was  at  once  pursued.  She 
sped  for  Gomera,  but  unable  to  weather  the  point  came 
to  anchor  within  half  a  cable's  length  of  the  shore. 
She  was  a  bark  of  sixty  tons  burthen,  and  as  the 
Revenge  drew  more  water  and  the  captain  feared  sunken 
rocks,  he  ordered  the  yawl  to  be  hoisted  out  and  to  be 
manned  with  eleven  hands. 

"  We  were  three  hours  after  we  left  the  ship  before 
we  got  within  musket-shot  of  the  bark.  Our  master 
ask'd  us  if  we  were  all  willing  to  board  her.  We 
answered,  one  and  all,  we  were.  We  saw  twelve  men 
ashore,  and  made  directly  towards  them.  Our  master 
said,  '  My  boys,  the  bark's  our  own,  for  these  men 
belong'd  to  her,  but  have  left  her ;  let  us  give  them  one 


Reproduced  f tout  the  frontispiece  to  ''  The  Life  and  Surprizing 
Adventures  of  J antes   Wyatt,   Written  by  Himself"  1755 


JAMES   WYATT  109 

volley,  and  then  board  the  bark.'  We  had  two  brass 
blunderbusses,  mounted  on  swivels,  in  the  bow  of  the 
boat.  Our  master  stepp'd  forward  to  one  of  them  him- 
self, and  order'd  me  to  the  other.  We  had  no  sooner 
discharged  the  blunderbusses,  but  two  or  three  hundred 
men  came  from  behind  the  rocks.  We  had  been  so 
long  getting  to  the  bark  that  the  men  belonging  to 
her,  unknown  to  us,  had  got  out  of  her,  gone  up 
country,  and  brought  these  people  to  their  assistance. 
Our  blunderbusses  being  discharged,  the  men  from 
behind  the  rocks  kept  up  a  constant  fire  at  us ;  and, 
at  the  very  first  fire,  our  master  received  a  ball  just 
above  his  right  eye,  and  another  went  almost  through 
my  right  shoulder.  We  rowed  directly  to  the  bark. 
The  lieutenant,  myself,  and  four  more  leapt  into  her, 
and  those  that  were  in  the  boat  handed  in  our  arms. 
As  soon  as  we  were  in  the  bark,  the  lieutenant  order'd 
one  of  our  men  to  take  a  pole-axe  and  cut  the  cable, 
saying  she  would  drive  off.  I  told  him  if  the  cable 
was  cut  she  would  certainly  drive  ashore,  for  she  was 
then  almost  upon  the  breakers.  He  seem'd  a  little 
angry  at  what  I  said,  though  had  my  advice  been 
followed,  it  had  been  better  for  us  all ;  for,  as  soon 
as  the  cable  was  cut,  she  turn'd  broadside  to  the  sea, 
and  in  a  few  minutes  after  struck  ashore  against  the 
rocks. 

"  By  the  bark's  swinging  round,  our  boat  was  ex- 
posed to  the  fire  of  the  enemy  ;  upon  which  Mr.  Perry, 
our  master -at-arms  (he  had  been  organist  at  Ross 
parish  church)  order'd  the  three  men  in  the  boat  to  row 
off.  In  less  than  a  minute  I  saw  Mr.  Perry  drop  to  the 
bottom  of  the  boat,  shot  through  the  heart. 

"  While  the  Spaniards  were  firing  at  our  boat,  we 
that  were  in  the  bark  kept  firing  at  them.  We  fired 
as  fast  as  possible,  and  threw  all  our  hand-granades 


no  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

ashore,  which  did  some  execution.  Our  lieutenant  being 
shot,  and  our  powder  almost  exhausted,  we  laid  down 
our  arms.  As  soon  as  the  Spaniards  saw  this,  they 
came  on  board  us.  The  first  man  they  saw  was  our 
lieutenant,  who,  although  he  was  dead,  they  began  to 
cut  in  a  very  cruel  manner.  The  next  man  they  came 
to  was  William  Knock,  whom  they  butcher'd  in  a 
most  barbarous  manner,  several  of  them  cutting  him 
with  their  long  hooks  at  once,  though  he  cry'd  out  for 
mercy  all  the  time.  In  the  same  manner  they  serv'd 
all  in  the  bark  but  myself. 

"  Being  in  the  bow  of  the  bark,  seeing  their  cruelty 
to  our  men,  and  expecting  the  same  fate  every  moment, 
I  took  the  blunderbuss  which  I  had  in  one  hand,  and 
laid  it  on  a  pease  cask,  being  unable  to  hold  it  high 
enough  to  fire,  as  the  ball  remain'd  still  in  my  right 
shoulder.  When  I  saw  them  coming  towards  me,  I 
rais'd  it  up  with  all  my  might,  as  though  I  was  going 
to  fire  it  at  them,  upon  which  they  all  ran  to  the  other 
side  of  the  bark,  and  from  thence  leapt  ashore. 

"  At  that  very  instant  a  great  sea  came  in,  and  turned 
the  bark  on  one  side,  with  her  keel  towards  the  shore. 
This  gave  me  an  opportunity  of  pulling  off  my  clothes 
and  jumping  into  the  water,  in  order  to  swim  to  my 
ship.  As  soon  as  they  saw  me  they  began  to  fire  at  me 
from  every  side.  Five  small  shot  lodg'd  between  my 
shoulders,  three  in  the  poll  of  my  neck,  and  one  ball 
graz'd  my  left  shoulder ;  besides  the  ball  which  I  had 
before  receiv'd  in  my  right  shoulder. 

"  I  kept  on  swimming  till  I  was  out  of  the  reach  of 
their  balls ;  and  I  should  have  been  able  to  have  swam 
to  our  own  ship,  had  not  the  Spaniards  launch'd  their 
boat  and  come  after  me.  As  soon  as  they  came  up  to  me, 
one  of  the  men  who  stood  in  the  bow  of  the  boat,  and 
had  a  half-pike  in  his  hand,  pointed  towards  me  and 


JAMES   WYATT  in 

said  in  the  Spanish  language,  <  Down,  down,  you 
English  dog.'  Then  they  pulled  me  into  the  boat.  As 
I  stood  upright  in  the  boat,  one  of  the  Spaniards  struck 
me  a  blow  on  the  breast  with  such  violence,  that  it  beat 
me  backwards,  and  I  fell  to  the  bottom  of  the  boat ; 
after  which  they  row'd  ashore.  When  they  came 
ashore,  they  haul'd  me  out  of  the  boat  as  though  I  had 
been  a  dog  ;  which  I  regarded  not  at  the  time,  being 
very  weak  and  faint  with  swimming  and  the  loss  of 
blood.  On  their  bringing  me  ashore,  the  enraged 
multitude  crowded  round  me,  and  carried  me  a  little 
way  from  the  place  where  they  had  landed  ;  they  placed 
me  against  a  rock  to  shoot  me,  and  threatened  to  run 
me  through  with  a  half-pike  if  I  offered  to  stir. 

"  While  I  was  plac'd  against  the  rock,  and  expecting 
death  every  moment,  I  saw  a  gentleman  expostulating 
with  the  mob,  and  endeavouring  to  prevail  with  them 
to  spare  my  life.  After  a  small  time  he  came  directly 
to  me  and  said  in  English,  l  Countryman,  don't  be  afraid ; 
they  want  to  kill  you,  but  they  shall  not.'  He  then  turn'd 
his  back  to  me,  stood  close  before  me,  opened  his  breast, 
and  said  if  they  shot  me  they  should  shoot  him  like- 
wise." 

His  preserver  was  an  Irishman,  named  William 
Ryan,  who  spoke  Spanish  fluently,  and  had  been  in 
the  bark  on  his  way  to  Santa  Cruz  in  Teneriffe.  He 
was  apparently  a  man  who  had  lived  some  time  in  the 
Canaries,  and  had  been  a  trader.  He  was  very  kind 
to  James  Wyatt,  gave  him  some  clothes,  and  washed 
his  wounds  with  brandy. 

After  that  he  was  taken  to  Gomera,  where  the 
deputy-governor  lived,  and  by  means  of  an  interpreter 
Wyatt  was  able  to  explain  to  him  that  he  was  in 
great  pain  and  had  a  ball  in  his  shoulder.  The 
deputy-governor  sent  for  a  barber,  who  with  a  razor 


ii2  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

cut  across  the  wound  this  way  and  that  till  he  saw  the 
ball,  which  he  hooked  out  with  a  bent  nail.  The  ball 
had  gone  eight  inches  through  the  fleshy  part  of  the 
shoulder  and  was  lodged  against  the  bone.  From 
Gomera  Wyatt  was  sent  by  boat  to  Teneriffe  to  the 
head  governor,  who  received  and  examined  him.  The 
governor's  mother  took  compassion  on  him,  saw  that 
he  was  well  fed,  and  sent  a  proper  surgeon  to  dress 
his  wounds,  and  made  him  a  present  of  three  shirts 
and  two  handkerchiefs  to  make  into  a  sling  for  his 
arm.  Next  day  the  kind  old  lady  sent  him  a  pair  of 
silk  stockings,  a  hat,  a  black  silk  waistcoat,  and  a 
dollar  in  money. 

Wyatt  was  now  transferred  to  the  castle  at  Laguna, 
above  Santa  Cruz,  where  he  found  five-and-twenty 
English  prisoners,  among  whom  was  a  physician, 
Dr.  Ross.  It  was  some  time  before  he  was  healed  of 
his  wounds,  but  eventually  did  recover. 

One  day  a  man  came  to  the  castle  with  a  drum  on 
his  back,  and  Wyatt  at  once  asked  him  to  be  allowed 
to  beat  it.  To  this  he  consented,  and  Wyatt  beat  a 
march.  Though  not  a  skilled  drummer,  his  perform- 
ance greatly  delighted  the  owner  of  the  drum,  and 
he  rushed  off  to  an  acquaintance,  a  gentleman,  to 
announce  that  among  the  English  prisoners  was  the 
first  drummer  in  the  world. 

The  gentleman  was  much  excited  and  sent  for  him, 
and  was  delighted.  After  that  at  every  dinner  party, 
entertainment,  gathering,  Wyatt  was  in  requisition 
to  rattle  the  drum,  on  which  occasions  he  received 
little  sums  of  money,  which  he  employed  in  relieving 
the  needs  of  his  fellow  prisoners. 

After  he  had  been  twenty-eight  days  in  the  castle  he 
was  sent  for  to  Santa  Cruz  to  the  general,  who  had 
heard  that  he  drummed,  and  was  eager  to  hear  the 


JAMES   WYATT  113 

performance.  This  pleased  him  so  well  that  he  asked 
Wyatt  if  he  would  teach  the  black  boy  of  a  friend  of 
his  how  to  handle  the  drum-sticks.  Wyatt  consented, 
and  thus  obtained  much  liberty,  for  the  owner  of  the 
black  boy,  whom  he  called  Don  Mathias  Caster,  took 
him  into  his  own  house.  As  instructing  the  boy  did 
not  occupy  the  whole  of  Wyatt's  time,  he  resolved  on 
turning  his  knowledge  of  dyeing  to  advantage.  The 
Spanish  love  black  ;  and  as  the  gentleman  told  him, 
black  cloaks  and  dresses  in  the  sun  and  with  the  dust 
soon  turned  rusty.  He  gave  him  an  old  kettle  and 
lent  him  an  outhouse,  and  Wyatt  converted  the  latter 
into  a  dye-house  and  re-dyed  the  cloth  garments  of 
most  of  the  gentlemen  of  Santa  Cruz,  and  received 
from  each  a  remuneration. 

Dr.  Ross  had  been  released  from  prison  on  condi- 
tion that  he  set  up  as  a  physician  in  Santa  Cruz,  where 
the  Spanish  doctors  were  ignorant  and  unsuccessful. 
But  Ross  had  no  house  to  go  into.  He  consulted 
Wyatt.  "I  will  build  you  one  of  wood,"  said  this 
Jack-of-all-trades.  "I  know  something  of  carpenter- 
ing." Accordingly  he  set  to  work,  built  a  shanty, 
painted  it  gaily,  enclosed  a  garden,  surrounded  it  with 
a  palisade,  and  dug  the  ground  up  for  flowers  and 
vegetables  and  herbs. 

A  Spanish  gentleman  was  so  delighted  with  the 
house  of  Dr.  Ross  that  he  asked  Wyatt  to  build  him 
one.  Wyatt  agreed,  but  in  the  midst  of  the  work  was 
arrested  by  soldiers  from  Grand  Canary  and  conveyed 
thither  to  be  examined  by  the  Inquisition,  which 
supposed  him  to  be  a  Freemason.  He  had  happily 
provided  himself  with  letters  of  recommendation  from 
a  number  of  leading  men  in  the  isle  of  Teneriffe  to 
whom  he  had  done  services,  and  in  return  for  blacken- 
ing their  suits  they  did  their  best  to  whiten  his 


1 14  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

character.  After  several  hearings  he  was  discharged, 
but  one  unfortunate  Englishman  languished  for  two 
years  in  their  dungeons,  labouring  under  the  suspicion 
of  being  a  Freemason. 

On  his  return  to  Santa  Cruz,  Wyatt  completed  the 
house  on  which  he  had  begun,  and  then  looked  about 
for  more  work.  Don  Mathias  Caster  said  to  him  one 
day,  "  Our  hats  cost  us  a  deal  of  money  and  soon  get 
shabby."  "  I  know  how  to  dye,  and  I  know  something 
about  the  hatting  trade,"  said  Wyatt  promptly,  "for 
when  I  was  an  apprentice,  there  was  a  hatter  next  door, 
and  I  kept  my  eyes  open  and  watched  his  proceed- 
ings." 

Accordingly  Don  Mathias  gave  him  one  of  his  old 
hats  to  dress.  Wyatt  immediately  had  a  hat-block 
made,  dyed  the  hat,  cleaned  the  lace,  and  carried  it  to 
the  Don  the  same  day. 

"When  I  show'd  it  to  him,  he  was  surpriz'd  to  see 
how  well  I  had  made  it  look.  He  told  me,  if  I  would 
do  other  gentlemen's  hats  as  well  as  I  had  done  his,  I 
might  get  an  estate  in  a  few  years,  and  that  he  would 
help  me  to  business  enough."  That  same  evening  in 
came  two  hats,  next  morning  five — and  then  they  rained 
on  him,  and  he  charged  half  a  dollar  for  renovating 
each.  He  had  soon  realized  £20. 

One  night  he  was  roused  by  the  cry  of  fire,  and  run- 
ning out  saw  a  crowd  standing  gaping  at  the  house  of 
the  Portuguese  consul  that  was  on  fire  in  the  top  story. 
No  one  did  anything — there  was  no  one  to  take  the 
lead,  and  the  family  was  fast  asleep  within.  Wyatt  got 
a  crowbar  and  an  axe,  broke  down  the  door,  and 
rescued  the  consul  and  his  wife  and  all  the  family  save 
one  child  that  was  burnt.  The  fire  rapidly  spread,  as 
the  houses  were  of  wood,  to  the  next  house  belonging 
to  the  French  consul.  He  and  his  were  rescued.  The 


JAMES  WYATT  115 

next,  but  not  adjoining,  house  was  that  of  the  general. 
But  what  intervened  made  its  destruction  probable,  for 
this  was  a  cellar  full  of  brandy  and'  rum  casks.  The 
general's  house  had  a  flat  roof.  Wyatt  organized  a 
chain  of  water  carriers,  and  standing  on  the  roof  poured 
water  incessantly  over  the  side  of  the  house  licked  by 
the  flames,  and  this  he  continued  to  do  till  the  fire 
burnt  itself  out. 

Next  day  the  general  sent  for  him,  thanked  him  for 
having  saved  his  house,  and  presented  him  with  a 
passport  authorizing  him  to  carry  on  his  trade  and 
travel  freely  between  the  seven  islands. 

In  the  beginning  of  June,  1742,  an  English  vessel 
was  brought  into  harbour,  the  Young  Neptune,  Captain 
Winter,  that  had  been  captured  by  a  Spanish  privateer. 
Wyatt  soon  became  intimate  with  the  captain  and  his 
mate,  and  after  a  while  they  confided  to  him  a  plan 
they  had  discussed  of  escaping  to  Madeira,  whence  they 
could  easily  obtain  a  passage  to  England  or  Holland. 
The  scheme  was  that  he,  Winter,  the  captain,  Bur- 
roughs, the  mate,  and  four  other  Englishmen  should 
steal  a  boat  from  a  galleon  laid  up  in  the  bay  and  make 
their  escape  in  the  night.  Wyatt  eagerly  agreed  to  be 
one  of  the  party ;  and  the  plan  was  carried  into  effect 
on  the  29th  of  June.  There  were  seven  in  the  boat, 
the  captain  and  mate  aforenamed,  Smith,  Swanwick, 
Larder,  Newell,  and  Wyatt.  The  boat  had  five 
oars  and  a  sprit-sail.  The  captain  had  a  compass, 
but  no  quadrant.  At  first  the  wind  blew  fair,  but 
speedily  turned  to  the  contrary  direction  desired,  so  that 
all  hopes  of  making  Madeira  had  to  be  abandoned. 
The  wind  rose  to  a  gale  and  the  men  were  worn  out 
with  bailing.  They  had  to  clear  the  boat  of  water  with 
two  pails  and  their  hats.  On  2  July  they  sighted  a 
point  of  land  which  they  took  to  be  Cape  Bojadore, 


n6     DEVONSHIRE  CHARACTERS 

and  they  steered  south  in  hopes  of  reaching  Gambia. 
On  7  July  they  saw  a  low  sandy  island,  and  a  sloop 
ashore,  and  made  at  once  for  land.  On  disembarking 
they  were  surrounded  by  a  swarm  of  Moors  and 
negroes,  the  former  of  whom  could  speak  a  little 
Portuguese,  and  two  of  them  spoke  broken  English. 
Wyatt  and  the  rest  were  conducted  inland  to  where 
there  was  a  village  of  squalid  huts.  Here  they  were 
given  some  fish  and  a  little  water.  They  speedily 
discovered  that  the  Moors  had  no  intention  of  letting 
them  go  to  Gambia,  but  purposed  making  off  with 
their  boat  and  leaving  them  to  perish  on  the  island  where 
there  was  no  water,  all  that  was  used  having  to  be 
brought  in  skins  from  the  mainland.  Presently  a 
number  of  the  Moors  departed  in  the  boat  of  the  Euro- 
peans, leaving  behind  only  one  large  boat  that  was 
rotten,  and  a  small  one ;  and  some  of  the  Moors  remained 
to  see  that  the  English  carpenter  repaired  the  decayed 
vessel,  intending  when  that  was  done  to  leave  the 
Europeans  behind.  These  consulted  and  resolved  on 
getting  possession  of  the  little  boat  and  escaping  in  it. 
As  a  precaution  they  contrived  to  get  hold  of  the  fish- 
ing spears  of  the  Moors,  so  that  these  might  have  as 
few  weapons  as  possible,  should  it  come  to  a  fight. 

The  carpenter  then,  with  the  tools  that  had  been 
given  to  him  for  the  purpose  of  repairing  the  large 
boat,  set  to  work  to  knock  holes  in  her  bottom,  so  that 
she  might  not  be  used  in  pursuit. 

Then  the  little  party,  having  got  together,  made  for 
the  small  boat.  "  I  had  got  the  hammer  and  the  adze, 
the  carpenter  had  the  hatchet,  and  the  rest  of  our  people 
had  fishing  spears.  The  Moors,  perceiving  us  make 
towards  the  boat,  ran  between  that  and  us,  in  order  to 
prevent  our  getting  into  her.  This  began  the  fight, 
for  the  carpenter  beat  Marta  into  the  water,  which  was 


JAMES   WYATT  117 

about  three  feet  deep,  with  the  hatchet,  and  Duck- 
amar  presently  after  him.  I  struck  Mahomet  with  the 
adze,  and  took  off  a  piece  of  flesh  and  part  of  his  ear. 
In  an  instant  every  one  was  out  of  their  huts,  and  pull- 
ing them  down  in  order  to  get  sticks  to  fight  us.  See- 
ing this,  we  ran  to  the  assistance  of  our  countrymen  as 
fast  as  we  could,  leaving  the  two  Moors  that  fell  into 
the  water  for  dead. 

"The  Moors  came  very  near  us  with  the  sticks  they 
pulled  out  of  their  huts,  and  threw  them  at  us,  one  of 
which  hit  Robert  Larder  and  broke  his  thumb.  One  of 
our  men,  looking  round,  saw  the  two  Moors  who  we 
thought  were  dead  standing  up  against  the  side  of  the 
boat.  Upon  his  saying  they  were  there,  I  ran  towards 
them,  having  still  the  hammer  in  one  hand  and  the  adze 
in  the  other.  When  they  saw  me  coming,  they  ran 
round  the  boat,  got  to  their  companions,  and  fought  as 
well  as  though  they  had  not  been  hurt. 

"  We  were  obliged  to  keep  our  ground,  for  fear  some 
of  the  Moors  should  get  into  the  little  boat,  in  which  we 
intended  to  make  our  escape,  and  which  was  not  an 
hundred  yards  behind  us.  At  length  one  of  the  Moors 
came  running  behind  Mr.  Burroughs,  and  gave  him  a 
terrible  blow  on  the  head  with  a  stick.  Mr.  Burroughs 
immediately  turned  round  and  struck  at  him,  but  missed 
him.  The  man  ran  directly  up  the  island  ;  and  Mr. 
Burroughs,  in  the  hurry  not  thinking  of  the  conse- 
quence, ran  after  him.  We  kept  calling  to  him  to  come 
back  to  us,  when,  on  a  sudden,  the  Moors  took  to  their 
heels  and  ran  after  him.  Some  of  them  presently  came 
up  with  him,  knocked  him  down  with  their  sticks,  and 
cut  his  throat  from  ear  to  ear.  Some  of  them  then 
turned  back  and  made  towards  their  little  boat,  think- 
ing to  have  got  her  off  in  order  to  prevent  our  escape. 
As  soon  as  we  saw  that,  we  all  ran  as  fast  as  possible  to 


n8  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

secure  the  boat.  As  I  was  the  nearest  to  the  boat  I  got 
soonest  to  her  ;  but  there  was  one  of  the  Moors  had  got 
to  the  boat  before  me,  and  was  getting  up  her  side.  I 
gave  him  a  blow  on  his  back  with  the  hammer ;  upon 
which  he  let  go  his  hold  and  fell  into  the  water.  As  he 
was  falling  I  hit  him  another  blow  on  the  head ;  upon 
which  he  fell  under  the  boat,  and  rose  on  the  other 
side. 

"  While  we  were  in  the  fight,  three  of  our  men  got 
into  the  boat,  and  kept  calling  to  the  rest  to  come  in 
likewise;  which  at  length  we  did,  retreating  all  the  way 
with  our  faces  towards  the  Moors.  When  we  came  to 
the  boat,  the  other  three,  with  the  fishing  spears,  kept 
off  the  Moors  till  we  got  in,  cut  the  grappling  loose, 
and  drove  away  with  the  tide." 

It  was  not  possible  to  get  far  in  this  little  boat,  and 
the  party  made  for  the  mainland,  where  they  were  at 
once  set  upon  by  other  Moors,  who  stripped  them  of 
their  shirts,  and  held  them  prisoners  till  those  from  the 
island  arrived,  and  these  latter  fell  on  them  and  beat 
and  trampled  on  them  unmercifully,  and  would  have 
cut  their  throats  had  not  the  mainland  Moors  restrained 
them  by  saying  that  the  King  or  Sultan  of  the  Gum 
Coast  must  be  informed  that  there  were  European 
prisoners  there,  and  that  he  would  decide  what  was  to 
be  done  with  them.  They  were  then  tied  in  pairs  back 
to  back  and  carried  back  to  the  island,  where  they  were 
cast  on  the  floor  of  a  tent,  and  left  thus  without  food  or 
water  for  four  days.  After  that  they  were  sparingly 
fed,  untied,  and  made  to  work  as  slaves.  After  some 
weeks  an  officer  called  Abede  arrived  with  nineteen 
men,  reviewed  them,  and  left.  As  soon  as  he  was  gone 
Swanwick,  the  carpenter,  was  taken  away  by  the  island 
Moors,  and  no  tidings  of  what  became  of  him  ever 
reached  the  rest.  Sixteen  days  after  the  officer  had  left 


JAMES   WYATT  119 

he  returned  with  orders  from  the  King  or  Sultan  that 
all  who  remained  of  the  prisoners  were  to  be  transferred 
to  the  mainland  and  conducted  across  the  desert  to  the 
French  factory  at  Senegal,  where  he  hoped  to  receive 
pay  from  the  French  for  surrendering  them. 

The  party  had  been  taken  prisoners  by  the  Moors  on 
7  July,  1742,  and  they  were  not  released  and  committed 
to  the  charge  of  Abede  till  13  November,  so  that  they 
had  remained  in  durance  and  in  miserable  condition  for 
four  months  and  six  days.  At  one  time,  when  deprived 
of  their  shirts  and  exposed  to  the  sun,  their  faces  and 
bodies  were  so  blistered  that  they  were  unable  to  recog- 
nize each  other,  save  by  their  voices.  They  had  now  a 
long  and  painful  journey  over  the  desert,  under  the 
charge  of  Abede,  that  lasted  till  the  23rd  December, 
when  they  were  near  Senegal,  and  Abede  dispatched  a 
messenger  to  the  French  factors  to  announce  that  the 
European  prisoners  were  at  hand,  and  to  bargain  for  a 
sum  to  be  paid  for  their  release.  They  had  been 
tramping  over  burning  sands,  insufficiently  fed,  for 
forty  days.  Whilst  waiting  for  news  from  the  factory 
the  Moors  killed  an  ox,  and  gave  the  head  and  guts  to 
the  English  prisoners.  They  boiled  the  meat  on  the 
sand  and  devoured  it  greedily — it  was  the  first  flesh 
they  had  tasted  for  upwards  of  six  months. 

"  Sometime  after  we  got  some  caravances.  Having 
eaten  no  pulse  for  several  months,  we  hardly  knew 
when  we  had  enough.  But  we  suffered  severely  for  it, 
for  we  were  presently  afterwards  taken  extremely  ill. 
The  Moors  seeing  we  were  very  bad,  gave  us  the  urine 
of  goats  to  drink.  This  purged  us  prodigiously,  and 
we  remained  ill  for  several  hours  ;  but,  when  it  had 
worked  off,  we  grew  speedily  well." 

Five  days  more  elapsed  before  an  answer  arrived 
from  the  factory.  On  28  December  the  messenger 


120  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

returned  in  a  sloop  sent  from  the  factory  to  bring  the 
prisoners  to  Senegal.  The  captain  brought  clothes  for 
them,  and  gave  them  "  an  elegant  entertainment,  con- 
sisting of  fowls,  fresh  meat,  etc." 

On  29  December  they  were  conveyed  to  the  factory 
at  Senegal,  and  were  most  kindly  received  by  the 
French,  and  they  remained  there  for  a  month  all  but 
a  day ;  and  then  were  sent  in  a  French  sloop  to 
Gambia,  on  28  January,  1743,  which  they  reached 
on  31  January.  Gambia  was  an  English  settlement, 
a  fort,  and  a  factory  ;  and  there  also  the  poor  fellows 
were  kindly  and  hospitably  entertained,  provided  with 
money  and  all  they  required. 

The  time  of  their  sufferings  was  now  over. 

"  The  ist  February  I  went  on  board  the  Robert, 
Captain  Dent,  commander,  lying  in  Gambia  River. 
He  was  hir'd  by  the  African  Company  and  was  laden 
with  gum  arabick,  elephants'  teeth,  bees-wax,  &c.  I 
told  him  our  case,  and  that  I  wanted  to  come  to  Eng- 
land ;  upon  which  he  kindly  promised  me,  or  all  of  us, 
if  we  were  so  disposed,  our  passage  to  England  gratis, 
provided  we  would  work  our  way  home.  Captain 
Winter,  however,  had  business  to  transact  in  Jamaica, 
and  preferred  to  wait  till  a  vessel  would  take  him 
thither  ;  two  of  the  men  remained  at  Gambia,  and  the 
rest,  saying  that  they  had  no  homes  or  friends  in 
England,  preferred  to  go  to  the  West  Indies  and  earn 
some  money  before  they  returned  to  the  right  and  tight 
little  island. 

"  It  was  an  unfortunate  decision  of  Captain  Winter. 
He  and  Larder  sailed  in  a  schooner  bound  for  Jamaica, 
but  never  reached  his  destination,  as  the  vessel  was  lost, 
and  every  one  of  the  crew  and  passengers  was  drowned. 

"  We  set  sail  from  Gambia  the  3rd  of  February,  1743, 
and  arrived  in  the  river  Thames  on  the  i6th  of  April 


JAMES   WYATT  121 

following  ;  so  that  we  were  just  two  months  and  thirteen 
days  in  our  passage  to  England." 

On  the  29th  May,  1741,  James  Wyatt  had  entered  as 
trumpeter  on  board  the  Revenge,  privateer,  and  was 
away  on  her  almost  two  years,  during  which  time  he 
had  undergone  as  many  hardships  as  ever  man  did — 
enough  to  break  down  the  health  of  one  who  did  not 
possess  a  constitution  of  iron. 

Wyatt  now  visited  his  friends,  and  was  warmly 
welcomed,  and  all  would  have  given  him  money  to 
start  him  in  some  business.  One  gentleman  offered  to 
advance  him  a  thousand  pounds  ;  but  he  declined  these 
generous  offers.  The  French  at  Senegal  and  the 
English  at  Gambia  had  been  so  liberal  that  he  had 
enough  for  his  purpose.  He  now  bought  an  electrical 
machine,  and  turned  showman  in  London,  giving 
people  shocks  at  a  shilling  a  head.  This  answered 
for  a  while,  and  then  public  interest  in  the  machine 
slackened  there,  so  he  toured  in  the  country. 

"At  some  towns  I  scarce  took  money  enough  to 
bear  my  expenses,  the  people  not  knowing  the  mean- 
ing of  the  word  Electricity ;  nor  would  they  give  the 
price  I  usually  got  in  London  ;  for,  talking  of  a  shilling 
each  person,  frightened  them  out  of  their  wits.  In 
some  towns  in  Kent  I  had  very  good  business,  and 
saved  a  pretty  deal  of  money ;  but,  even  then,  I  was 
forced  to  lower  my  price.  In  these  towns  the  people 
knew  what  it  meant,  and  that  the  thing  was  very 
curious  and  surprising.  They  came,  when  the  price 
was  not  so  high,  in  great  numbers,  and  sometimes 
many  miles,  to  be  electrified." 

He  remained  in  Kent  two  months  and  made  twelve 
pounds.  Then  it  occurred  to  him  that  he  would  go 
with  his  battery  to  Jamaica,  where  the  novelty  of  the 
machine  was  certain  to  create  a  stir. 


122  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Whilst  preparing  for  the  voyage,  he  undertook  to 
manufacture  an  optical  contrivance  for  a  gentleman, 
and  was  well  paid  for  it. 

Then  he  bought  a  pair  of  gloves  and  abundance  of 
clothes,  as  clothes  he  learned  were  very  dear  in  the 
West  Indies. 

"  At  length  the  time  of  the  ship's  sailing  being  near 
at  hand,  I  settled  my  affairs,  took  my  leave  of  my 
friends,  and  went  on  board  the  ship  on  the  25th  April, 

1747. 

" After  having  experienced  various  vicissitudes  of 
fortune,  I  am  once  more  going  into  a  strange  land  : 
for,  though  there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun,  yet 
the  eye  is  never  satisfied  with  seeing." 

Wyatt  had  committed  his  adventures  to  paper  before 
starting,  and  had  disposed  of  the  MS.  to  a  publisher. 
The  book  sold  well,  and  the  sixth  edition  was  called  for 
in  1755,  but  in  it  no  further  particulars  are  given  of 
Wyatt,  so  that  it  must  be  assumed  either  that  he  was 
then  dead  or  that  he  was  still  abroad. 

What  strikes  one  in  reading  his  Memoirs  is  the  in- 
defatigable energy  and  the  resourcefulness  of  the  man. 
He  could  turn  his  hand  to  anything.  He  kept  his 
eyes  open,  and  was  ever  eager  to  acquire  information. 

His  Life  and  Surprising  Adventures  has  his  portrait 
in  copper  plate  prefixed  to  it.  He  wears  a  wig,  and  a 
laced  and  embroidered  waistcoat,  open  at  the  breast  to 
display  his  fine  frilled  shirt. 


THE    REV.    W.    DAVY 

THIS  is  the  story  of  the  life  of  an  able,  versatile, 
and  learned  man,  neglected,  and  his  "  un- 
regarded age  in  corners  thrown." 
He  was  born  4  March,  1743,  at  Down- 
house,  in  the  parish  of  Tavistock,  of  respectable  parents. 
They  moved  whilst  he  was  still  an  infant  to  a  farm 
belonging  to  them,  Knighton,  in  the  parish  of  Hen- 
nock.  As  a  child  he  was  fond  of  mechanics,  and  amused 
himself  with  contriving  various  pieces  of  machinery. 
When  aged  eight  years  he  watched  the  construction  of 
a  mill,  and  imitated  it  in  small  in  wood,  thoroughly 
grasping  all  the  points  in  the  mechanism.  After  a 
while  the  workmen  engaged  on  the  mill  came  to  a  diffi- 
culty, and  the  mill  stopped,  nor  could  they  rectify  the 
fault.  Little  Will  Davy  pointed  out  the  defects ;  they 
saw  that  he  was  right,  remedied  the  defects,  and  the 
mill  ran  "suently." 

He  was  educated  at  the  Exeter  Grammar  School,  and 
at  the  age  of  eighteen  matriculated  at  Balliol  College, 
Oxford.  Whilst  there  the  idea  came  into  his  head  to 
produce  a  great  work  of  divinity,  a  compendium  of 
evidence  of  the  origin  of  the  Christian  Faith ;  but  the 
idea  lay  dormant  for  a  few  years. 

On  leaving  college  he  was  ordained  to  the  curacy  of 
Moreton  Hampstead,  and  married  Sarah,  daughter  of 
a  Mr.  Gilbert,  of  Longabrook,  near  Kingsbridge.  When 
settled  into  his  curacy  he  began  to  reduce  to  order  the 
plan  he  had  devised  of  writing  a  General  System  of 

123 


i24  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Theology,  and  wrote  twelve  volumes  of  MS.  on  the 
subject. 

Then  he  shifted  to  Drewsteignton.  His  preaching 
was  complained  of  to  the  Bishop  of  Exeter,  who  sent 
for  him.  He  took  his  twelve  volumes  of  MS.  with  him 
and  showed  them  to  the  Bishop,  and  bade  him  look 
through  them  and  mark  any  lapse  from  orthodoxy. 

This  was  more  than  the  Bishop  was  disposed  to  do  ;  he 
ran  his  ringers  through  the  pages,  he  could  do  no  more. 
"  What  the  parishioners  objected  to,"  said  Davy,  "  was 
not  that  I  taught  false  doctrine,  but  that  I  rebuke 
vicious  habits  that  prevail."  Actually,  doubtless,  it  was 
his  long-winded  discourses  on  the  evidence  for  a  God, 
and  for  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  that  the  people 
objected  to.  They,  simple  souls,  no  more  needed 
these  evidences  than  they  did  that  they  themselves 
lived  and  talked  and  listened. 

The  Bishop  was  courteous,  and  promised  Davy 
that  he  would  give  him  any  living  that  fell  vacant,  and 
asked  him  if  he  had  a  preference  for  one.  Davy  humbly 
replied  that  there  was  a  certain  benefice  likely  to  be 
vacated  very  shortly  that  would  suit  him  exactly.  The 
Bishop  promised  to  remember  this,  and  of  course  forgot, 
and  appointed  some  one  else,  one  more  of  a  toady,  or 
better  connected. 

Davy  continued  his  mechanical  work  and  executed 
several  ingenious  pieces  of  machinery. 

Then  he  was  appointed  to  the  curacy  of  Lustleigh 
at  £40  per  annum  ;  but  from  that  sum  was  deducted 
£5  for  the  rent  of  the  rectory  in  which  he  had  to  live, 
the  incumbent  being  non-resident. 

Whilst  at  Lustleigh  he  published  by  subscription  six 
volumes  of  sermons  and  lost  £100  by  the  transaction, 
as  many  of  the  subscribers  failed  to  pay  for  the  books 
sent  to  them. 


R. Cooper  sculp'. 


REV.   \V.   DAVY 


THE   REV.   W.    DAVY  125 

Then  he  took  to  farming,  but  he  had  no  experience 
and  lost  money  by  it,  and  had  to  abandon  the  farm. 

The  ambition  of  his  life  was  to  publish  his  System 
of  Divinity,  which  would  utterly  refute  atheism,  deism, 
and  every  ism  under  the  sun,  and  establish  the  doctrine 
of  the  Church  on  a  sound  basis.  But  no  publisher  or 
printer  would  undertake  the  mighty  work  unless  sure 
of  payment ;  and  the  price  asked  was  far  beyond  the 
means  of  Davy.  Determined  to  bring  his  great  work 
before  the  world,  he  constructed  his  own  printing  press, 
and  bought  type,  but  could  not  afford  to  purchase  more 
than  would  enable  him  to  set  up  four  pages  of  his  book 
at  a  time. 

Accordingly  he  did  this,  struck  off  forty  copies, 
broke  up  the  type  and  printed  four  more,  and  so  on. 
He  taught  his  servant,  Mary  Hole,  to  compose  type, 
and  these  two  worked  together,  and  at  last  completed 
the  work  in  twenty-six  volumes,  each  of  nearly  five 
hundred  pages.  When  the  first  volume  was  completed 
he  sent  copies  to  the  Bishop,  the  Dean  and  Chapter, 
the  Archdeacon,  the  Universities,  and  other  persons  of 
repute  for  learning.  But  he  received  no  encourage- 
ment. Some  of  those  to  whom  he  sent  his  book  did 
not  trouble  to  acknowledge  having  received  it.  When 
the  vast  work  was  complete  in  twenty-six  volumes,  he 
sent  a  copy  to  his  diocesan,  Dr.  Fisher,  who  un- 
graciously said  to  Davy,  when  he  called  at  the  Palace, 
u  I  cannot  be  supposed  to  be  able  to  notice  every  trifle 
that  appears  in  print."  To  this  Davy  replied,  "If 
your  Lordship  considers  twenty-six  volumes  8vo,  the 
labour  of  fifty  years  in  collecting,  compiling,  and  print- 
ing, to  be  a  trifle,  I  most  certainly  cannot  allow  myself 
to  expect  from  your  Lordship  either  approbation  or  en- 
couragement. " 

At  last  he  retired  from  the  parsonage  of  Lustleigh, 


126  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

discountenanced  and  discouraged,  to  a  small  farm  of 
his  own,  called  Willmead.  His  curacy  was  now 
advanced  to  £60,  and  he  had  not  to  keep  up  the  large 
rectory.  At  Willmead  he  amused  his  leisure  hours 
with  gardening.  He  moved  the  granite  boulders, 
arranged  terraces  among  the  rocks,  and  formed  a 
herbaceous  garden,  in  which  he  took  the  liveliest 
interest.  Whilst  here  he  invented  a  diving-bell,  and 
prepared  his  contrivance  for  use  to  raise  the  guns  and 
other  property  lost  in  the  Royal  George  (1782),  but  he 
had  not  the  means  to  cause  a  model  of  his  machine  to 
be  made,  and  his  idea  was  taken  up  and  carried  out  by 
others.  But  Davy  was  by  no  means  the  first  inventor 
of  the  diving-bell,  Dr.  Halley  had  made  one  in  or 
about  1720  ;  it  was  of  wood  covered  with  lead,  and  air 
was  supplied  through  barrels  attached  to  it.  But  the 
plan  proposed  by  Davy  was  far  in  advance  of  this,  and 
was,  in  fact,  practically  that  of  the  diving-bell  as 
now  in  use.  It  was  not  till  1817  that  the  Royal  George 
was  surveyed  by  means  of  a  diving-bell,  and  portions 
of  the  cargo,  the  guns,  etc.,  were  not  raised  till  1839-42. 
At  length,  at  the  age  of  eighty-two,  Davy  was  pre- 
sented in  1852  to  the  vicarage  of  Winkleigh,  and  that 
not  by  either  the  Bishop  or  the  Dean  and  Chapter. 

But  this  preferment  coming  so  late  in  life  was  rather 
a  cruelty  to  him  than  a  favour  granted.  It  removed 
him  from  his  garden,  in  which  he  had  spent  such 
happy  hours,  and  which  was  crowded  with  his  collec- 
tions of  rare  plants  procured  with  difficulty  and  from 
distances,  from  all  his  little  contrivances,  and  from  the 
comforts  of  his  own  residence.  He  had  to  shift  quarters 
in  December,  caught  a  chill  in  the  raw  damp  vicarage 
to  which  he  removed,  and  after  holding  the  benefice  for 
five  months,  expired  there  on  13  June,  1826,  and  was 
laid  in  the  chancel  of  Winkleigh. 


THE    REV.   W.   DAVY  127 

After  his  death  three  volumes  of  extracts  from  his 
System  of  Divinity  were  published,  together  with  a 
Memoir,  by  the  Rev.  C.  Davy,  Exeter,  1827,  and  fell 
as  flat  as  had  the  twenty-six  volumes  from  which  these 
withered  arguments  were  culled,  and  no  man — not  a 
theologian  even — would  think  it  worth  his  while  now  to 
read  a  dozen  pages  of  the  work.  But  the  intention 
was  good — he  was  persistent  in  carrying  it  out,  he  had 
the  honour  and  glory  of  God  before  his  eyes,  and  he 
worked  for  that,  and  certainly  will  receive  the  com- 
mendation, "  Well  done,  good  and  faithful  servant, 
enter  thou  into  the  joy  of  thy  Lord,"  though  bishops 
and  deans  and  archdeacons  and  the  well-beneficed 
clergy,  "  bene  nati,  bene  vestiti  et  moderate  docti," 
showed  him  the  cold  shoulder  here  below. 

But  one  cannot  fail  to  regret  that,  placed  where  he  had 
been,  at  Moreton,  at  Drewsteignton,  at  Lustleigh,  his 
active  mind  had  not  been  turned  to  more  profitable 
pursuits.  What  might  he  not  have  gleaned,  then, 
among  the  traditions  of  the  people  !  What  stores  of 
ballads  might  he  not  have  collected  !  What  careful 
plans  and  descriptions  he  might  have  made  of  the  pre- 
historic relics  that  then  abounded  around  him,  then 
almost  intact,  now  to  such  a  large  extent  wrecked  and 
swept  away. 

At  Drewsteignton  there  was  a  most  remarkable  col- 
lection of  stone  circles  and  avenues  and  menhirs,  and 
all  have  gone,  not  one  is  now  left,  only  the  dolmen  of 
Shilstone  remains.  One  accurate  plan  drawn  by  Davy, 
and  draw  and  plan  he  could,  would  have  been  worth 
all  his  twenty-six  volumes  of  System  of  Divinity. 


THE    GREY    WOMAN 


f  "^HE  following  curious  story  is  from  the  pen 

of  the  lady  whose  experience  is  recorded. 

I   know  both   her  and  the  localities ;    also 

-^-        a   good    many  of   the  particulars,   and   all 

the  names ;  but  for  good  reasons  it  has  been  thought 

advisable  to  disguise  both  the  name  of  the  place  and  of 

the  persons  mentioned.     Every  particular  is  absolutely 

true,  excepting  the  names  that  are  fictitious. 

"On  the  ist  August,  1904,  we  heard  that  we  had 
succeeded  by  the  death  of  an  aunt  of  my  husband  to 
a  considerable  property  in  South  Devon,  and  as  bad 
luck  would  have  it,  the  mansion  on  the  estate  had  been 
let  just  two  months  before  on  a  short  lease.  It  was  our 
duty  to  make  Devonshire  our  home  at  once  and  for  the 
future,  and  the  wearying  undertaking  was  before  us  of 
looking  out  for  a  suitable  house. 

"A  few  days  after  this  I  had  a  dream  remarkably 
distinct  and  impressive,  so  impressive  was  it  that  on 
awaking  every  particular  therein  was  stamped  indelibly 
on  my  mind. 

"  I  thought  that  I  was  looking  over  a  large  empty 
house,  and  I  was  conscious  at  the  time  that  it  was  in 
Devonshire.  A  man  was  showing  me  through  it,  and 
we  had  just  reached  the  top  of  the  front  and  principal 
staircase,  and  stood  on  a  broad  landing,  with  many 
bedroom  doors  opening  on  to  it.  I  observed  one  short 
narrow  passage  that  led  down  to  a  door,  and  in  that 

128 


THE   GREY   WOMAN  129 

doorway,  at  the  end  of  the  passage,  I  saw  a  tall  hand- 
some woman  in  grey,  deadly  pale,  with  clean-cut 
features,  carrying  a  little  child  of  about  two  years  of  age 
or  under  upon  her  arm.  The  thought  struck  me,  'Who 
can  she  be  ? '  But  I  almost  immediately  said  to  myself, 
1  What  can  it  matter  to  me  who  she  is?' 

"The  caretaker  of  the  house  immediately,  and  with- 
out noticing  her,  led  me  to  that  very  room,  and  went 
past  her  without  a  word  or  turning  his  head  towards 
her.  I  followed,  and  in  so  doing  brushed  past  the 
Grey  Woman,  also  without  a  word. 

"  On  entering  the  room  I  saw  that  in  it  was  a  second 
door  in  the  same  end  wall  in  which  was  that  by  which 
I  had  come  in,  and  that  between  these  two  doors  was  a 
broad  space.  I  at  once  decided  that  this  should  be  my 
bedchamber,  and  that  I  would  place  my  bed  between 
the  two  doors,  as  most  convenient  for  the  light  and  for 
the  fireplace. 

"Then,  suddenly,  without  awaking,  my  dream 
shifted,  and  I  thought  that  I  was  in  that  identical  room, 
and  in  my  own  bed,  placed  where  I  had  designed  to 
place  it ;  that  all  my  belongings  were  about  me. 

"  Next,  the  second  door,  that  by  which  I  had  not 
entered,  was  opened,  and  again  I  saw  the  Grey  Woman 
come  in,  with  the  little  one  toddling  before  her  push- 
ing before  it  a  round  wheel-toy  with  coloured  beads  on 
the  spokes.  I  nudged  my  husband  and  said,  '  Alex, 
there  is  a  nurse  with  a  child  in  the  room.'  True  to 
life  he  answered,  *  Bosh!'  Nevertheless,  I  repeated, 
*  Alex,  look  there — a  nurse  and  child  really  are  in  the 
room.' 

By  this  time  the  pair  had  walked  round  the  foot  of 
the  bed,  almost  to  his  side.  He  raised  himself  on  one 
arm,  and  exclaimed,  *  Good  Lord  !  so  there  is.'  Then 
I  said,  '  And  they  have  both  been  dead  long  years  ago.' 


130  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"  After  that  I  remember  nothing  further  till  I  awoke 
in  the  morning. 

"The  dream  had  made  such  an  impression  on  me, 
that  at  breakfast  I  told  my  daughter,  and  in  the  after- 
noon some  friends  came  in  to  tea,  and  I  again  repeated 
my  story,  provoking  great  interest  in  the  sweet  ghost 
babe — much  more  so  than  in  the  nurse. 

"  I  forgot  to  state  that  in  my  dream  I  felt  quite  aware 
that  the  doorway  through  which  the  Grey  Woman  and 
the  child  had  passed  did  not  open  out  of  another  bed- 
room, but  communicated  with  the  back  part  of  the 
house. 

"  Weeks  went  by,  and  the  dream,  without  being  for- 
gotten in  any  single  particular,  passed  from  my 
thoughts,  now  occupied  with  more  practical  matters — 
considering  the  lists  of  houses  sent  to  us  by  various 
agents.  One  of  these  gentry  had  forwarded  to  us  a 
special  notice  of  a  house  that  read  like  the  description 
of  a  palace.  We,  having  no  ambition  that  way,  put  it 
down,  without  considering  it  for  a  moment. 

"  Some  days  later  I  called  on  the  agent,  and  then  put 
down  the  palatial  notice  on  his  table,  with  the  remark 
that  this  was  not  at  all  the  sort  of  mansion  that  we 
required. 

"  Towards  the  end  of  September  we  made  another 
expedition  to  Devon  to  see  a  particular  house  near 

B .     I  took   the   train   to   the   station   and   visited 

this  house,  but  in  ten  minutes  satisfied  myself  that  it 
would  not  do.  We  had  about  five  hours  on  hand 
before  the  train  was  due  that  would  take  us  back  to 
Exeter,  and  we  were  at  a  loss  how  to  spend  the  time. 
Suddenly  the  thought  struck  me  that  the  impossible 
house  was  somewhere  in  the  neighbourhood,  and  rather 
than  spend  hours  dawdling  on  the  railway  platform, 
I  proposed  to  my  daughter  that  we  should  go  and 


THE   GREY   WOMAN  131 

see  it.  The  driver  of  the  carriage  we  had  hired  said 
that  the  distance  was  seven  miles,  but  that  he  could 
very  well  take  us  there  and  back  so  as  to  catch  the  up 
train.  We  thought  so  too — but  speedily  discovered 
that  his  horse  was  extremely  leisurely  in  its  movements, 
and  that  we  should  not  be  able  to  spend  much  time 
in  viewing  the  house.  The  day  was  beautiful,  the  sun 
was  bright,  the  sky  blue,  and  the  trees  just  touched 
with  autumn  frost,  and  turning  every  colour. 

"  We  traversed  a  maze  of  lanes  and  finally  reached  a 
lonely  house,  shut  up,  and  standing  in  something  of  a 
jungle,  trees  all  round  it.  A  farm  was  near  by,  and 
we  sent  to  ask  if  the  keys  were  kept  there.  They  were, 
and  we  were  soon  inside.  We  were  delighted,  and 
said  at  once,  '  This  is  just  what  we  want ;  the  very 
house  to  suit  us.'  We  returned  full  of  it,  but  it  must 
be  admitted  after  a  very  hurried  run  through  the  inside. 
There  was  an  entrance  hall,  thence  led  a  staircase  to  a 
broad  landing,  out  of  which  opened  many  bedroom 
doors,  and  there  was  a  passage  leading  a  short  way  to 
another  room.  But  that  all  this  was  precisely  like  my 
dream  did  not  occur  to  me  at  the  time.  We  were 
in  a  hurry,  afraid  to  miss  our  train,  and  my  mind 
was  occupied  with  house-hunting  and  the  dream  was 
temporarily  forgotten.  In  my  dream,  it  must  be  re- 
membered, I  had  not  seen  the  exterior  of  the  house  in 
which  appeared  the  Grey  Woman. 

"  On  our  return  to  Exeter  we  made  a  full  report  to 
my  husband  of  what  we  had  seen  and  decided  ;  he  had 
been  kept  from  accompanying  us  by  illness. 

"  We  now  entered  into  negotiations,  and  speedily  all 
was  settled.  The  drains  had  all  to  be  looked  to  and 
put  in  order  before  we  could  take  possession,  which 
was  not  till  the  first  week  in  December. 

"  About  a  fortnight  before  we  moved  into  the  house, 


132  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

after  it  had  been  repainted  and  furnished,  my  daughter 
rushed  to  my  room  one  morning  exclaiming,  '  Mother 
— you  have  after  all  taken  the  Ghost-dream  House/ 
and  so  it  was  in  every  particular,  and  I  had  chosen  the 
very  room  for  mine  and  arranged  to  place  my  bed  in 
the  very  position  I  had  determined  on  in  my  dream. 

"  At  last  the  move  was  made,  I  feeling  sure  that  the 
Grey  Nurse  and  Little  Child  were  part  and  parcel  of  the 
house. 

"  In  coming  into  the  property  an  astonishing  number 
of  old  deeds  in  many  chests  had  been  handed  over  to 
us,  and  demanded  sorting  and  investigation.  A  large 
number  of  them  pertained  to  the  estates  that  my 
husband  owned,  some  of  them  going  back  five  hundred 
years  and  impossible  for  those  inexperienced  in  court- 
hand  and  legal  documents  full  of  contractions  to  de- 
cipher. But  there  were  others  that  did  not  belong  to  our 
property,  that  had  come  into  the  hands  of  a  collateral 
great-great-uncle,  a  noted  lawyer,  who  had  taken  the 
remainder  of  a  lease  for  ninety-nine  years  of  manors 
and  estates,  and  which  manors  and  estates  on  the 
termination  of  the  lease  had  reverted  to  the  proprietors  ; 
nevertheless,  the  deeds  had  been  retained  relative  to  this 
particular  lease. 

"  Whilst  I  was  engaged  along  with  an  upholsterer 
daily  in  hanging  curtains,  arranging  carpets,  choosing 
wall-papers,  hanging  pictures  and  the  like,  my  husband 
and  daughter  occupied  themselves  in  wading  through 
and  cataloguing  and  assorting  the  vast  accumulation  of 
deeds,  to  the  best  of  their  ability. 

"  At  the  end  of  a  fortnight  they  both  came  to  me  in 
great  excitement,  to  inform  me  that  they  had  come 
across  all  the  papers,  deeds,  and  parchments  for  gener- 
ations back  concerning  the  very  house  we  had  just 
rented,  and  into  which  we  had  settled.  This  was 


THE    GREY   WOMAN  133 

strange  indeed.  Till  this  moment  we  had  entertained 
not  the  smallest  suspicion  that  this  particular  house 
and  manor  had  ever  in  any  way  belonged  to  one  of  the 
family  from  which  my  husband  had  inherited  his  estate. 

"The  deeds  showed  that  in  1747,  the  great-great- 
uncle — if  he  may  be  so  termed,  there  being  no  blood- 
relationship — had  taken  this  particular  house  and  pro- 
perty along  with  another  much  larger  for  the  rest  of 
the  term  of  ninety-nine  years,  i.e.  for  the  remaining 
eighty-eight  years.  The  lease  had  terminated  in  1835. 
The  old  parchments  had  been  locked  up  and  probably 
had  never  been  looked  at  since. 

"A  week  later,  a  new  surprise.  My  husband  and 
daughter  in  overhauling  these  deeds  had  come,  as 
they  declared,  on  the  nurse.  On  the  margin  of  an  old 
deed  were  written  these  words : — 

"  '  Anna  Maria  Welland,  daughter  of  John  Welland, 
married  Mr.  Cresford  in  1771,  and  died  in  1772,  having 
only  been  married  fourteen  months.  She  left  an  only 
child,  born  March  8th,  1772,  died  the  following  year. 
Mrs.  Lock,  of  Old  Bond  Street,  took  the  body  in  a  box 
to  Barclay,  in  Gloucestershire  ;  Mrs.  Runt,  who  nursed 
the  child  that  died,  had  two  herself  by  Mr.  Cresford, 
one  of  whom  she  substituted  for  the  dead  child  of 
Anna  Maria,  the  wife  of  Mr.  Cresford.  Harkett,  a 
servant  of  Mr.  Cresford,  on  a  search  being  made  about 
two  years  ago  at  Barclay,  admitted  in  the  presence  of 
the  Hon.  Mr.  Maxwell  and  others,  the  fact  of  the  child 
having  been  placed  there  for  that  purpose,  and  then 
went  to  the  spot  under  Mr.  Cresford's  [word  illegible] 
room,  and  found  the  box  which  is  now  in  London. 
Mrs.  Runt  (the  nurse)  died  in  1826.  She  married  a 
miller  named  Harris,  and  she  admitted  to  Miss 
Birdwood  (who  is  now  living)  that  she  had  bastard 
children,  and  that  one  of  such  was  Mrs.  Francis.' " 


134  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

This  substituted  child  grew  up  and  inherited  the 
Welland  property  and  married  a  Mr.  Francis,  to  whom 
the  estate  went  after  her  death.  There  were  no  children. 
Here  is  the  pedigree  : — 

Samuel  Welland, 
d-  !73S' 

Walter,  John=.  .  .  Richard  ==. 

d.  1742.  d.  1746. 


L=.  .  .  i\.icnaru=.  .  . 


Anna  Maria==S.  Cresford—.  .  .  Runt.  Samuel, 


d.  1772. 


d.  1823.  d.  1826.  d.  1780. 


Anna,  Anna=Thos.  Francis. 

b.  1772,  (substituted  child), 

d.  1773.  d.  1811. 

In  the  above  account  and  in  the  pedigree  all  the 
names  are  fictitious  except  those  of  Mrs.  Runt  and  the 
servant,  Harkett. 

Now,  was  Mr.  Cresford  in  the  plot?  Did  Mrs.  Runt 
make  away  with  Anna,  the  daughter  of  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Cresford  ?  That  he  should  have  connived  at  the  murder 
of  his  child  is  improbable.  When  he  heard  that  Anna 
was  dead,  did  he  agree  to  have  the  body  smuggled 
away  in  a  box  to  his  own  family  seat  in  Gloucestershire, 
and  hidden  under  the  floor  in  his  room  ?  That  is  not 
so  unlikely.  That  he  was  an  utterly  unprincipled  man 
is  clear.  At  the  same  time  that  he  married  the  heiress 
of  the  Wellands,  he  was  carrying  on  an  intrigue  with 
Mrs.  Runt,  and  he  had  a  daughter  by  her  of  the  same 
age — or  thereabouts — as  his  legitimate  daughter  by  his 
wife. 

It  may  be  suspected  with  some  probability  that 
Mrs.  Runt  did  purposely  make  away  with  the  little 
heiress,  and  then,  having  told  Mr.  Cresford  that  it  had 
died  a  natural  death,  induced  him  to  agree  to  the 


THE   GREY   WOMAN  135 

substitution  of  his  bastard  daughter  for  his  legitimate 
child  who  was  dead,  so  that  this  bastard  might  inherit 
the  Welland  estate. 

The  stay  of  the  lady  who  wrote  the  above,  and  her 
husband  and  daughter,  at  this  Welland  House  was 
short.  Unexpectedly  their  own  mansion  became  vacant, 
and  they  moved  at  once  to  it.  But  during  the  time 
they  were  at  Welland  she  never  saw  the  Grey  Woman. 


ROBERT  LYDE  AND  THE  "FRIEND'S 
ADVENTURE" 

A  "RUE    and    Exact  Account  of  the  Retaking 
a  ship,    called   the  Friend's   Adventure   of 
Topsham,  from  the  French;  after  She  had 
been  taken  six  days,  and  they  were  upon 
the   Coasts  of  France  with  it  four  days.     When  one 
Englishman  and  a   Boy  set   upon  seven   Frenchmen, 
killed   two   of   them,    took   the   other   Five   prisoners, 
and  brought  the  said  Ship  and  them  safe  to  England. 
Their  Majesties'  Customs  of  the  said  Ship  amounted  to 
£1000  and  upwards.    Performed  and  written  by  Robert 
Lyde,  Mate  of  the  same  ship."     London,  1693. 

In  February,  1689,  Robert  Lyde,  of  Topsham, 
shipped  on  board  a  pink  of  the  same  port,  eighty  tons, 
Isaac  Stoneham,  master,  bound  for  Virginia,  and  on 
18  May  following  arrived  there,  took  in  a  lading,  and 
set  sail  in  company  with  a  hundred  merchantmen  for 
home  under  convoy  of  two  men-of-war.  A  fortnight 
after,  storms  separated  the  Topsham  boat  from  the 
convoy,  so  that  she  had  to  make  the  best  of  her  way 
home  alone,  and  on  19  October  came  up  with  two 
Plymouth  vessels  of  the  fleet  about  forty  leagues  west 
of  Scilly,  the  wind  easterly.  On  the  2ist  the  crew  saw 
four  other  ships  to  leeward  which  they  took  to  be  some 
of  their  consorts,  but  which  proved  to  be  French 
privateers.  They  managed  to  escape  them,  but  were 
captured  by  a  privateer  of  St.  Malo,  of  twenty-two 

136 


ROBERT   LYDE  137 

guns  and  over  a  hundred  men,  on  24  October,  and  were 
taken  to  St.  Malo  as  prisoners,  where  they  were  de- 
tained and  treated  with  gross  inhumanity,  during 
seventeen  days.  Lyde  says:  "  If  we  had  been  taken  by 
Turks,  we  could  not  have  been  used  worse.  For  bread 
we  had  6  Ibs.  and  one  cheek  of  a  Bullock  for  every  25 
men  for  a  day ;  and  it  fell  out  that  he  that  had  half  a 
Bullock's  eye  for  his  lot,  had  the  greatest  share." 
After  seventeen  days  they  were  all  removed  to  Dinan, 
where  were  many  other  English  prisoners  confined  in 
the  cramped  tower  of  the  fortification  that  is  still  stand- 
ing, with  its  small  cells.  Here  they  were  herded  to- 
gether in  a  place  not  fit  to  contain  one  quarter  of  the 
number,  and  there  they  were  retained  for  three  months 
and  ten  days.  "Our  allowance  was  3  Ib.  of  old  Cow- 
Beef  without  any  Salt  to  flavour  it,  for  seven  men  a 
day ;  but  I  think  we  had  2  Ibs.  of  Bread  for  each  Man, 
but  it  was  so  bad  that  Dogs  would  not  eat  it,  neither 
could  we  eat  but  very  little,  and  that  that  we  did  eat 
did  us  more  hurt  than  good,  for  'twas  more  Orts  than 
Bread,  so  we  gave  some  of  it  to  the  Hogs,  and  made 
Pillows  of  the  rest  to  lay  our  Heads  on,  for  they 
allowed  us  fresh  Straw  but  once  every  five  weeks,  so 
that  we  bred  such  swarms  of  lice  in  our  Rags  that  one 
Man  had  a  great  Hole  eaten  through  his  Throat  by 
them,  which  was  not  perceived  till  after  his  Death,  and 
I  myself  was  so  weak  that  it  was  14  weeks  after  my 
releasement  before  I  recovered  any  tolerable  strength 
in  me. 

4  *  They  plundered  us  of  our  Clothes  when  we 
were  taken,  and  some  of  us  that  had  Money  pur- 
chased Rugs  to  cover  our  Rags  by  day,  and  keep 
us  warm  by  night ;  but  upon  our  return  home  from 
France,  the  Deputy  Governor  of  Dinan  was  so  cruel 
as  to  order  our  said  Rugs  to  be  taken  from  us,  and 


138  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

staid  himself  and  saw  it  performed  ;  and  when  some  of 
our  fellow  Prisoners  lay  a  dying  they  inhumanly  stript 
off  some  of  their  Cloaths,  three  or  four  days  before 
they  were  quite  dead.  These  and  other  Barbarities 
made  so  great  an  Impression  upon  me,  as  that  I  did 
then  resolve  never  to  go  a  Prisoner  there  again,  and 
this  Resolution  I  did  ever  after  continue  in  and  by  the 
Assistance  of  God  always  will." 

Lyde  returned  to  his  home  at  Topsham,  an  exchange 
of  prisoners  having  been  effected,  but  not  till  four 
hundred  out  of  the  six  hundred  English  prisoners 
crowded  into  the  dungeons  at  Dinan  had  perished  of 
disease  and  starvation. 

In  his  Preface,  Lyde  says:  "I  here  present  you 
with  a  Token  of  God  Almighty's  Goodness  in  re- 
lieving me  from  the  Barbarity,  Inhumanity  and  most 
cruel  Slavery  of  the  Most  Christian  Turk  of  France, 
whose  Delight  it  was  to  make  his  own  Subjects  Slaves, 
and  his  chief  Study  to  put  Prisoners  of  War  to  the 
most  tedious  and  cruel  lingering  Death  of  Hunger 
and  Cold,  as  I  have  been  experimentally  (to  my  own 
Damage  both  felt  and  seen),  by  a  five  Months'  Con- 
finement in  this  Country." 

Shortly  after  his  return  to  Topsham  Lyde  shipped 
as  mate  of  a  vessel,  the  Friend's  Adventure,  eighty 
tons,  bound  for  Oporto,  and  sailed  on  30  September, 
1691.  Oporto  was  reached  in  safety,  but  on  the  way 
back,  off  Cape  Finisterre,  the  vessel  was  taken  by  a 
French  privateer.  Resistance  had  been  impossible, 
at  all  events  must  have  been  unavailing,  but  before 
surrendering  Lyde  concealed  a  blunderbuss  and  ammu- 
nition between  decks  among  the  pipes  of  wine.  When 
the  Friend's  Adventure  was  boarded  the  lieutenant 
ordered  Lyde  and  a  boy  to  remain  on  her,  and  the 
master,  four  men,  and  another  boy  were  conveyed  on 


ROBERT    LYDE  139 

board  the  privateer.  Seven  Frenchmen  were  left  on  the 
Friend's  Adventure  to  navigate  her  and  take  her  to 
St.  Malo.  This  done,  the  privateer  departed.  Lyde 
was  determined  not  to  go  through  his  former  experi- 
ences as  a  prisoner  in  France,  and  he  endeavoured  to 
induce  the  boy  to  assist  him  against  the  French  crew, 
but  the  lad  was  timorous,  thought  such  an  attempt  as 
Lyde  promised  must  fail,  and  repeatedly  refused  to 
take  any  part  in  it.  The  boat  was  not  very  seaworthy, 
and  needed  much  bailing.  As  the  boy  represented  to 
the  mate,  even  if  they  did  overmaster  the  French  crew, 
how  could  they  navigate  the  vessel  and  keep  the 
pumps  going  till  they  reached  England? 

After  a  few  days  they  approached  St.  Malo,  and  the 
repugnance  in  Lyde's  mind  against  renewing  his  ex- 
periences there  and  at  Dinan  became  overmastering. 

"  At  8  in  the  morning  all  the  Frenchmen  sat  round 
the  Cabbin's  Table  at  Breakfast,  and  they  call'd  me  to 
eat  with  them,  and  accordingly  I  accepted,  but  the 
Sight  of  the  Frenchmen  did  immediately  take  away 
my  Stomach,  and  made  me  sweat  as  if  I  had  been  in 
a  Stove,  and  was  ready  to  faint  with  eagerness  to 
encounter  them.  Which  the  Master  perceiving,  and 
seeing  me  in  that  condition,  asked  me  (in  French)  if  I 
were  sick,  and  I  answered  Yes  !  But  could  stay  no 
longer  in  sight  of  them,  and  so  went  immediately 
down  between  Decks  to  the  Boy  and  did  earnestly 
intreat  him  to  go  presently  with  me  into  the  Cabbin, 
and  to  stand  behind  me,  and  I  would  kill  and  com- 
mand all  the  rest  presently.  For  now  I  told  him  was 
the  best  Time  for  me  to  attack  them,  while  they  were 
round  the  Table,  and  knock  down  but  one  man  in 
case  Two  laid  hold  upon  me,  and  it  may  be  never  the 
like  opportunity  again.  After  many  importunities, 
the  Boy  asked  me  after  what  manner  I  intended  to 


140  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

encounter  them  ;  I  told  him  I  would  take  the  Crow  of 
Iron  and  hold  it  in  the  Middle  with  both  Hands,  and 
I  would  go  into  the  Cabbin  and  knock  down  him  that 
stood  at  the  end  of  the  Table  on  my  right  Hand,  and 
stick  the  point  of  the  Crow  into  him  that  sat  at  the  end 
of  the  Table,  on  my  left  Hand,  and  then  for  the  other 
five  that  sat  behind  the  Table.  But  still  he  not  con- 
senting, I  had  second  thoughts  of  undertaking  it 
without  him,  but  the  Cabbin  was  so  low  that  I  could 
not  stand  upright  in  it  by  a  foot,  which  made  me  at 
that  time  desist. 

"  By  this  time  they  had  eat  their  Breakfast,  and  went 
out  upon  Deck  ;  then  I  told  the  boy  with  much  trouble, 
We  had  lost  a  grave  opportunity,  for  by  this  time  I  had 
had  the  ship  under  my  command.  Nay,  says  the  Boy, 
I  rather  believe  that  by  this  time  you  and  I  should  have 
both  been  killed." 

Lyde  then,  to  stimulate  the  slack  fellow  to  action, 
recounted  to  him  the  miseries  to  which  he  would  be 
subjected  in  prison  in  France. 

"  In  a  little  time  after  they  had  been  upon  Deck,  they 
separated  from  each  other,  viz.  the  Master  lay  down  in 
his  Cabbin  and  two  of  the  Men  lay  down  in  the  Great 
Cabbin  and  one  in  a  Cabbin  between  Decks,  and 
another  sat  down  upon  a  low  Stool  by  the  Helm,  to 
look  after  the  Glass,  to  call  the  Pumps,  and  the  other 
two  men  walked  upon  the  Decks.  Then,  hoping  I 
should  prevail  with  the  Boy  to  stand  by  me,  I  immedi- 
ately applied  myself  to  Prayer,  desiring  God  to  pardon 
my  Sins,  and  I  prayed  also  for  my  Enemies  who  should 
happen  to  dye  by  my  Hands.  And  then  I  endeavoured 
again  to  persuade  the  Boy — but  could  not  prevail  with 
him  to  Consent. 

"Then  the  Glass  was  out,  it  being  half  after  eight, 
and  the  two  men  that  were  upon  Deck  went  to  pump 


ROBERT    LYDE  141 

out  the  Water.  Then  I  also  went  upon  Deck  again,  to 
see  whether  the  Wind  and  Weather  were  like  to  favour 
my  Enterprize,  and  casting  my  Eyes  to  Windward,  I 
liked  the  Weather,  and  hop'd  the  Wind  would  stand. 
And  then  immediately  went  down  to  the  Boy,  and 
beg'd  of  him  again  to  stand  by  me,  while  two  of  the 
men  were  at  the  Pumps  (for  they  pumpt  on  the  star- 
board side,  and  the  Steeridge  Door  open  on  the  star- 
board side,  so  that  they  could  not  see  me  going  aft  to 
them  in  the  Cabbin).  But  I  could  by  no  Persuasions 
prevail  with  the  Boy,  so  that  by  this  Time  the  Men  had 
done  Pumping ;  whereupon  losing  this  opportunity 
caused  me  again  to  be  a  little  angry  with  the  Boy." 

Again  Lyde  warned  the  lad  of  the  horrors  before 
him  if  taken  a  prisoner  to  S.  Malo.  The  boy  replied 
that  rather  than  endure  such  distresses  he  would  turn 
Papist,  and  volunteer  on  board  a  French  privateer. 
This  roused  Lyde's  wrath,  and  he  said  some  very  strong 
things.  He  told  him  that  this  would  not  help  him  ; 
some  of  the  English  prisoners  of  war  with  himself  had 
turned  Papists,  but  had  already  become  so  attenuated 
by  disease  and  suffering  that  they  had  died. 

"The  Boy  asked  What  I  would  have  him  do?  I 
told  him  to  knock  down  that  Man  at  the  Helm,  and  I 
will  kill  and  command  all  the  rest.  Saith  the  Boy,  If 
you  be  sure  to  overcome  them,  how  many  do  you 
count  to  kill  ?  I  answered  that  I  intended  to  kill  three 
of  them.  Then  the  Boy  replied,  Why  three  and  no 
more?  I  answered  that  I  would  kill  three  for  three  of 
our  men  that  died  in  Prison  when  I  was  there.  And  if 
it  should  please  God  that  I  should  get  home  safe  I 
would  if  I  could  go  in  a  Man-of-War  or  Fireship,  and 
endeavour  to  revenge  on  the  Enemy  for  the  Death  of 
those  400  Men  that  died  in  the  same  Prison  of  Dinan. 
But  the  Boy  said  Four  alive  would  be  too  many  for  us. 


142  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

I  then  replied  that  I  would  kill  but  three,  but  I  would 
break  the  Legs  and  the  Arms  of  the  rest  if  they  won't 
take  quarter  and  be  quiet  without  it." 

After  a  long  discussion  and  much  inquiry,  the  boy 
was  finally  induced  to  give  a  reluctant  consent  to  help. 
The  attempt  was  to  be  made  that  day.  "  At  9  in 
the  morning  the  two  men  upon  Deck  were  pumping  ; 
then  I  turned  out  from  the  Sail,  where  the  Boy  and  I 
then  lay'd,  and  pull'd  off  my  Coat  that  I  might  be  the 
more  nimble  in  the  Action.  I  went  up  the  Gunroom 
Scuttle  into  the  Steeridge,  to  see  what  Position  they 
were  in,  and  being  satisfied  therein.  Then  the  Boy 
coming  to  me,  I  leapt  up  the  gunroom  Scuttle,  and 
said,  Lord  be  with  us  !  and  I  told  the  Boy  that  the 
Drive  Bolt  was  by  the  Scuttle,  in  the  Steeridg  ;  and 
then  I  went  softly  aft  into  the  Cabbin,  and  put  my 
Back  against  the  Bulkehead  and  took  the  Jam  Can, 
and  held  it  with  both  my  Hands  in  the  middle  part, 
and  put  my  legs  abroad  to  shorten  myself,  because  the 
Cabbin  was  very  low.  But  he  that  lay  nighest  to  me, 
hearing  me,  opened  his  eyes,  and  perceiving  my  intent, 
endeavoured  to  rise,  to  make  resistance  ;  but  I  pre- 
vented him  by  a  Blow  upon  his  Forehead,  which 
mortally  wounded  him,  and  the  other  Man  which  lay 
with  his  Back  to  the  dying  Man's  side,  hearing  the 
Blow,  turned  about  and  faced  me,  and  as  he  was  rising 
with  his  left  Elbow,  very  fiercely  endeavouring  to  come 
against  me,  I  struck  at  him,  and  he  let  himself  fall 
from  his  left  Arm,  and  held  his  Arm  for  a  Guard, 
whereby  did  keep  off  a  great  part  of  the  Blow,  but  still 
his  Head  received  a  great  part  of  the  Blow. 

"  The  Master  lying  in  the  Cabbin  on  my  right  Hand, 
hearing  the  two  Blows,  rose  and  sate  in  the  Cabbin 
and  called  me — bad  names ;  but  I  having  my  eyes 
every  way,  I  push't  at  his  Ear  with  the  Claws  of  the 


ROBERT   LYDE  143 

Crow,  but  he,  falling  back  for  fear  thereof,  it  seemed 
afterwards  that  I  struck  the  Claws  of  the  Crow  into 
his  Cheek,  which  Blow  made  him  lie  Still  as  if  he  had 
been  Dead ;  and  while  I  struck  at  the  Master,  the 
Fellow  that  fended  off  the  Blow  with  his  Arm,  rose 
upon  his  Legs,  and  running  towards  me,  with  his 
Head  low,  to  ram  his  Head  against  my  Breast  to  over- 
set me,  but  I  pusht  the  point  at  his  Head.  It  struck  it 
an  inch  and  a  half  into  his  Forehead,  and  as  he  was 
falling  down,  I  took  hold  of  him  by  the  Back,  and 
turn'd  him  into  the  Steeridg. 

"I  heard  the  Boy  strike  the  Man  at  the  Helm  two 
Blows,  after  I  had  knock'd  down  the  first  Man,  which 
two  Blows  made  him  lye  very  still,  and  as  soon  as  I 
turn'd  the  Man  out  of  the  Cabbin,  I  struck  one  more 
Blow  at  him  that  I  struck  first  and  burst  his  Head,  so 
that  his  Blood  and  Brains  ran  out  upon  the  Deck. 

"  The  Master  all  the  while  did  not  stir,  which  made 
me  conclude  that  I  had  struck  him  under  the  Ear,  and 
had  killed  him  with  the  Blow. 

"  Then  I  went  out  to  attack  the  two  Men  that  were 
at  the  Pump,  where  they  continued  Pumping,  without 
hearing  or  knowing  what  I  had  done  ;  and  as  I  was 
going  to  them,  I  saw  that  Man  that  I  had  turn'd  into 
the  Steeridg  crawling  out  upon  his  Hands  and  Knees 
upon  the  Deck,  beating  his  Hands  upon  the  Deck,  to 
make  a  Noise,  that  the  Men  at  the  Pump  might  hear, 
for  he  could  not  cry  out,  nor  speak.  And  when  they 
heard  him,  and  seeing  his  Blood  running  out  of  his 
Forehead,  they  came  running  aft  to  me,  grinding  their 
Teeth ;  but  I  met  them  as  they  came  within  the 
Steeridg  Door,  and  struck  at  them,  but  the  Steeridg 
being  not  above  4ft.  high,  I  could  not  have  a  ful  Blow 
at  them,  whereupon  they  fended  off  the  Blow,  and  took 
hold  of  the  Crow  with  both  their  Hands  close  to  mine, 


144  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

striving  to  hawl  it  from  me.  Then  the  Boy  might 
have  knockt  them  down  with  much  ease,  while  they 
were  contending  with  me,  but  that  his  heart  failed  him, 
so  that  he  stood  like  a  Stake  at  a  distance  on  their  left 
side,  and  2  Foots  length  off,  the  Crow  being  behind 
their  Hands.  I  called  to  the  Boy  to  take  hold  of  it, 
and  hawl  as  they  did,  and  I  would  let  go  all  at  once, 
which  the  Boy  accordingly  doing,  I  pusht  the  Crow 
towards  them,  and  let  it  go,  and  was  taking  out  my 
Knife  to  traverse  amongst  them,  but  they  seeing  me 
put  my  right  hand  into  my  Pocket,  fearing  what  would 
follow,  they  both  let  go  of  the  Crow  to  the  Boy,  and 
took  hold  of  my  right  Arm  with  both  their  Hands. 

"The  Master,  that  I  thought  I  had  killed  in  his 
Cabbin,  coming  to  himself,  and  hearing  they  had  hold 
of  me,  came  out  of  his  Cabbin,  and  also  took  hold  of 
me  with  both  his  Hands  about  my  Middle.  Then  one 
of  the  Men  that  had  hold  of  my  right  Arm  let  go,  and 
put  his  Back  to  my  Breast,  and  took  hold  of  my  left 
Hand  and  Arm,  and  held  it  close  to  his  Breast,  and 
the  Master  let  go  from  my  Middle,  and  took  hold  of 
my  right  Arm,  and  he  with  the  other  that  had  hold  of 
my  right  Arm  did  strive  to  get  me  off  my  Legs ;  but 
knowing  that  I  should  not  be  long  in  one  piece  if  they 
got  me  down,  I  put  my  right  Foot  against  the  Ship's 
side,  on  the  Deck,  for  a  support,  and  with  the  assist- 
ance of  God,  I  kept  my  Feet,  when  they  three  and  one 
more  did  strive  to  throw  me  down,  for  the  Man  at  the 
Helm  that  the  Boy  knocked  down  rose  up  and  put  his 
Hands  about  my  Middle  and  strove  to  hawl  me  down. 
The  Boy  seeing  that  Man  rise  and  take  hold  of  me, 
cried  out,  fearing  then  that  I  should  be  overcome  of 
them,  but  did  not  come  to  help  me,  nor  did  not  Strike 
one  Blow  at  any  of  them  neither  all  the  time. 

"When  I  heard  the  Boy  cry  out,  I  said,  '  Do  you 


ROBERT   LYDE  145 

cry,  you  Villain,  now  I  am  in  such  a  condition  !  Come 
quickly,  and  knock  this  Man  on  the  Head  that  hath 
hold  of  my  left  Arm ' ;  the  Boy  perceiving  that  my 
Heart  did  not  fail  me,  took  some  courage  from  thence, 
and  endeavoured  to  give  that  man  a  Blow  on  the  Head, 
with  the  Drive-Bolt,  but  struck  so  faintly  that  he  mist 
his  Blow,  which  greatly  enraged  me  against  him. 

"I,  feeling  the  Frenchman  that  held  about  my 
middle  hang  very  heavy,  I  said  to  the  Boy,  '  Do  you 
miss  your  Blow,  and  I  in  such  a  Condition  ?  Go  round 
the  Binkle  and  knock  down  that  Man  that  hangeth  upon 
my  Back,'  which  was  the  same  Man  the  Boy  knock't 
down  at  the  Helm.  So  the  Boy  did  strike  him  one 
Blow  upon  the  Head,  which  made  him  fall,  but  he  rose 
up  again  immediately,  but  being  uncapable  of  making 
any  further  resistance,  he  went  out  upon  Deck  stagger- 
ing to  and  fro,  without  any  further  Molestance  from  the 
Boy.  Then  I  look't  about  the  Beams  for  a  Marlin- 
Speek,  and  seeing  one  hanging  with  a  strap  to  a  nail 
on  the  Larboard  Side,  I  jerk't  my  right  Arm  forth  and 
back,  which  clear'd  the  two  Men's  Hands  from  my 
right  Arm,  and  took  hold  of  the  Marlin-Speek,  and 
struck  the  Point  four  times,  about  a  quarter  of  an  inch 
deep  into  the  Skull  of  that  man  that  had  hold  of  my 
left  Arm,  before  they  took  hold  of  my  right  Arm  again. 
And  I  struck  the  Marlin-Speek  three  times  into  his 
Head  after  they  had  hold  of  me,  which  caused  him  to 
Screech  out,  but  they  having  hold  of  me,  took  off 
much  of  the  force  of  the  three  Blows,  and  being  a 
strong-hearted  Man,  he  would  not  let  go  his  hold  of 
me,  and  the  two  men,  finding  that  my  right  Arm  was 
stronger  than  their  four  Arms  were,  and  observing  the 
Strap  of  the  Marlin-Speek  to  fall  up  and  down  upon 
the  back  of  my  Hand,  one  of  them  let  go  his  right 
Hand  and  Took  hold  of  the  Strap  and  hawl'd  the 
L 


146  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

Marlin-Speek  out  of  my  Hand,  and  I,  fearing  what  in 
all  likelyhood  would  follow,  I  put  my  right  Hand  before 
my  Head  as  a  Guard,  although  three  Hands  had  hold 
of  that  Arm  ;  for  I  concluded  he  would  knock  me  on  the 
Head  with  it ; — but,  through  God's  Providence  it  fell 
out  of  his  Hand  and  so  close  to  the  Ship's  side  that 
he  could  not  reach  it  again  without  letting  go  his  other 
Hand  from  mine,  so  he  took  hold  of  my  Arm  with  the 
other  Hand  again. 

"  At  this  time  the  Almighty  God  gave  me  strength 
enough  to  take  one  Man  in  one  Hand,  and  throw  at 
the  other's  Head.  Then  it  pleased  God  to  put  me  in 
mind  of  my  Knife  in  my  Pocket,  and  although  two  of 
the  Men  had  hold  of  my  right  Arm,  yet  God  Almighty 
strengthened  me  so  that  I  put  my  right  Hand  into  my 
Pocket,  and  took  out  my  Knife  and  Sheath,  holding  it 
behind  my  Hand  that  they  should  not  see  it ;  but  I 
could  not  draw  it  out  of  the  Sheath  with  my  left  Hand, 
because  the  Man  that  I  struck  on  the  Head  with  the 
Marlin-Speek  had  still  hold  of  it,  with  his  Back  to  my 
Breast ;  so  I  put  it  between  my  Legs,  and  drew  it  out, 
and  then  cut  the  Man's  Throat  with  it,  that  had  his 
Back  to  my  Breast,  and  he  immediately  dropt  down, 
and  scarce  ever  stirr'd  after.  Then  with  my  left  Arm 
I  gave  both  the  Men  a  Push  from  me,  and  hawl'd  my 
right  Arm  with  a  jerk  to  me,  and  so  clear'd  it  of  both 
of  them  ;  and  fetching  a  strike  with  intent  to  cut  both 
their  Throats  at  once,  they  immediately  apprehended 
the  Danger  they  were  in,  put  their  Hands  together  and 
held  them  up,  crying,  Corte,  corte  (i.e.  Quarter),  Moun- 
seery  moy  allay  par  Angleterre  si  vou  plea.  With  that 
I  stopt  my  Hand,  and  said  Good  Quarter  you  shall 
have.  A  lie  a  pro  (Go  to  the  Fore),  and  then  I  put  up 
my  Knife  into  the  Sheath  again. 

4  *  Then  I  made  fast  the  Steeridg  Door,  and  ordered 


ROBERT   LYDE  147 

the  Boy  to  stand  by  it,  and  to  keep  it  fast,  and  to  look 
through  the  Blunderbuss  Holes,  and  if  he  did  see  any 
Man  coming  towards  the  Door,  he  should  tell  me  of  it, 
and  come  into  the  Cabbin  for  the  Blunderbuss  and 
Amunition  which  I  had  hid  away  before  we  were 
taken. 

"  After  that  I  had  loaden,  I  came  out  with  it  into  the 
Steeridg  and  look't  forward,  out  of  the  Companion,  to 
see  if  any  Man  did  lye  over  the  Steeridg  Door — but 
seeing  no  Man  there,  I  went  out  upon  Deck  and  look't 
up  to  the  Maintop,  for  fear  the  two  wounded  Men  were 
there  and  should  throw  down  anything  upon  my  Head  ; 
but  seeing  no  Man  there,  I  asked  the  Boy  if  he  could 
tell  what  was  become  of  the  two  wounded  Men  that 
came  to  themselves  and  went  out  upon  the  Deck  whilst 
I  was  engaged  with  the  three  Men  in  the  Steeridg. 
The  Boy  told  me  they  had  scrambled  over-board.  But 
I  thought  it  very  strange  that  they  should  be  accessary 
to  their  own  deaths.  Then  I  ordered  the  Boy  to  stand 
by  the  Steeridg  Door  to  see  if  that  Man  betwixt  Decks 
did  come  up,  and  if  he  did,  to  tell  me. 

"Then  I  went  forward  to  the  Two  Men  that  had 
cried  for  Quarter,  but  they,  being  afraid,  ran  forward 
and  were  going  up  the  Fore-shrouds,  but  I  held  up  the 
Blunderbuss  at  them,  and  said,  Veni  abau  et  montea 
Cuttelia  et  ally  abau,1  and  then  they  put  off  their  Hats 
and  said,  Monsieur,  moy  travally  pur  Angleterre  sivous 
plea;  but  I  answered  Alle  abau,  for  I  don't  want  any 
Help ;  and  then  they  unlid  the  Scuttle,  and  went 
down.  Then  I  went  forward,  and  as  I  came  before 
the  foot  of  the  Mainsail  I  look't  up  to  the  Foretop, 
and  seeing  no  Man  there,  I  look't  down  in  the  Fore- 
castle, and  showed  the  two  men  a  Scuttle  on  the  lar- 
board side  that  went  down  into  the  Forepeak,  and 

1  "  Venez  en  has,  et  montez  le  '  Scuttle'  et  allez  en  has." 


148  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

said  :  Le  Monte  Cuttelia  et  ally  abau.  They  unlid  the 
Scuttle,  and  put  off  their  Hats  and  step't  down. 

"Then  I  call'd  down  to  them  and  asked  them  if  they 
saw  any  Men  betwixt  Decks  as  they  went  down,  and 
they  answered  No.  Then  I  call'd  forward  the  Boy  and 
gave  him  the  Blunderbuss  and  bid  him  present  it 
down  the  Forecastle,  and  if  he  saw  any  Men  take  hold 
of  me,  or  if  I  call'd  on  him  for  help,  then  he  should  be 
sure  to  discharge  the  Blunderbuss  at  us,  and  kill  us  all 
together,  if  he  could  not  shoot  them  without  me. 

"  Then  I  took  the  Boy's  Bolt  and  put  my  head  down 
the  Scuttle,  and  seeing  no  Man  there  I  leap't  down  in 
the  Forecastle  and  laid  the  Scuttle  and  nail'd  it  fast, 
and  thought  myself  fast,  seeing  two  killed  and  two 
secured. 

"Then  I  went  upon  Deck,  and  took  the  Blunderbuss 
from  the  Boy  and  gave  him  the  Bolt,  and  went  aft, 
and  ordered  the  Boy  as  before  to  stand  by  the  Steeridg 
Door,  and  give  me  an  account  if  he  saw  any  Man 
come  towards  him  with  a  Handspike  ;  and  then  I  went 
aft  into  the  Cabbin,  and  cut  two  Candles  in  four  pieces 
and  lighted  them,  one  I  left  burning  upon  the  Table, 
the  other  three  I  carried  in  my  left  Hand,  and  the 
Blunderbuss  in  my  right  Hand  ;  and  I  put  my  Head 
down  the  Gun-room  Scuttle  and  look't  around,  and 
seeing  no  Man  there,  I  leap't  down  and  went  to  the 
Man  that  lay  all  the  time  asleep  in  a  Cabbin  betwixt 
Decks,  and  took  him  by  the  Shoulder  with  my  left  Hand, 
and  wakened  him,  and  presented  the  Blunderbuss  at 
him  with  my  right  Hand,  and  commanded  him  out  of 
his  Cabbin,  and  made  him  stand  still,  till  I  got  up  into 
the  Steeridg.  Then  I  call'd  the  Man,  and  he  stand- 
ing on  the  Scuttle  and  seeing  the  Man  that  had  his 
Throat  cut  almost  buried  in  his  Blood,  he  wrung  his 
Hands,  crying  out,  O  Jesu  Maria  !  I  told  him  I 


ROBERT   LYDE  149 

had  nothing  to  do  with  Maria  now.  Monte,  monte  et 
allez  a  pro!  Then  he  came  up  and  went  forward  look- 
ing round  to  see  his  Companions,  but  I  followed  him, 
and  made  him  go  down  into  the  Forecastle.  Then  I 
gave  the  Boy  the  Blunderbuss  and  ordered  him  to 
present  it  at  the  Man  if  he  perceived  him  to  come 
towards  me  while  I  was  opening  the  Scuttle,  then  to 
shoot  him. 

"  Then  I  took  the  Crow  and  leap't  down  with  it  into 
the  Forecastle  and  drew  the  Spikes  and  opened  the 
Scuttle,  and  bid  the  Man  come  down  and  joyn  his 
Companions.  And  after  that  I  nailed  down  the  Scuttle 
again,  and  went  aft  and  ordered  the  Boy  to  stand  by 
the  Steeridg  Door  again,  and  I  took  the  Candles  and 
the  Blunderbuss  and  went  down  between  Decks  and 
looked  in  all  Holes  and  Corners  for  the  two  wounded 
Men  and  found  them  not.  Then  I  went  on  Deck,  and 
told  the  Boy  I  could  not  find  the  Men,  and  he  said  they 
were  certainly  run  overboard.  I  told  him  I  would  know 
what  was  become  of  them  before  I  made  sail. 

"  Then  I  told  the  Boy  I  would  go  up  into  the  Main- 
top, and  see  if  they  were  there  ;  and  so  I  gave  him  the 
Blunderbuss  and  bid  him  present  it  at  the  Maintop, 
and  if  he  saw  any  man  look  out  over  the  Top  with  any- 
thing in  his  Hand  to  throw  at  me,  he  should  then  shoot 
them.  Then  I  took  the  Boy's  Bolt,  and  went  up,  and 
when  I  was  got  to  the  Puddick  Shrouds  I  look'd  forwards 
to  the  Foretop,  I  saw  the  two  Men  were  cover'd  with  the 
Foretopsail,  and  their  Sashes  bound  about  their  Heads 
to  keep  in  the  Blood,  and  they  had  made  a  great  part 
of  the  Foretopsail  Bloody,  and  as  the  Ship  rould,  the 
Blood  ran  over  the  Top.  Then  I  calPd  to  them,  and 
they  turn'd  out  and  went  down  on  their  knees,  and 
wrung  their  Hands,  and  cried,  O  corte,  corte,  Monsieur. 
Then  I  said,  Good  Quarter  shall  you  have,  And  I 


150  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

went  down  and  calPd  to  them  to  come  down,  and  he 
that  the  Boy  wounded  came  down,  and  kissed  my 
Hand  over  and  over,  and  went  down  into  the  Fore- 
castle very  willingly.  But  the  other  Man  was  one  of 
the  three  that  I  designed  to  kill ;  he  delayed  his 
Coming.  I  took  the  Blunderbuss  and  said  I  would 
shoot  him  down,  and  then  he  came  a  little  way  and 
stood  still,  and  begged  me  to  give  him  Quarter.  I 
told  him  if  he  would  come  down  he  should  have 
quarter.  Then  he  came  down  and  I  gave  the  Boy 
the  Blunderbuss" — and  then  ensued  the  redrawing 
of  the  nails  and  the  reopening  of  the  scuttle,  so  as  to 
thrust  these  two  wounded  men  in  with  the  others. 
But  Lyde  called  up  one  of  the  men,  a  fellow  of  about 
four-and-twenty,  and  who  had  shown  Lyde  some  kind- 
ness when  he  was  a  prisoner  on  the  ship.  We  need 
not  follow  Lyde  in  his  voyage  home.  He  made  the 
Frenchman  help  to  navigate  the  vessel.  But  they  had 
still  many  difficulties  to  overcome,  the  weather  was 
rough,  the  ship  leaked,  and  there  were  but  Lyde  and 
the  Frenchman  and  the  boy  to  handle  her. 

Even  when  he  did  reach  the  mouth  of  the  Exe, 
though  he  signalled  for  a  pilot,  none  would  come  out 
to  him,  as  he  had  no  English  colours  on  board  to  hoist, 
and  he  was  obliged  to  beat  about  all  night  and  next  day 
in  Torbay  till  the  tide  would  serve  for  crossing  the 
bar  at  Exmouth.  Again  he  signalled  for  a  pilot.  The 
boat  came  out,  but  would  approach  only  near  enough 
to  be  hailed.  Only  then,  when  the  pilot  was  satisfied 
that  this  was  not  a  privateer  of  the  enemy,  would  he 
come  on  board,  and  steer  her  to  Starcross,  which 
Lyde  calls  Stair-cross.  Thence  he  sent  his  prisoners 
to  Topsham  in  the  Customs  House  wherry.  There 
they  were  examined  by  the  doctor,  who  pronounced 
the  condition  of  two  of  them  hopeless. 


ROBERT   LYDE  151 

Lyde's  troubles  were  by  no  means  over ;  for  the 
owners  of  the  Friend's  Adventure  were  vastly  angry  at 
her  having  been  brought  safely  back.  She  had  been 
insured  by  them  for  £560,  and  when  valued  was 
knocked  down  for  £170;  and  they  did  much  to  annoy 
and  harass  Lyde,  and  prevent  him  getting  another 
ship. 

However,  his  story  got  about,  and  the  Marquess  of 
Carmarthen  introduced  him  to  Queen  Mary,  who 
presented  him  with  a  gold  medal  and  chain,  and  re- 
commended him  to  the  Lords  of  the  Admiralty  for 
preferment  in  the  Fleet. 

With  this  his  narrative  ends.  He  expresses  his 
hope  to  serve  their  Majesties,  and  to  have  another 
whack  at  the  Frenchmen. 


JOSEPH    PITTS 

JOSEPH  PITTS,  of  Exeter,  was  the  son  of  John 
Pitts    of   that    city.      When    aged    fourteen    or 
fifteen  he  became  a  sailor.      After  two  or  three 
voyages,   very  short,   he  shipped   on   board  the 
Speedwell,    on    Easter    Tuesday,    1678,    at    Lympston, 
bound  for  the  Western  Islands,  from  thence  to  New- 
foundland, thence  to  Bilbao,  and  so  by  the  Canaries, 
home.     Newfoundland  was  reached,  but  on  the  voyage 
to  Bilbao  the  ship  was  boarded  and  taken  by  Algerine 
pirates. 

"The  very  first  words  they  spake,  and  the  very  first 
thing  they  did  was  Beating  us  with  Ropes,  saying  : 
*  Into  Boat,  you  English  Dogs  ! '  and  without  the  least 
opposition,  with  fear,  we  tumbled  into  their  Boat,  we 
scarce  knew  how.  They  having  loaded  their  Boat, 
carried  us  aboard  their  Ship,  and  diligent  Search  was 
made  about  us  for  Money,  but  they  found  none.  We 
were  the  first  Prize  they  had  taken  for  that  Voyage, 
and  they  had  been  out  at  Sea  about  six  weeks.  As 
for  our  vessel,  after  they  had  taken  out  of  her  what 
they  thought  fit  and  necessary  for  their  use,  they  sunk 
her  ;  for  she  being  laden  with  Fish,  they  thought  it 
not  worth  while  to  carry  her  home  to  Algier. 

"About  Four  or  Five  Days  after  our  being  thus 
taken,  they  met  with  another  small  English  Ship,  with 
Five  or  Six  Men  aboard,  which  was  served  as  ours 
was.  And  Two  or  Three  Days  after  that,  they  espied 

152 


JOSEPH   PITTS  153. 

another  small  English  Vessel,  with  Five  or  Six  men 
aboard  laden  with  Fish,  and  coming  from  New  Eng- 
land. This  Vessel  was  at  their  first  view  of  her  some 
Leagues  at  Windward  of  them,  and  there  being  but 
little  Wind,  and  so  they  being  out  of  hopes  of  getting 
up  to  her,  they  us'd  this  cunning  device,  They  hawled 
up  their  Sails,  and  hang'd  out  our  English  King's 
Colours,  and  so  appearing  Man  of  War  like  decoyed 
her  down,  and  sunk  her  also. 

"Two  or  Three  days  after  this,  they  took  a  fourth 
little  English  Ship  with  four  or  five  Men  a-board  laden 
with  Herrings,  of  which  they  took  out  most  part,  and 
then  sunk  the  Ship." 

The  pirates  now  returned  to  Algiers,  and  their  cap- 
tured Christians  were  driven  to  the  palace  of  the  Dey, 
who  had  a  right  to  select  an  eighth  of  them  for  the 
public  service  and  also  to  retain  an  eighth  part  of  the 
spoils  taken  from  the  prizes.  His  selection  being 
made,  the  rest  were  driven  to  the  market-place  and 
put  up  to  auction. 

Joseph  Pitts  was  bought  by  one  Mustapha,  who 
treated  him  with  excessive  barbarity. 

"Within  Eight  and  forty  Hours  after  I  was  sold,  I 
tasted  of  their  (Algerine)  Cruelty  ;  for  I  had  my  tender 
Feet  tied  up,  and  beaten  Twenty  or  Thirty  Blows,  for  a 
beginning.  And  thus  was  I  beaten  for  a  considerable 
Time,  every  two  or  three  days,  besides  Blows  now  and 
then,  forty,  fifty,  sixty,  at  a  time.  My  Executioner 
would  fill  his  Pipe,  and  then  give  me  ten  or  twenty 
Blows,  and  then  stop  and  smoak  his  Pipe  for  a  while, 
and  then  he  would  at  me  again,  and  when  weary  stop 
again  ;  and  thus  cruelly  would  he  handle  me  till  his 
Pipe  was  out.  At  other  times  he  would  hang  me  up 
by  Neck  and  Heels,  and  then  beat  me  miserably. 
Sometimes  he  would  hang  me  up  by  the  Armpits,  beat- 


154  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

ing  me  all  over  my  Body,  And  oftentimes  Hot  Brine 
was  order'd  for  me  to  put  my  Feet  into,  after  they  were 
sore  with  beating,  which  put  me  to  intolerable  Smart. 
Sometimes  I  have  been  beaten  on  my  Feet  so  long,  and 
cruelly,  that  the  Blood  hath  run  down  my  Feet  to  the 
Ground.  I  have  oftentimes  been  beaten  by  my  Pat- 
roon  so  violently  on  my  Breech,  that  it  hath  been  black 
all  over,  and  very  much  swollen,  and  hard  almost  as  a 
Board  ;  insomuch,  that  I  have  not  been  able  to  sit  for 
a  considerable  Time." 

After  two  or  three  months,  Mustapha  sent  him  to  sea 
in  a  pirate  vessel,  in  which  he  was  interested,  to  attend 
on  the  gunner.  The  expedition  was  not  very  success- 
ful, as  only  one  ship  was  taken,  a  Portuguese,  with  a 
crew  of  eighteen  who  were  enslaved.  On  his  return  to 
Algiers,  after  having  been  a  couple  of  months  at  sea,  he 
was  sold  to  a  second  "Patroon,"  named  Ibrahim,  who 
had  "  two  Brothers  in  Algiers  and  a  third  in  Tunis. 
The  middle  Brother  had  designed  to  make  a  Voyage  to 
Tunis  to  see  his  Brother  there ;  and  it  seems  I  was 
bought  in  order  to  be  given  as  a  Present  to  him.  I  was 
then  cloth'd  very  fine,  that  I  might  be  the  better  accepted. 
The  Ship  being  ready  we  put  to  Sea,  and  in  about  four- 
teen Days  time  we  arrived  at  Tunis,  and  went  forthwith 
to  my  Patroon's  Brother's  House.  The  next  Day  my 
Patroon's  Brother's  Son,  taking  a  Pride  to  have  a 
Christian  to  wait  upon  him,  made  me  walk  after  him. 
As  I  was  attending  upon  my  new  Master  through  the 
Streets,  I  met  with  a  Gentleman  habited  like  a  Christian, 
not  knowing  him  to  be  an  Englishman,  as  he  was.  He 
look'd  earnestly  upon  me,  and  ask'd  me  whether  I  were 
not  an  Englishman.  I  answered  him,  Yea !  How 
came  you  hither  ?  said  he.  I  told  him  I  came  with  my 
Patroon.  What,  are  you  a  slave  ?  said  he.  I  replied, 
Yes.  But  he  was  loath  to  enter  into  any  further  Dis- 


JOSEPH    PITTS  155 

course  with  me  in  the  public  Street,  and  therefore 
desired  of  the  young  Man  on  whom  I  waited,  that  he 
would  please  to  bring  me  to  his  House.  The  young 
Man  assured  him  he  would  ;  for  being  a  drinker  of 
Wine,  and  knowing  the  Plenty  of  it  in  the  said  Gentle- 
man's House,  he  was  the  rather  willing  to  go.  After  the 
Gentleman  was  gone  from  us,  my  young  new  Master 
told  me,  that  he  whom  we  talk'd  to  was  the  English 
Consul." 

The  Consul  kindly  invited  Joseph  Pitts  to  go  to  his 
house  as  often  as  he  had  an  opportunity.  After  spend- 
ing thirty  days  in  Tunis,  Pitts  learned  to  his  dismay 
that  the  "  Patroon's  Brother  "  did  not  care  to  have  him, 
and  that  consequently  he  would  have  to  return  to 
Algiers.  The  Consul  and  two  merchants  then  endeav- 
oured to  buy  Pitts,  but  his  master  demanded  for  him 
five  hundred  dollars ;  they  offered  three  hundred,  which 
was  all  that  they  could  afford,  and  as  Ibrahim  refused 
to  sell  at  this  price,  the  negotiation  was  broken  off,  and 
he  returned  with  his  master  to  Algiers. 

Here  he  was  subjected  to  the  persecution  of  his 
master's  youngest  brother,  who  endeavoured  to  induce 
Joseph  to  become  a  renegade.  As  persuasion  availed 
nothing,  the  young  man  went  to  his  elder  brother 
Ibrahim,  and  told  him  that  he  had  been  a  profligate  and 
debauched  man  in  his  time,  as  also  a  murderer ;  and 
that  his  only  chance  of  Paradise  lay  in  making  atone- 
ment for  his  iniquities  by  obtaining  or  enforcing  the 
conversion  of  his  slave. 

Ibrahim  was  alarmed,  and  being  a  superstitious  man 
believed  this,  and  began  to  use  great  cruelty  towards 
Pitts.  "He  call'd  two  of  his  Servants,  and  commanded 
them  to  tye  up  my  Feet  with  a  Rope  to  the  Post  of  the 
Tent ;  and  when  they  had  so  done,  he  with  a  great 
Cudgel  fell  to  beating  of  me  upon  my  bare  Feet.  He 


156  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

being  a  very  strong  Man,  and  full  of  Passion,  his 
Blows  fell  heavy  indeed  ;  and  the  more  he  beat  me, 
the  more  chafed  and  enraged  he  was  ;  and  declared, 
that  if  I  would  not  Turn,  he  would  beat  me  to  death. 
I  roar'd  out  to  feel  the  Pains  of  his  cruel  Strokes  ;  but 
the  more  I  cry'd,  the  more  furiously  he  laid  on  upon 
me  ;  and  to  stop  the  Noise  of  my  Crying,  he  would 
stamp  with  his  Feet  on  my  Mouth  ;  at  which  I  beg'd 
him  to  despatch  me  out  of  the  way ;  but  he  continued 
beating  me.  After  I  had  endured  this  merciless  Usage 
so  long,  till  I  was  ready  to  faint  and  die  under  it,  and 
saw  him  as  mad  and  implacable  as  ever,  I  beg'd  him 
to  forbear  and  I  would  turn.  And  breathing  a  while, 
but  still  hanging  by  the  Feet,  he  urg'd  me  again  to 
speak  the  Words,  yet  loath  I  was,  and  held  him  in 
suspense  awhile  ;  and  at  length  told  him  that  I  could 
not  speak  the  Words.  At  which  he  was  more  enrag'd 
than  before,  and  fell  at  me  again  in  a  most  barbarous 
manner.  After  I  had  received  a  great  many  Blows  a 
second  Time,  I  beseech'd  him  again  to  hold  his  Hand, 
and  gave  him  fresh  hopes  of  my  turning  Mohammetan; 
and  after  I  had  taken  a  little  more  Breath,  I  told  him 
as  before,  I  could  not  do  what  he  desired.  And  thus 
I  held  him  in  suspense  three  or  four  times  ;  but,  at 
last,  seeing  his  Cruelty  towards  me  insatiable,  unless 
I  did  turn  Mohammetan,  through  Terrour  I  did  it, 
and  spake  the  Words,  holding  up  the  Fore-finger  of 
my  Right-hand  ;  and  presently  I  was  lead  away  to  a 
Fire,  and  care  was  taken  to  heal  my  Feet  (for  they  were 
so  beaten,  that  I  was  unable  to  go  on  them  for  several 
Days),  and  so  I  was  put  to  Bed." 

Algiers  was  bombarded  thrice  by  the  French  whilst 
Joseph  Pitts  was  living  there  as  a  slave,  their  purpose 
being  to  obtain  the  surrender  of  French  captives  who 
had  been  enslaved.  "  They  then  threw  but  few  Bombs 


JOSEPH    PITTS  157 

into  the  Town,  and  that  by  night ;  nevertheless  the 
Inhabitants  were  so  Surprized  and  Terrifi'd  at  it, 
being  unacquainted  with  Bombs,  that  they  threw  open 
the  Gates  of  the  City,  and  Men,  Women,  and  Children 
left  the  Town.  Whereupon  the  French  had  their 
Country-men,  that  were  Slaves,  for  nothing.  In  a  little 
while  after  the  French  came  again  to  Algiers,  upon 
other  Demands,  and  then  the  Dey  Surrendered  up  all 
the  French  Slaves,  which  prov'd  the  said  Dey's  Ruine. 
And  then  they  came  a  third  time  (1682).  There  were 
nine  Bomb- Vessels,  each  having  two  Mortars,  which 
kept  fireing  Day  and  Night  insomuch  that  there  would 
be  five  or  six  Bombs  flying  in  the  air  at  once.  At  this 
the  Algerines  were  horribly  Enrag'd,  and  to  be  Re- 
veng'd,  fired  away  from  the  mouth  of  their  Cannon 
about  forty  French  slaves,  and  finding  that  would  not 
do,  but  d'Estree  (the  Marshall)  was  rather  the  more 
enraged.  They  sent  for  the  French  Consul,  intending 
to  serve  him  the  same  Sause.  He  pleaded  his  character, 
and  that  'twas  against  the  Law  of  Nations,  etc.  They 
answered,  they  were  resolv'd,  and  all  these  comple- 
ments would  not  serve  his  turn.  At  which  he  desir'd 
a  day  or  two's  Respite,  till  he  should  despatch  a  Letter 
to  the  Admiral.  Which  was  granted  him  ;  and  a  Boat 
was  sent  out  with  a  White  Flag.  But  after  the  Admiral 
had  perused  and  considered  the  Consul's  Letter,  he 
bid  the  Messenger  return  this  answer  (viz.}:  That  his 
Commission  was  to  throw  10,000  Bombs  into  the  Town, 
and  he  would  do  it  to  the  very  last,  and  that  as  for  the 
Consul,  if  he  died,  he  could  not  die  better  than  for  his 
Prince. 

"  This  was  bad  News  to  the  Consul;  and  highly 
provoked  the  Algerines,  who  immediately  caused  the 
Consul  to  be  brought  down  and  placed  him  before  the 
mouth  of  a  Cannon,  and  fired  him  off  also." 


158  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

D'Estree's  success  was. by  no  means  so  great  as  he 
had  anticipated  and  as  was  expected.  He  was  com- 
pelled by  the  stubborn  defence  of  Algiers  to  content 
himself  with  an  exchange  of  prisoners  for  French 
slaves,  nor  did  he  recover  more  than  forty  or  fifty. 

Meanwhile,  what  was  the  English  Government  doing 
for  the  protection  of  its  subjects,  for  the  recovery  of 
Englishmen  who  were  languishing  as  slaves  in  Algiers 
and  Tunis?  Nothing  at  all. 

Under  the  Commonwealth,  Blake  in  1654  nad 
severely  chastised  the  nest  of  pirates.  He  had  com- 
pelled the  Dey  to  restrain  his  piratical  subjects  from 
further  violence  against  the  English.  He  had  pre- 
sented himself  before  Tunis,  where,  incensed  by  the 
violence  of  the  Dey,  he  had  destroyed  the  castles  of 
Porto  Farino  and  Goletta,  had  sent  a  numerous  detach- 
ment of  sailors  in  their  long-boats  into  the  harbour, 
and  burned  every  vessel  which  lay  there. 

But  now  the  despicable  Charles  II  was  king,  and  the 
power  of  England  to  protect  its  subjects  was  sunk  to 
impotence.  Every  three  years  the  English  fleet  appeared 
off  Algiers  to  renew  a  treaty  of  peace  with  the  Dey, 
that  meant  nothing;  the  piratical  expeditions  continued, 
and  Englishmen  were  allowed  to  remain  groaning  in 
slavery,  tortured  into  acceptance  of  Mohammedanism, 
and  not  a  finger  was  raised  for  their  protection  and 
release.  The  Consuls  were  impotent.  They  could  do 
nothing.  There  was  no  firm  Government  behind  them. 

In  Algiers,  Pitts  met  with  an  Englishman,  James 
Grey,  of  Weymouth,  with  whom  he  became  intimate. 
This  man  often  appealed  to  Pitts  for  advice,  whether 
he  should  turn  Mussulman  or  not ;  but  Pitts  would 
give  him  no  counsel  one  way  or  the  other.  Finally, 
he  became  a  renegade,  but  moped,  lost  all  heart,  and 
died. 


JOSEPH    PITTS  159 

Pitts  tells  us  how  that  secretly  he  received  a  letter 
from  his  father,  advising  him  "to  have  a  care  and  keep 
close  to  God,  and  to  be  sure,  never,  by  any  methods 
of  cruelty  that  could  be  used  towards  him,  to  deny  his 
blessed  Saviour;  and  that  he — his  father — would  rather 
hear  of  his  son's  death  than  of  his  becoming  a  Mahom- 
medan."  The  letter  was  slipped  into  his  hands  a  few 
days  after  he  had  become  a  renegade.  He  dared  to 
show  this  to  his  master,  and  told  him  frankly,  "I  am 
no  Turk,  but  a  Christian."  The  master  answered,  "  If 
you  say  this  again,  I  will  have  a  fire  made,  and  burn 
you  in  it  immediately." 

The  then  Dey,  Baba  Hasan,  died  in  1683,  and  Pitts' 
master  being  rich  and  having  friends,  attempted  a 
revolt  against  Hasein  "  Mezzomorto,"  his  successor, 
and  was  killed  in  the  attempt.  This  led  to  the  sale 
of  Pitts  again,  and  he  was  bought  by  an  old  bachelor, 
named  Eumer,  a  kindly  old  man,  with  whom  he  was 
happy.  "  My  Work  with  him  was  to  look  after  his 
House,  to  dress  his  Meat,  to  wash  his  Clothes ;  and, 
in  short,  to  do  all  those  things  that  are  look'd  on  as 
Servant-maids'  work  in  England."  With  the  old  master 
he  made  the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  and  thence  went  on 
to  Medina,  and  he  was  the  first  Englishman  to  give 
a  description  of  these  sacred  towns.  Moreover,  his 
account  is  remarkably  exact.  He  was  a  young  fellow 
full  of  observation  and  intelligence,  and  he  made  good 
use  of  his  eyes.  At  Mecca,  Eumer  gave  Pitts  his 
freedom,  and  Pitts  remained  with  him,  not  any  longer 
as  a  slave,  but  as  a  servant. 

By  being  granted  his  freedom  this  did  not  involve 
the  liberty  to  return  to  his  home  and  his  Christian 
religion.  But  he  looked  out  anxiously  for  an  oppor- 
tunity to  do  both.  This  came  in  a  message  arriving 
from  Constantinople  from  the  Sultan  to  demand  the 


160  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

assistance  of  Algerine  vessels,  and  Joseph  Pitts  volun- 
teered as  a  seaman  upon  one  of  these  vessels,  in  the 
vain  hope  of  its  being  captured  by  some  Christian 
vessel — French,  for  there  was  nothing  to  be  expected 
from  English  ships. 

At  Algiers,  he  became  acquainted  with  a  Mr.  Butler, 
and  as  Pitts  was  suffering  from  sore  eyes,  Mr.  Butler 
got  an  English  doctor,  who  was  a  slave,  to  attend  to 
him  and  cure  him.  Mr.  Butler  introduced  him  to  the 
English  Consul,  whom  he  saw  once,  and  once  only, 
and  who  could  do  nothing  for  him  further  than  give 
him  a  letter  to  the  English  Consul  at  Smyrna,  at  the 
same  time  imploring  him  to  conceal  the  letter  and  not 
let  it  get  into  the  hands  of  the  Turks,  or  it  might  cost 
him  his  life. 

"  Being  got  about  thirty  Days'  voyage  towards 
Smyrna,  where  I  design'd  to  make  my  Escape,  we 
espied  seven  or  eight  Venetian  Gallies  at  Anchor  under 
the  Shoar.  The  Turks  had  a  great  Tooth  for  these 
Gallies,  but  knew  not  how  to  come  to  them,  not  being 
able  to  adventure  so  far  as  Gallies  safely  may.  At 
length  they  consulted,  being  fifteen  Ships  in  number, 
to  hoist  French  Colours.  Having  done  this  we  haul'd 
up  our  Sails  and  brought  to,  pretending  as  if  we  were 
desirous  of  some  News  from  the  Levant.  They,  at 
this,  thinking  we  were  French  Men-of-War,  sent  out 
two  of  their  Gallies ;  upon  which  the  Turks  were 
ordered  to  lie  close,  and  not  stir,  for  fear  of  showing 
their  Turbants,  and  such  Officers,  that  were  obliged  to 
be  moving,  took  off  their  Turbants  to  avoid  discovery, 
and  put  on  a  Hat  and  Cap  instead  thereof;  but  the 
Slaves  were  all  ordered  to  be  upon  Deck  to  colour  the 
matter,  and  make  us  look  more  like  Christians.  At 
length  one  of  the  Gallies  being  within  Musquet-shot, 
we  fired  upon  him,  and  soon  made  him  strike.  The 


JOSEPH    PITTS  161 

other,  seeing  that,  turns  and  rows  with  all  his  Might 
and  Main  to  get  ashoar,  the  Algerines  all  the  while 
making  what  sail  they  could  after  him,  but  'twas  in 
vain,  for  the  Venetian  got  clear,  the  Wind  being  off 
Shoar  just  in  our  Mouth.  In  that  Galley  which  we 
took,  there  were  near  four  hundred  Christians,  and 
some  few  Turks  that  were  Slaves. 

"When  we  came  to  Scio,  we  were  joyn'd  with  ten 
Sail  of  the  Grand  Turk's  Ships,  carrying  seventy  or 
eighty  Brass  Cannon  Guns  each ;  and  now  being 
twenty-five  in  number,  we  had  the  Courage  to  cruize 
about  the  Islands  of  the  Archipelago. 

"Some  time  after  we  arrived  at  Scio,  the  Turks  had 
liberty,  for  one  Month's  time,  to  go  home  to  visit  the 
respective  Places  of  their  Nativity.  I  went  to  Smyrna 
and  hired  a  Chamber  there.  And  after  I  knew  where 
the  Consul's  House  was  I  went  thither.  The  Consul 
not  knowing  who  I  was,  Complemented  me  much, 
because  I  was  handsomely  Apparel'd,  and  I  returned 
the  Complement  to  him  after  the  Turkish  manner  ;  and 
then  delivered  him  my  Letter  of  Recommendation. 
The  Consul,  having  perused  the  Letter,  he  bid  the 
Interpreter  to  withdraw,  because  he  should  not  under- 
stand anything  of  the  matter.  After  the  Interpreter 
was  gone,  the  Consul  ask'd  me  whether  I  was  the  Man 
mentioned  in  the  Letter.  I  told  him  I  was.  He  said  the 
Design  was  very  dangerous,  and  that  if  it  should  be 
known  to  the  Turks  that  he  was  any  way  concerned  in 
it,  it  was  as  much  as  his  Life,  and  his  all  was  worth. 
But  after  he  had  discours'd  me  further  and  found  that  I 
was  fully  resolv'd  in  the  matter,  he  told  me  that,  Truly 
were  it  not  for  Mr.  Butler's  Request  he  would  not 
meddle  in  such  a  dangerous  Attempt ;  but  for  the 
friendship  and  Respect  he  bore  to  him,  would  do  me 
all  the  kindness  he  could  ;  which  put  Life  into  me. 

M 


162  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"We  had  no  English  nor  Dutch  Ships  at  Smyrna 
then,  but  daily  expected  some  ;  and  he  told  me,  I  must 
wait  till  they  came,  and  withall  caution'd  me  not  to 
frequent  his  House.  A  day  or  two  after  this  I  was 
sitting  in  a  Barber's  Shop,  where  both  Christians  and 
Turks  did  Trim,  and  there  was  a-triming  then  an 
English  Man,  whose  Name  was  George  Grunsell,  of 
Deptford.  He  knew  me  no  otherwise  than  a  Turk  ; 
but  when  I  heard  him  speak  English,  I  ask'd  him  in 
English,  Whether  he  knew  any  of  the  Western  Parts 
of  England  to  be  in  Smyrna.  He  told  me  of  one,  who 
he  thought  was  an  Exeter  man,  which,  when  I  heard, 
I  was  glad  at  Heart.  I  desired  him  to  shew  me  his 
House  ;  which  he  very  kindly  did  ;  but  when  I  came  to 
speak  with  Mr.  Elliott,  for  so  was  his  Name,  I  found 
him  to  be  of  Cornwall,  who  had  serv'd  some  part  of  his 
Apprenticeship  in  Exon,  with  Mr.  Henry  Cudmore  a 
Merchant.  He  was  very  glad  to  see  me  for  Country's- 
sake.  After  some  Discourse,  I  communicated  to  him 
my  Design.  He  was  very  glad  to  hear  of  it,  and 
promised  to  assist  me  ;  and  told  me,  that  I  need  not 
run  the  hazard  of  going  to  the  Consul's  House,  but 
that  if  I  had  anything  of  Moment  to  impart  to  him,  he 
would  do  it  for  me. 

"In  a  Month's  time  it  was  cry'd  about  the  City  of 
Smyrna,  that  all  Algerines  should  repair  to  their  Ships, 
which  lay  then  at  Rhodes. 

"  All  this  while  no  English  or  Dutch  Ships  came  to 
Smyrna ;  the  Consul  and  Mr.  Elliott  therefore  con- 
sulted which  was  my  best  way  to  take  ;  to  tarry  in 
Smyrna  after  all  the  Algerines  were  gone,  would  look 
suspiciously ;  and  therefore  they  advised  me  not  to 
tarry  in  Smyrna,  but  either  to  go  to  Scio  with  the 
Algerines,  which  is  part  of  our  way  back  to  Rhodes,  or 
else  to  go  up  to  Constantinople;  and  when  I  was  there, 


JOSEPH    PITTS  163 

to  write  to  the  said  Mr.  Elliott  to  acquaint  him  where  I 
was ;  and  to  stay  there  till  I  had  directions  from  them 
to  return  to  Smyrna,  or  what  else  to  do. 

"  I  pursued  their  Advice,  and  went  with  some  of  the 
Algerines  to  Scio,  and  there  I  made  a  stop  till  all  the 
Algerines  were  gone  from  thence,  and  writ  to  Mr. 
Elliott  where  I  was.  A  short  Time  after,  he  writ  me, 
that  he  was  very  glad  that  I  was  where  I  was,  but 
withal,  gave  a  damp  to  my  Spirits,  with  this  bad  News, 
that  our  Smyrna  Fleet  were  said  to  be  interrupted  by 
the  French  ;  with  the  cold  reserve  of  Comfort,  that  it 
wanted  Confirmation. 

"Now  the  Devil  was  very  busy  with  me,  tempting 
me  to  lay  aside  all  thoughts  of  Escaping,  and  to  return 
to  Algiers,  and  continue  Mussulman.  For  it  was 
suggested  to  me,  first,  That  it  was  a  very  difficult,  if 
not  a  desperate  Attempt,  to  endeavour  to  make  my 
Escape  ;  and  that  if  I  were  discovered  in  it,  I  should 
be  put  to  death  after  the  most  cruel  and  exemplary 
way.  Also,  in  the  next  place,  the  Loss  that  I  should 
sustain  thereby,  in  several  respects,  viz.  The  Loss  of 
the  profitable  Returns  which  I  might  make  of  what 
Money  I  had  to  Algiers  ;  and  the  Loss  of  receiving 
eight  Months  Pay  due  to  me  in  Algiers  ;  and  the  frus- 
trating of  my  Hopes  and  Expectation  which  I  had  from 
my  Patroon,  who  made  me  large  Promises  of  leaving 
me  considerable  Substance  at  his  Death  ;  and  I  believe 
he  meant  as  he  promised  ;  for  I  must  acknowledge  he 
was  like  a  father  to  me. 

"  In  the  midst  of  all  I  would  pray  to  God  for  his 
Assistance,  and  found  it.  For  I  bless  God,  that  after 
all  my  Acquaintance  were  gone  from  Scio  to  Rhodes, 
I  grew  daily  better  and  better  satisfied  ;  though  my 
Fears  were  still  very  great ;  and  I  was  indeed  afraid 
every-body  I  met  did  suspect  my  Design.  And  I  can 


164  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

truly  say,  that  I  would  not  go  through  such  a  Labyrinth 
of  Sorrows  and  Troubles  again,  might  I  gain  a  King- 
dom. 

"The  first  Letter  that  Mr.  Elliott  sent  me  while  I 
was  at  Scio,  he  directed  to  a  Greek  at  Scio,  who  did 
business  with  the  Consul  at  Smyrna,  to  be  delivered  to 
me,  naming  me  by  my  Turkish  Name.  I  was  altogether 
unknown  to  the  Greek,  so  that  he  was  forced  to  enquire 
among  the  Algerines  for  one  of  that  Name;  and  indeed 
there  were  two  Men  of  that  Name  with  myself ;  but  by 
good  hap,  they  were  gone  to  Rhodes,  otherwise  'tis 
odds  but  the  Letter  had  come  to  the  Hands  of  one  of 
them,  and  then  my  Design  had  been  discovered,  and  I 
should  undoubtedly  have  been  put  to  Death. 

"  I  receiv'd  another  Letter  from  Mr.  Elliott,  in  which 
he  informed  me  that  the  reported  bad  News  concerning 
our  Ships  was  true,  but  that  he  and  the  Consul  had 
Conferr'd  that  Day  what  was  best  to  be  done  for  my 
safety  ;  and  were  of  opinion  that  it  would  be  in  vain  for 
me  to  wait  for  any  English  Ships,  and  therefore  they 
advised  me  to  go  off  in  a  French  Ship,  tho'  somewhat 
more  expensive,  and  in  order  thereto,  to  hasten  back 
again  to  Smyrna,  in  the  first  boat  that  came. 

"  Accordingly  I  came  to  Smyrna  again  and  lodg'd  at 
Mr.  Grunsell's  House,  and  kept  myself  very  private  for 
the  space  of  twenty  Days,  'till  the  French  Ship  was 
ready  to  sail. 

"  Now  the  French  Ship,  in  which  I  was  to  make  my 
escape,  was  intended  to  sail  the  next  Day,  and  therefore 
in  the  Evening  I  went  on  Board,  Apparel'd  as  an  Eng- 
lish Man,  with  my  Beard  shaven,  a  Campaign  Perry- 
wigg,  and  a  Cane  in  my  Hand,  accompanied  with  three 
or  four  of  my  Friends  in  the  Boat.  As  we  were  going 
into  the  Boat,  there  were  some  Turks  of  Smyrna  walk- 
ing by,  but  they  smelt  nothing  of  the  matter.  My 


JOSEPH    PITTS  165 

good  Friend  Mr.  Elliott  had  agreed  with  the  Captain  of 
the  Ship  to  pay  Four  Pounds  for  my  Passage  to  Leg- 
horn, but  neither  the  Captain  nor  any  of  the  French 
Men  knew  who  I  was.  My  Friends,  next  Morning, 
brought  Wine  and  Victuals  a  board  ;  upon  which  they 
were  very  merry,  but,  for  my  part,  I  was  very  uneasy 
till  the  Ship  had  made  Sail.  I  pretended  myself  Ignor- 
ant of  all  Foreign  Languages,  because  I  would  not  be 
known  to  the  French,  who, — if  we  had  met  with  any 
Algerines, — I  was  affraid  would  be  so  far  from  showing 
me  any  Favour  so  as  to  Conceal  me,  would  readily  Dis- 
cover me. 

"  We  had  a  Month's  passage  from  Smyrna  to  Leg- 
horne,  and  I  was  never  at  Rest  in  my  Mind  till  we 
came  to  Leghorne,  where,  as  soon  as  ever  I  came 
ashore,  I  prostrated  myself,  and  kissed  the  earth,  bless- 
ing Almighty  God  for  his  Mercy  and  Goodness  to  me, 
that  I  once  more  set  footing  on  the  European,  Christian 
part  of  the  World." 

Arrived  at  Leghorn,  Joseph  Pitts  was  put  in  quaran- 
tine, but  for  five-and-twenty  days  only.  Whilst  in  the 
Lazaret  he  met  with  some  Dutchmen,  one  of  whom  had 
been  a  near  neighbour  in  Algiers.  He  suggested  that 
Pitts  should  join  company  with  him  and  his  party 
travelling  homewards  by  land.  To  this  Joseph  agreed, 
and  they  all  set  off  at  Christmas,  in  frosty  weather,  and 
travelled  for  twenty  days  through  heavy  snow.  After  a 
while  Joseph's  leg  gave  way,  and  he  could  not  proceed 
with  the  others.  They  were  constrained  to  leave  him 
behind,  for  fear  that  their  money  would  run  short. 

After  having  travelled  two  hundred  miles  in  their 
company,  he  was  now  forced  to  travel  five  hundred  on 
foot  through  Germany  alone.  One  day  as  he  was 
passing  through  a  wood  he  was  attacked  by  a  party  of 
German  soldiers,  who  robbed  him  of  his  money. 


166  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Happily,  they  did  not  strip  him  and  so  discover  that 
he  had  a  good  deal  more  than  was  in  his  pockets  sewn 
into  a  belt  about  his  waist. 

"  When  I  came  to  Franckfort,  the  Gates  of  the  City 
were  just  ready  to  be  shut,  and  I  offering  to  go  in,  the 
Centinel  demanded  of  me  who  I  was.  I  told  them  I 
was  an  Englishman.  They  bid  me  show  my  Passport, 
but  I  had  none.  I  having  therefore  no  pass,  they  would 
not  let  me  into  the  City.  So  the  Gate  was  shut.  I  sat 
down  upon  the  Ground  and  wept,  bewailing  my  hard 
Fortune  and  their  Unkindness,  having  not  a  bit  of 
Bread  to  eat,  nor  Fire  to  warm  myself  in  the  extreme 
cold  Season  which  then  was. 

"  But  there  being  just  outside  the  Gate  a  little  Hutt, 
where  the  Soldiers  Kept  Guard,  the  Corporal  seeing  me 
in  such  a  condition  as  I  was,  called  me  in,  where  they 
had  a  good  Fire,  and  he  gave  me  some  of  his  Victuals  ; 
for  which  seasonable  Kindness  I  gave  him  some  money 
to  fetch  us  some  good  Liquor.  And  I  told  the  Corporal, 
if  he  would  get  me  into  the  City  the  next  Day,  I  would 
Requite  him  for  it.  Accordingly  he  did.  He  brought 
me  to  a  Frenchman's  House,  who  had  a  Son  that  lived 
in  England  some  time,  and  was  lately  come  home 
again,  who  made  me  very  Welcome.  He  ask'd  me  what 
my  Business  was  ;  I  told  him  'twas  to  get  a  Pass  to  go 
safe  down  the  River,  (for  they  are  so  strict  there  in  time 
of  War,  that  they'll  even  examine  their  own  Country- 
men), and  withal,  desired  him  to  change  a  Pistole  for 
me,  and  to  give  me  instead  of  it  such  Money  as  would 
pass  current  down  the  River.  For  (as  I  told  him) 
I  have  sometimes  chang'd  a  Pistole,  and  before  the 
Exchange  of  it  had  been  expended  in  my  Travels, 
some  of  the  money  would  not  pass  current.  He 
chang'd  my  Pistole  for  me,  and  told  me  what  Money 
would  pass  in  such  a  place,  and  what  in  such  a 


JOSEPH    PITTS  167 

place,  and  what  I  should  reserve  last  to  pass  in 
Holland.  And  he  was  moreover  so  civil,  as  to  go 
to  the  public  Office  and  obtain  a  Pass  for  me. 
After  which  he  brought  me  to  his  House  again,  and 
caused  one  of  his  Servants  to  direct  me  to  an  Inn,  where 
I  should  Quarter,  and  bid  me  come  again  to  him  the 
next  Morning,  when  he  sent  his  Servant  to  call  me,  and 
also  to  pay  off  my  Host,  but  I  had  paid  him  before,  for 
which  he  show'd  Dislike.  After  all  which,  he  conducted 
me  to  the  River's  side  where  was  a  Boatfull  of  Pas- 
sengers ready  to  go  to  Mentz.  This  obliging  Gentle- 
man (whose  name  was  Van  der  Luh'r)  told  the  Master 
of  the  Boat,  that  he  would  satisfy  him  for  my  Passage 
to  Mentz  ;  and  moreover  desired  an  Acquaintance  of  his 
in  the  Boat  to  take  care  of  me  ;  and  when  at  Mentz,  to 
direct  me  to  such  a  Merchant,  to  whom  he  gave  a 
Letter,  and  therewith  a  piece  of  Money  to  drink  his 
Health. 

' '  When  we  came  to  Mentz,  we  were  every  Man  to 
produce  his  Passport ;  and  as  the  Passes  were  looking 
over,  the  Person  in  the  Boat,  who  was  desired  to  take 
care  of  me,  sent  a  Boy  to  call  the  Merchant  to  whom  I 
was  to  deliver  the  Letter ;  who  immediately  came,  and 
invited  me  to  his  House. 

"It  hap'ned  that  this  Gentleman  was  a  Slave  in 
Algier  at  the  same  time  I  was.  He  enquired  of  me  about 
his  Patroon,  whom  I  knew  very  well ;  and  we  talk'd 
about  many  other  things  relating  to  Algier.  I  received 
much  kindness  and  Hospitality  from  the  Gentleman  ; 
he  paid  off  my  Quarters  for  that  Night ;  and  also  gave 
me  Victuals  and  Money,  and  paid  for  my  Passage 
from  Mentz  to  Cologne  ;  and  moreover,  sent  by  me 
a  Letter  of  Recommendation  to  his  Correspondent 
there. 

"  At  Cologne  1  received  the  like  Kindness,  and  had 


1 68  DEVOiNSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

my  Passage  paid  to  Rotterdam  ;  and  if  I  would,  I 
might  have  had  a  Letter  of  Recommendation  to  some 
Gentle-man  there  too ;  but  I  refus'd  it  (with  hearty 
Thanks  for  the  offer)  being  loath  to  be  too  troublesome 
to  my  Friends. 

"  I  found  great  Kindness  at  Rotterdam  and  Helver- 
sluyce,  whither  our  English  Packquet-Boats  arrive. 
But  when  I  came  into  England,  my  own  native 
Country,  here  I  was  very  badly  treated;  for  the  very 
first  Night  that  I  lay  in  England,  I  was  impressed  for  to 
go  in  the  King's  Service.  And  notwithstanding  that  I 
made  known  my  Condition,  and  used  many  Arguments 
for  my  Liberty,  with  Tears,  yet  all  this  would  not 
prevail,  but  away  I  must ;  and  was  carried  to  Colchester 
Prison,  where  I  lay  some  Days.  While  I  was  in  Prison 
I  Writ  a  Letter  to  Sir  William  Falkener,  one  of  the 
Smyrna  Company  in  London,  on  whom  I  had  a  Bill  for 
a  little  Money  ;  he  immediately  got  a  Protection  for 
me,  and  sent  it  me,  which  was  not  only  my  present 
Discharge,  but  prevented  all  further  Trouble  to  me  on 
my  Road  Homeward,  which  otherwise  I  must  unavoid- 
ably have  met  with. 

"  When  I  came  from  Colchester  to  London,  I  made 
it  my  Business,  as  in  Duty  bound,  to  go  and  pay  my 
Thanks  to  the  honourable  Gentleman,  from  whom  I  re- 
ceived fresh  Kindness.  After  this  I  made  what  hast  I 
could  to  dear  Exeter,  where  I  safely  came,  to  the  great 
Joy  of  my  Friends  and  Relations. 

"I  was  in  Algier above  Fifteen  Years.  After  I  went 
out  of  Topsham,  it  was  about  Half  a  Year  before  I 
was  taken  a  Slave.  And  after  I  came  out  of  Algier 
it  was  well  nigh  Twelve  Months  ere  I  could  reach 
home." 

This  interesting  narrative  is  from  "  A  true  and  Faith- 
ful Account  of  the  Religion  and  Manners  of  the 


JOSEPH   PITTS  169 

Mohammetans.  In  which  is  a  particular  Relation  of 
their  Pilgrimage  to  Mecca  ...  by  Joseph  Pitts  of 
Exon."  Exon,  1704.  A  second  edition  was  published 
at  Exeter  in  1717  ;  and  a  third  edition  corrected,  at 
London,  in  1731. 


THE    DEMON   OF   SPREYTON 

A3UT  the  month  of  November  last  in  the 
Parish  of  Spraiton,  one  Francis  Fey 
(servant  to  Mr.  Philip  Furze)  being  in  a 
Field  near  the  Dwelling  house  of  the  said 
Master,  there  appeared  unto  him  the  resemblance  of  an 
old  Gentleman,  like  his  Master's  Father,  with  a  Pole  or 
Staff  in  his  hand,  like  that  he  was  wont  to  carry  when 
living,  to  kill  Moles  withal.  The  Spectrum  approached 
near  the  young  Man,  who  was  not  a  little  surprised  at 
the  Appearance  of  one  whom  he  knew  to  be  dead,  but 
the  Spectrum  bade  him  have  no  Fear,  but  tell  his 
Master  that  several  Legacies,  which  by  his  Testament 
he  had  bequeathed  were  unpaid,  naming  ten  shillings 
to  one,  ten  shillings  to  another,  both  which  he  named. 
The  young  man  replied  that  the  party  last  named  was 
dead,  and  so  it  could  not  be  paid  to  him.  The  Ghost 
answered,  He  knew  that,  but  it  must  be  paid  to  the 
next  relative,  whom  he  also  named.  The  Spectrum 
likewise  ordered  him  to  carry  twenty  shillings  to  a 
Gentlewoman,  sister  of  the  Deceased,  living  at  Totness, 
and  promised  if  these  things  were  done,  to  trouble  him 
no  more.  At  the  same  time  the  Spectrum  speaking  of 
his  second  wife  (also  dead)  called  her  a  wicked  Woman, 
though  the  Relater  knew  her  and  esteemed  her  as 
a  good  Woman." 

The  spectre  vanished.     The  young  man  did  as  en- 
joined and  saw  that  the  legacies  were  duly  paid,  and  he 

170 


THE    DEMON   OF   SPREYTON  171 

took  twenty  shillings  to  the  gentlewoman  near  Totnes  ; 
but  she  utterly  refused  to  receive  it,  believing  it  to  have 
been  sent  to  her  by  the  devil. 

That  same  night,  the  young  man,  who  was  lodging 
in  the  house  of  his  former  master's  sister,  saw  the 
ghost  again.  The  youth  thereupon  remonstrated  with 
it  and  reminded  it  of  the  promise  made  no  more  to 
annoy  him,  and  he  explained  that  the  deceased  man's 
sister  refused  to  accept  the  money.  Then  the  spirit 
bade  the  young  man  take  horse,  ride  into  Totnes,  and 
buy  a  ring  of  the  value  of  twenty  shillings,  and  assured 
him  that  the  lady  would  receive  that. 

Next  day,  after  having  delivered  the  ring,  that  was 
accepted,  the  young  man  was  riding  home  to  his 
master's,  accompanied  by  a  servant  of  the  gentlewoman 
near  Totnes,  and  as  they  entered  the  parish  of  Spreyton, 
the  ghost  was  seen  sitting  on  the  horse  behind  the 
youth.  It  clasped  its  long  arms  about  his  waist  and 
flung  him  from  his  saddle  to  the  ground.  This  was 
witnessed  by  several  persons  in  the  road,  as  well  as  by 
the  serving  man  from  Totnes. 

On  entering  the  yard  of  Mr.  P.  Furze's  farm,  the 
horse  made  a  bound  of  some  twenty-five  feet,  to  the 
amazement  of  all. 

Soon  after  this  a  female  ghost  appeared  in  the  house, 
and  was  seen  by  the  same  young  man,  as  also  by 
Mrs.  Thomasine  Gidley,  Anne  Langdon,  and  a  little 
child.  She  was  able  to  assume  various  shapes  :  some- 
times she  appeared  as  a  dog,  belching  fire,  at  another 
she  went  out  of  the  window  in  the  shape  of  a  horse, 
breaking  one  pane  of  glass  and  a  piece  of  iron.  It  was 
certainly  vastly  considerate  of  her  in  the  bulk  of  a 
horse  to  do  so  little  damage  !  But  usually  she  stalked 
along  the  passage  and  appeared  in  the  rooms  in  her 
own  form.  No  doubt  could  exist  as  to  who  this  trouble- 


172  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

some  ghost  was.  The  ''spectrum"  of  the  old  gentle- 
man had  already  hinted  that  his  second  wife  was  a  bad 
woman,  and  could  make  herself  unpleasant. 

On  one  occasion,  invisible  hands  laid  hold  of  the 
young  man,  and  rammed  his  head  into  a  narrow  space 
between  the  bedstead  and  the  wall,  and  it  took  several 
persons  to  extricate  him  ;  and  then,  what  with  fright 
and  what  with  the  pressure,  he  was  so  unwell  that  a 
surgeon  was  sent  for  to  bleed  him.  No  sooner  was 
this  operation  performed,  than  the  ligatures  about  the 
arm  were  suddenly  snatched  at  and  torn  off,  and  slung 
about  his  waist,  and  there  drawn  so  tight  that  he  was 
nearly  suffocated.  They  had  to  be  cut  through  with  a 
knife  to  relieve  him.  At  other  times  his  cravat  was 
drawn  tight. 

The  spectre  was  of  a  playful  humour  sometimes, 
and  would  pluck  the  perukes  off  the  heads  of  people, 
and  one  that  was  on  top  of  a  cabinet  in  a  box,  with 
a  joint -stool  on  it,  was  drawn  out  and  ripped  to 
shreds  —  and  this  was  the  most  costly  wig  in  the 
house. 

At  another  time  the  youth's  "  shoe-string "  was 
observed  without  assistance  of  hands  to  come  out  of 
his  shoe  of  its  own  accord  and  cast  itself  to  the  other 
side  of  the  room,  whereupon  the  other  shoe-lace  started 
crawling  after  its  companion.  A  maid  espying  this, 
with  her  hand  drew  it  back,  when  it  clasped  and  curled 
round  her  hand  like  an  eel  or  serpent. 

The  young  man's  clothes  were  taken  off  and  torn  to 
shreds,  as  were  those  of  another  servant  in  the  house, 
and  this  while  they  were  on  their  backs.  A  barrel  of 
salt  was  seen  to  march  out  of  one  room  and  into 
another,  untouched  by  human  hands.  When  the 
spectre  appeared  in  her  own  likeness  she  was  habited 
in  the  ordinary  garments  of  women  at  the  time, 


THE    DEMON    OF   SPREYTON  173 

especially  like  those  worn  by  Mrs.  Philip  Furze,  her 
daughter-in-law. 

On  Easter  Eve  the  young  man  was  returning  from 
the  town  when  he  was  caught  by  the  female  spectre  by 
his  coat  and  carried  up  into  the  air,  head,  legs,  and 
arms  dangling  down. 

Having  been  missed  by  his  master  and  fellow 
servants,  search  was  made  for  him,  but  it  was  not  till 
half  an  hour  later  that  he  was  found  at  some  distance 
from  the  house  plunged  to  his  middle  in  a  bog,  and  in 
a  condition  of  ecstasy  or  trance,  whistling  and  singing. 
He  was  with  difficulty  extracted  and  taken  to  the  house 
and  put  to  bed.  All  the  lower  part  of  his  body  was 
numbed  with  cold  from  long  immersion  in  the  morass. 
One  of  his  shoes  was  found  near  the  doorstep  of  the 
house,  another  at  the  back  of  the  house,  and  his 
peruke  was  hanging  among  the  top  branches  of  a 
tree.  On  his  recovery  he  protested  that  the  spirit  had 
carried  him  aloft  till  his  master's  house  had  seemed  to 
him  no  bigger  than  a  haycock. 

As  his  limbs  remained  benumbed  he  was  taken  to 
Crediton  on  the  following  Saturday  to  be  bled.  After 
the  operation  he  was  left  by  himself,  but  when  his 
fellows  came  in  they  found  his  forehead  cut  and 
swollen  and  bleeding.  According  to  him,  a  bird  with 
a  stone  in  its  beak  had  flown  in  at  the  window  and 
dashed  it  at  his  brow.  The  room  was  searched  ;  no 
stone,  but  a  brass  weight  was  found  lying  on  the  floor. 

"This  is  a  faithful  account  of  the  Contents  of  a 
Letter  from  a  Person  of  Quality  in  Devon,  dated 
ii  May,  1683.  The  young  man  will  be  21  if  he  lives 
to  August  next." 

The  title  of  this  curious  pamphlet  is  :  "  A  Narrative 
of  the  Demon  of  Spraiton.  In  a  Letter  from  a  Person 
of  Quality  in  the  County  of  Devon,  to  a  Gentleman  in 


174  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

London,  with  a  Relation  of  an  Apparition  or  Spectrum 
of  an  Ancient  Gentleman  of  Devon  who  often  appeared 
to  his  Son's  Servant.  With  the  Strange  Actions  and 
Discourses  happening  between  them  at  divers  times. 
As  likewise,  the  Demon  of  an  Ancient  Woman,  Wife  of 
the  Gentleman  aforesaid.  With  unparalell'd  varieties 
of  strange  Exploits  performed  by  her  :  Attested  under 
the  Hands  of  the  said  Person  of  Quality,  and  likewise 
a  Reverend  Divine  of  the  said  County.  With  Reflec- 
tions on  Drollery  and  Atheism,  and  a  Word  to  those 
that  deny  the  Existence  of  Spirits."  London,  1683. 

It  is  pretty  obvious  that  the  mischievous  and  idle 
youth  was  at  the  bottom  of  all  this  bedevilment.  This 
was  but  an  instance  of  the  Poltergeist  that  so  exercised 
the  minds  of  Korner,  Mrs.  Crowe,  and  the  like,  but 
which  can  all  be  traced  back  to  a  knavish  servant. 


TOM    AUSTIN 


f  ^OM  AUSTIN  was  a  native  of  Collumpton, 
and  was  the  son  of  a  respectable  yeoman, 
who,  at  his  death,  left  him  his  little  property, 
-^-  which  was  estimated  at  that  time  as  worth 
£80  per  annum.  As  he  bore  a  good  character,  he  soon 
got  a  wife  with  a  marriage  portion  of  £800.  Unhappily 
this  accession  to  his  means  completely  turned  his  head. 
He  became  wild  and  extravagant,  and  in  less  than  four 
years  had  dissipated  all  his  wife's  fortune  and  mort- 
gaged his  own  farm.  Being  now  somewhat  pinched  in 
circumstances,  he  was  guilty  of  several  frauds  on  his 
neighbours,  but  they  did  not  prosecute  him,  out  of 
respect  for  his  family.  Then,  unable  to  satisfy  his 
needs,  he  took  to  the  highway,  and  stopped  Sir 
Zachary  Wilmot  on  the  road  between  Wellington  and 
Taunton  Dean,  and  as  the  worthy  knight  resisted 
b-Mng  robbed,  Austin  shot  him  dead.  From  Sir 
Zachary  he  got  forty-six  guineas  and  a  silver-hilted 
sword.  With  this  plunder  he  made  haste  home  to 
Collumpton  undiscovered.  This  did  not  last  long,  as 
he  continued  in  the  same  course  of  riot.  When  it  was 
spent  he  started  to  visit  an  uncle  of  his,  living  at  a 
distance  of  a  mile. 

On  reaching  the  house  he  found  nobody  within  but 
his  aunt  and  five  small  children,  who  informed  him 
that  his  uncle  had  gone  away  for  the  day  on  business, 
and  they  invited  him  to  stay  and  keep  them  company 


176  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

till  his  return.  He  consented,  but  almost  immediately 
snatched  up  an  axe  and  split  the  skull  of  his  aunt  with 
it,  then  cut  the  throats  of  all  the  children,  laid  their 
bodies  in  a  heap,  and  proceeded  to  plunder  the  house 
of  the  money  it  contained,  which  amounted  to  sixty 
guineas.  Then  he  hastened  home  to  his  wife,  who, 
perceiving  some  blood  on  his  clothes,  asked  whence  it 
came.  In  reply  he  rushed  upon  her  with  a  razor,  cut 
her  throat,  and  then  murdered  his  own  two  children, 
the  eldest  of  whom  was  not  three  years  of  age. 

Hardly  had  he  finished  with  these  butcheries  before 
his  uncle  arrived,  calling  on  his  way  home.  On  enter- 
ing the  house  this  man  saw  what  had  been  done,  and 
though  little  suspecting  what  would  meet  his  eyes 
when  he  returned  home,  with  great  resolution  flung 
himself  upon  Tom  Austin,  mastered  him,  bound  his 
hands,  and  brought  him  before  a  magistrate,  who  sent 
him  to  Exeter  Gaol. 

In  August,  1694,  this  inhuman  wretch  was  hanged. 
He  seemed  quite  insensible  as  to  the  wickedness  of  his 
acts,  as  well  as  to  the  senselessness  of  them,  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  he  was  a  victim  to  homicidal 
madness. 

When  on  the  scaffold,  when  asked  by  the  chaplain  if 
he  had  anything  to  say  before  he  died:  "  Only  this," 
was  his  reply,  "I  see  yonder  a  woman  with  some  curds 
and  whey,  and  I  wish  I  could  have  a  pennyworth  of 
them  before  I  am  hanged,  as  I  don't  know  when  I  shall 
see  any  again."  Tom  Austin  had  many  errors,  many 
faults,  many  crimes  to  expiate,  but  he  carried  with  him 
into  the  next  world  one  merit — his  undying  love  of 
Devonshire  junket,  the  same  as  curds  and  whey. 


FRANCES    FLOOD 

"  1|  ^RANGES  FLOOD  was  born  in  Gitsom  (Git- 
•  J  tisham),  near  Honiton  in  Devon,  and  on  the 
22nd  January,  1723,  being  thirty-two  years 
•J*-  of  age,  I  went  from  Philip's  Norton  to  the 
town  of  Saltford,  where  I  had  for  lodging  an  Inn. 
I  arose  well  in  the  Morning,  thinking  to  go  about 
my  Business :  but  being  conie  out  of  the  Door,  I  was 
taken  very  ill,  and  before  I  came  to  the  Village  I  was 
not  sensible  in  what  condition  I  was  in,  and  not  able  to 
go,  was  forced  to  hold  by  the  Wall  as  I  went  along  : 
With  great  Difficulty  I  got  to  the  Overseer's  House, 
and  desired  him  to  get  me  a  lodging,  but  he  denied 
me  ;  whereupon  I  went  up  the  Street  and  lay  in  a  Hog- 
sty,  where  many  People  came  to  see  me.  I  lay  there 
till  the  Evening  in  a  sad  Condition,  when  the  Overseer's 
Wife  of  that  Place  led  me  to  the  Overseer's  again,  but 
he  still  denied  me  Relief;  and,  not  being  very  sensible, 
I  returned  again  to  the  same  Place,  but  they  had  been 
so  inhuman  as  to  put  some  Dung  into  it,  to  prevent  my 
lodging  there  again  ;  but  at  last  I  got  into  another 
which  had  no  Cover  over  it  as  the  other  had.  In 
the  Morning  when  I  awoke,  I  went  up  the  Street  and 
with  Weakness  fell  down,  so  that  Streams  of  Water 
ran  over  me,  till  helped  up  by  the  Clerk  of  the  Parish's 
Wife,  who  led  me  till  I  came  to  the  wall,  by  which 
I  held,  and  with  great  Trouble  got  to  the  Barn,  but  the 
Owner  of  the  Barn  was  so  barbarous  as  to  unhang  the 

N  I77 


178  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

Door  the  next  Day  ;  a  young  Man,  out  of  Compassion, 
hung  the  Door  again.  The  Owner  was  so  displeased, 
that  he  came  a  second  Time  and  unhung  it. 

"The  next  Day,  the  Small-Pox  appeared  on  me, 
and  was  noised  about ;  insomuch  that  the  Overseer 
came  and  put  up  the  Door,  and  then  I  had  both  Meat 
and  Drink,  but  took  no  further  Care  of  me  for  14  days  ; 
the  Small-Pox  appeared  very  kind  and  favourable  and 
might  have  done  very  well,  had  I  not  been  taken  in  my 
Legs,  and  should  have  been  able  to  go  away  in  a  Fort- 
night ;  after  which  I  was  taken  on  my  Calfs,  which 
turned  black  and  cold  and  looked  much  like  Scalds,  and 
broke  out.  I  applied  to  them  first  of  all  a  Bathe,  but 
the  Flesh  speedily  parted  from  the  small  of  my  Legs  to 
the  Bones.  I  had  there  by  me  some  Ointment,  which 
was  brought  me  by  the  Overseer  ;  but  had  no  one 
to  dress  my  Wounds,  but  did  all  myself. 

"  I  freely  forgive  all  the  Parish,  and  as  for  the  Over- 
seers, they  did  to  the  utmost  of  their  power,  when  my 
Flesh  was  separated  ;  and  whatever  I  desired  of  them, 
they  sent  me,  so  I  desire  that  all  may  be  blameless  of 
my  Misfortunes.  My  Pains  increased  to  a  wonderful 
Degree  and  my  Legs  grew  worse,  and  was  driven  to 
dismal  Extremity,  and  lay  in  that  Condition  three 
Weeks. 

"On  the  i8th  Day  of  March  about  8  o'clock  in 
the  Evening  there  came  a  Woman  to  the  Barn-door 
to  ask  me  how  I  did.  I  was  going  to  show  her  how  my 
Legs  were,  and  how  the  Flesh  was  separated  from  the 
Bones,  and  leaning  a  little  harder  than  Ordinary  upon 
my  left  leg,  it  broke  off  as  though  it  were  a  rotten  Stick, 
a  little  below  the  Calf;  the  woman  left  me,  and  I  was 
surprised,  but  God  enabled  me  to  bind  up  my  Leg 
again  with  the  same  Medicines  as  before ;  and  when 
most  of  the  People  of  the  Village  were  at  rest,  then  a 


FRANCES   FLOOD  179 

Man  that  liv'd  over  against  the  Barn  came  to  see  me, 
and  asked  me  how  I  did.  I  desired  him  to  get  me 
some  Beer  at  the  Overseers,  but  he  fetched  me  some  of 
his  own  and  left  me  ;  so  there  was  no  one  with  me.  I 
submitted  myself  to  God,  and  after  some  time  fell 
asleep,  and  slept  till  the  morning.  And  as  soon  as 
'twas  Light,  dressed  the  wound  before  any  came  to 
me,  and  the  Flesh  covered  the  Bone,  but  had  no  Loss 
of  Marrow,  and  but  little  of  Blood,  nor  hardly  any 
Pain.  The  Mercies  there  received  at  the  Hands  of 
God  exceeded  all  the  Punishment  was  due  to  me  thro' 
Sin,  and  His  Mercy  I  never  did  deserve.  I  was  visited 
by  abundance  of  People,  and  amongst  them  God  sent 
me  the  Minister  of  Keinsham,  and  Mr.  Brown  of  the 
same  Town  came  along  with  him,  and  they  afforded  me 
much  Comfort ;  they  told  me  they  never  saw  the  like, 
and  it  was  God's  handy  Work,  and  not  Man's,  so  taking 
leave  of  me,  they  wished  that  the  God  of  Heaven  might 
be  my  Physician,  and  it  gave  me  a  merry  Heart  and 
cheerful  Countenance,  and  gave  them  Thanks  for  what 
Favours  I  had  received  from  them,  and  my  Pains  still 
ceased.  Abundance  came  both  far  and  near  all  the 
Week  to  see  me,  and  amongst  the  rest  a  Surgeon,  who 
persuaded  me  to  have  the  Bone  of  my  right  Leg  taken 
off,  to  which  I  gave  Consent.  On  the  25th  about  6  in 
the  Morning,  when  I  arose  and  opened  the  Cloaths,  I 
found  my  Legs  were  fallen  from  me,  and  the  Pains 
I  then  suffered  were  not  worthy  to  be  called  Pains  ;  so 
I  dressed  it  with  the  same  Medicine  I  made  use  of 
before ;  within  two  Hours  after  came  several  People  to 
visit  me.  I  unbound  the  Cloaths  and  the  Flesh  was 
closed  over  the  Bone,  and  the  Blood  was  stopp'd.  So 
I  had  great  Reason  to  praise  the  Lord  for  all  His 
Mercies  and  Favours  I  had  received  from  Time  to 
Time." 


i8o  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Buried  in  Saltford  Churchyard 

Stop  Reader,  and  a  Wonder  See, 

As  strange  as  e'er  was  known  ! 
My  Feet  drop'd  off  from  my  Body, 

In  the  Middle  of  the  Bone. 
I  had  no  Surgeon  for  my  Help 

But  God  Almighty's  Aid, 
In  Whom  I  ever  will  rely 

And  never  be  afraid. 
Though  here  beneath  (the  Mold)  they  lie 

Corruption  for  to  see, 
Yet  they  shall  one  Day  reunite 

To  all  Eternity. 

The  last  line  might  have  been  amended  to — 

And  walk  away  with  me. 

This  curious  tract  is  entitled  The  Devonshire  Woman: 
or  a  Wonderful  Narrative  of  Frances  Flood.  It  bears 
no  date,  but  is  of  about  1724.  At  the  end  stands: 
"  Printed  for  Frances  Flood,  and  sold  by  Nobody  but 
herself." 

In  fact,  the  poor  creature  went  about  on  crutches 
selling  the  story  of  her  misfortunes.  The  tract  is  very 
scarce,  but  there  is  a  copy  in  the  British  Museum. 


SIR    WILLIAM    HANKFORD 

IN   the  Second  Part  of  Henry  IV,   Shakespeare 
makes  his  hero,  Prince  Hal,  behave  with  splendid 
generosity  to  Judge  Gascoigne,  who  had  com- 
mitted him  to  prison  for  striking  him  in  open 
court. 

The  King  says  to  him  : — 

How  might  a  prince  of  my  great  hopes  forget 
So  great  indignities  you  laid  upon  me  ? 
What !  rate,  rebuke,  and  roughly  send  to  prison 
The  immediate  heir  of  England  !     Was  this  easy  ? 
May  this  be  wash'd  in  Lethe,  and  forgotten  ? 

The  Chief  Justice  replies  : — 

I  then  did  use  the  person  of  your  father ; 
The  image  of  his  power  lay  then  in  me  : 
And,  in  the  administration  of  his  law, 
Whiles  I  was  busy  for  the  commonwealth, 
Your  highness  pleased  to  forget  my  place, 
The  majesty  and  power  of  law  and  justice, 
The  image  of  the  king-  whom  I  presented, 
And  struck  me  in  my  very  seat  of  judgment ; 
Whereon,  as  an  offender  to  your  father, 
I  gave  bold  way  to  my  authority, 
And  did  commit  you. 

Shakespeare  makes  King  Henry  V  recognize  that 
Gascoigne  was  in  the  right. 

You  are  right,  justice,  and  you  weigh  this  well ; 
Therefore  still  bear  the  balance  and  the  sword. 

But  here  Shakespeare  has  not  been  true  to  history. 
His  ideal  king  was  not  so  generous  as  he  represented 
him.  In  fact,  directly  on  his  accession  Henry  displaced 

181 


182  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Gascoigne  from  the  Chief-Justiceship,  and  elevated  to 
his  place  the  Devonshire  lawyer  Sir  William  Hank- 
ford,  Knight  of  the  Bath. 

Prince,  indeed,  in  his  Worthies  of  Devon,  claims  that 
it  was  Hankford  who  committed  Prince  Hal  to  prison  ; 
but  this  is  a  mistake,  the  brave  and  resolute  judge  was 
Sir  William  Gascoigne,  who  was  displaced,  and  Sir 
William  Hankford  installed  as  Chief  Justice  in  his 
room  by  Henry  V  eight  days  after  his  accession. 

Sir  William  was  probably  born  at  Hankford,  the 
ancient  seat  of  the  family,  in  the  hamlet  of  Bulkworthy, 
a  chapel-of-ease  to  Buckland  Brewer.  He  was  made 
Serjeant-at-law  in  1391  in  the  reign  of  Richard  II,  and 
was  advanced  to  be  one  of  the  lords-justices  in  the 
Court  of  Common  Pleas  in  1397.  He  was  made  Knight 
of  the  Bath  at  the  coronation  of  Henry  IV,  and,  as 
already  said,  he  was  called  up  higher  to  be  Chief  Justice 
by  Henry  V  on  his  accession  to  the  throne.  He  retained 
his  office  for  part  of  a  year  under  Henry  VI,  so  that 
he  served  under  four  kings.  He  moved  from  Hank- 
ford,  the  family  seat,  to  Annery,  in  the  parish  of 
Monkleigh,  near  Great  Torrington,  a  beautiful  spot 
on  the  Torridge.  Here  he  had  a  stately  mansion 
"  famous  for  a  large  upper  gallery,  wherein  might  be 
placed  thirty  standing  beds,  fifteen  of  a  side,  and  yet 
not  one  to  be  seen  there.  Nor  could  you  from  one 
bed  see  another :  for  this  gallery  being  very  long  and 
wainscotted  on  each  hand,  there  were  several  doors 
in  it,  which  led  into  little  alcoves  or  apartments,  well 
plaistered  and  whited,  large  and  convenient  enough  for 
private  lodgings." 

Annery  still  stands  in  its  beautiful  park,  but  the 
gallery  has  disappeared ;  it  was  pulled  down  in  the 
year  1800. 

Towards  the  end  of  his  days  Hankford  fell  into  deep 


SIR   WILLIAM    HANKFORD  183 

fits  of  depression  in  retirement  at  Annery,  where,  weary 
of  life  and  despondent  at  the  prospect  of  the  new  reign 
with  an  infant  as  king,  and  with  furious  rivalries  ready 
to  break  forth  and  tear  the  kingdom  to  pieces,  he  was 
impatient  that  death  might  end  his  troubles. 

"  On  a  fit  time  for  the  purpose,  he  called  to  him  the 
keeper  of  his  park,  which  adjoined  his  house  at 
Annery,  and  charged  him  with  negligence  in  his  office, 
suffering  his  deer  to  be  killed  and  stolen  ;  whereupon 
he  left  it  in  strict  charge  with  him,  that  he  should  be 
more  careful  in  his  rounds  by  night,  and  that  if  he  met 
any  one  in  his  walk  that  would  not  stand  and  speak,  he 
should  shoot  him,  whoever  he  was,  and  that  he  would 
discharge  him  (i.e.  free  him  of  blame).  This  the 
keeper  directly  promised,  and  too  faithfully  performed. 
The  judge  having  thus  laid  the  design,  meaning  to 
end  his  doleful  days,  in  a  dark  tempestuous  night,  fit 
for  so  black  an  action,  secretly  conveyed  himself  out  of 
the  house,  and  walked  alone  in  his  park,  just  in  the 
keeper's  way ;  who  being  then  in  his  round,  hearing 
somebody  coming  towards  him,  demanded,  Who  was 
there.  No  answer  being  made,  he  required  him  to 
stand ;  the  which  when  he  refused  to  do,  the  keeper 
shot  and  killed  him  upon  the  place  :  and  coming  to  see 
who  he  was,  found  him  to  be  his  master." 

So  relates  Prince,  following  Baker's  Chronicle,  1643, 
and  Risdon  and  Westcote.  But  Sir  Richard  Baker's 
account  is  full  of  errors :  he  makes  Hankford  die 
in  the  reign  of  Edward  IV,  whereas  he  died  in  the 
same  year  as  Henry  V  (1422).  Prince  objects  that  the 
story  may  not  be  true  or  only  partly  true.  That  Sir 
William  was  killed  by  his  keeper  is  a  fact  not  to  be 
disputed,  but  that  he  purposely  contrived  his  own 
death  is  very  doubtful — it  is  a  conjecture  and  no  more. 

Sir  William  was  a  liberal  and  religious  man  :  he  built 


1 84  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  chapel  at  Bulkworthy,  as  well  as  the  Annery  Aisle 
to  Monkleigh  Church.  In  this  latter  he  lies  interred, 
and  a  noble  monument  was  erected  over  him,  with  the 
epitaph:  "  Hie  jacet  Willielmus  Hankford,  Miles,  quon- 
dam Capitalis  Justiciarius  Domini  Regis  de  Banco,  qui 
obiit  xx  die  mensis  Decembris,  Anno  Domini  MCCCCXXII. 
Cujus  Animae  propicietur  Deus.  Amen." 

He  is  represented  kneeling  in  his  robes  alongside  of 
his  wife.  Out  of  his  mouth  proceeds  this  prayer: 
11  Miserere  mei  Deus,  secundum  magnam  misericordiam 
tuam."  A  book  in  his  hand  is  inscribed  with  "  Miserere 
mei  Deus  secundum  magnam  justiciam  divinam,"  and 
over  his  head  is  "Beati  qui  custodiunt  judicium  et 
faciunt  justiciam  omni  tempore." 


SIR   JOHN    FITZ 


i 


^AVISTOCK,  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  was 
a  more  picturesque  town  than  it  is  at  present. 
Then  the  abbey  walls,  crenellated  and  with 
towers  at  intervals,  were  still  standing  in 
complete  circuit,  and  the  abbey  church,  the  second 
finest  in  the  county  and  diocese,  though  unroofed,  was 
still  erect.  The  houses,  slate-hung  in  quaint  patterns 
representing  fleurs-de-lis,  oak  leaves,  swallow-tails, 
pomegranates,  with  gables  to  the  street,  were  very 
different  from  the  present  houses,  stuccoed  drab  and 
destitute  of  taste.  Moreover  the  absurd,  gaunt  market 
hall  erected  last  century  was  not  a  central  and  conspicu- 
ous disfigurement  to  the  town. 

But  a  few  strides  to  the  west,  on  the  Plymouth  road, 
stood  Fitzford  House,  a  mansion  recently  erected,  con- 
sisting of  a  court,  entered  through  a  massive  gate- 
house, and  the  mansion  standing  back,  with  porch  and 
projecting  wings. 

In  this  house  lived  the  Fitz  family.  They  had  been 
there  for  four  generations  and  had  married  well.  They 
were  also  well  estated,  with  property  in  Cornwall,  in 
Kent  and  Southwark,  as  well  as  in  Devon.  John  Fitz, 
the  father  of  the  man  whose  tragic  history  we  are  about 
to  relate,  married  Mary,  daughter  of  Sir  John  Sydenham, 
of  Brimpton,  in  Somerset,  and  had  late  in  life  one  son, 
the  " unfortunate"  Sir  John.  The  Fitzes  had  been  a 
family  bred  to  the  law  ;  the  first  known  of  them,  John 

185 


186  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Fitz,  had  been  a  bencher  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  the 
John  Fitz  who  married  Mary  Sydenham  was  also  a 
counsellor-at-law,  and  he  managed  considerably  to  add 
to  the  wealth  of  the  family.  When  he  had  got  as 
much  as  he  wanted  out  of  the  pockets  of  his  clients,  he 
retired  to  his  family  place  of  Fitzford  and  there  amused 
himself  with  astrology  and  the  casting  of  horoscopes. 
When  his  son  John  was  about  to  be  born  in  1575,  John 
Fitz  studied  the  stars,  and,  says  Prince,  " finding  at 
that  time  a  very  unlucky  position  of  the  heavens,  he 
desired  the  midwife,  if  possible,  to  hinder  the  birth  but 
for  one  hour  ;  which,  not  being  to  be  done,  he  declared 
that  the  child  would  come  to  an  unhappy  end  and  undo 
the  family." 

John  Fitz  was  riding  over  the  moor  one  day  with  his 
wife,  when  they  lost  their  direction,  were,  in  fact,  pixy- 
led,  and  they  floundered  through  bogs,  and  could 
nowhere  hit  on  the  packhorse  track  that  led  across 
the  moors  from  Moreton  Hampstead  to  Tavistock. 
Exhausted  and  parched  with  thirst  they  lighted  on  a 
crystal  stream,  dismounted,  and  drank  copiously  of  the 
water.  Not  only  were  they  refreshed,  but  at  once  John 
Fitz's  eyes  were  opened,  the  spell  on  him  was  undone, 
and  he  knew  where  he  was  and  which  direction  he 
should  take.  Thereupon  he  raised  his  hand  and  vowed 
he  would  honour  that  well,  so  that  such  travellers  as  were 
pixy-led  might  drink  at  it  and  dispel  the  power  over 
them  exercised  by  the  pixies.  The  spring  still  flows 
and  rises  under  a  granite  structure  erected  in  fulfilment 
of  his  vow  by  John  Fitz ;  it  bears  his  initials  and  the 
date  1568  in  raised  figures  and  letters  on  the  covering 
stone.  Formerly  it  was  on  a  slope  in  the  midst  of 
moorland  away  from  the  main  track,  near  the  Blacka- 
brook.  Now  it  is  enclosed  in  the  reclaimed  tract  made 
into  meadows  by  the  convicts  of  Princetown.  Happily 


SIR  JOHN    FITZ  187 

the  structure  has  not  been  destroyed  :  it  is  surrounded 
by  a  protecting  wall. 

In  the  same  year  that  John  Fitz  erected  this  well,  he 
obtained  a  lease  to  carry  water  in  pipes  of  wood  or  of 
lead  through  the  garden  of  one  John  Northcott  to  his 
mansion  at  Fitzford.  The  little  house  that  he  built 
over  the  spring  in  his  close,  called  Boughthayes,  still 
stands,  picturesquely  wreathed  in  ivy. 

He  died  8  January,  1589-90,  aged  sixty-one,  and  by 
his  will  made  his  wife  executrix  and  guardian  of  his 
son,  who  was  then  rather  over  fourteen  years  old. 
There  is  a  stately  monument  in  Tavistock  Parish 
Church  to  John  Fitz  and  his  wife,  he  clothed  in  armour, 
which  in  life  he  probably  never  wore,  as  he  was  a  man 
of  the  long  robe.  The  effigies  are  recumbent,  and  by 
them  is  a  smaller,  kneeling  figure  of  the  son  and  heir — 
their  only  child,  the  "unfortunate"  John  Fitz.  But 
the  widow  did  not  have  charge  of  her  son  ;  as  a  ward 
under  the  Queen  he  was  committed  to  Sir  Arthur 
Gorges,  "who  tended  more  to  the  good  of  the  child  than 
his  own  private  profit,"  which  was  perhaps  unusual. 
Mary  Fitz  retired  to  Walreddon,  near  Tavistock, 
another  house  belonging  to  the  family,  for  her  initials 
"  M.  F."  and  the  date  1591  are  cut  in  granite  over  the 
doorway.  But  presently  she  married  Christopher 
Harris,  of  Radford,  when  she  moved  to  his  house  near 
Plymouth. 

The  young  John  Fitz  is  described  as  having  been 
"a  very  comlie  person."  He  was  married,  before  he 
had  attained  his  majority,  to  Bridget,  sixth  daughter 
of  Sir  William  Courtenay.  Of  this  marriage  one 
child,  Mary,  was  born  i  August,  1596,  when  her 
father  was  just  twenty-one  years  old.  John  Fitz  was 
now  of  age,  considered  himself  free  of  all  restraint, 
owner  of  large  estates,  and  was  without  stability  of 


1 88  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

character  or  any  principle,  and  was  inclined  to  a  wild 
life.  He  took  up  his  residence  at  Fitzford,  and  roystered 
and  racketed  at  his  will. 

One  day  (it  was  4  June,  1599)  he  was  dining  at 
Tavistock  with  some  of  his  friends  and  neighbours. 
The  hour  was  early,  for  in  the  account  of  it  we  are  told 
that  "with  great  varietie  of  merriments  and  discourse 
they  outstript  the  noontide." 

John  Fitz  had  drunk  a  good  deal  of  wine,  and  he 
began  to  brag  of  his  possessions,  and  boasted  that  he 
had  not  a  foot  of  land  that  was  not  his  freehold. 
Among  those  present  was  Nicholas  Slanning,  of  Bick- 
leigh.  He  interrupted  Fitz,  and  said,  "That  is  not  so. 
You  hold  of  me  a  parcel  of  land  that  is  copyhold,  and 
though  of  courtesy  it  has  been  intermitted,  yet  of  due, 
you  owe  me  so  much  a  year  for  that  land." 

John  started  from  his  seat,  and  told  Slanning  to  his 
face  that  he  lied,  and  mad  with  rage,  drew  his  dagger 
and  would  have  stabbed  him.  Slanning  with  a  knife 
beat  down  Fitz's  blade,  and  the  friends  at  the  table 
threw  themselves  between  them  and  patched  up  the 
quarrel  as  they  supposed.  Nicholas  Slanning  then  left 
the  apartment  and  departed  for  Bickleigh  with  his 
man,  both  being  on  horseback. 

They  had  not  ridden  far  when  they  came  to  a  deep 
and  rough  descent,  whereupon  Slanning  bade  his  man 
lead  the  horses,  and  he  dismounting  walked  through  a 
field  where  the  way  was  easier. 

At  that  moment  he  saw  John  Fitz  with  four  attend- 
ants galloping  along  the  lane  after  him.  Without  ado, 
Slanning  awaited  the  party  and  inquired  of  John  Fitz 
what  he  desired  of  him.  Fitz  replied  that  he  had 
followed  that  he  might  avenge  the  insult  offered  him. 
Thereupon  Fitz  called  to  his  men,  and  they  drew  their 
blades  and  fell  on  Slanning,  who  had  to  defend  himself 


SLANNINGS  OAK 
From  an  oil  painting  by  A.  B.  Collier,  1855 


SIR   JOHN    FITZ  189 

against  five  men.  The  matter  might  even  then  have 
been  composed,  but  one  of  Fitz's  men,  named  Cross, 
twitted  his  master,  saying,  "  What  play  is  this?  It  is 
child's  play.  Come,  fight !  "  Fitz,  who  had  sheathed 
his  sword,  drew  it  again  and  attacked  Slanning.  The 
latter  had  long  spurs,  and  stepping  back  they  caught 
in  a  tuft  of  grass,  and  as  he  staggered  backward,  Fitz 
ran  him  through  the  body.  At  the  same  time,  one  of 
Fitz's  men  struck  him  from  behind.  Slanning  fell  to  the 
ground  and  died.  He  was  conveyed  home,  and  buried 
in  Bickleigh  Church,  where  his  monument  still  exists, 
but  in  a  mutilated  condition.  It  was  of  plaster,  and 
when  the  church  was  "  restored  "  fell  to  pieces;  but  the 
curious  Latin  inscription  has  been  preserved. 

Nicholas  Slanning  had  been  married  to  Margaret, 
daughter  of  Henry  Champernowne,  of  Modbury,  and 
he  died  leaving  as  his  heir  a  child,  and  the  administra- 
tion of  his  estates  was  committed  to  that  son's  great- 
uncle.  Of  Ley,  the  fine  Slanning  place,  nothing  now 
remains  except  the  balls  that  stood  on  the  entrance 
gates,  that  have  been  transferred  to  the  vicarage  garden 
at  Bickleigh.  The  situation  was  incomparably  beauti- 
ful, and  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  grand  old  Eliza- 
bethan mansion  has  been  levelled  with  the  dust.  Sir 
Nicholas  Slanning,  created  a  baronet  in  1663,  moved 
to  Maristowe  in  Tamerton  Foliot,  but  the  second  and 
last  baronet  died  without  issue  in  1700,  and  in  1798 
John  Modyford  Heywood,  who  inherited  the  extensive 
Slanning  estates  through  a  female  line,  sold  them  all 
to  Sir  Manasseh  Lopes,  a  Portuguese  Jew  diamond 
merchant,  who  had  obtained  a  baronetcy  by  buying  up 
rotten  boroughs  in  Cornwall  and  putting  in  members 
whose  votes  could  be  relied  on  by  the  ministry  of  the 
day.  The  baronetcy  was  created  in  1805.  The  first 
baronet  was  the  son  of  Mordecai  Lopes,  of  Jamaica. 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

" Great,"  we  are  informed,  "was  the  lamentation 
that  the  countryside  made  for  the  death  of  so  beloved  a 
gentleman  as  Maister  Slanning  was." 

John  Fitz,  then  aged  twenty-four,  escaped  to  the 
Continent  and  stayed  in  France,  until  the  exertions  of 
his  wife  and  mother  succeeded  in  December,  1599,  in 
procuring  a  pardon  for  him  ;  whereupon  he  returned 
home,  unsubdued  by  the  past,  insolent,  riotous,  and 
haughty.  At  the  coronation  of  James  I,  1603,  he  was 
knighted,  not  for  any  services  done  to  the  Crown  or 
State,  but  because  he  was  of  good  family,  well  con- 
nected, and  with  property. 

He  returned  to  Fitzford,  where,  finding  his  wife  and 
child  something  of  a  drag  upon  him  in  his  wild  and 
dissipated  career,  he  turned  them  out  of  doors,  and  his 
wife  had  to  go  for  shelter  to  her  father.  Left  now  to 
himself  and  his  evil  associates,  "  Men  of  dissolute  and 
desperate  fortunes,"  chief  among  whom  was  "  Lusty 
Jacke,  one  whose  deedes  were  indeed  meane,  whose 
qualities  altogether  none,"  he  behaved  in  such  sort 
that  "the  Towne  of  Tavistocke,  though  otherwise 
orderly  governed  with  sobriety,  and  likewise  of  grave 
magistrates,  was  thereby  infected  with  the  beastly 
corruption  of  drunkenesse.  Sir  John,  of  his  own  in- 
clination apte,  and  by  his  retained  copesmates  urged, 
persevered  evermore  to  run  headlong  into  such  enor- 
mities as  their  sensuality  and  pleasures  inclined  unto, 
spending  their  time  in  riotous  surfettinge  and  in  all 
abominable  drunkenness,  plucking  men  by  night  out 
of  their  beddes,  violently  breaking  windows,  quarrelling 
with  ale-conners  [ale-tasters],  righting  in  private  brables 
amongst  themselves.  And  when  they  had  abused  the 
townsmen  and  disturbed  their  neighbours,  Sir  John's 
own  house  was  their  sanctuary  or  receptacle  to  cloak 
their  outrages ;  so  as  it  seemed  they  lyved  as,  in  time 


SIR  JOHN   FITZ  191 

of  old,  the  common  outlaws  of  the  land  did,  neither 
worshipping  God  nor  honouringe  Prince,  but  wholly 
subject  to  their  contentes  alone." 

According  to  Prince,  about  this  time  Fitz  committed 
another  murder  ;  but  what  seems  to  be  better  authenti- 
cated is  that  he  all  but  killed  one  of  the  town  con- 
stables. 

In  the  summer  of  1605,  Sir  John  Fitz  was  summoned 
to  London  to  appear  before  the  courts,  in  answer  to  a 
claim  of  compensation  for  their  father's  murder,  made 
by  the  children  of  Nicholas  Slanning,  the  eldest  of 
whom,  Gamaliel,  was  now  about  eighteen  years  old. 
He  set  out  on  horseback,  attended  by  a  servant. 
Dissipation  had  weakened  his  mind  and  shattered  his 
nerves.  He  was  in  deadly  alarm.  Not  only  would  he 
be  heavily  fined  for  the  assassination  of  Slanning, 
but  he  had  been  playing  ducks  and  drakes  with  his 
property  which  had  been  settled  by  deed  of  20  March, 
1598-9,  on  his  wife,  and  he  expected  to  be  called  to 
task  for  this  by  Sir  William  Courtenay,  his  wife's 
father.  He  took  it  into  his  head  that  his  life  was  in 
danger,  that  the  friends  and  kinsfolk  of  Slanning 
would  ambuscade  and  murder  him ;  that  Sir  W. 
Courtenay  would  be  willing  to  have  him  put  out  of 
the  way  so  as  to  save  the  property  from  being  further 
dissipated.  At  every  point  on  his  journey  he  showed 
himself  suspicious  of  being  waylaid  or  pursued.  Every 
day  his  fancies  became  more  disordered. 

At  length  he  reached  Kingston-on-Thames,  and  put 
up  for  the  night  there.  But  he  could  not  sleep,  noises 
disturbed  him,  and  rising  from  his  bed  he  insisted  on 
the  servant  getting  ready  his  nag,  and  away  he  rode 
over  Kingston  Bridge,  alone,  having  peremptorily  for- 
bidden his  man  to  accompany  him,  entertaining  some 
suspicion  that  the  man  had  been  bought  by  his  enemies 


192  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

and  would  lead  him  into  a  trap.  He  drew  up  at  the 
"Anchor,"  a  small  tavern  at  Twickenham,  kept  by  one 
Daniel  Alley ;  it  was  now  2  a.m.,  and  all  Twickenham 
was  asleep.  He  hammered  at  the  door  and  shouted  ; 
presently  the  casement  opened,  and  the  publican 
put  out  his  head  and  inquired  what  the  gentleman 
wanted.  Sir  John  demanded  a  bed  and  shelter  for  the 
rest  of  the  night.  Daniel  Alley  begged  to  be  excused, 
he  had  no  spare  room,  his  house  was  small  and  not 
fitted  for  the  reception  of  persons  of  quality.  How- 
ever, on  Sir  John's  further  insistence  he  put  on  his 
clothes,  struck  a  light,  descended,  and  did  his  utmost 
to  make  the  nocturnal  visitor  comfortable,  even  sur- 
rendering to  him  his  own  bed,  and  sending  his  wife  to 
sleep  with  the  children.  Sir  John  cast  himself  on  the 
bed.  He  tossed  ;  and  host  and  hostess  heard  him  cry 
out,  and  speak  of  enemies  who  pursued  him  and 
sought  his  blood.  There  was  no  sleeping  for  Daniel 
or  his  wife,  and  the  host  rose  at  dawn  to  join  a  neigh- 
bour in  mowing  a  meadow.  But  when  he  was  about 
to  go  forth,  his  wife  begged  not  to  be  left  in  the  house 
alone  with  the  strange  gentleman.  The  neighbour 
came  up,  and  he  and  Alley  spoke  together  at  the  door. 
Their  voices  reached  Sir  John,  who  had  fallen  into  a 
disordered  sleep.  Persuaded  that  the  enemies  were 
arrived  and  were  surrounding  the  house,  he  rushed 
out  in  his  nightgown,  with  his  sword  drawn,  fell  on 
his  host,  and  killed  him.  Then  he  ran  his  sword 
against  the  wife,  wounding  her.  But  now,  with  the 
gathering  light,  he  discovered  what  he  had  done, 
and  in  a  fit  of  despair  stabbed  himself  in  two  places. 
He  was  secured  now  by  neighbours  who  had  come 
up,  and  taken  to  the  bed  he  had  just  quitted.  A 
surgeon  was  sent  for,  and  his  wounds  were  bound 
up.  But  Sir  John  angrily  refused  the  assistance  of 


FRONTISPIECE   TO    "THE    BLOUDIE   BOOKE  ;     OR   THE   TRAGICAL   END 
OF   SIR  JOHN    FITZ" 


SIR  JOHN   FITZ  193 

the  leech,  and  tore  away  the  bandages,  and  bled  to 
death. 

Daniel  Alley  was  buried  on  the  8th  day  of  August, 
1605,  an(*  Sir  John  Fitz  on  the  loth,  and  "  because  he 
was  a  Gentleman  borne  and  of  good  kindred,  hee  was 
buried  in  the  Chancell  at  Twickenham.'*  The  repre- 
sentative of  the  Fitz  family  was  now  his  little  daughter 
Mary,  whose  story  is  also  sufficiently  curious  to  deserve 
a  place  here. 

The  authority  for  the  story  of  Sir  John  Fitz's  death 
is  The  Bloudie  Booke;  or,  the  Tragical  End  of  Sir  John 
Fitz.  London,  1605.  Probably  enough  written  by  a 
chaplain  to  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  then  at  Sion 
House,  who  hearing  of  what  had  happened,  sent  this 
chaplain  to  Twickenham,  and  to  Sir  John,  at  the 
" Anchor,"  "To  put  him  in  mind  what  he  had  done 
and  persuade  him  to  repent." 


i 


LADY    HOWARD 

Earl  of  Northumberland  had  shown 
himself  solicitous  for  the  welfare  of  the  soul 
of  Sir  John  Fitz  when  he  heard  of  the 
murder  and  suicide  at  Twickenham  ;  he  was 
even  more  solicitous  over  his  estate.  He  was  aware 
that  Sir  John  had  left  an  only  daughter,  still  a  child, 
who  was  with  her  mother  at  Radford.  He  posted  up  to 
London  at  once,  saw  the  King,  and  bought  of  him  the 
wardship  of  the  little  orphan  for  ^465,  to  be  paid  in 
instalments,  and  raised  out  of  the  estate  of  the  little 
heiress,  who  was  then  aged  nine  years  and  one 
week. 

"The  law  of  wardship,"  says  Mrs.  G.  Radford, 
"seems  so  cruel  and  tyrannical  that  it  is  wonderful 
that  it  should  have  endured  so  long.  By  it,  when 
any  man  who  held  land  in  capite,  or  direct  from  the 
Crown,  died,  his  heir,  if  a  minor,  belonged  to  the  king, 
who  had  a  right  to  receive  all  rents  and  profits  from 
these  lands  until  the  heir  became  of  age.  He  could 
also  marry  the  ward  to  whom  he  would.  Henry  VIII 
established  the  Court  of  Wards  and  Liveries,  the 
number  of  estates  held  in  capite  being  so  great  that 
some  organized  system  was  necessary.  By  it  the  ward- 
ship and  marriage  of  minors  were  sold  to  the  highest 
bidder,  who  was  sometimes  the  child's  mother  or  the 
executors  of  the  father's  will.  But  if  they  were  not 
very  prompt  in  applying,  or  did  not  offer  the  largest 
sum,  then  to  any  stranger.  The  guardian  would  have 

194 


LADY    HOWARD 


LADY    HOWARD  195 

complete  control  over  the  ward,  who  generally  lived  in 
his  house,  could  marry  the  ward  as  he  liked,  this  also 
being  generally  an  affair  of  money,  and  received  the 
rents  of  the  minor's  estate  without  any  liability  to 
account."1 

Accordingly,  at  the  age  of  nine,  little  Mary  Fitz  was 
taken  from  her  mother,  but  under  whose  charge  she  was 
placed  at  first  does  not  appear.  A  year  or  two  later, 
she  was  living  in  the  house  of  Lady  Elizabeth  Hatton, 
second  wife  of  Sir  Edmund  Coke,  then  Master  of  the 
Court  of  Wards.  At  once  the  Earl  of  Northumberland 
sent  his  brother,  Sir  Allan  Percy,  into  Devon  to  look 
over  the  estates  of  Mary  Fitz  and  make  what  money  he 
could  out  of  them  by  felling  timber. 

Sir  Allan  was,  apparently,  quite  satisfied  with  what 
he  saw  ;  he  was  a  needy  man,  and  resolved  on  marry- 
ing the  heiress,  and  this  he  did  about  1608,  when  he 
was  aged  thirty-one  and  she  twelve.  But  as  she  was  so 
young  it  was  arranged  that  she  should  not  live  with  her 
husband  till  she  reached  a  nubile  age.  She  never 
did  live  with  him,  for  he  caught  a  severe  chill  through 
lying  on  the  damp  ground  when  hot  and  tired  with 
hunting,  and  he  died  in  November,  1611.  She  was  the 
wealthiest  heiress  in  Devonshire,  and  the  Earl  of 
Suffolk  schemed  to  obtain  her  for  his  third  son,  Sir 
Thomas  Howard.  She  was  not  only  rich,  but  beautiful. 
Her  father  had  been  a  remarkably  handsome  man,  and 
Lord  Clarendon,  long  after  this  date,  speaks  of  her  as 
"  having  been  of  extraordinary  beauty."  But  she 
balked  all  schemers  by  running  away  with  Thomas 
Darcy,  a  young  man  of  her  own  age,  son  of  Lord 
Darcy,  of  Chiche,  afterwards  Earl  Rivers.  Lord  Darcy 
could  not  object  to  the  match,  but  Mary  Fitz  was  still  a 

1  "  Lady  Howard,  of  Fitzford,"  in  Transactions  of  the  Devonshire 
Association,  1890. 


196  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

minor,  and  a  ward.  If  proceedings  were  threatened, 
nothing  came  of  it,  for  the  young  bridegroom  died. 
The  exact  date  is  not  known,  but  he  could  not  have 
lived  with  her  more  than  a  few  months  after  his 
marriage. 

Mary,  still  a  ward,  was  now  married,  for  the  third 
time  before  she  was  sixteen,  to  Sir  Charles  Howard, 
fourth  son  of  the  Earl  of  Suffolk,  not  to  Sir  Thomas, 
his  third  son,  as  had  been  at  first  designed.  The  young 
couple  resided  with  the  Earl  at  Audley  End,  and  there 
her  first  child  was  born,  a  daughter,  Elizabeth,  born 
on  21  September,  1613,  who  does  not  seem  to  have 
lived  long,  as  she  disappears  altogether  within  a  few 
years.  There  was  a  second  daughter,  Mary,  born  in 
London,  the  date  not  known ;  but  Sir  Charles  Howard 
died  on  22  September,  1622,  without  leaving  male 
issue.  It  was  when  a  widow  about  this  time,  appa- 
rently, that  Lady  Howard  was  painted  by  Vandyke, 
and  this  was  engraved  by  Hollar.  The  painting 
cannot  now  be  traced.  She  was  now  one  of  the 
stateliest  dames  of  the  Court  of  Henrietta  Maria, 
where  she  cultivated  the  friendship  of  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham,  who  exerted  his  influence  with  her  so  as 
to  render  her  propitious  to  the  addresses  of  one  of  his 
own  dependents,  Sir  Richard  Grenville.  The  Duke 
considered  that  a  rich  wife  would  help  on  the  fortunes 
of  his  favourite,  and  thus  did  the  heiress  of  Fitzford 
and  Walreddon  give  herself  to  her  fourth  and  worst 
husband.  But  before  marrying  him  she  was  cautious 
to  tie  up  her  estate  in  such  a  manner  that  he  could  not 
touch  it.  Without  breathing  a  word  of  what  she  was 
doing,  she  conveyed  all  her  lands  to  Walter  Hele, 
Anthony  Short,  and  William  Grills  in  trust  to  permit 
her  during  her  life,  whether  sole  or  married,  to  receive 
the  rents  and  dispose  of  them  at  her  own  goodwill  and 


LADY   HOWARD  197 

pleasure.  Sir  Richard  Grenville  went  with  his  wife  to 
Fitzford,  and  there  in  May,  1630,  their  first  child  was 
born,  and  christened  Richard  after  his  father.  Sir 
Richard  was  mightily  incensed  when  he  discovered 
that  he  could  not  handle  the  revenues  of  the  estates, 
and  this  led  to  incessant  bickerings.  Clarendon  says  : — 

"He  had  nothing  to  depend  upon  but  the  fortune 
of  his  wife :  which,  though  ample  enough  to  have  sup- 
ported the  expense  a  person  of  his  quality  ought  to 
have  made,  was  not  large  enough  to  satisfy  his  vanity 
and  ambition.  Nor  so  great  as  he,  upon  common 
reports,  had  promised  himself  by  her.  By  not  being 
enough  pleased  with  her  fortune,  he  grew  less  pleased 
with  his  wife  ;  who,  being  a  woman  of  a  haughty  and 
imperious  nature,  and  of  a  wit  far  superior  to  his  own, 
quickly  resented  the  disrespect  she  received  from  him, 
and  in  no  degree  studied  to  make  herself  easy  to  him. 
After  some  years  spent  together  in  these  domestic  un- 
sociable contestations,  in  which  he  possessed  himself 
of  all  her  estate,  as  the  sole  master  of  it,  without  allow- 
ing her  out  of  her  own  any  competency  for  herself,  and 
indulging  to  himself  all  those  licences  in  her  own 
house  which  to  women  are  most  grievous,  she  found 
means  to  withdraw  herself  from  him,  and  was  with  all 
kindness  received  into  the  family  in  which  she  had 
before  married,  and  was  always  very  much  respected." 

Before  proceeding  with  the  quotation  from  Clarendon, 
it  will  be  well  to  give  at  once  some  illustrative  touches 
as  to  the  annoyances  she  underwent  at  the  hands  of 
Sir  Richard,  and  as  to  her  own  conduct  towards  him. 
He  confined  her  to  a  corner  of  her  own  house,  Fitzford, 
excluded  her  from  the  government  of  the  house,  and 
installed  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Katherine  Abbott,  as  his  house- 
keeper, with  control  over  the  servants  and  the  keeping 
of  the  keys. 


i98  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

This  was  bad  enough,  but  there  was  worse  to  come  ; 
his  violence  and  language  towards  her  were  so  intoler- 
able that  she  was  constrained  to  appeal  to  the  justices  of 
the  peace,  who  ordered  him  to  allow  her  forty  shillings 
a  week.  This,  after  a  time,  he  refused  to  pay,  unless 
she  would  grant  him  an  acquittance.  All  this  is  stated 
in  the  lady's  plea  to  obtain  a  divorce  in  1631-2.  He 
also  called  her  bad  names  before  the  justices,  "she 
being  a  vertuous  and  a  chaste  lady  " — a  pretty  scene  in 
the  court  at  Tavistock  for  the  citizens  to  witness  and 
listen  to. 

"  He  gave  directions  to  one  of  his  servantes  to  burn 
horse-haire,  wooll,  feathers  and  parings  of  horse  hoofes, 
and  to  cause  the  smoke  to  goe  into  the  ladye's  chamber, 
through  an  hole  made  in  the  plaistering  out  of  the 
kitchen.  He  broke  up  her  chamber  doore,  and  came 
into  her  chamber  at  night  with  a  sword  drawn.  That 
for  the  key  of  his  closett  which  she  had  taken  away 
and  denyed  to  give  him,  he  tooke  hold  of  her  petty 
coate  and  tore  it,  and  threw  her  upon  the  ground, 
being  with  childe,  and,  as  one  witness  deposeth,  made 
her  eye  blacke  and  blewe." 

Sir  Richard,  on  his  side,  complained,  "  That  they 
had  lived  quietly  together  for  the  space  of  two  years, 
and  till  they  came  to  this  Court.  .  .  .  That  she  hath 
often  carried  herself  unseemly  both  in  wordes  and 
deedes,  and  sunge  unseemly  songs  to  his  face  to  pro- 
voke him,  and  bid  him  goe  to  such  a  woman  and  such 
a  woman,  and  called  him  a  poore  rogue  and  pretty 
fellow,  and  said  he  was  not  worth  ten  groates  when  she 
married  him  ;  that  she  would  make  him  creepe  to  her, 
and  that  she  had  good  friends  in  London  would  beare 
her  out  of  it.  That  she  swore  the  peace  against  him 
without  cause,  and  then  asked  him,  <  Art  thou  not  a 
pretty  fellow  to  be  bound  to  the  good  behaviour?' 


LADY   HOWARD  199 

Then  she  said  he  was  an  ugly  fellow,  and  when  he  was 
once  gone  from  home,  she  said,  (  The  Devill  and  six- 
pence goe  with  him,  and  soe  shall  he  lacke  neither 
money  nor  company  ! '  That  she  said  such  a  one  was 
a  honester  man  than  her  husband,  and  loved  Cuttofer 
(George  Cutteford,  her  steward)  better  than  him.  That 
there  were  holes  made  in  the  kitchen  wall  by  the  lady 
or  her  daughter  (i.e.  Mary  Howard),  that  he  gave  direc- 
tion that  they  should  be  stopped  up,  that  she  might 
not  harken  to  what  the  servants  said  in  the  kitchen, 
that  she  had  ten  roomes  at  pleasure,  and  had  whatso- 
ever in  the  house  she  would  desire.  That  she  locked 
him  into  his  closett  and  tooke  away  the  key,  and  it  is 
true  he  endeavoured  to  take  away  the  key  from  her, 
and  hurt  his  thumb  and  rent  her  pocket." 

Sir  Richard  certainly  comes  out  best  in  the  case. 
She  was  a  woman  of  insuperable  pride,  and  with  a 
violent  temper  and  abusive,  insulting  tongue.  Having 
fled  from  Fitzford,  and  taken  refuge  with  the  family  of 
the  Earl  of  Suffolk,  Sir  Richard  for  a  while  breathed 
free,  and  rejoiced  at  her  absence,  till  the  tenants  refused 
to  pay  rent  into  his  hands,  whereupon  he  found  himself 
without  money  ;  her  pre-nuptial  settlement  was  put 
in  force,  and  the  trustees  required  the  tenants  to  pay 
their  rents  to  them.  To  return  to  Clarendon.  "This 
begat  a  suit  in  Chancery  between  Sir  Richard  Grenville 
and  the  Earl  of  Suffolk,  before  the  Lord  Coventry,  who 
found  the  conveyance  in  Law  to  be  so  firm,  that  he 
could  not  only  not  relieve  Sir  Richard  Grenville  in 
equity,  but  that  in  justice  he  must  decree  the  land  to 
the  Earl,  which  he  did.  This  very  sensible  mortifica- 
tion transported  him  so  much,  that  being  a  man  who 
used  to  speak  bitterly  of  those  he  did  not  love,  after  all 
endeavours  to  engage  the  Earl  in  a  personal  conflict, 
he  revenged  himself  upon  him  in  such  opprobrious 


200  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

language  as  the  Government  and  justice  of  that  time 
would  not  permit  to  pass  unpunished  ;  and  the  Earl 
appealed  for  reparation  to  the  Court  of  the  Star 
Chamber,  where  Sir  Richard  was  decreed  to  pay  three 
thousand  pounds  to  the  King,  who  gave  the  fine  like- 
wise to  the  Earl ;  so  that  Sir  Richard  was  committed  to 
the  prison  of  the  Fleet  in  execution  for  the  whole  six  thou- 
sand pounds,  which  at  that  time  was  thought  by  all  men 
to  be  a  very  severe  and  rigorous  decree,  and  drew  a 
general  compassion  towards  the  unhappy  gentleman. 

"  For  some  years  Sir  Richard  endured  this  imprison- 
ment, which  made  him  the  more  bitter  against  his 
wife ;  he  at  length  escaped  his  captivity,  and  fled 
beyond  seas.  There  he  remained  till  the  great 
change  in  England  having  caused  many  decrees  of  the 
Star  Chamber  to  be  repealed,  and  the  persons  awarded 
to  pay  penalties  absolved,  he  came  home  and  petitioned 
to  be  heard  in  mitigation  of  his  case.  Before  this  came 
on,  the  rebellion  broke  out  in  Ireland."  The  proceed- 
ings for  a  divorce  were  taken  by  Lady  Grenville 
against  her  husband  whilst  he  was  a  prisoner  in  the 
Fleet,  no  doubt  acting  on  the  advice  of  the  Earl  of 
Suffolk,  elder  brother  of  her  late  husband  ;  and  it  was 
whilst  she  was  in  London  at  his  house  that  her  second 
daughter,  Elizabeth,  was  born.  The  court  after  hear- 
ing arguments  from  counsel,  decreed  divorce  a  mensa 
et  thoro,  but  that  one-half  of  her  means  should  be  paid 
to  Sir  Richard  annually.  In  August  of  the  same  year 
(1632),  a  commission  was  sent  to  Fitzford  to  search  the 
house,  as  Sir  Richard  was  suspected  of  clipping  the 
current  coin  and  of  coining  as  well.  Sir  F.  Drake 
and  William  Strode  visited  the  house,  but  notice  of 
their  coming  had  in  some  way  been  given.  They 
thoroughly  searched  "  tronkes,  chests  and  cabinetts," 
and  closely  examined  Mrs.  Abbott,  Sir  Richard's  aunt 


LADY   HOWARD  201 

"who  had  the  rule  of  the  house."  Pincers,  holdfasts, 
files  "smoothe  and  ruffe,"  one  of  which  had  been  em- 
ployed for  yellow  metal,  were  found,  and  the  servants 
admitted  that  they  had  melted  silver  lace,  etc.  All 
this,  though  suspicious,  was  not  conclusive,  and  the 
charge  was  not  pressed.  On  17  October,  1633,  Sir 
Richard  escaped  from  the  Fleet  and  entered  the 
Swedish  service  in  Germany.  Nothing  is  heard  of  him 
again  till  1639.  During  these  seven  years  his  emanci- 
pated wife  lived  in  various  places,  for  the  first  four  or 
five  years  with  the  Earl  of  Suffolk,  and  afterwards 
at  her  own  house  in  London.  She  had  thrown  off  her 
name  of  Grenville  and  resumed  that  of  Howard. 

Theophilus,  Earl  of  Suffolk,  was  born  in  1584,  and 
was  married  to  Lady  Elizabeth  Hume,  who  died  in 
J533>  the  year  after  the  divorce.  To  this  period  prob- 
ably belongs  an  episode  that  is  shrouded  in  mystery. 
Lady  Howard  had  a  son,  George  Howard,  when  born 
is  not  recorded. 

He  is  first  mentioned  in  1644  in  a  petition  made 
by  his  mother  to  the  King,  and  then  and  afterwards  is 
alluded  to  as  Lady  Howard's  son.  He  certainly  was 
not  the  son  of  Sir  Charles  Howard,  for  seven  years 
after  that  gentleman's  death,  in  1628,  it  is  stated,  in 
his  wife's  pleading  before  the  Court  of  Chancery, 
that  Sir  Charles  died  "  without  heires  male,  leaving 
only  twoe  daughters,  Elizabeth  and  Mary."  It  is  a 
curious  fact  that  none  of  the  contemporary  writers 
who  mention  Lady  Howard  make  any  aspersions  on 
her  morals.  That  George  passed  in  Tavistock  as  the 
son  of  Sir  Charles  is  certain,  but  it  is  just  as  certain 
that  he  was  not  this.  We  cannot  but  suspect  a  liaison 
with  Theophilus,  Earl  of  Suffolk,  in  whose  house  Lady 
Howard  continued  to  live  after  the  death  of  his  wife. 
In  the  confusion  of  the  Civil  Wars,  and  the  distraction 


202  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

of  men's  minds  from  family  scandals  to  events  of  public 
import,  it  would  have  been  quite  possible  for  Lady 
Howard  to  mislead  the  Tavistock  people  as  to  the  true 
parentage  of  her  son  George.  The  Earl  was  by  no 
means  an  old  man  when  the  Countess  died,  in  fact,  was 
aged  forty-nine  years. 

During  the  seven  years  of  Sir  Richard's  absence, 
Lady  Howard  wrote  many  letters  to  her  steward  Cutte- 
ford,  who  occupied  Walreddon  and  managed  her  estates 
in  Devon  and  Cornwall.  Whether  it  was  intended  as 
humour  or  not  we  cannot  say,  but  she  invariably 
addressed  her  agent  as  "Guts,"  "Honest  Guts," 
"Good  Guts,"  and  once  "  Froward  Guts,"  and  almost 
every  letter  was  for  money.  In  all  the  seven  years 
since  the  decree  of  divorce,  Sir  Richard  had  certainly 
not  received  one  penny  of  the  sum  allotted  to  him 
to  be  paid  annually  from  his  wife's  income,  and 
when  he  returned  to  England  in  1639  ne  carried  his 
cause  before  the  King's  Council,  and  claimed  of  the 
Earl  of  Suffolk  arrears  to  the  amount  of  £12,656. 

A  committee  was  appointed  to  hear  Sir  Richard's 
cause,  in  December,  1640,  and  so  hopeful  was  he  of 
success,  that  he  actually  went  down  to  Fitzford,  turned 
out  the  caretakers,  and  installed  his  aunt  there  again. 
Lady  Howard  wrote  to  her  steward  in  "a  very  great 
distraction "  on  hearing  of  these  proceedings.  But 
before  his  case  was  decided,  he  was  sent  by  the  King  to 
Ireland  in  command  of  a  troop,  and  arrived  in  Dublin 
in  March,  1641-2.  He  remained  in  Ireland  for  more 
than  a  year,  and  earned  distinction  as  a  commander. 
On  his  return,  he  learned  that  the  King,  who  was  at 
Oxford,  was  short  of  money,  and  that  the  Parliament 
in  London  had  plenty.  He  had  not  been  paid  for  his 
services  in  Ireland,  so  he  rode  to  where  the  money  bags 
were,  assumed  the  Puritan  cant  and  nasal  twang,  re- 


LADY    HOWARD  203 

counted  his  great  service,  and  protested  his  desire  to 
quit  the  "  Tents  of  Shem  and  cast  in  his  lot  with  the 
righteous,"  i.e.  to  desert  the  royal  cause.  The  Par- 
liament was  delighted,  he  was  at  once  paid  all  arrears, 
was  made  a  major-general  of  horse  in  the  Parlia- 
mentary army,  with  a  regiment  of  five  hundred  horse, 
and  power  to  choose  his  own  officers.  On  2  March, 
1643-4,  he  set  out  with  his  regiment,  riding  through 
London  amidst  the  plaudits  of  the  citizens.  His  banner 
was  carried  in  front,  displaying  a  map  of  England  and 
Wales  on  a  crimson  ground,  with  "  England  bleed- 
ing "  in  golden  letters  across  the  top.  The  regiment 
rode  on  as  far  as  Bagshot,  when  a  halt  was  called. 
Then  Sir  Richard  harangued  the  officers  and  men,  set 
forth  the  sinfulness  of  fighting  against  their  anointed 
King,  and  concluded  by  inviting  them  to  follow  him  to 
Oxford,  to  fight  for  the  King  instead  of  against  him. 
The  officers,  whom  he  had  not  failed  to  pick  out  from 
among  his  most  trusty  friends  and  dependents,  all  cheer- 
fully assented,  and  followed  by  most  of  his  soldiers,  Sir 
Richard  rode  straight  to  Oxford  and  presented  himself 
to  the  King  at  the  head  of  a  well-equipped  troop,  and 
placed  his  sword  at  His  Majesty's  disposal.  The  Par- 
liament, duped,  was  furious,  a  price  was  set  on  Sir 
Richard's  head,  and  he  was  hanged  in  effigy.  A  Pro- 
clamation was  issued,  declaring  him  "traytor,  rogue, 
villain  and  skellum  " — this  last  word  was  deemed  so 
appropriate  that  henceforth  he  was  known  as  Skellum 
Grenville.  William  Lilly,  the  astrologer,  refers  to  him 
when  he  says:  "  Have  we  another  Red  Fox  like  Sir 
R.  G.  acting  his  close  devotions  to  do  our  Army 
mischief?  Let's  be  wary  !  " 

Sir  Richard  being  now  in  high  favour  with  the  King 
made  petition  to  be  given  his  wife's  estates  in  Devon- 
shire, on  the  ground  that  her  continued  residence  in 


204  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

London  made  her  a  rebel.  The  King,  with  monstrous 
injustice,  granted  what  was  asked,  and  at  once — a  fort- 
night after  his  having  marched  out  of  London — he 
arrived  in  Tavistock,  with  powers  from  the  King  to 
take  possession  of  all  his  wife's  estates.  Armed  with  a 
warrant  from  Prince  Maurice,  then  quartered  at  Tavi- 
stock, Sir  Richard  threw  Cutteford  and  his  wife  and 
son  into  prison,  and  proceeded  to  plunder  his  house, 
and  scrape  together  what  money  he  could  from  the 
tenants.  Plymouth  was  at  this  time  invested  by  the 
Royal  army  ;  Sir  Richard  was  placed  in  command, 
and  he  remained  there  till  the  approach  of  Essex  with 
a  large  army  compelled  him  to  retreat  into  Cornwall 
with  his  troops,  leaving  only  a  few  soldiers  in  his  wife's 
house,  Fitzford,  to  defend  it. 

Essex  was  not  slow  to  avail  himself  of  the  chance  of 
punishing  Skellum  Grenville — the  Red  Fox — and  his 
own  regiment  and  another  proceeded  to  Fitzford,  and 
after  damaging  it  with  cannon,  compelled  the  garrison 
of  one  hundred  and  eighty  to  lay  down  their  arms. 
Those  who  agreed  to  take  the  Covenant,  about  sixty, 
were  enrolled  in  the  Parliamentary  army,  the  rest  were 
detained  as  prisoners.  The  house  was  given  up  to 
plunder.  There  was  in  it  "  excellent  pillage  for  the 
soldiers,  even  at  least  £3000  in  money  and  plate,  and 
other  provisions  in  great  quantity." 

Unhappily,  the  plate,  the  money,  the  furniture,  the 
provisions  did  not  belong  to  Skellum  Grenville  at  all, 
but  to  Lady  Howard,  accounted  a  Parliamentarian. 
They  were  his  by  usurpation  only.  After  the  defeat 
of  Essex  in  Cornwall,  the  King  gave  Sir  Richard  all 
the  Earl  of  Bedford's  estates  and  those  of  Sir  Francis 
Drake,  and  he  resumed  command  at  the  siege  of  Ply- 
mouth. He  was  made  Sheriff  of  Devon  in  the  same 
year,  1645,  and  his  exactions  were  great,  both  as 


LADY    HOWARD  205 

sheriff  and  as  the  "  King's  General  in  the  West." 
But  he  was  not  a  man  to  behave  with  moderation  ; 
he  speedily  abused  all  these  favours,  and  his  acts  were 
so  notoriously  tyrannical  and  cruel  that  they  were 
formally  brought  as  charges  against  him  before  the 
Council,  where  he  was  summoned  to  appear  in  person 
and  answer  for  his  misdeeds  whilst  governor  of  Lyd- 
ford  Castle.  One  instance  of  his  cruelty  deserves 
particular  notice,  as  it  shows  the  bitterness  wherewith 
he  recollected  his  quarrels  with  his  wife.  During  the 
time  of  her  proceedings  against  him  in  Chancery  she 
employed  an  attorn ey-at-law  whose  name  was  Brabant ; 
he  bore  the  character  of  being  an  honest  man,  and 
loyal  to  the  King.  He  lived  somewhere  in  this  part 
of  Devonshire.  Many  years  elapsed  since  the  decision 
of  that  suit  against  him,  before  Sir  Richard  became 
a  man  of  so  much  importance  by  his  high  military 
command  in  the  west.  No  sooner  did  Brabant  learn 
the  news  of  his  arrival,  than,  well  knowing  he  was  not 
of  a  disposition  to  forget  or  forgive  an  old  adversary, 
Brabant  judged  it  prudent  to  keep  as  much  as  possible 
out  of  the  way.  Having  occasion,  however,  to  make 
a  journey  that  would  take  him  near  Sir  Richard's 
quarters,  he  disguised  himself  as  well  as  he  could  and 
put  on  a  montero  cap.  Sir  Richard,  who  probably 
had  been  on  the  watch  to  catch  him,  notwithstanding 
all  these  precautions,  received  intelligence  of  the  move- 
ments of  the  man  of  law.  He  caused  him  to  be  inter- 
cepted on  his  road,  made  prisoner,  and  brought  before 
him.  In  vain  did  Brabant  protest  that  he  was  journey- 
ing on  no  errand  but  his  own  private  affairs ;  for  Sir 
Richard  affecting,  on  account  of  his  montero  cap,  to 
believe  him  to  be  a  spy,  without  a  council  of  war,  or 
any  further  inquiry,  ordered  the  luckless  lawyer  to  be 
hanged  on  the  spot.  The  offences  of  Sir  Richard  were 


206  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

so  gross  that  he  was  sent  a  prisoner  to  St.  Michael's 
Mount,  in  Cornwall  ;  but  on  the  approach  of  the  Par- 
liamentary army  he  was  allowed  to  escape  on  3  March, 
1645-6.  He  sailed  to  Brest,  and  joined  his  son  at 
Nantes. 

Lady  Howard,  so  soon  as  she  heard  that  Sir  Richard 
was  out  of  England,  hastened  down  to  Fitzford,  where 
she  found  that  her  steward  was  dead  and  her  mansion 
wrecked.  When  the  country  was  somewhat  more 
peaceful  she  brought  down  to  it  from  London  her 
furniture,  books,  and  plate,  and  set  to  work  to  repair 
the  damage  that  the  house  had  sustained.  Her  son, 
George  Howard,  was  with  her  and  managed  her  affairs 
eventually,  not  at  first,  for  if  he  were  born  in  1634  he 
would  be  still  a  child. 

Sir  Richard  Grenville  and  his  son  Richard  wandered 
about  the  Continent  till  1647,  when  he  formed  the  rash 
intention  to  return  to  London.  What  induced  him  to 
take  this  desperate  step  can  only  be  conjectured.  Per- 
haps he  had  money  in  London,  which  it  was  only 
possible  to  secure  personally ;  possibly  he  may  have 
desired  to  get  possession  of  his  daughter  Elizabeth 
and  take  her  abroad  with  him,  rightly  conjecturing 
that  her  mother  had  no  affection,  but  the  contrary,  for 
a  child  of  his.  Indeed,  it  is  probable  that  the  tradi- 
tion of  Lady  Howard's  persistent  hatred  displayed  to- 
wards one  of  her  daughters  pertains  to  this  Elizabeth 
Grenville. 

There  must  have  been  some  very  strong  reason  for 
Sir  Richard's  venturing  to  England,  for  he  knew  per- 
fectly in  what  estimation  he  was  held  by  the  Puritans. 
He  disguised  himself,  cutting  his  hair  short  and  wear- 
ing "a  very  large  periwigg  hanging  on  his  shoulders," 
and  blackening  his  foxy-red  beard  with  a  lead  comb,  so 
that  "  none  would  know  him  but  by  his  voyse." 


LADY   HOWARD  207 

How  he  fared  in  England  we  know  not ;  he  did 
secure  his  daughter  and  escaped  with  his  life  to  Holland, 
but  of  his  son  we  hear  nothing  more,  and  it  is  possible 
that  he  met  his  death  while  in  England. 

Lord  Lansdowne,  in  his  Vindication  of  his  uncle, 
says,  "  His  only  son,  unluckily  falling  afterwards  into 
whose  hands,  was  hanged." 

In  1652  Sir  Richard  Grenville,  being  in  the  Low 
Countries,  seized  goods  belonging  to  the  Earl  of 
Suffolk  that  were  at  Bruges,  to  the  value  of  £27,000, 
as  some  abatement  of  the  debt  he  considered  was  due 
to  him  out  of  Lady  Howard's  estate. 

In  1655  that  lady's  son,  George  Howard,  married 
Mistress  Burnby,  and  by  her  had  a  son  George  who 
died  young,  and  he  had  no  more  children,  so  that  with 
this  child  died  his  grandmother's  hopes  of  a  descendant 
in  the  male  line.  If  George  Howard,  the  father,  were 
born  in  1634,  he  would  have  been  one-and-twenty  when 
he  married. 

Sir  Richard  Grenville  died  at  Ghent  about  1659, 
attended  by  his  daughter  Elizabeth,  who  shortly  after 
married  a  privateer  captain  named  Lennard,  who 
cruised  the  Channel  stopping  and  plundering  English 
vessels,  on  the  principle  that  all  who  did  not  fight  for 
King  Charles  were  his  enemies  and  the  enemies  of  his 
country.  He  was  taken  prisoner  8  February,  1659-60, 
and  only  escaped  befog  hanged  by  the  Restoration.  He 
was  set  at  liberty  and  given  the  post  of  captain  of  the 
Black  Horse  at  Tilbury  ;  but  he  did  not  long  enjoy 
the  post,  as  he  died  in  1665. 

Something  must  now  be  said  about  this  daughter, 
Elizabeth  Grenville,  concerning  whom  tradition  has  a 
good  deal  to  say,  but  it  is  unsupported  by  documentary 
evidence. 

The  story  is  that  Lady  Howard  hated  the  child  with 


208  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

a  deadly  hate  as  the  offspring  of  the  plague  of  her  life, 
Sir  Richard  Grenville.  As  she  was  unkind  to  it,  a  lady 
carried  it  away,  and  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
mother  brought  it  up  as  her  own.  In  after  years  this 
lady  introduced  Elizabeth  to  her  mother  under  a  ficti- 
tious name,  and  Lady  Howard  became  quite  attached 
to  her.  Seeing  this,  the  lady  revealed  to  her  who  the 
young  girl  was.  At  this  Lady  Howard  started  to  her 
feet,  her  eyes  flaming  with  rage,  and  drove  Elizabeth 
from  her  presence. 

A  few  years  passed,  and  this  Elizabeth  Grenville 
made  another  attempt  to  see  and  soften  her  mother. 
She  went  to  her  at  Walreddon,  but  when  Lady  Howard 
saw  her  she  rushed  from  the  room  up  the  stairs  pur- 
sued by  her  daughter,  who  implored  her  to  stay  and 
hear  and  love  her.  Elizabeth  clung  to  her  mother's 
dress  on  the  landing,  as  Lady  Howard  passed  into  one 
of  the  upper  rooms.  The  unnatural  mother  swung 
back  the  door  with  such  violence  that  it  broke  her 
daughter's  arm.  If  this  took  place  at  all  it  was  prob- 
ably before  Elizabeth  departed  for  the  Continent  with 
her  father,  when  she  was  aged  sixteen.  She  never 
after  met  her  mother. 

Lady  Howard  was  getting  on  in  life  ;  her  son  George 
lived  with  her  at  Fitzford  and  managed  her  property. 
Feeling  old  age  creeping  on,  she  by  deed  made  over 
all  her  estates  to  him,  in  the  hopes  that  when  she  was 
gone  he  would  live  on  in  her  ancestral  home.  But  in 
the  prime  of  life  George  Howard  died  on  17  September, 
1671.  To  his  mother  the  shock  was  so  great  that  she 
did  not  recover  from  it,  and  she  also  died,  just  one  month 
after  him.  Hearing  that  she  was  ill,  her  first  cousin, 
Sir  William  Courtenay,  hurried  to  her  bedside,  and 
gained  such  power  over  Lady  Howard  as  to  induce  her 
to  make  a  will  leaving  all  her  possessions  to  him, 


LADY   HOWARD  209 

to  the  exclusion  of  her  daughters.  Mary  Howard, 
married  to  one  Vernon,  was  to  be  given  £500  within 
four  years  after  her  decease,  and  £1000  to  her  daughter 
Elizabeth,  married  to  Captain  Lennard,  to  be  paid 
within  two  years,  and  £20  within  one  year  ;  but  should 
she  protest  against  the  will,  then  what  she  was  to  receive 
would  be  reduced  to  £20.  The  will  was  signed  on 
14  October,  1671,  and  she  died  on  the  seventeenth  of  the 
same  month.  "This  is  the  one  action  of  Lady  Howard's 
life,"  says  Mrs.  Radford,  "that  seems  to  have  shocked 
her  contemporaries.  They  have  not  a  word  to  say 
against  her  moral  character  ;  but  she  disinherited  her 
children.  Could  anything  be  more  dreadful?" 

Walreddon  to  the  present  day  belongs  to  the  Earl  of 
Devon  ;  but  Fitzford  was  sold  in  1750  to  the  Duke  of 
Bedford. 

Lady  Howard  was  a  person  of  strong  will  and  im- 
perious temper,  and  left  a  deep  and  lasting  impression  on 
the  people  of  Tavistock.  Mrs.  Bray  collected  several 
traditions  relative  to  her,  which  she  published  in  her 
Notes  to  Fitz,  of  Fitzford^  in  1828.  She  bore  the  repu- 
tation of  having  been  hard-hearted  in  her  lifetime.  For 
some  crime  she  had  committed  (nobody  knew  what), 
she  was  said  to  be  doomed  to  run  in  the  shape  of  a 
hound  from  the  gateway  of  Fitzford  to  Okehampton 
Park,  between  the  hours  of  midnight  and  cock-crowing, 
and  to  return  with  a  single  blade  of  grass  in  her  mouth 
to  the  place  whence  she  had  started  ;  and  this  she  was 
to  do  till  every  blade  was  picked,  when  the  world 
would  be  at  an  end. 

"  Dr.  Jago,  the  clergyman  of  Milton  Abbot,  however, 
told  me  that  occasionally  she  was  said  to  ride  in  a 
coach  of  bones  up  West  Street,  Tavistock,  towards  the 
moor ;  and  an  old  man  of  this  place  told  a  friend  of 
mine  the  same  story,  adding  that  '  he  had  seen  her 
p 


210  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

scores  of  times.'  A  lady  also  who  was  once  resident 
here,  and  whom  I  met  in  company,  assured  me  that, 
happening  many  years  before  to  pass  the  old  gateway 
at  Fitzford,  as  the  church  clock  struck  twelve,  in  re- 
turning from  a  party,  she  had  herself  seen  the  hound 
start." 

When  a  child  I  heard  the  story,  but  somewhat  varied, 
that  Lady  Howard  drove  nightly  from  Okehampton 
Castle  to  Launceston  Castle  in  a  black  coach  driven  by 
a  headless  coachman,  and  preceded  by  a  fire-breathing 
black  hound  ;  that  when  the  coach  stopped  at  a  door, 
there  was  sure  to  be  a  death  in  that  house  the  same  night. 
There  was  a  ballad  about  it,  of  which  I  can  only  recall 
fragments.  Mr.  Sheppard  picked  it  up  also  at  South 
Brent  from  old  Helmore  the  miller ;  but  being  more 
concerned  about  the  tune  than  the  words,  and  thinking 
that  I  had  the  latter  already,  he  did  not  trouble  himself 
to  take  down  the  whole  ballad. 

In  the  first  edition  of  Songs  of  the  West,  I  gave  the 
ballad  reconstructed  by  me  from  the  poor  fragments 
that  I  recollected  ;  and  as  such  I  give  it  here  : — 

My  ladye  hath  a  sable  coach, 

And  horses  two  and  four  ; 
My  ladye  hath  a  black  blood-hound 

That  runneth  on  before. 
My  ladye's  coach  hath  nodding  plumes, 

The  driver  hath  no  head  ; 

My  ladye  is  an  ashen  white, 

As  one  that  long-  is  dead. 

"  Now  pray  step  in  ! "  my  ladye  saith, 

"  Now  pray  step  in  and  ride." 
I  thank  thee,  I  had  rather  walk 

Than  gather  to  thy  side. 
The  wheels  go  round  without  a  sound, 

Or  tramp  or  turn  of  wheels  ; 
As  cloud  at  night,  in  pale  moonlight, 

Along  the  carriage  steals. 


LADY   HOWARD  211 

"  Now  pray  step  in  !  "  my  ladye  saith, 

"  Now  prithee  come  to  me." 
She  takes  the  baby  from  the  crib, 

She  sits  it  on  her  knee. 
"  Now  pray  step  in  !  "  my  ladye  saith, 

"  Now  pray  step  in  and  ride." 
Then  deadly  pale,  in  waving-  veil, 

She  takes  to  her  the  bride. 

"  Now  pray  step  in  !  "  my  ladye  saith, 

"There's  room  I  wot  for  you." 
She  wav'd  her  hand,  the  coach  did  stand, 

The  Squire  within  she  drew. 
"  Now  pray  step  in  !  "  my  ladye  saith, 

"  Why  shouldst  thou  trudge  afoot?  " 
She  took  the  gaffer  in  by  her, 

His  crutches  in  the  boot. 

I'd  rather  walk  a  hundred  miles, 

And  run  by  night  and  day, 
Than  have  that  carriage  halt  for  me 

And  hear  my  ladye  say — 
"  Now  pray  step  in,  and  make  no  din, 

Step  in  with  me  to  ride  ; 
There's  room,  I  trow,  by  me  for  you, 

And  all  the  world  beside." 

As  a  fact,  Lady  Howard  did  not  have  a  carriage  but 
a  Sedan-chair.  An  inventory  of  her  goods  was  taken 
at  her  death  for  probate,  and  this  shows  that  she  had 
no  wheeled  conveyance.  The  story  of  the  Death  Coach 
is  probably  a  vague  reminiscence  of  the  Goddess  of 
Death  travelling  over  the  world  collecting  human  souls. 
The  authorities  for  the  Life  of  Lady  Howard  are  : — 
Lord  Lansdowne's  Vindication  of  Sir  Richard  Gren- 
ville,  printed  in  Holland,  1654,  reprinted  in  Lord  Lans- 
downe's Works,  1732  ;  also  Clarendon's  History  of  the 
Great  Rebellion,  and  Mrs.  G.  Radford's  "  Lady  Howard, 
of  Fitzford,"  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Devonshire 
Association,  1890. 


THE    BIDLAKES,  OF   BIDLAKE 


f  "^HE  Bidlake  family  can  be  traced  back  to 
the  thirteenth  century.  Their  original  seat 
was  Combe  or  Combebow,  in  the  parish  of 
-*-  Bridestowe,  where  they  had  a  mansion  on  a 
knoll  of  limestone  rising  out  of  a  narrow  valley.  The 
site  is  of  interest.  The  old  Roman  road,  probably  a 
pre-Roman  road  from  Exeter  to  Launceston  and  the 
West,  ran  through  this  contracted  glen,  on  the  south- 
east side  of  which  rises  steeply  a  lofty  chain  of 
hills  cut  sharply  through  by  the  Lew  River.  This 
ridge  goes  by  the  name  of  Galaford,  or  the  Forked 
Way,  because  the  ancient  roads  did  fork — that  already 
mentioned  ran  along  one  side,  and  that  leading  to 
Lydford  ran  on  the  other,  the  fork  being  on  Sourton 
Down.  At  the  point  or  promontory  above  the  cleft 
cut  by  the  Lew,  and  immediately  above  the  knoll  of 
Combe,  is  an  extensive  series  of  earthworks,  pre- 
historic and  Saxon.  The  prehistoric  camp  is  oval, 
with  outworks  to  the  south,  where  the  tongue  of  hill 
is  cut  through  from  one  side  to  the  other  by  an  artificial 
moat  with  bank. 

If  I  am  not  mistaken,  here  was  the  scene  of  the 
final  contest  of  the  Britons  against  the  Saxons  in  823, 
fought  at  Gavulford,  when  the  former  were  routed. 
This  was,  in  fact,  the  best  position  along  the  road  into 
Cornwall  at  which  they  could  make  a  stand.  That 

212 


THE   BIDLAKES,    OF    BIDLAKE         213 

the  Saxons  considered  it  a  point  of  importance  is 
shown  by  their  erecting  here  a  burh  or  burg  in  addi- 
tion to  the  powerfully  entrenched  prehistoric  fortress. 
The  knoll  in  the  valley  below  was  also  probably 
fortified,  but  all  traces  have  been  swept  away  by 
quarrymen  who  have  dug  the  hill  over  for  lime,  only 
sparing  one  point  that  was  heaped  up  with  the  ruins 
of  the  mansion  of  the  Combes. 

William  de  Combe  early  in  the  fifteenth  century  had 
a  son  John,  who  moved  to  Bidlake,  built  himself  a 
house  there,  and  called  himself  John  de  Bidlake.  His 
grandson,  John  de  Bidlake,  married  a  cousin  Alice, 
daughter  of  Richard  de  Combe  of  Bradstone,  and 
this  John  had  a  son,  another  John,  who  married  a 
Joan  of  Bridestowe,  his  cousin  in  the  fourth  degree. 
Combe  came  thus  to  be  united  to  the  possessions  of 
the  Bidlakes,  for  one  or  other  of  these  ladies  was  an 
heiress. 

There  was  in  Bridestowe  another  family  ancient  and 
well  estated,  the  Ebsworthys,  of  Ebsworthy,  and  the 
Bidlakes  and  Ebsworthys  were  too  near  neighbours  to 
be  good  friends.  In  fact,  there  was  an  hereditary  feud 
between  them.  One  of  the  Ebsworthys  had  married  a 
daughter  of  Gilbert  Germyn,  the  rector.  This  was 
quite  enough  for  the  Bidlakes  to  look  with  an  evil  eye 
on  the  parson.  William  Bidlake  and  Agnes  his  wife 
drew  up  charges  against  the  parson  in  1613. 

But  before  coming  to  the  complaints  of  1613,  we 
must  see  what  sort  of  man  this  Gilbert  Germyn  was. 
The  convulsions  and  changes  in  religion  that  had 
succeeded  each  other  in  waves  since  the  year  1531  had 
unsettled  men's  minds  ;  with  the  exception  of  fanatics 
on  one  side  or  the  other  —  the  staunch  adherents  to 
the  Papacy,  and  the  thorough-going  Puritans — dead 
apathy  had  settled  down  on  the  majority  with  regard 


2i4  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

to  religion  :  they  knew  not  what  to  believe  and  how 
worship  was  to  be  conducted,  and  they  did  not  much 
care.  Having  been  taught  to  abhor  the  distinctive 
errors  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  they  had  not  been  in- 
structed in  the  distinctive  errors  of  the  Church  of 
England  that  they  were  required  to  embrace.  The 
clergy  to  fill  the  vacant  benefices  were  ignorant  and 
brutish.  They  had  no  religious  convictions  and 
no  culture.  So  long  as  they  had  pliant  consciences, 
Elizabeth  was  content.  In  many  dioceses  in  England, 
a  third  of  the  parishes  were  left  without  a  pastor, 
resident  or  non-resident.  In  1561  there  were  in  the 
Archdeaconry  of  Norfolk  a  hundred  and  eighty 
parishes,  in  the  Archdeaconry  of  Suffolk  a  hundred 
and  thirty  parishes  in  this  condition.  Cobblers  and 
tailors  occupied  the  pulpits,  where  there  were  no 
incumbents.  "The  Bishops,"  said  Cecil,  "had  no 
credit  either  for  learning,  good  living  or  hospit- 
ality. The  Bishops  .  .  .  were  generally  covetous, 
and  were  rather  despised  than  reverenced  or  be- 
loved." The  Archbishop  of  York  was  convicted  of 
adultery  with  the  wife  of  an  innkeeper  at  Doncaster. 
Other  prelates  bestowed  ordination  "on  men  of  lewd 
life  and  corrupt  behaviour."  And  a  good  many  of 
them  sold  the  livings  in  their  gift  to  the  highest 
bidder. 

Gilbert  Germyn  was  the  son  of  an  apothecary  in 
Exeter.  At  the  time,  Bridestowe  cum  Sourton,  one  of 
the  best  livings  in  the  gift  of  the  Bishop,  was  held  by 
Chancellor  Marston.  The  apothecary,  it  is  stated, 
bribed  the  Chancellor  to  resign,  with  a  present  of 
£100,  and  then  negotiated  with  the  Bishop — at  what 
price  is  not  known — to  present  his  son  to  the  united 
benefices. 

When  so  many  livings  were  without   incumbents, 


THE    BIDLAKES,    OF    BIDLAKE          215 

all  sorts  of  unscrupulous  men,  of  a  low  class,  rushed 
into  Orders,  without  university  education,  indeed  with- 
out any.  education  at  all,  so  as  to  secure  a  living  in 
which  they  could  draw  the  tithe  and  farm  the  glebe, 
without  a  thought  as  to  their  religious  responsi- 
bilities. 

Such  a  man  Gilbert  Germyn  seems  to  have  been. 
In  1582  articles  of  misdemeanours  were  drawn  up 
against  him  by  Henry  Bidlake  and  some  of  the 
parishioners,  but  as  far  as  can  be  learnt  without  effect. 
The  Bishop  had  presented  him,  for  reasons  best  known 
to  himself,  and  was  indisposed  to  take  cognizance  of 
his  conduct. 

It  is  worth  while  looking  at  some  of  the  charges 
brought  against  a  man  whom  the  Bishop,  John 
Woolton,  delighted  to  honour. 

He  was  complained  of  for  his  grasping  character. 
Although  the  glebe  comprised  a  manor  of  eight  or 
nine  tenements,  yet  he  did  not  rest  till  he  got  into  his 
own  hands  "by  dyvers  meannes  three  of  the  best  and 
most  fruitfull  tenements  in  the  two  parishes." 

That,  in  addition  to  being  rector  of  Bridestowe  and 
Sourton,  he  was  vicar  of  another  parish  in  Cornwall. 

That  he  was  litigious,  citing  his  tenants  and  the 
tithe  payers  even  for  a  halfpenny. 

That  he  refused  at  Easter  to  give  the  Holy  Com- 
munion to  a  bedridden  woman,  eighty  years  old, 
named  Jane  Adams,  till  she  paid  him  a  penny  for  his 
trouble. 

"  He  is  a  great  skold  and  faller  owte  with  his  neybors, 
for  lyght  occasyons,  as  with  Mr.  William  Wrays,  and 
other  the  best  of  the  parishes ;  and  stycketh  not  to 
saye  yn  the  churche  Thou  lyest ;  and  to  skold  yn  the 
Churchyerde." 

"  For  his  pryde,  Skoldyng,  Avarice  and  Crueltye  his 


2i6  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

manner  is  hated  and  abhorred  of  all  the  2  parishes, 
and  so  driveth  them  awaye  from  the  Church. 

"He  marryed  hys  wyffe,  a  notorryowse  lyght 
woman,  and  of  lyke  parents  descended  being  notoryusly 
suspectyd  with  the  sayd  German  of  [causing]  her  first 
husband's  death  ;  after  whose  deathe  one  Edmonds, 
her  servant  claymed  her  in  promise,  to  be  his  wyffe, 
and  that  openly,  and  yn  the  presence  of  dyvers  re- 
quyred  the  Parson  German  to  procleme  the  bannes 
bytwene  them.  But  German  refused  to  doo  yt  but 
presently  shyfted  secretly  to  marry  her  hymself,  having 
a  lycence,  and  yn  a  marryng  before  sun  rysyng  so  dyd, 
having  a  lyttle  before  cyted  the  said  Edmonds  to  ... 
prove  his  contract  with  her,  came  too  late,  and  thuse 
were  they  marryed  withowt  clearyng  of  the  woman,  to 
the  offence  of  both  parishioners  and  others,  knowyng 
before  her  lyght  behavyor." 

It  seems  that  this  widow  whom  Germyn  married  had 
some  money.  Her  former  husband  had  left  a  will 
making  several  bequests,  but  Parson  Germyn  having 
got  the  money  of  the  deceased  into  his  hands  refused  to 
pay  the  bequests,  as  also  the  debts  of  the  man  and  of  his 
widow,  now  his  wife  ;  also  refused  to  pay  annuitants. 

It  was  further  complained  that  Mrs.  Germyn  baked 
bread  and  sold  it  in  the  rectory. 

It  may  be  worthy  of  remark  that  there  is  no  trace 
in  the  Episcopal  Registers  of  Mr.  Germyn  having 
obtained  a  licence  to  marry  this  widow.  It  was  prob- 
ably a  bit  of  bluff  on  his  part  to  say  that  he  had  one. 
Who  performed  the  ceremony  we  are  not  told.  Un- 
fortunately the  Bridestowe  registers  do  not  go  back 
sufficiently  far  to  help  us. 

From  1582  to  1613  we  hear  no  more  of  Parson 
Germyn.  At  this  latter  date  fresh  complaints  were 
made  against  him.  Another  bishop  now  occupied  the 


THE   BIDLAKES,    OF   BIDLAKE         217 

see,  William  Cotton,  a  man  of  some  character  and 
worth,  and  not  one  interested  in  protecting  the  dis- 
reputable priest. 

It  was  now  charged  against  Mr.  Germyn  that  "  he 
preached  that  John  Baptist  and  Mary  Magdalen  wear 
married  in  a  citie  called  Cana  in  Galilee,"  also  that 
"the  said  Parson  readeth  the  usuall  divine  prayers 
soe  fast  that  few  can  understand  what  he  sayeth  or  the 
clarke  can  spare  to  answere  him  accordinge  to  what  is 
sett  fourth  in  the  booke  of  Common  prayer,"  also  that 
"  he  setteth  out  the  Church  yard  for  8  shillings  and 
sixpence,  and  suffereth  the  horses  and  sheepe  to  use 
the  Church  porche  as  a  common  folde,  the  smell  being 
verie  loathesome  to  the  Parishioners." 

Then  came  in  an  accusation  of  Peter  Ebsworthy,  u  for 
usurpinge  of  place  in  the  Churche,  being  a  man  of  no 
discent,  or  parentage,  and  claiminge  a  Seate  unfittinge 
for  a  man  of  his  ranke  or  position." 

This  was  not  a  reasonable  charge.  The  Ebsworthys, 
it  is  true,  in  1620  could  prove  only  three  descents, 
but  one  had  married  an  heiress  of  Shilston,  another 
an  heiress  of  Durant,  and  they  were  allied  by  marriage 
with  the  Calmadys,  the  Harrises,  and  the  Ingletts. 
The  Ebsworthys,  of  Ebsworthy,  had  probably  lived  on 
their  paternal  acres  as  long  as  had  the  Bidlakes,  of 
Bidlake,  but  as  yet  they  had  laid  no  claim  to  bear 
coat-armour.  The  Bidlakes  bore  two  white  doves,  but 
naturalists  say  that  doves  and  pigeons  are  the  most 
quarrelsome  of  birds. 

The  spiteful  remark  about  Peter  Ebsworthy  being  of 
no  descent  and  parentage  was  intended  to  wound  the 
feelings  of  the  rector,  who  had  married  one  of  his 
daughters  to  Peter  Ebsworthy.  The  ancients  said  that 
doves  were  without  gall. 

"  Next  for  his  wief  abusing  of  my  wief  in  goinge  to 


218  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  Communion,  by  blowes  and  afterwards  with  dis- 
gracefull  words."  Also,  "Paule  Ebsworthy  for  layinge 
of  violent  handes  upon  my  wief  in  the  Church  yard  : 
and  his  wiefs  scouldinge,  Katheren  Ebsworthy  using 
these  wordes  before  the  Parson  unto  her  sister,  Peter's 
wief,  that  her  sister  might  be  ashamed  to  suffer  such  to 
goe  before  her  as  my  wief  was." 

It  seems  that  Agnes  Bidlake,  the  wife  of  William, 
sought  assistance  of  her  uncle,  Sir  Edward  Giles,  to 
bring  these  complaints  before  the  Bishop.  He  replied 
to  this  by  writing  to  William  Bidlake  : — 

"  I  would  intreat  you  and  my  niece  your  wife  at  the 
time  of  hearinge  of  these  differences  before  his  Lord- 
shipp  to  be  very  temperate  in  your  utterances.  You 
know  it  is  an  old  sayinge,  A  good  matter  may  be 
marred  in  the  handlinge ;  and  I  know  if  passion  doe  not 
overcome  you  all,  it  will  be  to  my  Lord's  good  likeinge." 

Mr.  Bidlake  went  up  about  the  matter  and  inter- 
viewed the  Bishop,  who  agreed  to  hear  the  case  at  Oke- 
hampton  on  the  following  Thursday. 

The  Bishop  wrote  to  Parson  Germyn :  "  Being  credibly 
informed  that  Mr.  Bidlake  and  his  wief  were  latlie  by 
your  sonne  Peter  Ebsworthy  and  his  wief  verie  dis- 
gracefully wronged  at  a  Communion  ...  as  alsoe  for 
your  scandalous  and  indiscreete  doctrine  which  you 
usually  teach  I  may  not  att  any  hande  suffer,"  he  sum- 
moned him  to  appear  before  him  at  his  approaching 
visitation  at  Okehampton. 

On  13  May,  1613,  the  Bishop  of  Exeter  summoned 
plaintiffs  and  defendants  and  witnesses  before  him  for 
the  following  Friday  at  Okehampton. 

The  Rev.  Gilbert  Germyn  indignantly  denied  that 
he  had  ever  preached  scandalous  and  indiscreet  doc- 
trine ;  but  what  was  the  result  of  the  suit  before  the 
Bishop  does  not  transpire. 


THE    BIDLAKES,    OF    BIDLAKE          219 

Old  John  Bidlake,  the  father  of  William,  mightily 
disapproved  of  this  contention.     He  wrote  to  his  son  : 
"  Commend  me   heartily  to   your  wief  whom   I   pray 
God  to  give  patience  and  charitie  unto  in  all   these 
troubles,  and  that   yourselfe  forgett  not  that  which   I 
said   I   lately  dreamed  of  2  snakes  whereof  the  one 
seemed  to  me  to  ate  up  the  other  before   me.     And 
that  which  I  formerly  dreamed  of  the  Man  that  firstlie 
riding  from  me  said,  Commend  me  to  my  friends  that 
are  like  to  be  lost  if  they  repent  not  er  time  be  past. 
Good  sonne,  seeke  peace  and  ensue  it  in  what  you  may, 
for  to  live  peaceably  with  all  men  maketh  a  man  and 
woman  long  to  seme  younge.     And  if  you  knewe  the 
hindrances  and  losses  besides  heartburnings,  weariness 
of  bodye  and  unquietness  innumerable  that  suits  of 
Lawe  doe  bring,  as  well  as  I,   you  would  rather  goe 
with  your  wief  even  unto  all  such  as  have  donne  you 
offence    and    openly   imbrace    them    as    brethren    and 
sisters  and  fully  forgive  them  and  desier  them  to  accept 
of  your  lives  ever  hereafter ;  as  honest  quyet  neigh- 
bours should  doe,  rather  than  vex  your  neighbours  by 
suits  of  laws  therein,  whereof  are  as  variable  as  the 
turnings  of  a  weathercock." 
This  was  dated  10  April,  1613. 
William  died  before  his  father. 

Old  John  was  a  fine  and  loyal  man  ;  the  date  of  his 
death  is  not  known.  The  estates  devolved  on  Henry 
Bidlake,  the  son  of  William,  born  in  1606  or  1607. 

After  Henry  Bidlake  came  of  age,  he  married  Phil- 
ippa,  daughter  of  William  Kelly,  of  Kelly;  whereupon 
his  mother,  the  quarrelsome  Agnes,  retired  to  the  south 
of  Devon,  there  indulged  in  some  costly  lawsuits,  and 
died  in  1651. 

Henry,  while  yet  young,  joined  the  army  of  King 
Charles,  and  in  1643  was  made  a  captain  of  horse  under 


220  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Colonel  Sir  Thomas  Hele,  Baronet.  In  1645  he  was 
one  of  the  defenders  of  Pendennis  Castle ;  a  copy 
of  the  articles  for  its  surrender  is  preserved  among 
the  Bidlake  Papers.  These  articles  were  signed  on 
18  August,  and  the  besieged  went  forth.  From  that 
time  misfortune  after  misfortune  befell  Henry  Bidlake. 
On  18  January,  1646,  the  Standing  Committee  of 
Devon  "ordered  upon  Perusall  of  the  inventory  of  the 
goods  of  Mr.  Henry  Bidlake  amounting  to  Thirtie 
pounds  that  upon  payment  of  fower  and  Twentie  pounds 
unto  the  Treasurer  or  his  Deputie  by  Mr.  William 
Kelley,  the  sequestration  of  the  said  goods  shall  be 
removed  and  taken  off,  and  the  other  six  pounds  is  to 
be  allowed  to  Mrs.  Bidlake  for  her  sixth  part." 

Several  stories  are  told  of  Henry  hiding  from  Crom- 
well's soldiers,  who  were  sent  to  surround  Bidlake  in 
order  to  take  him  prisoner.  He  was  warned,  and 
dressed  himself  in  rags  in  order  to  pass  them.  Some 
soldiers  met  him  and  asked  him  if  he  had  seen  Squire 
Bidlake.  "  Aye,  sure,"  he  replied,  "her  was  a-standin' 
on  'is  awn  doorstep  a  foo  minutes  agoo."  So  they  went 
on  to  search  Bidlake  House  while  he  escaped  to  the 
house  of  a  tenant  of  his  named  Veale  in  Burleigh 
Wood.  The  troopers  went  there  also,  and  Mrs.  Veale 
made  him  slip  into  the  clock-case ;  they  hunted  high 
and  low,  but  could  not  find  him.  One  of  the  soldiers 
looking  up  at  the  dial  and  seeing  the  hand  at  the  hour 
said,  "  What,  doant  he  strike?"  "Aye,  aye,  mister," 
replied  Mrs.  Veale,  "there  be  a  hand  here  as  can  strike, 
I  tell  'ee." 

Mr.  Bidlake  suffered  from  a  chronic  cough,  and  just 
at  that  moment  it  began,  but  he  had  the  art  to  dip  his 
head,  let  the  weight  down  behind  his  back,  and  the 
clock  struck  the  hour  and  drowned  the  cough  in  the 
case. 


THE   BIDLAKES,    OF   BIDLAKE         221 

According  to  another  version  of  the  story,  his  cough 
was  heard,  the  clock-case  was  opened,  and  he  taken. 
But  I  doubt  this.  An  old  man,  William  Pengelly, 
who  had  been  with  my  grandfather,  and  father,  and 
myself,  told  me  that  Henry  Bidlake  was  concealed  by 
the  Veales  in  Burleigh  Wood — that  is,  the  wood  over 
the  promontory  where  are  the  camps — and  they  sup- 
plied him  with  blankets  and  food  for  some  weeks  till  it 
was  safe  for  him  to  reappear.  Their  farm  is  now  com- 
pletely ruined,  but  I  can  recall  when  it  was  occupied. 
According  to  Pengelly's  story,  later  on,  Henry  Bid- 
lake  granted  that  farm  to  the  Veale  family  to  be  held  in 
perpetuity  on  a  tenure  of  half  a  crown  per  annum,  so 
long  as  there  remained  a  male  Veale  in  the  family. 
Pengelly  informed  me  that  the  last  Veale  had  died 
when  the  Rev.  John  Stafford  Wollocombe  held  the 
estate,  1829-66,  and  that  the  tenure  had  remained  the 
same  till  then.  The  Rev.  J.  H.  Bidlake  Wollocombe, 
present  owner  of  the  Bidlake  estate,  tells  me  that  he  can 
find  no  evidence  of  the  grant  to  the  Veales  among  the 
deeds,  and  that  he  never  heard  of  the  story  save 
from  me. 

If  Henry  Bidlake  had  been  secured  on  this  occasion, 
it  would  certainly  have  been  recorded.  We  have  a 
narrative  of  the  visit  of  a  troop  of  horse  sent  to 
Bridestowe  by  the  Earl  of  Stamford  in  1647.  In  the 
Mercurius  Rusticus  of  that  year  is  an  account  of  this 
expedition,  but  not  a  word  about  the  capture  of  Henry 
Bidlake.  There  is,  however,  one  of  a  barbarous  act 
committed  in  the  cottage  of  a  husbandman  in  Bride- 
stowe, whose  name,  however,  is  not  given,  but  possibly 
enough  it  may  have  been  Veale.  This  man  having 
openly  adhered  to  the  King's  party,  the  Earl  of  Stam- 
ford sent  a  troop  of  horse  to  apprehend  him  in  his 
cottage  or  farm.  "  When  they  came  thither,  they 


222  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

found  not  the  good  man  at  home,  but  a  sonne  of  his, 
about  ten  or  twelve  years  old,  they  ask  him  where  his 
Father  was,  the  childe  replyed  that  he  was  not  at  home, 
they  threaten  him,  and  use  all  arts  to  make  him 
discover  where  his  Father  had  hid  himselfe,  the  childe 
being  ignorant  where  his  father  was,  still  persisted  in 
the  same  answer,  that  he  knew  not  where  he  was  ;  here- 
upon they  threaten  to  hang  him,  neither  doth  that  pre- 
vail ;  at  last  they  take  the  poore  innocent  childe  and 
hang  him  up,  either  because  he  would  not  betray  his 
Father,  had  he  been  able  to  satisfie  their  doubt,  or  for 
not  having  the  spirit  of  Prophecy,  not  being  able  to 
reveale  what  by  an  ordinary  way  of  knowledge  he  did 
not  know ;  having  let  him  hang  a  while,  they  cut  him 
downe,  not  intending  to  hang  him  unto  death,  but  being 
cut  downe  they  could  perceive  nothing  discovering 
life  in  him,  hereupon  in  a  barbarous  way  of  experi- 
ment, they  pricke  him  with  their  swords  in  the  back  and 
thighs,  using  the  means  leading  to  death  to  find  out 
life  ;  at  last  after  some  long  stay,  some  small  symptoms 
of  life  did  appear ;  yet  so  weake,  that  they  left  him 
nearer  the  confines  of  death  than  life  ;  and  whether 
the  child  did  ever  recover,  is  more  than  my  informer 
can  assure  me." 

In  1651  a  fine  of  ,£300  was  put  upon  Henry  Bidlake, 
and  his  estates  were  sequestrated  to  the  Commonwealth 
until  it  should  be  paid.  He  had  to  borrow  money 
from  his  friends  in  order  to  pay  his  fine.  Money  was 
lent  him  by  Nicholas  Rowe,  of  Lamerton,  by  Daniel 
Hawkins,  of  Sydenham,  by  David  Hore,  of  Coryton,  by 
Prudence  Lile,  of  Lifton,  by  Richard  Edgecombe,  of 
Milton  Abbot,  by  John  Baron,  of  Lawhitton,  and  by 
John  Cloberry,  of  Bradstone.  His  mother-in-law, 
Philippa  Kelly,  of  Kelly,  seems  to  have  repaid 
these  friends,  or  paid  the  interest  due  to  them.  As 


THE   BIDLAKES,    OF   BIDLAKE         223 

security,  Henry  Bidlake  alienated  and  sold  to  her  his 
goods  and  chattels,  only  reserving  his  wearing  apparel. 
He  got  back  his  property  in  1654,  but  his  account  with 
the  Parliament  seems  never  to  have  been  settled,  and 
he  was  liable  to  repeated  vexations.  As  late  as 
December,  1658,  he  received  a  summons  along  with  his 
wife,  from  Richard,  Lord  Protector,  to  appear  before  the 
Chancery  Court  at  Exeter.  But  next  year  he  died,  too 
early  to  see — what  would  have  gladdened  his  heart — the 
Restoration,  and  to  have  learned  by  painful  experience 
the  ready  forgetfulness  by  kings  of  services  rendered 
in  the  past. 

Bidlake  House  is  a  very  interesting  example  of  a 
simple  mansion  such  as  suited  the  small  squires  of 
Devon  in  the  seventeenth  century.  It  is  Elizabethan, 
and  has  a  quaint  old  garden  at  the  back.  Like  so  many 
old  houses,  the  aspect  was  not  considered,  and  the  sun 
pours  into  the  kitchen,  but  hardly  a  gleam  can  reach 
the  hall  and  parlour. 

But  our  ancestors  had  their  reasons  for  burying  their 
mansions  at  the  foot  of  hills,  and  turning  their  backs 
against  the  sun.  The  great  enemy  was  the  south-west 
wind  which  they  could  not  exclude.  It  drove  through  the 
walls.  Therefore  by  preference  they  planted  their  houses 
under  the  lee  of  a  bank  of  hill  that  intervened  between 
them  and  the  south,  and  turned  their  backs  like  horses 
against  the  driving  rain. 


THE    PIRATES    OF    LUNDY 

"  "W"  N  the  Bristol  Channel,  "  says  Mr.  Chanter, 
"twenty  miles  from  Barnstaple  Bar,  and 
nearly  equidistant  from  the  two  headlands  of 
-*-  the  bay,  lies  the  island  of  Lundy,  sometimes 
invisible  from  the  shore,  but  generally  looming  dim  and 
mysterious  and  more  or  less  shrouded  in  mists,  or 
capped  with  cloud-reefs ;  occasionally  standing  out 
lofty,  clear,  and  distinct,  bright  with  varied  hues  of 
rock,  fern,  and  heather,  its  granite  cliffs  glittering  as 
they  reflect  the  rays  of  the  morning  sun,  and  the 
graceful  lighthouse  tower  and  buildings  plainly  de- 
fined ;  or  at  night  traceable  by  its  strange  intermittent 
light — either  suddenly  shining  out  as  a  star  and  as 
suddenly  vanishing,  or  gradually  rising  and  fading 
according  to  the  atmospheric  conditions  ;  but  in  all  its 
aspects,  varying  much  from  day  to  day.  And  to  those 
who  know  how  to  read  them  aright,  the  changing 
aspects  of  Lundy  are  the  surest  indications  of  approach- 
ing changes  of  weather — of  winds,  storms,  or  settled 
sunshine. 

"  As  seen  nearer  the  island  shows  itself  a  lofty  table- 
headed  granite  rock,  rising  to  the  height  of  500  feet, 
surrounded  by  steep  and  occasionally  perpendicular 
cliffs,  storm-beaten,  riven,  and  scarred  over  with  grisly 
seams  and  clefts,  and  hollowed  out  here  and  there  along 
the  shore  into  fantastic  coves  and  grottoes,  with  huge 
piles  of  granite  thrown  in  wild  disorder.  The  cliffs  and 

224 


THE   PIRATES   OF   LUNDY  225 

adjacent  sea  are  alive  with  sea-birds,  every  ledge  and 
jutting  rock  being  dotted  with  them,  or  they  are  whirl- 
ing round  in  clouds,  filling  the  air  with  their  discordant 
screams. 

"  This  island,  so  little  known,  so  little  visited,  so 
wild  and  mysterious  in  aspect,  possesses  an  interest  in 
its  remote  history,  its  antiquities,  its  physical  features 
and  peculiarities,  and  in  its  natural  history,  almost 
unrivalled."1 

Lundy  is  an  outcrop  of  the  granite  that  heaved  up 
Exmoor  on  its  back,  but  there  never  broke  through. 
Here  the  superincumbent  carboniferous  rocks  have  been 
cleared  away  by  the  action  of  the  sea,  and  Lundy 
stands  forth  a  naked  shaft  of  granite.  It  possesses  but 
a  single  harbour,  at  the  southern  extremity  of  the 
island. 

Lundy  takes  its  name  from  the  puffins,  in  Scandi- 
navian Lund,  that  at  all  times  frequented  it ;  but  it  had 
an  earlier  Celtic  name,  Caer  Sidi,  and  is  spoken  of  as 
a  mysterious  abode  in  the  Welsh  Mabinogion. 

From  an  early  period,  its  peculiar  position,  com- 
manding the  entrance  to  the  Bristol  Channel,  its  in- 
accessibility, its  remoteness,  rendered  it  a  resort  of 
pirates.  Thomas  Wyke,  Canon  of  Oseney,  in  1238, 
speaks  of  it  as  the  haunt  of  a  notable  pirate,  William 
de  Marisco.  This  William  had  a  son  Jordan,  who  held 
the  island  in  defiance  of  the  King,  and  descended  from 
it  to  make  raids  on  the  adjoining  coasts.  The  island 
had  been  granted  by  Henry  II  to  the  Templars,  but 
they  had  been  unable  to  dislodge  the  De  Mariscoes  and 
obtain  possession  of  it.  A  special  tax  was  levied  on 
the  counties  of  Devon  and  Cornwall  for  the  siege  of 
Lundy  and  the  defence  of  their  maritime  ports,  but  it 

1  Mr.  J.  R.  Chanter,  "A  History  of  Lundy  Island,"  in  the  Transactions 
of  the  Devonshire  Association,  1871.  Reprinted  in  Lundy  Island,  1877. 

Q 


226  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

does  not  seem  that  Sir  William  was  ever  dispossessed. 
Marisco  was  one  of  the  prisoners  captured  from  the 
French  in  a  sea  fight  in  1217,  and  was  afterwards  rein- 
stated in  his  island,  along  with  his  wife  and  children, 
who  had  also  been  taken.  In  1222  he  removed  to 
Lundy  some  guns  he  had  taken  from  his  lordship 
of  Camley  in  Somerset,  and,  turbulent  to  the  end,  he 
was,  in  1233,  amerced  in  a  fine  of  300  marks  to  the 
King  for  his  ransom. 

His  younger  son,  Sir  William,  was  outlawed  in  1235 
for  slaying  in  London  an  Irish  messenger.  His  elder 
brother  Jordan,  or  Geoffrey,  had  made  a  descent  on 
Ireland  and  was  killed  at  Kilkenny  in  1234. 

Sir  William  got  into  further  trouble  on  an  accusa- 
tion of  an  attempt  to  assassinate  Henry  III,  and  this 
led  to  the  breaking  up  of  the  robbers'  nest,  and  its 
being  wrested  from  the  Marisco  family  for  many  years. 

But  before  telling  the  story,  it  will  be  well  to  say  a 
few  words  about  the  castle  erected  by  this  turbulent 
family,  of  which  some  remains  may  still  be  seen.  It 
was  probably  originally  erected  by  the  first  Sir  Jordan, 
in  the  reign  of  Henry  II. 

The  keep  is  all  that  now  remains,  and  it  is  turned 
into  cottages.  The  basement  wall  is  nine  feet  thick, 
and  the  lines  of  bastion  and  fosse  may  still  be  traced. 
Two  engravings  and  a  plan  of  the  castle,  as  it  was 
in  1775,  appear  in  Grose's  Antiquities.  He  thus  de- 
scribes it : — 

"  The  castle  stood  on  two  acres  of  ground,  and  was 
surrounded  by  a  stone  wall,  with  a  ditch,  except 
towards  the  sea,  where  the  rock  is  almost  perpendicular. 
The  ditch  is  very  visible,  and  part  of  the  wall.  The 
walls  of  the  citadel  (i.e.  keep)  are  very  perfect,  of 
a  square  form.  It  is  converted  into  cottages,  the 
turrets,  of  which  there  are  four,  one  at  each  angle, 


THE    PIRATES   OF    LUNDY  227 

serving  as  chimneys.  The  S.W.  wall  is  51  feet,  the 
N.W.  wall  38  feet,  in  length.  In  front  of  the  house 
five  guns  were  placed.  The  garrison  was  supplied 
with  water  from  a  spring,  which  rises  above  the 
(mansion)  house.  It  was  conveyed  from  thence  by 
earthen  pipes.  At  the  extremity  of  the  rock,  within 
the  fortification,  is  a  cave,  supposed  to  be  cut  out  of 
the  rock  for  a  store-room,  or  magazine,  for  the  garrison." 

We  come  now  to  the  attempted  assassination. 
Matthew  Paris  tells  the  story  under  the  date  1238,  in 
the  reign  of  Henry  III. 

"  On  the  day  after  the  Nativity  of  St.  Mary,  a  certain 
learned  esquire  came  to  the  King's  Court  at  Wood- 
stock pretending  that  he  was  insane,  and  said  to  the 
King,  '  Resign  thy  kingdom  to  me '  ;  he  also  added, 
that  he  bore  the  sign  of  royalty  on  his  shoulder.  The 
King's  attendants  wanted  to  beat  him,  and  drive  him 
away  from  the  royal  presence,  but  the  King  interfered, 
saying,  <  Let  the  madman  rave — such  people's  words 
have  not  the  force  of  truth.'  In  the  middle  of  the 
night,  however,  the  same  man  entered  the  King's  bed- 
chamber window,  carrying  an  open  knife,  and  ap- 
proached the  King's  couch,  but  was  confused  at  not 
finding  him  there.  The  King  was,  by  God's  provi- 
dence, then  sleeping  with  the  Queen.  But  one  of  the 
queen's  maids,  Margaret  Bisett,  was  by  chance  awake, 
and  was  singing  psalms  by  the  light  of  a  candle  (for 
she  was  a  holy  maid  and  one  devoted  to  God),  and 
when  she  saw  this  madman  searching  all  the  private 
places  to  kill  the  King,  she  was  greatly  alarmed,  and 
began  to  utter  repeated  cries.  At  her  cry  the  King's 
attendants  awoke,  and  leaped  from  their  beds  with  all 
speed,  and  running  to  the  spot,  broke  open  the  door, 
which  this  robber  had  firmly  secured  with  a  bolt,  and 
seized  him,  and  notwithstanding  his  resistance,  bound 


228  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

him  fast.  He,  after  a  while,  confessed  that  he  had  been 
sent  to  kill  the  King  by  William  de  Marisco,  son  of 
Geoffrey  (or  Jordan)  de  Marisco,  and  he  stated  that 
others  had  conspired  to  commit  the  same  crime.  On 
learning  this,  the  King  ordered  him  to  be  torn  limb 
from  limb  by  horses,  at  Coventry." 

The  evidence  incriminating  William  de  Marisco  was 
clearly  worthless.  If  the  would-be  assassin  had  not 
been  insane  he  would  not  have  asserted  a  claim  to  the 
crown  and  drawn  attention  to  himself  before  making 
the  murderous  attempt.  De  Marisco  had  nothing  to 
gain  by  the  King's  death,  and  he  may  certainly  be 
acquitted  of  participation. 

William  fled  to  Lundy,  "  impregnable  from  the 
nature  of  the  place,  and  having  attached  to  himself 
many  outlaws  and  malefactors,  subsisted  by  piracies, 
taking  more  especially  wine  and  provisions,  and  mak- 
ing frequent  sudden  descents  on  the  adjacent  lands, 
spoiling  and  injuring  the  realm  by  land  and  by  sea, 
and  native  as  well  as  foreign  merchants.  Many  Eng- 
lish nobles,  having  learnt  how  that  the  said  William 
and  his  followers  could  not  be  surprised  save  by 
stratagem,  apprised  the  King  that  the  securing  of  this 
malefactor  must  be  effected  not  by  violence,  but  by 
craft.  The  King  therefore  ordered  his  faithful  subjects 
to  exert  themselves  strenuously  in  order  to  capture  him 
and  relieve  their  country." 

Nothing,  however,  was  done  for  four  years,  during 
which  the  piracies  continued.  There  was  this  excuse 
for  De  Marisco,  that  as  the  island  grew  neither  corn 
nor  wine,  he  was  dependent  on  the  mainland  or  on 
merchant  vessels  for  his  subsistence.  As  all  those  on 
the  mainland  were  on  the  look-out  to  capture  him  as 
the  supposed  mover  of  the  plot  to  kill  the  King,  he 
was  forced  to  live  by  piracy.  In  1242,  William  of 


THE   PIRATES   OF   LUNDY  229 

Worcester  informs  us,  he  was  caught :  how,  he  does 
not  say,  save  that  it  was  by  surprise.  "He  was  thrown 
into  chains,  and  he  and  sixteen  accomplices  were  con- 
demned and  sentenced  to  death.  He  was  executed  at 
the  Tower  on  a  gibbet  with  special  ignominy,  his  body 
suspended  in  a  sack,  and  when  stiff  in  death,  disem- 
bowelled, his  bowels  burnt,  and  his  body  divided  into 
quarters." 

After  the  execution  of  Sir  William,  his  father,  Geoffrey 
(or  Jordan)  fled  to  France,  and  the  island  was  then  seized 
by  the  King,  who  appointed  to  it  governors.  But  in 
1281  Lundy  was  again  granted  to  a  Marisco,  Sir 
William,  son  of  Jordan,  another  of  the  progeny  of  old 
Geoffrey.  He  died  in  1284,  and  his  son  John  in  1289, 
leaving  Herbert  as  his  son  and  heir.  But  Edward  II 
granted  the  island  to  the  elder  Despenser,  and  Herbert 
was  unable  to  obtain  possession  of  it.  He  died  in  1327, 
and  from  that  date  no  more  is  heard  of  the  Mariscoes 
in  connexion  with  the  island. 

From  their  time,  however,  other  pirates  obtained  a 
footing  on  it.  In  the  days  of  Henry  VIII  a  gang  of 
French  pirates,  under  their  captain,  De  Valle,  seized 
Lundy  and  waylaid  the  Bristol  traders,  but  the  Clovelly 
fishermen  made  an  expedition  against  them,  burnt  their 
ship,  and  killed  or  made  prisoners  of  the  whole  gang. 

A  few  years  later,  Lord  Seymour,  High  Admiral  of 
England,  uncle  of  Edward  VI,  was  charged,  among 
other  misdemeanours,  with  trying  to  get  hold  of  Lundy, 
"being  aided  with  shipps  and  conspiring  at  all  evill 
eventes  with  pirates,  (so  that)  he  might  at  all  tymes 
have  a  sure  and  saufe  refuge,  if  anything  for  his  demer- 
ites  should  have  been  attempted  against  him."  He 
was  executed,  having  refused  to  answer  the  charges 
made  against  him. 

In  Sir  John  Maclean's  Life  and  Times  of  Sir  Peter 


230  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Carew,  Knt.,  are  printed  two  letters  written  by  Queen 
Elizabeth  in  the  year  1564,  directing  Sir  Peter — "  for- 
asmuch as  that  cost  of  Devonshyre  and  Cornwall  is  by 
report  mucch  hanted  with  pyratts  and  Rovers  ...  to 
cause  on  or  twoo  apt  vessells  to  be  made  redy  with  all 
spede  in  some  portes  ther  about."  In  the  apprehension 
of  such  pirates,  with  her  characteristic  economy  the 
Queen  bargains  that  the  parties  "  must  take  ther  bene- 
fitt  of  ye  spoyle,  and  be  provijded  only  by  us  of  victell." 
She  goes  a  little  further  in  thriftiness,  and  suggests 
that  possibly  "ye  sayd  Rovers  might  be  entyced,  with 
hope  of  our  mercy,  to  apprehend  some  of  the  rest  of 
ther  Company,  which  practise  we  have  knowen  doone 
good  long  agoo  in  the  lyke." 

Although  Lundy  is  not  specified  in  this  as  the 
rendezvous  of  the  pirates,  we  know  that  at  this  time 
it  was  so. 

In  the  year  1587  the  authorities  of  Barnstaple  appear 
to  have  undertaken  on  their  own  account  a  raid  upon 
the  pirates  who  were  accustomed  to  shelter  themselves 
under  Lundy  Island. 

Connected  with  the  "  setting  forth  of  divers  men 
from  this  town  to  apprehend  divers  rovers  and  pirates 
at  Londey,"  the  following  items  of  expenditure  in  the 
municipal  records  show  that  the  expedition  was  not 
unsuccessful  :  "  Paid  to  six  watchmen  for  watching 
the  prisoners  that  were  taken,  12s  id.  Paid  for  a  watch 
put,  and  for  candlelyght  for  the  same  prisoners,  nd. 
Paid  for  meat  and  drink  for  the  same  prisoners,  2s11."1 

Stow  tells  us  that  a  batch  of  ten  sea-rovers  were 
hanged  at  once  at  Wapping.  They  distributed  among 
their  friends  their  murrey  velvet  doublets  with  great 
gold  buttons  and  crimson  taffeta,  and  great  Venetians 

1  W.  Cotton,  "An  Expedition  against  Pirates,"  in  Transactions  of  the 
Devonshire  Association,  1886. 


THE    PIRATES   OF   LUNDY  231 

laid  with  broad  gold  lace,   "too  sumptuous  apparel," 
Stow  remarks,  "which  they  had  worn  at  the  seas." 

In  1608,  a  commission  was  issued  to  the  Earl  of 
Bath,  who  took  the  depositions  of  three  persons  at 
Barnstaple,  to  the  effect  that  the  merchants  were  daily 
robbed  at  sea  by  pirates  who  took  refuge  in  Lundy. 
In  1610,  another  commission  was  issued  to  the  Earl  of 
Nottingham  to  authorize  the  town  of  Barnstaple  to 
send  out  ships  for  the  capture  of  pirates,  and  the 
deposition  was  taken  of  one  William  Young,  who  had 
been  made  prisoner  by  Captain  Salkeld,  who  entitled 
himself  "King  of  Lundy,"  and  was  a  notorious 
pirate. 

On  31  August,  1612,  the  town  of  Barnstaple  sent  out 
a  ship  and  a  bark — the  John  of  Braunton  and  the  May- 
flower— to  capture  pirates  who  had  robbed  a  London 
vessel  and  also  a  pinnace  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  in  the 
roads  of  Lundy.  It  is  satisfactory  to  learn  that  the 
offenders — "as  notorious  Rogues  as  any  in  England" 
— were  caught  at  Milford  Haven,  brought  to  Barn- 
staple,  and  lodged  in  Exeter  Gaol.  What  their  ulti- 
mate fate  was  is  not  known. 

In  1625,  the  Mayor  of  Bristol  reported  to  the  Council 
that  three  Turkish  pirate  vessels  had  surprised  and 
taken  the  island  of  Lundy,  and  had  carried  off  the 
inhabitants,  to  sell  them  as  slaves,  and  that  they  were 
threatening  Ilfracombe. 

In  1628,  it  was  the  headquarters  of  some  French 
pirates.  In  June,  1630,  Captain  Plumleigh  reported 
that  "  Egypt  was  never  more  infested  with  catterpillars 
than  the  Channel  with  Biscayers.  On  the  23rd  instant 
there  came  out  of  St.  Sebastian  twenty  sail  of  sloops  ; 
some  attempted  to  land  on  Lundy,  but  were  repulsed 
by  the  inhabitants." 

In  1632,  a  notorious  buccaneer,  Captain  Robert  Nutt, 


232  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

made  Lundy  one  of  his  stations,  and  defied  the  efforts 
of  several  ships  of  war  and  smaller  vessels  called 
' '  whelps  "  to  capture  him. 

In  1633,  Sir  Bernard  Grenville  reported  to  the  Sec- 
retary of  State  that  a  great  outrage  had  been  com- 
mitted by  a  Spanish  man-of-war  of  Biscay,  which  had 
landed  eighty  men  on  the  island  of  Lundy,  where, 
after  some  small  resistance,  they  had  killed  one  man, 
called  Mark  Pollard,  and  bound  the  rest,  and  surprised 
and  took  the  island,  which  they  rifled  and  cleared  of 
all  the  best  provisions  they  could  find,  and  then  de- 
parted to  sea  again. 

From  the  depositions  of  William  Skynner,  of  Kilk- 
hampton,  dyer,  and  others,  it  appears  that  the  Bis- 
cayner  was  a  vessel  of  150  tons  with  about  120,  under 
a  Captain  Meggor,  and  that  these  pirates  had  pre- 
viously robbed  a  French  bark,  and  also  a  pinnace  of 
George  Rendall,  which  happened  to  be  at  Lundy, 
taking  from  him  his  money  and  all  the  provisions  of 
his  pinnace. 

Capt.  John  Pennington,  of  the  Vanguard,  was  com- 
missioned to  put  down  the  pirates,  and  he  appears  to 
have  proclaimed  martial  law  on  the  island.  In  the 
year  1663,  a  Frenchman,  Captain  Pressoville,  es- 
tablished himself  on  Lundy.  In  consequence  of  these 
events  one  Thomas  Bushell  was  appointed  governor 
of  the  island  to  hold  it  for  the  King. 

Grose,  in  his  Antiquities,  gives  a  curious  story  of  an 
occurrence  during  the  reign  of  William  and  Mary. 
"  A  ship  of  force  pretending  to  be  a  Dutchman,  and 
driven  into  the  roads  by  mistaking  the  channel,  sent  a 
boat  ashore  desiring  some  milk  for  their  captain  who 
was  sick,  which  the  unsuspecting  inhabitants  granted 
for  several  days.  At  length  the  crew  informed  them  of 
their  captain's  death,  and  begged  leave,  if  there  were 


THE    PIRATES   OF   LUNDY  233 

any  church  or  consecrated  ground  on  the  island,  to 
deposit  his  corpse  in  it,  and  also  requested  the  favour 
of  all  the  islanders  to  be  present,  which  was  accord- 
ingly complied  with.  After  the  corpse  was  brought  in, 
the  islanders  were  required  to  quit  the  chapel  for  a  few 
minutes  when  they  should  be  readmitted  to  see  the 
corpse  interred.  They  had  not  waited  long  without  the 
walls  before  the  doors  were  suddenly  thrown  open,  and 
a  body  of  armed  men  furnished  from  the  feigned 
receptacle  of  the  dead  marched  out  and  made  them 
prisoners.  The  poor  islanders  then  discovered  the 
pretended  Dutchmen  to  be  their  natural  enemies  the 
French.  They  then  seized  50  horses,  300  goats,  500 
sheep,  and  some  bullocks,  and  reserving  what  they 
required,  hamstringed  the  rest  of  the  horses  and 
bullocks,  threw  the  goats  and  sheep  into  the  sea,  and 
stripped  the  inhabitants  of  every  valuable,  even  to  their 
clothes,  and  spoiled  and  destroyed  everything,  and 
then,  satiated  with  plunder  and  mischief,  they  threw 
the  guns  over  the  cliffs,  and  left  the  island  in  a  most 
desolate  and  disconsolate  condition." 

There  is  no  other  evidence  that  this  really  occurred, 
and  the  same  story  is  told  of  the  island  of  Sark,  so 
that  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  the  story  be  true. 

It  is,  however,  certain  that  for  a  considerable  portion 
of  the  reigns  of  William  and  Mary  and  of  Queen  Anne, 
Lundy  was  a  continual  resort  of  the  outcasts  of  the 
various  parties  who  betook  themselves  to  piracy  as  a 
means  of  subsistence,  as  also  that  it  was  for  a  time  in 
the  hands  of  the  French  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne, 
and  that  they  used  it  as  a  privateering  station,  and 
preyed  upon  the  merchant-men  who  sailed  from  Barn- 
staple  and  Bideford,  and  that  they  made  so  many  prizes 
that  they  termed  Barnstaple  Bay  as  "the  Golden  Bay." 

In   1748,   Thomas  Benson   obtained  a  lease  of  the 


234  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

island  from  Lord  Gower.  He  was  a  man  of  substance, 
a  native  of  Bideford,  and  had  inherited  a  fortune  of 
£40,000.  His  predecessors  had  been  successful  mer- 
chants, carrying  on  trade  with  France,  Portugal,  and 
the  colonies. 

In  1749  he  aspired  to  get  into  Parliament,  and  was 
elected  for  Barnstaple.  He  had  in  1745  presented  to 
the  mayor  and  corporation  a  large  silver  punch-bowl, 
which  still  forms  one  of  their  cherished  possessions, 
and  has  recently  been  copied  in  Barum  ware  for  pre- 
sentation to  the  association  of  "  Barumites  in  London." 

When,  however,  the  borough  authorities  received 
the  bowl,  they  discovered  that  they  had  no  ladle,  and 
this  they  humbly  and  respectfully  intimated  to  the 
donor.  So  Benson  added  to  his  gift  a  silver  ladle, 
with  the  inscription,  "  He  that  gave  the  Bowl  gave 
the  Ladle."1 

Soon  after  he  entered  into  a  contract  with  the  Govern- 
ment for  the  exportation  of  convicts  to  Virginia  and 
Maryland,  and  gave  the  usual  bond  to  the  sheriff  for 
so  doing.  But  instead  of  doing  this  he  shipped  them 
to  Lundy,  where  he  employed  them  in  building  walls 
and  other  work  in  the  island.  Every  night  they  were 
locked  up  in  the  old  keep  of  the  Mariscoes.  He  re- 
garded himself  as  king  of  Lundy,  and  ruled  with  a 
high  hand. 

Presently  he  got  into  difficulties  through  smuggling 
and  piracy.  In  a  cave  he  stored  his  smuggled  goods, 
and  a  raid  was  made  upon  these.  He  was  exchequered, 
and  fined  £5000. 

A  fieri  facias  was  directed  to  the  Sheriff  of  Devon 
to  levy  the  penalties,  under  which  the  officers  seized 
a  large  quantity  of  tobacco  and  other  goods  secreted  in 

1  R.  Pearse  Chope,  "  Benson,  M.P.  and  Smuggler,"  in  the  Hartland 
Chronicle,  1906. 


THE    PIRATES    OF    LUNDY  235 

the  caves  of  Lundy.  He  excused  himself  for  not  fulfill- 
ing his  compact  to  transport  the  convicts  to  Virginia 
and  Maryland  by  saying  that  he  considered  Lundy  to 
be  quite  as  much  out  of  the  world  as  these  colonies. 
As  the  fieri  facias  did  not  realize  the  sum  of  his  fine, 
an  extent  was  issued  in  1753  for  £7872  duties,  under 
which  his  patrimonial  estate  of  Napp  was  seized,  and 
retained  during  his  life  by  the  Government. 

"The  most  villainous  transaction,  however,  in  which 
he  was  implicated  was  the  conspiracy  to  defraud  the 
insurance  offices,  by  lading  a  vessel  with  a  valuable 
cargo  of  pewter,  linen,  and  salt,  which  he  heavily 
insured.  The  vessel  sailed  for  Maryland,  but  by  a 
secret  arrangement  between  the  Master  and  Benson, 
put  back  in  the  night  and  landed  the  greater  part  of 
the  cargo  at  Lundy,  where  Benson  had  repaired,  con- 
cealing it  in  the  caves  there  ;  and  then  the  Master, 
Lancey,  put  to  sea,  and  burnt  and  scuttled  his  vessel, 
some  leagues  to  the  westward,  the  crew  being  taken 
off  by  a  homeward-bound  vessel.  The  roguery  was, 
however,  discovered  by  the  confession  of  one  of  the 
crew.  Lancey  was  apprehended  with  some  of  his  ship- 
mates, seized  and  condemned,  hung  at  Execution  Dock 
and  afterwards  in  chains.  Benson  escaped  to  Portugal; 
he  is  said,  however,  to  have  returned  to  Napp  incognito 
for  a  time,  some  years  afterwards,  when  the  affair  was 
nearly  forgotten,  but  ultimately  returned  to  Portugal, 
and  died  there."  I  quote  from  a  manuscript  journal  of  a 
visit  to  Lundy  by  a  friend  of  Benson's  some  particulars 
of  the  island  and  of  Benson  himself  at  this  time. 

"  In  the  month  of  July,  1752,  I  sailed  from  Apple- 
dore  on  a  Monday  morning  with  Sir  Thomas  Gunstone 
in  a  little  vessel  bound  to  Wales  which  dropped  us  at 
Lundy  road.  We  came  from  Benson's  house,  of 
Napp,  who  rented  the  island  of  the  Lords  Carteret  and 


236  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Gower  for  £60.  We  landed  about  two  o'clock.  Mr. 
Benson  did  not  accompany  us,  expecting  letters  from 
the  insurance  office  for  the  vessel  and  cargo  which 
was  to  have  taken  us  there.  The  vessel  then  lay  off  his 
quay  with  convicts  bound  for  Virginia,  but  he  came  to 
us  on  Wednesday.  The  island  was  at  this  time  in  no 
state  of  improvement,  the  houses  miserably  bad,  one 
on  each  side  of  the  platform,  that  on  the  right  inhabited 
by  Mr.  Benson  and  his  friends,  the  other  by  the  ser- 
vants. The  old  fort  was  occupied  by  the  convicts 
whom  he  had  sent  there  some  time  before,  and  occupied 
in  making  a  wall  across  the  island.  They  were  locked 
up  every  night  when  they  returned  from  their  labour. 
About  a  week  before  we  landed  seven  or  eight  of  them 
took  the  long-boat  and  made  their  escape  to  Hartland, 
and  were  never  heard  of  afterwards.  Wild  fowl  were 
exceeding  plenty  and  a  vast  number  of  rabbits.  The 
island  was  overgrown  with  ferns  and  heath,  which 
made  it  almost  impossible  to  go  to  the  extreme  of  the 
island.  Had  it  not  been  for  the  supply  of  rabbits  and 
young  sea-gulls  our  tables  would  have  been  but  poorly 
furnished,  rats  being  so  plenty  that  they  destroyed 
every  night  what  was  left  of  our  repast  by  day. 
Lobsters  were  tolerably  plenty,  and  some  other  fish  we 
caught.  The  deer  and  goats  were  very  wild  and  diffi- 
cult to  get  at.  The  path  to  the  house  was  so  narrow 
and  steep  that  it  was  scarcely  possible  for  a  horse  to 
ascend  it.  The  inhabitants  by  the  assistance  of  a  rope 
climbed  up  a  rock  in  which  were  steps  cut  to  place  their 
feet,  to  a  cave  or  magazine  where  Mr.  Benson  lodged 
his  goods.  There  happened  to  come  into  the  roads  one 
evening  near  70  sail  of  vessels.  The  colours  were 
hoisted  on  the  fort,  and  they  all  as  they  passed  that 
island  returned  the  compliment  except  one  vessel, 
which  provoked  Mr.  Benson  to  fire  at  her  with  ball, 


THE    PIRATES   OF   LUNDY  237 

though  we  used  every  argument  in  our  power  to  pre- 
vent him.  He  replied  that  the  island  was  his,  and 
every  vessel  that  passed  it  and  did  not  pay  him  the 
same  compliment  as  was  paid  to  the  King's  forts  he 
would  fire  on  her.  He  talked  to  us  about  his  contract 
for  exportation  of  convicts  to  Virginia,  and  often  said 
that  the  sending  of  convicts  to  Lundy  was  the  same  as 
sending  them  to  America ;  they  were  transported  from 
England,  it  mattered  not  where  it  was,  so  long  as  they 
were  out  of  the  kingdom."1 

1  Chanter,  Lundy  Island,  1877.  Besides  Mr.  Chanter's  History,  my 
authority  is  Mr.  R.  P.  Chope's  articles  on  ''Lundy  Pirates"  and  on 
"  Benson"  in  the  Hartland  Chronicle^  1906. 


TOM    D'URFEY 


f  ^OM  D'URFEY  was  born  in  Exeter  in  the 
year  1653.  The  date  usually  given,  1649,  is 
incorrect.  He  came  of  a  very  ancient  and 
-^-  well-connected  family.  Under  Charles  VII 
of  France,  Pierre  d'Ulphe  was  Grand  Master  of  the 
crossbow-men  of  France.  His  son,  Peter  II,  changed 
the  spelling  of  his  name  from  Ulphe  to  Urfe.  He  died 
in  1508,  after  having  served  with  distinction  under 
Charles  VIII  and  Louis  XII.  Francis,  the  nephew  of 
Peter  II,  Baron  d'Oroze,  fought  along  with  Bayard  in  a 
combat  of  thirteen  Frenchmen  against  thirteen  Span- 
iards. The  son  of  Peter  II,  Claude,  was  ambassador 
of  France  at  the  Council  of  Trent,  and  governor  of  the 
royal  children.  He  loved  letters,  had  a  fine  library  at 
his  Chateau  de  la  Batie,  near  Montbrison.  Jacques, 
his  son,  was  chamberlain  to  Henry  II  ;  he  died  in  1574, 
leaving  several  sons,  of  whom  two  were  Anne  and 
Honore,  both  staunch  Leaguers,  and  in  their  day  con- 
sidered to  be  poets.  Honore,  however,  made  his  fame 
by  his  interminable  and  tedious  romance  of  Astree. 
The  Dictionary  of  National  Biography  says  that  Tom's 
uncle  was  this  same  Honore  ;  but  this  is  impossible. 
Honore,  the  fifth  son  of  Jacques  I,  was  born  1572.  He 
had  four  elder  brothers — Anne,  who  died  without  issue  ; 
Claude,  who  died  young  ;  Jacques  II,  who  had  one  son  ; 
Claude  Emmanuel,  who  died  in  1685.  Christopher  died 
without  issue,  and  Antoine  became  a  bishop.  Con- 
sequently it  is  not  possible  to  fit  Tom  D'Urfey  into  the 

238 


TOM    D'URFEY  239 

pedigree.  It  is  possible  enough  that  the  grandfather 
who  quitted  La  Rochelle  before  the  end  of  the  siege  in 
1628  and  brought  his  son  with  him  to  England,  and 
who  settled  at  Exeter,  may  have  been  a  connexion  by 
blood,  possibly  enough  illegitimate,  as  no  trace  of  him 
can  be  found  in  the  D'Urfe  pedigree.  The  grandfather 
broke  away  from  the  traditions  of  the  family  entirely  by 
becoming  a  Huguenot,  for  not  only  were  Anne  and 
Honore  Leaguers,  but  Anne  entered  Orders  and  Antoine 
became  Bishop  of  Saint  Flores. 

Charles  Emmanuel  called  himself  De  Lascaris,  and 
was  created  Marquis  D'Urfe  and  De  Bauge,  Count  of 
Sommerive  and  St.  Just,  Marshal,  and  died  in  1685  at 
the  age  of  eighty-one.  His  son  Louis  became  Bishop  of 
Limoges  ;  another,  Francis,  became  Abbe  of  St.  Just, 
and  devoted  himself  to  missionary  work  in  Canada  ;  he 
died  in  1701.  The  third  son,  Claude  Yves,  became  a 
priest  of  the  Oratoire  ;  the  fourth,  Emmanuel,  Dean  of 
Le  Puy,  died  in  1689;  the  fifth,  Charles  Maurice,  was  the 
only  one  who  did  not  enter  the  ministry,  and  he  died 
unmarried  ;  thus  the  family  came  to  an  end,  and  it  is 
characteristic  of  it  that  it  was  intensely  Catholic.  Thus 
if  the  grandfather  of  Tom  D'Urfey  did  belong  to  the 
stock,  he  was  a  sport  of  a  different  colour.  The  father 
of  Tom  D'Urfey  married  Frances  of  the  family  of  the 
Marmions,  of  Huntingdonshire.  Tom  certainly  claimed 
kinship  with  the  D'Urfes,  of  Forez,  and  was  proud  of 
the  fame  that  attached  to  his  relative  Honore. 

The  elder  of  the  sons  of  Jacques  I,  viz.  Anne,  had 
married  a  splendid  beauty,  Diana  de  Chateau  Morand, 
who  was  also  an  heiress.  But  the  union  was  not  happy, 
and  it  was  annulled  by  the  Ecclesiastical  Court  at 
Lyons  (1598)  at  the  joint  petition  of  husband  and  wife. 
Then  Anne,  after  trifling  with  the  Muses,  took  Holy 
Orders.  Thereupon  Honore,  having  money  to  pay  for 


240  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

it,  bought  a  dispensation  at  Rome,  and  married  his 
brother's  late  wife,  not  out  of  love,  but  for  the  purpose 
of  retaining  in  the  family  her  great  estates.  He  was 
then  aged  thirty-two,  and  she  was  in  her  fortieth  year. 
She  was  haughty,  vain  of  her  beauty,  which  had  made 
her  famous  at  one  time,  and  spent  her  time  in  trying 
to  disguise  the  ravages  of  time  on  her  face.  She  lived 
mainly  in  her  room  surrounded  by  dogs,  "qui  repan- 
daient  partout,  jusque  dans  son  lit,  une  salete  insup- 
portable." 

Very  different  was  the  life  of  Tom  D'Urfey's  father, 
and  one  of  the  touching  incidents  in  his  character  was 
his  devotion  and  tenderness  towards  his  wife  to  her 
dying  day. 

Tom  had  been  intended  for  the  law,  but,  as  he  said, 
"  My  good  or  ill  stars  ordained  me  to  be  a  knight 
errant  in  the  fairy  fields  of  poetry." 

He  wrote  plays  that  were  well  received  for  the  most 
part,  but  all  were  tainted  with  intolerable  grossness. 
But  at  this  period  of  revulsion  from  Puritanism,  licen- 
tiousness of  intrigue,  indelicacy  of  wit,  most  strongly 
appealed  to  the  popular  taste,  at  least  in  London,  and 
among  the  hangers-on  of  a  profligate  court.  In  1676, 
he  produced  The  Siege  of  Memphis  and  The  Fond 
Husband;  or,  The  Plotting  Sisters.  In  1677,  Madame 
Pickle.  In  all,  down  to  his  death,  thirty-two  dramatic 
pieces.  But  that  which  obtained  for  D'Urfey  his 
greatest  reputation  was  a  peculiarly  happy  knack  that 
he  possessed  in  writing  satires  and  songs.  In  the 
latter  style  of  composition  he  knew  how  to  start  with  a 
telling  line.  There  was  in  his  composition  a  vein  of 
genuine  poetry,  but  the  trail  of  the  serpent  was  over  it 
all:  he  could  not  leave  his  best  pieces  without  some- 
thing foul  to  spoil  it.  Many  of  his  songs  were  set  to 
music  by  his  friends  Henry  Purcell,  Thomas  Farmer, 


TOM    D'URFEY  241 

and  Dr.  John  Blow  ;  but  a  good  many  were  adapted  to 
folk  airs.  In  1683,  he  brought  out  his  New  Collection 
of  Songs  and  Poems,  in  which  was  "  The  Night  her 
Blackest  Sables  Wore,"  which  was  afterwards  claimed 
for  Francis  Semple,  of  Beltrees.  D'Urfey  wrote  a  good 
many  songs  in  fancy  Scottish  dialect,  as  a  taste  for 
North-country  songs  came  in  after  James,  Duke  of 
York,  afterwards  James  II,  was  sent  to  govern  Scot- 
land in  1679  and  1680.  Although  there  can  be  no 
doubt  whatever  as  to  the  authorship  of  "The  Night 
her  Blackest  Sables  Wore,"  about  fifty  years  after  its 
first  publication  the  song  and  tune  in  a  corrupt  form 
appear  in  Thomson's  Orpheus  Caledonicus  (1733),  with 
some  change  in  the  words  so  as  to  make  it  appear 
to  be  Scottish,  as  "She  rose  and  let  me  in,"  altered  to 
"She  raise  and  loot  me  in."  Mr.  Chappell  says  :  "  It 
is  a  common  error  to  suppose  that  England  was  inun- 
dated with  Scotch  tunes  at  the  union  of  the  two  Crowns. 
The  first  effect  was  directly  the  reverse."  In  fact,  a 
stream  of  English  popular  melodies  flowed  into  Scot- 
land, and  this  in  a  flood  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II, 
carrying  with  them  the  English  words,  which  Scottish 
compilers  adapted  and  appropriated,  and  these  have 
come  back  to  us  as  "  made  in  Scotland,"  whereas  they 
are  genuine  English  songs,  words  and  music  and  all. 

Tom  Brown,  venomous  and  scurrilous  as  Tom 
D'Urfey  was  not,  lampooned  the  latter,  and  called  him 
"Thou  cur,  half  French,  half  English  breed,"  and 
mocked  him  regarding  a  duel  at  Epsom,  in  1689,  with 
one  Bell,  a  musician. 

I  sing-  of  a  Duel,  in  Epsom  befell 

'Twixt  Fa-so-la  D'Urfey  and  Sol-la-mi  Bell. 

Tom  took  it  in  good  part.     It   was   only  by  Jeremy 
Collier  that  he  could  be  prevailed  to  reply,  and  even 
then  it  was  chiefly  in  a  song. 
R 


242  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Jeremy  Collier  had  published  in  1697  his  famous 
Short  View  of  the  Profaneness  and  Immorality  of  the 
English  Stage,  which  dealt  a  terrible  blow  at  what  little 
prosperity  the  theatres  enjoyed,  and  aroused  a  whole- 
some spirit  of  resentment  against  the  outrages  com- 
mitted on  the  stage  against  Christian  virtue  and 
common  decency.  The  castigation  was  well  deserved, 
for  the  licentiousness  of  the  stage  both  before  and 
behind  the  curtain  had  become  a  monstrous  evil. 

The  sensation  created  by  the  book  was  enormous, 
scores  of  pamphlets  refuting  or  defending  its  views 
were  written,  and  the  falling  off  in  the  audiences  plainly 
showed  that  its  remonstrances  hadstruck  home.  D'Urfey 
was  one  of  those  hardest  hit ;  he  winced,  cried  out,  but 
did  not  mend.  D'Urfey  was  a  good,  witty,  and  genial 
companion,  and  this  obtained  him  favour  with  a  great 
many  persons  of  all  ranks  and  conditions.  The  Duke 
of  Albemarle,  son  of  General  Monk,  had  him  fre- 
quently at  his  table  to  divert  the  company ;  of  which 
he  was  not  a  little  vain,  as  we  may  gather  from  part  of 
a  song  made  upon  him  at  that  time  : — 

He  prates  like  a  parrot ; 
He  sups  with  the  Duke, 
And  he  lies  in  a  garret. 

Crowned  heads  condescended  to  admit  him  to  their 
presence,  and  were  not  a  little  diverted  by  him.  It 
is  not  surprising  to  hear  this  of  so  merry  a  monarch 
as  Charles  II ;  but  even  King  William,  so  glum  and 
reserved  in  temper,  and  so  little  appreciative  of  music, 
or  of  any  amusements  of  that  kind,  must  needs  have 
D'Urfey  one  night  to  him  ;  and  D'Urfey  extorted  a 
hearty  laugh  even  from  him,  and  departed  with  a  present. 
D'Urfey  had  inherited  his  grandfather's  Huguenot 
prejudices  ;  he  was  a  staunch  Protestant  in  his  feelings 
if  not  a  Christian  in  his  morals,  and  he  wrote  satirical 


TOM    D'URFEY  243 

songs  against  the  Roman  Catholics,  so  that  William  III 
felt  it  well  to  show  him  favour. 

One  of  his  anti-papal  songs,  and  one  that  was 
very  popular  among  the  Whigs,  was  "  Dear  Catholic 
Brother,"  and  this  he  set  to  a  very  fine  ancient  tune,  to 
which  to  this  day  <  <  The  Hunting  of  Arscott  of  Tetcott  "  is 
sung  in  Devon.  But  D'Urfey  did  not  take  the  complete 
tune,  as  he  did  not  need  it  for  his  piece  of  verse,  and 
his  incomplete  version  of  the  tune  travelled  into  Wales 
and  Scotland  as  well  as  throughout  England.  It  is  an 
early,  genuine  English  melody  in  the  Dorian  mode. 

Charles  II  had  leaned  familiarly  on  D'Urfey's 
shoulder,  holding  a  corner  of  the  same  sheet  of  music 
from  which  the  poet  was  singing  his  burlesque  song, 
"  Remember,  ye  Whigs,  what  was  formerly  done." 

James  II  continued  the  friendship  previously  shown 
him  when  he  was  Duke  of  York.  He  had  no  wish  to 
offend  one  who  could  turn  a  song  against  him  and  his 
religion.  Queen  Anne  delighted  in  his  wit  and  gave 
him  fifty  guineas  when  she  admitted  him  to  her  at 
supper,  because  he  lampooned  the  Princess  Sophia, 
then  next  in  succession  to  herself,  by  his  ditty,  "The 
Crown's  too  weighty  for  shoulders  of  eighty."  She 
herself  entertained  great  dislike  towards  the  Electress 
Dowager  of  Hanover.  D'Urfey  was  attached  to  the 
Tory  interest ;  and  in  the  latter  part  of  the  Queen's 
reign  frequently  had  the  honour  of  diverting  her  with 
witty  catches  and  humorous  songs,  suited  to  the  spirit 
of  the  times,  written  by  himself  and  sung  in  a  droll  and 
entertaining  manner. 

The  Earl  of  Dorset  welcomed  him  at  Knole  Park, 
and  had  his  portrait  painted  there.  At  Wincherdon, 
Buckingham's  house,  Philip,  Duke  of  Wharton,  en- 
joyed in  company  D'Urfey  singing  his  songs,  which  he 
did  with  vivacity,  although  in  speech  he  stammered. 


244  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

D'Urfey  said:  "  The  town  may  da-da-da-mn  me  as 
a  poet,  but  they  sing  my  songs  for  all  that." 

He  collected  his  songs  into  six  volumes,  published 
under  the  title  of  Wit  and  Mirth^  or  Pills  to  Purge 
Melancholy ,  which  went  through  several  editions.  In 
that  for  1719  all  the  songs  in  the  first  two  volumes  are 
his  own  ;  other  songs,  many  of  them  folk  ballads,  he 
tampered  with,  and  added  coarsenesses  of  his  own  not 
in  the  original.  The  book  was  published  by  Playford, 
and  the  melodies  are  not  always  correctly  printed. 
Most  of  his  airs  were  folk  melodies  ;  many  of  them, 
doubtless,  heard  by  him  when  he  was  young  in  Devon- 
shire, for  there  they  are  still  employed  to  ballads  he 
recast. 

Writing  to  Henry  Cromwell,  loth  April,  1710, 
Alexander  Pope  says:  "I  have  not  quoted  one  Latin 
author  since  I  came  down,  but  have  learned  without 
book  a  song  of  Mr.  Thomas  Durfey's,  who  is  your 
only  poet  of  tolerable  reputation  in  this  country.  He 
makes  all  the  merriment  in  our  entertainments,  and 
but  for  him,  there  would  be  so  miserable  a  dearth  of 
catches,  that,  I  fear,  they  would  put  either  the  Parson 
or  me  upon  making  some  of  'em.  Any  man,  of  any 
quality,  is  heartily  welcome  to  the  best  topeing-table 
of  our  gentry,  who  can  roar  out  some  rhapsodies  of 
his  works  ;  so  that  in  the  same  manner  as  it  was  said 
of  Homer  to  his  detractors,  What !  dares  any  man 
speak  against  him  who  has  given  so  many  men  to 
eat?  (meaning  the  rhapsodists  who  lived  by  repeating 
his  verses).  Thus  may  it  be  said  of  Mr.  Durfey  to  his 
detractors,  Dares  any  one  despise  him,  who  has  made 
so  many  men  drink  ?  Alas,  Sir  !  this  is  a  glory  which 
neither  you  nor  I  must  ever  pretend  to.  Neither  you 
with  your  Ovid,  nor  I  with  my  Statius,  can  amuse  a 
board  of  Justices  and  extraordinary  Squires,  or  gain 


TOM    D'URFEY  245 

one  hum  of  approbation,  or  laugh  of  admiration. 
These  things  (they  would  say)  are  too  studious,  they 
may  do  well  enough  with  such  as  love  reading,  but 
give  us  your  ancient  Poet,  Mr.  Durfey  !  'Tis  morti- 
fying enough,  it  must  be  confess'd." 

There  is  a  slight  allusion  to  D'Urfey  in  the  Dunciad, 
iii.  146. 

Gay  mentions  that  Tom  ran  his  Muse  with  what  was 
long  a  favourite  racing  song,  "  To  horse,  brave  boys, 
to  Newmarket,  to  horse  !  " 

Tom  was  very  irregular  in  his  metres.  He  had  the 
art  of  jumbling  long  and  short  quantities  so  dexter- 
ously together  that  order  resulted  from  confusion.  Of 
this  happy  talent  he  gave  various  specimens,  in  adapt- 
ing songs  to  tunes,  composing  his  songs  in  such 
measures  as  scarcely  any  instrument  but  a  drum  could 
accompany  ;  as  to  the  tune,  it  had  to  take  care  of  itself. 
To  be  even  with  the  musicians  who  complained  of  the 
irregularity  of  his  metres,  and  their  unusual  character, 
he  went  further,  composing  songs  in  metres  so  broken 
and  intricate,  that  few  could  be  found  who  could  adapt 
tunes  to  them  that  were  of  any  value.  It  is  said  that 
he  once  challenged  Purcell  to  set  to  music  such  a  song 
as  he  would  write,  and  gave  him  the  ballad  that 
speedily  became  popular,  "One  Long  Whitsun  Holi- 
day," which  cost  the  latter  more  pains  to  fit  with  a 
tune  than  the  composition  of  his  Te  Deum. 

Tom,  at  least  in  the  early  part  of  his  life,  was  a 
Tory  by  principle,  and  never  let  slip  an  opportunity 
of  representing  his  adversaries,  the  Whigs,  in  a 
ridiculous  light.  Addison  says  that  the  song  of  "  Joy 
to  Great  Cassar"  gave  them  such  a  blow  that  they 
were  not  able  to  recover  during  the  reign  of  Charles  II. 

This  song  was  set  to  a  tune  called  "  Farinelli's 
Ground."  Divisions  were  made  on  it  by  some  English 


246  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

master,  and  it  soon  became  a  favourite  air.  D'Urfey 
set  words  to  it  in  which  his  old  Huguenot  execration 
of  the  Papists  breaks  forth.  Farinelli  was  a  Papist,  a 
circumstance  that  gave  occasion  to  Addison  to  remark 
that  his  friend  Tom  had  made  use  of  Italian  tunes  for 
promoting  the  Protestant  interest ;  and  turned  a  con- 
siderable part  of  the  Pope's  music  as  a  battery  against 
the  chair  of  St.  Peter. 

D'  Urfey's  Pills  to  Purge  Melancholy  is  a  book  now- 
adays to  be  kept  under  lock  and  key,  or  else  to  be 
bound  and  lettered  "  Practical  Sermons,"  to  avoid  its 
being  taken  down  from  its  shelf  and  being  looked  into 
by  young  people.  And  yet — "Tempora  mutantur  et 
nos  mutantur  in  illis."  Addison  speaks  of  his  songs 
in  No.  67  of  The  Guardian  thus:  "I  must  heartily 
recommend  to  all  young  ladies,  my  disciples,  the  case 
of  my  old  friend,  who  has  often  made  their  grand- 
mothers merry,  and  whose  sonnets  have  perhaps  lulled 
to  sleep  many  a  pleasant  toast,  when  she  lay  in  her 
cradle."  In  No.  29,  1713,  Addison  wrote  :  "A  judicious 
author,  some  years  since,  published  a  collection  of 
sonnets,  which  he  very  successfully  called  '  Laugh  and 
be  Fat;  or,  Pills  to  Purge  Melancholy.'  I  cannot 
sufficiently  admire  the  facetious  title  of  these  volumes, 
and  must  censure  the  world  of  ingratitude,  while  they 
are  so  negligent  in  rewarding  the  jocose  labours  of  my 
friend,  Mr.  D'Urfey,  who  was  so  large  a  contributor  to 
this  treatise,  and  to  whose  numerous  productions  so 
many  rural  squires  in  the  remotest  parts  of  the  island 
are  obliged  for  the  dignity  and  state  which  corpulency 
gives  them." 

D'Urfey  was  the  last  English  poet  that  appeared  in 
the  streets  attended  by  a  page.  Many  an  honest  gentle- 
man, it  is  said,  got  a  reputation  in  his  county  by 
pretending  to  have  been  a  boon  companion  of  D'Urfey; 


TOM    D'URFEY  247 

yet,  so  universal  a  favourite  as  he  was,  towards  the 
latter  part  of  his  life  he  stood  in  need  of  assistance  to 
prevent  his  passing  the  remainder  of  it  in  a  cage  like  a 
singing-bird  ;  for,  to  use  his  own  words,  "  after  having 
written  more  odes  than  Horace,  and  about  four  times 
as  many  comedies  as  Terence,  he  found  himself  reduced 
to  great  difficulties  by  the  importunities  of  a  set  of  men 
who  of  late  years  had  furnished  him  with  the  accom- 
modations of  life,  and  would  not,  as  we  say,  be  paid 
with  a  song." 

Addison,  to  relieve  the  old  man,  whose  sight  was  then 
failing,  but  whose  spirits  had  not  been  extinguished, 
applied  to  the  directors  of  the  play-house,  and  they 
agreed  to  act  The  Plotting  Sisters,  one  of  his  earliest 
productions,  for  the  benefit  of  the  author.  What  the 
result  of  this  benefit  was  does  not  appear,  but  it  was 
probably  sufficient  to  make  him  easy,  as  we  find  him 
living  and  continuing  to  write  with  the  same  humour 
and  liveliness  to  the  time  of  his  death,  which  happened 
on  26  February,  1723.  He  was  buried  in  the  church- 
yard of  St.  James's,  Westminster,  against  the  wall  on 
the  south-west  angle  of  which  church,  on  the  outside, 
was  erected  a  stone  to  his  memory,  with  this  inscrip- 
tion :  "Tom  Durfey  died  Feb.  26,  1723." 


THE    BIRD    OF   THE    OXENHAMS 


f~  ""^HE  Lysons  brothers,  in  their  Magna  Bri- 
tannia, Devon,  tell  the  following  story,  under 
the  head  of  South  Tawton  :  ' '  Oxenham  gave 
^  its  name  to  an  ancient  family,  who  pos- 
sessed it  at  least  from  the  time  of  Henry  III  till 
the  death  of  the  late  William  Long  Oxenham,  Esq., 
in  1814.  Captain  John  Oxenham,  who  had  been  the 
friend  and  companion  of  Sir  Francis  Drake,  and  who, 
having  fitted  out  a  ship  on  a  voyage  of  discovery  and 
enterprise  on  his  own  account,  lost  his  life  in  an 
engagement  with  the  Spaniards  in  South  America,  in 
J575>  is  supposed  to  have  been  of  this  family.  The 
family  has  been  remarkable  also  for  the  tradition  of  a 
bird  having  appeared  to  several  of  its  members  pre- 
viously to  their  death.  Howell,  who  had  seen  mention 
of  this  circumstance  on  a  monument  at  a  stonemason's 
in  Fleet  Street,  which  was  about  to  be  sent  to  Devon- 
shire, gives  a  copy  of  the  inscription  in  one  of  his 
letters.  It  is  somewhat  curious  that  this  letter  proves 
the  fact  alleged  by  Wood,  that  Howell's  work  does 
not  consist  of  entirely  genuine  letters,  but  that  many  of 
them  were  first  written  when  he  was  in  the  Fleet  prison 
to  gain  money  for  the  relief  of  his  necessities.  This 
letter,  dated  July  3,  1632,  relates  that,  as  he  passed  by 
the  stonecutter's  shop  Mast  Saturday,'  he  saw  the 
monument  with  the  inscription  relating  the  circum- 
stance of  the  apparition.  It  appears,  however,  by  a 

248 


FRONTISPIECE   TO    "A   TRUE    RELATION   OF   AX    APPARITION,"   ETC., 
BY  JAMES   OXENHAM 


THE   BIRD   OF   THE   OXENHAMS       249 

very  scarce  pamphlet  .  .  .  that  the  persons  whose 
names  are  mentioned  in  the  epitaph,  given  in  Howell's 
letter,  all  died  in  the  year  1635,  three  years  after  the 
date  of  his  letter.  The  persons  to  whom  the  apparition 
is  stated  in  the  pamphlet  to  have  appeared  were  John 
Oxenham,  son  of  James  Oxenham,  gentleman,  of  Zeal 
Monachorum,  aged  twenty-one,1  and  said  to  have 
been  six  feet  and  a  half  in  height,  who  died  Sept.  5, 
1635,  a  bird  with  a  white  breast  having  appeared 
hovering  over  him  two  days  before  ;  Thomazine,  wife 
of  James  Oxenham,  the  younger,  who  died  Sept.  7, 
1635,  aged  twenty-two ;  Rebecca  Oxenham,  who  died 
Sept.  9,  aged  eight  years ;  and  Thomazine,  a  child  in 
the  cradle,  who  died  Sept.  15.  It  is  added  that  the 
same  bird  had  appeared  to  Grace,  the  grandmother  of 
John  Oxenham,  who  died  1618.  It  is  stated  also  that 
the  clergyman  of  the  parish  had  been  appointed  by  the 
Bishop  (Hall)  to  enquire  into  the  truth  of  these  par- 
ticulars, and  that  a  monument,  made  by  Edward 
Marshall,  of  Fleet  Street,  had  been  put  up  with  his 
approbation,  with  the  names  of  the  witnesses  of  each 
apparition. 

"  Another  proof  that  Howell's  letter  must  have  been 
written  from  memory  is,  that  most  of  the  Christian 
names  are  erroneous.  The  pamphlet  adds,  that  those 
of  the  family  who  had  been  sick  and  recovered  never 
saw  the  apparition."  The  pamphlet  to  which  the 
brothers  Lysons  refer  is  entitled  :  "  A  True  Relation 
of  an  Apparition  in  the  likeness  of  a  Bird  with  a  white 
brest  that  appeared  hovering  over  the  Death-Beds  of 
some  of  the  children  of  Mr.  James  Oxenham,  of  Sale 
Monachorum,  Devon,  Gent.  Confirmed  by  sundry 
witnesses  as  followeth  in  the  ensuing  Treatise.  London, 
printed  by  I.  O.  for  Richard  Clutterbuck,  and  are  to 

1  In  the  tract,  twenty-two. 


250  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

be  sold  at  the  signe  of  the  Gun,  in  Little  Britain,  neere 
St.  Botolph's  Church,  1641." 

Now  in  the  first  place  it  is  well  to  observe  that  the 
name  of  the  place  is  wrong.  The  Oxenhams  did  not 
live  at  Zeal  Monachorum,  but  at  South  Zeal  in  South 
Tawton.  No  Oxenham  entries  are  to  be  found  in  the 
registers  of  Zeal  Monachorum,  no  monuments  of  the 
family  are  in  the  church.  The  brothers  Lysons 
examined  the  registers  there,  and  certified  to  this. 
The  Devon  volume  of  the  Magna  Britannia  was  pub- 
lished in  1822.  Since  that  date  a  portion  of  the  page  in 
the  Burial  Register,  containing  the  entries  of  burials 
in  1635,  has  been  cut  out  by  some  person  who  has  by 
this  means  destroyed  the  evidence  that  no  such 
Oxenhams  were  buried  at  Zeal  Monachorum.  Now  the 
pamphlet  states  that  John,  son  of  James  Oxenham, 
aged  twenty-two,  died  on  5  September,  1635.  The 
register  of  South  Tawton  informs  us  that  John 
Oxenham  was  buried  on  20  May,  1635,  i.e.  four 
months,  two  weeks,  and  two  days  before  he  died, 
according  to  the  tract.  He  was  born  in  1613  and 
baptized  17  October  in  that  year.  His  father,  James 
Oxenham,  was  married  to  Elizabeth  Hellier  in  1608. 
In  1614,  a  John  Oxenham  and  his  wife  Mary  had  a  son 
John  as  well.  Others  reported  to  have  had  the  white- 
breasted  bird  appear  on  their  deaths  in  the  same  year, 
were  Thomasine,  wife  of  James  Oxenham  the  younger, 
Thomasine,  their  babe,  and  Rebecca  Oxenham,  aged 
eight  years. 

There  is  no  entry  in  the  register  of  the  baptism  of 
either  Thomasine  or  Rebecca,  nor  of  the  burial  of 
Thomasine  the  elder,  Thomasine  the  babe,  or  of 
Rebecca. 

The  second  John  Oxenham,  son  of  John  and  Mary, 
was  buried  31  July,  1636,  at  least  we  presume  it 


THE    BIRD   OF   THE   OXENHAMS       251 

was  he ;  the  registers  do  not  state  in  either  case 
whose  son  each  of  the  Johns  was. 

There  is  no  trace  of  the  younger  James  to  be  found 
in  the  register,  nor  of  any  of  the  Oxenhams  in  North 
Tawton  registers  at  or  about  the  time  of  the  supposed 
apparition. 

The  witnesses  to  the  vision  were,  in  the  case  of  John 
Oxenham,  Robert  Woodley  and  Humphry  King. 
Robert  Woodley  does  occur  in  the  register  under 
date  1664.  Mary  Stephens  was  witness  to  the  visions 
when  Rebecca  and  Thomasine  the  babe  died,  and  Mary 
Stephens  does  occur  in  the  register  under  the  date  1667, 
but  none  of  the  other  witnesses,  Humphry  King, 
Elizabeth  Frost,  Joan  Tooker,  and  Elizabeth  Averie, 
widow.  Consequently  there  is  negative  evidence  that 
Thomasine,  elder  and  younger,  and  Rebecca  never 
existed  save  in  the  imagination  of  the  author  of  the 
catch-penny  tract. 

We  come  now  to  James  Howell's  account,  in  his 
Epistolce  Ho-Eliance;  or  Familiar  Letters.  The  first 
edition  of  the  first  series  of  these  letters  was  published  in 
the  year  1645,  four  years  after  the  tract  had  appeared. 
About  the  year  1642  he  had  been  committed  to  the 
Fleet,  and  there  confined  for  eight  years.  He  states 
in  his  Letter  IX,  in  Sect.  6,  in  a  letter  to  Mr. 
E.  D.  :— 

"SiR, — I  thank  you  a  thousand  times  for  the  Noble 
entertainment  you  gave  me  at  Berry,  and  the  pains 
you  took  in  shewing  me  the  Antiquities  of  that  place. 
In  requitall,  I  can  tell  you  of  a  strange  thing  I  saw 
lately  here,  and  I  beleeve  'tis  true  :  As  I  pass'd  by 
Saint  Dunstans  in  Fleet  street  the  last  Saturday,  I 
stepp'd  into  a  Lapidary  or  Stone-cutters  Shop,  to 
treat  with  the  Master  for  a  Stone  to  be  put  upon  my 
Father's  Tomb ;  And  casting  my  eies  up  and  down,  I 


252  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

might  spie   a  huge    Marble  with   a   large   inscription 
upon  't,  which  was  thus  to  my  best  remembrance  : — 

"Here  lies  John  Oxenham,  a  goodly  young  man,  in 
whose  Chamber,  as  he  was  strugling  with  the  pangs  of 
death,  a  Bird  with  White-brest  was  seen  fluttering 
about  his  Bed,  and  so  vanished. 

"Here  lies  also  Mary  Oxenham,  the  sister  of  the  said 
John,  who  died  the  next  day,  and  the  same  Apparition 
was  seen  in  the  Room. 

"Then  another  sister  is  spoke  of.  Then,  Here  lies 
hard  by  James  Oxenham,  the  son  of  the  said  John,  who 
died  a  child  in  his  cradle  a  little  after,  and  such  a  Bird 
was  seen  fluttering  about  his  head  a  little  before  he 
expired,  which  vanished  afterwards. 

"  At  the  bottom  of  the  Stone  ther  is— 

"Here  lies  Elizabeth  Oxenham,  the  Mother  of  the 
said  John,  who  died  16  yeers  since,  when  such  a  Bird, 
with  a  White-Brest,  was  seen  about  her  Bed  before  her 
death. 

"  To  all  these  ther  be  divers  Witnesses,  both  Squires 
and  Ladies,  whose  names  are  engraven  upon  the 
Stone  :  This  Stone  is  to  be  sent  to  a  Town  hard  by 
Excester,  wher  this  happend." 

It  will  be  noticed  that  Howell  has  got  all  the 
Christian  names  wrong,  but  then,  as  he  states,  he 
gave  the  inscription  from  memory.  If  the  date  of  the 
letter  be  correct,  1632,  that,  as  Lysons  pointed  out,  was 
before  the  deaths  that  took  place  in  1635.  But  in  the 
first  edition  of  the  letters  this  particular  one  is  un- 
dated, and  little  or  no  reliance  can  be  placed  on  the 
dates  that  are  given  ;  indeed,  the  bulk  of  the  letters,  if 
not  all,  were  written  by  Howell  when  in  prison  and 
never  had  been  sent  to  the  persons  to  whom  addressed, 
any  more  than  at  the  dates  when  supposed  to  be 
written.  Probably  in  his  second  edition  he  dated  this 


THE   BIRD   OF   THE   OXENHAMS       253 

letter  to  E.  D.  sufficiently  early  to  account  for  his 
walking  abroad  in  Fleet  Street  "  last  Saturday," 
caring  only  that  it  should  not  appear  as  a  composition 
written  in  prison. 

That  he  ever  saw  the  marble  monument  is  improb- 
able, as  it  is  almost  certain  that  no  such  monument 
existed.  He  had  read  the  tract,  and  pretended  to  have 
seen  the  stone  so  as  to  furnish  a  theme  for  an  interest- 
ing letter.  It  is  extremely  unlikely  that  the  names  of 
witnesses  to  the  apparition  should  be  inscribed  on  the 
stone.  Howell  saw  these  names  in  the  tract ;  he  did 
not  know  who  they  were,  but  supposed  them  to  be 
squires  and  ladies.  There  were  no  such  gentry  about 
South  Tawton  at  the  period.  As  to  the  statement 
made  in  the  tract  that  the  Bishop  had  commissioned 
the  vicar  of  the  parish  to  examine  into  the  case,  and 
that  he  and  the  parson  bore  testimony  to  its  genuine 
character,  that  is  as  worthless  as  the  witnessing  to  the 
ballad  concerning  the  "  Fish  that  appeared  upon  the 
Coast,  on  Wednesday  the  four  score  of  April,  forty 
thousand  fathom  above  water.  ...  It  was  thought  she 
was  a  woman  turned  into  a  cold  fish.  The  ballad  is 
very  pitiful,  and  as  true.  .  .  .  Five  justices'  hands 
at  it ;  and  witnesses  more  than  my  pack  will  hold." 

It  was  a  common  trick  of  ballad-mongers  and  pamph- 
leteers to  add  a  string  of  names  of  witnesses — all  fic- 
titious, every  one. 

The  monument  is  probably  as  fictitious  as  the  names 
of  the  witnesses.  There  is  not,  and  there  never  was, 
such  in  South  Tawton  Church  any  more  than  in  that  of 
Zeal  Monachorum.  Lysons  gives  the  Oxenham  monu- 
ments as  he  found  them  there :  William  Oxenham, 
gent.,  1699;  William  Oxenham,  Esq.,  1743;  George 
Oxenham,  Esq.,  1779.  "It  is  proper  to  add,"  says 
Lysons,  "that  there  is  no  trace  of  the  Oxenham  family, 


254  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

nor  of  the  monument  before  mentioned,  either  in  the 
register,  church,  or  churchyard  of  Zeal  Monachorum, 
nor  have  I  been  able  to  learn  that  it  exists  at  Tawton, 
or  elsewhere  in  the  county." 

I  was  at  South  Tawton  in  1854,  staying  with  Mr.  T. 
Burkett,  the  then  vicar,  and  I  drew  some  of  the  monu- 
ments in  the  church,  and  am  certain  this  particular 
stone  was  neither  in  the  church  nor  outside. 

So  also  Polwhele,  in  his  History  of  Devonshire,  1793, 
says:  "  The  prodigy  of  the  white  bird  .  .  .  seems  to 
be  little  known  at  present  to  the  common  people  at 
South  Tawton  ;  nor  can  I  find  anywhere  a  trace  of  the 
marble  stone  which  Mr.  Howell  saw  in  the  lapidary's 
shop  in  London." 

In  Sir  William  Pole's  Collections,  published  in  1791, 
there  stood  originally:  "  Oxenham,  the  land  of  Wm. 
Oxenham  [the  father  of  John,  the  grandfather  of  Will, 
father  of  another  John,  grandfather  of  James  ;  whose 
tombstone  respects  a  strange  wonder  of  this  famyly, 
that  at  theire  deaths  were  still  seen  a  bird  with  a  white 
brest,  which  fluttering  for  a  while  about  theire  beds 
suddenly  vanisht  away,  which  divers  of  ye  same  place 
belive  being  eyewitnesses  of]". 

Sir  William  Pole  died  in  1635,  and  he  said  not  one 
word  about  the  bird  of  the  Oxenhams  ;  that  which  has 
been  placed  within  brackets  was  an  addition  made  by 
his  son,  Sir  John,  who  had  probably  read  the  pamphlet 
or  Howell's  Letters.  Risdon,  who  lived  not  far  from 
South  Tawton,  knew  nothing  about  the  bird.  In  fact, 
the  whole  legend  grew  out  of  the  story  in  the  tract. 

That  this  story  is  not  wholly  baseless  may  be  allowed 
in  the  one  case  of  John  Oxenham.  As  he  was  dying 
the  window  very  probably  was  opened,  and  a  ring 
ouzel,  attracted  by  the  light,  may  have  entered,  flut- 
tered about,  and  then  flown  out  again.  That  the  win- 


THE    BIRD    OF   THE   OXENHAMS       255 

dow  was  open  I  said  was  probable,  for  it  is  an  idea 
widely  spread  in  England  that  when  a  person  is  near 
death  the  casement  should  be  thrown  open  so  as  to 
allow  the  soul  to  escape.  I  said  once  to  a  nurse 
who  had  attended  a  dying  man  :  "  Why  did  you  open 
the  window?"  "  You  wouldn't  have  had  his  soul  go 
up  the  chimney,  sir?"  was  the  answer. 

The  appearance — accidental— of  a  bird  in  the  death 
chamber  would,  in  a  superstitious  age,  be  regarded  as 
supernatural.  I  was  attending  the  wife  of  an  old 
coachman  who  had  been  with  my  father  and  myself. 
She  was  bed-ridden.  One  day  she  said  to  me:  "I 
know  I  shall  go  soon,  for  a  great  bird  came  fluttering 
at  the  window."  She  did  not,  however,  die  till  two 
months  later. 

The  story  of  John  Oxenham  and  the  bird  got  about, 
and  then  some  one  remarked  that  a  similar  sort  of  thing 
had  happened,  so  it  was  said,  when  the  young  man's 
grandmother  died.  That  sufficed  to  set  the  ball  rolling. 
For  the  purpose  of  the  pamphleteer,  three  additional 
cases  were  invented,  cases  of  Oxenhams  who  never 
existed,  and  the  account  of  the  stone  was  added,  so  as 
to  give  the  tale  greater  appearance  of  verisimilitude. 

Kingsley  introduces  the  white  bird  as  an  omen  of 
the  navigator  Oxenham.  He  was  justified  as  a  novelist 
in  predating  the  tradition  which  did  not  exist  in  his 
time,  and  was  hatched  out  of  the  tract  of  1641. 

I  have  said  white  bird — for  as  the  story  went  on  the 
white-breasted  bird  became  white,  hoary  with  attend- 
ance on  generations  of  Oxenhams.  It  may  be  interest- 
ing, at  all  events  it  is  amusing,  to  note,  how  out  of  this 
pious  hoax  serious  convictions  have  grown  that  the 
bird  really  has  been  seen,  and  that  repeatedly. 

Messrs.  Lysons  say  :  "This  tradition  of  the  bird  had 
so  worked  upon  the  minds  of  some  of  the  members  of 


256  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  family,  that  it  is  supposed  to  have  been  seen  by 
William  Oxenham,  who  died  in  1743."  Then  they  go 
on  to  relate  this  particular  instance,  which  is  given  on 
the  authority  of  a  note  in  the  manuscript  collections  of 
William  Chappie.  Mr.  Chappie  "  had  the  relation 
from  Dr.  Bent,  who  was  brother-in-law  to  Mr.  Oxen- 
ham,  and  had  attended  him  as  a  physician.  The  story 
told  is,  that  when  the  bird  came  into  his  chambers  he 
observed  upon  the  tradition  as  connected  with  his 
family,  but  added,  he  was  not  sick  enough  to  die,  and 
that  he  should  cheat  the  bird  ;  and  that  this  was  a  day 
or  two  before  his  death,  which  took  place  after  a  short 
illness." 

The  story  is  told  more  fully  in  a  letter  printed  in 
the  Gentleman" s  Magazine  of  April,  1862,  from  J.  Short, 
Middle  Temple,  to  George  Nares,  jun.,  of  Albury. 

"I  have  received  an  answer  from  the  country  in 
relation  to  the  strange  bird  which  appeared  to  Mr. 
Oxenham  just  before  his  death,  and  the  account  which 
Dr.  Bertie  gave  to  Lord  Abingdon  of  it  is  certainly 
true.  It  first  was  seen  outside  the  window,  and  soon 
afterwards  by  Mrs.  Oxenham  in  the  room,  which  she 
mentioned  to  Mr.  Oxenham,  and  asked  him  if  he  knew 
what  the  bird  was.  '  Yes/  says  he,  *  it  has  been  upon 
my  face  and  head,  and  is  recorded  in  history  as  always 
appearing  to  our  family  before  their  deaths  ;  but  I  shall 
cheat  the  bird.'  Nothing  more  was  said  about  it,  nor 
was  the  bird  taken  notice  of  from  that  time  ;  but  he 
died  soon  afterwards.  However  odd  this  affair  may 
seem,  it  is  certainly  true,  for  the  account  was  given  of 
it  by  Mrs.  Oxenham  herself,  but  she  never  mentions  it 
to  any  one,  unless  particularly  asked  about  it,  and  as  it 
was  seen  by  several  persons  at  the  same  time,  I  can't 
attribute  it  to  imagination,  but  must  leave  it  as  a 
phenomenon  unaccounted  for." 


THE   BIRD   OF  THE   OXENHAMS       257 

In  both  these  accounts  we  have  the  story  at  second 
hand.  The  Hon.  Charles  Barker,  LL.D.,  was  rector  of 
Kenn  at  the  time,  and  during  his  tenure  of  the  rectory, 
Mrs.  Oxenham  erected  a  monument  in  the  church  to 
her  father  and  mother.  But  who  was  the  J.  Short, 
Middle  Temple,  who  wrote  the  above  letter  to  George 
Nares,  jun.,  Albury?  And  what  is  more  to  the  point, 
how  came  it  to  be  dated  December  24th,  1741,  when 
Mr.  William  Oxenham,  whose  death  it  records,  died 
on  10  December,  1743?  Discrepancies  and  anachron- 
isms meet  us  at  every  point  in  the  story  of  the  Oxenham 
omen. 

In  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  of  the  year  1794,  the 
following  paragraph  occurs  recording  the  death  of  one 
of  the  Oxenhams  :  "  I3th  (January)  at  Exeter,  aged 
80,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Weston  .  .  .  the  youngest  daughter 
of  William  Oxenham,  Esq.,  of  Oxenham.  The  last 
appearance  of  the  bird,  mentioned  by  Howell  and 
Prince,  is  said  to  have  been  to  Mrs.  E.  Weston's  eldest 
brother  on  his  death-bed."  Who  said  it?  What  was 
the  authority  ? 

In  Mogridge's  Descriptive  Sketch  of  Sidmouth,  is 
given  a  letter  relative  to  the  death  of  a  Mr.  Oxenham 
at  Sidmouth  : — 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR, 

"  I  give  you,  as  well  as  I  can  recollect,  the  story 
related  to  me  by  a  much  respected  baronet  of  this  county. 
He  told  me  that,  having  read  in  Howell's  Anecdotes  of 
the  singular  appearance  of  a  white  bird  flying  across, 
or  hovering  about  the  lifeless  body  of  divers  members 
of  the  Devonshire  Oxenham  family,  immediately  after 
dissolution,  and  also  having  heard  the  tradition  in 
other  quarters,  wishing  rather  for  an  opportunity  of 
refuting  the  superstitious  assertion  than  from  an  idea  of 
meeting  with  anything  like  a  confirmation  ;  having 


258  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

occasion  to  come  to  Sidmouth  shortly  after  the  death  of 
his  friend  Mr.  Oxenham,  who  resided  in  an  old 
mansion,  not  now  standing,  he  questioned  the  old 
gardener,  who  had  the  care  of  the  house,  as  to  who 
attended  his  master  when  he  died,  as  Mr.  O.  had  gone 
there  alone,  meaning  only  to  remain  for  a  day  or  two. 
1 1  and  my  wife,  sir,'  was  the  reply.  '  Were  you  in  the 
room  when  he  expired?'  'Yes,  both  of  us.'  '  Did 
anything  in  particular  take  place  at  that  time?'  'No, 
sir,  nothing.'  But  then,  after  a  moment's  pause, 
'  There  was  indeed  something  which  I  and  my  wife 
could  almost  swear  we  saw,  which  was  a  white  bird 
fly  in  at  the  door,  dart  across  the  bed,  and  go  into  one 
of  the  drawers  ;  and  as  it  appeared  in  the  same,  way  to 
both  of  us,  we  opened  all  the  drawers  to  find  it,  but 
where  it  went  to  we  could  never  discover.'  If  I  recollect 
rightly,  the  man  on  being  questioned  had  not  heard  of 
the  tradition  respecting  such  appearances." 

Unfortunately  Mr.  Mogridge  does  not  name  the 
writer  of  this  letter.  But  it  matters  little — the  story 
comes  third  hand.  The  "  much-respected  baronet" 
had  a  bad  memory.  He  thought  Howell  called  the 
apparition  a  "  white  bird,"  and  that  he  related  that  it 
crossed  the  bed  after  the  body  was  dead.  Accordingly 
the  gardener  sees  things  after  the  erroneous  fashion  of 
the  story  remembered  so  badly  by  the  "  much-respected 
baronet."  Who  this  Mr.  Oxenham  was,  when  he  died, 
and  where  he  is  buried  is  unknown. 

In  Glimpses  of  the  Supernatural,  published  in  1875,  is 
a  communication  of  the  Rev.  Henry  Nutcombe  Oxen- 
ham,  and  a  still  more  detailed  account  from  his  pen  is  in 
Mr.  Cotton's  article  on  "The  Oxenham  Omen"  in  the 
Transactions  of  the  Devonshire  Association  for  1882. 

"  Shortly  before  the  death  of  my  late  uncle,  G.  N. 
Oxenham,  Esq.,  of  17  Earl's  Terrace,  Kensington,  who 


THE    BIRD   OF   THE   OXENHAMS       259 

was  then  head  of  the  family,  this  occurred  :  His  only 
surviving  daughter,  now  Mrs.  Thomas  Peter,  but  then 
unmarried,  and  living  at  home,  and  a  friend  of  my 
aunt's,  Miss  Roberts,  who  happened  to  be  staying  in 
the  house,  but  was  no  relation,  and  had  never  heard  of 
the  family  tradition,  were  sitting  in  the  dining-room, 
immediately  under  his  bedroom,  about  a  week  before 
his  death,  which  took  place  on  the  i5th  December,  1873, 
when  their  attention  was  roused  by  a  shouting  outside 
the  window.  On  looking  out  they  discerned  a  white 
bird — which  might  have  been  a  pigeon,  but  if  so  was 
an  unusually  large  one — perched  on  the  thorn-tree  out- 
side the  windows,  and  it  remained  there  for  several 
minutes,  in  spite  of  some  workmen  on  the  opposite  side 
of  the  road  throwing  their  hats  at  it  in  a  vain  attempt 
to  drive  it  away.  Miss  Roberts  mentioned  this  to  my 
aunt  at  the  time,  though  not  of  course  attaching  any 
special  significance  to  it,  and  my  aunt,  since  deceased, 
repeated  it  to  me  soon  after  my  uncle's  death.  Neither 
did  my  cousin,  though  aware  of  the  family  tradition, 
think  of  it  at  the  time.  Miss  Roberts  we  have  lost 
sight  of  for  some  years,  and  do  not  even  know  if  she  is 
still  living  ;  but  Mrs.  Thomas  Peter  confirms  in  every 
particular  the  accuracy  of  the  statement.  Of  the  fact, 
therefore,  there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt,  whatever 
interpretation  may  be  put  upon  it.  My  cousin  also 
mentioned  another  circumstance  which  either  I  did  not 
hear  of  or  had  forgotten  :  viz.  that  my  late  aunt  spoke, 
at  the  time,  of  frequently  hearing  a  sound  like  a  flutter- 
ing of  a  bird's  wings  in  my  uncle's  bedroom,  and  said 
that  the  nurse  testified  to  hearing  it  also." 

Here  we  have  a  development  of  the  story.  The  bird 
is  white,  not  white-breasted,  and  it  appears  before  the 
death  of  the  head  of  the  family,  whereas  in  the  original 
story  it  appeared  before  the  decease  of  any  member  of 


2<5o  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  Oxenham  family.  This  looks  like  a  shrinkage  of 
the  story.  So  many  had  died  without  the  apparition, 
that  it  was  reduced  in  significance  to  the  appearance 
before  the  death  of  the  head  of  the  family. 

Mr.  Cotton  says:  "  On  my  pointing  out  to  Mr. 
Oxenham  that  at  least  the  earlier  notices  of  his  family 
tradition  did  not  seem  to  warrant  his  supposition  that 
the  apparition  was  limited  to  the  head  of  the  family,  he 
informed  me  that,  so  far  as  he  was  aware,  it  had  always 
been  the  oral  tradition  in  the  family  that  the  bird  was 
bound  to  appear  before  the  death  of  the  head  of  the 
family,  and  that  it  might  or  might  not  appear  at  other 
deaths,  but  certainly  not  that  it  always  did  so.  Mr. 
Oxenham,  who  was  himself  a  boy  at  the  time,  does  not 
remember  hearing  of  any  appearance  of  the  omen  to 
his  great  uncle,  Richard  Oxenham,  the  head  of  the 
family  in  the  previous  generation,  who  died  August 
24th,  1844,  at  Penzance.  He  was  a  bachelor,  and  lived 
alone,  and  only  his  sister,  Mrs.  Oddy,  who  herself  died 
in  1861,  was  with  him  at  the  time  of  his  death.  It  cer- 
tainly was  not  seen  at  the  death  of  the  Rev.  W.  Oxen- 
ham,  Vicar  of  Cornwood  and  Prebendary  of  Exeter, 
younger  brother  of  the  above,  six  months  earlier,  Feb. 
28th,  1844,  nor  at  the  death  of  either  of  the  younger 
brothers  of  the  late  head  of  the  family,  G.  N.  Oxen- 
ham,  Esq.,  before  mentioned.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
stated  by  a  relative  of  the  family  now  living,  that  when 
Mrs.  Oddy  died,  her  daughter,  now  dead,  spoke  of 
birds  flapping  and  hopping  at  the  bedroom  window  the 
night  before." 

My  mother  was  most  intimate  with  Miss  Anne  Oxen- 
ham,  who  lived  in  the  Close,  Exeter,  one  whom  I 
remember  and  loved.  My  mother  informed  me  that  the 
bird  was  seen  when  Miss  Anne  Oxenham's  sister  died. 
But  on  what  authority  she  received  this  I  am  unable  to  say. 


THE   BIRD   OF   THE   OXENHAMS       261 

Finally,  in  September,  1891,  on  the  death  of  a  female 
descendant  of  the  Oxenhams,  the  Rev.  C.  S.  Homan 
states  that,  while  at  Oxenham  Manor  (Oxenham,  by  the 
way,  never  was  a  manor),  he  was  one  day  up  very 
early  by  daylight,  and  as  he  went  out  of  the  front  door, 
he  just  caught  sight  of  what  in  the  early  light  looked 
like  a  very  large  white  bird.  His  father  said,  "  Perhaps 
it  is  the  Oxenham  white  bird  ;  if  so,  there  ought  to  be  a 
death  in  the  family."  Within  a  few  days  they  noticed 
in  the  newspaper  the  death  of  a  connexion  of  the 
family,  and  were  struck  by  the  coincidence.1 

In  these  last  cases,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  bird 
has  grown  plump  and  big.  It  was  first  white- 
breasted,  then  white,  and  finally  a  big  white  bird.  So 
fables  grow.  One  wonders  where  the  bird  nests,  how 
many  little  white-breasted  ones  it  has  had,  what  has 
become  of  them  !  For  that  it  is  the  old  hoary  humbug 
there  can  be  little  doubt  becoming  blanched  with  age, 
and  stout,  " going  in  for  its  fattenings,"  as  the  York- 
shire folk  say. 

1  For  this  last  instance,  see  Transactions  of  the  Devonshire  Associa- 
tion, 1900,  p.  84. 


"LUSTY'     STUCLEY 

IF  Devonshire  has  turned  out  a  number,  and  a 
very  considerable  number,  of  gallant  and  honour- 
able gentlemen,  she  has  also  given  birth  to  some 
great  scoundrels,  and  one  of  these  was  Thomas 
Stucley  or  Stukeley. 

His  life  was  worked  out  with  great  pains  and 
elaboration  by  the  late  Richard  Simpson  in  his  School 
of  Shakespeare,  London,  1878.  Indeed,  it  occupies  one 
hundred  and  thirty-nine  pages  in  the  first  volume  of 
that  work.  To  give  the  biography  at  all  fully  here  is 
not  possible,  space  is  not  at  one's  disposal  for  all  details ; 
it  is  also  unnecessary,  since  that  exhaustive  account  by 
Simpson  is  accessible  to  every  one.  The  utmost  we  can 
do  is  to  give  a  summary  of  the  chief  events  of  his 
chequered  career.  Captain  Thomas  Stucley  was  the 
third  son  of  Sir  Hugh  Stucley,  of  Affeton  in  the  parish 
of  West  Worlington,  near  Chumleigh.  Hugh  Stucley, 
the  father  of  our  Thomas,  was  Sheriff  of  Devon  in 
1544;  his  wife  was  Jane,  daughter  of  Sir  Lewis 
Pollard.  Sir  Hugh  died  in  1560. 

The  eldest  son,  Lewis  Stucley,  was  aged  thirty  at  the 
death  of  his  father.  He  became  standard-bearer  to 
Queen  Elizabeth. 

It  was  rumoured  during  the  life  of  Thomas  that  he 
was  an  illegitimate  son  of  Henry  VIII,  like  Sir  John 
Perrot.  u  Stucley's  birth,"  says  Mr.  Simpson,  "  must 
have  occurred  at  the  time  when  the  King,  tired  of  his 

262 


"  LUSTY"   STUCLEY  263 

wife  Catherine,  was  as  yet  ranging  among  favourites 
who  were  contented  with  something  less  than  a  crown 
as  the  price  of  their  kindness.  Elizabeth  Tailbois  had 
been  succeeded  by  Mary  Boleyn  ;  and  as  Mary  Boleyn 
was  married  to  William  Carey  at  Court,  and  in  the 
presence  of  the  King,  31  January,  1521,  it  is  clear  that 
some  one  else  had  already  succeeded  to  her  place." 

Whether  Thomas  ever  claimed  to  be  of  royal  blood 
we  do  not  know.  If  so,  Lady  Stucley,  like  Lady 
Falconbridge,  might  have  cried  out : — 

Where  is  that  slave — where  is  he, 

That  holds  in  chase  mine  honour  up  and  down? 

But  he  was  certainly  treated  at  foreign  courts  as  one 
of  birth  superior  to  that  of  a  younger  son  of  a  Devon- 
shire knight ;  and  the  tradition  obtains  some  support 
from  the  familiar  way  in  which  he  was  received  by  both 
queens,  Mary  and  Elizabeth,  and  the  peculiar  terms  of 
intimacy  which  he  assumed  towards  royal  personages  ; 
moreover  the  Duke  of  Northumberland  treated  him  with 
the  same  jealousy  with  which  he  might  have  treated 
Henry  Fitzroy,  Duke  of  Richmond,  had  he  been  still 
alive.  In  the  play  Vernon  says  : — 

Doubtless,  if  ever  man  was  misbegfot, 
It  is  this  Stucley. 

As  a  retainer  of  the  Duke  of  Suffolk,  into  whose 
household  he  had  entered,  and  whose  livery  he  wore, 
he  was  present  at  the  siege  of  Boulogne,  1545-50;  and 
he  acted  as  standard-bearer,  with  the  wage  of  six 
shillings  and  eightpence  a  day,  from  1547  until  its 
surrender  to  the  French  in  March,  1549-50.  Then  he 
returned  to  England,  and  attached  himself  closely  to  the 
Protector  Somerset. 

As  one  of  the  Protector's  retainers,  he  was  probably 
involved  in  his  plot  to  revolutionize  the  government. 
The  gendarmerie  upon  the  muster  day  were  to  be 


264  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

attacked  by  two  thousand  men  under  Sir  Ralph  Vane, 
and  by  a  hundred  horse  of  the  Duke  of  Somerset's, 
besides  his  friends,  who  were  to  stand  by,  and  the  idle 
people  who,  it  was  calculated,  would  take  part.  After 
this  was  done,  the  Protector  intended  to  run  through 
the  city  and  proclaim,  "  Liberty  !  Liberty  !"  But  the 
plot  was  discovered  in  time,  and  Somerset  and  his  chief 
accomplices  were  committed  to  the  Tower,  17  October, 
1551.  The  Council  gave  orders  for  Stucley's  appre- 
hension, but  he  escaped  in  time,  and  took  refuge  in 
France,  where  he  devoted  his  sword  to  the  service  of 
Henry  II,  who  entitled  him  "  mon  cher  et  bon  ami." 

He  must  have  fought  in  the  campaign  of  Henry 
against  the  Emperor  Charles  V  in  1552,  when  Metz  was 
taken  by  fraud.  He  was  certainly  received  as  a  dis- 
affected subject,  and  was  admitted  to  the  French  coun- 
sels. In  1552  he  returned  to  England  with  a  story 
which  he  hoped  would  purchase  his  pardon.  This  was 
to  the  effect  that  Henry  II  meditated  a  sudden  attack 
upon  Calais. 

According  to  his  account  the  French  King  himself 
had  spoken  to  him  of  the  weak  points  in  the  defences, 
had  pointed  out  the  very  plan  of  assault  by  which,  six 
years  later,  Calais  was  actually  taken.  Moreover, 
according  to  his  scheme,  the  Scots  were  to  enter  North- 
umberland ;  Henry  II  would  land  troops  at  Falmouth, 
and  the  Duke  of  Guise  would  land  at  Dartmouth, 
which  he  knew  to  be  undefended.  Cecil  suggested  that 
Stucley  should  be  sent  back  to  France  to  acquire 
further  information  ;  but  the  Duke  of  Northumberland 
sent  Stucley's  report  to  the  French  King,  and  com- 
mitted Stucley  to  the  Tower.  Henry  denied  the  truth 
of  what  had  been  reported.  The  payment  of  his  debts, 
which  had  been  promised  to  Stucley  as  a  reward  for 
his  revelations,  was  now  refused,  and  he  remained 


"  LUSTY"   STUCLEY  265 

in  prison  to  the  end  of  Edward's  reign.  He  was 
released  on  6  August,  1553,  but  his  debts  compelled 
him  again  to  leave  England.  Unable  to  return  to 
France,  he  betook  himself  to  the  Emperor,  and  he  was 
at  Brussels  in  the  winter  of  1553-4,  and  served  with 
the  Imperial  army  at  St.  Omer.  Philibert,  Duke  of 
Savoy,  invited  Stucley  to  accompany  him  to  England 
in  October  of  1554,  anc^  Stucley  accordingly  appealed 
to  Queen  Mary  for  security  against  arrest  whilst  in  her 
dominions,  and  this  was  granted  to  him  for  six  months, 
and  at  the  end  of  December  he  accompanied  the  Duke 
to  England. 

During  his  visit  he  attempted,  Othello-like,  to  be- 
witch Anne,  the  grand-daughter  and  sole  heiress  of 
Sir  Thomas  Curtis,  a  wealthy  alderman  of  London, 
with  his  tales  of  adventure.  Against  her  father's 
wishes  the  lady  was  beguiled  into  a  secret  marriage, 
and  he  retired  with  her  to  North  Devon.  On  13  May, 
1555,  the  sheriffs  of  Devon  and  Cheshire  were  ordered 
to  arrest  him  on  a  charge  of  coining  false  money.  His 
house  was  searched,  his  servants  questioned.  There 
was  much  that  was  suspicious,  but  nothing  certainly  to 
convict.  But  Thomas  Stucley  had  taken  himself  off 
before  the  sheriff  arrived,  and  again  took  service  under 
the  Duke  of  Savoy,  and  shared  in  the  victory  of 
the  Imperialists  over  the  French  at  St.  Quintin,  10 
December,  1557. 

Then  he  went  into  the  Spanish  service,  but  in 
November  old  Sir  Thomas  Curtis  died,  brokenhearted, 
it  was  asserted,  at  the  match  his  favourite  grandchild 
had  contracted  with  one  so  disreputable  and  un- 
principled. 

Stucley  at  once  returned  to  England,  and  a  corre- 
spondent of  Challoner,  the  Ambassador  in  Spain, 
writes  of  him  in  November,  1559:  "The  Alderman 


266  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Curtes  is  dead,  and  by  this  time  is  busy  Stucley  in  the 
midst  of  his  coffers. "  Speedily  the  accumulations  of  the 
merchant's  industrious  life  were  squandered  in  extrava- 
gance. We  next  hear  of  him  in  April,  1561,  when  he 
was  appointed  to  a  captaincy  in  Berwick.  There  he 
entertained  Shan  O'Neil,  a  famous,  turbulent  chief 
from  Ireland,  who  late  in  this  year  visited  Elizabeth's 
Court,  where  his  train  of  kerns  and  gallowglasses, 
clothed  in  linen  kilts  dyed  with  saffron,  made  a  great 
impression. 

While  at  Court,  Shan  wrote  to  Elizabeth  :  "  Many  of 
the  nobles,  magnates,  and  gentlemen  treated  me  kindly 
and  ingenuously,  and,  namely,  Master  Thomas  Stucley 
entertained  me  with  all  his  heart,  and  with  all  the 
favour  he  could."  The  friendship  was  destined  to  bear 
fruit  later. 

In  a  few  years  but  little  of  the  alderman's  savings 
remained,  and  with  the  wreck  that  was  left,  Stucley 
fitted  out  a  small  squadron,  and  obtained  permission 
from  Elizabeth  to  colonize  Florida;  and  the  Queen  con- 
tributed "2000  weight  of  corn-powder,  and  100  curriers; 
and  besides  artillery  to  the  value  of  £120  towards  the 
furniture  of  his  journey."  This  was  her  investment  in 
the  venture,  though  she  did  not  furnish  the  powder  out 
of  her  own  stores,  but  made  one  Bromefield  go  into 
debt  for  it  with  a  Dutchman. 

Fuller  says  that,  "  having  prodigally  misspent  his 
Patrimony,  he  entered  on  several  projects  (the  issue- 
general  of  all  decaied  estates),  and  first  pitched  on  the 
peopling  of  Florida,  then  newly  found  in  the  West 
Indies.  So  confident  his  ambition,  that  he  blushed  not 
to  tell  Queen  Elizabeth  '  that  he  preferred  rather  to  be 
sovereign  of  a  Mole-hill  than  the  highest  Subject  to  the 
greatest  King  in  Christendom ' ;  adding,  moreover, 
*  that  he  was  assured  he  should  be  a  Prince  before  his 


"  LUSTY"   STUCLEY  267 

death.'  'I  hope,' said  Queen  Elizabeth,  'I  shall  hear 
from  you,  when  you  are  seated  in  your  Principality.' 
*I  will  write  to  you,'  quoth  Stucley.  ( In  what  lan- 
guidge?'  said  the  Queen.  He  returned,  'In  the  style 
of  Princes,  To  our  dear  Sister :" 

He  took  leave  of  the  Queen  on  25  June,  1563.  Cecil 
wrote  in  her  name  to  the  Earl  of  Sussex,  Lord  Deputy 
of  Ireland:  "  Our  servant  Thomas  Stucley,  associated 
with  sundry  of  our  subjects,  hath  prepared  a  number 
of  good  ships  well  armed  and  manned  to  pass  to  discover 
certain  lands  to  the  West  towards  Florida,  and  by  our 
licence  hath  taken  the  same  voyage."  But  in  the  event 
of  stormy  winds  or  accidents  he  was  to  be  well  received, 
should  he  put  into  a  port  in  Ireland. 

So  he  sailed,  but  Stucley. had  no  real  intention  of 
going  to  Florida  :  his  squadron  lived  by  piracy  on  the 
high  seas  for  two  years.  He  made  his  head-quarters 
at  Kinsale,  where  he  resumed  acquaintance  with  Shan 
O'Neil,  chief  of  Tyrone,  who  aspired  to  be  king  of 
Ulster,  and  was  repeatedly  in  arms  against  the  English. 
Shan  had  offered  Ireland  as  a  fief  to  Philip  II  of  Spain. 
And  now  Stucley  from  Kinsale  swept  the  seas,  and 
made  prizes  of  Spanish  galleons,  and  of  French  and 
Portuguese  merchantmen.  Complaints  were  made  by 
the  foreign  courts,  and  the  English  Ambassador  at 
Madrid  confessed  that  "  he  hung  his  head  for  shame." 
Stucley  filled  his  cellars  with  sherry  from  Cadiz,  and 
amused  Shan  O'Neil  with  his  boastful  speech,  his 
flattery,  and  his  utterance  of  what  he  would  do  for  him  ; 
and  Shan  had  the  impertinence  to  write  to  Elizabeth  in 
favour  of  "  his  so  dearly  loved  friend,  and  her  Majesty's 
worthy  subject." 

In  June,  1563,  Stucley  took  a  Zealand  ship  with  £3000 
worth  of  linen  and  tapestry,  and  then,  joining  a  small 
fleet  of  West-countrymen,  fourteen  sail  in  all,  he  lay  off 


268  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Ushant,  watching  for  the  wine  fleet  from  Bordeaux  pro- 
fessedly, but  picking  up  gratefully  whatever  the  gods 
might  send.  No  less  a  person  than  the  Mayor  of  Dover 
himself  was  the  owner  of  one  of  these  sea-hawks. 
Wretched  Spaniards  flying  from  their  talons  were 
dashed  to  pieces  upon  the  granite  cliffs  of  Finisterre. 

At  length  the  remonstrances  of  foreign  ambassadors 
took  effect,  and  Elizabeth  disowned  Stucley,  and  took 
measures  for  his  apprehension.  Some  ships  were  sent 
out  with  this  object,  and  he  was  caught  in  Cork  harbour, 
in  1565,  put  under  arrest,  and  sent  to  London,  where 
he  was  consigned  to  the  Tower. 

Stucley  was  all  the  while  playing  a  double  game. 
While  professing  loyalty  to  the  Queen  he  was  in  corre- 
spondence with  Philip  of  Spain.  Shan  O'Neil  pro- 
posed to  Elizabeth  that  she  should  divide  all  Ireland 
between  himself  and  Stucley,  when  they  would  make 
of  it  a  paradise.  Stucley  had  purchased  a  good  deal 
of  land  in  Cork,  and  he  hoped  to  have  more  granted 
him  and  to  share  with  St.  Leger  and  Carew  in  the 
partition  of  Munster.  He  had  a  plausible  tongue,  put 
on  an  air  of  great  frankness,  and  soon  obtained  his 
release,  and  was  actually  sent  back  to  Ireland  with 
a  letter  of  recommendation  from  Cecil.  There  he 
bought  of  Sir  Nicholas  Bagnal  for  £300  down  his 
office  of  Marshal  of  Ireland  and  all  Bagnal's  estate  in 
the  island.  Elizabeth,  however,  refused  to  sanction 
the  transaction  ;  she  mistrusted  him,  and  with  reason, 
for  he  was  engaged  in  constant  treasonable  corre- 
spondence with  the  Spanish  Ambassador,  and  he  was 
in  receipt  of  a  pension  from  Philip.  She  heard  re- 
ports of  murders,  robberies,  and  other  outrages  com- 
mitted by  him,  and  ordered  him  back  to  England.  He 
obeyed,  cleared  himself,  and  in  1567  was  allowed  to 
return  to  Ireland,  where  he  purchased  of  Sir  Nicholas 


"LUSTY"   STUCLEY  269 

Heron  the  offices  of  seneschal  and  constable  of  Wex- 
ford  and  captainship  of  the  Kavanaghs,  together  with 
many  estates.  Again  Elizabeth  interfered,  and  Stucley 
was  turned  out  of  his  offices.  Nicholas  White, 
Heron's  successor,  now  accused  Stucley  of  felony  and 
high  treason,  and  in  June,  1569,  he  was  imprisoned  in 
Dublin  Castle.  It  was  high  time ;  he  had  in  that 
same  month  proposed  to  Philip  the  invasion  of  Ire- 
land, and  had  demanded  twenty  fully  armed  ships  for 
the  purpose.  As  sufficient  evidence  to  convict  him 
was  not  forthcoming,  he  was  discharged,  but  felt 
that  he  could  no  longer  rely  on  Elizabeth's  forbear- 
ance. With  treachery  in  his  heart  he  pretended  to 
Sidney,  the  Queen's  deputy  in  Ireland,  that  after  such 
misinterpretation  of  his  acts  and  doubts  of  his  fidelity, 
he  desired  to  go  in  person  to  his  royal  mistress  and 
clear  his  reputation  with  her ;  and  Sidney,  instead  of 
sending  him  over  under  a  guard,  was  contented  with 
his  parole — Stucley's  parole  ! 

Stucley  informed  him  that  for  his  defence  he  needed 
a  certain  number  of  Irish  gentlemen  to  serve  as  wit- 
nesses to  his  conduct.  The  deputy  permitted  him  to 
purchase  and  fit  out  a  ship  at  Waterford  to  transport 
them  and  himself.  He  took  with  him  some  Irish 
cavaliers,  along  with  their  servants  and  horses,  and  a 
miscellaneous  crew  of  adventurers.  They  embarked 
as  for  London,  but  when  clear  of  the  harbour  made 
for  the  ocean.  A  few  days  after  they  sailed  for  Galicia, 
and  sent  messengers  to  Philip  to  announce  their  arrival. 

The  Archbishop  of  Cashel,  then  at  Madrid,  not 
knowing  much  of  Stucley,  recommended  Philip  to 
receive  the  party.  The  King  accordingly  sent  for  him 
to  Court,  knighted  him,  loaded  him  with  presents, 
granted  him  five  hundred  reales  a  day  and  a  residence 
at  Las  Rozas,  nine  miles  from  Madrid,  where  he  lived 


270  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

in  great  state,  with  thirty  gentlemen  about  him.  He 
made  great  brag  of  the  vast  estates  of  which  the 
Queen  had  deprived  him — Wexford,  Kinsale,  the 
Kavanagh  country,  Carlow,  and  the  whole  kingdom 
of  Leinster,  and  an  income  of  £2200  per  diem — and 
was  believed.  He  assumed  the  title  of  Duke  of  Ire- 
land, but  Philip  only  allowed  him  to  be  received  as 
Duke  of  Leinster.  He  represented  himself  as  of  vast 
influence  in  Ireland,  and  Philip  was  completely  taken 
in  by  his  boasting.  But  the  Archbishop  of  Cashel 
soon  received  tidings  of  his  real  position  in  the  island. 
He  had  robbed  churches,  despoiled  abbeys,  was  detested 
by  the  native  Irish  whom  he  had  cruelly  maltreated, 
and  was  of  no  influence  at  all.  Thenceforth  two  parties 
were  formed  in  the  Spanish  Court,  one  denouncing 
Stucley  as  an  adventurer  and  so  unprincipled  that  if 
he  thought  it  would  suit  his  purpose  would  betray 
everything  to  Elizabeth.  The  other  party  believed  in 
his  professions  and  encouraged  the  King  to  trust  him  ; 
and  his  assumption,  his  audacious  and  enormous  lies, 
his  perfect  self-assurance  bore  down  all  opposition, 
and  under  Stucley's  auspices  the  Spanish  Govern- 
ment began  serious  preparations  for  the  invasion  and 
conquest  of  Ireland.  Ships  were  collected  at  Vigo 
with  arms  and  stores.  Ten  thousand  men  were  to  be 
raised,  and  Julian  Romero  was  to  be  recalled  from 
Flanders  to  command. 

Meanwhile  he  amused  the  Spaniards  with  scandalous 
stories  about  Elizabeth  and  her  Court,  and  his  fool's 
boast  of  what  he  was  about  to  achieve. 

"  Master  Stukely  said  to  the  King's  Council  that  the 
Queen's  Majesty  will  beat  Secretary  Cecil  about  the 
ears  when  he  discontenteth  her,  and  he  will  weep 
like  a  child.  The  Spaniards  asking  him  why  the 
Queen's  Highness  did  not  marry,  he  said  she  would 


"LUSTY"   STUCLEY  271 

never  marry,  for  she  cannot  abide  a  woman  with  child, 
for  she  saith  those  women  be  worse  than  a  sow.  He 
also  said,  '  What  hurt  I  can  do  her  I  will  do  it  and  will 
make  her  vilely  afraid.' 5)1 

"The  Duke's  Grace  Stukely  had  received  the  Sacra- 
ment, and  promised  to  render  unto  the  King  of  Spain 
not  only  entrance  within  his  duchy,  but  also  possession 
of  the  whole  realm  of  Ireland.  The  soldiers  were 
amassing  from  all  parts  of  Spain — Spaniards,  Bur- 
gundians,  Italians,  the  most  part  Bezonians,  beggarly, 
ill-armed  rascals,  but  their  captains  old  beaten  men- 
of-war.  The  King  was  sparing  no  cost  on  the  enter- 
prise, and  no  honours  to  Stukely,  hoping  by  such 
means  to  enlarge  his  empire."2 

Nothing,  however,  came  of  this  at  the  time,  and  the 
party  that  perceived  Stucley  to  be  a  charlatan  grew 
stronger,  his  boasting  palled,  and  the  King  at  last 
became  suspicious  and  withdrew  his  favour.  Perceiv- 
ing himself  to  be  regarded  on  all  sides  with  mistrust, 
not  to  say  with  contempt,  in  a  huff  he  left  Spain,  went 
to  Italy,  and  offered  his  service  to  the  Pope.  In  1571 
he  was  given  command  of  three  galleys,  and  partook 
in  Don  John's  victory  over  the  Turks  at  Lepanto  ;  and 
thus  raised  himself  considerably  in  King  Philip's 
estimation.  Then  he  went  back  to  Rome,  where  "it  is 
incredible  how  quickly  he  wrought  himself  into  the 
favour,  through  the  Court  into  the  Chamber,  yea 
Closet,  yea  Bosom  of  Pope  Pius  V  ;  so  that  some  wise 
men  thought  his  Holiness  did  forfeit  a  parcel  of  his 
Infallibility  in  giving  credit  to  such  a  Glorioso,  vaunt- 
ing that  with  three  thousand  Soldiers,  he  would  beat  all 
the  English  out  of  Ireland." 

1  Depositions  relating  to  Mr.  Stucley's  doings  in  Spain,  August,  1571, 
quoted  by  Froude  in  his  History  of  England. 

2  O.  King  to  Burghley,  18  February,  1572.     Ibid. 


272  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

The  Pope  created  Stucley  Baron  of  Ross,  Viscount 
Murrough,  Earl  of  Wexford,  and  Marquess  of  Leinster, 
and  furnished  him  with  a  few  vessels  and  eight  hun- 
dred soldiers,  but  these  were  to  receive  their  pay  from 
the  King  of  Spain. 

Some  contention  arose  as  to  the  division  of  spoil 
when  Elizabeth  was  overthrown  and  England  and  Ire- 
land were  at  the  feet  of  Gregory  XIII  and  Philip  of 
Spain.  The  Pope  gave  Stucley  a  consecrated  banner 
to  plant  in  Ireland,  which  was  to  become  wholly  his 
own,  and  to  which  he  was  to  appoint  the  Pope's  bastard 
son,  Giacomo  Buoncompagni,  as  king. 

Stucley  left  Civita  Vecchia  in  March,  1577-8,  but 
soon  found  that  the  vessels  were  unseaworthy,  and  the 
military  the  offscouring  of  Italy.  Stucley  put  into 
Lisbon  for  repairs,  and  found  King  Sebastian  of  Por- 
tugal preparing  for  his  attempt  on  North  Africa,  having 
with  him  two  Moorish  kings.  The  King  persuaded 
Stucley  to  accompany  him.  Landing  in  Africa,  Stucley 
gave  wise  counsel  to  Sebastian  not  to  engage  the 
enemy  till  the  soldiers  had  recovered  from  the  voyage, 
they  having  suffered  severely  in  the  stormy  passage. 
But  the  young  King  would  listen  to  no  advice,  and  in 
the  battle  of  Alcazar,  on  4  August,  1578,  Stucley  lost 
his  life,  regretted  probably  by  none. 

A  fatal  fight,  where  in  one  day  was  slain 

Three  king's  that  were,  and  one  that  would  be  fain. 

Thus  perished  a  man  of  whom  Cecil  had  written 
some  years  before,  "  Thomas  Stucley,  a  defamed 
person  almost  through  all  Christendom,  and  a  faithless 
beast  rather  than  a  man,  fleeing  first  out  of  England 
for  notable  piracies,  and  out  of  Ireland  for  treacheries 
unpardonable." 

Lord  Burghley  wrote:  "  Of  this  man  might  be 
written  whole  volumes  to  paint  out  the  life  of  a  man  in 


"  LUSTY"   STUCLEY  273 

the  highest  degree  of  vain-glory,  prodigality,  false- 
hood, and  vile  and  filthy  conversation  of  life,  and 
altogether  without  faith,  conscience,  or  religion." 

Stucley  at  once  became  the  hero  of  ballads,  chap- 
books,  and  plays.  The  Famous  History  of  the  Life  and 
Death  of  Captain  Thomas  Stukeley  was  printed  in  1605, 
and  Peele's  Battle  of  Alcazar  in  1594,  but  both  plays 
had  been  acted  before  these  dates.  In  the  Life  and 
Death  Stucley  is  glorified,  as  an  idol  of  the  military  or 
Essex  party  to  which  Shakespeare  is  known  to  have 
belonged,  and  it  has  been  thought  that  his  hand  can 
be  traced  in  the  composition.  But  if  so,  he  has  left  in 
it  but  little  trace  of  his  genius. 

In  one  of  the  ballads  published  about  Stucley,  he  is 
thus  spoken  of: — 

Taverns  and  ordinaries — were  his  chiefest  braveries, 

Golden  angels  there  flew  up  and  down  ; 
Riots  were  his  best  delights — with  stately  feasting  day  and  night, 

In  court  and  city  thus  he  won  renown. 


THE    BIDEFORD    WITCHES 

A  the  assizes  held  at  the  castle  of  Exeter 
14  August,  1682,  three  poor  old  women 
from  Bideford — Temperance  Lloyd,  aged 
eighty  years,  Mary  Trembles,  and  Susanna 
Edwards — were  tried  for  witchcraft,  were  found  guilty, 
and  were  executed  on  25  August  ensuing. 

They  had  all  previously  been  examined  before 
Thomas  Gist,  Mayor  of  Bideford,  and  John  Davie, 
Alderman,  and  also  by  the  Rector.  Before  these 
worthies  they  had  made  full  confession  of  their  mis- 
deeds, but  to  what  an  extent  they  had  been  drawn  on 
by  leading  questions  appears  from  the  proces  verbal  of 
these  examinations. 

The  worst  of  the  three  women  was  Temperance 
Lloyd,  "  intemperate  Temperance"  as  she  is  called  in 
one  account. 

According  to  the  information  of  Dorcas  Coleman, 
she  had  suffered  from  prickings  in  her  body.  She  had 
consulted  a  physician,  Dr.  Beare,  and  he  had  told  her 
that  he  could  do  nothing  for  her,  as  she  was  be- 
witched. When  Susanna  Edwards  entered  the  room 
of  Dorcas,  the  deponent  was  sitting  in  her  chair  speech- 
less, but  on  seeing  Susanna  she  slid  out  of  her  seat 
and  tried  to  scramble  towards  her  so  as  with  her  nails 
to  draw  blood,  for  by  that  means  alone  can  a  spell  be 
broken  that  has  been  cast  by  a  witch. 

Grace  Thomas  also  complained  of  pricking  pains 

274 


THE   BIDEFORD   WITCHES  275 

caused  by  Temperance  Lloyd,  "just  as  though  pins 
and  awls  had  been  thrust  into  her  body,  from  the 
crown  of  her  head  to  the  soles  of  her  feet."  Temper- 
ance was  brought  to  confess  that  she  had  met  the 
devil,  as  a  little  blackamoor,  in  a  lane,  and  that  she  had 
gone  with  him  invisibly  to  the  bedroom  of  Grace 
Thomas,  who  lodged  in  the  house  of  Thomas  East- 
church,  and  that  she  "  did  then  and  there  pinch  with 
the  nails  of  her  fingers  the  said  Grace,  in  her  shoulders, 
thighs,  and  legs."  She  further  admitted  that  the  black 
man  had  sucked  her  teats,  and  that  he  was  about  the 
length  of  her  arm.  She  was  subjected  to  examination 
by  some  matrons,  who  professed  that  they  found 
suspicious  marks  upon  her  body.  Before  the  rector 
of  Bideford  she  confessed  that,  having  assumed  the 
form  of  a  cat,  she  fetched  out  of  Thomas  Eastchurch's 
shop  a  puppet,  commonly  called  a  child's  baby,  and 
left  it  near  Grace's  bed,  but  she  would  in  no  way  admit 
that  she  had  run  pins  into  this  figure.  It  appears  that 
Grace  Thomas  had  been  pricked  in  nine  places  about 
the  knee,  as  though  pricked  by  a  thorn,  and  according 
to  the  evidence  of  Elizabeth  Eastchurch,  Temperance 
had  confessed  that  she  had  taken  a  piece  of  leather 
and  driven  a  pin  into  it  nine  times,  purposing  thereby 
to  cause  injury  to  the  skin  of  Grace.  She  allowed  that 
she  had  been  accused  of  assuming  the  form  of  a  red 
pig,  but  would  not  admit  that  the  accusation  was  true. 
According  to  the  evidence,  the  devil  had  appeared  to 
her  at  various  times,  sometimes  in  the  form  of  a  magpie, 
sometimes  in  that  of  a  grey  or  braget  cat. 

Susanna  Edwards  confessed  that  she  first  encountered 
the  devil,  dressed  very  respectably  and  gravely  in  a 
black  suit,  in  the  Parsonage  Close,  and  that  afterward, 
shrinking  in  size  to  a  small  boy,  he  had  sucked  blood 
from  her  breast.  She  had  pricked  and  pinched  Grace 


276  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Barnes  ;  and  she  stated  that  whilst  her  body  lay  motion- 
less in  bed,  she  could  go  to  any  place  she  liked  in- 
visibly. 

Mary  Trembles  confessed  that  the  devil  came  to  her 
"in  the  shape  of  a  Lyon  "  and  sucked  her  so  hard, 
that  she  was  obliged  to  scream  for  pain,  and  that  she 
also  could  travel  invisibly. 

Among  these  witches,  a  certain  Anne  Fellow  was 
said  to  have  been  done  to  death  by  their  practices. 
They  had  also  bewitched  cows  so  that  they  would  not 
yield  their  milk  ;  and  Temperance  admitted  that  she 
had  caused  several  shipwrecks  and  been  instrumental 
to  the  death  of  several  persons  and  many  cattle.  They 
could  only  say  the  Lord's  Prayer  backwards.  They 
had  squeezed  Hannah  Thomas  to  death.  At  their  trial 
at  the  assizes,  all  their  confessions  before  the  Mayor 
and  Alderman  at  Bideford  were  accepted  against  them. 
There  was  no  evidence  produced  to  inculpate  them 
beyond  these  confessions  and  the  suppositions  of 
women  who  had  felt  pains  and  pricks  in  their  bodies. 
Nevertheless,  the  three  poor  creatures  were  sentenced 
to  death.  On  the  scaffold  they  were  again  questioned, 
and  denied  almost  everything  that  they  had  previously 
been  induced  or  frightened  into  admitting. 

The  authorities  for  this  account  are  : — 

"  A  True  and  Impartial  Relation  of  the  Informations 
against  Three  Witches,  Temperance  Lloyd,  Mary 
Trembles,  and  Susanna  Edwards  .  .  .  London, 
1682." 

"  The  Tryal,  Condemnation  and  Execution  of  three 
Witches  .  .  .  who  were  arraigned  at  Exeter,  on  the  1 8th 
of  August,  1682  .  .  .  London,  1682."  In  this  the 
names  are  given  inaccurately. 

There  is  also  a  broadside  ballad  on  the  subject.  At 
the  top  are  two  rude  woodcuts  of  witches,  and  a 


THE    BIDEFORD   WITCHES  277 

third  of  the  devil  dancing  in  the  middle  of  a  ring  of 
witches.  He  holds  a  candle  in  his  right  hand  and  a 
broomstick  in  the  other.  Black  owls  are  flying  about ; 
and  a  black  cat  sits  hard  by  looking  on  complacently. 
It  has  been  reprinted  by  John  Ashton  in  his  Century  of 
Ballads,  London,  1887. 

It  is  wretched  doggerel.     Here  are  some  stanzas  : — 

So  these  Malicious  Women  at  the  last, 
Having-  done  mischief,  were  by  Justice  cast ; 
For  it  appear'd  they  children  had  destroy'd, 
Lamed  Cattel,  and  the  Aged  much  annoy'd. 

Having1  Familiars  always  at  their  Beck, 
Their  Wicked  Rage  on  Mortals  for  to  wreck ; 
It  being  proved  they  used  Wicked  Charms, 
To  Murder  Men,  and  bring  about  sad  harms. 

The  Country  round  where  they  did  live  came  in, 
And  all  at  once  their  sad  complaints  begin  ; 
One  lost  a  Child,  the  other  lost  a  Kine, 
This  his  brave  Horse,  that  his  hopeful  Swine. 

One  had  his  Wife  bewitch'd,  the  other  his  Friend, 
Because  in  some  things  they  the  Witch  offend  : 
For  which  they  labour  under  cruel  pain, 
In  vain  seek  remedy,  but  none  can  gain. 


SIR    "JUDAS"    STUKELEY 

SIR  LEWIS  STUKELEY,  or  Stucley,  who  has 
been  branded  as  the  Judas  of  Devonshire,  was 
the  eldest  son  of  John  Stukeley,  of  Affeton,  by 
Frances  St.  Leger.     He  had  two  brothers  and 
several   sisters.      He  was  great-nephew  to    "  Lusty" 
Stucley,   and  partook  of  that  vein  of  meanness  and 
treachery  that  characterized  Thomas.     He  was  married 
to  Frances  daughter  of  Anthony  Monk,  of  Potheridge, 
a  family  which,  if  not  more  ancient,  was  free  from  the 
taint  of  baseness  that  savoured  three  of  the  Stukeleys. 
By  her   he  had  five  sons ;    none  were   knighted,   the 
shame  of  the  father  rested  on  them,  and  it  was  not  till 
the  next  generation  that  knighthood  was  again  granted 
to  the  representative  of  the  Stukeleys,  of  Affeton. 

Lewis  himself  was  knighted,  not  for  any  worthiness 
that  he  had  shown,  but  as  the  representative  of  a  good 
family,  when  James  I  was  on  his  way  to  London  in 
1603.  In  1617  he  was  appointed  guardian  of  Thomas 
Rolfe,  the  infant  son  of  Pocahontas  by  J.  Rolfe.  Then 
he  was  created  Vice-Admiral  of  Devon,  and  in  that 
capacity  he  left  London  in  June,  1618,  with  verbal  orders 
from  the  King  to  arrest  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  then 
arrived  at  Plymouth  on  his  return  from  the  Orinoco. 
Sir  Walter  had  been  released  from  his  long  captivity  in 
the  Tower,  because  he  gave  hopes  to  James  of  finding 
a  gold-mine  in  Guiana.  He  had  been  there  before,  had 
brought  away  auriferous  spar,  and  had  heard  tidings  of 

278 


SIR   " JUDAS"   STUKELEY  279 

deposits  of  gold.  James  was  in  debt  and  in  need  of 
money,  and  he  clutched  at  the  chance  of  getting  out 
of  his  difficulties  through  the  gold  of  Guiana.  That 
there  was  gold  there  is  certain  ;  Raleigh's  mine  has 
been  identified ;  but  since  he  had  left  the  Orinoco,  the 
Spaniards  had  pushed  up  the  river  and  annexed  land 
and  built  stations. 

James  did  not  want  to  break  with  the  Spanish  Govern- 
ment and  gave  Raleigh  instructions  not  to  come  to 
blows  with  the  Spaniards.  Unhappily,  Raleigh's  lieu- 
tenant, whom  he  had  dispatched  up  the  river,  did  come 
to  blows  with  them,  and  blood  was  shed  ;  it  was  however 
in  self-defence,  for  the  Spaniards  had  fallen  upon  the 
English  party  when  unprepared  and  killed  some  of  them. 
This  unfortunate  business,  and  the  fact  that  Raleigh 
could  not  reach  his  gold-mine,  the  way  to  it  being  in- 
tercepted by  the  Spaniards,  made  him  turn  back  with  a 
heavy  heart.  On  reaching  Plymouth,  he  hasted  towards 
London  to  state  the  case  to  the  King,  when  he  was  met 
at  Ashburton  by  his  cousin,  Sir  Lewis  Stukeley,  with 
smiles  and  professions  of  love — but  having  war  in  his 
heart.  His  rancour  against  his  kinsman  was  due  to  a 
quarrel  in  1584,  when,  as  Stukeley  asserted,  Sir  Walter 
did  "extreme  injustice"  to  Stukeley's  father,  then  a 
volunteer  in  Sir  Richard  Grenville's  Virginia  voyage, 
by  deceiving  him  in  a  matter  of  a  venture  he  had  made. 
James  was  in  a  great  fright  lest  he  should  be  plunged  in 
war  with  the  King  of  Spain,  and  very  angry  because 
the  gold-mine  had  not  been  found  ;  and  Stukeley  was 
promised  ^500  to  worm  out  of  his  cousin  some  damn- 
ing admissions,  as  that  there  never  had  been  any  gold- 
mine at  all,  and  to  betray  these  to  James.  Stukeley  had 
received  only  verbal  instructions  from  the  King.  He 
therefore  reconducted  Raleigh  back  to  Plymouth,  where 
he  placed  him  in  Radford,  the  house  of  Sir  Christopher 


280  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Harris,  who  was  charged  with  his  custody,  till  Stukeley 
received  orders  from  James.  Raleigh  was  ill — or 
feigned  to  be  ill — the  former  is  the  more  probable,  and 
he  being  laxly  guarded  formed  a  plan  of  escape  to 
France.  He  commissioned  Captain  King,  the  only  one 
of  his  officers  who  remained  faithful  to  the  last,  to  make 
arrangements  for  flight  with  the  master  of  a  French 
vessel  then  lying  in  the  Sound.  At  nightfall,  the  two 
stole  from  Radford  and  got  into  a  boat  lying  at  the 
little  quay  below  the  house.  They  had  not  rowed  far, 
however,  before  qualms  came  over  Raleigh  ;  it  seemed 
to  him  unworthy  of  his  past  and  of  his  honour  to  fly  his 
native  land ;  and  he  perhaps  counted  too  securely  on 
the  generosity  of  the  despicable  James.  He  changed 
his  mind,  and  ordered  King  to  return  to  Radford. 
Next  day  he  sent  money  to  the  Frenchman,  and  begged 
him  to  wait  for  him  another  night.  Night  came,  but 
Raleigh  did  not  stir.  This  singular  irresolution  in  a  man 
so  energetic,  ready,  and  firm,  points  surely  to  the  fact 
that  he  was  ill  at  the  time,  suffering  from  the  ague 
which  so  often  prostrated  him.  Stukeley  at  length  re- 
ceived orders  to  take  his  prisoner  to  London,  and  the 
opportunity  to  escape  was  gone  for  ever.  As  Raleigh 
passed  through  Sherborne,  he  pointed  out  the  lands 
that  had  once  been  his,  and  related  how  wrongfully 
they  had  been  taken  from  him. 

At  Salisbury  Raleigh  complained  of  illness,  and 
begged  to  be  allowed  to  halt  there  for  a  while.  It  was 
asserted  by  a  French  quack,  Mannourie,  set  as  a  spy 
over  him,  that  he  got  the  doctor  to  anoint  him  so  as 
to  produce  sores  wherever  the  ointment  was  applied. 
This  was  one  of  the  charges  afterwards  brought  against 
him,  at  the  special  insistence  of  King  James,  who 
always  kept  his  eye  on  trifles.  Whilst  Raleigh  was  at 
Salisbury,  Sir  Lewis  Stukeley  robbed  him  of  all  his 


SIR   " JUDAS"   STUKELEY  281 

jewels  and  money,  leaving  him  only  the  emerald  ring 
on  his  finger,  engraved  with  the  Raleigh  arms.  It  has 
been  asserted  that  Sir  Walter  endeavoured  here  to  bribe 
his  cousin  to  connive  at  his  escape.  Had  this  been  the 
case,  Stukeley  would  certainly  have  mentioned  it  in  his 
"  Humble  Petition,"  and  justification  of  his  conduct 
after  the  execution  of  Raleigh.  He  was  not  the  man 
to  fail  to  flaunt  such  a  feather  in  his  cap  as  that  he 
had  resisted  a  bribe,  had  such  a  bribe  been  offered 
him. 

Whilst  Raleigh  lay  ill  at  Salisbury,  Captain  King 
hurried  up  to  London,  by  his  master's  direction,  to  hire 
a  vessel  to  wait  at  Gravesend  till  he  should  be  able  to  go 
on  board.  The  master  of  the  vessel  at  once  betrayed  the 
matter.  Sir  William  St.  John,  a  captain  of  one  of  the 
King's  ships,  immediately  took  horse  and  rode  to  meet 
Stukeley  and  his  prisoner  on  their  way  to  town,  and 
encountered  them  before  he  reached  Bagshot.  Stuke- 
ley then  confided  to  him  certain  charges  against  Raleigh 
which  he  was  to  lay  before  the  King. 

Next  day  Stukeley  had  fresh  matter  to  dispatch  to 
the  Court.  It  was  this  :  La  Chesnee,  the  interpreter 
of  the  French  Embassy,  visited  Sir  Walter  at  Brentford. 
He  had  brought  with  him  a  message  from  Le  Clerc, 
agent  for  the  King  of  France,  offering  him  a  passage 
on  board  a  French  vessel,  together  with  letters  of  in- 
troduction which  would  secure  him  an  honourable  re- 
ception in  Paris.  Raleigh  thanked  him  for  the  offer, 
but  replied  that  he  had  already  provided  for  his  escape. 
All  this  Stukeley  learned  by  applying  his  ear  to  the 
keyhole  or  by  worming  the  secret  out  of  Raleigh  by 
professions  of  kindness  and  desire  to  assist  him  to 
escape. 

James  at  once  took  alarm.  A  plot  with  France  was  a 
serious  matter  at  that  time.  He  accordingly  directed 


282  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Stukeley  to  continue  to  counterfeit  friendship  with 
Raleigh,  to  assist  him  in  his  meditated  escape,  and 
only  to  arrest  him  at  the  last  moment ;  and  to  bring 
this  attempt  as  one  more  charge  against  Raleigh.  So 
Stukeley  continued  to  insinuate  himself  into  the  con- 
fidence of  his  cousin,  and  endeavoured  by  all  means  in 
his  power  to  wheedle  out  of  him  such  papers  as  might 
afford  evidence  of  his  designs  and  might  serve  to  help 
to  bring  him  to  the  scaffold. 

On  his  arrival  in  town,  Raleigh  was  conducted  to  his 
own  house  in  Broad  Street.  There  he  was  revisited  by 
Le  Clerc,  who  repeated  his  former  offers. 

The  next  morning  Sir  Walter  got  into  a  boat  attended 
by  Stukeley,  all  smiles,  and  the  honest  King ;  and,  as 
prearranged,  he  was  arrested  at  Woolwich  and  at  once 
lodged  in  the  Tower. 

On  29  October,  1618,  Raleigh's  head  fell  under  the 
executioner's  axe.  He  was  a  victim  to  Spanish  resent- 
ment and  to  James's  meanness  in  offering  him  as  a 
sacrifice  to  curry  favour  with  Spain.  Gardiner  says 
Raleigh  was  executed  "  nominally  in  accordance  with 
the  sentence  delivered  in  1603  I  ln  reality  because  he 
had  failed  to  secure  the  gold  of  which  James  was  in 
need.  The  real  crime  was  the  King's,  who  had  sent 
him  out  without  first  defining  the  limits  of  Spanish 
sovereignty." 

The  writer  of  the  notice  of  Sir  Lewis  Stukeley  in  the 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography  takes  a  lenient  view 
of  Stukeley's  conduct.  "  Stukeley  certainly  gave  hos- 
tile, not  necessarily  false  evidence  against  Raleigh. 
He  seems  to  have  been  a  harsh,  narrow-minded,  and 
vulgar  man,  glad  to  have  his  cousin  in  his  power,  to 
revenge  himself  on  him  for  the  pecuniary  loss  his  own 
father  had  entertained."  Gardiner  says:  "Stukeley 
seems  to  have  thought  it  no  shame  to  act  as  a  spy  upon 


SIR    " JUDAS"   STUKELEY  283 

the  man  who  had  called  upon  him  to  betray  his  trust ; " 
but  it  is  precisely  this  charge  that  cannot  be  estab- 
lished. We  have  no  good  evidence  that  Raleigh  did 
attempt  to  bribe  him.  Popular  opinion  ran  strongly 
against  Stukeley,  and  he  was  nicknamed  Sir  Judas. 
He  tried  to  hold  up  his  head  at  Court,  but  no  man 
would  condescend  to  speak  to  him.  He  met  on  all 
sides  with  glances  full  of  contempt  and  gestures  of  dis- 
gust. He  hurried  to  James,  and  offered  to  take  the 
Sacrament  upon  the  truth  of  a  story  Raleigh  had 
denied  on  the  scaffold — that  he  had  been  offered  a  com- 
mission by  the  French  King  (the  story  came  through 
Mannourie) ;  but  no  one  would  have  believed  Stukeley 
a  whit  the  readier  had  he  done  this. 

Indeed,  Mannourie  subsequently  admitted  that  it  was 
false,  when  he  was  arrested  for  clipping  the  gold,  the 
blood  money,  he  had  received  for  spying  on  Sir  Walter. 
In  a  letter  from  the  Rev.  T.  Lorkin  to  Sir  T.  Puckering 
on  16  February,  1618-19,  he  says :  "  Manourie,  the 
French  Apothecary,  (who  joigned  with  Stukely  in  the 
accusation  of  Syr  Walter  Raleigh)  is  at  Plimouth  for 
clippyng  of  gold  .  .  .  his  examination  was  sent  up 
hether  to  the  King,  wherein  ...  (as  I  hear  from  Syr 
Rob.  Winde,  cupbearer  I  thincke  to  his  Majesty,  who 
saith  he  read  the  examination)  that  his  accusation 
against  Raleigh  was  false,  and  that  he  was  wonne 
thereto  by  the  practise  and  importunity  of  Stukely,  and 
now  acknowledges  this  his  present  miserable  condition 
a  judgment  of  God  upon  him  for  that." 

When  Stukeley  made  this  offer  to  King  James,  a 
bystander  dryly  observed  that  if  the  King  would  order 
him  to  be  beheaded,  and  if  he  would  then  confirm  the 
truth  of  his  story  with  an  oath  while  on  the  scaffold, 
then  possibly  he  might  be  believed. 

One  day  Sir  Judas  went  to  call  on  the  old  Earl  of 


284  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Nottingham,  who  was  Lord  High  Admiral,  and  asked 
to  be  allowed  to  speak  to  him.  The  Earl  turned  on 
him  instantly.  "What,"  he  said,  "  thou  base  fellow! 
Thou  who  art  reputed  the  scorn  and  contempt  of  men, 
how  darest  thou  offer  thyself  into  my  presence?  Were 
it  not  in  my  own  house,  I  would  cudgel  thee  with  my 
staff  for  presuming  to  be  so  saucy."  Stukeley  ran  off 
to  whine  to  the  King,  but  even  there  he  met  with  no 
redress.  "What,"  said  James,  "wouldst  thou  have 
me  do?  Wouldst  thou  have  me  hang  him?  On  my 
soul,  if  I  should  hang  all  that  speak  ill  of  thee,  all  the 
trees  in  the  country  would  not  suffice."  It  was  even 
said,  probably  without  truth,  that  James  had  said  to 
Stukeley,  "Sir  Walter's  blood  be  on  thy  head." 

A  few  days  after  the  scene  with  the  King,  it  was  dis- 
covered that  Stukeley  had  been  for  many  years  engaged 
in  the  nefarious  occupation  of  clipping  coin.  It  was 
even  said  that  he  tampered  in  this  way  with  the  very 
gold  pieces  which  had  been  paid  to  him  as  the  price  of 
his  services  for  lodging  Raleigh  in  the  Tower  and 
betraying  him.  When  arrested  he  endeavoured  to 
excuse  himself  by  inculpating  his  son.  Could  mean- 
ness descend  to  a  lower  depth  ? 

"  1618-19.  Jan.  12.  ...  Upon  Twelf  night  Stukely 
was  committed  close  prisoner  in  the  Gate  house  for 
clipping  of  gould.  He  had  receyved  of  the  Exchequer 
some  weeks  before  £500  in  recompense  for  the  service 
he  had  performed  in  the  business  of  Syr  Walter 
Raleigh,  and  beganne  (as  is  said)  to  exercise  the  trade 
upon  that  ill-gotten  money  (the  price  of  blood).  Upon 
examination  he  endeavoured  to  avoid  it  from  himself, 
by  casting  the  burden  either  upon  his  sonne  or  man. 
The  former  playes  least  in  sight  and  can  not  be  found. 
The  servant  is  committed  to  the  Marshalsay,  who,  under- 
standing that  his  Master  would  shift  over  the  business 


SIR    " JUDAS"   STUKELEY  285 

to  him,  is  willing  to  sett  the  saddle  upon  the  right 
horse,  and  accuses  his  Master."1 

But  the  accusation  was  not  pressed.  King  James 
owed  Stukeley  too  deep  a  debt  to  let  him  suffer,  and 
he  threw  him  a  pardon,  so  that  the  evidence  against 
him  was  not  gone  into.  It  may  be  remembered  that 
"  Lusty"  Stukeley  had  also  been  implicated  in  clipping 
and  coining,  and  had  only  escaped  arrest  by  flying  the 
country. 

Stukeley,  an  outcast  from  society  in  London,  went 
down  to  Affeton.  But  even  there  he  was  ill-received. 
The  gentry  would  not  speak  to  him,  his  own  retainers 
viewed  him  with  a  cold,  if  not  hostile,  eye,  and  ren- 
dered him  but  bare  obedience. 

The  brand  of  Cain  was  on  him,  and  he  fled  from  the 
society  of  his  fellow  men  to  the  isle  of  Lundy,  and  shut 
himself  up  in  the  lonely,  haunted  tower  of  the  De 
Mariscoes.  There  he  went  raving  mad  and  perished 
(1620),  a  miserable  lunatic  on  that  rock,  surrounded  by 
the  roaring  of  the  waves  and  the  shrieks  of  the  wind. 
His  body  was  conveyed  to  South  Molton,  so  that  he 
was  denied  even  a  grave  beside  his  ancestors  at 
Affeton. 

For  authorities,  see  Gardiner,  Prince  Charles  and  the 
Spanish  Marriage,  Vol.  I,  London,  1869 ;  Dr.  Brush- 
field's  Raleghana,  Part  VII;  the  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  s.n. ;  and  the  various  Lives  of  Raleigh. 

1  Letter  from  T.  Lorkin  to  Sir  T.  Puckering. 


THE  SAMPFORD  GHOST 

IN  1810,  considerable  commotion  was  caused  by  the 
rumour  that  spread  concerning  a  house  in  Samp- 
ford  Peverell  reputed  to  be  haunted.  The  house 
belonged  to  a  Mr.  Tally,  who  let  it  to  a  Mr. 
Chave,  son  of  a  well-to-do  yeoman  of  the  neighbour- 
hood, for  a  general  shop  and  residence.  The  rumours 
reached  the  ears  of  the  Rev.  C.  Colton,  M.A.,  a  clergy- 
man at  Tiverton,  and  he  visited  Sampford  to  investigate 
the  matter,  and  wrote  his  experiences  to  the  editor 
of  the  Taunton  Courier  on  18  August.  The  tone  of 
the  letter  is  frank  and  sincere. 

"I  am  well  aware  that  all  who  know  me  would  not 
require  the  sanction  of  an  oath,  but  as  I  am  now 
addressing  the  public,  I  must  consider  myself  before  a 
tribunal  of  which  my  acquaintance  constitutes  a  very 
small  part.  And  first,  I  depose  that  after  six  nights  at 
Mr.  Chave's  house,  and  with  a  mind  perfectly  un- 
prejudiced, after  the  most  minute  investigation  and 
closest  inspection  of  the  premises,  I  am  utterly  unable 
to  account  for  any  of  the  phenomena. 

"I  further  depose,  that  in  my  visits  to  Mr.  Chave's 
house,  I  never  had  any  other  motive,  direct  or  indirect, 
but  an  earnest  wish  to  trace  these  phenomena  to  their 
true  and  legitimate  cause.  Also  that  I  have  in  every 
instance  found  the  people  of  the  house  most  willing  and 
ready  to  contribute  everything  in  their  power  to  co- 
operate with  me  in  the  detection  of  the  cause  of  these 

286 


THE   SAMPFORD   GHOST  287 

unaccountable  sights  and  violent  blows  and  sounds. 
Also,  that  I  have  affixed  a  seal  with  a  crest  to  every 
door,  cavity,  etc.,  in  the  house,  through  which  any 
communication  could  be  carried — that  this  seal  was 
applied  to  each  end  of  sundry  pieces  of  paper  in  such 
a  manner  that  the  slightest  attempt  to  open  such  doors, 
or  pass  such  cavities,  must  have  broken  these  papers — 
that  none  of  these  papers  were  deranged  or  broken  ; 
and  also,  that  the  phenomena  that  night  were  as  un- 
accountable as  ever. 

' '  Also,  that  it  appears  that  this  plot,  if  it  be  a  plot, 
hath  been  carried  on  for  many  months,  that  it  must  be 
in  the  hands  of  more  than  fifty  people,  that  the  present 
owner  is  losing  the  value  of  his  house,  the  tenant  the 
customers  of  his  shop,  whom  fear  now  prevents  from 
visiting  it  after  sunset." 

To  this  and  more,  Mr.  Colton  took  oath  before 
B.  Wood,  Master  in  Chancery,  Tiverton. 

This  letter  was  animadverted  upon  by  the  editor  and 
by  writers  to  the  Taunton  Courier •,  as  dealing  in  general, 
and  giving  no  details. 

To  this  Mr.  Colton  (14  September)  replied,  giving 
particulars  of  what  he  had  seen  and  heard. 

The  house  rented  by  Chave  had  for  some  time  been 
looked  upon  as  haunted.  An  apprentice  boy  lodging 
in  it  had  been  frightened  by  the  apparition  of  a  woman. 
Persons  passing  at  night  had  seen  strange  lights  in 
the  windows.  Mr.  Colton  goes  on  to  say  : — 

"  Rather  more  than  four  months  ago,  this  house 
became  extremely  troublesome.  The  inhabitants  were 
alarmed  in  the  following  manner  :  noises  and  blows 
by  day  were  heard  extremely  loud,  in  every  apartment 
of  the  house.  On  going  upstairs  and  stamping  on  any 
of  the  boards  of  the  floor,  in  any  room,  say  five  or  six 
times,  corresponding  blows,  generally  louder,  and  more 


288  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

in  number,  would  be  instantly  returned.  The  vibration 
of  the  boards  caused  by  the  violence  of  these  blows 
would  be  sensibly  felt  through  a  shoe  or  boot.  Observe, 
the  floors  underneath  which  these  noises  were  heard 
are  all  of  them  immediately  over  rooms  that  are  ceiled. 
An  effect  not  to  be  produced  by  any  blows  on  the  ceil- 
ing was  that  the  dust  was  thrown  up  from  such  boards 
as  were  beaten  with  such  velocity  as  to  affect  the  eyes  of 
the  spectators. 

"  At  midday  the  cause  of  these  effects  would  an- 
nounce its  approach  by  amazing  and  loud  knockings  in 
some  apartment  or  other  of  the  house,  above  stairs  or 
below,  as  might  happen.  The  moment  they  were  heard, 
any  person  on  ascending  the  stairs,  and  stamping  with 
the  feet,  would  be  answered  somewhat  louder ;  and 
then,  what  is  extremely  curious,  these  noises  would 
absolutely  follow  the  persons  through  any  of  the  upper 
apartments.  The  joists  and  beams  of  the  flooring 
opposed  not  the  slightest  obstacle  to  its  progress. 
Walls  it  would  penetrate  with  equal  facility,  as  was 
manifest  by  its  following  any  person  into  different 
apartments. 

"  These  phenomena  by  day  continued  almost  inces- 
santly for  about  five  weeks,  when  they  gradually  gave 
place  to  others  still  more  curious  and  alarming,  which 
succeeded  at  night.  There  are  two  apartments  in  this 
house — one  within  the  other.  In  this  room  there  is 
but  one  door,  not  a  single  cupboard,  and  one  very  small 
chimney.  The  walls  are  of  stone,  the  flooring  of  new 
deal,  extremely  close,  and  not  covered  by  a  carpet. 
There  is  one  large  modern  window  in  the  room.  There 
is  no  visible  access  to  this  room  but  through  another,  in 
which  they  who  wish  to  satisfy  their  curiosity  constantly 
sit.  The  partition  is  thin,  there  is  also  a  window  in  it 
(it  is  of  lath  and  plaster).  In  the  room  where  strangers 


THE   SAMPFORD   GHOST  289 

sit,  there  is  also  one  door  only ;  and  there  is  a  kind  of 
landing-room  at  the  top  of  the  stairs  opposite  to  this 
door." 

In  the  further  room  the  servant-maids  were  sent  to 
sleep.  These  were  now  violently  beaten,  during  the 
night,  producing  bruises  and  swellings.  Those  who 
sat  in  the  outer  room  could  hear  the  blows  being 
administered.  Mr.  Colton  went  into  the  inner  room 
and  stood  by  the  bed  where  the  maids  were,  and  heard 
the  blows  rained  on  them.  When  he  cried  for  a  light, 
it  was  brought  in,  but  no  person  could  be  seen  by  him 
who  could  have  administered  these  blows. 

The  next  phenomenon  was  this,  not  witnessed  by 
Mr.  Colton.  He  says:  "  Mr.  Chave,  of  Mere,  no  relation 
at  all  to  Mr.  Chave  who  rents  the  house,  can  swear  to 
the  following  fact.  Sitting  up  to  hear  and  see  these 
phenomena,  he  was  alarmed  by  one  or  two  loud  shrieks; 
on  rushing  into  the  room  his  course  at  the  threshold  of 
the  door  was  arrested  by  the  following  phenomenon. 
Every  curtain  of  that  bed  was  agitated  and  the  knots 
thrown  and  whirled  about  with  such  rapidity,  all  at  the 
same  time,  that  it  would  have  been  by  no  means 
pleasant  to  have  been  in  their  vortex,  or  within  the 
sphere  of  their  action."  The  moon  at  the  time  was 
full,  and  was  shining  into  the  room. 

"This  scene,  accompanied  with  such  a  violent  noise 
of  the  rings  as  could  not  have  been  exceeded  by  four 
persons  stationed  one  at  each  curtain  for  the  purpose, 
continued  for  about  two  minutes,  when  it  concluded 
with  a  noise  resembling  the  tearing  of  a  sheet  from  top 
to  bottom.  Candles  were  then  instantly  produced,  and 
many  rents,  one  very  large  one  across  the  grain  of 
strong  new  cotton  curtains,  were  discovered."  Mr. 
Colton,  however,  on  other  occasions  professes  to  have 
seen  the  curtains  violently  agitated  and  a  heavy  Greek 
u 


290  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Testament  placed  on  the  bed  flung  across  the  room. 
But  it  is  worth  noticing  that  these  things  only  took 
place  when  the  women  were  in  the  bed,  and  never 
when  the  candle  was  in  the  room.  The  maids  now 
pretended  to  be  so  frightened  that  they  dared  no  longer 
sleep  in  their  room,  whereupon  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Chave 
allowed  them  to  remove  into  their  apartment.  The 
noises  followed  them,  an  iron  candlestick  was  flung 
across  the  room  at  Mr.  Chave's  head.  Another  sig- 
nificant matter  noted  by  Mr.  Colton,  was  that  the  maids 
after  one  of  these  violent  exhibitions  were  found  bathed 
in  perspiration,  the  drops  rolling  from  their  brows. 

Such  is  a  brief  summary  of  Mr.  Colton's  narrative. 
It  called  forth  a  pamphlet  by  Mr.  Marriott,  the  editor 
of  the  Taunton  Courier,  that  had  been  prompted  by 
Mr.  Tally  who  was  much  annoyed  at  the  probable 
depreciation  of  the  value  of  his  house,  and  who  gave 
notice  to  Mr.  Chave  to  quit  it. 

Mr.  Marriott  was  doubtless  right  in  his  conjecture  that 
there  was  a  plot  among  the  servants,  and  that  it  was 
they  who  produced  the  phenomena.  He  conjectured 
that  the  raps  were  dealt  by  a  mop-stick  at  the  ceiling 
below  the  floors  that  seemed  to  be  struck.  He  pointed 
out  that  there  were  marks  on  the  ceiling  as  if  the  mop- 
stick  had  been  so  used,  and  he  intimated  that  the  set  of 
hauntings  was  due  to  Mr.  Chave  trying  by  this  means  to 
avenge  a  quarrel  he  had  had  with  his  landlord  over  a 
bill. 

To  this  Mr.  Colton  promptly  replied,  that  it  was  true 
that  there  was  a  mop-stick  in  the  house,  but  that  by 
means  of  the  mop-stick  the  sounds  heard  and  the 
vibration  of  the  boards  casting  up  dust  could  not  have 
been  effected.  He  and  others  had  tried,  and  the  marks 
observed  on  the  ceiling  were  caused  by  these  trials. 
As  to  the  quarrel  over  a  bill,  it  had  not  occurred.  It 


i 


THE   SAMPFORD  GHOST  291 

was  not  to  Mr.  Chave's  interest  to  give  the  house  a  bad 
name,  for  he  had  but  recently  rented  and  fitted  it  up, 
and  it  would  be  an  inconvenience  to  him  to  move  ; 
moreover,  these  supernatural  phenomena  were  doing 
him  much  harm,  in  injuring  his  business. 

Mr.  Colton  now  added  further  mysterious  sights,  but 
they  rested  on  nothing  better  than  the  testimony  of  the 
maids.  One  had  seen  a  white  hand  come  out  from 
under  the  bed,  another  had  seen  a  livid  arm  hanging 
down  from  the  ceiling. 

There  can,  I  think,  be  little  doubt  that  it  was  not 
Mr.  Chave,  but  the  servant-maids  who  managed  the 
whole  series  of  phenomena.  These  knockings  could 
easily  be  transmitted  through  boards,  and  the  curtains 
tossed  about,  and  books  and  candlesticks  flung  across 
the  room,  by  having  horsehair  attached  to  them.  That 
is  the  true  secret  of  the  Poltergeist  manifestations  in 
England,  France,  and  Germany. 

The  authorities  are  : — 

*  *  Sampford  Ghost.  A  Plain  and  Authentic  Narrative 
of  those  Extraordinary  Occurrences,  etc.,  by  the  Rev. 
C.  Colton,  M.A.,  Reg.  Col.  Soc.,  Tiverton  "  (1810). 

"  Sampford  Ghost!!!  A  Full  Account  of  the  Con- 
spiracy at  Sampford  Peverell,  near  Tiverton  ;  Contain- 
ing the  Particulars  of  the  Pretended  Visitations  of  the 
Monster.  Taunton,  1810."  (This  by  Marriott.) 

"  Sampford  Ghost.  Stubborn  Facts  against  Vague 
Assertions,  etc.,  by  the  Rev.  C.  Colton,  M.A.,  Reg. 
Col.  Soc.,  Tiverton"  (1810).  Answer  to  Mr.  Marriott. 

"Sampford  Ghost!  Facts  Attested  and  Delivered  to 
the  Public  Relative  to  these  Extraordinary  Occur- 
rences, etc.,  by  the  Rev.  C.  Colton.  .  .  London  (n.d.)." 


PHILIPPA   GARY    AND    ANNE    EVANS 

IN  the  month  of  August,  1672,  the  wife  of  a  dyer 
of    Plymouth,    one   William    Weeks,    died    after 
"many  and  frequent  vomitings."     Shortly  after 
that  Mr.  Weeks  and  his  daughter  were  seized  with 
the    same    symptoms — violent    pains    internally,    cold 
sweats,  faintings  and  vomitings ;  and  in  an  engraving 
of  the  period  relative  to  the  tragic  event  about  to  be 
related,  Mr.  Weeks  is  shown  in  bed  affected  by  this 
last  symptom.  At  the  outset  the  physician  who  attended 
them  suspected  poison,  and  he  was  confirmed  in  his 
suspicions  when   a   neighbour  who    had   entered   the 
house  found  a  pot  in  the  kitchen  with  " crude  arsenick" 
in  it.  Moreover,  Mr.  Weeks's  grand-daughter,  child  of 
a  Mistress  Pengelly,  was  affected  in  precisely  the  same 
manner. 

Philippa  Gary,  the  nurse,  together  with  Anne  Evans, 
the  servant,  first  drew  attention  to  themselves  by 
counterfeiting  sickness  and  vomiting,  but  the  general 
prostration  and  agony  were  lacking  in  their  case.  The 
administration  of  emetics  led  to  the  recovery  of  the 
child  and  of  Mr.  Weeks,  but  Mistress  Pengelly  died 
in  great  agonies. 

This  " horrid  accident"  caused  much  commotion, 
and  the  nurse  and  the  girl  were  arrested.  The  first 
brought  before  the  mayor  was  Anne  Evans,  "  appren- 
tice to  the  said  Mistress  Weeks,  a  poor  child,  whose 
mother  being  dead,  had  been  bound  out  in  the 
Mayoralty  of  Mr.  Peter  Schaggel,  Anno  1672,  by  the 

292 


PHILIPPA   GARY   AND   ANNE   EVANS  293 

Churchwardens  and  overseers  of  Charles  parish,  being 
then  about  twelve  or  thirteen  years  old." 

The  poor  child  Anne,  on  being  questioned  by  the 
mayor,  allowed  that  she  bought  "a  pottle  of  girts"  in 
the  market,  and  that  when  they  had  been  cooked  she 
had  noticed  "  some  yellow  thing  in  the  girts,"  and  the 
family  were  afflicted  by  incessant  tortures  after  they  had 
partaken  of  it.  There  had  been  a  dispute  between 
Mrs.  Weeks  and  the  nurse,  and  the  latter  had  asked 
Evans  whether  she  knew  where  she  could  get  some 
rat's-bane.  Cary  admitted  that  there  had  been  words 
between  her  and  the  old  lady,  and  said  that  it  arose 
over  the  frying  of  some  pilchards.  She  added  that 
Anne  Evans  was  on  bad  terms  with  her  mistress,  and 
that  the  girl  had  threatened  to  run  away  and  join  "the 
mountebanks." 

The  mayor  plied  one  witness  against  the  other.  Next 
Evans  said  that  as  she  was  gathering  herbs  she  found 
a  packet  of  rat's-bane,  and  on  showing  it  to  Cary  the 
latter  exclaimed  that  was  just  the  very  thing  needed 
to  "fit"  Mrs.  Weeks,  and  that  a  little  dose  of  it 
would  soon  "make  work."  Next  the  girl  mentioned 
that  Cary  abused  her  for  removing  a  great  spider  from 
some  beer  that  Mrs.  Weeks  was  about  to  drink.  A 
spider  was,  according  to  popular  belief,  a  concentra- 
tion of  deadly  poison.  Cary  had  said,  "Thou  shouldst 
have  let  it  alone,  thou  Fool,  and  not  have  taken  it  out, 
but  shouldst  have  squatted  it  amongst  the  beer." 
When  Cary  was  taxed  with  this,  she  denied  having 
said  any  such  thing,  but  asserted  that  Evans  had 
threatened  to  do  away  with  her  mistress  "on  Saturday 
week  was  fortnight." 

The  mayor  continued  his  interrogations  of  each 
witness  separately,  playing  the  statements  of  one 
against  the  other.  Then  Evans  improved  her  story  by 


294  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

asserting  that  she  saw  Cary  crush  the  rat's- bane  into 
fine  powder  between  two  tiles,  and  she  added  that 
when  she  asked  the  nurse  what  she  was  about  Cary 
replied  that  she  was  making  a  medicine  to  "fit"  the 
old  woman. 

Having  placed  the  powder  in  a  cloam  dish,  she  added 
small  beer,  and  allowed  it  to  steep  overnight.  She 
then  gave  some  of  the  poison  to  Anne  to  put  in  the 
"Old  Woman's  Dish"  of  porridge,  adding,  "You 
shall  see  what  sport  we  shall  have  with  her  to-morrow." 

But  the  amount  then  administered  was  small :  it  was 
designed  to  cause  only  preliminary  discomfort.  After 
that,  Cary  said,  "We  shall  live  so  merry  as  the  days 
are  long."  She  cautioned  the  girl  to  hold  her  tongue, 
and  told  her  that  if  she  did  so  nothing  could  come  out ; 
and  she  threatened  that  if  Evans  betrayed  what  had 
been  done,  she  would  lay  all  the  blame  upon  her.  In 
due  time  Mrs.  Weeks  asked  for  her  porridge,  and  the 
girl  put  the  arsenic  into  the  bowl  according  to  the 
instructions  she  had  received  from  the  nurse.  Later 
on  Cary  drank  from  a  jug  ;  and  after  pouring  in  the 
poisoned  liquor,  administered  it  to  Mr.  Weeks,  but  he 
did  not  relish  the  taste  of  it  and  passed  it  on  to  the 
others  to  try.  They  all  averred  that  it  had  a  "  keamy  " 
taste,  but,  small  though  the  quantity  was  that  they 
drank,  all  who  tasted  it  had  convulsions.  In  some 
concern  at  seeing  her  master  and  mistress  in  such 
anguish,  the  girl  affirmed  that  she  had  exclaimed, 
"  Alas  !  nurse,  what  have  you  done  that  our  master  and 
mistress  are  so  very  ill  ?  " 

Cary  replied,  according  to  Anne's  statement,  that 
"she  had  done  God  good  service  in  it  to  rid  her  out  of 
the  way,  and  that  she  had  done  no  sin  in  it." 

This  confession  was  read  over  to  Cary,  who  denied 
every  particular. 


PHILIPPA   GARY   AND   ANNE   EVANS  295 

Gary  and  the  little  girl — who,  be  it  remembered,  was 
only  twelve  or  thirteen  years  of  age — were  put  in 
prison,  and  were  to  appear  at  the  next  assizes.  Gary 
and  Evans  found  themselves  "in  the  very  suburbs  of 
Hell,"  for  the  local  prison  was  no  better  than  "a 
seminary  of  all  vilainies,  prophaneness  and  im- 
pieties." 

After  months  of  waiting,  the  prisoners  were  sent  to 
Exeter,  where  they  were  tried  for  their  lives.  They 
responded  "with  heavy  hearts  though  with  undejected 
countenances."  Sentence  of  death  was  pronounced 
against  them  both,  but  they  petitioned  to  be  transported. 

The  unfortunate  little  girl  was  sentenced  "to  be 
drawn  on  a  hurdle  to  the  place  where  she  shall  be 
executed,  and  there  burnt  to  death." 

John  Quicke  was  a  Nonconformist  minister,  and  he 
interested  himself  in  the  criminals.  "  Methinks,"  said 
he,  "the  very  sentence  should  have  struck  her  dead; 
an  emblem  and  lively  picture  of  Hell's  torments. 
Drawn  as  if  dragged  by  devils.  Burnt  alive,  as  if  in 
the  Lake  of  Fire  and  Brimstone  already." 

The  nurse,  Philippa  Gary,  was  ordered  to  hang  till 
she  was  dead.  "  Too  gentle  a  death,"  wrote  the  harsh 
Quicke,  "for  such  a  prodigy  of  ungodliness.  She 
pleads  stiffly  her  innocence,  disowns  her  guilt,  takes  no 
shame,  her  brow  is  brass,  she  is  impudent  and  hath  a 
whore's  forehead.  If  ever  there  were  a  daughter  of 
Hell,  this  is  one  in  her  proper  colours.  No  evidence 
shall  convince  her.  '  Confess/  saith  she,  'then  I  shall 
hang  indeed.  I  deny  the  fact,  none  saw,  none  knew  it 
but  the  girl ;  it  may  be  that  vile  person,  my  husband, 
hath  a  hand  in  it,  but  he  is  gone.  Some  will  pity  me, 
though  none  will  believe  me,  none  can  help  me.'" 
And  now,  according  to  Quicke,  Satan  helps  Gary  to 
"an  expedient  that  may  help  her  life."  She  pleaded 


296  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

before  the  judge  that  she  was  in  the  family  way.     "  If 
I  must  dye,  let  my  child  live." 

Thereupon  the  judge  ordered  a  jury  of  matrons  to  be 
empanelled,  but  they  found  that  the  plea  of  Gary  was 
false. 

As  Plymouth  had  been  the  scene  of  the  murder,  the 
judge  had  little  difficulty  in  consenting  to  the  petition 
of  the  relatives  of  Mrs.  Weeks  that  the  execution  should 
take  place  there.  "  Provided  that  the  magistrates  of 
the  towne,  or  Mr.  Weeks,  whose  wife  was  by  the  male- 
factors above  named  poysoned,  shall  defray  the  extra- 
ordinary charges  thereof,  and  shall  undertake  for  the 
same  before  Easter  Day,  being  Sunday  next.  The  day 
of  execution  is  to  bee  on  Thursday  in  Easter  weeke, 
but  if  you,  the  magistrate  of  the  said  towne,  or 
Mr.  Weeks,  shall  fail  to  undertake  before  Easter  Day 
to  defray  the  extraordinary  charges  thereof,  then  the 
execution  on  these  malefactors  is  to  be  done  at  the 
common-place  of  execution  for  this  Countie,"  i.e.  at 
Exeter. 

The  local  authorities  gladly  undertook  the  arrange- 
ments for  carrying  out  Lord  Chief  Justice  North's  sen- 
tence, and  for  affording  to  the  citizens  of  Plymouth  an 
exciting  scene,  and  for  the  domestic  servants  of  that 
borough  a  moral  warning. 

Every  endeavour  was  made  to  persuade  Cary  to  con- 
fess, but  she  laid  the  crime  upon  the  girl.  Of  all  the 
ministers  who  strove  to  turn  her  to  repentance,  John 
Quicke,  the  Nonconformist,  was  the  most  importunate. 
He  warned  her  that  "she  had  sworn  a  bargain  with 
the  Devil  for  secrecy  to  her  own  destruction,  that  all 
would  come  out  at  last,  as  cunningly  and  closely  as 
she  did  carry  it  before  men  and  angels  ;  and,  said  I, 
you  are  one  of  the  most  bloody  women  that  ever  came 
into  gaol ;  you  are  guilty  of  two  murders,  one  of  your 


PHILIPPA   GARY   AND   ANNE   EVANS  297 

master,  another  of  your  mistress,  and  a  third  of  having 
drawn  in  this  poor  girl  like  a  Devil,  as  you  are,  to 
joyn  with  you  to  ruin  them  and  herself  also."  Quicke 
further  assured  her  that  he  did  "as  verily  believe  she 
would  be  in  Hell,  unless  there  were  a  very  wonderful 
change  wrought  upon  her,  as  that  old  Murderer,  her 
Father,  the  Devil,  was."  Quicke  was  obviously  not  a 
man  to  move  a  sinner  to  repentance.  His  exhortation 
made  her  cry,  but  extorted  no  confession  ;  and  when 
Gary  implored  this  sour  and  remorseless  minister  to 
have  some  little  pity  and  indulgence  towards  her,  he 
declined  to  tone  his  invectives  till  he  knew  that  "her 
stony  heart  was  riven  and  shivered  in  pieces  and  her 
bones  broken  under  her  hellish  wickedness." 

Waiting  without  the  cell  door  whilst  this  appalling 
denunciation  was  being  delivered  was  "a  crowd  of 
vulgar  persons,"  all  pressing  and  impatient  to  obtain 
admission.  The  gaolers  derived  not  a  little  revenue 
by  charging  the  inquisitive  and  curious  with  fees  for 
admission  to  see  criminals  condemned  to  death,  and 
they  reaped  a  good  harvest  on  this  occasion. 

During  a  subsequent  visit,  influenced  by  apparent 
relenting,  Quicke  assured  the  two  criminals  that  it  was 
quite  as  "  easy  going  to  Heaven  from  the  stake  and  the 
gallows  as  if  it  was  from  their  beds,"  but  then,  they 
must  confess  their  guilt.  But  Gary  was  not  to  be 
induced  to  admit  anything.  He  was  highly  incensed 
that  his  words  produced  no  effect,  and  he  abused  her 
roundly  as  "a  brazen  impudent  hypocrite  thus  to  dis- 
semble with  God  and  man  "  ;  and  he  warned  her  that, 
as  she  kept  the  devil's  counsel,  to  the  devil  she  would 
go.  He  added  that  he  saw  no  promise  of  a  good  result 
if  he  expended  any  more  labour  upon  her.  "  Look  to 
it,  woman,"  he  shouted  to  her  at  parting,  "that  this 
do  not  make  thy  Hell  hotter  than  ordinary." 


298  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

As  the  prisoners  were  conducted  from  Exeter  on 
horseback,  we  are  told  that  the  nurse  exchanged  ribald 
and  obscene  jests  with  the  spectators,  and  at  the 
entrance  to  Plymouth  the  procession  was  met  by 
thousands.  Persons  of  every  age  and  sex  and  quality 
rushed  forth  to  the  suburbs  to  see  the  arrival  of  the 
two  unfortunates.  Although,  we  are  informed,  many 
had  u  bowels  of  pity  for  the  poor  girl,"  none  "  hath 
charity  for  the  nurse." 

On  being  conducted  to  their  cells,  various  ministers 
attended  them  ;  but  crowds  poured  in,  tipping  the 
gaolers,  to  have  a  sight  of  the  criminals,  and  the 
ministers  of  religion  could  effect  nothing.  The  nurse 
remained  resolute  in  denying  her  guilt,  but  the  little 
girl  admitted  hers. 

On  the  appointed  day  Philippa  Cary  and  Anne 
Evans  were  escorted  to  the  gallows  erected  on  the 
heights  of  Prince  Rock.  "The  streets  were  crowded, 
the  Mayor,  the  Magistrates  and  Under  Sheriff  can 
hardly  pass  for  the  throng.  The  poor  maid  was  drawn 
on  the  hurdle.  The  posture  she  lay  in  was  on  her  left 
side,  her  face  in  her  bosom,  her  Bible  under  her  arm, 
seeming  like  one  dead  rather  than  alive.  At  length 
we  came,  though  slowly,  to  the  place  of  execution. 
Plimouth  was  then  naked  of  inhabitants,  the  town  was 
easy  to  be  taken,  and  the  houses  to  be  plundered,  if 
an  enemie  had  been  at  hand  to  have  done  it.  Cat- 
downe,  the  Lambhay,  the  Citadel,  and  Catwater  are 
pressed  with  a  multitude  of  twenty  thousand  persons. 
But  commanders,  who  have  lived  in  wars  and  seen 
great  armies,  and  are  therefore  the  most  competent 
judges  in  this  case,  estimate  them  at  one-half.  I  write 
within  compass.  The  maid,  being  nailed  to  the  stake, 
and  the  iron  hoop  about  her,  and  the  nurse  mounted 
on  the  ladder,  she  desires  that  the  Relater  may  pray 


PHILIPPA   GARY   AND   ANNE   EVANS  299 

with  her."  With  passionate  invocations  to  the  Deity, 
Mr.  Quicke  complied  ;  the  crowd  were  invited  at  the 
close  to  join  in  the  singing  of  a  psalm,  and  in  this 
part  of  the  ceremony  the  clear  childish  voice  of  Anne 
Evans  was  heard  to  rise  like  that  of  the  lark.  Then 
Quicke  laboured  through  extemporary  prayers  of  in- 
ordinate length,  smiting  at  the  flinty  heart  of  Gary, 
hitting  right  and  left  at  impenitent  sinners  in  those 
around.  It  has  been  said  that  as  a  front  rank  of 
soldiers  kneels  to  shoot,  so  do  certain  divines  in  their 
prayers  aim,  not  at  God,  but  at  those  who  hear  them. 
It  was  so  with  Quicke.  Then  the  poor  sufferers  were 
urged  to  avow  their  theological  opinions  with  regard 
to  certain  dogmas  of  religion,  not  this  time  by  Quicke, 
but  by  other  ministers. 

The  rope  was  now  drawn  close  round  the  child's 
neck,  "and  the  hangman  would  have  set  fire  unto  the 
furze  before  she  was  strangled  ;  but  some,  more  charit- 
able and  tender-hearted,  cryed  to  him  to  take  away  the 
block  from  under  her  feet,  which  having  been  done, 
she  soon  fell  down  and  expired  in  a  trice." 

The  executioner  could  cause  neither  powder,  wood 
nor  fuel  to  catch  fire  till  the  girl  had  been  dead  a 
quarter  of  an  hour ;  and  then,  as  the  flames  kindled, 
the  wind  blew  the  smoke  into  the  face  of  the  nurse, 
"as  if  God  had  spoken  to  her;  'the  smoke  of  My  Fury 
and  Flames  of  My  Fiery  Vengeance  are  now  riding 
upon  the  wings  of  the  wind  towards  thee.'" 

For  two  hours  Gary  was  compelled  to  remain  and 
watch  the  death  and  burning  of  the  little  girl,  and 
again  attempts  were  made  to  wring  a  confession  from 
her.  Such  she  steadily  and  persistently  put  from  her. 
When  the  word  went  forth  to  dispatch  her,  the  execu- 
tioner could  not  be  found.  He  had  run  off  with  the 
halter  under  the  cliffs ;  and,  on  being  found,  was 


300  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

carried  by  the  exploring  party  to  the  scene  and  cast 
dead-drunk  at  the  foot  of  the  gallows,  there  to  sleep  off 
his  intoxication,  whilst  the  nurse  was  still  pestered  by 
the  Nonconforming  ministers  to  repent  and  confess. 

But  the  last  words  she  uttered  before  being  swung 
into  the  air  were:  "Judge  and  revenge  my  cause,  O 
God."  "  A  sure  proof,"  concluded  Quicke,  "that  she 
went  into  the  lake  of  brimstone  and  fire,  there  to  be 
tormented  for  ever  and  ever." 

We  are  inclined  to  judge  otherwise,  and  that  she  was 
guiltless  of  intent  to  poison  the  Weeks  family.  This 
was  done  by  the  child,  in  a  fit  of  temper  and  resent- 
ment. Only  after  this  had  been  done,  did  Cary  find 
it  out,  and,  frightened  for  the  consequences,  simulated 
sickness  and  cramps,  lest  she  should  be  accused  of  the 
poisoning.  As  to  Quicke's  statement  that  on  the  ride 
into  Plymouth  she  used  obscene  and  ribald  jests,  we  do 
not  believe  a  word  of  it.  He  was  furious  against  her 
because  she  would  not  confess ;  and  he  was  not  with 
her  on  the  ride  to  hear  what  her  words  were.  He 
invented  this,  and  put  it  into  his  narrative  to  prejudice 
the  reader  against  her  who  was  not  amenable  to  his  ex- 
hortations, and  who  accordingly  galled  his  self-conceit. 

The  authorities  for  this  tragic  story  are  three  : — 

"  Horrid  News  of  a  Barbarous  Murder  committed  at 
Plimouth  .  .  .  1676." 

"  Hell  Open'd,  or  the  Infernal  Sin  of  Murther 
Punished.  Being  a  True  Relation  of  the  Poysoning 
of  a  whole  Family  in  Plymouth  .  .  .  by  J.  Q.  (John 
Quicke),  Minister  of  the  Gospel.  London,  1676." 

"The  Poysoners  Rewarded,  or  the  Most  Barbarous 
of  Murthers  detected  and  Punished  .  .  .  London,  1687." 

Mr.  Whitfeld  has  summed  them  up  in  his  book, 
Plymouth  and  Devonport,  in  War  and  Peace.  Ply- 
mouth, 1900. 


i 


JACK    RATTENBURY 

coasts  of  Devon  and  Cornwall,  north  and 
south,  are  bold,  with  cliffs  starting  out  of  the 
sea,  white  near  the  Dorset  frontier,  then  red, 
and  then  of  limestone  marble,  or,  on  the 
north  coast,  of  slate  and  schist.  The  rocks  are  riddled 
with  caves,  the  highland  is  cleft  by  narrow  valleys 
sawn  through  their  mass  by  descending  streams.  The 
whole  coast,  north  and  south,  lends  itself  to  smug- 
gling ;  and  smuggling  had  been  carried  on  as  a  profit- 
able speculation  till  it  ceased  to  pay,  when  heavy 
duties  were  removed,  and  when  the  coastguard  became 
efficient. 

The  smugglers  formerly  ran  their  goods  into  the 
caves  when  the  weather  permitted,  or  the  preventive 
men,  nicknamed  picaroons,  were  not  on  the  look-out. 
They  stowed  away  their  goods  in  the  caves,  and  gave 
notice  to  the  farmers  and  gentry  of  the  neighbourhood, 
all  of  whom  were  provided  with  numerous  donkeys, 
which  were  forthwith  sent  down  to  the  caches,  and  the 
kegs  and  bales  were  removed  under  cover  of  night  or 
of  storm.  Few  farmhouses  and  squires'  mansions  were 
not  also  provided  with  hiding-places  in  which  to  store 
the  kegs  obtained  from  the  free-traders.  Only  the 
week  before  writing  this  I  was  shown  one  such  in  the 
depth  of  a  dense  wood,  at  Sandridge  Park  on  the 
Dart ;  externally  it  would  have  been  taken  for  a  natural 
mound  or  a  tumulus.  But  there  are  a  concealed  door 

301 


302  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

and  a  descent  by  a  flight  of  steps  into  the  subterranean 
cellar,  that  was  carefully  vaulted,  and  also  carefully 
drained. 

The  other  day  I  saw  an  old  farmhouse  in  process  of 
demolition  in  the  parish  of  Altarnun,  on  the  edge  of  the 
Bodmin  Moors.  The  great  hall  chimney  was  of  un- 
usual bulk,  bulky  as  such  chimneys  usually  are  ;  and 
when  it  was  thrown  down  it  revealed  the  explanation  of 
this  unwonted  size.  Behind  the  back  of  the  hearth  was 
a  chamber  fashioned  in  the  thickness  of  the  wall  to 
which  access  might  have  been  had  at  some  time 
through  a  low  walled-up  doorway,  that  was  concealed 
behind  the  kitchen  dresser  and  plastered  over.  This 
door  was  so  low  that  it  could  be  passed  through  only 
on  all  fours. 

Now  the  concealed  chamber  had  also  another  way  by 
which  it  could  be  entered,  and  this  was  through  a  hole 
in  the  floor  of  a  bedroom  above.  A  plank  of  the  floor 
could  be  lifted,  when  an  opening  was  disclosed  by 
which  any  one  might  pass  under  the  wall  through  a 
sort  of  door  and  down  steps  into  this  apartment,  which 
was  entirely  without  light.  Of  what  use  was  this 
singular  concealed  chamber?  There  could  be  little 
question.  It  was  a  place  in  which  formerly  kegs  of 
smuggled  spirits  and  tobacco  were  hidden.  The  place 
lies  some  fourteen  or  fifteen  miles  from  Boscastle,  a 
dangerous  little  harbour  on  the  North  Cornish  coast, 
and  about  a  mile  off  the  main  road  from  London,  by 
Exeter  and  Launceston,  to  Falmouth.  The  coach- 
travellers  in  old  days  consumed  a  good  deal  of  spirits, 
and  here  in  a  tangle  of  lanes  lay  a  little  emporium 
always  kept  well  supplied  with  a  stock  of  spirits  which 
had  not  paid  duty,  and  whence  the  taverners  along  the 
road  could  derive  the  contraband  liquor,  with  which 
they  supplied  the  travellers.  Between  this  emporium 


",  ^      ).&  AViT  T  'JS  M  3B  TO'  'l&  IT 
oi.'  bee.f,  Devon:,}) ire 

"THF,   HOB   ROY  oi  ine  WEST" 


JACK   RATTENBURY  303 

and  the  sea,  the  roads — parish  roads — lie  over  wild 
moors  or  creep  between  high  hedges  of  earth  on  which 
the  traveller  can  step  along  when  the  lane  below  is  con- 
verted into  the  bed  of  a  stream,  also  on  which  the  wary 
smuggler  could  stride,  and  keep  a  look-out  whilst  his 
laden  mules  and  asses  stumbled  forward  in  the  conceal- 
ment of  the  deep-set  lane. 

A  very  noticeable  feature  of  the  Devon  and  Cornwall 
coasts  is  the  trenched  and  banked-up  paths  from  the 
little  coves.  By  these  paths  the  kegs  and  bales  were 
removed  under  cover  of  night. 

As  an  excuse  for  keeping  droves  of  donkeys,  it  was 
pretended  that  the  sea-sand  and  the  kelp  served  as 
admirable  dressing  for  the  land  ;  and  no  doubt  so  they 
did  ;  the  trains  of  asses  sometimes  came  up  laden  with 
sacks  of  sand,  but  not  infrequently  with  kegs  of 
brandy. 

Now  a  wary  preventive  man  might  watch  too 
narrowly  the  proceedings  of  these  trains  of  asses. 
Accordingly  squires,  yeomen,  farmers  alike  set  to 
work  to  cut  deep  ways  in  the  face  of  the  downs,  along 
the  slopes  of  the  hills,  and  bank  them  up,  so  that 
whole  caravans  of  laden  beasts  might  travel  up  and 
down  absolutely  unseen  from  the  sea  and  greatly 
screened  from  the  land  side. 

Undoubtedly  the  sunken  ways  and  high  banks  are  a 
great  protection  against  the  weather.  So  they  were 
represented  to  be — and  no  doubt  greatly  were  the  good 
folks  commended  for  their  consideration  for  the  beasts 
and  their  drivers,  in  thus  at  great  cost  shutting  them  off 
from  the  violence  of  the  gale.  Nevertheless,  it  can 
hardly  be  doubted  that  concealment  from  the  eye  of 
the  coastguard  was  sought  by  this  means  quite  as 
much  as,  if  not  more  than  the  sheltering  the  beasts  of 
burden  from  the  weather. 


304  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

A  few  years  ago,  an  old  church-house  in  my  own 
parish  was  demolished.  The  church-house  was  origin- 
ally the  place  where  the  parishioners  from  a  distance, 
in  a  country  district,  put  up  between  the  morning  and 
afternoon  services  on  the  Sunday,  and  was  used  for 
"  church  ales,"  etc.  It  was  always  a  long  building  of 
two  stories  ;  that  below  served  for  the  men,  that  above 
for  the  women,  and  each  had  its  great  fireplace.  Here 
they  ate  and  chattered  between  services,  as  already  said, 
and  here  were  served  with  ale  by  the  sexton  or  clerk. 
In  a  great  many  cases  these  church-houses  have  been 
converted  into  taverns.  Now  this  one  in  the  writer's 
parish  had  never  been  thus  altered.  When  it  was 
pulled  down,  it  was  found  that  the  floor  of  large  slate 
slabs  in  the  lower  room  was  undermined  with  hollows 
like  graves,  only  of  much  larger  dimensions — and  these 
had  served  for  the  concealment  of  smuggled  spirits. 
The  clerk  had,  in  fact,  dug  them  out,  and  did  a  little 
trade  on  Sundays  with  selling  contraband  liquor  from 
these  stores. 

The  story  is  told  of  a  certain  baronet  near  Dart- 
mouth, now  deceased,  who  had  a  handsome  house  and 
park  near  the  coast.  The  preventive  men  had  long 
suspected  that  Sir  Thomas  had  done  more  than  wink  at 
the  proceedings  of  the  receivers  of  smuggled  goods. 
His  park  dipped  in  graceful  undulations  to  the  sea  and 
to  a  lovely  creek,  in  which  was  his  boathouse.  But 
they  never  had  been  able  to  establish  the  fact  that  he 
favoured  the  smugglers,  and  allowed  them  to  use  his 
grounds  and  outbuildings. 

However,  at  last,  one  night  a  party  of  men  with  kegs 
on  their  shoulders  were  seen  stealing  through  the  park 
towards  the  mansion.  They  were  observed  also  leav- 
ing without  the  kegs.  Accordingly,  next  morning  the 
officer  in  command  called,  together  with  several  under- 


JACK   RATTENBURY  305 

lings.  He  apologized  to  the  baronet  for  any  incon- 
venience his  visit  might  occasion — he  was  quite  sure 
that  Sir  Thomas  was  ignorant  of  the  use  made  of 
his  park,  his  landing-place,  even  of  his  house — but 
there  was  evidence  that  "run"  goods  had  been  brought 
to  the  mansion  the  preceding  night,  and  it  was  but  the 
duty  of  the  officer  to  point  this  out  to  Sir  Thomas,  and 
ask  him  to  permit  a  search — which  would  be  conducted 
with  all  the  delicacy  possible.  The  baronet,  an  ex- 
ceedingly urbane  man,  promptly  expressed  his  readi- 
ness to  allow  house,  cellar,  attic — every  part  of  his 
house,  and  every  outbuilding — unreservedly  to  be 
searched.  He  produced  his  keys.  The  cellar  was,  of 
course,  the  place  where  wine  and  spirits  were  most 
likely  to  be  found — let  that  be  explored  first.  He  had 
a  cellar-book,  which  he  produced,  and  he  would  be 
glad  if  the  officer  would  compare  what  he  found  below 
with  his  entries  in  the  book.  The  search  was  made 
with  some  zest,  for  the  Government  officers  had  long 
looked  on  Sir  Thomas  with  mistrust ;  and  yet  were 
somewhat  disarmed  by  the  frankness  with  which  he 
met  them.  They  ransacked  the  mansion  from  garret 
to  cellar,  and  every  part  of  the  outbuildings,  and  found 
nothing.  They  had  omitted  to  look  into  the  family 
coach,  which  was  full  of  rum  kegs,  so  full  that,  to 
prevent  the  springs  being  broken  or  showing  that  the 
carriage  was  laden,  the  axle-trees  were  " trigged  up" 
below  with  blocks  of  wood. 

When  a  train  of  asses  or  mules  conveyed  contraband 
goods  along  a  road,  it  was  often  customary  to  put 
stockings  over  the  hoofs  to  deaden  the  sound  of  their 
steps. 

One  night  many  years  ago,  a  friend  of  the  writer — a 
parson  on  the  north  coast  of  Cornwall — was  walking 
along  a  lane  in  his  parish  at  night.  It  was  near 
x 


306  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

midnight.  He  had  been  to  see,  and  had  been  sitting 
up  with,  a  dying  person. 

As  he  came  to  a  branch  in  the  lane  he  saw  a  man 
there,  and  he  called  out  "  Good  night."  He  then  stood 
still  a  moment,  to  consider  which  lane  he  should  take. 
Both  led  to  his  rectory,  but  one  was  somewhat  shorter 
than  the  other.  The  shorter  was,  however,  stony  and 
very  wet.  He  chose  the  longer  way,  and  turned  to  the 
right.  Thirty  years  after  he  was  speaking  with  a 
parishioner  who  was  ill,  when  the  man  said  to  him  sud- 
denly :  "Do  you  remember  such  and  such  a  night, 
when  you  came  to  the  Y  ?  You  had  been  with 
Nankevill,  who  was  dying." 

"  Yes,  I  do  recall  something  about  it." 

*  '  Do  you  remember  you  said  '  Good  night '  to  me  ?  " 

"  I  remember  that  someone  was  there;  I  did  not 
know  it  was  you." 

"And  you  turned  right  instead  of  left?" 

"I  daresay." 

"  If  you  had  taken  the  left-hand  road  you  would 
never  have  seen  next  morning." 

"Why  so?" 

"There  was  a  large  cargo  of  f  run '  goods  being 
transported  that  night — and  you  would  have  met  it." 

"What  of  that?" 

"What  of  that?  You  would  have  been  chucked 
over  the  cliffs." 

"  But  how  could  they  suppose  I  would  peach  ?  " 

"Sir!  They'd  ha'  took  good  care  you  shouldn't  ha' 
had  the  chance  !  " 

The  principal  ports  to  which  the  smugglers  ran  were 
Cherbourg  and  Roscoff ;  but  also  to  the  Channel  Islands. 
During  the  European  War,  and  when  Napoleon  had 
formed,  and  forced  on  the  humbled  nations  of  Europe, 
his  great  scheme  for  the  exclusion  of  English  goods 


JACK   RATTENBURY  307 

from  all  ports,  our  smugglers  did  a  rare  business 
in  conveying  prohibited  English  wares  to  France  and 
returning  with  smuggled  spirits  to  our  shores,  reaping 
a  harvest  both  ways.  If  a  revenue  cutter  hove  in  sight 
and  gave  chase,  they  sank  their  kegs,  but  with  a  small 
buoy  above  to  indicate  where  they  were,  and  afterwards 
they  would  return  and  "  creep  "  for  them  with  grappling 
irons.  But  the  preventive  officers  were  on  the  alert, 
and  although  they  might  find  no  contraband  on  the 
vessel  they  overhauled,  yet  the  officers  threw  out  their 
irons  and  searched  the  sea  in  the  wake  of  the  ship,  and 
kept  a  sharp  look-out  for  the  buoys.  If  the  contraband 
articles  were  brought  ashore,  and  there  was  no  oppor- 
tunity to  remove  them  at  once,  they  were  buried  in  the 
sand,  to  be  exhumed  when  the  coast  was  clear. 

The  smugglers  had  more  enemies  to  contend  with 
than  the  preventive  men.  As  they  were  known  to  be 
daring  and  experienced  sailors,  they  were  in  great 
request  to  man  the  navy,  and  every  crib  and  den  was 
searched  for  them  that  they  might  be  impressed. 

The  life  was  hard,  full  of  risks,  and  although  these 
men  sometimes  made  great  hauls,  yet  they  as  often 
lost  their  cargoes  and  their  vessels.  They  were  very 
frequently  in  the  pay  of  merchants  in  England,  who 
provided  them  with  their  ships  and  bailed  them  out 
when  they  were  arrested.  Rarely  did  a  smuggler 
realize  a  competence,  he  almost  invariably  ended  his 
days  in  poverty.  One  of  the  most  notorious  of  the  Devon 
free-traders  was  Jack  Rattenbury,  who  was  commonly 
called  "The  Rob-Roy  of  the  West."  He  wrote  his 
Memoirs  when  advanced  in  life,  and  when  he  had  given 
up  smuggling,  not  that  the  trade  had  lost  its 
attraction  for  him,  but  because  he  suffered  from  gout, 
and  he  ended  his  days  as  a  contractor  for  blue-lias  lime 
for  the  harbour  in  course  of  erection  at  Sidmouth. 


308  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

It  will  not  be  necessary  to  give  the  life  of  this  man  in 
full.  It  was  divided  into  two  periods — his  career  on 
a  privateer  and  his  career  as  a  smuggler — spent  partly  in 
fishing,  partly  as  a  pilot,  mainly  in  carrying  on  free 
trade  in  spirits,  between  Cherbourg,  or  the  Channel 
Islands,  and  Devon.  Naturally,  Rattenbury  speaks 
of  himself  and  his  comrades  as  all  honourable  men,  it 
is  the  informers  who  are  the  spawn  of  hell.  The 
record  year  by  year  of  his  exploits  as  a  smuggler,  presents 
little  variety,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  his  deeds  as 
a  privateer.  We  shall  therefore  give  but  a  few  in- 
stances illustrative  of  his  career  in  both  epochs  of  his 
life. 

John  Rattenbury  was  born  at  Beer  in  the  year  1778. 
Beer  lies  in  a  cleft  of  the  chalk  hills,  and  consists  of  one 
long  street  of  cottages  from  the  small  harbour.  His 
father  was  a  shoemaker,  but  tired  of  his  awl  and  leather 
apron,  he  cast  both  aside  and  went  on  board  a  man-of- 
war  before  John  was  born,  and  was  never  heard  of 
more.  It  is  possible  that  Mrs.  Rattenbury's  tongue 
may  have  been  the  stimulating  cause  of  his  desertion 
of  the  last. 

The  mother  of  John,  frugal  and  industrious,  sold  fish 
for  her  support  and  that  of  her  child,  and  contrived  to 
maintain  herself  and  him  without  seeking  parish  relief. 
The  boy  naturally  took  to  the  water,  as  all  the  men 
of  Beer  were  fishermen  or  smugglers,  and  at  the  age 
of  nine  he  went  in  the  boat  with  his  uncle  after  fish, 
but  happening  one  day  when  left  in  charge  to  lose  the 
rudder  of  the  row-boat,  his  uncle  gave  him  the  rope's 
end  so  severely  that  the  boy  ran  away  and  went  as 
apprentice  to  a  Brixham  fisherman  ;  but  this  man  also 
beat  and  otherwise  maltreated  him,  and  again  he  ran 
away.  As  he  could  get  no  employment  at  Beer,  he 
went  to  Bridport  and  engaged  on  board  a  vessel  in  the 


JACK    RATTENBURY  309 

coasting  trade.  But  he  did  not  remain  long  with  his 
master  and  returned  to  Beer,  where  he  found  his  uncle 
entering  men  for  privateering,  and  this  fired  John 
Rattenbury's  ambition  and  he  volunteered. 

"  About  the  latter  end  of  March,  1792,  we  proceeded 
on  our  first  cruise  off  the  Western  Islands  :  and  even 
now,  notwithstanding  the  lapse  of  years,  I  can  recall 
the  triumph  and  exultation  which  rushed  through  my 
veins  as  I  saw  the  shores  of  my  native  land  recede,  and 
the  vast  ocean  opening  before  me." 

Instead  of  making  prizes,  the  privateer  and  her  crew 
were  made  a  prize  of  and  conveyed  to  Bordeaux,  where 
the  crew  were  detained  as  prisoners.  John  Rattenbury, 
however,  contrived  to  make  his  escape  to  an  American 
vessel  lying  in  the  harbour,  on  which,  after  detention 
for  twelve  months,  he  sailed  to  New  York.  There 
he  entered  on  an  American  vessel  bound  for  Copen- 
hagen, and  on  reaching  that  place  invested  all  the 
money  he  had  earned  and  carried  away  with  him  from 
Bordeaux  in  fiddles  and  clothes.  Then  he  sailed  in 
another  American  vessel  for  Guernsey,  where  he  profit- 
ably disposed  of  his  fiddles  and  clothes.  He  had 
engaged  with  the  captain  for  the  whole  voyage  to  New 
York,  but  when  at  Guernsey  at  his  request  the  captain 
allowed  him  to  return  to  England  to  visit  his  family, 
on  passing  his  word  that  he  would  rejoin  the  ship 
within  a  specified  time.  Rattenbury  returned  to  Beer, 
and  broke  his  promise,  which  he  regards  as  a  mistake. 
He  remained  at  home  six  months  occupied  in  fishing, 
"but,"  says  he,  "I  found  the  employment  very  dull 
and  tiresome  after  the  roving  life  I  had  led  ;  and  as  the 
smuggling  trade  was  then  plied  very  briskly  in  the 
neighbourhood,  I  determined  to  try  my  fortune  in  it." 
Fortune  in  smuggling  as  in  gambling  favours  beginners 
so  as  to  lure  them  on.  However,  after  a  few  months, 


310  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Rattenbury  had  lapses  into  the  paths  of  honesty.  In 
one  of  these,  soon  after,  he  did  one  of  the  most  bril- 
liant achievements  of  his  life.  I  will  give  it  in  his  own 
words : — 

"  Being  in  want  of  a  situation,  I  applied  to  Captain 
Jarvis,  and  agreed  to  go  with  him  in  a  vessel  called  the 
Friends,  which  belonged  to  Beer  and  Seaton.  As  soon 
as  she  was  rigged  we  proceeded  to  sea,  but,  contrary 
winds  coming  on,  we  were  obliged  to  put  into  Lyme ; 
the  next  day,  the  wind  being  favourable,  we  put  to  sea 
again,  and  proceeded  to  Tenby,  where  we  were  bound 
for  culm.  At  eight  o'clock  the  captain  set  the  watch, 
and  it  was  my  turn  to  remain  below  ;  at  twelve  I  went 
on  deck  and  counted  till  four,  when  I  went  below 
again,  but  was  scarcely  dropped  asleep,  when  I  was 
aroused  by  hearing  the  captain  exclaim,  *  Come  on 
deck,  my  good  fellow  !  Here  is  a  privateer,  and  we 
shall  all  be  taken/  When  I  got  up,  I  found  the 
privateer  close  alongside  of  us.  The  captain  hailed  us 
in  English,  and  asked  us  from  what  port  we  came  and 
where  we  were  bound.  Our  captain  told  the  exact 
truth,  and  he  then  sent  a  boat  with  an  officer  in  her  to 
take  all  hands  on  board  his  own  vessel,  which  he  did, 
except  myself  and  a  little  boy,  who  had  never  been  to 
sea  before.  He  then  sent  the  prize-master  and  four 
men  on  board  our  brig,  with  orders  to  take  her  into  the 
nearest  French  port.  When  the  privateer  was  gone, 
the  prize-master  ordered  me  to  go  aloft  and  loose  the 
maintop-gallant  sail.  When  I  came  down,  I  perceived 
that  he  was  steering  very  wildly  through  ignorance  of 
the  coast,  and  I  offered  to  take  the  helm,  to  which  he 
consented,  and  directed  me  to  steer  south-east  by 
south.  He  went  below,  and  was  engaged  in  drinking 
and  carousing  with  his  companions.  They  likewise 
sent  me  up  a  glass  of  grog  occasionally  which  animated 


JACK   RATTENBURY  311 

my  spirits,  and  I  began  to  conceive  a  hope  not  only 
of  escaping,  but  also  of  being  revenged  on  the  enemy. 
A  fog  too  came  on,  which  befriended  the  design  I 
had  in  view  ;  I  therefore  altered  the  course  to  east  by 
north,  expecting  that  we  might  fall  in  with  some 
English  vessel.  As  the  day  advanced  the  fog  gradually 
dispersed,  and,  the  sky  getting  clearer,  we  could  per- 
ceive land  ;  the  prize-master  and  his  companions  asked 
me  what  land  it  was  ;  I  told  them  that  it  was  Alderney, 
which  they  believed,  though  at  the  same  time  we  were 
just  off  Portland.  We  then  hauled  our  wind  more  to 
the  south  until  we  cleared  the  Bill ;  soon  after  we  came 
in  sight  of  land  off  St.  Alban's  :  the  prize-master  then 
again  asked  what  land  it  was  which  we  saw  ;  I  told  him 
it  was  Cape  La  Hogue.  My  companions  then  became 
suspicious  and  angry,  thinking  I  had  deceived  them, 
and  they  took  a  dog  that  had  belonged  to  our  captain, 
and  threw  him  overboard  in  a  great  rage  and  knocked 
down  his  house.  This  was  done  as  a  caution  to 
intimate  to  me  what  would  be  my  fate  if  I  had  deceived 
them.  We  were  now  within  a  league  of  Swanage,  and 
I  persuaded  them  to  go  on  shore  to  get  a  pilot :  they 
then  hoisted  out  a  boat,  into  which  I  got  with  three  of 
them,  not  without  serious  apprehension  as  to  what 
would  be  the  event.  We  now  came  so  near  the  shore 
that  the  people  hailed  us,  and  told  them  to  keep 
further  west.  My  companions  began  to  swear,  and 
said  the  people  spoke  English :  this  I  denied,  and 
urged  them  to  hail  again  ;  but  as  they  were  rising  to 
do  so,  I  plunged  overboard  and  came  up  the  other 
side  of  the  boat ;  they  then  struck  at  me  with  their 
oars,  and  snapped  a  pistol  at  me,  but  it  missed  fire.  I 
still  continued  swimming,  and  every  time  they  attempted 
to  strike  me,  I  made  a  dive  and  disappeared.  The  boat 
in  which  they  were  now  took  water,  and  finding  they 


312  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

were  engaged  in  a  vain  pursuit,  and  endangering  their 
own  safety,  they  suddenly  turned  round,  and  rowed 
away  as  fast  as  possible  to  regain  the  vessel.  Having 
got  rid  of  my  foes,  I  put  forth  all  my  efforts  to  get  to 
the  shore,  which  I  at  last  accomplished.  In  the  mean- 
time, the  men  in  the  boat  reached  the  brig,  and  spread- 
ing all  canvas,  bore  away  for  the  French  coast.  Being 
afraid  they  would  get  off  with  the  vessel,  I  immediately 
sent  two  men,  one  to  the  signal-house  at  St.  Alban's 
and  another  to  Swanage,  to  obtain  all  the  assistance 
they  could  to  bring  her  back. 

"  Fortunately,  there  was  at  the  time  in  Swanage  Bay 
a  small  cutter,  belonging  to  His  Majesty's  customs, 
called  the  Nancy,  commanded  by  Captain  Willis  ;  and 
as  soon  as  he  had  received  the  information,  he  made  all 
sail  after  them  ;  but  I  was  not  on  board,  not  being  able 
to  reach  them  in  time.  The  cutter  came  up  with  the 
brig,  and  by  retaking,  brought  her  into  Cowes  the 
same  night,  where  the  men  were  put  in  prison.  Captain 
Willis  then  sent  me  a  letter,  stating  what  he  had  done, 
and  advising  me  to  go  as  quickly  as  possible  to  the 
owners,  and  inform  them  of  all  that  had  taken  place. 
This  I  did  without  delay,  and  one  of  them  immediately 
set  off  for  Cowes,  when  he  got  her  back  by  paying 
salvage — but  I  never  received  any  reward  for  the 
service  I  had  rendered,  either  from  the  owners  or  from 
any  other  quarter." 

John  Rattenbury  was  then  aged  sixteen. 

As  Rattenbury  was  returning  to  Devon  in  a  cutter, 
the  vessel  was  stopped  and  overhauled  by  a  lieutenant 
and  his  gang  seeking  able-bodied  seamen  to  impress 
them. 

1 '  When  it  came  to  my  turn  to  be  examined,  I  told 
him  I  was  an  apprentice,  and  that  my  name  was 
German  Phillips  (that  being  the  name  of  a  young  man 


JACK   RATTENBURY  313 

whose  indenture  I  had  for  a  protection).  This  stratagem 
was  of  no  avail  with  the  keen-eyed  lieutenant,  and  he 
took  me  immediately  on  board  the  Royal  William^  a 
guard  ship,  then  lying  at  Spithead.  I  remained  in 
close  confinement  for  a  month,  hoping  by  some  chance 
I  might  be  able  to  effect  my  escape  ;  but  seeing  no 
prospect  of  accomplishing  my  design,  I  at  last  volun- 
teered my  services  for  the  Royal  Navy ;  if  that  can  be 
called  a  voluntary  act,  which  is  the  effect  of  necessity, 
not  of  inclination. 

"And  here  I  cannot  help  making  a  remark  on  the 
common  practice  of  impressing  seamen  in  time  of  war. 
Our  country  is  called  the  land  of  liberty  ;  we  possess  a 
just  and  invincible  aversion  to  slavery  at  home  and  in 
our  foreign  colonies,  and  it  is  triumphantly  said  that 
a  slave  cannot  breathe  in  England.  Yet  how  is  this 
to  be  reconciled  with  the  practice  of  tearing  men  from 
their  weeping  and  afflicted  families,  and  from  the  peace- 
able and  useful  pursuits  of  merchandise  and  commerce, 
and  chaining  them  to  a  situation  which  is  alike  repug- 
nant to  their  feelings  and  their  principles?" 

At  Spithead  Rattenbury  succeeded  in  making  his 
escape.  But  he  had  left  his  pocket-book  on  board,  and 
by  this  means  the  lieutenant  found  out  what  were  his 
real  name  and  abode,  and  thenceforth  he  was  hunted  as 
a  deserter  and  put  to  great  shifts  to  save  himself  from 
capture. 

In  1800,  when  he  was  twenty-one,  he  was  taken 
in  a  vessel  by  a  Spanish  privateer  and  brought  to  Vigo; 
but  on  shore  made  himself  so  useful  and  was  so  cheer- 
ful that  he  was  given  his  liberty  and  travelled  on  foot 
to  Oporto,  where  he  found  a  vessel  bound  for  Guernsey, 
laden  with  oranges  and  lemons,  and  worked  his  way 
home  in  her. 

1 '  Before  I  set  out  on  my  last  voyage,  I  had  fixed  my 


314  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

affections  on  a  young  woman  in  the  neighbourhood, 
and  we  were  married  on  the  I7th  of  April,  1801.  We 
then  went  to  reside  at  Lyme,  and  finding  that  I  could 
not  obtain  any  regular  employment  at  home,  I  again 
determined  to  try  my  fortune  in  privateering,  and 
accordingly  engaged  myself  with  Captain  Diamond  of 
the  Alert." 

But  this  expedition  led  to  no  results.  No  captures 
were  made,  and  Rattenbury  returned  home  as  poor  as 
when  he  started,  and  almost  at  once  acted  as  pilot  to 
foreign  vessels.  On  one  occasion  a  lieutenant  came 
on  board  to  impress  men,  and  took  Rattenbury  and 
put  him  in  confinement.  Next  day  he  told  the  lieu- 
tenant that  if  he  would  accompany  him  to  Lyme,  he 
would  show  him  a  public-house  where  he  was  sure  to 
find  men  whom  he  could  impress.  The  officer  con- 
sented and  landed  with  Jack  and  some  other  seamen, 
and  proceeded  to  the  tavern  ;  but  finding  none  there 
he  ordered  Rattenbury  back  to  the  boat.  At  that 
moment  up  came  Rattenbury's  wife,  and  he  made  a 
rush  to  escape  whilst  she  threw  herself  upon  the  lieu- 
tenant and  had  a  scuffle  with  him  ;  and  as  the  townfolk 
took  her  part,  Rattenbury  managed  to  escape. 

On  another  occasion  he  was  at  Weymouth,  and  the 
same  lieutenant,  learning  this  fact,  tracked  him  to  the 
tavern  where  he  slept,  and  burst  in  at  2  a.m.  Ratten- 
bury had  just  time  to  climb  up  the  chimney  before  the 
officer  and  his  men  entered.  They  searched  the  house, 
but  could  not  find  him.  When  they  were  gone  he 
descended  much  bruised,  half-stifled,  and  covered  with 
soot. 

"  Wearied  out  by  the  incessant  pursuit  of  my  enemies, 
and  finding  that  I  was  followed  by  them  from  place  to 
place  like  a  hunted  stag  by  the  hounds,  I  at  last  deter- 
mined, with  a  view  to  getting  rid  of  them,  again  to  go 


JACK   RATTENBURY  315 

privateering."  Accordingly  he  shipped  on  board  the 
Unity  cutter  and  cruised  about  Madeira  and  Teneriffe, 
looking  out  for  prizes.  But  this  expedition  was  as  un- 
successful as  the  other,  and  in  August,  1805,  he  returned 
home;  "and  I  determined  never  again  to  engage  in 
privateering,  a  resolution  which  I  have  ever  since  kept, 
and  of  which  I  have  never  repented." 

We  now  enter  on  the  second  period  of  Rattenbury's 
career. 

"On  my  return  home,  I  engaged  ostensibly  in  the 
trade  of  fishing,  but  in  reality  was  principally  em- 
ployed in  that  of  smuggling.  My  first  voyage  was  to 
Christchurch,  in  an  open  boat,  where  we  took  in  a 
cargo  of  contraband  goods,  and,  on  our  return,  safely 
landed  the  whole. 

"Being  elated  with  this  success,  we  immediately 
proceeded  to  the  same  port  again,  but  on  our  way  we 
fell  in  with  the  Roebuck  tender  :  a  warm  chase  ensued  ; 
and,  in  firing  at  us,  a  man  named  Slaughter,  on 
board  the  tender,  had  the  misfortune  to  blow  his  arm 
off.  Eventually,  the  enemy  came  up  with  and  captured 
us  ;  and,  on  being  taken  on  board,  found  the  captain  in 
a  great  rage  in  consequence  of  the  accident,  and  he 
swore  he  would  put  us  all  on  board  a  man-of-war.  He 
got  his  boat  out  to  take  the  wounded  man  on  shore ; 
and,  while  this  was  going  forward,  I  watched  an  op- 
portunity, and  stowed  myself  away  in  her,  unknown  to 
any  person  there.  I  remained  without  being  perceived, 
amidst  the  confusion  that  prevailed ;  and  when  they 
reached  the  shore,  I  left  the  boat,  and  got  clear  off. 
The  same  night,  I  went  in  a  boat  that  I  had  borrowed, 
alongside  the  tender,  and  rescued  all  my  companions  ; 
we  likewise  brought  three  kegs  of  gin  away  with  us, 
and  landed  safe  at  Weymouth,  from  whence  we  made 
the  best  of  our  way  home. 


316  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"  The  same  winter  I  made  seven  voyages  in  a  smug- 
gling vessel  which  had  just  been  built ;  five  of  them 
were  attended  with  success,  and  two  of  them  turned 
out  failures. 

"  In  the  spring  of  1806,  I  went  to  Alderney,  where 
we  took  in  a  cargo  ;  but,  returning,  fell  in  with  the 
Duke  of  York  cutter,  in  consequence  of  getting  too  near 
her  boat  in  a  fog  without  perceiving  her.  Being  un- 
able to  make  our  escape,  we  were  immediately  put  on 
board  the  cutter,  and  the  crew  picked  up  some  of  our 
kegs  which  were  floating  near  by,  but  we  had  pre- 
viously sunk  the  principal  part.  As  soon  as  we  were 
secured,  the  captain  called  us  into  his  cabin,  and  told 
us  that  if  we  would  take  up  the  kegs  for  him,  he  would 
give  us  our  boat  and  liberty,  on  the  honour  of  a  gentle- 
man. To  this  proposal  we  agreed,  and  having  pointed 
out  where  they  lay,  we  took  them  up  for  him.  We  then 
expected  that  the  captain  would  have  been  as  good  as 
his  word ;  but,  instead  of  doing  so,  he  disgracefully 
departed  from  it,  and  a  fresh  breeze  springing  up,  we 
steered  away  hard  for  Dartmouth.  When  we  came 
alongside  the  castle,  the  cutter  being  then  going  at  the 
rate  of  6  knots,  I  jumped  overboard  ;  but  having  a  boat 
in  her  stern,  they  immediately  lowered  her  with  a  man. 
I  succeeded,  however,  in  getting  on  shore,  and  concealed 
myself  among  some  bushes  ;  but  two  women  who  saw 
me  go  into  the  thicket  inadvertently  told  the  boat's 
crew  where  I  was,  upon  which  they  retook  me,  and  I 
was  carried  on  board  quite  exhausted  with  the  fatigue 
and  loss  of  blood,  for  I  had  cut  myself  in  different 
places." 

Next  morning  Rattenbury  was  brought  up  before 
the  magistrates  at  Dartmouth  along  with  his  comrades 
in  misfortune,  and  they  were  sentenced  to  pay  a  fine  of 
a  hundred  pounds  each,  or  else  to  serve  on  board  a 


JACK   RATTENBURY  317 

man-of-war,  or  go  to  prison.  They  elected  the  last, 
and  were  confined  in  a  wretched  den  where  they 
could  hardly  move  and  breathe.  Worn  out  by  their 
discomfort,  they  agreed  to  enlist,  and  were  liberated 
and  removed  to  a  brig  in  Dartmouth  roads.  On  com- 
ing on  board  he  found  all  the  officers  drinking,  and 
that  the  mainsail  had  been  partly  hoisted  so  that  the 
officers  could  not  command  a  prospect  of  the  shore. 
Seizing  his  opportunity  he  jumped  overboard,  and  see- 
ing a  boat  approaching  held  up  his  hand  to  the  man  in 
it,  as  a  signal  to  be  taken  up.  The  fellow  did  so,  and 
in  less  than  five  minutes  he  was  landed  at  Kings- 
wear,  opposite  Dartmouth.  He  paid  the  fisherman  a 
pound,  and  made  his  way  to  Brixham,  where  he  hired 
a  fishing-smack  and  got  safely  home. 

Soon  after  he  purchased  part  of  a  galley,  and  re- 
sumed his  smuggling  expeditions,  and  made  several 
successful  trips  in  her,  till  he  lost  his  galley  at  sea. 
Then  he  went  to  Alderney  in  an  open  boat,  with  two 
other  men,  to  get  kegs,  but  on  their  way  back  were 
chased,  captured,  and  carried  into  Falmouth,  where  he 
was  sentenced  to  be  sent  to  gaol  at  Bodmin. 

"  We  were  put  into  two  post-chaises,  with  two  con- 
stables to  take  care  of  us.  As  our  guards  stopped  at 
almost  every  public-house,  towards  evening  they  be- 
came pretty  merry.  When  we  came  to  the  '  Indian 
Queen  ' — a  public-house  a  few  miles  from  Bodmin — 
while  the  constables  were  taking  their  potations,  I 
bribed  the  drivers  not  to  interfere.  Having  finished, 
the  constables  ordered  us  again  into  the  chaise,  but  we 
refused.  A  scuffle  ensued.  One  of  them  collared  me, 
some  blows  were  exchanged,  and  he  fired  a  pistol,  the 
ball  of  which  went  close  to  my  head.  My  companion 
in  the  meantime  was  encountering  the  other  constable, 
and  he  called  on  the  drivers  to  assist,  but  they  said  it 


318  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

was  their  duty  to  attend  the  horses.  We  soon  got  the 
upper  hand  of  our  opponents,  and  seeing  a  cottage 
near,  I  ran  towards  it,  and  the  woman  who  occupied  it 
was  so  kind  as  to  show  me  through  her  house  into  the 
garden  and  to  point  out  the  road." 

Eventually  he  reached  Newquay  with  his  comrade. 
Thence  they  hired  horses  to  Mevagissey,  where  they 
took  a  boat  for  Budleigh  Salterton.  On  the  following 
day  they  walked  to  Beer. 

This  is  but  a  sample  of  one  year  out  of  many.  He 
was  usually  engaged  in  shady  operations,  getting  him 
into  trouble.  On  one  occasion  he  undertook  to  carry 
four  French  officers  across  the  Channel  who  had  made 
their  escape  from  the  prison  at  Tiverton,  for  the  sum 
of  a  hundred  pounds,  but  was  caught,  and  narrowly 
escaped  severe  punishment.  Soon  after  that  he  was 
arrested  as  a  deserter,  by  a  lieutenant  of  the  sea- 
fencibles  when  he  was  in  a  public-house  drinking 
along  with  a  sergeant  and  some  privates.  But  he 
broke  away  and  jumped  into  the  cellar,  where  he 
divested  himself  of  shirt  and  jacket,  armed  himself 
with  a  reaping-hook,  and  closing  the  lower  part  of  a 
half-hatch  door  stood  at  bay,  vowing  he  would  reap 
down  the  first  man  who  ventured  to  attack  him.  His 
appearance  was  so  formidable,  his  resolution  was  so 
well  known,  that  the  soldiers,  ten  in  number,  hesitated. 
As  they  stood  doubtful  as  to  what  to  do,  some  women 
ran  into  the  house  crying  out  that  a  vessel  had  drifted 
ashore,  and  a  boy  was  in  danger  of  being  drowned, 
that  help  was  urgently  needed.  This  attracted  the 
attention  of  the  soldiers,  and  whilst  they  were  dis- 
cussing what  was  to  be  done,  Rattenbury  leaped  over 
the  hatch,  dashed  through  the  midst  of  them,  and 
being  without  jacket  and  shirt  slipped  between  their 
fingers.  He  ran  to  the  beach,  jumped  into  a  boat,  got 


JACK   RATTENBURY  319 

on  board  his  vessel,  and  hoisted  the  colours.  The  story 
told  by  the  women  was  a  device  to  distract  the  attention 
of  his  assailants.  The  lieutenant  was  furious,  especi- 
ally at  seeing  the  colours  flying,  as  a  sign  of  triumph 
on  the  part  of  Rattenbury,  who  spread  sail  and  scudded 
away  to  Alderney,  took  in  a  cargo  of  contraband 
spirits,  and  returned  safely  with  it. 

Occasionally,  to  give  fresh  zest  to  his  lawless  trans- 
actions, he  did  an  honest  day's  work,  as  when  he 
piloted  safely  into  harbour  a  transport  vessel  that  was 
in  danger.  We  need  not  follow  him  through  a  succes- 
sion of  hair's-breadth  escapes,  of  successes  and  losses, 
imprisonments  and  frauds.  He  carries  on  his  story  to 
1836,  when,  so  little  had  he  profited  by  his  free-trading 
expeditions,  that  he  was  fain  to  accept  a  pension  from 
Lord  Rolle  of  a  shilling  a  week. 

NOTE.— There  is  an  article  by  Mr.  Maxwell  Adams  on  "  Jack  Ratten- 
bury "  in  Snell's  Memorials  of  Old  Devonshire. 


JOHN    BARNES,    TAVERNER   AND 
HIGHWAYMAN 


f  "^HE  u  Black  Horse"  was  an  old  inn  near 
Southgate,  Exeter.  The  south  gate  was 
perhaps  the  strongest  of  all  the  gates.  It 
-*-  was  defended  by  two  massive  drums  of 
towers,  and  there  was  a  double  access  to  the  town 
through  it,  the  first  gate  leading  into  a  yard  with  a 
second  gate  behind.  Holy  Trinity  Church,  with  a  red 
tower  and  pinnacles,  was  close  to  the  inner  gate,  and 
nigh  by  that  swung  the  sign  of  the  "  Black  Horse." 
The  whole  group  was  eminently  picturesque.  All  was 
effaced  in  1819;  the  gabled  houses  have  been  destroyed, 
not  a  stone  left  upon  another  of  the  noble  gateway ; 
even  Trinity  Church  was  pulled  down,  and  a  despic- 
able cardboard  edifice  erected  in  its  room  as  a  specimen 
of  the  utter  degradation  to  which  art  had  fallen  at  that 
period. 

John  Barnes  was  taverner  at  the  "  Black  Horse"  in 
and  about  the  years  1670-5,  during  which  he  had  three 
children  christened  in  Trinity  Church.  He  kept  his 
tavern  well.  His  wife  was  reputed  to  be  a  quiet,  tidy, 
and  respectable  woman,  and  John  Barnes  professed  to 
be  a  hot  and  strong  Presbyterian,  and  he  made  of  his 
house  a  rally  ing-place  of  the  godly  who  were  in  a  low 
way  after  the  Restoration  and  the  ejection  from  their 
benefices  of  the  ministers  who  had  been  intruded  into 

320 


JOHN   BARNES,   TAVERNER  321 

them  during  the  days  of  the  Commonwealth,  when  the 
Church  pastors  were  ejected.  It  was  turn  and  turn 
about.  These  latter  had  been  thrown  out  of  their  nest 
by  Independent  and  Presbyterian  cuckoos,  and  now  the 
cuckoos  had  to  go  and  the  original  owners  of  the  nests 
were  reinstated.  But  the  cuckoos  did  not  like  it,  and 
the  Puritans  were  very  sore  afflicted,  and  liked  to  meet 
and  grumble  and  testify,  over  ale  and  cyder,  in  John 
Barnes'  tavern.  And  when  a  private  prayer  meeting 
was  held,  mine  host  of  the  "  Black  Horse"  was  sure 
to  be  there,  and  to  give  evidence  of  his  piety  by 
sighs  and  groans.  But  he  testified  against  prelacy 
more  efficaciously  than  by  upturned  eyes  and  nasal 
whines,  for  he  refused  to  have  his  children  baptized 
by  the  Church  clergy,  and  was  accordingly  prose- 
cuted in  the  Exeter  Consistory. 

About  1677  Barnes  abandoned  the  "  Black  Horse"  in 
Exeter,  and  took  an  inn  at  Collumpton,  where  he  threw 
off  the  "religious  mask"  and  ran  into  debt  and  evil 
courses.  One  of  his  creditors  was  a  smith,  "a  stout 
fellow  of  good  natural  courage." 

Barnes  could  not  or  would  not  discharge  the  debt, 
and  he  suggested  to  the  blacksmith  that  there  was  an 
opening  for  doing  a  fine  stroke  of  business  that  would 
at  once  liquidate  the  little  bill  and  make  him  a  man  for 
ever.  The  plan  was  to  waylay  and  rob  the  Exeter 
carrier  on  his  way  up  to  London,  charged  with  a 
considerable  amount  of  money  sent  to  town  by  the 
merchants  for  the  purchase  of  sundry  goods.  The 
blacksmith  agreed,  but  it  was  deemed  prudent  to  have 
another  confederate,  so  a  woolcomber  was  prevailed 
on  to  join. 

The  old  Exeter  road,  after  leaving  Honiton,  ascends 
a  barrier  of  hill  now  pierced  by  the  South  Western 
Railway  that  there  passes  through  a  tunnel.  This 


322  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

ridge  stands  between  the  stream  bottoms  of  the  Otter 
and  the  Corry,  and  is  bleak,  with  habitations  very 
wide  apart  along  it.  The  distance  from  Collumpton  to 
Honiton  was  so  considerable  and  intercommunication 
so  infrequent  that  the  confederates  hoped  to  escape 
recognition  and  detection  by  making  their  attempt  far 
from  home. 

We  are  not  informed  at  what  hour  the  carrier's  van 
was  waylaid,  but  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  it  was 
early  in  the  morning.  One  day  out  of  Exeter  was  the 
stage  to  Honiton,  and  there  the  carriers  had  put  up. 

Upon  a  cold  and  stormy  night,  when  wetted  to  the  skin, 

I  bear  it  with  contented  heart,  until  I  reach  the  inn  ; 

And  there  I  sit  a-drinking,  boys,  with  the  landlord  and  his  kin. 

Say  wo  !  my  lads,  say  wo  !     Drive  on,  my  lads,  I-ho  ! 

Who  would  not  lead  the  stirring-  life  we  jolly  waggoners  do? 

When  Michaelmas  is  coming  on,  we'll  pleasure  also  find, 
We'll  make  the  red  gold  fly,  my  boys,  as  chaff  before  the  wind  ; 
And  every  lad  shall  take  his  lass,  so  merry,  buck  and  hind. 

Say  wo  !  my  lads,  say  wo  !     Drive  on,  my  lads,  I-ho  ! 

Who  would  not  lead  the  stirring  life  we  jolly  waggoners  do  ? 

The  highwaymen  heard  the  tinkle  of  the  horse-bells, 
as  the  team  of  four  drew  the  carrier's  van  up  the  long 
hill,  and  listened  to  the  shout  of  the  walking  driver 
to  the  horses  to  put  a  good  breast  to  it,  as  the  top  of 
the  ascent  was  not  far  off.  It  would  have  been  still 
dusk,  when  the  three  men  leaped  from  behind  some 
thorn  bushes  upon  the  carriers,  and  presented  loaded 
pistols  at  their  heads.  It  was  customary  for  carriers 
to  start  before  daybreak,  as  we  know  from  the  scene 
on  the  way  to  Gadshill  in  Henry  IV,  Part  I. 

Whilst  two  of  the  ruffians  held  the  carriers  and 
passengers  quiet,  with  their  pistols  presented  at  full 
cock,  Barnes  ransacked  the  van,  and  secured  six 
hundred  pounds.  Then  the  three  men  disappeared, 
mounted  their  horses,  and  galloped  back  to  Collumpton. 


JOHN   BARNES,    TAVERNER  323 

But  Barnes  had  left  out  of  count  that  he  was  well 
known  by  voice  and  face  in  Exeter,  and  that  a  change 
of  domicile  and  the  space  of  one  year  would  not  have 
eradicated  from  the  memory  of  carriers  and  such  as 
frequented  taverns  the  canting  publican  of  the  "  Black 
Horse." 

The  carrier's  men  at  once  gave  information,  and 
before  long  both  Barnes  and  his  confederates  were 
apprehended  and  conveyed  to  Exeter  Gaol,  but  not 
before  the  blacksmith  had  managed  to  secrete  a  file 
about  his  person.  There  they  were  fettered,  but  during 
the  night  by  means  of  the  file  the  blacksmith  relieved 
himself  and  the  other  two  of  their  chains,  and  all  three 
broke  out  of  prison. 

One  of  them  escaped,  but  the  other  two,  including 
the  taverner,  were  retaken  next  morning,  and  both  were 
sentenced  to  die.  The  narrative  proceeds  to  state  that 
"  there  were  many  Women  of  Quality  in  Exeter  that 
made  great  intercession  for  the  said  innkeeper  to  get 
him  a  Reprieve,  not  so  much  for  his  sake,  as  out  of 
charity  to  his  poor  innocent  Wife  and  Children  ;  for 
she  was  generally  reputed  a  very  good,  careful,  in- 
dustrious and  pious  Woman,  and  hath  no  less  than 
nine  very  hopeful  children  ;  but  the  nature  of  the  Crime 
excluded  him  from  mercy  in  this  World,  so  that  he 
and  his  Comrade  were  on  Tuesday,  the  I3th  of  this 
instant  August  (1678),  conveyed  to  the  usual  place  of 
Execution,  where  there  were  two  that  presently  suffered  ; 
but  the  Innkeeper,  desiring  two  hours'  time  the  better 
to  prepare  himself,  had  it  granted,  which  he  spent  in 
prayer  and  godly  conference  with  several  Ministers; 
then,  coming  upon  the  ladder,  he  made  a  long  Speech, 
wherein  he  confessed  not  only  the  Crime  for  which 
at  present  he  suffered,  but  likewise  divers  other  sins, 
and  particularly  lamented  that  his  Hypocrisie,  earnestly 


324  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

begging  the  Spectators'  prayers,  and  exhorting  them 
not  to  despair  in  any  condition  .  .  .  and  so  with  all  the 
outward  marks  of  a  sincere  Penitent,  submitted  to  his 
sentence,  and  was  executed." 

Dr.  Lake,  whose  Diary  has  been  published  by  the 
Camden  Society,  happened  to  be  visiting  a  prisoner 
in  the  gaol  when  Barnes  and  his  accomplice  were 
brought  in.  The  doctor  says  that  he  was  "a  noto- 
rious Presbyterian,"  and  that  "the  evening  before  hee 
went  forth  to  execute  his  design" — of  robbing  the  carrier 
— "  hee  pray'd  with  his  family  two  hours." 

The  authority  for  this  story  is  a  unique  tract  in  the 
Bodleian  Library,  Oxford,  of  which  the  late  Robert 
Dymond,  of  Exeter,  made  a  copy,  and  to  which  he 
refers  in  his  paper  on  "  The  Old  Inns  and  Taverns  of 
Exeter,"  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Devonshire  Associ- 
ation for  1880. 


EDWARD   CAPERN 


I 


^ HE  Postman  Poet,  Edward  Capern,  has  been 
hailed  as  the  Devonshire  Burns,  but  he  has 
no  right  to  be  so  entitled.  Burns,  at  his 
best,  sang  in  the  tones  and  intonation  of 
his  class  and  country,  and  it  was  at  his  worst  that 
he  affected  the  style  of  the  period  and  of  culture,  such 
as  it  was.  Now  Capern  aspired  to  the  artificiality  and 
smoothness  of  the  highly  educated  and  wholly  unreal 
class  of  verse  writers  of  the  Victorian  period,  of  whom 
John  Oxenford  may  be  thrust  forward  as  typical,  men 
who  could  turn  out  smooth  and  finished  pieces,  rhythm 
and  rhyme  correct,  but  without  a  genuine  poetical  idea 
forming  the  kernel  of  the  "poem." 

What  can  be  said  for  verses  that  begin  as  this  to  the 
Wild  Convolvulus? 

Upon  the  lap  of  Nature  wild 
I  love  to  view  thee,  Beauty's  child  ; 
And  mark  the  rose  and  lily  white 
Their  charms  in  thy  fair  form  unite. 

And  this  to  the  White  Violet  ? 

Pale  Beauty  went  out  'neath  a  wintry  sky 

From  a  nook  where  the  gorse  and  the  holly  grew  by, 

And  silently  traversed  the  snow-covered  earth 

In  search  of  a  sign  of  floriferous  birth. 

And  this  to  an  Early  Primrose  ? 

Pretty  flow'ret,  sweet  and  fair, 
Pensive,  weeping,  withering  there  ; 
Storms  are  raging,  winds  are  high, 
I  fear  thy  beauty  soon  will  die. 

325 


326  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Who  is  not  familiar  with  this  sort  of  stuff?  It  is  to 
be  found  in  "  Keepsakes,"  in  those  old  pocket-books  in 
leather,  with  a  dozen  badly  engraved  steel-plate  land- 
scape scenes  at  the  beginning,  and  a  budget  of  verses 
and  rhapsodies  that  follow,  before  we  come  to  the 
calendar  and  the  sheets  for  notes. 

Of  himself,  Capern  wrote  : — 

He  owns  neither  houses  nor  lands, 

His  wealth  is  a  character  good  ; 
A  pair  of  industrious  hands, 

A  drop  of  poetical  blood. 

It  was  a  drop,  and  a  small  drop.  He  had  an  ear  for 
rhythm  ;  he  had  a  warm  appreciation  of  Nature  ;  he 
had  sentiment — but  not  ideas,  the  germs  of  mental  life 
to  be  carried  on  from  generation  to  generation.  The 
leaves  of  poetic  expression,  graceful  diction,  fade  and 
wither.  It  is  ideas  alone  that  are  the  fruit  of  the  tree 
of  mental  life  that  will  survive.  Of  such  we  find  none 
in  Capern's  volumes. 

His  verses  are  very  creditable  to  the  man,  consider- 
ing his  position,  but  he  is  not  to  be  named  in  the  same 
breath  with  Robert  Burns  and  Edwin  Waugh. 
Capern  had  the  poetic  faculty,  but  he  trod  wrong  paths, 
with  the  result  that  nobody  henceforth  will  read  his 
verses,  which  are  not  likely  to  be  republished.  Edward 
Capern  was  born  at  Tiverton  on  21  January,  1819,  where 
his  father  carried  on  business  as  a  baker.  When 
Edward  was  about  two  years  old,  the  family  removed 
to  Barnstaple,  and  his  mother  becoming  bed-ridden, 
young  Edward,  then  about  eight  years  old,  found 
employment  at  a  local  lace  factory,  toiling  often,  for  a 
scanty  wage,  twenty  out  of  the  twenty-four  hours.  The 
long  hours  and  the  trying  nature  of  the  work  perma- 
nently injured  his  eyesight,  and  seriously  affected  his 
after  life. 


EDWARD   CAPERN,    THE   POSTMAN-POET   OF    DEVONSHIRE 
From  a  painting  by  William  Widgery,  in  the  free  Library,  Bideford 


EDWARD   CAPERN  327 

Compelled  to  abandon  his  work  in  the  factory  in  1847, 
he  ultimately  obtained  the  post  of  letter-carrier  from 
Bideford  to  Buckland  Brewer  and  its  neighbourhood, 
distributing  the  mail  through  a  discursive  walk  of 
thirteen  miles  daily,  and  receiving  a  salary  of  half  a 
guinea  per  week. 

Capern's  first  book  of  Poems  was  published  in  1856. 
A  Mr.  W.  F.  Rock,  having  seen  his  verses,  thought 
there  was  merit  in  them,  and  undertook  to  collect  sub- 
scribers ;  and  by  worrying  certain  noblemen  into  taking 
four,  five,  or  six  copies,  and  canvassing  through  the 
county,  he  succeeded  in  getting  enough  subscribers  to 
enable  him  to  publish. 

But  Capern  wanted  to  have  all  he  had  written 
included.  Mr.  Rock  had  to  be  firm. 

uWhat!"  exclaimed  Capern.  "  Exclude  my 
*  Morning/  and  the  '  Apostrophe  to  the  Sun  ' !  Why, 
sir,  I  wrote  those  pieces  when  I  had  but  four  shillings  a 
week  to  live  upon,  which  gave  but  frugal  meals." 

Precisely,  but  that  did  not  constitute  them  poems. 
Mr.  Rock  says  :  "  It  is  not  my  intention  even  to  touch 
upon  the  trying  incidents  of  Mr.  Capern's  early  life. 
He  is  a  rural  letter-carrier  .  .  .  for  which  his  salary  is 
ten  shillings  and  sixpence  per  week.  He  has  a  real 
poet's  wife  ;  his  Jane,  a  charming  brunette,  is  intelli- 
gent, prudent,  and  good.  He  has  two  children, 
Charles,  a  boy  of  seven,  and  Milly,  a  girl  just  three 
years  of  age. 

"  Mr.  Capern's  features  have  a  striking  resemblance 
to  those  of  Oliver  Goldsmith  ;  he  has  also  the  Doctor's 
sturdy  build,  though  not  his  personal  height.  Nor  is 
this  the  only  point  of  resemblance  to  our  dear  Goldy. 
Mr.  Capern  has  an  ear  for  music,  he  plays  touchingly 
on  the  flute,  and  sings  his  own  songs  to  his  own  tunes 
with  striking  energy  or  tenderness." 


328  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

He  certainly  enjoyed  his  life  as  a  postman.    He  says: — 

O,  the  postman's  life  is  as  happy  a  life 

As  any  one's,  I  trow  ; 
Wand'ring  away  where  dragon-flies  play, 

And  brooks  sing-  soft  and  low  ; 
And  watching  the  lark  as  he  soars  on  high, 

To  carol  in  yonder  cloud, 
"  He  sings  in  his  labours,  and  why  not  I  ?  " 

The  postman  sings  aloud. 

In  1858,  Capern  published  a  second  volume,  entitled 
Ballads  and  Songs,  and  in  1865  a  third,  Wayside 
Warbles.  There  was  yet  another,  The  Devonshire 
Melodist,  in  which  he  set  his  own  songs  to  tunes  of  his 
own  composition.  But  here  again  he  was  at  fault. 
Devonshire  is  full  of  folk  music  of  the  first  order. 
Burns  set  his  songs  to  folk  tunes  then  sung  by  the 
people,  but  to  gross  words.  He  rescued  the  melodies 
by  giving  to  them  verses  that  could  be  sung  by  decent 
and  clean-minded  people.  Now  had  Capern  done  this 
for  the  music  of  the  neighbourhood  of  Barnstaple  he 
would  have  been  remembered  along  with  these  delicious 
airs,  as  is  Burns  along  with  the  Scotch  melodies.  But 
not  so,  he  must  set  his  verses  to  the  tootling  of  his  own 
pipe,  entirely  without  melodious  idea  in  the  tunes. 

Probably  Edward  Capern  had  never  heard  of  Edwin 
Waugh,  who  wrote  the  most  delicious,  simple,  and 
sweet  poems  in  Lancashire  and  Yorkshire  dialect ; 
every  one  is  a  gem.  Probably,  had  he  seen  these, 
Capern  would  have  despised  them.  They  breathe  the 
life,  the  passion,  the  tenderness,  the  genius  of  the 
North-countrymen.  Capern's  verses  have  none  of  this 
merit.  They  are  respectable  vers  de  societe,  such  as  any 
man  of  culture  could  have  written.  His  great  achieve- 
ment was,  that,  not  being  a  man  of  culture,  he  could 
write  such  respectable  "  poems."  He  took  a  wrong 
course  from  the  outset ;  and  unhappily  he  maintained 
it.  What  tells  its  own  tale  is  this.  Next  to  the  British 


EDWARD   CAPERN  329 

Museum,  the  London  Library  is  the  largest  in  the 
Metropolis,  and  it  has  not  been  deemed  worth  while  to 
include  in  it  one  of  Capern's  volumes  of  verses. 

His  last  volume  published  was  Sun-gleams  and 
Shadows  (1881),  and,  unless  I  am  mistaken,  all  owed 
their  success  to  subscribers. 

In  1866  Capern  left  Marine  Gardens,  Bideford,  and 
went  to  live  at  Harborne,  near  Birmingham.  His 
verses  found  their  way  into  various  periodicals,  Fun 
and  Hood's  Comic  Annual.  But  his  heart  was  in  his 
native  county  and  thither  he  returned.  He  received  a 
pension  from  the  Civil  List  of  ^40  a  year,  which  was 
afterwards  increased  to  £60.  It  was  due  to  his  wife's 
ill-health  that  he  left  the  neighbourhood  of  Birming- 
ham in  1884,  and  rented  a  pleasant  cottage  at  Braunton. 
There  he  lost  his  wife  in  February,  1894.  The  two  old 
people  had  been  tenderly  attached,  and  her  admiration 
for  and  pride  in  her  husband  were  unbounded.  He  did 
not  long  survive  her,  for  he  died  on  4  June  in  the  same 
year  as  his  wife,  and  they  were  buried  side  by  side  in 
the  churchyard  of  Heanton  Punchardon.  The  expenses 
of  his  funeral  were  defrayed  by  the  Baroness  Burdett- 
Coutts,  to  whom  he  had  dedicated  the  second  volume  of 
his  poems. 

It  was  unfortunate  for  Capern  in  a  measure  that  he 
had  been  patted  on  the  back  by  such  men  as  James 
Anthony  Froude,  who  wrote  of  him  in  Eraser's 
Magazine:  "  Capern  is  a  real  poet,  a  man  whose 
writings  will  be  like  a  gleam  of  summer  sunshine  in 
every  household  which  they  enter  "  ;  and  Walter  Savage 
Landor,  who  pronounced  him  to  be  "a  noble  poet"; 
also  Alfred  Austin,  who  wrote  of  him  : — 

O,  Lark-like  Poet :  carol  on, 
Lost  in  dim  light,  an  unseen  trill : 
We,  in  the  Heaven  where  you  are  gone, 
Find  you  no  more,  but  hear  you  still. 


330  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

In  the  summer  of  1864,  the  American  literary  black- 
smith, Elihu  Burritt,  spent  three  days  with  Capern,  on 
his  "  Walk  from  London  to  the  Land's  End  and  back," 
and  gave  an  excellent  description  of  his  host.  He 
says:  " Edward  Capern,  of  Bideford,  is  a  poet,  and 
he  is  a  postman,  and  both  at  once,  and  good  at  each. 
He  is  as  faithful  and  genial  a  postman  as  ever  dropped 
a  letter  in  a  cottage  door,  with  an  honest  and  welcome 
face,  itself  a  living  epistle  of  good  will  and  friendly 
cheer.  I  can  attest  to  that  most  confidently;  for  I 
went  with  him  in  his  pony-cart  two  days  on  his 
rural  rounds.  That  he  is  a  poet  who  has  written  songs 
that  will  live  and  have  a  pleasant  place  among  the 
productions  of  genius,  I  am  equally  confident,  though 
pretending  to  be  no  connoisseur  in  such  matters  myself. 
Better  judges  have  awarded  to  them  a  high  degree  of 
merit.  Already  a  considerable  volume  of  his  songs 
and  ballads  has  gone  to  its  second  edition  ;  and  he  has 
sufficient  matter  on  hand  to  make  another  of  equal  size 
and  character.  His  postal  beat  lies  between  Bideford 
and  Buckland  Brewer,  a  distance  of  more  than  six 
miles.  Up  to  quite  a  recent  date,  he  walked  this 
distance  twice  a  day  in  all  weathers  ;  starting  off  on 
winter  mornings  while  it  was  yet  dark.  Having  grown 
somewhat  corpulent  and  short-winded,  he  has  mounted, 
within  a  year  or  two,  a  pony-cart,  that  carries  him  up 
and  down  the  long,  steep  hills  on  his  course.  It  takes 
him  till  noon  to  ascend  these  to  Buckland  and  distribute 
letters  and  papers  among  the  hamlet  cottages  and 
roadside  farmhouses  on  the  way.  Having  reached  the 
little  town  on  the  summit-hill,  and  left  his  bag  at  the 
post-office,  he  has  three  hours  to  wait  before  setting 
out  on  his  return  journey.  These  are  his  writing 
hours ;  and  he  spends  them  in  a  little,  antique, 
thatched  cottage  in  one  of  the  village  streets.  Here, 


EDWARD   CAPERN  331 

seated  at  one  end  of  a  long  deal  table,  while  the 
cottager's  wife  and  daughters  are  plying  their  needles, 
and  doing  all  their  family  work  at  the  other,  he  pens 
down  the  thoughts  that  have  passed  through  the  flitting 
visions  of  his  imagination  while  alone  on  the  road. 
Here  he  wrote  most  of  his  first  book  of  ballads,  and 
here  he  is  working  up  his  glowing  rollicking  songs  for  a 
new  volume.  Sometimes  the  poetic  inspiration  comes 
in  upon  him  like  a  flood  on  his  way.  He  told  me  that 
he  once  brought  home  with  him  six  sonnets  on  six 
different  subjects,  which  he  had  thought  out  and  penned 
in  one  of  his  daily  beats.  When  the  news  of  the 
taking  of  the  Redan  reached  England,  the  very  inner 
soul  of  his  patriotism  was  stirred  within  him  to  the 
proudest  emotion.  As  he  walked  up  and  down  the 
long  hills  with  his  letter-bags  strapped  to  his  side,  the 
thoughts  of  the  glory  his  country  had  won  came  into 
his  mind  with  a  half-suffocating  rush,  and  he  struggled, 
nearly  drowned  by  them,  to  give  them  forms  of  speech. 
The  days  were  short,  the  road  was  long,  and  hard  to 
foot,  and  the  rules  of  the  postal  service  were  rigid. 
He  could  not  hold  fast  the  thoughts  the  event  stirred 
within  him  until  he  reached  the  cottage.  Some  of  the 
best  of  them  would  flit  out  of  his  memory,  if  he  delayed 
to  pen  them  as  they  arose.  So  he  ran  with  all  his 
might  and  main  for  a  third  of  a  mile,  all  panting  with 
the  race  for  time,  found  he  had  caught  enough  of  it  for 
pencilling  on  his  knee  a  whole  verse  of  the  song. 
Thus  he  ran  and  wrote,  each  stanza  costing  him  a 
race  that  made  the  hot  perspiration  fall  upon  the  soiled 
and  crumpled  paper,  on  which  he  brought  home  to  a 
wife  prouder  than  himself  of  the  song, — 'The  Lion 
Flag  of  England.'" 


GEORGE    MEDYETT    GOODRIDGE 


f  "^HE  record  of  the  adventures  of  this  man  is 

fully  as  interesting  as  the  fictitious  story  of 

Robinson  Crusoe  and  well  deserves  repub- 

-*^        lication.     It  was  first  published  in  Exeter 

in  1837.     Two  editions  of  a  thousand  copies  each  were 

exhausted,  and  a  third  was  published  in  1839,  an^  a 

fourth  in  1841. 

George  Medyett  Goodridge  was  born  at  Paignton 
on  22  May,  1796.  At  the  age  of  thirteen  he  hired 
himself  as  cabin-boy  on  board  the  Lord  Cochrane,  an 
armed  brig,  stationed  off  Torquay  to  protect  the  fish- 
ing craft  from  French  cruisers.  From  that  time  till 
1820  he  was  continually  at  sea  ;  in  that  year,  on  i  May, 
he  joined  the  Princess  of  Wales,  a  cutter,  burthen 
seventy-five  tons,  bound  for  the  South  Seas  after  oil, 
fins,  seal-skins,  and  ambergris.  The  arrangement 
was  that  out  of  every  ninety  skins  procured,  each 
mariner  should  have  one ;  the  boys  proportionately  less ; 
and  the  officers  proportionately  more.  Captain  Veale 
was  commander,  Mazora,  an  Italian,  mate ;  there  were 
in  addition  three  boys  and  ten  mariners. 

In  descending  the  Thames  from  Limehouse,  a 
Captain  Cox  went  on  board  and  made  a  present  to  the 
crew  of  a  Bible.  "  We  thought  little  of  the  gift  at  the 
time,"  says  Goodridge,  "  but  the  sequel  will  show  that 
this  proved  to  be  the  most  valuable  of  all  our  stores." 
In  passing  down  the  Channel,  the  vessel  was  wind- 
bound  for  several  days,  and  Goodridge  was  able  to 

332 


CHARLES   MEDYETT   GOODRIDGE    IN    HIS    SEAL-SKIN    DRESS 


GEORGE    MEDYETT   GOODRIDGE       333 

visit  his  friends  at  Paignton,  and  bid  them  farewell. 
"  On  the  2ist,  being  Whit  Sunday,  the  weather  proved 
fine,  with  a  breeze  from  the  northward,  we  again 
weighed  anchor  and  proceeded  on  our  voyage." 

On  2  November  the  vessel  reached  the  Crozets,  a 
group  of  five  islands  in  the  South  Pacific  Ocean. 

"  As  there  is  no  harbour  for  shelter,  the  plan  pursued 
is,  for  one  party  to  go  on  shore,  provided  with  neces- 
sary provisions  for  several  days,  while  the  remainder  of 
the  crew  remain  to  take  care  of  the  vessel,  and  to  salt 
in  the  skins  that  have  been  procured.  The  prevailing 
winds  are  from  the  westward,  and  we  used  to  lie  with 
our  vessel  under  the  shelter  of  the  island,  and  when- 
ever the  wind  shifted  to  the  eastward,  which  it  some- 
times did  very  suddenly,  we  had  to  weigh  our  anchor, 
or  slip  the  cable,  and  stand  out  to  sea.  The  easterly 
wind  scarcely  ever  lasted  more  than  two  days,  when  it 
would  chop  round  to  the  northward,  with  rain,  and 
then  come  round  to  W.N.W.  We  should  then  return 
to  our  shelter,  take  on  board  the  skins  collected,  and 
again  furnish  the  sealing  party  with  provisions.  The 
most  boisterous  season  of  the  year  in  these  latitudes 
commences  in  August,  during  which  month  the  most 
tremendous  gales  are  experienced,  with  much  snow, 
rain  and  hail. 

"The  hardships  and  privations  experienced  in  pro- 
curing seal-skins  on  these  islands  may  be  faintly  con- 
jectured, when  I  state  the  plan  pursued  by  the  parties 
on  shore.  The  land  affords  no  shelter  whatever,  there 
being  neither  tree  nor  shrub,  and  the  weather  is  at 
most  times  extremely  wet,  and  snow  frequently  on  the 
ground,  indeed,  there  is  scarcely  more  than  a  month's 
fine  weather  during  the  year.  Their  boat,  therefore, 
hauled  on  shore,  serves  them  for  their  dwelling  house 
by  day,  and  their  lodging  house  by  night.  Their 


334  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

provisions  consist  of  salt  pork,  bread,  coffee,  and 
molasses;  on  this  scanty  fare,  with  the  shelter  of  their 
boat  only  turned  upside  down,  and  tussicked  up,  they 
sometimes  remain  a  fortnight  at  a  time,  each  day 
undergoing  excessive  labour  in  searching  for  and  kill- 
ing seals,  and  very  often  without  meeting  with  an 
adequate  reward  after  all  their  privations.  Added  to 
this,  when  a  gale  renders  it  necessary  for  their  vessel  to 
drive  to  sea,  each  hour  she  is  absent,  the  mind  is 
harassed  with  fears  for  her  safety,  and  of  the  conse- 
quences that  would  result  to  themselves  if  thus  left  on 
such  a  desolate  spot,  surrounded  by  a  vast  ocean,  and 
where  years  might  pass  without  a  vessel  ever  coming 
near  them." 

The  largest  of  the  islands  is  about  twenty-five  miles 
in  circumference,  and  lies  about  thirty  miles  distant 
from  one  of  the  small  ones,  and  about  twelve  miles 
from  the  other.  The  other  two  islands  lie  about  twenty 
miles  to  the  eastward  of  the  three  first. 

On  5  February  a  sealing  party,  consisting  of  eight, 
was  landed  on  the  easternmost  island,  and  the  remain- 
ing seven  proceeded  with  the  vessel  to  the  other  island. 
Those  in  the  vessel  consisted  of  the  master,  Captain 
Veale,  of  Dartmouth,  and  his  brother,  Jarvis  Veale, 
Goodridge,  Parnel,  Hooper,  Baker,  and  a  Hanoverian 
named  Newbee.  The  vessel  visited  the  sealing  party 
every  seven  days,  took  on  board  the  skins  collected, 
and  supplied  them  with  a  fresh  stock  of  provisions  ; 
that  done  it  returned  to  the  other  island,  where  the 
crew  also  employed  themselves  in  collecting  seal-skins. 

The  last  visit  made  to  the  easternmost  island  was  on 
10  March,  and  the  next  visit  would  have  been  on  the 
1 8th  had  not  a  gale  come  on,  on  the  lyth,  that  com- 
pelled the  captain  to  stand  off,  and  gain  the  offing. 

"We  accordingly  slipped  our  cable  and  stood  to 


GEORGE   MEDYETT  GOODRIDGE       335 

sea,  but  before  we  had  proceeded  any  distance,  it  came 
on  a  dead  calm,  so  that  we  entirely  lost  command  of 
the  vessel,  the  swell  of  the  sea  continuing  at  the  same 
time  so  heavy  that  our  boat  was  useless  ;  for  any 
attempt  at  towing  her  in  such  a  swell,  and  against  a 
strong  current  which  was  making  directly  on  the  land, 
was  utterly  vain.  The  island  presented  to  our  view 
a  perpendicular  cliff,  with  numerous  rocks  protruding 
into  the  sea,  and  against  them  we  were  driven, 
victims  to  the  unspent  power  of  a  raging  sea,  lashed 
into  fury  by  winds  which  now  seemed  hushed  into 
breathless  silence,  the  more  calmly  to  witness  the 
effects  of  the  agitation  raised  by  them  in  the  bosom 
of  the  ocean.  We  attempted  to  sound  for  bottom,  in 
hope  that  we  might  have  recourse  to  our  anchor ;  but 
the  hope  was  vain,  as  our  longest  lengths  of  line  were 
found  inadequate  to  reach  it.  It  was  now  ten  at  night, 
and  from  this  time  till  midnight  we  were  in  momentary 
expectation  of  striking.  The  suspense  was  truly  awful, 
indeed,  the  horrors  we  experienced  were  more  dreadful 
than  I  had  ever  felt  or  witnessed  in  the  most  violent 
storms ;  for  on  such  occasions  the  persevering  spirits 
of  Englishmen  will  struggle  with  the  elements  to  the 
last  blast  and  the  last  wave  ;  but  here  there  was  nothing 
to  combat ;  we  were  driven  on  by  an  invisible  power 
— all  was  calm  above  us — around  us  the  surface  of  the 
sea,  although  raised  into  a  mountainous  swell,  was 
smooth;  but  the  distant  sound  of  its  continued  crash  on 
the  breakers  to  which  we  were  drawn  by  irresistible 
force,  broke  on  our  ears  as  our  death  knell.  At  last 
the  awful  moment  arrived,  and  about  12  o'clock  at 
night,  our  vessel  struck  with  great  violence.  Although 
previous  to  her  striking  all  hands  appeared  paralysed, 
now  arrived  the  period  of  action.  The  boat  was  for- 
tunately got  out  without  accident,  and  all  hands  got 


336  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

into  her  with  such  articles  as  we  could  immediately  put 
our  hands  on,  among  which  were  a  kettle,  a  frying- 
pan,  our  knives  and  steels,  and  a  fire-bag  (this  article 
is  a  tinder-box  supplied  with  cotton  matches,  and  care- 
fully secured  from  damp  in  a  tarpaulin  bag),  but  with- 
out any  provisions  or  clothes  except  what  we  stood 
upright  in. 

"  The  night  was  dark  and  rainy,  and  the  vessel  was 
pitching  bowsprit  under;  we  were  surrounded  by  rocks, 
and  the  nearest  shore  was  a  perpendicular  cliff  of  great 
height.  We  however  tugged  at  the  oars,  but  made 
little  progress,  the  kelp  being  extremely  thick,  long 
and  strong,  and  the  current  running  direct  to  the 
shore.  After  four  hours  incessant  labour,  we  suc- 
ceeded in  effecting  a  landing,  on  a  more  accessible 
part  of  the  island,  but  our  boat  was  swamped,  and  it 
was  with  great  difficulty  we  succeeded  at  length  in 
dragging  her  ashore;  which  however  we  accomplished, 
and  by  turning  her  bottom  upwards,  and  propping  up 
one  side  as  before  described,  we  crept  under  and  ob- 
tained some  little  shelter  from  the  rain,  being  all 
miserably  cold,  wet  and  hungry. 

"  We  remained  huddled  together  till  daylight  ap- 
peared, and  our  craving  appetites  then  told  us  it  was 
time  to  seek  for  sustenance  ;  we  therefore  sallied  forth 
in  search  of  a  sea-elephant ;  and  although  they  were 
rather  scarce  at  this  period  of  the  year,  it  was  not  long 
before  we  found  one ;  nor  was  it  long  before  we  dis- 
patched it.  With  its  blubber  we  soon  kindled  a  fire, 
and  the  heart,  tongue,  and  such  other  parts  as  were 
edible,  with  the  assistance  of  our  kettle  and  frying- 
pan,  were  soon  in  a  forward  state  of  cookery.  We 
also  made  a  fire  of  some  blubber  under  our  boat,  and 
by  it  we  dried  our  clothes,  and  made  ourselves  more 
comfortable. 


GEORGE    MEDYETT  GOODRIDGE       337 

"When  we  were  in  some  measure  refreshed,  and 
had  recruited  our  strength  with  the  food  we  had  pro- 
cured, a  party  of  us  set  out  over  the  hills,  in  the 
direction  of  the  spot  where  the  vessel  was  wrecked,  in 
order  to  ascertain  her  fate,  and  to  see  if  there  was  a 
possibility  of  saving  anything  out  of  her.  They  re- 
turned about  the  middle  of  the  day,  and  reported  that 
she  was  lying  on  the  rocks,  on  her  beam  ends,  with 
a  large  hole  in  her  lower  planks,  and  the  sea  breaking 
over  her  ;  so  that  it  was  impossible  she  should  hold 
together  much  longer ;  it  was  evident,  therefore,  that 
all  hope  of  saving  her  was  at  an  end,  and  our  endeav- 
ours could  now  only  be  exerted  for  the  purpose  of 
saving  any  portion  of  the  wreck  that  might  prove 
serviceable  to  us  in  our  desolate  situation. 

"  On  the  following  morning  we  succeeded  in  launch- 
ing our  boat,  and  we  then  proceeded  towards  the 
wreck.  In  our  progress  we  discovered  a  cove  much 
nearer  the  vessel  than  where  we  landed,  and  we 
resolved  to  make  this  our  immediate  station. 

"We  next  visited  the  wreck,  and  succeeded  in 
saving  the  captain's  chest,  the  mate's  chest,  and  also 
some  planks.  The  last  thing  we  saved,  and  which  we 
found  floating  on  the  water,  was  the  identical  Bible  put 
on  board  by  Captain  Cox.  What  made  this  circum- 
stance more  remarkable  was,  that  although  we  had  a 
variety  of  other  books  on  board,  such  as  our  navigation 
books,  journals,  log-books,  etc.,  this  was  the  only 
article  of  the  kind  that  we  found,  nor  did  we  discover  the 
smallest  shred  of  paper  of  any  kind,  except  this  Bible. 

"  On  the  next  day  the  wind  blew  very  strong,  and  we 
saw  that  nothing  remained  of  our  vessel  but  the  mast, 
which  had  become  entangled  by  the  rigging  among  the 
rocks  and  sea  weed,  and  this  was  the  last  thing  we 
were  enabled  to  secure. 


338  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"  The  weather  continued  so  wet  and  boisterous  for 
three  weeks  from  this  time,  that  it  was  as  much  as  we 
could  well  do  to  procure  necessary  food  for  our  susten- 
ance, and  we  therefore  contented  ourselves  with  the 
shelter  our  boat,  tussicked  up,  afforded  us  during  that 
period  ;  the  weather  at  last  proving  less  inclement,  we 
set  about  collecting  all  the  materials  we  had  saved,  and 
then  commenced  erecting  for  ourselves  a  more  com- 
modious dwelling-place.  The  sides  we  formed  of  stones 
and  the  wood  saved  from  the  wreck,  for  there  was 
not  shrub  or  tree  growing  on  the  whole  island.  The 
top  we  covered  with  sea-elephants'  skins,  and  at  the  end 
of  a  few  weeks  we  were  comparatively  well  lodged. 
We  made  our  beds  of  the  long  grass,  called  tussick, 
with  which  the  island  abounded  ;  and  the  skins  of  the 
seals  we  chanced  to  kill  served  us  for  sheets,  blankets, 
and  counterpanes.  Wanting  glass  we  were  obliged  to 
do  without  windows  ;  the  same  opening,  therefore, 
that  served  us  for  entrance,  served  us  also  for  the 
admission  of  light  and  air ;  and  when  the  weather 
obliged  us  to  shut  out  the  cold,  we  were  obliged  to 
shut  out  the  light  of  day  also. 

"While  constructing  our  hut,  we  found  on  the 
island  traces  of  some  Americans  who  had  visited  these 
islands  sixteen  years  before,  and  who  had  built  a  hut. 
The  sea-elephants,  however,  had  trodden  almost  every- 
thing into  the  ground  ;  and  as  we  had  no  tools  where- 
with to  dig,  we  could  not  search  for  anything  they 
might  have  left.  Providence,  however,  at  length  threw 
the  means  in  our  way  of  effecting  our  wishes  ;  for  one 
of  our  company,  while  searching  for  eggs  at  a  consider- 
able distance  from  our  building,  found  a  pick-axe,  and 
brought  it  home  in  high  glee.  To  men  situated  as  we 
were,  it  was  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  we  should  deem 
this  almost  a  miracle.  Suffice  it  to  say,  we  all  returned 


GEORGE    MEDYETT   GOODRIDGE       339 

our  hearty  thanks  for  the  favour,  and  set  to  work 
digging  up  the  place  where  traces  of  the  hut  remained. 
Our  labour  proved  not  to  be  in  vain,  for  we  got  up 
a  quantity  of  timber  ;  also  part  of  a  pitch-pot,  which 
would  hold  about  a  gallon.  This  proved  highly 
valuable  to  us,  for,  by  the  help  of  a  piece  of  hoop-iron, 
we  manufactured  it  into  a  frying-pan,  our  other  being 
worn  so  thin  by  constant  use,  that  it  was  scarcely  fit 
to  cook  in.  Digging  further  we  found  a  broad  axe,  a 
sharpening-stone,  a  piece  of  a  shovel,  and  an  auger ; 
also  a  number  of  iron  hoops.  These  things  were  of 
essential  service  to  us.  We  did  not  save  any  of  our 
lances  from  the  ship,  and  we  had  often  considerable 
labour  to  kill  the  large  male  sea-elephants  ;  but  we 
now  took  the  handle  of  our  old  frying-pan,  and  with 
the  help  of  the  sharpening-stone,  gave  it  a  good  point  ; 
we  then  fixed  it  in  a  handle,  and  with  this  weapon  we 
dispatched  these  animals  with  ease. 

"  The  dog-seals  are  named  by  South-seamen  Wigs^ 
and  the  female  seals  are  called  Clap-matches.  The 
Wigs  are  larger  than  the  largest  Newfoundland  dog, 
and  their  bark  is  somewhat  similar.  When  attacked 
they  would  attempt  to  bite ;  and  it  required  some 
dexterity  to  avoid  their  teeth,  the  wounds  from  which 
were  difficult  to  heal.  The  flesh  we  found  very  rank. 
The  young  ones  are  usually  denominated  Pompeys,  and 
are  excellent  for  food. 

"The  supply  of  seals  we  found  very  scanty;  our 
principal  dependence,  therefore,  was  on  the  sea- 
elephants,  which,  from  their  great  tameness,  became  an 
easy  prey.  They  served  us  for  meat,  washing,  lodging, 
firing,  grates,  washing-tubs,  and  tobacco  pipes.  The 
parts  we  made  use  of  for  food,  were  the  heart,  tongue, 
sweetbread,  and  the  tender  parts  of  the  skin  ;  the 
snotters  (a  sort  of  fleshy  skin  which  hangs  over  the 


340  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

nose)  and  the  flappers.  These,  after  boiling  a  con- 
siderable time,  formed  a  jelly,  and  made,  with  the 
addition  of  some  eggs,  adding  a  pigeon  or  two,  or 
a  sea-hen,  very  good  soup.  The  blood  served  to  wash 
with,  as  it  quickly  removed  either  dirt  or  grease. 
When  we  had  articles  that  needed  washing,  and  had 
killed  an  elephant,  we  used  to  turn  the  carcase  on  its 
back,  and  the  intestines  being  taken  out,  a  quantity  of 
blood  would  flow  into  the  cavity.  In  this  we  cleansed 
the  articles,  and  then  rinsing  them  in  the  stream,  they 
were  washed  as  well  as  if  we  had  been  provided  with 
soap. 

"  The  skins  served  us  for  roofing,  and  of  them  we 
also  formed  our  shoes  or  moccasins,  and  these  we  used 
to  sew  together  with  thongs  formed  from  the  sinews. 
Their  teeth  we  formed  into  the  bowls  of  pipes,  and 
to  this  attached  the  leg  bone  of  some  water-fowl,  and 
together  it  formed  a  good  apparatus.  Having  no 
tobacco,  we  used  the  dried  grass  that  grew  on  the 
island. 

"  Of  sea-elephants'  blubber  we  made  our  fires,  and 
their  bones  laid  across  on  some  stones  formed  grates  to 
lay  the  blubber  on.  Of  a  piece  of  blubber  also,  with  a 
piece  of  rope-yarn  stuck  in  it,  we  formed  our  lamps, 
and  it  produced  a  very  good  light.  The  largest 
elephants  are  about  25  ft.  long  and  18  ft.  round,  and 
their  blubber  was  frequently  7  in.  thick  and  would 
yield  a  tun  of  oil.  The  brain  of  the  animal,  which  was 
almost  as  sweet  as  sugar,  was  frequently  eaten  by 
us  raw.  The  only  kind  of  vegetable  on  the  island, 
besides  grass,  was  a  plant  resembling  a  cabbage,  but 
we  found  it  so  bitter  that  we  could  make  no  use  of  it. 

"  Mr.  Veale  had  fortunately  saved  his  watch  un- 
injured, so  we  were  able  to  divide  our  time  pretty 
regularly.  We  usually  rose  about  8  in  the  morning, 


GEORGE    MEDYETT   GOODRIDGE       341 

and  took  breakfast  at  9  o'clock ;  after  breakfast  some 
of  the  party  would  go  catering  for  the  day's  provisions, 
while  the  others  remained  at  home  to  fulfil  the  domestic 
offices.  We  dined  generally  about  i  o'clock,  and 
took  tea  about  5.  For  some  months  this  latter  meal, 
as  far  as  the  beverage  went,  consisted  of  boiled  water 
only,  but  we  afterwards  manufactured  what  we  named 
Mocoa  as  a  substitute  for  tea,  and  this  consisted  of  raw 
eggs  beat  up  in  hot  water.  We  supped  about  7  or  8 
o'clock,  and  generally  retired  to  rest  about  10. 

"  I  have  before  said  that  the  most  valuable  thing  we 
preserved  from  the  wreck  was  our  Bible,  and  here  I 
must  state  that  some  portion  of  each  day  was  set  apart 
for  reading  it ;  and  by  nothing  perhaps  could  I  better 
exemplify  its  benefits  than  by  stating  that  to  its  in- 
fluence we  were  indebted  for  an  almost  unparalleled 
unanimity  during  the  whole  time  we  were  on  the 
island.  Peace  reigned  among  us,  for  the  precepts  of 
Him  who  was  the  harbinger  of  Peace  and  Goodwill 
towards  men  were  daily  inculcated  and  daily  practised. 
The  Bible  when  bestowed  was  thrown  by  unheeded  :  it 
traversed  wide  oceans,  it  was  scattered  with  the  wreck 
of  our  frail  bark,  and  was  indeed  and  in  truth  found 
upon  the  waters  after  many  days,  and  not  only  was 
the  mere  book  found,  but  its  value  was  also  discovered, 
and  its  blessings,  so  long  neglected,  were  now  made 
apparent  to  us.  Cast  away  on  a  desert  island,  in  the 
midst  of  an  immense  ocean,  without  a  hope  of  deliver- 
ance, lost  to  all  human  sympathy,  mourned  as  dead  by 
our  kindred,  in  this  invaluable  book  we  found  the 
herald  of  hope,  the  balm  and  consolation,  the  dispenser 
of  peace. 

"  Another  striking  fact  may  here  be  stated.  One  of 
our  crew  was  a  professed  Atheist :  he  was,  however, 
extremely  ignorant,  not  being  able  even  to  read.  This 


342  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

man  had  frequently  derided  our  religious  exercises,  but 
having  no  one  to  second  him,  it  did  not  disturb  the 
harmony  that  reigned  among  us. 

"This  man's  conversion  was  occasioned  by  an  inter- 
position which  he  deemed  supernatural.  The  story  he 
gave  of  himself  was  as  follows :  He  had  been  out 
seeking  for  provender  alone,  and  evening  closed  on 
him  before  he  could  reach  our  dwelling.  The  dark- 
ness perplexed  him,  and  the  ground  which  he  had  to 
cross  being  very  uneven  and  interspersed  with  many 
rocks  and  declivities,  fear  rather  increased  than  de- 
creased his  power  of  perception,  and  he  became  unable 
to  proceed." 

It  may  here  be  added  that  one  of  the  great  dangers 
of  the  island  were  the  bog-holes,  Goodridge  supposes 
worked  in  the  soil  by  the  bull-elephants  ;  these  are 
eight  or  nine  feet  deep  and  become  full  of  mire  :  any 
one  stepping  in  would  suddenly  be  engulfed. 

"  Here  he  first  felt  his  own  weakness;  he  hallooed 
loudly  for  help,  but  he  was  far  out  of  hearing  of  our  abode. 
Bereft  of  all  human  aid,  and  every  moment  adding  to 
his  fear,  he  at  length  called  on  the  name  of  his  Maker 
and  Saviour,  and  implored  that  assistance  from  Heaven 
which  he  had  before  so  often  scorned.  He  prayed  now 
most  fervently  for  deliverance,  and  suddenly,  as  he 
conceived,  a  light  appeared  around  him,  by  which  he 
was  enabled  to  discover  his  path  and  reach  our  hut  in 
safety.  So  fully  satisfied  was  he  himself  that  it  was  a 
miraculous  interposition  of  Providence  that  from  that 
period  he  became  quite  another  man. 

"  Great  numbers  of  birds  visit  these  islands.  There 
are  three  species  of  Penguins  beside  the  King  Pen- 
guin, and  these  are  named  by  South  Sea  men,  Maca- 
roonys,  Johnnys,  and  Rock  Hoppers.  The  Macaroonys 
congregate  in  their  rookeries  in  great  numbers,  fre- 


GEORGE   MEDYETT   GOODRIDGE       343 

quently  three  or  four  thousand  ;  they  ascend  very  high 
up  the  hills,  and  form  their  nests  roughly  among  the 
rocks.  They  are  larger  than  a  duck,  and  lay  three 
eggs,  two  about  the  size  of  duck's  eggs,  on  which  they 
sit ;  the  other  is  smaller,  and  is  cast  out  of  the  nest, 
and  we  used  to  term  it  the  pigeon's  egg,  for  another 
kind  of  bird  which  frequent  these  islands,  almost  in 
every  respect  resembling  a  pigeon,  make  their  principal 
food  of  eggs,  and  would  rob  the  nests  to  procure  them 
unless  they  found  those  cast-out  eggs,  which  most 
commonly  satisfied  them  till  the  others  by  incubation 
were  unfit  for  food.  A  similar  practice  we  observed 
with  the  Rock  Hoppers,  but  the  Johnnys,  like  the  King 
Penguins,  lay  only  one  egg  each,  unless  deprived  of 
them. 

"The  Johnnys  build  their  nests  superior  to  either  of 
the  others  among  the  long  grass.  These  birds  lay  in 
winter  as  well  as  in  summer,  and  by  robbing  their 
nests  we  kept  them  laying  nearly  all  the  year  round. 
We  observed  that  when  we  robbed  those  which  formed 
their  nests  on  the  plain,  that  they  rebuilt  their  nests 
higher  up.  When  we  took  the  eggs  of  these  birds, 
they  would  look  at  us  most  piteously,  making  a  low, 
moaning  noise,  as  if  in  great  distress  at  the  depriva- 
tion, but  would  exhibit  no  kind  of  resistance.  The 
King  Penguins,  however,  would  strike  at  us  with  their 
flippers,  and  their  blows  were  frequently  severe. 

"The  Rock  Hoppers  form  their  rookeries  at  the  foot 
of  high  hills,  and  make  their  nests  of  stones  and  turf. 
This  is  the  only  species  of  Penguin  that  whistles  ;  the 
King  Penguins  halloo,  and  the  Johnnys  and  Maca- 
roonys  make  a  sort  of  yawing  noise. 

"  One  kind  of  bird  which  proved  very  valuable  to  us 
are  called  Nellys.  They  are  larger  than  a  goose,  and 
resort  to  these  islands  in  great  numbers.  They  make 


344  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

burrows  in  the  ground,  and  were  very  easily  caught. 
These  birds  are  so  ravenous,  that  after  we  had  killed  a 
Sea-Elephant,  they  would,  in  a  few  hours,  completely 
carry  off  every  particle  of  flesh  we  did  not  make  use  of, 
leaving  the  bones  clean  as  possible.  Their  young 
became  very  good  eating  in  March." 

Although  this  party  knew  that  the  other  party  of 
sealers  had  been  left  on  the  larger  island,  they  did  not 
venture  to  cross  to  it,  as  the  seas  were  very  rough,  and 
winds  were  almost  always  contrary.  However,  this 
party  on  the  western  island,  in  December,  1821,  find- 
ing the  seals  very  scarce,  and  other  provisions  scanty, 
determined  on  visiting  the  eastern  island,  but  without 
the  least  expectation  of  finding  any  remnants  of  the 
vessel,  much  less  of  meeting  any  of  their  comrades, 
whom  they  supposed  to  be  all  drowned. 

They  arrived  on  the  i3th  December,  and  entered  the 
same  cove  where  was  the  residence  of  those  who  had 
escaped  the  wreck.  The  joy  of  all  hands  on  meeting  is 
better  conceived  than  described.  The  new  arrivals  had 
brought  with  them  their  kettle,  frying-pan,  and  other 
implements ;  and  also  the  discovery  they  had  made 
that  the  cabbage  growing  on  the  islands  if  boiled  for 
three  or  four  hours  lost  its  bitterness.  This  now  proved 
to  be  a  rich  delicacy  after  such  long  deprivation  of 
vegetable  diet. 

As  the  chance  of  any  vessel  coming  to  the  Crozets 
became  apparently  less  and  less,  the  whole  party  now 
resolved  to  attempt  to  construct  a  vessel  in  which  to 
make  their  escape.  Those  on  the  western  isle  had 
found  there  remains  of  wooden  huts,  and  some 
beams  and  planks  had  been  dug  up  on  the  eastern 
isle.  It  was  found  that  the  means  of  subsistence  on 
that  island  where  the  whole  party  was  now  settled 
would  not  suffice  for  all.  It  was  accordingly  resolved 


GEORGE    MEDYETT   GOODRIDGE       345 

again  to  separate.  Captain  Veale  and  his  brother,  Good- 
ridge,  Soper,  and  Spesinick,  an  Italian,  were  to  go  to 
the  western  isle  and  remain  there,  but  the  timber  found 
there  was  to  be  transferred  to  the  eastern  isle,  where 
the  vessel  was  to  be  constructed.  This  accordingly 
was  effected.  Meanwhile  Goodridge's  clothes  had  worn 
out,  and  he  had  to  clothe  himself  in  seal-skins. 

In  building  the  ship  numerous  were  the  difficulties 
experienced.  Tools  were  few  and  imperfect.  They  had 
neither  pitch  nor  oakum.  The  rigging  was  made  of 
the  ropes  taken  on  shore  by  the  sealing  party  where- 
with to  raft  off  to  the  boats  the  skins  procured,  as  the 
surf  on  the  beaches  prevented  their  landing  to  load 
with  safety  and  convenience. 

By  the  beginning  of  January,  1823,  the  vessel  was 
completed  by  the  ten  men  on  the  eastern  isle,  and  it 
was  equipped  with  sails  of  seal-skins.  They  also  formed 
vessels  for  taking  a  stock  of  fresh  water,  from  the  skins 
of  pup  elephants  ;  and  they  provided  a  store  of  salted 
tongues,  eggs,  and  whatever  could  be  got  for  a  voyage 
in  the  frail  bark.  Then  the  boat  was  sent  over  to  the 
western  isle  to  fetch  away  those  on  it  to  assist  in 
launching  the  ship  ;  and  lots  were  to  be  cast  as  to  the 
five  whom  alone  it  would  accommodate,  and  who  were 
to  be  sent  off  in  this  frail  vessel,  without  compass  or 
chart,  on  the  chance  of  falling  in  with  some  ship  in  the 
Southern  Seas. 

Two  years  had  now  nearly  passed  since  the  party 
had  been  wrecked. 

Seven  had  come  over  to  the  western  isle  to  summon 
the  Veales,  Goodridge,  and  the  rest,  but  it  was  not  pos- 
sible to  return  the  same  day ;  and  during  the  night  a 
violent  gale  of  wind  sprang  up,  and  the  boat  having 
been  hauled  up  in  an  exposed  situation,  the  wind 
caught  her,  carried  her  to  a  distance  of  seventy  yards, 


346  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

and  so  damaged  her  as  to  render  her  unseaworthy,  the 
stern  being  completely  beat  in.  This  disaster  produced 
consternation ;  for  the  other  boat,  that  left  on  the  eastern 
isle,  had  been  ripped  up  to  line  the  ship  that  had  been 
constructed. 

On  the  2ist,  " about  noon,  whilst  most  of  us  were 
employed  in  preparing  for  our  meal,  Dominic  Spesi- 
nick,  who  was  an  elderly  man,  left  us  to  take  a  walk  ; 
he  had  proceeded  to  a  high  point  of  land  about  three 
parts  of  a  mile  distant  from  our  hut,  and  saw  a  vessel 
passing  round  the  next  point.  He  immediately  came 
running  towards  us  in  great  agitation,  and  for  some 
time  could  do  nothing  but  gesticulate,  excess  of  joy 
having  completely  deprived  him  of  the  power  of  utter- 
ance. Capt.  Veale,  who  was  with  me,  asked  what  the 
foolish  fellow  was  at,  and  he  having  by  this  time  a  little 
recovered  himself,  told  us  that  he  had  certainly  seen  a 
vessel  pass  round  the  point  of  the  island.  We  had  so 
often  been  deceived  by  the  appearance  of  large  birds 
sitting  on  the  water,  which  we  had  mistaken  for  ves- 
sels at  a  distance,  that  we  were  slow  to  believe  his 
story ;  however,  it  was  agreed  that  John  Soper  should 
go  with  him,  taking  a  direction  across  the  island,  so 
that  they  might,  if  possible,  intercept  the  vessel ;  and 
being  supplied  with  a  tinder-box,  in  order  to  light  a 
fire,  to  attract  the  notice  of  the  crew  should  they  gain 
sight  of  her,  off  they  started. 

"  The  hours  passed  very  slowly  during  their  absence, 
and  when  night  approached,  and  they  were  not  re- 
turned, a  thousand  conjectures  were  started  to  account 
for  their  stay.  Morning  at  length  came,  after  a  tedious 
night.  Some  had  not  closed  their  eyes,  whilst  the 
others  who  had  caught  a  few  minutes  sleep  had  been 
disturbed  by  frightful  dreams,  and  wakened  only  to 
disappointed  hopes. 


GEORGE    MEDYETT  GOODRIDGE       347 

"  Our  two  companions  had  been  fortunate  enough  to 
reach  that  part  of  the  island  in  which  the  vessel  was 
still  in  sight ;  and  by  finding  the  remains  of  a  sea- 
elephant  that  had  been  recently  killed,  they  ascertained 
that  the  crew  had  been  on  shore,  and  they  hastened  to 
kindle  a  fire ;  but  finding  they  could  not  attract  the 
attention  of  those  in  the  vessel  from  the  beach,  they 
proceeded  with  all  haste  to  ascend  a  hill  in  the  direc- 
tion she  was  still  steering.  Spesinick,  however,  be- 
came exhausted,  and  was  unable  to  proceed  further. 
Soper  went  on,  but  had  to  descend  into  a  valley  before 
he  could  gain  another  elevated  spot  to  make  a  signal 
from.  Spesinick,  returning  to  the  beach  where  they 
had  kindled  the  fire,  to  his  great  joy,  saw  a  boat  from 
the  vessel  coming  on  shore.  The  crew  had  reached 
the  beach  before  Spesinick  got  to  it ;  but  his  voice  was 
drowned  by  the  noise  of  a  rookery  of  macaroonys  he 
had  disturbed  on  the  hill.  Seeing  the  fire,  the  smoke 
of  which  had  first  attracted  their  attention,  they  were 
convinced  that  there  were  human  beings  on  the  island, 
and  had  commenced  a  search.  In  the  interim,  Spe- 
sinick had  made  for  the  boat,  and  having  reached  it 
clung  to  it  in  a  fit  of  desperate  joy  that  gave  him  the 
appearance  of  a  maniac  ;  and  the  crew,  on  returning, 
found  him  in  such  questionable  guise  that  they  hailed 
him  before  approaching.  Dressed  in  shaggy  fur  skins, 
with  a  cap  of  the  same  material,  and  beard  of  nearly 
two  years'  growth,  it  was  not  probable  that  they  should 
take  him  for  a  civilized  being.  They  soon,  however, 
became  better  acquainted,  and  he  gave  them  an  outline 
of  the  shipwreck,  the  number  of  men  on  the  island, 
and  that  Soper  was  not  far  off. 

"The  vessel  proved  to  be  an  American  schooner 
called  the  Philo,  Isaac  Perceval,  master,  on  a  sealing 
and  trading  voyage. 


348  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

"  Soper,  being  still  unaware  of  the  boat  having  gone 
ashore,  as  it  must  have  done  so,  while  he  was  crossing 
the  valley,  on  coming  to  a  place  where,  on  a  foraging 
excursion,  we  had  erected  a  shelter  at  the  opening  of  a 
cave,  he  set  the  place  on  fire,  and  the  boat  which  had 
returned  with  Spesinick  put  off  and  took  him  on  board 
also,  much  to  his  joy.  By  this  time  it  was  nearly 
dark,  and  too  late  to  send  or  make  any  communication 
to  us  on  that  evening,  but  on  the  following  morning, 
22  January,  the  captain  of  the  schooner  sent  his  boat  to 
fetch  off  the  remaining  ten. 

"  We  had  by  this  time  almost  given  up  all  hopes  of 
our  expected  deliverance,  and  had  gone  to  a  neighbour- 
ing rookery  to  gather  all  the  eggs  we  could  collect. 
Shortly  after  ten  a  shout  from  one  of  our  companions, 
Millichant,  aroused  our  attention,  and  we  soon  per- 
ceived the  American  schooner's  boat  coming  round  the 
point.  Down  went  the  eggs.  Some  capered,  some 
ran,  some  shouted,  and  three  loud  cheers  from  us  were 
quickly  answered  by  those  in  the  boat. 

' '  Here  I  cannot  help  breaking  off  in  my  narrative  to 
remark  on  the  providential  nature  of  our  succour. 
The  damage  done  to  our  boat  had  caused  us  much 
distress,  but  now  how  different  were  our  views  of  the 
accident ;  for  had  our  boat  not  been  damaged,  our 
return  to  the  other  island  would  have  followed  as  a 
matter  of  course  ;  and,  in  all  probability,  we  should 
never  have  seen  the  vessel  that  now  proved  the  means 
of  our  deliverance." 

On  23  January,  Captain  Perceval  steered  for  the 
east  island,  and  took  off  the  remainder  of  the  ship- 
wrecked men. 

"The  day  of  departure  now  arrived,  and  after  re- 
maining on  those  islands  one  year,  ten  months,  and 
five  days,  we  bade  them  adieu — shall  I  say  with  great 


GEORGE    MEDYETT   GOODRIDGE        349 

joy  ?  Certainly  ;  and  yet  I  felt  a  mixture  of  regret. 
Whether  from  the  perverseness  of  my  nature,  or  from 
any  other  cause,  I  can  only  say — so  it  was." 

The  American  captain  was  bent  on  collecting  seal- 
skins, and  it  was  his  purpose  to  visit  the  islands  of 
Amsterdam  and  St.  Paul's,  and  then  make  his  way  to 
the  Mauritius,  where  he  would  leave  those  whom  he  had 
rescued.  Meanwhile,  he  required  them,  like  a  shrewd, 
not  to  say  grasping  Yankee,  to  work  for  him  at  the 
seal  fishery  ;  and  this  they  did  till  the  ist  April,  when 
he  was  at  St.  Paul's.  There  dissatisfaction  broke  out 
among  those  he  had  rescued.  He  had  kept  them  work- 
ing hard  for  him  during  two  months,  and  had  not  given 
them  even  a  change  of  clothing.  The  Italian  Mazora 
spoke  out,  and  Captain  Perceval  was  furious  and 
ordered  him  to  be  set  on  shore  ;  he  would  take  him  no 
further  in  his  ship.  At  this  his  comrades  in  misfortune 
spoke  out  also.  Having  suffered  so  long  together  they 
would  not  desert  a  comrade,  and  they  all  resented  the 
way  in  which  Captain  Perceval  was  taking  an  unfair 
advantage  of  them.  They  had,  in  fact,  secured  for  him 
five  thousand  seal-skins  and  three  hundred  quintals  of 
fish.  The  Yankee  captain  having  now  got  out  of  them 
all  he  could,  did  not  trouble  himself  about  taking  them 
any  further,  and  sent  ten  of  them  ashore  :  only  three — 
Captain  Veale,  his  brother,  and  Petherbridge — went 
on  with  the  American  ship.  Two  others,  Soper  and 
Newbee,  had  remained  at  their  own  wish  at  Amsterdam, 
which  they  could  leave  when  they  wished,  as  it  lay  in 
the  direct  track  of  all  ships  going  from  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope  to  New  South  Wales. 

The  American  captain  gave  a  cask  of  bread  and  some 
necessaries  to  those  he  put  ashore  on  St.  Paul's. 

Here  they  remained,  renewing  their  hardships  on  the 
Crozets,  but  in  a  better  climate,  till  the  first  week  in 


350  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

June,  when  a  sloop,  a  tender  to  the  King  George 
whaler,  arrived,  looking  for  her  consort  in  vain.  The 
sloop  was  only  twenty-eight  tons  and  could  not  accom- 
modate more  than  three,  and  the  lot  decided  that  Good- 
ridge  should  be  one  of  these  three.  Then  the  sloop 
sailed  for  Van  Diemen's  Land,  and  after  a  rough 
passage  of  thirty-six  days  reached  Hobart  Town  on 
7  July. 

We  need  not  follow  Goodridge's  narrative  further, 
though  what  remains  is  interesting  :  his  observations 
on  the  condition  of  the  convicts,  the  settlers,  and  so 
forth.  He  there  got  into  trouble,  being  arrested  and 
thrown  into  prison  on  the  suspicion  that  he  was  a  run- 
away sailor  from  the  King  George,  and  he  had  great 
difficulty  in  obtaining  his  discharge.  He  was  also 
attacked  and  nearly  murdered  by  bushrangers. 

At  length,  in  the  beginning  of  1831,  he  was  able  to 
start  for  home.  He  embarked  on  15  February.  "  On 
Sunday  morning,  3ist  July,  we  came  off  Torbay,  and 
now  I  anxiously  looked  out  for  some  conveyance  to 
land  :  I  was  in  sight  of  my  native  village — my  heart 
beat  high.  The  venerable  tower  of  Paignton,  forming 
as  it  does  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  objects  in  the 
bay,  was  full  in  view,  and  with  my  glass  I  could  trace 
many  well-remembered  objects,  even  the  very  dwelling 
of  my  childhood  and  the  home  of  my  parents."  On 
2  August,  Goodridge  reached  home  to  find  his  parents 
still  alive,  though  the  old  man  was  infirm  and  failing. 
He  had  been  away  eleven  years  ;  but  of  these  a  good 
many  had  been  spent  by  him  in  business  in  Van 
Diemen's  Land. 


JOHN    DAVY 

JOHN  DAVY  was  born  at  Upton  Hellions,  and 
was  an  illegitimate  child,  baptized  as  Davie  on 
Christmas  Day,  1763.  When  he  was  about  three 
years  old,  he  entered  the  room  one  day  where 
his  uncle,  a  blacksmith  in  the  same  parish,  was  playing 
a  psalm  tune  on  the  violoncello ;  but  the  moment  he 
heard  the  instrument  he  ran  away  crying,  and  was  so 
terrified  that  it  was  thought  he  would  have  a  fit.  For 
several  weeks  his  uncle  repeatedly  tried  to  reconcile 
him  to  the  instrument ;  and  at  last,  after  much  coaxing 
and  encouragement,  he  effected  it  by  taking  the  child's 
fingers  and  making  him  strike  the  strings.  The  sound 
thus  produced  startled  him  considerably  at  first,  but 
in  a  few  days  he  became  so  passionately  fond  of  the 
amusement,  that  he  took  every  opportunity  of  scraping 
a  better  acquaintance  with  the  monster.  With  a  little 
attention  he  was  soon  able  to  produce  such  notes  from 
the  violoncello  as  greatly  delighted  him. 

Soon  after  this  Davy's  uncle  frequently  took  him  to 
Crediton,  where  a  company  of  soldiers  was  quartered, 
and  one  day  at  the  roll-call  he  was  greatly  delighted  at 
the  music  of  the  fifes  ;  so  much  was  he  pleased  that  he 
borrowed  one,  and  very  soon  taught  himself  to  play 
several  tunes  decently.  After  this  he  began  to  make 
fifes  from  the  tubular  reeds  growing  on  the  banks  of 
the  Greedy,  and  commonly  called  "billers."  With 


352  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

these  he  made  several  imitations  of  the  fife,  and  bartered 
them  to  his  playmates.. 

At  the  age  of  four  or  five  years,  his  ear  was  so 
correct  that  he  could  play  any  easy  tune  after  once 
hearing  it.  Before  he  was  quite  six  years  old,  a  neigh- 
bouring blacksmith,  into  whose  house  he  went  fre- 
quently, lost  twenty  or  thirty  horseshoes.  Diligent 
search  was  made  for  them  during  many  days.  But 
one  evening  the  blacksmith,  John  Davy's  uncle,  heard 
faint  chimes,  like  those  of  Crediton  Church,  sounding 
from  the  garret  of  his  house,  and  having  listened  a 
sufficient  time  to  be  convinced  that  his  ears  did  not 
deceive  him,  he  ascended  to  the  attic,  and  there  found 
the  boy  with  the  horseshoes,  or  so  many  of  them  as 
would  form  an  octave,  hung  clear  of  the  wall  to  nails, 
and  he  was  striking  them  with  a  hammer  or  iron  rod, 
playing  the  chimes  of  Crediton  Church  bells. 

The  story  coming  to  the  ears  of  Chancellor  Carring- 
ton,  then  rector  of  Upton  Hellions,  he  felt  interested 
in  the  child,  and  showed  him  a  harpsichord,  on  which 
he  speedily  acquired  some  proficiency.  He  applied 
himself  likewise  to  the  violin,  on  which  his  uncle,  who 
played  in  the  orchestra  of  the  church  choir,  was  able  to 
give  him  some  instruction,  and  he  found  little  difficulty 
in  surmounting  the  preliminaries.  When  eleven  years 
old  the  Chancellor  introduced  him  to  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Eastcott,  who  possessed  a  pianoforte,  then  an  instru- 
ment of  recent  introduction,  at  least  in  the  west.  With 
this  also  the  boy  soon  became  familiar,  and  so  im- 
pressed Mr.  Eastcott  with  his  intuitive  genius  for  music, 
that  he  advised  his  friends  to  place  him  with  some 
musician  of  eminence,  under  whom  he  would  have  free 
access  to  a  good  instrument,  and  might  learn  the  rules 
of  composition.  They  applied  to  Mr.  William  Jackson, 
the  organist  of  Exeter  Cathedral,  and  when  John  was 


JOHN   DAVY  353 

about  twelve  years  of  age,  he  was  articled  as  a  pupil 
and  apprentice  to  this  able  man. 

His  progress  in  the  study  of  composition,  and  espe- 
cially of  church  music,  was  rapid.  He  also  became 
an  admirable  performer  on  the  organ,  and  often  took 
the  place  of  Jackson  in  the  cathedral.  The  first  of  his 
compositions  that  appear  to  have  attained  any  degree 
of  celebrity  were  some  vocal  quartettes. 

Having  completed  his  studies  with  Jackson,  Davy 
went  to  London,  where  he  obtained  a  situation  in  the 
orchestra  at  Covent  Garden  ;  and  he  employed  his  time 
in  teaching,  and  soon  had  a  considerable  number  of 
pupils.  He  composed  some  dramatic  pieces  for  the 
theatre  at  Sadler's  Wells,  and  wrote  the  music  to 
Mr.  Holman's  opera  of  What  a  Blunder,  which  was 
performed  at  the  little  theatre  in  the  Haymarket  in 
1800.  In  the  following  year,  he  was  engaged  with 
Moorhead  in  the  music  of  Perouse,  and  with  Mountain 
in  The  Brazen  Mask,  for  Covent  Garden. 

He  was  greatly  lionized  in  Town,  owing  to  the  eclat 
attending  his  early  efforts,  and  was  retained  as  com- 
poser of  music  by  the  managers  of  the  Theatres  Royal 
until  infirmities,  rather  than  age,  rendered  him  almost 
incapable  of  exertion,  unhappily  a  victim  to  drink. 
He  died,  before  he  was  sixty-two,  in  February,  1824, 
without  a  friend,  and  was  buried  in  St.  Martin's  church- 
yard at  the  expense  of  two  London  tradesmen,  one  of 
whom,  Mr.  Thomas,  was  a  native  of  Crediton. 

Davy  at  one  time  had  an  ambition  to  shine  as  an 
actor,  and  he  actually  made  his  debut  on  the  stage  at 
Exeter,  but  failed. 

Although  Davy's  end  was  so  wretched,  many  of  his 
compositions  will  never  cease  to  be  recollected  and 
sung;  notably  that  delicately  beautiful  ballad,  "Just 
Like  Love  "  ;  others,  more  boisterous  in  character,  are, 

2   A 


354  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"  May  We  Never  Want  a  Friend,"  "  The  Death  of  the 
Smuggler,"  and  "The  Bay  of  Biscay." 

For  the  life  of  Davy,  see  dictionaries  of  Musical 
Biography,  and  an  article  by  Dr.  Edwards  on  "  Credi- 
ton  Musicians  "  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Devonshire 
Association,  1882. 


RICHARD    PARKER,  THE    MUTINEER 

FOR  the  story  of  Richard  Parker,  I  shall 
quote  almost  verbatim  the  account,  which  is 
very  detailed,  by  Camden  Pelham  in  Chroni- 
cles of 'Crime ',  London,  1840. 

In  the  year  1797,  when  the  threatening  aspect  of 
affairs  abroad  made  the  condition  of  the  naval  force 
a  matter  of  vital  importance  to  Britain,  several  alarm- 
ing mutinies  broke  out  among  the  various  fleets 
stationed  around  the  shores  of  the  country.  In  April 
of  the  year  mentioned,  the  seamen  of  the  grand  fleet 
lying  at  Portsmouth  disowned  the  authority  of  their 
officers,  seized  upon  the  ships,  hoisted  the  red  flag, 
and  declared  their  determination  not  to  lift  an  anchor, 
or  obey  any  orders  whatsoever,  until  certain  grievances 
of  which  they  complained  were  redressed. 

There  is  no  denying  or  concealing  the  fact — the  men 
had  been  ill-paid,  ill-fed,  shamefully  neglected  by  the 
country,  which  depended  upon  them  for  its  all,  and, 
in  many  instances,  harshly  and  brutally  treated  by 
their  officers,  and  belly-pinched  and  plundered  by  their 
pursers.  They  behaved  with  exemplary  moderation. 
The  mutineers  allowed  all  frigates  with  convoys  to  sail, 
in  order  not  to  injure  the  commerce  of  the  country. 
The  delegates  of  the  vessels  drew  up  and  signed  a 
petition  to  Parliament  and  another  to  the  Admiralty ; 
their  language  was  respectful,  and  their  demands  were 
very  far  from  exorbitant. 

355 


356  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

After  some  delay,  satisfactory  concessions  were  made 
to  them  by  Government,  and  the  men  returned  to  their 
duty.  But  the  spirit  of  insubordination  had  spread 
among  other  squadrons  in  the  service,  and  about  the 
middle  of  May,  immediately  after  the  Portsmouth  fleet 
had  sailed  peaceably  for  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  the  seamen 
of  the  large  fleet  lying  at  the  Nore  broke  out  also 
into  open  mutiny.  The  most  conspicuous  personage  in 
the  insurrection  was  one  Richard  Parker,  a  native  of 
Exeter,  privately  baptized,  in  St.  Mary  Major  parish, 
24  April,  1767.  His  father  was  a  baker  in  that  parish, 
and  had  his  shop  near  the  turnstile.  It  was  afterwards 
burnt  down.  He  rented  it  of  the  dean  and  chapter, 
from  1761  to  1793,  and  acquired  a  little  land  near  to 
Exeter  as  his  own.  Young  Parker  received  a  good 
education,  and  at  the  age  of  twelve  went  to  sea.  He 
served  in  the  Royal  Navy  as  midshipman  and  master's 
mate.  But  he  threw  up  his  profession  on  his  marriage 
with  Anne  McHardy,  a  young  woman  resident  in 
Exeter,  but  of  Scottish  origin,  a  member  of  a  respect- 
able family  in  Aberdeen. 

This  connexion  led  Parker  to  remove  to  Scotland, 
where  he  embarked  in  some  mercantile  speculations 
that  proved  unsuccessful.  The  issue  was  that  before 
long  he  found  himself  in  embarrassed  circumstances, 
and  unable  to  maintain  his  wife  and  two  children.  In 
Edinburgh,  where  these  difficulties  arose,  he  had  no 
friends  to  whom  he  could  apply  for  assistance,  and  in 
a  moment  of  desperation  he  took  the  King's  bounty, 
and  became  a  common  sailor  on  board  a  tender  at 
Leith.  When  he  announced  to  his  wife  the  steps  he 
had  taken,  she  hastened  to  Aberdeen  in  great  distress 
to  procure  from  her  brother  the  means  of  hiring  two 
seamen  as  substitutes  for  her  husband.  But  when  she 
returned  with  the  money  from  Aberdeen  it  was  too 


RICHARD  PARKER,  THE  MUTINEER    357 

late,  for  the  tender  had  just  sailed  with  her  husband 
on  board.  Her  grief  was  aggravated  at  this  time  by 
the  loss  of  one  of  her  children.  Parker's  sufferings 
were  shown  to  be  equally  acute  by  his  conduct  when 
the  vessel  sailed,  crying  out  that  he  saw  the  body  of 
his  child  floating  upon  the  waves  ;  he  leaped  overboard, 
and  was  with  difficulty  rescued  and  restored  to  life. 

In  the  early  days  of  May,  1797,  Parker  reached  the 
Nore,  a  point  of  land  dividing  the  mouth  of  the  Thames 
and  the  Medway.  Probably  on  account  of  his  former 
experience  as  a  seaman,  he  was  drafted  on  board  the 
Sandwich,  the  guardship  that  bore  the  flag  of  Admiral 
Buckner,  the  Port  Admiral.  The  mutinous  spirit  which 
afterwards  broke  out  certainly  existed  on  board  the 
Nore  squadron  before  Parker's  arrival.  Communica- 
tions were  kept  up  in  secret  between  the  various  crews, 
and  the  mischief  was  gradually  drawing  to  a  head. 
But  though  he  did  not  originate  the  feeling  of  insub- 
ordination, the  ardent  temper,  boldness,  and  superior 
intelligence  of  Parker  soon  became  known  to  his  com- 
rades, and  he  became  a  prominent  man  among  them. 
Their  plans  being  at  last  matured,  the  seamen  rose 
simultaneously  against  their  officers,  and  deprived  them 
of  their  arms,  as  well  as  of  all  command  in  the  ships, 
though  behaving  respectfully  to  them  in  all  other 
ways.  Each  vessel  was  put  under  the  government 
of  a  committee  of  twelve  men,  and,  to  represent  the 
whole  body  of  seamen,  every  man-of-war  appointed 
two  delegates  and  each  gunboat  one  to  act  for  the 
common  good.  Of  these  delegates  Richard  Parker 
was  chosen  president,  and  in  an  unhappy  hour  for 
himself  he  accepted  the  office.  The  representative  body 
drew  up  a  list  of  grievances,  of  which  they  demanded 
the  removal,  offering  return  immediately  after  to  their 
duty.  The  demands  were  for  increased  pay,  better  and 


358  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

more  abundant  food,  a  more  equal  division  of  prize- 
money,  liberty  to  go  on  shore,  and  prompt  payment  of 
arrears.  A  committee  of  naval  inquiry  subsequently 
granted  almost  all  their  demands,  thereby  acknow- 
ledging their  justice.  Parker  signed  these  documents, 
and  they  were  published  over  the  whole  kingdom  with 
his  name  attached,  as  well  as  presented  to  Port  Admiral 
Buckner,  through  whom  they  were  sent  to  the  Govern- 
ment. When  these  proceedings  commenced  the  muti- 
neers were  suffered  to  go  on  shore,  and  they  paraded 
the  streets  of  Sheerness,  where  lay  a  part  of  the  fleet, 
with  music  and  the  red  flag  flying. 

But  on  the  22nd  of  May,  troops  were  sent  to  Sheer- 
ness  to  put  a  stop  to  these  demonstrations.  Being  thus 
confined  to  their  ships,  the  mutineers,  having  come  to 
no  agreement  with  Admiral  Buckner,  began  to  take 
more  decisive  measures  for  extorting  compliance  with 
their  demands,  as  well  as  for  securing  their  own  safety. 
The  vessels  at  Sheerness  moved  down  to  the  Nore,  and 
the  combined  force  of  the  insurgents,  which  consisted 
of  twenty-five  sail,  proceeded  to  block  up  the  Thames, 
by  refusing  a  free  passage,  up  or  down,  to  the  London 
trade.  Foreign  vessels,  and  a  few  small  craft,  were 
suffered  to  go  by,  after  having  received  a  passport, 
signed  by  Richard  Parker,  as  president  of  the  delegates. 

In  a  day  or  two  the  mutineers  had  an  immense  number 
of  vessels  under  detention.  The  mode  in  which  they 
kept  them  was  as  follows :  The  ships  of  war  were 
ranged  in  a  line,  at  considerable  distances  from  each 
other,  and  in  the  interspaces  were  placed  the  merchant 
vessels,  having  the  broadsides  of  the  men-of-war 
pointed  to  them.  The  appearance  of  the  whole  assem- 
blage is  described  as  having  been  at  once  grand  and 
appalling.  The  red  flag  floated  from  the  mast-head  of 
every  one  of  the  mutineer  ships. 


RICHARD  PARKER,  THE  MUTINEER   359 

The  Government,  however,  though  unable  at  the 
moment  to  quell  the  mutiny  by  force,  remained  firm  in 
their  demand  of  "  unconditional  surrender  as  a  neces- 
sary preliminary  to  any  intercourse."  This  was,  per- 
haps, the  best  line  of  conduct  that  could  have  been 
adopted.  The  seamen,  to  their  great  honour,  never 
seemed  to  think  of  assuming  an  offensive  attitude,  and 
were  thereby  left  in  quiet  to  meditate  on  the  dangerous 
position  in  which  they  stood  in  hostility  to  their  own 
country.  Disunion  began  to  manifest  itself,  and 
Parker's  efforts  to  revive  the  cooling  ardour  of  the 
mutineers  resulted  in  rousing  particular  hostility  against 
himself. 

Meanwhile,  formidable  preparations  had  been  made 
by  the  Government  for  the  protection  of  the  coast 
against  a  boat  attack  by  the  mutineers,  and  to  prevent 
the  fleet  advancing  up  the  Thames  and  menacing 
London.  All  the  buoys  and  beacons  in  the  three 
channels  giving  entrance  to  the  Thames  had  been 
removed.  Batteries  with  furnaces  for  red-hot  shot  were 
constructed  at  several  points.  Sheerness  was  filled  with 
troops,  and  at  more  distant  places  outposts  were  estab- 
lished to  prevent  the  landing  of  parties  of  the  mutineers. 
Two  ships  of  the  line,  some  frigates,  and  between  twenty 
and  thirty  gunboats  lying  higher  up  the  river  were 
fitted  out  in  great  haste,  to  co-operate,  in  the  event  of  an 
attack  by  the  mutinous  fleet,  with  the  squadron  from 
Spithead,  that  had  been  summoned.  Alarm  and  per- 
plexity disorganized  the  council  of  the  mutineers.  The 
supply  of  provisions  had  for  some  time  been  running 
short. 

A  price  had  been  set  on  Parker's  head — £500.  It  was 
thought  that  he  might  attempt  to  escape,  and  therefore 
a  description  of  him  was  published:  " Richard  Parker  is 
about  thirty  years  of  age,  wears  his  own  hair,  which  is 


360  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

black,  untied,  though  not  cropt ;  about  five  feet  nine  or 
ten  inches  high ;  has  a  rather  prominent  nose,  dark  eyes 
and  complexion,  and  thin  visage  ;  is  generally  slovenly 
dressed,  in  a  plain  blue  half-worn  coat  and  a  whitish  or 
light  coloured  waistcoat  and  half-boots." 

But  Parker  made  no  attempt  to  escape.  The 
mutineering  vessels  held  together  till  the  3Oth  May, 
when  the  Clyde  frigate  was  carried  off  by  a  combina- 
tion of  its  officers  and  some  of  the  seamen,  and  was 
followed  by  the  S.  Fiorenzo.  These  vessels  were 
fired  upon  by  the  mutineers,  but  escaped  up  the  river. 
The  loss  was,  however,  more  than  counterbalanced 
by  the  arrival  of  eight  ships  from  the  mutinous 
fleet  of  Admiral  Duncan,  anchored  in  Yarmouth 
Roads. 

On  the  4th  June,  the  King's  birthday,  the  Nore  fleet 
showed  that  their  loyalty  to  their  Sovereign  was  undis- 
turbed by  firing  a  general  salute. 

On  the  6th  June  two  more  ships  deserted  under 
the  fire  of  the  whole  fleet,  but  the  same  evening  four 
more  arrived  from  Admiral  Duncan's  fleet.  On  this 
day  Lord  Northesk,  having  been  summoned  on  board 
the  Sandwich,  found  the  council,  comprising  sixty 
delegates,  sitting  in  the  state  cabin,  with  Parker  at  its 
head.  After  receiving  a  letter  containing  proposals  of 
accommodation  to  which  the  unfortunate  Parker  still  put 
his  name  as  president,  Lord  Northesk  left,  charged  to 
deliver  this  letter  to  the  King.  The  answer  was  a 
refusal  to  all  concessions  till  the  mutineers  had  surren- 
dered unconditionally.  Disunion  thereupon  became 
more  accentuated,  and  on  10  June,  Parker  was  com- 
pelled to  shift  his  flag  to  the  Montague  and  the 
council  removed  with  him. 

On  the  same  day  the  merchantmen  were  permitted 
by  common  consent  to  pass  up  the  river,  and  such  a 


RICHARD  PARKER,  THE  MUTINEER   361 

multitude  of  ships  certainly  had  never  before  entered  a 
port  by  one  tide. 

Fresh  desertions  now  occurred  every  day,  and  all 
hope  of  concerted  action  was  ended  by  stormy  discus- 
sions, in  which  contradictory  suggestions  were  made 
with  such  heat  as  to  lead  in  many  instances  to  acts  of 
violence.  Upon  ship  after  ship  the  red  flag  was  hauled 
down  and  replaced  by  one  that  was  white,  signifying 
submission.  On  the  i2th  only  seven  ships  had  the  red 
flag  flying.  Such  was  the  confusion,  every  crew  being 
divided  into  two  hostile  parties,  that  five  ships  were 
taken  up  the  Thames  by  those  in  favour  of  surrender, 
aided  by  their  opponents  under  the  belief  that  an 
attack  was  about  to  be  made  on  the  shore  defences. 
The  discovery  by  the  latter  that  they  were  betrayed 
aroused  terrible  strife.  The  deck  of  the  Iris  frigate 
became  a  battlefield  ;  one  party  in  the  fore,  the  others 
in  the  after-part,  turned  the  great  guns  against  each 
other,  and  fought  till  the  mutineers  were  worsted. 

By  the  i6th  the  mutiny  had  terminated,  every  ship 
having  been  restored  to  the  command  of  its  officers. 
A  party  of  soldiers  went  on  board  the  Sandwich  to 
which  Parker  had  returned,  and  to  them  the  officers 
surrendered  the  delegates  of  the  ship,  namely  a  man 
named  Davies  and  Richard  Parker. 

Richard  Parker,  to  whom  the  title  of  admiral  had 
been  accorded  by  the  fleet  and  by  the  public  during  the 
whole  of  this  affair,  was  the  undoubted  ringleader,  and 
was  the  individual  on  whom  all  eyes  were  turned  as 
the  chief  of  the  mutineers.  He  was  brought  to  trial 
on  the  22nd  of  June,  after  having  been  confined  during 
the  interval  in  the  Black-hole  of  Sheerness  garrison. 
Ten  officers,  under  the  presidency  of  Vice-Admiral 
Sir  Thomas  Pasley,  Bart.,  composed  the  court-martial, 
which  sat  on  board  the  Neptune,  off  Greenhithe.  The 


362  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

prisoner  conducted  his  own  defence,  exhibiting  great 
presence  of  mind,  and  preserving  a  respectful  and  manly 
deference  throughout  towards  his  judges. 

The  prosecution  on  the  part  of  the  Crown  lasted  two 
days,  and  on  the  26th,  Parker  called  witnesses  in  his 
favour,  and  read  a  long  and  able  defence  which  he  had 
previously  prepared.  The  line  of  argument  adopted 
by  him  was — that  the  situation  he  had  held  had  been 
in  a  measure  forced  upon  him  ;  that  he  had  consented 
to  assume  it  chiefly  from  the  hope  of  restraining  the 
men  from  excesses  ;  that  he  had  restrained  them  in 
various  instances  ;  that  he  might  have  taken  all  the 
ships  to  sea,  or  to  an  enemy's  port,  had  his  motives 
been  disloyal,  etc.  Parker  unquestionably  spoke  the 
truth  on  many  of  these  points.  Throughout  the  whole 
affair,  the  injury  done  to  property  was  trifling,  the 
taking  of  some  flour  from  a  vessel  being  the  chief  act 
of  the  kind.  But  he  had  indubitably  been  the  head 
of  the  mutineers.  It  was  proved  that  he  went  from 
ship  to  ship  giving  orders  and  encouraging  the  men  to 
stand  out,  and  that  his  orders  were  given  as  though  he 
were  actually  admiral  of  the  fleet.  Nothing  could  save 
him.  He  was  sentenced  to  death.  When  his  doom  was 
pronounced,  he  rose,  and  said,  in  firm  tones,  "I  shall 
submit  to  your  sentence  with  all  due  respect,  being 
confident  in  the  innocency  of  my  intentions,  and  that 
God  will  receive  me  unto  His  favour  ;  and  I  sincerely 
hope  that  my  death  will  be  the  means  of  restoring 
tranquillity  to  the  Navy,  and  that  those  men  who  have 
been  implicated  in  the  business  may  be  reinstated  in 
their  former  situations,  and  again  be  serviceable  to 
their  country." 

On  the  morning  of  the  3Oth  of  June,  the  yellow  flag, 
the  signal  of  death,  was  hoisted  on  board  the  Sandwich, 
where  Richard  Parker  lay,  and  where  he  was  to  meet 


RICHARD  PARKER,  THE  MUTINEER    363 

his  fate.  The  whole  fleet  was  ranged  a  little  below 
Sheerness,  in  sight  of  the  Sandwich,  and  the  crew  of 
every  ship  was  piped  to  the  forecastle.  Parker  was 
awakened  from  a  sound  sleep  on  that  morning,  and 
after  being  shaved,  he  dressed  himself  in  a  suit  of  deep 
mourning.  He  mentioned  to  his  attendants  that  he  had 
made  a  will,  leaving  to  his  wife  some  property  in 
Devonshire  that  belonged  to  him.  On  coming  to  the 
deck,  he  was  pale,  but  perfectly  composed,  and  drank  a 
glass  of  wine  "  to  the  salvation  of  his  soul,  and  for- 
giveness of  all  his  enemies  !  "  He  said  nothing  to  his 
mates  on  the  forecastle  but  "  Good-bye  to  you!"  and 
expressed  a  hope  that  "  his  death  would  be  deemed 
sufficient  atonement,  and  save  the  lives  of  others." 

He  was  strung  up  to  the  yard-arm  at  half-past  nine 
o'clock.  A  dead  silence  reigned  among  the  crews 
around  during  the  execution.  When  cold,  his  body 
was  taken  down,  put  in  a  shell,  and  interred  within  an 
hour  or  two  after  his  death  in  the  new  naval  burying 
ground  at  Sheerness.  A  remarkable  and  pathetic 
sequel  to  the  account  has  served  as  the  basis  of  a  popu- 
lar ballad  still  sung. 

Richard  Parker's  unfortunate  wife  had  not  left  Scot- 
land, when  the  news  reached  her  ears  that  the  Nore 
fleet  had  mutinied,  and  that  the  ringleader  was  one 
Richard  Parker.  She  could  not  doubt  that  this  was  her 
husband,  and  immediately  took  a  place  in  the  mail  for 
London,  to  save  him  if  possible.  On  her  arrival,  she 
heard  that  Parker  had  been  tried,  but  the  result  was  not 
known.  Being  able  to  think  of  no  way  but  petitioning 
the  King,  she  gave  a  person  a  guinea  to  draw  up 
a  paper,  praying  that  her  husband's  life  might  be 
spared.  She  attempted  to  make  her  way  with  this  into 
His  Majesty's  presence,  but  was  obliged  finally  to  hand 
it  to  a  lord-in-waiting,  who  gave  her  the  cruel  intelli- 


364  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

gence  that  all  applications  for  mercy  would  be  attended 
to,  except  for  Parker.  The  distracted  woman  then  took 
coach  for  Rochester,  where  she  got  on  board  a  King's 
ship,  and  learnt  that  Parker  was  to  be  executed  next 
day.  She  sat  up,  in  a  condition  of  unspeakable 
wretchedness,  the  whole  of  that  night,  and  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning  went  to  the  riverside  to  hire  a 
boat  to  take  her  to  the  Sandwich,  that  she  might  at  least 
bid  her  poor  husband  farewell.  Her  feelings  had  been 
deeply  wrung  by  hearing  every  person  she  met  talking 
on  the  subject  of  her  distress,  and  now  the  first  water- 
man to  whom  she  spoke  refused  to  take  her  as  a  single 
passenger.  "The  brave  Admiral  Parker  is  to  die  to- 
day," he  said,  "and  I  can  get  any  sum  I  choose  to  ask 
for  carrying  over  a  party." 

Finally,  the  wretched  wife  was  glad  to  go  on  board  a 
Sheerness  market  boat,  but  no  boat  was  allowed  to  run 
up  alongside  of  the  Sandwich.  In  her  desperation  she 
called  on  Parker  by  name,  and  prevailed  on  the  boat 
people,  moved  by  the  sight  of  her  distress,  to  attempt  to 
approach,  but  they  were  stopped  by  a  sentinel  who 
threatened  to  fire  at  them,  unless  they  withdrew. 

O  Parker  was  the  truest  husband, 

Best  of  friends,  whom  I  love  dear ; 
Yet  when  he  was  a-called  to  suffer, 

To  him  I  might  not  then  draw  near. 
Again  I  ask'd,  again  I  pleaded, 

Three  times  entreating, — all  in  vain  ; 
They  even  that  request  refused  me, 

And  ordered  me  ashore  again. 

As  the  hour  drew  nigh,  she  saw  her  husband  appear 
on  deck  walking  between  two  clergymen.  She  called 
to  him,  and  he  heard  her  voice,  for  he  exclaimed, 
"There  is  my  dear  wife  from  Scotland." 

Then,  happily,  she  fainted,  and  did  not  recover  till 
some  time  after  she  was  taken  ashore.  By  this  time  all 


RICHARD  PARKER,  THE  MUTINEER   365 

was  over,  but  the  poor  woman  could  not  believe  it  so. 
She  hired  another  boat,  and  again  reached  the  Sandwich. 
Her  exclamation  from  the  boat  must  have  startled  all 
who  heard  it.  "  Pass  the  word,"  she  cried  in  her 
delusion,  "for  Richard  Parker!" 
The  ballad  says  : — 

The  yellow  flag-  I  saw  was  flying-, 

A  signal  for  my  love  to  die  ; 
The  g-un  was  fir'd,  as  was  requir'd, 

To  hang-  him  on  the  yard-arm  hig-h. 
The  boatswain  did  his  best  endeavour, 

I  on  the  shore  was  put  straightway, 
And  there  I  tarried,  watching-,  weeping1, 

My  husband's  corpse  to  bear  away. 

On  reaching  the  Sandwich  she  was  informed  that  all 
was  over,  and  that  the  body  of  her  husband  had  just 
been  taken  ashore  for  burial.  She  immediately  caused 
herself  to  be  rowed  ashore  again,  and  proceeded  to  the 
cemetery,  but  found  that  the  ceremony  was  over  and 
the  gate  was  locked.  She  then  went  to  the  Admiral 
and  sought  the  key,  but  it  was  refused  to  her.  Excited 
almost  to  madness  by  the  information  given  her  that 
probably  the  surgeons  would  disinter  the  body  that 
night  and  cut  it  up,  she  waited  around  the  churchyard 
till  dusk,  and  then  clambering  over  the  wall,  readily 
found  her  husband's  grave.  The  shell  was  not  buried 
deep,  and  she  was  not  long  in  scraping  away  the  loose 
earth  that  intervened  between  her  and  the  object  of  her 
search.  She  tore  off  the  lid  with  her  nails  and  teeth, 
and  then  clasped  the  hand  of  her  husband,  cold  in 
death,  and  no  more  able  to  return  the  pressure. 

Her  determination  to  possess  the  body  next  forced 
her  to  quit  the  cemetery  and  seek  the  assistance  of  two 
women,  who,  in  their  turn,  got  several  men  to  under- 
take the  task  of  lifting  the  body.  This  was  accom- 
plished successfully,  and  at  3  a.m.  the  shell  containing 


366  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  corpse  was  placed  in  a  van  and  conveyed  to 
Rochester,  where,  for  the  sum  of  six  guineas,  the 
widow  procured  another  wagon  to  carry  it  to  London. 
On  the  road  they  met  hundreds  of  people  all  in- 
quiring about,  and  talking  of,  the  fate  of  "  Admiral 
Parker." 

The  rude  ballad  thus  relates  the  carrying  away  of  the 
body : — 

At  dead  of  night,  when  all  was  quiet, 

And  many  thousands  fast  asleep, 
I,  by  two  female  friends  attended, 

Into  the  burial-ground  did  creep. 
Our  trembling  hands  did  serve  as  shovels 

With  which  the  mold  we  moved  away, 
And  then  the  body  of  my  husband 

Was  carried  off  without  delay. 

At  ii  p.m.  the  van  reached  London,  but  there  the 
poor  widow  had  no  private  house  or  friends  to  go  to, 
and  was  constrained  to  stop  at  the  "  Hoofs  and  Horse- 
shoe "  on  Tower  Hill,  which  was  full  of  people.  Mrs. 
Parker  got  the  body  into  her  room,  and  sat  down 
beside  it ;  but  the  secret  could  not  long  be  kept  in 
such  a  place,  more  particularly  as  the  news  of  the 
exhumation  had  been  brought  by  express  that  day  to 
London. 

An  immense  crowd  assembled  about  the  house, 
anxious  to  see  the  body  of  Parker,  but  this  the  widow 
would  not  permit. 

The  Lord  Mayor  heard  of  the  affair,  and  came  to  ask 
the  widow  what  she  intended  to  do  with  her  husband's 
remains.  She  replied,  "To  inter  them  decently  at 
Exeter  or  in  Scotland."  The  Lord  Mayor  assured  her 
that  the  body  would  not  be  taken  from  her,  and  eventu- 
ally prevailed  on  her  to  consent  to  its  being  decently 
buried  in  London.  Arrangements  were  made  with  this 


RICHARD  PARKER,  THE  MUTINEER    367 

view,  and  in  the  interim  it  was  taken  to  Aldgate  Work- 
house, on  account  of  the  crowds  attracted  by  it,  which 
caused  some  fears  lest  "  Admiral  Parker's  remains 
should  provoke  a  civil  war." 

Finally,  the  corpse  was  buried  in  Whitechapel 
Churchyard,  and  Mrs.  Parker,  who  had  in  person 
seen  her  husband  consigned  to  the  grave,  gave  a 
certificate  that  all  had  been  done  to  her  satisfaction. 
But,  though  strictly  questioned  as  to  her  accomplices 
in  the  exhuming  and  carrying  away  of  the  body,  she 
firmly  refused  to  disclose  the  names. 

Parker  had,  as  he  said,  made  a  will,  leaving  to  his 
wife  the  little  property  he  had  near  Exeter.  This  she 
enjoyed  for  a  number  of  years,  but  ultimately  lost  it 
through  a  lawsuit  with  Parker's  sisters,  who  claimed 
that  it  was  theirs  by  right.  She  was  thrown  into 
great  distress,  and,  becoming  almost  blind,  was 
obliged  to  solicit  assistance  from  the  charitable. 
King  William  IV  gave  her  at  one  time  £10,  and  at 
another  £20. 

In  1836  the  forlorn  and  miserable  condition  of  poor 
Parker's  widow  was  made  known  to  the  London  magis- 
trates, and  a  temporary  refuge  was  provided  for  her. 
But  temporary  assistance  was  of  little  avail  to  one 
whose  physical  infirmities  rendered  her  incapable  of  any 
longer  helping  herself.  When  Camden  Pelham  wrote 
in  1840,  she  was  aged  seventy,  blind,  and  friendless  ; 
but  time  and  affliction  had  not  quenched  her  affection 
for  the  partner  of  her  early  days.  However,  in  1828, 
John  C.  Parker,  the  son  of  the  mutineer,  obtained  a 
verdict  against  his  aunts  for  the  possession  of  the  little 
estate  of  Shute  that  had  belonged  to  his  father's  elder 
brother.  The  question  turned  on  the  legitimacy  of  the 
plaintiff,  which  was  proved  by  his  mother,  a  woman 
who  then  exhibited  the  remains  of  uncommon  beauty, 


368  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

and   who   was   able  to    prove   that   she    had    married 
Richard  Parker  in  1793. 

Then  farewell,  Parker,  best  beloved, 

That  was  once  the  Navy's  pride, 
And  since  we  might  not  die  together, 

We  separate  henceforth  abide. 
His  sorrows  now  are  past  and  over, 

Now  he  resteth  free  from  pain — 
Grant,  O  God,  his  soul  may  enter 

Where  one  day  we  meet  again.1 

The  melody  to  which  the  ballad  of  the  "  Death  of 
Parker  "  is  set  is  much  more  ancient,  by  two  centuries 
at  the  least,  than  the  ballad  itself.  It  is  plaintive  and 
very  beautiful,  and  the  words  are  admirably  fitted  to 
the  dainty  and  tender  air. 

Richard  Parker  was  a  remarkably  fine  man.  The 
brilliancy  and  expression  of  his  eyes  were  of  such  a 
nature  as  caused  one  of  the  witnesses,  while  under 
examination,  to  break  down,  and  quail  beneath  his 
glance,  and  shrink  abashed,  incapacitated  from  giving 
further  testimony. 

Douglas  Jerrold  wrote  a  drama  upon  the  theme  of 
the  "  Mutiny  at  the  Nore."  But  it  is  a  mere  travesty  of 
history.  The  true  pathos  and  beauty  of  the  story  of 
the  devoted  wife  were  completely  put  aside  for  vulgar 
melodramatic  incidents. 

For  authorities,  the  Annual  Register  for  1797;  The 
Chronicles  of  Crime,  by  Camden  Pelham,  London, 
1840 ;  The  Mutiny  at  Spithead  and  the  Nore,  London, 
1842  ;  "  Richard  Parker,  of  Exeter,  and  the  Mutiny 
of  the  Nore,"  by  S.  T.  Whiteford,  in  Notes  and  Glean- 
ings, Exeter,  1888. 

1  The  ballad,  with  its  melody,  is  given  in  Songs  of  the  West,  2nd  ed. , 
I905- 


BENJAMIN    KENNICOTT,    D.D. 

BENJAMIN  KENNICOTT  was  born  at  Tot- 
nes  on  4  April,  1718,  and  was  the  son  of 
Benjamin  Kennicott,  the  parish  clerk  of  that 
town.  The  family  had  been  one  of  some 
respectability,  as  in  1606  one  Gabriel  Kennicott  was 
mayor  of  Totnes.  Probably,  if  a  well-to-do  tradesman 
family  at  one  time,  it  had  sunk,  and  Benjamin  senior 
was  quite  content  to  act  as  clerk  on  a  small  stipend. 
His  son  was  educated  at  the  Grammar  School,  founded 
by  King  Edward  VI  in  1554,  and  held  in  a  building 
adjoining  the  Guildhall,  both  of  which  occupy  a  por- 
tion of  the  old  dissolved  priory  of  Totnes,  on  the  north 
side  of  the  church.  The  trustees  of  Eliseus  Hele  had 
endowed  the  school,  and  the  corporation  were  em- 
powered to  send  three  boys  to  the  school  to  receive 
their  education  free  of  expense  ;  and  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  Benjamin  the  younger  was  one  so  privi- 
leged. After  quitting  school  he  was  appointed  master 
of  a  charity  school  for  poor  children,  male  and  female, 
at  Totnes  ;  which  same  charity  children  were  provided 
with  quaint  and  antiquated  garbs.  Young  Kennicott 
now  doubtless  thought  that  he  was  provided  for  for 
life. 

In  1732,  when  he  was  only  fourteen  years  of  age,  the 
bells  of  Totnes  tower  were  recast,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  ringers  presented  to  the  bell-ringing  chamber  an 
eight-light  brass  candlestick  inscribed  with  the  names 
of  the  ringers.  Benjamin  Kennicott  the  elder  headed 

2   B  369 


370  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  list,  and  Benjamin  Kennicott  the  younger  brought 
up  the  tail.  But  in  1742,  when  new  regulations  were 
drawn  up  and  agreed  to  by  the  ringers,  the  youngest 
ringer  had  become  the  leader. 

Bell-ringing  was  a  pastime  dearly  loved  and  much 
practised  in  Devon  at  the  time.  There  were  contests 
between  the  ringers  of  various  churches,  and  chal- 
lenges, the  prize  being  either  money  or  a  hat  laced 
with  gold.  All  over  the  county  one  comes  on  old  songs 
relating  to  these  contests,  and  in  these  songs  are  re- 
corded the  names  of  ringers  who  are  now  only  repre- 
sented by  moss-grown  stones  in  the  churchyard.  A 
party  of  ringers,  say  of  Totnes,  would  sally  forth  to 
spend  a  day  in  contest  with  those  of  Ashburton  or 
Dartmouth,  and  all  day  long  the  tower  would  be  reel- 
ing with  the  clash  of  the  bells.  Here  is  one  of  the 
songs  touching  the  ringers  of  Torrington  : — 

1.  Good  ringers  be  we  that  in  Torrington  dwell, 
And  what  that  we  are  I  will  speedily  tell. 

1.2.3.4.5.656.5.4.3.2.1. 
The  first  is  called  Turner,  the  second  called  Swete, 
The  third  is  a  Vulcan,  the  fourth  Harry  Neat. 

1.2.3.4.5.656.5.4.3.2.1. 

2.  The  fifth  is  a  doctor,  a  man  of  renown, 

The  tenor  the  tailor  that  clothes  all  the  town. 

1.2.3.4.5.656.5.4.3.2.1. 
The  breezes  proclaim  in  their  fall  and  their  swell, 
No  jar  in  the  concord,  no  flaw  in  a  bell. 

1.2.3.4.5.656.5.4.3.2.1. 

3.  The  winds  that  are  blowing  on  mountain  and  lea, 
Bear  swiftly  my  message  across  the  blue  sea, 

1.2.3.4.5.656.5.4.3.2.1. 
Stand  all  men  in  order,  give  each  man  his  due, 
We  can't  be  all  tenors,  but  each  can  pull  true. 

1.2.3.4.5.656.5.4.3.2.1. 

There  is  another,  wedded  to  an  exquisitely  sweet  and 
expressive  melody,  concerning  the  ringers  of  North 


B.KENNICOTT.S.T.P, 
olim    Socius. 


From  the  portrait  at  Exeter  College,  Oxjord 


BENJAMIN   KENNICOTT,    D.D.  371 

Lew,  who  challenged  Ashwater,  Broadwood,  S.  Ste- 
phen's, and  Callington.  I  give  but  the  opening 
verse  : — 

One  day  in  October, 

Neither  drunken  nor  sober, 
O'er  Broadbury  Down  I  was  wending  my  way, 

When  I  heard  of  some  ring-ing1, 

Some  dancing  and  singing, 
I  ought  to  remember  that  Jubilee  Day. 

"Twas  in  Ashwater  town, 

The  bells  they  did  soun' ; 
They  rang  for  a  belt  and  a  hat  laced  with  gold. 

But  the  men  of  North  Lew 

Rang  so  steady  and  true, 
That  never  were  better  in  Devon,  I  hold. 

On  this  song  the  late  Rev.  H.  H.  Sheppard  re- 
marked :  "  There  is  an  indolent  easy  grace  about  this 
tune  which  is  quite  in  keeping  with  the  words  and 
charmingly  suggestive.  The  sunny  valleys,  the  breezy 
downs,  the  sweet  bell-music  swelling  and  sinking  on 
the  soft  autumn  air,  the  old  folk  creeping  out  of  their 
chimney-nooks  to  listen,  and  all  employment  in  the 
little  town  suspended  in  the  popular  excitement  at  the 
contest  for  the  hat  laced  with  gold  ;  all  this,  told  in 
a  few  words  and  illustrated  by  a  few  notes,  quite 
calls  up  a  picture  of  life,  and  stamps  the  number  as  a 
genuine  folk-song.  The  narrator  is  unhappily  slightly 
intoxicated,  but  no  one  thinks  the  worse  of  him  ;  stern 
morality  on  that  or  any  other  score  will  in  vain  be 
looked  for  in  songs  of  the  West." 

Such  a  picture  as  this  must  have  occurred  again  and 
yet  again  in  young  Kennicott's  life  whilst  head  of  the 
ringers  at  Totnes. 

Kennicott's  sister  was  in  service  as  lady's-maid  to  the 
Hon.  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Courtney,  of  Painsford  in  Ash- 
prington,  near  Totnes;  and  in  1743  that  lady  had  a 
narrow  escape  from  death,  having  eaten  a  poisonous 


372  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

herb  in  mistake  for  watercress,  which  it  much  resem- 
bled. The  charity-school  master,  on  hearing  of  this, 
composed  a  poem  on  her  recovery,  which  he  dedicated 
to  "  Kelland  Courtney,  Esq.,  and  his  Lady."  It  con- 
sisted of  no  fewer  than  three  hundred  and  thirty-four 
lines ;  and  this  effusion  having  gained  him  the  favour 
of  the  family,  he  was  taken  in  hand,  and  sent  in  1744 
to  Oxford,  where  he  became  a  student  of  Wadham 
College.  But  the  Courtneys,  though  his  principal 
patrons,  were  not  the  sole.  Archdeacon  Baker,  the 
Rev.  F.  Champernowne,  and  H.  Fownes  Luttrell, 
Esq.,  subscribed  to  send  him  to  college. 

At  Oxford  he  speedily  attracted  attention  by  his 
industry  and  abilities,  and  was  elected  Fellow  of  Exeter 
College  in  1747,  and  was  admitted  to  his  B.  A.  degree  a 
year  before  the  usual  time.  He  took  his  M.A.  degree 
in  1750,  about  which  time  he  entertained  a  design  of 
collating  the  Hebrew  texts  of  the  Old  Testament.  In 
1753  he  published  his  first  volume  on  the  state  of  the 
printed  text,  and  in  1760  his  second  volume.  In  these 
works  he  pointed  out  various  discrepancies,  and  pro- 
posed an  extensive  collation  of  manuscripts. 

Subscriptions  were  obtained,  and  between  1760  and 
1769  no  less  than  £9117.  75.  6d.  had  been  raised  for 
the  work.  This  work  occupied  ten  years.  To  aid  in  it, 
persons  were  employed  to  examine  the  MSS.  in  all 
parts  of  Europe.  In  1769,  Dr.  Kennicott  stated  that  of 
the  500  Hebrew  MSS.  then  in  Europe  he  had  himself 
seen  and  studied  250  ;  and  of  the  16  MSS.  of  the 
Samaritan  Pentateuch  eight  had  been  collated  for  him. 
Subsequently  other  MSS.  were  heard  of,  and  the  colla- 
tion extended  in  all  to  581  Hebrew  and  16  Samaritan 
MSS. 

In  1776  appeared  the  first  fruit  of  all  the  labour,  being 
the  first  volume  of  his  Vetus  Testamentum  Hebraicum 


BENJAMIN    KENNICOTT,    D.D.  373 

cum  variis  lectionibus,    and   the    second    appeared   in 
1780. 

Kennicott  took  his  degree  of  D.D.  in  1761,  and 
received  from  the  Crown  a  pension  of  ^"200.  In  1770 
he  was  made  Prebendary  of  Westminster,  but  this  he 
afterwards  exchanged  for  a  canonry  at  Christchurch. 
He  was  also  rector  of  Culham,  a  valuable  living,  but 
resigned  it,  as  owing  to  his  studies  he  was  unable  to 
reside  and  pay  attention  to  his  pastoral  duties  there. 

Against  the  garden  wall  of  Exeter  College  grew  a 
fig  tree,  and  Kennicott  was  very  partial  to  figs.  Now 
in  a  certain  year  there  was  but  a  single  fig  on  the  tree. 
The  Doctor  watched  it,  eagerly  expecting  when  it 
would  be  ripe,  for  a  fig  is  like  a  pear,  it  ripens  and 
reaches  perfection  all  at  once,  before  which  moment  it 
is  no  good  at  all.  To  secure  this  fruit  for  himself  he 
wrote  out  a  label,  "  Dr.  Kennicott's  Fig,"  and  hung  it 
above  the  fruit  on  the  tree.  But  just  as  the  fig  was  fit 
to  be  gathered  and  eaten,  some  audacious  under- 
graduate managed  to  get  it,  plucked,  ate,  and  then  re- 
versing the  label  wrote  in  large  letters  thereon  "A  Fig 
for  Dr.  Kennicott." 

When  the  reverend  divine  was  at  the  height  of  his 
fame  he  visited  Totnes,  and  was  asked  to  preach  in  the 
parish  church.  This  he  consented  to  do.  In  the  vestry 
he  found  his  old  father,  still  parish  clerk,  prepared  to 
robe  him.  The  Doctor  protested.  No — on  no  account 
would  he  suffer  that.  He  could  perfectly  well  and  un- 
assisted encase  himself  in  cassock  and  surplice  and 
assume  his  scarlet  doctorial  hood.  But  the  old  man 
was  stubborn.  "  But,  Ben — I  mean  Reverend  Doctor — 
do  it  I  must,  and  do  it  I  will.  You  know,  Ben — I 
mean  Reverend  Sir — I  am  your  father  and  you  must 
obey."  So  the  Hebrew  scholar  was  fain  to  submit  and 
give  to  the  old  parish  clerk  the  proudest  hour  of  his 


374  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

life.  Dr.  Kennicott  died  on  18  September,  1783,  in 
the  sixty-sixth  year  of  his  age. 

For  authority  see  an  article  on  "  Benjamin  Kenni- 
cott, D.D.,"  by  Mr.  Ed.  Windeatt,  in  the  Transactions 
of  the  Devonshire  Association,  1878. 

The  portrait  given  with  this  article  is  from  one  in 
Exeter  College. 


CAPTAIN  JOHN    AVERY 

CONCERNING  this  captain  it  is  not  easy  to 
give  a  trustworthy  account  as  the  discrepan- 
cies between  the  narratives  of  his  life  and 
adventures  are  considerable,  and  the  means 
of  discriminating  between  the  true  and  the  fictitious  are 
not  available.     He  is  a  Flying  Dutchman  who  appears 
in  weird  and  terrible  scenes,  and  then  vanishes  into 
mist. 

The  authorities  for  his  adventures,  such  as  they  are, 
are  these : — 

(a)  "  The  Life  of  Captain  Avery  "  in  Captain  Charles 

Johnson's  General  History  of  the  Robberies  and 
Murders  of  Notorious  Py  rates  y  from  1717. 
London,  1724. 

(b)  The  Life  and  Adventures  of  Captain  John  Avery. 

I.  Baker.     London,  1709. 

(c)  The  Famous  Adventures  of  Captain  John  Avery 

of  Plymouth.  Falkirk,  1809.  Probably  a  re- 
print of  an  earlier  Life. 

(d)  The  King    of  Pirates.      (Supposed    to    be    by 

Daniel  Defoe.)     London,   1720. 

With  regard  to  (a\  Johnson  gives  no  authority  for  his 
narrative,  and  it  widely  differs  in  the  sequel  from  (b) 
and  (c). 

375 


376  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

(b)  purports  to  be  written  by  Adrian  Van  Broeck,  a 
Dutchman,  who  was  a  prisoner  for  some  time  with  Avery 
in  Madagascar,  but  he  effected  his  escape  in  a  vessel 
of  the  East  India  Company,  and  his  narrative  ter- 
minates abruptly  with  the  severance  of  his  connexion 
with  the  pirates. 

(c).  In  this — as  we  have  it — late  version,  all  the  early 
life  of  John  Avery  is  given  totally  different  from  (a)  and 
(b).  Little  or  no  reliance  can  be  placed  on  it,  and  as  to 
(ft)  it  is  hard  to  say  whether  Van  Broeck's  is  a  fictitious 
narrative  or  whether  he  records  actual  facts.  It  is  sin- 
gular that  Johnson  should  not  have  spoken  explicitly 
about  this,  the  first  published  record  of  the  pirate's 
adventures. 

(d)  purports  to  be  Avery's  story  of  his  own  life, 
but  it  is  almost  certainly  a  product  of  Defoe's  lively 
imagination. 

On  the  whole  Johnson's  account  is  the  most  reliable, 
and  we  will  follow  that,  noticing  the  divergences  from 
it  in  (d)j  and  will  take  no  account  of  (c)  and  (d}.  John- 
son begins:  "  None  of  the  bold  adventurers  on  the 
Seas  were  ever  so  much  talk'd  of  for  a  while  as  Avery. 
He  was  represented  in  Europe  as  one  that  had  rais'd 
himself  to  the  Dignity  of  a  King,  and  was  likely  to  be 
the  Founder  of  a  new  Monarchy  ;  having,  as  it  was 
said,  taken  immense  Riches,  and  married  the  Great 
Mogul's  Daughter,  who  was  taken  in  an  Indian  Ship 
which  fell  into  his  Hands  ;  by  whom  he  had  many 
Children,  living  in  great  Royalty  and  State :  That  he 
had  built  Forts,  elected  Magistrates,  and  was  Master 
of  a  stout  Squadron  of  Ships,  mann'd  with  able  and 
desperate  Fellows  of  all  Nations.  That  he  gave  Com- 
missions out  in  his  own  Name  to  the  Captains  of  his 
Ships,  and  to  the  Commanders  of  the  Forts,  and  was 
acknowledg'd  by  them  as  their  Prince.  A  Play  was 


0-ri.t.  cf  tfa   CtJUZAT    ^lC"iri'f 


CAPTAIN   JOHN   AVERY  377 

writ  upon  him,  call'd  The  Successful  Pyrate ;*  and 
these  Accounts  obtained  such  Belief  that  several 
Schemes  were  offer'd  to  the  Council  for  sending  out 
a  Squadron  to  take  him  ;  while  others  were  for  offer- 
ing him  and  his  Companions  an  Act  of  Grace  and 
inviting  them  to  England  with  all  their  Treasure,  lest 
his  growing  Greatness  might  hinder  the  Trade  of 
Europe  to  the  East  Indies. 

"  Yet  all  these  were  no  more  than  false  Rumours, 
improv'd  by  the  Credulity  of  some,  and  the  Humour 
of  others  who  love  to  tell  strange  Things ;  for,  while  it 
was  said  he  was  aspiring  at  a  Crown,  he  wanted  a 
Shilling  ;  and  at  the  same  Time  it  was  given  out  he 
was  in  Possession  of  such  prodigious  Wealth  in 
Madagascar  he  was  starving  in  England." 

John  Avery  was  a  native  of  Plymouth ;  according  to 
(b)  he  was  born  in  1653.  His  father  had  served  under 
Admiral  Blake,  then  left  the  navy  for  the  merchant 
service,  but  died  whilst  John  was  still  young,  and  to 
his  sixth  year  was  brought  up  by  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Norris. 
The  story  in  (c)  is  that  his  mother  kept  the  tavern  with 
the  "Sign  of  the  Defiance,"  and  because  one  night 
she  refused  to  receive  a  drunken  party  of  sailors,  in 
revenge  they  carried  off  her  son  and  took  him  on 
board  their  ship,  where  the  captain,  taking  a  liking  to 
him,  carried  him  with  him  to  Carolina.  After  three 
years  he  returned  to  Plymouth  and  was  placed  under 
the  guardianship  of  a  Mr.  Lightfoot.  At  the  age  of 
forty-four  he  entered  on  board  the  Duke^  a  merchant 
vessel,  Captain  Gibson. 

At  this  time,  by  the  Peace  of  Ryswick,  1697,  there 

1  This  play  was  by  Charles  Johnson — not  the  author  of  the  Lives  of 
the  Pirates.  It  was  acted  at  Drury  Lane  in  1713.  John  Dennis  wrote 
to  the  Master  of  the  Revels  to  expostulate  with  him  for  having-  licensed 
this  play,  which  he  considered  as  a  prostitution  of  the  stage,  an  en- 
couragement to  villainy,  and  a  disgrace  to  the  theatre. 


378  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

was  an  alliance  betwixt  Spain,  England,  and  Holland 
against   France  ;    previous    to    this    the    French    had 
carried  on  a  smuggling  trade  with  the  Spaniards  in 
Peru,  which  was  against  the  law  that  reserved  the  trade 
with  the  Spanish  possessions  in  the  New  World  to 
Spaniards  alone.     Accordingly  a  fleet  was  ever  kept 
at  sea  to   guard   the   coast   and   seize  as   prizes   any 
foreign    vessels    that    approached    within    a    certain 
number  of  leagues.     But   as   this   fleet  was  very  in- 
efficient, the  French  smugglers  became  vastly  daring. 
Accordingly,  the  Spanish  Government,  after  the  con- 
clusion of  the  peace,  hired  three  large  vessels,  built  at 
Bristol,  to   serve  as    preventive  ships   on   the   South 
American  coast.     The  merchants  of   Bristol   at  once 
fitted  out  two  of  thirty  guns  each,  and  one  hundred 
and  twenty  hands  apiece,  for  service  under  the  Spanish 
Government,  and  one  of  them  was  the  Duke ;  and  in 
it  as  mate  sailed  our  hero,  John  Avery.     These  two 
vessels  were  ordered  to  sail  for  Corunna,  thence  to  take 
some  Spanish  officers  on  board.    Before  sailing  Avery, 
as  first  mate,  got  into  close  communication  with  both 
crews  and  persuaded  them  to  mutiny  so  soon  as  they 
got  to  sea,  and  instead  of  serving  the  Spanish  Govern- 
ment, to  sweep  the  Indian  Sea  as  pirates.     Captain 
Gibson  was  nightly  addicted  to  punch,  and  spent  most 
of  his  time  on  land  in  drinking  and  getting  drunk. 
The  day  of  sailing,  however,  he  did  not  go  ashore,  but 
tippled  in  his  cabin.     The  men  who  were  not  privy  to 
the  design,    as   well    as    he,    turned    into  their   ham- 
mocks, leaving  none  on  deck  but  the  conspirators.     At 
the  time  agreed  upon,  ten  o'clock  at  night,  the  long- 
boat of  the  consort,  called  the  Duchess^  approached. 
Avery  hailed,  and  was  answered  by  the  men,  u  Is  your 
drunken  boatswain  on  board  ?  "  which  was  the  watch- 
word agreed  upon  between  them.    Avery  replied  in  the 


CAPTAIN   JOHN   AVERY  379 

affirmative,  and  sixteen  men  from  the  boat  came  on 
board,  joined  the  company,  and  proceeded  to  secure  the 
hatches.  They  did  not  slip  the  anchor,  but  weighed  it 
leisurely,  and  so  put  to  sea  without  disorder,  though 
there  were  several  ships  lying  around. 

The  captain  awoke,  roused  by  the  motion  of  the 
vessel  and  the  noise  of  working  the  tackle,  and  rang 
his  bell.  Thereupon  Avery  and  two  others  went  to 
him.  He,  half  asleep,  shouted  out,  "What  is  the 
matter?"  To  which  Avery  replied  coolly,  "  Nothing." 
The  captain  retorted,  "  Something  is  the  matter.  Does 
she  drive?  What  is  the  weather?"  "No,  no,"  said 
Avery,  "  we  are  at  sea  with  a  fair  wind."  "  At  sea  !  " 
exclaimed  Captain  Gibson,  "how  can  that  be?" 
"Don't  be  alarmed,"  said  Avery;  "put  on  your 
clothes,  and  I'll  let  you  into  a  secret.  You  must  know 
that  now  I  am  captain  of  the  ship,  and  that  henceforth 
this  is  my  cabin,  so  please  to  walk  out  of  it.  I  am 
bound  for  Madagascar  to  seek  my  fortune,  and  that  of 
the  brave  fellows  who  have  joined  with  me." 

The  captain  was  now  thoroughly  roused,  and  in  a 
great  fright.  Avery  bade  him  not  fear.  If  he  chose 
to  throw  in  his  lot  with  them,  he  would  be  received, 
but  must  remain  sober  and  mind  his  own  business, 
and  if  he  conducted  himself  properly  would  be  made 
lieutenant.  If  he  refused  he  might  have  the  long-boat 
and  go  ashore  in  it.  The  captain  preferred  the  latter 
alternative  ;  he  was  accordingly  put  into  the  boat  along 
with  such  seamen,  five  or  six  in  all,  who  would  not 
throw  in  their  lot  with  the  mutineers.  The  two  ships 
proceeded  to  Madagascar,  and  came  across  a  couple 
of  sloops  at  anchor  on  the  north-east  of  the  island. 
These  were  manned  by  mutineers  as  well,  and  both 
parties  speedily  came  to  an  agreement  to  hunt  together, 
and  they  now  sailed  for  India.  Off  the  mouth  of  the 


380  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Indus  they  espied  a  large  vessel  flying  the  Great 
Mogul's  colours.  Avery  opened  fire,  and  the  sloops 
ran  close  to  her,  one  on  the  bow,  the  other  on  the 
quarter,  and  boarded  her.  She  at  once  struck  her 
colours.  She  was  a  vessel  of  the  Great  Mogul,  bound 
with  a  load  of  pilgrims  for  Arabia  to  make  the  annual 
pilgrimage  to  Mecca.  On  board  were  also  a  lady  with 
her  retinue,  whom  they  took  to  be  a  daughter  of  the 
Mogul.  The  vessel  was  laden  with  treasure. 

At  this  time  much  trouble  and  vexation  to  the  East 
India  Company  was  caused  by  the  interlopers.  The 
Company  had  obtained  their  charter,  granting  them 
exclusive  rights  to  trade  between  India  and  England, 
and  they  had  certain  determined  ports  where  they  had 
their  factories.  But  the  trade  was  so  profitable  that 
companies  of  merchants  and  private  adventurers  em- 
barked on  the  trade  in  defiance  of  the  rights  of  the 
Company.  They  put  into  ports  within  the  limits  of 
the  Company  concessions,  but  to  which  the  ships  of  the 
latter  did  not  resort,  by  this  means  undermining  and 
invading  the  rights  of  the  Company.  It  was  more  than 
that,  it  was  a  direct  attack  on  the  legal  exercise  of  the 
privileges  of  the  Company.  In  1695  the  British  Court 
informed  Sir  John  Gayer  and  the  Presidency  of  Surat 
that  the  expedients  which  had  been  adopted  for  sup- 
pressing the  interlopers  had  failed  at  home  and  abroad 
by  their  not  being  excluded  from  foreign  markets,  and 
the  Company's  servants  were  required  to  obstruct 
their  sales  in  foreign  markets,  and  further  to  take 
measures  against  their  entering  the  Indian  ports.  In 
1675-6,  the  interlopers  being  disappointed  in  the  sales 
of  their  cargoes  and  in  the  purchase  of  Indian  produce, 
determined  not  to  return  to  Europe  without  realizing 
gains  for  themselves  and  their  employers,  and  they 
turned  pirates  and  seized  vessels  belonging  to  the 


CAPTAIN   JOHN   AVERY  381 

native  princes,  and  left  the  Company's  servants  exposed 
to  suspicion  and  imprisonment  and  their  property  to 
seizure  and  confiscation.  It  was  precisely  at  this  con- 
juncture that  Avery's  little  piratical  fleet  made  its 
capture.  The  vessel,  the  Gunswek,  was  bound  from 
Bombay  for  Daman.  Avery  cleared  it  of  all  its  trea- 
sure, and  only  released  the  pilgrims  on  payment  of  a 
heavy  indemnity,  and  left  the  ship  to  be  steered  back 
to  Bombay  by  the  native  crew.  As  to  the  ladies  on 
board,  Avery  took  to  himself  that  one  whom  he  sup- 
posed to  be  the  daughter  of  the  Great  Mogul,  and  let 
his  crew  toss  up  for  the  rest  as  partners. 

John  Bruce  in  his  Annals  of  the  East  India  Company 
says  nothing  of  the  retention  of  the  ladies,  nor  of  the 
capture  of  the  Mogul's  daughter.  It  is  likely  enough 
that  some  women  were  taken  and  retained,  but  certainly 
no  lady  of  so  high  a  rank  as  the  grand-daughter  of 
Aurungzebe. 

This  outrage  produced  very  unpleasant  effects.  Al- 
ready in  September,  1695,  an  interloping  vessel  turned 
pirate,  and,  bearing  English  colours,  had  plundered  a 
ship  belonging  to  Abdul  Gopher,  a  merchant  of  Surat, 
and  the  governor  of  the  place  had  been  obliged  to  set 
a  guard  on  the  house  of  the  Company  to  prevent  its 
being  wrecked  by  the  enraged  natives,  and  the  servants 
of  the  Company  from  being  massacred.  News  now 
arrived  that  the  same  pirate  had  attacked  a  ship  be- 
longing to  the  Mogul,  conveying  pilgrims  to  Mecca. 
If  the  first  injury  to  an  individual  merchant  was 
resented,  this  which  was  deemed  a  sacrilege  roused 
fanatical  resentment  to  fury,  and  obliged  the  Governor 
to  put  the  President  and  all  the  English  in  irons  to 
prevent  their  being  torn  to  pieces  by  the  inhabitants. 

The  Governor  desired  French,  Dutch,  and  English  to 
send  vessels  in  search  of  the  pirate,  that  by  her  capture 


382  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  fact  might  be  ascertained  as  to  who  really  was  re- 
sponsible. The  French  and  Dutch  hesitated  to  comply, 
and  the  readiness  of  the  English  to  go  on  this  service 
served  somewhat  to  abate  the  hostility  entertained 
against  them. 

Sir  John  Gayer,  as  General  of  the  Company's  affairs, 
wrote  to  the  Mogul  to  assure  him  that  the  Company 
were  not  only  ignorant  of  the  existence  of  such  a  pirate, 
but  were  ready  to  employ  two  of  their  ships  completely 
armed  to  convey  the  pilgrims  to  Jedda,  if  he  would 
grant  that  all  the  English  but  the  Company  should  be 
debarred  from  trading  in  his  dominions.  The  Mogul 
answered  "  that  the  English,  French,  and  Dutch  must 
go  to  sea  in  search  of  the  thieves,  but  that  the  embargo 
he  had  placed  on  all  trade  must  continue  till  the 
innocence  or  guilt  of  the  English  Company  was 
proved." 

Mr.  Bruce  does  not  name  John  Avery  as  the  pirate, 
but  this  must  be  the  case  spoken  of  in  his  Life.  It  will 
be  noticed  that  the  dates  do  not  accord.  The  capture 
of  the  pilgrim  vessel  took  place  in  the  winter  of  1693-4, 
and,  according  to  Johnson,  it  was  not  till  after  the 
Peace  of  Ryswick,  10  September,  1697,  that  Avery  made 
the  capture,  and  it  was  in  consequence  of  this  treaty 
that  he  was  able  to  get  hold  of  the  vessels.  From  the 
date  1693  the  pilgrims  were  annually  conveyed  to  Jedda 
by  ships  of  the  Company,  so  that  Avery  could  not 
have  captured  one  of  them  after  that  date.  Charles 
Johnson  must  have  blundered  in  his  facts. 

The  sum  demanded  by  Avery  for  the  release  of  the 
pilgrims  was  three  hundred  thousand  pounds,  and  he 
got  it. 

He  had  already  established  himself  at  Perim,  and 
levied  toll  on  all  vessels  passing  in  and  out  of  the  Red 
Sea,  but  after  this  affair,  when  large  rewards  were 


CAPTAIN   JOHN   AVERY  383 

offered  by  the  Company  and  by  the  British  Govern- 
ment for  his  capture,  he  deemed  it  advisable  to  change 
his  quarters  and  establish  himself  in  Madagascar. 

As  the  four  vessels  were  steering  their  course,  he  sent 
on  board  each  of  the  sloops,  desiring  the  captains  to 
come  to  his  vessel  and  meet  in  council.  They  did  so, 
and  he  told  them  that  he  had  a  proposal  to  make.  The 
treasure  of  which  they  were  possessed  would  not  be 
sufficient  for  all  ;  they  might  be  separated  by  bad 
weather,  in  which  case  the  sloops,  if  either  of  them 
should  fall  in  with  any  large  armed  vessels  would  be 
taken  or  sunk,  and  the  treasure  on  board  lost  as  well. 
As  for  himself,  he  and  the  Duchess,  his  consort,  were 
strong  enough  to  hold  their  own  against  any  ship  they 
were  likely  to  meet  on  the  high  seas,  and  he  proposed, 
therefore,  that  all  the  spoil  should  be  put  on  board  his 
ship,  each  chest  sealed  with  three  seals,  whereof  each 
was  to  keep  one,  and  to  appoint  a  rendezvous  in  case 
of  separation.  This  proposal  seemed  reasonable  and 
was  agreed  to,  and  the  treasure  was  conveyed  on  board 
Avery's  vessel,  and  the  chests  sealed.  They  kept 
company  that  day  and  the  next,  the  weather  being 
fine  ;  and  during  this  time  Avery  tampered  with  his 
men.  "What  should  hinder  us,"  said  he,  "from 
going  to  some  strange  country  where  we  are  not 
known,  and  living  on  shore  all  the  rest  of  our  days  in 
plenty?"  They  understood  his  design,  and  all  agreed 
to  bilk  their  new  allies  in  the  sloops  and  other  vessel. 
Accordingly  they  took  advantage  of  the  night,  changed 
their  course,  and  next  morning  the  sloops  and  Duchess 
found  themselves  deserted  in  mid-ocean.  Avery  and 
his  men  resolved  to  make  the  best  of  their  way  to 
America,  and  there  change  their  names,  and  purchase 
settlements,  and  spend  the  rest  of  their  days  at  ease. 

The  first  land  they  made  was  the  island  of  Providence, 


384  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

then  quite  recently  settled,  and  there  they  disposed  of 
their  vessel,  under  the  pretence  that  the  Duke  had  been 
fitted  out  as  a  privateer,  but  that  having  met  with  no 
success,  Avery  said  that  he  had  received  orders  from 
the  owners  to  dispose  of  her  to  the  best  advantage. 
He  soon  met  with  a  purchaser,  and  immediately 
bought  a  sloop.  In  this  vessel  he  and  his  mates  em- 
barked. They  touched  at  several  ports,  where  no  one 
suspected  them,  and  some  of  the  crew  went  on  shore 
and  dispersed  about  the  country,  and  with  the  dividends 
given  them  by  Avery,  settled  there. 

At  length  he  arrived  at  Boston,  in  New  England, 
and  there  again  some  of  the  crew  left  to  establish 
themselves,  and  no  doubt  founded  there  some  of  the 
Bostonian  families  now  flourishing.  Avery  advised 
those  who  remained  to  sail  for  Ireland.  He  had  con- 
cealed and  kept  for  himself  a  great  store  of  diamonds 
that  had  been  secured  in  the  ship  of  the  Mogul,  and 
which  his  present  comrades  had  not  known  how  to 
value.  These  he  could  not  dispose  of  in  New  England, 
but  hoped  to  realize  in  Ireland. 

On  their  voyage  they  avoided  St.  George's  Channel, 
and  sailing  north,  put  into  one  of  the  northern  ports. 
There  they  disposed  of  the  sloop  and  separated  ;  some 
went  to  Dublin,  others  to  Cork.  Some  afterwards 
obtained  their  pardon  from  King  William. 

Avery  was  afraid  to  dispose  of  his  diamonds  in 
Ireland,  lest  inquiry  should  be  made  as  to  how  he  had 
come  by  them.  He  therefore  crossed  over  to  England, 
to  Bideford  ;  and  knowing  of  a  man  in  Bristol  who  was 
an  old  acquaintance,  and  whom  he  thought  he  could 
trust,  he  sent  to  appoint  a  meeting  in  Bideford.  The 
man  came,  and  after  consultation  the  friend  advised  that 
the  jewels  should  be  entrusted  to  certain  Bristol 
merchants,  who  being  men  of  wealth  and  credit,  no 


CAPTAIN   JOHN   AVERY  385 

suspicion  would  be  aroused  if  they  disposed  of  them. 
No  better  plan  could  be  devised,  Avery  consented,  the 
merchants  were  communicated  with  and  came  to 
Bideford,  where  they  received  the  diamonds,  undertook 
to  sell  them  and  remit  the  money  to  Avery,  reserving 
to  themselves  a  commission  ;  and  to  this  he  consented. 
He  now  changed  his  name  and  took  up  his  residence  at 
Bideford,  attracting  no  notice,  but  communicating  with 
some  of  his  relations.  After  a  while  his  money  was 
spent,  and  not  a  word  reached  him  from  the  merchants. 
He  wrote  to  them,  and  they  sent  him  a  supply  of 
money — not  much,  doled  out  from  time  to  time.  At 
last  he  could  endure  this  no  longer,  and  went  to 
Bristol  to  see  the  merchants,  who  coolly  told  him  that 
if  he  troubled  them  any  further  they  would  disclose  to 
the  authorities  who  he  was;  "so  that  our  merchants 
were  as  good  pirates  on  land  as  he  was  at  sea." 

Whether  alarmed  at  their  threats,  or  that  he  fancied 
he  had  been  seen  and  recognized  by  some  old  comrades 
in  Bristol,  is  not  known  ;  but  he  crossed  into  Ireland, 
where  he  remained  till  destitute.  Then  in  despair  he 
worked  his  way  over  before  the  mast  in  a  trading  vessel 
to  Plymouth,  and  thence  made  his  way  on  foot  to 
Bideford,  where  a  few  days  later  he  fell  ill  and  died 
without  so  much  money  in  his  pocket  as  would  buy 
him  a  coffin. 

In  the  meantime,  the  companions  in  the  Duchess  and 
the  two  sloops  when  deserted  by  Avery,  finding 
that  they  were  running  short  of  provisions,  made  their 
way  to  Madagascar.  On  their  course  they  fell  in  with  a 
privateer  sloop,  commanded  by  Captain  Tew,  who  had 
just  captured  a  large  vessel  bound  from  India  to  Arabia, 
with  three  hundred  soldiers  on  board  besides  seamen. 
By  this  prize  his  men  shared  £3000  apiece.  Tew  and 
the  crew  of  the  Duchess  and  the  sloops  agreed  together 
2  c 


386  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

to  form  a  settlement  in  Madagascar.  According  to  (b) 
the  pirates  established  themselves  on  the  east  coast, 
lat.  15°  30',  where  there  was  a  bay  and  an  island  before 
it. 

Probably  Antongil  Bay  is  meant.  They  built  a 
fort,  finding  the  natives  divided  up  into  clans  under 
their  several  chiefs,  who  were  incessantly  at  war  with 
one  another — "So,"  says  Johnson,  "they  sometimes 
joyned  one  sometimes  another ;  but  wheresoever  they 
sided,  they  were  sure  to  be  victorious  ;  for  the  Negroes 
here  had  no  Fire  arms  ;  so  that  at  length  these  Pirates 
became  so  terrible  to  the  Negroes,  that  if  two  or  three 
of  them  were  only  seen  on  one  Side,  when  they  were 
going  to  engage,  the  opposite  Side  would  fly  without 
striking  a  Blow.  By  this  means  they  not  only  became 
feared,  but  powerful ;  all  the  Prisoners  of  War  they 
took  to  be  their  slaves  ;  they  married  the  most  beautiful 
of  the  Negro  women,  not  one  or  two  only  but  as  many 
as  they  liked.  Their  Slaves  they  employ'd  in  planting 
Rice,  in  Fishing,  Hunting,  etc.  Besides  which,  they 
had  abundance  of  others,  who  lived,  as  it  were,  under 
their  protection.  Now  they  began  to  divide  from  one 
another,  each  living  with  his  own  Wives,  Slaves  and 
Dependants,  like  a  separate  Prince  ;  and,  as  Power  and 
Plenty  naturally  beget  Contention,  they  sometimes 
quarrelled  with  one  another,  and  attacked  each  other  at 
the  Head  of  their  several  Armies.  But  an  Accident 
happened,  which  oblig'd  them  to  unite  again  for  their 
common  Safety.  They  grew  wanton  in  Cruelty,  and 
nothing  was  more  Common  than,  upon  the  slightest 
Displeasure,  to  cause  one  of  their  Dependants  to  be 
tied  to  a  tree,  and  shot  thro'  the  Heart.1  This 
occasioned  the  Negroes  to  conspire  together,  to  rid 

1  We  might  be  led  to  suppose  that  we  were  reading-  of  the  proceedings 
of  the  Belgians  in  the  Congo  Free  State. 


CAPTAIN   JOHN   AVERY  387 

themselves  of  these  Destroyers,  all  in  one  Night ; 
and  as  they  lived  separately,  the  Thing  might  easily 
have  been  done,  had  not  a  Woman,  who  had  been  the 
Wife  or  Concubine  of  one  of  them,  run  nearly  twenty 
Miles,  in  three  Hours,  to  discover  the  Matter  to  them. 
Immediately  upon  the  Alarm,  they  ran  together  as  fast 
as  they  could  ;  so  that  when  the  Negroes  approached 
them,  they  found  them  up  in  Arms,  and  retired  with- 
out making  any  Attempt.  This  Escape  made  them 
very  cautious  from  that  Time." 

Thenceforth  they  fortified  their  dwellings  and  con- 
verted them  into  citadels. 

"  Thus  Tyrant-like  they  lived,  fearing  and  feared  by 
all ;  and  in  this  situation  they  were  found  by  Captain 
Woods  Rogers  when  he  went  to  Madagascar  in  the 
Delicid)  a  ship  of  forty  guns,  with  a  Design  of  buying 
Slaves  in  order  to  sell  them  to  the  Dutch  at  Batavia  or 
New  Holland.  He  happened  to  touch  upon  a  part  of 
the  Island  where  no  Ship  had  been  seen  for  seven  or 
eight  Years  before ;  here  he  met  with  some  of  the 
Pyrates,  when  they  had  been  upon  the  Island  above 
25  Years,  having  a  large  motly  Generation  of  Children 
and  Grandchildren  descended  from  them,  there  being, 
at  that  Time,  eleven  of  them  remaining  alive.  .  .  . 
Thus  he  left  them  as  he  found  them,  in  a  great  Deal 
of  dirty  State  and  Royalty,  but  with  fewer  Subjects 
than  they  had.  One  of  these  great  Princes  had 
formerly  been  a  Waterman  upon  the  Thames,  where 
having  committed  a  Murder,  he  fled  to  the  West 
Indies,  and  was  of  the  number  of  those  who  run  away 
with  the  Sloops  ;  the  rest  had  been  all  foremast  men, 
nor  was  there  a  Man  amongst  them,  who  could  either 
read  or  write." 

Such  is  Captain  Charles  Johnson's  account.  There 
are  several  difficulties  about  accepting  his  narrative 


388  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

about  Avery.  From  whom  could  he  have  obtained  the 
story?  Possibly  a  part  of  it  from  the  pirates  who 
obtained  their  pardon  from  William  III,  but  not  as  to 
the  end  of  John  Avery. 

The  story  as  told  in  (c)  is  quite  different.  According 
to  Adrian  van  Broeck,  Avery  did  not  desert  the 
Consort,  the  Duchess,  nor  the  sloops,  but  all  together 
went  to  Madagascar  and  settled  there.  In  that  settle- 
ment, his  wife,  the  daughter  of  the  Mogul,  bore  him  a 
son,  and  died  of  a  broken  heart. 

The  second  in  command  was  a  M.  de  Sales,  who 
after  a  while,  impatient  at  being  second,  organized  a 
revolt  among  the  Frenchmen  who  were  there,  captives 
from  a  French  vessel  taken  by  the  pirates.  As  soon  as 
the  watch-bell  sounded  they  were  to  seize  the  principal 
fort,  and  not  spare  any  man,  woman,  or  child.  One 
of  de  Sales'  crew,  named  Picard,  betrayed  the  plot  to 
a  Cornishman  named  Richardson,  who  told  it  to  Avery, 
and  precautions  were  taken  to  surround  the  French  on 
parade,  and  make  all  prisoners.  Avery  had  every  man 
impaled  who  had  been  engaged  in  the  conspiracy. 

Avery  was  anxious  to  obtain  his  pardon,  and  wrote 
a  letter  to  Captain  Pitt,  Governor  of  Fort  St.  George, 
near  Madras,  which  he  was  to  transmit  to  England, 
but  the  East  India  Company  would  not  present  it  to 
the  Government. 

Avery  next  attacked  and  destroyed  Fort  Ste.  Marie 
of  the  French  East  India  Company  on  the  north  of 
Madagascar. 

Adrian  van  Broeck  managed  to  make  his  escape 
from  the  settlement  on  board  an  East  India  Company 
vessel ;  and  with  that  the  narrative  abruptly  termi- 
nates. 

The  two  narratives  are  irreconcilable,  and  where  the 
truth  lies  is  impossible  to  determine.  It  is  conceivable 


CAPTAIN   JOHN   AVERY  389 

that  after  van  Broeck's  visit — if  it  ever  took  place — 
Avery  may  have  made  his  way  to  England  to  dispose 
of  his  jewels,  but  we  have  no  dates  in  the  Dutchman's 
narrative,  and  no  dates,  and  no  authority  quoted  by 
Johnson  for  his  account  of  the  last  days  of  Avery.  No 
reliance  whatever  can  be  placed  on  Defoe's  Life  and 
Adventures  of  Captain  John  Avery ,  "the  King"  in 
Madagascar,  1720.  Consequently  the  end  of  Avery 
remains,  and  probably  will  remain,  a  mystery  unsolved. 
Andrew  Brice  in  his  Geographical  Dictionary,  pub- 
lished in  1759,  under  the  heading  of  "  Madagascar," 
says:  "  Pirates  have  had  stations  in  these  Harbours, 
among  whom  was  Avery,  so  much  talked  of  40  or 
50  years  ago."  Had  Avery  died  at  Bideford,  Brice 
as  a  Devonshire  man  would  most  likely  have  heard  of 
it.  Salmon,  in  his  Universal  Traveller,  1759,  says: 
"What  became  of  Avery  himself  I  could  never  learn  ; 
but  it  is  probable  he  is  dead,  or  remains  concealed  in 
the  Island  of  Madagascar  to  this  time ;  for  he  can 
expect  no  Mercy  from  any  of  the  Powers  of  Europe, 
if  he  should  fall  into  their  hands,  but  as  to  being  in 
such  circumstances,  as  to  lay  the  Foundation  of  a  New 
State  or  Kingdom  in  this  Island,  this  report  possibly 
deserves  little  Credit.  We  should  have  heard  more  of 
him  after  so  many  years  elapsed,  if  he  had  made  any 
figure  there." 

According  to  Captain  Johnson's  account,  as  we  have 
seen,  a  Captain  Wood  Rogers  of  the  Delicia,  a  ship 
of  forty  guns,  touched  at  Madagascar  with  a  design 
of  purchasing  slaves,  and  came  on  the  settlement  of 
the  crews  of  the  two  other  vessels,  but  did  not  meet 
with  Avery  himself. 


JOANNA    SOUTHCOTT 


f  "^HE    life    of   this    impostor   or   self-deluded 

woman  is  not  pleasant  to  write  or  to  read, 

and  it  is  only  because  in  such  a  collection  in- 

'          eluding  Devonshire  oddities  and  unworthies 

she  could  not  be  excluded  that  her  story  is  here  given. 

Joanna  was  a  native  of  Gittisham,  the  daughter  of 
William  and  Hannah  Southcott,  respectable  people, 
the  father  a  very  small  farmer.  She  was  baptized  at 
Ottery  St.  Mary,  on  6  June,  1750.  There  was  nothing 
remarkable  in  her  during  the  first  forty  years  of  her 
life.  She  was  in  domestic  service,  and  then  moved  to 
Exeter,  where  she  entered  the  household  of  an  up- 
holsterer, in  1790. 

What  turned  her  head  was  the  visit  of  a  revivalist 
Methodist  preacher,  who,  combining  the  most  fiery 
evangelic  preaching  with  laxity  of  morals,  lived  in 
adultery  with  her  mistress,  and  endeavoured  to  seduce 
the  daughter.  But  his  ministrations  in  the  pulpit  were 
acceptable.  He  shrieked  and  threatened  till  sometimes 
the  whole  congregation  fell  flat  and  rigid  on  the  floor, 
when  he  would  walk  in  and  out  among  them  and  revive 
them  by  assuring  them  they  had  received  pardon  for 
all  their  sins,  were  elect  vessels,  and  that  their  election 
was  sealed  in  heaven.  He  would  declare  that  there 
never  was  a  man  so  highly  favoured  of  God  as  himself, 
and  that  he  would  not  thank  God  to  make  him  other 
than  what  he  was,  unless  he  made  him  greater  than 

390 


JOANNA   SOUTHCOTT  391 

every  other  man  on  earth,  and  placed  supreme  power 
in  his  hands  ;  and  he  boasted,  when  he  heard  of  the 
death  of  a  man  who  had  derided  his  mission,  that  he 
had  prayed  this  man  to  death. 

All  the  servants  in  the  house  were  afraid  of  this 
preacher ;  but  Joanna  affirmed  that  he  had  no  power 
over  her,  and  that  she  was  wont  to  think  that  the  room 
was  full  of  spirits  when  he  was  engaged  in  prayer. 
But  though  she  fancied  this  man  had  no  power  over 
her,  he  certainly  had,  and  turned  her  into  a  fanatic, 
intoxicating  her  with  his  own  spiritual  pride. 

When  first  she  went  to  Exeter,  she  attended  the 
services  in  the  cathedral,  but  she  left  the  Church  and 
joined  the  Wesleyans  in  1791,  as  she  affirmed,  by 
Divine  command,  for  she  was  already  beginning  to  see 
visions.  The  ministers  of  the  sect  frequented  her 
master's  shop,  and  took  a  good  deal  of  notice  of  Joanna, 
and  this  encouraged  her  to  launch  forth  in  the  course 
she  afterwards  pursued.  In  1792  she  stated  that  she 
had  had  a  vision  of  the  Lord,  and  a  meeting  of  Metho- 
dist preachers  was  summoned  to  discuss  her  spiritual 
condition.  It  concluded  by  their  signing  a  paper  to 
the  effect  that  her  calling  was  of  God. 

One  of  the  Methodist  preachers  in  Exeter  was  named 
Pomeroy,  and  he  at  first  more  than  half  believed  in  her 
mission.  She  gave  him  a  number  of  sealed  packets, 
which  she  told  him  contained  her  prophecies,  and 
desired  him  to  keep  them  till  a  time  she  mentioned, 
when  they  were  to  be  opened  and  would  prove  the  truth 
of  her  claim  to  inspiration. 

The  minister  received  the  precious  papers  ;  but  after- 
wards, when  Joanna  publicly  announced  that  he  was  a 
believer  and  a  recipient  of  her  prophecies,  he  got 
frightened,  and  committed  the  unopened  predictions  to 
the  flames.  "  From  that  time,"  says  Southey,  "  all  the 


392  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Joannians,  who  are  now  a  considerable  number,  regard 
him  as  the  arch-apostate.  He  is  the  Jehoiakim,  who 
burnt  Jeremiah's  roll  ;  he  is  their  Judas  Iscariot,  a 
second  Lucifer.  They  call  upon  him  to  produce  those 
prophecies,  which  she  boldly  asserts,  and  they  im- 
plicitly believe,  have  all  been  fulfilled,  and  therefore 
would  convince  the  world  of  the  truth  of  her  mission. 
In  vain  does  Mr.  Pomeroy  answer  that  he  has  burnt 
these  unhappy  papers  :  in  an  unhappy  hour  for  himself 
did  he  burn  them  !  Day  after  day  long  letters  are 
dispatched  to  him,  sometimes  from  Joanna  herself, 
sometimes  from  her  brother,  sometimes  from  one  of 
her  four-and-twenty  elders,  filled  with  exhortation, 
invective,  texts  of  Scripture,  and  denunciations  of  the 
law  in  this  world  and  the  devil  in  the  next ;  and  these 
letters  the  prophetess  prints,  for  the  very  sufficient 
reason — that  all  her  believers  purchase  them.  Mr. 
Pomeroy  sometimes  treats  them  with  contempt  ;  at 
other  times  he  appeals  to  their  compassion,  and  be- 
seeches them,  if  they  have  any  bowels  of  Christian 
charity,  to  have  compassion  on  him  and  let  him  rest." 

Meanwhile,  the  falling  away  of  this  believer  was 
abundantly  compensated  to  Joanna  by  the  accession  of 
other  adherents,  both  lay  and  clerical.  Among  the 
persons  of  superior  station  in  the  world  who  became 
ardent  disciples  was  the  Rev.  T.  P.  Foley,  incumbent 
of  Old  Swinford,  in  Leicestershire,  who  should  have 
written  his  name  Folly,  not  Foley. 

In  1792  she  had  a  serious  illness,  and  went  to  Plym- 
tree  to  recruit.  When  she  was  recovered  she  set  to 
work  again  with  renewed  vigour.  She  pretended  to 
have  found,  whilst  sweeping  the  house,  a  die  with  J.S. 
on  it  between  two  stars,  and  this  she  used  henceforth 
for  sealing  her  prophecies  and  her  passports  to  heaven. 

But    she    had    other    disappointments,    beside    the 


JOANNA   SOUTHCOTT  393 

defection  of  Mr.  Pomeroy.  One  of  his  elders,  Elias 
Carpenter,  of  Bermondsey,  after  going  a  certain  way 
with  her,  fell  off.  This,  however,  was  later.  He  was 
followed  by  six  others.  Thereupon  she  wrote  and 
printed  five  letters  of  denunciation  and  woe  to  the  back- 
sliders. 

By  the  sale  of  her  sealed  passports  to  heaven  Joanna 
obtained  a  very  respectable  revenue,  and  from  being  a 
poor  working  drudge  she  blossomed  out  into  a  woman 
of  substance.  Her  followers  in  Exeter  were  recognized 
by  the  peculiarity  of  their  dress,  somewhat  in  the  fashion 
of  that  of  the  Quakers,  the  men  being  particularly  dis- 
tinguished by  wearing  a  long  beard  at  a  time  when 
beards  were  not  generally  adopted. 

In  1798  she  moved  to  Bristol,  and  in  1801  began  to 
publish  books  of  prophecies  and  warnings,  which  were 
eagerly  purchased  by  her  followers.  In  1802  she  moved 
to  London,  where  she  was  patronized  by  Sharp,  the 
engraver,  and  had  other  influential  friends,  Brothers, 
the  fanatic,  who  had  proclaimed  himself  the  promised 
Messiah,  and  a  certain  Miss  Cott,  whom  he  admitted  to 
be  the  daughter  of  King  David  and  the  future  Queen 
of  the  Hebrews.  But  Richard  Brothers  was  sent  to 
Bridewell,  and  those  who  had  believed  in  him,  amongst 
others  an  M.P.,  Mr.  Halhead,  member  for  Lymington, 
were  drifting  about  in  quest  of  some  new  delusion. 
Joanna  suited  them  to  a  nicety,  and  they  rallied 
about  her. 

The  books  which  she  sent  forth  into  the  world  were 
written  partly  in  prose,  partly  in  rhyme,  all  the  prose 
and  most  of  the  rhyme  being  given  forth  as  the  direct 
words  of  the  Almighty.  It  is  not  possible  to  conceive 
that  any  persons  could  have  been  deluded  by  such 
rambling  nonsense,  did  one  not  know  that  human  folly 
is  like  the  Well  of  Zemzem  that  is  inexhaustible. 


394  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Joanna's  handwriting  was  illegibly  bad  ;  so  that  at  last 
she  found  it  advisable  to  pretend  that  she  had  received 
orders  from  heaven  to  discard  the  pen,  and  deliver  her 
oracles  verbally,  and  the  words  flowed  from  her  faster 
than  the  scribes  could  write  them  down.  Her  prophecies 
were  words,  and  words  only,  a  rhapsody  of  texts  and 
vulgar  applications  ;  the  verse  the  vilest  doggerel  ever 
written,  and  the  rhyme  and  grammar  equally  bad. 
She  made  a  pretty  penny,  not  only  by  the  sale  of  her 
books,  but  also  by  her  " Certificates  for  the  Millennium," 
and  her  "Sealings  of  the  Faithful,"  passports  to 
paradise.  Of  these  she  sold  between  six  and  seven 
thousand,  some  at  twelve  shillings,  but  most  at  a 
guinea ;  and  she  continued  the  sale  until  a  woman, 
Mary  Bateman,  a  Leeds  murderess,  who  had  poisoned  a 
Mrs.  Perigo,  and  had  attempted  to  poison  Mr.  Perigo, 
was  hanged  in  1809,  and  it  was  ascertained  that  this 
poisoner  had  been  furnished  by  Joanna  with  one  of  her 
passports  to  paradise. 

In  1813,  she  first  announced  that  she  was  to  become 
the  mother  of  Shiloh,  that  she  was  the  Woman  spoken 
of  in  the  Apocalypse  as  having  the  moon  under  her 
feet,  and  on  her  head  a  crown  of  twelve  stars ;  the 
twelve  stars  were  twelve  evangelists  or  apostles  whom 
she  sent  abroad  to  declare  her  revelations.  In  herself, 
she  asserted,  the  scheme  of  redemption  would  be  com- 
pleted, by  woman  came  the  fall  of  man,  and  by  woman 
must  come  his  restoration.  She  was  the  Bride,  the  pro- 
mised seed  who  was  to  bruise  the  serpent's  head.  The 
evening-star  was  placed  in  the  firmament  to  be  her 
type.  The  immediate  object  of  her  call  was  to  destroy 
the  devil ;  of  this  Satan  was  fully  aware  ;  and  that  it 
might  not  be  said  he  had  foul  play,  a  regular  dispute  of 
seven  days  was  agreed  upon  between  him  and  Joanna, 
in  which  she  was  to  be  alone  ;  the  conditions  were  that 


JOANNA   SOUTHCOTT  395 

if  she  held  out  her  argument  for  seven  days,  Satan 
should  retire  from  troubling  the  earth,  but  if  she 
yielded,  then  his  kingdom  was  to  stand.  Accordingly, 
she  went  alone  into  a  solitary  house  for  this  contest. 
Joanna  on  this  occasion  was  her  own  secretary,  and  the 
proces  verbal  of  the  conference  was  printed  from  her 
manuscript.  She  set  down  all  Satan's  blasphemies 
with  the  utmost  frankness,  and  the  proficiency  he  dis- 
played in  vulgar  language  and  Billingsgate  abuse  is 
surprising. 

Of  all  Joanna's  books  this  is  the  most  curious.  The 
conference  terminated  like  most  theological  disputes. 
Both  parties  grew  warm  ;  but  Joanna's  tongue  was 
more  lightly  slung  on  its  pivots,  and  she  talked  Satan 
out  of  all  patience.  She  gave  him,  as  he  complained, 
ten  words  to  his  one,  and  allowed  him  no  time  to  speak. 
All  men,  he  said,  were  already  tired  of  her  tongue,  and 
now  she  had  tired  the  devil. 

This  was  not  unreasonable ;  but  he  proceeded  to 
abuse  the  whole  sex,  which  would  be  ungracious  in 
any  one,  but  in  him  was  peculiarly  ungrateful.  He 
said  that  no  man  could  tame  a  woman's  tongue  ;  it 
were  better  to  dispute  with  a  thousand  men  than  with 
one  woman. 

Once  she  declared  that  she  had  scratched  the  devil's 
face  with  her  nails,  and  had  even  bitten  off  one  of  his 
fingers,  and  that  his  blood  tasted  sweet. 

When  she  announced  to  the  world  her  pregnancy, 
her  followers  were  filled  with  breathless  expectation. 
Presents  came  pouring  in  for  the  coming  Shiloh.  One 
wealthy  proselyte  sent  a  cradle  that  cost  £200,  manu- 
factured by  Seddons,  a  cabinet-maker  of  repute  in 
Aldersgate  Street ;  another  sent  a  pap-spoon  that  cost 
£100 ;  and  that  nothing  might  be  lacking  at  this  ac- 
couchement laced  caps,  infant's  napkins,  bibs,  mantles, 


396  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

some  of  white  satin,  pap-boats,  caudle-cups  arrived.  A 
Bible  also,  richly  bound,  was  not  forgotten  as  a  pre- 
sent to  the  coming  Messiah.  The  cradle  is  now  in 
Salford  Museum. 

But  what  was  most  extraordinary  of  all  is  that  a 
regular  London  physician,  a  Dr.  Richard  Reece, 
having  on  the  yth  of  August,  1814,  visited  Joanna,  "to 
ascertain  the  probability  of  her  being  in  a  state  of 
pregnancy,  as  then  given  out,"  declared  his  opinion 
to  be  that  she  was  perfectly  right  in  the  view  she  had 
taken  of  her  situation,  and  according  to  his  own  ad- 
mission in  a  four-shilling  pamphlet,  entitled  A  Correct 
Statement  of  the  Circumstances,  etc.,  which  he  pub- 
lished, declared  his  belief  in  the  fact.  No  wonder  that 
after  this  the  Rev.  Mr.  Foley,  who  had  headed  a  depu- 
tation that  waited  on  the  doctor  to  obtain  an  authentic 
declaration  of  the  conclusion  to  which  he  had  come 
after  his  first  visit,  and  the  whole  body  of  the  believers 
were  frantic  with  exultation  and  confidence  ;  and  that 
even  a  portion  of  the  hitherto  incredulous  public  began 
to  have  misgivings,  and  not  to  know  very  well  what  to 
think  of  the  matter. 

When  Dr.  Reece  first  saw  the  prophetess  she  ex- 
pected to  lie-in  in  a  few  weeks  ;  months  however  passed 
without  bringing  the  looked -for  event.  Further,  to 
strengthen  the  delusion,  it  was  unblushingly  asserted 
that  a  number  of  medical  men  of  the  highest  reputation 
had  been  called  in,  and  that  they  had  expressed  their 
opinion  affirmatively  as  to  her  pregnancy. 

Dr.  Sims,  however,  published  a  statement  to  this 
effect  in  the  Morning  Chronicle  of  September  3,  1814: 
"  I  went  to  see  her  on  August  i8th,  and  after  ex- 
amining her,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  declare,  it  is 
my  firm  opinion,  that  the  woman  called  Joanna  South- 
cott  is  not  pregnant ;  and,  before  I  conclude  this 


JOANNA   SOUTHCOTT  397 

statement,  I  feel  it  right  to  say,  that  I  am  con- 
vinced the  poor  woman  labours  under  strong  mental 
delusion." 

A  Mr.  Want,  also,  a  surgeon,  who  was  called  in  by 
Dr.  Reece,  unhesitatingly  declared  his  opinion  that  she 
was  not  in  the  family  way,  as  also  that  there  were  no 
hopes  of  her  recovery. 

Before  her  death,  which  took  place  on  the  27th  of 
December,  she  had  been  confined  to  her  bed  for  above 
ten  weeks.  During  this  time  she  had  lived  in  a  state  of 
mental  exaltation,  but  towards  the  end  her  courage 
failed.  A  scene  in  the  chamber  of  the  dying  woman, 
which  Dr.  Reece  relates  that  he  witnessed  on  the  igih 
of  November,  is  not  without  pathos. 

Five  or  six  of  the  believers,  who  had  been  waiting, 
having  been  admitted,  "  She  desired  them  to  be  seated 
round  her  bed  ;  when,  spending  a  few  minutes  in  ad- 
justing the  bed-clothes  with  seeming  attention,  and 
placing  before  her  a  white  handkerchief,  she  thus 
addressed  them,  as  nearly  as  I  can  recollect,  in  the 
following  words :  *  My  friends,  some  of  you  have 
known  me  nearly  twenty-five  years,  and  all  of  you 
not  less  than  twenty.  When  you  have  heard  me 
speak  of  my  prophecies,  you  have  sometimes  heard 
me  say  that  I  doubted  my  inspiration.  But,  at  the 
same  time,  you  would  never  let  me  despair.  When  I 
have  been  alone  it  has  often  appeared  delusion  ;  but 
when  the  communications  were  made  to  me  I  did  not 
in  the  least  doubt.  Feeling,  as  I  now  do  feel,  that 
my  dissolution  is  drawing  near,  and  that  a  day  or 
two  may  terminate  my  life,  it  all  appears  a  delusion.' 
She  was  by  this  exertion  quite  exhausted,  and  wept 
bitterly."  She  then,  the  doctor  proceeds  to  inform 
us,  after  some  further  discourse  about  her  death  and 
funeral,  wept  again,  and  some  of  those  present  also 


398  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

shed  tears ;  but  after  a  little  while,  one  of  them, 
Mr.  Howe,  spoke  up,  and  said:  "Mother,  your  feel- 
ings are  human.  We  know  you  are  a  favoured  woman 
of  God,  and  that  you  will  produce  the  promised  child, 
and  whatever  you  may  say  to  the  contrary  will  not 
diminish  our  faith." 

This  assurance,  we  are  told,  revived  her,  and  from 
crying  she  fell  to  laughing.  She  however  then  made 
her  will. 

Immediately  on  her  decease,  Dr.  Reece  wrote  to  the 
editor  of  the  Sunday  Monitor,  which  had  lent  itself  to 
become  an  organ  of  the  Joannites  : — 

"  Agreeably  to  your  request,  I  send  a  messenger  to 
acquaint  you,  that  Joanna  Southcott  died  this  morning 
precisely  at  4  a.m.  The  believers  in  her  mission,  sup- 
posing that  the  vital  functions  are  only  suspended  for 
a  few  days,  will  not  permit  me  to  open  the  body  until 
some  symptom  appears,  which  may  destroy  all  hopes  of 
resuscitation." 

In  fact,  in  1792,  Joanna  had  published  a  prophecy  to 
the  effect  that  she,  the  mother  of  Shiloh,  previous  to 
his  birth  would  be  as  dead  for  four  days,  and  at  the  end  of 
that  period  would  revive  and  be  delivered.  No  sooner 
was  she  dead  than  her  friends  proceeded  to  wrap  her 
body  in  warm  blankets,  to  place  bottles  of  hot  water  at 
her  feet,  and  by  keeping  the  room  warm,  to  endeavour 
to  preserve  the  vital  spark. 

Manchester  Street  was  thronged  by  a  crowd  watch- 
ing the  house,  and  inquiries  respecting  her  resuscita- 
tion were  constant  and  anxious.  To  all  inquiries  the 
answer  given  was  consolatory.  On  Saturday  the  crowd 
again  assembled  early,  before  4  a.m.,  and  the  most 
zealous  pronounced  their  positive  conviction  that  she 
would  come  to  life  again  that  day. 

But  the  prescribed  period  of  four  days  and  nights 


JOANNA   SOUTHCOTT  399 

elapsed,  and  so  far  was  the  body  from  exhibiting 
appearances  of  a  temporary  suspension  of  animation, 
that  it  began  to  display  a  discoloration  which  at  once 
brought  home  to  conviction  the  fact  that  the  wretched 
Joanna  was  but  mortal.  Preparations  were  made  to 
dissect  her  remains.  A  summons  was  issued  to  the 
surgeons  who  had  expressed  a  wish  to  be  present,  and 
at  2  p.m.  fifteen  gentlemen  assembled;  in  addition 
were  the  apostle  Tozer,  Colonel  Harwood,  and  one  or 
two  other  of  Joanna's  followers  and  proselytes.  Ann 
Underwood  was  in  the  ante-room,  much  chagrined  at 
the  disappointment  of  her  hopes,  and  the  breakdown 
of  her  convictions. 

The  examination  of  the  body  showed  that  Joanna 
Southcott  had  been  suffering  from  dropsy,  which  had 
killed  her. 

The  adherents  of  the  prophetess,  who  had  awaited 
the  event,  skulked  off  in  great  tribulation,  and  were 
happy  to  escape  the  populace,  who  were  outrageous 
towards  any  whom  they  suspected  of  adhering  to  the 
sect  of  Joanna.  This  excusable  indignation  had  nearly 
proved  fatal  in  the  morning  to  an  old  lady  who  had 
rapped  at  the  door  of  the  house,  to  make  inquiries  as  to 
whether  Joanna  was  already  resuscitated.  No  sooner 
was  she  suspected  to  be  a  disciple,  than  she  was  assailed 
with  mud  and  cabbage  stalks. 

Some  glimmerings  of  sanity  had  lightened  the  mind 
of  Joanna  previous  to  her  death,  and  she  had  indited 
a  will,  in  which  she  professed  that  she  had  been  a 
deceiver,  prompted  to  play  her  part  by  the  devil, 
and  directing  that  after  her  death,  cradle,  caudle- 
cups,  pap-boats,  etc.,  that  had  been  sent  for  the 
use  of  the  coming  Shiloh,  should  be  returned  to  the 
donors.  She  was  buried  in  Marylebone  burying-ground 
on  2  January,  1815.  On  her  stone  was  inscribed: — 


400  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

In  Memory  of  Joanna  Southcott, 
who  departed  this  life  December  27,  1814,  aged  60  years. 

While  through  all  my  wondrous  days, 
Heaven  and  earth  enraptured  gaze, 
While  vain  sages  think  they  know 
Secrets  thou  alone  canst  show, 
Time  alone  will  tell  what  hour 
Thou'lt  appear  in  greater  power  ! 

The  composition  evidently  of  one  of  her  dupes, 
hoping  on  still.  She  was  really  aged  sixty-four  years. 
Her  tombstone  was  shattered  by  the  great  gunpowder 
explosion  in  the  Regent's  Park  Canal  in  1874.  The 
delusion  was  not  at  an  end  with  the  death  and  burial  of 
Joanna.  Sharp,  the  engraver,  ever  after  maintained 
that  she  was  not  really  dead,  and  would  rise  again  and 
become  the  mother  of  Shiloh.  When  he  was  sitting 
to  Haydon  for  his  portrait,  he  predicted  that  Joanna 
would  reappear  in  the  month  of  July,  1822. 

"  But  suppose  she  should  not?  "  said  Haydon. 

"  I  tell  you  that  she  will,"  retorted  Sharp  ;  "  but  if 
she  should  not,  nothing  would  shake  my  faith  in  her 
divine  mission." 

Those  who  were  near  Sharp  during  his  last  illness, 
state  that  in  this  belief  he  died. 

Nor  was  he  singular.  Some  of  her  one  hundred 
thousand  adherents  fell  away,  but  a  great  many  re- 
mained, waiting  in  yearly  expectation  for  her  reappear- 
ance. The  men  bound  themselves  by  a  vow  not  to 
shave  their  beards  till  her  resurrection.  It  need  scarcely 
be  said  that  they  descended  to  their  graves  unshorn. 

Under  the  date  of  January,  1817,  the  Annual 
Register  quotes  the  following  notice  of  the  proceedings 
of  the  sect  from  a  Lincoln  newspaper  of  the  day  :  "  An 
interdict  arrived  at  Newark,  on  Sunday,  the  igth 
instant,  from  a  disciple  of  the  Conclave  at  Leeds, 
inhibiting  those  of  the  faith,  amongst  other  things,  from 


JOANNA   SOUTHCOTT  401 

attending  to  their  ordinary  business  during  the  ensuing 
eight  or  nine  days  ;  and  a  manufacturer's  shop  at  that 
place  is  at  this  time  entirely  deserted,  and  the  business 
of  many  small  dealers  suspended  in  consequence." 
This  was  due  to  the  expectation  of  the  resuscitation 
of  Joanna. 

Leeds  was  one  of  the  strongholds  of  Joannism,  and 
several  of  the  founder's  publications  are  dated  from 
that  place. 

Two  years  after  this,  in  January,  1817,  the  London 
disciples  made  a  remarkable  outbreak.  One  morning, 
having  assembled  somewhere  in  the  West  End  of  the 
metropolis,  they  made  their  way  to  Temple  Bar,  pass- 
ing through  which,  they  set  forward  in  procession 
through  the  City,  each  decorated  with  a  white  cockade, 
and  wearing  a  small  star  of  yellow  riband  on  the  left 
breast.  In  this  guise,  led  by  one  of  their  number, 
carrying  a  brazen  trumpet  ornamented  with  light  blue 
ribands,  while  two  boys  marching  by  his  side  bore  each 
a  flag  of  silk,  they  proceeded  along  Fleet  Street,  up 
Ludgate  Hill,  and  thence  through  St.  Paul's  Church- 
yard to  Bridge  Row,  followed  by  the  rabble  in  great 
force.  Here,  having  reached  what  they  considered 
to  be  the  centre  of  the  great  city,  they  halted  ;  and  then 
their  leader  sounded  his  trumpet,  and  roared  out  that 
the  Shiloh,  the  Prince  of  Peace,  was  come  again  to  the 
earth  ;  to  which  a  woman  who  was  with  him,  and  who 
was  said  to  be  his  wife,  responded  with  another  wild  cry 
of  "  Woe  !  woe  I  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  earth,  because 
of  the  coming  of  Shiloh."  This  terrific  vociferation 
was  repeated  several  times,  and  joined  in  by  the  rest  of 
the  party.  But  at  last  the  mob,  which  now  completely 
blocked  up  the  street,  from  laughing  and  shouting 
proceeded  to  pelting  the  enthusiasts  with  mud  and 
harder  missiles.  They  struggled  to  make  their  escape, 

2   D 


402  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

or  to  beat  off  their  assailants  ;  this  led  to  a  general 
fight ;  the  flags  were  torn,  and  the  affray  ended  in  the 
trumpeter  and  his  wife,  five  other  men  and  the  two 
boys  of  the  party,  after  having  been  rolled  in  the  mire, 
being  rescued  from  the  fury  of  the  multitude  by  the 
constables,  and  conveyed  to  the  Compter. 

When  they  were  brought  up  the  next  day  before  the 
alderman  at  Guildhall,  they  maintained  that  they  were 
only  obeying  the  commands  of  God  in  acting  as  they 
had  done.  Their  spokesman,  the  trumpeter,  who 
turned  out  to  be  one  Sibley,  a  City  watchman,  who 
appeared  to  exercise  great  authority  over  the  others, 
said  that  he  had  proclaimed  the  second  coming  of  the 
Shiloh  in  the  same  manner  and  with  the  same  authority 
as  John  the  Baptist,  who  had  announced  the  first  com- 
ing ;  and  his  wife  asserted  that  she  had  had  the  Shiloh 
in  her  arms  four  times.  In  the  end  they  were  all  sent 
back  to  prison,  to  be  detained  till  they  could  find 
security  for  their  peaceful  demeanour  in  future. 

A  remnant  of  the  sect,  the  Jezreelites,  lingered  on  for 
long  at  Chatham,  remarkable  for  the  general  singularity 
of  their  manners  and  appearance. 

The  Joannites  are  now  almost,  if  not  wholly,  extinct, 
leaving  room  for  some  newer  outbreak  of  religious 
folly. 

If  we  did  not  live  at  a  period  when  such  charlatans 
as  Dr.  Dowie  and  Mrs.  Eddy  have  appeared,  drawn 
about  them  crowds  of  adherents,  and  conjured  tens  of 
thousands  of  pounds  out  of  their  pockets,  we  should 
have  supposed  that  such  irruptions  of  religious 
mania,  such  eagerness  to  believe  in  a  lie,  such  credu- 
lous clinging  to  an  impostor,  were  a  thing  of  the  remote 
past.  But  the  fools,  like  the  poor,  are  always  with  us, 
and — 

Still  Dunce  the  Second  reigns  like  Dunce  the  First. 


SILVER    PAP-BOAT    PREPARED    FOR   THE   COMING   OF    SHILC 
PRESENTED   TO  JOANNA   SOUTHCOTT    IN   JUNE,    1814 
From  the  original  in  the  collection  of  A .  M.  Bryadley,  Ksg. 


CRIB  PRESENTED  TO  JOANNA  SOUTHCOTT  IN  ANTICIPATION  OF 
THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  SHILOH  BY  BELIEVERS  IN  HER  DIVINE 
MISSION  AS  "A  GOODWILL  OFFERING  BY  FAITH  TO  THE 

PROMISED  SEED" 

Reproduced  from  the  original  print  in  the  collection  of  A.  M.  Broadley.  Esq. 


JOANNA   SOUTHCOTT  403 

The  question  presents  itself  to  the  mind  whether 
Joanna  was  a  conscious  impostor,  or  whether  she  was 
self-deluded.  With  her  dying  confession  and  her  will 
before  us,  it  would  seem  that  she  knew  that  she  was  im- 
posing on  the  credulity  of  men  and  women.  She  had 
seen  a  debauched  and  dissolute  Methodist  preacher  in 
her  master's  house  pose  as  an  apostle  and  as  inspired, 
and  draw  crowds  and  convince  them  that  he  was  an 
oracle  of  God.  She  imitated  him,  and  found  that  her 
imitation  was  successful,  and  also  that  it  paid  well. 
She  was  able  to  command  thousands  of  pounds  from 
her  dupes,  and  it  flattered  her  vanity  to  be  appreciated 
as  one  half  divine. 

She  had  occasional  qualms  of  conscience,  but  her  de- 
votees had  more  faith  in  her  than  she  had  in  herself,  and 
they  overbore  every  feeble  attempt  to  retrace  her  steps. 

The  authorities  for  her  life  are  numerous. 

Southey  has  given  a  full  account  of  her  in  Letters  from 
England  by  Dom  M.  A.  Espnella.  London,  1806. 

A  full  account  of  the  dissection  of  her  body  is  given  in 
Notes  and  Gleanings,  VI,  15  December,  1891. 
Exeter,  1891. 

A  reproduction  of  one  of  her  Passports  to  Heaven 
made  out  to  Richard  Hubbard,  is  in  Devon  Notes  and 
Queries,  Vol.  II.  Exeter,  1903. 

Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Mission  of  Joanna  Southcott, 
to  which  is  added  a  sketch  of  the  Rev.  W. 
Tozer,  M.J.S.,  with  portrait.  London,  1814. 

Life  of  Joanna  Southcott  the  Prophetess :  her  Astounding 
Writings,  etc.,  with  Caricature  Portrait.  London, 
1814. 

The  Life  of  Joanna  Southcott,  the  Prophetess,  etc., 
with  Portrait  and  View  of  the  Crib  for  the  Expected 
Messiah.  London,  1814. 


404  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Fairburn's   edition   of   the    Prophetess.      Portrait  and 

Prints.     London,  1814. 
The  Life  and  Prophecies  of  Joanna  Southcott,  from  her 

Infancy  to  the  Present  Time,  etc.  Portrait.  London. 
The  Life  of  Joanna  Southcott,  illustrative  of  her  supposed 

Mission,    etc.      By   D.    Hughson,    LL.D.      Portrait. 

London,  1814. 
Full  Particulars  of  the  Last  Moments  of  the  Pretended 

Prophetess,  Joanna  Southcott.     London,  1815. 
A  Correct  Statement  of  the  Circumstances  that  attended 

the  last  illness  and  death   of  Mrs.    Southcott.      By 

Richard  Reece,  M.D.     London,  1815. 
A  Complete  Refutation  of  the  Statements  and  Remarks. 

Published  by  Dr.  Reece,  relative  of  Mrs.  Southcott. 

London,  1815. 

The  Case  of  Joanna  Southcott,  as  far  as  it  came  under 
his  professional  observation,  impartially  stated.  By 
P.  Mathias,  Surgeon  and  Apothecary.  Portrait. 
London,  1815. 

The  Life  and  Death  of  Joanna  Southcott,  with  the  par- 
ticulars of  her  will,  and  an  account  of  her  dissection. 
Woodcut.  London  (n.d.). 

Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Mission  of  Joanna  Southcott. 
Portrait.  London,  1814. 

There  are  other  tracts,  but  these  are  the  principal. 

NOTE. — Mr.  A.  M.  Broadly,  of  Bridport,  kindly  supplies  the  following- 
note  : — 

Stourbridge,  in  the  second  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century,  was  a 
strong-hold  of  the  followers  of  Joanna  Southcott.  Amongst  them  was  the 
Rev.  T.  P.  Foley,  a  member  of  one  of  the  leading  county  families  of  the 
district.  In  the  spring  of  1814  the  coming  of  the  Shiloh  was  announced, 
and  a  crib  and  a  pap-bowl  were  among  the  presents  which  were  made 
by  the  faithful.  The  pap-bowl  was  presented  in  June,  and  was  engraved 
by  Lowe  of  Birmingham.  It  has  on  it  a  portrait,  cherubim  in  rays  of 
light,  the  dove  with  the  olive  branch,  and  a  crowned  child  leading  a 
lion,  with  two  repetitions  of  "  Glory  to  God."  The  reverse  of  the  bowl 
contains,  within  two  branches  of  laurel  and  oak,  the  following  inscription : 
"  A  Token  of  Love  to  the  Prince  of  Peace.  From  the  Believers  of  Joanna 
Southcott's  Divine  Mission  in  Stourbridge  and  its  vicinity." 


THE   STOKE    RESURRECTIONISTS 

IN   the  year    1829   Mr.  Warburton   introduced  a 
Bill  into  the  House  of  Commons  for  the  preven- 
tion of  the  unlawful  disinterment  of  human  bodies 
and  for  the  regulation  of  schools  of  anatomy. 
The  horrible  revelations  of  the  murders — at  least  thirty 
— committed  by  Burke  and  Hare,  in  Edinburgh,  for  the 
sake  of  providing  subjects  for  the  purposes  of  anatomy 
to  lecture  on,  had  produced  a  profound  emotion.    The 
Bill  passed  the  House  of  Commons,  but  was  thrown 
out  by  the  Lords. 

So  long  as  the  European  war  continued,  the  period 
of  time  required  for  the  completion  of  the  education  of 
medical  students,  so  as  to  fit  them  for  the  service  in 
the  Army  or  Navy,  was  unduly  short,  and  the  study 
of  anatomy  was  consequently  much  neglected.  At 
that  time  the  dissecting-rooms  were  supplied  by  men 
who  in  general  exhumed  bodies.  The  trade  was  lucra- 
tive ;  one  resurrectionist  at  his  death  left  nearly  .£6000 
to  his  family.  Another  resurrectionist,  after  a  long 
career,  withdrew  in  1817.  He  had  attended  the  army  in 
the  Peninsula  and  in  France  as  a  licensed  sutler,  and 
after  a  battle  went  over  the  field  extracting  the  teeth  of 
those  who  had  fallen  and  such  as  were  dying,  and  dis- 
posed of  them  to  dentists  in  England.  With  the 
produce  of  these  sales  he  built  a  large  hotel  at 
Margate.  A  leading  resurrectionist  once  received 
£144  for  twelve  subjects  in  one  evening.  Sir  Astley 

405 


406  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Cooper  expended  hundreds  of  pounds  in  the  purchase 
of  bodies  and  in  advancing  money  to  screen  these 
useful  auxiliaries  of  the  anatomical  school.  To  obtain 
the  liberation  of  one  he  paid  £160. 

The  proper  education  of  a  surgeon  demanded  that 
he  should  be  acquainted  with  anatomy,  and  the  only 
provision  made  by  the  legislature  was  that  the  bodies 
of  criminals  who  had  been  executed  should  be  handed 
over  to  the  schools.  This  did  not  furnish  by  any 
means  an  adequate  number,  and  the  professors  of 
anatomy  were  obliged  to  have  recourse  to  the  pro- 
fessional purveyor  of  corpses,  knowing  well  enough, 
or  suspecting,  whence  they  came. 

A  select  committee  of  the  House  of  Commons  was 
appointed  to  inquire  into  the  matter,  and  several  of  the 
profession  were  had  up  for  examination. 

Here  is  the  evidence  of  one  resurrectionist,  con- 
densed : — 

"A  man  may  make  a  good  living  at  it  if  he  is  a 
sober  man,  and  acts  with  judgment.  I  should  suppose 
there  are  at  present  in  London  between  forty  and  fifty 
men  that  have  the  name  of  raising  subjects.  If  you 
are  friends  with  a  grave-digger,  the  thing  will  be  all 
right  to  know  what  bodies  to  get ;  if  you  are  not,  you 
cannot  get  them.  The  largest  number  of  bodies  I 
have  got  were  twenty-three  in  four  nights.  It  was 
only  in  one  year  that  I  got  one  hundred.  Perhaps  the 
next  year  I  did  not  get  above  fifty  or  sixty.  When 
I  go  to  work  I  like  to  get  those  of  poor  people  buried 
from  the  workhouses,  because,  instead  of  working  for 
one  subject,  you  may  get  three  or  four.  I  do  not 
think,  during  the  time  I  have  been  in  the  habit  of 
working  for  the  schools,  I  got  half  a  dozen  of  wealthier 
people." 

A  second  said  :  "  The  course  I  should  take  would  be 


THE   STOKE    RESURRECTIONISTS      407 

to  have  the  workhouse  subjects ;  we  can  get  them  out 
of  the  burial-ground  without  any  difficulty  whatever." 

One  of  the  largest  dealers  was  Israel  Cohen,  com- 
monly called  Izzy,  a  Jew,  well  known  to  surgeons  and 
sextons.  By  the  surgeons  he  was  patronized  ;  of  the 
sextons  he  was  the  patron  ;  and  so  complete  was  the 
understanding  between  the  profession  to  which  he  be- 
longed and  those  with  which  he  was  connected,  that 
the  interest  of  all  three  was  advanced  by  coalition. 
He  was  a  square-built,  resolute  ruffian,  with  features 
indicative  of  his  Hebrew  origin,  black  whiskers,  and  a 
squint. 

The  Plymouth  medical  men  memorialized  the  Govern- 
ment in  1827  relating  to  the  necessity  they  were  in  of 
having  human  bodies  for  dissection,  and  the  in- 
adequacy of  the  legitimate  supply.  "  In  other  coun- 
tries," they  said,  "the  dissection  of  the  dead,  so  neces- 
sary to  the  well-being  of  the  living,  is  permitted  and 
protected  ;  and  is  actually  prosecuted,  without  shocking 
any  existing  prejudice  or  violating  the  sanctities  of 
the  dead.  It  follows  either  that  the  professional  gentle- 
men of  this  kingdom  must  be  contented  with  a  very 
inferior  medical  education,  or  that  they  must  resort  to 
the  Continent  to  obtain  that  information  which  is  denied 
to  them  by  the  laws  of  Great  Britain."  The  alternative 
of  having  recourse  to  resurrectionists  they  did  not  refer 
to.  The  memorial  produced  no  results. 

In  the  recent  alterations  of  Princetown  Church,  it  was 
found  that  no  inconsiderable  number  of  the  graves  of 
the  French  prisoners  who  died  during  incarceration 
were  empty.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  bodies 
were  disposed  of  to  the  surgeons  in  Plymouth.  It  was 
generally  supposed  that  the  body-snatchers  in  ex- 
huming a  corpse  first  proceeded,  as  would  a  novice, 
in  excavating  the  whole  grave,  and  having  arrived  at 


408  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  coffin  would  then  force  off  the  lid  and  so  get  posses- 
sion of  the  body.  But  this  would  have  been  too  slow 
an  operation.  To  do  the  job  expeditiously  they  cleared 
away  the  earth  above  the  head  of  the  coffin  only,  taking 
care  to  leave  that  which  covered  the  rest  of  the  coffin 
undisturbed.  As  soon  as  about  one-third  of  the  chest 
was  thus  exposed,  they  forced  a  very  strong  crowbar 
between  the  end  of  the  coffin  and  the  lid,  and  easily 
prised  it  open.  It  usually  happened  at  this  stage  of 
the  proceedings  that  the  superincumbent  weight  of 
earth  on  the  other  portion  of  the  coffin-lid  caused  it  to 
be  snapped  across.  As  soon  as  this  was  effected  the 
body  was  drawn  out,  the  death-gear  removed  from  it 
and  replaced  in  the  coffin,  and  finally  the  body  was 
tied  up  in  a  bundle  or  thrust  into  a  sack  and  taken 
away,  the  whole  operation  lasting  not  over  a  quarter 
of  an  hour. 

Very  generally  a  hackney  coach  or  a  spring  cart 
was  in  waiting  to  receive  the  body.  When  corpses 
were  sent  from  the  country  to  London  they  were  gene- 
rally packed  in  barrels  or  hat-crates.  But  when  one 
was  to  be  taken  to  a  dissecting-room  in  the  same  town 
it  was  laid  on  a  large  piece  of  green  baize,  the  four 
corners  were  tied  together,  and  so  the  body  was  rolled 
up  in  a  bundle.  The  body-snatcher  would  then,  dressed 
as  a  porter,  swing  the  load  over  his  shoulder,  and 
often,  even  in  broad  daylight,  carry  it  to  its  place  of 
destination  through  the  most  crowded  streets. 

Every  means  which  ingenuity  could  suggest  was  put 
in  practice  to  obtain  bodies  which  had  not  been  buried. 
For  this  purpose  the  men,  when  they  heard  of  the  body 
of  a  person  being  found — drowned,  for  instance,  and 
lying  to  be  owned— trumped  up  a  story  of  an  unfortu- 
nate brother  or  sister,  humbugged  a  coroner's  jury, 
and  thus  obtained  possession  of  the  body.  In  this  sort 


THE   STOKE   RESURRECTIONISTS      409 

of  trickery  the  wives  of  the  men  were  often  employed, 
as  their  application  was  attended  to  with  less  suspicion, 
and  it  was  never  difficult  to  impose  on  the  parochial 
officials,  who  were  always  anxious  to  avoid  the  expense 
of  burying  the  deceased.  Subjects  were  thus  occasion- 
ally procured,  but  they  were  more  frequently  obtained 
by  pretending  relationship  to  persons  dying  without 
friends  in  hospitals  and  workhouses.  As  the  bodies 
thus  obtained  were  much  fresher  than  those  which  had 
been  buried,  they  produced  generally,  independent  of 
the  teeth,  as  much  as  twelve  guineas  each. 

At  the  commencement  of  a  new  term  at  the  hospitals, 
the  lecturers  on  anatomy  were  beset  by  the  leading 
dealers  in  subjects,  and  "  fifty  pounds  down,  and  nine 
guineas  a  body,"  was  often  acceded  to.  The  larger 
sum  down  secured  to  the  lecturer  the  exclusive  supply 
of  that  dealer's  wares.  The  competition  for  subjects 
was  great,  and  in  some  cases  twenty  pounds  were  paid 
for  a  single  corpse  in  good  condition. 

Stoke  Church  and  yard  lay  solitary  amid  waste  land. 
It  had  a  wall  round  it,  but  no  houses  very  near,  and 
there  were  no  oil  lamps  burning  in  the  road  that  passed 
it. 

A  strong  suspicion  was  entertained  that  the  graves 
there  had  been  rifled,  and  were  so  continually, 
and  it  was  proposed  to  the  parish  authorities  to 
have  lamps  and  organize  a  night  watch.  But  the 
officials  shrank  from  the  expense,  and  many  people 
reasoned  that  it  were  well  to  allow  the  resurrectionists 
to  get  bodies  from  graves,  as  bodies  the  surgeons  must 
have,  rather  than  run  the  risk  of  inducing  these 
scoundrels  to  imitate  the  proceedings  of  Burke  by  kill- 
ing individuals  for  the  purpose.  Within  a  stone's  throw 
of  Mill  Bridge  was  a  commodious  residence  called 
Mount  Pleasant,  with  Stonehouse  Lake  or  Creek  on 


410  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

one  side,  and  Stoke  Church  on  the  other.  A  man, 
apparently  well  to  do,  a  Mr.  Gosling,  took  the  house, 
and  brought  in  a  somewhat  mixed  party  of  men  and 
women.  The  neighbours  thought  the  family  was 
peculiar,  but  as  he  was  a  pleasant-spoken  man  and  the 
ladies  of  the  party  were  affable  and  sympathetic,  and  as 
he  paid  his  way  with  punctuality,  they  were  content. 
Indeed,  they  were  more  than  content.  The  females  of 
the  Gosling  household  attended  every  funeral,  and  ex- 
pressed their  tenderest  feelings  of  regard  and  pity  for 
the  mourners,  asked  all  particulars  about  the  deceased, 
his  or  her  age,  and  what  malady  had  hurried  the 
lamented  one  to  his  grave,  as  also  occasionally  whether 
the  deceased  had  good  teeth.  At  night,  immediately 
after  every  funeral,  the  men  of  the  party  stole  forth, 
furnished  with  crowbar  and  spades,  and  equipped  with 
a  sack  or  two,  and  made  their  way  into  the  graveyard, 
where  they  worked  by  the  light  of  a  dark  lantern. 
The  sexton  had  been  squared,  and  he  had  not  made 
the  grave  very  deep,  nor  had  he  heaped  the  earth 
thickly  over  it. 

But  the  gang  did  not  confine  operations  to  the  last 
interment.  They  opened  other  graves,  and  if  the 
corpses  were  too  much  decomposed  to  be  of  any  com- 
mercial value  they  contented  themselves  with  drawing 
all  their  teeth. 

Sometimes  it  happened  that  the  subjects  when  re- 
moved to  Mount  Pleasant  underwent  rapid  decom- 
position. Then  they  were  buried  in  the  garden,  and 
restored  to  the  graveyard  on  the  next  visit. 

Neighbours  now  began  to  notice  that  lights  were 
burning  in  Mount  Pleasant  at  all  times  of  the  night.  It 
was  also  remarked  that  the  grave  mounds  bore  a  sus- 
picious look  of  having  been  tampered  with — not  those 
recently  made  only,  but  others  more  ancient. 


THE   STOKE    RESURRECTIONISTS      411 

In  the  nearest  house  was  a  shrewd,  observant  servant- 
girl,  and  the  lights,  the  way  they  moved  about  at  night 
in  the  rooms  of  the  villa — not  in  the  bedrooms,  but 
downstairs,  at  times  when  every  one  else  was  asleep — 
aroused  her  suspicions.  Her  bedroom  window  com- 
manded the  villa  of  Gosling  and  Co.,  and  wake  at 
what  time  she  might  or  however  early  in  the  morning 
before  daybreak,  there  the  lights  were.  She  resolved 
on  keeping  watch ;  and  she  stationed  herself  where, 
unseen,  she  could  observe  proceedings.  Towards  mid- 
night she  saw  dark  figures  emerge  from  Mount  Plea- 
sant and  make  their  way  to  Stoke  Church.  Follow  she 
did  not.  Her  courage  was  not  equal  to  that ;  but  she 
waited  and  watched  till  the  figures  stole  back,  and  on 
this  occasion  she  distinctly  saw  sacks  being  carried  on 
the  backs  of  two  of  the  men.  She  now  remembered 
that  she  had  often  noticed  packing-cases  and  casks 
being  taken  from  the  villa  to  the  water's  edge  and 
placed  on  a  barge  apparently  waiting  there  for  its  load. 
In  the  morning  the  girl  told  her  master  what  she  had 
seen,  and  he  at  once  apprised  the  police. 

These  latter  now  placed  themselves  behind  the  wall  at 
night  to  watch  what  would  happen  ;  they  were  rewarded 
one  night  after  there  had  been  a  couple  of  funerals  in 
the  churchyard.  The  constables  saw  the  men  dig  and 
shovel  for  about  ten  minutes ;  heard  them  strike  a 
coffin-lid,  and  proceed  to  force  it  up.  Then  by  the 
faint  light  they  saw  them  remove  a  corpse  and  put  it 
into  a  sack.  Thereupon  one  of  the  men  came  out  of  the 
yard  as  a  scout  to  see  that  the  coast  was  clear. 
After  that  they  hoisted  the  body  over  the  church- 
yard wall  and  made  towards  Mount  Pleasant.  As 
the  constables  on  this  occasion  were  but  two  and 
there  was  a  considerable  gang  in  the  villa,  they 
returned  to  Devonport,  where  they  collected  a  sufficient 


412  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

force  of  watchmen  and  special  constables,  and  sur- 
rounded the  building,  where  the  resurrectionists  were 
enjoying  a  refreshing  sleep  after  their  labours.  Scaling 
the  wall  by  means  of  a  ladder  and  advancing  in  their 
stocking-soles,  they  entered  the  various  bedrooms,  and 
secured  four  men  and  two  women,  pinioned  and  gagged 
them.  They  were  taken  completely  by  surprise. 

In  the  kitchen  were  found  two  sacks.  In  one  was  the 
body  of  a  girl  of  eighteen,  in  the  other  that  of  an  elderly 
man.  The  cupboards  and  drawers  were  stocked  with 
extracted  teeth  and  implements  of  dentistry  for  drawing 
them. 

When  on  the  following  morning  it  was  noised  in 
Devonport  that  a  confederacy  of  body-snatchers  had 
been  captured,  the  greatest  excitement  prevailed.  The 
relatives  of  all  who  had  died  and  been  buried  within  a 
couple  of  years  and  more  crowded  the  cemetery  de- 
manding that  the  graves  of  their  kinsfolk  should  be 
examined.  The  graveyard  turned  out  to  have  been  a 
mine  well  worked.  Grave  after  grave  was  opened,  and 
dishevelled  shrouds  and  mutilated  bodies,  teethless 
jaws,  revealed  to  the  distracted  relatives  of  the  dead 
that  the  graves  had  been  violated. 

Gosling  and  his  confederates  were  brought  to  trial, 
and  confessed  their  guilt,  and  even  revelled  in  their 
horrible  reminiscences.  Gosling  grimly  recalled  how 
on  one  night  the  resurrection  party  had  been  so  drunk 
that  they  had  fought  in  an  open  grave  under  the 
shadow  of  the  church. 

This  took  place  in  1830.  Gosling  and  his  confederates 
were  transported. 

It  was  not  till  1832  that  Mr.  Warburton's  Bill,  already 
referred  to,  passed  both  Houses  ;  and  public  feeling 
had  been  further  stirred  on  the  subject  by  the  case  of 
Bishop  and  Williams,  who  had  murdered  an  Italian 


THE   STOKE    RESURRECTIONISTS      413 

boy  in  London  for  the  sake  of  providing  a  subject  for 
S.  Bartholomew's  Hospital,  and  Bishop  had  admitted 
that  he  had  committed  sixty  such  murders. 

The  objection  raised  to  the  Bill  in  the  House  of 
Lords  in  the  first  instance,  and  again  in  the  second, 
was  that  Warburton's  project  was  that  such  persons  as 
died  in  a  hospital,  and  whose  bodies  were  not  claimed 
by  relatives,  should  be  given  up  for  dissection.  What 
the  Lords  objected  to  was  that  this  subjected  the  poor 
to  what  might  be  considered  an  evil  in  which  the  rich 
did  not  participate.  But  the  serious  condition  of 
affairs,  the  evidence  that  many  murders  were  com- 
mitted so  as  to  provide  the  anatomical  schools  with 
subjects,  overrode  the  sentimental  feeling,  and  the  Bill 
passed.  Happy  indeed  would  it  have  been  if  it  had 
passed  thirty  years  earlier. 


"THE   BEGGARS'    OPERA"   AND 
GAY'S    CHAIR 

IT  is  not  my  intention  to  give  a  detailed  biography 
of  John  Gay,  for  such  is  easily  procurable,  either 
in  Cox's  Life  of  the  poet,  or  in  the  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  or,  again,   in  the  Life,  pre- 
fixed to  his  works,   by  J.   Underbill,  1893.     All  here 
proposed  is  to  give  a   brief  sketch,  and  fill  out  two 
points,  the  story  of  The  Beggars'  Opera,  and  that  of 
the  discovery  of  MSS.  in  Gay's  chair. 

The  Gays  of  Goldsworthy  were  an  ancient  Devon- 
shire family,  tracing  back  in  direct  descent  from  a  John 
Gay,  already  seated  in  his  warm  nest  at  Goldsworthy,  in 
Parkham,  near  Bideford,  a  parish  that  nursed  as  well 
the  Giffards  of  Halsbury  and  the  Risdons  of  Babley. 
But  if  Parkham  nursed  these  families,  it  did  not  keep 
them  ;  Giffards,  Risdons,  Gays  are  all  gone,  and  the 
Gays  had  sold  Goldsworthy  before  Risdon  wrote  his 
Survey  between  1605  and  1630.  But  the  Gays  still  re- 
tained the  old  priory  of  Frithelstock  which  they  held  .on 
a  long  lease  from  1602,  and  where  lived  the  widow  of  a 
Gay  in  1822,  when  Lysons  published  his  " Devonshire" 
in  Magna  Britannia. 

John  Gay  was  the  son  of  William  Gay,  fourth  son  of 
John  Gay  of  Frithelstock.  William  had  married  the 
daughter  of  a  Dissenting  preacher  named  Hanmer,  in 
Barnstaple,  and  there  John  was  born  on  30  June,  1685. 
William  Gay  died  when  John  was  but  ten  years  old, 

414 


THE    "BEGGARS'   OPERA"  415 

and  he  was  brought  up  by  his  mother  in  Ivy  Street, 
Barnstaple,  and  sent  to  school  to  Robert  Luck,  a 
would-be  poet,  who  wrote  Latin  and  English  verses, 
in  one  of  which,  "The  Female  Phaeton,"  he  depicted 
the  career  and  lapse  of  a  fast  young  lady  of  fashionable 
life. 

Gay  was  bound  apprentice  to  a  London  mercer, 
but,  his  health  failing,  he  returned  to  Barnstaple, 
where  he  dwelt  with  his  uncle,  the  Dissenting  minister, 
John  Hanmer.  The  association  must  have  been  most 
unsuitable  to  both.  John  "  toujours  gai, "  with  a  poet's 
fancy,  a  buoyant  heart,  what  more  incongruous  than  to 
be  lodged  under  the  roof  and  nourished  at  the  table  of 
a  sour  and  moody  Puritan  ! 

How  and  when  he  broke  away  from  this  depressing 
and  distressing  environment  we  do  not  know.  All  that 
is  known  of  this  early  period  is  to  be  found  in  a  little 
work  called  Gay's  Chair,  written  by  his  nephew, 
Joseph  Ballard.  At  the  age  of  twenty-one  he  wrote 
his  first  piece,  Rural  Sports,  which  he  dedicated  to 
Pope,  with  whom  he  became  afterwards  allied  in 
intimate  friendship.  In  1712  we  find  him  secretary, 
or  rather  domestic  steward,  to  the  Duchess  of  Mon- 
mouth,  in  which  station  he  continued  till  the  beginning 
of  the  year  1714,  at  which  time  he  accompanied  the 
Earl  of  Clarendon  to  Hanover,  whither  that  nobleman 
was  dispatched  by  Queen  Anne.  In  the  latter  part  of 
the  same  year,  in  consequence  of  the  Queen's  death, 
he  returned  to  England,  where  he  lived  in  the  highest 
estimation  and  intimacy  of  friendship  with  many  per- 
sons of  rank ;  he  became,  in  fact,  the  petted  lap-dog  of 
fashionable  society. 

Queen  Caroline,  then  Princess  of  Wales,  was  inter- 
ested in  him,  and  sent  to  invite  him  to  read  his  play, 
The  Captives,  before  her  at  Leicester  House.  The  day 


416  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

was  fixed,  and  Gay  was  commanded  to  attend.  He 
waited  some  time  in  a  presence  chamber,  with  his 
manuscript  in  his  hand,  but  being  a  modest  man,  and 
unequal  to  the  trial  into  which  he  was  entering,  when 
the  door  of  the  drawing-room  was  thrown  open,  where 
the  Princess  sat  with  her  ladies,  he  was  so  much  con- 
fused and  concerned  about  making  the  proper  obei- 
sance that  he  did  not  see  a  low  footstool  that  happened 
to  be  in  the  way  ;  and,  stumbling  over  it,  fell  against  a 
large  screen,  which  he  upset,  and  threw  the  ladies  into 
no  small  disorder. 

In  1726  he  dedicated  his  Fables,  by  permission,  to 
the  Duke  of  Cumberland.  From  his  countenance,  and 
promises  made  of  preferment,  he  hoped  to  have  ob- 
tained some  office  in  which,  without  being  overworked, 
he  might  be  well  paid,  and  able  to  devote  himself  more 
at  leisure  to  the  Muses.  Instead  of  which,  in  1727,  he 
was  offered  the  place  of  gentleman-usher  to  one  of  the 
youngest  princesses ;  an  offer  which,  as  he  regarded, 
it  was  insulting  to  make.  In  a  fit  of  resentment,  and  in 
ill-humour  with  the  Court,  he  wrote  The  Beggars' 
Opera  as  a  satire  on  the  Italian  opera,  then  warmly 
patronized  by  the  Court. 

Swift  had  observed  to  Gay  what  an  old,  pretty  sort 
of  thing  a  Newgate  pastoral  would  make.  Gay  was 
inclined  to  consider  the  suggestion,  but  afterwards,  hot 
in  his  resentment  against  the  Court,  turned  the  theme 
into  a  comedy.  He  began  The  Beggars'*  Opera,  and 
mentioned  it  to  Swift,  but  the  Doctor  did  not  much  like 
the  project.  As  he  carried  it  on,  he  showed  what  he 
had  written  to  him  and  to  Pope,  and  they  now  and  then 
gave  him  a  correction  or  a  word  or  two  of  advice  ;  but 
it  was  wholly  of  his  own  writing.  When  it  was  done, 
neither  of  them  thought  it  would  succeed.  The  play 
was  offered  in  1727  to  Cibber  at  Drury  Lane,  and  was 


THE    "  BEGGARS'  OPERA"  417 

by  him  rejected  with  contempt.  Congreve  read  it  over 
and  said,  "It  will  either  take  greatly  or  be  damned 
confoundedly." 

The  play  was,  however,  accepted  by  Rich,  and  pro- 
duced at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  Theatre.  When  brought 
on  the  stage  on  the  first  night,  29  January,  1727-8, 
Gay's  friends  sat  in  great  uncertainty  of  the  event, 
till  they  were  vastly  encouraged  by  overhearing  the 
Duke  of  Argyll,  who  sat  in  the  next  box,  say:  "It 
will  do— it  must  do  !  I  see  it  in  the  eyes  of  them  ! " 
When  Polly  Peachum  sang  her  pathetic  appeal  to  her 
parents — 

O  ponder  well,  be  not  severe 

To  save  a  wretched  wife, 
For  on  the  rope  that  hangs  my  dear 

Depends  poor  Polly's  life, 

and  this,  to  the  air  of  "The  Babes  in  the  Wood," 
familiar  to  the  entire  audience  from  their  nurseries,  the 
effect  was  magical.  The  audience  broke  into  a  roar  of 
applause,  and  the  success  of  the  play  was  established. 

The  plot  of  the  piece  was  thin  and  poor,  but  the 
people  were  refreshed,  and  rejoiced  to  hear  again  the 
old  familiar  notes  of  English  music.  There  were  sixty- 
nine  airs  in  The  Beggars'  Opera,  and  nearly  every  one 
was  an  old  English  ballad  or  song  air.  Gay  was  not 
himself  a  musician,  but  he  had  his  head  full  of  old 
ballads  and  their  airs,  most,  doubtless,  picked  up  about 
Barnstaple  or  Bideford,  and  he  set  to  the  tunes  words 
suitable  to  his  characters  and  the  dialogue,  and  then 
got  a  German  named  Pepusch  to  note  them  down  for 
him  and  write  a  simple  orchestral  accompaniment  and 
an  overture.  The  author,  according  to  Mace,  got  the 
entire  receipts  of  four  nights,  amounting  in  the  aggre- 
gate to  £693  133.  6d.,  whereas  Rich,  the  manager, 
after  the  piece  had  been  performed  thirty-six  times, 

2   E 


4i8  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

had  pocketed  nearly  £4000.     It  was  well  said  that  this 
play  made  Rich  gay,  and  Gay  rich. 

Lavinia  Fenton  had  been  tempted  by  Rich  from  the 
Haymarket  to  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  to  act  the  part  of 
Polly  in  The  Beggars'  Opera  at  a  salary  of  155.  per 
week,  but  owing  to  the  enormous  success  of  the  play  he 
raised  it  to  305.  ;  and  such  was  the  rage  of  the  town 
respecting  her  that  she  was  obliged  to  be  guarded 
home  every  night  by  a  considerable  party  of  her  confi- 
dential friends,  to  prevent  her  being  hurt  by  the 
crowd  or  being  run  away  with.  The  Duke  of  Bolton 
became  enamoured  of  her — took  her  under  his  pro- 
tection, as  the  euphemism  went.  The  Duke  was  then  in 
the  prime  of  life,  living  apart  from  his  wife.  "  Polly  " 
was  not  remarkably  pretty,  but  she  had  a  charming 
manner  and  a  delicious  voice.  Wharton  tells  us  that 
he  knew  her,  and  could  testify  to  her  wit,  intelligence, 
and  good  manners.  "  Her  conversation,"  says  he, 
"  was  admired  by  the  first  characters  of  the  age,  par- 
ticularly the  old  Lord  Bathurst  and  Lord  Grenville." 
She  and  the  Duke  had  several  quarrels,  and  after  one 
very  serious  explosion  he  gave  her  notice  to  quit  the 
house. 

She  retired  to  her  room,  assumed  the  costume  of 
Polly  Peachum,  returned,  and  presenting  herself  before 
him  in  all  the  grace  and  charm  with  which  she  had  first 
won  him,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  sang — 

Oh,  what  pain  it  is  to  part ! 
Can  I  leave  thee  ?  Can  I  leave  thee  ? 

Oh,  what  pain  it  is  to  part ! 
Can  thy  Polly  ever  leave  thee  ? 

to  the  air  "Gin  thou  wert  mine  ain  thing,"  to  which 
it  had  been  set  by  Gay. 

Touched  by  the  remembrance  of  the  past  and  by  her 
witchery  of  manner,  the  Duke  opened  his  arms,  she 


THE    "BEGGARS'   OPERA"  419 

flew  to  his  heart,  and  the  reconciliation  was  complete. 
On  the  death  of  the  Duchess,  the  Duke  married  Lavinia 
Fenton  at  Aix  in  Provence,  21  October,  1751,  just  one 
day  beyond  the  month  after  the  death  of  his  wife,  who 
died  on  20  September. 

The  children  borne  by  "  Polly"  to  the  Duke  before 
the  marriage  were  three  sons,  who  all  assumed  the 
name  of  Powlett.  The  Duke  died  on  26  August,  1754, 
and  was  succeeded  in  the  dukedom  by  his  brother. 
"  Polly"  Fenton  died  at  West  Combe  Park,  Kent,  on 
24  January,  1760,  at  the  age  of  fifty-two. 

Assuredly  never  was  a  more  sudden,  complete,  and 
unexpected  success  achieved  than  that  by  the  produc- 
tion of  The  Beggars^  Opera.  It  defied  the  prevailing 
taste;  it  went  contrary  to  all  the  received  canons  of  art, 
it  was  as  audacious  as  a  play  as  it  was  musically. 
Hitherto  the  Opera  had  been  in  the  hands  of  Italians. 
The  themes  selected  for  musical  setting  had  been 
classic  and  mythological.  Then  came  Gay,  taking  his 
subject  from  the  lowest  class — gaol-birds  ;  and  discard- 
ing all  intricate  and  foreign  music,  set  his  songs  to 
melodies  familiar  to  all  from  their  cradles. 

It  was  said  of  the  deserted  stalls  and  boxes  at  the 
Italian  Opera  whilst  Gay's  piece  held  the  town,  that 
he  had  made  of  the  Italian  the  veritable  Beggars' 
Opera. 

Sir  Robert  Walpole  was  frequently  the  subject  of 
Gay's  satire.  Nevertheless  he  attended  the  first  per- 
formance, and  sat  in  one  of  the  stage  lounges.  When 
Lockit  sang — 

When  you  censure  the  age, 
Be  cautious  and  sage, 
Lest  the  courtiers  offended  should  be. 
If  you  mention  vice  or  bribe, 
Tis  so  pat  to  all  the  tribe, 
That  each  cries— That  was  levelled  at  me  ! 


420  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Sir  Robert  observing  that  all  eyes  turned  upon  him  at 
these  lines,  parried  the  thrust  by  leading  the  applause. 
After  an  uninterrupted  run  in  London  of  sixty-three 
nights,  and  emptying  the  Italian  Opera  House,  the  play 
spread  into  all  the  great  towns  of  England,  and  was 
played  in  many  places  thirty  or  forty  times — in  Bath 
and  Bristol  fifty  times.  It  made  its  progress  into 
Wales,  where  it  contributed  some  of  its  airs  to  national 
Welsh  melody,  to  Scotland  and  Ireland  ;  and  last  of  all 
it  was  performed  in  Minorca. 

Nor  was  its  fame  confined  to  the  reading  and  repre- 
sentation alone,  for  the  card-table  and  the  drawing- 
room  shared  with  the  theatre  and  the  closet  in  this 
respect ;  the  ladies  carried  about  the  favourite  songs 
engraven  on  their  fans,  and  screens  were  decorated 
with  scenes  from  the  play. 

Hogarth's  painting  representing  the  first  scene  on 
the  boards,  with  noble  dukes  and  earls  on  fauteuils 
upon  the  stage,  is  well  known.  His  portrait  of  Polly 
Fenton  is  in  the  National  Gallery. 

The  Beggars'  Opera  was  revived  by  Messrs.  Gatti 
at  Covent  Garden  in  the  season  1878-9.  On  this 
occasion  wrote  Punch:  "The  house  was  literally 
crammed  from  floor  to  ceiling  by  an  audience  whose 
enthusiastic  temperature  increased  in  a  graduated  ther- 
mometrical  scale,  the  over-boiling  point  being  reached 
at  the  back  row  of  the  upper  gallery ;  and  this  on  a 
night  when,  in  the  stalls  and  boxes,  wrappers,  furs, 
mantles,  and  ulsters  were  de  rigueur  on  account  of  the 
rigour  of  the  cold.  .  .  .  Let  those  who  do  not  believe 
in  a  comic  tenor  see  Sims  Reeves  as  Captain  Macheath, 
and  they  will  discover  what  magic  there  is  even  in  a 
refrain  of  'tol-de-lol,  lol-de-rol,  loddy,'  when  given  by 
a  tenor  who  is  not  impressed  by  the  absurd  traditional 
notion  that  he  is  nothing  if  not  sentimental.  His  acting 


THE    "  BEGGARS'   OPERA"  421 

of  the  celebrated  song  *  How  happy  could  I  be  with 
either'  is  full  of  humour,  and  his  change  of  manner 
from  '  tol-de-rol '  in  a  tender  tone,  when  addressed  to 
the  gentle,  confiding  Polly,  to  the  '  tol-de-rol '  with  a 
true  Cockney  chick-a-leary  twang  when  addressed  to 
the  vulgar  Lucy  Lockit,  is  a  clever  idea,  most  artistic- 
ally carried  out ;  and  then  his  dance  up  the  stage  while 
singing,  giving  his  last  note  good  and  true  to  the  end 
in  spite  of  his  unaccustomed  exertion,  as  with  a  jump 
he  seats  himself  in  a  natural  devil-may-care  style  upon 
the  table,  was  followed  by  an  encore  so  momentous 
that  even  he,  the  anti-encorist^  was  fain  to  comply  with 
the  enthusiastic  demand ;  so  he  repeated  the  two  verses, 
the  dance,  and  the  jump  with  as  much  freshness  and 
vigour  as  though  he  had  not  already  sung  six  songs — 
snatches,  more  or  less,  it  is  true — and  had  got  ten  more 
to  follow." 

As  a  man,  Gay  was  amiable  and  winning  in  manner. 
He  had  a  foible  —  indolence.  Nevertheless  he  had 
saved  several  thousand  pounds  at  the  time  of  his 
death,  which  occurred  in  the  house  of  the  Duke  and 
Duchess  of  Queensberry,  in  Burlington  Gardens,  in 
December,  1732,  and  he  was  buried  in  Westminster 
Abbey. 

And  now,  having  done  with  the  man,  we  come  to  his 
chair. 

Rather  over  eighty  years  after  the  death  of  Gay 
some  unpublished  poems  of  his  were  found  in  an  old 
arm-chair  which  had  belonged  to  the  poet,  and  after  his 
death  had  been  retained,  with  other  relics,  by  the 
surviving  members  of  his  family.  The  history  was 
fully  narrated  immediately  after  the  discovery  in  a  little 
book,  called  Gay's  Chair,  along  with  the  life  of  the 
poet  and  a  selection  of  the  poems  discovered  ;  some 
were  too  broad  in  humour  for  publication. 


422  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

It  appears  that  at  a  sale  in  1818  of  the  effects  of  a 
man  called  Clarke,  who  had  kept  an  old -clothes  and 
curiosity  shop  in  Barnstaple,  an  antique  chair  was 
disposed  of.  It  is  described  as  of  mahogany,  with  the 
seat,  back,  and  arms  stuffed,  and  covered  with  brown 
leather  and  studded  with  brass  nails.  There  was  a 
long  drawer  under  the  seat,  and  two  other  drawers 
were  fixed  on  pivots  so  as  to  turn  back  under  the  arms, 
and  were  fitted  for  writing  materials,  with  a  brass 
candlestick  attached  to  each  and  a  wooden  leaf  for 
reading  or  writing.  It  was  knocked  down  for  a  few 
shillings,  and  being  rather  dilapidated,  was  sent  to 
Mr.  Crook,  cabinet-maker,  to  be  repaired.  Whilst 
doing  this  he  found  that  the  drawer  under  the  seat  did 
not  extend  the  full  depth  of  the  seat,  and  that  when 
this  drawer  was  taken  out  it  disclosed  another  behind 
it.  This  concealed  drawer  was  crammed  with  MSS.  and 
paper.  These  were  submitted  to  inspection,  and  found 
to  consist  of  some  unpublished  poems,  together  with  a 
variety  of  other  documents  and  accounts. 

This  discovery  caused  much  local  sensation  at  the 
time.  It  was  ascertained  that  the  chair  had  been  pur- 
chased some  years  previously  at  the  sale  of  the  effects 
of  Mrs.  Williams,  a  descendant  of  Catherine,  the  poet's 
sister,  who  had  married  Anthony  Bailer.  She  had  come 
in  for  Gay's  furniture  as  next-of-kin,  and  it  was  then 
considered  as  proved  beyond  all  reasonable  doubt  that 
it  had  been  Gay's  property.  Mr.  Henry  Lee  edited  the 
poems,  and  they  were  published  in  1820,  with  a  frontis- 
piece representing  the  chair.  Mr.  Chanter  says  : — 
"  Now  all  this  seems  like  a  clever  fiction  introductory 
to  a  book,  and  indeed  the  idea  of  finding  papers  in  a 
concealed  drawer  or  cabinet  has  been  used  so  often  as 
to  become  threadbare.  I  have  therefore  taken  pains  to 
verify  the  story,  gaining  further  details  from  Mr.  Crook 


GAY'S  CHAIR 

DESCRIPTION  .' 

Under  the  arms  of  the  Chair  are  drawers,  with  the  necessary  implements  for 
writing  ;  each  drawer  turns  on  a  pivot,  and  has  attached  to  it  a  brass  candle- 
stick. The  wooden  leaf  for  reading  or  writing  upon,  may  be  raised  or 
depressed,  or  entirely  let  down,  at  the  student's  pleasure.  Under  the  seat  is 
a  drawer  for  books  or  paper,  and  behind  it  is  the  concealed  drawer,  in  which 
were  found  the  manuscripts  ;  it  is  curiously  fastened  by  a  small  bolt,  not  per- 
ceivable till  the  larger  drawer  is  removed.  The  Chair  is  made  of  very  fine 
grained,  dark  coloured  mahogany  ;  the  seat,  back,  and  arms  stuffed,  and 
covered  with  brown  leather,  ornamented  with  brass  nails  ;  the  whole,  consider- 
ing its  antiquity,  in  pretty  good  repair,  and  admirably  constructed  for  med- 
itative ease  and  literary  application. 


THE    "  BEGGARS'   OPERA"  423 

himself,    who    is    still    living,    and,    fiction-like   as    it 
appears,  it  is  strictly  and  literally  true."  1 

One  of  the  poems  found  in  the  chair  is  "  The  Ladies' 
Petition  to  the  House  of  Commons,"  the  suffragettes  of 
the  day.  It  is  founded  on  the  old  ballad  of  "  Nice 
Young  Maidens." 

Here's  a  pretty  set  of  us 

Nice  young-  maidens. 
Here's  a  pretty  set  of  us 
All  for  husbands  at  a  loss 
But  we  cannot  tarry  thus, 

Nice  young-  maidens. 

There  is  a  Scottish  version  of  the  same,  "  Puir  auld 
Maidens,"  borrowed  from  England. 
Gay  wrote  : — 

Sirs  : — We,  the  maids  of  Exon-City, 

The  maids — g-ood  lack  !  the  more's  the  pity  ! 

We  humbly  offer  this  petition 

To  represent  our  sad  condition. 

Which,  once  made  known,  our  hope  and  trust  is 

Your  honoured  House  will  do  us  justice. 

First  you  shall  hear — but  can't  you  guess  ? — 

The  reason  of  our  sad  distress. 

A  maiden  was  designed  by  nature 

A  weakly  and  imperfect  creature, 

So  liable  to  err  and  stray, 

She  wants  a  guide,  requires  a  stay  : 

And  then,  so  timorous  of  sprites, 

She  dreads  to  be  alone  at  nights. 

Say  what  she  will,  do  what  she  can, 

Her  heart  still  gravitates  to  man. 

As  Mr.  Chanter  has  pointed  out,  Gay  has  scarcely 
received  due  credit  for  the  number  of  proverbial  couplets 
and  sayings  which  have  entwined  themselves  in  our 
daily  language  ;  for  instance  : — 

When  a  lady's  in  the  case 

You  know  all  other  things  give  place. 

1  "The  Early  Poetry  of  Devonshire"  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Devon- 
shire Association  for  1874. 


424  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Those  who  in  quarrels  interpose, 
Must  often  wipe  a  bloody  nose. 

Can  Love  be  controll'd  by  advice  ? 
While  there's  Life  there's  Hope. 

If  the  heart  of  a  man  is  depressed  with  cares, 
The  mist  is  dispelled  when  a  woman  appears. 

The  epitaph   which   Gay  wrote  for  himself  is  a  fit 
conclusion  : — 

Life  is  a  jest,  and  all  things  show  it  ; 
I  thought  so  once,  but  now — I  know  it. 


BAMPFYLDE-MOORE   CAREW 


i 


An  Apology  for  the  Life  of  Mr. 
Bampfylde  -  Moore  Carewy  London,  n.d., 
but  probably  1753,  all  the  Lives  of  this  dis- 
reputable man  are  indebted.  This  was,  in 
fact,  his  own  autobiography,  dictated  by  him  to  some 
literary  acquaintance,  who  put  his  adventures  into 
shape  and  padded  them  out  with  reflections  and  quota- 
tions from  Shakespeare,  Horace,  and  mainly  from 
Fielding's  Tom  Jones. 

The  book  has  two  dedications,  the  first  is  from  the 
"  Historiographer  to  Mr.  Bamfylde-Moore  Carew  "  to 
Justice  Fielding.  The  second  is  "To  the  Public" 
from  Bampfylde  himself.  The  dedication  to  Henry 
Fielding  is  by  no  means  complimentary,  and  one  strain 
of  thought  runs  through  the  whole  Apology.  It  shows 
that  Bampfylde-Moore  Carew  was  not  such  a  scoundrel 
as  was  Tom  Jones  the  hero  of  Fielding's  novel ;  and  in 
that  attempt  the  author  does  not  fail. 

It  will  not  be  possible  here  to  do  more  than  give  an 
outline  of  the  life  of  this  King  of  the  Beggars ;  the 
original  deserves  to  be  read  by  West-countrymen, 
on  account  of  the  numerous  references  to  the  gentry  of 
the  counties  of  Devon,  Cornwall,  and  Somerset  that  it 
contains.  It  is  somewhat  amusing  in  the  Apology  to 
notice  how  Carew  insists  on  being  entitled  Mr.  on 
almost  every  occasion  that  his  name  is  mentioned  by 
the  biographer.  The  book  reveals  at  every  page  the 

425 


426  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

vanity  and  self-esteem  of  this  runaway  from  civilized 
life,  as  it  does  also  his  utter  callousness  to  truth  and 
honesty.  He  relates  his  frauds  and  falsehoods  with  un- 
blushing effrontery,  glorying  in  his  shame.  There 
have  always  been  persons  who  have  rebelled  against 
the  restraints  of  culture,  and  have  reverted  to  a  state 
of  savagery  more  or  less.  Nowadays  there  are  the 
colonies,  to  which  those  who  are  energetic  and  dislike 
the  bonds  of  civilization  at  home  can  fly  and  live  a  freer 
life,  one  also  simpler.  And  this  desire,  located  in 
many  hearts,  to  be  emancipated  from  limitations  and 
ties  that  are  conventional,  is  thus  given  an  opening  for 
fulfilment.  It  may  be  but  a  temporary  outburst  of  inde- 
pendence, but  with  some,  unquestionably,  like  Falstaff, 
there  is  a  "kind  of  alacrity  in  sinking." 

Bampfylde-Moore  Carew  broke  all  ties  when  a  boy, 
and  remained  a  voluntary  outcast  from  society  to  his 
death. 

"  Mr.  Carew  was  born  in  the  Month  of  July,  1693  " — 
even  at  birth  he  is  Mister — "and  never  was  there 
known  a  more  splendid  Appearance  of  Gentlemen  and 
Ladies  of  the  first  Rank  and  Quality  at  any  Baptism  in 
the  West  of  England  than  at  his."  He  was  the  son  of 
the  Rev.  Theodore  Carew,  rector  of  Bickleigh,  near 
Tiverton. 

At  the  age  of  twelve,  Bampfylde  was  sent  to  Tiver- 
ton school,  "where  he  contracted  an  intimate 
Acquaintance  with  young  Gentlemen  of  the  first  Rank 
in  Somersetshire,  Devonshire,  Cornwall,  and  Dorset- 
shire." Here  he  and  other  boys  kept  a  pack  of  hounds, 
and  as  these,  with  Carew  and  others  behind  them,  once 
gave  chase  to  a  deer  strayed  from  Exmoor  over  stand- 
ing corn,  so  much  damage  was  done  that  the  farmers 
complained  to  the  headmaster.  Bampfylde  was  too  great 
a  coward  to  wait  and  take  his  whipping.  He  ran  away 


BAMPFYLDE-MOORE   CAREW  427 

from  school  and  sheltered  among  some  gipsies.  He 
contracted  such  a  love  for  their  vagrant  life,  and  such 
satisfaction  from  the  applause  he  got  for  thefts  that 
manifested  low  cunning,  that  nothing  would  induce 
him  to  abandon  their  mode  of  life  and  return  to  civiliza- 
tion. Here  is  the  description  of  the  hero,  as  sent  forth 
into  the  world  with  Mr.  Carew's  sanction  : — 

"The  Stature  of  our  Hero  is  tall  and  majestic,  his 
Limbs  strong  and  well  proportioned,  his  Features  regu- 
lar, his  Countenance  open  and  ingenuous,  bearing  all 
those  characteristical  Marks  which  Physiognomists 
assert  denote  an  honest  and  good-natured  Mind  ;  and 
tho'  Hardships,  and  even  Age  itself  (he  being  now 
sixty)  have  made  some  Alterations  in  his  Features,  yet 
we  venture  to  compare  his  Countenance  with  Mr. 
Thomas  Jones's,  tho'  the  Author  of  that  Gentleman's 
Life  asserts  he  is  the  finest  Figure  he  ever  beheld." 

He  was  an  adept  at  all  sorts  of  disguises.  Some- 
times he  postured  as  a  shipwrecked  seaman  and  begged 
for  relief,  sometimes  he  was  a  householder  whose 
dwelling  had  been  destroyed  by  fire,  sometimes,  dressed 
in  little  more  than  a  blanket,  he  acted  the  madman. 
Then  he  was  a  Kent  farmer,  whose  lands  had  been 
overflowed  by  the  tide.  The  only  trade  he  acquired 
was  that  of  rat-catching.  In  this,  "  our  Hero,  by  his 
close  Application,  soon  attained  so  considerable  a 
Knowledge  in  his  Profession,  that  he  practised  it  with 
Success  and  Applause,  to  the  great  Advantage  of  the 
Public  in  general,  not  confining  the  good  Effects  of  his 
Knowledge  to  his  own  Community  only,  but  extending 
them  universally  to  all  Sorts  of  People  wheresoever 
they  were  wanted  ;  for  though  the  Mendicants  are  in  a 
constant  State  of  Hostility  with  all  other  People,  and 
Mr.  Carew  was  as  alert  as  any  one  in  laying  all  Manner 
of  Schemes  and  Stratagems  to  carry  off  a  Booty  from 


428  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

them,  yet  he  thought,  as  a  Member  of  the  grand 
Society  of  Human  Kind,  he  was  obliged  to  do  them  all 
the  Good  in  his  Power,  when  it  was  not  opposite  to  the 
Interest  of  that  particular  Community  of  which  he  was 
a  Member." 

Carew  kept  a  watchful  eye  on  the  papers,  and  so 
soon  as  he  heard  of  a  disaster  anywhere,  he  at  once 
assumed  the  disguise  of  one  who  had  suffered  in  this 
disaster,  and  appealed  for  relief.  To  assist  him  in  his 
deception,  he  produced  letters  authenticating  his  story, 
forged  by  himself  in  the  name  of  magistrate  and  noble- 
man, clergy  and  country  gentlemen  of  good  repute. 

It  next  occurred  to  him  that  it  would  serve  his 
purpose  if  he  made  a  voyage  to  Newfoundland,  so  as  to 
be  able  the  better  to  personate  an  unfortunate  sailor 
who  had  been  wrecked  on  his  way  home.  He  went 
there  accordingly  and  picked  up  all  the  local  knowledge 
he  could,  the  names  of  the  merchants  and  dealers  and 
agents  there,  and  returned.  At  once  he  figured  in  the 
character  of  a  seaman  lost  in  a  vessel  homeward 
bound,  sometimes  belonging  to  Poole,  sometimes  to 
Dartmouth,  at  other  times  to  other  ports,  and  under 
such  and  such  commander,  according  as  the  news- 
papers gave  accounts  of  such  accidents. 

"  If  the  Booty  he  got  before  under  this  character  was 
considerable,  it  was  much  more  so  now  ;  for  being  able 
to  give  a  very  exact  Account  of  Newfoundland,  he 
applied  with  great  Confidence  to  Masters  of  Vessels, 
and  Gentlemen  well  acquainted  with  those  Parts  ;  so 
that  those  whom  before  his  Prudence  would  not  per- 
mit him  to  apply  to,  now  became  his  greatest  benefac- 
tors, as  the  perfect  Account  he  gave  of  the  Country 
engaged  them  to  give  Credit  to  all  he  asserted,  and 
made  them  very  liberal  in  his  Favour." 

But  his  very  worst  act  was  committed  shortly  after 


BAMPFYLDE-MOORE   CAREW  429 

this.  He  went  in  a  collier  from  Dartmouth  to  New- 
castle, and  there  he  fell  in  love  with  a  Miss  Grey, 
daughter  of  a  respectable  surgeon-apothecary  of  the 
town.  He  pretended  to  be  mate  of  the  collier,  and  the 
captain  was  not  ashamed  to  corroborate  this  statement. 
He  gained  the  young  lady's  affections,  and  as  the 
father  naturally  objected  to  such  a  match,  he  induced 
the  unfortunate  girl  to  elope  with  him  and  come  to 
Dartmouth,  where  only  did  she  find  out  that  he  was  a 
professional  mumper  or  beggar,  and  that  his  only 
respectable  trade  was  that  of  rat-catcher.  But  she  had 
taken  an  irrevocable  step  in  running  away  with  him,  and 
she  consented  to  marry  him,  and  the  ceremony  was 
performed  at  Bath,  where  for  a  few  weeks  they  lived  in 
high  style,  till  his  money  was  gone,  when  he  was 
obliged  again  to  return  to  his  impositions  and  frauds. 
From  Bath  the  young  couple  went  to  Porchester,  where 
they  were  kindly  received  by  an  uncle  of  Bampfylde,  and 
he  most  urgently  strove  to  turn  the  scoundrel  from 
his  mode  of  life,  promising  that  if  he  would  reform, 
he  and  the  family  would  obtain  for  him  some  situa- 
tion in  which  he  could  earn  his  livelihood  in  an  honest 
manner,  and  live  in  a  way  befitting  his  birth.  But  this 
did  not  suit  Carew.  He  employed  his  time  with  his 
uncle,  who  was  a  clergyman,  in  studying  his  de- 
meanour, manner  of  speech,  etc.,  and  leaving  him  sup- 
plied himself  with  cassock,  bands,  a  black  gown,  and 
started  "  mumping"  as  a  Jacobite  incumbent  of 
Aberystwyth,  who  had  been  ejected  from  the  living  for 
his  political  sentiments,  and  "  this  and  his  thorough 
Knowledge  of  those  Persons  whom  it  was  proper  to 
apply  to,  made  this  stratagem  succeed  even  beyond 
his  own  expectations." 

He,   however,   exchanged  his  disguise ;  for  having 
heard  that  a  vessel  containing  many  Quakers  bound  for 


430  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Philadelphia  had  been  cast  away  on  the  coast  of  Ire- 
land, he  laid  aside  gown,  cassock,  and  bands,  and 
assumed  the  garb  and  language  and  address  of  a 
Quaker.  "His  countenance  was  now  demure;  the 
words  You  and  Sir  he  seemed  to  hold  in  abomination  ; 
his  Hat  was  moved  to  none  ;  for  though  under  Misfor- 
tunes, he  would  not  think  of  bowing  the  knee  to  Baal." 
Thus  equipped  he  preyed  very  successfully  on  the 
Friends.  He  even  went  to  a  great  meeting  of  Quakers 
from  all  parts  at  Thorncombe,  in  Dorset,  and  induced 
the  Friends  there  to  make  a  considerable  contribution 
for  the  relief  of  this  member  of  the  sect  who  had 
fallen  into  such  distress  through  the  wreck. 

His  effrontery,  his  cunning,  his  utter  unscrupulous- 
ness  gained  him  such  credit  among  the  gipsies  that  on 
the  death  of  Claude  Patch,  who  had  reigned  previously 
over  the  canting  crew,  he  was  elected  King  of  the 
Beggars,  and  thenceforth  drew  from  the  whole  com- 
munity a  certain  income. 

At  last  he  was  arrested,  tried  at  the  quarter  sessions 
at  Exeter,  and  transported  to  Maryland,  where  he  was 
sold  to  a  planter.  As  he  tried  to  escape,  an  iron  collar 
with  a  handle  to  it  was  riveted  about  his  neck.  He 
again  escaped ;  this  time  he  succeeded  in  getting 
among  the  Indians,  who  relieved  him  of  his  collar. 
He  stole  a  canoe  from  his  benefactors,  and  in  it  made 
his  way  to  Newcastle  in  Pennsylvania.  There  he 
wandered  about,  pretending  to  be  a  Quaker,  being 
everywhere  well  received  by  the  fraternity  till  he  came 
to  Derby,  where  Mr.  Whitefield  was  preaching  and 
drawing  crowds.  He  attended  Whitefield's  meetings, 
pretended  to  be  a  converted  character,  sought  the 
preacher  out,  imposed  on  him,  got  from  him  money, 
and  departed  for  Philadelphia,  and  thence  made  his 
way  to  New  London,  where  resided  two  sisters  of  Sir 


BAMPFYLDE-MOORE   CAREW          431 

John  Davie,  of  Greedy  Park,  near  Crediton.  They 
were  married  there,  and  their  sons  were  timber  mer- 
chants. They  were  greatly  delighted  to  see  a  man 
who  could  inform  them  about  their  family,  and  he 
raised  vain  hopes  in  their  mind  that  "they  were  near 
heirs  to  a  fine  estate  near  Crediton."  So  completely 
were  they  taken  in  by  him  that  they  gave  him  money 
and  a  letter  to  their  relative  Humphry  Davie,  recom- 
mending Carew  to  his  good  offices.  Carew  embarked 
at  New  London  for  England.  He  was,  however,  much 
afraid  of  being  pressed  for  the  Navy  on  approaching 
England.  To  avoid  this  he  pricked  his  breast  and 
arms  with  a  needle,  rubbed  in  bay  salt  and  gunpowder, 
feigned  to  be  very  ill  and  to  be  light-headed.  It  was 
suspected  that  he  had  small-pox,  and  as  such,  when  an 
officer  came  on  board  to  see  what  men  were  there,  he 
escaped.  As  ill  with  small-pox,  he  was  put  ashore  at 
Bristol,  where  he  speedily  threw  off  all  appearance  of 
sickness,  made  the  best  of  his  way  to  a  mumpers'  resort 
at  Mile  Hill,  and  had  a  carouse.  He  then  made  his 
way  to  Exeter,  where  he  fell  in  with  the  captain  who 
had  conveyed  him  to  Maryland,  and  who  was  vastly 
astonished  to  find  that  Carew  had  returned  home  as 
soon  as  or  sooner  than  himself. 

He  now  resumed  his  old  mode  of  begging  under 
false  pretences. 

"  One  day  as  he  was  begging  in  the  town  of  Maiden 
Bradley,  from  Door  to  Door,  as  a  shipwrecked  Sea- 
man, he  saw  on  the  other  side  of  the  Street  a  mendicant 
Brother  Sailor  in  a  Habit  as  forlorn  as  his  own,  a  beg- 
ging for  God's  sake,  just  like  himself ;  who  seeing  Mr. 
Carew,  crossed  over  the  way  and  came  up  to  him,  and 
in  the  canting  Language  asked  him  where  he  was  last 
Night ;  what  Road  he  was  going  ;  then  whether  he 
would  brush  into  a  Boozing-ken  and  be  his  Thrums, 


432  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

i.e.  go  into  the  Alehouse  and  spend  his  Threepence 
with  him.  To  this  he  consented  and  away  they  go, 
where,  in  the  Series  of  their  Conversation,  they  ask 
each  other  various  Questions  concerning  the  Country, 
the  charitable  and  uncharitable  Families,  the  moderate 
and  severe  Justices,  the  good  and  queer  Corporations, 
etc.,  those  that  would  and  would  not  suffer  begging 
in  their  Territories.  The  new  Acquaintance  of  Mr. 
Carew's  asked  him  if  he  had  been  to  Sir  Edward 
Seymour's?  He  answered  Yes,  and  had  received  his 
Alms. 

"  The  next  Day  they  beg  the  Town,  one  on  one  Side 
of  the  Street,  the  other  on  the  other,  each  on  his  own 
separate  Story.  They  then  proceeded  to  the  Houses  of 
several  Gentlemen  in  that  Neighbourhood ;  among 
others  they  came  to  Lord  Weymouth's,  where  it  was 
agreed  that  Mr.  Carew  should  be  the  Spokesman. 
Upon  their  coming  up  to  the  House  the  Servants  bid 
them  begone,  for  should  Lord  Weymouth  come  and 
detect  them  in  any  Falsehood,  he  would  horsewhip 
them  without  Mercy. 

"Our  Travellers,  however,  were  not  the  least  daunted 
hereat.  Therefore  they  went  up  to  the  Kitchen  Door 
and  Mr.  Carew  broke  the  Ice,  telling  the  deplorable 
Story  of  their  Misfortune  in  his  usual  lamentable  Tone. 
At  length  the  Housekeeper  gave  them  the  greatest  Part 
of  a  cold  Shoulder  of  Mutton,  half  a  fine  Wheaten 
Loaf,  and  a  Shilling,  but  did  it  with  great  Haste  and 
Fear,  lest  my  Lord  should  see  her.  Of  the  Butler  they 
got  a  Copper  of  good  Ale,  and  then  departed. 

"  Having  got  at  some  Distance  from  the  House, 
there  arose  a  Dispute  who  should  carry  the  Victuals, 
both  being  loth  to  encumber  themselves  with  it,  as 
having  neither  Wife  nor  Child  near  to  give  it  to.  Mr. 
Carew  was  for  throwing  it  into  the  Hedge,  but  the 


BAMPFYLDE-MOORE   CAREW          433 

other  urged  that  it  was  both  a  Sin  and  a  Shame  to 
waste  good  Victuals  in  that  Manner ;  so  they  both 
agreed  to  go  to  the  ' Green  Man,'  about  a  Mile  from  my 
Lord's,  and  there  exchange  it  for  Liquor.  At  this  Ale- 
house they  tarried  some  time,  and  snacked  the  Arget, 
that  is,  shared  the  Money  which  they  had  that  Day 
gotten ;  then,  after  a  parting  Glass,  each  went  his 
separate  Way. 

"The  Reader  cannot  but  be  surprised,  when  we 
assure  him  that  this  Mendicant  Companion  of  his  was 
no  less  a  Person  than  my  Lord  Wey mouth  himself,  who, 
being  desirous  of  sounding  the  Tempers  and  Disposi- 
tions of  the  Gentlemen,  and  other  Inhabitants  of  his 
Neighbourhood,  put  himself  into  a  Habit  so  vastly 
beneath  his  Birth  and  Fortune.  Nor  was  this  the  first 
Time  that  this  great  Nobleman  had  metamorphosed 
himself  into  the  despicable  Shape  and  Character  of  a 
Beggar.  He  took  especial  Care  to  conceal  it  even 
from  his  own  Family,  one  Servant  only,  in  whose 
Secresy  he  greatly  confided,  being  entrusted  therewith." 

This  Lord  Weymouth  was  Thomas  Thynne,  born 
1710,  who  succeeded  to  the  title  of  Viscount  Weymouth 
in  1714,  and  died  in  1751. 

So  soon  as  Carew  and  his  companion  had  parted  com- 
pany, Lord  Weymouth  slipped  home  by  a  private  way, 
divested  himself  of  his  disguise,  and  calling  for  his 
servants  said  that  he  had  been  informed  that  two 
mendicant  sailors  had  visited  his  house,  that  they  were 
impostors,  and  he  ordered  two  of  his  men  to  mount 
their  horses  and  bring  them  before  him. 

The  servants,  naturally,  were  able  to  secure  Carew 
alone,  and  he  was  reconducted  to  the  mansion.  My 
lord  accosted  him  in  a  very  rough  manner,  asked 
where  the  other  fellow  was,  and  told  him  he  should  be 
made  to  find  him.  "  Mr.  Carew  in  the  mean  Time  stood 

2    F 


434  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

thunder-struck,  expecting  nothing  less  than  Commit- 
ment to  Prison  ;  but  upon  Examination,  made  out  his 
Story  as  well  as  he  could.  After  having  thus  terrified 
and  threatened  him  for  a  considerable  Time,  away  goes 
his  Lordship,  and  divesting  himself  of  his  Habit  and 
Character  of  a  Nobleman,  again  puts  on  his  Rags,  and 
is  by  his  Trusty  Valet  de  Chambre  (alone  in  the 
Secret)  ushered  into  the  Room  where  his  Brother 
Beggar  stood  sweating  with  Fear.  They  confer  Notes 
together,  whispering  to  each  other  what  to  say,  in 
order  that  their  Accounts  might  agree  when  examined 
apart.  The  Steward  took  Mr.  Carew  aside  into  a 
private  chamber,  and  there  pretending  that  the  other 
Fellow's  Relation  contradicted  his,  proved  them  to  be 
both  Counterfeits  ;  a  Prison  must  be  the  Portion  of 
them  both  ;  indeed  nothing  was  omitted  that  might 
strike  Mr.  Carew  with  the  greatest  Terror  and  Confu- 
sion. By  this  Time  my  Lord  having  thrown  off  his 
Rags  and  put  on  his  fine  Apparel,  Mr.  Carew  was 
again  brought  into  his  Presence  to  receive  his  Sentence ; 
when  my  Lord,  having  sufficiently  diverted  himself 
with  the  Consternation  of  his  Brother  Mumper,  dis- 
covered himself  to  him." 

After  that  Lord  Weymouth,  to  whom  before  Bamp- 
fylde  had  confided  his  real  name,  showed  him  hospi- 
tality and  liberality  and  took  him  along  with  himself 
to  the  Warminster  horse-races. 

We  need  not  follow  in  detail  all  Bampfylde-Moore 
Carew's  adventures.  He  went  to  Sweden,  where  he 
collected  money  on  the  ground  that  he  was  a  Presby- 
terian Minister,  to  Paris  where  he  posed  as  a  refugee 
Romanist  from  England ;  he  was  again  arrested  and 
sent  to  Maryland,  and  again  escaped.  He  pretended 
to  be  a  soldier  wounded  at  Fontenoy,  and  exhibited 
a  raw  beefsteak  attached  to  his  knee  as  his  open 


BAMPFYLDE-MOORE   CAREW          435 

wound.  In  a  word  his  disguises,  his  rascalities  were 
endless. 

Many  attempts  were  made  by  his  family  to  reclaim 
him,  by  Lord  Clifford  who  was  his  first  cousin,  but  all 
in  vain. 

He  died  in  obscurity  in  1758,  at  the  age  of  fifty- 
five,  at  Bickleigh,  where  he  is  buried.  It  is  not 
known  what  became  of  his  daughter,  the  only  child 
he  had. 


WILLIAM    GIFFORD 

WILLIAM  GIFFORD,  the  satirist,  was  born 
at  Ashburton  in  April,  1756.  His  father's 
name  was  Edward,  and  he  says  that  his 
great-grandfather  "was  possessed  of  con- 
siderable property  at  Halsbury,  a  parish  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Ashburton."  There  is  no  such  parish, 
but  there  is  the  manor  of  Halsbury  that  belonged  to 
the  Giffords  or  Giffards  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Bide- 
ford,  in  Parkham  parish. 

As  William  Gifford  does  not  give  the  Christian 
names  of  his  grandfather  and  great-grandfather,  it 
will  not  be  an  easy  matter  to  trace  descent  from  the 
Giffards  of  Halsbury.  That  estate  was  sold  by  Roger 
Giffard,  who  died  in  1763,  seven  years  after  the  birth  of 
William. 

Roger  had  inherited  Halsbury  from  his  great-uncle, 
of  the  same  Christian  name,  who  died  without  issue  in 
1724.  There  is  no  trace  of  any  legitimate  son  of  this 
Roger. 

No  Giffords  appear  in  the  Ashburton  register  prior 
to  1716,  when  Mary,  daughter  of  Edward  Gifford,  was 
baptized ;  but  there  were  Giffords,  but  not  gentlefolk, 
in  the  neighbouring  parish  of  Ilsington. 

William  Gifford's  great-grandfather  was  of  the  same 
generation  as  Roger  Giffard  of  Halsbury,  second  son 
of  John  Giffard,  of  Brightleigh,  who  succeeded  to  Hals- 
bury,  under  some  family  arrangement,  in  consequence 
of  the  then  heads  of  the  Halsbury  Giffards  dying  with- 

436 


/.  Hofp. 


\V.    GIFFORD 


WILLIAM   GIFFORD  437 

out  issue.  It  is  possible  that  the  last  Halsbury  Giffard 
may  have  left  his  estate  to  Roger  of  Brightleigh,  in 
consequence  of  his  having  disinherited  a  worthless  son. 
In  this  case  William  Gifford's  story  of  a  disinheritance 
may  have  some  foundation.  But  one  would  expect  to 
find  an  entry  in  the  Parkham  registers  of  the  baptism 
of  such  a  son  ;  and  there  is  none. 

William's  grandfather  was  dissipated  and  extrava- 
gant, and  his  father,  Edward,  was  not  much  better. 
He  had  been  sent  to  the  Grammar  School  at  Exeter, 
but  ran  away,  and  entered  on  board  a  man-of-war. 
His  father  bought  him  out,  but  he  was  incorrigible  ;  he 
again  ran  away,  and  joined  Bampfylde-Moore  Carew 
in  his  vagabondage,  when  the  latter  was  an  old  man. 
On  leaving  this  choice  society  he  became  a  plumber 
and  glazier  at  Ashburton,  and  married  a  carpenter's 
daughter  named  Elizabeth  Cain,  3  September,  I75O.1 
Edward  Gifford  now  moved  to  South  Molton  and  set 
up  there  ;  but  after  four  or  five  years,  having  involved 
himself  in  trouble  by  attempting  to  excite  a  riot  in  a 
Methodist  conventicle,  he  deemed  it  advisable  to  show 
a  pair  of  heels,  and  went  to  sea  on  board  the  Lyon, 
a  transport.  Mrs.  Gifford  then  returned  to  her  native 
place,  Ashburton,  where  William  was  born. 

So  away  went  Edward,  singing,  I  doubt  not,  a 
popular  Devonshire  song — 

My  fortune  is  pretty  well  spent, 

My  lands  and  my  cattle  and  corn  ; 
I  must  put  on  a  face  of  content, 

When  as  naked  as  when  I  was  born. 
No  more  I'll  be  troubled  with  wealth, 

My  pockets  are  drained  full  dry, 
I  walk  where  I  please  for  my  health, 

And  never  fear  robbing,  not  I. 

1  She  was  daughter  of  George  Cain,  carpenter,  and  was  baptized 
8  December,  1728. 


438  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

O  once  I  could  He  on  the  best, 

The  best  of  good  beds  made  of  down, 
If  sure  of  a  flock  of  good  straw 

I  am  glad  to  keep  off  the  cold  ground. 
Some  say  that  Old  Care  killed  the  cat, 

And  starv'd  her  for  fear  she  should  die  ; 
Henceforth  I'll  be  wiser  than  that, 
To  my  cares  bid  for  ever  good-bye. 
So  adieu  to  old  England,  adieu  ! 

And  adieu  to  some  thousands  of  pounds ! 
If  the  world  had  been  done,  ere  my  life  was  begun, 
My  sorrows  would  then  have  had  bounds. 

Mrs.  Gifford  was  left  very  badly  off.  All  she  had  for 
her  maintenance  was  the  rent  of  four  small  fields — all 
that  remained  of  the  land  as  yet  unsold. 

Edward  Gifford  returned  from  sea  in  1764,  having 
been  absent  eight  years.  He  had  received  over  a  hun- 
dred pounds  of  prize  money  in  addition  to  his  wages, 
which  were  considerable ;  but  as  he  reappeared  in 
Ashburton  his  pockets  were  nearly  empty.  The  little 
property  yet  left  was  therefore  turned  into  money, 
and  Edward  Gifford  set  up  a  second  time  as  glazier, 
plumber,  and  house-painter.  William  was  now  sent 
to  the  free  school  in  S.  Laurence's  Chapel,  the  master 
of  which  was  Hugh  Smerdon.  This  school  was 
founded  by  Bishop  Stapeldon  in  the  tower  of  the  old 
Chantry  Chapel.  On  the  dissolution  of  the  chantries, 
the  scholars  and  master  moved  out  of  the  tower  into 
the  body  of  the  chapel.  It  was  further  endowed  with 
funds  by  Edward  Gould,  Esq.,  of  Pridhamsleigh,  and 
Mr.  Peter  Blundell,  of  Tiverton.  In  this  school 
William  Gifford  learned  to  read,  write,  and  cypher. 
He  remained  there  till  his  father's  death  three  years 
later.  Edward  Gifford  had  learned  nothing  by  his  mis- 
fortunes. He  preferred  to  drain  the  pewter  in  the 
tavern  to  doing  pewterer's  work  in  the  shop.  He  died 
and  was  buried  9  June,  1767,  leaving  beside  a  widow  and 


WILLIAM   GIFFORD  439 

his  son  William  another  son  aged  six  or  eight  months. 
Mrs.  Gifford  unwisely  continued  the  business  without 
knowing  anything  about  it,  and  committed  the  man- 
agement to  a  couple  of  journeymen,  who  wasted  her 
property  and  embezzled  her  money.  In  less  than  a 
twelvemonth  she  died,  and  was  buried  29  November, 
1768.  William  was  then  thirteen  and  his  brother  not 
two  years  old ;  and  they  had  not  a  relation  or  friend 
in  the  world.  Everything  left  was  seized  by  a  man 
named  Carlile  for  money  advanced  to  Mrs.  Gifford. 
The  youngest  child  was  sent  to  an  almshouse,  and 
William  was  taken  charge  of  by  Carlile,  who  was  his 
godfather,  not  out  of  pity,  but  because  he  was  afraid  of 
forfeiting  the  respect  of  his  fellow  citizens  if  he  turned 
the  orphan  adrift. 

The  life  of  the  unfortunate  youngest  child  was  short. 
He  was  indeed 

The  child  of  misery,  baptized  in  tears. 

When  aged  seven  the  parish  bound  him  apprentice  to 
a  farmer  of  the  name  of  Leman,  with  whom  he  endured 
incredible  hardships,  and  at  nine  broke  his  thigh.  On 
his  recovery  he  tried  the  sea,  and  went  on  board  the 
Egmont,  but  was  allowed  to  do  this  by  the  grasping 
Leman,  as  his  apprenticeship  was  not  expired,  only  on 
condition  that  his  wages  should  be  paid  into  his 
(Leman's)  hands.  The  poor  lad  knew  no  favourable 
change  of  fortune,  for  he  fell  sick  and  died  at  Cork. 

Carlile  sent  the  unfortunate  William  to  drudge  at 
the  plough  ;  but  William  was  physically  incapable  of 
driving  the  plough.  During  his  father's  life,  in  at- 
tempting to  clamber  up  a  table,  he  had  fallen  back- 
wards and  drawn  it  after  him  ;  its  edge  fell  on  his 
chest,  and  it  is  possible  that  his  spine  was  also  jarred, 
giving  him  ever  after  a  look  of  deformity.  Ploughing 


440  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

was  out  of  the  question,  and  he  was  forced  to  be  with- 
drawn from  field  labour. 

His  guardian  then  thought  of  sending  him  to 
Newfoundland  to  assist  in  a  storehouse,  and  for  this 
purpose  entered  into  correspondence  with  a  Mr.  Holds- 
worth,  of  Dartmouth,  who  consented  to  see  the  boy. 
When,  however,  he  had  cast  eyes  on  the  puny,  sickly 
child,  he  declined  to  have  anything  to  do  with  him, 
and  Carlile  then  sent  him  on  board  a  coaster  at  Brix- 
ham,  with  a  man  named  Full,  plying  between  Dart- 
mouth and  Plymouth,  and  sometimes  going  as  far  as 
Portsmouth. 

In  this  boat  he  continued  for  a  twelvemonth. 

On  Christmas  Day,  1770,  he  was  summoned  back  to 
Ashburton  by  his  godfather.  It  seemed  that  the  fish- 
wives who  went  from  Brixham  to  Ashburton  with  their 
wares  had  spoken  there  pretty  freely  of  the  little  ragged 
urchin  who  wandered  about  the  quay,  and  of  his  deli- 
cacy and  of  the  rough  treatment  to  which  he  was 
exposed.  This  roused  a  strong  feeling  in  Ashburton 
against  Carlile,  and  he  was  constrained  to  bring  the 
boy  back  so  as  to  allay  the  prejudice  his  conduct  had 
awakened.  He  sent  him  again  to  school  in  the  old 
chapel,  where  he  sat  on  the  benches  at  the  long  desks, 
and  looked  up  at  the  huge  plaster-work  gaily-painted 
shield  and  bearings  of  Ashburton  over  the  headmaster's 
desk,  and  those  of  the  benefactors  to  the  school  down 
the  sides.  Here  he  worked  assiduously  at  his  books 
and  made  astonishing  progress.  He  was  even  em- 
ployed as  a  monitor  to  teach  the  younger  boys,  and 
received  a  few  coppers  for  his  services.  The  ambition 
of  his  young  heart  was  to  qualify  himself  to  take  the 
place  of  the  old  schoolmaster,  Smerdon,  who  was 
becoming  infirm  and  past  work. 

But  these  dreams  of  future  happiness  in  the  school 


WILLIAM   GIFFORD  441 

where  he  had  passed  his  most  enjoyable  hours  were 
dashed.  Carlile  wanted  to  get  the  lad  out  of  Ash- 
burton  and  relieve  his  pocket  of  the  burden  of  finding 
him  clothes  and  bread  and  butter.  He  was  determined 
to  wash  his  hands  of  the  orphan  altogether ;  and  ac- 
cordingly, without  consulting  the  boy's  wishes,  in- 
dentured him  in  January,  1772,  to  a  cobbler,  a  cousin 
of  his  in  Exeter,  with  whom  he  would  be  bound  to 
remain  till  he  was  twenty-one.  The  shoemaker  with 
whom  he  was  placed  was  a  sour  and  narrow-minded 
Presbyterian,  who  read  nothing  but  controversial  pam- 
phlets relative  to  a  theological  dispute  then  raging 
between  two  of  the  clergy  of  Exeter  and  some  of  the 
Dissenting  preachers  of  the  city,  and  of  these  contro- 
versial pamphlets  the  cobbler  read  only  those  of  his 
own  side. 

Gifford  had  no  books  save  a  Bible,  a  Thomas  a  Kem- 
pis,  and  a  black-letter  romance,  Parismus  and  Paris- 
menus,  that  had  belonged  to  his  mother,  together  with 
some  chapbooks,  The  Golden  Bull,  and  such  like  trifles. 
However,  he  found  a  stray  treatise  on  algebra  in  a  lodg- 
ing-house, and  commandeered  it.  But  this  last  book 
was  not  at  this  time  of  any  advantage  to  him,  as  to 
understand  it  a  preliminary  knowledge  of  simple  equa- 
tions was  necessary — and  what  "  equations"  meant  he 
knew  no  more  than  did  the  man  in  the  moon,  who  had 
at  his  command  no  library  whatsoever. 

However,  his  master's  son  had  a  Flemming's  Intro- 
duction to  Knowledge,  which,  as  a  spiteful  boy,  he 
refused  to  let  Gifford  use,  and  hid  it  away.  William, 
however,  by  accident  discovered  where  the  book  was 
concealed  and  carried  it  off,  sat  up  for  several  nights, 
and  poring  over  it  with  avidity  mastered  the  contents, 
and  was  then  able  to  pursue  his  studies  in  algebra. 

He  says :  "  I  hated  my  new  profession  with  a  perfect 


442  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

hatred ;  I  made  no  progress  in  it,  and  was  consequently 
little  regarded  in  the  family,  of  which  I  sank  by  degrees 
into  the  common  drudge." 

Whilst  at  Ashburton  his  dreary  life  had  been  cheered 
by  making  friends  with  some  of  his  schoolfellows. 
One  of  these  was  young  Hoppner,  afterwards  a  famous 
portrait  painter,  a  rival  of  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  and 
in  after  years  he  looked  back  to  this  friendship  with 
pleasure,  and  wrote  to  him,  on  the  death  of  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds — 

One  Sun  is  set,  one  Glorious  Sun,  whose  rays 
Long  gladdened  Britain  with  no  common  blaze  ; 
O  may'st  thou  soon  (for  clouds  begin  to  rise) 
Assert  thy  station  in  the  Eastern  skies, 
Glow  with  his  fires,  and  give  the  world  to  see 
Another  Reynolds  rise,  my  friend,  in  thee  ! 

But  dearer  still  to  him  had  been  the  Ashburton 
butcher's  son,  John  Ireland,  afterwards  Dean  of  West- 
minster, and  to  him  he  wrote — 

Sure  if  our  fates  hang  on  some  hidden  Power, 
And  take  their  colour  from  the  natal  hour, 
Then,  Ireland  !  the  same  planet  on  us  rose, 
Such  the  strong  sympathies  our  lives  disclose  ! 
Thou  know'st  how  soon  we  felt  this  influence  bland, 
And  sought  the  brook  and  coppice,  hand  in  hand, 
And  shaped  rude  bows,  and  uncouth  whistles  blew, 
And  paper  kites  (a  last  great  effort)  flew  ; 
And  when  the  day  was  done,  retired  to  rest, 
Sleep  on  our  eyes,  and  sunshine  in  our  breast. 

But  in  Exeter  he  had  no  friends,  none  who  would 
associate  with  him.  He  was  utterly  alone  and  miser- 
able. He  had  not  a  penny  wherewith  to  bless  himself. 
One  only  little  streak  of  sunlight  entered  his  gloomy 
life,  and  this  was  the  cheery  notice  of  a  young  woman, 
a  neighbour,  who  daily  gave  the  depressed  boy,  as  he 
passed  her  door,  a  smile  and  a  kindly  greeting,  and 
the  gratitude  he  felt  for  this  slight  encouragement  was 


WILLIAM   GIFFORD  443 

the  first  pleasing  sensation  he  had  ventured  to  enter- 
tain for  many  dreary  months. 

In  ^^Autobiography  he  says:  "Pen,  ink,  and  paper 
were  for  the  most  part  as  completely  out  of  my  reach 
as  a  crown  and  sceptre."  He  had  but  one  resource, 
which  required  the  utmost  caution  and  secrecy  in 
applying  it.  He  beat  out  pieces  of  leather  as  thin  and 
smooth  as  possible,  and  in  his  garret,  by  the  tiny  win- 
dow, with  a  blunt  awl  worked  out  on  the  leather  his 
algebraical  calculations. 

Hitherto  he  had  not  so  much  as  dreamed  of  poetry, 
but  his  first  attempt  was  on  the  occasion  of  a  person 
who  had  undertaken  to  paint  a  sign  for  an  inn  ;  it  was 
to  have  been  a  lion,  but  the  artist  had  produced  a 
creature  much  more  like  a  dog.  One  of  his  acquaint- 
ances wrote  some  lines  on  it.  Gifford  looked  them 
over,  shook  his  head,  and  said  that  he  thought  that  he 
could  do  better.  Accordingly  he  composed  an  epigram 
on  the  theme,  so  cutting  and  droll  that  his  shopmates 
declared  he  had  succeeded  in  a  masterly  manner.  After 
that  he  ventured  on  other  attempts — doggerel,  he  says 
they  were,  but  all  caustic  and  humorous,  and  these  cir- 
culated, were  laughed  over,  and  gained  him  not  a  little 
applause.  When  he  had  composed  some  brief  little 
satire  he  would  read  it  to  a  select  circle,  and  was  re- 
warded by  the  gift  of  a  few  pence,  amounting  occasion- 
ally to  sixpence.  Did  he  write  also  a  few  tender  and 
grateful  lines  to  the  pretty,  smiling  girl  on  the  door- 
step in  the  same  street,  who  had  cheered  the  lonely 
boy?  I  have  not  the  smallest  doubt  in  my  mind  that 
he  did. 

To  one  so  long  in  absolute  want  of  money,  such  a 
resource  seemed  like  a  gold-mine,  and  although  at  this 
time  he  thought  lightly,  even  contemptuously  of  the 
Muse,  and  all  his  energies  of  mind  were  devoted  to 


444  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

mathematics,  yet,  as  these  trifles  brought  him  in 
money,  and  so  enabled  him  to  buy  paper  and  ink,  and 
books  on  geometry  and  algebra,  he  continued  to  com- 
pose verses. 

But  a  storm  was  gathering.  There  is  a  delightful 
picture  by  Phiz  in  David  Copperfield,  where  Mr. 
Creakle,  the  schoolmaster,  enters  the  schoolroom  lean- 
ing on  the  arm  of  his  factotum  Tungay,  just  as  a  boy 
has  drawn  a  caricature  of  both  on  the  blackboard. 

Inevitably  some  of  the  keen  shafts  of  Gilford's  ridi- 
cule had  been  levelled  at  his  master,  the  cobbler. 
This  man  laid  himself  open  to  being  satirized.  He 
possessed  a  dictionary  of  synonyms ;  and  it  was  his 
practice  never,  when  he  could  avoid  it,  to  employ  a 
direct  word  when  he  could  find  a  roundabout  mode  of 
expressing  himself;  a  weeding  with  him  would  be  a 
runcation,  and  to  ride  would  be  to  equitate.  It  was  not 
in  human  nature  that  William  Gifford  should  withhold 
his  hand  from  turning  out  some  neat  lines  taking  off 
the  sanctimonious  and  pretentious  cobbler,  and  so 
revenging  himself  for  slights  and  insults  many.  It  is 
not  in  human  nature  that  he  should  refrain  from  show- 
ing this  product  to  his  fellow  apprentices.  It  is  not  in 
human  nature  that  some  sneak  among  them  should  not 
apprise  the  master  or  that  master's  son  of  what  the 
sullen,  discontented  lad  had  done. 

Whether  it  was  this,  or  whether  it  was  that  the  shoe- 
maker as  a  strict  Puritan  looked  on  laughter  and  jest 
and  poetry  as  ungodliness,  the  master's  anger  was 
raised  to  fury.  He  searched  Gifford's  garret,  took 
away  all  his  books  and  papers,  and  dared  him  to  touch 
paper  with  pen  or  read  any  other  books  in  future  than 
the  Bible.  This  was  a  severe  blow,  and  was  followed 
soon  after  by  another  that  was  as  great.  Mr.  Hugh 
Smerdon,  whom  he  had  hoped  to  succeed,  died,  and 


WILLIAM   GIFFORD  445 

was  succeeded  as  master  in  the  Ashburton  Grammar 
School  by  another  man  not  much  older  and  still  less 
qualified  for  the  station  than  himself.  Thus  at  once 
crumbled  to  nothing  all  his  castles  in  the  air  that  he 
had  built ;  and  still  the  only  light  in  his  darkness  con- 
tinued to  be  the  smile  and  welcome  from  the  girl  a  few 
doors  off. 

There  is  a  ballad,  "The  Little  Girl  Down  the  Lane," 
sung  to  a  plaintive,  sweet  air,  greatly  affected  at  one 
time  by  apprentices,  and  not  yet  forgotten  in  Devon- 
shire ;  it  relates  the  loves  and  sorrows  of  a  'prentice 
boy,  bound  by  his  articles  to  a  tailor,  who  loved  a 
maiden  in  the  same  lane,  and  who  induced  her  to 
marry  him.  But,  alas  !  as  the  couple  were  in  church 
and  the  knot  was  about  to  be  tied,  the  master  tailor  got 
wind  of  it,  rushed  in,  stopped  the  ceremony,  and 
carried  off  the  bridegroom  to  his  bench  again.  The 
words  are  mere  doggerel,  but  they  would  appeal  to 
Gifford,  as  they  have  appealed  to  many  a  Devonshire 
apprentice,  and  often  in  his  garret  he  may  have 
hummed  over  the  pathetic  air  as  he  thought  of  the 
kind  young  face  that  alone  in  Exeter  had  smiled  on 
him. 

The  darkest  hour  precedes  the  dawn.  And  now, 
when  he  was  in  the  profoundest  depths  of  depression, 
help  arrived,  and  that  from  an  unexpected  quarter.  Mr. 
William  Cookesley,  a  surgeon  of  Ashburton,  a  large- 
hearted  and  open-handed  man,  having  by  accident  heard 
some  of  his  verses,  recalled  the  unfortunate  boy,  thrust 
from  pillar  to  post,  and  inquired  after  him.  His  history 
was  well  known  to  all  in  Ashburton,  and  he  at  once 
interested  himself  in  Gifford,  and  not  only  gave  from  his 
own  scantily  furnished  purse,  but  begged  help  from 
his  friends  and  patients  to  cancel  Gifford's  apprentice- 
ship and  further  his  education.  On  examining  his 


446  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

literary  attainments,  he  found  that,  with  the  exception 
of  mathematics,  he  was  woefully  ignorant ;  his  hand- 
writing was  bad,  and  his  language  very  incorrect.  Mr. 
Cookesley  now  started  a  subscription  list  headed  "A 
Subscription  for  purchasing  the  remainder  of  the  time 
of  William  Gifford,  and  for  enabling  him  to  improve 
himself  in  Writing  and  English  Grammar."  Few  con- 
tributed more  than  five  shillings,  and  none  beyond  half 
a  guinea ;  enough,  however,  was  collected  to  free  him 
from  his  apprenticeship,  which  amounted  to  six  pounds 
(there  were  but  eighteen  months  of  that  bondage  to 
run),  and  also  to  maintain  him  for  a  few  months  during 
which  he  attended  school  under  the  Rev.  Thomas 
Smerdon. 

The  hard  life,  the  starvation  of  his  early  days,  men- 
tally and  physically  for  a  while  stunted  his  faculties,  so 
that  he  could  not  keep  pace  with  youths  of  his  own  age 
or  even  younger,  and  his  master  talked  of  putting  him 
into  a  lower  class ;  on  which  he  wrote  the  following 
lines,  adopting  playfully  his  somewhat  significant  nick- 
name : — 

Tho'  my  name  is  Cloudy, 

Yet  cast  me  not  away ; 
For  many  a  cloudy  morning 

Brings  forth  a  shining  day. 

However,  by  dint  of  hard  work,  after  two  years  and 
two  months  he  was  pronounced  by  Mr.  Smerdon  fit  to 
go  to  the  University. 

Assistance  was  afforded  by  Mr.  Thomas  Taylor,  of 
Denbury,  who  had  already  given  him  friendly  support, 
and  who  procured  for  him  a  Bible  readership  at  Exeter 
College ;  and  this,  with  occasional  help  from  Mr.  Cookes- 
ley and  his  friends,  was  considered  sufficient  to  enable 
him  to  live  until  he  could  take  his  degree. 

The  first  act  of  Gifford  on   reaching   Oxford   was 


WILLIAM   GIFFORD  447 

heartily  to  thank  his  friend  Cookesley  for  all  he  had 
done  for  him.  The  surgeon  replied  :  "  Though  I  have 
ever  esteemed  you,  my  dear  Gifford,  yet  I  was  far  from 
perceiving  the  extent  of  my  regard  for  you  till  you  left 
Ashburton  ;  and  I  am  only  reconciled  to  the  loss  of 
your  society  by  the  prospects  of  advantage  and  honour 
which  are  now  before  you.  Believe  me,  I  shall  ever 
feel  myself  as  much  interested  in  your  future  fortune  as 
if  you  were  my  brother  or  my  son." 

When  Gifford  was  preparing  to  issue  his  Pastorals 
he  insisted  that  Mr.  Cookesley's  name  should  stand  at 
the  head  of  the  list  of  subscribers.  "I  will  suck  my 
fingers  for  a  month  rather  than  draw  my  pen  to  put  a 
name  over  yours  in  my  subscription  book.  Therefore 
look  to  it  !  I  am  Wilful  and  Wishful ;  and  Wilful 
will  do  it." 

Unfortunately  those  who  promised  to  subscribe  to 
maintain  Gifford  at  college  were  slack  in  paying  the 
sums  they  had  agreed  to  find,  and  this  put  both 
Cookesley  and  Gifford  in  pecuniary  straits. 

Cookesley  was  one  day  dining  with  Governor  Palk, 
near  Ashburton,  when  he  told  him  that  Gifford  was  in 
sore  want  of  a  Juvenal,  and  could  not  afford  to  buy  a 
second-hand  copy  at  sixteen  shillings.  The  governor 
then  exclaimed:  "  Oh  !  he  shall  not  want  a  Juvenal. 
My  dear  "  (to  his  wife),  "  give  Mr.  Cookesley  a  guinea, 
and  tell  Gifford  from  me  that  he  shall  have  his  Juvenal 
and  a  little  firing  to  read  it  by ;  and  tell  him,  moreover, 
that  I'll  make  my  subscription  three  guineas  annually." 

Cookesley's  letters  to  Gifford  were  carefully  pre- 
served. They  were  often  written  between  sleeping 
and  waking.  One  day  he  gives,  as  an  excuse  for  the 
shortness  of  his  letter:  "I  am  quite  fatigued,  having 
been  without  sleep  for  a  great  part  of  the  past  night, 
and  on  horseback  for  several  hours  to-day.  .  .  .  Your 


448  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

account  of  the  meadows  of  Christchurch  almost  made 
me  so  far  forget  myself  as  to  cry  out,  '  I  am  resolved 
forthwith  to  set  out  for  Oxford ' ;  but,  alas  !  to  begin 
one's  journey  without  money  would  be  rather  worse 
than  ending  it  so." 

Mr.  Cookesley's  active  benevolence  was  cut  short  by 
his  untimely  death.  He  did  not  live  long  enough  to 
do  more  than  start  his  young  friend  on  the  road  to 
fame  and  affluence.  This  event  took  place  on 
15  January,  1781.  He  died  suddenly,  and  with  a 
letter  of  Gifford's  unopened  in  his  hands.  He  left 
his  family  but  scantily  provided  for,  but  a  man's  good 
works  follow  him,  and  the  harvest  comes  sometime, 
if  late,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  sequel. 

In  his  Autobiography,  written  twenty  years  later, 
Gifford  says:  "It  afflicted  me  beyond  measure,  and  in 
the  interval  I  have  wept  a  thousand  times  at  the  recol- 
lection of  his  goodness  ;  I  yet  cherish  his  memory  with 
filial  respect ;  and  at  this  distant  period  my  heart  sinks 
within  me  at  every  repetition  of  his  name." 

Gifford  was,  however,  encouraged  by  the  unexpected 
friendship  of  the  Rev.  Servington  Savery.  He  had, 
moreover,  gained  other  friends,  not  more  kindly,  but 
better  able  to  serve  him  with  their  purses.  His 
acquaintance  with  his  greatest  patron,  Earl  Grosvenor, 
was  made  through  an  accident.  He  had  formed  a 
college  acquaintance  with  a  young  man  who  kept  up 
a  correspondence  with  him,  and  to  whom,  when  this 
latter  left  college,  he  addressed  his  letters  under  cover 
to  Lord  Grosvenor.  But  on  one  occasion  he  forgot  to 
put  his  friend's  name  to  the  letter,  and  it  was  opened 
by  the  Earl,  who  read  it,  and  was  surprised  at  the  wit 
and  brilliance  of  scholarship  it  evinced,  and  he  begged 
for  an  introduction.  This  led  to  his  being  sent  as 
tutor  to  travel  abroad  with  Lord  Belgrave,  Earl  Gros- 


WILLIAM   GIFFORD  449 

Under  the  auspices  of  this  nobleman 
he  entered  upon  London  life,  and  gradually  rose  to  an 
eminent  position  among  men  of  letters. 

But  there  is  an  episode  in  his  life  to  which  he  him- 
self makes  no  allusion  in  his  memoirs.  Somewhere 
about  the  time  when  he  was  able  to  maintain  himself, 
he  married  a  certain  Joanna — her  surname  is  not 
known  —  but  not  at  Ashburton.  It  can  hardly  be 
doubted  that  this  was  the  " little  girl  down  the  lane" 
who  had  cheered  him  with  her  smile  and  voice  in  his 
hours  of  deepest  gloom. 

The  entry  of  this  marriage  has  not  yet  been  found, 
but  it  will  be  lighted  on  some  day  in  the  register  of  one 
of  the  Exeter  churches.  To  her  he  often  alluded  in  his 
poems,  as  Anna.  In  an  ode  to  a  tuft  of  violets  we  find 
the  following : — 

Come  then — ere  yet  the  morning-  ray 

Has  drunk  the  dew  that  gems  your  crest, 
And  drawn  your  balmiest  sweets  away  ; 

0  come  and  grace  my  Anna's  breast. 

0  !  I  should  think— that  fragrant  bed 
Might  I  but  hope  with  you  to  share — 

Years  of  anxiety  repaid 

By  one  short  hour  of  transport  there. 

To  her  he  appears  to  have  been  deeply  attached. 
He  moved  her  to  Ashburton,  and  there  visited  her 
when  he  could  escape  from  his  literary  labours  in 
London,  and  there  she  faded,  and  was  buried  on 
27  December,  1789.  Gifford  was  stricken  by  her  loss 
in  the  most  sensitive  part  of  the  human  heart,  for  over 
her  grave  he  poured  forth  the  pathetic  lament : — 

1  wish  I  was  where  Anna  lies, 

For  I  am  sick  of  lingering  here, 
And  every  hour  affliction  cries, 

"  Go,  and  partake  her  humble  bier." 
I  wish  I  could  !     For  when  she  died 

1  lost  my  all ;  and  life  has  proved 
Since  that  sad  hour  a  dreary  void, 

A  waste,  unloving-  and  unloved. 
2  G 


450  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Perhaps  the  surest  testimony  to  the  pain  left  in  his 
soul  by  her  loss  is  his  silence  in  his  Autobiography 
concerning  her.  She — and  his  love  and  his  sorrow — 
were  too  sacred  to  be  brought  before  the  public  eye. 
He  never  mentioned  her,  or  that  he  had  been  married, 
even  to  his  best  friends;  and  in  Murray's  Reminiscences 
it  is  asserted  that  Gifford  never  was  married. 

In  Lord  Grosvenor's  house  Gifford  proceeded  with 
his  translation  of  Juvenal,  that  had  occupied  him  off 
and  on  for  some  years.  His  bitter  humour  agreed 
with  the  biting  sarcasm  of  the  Roman  poet,  and  the 
work  on  which  he  was  engaged  was  one  of  love.  But, 
previous  to  its  publication,  he  hurled  his  Bamad  at 
the  heads  of  the  Delia  Cruscan  school  of  poetasters,  in 
1794.  The  name  signifies  "  of  the  Bran,"  and  was 
adopted  by  a  literary  coterie,  to  signify  that  their 
poetic  productions  were  sifted,  and  of  the  purest  wheat. 
It  was  a  mutual  admiration  society,  and  was  composed 
of  Robert  Merry,  a  fanatical  Republican,  who  had 
married  Miss  Brunton,  the  celebrated  actress,  and 
sister  of  the  still  more  celebrated  Louisa,  who  became 
Countess  of  Craven  ;  another  member  of  the  society 
was  Mrs.  Piozzi ;  others  were  Mrs.  Robertson  and 
Bertie  Greathead.  This  set  inundated  the  newspapers, 
magazines,  and  annuals  with  a  flood  of  weak  and 
watery  "  poetry." 

As  Byron  says,  addressing  this  set : — 

With  you  I  was  not  :  Gifford' s  heavy  hand 

Has  crush'd,  without  remorse,  your  numerous  band. 

In  1795  appeared  the  Mcemad,  a  satire  of  the  same 
class,  in  which,  although  equally  personal,  there  was 
less  unnecessary  virulence. 

Following  up  a  line  of  composition  so  congenial  to 
his  temper  and  talents,  he  published,  in  1800,  his 
Epistle  to  Peter  Pindar,  of  which  some  lines  are  given 


WILLIAM   GIFFORD  451 

in  the  article  devoted  to  that  abusive  poet.  This  roused 
Wolcot  to  fury,  and  he  sought  out  and  found  the  rival 
satirist  in  the  publisher's  shop. 

An  amusing  account  of  the  fray  is  given  by  Mr. 
Moonshine,  "  The  Battle  of  the  Bards."  Sir  Walter 
Scott  says  of  it :  "  Though  so  little  an  athlete,  he 
nevertheless  beat  off  Dr.  Wolcot,  when  that  cele- 
brated person,  the  most  unsparing  calumniator  of  his 
time,  chose  to  be  offended  with  Gifford  for  satirizing 
him  in  his  turn.  Peter  Pindar  made  a  most  violent 
attack,  but  Gifford  had  the  best  of  the  affray,  and 
remained,  I  think,  in  triumphant  possession  of  the  field 
of  action,  and  of  the  assailant's  cane." 

Scott  had  a  high  opinion  of  Gifford  as  a  poet  in  his 
peculiar  line.  He  wrote  in  1805:  "I  have  a  good 
esteem  of  Mr.  Gifford  as  a  manly  English  poet,  very 
different  from  most  of  our  modern  versifiers." 

In  1802,  Gifford  published  his  principal  work,  his 
English  version  of  Juvenal,  the  production  of  which 
had  engrossed  the  greater  part  of  his  life,  and  which 
was  issued  with  a  dedication  to  Earl  Grosvenor. 

Soon  after  the  publication  of  the  Baviad,  and  the 
Mceviady  Gifford  issued,  as  editor,  the  Anti-Jacobin 
(1797-8).  In  1805,  he  published  an  edition  of  Massinger ; 
in  1816,  an  edition  of  Ben  Jonson.  His  version  of 
Persius  did  not  appear  till  1821,  after  which  date  he 
completed  an  edition  of  Ford. 

In  1814,  he  was  at  Ryde,  whither  he  had  taken  his 
old  housekeeper.1  He  wrote  :  "  My  poor  housekeeper 
is  going  fast.  Nothing  can  save  her,  and  I  lend  all  my 
care  to  soften  her  declining  days.  She  has  a  physician 
every  second  day,  and  takes  a  world  of  medicines, 
more  for  their  profit  than  her  own,  poor  thing.  Guess 

1  Annie  Davies,  died  6  February,  1815  ;  buried  in  South  Audley  Street 
Church. 


452  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

at  my  expenses,  but  I  owe  in  some  measure  the  exten- 
sion of  my  feeble  life  to  her  care  through  a  long  suc- 
cession of  years,  and  I  would  cheerfully  divide  my  last 
farthing  with  her." 

When  the  scheme  was  first  started  to  issue  the 
Quarterly  Review,  to  counteract  the  influence  of  the 
Edinburgh  Review,  Gifford  was  at  once  proposed  as 
editor.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  25  October,  1808,  wrote  of 
the  selection:  " Gifford  will  be  admirable  at  service, 
but  will  require,  or  I  mistake  him  much,  both  a  spur 
and  a  bridle — a  spur  on  account  of  habits  of  literary 
indolence,  induced  by  weak  health,  and  a  bridle  be- 
cause, having  renounced  in  some  degree  general 
society,  he  cannot  be  supposed  to  have  the  habitual 
and  distinctive  feeling  enabling  him  to  judge  at  once 
and  decidedly  on  the  mode  of  letting  his  shafts  fly 
down  the  breeze  of  popular  opinion.  But  he  has 
worth,  wit,  learning,  and  extensive  information." 

From  this  time  the  influence  and  celebrity  of  Gifford 
may  be  deemed  established  ;  nor  were  his  services  as  a 
party  man  forgotten  by  those  who  could  reward  him, 
as  he  possessed  two  sinecures,  the  controllership  of  the 
lottery,  at  a  salary  of  £600  per  annum,  and  paymaster- 
ship  of  the  band  of  gentlemen  pensioners,  at  £300  per 
annum.  As  editor  of  the  Quarterly,  he  received  a 
salary  of  £900  per  annum,  and  also  a  pension  of  £400 
from  his  former  pupil,  now  Earl  Grosvenor.  He  bitterly 
lamented,  long  ere  this,  that  before  the  means  of  help- 
ing his  little  brother,  nursed  in  the  almshouse  at  Ash- 
burton,  was  in  his  power,  that  little  brother  had  died. 

He  was  alone  in  the  world,  and  his  early  trials,  his 
loss  of  the  only  beings  whom  he  had  loved,  soured  his 
temper,  and  made  him  savage  and  virulent  in  his  treat- 
ment of  such  as  differed  from  him.  One  great  defect 
he  showed  as  editor.  He  would  not  consider  a  work  to 


WILLIAM   GIFFORD  453 

be  reviewed  on  its  own  merits,  but  looked  first  to  see 
what  were  the  politics  of  the  author  before  he  praised 
or  condemned  the  book. 

In  personal  appearance  he  was  not  striking.  George 
Ticknor,  in  his  Life,  Letters,  and  Journals,  says,  under 
19  June,  1814:  "  Among  other  persons  I  brought  letters 
to  Gifford,  the  satirist,  but  never  saw  him  till  yester- 
day. Never  was  I  so  mistaken  in  my  anticipations. 
Instead  of  a  tall  and  handsome  man,  as  I  had  supposed 
him  from  his  pictures,  a  man  of  severe  and  bitter  re- 
marks in  conversation,  such  as  I  had  good  reason  to 
believe  him  from  his  books,  I  found  him  a  short,  de- 
formed, and  ugly  little  man,  with  a  large  head  sunk 
between  his  shoulders,  and  one  of  his  eyes  turned  out- 
ward, but  withal  one  of  the  best-natured,  most  open, 
and  well-bred  gentlemen  I  have  met." 

From  the  ability  and  keenness  of  the  Bamad  and 
Mceviad,  and  from  a  promise  made  in  his  edition  of 
the  latter  to  continue  his  satirical  writings,  it  was  hoped 
that  he  would  do  this,  but  he  did  not.  Byron  says  : — 

"  Why  slumbers  Gifford?  "  once  was  asked  in  vain. 
Why  slumbers  Gifford  ?  let  us  ask  again. 
Are  there  no  follies  for  his  pen  to  purge  ? 
Are  there  no  fools  whose  backs  demand  the  scourge  ? 
Are  there  no  sins  for  satire's  bard  to  greet  ? 
Stalks  not  gigantic  Vice  in  every  street  ? 
Shall  peers  or  princes  tread  pollution's  path 
And  'scape  alike  the  law's  and  Muse's  wrath  ? 
Nor  blaze  with  guilty  stare  through  future  time, 
Eternal  beacons  of  consummate  crime  ? 
Arouse  thee,  Gifford  !  be  thy  promise  claim'd, 
Make  bad  men  better,  or,  at  least,  ashamed. 

One  curious  peculiarity  Gifford  had.  He  made  his 
old  housekeeper  sit  in  his  study  doing  her  needlework 
whilst  he  was  engaged  on  his  literary  labours.  To  the 
end  he  maintained  a  warm  friendship  with  Dr.  Ireland, 
Dean  of  Westminster,  son  of  a  butcher  of  Ashburton, 


454  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

and  a  schoolfellow  in  former  days,  and  when  he  died 
he  bequeathed  to  him  his  library. 

"The  last  month  of  Gifford's  life  was  but  a  slow 
dying,"  says  Mr.  Smiles.  "He  was  sleepless,  fever- 
ish, oppressed  by  an  extreme  difficulty  of  breathing, 
which  often  deprived  him  of  speech  ;  and  his  sight  had 
failed.  Towards  the  end  of  his  life  he  would  sometimes 
take  up  a  pen,  and  after  a  vain  attempt  to  write,  would 
throw  it  down,  saying,  '  No,  my  work  is  done.'  Even 
thinking  caused  him  pain.  As  his  last  hour  drew  near, 
his  mind  began  to  wander.  *  These  books  have  driven 
me  mad,'  he  once  said;  <I  must  read  my  prayers.' 
He  passed  gradually  away,  his  pulse  ceasing  to  beat 
five  hours  before  his  death.  And  then  he  slept  out  of 
life  on  the  3ist  December,  1826,  in  his  yist  year." 

He  left  £25,000  of  personal  property.  He  left  the 
bulk  of  it  to  the  Rev.  John  Cookesley,  son  of  his  early 
patron,  whom  he  also  instituted  residuary  legatee.  He 
also  left  a  sum  of  money  the  interest  of  which  was  to  be 
distributed  annually  among  the  poor  of  Ashburton. 

Finally,  one  touching  trait  in  the  character  of  Gifford 
was  his  exceeding  love  for  children.  Looking  back  at 
his  own  desolate,  loveless  childhood,  full  of  hardship, 
his  heart  expanded  towards  all  little  ones,  and  he 
delighted  in  attending  juvenile  parties,  and  rejoiced  at 
seeing  the  children  frisking  about  in  the  happiness  of 
youth.  His  domestic  favourites  were  his  dog  and  his 
cat,  both  of  which  he  dearly  loved.  He  was  also  most 
kind  and  considerate  to  his  domestic  servants  ;  and  all 
who  knew  him  well  knew  that  his  bark  was  worse  than 
his  bite  ;  he  made  no  answer,  did  not  retaliate  when 
attacked  vindictively,  insultingly  by  Hazlitt,  and  when 
William  Cobbett  called  him  "the  dottrel-headed  old 
shuffle-breeches  of  the  Quarterly  Review  "  he  cast  back 
no  vituperative  term  in  reply. 


WILLIAM   GIFFORD  455 

Gifford  was  a  staunch  friend.  He  left  his  house  in 
James  Street,  Buckingham  Gate,  to  the  widow  of  his 
old  friend  Hoppner,  the  portrait  painter. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  wrote  on  17  January,  1827:  "I 
observe  in  the  papers  my  old  friend  Gifford's  death. 
He  was  a  man  of  rare  attainments  and  many  excellent 
qualities.  Hisfuvenal  is  one  of  the  best  versions  ever 
made  of  a  classic  author,  and  his  satire  of  the  Bamad 
and  Mceviad  squabashed  at  one  blow  a  set  of  coxcombs 
who  might  have  humbugged  the  world  long  enough. 
As  a  commentator  he  was  capital,  could  he  but  have 
suppressed  his  rancours  against  those  who  had  pre- 
ceded him  in  the  task ;  but  a  misconstruction  or  mis- 
interpretation, nay,  the  misplacing  of  a  comma,  was  in 
Gifford's  eyes  a  crime  worthy  of  the  most  severe  anim- 
adversion. The  same  fault  of  extreme  severity  went 
through  his  critical  labours,  and  in  general  he  flagel- 
lated with  so  little  pity,  that  people  lost  their  sense  of 
the  criminal's  guilt,  in  dislike  of  the  savage  pleasure 
which  the  executioner  seemed  to  take  in  inflicting  the 
punishment.  This  lack  of  temper  probably  arose  from 
indifferent  health,  for  he  was  very  valetudinary,  and 
realized  two  verses,  wherein  he  says  Fortune  assigned 

One  eye  not  over  good, 
Two  sides  that  to  their  cost  have  stood 

A  ten  years'  hectic  cough, 
Aches,  stitches,  all  the  various  ills 
That  swell  the  devilish  doctor's  bills, 

And  sweep  poor  mortals  off. 

But  he  might  also  justly  claim  as  his  gift  the  moral 
qualities  expressed  in  the  next  fine  stanza  : — 

A  soul 
That  spurns  the  crowd's  malign  control, 

A  firm  contempt  of  wrong  ; 
Spirits  above  affliction's  power, 
And  skill  to  soothe  the  lingering  hour 

With  no  inglorious  song. 


456  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"  He  was  a  little  man,  dumped  up  together,  and  so 
ill  made  as  to  seem  almost  deformed,  but  with  a  singu- 
lar expression  of  talent  in  his  countenance." 

Gifford  was  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  and  his 
schoolfellow  and  lifelong  friend,  Dean  Ireland,  was 
afterwards  buried  in  the  same  grave. 

The  authorities  for  his  life  are  his  own  biographical 
account  of  his  early  life,  and  Smiles's  Memoir  and  Cor- 
respondence  of  John  Murray,  the  Publisher.  London, 
1891. 

Also  a  "Life,"  by  Mr.  J.  S.  Amery,  in  the  now 
extinct  Ashburtonian,  1891. 

Also  a  brief  account  by  the  Rev.  Treasurer  Hawker  in 
"  Two  Ashburton  Scholars,"  in  the  Transactions  of  the 
Devonshire  Association,  1876. 


BENJAMIN    R.    HAYDON 


i 


only  painting  by  which  this  artist  is 
generally  known  is  that  of  Napoleon  stand- 
ing on  a  cliff  at  S.  Helena,  gazing  on  the 
departing  glories  of  the  day  as  the  sun  sets 
in  the  ocean.  There  is  feeling  and  pathos  in  the  pic- 
ture, as  there  is  in  Watts's  "  Young  Man  with  Great 
Possessions,"  although  in  both  only  the  back  is  seen  of 
the  personage  depicted.  Haydon  did  his  "  Napoleon 
Musing  "  over  a  good  many  times.  He  sold  a  copy  to 
the  King  of  Hanover. 

On  7  March,  1844,  he  entered  in  his  diary:  "I 
have  painted  nineteen  Napoleons.  Thirteen  Musings 
at  S.  Helena,  and  six  other  Musings.  By  heavens  ! 
how  many  more? " 

And  of  all  his  pictures  Haydon  thought  least  of  this. 
But  he  was  a  man  mistaken  in  his  estimate  of  his  own 
powers  and  of  what  he  could  do.  He  wanted  to  be  an 
heroic  painter,  but  projected  his  own  personality  upon 
his  canvas,  and  as  he  was  a  man  with  disproportion- 
ately short  legs,  his  "  Moses,"  his  "  Alexander,"  and 
other  heroes  must  be  short  nether-limbed  as  well. 

The  Haydons  of  Cadhay,  in  Ottery  S.  Mary  parish, 
were  an  ancient  family.  They  built  the  south  porch  of 
the  collegiate  church  in  1571,  and  set  up  on  it  the 
inscription  "He  that  no  il  will  Do  no  thynt  yt  lang 
yto,"  or  in  plainer  English,  "  He  that  no  ill  will  do,  let 
him  do  nothing  that  belongs  thereto  "  ;  a  motto  that  it 

457 


458  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

had  been  well  for  Benjamin  had  he  retained  it  and 
acted  on  it  to  the  end. 

The  authentic  pedigree  of  the  Haydons  goes  back  to 
the  reign  of  Henry  III.  They  were,  originally,  of  Ebford, 
in  Woodbury  parish,  and  did  not  acquire  Cadhay 
till  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century ;  but 
in  the  eighteenth  century  they  got  into  difficulties 
through  expensive  lawsuits,  and  lost  both  Cadhay  and 
Ebford,  and  disappeared  as  water  that  sinks  into  the 
sand.  The  last  of  whom  we  know  anything  was  Gideon 
Haydon,  of  Cadhay,  who  died  in  1707,  and  left  two 
sons,  Gideon  and  John. 

Benjamin  Robert  Haydon  in  his  Autobiography  says: 
"  My  father  was  the  lineal  descendant  of  one  of  the 
oldest  families  in  Devon,  the  Haydons  of  Cadhay. 
The  family  was  ruined  by  a  chancery  suit,  and  the 
children  were  bound  out  to  various  trades.  Among 
them  was  my  grandfather,  who  was  bound  out  to  Mr. 
Savery,  of  Slade,  near  Plymouth.  He  conducted  him- 
self well,  and  gained  the  esteem  of  his  master,  who  in 
time  made  him  his  steward.  In  a  few  years  he  saved 
money,  and  on  the  death  of  Mr.  Savery  set  up  a  book- 
seller's shop  in  Plymouth,  where  he  died  in  1773  from 
disease  of  the  heart.  My  grandfather  married  Mary 
Baskerville,  a  descendant  of  the  great  printer.  At  my 
grandfather's  death  my  father  succeeded  to  the  busi- 
ness, and  married  a  Miss  Cobley,  daughter  of  a  clergy- 
man, who  had  the  living  of  Ide,  near  Exeter.  He  was 
killed  early  in  life  by  the  fall  of  a  sounding-board  on 
his  head  while  preaching." 

Unfortunately  B.  R.  Haydon  does  not  give  the 
Christian  names  of  his  father  and  grandfather,  so  that 
we  are  not  able  to  say  where  they  hitch  on  to  the  sub- 
merged Haydons  of  Cadhay. 

B.  R.  Haydon  left  at  his  death  not  only  an  Auto- 


B.   R.  HAYDON 

From  a  drawing  by  David  Wilkie 


BENJAMIN    R.    HAYDON  459 

biography  extending  to  the  year  1820,  but  also  a  Journal 
in  twenty-six  folio  volumes.  The  former  has  been  pub- 
lished entire,  but  the  Journal  has  been  compressed,  and 
the  whole  edited  in  three  volumes  by  Mr.  Tom  Taylor 
(London,  1853).  It  is  not  my  intention  in  a  short 
article  to  go  through  the  entire  Life  and  further  to  com- 
press it,  but  rather  to  pick  out  a  few  salient  points,  and 
to  draw  from  other  sources  more  impartial  estimates  of 
Haydon  than  he  formed  of  himself  and  of  his  work. 

As  the  opening  of  his  Autobiography  contains  some 
lively  sketches  of  old  Plymouth,  I  shall  extract  these. 

"  My  father  sent  me  to  the  grammar  school  under 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Bidlake,  a  man  of  some  taste.  He  painted 
and  played  on  the  organ,  patronized  talent,  was  fond  of 
country  excursions,  wrote  poems  which  nobody  ever 
read. 

' '  Finding  that  I  had  a  taste  for  art,  he  always  took 
me,  with  another  boy,  from  our  studies  to  attend  his 
caprices  in  painting.  Here  his  odd  and  peculiar  figure, 
for  his  back  was  bent  from  fever,  induced  us  to  play 
him  tricks.  As  he  was  obliged  to  turn  round  and  walk 
away  to  study  the  effect  of  his  touches,  we  used  to  rub 
out  what  he  had  done  before  he  returned,  when  his 
perplexity  and  simplicity  were  delightful  to  mischiev- 
ous boys.  Once  he  sent  my  companion  to  cut  off  the 
skirt  of  an  old  coat  to  clean  his  palette  with,  and  the  boy 
cut  off  the  skirt  of  his  best  Sunday  coat.  Poor  dear  Dr. 
Bidlake  went  to  Stonehouse  Chapel  in  his  great-coat 
the  next  Sunday,  and  when  he  took  it  off  to  put  on  the 
surplice  the  clerk  exclaimed  in  horror,  <Good  God,  Sir! 
somebody  has  cut  off  the  skirt  of  your  coat ! '  " 

"My  father  used  to  show  my  drawings  to  his  cus- 
tomers. One  of  them  was  a  very  great  man  in  the 
town — merchant  and,  I  believe,  consul.  John  H. 
[Hawker]  was  a  very  worthy  but  pompous  man,  exceed- 


460  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

ingly  vain,  very  fond  of  talking  French  before  people 
who  could  not  speak  a  word  of  it,  and  quoting  Italian 
sayings  of  which  he  knew  little  ;  liked  everything  but 
steady  attention  to  his  business,  was  a  good  father, 
good  husband,  and  to  play  soldier  for  a  week  at  any 
time  would  have  laid  his  head  upon  the  block.  During 
the  dread  of  invasion  volunteer  corps  became  the  rage. 
The  very  infants  in  the  nursery  played  soldiers  too. 
Mr.  John  [Hawker]  either  raised  or  joined  a  corps  of 
volunteers,  and  warier  men  made  him  colonel,  that  the 
expense  might  not  fall  on  their  heads.  Colonel  he  was, 
and  devoted  himself  to  the  occupation  with  so  much 
sincerity  that  his  men  in  discipline  and  order  would 
certainly  not  have  disgraced  a  marching  militia  regi- 
ment. After  review  days,  nothing  gave  the  Colonel  so 
much  delight  as  marching  right  through  the  town  from 
the  Hoe,  to  the  horror  and  consternation  of  the  apple- 
women.  The  moment  the  drums  and  trumpets  were 
heard  sounding  at  the  bottom  of  Market  Street,  the 
scramble  to  get  out  of  the  way  among  the  poor  old 
women  is  not  to  be  imagined.  Market  Street  in  Ply- 
mouth is  a  sort  of  hill,  and  how  often  as  a  boy  have  I 
left  my  drawing,  dashed  down  and  out  to  the  top  of  the 
hill  to  see  the  Colonel  in  all  his  glory. 

"  First  came  in  view  his  feather  and  cap,  then  his 
large,  red,  pride-swollen,  big-featured  face,  with  a  smile 
on  it  in  which  grim  war,  dignity,  benevolent  condescen- 
sion, stolidity,  and  self-satisfaction  were  mixed  in  equal 
proportions ;  then  came  his  charger,  curvetting  with 
graceful  fire,  now  hind-quarters  this  side,  now  fore- 
quarters  that  side,  with  the  Colonel — sword  drawn 
and  glittering  in  the  sun — recognizing  the  wives  and 
children  of  the  ironmongers,  drapers,  and  grocers 
who  crowded  the  windows  to  see  him  pass.  Then  came 
the  band,  big  drum  and  trumpets  ;  then  the  grenadier 


BENJAMIN    R.    HAYDON  461 

company  with  regular  tramp  ;  then  the  Colonel's  eldest 
son,  John,  out  of  the  counting-house,  who  was  captain; 
then  his  lieutenant,  an  attorney's  clerk ;  then  the 
Colonel  and  band  turned  to  the  right  down  Broad 
Street — the  music  became  fainter  and  fainter,  the  rear 
lagged  after.  The  Colonel  drew  up  his  regiment  before 
his  own  parlour  windows,  and  solaced  by  white  hand- 
kerchiefs and  fair  lips,  dismissed  his  men,  and  retired 
to  the  privacy  of  domestic  life  until  a  new  field  day 
recalled  him  to  the  glory  of  the  Hoe  and  the  perils  of 
apple-stalls  and  slippery  streets." 

B.  R.'s  father  had  been  a  fast  and  dissipated  man, 
but  before  he  utterly  sank  past  recovery,  he  pulled 
himself  together  and  became  a  man  of  business, 
always  somewhat  shifty,  and  disposed  to  enjoy  himself 
rather  than  stick  to  work.  On  one  occasion  the  book- 
seller was  asked  angrily  by  a  important  customer  why 
he  had  not  fulfilled  his  oft-repeated  promise  to  procure 
some  young  walnuts  to  which  he  had  access,  and  his 
reply  was  that  there  had  been  such  a  demand  for  gun- 
stocks  from  the  war  then  raging  in  the  Peninsula  that 
there  were  no  trees  left. 

A  somewhat  congenial  spirit  came  to  Plymouth  and 
settled  into  his  house.  This  was  a  Mr.  Cobley,  brother 
of  Mrs.  Haydon,  a  man  fond  of  society  and  of  his  bottle, 
accomplished,  and  so  habitually  indolent  that  when 
he  came  to  see  his  sister  on  a  six  weeks'  visit  he  never 
had  the  energy  to  remove,  got  embedded  in  the  family, 
stayed  thirty  years,  and  quitted  it  and  life  together. 

B.  R.  does  not  appear  to  have  had  much  love  for  his 
father,  but  he  always  speaks  of  his  mother  with  the 
tenderest  affection,  and  her  opposition  to  her  only  boy's 
choice  of  the  profession  of  a  painter  cost  him  a  severe 
struggle  before  he  could  disregard  her  entreaties  to 
abide  by  his  father's  trade. 


462  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Haydon  was  little  more  than  a  boy  in  years  when  he 
left  home  in  May,  1804,  and  plunged  into  the  uncertain 
depths  of  London  life.  He  had  an  introduction  to 
Northcote,  a  Devonshire  man  like  himself,  but  jealous, 
spiteful,  and  unwilling  to  help  a  struggling  beginner, 
And  he  was  fortunate  in  attracting  the  notice  of  Fuseli, 
Keeper  of  the  Royal  Academy,  who  liked  him,  and 
helped  him  to  master  the  rudiments  of  his  profession. 

Haydon  admired  the  effects  of  London  smoke. 

"By  Code,"  said  Fuseli  to  him  one  day,  "it's  like 
the  smoke  of  the  Israelites  making  bricks."  "It  is 
grand,"  retorted  B.  R.,  "for  it  is  the  smoke  of  a 
people  who  would  have  made  the  Egyptians  make 
bricks  for  them." 

He  became  friendly  with  Wilkie,  then  a  raw,  red- 
headed Scotch  lad,  who  had  made  a  hit,  and  taken  the 
town  by  storm  with  his  "  Village  Politicians." 

David  Wilkie  was  canny  about  money.  One  day  he 
was  showing  his  fellow  pupils  some  drawing-paper  he 
was  using.  "Why,  Wilkie!"  exclaimed  Haydon, 
"where  did  you  get  this?  Bring  us  a  quire  to- 
morrow." He  promised  that  he  would.  The  next 
day,  and  the  day  after,  no  drawing-paper.  When 
remonstrated  with,  David  quietly  excused  himself, 
"  Weel,  weel,  jest  give  me  the  money  first,  and  ye'll 
be  sure  to  hae  the  paper." 

When  thus  starting  as  a  painter,  a  hint  was  given  to 
Haydon,  by  this  success  of  Wilkie,  what  was  the  line 
that  he  should  pursue,  what  was  the  style  of  picture 
that  would  appeal  to  the  public.  But  he  was  too 
obstinate  to  take  the  hint.  His  idea  was  the  High 
Art,  heroic  subjects  from  mythology  or  classic  history, 
or  from  the  Old  Testament,  on  huge  canvases — 
themes  that  interested  few,  and  of  a  size  that  few  could 
buy. 


BENJAMIN    R.    HAYDON  463 

"  Your  paintings  are  too  big,"  said  a  duchess  to  him 
one  day  ;  "  we  have  not  houses  that  can  contain  them." 

"It  is  not  that,"  replied  Haydon  ;  "it  is  that  your 
hearts  are  too  contracted  to  appreciate  them." 

In  1807  Haydon  was  summoned  to  Plymouth  by  the 
failure  of  his  mother's  health. 

"Incessant  anxiety  and  trouble,  and  her  only  son's 
bursting  away  from  her  at  a  time  when  she  had  hoped 
for  his  consolations  in  her  old  age,  gradually  generated 
that  dreadful  disease  angina  pectoris.  Her  doom  was 
sealed,  and  death  held  her  as  his  own,  whenever  it 
should  please  him  to  claim  her.  Her  fine  heroic  face 
began  to  wither  and  grow  pale ;  loss  of  exercise 
brought  on  weakness  and  derangement.  She  imagined 
that  the  advice  of  an  eminent  surgeon  in  London  might 
save  her,  and  though  I  and  everybody  else  knew  that 
nothing  could  be  done,  we  acceded  to  her  wish  imme- 
diately. 

"  I  painted  her  portrait,  and  as  she  sat  I  saw  a  tear 
now  and  then  fill  her  eye  and  slowly  trickle  down  her 
cheek,  and  then  she  would  look  almost  indignant  at 
her  own  weakness.  My  dear  mother  felt  her  approach- 
ing end  so  clearly  that  she  made  every  arrangement 
with  reference  to  her  death.  I  went  to  Exeter  to  get 
her  apartments  ready  at  the  hotel  the  day  before  she 
left  home.  She  had  passed  a  great  part  of  her  life  with 
a  brother  (the  prebend  of  Wells),  who  took  care  of  a 
Mr.  Cross,  a  dumb  miniature  painter.  Cross  (who  in 
early  life  had  made  a  fortune  by  his  miniatures)  loved 
my  mother,  and  proposed  to  her,  but  she,  being  at  that 
time  engaged  to  my  father,  refused  him,  and  they  had 
never  seen  each  other  since.  He  retired  from  society, 
deeply  affected  by  his  disappointment.  The  day  after 
leaving  Exeter  we  stopped  at  Wells,  as  my  mother 
wished  to  see  my  uncle  once  more. 


464  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"  The  meeting  was  very  touching.  As  I  left  the 
room  and  crossed  the  hall  I  met  a  tall,  handsome  old 
man  ;  his  eyes  seemed  to  look  me  through.  Muttering 
hasty,  unintelligible  sounds  he  opened  the  door,  saw 
my  mother,  and  rushed  over  to  her,  as  if  inspired  of  a 
sudden  with  youthful  vigour.  Then,  pressing  her  to 
his  heart,  he  wept,  uttering  sounds  of  joy  not  human. 
This  was  Cross.  They  had  not  met  for  thirty  years. 
We  came  so  suddenly  to  my  uncle's  they  had  never 
thought  of  getting  him  out  of  the  way.  It  seemed  as 
if  the  great  sympathizing  spirit  once  again  brought 
them  together  before  their  souls  took  flight. 

"  He  was  in  an  agony  of  joy  and  pain,  smoothing 
her  hair,  and  pointing  first  to  her  cheek  and  then  to  his 
own,  as  if  to  say,  <  How  altered  ! '  The  moment  he 
darted  his  eyes  upon  my  sister  and  me,  he  looked  as  if 
he  felt  we  were  her  children,  but  did  not  much  notice  us 
beyond  this. 

"My  sister,  hanging  over  my  poor  mother,  wept 
painfully.  She,  Cross,  my  uncle  and  aunt,  were  all 
sobbing  and  much  touched  ;  for  my  part,  my  chest 
hove  up  and  down  as  I  struggled  with  emotions  at  this 
singular  and  afflicting  meeting.  Disappointment  in 
love,  where  the  character  is  amiable,  gives  a  pathetic 
interest  to  woman  or  man.  But  how  much  more  than 
ordinary  sympathy  must  he  excite  who,  dumb  by 
nature,  can  only  express  his  feelings  by  the  lighten- 
ings  of  the  eye  !  Thus  had  this  man  been  left  for 
thirty  years,  brooding  over  affections  wounded  as  for 
the  mere  pleasure  of  torture.  For  many  months  after  my 
mother  married  he  was  frantic  and  ungovernable  at  her 
continued  absence,  and  then  sank  into  sullen  sourness. 
His  relations  and  friends  endeavoured  to  explain  to 
him  the  cause  of  her  going  away,  but  he  was  never 
satisfied,  and  never  believed  them ;  now,  when  the 


BENJAMIN   R.    HAYDON  465 

recollection  of  her,  young  and  beautiful,  might  occa- 
sionally have  soothed  his  imagination,  she  suddenly 
bursts  on  him  with  two  children,  the  offspring  of  her 
marriage  with  his  rival — and  that  so  altered,  bowed, 
and  weakened  as  to  root  out  the  association  of  her 
youthful  beauty  with  the  days  of  his  happy  thoughts. 

"  There  are  moments  of  suffering  or  joy  when  all 
thought  of  human  frailties  is  swept  away  in  the  gush  of 
sympathy.  Such  a  moment  was  this.  His  anger,  his 
frantic  indignation,  and  his  sullen  silence  at  her  long 
absence,  all  passed  away  before  her  worn  and  sickly 
face.  He  saw  her  before  him,  broken  and  dying ;  he 
felt  all  his  affection  return,  and  flinging  himself  for- 
ward on  the  table,  he  burst  into  a  paroxysm  of  tears  as 
if  his  very  heart-strings  would  crack.  By  degrees  we 
calmed  him,  for  nature  had  been  relieved  by  this  agon- 
izing grief,  and  they  parted  in  a  few  moments  for  the 
last  time." 

Next  day  Haydon  and  his  sister  went  on  with  their 
mother,  but  did  not  reach  London  with  her ;  she  died 
at  Salt  Hill,  in  the  inn. 

Surely  had  B.  R.  but  deigned  to  paint  a  picture  of 
the  old  dumb  lover  with  arms  outspread  on  the  table, 
weeping — as  he  so  touchingly  describes  the  scene,  it 
would  have  appealed  to  the  public.  But  no  !  the  scene 
was  not  heroic.  Old  Cross  was  not  a  classic  figure. 
Haydon  had  resolved  to  be  a  painter  of  heroic  in  art  or 
be  nothing. 

The  Royal  Academy  would  have  none  of  him,  and  he 
attacked  it  furiously  at  point  of  the  bayonet.  That  the 
Royal  Academy  hampered  the  progress  of  Art,  stifled 
genius,  crushed  out  originality  was  true  then  as  some 
assert  it  is  true  now  ;  but  the  Royal  Academicians  did 
not  relish  being  told  these  truths  by  one  just  growing  to 
manhood  ;  and  it  was  impolitic  in  Haydon  to  set  those 

2   H 


466  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

in  arms  against  him  who  posed  and  were  regarded  as 
authorities  on  Art.  Nothing  pleased  him  but  vast  can- 
vases. On  24  July,  1825,  he  refused  a  commission  of 
five  hundred  guineas  from  Sir  John  Broughton  to 
paint  a  small  picture  of  Edward  the  Black  Prince  dis- 
tinguishing an  ancestor  on  the  field  of  Poitiers,  lest  it 
should  interfere  with  his  carrying  out  of  one  of  his 
unsaleable  monstrous  canvases.  The  pictures  that  sold 
were  portraits.  "  My  whole  soul  and  body  raise  the 
gorge  at  portrait,"  he  wrote  in  his  diary.  When  he 
was  engaged  to  do  a  family  piece,  he  says  that  it  gave 
him  a  nasty  taste  in  his  mouth.  Yet,  as  his  great  sub- 
jects would  not  sell,  he  was  forced  to  paint  portraits  ; 
and  he  writes,  24  July,  1824:  "  For  these  two  months, 
having  at  last  devoted  myself  to  portraits,  I  have  en- 
joyed tranquillity,  luxury,  quiet,  and  peace,  and  have 
maintained  my  family  with  respectability."  And  then 
he  bursts  forth  into  scorn  and  loathing  of  the  subject. 
Indeed,  he  says  he  gloried  in  doing  portraits  badly, 
because  it  was  unworthy  of  him  and  his  high  ideals. 
"  I  have  an  exquisite  gratification  in  painting  portraits 
wretchedly."  27  March,  1843:  "The  moment  I  touch 
a  great  canvas  I  think  I  see  my  Creator  smiling  on  all 
my  efforts.  The  moment  I  do  mean  things  for  subsist- 
ence I  feel  as  if  He  had  turned  His  back,  and,  what's 
more,  I  believe  it."  21  January,  1842:  "There  is 
nothing  like  a  large  canvas.  Let  me  be  penniless, 
helpless,  hungry,  thirsty,  croaking  or  fierce,  the  blank, 
even  space  of  a  large  canvas  restores  me  to  happiness, 
to  anticipations  of  glory.  My  heart  expands,  and  I 
stride  my  room  like  a  Hercules."  Borrow,  in  his 
Lavengro,  has  devoted  a  chapter  to  a  visit  to  Haydon. 
A  commission  had  been  given  to  the  artist  to  paint  the 
portrait  of  the  Mayor  of  Norwich.  He  was  only  recon- 
ciled to  the  idea  when  it  was  suggested  to  him  that  he 


BENJAMIN    R.    HAYDON  467 

should  represent  the  mayor  as  issuing  from  under  a 
Norman  archway. 

"The  painter  of  the  heroic  resided  a  great  way  off, 
at  the  western  end  of  the  town.  We  had  some  difficulty 
in  obtaining  admission  to  him  ;  a  maidservant,  who 
opened  the  door,  eyeing  us  somewhat  suspiciously.  It 
was  not  until  my  brother  had  said  that  he  was  a  friend 
of  the  painter  that  we  were  permitted  to  pass  the 
threshold.  At  length  we  were  shown  into  the  studio, 
where  we  found  the  painter,  with  an  easel  and  brush, 
standing  before  a  huge  canvas,  on  which  he  had  lately 
commenced  painting  a  heroic  picture.  The  painter 
might  be  about  thirty-five  years  old  ;  he  had  a  clever, 
intelligent  countenance,  with  a  sharp  grey  eye ;  his  hair 
was  dark-brown,  and  cut  a  la  Raphael,  that  is,  that 
there  was  very  little  before  and  much  behind  ;  he  did 
not  wear  a  neckcloth,  but  in  its  stead  a  black  riband, 
so  that  his  neck,  which  was  rather  fine,  was  somewhat 
exposed  ;  he  had  a  broad,  muscular  breast,  and  I  make 
no  doubt  that  he  would  have  been  a  fine  figure,  but 
unfortunately  his  legs  and  thighs  were  somewhat  short. 

"  My  brother  gave  him  a  brief  account  of  his  com- 
mission. At  the  mention  of  the  hundred  pounds  I 
observed  the  eyes  of  the  painter  to  glisten.  '  Really,' 
said  he,  '  it  was  very  kind  to  think  of  me.  I  am  not 
very  fond  of  painting  portraits ;  but  a  mayor  is  a 
mayor,  and  there  is  something  grand  in  the  idea  of  the 
Norman  arch.  I'll  go  ;  moreover,  I  am  just  at  this 
moment  confoundedly  in  need  of  money,  and  when 
you  knocked  at  the  door  I  thought  it  was  some  dun. 
I  don't  know  how  it  is,  but  in  the  capital  they  have  no 
taste  for  the  heroic.  They  will  scarce  look  at  a  heroic 
picture.' 

"Thereupon  it  was  arranged  between  the  painter 
and  my  brother  that  they  should  depart  [for  Norwich] 


468  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  next  day  but  one ;  they  then  began  to  talk  of  art. 
1  I'll  stick  to  the  heroic/  said  the  painter  ;  '  I  now  and 
then  dabble  in  the  comic,  but  what  I  do  gives  me  no 
pleasure — the  comic  is  low  ;  there  is  nothing  like  the 
heroic.  I  am  engaged  here  on  a  heroic  picture,'  said 
he,  pointing  to  the  canvas;  'the  subject  is  Pharaoh  dis- 
missing Moses  from  Egypt.  That  finished  figure  is 
Moses.'  The  picture  was  not  far  advanced  ;  as  I  gazed 
upon  it,  it  appeared  to  me  that  there  was  something 
defective — something  unsatisfactory  in  the  figure. 

"We  presently  afterwards  departed.  My  brother 
talked  much  about  the  painter.  '  He  is  a  noble  fellow,' 
said  my  brother,  '  but,  like  many  other  noble  fellows, 
has  a  great  many  enemies ;  he  is  hated  by  his  brethren 
of  the  brush — but  above  all,  the  race  of  portrait 
painters  detest  him  for  his  heroic  tendencies.  It  will 
be  a  kind  of  triumph  to  the  last  when  they  hear  he  has 
condescended  to  paint  a  portrait ;  however,  that  Nor- 
man arch  will  enable  him  to  escape  from  their  malice. 
.  .  .  By  the  by,  do  you  not  think  that  figure  of  Moses 
is  somewhat  short?'  And  then  it  appeared  to  me  that 
I  had  thought  the  figure  of  Moses  somewhat  short,  and 
I  told  my  brother  so. 

uOn  the  morrow  my  brother  departed  with  the 
painter  for  the  old  town,  and  there  the  painter  painted 
the  mayor.  The  mayor  was  a  mighty,  portly  man,  with 
a  bull's  head,  black  hair,  body  like  that  of  a  dray- 
horse,  and  legs  and  thighs  corresponding — a  man  six 
foot  high  at  the  least.  To  his  bull's  head,  black  hair, 
and  body,  the  painter  had  done  justice ;  there  was  one 
point,  however,  in  which  the  portrait  did  not  corre- 
spond with  the  original — the  legs  were  disproportion- 
ably  short,  the  painter  having  substituted  his  own  legs 
for  those  of  the  mayor. 

"Short  legs  in  a  heroic  picture  will  never  do;  and, 


BENJAMIN   R.    HAYDON  469 

upon  the  whole,  I  think  the  painter's  attempt  at  the 
heroic  in  painting  the  mayor  of  the  old  town  a  decided 
failure.  If  I  am  now  asked  whether  the  picture  would 
have  been  a  heroic  one  provided  the  painter  had  not 
substituted  his  own  legs  for  those  of  the  mayor,  I  must 
say  I  am  afraid  not.  I  have  no  idea  of  making  heroic 
pictures  out  of  English  mayors,  even  with  the  assist- 
ance of  Norman  arches ;  yet  I  am  sure  that  capital 
pictures  might  be  made  of  English  mayors,  not  issuing 
out  of  Norman  arches,  but  rather  from  the  door  of  the 
Chequers,  or  the  Brewers  Three.  The  painter  in  ques- 
tion had  great  comic  power,  which  he  scarcely  ever 
cultivated ;  he  would  fain  be  a  Raphael,  which  he 
never  could  be,  when  he  might  have  been  something 
quite  as  good — another  Hogarth  ;  the  only  comic  piece 
which  he  ever  presented  to  the  world  being  little 
inferior  to  the  best  of  that  illustrious  master." 

Borrow  was  wrong  in  saying  that  Haydon  did  only 
one  comic  piece ;  he  did  three  or  four,  of  which 
presently. 

On  10  October,  1821,  Haydon  married  a  widow  with 
two  children  by  the  first  husband  ;  and  to  the  end  he 
remained  devotedly  attached  to  his  dear  Mary.  She 
had  a  little  money  of  her  own. 

He  had  got  .£3000  receipts  by  exhibition  of  his  pic- 
ture "  Christ's  Entry  into  Jerusalem,"  but  had  to  sell  it, 
being  short  of  money,  for  £240 ;  and  he  was  forced  to 
dispose  of  his  " Raising  of  Lazarus"  to  Binus,  his 
upholsterer,  to  clear  off  a  debt,  for  £300.  He  certainly 
did  make  a  good  deal  of  money,  but  was  always  in 
debt,  often  without  a  shilling  in  his  pocket.  His  huge 
canvases  did  not  sell.  He  says  of  them,  in  1826,  when 
Reinagle  questioned  him  about  them,  "  Where  is  your 
4  Solomon,'  Mr.  Haydon?"  "  Hung  up  in  a  grocer's 
shop."  "  Where  is  your  '  Jerusalem  '  ?  "  "  In  a  ware- 


470  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

room  in  Holborn."  "  Where  is  your  '  Lazarus'?" 
"  In  an  upholsterer's  shop  in  Mount  Street."  "And 
your  <  Macbeth'?"  "In  Chancery."  "Your  <  Pha- 
raoh '  ?  "  "  In  an  attic,  pledged."  "  And  your  '  Cruci- 
fixion'?" "In  a  hayloft."  "And  'Silenus'?"  "Sold 
for  half-price."  But  he  was  incapable  of  bending  his 
proud  spirit  to  accommodate  his  style  to  the  popular 
taste.  He  besieged  the  ministers,  he  pestered  great 
men  to  get  the  Government  to  encourage  High  Art.  If 
noble  patrons  would  not  buy  heroic  pictures  on  huge 
canvases,  the  State  should  do  it  to  adorn  public  build- 
ings. He  took  pupils,1  who  paid  large  premiums,  and 
he  got  them  to  back  his  bills,  and  involved  them  in 
heavy  outlay  to  meet  them,  and  then  pupils  shrank  from 
coming  near  him.  He  pestered  the  nobility,  all 
wealthy  men  for  loans,  for  grants,  for  pecuniary  aid  to 
help  him  out  of  immediate  difficulties.  He  was  arrested 
again  and  again,  and  sent  to  the  King's  Bench,  had  to 
appear  in  the  Insolvent  Debtors'  Court,  had  distraints 
levied  on  his  pictures,  his  furniture,  his  books.  He 
went  about  lecturing  on  Art,  and  these  lectures  brought 
him  in  a  respectable  revenue,  but  he  was  ever  under- 
water. How  he  squandered  his  money  does  not  appear 
in  his  journals;  but  he  certainly  did  earn  sufficient  with 
his  brush  to  have  maintained  himself  and  his  family  in 
respectability  had  he  known  how  to  economize.  He 
got  into  the  hands  of  moneylenders,  and  was  squeezed. 
He  met  with  generous  aid  from  numerous  quarters,  but 
was  no  sooner  relieved  of  one  pressing  call  than  he  fell 
into  fresh  difficulties. 

If  he  were  taken  up  by  a  noble  patron  and  invited  to 
his  table,  he  offended  him  by  contradiction  and  rude- 
ness. "  I  do  not  think  I  am  liked  in  company,  except 
by  women,"  he  admits  in  his  journal. 

1  His  pupils  paid  him  £210  each. 


BENJAMIN    R.    HAYDON  471 

The  comic  painting  alluded  to  by  Borrow  was  thus 
originated  whilst  Haydon  was  in  the  Debtors'  Prison  at 
King's  Bench  : — 

"  I  was  sitting  in  my  own  apartment,  buried  in  my 
own  reflexions,  melancholy,  but  not  despairing,  at  the 
darkness  of  my  prospects  and  the  unprotected  condition 
of  my  wife  and  children,  when  a  sudden  tumultuous 
and  hearty  laugh  below  brought  me  to  the  window. 

"  Before  me  were  three  men  marching  in  solemn 
procession,  the  one  in  the  centre  a  tall  young,  reck- 
less, bushy-headed,  light-hearted  Irishman,  with  a 
rusty  cocked-hat  under  his  arm,  a  bunch  of  flowers  in 
his  bosom,  his  curtain-rings  round  his  neck  for  a  gold 
chain,  a  mopstick  for  a  white  wand,  tipped  with  an 
empty  strawberry-pottle,  bows  of  ribbons  on  his 
shoulders,  and  a  great  hole  in  his  elbow ;  on  his  right 
was  another  person  in  burlesque  solemnity,  with  a 
sash  and  real  white  wand  ;  two  others,  fantastically 
dressed,  came  immediately  behind,  and  the  whole  fol- 
lowed by  characters  of  all  descriptions,  some  with 
flags,  some  with  staffs,  and  all  in  perfect  merriment 
and  mock  gravity,  adapted  to  some  masquerade.  I 
asked  what  it  meant,  and  was  told  it  was  a  procession 
of  burgesses,  headed  by  the  Lord  High  Sheriff  and 
Lord  Mayor  of  the  King's  Bench  Prison,  going  in 
state  to  open  the  poll,  in  order  to  elect  two  members 
to  protect  their  rights  in  the  House  of  Commons.  I 
returned  to  my  room,  and  laughed  and  wept  by  turns  ! 
Here  were  a  set  of  creatures  who  must  have  been  in 
want  and  in  sorrow,  struggling  (with  a  spiked  wall 
before  their  eyes)  to  bury  remembrance  in  the  humour 
of  a  farce." 

He  painted  the  scene  of  the  "  Mock  Election  in 
Prison,"  and  sold  it  to  the  King  for  £525,  after  having 
made  £321  by  it  in  exhibition.  Then  he  painted 


472  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

another  comic  picture,  "  Chairing  the  Member,"  for 
which  he  got  £422,  beside  £168  by  exhibition.  A  third 
humorous  picture  was  "  Punch  and  Judy." 

But  though  he  made  money  by  these  paintings  in  the 
style  of  Hogarth,  he  hated  doing  them.  His  soul 
soared  to  High  Art. 

"At  the  table  of  Mr.  Wyatt,"  says  the  Rev.  J. 
Richardson  in  his  Recollections  (London,  1856),  I  met 
the  late  Mr.  Haydon,  the  artist,  with  whom  I  had  been 
previously  acquainted.  Haydon  was  undoubtedly  a 
man  of  considerable  talent,  but  of  insatiable  vanity. 
He  had  concentrated  in  his  own  estimation  of  his 
merits  those  atoms  of  admiration  that  ought  to  have 
been  diffused  among  the  general  community,  who  were 
certainly  somewhat  slow  in  recognizing  the  claims 
which  he  was  continually  urging  ;  indeed,  they  were 
far  too  slow  to  satisfy  his  craving  for  applause,  and  for 
a  slice  or  two  of  that  solid  pudding  which  many  people 
value  much  more  than  empty  praise.  The  consequence 
was  that  he  was  continually  indulging  in  querulous 
complaint  and  bitter  vituperation  ;  everybody  was  re- 
warded except  himself ;  nobody  but  himself  had  any 
merit  or  capacity  or  feeling  for  Art.  All  the  world  were 
fools  ;  he  was  the  little  bit  of  leaven  that  was  to  bring 
the  solid  lump  into  fermentation  ;  the  one  wise  man 
whose  presence  rescued  the  mass  of  mankind  from  un- 
qualified insignificance  and  fatuity.  This  inordinate 
vanity  overlaid  the  many  good  qualities  which  he  pos- 
sessed, blinded  his  perspicuity,  and  perverted  his 
judgment." 

On  16  October,  1834,  the  Houses  of  Parliament  were 
consumed  by  fire,  and  Barry  was  entrusted  with  designs 
for  the  erection  of  a  new  palace,  which  was  begun  in 
1840.  Now  was  the  opportunity  for  which  Haydon  had 
yearned.  The  new  Houses  of  Parliament  must  receive 


BENJAMIN    R.    HAYDON  473 

decoration  in  fresco.  In  1842  a  Fine  Arts  Commission 
issued  a  notice  of  conditions  for  a  cartoon  competition. 
Haydon  welcomed  this  with  delight.  Who  but  he  was 
competent  to  execute  such  great  works?  And  he 
laboured  hard  at  the  study  of  fresco  and  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  cartoons.  But  he  was  disappointed  at  not  being 
given  the  chief  place,  without  question,  in  the  decora- 
tion of  the  Houses. 

"After  thirty-eight  years  of  bitter  suffering,"  he 
wrote,  "perpetual  struggle,  incessant  industry,  un- 
daunted perseverance,  four  imprisonments,  three  ruins, 
and  five  petitions  to  the  House — never  letting  the  sub- 
ject of  State  support  rest  night  or  day,  in  prison  or 
out  ;  turning  everything  before  the  public — the  wants 
of  his  family,  the  agonies  of  his  wife,  the  oppression  of 
the  Academy,  directing  all  to  the  great  cause  [of  High 
Art],  it  is  curious  to  see  that  the  man  who  has  got  hold 
of  the  public  heart,  who  is  listened  to  and  hailed  by 
the  masses — it  is  curious,  as  a  bit  of  human  justice,  to 
find  chairman,  committee,  witnesses,  pupils,  avoid 
throughout  the  whole  inquiry  any  thought,  word,  or 
deed  which  could  convey  to  a  foreign  nation  or  a 
native  artist,  a  noble  lord  or  an  honourable  member, 
that  there  was  such  a  creature  as  Haydon  on  the 
earth  ! " 

The  opening  of  the  Cartoon  Exhibition  was  fixed  for 
3  July,  1843.  Already,  on  27  June,  Haydon  had  re- 
ceived intelligence  that  his  cartoons  had  been  rejected. 
It  was  a  bitter  blow.  But  he  struggled  on  till  April,  1846, 
when  he  received  another,  that  was  final,  and  crushed 
his  spirits.  His  cartoons  should  be  seen  and  appre- 
ciated by  the  public.  He  hired  a  room  in  the  Egyptian 
Hall,  Piccadilly,  in  which  to  exhibit  them,  together 
with  some  of  his  historical  paintings — uAristides 
Banished  from  Naples,"  "Nero  Playing  upon  his 


474  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Harp  whilst  Rome  was  Burning,"  and  some  others. 
In  the  large  front  room  of  the  Egyptian  Hall,  General 
Tom  Thumb  was  holding  his  levees,  and  a  swarm  of 
people  crowded  to  these,  and  very  few  looked  in  on 
Haydon's  exhibition. 

In  his  diary  he  enters  :  "  21  April.  Tom  Thumb 
had  12,000  people  last  week.  B.  R.  Haydon  133^  (the 
J  a  little  girl).  Exquisite  taste  of  the  English  people  !  " 

He  closed  his  exhibition  on  18  May,  and  had  lost  by 
it  £111  8s.  rod.  He  wrote  :  "  I  have  not  decayed,  but 
the  people  have  been  corrupted.  I  am  the  same,  they 
are  not." 

This  was  a  wound  so  severe  to  his  vanity  that  it 
never  healed.  He  abused  the  public,  contrasting  his 
own  merits  with  those  of  his  diminutive  rival,  and 
mixing  up  the  sublime  with  the  ridiculous  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  make  his  complaints  the  source  of 
laughter  rather  than  of  commiseration.  He  was  at 
some  moments  in  so  excited  a  condition  from  his  own 
disappointment,  contrasted  with  the  success  of  the 
dwarf  and  the  showman,  that  he  appeared  to  his  friends 
to  be  almost  insane. 

On  22  June  he  wrote  in  his  diary  the  lines  from 
Lear : — 

Stretch  me  no  longer  on  this  rough  world. 

This  was  written  between  half-past  ten  and  a  quarter 
to  eleven  o'clock  on  that  morning.  He  was  in  his 
studio.  About  a  quarter  to  eleven  his  wife  and  daugh- 
ter heard  the  report  of  firearms,  but  took  little  notice  of 
it,  as  they  supposed  it  to  proceed  from  the  troops  then 
exercising  in  the  Park.  Mrs.  Haydon  went  out.  Miss 
Haydon  entered  the  painting-room,  and  found  her 
father  stretched  dead  before  the  easel  on  which  stood 
his  unfinished  picture  of  "  King  Alfred  and  the  First 
English  Jury  " — his  white  hairs  dabbled  in  blood,  a 


BENJAMIN    R.    HAYDON  475 

half-open  razor  smeared  with  blood  at  his  side,  near  it 
a  small  pistol  recently  discharged,  in  his  throat  a  fear- 
ful gash,  and  a  bullet-wound  in  his  skull.  A  portrait 
of  his  wife  stood  on  a  smaller  easel  facing  his  large 
picture.  On  a  table  near  was  his  diary  open  at  the 
page  of  that  last  entry,  his  watch,  and  a  Prayer  Book 
open  at  the  Gospel  for  the  Sixth  Sunday  after  the 
Epiphany,  and  his  will. 

The  coroner's  jury  found  that  the  suicide  was  com- 
mitted when  Haydon  was  in  an  unsound  state  of  mind. 
In  fact,  he  had  been  driven  mad  by  mortified  vanity. 
His  debts  at  his  death  amounted  to  about  £3000.  The 
assets  were  inconsiderable.  Liberal  and  immediate 
assistance  and  much  sympathy  were  extended  to  the 
bereaved  widow  and  family. 

Posterity  has  not  seen  occasion  to  reverse  the  judg- 
ment of  his  contemporaries  on  Haydon's  paintings. 

His  engrossing  love  of  art,  with  his  consciousness 
of  great  powers,  and  excessive  self-esteem,  made 
him  a  most  enthusiastic  devotee  to  any  work  which 
he  had  on  his  easel,  and  enabled  him  to  bear  up 
long  against  the  thousand  interruptions  from  embar- 
rassed circumstances  which  are  detailed  in  his  Autobio- 
graphy. Whilst  painting  his  "Maid  of  Saragossa"  he 
accidentally  wounded  his  foot  with  a  bayonet,  but  went 
on  with  the  picture,  using  his  own  blood  as  a  pigment, 
till  the  surgeon  arrived. 

Zeal,  devotion,  high  thoughts,  ability  in  composi- 
tion, some  power  in  colouring,  and  correct  anatomical 
drawing  may  and  ought  to  be  conceded  to  Haydon. 
But  he  aimed  at  subjects  beyond  his  power  of  execu- 
tion, and  in  all  his  High  Art  paintings  there  is  a  lack  of 
refined  feeling  and  good  taste.  Thus,  in  the  "Judg- 
ment of  Solomon  "  the  king  is  depicted  as  treating  the 
whole  affair  as  a  practical  joke.  Mr.  Watts,  the  artist, 


476  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

says:  u  The  characteristics  of  Haydon's  art  appear  to 
me  to  be  great  determination  and  power,  knowledge 
and  effrontery.  His  pictures  are  himself,  and  fail  as  he 
failed.  In  Haydon's  work  there  is  not  sufficient  forget- 
fulness  of  self  to  disarm  criticism  of  personality.  His 
pictures  are  themselves  autobiographical  notes  of  the 
most  interesting  kind  ;  but  their  want  of  beauty  repels, 
and  their  want  of  modesty  exasperates.  Perhaps  their 
principal  characteristic  is  want  of  delicacy  of  percep- 
tion and  refinement  of  execution.  His  touch  is  gene- 
rally woolly,  and  his  surface  disagreeable." 

He  was  determined  to  force  his  idea  of  the  Heroic  in 
Art  on  a  public  that  had  got  beyond  gods  and  god- 
desses and  the  heroes  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans.  He 
would  have  done  well  at  the  Court  of  Louis  XIV,  but 
he  was  out  of  date  at  the  dawn  of  the  naturalism  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

The  public,  thought  Haydon,  were  sick,  and  knew 
not  what  Art  was.  They  must  be  forced,  scolded,  lec- 
tured, rated  to  admire  it.  The  last  thing  that  would 
occur  to  him  would  be  to  study  the  trend  of  public 
taste  and  to  adapt  himself  to  it. 

When  drawing  his  cartoons  for  the  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment, he  would  not  even  consider  what  was  fitting. 
Had  he  sent  in  his  "  Alfred  and  Trial  by  Jury,"  it 
might  and  probably  would  have  been  approved  ;  but 
instead  he  sent  pictures  from  the  Reign  of  Terror  in 
France  to  represent  Anarchy,  which  was  of  all  things 
unsuited  for  the  new  palace,  that  did  not  desire  scenes 
from  French  history,  and  those  recent  ones. 

And  his  huge  cartoons  were  a  mistake.  Epics  are 
not  for  the  masses,  and  only  great  public  buildings 
could  contain  these  canvases.  Public  bodies  did  not 
care  to  spend  large  sums  upon  pictures  for  town  halls 
and  exchanges. 


BENJAMIN   R.    HAYDON  477 

"  What  a  game  you  have  thrown  away!"  said  a 
friend  to  Haydon  one  day ;  and  we  must  echo  that 
opinion  in  considering  the  life  before  us.  It  was  a 
game  utterly  and  irretrievably,  through  vanity  and 
pig-headedness,  thrown  away. 


JOHN  COOKE 


By  a  public  character  in  his  way 
You  may  find  an  anecdote  of  the  day, 
I  wish  every  line  to  tell,  and  word  I  say. 


f  ""^HUS  "  Captain"  John  Cooke,  the  Exeter 
saddler,  begins  his  pamphlet,  Old  England 
for  Ever,  published  by  Curson,  of  Exeter, 

-*-        in  1819. 

John  Cooke  was  born  at  the  "  Rose  and  Crown" 
public-house,  on  the  old  bridge,  at  Ashburton,  in  1765. 
Ashburton,  says  Cooke,  was  not  only  famous  as  pro- 
ducing Dunning,  Lord  Ashburton,  but  also  for  its 
Pop.  "I  recollect  its  sharp  feeding  good  taste,  far 
richer  than  the  best  small  beer,  more  of  the  champagne 
taste,  and  what  was  termed  a  good  sharp  bottle. 
When  you  untied  and  hand-drew  the  cork  it  gave  a 
report  louder  than  a  pop-gun,  to  which  I  attribute  its 
name  ;  its  contents  would  fly  up  to  the  ceiling  if  you 
did  not  mind  to  keep  the  mouth  of  the  stone  bottle  into 
the  white  quart  cup  ;  it  filled  it  with  froth,  but  not  over 
a  pint  of  clear  liquor.  Three  old  cronies  would  sit  an 
afternoon  six  hours,  smoke  and  drink  a  dozen  bottles, 
their  reckoning  but  eightpence  each,  and  a  penny  for 
tobacco.  The  pop  was  but  twopence  a  bottle.  It 
is  a  great  loss  to  the  town,  because  its  recipe  died 
with  its  brewer  about  1785." 

Another  drink  of  the  past  was  white  ale.  This  derived 
its  name  from  its  appearance,  not  unlike  tea  freely 

478 


CAPTAIN    COOKK,    1824,    AGED    58 
Dra.iv n  fri»n  \ at nre,  on  the  stone  by  N.   Wkittock 


JOHN   COOKE  479 

diluted  with  milk  and  having  considerable  quantities  of 
some  white  curdy  substance  floating  about  in  it,  which 
had  a  tendency  to  settle  at  the  bottom  of  the  glass. 
The  secret  of  its  composition  lay  in  the  nature  of  the 
ferment  employed,  called  "  grout."  At  one  time  white 
ale  was  a  common  drink  in  South  Devon  ;  now  it  is  as 
dead  as  Ashburton  Pop  and  John  Dunning. 

John  Cooke's  father  was  a  plasterer  and  u  hellier" — 
i.e.  slater — but  turned  publican  and  maltster,  and  kept 
the  tavern  in  which  his  son  was  born.  John's  grand- 
father brought  the  water  into  the  town  to  the  East 
Street  conduit.  At  the  age  of  fifteen  his  mother,  then 
a  widow,  put  John  apprentice  to  Chaster,  a  saddler  in 
Exeter,  and  on  the  death  of  Chaster,  Cooke  succeeded 
to  the  business  at  the  age  of  twenty-one,  and  was 
highly  esteemed  in  the  county  for  the  excellence  of  his 
work  and  his  knowledge  of  how  to  fit  the  back  of  a 
horse.  He  made  saddles  for  Lord  Rolle,  Sir  Stafford 
Northcote,  Sir  John  Duntze,  Sir  Robert  and  Sir  Law- 
rence Palk,  Sir  Thomas  Acland,  and  last,  but  not 
least,  for  Lord  Heathfield.  "  His  lordship  was  allowed 
to  be  one  of  the  best  judges  of  horses  and  definer  of 
saddlery  in  the  kingdom  ;  his  lordship's  saddle-house 
consisted  from  the  full  bristed  to  the  demi-pick,  Shafto, 
Hanoverian,  to  the  Dutch  pad-saddles  ;  and  from  the 
snaffle,  Pelham,  Weymouth,  Pembroke,  Elliott,  Mame- 
luke, and  Chifney  bridles.  His  lordship's  saddle  and 
riding-house  was  a  school  for  a  saddler  and  dragoon." 

Cooke  breaks  into  rhyme  : — 

As  few  began  the  world  so  I  multiplied, 

I've  gratitude  to  all  my  friends,  who've  supplied. 

Plain  at  twenty-one,  I  did  begin, 

Which  in  my  manuscript  was  seen, 

Tho'  years  at  school  with  arithmeterians, 

Who  wrote  well,  but  they  are  no  grammarians, 

Tho'  I  did  not  know  the  use  of  grammar 

I  was  well  supported  by  my  hammer. 


480  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

I  sticked  to  my  King,  leather  and  tools  ; 

And  for  order  wrote  a  set  of  shop  rules. 

It's  not  what  work  is  brought  for  to  be  only  done, 

Every  think  that's  necessary,  buckle  or  tongue  ; 

For  instance,  a  saddle  is  brought  to  stuff,  that's  all, 

A  stirrup-bar  is  wanted  to  prevent  a  fall  ; 

All  your  work  must  be  done  well,  not  like  fools, 

For  if  it  breaks  on  the  road,  there's  no  tools. 

Working  with  the  hands  only  is  but  part, 

The  head's  the  essential  to  make  work  smart. 

Be  John  Bulls,  true  to  your  country  and  Church, 
Always  tell  the  truth  and  don't  never  lurch. 

John  Cooke's  saddlery  was  better  than  his  grammar 
and  his  orthography,  and  his  faults  in  these  latter  par- 
ticulars called  down  upon  him  the  scorn  of  Andrew 
Brice,  the  printer  and  publisher  of  a  weekly  paper. 
Cooke  was  a  strong  loyalist,  and  Brice  was  touched 
with  republican  ideas. 

< '  Brice,"  says  Cooke,  "  posted  me  about  the  streets 
with  halfpenny  papers ;  and  the  poor  hawkers  got 
many  pence  through  me ;  but  all  that  he  could  do  or 
say  was  to  degrade  my  orthography  ;  but  to  lessen  my 
loyalty  or  character  he  could  not ;  from  his  art  or  out  of 
burlesque  he  said  my  letters  were  after  the  manner  of 
Junius,  and  at  the  same  time  said  I  was  of  Grub-street. 
I  winked  at  all  this,  whilst  the  people  read  my  bulle- 
tins. I  confess  I  did  not  know  Junius's  Letters  or 
Grub-street  then,  but  I  know  them  now.  At  the  attack 
and  at  different  times  he  wanted  to  run  aground  my 
loyal  advertisements ;  but,  poor  man,  he  ran  himself 
aground  dead." 

The  bulletins  and  advertisements  animadverted  upon 
by  Brice  were  handbills  issued  by  Cooke  opposing  the 
republican  inflammatory  pamphlets  that  were  put  in 
circulation,  as  also  bulletins  of  the  news  with  com- 
ments of  his  own  which  he  pasted  up  outside  his  shop. 
There  was  at  the  time  a  noisy  party  in  England  in 


JOHN   COOKE  481 

favour  of  Bonaparte,  and  this  was  the  Radical  and 
Republican  party.  Cooke  was  taunted  by  these  as  a 
bull-calf.  He  replied  that  he  gloried  in  the  name 
of  John  Bull.  "  Even  when  the  friends  of  one  of  the 
candidates  at  the  recent  general  election  at  Exeter 
came  to  solicit  my  vote  (I  thank  God  I  vote  for  six 
members)  I  told  them  that  I  would  not  vote  for  a  man 
of  such  principles  if  they  would  give  me  £500.  When 
I  came  to  give  my  vote  at  the  Guildhall,  Mr.  Sergeant 
Pell  rose  up  out  of  fancy  or  fun,  and  said  to  me,  Are 
you  not  a  Frenchman  ?  I  said,  A  Frenchman  !  No, 
sir,  I  am  a  true  John  Bull.  He  said,  Of  the  calf  kind. 
I  said,  It  must  be  a  calf  before  it's  a  bull.  The  Sergeant 
sat  down." 

In  1789  Cooke  was  made  captain  to  the  sheriff's 
troop.  "  About  this  time  there  were  commotions  by 
the  mobility  in  London  against  his  Majesty's  minister, 
Mr.  Pitt.  I  went  into  the  pot-houses  at  Exeter,  and 
treated  with  mugs  round,  and  gave  loyal  toasts  and 
sentiments — my  own  motto,  Any  income-tax  sooner 
than  a  French-come-tax  ;  a  long  pull  and  a  strong  pull 
and  a  pull  altogether — mind  how  the  fox  served  the 
chicken,  and  said  the  grapes  were  sour — a  speedy  neck- 
lace to  all  traitors — Old  England  for  ever,  and  those 
who  don't  like  it,  leave  it. 

"  There  has  been  but  one  small  riot  in  Devonshire, 
to  its  honour  and  credit,  and  that  was  stopped  in  its 
infancy.  It  was  for  breaking  into  a  miller's  house  to 
get  corn  by  violence  ;  one  Campion,  a  blacksmith,  a 
young  man  called  out  from  his  work  inadvertently  to 
join  the  mob ;  from  farmhouse  to  house  they  got 
liquor,  got  inebriated.  He  became  a  leader  and  carried 
a  French  banner,  the  old  story.  Campion  was  desired 
to  desist  by  gentlemen  ;  but  he  would  not.  He  was 
apprehended  in  a  day  or  two,  committed  to  gaol,  and 

2    I 


482  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

tried  at  the  Assizes,  1795,  before  the  late  Justice  Heath; 
the  jury  found  him  guilty  of  the  felony — riot  and  sedi- 
tion. He  suffered  death.  This  prompt  measure  put 
an  end  and  stopped  the  contagion  in  the  West.  There 
were  thousands  of  spectators  on  the  road,  besides  a 
thousand  military  of  dragoons,  artillery  and  volunteers 
of  the  district,  who  escorted  him  thirteen  miles  to  the 
place  of  execution,  Bovey-heathfield,  in  sight  of  his 
own  village,  Ilsington,  as  a  rescue  was  talked  of. 

"  At  a  foolish  County  Meeting  in  1797,  to  petition 
his  Majesty  to  remove  his  late  Minister,  Mr.  Pitt,  I 
called  up  my  apprentices  at  3  o'clock  in  the  morning ; 
we  got  a  ladder,  and  scaladed  the  walls  of  the  Castle  of 
Exeter,  got  in  unperceived,  I  wrote  conspicuously  No 
petition,  no  civil  war,  and  at  many  more  lofty  hazardous 
places  in  the  city,  that  the  freeholders  might  read  it 
when  they  came  to  the  meeting ;  we  (had)  done  the 
whole  before  the  people  were  up.  I  again  put  out 
handbills  warning  the  mobility  of  Exeter  of  riot ;  and 
at  the  show  of  hands  by  the  Sheriff  the  mob  held  up 
both  their  hands,  and  there  was  a  great  majority  of 
legal  (loyal)  votes. 

"  At  another  County  Meeting  a  few  violent  gentleman 
wanted  to  turn  out  one  or  both  of  our  old  staunch 
County  Members,  Col.  Bastard  and  Sir  Laurence  Palk. 
An  orator,  a  Protestant  Dissenter,  took  an  elevated 
station  and  was  haranguing ;  I  perceived  that  the 
orator  spared  neither  powder  nor  shot  with  his  tongue. 
I  being  a  freeholder  mixed  with  the  yeomanry  free- 
holders ;  I  fired  a  shot  from  my  mouth,  having  good 
lungs  it  gave  a  loud  report.  I  exclaimed  '  Palk's  no 
presbyterian  I'll  sware  [sic].'  It  hit  him,  it  had  the 
desired  effect,  the  orator  was  struck  tongue-tied,  he 
thought  it  came  from  higher  authority.  He  attempted 
again  in  vain  ;  the  yeomanry  caught  flash  from  my 


JOHN   COOKE  483 

pan  and  they  fired  a  feu-de-joy  with  their  tongues  for 
Bastard  and  Palk,  a  loud  clamour  for  question  was 
called,  and  the  old  members  were  returned  unani- 
mously. 

"  When  Mr.  Pitt  armed  this  country  I  became  a 
volunteer  in  the  infantry,  before  the  cavalry  were 
equipped  by  my  brother  tradesmen,  that  they  should 
not  say  my  loyalty  was  for  trade.  After  this,  I  joined 
the  second  troop  of  the  first  Devon  Royal  Cavalry. 

"I  may  say  John  Cooke,  the  saddler  of  Exeter,  is 
known  from  England  to  the  Indies,  on  the  Continent, 
Ireland  and  Scotland  ;  from  Berwick- upon -Tweed  to 
Penzance.  I  had  two  direction  posts  at  my  door  during 
the  War,  that  no  one  had  in  the  kingdom  besides — one 
to  the  various  places  and  distances  from  Exeter  to 
London  ;  the  other  a  large  sheet  of  paper  written  as  a 
daily  monitor,  gratis,  a  bulletin  of  news,  to  cheer  people 
in  the  worst  of  times,  to  guide  them  in  the  Constitutional 
Road,  which  both  citizens  and  country-folks  of  a 
market-day  looked  up  to  Cooke's  bulletin  as  natural  as 
they  look  at  their  parish  dial. 

"I  knowing  the  city  and  county  of  Exeter  is  the 
county  town  of  the  second  county  of  England,  I  even 
made  myself  a  direction-post  when  commotions  were  in 
London  by  the  mobility,  against  the  late  Mr.  Pitt,  who 
was  the  people's  friend,  instead  of  their  enemy;  I  being 
a  public  officer  at  the  Assizes,  having  had  the  honour 
to  serve  thirty  Sheriffs  of  the  County,  sixty  Assizes, 
and  1817  I  commanded  two  Sheriffs  troops,  Devon  and 
Cornwall.  In  1795  I  wore  a  conspicuous  breast-plate 
painted  with  this  motto,  Fear  God,  honour  the  King,  and 
revere  his  Ministers;  which  made  not  only  the  auditory, 
but  the  Judges,  Sheriffs,  and  Counsel  stare  at  me  ; 
which  my  heart  did  not  mind  being  for  the  public  good. 
Twice  I  had  two  escapes  for  my  life  in  my  achieve- 


484  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

ments.  I  went  from  Exeter  to  London,  to  the  funeral  of 
Lord  Nelson,  the  hero  of  the  Nile,  in  1805.  In  mY 
going  into  the  painted  hall  at  Greenwich  to  see  the 
corpse  lie  in  state,  I  was  nearly  squeezed  to  death 
against  the  stone  pillars.  I  might  as  well  holloa  in  the 
bottom  of  the  sea,  as  in  a  London  throng.  I  have  the 
pain  to  this  day. 

"I  saw  Mr.  Pitt  at  his  lodging  window  at  Bath,  a 
few  weeks  before  he  died ;  he  looked  very  weak  and  thin. 
I  had  a  tablet  made  to  his  memory  and  hung  it  over 
my  door. 

"In  1800,  in  consequence  of  that  dearth  year,  potatoes 
were  sixteen  pence  a  peck.  The  poor  grumbled,  noisy, 
clamorous  in  the  market.  I  went  in  the  country  and 
bought  500  bags,  and  sold  them  at  a  shilling  a  peck. 
The  rumour  that  I  had  got  all  the  potato  trade;  it 
lowered  the  market  to  a  shilling  a  peck. 

"  In  honour  of  his  Majesty,  on  the  Jubilee,  1809,  I 
gave  all  the  poor  men,  women  and  children  of  my 
parish,  above  200,  a  good  dinner  in  the  long  cloth 
hall  of  Exeter.  My  wife  ripped  sheets  for  tablecloths, 
and  what  is  worth  recording,  in  the  evening  the  men 
would  carry  me  home  on  their  shoulders.  They 
carried  me  by  the  Old  London  Inn,  where  a  large  party, 
it  being  a  holiday,  in  our  passing  we  were  not  halted.1 
In  the  centre  of  a  50  feet  street,  I  saw  a  decanter  thrown 
from  the  dining-room  twelve  feet  high  ;  I  was  bare 
pate,  my  hat  being  off,  to  make  obedience  to  this  com- 
pany ;  I  miraculously  caught  the  decanter  by  its  neck 
with  my  right  hand,  it  was  full  of  port  wine  ;  it  came 
with  such  velocity  not  a  drop  was  spilt.  I  thought  no 
harm  meant,  I  jocosely  drank  all  their  healths  and 
gave  the  spectators  the  rest.  I  bought  the  decanter  of 
Miss  Pratt,  of  the  Inn,  in  memory  of  such  an  event ; 

1     His  grammar  is  here  perplexed. 


JOHN   COOKE  485 

which,  if  it  had  took  me  by  the  head,  must  have 
stun  me." 

Besides  having  done  much  for  his  King  and  country, 
Cooke  flattered  himself  that  he  did  much  for  the  city  of 
Exeter.  He  says:  "  We  are  indebted  to  Mr.  S.  F. 
Milford  for  the  Savings  Bank,  and  wholesome  prisons 
in  Exeter.  We  had  no  common  sewers  until  1810,  it 
was  like  old  Edinburgh  before.  About  twelve  years 
since,  I  rose  one  morning  before  the  people  were  up, 
and  numbered  every  house  in  Fore  Street  with  chalk, 
which  made  the  people  stare.  I  was  told  I  had  not 
begun  at  the  right  end,  with  the  sun.  I  went  over  the 
ground  again.  My  house  being  a  corner  one,  I  got  it 
properly  numbered,  and  the  street  labelled,  which  soon 
led  to  be  general.  I  paid  for  seven  label  boards  at  the 
street.  Who  would  have  done  it  beside  ?  Our  market 
days  had  ever  been  on  Wednesdays  and  Fridays, 
only  one  day  between.  I  wrote  a  requisition  on  the 
propriety  of  altering  the  Wednesday's  market  to  Tues- 
day. I  carried  it  for  signatures  to  the  principal  inhabi- 
tants, and  sent  it  to  the  Chamber,  who  upon  perusing 
of  their  charters  found  they  had  a  bye-law ;  the  market 
was  altered  with  unanimous  approbation  in  1812."  He 
also  introduced  watering-carts  for  the  streets  in  sum- 
mer. In  1809  he  issued  a  catalogue  of  a  hundred  and 
ten  nuisances  in  the  city  of  Exeter,  which  he  exhorted 
the  Corporation  to  get  rid  of.  He  urged  on  the  Dean 
and  Chapter  the  pulling  down  of  the  gates  into  the 
Close,  which  unhappily  was  done.  "At  present,"  said 
Cooke,  "you  have  none  but  a  dangerous  way  to  the 
Cathedral.  A  coach-passenger  was  killed  going  under 
Catherine-Gate." 

There  were  still  three  gates  left ;  three  had  already 
been  destroyed. 

Poor  Allhallows,  Goldsmith  Street,  was  levelled  with 


486  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  dust  but  last  year,  so  as  to  widen  High  Street. 
Cooke  urged  its  destruction  in  1809,  as  "  useless  and 
dormant." 

Cooke  built  himself  a  villa  residence,  which  he  dubbed 
"  Waterloo  Cottage."  He  was  a  very  plain  man,  with 
thick,  coarse  mouth,  and  a  broken  nose.  A  portrait,  a 
profile,  is  prefixed  to  his  pamphlet,  Old  England  for 
Every  but  there  is  one  much  finer  of  him,  in  colour, 
representing  him  in  uniform.  This  is  in  the  library  of 
the  Institution  at  Exeter. 

That  the  man  had  enormous  self-confidence  and  con- 
ceit saute  aux  yeux,  but  that  he  was  a  useful  man  to  his 
country,  to  the  county,  and  to  the  city  is  also  clear. 

Cooke  assures  us  that  he  had  been  in  400  out  of  the 
466  parishes  of  Devon,  "  having  the  heartfelt  satisfac- 
tion of  being  respected"  in  all  of  them,  "and  knowing 
fifteen  lords,  four  honourables,  twenty-two  baronets, 
and  three  knights,  and  most  of  the  clergy  and  gentry  " 
of  the  county. 

Universal  suffrage  will  never,  never  do, 

So  experience  tells  me— and  I  tell  you. 

It  would  break  down  the  barriers  of  our  Constitution, 

And  plunge  both  high  and  low  in  cut-throat  revolution. 

You  see,  in  the  murder  of  the  Constable  Birch, 

The  means  they'd  employ  to  destroy  King  and  Church. 

The  King  is  the  head— the  constable  the  hand — 

For  preserving  peace  and  order  in  this  happy  land. 

They  who'd  cut  off  the  hand,  would  cut  off  the  head — 

So,  a  word  to  the  wise  ;  remember  what's  said 

In  the  plain,  honest  Book 

Of  your  humble  servant, 

COOKE. 


SAVERY   AND    NEWCOMEN, 
INVENTORS 

WHEN  a  commission  was  sent  by  the  Par- 
liament to  search  Raglan  Castle  for  arms, 
a  jet  of  water  was  sent  pouring  over  them 
in  a  way  to  them  extraordinary.  It  was 
from  a  steam-propelled  fountain,  invented  and  executed 
by  Edward  Somerset,  Lord  Herbert,  the  son  of  the 
Marquess  of  Worcester.  In  1646  the  castle  stood  a 
siege  from  the  Parliamentarians,  under  Sir  Trevor 
Williams  and  Colonel  Morgan,  and  finally  under  Sir 
Thomas  Fairfax.  It  surrendered  on  17  August.  No 
sooner  was  the  castle  abandoned  than  the  lead  and 
timber  of  the  roofs  were  carried  off  for  the  rebuilding  of 
Bristol  Bridge,  and  the  peasantry  of  the  neighbourhood 
began  to  dig  in  the  moats,  drain  the  fish-ponds,  and 
tear  down  the  walls  in  quest  of  treasures  supposed  to 
be  concealed  there,  and  to  rip  up  pipes,  and  pull  to 
pieces  lead  and  iron  work  to  appropriate  the  metal. 
Then  it  was  that  Lord  Herbert's  steam  fountain  was 
destroyed. 

The  old  Marquess  died  in  December  of  the  same 
year,  and  Edward  Somerset  became  second  Marquess 
of  Worcester.  Whilst  in  the  Tower,  in  1652-4,  the 
Marquess  wrote  his  Century  of  the  Names  and  Scant- 
lings of  Inventions,  but  it  was  not  published  till  1663. 
"He  was  a  man,"  says  Clarendon,  "of  a  fair  and 
gentle  carriage  towards  all  men  (as  in  truth  he  was 

487 


488  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

of  a  civil  and  obliging  nature)."  He  died  3  April, 
1667.  In  his  remarkable  book  he  anticipated  the 
power  of  steam,  and  indeed  may  be  said  to  have  in- 
vented the  first  steam  engine.  His  object  in  his  steam- 
fountain  was  to  throw  up  or  raise  water  to  a  great 
height.  His  words  are  as  follows:  "This  admirable 
method  which  I  propose  of  raising  water  by  the  force 
of  fire  has  no  bounds  if  the  vessels  be  strong  enough  ; 
for  I  have  taken  a  cannon,  and  having  filled  it  three- 
fourths  full  of  water  and  shut  up  its  muzzle  and  touch- 
hole,  and  exposed  it  to  the  fire  for  twenty-four  hours,  it 
burst  with  a  great  explosion.  Having  afterwards  dis- 
covered a  method  of  fortifying  vessels  internally,  and 
combined  them  in  such  a  way  that  they  filled  and  acted 
alternately,  I  have  made  the  water  spout  in  an  uninter- 
rupted stream  forty  feet  high,  and  one  vessel  of  rarefied 
water  raised  40  of  cold  water.  The  person  who  con- 
ducted the  operation  had  nothing  to  do  but  turn  two 
cocks,  so  that  one  vessel  of  water  being  consumed, 
another  begins  to  force,  and  then  to  fill  itself  with  cold 
water,  and  so  on  in  succession."  By  means  of  his  con- 
trivance he  proposed  "  not  only  with  little  charge  to 
drain  all  sorts  of  mines,  and  furnish  cities  with  water, 
though  never  so  high  seated,  as  well  as  to  keep  them 
sweet,  running  through  several  streets,  and  so  perform- 
ing the  work  of  scavengers,  as  well  as  furnishing  the 
inhabitants  with  sufficient  water  for  their  private  occa- 
sions, but  likewise  supply  rivers  with  sufficient  to 
maintain  and  make  them  portable  from  town  to  town, 
and  for  the  bettering  of  lands  all  the  way  it  runs,  with 
many  more  advantageous  and  yet  greater  effects,  of 
profits,  admiration,  and  consequence — so  that  deser- 
vedly I  deem  this  invention  to  crown  my  labours,  to 
reward  my  expenses,  and  make  my  thoughts  acquiesce 
in  the  way  of  further  inventions." 


THOMAS   SAVERY 


SAVERY   AND   NEWCOMEN  489 

The  Marquess  of  Worcester's  small  book  attracted 
some  attention  even  in  his  own  generation.  About 
twenty  years  after  his  death,  Sir  Samuel  Morland 
made  some  improvements  on  Worcester's  plan,  raising 
water  to  a  great  height  "  by  the  force  of  Aire  and 
Powder  conjointly."  He  endeavoured  to  draw  the 
attention  of  the  French  King  to  the  matter,  but  met 
with  no  encouragement. 

Denis  Papin  was  a  French  physician,  born  at  Blois 
in  1647.  He  studied  medicine  in  Paris,  and  visited 
England  to  associate  himself  with  Robert  Boyle  in  his 
experiments,  and  was  admitted  a  member  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1681.  After  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes,  being  a  Huguenot,  he  could  not  return  to  France, 
so  took  refuge  in  Germany,  where  he  was  well  received 
by  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse,  who  gave  him  the  pro- 
fessorship of  mathematics  in  the  University  of  Marburg. 
He  was  the  first  to  apply  the  safety-valve  and  the 
piston  to  the  steam  engine.  He  showed  that  the 
upward  and  downward  alternate  movement  of  the  piston 
might  be  employed  with  effect  for  the  transmission 
of  force.  If  after  the  rise  of  the  piston  a  vacuum 
could  be  created  below,  the  piston  would  fall  with  the 
pressure  of  the  atmosphere  above.  In  order  to  create 
this  vacuum  he  proposed  to  explode  gunpowder  under 
the  piston  ;  but  he  saw  himself  that  this  method  of 
creating  a  void  was  clumsy  and  impracticable.  He 
then  sought  to  exhaust  the  air  by  means  of  an  hydraulic 
engine  moved  by  a  water-wheel,  and  he  proposed  a 
machine  of  this  sort  to  the  Royal  Society  in  1687  J  but 
he  also  suggested  a  means  of  producing  the  required 
vacuum  by  condensation  of  steam. 

Much  about  the  same  time  the  same  idea  occurred 
to  Thomas  Savery,  a  native  of  Modbury,  a  member  of 
an  ancient  Devonshire  family,  coming  originally  from 


490  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Halberton,  whence  John  Savery  moved  to  Totnes.  Prob- 
ably through  the  wool  and  clothing  trade,  he  amassed 
a  considerable  estate  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  In 
the  sixteenth  century  the  heiress  of  Servington  of  Tavi- 
stock  married  into  the  family.  In  1588,  Christopher 
Savery,  the  head  of  the  family,  resided  in  Totnes 
Castle,  not  then  dismantled  ;  and  for  a  period  of  nearly 
forty  years  the  town  was  represented  in  Parliament  by 
members  of  the  Savery  family.  One  Christopher 
served  as  Sheriff  of  Devon  in  1620.  His  son  was  a 
colonel  under  Oliver  Cromwell. 

The  Saverys  had  acquired  Shilston  in  Modbury  at 
the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  resided  there  till 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth.  Colonel  Christopher  Sa- 
very's  youngest  son  is  said  by  Mr.  Smiles,  in  his  Lives  of 
Boulton  and  Watt,  to  have  been  Richard.  But  Richard 
does  not  appear  in  the  pedigree  in  Colonel  Vivian's 
Visitations  of  Devon.  This  is,  however,  no  proof 
that  Smiles  is  wrong.  Richard  Savery  was  the  father 
of  Thomas,  who  was  born,  "according  to  Smiles,  at 
Shilston  about  the  year  1650.  He  was  educated  to  the 
profession  of  a  military  engineer,  and  in  course  of  time 
reached  the  rank  of  trench-master.  The  pursuit  of  his 
profession,  as  well  as  his  natural  disposition,  led  Savery 
to  study  mechanics,  and  he  spent  all  his  spare  time  in 
executing  mechanical  contrivances  of  various  sorts. 
One  of  the  first  of  these  was  a  paddle-boat  worked  by 
men  turning  a  crank.  He  spent  ^"200  on  this,  and 
built  a  small  yacht  on  the  Thames  to  exhibit  its  utility. 
But  when  submitted  to  the  Admiralty  they  would  have 
nothing  to  do  with  it,  as  its  practical  utility  was  doubt- 
ful. The  power  of  wind  was  better  than  hand  labour 
in  propelling  a  vessel;  and  although  his  machine  might 
answer  on  a  river,  it  was  extremely  doubtful  whether  it 
would  succeed  even  in  a  moderately  rough  sea. 


SAVERY   AND   NEWCOMEN  491 

Dissatisfied  at  the  reception  of  his  paddle-boat  by 
the  naval  authorities,  Savery  gave  no  more  thought  to 
it,  and  turned  his  attention  in  another  direction. 

The  miners  in  Cornwall  had  been  hampered  by  water 
flowing  into  their  workings.  When  the  upper  strata 
had  become  exhausted  they  were  tempted  to  go  deeper  in 
search  of  richer  ores.  Shafts  were  sunk  into  the  lodes, 
and  these  were  followed  underground,  but  very  speedily 
had  to  be  abandoned  through  the  influx  of  water. 
When  the  mines  were  of  no  great  depth  it  was  possible 
to  bale  the  water  out  by  hand  buckets ;  but  this  ex- 
pedient was  laborious  and  ineffectual,  as  the  water 
gained  on  the  men  who  baled.  Then  whims  were  intro- 
duced, and  by  means  of  horse-power  water  was  drawn 
up.  But  this  process  also  proved  to  be  but  partially 
effective :  in  one  pit  after  another  the  miners  were 
being  drowned  out. 

In  the  fen  lands  water  was  drawn  up  out  of  the  drains 
and  pumped  into  canals  by  means  of  windmills  ;  and  it 
is  to  this  that  Ben  Jonson  alludes  in  his  play  The 
Devil  is  an  Ass,  1616,  when  he  makes  Fitzdottrell  say  : 
"This  man  defies  the  devil  and  his  works.  He 
does  it  by  engines  and  devices,  he  !  He  has  .  .  .  mills 
will  spout  you  water  ten  miles  off!  All  Crowland  is 
ours,  wife ;  and  the  fens,  from  us,  in  Norfolk,  to  the 
utmost  bounds  in  Lincolnshire." 

But  the  use  of  wind  as  a  motive  power  does  not  seem 
to  have  occurred  to  the  Cornish  miners,  or  perhaps  it 
was  thought  to  be  too  uncertain  to  be  of  much  value 
for  pumping  purposes. 

It  is  possible  enough  that  Savery  had  read  the  sug- 
gestions of  the  Marquess  of  Worcester,  and  that  this 
ingenious  author  gave  him  the  first  hint  whither  to 
turn  to  find  the  force  required.  But  how  he  was  led  to 
steam  is  differently  stated. 


492  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Desaguliers  says  that  Savery's  own  account  was  this  : 
Having  drunk  a  flask  of  Florence  at  a  tavern,  and 
thrown  the  bottle  into  the  fire,  he  proceeded  to  wash  his 
hands,  when  he  noticed  that  the  little  wine  left  in  the 
flask  was  converted  into  steam.  He  took  the  vessel  by 
the  neck  and  plunged  its  mouth  into  the  water  in  the 
basin,  when,  the  steam  being  condensed,  the  water  was 
immediately  driven  up  into  the  bottle  by  the  atmo- 
spheric pressure. 

Switzer,  however,  who  was  very  intimate  with  Savery, 
gives  another  account.  He  says  that  the  first  hint 
from  which  he  took  the  engine  was  from  a  tobacco- 
pipe,  which  he  immersed  in  water  to  wash  or  cool  it. 
Then  he  noticed  how  that  by  the  rarefaction  of  the  air 
in  the  tube  by  the  heat,  the  gravitation  or  pressure 
of  the  external  air,  upon  the  condensation  of  the  steam, 
made  the  water  to  spring  through  the  tube  of  the 
pipe  in  a  most  surprising  manner. 

However  it  was  that  Savery  obtained  his  first  idea  of 
the  expansion  and  condensation  of  steam  and  of  atmo- 
spheric pressure,  he  had  now  before  him  a  new  and 
untried  power  with  which  to  deal,  and  he  was  obliged 
to  approach  it  by  several  tentative  efforts. 

Before  1696  he  had  constructed  several  steam  pump- 
ing engines  to  mines  in  Cornwall,  and  he  described 
these  as  already  working  in  his  book  entitled  The 
Miners'  Friend.^  He  took  with  him  a  model  to 
London  and  exhibited  it  to  William  III  in  1698,  and 
the  King  promoted  Savery's  application  for  a  patent, 
which  was  secured  in  July,  1698,  and  an  Act  was  passed 
confirming  it  in  the  ensuing  year. 

Papin  saw  Savery's  steam  engine,  when  exhibited 
before  the  Royal  Society,  he  also  witnessed  the  trial 

1  Reprinted  in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  Institute  of  Cornwall,  1904. 


SAVERY   AND   NEWCOMEN  493 

of  his  paddle-boat  on  the  Thames.  Returning  to 
Marburg,  of  which  university  he  was  professor,  he 
thought  over  what  he  had  seen,  and  it  occurred  to  him 
to  combine  the  two  contrivances  in  one,  and  to  apply 
Savery's  motive  power  in  the  pump  to  drive  Savery's 
paddle-wheels.  But  it  took  him  fifteen  years  to  fit 
up  a  boat  that  worked  to  his  satisfaction.  "It  is 
important/'  he  wrote  to  Liebnitz  on  7  July,  1707, 
"that  my  new  construction  of  vessel  should  be  put 
to  the  proof  in  a  seaport  like  London,  where  there  is 
depth  enough  to  apply  the  new  invention,  which,  by 
means  of  fire,  will  render  one  or  two  men  capable  of 
producing  more  effect  than  some  hundreds  of  rowers." 
Papin's  boat  that  he  intended  to  send  to  London  was 
destroyed  by  some  watermen,  who  feared  the  new 
invention  might  interfere  with  their  trade. 

Savery  proposed  to  apply  his  engine  to  various  pur- 
poses. One  was  to  pump  water  into  a  reservoir  for  the 
production  of  an  artificial  waterfall  for  driving  mills  or 
any  other  ordinary  machinery  ;  that  is  to  say,  by  means 
of  steam  he  would  lift  a  body  of  water  which  by  flow- 
ing back  might  drive  an  overshot  wheel,  from  the 
rotation  of  which  the  motive  power  for  any  other 
mechanical  operations  would  be  derived.  This,  how- 
ever, was  never  done,  and  Savery's  engine  continued 
to  be  employed  only  in  the  drainage  of  Cornish  mines. 
But  it  had  this  disadvantage,  that  it  could  not  heave 
water  but  to  about  eighty  feet,  and  as  the  depth  of 
mines  was  from  fifty  to  a  hundred  yards,  the  only  way 
to  exhaust  the  water  was  by  erecting  several  engines 
in  successive  stages,  one  above  the  other.  But  the 
expense  of  fuel  and  attendants  and  the  constant  danger 
of  explosions  rendered  it  clear  that  the  use  of  his 
engine  for  deep  mines  was  altogether  impracticable. 
Such  was  the  state  of  affairs  when  Thomas  Newcomen, 


494  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

a  blacksmith  and  ironmonger  of  Dartmouth,  turned 
his  attention  to  the  matter. 

Thomas  Newcomen  was  a  member  of  a  very  ancient 
family. 

In  the  church  of  Stoke  Fleming,  near  Dartmouth,  is  a 
brass  with  this  inscription  : — 

Elias  old  lies  here  intombed  in  grave, 

But  Newcomin  to  heaven's  habitation. 
In  knowledge  old,  in  zeal,  in  life  most  grave, 

Too  good  for  all  who  live  in  lamentation. 
Whose  sheep  and  seed  with  heavie  plaint  and  mone, 

Will  say  too  late,  Elias  old  is  gone  ! 
The  i3th  May,  1614. 

Over  this  inscription  is  a  shield  of  arms,  with  helmet, 
crest,  and  mantling,  bearing  the  arms  of  Newcomen, 
of  Saltfleetby,  in  Lincolnshire,  with  six  quarterings. 
This  is  the  monument  of  Elias  Newcomen,  rector  of 
Stoke  Fleming.  The  pedigree  of  the  family  commences 
with  Hugo  Newcomen,  of  Saltfleetby,  in  1189-99. 
Elias  Newcomen,  rector  of  Stoke  Fleming,  had  a  brother 
Robert,  who  went  to  Ireland  and  was  created  a  baronet. 

The  son  of  the  Rev.  Elias  was  Thomas,  who  settled 
in  Dartmouth,  and  this  Thomas  had  a  son  Elias,  who 
was  the  father  of  the  inventor  Thomas,  who  was  bap- 
tized at  Dartmouth  28  February,  1663-4.  He  married 
Hannah,  daughter  of  Peter  Waymouth,  of  Mai- 
borough,  Devon,  in  1705,  and  died  in  1729. 

He  left  two  sons,  Thomas  and  Elias ;  and  Thomas 
Newcomen,  son  of  the  inventor,  compiled  a  pedigree 
with  a  view  to  proving  his  claim  to  the  Irish  baronetcy, 
but  probably  abandoned  the  attempt  from  want  of 
funds  to  prosecute  the  claim.1 

Although  of  gentle  blood,  Thomas  Newcomen,  son 
of  Elias,  and  the  inventor,  was  a  tradesman  in  Dart- 

1  Worthy  (C.),  Devonshire  Parishes,  II,  pp.  371-4.     Exon.,  1888. 


i^Ss«J— •>.-    .---    • 


SKETCH  OF  NEWCOMIN  S  HOUSE, 
LOWER  STREET,  DARTMOUTH, 
BEFORE  IT  WAS  DEMOLISHED 


THE   CHIMNEY-PIECE   AT    WHICH    NEWCOMIN    SAT   WHEN    HE    INVENTED 
THE   STEAM-ENGINE 


SAVERY   AND   NEWCOMEN  495 

mouth,  variously  described  as  a  locksmith,  an  iron- 
monger, and  a  blacksmith  ;  and  probably  combining 
all  these  trades.  He  lived  in  a  picturesque  gabled 
house,  with  overhanging  stories  sustained  by  carved- 
oak  corbels,  in  Lower  Street.  As  the  street  was  very 
narrow,  it  was  taken  down  by  order  of  the  Local 
Board,  in  1864,  and  Mr.  Thomas  Lidstone  became  the 
purchaser  of  the  most  interesting  portions  of  the  old 
dwelling.  These  he  afterwards  erected  in  a  new  build- 
ing for  himself,  which  he  called  Newcomen  Cottage. 
This  Mr.  Lidstone  was  greatly  interested  in  the  history 
of  Newcomen,  and  in  1871  published  A  Few  Notes 
and  Queries  about  Newcomen,  and  in  1876  Notes  on  the 
Model  of  Newcomen' s  Steam  Engine  (1705). 

For  some  time  Thomas  Newcomen  carried  on  his 
experiments  in  secret  on  the  leads  of  his  house.  A 
letter  extant  of  the  time  is  quoted  by  Mr.  Lidstone. 

"  When  [Newcomen]  was  engaged  on  his  great 
work,  which  took  him  three  years  from  its  commence- 
ment until  it  was  completed,  and  was  kept  a  profound 
secret,  some  of  his  friends  would  press  Mrs.  Newcomen 
to  find  out  what  her  husband  was  engaged  about,  and, 
*  for  their  part,  they  would  not  be  satisfied  to  be  kept  in 
ignorance.'  Mrs.  Newcomen  replied,  *I  am  perfectly 
easy.  Mr.  Newcomen  cannot  be  employed  about  any- 
thing wrong  ;  and  I  am  fully  persuaded,  when  he 
thinks  proper,  he  will,  himself,  unasked,  inform  me.'" 

When  Thomas  Newcomen  had  perfected  his  engine 
he  associated  with  himself  Galley  or  Cawley,  a  Dart- 
mouth brazier,  and  How,  another  Dartmouth  man, 
in  applying  for  a  patent. 

Newcomen  was  a  man  of  reading,  and  was  in  corre- 
spondence with  Dr.  Hooke,  secretary  of  the  Royal 
Society.  There  are  to  be  found  among  Hooke's  papers, 
in  the  possession  of  the  Royal  Society,  some  notes  of 


496  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

observations  made  by  him  for  the  use  of  Newcomen  on 
Papin's  boasted  method  of  transmitting  to  a  great  dis- 
tance the  action  of  a  mill  by  means  of  pipes.  Papin's 
project  was  to  employ  the  mill  to  work  two  air  pumps 
of  great  diameter.  The  cylinders  of  these  pumps  were 
to  communicate  by  means  of  pipes  with  equal  cylinders 
furnished  with  pistons  in  the  neighbourhood  of  a 
mine.  The  pistons  were  to  be  connected  by  means 
of  levers  with  the  piston-rods  of  the  mine.  There- 
fore, when  the  piston  of  the  air  pumps  at  the  mill  was 
drawn  up  by  the  engine  the  corresponding  piston  at 
the  side  of  the  mine  would  be  pressed  down  by  the 
atmosphere,  and  thus  would  raise  the  piston-rod  in 
the  mine  and  throw  up  the  water.  It  would  appear 
from  these  notes  that  Dr.  Hooke  dissuaded  Newcomen 
from  erecting  a  machine  on  this  principle,  of  which  he 
saw  the  fallacy. 

It  is  highly  probable  that,  in  the  course  of  his 
labours  and  speculations,  it  occurred  to  Newcomen 
that  the  vacuum  he  so  much  desired  to  create  might  be 
produced  by  steam,  and  that  this  gave  rise  to  his  new 
principle,  and  the  construction  of  his  steam  engine. 
He  saw  the  defects  of  Savery's  engine,  and  laboured  to 
correct  them.  Savery,  however,  claimed  the  invention 
as  his  own,  which  lay  at  the  root  of  Newcomen's  im- 
provements ;  and  Newcomen,  being  a  Quaker,  and 
averse  from  contention,  and  moreover  glad  to  be 
assisted  by  Savery's  wide  circle  of  acquaintances,  was 
content  to  share  the  honours  and  the  profits  with  Savery. 

Switzer,  who  knew  both,  says  :  "  Mr.  Newcomen  was 
as  early  in  his  invention  as  Mr.  Savery  was  in  his  ; 
only,  the  latter  being  nearer  the  Court,  had  obtained 
the  patent  before  the  other  knew  it,  on  which  account 
Mr.  Newcomen  was  glad  to  come  in  as  a  partner  to  it."1 

1  Switzer,  Introduction  to  Hydrostatics  and  Hydraulics,  p.  342. 


REFERENCES 

y.y   rijiirci,    to   the  fcreril  Mr.fbcri, 

iHl         1 

,, 

The  Flr«  Momh  ander  the  BoyUr  w;,b  a  Ud  or  Door 

QfW  ABHHBHVI 

J 

The  Boyler  5  Feet,  6  Inches  Diameicr,  i  Feet  i  Inch  (ugh,  the  Cylindrical  pa"  4  Feet 
4  Incbet,  Content  nrar  ij  HogTheads. 

j  m 

1 

The  Neck  or  Throat  betwin  the  Boylet  and  the   Great  Cylhxltr. 

VI1 

4 

».   Brafi  Cylinder   7   Fret   10  Inctet  high,    21    lochd   Diameter,    to  Rariie  and 

r  j^b            1 

Condeafe  the  Steam. 

J 

The  Pip*  which  contains  the  Buoy,  4  Inches  Diameter. 

^P^^^T1 

6 

The  Mirier  Pipe*  that  Supplies  all  tbc  Offices,    4  Indir,  Diameter. 

^Et            \  ' 

7 

Tho  Injefting  Pipe  till'd  br  the   Mafler   Pipe  i,  and  Itopp'd  by  i  vi'.ve. 

• 

8 

The  Sinking  Pipe,  .  4  inohcs  Diameter,  tfut  carries  cir  the  hor  Want  or  Steam. 

• 

9 

A  Replcnilhing  Pipe  to  Thr  Boylcr  as  it  watles.wiih   .1   Cxk. 

•         L 

10 

A  Large  Pipe  w«h  a  Valve  t«  carry  the  Steam  oot  of  Dow. 

•         fc 

" 

The  Rrgularor'  moved  by  the  r    Y  y  «id   they  by   the  Brim.   u. 

•        r 

11 

Tbr  Sliding  Beam  mov'd  by  the  little  Arch  of  the   great  Beam. 

B         r 

'3 

Scoggei  »n,|   hit  Mate  who  work  Double  ro  the   Boy,  r  is  thr  Aiii  <<(  him 

B 

» 

Tke  great  Y  that  movei  the  little  y  and  Regulator,    ij  and    n   by  ihr  Hum    •  • 

•^H.                      Bl  j 

IJ 

Tl.e  little  j,  gjidcd  by  a  KoJ  of  Iran  from  the  Kri;u!.:rr. 

B-£<22I 

If 

Tbc  Ingoing  Hammer  or  F  that   movn  upon  it's  Atis  in  tbc  Raige   i; 

17 

Which  Barge  has    a  leaking  Pipe,   bef.des  .rhe  V.l.e   nam  '1   in  N'    j. 

H        t 

18 

the  Leaking   Pipe  i    Inch    Diameter,  iSe  Warer  tails   into    thr  VVr! 

m      i 

SO 

The  Watte  Pipe  that  carries  off  the  Water  from  the  Pilton. 

•      I 

31 

A   Pipe  which  covers  the  Pifton  nith  a  C»cl. 

B            J 

11 

The  Great  Sommers  thar  Support  the  Houfi  and  En;!*. 

• 

IJ 

A   Lead  CyOern.  i  Feet  fqune,  filld  by  the  Mafler  Pipe  I. 

B^j-^-g-fgJ, 

24 

The  Walle  Pipe   to   that  Cyflern. 

mfOSz^ 

SJ 

The  Great  Ballanc'd   Brain  that  Wotks  the  whole  Engine. 

Lcfrir  KB«iftj^BGwl 
•^K*Sii"^^52 

Tai 

The  Two  Archei  of  the  Great  Ballanced  Beam 

mSk 

•  i* 

Two  WooJen  Frames  to  (trp  rhe  Force  of  the  Great  Rillanced  Ream. 

m 

28 

Trie  Little  Arch   of  the  Great  Ba'.larc'd  Beim  that   movei   the  N°  u. 

m 

5? 

Two  Chains  Jix'd  to  the  Little  Arch,  one  drawl  down,  the   other  up. 

^k   Jj> 

JO 

Siaf  to  the  great  Arches  of  the  Ballanc  A  Beam. 

•  ^^/z& 

Jl 

Strong  tarn  of  fron  which  go  thrcojh  the  Arches  and  frcure  the  Chains. 

••1™^1 

33 

Large  fins  of  lion  going  through  the  Arch    to  (lop  the  t-crte  of  thr  Beam. 

^^B^?~ 

^•P 

3) 

34 

Very  ftrong  Cru.ni  rixed  to  Pillon  and  the  Plugg  and   h;th  Arches. 
Great  Springs  to  flnp  the  Force  of  the  Gteat  Ballanc'd  Bc/m. 

W^ 

35 

Tht  Stair  -Cafe  from  Bottom  to  the  Top. 

•^^-ir1  -•- 

3« 

The  A(h  •  hole  under  the  Fire,  even  with  the  Surface  of  rlie  Well. 

MBk1              B^Br-' 

37 

The  Door  -Cafe  to  the  Well   tbat  receive*  the  Water  from  the  Level. 

,  ;.     \        HK:'"  ' 

.•*8 

A  Stair  -Cafe  from  the  Fite  to  the  Engine   ami  to  the  Geat  Door-Cafe. 

H^^M      I  r     ^^^^' 

19 

The  Gable  -End  the  Gteat  Ballanc'd  Beam  goes  through. 

^^11    'f~    ^^^^-^ 

The  Cslepit  nrouth  11  Feet  or  more  above  the  Uvel. 

HHI  i  r  ~IH  j.  i 

41 

The  fli-Wing  of  rhe  Pump  woik  into,  halve*  in  the   Pit. 

'  ^^R:  f!  '  ^BjjJ 

M 

The  Mouth  of  the  Pomps  to  the  Level  of  the  Well.     . 

^•^Ril  '  Li  ~^^^B~r~~~T 

43 

The  Pump-«»ork  within  the  Pit. 

1^9  '  IB  '  • 

44 

A  Large  Cyftcrn.of  Wood  15  Yardi  or  Half  way  down  the  Pit. 

mttlm   Y'    H  '  '  ' 

4J 

The  :Pump  within  the  Houfe  that  FurnUhe,  all  the.  Offices  with  Water. 

IRfl      '  r      Bl    '  •   : 

«i 

The  Floor  over  the  Well. 

fi  >  '  H  '  i  ' 

4> 

Tbe  Great   Door  -Cafe  «  Feet  fquare,  to  bring'  in  the  'Boyler. 

!  )rfl*l    ^-',    ^^m  i! 

4* 

Star*  »  rti«  Gteat  Frame  over  the  Pit. 

vO^           ffin 

49 

The  Wind   to  put  them  down  gently  qr  fafelr. 

tjy  *^"j 

50 

A  TWn  -Barrel  over  the  Pit,  which   the  Line  goes  round,  not  to  flip. 

rWM     •  '    Ir^  ^^ 

5< 

The  Gajr  -  Pipe  to  know  the  Depth  of  the  Water   within   the  Bojler. 

!   ™-:  '  y  /  ^ 

iJ 

Two  CocVj  within  the  Pit  to  keep  the  Pump  work   moift. 

\  /   /    /  /  f» 

n 

A  Utile  Bench  with  a  Bat  to  reft  when  they  are  weaty. 

V^^^^v            /fiffi- 

J* 

A  Man  going  to  Reptenilh  the  Fire. 

ffijSj&Rfifay//  f 

.«• 

The  Peck  -Ax  and  Proaker. 

«vS^^^  /  $ 

J*- 

Tta  Ccatf*  at  A»il  of  lie  Great  BallancM  Beam.  H,<>4  Ptfttifa  ./?  d"">  /"  •• 

tll,*«S,X~^rs,     f'4*.          f"*'       &f***'fir»" 

Reproduced  by  kind pennissii 


/lie    .STEAM    KN<;/\K    j    ^ 

>tvr  Dudlcij  Cdfttc   IttM-iih-d  !»j  ! 
r  Newonieii 


SAVERY   AND   NEWCOMEN  497 

Savery  had  created  his  vacuum  by  the  condensation 
of  steam  in  a  closed  vessel  by  dashing  cold  water 
against  it.  Papin  had  created  his  vacuum  by  exhaust- 
ing the  air  in  a  cylinder,  fitted  with  a  piston,  by  means 
of  an  air  pump.  What  Newcomen  did  was  to  combine 
both  systems.  Instead  of  employing  Savery's  closed 
vessel,  he  made  use  of  Papin's  cylinder  fitted  with  a 
piston,  but  worked  by  the  condensation  of  steam,  still 
employing  the  clumsy  system  of  dashing  cold  water 
against  the  cylinder. 

Whilst  the  engine  was  still  in  its  trial  state  an 
accident  occurred  that  led  to  another  change  in  the 
mode  of  condensation.  It  was  this.  In  order  to  keep 
the  cylinder  as  free  from  air  as  possible,  great  pains 
were  taken  to  prevent  it  from  passing  down  with  the 
piston,  and  to  keep  the  cylinder  air-tight,  water  was 
employed  to  lie  above  the  place  where  the  piston  passed 
up  or  down. 

At  one  of  the  early  trials  the  inventors  were  sur- 
prised to  see  the  engine  make  several  rapid  strokes, 
and  on  looking  into  the  cause  found  that  there  was 
a  small  hole  in  the  piston,  which  allowed  a  jet  of 
cold  water  to  penetrate  within,  and  that  this  acted  as  a 
rapid  condenser  of  the  steam. 

A  new  light  suddenly  broke  upon  Newcomen.  The 
idea  of  condensing  the  steam,  and  so  producing  a 
vacuum  by  injecting  cold  water  into  the  receiver, 
instead  of  splashing  it  against  the  outside,  at  once 
occurred  to  him  ;  and  he  proceeded  to  embody  the 
principle  which  this  accident  had  suggested,  as  part 
of  his  machine. 

Another  improvement  was  due  to  another  accident,  if 
so  it  may  be  termed.  To  keep  the  machine  in  action 
a  man  or  boy  had  to  be  employed  in  turning  alter- 
nately two  taps,  one  admitting  the  steam  into  the 

2    K 


498  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

cylinder,  the  other  admitting  the  cold  jet  into  it  to 
condense  it. 

The  story  has  been  often  told  how  that  a  boy  named 
Humphry  Potter  was  planted  beside  the  engine  to  turn 
the  cocks,  and  found  that  this  was  excessively  tedious 
and  monotonous  work,  and  being  a  shrewd  lad,  ob- 
serving the  alternate  ascent  and  descent  of  the  beam 
above  his  head,  worked  by  the  piston,  he  thought  that 
by  attaching  to  the  beam  the  levers  that  governed  the 
cocks,  that  would  do  the  work  for  him.  The  result 
was  the  contrivance  of  what  he  called  the  scoggan, 
consisting  of  a  catch,  worked  at  first  by  strings, 
and  afterwards  by  rods,  that  did  the  work  automati- 
cally. This  story  has  however  been  discredited.  See 
Galloway's  Steam  Engine,  1881. 

"Thus,  step  by  step,"  says  Mr.  Smiles,  "  New- 
comen's  engine  grew  in  power  and  efficiency,  and 
became  more  and  more  complete  as  a  self-acting 
machine.  It  will  be  observed  that,  like  all  other  in- 
ventions, it  was  not  the  product  of  any  one  man's 
ingenuity,  but  of  many.  One  contributed  one  im- 
provement, and  another  another.  The  essential  fea- 
tures of  the  atmospheric  engine  were  not  new.  The 
piston  and  cylinder  had  been  known  as  long  ago  as  the 
time  of  Hero  (222-205  B.C.).  The  expansive  force  of 
steam  and  the  creation  of  a  vacuum  by  its  condensa- 
tion had  been  known  to  the  Marquess  of  Worcester, 
Savery,  Papin,  and  many  more. 

"  Newcomen  merely  combined  in  his  machine  the  result 
of  their  varied  experience,  and,  assisted  by  the  persons 
who  worked  with  him,  down  to  the  engine-boy  Potter, 
he  advanced  the  inventions  several  important  stages, 
so  that  the  steam-engine  was  no  longer  a  toy  or  a  scien- 
tific curiosity,  but  had  become  a  powerful  machine 
capable  of  doing  useful  work."2 

2  Smiles,  Lives  of  Boulton  and  Watt^  pp.  62-8.     London,  1865. 


SAVERY  AND  NEWCOMEN  499 

In  1712  Newcomen  and  his  partner,  Cawley,  con- 
tracted to  erect  an  engine  at  Wolverhampton.  Next 
they  erected  two  engines  near  Newcastle.  The  fourth 
was  put  up  at  Leeds  in  1714.  The  fifth  was  erected  in 
Cornwall  at  Wheal  Fortune  in  1720,  and  was  on  a 
larger  scale  than  any  previously  constructed,  having  a 
cylinder  of  nearly  four  feet  in  diameter,  and  its  per- 
formance was  regarded  as  extraordinary,  since  it  made 
fifteen  strokes  a  minute,  and  drew  up  at  each  stroke  a 
hogshead  of  water  from  a  depth  of  180  feet. 

Thomas  Savery  was  a  captain  of  military  engineers 
in  1702,  and  in  1705  he  published  a  translation  of 
Cohorn's  work  on  fortification.  In  the  same  year  he 
was  appointed  Treasurer  of  the  Hospital  for  Sick  and 
Wounded  Seamen.  In  1714,  by  the  favour  of  Prince 
George  of  Denmark,  he  was  given  the  surveyorship  to 
the  waterworks  at  Hampton  Court ;  but  he  died  in  the 
course  of  the  following  year,  15  May,  1715. 

The  date  of  Newcomen's  death  has  been  already 
mentioned.  Engines  of  his  pattern  continued  to  be 
erected  long  after  his  death,  till  there  was  scarcely  a 
tin  or  copper  mine  of  any  importance  in  Cornwall  that 
had  not  one  or  more  of  such  engines  at  work,  and  the 
gaunt  and  ugly  ruins  of  the  engine-houses  disfigure 
the  landscape  throughout  the  mining  districts  of  Corn- 
wall. 

In  1882  Louis  Figuier  produced  a  five-act  play  at  the 
Gaiete  in  Paris  on  Denis  Papin.  According  to  this 
version,  Papin,  who  was  a  Huguenot,  having  fled  to 
London  with  his  family  after  the  Revocation  of  the 
Edict  of  Nantes,  abandoned  wife  and  family  to  go  to 
Germany,  there  to  pursue  his  scientific  investigations. 
When  skimming  a  pot,  he  noticed  the  force  that  raised 
the  lid,  and  conceived  the  idea  of  the  power  of  steam. 

He  next  set  about  contriving  a  model  of  a  steamboat, 


500  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

and  as  that  was  successful,  he  constructed  another  on  a 
large  scale  on  the  Weser,  which  was  hacked  to  pieces 
by  the  boatmen,  who  were  incited  to  this  act  of  vandal- 
ism by  a  harpy  of  the  name  of  Barbara.  Papin  re- 
turned to  London,  where  his  wife  and  son,  he  learned, 
had  died  during  his  ten  years'  absence,  and  there, 
when  reduced  to  the  utmost  distress,  he  learned  that  a 
Dartmouth  locksmith  named  Thomas  Newcomer  [stc] 
had  invented  an  engine  in  which  steam  was  employed 
as  a  motive  power.  Papin  then  begged  his  way  to 
Dartmouth,  and  recognized  in  Newcomer  his  son, 
whom  he  had  supposed  to  be  dead.  The  young  man 
had  been  led  to  this  invention  by  information  he  had 
found  in  drawings  and  writings  of  his  father  that  had 
been  left  behind  when  he  went  to  Germany.  Papin 
did  not  make  himself  known,  however,  but  allowed  his 
son  to  reap  all  the  honour  and  reward  of  his  discovery. 
In  the  last  scene  Newcomer's  pump  is  being  tried  on 
the  Thames  in  the  presence  of  the  Lord  Mayor  and 
Corporation  of  London,  when  Barbara  and  the  Weser 
boatmen,  having  crossed  the  " silver  streak"  for  the 
purpose,  cripple  the  machine  by  cutting  some  cord 
that  prevents  the  valve  opening,  and  Papin,  who  has 
perceived  this,  rushes  forward  to  avert  an  explosion, 
and  falls  a  victim  to  his  generous  devotedness,  for  the 
boiler  bursts  just  as  he  reaches  it ;  he  dies  in  his  son's 
arms,  and  Newcomer  proclaims  to  the  Lord  Mayor  and 
the  world  generally  that  all  the  honour  of  the  invention 
and  application  of  steam  is  due  to  his  father,  a  French- 
man— a  very  satisfactory  conclusion  for  a  French  audi- 
ence.1 

The  French  continue  to  claim  for  their  countryman 
the  glory  of  being  the  inventor  of  the  modern  steam 

1  Pengfelly  (W.),  "Notes  on  Slips,"  in  Transactions  of  the  Devonshire 
Association,  1882. 


SAVERY  AND   NEWCOMEN  501 

engine.  The  system  of  the  Marquess  of  Worcester 
was  propulsion  of  cold  water  by  the  introduction  of  a 
blast  of  steam.  Papin  suggested  the  use  of  a  vacuum 
formed  by  condensation  of  steam,  so  as  to  work  a 
piston  ;  and  this  vacuum  in  a  cylinder  he  formed  first 
by  exploding  gunpowder  in  it ;  and,  as  this  did  not 
answer,  by  removing  the  fire  every  time  the  condensa- 
tion was  required — a  clumsy  and  impracticable  method. 
Savery  formed  the  vacuum  first  by  dashing  cold  water 
against  the  cylinder,  then  by  forming  an  outer  ring  of 
cold  water  about  the  receiver ;  but  this  did  not  answer 
well,  as  this  body  of  water  rapidly  heated.  Moreover, 
he  did  not  adopt  the  piston,  but  drew  up  the  water 
from  mines  by  suction.  Then  came  Newcomen,  who 
adapted  the  piston  in  a  cylinder  to  Savery's  engine ; 
and  finally  Newcomen  and  Savery  together  discovered 
how  to  chill  and  condense  the  steam  by  an  injection  of 
cold  water.  Papin  undoubtedly  suggested  the  leading 
lines  on  which  the  steam  engine  was  to  be  constructed, 
but  he  was  unable  effectually  to  apply  his  ideas  or  to 
rectify  defects  in  such  machines  as  he  suggested.  The 
solution  was  due  to  Newcomen  and  Savery. 


ANDREW  BRICE,  PRINTER 

A  DREW    BRICE,   an    Exeter    printer,   was 
born    21    August,    1692,     "  in    the    house 
where  Mary  Hellier  now  lives  [1719]  near 
the  Butcherow."1     He  was  educated  to  be 
a  dissenting  minister,  and  received  a  good  grounding 
in  classical  studies.     But  owing  to  the  pinched  circum- 
stances of  his  father,  and  probably  also  his  own  disin- 
clination  for  the   pastorate,   he  was  withdrawn   from 
school,  and  at  the  age  of  seventeen  apprenticed  to  a 
printer.     His  earliest  biographer2  states  : — 

"  Mr.  Bliss,  a  printer  of  Exeter,  wanting  a  person 
capable  of  correcting  the  press,  young  Brice  (aged  17) 
was  proposed  to,  and  accepted  by  him  as  an  apprentice 
for  the  term  of  five  years.  However,  having  long 
before  his  service  expired  inconsiderately  contracted 
marriage,  and  being  unable  to  support  a  family  of  a 
wife  and  two  children,  he  enlisted  as  a  soldier  in  order 
to  cancel  his  indentures ;  and,  by  the  interest  of  his 
friends,  very  soon  procured  his  discharge."  Bliss  in 
his  paper,  the  Mercury,  30  December,  1715,  inserted 
this  advertisement :  "  Whereas  Andrew  Brice,  who  is 
my  Lawful  Apprentice,  hath,  without  any  Cause,  in  the 
midst  of  a  Flush  of  Business,  and  when  I  was  disabled 
by  Illness  from  working  myself,  roguishly  absconded 
and  deserted  my  Service  to  my  present  great  Loss  of 
Businress  [sic],  and  Damage,  this  is  to  forbid  all  Persons 

1  Entries  in  an  old  Bible,  in  the  Western  Antiquary  >  1885,  p.  196. 

2  Universal  Magazine  for  1781. 

502 


ANDREW   BRICE,    PRINTER 
Reproduced  by  kind  permission  from  a  print  in  the  possession  of  Dr.  Brnshfield 


ANDREW   BRICE,    PRINTER  503 

to  entertain  or  Employ  the  said  Andrew  Brice  in  any 
Business,  or  upon  any  Account,  whatsoever;  for,  acting 
by  the  Advice  of  the  Learned  in  the  Law,  I  am  resolved, 
upon  Notice  thereof  to  prosecute  such  as  shall  so  do.  If 
he  returns  not  to  my  Business  in  a  very  short  Time,  I 
shall  apply  myself  to  the  Magistrates  of  this  City  for 
Justice  in  this  Case. 

"  N.B.  I  am  inform'd  his  dependence  is  on  Mr. 
Bishop ;  but  I  am  greatly  deceiv'd,  if  He  is  not  a 
Person  of  more  sense ;  and  better  understands  what 
belongs  to  an  Apprentice,  than  to  encourage  such  a 
Rascal  as  shall  so  basely  leave  his  Master  without  the 
least  Cause.  JOE  BLISS." 

What  became  of  Brice  during  the  next  two  years  is 
not  known,  but  in  1717  he  was  back  in  Exeter,  for  on 
22  March  of  that  year  Bliss  inserted  the  following  para- 
graph in  his  Protestant  Mercury:  "N.B.  Having 
received  reiterated  Assurances  from  several  Gentlemen, 
that,  notwithstanding  that  Villain  Brice's  Opposition 
against  me,  they  are  firmly  resolved  to  continue  in  my 
Interest :  To  oblige  them,  therefore,  and  the  rest  of  my 
Customers,  I  shall  for  the  future  publish  my  News  on 
no  worse  Paper  than  this,  Price  One  Penny.  I  can't 
forbear  remarking,  how  that  sorry  Rascal  has  opened 
his  Printing  Press  with  a  most  rediculous  and  shabby 
Advertisement,  and  a  shameful  obscene  bawdy  Ballad, 
which  deserves  to  be  burnt.  Curious  Specimens  of 
Rare  Genius  and  Great  Capacity." 

It  is  evident  from  this  that  Brice  had  already  taken 
up  his  permanent  abode  in  Exeter,  and  had  established 
himself  there  with  a  printing  press  of  his  own.  His 
place  of  business  was  in  Southgate  Street,  and  he 
started  a  paper  of  his  own,  the  Postmaster,  or  Loyal 
Mercury.  In  the  "Journals  of  the  House  of  Commons" 
we  find  under  date  19  December,  1718:  "Complaint 


504  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

having  been  made  to  the  House,  as  a  printed  Pamphlet, 
intituled  The  Postmaster,  or  the  Loyal  Mercury ',  Friday, 
November  the  28th,  iji8  ;  Exon.  Printed  by  Andrew 
Brice,  at  the  head  of  the  Serge  Market  in  Southgate 
Street.  Wherein  the  Resolutions  and  Proceedings  of 
this  House  are  falsely  represented  and  printed,  in 
Contempt  of  the  Order,  and  in  Breach  of  the  Privilege 
of  this  House;  the  said  Pamphlet  was  delivered  in  at 
the  Clerk's  Table;  and  several  Paragraphs  thereof 
being  read  :  Ordered  That  the  said  Andrew  Brice  do 
attend  this  House  upon  Wednesday  the  i4th  January." 

On  the  day  appointed  Brice  presented  himself  at  the 
Bar,  and  it  was  ordered  "that  the  said  Andrew  Brice  be, 
for  the  said  Breach  of  Privilege,  taken  into  Custody  of 
the  Sergeant  of  Arms."  Next  day,  having  acknow- 
ledged his  offence,.  "  he  was  accordingly  brought  to 
the  Bar  :  when  he,  upon  his  Knees,  received  a  Repri- 
mand from  Mr.  Speaker ;  and  was  discharged  out  of 
Custody,  paying  his  Fees." 

Brice  introduced  a  new  feature  into  his  paper  by 
devoting  the  first  two  pages  to  some  tale  or  narrative 
of  voyages,  continued  from  week  to  week,  in  the  style 
of  the  French  feuilleton.  His  paper  terminated  its 
career  on  Friday,  23  April,  1725,  owing  to  the  imposi- 
tion of  a  Stamp  Duty  of  a  penny  for  every  whole 
sheet ;  but  on  the  ensuing  3Oth  April,  in  the  same 
year,  appeared  a  new  journal  from  his  press,  entitled 
Brice' s  Weekly  Journal,  price  twopence. 

In  the  meantime  Samuel  Farley,  an  enterprising 
printer,  had  started  a  rival  paper,  Farley's  Exeter 
Journal,  and  this  seriously  interfered  with  the  sale  of 
Brice's  Journal.  This  led  to  bickering  that  reached  a 
climax  in  1726,  when  there  ensued  an  open  quarrel, 
and  Brice  was  obliged  to  publish  an  apology.  Accord- 
ing to  his  own  admission,  he  had  acted  in  an  injudicious 


ANDREW    BRICE,    PRINTER  505 

and  unjustifiable  manner.  However,  he  wrote  :  "The 
Parleys  have  vauntingly  given  out,  That  they  will 
totally  effect  my  Overthrow,  and  that  I  am  now  totter- 
ing on  the  Brink  of  Destruction  ;  For  that  Sam  the 
younger  is  now  actually  gone  to  London  to  swear  some 
dreadful  Thing  (I  know  not  what)  against  me,"  and  he 
intimates  that  he  may  possibly  be  compelled  to  shift  his 
quarters  to  Bristol. 

In  1727  Brice  energetically  took  up  the  case  of  the 
treatment  of  insolvent  debtors.  In  his  Journal  of 
8  September  appeared  "  The  Case  of  Mr.  Charles 
Lanyon,  &c.,  of  Newlyn,  near  Penzance,  Merchant,  a 
Prisoner  in  the  Sheriff's  Ward  in  St.  Thomas's,"  with 
a  copy  of  a  letter  to  Mr.  George  Glanvill,  gaoler  of 
this  prison,  which  had  been  disregarded  by  him  ;  and 
a  postscript  commencing  :  "  We  have  desired  Mr.  Brice, 
in  pure  Commiseration,  to  insert  this  Account  in  his 
Journal,  that  the  World  may  be  made  sensible  of  our 
Sufferings." 

On  20  October  he  contrasted  the  manner  in  which 
Dally,  the  keeper  of  Southgate  Prison,  treated  those 
committed  to  his  charge  with  that  of  Glanvill  at 
St.  Thomas's.  "  Be  it  known  to  my  Country  Readers, 
that  that  very  worthy  Governor  is  as  distinguishable 
for  Humanity,  Good-nature,  Charity,  and  Indulgence 
to  the  poor  People  under  his  Guard  and  Care,  as  He  in 
St.  Thomas's  is  for  Revenge,  Savageness,  Cruelty, 
and  a  long  et  ccetera  of  abhorred  Things  which  want  a 
Name." 

Brice  doubtless  had  good  cause  to  bring  before  the 
public  the  atrocious  manner  in  which  insolvent  debtors 
were  treated,  but  he  did  this  in  an  intemperate  manner, 
and  with  personal  abuse  that  Glanvill  could  not  allow 
to  pass  without  placing  the  matter  in  the  hands  of  his 
lawyer,  and  legal  proceedings  were  taken  against  Brice. 


506  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

In  his  Journal  of  10  November  is  the  remarkable 
paragraph :  ' '  This  is  to  give  Notice,  that  the  poor 
Printer  hereof,  who  expects  never  to  be  free  from 
Trouble  till  Death  or  Dishonesty  takes  him  under 
Tutelage,  was  last  Week  sued  by  the  most  merciful 
Governour  of  St.  Thomas's.  But  he  dares  lay  2d.  ob. 
neither  he  nor  his  Councel  knows  for  what.  Well ! 
the  Comfort  is  he  fears  none  but  God.  .  .  .  How- 
ever, being  just  going  to  drink,  Mr.  Grandvile,  my 
humble  Service  t'ye  ! " 

Up  to  the  end  of  the  year  Brice  continued  to  hammer 
at  Glanvill ;  one  of  his  leaders,  being  a  specially 
vituperative  one,  he  repeated  twice  ;  and  in  his  paper 
of  16  August,  1728,  he  accused  Glanvill  of  riding 
round  the  country,  visiting  the  gentlemen  empanelled 
on  the  jury  for  the  trial  of  the  case,  to  endeavour  to 
prejudice  and  influence  them  in  his  own  favour  against 
Brice.  After  several  adjournments  the  case  was  tried  ; 
and  judgment  was  given  against  Andrew  Brice,  and  a 
fine  and  costs  imposed,  amounting  to  a  large  sum. 

Dr.  Brushfield  says  truly:  "That  Brice's  language 
was  strong,  outspoken,  coarse,  and  at  times  savage,  no 
one  will  dispute — he  was  undoubtedly  a  hard  hitter, 
and  went  straight  to  the  mark.  In  reflecting  upon 
him,  due  regard  must  be  had  to  the  coarse  period  in 
which  he  lived.  Let  any  one  read  the  accounts  given 
by  the  debtors  themselves  and  others  (in  Brice's 
Weekly  Journal^  8  September,  1717,  19  July,  and 
6  December,  1728) ;  and  if  they  even  make  allowance 
for  some  exaggeration,  let  them  ask  themselves  whether 
anything  could  be  more  revolting  than  Glanvill's  treat- 
ment of  the  debtors,  and  whether  Brice's  language 
could  be  too  strong  in  his  condemnation  of  such  prac- 
tices. In  such  a  case,  truth,  if  vigorously  expressed, 
was  a  libel  in  law.  His  active  sympathies  were  roused 


ANDREW   BRICE,    PRINTER  507 

by,  what  appeared  to  him  to  be,  the  gross  injustice  and 
cruelty  of  the  keeper  of  St.  Thomas's  Ward.  His  en- 
thusiasm never  wavered  in  the  support  of  what  he 
deemed  to  be  a  good  cause  ;  and  no  subject  did  he  pro- 
secute more  vigorously  than  that  of  rendering  some 
assistance  to  the  confined  debtors.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, trouble,  expense,  and  future  consequences  were 
never  considered  by  him." 

Brice  could  not  and  would  not  pay  his  fine  ;  and  it 
has  been  asserted  that  he  was  sent  to  prison.  This, 
however,  seems  not  to  have  been  the  case.  He  retired 
into  his  own  house,  and  remained  there  in  voluntary 
confinement  for  seven  years ;  where  he  still  continued 
to  produce  his  Journal.  That  of  27  February,  1730, 
contains  some  information  about  him  in  a  leading 
article.  After  alluding  to  "  the  vile  Prosecution  com- 
menced against"  him  u  near  Two  Years  and  a  Half 
since,"  he  thus  refers  to  the  consequences  of  the  action: 
"  I've  the  sad  Choice  of  paying  that  other  Honourable 
Man,  my  gentle  Adversary  above  a  Hundred  Pounds, 
go  to  Gaol  (the  Den  of  Legion  Woe),  or  retire  from 
and  guard  against  the  horrid  Catchpoles'  rapacious 
Clutches.  The  first  none  who  can't  instruct  me  hon- 
estly to  get  the  Sum  will,  I  presume,  advise  me  to  com- 
ply with  ;  the  second  I've  a  natural  Antipathy  against ; 
and  therefore  the  latter,  how  much  soever  it  may  rub 
against  the  grain,  I'm  forced  to  submit  to."  Then 
follows  the  first  announcement  of  a  poem  he  had  com- 
posed during  his  retirement,  entitled  Freedom;  and 
this  had  appended  to  it  a  notice  of  another  poem, 
" already  printed,  to  be  published  very  soon,"  entitled 
"  BEHEMOTH,  or,  The  horrid  bloody  Monster  of  St. 
Thomas's  (an  Island  scituate  directly  under  the  Equi- 
noctial Line,  between  Guinea  and  Lower  Ethiopia, 
subject  to  the  Portuguese)."  This,  of  course,  was 


508  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

another  attack  upon  Glanvill,  but  no  copy  of  it  is  now 
known  to  exist. 

Whilst  preparing  for  the  publication  of  Freedom  he 
lost  his  mother  and  wife,  and  this  delayed  its  issue. 

Brice  took  advantage  of  every  Sunday,  a  day  on 
which  debtors  could  not  be  arrested,  to  walk  abroad. 
Many  attempts  were  made  to  seize  him,  but  all  failed. 
He  kept  himself  too  close,  and  was  too  much  on  his 
guard.  On  one  occasion  a  bailiff  named  Spry  dis- 
guised himself  as  a  clergyman  and  entered  his  office 
under  pretence  that  he  had  got  a  book  he  desired  to 
have  published  by  Brice ;  but  that  worthy  did  not 
allow  himself  to  be  seen. 

The  profits  from  the  sale  of  his  poem  on  "  Freedom  " 
were  said  to  have  been  sufficiently  large  to  enable  him 
to  compound  with  his  creditors  and  regain  his  liberty. 
After  this  he  opened  a  printing  press  at  Truro,  the  first 
in  Cornwall.  But  the  venture  did  not  succeed,  and  he 
soon  gave  it  up. 

From  the  outset  of  his  career  Brice  had  exhibited  a 
strong  partiality  for  the  drama,  and  when  players  came 
to  Exeter  they  were  hospitably  received  at  his  table. 

In  1743,  John  Wesley  visited  Exeter  for  the  second 
time,  and  preached  in  the  open  air.  He  probably  pro- 
duced considerable  effect,  for  some  time  after  this  visit 
the  local  comedians  were  prosecuted  as  vagrants  and 
forced  to  give  up  their  theatre  in  Waterbeer  Street. 
Thereupon  the  Methodists  purchased  it  and  converted 
it  into  a  meeting-house.  Brice  at  once  took  up  the 
cause  of  the  players,  and  in  1745  published  a  poem 
entitled  "The  Play-house  Church,  or  new  Actors  of 
Devotion."  In  consequence  of  this,  says  the  early  bio- 
grapher of  Brice,  "the  mob  were  so  spirited  up  that 
the  Methodists  were  soon  obliged  to  abandon  the  place 
to  its  former  possessors,  whom  Mr.  Brice  now  protected 


ANDREW   BRICE,    PRINTER  509 

by  engaging  them  as  his  covenant-servants  to  perform 
gratis." 

All  the  playing  fraternity  who  visited  Exeter  became 
acquainted  with  Brice,  and  while  valuing  his  hospi- 
tality and  support,  could  not  fail  to  notice  and  be 
amused  at  his  eccentricities.  When  Garrick  produced 
Col  man's  play,  The  Clandestine  Marriage,  in  1766, 
Dr.  Oliver  says:  " There  was  some  hesitation  what  tone 
would  be  most  suitable  to  Lord  Ogleby — it  was  decided 
at  last  that  Mr.  King  should  assume  Mr.  A.  Brice's." 
The  part,  an  important  one,  was  originally  intended 
for  Garrick  :  but  on  his  declining  it,  Mr.  King  was 
requested  to  undertake  it.  He  at  first  hesitated,  but 
finally  consented,  and  made  a  great  hit  with  it.  "  Mr. 
King— as  Lord  Ogleby — seemed  to  give  a  relief  and 
glow  to  the  character  which  was  not  intended  by  the 
author."1 

The  character  does  not  accord  with  what  we  know  of 
Brice.  Lord  Ogleby  is  a  hypochondriac,  a  fop,  an 
aged  flirt,  who  leers  at  the  ladies  and  makes  up  his 
complexion.  "I  have  rather  too  much  of  the  lily  this 
morning  in  my  complexion,"  he  says  to  his  valet ;  "  a 
faint  tincture  of  the  rose  will  give  a  delicate  spirit  to 
my  eyes  for  the  day."  He  converses  in  French,  he 
chirps  out  stanzas,  whilst  twinged  with  rheumatism. 
"  Love  is  the  idol  of  my  heart,"  says  the  old  fop,  "and 
the  demon,  interest,  sinks  before  him."  But  that  there 
is  a  strong  vein  of  sarcasm  in  Lord  Ogleby,  there  seems 
to  be  no  element  in  the  character  that  agrees  with  that 
of  Brice. 

We  now  arrive  at  the  production  of  the  Grand 
Gazetteer,  the  work  upon  which  rests  principally  Brice's 
claim  to  literary  celebrity.  Upon  it  he  expended  much 
labour  and  money.  "  The  very  Books  by  us  us'd  in 

1  Memoirs  of  P.  Stockdale,  I,  313-14.     London,  1809. 


5io  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  composition  .  .  .  cost  far  above  £100,"  he  says. 
It  was  issued  in  forty-four  shilling  numbers,  each  con- 
sisting of  thirty-two  pages,  and  was  begun  in  1751, 
and  the  last  number  appeared  in  1755.  This  was  one 
of  the  earliest  gazetteers  published  in  England,  and 
certainly  the  most  important.  Writing  fifty  years  after 
its  completion,  Dyer,  the  Exeter  bookseller,  in  1805, 
termed  it,  at  that  date,  "the  best,  the  most  compre- 
hensive, and  even  the  most  learned  Gazetteer  in  the 
English  language  "  ;  but  if  we  may  trust  Brice  in  the 
matter,  he  lost  money  on  the  publication. 

His  last  published  work  was  an  heroic-comic  poem 
entitled  The  Mobiad,  being  a  description  of  an  Exeter 
election  "  by  Democritus  Juvenal,  Moral  Professor 
of  Ridicule  and  plaguy-pleasant  Fellow  of  Sting- 
tickle  College;  vulgarly  Andrew  Brice."  London, 
1770. 

Dr.  Brushfield  has  shown  good  reasons  for  attrib- 
uting to  Andrew  Brice,  assisted  by  Benjamin  Bowring, 
of  Chumleigh,  the  composition  of  The  Exmoor  Scold- 
ing and  Courtship  that  first  appeared  in  B rice's 
Journal.1 

Brice's  latter  days  were  spent  in  strife  with  his  nephew, 
Thomas  Brice,  who  was  connected  with  the  Exeter 
Journal,  and  with  Mr.  Andrews  and  B.  Trewman,  who 
had  been  employed  in  his  printing  office,  and  who  left 
him  and  started  a  new  paper  on  their  own  account, 
the  Exeter  Mercury. 

He  was  a  disappointed  man  in  his  family.  He  was 
twice  married,  but  both  his  wives,  and  all  his  children, 
died  before  him.  He  himself  died  of  general  decay,  at 
the  age  of  eighty-three,  on  7  November,  1773.  In  his 
will  he  desired  that  he  might  be  attended  to  his  grave 

1  "The  Exmoor  Scolding  and  Courtship,"  by  T.  N.  Brushfield,  M.D., 
in  the  Transactions  of  the  Devonshire  Association  for  1888. 


ANDREW   BRICE,    PRINTER  511 

by  his  brother  masons  of  St.  John's  Lodge.  His  re- 
mains were  removed  to  the  Apollo  Room,  where  during 
his  lifetime  he  had  often  presided  at  masonic  gather- 
ings, and  there  they  were  exposed  for  several  days 
on  show  to  the  public,  who  were  charged  a  shilling 
a  head  to  view  them.  The  money  raised  was  to  defray 
the  expenses  of  his  funeral. 

On  Sunday,  14  November,  "the  morrow  of  St. 
B  rice's  day,"  the  interment  took  place  in  St.  Bartholo- 
mew's churchyard.  Two  hundred  members  of  various 
lodges,  in  masonic  costume,  and  with  all  their  regalia, 
together  with  several  hundred  of  the  inhabitants,  walked 
in  procession  from  the  New  Inn  to  the  grave.  A 
funeral  elegy,  written  by  J.  E.  Whitaker  and  set  to 
music  by  J.  E.  Gaudry,  was  performed  at  the  grave  to 
the  accompaniment  of  orchestral  music.  No  monu- 
mental stone  marks  the  spot  where  he  lies,  but  the 
following  epitaph,  as  suitable,  is  given  by  Polwhele  : — 

Here  lies  Andrew  Brice,  the  old  Exeter  printer, 
Whose  life  lengthen'd  out  to  the  depth  of  its  winter  ; 
Of  his  brethren  masonic  he  took  his  last  leave, 
Inviting  them  all  to  a  lodge  at  his  grave, 
Who,  to  show  their  respect  and  obedience,  came  hither, 
(Or  rather,  the  mob  and  the  masons  together) 
Sung  a  hymn  to  his  praise  in  a  funeral  tone, 
But  disliking  his  lodging,  return'd  to  their  own. 

Dr.  Brushfield  thus  gives  his  appreciation  of  Andrew 
Brice  :  "The  character  of  Andrew  Brice,  although  very 
pronounced,  is  by  no  means  an  easy  one  to  estimate  or 
to  describe.  His  natural  good  abilities,  aided  by  a 
good  education,  placed  him  in  a  position  far  above  his 
compeers,  and  we  can  well  understand  Polwhele's  re- 
mark on  the  Parleys  being  '  no  match  for  the  learning 
and  abilities  of  Brice.'  That  he  possessed  literary 
talents  of  a  high  order  is  shown  by  his  article  on 
Exeter  in  his  Gazetteer.  Of  another  order  of  com- 


512  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

position,  and  as  displaying  his  versatility  in  a  praise- 
worthy direction,  some  of,  his  newspaper  articles  may 
be  mentioned.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  when  excited 
by  political  animosity  or  by  private  enmity,  he  appears 
to  have  thrown  off  all  restraint,  and  as  he  was  a  master 
in  the  arts  of  vituperation,  satire,  and  unscrupulous 
sneering,  and  coarse  in  his  statements,  we  are  not  sur- 
prised to  learn  that  he  was  constantly  embroiled  in 
literary  and  even  in  more  active  warfare.  He  was 
vigorous  and  thorough  in  all  that  he  did  ;  a  model  of 
plodding  perseverance,  as  the  circumstances  of  his 
early  life  have  already  demonstrated,  a  man  of  strong 
feelings  and  powerful  resentment.  Testy,  painfully 
sensitive,  never  forgetting  or  forgiving  an  injury,  and 
governed  by  strong  impulses,  whether  for  good  or  for 
evil.  And  yet,  like  those  of  a  large  class,  his  faults 
were  far  more  patent  to  the  world  than  were  his  virtues. 
His  character  was  antithetic,  powerful  in  extremes. 
Although  a  good  fighter,  even  when  on  the  losing 
side,  he  often  acknowledged  himself  to  be  in  the 
wrong.  In  his  daily  life  no  one  was  kinder,  displayed 
more  hospitality,  or  was  more  charitable — all  these 
good  qualities  were  especially  exhibited  to  his  poorer 
relatives,  as  well  as  to  the  '  poor  players.'  Of  him  Dr. 
Oliver  reports  '  that  he  was  a  great  favourite  with  his 
brother  Exonians ;  he  ...  was  frank,  humorous,  and 
independent.'  He  calls  him  '  facetious,'  a  point  of 
character  on  which  Andrew  appeared  to  pride  himself, 
as  he  sometimes  dubbed  himself  (  Merry  Andrew,'  at 
other  times  *  Andrew,  surnamed  Merry.'  He  certainly 
possessed  strong  individuality,  and  was  eccentric  in 
speech,  in  manner,  and  dress." 

It  often  happens  that  what  a  man  has  done  and  least 
values  is  all  that  remains  of  him  to  be  really  appre- 
ciated in  after  times.  So  was  it  with  Andrew  Brice. 


ANDREW    BRICE,    PRINTER  513 

His  Gazetteer  has  long  been  superseded.  But  his 
Exmoor  Scolding  and  Courtship,  which  he  so  little 
appreciated  that  he  did  not  care  to  acknowledge  his 
part  authorship,  has  been  printed  and  reprinted,  and 
is  valued  to  this  day  as  one  of  the  most  important 
dialect  works  in  the  English  language,  and  the  two 
were  published  as  a  specimen  of  the  folk-speech  of  the 
north-east  of  the  county  in  1879  by  the  English  Dialect 
Society,  edited  by  Mr.  F.  T.  Elworthy.  Of  the 
various  authorities  for  the  life  of  Andrew  Brice  it  is  un- 
necessary here  to  speak ;  all  have  been  superseded  by 
the  admirable  monograph  by  Dr.  Brushfield  in  the 
Transactions  of  the  Devonshire  Association,  1888.  He 
has  been  able  to  correct  many  errors  into  which  earlier 
biographers  fell. 

Several  portraits  of  Brice  exist,  mainly  line  en- 
gravings. But  the  best  is  a  mezzotint  engraved  by 
Jehner  and  published  in  1781. 


DEVONSHIRE    WRESTLERS 

WRESTLING  was  the  favourite  sport  in 
former  days  in  Devonshire  and  Cornwall. 
Evelyn,  in  his  Diary ',  speaks  of  West- 
countrymen  in  London  contesting  in 
London  against  men  of  the  North,  and  in  all  cases  the 
former  were  the  victors.  And  Ben  Jonson,  in  his 
Bartholomew  Fair,  1614,  introduces  a  Western  wrestler, 
who  performed  before  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London. 

If  we  may  judge  by  As  You  Like  It,  wrestling  in 
the  Elizabethan  period  was  a  murderous  sport.  Charles, 
the  wrestler,  plays  with  an  old  man's  three  sons. 
"  The  eldest  of  the  three  wrestled  with  Charles — which 
Charles  in  a  moment  threw  him,  and  broke  three  of  his 
ribs,  and  there  is  little  hope  of  life  in  him,  so  he  served 
the  second,  and  so  the  third."  When  Le  Beau  laments 
that  Rosalind  and  Celia  had  not  seen  the  sport, 
Touchstone  wisely  remarks,  "  Thus  men  grow  wiser 
every  day  !  It  is  the  first  time  that  ever  I  heard  break- 
ing of  ribs  was  sport  for  ladies." 

At  Marytavy,  in  the  churchyard,  is  the  tombstone  of 
John  Hawkins,  blacksmith,  1721  : — 

Here  buried  were  some  years  before, 
His  two  wives  and  five  children  more  : 
One  Thomas  named,  whose  fate  was  such 
To  lose  his  life  by  wrestling-  much. 
Which  may  a  warning1  be  to  all 
How  they  into  such  pastimes  fall. 

5  M 


DEVONSHIRE   WRESTLERS  515 

There  is  a  Cornish  ballad  of  a  wrestling  match 
between  Will  Trefry  and  "  Little  Jan"  that  ends 
thus  :— 

Then  with  a  desperate  toss 
Will  showed  the  flying  hoss, 

And  little  Jan  fell  on  the  tan, 
And  never  more  he  spake. 
Oh  !  little  Jan,  alack  ! 
The  ladies  say,  O  woe's  the  day  ! 

O  little  Jan,  alack. 

And  it  concludes  with  a  verse  stating  that  Little  Jan 
was  to  have  been  married  that  day. 

Of  the  "  flying  hoss"  or  "flying  mare"  more  pre- 
sently. The  wrestling  dress  peculiar  to  the  West 
Country  consisted  of  breeches  or  trousers  and  a  wrest- 
ling jacket,  the  only  part  of  the  dress  by  which  a  hold, 
or  as  it  was  technically  called  a  hitch,  could  be  got  by 
the  rules  of  the  play.  The  jacket  was  short  and  loose, 
made  of  untearable  linen  stuff,  and  had  short  loose 
sleeves,  reaching  nearly  to  the  wrist.  Wrestlers  wore 
nothing  else,  except  worsted  stockings,  and  in  Devon- 
shire shoes,  soaked  in  bullock's  blood  and  baked  at 
a  fire,  making  them  hard  as  iron.  Three  men  were 
appointed  as  sticklers  to  watch  the  players  and  act  as 
umpires,  and  decide,  in  the  case  of  a  fall,  whether  it 
was  ^  fair  back  or  not.  For  a  fair  back  both  shoulders 
and  one  hip  must  touch  the  ground  at  the  same  time,  or 
both  hips  and  one  shoulder.  Such  a  fall  was  called  a 
Threepoint  Fall. 

The  men  having  stepped  into  the  ring,  shook  hands, 
and  then  separated,  and  the  play  began  by  trying  for  a 
hitch.  This  led  to  much  dodging. 

A  player  who  gave  his  adversary  a  fall  remained  in 
the  ring  for  the  next  antagonist,  and  when  he  had 
given  two  falls  he  was  reckoned  as  a  standard.  Sup- 
posing there  were  twenty  standards  left  in,  the  double 


5i6  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

play  would  begin  by  the  sticklers  matching  them  with 
each  other,  and  ten  would  then  be  left  for  the  treble 
play.  The  players  would  then  be  reduced  to  five,  then 
to  three,  and  finally  the  two  best  would  be  matched 
against  one  another. 

The  play  in  Devonshire  and  Cornwall  was  different 
in  this,  that  in  the  former  county  there  was  kicking, 
but  this  was  not  allowed  above  the  knee.  In  some 
cases  skillibegs  were  worn  in  Devon,  that  is,  haybands 
wound  about  the  calves  and  shins  as  a  protection.  In 
the  Cornish  play  there  is  hugging  and  heaving  ;  in  the 
Devonshire  play,  kicking  and  tripping.  It  might  be 
thus  defined :  in  Cornwall,  the  shoulders  and  arms 
were  mainly  relied  on  ;  in  Devonshire,  the  legs. 

A  player,  having  got  his  hitch,  would  proceed  to  very 
close  quarters,  and  taking  his  man  round  the  body,  not 
lower  than  the  waist,  would  throw  him  over  his 
shoulder,  giving  him  the  Flying  Mare,  and  turning  him 
over  on  his  back  when  falling,  give  him  the  Back  Fall. 

Besides  the  Flying  Mare,  there  was  the  Cross-buttock 
fall  in  shoulder  play,  the  Back-heave,  and  others.  In 
the  leg  play  there  were  the  Fore-lock,  the  Back-lock, 
Heaving-toe,  Back-heel,  and  others.  The  Cornish 
player  would,  when  he  had  secured  his  hitch,  en- 
deavour to  drag  his  man  in  for  the  hug  and  the  fling  ; 
whereas  the  Devonshire  man  would  play  for  his  hitch 
to  keep  him  off,  till  he  had  disabled  him.1 

Sir  Thomas  Parkyns,  about  whom  more  in  the 
sequel,  thus  describes  the  cast  of  the  Flying  Mare: 
"Take  him  by  the  right  hand  with  your  left,  your 
palm  being  upwards  as  if  you  designed  only  to  shake 
him  by  the  hand  in  a  friendly  manner  in  the  beginning, 
and  twist  it  outwards,  and  lift  it  upwards  to  make  way 

1  See  W.  F.  Collier,  "  Wrestling,"  in  the  Cornish  Magazine,  Vol.  I, 


DEVONSHIRE   WRESTLERS  517 

for  your  head,  and  put  your  head  under  his  left  armpit, 
and  hold  his  head  stiff  backwards,  to  hold  him  out  of 
his  strength ;  then  put  your  right  arm  up  to  the 
shoulder  between  his  grainings,  and  let  your  hand 
appear  behind,  past  his  breech  ;  but  if  you  suspect  they 
will  cavil  at  that  arm,  as  a  breeching,  lay  your  arm 
across  his  belly,  and  lift  him  up  as  high  as  your  head, 
and  in  either  hold,  when  so  high,  lean  backwards  and 
throw  him  over  your  head." 

Sir  Thomas  insists  that  a  good  wrestler  must  be 
temperate.  "  Whoever  would  be  a  complete  wrestler 
must  avoid  being  overtaken  in  drink,  which  very  much 
enervates,  or,  being  in  a  passion  at  the  sight  of  his 
adversary,  or  having  received  a  fall,  in  such  cases  he 
is  bereaved  of  his  senses ;  not  being  master  of  himself 
is  less  of  his  art,  but  showeth  too  much  play,  or  none 
at  all,  or  either  pulleth,  kicketh,  and  ventureth  beyond 
all  reason  and  his  judgment  when  himself." 

Wrestling  matches  usually  began  at  Whitsuntide, 
but  were  most  in  practice  at  the  period  between  the 
hay  and  corn  harvests,  when  the  cereals  were  assuming 
a  golden  hue,  and  the  orchards  were  bending  under 
their  burden  of  fruit.  There  was  hardly  a  village  in 
the  West  that  did  not  offer  a  prize  and  enjoy  the  time- 
honoured  spectacle  of  a  game  of  wrestling.  The 
prize  was  either  a  silver-plated  belt  or  a  gold-laced  hat. 
The  wearing  of  the  latter  was  held  to  free  the  wearers 
from  liability  to  be  pressed  for  the  Navy. 

The  wrestling  ground  was  laid  with  tan.  At  Moreton 
Hampstead  the  games  took  place  in  the  Sentry  or 
Sanctuary  field.  At  Sheepstor  in  the  still  well-preserved 
Bull-ring,  and  the  spectators  sat  on  the  churchyard 
wall  to  watch  the  sport.  At  Liskeard,  matches  took 
place  in  the  Ploy,  or  Play-field  from  Lady  Day  to 
Michaelmas. 


5i8  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

In  the  kicking,  usual  in  Devonshire  play,  the 
wrestler  about  to  administer  a  kick  had  but  one  foot  on 
the  ground,  and  having  an  off-hitch  was  liable  to  be 
thrown  by  a  quick  player  with  a  trip  or  a  lock.  The 
kick  could  be  prevented  by  bending  the  knee  so  as  to 
bring  the  heel  up  to  the  buttock,  and  projecting  it,  when 
the  knee  caught  the  administering  player  on  the  leg- 
bone  above  the  knee  with  such  force  as  to  paralyse  it  for 
a  while,  and  it  has  even  been  known  to  break  it.  This 
was  entitled  the  stop. 

Several  of  the  Devonshire  wrestlers  became  famous 
beyond  the  confines  of  the  county  ;  and  matches  be- 
tween Devonians  and  Cornishmen  were  not  uncommon ; 
and  the  latter  do  not  seem  to  have  been  at  all  afraid  of 
the  kick,  for  by  closing  on  their  antagonists  for  the  hug, 
they  could  prevent  them  from  kicking  with  toe  or  heel, 
at  all  events  with  full  force. 

Thorne  was  a  man  of  Widdecombe-on-the-Moor,  a 
man  of  splendid  build  and  muscular  development.  He 
had  made  his  name  as  a  wrestler,  when  he  was  induced 
to  join  the  Life  Guards,  and  in  the  battle  of  Waterloo 
took  part  in  the  famous  charge  against  the  French 
cuirassiers  ;  as  he  was  cutting  down  his  tenth  victim  a 
shot  laid  him  low,  at  the  age  of  twenty-three. 

Then  two  young  Devonian  giants  took  the  lead  in 
the  ring,  Johnny  Jordan  and  Flower,  each  six  feet 
high  and  weighing  a  trifle  over  eighteen  stone  apiece. 
Jordan  was  a  redoubted  kicker,  and  the  bravest  wrest- 
lers shrank  from  challenging  him.  On  one  occasion 
Flower  and  Jordan  were  opposed  to  one  another,  and 
after  a  struggle  of  seventeen  minutes,  Flower  gave 
way. 

In  1816,  Flower  was  confronted  with  Polkinghorne, 
a  St.  Columb  taverner,  and  the  champion  of  Cornwall. 
The  latter  was  too  much  for  Flower,  and  he  was  thrown 


-,fe'"1.    12    ^tone    /It,     AgfciO. 


DEVONSHIRE   WRESTLERS  519 

amidst  enthusiastic  cheering  and  hat-tossing  and  ker- 
chief-waving of  the  Cornishmen. 

Jackman,  another  Devonshire  man,  confronted  Polk- 
inghorne  next  day,  and  he  was  cast  over  the  head  of 
the  Cornubian,  describing  the  "flying  mare."  William 
Wreford,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  achieved  reputation 
by  throwing  Jordan  over  his  head  with  such  force  that 
Jordan  came  down  with  a  "crash  similar  to  that  pro- 
duced by  felling  an  oak  tree."  But  Wreford  met 
his  match  in  a  wrestle  with  "the  little  Elephant," 
James  Stone.  Simultaneously  the  men  grappled  each 
other  ;  and  although  Wreford  had  the  advantage  at  the 
outset,  he  was  hurled  into  the  air,  and  fell  with  such 
violence  on  his  back  that  fora  time  he  was  incapacitated 
from  taking  part  in  a  similar  contest.  Eventually  the 
return  match  came  off  at  Southmolton,  and  Stone  was 
again  victorious.  Nevertheless  Wreford  remained  a 
prominent  figure  in  the  ring,  and  threw  Francis  Olver, 
a  Cornishman,  although  he  came  out  of  the  contest  with 
several  of  his  ribs  crushed  by  the  deadly  "  hug."  But 
a  greater  than  Wreford  and  Jordan  arose  in  the  person 
of  Abraham  Cann.  He  was  born  in  December,  1794, 
and  was  the  son  of  Robert  Cann,  a  farmer  and  maltster 
at  Colebrook.  His  father  had  been  a  wrestler  before  him, 
and  Abraham  inherited  the  old  man's  skill,  and  learned 
by  his  experience,  and  soon  defeated  Jordan,  Flower, 
Wreford,  Simon  Webber,  and  other  redoubtable  Devon 
champions.  He  was  above  the  middle  height  as  a 
man,  with  long  legs,  and  was  endowed  with  surprising 
strength  of  limb.  He  was  a  kicker.  Abraham  had  a 
brother  James,  also  a  well-known  wrestler,  but  he  did 
not  acquire  the  celebrity  of  Abraham.  In  his  later 
years  he  was  an  under-gamekeeper,  respected  for  his 
fearlessness  when  poachers  were  to  the  fore. 

There  were  other  mighty  men  in  the  ring,  as  Baw- 


520  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

den  the  Mole-catcher,  and  Frost,  of  Aveton  Gifford  ; 
but  these  were  no  match  for  Cann. 

At  Totnes,  in  1825,  Jordan  had  thrown  a  fine  player, 
of  the  name  of  Huxtable,  in  one  minute,  and  the  live- 
liest interest  was  felt  in  a  match  that  was  to  be  played 
between  him  and  Abraham  Cann,  who  boasted  that  he 
could  kick  to  rags  the  legs  of  his  antagonist  in  "vive 
minutes." 

When  his  turn  arrived  Cann  awaited  Jordan  in  the 
ring,  upright,  undaunted,  with  a  smile  of  conscious 
superiority  on  his  face.  Jordan  eyed  the  tall,  athletic, 
and  muscular  form  of  Abraham,  and  withdrew  without 
trying  for  a  hitch.  This  caused  lively  disappointment, 
and  loud  cries  of  anger  broke  forth.  But  Jordan  felt 
that  he  was  not  in  good  form  at  the  time.  Two  days 
later  he  was  roughly  handled  by  a  young  Cornishman 
named  Hook,  and  was  too  much  injured  to  resume  the 
contest. 

On  21  September,  1826,  at  the  Eagle  Tavern,  City 
Road,  London,  Cann  contended  without  shoes  for  the 
first  prize  with  James  Warren  of  Redruth,  and  although 
the  latter  made  a  gallant  struggle  and  Cann  was  at  a 
disadvantage  playing  without  his  proper  and  accus- 
tomed weapons,  the  indurated  boots,  Abraham  Cann 
came  off  the  victor. 

He  now  challenged  Polkinghorne,  the  champion  of 
Cornwall.  James  Polkinghorne  was  6ft.  2  in.  high, 
weighed  320  lb.,  and  had  not  wrestled  for  some  years, 
but  had  carried  on  business  as  landlord  of  the  "  Red 
Lion  "  in  St.  Columb  Major.  Cann  was  but  5  ft.  8J  in. 
high,  and  weighed  175  lb.  This  match  was  for  £200  a 
side,  for  the  best  of  three  back-falls ;  and  it  took  place  on 
Tamar  Green,  Morice  Town,  Plymouth,  on  23  October, 
1826,  in  presence  of  17,000  spectators.  According  to 
some  accounts,  Abraham  on  this  occasion  was  allowed 


DEVONSHIRE    WRESTLERS  521 

only  one  shoe.  There  had  been  much  previous  cor- 
respondence between  the  champions ;  Polkinghorne 
had  postponed  meeting  Cann  as  long  as  was  possible. 

Finally  a  meeting  was  arranged,  as  said,  on  the  23rd 
October,  1826. 

"  Tamar  Green,  Devonport,  was  chosen  for  this  pur- 
pose, and  the  West  was  alive  with  speculation  when  it 
was  known  that  the  backers  meant  business.  On  the 
evening  before  the  contest  the  town  was  inundated, 
and  the  resources  of  its  hotels  and  inns  were  taxed  to 
the  utmost.  Truculent  and  redoubtable  gladiators 
flocked  to  the  scene — kickers  from  Dartmoor,  the  re- 
cruiting-ground of  the  Devonshire  system,  and  bear- 
like  huggers  from  the  land  of  Tre,  Pol,  and  Pen — a 
wonderful  company  of  tried  and  stalwart  experts.  Ten 
thousand  persons  bought  tickets  at  a  premium  for 
seats,  and  the  hills  around  swarmed  with  spectators. 
The  excitement  was  at  the  highest  possible  pitch,  and 
overwhelming  volumes  of  cheering  relieved  the  tension 
as  the  rivals  entered  the  ring — Polkinghorne  in  his 
stockings,  and  Cann  with  a  monstrous  pair  of  shoes 
whose  toes  had  been  baked  into  flints.  As  the  men 
peeled  for  action  such  a  shout  ascended  as  awed  the 
nerves  of  all  present.  Polkinghorne  had  been  dis- 
counted as  fat  and  unwieldy,  but  the  Devonians  were 
dismayed  to  find  that,  great  as  was  his  girth,  his  arms 
were  longer,  and  his  shoulders  immensely  powerful. 
Three  stone  lighter  in  weight,  Cann  displayed  a  more 
sinewy  form,  and  his  figure  was  knit  for  strength,  and 
as  statuesquely  proportioned.  His  grip,  like  Polking- 
horne's,  was  well  known.  No  man  had  ever  shaken  it 
off  when  once  he  had  clinched ;  and  each  enjoyed 
a  reputation  for  presence  of  mind  and  resource  in  ex- 
tremity beyond  those  of  other  masters  of  the  art.  The 
match  was  for  the  best  of  three  back-falls,  the  men  to 


522  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

catch  what  hold  they  could  ;  and  two  experts  from  each 
county  were  selected  as  sticklers.  The  feeling  was  in 
favour  of  Cann  at  the  outset,  but  it  receded  as  the 
Cornishman  impressed  the  multitude  with  his  muscular 
superiority.  Repeatedly  shifting  their  positions,  the 
combatants  sought  their  favourite  *  holts.'  As  soon  as 
Cann  caught  his  adversary  by  the  collar  after  a  con- 
tending display  of  shifty  and  evasive  form,  Polking- 
horne  released  himself  by  a  feint ;  and,  amid  '  terrible 
shouts  from  the  Cornishmen,'  he  drove  his  foe  to  his 
knees. 

"  Nothing  daunted,  the  Devonian  accepted  the  Corn- 
ish hug,  and  the  efforts  of  the  rivals  were  superb. 
Cann  depended  on  his  science  to  save  him  ;  but  Pol- 
kinghorne  gathered  his  head  under  his  arm,  and  lifting 
him  from  the  ground,  threw  him  clean  over  his  shoulder, 
and  planted  him  upon  his  back.  'The  very  earth 
groaned  with  the  uproar  that  followed  ;  the  Cornish- 
men  jumped  by  hundreds  into  the  ring  ;  there  they 
embraced  their  champion  till  he  begged  to  be  released  ; 
and,  amid  cheers  and  execrations,  the  fall  was  an- 
nounced to  have  complied  with  the  conditions.  Bets 
to  the  amount  of  hundreds  of  pounds  were  decided  by 
this  event.* 

"  Polkinghorne  now  went  to  work  with  caution,  and 
Cann  was  conscious  that  he  had  an  awkward  customer  to 
tackle.  After  heavy  kicking  and  attempted  hugging, 
the  Cornishman  tried  once  more  to  lift  his  opponent; 
but  Cann  caught  his  opponent's  leg  in  his  descent,  and 
threw  him  to  the  ground  first.  In  the  ensuing  rounds 
both  men  played  for  wind.  Polkinghorne  was  the 
more  distressed,  his  knees  quite  raw  with  punishment, 
and  the  betting  veered  in  Cann's  favour.  Then  the 
play  changed,  and  Cann  was  apparently  at  the  mercy 
of  his  foe,  when  he  upset  Polkinghorne's  balance  by  a 


DEVONSHIRE   WRESTLERS  523 

consummate  effort,  and  threw  him  on  his  back  by  sheer 
strength — the  first  that  the  sticklers  allowed  him. 
Cann  next  kicked  tremendously ;  but,  although  the 
Cornishman  suffered  severely,  he  remained  '  dead 
game,'  and  twice  saved  himself  by  falling  on  his 
chest. 

"  Disputes  now  disturbed  the  umpires,  and  their 
number  was  reduced  to  two.  In  the  eighth  round 
Polkinghorne's  strength  began  to  fail,  and  a  dispute 
was  improvised  which  occasioned  another  hour's  delay. 
With  wind  regained  and  strength  revived,  the  tenth 
round  was  contested  with  absolute  fury  ;  and,  taking 
kicking  with  fine  contempt,  Polkinghorne  gripped 
Cann  with  leonine  majesty,  lifted  him  from  the  earth 
in  his  arms,  turned  him  over  his  head,  and  dashed  him 
to  the  ground  with  stunning  force.  As  the  Cornish- 
man dropped  on  his  knee  the  fall  was  disputed,  and  the 
turn  was  disallowed.  Polkinghorne  then  left  the  ring 
amid  a  mighty  clamour,  and,  by  reason  of  his  default, 
the  stakes  were  awarded  to  Cann.  The  victor  emerged 
from  the  terrific  hugs  of  his  opponent  with  a  mass  of 
bruises,  which  proved  that  kicking  was  only  one  degree 
more  effective  than  hugging. 

"A  more  unsatisfactory  issue  could  hardly  have  been 
conceived,  and  the  rival  backers  forthwith  endeavoured 
to  arrange  another  encounter.  Polkinghorne  refused  to 
meet  Cann,  however,  unless  he  discarded  his  shoes." 

Various  devices  were  attempted  to  bring  them  to- 
gether again,  but  they  failed.  Each  had  a  wholesome 
dread  of  the  other. 

But  Cann  went  on  as  a  mighty  wrestler.  He  tried  a 
fall  with  "  Irish  Gaffney."  It  ended  in  Cann  throwing 
Gaffney  over  his  back  and  dislocating  his  left  shoulder, 
besides  cutting  his  shins  to  pieces  with  his  boots. 

His  next  famous  encounter  was  with  Frost,  a  moor- 


524  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

man  of  Aveton  Gifford,  and  after  a  most  desperate 
contest,  Cann  landed  him  on  his  back.1 

There  were  other  mighty  men  of  the  ring,  such  as 
a  blind  wrestler  mentioned  in  the  ballad  of  "  Dick 
Simmins."  In  Cornwall  wrestling  continues,  especially 
at  S.  Columb  and  S.  Austell,  but  in  Devon  it  is  extinct: 
it  was  thought  brutal  to  hack  the  shins,  and  after  the 
hobnailed  boot,  or  boot  hardened  in  blood  and  at  the 
fire,  was  discarded,  it  lost  its  interest. 

Sir  Thomas  Parkyns  has  been  quoted.  He  pub- 
lished a  curious  work  entitled  The  Inn  Play,  or  Cornish 
Hugg  Wrestler,  and  died  in  1741.  He  was  an  enthu- 
siast for  the  noble  science — the  Cornish,  and  not  the 
Devonshire  mode — and  would  only  take  into  his  service 
men  who  were  good  wrestlers.  His  coachman  was  one 
who  had  shown  him  the  Flying  Mare. 

Sir  Thomas,  by  his  will,  left  a  guinea  to  be  wrestled 
for  at  Bradmore,  Nottinghamshire,  every  Midsummer 
Day,  and  had  his  monument  carved  for  him  during  his 
lifetime,  representing  him  in  wrestling  costume,  sculp- 
tured in  marble  by  his  chaplain,  prepared  for  either  the 
Cornish  Hug  or  the  Flying  Mare.  On  one  side  is  a 
well-limbed  figure  lying  above  the  scythe  of  Time,  the 
sun  rising  and  shining  on  him  as  a  wrestler  in  the 
prime  of  life  ;  on  the  other  side  is  the  same  figure 
stretched  in  a  coffin,  with  Time  triumphant  above  him 
brandishing  his  scythe,  and  the  sun  setting.  There  are 
Latin  verses  appended,  that  may  be  thus  translated: — 

Here  lies,  O  Time !  the  victim  of  thy  hand, 
The  noblest  wrestler  on  the  British  strand, 
His  nervous  arm  each  bold  opposer  quell'd, 
In  feats  of  strength  by  none  but  thee  excell'd, 
Till,  spring-ing-  up,  at  the  last  trumpet's  call, 
He  conquers  thee,  who  will  have  conquer'd  all. 

1  For  a  full  account,  most  graphically  written,  and  from  which  I 
have  quoted,  see  Mr.  Whitfeld's  Plymouth  and  Devonport,  in  War  and 
Peace,  Plymouth,  1900 ;  also  the  Sporting  Magazine  for  1826-7 ;  the 
Annual  Register,  1826. 


DEVONSHIRE   WRESTLERS  525 

At  the  time  of  the  European  war,  it  sometimes  hap- 
pened that  a  wrestling  match  was  interrupted  in  an 
unpleasant  manner  to  some  of  the  parties  by  the  ap- 
pearance on  the  scene  of  the  press-gang.  There  is  a 
favourite  song  relative  to  Dick  Simmins,  published 
in  Mr.  Collier's  memoir  of  Hicks  of  Bodmin.  I  will 
give  it  here  : — 

Come  Vaither,  Mother  and  Brothers  all, 

And  Zistur  too,  I  pray, 
I'll  tell  ee  a  power  o'  the  strangest  thing's 

As  happen'd  to  me  at  say. 
I'll  tell  ee  a  parcel  o'  the  strangest  things 

About  the  winds  and  tide, 
How  by  compass  us  steer'd,  and  o'  naught  was  afear'd, 

An'  a  thousand  things  beside. 

'Tes  true  I  lived  i'  ole  Plymouth  town, 

My  trade  it  were  ostling, 
Dick  Simmins  and  I  went  to  Maker  Green 

To  turn  at  wrasteling. 
The  prize  o'  buckskin  breeches  a  pair, 

And  ne'er  the  wuss  for  wear, 
Dick  and  I  us  tried  two  vails  apiece, 

The  blind  man  got  his  share. 

Bevoor  the  play  was  o'er  half  way, 

'Tes  true  upon  my  word, 
There  came  a  set  o'  press-gang  chaps 

Each  armed  wi'  stick  and  sword. 
Dick  Simmins  swore  a  dreadful  oath 

I  didn't  like  to  hear, 
But  when  King  ca'd  blind  man  a  fule, 

That— darn't— I  couldn't  bear. 

I  went  to  t'  chap  wi'  upcock'd  hat, 

"  No  odds  where  you  may  be, 
But  if  thou  thinks  thyself  a  man 

Come  wi'out  the  ring  wi'  me." 
So  he  did  stand,  his  sword  in  hand, 

I  knocked  it  from  his  hand, 
Then  three  or  vour  gurt  toads  came  up 

And  knocked  me  down  on  t'  land. 

Along  came  one  of  Plymouth  town, 

Prentice  to  Uncle  Cross, 
Wot  run  away  'bout  a  bastard  child, 

A  terrible  lad  he  wos. 


526  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Said  he,  "  Don't  sarve  the  young  man  so, 

'Tes  an  onmanly  thing  ; 
Pick  up  the  lad,  put  him  on  board 

That  he  may  sarve  the  King." 

They  took  me  up  by  neck  and  heels, 

They  dra'ed  me  to  the  boat, 
The  master  came  'longside  of  me 

Wi',  "Send  the  lubber  afloat." 
They  took  me  up  by  neck  and  heels, 

They  dra'ed  me  to  the  say, 
But  Providence  a-ordered  it 

I  shuldn't  be  killed  that  way. 

They  picked  me  out,  put  me  aboard 

A  ship  then  in  the  Sound, 
The  waves  and  winds  did  blow  and  roar, 

I  thought  I  shu'd  be  drown'd. 
Then  one  called  "  Tack  !  "  another  "  Ship  !  " 

A  third  cried  ' '  Helm  a  lee  !  " 
Lor'  bless'y,  I  dun  knaw  Tack  from  Ship, 

An'  Helm  to  me's  Chinee. 

The  Master  ordered  I  aloft, 

'Twas  blawin'  cruel  hard, 
And  there  was  three  or  vour  gurt  chaps 

A  grizzlin'  in  the  yard. 
When  down  came  mast  and  down  came  yard, 

Then  down  came  I  likewise. 
Lor'  bless'y  !  if  the  church  tower  vaall'd, 

'Twouldn't  make  half  the  noise. 

Some  vaall'd  o'erboard,  and  some  on  deck, 

Some  had  a  thundrin'  thump, 
The  Master  ordered  all  hands  up 

For  pumpin'  at  the  pump. 
Us  pumped  at  the  pump,  my  boys, 

And  no  one  dared  to  squeak, 
The  Master  ordered  all  below 

To  stop  a  thunderin'  leak. 

When  us  had  stopped  up  that  leak 

A  French  ship  us  spied  comin', 
The  Master  orders  all  to  fight 

And  the  drummer  to  be  drummin'. 
So  when  the  French  ship  came  'longside, 

A  broadside  us  let  flee, 
Lor'  bless'y  !  what  for  smoke  and  vire 

Us  couldn't  smell  nor  see. 


DEVONSHIRE   WRESTLERS  527 

The  Master  vvi'  his  cocked-up  hat 

He  flourished  his  sword, 
Wi'  "  Come  and  follow  me,  brave  boys, 

I  warn't  we'll  try  to  board." 
I  vollowed  he  thro'  thick  and  thin, 

Tho'  bless'y  I  culdn't  see'n  ; 
The  gurt  French  chap  was  on  to  he 

Wi'  sword  both  long"  and  keen. 

I  rinrj'd  up  to  the  Master's  help, 

I  niver  rinn'd  no  vaster, 
I  zed  unto  the  gurt  French  chap, 

"  Now  don't  ee  hurt  the  Master  !  " 
Then  "  Wee,  wee,  wee,  parlez  vous  Frenchee  !  " 

He  zed — I  reck'n  he  cuss'd — 
But  "  Darny,"  sez  I,  "  if  that's  your  game, 

I  reck'n  I  must  kill  ee  fust." 

The  Master  jumped  'bout  the  French  ship 

And  tore  down  all  her  colours, 
And  us  jumped  'bout  the  French  ship,  too, 

A  whoppin'  them  foreign  fellers. 
As  for  the  chap  as  Master  threat'n'd 

I  beat  that  Parley-vous, 
From  the  niddick  down  his  lanky  back, 

Till  he  squeaked  out  "  Mortbleu  !  " 

Now  here's  a  lesson  to  volks  ashore, 

And  sich  as  ostlers  be, 
Don't  never  say  Die,  and  Tain't  my  trade, 

But  listen,  and  mark  of  me. 
There's  nobody  knaws  wot  ee  can  do, 

Till  tried — now  trust  me  well, 
Why — us  wos  ostlers  and  ort  beside, 

Yet  kicked  the  Frenchies  to Torpoint. 

Carew  gives  us  an  account  of  the  way  in  which 
wrestling  was  conducted  in  the  West  of  England  in 
the  days  of  Charles  I.  "  The  beholders  cast  or  form 
themselves  into  a  ring,  in  the  empty  space  whereof  the 
two  champions  step  forth,  stripped  into  their  dublets 
and  hosen,  and  untrussed,  that  they  may  so  the  better 
command  the  use  of  their  lymmes ;  and  first,  shaking 
hands,  in  token  of  friendship,  they  fall  presently  to  the 
effects  of  anger  ;  for  each  striveth  how  to  take  hold  of 


528  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  other  with  his  best  advantage,  and  to  bear  his 
adverse  party  downe  ;  whereas,  whosoever  over- 
throweth  his  mate,  in  such  sort,  as  that  either  his 
backe,  or  the  one  shoulder,  and  contrary  heele  do 
touch  the  ground,  is  accounted  to  give  the  fall.  If  he 
be  only  endangered,  and  makes  a  narrow  escape,  it  is 
called  a  foyle." 

He  then  adds:  "This  pastime  also  hath  his  laws, 
for  instance  ;  of  taking  hold  above  the  girdle — wearing 
a  girdle  to  take  hold  by — playing  three  pulls  for  trial  of 
the  mastery,  the  fall-giver  to  be  exempted  from  playing 
again  with  the  taker,  but  bound  to  answer  his  suc- 
cessor. Silver  prizes  for  this  and  other  activities, 
were  wont  to  be  carried  about,  by  certain  circumforanei, 
or  set  up  at  bride-ales,  but  time  or  their  abuse  hath  now 
worn  them  out  of  use."  Double  play  was  when  two 
who  had  flung  the  rest  contested  at  the  close  for  the 
prize. 

If  wrestling  was  declining  in  Carew's  time,  it  cer- 
tainly revived  in  vigour  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II,  and 
continued  till  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
when  again  it  declined,  and  is  now  in  Devon  a  thing  of 
the  past. 

Blackmore  has  given  an  excellent  description  of  a 
Devonshire  wrestling  match  in  his  early  novel  of  Clara 
Vaughan. 


TWO  HUNTING  PARSONS 

A~  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  few 
counties  in  England  produced  such  a  crop 
of  hunting  parsons  as  did  Devonshire.  They 
were  in  force  for  the  first  fifty  years.  In 
1831  Henry  Phillpotts  was  consecrated  Bishop  of 
Exeter.  Shortly  after,  as  he  was  driving  with  his 
chaplain  on  the  way  to  a  Confirmation,  a  fox-hunt 
passed  by  in  full  halloo. 

"  Dear  me!"  exclaimed  his  lordship;  "what  a 
number  of  black  coats  among  the  hunters.  Has  there 
been  some  great  bereavement  in  the  neighbourhood  ?  " 

"  My  lord,"  replied  the  chaplain,  "the  only  bereave- 
ment these  black-coated  sportsmen  suffer  from  is  not 
being  able  to  appear  in  pink." 

There  were,  it  was  computed,  in  the  diocese  of 
Exeter  a  score  of  incumbents  who  kept  their  packs; 
there  must  have  been  over  a  hundred  parsons  who 
hunted  regularly  two  or  three  days  in  the  week,  and  as 
many  more  who  would  have  done  so  had  their  means 
allowed  them  to  keep  hunters. 

There  is  no  objection  to  be  made  to  a  parson  follow- 
ing the  hounds  occasionally ;  the  sport  is  more  manly 
than  that  which  engrosses  so  many  young  clerics  now- 
adays, dawdling  about  with  ladies  on  lawn -tennis 
grounds  or  at  croquet.  But  those  early  days  of  last 
century  hunting  was  with  many  the  main  pursuit  of 
their  life,  and  clerical  duties  were  neglected  or  perfunc- 
torily performed. 

2  M  529 


530  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

There  was  no  high  standard  of  clerical  life  preva- 
lent, but  what  standard  there  was  was  not  lived  up  to. 
These  parsonic  sportsmen  were  as  profoundly  ignorant 
of  the  doctrines  of  the  Faith  they  were  commissioned  to 
teach,  as  any  child  in  a  low  form  in  a  National  School. 
As  was  sung  of  one — typical — 

This  parson  little  loveth  prayer 

And  Pater  night  and  morn,  Sir  ! 
For  bell  and  book  hath  little  care, 
But  dearly  loves  the  horn,  Sir  ! 
Sing  tally-ho  !  sing  tally-ho  ! 

Sing  tally-ho  !  Why,  Zounds,  Sir ! 
I  mounts  my  mare  to  hunt  the  hare  ! 
Sing  tally-ho  !  the  hounds,  Sir ! 

In  pulpit  Parson  Hogg  was  strong, 

He  preached  without  a  book,  Sir ! 
And  to  the  point,  but  never  long, 

And  this  the  text  he  took,  Sir  ! 

0  tally-ho  !  O  tally-ho  ! 
Dearly  Beloved— Zounds,  Sir ! 

1  mounts  my  mare  to  hunt  the  hare  ! 
Sing  tally-ho  !  the  hounds,  Sir ! 

There  is  but  one  patch  of  false  colour  in  this  song, 
that  which  represents  the  hunting  parson  as  strong  in 
the  pulpit. 

Society — hunting  society  especially — in  North  Devon 
was  coarse  to  an  exceptional  degree.  One  who  knew  it 
intimately  wrote  to  me:  "It  was  a  strange  ungodly 
company,  parsons  included,  and  that  not  so  very  long 
ago.  North  Devon  society  in  Jack  Russell's  day  was 
peculiar  —  so  peculiar  that  no  one  now  would  believe 
readily  that  half  a  century  ago  such  life  could  be — but 
I  was  in  the  thick  of  it.  It  was  not  creditable  to  any 
one,  but  it  was  so  general  that  the  rascality  of  it  was 
mitigated  by  consent." 

The  hunting  parson  was,  as  said,  not  strong  in  the 
pulpit  except  in  voice.  But  Jack  Russell,  of  Swym- 
bridge,  was  an  exception. 


TWO   HUNTING   PARSONS  531 

He  had  a  fine,  sonorous  voice,  good  delivery,  and 
some  eloquence.  The  Bishop  of  Exeter,  Dr.  Phillpotts, 
heard  him  on  one  occasion,  and  said  to  a  lady,  a  con- 
nexion of  Mr.  Russell,  uThat  was  really  a  capital 
sermon."  "  Ah  !  my  lord,"  she  replied,  "you  have 
only  heard  him  in  the  wood — you  should  hear  him  in 
pig-skin  giving  the  view-halloo  ! " 

Bishop  Phillpotts  came  to  the  diocese  resolved  to 
suppress  the  hunting  and  sporting  of  his  clergy,  but 
found  it  impossible  to  do  so.  His  efforts  were  wrongly 
directed  ;  the  hunting  put  down  would  not  have  altered 
the  propensities  of  his  clergy.  He  could  not  convert 
them  to  earnest  and  devoted  parish  priests.  Thus 
hearts  could  not  be  reached.  It  was  only  as  this  class 
of  men  died  out  that  a  better  type  could  be  introduced. 
The  Bishop  sent  for  Mr.  Russell,  of  Swymbridge. 

"I  understand  that  you  keep  hounds,  and  that  your 
curate  hunts  with  you.  Will  you  give  up  your 
hounds?" 

"  No,  my  lord,  I  decline  to  do  so." 

He  then  turned  to  the  curate,  Sleeman,  and  said, 
"Your  licence,  sir,  I  revoke;  and  I  only  regret  that 
the  law  does  not  enable  me  to  deal  with  the  graver 
offender  of  the  two." 

"I  am  very  happy  to  find  you  can't,  my  lord,"  said 
Russell.  "And  may  I  ask,  if  you  revoke  Mr.  Slee- 
man's  licence,  who  is  to  take  the  duty  at  Landkey,  my 
other  parish,  next  Sunday?" 

"  Mr.  Sleeman  may  do  it." 

"And  who  the  following  Sunday?" 

"Mr.  Sleeman  again,"  replied  the  Bishop,  "if  by 
that  time  you  have  not  secured  another  curate." 

"  I  shall  take  no  steps  to  do  so,  my  lord  ;  and,  more- 
over, shall  be  very  cautious  as  to  whom  I  admit  into 
my  charges,"  replied  Russell. 


532  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Finally  Mr.  Sleeman  removed  to  Whitchurch,  a 
family  living,  to  which  he  succeeded  on  the  death  of 
his  father,  and  Bishop  Phillpotts  had  to  swallow  the 
bitter  pill  of  instituting  him  to  it.  I  remember  Mr. 
Sleeman  as  rector,  hunting,  shooting,  dancing  at  every 
ball,  and  differing  from  a  layman  by  his  white  tie,  a 
capital  judge  of  horses,  and  possessor  of  an  excellent 
cellar. 

When  Parson  Jack  Russell  was  over  eighty  he 
started  keeping  a  pack  of  harriers.  The  then  Bishop 
of  Exeter  sent  for  him. 

"  Mr.  Russell,  I  hear  you  have  got  a  pack  of  hounds. 
Is  it  so?" 

"  It  is.     I  won't  deny  it,  my  lord." 

"Well,  Mr.  Russell,  it  seems  to  me  rather  unsuitable 
for  a  clergyman  to  keep  a  pack.  I  do  not  ask  you 
to  give  up  hunting,  for  I  know  it  would  not  be  possible 
for  you  to  exist  without  that.  But  will  you,  to  oblige 
me,  give  up  the  pack  ?  " 

"  Do  y'  ask  it  as  a  personal  favour,  my  lord?  " 

"  Yes,  Mr.  Russell,  as  a  personal  favour." 

"  Very  well,  then,  my  lord,  I  will." 

"  Thank  you,  thank  you."  The  Bishop,  moved  by 
his  readiness,  held  out  his  hand.  "  Give  me  your  hand, 
Mr.  Russell ;  you  are — you  really  are — a  good  fellow." 

Jack  Russell  gave  his  great  fist  to  the  Bishop,  who 
pressed  it  warmly.  As  they  thus  stood  hand  in  hand, 
Jack  said — 

"  I  won't  deceive  you — not  for  the  world,  my  lord. 
I'll  give  up  the  pack  sure  enough— but  Mrs.  Russell 
will  keep  it  instead  of  me." 

The  Bishop  dropped  his  hand. 

On  one  occasion  Bishop  Phillpotts  met  Froude, 
vicar  of  Knowstone.  "I  hear,  Mr.  Froude,  that  you 
keep  a  pack  of  harriers." 


TWO   HUNTING   PARSONS  533 

"  Then  you've  heard  wrong,  my  lord.  It  is  the  pack 
that  keeps  me." 

"  I  do  not  understand." 

"They  stock  my  larder  with  hares.  You  don't  sup- 
pose I  should  have  hares  on  my  table  unless  they  were 
caught  for  me?  There's  no  butcher  for  miles  and  miles, 
and  I  can't  get  a  joint  but  once  in  a  fortnight.  Forced 
to  eat  hares  ;  and  they  must  be  caught  to  be  eaten." 

The  Bishop  then  said  to  Froude  :  "  I  hear,  sir,  but  I 
can  hardly  credit  it,  that  you  invite  men  to  your  house 
and  keep  them  drinking  and  then  fighting  in  your  par- 
lour." 

"  My  lord,  you  are  misinformed.  Don't  believe  a 
word  of  it.  When  they  begin  to  fight  and  takes  off 
their  coats,  I  turns  'em  out  into  the  churchyard." 

John  Boyce,  rector  of  Sherwell,  wishing  to  have  a 
day's  hunting  with  the  staghounds  on  the  Porlock  side 
of  Exmoor,  told  his  clerk  to  give  notice  in  the  morning 
that  there  would*  be  no  service  in  the  afternoon  in  the 
church,  as  he  was  going  off  to  hunt  with  Sir  Thomas 
Acland  over  the  moor  on  the  following  day.  The 
mandate  was  obeyed  to  the  letter,  the  clerk  making  the 
announcement  in  the  following  terms  : — 

' ( This  is  to  give  notiss — there  be  no  sarvice  to  this 
church  this  arternoon  ;  cos  maester  be  a-going  over  the 
moor  a  stag-hunting  wi'  Sir  Thomas." 

At  Stockleigh  Pomeroy  parish,  the  rector,  Roupe 
Ilbert,  desired  his  clerk  to  inform  the  congregation  that 
there  would  be  one  service  only  on  the  Sunday  in  that 
church  for  a  month,  as  he  was  going  to  take  duty  at 
Stockleigh  English  alternately  with  his  own.  The 
clerk  did  so  in  these  words:  "This  is  vor  to  give 
notiss — there'll  be  no  sarvice  to  thes  church  but  wance 
a  wick,  as  maester's  a-going  to  sarve  t'other  Stockleigh 
and  this  church  to  all  etarnity." 


534  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

On  one  occasion,  as  the  congregation  were  assem- 
bling for  divine  service  in  a  church  where  Mr.  Russell 
was  ministering,  a  man  stood  on  the  churchyard  hedge, 
with  the  band  of  his  hat  stuck  round  with  silver  spoons, 
bawling  out,  "  Plaize  to  tak'  notiss — Thaise  zix 
zilver  spunes  to  be  wrastled  vor  next  Thursday,  at 
Poughill,  and  all  ginlemen  wrastlers  will  receive  vair 
play."  The  man,  with  the  spoons  in  his  hat,  then 
entered  the  church,  went  up  to  the  singing  gallery,  and 
hung  it  on  a  peg,  from  which  it  was  perfectly  visible  to 
the  parson  and  the  greater  part  of  the  congregation 
during  service. 

It  was  customary  in  those  portions  of  Devon  which 
were  not  regularly  hunted,  for  the  church  bell  to  be 
rung  when  a  fox  had  been  discovered,  so  as  to  assemble 
all  hands  to  kill  it. 

On  one  occasion,  at  Welcombe,  snow  lying  deep  on 
the  ground,  the  clergyman  was  reading  the  second 
lesson,  when  a  man  opened  the  church  door  and 
shouted  in,  "  I've  a  got  un  !  "  and  immediately  with- 
drew. At  once  up  rose  all  the  men  in  the  congregation 
and  followed  him,  and  within  a  couple  of  hours  brought 
into  the  village  inn  a  fine  old  fox,  dug  out  and  mur- 
dered in  cold  blood. 

Of  the  whole  tribe  of  fox-hunting,  hare-hunting, 
otter-hunting,  dancing  parsons,  Jack  Russell  was  the 
best  in  every  way. 

I  was  travelling  outside  the  coach  one  day  to  Exeter, 
and  two  farmers  were  by  me  on  the  seat  behind  the 
driver.  Their  talk  was  on  this  occasion,  not  of  bullocks, 
but  of  parsons.  One  of  them  came  from  Swymbridge, 
the  other  from  a  certain  parish  that  I  shall  not  name, 
and  whose  rector  we  will  call  Rattenbury.  The  latter 
told  a  story  of  Rattenbury  that  cannot  be  repeated, 
indicating  incredible  grossness  in  an  Englishman,  im- 


TWO  HUNTING   PARSONS  535 

possible  in  a  gentleman.  "  Aye  there  !"  retorted  the 
sheep  of  Parson  Jack's  flock.  "Our  man  b'aint  like 
that  at  all.  He  be  main  fond  o'  dogs,  I  allows  ;  he 
likes  his  bottle  o'  port,  I  grant  you  that ;  but  he's  a 
proper  gentleman  and  a  Christian  ;  and  I  reckon  your 
passon  be  neither  one  nor  t'other." 

John  Russell  was  born  in  December,  1796.  His 
father  was  rector  of  Iddesleigh,  in  North  Devon,  and 
at  the  same  time  of  Southill,  near  Callington,  in  Corn- 
wall, one  of  the  fattest  livings  in  that  county,  the 
rectory  and  church  distant  three  miles  from  the  town  of 
Callington,  that  is  in  the  parish.  A  curate  on  a  small 
stipend  was  sent  to  serve  Iddesleigh,  Mr.  Russell 
settling  into  the  spacious  rectory  of  Southill,  large  as  a 
manor-house,  and  with  extensive  grounds  and  gardens. 

Young  John  was  sent  to  school  at  Blundell's,  at 
Tiverton,  under  Dr.  Richards,  a  good  teacher,  but  a 
very  severe  disciplinarian.  At  Blundell's,  Russell  and 
another  boy,  named  Bovey,  kept  a  scratch  pack  of 
hounds.  Having  received  a  hint  that  this  had  reached 
the  ears  of  Dr.  Richards,  he  collected  his  share  of  the 
pack  and  sent  them  off  to  his  father.  Next  day  he  was 
summoned  to  the  master's  desk. 

"Russell,"  said  the  Doctor,  "I  hear  that  you  have 
some  hounds.  Is  it  true  ?  " 

"  No,  sir,"  answered  Russell ;  "  I  have  not  a  dog  in 
the  neighbourhood." 

"  You  never  told  me  a  lie,  so  I  believe  you.  Bovey, 
come  here.  You  have  some  hounds,  I  understand?" 

"  Well,  sir,  a  few — but  they  are  little  ones." 

"  Oh  !  you  have,  have  you?  Then  I  shall  expel  you 
the  school." 

And  expelled  he  was,  Russell  coming  off  scatheless. 

John  Russell  was  ordained  deacon  in  1819,  on 
nomination  to  the  curacy  of  Georgenympton,  near 


536  DEVONSHIRE  CHARACTERS 

Southmolton,  and  there  he  kept  otter  hounds.  In  1830 
he  married  Penelope,  daughter  of  Admiral  Bury,  a 
lady  with  a  good  deal  of  money,  all  of  which,  or  nearly 
all,  Parson  Jack  managed  in  process  of  years  to  get  rid 
of — £50,000,  which  went,  not  in  giving  her  pleasure, 
but  on  his  own  sporting  amusements. 

Russell  thought  that  in  horse-dealing,  as  in  love  and 
war,  all  things  are  lawful.  It  so  happened  that  Parson 
Froude  wanted  a  horse,  and  he  asked  his  dear  friend, 
Russell,  if  he  knew  where  he  could  find  one  that  was 
suitable.  "  Would  my  brown  horse  do?"  asked 
Russell.  "I  want  to  sell  him,  because  the  hunting 
season  is  over,  and  I  have  too  many  horses.  Come 
into  town  on  Saturday  and  dine  with  me  in  the  middle 
of  the  day,  and  see  the  horse.  If  you  like  him,  you 
can  have  him,  and  if  you  do  not,  there  is  no  harm 
done." 

On  Saturday,  into  Southmolton  came  Froude. 
Russell  lived  there,  as  he  was  curate  of  George- 
nympton,  near  by.  Froude  stabled  his  horse  at  the 
lower  end  of  the  town.  He  was  suspicious  even  of  a 
friend,  so,  instead  of  going  to  Russell's  lodging,  he 
went  to  his  stable  and  found  the  door  locked.  This 
circumstance  made  him  more  suspicious  than  ever, 
and,  looking  round,  he  saw  a  man  on  a  ladder,  from 
which  he  was  thatching  a  cottage.  He  called  to  him 
for  assistance,  shifted  the  ladder  to  the  stable,  as- 
cended, and  went  by  the  "tallet"  door  into  the  loft. 
He  got  down  the  steps  inside,  opened  the  window,  and 
carefully  inspected  the  horse,  which  he  found  to  be 
suffering  in  both  eyes  from  incipient  cataract.  He 
climbed  back,  got  down  the  ladder,  and  shutting  the 
window,  went  into  a  shop  to  have  his  coat  brushed 
before  he  rang  his  friend's  door-bell.  The  door  was 
opened  by  Russell  himself,  who  saluted  him  with : 


TWO   HUNTING   PARSONS  537 

"You  are  early,  Froude.  Come  across  to  the  bank 
with  me  for  a  moment,  if  you  do  not  mind." 

In  the  street  was  standing  a  Combmartin  cart 
laden  with  early  vegetables,  and  between  the  shafts 
was  an  old  pony,  stone  blind,  with  glassy  eyeballs. 
Froude  paused,  lifted  the  pony's  head,  turned  its  face 
to  the  light,  looked  at  the  white  eyeballs,  and  re- 
marked :  "  How  blessed  plenty  blind  horses  are  in  this 
town  just  now,  Jack." 

Not  another  word  was  said.  The  dinner  was  eaten, 
the  bottle  of  port  wine  was  consumed,  and  Froude  rode 
home  without  having  been  asked  to  see  the  brown 
horse.  Russell  knew  that  the  game  was  up,  and  that 
his  little  plan  for  making  his  friend  view  the  horse 
after  he  had  dined,  and  not  before,  had  lamentably 
failed.1 

But  that  was  the  way  with  them.  Froude  would 
have  dealt  with  his  best  friend  in  the  same  manner  over 
horses. 

One  who  knew  him  intimately  writes  :  "  Russell  was 
an  iron  man.  I  have  known  other  specimens,  but 
Russell  was  the  hardest  of  all  in  constitution.  He  was 
kindly  enough  and  liberal  in  his  dealings  with  his 
people  ;  but  if  it  came  to  selling  him,  or  even  to  lend- 
ing him,  a  horse,  or  buying  what  he  was  pleased  to  call 
his  famous  terriers,  the  case  was  different — it  was  after 
the  morality  of  North  Devon.  He  was  a  wonderful 
courtier  where  ladies  were  concerned,  and  with  them  he 
was  very  popular.  He  was  no  fool,  but  very  capable, 
only  a  man  who  was  too  much  given  to  outdoor 
sports  to  read,  or  even  to  keep  himself  currently  in- 
formed. 

"His   voice   was    not   unmusical,    but  tremendous. 

1  Thornton  (Rev.  W.  H.)>  Reminiscences  of  an  Old  West-country 
Clergyman,  1897. 


538  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

He  was  far  too  shrewd  to  be  ever  foolish  in  church.  I 
was  in  the  county  somewhere  about  1848-9,  and  there 
was  a  Bishop's  Visitation  at  Southmolton,  and  Russell 
was  asked  to  preach.  Then  the  clergy,  churchwardens, 
etc.,  dined  together  at  the  *  George,'  and  after  dinner 
the  Bishop  rose,  and,  with  his  silvery  voice,  thanked 
the  preacher  of  the  day,  and,  in  the  name  of  all  those 
present,  begged  him  to  publish  his  admirable  discourse 
for  their  benefit. 

"  Bishop  Phillpotts,  I  may  say,  was  diabolically 
astute  and  well-informed,  and  dangerous  to  match. 

"  Then  up  rose  Russell,  with  head  thrown  back,  and 
said :  <  My  lord,  I  rejoice  that  so  good  a  judge  should 
pronounce  my  performance  profitable.  But  I  cannot 
oblige  your  lordship  and  publish,  because  that  dis- 
course is  already  in  print.  My  lord,  when  I  was  re- 
quested to  preach  to-day  I  naturally  turned  to  see  what 
others  before  me  had  thought  it  advisable  to  say  on 
similar  occasions ;  and,  chancing  on  a  discourse  by  an 
Irish  clergyman  of  long  ago,  I  shared  your  lordship's 
sentiments  of  admiration,  and  feeling  myself  incapable 
of  doing  better  than  the  author,  I  was  determined,  my 
lord,  that  if,  to-day,  I  could  give  no  better  fare,  at  least 
my  audience  should  have  no  worse.  My  lord,  the 
sermon  is  not  original.' 

"  There  was  not  a  man  in  the  room  but  knew  that  the 
Bishop  had  endeavoured  to  trap  their  man.  And  that 
he  had  extricated  himself  gave  vast  delight,  manifested 
by  the  way  in  which  the  glasses  leaped  from  the  tables, 
as  the  churchwardens  banged  the  boards." 

Russell  was  not  a  heavy  drinker.  No  one  ever  saw 
him  drunk.  Usually  he  only  brought  out  a  bottle  of 
port  after  he  had  killed  his  fox.  On  all  other  occasions 
gin  and  water  was  produced  before  going  to  bed.  But 
if  not  intemperate  in  that  way,  he  could  and  did  use 


TWO   HUNTING   PARSONS  539 

strong  language  in  the  hunting-field — as  strong  as  any 
of  the  yeomen  and  farmers. 

He  was  ubiquitous.  Whenever  there  was  a  wrestling 
match,  distance  was  nothing  to  him,  or  a  horse  fair,  or 
a  stag-hunt.  Mentioning  stag-hunts  recalls  the  story 
of  a  parson  on  the  fringe  of  Exmoor,  who  had  been  out 
with  the  hounds,  and  had  the  hunters  in  his  church  on 
Sunday  morning.  The  Psalm  given  out  was  "  As  pants 
the  hart  for  cooling  streams,"  and  his  text  was  "  Lo, 
we  heard  of  it  at  Ephratah,  and  we  found  it  in  the  wood." 

From  Southmolton  John  Russell  moved  to  Iddes- 
leigh,  appointed  there  by  his  father,  who  surrendered 
to  him  the  income  of  the  living. 

He  was  now  somewhat  out  of  the  ring  of  his  former 
associates,  and  had  to  make,  and  contrived  to  make, 
fresh  friends  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Hatherleigh. 
But  it  was  not  one  where  there  were  many  squires,  and 
the  clergy  were  too  poor  to  keep  packs.  Moreover, 
that  tract  of  country  was  rarely  hunted  at  all,  and 
Russell  determined  to  make  it  his  own  special  happy 
hunting  ground.  There  were,  however,  difficulties  in 
the  way.  The  people  did  not  sympathize.  The  farmers 
were  indisposed  to  favour  his  scheme,  and  of  resident 
sporting  squires  there  were  none  at  all. 

It  had  long  been  the  practice  of  the  natives  to  kill  a 
fox  whenever  and  however  they  could  catch  him  ;  and 
Russell  had  not  been  long  at  Iddesleigh  when  one  day 
his  ear  caught  the  sound  of  a  church  bell,  rung  in  a 
jangling  fashion  and  with  more  than  usual  clamour. 
It  was  the  signal  that  a  fox  had  been  tracked  to  ground 
or  balled  into  a  brake  ;  and  the  bell  summoned  every 
man  who  possessed  a  pickaxe,  a  gun,  or  a  terrier  to 
hasten  to  the  spot  and  lend  a  hand  in  destroying  the 
noxious  animal.  This  practice  he  had  to  interrupt  and 
put  an  end  to. 


540  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

A  letter  of  Russell's  thus  describes  his  first  adventure 
with  a  party  bent  on  murdering  a  fox  in  his  new 
country : — 

"  During  the  winter  of  the  first  year  I  was  at  Iddes- 
leigh,  the  snow  at  the  time  lying  deep  on  the  ground,  a 
native — Bartholomew,  alias  Bat,  Anstey — came  to  me 
and  said,  *  Hatherleigh  bell  is  a-ringing,  sir.'  '  Ring- 
ing for  what?'  I  asked,  with  a  strong  misgiving  as  to 
the  cause  of  it.  '  Well,  sir,  they've  a-tracked  a  fox  in 
somewhere ;  and  they've  a-sot  the  bell  a-going  to  col- 
lect the  people  to  shoot  un.'  'Come,  Bat,  speak  out 
like  a  man,'  I  replied,  'and  tell  me  where  it  is.'  'In 
Middlecot  Earths,  sir  ;  just  over  the  Ockment.' 

"  I  was  soon  on  the  spot  with  about  ten  couple  of  my 
little  hounds,  and  found  standing  around  the  earths 
about  a  hundred  fellows,  headed,  I  am  almost  ashamed 
to  say,  by  two  gentlemen — Mr.  Veale,  of  Passaford,  and 
Mr.  Morris,  of  Fishley.  I  remonstrated  with  these 
gentlemen,  and  told  them  plainly  that  if  they  would 
leave  the  earths,  and  preserve  foxes  for  me,  I  would 
show  them  more  sport  with  my  little  pack  in  one  day 
than  they  would  see  in  a  whole  year  by  destroying  the 
gallant  animal  in  so  un-English  a  way. 

"  Impressed,  apparently,  by  what  I  had  said,  both 
gentlemen  instantly  bade  me  good  morning,  turned  on 
their  heels,  and  left  the  place ;  while  a  few  shillings 
distributed  among  the  rest,  by  way  of  compensation  for 
the  disappointment  I  had  caused  them,  induced  them  to 
disperse  and  leave  me  almost  the  sole  occupant  of  the 
situation. 

"Then,  after  waiting  half  an  hour  near  the  spot,  I 
turned  my  head  towards  home ;  but  before  I  arrived 
there  I  met  a  man  open-mouthed,  bawling  out,  'They've 
a-tracked  a  fox  into  Brimblecombe,  for  I  hear  the  Dow- 
land  bell  a-going.' 


TWO   HUNTING   PARSONS  541 

"  So  off  I  went  to  Dowland  in  post-haste  ;  found  out 
where  the  fox  was  lying,  turned  him  out  of  a  furze- 
bush,  ran  him  one  hour  and  forty  minutes — a  blaze  of 
scent  all  the  way — and  took  him  up  alive  before  the 
hounds  on  the  very  earths  I  had  so  lately  quitted  ; 
where,  unfortunately  for  him,  a  couple  of  scoundrels 
had  remained  on  the  watch,  and  had  consequently 
headed  him  short  back  from  that  stronghold." 

But  Russell  had  not  yet  finished  with  the  fox-killers, 
for  he  says:  "The  very  next  day  after  the  run  from 
Brimblecombe,  a  man  came  to  Iddesleigh  on  purpose 
to  inform  me  that  the  bell  was  going  at  Beaford,  and 
that  a  fox  had  been  traced  into  a  brake  near  that 
hamlet.  The  brake,  in  reality,  though  not  far  from 
Iddesleigh,  was  in  Mr.  Glubb's  country ;  but  feeling 
sure  that  the  necessity  of  the  case  would  justify  the 
encroachment,  I  let  out  the  hounds  at  once,  and  hurried 
to  the  spot  with  all  speed. 

"  On  arriving  at  the  brake  I  found  only  one  man  near 
it ;  and  he,  placed  there  as  sentinel,  was  guarding  it 
from  disturbance  with  a  watchful  eye.  I  asked  him  to 
tell  me  where  the  fox  was,  but  he  gave  me  a  very 
impertinent  answer.  Pulling  out  half  a  crown,  I  said, 
t  There,  my  man,  I'd  have  given  you  that  if  you  had 
told  me  where  he  was.'  The  fellow's  eye  positively 
sparkled  at  sight  of  the  silver.  '  Let  me  have  it,  then,' 
he  replied,  '  and  I  will  show  you  where  he  is  to  a  yard.' 

"  I  ran  that  fox  an  hour,  and  lost  him  near  where  he 
was  found.  Then,  just  as  I  was  calling  the  hounds  away 
to  go  home,  down  came  a  crowd  of  men,  women,  and 
children  to  see  this  fox  murdered.  Many  of  them  had 
brought  their  loaded  guns,  were  full  of  beer,  and  eager 
for  the  fray.  And  when  they  discovered  that  I  had 
disturbed  their  fox,  as  they  were  pleased  to  designate 
him,  their  language  was  anything  but  choice. 


542  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"A  strapping  young  fellow,  one  of  the  principal 
farmers  in  the  parish,  came  up  to  me  and  said,  <  Who 
are  you,  sir,  to  come  here  and  spoil  our  sport  ? '  '  You 
would  have  spoiled  mine,'  I  replied,  'if  you  could.' 
'  We'll  shoot  them  foxes  whenever  we  can — that  I'll 
promise  you,'  he  said  in  an  angry  tone.  At  that 
moment  one  of  the  hounds  began  to  howl.  I  looked 
round,  saw  she  was  in  pain,  and  asked  in  a  threat- 
ening manner,  'Who  kicked  that  hound?' 

"  No  one  spoke  for  half  a  minute,  when  a  little  boy 
said,  pointing  to  another,  '  That  boy  kicked  her.'  *  Did 
he? '  I  exclaimed.  '  Then  'tis  lucky  for  him  that  he  is  a 
little  boy.'  '  Why?'  said  the  farmer  with  whom  I  had 
been  previously  talking.  <  Because, '  I  replied,  '  if  a  man 
had  kicked  her  I  would  have  horse-whipped  him  on  the 
spot.'  *  You  would  find  that  a  difficult  job  if  you  tried  it,' 
was  his  curt  answer.  I  jumped  off  my  horse,  threw  down 
my  whip,  and  said,  *  Who's  the  man  to  prevent  me?' 

"  Not  a  word  was  spoken.  I  stood  my  ground,  and 
one  by  one  the  crowd  retired,  the  young  farmer 
amongst  the  number ;  and  from  that  day  forward  I 
secured  for  myself  not  only  the  goodwill  and  co-opera- 
tion but  the  friendship  of  some  of  the  best  fox-preservers 
that  the  county  of  Devon  has  ever  seen." 

I  have  thought  it  as  well  to  let  Mr.  Russell  tell  his 
own  story.  If  the  reader  considers  this  a  dignified  scene 
for  a  clergyman  to  be  engaged  in  I  beg  to  differ  from 
him.  In  1832,  after  he  had  been  six  years  at  Iddesleigh, 
Mr.  Russell  moved  to  Tordown,  a  lone  country  house 
in  the  parish  of  Swymbridge,  and  in  1833,  the  perpetual 
curacy  of  Swymbridge  and  Landkey  becoming  vacant, 
he  was  appointed  to  the  benefice  by  the  Dean  of  Exeter, 
and  there  he  remained  almost  till  his  death. 

"When  I  was  inducted,"  wrote  he,  "to  this  incum- 
bency there  was  only  one  service  here  every  Sunday— 


TWO   HUNTING   PARSONS  543 

morning  and  evening  alternately  with  Landkey — 
whereas  now,  I  am  thankful  to  say,  we  have  four 
services  every  Sunday  in  Swymbridge  alone." 

This  shows  that  Parson  Jack  was  not  a  mere  mighty 
hunter  before  the  Lord.  He  was  a  sincerely  good  man 
up  to  his  lights,  and  never  neglected  a  duty  for  the 
sake  of  a  gallop  after  his  hounds. 

When  he  lost  Mr.  Sleeman  he  advertised  for  another 
curate  in  the  North  Devon  Journal.  "  Wanted  a  curate 
for  Swymbridge  ;  must  be  a  gentleman  of  moderate  and 
orthodox  views." 

Mr.  Hooker,  vicar  of  Buckerell,  was  standing  in  a 
shop  door  in  Barnstaple  shortly  after  the  appearance  of 
this  advertisement,  when  he  was  accosted  by  Will 
Chappie,  the  parish  clerk  of  Swymbridge,  who  entered 
the  grocer's  shop.  "  Hav'ee  got  a  coorate  yet  for 
Swymbridge,  Mr.  Chappie?"  inquired  the  grocer  in 
Mr.  Hooker's  hearing.  "No,  not  yet,  sir,"  replied  the 
sexton,  "Master's  'nation  particler,  and  the  man  must 
be  orthodox." 

"  What  does  that  mean  ?  "  inquired  the  grocer. 

"Well,  I  recken  it  means  he  must  be  a  purty  good 
rider." 

And  Mr.  Chappie  was  not  far  out.  A  curate  did 
apply  and  breakfasted  with  Russell.  The  meal  over, 
two  likely-looking  hunters  were  brought  round  ready 
to  be  mounted.  "I'm  going  to  take  'ee  to  Landkey," 
explained  Russell.  Off  they  rode.  The  young  cleric 
presently  remarked,  "How  bare  of  trees  your  estate  is," 
as  they  crossed  the  lands  belonging  to  Russell. 

"Ah  !  "  responded  the  sportsman,  "the  hounds  eat 
'em."  Coming  to  a  stiff  gate,  Russell,  with  his 
hand  in  his  pocket,  cleared  it  like  a  bird,  but  look- 
ing round,  saw  the  curate  on  the  other  side  crawling 
over  the  gate,  and  crying  out,  "  It  won't  open." 


544  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"  Not  it,"  was  the  reply;  "and  if  you  can't  leap  a 
five-barred  gate  like  that,  I'm  sure  you  can't  preach  a 
sermon.  Good-bye." 

It  is  not  my  intention  to  give  a  detailed  life  of  the 
Rev.  John  Russell.  His  memoirs  by  the  author  of  Old 
Dartmoor  Days,  published  in  1878,  are  very  full.  They 
are  very  laudatory,  written  as  they  were  whilst  Russell 
was  alive.  Cromwell  when  being  painted  was  asked  by 
the  artist  about  his  mole.  "  Paint  the  mole  and  all," 
was  the  Protector's  reply.  But  others  are  not  so  strong- 
minded  and  do  not  care  to  have  portraits  too  realistic. 
In  1880,  Russell  was  appointed  to  Black  Torrington. 

When  he  was  over  eighty  he  rode  a  poor  hack  from 
Black  Torrington  to  Mr.  Williams,  at  Scorrier,  to 
judge  puppies,  and  Mrs.  Williams  was  alarmed,  as  the 
old  man  was  not  well  on  arriving.  She  proposed  to 
send  him  back  by  rail,  fearing  lest  he  should  be 
seriously — fatally,  perhaps — ill  in  her  house.  But 
although  very  poorly,  he  refused,  and  with  one  day 
between,  rode  home,  something  like  seventy  miles  each 
journey. 

He  died  in  1883,  3  May,  in  the  arms  of  his  medical 
attendant,  Dr.  Linnington  Ash,  at  Black  Torrington, 
and  was  buried  at  Swymbridge. 

After  the  best  type  of  the  hunting  parson  we  come  to 
one  of  the  worst,  who  exercised  a  good  deal  of  in- 
fluence over  Russell,  when  he  was  young,  at  South- 
molton.  This  was  John  Froude,  vicar  of  Knowstone, 
who  had  succeeded  his  father,  the  elder  John  Froude, 
in  September,  1803,  and  who  held  the  incumbency,  a 
veritable  incubus  to  it,  for  forty-nine  years  till  his  death, 
on  9  September,  1852. 

Russell  himself  says  :  "  My  head-quarters  (after 
having  been  ordained)  were  at  Southmolton;  and  I 
hunted  as  many  days  in  every  week  as  my  duties  would 


TWO   HUNTING   PARSONS  545 

permit  with  John  Froude,  with  whom  I  was  on  very 
intimate  terms.  His  hounds  were  something  out  of 
the  common ;  bred  from  old  staghounds — light  in 
colour  and  sharp  as  needles,  plenty  of  tongue,  but 
would  drive  like  furies.  He  couldn't  bear  to  see  a 
hound  put  his  nose  on  the  ground  and  *  twiddle  his 
tail.'  '  Hang  the  brute,'  he  would  say  to  the  owner  of 
the  hounds,  'get  me  those  who  can  wind  their  game 
when  they  are  thrown  off.' 

"  Froude  was  himself  a  first-rate  sportsman,  but 
always  acted  on  the  principle  of  *  kill  un,  if  you  can  ; 
you'll  never  see  un  again.' 

"He  had  an  old  liver-coloured  spaniel,  a  wide 
ranger,  and  under  perfect  command.  He  used  to  say 
he  could  hunt  the  parish  with  that  dog  from  the  top  of 
the  church  tower.  You  could  hear  his  view-halloo  for 
miles,  and  his  hounds  absolutely  flew  to  him  when  they 
heard  it.  Let  me  add,  his  hospitality  knew  no  bounds." 

John  Froude  belonged  to  a  clever  family,  that  pro- 
duced Archdeacon  Froude,  rector  of  Dartington  and 
father  of  Hurrell  and  James  Anthony,  the  historian. 
He  had  been  well  educated,  and  was  a  graduate  of 
Oxford  University.  It  is  said  that  he  had  met  with 
great  disappointment  in  love,  and  early  in  life  retired 
into  what  was,  in  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, the  great  retirement  from  the  world  of  culture  and 
intellectual  activity,  Knowstone-cum-Molland. 

Knowstone  stands  high  on  a  bleak  and  wind-swept 
hill,  reached  even  at  this  day  by  a  narrow  and  arduous 
and  often  a  rough  road,  when  torn  up  by  a  descending 
torrent  after  a  storm.  Molland  lies  distant  three  and  a 
half  miles  on  a  brook  flowing  down  from  bleak  moors 
into  the  Yeo.  A  sheltered  and  pleasant  spot,  with  an 
interesting  church,  containing  Courtenay  monuments. 

Froude's  church   preferment  was  at  the  time  valu- 

2   N 


546  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

able,  and  he  was,  moreover,  in  possession  of  some 
considerable  private  fortune  in  addition  to  his  profes- 
sional income.  He  had  few  educated  people  residing 
in  his  neighbourhood.  With  the  quiet,  inoffensive 
clergy  about  he  would  not  associate  ;  with  others  he 
could  not,  as  they  held  themselves  aloof  from  him.  He 
soon  came  to  associate  almost  entirely  with  the  rough 
farmers  who  inhabited  the  Exmoor  district,  and  he  grew 
to  resemble  them  in  mind,  language,  habits  of  life  and 
dress.  From  them  he  was  principally  differentiated  by 
his  native  wit,  his  superior  education,  and  his  exceed- 
ing wickedness. 

I  have  said  that  there  were  some  with  whom  he  could 
not  associate.  Such  was  the  Hon.  Newton  Fellowes, 
afterwards  Earl  of  Portsmouth,  but  at  that  time  a 
young  man  with  a  love  of  sport,  which  he  maintained 
to  the  last,  and  then  without  much  token  of  brains, 
but  he  developed  later.  Him  Froude  detested,  mainly 
because  Newton  Fellowes  busied  himself  to  improve 
the  roads,  so  that,  when  at  Eggesford,  he  could  drive 
about  the  country  in  his  four-in-hand  ;  partly,  also, 
because  he  was  never  invited  to  cross  the  threshold  of 
Eggesford.  He  revenged  himself  with  his  tongue. 

One  day  he  was  dining  at  the  ordinary  at  the  George 
Hotel  in  Southmolton  when  Newton  Fellowes  was 
there  as  well.  The  latter  was  telling  the  assembled 
farmers  how  he  had  fallen  over  a  hurdle  in  a  race  a  few 
days  earlier.  "  And  as  the  mare  rolled,"  added  he,  "I 
thought  I  had  broken  my  neck,"  and  he  put  his  hands 
to  his  throat  to  emphasize  the  remark.  Whereupon 
Froude,  speaking  loud  enough  to  command  attention, 
exclaimed:  "  No,  no,  Newton,  you  will  never  break 
your  neck  ;  we  have  scriptural  warrant  for  that." 

"  How  so?" 

"  The  Lord  preserveth  them  that  are  simple." 


TWO   HUNTING   PARSONS  547 

The  story  stuck  to  Lord  Portsmouth  for  life.  Nor 
did  Prebendary  Karslake  fare  much  better.  Kars- 
lake  was  a  scholar,  a  good  speaker,  rector  of  two 
parishes,  and  Prebendary  of  Exeter  Cathedral.  He 
took  pupils,  and  prepared  them  for  Oxford.  He  was 
rural  dean  and  inspector  of  schools,  and  also  chairman 
of  the  quarter  sessions,  farmed  largely,  and  was  a 
keen,  all-round  sportsman,  and  very  intimate  with 
Newton  Fellowes,  wherefore  Froude  hated  him. 

It  was  at  another  farmers'  dinner  at  the  "  George  " 
that  Froude  left  his  mark  upon  him.  Karslake  was  not 
present  at  this  dinner. 

Two  farmers  were  engaged  in  dispute,  and  one  said 
to  the  other:  "I  don't  care  for  your  opinion,  for  Mr. 
Karslake  says  otherwise,  and  he  knows." 

"  What !"  shouted  Froude;  "do  'ee  quote  that  little 
Billy  Karslake?  He  is  no  better  than  another — a  stone 
jackass." 

Then  a  dozen  voices  together  asked :  "Why  is  Parson 
Karslake  like  a  stone  jackass  ?  " 

"Well,"  said  Froude,  "'tis  plain  enough,  surely. 
He  ain't  handsome,  he  ain't  useful,  he's  main  stupid, 
but  he's  gallous  mischievous." 

The  nickname  of  the  "stone  jackass"  stuck  to  the 
Prebendary  for  life.  But  worse  treatment  was  in  store 
for  him. 

He  was  a  most  active  magistrate,  and  the  date  of  the 
occurrence  I  am  about  to  mention  was  somewhere 
between  1835  and  1840,  before  the  railways  penetrated 
into  the  West  Country. 

It  must  be  understood  that  Froude  fascinated  his 
neighbours,  overawing  them  as  a  snake  is  said  to 
fascinate  a  mouse.  If  he  told  them  to  do  a  thing,  or 
to  keep  silent,  he  was  obeyed.  They  dared  not  do 
otherwise. 


548  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

One  evening  a  young  farmer  arrived  at  Mr.  Kars- 
lake's  door,  at  Meshaw,  and  entreated  an  interview  on 
urgent  business.  On  being  admitted  he  told  the 
magistrate  that  an  atrocious  crime  had  been  un- 
doubtedly perpetrated  at  Knowstone  that  very  day. 
A  little  girl  of  eleven  years  of  age  had  left  the  village 
in  the  afternoon  to  return  to  her  parents,  who  occupied 
a  small  farm-house  a  mile  or  two  distant,  and  had  not 
been  seen  since.  When  search  was  made  for  her,  on 
the  roadside  were  found  a  child's  shoe  and  a  bonnet 
stained  with  blood,  but  no  body  could  be  discovered. 
Karslake  took  the  matter  up.  He  was  in  the  saddle 
from  morning  till  night,  the  local  constables  were 
stirred  up,  but  all  in  vain.  No  further  traces  of  the 
child  were  to  be  found,  no  clue  to  the  mystery  dis- 
covered. Karslake  then,  at  his  own  expense,  went  up 
to  London,  and  returned  with  a  first-class  detective 
from  Bow  Street.  But  in  vain.  He  was  as  unable  to 
unriddle  the  mystery  as  were  the  local  constables. 

About  ten  days  later  the  baffled  magistrate  was 
sitting  hearing  cases  in  the  court-house  at  South- 
molton,  wearied  and  dejected  at  his  failure,  when  Mr. 
Froude  walked  in,  accompanied  by  a  child.  "  Good 
morning,  Mr.  Karslake.  I  am  told  you've  been  look- 
ing for  a  little  maid  lately,  and  I've  brought  this  one 
for  you  to  see,  in  case  her's  the  one  you  be  wanting." 

The  child  had  been  kept  secreted  at  the  rectory,  and 
the  parents  had  lent  themselves  to  the  deception,  they 
being  tenants  and  allies  of  the  rector.  What  the  cost 
was  to  Mr.  Karslake  in  money,  vexation,  wear  and 
tear,  and  ridicule — to  which  he  was  particularly  sensi- 
tive— nobody  knows  ;  but  one  can  conceive  his  annoy- 
ance when  the  whole  court-house — bench  and  audience 
— broke  out  into  a  roar  of  laughter  at  his  expense,  he 
being  chairman. 


TWO    HUNTING   PARSONS  549 

Froude  had  a  nicely  adjusted  scale  of  punishments 
for  all  who  offended  him,  and  he  had  ready  assistants 
to  administer  them. 

From  his  first  arrival  at  Knowstone  he  encouraged 
about  him  a  lawless  company  of  vagabonds  who,  when 
they  were  not  in  prison,  lived  roughly  at  free  quarters 
at  the  rectory,  and  from  thence  carried  on  their  busi- 
ness of  petty  larceny  ;  and  who  were,  moreover,  ready 
to  execute  vengeance  upon  the  rector's  enemies,  and 
these  enemies,  although  they  lived  in  continual  terror, 
were  numerous. 

His  satellites  ran  errands,  beat  covers,  broke  in 
horses,  did  light  farm-work,  and  found  hares  for  the 
hounds,  which  were  kept  at  the  rectory. 

Blackmore  has  described  him  and  his  gang  in  The 
Maid  of  Sker,  in  which  he  calls  Froude  Parson  Chowne. 
If  Froude  desired  to  damage  an  obnoxious  farmer  who 
did  not  pay  his  tithes  punctually,  or  who  had  otherwise 
offended  him,  he  gave  a  hint,  and  the  man's  ricks  were 
burnt,  or  his  horses  houghed. 

As  Henry  II  did  not  order  the  murder  of  Becket,  but 
threw  out  a  hint  that  it  would  be  an  acceptable  thing 
to  him  to  be  rid  of  the  proud  prelate,  so  was  it  with 
Parson  Froude.  He  never  ordered  the  commission 
of  a  crime,  but  he  suggested  the  commission.  For  in- 
stance, if  a  farmer  had  offended  him,  he  would  say  to 
one  of  these  men  subject  to  his  influence,  "  As  I've 
been  standing  in  the  church  porch,  Harry,  I  thought 
what  a  terrible  thing  it  would  be  if  the  rick  over  yonder 

of  Farmer  G were  to  burn.  'Twould  come  home 

to  him  pretty  sharp,  I  reckon." 

Next  night  the  rick  would  be  on  fire. 

Or  he  would  say  to  his  groom,  "  Tom,  it's  my  tithe 
day,  and  we  shall  sit  on  purty  late.  There's  Farmer 
Q behindhand  again  :  this  is  the  second  half-year. 


550  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

You'll  be  in  the  room  :  if  1  scratch  my  nose  with  my 
fork  you'll  know  that  he  has  not  paid  up.  Dear  me  ! 
what  a  shocking  thing  were  his  linch-pin  to  be  gone, 
and  he  going  down  Knowstone  Hill,  and  in  such  a 
dark  night — and  the  wheel  were  to  come  off." 

And  certainly  if  Tom  saw  the  vicar  put  his  silver  fork 

to  his  nose,  so  certainly  would  Farmer  Q be  thrown 

out  of  his  trap  by  the  wheel  coming  off,  to  be  found  by 
the  next  passer  along  the  road  with  dislocated  thigh,  or 
broken  arm  and  collarbone. 

A  gentleman  near  had  offended  him.  This  person 
had  a  plantation  of  larch  near  his  house.  Froude  said 

to  Tom,  "Bad  job  for  Squire  ,  if  his  larch  lost 

their  leaders ! "  Next  morning  every  larch  in  the 
plantation  had  been  mutilated. 

The  Rev.  W.  H.  Thornton  says  in  his  delightful  book, 
Reminiscences  of  an  Old  West-country  Clergyman:  "He 
always  had  around  him  a  tribe  of  vagabonds,  whom  he 
harboured.  They  beat  the  covers  when  he  shot,  they 
found  hares  for  his  hounds  to  hunt,  they  ran  on  his 
errands,  they  were  the  terror  of  the  countryside,  and 
were  reputed  to  commit  crimes  at  their  master's  instiga- 
tion. He  never  paid  them  anything,  or  spared  or 
sheltered  them  from  punishment.  Sometimes  they 
were  in  gaol,  and  sometimes  out.  They  could  always 
have  as  much  bacon,  potatoes,  bread  and  cheese,  and 
cider  at  his  house  as  they  pleased,  as  well  as  a  fire  to  sit 
by,  and  a  rough  bed  to  lie  down  upon. 

"  Plantations  were  burned,  horses  mutilated,  chim- 
neys choked,  and  Chowne's  men  had  the  credit  of  these 
misdeeds,  which  were  generally  committed  to  the  injury 
of  some  person  with  whom  Chowne  had  quarrelled. 

"  I  have  known  him  say  to  a  young  farmer  :  '  John,  I 
like  that  colt  of  yours.  I  will  give  you  twenty-five 
pounds  for  him.'  The  owner  had  replied  that  it  was 


TWO    HUNTING   PARSONS  551 

not  money  enough,  and  Chowne  had  retorted,  'You  had 
better  let  me  have  him,  Jack.  I  have  noticed  that  when 
a  man  refuses  an  offer  for  a  horse  from  me,  something 
goes  wrong  with  the  animal.  It  is  very  curious  really 
that  it  should  be  so,  but  so  it  is.'  And  the  horse  would 
be  sent  to  him  for  twenty-five  pounds. 

"  He  was  frequently  engaged  in  litigation,  and  one 
day  Mr.  Cockburn  (afterwards  Lord  Chief  Justice  of 
England,  but  then  a  wild  young  fellow  enough)  was 
engaged  against  him,  and  Chowne  lost  his  case. 
Cockburn  then,  or  so  it  is  said,  left  the  court  in  the 
Castle  of  Exeter  in  order  to  have  some  luncheon. 

"In  the  castle  yard  he  saw  an  old  countryman  in 
yellow  leggings  and  a  long  blue  coat,  who  had  an  ash 
sapling  in  his  hand.  As  the  great  lawyer  passed  him, 
whack  !  down  came  the  stick  across  the  silk  gown  upon 
his  shoulders. 

"'Be  you  the  young  rascal  who  spoke  up  against 
me  in  court  just  now?'  <I  suppose  that  you  are 
Parson  Chowne,'  said  Cockburn.  '  I  was  against  you, 
and  I  am  very  glad  that  I  succeeded  ;  and  now  I  am 
inclined  to  have  you  up  for  striking  me.' 

"'No  you  won't,'  was  the  reply,  'you  shall  come  and 
have  luncheon  with  me  instead.  You  are  a  deuced  clever 
young  chap,  and  I  am  hanged  if  ever  I  have  a  case  on 
again  without  employing  you.  So  come  along,  you 
little  beggar,  and  I  will  stand  you  a  bottle  of  port.' 
Cockburn  went,  and  frequently  afterwards  he  would 
stay  with  Chowne." 

The  following  story  shall  be  told  as  near  as  may  be 
in  the  words  of  the  farmer  who  was  present  when 
occurred  the  incident  he  related. 

"On  Saturday  last  Mr.  Froude  drove  a  fox  from 
Molland  to  ground  in  Parson  Jekyll's  Wood  at  Tar 
Steps.  He  was  going  to  dig  him  out,  and  the  men  had 


552  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

commenced  to  work,  when  down  came  Mr.  Jekyll  in 
a  thundering  passion.  Mr.  Froude  and  he  bean't  over 
friendly,  best  of  times  ;  and  the  earth  is  used  by  the 
vixens.  There  was  a  litter  of  cubs  there  only  last 
season.  Mr.  Jekyll,  hearing  the  hounds  stop,  came 
out  at  once  to  us,  in  a  tear ;  I  was  there  myself  and  I 
heard  him.  '  Mr.  Froude,*  says  he,  'I  thought  you 
knew  better  than  to  go  digging  in  another  man's 
country  without  special  permission  to  do  so,  and  late 
in  the  season  too,  with  cubs  already  about.  If  you 
don't  desist  and  take  yourself  off,  I'll  summons  you;  so 
blow  your  horn,  sir,  and  leave.'  '  I  have  a  terrier  to 
ground,  sir,'  replied  Froude,  *  and  I  mean  to  dig  him 
out.'  *  If  you  go  away,'  said  the  other,  *  the  terrier 
will  come  out.  In  no  case  will  I  allow  you  to  continue 
to  dig.'  With  that  the  old  man,  Parson  Froude,  grew 
white  with  passion,  and  says,  '  And  do  you  dare  risk  a 
quarrel  with  me,  Mr.  Jekyll  ?  Do  you  not  know  that 
to-night  on  my  return  I  have  only  to  say  at  Knowstone, 
Bones )  bones  at  Hcrwkridge!  and,  mind  you,  name  no 
names,  and  your  carcase  will  be  stinking  in  a  ditch 
within  the  week  ? ' 

"  Then  he  got  on  his  horse  and  rode  down  to  Wins- 
ford  and  obtained  a  search  warrant  from  S.  Mitchell  to 
search  Tar  Steps  Rectory  for  his  terrier,  which  he  took 
oath  he  believed  to  be  there,  stolen  by  Mr.  Jekyll  and 
concealed  on  the  premises.  And  he  brought  back 
Floyd,  the  Winsford  constable,  with  him  to  Tar  Steps  ; 
and  we  all  thought  Mr.  Jekyll  would  have  had  a  fit, 
he  was  that  furious,  while  they  searched  the  house 
down  to  the  very  cellars,  and  shook  up  the  rector's  old 
port  wine,  on  suspicion  that  he  might  have  hidden  the 
terrier  in  the  back  of  the  bin.  But  the  best  of  the  joke 
was  that  there  had  been  no  terrier  out  with  the  hounds 
that  day,  and  of  course  none  had  been  put  into  the  hole. 


TWO   HUNTING   PARSONS  553 

So  Parson  Froude  had  sworn  to  what  he  knew  well  was 
a  lie." 

Froude  had  a  horse  to  sell,  and  one  cold  morning  a 
gentleman  named  Houlditch,  of  Wellington,  drove  over 
in  a  gig  from  Tiverton  to  Knowstone,  and  requested  to 
be  shown  the  horse  without  delay.  Froude,  loud  in 
protestations  of  hospitality,  refused  his  request.  "I 
dine  at  one  o'clock,  you've  had  a  cold  drive,  and  no 
man  knows  better  than  do  I  what  them  hills  is  like  that 
you've  come  over.  So,  if  you  can  put  up  with  roast 
ribs  of  beef,  sir,  and  a  mouldy  Stilton  cheese  to  follow, 
us  will  top  up  with  a  drop  of  something  hot,  and  then 
Jack  Babbage,  my  huntsman,  shall  show  'ee  the  horse." 

After  hearing  from  Mr.  Houlditch  that  he  was  look- 
ing for  a  hunter,  they  sat  down  together  to  dinner,  and 
the  parson  firmly  but  politely  pressed  his  ale  upon  the 
guest.  This  ale  was  of  Froude's  own  brewing.  When 
new  it  did  not  readily  proclaim  its  potency,  and  the 
rector  never  gave  warning  nor  spoke  of  its  strength. 
It  was  excellent,  soft  as  milk.  The  day  had  been  cold, 
and  the  drive  had  been  long. 

When  a  strange  and  unaccustomed  glare  had  come 
into  Mr.  Houlditch's  eyes,  Froude  ordered  Jack 
Babbage  to  bring  out  the  horse,  and  giving  his 
guest  a  hand  to  steady  him,  the  two  went  into  a  field 
near  the  rectory.  In  this  field  some  hurdles  "feathered" 
with  gorse  bushes  were  set  up,  and  Babbage,  always 
shouting  as  he  neared  a  jump,  rode  the  horse  repeatedly 
over  the  obstacles,  and  galloped  him  round.  Then 
Froude  invited  Mr.  Houlditch  to  try  the  horse  himself, 
but  he  was  too  fuddled  to  mount,  and  he  bought  the 
beast  for  £50,  a  long  price  in  those  days,  and  was  driven 
back  by  the  post-boy  to  the  "  Angel  "  at  Tiverton.  The 
horse,  at  his  charges,  was  sent  to  Wellington  at  once. 

A  week  later  came  a  letter  with  the  Wellington  post- 


554  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

mark,  which  Froude  threw  into  the  fire  unopened. 
A  few  days  later  came  a  second  letter,  then  a  third,  and 
all  shared  the  same  fate. 

Finally,  one  day  an  angry  man  drove  up  from 
Tiverton — it  was  Houlditch  himself.  "  You  don't 
seem  to  care  to  reply  to  my  letters,  Mr.  Froude,"  said 
he,  "so  I  have  come  in  person  to  ask  you  whether 
or  not  you  will  take  back  your  horse  which  you  sold  me 
ten  days  ago,  for  he  is  blind." 

"Sir,"  said  Froude,  "you  asked  me  for  a  hunter, 
and  one  that  could  jump,  and  I  sold  you  a  hunter  that 
could  jump.  You  saw  the  horse,  and  it  was  a  bargain. 
You  did  not  ask  me  if  it  could  see.  Jump  he  can,  as 
you  observed.  When  you  ride  him,  carry  a  knife  with 
you,  and  when  you  come  to  a  fence  you  just  jump  off 
his  back  and  cut  a  furze-bush.  Put  that  down  before 
the  fence  and  canter  the  old  horse  up  and  speak  sharp 
to  him,  same  as  Babbage  did,  and  so  soon  as  he  feels 
the  prickles  about  his  legs  he  will  jump." 

"  Will  you  take  the  horse  back?  "  roared  Houlditch. 

"Certainly  I  will." 

"  And  repay  me  my  £50?" 

"  Certainly  not.  I  cashed  your  cheque,  sir,  last 
week,  and  with  the  money  paid  my  butcher.  A  deal  is 
a  deal." 

The  story  comes  with  the  authority  of  Jack  Babbage, 
confirmed  by  Mrs.  Froude,  after  her  husband's  death. 
The  incident  occurred  late  in  the  rector's  life,  after  he 
was  married. 

Froude's  shamelessness  was  phenomenal.  On  one 
occasion  he  sold  some  keep  on  the  glebe  at  Knowstone 
by  auction,  and  a  neighbouring  farmer  purchased  a 
field  of  swede  turnips  under  condition  that  he  should 
remove  them  before  a  stated  day. 

The  time   limit  was   nearly  expired,   when    Froude 


TWO    HUNTING    PARSONS  555 

found  the  purchaser  and  the  men  in  the  field  carting 
away  the  roots.  The  rain  was  falling  in  torrents,  the 
crop  was  heavy,  and  it  was  a  dirty  job. 

Froude  rode  into  the  field  and  shouted  to  the  farmer 
(with  the  usual  expletives  with  which  he  garnished  his 
discourse),  bidding  him  desist. 

"  But,  sir,"  said  the  man,  "the  time  is  nearly  up, 
and  I  am  bound  to  go  on,  or  I  shall  forfeit  my  purchase." 

Froude  then  called  him  a fool,  reminded  him 

that  he  had  known  him  from  his  cradle  and  his  father 
before  him,  and  bade  him  go  home  and  wait  for  finer 
weather  to  pull  his  turnips  and  take  them  away. 

The  appointed  day  soon  came  and  passed,  and  the 
following  morning  the  farmer,  feeling  a  little  uneasy, 
rose  early  and  rode  off  to  his  turnips.  The  field  was 
full  of  sheep  when  he  arrived,  and  they  were  all  marked 
J.F.  Calling  his  dog,  the  farmer  opened  the  gate  and 
proceeded  to  turn  them  out. 

Then  Froude,  on  horseback,  came  from  an  ambush, 
and  cracking  his  whip  and  swearing  horribly,  rode  at 
him,  and  dared  him  to  remove  the  sheep.  The  man 
was  terrified  and  went  home,  fearing  lest  worse  should 
befall  him.  Next  day  was  Saturday,  and  Southmolton 
Market,  and  the  young  man,  bursting  with  his  sense  of 
wrong,  rode  into  the  town  to  proclaim  his  woes.  As 
he  entered  from  the  bottom  of  the  long  street  he  saw 
Mr.  Froude  in  the  midst  of  a  cluster  of  sporting 
farmers,  the  allies  of  the  rector,  and  as  the  injured  man 
approached,  Froude  stretched  out  the  finger  of  scorn, 
and  cried,  "  Look  there  !  See  to  un  !  See  to  the 
biggest  fule  in  Devonshire  as  buys  a  vield  of  swedes 
and  leaves  'em  to  another  man  to  stock — a  gurt  natural 
ass  !  "  This  sally  was  answered  by  a  peal  of  laughter, 
and  the  victim,  turning  his  head  down  street,  galloped 
away. 


556  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

In  The  Maid  of  Sker,  Blackmore  tells  the  story  of 
Parson  Chowne  (Froude)  having  driven  a  horse  mad 
by  putting  a  hemp-seed  into  its  eye.  This  story,  I  was 
informed  by  one  who  had  every  occasion  to  know  the 
circumstances,  is  true.  Froude  had  set  his  heart  on 
buying  a  horse  at  Southmolton  Fair,  but  Sir  Walter 
Carew  out-bid  him  and  secured  the  beast.  Froude 
shortly  after  was  again  in  Southmolton,  and  ascer- 
tained that  Sir  Walter  was  in  the  inn,  at  the  ordinary, 
taking  his  lunch.  He  went  into  the  stable,  and  saw 
that  the  baronet  had  ridden  in  on  the  coveted  horse. 
Froude  gave  the  ostler  a  shilling  to  do  him  some  trifling 
errand,  and  during  his  absence  so  treated  the  unfortu- 
nate animal  that  it  went  almost  mad  with  pain,  and  on 
the  way  home  threw  its  rider. 

Henry  Phillpotts  was  consecrated  Bishop  of  Exeter 
in  the  year  1831,  and  he  soon  came  into  collision  with 
Froude  ;  but  the  Bishop  was  a  formidable  antagonist, 
and  Froude  shunned  him,  and  would  not  attend  his 
visitations. 

The  following  story  has  been  frequently  told  ;  but 
the  version  here  given  is  as  related  half  a  century  ago 
by  Jack  Russell  and  by  Babbage,  and  confirmed  by 
Prebendary  Matthews,  who  succeeded  Froude  at 
Knowstone. 

The  Bishop  held  a  visitation  at  Southmolton,  and 
Froude  sent  a  note  to  say  that  he  could  not  attend,  as 
he  was  indisposed. 

The  Bishop  remained  the  night  at  Southmolton,  and 
next  morning  early  started  for  Tiverton  in  a  carriage, 
and  as  Knowstone  was  not  much  out  of  the  way,  he 
ordered  the  driver  to  turn  up  the  hill  to  the  village. 
Mr.  Froude  was  in  the  dining-room  talking  to  Bab- 
bage, and  the  hounds  on  the  lawn,  when  one  of 
his  rascally  retainers  ran  in  to  inform  the  rector  that 


TWO    HUNTING    PARSONS  557 

the  Bishop  was  in  the  village  inquiring  for  the  rectory. 
Babbage  hurried  the  hounds  into  kennel,  and  Froude 
went  to  bed. 

A  good-looking  housekeeper  (for  Froude  married 
very  late  in  life)  met  his  lordship  at  the  door,  and 
answering  his  inquiry  after  the  rector,  said  that  Mr. 
Froude  was  unwell  in  bed. 

"  May  I  trouble  you  to  tell  him  that  his  bishop  wishes 
to  see  him,  and  will  visit  him  in  his  bedroom  ?  " 

The  woman  went  upstairs,  and  the  Bishop,  waiting 
in  the  hall,  overheard  the  conversation  which  ensued. 

"  Bishop  says,  sir,  as,  he  must  come  upstairs  if  you 
can't  come  down." 

"Tell  his  lordship,  Mary,  that  I  don't  know  what's 
the  matter  with  me,  but  it's  something  infectious — 
scarlet  fever,  I  reckon — and  maybe  he'll  catch  it  if  he 
comes  up  here." 

However,  Henry  Phillpotts  was  not  to  be  dissuaded, 
and  he  mounted  the  stairs  and  seated  himself  by  the 
bed. 

"  What  will  your  lordship  take?"  asked  Froude, 
showing  his  head  only  above  the  clothes.  "  It's  cruel 
cold ;  a  drop  of  brandy  hot  will  help  to  keep  off  the 
infection." 

"Nothing,  thank  you,  Mr.  Froude.  I  take  this 
opportunity  to  tell  you  that  strange  stories  concerning 
you  meet  my  ears." 

"Perhaps  your  lordship  prefers  whisky,"  said 
Froude,  "with  a  slice  of  lemon  in  your  grog." 

"Mr.  Froude,  I  beg  you  to  desist.  I  am  here  to 
inquire  into  the  truth  of  the  stories  repeated  concerning 
you." 

"My  lord,  I've  also  heard  strange  tales  about  your 
lordship.  But  among  gentlemen,  us  don't  give  heed 
to  all  thickey  tittle-tattle.  Perhaps  you'd  prefer  gin — 


558  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

London  or  Plymouth,  my  lord  ?  You'll  excuse  me,  my 
lord  ;  I  be  terrible  bad,  and  I  be  afraid  you'll  catch  the 
infection — pleased  to  have  seen  you — good-bye  "  ;  and 
he  ducked  his  head  under  the  bedclothes. 

"  I  knawed  he'd  come,"  said  Froude  to  Russell  after 
the  visit;  "  but  I  reckon  he'll  never  come  again:  the 
air  of  Knowstone  be  too  keen  for  he." 

One  day  his  lordship  ran  against  Froude  in  Fore 
Street  of  Exeter.  The  vicar  had  with  him  a  grey- 
hound, commonly  known  in  Devonshire  as  a  "  long 
dog."  It  was  on  this  occasion  that  the  Bishop  tackled 
him  for  keeping  a  pack  of  harriers,  as  already  related. 
After  that  said  Henry  of  Exeter,  "And  pray,  Mr.  Froude, 
what  manner  of  dog  do  you  call  that?" 

"Oh,  that's  what  volks  do  call  a  long  dog,  my  lord, 
and  ef  yeu  will  just  shak  yeur  appern  to  un,  he'll  go 
like  a  dart." 

The  Weekly  Times  of  Exeter  kept  an  eye  on  Froude's 
doings  and  misdoings,  and  published  them  under  the 
heading  of  "  Knowstone  Again."  But  Froude  was  too 
sly  to  enable  the  Bishop  to  find  an  occasion  to  proceed 
against  him  ;  the  people  of  Knowstone  were  too  much 
afraid  of  his  vengeance  to  dare  to  give  evidence. 

Froude  married  a  Miss  Halse,  the  pretty  sister  of  two 
well-known  yeomen  of  Anstey.  She  was  quite  young 
enough  to  have  been  his  daughter,  and  they  had  no 
children — perhaps  fortunately.  The  circumstances  of 
the  marriage  are  said  to  have  been  these.  Froude  had 
paid  Miss  Halse  some  of  his  insolent  attentions,  that 
meant,  if  they  meant  anything,  a  certain  contemptuous 
admiration.  The  brothers  were  angry.  They  invited 
him  to  their  house,  made  him  drunk,  and  when  drunk 
sign  a  paper  promising  to  marry  their  sister  before 
three  months  were  up  or  to  forfeit  £20,000.  They  took 
care  to  have  this  document  well  attested,  and  next 


THE    REV.    JOHN    RUSSELL  S    PORT-WINE   GLASS,    CHAMBERLAIN    WORCESTER 

BREAKFAST   SERVICE   AND    BAROMETER 

Purchased  at  the  sale  of  his  effects  in  1883  by  Mrs.  Arnull  and  presented  by  her  to 
Mr.  John  Lane,  in  whose  possession  they  now  are 


TWO    HUNTING   PARSONS  559 

morning  presented  it  to  Mr.  Froude,  who  had  for- 
gotten all  about  it.  He  was  very  angry,  blustered, 
cajoled,  tried  to  laugh  it  off — all  to  no  purpose.  He 
was  constrained  to  marry  her.  And  he  seems  to  have 
been  really  fond  of  her.  Certain  it  is  that  she  was 
warmly  attached  to  him,  and  after  his  death  would 
speak  of  him  as  her  "  dear  departed  saint,"  which 
implies  a  singular  misappropriation  of  terms,  and  con- 
fusion of  ideas. 

The  following  story  is  on  the  authority  of  Jack 
Russell.  He  had  called  one  day  at  Knowstone 
Parsonage,  and  found  Froude  sitting  over  his  fire 
smoking  and  Mrs.  Froude  sitting  in  the  corner  of  the 
room  against  the  wall.  Her  husband  had  his  back 
towards  her.  Russell  was  uneasy,  and  asked  if  Mrs. 
Froude  was  unwell.  Froude  turned  his  head  over  his 
shoulder,  and  asked:  "Mrs.  Froude,  be  you  satisfied 
or  be  you  not?  You  know  the  terms  of  agreement 
come  to  between  us  when  we  married,  that  I  were  never 
to  be  contradicted  and  disagreed  with.  If  you  are  not 
satisfied  you  can  go  back  to  your  friends  ;  I  don't  care 
a  hang  myself  whether  you  stay  or  whether  you  go." 

"  I  am  content,"  said  the  lady  faintly. 

"Very  well,"  said  Froude  ;  "then  we'll  have  a  drop 
of  ale,  Jack.  Go  and  fetch  us  a  jug  and  mugs, 
madam." 

His  harriers  were  kept  in  such  a  wretched,  rattle-trap 
set  of  kennels  that  they  occasionally  broke  loose.  This 
occurred  on  a  certain  Sunday,  and  just  as  Froude  was 
going  up  into  the  pulpit  the  pack  went  by.  He  halted 
with  his  hand  on  the  rail,  turned  to  the  clerk,  and  said : 
"That's  Towler  giving  tongue.  Run — he's  got  the 
lead,  and  will  tear  the  hare  to  bits." 

Accordingly  the  clerk  left  his  desk  and  went  forth, 
and  succeeded  in  securing  the  hare  from  the  hounds, 


560  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

hunting  on  their  own  head.  He  brought  the  hare  into 
the  church  and  threw  it  under  his  seat  till  the  sermon 
was  done,  the  blessing  given,  and  the  congregation 
dismissed. 

When  Froude  got  old  he  was  forced  by  the  Bishop 
to  have  a  curate.  "  I  don't  care  to  keep  dogs  to  do  the 
barking  for  me,  no  fye,"  said  he,  "but  I  can't  help  it. 
You  see,  I  just  maintains  a  rough  boy  to  do  the  work 
now,  and  I  sits  in  the  vestry  and  hears  un  tell." 

Between  services  one  Sunday,  Froude  gave  his 
young  curate,  who  was  dining  with  him  and  some 
of  his  farmer  friends,  too  much  of  his  soft  but  strong 
ale.  He  disliked  the  young  fellow,  who  was  a  bit  of  a 
clown  and  uncouth,  and  did  it  out  of  malice.  The 
curate,  quite  ignorant  of  the  headiness  of  the  ale, 
inadvertently  got  fuddled. 

The  conversation  turned  on  a  monstrous  pig  that 
Froude  had  killed,  and  which  was  hung  up  in  his  out- 
house, and  he  invited  his  guests  to  accompany  him  and 
view  the  carcase,  and  estimate  the  weight.  One 
thought  it  weighed  so  many  stone,  others  thought 
differently.  Froude  said  that  it  weighed  just  the  same  as 
his  curate,  who  was  fat.  The  rough  farmers  demurred 
to  the  rector's  estimate,  and,  finding  an  empty  corn- 
sack,  they  thrust  the  intoxicated  ecclesiastic  into  it, 
and,  hanging  him  up  to  the  end  of  the  beam,  shouted 
with  delight  as  the  curate  brought  the  weight  down. 
Meantime  the  bells  were  ringing  for  evensong,  but 
they  left  the  curate  hung  up  in  the  sack,  where  he  slept 
uncomfortably.  The  congregation  assembled  for  ser- 
vice, and  waited.  Froude  would  not  officiate,  and  the 
curate  was  incapable  of  doing  so. 

Mr.  Matthews,  afterwards  Prebendary  of  Exeter,  had 
been  dining  at  Southmolton  in  Froude's  company,  and 
Froude  undertook  to  drive  him  back  to  Knowstone  in 


TWO   HUNTING   PARSONS  561 

his  gig,  where  Mr.  Matthews  was  to  sleep  the  night. 
Froude  had  drunk  too  much,  but  insisted  on  driving 
home  himself.  At  the  bottom  of  the  long  street  the 
road  crosses  the  river,  and  the  bridge  is  set  on  at  an 
angle  to  the  road.  The  horse  was  a  spirited  animal, 
and  was  going  home.  So  down  the  street  they  went 
at  a  spanking  pace,  and  over  the  bridge  with  a  whir. 
Froude  had  fallen  asleep  already,  but  Matthews  seized 
the  reins  and  guided  the  animal,  and  thus  they  narrowly 
escaped  destruction. 

Froude  slept  on,  and,  arriving  at  Knowstone,  Mat- 
thews went  in  to  prepare  the  young  wife  to  get  the 
rector  to  bed. 

"  Oh,  what  is  the  matter  ?  "  cried  Mrs.  Froude,  when 
she  was  informed  that  her  husband  was  not  very  well, 
and  had  better  be  put  to  bed.  "  Oh  !  dear  lamb"— 
Mrs.  Froude  was  not  happy  in  her  choice  of  descriptive 
epithets — "dear  lamb,  are  you  ill  ?  Oh  dear  !  dear  !  " 
"  Nonsense,"  retorted  Froude,  "  I  bain't  ill.  Pm  only 
drunk,  my  dear,  that's  all." 

One  day  he  was  riding  on  the  quay  at  Barnstaple, 
and  asked  some  question  of  a  bargeman  in  his 
boat.  The  fellow  gave  him  a  rude  answer.  There- 
upon Froude  leaped  his  horse  down  into  the  barge, 
and  thrashed  the  man. 

In  the  end,  Froude  gave  up  doing  duty,  and  retired 
into  a  small  house  in  Molland,  as  more  sheltered  than 
Knowstone.  In  The  Maid  of  Sker,  Blackmore  repre- 
sents him  as  torn  to  pieces  by  his  hounds.  Actually 
this  was  not  the  occasion  of  his  death.  Before  his 
parlour  window  grew  a  peculiarly  handsome  trimmed 
box-tree.  Now  Froude  had  done  a  mean  and  cruel  act 
to  a  young  farmer  near,  tricking  him  out  of  a  consider- 
able sum  of  money.  One  night  the  box-tree  was 
pulled  up  by  the  roots  and  carried  away,  no  one  knew 
2  o 


562  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

whither,  or  for  certain  by  whom,  though  the  young 
farmer  was  suspected  of  the  deed. 

Froude  raged  over  the  insult ;  but  as  he  was  unable 
to  bring  it  home,  and  as  his  powers  were  failing,  his 
rage  was  impotent. 

The  uprooting  of  the  box-tree  apparently  precipi- 
.tated  his  death.  He  felt  that  the  awe  of  him  was 
gone,  his  control  over  the  neighbourhood  was  lost. 
This  thought,  even  more  than  mortification  at  not  being 
able  to  revenge  the  uprooting  of  his  box-tree,  broke 
him  down,  and  he  rapidly  sank,  intellectually  and 
physically,  and  died  9  December,  1852. 

A  little  before  his  death,  Jack  Babbage,  his  hunts- 
man, visited  him.  "  Oh,  Jack!"  said  he,  "  it's  all 
over  with  me.  I'm  going  to  glory,  Jack  " — which  shows 
what  is  the  value  of  assurance  on  a  death-bed. 

"Well,"  said  Babbage,  "if  the  old  master  be  so 
cock-sure  that  he's  on  that  way,  I  reckon  there  be  a  good 
chance  of  a  snug  corner  for  me." 

There  was  another  parson,  if  possible,  more  evil  than 
Froude,  whom  Blackmore  has  called  Parson  Hannaford, 
but  we  have  had  enough  specimens  of  a  type  of  clergy 
that  is,  we  trust,  for  ever  passed  away  ;  but  it  has  gone 
not  without  leaving  its  mark  on  the  present,  for  it  was 
this  sort  of  parson  who  drove  all  the  God-fearing 
people  in  the  parish  into  dissent.  Happily  these  men 
were  exceptions  even  in  their  day,  and  were  not  the  rule. 
The  bulk  of  the  clergy  were  worthy  men,  doing  their 
duty  up  to  their  light,  the  services  in  the  churches 
not  a  little  dreary ;  but  then,  at  that  time,  it  was  ex- 
ceptional to  find  that  the  country  people  could  read, 
and  therefore  sing  out  a  hymn  or  psalm  with  one 
accord  as  they  can  now.  They  preached  dull  sermons, 
because  their  own  minds  were  not  clear.  But  they  were 
kind,  they  visited  their  flock,  they  were  charitable,  and 


TWO   HUNTING   PARSONS  563 

their  families  set  a  good  example  in  the  parish,  and  had 
immense  influence  in  purifying  the  moral  tone,  and 
they  taught  in  Sunday-schools.  I  can  recall  those  old 
days,  and  I  know  that  men  like  Froude  and  Russell 
were  but  spots  widely  scattered  over  an  otherwise  white 
reputation  such  as  the  general  body  of  the  clergy  bore. 
But  that  there  were  such  spots  none  could  deny,  and  in 
almost  every  case  the  Bishop  was  powerless  to  eradicate 
them. 

To  a  farmer  said  a  vicar  of  Holsworthy,  himself 
one  of  the  disreputable,  who  thought  fit  to  reprimand 
him  for  his  conduct,  "  Go  by  the  light,  man,  not  by  the 
lantern."  To  which  the  farmer  replied,  "When  the 
lantern  is  covered  with  muck,  none  can  see  the  light." 

For  the  account  I  have  given  of  Parson  Froude  I  am 
indebted  partly  to  the  late  Prebendary  Matthews, 
rector  of  Knowstone  after  Froude,  and  also  to  Rev. 
W.  H.  Thornton's  Reminiscences  of  an  Old  West- 
country  Clergyman,  as  well  to  a  Froudiana,  a  collection 
made  by  one  who  intimately  knew  the  neighbourhood 
and  the  individuals,  and  who  most  kindly  placed  his 
collection  of  anecdotes  at  my  disposal. 

The  accompanying  illustration  represents  Jack 
Russell's  port-wine  glass  with  a  fox  beautifully  cut  in 
it,  his  barometer,  which  he  probably  tapped  with  his 
knuckles  many  a  time  before  he  started  on  a  day's 
hunting,  as  well  as  a  Chamberlain  Worcester  tea 
service,  formerly  in  his  possession.  All  these  were 
bought  after  his  death  at  Black  Torrington  at  a  sale 
of  his  effects,  by  Miss  Bernasconi,  now  Mrs.  Arnull, 
and  presented  to  the  publisher,  Mr.  John  Lane,  in 
whose  possession  they  are.  Dr.  Linnington  Ash  on 
the  same  occasion  purchased  several  mementoes  for  his 
Majesty  the  King — then  Prince  of  Wales— as  well  as 
for  himself  and  other  friends. 


SAMUEL   PROUT 

HAS  full  justice  been  done  to  Samuel  Prout, 
the  artist?     I  doubt  it.     True  that  Ruskin 
recognized  his  great  merits,  but  the  public 
generally  has  not  acknowledged,  indeed, 
has  not  realized,  the  revolution  in  taste  due  mainly  to 
this  shy,  unassertive  man. 

What  man  in  his  century  had  dreamed,  before  Prout 
issued  his  sketches,  that  there  was  exquisite  beauty  in 
old  English  cottages?  He  arose  at  a  time  when  atten- 
tion was  being  drawn  to  Gothic  architecture,  and  there 
was  a  growing  recognition  of  its  merits  in  cathedral, 
church,  and  mansion.  Architects  with  tape  and  foot- 
rule  measured  and  planned,  with  lead-tape  took  mould- 
ings. They  learned  the  principles  of  Gothic  and  Tudor 
architecture.  They  gathered  and  studied  details.  But 
the  soul,  the  spirit  escaped  them.  When  they  under- 
took to  design  and  build  new  churches  and  mansions, 
they  turned  out  very  poor,  uninteresting  stuff.  Rick- 
man  erected  the  new  courts  of  St.  John's  College, 
Cambridge,  a  monstrous  pile  of  ugliness,  bad  even  in 
its  details.  Blore  built  the  chapel  of  Marlborough 
College,  a  horror,  now  happily  transformed.  Sir  Gil- 
bert Scott  designed  numerous  churches,  all  of  borrowed 
detail,  and  all  utterly  uninteresting.  It  was  the  same 
on  the  Continent.  In  France,  Viollet  le  Due  studied 
throughout  France,  knew  the  purest  French  styles 
intimately,  but  could  produce  nothing  good  him- 

564 


SAMUEL    PROUT 
Front  a  drawing  in  the  possession  of  Samuel  Gillesfiie  Front,  Esq. 


SAMUEL   PROUT  565 

self.  It  was  the  same  with  Heideloff  in  Germany. 
The  inspiration  of  the  Gothic  or  medieval  soul  es- 
caped them.  It  was  not  to  be  caught  with  tape  and 
rule.  Their  buildings  proved  correct  in  many  cases, 
but  all  cold,  unimpressive,  and  uninteresting.  But 
Prout  caught  the  spirit.  He  did  not  measure  and 
scale,  but  he  drew  with  the  breath  of  the  genius  of 
olden  time  fanning  his  heart. 

And  the  cottage !  Churches  and  mansions  were 
erected  by  the  new  Gothic  school  throughout  the  land  ; 
they  were  accepted,  but  did  not  please.  But  no  one 
thought  of  the  cottage,  unless  it  was  to  be  a  lodge  at 
a  gate.  Rows  of  hideous  dwellings  for  the  artisan  and 
the  labourer  continued  to  be  erected,  with  tall,  lanky 
doors,  a  fanlight  over  them,  lean  windows,  no  gables, 
nothing  picturesque  about  them. 

Jerrybuilders  covered  the  suburbs  of  our  towns  with 
their  repulsive  dwellings,  their  only  idea  of  decoration 
being  elaborate  hip-knobs  and  ridge  tiles.  Retired 
tradesmen  and  farmers  built  their  residences,  dis- 
figuring the  countryside  with  square  blocks,  a  door  in 
the  face,  a  window  on  each  side,  and  three  windows  in 
the  upper  story,  the  roof  pinched  together  from  all 
four  sides,  and  two  chimneys  standing  up  like  donkey's 
ears,  one  on  each  side  of  the  face.  Not  till  this  century, 
with  the  creation  of  the  garden  city,  has  Prout's  idea 
of  the  dwelling  for  artisan  and  labourer,  as  a  thing  of 
beauty,  been  carried  out. 

Samuel  Prout  was  born  at  Plymouth  17  September, 
1783.  The  Prouts  were  a  respectable  Cornish  family 
of  St.  Stephen's  by  Launceston,  and  an  heiress  of 
Grenville  had  married  a  Prout,  and  the  sister  and 
coheiress  a  Gary.  The  family  has  laid  claim  to  the  arms 
of  Prouse  of  Gidleigh,  but  can  prove  no  connexion. 

Samuel   was   educated   at   the   Plymouth   Grammar 


566  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

School,  under  the  eccentric,  worthy  Dr.  Bidlake,  who 
had  an  eye  for  the  picturesque,  and  delighted  in  taking 
out  his  young  pupils,  Prout  and  Benjamin  Haydon,  on 
holidays  for  long  walks  into  the  country,  and  pointing 
out  to  them  scenes  of  beauty.  Dr.  Bidlake  was,  more- 
over, a  bit  of  a  poet,  as  poets  went  in  those  days.  He 
was  a  good  and  kindly  man,  and  endeared  himself  to 
his  pupils. 

P  rout's  mother  was  a  daughter  of  a  Mr.  Cater,  an 
enterprising  Plymouth  shipping  venturer. 

Samuel  was  a  delicate  boy.  One  hot  autumn  day  he 
was  out  nutting  when  he  was  discovered  by  a  farmer 
lying  moaning  under  a  hedge,  with  his  hands  to  his 
head.  He  had  been  prostrated  by  sunstroke,  and  he 
was  carried  home  in  a  state  of  insensibility.  From 
that  day  forward  he  was  subject  to  violent  attacks 
of  headache,  returning  at  short  intervals,  and  pre- 
venting him  from  sticking  to  business.  Indeed,  a 
week  seldom  passed  without  his  being  confined  to  his 
room  for  a  day  or  two,  unable  to  raise  his  head  from 
the  pillow,  and  refusing  all  food.  Speaking  in  later 
years  of  his  life-long  infirmity,  he  says:  "  Up  to  this 
hour  I  have  to  endure  a  great  fight  of  afflictions  ;  can  I 
therefore  be  sufficiently  thankful  for  the  merciful  gift  of 
a  buoyant  spirit?" 

His  father,  finding  him  unsuited  for  any  other  profes- 
sion, allowed  him  to  follow  his  artistic  bent,  but  he  was 
chiefly  self-taught.  He  made  friends  with  young  Opie, 
who  painted  his  portrait.  Another  was  Ambrose  Bow- 
den  Johns,  born  in  Plymouth  in  1776.  He  had  been  a 
bookseller,  but  his  passion  was  for  landscape  art,  and 
he  gave  up  his  business  to  become  a  painter.  Johns 
had  the  advantage  of  age  and  experience,  and  he  was 
able  to  give  Prout  much  good  advice.  Noticing  that 
his  young  friend  loved  chiefly  to  draw  old  houses  and 


SAMUEL   PROUT  567 

architectural  scraps,  he  urged  him  to  devote  himself 
especially  to  that  line,  and  not  to  cultivate  landscape 
and  figure  drawing.  Boats  Samuel  ever  delighted  in, 
and  sketched  them  excellently. 

"Thenceforth,"  to  quote  Ruskin,  "  Prout  devoted 
himself  to  ivy-mantled  bridges,  mossy  water-mills,  and 
rock-built  cottages." 

But  he  knew  nothing  of  perspective,  and  his  draw- 
ings were  sadly  inaccurate  in  this  respect.  He  himself 
wrote  in  after  years,  as  the  result  of  his  own  experi- 
ence:  "  Perspective  is  generally  considered  a  dry  and 
distasteful  study,  and  a  prejudice  exists  with-  many 
against  everything  like  geometrical  drawings ;  but 
without  a  knowledge  of  its  rules  no  object  can  be 
properly  delineated,  and  their  application  alone  pre- 
vents absurdities  and  secures  symmetry  and  truth." 

The  Earl  of  Mount  Edgcumbe  took  notice  of  the 
intelligent,  sensitive  boy,  and  detected  that  there  was 
talent  in  him.  He  invited  him  to  Mount  Edgcumbe 
House  to  see  and  examine  for  himself  the  paintings 
and  pictures  there ;  and  the  Earl  became  so  interested 
in  the  young  artist,  and  would  have  him  so  frequently 
with  him,  that  Samuel  at  last  acquired  the  nickname  of 
« the  Earl's  puppy  dog." 

Samuel  Prout  was  also  passionately  fond  of  music, 
and  learned  to  play  on  the  organ,  the  piano,  and 
the  flute.  In  early  days,  when  not  out  sketching  by 
himself  or  with  Dr.  Bidlake  or  Haydon,  he  would  steal 
to  St.  Andrew's  to  play  the  organ,  at  that  time  the  only 
organ  in  the  town. 

Meanwhile,  on  every  sunny  day,  when  the  soft  south 
wind  breathed,  Samuel,  pencil  and  sketch-book  in 
hand,  strayed  about  the  villages  round  Plymouth,  and 
made  his  sketches,  not  of  bold  architectural  structures, 
but  of  cottages  and  little  bits  of  street  scenery.  He 


568  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

loved  the  old  wall  where  the  granite  blocks  were  irregu- 
larly jointed,  and  saxifrage,  sedum,  and  wallflower  had 
rooted  themselves  in  the  interstices.  He  loved  to  stray 
by  the  seashore  or  to  wander  about  Sutton  Pool  and 
the  Barbican  and  draw  the  ships  and  fishing  smacks  he 
saw  there.  At  the  time  when  he  was  young,  Ply- 
mouth abounded  in  quaint  old  houses  that  had  been 
inhabited  by  its  great  merchants,  with  overhanging 
gables  and  mullioned  windows.  These  are  now  almost 
all  gone. 

On  returning  from  one  of  his  wanderings,  he  called 
on  Mr.  Johns  with  his  portfolio  in  his  hand.  Johns 
asked  him  how  many  sketches  he  had  made  and  what 
success  he  had  met  with.  Prout,  bursting  into  tears 
and  wringing  his  hands  with  grief,  replied  :  "  Oh,  Mr. 
Johns,  I  shall  never  make  a  painter  as  long  as  I  live." 

Johns  then  turned  over  his  collection  of  sketches, 
and  noticing  the  power  shown  in  the  drawing  of  old 
cottages  and  mills,  said,  "If  you  won't  make  a  land- 
scape painter,  you  will  make  a  painter  of  architecture, 
and  I  recommend  you  to  stick  to  that."  Encouraged 
by  this,  he  went  away  rejoicing  that  there  was  still  a 
field  open  to  him  in  Art. 

Whilst  still  quite  a  lad,  accident  made  him  ac- 
quainted with  John  Britton,  who  was  passing  through 
Plymouth  on  his  way  into  Cornwall,  collecting  ma- 
terials for  his  Beauties  of  England  and  Wales ,  begun 
in  1801,  and  carried  on  to  1818.  Immediately  after 
Prout's  death,  Britton  published  an  account  of  his 
first  acquaintance  with  him  in  the  Art  Journal  for 
1852.  He  says  that  he  first  saw  Samuel  Prout,  "a 
pretty,  timid  boy,"  at  Dr.  Bidlake's  school,  and  that 
Prout  occasionally  accompanied  his  drawing  master, 
S.  Williams,  to  Bickleigh  Vale,  and  made  sketches  of 
the  rude  cottages  and  bits  of  rock  scenery  he  found  there. 


SAMUEL  PROUT  569 

These  Britton  saw  and  liked,  and  proposed  to  Prout 
to  take  him  with  himself  into  Cornwall,  paying  all  his 
expenses,  that  the  lad  might  make  for  him  the  draw- 
ings he  required.  Samuel  gladly  consented,  and  the 
two  started  for  St.  Germans  through  a  heavy  fall  of 
snow,  and  put  up  at  a  wretched  inn  there.  "The 
object  of  visiting  the  place,"  says  Britton,  "was  to 
draw  and  describe  the  old  parish  church,  which  is 
within  the  grounds  of  the  seat  of  Port  Eliot,  belonging 
to  Lord  Eliot.  Prout's  first  task  was  to  make  a  sketch 
of  the  west  end  of  this  building,  which  is  of  early 
Norman  architecture,  with  two  towers,  one  of  which  is 
square,  the  other  octagonal.  Between  these  is  a  large 
semicircular  doorway,  with  several  receding  arches, 
but  there  is  very  little  of  other  detail.  My  young  artist 
was,  however,  sadly  embarrassed,  not  knowing  where 
to  begin,  how  to  settle  the  perspective  or  determine  the 
relative  proportions  of  the  heights  and  widths  of  parts. 
He  continued  before  the  building  for  four  or  five  hours, 
and  at  last  his  sketch  was  so  inaccurate  in  proportion 
and  detail  that  it  was  unfit  for  engraving."  In  fact, 
Britton  had  set  the  poor  lad  a  task  for  which  he 
was  wholly  incompetent.  Next  morning  Prout  began 
another  sketch,  and  persevered  in  it  in  spite  of  the  cold 
and  discouragement  nearly  all  the  day,  but  the  result 
was  again  a  failure. 

Then  Britton  travelled  on  with  him  to  Probus,  and 
set  him  to  draw  the  wonderful  sculptured  tower  of  that 
church,  the  richest  piece  of  work  of  the  kind  in  the 
west  of  England.  It  is  built  of  elvan  and  is  not 
merely  sculptured  throughout,  but  has  pinnacled  but- 
tresses with  crockets  and  finials.  Prout  worked  hard 
at  this  all  day,  and  though  Britton  accepted  the  draw- 
ing, it  was  bad.  "The  poor  fellow  cried,  and  was 
really  distressed,  and  I  felt  as  acutely  as  he  possibly 


570  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

could,  for  I  had  calculated  on  having  a  pleasing  com- 
panion upon  a  dreary  journey,  and  also  to  obtain  some 
correct  and  satisfactory  sketches.  On  proceeding 
further,  we  had  occasion  to  visit  certain  druidical  mon- 
uments, vast  rocks,  monastic  wells,  and  stone  crosses 
on  the  moors  north  of  Liskeard.  Some  of  these  objects 
my  young  friend  delineated  with  smartness  and  toler- 
able accuracy.  We  proceeded  on  to  St.  Austell,  and 
thence  to  Ruan-Lanyhorne,  where  we  found  comfortable 
quarters  in  the  house  of  the  Rev.  John  Whitaker,  the 
historian  of  Manchester,  and  author  of  several  other 
literary  works.  Prout,  during  his  stay  at  Ruan,  made 
five  or  six  pleasing  and  truly  picturesque  sketches,  one 
of  which  included  the  church,  the  parsonage,  some 
cottages  mixing  with  trees,  the  water  of  the  river  Fal, 
the  moors  in  the  distance,  and  a  fisherman's  ragged  cot 
in  the  foreground,  raised  against  and  mixing  with  a 
mass  of  rocks ;  also  a  broken  boat,  with  net,  sails,  etc., 
in  the  foreground."  The  next  halting  place  was  Truro, 
and  there  Prout  made  a  sketch  of  the  church  and  the 
houses  about  it.  But  here  again  he  was  embarrassed 
with  the  mullioned  windows  and  the  general  perspective, 
and  was  particularly  troubled  with  the  iron  railings  that 
surrounded  the  church.  Here  they  parted;  Britton 
went  forward  on  his  way  to  Penzance  and  the  Land's 
End,  and  Prout  was  sent  back,  a  poor  disheartened  lad, 
who  felt  that  he  had  missed  his  vocation,  by  coach  to 
Plymouth.  But  the  disappointment  did  Samuel  good. 
He  had  learned  in  what  his  weakness  lay,  and  he  re- 
solved to  labour  hard  to  acquire  the  rudiments  of  per- 
spective. 

In  May,  1802,  he  sent  Britton  several  sketches  of 
Launceston,  Tavistock,  Okehampton  Castle,  and  other 
places,  showing  a  considerable  advance  in  his  powers, 
and  some  of  these  were  engraved.  Britton  saw  enough 


SAMUEL   PROUT  571 

to  convince  himself  that  Prout  had  exceptional  genius 
for  catching  the  spirit  of  architectural  work,  and  that  all 
he  required  was  technical  training,  and  he  sent  for  him 
to  London,  kindly  undertaking  to  give  him  a  room  and 
food  in  his  house  in  Wilderness  Row,  Camberwell, 
whilst  prosecuting  his  studies  in  Town.  Here  he 
remained  for  about  two  years,  and  was  introduced  to 
Northcote  and  Benjamin  West,  the  latter  of  whom  gave 
him  valuable  hints  on  the  management  of  chiaroscuro, 
and  Prout  often  recurred  to  his  meeting  with  West  and 
to  the  utility  his  advice  had  been  to  him.  In  1803  and 
1804  Britton  sent  Prout  into  Cambridge,  Essex,  and 
Wiltshire  to  make  sketches  and  studies  of  buildings. 
Some  of  these  were  engraved  in  his  Beauties,  and 
others  in  Architectural  Antiquities ,  1835. 

In  the  year  1805,  Prout  returned  to  Plymouth  mainly 
on  account  of  his  health  and  his  headaches,  which  un- 
fitted him  for  prosecuting  his  studies  with  ease  and 
energy. 

He  had  in  the  previous  year  sent  his  first  picture  to 
the  Royal  Academy,  and  he  was  for  the  next  ten  years 
an  occasional  exhibitor,  his  subjects  being  mainly 
views  in  Devonshire  and  coast  scenes.  His  simple 
drawings,  says  Mr.  Ruskin,  were  made  for  the  middle 
classes,  even  for  the  second  order  of  the  middle 
classes. 

"The  great  people  always  bought  Canaletti,  not 
Prout.  There  was  no  quality  in  the  bright  little  water- 
colours  which  could  look  other  than  pert  in  ghostly 
corridors  and  petty  in  halls  of  state  ;  but  they  gave  an 
unquestionable  tone  of  liberal-mindedness  to  a  sub- 
urban villa,  and  were  the  cheerfullest  possible  decoration 
for  a  moderate-sized  breakfast  parlour  opening  on  a 
nicely-mown  lawn.  Their  liveliness  even  rose,  on  occa- 
sion, to  the  chanty  of  beautifying  the  narrow  chambers 


572  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

of  those  whom  business  or  fixed  habit  retained  in  the 
obscurity  of  London  itself, " 

After  about  six  years  of  earnest  work  in  Devon,  he 
returned  to  London  and  took  up  his  abode  in  Brixton, 
and  three  years  after  he  married  (1810)  Elizabeth 
Gillespie.  There  were  pleasant  meetings  in  town  with 
his  fellow  Plymothians.  Haydon  was  there  full  of 
enthusiasm  and  enormous  self-confidence,  and  East- 
lake,  who  had  already  made  his  mark  and  was  rapidly 
rising  into  fame ;  an  occasional  visit  was  made  to  the 
surly  Northcote,  but  from  him  little  encouragement  was 
to  be  obtained.  To  maintain  himself,  Prout  gave 
lessons  in  drawing,  and  sent  pictures  to  the  Water- 
colour  Society,  and  succeeded  in  selling  them.  In  1816, 
Ackermann  published  his  Studies  in  parts,  executed 
in  the  then  new  art  of  lithography.  This  was  followed 
by  Progressive  Fragments,  Rudiments  of  Landscape, 
and  other  collections  of  instructive  drawings.  How  per- 
fectly Prout  mastered  the  technicalities  of  lithography 
may  be  seen  by  some  of  his  late  works  on  tinted  paper, 
with  introduction  of  white,  as,  for  instance,  his  Hints 
on  Light  and  Shade,  etc.,  published  in  1838.  In  the  in- 
troduction to  that  he  tells  his  own  experience. 

' '  Want  of  talent  and  want  of  taste  are  common 
lamentations  and  common  excuses,  but  wonders  will  be 
achieved  by  the  lowest  ability  if  assisted  by  unremitted 
diligence.  Nothing  is  denied  to  well-directed  labour  ; 
nothing  is  to  be  obtained  without  it.  There  must  be  an 
assiduous,  ardent  devotedness,  with  a  firmness  of  pur- 
pose, absorbing  the  whole  mind  ;  never  rambling,  but 
pursuing  one  determined  object.  It  is  the  persevering 
who  leave  their  competitors  behind ;  and  those  who 
work  the  hardest  always  gain  the  most." 

Prout's  love  was  for  marine  subjects — this  can  be 
noticed  in  all  his  publications — but  the  influence  of 


SAMUEL   PROUT  573 

Britton  and  the  advice  of  Johns  prevailed  to  make  him 
cleave  to  architecture  ;  and  indeed  from  the  first  this 
had  ever  attracted  him,  though  not  so  much  the  great 
achievements  of  the  art,  as  its  humbler  yet  lovely 
creations,  the  labourer's  cottage,  built  of  moor-stone, 
and  thatched  with  reed  or  heather. 

His  health,  always  bad  at  the  best  of  times,  grew 
worse  ;  he  became  so  feeble  that  a  trip  to  the  Continent 
was  recommended  to  him.  "  The  route  by  Havre  and 
Rouen,"  writes  Ruskin,  "  was  chosen,  and  Prout  found 
himself  for  the  first  time  in  the  grotesque  labyrinths  of 
the  Norman  streets.  There  are  few  minds  so  apathetic 
as  to  receive  no  impulse  of  new  delight  from  their  first 
acquaintance  with  continental  scenery  and  architecture  ; 
and  Rouen  was,  of  all  the  cities  of  France,  the  richest 
in  those  objects  with  which  the  painter's  mind  had  the 
profoundest  sympathy."  Now  all  is  changed.  The 
great  churches  stand  up  by  themselves  in  the  midst  of 
modern  houses  destitute  of  beauty,  islands  of  loveliness 
in  a  sea  of  vulgarity.  Great  streets  have  been  driven 
through  the  town,  picturesque  houses  have  been  swept 
away ;  that  which  is  old  has  been  barbarously  reno- 
vated. The  cathedral  has  been  furnished  with  a 
ridiculous  spire.  Then  "all  was  at  unity  with  itself, 
and  the  city  lay  under  its  guarding  hills  one  labyrinth 
of  delight — its  grey  and  fretted  towers,  misty  in  their 
magnificence  of  height,  letting  the  sky  like  blue  enamel 
through  the  foiled  spaces  of  their  crowns  of  open  work; 
the  walls  and  gates  of  its  countless  churches  wardered 
by  saintly  groups  of  solemn  statuary,  clasped  about  by 
wandering  stems  of  sculptured  leafage,  and  crowned 
by  fretted  niche  and  fairy  pediment,  meshed,  like 
gossamer,  with  inextricable  tracery,  many  a  quaint 
monument  of  past  times  standing  to  tell  its  far-off  tale 
in  the  place  from  which  it  has  since  perished — in  the 


574  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

midst  of  the  throng  and  murmur  of  those  shadowy 
streets — all  grim  with  jutting  props  of  ebon  woodwork, 
lightened  only  here  and  there  by  a  sunbeam  glancing 
down  from  the  scaly  backs  and  points  of  pyramids  of 
the  Norman  roofs,  or  carried  out  of  its  narrow  range  by 
the  gay  progress  of  some  snowy  cap  or  scarlet  camisole. 
The  painter's  vocation  was  fixed  from  that  hour  ;  the 
first  effect  upon  his  mind  was  irrepressible  enthusiasm, 
with  a  strong  feeling  of  new-born  attachment  to  art,  in 
a  new  world  of  exceeding  interest." 

This  was  the  first  of  many  excursions  made  through 
France,  Germany,  the  Netherlands,  and  Italy.  How 
he  enjoyed  these  trips  is  beyond  power  of  words  to 
describe.  He  drank  in  the  beauties  as  he  would  nectar; 
they  inspired  new  life  into  him  ;  it  filled  his  happy  soul 
with  delights  that  made  him  forget  his  bodily  infirmi- 
ties. His  books  of  studies  sold  well — they  did  more 
than  anything  else  to  form  the  taste  of  the  public.  The 
fashion  set  in  for  sketches  of  ruins,  of  old  buildings,  of 
cottages.  He  had  many  imitators,  but  no  equals.  For 
his  water-colour  paintings  he  asked  but  modest  prices, 
six  guineas  each. 

How  Gothic  architecture  was  viewed  only  seventeen 
years  before  Samuel  Prout  was  born  may  be  judged  by 
Matthew  Bramble's  account  of  York  Minster  in  Hum- 
phrey Clinker.  He  writes:  "As  for  the  minster,  I 
know  not  how  to  distinguish  it,  except  by  its  great  size 
and  the  height  of  its  spire,  from  those  other  ancient 
churches  in  different  parts  of  the  kingdom  which  used 
to  be  called  monuments  of  Gothic  architecture;  but  it  is 
now  agreed  that  the  style  is  Saracen — and  I  suppose  it 
was  first  imported  into  England  from  Spain,  greater 
part  of  which  was  under  the  domination  of  the  Moors. 
Those  British  architects  who  adopted  this  style  don't 
seem  to  have  considered  the  propriety  of  their  adop- 


SAMUEL    PROUT  575 

tion.  Nothing  could  be  more  preposterous  than  to 
imitate  such  a  mode  of  architecture  in  a  country  like 
England,  where  the  climate  is  cold  and  the  air  eternally 
loaded  with  vapours.  For  my  part,  I  never  entered  the 
abbey  church  at  Bath  but  once,  and  the  moment  I 
stepped  over  the  threshold  I  found  myself  chilled  to  the 
very  marrow  of  my  bones.  I  should  be  glad  to  know 
what  offence  it  would  give  to  tender  consciences  if  the 
House  of  God  were  made  more  comfortable ;  and 
whether  it  would  not  be  an  encouragement  to  piety,  as 
well  as  the  salvation  of  many  lives,  if  the  place  of  wor- 
ship were  well  floored,  wainscotted,  warmed,  and  venti- 
lated. 

"  The  external  [appearance  of  an  old  cathedral  cannot 
but  be  displeasing  to  the  eye  of  every  man  who  has  any 
idea  of  propriety  and  proportion,  even  though  he  may 
be  ignorant  of  architecture  as  a  science.  There  is 
nothing  of  the  Arabic  architecture  in  the  Assembly 
Rooms,  which  seems  to  me  to  have  been  built  upon  a 
design  of  Palladio,  and  might  be  converted  into  an 
elegant  place  of  worship." 

In  little  more  than  a  generation  popular  taste  was 
completely  changed.  Augustus  Pugin  and  Le  Keux 
published  their  Specimens  of  Architectural  Antiquities 
in  Normandy  in  1827  ;  Parker  his  Glossary  of  Archi- 
tecture in  1836,  which  rapidly  went  through  several 
editions.  A.  Welby  Pugin  poured  forth  the  vials  of 
scorn  on  the  taste  of  his  day  in  his  Contrasts,  1841  ; 
Ruskin's  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture  laid  down  first 
principles  in  1849;  Rickman,  the  Quaker,  had  issued 
his  A  ttempt  to  Distinguish  the  Styles  of  English  A  rchi- 
tecture  as  early  as  1817,  and  this  also  rapidly  passed 
through  several  editions.  But  it  was  not  enough  to 
instruct  the  public :  its  heart  must  be  touched,  its 
eyes  unsealed  to  the  beauties  of  the  so-called  Gothic 


576  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

style  ;  and  this  is  what  Prout  did  with  his  exquisite 
drawings.  There  was  no  technical  skill  obtruded, 
no  attempt  made  to  distinguish  styles :  he  simply 
with  his  pencil  brought  its  charms  before  the  public 
eye  in  an  engaging  form.  And  the  public  saw  and 
believed. 

Mr.  S.  C.  Hall,  writing  of  Prout's  personal  qualities, 
says  :  "  No  member  of  the  profession  has  ever  lived  to 
be  more  thoroughly  respected,  we  may  add  beloved, 
by  his  fellow  artists ;  no  man  has  ever  given  more 
unquestionable  evidence  of  a  gentle  and  generous 
spirit,  or  more  truly  deserved  the  esteem  in  which  he  is 
so  universally  held.  His  always  delicate  health,  in- 
stead of  souring  the  temper,  made  him  more  thoughtful 
of  the  trials  of  others.  Ever  ready  to  assist  the  young 
by  the  counsels  of  experience,  he  is  a  fine  example  of 
perseverance  and  industry  combined  with  suavity  of 
manner  and  those  endearing  attributes  which  invari- 
ably blend  with  admiration  of  the  artist,  affection  for 
the  man.  During  the  last  six  or  seven  years  we  have 
sometimes  found  our  way  into  his  quiet  studio,  where, 
like  a  delicate  exotic  requiring  the  most  careful  treat- 
ment to  retain  life  within  it,  he  could  keep  himself 
warm  and  snug,  as  he  expressed  it.  There  he  might 
be  seen  at  his  easel,  throwing  his  rich  and  beautiful 
colouring  over  a  sketch  of  some  old  palace  in  Venice 
or  time-worn  cathedral  of  Flanders  ;  and  though  suffer- 
ing much  from  pain  and  weakness,  ever  cheerful,  ever 
thankful  that  he  had  still  strength  enough  to  carry  on 
his  work.  He  rose  late,  and  could  seldom  begin  his 
labours  before  the  middle  of  the  day,  when,  if  tolerably 
free  from  pain,  he  would  paint  till  the  night  was  ad- 
vanced. No  man  ever  bore  suffering  more  meekly. 
Essentially  religious,  he  submitted  with  patience  and 
resignation  to  the  Divine  will.  All  the  home  affec- 


SAMUEL   PROUT  577 

tions  were  warm  and  strong   in  him.     He   was  of  a 
tender,  loving,  and  truly  upright  nature." 

He  spent  some  time  at  Hastings  for  his  health,  and 
when  there  his  parish  church  was  S.  Mary's.  He 
attended  this  church  regularly,  and  the  vicar,  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Vines,  used  to  say:  "I  always  wait  for  Prout  to 
come  and  light  up  my  church."  Indeed,  his  temper 
was  always  sunny,  and  he  was  eminently  devout. 
What  touched  him  profoundly  was  the  piety  he  noticed 
among  the  peasantry  abroad — how  they  uncovered  for 
a  brief  prayer  at  the  sound  of  the  Angelus,  and  how 
they  made  of  their  churches  a  veritable  home,  where 
they  could  pour  out  their  hearts  in  prayer  in  all  sor- 
rows, and  in  thanksgiving  in  all  joys.  But  abroad  or 
at  home,  in  his  hotel  or  his  studio,  his  constant  com- 
panions were  his  English  Bible  and  Book  of  Common 
Prayer,  and  with  them  he  said  that  he  was  satisfied. 

As  Mr.  Hine  says  beautifully  in  his  Memoirs  of 
Prout:  "All  the  subjects  of  his  pictures  point  upwards, 
the  lovely  street  scenes  terminating  in  the  tall  tower  or 
the  divine  spire.  The  doves  hover  about  the  highest 
ridges  of  his  roofs  and  the  loftiest  pinnacles  of  his 
towers.  He  had  the  most  implicit  faith  in  the  final 
article  of  the  Nicene  Creed — '  I  believe  in  the  life  of  the 
world  to  come ' — and  his  own  pictures  are  the  faint  but 
beautiful  symbols  of  that  celestial  city  which  he  saw  as 
through  a  glass,  darkly." 

He  had  been  invited  with  many  literary  and  artistic 
celebrities  to  dine  with  Mr.  Ruskin,  the  elder,  on  Tues- 
day, 9  February,  1852,  to  keep  the  birthday  of  John 
Ruskin,  and  hear  a  letter  from  Venice,  from  the 
younger  Ruskin,  who  was  then  in  that  city. 

Samuel  Prout  had  not  been  well  of  late,  but  he  went 
to  the  dinner,  and  returned  between  ten  and  eleven, 
and  said  to  his  wife,  "  I've  had  such  a  happy  evening  ! 
2  P 


578  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

The  Venice  letter  was  capital."  Then  he  retired  to  his 
studio.  Shortly  after  a  tapping  sound,  often  made  by 
him  as  a  summons,  was  heard.  One  of  his  daughters 
running  upstairs  found  her  father  lying  on  the  hearth- 
rug in  a  fit  of  apoplexy.  His  open  Bible,  in  which  he 
had  been  reading  one  of  the  Psalms,  lay  on  the  table. 
He  was  carried  to  bed,  but  never  spoke  again.  He 
died  in  the  sixty-ninth  year  of  his  age.  "  There  will 
never  be  any  more  Prout  drawings,"  said  Ruskin 
sorrowfully. 

In  the  north  aisle  of  St.  Andrew's  Church,  Plymouth, 
is  a  marble  tablet  to  his  memory. 

"There  is  one  point,"  says  Ruskin,  "in  which 
Turner,  Bewick,  Hunt,  and  Prout,  all  four  agree — 
that  they  can  draw  the  poor,  but  not  the  rich.  They 
acknowledge  with  affection,  whether  for  principal  or 
accessory  subjects  of  their  art,  the  British  farmer,  the 
British  sailor,  the  British  market-woman,  and  the 
British  workman.  They  agree  unanimously  in  ignor- 
ing the  British  gentleman.  Let  the  British  gentleman 
lay  it  to  heart,  and  ask  himself  why. 

"The  general  answer  is  long  and  manifold.  But, 
with  respect  to  the  separate  work  of  Prout,  there  is  a 
very  precious  piece  of  instruction  in  it  respecting 
national  prosperity  and  policy,  which  may  be  gathered 
in  a  few  glances. 

"You  see  how  all  his  best  pictures  depend  on  figures 
either  crowded  in  market-places  or  pausing  (lounging, 
it  may  be)  in  quiet  streets.  You  will  not  find,  in  the 
entire  series  of  subjects  from  his  hand,  a  single  figure 
in  a  hurry.  He  ignores  not  only  the  British  gentle- 
man, but  every  necessary  condition,  nowadays,  of 
British  business. 

"  Look  again  and  see  if  you  can  find  a  single  figure 
exerting  all  its  strength.  A  couple  of  men  rolling  a 


SAMUEL    PROUT  579 

single  cask  perhaps  ;  here  and  there  a  woman  with  a 
rather  large  bundle  on  her  head — any  more  athletic 
display  than  these  you  seek  in  vain.  His  figures  are 
all  as  quiet  as  the  Cathedral  of  Chartres.  Some  of 
them  you  can  scarcely  think  are  standing  still,  but  they 
all  move  quietly.  The  real  reason  is  that  he  understood, 
and  we  do  not,  the  meaning  of  the  word  <  quiet.' 

"  He  understood  it,  personally,  and  for  himself; 
practically,  and  for  others.  Take  this  one  fact — of  his 
quiet  dealings  with  men — and  think  it  over. 

"The  modern  fashionable  interest  in  what  we  sup- 
pose to  be  art  had  just  begun  to  show  itself  a  few  years 
before  Prout's  death,  and  he  was  frequently  advised  to 
raise  his  prices.  But  he  never  raised  them  a  shilling 
to  his  old  customers,  nor  greatly  to  his  new  ones. 
They  were  supplied  with  all  the  drawings  they  wanted 
at  six  guineas  each — to  the  end.  A  very  peaceful 
method  of  dealing,  and  under  the  true  ancient  laws 
ordained  by  Athena  of  the  Agora,  and  St.  James  of  the 
Rialto. 

"  And  learn  from  your  poor  wandering  painter 
this  lesson — for  some  of  the  best  he  had  to  give  you 
(it  is  the  Alpha  of  the  laws  of  true  human  life) — that 
no  city  is  prosperous  in  the  sight  of  Heaven  unless  the 
peasant  sells  in  its  market ;  that  no  city  is  ever 
righteous  in  the  sight  of  Heaven  unless  the  noble 
walks  in  its  street." 

Prout's  work  is  divided  into  two  clearly  defined 
periods.  In  the  first  he  drew  only  English  scenes. 
In  1819  he  made  his  first  tour  on  the  Continent,  and 
thenceforth  devoted  himself  almost  entirely  to  foreign 
subjects.  In  this  devotion  Ruskin  lamented  the  "loss 
of  his  first  love."  His  grand  wrecks  of  Indiamen  were 
instinct  with  that  subtle  sense  of  vastness  that  the  Art 
Teacher  felt. 


580  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

AUTHORITIES 

The  authorities  for  the  life  of  Samuel  Prout  are  : — 

"  Samuel  Prout,  Artist,"  by  J.  Hine,  in  the  Transac- 
tions of  the  Plymouth  Institution,  1879-80. 

Art  in  Devonshire,  by  Geo.  Pycroft,  Exeter,  1883, 
pp.  106-17. 

Royet,  History  of  the  Old  Water-Colour  Society, 
London,  1891. 

Ruskin's  "  Notes  on  Samuel  Prout  and  William 
Hunt,"  new  edition  in  Ruskin  on  Pictures,  London, 
1902. 


NOTE. — The  publisher  of  this  work  will  esteem  it  a 
favour  if  the  possessors  of  pictures  or  drawings  by 
Prout  will  place  themselves  in  communication  with 
him.  He  is  particularly  anxious  to  obtain  copies  of 
letters  by,  or  documents  about,  the  artist — in  short, 
any  material  which  may  be  of  use  in  the  preparation  of 
the  exhaustive  Life  which  is  in  progress.  All  com- 
munications should  be  addressed  to  Mr.  John  Lane, 
The  Bodley  Head,  Vigo  Street,  London,  W. 


FONTELAUTUS 

IT  may  seem — in  fact,  it  must  seem — strange  to  have 
included  in  a  volume  of  notices  of  remarkable 
Devonshire  characters  a  biography  of  an  infant 
who  did  not  attain  to  the  age  of  two  years  ;  but 
I  leave  the  reader  to  judge  from  the  sequel  whether 
I  should  have  been  justified  in  omitting  a  notice  of 
Fontelautus. 

For  an  account  of  the  life  and  adventures  of  this  pre- 
cocious infant  we  are  obliged  to  refer  to  the  following 
work,  published  1826:  Subversion  of  Materialism  by 
Credible  A  ttestation  of  Supernatural  Occurrences  .  .  . 
Pt.  I.  Memoirs  of  Fontelautus,  infant  son  of  Prebendary 
Dennis,  comprising  his  demoniacal  obsession,  and  diver- 
sified apparition,  with  his  father's  ante-nuptial  vision  and 
revelations.  Pt.  II.  Supernatural  Anecdotes  of  various 
Families'  Farewell  Apparitions,  Supernatural  Fire 
tokens  .  .  .  By  Jonas  Dennis,  B.C.L.,  Prebendary  of 
the  Royal  Collegiate  Church  of  Exeter  Castle." 

Prebendary  Dennis  hurls  his  son  Fontelautus  as  a 
bomb  into  the  camp  of  atheists,  materialists,  and  ra- 
tionalists. If  Fontelautus  does  not  shatter  their  un- 
belief, they  are  past  arguing  with,  past  praying  for. 

Prebendary  Dennis  begins  with  the  ancestry  of  Fon- 
telautus, who  was  derived  in  direct  lineal  descent  from 
Sir  Thomas  Dennis  of  Holcombe  Burnell,  the  rapacious 
and  insatiable  devourer  of  ecclesiastical  estates,  made 
fat  on  the  plunder  of  Church  property  by  Henry  VIII. 


582  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Mr.  Jonas  Dennis  is  led  to  observe  that  there  was  an 
hereditary  tendency  in  the  Dennis  family  to  acquisitive- 
ness, to  avarice  ;  but  this  proclivity,  like  gout,  jumped 
a  generation,  and  he  informs  us  that  he  himself  was  so 
entirely  free  from  the  family  taint  that  he  declined  a 
benefice  from  scruples  respecting  the  administration  of 
the  sacraments ;  that  he  further  rejected  the  advances 
of  a  lady  with  a  fortune  of  £50,000,  on  the  discovery  of 
incompatibility  of  inclination  ;  and  that  he  subsequently 
married  "  a  lady  with  ten  pounds  for  her  fortune,  calcu- 
lating probability  of  conjugal  felicity  from  the  endow- 
ment of  amiable  qualities,  placid  disposition,  compilable 
temper,  serious  principles,  polite  accomplishments,  and 
last,  though  not  least,  domestic  habits."  But  if  acquisi- 
tiveness jumped  a  generation,  it  manifested  itself  in 
Fontelautus,  who  from  the  earliest  age  clawed  and 
endeavoured  to  ram  into  his  mouth  whatever  he  could 
lay  his  hands  on. 

The  Dennis  family  had  been  one  of  warriors  :  their 
arms  were  battle-axes  ;  and  the  Rev.  Jonas  admits  that 
combativeness  remained  as  a  pronounced  feature  in  his 
own  character,  the  hereditary  principle  in  himself 
prompting  him  to  engage  in  controversy.  Some  of  his 
achievements  he  records.  It  seems  that  the  priest 
vicars  of  the  cathedral  of  Exeter  had  petitioned  the 
Dean  and  Chapter  to  suppress  the  week-day  matins. 
The  Chapter  was  more  than  half  inclined  to  agree, 
when  the  stalwart  Jonas  threw  himself  into  the  midst, 
and  stormed,  threatened,  pointed  to  the  Constitutions, 
dared  the  Chapter  to  give  way,  and  so  saved  the  choral 
matins  in  the  minster. 

The  cathedral,  he  informs  us,  was  kept  open,  and 
was  used  for  assignations  and  for  various  objectionable 
gatherings.  At  his  instigation  the  doors  were  locked 
between  the  hours  of  Divine  service.  It  is  possible 


FONTELAUTUS  583 

that  what  he  here  refers  to  may  be  the  performance  of 
the  Gloria  in  Excelsis  by  the  choir  in  the  Minstrel 
Gallery  at  midnight  on  Christmas  Eve.  This  was 
stopped  about  the  same  time  on  account  of  the  dis- 
orderly scenes  that  took  place  in  the  nave  ;  but  he  does 
not  specially  refer  to  this. 

Every  now  and  then  information  reached  his  ear  of 
intended  jobs  by  the  Bishop  (Carey)  to  accommodate 
noblemen,  and  rich  squires  of  the  diocese,  by  putting 
very  undesirable  scions  of  these  families  into  some  of 
his  best  livings.  Dennis  wrote  to  the  Bishop,  told  him 
that  if  he  proceeded  in  these  appointments  he  would 
publish  what  he  knew  about  the  character  of  those 
whom  he  presented  and  of  the  negotiations  undertaken 
to  obtain  these  benefices. 

He  also  strove  to  get  Convocation  to  transact  busi- 
ness. "  It  was  a  point  gained  to  make  a  torpid  tribe 
stretch  and  flap  their  wings,  although  speedily  droop- 
ing into  a  seven  years'  rest." 

The  mother  of  Prebendary  Dennis  was  a  daughter  of 
John  Cobley,  of  Crediton — in  fact,  the  Fontelautus  who 
was  to  be  would  be  a  kinsman  through  his  grandmother 
of  the  immortal  Uncle  Tom  Cobley. 

The  Prebendary  having  no  church  near  him  at 
Exmouth,  where  he  resided,  that  was  open  for  daily 
prayer,  was  wont  to  recite  his  office  when  walking  or 
riding.  One  day  when  he  was  on  horseback  and 
engaged  in  prayer,  he  saw  a  sudden  illumination  of  the 
sky  in  the  east,  that  grew  brighter  and  ever  more 
brilliant  till  it  exceeded  that  of  the  sun,  and  the  light 
appeared  to  pulsate  in  waves.  Dazzled  and  overcome 
he  reined  in  his  horse,  when  from  the  depths  of  the 
light  he  heard  a  voice,  "The  discipline  of  the  Church 
shall  be  restored  through  you  !  "  Then  a  pause,  and  the 
light  swelled  and  enveloped  him,  and  he  heard,  "  Miss 


584  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Shore  will  marry  you  ! "  After  a  pause  a  third  voice 
fell  from  heaven,  "  You  shall  recover  your  health  by 
observing  the  fasts  of  the  Church."  Then  the  light 
gradually  faded  away. 

"Of  the  three  predictions,"  writes  Prebendary 
Dennis,  "attended  with  a  vision,  two  have  already  been 
fulfilled,  i.e.  his  engagement  and  marriage  to  Miss 
Shore  (Juliana  Susannah)  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Thomas 
Shore,  vicar  of  Otterton,  and  brother  of  Lord  Teign- 
mouth  ;  next  his  recovery  of  sound  health.  Toward 
the  fulfilment  of  the  other  the  author  has  from  that  day 
laboured  with  might  and  main.  To  it  he  has  devoted 
prayer,  thought,  money,  speech,  travel,  exerting  every 
effort  within  compass  of  attainment."  According  to 
him,  Papal  supremacy  had  been  abolished  in  the  Church 
of  England,  Royal  supremacy  existed  but  as  a  shadow, 
that  supremacy  under  which  the  Church  was  crushed, 
but  did  not  groan  and  seem  inconvenienced,  or  to 
dislike,  was  the  supremacy  of  Mammon.  And  he  traced 
this  supremacy  to  the  coming  over  of  William  of 
Orange,  and  the  filling  of  the  bishoprics,  and  all  pre- 
ferments with  men  who  were  mere  timeservers  and 
political  partisans.  He  was  an  advocate  for  the  restora- 
tion of  clinical  unction  ;  he  preached  it,  and  records 
several  instances  of  healing  through  it.  He  also  re- 
garded madness  as  in  many  cases  due  to  demoniacal 
possession,  and  urged  the  use  of  exorcism. 

The  following  is  an  extract  from  the  Register  of 
Baptisms  of  Exmouth  for  the  year  1824  : — 

"  Fontelautus,  first-born  son  and  fifth  child  of  Jonas 
and  Juliana  Susanna  .  .  .  Dennis,  Prebendary  of 
Kerswell,  in  the  R.  Collegiate  Church  of  the  Castle  of 
Exeter.  Baptised  by  me,  Jonas  Dennis,  B.C.L.,  the 
aforesaid  Prebendary.  Sponsors :  Sir  W.  T.  Pole, 
Bart.,  by  his  proxy,  the  Rev.  R.  Prat,  vicar;  the 


FONTELAUTUS  585 

Rev.  Jno.  Dennis,  A.B.,  and  Elizabeth  his  wife.  Sup- 
posed to  be  the  first  instance  of  trine  immersion  since 
its  suppression  by  the  Presbyterian  Directory  of  the 
Long  Parliament." 

Fontelautus  means,  of  course,  "  washed  in  the  (sacred) 
fount."  What  could  a  wretched  infant  do  with  such 
a  name?  Could  it  possibly  live? 

"  Peaceful  was  his  countenance,  engaging  was  his 
manner,  penetrating  his  looks.  In  family  worship  his 
attention  and  serious  aspect  was  striking  to  the  specta- 
tors." 

But,  alas  !  there  was  something  of  the  hereditary 
taint  in  Fontelautus — the  love  of  admiration.  "  Every 
little  cunning  trick  was  resorted  to  for  its  gratification. 
Every  description  of  expedient  was  equally  adopted 
by  him  as  by  a  vain  adult.  Approaching  home  in  his 
attendant's  arms,  on  her  return  from  executing  any 
commission,  he  studiously  assumed  appearance  of 
having  been  bearer  of  the  purchased  article  by  grasping 
it  in  his  extended  fingers,  merely  to  excite  admiration. 
Rather  than  not  excite  attention,  he  courted  notice  by 
laying  his  head  on  the  floor  in  preference  to  other  sup- 
port." 

Here  follows  an  exquisite  specimen  of  the  style  of 
the  Rev.  Jonas:  "  The  few  moments  spent  in  his 
father's  arms  were  marked  by  ecstacy ;  and  the  privilege 
of  attendance  on  tonsorial  operations "  —  he  means 
watching  the  barber  cut  his  father's  hair  and  shave  him 
— '  *  was  highly  estimated  by  the  animated  boy.  But  the 
son  of  a  scholar  commands  an  inferior  portion  of 
paternal  time  and  caresses,  than  he  ensures  in  maternal 
embraces  or  sartorial  attention  !  His  mother,  of  course, 
was  the  paramount  object  of  regard.  He  could  not 
obliterate  the  associated  delight  of  a  suckling." 

Fontelautus  seemed  to   be  progressing  lustily  with 


586  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

his  pap  and  his  bottle,  and  dribbling  effusively  as  in- 
dication of  teething,  when  about  a  fortnight  before  the 
end  of  May,  as  the  cook-maid  sat  at  night  in  the 
kitchen,  she  saw  the  headless  form  of  a  child  enter  the 
door  from  the  court,  walk  or  glide  through  the  kitchen 
into  the  pantry,  and  suddenly  vanish. 

On  i  June,  seven  weeks  before  Fontelautus  had  com- 
pleted his  second  year,  rising  to  meet  his  father  who 
had  been  absent  from  home  for  some  months,  the  boy 
got  his  foot  entangled  in  a  bedside  carpet,  and  falling 
on  his  right  arm  bent  the  bone,  or,  as  Jonas  words  it, 
"  the  pressure  of  the  superincumbent  weight  gave  it 
an  unprecedented  degree  of  incurvation."  Before  he 
had  recovered  from  this  he  had  a  fall  on  his  head,  and 
soon  water  on  the  brain  began  to  gather,  and  he  had 
convulsions  during  ten  days,  and  from  the  appearance 
of  his  eyes  it  was  clear  that  the  child  could  no  longer 
see.  The  father  was  convinced  that  this  was  a  case  of 
obsession  by  an  evil  spirit,  not  of  /obsession,  as  he  is 
careful  to  explain,  and  he  had  recourse  to  exorcism, 
which  temporarily  relieved  the  distressed  infant.  The 
contortions,  the  expression  of  the  face,  the  foaming  of 
the  mouth,  all  satisfied  the  father  that  the  child  was 
beset  by  evil  spirits,  and  his  exorcisms  were  always 
conducive  to  relief  of  the  patient ;  an  expression  of 
repose  and  relief  stole  over  the  distressed  countenance 
of  the  child  ;  and  when  he  died  it  was  during  such  a 
pause  of  relief;  as  the  Prebendary  says,  "  His  soul 
was  not  extracted  from  the  body  by  the  coercive  agency 
of  an  infernal  envoy." 

So  far  we  do  not  see  how  that  Fontelautus  should  be 
such  a  crushing  argument  against  materialism.  Yet 
the  Memoirs  were  addressed  to  "  Mr.  William  Lawrence, 
surgeon,  as  chief  British  apostle  of  the  system  of 
Natural  Philosophy  completely  reducing  man  to  a 


FONTELAUTUS  587 

biped  featherless  brute  ;  therefore  eradicating  apprehen- 
sions of  future  responsibility,  consequently  destructive 
of  every  moral  feeling  in  the  heart." 

But  wait,  Mr.  Apostle  Lawrence,  the  evidence  against 
materialism  is  coming  ! 

It  must  be  premised  that  the  family  lived  at  the  time 
at  Belmont  House,  in  Bicton  Street,  Exmouth,  and 
this  was  the  scene  of  what  followed  : — 

"On  the  night  succeeding  the  decease  of  Fontelautus, 
for  preclusion  of  the  body  from  renewed  maternal  in- 
spection, it  was  removed  to  an  attic  apartment,  having 
an  unglazed  window  open  to  the  staircase.  With  the 
same  view,  the  lid  of  the  coffin  was  screwed  until  the 
following  day,  when  it  was  unscrewed  on  suggestion  of 
hazard  to  bearers  from  condensation  of  putrescent 
exhalation." 

At  the  Prebendary's  desire,  the  head  of  his  child  had 
been  cut  off  and  the  skull  opened  to  examine  the  con- 
dition of  the  brain,  and  to  ascertain  the  amount  of 
water  that  was  in  it.  And  it  is  remarkable  that  this 
operation  took  place  in  the  room  immediately  above  the 
kitchen  in  which  a  few  weeks  before  the  cook  had  seen 
the  apparition  of  the  headless  child. 

"  Pending  the  intervening  night,  the  inmates  of  the 
nursery  being  removed  to  another  sleeping  room,  the 
nursemaid,  during  half  an  hour,  while  lying  in  bed, 
heard  his  accustomed  tones  of  voice  as  distinctly  as 
when  occasionally  lying  with  her  during  lifetime. 
Sitting  up,  she  heard  the  voice  continued  precisely  in 
the  usual  mode  constantly  resorted  to  by  the  affection- 
ate child,  to  engage  his  nurse's  nocturnal  attention,  if 
through  fatigue  reluctant  to  be  disturbed.  His  vocal 
tones  were  peculiarly  winning,  coaxing,  and  caressing. 
They  retained  their  pristine  character  during  the  period 
of  apparition.  Forgetful,  for  the  time,  of  all  impossi- 


588  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

bility  of  reanimation,  through  dissection  of  the  cere- 
bellum, she  concluded,  through  protraction  of  the 
phenomenon,  that  life  was  restored.  On  walking  out 
on  the  staircase,  and  remaining  ten  minutes,  the  voice 
continued  to  attend  her,  until  hastening  to  the  coffin 
and  without  success  endeavouring  to  force  open  the  lid. 
His  favourite  sister,  Maria,  lying  in  a  crib  in  the  same 
room,  heard  her  brother's  voice  with  equal  distinctness, 
both  that  night  and  the  two  following  days.  She, 
indeed,  heard  the  sound  of  his  voice  so  frequently 
transmitted  from  the  attic  room,  as  repeatedly  to  be 
induced  to  hasten  thither  in  expectation  of  finding  him 
alive.  Her  mother,  sitting  in  the  drawing-room,  like- 
wise heard  the  same  articulate  sound.  At  one  time,  the 
girl  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  and  the  servant  at  the 
nursery  door,  both  heard  the  infant's  tones  repeated  at 
the  same  time  from  the  attic  room.  At  another  time, 
Maria,  during  five  minutes,  saw  the  apparition  of  her 
brother's  hand  stretching  out  of  the  room  window 
where  his  body  lay ;  and  she  knocked  at  her  mother's 
door,  calling  her  out  to  see  Lautus,  as  he  was  alive. 
Before  her  mother  arrived,  she  saw  the  hand  turned 
round  and  drawn  in  at  the  window.  She  continued  to 
hear  his  voice  coming  in  the  same  direction  the  succeed- 
ing day. 

"At  night,  her  mother,  entreated  by  her  father  to 
deny  herself  the  pleasure  of  saluting  her  deceased 
darling's  icy  lips,  reluctantly  yielded  to  the  injunction. 
She  was  subsequently  awakened  from  sound  sleep  by 
sensible  perception  of  a  wing  fluttering  on  her  lips, 
with  such  rapidity  as  nearly  to  suspend  breathing. 
Sitting  up  in  the  bed,  she  then  heard  the  more  distant 
sound  of  which  fluttering,  equally  distinct  to  the  ear 
as  previously  perceptible  by  contact.  It  continued  for 
some  time  in  the  upper  part  of  the  room.  On  search- 


FONTELAUTUS  589 

ing  the  following  morning,  no  material  object  elucidat- 
ing the  phenomena  was  by  any  means  discoverable, 
both  window  and  door  having  through  the  night  been 
closely  shut  and  locked." 

That  this  was  none  other  than  a  moth  that  escaped 
notice  by  day  by  clinging  to  a  curtain  with  folded 
wings  is  obvious  enough. 

The  reader  is  by  this  time  doubtless  so  tired  of  the 
inflated  style  of  the  Prebendary,  that  he  will  be  grateful 
to  have  the  rest  of  the  story  told  in  plain  English. 

The  Rev.  Jonas  had  made  up  his  mind  to  have 
Fontelautus  buried  in  the  garden  of  his  home,  and 
arrangements  were  made  that  his  five  sisters  were  to 
be  the  bearers.  But  this  was  at  once  met  by  the  positive 
refusal  of  Maria,  who  declared  that  she  would  be  no 
party  to  the  burial  of  her  brother,  who,  she  was  assured, 
was  still  alive.  After  the  funeral  she  remained  in  an 
agony  of  distress,  and  this  idea  continued  to  possess  her, 
and  so  firmly  impressed  her  mind,  that  at  length,  to 
appease  her  and  satisfy  her  that  Fontelautus  was  really 
dead,  he  was  dug  up  again. 

Such  is  the  story  that  the  Prebendary  thought  would 
be  annihilation  to  materialism. 

He  was  the  author  of  a  good  many  books.  I  give 
the  titles  of  a  few. 

Church  Reform,  by  a  Church  Radical,  and  Other 
Tracts.  Exeter,  1834-5. 

Alliance  of  Church  and  State,  Neither  Sinful  nor  Un- 
scriptural.  London,  1834. 

Key  to  the  Regalia,  with  Anecdotes  of  the  Late  King. 
London,  1820. 

Architectura  Sacra.     Exeter,  1819. 

Cat  o'  Nine  Tails.     Exeter,  1823. 

The  Landscape  Gardener.     Chelsea,  1835. 

The  Rev.  Jonas  Dennis  himself  died  at  Polsloe  Park 


590  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

on  6  December,  1846,  aged  seventy-one.  His  only  eccle- 
siastical preferment  in  life  was  the  prebend  of  Carswell, 
one  of  the  four  prebends  attached  to  the  church  of  St. 
Mary,  in  the  Castle  of  Exeter,  which  he  held  from  1799 
to  the  day  of  his  death,  receiving  the  yearly  emolument 
of  £2  135.  4d. 

He  was  buried  at  Otterton,  and  his  grave  and  tomb- 
stone, as  well  as  those  of  his  wife,  are  in  the  churchyard. 

If  Providence  had  chosen  him,  as  the  voice  from 
heaven  intimated,  to  reform  the  Church,  it  made  a 
most  unhappy  selection,  as  his  inflated  and  absurd 
style  of  writing  and  speaking  made  him  an  object  of 
ridicule  not  of  respect,  and  deprived  his  efforts  of 
success. 

I  will  add  some  of  the  stories  from  the  second  part 
of  his  Hammer  of  Materialists. 

Prebendary  Salter,  M.A.,  tutor  to  the  son  of  the 
former  Bishop  Fisher,  of  Exeter,  translated  to  Salisbury 
in  1807,  declared  that  one  night  he  saw  his  father's  ap- 
parition standing  by  the  bedside.  At  the  same  time 
his  little  child  began  to  whimper,  and  this  roused  his 
wife,  who  also  saw  the  spectre,  and  both  particularly 
noticed  the  peculiar  plaiting  of  the  shirt.  In  a  short 
time  a  special  messenger  arrived  bringing  information 
that  the  old  gentleman  was  dead. 

Sarah,  wife  of  James  Smith,  of  Peckham,  Russia  mer- 
chant, and  herself  a  descendant  of  General  Monk  and 
mother-in-law  of  John  Dennis,  the  brother  of  Prebendary 
Jonas,  saw  a  female  friend's  apparition  at  the  foot  of 
her  bed.  Next  day  a  letter  arrived  announcing  the 
dying  anxiety  of  the  party  for  an  interview  with  Mrs. 
Smith,  to  entreat  her  kind  attention  to  her  surviving 
orphans.  The  moment  of  dissolution  coincided  with 
that  of  the  apparition.  Mrs.  Burrow,  aunt  of  Baron 
Giffard,  informed  the  author  that  going  up  Fore  Street, 


FONTELAUTUS  591 

Exeter,  one  night,  she  saw,  walking  at  a  little  distance 
before  her,  an  intimate  acquaintance  named  Jones,  a 
retired  silversmith.  Perceiving  him  to  halt  at  the  door 
of  the  house  where  he  had  been  formerly  established  in 
business,  she  hurried  her  pace  to  catch  him  up,  when 
he  vanished  as  she  reached  the  spot.  Next  morning 
a  messenger  arrived  to  announce  his  death,  which  had 
occurred  at  the  very  time  of  her  seeing  the  spectre. 

Mrs.  Woodall,  of  Dartmouth,  a  widow,  blind,  was 
informed  by  letter  from  her  daughter-in-law  in  Novem- 
ber, 1797,  of  the  death  of  her  cousin,  her  sister-in-law ; 
Miss  Sarah  Woodall  replied  through  an  amanuensis 
that  she  had  previously  known  of  the  death,  by  feeling 
the  clay-cold  hand  of  her  cousin  clasp  her  own  as  she 
lay  in  bed. 

The  late  Lady  Rolle  was  reported  to  have  been  seen 
after  her  decease  by  the  gardener  at  Bicton,  at  the  gate 
of  the  Dutch  garden. 

The  gardener  of  Franklyn,  in  St.  Thomas  by  Exeter, 
then  in  the  possession  of  a  family  named  Jones,  said 
that  he  saw  his  father's  ghost  whilst  he  was  at  work  in 
one  of  the  gardens  of  the  mansion. 

Mr.  Pearce,  of  Exeter,  a  retired  wine  merchant, 
informed  the  author  that  his  little  child  had  been  wont 
in  the  mornings  to  leave  his  crib  in  the  nursery  and 
run  to  his  father's  room  and  cuddle  into  his  bed.  Once 
when  the  child  was  very  ill  Mr.  Pearce  saw  him  come 
in  as  usual  in  his  nightshirt,  whereat  he  shouted  angrily 
to  the  nurse  in  another  room  to  rebuke  her  for  allowing 
the  child  to  leave  its  crib  whilst  so  ill.  The  child  had 
not  left  it — at  that  moment  it  had  died. 

A  male  servant  of  the  late  Colonel  Templer,  of 
Teignmouth,  in  November,  1810,  during  an  incessant 
fall  of  rain,  swelling  the  rivers  and  carrying  away 
bridges,  had  three  successive  dreams  the  same  night, 


592  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

in  which  he  thought  that  some  one,  in  danger  of  death 
on  the  Dawlish  road,  was  calling  to  him  to  come  to  his 
aid.  So  persuaded  was  the  man  that  he  was  truly  sum- 
moned, that  he  hastily  dressed,  saddled  and  mounted 
one  of  his  master's  horses,  and  proceeded  along  the 
road  in  the  darkness,  till  his  horse  suddenly  drew  up 
and  refused  to  proceed.  Dismounting,  he  found  a 
woman  apparently  dying  in  a  channel  of  water  fur- 
rowed deep  across  the  highway.  By  this  means  her 
life  was  preserved. 

The  late  Mr.  Smith,  of  Exeter,  proprietor  of  a 
muslin  warehouse,  in  three  successive  dreams  in  the 
same  night,  which  he  separately  repeated  to  his  wife, 
was  summoned  to  go  at  once  to  Bodmin.  He  obeyed, 
and  on  arriving  there,  heard  that  the  assizes  were 
being  held.  Out  of  curiosity  he  went  into  the  court 
and  heard  the  judge  ask  whether  any  one  had  seen  the 
prisoner  on  the  day  and  at  the  hour  at  which  he  was 
charged  with  having  committed  a  murder  in  the  west 
of  Cornwall.  Looking  at  the  accused,  Mr.  Smith 
exclaimed,  "  Why  !  he  was  in  my  shop  in  Exeter  on 
that  very  day."  Through  such  conclusive  evidence  an 
alibi  was  established,  and  the  prisoner  was  acquitted 
and  discharged. 

The  Rev.  Mr.  Reynolds  was  master  of  the  Grammar 
School,  Exeter.  He  lost  his  wife,  and  after  that, 
possibly  because  his  spirits  failed  him  and  he  lacked 
energy,  the  school  declined  seriously  and  he  thought  of 
giving  it  up.  While  he  was  debating  this  in  his  mind, 
one  night  he  saw  the  figure  of  a  woman  stand  by  his 
bedside.  She  told  him  that  she  was  his  mother  who 
had  died  in  childbed  at  his  birth,  and  that  she  had 
been  suffered  to  come  to  him  to  encourage  him,  and 
bid  him  go  on  with  the  school,  for  that  a  notable  im- 
provement in  his  circumstances  would  take  place  if  he 


FONTELAUTUS  593 

remained  at  his  post.  He  communicated  this  to  Dr. 
Rennel,  rector  of  Drewsteignton. 

The  last  story  I  shall  quote  is  of  a  different  character. 
Mr.  Tuckfield,  of  Little  Fulford  by  Crediton,  was 
presumedly  dead,  and  was  laid  in  his  shell,  and  men 
were  set  to  watch  through  the  night.  They  were  plenti- 
fully supplied  with  candles  and  spirits.  In  the  dead  of 
the  night  one  pulled  out  a  pack  of  cards  and  the  two 
began  to  play,  and  as  they  played  they  drank,  till  they 
became  intoxicated. 

Then  said  one  to  the  other :  "I  say,  Bill,  old  Squire 
Tuckfield  he  did  like  a  drop  o'  spirits  in  his  day.  I 
reckon  it  won't  do  him  a  crumb  o'  harm  to  give  him 
a  drop  now."  And  taking  his  glass  of  almost  neat 
spirits,  he  poured  it  down  the  throat  of  the  deceased. 
Thereat,  to  their  dismay,  the  supposed  corpse  gasped, 
opened  its  eyes,  sat  up,  and  said:  "Give  me  another 
drop  and  I'll  take  a  hand  of  cards  with  you." 


2  Q 


WILLIAM    LANG,    OF    BRADWORTHY 

"  ~T| "^OORTIE  Articles  exhibited  against  William 

1^      Lang   who    was    Vicar    of  the    Parish    of 

i       Broadworthy,  &c.,  humbly  presented  in  the 

-^-          High  Court  of  Parliament.    London,  1641." 

"To  the  Rt.  Honourable  the  Knights,  Citizens  and 
Burgesses  assembled  in  the  Commons  House  this 
present  Parliament. 

"Humbly  showing  to  the  Honourable  Assembly 
that  one  William  Lang,  Vicar  of  the  Parish  of  Brad- 
worthie  aforesaid,  having  for  about  eighteen  yeers  last 
past  grievously  vexed  his  parishioners  with  infinite 
Vexations  and  causeless  Suits  to  their  exceeding  great 
oppression,  and  to  the  ruine  and  undoings  of  many  of 
them,  and  lived  with  great  dishonour  to  God,  and 
scandall  to  the  Ministrie  ;  He,  the  said  Lang,  being 
guiltie  of  Symonie,  Common  Barretrie,  Forgerie, 
Practising  to  poyson  some,  and  Endeavouring  to 
pistoll  others  of  his  Parishioners,  with  many  other 
foule  and  gross  misdemeanors,  particularlie  set  forth, 
and  expressed  in  the  paper  herewith  annexed,  the  con- 
sideration whereof  is  hereby  humbly  presented  to  the 
Honorable  Assemblie. 

"That  the  said  Lang  lived  till  he  was  about  the 
age  of  30  yeers  by  day-labour,  and  daily  hedged  and 
ditched,  threshed  and  carried  Sand,  in  the  same  Parish, 
and  places  adjacent,  being  never  admitted  of  any 
Universitie. 

594 


WILLIAM  LANG,  OF  BRADWORTHY    595 

"That  then  he  became  a  Sheriffe's  Bayliffe  and 
arrested  divers  in  his  own  person. 

"That  about  20  yeers  since  he  forged  several  War- 
rants, and  the  Justices  of  Assizes  having  notice  thereof, 
gave  order  for  his  Apprehension,  whereupon  he  fled 
into  Ireland. 

"That  about  four  yeers  after,  he  returned  and  pre- 
tended he  had  taken  Orders  in  Ireland,  and  did  officiate 
as  a  hireling  Reader,  untill  by  Carey,  Bishop  of  Exeter, 
he  was  suspended  for  foule  misdemeanors. 

"That  he  purchased  his  Vicarage  of  Bradworthie  for 
Money,  by  unlawful  Symony,  by  means  of  one  Robert 
Yee  (Yeo),  who  being  demanded  by  some  how  he  should 
make  a  Common  Bailiff  (naming  Lang)  Vicar  of  Brad- 
worthie, who  answered  that  he  had  then  such  power, 
that  if  his  Horse-head  could  but  speak,  he  could  have 
made  him  Vicar  of  Bradworthie. 

"That  same  Lang,  being  desirous  to  be  licensed  to 
preach  and  pray,  conscious  of  his  own  Insufficiencie  to 
undergo  Examination,  procured  one  Nicholas  Hunny 
to  be  examined  for  him  by  the  name  of  William  Lang, 
and  so  goes  for  a  Preaching  Minister. 

"That  ever  since  he  hath  been  Vicar,  he  hath  taken 
upon  him  to  be  a  common  Soliciter  of  Causes  in 
the  Courts  at  Westminster,  and  frequented  London 
Tearmly,  and  taken  Money  for  Solicitations. 

"That  he  hath  commenced  Causeless  Suits  against 
his  Parishioners  in  the  Court  of  Star-Chamber,  the 
Court  of  High  Commission,  the  Court  of  Audience, 
the  County  Court  of  Devon,  the  Consistory  Court  at 
Exeter,  all  at  once,  and  hath  had  above  fourtie  severall 
Suits  at  one  time,  and  above  eightie  of  his  Parish- 
ioners and  others  in  Suite  at  one  time,  and  having  by 
vexatious  Suits  utterlie  undone  divers  of  them,  their 
wives  and  children. 


596  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"That  he  hath  had  four  Bills  in  the  Star-Chambre 
depending  at  one  time  against  fourty  of  his  Parish- 
ioners, where  some  haye  depended  twelve  yeers,  and 
thereby  compelled  his  Parishioners  to  travell  to  London, 
tearmely  from  Bradworthie,  being  200  miles  distant. 

"That  divers  of  his  Parishioners  have  several  Times 
been  enforced  to  give  Compositions  to  him,  whereof 
some  have  payed  to  him  £40,  some  ten,  some  four 
pounds,  some  lesse,  at  his  pleasure  to  redeem  them 
from  oppression  and  causeless  Suits. 

"That  he  hath  prosecuted  Nicolas  Eliot  with  unjust 
and  causeless  suits  this  twenty  yeers  and  upward,  to 
his  damage  above  £500,  and  hath  utterly  undone  him, 
his  wife  and  children,  and  hath  kept  him  excommuni- 
cate for  these  two  years  last  past. 

"That  he  hath  of  meere  malice  .  .  .  undone  Robert 
Judd,  his  wife  and  children,  by  taking  wrongfully  from 
them  his  lands  and  goods  to  the  value  of  above  £300, 
not  leaving  him  worth  one  mouthful  of  Bread  ;  and  in 
this  extreme  Povertie  did  cast  into  Prison  the  said 
Robert  Judd,  and  excommunicated  him  this  eight  yeers 
last  past ;  and  the  said  Judd  doth  still  stand  unab- 
solved,  notwithstanding  there  is  no  cause  against  him  ; 
nor  did  his  malice  cease  there,  for  he  hath  prosecuted 
Robt.  Judd's  children  to  their  imprisonment  and  ruine. 

"That  he  having  about  six  or  seven  yeers  since 
agreed  with  Anthony  Nicholl,  one  of  his  Parishioners, 
for  fourteen  shillings  per  annum,  in  lieu  of  the  Tithes 
of  his  Tenement,  did  notwithstanding  shortly  after  sue 
Nicholl  and  threaten  him  that  unless  he  would  give 
him  Twenty  shillings  per  annum,  and  ,£5  for  so  quiet 
a  composition,  he  would  make  him  spend  more  yeerly 
than  the  Rent  of  his  Tenement,  and  so  forced  Nicholl 
to  a  new  Agreement,  and  gave  him  a  note  under  his 


WILLIAM  LANG,  OF  BRADWORTHY     597 

hand,  that  for  20  shillings  per  ann.  he  should,  etc.  .  .  . 
Yet  two  yeers  after  the  latter  Agreement  he  sued 
Nicholl  and  forced  him  to  compound  by  paying  24  shil- 
lings per  annum,  and  ,£5  for  his  Love. 

"  That  for  3d  due  he  sued  Richard  Snowe,  in  the 
Consistorie  at  Exeter,  and  put  him  to  £4  or  £5  charge 
about  it. 

"That  he  suborned  Gabriel  Williams  of  Torrington 
to  enforce  actions  against  his  Parishioners. 

"  So  he  forced  William  Cann,  John  Bishop,  Richard 
Lile,  Lewis  Dennis,  Robert  Terdrew,  John  Yee,  to 
come  to  composition  with  him. 

"  That  he  hath  affirmed  that  if  his  Chancell  were  full 
of  Gold  and  Silver,  he  would  spend  it  all  to  be  avenged 
of  his  Enemies,  and  that  he  would  never  give  over  his 
Parishioners  with  Suits,  untill  he  lay  down  like  a  Hare 
before  the  Hounds. 

"He  dealt  with  one  Christopher  Pugsley  to  poyson 
four  of  his  Parishioners,  Thomas  Vigers,  Richard 
Facye,  Robert  Bishop,  and  Thomas  Boundye,  and 
gave  209  6d  to  said  Pugsley  to  buy  Ratsbane  with  pro- 
mise of  Money  upon  the  Fact  committed,  which  Pugs- 
ley attempted  three  Times,  and  besides  there  is  more 
than  Suspicion  that  he  poysoned  his  Predecessor's 
Wife,  whose  Estate  he  had,  and  was  tied  to  maintain 
her  during  her  Life. 

"That  he  Conspired  to  cause  the  Death  of  his  Pre- 
decessor Twiggs. 

"That  he  carried  a  Pistoll  to  kill  Mr.  Thomas 
Vigurs  then  in  Suit  with  him,  and  did  threaten 
Thomas  Woodroffe,  a  Minister. 

"That  he  dealt  with  Pugsley  to  burn  the  Barn  and 
Corn  Mowes  of  Samuel  Chappell. 

"That  he  committed  divers  Forgeries  since  he  hath 
been  Vicar  of  Bradworthie. 


598  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

4 'That  during  his  Absence  above  7  yeers  since  he 
left  Matthew  Lile,  a  Miller,  to  read  Prayers  in  Church, 
and  since  then  Philip  Natt,  a  Taylor. 

"That  he  causeth  Dorothie  Lang,  his  daughter,  to 
catechise  in  Church. 

"That  being  required  to  baptize  a  child,  he  bade  the 
Woman  to  cast  a  Dish  of  Water  in  the  face  of  the  child, 
and  call  it  John  or  Joan,  in  the  Name  of,  etc.,  and  this 
would  be  well  enough.  Which  Child  lived  more  than 
10  weeks  after  and  died  unbaptized. 

"That  he  obtained  a  Licence  to  sell  Wine,  and  hath 
kept  a  Tavern  in  the  Vicarage  for  four  yeers. 

"  That  a  Child  being  baptized,  the  Woman  that  held 
the  Child  softly  and  modestly  requested  him  to  put 
back  the  Child's  Head-covering  ;  he  answered,  '  Go 
thy  Wayes  home,  and  teach  thy  Maid  to  whip  her 
Cat.' 

"That  being  requested  by  a  parent  to  christen  her 
child,  he  answered,  '  What,  wilt  thou  have  me  christen 
thy  Old  Sow?' 

"That  he  affirms  the  Book  of  Canticles  to  be  but  a 
kind  of  bawdy  Song. 

"That  he  never  preacheth  or  catechiseth  in  the 
Afternoon  on  Sabbath  Days,  but  goes  to  the  Alehouse, 
and  makes  himself  so  drunk  that  he  can  neither  go  nor 
stand."  When  this  was  published  William  Lang  was 
a  prisoner  in  London. 

That  there  is  considerable  exaggeration  in  these 
charges — I  have  not  given  all — goes  without  saying, 
but  that  there  was  a  strong  case  against  the  vicar 
nevertheless  cannot  be  doubted.  The  facts  of  his  legal 
proceedings  against  his  parishioners  were  indisputable  ; 
the  surmises  that  he  had  poisoned  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Twigg  are  worthless.  That  his  daughter  catechized 
in  church  is  harmless  enough  ;  it  is  what  is  done  by 


WILLIAM  LANG,  OF  BRADWORTHY    599 

many  a  parson's  daughter  nowadays  where  there  is  no 
Sunday-school  room. 

Reckless  charges  and  complaints  against  the  clergy 
whom  their  parishioners  did  not  like  were  eagerly 
received  by  the  Parliament  on  one  side  and  by  the 
King  on  the  other.  Thus  Larkham,  the  intruding 
vicar  of  Tavistock,  was  petitioned  against,  and  the 
petition  put  into  the  King's  own  hand,  with  twenty-four 
articles  against  him,  imputing  faction,  heresy,  witch- 
craft, rebellion,  and  treason.  This  was  in  1639  or 
1640. 

Mark  Twigg,  the  vicar,  was  buried  on  9  November, 
1622,  and  seems  to  have  been  a  son  of  Ralph  Twigg,  of 
Lawhitton,  and  Joan,  daughter  of  John  Cory,  of  Putford. 
His  widow  was  buried  by  Lang  in  1638,  so  that  if 
Lang  had  the  charge  of  her  he  endured  it  for  sixteen 
years.  The  wife  of  W.  Lang  was  Helen  Hockin  ;  he 
married  her  in  1607. 

Lang  was  succeeded  by  Elias  Eastaway  in  1641.  He 
was  buried  10  June,  1646,  when  his  son,  of  the  same 
name,  quietly  stepped  into  his  place.  This  Elias  married 
Penelope  Cleverdon  on  25  March,  1647-8 ;  and  his 
daughter,  Elizabeth,  was  baptized  23  January,  1647, 
before  they  were  married,  and  she  was  buried  30  June. 
Elias  had  a  son  of  the  same  name  baptized  14  Novem- 
ber, 1649,  and  a  daughter  in  1652,  another  son,  Elias, 
in  1653,  and  a  son,  Richard,  in  1656,  and  a  daughter, 
Margaret,  1659. 

Elias  was  quite  ready  to  conform,  so  as  to  retain  his 
living,  at  the  Restoration,  though  he  had  been  a  burn- 
ing and  a  shining  light  among  the  Puritans.  He  held 
the  living  till  his  death  in  1680.  He  had  been  insti- 
tuted 10  January,  1648-9,  only  a  few  days  before  the 
execution  of  the  King. 


WILLIAM    COOKWORTHY 

AjUSTUS  was  about  to  indulge  the  Romans 
in  a  great  series  of  spectacles,  races  in  the 
circus,  gladiatorial  shows  in  the  arena,  and 
theatrical  performances,  all  gratis,  free  and 
for  nothing.    Down  came  the  rain  in  torrents  all  night. 
The  streets  were   swimming,   the  Tiber  swelled  and 
rolled   down  a  volume   of   yellow  water.      The  good 
folks  of  Rome  were  in  despair.     But  when  morning 
dawned   the  skies   cleared,   the   sun   shone   forth,   the 
streets  dried  as  by  magic,  and  the  shows  were  carried 
out  with  the  utmost  splendour.    At  night  on  the  palace 
wall  was  scrawled  in  chalk  : — 

It  rained  all  night,  the  day  was  bright, 
Jove  and  Augustus  share  All-might. 

Augustus  was  flattered  and  asked  who  had  written 
these  lines.  Presently  a  poetaster,  Bathylus,  stood 
forward  and  confessed  that  he  was  the  author,  and  was 
rewarded  most  liberally.  Next  night,  the  same  lines 
were  written  on  the  wall,  and  under  them  the  line  : 
"I  wrote  the  verse,  another  claimed  the  fame,"  and 
underneath  four  times  repeated  "  Sic  vos  non  vobis,"  or 
"Thus  you,  but  not  for  you."  Bathylus  was  sent  for 
and  required  to  complete  the  lines.  He  scratched  his 
head,  turned  red,  and  declared  his  inability  to  do  this. 
Then  from  the  throng  came  a  tall,  swarthy  man, 
modest  in  his  bearing,  and  wrote  in  chalk : — 

Sic  vos  non  vobis  nidificatis  aves, 
Sic  vos  non  vobis  velera  fertis  oves, 
Sic  vos  non  vobis  melificatis  apes, 
Sic  vos  non  vobis  fertis  aratra  boves. 

600 


WILLIAM    COOKWORTHY   OF    PLYMOUTH 

From  the  original  portrait  by  Opie  in  the  possession  of  Edward  Harrison,  Esq., 
of  Watford 


WILLIAM   COOKWORTHY  601 

That  may  be  rendered  thus  : — 

Thus  you,  but  not  for  you,  birds  build  their  nest, 
Thus  you,  but  not  for  you,  ye  sheep  in  fleeces  drest, 
Thus  you,  but  not  for  you,  ye  bees  the  honey  drain, 
Thus  you,  but  not  for  you,  ye  oxen  ploughing  strain. 

He  who  wrote  this  was  P.  Virgilius  Maro,  and 
Bathylus  became  the  laughing-stock  of  Rome. 

I  tell  this  story  because  up  to  a  certain  point  it 
illustrates  the  fortunes  of  William  Cookworthy.  At  the 
present  day  many  hundreds  of  men  live  in  ease  and 
happiness  through  the  discovery  of  china-clay  by 
Cookworthy,  but  he  himself  reaped  no  advantage  by 
what  he  discovered. 

The  town  of  St.  Austell  in  Cornwall  may  be  said  to 
live  on  china-clay  that  is  exported  to  the  Staffordshire 
potteries.  Before  the  discovery  by  Cookworthy,  it  was 
not  known  that  the  kaolin,  the  essential  ingredient  of 
porcelain,  was  to  be  found  anywhere,  except  in  China. 
But  Cookworthy,  who  has  put  bread  into  the  mouths 
of  thousands,  who  created  the  manufacture  of  porcelain 
in  England  out  of  home-produced  kaolin,  reaped  not  a 
penny  advantage  from  his  discovery. 

Kaolin  is  found  elsewhere,  in  Devon,  on  the  fringe 
of  Dartmoor.  Now,  the  visitor  to  Plymouth,  as  he 
passes  by  the  head  of  the  Laira,  will  see  a  milk-white 
stream  flow  past  the  line.  It  is  the  overflow  from  the 
kaolin  works  at  Lee  Moor.  Cookworthy  did  not, 
however,  discover  the  china-clay  on  the  borders  of 
Dartmoor,  where  it  abounds. 

China-clay  or  kaolin  is  obtained  from  highly  decom- 
posed granite,  and  consists  of  the  disintegrated  and 
metamorphosed  felspar  of  that  rock.  Often  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  granitic  masses  of  Cornwall  the  rock  is  so 
decomposed  by  the  percolation  of  rain-water  holding 
carbonic  acid  in  solution  that  the  granite  may  be  dug 


602  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

with  a  spade  to  the  depth  of  twenty  feet  or  more. 
China-stone  also  is  found  similarly  composed  of  disinte- 
grated granite,  and  contains  quartz  as  well  as  kaolin. 
It  is  used  in  the  manufacture  of  glaze  for  earthenware. 
From  S.  Austell,  where  three  thousand  persons  are 
engaged  in  raising  and  cleaning  the  kaolin,  something 
like  forty  thousand  tons  are  annually  exported  to  Staf- 
fordshire for  the  manufacture  of  porcelain.  But  it  is 
employed  also  largely  in  the  calico-weaving  districts  as 
the  principal  ingredient  in  sizing  and  loading  calico. 
It  is  also  used  in  paper  manufacture  for  the  highly 
glazed  and  smooth  sheets  employed  for  illustrations. 

But  to  come  to  William  Cookworthy.  He  belonged 
to  a  Quaker  family  of  Kingsbridge.  His  grandfather, 
William  Cookworthy,  married  Susanna  Wearmouth  in 
1669,  and  died  in  1708.  His  father,  a  weaver,  also 
William  Cookworthy,  born  in  1670,  married  Edith 
Dobell  in  1704,  and  died  in  1718.  William  the  third 
Cookworthy  was  born  in  1705.  After  the  father's  death 
the  widow  was  left  in  straitened  circumstances,  and 
received  assistance  from  the  Friends'  Monthly  Meeting. 
Although  reduced  to  poverty,  with  a  family  of  seven 
children,  the  eldest  only  fourteen  years  old,  the  widow 
struggled  bravely  through  her  difficulties.  William, 
the  eldest  son,  was  apprenticed  after  his  father's  death  to 
the  firm  of  Bevan,  chemists  and  druggists,  London, 
also  Quakers.  At  the  close  of  his  apprenticeship,  with 
the  assistance  of  his  employers,  he  set  up  for  himself  as 
a  wholesale  chemist  and  druggist  at  Plymouth,  the 
firm  being  entitled  Bevan  and  Cookworthy,  and  the 
place  of  business  was  in  Notte  Street,  and  here  he  lived 
for  many  years,  and  there  died. 

"He  was  in  many  respects  a  remarkable  man,  and 
his  life  is  one  of  the  most  illustrious  examples  of  men 
who  have  risen  of  which  England  can  boast.  Empha- 


WILLIAM   COOKWORTHY  603 

tically  self-made,  he  had  none  of  the  foibles  which 
frequently  mark  the  characters  of  those  who  have  been 
the  architects  of  their  own  fortunes.  An  industrious 
man  of  business,  a  shrewd  and  painstaking  inventor, 
deeply  versed  in  the  science  of  the  day,  valued  in  society 
for  his  geniality  and  power  of  conversation,  he  was  at 
the  same  time  one  of  the  simplest  and  devoutest  of 
Quakers,  and  an  enthusiastic  believer  in  the  views  of 
Swedenborg.  He  was  a  firm  believer  in  the  divining 
rod,  and  left  a  treatise  on  its  uses.  In  short,  Cookworthy 
was  a  man  of  many  sides,  but  always  genial,  courage- 
ous, and  persevering  ;  a  man  who  won  the  respect  and 
esteem  alike  of  high  and  low  by  his  strict  integrity, 
wide  sympathies,  and  varied  powers  ;  one  who,  having 
set  his  hand  to  the  plough,  was  not  ready  to  turn 
back."1 

In  1735,  at  the  age  of  thirty,  Cookworthy  married 
Sarah  Berry,  of  a  Somerset  Quaker  family  ;  and  about 
this  time  he  assumed  the  peculiar  dress  of  the  Society, 
a  drab  suit  and  a  broad-brimmed  hat,  and  became  more 
accentuated  in  the  phraseology  adopted  by  the  sect. 
He  was  an  absent-minded  man.  One  Sunday,  in 
Exeter,  on  leaving  the  house  of  a  friend,  a  physician, 
to  go  to  meeting,  as  the  rain  was  streaming  down,  he 
took  down  a  cloak  that  was  hanging  in  the  hall  and 
threw  it  over  his  shoulders,  little  noticing  that  this  was 
not  his  own,  but  that  of  the  owner  of  the  house.  In 
those  days  a  physician's  walking  costume  was  a  scarlet 
cloak,  with  a  gold-headed  cane.  In  this  garb  Cook- 
worthy  strolled  into  meeting,  and  into  the  Ministers' 
Gallery  to  the  scandal  of  all  the  Friends  assembled,  but 
quite  unconscious  of  his  transformation. 

On  another  occasion  he  was  on  his  way  to  attend 
the  quarterly  meeting  of  the  sect  at  Exeter,  and  halted 

1  R.  N.  Worth,  Transactions  of  Devonshire  Association,  1876. 


604  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

at  Ashburton  to  refresh  himself  and  his  horse.  After 
having  lunched,  he  took  up  a  copy  of  Sir  Charles 
GrandisoH)  in  seven  volumes,  began  to  read,  read  on 
and  on,  finished  one  volume,  took  up  the  next,  forgot 
all  about  his  purpose  of  going  to  Exeter,  and  was  found 
by  the  Friends  on  their  return  from  that  town,  and  the 
conclusion  of  the  meeting,  still  immersed  in  Samuel 
Richardson's  novel.  As  novel-reading  is  forbidden  in 
the  Society,  no  doubt  but  that  poor  Cookworthy  was 
severely  reprimanded,  and  prayed  for  as  a  back-slider. 

Porcelain  in  China  has  a  high  antiquity,  and  must 
have  been  made  there  at  least  1250  years  before  it  was 
manufactured  in  England ;  it  was  introduced  into 
Europe  in  1518,  when  it  acquired  the  name  of  China. 
For  a  long  period  it  was  supposed  that  the  fine  white 
clay  consisting  of  silica  and  alumina,  and  called  by  the 
Chinese  Kaolin^  was  found  only  in  the  Celestial  Empire, 
and  specimens  brought  to  Europe  fetched  a  high  price. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  it  was  dis- 
covered in  Saxony  in  an  odd  way.  A  merchant  named 
Schnorr,  being  on  a  journey,  was  struck  with  the  white- 
ness of  some  clay  near  Schneeburg,  and  collecting 
some  of  it,  thinking  it  might  be  employed  instead  of 
wheaten  flour  for  the  manufacture  of  hair  powder,  used 
it  for  this  purpose.  It  succeeded,  but  had  this  disad- 
vantage, that  wigs  dressed  with  the  new  hair  powder 
were  very  heavy.  An  apothecary  named  Botcher 
noticed  the  increased  weight  of  his  wig  and  instituted 
inquiries,  when  he  found  that  the  new  material  used 
was  precisely  that  which  was  required  for  the  manu- 
facture of  porcelain  ;  and  Dresden  china  was  begun  to 
be  made  by  him  in  1709,  and  was  carried  on  with  the 
greatest  secrecy,  and  the  exportation  of  the  earth  was 
forbidden  under  heavy  penalties. 

In  1 745,  Cookworthy  heard  that  a  similar  clay  had  been 


WILLIAM    COOKWORTHY  605 

discovered  in  Virginia,  and  sent  a  Quaker  to  procure 
some  for  him.  Somewhere  about  1748  he  himself  dis- 
covered it  in  Cornwall.  He  wrote:  "  I  first  discovered 
it  in  the  parish  of  Germo,  in  a  hill  called  Tregonnin 
Hill."  After  a  long  description  of  the  properties  of 
the  clay  and  his  experiments  upon  it,  he  says:  "  I  have 
lately  discovered  that  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
parish  of  S.  Stephen's,  in  Cornwall,  there  are  immense 
quantities  both  of  the  Petunse  stone  and  the  Kaulin, 
and  which  I  believe  may  be  more  conveniently  and 
advantageously  wrought  than  those  of  Tregonnin  Hill, 
as  by  experiments  I  have  made  on  them  they  produce 
a  much  whiter  body,  and  do  not  shrink  so  much  in 
baking,  nor  take  stains  so  readily  from  the  fire.  S. 
Stephen's  lies  between  Truro,  S.  Austell  and  S.  Columb ; 
and  the  parish  of  Dennis,  the  next  to  S.  Stephen's,  I 
believe,  hath  both  the  ingredients  in  plenty  in  it." 

The  same  materials  were  afterwards  found  at  Bo- 
connoc,  the  seat  of  the  Hon.  Thomas  Pitt,  afterwards 
created  Lord  Camelford.  This  discovery  led  to  an 
acquaintance  with  Thomas  Pitt,  and  together  they 
obtained  a  patent  in  1768  and  started  the  Plymouth 
China  Factory,  that  brought  the  manufacture  of  porce- 
lain to  great  perfection  ;  but  for  some  reason  did  not 
yield  profit  to  the  patentees. 

In  precisely  the  same  year  kaolin  was  discovered  at 
St.  Yrieix,  near  Limoges.  The  wife  of  a  surgeon  there 
had  used  it  for  the  purpose  of  bleaching  linen,  when 
her  husband,  suspecting  its  real  value,  took  it  to 
Bordeaux,  and  on  trial  it  was  found  to  be  the  very 
thing  needed  as  a  base  to  real  hard  porcelain.  The 
manufactory  of  Sevres  which  had  used  imported  Chinese 
clay,  now  employed  that  of  St.  Yrieix ;  and  the  Limoges 
manufacture  of  porcelain  was  then  started. 

After  six  years'  trial,  outlay,  and   discouragement, 


606  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  Plymouth  China  Works  were  removed  to  Bristol  and 
the  patent  was  assigned  to  Richard  Champion,  a  con- 
nexion by  marriage  of  the  Cookworthy  family.  The 
endeavour  to  make  the  porcelain  manufactures  there 
a  paying  concern  failed  as  it  had  at  Plymouth,  and 
Champion  removed  his  works  to  Staffordshire,  where 
the  fuel  was  close  at  hand.  The  Bristol  patent-right 
was  transferred  to  a  company  of  six  partners.  Champion 
received  through  Burke,  who  was  then  in  office,  the 
appointment  of  Deputy-Paymaster  of  the  Forces,  in 
1782,  when  he  left  Staffordshire,  but  on  a  change  of 
Ministry  he  lost  the  post,  and  went  to  America,  where 
he  died  in  1787.  Neither  his  family,  nor  that  of  Cook- 
worthy,  ever  received  any  benefit  from  the  important 
art  and  industry  they  had  been  the  means  of  establish- 
ing. William  Cookworthy  died  on  the  i7th  October, 
1780.  Among  the  worthies  celebrated  in  the  memorial 
windows  of  the  Plymouth  town  hall  is  "  William  Cook- 
worthy,  Chemist  and  Potter,  the  discoverer  of  the 
English  China-clay,  and  the  first  maker  in  England  of 
true  Porcelain." 

Abundant  information  relative  to  Cookworthy  exists. 

Memoir  of  William  Cookworthy,  by  his  Grandson, 
G.  H.  Harrison.  London,  1854. 

Relics  of  William  Cookworthy,  by  John  Prideaux. 
London,  1853. 

"  William  Cookworthy  and  the  Plymouth  China 
Factory,"  by  R.  N.  Worth,  in  the  Transactions  of  the 
Devonshire  Association,  1876. 

William  Cookworthy,  by  Theodore  Compton.  Lon- 
don, 1894. 

Strangely  enough,  though  Cookworthy  has  not  re- 
ceived the  recognition  due  to  him  as  a  discoverer.  Ure, 
in  his  Dictionary  of  Arts  and  Manufactures  (London, 
1853),  makes  no  mention  of  him.  Nor  does  Tomlinson 


WILLIAM    COOKWORTHY  607 

in  his  Cyclopaedia  of  Useful  Arts  and  Manufactures •, 
London,  1854  »  nor  did  Marryatt  in  the  first  edition  of 
his  History  of  Pottery  in  1850.  But  Cookworthy  has 
received  due  acknowledgment  in  the  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography. 


WILLIAM  JACKSON,    ORGANIST 


i 


autobiography  of  William  Jackson  was 
printed  and  published  for  the  first  time  in  the 
Leisure  Hour,  1882.  It  is  not  of  much  per- 
sonal interest,  as  it  concerns  almost  exclu- 
sively his  musical  education  and  his  travels  abroad. 
For  instance,  concerning  his  marriage,  it  is  dismissed 
with  the  curt  remark,  "At  twenty-three  I  married." 
Nevertheless  it  affords  us  some  particulars  which  we 
might  have  sought  for  in  vain  elsewhere. 

He  informs  us:  "  Of  my  family  I  know  nothing  but 
that  for  many  generations  they  were  farmers  at  Mor- 
leigh,  an  obscure  place  in  the  south-west  of  Devon.  It 
seems  trifling  to  add  that  all  the  Jacksons  in  Devon- 
shire have  a  family  face  and  person.  What  mine  was 
may  be  known  by  a  picture  by  Rennell,  painted  at 
twenty  years  of  age  ;  one  by  Gainsborough  at  forty ; 
another  by  Keenan  at  seventy.  I  recollect  also  sitting 
for  a  miniature  to  Humphrey,  for  a  portrait  in  crayon 
to  Morland,  and  for  two  in  oil  to  Opie."  He  goes  on 
to  say:  "  My  grandfather  Richard  Jackson  was  a  serge- 
maker  in  Exeter,  lived  creditably,  and  acquired  what  in 
those  days  was  considered  a  fortune.  He  left  many 
children.  My  father,  William,  was  his  second  son,  to 
whom  he  gave  a  good  school  education,  but  not  in- 
heriting the  prudence  of  his  predecessor,  he  soon  dis- 
sipated his  little  fortune." 

William  Jackson  of  Exeter  was  born  on   28  May, 

608 


WILLIAM   JACKSON,    ORGANIST        609 

1730,  and  began  his  education  at  seven,  which  was 
continued  till  he  was  sixteen.  He  did  not  begin  his 
musical  studies  till  twelve  years  old,  when  he  became 
a  chorister  in  Exeter  Cathedral.  He  displayed  a 
decided  taste  for  music. 

"  From  a  subordinate  member  of  the  choir  at  Exeter 
I  learnt  two  or  three  common  airs,  such  as  are  given  to 
beginners.  This  was  the  whole  of  my  instruction  for 
three  years  which  I  received  from  others ;  by  my  own 
assiduous  practice  I  could  perform  Handel's  organ  con- 
certos and  some  of  Corelli's  sonatas — in  a  wild,  irregular 
manner,  no  doubt.  As  yet  I  was  a  stranger  to  any  but 
my  own  poor  performance,  when  I  was  carried  to  hear  a 
young  lady,  who,  among  other  pieces,  played  the  over- 
ture of  Otho." 

In  1748  he  removed  to  London,  where  he  passed  two 
years  under  the  tuition  of  John  Travers,  organist  to  the 
King's  Chapel  and  to  St.  Paul's,  Covent  Garden,  and 
an  eminent  song  composer.  He  then  returned  to  his 
native  place,  where  he  settled  for  life  as  a  teacher,  pro- 
fessor, and  composer  of  music.  He  soon  attained 
reputation  and  employment;  but  it  was  not  till  1777 
that  he  succeeded  to  the  places  of  sub-chanter,  organist, 
lay  vicar,  and  master  of  the  choristers  in  the  cathedral. 
His  talents  in  musical  composition  were  first  made 
known  in  1775,  when  he  printed  a  collection  of  twelve 
songs  that  speedily  became  popular. 

Whilst  a  boy  in  London,  "In  or  about  1746,"  he 
says,  *  *  the  oratorio  of  Judas  Maccabeus  was  first  per- 
formed. I  squeezed  in  among  the  chorus  singers,  and 
was  remarked  by  Handel  when  he  entered,  as  a  stranger. 
'  Who  are  you  ? '  says  he.  '  Can  you  play  ?  Can  you 
sing?  If  not,  open  your  mouth  and  pretend  to  sing; 
for  there  must  be  no  idle  persons  in  my  band/  He 
was  right.  However,  in  the  course  of  the  evening,  by 

2   R 


6io  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

turning  his  leaf  and  some  other  little  attentions,  there 
became  some  sort  of  intimacy  between  us,  so  that 
I  gained  admittance  to  the  frequent  repetitions  of  this 
oratorio." 

Jackson  made  the  acquaintance  and  gained  the  friend- 
ship of  Gainsborough.  Of  him  he  says:  "  His  profes- 
sion was  painting,  music  was  his  amusement,"  and  the 
reverse  might  be  said  with  equal  truth  of  Jackson. 
Each  undertook  to  instruct  the  other  in  his  own  art, 
and  Jackson  rather  prided  himself  on  his  paintings  than 
on  his  music.  In  his  volume  of  essays,  The  Four  Ages, 
he  gives  his  reminiscences  of  Gainsborough,  and  they 
are  amusing.  His  account  can  here  be  briefly  summed 
up:— 

"  There  were  times  when  music  seemed  to  be  his 
employment,  and  painting  his  diversion.  When  I  first 
knew  him  he  lived  at  Bath,  where  Giardini  had  been 
exhibiting  his  then  unrivalled  powers  on  the  violin. 
His  performance  made  Gainsborough  enamoured  of 
that  instrument ;  and  conceiving,  like  the  servant  maid 
in  the  Spectator,  that  the  music  lay  in  the  fiddle,  he 
was  frantic  until  he  possessed  himself  of  the  very 
instrument  which  had  given  him  so  much  pleasure — 
but  seemed  much  surprised  that  the  music  of  it  re- 
mained behind  with  Giardini. 

"  He  had  scarcely  recovered  this  shock  when  he 
heard  Abel  on  the  viol-di-gamba.  The  violin  was 
hung  on  the  willow — Abel's  viol-di-gamba  was  pur- 
chased, and  the  house  resounded  with  melodious  thirds 
and  fifths.  Many  an  adagio  and  many  a  minuet  were 
begun,  but  never  completed.  This  was  wonderful,  as  it 
was  Abel's  own  instrument,  and  therefore  ought  to 
have  produced  Abel's  own  music. 

"  Fortunately,  my  friend's  passion  had  now  a  fresh 
object — Fischer's  hautboy ;  but  I  do  not  recollect  that 


WILLIAM   JACKSON,    ORGANIST        611 

he  deprived  Fischer  of  his  instrument,  though  he  pro- 
cured a  hautboy. 

"  The  next  time  I  saw  Gainsborough  he  had  heard  a 
harper  at  Bath.  The  performer  was  soon  left  harpless, 
and  now  Fischer,  Abel,  and  Giardini  were  all  forgotten 
— there  was  nothing  like  chords  and  arpeggios. 

"  More  years  passed,  when,  upon  seeing  a  Theorbo 
in  a  picture  of  Van  Dyck,  he  concluded  that  the  Theorbo 
must  be  a  fine  instrument."  But  Theorbos  were  no 
more  played.  The  nearest  approach  to  one  was  a  lute. 
On  inquiry  Gainsborough  ascertained  that  there  was 
a  poor  German  professor  who  performed  on  the  lute, 
living  in  a  garret.  To  him  went  the  artist  full  of  eager- 
ness. The  lute  he  must  have.  The  poor  man  was 
reluctant  to  part  with  it ;  but  finally  sold  it  for  ten 
guineas. 

"But  I  must  have  the  book  of  airs  for  the  instru- 
ment," said  Gainsborough;  "the  instrument  is  no 
good  without  the  book."  After  much  haggling,  at  last 
the  German  parted  with  the  music-book  for  another  ten 
guineas.  "In  this  way,"  says  Jackson,  "Gainsborough 
frittered  away  his  musical  talents,  and  though  possessed 
of  ear,  taste,  and  genius,  he  never  had  application  to 
learn  his  notes." 

Another  acquaintance  of  Jackson's  was  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds.  Of  him  he  says:  "Whatever  defects  a 
critical  eye  might  find  in  his  works,  a  microscopic  eye 
could  discover  none  in  his  heart.  If  constant  good- 
humour  and  benevolence,  if  the  absence  of  everything 
disagreeable,  and  the  presence  of  everything  pleasant, 
be  recommendations  for  a  companion,  Sir  Joshua  had 
these  accomplishments." 

Of  Jackson's  musical  powers  it  is  not  necessary  to 
speak.  Details  concerning  his  compositions  may  be 
found  in  Grove's  Dictionary  of  Music,  and  his  songs 


612  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"  Love  in  thine  eyes  for  ever  dwells,"  "Take,  O  take 
those  lips  away,  "and  "Time  hath  not  thinned  my  flow- 
ing hair,"  are  still  not  quite  dead.  His  "Te  Deum 
in  F  "  rang  through  every  village  church  in  England. 

He  made  many  visits  to  London,  and  returned  each 
time  more  dissatisfied  with  Exeter,  to  which  he  was 
bound  by  his  occupation  as  organist  of  the  cathedral, 
and  by  his  family. 

The  Literary  Society  of  Exeter  and  its  environs 
was  not  inconsiderable  in  number.  Several  of  the 
resident  clergy,  some  physicians  and  other  gentlemen, 
had  instituted  what  they  called  "The  Exeter  Society." 
They  proposed  to  rival,  by  volumes  of  their  own, 
the  Transactions  of  the  Manchester  Society,  whose 
occasional  appearance  had  attracted  some  notice.  But 
a  committee  sitting  judicially  on  the  contributions  of 
their  neighbours  and  of  each  other  nearly  broke  up 
their  friendly  intercourse. 

In  this  "Exeter  Society"  from  the  first  Jackson  had 
declined  to  enrol  himself  as  a  member.  He  kept  aloof; 
he  took  no  interest  in  their  enterprise.  He  kept  on 
good  terms  with  the  members,  not  entering  into  friend- 
ship with  any,  but  also  keeping  free  from  their  rivalries 
and  contentions. 

He  was  known  throughout  England  as  "Jackson  of 
Exeter."  This  was  because,  on  the  publication  of  his 
first  set  of  songs,  he  had  described  himself  as  "William 
Jackson  of  Exeter  "  to  distinguish  himself  from  another 
Jackson  who  was  a  musician  at  Oxford.  The  last 
twenty  years  of  his  life  were  passed  in  a  voluntary 
seclusion.  A  good  many  regretted  this ;  he  supposed 
that  his  talents  made  him  an  object  of  jealousy  in  the 
petty  world  of  a  cathedral  city.  He  was  not  made  as 
much  of  there  as  he  deemed  that  he  deserved.  Few 
strangers,  however,  visited  Exeter  without  seeking  an 


WILLIAM   JACKSON,    ORGANIST        613 

introduction  to  this  eminent  man  ;  and  his  door  was 
always  open  to  those  young  men  who  were  of  a 
poetical  cast  of  mind.  Even  Dr.  Wolcot,  the  veno- 
mous Peter  Pindar,  had  a  kindly  word  to  say  for  him 
in  verse.  His  favourite  composer  of  words  for  his 
songs  was  one  Bampfylde,  a  Devonshire  poet,  whose 
sonnets  have  never  been  collected,  and  which  would 
not  commend  themselves  to  modern  taste.  Rendal, 
a  polished  versifier,  composed  for  him  a  series  of 
fairy  personifications,  with  distinct  scenery  and  ap- 
propriate action,  to  introduce  new  combinations  of 
music.  The  fays  were  in  caverns,  on  lakes,  on  a 
volcano,  among  glaciers,  in  the  billows  of  the  sea,  in 
groves  lit  by  the  evening  star.  The  music  of  the 
"  Fairy  Fantasies,"  as  these  were  called,  was  one  of 
the  latest  compositions  of  Jackson. 

Jackson  occupied  and  amused  himself  with  literary 
compositions.  His  Thirty  Letters  touched  on  many  in- 
teresting points  of  art,  literature,  and  philosophy. 

In  The  Four  Ages  he  put  together  a  collection  of 
various  articles  and  stories.  The  volume  took  its  title 
from  the  leading  essay,  in  which  he  showed  that  the 
opinion  of  the  Ancients  as  to  a  sequence  of  Golden, 
Silver,  Brass,  and  Iron  Ages  should  be  inverted — that 
early  man  began  in  the  Iron  Age,  and  that  society  and 
culture  were  rapidly  progressing  to  the  Golden  Age. 

Dr.  Burney  said  with  severity,  yet  not  without  some 
truth,  of  Jackson  :  "  He  has  never  been  remarkable  for 
sailing  with  the  tide  of  general  opinion  on  any  occa- 
sion. He  would,  perhaps,  suppose  the  whole  universe 
rather  than  himself  to  be  in  the  wrong,  in  judging  of 
any  of  the  arts."  The  critic  ascribed  his  perverse  in- 
genuity to  "  prejudice,  envy,  a  provincial  taste,  or 
perhaps  all  together,  which  prevented  his  candid 
attention." 


614  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

He  possessed  a  certain  amount  of  wit,  but  it  was  of 
a  cumbrous  nature.  On  one  occasion,  being  called 
upon  at  a  public  dinner  for  a  toast,  he  said  :  "I  have 
great  pleasure,  Mr.  Chairman,  in  complying  with  your 
command,  and  give  you  the  opening  words  of  the  third 
Psalm."  The  chairman,  astonished  at  the  inappro- 
priateness  of  the  idea,  stopped  the  musician  short  by 
exclaiming  :  "  Oh,  fie,  Mr.  Jackson  !  the  beginning  of 
a  Psalm  as  a  convivial  toast?  " 

"  Yes,  sir,  unless  you  can  suggest  a  better.  I  give 
you  Lord  How." 

But  what  humour  he  had  acidulated  into  sarcasm,  as 
he  could  not  move  musically  with  the  times.  He  could 
not  advance  out  of  the  restricted  circle  of  his  own 
ideals,  which  was  very  narrow.  To  such  a  mind, 
Gothic  architecture  could  only  exhibit  "an  incongru- 
ous mass  of  absurdities — it  is  a  false  style,  only  showing 
the  want  of  skill  in  the  builders  in  mixing  forms  which 
cannot  accord." 

He  was  greatly  incensed  that  the  public  appreciated 
the  music  of  Haydn,  Mozart,  and  even  Handel,  whose 
strains  were  "an  imposition  of  the  feelings  drawn 
from  illegitimate  sources."  Why  could  not  English 
ears  rest  satisfied  with  Greene  and  Boyce  and  Blow  ? 
He  affected  to  smile  on  "musical  expression,"  which 
he  considered  so  contemptible  that  fantastic  Germans 
were  only  capable  of  attempting  it.  Did  the  poet  ask, 
"What  passion  cannot  music  raise  or  quell?"  I  ask 
in  turn,  What  passion  can  music  raise  or  quell  ?  Poets 
or  musicians  can  only  produce  different  degrees  of  pure 
pleasure,  and  when  they  have  produced  this  last  effect 
they  have  attained  the  utmost  in  the  power  of  poetry 
or  music.  Jackson  published  his  Observations  on  the 
Present  State  of  Music  in  London  in  1791,  in  which 
he  gave  vent  to  his  spleen.  Dr.  Burney  replied,  "And 


WILLIAM   JACKSON,    ORGANIST        615 

must  we  go  to  Exeter  to  ask  Mr.  Jackson  how  to  please 
and  be  pleased?  Are  we  to  have  no  music  in  our 
concerts  but  elegies  and  balads  ?  Mr.  Jackson's  favourite 
style  of  music  has  been  elegies,  but  what  is  an  elegy 
to  a  tragedy  or  to  an  epic  poem?  He  sees  but  one 
angle  of  the  art  of  music,  and  to  that  all  his  opinions 
are  referred.  His  elegy  is  no  more  than  a  closet  in  a 
palace." 

The  great  Handel  Commemoration  in  Westminster 
Abbey  in  1784  affected  the  organist  of  Exeter  Cathe- 
dral with  an  attack  of  the  spleen,  from  which  he  seems 
never  to  have  recovered.  At  first,  when  that  gigantic 
project  was  announced,  he  declared  it  to  be  imprac- 
ticable, for  that  so  stupendous  a  band,  composed  of 
many  hundred  instruments,  could  produce  only  a 
universal  and  deafening  clash.  When,  however,  the 
miracle  succeeded,  he  took  exception  at  the  selection  of 
pieces  that  had  been  performed.  Lest  Handel  should 
obtain  an  exclusive  triumph,  he  protested  that  there 
were  other  musicians  beside  Handel  who  deserved  to 
be  heard,  and  merited  as  high  honours  as  were  accorded 
to  him.  In  1790  came  Haydn  to  London,  and  the  cup 
of  Jackson's  wrath  overflowed.  His  ear  could  not  en- 
dure the  lively  melodies  and  gorgeous  effects  of  The 
Creation.  It  was  then,  in  the  rage  of  his  heart,  that  he 
published  his  Observations.  Artists  and  amateurs, 
according  to  him,  who  welcomed  the  ravishing  music 
of  Haydn  were  taking  "  their  present  musical  pleasure 
from  polluted  sources."  And  on  his  accustomed  prin- 
ciple and  in  his  usual  style  he  declared  that,  "  judging 
of  the  sensations  of  others  by  his  own,  the  public  is 
not  pleased  with  what  it  applauds  with  rapture." 

Jackson  entertained  the  greatest  contempt  for  the 
physicians  of  his  day,  and  perhaps  not  unjustly.  He 
imagined  that  all  the  diseases  to  which  man  is  heir  are 


616  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

produced  by  misconduct  and  intemperance,  and  that 
they  could  be  resisted  by  sobriety  ;  and  prevention, 
said  he,  was  better  than  cure.  His  decision,  persevered 
in,  of  using  only  abstinence,  when  his  constitution  was 
broken,  precipitated  his  end.  He  died  of  asthma  on 
5  July,  1803,  and  was  buried  in  S.  Stephen's  Church, 
Exeter,  where  is  a  tablet  to  his  memory,  with  a 
eulogistic  description  of  his  talents  and  attainments, 
written  by  his  friend,  William  Kendall.  The  tablet 
also  records  the  death  of  his  widow,  his  daughter 
Mary,  and  four  sons.  One  of  his  sons  was  ambassador 
to  the  King  of  Sardinia,  and  afterwards  to  Paris  and 
Berlin.  His  eldest  son,  William,  at  an  early  age 
entered  the  service  of  the  East  India  Company,  and 
was  secretary  to  Lord  Macartney  in  his  embassy  to 
China.  He  amassed  a  considerable  fortune  in  India, 
and  married  Frances,  the  only  plain  daughter  of 
Charles  Baring,  of  Courtlands,  near  Exmouth.  One 
of  the  other  daughters  married  Sir  Stafford  Northcote, 
Bart.,  of  Pynes,  another  Sir  Samuel  Young,  Bart.,  of 
Formosa  Place,  on  the  Thames.  William  purchased 
Cowley  Barton,  where  he  built  Cowley  House.  The 
design  is  said  to  have  been  suggested  by  his  father,  as 
bearing  some  resemblance  to  an  organ  front.  He  was 
High  Sheriff  of  Devon  in  1806.  He  died  in  1842, 
without  leaving  any  issue. 

Among  William  Jackson's  musical  compositions  was 
a  setting  of  Pope's  elegy,  Vital  Spark  of  Heavenly 
Flame,  which  was  sometimes  used  as  an  anthem,  and 
has  been  known  to  be  given  out  by  a  clerk  in  a 
village  church  thus:  "  Let  us  sing  to  the  praise  and 
glory  of  God — Poppy's  Legacy." 

The  authorities  for  Jackson's  life  are  : — 

Grove's  Dictionary  of  Music. 

A  Dictionary  of  Musicians.     London,  1827. 


WILLIAM   JACKSON,    ORGANIST        617 

The  autobiography  already  referred  to  in  The  Leisure 
Hour,  1882. 

"  Jackson  of  Exeter,"  in  the  New  Monthly  Magazine 
for  1832. 

G.  Townsend,  "  William  Jackson,"  in  Transactions 
of  the  Devonshire  Association,  1882. 

The  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  etc. 


JOHN   DUNNING,  FIRST   LORD 
ASHBURTON 

AWalkhampton  is  an  old  farm  called  Guatham 
that  had  pertained  for  several  generations  to 
the  family  of  Dunning,  originally  well-to-do 
yeomen,  but   not   dignified  enough   to   be 
recorded  as  bearing  arms  at  the  Heralds'  Visitation 
of    1620.      In    1661    Richard    Dunning,    in    a    deed, 
mentions   his   mother,  Wilmot,   his  sister  Mary,   and 
his  brother,  John  Dunning.     His  wife  was  Mary,  and 
he   had   besides    his    sister   Mary   another,    Margaret, 
who  married  Edward  Gould,  gent.,  of  Pridhamsleigh, 
in    Staverton ;     the    marriage    settlement    was    dated 
7  February,    14  Charles  II  (1662).     She  died  shortly 
after    her    marriage,    and    was    buried    at    Staverton 
26   April,    1662,   where   was    erected    a    brass    to    her 
memory  bearing  the  inscription  : — 

Here  lies  the  gentle  Margaret 
A  pearl  in  Gold  right  meetly  set. 

Her  brother  Richard  held  Guatham,  and  wrote  him- 
self "  Gentleman."  He  was  the  author  of  a  tract 
published  in  the  year  1686,  in  which  he  described  the 
condition  of  the  poor  of  the  county.  Macaulay  says: — 

"  That  he  understood  his  subject  well  it  is  impossible 
to  doubt ;  for  a  few  months  later  his  work  was  re- 
printed, and  was,  by  the  magistrates  assembled  in 
quarter  sessions  at  Exeter,  strongly  recommended  to 

618 


Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  pinxt. 


LORD   ASHBURTON 


F.  Bartdozei  sculpt. 


JOHN   DUNNING  619 

the  attention  of  all  parochial  officers.  According  to 
him  the  wages  of  the  Devonshire  peasant  were,  without 
food,  about  five  shillings  a  week." 

Richard  died  s.p. 

John  Dunning,  brother  of  the  pamphleteer,  lived 
with  Mary,  his  wife,  at  Guatham.  After  eleven  years 
of  married  life  he  died  in  1706,  leaving  four  sons  and 
three  daughters.  The  second  of  their  sons  who  attained 
manhood  was  born  in  1701,  and  bore  his  father's  name 
of  John.  He  was  bred  to  the  law,  and  having  married 
Agnes,  daughter  of  Henry  Jutsham,  of  Old-a-Port,  in 
Modbury,  settled  down  as  an  attorney  at  Ashburton, 
probably  drawn  there  by  the  representations  of  his 
uncle  Edward  Gould.  He  settled  into  a  house  at 
Gulwell,  in  the  parish  of  Staverton,  a  stone's-throw 
from  the  boundary  of  Ashburton. 

This  attorney  Dunning  had  a  son  John  born  on 
1 8  October,  1731.  Attorney  Dunning  now  moved  into 
Ashburton  into  a  house  in  West  Street,  where  he 
resided  till  his  death,  which  took  place  in  1780.  Day 
by  day  in  his  youth  did  the  ugly,  ungainly  boy  John 
Dunning  trudge  to  the  school  of  Ashburton,  occupying 
the  ancient  chapel  of  S.  James.  This  chapel  had  been 
decorated  with  large  coats-of-arms  in  plaster,  coloured 
periodically,  of  benefactors.  Above  the  master's  desk 
at  the  east  end  were  the  arms  of  Ashburton.  The  other 
coats  were  Harris,  Gould,  Blundell,  and  Young.  As 
the  urchin,  ugly  as  an  imp  from  the  abyss,  sat  on  his 
form  looking  up  at  the  great  blue  and  gold  lion  of  the 
Goulds — his  uncle's  coat — did  it  ever  flash  across  his 
mind  that  he  might  eventually,  like  the  cuckoo,  kick 
them  out  of  their  nest  and  gather  all  their  property  into 
his  own  hands? 

At  the  early  age  of  thirteen  he  left  school  and  was 
taken  into  the  paternal  office  for  five  years'  service  as 


620  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

an  articled  clerk.  Here  he  acquired  the  neat  and 
formal  hand  that  distinguished  his  writing  through 
life. 

One  of  Attorney  Dunning's  clients  was  Sir  Thomas 
Clarke,  Master  of  the  Rolls,  who  employed  him  as 
agent  to  his  property  about  Ashburton.  An  incident 
in  his  stewardship  led  to  important  consequences.  A 
legal  instrument  was  prepared  by  the  young  John 
Dunning,  who  forwarded  it  to  Sir  Thomas  in  his  father's 
absence,  and  was  accordingly  taken  to  task  by  his  father 
for  his  presumption.  A  letter  was  dispatched  in  hot 
haste  to  the  client,  apologizing  for  the  errors  which 
it  was  feared  must  be  found  in  a  draft  prepared  by  a  lad 
under  nineteen,  and  which  his  father  had  not  been 
allowed  opportunity  of  revising.  Greatly  to  the  parent's 
relief,  however,  the  distinguished  lawyer  expressed 
himself  perfectly  satisfied  with  the  document,  and 
volunteered  to  push  the  young  man  in  his  profession, 
and  incur  the  sole  charge  of  fitting  him  for  a  career  at 
the  Bar.  Under  this  patron's  auspices  young  Dunning, 
in  the  twenty-first  year  of  his  age,  was  entered  as  a 
student  at  the  Middle  Temple  on  8  May,  1752.  In 
turn  he  made  acquaintance  with  Kenyon,  afterwards 
Lord  Kenyon,  who  succeeded  Lord  Mansfield  on  the 
King's  Bench  ;  also  Home  Tooke,  who  addressed  to 
Dunning  that  Letter  on  the  English  Particle,  which  was 
afterwards  expanded  into  The  Diversions  of  Purley. 
Out  of  term  these  three  friends  dined  together  at  a 
little  eating-house  near  Chancery  Lane  at  the  modest 
charge  of  7|d.  each.  Tooke  and  Dunning  would 
generously  add  to  this  a  penny  for  the  waitress ;  but 
the  more  thrifty  Kenyon  rewarded  the  girl  with  a  half- 
penny, and  sometimes  with  the  promise  to  remember 
her  next  time. 

After  four  years  Dunning  was  called  to  the  Bar  in 


JOHN    DUNNING  621 

July,  1756,  and  betook  himself  to  the  Western  Circuit, 
but  with  little  success,  owing  mainly  to  his  forbidding 
appearance.  Polwhele  declares  that  ' '  had  Lavater 
been  at  Exeter  in  1759,  he  must  have  sent  Counsellor 
Dunning  to  the  hospital  for  idiots.  Not  a  feature  marked 
him  for  the  son  of  wisdom."  He  was  stunted  in  growth, 
his  limbs  were  misshapen,  and  his  features  mean 
and  the  general  expression  repellent.  Home  Tooke  was 
wont  to  tell  a  story  illustrative  of  Dunning's  personal 
appearance.  On  one  occasion  Thurlow  wished  to  see 
him  privately,  and  went  to  the  coffee-house  that  he 
frequented  and  inquired  of  the  waiter  whether  Mr. 
Dunning  was  there.  The  waiter,  who  was  new  to  the 
place,  said  that  he  did  not  know  him.  "Not  know 
him!"  roared  Thurlow  with  a  volley  of  oaths.  "  Go 
into  the  room  upstairs,  and  if  you  see  a  gentleman 
there  like  the  Knave  of  Clubs,  tell  him  that  he  is  particu- 
larly wanted."  The  waiter  did  as  desired,  and  returned 
promptly  with  Dunning.  He  alone  seemed  to  be 
unaware  of  his  own  ungainly  appearance.  One  story 
is  told  of  this  when  he  was  retained  in  defence  in  an 
assault  case,  and  his  object  was  to  disprove  the  identity 
of  the  person  named  by  an  old  woman  as  the  aggressor. 
Abandoning  his  usual  tactics  of  browbeating  the  witness, 
he  commenced  the  cross-examination  with  much  gentle- 
ness. 

"Pray,  my  good   woman,"  he   inquired,    "are  you 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  this  person  ?  " 
"  O,  yes,  sir  ;  very  well  indeed." 
"  Come  now,  describe  him  to  me.     Was  he  short  or 
tall?" 

"  Stumpy,  sir  ;  almost  as  much  so  as  your  honour." 
1  <  Humph  !     What  kind  of  nose  had  he  ?  " 
"Snubby,  as  I  should  say,  just  like  your  own,  sir, 
only  not  cocked  up  quite  so  much." 


622  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"  Humph!     His  eyes?" 

"  Well  now,  he  has  a  kind  of  cast  in  them,  sir,  a  sort 
of  a  squint  very  much  like  your  honour's  eyes." 

"  Psha  !     You  may  go  down." 

In  or  about  1768  John  Dunning  was  retained  in  a 
case  of  murder.  The  story  told  is  this  : — 

Edward  Gould,  of  Pridhamsleigh,  died  in  1736,  and 
as  he  was  the  last  of  the  elder  branch  of  the  family, 
he  left  all  his  lands  in  Staverton,  Ashburton,  Holne, 
Widdecombe-on-the-Moor,  and  Chudleigh  to  William 
Drake  Gould,  of  Lew  Trenchard,  the  representative  of 
the  next  branch,  who  was  then  a  minor.  This  William 
Drake  Gould  died  in  1766,  and  all  his  estates  devolved  on 
his  only  son  Edward,  born  in  1740.  Edward  was  a 
spendthrift  and  a  gambler.  One  evening  he  had  been 
playing  late  and  deep,  and  had  lost  every  guinea  he  had 
about  him.  Then  he  rode  off,  put  a  black  mask  over 
his  face,  and  waylaid  the  man  who  had  won  the  money 
of  him,  and  on  his  appearance,  challenged  him  to 
deliver.  The  gentleman  recognized  him  and  incautiously 
exclaimed,  "Oh!  Edward  Gould,  I  did  not  think  this 
of  you  ! " 

"  You  know  me,  do  you  ?  "  was  his  reply,  and  Edward 
shot  him  dead.  Then  he  rode  to  Pridhamsleigh,  re- 
versed his  horse's  shoes,  and  sped  across  Dartmoor  to 
Lew  Trenchard. 

Now  there  had  been  a  witness,  a  man  who  had  seen 
Edward  take  up  his  position,  and  who,  .believing  him 
to  be  a  highwayman,  had  secreted  himself  and  waited 
an  opportunity  to  effect  his  escape.  Edward  Gould 
was  tried  for  the  murder.  Dunning  was  engaged  to 
defend  him.  It  was  essential  to  weaken  or  destroy  the 
testimony  of  the  witness.  On  the  day  of  the  trial  he 
cross-questioned  this  same  witness  sharply. 

"  How  can  you  be  sure  that  the  man  on  the  horse 


JOHN    DUNNING  623 

was  Mr.  Gould,"  asked  Dunning,  "  when,  as  you  say, 
it  was  past  midnight?" 

"  Sir,  the  full  moon  shone  on  him.  I  recognized  his 
horse.  I  knew  his  coat.  Besides,  when  he  had  shot 
the  other  he  removed  the  mask." 

"The  full  moon  was  shining,  you  assert?" 

"  Yes,  your  honour.  I  saw  his  face  by  the  clear 
moonlight." 

"  Pass  me  a  calendar,"  said  the  judge.  "Who  has 
got  a  calendar  ?  " 

At  that  time  almanacs  were  not  so  plentiful  as  they 
are  now.  As  it  happened,  no  one  present  possessed 
one.  Then  Dunning  said,  standing  up: — 

"  My  lord,  I  had  one  yesterday,  and  put  it,  I  believe, 
in  my  overcoat  pocket.  If  your  lordship  will  send  an 
apparitor  into  the  ante-room  to  search  my  pocket,  it 
may  be  found." 

The  calendar  was  produced.  There  was  no  moon  on 
the  night  of  the  murder.  The  evidence  against  the 
prisoner  broke  down,  and  he  was  acquitted. 

Dunning  on  the  previous  day  had  purchased  an 
almanac,  removed  the  sheets  containing  among  others 
the  month  and  those  preceding  and  following  it,  and 
had  had  the  calendar  reprinted,  altering  the  moons  so 
that  there  might  be  none  on  the  night  in  question. 

This  was  considered  at  the  time  a  clever  and  sharp 
bit  of  practice  of  Mr.  Dunning  ;  it  occurred  to  no  one 
that  it  was  immoral. 

This  story  rests  entirely  on  tradition,  but  the  tradition 
lived  both  at  Lew  Trenchard  and  at  Ashburton.  I  have 
been  unable  to  find  any  record  in  the  Assize  Rolls,  but 
then  I  do  not  know  whether  the  murder  took  place 
in  Devon,  as  the  tale  goes,  or  elsewhere,  so  that  I 
cannot  be  sure  that  the  trial  took  place  in  Exeter,  or 
perhaps  at  Bath. 


624  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Dunning  lent  Edward  Gould  large  sums.  These 
were  repaid  every  now  and  then  by  his  mother,  but 
they  amounted  to  so  great  a  sum,  all  the  estates  about 
Ashburton,  Widdecombe,  Holne,  and  Staverton  being 
mortgaged,  that  finally  Dunning  foreclosed  and  secured 
all.  Edward  Gould  retired  to  end  his  days  in  lodgings 
in  Shaldon. 

Lew  Trenchard  would  have  been  lost  like  the  rest 
had  not  Edward  Gould's  mother  secured  it  by  a  lease 
of  ninety-nine  years. 

Dunning  had  already  made  his  mark  before  this 
came  on  to  enhance  his  fame  as  an  astute  lawyer,  if 
the  story  be  true.  He  had  made  it  in  this  way : — 

After  the  French  had  been  driven  from  their  settle- 
ments in  Hindustan,  the  Dutch  East  India  Company, 
jealous  of  the  advanced  power  of  their  English  rivals, 
addressed  a  remonstrance  against  the  violation  of  their 
privileges  as  neutrals,  alleging  sundry  acts  of  in- 
terruption of  their  trade  that  they  held  to  be  unjusti- 
fiable. This  was  presented  to  Lord  Bute,  then  Prime 
Minister,  and  he  called  on  the  English  company  to 
reply.  The  drawing  up  of  the  counter  memorial  was 
confided  to  John  Dunning  as  a  subtle,  shrewd,  and  not 
scrupulous  pleader.  It  succeeded,  and  he  was  rewarded 
with  a  fee  of  five  hundred  guineas.  Seven  years  had 
now  passed  since  Dunning's  call  to  the  Bar,  and  five 
of  these  had  been  years  of  famine.  In  1766  he  became 
Recorder  of  Bristol,  and  in  1767  was  appointed  Solicitor- 
General.  In  1768  he  was  elected  member  for  Calne, 
and  his  entry  into  Parliament  was  hailed  as  a  great 
gain  to  the  Whig  party. 

"  Among  the  new  accessions  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons at  this  juncture,"  writes  Lord  Mahon,  "by  far 
the  most  eminent  in  ability  was  John  Dunning.  .  .  . 
He  was  a  man  both  of  quick  parts  and  strong  passions; 


JOHN   DUNNING  625 

in  his  politics  a  zealous  Whig.  As  an  orator,  none 
ever  laboured  under  greater  disadvantages  of  voice  and 
manner ;  but  those  disadvantages  were  most  success- 
fully retrieved  by  his  wondrous  power  of  reasoning, 
his  keen  invective,  and  his  ready  wit.  At  the  trial  of 
the  Duchess  of  Kingston  for  bigamy,  when  he  appeared 
as  counsel  against  her  Grace,  Hannah  More,  who  was 
present,  thus  describes  him  :  '  His  manner  is  insuffer- 
ably bad,  coughing  and  spitting  at  every  word,  but  his 
sense  and  expression  pointed  to  the  last  degree.  He 
made  her  Grace  shed  bitter  tears/" 

The  case  of  the  Duchess  came  on  upon  17  April, 
1776,  in  Westminster  Hall,  and  lasted  five  days.  As 
a  girl  she  had  been  married  in  a  frolic  at  night  in  a 
ruined  church  ;  but  the  Spiritual  Court  had  decreed 
that  this  was  no  proper  marriage. 

Regarding  herself  as  free,  she  had  married  the  Duke 
of  Kingston,  who  died  and  bequeathed  his  large  fortune 
to  her.  At  once  those  who  had  expected  to  obtain  the 
inheritance  began  to  stir,  and  had  the  unfortunate 
Duchess  tried  for  bigamy.  John  Dunning  was  counsel 
against  her.  She  belonged  to  an  ancient  Devonshire 
family,  but  that  did  not  concern  him  ;  she  was  an  un- 
fortunate widow  beset  by  foes — that  mattered  not  to 
him,  he  attacked  her  in  the  grossest  manner.  As  the 
judges  refused  to  accept  the  sentence  of  the  Spiritual 
Court,  a  conviction  of  course  followed,  and  she  fled  from 
England  secretly,  to  escape  being  branded  in  the  hand 
and  imprisoned.  The  hawking  and  spitting  of  John 
Dunning  were  not  due  to  any  complaint,  but  were  tricks 
he  had  acquired  and  had  not  laboured  to  master.  The 
herald  to  an  approaching  speech  from  Dunning  was 
a  series  of  laboured  and  noisy  efforts  to  clear  his  throat. 
When  speaking  his  head  waggled  as  if  he  were  afflicted 
with  palsy,  and  he  had  the  trick  of  raising  his  arms 

2   S 


626  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

to  his  breast,  extending  his  hands  in  front  of  him  and 
flapping  them,  or  paddling  with  outspread  palms, 
moving  them  with  a  rapidity  corresponding  to  the 
wagging  of  his  tongue.  "  We  have  heard  it  said  by 
those  who  have  seen  him  while  thus  employed,  that 
his  whole  appearance  reminded  them  of  some  particular 
species  of  flat-fish  which  may  occasionally  be  seen 
hanging  alive  outside  the  fishmongers'  shops,  the  body 
wholly  motionless,  but  certain  short  fins  in  front  vibrat- 
ing up  and  down  incessantly.  To  others  the  exhibition 
suggested  the  idea  of  a  kangaroo  seated  on  its  hind  legs, 
and  agitating  its  forepaws  in  the  manner  that  animal  is 
wont  to  do.  All,  however,  add,  that  it  is  only  at  the 
first  glance  they  are  susceptible  of  anything  about  him 
approaching  to  the  ridiculous.  After  listening  to  him 
for  a  very  few  minutes,  the  attention  became  wholly 
engrossed  by  what  he  said,  and  all  consciousness  of 
his  awkward  gesticulations  was  entirely  absorbed  in 
the  interest  aroused  by  his  discourse."1 

Sir  William  Jones  says  of  his  oratory:  "His 
language  was  always  pure,  always  elegant  ;  and  the 
best  words  dropped  easily  from  his  lips  into  the  best 
places  with  a  fluency  at  all  times  astonishing,  and 
when  he  was  in  perfect  health,  really  melodious.  His 
style  of  speaking  consisted  of  all  the  turns,  appositions, 
and  figures  which  the  old  rhetoricians  taught,  and  which 
Cicero  frequently  preached,  but  which  the  austere  and 
solemn  spirit  of  Demosthenes  refused  to  adopt  from  his 
first  master,  and  seldom  admitted  into  his  orations."2 

In  the  House  of  Commons,  Dunning  pursued  an 
enlightened  policy.  He  advocated  the  Roman  Catholic 
Relief  Bill,  he  was  opposed  to  the  policy  of  the  Govern- 
ment in  prosecuting  the  war  with  America.  He  bitterly 


Magazine  p,  Vol.  VII,  p.  331. 
2  Sir  W.  Jones'  Works  (1799),  Vol.  IV,  p.  577. 


i 


JOHN   DUNNING  627 

and  savagely  opposed  sinecure  offices,  yet  no  sooner 
was  he  raised  to  the  peerage  than  he  accepted  one  for 
himself,  that  of  Chancellor  of  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster, 
with  the  enormous  pension  of  ^4,000  per  annum.  He 
had  as  Solicitor-General  acquired  the  then  unpre- 
cedented sum  of  £10,000  per  annum.  As  money-lender 
he  had  obtained  estates  that  brought  him  in  large  sums; 
but  he  ravened  for  more. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  follow  his  political  career, 
but  to  confine  myself  to  his  private  life.  The  days 
of  sevenpenny  dinners  in  the  Chancery  Lane  eating- 
house  were  left  behind.  He  unbent  after  labours  of 
the  day  in  the  Literary  Club  founded  by  Johnson 
in  1764,  where  he  met  Goldsmith  and  Sir  William 
Jones,  Reynolds,  his  fellow  Devonian,  who  twice 
painted  his  portrait,  Gibbon,  and  Burke.  That 
Johnson  and  he  entertained  a  mutual  admiration  is 
evinced  by  a  conversation  recorded  by  Boswell.  "I 
told  him,"  says  the  biographer,  "that  I  had  talked  of 
him  to  Mr.  Dunning  a  few  days  before,  and  had  said 
that  in  his  company  we  did  not  so  much  as  interchange 
conversation  as  listen  to  him  ;  and  that  Dunning  ob- 
served upon  this,  i  One  is  always  willing  to  listen  to 
Dr.  Johnson.'  To  which  I  answered,  *  That  is  a  great 
deal  for  you,  Sir.'  '  Yes,  Sir,'  (said  Johnson),  *a 
great  deal  indeed.  Here  is  a  man  willing  to  listen,  to 
whom  the  world  is  listening  all  the  rest  of  the  year.'" 

Dunning  now  purchased  for  £4700  the  residue  of  a 
lease  of  ninety-nine  years  of  the  manors  of  Spitchwick 
and  Widdecombe.  In  a  letter  to  his  sister  he  says  that 
the  length  to  which  his  lease  would  run  would  be  sixty- 
three  years.  It  was  actually  eighty-eight;  and  he 
made  a  very  good  bargain  by  the  purchase.  He  built 
the  ugly  house  at  Spitchwick  where  had  formerly  stood 
a  chapel  of  S.  Laurence,  and  did  much  planting.  He 


628  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

had  an  old  servant,  John  Hext,  brought  up  to  London 
by  him  from  Ashburton.  One  day  the  man  was  late  in 
attendance.  "What  has  delayed  thee,  John?"  asked 
Dunning.  "I  was  listening  to  a  man  playing  on  the 
crowd."  "Crowd!  crowd!  John,  that  word  is  dead 
and  buried  ;  say  a  violin."  On  another  occasion  John 
Hext,  remembering  his  orders,  was  remonstrated  with 
by  his  master  for  waiting  about  at  the  Temple  Gate. 
"I  was  only  waiting,"  said  John,  "till  the  violin  of 
the  people  had  gone  by." 

Dunning  was  very  proud  of  being  lord  of  the 
manors  of  Pridhamsleigh,  Spitchwick,  and  Widde- 
combe,  and  he  was  boasting  of  his  possession  to  some 
friends  in  London  when  "Jack  Lee,"  afterwards 
Solicitor-General,  said:  "Aye,  Dunning,  you  may 
have  manors  in  Devonshire.  It  is  a  pity  you  did  not 
bring  your  manners  up  to  Town  and  to  Westminster." 

Whilst  holding  office  as  Solicitor-General,  during  a 
recess,  he  and  Colonel  Isaac  Barre,  his  friend  and  col- 
league in  the  representation  of  Calne,  visited  Berlin. 
"As  distinguished  members  of  the  British  Legislature 
the  two  friends  received  marked  attention  at  the  Court 
of  Frederick  the  Great.  When  presented  by  their  proper 
titles,  the  military  chiefs  surrounding  the  throne  of 
the  Soldier-King  naturally  concluded  that  a  Solicitor- 
General  of  England  must  occupy  a  high  position  in  the 
British  Army.  The  latter  part  of  the  title  they  could 
understand,  while  the  prefix  i  solicitor '  was  doubtless 
some  foreign  equivalent  to  that  of  major  or  lieutenant. 
Clearly  the  proper  way  to  entertain  the  English  officers 
was  to  invite  them  to  a  grand  review  of  the  Prussian 
Army.  The  invitation  was  issued  with  a  courteous 
intimation  that  suitable  means  of  conveyance  to  the 
field  would  be  duly  provided.  At  the  appointed  hour 
the  two  guests  of  royalty  were  ready — Col.  Barre  in 


JOHN   DUNNING  629 

full  military  costume,  and  Dunning  fully  arrayed  in 
court  suit,  bag-wig,  dress-sword,  and  silk  hose,  with 
brilliant  buckles  at  knee  and  instep.  On  descending 
to  the  door  of  the  hotel  the  latter  shrank  back  with  dis- 
may at  finding,  instead  of  the  expected  chariot,  two 
orderly  dragoons  holding  the  bridles  of  a  couple  of 
prancing  chargers  duly  caparisoned  for  the  field.  Col. 
Barre  was  soon  in  the  saddle ;  but  it  was  not  without 
some  hesitation  and  the  undignified  help  of  the  soldiers 
that  the  great  lawyer  succeeded  in  attaining  a  like 
elevation.  Once  wedged  in  the  hollow  of  the  demi- 
pique  saddle,  with  its  holsters  in  front  and  its  raised 
cantle  behind,  he  felt  tolerably  secure.  But  your  horse 
has  a  quick  perception  of  the  capacity  of  his  rider,  and 
the  proud  steed  on  which  Dunning  rode  chose  to  exer- 
cise his  own  discretion  with  regard  to  his  movements. 
To  their  unconcealed  amusement,  the  great  Frederick 
and  his  staff  were  treated  to  an  equestrian  spectacle  not 
set  down  in  the  programme  of  the  day.  Finding  at 
last  that  these  antics  were  getting  somewhat  too  lively 
for  him  to  cope  with,  poor  Dunning  was  fain  to  beg  for 
assistance  in  escaping  from  the  back  of  his  wilful  quad- 
ruped, and  the  Prussian  monarch  and  his  suite  became 
aware  that  their  English  allies  had  generals  in  West- 
minster Hall  whose  charges  bore  no  affinity  to  charges 
in  the  field  of  war." 

In  London  John  Dunning  was  visited  by  his  mother 
and  father.  The  former  did  not  by  any  means  approve 
of  the  luxury  of  his  table,  and  scolded  him  for  ex- 
travagant housekeeping.  But  the  father  was  puffed 
up  with  elation  at  seeing  that  his  son  had  become  so 
great  a  man.  Neither  lived  to  see  him  raised  to  the 
peerage. 

Dunning  was  nearly  fifty  years  old  before  he  mar- 
ried, and  then  he  took  to  him  Elizabeth  the  daughter 


630  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

of  John  Baring,  of  Exeter,  who  was  half  his  age.  They 
were  married  at  St.  Leonard's  by  Exeter  on  31  March, 
1780,  as  at  that  time  John  Baring  and  his  family 
resided  at  Larkbeare  in  that  parish. 

Lord  North's  Ministry  fell,  and  a  new  administration 
was  undertaken  by  the  Marquess  of  Rockingham.  Lord 
Shelburne  became  Secretary  of  State,  and  at  his  re- 
commendation Dunning  was  given  a  coronet.  His 
patent  of  nobility  bore  the  date  8  April,  1782,  and  the 
title  he  assumed  was  that  of  Baron  Ashburton.  There 
were  hot  jealousies  in  the  party,  and  the  Marquess  of 
Rockingham  was  highly  incensed  at  the  coronet  being 
granted  to  Dunning  without  his  having  been  consulted. 
The  Rockinghamites  insisted  on  peer  for  peer,  and 
accordingly  Sir  Fletcher  Norton  was  raised  to  the 
peerage  in  a  very  great  hurry  to  keep  them  quiet. 

Lord  Ashburton's  health  began  to  fail  almost  as  soon 
as  he  married.  At  the  age  of  fifty-one  his  constitution 
was  completely  broken,  and  Lady  Ashburton  could  look 
for  a  happy  release  from  a  very  disagreeable  husband  in 
a  very  short  time.  Dunning  expired  at  Exmouth  on 
1 8  August,  1783,  after  repeated  attacks  of  paralysis, 
leaving  one  son,  Richard  Barre,  then  fifteen  months  old, 
to  be  second  Lord  Ashburton,  and  last  of  the  first 
creation. 

In  spite  of  a  coarseness,  almost  brutality  of  manner, 
and  his  unpleasant  tricks  of  hawking  and  spitting, 
Dunning  managed  to  make  friends,  and  perhaps  even 
inspire  affection.  Sir  William  Jones  felt  or  pretended 
to  feel  deep  emotion  at  his  death.  He  wrote  :  "  For 
some  months  before  his  death  the  nursery  had  been  his 
chief  delight,  and  gave  him  more  pleasure  than  the 
Cabinet  could  have  afforded.  But  his  parental  affection, 
which  had  been  the  source  of  so  much  felicity,  was 
probably  the  cause  of  his  fatal  illness.  He  had  lost 


JOHN   DUNNING  631 

one  son,  and  expected  to  lose  the  other,  when  the 
author  of  this  painful  tribute  to  his  memory  parted  from 
him  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  little  hoping  to  see  him 
again  in  a  perishable  state. 

"  As  he  perceives  without  affectation  that  his  tears 
now  steal  from  him,  and  begin  to  moisten  the  paper  on 
which  he  writes,  he  reluctantly  leaves  a  subject  which 
he  could  not  soon  have  exhausted  ;  and  when  he  also 
shall  resign  his  life  to  the  great  Giver  of  it,  he  desires 
no  other  decoration  of  his  humble  gravestone  than  this 
honourable  truth  : — 

With  none  to  flatter,  none  to  recommend, 
Dunning  approved  and  marked  him  as  a  friend." 

After  the  death  of  Dunning,  his  widow,  Lady  Ash- 
burton,  resided  at  Spitchwick,  and  on  her  decease  it  was 
occupied  by  Miss  Baring. 

If  Dunning  hoped  to  found  a  family  and  transmit  his 
manors  and  lands  and  houses  and  wealth  to  a  long  line  of 
descendants,  his  hope  was  frustrated.  His  son,  Richard 
Barre,  second  Baron  Ashburton,  married  in  1805  Anne 
Selby,  daughter  of  William  Cunninghame,  of  Lainshaw, 
co.  Ayr,  and  he  died  in  1823  without  issue,  and  be- 
queathed his  estates  to  his  wife  for  life,  then  to  his 
wife's  nephews  for  life,  and  then  to  his  wife's  nieces, 
Margaret,  Elizabeth,  Anna  Maria  Isabella  Macleod,  in 
succession  for  life,  the  survivor  having  the  estates  in  fee 
simple.  The  nephew,  James  Edward,  Baron  Cranstoun, 
who  died  in  1869,  and  Charles  his  brother,  who  suc- 
ceeded to  the  title  and  died  soon  after,  had  but  a  life 
interest  in  the  estates.  These  now  passed  to  Margaret, 
Baroness  de  Virte,  daughter  of  Robert  Macleod,  of 
Cadboll,  co.  Cromarty,  who  had  married  Isabella 
Cunninghame,  sister  of  Lady  Ashburton.  Baroness  de 
Virte  died  in  1904.  Her  youngest  sister,  Anna  Maria 


632  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Isabella,1  who  had  married  John  Wilson,  of  Seacroft, 
Yorkshire,  had  died  the  year  before  the  Baroness,  and 
left  two  sons  ;  the  eldest  had  died  before  her  ;  and  of 
those  that  survive,  the  senior  inherited  the  Yorkshire 
estates,  and  the  younger,  Arthur  Henry  Wilson,  Esq., 
now  owns  those  obtained  by  John  Dunning,  and  Sand- 
ridge  Park  by  Totnes  as  well.  John  Dunning,  first 
Lord  Ashburton,  was  buried  in  Ashburton  Church, 
where  is  his  monument,  now  obscured  by  the  organ 
which  is  planted  before  it. 

Richard  Barre,  second  Lord  Ashburton,  in  bequeath- 
ing his  estates  to  his  wife's  relations,  excepted  Guatham, 
the  ancestral  farm  and  acres.  These  he  left  to  any 
Dunning  who  could  claim  relationship,  though  he 
added  that  he  did  not  know  that  any  such  existed. 
However,  one  did  appear  and  established  his  connexion 
and  obtained  Guatham,  and  it  has  been  sold  to  the 
Lopes  family  at  Maristowe.  The  arms  granted  to  John 
Dunning,  first  Lord  Ashburton,  were  :  Bendy,  sinister 
of  eight,  or  and  vert,  a  lion  rampant  sable — certainly 
a  very  ugly  coat  and  bad  heraldry.  The  crest,  an 
antelope's  head,  couped  proper,  attired  proper. 

For  much  of  the  information  contained  in  this  article 
I  am  indebted  to  an  admirable  "  Memoir  of  John 
Dunning,  First  Lord  Ashburton,"  by  the  late  Robert 
Dymond,  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Devonshire 
Association  for  1876.  Also  to  a  "  Life  of  John 
Dunning"  in  the  Penny  Cyclopaedia  for  1837. 

1  Mackenzie's  History  of  the  Macleods,  p.  431,  says  it  was  Anna  Maria 
who  married  John  Wilson.  He  does  not  mention  her  sister  Isabella  at 
all.  Burke's  Landed  Gentry  of  1846  mentions  Isabella  but  not  Elizabeth. 


GOVERNOR  SHORTLAND  AND  THE 
PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE 

ON  the  i8th  June,  1812,  the  United  States  of 
America  declared  war  with  Great  Britain. 
Since  Napoleon's  Edict  of  Berlin,  21  Novem- 
ber, 1806,  which  had  closed  all  the  ports  of 
Europe  that  he  could  control  against  English  merchan- 
dise, there  had  been  considerable  tension,  breaking 
out  into  ill-will,  between  the  States  and  Britain. 
By  Orders  of  Council,  our  vessels  were  empowered  to 
stop  and  search  American  ships  for  deserters  from  our 
navy,  and  for  contraband  of  war,  although  the  Orders 
were  relaxed  as  far  as  America  was  concerned  for  the 
ports  of  Germany  and  of  the  Baltic,  yet  our  interference 
hampered  her  growing  trade  with  France,  and  this  was 
forbidden  by  the  above  Orders.  The  States  cast  a 
covetous  eye  on  Canada,  and  hoped  to  cripple  our 
trade  with  the  West  Indian  Islands.  Indeed,  the 
declaration  of  war  was  kept  secret  for  some  days  so 
as  to  afford  opportunity  for  the  armed  vessels  of  the 
States  to  intercept  the  sugar  fleet  before  it  and  its 
convoy  had  received  news  that  war  was  declared. 

Prisoners  began  to  arrive  at  Plymouth,  mainly  sea- 
men captured  from  merchant  vessels,  and  were  sent  to 
the  Hector  and  Le  Brave,  two  line-of-battle  ships  unfit  for 
service  at  sea  and  now  anchored  in  the  Hamoaze.  The 
officers  were  entitled  to  reside  on  parole  in  Ashburton, 
and  were  allowed  by  the  British  Government  eighteen- 

633 


634  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

pence  a  day  each  man  for  their  lodging  and  board  and 
washing.  They  were  suffered  every  day  to  walk  a  mile 
along  the  Exeter  or  the  Totnes  road,  but  were  required 
every  evening  to  return  to  their  respective  lodgings  and 
there  remain  till  the  next  morning.  But  such  officers 
as  broke  parole  were  sent  to  the  common  sea-mess  on 
board  one  or  other  of  the  ships  above-mentioned. 

The  French  officers  had  shown  conspicuous  indiffer- 
ence about  keeping  their  parole.  Between  1809  and 
1812  five  hundred  officers  violated  their  paroles  and 
effected  their  escapes.  A  good  many  American  officers 
were  equally  unscrupulous. 

We  have  the  journal  of  an  American  prisoner, 
Charles  Andrews,  who  was  one  of  the  first  taken  and 
who  remained  in  durance  till  the  end  of  the  war.  His 
statement  was  countersigned  as  a  genuine  record  of 
facts  by  fourteen  captains,  two  lieutenants,  one  doctor, 
and  forty-five  others  who  had  shared  the  long  captivity 
with  him. 

There  were  other  American  prisoners  at  Chatham 
and  at  Portsmouth,  but  with  them  we  have  no  concern. 

Every  prisoner  sent  to  one  of  the  two  ships  for  their 
accommodation  in  the  Hamoaze  was  given  a  coarse 
hammock  with  a  mattress,  the  latter  with  from  3  to  4  Ib. 
of  chopped  rags  and  flock  in  it,  "one  coarse  and  sleazy 
blanket,"  and  these  were  to  last  for  the  twelvemonth. 
To  each  man  was  allowed  ijlb.  of  poor  coarse  bread, 
\  Ib.  beef  including  bone,  \  oz.  of  salt,  and  one  or  two 
turnips  per  man.  These  rations  were  for  five  days  in 
the  week:  the  other  two  were  fish  days,  i  Ib.  salt 
haddock,  i  Ib.  potatoes  and  bread  as  before,  then 
constituted  the  fare. 

From  the  summer  of  1812  to  April,  1813,  there  were 
seven  hundred  prisoners  on  board  these  vessels  at 
Plymouth.  They  suffered  from  want  of  many  con- 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        635 

veniences  and  comforts.  They  had  no  change  of 
clothes  and  linen,  some  had  their  garments  completely 
worn  out ;  they  were  not  provided  with  combs  and 
brushes,  tea,  coffee,  boots  and  shoes.  The  American 
Government  had  appointed  a  Mr.  Ruben  G.  Beasley  as 
its  agent  in  England  to  see  to  the  comfort  of  the 
prisoners,  and  he  was  furnished  with  money  by  that 
Government  for  the  supply  of  all  that  was  needful  to 
make  the  captivity  endurable  by  those  who  had  to 
endure  it.  But  he  pocketed  the  money  and  only  doled 
out  some  to  Jews  who  undertook  to  supply  certain 
articles  to  the  prisoners,  few  and  bad,  short  in  quantity 
and  bad  in  quality.  The  American  prisoners  wrote 
repeatedly  in  complaint  to  Mr.  Beasley,  pointing  out 
that  they  were  half-starved,  in  bad  health,  shoeless, 
nearly  naked.  But  he  did  not  even  trouble  to  answer 
the  letters  and  made  no  inquiry  as  to  the  real  condition 
of  the  complainants.  Added  to  their  discomforts  was 
the  fact  that  they  were  devoured  by  vermin,  and  had  no 
means  of  keeping  themselves  clean. 

On  2  April,  1813,  an  order  was  issued  for  the 
American  prisoners  to  be  transferred  to  Princetown, 
with  their  hammocks,  baggage,  etc.,  and  on  that  day 
250  men  were  so  dispatched.  "  Orders  were  given  to 
march  at  10.30  in  the  morning,  with  a  positive  injunc- 
tion that  no  prisoners  should  step  out  of  or  leave  the 
ranks,  on  pain  of  instant  death.  Thus  we  marched, 
surrounded  by  a  strong  guard,  through  a  heavy  rain, 
over  a  bad  road,  with  only  our  usual  and  scanty  allow- 
ance of  bread  and  fish.  We  were  allowed  to  stop  only 
once  during  the  march  of  seventeen  miles. 

"  We  arrived  at  Dartmoor  late  in  the  afterpart  of  the 
day,  and  found  the  ground  covered  with  snow. 

"The  prison  of  Dartmoor  is  situated  on  the  east  side 
of  one  of  the  highest  and  most  barren  mountains  in 


636  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

England,  and  is  surrounded  on  all  sides  as  far  as  the  eye 
can  see  by  the  gloomy  features  of  a  black  moor,  un- 
cultivated and  uninhabited,  except  by  one  or  two 
miserable  cottages,  just  discernible  in  an  eastern  view, 
the  tenants  of  which  live  by  cutting  turf  on  the  moor 
and  selling  it  at  the  prison.  The  place  is  deprived  of 
everything  that  is  pleasant  or  agreeable,  and  is  pro- 
ductive of  nothing  but  human  woe  and  misery.  Even 
riches,  pleasant  friends,  and  liberty  could  not  make  it 
agreeable.  It  is  situated  seven  miles  from  the  little 
village  of  Tavistock. 

"  On  entering  this  depot  of  living  death,  we  first 
passed  through  the  gates  and  found  ourselves  sur- 
rounded by  two  huge  circular  walls,  the  outer  one  of 
which  is  two  miles  in  circumference  and  16  ft.  high. 
The  inner  wall  is  distant  from  the  outer  30  ft.,  around 
which  is  a  chain  of  bells  suspended  by  a  wire,  so  that 
the  least  touch  sets  every  bell  in  motion  and  alarms  the 
garrison.  On  the  top  of  the  inner  wall  is  placed  a 
guard  at  the  distance  of  every  20  ft.  Between  the  two 
walls  and  over  the  intermediate  space  are  also  stationed 
guards. 

"Thus  much  for  the  courtyard  of  this  seminary  of 
misery.  We  shall  next  proceed  to  give  a  description 
of  the  gloomy  mansion  itself.  On  entering  we  find 
seven  prisons  enclosed  in  the  following  manner,  and 
situated  quite  within  all  the  walls  before-mentioned. 
Prisons  i,  2,  and  3  are  built  of  hard,  rough,  unhewn 
stone  three  storeys  high,  180  ft.  long  and  40  ft.  broad  ; 
each  of  these  prisons  on  an  average  can  contain  1500 
prisoners.  There  is  also  attached  to  the  yard  a  house 
of  correction,  called  a  cachot ;  this  is  built  of  large 
stone,  arched  above  and  floored  with  the  same.  Into 
this  cold,  dark,  and  damp  cell,  the  unhappy  prisoner 
is  cast  if  he  offend  against  the  rules  of  the  prison, 


THE    PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        637 

either  willingly  or  inadvertently,  and  often  on  the  most 
frivolous  pretext.  There  he  must  remain  for  many 
days,  and  often  weeks,  on  two-thirds  the  usual  allow- 
ance of  food,  without  a  hammock  or  a  bed,  and  nothing 
but  a  stone  pavement  for  his  chair  and  bed.  These 
three  prisons  are  situated  on  the  north  side  of  the  en- 
closure, as  is  also  the  cachot,  and  separated  from  the 
other  prisons  by  a  wall.  Next  to  these  is  another, 
No.  4,  equally  as  large  as  any  of  the  others,  this  is 
separated  from  all  the  rest  by  a  wall  on  each  side,  and 
stands  in  the  centre  of  the  circular  walls. 

f  '  Adjoining  this  are  situated  prisons  Nos.  5,  6,  and  7, 
along  the  south  side  of  the  circular  wall." 

The  prisons  had  been  erected  at  a  cost  of  £1 30,000 
in  1809,  and  consisted  of  five  radiating  blocks  of 
buildings,  like  spokes  of  a  wheel,  and  two  other  blocks 
nearer  the  entrance.  These  two  constituted,  one  the 
hospital,  the  other  the  residence  of  the  petty  officers. 
A  segment  cut  off  from  the  inner  circle  contained  the 
governor's  house  and  the  other  buildings  necessary  for 
the  civil  establishment ;  and  into  this  part  of  the 
ground  the  country  people  were  admitted  and  a  daily 
market  was  held,  where  vegetables  and  such  other 
things  as  the  prisoners  might  care  to  purchase  were 
provided,  in  part  by  the  neighbouring  farmers,  but 
mainly  by  Jew  pedlars.  The  barracks  for  the  troops 
was  a  detached  building  at  a  little  distance. 

4 'We  entered  the  prisons,"  continues  Mr.  Andrews, 
"  but  here  the  heart  of  every  American  was  appalled. 
Amazement  struck  the  unhappy  victim,  for  as  he  cast 
his  hopeless  eyes  around,  he  saw  the  water  constantly 
dripping  from  the  cold  stone  walls  on  every  side,  which 
kept  the  floor,  made  of  stone,  constantly  wet  and  cold 
as  ice.  During  the  month  of  April  there  was  scarce 
a  day  but  more  or  less  rain  fell." 


638  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

When  the  Americans  arrived  they  found  the  prison 
already  packed  with  8000  French  captives.  These  were 
of  various  classes  and  characters.  Among  these  latter 
"  the  Seigneurs  "  were  such  as  received  remittances  from 
their  friends,  or  had  money  of  their  own,  and  were  able 
to  draw  cheques  on  Plymouth  bankers,  and  these 
bought  such  luxuries  as  they  would  in  the  market 
of  the  outer  court.  Those  who  worked  at  trades 
were  known  as  labourers,  and  they  were  employed 
in  building  the  chaplain's  house,  etc.  The  inn,  "  The 
Plume  of  Feathers,"  the  sole  building  in  Princetown 
which  is  not  an  architectural  monstrosity,  was  erected 
by  these  French  "  labourers."  They  also  erected  the 
cottage  at  Okery  Bridge,  which  was  an  extremely 
picturesque  edifice  till  its  balconies  and  galleries  were 
removed.  But  there  were  others,  the  prisoners  who 
would  do  no  work,  who  gambled  for  whatever  they 
possessed,  and  quarrelled,  fought,  and  were  intolerable 
nuisances.  These  would  gamble  the  very  clothes  off 
their  backs,  and  were  reduced  to  blankets  with  a  hole 
cut  in  the  middle,  through  which  they  thrust  their  heads. 
As  they  were  denied  knives,  when  they  wanted  to  fight 
they  attached  one  blade  of  a  pair  of  scissors  to  a  stick, 
and  with  these  formidable  weapons,  each  armed  with 
one  portion  of  the  scissors,  they  were  able  to  deal  each 
other  serious  wounds. 

To  the  great  annoyance  of  the  American  prisoners 
they  were  thrust  into  No.  4  ward,  into  which  had 
been  relegated  the  good-for-naught  class  of  the  French. 
But  here  they  did  not  live  as  brothers,  for  they  drew 
a  sharp  line  of  demarcation  between  themselves,  who 
were  of  white  blood,  and  their  negro  brethren,  fellow 
seamen  captured  with  them  under  the  same  banner. 

At  the  end  of  May  the  Americans  appealed  respect- 
fully, but  urgently,  to  the  U.S.  agent,  Mr.  R.  G. 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        639 

Beasley,  complaining  that  the  allowance  made  them  was 
scanty,  that  the  whole  day's  pittance  was  scarcely  enough 
for  one  meal,  that  for  the  greater  part  the  American 
prisoners  were  in  a  state  of  nakedness,  and  that  a  good 
many  of  them  to  escape  from  a  condition  that  was  in- 
tolerable had  volunteered  to  join  the  King's  service. 

"To  these  petitions,  complaints,  and  remonstrances, 
Mr.  Beasley  returned  no  answer,  nor  took  any  notice  of 
them  whatever." 

On  28  May,  250  more  American  prisoners  arrived, 
raising  the  total  to  500.  Again  they  appealed  to  the 
agent  of  the  U.S.A.,  informing  him  that  they  were 
defrauded  of  half  their  rations  by  the  contractor,  that 
small-pox  was  raging  among  them,  and  that  they  were 
swarming  with  vermin. 

"To  these  complaints  he  paid  no  more  attention, 
neither  came  to  see  whether  they  were  true  or  false,  nor 
sent  any  answer  either  written  or  verbal." 

On  16  September,  1813,  to  the  immense  relief  of  the 
Americans,  all  the  French  prisoners  to  the  number  of 
436,  who  had  herded  with  them  in  No.  4,  were  turned 
out  and  placed  elsewhere.  Many  of  these  had  been  in 
prison  for  ten  years,  and  were  in  a  condition  of  perfect 
nudity,  and  slept  on  the  bare  floor  without  any  rug 
under  them  or  covering  over  them.  This  endured  for 
so  many  years  had  caused  their  skin  to  acquire  a  hard- 
ness like  that  of  the  stones.  But  this  condition  was  en- 
tirely due  to  the  passion  for  gambling.  Whenever  they 
were  supplied  with  clothes,  instead  of  putting  them 
on,  they  started  playing  and  staking  every  several  article 
of  clothing  given  them,  till  they  had  lost  all.  They 
had  often  been  supplied  by  their  countrymen  with  ham- 
mocks, beds,  and  garments,  but  they  no  sooner  were  in 
possession  of  them  than  they  went  to  the  grating,  sold 
them  to  the  Jews  outside,  and  gambled  the  whole  pro- 


640  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

ceeds  away.  Very  different  was  it  in  the  No.  6  ward, 
occupied  by  the  industrious  French  prisoners.  "  Here 
is  carried  on  almost  every  branch  of  the  mechanic  arts. 
They  resemble  little  towns  ;  every  man  has  his  separate 
occupation,  his  workshop,  his  store-house,  his  coffee- 
house, his  eating-house,  etc.  ;  he  is  employed  in  some 
business  or  other.  There  are  many  gentlemen  of 
large  fortune  there  who,  having  broken  their  parole, 
were  committed  to  close  confinement.  These  were  able 
to  support  themselves  in  a  genteel  manner ;  though 
they  were  prisoners,  they  drew  upon  their  bankers  in 
other  parts  of  Europe.  They  manufactured  shoes,  hats, 
hair,  and  bone-work.  They  likewise,  at  one  time, 
carried  on  a  very  lucrative  branch  of  manufacture ; 
they  forged  notes  on  the  Bank  of  England  to  the 
amount  of  £150,000  sterling,  and  made  so  perfect  imita- 
tions that  the  cashier  could  not  discover  the  forgery. 
They  also  carried  on  the  coining  of  silver,  to  a  very 
considerable  advantage.  They  had  men  constantly 
employed  outside  the  yard,  to  collect  all  the  Spanish 
dollars  they  could,  and  bring  them  into  the  prison. 
Out  of  every  dollar  they  made  eight  smooth  English 
shillings,  equally  as  heavy,  and  passed  as  well  as  any 
in  the  kingdom." 

With  regard  to  the  forgery  of  bank-notes,  something 
may  be  added.  The  material  for  manufacturing  the 
notes  was  imported  from  without,  and  the  Jews  were 
largely  involved  in  the  matter.  The  method  pursued 
was  revealed  in  1809,  before  the  American  prisoners 
arrived,  when  two  French  captives,  Charles  Guiller 
and  Victor  Collas,  who  were  berthed  on  board  El  Firm, 
in  the  Hamoaze,  made  overtures  for  their  transfer  to  the 
GdnereuXy  from  which  they  could  direct  their  operations 
with  more  freedom.  They  opened  negotiations  with 
the  captain's  clerk  of  the  Genereux,  candidly  telling 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        641 

him  that  their  object  was  the  forgery  and  passing  of 
£$  bank-notes,  and  promising  him  a  share  of  the 
spoils.  The  man  affected  to  entertain  the  proposition, 
but  communicated  the  whole  to  his  captain,  secured  the 
transfers  as  desired,  and  supplied  the  prisoners  with  all 
the  necessary  facilities.  By  means  of  fine  hair  pencils 
and  Indian  ink  they  forged  to  a  point  of  astonishing 
perfection  notes  on  the  Bank  of  England,  the  Naval 
and  Commercial  Bank,  and  Okehampton  one-pound 
notes.  To  compensate  for  the  deficiency  of  the  official 
perforated  stamps,  they  set  to  work  with  smooth  half- 
pennies and  sail-maker's  needles,  and  thus  imitation 
was  carried  to  perfection.  When  the  prisoners  had 
made  sufficient  progress,  their  trunk  was  seized  with 
the  evidences  of  their  guilt,  and  they  were  restored  to 
closer  supervision,  and  visited  with  the  usual  corporal 
punishment.1 

On  the  whole,  the  French  prisoners,  if  they  con- 
ducted themselves  well  and  were  industrious,  did  not 
suffer  severely.  A  book  was  published  in  Paris  by 
Le  Catel,  in  1847,  entitled  La  Prison  de  Dartmoor,  un 
recit  historique  des  Infortunes  et  Evasions  des  Prison- 
niers  Franqais  en  Angleterre,  sous  V Empire,  depuis 
1809  jusqu'en  1814,  but  it  is  a  romance,  the  " facts" 
drawn  out  of  the  lively  imagination  of  the  author.  The 
only  prisoners  who  really  suffered  were  those  who 
brought  their  sufferings  on  themselves.  As  Andrews 
says  of  the  French,  "they  drink,  sing,  and  dance,  talk 
of  their  women  in  the  day  time  and  dream  of  them  at 
night.  But  the  Americans  have  not  that  careless 
volatility,  like  the  cockle  in  the  fable,  to  sing  and 
dance  when  the  house  is  on  fire  over  them." 

In  December,  1813,  the  cold  was  severe.  Captain 
Cotgrave  was  governor  of  the  prison,  and  he  ordered 

1  Whitfeld,  Plymouth  and  Devonport,  in  War  and  Peace,  p.  244. 
2  T 


642  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

the  prisoners  to  turn  out  every  morning  at  nine  o'clock 
and  stand  in  the  yard  till  the  guards  had  counted  them, 
and  this  usually  took  over  an  hour.  Many  of  the  prisoners 
were  without  stockings,  and  some  without  shoes,  and 
many  without  jackets.  They  cut  up  their  blankets  to 
wrap  round  their  feet  and  legs,  that  they  might  be  able 
to  endure  the  cold  and  snow  which  lay  thick  whilst 
they  were  undergoing  this  ceremony.  They  com- 
plained to  Captain  Cotgrave,  but  he  replied  that  he  was 
acting  upon  orders.  Several  of  the  naked  men,  chilled 
and  half  starved,  fell  insensible  before  him  and  the 
guards  and  turnkeys,  and  had  to  be  removed  to  the 
hospital ;  but  as  soon  as  they  were  brought  round  they 
were  sent  back  to  their  prison. 

On  22  December,  1813,  Captain  Cotgrave  was  super- 
seded and  Captain  Thomas  G.  Shortland  was  appointed 
governor.  At  first  he  seemed  to  be  an  improvement  on 
the  former,  who  had  been  a  harsh  martinet;  he  stopped 
the  roll-call  and  required  the  surgeon  to  visit  the 
prisons  daily.  But  the  favourable  impression  he  caused 
at  first  did  not  last  long. 

Hitherto,  for  some  unaccountable  reason,  the  licence 
to  trade  with  the  country-folk  and  pedlars  in  the  outer 
court  which  had  all  along  been  allowed  to  the  French 
had  been  denied  to  the  American  prisoners,  but  on 
18  March,  1814,  this  restriction  was  withdrawn,  and  the 
American  prisoners  were  allowed  greater  privileges. 
They  now  began  to  receive  money  from  home,  to  make 
shoes  of  list,  to  plait  straw,  make  bracelets,  and  carve 
meat-bones.  The  French  had  been  allowed  to  have 
plays  with  a  stage  and  scenery  once  a  month,  good 
music  and  appropriate  comic  and  tragic  costumes. 
They  had  also  had  their  schools  for  teaching  the  arts 
and  sciences,  dancing,  fencing,  and  fiddling.  But  all 
these  privileges  had  been  denied  to  the  Americans 


i 


THE    PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        643 

occupying  No.  4.  Now  these  privileges  were  extended 
to  them,  and  they  considered  that  this  indulgence  was 
due  to  Captain  Shortland.  Indeed,  Shortland  seems  to 
have  been  on  the  whole  more  humane  than  Cotgrave, 
and  the  final  disaster  which  has  blackened  his  name 
was  due  to  another  cause,  his  moral  and  mental  in- 
capacity to  fill  the  position  into  which  he  had  been 
thrust. 

In  1814,  there  were  1500  prisoners  of  American  nation- 
ality in  No.  4.  They  despaired  of  freedom,  and  were 
rendered  restless  by  the  French  prisoners  evacuating 
the  prison  after  the  abdication  of  Napoleon,  4  April, 
1814,  and  the  end  of  the  European  war.  Then  there 
were  3500  American  prisoners  moved  into  No.  5,  and 
by  31  December  in  that  year  the  number  amounted  to 
5326,  mainly  in  the  buildings  4  and  5. 

Those  in  No.  4  now  resolved  on  making  an  attempt 
at  escape,  and  they  began  to  excavate  a  tunnel  that  was 
to  run  250  feet  and  enable  those  in  the  ward  to  escape, 
not  only  out  of  the  block,  but  also  beyond  the  outer 
wall.  American  blacksmiths  among  the  prisoners  fur- 
nished the  necessary  tools,  and  correspondence  was 
maintained  with  American  agents  outside,  and  a  fleet 
of  friendly  fishing  boats  was  hovering  about  in  Tor 
Bay  to  receive  the  prisoners.  But  they  were  betrayed 
by  one  of  their  number,  who  led  the  Governor  to  the 
excavation  when  it  had  been  carried  as  far  as  sixty  feet. 
It  was  at  once  choked  up  with  masses  of  granite  and 
cement,  and  those  who  had  been  engaged  on  it  were 
put  on  short  commons.  This  was  in  the  summer  of 
1814.  The  attempt  completely  upset  Governor  Short- 
land's  nerves. 

On  24  December,  1814,  peace  between  England  and 
America  was  signed  at  Ghent,  and  the  news  speedily 
reached  England,  but  did  not  arrive  in  the  United 


644  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

States,  and  was  not  published  there  till  n  February, 
1815.  By  i  January,  1815,  the  American  prisoners  in 
Princetown  were  aware  that  the  time  of  their  incarcera- 
tion was  drawing  to  an  end.  Indeed,  they  might  have 
all  been  discharged,  but  that  the  Government  waited 
for  the  United  States  Government  to  send  men-of-war 
or  other  vessels  to  convey  the  prisoners  to  America.  A 
misunderstanding  prevented  their  immediate  release. 
The  American  Government  considered  it  the  duty  of  the 
British  Government  to  reconvey  the  prisoners  to  the 
United  States,  and  undertook  in  return  to  reconvey  the 
British  prisoners  detained  in  their  prisons  to  Bermuda 
or  Halifax.  Lord  Castlereagh  objected  to  this  as  an 
unfair  and  unreasonable  distribution  of  expenses,  for 
Great  Britain  would  be  put  to  the  expense,  not  only  of 
conveying  the  American  prisoners  to  the  States,  but 
also  of  bringing  home  from  Bermuda  and  Halifax  all 
the  prisoners  of  her  own  nationality. 

At  the  end  of  March,  1815,  three  months  after  peace 
had  been  concluded,  there  were  5693  prisoners  within 
the  walls  of  Princetown  Gaol.  That  these  were  restless 
and  impatient  at  their  detention  is  not  to  be  wondered  at. 
But  their  chief  irritation  was  against  Mr.  Beasley,  the 
agent,  whom  they  considered  as  dilatory,  and  who  they 
supposed  ought  at  once  to  have  provided  for  their 
repatriation,  they  being  unaware  of  the  contention 
between  the  two  Governments  as  to  the  cost  of  this 
repatriation.  They  were  further  incensed  against  him 
because,  according  to  the  testimony  of  John  C.  Clement, 
one  of  them,  made  in  Philadelphia  :  "  During  our  con- 
finement, the  American  agent  (Beasley)  did  not  give  us, 
say  from  2  April,  1813,  to  March,  1814,  the  6s.  8d. 
sterling  per  month,  as  well  as  the  suit  of  clothes 
allowed  us  annually  by  our  Government,  which  money 
and  clothes  the  prisoners  have  never  received  ;  and 


THE   PRINCETOWN   MASSACRE        645 

when  I,  with  two  hundred  and  fifty  others,  were  released 
from  prison,  there  was  likewise  a  shirt,  a  pair  of  shoes, 
and  6s.  8d.  due  to  us,  which  we  never  received. 
The  prisoners  had  applied  to  Beasley  repeatedly  for 
what  was  due  to  them,  but  received  no  satisfaction. 
He  never  visited  the  prisons  but  once  during  the  two 
years  and  upwards  I  was  there."  On  4  April  the 
Governor  went  to  Plymouth  ;  and  orders  had  been  left 
that  the  prisoners  were  to  be  given  biscuit  in  place  of 
bread.  This  they  resented,  and  refused  the  biscuit. 
Towards  evening  they  broke  out  in  mutiny  and  threat- 
ened to  sack  the  stores  unless  they  were  at  once  pro- 
vided with  bread,  but  this  was  done  and  they  were 
satisfied. 

A  messenger  was  at  once  dispatched  to  Plymouth  to 
announce  to  Shortland  that  the  captives  were  in  rebel- 
lion. When  he  received  the  news  he  rushed  off  to  the 
Citadel  and  begged  for  a  reinforcement  of  two  hundred 
men  to  be  added  to  the  five  hundred  Somersetshire  and 
Derbyshire  militiamen  already  at  Princetown.  Accord- 
ingly these  soldiers,  under  Major  Joliffe,  were  accorded 
him.  He  returned  with  them  to  Princetown,  and  found 
that  the  rioters  had  peacefully  retired  to  their  beds 
after  the  outbreak  and  promised  to  give  no  more 
trouble. 

Governor  Shortland  was  somewhat  irritated  against 
the  Americans  on  account  of  a  practical  joke  they  had 
recently  played  on  him.  One  evening  they  had  at- 
tached a  jacket  and  a  pair  of  breeches  to  a  string,  and 
had  let  them  down  over  the  outer  wall.  A  turnkey  saw 
what  he  supposed  to  be  a  prisoner  in  the  act  of  making 
his  escape,  and  communicated  with  the  Governor,  who 
called  out  some  warders,  marched  to  within  some  yards 
of  the  spot,  and  ordered  a  volley  to  be  fired  at  the  sup- 
posed escaping  prisoner.  As  he  did  not  fall,  a  little 


646  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

nearer  inspection  revealed  that  an  April  fool  had  been 
made  of  him. 

On  6  April,  at  6  p.m.,  Captain  Shortland  was  in- 
formed that  a  hole  had  been  discovered  in  the  wall  that 
separated  the  yard  No.  6  from  No.  7.  This  hole,  says 
Andrews,  had  been  made  that  same  afternoon  by  some 
of  the  Americans  out  of  mere  mischief,  and  without 
any  design  of  effecting  their  escape.  Indeed,  why 
should  they  attempt  it,  when  their  release  was  at  hand, 
and  they  were  in  daily  expectation  of  receiving  their 
cartels  of  discharge  ? 

Other  prisoners  state  that  the  hole  was  made  by  some 
of  the  boys  whose  ball,  as  they  were  playing,  had  flown 
over  into  the  next  yard,  and  they  bored  through  so  as 
to  recover  their  ball.  Directly  it  was  discovered  a 
sentinel  was  placed  by  it  to  prevent  its  being  enlarged ; 
but  it  was  then  no  bigger  than  that  a  head  could  be 
thrust  through  ;  and  afterward,  through  the  hole  in 
the  wall,  the  sentinel  remonstrated  with  the  prisoners 
on  the  other  side. 

All  the  prisoners  who  were  subsequently  examined 
protested  on  oath  that  the  perforation  was  not  made 
with  intent  to  escape,  or  to  get  at  the  armoury  so  as  to 
provide  themselves  with  weapons.  This,  however,  was 
the  view  taken  of  it  by  Shortland,  and  in  a  fit  of 
nervous  fear  he  ordered  the  alarm  bells  to  be  pealed 
and  the  military  to  be  called  out.  These  latter  issued 
from  their  barracks  with  drums  beating  to  arms.  This 
was  at  ten  minutes  to  six  in  the  evening. 

This  sudden  and  unexpected  alarm  excited  the  atten- 
tion and  curiosity  of  the  prisoners,  and  they  poured 
forth  from  their  wards,  filled  the  inner  yard  and  rushed 
to  the  outer  gates.  They  suspected  that  fire  had  broken 
out. 

"  Among    so    many  as  were    in    the   depot,"   says 


THE   PRINCETOWN   MASSACRE        647 

Andrews,  "it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  some  mis- 
chievous persons  were  among  them,  and  among  those 
collected  at  the  gate  were  some  such  persons  who  forced 
the  gates  open,  whether  by  accident  or  design  I  will 
not  attempt  to  say  ;  but  without  any  intention  of  making 
an  escape,  and  totally  unknown  to  every  man  except 
the  few  who  stood  in  front  of  the  gates.  Those  back 
naturally  crowded  forward  to  see  what  was  going  on  at 
the  gates ;  this  pressed  and  forced  a  number  through 
the  gates,  quite  contrary  to  the  intention  of  either  these 
in  front  or  those  in  rear. 

"While  in  this  situation  Captain  Shortland  entered 
the  inner  square  at  the  head  of  the  whole  body  of 
soldiers  in  the  garrison.  As  soon  as  they  entered 
Captain  Shortland  took  sole  command  of  the  whole, 
and  immediately  drew  up  the  soldiers  in  a  position  to 
charge." 

Here  ensues  a  difference  between  the  report  of  the 
commissioners  appointed  later  to  investigate  the  matter 
and  that  drawn  up  by  the  prisoners.  These  latter 
assert  that  the  officers  of  the  regiment,  seeing  what 
was  Shortland's  intention,  refused  to  act  under  him, 
and  withdrew.  The  commissioners  state  that  the  hour 
was  that  of  the  officers'  mess,  and  that  they  were  at 
dinner,  and  only  two  young  lieutenants  and  an  ensign 
were  with  the  soldiers.  But  this  is  incredible.  The 
alarm  bell  pealing  and  the  drum  calling  to  arms  would 
have  summoned  the  officers  from  their  mess,  and  we 
are  rather  inclined  to  believe  that  the  account  of  the 
Americans  is  correct.  The  officers  saw  that  the 
Governor  had  lost  his  head  and  was  resolved  on 
violence,  and  they  withdrew  so  as  not  to  be  com- 
promised in  what  would  follow.  The  officers,  says 
Andrews,  perceiving  the  horrid  and  murderous  designs 
of  Captain  Shortland,  resigned  their  authority  over  the 


648  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

soldiers  and  refused  to  take  any  part,  or  give  any 
orders  for  the  troops  to  fire.  They  saw  by  this  time 
that  the  terrified  prisoners  were  retiring  as  fast  as  so 
great  a  crowd  would  permit,  and  hurrying  and  flying  in 
terrified  flight  in  every  direction  to  their  respective 
prisons. 

"  The  troop  had  now  advanced  within  three  yards  of 
the  prisoners,  when  Captain  Shortland  gave  them 
orders  to  charge  upon  them.  At  the  same  time  the 
prisoners  had  all  got  within  their  respective  prison 
yards,  and  were  flying  with  the  greatest  precipitation 
from  the  point  of  the  bayonet,  the  doors  being  now  full 
of  the  terrified  crowd.  They  could  not  enter  as  fast 
as  they  wished.  At  this  moment  of  dismay,  Captain 
Shortland  was  distinctly  heard  to  give  orders  to  the 
troops  to  fire  upon  the  prisoners,  although  now  com- 
pletely in  his  power,  their  lives  at  his  disposal,  and  had 
offered  no  violence  nor  attempted  to  resist,  and  the 
gates  all  closed. 

"  The  order  was  immediately  obeyed  by  the  soldiers, 
and  they  discharged  a  full  volley  of  musketry  into  the 
main  body  of  the  prisoners  on  the  other  side  of  the 
iron  railings  which  separated  the  prisoners  from  the 
soldiers.  The  volley  was  repeated  for  several  rounds, 
the  prisoners  falling  dead  or  wounded  in  several 
directions,  while  it  was  yet  impossible  for  them  to  enter 
the  prisons  on  account  of  the  numbers  that  fled  there 
from  the  rage  of  the  bloodthirsty  murderers. 

"In  the  midst  of  this  horrid  slaughter,  one  man 
among  the  rear  prisoners,  with  great  presence  of  mind 
and  undaunted  courage,  turned  and  advanced  to  the 
soldiers,  amidst  the  fire  of  hundreds,  and  while  his 
fellow  prisoners  were  falling  around  him,  and  in  a 
humble  and  suppliant  manner  implored  mercy  of  Cap- 
tain Shortland  to  spare  his  countrymen.  He  cried, 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        649 

'  Oh,  Captain  !  forbear — don't  kill  us  all.'  To  this  sup- 
plication the  cruel  inexorable  Shortland  replied,  '  Re- 
turn, you  d d  rascal,  I'll  hear  to  nothing.'  The 

soldiers  then  pricked  him  with  their  bayonets,  which 
compelled  him  to  retreat  to  the  prison  door,  where  the 
soldiers  who  had  now  entered  the  prison  yard  were 
pursuing  and  firing. 

"  The  soldiers  advanced  making  a  general  massacre 
of  men  and  boys,  whom  accident  or  inability  had  left 
without  the  doors  of  the  prison  ;  they  advanced  near  to 
the  crowded  door,  and  instantly  discharged  another 
volley  of  musketry  on  the  backs  of  those  furthest  out. 
This  barbarous  act  was  repeated  in  the  presence  of 
this  inhuman  monster,  Shortland — and  the  prisoners 
fell,  either  dead  or  severely  wounded,  in  all  directions 
before  his  sight. 

"But  his  vengeance  was  not  glutted  by  the  murder 
of  innocent  men  and  boys  that  lay  weltering  and 
bleeding  in  the  agonies  of  death  about  the  prison  door, 
but  turned  and  traversed  the  yard,  and  hunted  a  poor 
affrighted  wretch  that  had  fled  for  safety  close  under 
the  walls  of  Prison  No.  i.  This  unhappy  man  was 
discovered  by  these  hell-hounds,  with  that  demon  at 
their  head,  and  with  cool  and  deliberate  malice  drew 
up  their  muskets  to  their  shoulders  and  dispatched 
their  victim  in  the  act  of  imploring  mercy  from  their 
hands.  His  only  crime  was  not  being  able  to  get  into 
the  prison  before  without  being  shot. 

"  In  the  yard  of  No.  7  they  found  another  hopeless 
victim  crouching  along  the  wall  at  the  far  end  of  the 
yard.  Whereupon  five  of  them  drew  up  their  instru- 
ments of  death,  and  by  the  order  of  this  fell  murderer 
discharged  their  contents  into  the  body  of  the  innocent 
man." 

After  this  the  soldiery  were  withdrawn. 


650  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

The  account  by  Andrews  is  tinctured  with  animosity, 
and  is  not  to  be  taken  an  pied  de  la  lettre.  He  is  un- 
questionably wrong  in  stating  that  these  two  crouching 
men  were  shot  by  Shorthand's  orders.  The  evidence 
taken  later  is  contradictory.  Shortland,  by  his  own 
account,  had  already  retired  from  the  yard. 

A  dispatch  was  immediately  sent  to  Admiral  Sir 
J.  T.  Duckworth,  Commander-in-Chief  at  Plymouth, 
who  lost  no  time  in  directing  Rear-Admiral  Sir  Josias 
Rowley,  Bart.,  and  Captain  Schomberg,  the  two  senior 
officers  at  that  port,  to  proceed  to  Dartmoor  and  inquire 
into  the  circumstances. 

It  was  ascertained  that  seven  of  the  prisoners  had 
been  killed  outright,  seven  were  so  badly  wounded  that 
they  had  to  have  legs  or  arms  amputated,  thirty-eight 
were  dangerously  wounded  and  fifteen  slightly. 

Before  the  two  sent  from  Plymouth  arrived,  Shortland 
had  asked  for  a  reinforcement,  and  a  colonel  at  the  head 
of  more  troops  arrived.  "The  colonel  came  to  the 
gate  attended  by  the  guilty  Shortland,"  says  Andrews, 
"who  could  not  look  a  prisoner  in  the  face,  but  walked 
towards  the  prison  bars  with  his  face  fixed  on  the 
ground." 

The  report  of  Sir  J.  Rowley  and  Captain  Schomberg 
was  to  the  effect  that  "the  rioters  endeavoured  to  over- 
power the  guard,  to  force  the  prison,  and  had  actually 
seized  the  arms  of  some  of  the  soldiers  and  made  a 
breach  in  the  walls  of  the  depot,  when  the  guard  found 
itself  obliged  to  have  recourse  to  firearms,  and  five  of 
the  rioters  were  killed  and  thirty-four  wounded  .  .  . 
that  the  Americans  unanimously  declared  that  their 
complaint  of  delay  was  not  against  the  British  Govern- 
ment, but  against  their  own,  which  ought  to  have  sent 
means  for  their  early  conveyance  home  ;  and  in  replies 
to  distinct  questions  to  that  effect,  they  declared  they 


' 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        651 

had  no  ground  of  complaint  whatever."  Governor 
Shortland,  according  to  Andrews,  in  alarm  lest  the 
prisoners  should  attempt  to  retaliate  on  his  family, 
hastily  removed  his  wife  and  children  from  the  Gover- 
nor's house.  But,  as  Andrews  asserts,  such  a  dastardly 
thought  as  to  revenge  themselves  on  a  woman  and 
children  never  entered  the  heads  of  any  of  them — and 
this  we  may  well  believe. 

The  prisoners  now  formed  a  committee  to  draw  up 
an  account  of  the  circumstances,  and  to  send  it  to  the 
American  agent,  Beasley,  for  transmission  to  the 
Government  of  the  United  States.  It  is  characterized, 
naturally,  with  bitterness  and  resentment,  such  as  were 
felt  in  the  heat  of  the  moment. 

It  will  be  as  well  to  give  this  textually. 

"  We  the  undersigned,  being  each  severally  sworn  on 
the  holy  Evangelists  of  Almighty  God,  for  the  investiga- 
tions of  the  circumstances  attending  the  late  Massacre, 
and  having  heard  the  depositions  of  a  great  number  of 
witnesses,  from  our  own  personal  knowledge,  and  from 
the  depositions  given  in  as  aforesaid, 

REPORT  AS  FOLLOWS. 

"  That  on  the  6th  of  April,  about  6  o'clock  in  the 
evening,  when  the  prisoners  were  all  quiet  in  their 
respective  yards,  it  being  about  the  usual  time  for  turn- 
ing in  for  the  night,  and  the  greater  part  of  the  prisoners 
being  then  in  the  prisons,  the  alarm  bell  was  rung. 
Many  of  the  prisoners  ran  up  to  the  Market  Square 
(the  outer  court)  to  learn  the  occasion  of  the  alarm. 
There  were  then  drawn  up  in  the  square  several  hundred 
soldiers,  with  Captain  Shortland  at  their  head  ;  it  was 
likewise  observed  at  the  same  time,  that  additional 
numbers  of  soldiers  were  posting  themselves  round  the 
walls  of  the  prison  yard.  One  of  them  observed  to  the 


652  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

prisoners  that  they  had  better  go  into  the  prisons,  for 
they  would  be  charged  upon  directly.  This,  of  course, 
occasioned  considerable  alarm  among  them.  In  this 
moment  of  uncertainty  they  were  running  in  different 
directions,  inquiring  of  each  other  what  was  the  cause 
of  the  alarm,  some  towards  their  respective  prisons, 
and  some  towards  the  Market  Square.  When  about 
one  hundred  were  collected  in  the  Market  Square, 
Captain  Shortland  ordered  the  soldiers  to  charge  upon 
them ;  which  orders  the  soldiers  were  reluctant  in 
obeying,  as  the  prisoners  were  using  no  violence  ;  but 
on  the  order  being  repeated,  they  made  a  charge,  and 
the  prisoners  retreated  out  of  the  square  into  their 
respective  prison  yards,  and  shut  the  gates  after  them. 
Captain  Shortland  himself  opened  the  gates,  and  ordered 
the  soldiers  himself  to  fire  in  among  the  prisoners,  who 
were  all  retreating  in  different  directions  towards  their 
respective  prisons.  It  appears  that  there  was  some 
hesitation  in  the  minds  of  the  officers  whether  or  not 
it  was  proper  to  fire  upon  the  prisoners  in  that  situation  ; 
on  which  Shortland  seized  a  musket  out  of  the  hands 
of  a  soldier,  which  he  fired.  Immediately  after  the 
firing  became  general,  and  many  of  the  prisoners  were 
either  killed  or  wounded ;  the  remainder  were  en- 
deavouring to  get  into  the  prisons,  when,  going  towards 
the  lower  doors,  the  soldiers  on  the  walls  commenced 
firing  on  them  from  that  quarter,  which  killed  some  and 
wounded  others.  After  much  difficulty  (all  the  doors 
being  closed  in  the  interim,  but  one  in  each  prison), 
the  survivors  succeeded  in  gaining  the  prisons.  Imme- 
diately after  which  parties  of  soldiers  came  to  the  doors 
of  Nos.  3  and  4  prisons,  fired  several  volleys  into  them, 
through  the  windows  and  doors,  killed  one  man  in  each 
prison,  and  wounded  severely  several  others.  It  like- 
wise appears  that  the  preceding  butchery  was  followed  up 
with  a  disposition  of  peculiar  inveteracy  and  barbarity. 


THE    PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        653 

One  man,  who  had  been  severely  wounded  in  No.  7 
yard,  and  being  unable  to  make  his  way  to  the  prison, 
was  come  up  with  by  the  soldiers,  whom  he  implored 
for  mercy,  but  in  vain  ;  five  of  the  hardened  wretches 
immediately  levelled  their  pieces  at  him,  and  shot  him 
dead  !  The  soldiers  who  were  posted  on  the  walls 
manifested  equal  cruelty,  by  keeping  up  a  constant  fire 
on  every  prisoner  they  could  see  in  the  yard  endeavour- 
ing to  get  into  the  prisons,  when  the  numbers  were 
very  few,  and  when  not  the  least  shadow  of  resistance 
could  be  made  or  expected.  Several  of  them  got  into 
No.  6  prison  cook-house,  which  was  pointed  out  by  the 
soldiers  on  the  walls  to  those  who  were  marching  in 
from  the  square  ;  they  immediately  went  up  and  fired 
into  the  same,  which  wounded  several ;  one  of  the 
prisoners  ran  out  with  the  intention  of  gaining  his 
prison,  but  was  killed  before  he  reached  the  door.1 

"  On  an  impartial  (!)  consideration  of  all  the  circum- 
stances of  the  case,  we  are  induced  to  believe  it  was  a 
premeditated  scheme  in  the  mind  of  Captain  Shortland, 
for  reasons  which  we  will  now  proceed  to  give.  As  an 
elucidation  of  its  origin,  we  will  recur  back  to  an  event 
which  happened  some  days  previous.  Captain  Short- 
land  was,  at  that  time,  absent  in  Plymouth,  but  before 
going,  he  ordered  the  contractor  or  his  clerk  to  serve 
out  one  pound  of  indifferent  hard  bread,  instead  of  one 
pound  and  a  half  of  soft  bread,  their  usual  allowance. 
This  the  prisoners  refused  to  receive.  They  waited  all 
day  in  expectation  of  their  usual  allowance  being  served 
out ;  but  at  sunset,  finding  this  would  not  be  the  case, 
they  burst  open  the  lower  gates,  and  went  to  the  store, 
demanding  to  have  their  bread.  The  officers  of  the 
garrison,  on  being  alarmed,  and  informed  of  the  reasons 
of  this  proceeding,  observed  that  it  was  no  more  than 

1  This  is  probably  the  second  man  shot  when  crouching-  against  the 
wall  mentioned  by  Andrews. 


654  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

right  the  prisoners  should  have  their  usual  allowance, 
and  strongly  reprobated  the  conduct  of  Captain  Short- 
land  in  withholding  it  from  them.  They  were  accord- 
ingly served  with  their  bread,  and  quietly  returned  to 
their  prison.  This  circumstance,  with  the  censures 
that  were  thrown  on  his  conduct,  reached  the  ears  of 
Shortland  on  his  return  home,  and  he  must  then  have 
determined  on  the  diabolical  plan  of  seizing  the  first 
slight  pretext  to  turn  in  the  military  to  butcher  the 
prisoners,  for  the  gratification  of  his  malice  and  revenge. 
It  unfortunately  happened  that  in  the  afternoon  of  the 
6th  of  April,  some  boys  who  were  playing  ball  in  No.  7 
yard  knocked  their  ball  into  the  barrack  yard,  and 
on  the  sentry  in  that  yard  refusing  to  throw  it  back  to 
them,  they  picked  a  hole  through  the  wall  to  get  in  after 
it.  This  afforded  Shortland  his  wished-for  pretext,  and 
he  took  his  measures  accordingly.  He  had  all  the 
garrison  drawn  up  in  the  military  walk,  additional 
numbers  posted  on  the  walls,  and  everything  prepared 
before  the  alarm  bell  was  rung.  This,  he  naturally  con- 
cluded, would  draw  the  attention  of  a  great  number  of 
prisoners  towards  the  gate  to  learn  the  cause  of  the 
alarm,  while  the  turnkeys  were  dispatched  into  the 
yards  to  lock  all  the  doors  but  one  of  each  prison  to 
prevent  the  prisoners  retreating  out  of  the  way  before 
he  had  sufficiently  wreaked  his  vengeance. 

"What  adds  particular  weight  to  the  belief  of  its 
being  a  premeditated  massacre  are,  firstly,  The  san- 
guinary disposition  manifested  on  every  occasion  by 
Shortland,  he  having,  prior  to  this  time,  ordered  the 
soldiers  to  fire  into  the  prisons,  through  the  windows, 
upon  unarmed  prisoners  asleep  in  their  hammocks,  on 
account  of  a  light  having  been  seen  in  the  prisons, 
which  barbarous  act  was  repeated  several  nights  suc- 
cessively ;  that  murder  was  not  committed  was  owing 
to  an  over-ruling  Providence  alone,  for  the  balls  were 


THE    PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        655 

picked  up  in  the  prisons,  where  they  passed  through 
the  hammocks  of  men  asleep  in  them  :  he  having 
ordered  the  soldiers  to  fire  upon  the  prisoners  in  the 
yard  No.  7  prison,  because  they  would  not  deliver  up 
to  him  a  man  who  had  made  his  escape  from  the  cachot, 
which  order  the  Commanding  Officer  of  the  soldiers 
refused  to  obey  ;  1  and  generally  he  having  seized  on 
every  slight  pretext  to  injure  the  prisoners,  by  his 
stopping  the  marketing  for  ten  days  repeatedly,  and 
once  a  third  part  of  their  provisions  for  the  same  length 
of  time.  Secondly  y  He  having  been  heard  to  say,  when 
the  boys  had  picked  the  hole  in  the  wall,  and  some  time 
before  the  alarm  bell  was  rung,  and  while  all  the 
prisoners  were  quiet  in  their  respective  yards  as  usual, 
Til  fix  the  d  -  d  rascals  directly.'  Thirdly,  He 
having  all  the  soldiers  on  their  posts,  and  the  garrison 
fully  prepared  before  the  alarm  bell  was  rung.  It  could 
not  of  course  then  be  done  to  assemble  the  soldiers,  but 
to  alarm  the  prisoners  and  create  confusion  among 
them.  Fourthly  ,  The  soldiers  on  the  wall,  previous  to 
the  alarm  bell  being  rung,  informing  the  prisoners  that 
they  would  be  charged  upon  directly.  Fifthly,  The 
turnkeys  going  into  the  yard  and  closing  all  the  doors 
but  one  in  each  prison,  whilst  the  attention  of  the 
prisoners  was  attracted  by  the  alarm  bell.  This  was 
done  about  fifteen  minutes  sooner  than  usual,  and 
without  informing  the  prisoners  it  was  time  to  shut  up. 
It  was  ever  the  invariable  practice  of  the  turnkeys, 
from  which  they  never  deviated  before  that  night,  when 
coming  into  the  yards  to  shut  up,  to  halloo  to  the 
prisoners  so  loud  as  to  be  heard  all  over  the  yards, 
*  Turn  in  !  turn  in  !'  while  on  that  night  it  was  done  so 
secretly,  that  not  one  man  in  a  hundred  knew  they  were 

1  Neither  of  these  charges  was  investigated  by  the  Commissioners, 
as  beyond  the  scope  of  their  inquiry,  which  was  confined  to  the  actual 


massacre. 


656  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

shut,  and  in  particular  their  shutting  the  door  of  No.  7, 
which  the  prisoners  usually  go  in  and  out  at  (and  which 
was  formerly  always  the  last  one  closed),  and  leaving 
one  open  in  the  other  end  of  the  prison,  which  was  ex- 
posed to  a  cross-fire  from  the  soldiers  on  the  walls,  and 
which  the  prisoners  had  to  pass  in  gaining  the  prison. 

"It  appears  to  us  that  the  foregoing  reasons  suffi- 
ciently warrant  the  conclusions  we  have  drawn  therefrom. 
We  likewise  believe,  from  the  depositions  of  men  who 
were  eye-witnesses  of  a  part  of  Shortland's  conduct  on 
the  evening  of  the  6th  April,  that  he  was  intoxicated 
with  liquor  at  the  time,  from  his  brutality  in  beating 
a  prisoner,  who  was  then  supporting  another,  severely 
wounded ;  from  the  blackguard  and  abusive  language 
he  made  use  of;  and  from  his  having  frequently  been 
seen  in  the  same  state  :  his  being  drunk  was  of  course 
the  means  of  inflaming  his  bitter  enmity  against  the 
prisoners,  and  no  doubt  was  the  principal  cause  of  the 
indiscriminate  butchery,  and  of  no  quarter  being  shown.1 

"  We  here  solemnly  aver,  there  was  no  preconcerted 
plan  to  attempt  breaking  out.  There  cannot  be  pro- 
duced the  least  shadow  of  a  reason  or  inducement  for 
that  intention,  the  prisoners  daily  expecting  to  be  re- 
leased, and  to  embark  on  board  cartels  for  their  own 
native  country.  And  we  solemnly  assert,  likewise,  that 
there  was  no  intention  of  resisting,  in  any  manner,  the 
authority  of  the  government  of  this  depot. 

"  Signed  by  the  Committee  (ten  names  in  all). 

N.B. —  7  were  killed, 

30  dangerously  wounded, 
30  slightly  wounded. 

Total         .     67  killed  and  wounded. 

"Dartmoor  Prison,  April  7,  1815." 

1  Both  Dr.  Mag-rath  and  Lieut.  Avelyn  deny  in  their  depositions  that 
on  this  occasion  Captain  Shortland  was  intoxicated. 


THE   PRINCETOWN   MASSACRE        657 

Some  points  in  the  above  account  deserve  comment. 
It  is  obvious  that  it  is  an  entirely  one-sided  version  of 
what  took  place.  The  committee  do  not  mention  that 
after  the  gates  to  the  inner  yard  had  been  fastened,  the 
prisoners  pressing  against  it,  and  by  means  of  some 
iron  tool,  broke  the  lock  and  burst  the  gate  open. 
Nor  do  they  state  that  the  prisoners  assailed  the 
soldiery  with  abuse  and  with  stones.  They  do  not 
state  that  Shortland  gave  the  order  to  fire — only  that 
he  fired  the  first  shot.  There  is  conflicting  evidence 
relative  to  the  order  given  ;  but  there  is  good  evidence 
that  Shortland  fired  the  first  shot. 

The  charge  of  a  prearranged  massacre  need  not  be 
seriously  entertained.  Apparently  Shortland  was  thor- 
oughly frightened  and  lost  his  head  and  acted  with 
extraordinary  indiscretion. 

The  order  of  events  seems  to  have  been  this  : — 

1.  A  hole  was  knocked  through  a  wall,  not  an  outer 
wall  of  the  prison,  but  one  dividing  the  yards,  by  some 
boys  after  their  ball.     This  was  reported  to  the  Gov- 
ernor, who  was  alarmed,  and  fancied  that  an  attempt 
was  being  made  by  the  prisoners  to  get  at  a  few  stacks 
of  arms ;  but  there  was  no  ammunition  in  the  guard- 
house.    There  was  a  sentinel  in  the  yard,  and  there 
were  soldiers  about.    That  this  hole-breaking  was  done 
by  the  boys  was  proved  afterwards  by  evidence  taken. 
The  hole  was  knocked  in  open  daylight  and  in  the 
afternoon,  so  that  there  could  have  been  no  sinister 
object  contemplated. 

2.  When  Shortland  saw  the  hole  it  was  just  about 
the  time  for  locking  up  ;  and  the  warders  had  begun  to 
do  this,  and  had  locked  all  the  doors  of  the  prison 
houses  except  one  in  each  for  the  ingress  of  those  who 
were  still  in  the  yards.     There  was  no  evidence  that 
this  was  done  purposely  before  the  proper  time. 

2   U 


658  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

3.  He  ordered  the  alarm  bell  to  be  pealed  and  kept 
ringing,   so  that  the  prisoners  did  not  hear  the  sum- 
mons to  all  to  go  within.     This  was  the  real  fact. 

4.  Then,  surprised  by  the  ringing  of  the  bell,   the 
prisoners  in  the  several  houses  ran  out,  and  pressed 
against  the  gate  fastened  with  a  chain  ;  and  one  with  a 
bolt  or  bar  broke  the  chain,  and  with  the  pressure  of 
the  crowd  the  gate  was  burst  open,  and  the  prisoners 
surged  forth  into  the  outer  or  market  square,  which 
was  also  supplied  with  an  iron  gate,  then  open. 

5.  Shortland  thereupon  drew  up  the  militia  across 
the  yard,  and  going  before  the  line  of  soldiers,  remon- 
strated with  the  prisoners  and  urged  them  to  retreat ; 
but  this  they  were  unable  to  do,  owing  to  those  who 
had  entered  the  outer  yard  being  pushed  forward  by 
those  behind. 

6.  Thereupon  he  ordered  the  military  to  charge  with 
fixed  bayonets ;  and  as  the  prisoners  were  slow  in  re- 
tiring, he  or  some  one  else  or  the  soldiers  on  their  own 
initiative  fired  on  the  crowd,  and  drove  them  through 
the  inner  gate  into  the  inner  yard,  where  the  soldiers 
were  assailed  with  insulting  epithets,  and  some  stones 
were  thrown  at  them. 

7.  Some  of  the  military  ran  up  on  the  platform  of  the 
outer  wall,  and  thence  enfiladed  the  flying  prisoners. 
There  was  no  evidence  that  Shortland  had  placed  these 
men  on  the  wall  before  this  took  place. 

8.  Shortland  then,   possibly,  retired  into  the  outer 
yard  and  busied  himself  with  the  wounded,  and  left  the 
military  to  do  as  they  thought  best  in  the  inner  yard, 
where  they  continued  to  fire  volleys,  driving  the  fright- 
ened  prisoners    in    at    the    doors   of  their   respective 
houses,    fired    in    on    them    huddled    together    inside 
through  the  doorways  and  windows. 

9.  Major  Joliffe  at  the  time  was  in  the  barrack  half  a 


THE   PRINCETOWN   MASSACRE        659 

mile  from  the  prison,  when  news  reached  him,  whilst 
at  mess,  that  there  was  a  riot  in  the  prison.  He  at 
once  called  out  his  grenadiers  and  marched  to  the 
prison,  where  he  found  firing  going  on,  and  he  entered 
the  inner  yard  and  stopped  the  firing.  The  firing  was 
done  by  the  Somersetshire  and  Derbyshire  militia. 

10.  Shortland  at  the  same  time  or  a  little  earlier,  and 
conjointly  with  Joliffe,  urged  the  soldiers  to  cease  from 
firing. 

Such,  as  far  as  can  be  made  out  from  the  account 
given  by  the  witnesses  on  oath,  both  before  the  coroner 
and,  subsequently,  before  the  magistrates  and  the  com- 
missioners, appears  to  have  been  the  sequence  of  events. 
Captain  Shortland  was  not  drunk  at  the  time  ;  indeed, 
as  Dr.  Magrath,  the  prison  surgeon,  testified  that 
"  having  observed  him  on  the  evening  of  the  6th,  no 
man  could  be  more  free  from  it ;  and  from  my  acquaint- 
ance with  him  and  with  his  general  habits  in  his  family, 
I  do  not  think  any  man  can  be  more  abstemious." 

Governor  Thomas  George  Shortland,  Captain,  R.N., 
gave  his  account  on  oath  later,  before  the  commis- 
sioners, and  from  it  he  appears  to  have  been  unarmed 
and  in  undress.  His  account  is  very  confused,  and 
speaks  for  the  condition  of  his  mind  at  the  time— that 
he  had  lost  his  head,  and  did  not  know  well  what  he 
did  or  did  not  do.  It  shall  be  given  verbatim,  only 
omitting  unimportant  particulars  : — 

"  On  the  evening  of  the  6th,  a  little  before  7  o'clock, 
Mr.  Holmsden,  ist  clerk,  came  to  my  house  and  in- 
formed me  there  was  a  disposition  of  the  prisoners  to  be 
riotous,  as  they  had  got  between  the  railings  and  wall 
of  No.  7  yard  ;  in  consequence,  I  walked  down  to  the 
upper  gate.  On  coming  there,  I  was  informed  the 
prison  barrack  wall  had  been  breached.  I  went  to  the 
yard  and  saw  a  large  hole,  and  the  military  guarding  it 


660  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

under  an  officer  whom  I  since  know  to  be  Lieutenant 
Avelyn.  On  getting  to  the  breach  I  observed  the 
prisoners  using  an  iron  bar  to  enlarge  it.  I  remon- 
strated and  told  them  it  was  the  prison  barrack-yard, 
and  that  it  would  be  dangerous  for  them  to  attempt  to 
force  in  ;  the  prisoners  shouted  and  threw  stones  through 
the  breach,  and  still  continued  at  times  to  enlarge  it. 
I  then  heard  some  one  say  they  were  breaking  the  wall 
above  the  cook-house  in  the  prison  barrack-yard,  and 
nearly  at  the  same  time  there  was  a  call  out  that  they 
were  forcing  the  lower  gates,  while  I  was  still  in  the 
lower  barrack-yard.  I  immediately  left  the  yard  and 
Lieutenant  Avelyn  followed  me,  leaving  the  breach  with 
a  party  and  a  sergeant.  When  I  arrived  at  the  black- 
smith's shop  I  saw  a  rush  of  prisoners  between  the  iron 
rails  under  the  platform  :  the  gate  was  at  this  time 
forced,  and  the  prisoners  were  without  the  gates  in  the 
market  square,  where  they  are  not  allowed  to  be.  Seeing 
this,  and  having  in  my  mind  the  breach  in  the  barrack 
wall  and  the  reported  breach  above  the  cook-house, 
bearing  this  in  mind  with  the  reported  threats  that  had 
been  constantly  told  me  that  the  prisoners  would 
liberate  themselves  on  or  before  the  loth  April,  I 
ordered  the  alarm  bell  to  be  rung.  At  this  time  part  of 
the  west  guard,  which  is  called  the  piquet,  had  gone 
round  to  turn  the  prisoners  out  of  the  railway  in  No.  7 
yard,  and  another  part  of  the  same  piquet  was  in  the 
barrack-yard  ;  so  that  the  force  was  reduced  to  the  north 
guard  only  ;  Lieutenant  Avelyn  formed  that  guard  and 
marched  down  into  the  market  square.  I  preceded 
them,  and  about  half-way  down  the  guard  formed  in  a 
line,  keeping  their  left  close  to  the  hospital  wall.  At 
this  time  I  should  suppose  there  were  from  4  to  500 
prisoners  in  the  market  square ;  I  was  perfectly  unarmed, 
and  went  down  to  remonstrate  with  them,  using  all 
persuasions  in  my  power  to  make  them  return  to  their 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        661 

prisons,  stating  that  the  military  guard  was  formed 
about  them,  and  it  was  dangerous  to  attempt  to  use 
force.  I  was  at  this  time  about  six  paces  in  front  of  the 
guard,  and  the  prisoners  kept  still  pressing  up,  and 
pressing  me  on  the  military  ;  they  appeared  to  want  to 
get  round  the  left  of  the  military,  keeping  close  to  the 
hospital  wall.  At  this  time  I  looked  back,1  and  said, 
'  For  God's  sake,  soldiers,  keep  your  ground  ! '  bearing 
in  mind  that  there  was  not  a  single  soldier  above  these  to 
prevent  escape  through  the  outer  gates.  Almost  imme- 
diately, about  twelve  or  fifteen  soldiers  charged  down 
towards  No.  i,  towards  the  hospital  gates,  about  5  or  6 
paces,  and  they  returned  into  line  again.  I  was  still  at 
this  time  in  front  and  had  gone  forward  again,  urging 
the  prisoners  who  had  retreated  when  a  discharge  of 
musketry  took  place.  While  I  was  in  that  position, 
being  to  the  right  of  the  centre  of  the  guard,  and  not 
near  the  hospital  wall,  a  musket  ball  grazed  my  temple 
in  that  discharge,  when  I  retreated  into  line  with  the 
soldiers  ;  the  prisoners  retreated  and  advanced  again, 
and  about  this  time  Major  Joliffe  gave  the  orders  to  fire, 
conceiving  he  had  done  so  from  seeing  the  Major  appear 
at  the  moment.  Indeed  in  a  former  conversation  with 
General  Brown,  in  the  presence  of  Major  Gladding, 
being  asked  if  an  attempt  were  made  to  resist  the 
authority  of  the  depot  I  should  order  the  military  to 
fire,  I  told  General  Brown  as  well  as  the  Major,  that  I 
did  not  think  myself  authorized  to  command  the  military 
to  fire,  because  it  was  their  duty  to  do  it  when  they 
thought  it  necessary.  I  don't  recollect  a  suspension  of 
the  ringing  the  bell  and  then  commencing  again  ;  it 
was  a  continual  ringing  ;  I  ordered  it  in  consequence 
of  seeing  that  the  prisoners  had  broken  through  the 
breach  in  the  wall,  and  the  other  reported  breach.  I 

1  "  He  went  down  with  the  military  with  both  hands  in  his  breeches 
pockets."     Evidence  of  James  Carley,  turnkey. 


662  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

did  not  hear  any  orders  to  fire.  It  must  be  understood 
that  I  was  with  the  prisoners,  who  were  making  a  great 
noise,  hurrahing  and  rioting  at  the  time.  ...  I  was  not 
out  of  the  market  square  until  all  the  firing  had  ceased. 
I  was  not  in  No.  7  yard  until  an  hour  after  the  whole 
was  over.  I  recollect  a  man  coming  up  the  market 
square  with  a  wounded  man,  and  after  being  told  to  go 
away  he  would  not,  and  I  gave  him  a  push ;  he  said 
that  I  must  recollect  I  had  struck  him,  but  I  made  him 
no  answer.  Taking  into  consideration  the  apparent 
temper  and  resolution  of  the  prisoners,  and  my  remon- 
strances having  no  effect,  I  do  not  think  they  could 
have  been  driven  back  without  firing." 

Captain  Shortland  dated  the  commencement  of  the 
antipathy  of  the  prisoners  towards  him  from  the  time 
when  he  got  the  Transport  Board  to  prosecute  some 
men  for  tattooing  others. 

The  evidence  of  Captain  Shortland  is  remarkably 
meagre  and  unsatisfactory.  According  to  him,  every 
one  acted  on  his  own  initiative,  and  he  himself  had 
little  to  do  in  the  matter  but  make  useless  expostulations. 
He  says  nothing  about  the  fastening  of  the  inner  gate 
being  broken.  The  charge  with  bayonets  took  place 
without  his  orders,  as  did  also  the  firing  on  the 
prisoners.  But  he  made  the  astounding  statement  that 
in  his  opinion  the  military  might  fire  on  the  prisoners 
if  they  saw  fit,  without  having  received  orders  to  do  so. 
But  he  believed  that  Major  Joliffe  had  ordered  the 
volleys,  whereas  Major  Joliffe  with  the  grenadiers  did 
not  arrive  till  the  firing  had  begun  and  was  in  progress. 

On  8  April,  a  coroner's  inquest  was  held  at  the 
prisons,  by  Joseph  Whitford,  coroner ;  the  jury 
consisted  of  Dartmoor  farmers,  and  they  returned  a 
verdict  of  "  Justifiable  homicide."  But  the  American 
representative  demanded  a  further  examination,  and 


THE   PRINCETOWN   MASSACRE        663 

accordingly  Mr.  Larpent,  an  Englishman,  and  Charles 
King,  an  American,  were  appointed  to  investigate  the 
matter ;  and  their  investigation  was  made  on  26  April. 
When  their  report  was  sent  to  Mr.  Adams,  the  Minister 
of  the  United  States  to  the  British  Court,  it  was  accom- 
panied by  a  letter  from  Charles  King,  in  which  he 
states  his  own  independent  opinion. 

"  In  considering  it  of  much  importance  that  the 
report,  whatever  it  might  be,  should  go  forth  under  our 
joint  signatures,  I  have  forborne  to  press  some  of  the 
points  which  it  involves,  as  far  as  otherwise  I  might  have 
done  ;  and  it  therefore  may  not  be  improper  in  this  letter 
to  enter  into  some  little  explanation  of  such  parts  of  the 
report.  Although  it  does  appear  that  a  part  of  the 
prisoners  were,  on  that  evening,  in  such  a  state  and  under 
such  circumstances  as  to  have  justified,  in  the  view  which 
the  commander  of  the  depot  could  not  but  take  it,  the 
intervention  of  the  military  force,  and  even  in  a  strict 
sense  the  first  use  of  firearms,  yet  I  cannot  but  express 
it  as  my  settled  opinion,  that  by  a  conduct  a  little  more 
temporizing  this  dreadful  alternative  of  firing  upon  the 
unarmed  prisoners  might  have  been  avoided.  .  .  . 
When  the  firing  became  general,  as  it  afterwards 
appears  to  have  done,  and  caught  with  electric  rapidity 
from  the  square  to  the  platforms,  there  was  no  plea  nor 
shadow  of  excuse  for  it,  except  in  the  personal  ex- 
asperation of  the  soldiers :  nor  for  the  more  deliberate, 
and  therefore  more  unjustifiable,  firing  which  took 
place  into  three  of  the  prisons  .  .  .  after  the  prisoners 
had  retired  into  them,  and  there  was  no  longer  any 
pretence  of  apprehension  as  to  their  escape. 

"  As  to  whether  the  order  to  fire  came  from  Captain 
Shortland,  I  yet  confess  myself  unable  to  form  any 
satisfactory  opinion,  though  perhaps  the  bias  of  my 
mind  is  that  he  did  give  such  an  order." 


664     DEVONSHIRE  CHARACTERS 

I  now  subjoin  the  report  signed  by  both  Com- 
missioners : — 

"  During  the  period  which  has  elapsed  since  the 
arrival  in  this  country  of  the  account  of  the  ratification 
of  the  Treaty  of  Ghent,  an  increased  degree  of  restless- 
ness and  impatience  of  confinement  appears  to  have 
prevailed  amongst  the  American  prisoners  at  Dartmoor  ; 
which,  though  not  exhibited  in  the  shape  of  any 
violent  excesses,  has  been  principally  indicated  by 
threats  of  breaking  out,  if  not  soon  released.  On  the 
fourth  of  the  month  in  particular,  only  two  days 
previous  to  the  event,  the  subject  of  this  inquiry,  a 
large  body  of  the  prisoners  rushed  into  the  Market 
Square,  from  whence  by  the  regulations  of  the  prison 
they  are  excluded,  demanding  bread  instead  of  biscuit, 
which  had  on  that  day  been  issued  by  the  officers  of  the 
depot.  Their  demands,  however,  having  been  then 
almost  immediately  complied  with,  they  returned  to 
their  own  yards,  and  the  employment  of  force,  on  that 
occasion,  became  unnecessary. 

"  On  the  evening  of  the  6th,  about  six  o'clock,  it  was 
clearly  proved  to  us,  that  a  breach  or  hole  had  been 
made  in  one  of  the  prison  walls,  sufficient  for  a  full- 
sized  man  to  pass ;  and  that  others  had  been  com- 
menced in  the  course  of  the  day,  near  the  same  spot, 
though  never  completed  ;  that  a  number  of  prisoners 
were  over  the  railing,  erected  to  prevent  them  from 
communicating  with  the  sentinels  on  the  walls,  which 
was,  of  course,  forbidden  by  the  regulations  of  the 
prison  ;  and  that,  in  the  space  between  the  railing  and 
these  walls,  they  were  tearing  up  pieces  of  turf,  and 
wantonly  pelting  each  other  in  a  noisy  and  disorderly 
manner.  That  a  much  more  considerable  number  of 
the  prisoners  were  collected  together  at  that  time,  in 
one  of  their  yards,  near  the  place  where  the  breach  was 
effected  ;  and  that,  although  such  collection  of  prisoners 


THE    PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        665 

was  not  unusual  at  other  times  (the  gambling  tables 
being  commonly  kept  in  that  part  of  the  yard), 
yet  when  connected  with  the  circumstances  of  the 
breach,  and  the  time  of  day,  which  was  after  the  horn 
(the  signal  for  the  prisoners  to  retire  to  their  respective 
prisons)  had  ceased  to  sound  ; l  it  became  a  natural  and 
just  ground  of  alarm  to  those  who  had  charge  of  the 
depot. 

"It  was  also  in  evidence,  that  in  the  building 
formerly  the  petty  officers'  prison,  but  now  the  guard 
barracks,  which  stands  in  the  yard,  to  which  the  hole 
in  the  wall  would  serve  as  a  communication,  a  part  of 
the  arms  of  the  guards  who  were  on  duty  were  usually 
kept  in  the  racks  ;  and  though  there  is  no  evidence  that 
this  was  in  any  respect  the  motive  which  induced  the 
prisoners  to  make  the  opening  in  the  wall,  or  even  that 
they  were  acquainted  with  the  fact,  it  naturally  became 
at  least  a  further  cause  for  suspicion  and  alarm,  and  an 
additional  reason  for  precaution. 

"  Upon  these  grounds  Captain  Shortland  appears  to 
us  to  have  been  justified  in  giving  the  order,  which 
about  this  time  he  seems  to  have  given,  to  sound  the 
alarm  bell,  the  usual  signal  for  collecting  the  officers 
of  the  depot,  and  putting  the  military  on  the  alert. 
However  reasonable  and  justifiable  this  was,  as  a  matter 
of  precaution,  the  effects  produced  thereby  in  the 
prisons,  but  which  could  not  have  been  intended,  were 
most  unfortunate  and  deeply  to  be  regretted.  A  con- 
siderable number  of  prisoners  in  the  yards  where  no 
disturbance  existed  before,  and  who  were  either  already 
within  their  respective  prisons,  or  quietly  returning  as 
usual  towards  them,  immediately  upon  the  sound  of  the 
bell,  rushed  back,  from  curiosity,  towards  the  gates, 
where,  by  that  time,  the  crowd  had  assembled  ;  and 

1  This  contravenes  the  statement  made  by  the  prisoners  in  their 
memorandum. 


666  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

many  who  were  absent  at  the  time  from  the  yards,  were 
also,  from  the  plan  of  the  prison,  compelled,  in  order 
to  reach  their  own  homes,  to  pass  by  the  same  spot. 
And  thus,  that  which  was  merely  a  measure  of  precau- 
tion, in  its  operation  increased  the  evil  it  was  intended 
to  prevent. 

"  Almost  at  the  same  instant  that  the  alarm  bell  rang 
(but  whether  before  or  subsequent,  is  upon  the  evidence 
doubtful,  though  Captain  Shortland  states  it  positively 
as  one  of  his  further  reasons  for  causing  it  to  ring)  some 
one  or  more  of  the  prisoners  broke  the  iron  chain 
which  was  the  only  fastening  of  No.  i  gate,  leading 
into  the  Market  Square,  by  means  of  an  iron  bar  ;  and 
a  very  considerable  number  of  the  prisoners  immedi- 
ately rushed  towards  that  gate,  and  many  of  them 
began  to  press  forward  as  fast  as  the  opening  would 
permit  into  the  square. 

"  There  is  no  direct  proof  before  us  of  previous 
concert  or  preparation  on  the  part  of  the  prisoners,  and 
no  evidence  of  their  intention  or  disposition  to  effect 
their  escape  on  this  occasion,  excepting  that  which 
arose  by  inference  from  the  whole  of  the  above  detailed 
circumstances  connected  together. 

"The  natural  and  almost  irresistible  inference  to  be 
drawn,  however,  from  the  conduct  of  the  prisoners,  by 
Captain  Shortland  and  the  military,  was,  that  an  in- 
tention on  the  part  of  the  prisoners  to  escape  was  on 
the  point  of  being  carried  into  execution,  and  it  was  at 
least  certain  that  they  were  by  force  passing  beyond  the 
limits  prescribed  to  them  at  a  time  when  they  ought  to 
have  been  quietly  going  in  for  the  night. 

"  It  was  also  in  evidence  that  the  outer  gates  of  the 
Market  Square  were  usually  opened  about  the  time  to 
let  the  bread-wagon  pass  and  repass  to  the  store, 
although  at  the  period  in  question  they  were,  in  fact, 
closed. 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        667 

"  Under  these  circumstances  and  with  these  impres- 
sions necessarily  operating  upon  his  mind,  and  the 
knowledge  that  if  the  prisoners  once  penetrated 
through  the  square  the  power  of  escape  was  almost  to 
a  certainty  afforded  to  them,  if  they  should  be  so  dis- 
posed,— Captain  Shortland,  in  the  first  instance,  pro- 
ceeded down  the  square,  towards  the  prisoners,  having 
ordered  a  part  of  the  different  guards,  to  the  number 
of  about  fifty  only  at  first  (though  they  were  increased 
afterwards)  to  follow  him.  For  some  time,  both  he  and 
Dr.  Magrath  endeavoured  by  quiet  means  and  persua- 
sion to  induce  the  prisoners  to  retire  to  their  own  yards, 
explaining  to  them  the  fatal  consequences  which  must 
ensue  if  they  were  refused,  as  the  military  would  in 
that  case  be  necessarily  compelled  to  employ  force. 
The  guard  was  by  this  time  formed  in  the  rear  of 
Captain  Shortland,  about  two-thirds  of  the  way  down 
the  square :  the  latter  is  about  one  hundred  feet  broad, 
and  the  guards  extended  nearly  all  across.  Captain 
Shortland,  finding  that  persuasion  was  in  vain,  and 
that  although  some  were  induced  by  it  to  make  an  effort 
to  retire,  others  pressed  on  in  considerable  numbers,  at 
last  ordered  about  fifteen  file  of  the  guard,  nearly  in 
front  of  the  gate  which  had  been  forced,  to  charge  the 
prisoners  back  to  their  own  yards. 

"  The  prisoners  were  in  some  places  so  near  the 
military  that,  one  of  the  soldiers  states,  he  could  not 
come  fairly  to  the  charge,  and  the  military  were  un- 
willing to  act  as  against  an  enemy.1  Some  of  the 
prisoners  also  were  unwilling  and  reluctant  to  retire, 
and  some  pushing  and  struggling  ensued  between  the 
parties,  arising  partly  from  intention,  but  mainly  from 
the  pressure  of  those  behind  preventing  those  in  front 

1  Captain  Shortland  pretended  that  the  soldiers  charged  without  his 
having-  given  the  command— all  evidence  to  the  contrary.  The  Com- 
missioners did  not  believe  him. 


668  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

from  getting  back.  After  some  little  time,  however, 
this  charge  appears  to  have  been  so  far  effective,  and 
that  with  little  or  no  injury  to  the  prisoners,  as  to  have 
driven  them  for  the  most  part  quite  down  out  of  the 
square,  with  the  exception  of  a  small  number  who  con- 
tinued their  resistance  about  No.  i  gate. 

"  A  great  crowd  still  remained  collected  after  this  in 
the  passage  between  the  square  and  the  prisoners' 
yards,  and  in  the  part  of  those  yards  in  the  vicinity  of 
the  gates.  This  assemblage  still  refused  to  withdraw, 
and  according  to  most  of  the  English  witnesses,  and 
some  of  the  American,  was  making  a  noise,  insulting 
and  provoking  and  daring  the  military  to  fire  ;  and 
according  to  the  evidence  of  several  of  the  soldiers,  and 
some  others,  was  pelting  the  military  with  large  stones, 
by  which  some  were  actually  struck.  This  circumstance 
is  however  denied  by  many  of  the  American  witnesses  ; 
and  some  of  the  English,  upon  having  the  question  put 
to  them,  stated  that  they  saw  no  stones  thrown  pre- 
viously to  the  firing,  although  their  situation  at  the 
time  was  such  as  to  enable  them  to  see  most  of  the 
other  proceedings  in  the  square. 

"Under  these  circumstances  the  firing  commenced. 
With  regard  to  any  order  having  been  given  to  fire, 
the  evidence  is  very  contradictory ;  several  of  the 
Americans  swear  very  positively,  that  Captain 
Shortland  gave  the  order,  but  the  manner  in  which, 
from  the  confusion  of  the  moment,  they  describe  this 
part  of  the  transaction  is  so  different  in  its  details,  that 
it  is  very  difficult  to  reconcile  their  testimony.  Many  of 
the  soldiers  and  other  English  witnesses  heard  the 
word  given  by  some  one,  but  no  one  of  them  can  swear 
it  was  by  Captain  Shortland  or  by  any  one  in  particular, 
and  some,  amongst  whom  is  the  officer  commanding 
the  guard,  think  if  Captain  Shortland  had  given  such 
an  order,  that  they  must  have  heard  it,  which  they  did 


THE    PRINCETOWN   MASSACRE        669 

not.  In  addition  to  this,  Captain  Shortland  denies  the 
fact,  and  from  the  situation  in  which  he  appears  to 
have  been  placed  at  the  time,  even  according  to  the 
American  witnesses,  in  front  of  the  soldiers,  it  may 
appear  somewhat  improbable  that  he  should  then  have 
given  such  an  order.1  But,  however  it  may  remain  a 
matter  of  doubt  whether  the  firing  first  began  in  the 
square  by  order,  or  was  a  spontaneous  act  of  the  soldiers 
themselves,  it  seems  clear  that  it  was  continued  and  re- 
newed both  there  and  elsewhere  without  orders,  and 
that  on  the  platform,  and  about  the  prison,  it  was 
certainly  commenced  without  any  authority. 

"  The  fact  of  an  order  having  been  given  at  first, 
provided  the  firing  was  under  the  existing  circumstances 
justifiable,  does  not  appear  very  material  in  any  other 
point  of  view,  than  as  showing  a  want  of  discipline  and 
self-possession  in  the  troops  if  they  should  have  fired 
without  orders. 

"  With  regard  to  the  above  most  important  con- 
sideration of  whether  the  firing  was  justifiable  or  not ; 
we  are  of  opinion,  under  all  the  circumstances  of  the 
case,  from  the  apprehension  which  the  soldiers  might 
fairly  entertain,  owing  to  the  number  and  conduct  of 
the  prisoners,  that  their  firing,  to  a  certain  extent,  was 
justifiable  in  a  military  point  of  view,  in  order  to 
intimidate  the  prisoners,  and  compel  them  thereby  to 
desist  from  all  acts  of  violence,  and  to  retire  as  they 
were  ordered,  from  a  situation  in  which  the  responsi- 
bility of  the  agent  and  military  could  not  permit  them 
with  safety  to  remain. 

"  From  the  fact  of  the  crowd  being  so  close  and  the 
firing  at  first  being  attended  with  very  little  injury,  it 
appears  probable  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  muskets 

1  David  Spencer  Warren,  one  of  the  witnesses,  said :  "  Captain 
Shortland,  when  he  told  them  to  fire,  was  in  front,  one  soldier  beside  him. 
They  might  have  fired  at  his  side  or  over  him  without  hurting  him." 


670  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

were,  as  stated  by  one  or  two  witnesses,  levelled  over 
the  heads  of  the  prisoners,  a  circumstance  in  some 
respects  to  be  lamented,  as  it  induced  them  to  cry  out 
'  blank  cartridges,'  and  merely  irritated  and  encouraged 
them  to  renew  the  insults  to  the  soldiery,  which  pro- 
duced a  repetition  of  the  firing  in  a  manner  much 
more  destructive. 

"  The  firing  in  the  square  having  continued  for  some 
time,  by  which  several  of  the  prisoners  sustained 
injuries,  the  greater  part  of  them  appear  to  have  been 
running  back  with  the  utmost  confusion  and  precipita- 
tion to  their  respective  prisons — and  the  cause  for 
further  firing  seems  at  this  period  to  have  ceased.  It 
appears  accordingly,  that  Captain  Shortland  was  in  the 
Market  Square  exerting  himself  and  giving  orders  to 
that  effect,  and  that  Lieutenant  Fortye  had  succeeded 
in  stopping  the  fire  of  his  part  of  the  guard. 

"  Under  these  circumstances  it  is  very  difficult  to 
find  any  justification  for  the  further  renewal  and  con- 
tinuance of  the  firing  which  certainly  took  place  both 
in  the  prison  yards  and  elsewhere,  though  we  have 
some  evidence  of  subsequent  provocation  given  to  the 
military,  and  resistance  to  the  turnkeys  in  shutting  the 
prisons,  and  of  stones  being  thrown  out  from  within 
the  prison  doors. 

"  The  subsequent  firing  appears  to  have  arisen  from 
the  state  of  individual  irritation  and  exasperation  on 
the  part  of  the  soldiers  who  followed  the  prisoners  into 
their  yards,  and  from  the  absence  of  nearly  all  the 
officers  who  might  have  restrained  it,  as  well  as  from 
the  great  difficulty  of  putting  an  end  to  a  firing  when 
once  commenced  under  the  circumstances.  Captain 
Shortland  was  from  this  time  busily  occupied  with  the 
turnkeys  in  the  square  receiving  and  taking  care  of  the 
wounded.  Ensign  White  remained  with  his  guard  at 
the  breach,  and  Lieutenants  Avelyne  and  Fortye,  the 


THE    PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        671 

only  other  subalterns  known  to  have  been  present, 
continued  in  the  square  with  the  main  bodies  of  their 
respective  guards. 

"The  time  of  day,  which  was  the  officers'  dinner 
hour,  will  in  some  measure  explain  this,  as  it  caused 
the  absence  of  every  officer  from  the  prison  whose 
presence  was  not  indispensable  there.  And  this  cir- 
cumstance, which  has  been  urged  as  an  argument  to 
prove  the  intention  of  the  prisoners  to  take  this  oppor- 
tunity to  escape,  tended  to  increase  the  confusion  and 
to  prevent  those  greater  exertions  being  made,  which 
might  perhaps  have  obviated  at  least  a  portion  of  the 
mischief  which  ensued.  At  the  time  that  the  firing  was 
going  on  in  the  square,  a  cross-fire  was  also  kept  up 
from  several  of  the  platforms  on  the  walls  round  the 
prison,  where  the  sentinels  stand,  by  straggling  parties 
of  soldiers  who  ran  up  there  for  that  purpose.1  As  far 
as  this  fire  was  directed  to  disperse  the  men  assembled 
round  the  breach,  for  which  purpose  it  was  most 
effectual,  it  seems  to  stand  upon  the  same  ground  as 
that  in  the  first  instance  in  the  square.  But  that  part 
which  it  is  positively  sworn  was  directed  against  strag- 
gling parties  of  prisoners  running  about  the  yards  and 
endeavouring  to  reach  the  few  doors,  which  the  turn- 
keys, according  to  their  usual  practice,  had  left  open, 
does  seem,  as  stated,  to  have  been  wholly  without 
object  or  excuse,  and  to  have  been  a  wanton  attack  upon 
the  lives  of  defenceless  and,  at  the  time,  unoffending 
individuals. 

"  In  the  same,  or  even  in  more  severe  terms,  we  must 
remark  upon  what  was  proved,  as  to  the  firing  into 
the  doorways  of  the  prisons,  more  particularly  into  that 
of  No.  3  prison,  at  a  time  when  the  men  were  in  crowds 
at  the  entrance. 

1  This  disposes  of  the  allegation  of  the  prisoners  that  Shortland  had 
placed  the  soldiers  there  before  the  ringing-  of  the  alarm  bell. 


672  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"From  the  position  of  the  prison  and  of  the  door, 
and  from  the  marks  of  the  balls,  which  were  pointed 
out  to  us,  as  well  as  from  the  evidence,  it  was  clear 
the  firing  must  have  proceeded  from  soldiers  a  very  few 
feet  from  the  doorway  ;  and  though  it  was  certainly 
sworn  that  the  prisoners  were  at  the  time  of  part  of  the 
firing,  at  least,  continuing  to  insult  and  occasionally  to 
throw  stones  at  the  soldiers,  and  that  they  were  standing 
in  the  way  of  and  impeding  the  turnkey  who  was  there 
for  the  purpose  of  closing  the  door — yet  still  there  was 
nothing  stated  which  could  in  any  view  at  all  justify 
such  excessively  harsh  and  severe  treatment  of  helpless 
and  unarmed  prisoners,  when  all  idea  of  escape  was 
at  an  end. 

"  Under  these  circumstances  we  used  every  en- 
deavour to  ascertain  if  there  was  the  least  prospect  of 
identifying  any  of  the  soldiers  who  had  been  guilty 
of  the  particular  outrages  here  alluded  to,  or  of  tracing 
any  particular  death,  at  that  time,  to  the  firing  of  any 
particular  individual,  but  without  success,  and  all 
hopes  of  bringing  the  offenders  to  punishment  should 
seem  to  be  at  an  end. 

"In  conclusion,  we  the  undersigned  have  only  to 
add,  that  whilst  we  lament,  as  we  do  most  deeply,  the 
unfortunate  transaction  which  has  been  the  subject  of 
this  inquiry,  we  find  ourselves  totally  unable  to  suggest 
any  steps  to  be  taken  as  to  those  parts  of  it  which  seem 
most  to  call  for  redress  and  punishment. 

"(Signed)      CHARLES  KING, 

FRANCIS  SEYMOUR  LARPENT. 

"PLYMOUTH,  26th  April,  1815." 

This  report  was  obviously  drawn  up  so  as  to  smooth 
the  matter  over,  lest  the  newly  established  peace  should 
be  broken  by  the  angry  resentment  of  the  Americans 


THE    PRINCETOWN   MASSACRE        673 

at  the  treatment  which  their  fellow  citizens  had  re- 
ceived. 

The  prisoners  at  once  presented  a  Remonstrance 
against  the  perfunctory  way  in  which  the  investigation 
had  been  carried  out.  They  indignantly  complained 
that  although  their  committee  had  named  fifty  men  as 
witnesses,  only  some  of  these  were  called,  and  these 
not  the  most  important.  They  had  written  a  letter  of 
complaint  to  the  Commissioners,  who  did  not  even 
trouble  themselves  to  answer  it. 

The  British  Government  and  the  American  agent 
now  bestirred  themselves  to  dispatch  the  prisoners  to 
the  States  as  speedily  as  might  be.  The  American 
Minister  asked  that  Captain  Shortland  might  be  placed 
on  his  trial,  but  did  not  press  the  demand,  as  this 
would  have  entailed  the  bringing  back  of  the  principal 
witnesses  against  him  from  their  homes  in  the  States. 
Lord  Castlereagh  promised  on  the  part  of  the  British 
Government  ample  indemnification  in  money  to  the 
wounded  and  maimed  for  life,  and  to  the  widows  of 
those  who  had  been  killed,  but  this  the  United  States 
Government  with  dignity  declined. 

It  is  remarkable  how  reticent  on  the  event  were  the 
English  papers  at  the  time.  Both  England  and 
America  were  heartily  tired  of  the  war  which  profited 
neither,  and  were  willing  to  let  the  unfortunate  affair 
drop  out  of  consideration.  Before  the  prisoners  de- 
parted from  Princetown,  they  held  a  mock  trial  and 
condemnation  of  Mr.  Beasley,  and  hung  him  in  effigy. 
Even  when  they  departed,  he  took  no  pains  to  provide 
them  with  suitable  clothes,  and  some  of  them  had  to 
tramp  barefooted  to  Plymouth.  They  departed,  march- 
ing under  a  banner  on  which  was  depicted  Columbia 
weeping  over  her  murdered  citizens.  They  were  dis- 
missed from  the  prison  on  iQth  April,  but  the  investiga- 

2    X 


674  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

tion  into  the  whole  affair  was  begun  at  Princetown  and 
in  Plymouth  before  the  magistrates,  on  the  2ist  April, 
and  carried  on  to  the  24th,  Sunday  included,  in  the 
presence  of  two  Commissioners,  who,  as  we  have  seen, 
drew  up  their  report  on  the  26th. 

It  will  be  well  now  to  look  at  the  depositions  of  such 
witnesses  as  the  Commissioners  were  pleased  to  sum- 
mon, and  to  see  how  far  they  confirm  or  contradict 
the  account  of  the  transaction  as  given  by  Captain 
Shortland. 

According  to  the  Governor  of  the  prison,  the  part  he 
played  in  the  "  massacre  "  was  almost  niL  He  was  the 
angel  of  peace  hovering  about,  soothing  excited 
feelings,  urging  a  cessation  of  the  firing,  and  minister- 
ing to  the  wounded.  He  gave  no  further  directions 
than  that  to  ring  the  alarm  bell.  He  neither  ordered 
the  soldiery  to  form  in  line,  nor  to  charge,  nor  to  fire. 
It  is  impossible  from  his  account  to  obtain  any  con- 
nected idea  as  to  the  sequence  of  events. 

I  can  only  summarize  the  depositions  in  reference  to 
the  "  massacre." 

John  Mitchell^  one  of  the  clerks  in  the  office  of  the 
Governor,  deposed  "  that  this  informant  saw  Capt. 
Shortland  in  the  front  of  the  prison.  .  .  .  That  Capt. 
Shortland  advanced  towards  the  prisoners,  calling  on 
the  guard  to  follow,  form  and  be  steady,  and  directed 
them  to  keep  possession  of  the  Market  Square.  That 
this  informant  followed  Capt.  Shortland,  keeping  be- 
tween him  and  the  military,  and  this  informant  heard 
Capt.  Shortland  desire  the  prisoners  to  return  quietly 
to  their  prisons.  .  .  .  But  they  still  continued  advanc- 
ing, speaking  in  a  riotous  manner.  That  this  informant 
observed  a  large  body  of  prisoners  assembled  at  the 
other  gate,  at  the  opposite  side  of  the  Market  Square. 
.  .  .  Hearing  a  noise  he  turned  around  and  observed 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        675 

the  prisoners  were  much  further  up  the  square,  and 
part  of  the  guards  had  charged  their  bayonets  towards 
the  prisoners  to  force  them  down,  and  almost  at  the 
same  moment  he,  this  informant,  heard  the  report 
of  a  musket  discharged.  .  .  .  That  he,  this  in- 
formant, did  not  hear  any  person  give  orders  to  fire. 
That  several  muskets  were  fired  in  the  Market  Square, 
and  immediately  after  the  firing  had  ceased  he  heard 
Capt.  Shortland  call  for  turnkeys  to  take  up  the 
wounded.  .  .  .  That  this  informant  did  not  observe 
anything  thrown  by  the  prisoners  at  the  military, 
nor  see  the  prisoners  armed  with  any  offensive 
weapons." 

Richard  Arnold,  one  of  the  turnkeys,  after  stating 
the  fact  of  the  hole  in  the  wall  and  Captain  Shortland's 
examination  of  it:  "  This  informant  then  returned  to 
the  Market  Square  leaving  Capt.  Shortland  in  the 
barrack-yard,  and  the  horn  was  then  sounding  for  the 
prisoners  to  turn  into  their  respective  prisons,1  when 
he  observed  a  large  body  of  prisoners  collected  between 
the  iron  railing  in  the  front  of  the  prisons,  and  they 
were  attempting  to  force  the  gates.  .  .  .  That  this 
informant  went  away  to  call  the  guard,  and  met  Capt. 
Shortland  at  the  upper  gate.  That  the  guard  was 
outside  the  guard-house  drawn  out,  and  Capt.  Short- 
land  called  to  them  to  follow  him,  and  this  informant 
returned  with  him,  and  by  this  time  the  prisoners  had 
forced  the  gate,  and  many  hundreds  had  assembled  in 
the  Market  Square.  That  Capt.  Shortland  desired  the 
soldiers  to  draw  up,  be  steady,  and  keep  their  ground, 
and  the  soldiers  formed  across  the  square.  That  this 
informant  saw  Capt.  Shortland  go  up  in  front  of  the 
military  and  heard  him  desire  the  prisoners  to  go  in, 

1  This  disposes  of  the  charge  made  by  the  prisoners  that  no  proper 
notice  was  given  them  that  they  were  to  turn  in. 


676  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

or  otherwise  he  should  be  obliged  to  use  means  which 
he  should  be  very  sorry  for.  That  the  prisoners  were 
very  riotous,  calling  out  (  Keeno '  several  times,  and 
advanced  instead  of  retiring,  when  some  of  the  soldiers 
came  to  a  charge,  and  this  informant  made  the  best  of 
his  way  to  the  rear,  and  just  after  he  got  in  the  rear  he 
heard  a  single  musket,  and  soon  after  he  heard  several 
muskets  discharged,  but  the  muskets  were  at  first 
elevated  high,  that  he  does  not  think  a  single  shot 
touched  either  of  the  prisoners  .  .  .  when  some  of 

them  called  out,  <  Fire,  you ,  you  have  no  shot  in 

your  guns,'  when  the  military  fired  again,  .  .  .  and 
almost  immediately  he  heard  Capt.  Shortland  call  for 
the  turnkeys  to  help  the  wounded  away.  That  this 
informant  did  not  hear  any  person  give  any  orders  to 
fire,  that  he  was  near  to  Capt.  Shortland  when  the 
firing  first  begun,  and  if  Capt.  Shortland  had  given 
any  orders  to  fire  he  thinks  that  he  must  have  heard 
them.  .  .  .  That  he  did  not  see  the  prisoners  armed 
with  any  offensive  weapons,  nor  did  he  see  them  throw 
any  stones  at  the  military." l 

Stephen  Hall,  one  of  the  turnkeys,  gave  information 
almost  identical  with  that  of  Richard  Arnold.  He  did 
not  hear  any  orders  given  to  fire. 

Richard  Cephus,  an  American  prisoner  of  war,  gave 
no  evidence  of  value,  as  he  was  not  present  in  the 
affray. 

George  Magrath,  surgeon  of  the  hospital  at  the 
prison.  Hearing  the  alarm  bell  he  ran  from  his  dwell- 
ing into  the  Market  Square,  where  he  saw  a  line  of 
soldiers  drawn  up  and  the  prisoners  breaking  out  at 
the  inner  gate.  "  He  advanced  towards  them  and 
began  to  exhort  them  to  return  quietly  into  the  prison 

1  The  stone-throwing-  did  not  take  place  in  the  outer  yard  or  Market 
Square  where  these  two  warders  were,  but  later  in  the  inner  yard. 


THE    PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        677 

.  .  .  that  this  informant  observed  to  them  that  their 
detention  appeared  to  be  entirely  the  fault  of  their 
own  agent,  Mr.  Beasley  .  .  .  that  this  informant  heard 
a  voice,  but  whose  it  was  this  informant  did  not  know, 
ordering  the  soldiers  to  charge  ;  that  at  this  time 
Captain  Shortland  was  near  to  this  informant,  and 
he  seemed  to  be  employing  means  to  induce  the 
prisoners  to  return  to  the  prison  ;  that  on  hearing  the 
word  *  Charge '  given,  he  looked  round  and  found 
himself  on  the  point  of  the  soldiers'  bayonets  .  .  . 
that  he  found  it  necessary  to  attempt  to  extricate  him- 
self and  succeeded  in  getting  round  the  left  wing, 
which  rested  on  the  wall.  .  .  .  Whilst  this  informant 
was  endeavouring  to  get  around,  the  firing  commenced, 
at  first  he  heard  two  or  three  muskets,  but  afterwards 
the  discharges  became  more  frequent,  and  almost 
amounted  to  a  volley."  He  then  retired  to  attend  to 
the  wounded. 

It  must  be  added  that  the  prisoners  unanimously 
speak  of  Dr.  Magrath  with  high  praise,  as  most  kind 
and  attentive  to  their  wants  and  ailments. 

John  Odiorne,  a  citizen  of  the  United  States.  "He 
was  at  the  store  in  the  Market  Square,  standing  by  the 
door  ;  and  the  wagon  with  the  bread  was  partly  un- 
laden, when  this  informant  heard  some  persons  talking 
loud  at  the  gate  at  the  uppercut  (i.e.  the  main  entrance) 
and  went  round  the  wagon  to  see  who  it  was,  and  saw 
Captain  Shortland  advancing  into  the  yard  ;  and  he 
was  giving  his  orders  to  the  turnkeys  at  the  lodge  in  a 
loud  voice  ;  and  Richard  Arnold  spoke  to  him,  and  told 
him  something  about  the  wall,  when  Captain  Shortland 

said,  '  D you,  why  did  not  you  tell  me  about  it 

before?  Ring  the  bell,  call  the  guard  out.'  That  the 
guard  immediately  followed  Captain  Shortland  into  the 
yard,  when  he  ordered  them  to  form  across  the  yard, 


678  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

about  two-thirds  of  the  way  down.  .  .  .  That  just  as 
Captain  Shortland  gave  the  orders,  this  informant  saw 
the  prisoners  force  the  gate  No.  i,  and  before  this  time 
this  informant  had  not  seen  a  single  prisoner  in  the 
Market  Square,  except  those  who  were  employed  with 
him  (in  unlading  the  bread  wagon).  He  was  on  the 
steps,  at  the  store,  which  is  about  ten  feet  high  and 
commands  a  complete  view  of  the  square.  That  after 
the  prisoners  had  advanced  to  the  distance  of  between 
twenty-five  or  thirty  feet,  Captain  Shortland  then 
ordered  the  men  to  charge  upon  them,  and  the  soldiers 
charged  upon  the  prisoners,  when  they  retreated  into 
the  yard.  That  after  the  prisoners  had  retreated  within 
the  prison  ...  he  heard  an  order  given  to  fire  by 
Captain  Shortland,  as  the  informant  supposed,  for  he 
was  looking  directly  at  him.  That  the  order  was  not 
instantly  complied  with  .  .  .  but  in  a  few  seconds  a 
musket  was  fired  by  a  person  at  the  right  of  Capt. 
Shortland,  a  few  paces  in  advance  of  the  others,  and 
immediately  after  two  muskets  were  fired  to  the  left  of 
Capt.  Shortland,  and  after  that  there  was  a  general  dis- 
charge. And  immediately  after  the  general  discharge 
a  party  of  soldiers  marched  into  No.  i  yard,  through 
the  gate,  and  fired  a  volley,  and  then  wheeled  about 
and  returned  into  the  square,  and  after  the  soldiers  had 
returned  into  the  square  and  formed  into  line  the  officer 
ordered  them  to  fire,  and  immediately  the  whole  line 
across  the  square  fired  into  the  yard,  after  which  the 
line  broke  up  and  advanced  into  the  yard,  and  this  in- 
formant could  not  see  any  further,  but  he  heard  the 
reports  of  guns  in  the  yard." 

The  evidence  of  John  Odiorne  is  of  special  value,  as 
he  and  Arnold  were  the  only  witnesses  of  what  took 
place  in  the  Market-yard,  who  were  not  actively  en- 
gaged in  the  affray. 


THE    PRINCETOWN   MASSACRE        679 

Addison  Holmes,  citizen  of  the  United  States.  "  Un- 
derstanding that  a  hole  had  been  broken  through  the 
wall  in  the  prison  No.  7  by  the  boys,  to  get  at  their 
balls,  he  was  going  to  see  it ;  and  hearing  the  alarm 
bell  rung,  he  went  into  the  Market  Square,  having 
found  the  gate  open,1  and  there  were  about  a  dozen 
prisoners  in  the  square,  and  a  great  many  more  followed 
after  him  ;  he  was  going  up  to  see  what  the  alarm  bell 
was  rung  for,  when  he  saw  the  troops  entering  the  outer 
gate  of  the  square,  and  Captain  Shortland  was  with 
them.  That  as  the  troops  came  through  the  gate,  they 
were  paraded  across  the  square  ;  and  this  informant 
saw  Dr.  Magrath  at  the  left  of  the  troops,  talking  to 
about  a  dozen  prisoners,  advising  them  to  go  down  to  the 
prison  quietly.  That  at  this  time  there  was  a  consider- 
able body  of  prisoners  in  the  rear.  That  Captain 
Shortland  was  in  front  of  the  troops,  speaking  to  one 
man,  who  wanted  to  say  something  to  him  ;  but  it  ap- 
peared that  the  captain  would  have  no  conversation 
with  him,  and  pushed  him  from  him  twice,  when  the 
man  turned  about  and  was  going  down  slowly.2  The 
captain  then  turned  him  round  and  ordered  the  troops 
to  charge  their  bayonets,  twice  ;  but  they  did  not  do  so 
until  they  were  ordered  by  one  of  their  own  officers, 
and  then  the  troops  charged  their  bayonets  and  the 
prisoners  were  forced  on  before  them,  and  Dr.  Magrath, 
being  in  front,  stepped  in  between  two  bayonets,  and 
got  to  the  rear.  That  this  informant  stepped  aside, 
and  got  between  two  sentry-boxes,  and  the  troops 
passed  him  ;  and  by  this  time  the  prisoners  were  forced 
to  the  gate,  had  got  inside  the  prison,  and  shut  the 
gate  after  them  ;  but  Captain  Shortland,  who  was  in 

1  This  is  disingenuous.     He  says  nothing-  about  the  forcible  breaking 
open  of  the  gate. 

2  This  was  James  Greenlaw. 


680  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

front  of  the  troops,  shoved  the  gate  open,  and  this 
informant  thinking  it  was  a  good  opportunity  for  him 
to  get  in,  pushed  on  between  two  men,  and  then  saw 
that  Captain  Shortland  had  hold  of  a  musket,  and  im- 
mediately that  musket  was  discharged  ;  but  whether 
Capt.  Shortland  pulled  the  trigger  or  not,  this  in- 
formant does  not  know,  and  immediately  after  there 
was  firing  at  the  left.  That  Capt.  Shortland  had 
ordered  the  troops  to  fire  before  he  took  hold  of  the 
musket,  but  he  was  not  obeyed,  and  then  took  hold  of 
the  musket,  and  he  believes  the  soldier  had  hold  of  it 
at  the  same  time.  That  just  after  the  firing  at  the  left, 
as  he,  this  informant,  was  passing  between  two  men, 
one  of  whom  had  discharged  his  musket,  this  man  was 
hauling  his  musket  back  to  stab  this  informant,  and 
before  he  drew  it  past  this  informant,  he,  this  informant, 
unshipped  the  bayonet,  and  threw  it  on  the  ground, 
and  then  pushed  off  the  bayonet  on  the  left,  with  his 
arm,  and  got  in  round  the  gate,  when  the  soldiers  im- 
mediately fired  another  round,  and  he  saw  a  man  fall. 
That  this  informant  stopped  a  few  minutes,  and  the 
soldiers  fired  several  rounds,  and  the  soldiers  were 
firing  from  the  walls  up  the  prison.  That  two  rounds 
were  fired  into  the  prison  door,  which  killed  one  man 
and  wounded  another." 

John  Arnold,  steward  of  the  prisoners,  was  engaged 
with  Odiorne  in  unlading  the  bread-wagon,  when  he 
heard  the  alarm  bell  rung,  and  the  drums  beat  to  arms, 
and  the  horns  sounded  ;  * '  And  soon  after  this  informant 
saw  a  great  body  of  prisoners  between  the  railing  and 
the  Market  Square.  .  .  .  That  Captain  Shortland  came 
into  the  square,  and  the  soldiers  marched  in  with  their 
officers.  That  this  informant  ordered  the  wagon  away, 
and  just  then  the  prisoners  burst  open  the  gate  and 
rushed  into  the  Market  Square  in  a  very  large  body. 


THE    PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        68 1 

.  .  .  That  the  soldiers  were  formed  across  the  square, 
and  had  advanced  in  a  body  .  .  .  when  the  soldiers 
charged  upon  the  prisoners,  but  this  informant  did  not 
hear  any  order  to  charge  given,  and  this  informant 
thinks,  that  from  the  noise  made  by  the  prisoners,  it 
was  impossible  to  hear  any  word  of  command."  After 
describing  the  charge,  he  asserts  that  "  stones  were 
thrown  at  the  military.  .  .  .  That  this  informant  never 
heard  Captain  Shortland  give  any  directions  to  the 
soldiers  to  fire,  and  he  was  so  near  Odiorne,  that  if 
orders  had  been  given  which  he  might  have  heard,  he, 
the  informant,  must  have  heard  also.  And  this  in- 
formant further  saith,  that  the  firing  was  very  irregular, 
and  it  did  not  seem  like  firing  in  obedience  to  order  ; 
and  this  informant  further  saith,  that  it  appeared  to  him 
the  soldiers  were  in  danger  from  the  stones  thrown  at 
them  by  the  prisoners." 

William  Gifford,  private  in  the  ist  Regiment  of 
Somerset  Militia,  was  posted  as  sentinel  at  the  inner 
gate.  "  That  this  informant  saw  a  prisoner  who  broke 
the  lock  of  the  gate,  where  this  informant  was  sentinel, 
with  an  iron  bar,  and  the  prisoners  rushed  out  as  fast 
as  they  could  come,  crying  out  '  Keeno ' ;  whereupon 
the  alarm  bell  was  rung,  and  part  of  the  north  guard 
came  into  the  Market  Square,  and  Capt.  Shortland 
was  with  them  .  .  .  that  Capt.  Shortland  ordered  the 
soldiers  to  charge,  which  they  did,  and  forced  the 
prisoners  almost  to  the  prison  gate  .  .  .  that  the 
prisoners  began  to  throw  stones  at  the  soldiers,  and 
this  informant  saw  several  of  the  men's  caps  knocked 
off  with  the  stones  .  .  .  this  informant  heard  the  word 
'  Fire  ! '  given  by  some  person,  but  by  whom  he  does 
not  know  ;  that  this  informant  immediately  heard  a 
discharge  of  musketry,  and  saw  that  the  muskets  were 
presented  in  the  air  ;  that  the  prisoners  still  continued 


682  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

throwing  stones,  when  the  soldiers  began  to  fire  towards 
the  prisoners,  and  this  informant  afterwards  saw  two 
men  lying  in  the  market-place,  apparently  dead.  That 
the  soldiers  then  went  into  the  different  prison  yards  to 
turn  the  prisoners  in,  and  this  informant  heard  some 
firing  in  the  yards.  That  Major  Joliffe  had  the  com- 
mand of  the  ist  Somersetshire  Regiment  of  Militia,  but 
he  was  not  present  when  the  first  firing  commenced. 
.  .  .  That  this  informant  was  near  to  Capt.  Shortland, 
and  he  never  saw  Capt.  Shortland  with  a  musket  in  his 
hand,  or  attempt  to  take  a  musket ;  if  he  had,  he,  this 
informant,  thinks  that  it  was  impossible  for  him  not  to 
have  seen  it.  That  he  never  heard  Capt.  Shortland 
give  any  orders  to  fire,  and  the  informant  was  so  near 
him,  that  he  thinks  he  must  have  heard  him,  if  he  had 
given  any  such  orders." 

James  Groves,  private  in  the  ist  Regiment  of  Somer- 
set Militia,  was  sentinel  in  the  barrack  yard,  and  gave 
evidence  that  at  5  p.m.  or  thereabouts  a  ball  was 
thrown  over  the  wall.  He  was  relieved  at  6  p.m.,  and 
by  that  time  no  attempt  had  been  made  to  knock  a  hole 
in  the  wall. 

David  Spencer  Warren^  citizen  of  the  United  States. 
On  hearing  the  alarm  bell  he  went  to  the  gate,  which 
was  already  burst  open,  and  the  prisoners  had  got  into 
the  Market-yard.  "  A  number  of  soldiers  were  in  the 
square,  and  Capt.  Shortland  was  at  the  head  of  one 
party  of  them,  and  he  was  forming  a  line  across  the 
yard,  which  after  he  had  done,  he  told  them  to  charge. 
That  the  soldiers  did  charge  on  the  prisoners,  who  ran 
back  into  the  prison  yard,  and  as  they  got  inside  the 
gate,  they  flung  one  of  them  to.  That  Capt.  Shortland 
ordered  one  of  the  soldiers  to  fire,  and  immediately 
there  was  a  soldier  with  his  musket  turned  to  the  right, 
and  Capt.  Shortland  caught  hold  of  the  musket  and 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        683 

pointed  it  towards  a  man  that  stood  by  the  gate,  and 

said,  '  God  d you,  fire  ! '  that  directly  after  this 

a  fire  of  musketry  became  general.  That  this  informant 
did  not  see  any  of  the  officers  with  the  soldiers  when 
Capt.  Shortland  gave  the  orders  to  fire.  That  after  the 
firing  began  he  saw  some  stones  thrown  by  the 
prisoners  over  the  wall  into  the  square." 

James  Greenlaw,  a  citizen  of  the  United  States,  heard 
the  alarm  bell  ring,  and  went  to  the  railing  giving 
admission  to  the  Market  Square,  which  was  already 
burst  open,  and  some  prisoners  in  the  square.  "At 
the  same  time  he  saw  the  troops  coming  through 
the  market-gate,  with  Capt.  Shortland  at  their  head, 
and  saw  him  form  the  men  in  one  line,  extending  across 
the  square,  and  he  then  ordered  them  to  charge,  where- 
upon the  prisoners  retreated  into  the  prison  yard, 
when  the  informant  heard  Capt.  Shortland  give 
orders  for  the  soldiers  to  fire  upon  the  prisoners,  where- 
upon this  informant  ran  into  No.  4  yard,  for  shelter, 
and  saw  two  black  men  fall.  That  as  soon  as  this 
informant  thought  the  firing  had  ceased,  he  ran  up 
towards  the  grating  to  speak  to  Capt.  Shortland, 
and  asked  him  if  he  would  allow  him  to  speak  to 

him,  when  Capt.  Shortland  said,  '  No,  you  d d 

rascal ! '  whereupon  two  soldier  officers  put  their  swords 
through  the  iron  railing  towards  the  informant,  and 
one  soldier  pricked  him  with  his  bayonet.  That 
this  informant  then  retreated  into  No.  3  yard,  and  he 
then  heard  two  distinct  volleys.  .  .  .  That  this  infor- 
mant did  not  see  any  stones  thrown  until  the  firing 
had  commenced,  and  then  he  saw  two  stones  thrown 
over  the  wall." 

Thomas  Burgess  Mott,  citizen  of  the  United  States, 
gave  evidence  as  to  the  firing  on  the  prisoners  from  the 
walls,  and  at  the  door  of  No.  5  prison. 


684  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Enoch  Burnham,  citizen  of  the  United  States,  gave 
very  similar  evidence.  He  confirmed  the  statement 
made  by  Andrews  in  his  narrative  of  the  murder  of 
the  man  against  the  wall. 

Robert  Holmden,  first  clerk  to  Captain  Shortland,  had 
informed  the  Governor  of  the  breach  in  the  wall  and 
went  with  him  to  inspect  it.  "  Whereupon  Captain 
Shortland  ordered  the  alarm  bell  to  be  rung  ;  and  as 
soon  as  the  guard  could  be  collected,  he  went  with  them 
into  the  Market  Square.  ...  He  heard  one  shot  fired, 
which  was  followed  by  several  others.  He  did  not  go 
down  among  the  prisoners,  or  see  what  took  place  there." 

Homer  Hull,  citizen  of  the  United  States,  saw  a  man 
with  a  bolt  in  his  hand  break  the  lock  of  the  gate. 
"Just  at  the  time  the  gate  was  forced  open,  he  saw 
some  soldiers  come  into  the  Market  Square  ;  when 
Capt.  Shortland  gave  the  soldiers  orders  to  charge, 
and  the  soldiers  accordingly  charged ;  when  the 
prisoners  retreated  into  the  prisons,  and  one  of  them 
shut  to  the  gates  ;  then  the  soldiers  marched  down  a 
little  further,  when  Capt.  Shortland  ordered  them  to 
fire.  .  .  .  That  he  did  not  see  any  stones  thrown  before 
the  musketry  began  to  be  discharged,  but  afterwards  he 
saw  a  stone  thrown  from  the  prison  yard  towards  the 
square." 

Robert  McFarlane,  assistant  surgeon  at  the  prison, 
had  assisted  Dr.  Magrath  to  persuade  the  prisoners  to 
retire.  "  This  informant  heard  no  order  to  fire.  Capt. 
Shortland  was  at  the  south  end  of  the  guard,  and  this 
informant  thinks  if  he  had  given  orders  to  fire  he  must 
have  heard  it — that  at  the  time  the  first  musket  was 
fired  nearly  one-third  of  the  Market  Square  was  filled 
with  the  prisoners,  making  a  great  noise  in  a  very 
riotous  and  disorderly  manner,  and  stones  were  thrown 
by  the  prisoners  from  all  quarters." 


THE   PRINCETOWN   MASSACRE        685 

John  Tozer,  turnkey,  gave  testimony  of  no  importance. 

Joseph  Manning,  sergeant  of  the  ist  Somerset  Regi- 
ment of  Militia,  was  sent  by  Captain  Shortland  to  fetch 
Major  Joliffe,  "  who  put  himself  at  the  head  of  the 
grenadiers,  and  before  Major  Joliffe  had  gone  ten  yards 
fro  mthe  south  guard  gate  the  firing  commenced.  That 
it  was  impossible  for  Major  Joliffe  to  give  orders  to  fire, 
as  he  was  not  near  the  spot  when  the  firing  first  began." 

These  are  all  the  depositions  taken  before  the 
coroner.  Others  taken  before  the  commissioners  were 
as  follows : — 

John  Rust,  one  of  the  prisoners  and  one  of  the  Com- 
mittee that  drew  up  the  report  already  given.  "  About 
6  o'clock  in  the  evening  I  came  from  the  place  where  I 
was  taking  supper,  and  persuaded  the  prisoners  to  leave 
the  breach.  At  the  time  I  went  to  the  breach  the  horn 
had  not  sounded  ;  it  sounded  but  a  few  minutes  before 
the  firing.  I  heard  the  alarm  bell  ring  before  the  firing 
took  place.  The  firing  continued  at  intervals  about 
fifteen  minutes.  ...  I  saw  nothing  of  the  firing  in  the 
Market  Square." 

John  T.  Trowbridge,  another  of  the  Prisoners'  Com- 
mittee, made  no  part  of  the  report  from  his  own 
knowledge. 

John  Boggs,  another  of  the  Committee,  "  made  no 
part  of  the  report  from  my  own  knowledge." 

Amos  Wheeler,  sergeant  of  the  north  guard,  "  was 
ordered  by  Capt.  Shortland  to  march  to  the  Market 
Square  ;  the  officer  of  the  guard  was  not  then  with  it.  ... 
There  were  not  many  prisoners  in  the  Market  Square 
when  our  guard  entered.  The  alarm  bell  had  rung 
before  we  marched.  When  we  entered,  the  prisoners 
were  endeavouring  to  burst  the  gates  below.  .  .  .When 
they  had  succeeded  in  bursting  them  there  was  a  great 
rush  towards  the  soldiers.  They  threw  stones  at  the 


686  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

soldiers  before  there  was  any  firing.  They  were  not 
armed  with  anything  that  I  saw.  .  .  .  Captain  Shortland 
ordered  the  soldiers  to  bring  their  muskets  down  to  the 
charge.  I  believe  Capt.  Shortland  was  in  front  of  the 
guard,  at  this  time,  desiring  the  prisoners  to  go  back. 
I  saw  none  of  the  prisoners  wresting  the  arms  from  the 
soldiers.  I  saw  none  of  them  attempt  to  seize  the  arms. 
...  I  heard  no  order  to  fire,  nor  do  I  know  how  it  began  ; 
did  not  hear  any  of  the  prisoners  challenging  the  soldiers 
to  fire.  ...  I  did  not  see  the  officer  of  the  guard  at  this 
time.  The  firing  was  in  an  independent  manner,  three  or 
four  muskets  being  discharged  at  a  time.  After  the  firing 
commenced  the  prisoners  began  to  retire  towards  their 
prisons.  I  did  not  hear  any  cheering  among  them,  or 
see  them  rally  after  the  fire.  ...  I  did  not  go  into  the 
prison  yard." 

John  Saunders,  private  in  the  ist  Regiment  of  Somer- 
set Militia.  "  I  was  with  the  first  party  of  soldiers  that 
marched  into  the  Market  Square ;  at  that  time  the  gate 
was  broken  open  the  prisoners  were  coming  through 
in  a  crowd.  The  alarm  bell  rang  at  the  time  we  reached 
the  west  guard-house ;  the  officer  of  the  guard  was 
with  us,  I  believe.  I  believe  it  was  he  who  ordered  us 
into  the  square.  .  .  .  Capt.  Shortland,  after  some  dis- 
course with  the  prisoners,  ordered  to  charge— with  some 
difficulty  we  got  the  prisoners  back  to  the  gates,  some 
of  them  retiring  through  the  gates.  .  .  .  The  square 
was  nearly  clear  of  prisoners  before  the  firing — they 
did  not  return  into  the  square,  but  threw  some  stones 
through  the  rails.  I  heard  the  word  '  Fire  ! '  given, 
but  do  not  know  by  whom.  There  were  no  prisoners 
in  the  Market  Square  when  the  first  shots  were  fired. 
The  prisoners  had  the  command  of  the  gates,  so  as  to 
open  them  when  they  thought  proper.  I  fired  my  mus- 
ket. The  prisoners  closed  the  gates  after  them,  which  we 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        687 

opened,  and  we  received  orders  from  the  commanding 
officer  to  charge  the  men  to  their  prisons.  No  muskets 
were  fired  in  compelling  them  to  their  prisons.1  Just 
before  the  firing  the  prisoners  were  throwing  stones, 
and  insulting  the  soldiers.  Saw  no  prisoners  attempt- 
ing to  wrest  the  arms  from  the  soldiers.  Several  shots 
were  fired  into  No.  3 — they  were  fired  into  the  doorway. 
I  heard  no  order  given  for  this  fire,  and  heard  none 
to  cease  firing  ;  there  was  much  disturbance  among  the 
prisoners  going  in,  and  a  stone  was  thrown  out." 

William  Smith,  private  in  the  ist  Somerset  Militia. 
"  I  heard  no  order  to  fire.  The  firing  was  in  an  inde- 
pendent manner,  one  after  another,  till  nearly  all  the 
guard  had  fired,  and  then  they  loaded  again.  No  order 
was  given  to  fire." 

John  Tutt,  private.  "  Can't  say  exactly  who  ordered 
us  to  charge,  but  think  it  was  Captain  Shortland's 
voice.  .  .  .  While  charging,  a  stone  knocked  off  my 
cap.  ...  I  heard  the  order  for  the  firing  in  the  square  ; 
it  commenced  while  I  was  picking  up  my  cap." 

William  Rowles,  private.  "Captain  Shortland  gave 
the  order  to  charge.  ...  I  heard  an  order  to  fire,  but 
don't  know  from  whom.  ...  I  entered  the  prison  yard, 
saw  a  soldier  level  his  musket  into  prison  No.  3.  I 
heard  no  order  to  the  soldier  to  fire  into  No.  3  ;  saw  no 
officer  there  at  this  time." 

John  Hamlet,  private.  "  I  heard  the  order  to  charge 
by  Capt.  Shortland.  ...  I  was  struck  by  a  stone  in 
advancing.  ...  I  heard  an  order  to  fire  given  before 
any  firing  took  place,  but  don't  know  by  whom." 

John  Williams,  sergeant.  "  I  heard  no  order  to  fire  ; 
our  guard  seeing  the  state  the  prisoners  were  in  began 
firing  of  their  own  accord." 

1  This  is  contrary  to  the  general  evidence,  and  contrary  to  his  subse- 
quent admission. 


688  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

John  Tivyford  Jolliffj  major  commanding,  handed  in  a 
written  statement,  dated  7  April,  1815:  "  Yesterday 
evening,  between  the  hours  of  six  and  seven  o'clock, 
soon  after  the  officers'  dinner,  the  mess- waiter  came 
into  the  mess-room  and  said  that  the  American 
prisoners  had  broken  out  of  the  prison,  and  were 
attempting  their  escape.  I  immediately  ordered  the 
troops  composing  the  garrison  to  fall  in  at  the  alarm 
post.  Whilst  the  troops  were  forming,  I  heard  several 
shots  fired,  upon  which  I  immediately  took  the  grena- 
diers and  proceeded  to  the  west  guard.  .  .  .  Upon  my 
arrival  several  of  the  troops  were  formed  in  the  market- 
place, and  had  fired  some  shots.  I  immediately  called 
out  to  them  to  cease  firing,  and  finding  that  the  prisoners 
still  refused  to  go  into  their  prison,  I  took  a  party 
of  grenadiers  and  went  into  two  of  the  prison  yards, 
and  told  the  soldiers  [prisoners?]  to  go  into  their 
prisons,  which  they  very  reluctantly  did.  Several 
stones  were  thrown  at  the  military.  .  .  .  The  military 
fired  a  few  shot  at  the  prisoners  in  the  yard,  in  con- 
sequence of  their  throwing  stones  and  refusing  to  go 
into  the  prison,  but  the  firing  was  without  any  orders, 
and  I  conceive  took  place  owing  to  the  military  being 
so  exasperated.  As  soon  as  the  prisoners  were  all  gone 
into  their  different  prisons  and  properly  secured,  I 
returned  to  the  barracks."  He  added,  "Several  shots 
were  fired  in  the  prison  yards,  but  entirely  without  any 
command." 

George  Pett^  sergeant,  testified  to  the  efforts  made  by 
Major  Joliffe  to  put  an  end  to  the  firing. 

Henry  Burgoyne,  private,  was  on  the  platform  when 
the  alarm  bell  rang,  but  left  it  for  the  Market  Square. 
"  I  heard  an  order  to  fire,  but  don't  know  who  gave  it." 

Edward  Jackson^  private  of  the  Derby  Militia,  was  on 
the  platform.  "I  think  there  had  been  two  volleys  in 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        689 

the  Market  Square  before  the  men  on  the  platform 
fired.  No  order  was  given  to  fire  on  my  platform  ;  to 
the  best  of  my  recollection  I  think  I  heard  a  command 
1  to  commence  firing  from  the  right.'  I  saw  no  tumult 
in  the  yard  before  the  firing." 

Thomas  Burgess  Mott,  prisoner,  gave  unimportant 
evidence.  "I  did  not  hear  the  horn  sound  before  the 
firing." 

Walter  Cotton,  prisoner  and  one  of  the  Committee, 
did  not  hear  the  horn.  Entirely  repudiated  any  inten- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  prisoners  to  break  out ;  he  com- 
plained of  acts  of  barbarity  committed  previously  by 
Captain  Shortland  ;  but  gave  no  evidence  relative  to 
the  "  massacre." 

William  Hobart,  one  of  the  Prisoners'  Committee,  had 
not  heard  the  horn  sound  before  the  alarm  bell  rang. 
Hearing  the  bell,  he  went  out  to  know  the  cause,  but 
did  not  pass  into  the  Market  Square,  though  within  a 
few  yards  of  the  gate  ;  and  finding  there  was  danger 
returned  to  his  ward.  He  also  complained  of  acts  of 
barbarity  previously  committed  by  the  Governor. 

William  B.  Orne,  one  of  the  Committee,  gave  no 
evidence  of  importance. 

Niel  M^Kinnon^  prisoner.  "  I  heard  an  order  given 
to  charge  and  fire,  but  don't  know  by  whom."  Seeing 
a  man,  Haywood,  killed,  he  went  to  the  gate  to  speak 
to  Captain  Shortland,  and  begged  him  to  make  the 
firing  cease.  He  told  Orne  to  go  to  his  prison.  "I 
went  down  to  No.  4  yard  ;  while  going  down  the  yard 
a  volley  was  fired  into  it  by  the  soldiers  in  the  Market 
Square ;  there  were  many  prisoners  then  in  the  yard 
.  .  .  Was  going  up  the  yard,  when  I  met  a  party  of 
military  with  an  officer,  driving  along  four  or  five  pri- 
soners. I  went  up  to  the  officer,  who  I  understood  was 
Major  Joliffe,  and  remonstrated  with  him  on  the  harsh 

2   Y 


690  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

treatment  the  prisoners  were  receiving.  He  put  his  fist 
in  my  face,  and  swore  '  By  God,  they  would  not  be 
trifled  with  any  longer  by  us.'  I  was  driven  with  the 
rest  into  No.  4.  I  entered  the  prison  with  my  face  to 
the  soldiers  ...  at  that  moment  a  musket  was  fired 
close  to  me,  which  wounded  a  little  boy,  who  screamed 
and  dropped  down  ;  he  died  next  day."  He  repudiated 
any  intent  of  the  prisoners  to  escape. 

John  G.  Gatchell,  prisoner.  "I  heard  an  order  to 
fire,  but  don't  know  by  whom ;  the  first  volley  one  man 
fell.  I  went  to  him  ;  he  said  he  was  wounded  in  the 
breast.  I  called  assistance,  and  was  trying  to  get  him 
to  the  receiving-house,  when  Captain  Shortland  entered 
No.  7  gate  with  two  soldiers,  and  said  something  which 
induced  the  two  others  to  run  away  and  leave  the 
wounded  man  with  me  ;  upon  which  Captain  Short- 
land,  seeing  I  did  not  run,  said,  '  Kill  the  d d 

rascal ! '  The  soldiers  charged  on  me,  and  a  bayonet 
pierced  my  clothes  and  skin,  going  in  about  a  quarter 
of  an  inch.  I  was  then  forced  to  leave  the  wounded 
man  and  run,  when  a  soldier  followed  me,  and  Capt. 
Shortland,  urging  him  on,  repeated  several  times, 

*  Kill  the  d d  rascal  ! '     While  running  on  I  was 

pricked  three  times,  and  would  have  been  killed,  but 
stepping  aside  the  bayonet  ran  under  my  arm,  and  the 
soldier  with  the  force  of  the  thrust  fell  on  his  knees,  by 
which  means  I  escaped  into  the  prison.  While  getting 
in  No.  7  I  saw  Captain  Shortland  running  down  the 
yard  towards  No.  5  with  the  soldiers,  and  heard  him 
order  them  to  fire.  He  was  facing  me  at  the  time;  was 
running  towards  No.  5,  and  ordering  them  to  fire  as 
they  ran,  which  they  did.  I  did  not  see  that  the 
soldiers  hesitated  to  fire  when  ordered;  they  did  fire. 
.  .  .  Two  soldiers  came  into  the  gate  abreast  of  Capt. 
Shortland,  but  many  followed  him,  thirty  or  forty  per- 


THE    PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        691 

haps.  After  the  soldiers  were  in  the  yard  those  on  the 
ramparts  did  not  fire.  .  .  .  While  the  prisoners  were 
running  to  No.  7  they  were  cut  off  by  a  cross-fire  from 
the  ramparts." 

Andrew  Davis,  prisoner.  "  I  went  up  to  No.  i  gate  ; 
when  I  got  there,  five  or  six  men  were  bringing  a  man, 
who  appeared  to  be  badly  wounded,  into  the  Market 
Square.  I  heard  Capt.  Shortland  order  them  to  let 
go  the  wounded  man  ;  one  of  them  (this  was  John 
Hubbard)  remonstrated  against  it,  and  Capt.  Shortland 
struck  him  with  his  fist.  The  man  then  went  outside  of 
the  gate  into  the  passage,  between  the  two  gates,  and 
said  to  Capt.  Shortland,  '  You'll  recollect  you  have 
struck  me  twice;  and  I'll  have  satisfaction  for  it?' 
Captain  Shortland  told  him  to  go  into  the  prison,  or  he 
would  order  the  men  to  fire  on  him." 

John  Odiorne,  prisoner,  had  given  evidence  before  the 
coroner.  He  repeated  now  :  "  I  heard  an  order  to  fire, 
which  was  from  Capt.  Shortland  as  near  as  I  could 
judge  of  any  man,  who  had  his  back  to  me  ;  it  was 
Captain  Shortland's  voice  ;  he  was  about  100  yards 
from  me.  I  am  as  positive  as  I  can  be  under  such 
circumstances  that  the  order  came  from  him.  Captain 
Shortland  appeared  to  be  in  a  great  passion.  When 
entering  the  square  he  looked  very  red,  and  spoke 
loud  ;  am  confident  there  was  no  disposition  to  break 
out." 

Gerard  Smith,  prisoner,  gave  no  material  evidence. 

Robert  Johnson,  prisoner.  "  I  know  Gatchell ;  I  was 
at  the  gate  No.  7  when  Captain  Shortland  spoke  to 
him.  I  ran  directly  into  the  gate  from  No.  5  ;  at  the 
first  firing  a  wounded  man  lay  about  five  yards  from  the 
gate.  Gatchell  and  two  or  three  others  came  up  to  take 
him  away  to  the  receiving-house.  When  he  got  into 
the  passage,  between  the  railings,  Captain  Shortland 


692  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

came  in  with  two  or  three  soldiers,  and  told  him  to  go 
back  or  he  would  kill  them  ;  the  soldiers  followed.  In 
rushing  in,  Capt.  Shortland  stumbled  over  the  wounded 
man  ;  Gatchell  did  not  go  away  immediately.  Capt. 
Shortland  ordered  the  soldiers  to  charge  on  him  ;  one 
did  charge  on  him,  and  another  on  me.  I  then  made 
my  escape  into  the  prison.  I  am  quite  sure  Captain 
Shortland  ordered  the  soldiers  to  charge.  I  heard  no 
abusive  language  from  Capt.  Shortland." 

James  N.  Bushfield,  prisoner,  testified  mainly  to  the 
making  the  hole  in  the  wall.  "  I  do  not  suppose  a 
man  in  the  yard  knew  there  was  arms  in  the  barrack 
yard." 

William  Clements,  prisoner.  "  I  heard  no  order  to 
fire.  ...  I  saw  Capt.  Shortland  in  the  yard,  but 
whether  it  was  him  or  the  other  officer  who  first  came  in 
I  don't  know." 

John  Hubbard,  prisoner.  "  I  was  carrying  a  wounded 
man  to  the  hospital.  Capt.  Shortland  came  up  to  me 
.  .  .  he  ordered  me  to  drop  the  man.  I  told  him  I 
should  not,  for  I  wanted  to  take  him  to  the  hospital. 
He  gave  me  a  crack  on  the  neck  with  his  fist  and 
ordered  the  soldiers  to  charge  on  us ;  I  then  went  back 
and  ran  in.  When  I  got  in  I  called  to  Capt.  Shortland 
and  told  him  '  You  will  recollect,  Sir,  you  struck  me, 
if  you  are  brought  to  account  for  this.' ' 

John  Reeves  y  prisoner.  His  evidence  is  not  particu- 
larly trustworthy,  as  he  admitted,  "I  was  rather  groggy 
that  evening.  ...  I  heard  Captain  Shortland  sing  out 
'  Fire  ! '  twice.  .  .  .  After  we  were  inside  No.  i  prison, 
being  mad  at  being  pricked  (with  a  bayonet)  I  flung  a 
stone  myself  out  at  the  soldiers.  The  soldiers  had  fired 
into  the  prison  before  I  did  so." 

William  Mitchell,  prisoner,  did  not  hear  the  horn  or 
the  alarm  bell. 


THE    PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        693 

David  Spencer  Warren,  prisoner,  who  had  given 
evidence  before  the  coroner,  now  added:  "  I  was  within 
seven  or  eight  feet  of  Captain  Shortland  when  I  heard 
him  give  orders  to  fire.  I  was  inside  my  own  prison 
yard  and  Capt.  Shortland  was  close  to  the  gate  ;  that 
was  the  first  firing  I  heard  ;  there  had  been  none  before. 
Soldiers  had  broken  up  their  line  when  Captain  Short- 
land  led  them  into  the  prison  yard.  Captain  Shortland 
was  at  the  head  of  them,  when  I  heard  him  tell  the  men 
to  fire.  They  did  not  fire  the  first  time  he  said  '  Fire !'; 
it  was  about  a  minute  afterwards  before  they  fired.  He 
said  *  Fire  !'  three  times."  He  repeated  his  story  of 
Shortland  taking  hold  of  the  musket. 

Richard  Walker,  private  of  the  Derby  Militia.  "I 
heard  no  order  to  fire  ;  first  one  musket  was  fired  ;  it 
was  by  a  sentry  posted  at  the  bottom  of  the  square,  in 
consequence  of  the  prisoners  abusing  him.  I  saw  this. 
I  saw  them  throw  no  stones  before,  but  after  it  was  fired 
they  did.  It  might  be  two  minutes  before  there  was 
firing  again.  As  soon  as  the  prisoners  threw  stones 
there  was  more  firing.  Don't  recollect  I  heard  any 
order  to  fire.  Heard  several  call  out  *  Fire  ! '  and  sup- 
posed it  might  be  the  prisoners  who  were  calling  out. 
.  .  .  Saw  Capt.  Shortland  come  down,  break  through 
the  guard,  and  heard  him  order  them  to  cease  firing." 

William  Ward,  private  in  the  Derby  Militia.  "I 
came  up  just  after  (the  firing  had  begun).  Capt.  Short- 
land,  after  it  had  continued  some  time,  came  up  and 
ordered  the  soldiers  to  cease  firing.  They  immediately 
ceased." 

Some  turnkeys  were  examined,  but  their  evidence 
was  immaterial,  as  they  were  employed  elsewhere  or 
in  taking  the  wounded  to  the  hospital,  except  James 
Carley,  who  was  with  the  bread-wagon  ;  but  he  could 
say  no  more  than  that  he  saw  Shortland  come  down 


694  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"  with  his  hands  in  his  breeches'  pockets  " ;  and  William 
Wakelin,  who  deposed  to  Shortland  pushing  one  of 
the  prisoners  (James  Reeves). 

John  Bennett,  store  clerk.  "  I  heard  Captain  Short- 
land  tell  the  prisoners  in  the  market-place  to  go  back 
to  their  different  prisons,  and  say  how  sorry  he  should 
be  to  use  force.  .  .  .  Some  minutes  after  a  musket  went 
off,  and  soon  after  many  others.  I  was  then  so  near 
Capt.  Shortland  that  I  am  sure  I  should  have  heard  it 
had  he  given  the  orders  to  fire  ;  but  I  did  not,  nor  did 
I  hear  an  order  from  anybody.  I  did  not  see  the 
charge." 

John  Collard,  sergeant  of  the  ist  Somerset  Militia, 
heard  Shortland  give  the  order  to  charge.  "  An  order 
was  then  given  to  fire  on  them  (the  prisoners) ;  I  heard 
the  word  given  to  fire  by  some  one ;  I  think  the  word 
given  was  in  my  rear.  .  .  .  The  prisoners  were  crying 
out  'Fire!'  I  could  not  then  see  Captain  Shortland.  I 
did  not  look  out  for  him.  I  had  something  else  to 
think  of  when  the  order  to  fire  was  given.  Two  or 
three  men  fired  ;  immediately  they  obeyed  the  order  ; 
one  musket  was  discharged  first,  and  one  or  two  very 
soon  after.  ...  I  think  the  soldiers  fired  over  their 

heads;  then  some  prisoner  or  prisoners  said,  'You 

why  don't  you  fire?  You  have  nothing  but  blank  cart- 
ridges.' Afterwards  the  firing  became  general,  and 
the  prisoners  were  driven  into  the  yard.  I  heard  no 
word  of  command  for  the  second  firing  ;  the  firing  was 
not  in  a  volley,  but  in  small  numbers  at  a  time.  ...  I 
know  nothing  of  what  happened  afterwards  in  the 
prison  yard." 

Stephen  Lapthorny  private  in  the  ist  Somersetshire 
Militia.  "I  heard  an  order  given  to  fire,  but  don't 
know  who  gave  it.  I  can't  say  whose  voice  it  was  ;  am 
not  sure  whether  it  was  from  the  prisoners  or  the 


THE   PRINCETOWN   MASSACRE        695 

military.  ...  I  heard  Major  Joliffe  give  orders  to  cease 
firing." 

John  Soathern,  private  in  the  Derby  Militia.  "We 
went  close  to  the  railings ;  my  bayonet  pricked  them  ; 
when  we  got  there,  the  prisoners  began  throwing 
stones  ;  one  stone  struck  me.  Just  then  the  firing  com- 
menced. After  some  time  Capt.  Shortland  came  in 
front  and  said,  holding  his  hands  up,  *  For  God's  sake, 
men,  cease  firing.'  Captain  Shortland  was  not  near  me 
when  it  commenced.  The  order  to  fire  was  given  on 
the  left,  and  it  passed  through  the  ranks  one  after 
another." 

Lieutenant  Avelyne,  of  ist  Somerset  Militia.  "  When 
I  came  into  the  Market  Square  with  Captain  Shortland 
the  prisoners  had  burst  No.  i  gate  and  were  rushing 
through  in  a  crowd.  .  .  .  Capt.  Shortland  went  forward 
to  speak  to  them.  .  .  .  The  soldiers  did  not  charge  by 
my  order,  nor  did  I  hear  Capt.  Shortland  order  it.  I 
considered  myself  under  Capt.  Shortland's  orders.  .  .  . 
I  heard  the  first  musket  fired.  I  could  not  see  where 
it  was  fired  from.  .  .  .  There  was  at  first  a  single  shot, 
and  almost  instantly  after  several  others  were  fired. 
I  heard  no  distinct  order  to  fire.  ...  I  did  not  go  into 
the  prison  yard." 

Lieutenant  Forty 'e,  of  ist  Somerset  Militia.  "My 
guard  took  up  the  firing  from  others  without  any 
orders." 

Cornelius  Rowe,  prisoner.  "  I  saw  the  military  come 
down  the  square  and  heard  Capt.  Shortland  order  them 
to  charge." 

Thomas  Tindaley  prisoner.  "I  heard  Captain  Short- 
land  give  orders  to  fire  ...  he  gave  orders  twice  to 
fire.  I  was  not  ten  steps  from  him  when  I  heard  him. 
I  heard  every  word  he  said  ;  I  saw  him  plainly  ;  the 
firing  commenced  by  one  musket  first,  then  two,  and 


696  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

afterwards  a  whole  volley.  The  firing  began  when 
Captain  Shortland  gave  the  word  the  second  time. 
I  heard  him  tell  the  soldiers  to  fire  low.  He  was  then 
standing  inside  the  muzzles  of  the  foremost  muskets. 
When  I  heard  the  order  to  fire  I  was  about  the  middle  of 
gate  No.  4  ;  the  soldiers  charged  up  to  the  railings  and 
then  fell  back  four  or  five  paces,  when  Capt.  Shortland 
gave  the  order  to  fire." 

The  evidence  of  Captain  Shortland  has  been  already 
given.  He  denied  the  truth  of  Gatchell's  statements 
that  he  had  run  down  the  yard  ;  and  as  to  that  of 
Hubbard,  he  would  only  admit  that  he  had  pushed, 
not  struck  him. 

In  reviewing  the  depositions  it  appears  evident  that 
the  American  witnesses  were  hostile  to  the  Governor, 
and  that  their  bitterness  of  feeling  coloured  their  testi- 
mony. There  is  evidence  that  Captain  Shortland  en- 
tered the  inner  yard,  though  he  denied  it ;  but  that 
Major  Joliffe  was  there  is  certain,  and  it  cannot  be  ad- 
mitted that  he  acted  with  the  promptitude  that  he 
should  have  displayed.  It  is  certain  that  by  this  time 
the  soldiers  had  got  out  of  control,  and  it  was  no  doubt 
difficult  to  restrain  them. 

Captain  Shortland  was  not  really  a  brutal  Gover- 
nor, and  the  barbarities  of  which  he  was  accused  were 
not  barbarities  at  all,  but  the  exercise  of  very  necessary 
discipline.  But  he  was  lacking  in  capacity  for  such 
a  responsible  post,  at  such  a  time. 

So  the  British  Government  must  have  considered 
him,  for  he  was  promoted  to  be  Superintendent  of  Port 
Royal  Dockyard  in  Jamaica,  where  he  died  of  yellow 
fever  in  1825. 

The  most  thoroughly  reliable  authority  for  the 
"  massacre"  is  the  "  Message  from  the  President  of 
the  United  States,  transmitting  a  Report  of  the  Secre- 


THE   PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        697 

tary  of  State,  prepared  in  obedience  to  a  Resolution  of 
the  House  of  Representatives  of  the  4th  inst.,  in 
relation  to  the  Transactions  at  Dartmoor  Prison,  in  the 
month  of  April  last,  so  far  as  the  American  Prisoners 
of  war,  there  confined,  were  affected  by  such  Transac- 
tions," January  31,  1816,  "  Read  and  ordered  to  lie 
upon  the  table,"  Washington,  1816.  Next  come 
"The  Prisoners'  Memoirs,  or  Dartmoor  Prison;  con- 
taining a  Complete  and  Impartial  History  of  the  entire 
captivity  of  the  Americans  in  England,  from  the  com- 
mencement of  the  late  War  between  the  United  States 
and  Great  Britain,  until  all  Prisoners  were  released  by 
the  treaty  of  Ghent.  Also  a  particular  detail  of  all  the 
occurrences  relative  to  that  Horrid  Massacre  at  Dart- 
moor, on  the  fatal  evening  of  the  6th  April,  1815.  The 
whole  carefully  compiled  from  the  Journal  of  Charles 
Andrews,  a  Prisoner  in  England  from  the  commence- 
ment of  the  War,  until  the  release  of  all  the  Prisoners." 
New  York,  1815. 

According  to  him  269  American  prisoners  died  on 
Dartmoor  between  April,  1813,  and  20  April,  1815,  and 
twenty-one  succeeded  in  making  their  escape. 

Waterhouse  (Henry),  Journal  of  a   Young  Man  of 
Massachusetts,  confined  at  Dartmoor  Prison.    Boston, 
1816. 

He  arrived  at  the  Dartmoor  Prison  but  a  short  while 
before  the  outbreak.  His  account  confirms  that  of 
Andrews.  He  gives  the  Remonstrance  of  the  prisoners 
on  the  hasty  and  hardly  impartial  manner  in  which  the 
Commissioners  investigated  the  circumstances. 

The  Dartmoor  Massacre,  by  I.  H.  W.  (Isaac  H. 
Williamson,  of  New  Jersey),  1815.  This  is,  however, 
a  mere  rhymed  account,  based  on  the  narrative  in  the 
Boston  papers  and  the  New  York  Commercial  Advertiser 
of  6  June,  1815.  "  Being  the  Authentic  and  Particular 


698  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Account  of  the  tragic  Massacre  at  Dartmoor  Prison  in 
England,  on  the  6th  April  last  (1815),  in  which  sixty- 
seven  American  sailors,  prisoners  there,  fell  the  victims 
to  the  jailor's  revenge,  for  obtaining  their  due  allowance 
of  bread  which  had  been  withheld  from  them  by  the 
jailor's  orders." 

Melish  (John),  Description  of  Dartmoor  Prison. 
Philadelphia,  1815. 

He  confirms  the  account  of  Andrews,  and  insists  that 
the  examination  was  not  properly  and  honestly  carried 
out ;  and  he  asserts  positively  that  Capt.  Shortland 
gave  the  order  to  fire. 

Justin  Winsor,  in  his  Narrative  and  Critical  History 
of  America,  has  treated  of  the  matter  in  a  temperate 
spirit. 

I  subjoin  the  names  of  those  killed  and  those 
wounded. 

KILLED  :  John  Haywood,  Thomas  Jackson,  John  Wash- 
ington, James  Mann,  Joseph  Toker  Johnson,  William 
Leverage,  and  James  Campbell. 

WOUNDED  :  Thomas  Smith,  needed  amputation  of 
the  thigh.  Philip  Ford,  severely  wounded  in  the  back. 
John  Gray,  arm  had  to  be  amputated.  Robert  Willet 
Tawney,  required  to  have  the  thigh  amputated.  James 
Bell,  bayonet  wound  in  the  thigh.  Thomas  Truely, 
gun-shot  wound  in  thigh  and  other  serious  injury. 
Joseph  Beyeck,  gun-shot  wound  in  the  thigh,  through 
which  the  ball  passed.  John  Willet,  fractured  hip 
and  shattered  upper  jaw.  James  Esdell,  gun-shot 
wound  in  the  hip.  Henry  Montcalm,  gun-shot  wound 
in  the  knee.  Frederick  Howard,  gun-shot  wound  in 
the  leg.  William  Penn,  gun-shot  wound  in  the  thigh. 
Robert  Fittey,  gun-shot  wound  in  the  penis.  Cornelius 
Garrison,  gun-shot  wound  in  the  thigh.  Edward 
Whittlebanks,  bayonet  wound  in  the  back,  producing 


THE    PRINCETOWN    MASSACRE        699 

paralysis  in  the  lower  extremities.  James  Turnbull, 
amputated  arm.  Stephen  Phipps,  bayonet  wounds  in 
abdomen  and  thigh.  James  Wells,  gun-shot  fracture 
of  sacrum  and  gun-shot  fracture  of  both  bones 
of  the  left  arm.  Caleb  Codding,  gun-shot  wound  of 
the  leg.  Edward  Gardner,  gun-shot  fracture  of  left 
arm.  Jacob  Davis,  gun-shot  wound  of  the  thigh. 
John  Hagabets,  gun-shot  wound  of  the  hip.  Peter 
Wilson,  gun-shot  fracture  of  the  hand.  John  Perry, 
gun-shot  wound  of  the  shoulder.  John  Peach,  gun- 
shot wound  of  the  thigh.  John  Roberts,  gun-shot 
wound  of  the  thigh.  John  Gair,  amputated  thigh. 
Ephraim  Lincoln,  gun-shot  wound  of  the  knee.  John 
Wilson,  bayonet  wound.  William  Blake,  bayonet 
wound. 

The  rest  were  not  seriously  wounded. 


CAPTAIN   JOHN    PALK 

IN  the  forties  and  fifties  no  man  was  better  known 
as  a  character  in  Tavistock  and  on  the  Moor  than 
Captain  Palk,  or,  as  he  was  usually  designated, 
Quaker  Palk.     He  was  a  sturdy,  thick-set  man 
with  a  shrewd  face,  sharp  keen  eyes,  and  hair  short  cut 
and  turning  grey. 

He  began  life  as  a  miner  on  his  own  account  at 
Birch  Tor  and  Vitifer,  between  the  Warren  Inn  and 
Moreton  Hampstead.  To  any  man  travelling  over 
Dartmoor  along  the  main  road  to  the  latter  town, 
crossing  that  portion  of  the  Moor  where  rise  the  head- 
waters of  the  West  Webburn,  the  aspect  of  the  valley 
and  hillsides  must  appear  strange,  welted  as  they  are 
with  old  Streamworks  and  mine-heaps.  Just  beyond 
the  inn  are  the  remains  of  the  King's  Oven  ;  this  was 
the  ancient  Furnum  Regis,  the  tin-smelting  place,  which 
tin  was  the  royal  due.  Here  there  is  a  large  pound, 
in  one  portion  of  the  arc  of  which  are  the  remains  of 
a  circle  of  upright  stones,  enclosing  a  cairn  and  the 
relics  of  a  kistvaen ;  a  beautiful  flint  scraper  has 
been  found  wedged  between  the  stones  of  the  kistvaen. 
The  oven  itself  has  been  destroyed,  and  the  stones 
carried  off  for  the  construction  of  the  buildings  of 
Bush  Down  Mine,  which  are  hard  by,  but  are  now  in 
ruins.  On  the  highest  bit  of  the  down  is  a  rude 
ancient  cross  called  Bennett's  Cross,  with  W.B.  on  the 
face,  carved  in  modern  letters,  to  indicate  that  it  forms 
one  of  the  boundaries  of  Headland  Warren.  It  is  also 

700 


CAPTAIN   JOHN    PALK  701 

a  boundary  mark  of  the  parish  of  North  Bovey,  and 
of  the  ground  over  which  the  rights  belonging  to 
Vitifer  Mine  extended.  The  mine  works  are  of  many 
ages,  some  very  ancient,  overgrown  with  heather  and 
gorse  bushes  ;  others  are  more  recent  and  show  raw 
and  white  against  the  turf  and  heather.  Above  the 
sources  of  the  Webburn  rises  Birch  Tor,  crowned  by 
a  grey  cairn,  its  flanks  dense  with  whortle  bushes,  that 
supply  richer  and  larger  purple  berries  than  almost 
any  Moor  slope.  Birch  Tor  is  connected  with  Challa- 
combe  Common,  a  swelling  hill  to  the  south,  by  a  neck 
of  land  that  has  been  cut  through  by  miners,  thereby 
destroying  the  first  portion  of  a  remarkable  series  of 
stone  rows  leading  to  a  menhir.  The  cuttings  of  the 
searchers  after  tin  to  the  west  are  deep,  and  here  nest 
ravens  to  this  day.  The  slender  stream  that  trickles 
down  the  depression  feeds  the  Webburn.  From  the 
neck  of  land  can  be  discerned  to  the  east  the  remark- 
able enclosure  of  Grimspound,  pertaining  to  the  Early 
Bronze  period. 

As  already  said,  John  Palk  worked  as  a  miner  "on 
his  own  hook "  at  Birch  Tor,  and  found  a  good  deal 
of  tin.  Finding  that  he  needed  capital  he  induced  the 
Davys  of  Cornwall,  who  were  his  kinsmen,  to  enter 
into  partnership  with  him.  Richard  Davy  was  subse- 
quently M.P.  for  Cornwall.  The  Davys  became  then 
possessors  of  the  mines  of  Vitifer  and  Birch  Tor. 
Call  after  call  was  made  on  them  for  money  to  develop 
the  mines,  and  the  returns  were  insignificant.  They 
became  impatient,  and  considered  the  venture  un- 
profitable. On  one  occasion,  when  their  patience  was 
exhausted,  Palk  visited  them,  and  showed  as  usual  an 
unsatisfactory  balance  sheet,  and  made  a  demand  for 
more  money. 

Richard  Davy  was  angry,  and  exclaimed,  "  Hang  it, 


702  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Palk,  I  wish  you  would  take  the  confounded  business 
off  our  hands,  and  make  what  you  can  of  it,"  and  they 
offered  it  to  him  for  a  ridiculously  small  sum. 

Quaker  Palk  hummed  and  hah'd,  said,  "  Friend, 
I  am  a  poor  man,  and  cannot  raise  so  much,  but  by 
the  blessing  of  the  Lord  I  would  like  to  try  to  earn  a 
bit  of  bread  from  it  to  put  into  my  mouth.  Will  thee 
not  bate  the  price  to  the  level  of  my  means  ?  " 

Eventually  he  bought  the  whole  rights  over  Vitifer 
and  Birch  Tor.  This  was  precisely  what  he  had  been 
aiming  at.  He  knew  that  there  was  plenty  of  tin  there, 
but  he  had  hitherto  avoided  following  out  the  "  keenly  " 
lodes,  and  exploited  only  the  poor  veins. 

No  sooner  was  the  right  his  own  than  the  complexion 
of  the  mine  altered,  and  he  is  computed  to  have  made 
from  £60,000  to  £80,000  out  of  it,  and  he  retained 
Vitifer  and  Birch  Tor  mines  to  his  death.  He  also 
secured  rights  in  Drake  Walls,  and  he  had  a  smelting 
house  there  and  also  in  Crown  Dale,  below  Tavistock 
on  the  Tavy. 

Being  flush  of  money,  he  erected  Palk's  Buildings  in 
Tavistock  as  well  as  several  other  houses,  and  he 
bought  Baggator  farm  in  Petertavy,  and  Narrator  in 
Sheepstor  parish. 

Quaker  Palk  was  a  sturdy  teetotaller,  and  a  lecturer 
on  the  subject,  but  when  he  came  out  to  Vitifer,  he 
would  call  in  at  the  Warren  Inn,  then  kept  by  a  man 
named  Warne,  himself  an  interesting  character,  and 
mix  himself  a  stiff  glass  of  grog.  On  one  occasion  he 
had  taken  out  with  him  Mr.  John  Pearce  of  Tavistock, 
and  they  entered  the  tavern.  Pearce  noticed  that 
Captain  Palk,  in  helping  himself  to  brandy,  put  his 
hand  round  the  glass,  to  hide  the  quantity  he  poured 
in,  but  when  the  brown  liquid  rose  above  his  palm, 
Mr.  Pearce  stared  and  uttered  an  exclamation. 


CAPTAIN   JOHN    PALK  703 

"  Ah,  John  Pearce,"  said  Palk,  "  I  tell  thee  that  the 
Warren  Inn  is  the  highest  public-house  in  all  England, 
and  one  must  live  up  to  one's  elevation." 

On  his  return  to  Tavistock  he  would  as  likely  as  not 
appear  on  a  platform  and  harangue  on  total  abstinence. 

The  story  is  told,  I  believe,  of  Captain  Palk,  that 
on  his  marriage  he  opened  a  drawer,  drew  out  a  pair 
of  breeches,  flung  them  to  his  wife  with,  "  Molly,  put 
them  breeches  on." 

"  Why,  John,  be  thou  mazed  ?  " 

"  I  tell  thee,  thou  hast  sworn  to  obey.  Put  them  on 
this  moment." 

After  some  further  remonstrance  and  hesitation,  the 
wife  complied. 

"  How  dost  thou  think  they  fit  thee,  Molly?  " 

"  Why,  John,  not  at  all." 

"  Then,  Molly,  never  thee  try  to  wear  'em,  as  long  as 
we  are  together.  The  breeches  pertain  to  me,  and  to  me 
only." 

In  driving  to  Vitifer  one  winter's  day,  the  snow  came 
on,  and  on  mounting  Merripit  Hill  he  and  his  horse 
were  exhausted,  and  could  no  longer  face  the  snow- 
laden  blast,  and  he  drew  aside  into  a  sand-pit  that  opened 
on  to  the  road.  The  snow  accumulated,  a  drift  was 
formed,  and  they  would  have  been  buried,  had  not 
some  miners  passing  come  to  the  rescue  and  extricated 
him  and  his  trap  and  horse. 

He  had  some  stout  Moor  men  working  under  him. 
Joe  Hamlyn  had  mined  at  Birch  Tor  for  seventy-five 
years  in  1864.  Jacob  German  had  been  on  the  same 
works  for  sixty  years,  and  had  left  them  only  once,  and 
that  for  a  single  month  to  do  navvy's  work  on  the  line 
to  Moreton  from  Newton  Abbot. 

Palk  liked  a  hare,  when  he  could  get  one,  and  Jacob 
could  generally  provide  him  with  one. 


704  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"Oh,  Jacob,"  Palk  would  say,  "I  hope  thou  hast 
not  been  poaching." 

"  Poaching  !  "  Jacob  would  exclaim  ;  "  Lord,  sir,  if  a 
hare  runs  across  the  road,  I  may  knock  un  on  the  head, 
I  reckon,  and  no  one  say  nort." 

"  I  should  like  to  know  just  where  it  was— as  a  study 
in  nat'ral  history." 

"  Well,  if  you  must  know,  Cap'n,  it  were  in  Buckland- 
on-the-Moor,  Squire  Bastard's  woods." 

"  I  dare  say,  friend,  it  will  be  all  the  fatter  and  better 
eating." 

In  these  Buckland  Woods  larch  grew  finer  than 
almost  anywhere  else  in  England,  and  the  timber 
was  obtained  thence  for  Vitifer  and  Birch  Tor  mines. 
Some  forty  years  ago,  as  much  as  a  hundred  and  twenty 
feet  of  timber  was  got  out  of  a  single  tree. 

"  Well,"  said  Palk,  "  I've  had  Squire  Bastard's  larch 
wood  and  obliged  him.  The  trees  grew  too  thick. 
Hares  there  too  thick.  It's  a  favour  to  him  to  thin  them 
out  for  me.  One  hand  washes  the  other." 

Palk  was  an  assiduous  attendant  at  the  Quakers' 
Annual  Meetings,  both  in  Devon  and  in  Cornwall. 
That  of  Cornwall  was  held  at  S.  Austell,  and  it  fell  at 
the  time  when  the  hay  was  cut,  and  that  was  frequently 
wet,  so  that  a  rhyme  was  commonly  repeated  to  caution 
the  farmers  : — 

Now  varmer,  now  varmer, 
Take  care  ov  your  hye. 
For  'tes  the  Quakkers'  gurt  meetin'  to-dye. 

At  one  of  these  gatherings,  when  the  monthly  advices 
to  the  members  were  being  read  out,  and  there  was  one 
specially  enjoining  forbearance  from  "  vain  sports,"  up 
rose  a  lately-joined  member,  and  with  an  anxious  voice 
inquired  what  these  vain  sports  embraced.  "Now," 
said  he,  "  Do'ee  reckon  that  kissing  the  mydens 


CAPTAIN   JOHN   PALK  705 

(maidens)  in  the  hye  (hay)  be  a  vain  sport? — vor  my 
part  I  can't  see  it." 

There  was  unquestionably  a  vast  amount  of  roguery 
in  the  mining  business  in  Devon  and  Cornwall.  Salting 
a  mine,  so  as  to  induce  capitalists  to  embark  their  money 
in  one,  was  by  no  means  an  uncommon  practice.  But 
occasionally  a  specialist  was  too  sharp  to  be  taken  in. 
"Ah!"  said  one,  handling  the  ore  that  professed  to 
have  been  raised  in  a  new  mine  on  Dartmoor,  "Carn- 
brea  tin.  How  the  dickens  did  that  find  its  way  up 
here?" 

Originally  the  tin  was  worked  by  a  small  company  of 
adventurers  with  very  simple  machinery,  and  the 
adventurers  shared  the  profits  among  themselves.  The 
tin  lodes  on  Dartmoor  are  thin,  and  in  my  opinion  and 
in  that  of  those  who  know  best,  will  never  pay  for 
expensive  working  with  costly  plant.  But  little  men, 
working  for  themselves,  have  made  mining  pay  there. 
The  abandoned  engine-houses,  huge  wheels,  and  stamp- 
ing pans  show  where  large  ventures  have  everywhere 
proved  to  be  failures. 

Chaw  Gully,  that  runs  up  between  Birch  Tor  and 
Challacombe  Down,  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
examples  of  "old  men's  workings"  that  there  are  upon 
Dartmoor.  It  extends  about  half  a  mile.  In  places 
it  is  some  forty  feet  deep,  and  two  or  three  hundred  feet 
wide.  In  the  bottom  are  several  circular  shafts,  lined 
with  stones  dry-laid,  which  communicate  with  a  dip 
formerly  used  for  drainage  purposes.  There  are  no 
"jumper"  marks  on  the  rocks  in  Chaw  Gully.  In 
following  the  shallow  lode  of  tin  the  old  adventurers 
must  have  torn  out  the  rock  with  wedges.  Sometimes 
fire  was  applied  to  the  rock  and  then  water  was  dashed 
on  it  to  crack  it ;  as  softened  by  the  heat  it  was  more 
easily  worked.  Another  system  of  splitting  the  granite 

2   Z 


706  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

was  to  cut  a  groove  on  the  surface  of  the  rock,  fill  that 
with  quicklime,  and  then  throw  on  water.  The  swelling 
of  the  lime  rent  the  rock. 

The  old  works  in  Chaw  Gully  were  taken  in  hand 
by  Captain  Palk,  who  deepened  and  successfully  worked 
a  shaft  there.  A  good  deal  of  money  was  made,  but 
"the  eyes  of  the  mine  were  picked  out,"  and  it  is 
now,  like  nearly  all  the  Dartmoor  mines,  a  "  knacked 
bal,"  a  picture  of  desolation,  and  the  ravens  now  build 
in  the  chasm,  on  a  ledge  of  the  rock.1 

Palk  was  intimate  with  Jonas  Coaker,  the  "Poet  of 
the  Moor,"  as  he  styled  himself.  His  poetry  was,  how- 
ever, only  rhyme,  and  that  often  bad. 

"What's  the  difference  between  poetry  and  blank 
verse?"  asked  one  miner  of  another. 

"  Why,  the  difference  be  this,"  was  the  reply.  "  Ef 
you  say,  He  went  up  to  the  mill.dam 

And  failed  down  slam, 

that,  I  reckon,  be  poetry.     But  ef  you  say  instead, 

He  went  up  to  the  mill-dam 
And  failed  down  wop, 

that's  blank  verse.     Knaw  now,  do  'ee  ?  " 

This  was  Jonas  Coaker's  conception  of  poetry.  He 
was  born  at  Hartland,  Post  Bridge,  on  23  February, 
1 80 1,  as  he  sang  : — 

I  drew  my  breath  first  on  this  moor  ; 

There  my  forefathers  dwell' d. 
Its  hills  and  dales  I've  traversed  o'er, 

Its  desert  parts  beheld. 

As  a  young  man  he  worked  on  the  Moor  building 
new-take  walls,  and  he  esteemed  himself  almost  as 
highly  in  this  capacity  as  in  knocking  out  verse.  Later 

1  Burnard  (R.),  Dartmoor  Pictorial  Records,  IV.     Plymouth,  1894. 


CAPTAIN   JOHN    PALK  707 

he  became  taverner  of  the  Warren  Inn,  that  at  that 
time  stood  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  road  to  its 
present  position.  The  miners  frequented  it,  and  they 
were  rough  customers,  drinking  hard,  fighting  and 
dancing.  On  one  occasion  they  broke  out  into  mutiny 
against  Jonas,  because  he  would  serve  out  no  more 
drink ;  they  drove  him  from  the  house,  and  he  was 
compelled  to  "hidey-peep,"  as  he  termed  it,  on  the 
Moor,  whilst  they  emptied  his  barrels.  On  another 
occasion  two  miners  fought  in  the  tavern,  with  a  fatal 
result  for  one  of  them,  but  the  survivor  was  let  off 
with  three  weeks'  imprisonment,  mainly  on  Jonas's 
evidence,  for  he  was  able  to  establish  gross  provo- 
cation. 

In  an  evil  hour  for  himself,  Jonas  pulled  down  the 
old  inn  and  built,  at  his  own  cost,  the  new  Warren  Inn 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  road.  Now  it  happened 
that  the  old  inn  had  been  on  common  land  of  the  parish 
of  North  Bovey,  but  where  he  had  built  the  new  inn 
was  on  Duchy  property.  Down  on  him  came  the  agent 
for  the  Duchy,  but  not  till  the  house  was  complete,  and 
the  last  slate  nailed  on,  and  said  to  him,  "  Now  you  are 
on  Duchy  land  you  shall  pay  rent  for  the  inn  you 
have  built  on  our  land,  without  our  gracious  permis- 
sion." 

Towards  the  end  of  his  life  Jonas  became  very  infirm 
and  blind;  his  memory  began  to  fail,  and  he  accounted 
for  this  by  saying  that  as  he  had  always  possessed  a 
genius  for  poetry,  he  supposed  he  had  overwhelmed 
his  brain  with  too  much  study.  He  died  on  12  Feb- 
ruary, 1890,  and  is  buried  at  Widdecombe.  I  say  no 
more  of  him  here,  as  I  gave  his  life  and  stories  about 
him  in  my  Dartmoor  Idylls,  1896.  There  is  as  well 
a  memoir  with  his  portrait  in  Mr.  Burnard's  Pictorial 
Records,  already  quoted. 


708  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

After  having  made  such  success  with  his  mines  about 
the  Upper  Webburn,  Quaker  Palk  became  reckless  in 
his  speculations,  and  was  soon  heavily  involved.  He 
was  kept  on  his  feet  by  Mr.  Bailey,  of  Plymouth,  and 
Joe  Matthews,  who  bought  Palk's  holding  of  Birch 
Tor  Mine.  He  died  suddenly  9  February,  1853,  aged 
fifty-nine  years. 

I  think,  but  cannot  be  sure,  that  it  was  of  John  Palk 
that  the  story  was  told  of  two  old  folks,  returning  from 
the  funeral,  when  one  said  to  the  other,  "  Sure  and  he 
was  a  very  charitable  man." 

"  I  reckon  he  were,"  replied  the  other.  "  He  always 
had  three  eggs  boiled  to  his  breakfast,  and  gave  away 
the  broth." 

His  wife  survived  him  thirty-one  years,  and  died  in 
Plymouth  24  May,  1884,  aged  eighty-five  years. 


RICHARD   WEEKES, 

GENTLEMAN    AT  ARMS    AND 

PRISONER    IN    THE    FLEET 

IN  the  parish  of  South  Tawton,  about  three  miles 
from  the  village  and  church,  and  midway  on  the 
west  road  to  North  Tawton,  stands  the  ancient 
and  interesting  mansion  of  North  Wyke.1  A 
house  so  named  was  there  as  early  as  I243,2  but  experts 
are  at  variance  as  to  the  age  of  the  several  parts  of 
the  existing  structure.  It  formed  an  inner  court,  two 
sides  of  which  were  stables  and  offices,  and  a  front 
court  enclosed  within  high  walls,  and  with  gate-house, 
porter's  lodgings,  and  domestic  chapel.  Though  the 
house  itself  lies  in  a  somewhat  sheltered  situation,  the 
drive  down  from  the  lodge  commands  a  lovely  pros- 
pect ;  and  from  the  top  of  North  Wyke  Quarry  a 
panorama  of  three-quarters  of  a  circle  extends  over 
miles  of  undulating  country,  from  the  blue  sky-line 
of  Exmoor  to  the  three  conspicuous  heights  of  the 
north-east  angle  of  Dartmoor — Yes  Tor,  Belstone,  and 
Cosdon — the  last  crowned  with  a  cairn  from  which 
beacon  fires  have  flared  out  many  a  warning  message 
to  arm  against  a  foe,  both  before  and  since  the  coming 
of  the  Armada.  From  Belstone  Cleave  bursts  forth  the 

1  For  fuller  accounts  of  the  house  and  family  see  Transactions  of  the 
Devonshire  Association,  Vols.  XXXII  and  XXXV. 

2  For  in  that  year  "  Roger  de  Nort'  Wyke  "  appears  in  the  jury  list 
of  S.T.  Hundred  (Assize  Roll,  Devon,  175,  m.  35). 

709 


710  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

river  Taw  that  borders  the  North  Wyke  lands  for  fully 
a  mile  and  a  half  of  its  course.  After  rushing  in 
foaming  stickles  from  under  Peckettsford  alias  Pack- 
saddle  Bridge,  but  before  reaching  Newlands  Weir, 
the  river  is  joined  by  a  meeker  stream  that  bounds 
North  Wyke  on  another  side.  There  is  said  to  have 
been  much  fine  timber  on  the  land  before  the  alienation 
of  the  estate,  the  story  of  which  may  now  be  related. 

In  the  history  of  the  ancient  family  of  Weekes, 
of  North  Wyke,  and  its  cadet  house  of  Honeychurch 
and  Broadwood  Kelly,  Richard  Weekes,  of  Hather- 
leigh,  of  the  latter  branch,  comes  upon  the  scene  at 
North  Wyke  in  the  character  of  the  villain  of  the 
piece  ! — a  crafty  interloper,  who  ousts  those  of  the 
rightful  line  from  their  inheritance.  He  makes  a  gallant 
appearance  and  brings  with  him  some  of  the  glamour 
of  the  Restoration  Court,  for  he  was  a  member  of 
"  the  Honourable  Corps  of  Gentlemen  at  Arms,"  or, 
as  they  were  then  called,  "  Gentlemen  Pensioners" 
of  Charles  II— a  band  of  "  fifty  gentlemen  of  blood 
and  fortune  "  who  formed  the  King's  nearest  guard. 

Richard  was  not,  indeed,  possessed  of  any  estate  ; 
but  he  was  related  to  the  Grenvilles,  Stukeleys,  and 
other  influential  families.  He  probably  learned  the 
trade  of  arms  under  his  father,  Francis  Weekes,  of 
Broadwood  Kelly,  who  in  1635  commanded  the  2nd 
Regiment  of  trained  soldiers  of  the  North  Division 
of  county  Devon. 

Possibly  his  uncle,  Dr.  John  Weekes,  Dean  of  Burian, 
chaplain  to  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  or  Dr.  Jasper 
Mayne,  the  Court  playwright  (a  native  of  Hatherleigh), 
may  have  had  a  hand  in  his  promotion. 

The  Merry  Monarch  was,  however,  a  bad  pay- 
master ;  and  Richard  focussed  a  covetous  gaze  on  the 
North  Wyke  property.  The  owner  was  a  sickly  youth, 


NORTH    WYKE 


RICHARD   WEEKES  711 

ill  qualified  to  cope  with  the  entanglements  of  debts 
and  mortgages  with  which  his  father  and  grandfather, 
in  their  devotion  to  the  Royalist  cause,  had  encumbered 
the  estate.  His  mother  and  sister,  both  strong-willed 
women,  wielded  masterfully  the  reed  they  could  not 
lean  upon.  Richard  ingratiated  himself  with  them, 
and  making  much  of  his  alleged  "near  relationship," 
which  they  afterwards  repudiated,  and  which  does  not 
appear  to  have  been  established,  seems  to  have  per- 
suaded them  that  their  own  interests,  and  the  desire 
of  the  childless  young  John,  that  North  Wyke  should 
continue  in  the  name  of  Weekes,  could  best  be  served 
by  inducing  the  said  John  to  constitute  htm,  Richard 
Weekes,  his  heir,  on  condition  of  giving  the  mother 
an  annuity  of  ;£ioo,  and  the  sister  a  marriage  portion 
of  ^"2000,  besides  paying  young  John's  debts,  amount- 
ing to  £5000,  and  his  funeral  expenses. 

Now  the  rightful  heir  was  young  John's  uncle,  John 
Weekes  of  Blackball,  but  he  had  mortally  offended 
Mistress  Weekes  immediately  on  her  widowhood,  by 
contesting  with  her  both  the  care  of  her  children  and 
the  custody  of  the  family  deed-box. 

This  latter  he  had  violently  raided,  though  he  is  said 
to  have  soon  returned  it  undespoiled,  and  without 
having  mastered  its  contents,  he  being  "  a  man  of  very 
slender  understanding  in  matters  of  the  law."  But 
"  his  specious  pretence  to  do  his  nephew  good  and 
undertake  his  tuition/'  had  been  vehemently  rejected 
by  the  mother,  to  whom  it  may  have  occurred  that  if 
little  John  and  his  sister  were  to  be  confided  to  their 
grasping  uncle's  control,  such  another  tragedy  as  that 
of  the  Babes  in  the  Wood  might  stain  the  annals  of 
Dartmoor ! 

Mistress  Weekes  who,  as  Mary  Southcote,  had 
married  before  the  settlements  were  executed,  had 


712  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

received  no  jointure.  She  could  expect  no  generosity 
from  uncle  John,  and  was  naturally  anxious  about  her 
future. 

She  accordingly  preferred — in  both  senses — Richard's 
claim,  and — apparently  by  mutual  understanding — the 
deed  by  which  young  John's  grandfather  had  entailed 
the  estate  on  the  heirs  male  was  suppressed. 

In  the  summer  of  1661,  young  John  being  evidently 
in  a  rapid  decline,  was  persuaded  to  ride  to  Plymouth 
to  be  treated  by  Dr.  Anthony  Salter,  and  his  son-in-law 
Dr.  William  Durston,  Richard's  cousin.  When  young 
John  was  in  Salter's  house,  another  cousin  of  Richard's, 
a  barrister,  was  introduced,  and  by  his  advice — and  it 
is  more  than  insinuated  under  undue  pressure — on 
29  August  John  signed  a  conveyance  of  his  estates  on 
the  prearranged  lines,  to  Salter  and  Durston  as  trustees 
on  behalf  of  Richard  Weekes  of  Hatherleigh  and  his 
heirs  for  ever.  But  John  had  sufficient  wit  to  insist 
upon  endorsing  the  settlement  with  a  clause  giving  him 
power  of  revocation. 

Shortly  after  the  execution  of  this  deed,  at  his  urgent 
request,  John  was  carried  home  to  North  Wyke  on  a 
horse-litter,  accompanied  by  Richard  of  Hatherleigh, 
Dr.  Durston,  and  others,  and  three  days  later,  i.e.  on 
or  about  i  September,  he  departed  this  life.  By  that 
time,  the  attitude  of  Katherine  Weekes,  the  sister  of 
John,  had  undergone  a  complete  volte-face.  This 
defection  may  safely  be  attributed  to  the  treacherous 
influence  of  Dr.  Salter,  who,  having  seen  North  Wyke, 
evidently  thought  that  it  might  as  well  come  into  his 
family  as  go  to  Richard  Weekes ;  for  at  this  period 
he  began  to  make  strenuous  efforts  to  bring  about  a 
marriage  between  Katherine  and  his  son,  and  she,  it  is 
said,  "did  entertain  his  son  to  be  a  suitor."  The  plan 
was  now  to  secure  the  whole  estate  to  herself.  She 


RICHARD   WEEKES  713 

accordingly  declared  that  young  John  had  always 
promised  that  she  should  be  his  heir,  and  that  on  his 
death-bed  he  had  repented  of  his  conveyance  to  Richard, 
and  had  by  word  of  mouth,  in  the  presence  of  several 
witnesses,  revoked  it. 

Scarcely  was  the  breath  out  of  the  body  of  young 
John,  says  one  deponent,  before  she  drew  from  beneath 
his  pillow  a  "  portmantea  "  containing  the  said  writing, 
and  concealed  it  with  intention  to  burn  it ;  but  Richard 
came  upstairs  into  the  room  where  she  was  with  this 
deponent  and  others,  and  took  it  from  where  it  was 
hidden,  "and  did  keep  the  same."  Thus  was  war 
openly  declared  between  Richard  Weekes  on  the  one 
side,  and  his  quondam  confederate  Salter  and  Katherine 
on  the  other. 

The  funeral  did  not  take  place  till  three  weeks  after 
the  decease,  a  fact  somewhat  remarkable,  but  not  extra- 
ordinary.1 To  do  Richard  justice,  he  had  the  funeral 
conducted  with  all  the  pomp  befitting  the  old  position  of 
the  family,  and  "was  at  about  £400  or  £500  charges 
over  it." 

On  "the  day  after  the  day  of  the  funeral,"  i.e.  on 
Sunday,  22  September,  Richard  proceeded  in  a  very 
practical  manner  to  take  possession.  A  company  of 
fifteen  or  sixteen  persons,  mostly  relations  of  the 
deceased,  had  been  invited  by  him  to  sup  in  the  hall, 
and  scarcely  was  the  meal  over  when  Richard,  pro- 
claiming that  he  was  "  now  to  do  the  Divell's  work  and 
his  own,"  rose,  and  drawing  his  sword,  commanded  all 
to  quit  the  house,  saying  that,  as  God  was  his  judge,  if 
they  did  not  presently  depart  he  would  run  them 
through.  Several  resisted,  including  Mr.  Richard 
Parker,  of  Zeal  Monachorum,  Katherine's  trustee, 
whose  brother,  Edmund  Parker,  of  Boringdon  (ancestor 

1  See  Notes  and  Queries,  10,  S.  VIII,  pp.  9,  73,  74.— E.  L.-W. 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

of  Lord  Morley)  she  eventually  married.  Katherine, 
her  mother,  and  the  other  ladies  endeavoured  to  return 
to  their  chambers,  but  Richard  Weekes,  with  bared 
sword,  stood  in  the  doorway  of  the  parlour,  from  which 
room  the  stairs  ascended  to  that  part  of  the  house  in 
which  the  deeds  were  kept,  and  swore  that  he  would 
suffer  no  one  to  go  up  the  said  stairs.  On  Katherine's 
making  a  second  attempt  to  do  so,  he  "threw  her 
violently  on  the  ground  upon  her  head."  Mr.  Parker, 
seeing  this  done  in  the  presence  of  a  justice  of  the 
peace,  Alexander  Wood,  of  North  Tawton,  rightly 
apprehended  that  he  was  a  partisan  of  Richard,  and 
determined  to  ride  off  in  quest  of  a  more  impartial 
justice. 

Stepping  out  of  the  house  in  his  "  pantables"  (pan- 
toufles,  slippers)  to  get  his  horse  in  readiness,  and 
returning  to  the  hall  door  for  his  boots,  Parker  was 
refused  admittance,  "  and  his  boots  denied  to  be  de- 
livered to  him,  although  he  desired  they  might  be 
delivered  to  him  out  of  the  window,  so  that  he  was 
forced,  having  been  indisposed  that  day,  and  by  that 
means  in  his  pantables,  to  take  his  servant's  boots, 
which  he  caused  to  be  pluckt  off  on  purpose." 

Richard  then  turned  the  guests  out  into  the  dark, 
many  of  whom,  "though  gentlewomen  of  quality," 
were  forced  to  sleep  "  at  mean  houses,  and  some  to  lie 
in  hay-lofts."  But  Katherine,  her  mother,  and  grand- 
mother were  allowed  to  sit  up  all  night  in  the  hall.  At 
about  midnight,  to  their  dismay,  Katherine  and  her  com- 
panions heard  Richard  Weekes  and  his  myrmidons  go 
up  the  stairs  and  smash  open,  "with  hatchet  and  iron 
bar,"  the  locked  doors  of  her  own  chamber  and  of  the 
muniment-room. 

Among  the  "writings"  that  Richard  thus  got  hold 
of  was  the  deed  of  entail,  which  was  her  last  weapon 


RICHARD   WEEKES  715 

against  him,  albeit  a  double-edged  one  that  might  be 
turned  against  herself,  since  by  virtue  of  that  deed  the 
estates  should  revert  to  the  inimical  uncle  John. 

In  the  morning  Richard  finally  ejected  the  ladies, 
and  barred  the  house  doors  against  them. 

The  story  of  the  legal  proceedings  that  ensued  is  too 
long  and  too  complicated  for  these  pages,  but  may  be 
summed  up  in  the  moral  that  "  possession  is  nine  points 
of  the  law."  Katherine  and  her  mother  obtained  a 
judgment  against  Richard  for  detention  of  their  per- 
sonal effects,  etc.,  for  £900,  plus  costs,  which  sum  he 
never  paid.  He  perhaps  counted  on  immunity  from 
imprisonment  by  reason  of  his  position  in  the  King's 
service.  From  a  "  State  paper"  it  appears  that  the 
Earl  of  Cleveland,  Captain  of  the  Gentlemen  Pen- 
sioners, was  applied  to  for  leave  to  arrest  Richard,  at 
the  suit  of  his  creditors,  and  refused  permission  ;  not- 
withstanding which  Richard  was  arrested  and  com- 
mitted to  the  Fleet  Prison  for  debtors.  From  the 
moment  of  his  incarceration  all  resentment  of  Richard's 
iniquities  may  well  be  quenched  in  compassion,  so 
grievous  were  the  sufferings  and  degradations  under- 
gone by  the  inmates  of  those  noisome  and  infectious 
precincts. 

The  old  Fleet  Prison  was  destroyed  by  the  Great 
Fire  of  London  on  4  September,  1666;  and  Richard 
was  probably  among  the  prisoners  who  were  tempo- 
rarily accommodated  in  Caron  House,  South  Lambeth, 
and  conveyed  back  to  the  Fleet  on  its  re-erection,  21 
January,  1668.  But — though  it  may  seem  somewhat 
audacious  to  controvert  on  this  point  the  deposition  of 
his  own  son — he  did  not  die  therein.  A  "Coram  Rege 
Roll"  of  the  King's  Bench,  dated  22-23  Charles  II, 
bears  record  that  Richard  Weekes,  of  North  Weeke, 
in  county  Devon,  was  then  in  custody  for  debt  to  one 


716  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

William  Jolly,  to  whom  he  had  given  a  bond  for  £40. 
Now  the  prison  pertaining  to  the  King's  Bench  at  that 
time  became  the  Marshalsea  Prison  in  1811.  It  adjoins 
the  burial-ground  of  St.  George's  in  the  Borough  ; 
and  in  the  registers  of  that  church,  under  Burials, 
5  February,  1670-1,  is  "  Richard  Week's,  K.B."  His 
relations  declare  that  he  "  died  not  worth  a  groat," 
and  that  a  "  gathering  "  (i.e.  a  collection)  was  made  to 
defray  the  expenses  of  his  funeral. 

The  demands  of  poetic  justice  are  met  by  the  fact 
that  Richard  Weekes,  though  virtually  possessor  of 
North  Wyke,  never  reaped  a  penny  from  it.  All 
that  it  brought  in  was  consumed  by  the  lawyers  and 
his  creditors ;  and  Chancery  suits  between  the  several 
claimants  to  the  estate  were  waged  over  it  down  to  the 
eighteenth  century. 

The  rightful  line  of  Weekes  proprietors  had  ended  in 
John,  the  wrongful  line  ended  in  another  John,  Richard's 
grandson,  who  is  accused  of  having  practised  the 
"  black  arts/'  and  who,  after  a  roving  life,  was  buried 
at  Lezant  in  Cornwall.  The  little  boys  of  the  neigh- 
bourhood, ever  since  his  time,  have  found  his  tombstone 
a  convenient  surface  for  the  game  of  marbles ;  but 
there  is  a  crack  in  it  through  which  one  of  these 
treasures  occasionally  disappears,  so  that  the  cry  has 
become  traditional,  u  There  goes  another  down  to  old 
Weekes  !  "  This  John  sold  North  Wyke,  in  considera- 
tion of  an  annuity,  to  George  Hunt  of  North  Bovey, 
who  had  married  his  sister  Elizabeth,  and  Hunt's 
grandsons  divided  the  property  and  house  into  two, 
and  sold  the  eastern  moiety  to  one  Tickell,  of  Sampford 
Courtenay,  and  the  western,  in  1786,  to  one  Andrew 
Arnold,  yeoman.  Thus  North  Wyke  was  completely 
alienated  from  the  race  that  had  built  and,  for  many 
centuries,  had  owned  it.  It  has,  however,  returned  by 


RICHARD   WEEKES  717 

purchase  to  one  of  the  old  blood  (on  the  distaff  side), 
the  Rev.  William  Wykes-Finch,  who,  by  his  extensive 
restorations  and  additions,  is  giving  the  time-worn 
place  a  fresh  start  in  local  history. 

ETHEL  LEGA-WEEKES. 


STEER    NOR'-WEST 

1HAVE  seen  a  water-colour  drawing  made  by  a 
great-aunt    of    mine,    Miss    Marianne    Snow,    of 
Belmont,  near  Exeter,  of  Torquay  before  it  was 
"  in  vented"  and  turned  into  a  fashionable  winter 
residence  and  watering-place.     It  was  a  quiet  fishing- 
village,    consisting   of  a    few    cottages,    under   richly 
wooded  hills. 

In  one  of  these  cottages,  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  at  the  time  when  this  water-colour  was  made, 
lived  a  sailor  named  Robert  Bruce. 

Bruce  is  not  a  Devonshire  name,  and  we  may 
shrewdly  suspect  that  he  was  a  Browse,  and  that  his 
shipmates  called  him  by  the  better-known  Scottish 
name,  which  sounds  almost  identical  with  Browse. 
The  Browses  formed  a  considerable  clan  about  Tor- 
quay and  Teignmouth.  But  whether  of  Scotch  origin 
or  not,  he  was  a  native  of  Torquay.  When  he  reached 
the  age  of  thirty  he  became  first  mate  of  a  ship  sail- 
ing between  Liverpool  and  St.  John,  New  Brunswick. 
On  one  of  these  periodical  voyages  westwards,  after 
having  been  at  sea  six  weeks,  and  being  near  the 
Banks  of  Newfoundland,  the  captain  and  mate,  after 
having  taken  an  observation,  went  below  into  the 
cabin  to  calculate  their  day's  work. 

The  mate,  Robert  Bruce,  absorbed  in  his  reckon- 
ings, which  did  not  answer  his  expectations,  had  not 
noticed  that  the  captain  had  risen  and  left  the  cabin  as 
soon  as  he  had  completed  his  calculations.  Without 

718 


STEER   NOR'-WEST  719 

raising  his  head,  he  called  out,  "I  say,  cap'n,  I  make 
the  latitude  and  the  longitude  to  be  so-and-so.  Not 
what  it  ought  to  be.  What  is  your  reckoning?  " 

As  he  received  no  reply,  he  repeated  the  question, 
and  glancing  over  his  shoulder  and  seeing,  as  he  sup- 
posed, the  captain  figuring  on  his  slate,  he  asked  a 
third  time,  and  again  without  eliciting  a  reply.  Sur- 
prised and  vexed,  he  stood  up,  and  to  his  inexpressible 
astonishment  saw  that  the  seated  man,  engaged  on  the 
slate,  was  not  the  captain,  but  an  entire  stranger.  He 
noted  his  features  and  his  garments,  both  wholly  differ- 
ent from  those  of  his  superior  officer.  At  the  same 
moment  the  stranger  raised  his  head  and  looked  him 
full  in  the  eyes.  The  face  was  that  of  a  man  he  had 
never  seen  before  in  his  life.  Much  disturbed,  he 
slipped  up  the  ladder,  and  seeing  the  captain,  went  to 
him,  and  in  an  agitated  voice  told  him  that  there  was  a 
total  stranger  in  the  cabin,  at  the  captain's  desk,  en- 
gaged in  writing. 

"A  stranger!"  exclaimed  the  captain.  u  Impos- 
sible !  You  must  have  been  dreaming.  The  steward 
or  second  mate  may  have  gone  down  for  aught  I 
know." 

"  No,  sir  ;  it  was  neither.  I  saw  the  man  occupying 
your  arm-chair.  He  looked  me  full  in  the  face,  and  I 
saw  him  as  plainly  as  I  see  you  now." 

"Impossible!"  said  the  captain.  "  Do  you  know 
who  he  is?" 

"Never  saw  the  man  in  my  life  before — an  utter 
stranger." 

"You  must  be  gone  daft,  Mr.  Bruce.  Why,  we 
have  been  six  weeks  at  sea,  and  you  know  every  man 
Jack  who  is  on  board." 

"I  know  that,  sir;  but  a  stranger  is  there,  I  assure 
you." 


720  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

"Go  down  again,  Mr.  Bruce,  and  ask  his  name." 

The  mate  hesitated.  "  I'm  not  a  superstitious  man," 
said  he  ;  "  but,  hang  it,  I  don't  relish  the  idea  of  facing 
him  again  alone." 

"Well,  well,"  said  the  captain,  laughing,  "I  don't 
mind  accompanying  you.  This  is  not  like  you,  Bruce, 
not  like  you  at  all — you're  not  in  liquor.  It  is  a  mere 
delusion." 

The  captain  descended  the  stairs  accompanied  by  the 
mate  ;  and,  sure  enough,  the  cabin  was  empty. 

"There  you  are,  convicted  of  dreaming,"  said  the 
former.  "  Did  not  I  tell  you  as  much?" 

"I  can't  say  how  it  was,  sir,"  replied  Bruce,  "but  I 
could  take  my  oath  on  the  Gospels  that  I  saw  a  man 
writing  on  your  slate." 

"If  he  wrote,  there  must  be  something  to  show  for 
it,"  said  the  captain,  as  he  took  up  the  slate,  and  at 
once  exclaimed,  "Why — good  God!  there  is  some- 
thing here.  Is  this  your  fist,  Mr.  Bruce?" 

The  mate  examined  the  slate,  and  there  in  plain, 
legible  characters  stood  the  words  "STEER  TO  THE 
NOR'-WEST." 

"You  have  been  playing  tricks,"  said  the  captain 
impatiently. 

"  On  my  word  as  a  man  and  a  sailor,  sir/'  replied 
Bruce,  "  I  know  no  more  about  this  matter  than  just 
what  I  told  you." 

The  captain  mused,  seated  himself,  and  handing 
over  the  slate  to  the  mate,  said,  "You  write  on  the 
back  of  this  slate,  Steer  to  the  Nor1 -West." 

Bruce  did  as  required,  and  the  captain  narrowly 
compared  the  two  writings  ;  they  differed  entirely. 

"  Send  down  the  second  mate,"  he  ordered. 

Bruce  did  as  required.  On  entering  the  cabin,  the 
captain  bade  him  write  the  same  words,  and  he  did  so. 


STEER   NOR'-WEST  721 

The  handwriting  was  again  different.  Next,  the 
steward  was  sent  for,  as  also  every  one  of  the  crew 
who  could  write,  and  the  result  was  the  same.  At 
length  the  captain  said,  "  There  must  be  a  stowaway. 
Have  the  ship  searched.  Pipe  all  hands  on  deck." 
Every  corner  of  the  vessel  was  explored,  but  all  in 
vain.  The  captain  was  more  perplexed  than  ever. 
Summoning  the  mate  to  attend  him  in  the  cabin,  and 
holding  the  slate  before  him,  he  asked  Bruce  what  he 
considered  this  might  mean. 

"  That  is  more  than  I  can  say,  sir,"  replied  Bruce, 
"  I  saw  the  man  write,  and  there  you  see  the  writing. 
There  must  be  something  in  it  we  don't  understand." 

"Well,"  said  the  captain,  "It  does  look  like  it.  We 
have  the  wind  fine,  "and  I  have  a  good  mind  to  keep 
her  away  and  see  what  comes  of  it  all." 

"  If  I  were  in  your  place,  sir,  that  is  what  I  would 
do.  It's  only  a  few  hours  lost,  at  the  worst." 

"  It  shall  be  so.  Go  and  give  the  course  Nor* -west, 
and,  Mr.  Bruce,  have  a  good  look-out  aloft ;  and  let  it 
be  a  hand  you  can  depend  upon." 

The  mate  gave  the  required  orders  ;  and  about  3 
p.m.  the  look-out  reported  an  iceberg  nearly  ahead, 
and  shortly  after,  that  he  observed  a  vessel  of  some 
sort  close  to  it.  As  they  approached,  by  aid  of  his 
telescope,  the  captain  discerned  a  dismantled  ship,  ap- 
parently wedged  into  and  frozen  to  the  ice,  and  he  was 
able  to  distinguish  a  good  many  human  beings  on  it. 
Shortly  after,  he  hove  to,  and  sent  out  boats  to  the 
relief  of  the  sufferers. 

The  vessel  proved  to  be  one  from  Quebec,  bound  to 
Liverpool,  with  passengers  on  board.  She  had  become 
entangled  in  the  ice,  and  finally  frozen  fast,  and  had 
been  in  this  condition  for  several  weeks.  She  was 
stove  in,  her  decks  swept,  and  was,  in  fact,  a  mere 
3  A 


722  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

wreck.  All  her  provisions  and  almost  all  her  water 
had  been  consumed,  and  crew  and  passengers  had 
despaired  of  being  saved,  and  looked  out  for  a  watery 
grave.  Their  gratitude  for  this  unexpected  deliverance 
was  proportionately  great. 

As  one  of  the  men,  who  had  been  brought  away  in 
the  third  boat  that  had  reached  the  wreck,  was  ascending 
the  ship's  side,  the  mate,  catching  a  glimpse  of  his 
face,  started  back  in  astonishment.  He  recognized  the 
identical  face  that  he  had  seen  in  the  cabin,  three  or 
four  hours  before,  looking  up  at  him  from  the  captain's 
desk.  When  the  man  stood  on  the  deck,  Bruce  ex- 
amined him  closely.  Not  only  was  the  face  the  same, 
but  in  person  and  dress  he  corresponded  exactly  with 
his  vision. 

So  soon  as  the  exhausted  crew  and  passengers  had 
been  fed  and  cared  for,  and  the  bark  was  on  her  course 
again,  the  mate  called  the  captain  aside,  and  said, 
"  That  was  no  ghost,  sir,  that  I  saw  this  morning. 
The  man  is  here,  alive,  and  on  board  our  boat." 

"  What  do  you  mean?" 

"Sir,"  said  Bruce  very  gravely.  "  One  of  the 
passengers  we  have  just  saved  is  the  very  same  person 
that  I  saw  writing  on  your  slate  at  noon.  I  would 
swear  to  the  identity  in  any  court  of  justice." 

"This  is  becoming  more  strange  and  inexplicable 
every  minute,"  said  the  captain  ;  "let  us  go  and  have 
a  look  at  the  man." 

They  found  him  in  conversation  with  the  captain  of 
the  derelict  vessel,  when  both  expressed  their  warmest 
gratitude  for  deliverance  from  a  terrible  fate,  either 
starvation  and  exposure,  or  drowning  should  the  ice- 
berg capsize. 

The  captain  replied  that  he  had  done  no  more  than 
was  his  duty,  and  that  he  was  quite  sure  that  they 


STEER   NOR'-WEST  723 

would  have  done  the  same  for  him  under  similar 
circumstances  ;  and  then  he  requested  both  to  step 
down  with  him  into  his  cabin. 

When  that  was  done,  turning  to  the  passenger  he 
said:  "  Will  you  excuse  the  liberty  I  am  taking 
with  you,  if  I  desire  you  to  write  a  few  words  on 
the  slate?" 

"  Certainly  I  will  do  so,"  said  the  passenger.  "  What 
shall  I  write?" 

"  Nothing  more  than  this  :  Steer  to  the  Nor* -West" 

The  passenger  looked  amazed  and  puzzled ;  however, 
he  held  out  his  hand  for  the  slate.  This  the  captain 
extended  to  him,  with  that  side  uppermost  on  which 
Bruce  and  the  crew  had  written,  and  which  writing  he 
had  effaced  with  a  sponge.  The  man  wrote  the  re- 
quired words.  The  captain  took  back  the  slate, 
stepping  aside  whilst  the  passenger  was  not  observing, 
turned  the  slate  over,  and  presented  it  to  him,  with 
the  side  uppermost  on  which  was  the  mysterious  in- 
scription. 

Tendering  the  slate  again  to  him,  he  said:  "You 
are  ready  to  swear,  sir,  that  this  is  your  handwriting?" 

"  Of  course  it  is  ;  you  saw  me  write." 

"  Look  at  it  attentively  and  make  sure  that  it  is  the 
same." 

"I  have  no  doubt  about  it.  I  make  my  ^  in  the 
midst  of  a  sentence  in  the  old-fashioned  way,  long. 
And  there  it  is,  attached  to  the  t  at  steer  and  west." 

"And  this  also?"  asked  the  captain,  turning  the 
slate  over. 

The  passenger  looked  first  at  one  writing,  then  at  the 
other,  quite  confounded.  "  I  don't  understand  what 
this  can  mean,"  said  he;  "I  wrote  the  words  once 
only.  Who  wrote  the  other  ?" 

"That,  sir,  is  more  than  I  can  say.      My  mate  in- 


724  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

forms  me  that  you  wrote  it,  sitting  at  my  desk  at  noon 
to-day." 

"That  is  impossible.  I  was  on  the  wreck  miles 
away." 

"I  saw  you  there  writing  it,  as  distinctly  as  I  see  you 
now,"  put  in  Bruce. 

The  captain  of  the  wreck  turned  to  the  passenger, 
and  said :  "  Did  you  dream  that  you  wrote  on  a  slate  ? " 

"  Not  that  I  can  recall,"  replied  he. 

"  Now  you  speak  of  dreaming,"  said  the  skipper, 
"  may  I  inquire  what  the  gentleman  was  about  at  noon 
to-day?" 

" Captain,"  said  the  other,  "he  had  become  greatly 
exhausted,  and  fell  into  a  heavy  sleep,  some  time  before 
noon,  and  remained  in  that  condition  for  over  an  hour. 
When  he  awoke  he  said  to  me,  '  Captain,  I  am  con- 
fident that  we  shall  be  relieved  this  very  day.  When 
I  asked  him  his  reason  for  so  saying,  he  replied  that  he 
had  dreamt  that  he  was  on  board  a  vessel,  and  that 
he  was  convinced  she  was  coming  to  our  rescue.  He 
described  her  appearance  and  outward  rig,  and,  to  our 
astonishment,  when  your  vessel  hove  in  sight,  she 
corresponded  exactly  to  his  description.  We  had  not, 
I  must  admit,  much  confidence  in  his  assurance.  As  it 
has  happened,  it  looks  uncommon  like  as  if  Providence 
had  interfered  to  save  us  in  a  very  mysterious  manner." 

"There  can  be  no  doubt  about  that,"  replied  the 
other  captain.  "It  is  due  to  that  writing  on  the  slate, 
however  it  came  about,  that  all  your  lives  are  saved.  I 
was  steering  at  the  time  considerably  south  of  west, 
and  I  altered  my  course  to  nor'-west,  on  account  of  the 
writing  on  the  slate."  Then,  turning  to  the  passenger, 
he  inquired,  "  Did  you  dream  of  writing  on  a  slate?" 

"  Not  that  I  am  aware  of.  I  have  no  recollection 
of  that;  but  I  may  say  that  everything  here  on  board 


STEER   NOR'-WEST  725 

seems  to  me  familiar  ;  yet  I  am  certain  that  I  was  never 
in  your  vessel  before.  It  is  very  perplexing,  May  I 
ask  what  your  mate  saw  ?  " 

Thereupon  Bruce  related  the  circumstances  already 
detailed. 

The  above  extraordinary  account  was  related  to  Mr. 
Robert  Owen,  formerly  American  Minister  at  Naples, 
by  Captain  J.  S.  Clarke,  of  the  Julia  Hallock,  a  schooner 
trading  in  1859  between  New  York  and  Cuba,  who  had 
received  it  directly  from  Robert  Bruce  himself.  They 
sailed  together  for  nearly  two  years,  in  1836  and  1837  > 
so  that  Captain  Clarke  had  the  story  from  the  mate 
about  eight  years  after  the  occurrence.  Bruce  after 
that  became  master  of  the  brig  Comet,  trading  to  New 
Brunswick,  and  she  was  eventually  lost  at  sea,  and 
Bruce  is  believed  to  have  perished  in  her.- 

In  reply  to  a  question  as  to  the  character  which  Bruce 
bore  for  uprightness,  Captain  Clarke  replied:  "  As 
truthful  and  straightforward  a  man  as  ever  I  met  in 
my  life.  We  were  as  intimate  as  brothers  ;  and  two 
men  can't  be  together,  shut  up  for  nearly  two  years  in 
the  same  ship,  without  getting  to  know  whether  they 
can  trust  one  another's  word  or  not.  He  always  spoke 
of  the  circumstance  in  terms  of  reverence,  as  of  an 
incident  that  seemed  to  bring  him  nearer  to  God  and  to 
another  world  than  anything  that  had  ever  happened  to 
him  in  his  life  before.  I'd  stake  my  life  upon  it  that  he 
was  speaking  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing 
but  the  truth,  in  the  very  extraordinary  account  which 
I  have  related  to  you  just  as  he  delivered  it  to  me." 

Such  is  the  story,  and  it  is  much  to  be  regretted  that 
there  is  no  confirmation  or  other  testimony  from  the  two 
captains,  or  from  any  others  who  were  in  the  vessel. 

It  is  given  by  the  Rev.  Bourchier  Wrey  Savile,  in 
his  Apparitions  :  a  Narrative  of  Facts.  London,  1874. 


GEORGE    PEELE 

PEELE,  a  poet  and  dramatist,  was  a  Devon- 
shire man  by  birth,  but  of  no  family  of  con- 
sequence in  the  county,  as  the  name  does 
not  once  occur  in  the  Heralds'  Visitations, 
either  as  a  family  entitled  to  bear  arms  or  in  the 
alliances  of  such.  He  became  a  student  of  Christ 
Church,  Oxford,  about  the  year  1573,  where  he  studied 
to  good  effect  and  took  his  Master's  degree  in  1579. 
Although  he  unquestionably  studied,  yet  he  also  spent 
his  spare  time  in  revelry.  He  was  always  hard  up  for 
money,  and  was  quite  unscrupulous  how  he  procured  it. 
On  one  occasion,  but  later,  when  in  middle  life,  he  was 
riding  to  Oxford  on  a  borrowed  horse,  and  stayed  the 
night  at  Wycombe,  where  the  landlady  of  the  inn  was 
a  great  woman  for  herbs  and  nostrums  of  all  sorts  for 
the  cure  of  every  kind  of  disease.  George  Peele  fell  in 
with  her  humour,  admired  her  prescriptions,  and  said  : 

"  I  am  a  doctor  and  surgeon  myself,  and  am  on  my 
way  to  visit  a  gentleman  of  large  estate  in  Warwick- 
shire, who  is  fallen  into  a  consumption." 

"Why  —  bless  my  heart,"  exclaimed  the  hostess, 
"our  squire  here  is  very  bad,  and  supposed  to  be  in  a 
consumption.  The  surgeons  have  given  him  up." 

Next  morning  at  daybreak  away  runs  the  good- 
natured  woman  to  the  Hall,  rouses  the  squire's  wife, 
and  tells  her  that  a  notable  London  doctor  is  staying  at 

726 


GEORGE   PEELE  727 

her  inn.  The  lady  at  once  penned  a  note,  entreating 
the  learned  leech  to  visit  her  husband  ;  and  the  hostess 
carried  this  to  Peele  and  urged  him  to  visit  the  patient. 

George  was  taken  aback,  he  had  not  meant  his  words 
to  be  taken  au  grand  serieux,  and  he  tried  to  get  out  of 
the  visit,  but  a  servant  from  the  great  house  arrived  to 
conduct  him  to  it,  and  Peele  went  with  him.  On  his 
arrival  he  was  gratefully  received  by  the  squire's  wife, 
who  conducted  him  to  her  husband's  room.  George 
felt  his  pulse  and  temples,  and  shook  his  head  :  "  He  is 
far  spent,"  said  he,  "  but  under  Heaven,  I  will  do  him 
some  good,  if  nature  be  not  quite  extinct."  He  then 
asked  to  be  shown  into  the  garden,  where  he  cut  a 
handful  of  every  flower  and  herb  and  shrub  the  garden 
contained,  brought  them  into  the  house  in  the  lappet  of 
his  cloak,  boiled  them  in  ale,  strained  them,  boiled 
them  again  ;  and  when  he  had  all  the  juice  out  of  them, 
made  a  hot  draught  and  bade  the  patient  drink  a  cup- 
ful, and  ordered  the  wife  to  administer  the  same  to  the 
squire  morning,  noon,  and  night,  and  to  keep  the  sick 
man  warm.  Then  when  he  took  his  leave  the  lady 
pressed  into  his  hand  a  couple  of  brace  of  angels,  or 
about  forty  shillings.  Away  went  Le  Medecin  malgre 
lui  to  Oxford,  where  he  roystered  so  long  as  the 
money  lasted.  Then  he  had  to  return  to  London  and 
by  the  same  way,  and  was  not  a  little  shy  of  showing 
in  Wycombe,  for  he  did  not  know  but  that  some  of 
the  herbs  he  had  boiled  and  administered  might  be 
poisonous,  and  have  killed  the  gentleman.  So,  as  he 
approached  the  place,  he  inquired  of  a  country  bump- 
kin how  the  gentleman  was.  The  fellow  told  him,  that 
his  good  landlord,  Heaven  be  praised,  had  been  cured 
by  a  wonderful  doctor  who  had  come  that  way  by 
chance. 

"Art   thou   sure   of    this?"   quoth   George,    "  Yes, 


728  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

believe  me,"  answered  the  man  ;  "  I  saw  him  in  fields 
this  morning." 

George  Peele  now  set  spurs  to  his  horse,  and  rode  to 
the  inn,  where  he  was  cordially  received :  the  hostess 
clapped  her  hands  ;  the  ostler  laughed  ;  the  tapster 
leaped  ;  the  chamberlain  ran  to  the  gentleman's  house, 
and  told  him  of  the  arrival  of  the  doctor.  The  squire 
sent  for  Peele  at  once,  and  forced  him  to  accept  twenty 
pounds  for  having  cured  him  of  his  consumption.  But 
whether  the  cure  was  the  result  of  some  herbs  that 
chanced  to  go  into  the  pot,  or  was  due  to  the  confidence 
the  sick  man  had  in  the  science  of  George  Peele,  none 
can  say. 

George  Peele  took  up  his  residence  in  London,  on 
the  Bank  side,  over  against  Black  Friars,  and  picked 
up  a  livelihood  by  writing  interludes,  and  the  ordering 
of  pageants.  Anthony  a  Wood  says  that  his  plays 
were  not  only  often  acted  with  great  applause  in  his 
lifetime,  but  also  did  endure  reading,  with  due  com- 
mendation, after  his  death.  He  was  a  voluminous 
writer,  and  would  turn  his  hand  to  any  kind  of  literary 
work.  On  one  occasion  a  gentleman  from  the  West 
Country  engaged  him  to  translate  some  Greek  author 
into  English  for  him.  During  the  process  of  the  work, 
Peele  applied  repeatedly  to  his  patron  for  advances  ; 
but  the  more  Peele  was  supplied  with  coin,  the  slacker 
he  became  in  his  work,  and  at  last  the  gentleman  lost 
all  patience  with  him.  Next  time  Peele  called  with  the 
usual  request  for  an  advance,  he  was  invited  to  stay  for 
dinner.  During  the  meal,  George  incautiously  let  out 
that  he  had  not  done  a  line  of  translation  for  two 
months.  The  gentleman,  very  incensed,  ordered  his 
servants  to  bind  the  author  hand  and  foot  into  a 
chair.  This  done  a  barber  was  sent  for,  and  by  order 
of  the  gentleman  shaved  Peele's  chin,  lip,  cheeks, 


GEORGE   PEELE  729 

and  head,  and  left  him  as  bare  of  hair  as  he  was  of 
money. 

"George,"  said  the  gentleman,  "  I  have  always  used 
you  as  a  friend  ;  my  purse  hath  been  open  to  you  ;  you 
know  that  I  highly  value  the  book  I  committed  to  you 
to  translate,  and  I  want  it  done.  I  have  used  you  in 
this  fashion  so  as  to  force  you  to  stay  at  home  till  the 
translation  is  completed ;  for  I  know  you  will  be 
ashamed  to  show  in  the  streets  the  ridiculous  figure  you 
now  are.  By  the  time  the  book  is  done,  your  beard  will 
have  grown  again."  Then  he  put  in  his  hand  forty  shil- 
lings, detained  him  till  nightfall,  and  sent  him  home. 

Next  morning  there  was  a  hubbub  in  the  street, 
crying  and  shouting,  and  a  mob  collected.  The  gentle- 
man looked  out  of  his  window,  and  saw  a  girl  with 
dishevelled  hair,  wringing  her  hands  and  screaming, 
"  Oh  !  my  father  !  my  good — my  dear  father  !  "  and  the 
people  around  were  clamouring  to  know  what  was  the 
matter.  Then  the  girl  burst  forth  into  "  Woe  to  this 
place,  that  my  dear  father  ever  saw  it  !  I  am  now  an 
orphan,  a  castaway,  and  my  mother  a  widow."  The 
servants  of  the  gentleman  came  upstairs  to  him  in 
concern,  saying  that  George  Peele's  daughter  was  on 
the  doorstep  calling  down  imprecations  on  the  house 
and  all  within.  The  gentleman  in  a  mighty  quaking 
sent  for  the  girl,  who  came  in  sobbing  and  crying. 
When  she  saw  him  she  screamed,  "  Out  on  thee  !  thou 
cruel  man  !  Thou  hast  made  my  father — my  good 
father — drown  himself."  Then  she  fainted.  The  gen- 
tleman was  in  serious  alarm.  He  sent  his  servants  at 
once  to  buy  a  new  and  smart  suit  of  clothes  for  the 
girl,  as  the  best  way  to  console  her,  and  gave  her  five 
pounds  ;  then,  as  she  recovered,  he  bade  her  return 
home,  and  tell  her  mother  that  he  would  visit  her  in  the 
evening. 


730  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

The  gentleman  was  so  crossed  in  mind,  and  disturbed 
in  thought  at  having  involuntarily  caused  a  man  to 
commit  suicide,  that  his  soul  could  not  be  quiet  till  he 
had  seen  the  woeful  widow.  So  towards  evening  he 
hired  a  boat  and  was  rowed  from  the  Old  Bailey,  where 
he  lived,  to  Black  Friars,  and  went  directly  to  Peele's 
house,  where  he  found  the  wife  plucking  larks,  the 
orphaned  daughter  turning  the  spit,  and  George, 
pinned  up  in  a  blanket,  hard  at  work  at  the  translation. 
The  gentleman,  more  relieved  at  the  sight  of  Peele 
alive  and  well  than  grieved  at  being  cheated  out  of  his 
money,  accepted  George's  invitation,  and  gull  and 
gulled  had  a  merry  supper  together  off  roast  larks  and 
canary. 

One  day  Peele  invited  half  a  score  of  his  friends  to  a 
great  supper,  where  all  was  passing  merry ;  no  cheer 
was  lacking  ;  there  was  wine  flowing  and  music  play- 
ing. As  the  night  was  passing  a  reckoning  was  called 
for.  The  guests,  being  well-to-do  citizens,  insisted  that 
Peele  should  not  treat  them  all.  He,  as  they  were  well 
aware,  was  not  well  off,  so  they  threw  down  their  con- 
tributions to  the  feast — some  two  shillings,  some  five, 
some  more.  "Well,"  said  George,  "as  you  seem  so 
determined  I  will  submit,"  and  he  gathered  the  money 
into  his  cloak.  "But,"  said  he,  "before  we  part,  let 
us  drink  a  couple  of  bottles  of  hippocras  and  have 
a  caper."  Whilst  all  were  taking  the  final  draught 
and  dancing  about  the  room,  George  Peele  decamped 
with  the  contributions,  and  left  his  guests  to  pay  the 
reckoning. 

Peele  and  four  of  his  companions  supping  together 
found  that  they  had  spent  all  their  cash,  save  five  pounds 
between  them.  Holiday  time  was  come,  Whitsuntide, 
and  it  must  be  enjoyed,  but  how  was  enjoyment  to  be 
had  for  five  mates,  for  four  or  five  days,  on  five  pounds  ? 


GEORGE    PEELE  731 

'  <  I  have  it, "  said  Peele.  ' *  Trust  your  money  to  me,  and 
I  will  go  to  the  Jew  clothes  dealer,  get  a  handsome 
black  satin  suit  and  good  boots,  and  you  must  all  be 
put  in  livery  and  pass  as  my  servants." 

Thus  costumed,  and  taking  a  pair  of  oars  with  them, 
the  party  ascended  the  Thames  to  Brentford,  where 
they  entered  the  inn  of  the  "  Three  Pigeons."  George 
called  for  the  host,  said  he  was  a  big  squire  in  Kent, 
and  that  he  had  come  up  the  river  to  make  merry  at 
Brentford.  And  he  thereupon  ordered  supper  and 
wine,  and  paid  down  out  of  the  money  he  had  in  hand. 

At  dinner,  Peele  asked  the  host  about  the  tide. 
When  he  heard  that  the  tide  did  not  set  out  till  even- 
ing, "  Confound  it,"  said  he,  "I  intended  to  stay 
here  a  few  days,  but  I  have  not  money  enough  with  me 
to  pay.  I  want  to  send  a  lackey  to  London  for  a  bag 
of  ten  pounds  that  have  not  seen  the  sun  and  begun 
to  melt.  Have  you  a  horse?"  "  Certainly  I  have," 
answered  the  taverner,  "and  I  can  lend  it  your  man." 

Accordingly,  one  of  the  good  comrades  was  mounted 
and  sent  off  to  London.  Presently  in  came  the  hostess 
with  a  petition.  One  of  Mr.  Peele's  lackeys  had 
been  at  her  to  beg  his  master  to  allow  him  to  go  as  far 
as  Kingston  to  visit  a  sweetheart  he  had  there.  If 
Mr.  Peele  would  allow  him  to  go  he  would  promise  to 
be  back  by  nightfall. 

"  How  can  he?"  asked  George:  "the  distance  is  too 
great — if  he  runs,  he  cannot  do  it." 

"For  the  matter  of  that,"  replied  the  landlady, 
"  I  have  a  mare,  and  will  lend  it  him." 

"  Very  well,  let  the  rogue  go." 

So  away  went  the  fellow  with  the  mare,  but  not  to 
Kingston — he  rode  to  London,  where  he  met  his  fellow 
on  the  landlord's  other  horse.  George  Peele  now  sent 
for  the  barber  to  do  his  hair,  and  he  was  to  mind  and 


732  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

bring  his  lute  with  him.  In  Queen  Elizabeth's  time 
a  lute  was  one  of  the  necessary  bits  of  furniture  of 
a  barber's  shop. 

The  man  arrived,  and  Peele  entreated  him  of  his 
courtesy  to  leave  the  lute  with  him,  that  he  might 
amuse  himself  with  it  in  the  evening.  The  barber 
consented,  and  departed.  George  was  now  left  alone 
with  two  of  his  comrades,  and  he  bade  them  clear  out 
of  the  house  speedily.  Then  going  down  into  the 
court  he  looked  at  the  clouds,  and  complained  of  the 
weather.  He  was  inclined  for  a  stroll.  Thereupon 
the  hostess  fetched  her  husband's  best  holiday  cloak. 
George  thanked  her  for  the  loan,  called  for  a  cup  of 
sack,  tossed  it  off  to  success  to  the  "  Three  Pigeons," 
and  walked  away — to  the  river  where  his  comrades  were 
awaiting  him,  and  they  rowed  down  to  London,  where 
they  all  met,  and  sold  the  horse  and  the  mare,  the  gown 
and  the  lute. 

Anthony  Nit,  the  barber,  was  not  satisfied  to  lose  his 
lute,  made  inquiries,  and  found  out  who  had  cheated 
him  of  it ;  and  pursued  George  Peele  to  Town  and 
lighted  on  him  in  an  alehouse  in  Seacoal  Lane.  Peele 
was  shabbily  dressed  in  a  worn  green  jerkin,  and  had  on 
his  head  a  Spanish  platter-fashioned  hat,  and  was  then 
engaged  on  a  peck  of  oysters.  George  was  not  a  little 
abashed  at  the  sight  of  the  barber,  but  showed  no  signs 
of  being  disconcerted.  On  the  contrary  he  at  once 
said,  u  My  honest  barber,  welcome  to  London.  I  partly 
know  your  business ;  you  come  for  your  lute,  do  you 
not?"  "  Indeed,  sir,"  quoth  Anthony  Nit,  "that  is 
the  purpose  of  my  coming." 

"  And  believe  me,"  said  Peele,  "you  shall  not  lose 
your  labour ;  I  pray  you  fall  to  and  eat  an  oyster,  and 
I  will  go  with  you  presently ;  for  a  gentleman  in  the 
city,  a  man  of  great  worship,  borrowed  it  of  me  for  the 


GEORGE   PEELE  733 

use  of  his  daughter.  But,  sir,  if  you  will  go  along 
with  me  to  the  gentleman's  house  you  shall  have  your 
lute.  Had  you  not  come  to  reclaim  it  I  assure  you  I 
would  have  sent  it  to  you  ;  for  you  must  understand 
that  all  that  was  done  at  Brentford  among  us  mad 
gentlemen  was  but  a  jest." 

Then  Peele  said  to  Barber  Anthony,  "  I  really  am 
not  in  a  fit  costume  to  appear  in  a  gentleman's  house. 
I  pray  you  let  me  have  your  cloak  and  hat,  and  you 
put  on  my  green  jerkin  and  the  Spanish  hat.  I  doubt, 
accoutred  as  I  am,  that  I  would  be  allowed  admit- 
tance." The  barber  agreed,  and  changed  garments 
with  Peele,  who  led  him  to  an  alderman's  house, 
and  knocked  at  the  door,  and  asked  to  see  the  master. 
Peele  was  well  known  there  as  master  of  the  revels 
and  overseer  of  the  pageants,  and  was  readily  ad- 
mitted. 

"Porter,"  said  he,  "  let  my  friend  remain  with  you 
till  I  have  done  my  business  with  the  master." 

"Certainly,"  said  the  porter,  "and  he  shall  take  a 
small  dinner  with  me." 

Peele  was  shown  into  the  alderman's  room,  and  he 
said  to  him,  "  I  want  you  to  do  me  a  favour.  There  is 
a  bum-bailiff  in  your  hall,  who  has  me  under  arrest  for 
a  little  sum.  Allow  me  to  slip  out  at  your  garden  door 
unperceived."  The  alderman  laughed  and  consented. 
So  Peele  evaded  in  the  cloak  and  hat  of  the  barber, 
who  failed  to  get  them  as  well  as  his  lute. 

Here  is  a  specimen  of  manners  in  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth.  Peele  was  invited  to  supper  at  the  White 
House  in  Friday  Street,  London,  by  some  of  his  friends. 
On  his  way  he  met  an  old  comrade  who  was  "  down  on 
his  luck  "  and  had  not  a  shilling  wherewith  to  get  his 
supper. 

"  I  wish  that  I  could  take  you  with  me,  but  I  cannot," 


734  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

said  George.  "  I  am  an  invited  guest,  and  besides, 
you  are  in  rags.  However,  I  will  get  you  a  supper  if 
you  will  do  what  I  bid." 

Whilst  seated  at  the  entertainment,  his  needy  friend 
pushed  into  the  room  and  made  up  to  Peele. 

"  You  scoundrel,"  shouted  the  latter,  "what  are  you 
doing  here?" 

"I  pray  you,  sir,  hear  my  errand,"  pleaded  the 
man. 

"  Not  I,  you  slave  ;  get  you  gone  ! "  and  snatching  a 
roasted  rabbit  from  the  dish,  he  threw  it  at  him. 

"  You  use  me  very  rudely,"  said  the  man. 

"You  dunghole — will  you  outface  me!"  roared 
Peele,  and  snatching  up  a  second  rabbit  threw  it  at  his 
head,  and  then  a  loaf.  After  that  he  drew  his  dagger 
and  made  as  though  he  would  stab  the  man,  but  his 
friends  interposed.  The  fellow  picked  up  the  rabbits 
and  the  bread  and  ran  away  with  them.  So,  by  this 
shift,  Peele  helped  his  friend  to  a  supper,  and  was  not 
suspected  by  the  company. 

Peele's  Merry  Conceited  Jests  was  first  published  in 
1607.  Other  editions  appeared  in  1626,  1627,  1657,  anc* 
1671.  There  is  also  an  undated  edition.  The  latest 
reprint  is  in  Bullen's  Works  of  George  Peele,  London, 
J.  C.  Nimmo,  1878. 

His  Merry  Conceited  Jests  shows  him  to  have  been 
a  great  rogue.  That  he  was  a  clever  man  and  well 
educated  is  undoubted.  He  wrote  several  plays,  but 
only  some  have  been  preserved,  such  as  The  Arraign- 
ment of  Paris,  1584;  The  Old  Wives'  Tale,  1595; 
Edward  I,  1593;  David  and  Bathsheba,  1599;  The 
Turkish  Mahomet  and  Hiren  the  Fair  Greek,  not  pub- 
lished at  the  time.  The  Battle  of  Alcazar  has  been 
already  mentioned.  He  also  composed  pageants  that 
were  performed  at  the  inauguration  of  the  chief  magis- 


GEORGE   PEELE  735 

trates  of  the  city  of  London.  One  composed  for  Sir 
Wolstone  Dixie,  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  29  October, 
1595,  is  curious,  as  it  describes  the  flourishing  condition 
of  the  metropolis  in  the  days  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  About 
1593  Peele  seems  to  have  been  taken  into  the  patronage 
of  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  to  whom  he  dedicated 
in  that  year  The  Honour  of  the  Garter.  In  The  Puritan, 
a  play  attributed  but  erroneously  to  Shakespeare,  and 
acted  by  the  children  of  S.  Paul's,  printed  in  1607,  is 
a  character,  George  Pieboard,  that  was  meant  to  be 
George  Peele.  Peele  died  before  the  year  1598,  and 
left  behind  him  a  widow  and  a  daughter. 

In  1591  Queen  Elizabeth  visited  Theobalds.  Lord 
Burleigh  had  lost  his  mother  in  1587,  and  his  wife,  to 
whom  he  was  deeply  attached,  in  1589;  and  his 
daughter,  Lady  Oxford,  had  also  expired,  and  de- 
pressed by  his  misfortunes,  he  retired  in  1591  to  Theo- 
balds. Queen  Elizabeth,  to  revive  his  spirits,  visited 
him  there  ;  and  Peele  was  commissioned  to  write  the 
speeches  delivered  by  Robert  Cecil,  dressed  as  a 
hermit,  and  others,  to  be  addressed  to  the  Queen. 
Besides  the  hermit,  another  performer  was  the  gar- 
dener, and  a  third  the  molecatcher.  The  latter  begins, 
"Good  Lady,  and  the  best  that  ever  I  saw,  or  any 
shall,  give  me  leave  to  tell  a  plain  tale  in  which  there 
is  no  device,  but  desert  enough,"  and  it  ends,  "Now, 
for  that  the  Gardiner  twitteth  me  with  my  vocation, 
I  could  prove  it  a  mystery  not  mechanical,  and  tell 
a  tale  of  the  Giant's  daughter  which  was  turned  to  a 
mole  because  she  would  eat  fairer  bread  than  is  made  of 
wheat,  wear  finer  clothes  than  is  made  of  wool,  drink 
sweeter  wine  than  is  made  of  grapes  ;  why  she  was 
blind,  and  yet  light  of  hearing  ;  how  good  clerks  told 
me  that  moles  in  fields  are  like  ill  subjects  in  com- 
monwealths, which  are  always  turning  up  the  place 


736  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

in  which  they  are  bred.  But  I  will  not  trouble  your 
Majesty,  but  every  day  pray  on  my  knees  that  those 
that  be  heavers  at  your  state  may  come  to  a  mole's 
blessing  —  a  knock  on  the  pate  and  a  swing  on  a 
tree." 


PETER    PINDAR 

JOHN  WOLCOT,  who  published  his  poems  under 
the  sobriquet  of  Peter  Pindar,  was  perhaps  the 
most  scurrilous  poet  in  a  scurrilous  age.     If  this 
were  a  book  of  Minor  Worthies  of  Devon,  I  should 
hesitate    about    admitting    one   who    was    in    nothing 
worthy,   but  possessed  wit  caustic  and   cutting.      He 
was  as  witty  and  not  so  coarse  as  Swift ;  witty  but  not 
so  terse  as  Pope,  and  also  without  Pope's  fine  touch. 

John  Wolcot  was  the  fourth  child  of  Alexander 
Wolcot  by  Mary  Ryder  his  wife,  and  was  born  at 
Dodbrooke  by  Kingsbridge,  baptized  9  May,  1738.  His 
father  was  a  country  surgeon  and  the  son  of  a  surgeon. 
The  Wolcot  family  was  ancient ;  it  had  its  origin  at 
Wolcot  in  Thrushelton,  where  a  moor  still  bears  the 
name  of  Wollacot  from  a  farm  near  by ;  the  heiress  of 
the  eldest  branch  carried  Wollacot  to  the  family  of 
Bidlake  of  Bidlake.  A  junior  branch  settled  at  Chag- 
ford,  where  "John  Wolcot  for  his  good  service  in  ye 
Warres  had  an  addition  given  him  to  his  Armes,  on 
Chief  or,  a  lis  betw.  2  Annulets."  One  branch  had 
a  residence  at  Butterstone  in  Hemyock,  where  it  re- 
mained for  several  generations.  The  lineal  descent  of 
John  Wolcot,  son  of  Alexander,  from  the  heraldic 
family  of  that  name  has  not  been  made  out,  but  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  he  was  so  descended. 

Alexander  Wolcot  died  14  June,  1751,  and  John  was 
3  B  737 


738  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

left  to  the  care  of  his  uncle,  John  Wolcot,  of  Fowey. 
He  was  educated  at  the  Kingsbridge  Grammar  School, 
and  afterwards  at  Liskeard  and  Bodmin.  In  or  about 
1760  he  was  sent  to  France  for  a  twelvemonth  to 
acquire  French.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  been  com- 
fortable there,  and  he  retained  through  life  a  distaste 
for  the  Gallic  people  : — 

I  hate  the  shrugging  dogs, 

I've  lived  among  them,  ate  their  frogs. 

It  was  decided  that  he  should  be  a  surgeon,  as 
had  been  his  father  and  grandfather  before  him,  and 
he  went  in  1762,  to  London,  and  lodged  with  his 
maternal  uncle,  Mr.  Giddy,  of  Penzance.  In  1764  he 
returned  to  his  uncle  at  Fowey,  with  whom  he  lived  as 
assistant  till  1767.  On  8  September  of  this  year  he 
graduated  M.D.  at  Aberdeen. 

Wolcot  was  connected,  it  is  not  clear  how,  with  Sir 
William  Trelawny  of  Trelawny,  Bart.,  and  on  Sir 
William's  appointment  in  1767  as  Governor  of  Jamaica, 
Wolcot  was,  by  his  influence,  appointed  to  accompany 
him  as  physician.  Sir  William  had  succeeded  to  the 
baronetcy  in  1762,  on  the  death  of  his  cousin  Sir  Harry 
Trelawny.  Sir  Harry  had  married  his  cousin  Letitia, 
daughter  of  Sir  Jonathan  Trelawny,  and  Sir  William 
married  Letitia,  daughter  of  Sir  Harry  and  Letitia. 
There  was  a  saying — 

Trelawne,  her  course  'mid  cousins  run, 
Shall  weep  for  many  a  first-born  son, 

and  when  Captain  William  fell  in  love  with  his  cousin 
Letitia  he  and  she  knew  that  their  union  would  be 
strongly  opposed,  indeed  certainly  forbidden,  by  her 
parents.  Accordingly  he  prevailed  on  her  to  marry 
him  in  private,  and  this  was  done  by  her  disguising 
herself  in  male  attire,  and  being  married  to  him 


DR.    WOLCOT 


PETER    PINDAR  739 

privately  one  evening  in  the  church,  she  dressed  as  a 
boy. 

In  Jamaica  Wolcot  found  that  there  was  but  little 
opportunity  for  him  to  earn  much  by  his  profession, 
and  Sir  William  proposed  to  him  to  take  Holy  Orders, 
so  that  he  might  appoint  him  to  the  rich  benefice  of 
S.  Anne  in  the  island.  Wolcot,  without  the  smallest 
vocation  for  Orders,  looking  only  to  the  monetary 
value  of  the  living,  practically  a  sinecure,  returned 
home  in  1769  and  was  ordained  deacon  24  June  in  that 
year,  and  priest  on  the  following  day,  by  the  Bishop 
of  London.  Thus  equipped  he  returned  to  Jamaica  in 
March,  1770,  hoping  to  find  the  incumbent  of  S. 
Anne's  dead — he  had  left  when  the  man  was  ailing. 
But  to  his  vast  disgust  the  rector  of  S.  Anne's  had  taken 
on  a  new  spell  of  life,  and  did  not  at  all  see  his  way  to 
vacate  the  fat  benefice  to  oblige  Wolcot.  John  Wolcot 
was  now  given  the  incumbency  of  Vere,  but  lived  most 
of  his  time  in  the  Governor's  house,  leaving  a  hired 
deputy  to  perform  the  duties  of  his  cure. 

Finding  that  there  was  little  prospect  of  getting 
S.  Anne's  he  threw  aside  his  Orders,  reverted  to  his 
profession,  and  was  appointed  Physician-General  to  the 
troops  on  the  island  21  May,  1770.  He  lived  on  terms 
of  close  friendship  with  the  Trelawny  family,  where 
his  broad  humour,  his  sarcastic  sallies,  and  his  witty 
stories  made  him  a  delightful  companion  at  the  table 
over  the  wine. 

"  I  was  invited,"  said  he,  "  to  sup  with  a  rich  planter 
and  his  wife.  During  the  repast,  my  friend  desired 
a  female  slave  in  waiting  to  mix  some  toddy,  on  which 
the  black  girl,  in  her  peculiar  way,  asked  him  if  it  was 
1  to  be  drinkey  for  dry,  or  drinkey  for  drunkey.' 
When  our  supper  was  ended,  and  our  water  being 
exhausted,  the  planter  sent  his  wife  a  short  distance 


740  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

from  the  house  for  a  fresh  supply.  The  thunder  and 
lightning  being  excessive  during  her  absence,  I  said 
to  him,  '  Why  did  you  not  send  that  girl  (the  slave) 
for  water  on  such  a  night  as  this,  instead  of  exposing 
your  wife  to  the  storm?'  '  Oh,  no,'  replied  he,  'that 
would  never  do.  That  slave  cost  me  forty  pounds.'  " 

Miss  Anne  Trelawny  was  not  a  little  simple  and 
credulous,  and  Wolcot  delighted  in  hoaxing  her.  On 
one  occasion,  he  informed  her  that  a  cherub  had  been 
caught  in  the  Blue  Mountains,  and  had  been  put  in 
a  cage  with  a  parrot.  Before  morning,  unhappily,  the 
parrot  had  pecked  out  the  eyes  of  the  poor  cherub,  all 
which  the  lady  believed  as  an  indisputable  fact.  "  The 
Nymph  of  Tauris,"  which  was  printed  in  the  Annual 
Register  for  1773,  was  written  by  Wolcot  on  the  death 
of  this  young  lady,  which  occurred  in  Jamaica. 

Sir  William  Trelawny  also  died  in  Jamaica  on 
ii  December,  1772,  whereupon  Wolcot  obtained  leave 
from  the  new  Governor,  Dalling,  20  February,  1773,  to 
return  to  England,  accompanying  Lady  Trelawny, 
and  it  was  thought  not  improbable  by  some  that  the 
lady  would  dry  her  tears  and  take  Wolcot  as  her 
second  husband,  but  death  put  an  end  to  this  scheme, 
if  ever  entertained,  as  she  died  in  the  month  of  August 
ensuing. 

Dr.  Wolcot  had  now  entirely  dropped  his  clerical 
character.  He  settled  at  Truro,  where  he  established 
himself  with  a  view  to  practising  as  a  doctor.  His 
peculiar  treatment,  which  consisted  in  giving  his  fever 
patients  doses  of  cold  water,  and  his  openly  proclaimed 
opinion  that  a  physician  did  more  harm  than  good  by 
cupping,  bleeding,  clystering,  and  by  the  administra- 
tion of  boluses  and  draughts,  as  also  that  the  only 
good  he  could  effect  was  by  nudging  on  Dame  Nature 
in  the  back  when  slow  in  recovering  the  sick,  raised  a 


PETER   PINDAR  741 

storm  against  him  among  his  fellow  practitioners, 
and  involved  him  in  disputes.  Polwhele  speaks 
highly  of  his  medical  abilities.  "  I  can  say  with  truth 
that  he  had  the  credit  not  only  of  a  skilful,  but  of  a 
benevolent  physician.  In  fevers,  he  was  uncommonly 
successful.  From  consumption  many  were  rescued  by 
his  hand  who  had  been  given  up  as  irrecoverable.  As 
a  physician  he  prescribed  medicines  ;  he  did  more,  he 
examined  them,  not  trusting  to  the  apothecary ;  and 
sometimes  detected  with  indignation  a  cheap  medicine 
substituted  for  a  costly  one.  He  was  no  favourite  with 
the  apothecaries  and  druggists  of  the  place  ;  but  his 
merit,  bearing  all  before  it,  showed  the  impotence  of 
their  resentment." 

He  quarrelled  also  with  the  Corporation  of  Truro, 
and  when  that  body  attempted  to  avenge  the  lampoons 
he  had  written  upon  their  vindictive  management  in 
planting  parish  apprentices  on  him,  he  removed  to 
Helston  in  1779,  leaving  behind  him  a  characteristic 
letter:  "Gentlemen,  your  Blunderbuss  has  missed 
fire. — Yours,  John  Wolcot." 

At  Truro  he  had  been  allowed  to  drop  in  occasionally 
at  Polwhele,  but  the  old  Mr.  Polwhele  was  always 
uneasy  with  him  at  table,  lest  he  should  launch  out 
into  gross  and  unseemly  jests  and  tales. 

From  Helston  he  moved  to  Exeter,  practising,  but 
meeting  there  with  small  success.  At  Exeter  he  made 
the  acquaintance  of  William  Jackson,  the  organist  of 
the  cathedral,  and  composer,  and  for  him  he  wrote 
songs  to  set  to  music. 

Owing  to  the  success  of  his  songs,  Wolcot  shifted  to 
London  in  1778,  to  devote  himself  wholly  to  the  Muse. 
He  took  with  him  young  Opie,  whose  abilities  he  had 
recognized  ;  and  it  really  was  a  token  of  great  good 
nature  that  he  endured  the  society  of  that  "unlicked 


742  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

cub  of  a  Carpenter  Opie,"  as  Polwhele  calls  him, 
"who  was  seen  now  ludicrously  exhibited  by  his 
keeper,  Wolcot, — a  wild  animal  of  St.  Agnes,  caught 
among  the  tin  works.  Not  to  pick  his  teeth  with  a  fork 
at  dinner-time,  nor  at  breakfast  to  '  clap  his  vingers' 
into  the  sugar-basin,  etc.,  were  instructions  of  Wolcot 
at  a  subsequent  stage  of  Opie's  life  when  breakfast- 
rooms  and  saloons  and  drawing-rooms  were  thrown 
open  to  his  excellence. 

"At  his  first  setting  out  at  Falmouth,  where  it  was 
Wolcot's  pride  to  exhibit  him,  he  collected  upwards  of 
thirty  guineas ;  and  Wolcot  was  one  day  surprised 
to  see  him  rolling  about  on  the  floor,  where  a  quantity 
of  money  lay  scattered.  'See  here  (says  Opie),  here  be 
I,  rolling  in  gold.'  " 

Wolcot  had  never  cared  for  his  profession  of  medicine, 
and  he  was  glad  to  shake  it  off.  And  now  young  Opie 
was  ready  for  making  his  way  in  Town.  Wolcot  had  first 
become  acquainted  with  the  young  painter  at  the  house  of 
Mr.  Zankwell,  at  Mithian,  in  1775 ;  he  took  him  to  his  own 
house  at  Truro,  provided  the  necessary  material,  gave 
him  instructions  and  advice,  for  Wolcot  himself  handled 
the  brush  and  palette,  and  when  fully  satisfied  with  the 
developing  genius  of  Opie,  persuaded  him  to  move 
with  him  to  London  in  1781.  An  agreement  was  en- 
tered into  between  him  and  his  protege,  by  which 
both  were  to  share  equally  in  the  profits  made  by 
the  artist  by  the  sale  of  his  pictures.  This  was  not 
an  arrangement  likely  to  last.  Wolcot  very  highly 
estimated,  and  justly  so,  the  advantage  he  had  been  to 
Opie,  not  only  in  providing  for  his  artistic  training, 
but  also  by  getting  him  orders  in  Town  ;  but  Opie, 
as  his  fame  grew,  and  his  prices  rose,  was  reluctant  to 
continue  the  bargain  and  halve  his  profits  with  Wolcot. 
The  origin  of  the  quarrel  is  sometimes  attributed  to 


PETER   PINDAR  743 

Opie's  having  passed  disparaging  criticism  on  some  of 
Wolcot's  paintings  ;  but  this  was,  if  it  took  place,  only 
one  element  in  the  contention  that  caused  a  final 
breach.  Wolcot  had  indeed  laid  the  foundation  of 
Opie's  success,  by  introducing  him  to  Mrs.  Boscawen, 
and  extolling  his  merits  in  verse. 

Speak,  Muse,  who  formed  that  matchless  head, 
The  Cornish  Boy,  in  tin  mines  bred  ; 
Whose  native  genius,  like  diamonds  shone 
In  secret,  till  chance  gave  him  to  the  sun  ? 
'Tis  Jackson's  portrait — put  the  laurel  on  it. 

In  1 782  appeared  "  Lyric  Odes  to  the  Royal  Academy, 
by  Peter  Pindar,  Esq.,  a  distant  relative  of  the  Poet  of 
Thebes,  and  Laureat  of  the  Academy."  They  were 
clever  and  discriminating.  Wolcot  recognized  the 
splendid  genius  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  and  the  merits 
of  Gainsborough  and  Wilson.  He  made  merry  over  a 
picture  by  Gainsborough  in  the  Academy  that  year  ; 
but  it  was  good-humouredly  done. 

And  now,  O  Muse,  with  song  so  big, 

Turn  round  to  Gainsborough's  Girl  and  Pig, 
Or  Pig  and  Girl  I  rather  should  have  said  ; 

The  pig  is  white,  I  must  allow, 

Is  really  a  well-painted  sow  : 
I  wish  to  say  the  same  thing  of  the  maid. 

The  success  of  these  lyrics  was  immediate,  and  in- 
duced Wolcot  to  continue  the  publication  in  1783, 
1785,  and  1786.  Having  hit  out  at  the  Academicians 
and  finding  that  this  paid,  he  now  struck  at  higher 
game.  He  knew  that  any  miserable  back-stairs 
gossip  about  the  King  and  the  Court  would  be 
greedily  devoured.  There  was  in  London  and  in 
the  country  a  sentiment  of  Jacobitism.  The  cause 
of  the  Stuarts  was  dead  as  Herod,  but  the  prejudice 
against  the  House  of  Hanover  continued  strong.  The 
German  proclivities  of  George  I  and  George  II,  who 
never  liked  England  and  the  English,  had  alienated 


744  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

even  those  who  sympathized  with  the  claims  of  the 
House  of  Hanover.  The  simple  life  of  George  III, 
without  state,  with  little  dignity,  and  so  homely  as  not 
to  appeal  to  the  imagination  of  the  people,  served  as 
an  admirable  field  for  ridicule.  There  is  not  any 
evidence  that  Peter  Pindar  personally  hated  the  King, 
and  that  his  politics  were  anti-Hanoverian  or  anti- 
royal.  He  attacked  the  King  and  Court  because  he 
knew  it  would  pay — that  was  his  main  inducement, 
another  was  equally  unworthy.  He  hoped  that  the 
Government  would  give  him  some  sinecure  office,  or 
some  bribe  in  money  to  silence  his  slanderous  tongue. 

He  began  his  assault  on  the  private  life  of  the  King 
in  the  Lousiad,  a  poem  in  five  cantos,  the  first  four 
published  in  1785,  and  the  last  in  1795.  The  subject 
was  disgusting.  It  turned  upon  the  King  having  dis- 
covered a  specially  nasty  parasitical  insect  on  his  plate, 
and  on  thereupon  ordering  the  shaving  of  the  heads  of 
his  cooks  and  scullions,  grooms  of  the  kitchen,  servants 
of  the  pantry,  etc.,  to  the  number  of  fifty-one.  A  young 
man  in  the  kitchen,  John  Bear,  refusing  to  submit  to 
this  indignity,  was  dismissed  his  place. 

The  subject  was  inexhaustible,  and  these  attacks  on 
Royalty  sold  and  brought  in  much  money.  Accord- 
ingly he  worked  indefatigably  at  it.  He  was  supplied 
with  plenty  of  information  by  the  favourites  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales,  who  himself  relished  these  attacks 
upon  his  father. 

Peter  Pindar  jeered  at  the  King's  little  note-book  in 
which  he  dotted  down  his  observations. 

Now  Majesty,  alive  to  knowledge,  took 
A  very  pretty  memorandum-book, 
With  gilded  leaves  of  asses'  skin  so  white  ; 
And  in  it  lightly  began  to  write  : — 
Mem.  A  charming  place  beneath  the  grates 
For  roasting  chestnuts  or  potates. 


PETER    PINDAR  745 

Mem.  'Tis  hops  that  give  a  bitterness  to  beer — 

Hops  grown  in  Kent,  says  Whitbread,  and  elsewhere. 
Queen.   Is  there  no  cheaper  stuff?  where  does  it  dwell  ? 

Would  not  horse-aloes  do  as  well  ? 
Mem.  To  try  it  soon  on  our  small  beer — 

'Twill  save  us  sev'ral  pounds  a  year. 
Mem.  To  remember  to  forget  to  ask 

Old  Whitbread  to  my  house  one  day. 
****** 
To  Whitbread  now  deigned  Majesty  to  say, 
"  Whitbread,  are  all  your  horses  fond  of  hay?  " 
"  Yes,  please  your  Majesty" — in  humble  notes, 
The  Brewer  answer'd — "also,  Sir,  of  oats  ; 
Another  thing  my  horses  too  maintains, 
And  that,  an't  please  your  Majesty,  are  grains." 
"  Grains,  grains,"  said  Majesty,  "  To  fill  their  crops? 
Grains  ?  Grains  ? — that  come  from  hops— yes,  hops,  hops,  hops  ?  " 
Here  was  the  King,  like  hounds  sometimes  at  fault — 
"  Sire"  cry'd  the  humble  Brewer,  "  give  me  leave 
Your  sacred  Majesty  to  undeceive  : 
Grains,  Sire,  are  never  made  from  hops,  but  malt." 
"  True,"  said  the  cautious  Monarch,  with  a  smile  ; 
"From  malt,  malt,  malt— I  meant  it  all  the  while." 
"  Yes,"  with  the  sweetest  bow,  rejoined  the  Brewer. 
"An't please  your  Majesty,  you  did  I'm  sure." 
"Yes,"  answered  Majesty,  with  quick  reply, 
"I  did,  I  did,  I  did,  I,  I,  I,  I." 

Peter  Pindar  scoffed  at  the  parsimony  of  George  III. 
He  scoffed  at  his  personal  appearance,  his  simple  tastes, 
his  attempt  to  enforce  respect  for  the  Sunday,  his 
admiration  for  the  music  of  Handel,  above  all  his 
patronage  of  Benjamin  West. 

E'en  with  his  painter  let  the  King  be  blest ; 
Egad  !  eat,  drink,  and  sleep,  with  Mister  West. 

Let  the  Court,  the  fashionables,  the  vulgar  populace 
admire  West  and  purchase  his  wretched  pictures,  Peter 
will  have  none  of  him  or  of  them.  Then  he  tells  an 
amusing  tale  of  a  Toper  and  the  Flies.  A  group  of 
topers  sat  about  the  table  drinking  punch.  Flies 
joined  the  party,  sipped  the  grog,  fell  by  hundreds 
into  the  bowl. 


746  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Wanting-  to  drink — one  of  the  men 

Dipp'd  from  the  bowl  the  drunken  host, 

And  drank— then  taking  care  that  none  were  lost, 

He  put  in  ev'ry  mother's  son  agen. 

Up  jump'd  the  bacchanalian  crew  on  this, 

Taking  it  very  much  amiss — 

Swearing-,  and  in  the  attitude  to  smite  : 
11  Lord  ! "  cry'd  the  man  with  gravely  lilted  eyes, 
"  Though  /  don't  like  to  swallow  flies, 

I  did  not  know  but  others  might." 

The  Queen  had  removed  the  cartoons  of  Raphael 
from  Hampton  Court  to  St.  James's,  and  had  them  cut 
down  so  as  to  fit  the  place  which  she  designed  them 
to  occupy.  This  exasperated  Peter  to  the  last  degree : 
it  reminded  him  of  a  cutting  story.  In  the  last  war  the 
French  prisoners  died  by  scores,  and  the  Mayor  of  Ply- 
mouth to  accommodate  a  first  cousin,  a  carpenter,  gave 
him  a  contract  for  their  coffins.  The  carpenter,  think- 
ing to  save  some  pence  on  each  coffin,  made  every  one 
too  short ;  and  so  as  to  accommodate  the  dead  to  the 
receptacles  made  for  them,  cut  off  the  heads  of  the 
deceased  prisoners  and  tucked  them  en  chapeau  bas 
under  their  arms. 

To  a  Devonshire  man  one  of  the  most  amusing  com- 
positions of  Peter  Pindar  is  an  account  of  the  royal 
visit  to  Exeter  in  1788,  supposed  to  be  written  by  a 
farmer  of  Moreton  Hampstead  to  his  sister  Nan  : — 

Now  meend  me,  Nan  !  all  Ex'ter  town 
Was  gapin',  rennin'  up  and  down, 

Vath,  just  leek  vokes  bewitch'd  ! 
Lord  !  how  they  laugh'd  to  zee  the  King  ; 
To  hear  un  zay  zum  marv'lous  thing! 

Leek  mangy  dogs  they  itch'd. 

Leek  bullocks  sting'd  by  appledranes  (wasps), 
Currantin'  it  about  the  lanes, 

Vokes  theese  way  dreav'd  and  that ; 
Zum  hootin',  swearin',  scraimin',  bawlin'  ! 
Zum  in  the  muck,  and  pellum  (dust)  sprawlin'  ; 

Leek  pancakes  all  zo  flat. 


PETER    PINDAR  747 

On  the  occasion  of  the  visit  of  the  King,  Queen,  and 
the  Royal  Princesses,  the  Bishop  of  Exeter,  John  Ross, 
begged  to  be  excused  the  honour  of  entertaining  Ma- 
jesty— the  palace  was  not  roomy  enough,  he  was  infirm, 
and  so  on  ;  accordingly  their  Royal  Highnesses  were 
received  by  Dean  Duller  at  the  Deanery.  Ross  seems 
to  have  been  a  screw,  and  he  dreaded  the  expense  of 
entertaining  Royalty.  It  was  said  of  him  that  when 
his  clergy  were  entertained  by  him  there  was  no  wine 
on  the  table,  and  they  begged  to  be  allowed  to  taste 
"his  charming  water."  The  King  and  Royal  Family 
went  to  the  cathedral  for  Morning  Prayer,  after  which 
Dean  Buller  showed  them  over  the  church  ;  the  King 
looked  about 

And  zoon  beginn'd  to  speak  ; 
Zo  zaid,  "  Neat,  neat — clean,  very  clean  ; 
D'ye  mop  it,  mop  it  Measter  Dean  ; 

Mop,  mop  it  every  week  ? 

Wolcot  adds  in  a  note  that  the  King  actually  did 
make  this  observation  at  Exeter,  as  well  as  at  Salisbury 
some  years  later. 

The  royal  entry  into  the  city  is  most  humorously 
described,  and  Mr.  Rolle's  active  attention  to  the 
King  is  hit  off: — 

Wipin'  his  zweatty  jaws  and  poull 
All  over  dust  we  spy'd  Squire  Rolle, 

Close  by  the  King's  coach  trattin' : 
Now  shovin'  in  the  coach  his  head, 
Meaning,  we  giss'd,  it  might  be  zed, 

The  Squire  and  King  be  chattin'. 

Now  goed  the  Aldermen  and  May'r, 

Zum  wey  cropp'd  wigs,  and  zum  wey  hair, 

The  Royal  Yoke  to  ken  ; 
When  Measter  May'r,  upon  my  word, 
Pok'd  to  the  King  a  gert  long  sword, 

Which  he  pok'd  back  agen. 

It  had  been  hoped  that  the  King  would  make  the 
round  of  the  city  and  visit  the  Guildhall  and  Castle, 


748  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

but  he  declined  to  do  this.  The  Mayor  and  Alderman 
had  proposed  a  sumptuous  repast  at  the  Guildhall  for 
His  Majesty,  but  he  declined  to  attend,  much  to  their 
disappointment. 

But  this  a  did — now  this  was  kind — 
Knowin'  the  people's  longing-  mind, 

And  being  pretty  tall, 
A  stude  'pon  tiptoes,  it  is  zed  ; 
And,  condescending  pok'd  his  head 

Over  the  Bishop's  wall. 

Zum  of  the  Ex'ter  vokes  suppose 
They  plainly  zeed  his  royal  nose, 

And  zum  his  royal  eyes  ; 
And,  Lord  !  whatever  peart  they  zeed, 
In  this  they  one  and  all  agreed, 

'Twas  glorious,  gert,  and  wize. 

There  is  a  rollicking  swing  about  the  whole  composi- 
tion, which  keeps  the  narrative  going  like  the  steady 
onward  pace  of  a  racing  eight-oar. 

The  conclusion  at  which  Jan  Ploughshare  arrives  is 
vastly  droll  : — 

Theeze  once  I've  made  myzelf  a  vool 
And  now  I  feel  my  courage  cool 

For  zeeing  Royal  things  ; 
And  whan  my  Bible  next  I  read, — 
Zo  leet  I  worship  all  the  breed, 

I'll  skep  the  Book  of  Kings. 

But  among  offensive  things  written  on  George  III, 
perhaps  the  most  offensive  is  his  "  Letter  from  Brother 
Peter  to  Brother  Tom,"  in  which  he  contrasts  the  Prince 
of  Wales  with  his  father.  In  this  and  in  his  "Expostulary 
Odes  "  he  treats  the  vices  of  the  Prince  as  virtues— an 
obvious  bid  made  for  his  favour.  The  good  old  King's 
homely  ways  are  drawn  in  the  Letter  with  a  pen  dipped 
in  gall,  whereas  it  is  plunged  in  honey  for  the  Prince. 

Whene'er  he  hunts,  the  Monarch  is  thrown  out, 

As  in  his  politics — a  common  thing  ! 
With  searching  eyes  he  stares  at  first  about, 

Then  faces  the  misfortune  as  a  king. 


PETER   PINDAR  749 

Hearing-  no  news  of  nimble  Mister  Stag, 
He  sits  like  Patience  grinning-  on  his  nag-. 
Thus,  wisdom-fraught,  his  curious  eye-balls  ken 

The  little  hovels  that  around  him  rise  : 

To  these  he  trots — of  hogs  surveys  the  styes, 
And  nicely  numbers  every  cock  and  hen. 
Then  asks  the  farmer's  wife  or  farmer's  maid, 
How  many  eggs  the  fowls  have  laid. 
What's  in  the  oven— in  the  pot— the  crock  ; 
Whether  'twill  rain  or  no,  and  what's  o'clock. 
Thus  from  poor  hovels  gleaning  information, 
To  serve  as  future  treasure  for  the  nation. 
There,  terrier-like,  till  pages  find  him  out, 
He  pokes  his  most  sagacious  nose  about ; 

And  scenes  in  Paradise — like  that  so  fam'd  ; 
Looking  like  Adam  too,  and  Eve  so  fair ; 
Sweet  simpletons  !  who,  though  so  bare, 

Were  (says  the  Bible)  not  asham'd. 
No  man  binds  books  so  well  as  George  the  Third. 
By  thirst  of  leather  glory  spurr'd, 
At  bookbinders  he  oft  is  seen  to  laugh — 
And  wond'rous  is  the  King  in  sheep  or  calf! 
But  see  !  the  Prince  upon  such  labour  looks 
Fastidious  down,  and  only  readeth  books. 
Here  by  the  Sire  the  son  is  much  surpast ; 
Which  fame  should  publish  on  her  loudest  blast  I 
The  King  beats  Monmouth-street  in  cast-off  riches  ; 
That  is,  in  coats,  and  waistcoats,  and  in  breeches ; 
Which,  draughted  once  a  year  for  foreign  stations, 
Make  fine  recruits  to  serve  some  near  relations. 
But  lo  !  the  Prince,  shame  on  him  t  never  dreams 
Of  petty  Jewish,  economic  schemes  ! 
So  very  proud  (I'm  griev'd,  O  Tom,  to  tell  it) 
He'd  rather  give  a  coat  away  than  sell  it ! 
Fair  justice  to  the  Monarch  must  allow 
Prodigious  science  in  a  calf  or  cow  ; 

And  wisdom  in  an  article  of  swine. 
What  most  unusual  knowledge  for  a  King  ! 
Because  pig-wisdom  is  a  thing 

In  which  no  Sov'reign  e'er  were  known  to  shine. 
Yet  who  'will  think  I  am  not  telling  fibs  ? 

The  Prince,  who  Britain's  throne  in  time  shall  grace, 
Ne'er  finger  d,  at  a  fair,  a  bullock's  ribs, 

Nor  even  ogled  a  pig's  face  I 
O  dire  disgrace  !  O  let  it  not  be  knoivn 
That  thus  a  Father  hath  excell'd  a  Son. 


750  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

Peter  Pindar  spared  few.  Pitt  he  hated,  because  he 
had  not  bribed  him  ;  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  Boswell — fair 
game — Hannah  More,  Bishop  Porteus,  who  had  ven- 
tured in  a  sermon  to  speak  highly  of  Hannah  ;  James 
Bruce,  and  many  another. 

To  Lady  Mount  Edgcumbe  he  wrote  a  consolatory 
stanza  on  the  death  of  her  favourite  pig. 

O  dry  that  tear,  so  round  and  big- ; 

Nor  waste  in  sighs  your  precious  wind  ! 
Death  only  takes  a  single  Pig- — 

Your  lord  and  son  are  still  behind. 

In  J793>  Wolcot  sold  the  copyright  of  his  public 
works  to  J.  Walker  for  an  annuity  of  £200,  and  it  was 
stipulated  that  any  future  work  should  be  offered  to  the 
same  publisher. 

On  this  occasion  he  craftily  overreached  the  pub- 
lisher. When  Walker  made  the  proposition  to  the 
doctor  by  letter  it  was  with  an  offer  of  an  annuity  of 
two  hundred  pounds.  Wolcot  replied  by  appointing 
the  publisher  to  call  on  him,  that  day  week.  He 
received  him  in  deshabille,  even  in  his  nightcap ; 
and,  from  having  purposely  abstained  from  shaving  for 
four  days,  together  with  the  naturally  cadaverous  com- 
plexion, his  appearance  was  unhealthy;  added  to  which, 
he  assumed  a  hollow  sepulchral  cough.  Walker  had 
determined  not  to  make  any  advance  on  the  sum  he 
had  named,  but  when  the  doctor  was  again  taken  with 
a  fit  of  coughing  he  was  induced  to  make  it  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  pounds.  This  Wolcot  peremptorily 
refused,  and  was  seized  with  an  attack  of  coughing  that 
nearly  suffocated  him.  The  publisher,  thinking  it 
impossible  that  he  could  last  long,  agreed  to  make 
the  annuity  three  hundred.  But  some  time  after,  Pitt 
having  passed  a  Bill  through  both  Houses  to  restrain 
such  libellous  writings  as  those  of  Peter  Pindar,  the 


PETER    PINDAR  751 

publisher,  considering  that  the  restraint  thereby  im- 
posed would  militate  against  his  profits,  filed  a  bill  in 
Chancery  against  him,  and  got  the  sum  reduced  to  two 
hundred.  Wolcot  was  furious,  and  vowed  vengeance 
against  Walker,  which  he  eventually  accomplished,  by 
living  nearly  twenty  years  afterwards. 

But  he  presently  met  his  match,  William  Gifford, 
also  a  Devonshire  man  ;  in  his  "Anti-Jacobin,"  Gifford 
fell  upon  the  poet,  and  in  a  review  of  his  life  called  him 
"  his  disgustful  subject,  the  profligate  reviler  of  his 
Sovereign  and  impious  blasphemer  of  his  God."  Peter 
Pindar  was  quite  unable  to  stand  his  ground  against 
Gifford,  whose  "  Epistle  to  Peter  Pindar"  was  savage 
and  caustic  in  the  extreme  (1800). 

Lo,  here  the  reptile  !  who  from  some  dark  cell, 
Where  all  his  veins  in  the  native  poison  swell, 
Crawls  forth  a  slimy  toad,  and  spits  and  spews 
The  crude  abortions  of  his  loathsome  muse 
On  all  that  genius,  all  that  worth  holds  dear — 
Unsullied  rank,  and  piety  sincere. 


Lo,  here  the  brutal  sot !  who  drench'd  with  gin, 
Lashes  his  wither'd  nerves  to  tasteless  sin  ; 
Squeals  out  (with  oaths  and  blasphemies  between) 
The  impious  song1,  the  tale,  the  jest  obscene  ; 
And  careless  views,  amidst  the  barbarous  roar, 
His  few  grey  hairs  strew,  one  by  one,  the  floor. 

Oh  !  check,  a  moment  check,  the  obstreperous  din 
Of  guilty  joy,  and  hear  the  voice  within  ; 
The  small,  still  voice  of  Conscience,  hear  it  cry  : 
An  atheist  thou  mayst  live,  but  canst  not  die. 

For  me — why  shouldst  thou  with  abortive  toil, 
Waste  the  poor  remnant  of  thy  spluttering  oil 
In  filth  and  falsehood?  Ignorant  and  absurd  ! 
Pause  from  thy  pains,  and  take  my  closing  word  ; 
Thou  canst  not  think,  nor  have  I  power  to  tell, 
How  much  I  scorn  and  loathe  thee — so— Farewell. 


752  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Wolcot  was  so  infuriated  that  he  sought  to  meet 
Gifford.  They  happened  to  meet  in  Wright's  shop  in 
Piccadilly  in  the  same  year  in  which  the  epistle  had 
appeared.  A  scuffle  ensued,  in  which  Wolcot  was  the 
aggressor,  and  got  the  worst  of  it.  Peter  retaliated 
with  "  A  Cut  at  a  Cobbler,"  but  it  fell  flat. 

The  Prince  of  Wales,  that  "  First  Gentleman  in 
Europe,"  had  encouraged  Peter,  and  is  said  to  have 
had  the  poet's  proof  sheets  forwarded  to  him  before 
publication.  Peter  had  licked  the  Prince's  dirty  boots, 
and  hoped  for  his  reward.  But  when  the  Prince  be- 
came Regent  he  cooled  towards  the  savage  yet  servile 
poet,  and  the  indignant  Peter  gave  vent  to  his  feelings 
of  disappointment  and  resentment  in  a  poem  in  1811, 
"  Carlton  House,  or  the  Disappointed  Bard." 

In  Wolcot's  later  years  his  sight  was  affected,  and  in 
May,  1811,  he  was  almost  totally  blind.  He  still,  how- 
ever, continued  to  write  and  publish.  Four  volumes  of 
his  works  had  been  published  by  Walker  in  1794,  a 
fifth  was  added  in  1801.  He  died  14  January,  1819,  in 
Somerstown,  and  was  buried  21  January,  in  S.  Paul's 
Church,  Covent  Garden.  By  his  own  expressed  wish, 
his  coffin  was  placed  beside  that  of  Samuel  Butler, 
author  of  Hudibras. 

In  appearance  Wolcot  was  "a  thick,  squat  man,  with 
a  large  dark  and  flat  face,  and  no  speculation  in  his 
eye."  His  portrait,  by  Opie,  is  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery,  where  is  also  a  miniature  of  him  by 
Lethbridge. 

He  was  never  married.  Indeed,  he  flouted  at  mar- 
riage. He  was  a  sensualist.  In  an  "  Apology  for 
Keeping  Mistresses  "  he  wrote  : — 

O  Love  !  for  heaven's  sake,  never  leave  my  heart  ; 
No  !  thou  and  I  will  never,  never  part : 
Go,  Wedlock,  to  the  men  of  leaden  brains, 
Who  hate  variety,  and  sigh  for  chains. 


PETER   PINDAR  753 

When  Wolcot  sought  to  be  sentimental,  he  was 
unreal.  One  piece  does  show  real  tenderness  of  feel- 
ing, and  that  must  be  given  in  conclusion,  to  show 
that  he  had  a  glimmering  now  and  then  of  better 
feelings  than  spite,  envy,  and  resentment. 

The  old  shepherd's  dog-,  like  his  master,  was  gray  ; 

His  teeth  all  departed,  and  feeble  his  tongue  ; 
Yet  where'er  Colin  went,  he  was  follow'd  by  Tray. 

Thus  happy  through  life  did  they  hobble  along-. 

When  fatigued  on  the  grass  the  shepherd  would  lie 
For  a  nap  in  the  sun,  'midst  his  slumbers  so  sweet, 

His  faithful  companion  crawl'd  constantly  nigh, 

Placed  his  head  on  his  lap,  and  lay  down  at  his  feet. 

When  winter  was  heard  on  the  hill  and  the  plain, 
And  torrents  descended,  and  cold  was  the  wind, 

If  Colin  went  forth  'midst  the  tempests  and  rain, 
Tray  scorned  to  be  left  in  the  chimney  behind. 

At  length  in  the  straw  Tray  made  his  last  bed  ; 

For  vain,  against  death,  is  the  stoutest  endeavour — 
To  lick  Colin's  hand  he  rear'd  up  his  weak  head, 

Then  fell  back,  clos'd  his  eyes,  and,  ah  !  clos'd  them  for  ever. 

Not  long  after  Tray  did  the  Shepherd  remain, 

Who  oft  o'er  his  grave  with  true  sorrow  would  bend  ; 

And,  when  dying,  thus  feebly  was  heard  the  poor  swain, 
"  Oh  bury  me,  neighbours,  beside  my  old  friend." 


DR.   J.   W.    BUDD 


f^  '•$  "^HE  Budd  family  was  one  of  tenants  under 
S  the  earls  of  Bedford  in   Goodleigh,   Land- 

S  key,  and  Swymbridge  parishes.     Parkham 

F  and  Newton  St.  Petrock  also  contained 
Budds,  the  name  occurring  in  the  registers  as  far  back 
as  1563.  The  name  does  not  occur  in  the  Heralds' 
Visitation  of  Devon  as  of  a  family  possessing  a  right 
to  bear  arms.  Nor  does  the  name  occur  in  Lysons' 
Devon.  A  Budd  was  Master  of  Caius  College  in  the 
time  of  James  I.  John  Turnarine  Budd  lived  at  Tan- 
creek,  in  the  parish  of  St.  Columb  Minor.  His  father 
before  him,  the  Rev.  Richard  Budd,  was  perpetual  curate 
of  St.  Columb  Minor,  and  married  Gertrude,  daughter 
of  John  Turnarine.  He  died  in  1787.  John  Turnarine 
Budd  was  the  father  of  Samuel  Budd,  educated  at  Truro 
Grammar  School.  Samuel  settled  as  a  doctor  at  North 
Tawton,  and  there  brought  up  his  nine  sons,  all  intended 
by  him  for  the  medical  profession.  Five  of  them  went 
to  Cambridge,  every  one  of  whom  became  a  Wrang- 
ler, and  four  obtained  fellowships.  The  most  famous 
of  these  was  William  Budd,  born  in  1811,  who  died 
in  1880.  On  one  occasion  typhoid  fever  broke  out  in 
North  Tawton,  and  caused  many  deaths.  Dr.  Budd 
at  once  divined  the  cause  ;  indeed,  he  was  the  first  man 
thoroughly  to  trace  the  fever  to  its  source,  and  he  per- 
sisted in  his  urgency  to  have  the  water  supply  thor- 
oughly overhauled,  and,  succeeding,  put  a  stop  to  the 
fever.  He  published  a  work  on  typhoid  fever  in  1873, 

754 


DR.    JOHN    W.    BUDD 
From  a  photograph  ly  his  brother,  Dr.  Richard  Budd  of  Barnstaple 


DR.    J.   W.   BUDD  755 

and  proved  beyond  dispute  how  it  originated,  how  it 
was  communicated,  and  how  alone  it  could  be  arrested. 
When  the  terrible  rinderpest  broke  out  in  England  in 
1866,  Budd  was  loud  in  his  recommendations  of  "a 
poleaxe  and  a  pit  of  quicklime  "  as  the  true  solution  of 
the  difficulty,  and  although  derided  at  first,  this  view 
was  ultimately  and  successfully  adopted. 

Rarely  has  a  whole  family  proved  so  able — and,  what 
is  more,  proved  the  excellence  of  a  home  education, 
where  the  father  is  competent  to  give  it.  Samuel 
Budd,  the  surgeon  of  North  Tawton,  managed  to 
teach  his  nine  sons  himself  in  the  intervals  of  his  pro- 
fessional calls  ;  and  he  taught  them  so  well  that  not 
one  of  his  sons  but  made  his  mark  in  the  world. 

Samuel,  the  eldest  son,  was  born  in  1806.  He  was 
one  of  the  seven  who  embraced  the  medical  profession. 
He  became  a  member  of  the  College  of  Physicians  in 
1859.  He  died,  aged  seventy-nine,  in  1885.  George 
was  born  in  February,  1808,  and  became  a  Fellow  of  the 
College  in  1841.  He  died  in  March,  1882.  Richard 
was  born  in  April,  1809,  became  a  Fellow  of  the  College 
of  Physicians  in  1863,  and  died  in  February,  1896. 
William  has  been  already  mentioned. 

John  Wreford,  the  subject  of  this  memoir,  was  born 
in  1813,  practised  at  Plymouth,  and  died  11  November, 
1873.  The  other  sons  were  Charles  Octavius,  Fellow 
of  Pembroke  College,  Cambridge;  Dr.  Christian  Budd, 
of  North  Tawton ;  and  Francis  Nonus,  born  1823, 
became  eighth  Wrangler  in  1846,  Fellow  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  called  to  the  Bar,  Lincoln's 
Inn,  1848,  practised  as  barrister  for  many  years  at 
Bristol,  bought  a  little  property  at  Batworthy,  Chag- 
ford,  on  the  Teign,  where  he  made  a  fine  collection  of 
flint  weapons  and  tools  found  in  his  fields,  where  was 
once  a  "  station  "  for  their  manufacture. 


756  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

Doctor  John  Wreford  Budd,  as  already  said,  prac- 
tised in  Plymouth.  He  was  a  man  of  rough  manners, 
blunt  and  to  the  point  in  all  he  said.  When  Roundell 
Palmer  was  electioneering  in  Plymouth  in  1847  he 
stayed  with  Budd,  who  was  very  proud  of  his  guest. 
Meeting  Mr.  William  Collier  in  the  street,  he  stopped 
him,  and  without  any  preliminaries  said:  "Can  your 
cook  make  soup  as  clear  as  sherry?  Mine  can,  sir — 
soup  like  that  every  day,  whilst  Mr.  Palmer  was  staying 
with  me." 

Another  time,  when  he  had  some  friends  to  lunch, 
there  was  some  delay.  He  took  out  his  watch,  placed 
it  before  him  on  the  table,  and  turning  to  Mrs.  Budd, 
said  :  "  What  a  thing  this  onpunctuality  is  !  If  it  be 
not  brought  to  table  in  two  minutes,  I'll  dra'e  it  all  out 
at  the  window,"  spoken  in  the  broadest  Devonian  dialect. 

A  gentleman  writes  :  "  An  excellent  cook  came  to  us 
from  the  service  of  Dr.  Budd.  She  was  epileptic,  and 
the  Doctor's  violence  increased  her  trouble.  With  us 
she  remained  for  many  years  until  age  made  her  unfit 
for  work.  She  told  me  that  once  preparations  were 
well  advanced  for  a  dinner  party,  when  the  Doctor  came 
down  to  the  kitchen,  as  was  his  wont.  She  had  been 
plucking  a  brace  of  pheasants,  and  some  blood  from 
the  beaks  had  stained  her  apron.  This  defilement 
roused  the  Doctor  to  such  frenzy  that  he  seized  and 
flung  out  of  the  window  or  smashed  up  all  the  prepared 
dishes.  As  the  guests  were  due  to  arrive  very  shortly, 
Mrs.  Budd,  in  a  state  of  distraction,  sent  all  over  the 
town  for  such  cold  joints,  sweets,  etc.,  as  could  be 
obtained  from  hotels,  confectioners,  and  other  caterers. 
With  this  scratch  meal  she  was  obliged  to  regale  her 
guests,  without  being  able  to  explain  the  reason  of  the 
novelty.  But  some  inkling  of  the  truth  came  to  be 
known  or  was  guessed  by  her  visitors. 


DR.    J.   W.   BUDD  757 

"Dr.  Stewart,  of  Plymouth,  told  me  one  day  that  a 
friend  of  his  passing  Dr.  Budd's  house  was  startled  by 
the  sudden  descent  of  a  leg  of  mutton  in  the  street, 
flung  out  of  the  window  by  the  irate  Doctor  because 
either  somewhat  over-  or  underdone. 

"Dr.  Budd  would  often,  when  giving  a  dinner  party, 
rise  at  the  conclusion  of  the  first  courses,  saying  *  I 
shan't  take  any  sweets/  would  go  to  the  fireside  and  fill 
a  long  '  churchwarden  '  clay,  then,  leaning  against  the 
mantelpiece,  calmly  smoke  and  join  in  the  conversation 
of  the  guests  as  they  continued  at  table. 

"  He  was  a  tall,  heavily-built  man,  with  a  full,  high- 
coloured  face,  not  intellectual  in  appearance,  and  with 
warm  brown  hair  and  side  whiskers." 

He  was  out  shooting  one  day  with  Mr.  Calmady.  A 
pheasant  rose,  and  both  men  raised  their  guns,  and 
the  bird  came  down  like  lead. 

"That's  my  burd,"  shouted  Budd. 

"I  really  think  not;  I  am  sure  I  brought  it  down," 
said  Mr.  Calmady. 

"  It's  my  burd,  I  zay.  I'll  swear  to  it.  Never  missed 
in  my  life,  any  more  than  blundered  in  my  profession. 
It's  mine." 

"Very  well.     Yours  it  shall  be." 

Up  rose  another  pheasant.  Each  hastened  to  load, 
when  it  turned  out  that  the  Doctor's  gun  had  not  been 
discharged  at  all. 

A  gentleman  writes  me:  "My  mother  remembers 
travelling  by  train  in  the  same  carriage  with  the  Doctor. 
Two  other  men  also  got  in  ;  and  one,  who  may  have 
been  the  worse  for  liquor,  began  grossly  to  insult  the 
other ;  whereupon  the  Doctor  interfered  and  took  the 
part  of  the  insulted  man.  '  What  business  is  this  of 
yours?'  shouted  the  offender.  At  this  moment  the  train 
drew  up  in  the  Plymouth  station.  Dr.  Budd  jumped 


758  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

out,  turned  up  his  sleeves,  squared  his  fists,  and 
shouted,  '  Now  then,  you  blackguard,  I'll  show  you 
what  I  have  to  do  with  it,'  and  knocked  him  down  on 
the  platform." 

A  friend  took  Budd  out  in  his  yacht.  As  the  vessel 
skimmed  through  the  smooth  waters  of  the  Sound — 
"He's  a  fool,  a  cursed  fool,"  said  Budd,  "  he  who  has 
the  means  and  don't  keep  a  yacht." 

Presently  the  boat  shot  out  beyond  the  breakwater, 
and  began  to  pitch.  Budd  turned  livid,  and  his  lips 
leaden.  "He's  a  fool,  a  cursed  fool,"  said  he,  after  he 
had  stooped  over  the  side,  "  he  who,  having  the 
means,  keeps  a  yacht ;  and  he's  a  cursed  fool  who, 
having  a  friend  that  has  a  yacht,  allows  himself  to  be 
over-persuaded  to  go  out  with  him." 

Mrs.  Calmady  was  in  a  very  poor  way.  The  doctors 
had  bled  her  and  allowed  her  only  slops,  and  the  poor 
lady  was  reduced  to  death's  door.  As  a  last  resource 
Dr.  Budd  was  called  in.  "  Chuck  the  slops  away,  and 
chuck  the  doctors  after  them,  with  their  pills  and 
lancets,"  roared  Budd.  "Give  her  three  or  four  glasses 
of  champagne  a  day,  a  bowl  of  beef-tea  every  three 
hours,  beefsteaks,  mutton-chops,  and  oysters." 

In  fact,  Dr.  J.  W.  Budd  broke  through  the  wretched 
system  that  prevailed  of  bleeding  and  giving  lowering 
diet  for  every  kind  of  malady,  which  was  the  Sangrado 
system  of  the  day. 

A  girl  was  shown  to  him  in  a  sort  of  box,  almost  like 
a  coffin.  He  had  been  called  in  to  examine  her,  and 
he  said  that  he  would  undertake  to  cure  her  if  she  were 
taken  to  his  house  and  his  treatment  were  not  inter- 
fered with. 

"But,  oh!  Doctor,"  said  the  mother,  "dearest 
Evangeline  can  eat  nothing  but  macaroons." 

"In— deed!" 


DR.    J.   W.    BUDD  759 

"  And,  oh  !  Doctor,  she  cannot  bear  the  light ;  and 
the  shutters  have  to  be  kept  fast,  and  even  the  blinds 
down.  The  least  ray  of  light  causes  her  excruciating 
pain." 

"Ha!     Humph!" 

"And,  Doctor  Budd,  she  cannot  stand;  she  lies 
always  in  that  box;  and,  what  is  more,  she  can't  speak, 
only  moans  and  mutters." 

"  I  understand.     Send  her  to  me." 

So  the  box  was  brought.  To  accommodate  it  a 
hearse  was  hired — no  cab  or  carriage  would  contain  it 
in  a  horizontal  position. 

The  chest  with  the  hysterical  girl  in  it  was  carried 
into  one  of  Budd's  rooms  in  his  house,  where  the  shut- 
ters were  closed  and  the  curtains  drawn. 

The  weeping  mother  departed  after  giving  strict 
injunctions  to  the  Doctor  not  to  allow  any  noise  to  be 
made  in  the  house,  no  doors  to  be  slammed,  or  poor 
darling  Evangeline  would  go  into  convulsions — so 
highly  strung  were  her  sensitive  nerves. 

"Humph!"  said  Budd,  and  saw  the  good  lady 
depart.  He  allowed  ten  minutes  to  elapse,  and  then  he 
went  upstairs,  stamping  on  each  step,  threw  open  the 
door  of  the  room  in  which  his  patient  lay,  and 
shouted — 

"  Halloo  !  What  tomfoolery  is  this?  I'll  soon  make 
an  end  to  it."  He  went  to  the  window,  drew  back  the 
curtains,  threw  open  the  shutters,  and  let  the  sun 
stream  into  the  apartment. 

The  girl  began  to  moan  and  cry. 

"  Stop  that  nonsense  !  "  said  he.  "  I'm  not  like  that 
fool  of  a  mother  of  yours  to  believe  in  your  whims. 
Get  out  of  that  box  this  instant." 

The  girl  began  to  tremble,  but  made  no  attempt  to 
obey. 


76o  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

Budd  went  to  a  drawer  and  pulled  out  a  pistol. 
Then  to  a  cupboard  and  emptied  a  draught  into  a 
glass. 

"Now,  then,"  said  he,  "which  shall  it  be,  pistol  or 
poison  ?  I'll  gripe  you  with  the  dose  till  you  squeal 
with  good  reason,  or  put  a  bullet  into  you — whichever 
you  prefer.  It's  all  one  to  me,  but  out  of  that  box  you 
jump." 

And  jump  she  did,  and  fell  on  her  knees  before 
Dr.  Budd. 

"  Oh  !  please,  please,  do  not  kill  me  ! " 

"  I  am  not  going  to  kill  you  if  you  do  what  you  are 
told.  Sit  down  there,"  indicating  a  chair. 

The  girl  complied.  He  rang  the  bell,  and  when  a 
servant  appeared  he  ordered  a  beefsteak  and  a  small 
bottle  of  porter  and  bread.  These  were  speedily 
brought  into  the  room. 

"  Now,  then,"  said  the  Doctor,  "eat  and  drink  and 
enjoy  yourself." 

"  I — I — I  can  only  eat  macaroons." 

"  Macaroons  be  d d.  You  eat  that  steak  and  you 

drink  that  porter,"  roared  Budd,  "or"— and  he  pro- 
ceeded to  cock  and  present  the  pistol. 

The  girl  tremblingly  obeyed,  but  presently  became 
interested  in  the  succulent  beef  and  some  crisp  pota- 
toes, and  the  porter  she  sipped  first,  and  then  drank, 
and  drained  the  tumbler. 

"That  will  do  for  to-day,"  said  Budd.  "I  have 
sent  for  your  out-of-door  clothes,  and  to-morrow  morn- 
ing you  shall  trundle  a  hoop  round  Princess  Square. 
Now  I  leave  you  a  packet  of  illustrated  books.  You 
dine  with  me  this  evening  at  seven." 

Another  hysterical  girl  he  dealt  with  and  cured  even 
more  expeditiously.  He  was  shown  into  the  room 
where  she  lay  in  bed,  and  was  informed  that  she  could 


DR.    J.   W.    BUDD  761 

not  rise.  The  Doctor  begged  to  be  left  alone  in  the 
room  with  her. 

When  all  were  gone  forth,  he  locked  the  door  ;  then 
proceeded  to  divest  himself  of  his  coat,  next  of  his 
waistcoat,  and  when  he  began  to  unhitch  his  braces — 

"  Now,  then,  make  room — I'm  coming  to  bed  !  " 

"  Mamma  !  Mamma  !  Mamma  !  "  screamed  the  girl, 
and  pulled  violently  at  the  bell. 

"All  right,  madam,"  said  Budd  when  the  mother 
arrived  on  the  spot ;  "  she's  cured  now.  Get  this  little 
maid  up  instantly,  and  vacate  the  bed  for  me.  If  there 
be  any  more  nonsense,  madam,  send  for  me." 

A  small  girl  had  a  tiresome  nervous  cough.  Dr. 
Budd  was  called  in.  He  heard  her  cough.  Then  he 
suddenly  took  her  up  in  his  arms  and  planted  her  on 
the  mantelshelf. 

"There!"  said  he.  "Balance  yourself  here  for 
half  an  hour."  He  pulled  out  his  watch.  "If  you 
cough  you  will  infallibly  tumble  over  among  the  fire- 
irons  and  cut  your  head.  You  are  a  nice  little  girl,  you 
are  an  active  little  girl,  you  are  a  pretty  little  girl ;  but 
you  have  one  cussed  fault  which  makes  every  one  hate 
you,  and  I'm  going  to  cure  you  of  that.  No  coughing. 
The  fire  is  burning,  and  if  you  do  fall  I  suspect  your 
skirts  will  catch  fire,  and  you  will  be  frightfully  burnt, 
besides  having  your  cheek  cut  open  by  the  fender." 

A  young  lady  was  one  day  brought  to  the  Doctor  by 
her  parents,  who  were  very  anxious  about  her,  as  she 
was  in  a  depressed  condition  of  mind,  out  of  which 
nothing  roused  her.  Budd  promised  to  give  every 
attention  to  the  case,  and  requested  the  parents  to 
leave  her  with  him  at  his  residence  in  Princess  Place. 
Soon  afterwards  he  bade  his  coachman  put  to  and  take 
the  young  lady  out  for  a  drive.  "  And  mind,"  said  the 
Doctor,  "you  upset  the  carriage." 


762  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

His  orders  were  obeyed.  The  landau  was  upset  in  a 
ditch,  and  the  young  lady  appeared  screaming  at  the 
window  to  be  extricated.  "No  more  apathy  now," 
said  Budd  ;  and  sent  her  home  cured. 

Budd,  with  all  his  roughness,  was  a  kind-hearted  and 
liberal  man.  His  surgery  was  at  the  "Cottage,"  in 
Westwell  Street,  and  thousands  streamed  there  every 
year  full  of  implicit  faith  in  Budd's  powers.  A  child 
was  one  day  brought  to  the  "Cottage,"  a  puny  little 
sufferer.  The  Doctor,  with  his  quick  eye,  saw  that  the 
case  was  critical ;  and  although  this  was  a  free  patient, 
he  immediately  had  it  sent  to  his  own  home  in  Princess 
Square,  with  strict  orders  that  it  was  to  be  well  fed  and 
cared  for ;  and  it  remained  there  for  several  days  under 
his  care  without  fee  or  reward. 

A  tradesman  in  Plymouth,  living  not  long  ago  and 
in  good  circumstances,  was  at  that  time  a  man  of  strait- 
ened means.  He  was  attacked  by  Asiatic  cholera.  Dr. 
Budd  was  called  in,  and  saw  that  the  case  was  severe 
and  required  every  care  ;  and  he  attended  morning, 
noon,  and  night — on  some  days  almost  hourly — for  a 
fortnight  or  three  weeks,  and  at  last  the  patient  was 
cured.  Then,  with  trembling  lips,  he  asked  Dr.  Budd 
for  his  bill,  thinking  he  would  have  to  pay  thirty  or 
forty  pounds.  The  Doctor  replied  :  "  You  are  a  strug- 
gling tradesman,  and  cannot  afford  to  pay  much;  if 
you  cannot  rake  together  five  pounds,  pay  me  what 
you  can." 

A  girl  suffering  from  S.  Vitus's  dance  was  brought 
to  him.  He  looked  hard  at  her.  "Humph!  Every 
time  you  make  one  of  those  jerks,  I'll  force  you  to  kiss 
me,"  said  the  Doctor.  This  succeeded — for,  according 
to  the  general  opinion,  Dr.  Budd  was  "  mortal  ugly." 

A  boy  patient  was  fencing  with  his  questions.  Budd 
put  the  poker  in  the  fire,  and  when  it  was  red-hot  took 


DR.    J.   W.    BUDD  763 

it  to  the  bedside,  and  with  a  severe  look  and  voice 
declared  that  he  would  at  once  apply  it  if  the  lad  did  not 
answer  fully  to  his  questions.  The  threat  produced 
the  immediate  result  of  eliciting  the  replies  he  required, 
so  as  to  enable  him  to  diagnose  the  case. 

Dr.  Budd  had  an  aptitude  to  diagnose  his  patient  at 
a  glance.  At  one  time  a  young  schoolmaster  of  Will- 
inghull,  aged  twenty-two,  named  Horswell,  visited 
him.  He  had  formerly  been  in  Plymouth,  and  knew 
the  fame  of  Dr.  Budd.  As  he  had  broken  down  in 
health,  he  returned  to  Plymouth.  Two  doctors  had 
assured  him  that  he  would  soon  recover,  but  he  thought 
he  would  obtain  an  opinion  from  Dr.  Budd.  This 
physician  examined  him,  and  told  him  in  his  usual 
blunt  manner  that  he  was  food  for  worms.  His  right 
lung  was  gone,  and  his  left  was  affected.  "I  shan't 
give  you  medicine.  Eat  and  drink  well,  and  keep  out 
of  the  cold,  and  you  will  hold  on  for  ten  months — no 
longer." 

Horswell  got  better  and  returned  to  his  duties  at  the 
Wesleyan  School  at  Willinghull.  He  wrote  frequently 
to  his  friends,  and  told  them  how  much  better  he  was, 
and  jeered  at  Budd's  prediction. 

About  eight  months  after  his  return  he  announced 
to  his  friends  in  Plymouth  that  he  was  about  to  be 
married,  and  again  alluded  to  Budd's  prediction,  and 
promised  to  write  announcing  his  wedding.  That  letter 
never  came  ;  but  instead  of  it  one  with  a  black  edge, 
informing  his  friends  that  Horswell  had  broken  a  blood- 
vessel and  had  died  suddenly  ;  and  a  post-mortem  ex- 
amination proved  that  the  right  lung  had  long  been 
gone,  and  a  portion  of  the  left. 

A  drunken  man  fell  into  Sutton  Pool.  It  was  late  in 
the  evening,  and  very  dark  at  the  time,  but  a  trades- 
man in  the  locality  happening  to  hear  the  splash,  raised 


764  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

the  alarm.  With  great  presence  of  mind,  he  laid  hold 
of  a  number  of  newspapers,  set  them  on  fire,  and  threw 
them  into  the  water.  By  this  light  the  drowning  man 
was  seen  and  recovered,  and  taken  into  a  public-house. 
Every  means  was  adopted  to  restore  animation.  Several 
medical  men  were  soon  in  attendance,  and  they  pro- 
nounced the  man  out  of  danger.  Dr.  Budd  put  in  his 
appearance  somewhat  late,  and,  shaking  his  head,  pro- 
nounced the  man's  condition  to  be  hopeless.  The  man 
slept  well  that  night,  and  next  day  ate  his  breakfast  and 
dinner  as  usual.  The  doctors  all  called  to  see  him  in 
the  morning,  and  all,  with  the  exception  of  Dr.  Budd, 
pronounced  him  out  of  danger ;  but  Budd  stepped 
forward  and  asked  the  man  if  he  was  prepared  to  die, 
"for,"  said  he,  "you  will  be  dead  before  six  o'clock 
this  evening."  No  one  present,  not  even  the  man  him- 
self, believed  the  statement,  as  all  was  going  on  so 
favourably.  But  Budd  was  right,  and  before  sundown 
the  man  was  dead.  Dr.  Budd  considered  it  impossible 
that  he  should  recover  from  the  blood-poisoning  caused 
by  taking  into  his  stomach  the  poisonous  deposits  in 
Sutton  Pool. 

A  miserly  old  fellow  who  was  well  off  in  worldly 
goods  visited  Dr.  Budd  at  his  "  Cottage  "  in  Westwell 
Street,  and,  thinking  to  save  the  guinea  fee,  dressed 
himself  in  rags.  The  Doctor  recognized  him,  but 
listened  patiently  to  the  old  man's  tale,  and  then  asked 
him  where  he  lived,  to  which  the  man  replied  by  naming 
a  very  poor  part  of  the  village  near  his  own  residence 
and  using  a  feigned  name. 

The  Doctor  said:  "Do  you  know  who  lives  in  that 
big  house  in  the  place  with  the  door  that  has  a  pediment 
over  it?"  To  which  the  old  man  replied  "Yes,"  and 
mentioned  his  own  name. 

"Then,"  said  Dr.  Budd,  "  call  on  that  gentleman  on 


DR.    J.   W.   BUDD  765 

your  way  home  and  tell  him  that  the  devil  will  have 
him  in  a  fortnight." 

A  few  days  beyond  the  fortnight  the  old  gentleman 
actually  died. 

A  Dartmoor  small  farmer  came  to  him  one  day, 
suffering  from  congestion  of  the  lungs.  u  You  go 
home,  and  to  bed  at  once,"  said  Dr.  Budd ;  "  and  here's 
a  draught  for  you  to  take  internally,  and  here  are  some 
leeches  to  apply  externally." 

"  Please,  your  honour,  to  write  it  down,"  said  John. 

"Can  you  read?" 

"  Yes,  I  reckon,  but  my  Mary  can't." 

So  Dr.  Budd  wrote  the  instructions. 

A  week  or  fortnight  later  the  patient  called  again. 
He  was  recovered. 

"Well,"  said  the  Doctor,  "you  took  my  prescrip- 
tions?" 

"Aye,  I  reckon  I  did — and  drashy  things  they  were." 

"  You  put  the  leeches  on  ?  " 

"  I  reckon  I  put  'em  in,  sir.  I  read  what  you'd  wrote 
and  we  understood  you  to  say  that  they  was  to  be  fried, 
so  my  Mary,  her  put  the  pan  on  th'  vire,  and  a  pat  o' 
butter  and  a  shred  o'  onion,  and  fried  'em,  live  as  they 
were.  But  they  was  cruel  nasty,  like  bits  of  leather. 
But  Lord  !  for  mussy's  sake,  Doctor,  don't  ax  me  to 
ate  any  more  o'  them  things.  I'd  rayther  take  a  whole 
box  o'  pills  all  to  wance." 

A  gentleman  called  on  him  one  day  just  before  Budd 
sat  down  to  dinner,  and  brought  with  him  his  brother 
suffering  from  lock-jaw. 

"  I'm  not  going  to  be  interfered  with  at  my  dinner  for 
you  or  the  King,"  said  Budd;  then  to  his  servant,  "Here, 
George,  lay  two  plates  for  these  gentlemen,  the  one  who 
can't  speak  place  opposite  me  at  the  bottom  of  the  table, 
and  for  the  other  gentleman  in  the  middle  on  my  left." 


766  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Whether  they  would  or  no,  the  two  visitors  were 
obliged  to  comply  ;  they  knew  the  imperious  nature  of 
the  Doctor,  and  that  unless  he  were  humoured,  he 
would  kick  them  out  of  the  house  and  refuse  to  attend 
to  the  patient. 

A  roast  leg  of  mutton  was  placed  before  Dr.  Budd ; 
he  proceeded  to  carve  a  great  slice,  then  took  it  and 
threw  the  slab  of  meat  in  the  face  of  the  gentleman  on 
his  left,  who  staggered  back  and  hastily  seized  his 
napkin  to  wipe  his  face  and  sweep  the  juice  from  his 
shirt-front  and  waistcoat.  But  before  he  had  cleansed 
himself,  slap  came  another  slice  of  mutton  in  his  face, 
and  then  a  third.  At  this  the  man  with  the  lock-jaw 
burst  into  a  roar  of  laughter. 

" There,"  said  Budd,  "I  have  cured  you:  you  will 
have  to  pay  for  a  new  waistcoat  for  your  brother,  it's 
messed  with  grease." 

Budd  was  sent  for  to  visit  a  poor  man  who  was  bad 
with  quinsy,  could  not  swallow,  could  not  even  speak. 
Said  the  Doctor  to  the  patient's  wife,  "  I  be  coming  to 
dine  with  you,  I  and  my  assistant  John." 

"  Lor'  a  mussy,  sir,  I  ain't  got  nothing  fit  for  gentle- 
volks  to  dine  on  here,"  said  the  amazed  woman. 

"  Here's  a  guinea,"  said  Budd.  "Go  and  get  us  a 
bottle  of  wine  and  make  us  apple  dumplings,  and 
plenty  of  these  latter.  Will  be  here  at  one  o'clock." 

At  the  appointed  hour,  Budd  and  his  assistant 
arrived.  The  table  was  spread  with  a  clean  cloth,  and 
humble  but  neat  ware  was  placed  on  it — all  in  the  room 
where  the  patient  was  lying  gasping  for  breath.  Budd 
and  John  seated  themselves  one  at  each  end  of  the 
table  ;  and  the  dumplings  were  produced,  round,  hard, 
hot,  and  steaming.  Budd  took  one  up  in  his  hands, 
turned  it  about,  and,  all  at  once,  threw  it  at  the  head  of 
his  assistant,  and  caught  him  full  crash  between  the 


DR.    J.   W.   BUDD  767 

eyes.  John  sprang  up.  "  Two  can  play  at  that  game!  " 
snouted  he,  and  catching  up  another  dumpling  threw 
it  at  the  Doctor,  who  dodged,  and  the  apple  burst  its 
crust  and  remained  clinging  to  the  wall.  This  was  the 
beginning  of  a  war  of  pelting  with  dumplings  ;  and 
it  so  tickled  the  patient  that  he  burst  out  laughing  and 
burst  the  quinsy. 

He  was  visiting  a  labouring  man  who  was  weak,  and 
Budd  saw  that  what  he  needed  more  than  physic  was 
good  nourishing  diet.  Now  that  day  he  was  having 
mock-turtle  soup  at  his  table,  so  he  sent  a  bowl  of  it  to 
his  patient.  The  man  looked  into  the  bowl,  saw  the 
pieces  of  calf's  head  floating  in  it,  shook  his  head, 
thrust  it  away,  and  said,  '  *  I  can't  take  that,  there's  too 
much  of  a  surgeon's  trade  in  it  to  suit  my  stomach, 
sure  'nuff." 

Budd  was  visiting  a  farmer  in  the  country.  Every 
time  he  left,  a  prentice  boy  on  the  farm  came  with  an 
anxious  face  to  inquire  how  his  master  was. 

The  Doctor  was  touched  with  the  intense  interest  the 
lad  took  in  the  condition  of  his  master.  One  day  as  he 
left  and  the  boy  asked  after  the  farmer,  Budd  shook  his 
head  and  said,  "  I  fear  it's  going  bad  with  him." 

Thereupon  the  boy  burst  out  into  a  loud  bohoo  of 
tears  and  sobs. 

"  There,  there,"  said  the  Doctor,  "  don't  take  on  so, 
my  lad.  It  can't  be  helped." 

"Oh,  you'd  take  on  if  you  was  in  my  place,"  sobbed 
the  youth,  "for  missus  makes  us  eat  all  the  stock,  pigs 
and  what  not,  as  dies  on  the  farm." 

He  was  visited  in  his  consulting  room  by  a  patient 
who  had  lock-jaw. 

"  Come  upstairs,"  said  he  ;  "I  can  do  nothing  with 
you  here."  He  threw  open  the  door  and  preceded  the 
man  up  the  flight  of  stairs.  When  he  had  got  some 


768  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

way  up  he  suddenly  lurched  against  his  patient,  upset 
him,  and  sent  him  rolling  heels  over  head  to  the  bottom 
of  the  staircase. 

The  man  yelled  out  from  the  bottom,  "  Confound 
you,  Doctor,  you've  broken  my  arm  ! " 

uOh!  is  that  all?  I  can  set  that.  I  have  already 
loosened  your  jaw." 

He  visited  the  late  Mrs.  Radford,  an  aged  lady. 

"What  you  want,"  said  he,  "I'll  tell  you.  Get  a 
boat  and  a  pair  of  sculls  and  row  round  Plymouth 
Sound  ;  do  that  or  be  d d." 

"  Doctor,"  replied  she,  "  I  can't  do  one— and  I  won't 
be  the  other,  not  even  to  please  you." 

When  he  resided  in  George  Street,  Devonport,  the 
young  officers  often  came  to  him  to  try,  as  the  saying 
is  now,  "to  pull  his  leg";  but  they  rarely  got  the  better 
of  him.  Once  a  couple  called  with  grave  faces  to  in- 
form him  that  a  comrade  had  swallowed  a  blue-bottle 
fly,  and  that  it  was  buzzing  about  in  his  interior  and 
made  him  feel  very  ill.  Doctor  John  went  to  an  out- 
house and  returned  with  a  fat  spider,  and  gave  it  to 
the  young  officers.  "There,"  said  he  ;  "tell  your  friend 
to  swallow  that,  and  it  will  soon  settle  the  blue-bottle." 

On  another  occasion,  some  officers  whom  he  had 
served  invited  him  to  dine  at  the  mess  with  them,  but, 
"  No,"  said  he  ;  "I  never  dine  from  home." 

"Very  well,"  said  they,  "dine  with  you  we  will; 
and,  if  you  will  allow  us,  we  will  order  a  dinner  to  be 
served  in  your  own  house." 

"  No  objection  to  that,"  said  Budd,  and  he  protested 
afterwards  that  they  had  given  him  the  best  dinner  and 
the  best  wine  he  had  ever  eaten  and  drunk  in  his  life. 

From  Devonport  he  removed  to  Westwell  Street, 
Plymouth,  and  this  became  the  Mecca  of  the  poor, 
whom  he  attended  with  as  much  consideration  as  the 


DR.    J.    W.    BUDD  769 

richest  patients;  and  every  one  took  his  or  her  turn ;  no 
favour  was  shown  to  one  who  could  pay  above  another 
who  could  not. 

Dr.  John  Budd  would  attend  at  the  workhouse,  to 
see  the  sick  there.  One  day  the  master  said  to  him, 
"  There  is  Jose  here  again.  He  pretends  that  he  is 
doubled  up  with  lumbago,  or  something  of  that  sort. 
The  fellow,  I  believe,  is  a  malingerer ;  he  hates  work, 
and  he  loves  to  be  in  the  infirmary  and  have  extra 
rations." 

"  I'll  deal  with  him,"  said  Budd  ;  and  he  was  shown 
into  the  ward  where  Jose  lay  groaning  and  crying  out. 

"  Where  is  it,  man?"  asked  the  Doctor. 

"  Oh,  sir  !  cruel  pains  right  across  my  body.  I  can't 
walk ;  I  can  scarce  breathe.  Oh  !  oh  !  oh  ! "  and  he 
began  to  howl. 

' '  I  must  examine  your  back, "  said  the  Doctor.  ' '  You 
must  be  placed  on  the  table  and  your  spine  bared." 

So  the  moaning  rascal  was  placed,  face  downwards, 
on  the  board,  and  his  hands  and  feet  tied.  He  did  not 
like  that;  he  said  it  hurt  him  " cruel  bad."  But  it  had 
to  be  done,  and  he  was  stripped  to  the  waist. 

"  I'll  try  Game's  Balls  on  him,"  said  Dr.  Budd.  The 
fellow,  looking  out  of  the  corners  of  his  eyes,  saw  an 
apparatus  introduced,  a  couple  of  iron  balls  like  large 
bullets,  with  handles  to  them  ;  then  a  spirit  lamp  was 
lighted,  and  the  balls  were  heated  in  the  flame. 

"I  think  I  feel  easier,  sir,"  said  Jose,  who  did  not 
relish  the  preparations. 

"But  we're  going  to  make  you  quite  well,"  said 
the  medical  practitioner ;  and  flinging  his  leg  across 
Jose's  hams  he  sat  astride  on  him,  and  signed  to  his 
assistant  to  hand  him  the  heated  balls. 

With  these  he  began  to  pound  the  patient  in  the 
small  of  the  back.  They  were  not  red  hot,  but  nearly 
3  D 


770  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

so,  and  the  purpose  of  the  application  was  to  raise 
round  blisters. 

Jose  yelled.  "Take  it  patiently,"  said  Budd  ;  "it 
will  do  you  good.  Heat  the  balls  again." 

Further  dabbing  with  the  implement;  vociferous  yells 
from  the  patient.  "I  am  well!  I've  no  more  pain. 
Have  mercy  on  me  ! " 

At  last  he  was  disengaged  and  sent  back  to  bed. 
Next  day  away  went  Jose  blistered  in  the  back  ;  not 
another  visit  from  the  Doctor  would  he  abide.  Nor 
did  he  appear  again  in  the  Plymouth  workhouse.  The 
man  was  well  known  elsewhere,  and  the  master  had 
communicated  with  other  heads  of  workhouses  in 
Devon.  A  few  weeks  later  Jose  turned  up  at  Newton 
Abbot,  and  applied  for  admission  into  the  workhouse ; 
he  was  suffering  badly,  very  badly,  with  spasms  in  the 
heart.  He  was  taken  to  the  infirmary,  at  once  recog- 
nized, and  the  surgeon  sent  for. 

"  Humph  !  "  said  the  medical  man.  "  This  is  a  case 
for  Carne's  Balls,  I  see.  I've  heard  of  him  from  Dr. 
Budd." 

"  I'll  be  shot  if  you  try  them  on  me  ! "  roared  Jose. 
"  Let  me  go— I'm  better— I'm  well." 

He  was  dismissed.  About  a  fortnight  later  he  ap- 
peared at  Exeter  workhouse,  with  his  leg  contracted, 
tottering  and  scarce  able  to  walk.  He  was  put  into  the 
infirmary.  Said  the  master,  "This  is  a  more  serious 
case  than  is  apparent.  We  must  send  for  Dr.  Budd." 
There  was  then  a  Dr.  Budd  of  Exeter. 

"Budd!  Budd!"  shouted  the  man.  "I'll  have  no 
Budds  about  me.  Let  me  go.  My  leg  is  well." 

One  day,  at  North  Tawton,  a  man  doubled  up  with 
pain  and  reeling  in  his  walk  applied  at  several  houses 
for  relief,  got  some  coppers,  and  came  to  the  respectable 
house  of  evidently  a  well-to-do  man,  and  rang  the  bell. 


DR.    J.    W.    BUDD  771 

The  servant  at  once  opened  and  asked  what  he 
wanted.  He  stated  his  case  and  his  need  of  help.  "  I'll 
go  and  call  Dr.  Budd,"  said  the  maid. 

"Budd  here!  Budd  there!  Budd  everywhere! 
I'll  be  off!"  And,  completely  cured,  away  went  the 
sick  man  as  hard  as  his  legs  could  carry  him. 

Whether  he  became  a  steady  working  man,  or 
whether  he  fled  the  county  and  the  region  of  Budds  to 
malinger  elsewhere,  was  never  known,  but  the  Devon 
workhouses  saw  him  no  more. 

Budd  was  called  to  see  a  lady  one  night  after  dinner. 
As  soon  as  he  reached  the  room,  feeling  his  own  con- 
dition, he  staggered  to  the  foot  of  the  bed,  clung  to 
a  bedpost,  and  exclaimed,  "  Drunk,  by  Gad!"  and 
walked  or  reeled  out  of  the  room.  Next  morning  a 
letter  came  from  the  lady,  with  a  handsome  cheque, 
and  a  petition  that  he  would  not  mention  the  condition 
in  which  he  had  found  her. 


REAR-ADMIRAL    SIR    EDWARD 
CHICHESTER,    BART. 


f  "^HE  Chichesters  are  an  ancient,  and  in  North 
Devon  an  all-pervading  family,  that  has 
overflowed  into  South  Devon. 

^  The  original  name  was  Cirencester,  but 

in  the  fifteenth  century  Sir  John  de  Cirencester  married 
the  heiress  of  Sir  John  Raleigh,  Knight,  of  Raleigh 
near  Barnstaple,  whereby  the  estate  passed  to  the 
Cirencester  family,  and  the  name  slid  imperceptibly 
into  Chichester,  just  as  Cirencester  in  Gloucestershire 
is  now  pronounced  Cicester. 

From  Raleigh  the  Chichesters  radiated  on  all  sides, 
married  heiresses,  and  settled  into  snug  nests.  Of  the 
Hapsburgs  it  was  said  "  Felix  Austria  nube,"  and  the 
same  with  a  change  of  name  might  be  said  of  the 
Chichesters. 

There  are  Chichesters  of  Youlston,  of  Hall,  Chi- 
chesters of  Arlington,  of  Widworthy ;  there  were 
Chichesters  of  Eggesford,  who  choked  up  the  little 
church  with  their  monuments;  Chichesters  of  Calver- 
leigh,  and  Chichesters  of  Grenofen  by  Tavistock. 
What  is  more,  the  Chichesters  have  made  their  mark  in 
history.  Sir  Arthur  Chichester,  Lord  Deputy  of  Ire- 
land, was  created  Baron  Chichester  of  Belfast  in  1612  ; 
his  brother,  Sir  Edward,  had  a  son  who  was  made  first 

772 


REAR-ADMIRAL   SIR    EDWARD   CHICHESTER,    BART 


SIR   EDWARD   CHICHESTER  773 

Earl  of  Donegal ;  and  the  present  Marquess  of  Donegal 
is  a  Chichester. 

Sir  John  Chichester,  sergeant-major  of  the  army  in 
Ireland  and  Governor  of  Carrickfergus,  fell  into  the 
hands  of  Sir  James  MacDonnell,  and  was  beheaded  on 
a  stone  in  Antrim.  Sir  Thomas  Chichester,  his  brother, 
was  granted  one  thousand  acres  in  Rathdonnell,  in 
Ireland.  So  Chichesters  crossed  the  stormy  streak  and 
settled  down  in  the  Emerald  Isle. 

It  is  really  remarkable  how  many  Devonshire 
families  did  the  same  in  the  reigns  of  Elizabeth  and 
James  I,  and  families  of  old  county  repute  and  of  acres 
sent  their  younger  branches  thither,  where  they  rooted 
themselves  and  became  vigorous  ;  whereas  in  a  good 
many  cases,  the  parent  stock  in  Devon  decayed  and  dis- 
appeared. It  does  seem  that  just  as  certain  plants  need 
transplantation,  to  maintain  their  vigour  and  to  avoid 
degeneration,  the  same  should  be  the  law  with  families. 

Sir  Edward  Chichester,  ninth  Baronet,  the  subject  of 
this  memoir,  was  the  second  son  of  Sir  Arthur  Chiches- 
ter, whose  eldest  son,  Arthur,  died  without  issue  in  1898. 

Youlston,  the  family  seat,  is  in  the  parish  of  Sherwill, 
about  four  miles  from  Barnstaple.  Youlston  itself  is 
not  beautiful  externally.  It,  however,  has  fine  ceilings 
in  some  of  the  rooms,  and  Grinling  Gibbons'  carving 
in  the  library.  It  stands  in  a  fine  park  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  acres,  on  high  ground  between  the  two 
streams  of  the  Bradiford  and  the  Youlston  waters. 
Youlston  at  the  time  of  the  Domesday  inquest  was 
held  by  Robert  de  Beaumont,  but  a  lucky,  keen-sighted 
Chichester  snapped  up  the  heiress  of  Beaumont  and  so 
settled  himself  into  the  property.  The  old  park  and 
the  old  house  were  near  the  little  river  that  bears  the 
name  of  Yeo,  but  these  sites  have  been  abandoned  and 
house  and  park  shifted  further  to  the  west. 


774  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

Born  in  1849,  Sir  Edward  began  his  preparation  for 
service  in  the  Royal  Navy  by  entering  as  a  cadet  when 
he  was  thirteen  years  old.  In  January,  1865,  ne  joined 
the  Victoria  in  the  Mediterranean,  was  appointed  in 
1868  to  the  Constance  on  the  west  coast  of  America, 
and  in  1869  passed  as  sub-lieutenant  to  the  Donegal  for 
service  in  the  Ocean  off  China.  He  was  gazetted  com- 
mander, captain,  and  rear-admiral  respectively  in  1882, 
1889,  and  1902. 

He  was  too  candid  a  man  to  attempt  to  conceal  his 
political  faith  in  any  way.  A  stauncher  Conservative 
it  would  have  been  hard  to  find,  and  he  followed  the 
political  life  in  North  Devon  with  the  keenest  interest, 
wherever  his  work  took  him  or  however  great  its 
pressure.  He  took  an  active  part  in  the  political 
struggles  of  Barnstaple  in  the  eighties.  Severe  con- 
tests were  fought  by  the  late  Sir  Robert  Garden  and 
Lord  Lymington,  now  the  Earl  of  Portsmouth.  Excite- 
ment led  enthusiasts  to  extremes.  The  head-quarters 
of  the  rival  candidates  adjoined.  After  a  public  meet- 
ing the  candidates  had  a  rough  time  on  their  way  from 
the  hall  to  their  several  hotels.  Edward  Chichester 
and  his  brother  one  evening  escorted  the  aged  Sir 
Robert  Garden.  Stones  were  thrown  and  the  little 
party  hustled.  A  Radical  crowd  blocked  the  main 
entrance  to  the  Tory  candidate's  head-quarters,  and 
threatened  to  maltreat  him.  By  great  efforts,  and 
after  frequent  assaults,  the  two  Chichesters  got  Sir 
Robert  safely  indoors.  A  moment  later  and  they 
emerged  from  the  entrance  without  their  coats  and  with 
their  sleeves  turned  up.  "Now,"  shouted  Edward 
Chichester,  "some  of  you  fellows  assailed  my  brother 
and  myself ;  come  out  and  face  us  like  men,  if  you  be 
such  ! " 

There  were  groans  and  cheers  ;  but  no  man  accepted 


SIR   EDWARD   CHICHESTER  775 

the  challenge.  Edward  Chichester  and  his  brother  did 
not  look  inviting,  as  they  stood  in  the  street  with  teeth 
and  fists  clenched,  and  "  their  tails  were  up."  After  this 
they  escorted  Sir  Robert  Garden  many  times,  but  there 
were  no  further  molestations. 

For  a  considerable  number  of  years  Captain 
Chichester  was  on  the  unemployed  list,  eating  out 
his  heart  in  his  bungalow  at  Instow.  But  to  every 
man  at  least  once  in  life  comes  a  chance,  and  the  un- 
lucky and  unsuccessful  man  is  he  who,  seeing  it,  does 
not  recognize  and  grasp  the  chance. 

It  so  fell  out  that  the  gunboat  Banterer  was  caught 
in  a  storm,  and  was  supposed  to  have  foundered  in 
the  Bristol  Channel.  No  tidings  had  been  heard  of 
her,  and  the  Admiralty  and  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh, 
then  in  command  at  Devonport,  were  greatly  alarmed. 
However,  she  managed  to  run  into  Bideford  estuary, 
but  was  there  in  a  deplorable  condition,  and  threat- 
ened to  become  a  total  wreck  by  running  on  some 
of  the  sandbanks  that  obstruct  the  channel.  Captain 
Chichester,  who  was  on  the  beach  with  telescope  to 
his  eye,  saw  the  peril,  called  together  at  once  a  scratch 
crew,  manned  a  boat,  and  at  great  personal  risk,  for 
the  wind  was  pn  shore  and  huge  rollers  were  coming 
in,  made  his  way  to  the  Banterer,  and  himself  piloted 
her  into  anchorage  at  Appledore,  and  was  able  to  wire 
to  the  Admiralty  that  she  was  safe.  This  got  him  the 
command  of  the  troopship  Himalaya. 

During  the  operations  against  the  Boers  in  the  Trans- 
vaal he  was  naval  transport  officer,  till  the  ignomini- 
ous surrender  by  Mr.  Gladstone  in  1881.  Whenever 
that  was  mentioned  in  Sir  Edward's  hearing,  his 
colour  would  mount  in  cheek  and  temple,  and  he 
would  lower  his  eyes,  feeling  the  dishonour  done  to 
his  country  as  if  it  were  a  personal  offence. 


776  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

In  1881-2  he  was  lieutenant  of  the  Thalia  during 
the  war  in  Egypt.  In  1882  he  was  promoted  for 
his  services  and  received  the  Egyptian  medal  and 
the  Khedive's  bronze  star,  and  was  again  employed 
in  the  transport  service. 

In  1884-5  he  was  engaged  on  the  same  work  in 
Egypt. 

In  1887  he  was  a  member  of  a  Committee  of  Inquiry 
on  British  Drift-net  Fisheries,  and  the  following  year 
received  the  thanks  of  the  Board  of  Trade  for  the  judg- 
ment and  tact  he  displayed  as  senior  officer  in  command 
of  the  ships  employed  in  protecting  North  Sea 
Fisheries  ;  while  in  1891  he  served  on  a  Board  of 
Trade  Committee  on  Fishing  Boats'  Lights.  In  1895 
he  was  sent  with  the  Immortalite  to  the  China  station. 
On  inspecting  a  ship  on  the  China  station  he  was 
accompanied  by  a  major  of  the  Royal  Marines  ;  the 
latter  had  forgotten  his  inspection  papers,  and  asked 
leave  to  go  back  to  his  ship  to  fetch  them.  When  he 
returned  he  apologized  to  the  captain  for  the  delay  and 
for  having  forgotten  the  papers.  "  You've  forgotten 
something  else,"  said  Captain  Chichester,  looking  up 
and  down  at  the  Marine  officer,  who  wore  the  official 
spurs;  "  why,  you've  forgotten  the  'oss."  He  was 
there  in  1898  when  the  Spanish- American  war  broke 
out. 

When,  after  destroying  the  Spanish  squadron  at 
Cavite,  Commodore  Dewey  blockaded  Manila,  the 
Immortalite  and  three  other  men-of-war  were  dis- 
patched thither  to  protect  English  interests.  Ships  of 
other  nations  also  assembled  there,  and  amongst  these 
the  Germans  with  such  an  assumption  of  menace,  that 
Commodore  Dewey  fired  a  shot  across  the  bows  of  the 
flagship  of  Admiral  Dietrich,  commanding  the  German 
squadron.  It  was  well  known  that  the  Germans 


SIR   EDWARD   CHICHESTER  777 

were  desirous  of  putting  a  stop  to  the  war,  and  that 
the  Kaiser  had  no  desire  to  see  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
wave  over  any  possession  in  the  Eastern  Archipelago. 
He  had  but  just  before  used  the  expression  "  the 
Mailed  Fist"  in  reference  to  his  squadron  in  the  Far 
East.  The  Emperor's  royal  brother  was  in  command 
of  one  of  the  German  ships.  The  American  fleet  was 
employed  in  Manila  Bay  in  keeping  the  Spanish 
squadron  inside.  The  Germans  were  approaching 
menacingly,  and  showed  signs  of  irritation  at  the 
prospect  of  the  Americans  taking  active  and  decisive 
measures  with  the  enemy.  It  became  necessary  for 
the  American  admiral  to  restrict  the  movements  of 
the  foreign  men-of-war  in  the  circumstances.  It 
seemed  probable  that  Dietrich  had  received  secret 
instructions  to  fire  on  the  American  fleet  in  the  event 
of  its  bombarding  Manila,  but  only  on  the  condition 
that  the  English  remained  neutral.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
the  disposition  of  the  German  squadron  drawing  in 
upon  that  of  the  American  looked  suspicious.  But 
before  opening  fire  the  German  admiral  went  to  the 
Immortalite  in  a  boat  to  sound  the  disposition  of  the 
English  commander. 

On  meeting  in  the  cabin,  Dietrich  inquired,  "  What 
attitude  are  you  likely  to  take  up  in  the  event  of  the 
Americans  bombarding  Manila?"  "That,"  replied 
Chichester,  "is  a  matter  known  only  to  Dewey  and  me." 

Dietrich,  somewhat  disconcerted,  paused,  and  then 
asked,  "Where,  sir,  do  you  intend  the  English 
squadron  to  be,  should,  unhappily,  a  conflict  ensue 
between  the  American  Navy  and  that  of  his  Imperial 
Majesty  ?  "  "  Ask  Dewey,"  was  the  only  answer  vouch- 
safed, and  the  German  retired  down  the  side  of  the 
vessel  growling  in  his  beard. 

Immediately  significant  orders  were  issued,  and  the 


778  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

four  British  men-of-war  steamed  across  the  line  of 
the  German  vessels,  the  Immortalite  leading,  and  the 
others  following  in  line,  and  when  the  senior  vessel 
was  about  two  ship-lengths  off,  the  band  of  the 
Olympia  played  "  God  Save  the  Queen,"  and  the  band 
of  the  Immortalite  responded  with  "  The  Star-spangled 
Banner."  It  was  but  a  common,  everyday  act  of 
courtesy,  but  it  was  vastly  appreciated  by  the 
Americans  who  witnessed  it,  and  it  was  a  significant 
hint  of  "  hands  off"  to  the  Germans. 

Towards  nightfall,  when  it  was  evident  that  the 
American  fleet  was  not  going  into  action,  the  French 
cruisers  Bayard  and  Pascal,  and  the  German  cruisers 
Kaiser  and  Kaiserin  Augusta  returned  to  their  former 
anchorage.  The  American  cruisers  Concord  and  Petrel 
steamed  slowly  up  the  bay  in  front  of  the  city,  and 
anchored  between  it  and  the  foreign  warships,  but 
all  through  the  night  kept  the  searchlight  travelling 
over  the  water  between  them. 

Next  morning  Dietrich  sent  an  apology  to  the 
Yankee  admiral. 

The  exact  details  were  never  officially  divulged. 
The  significance  of  this  dramatic  action  was  that  it 
convinced  the  world  that  England  was  on  the  side 
of  the  United  States,  and  that,  to  use  the  old  familiar 
phrase,  "Blood  is  thicker  than  water."  Hitherto,  the 
Americans  had  been  jealous  and  suspicious  of  Great 
Britain,  and  believed  it  possible  that  England  might 
have  sided  with  the  Germans  in  the  negotiations  which 
it  was  understood  were  then  taking  place  in  Europe  for 
the  combination  of  the  Old  World  forces  against  the 
States  in  favour  of  Spain.  As  a  contemporary  writer 
had  it:  "It  was  the  first  signal  demonstration  which 
the  Americans  received  that  the  sympathies  of  their  kith 
and  kin  were  with  them,  and  that  the  jealousy  of  no 


SIR   EDWARD   CHICHESTER  779 

third  Power  would  be  allowed  to  interfere  with  the  just 
retribution  which  they  were  about  to  exact  from  their 
enemy.  Sir  Edward  made  history  that  day.  He 
wiped  out  the  memories  of  Bunker  Hill  and  New 
Orleans — so  far  as  they  were  bitter  memories."  That 
his  conduct  was  approved  at  home  was  shown  by  the 
Government  conferring  on  him  the  C.  M.G.  On  another 
occasion,  when  in  the  China  seas,  Captain  Chichester 
had  an  opportunity  of  making  history,  and  make  it  he 
would  have  had  he  been  supported  by  the  Government 
at  home.  The  incident  shall  be  given  in  his  own 
words : — 

"  I  ran  into  Port  Arthur  one  morning  and  anchored 
alongside  a  Russian  cruiser.  Well,  there  was  the 
devil  of  a  to-do.  The  Port  Admiral  put  off  and  told 
me  I  could  not  anchor  there.  I  said  I  was  already 
anchored.  He  said  I  must  weigh  again  and  get  out. 
I  told  him  I  wouldn't  budge  an  inch  until  it  suited  me, 
and  in  the  meantime  I  must  have  fresh  provisions  and 
vegetables.  Then  there  was  no  end  to  the  excitement, 
Russian  pinnaces  and  Chinese  pinnaces  darting  all 
over  the  harbour.  I  went  quietly  about  my  business. 
The  Chinese  said  they  would  complain  to  my  Govern- 
ment. I  grinned.  This  went  on  for  some  time,  and 
then  I  got  orders  from  home — Salisbury  was  getting 
old  then,  and  probably  a  little  weak — to  leave  Port 
Arthur  and  sail  for  Chefoo.  When  I  reached  Chefoo, 
the  Russians  took  possession  of  Port  Arthur.  Had  I 
remained,  the  history  of  the  Far  East  would  have 
changed  for  all  time." 

With  all  officers  with  whom  he  had  been  shipmates, 
as  with  the  men  of  the  lower  deck,  the  feeling  enter- 
tained for  Sir  Edward  was  one  of  real  affection.  He 
was  a  sailor  after  the  sailor's  own  heart — bluff,  hearty, 
and  just  and  generous  to  a  degree,  and  as  fearless  as 


780  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

he  was  just.  In  his  manner  of  bearing  there  was  an 
entire  absence  of  that  characteristic  which  in  the  service 
as  in  civil  life  is  generally  known  as  side.  To  his  great 
disappointment  he  was  never  engaged  in  naval  war- 
fare ;  but  there  can  be  no  manner  of  doubt  that  he 
would  have  proved  a  brilliant  commander  in  an  engage- 
ment at  sea. 

During  the  South  African  war  in  1899  to  1900,  he 
was  again  employed  as  Transport  Officer,  this  time  at 
Cape  Town.  It  was  no  light  matter  to  transport  a 
quarter  of  a  million  men  over  five  thousand  miles  of 
sea,  and  to  land  them  at  the  Cape  without  a  hitch.  It 
was  no  fault  of  his  that  the  troops  were  dumped  down 
in  chaotic  groups  and  in  unsanitary  spots.  All  he  had 
to  do  was  to  convey  these  men  who  were  sent  to  him 
from  England  to  Africa. 

As  the  Morning  Chronicle  said  : — 

"  During  the  South  African  war,  Sir  Edward 
Chichester,  as  Chief  Naval  Transport  Officer,  superin- 
tended the  disembarkation  of  the  troops,  horses,  guns, 
and  provisions,  which  the  country  poured  into  the  sub- 
continent. The  smoothness  and  the  skill  and  the 
absence  of  casualty  with  which  that  difficult  work  was 
carried  through,  won  for  the  gallant  officer  universal 
approbation." 

Chichester  was  a  man  of  blunt  speech,  and  most  of 
the  stories  told  of  him  illustrate  this  roughness.  Sir 
Edward  ordered,  on  one  occasion,  the  captain  of  one 
of  the  transports  lying  in  Cape  Town  docks  to  move 
his  ship  out,  in  order  to  make  room  for  another.  The 
captain  did  not  want  to  go,  and  raised  difficulties.  "  He 
had  not  his  steam  up — could  not  possibly  change 
quarters  that  night."  Sir  Edward  remarked,  "  Give 
him  an  hour,  and  if  he  is  not  out  by  then,  we  will 
shift  him." 


SIR   EDWARD   CHICHESTER  781 

The  hour  elapsed  without  a  move  being  made. 
Then,  at  a  signal,  two  Government  tugs  shot  out,  ran 
alongside,  and  in  twenty  minutes  the  steamer  was  had 
out  and  anchored  in  the  bay. 

Into  his  room  at  Cape  Town  one  day  burst  a 
Volunteer  colonel,  swelling  with  importance.  "  Who 
are  you,  sir?"  asked  Sir  Edward. 

"  I  am  Colonel  Blank,"  was  the  reply,  given  with 
much  pomposity. 

"Oh,  indeed,  is  that  all?"  said  Sir  Edward.  "I 
thought  at  least  you  were  an  admiral." 

He  was  busy  writing  in  his  office  on  the  quay  on 
another  occasion,  and  took  no  notice  of  a  ponderous 
person  waiting  impatiently. 

"  Will  you  please  to  attend  to  me?"  the  man  asked 
at  length. 

Sir  Edward  looked  up  and  inquired,  "Have  you 
bought  these  docks,  sir?" 

"  Most  certainly  not.  I  do  not  know  what  you 
mean." 

"Then  go  to  the  devil,"  Sir  Edward  remarked, 
going  on  with  his  writing.  Then,  summoning  his 
clerk,  he  said :  "  Here  !  stick  up  on  my  door  the 
notice  in  big  letters,  '  Office  of  the  Chief  Transport 
Officer,  and  not  a  general  inquiry  office.'' '  But  he  had 
also  inscribed  on  his  office  door,  "Walk  right  in  ;  no 
Red  Tape  here." 

On  one  occasion  the  captain  of  a  big  Union-Castle 
liner  came  in  to  make  a  report.  Chichester  had  a  great 
objection  to  the  uniforms  worn  by  the  officers  of  these 
ships,  because  he  thought  they  were  modelled  too 
closely  on  the  lines  of  the  naval  uniforms.  Seeing 
this  gorgeously  clad  individual  in  his  office  he  stood 
up,  and  gravely  saluting  him  remarked  : — 

"  I  am  sorry,  Admiral^  that  the  Government  have 


782  DEVONSHIRE    CHARACTERS 

thought  it  necessary  to  send  you  out  to  supersede  me 
in  my  duties.  I  hoped  that  I  was  giving  satisfaction, 
but- 

"  There  is  some  mistake,  Sir  Edward,"  was  the 
reply.  "  I  am  Captain ,  of  the  Castle." 

"  Oh  !  Then  why  the  devil  do  you  deck  yourself  up 
in  that  rig  ? "  roared  out  the  Chief  Transport  Officer. 
"If  that  is  all  you  are,  you  can  wait  till  I've  finished 
my  letter." 

Bored  on  another  occasion  by  some  officer  over  a 
trumpery  affair,  he  burst  out,  "  Look  here,  sir  !  you  are 
sent  out  to  South  Africa  to  kill  Boers,  and  not  to  kill 
time.  Anyhow,  you  shall  not  kill  mine." 

Mr.  Douglas  Story  tells  the  following  :  An  anaemic 
officer  came  to  Sir  Edward  one  day  during  the  Boer 
war,  and  demanded  attention. 

"  H'm,  what  do  you  want  ?  "  growled  the  Chief  Naval 
Transport  Officer. 

"  Food,  sir,  for  my  men." 

"Well,  haven't  they  got  any?  What  are  they 
living  on?" 

"  Biscuits,  sir  ;  beastly  dry  biscuits." 

"Can't  they  live  on  biscuits?  The  Navy  men 
manage  to  subsist  on  them." 

"They  are  used  to  'em;  our  Tommies  are  not. 
Theirs  is  a  better  stomach  for  biscuits  than  that  of  the 
men  in  the  army." 

"Aye,  and  they  have  a  d d  better  stomach  for 

fighting,  too  ! "  roared  the  Captain,  and  resumed  his 
work. 

When  the  Devon  Volunteers  landed  in  South  Africa, 
Sir  Edward  saw  to  their  disembarkation,  and  also  saw 
them  leave  for  the  front.  One  of  the  Barnstaple  men 
relates  that  as  they  moved  away  Sir  Edward  put  his 
hands  to  his  mouth,  funnel-wise,  and  shouted  :  "  Mind, 


SIR   EDWARD   CHICHESTER  783 

you  Devon  chaps,  give  the  Boers  a  d d  good 

hiding." 

During  the  war  Sir  Edward  stayed  in  one  of  the 
smallest  hotels  in  Cape  Town,  near  the  docks,  as  more 
convenient  to  his  work  than  one  that  was  larger  and 
up  town.  But  the  food  provided  there  was  execrable. 
Sir  Edward,  unable  to  stomach  this,  one  day  provided 
himself  with  a  gigantic  cheese  that  he  had  purchased, 
and  entered  the  coffee-room  carrying  it,  and  thereon 
he  made  his  lunch. 

At  the  same  time  there  was  staying  in  the  hotel  a 
Dutchman  whom  every  one  looked  upon  as  a  spy.  In 
the  evening  Sir  Edward  was  late  for  dinner,  and  the 
Hollander  early.  Imagine,  therefore,  the  gallant 
captain's  disgust  when  on  entering  the  room  he  found 
the  Dutchman  tucking  into  his  cheese.  He  paused  in 
the  doorway,  stared,  and  then  thundered  out:  "I  say, 

waiter,  look  there  !  I'm  d d  if  that  Boer  spy  isn't 

eating  my  cheese  !  By  heavens,  it's  a  bullet  or  two  he 
should  have  inside  him  and  not  my  cheese  ! " 

Every  one  but  the  Dutchman  burst  into  a  roar  of 
laughter. 

He  was  made  C.B.  in  October,  1900,  and  was  naval 
A.D.C.  to  Queen  Victoria,  and  afterwards  to  the  King, 
from  1899  to  1904.  On  his  return  from  South  Africa 
he  took  command  of  the  fleet  reserve  at  Devonport. 
He  was  promoted  to  Rear-Admiral  in  January,  1902, 
and  on  June  loth,  1904,  was  appointed  Admiral- 
Superintendent,  with  charge  of  His  Majesty's  naval 
establishments  at  Gibraltar.  He  had  married  the 
daughter  of  the  late  Commander  R.  C.  Whyte,  R.N., 
of  Instow,  in  1880,  and  by  her  had  four  sons  and  six 
daughters. 

He  returned  to  England  hale  and  cheerful  in  1900. 
On  arriving  in  North  Devon  he  was  welcomed  by  his 


784  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

tenantry  with  great  rejoicings,  and  was  presented  with 
an  illuminated  address,  which  was  read  in  the  presence 
of  a  large  assembly  of  local  notabilities  by  his  brother, 
the  rector  of  Sherwill.  His  first  words  in  reply  were, 
"  You  said  that  very  well,  Pass'n  Charles." 

He  went  back  to  his  duties  at  Gibraltar,  where  he  died 
on  September  lyth,  1906.  The  body  was  brought  to 
Plymouth  in  the  Formidable,  and  thence  conveyed  by 
train  to  North  Devon,  and  the  obsequies  took  place  at 
Sherwill.  Sir  Edward  had  seldom  resided  at  Youlston 
when  in  England,  but  at  his  bungalow,  Instow. 

"  Outside  his  own  country  and  navy,"  said  the  Paris 
edition  of  the  New  York  Herald,  "  the  untimely  death 
of  Rear- Admiral  Chichester,  R.N.,  cannot  be  more 
regretted  than  by  the  American  people  and  its  naval 
service.  During  the  critical  period  succeeding  the 
capture  of  Manila,  this  British  officer  proved  himself 
a  steadfast  supporter  of  our  rights  in  those  waters. 
While  scrupulously  observing  the  obligations  imposed 
on  him  as  a  neutral,  his  official  and  personal  conduct 
strengthened  the  hands  of  Admiral  Dewey,  harassed 
as  he  was  by  the  inexplicable  and  annoying  perform- 
ances of  the  German  admiral  on  that  station.  The 
prompt  and  graceful  action  of  Rear-Admiral  Brownson 
on  his  arrival  off  Gibraltar,  with  the  American 
armoured  cruiser  division,  in  furnishing  an  escort  for 
the  funeral  of  this  distinguished  officer,  will  therefore 
be  earnestly  approved  by  our  Government  and  people. 
It  was  both  a  recognition  of  the  personal  esteem  in 
which  Rear-Admiral  Chichester  was  held,  and  a  fitting 
official  testimony  to  the  services  rendered  by  him  when 
our  friends  were  few  and  far  between." 

The  Morning  Chronicle  said:  " Admiral  Sir  Edward 
Chichester  was  a  splendid  specimen  of  the  British 
naval  officer.  In  physique,  in  his  bluff  heartiness  of 


SIR   EDWARD   CHICHESTER  785 

manner,  in  his  racy  conversation,  in  the  very  roll  of 
his  walk,  he  was  every  inch  a  sailor.  Wherever  he 
went  he  carried  with  him  the  savour  of  the  sea.  A 
thorough  West-countryman — a  man  'of  Bideford  in 
Devon '  —  he  preserved  the  traditions  of  the  old 
Elizabethan  sailors,  and  seemed  indeed  to  be  in  the 
lineal  succession  to  Grenville  and  Hawkins,  to  Drake 
and  Raleigh." 

Equally  sympathetic  was  a  notice  in  the  Standard: — 

"  In  Rear-Admiral  Sir  Edward  Chichester  there  has 
passed  away  a  sailor  after  Lord  St.  Vincent's  own 
heart.  We  had  said  after  Nelson's,  but  Nelson  had  no 
hand  in  the  administrative  work  of  the  Navy,  in  which 
Sir  Edward  took  so  great,  if  subordinate,  a  share.  He 
belonged  to  a  class  which  will  probably  become  more 
and  more  rare  in  the  Navy— the  type  of  blunt  sailor 
who  is  a  sailor  first,  second  and  last,  but  who,  just 
because  he  is  all  a  sailor,  is  also  an  inimitable  diplo- 
matist, prompt  and  resolute,  seeking  no  quarrel,  but 
fearing  no  responsibility.  We  do  not  for  a  moment 
imply  that  these  qualities  are  not  to  be  found  in  abund- 
ance in  the  new  Navy  ;  but  the  naval  officer  of  to-day 
has  the  habits  and  manners  of  the  world  in  a  degree  to 
which  a  sailor  of  the  school  of  Sir  Edward  Chichester 
did  not  attain." 

At  a  dinner  given  in  honour  of  Sir  Redvers  Duller 
in  Exeter,  in  November,  1900,  the  late  Lord  Clinton,  in 
the  course  of  a  speech  on  that  occasion,  said  : — 

"I  believe  if  ever  there  was  the  right  man  in  the 
right  place,  it  was  Sir  Edward  Chichester.  Go  out- 
side England — go  to  America,  and  ask  what  is  thought 
of  him  there.  We  know  that  the  opinion  is  very  high. 
I  believe  if  the  American  Navy  were  at  war,  and  found 
Sir  Edward  Chichester  on  the  high  seas  without  an 
escort,  they  would  kidnap  him,  and  place  him  at  the 
3  E 


786  DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 

head  of  the  American  Navy.  Many  American  stories 
are  told  about  Sir  Edward.  They  are  perhaps  not  all 
true.  But  if  not  all  true,  I  think  they  are  well  con- 
ceived. There  is  one  I  have  heard  about  an  admiral 
who  greatly  admired  Sir  Edward,  and  greatly  admired 
England.  The  admiral  bought  a  lion  cub,  and  wish- 
ing always  to  have  the  type  of  Britain  before  him, 
he  called  it  Chichester.  Sir  Edward  Chichester,  I 
dare  say  to  his  sorrow,  was  never  a  combatant  officer 
in  this  war,  but  his  heart  was  with  his  gallant  comrades 
who  arrived  so  opportunely  at  Ladysmith." 

Some  remarkable  coincidences  were  noted  on  the 
occasion  of  the  death  of  Admiral  Chichester. 

His  flagship,  the  sloop  Cormorant,  was  formally  paid 
off  on  the  date  of  his  death,  and  recommissioned  for 
similar  service  under  Rear-Admiral  J.  G.  C.  Goodrich, 
who  left  Plymouth  for  Gibraltar  to  take  up  his  appoint- 
ment. In  accord  with  an  arrangement  made  some 
weeks  before,  the  battleship  Formidable  was  directed  to 
call  at  Gibraltar  and  embark  the  paid-off  men  of  the 
Cormorant  for  passage  home.  The  Formidable  on 
reaching  Gibraltar  received  the  news  of  Sir  Edward's 
death,  and  was  at  once  ordered  to  arrange  for  the  body 
to  be  received  on  board,  so  that  the  late  admiral  and 
the  crew  of  his  flagship  came  home  in  the  same  vessel 
— a  vessel  which  was  also  bound  to  her  paying-off  port. 
The  paying-off  of  a  flagship  on  the  same  day  as  that 
on  which  the  death  took  place  of  the  admiral  whose 
flag  she  bore  was  probably  unique  in  the  annals  of  the 
British  Navy.  It  was  also  a  noteworthy  circumstance 
that  Rear-Admiral  Goodrich,  who  in  the  ordinary  way 
would  have  succeeded  Admiral  Chichester  early  in  the 
ensuing  month,  left  Plymouth  Sound  on  the  very  same 
day  as  that  on  which  the  body  of  his  predecessor  arrived 
at  that  port  from  Gibraltar. 


SIR   EDWARD   CHICHESTER  787 

The  speech  of  Captain  Chichester  to  the  German 
admiral — "  That  is  a  matter  known  only  to  Dewey 
and  me  " — may  be  seen  inscribed  in  the  Naval  School 
in  Annapolis,  U.S.A.,  where  it  embellishes  one 
of  the  walls  of  the  academy.  It  may  be  noted  that 
Annapolis  is  one  of  the  most  British  towns  in  the 
United  States,  in  the  style  of  its  streets  and  architecture 
generally,  and  there  is  surely  no  English  name  more 
beloved  in  the  American  Navy  than  that  of  bluff  old 
Admiral  Chichester. 


INDEX 


Abbott,  Mr.  Frank,  54 

Abbott,  Mrs.,  197,  200,  202 

Abdul  Gopher,  381 

Abede,  118,  119 

Aberdeen,  356,  738 

Aberystwyth,  429 

Abingdon,  Lord,  256 

Account  of  the  Religion  and  Manners 

of  the  MohammetanS)  169 
Ackermann,  572 
Acland,  Sir  Thomas,  479,  533 
Adams,  Jane,  215 
Adams,  Mr.,  663 
Addison,  Joseph,  245,  246,  247 
Admirable     Crichton.       See    James 

Wyatt 

Affeton,  262,  278,  285 
Aix,  419 

Albemarle,  Duke  of,  242 
Albury,  256,  257 
Aldgate  Workhouse,  367 
Algiers,  84,  152-158,  167 
Alley,  Daniel,  192,  193 
Almondsbury,  35,  39,  41 
Alphington,  17 
Alphington  Ponies,  the,  16-20 

—  strange  appearance    of,    16,    18, 

20 

—  excuses  of  the  impecunious,  18 
Alquenezes,  Marquess,  91,  92 
Altarnun,  302 

Amery,  Mr.  J.  S.,  456 
American  prisoners,  634-699 

—  are  shot  down,  646 

—  mutiny,  645,  653 

—  report  on  massacre,  674 
Anderson,  Lord,  104 

Andrews,    Charles,    634,   637,    641, 

646,  647,  650,  697,  698 
Andrews,  William,  64 
Annals  of  the  East  India  Company ', 


Annapolis,  787 

Anne,  Queen,  48,  233,  243,  415 

Annery,  182,  183 

Annual  Register^  67,  68,  368,  400, 

524  note 

Anstey,  Bat,  540,  558 
Antiquities,  226,  232 
Antongil  Bay,  386 
Apparitions,  725 
Appledore,  235,  775 
Apples,  14 

—  at  a  Church  Congress,  2 

—  grown  by  Stafford,  2 

—  in  church,  50 

—  Royal  Wilding,  6-9,  12,  13 
Arber,  Mr.,  94 
Architectural  Antiquities ;  571 
Architecture,  Gothic,  574,  614 
Architecture,  painter  of.    See  Samuel 

Prout 

Architecture,  Works  on,  575 
Argyll,  Duke  of,  417 
Arlington,  772 
Arms  of  Lord  Ashburton,  632 

—  Bidlake  family,  217 

—  Blundell  family,  619 

—  Gould  family,  619 

—  Harris  family,  619 

—  Kelloway  family,  I 

—  Prowse  family,  565 

—  Raleigh  family,  281 

—  Stafford  family,  I 

—  Young  family,  619 
Arnold,  Andrew,  716 
Arnold,  John,  680 

Arnold,  Richard,  675,  677,  678 

Arnull,  Mrs.,  563 

Arscott,  47 

Arscott  family,  the,  47,  57 

Arscott,  John,  47~57 

—  his  characteristic  kindness,  49 

—  his  conduct  in  church,  50 


789 


790 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Arscott,  John,  his  jester,  53 

—  his  toad,  49,  53 
Arscott,  "  the  wicked,"  49 
Ash,  Dr.  Linnington,  544,  563 
Ashburton,  first  Lord,  630 
Ashburton,  279,  370,  436,  437,  440, 

442,  445,   447,  452,  478,   604, 

619,  622-624,  628,  633 
Ashburtonian,  456 
Ashprington,  371 
Ashton,  John,  277 
Ash  water,  371 

Aspect,  reason  for  north,  223 
Assassination  of  Henry  I  II,attempted, 

226 

As  You  Like  Itt  514 
Audley  End,  196 
Aurungzebe,  381 
Austen,  Rudolphus,  13 
Austin,  Alfred,  329 
Austin,  Tom,  175,  176 
Avelyn,  Lieutenant,  656  note,  660, 

670,  695 

Averie,  Elizabeth,  251 
Avery,  Captain  John,  375-389 

—  autocracy    in    Madagascar,    376, 

386,  388 

—  as  pirate,  381 

—  captures  Great  Mogul's  daughter, 

38l 
Aveton  Gifford,  520,  524 

Baba  Hasan,  159 

Babbage,  Jack,   553,  554,  556,  557, 

562 

Babley,  414 
Badger,  John,  65 
Baggator,  702 
Bagnal,  Sir  Nicholas,  268 
Bagshot,  203,  281 
Bailey,  Mr.,  708 
Baker,  Archdeacon,  372 
Baker,  Bessie,  73 
Baker,  J.,  334,  375 
Baker,  Mary.    See  Caraboo 
Baker,  Sir  Richard,  183 
Baker's  Chronicle,  183 
Ballads  and  Songs,  328 
Ballads ;  A  Century  £/",  277 
Ballad  of  Cyder,  15 

—  of  Dick  Simmins,  524 

—  of  Lady  Howard,  210 

—  of  ' '  Lusty  "  Stucley,  273 

—  of  the  Bideford  Witches,  277 

—  of  Wrestling,  515 


Ballads,  244,  417,  503,  615 
"  The  Bay  of  Biscay,"  354 
"The  Death  of  the  Smuggler,"  354 
"The  Death  of  Parker,"  364-368 
"  Dear  Catholic  Brother,"  243 
"  The  Fish  on  the  Coast,"  253 
"The    Hunting    of    Arscott,    of 

Tetcott,"  54,  243 
"Joy  to  Great  Caesar,"  245 
"Just  Like  Love,"  353 
"The    Lamentation    of    Strang- 

widge,"  103 
"The  Little  Girl  down  the  Lane," 

445 
"  May  We  Never  Want  a  Friend," 

354 

"Mrs.  Page's  Lament,"  102 
"  Nice  Young  Maidens,"  423 
"One  Long  Whitsun  Holiday,  "245 
"  The  Scotch  Yoke,"  5 

Ballard,  Joseph,  415 

Bailer,  Anthony,  422 

Bampfylde,  Mr.,  613 

Bancroft,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  33 

Banks,  Sir  Joseph,  750 

Banterer,  775 

Barclay,  133 

Baring,  Charles,  616 

Barker,  Hon.  Charles,  257 

Barnes,  Grace,  276 

Barnes,  John,  320-324 

—  taverner  to  highwayman,  321 

—  executed,  324 

Barnstaple,  102-104,  224>  23O~234» 
326,  414,  417,  422,  543,  561, 
772,  774,  782 

Barnstaple,  Literary  History  of,  103 

Baron,  John,  222 

Barre,  Colonel  Isaac,  628,  629 

Barry,  Mr.,  472 

Barum  ware,  234 

Baskerville,  Mary,  458 

Bastard,  Colonel,  482,  483,  704 

Batavia,  38,  387 

Bateman,  Mary,  394 

Bath,  40,  45,  420,  429 

Bath  Chronicle,  40 

Bath,  Earl  of,  231 

Bathurst,  Lord,  418 

Battle  of  Alcazar,  272,  273,  734 

Battyn,  47 

Batworthy,  755 

Baviad,  451,  453,  455 

Bawden  the  Mole-catcher,  520 

Bayard,  238 


INDEX 


791 


Bay  of  Biscay,  86 

Beaford,  541 

Bear,  John,  744 

Beare,  Dr.,  274 

Beasley,  Reuben  G.,  635,  639,  673 

Beaumont,  Robert  de,  773 

Beauties  of  England  and  Wales ,  568, 

571 

Bebb,  Mr.,  27 
Becket,  Thomas  a,  549 
Bedford,  Earl  of,  204,  209,  754 
Beer,  308,  309,  318 
Beggar,  a  disguised,  432,  433 
Beggars'  Opera,  The,  414-421 

—  complete  success  of,  419 
Belgrave,  Lord,  448 
Bell,  Mr.,  241 

Bell,  James,  698 

Belle's  Stratagem,  The,  31 

Bell-ringing,  contests  in,  370 

—  songs  of,  370,  371 
Belmont,  716 
Belstone,  709 
Beltrees,  241 
Bennett,  John,  694 
Bennett's  Cross,  700 
Benson,  Thomas,  233 

—  donor  of  bowl  and  ladle,  234 
-  King  of  Lundy,  234-237 

—  M.P.  for  Barnstaple,  234 
Bent,  Dr.,  256 
Berkeley,  Colonel,  24-26 
Berkeley,  Earl  of,  24 
Berlin,  616,  628 
Bermondsey,  393 
Bernasconi,  Miss,  563 
Berry,  251 

Berry,  Sarah,  603 

Bertie,  Dr.,  256 

Berwick,  266,  483 

Bevan,  602 

Bewick,  578 

Beyeck,  Joseph,  698 

Bible,  value  of  the,  341 

Bickford,  William,  47 

Bickleigh,  188,  189,  426,  435,  568 

Bicton.  591 

Bideford,   233,   234,   274,   276,  327, 

329»  33°,   384.  385,    389,   4T4» 

417,  436,  775,  785 
Bidlake,  212,  217,  223,  737 
Bidlake,  Dr.,  459,  566,  567,  568 
Bidlake  family,  the,  212-223,  737 
Bidlake,  Henry,  215,  2.9,  222 

—  fights  for  Royalists,  220 


Bidlake,  Henry,  hides  in  a  clock,  220 

Bidlake,  John,  219 

Bidlake,  William,  215,  218 

Bilbao,  152 

Binus,  469 

Birch  Tor,  700,  701,  705 

Bird,  Mr.  E.,  R.A.,  41,  46 

Bird  of  the  Oxenhams,  the,  249-261 

—  appears  to  foretell  death,  249,  254, 

256,  258-261 

—  probable  origin  of  legend,  254,  255 
Birds  of  the  Crozet  Islands,  342 
Birdwood,  Miss,  133 
Birmingham,  62,  68,  329 

Bisett,  Margaret,  227 

Bishops,  bad  character  of,   in   i6th 

century,  214 
Bishop,  John,  597 
Bishop,  Robert,  597 
Bishops  of  Exeter,  48,  124,  125,  214, 

217,  218,  249,  529,  531,  532,  538, 

556,  557,  558,  583.  590,  747 
Bishop  of  Limoges,  239 
Bishop  of  London,  43,  739 
Bishop  of  Saint  Flores,  239 
Bishopstawton,  104 
"  Black  Assize,  The,"  103 
Blackabrook,  186 
Blackball,  711 

Black  Horse,  Captain  of  the,  207 
"Black  Horse  Tavern,"  320,  321,  323 
Black  John,  52-55 
Blackmail,  383 
Blackmore,  Robert  D.,  528,  549,  556, 

56i 

Blake,  Admiral,  158,  377 
Blake,  William,  699 
Blisland,  56 
Bliss,  Mr.  foe,  502 
Bloomers  introduced  by  the  Alphing- 

ton  Ponies,  20 
Blore,  Mr.,  564 
Bloudie  Booke,  The,  193 
Blow,  Dr.  John,  241,  614 
Blundell,  Peter,  438,  619 
Blundell's  School,  426,  535 
Board  of  Trade,  776 
Boconnoc,  605 
Bodleian  Library,  324 
Bodmin,  ^17,  525,  738 
Bodmin  Moors,  302 
Body-snatching,  365,  405-413 
Boer  War,  780,  782 
Boggs,  John,  685 
Boleyn,  Mary,  ^63 


792 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Bolton,  Duke  of,  418 

Bombay,  381 

Boogoos,  the,  38 

Book  of  the  West,  The,  6,  14 

Bordeaux,  268,  309,  605 

Borders  of  the  Tatnar  and  the  Tavy,  95 

Boringdon,  713 

Borrow,  George,  466,  469,  471 

Boscastle,  302 

Boscawen,  Mrs.,  743 

Boston,  384,  697 

Boswell,  James,  627,  750 

Botcher,  604 

Boughthayes,  187 

Boulogne,  siege  of,  263 

Boundye,  Thomas,  597 

Bovey,  535 

Bovey  Heathfield,  482 

Bowring,  Benjamin,  510 

Boyce,  John,  533 

Boyle,  Robert,  489 

Brabant,  205 

Braddons,  The,  18 

Bradford,  68 

Bradiford  stream,  773 

Bradmore,  524 

Bradstone,  213,  222 

Bradworthy,  594,  595 

Bratton  Clovelly,  97 

Braunton,  329 

Bray,  Mrs.,  95,  96 

Bray,  Rev.  E.  A. ,  95 

Brazen  Mas 6,  The,  353 

Breeches  fit  the  man,  703 

Brentford,  281,  731 

Brest,  206 

Brice,  Andrew,  389,  480,  502-5 1 3 

—  reprimanded  by  Parliament,  504 

—  publishes  Weekly  Journal,  504 

—  publishes  The  Grand  Gazetteer,  509 
Bridestowe,  212,  213,  221 
Bridewell,  393 

Bridport,  308 

Brightleigh,  436,  437 

Brighton,  44. 

Brimblecombe,  540,  541 

Brimpton,  185 

Bristol,  37,  39,  41,  45,  378,  384,  393, 

420,  431 

British  Museum,  52,  180,  329 
Britton,  John,  568,  569 
Brixham,  308,  317,  440 
Brixton,  572 
Broadbury  Down,  371 
Broadly,  Mr.  A.  M.f  404  note 


Broad  Street,  282 

Broad  wood,  371 

Broad  wood  Kelly,  710 

Broeck,  Adrian  Van,  376,  388 

Bromefield,  266 

Brooke,  Mr.,  42 

Brooking-Rowe,  Mr.,  94 

Brooks,  James,  62,  63 

Brothers,  Richard,  393 

Brouchet,  66 

Broughton,  66 

Broughton,  Sir  John,  466 

Brown,  General,  66 1 

Brown,  Tom,  241 

Brownson,  Rear- Admiral,  784 

Browse  family,  the,  718 

Bruce,  John,  381 

Bruce,  Robert,  718-725 

Bruges,  207 

Brunton,  Misses,  450 

Brushfield,  Dr.,  506,  510,  511 

Brushford,  42 

Brussels,  265 

Buckerell,  543 

Buckingham,  85,  243 

Buckingham,  Duke  of,  85,  196,  710, 

Buckland  Brewer,  182,  327,  330 

Buckland-on-the-Moor,  704 

Buckner,  Admiral,  357,  358 

Budd,  Dr.,   of  North  Tawton,    81, 

770 
Budd,  Dr.  J.  W.,  754-771 

—  his  summary  treatment  of  patients, 

759,76o,76i,762,  766,768,769 

—  his  kindness  to  the  poor,  762,  766, 

767 

—  his  accurate  diagnosis,  763,  7^4 

—  ubiquitous,  771 
Budd  family,  the,  754 
Budleigh  Salterton,  318 
Bulk  worthy,  182,  184 
Buller,  Dean,  747 
Buller,  Sir  Redvers,  785 
Bunker  Hill,  779 
Buoncompagni,  Giacomo,  272 
Burdeson  Park,  28 
Burdett-Coutts,  Baroness,  329 
Burgess,  Mary,  45.     See  Caraboo 
Burghley,  Lord,  271  note,  272 
Burgoyne,  Henry,  688 

Burian,  710 

Burke,  Edmund,  405,  409,  606,  627 

Burkett,  Rev.  T.,  254 

Burleigh,  Lord,  735 

Burleigh  Wood,  220 


INDEX 


793 


Burnby,  Mrs.,  207 

Burney,  Dr.,  613,  614 

Burnham,  Enoch,  684 

Burns,   the   Devonshire.      See   Edw. 

Capern 

Burritt,  Elihu,  330 
Burroughs,  Mr.,  115,  117 
Burrow,  Mrs.,  590 
Bury,  Admiral,  536 
Bush  Down  Mine,  700 
Bushell,  Thomas,  232 
Bushfield,  James  N.,  692 
Bute,  Lord,  3,  4,  6,  624 

—  burnt  in  effigy,  4 
Butler,  Mr.,  160,  161 
Butler,  Samuel,  752 
Butterstone,  737 
Byron,  Lord,  450,  453 

Cadboll,  631 
Cadhay,  457,  458 
Cadiz,  86,  87,  93,  267 
Cain,  Elizabeth,  437 
Calais,  264 

Callington,  81,  371,  535 
Calmady  family,  the,  217 
Calmady,  Mr.,  757 
Calne,  624,  628 
Calverleigh,  772 
Calvinists,  42 
Camberwell,  571 
Cambridge,  754 
Camden,  2 
Camden  Society,  324 
Camelford,  605 
Camley,  226 
Campbell,  James,  698 
Campion,  481 
Canaletti,  571 
Canary  Islands,  108,  152 
Cann,  Abraham,  5I9~S23 
Cann,  William,  597 
Canterbury,  66,  105 
Cape  Bojadore,  115 
Cape  Finisterre,  138,  268 
Cape  La  Hogue,  311 
Cape  of  Good  Hope,  349 
Cape  Town,  780,  781,  783 
Capern,  Edward,  325-331 

—  artificial  as  poet,  325,  328 

—  described  by  Burritt,  330 

—  praised  by  Froude  and  Landor, 

329 

—  the  postman  poet,  327 
Captives ,  The,  415 


Caraboo,  35-46 

—  her  supposed  history,  38 

—  her  real  identity,  41 

—  is  brought  to  Knole,  35 
Garden,  Sir  Robert,  774,  775 
Carew,  268,  527,  528 

Carew,   Bampfylde-Moore,  425-435, 
437 

—  life  as  a  beggar,  427-432 
Carew,  Rev.  Theodore,  426 
Carew,  Sir  Walter,  556 
Carey,  Bishop  of  Exeter,  595 
Carey,  William,  263 
Carley,  James,  66 1  note,  693 
Carlile,  Mr.,  439,  440 
Carlisle,  67 

Carlow,  270 

Carmarthen,  Marquess  of,  151 
Carnbrea,  705 
Game's  Balls,  769,  770 
Carolina,  377 
Caroline,  Queen,  415 
Caron  House,  715 
Carpenter,  Elias,  393 
Carrickfergus,  773 
Carrington,  Chancellor,  352 
Carswell,  584,  590 
Carteret,  Lord,  235 
Gary  family,  the,  565 
Gary,  Philippa,  292-300 

—  executed,  299 

—  exhorted  by  Quicke,  295-297 
Cashel,  Archbishop  of,  269,  270 
Castlereagh,  Lord,  644,  673 
Catdowne,  298 

Cater,  Mr.,  565 

Cathedral  Close  Gates,  Exeter,  485 

Catwater,  298 

Cavite,  776 

Cawley,  Mr.,  495,  499 

Cecil,  Robert,  735 

Cecil,  Sir  Edward,  85,  86,  93,  264, 

267,  272 
Century  of  the  Names  and  Scantlings 

of  Inventions,  487 
Cephus,  Richard,  676 
Chagford,  65,  737,  755 
Chair,  Gay's,  414,  415,  421 
Challacombe,  701,  705 
Challoner,  265 

Champernowne,  Margaret,  189 
Champernowne,  Rev.  F. ,  372 
Champion,  Richard,  606 
Channel  Islands,  306,  308,  309,  314, 


794 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Chanter,     Mr.    J.     R.,     103,     224, 

225  note,  237  note,  422,  423 
Chappell,  Samuel,  597 
Chappie,  William,  241,  256,  543 
Charles  I,  85,  93,  219 
Charles  II,  158,  241,  242,  243,  245 
Chartres,  Cathedral  of,  579 
Chaster,  479 
Chateau  Morand,  239 
Chatham,  634 
Chave,  Mr.,  286-291 
Chaw  Gully,  705 
Chefoo,  779 
Chee-ming,  38 
Cheltenham,  24 
Cherbourg,  306,  308 
Chiche,  195 
Chichester,  Baron,  772 
Chichester  family,  the  ubiquitous,  772 

—  famous  members  of,  772,  773 
Chichester,    Rear-Admiral    Sir    Ed- 
ward, 772-787 

—  a  staunch  Conservative,  774 

—  his  death  at  Gibraltar,  784 

—  his  difficulties  as  transport  officer, 

780-783 

—  his  diplomacy,  777,  784,  787 

—  promotions  of,  774,  775,  776,  779, 

783 

Child  of  Nature,  The,  23 
Chimsworthy,  97 
China,  36,  616,  776 
China-clay  discovered,  605 
Chope,  R.  Pearse,  234  note,  237  note 
Chowne,  Parson,  549,  551,  556 
Christchurch,  315,  373 
Chronicles  of  Crime,  355,  368 
Chudleigh,  622 
Chumleigh,  262,  510 
Church  Congress  at  Plymouth,  2 
Churchill,  Mr.,  107 
Gibber,  Colley,  416 
Cirencester,  772 
Cirencester,  Sir  John  de,  772 
Citadel,  The,  298 
Civita  Vecchia,  272 
Clandestine  Marriage,  The,  509 
Clarendon,  195,  197, 199,211,415,487 
Clarke,  Capt.  J.  S.,  725 
Clarke,  Mr.,  422 
Clarke,  Sir  T.,  620 
Clement,  John  C.,  644 
Clements,  William,  692 
Clergy,   corrupt  state  of   the,    214, 

562,  594 


Cleveland,  Earl  of,  715 

Cleverdon,  Penelope,  599 

Clifford,  Lord,  435 

Clinton,  Lord,  785 

Cloberry,  John,  222 

Clock,  grandfather,  220 

Clode,  Braddon,  56 

Clovelly,  fishermen  of,  229 

Clutterbuck,  Richard,  249 

Coaker,  Jonas,  poet,  706 

Cobbett,  William,  454 

Cobley,  John,  583 

Cobley,  Miss,  458 

Cobley,  Mr.,  461 

Cobley,  Uncle  Tom,  583 

Cockburn,  Mr.,  551 

Codding,  Caleb,  699 

Codmore,  John,  62 

Coham,  William  Holland,  47 

Cohen,  Israel,  407 

Cohorn,  499 

Coining,  counterfeit,  640 

Coin  clipping,  265,  283-285 

Coke,  Sir  Edmund,  195 

Cole,  James,  60 

Cole,  Mary,  24 

Colebrook,  519 

Collard,  John,  694 

Collas,  Victor,  640 

Colchester  prison,  168 

Coleman,  Dorcas,  274 

Collections,  254 

Collier,  Jeremy,  241,  242 

Collier,  W.  F.,  516  note,  525,  756 

Collumpton,  175,  321,  322 

Cologne,  167 

Colton,  Rev.  C.,  M.A.,  286,  289,  290 

Combe,  212 

Combe,  William  de,  213 

Combmartin,  537 

Compton,  Theodore,  606 

Congo  Free  State,  386  note 

Congreve,  W.,  417 

Constantinople,  159,  162 

Consul,  English,  155 

Consul,  French,  157 

Cooke,  John,  saddler,  478-486 

—  his  conduct  during  elections,  481 

—  his  services  to  Exeter,  483-485 
Cookesley,  Rev.  John,  454 
Cookesley,  William,  445-448 
Cookworthy,  William,  600-607 

—  absent-minded  Quaker,  603 

—  discoverer  of  china-clay,  605 
Cooper,  Sir  Astley,  405 


INDEX 


795 


Copenhagen,  309 

Corelli,  609 

Cork,  268,  384,  439 

Cork,  Earl  of,  45 

Cornish  Magazine,  516  note 

Cornwood,  290 

Corry,  322 

Corunna,  378 

Cory,  John,  598 

Coryton,  222 

Cosdon,  709 

Cotgrave,  Captain,  641,  642,  643 

Cott,  Miss,  393 

Cotton,  Mr. ,  230  note,  258,  260 

Cotton,  Walter,  689 

Cotton,  William,  217 

Council  of  Trent,  238 

Courtenay,  545 

Courtenay,  Sir  William,  187,191,208 

Courtlands,  616 

Courtney,  Hon.  Elizabeth,  371 

Courtney,  Kelland,  372 

Courtship,  an  uncertain,  25-30 

Covent  Garden,  353 

Coventry,  228 

Coventry,  Lord,  199 

Cowes,  312 

Cowley  Barton,  616 

Cox,  Captain,  332,  337 

Cox,  Mr.,  414 

Crackington  Cove,  56 

Cranstoun,  Baron,  631 

Craven,  Countess  of,  450 

Crediton,  44,  173,  351-353,  431,  583» 

593 

Greedy  Park,  431 
Greedy  River,  351 
Cresford,  Mr.,  133,  134 
Crolly  Bridge,  77 
Cromwell,  Henry,  244 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  490,  544 
Cromwell,  Richard,  223 
Cromwellian  barbarity,  222 
Crook,  Mr.,  422 
Cross,  Mr.,  189,  463,  464,  465 
Crowd,  a  London,  484 
Crowe,  Mrs.,  174 
Crown  Dale,  702 
Crown's  Too  Weighty ',  The,  243 
Crozcts,  The,  333,. 344 
Crusoe,  a  new  Robinson.     See  G.  M. 

Goodridge 

Cudmore,  Mr.  Henry,  162 
Culham,  373 
Cumberland,  Duke  of,  416 


Cunninghame,  William,  631 
Curate  and  the  pig,  the,  560 
Curate,  how  to  select  a,  543 
Curson,  478 
Curtis,  Anne,  265 
Curtis,  Sir  Thomas,  265 
Cutteford,  George,  199,  202,  204 
Cyder,  3,  13,  14 

—  how  made,  3,  6,  II 

—  tax  on,  3,  6 

—  Royal  Wilding,  8,  10 

—  Whitesour,  10,  13 

Cyder,  Dissertation  on,  I,  6,  10,  13 

Daily  Graphic,  70,  80 

Dalling,  Governor,  740 

Dally,  Mr.,  505 

Daman,  381 

Darcy,  Thomas,  195 

Dartington,  545 

Dartmoor,  521,  601,  700,  705,  709 

Dartmoor,  ancient  remains  on,  700 

Dartmoor  Idylls,  707 

Dartmoor  Pictorial  Records,  706  note 

Dartmoor  Prison,  described,  635 

—  massacre  in,  648 

—  official  report  on  massacre,  664 

—  prisoners'  depositions  concerning 

massacre,  674 
Dartmouth,  264,  304,  316,  317,  334, 

370,  428,  429,  440,  494,  591 
Dart  River,  301 
David  Copperfield,  444 
Davie,  Humphry,  431 
Davie,  Sir  John,  431 
Davie,  John,  274 
Da  vies,  361 

Davies,  Annie,  451  note 
Davis,  Andrew,  691 
Davis,  Jacob,  699 
Davy,  John,  35i~354 

—  passion  for  music,  35 1 

—  wonderful  proficiency,  352 

—  ruined  by  success,  353 
Davy,  Rev.  C.,  127 
Davy,  Rev.  W.,  123-127 

—  a  mechanical  genius,  123 

—  encounter  with  his  bishop,  124,125 

—  turns  printer,  125 
Davy,  Richard,  7QI 
Dawlish,  592 
Dazzard,  57 

Death  Coach,  the,  211 
Defoe,  Daniel,  375,  376 
Delaware,  Lord,  93 


796 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Demon  of  Spreyton,  the,  170-174 

Denbury,  446 

Dennis,  605 

Dennis,  John,  377  note 

Dennis,  Lewis,  597 

Dennis,  Prebendary  Jonas,  581-590 

—  Church  disciplinarian,  582,  583 

—  list  of  his  works,  589 
Dennis,  Sir  Thomas,  581 
Dent,  Captain,  120 
Deptford,  162 

Derby,  U.S.A.,  430 

Desaguliers,  492 

Descriptive  Sketch  of  Sidmoulh,  257 

Despenser,  229 

D'Estree,  157,  158 

De  Valle,  229 

Devil,  encounter  with  the,  395 

—  various  forms  assumed  by,  275,  276 
Devon,  Earl  of,  209 

Devon  Notes  and  Queries,  1850,  105  ; 

1903,  403  5  I9°S,  94 ;  !9o6,  64  ; 

1906,  79 
Devonport,  64,  411,  412,  521,  768, 

774,  782 

Devonshire  Melodist,  The,  328 
Devonshire  Parishes,  494  note 
Devonshire  Woman,  The :  or  a 

Wonderful  Narrative  of  Frances 

Flood,  1 80 

Dewey,  Admiral,  776,  777,  784 
Diamond,  Captain,  314 
Dickenson,  Captain  Harvey,  47 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography, 

238,  282,  285,  414,  607,  617 
Dietrich,  Admiral,  776,  777 
Dilwyn,  14 
Dinan,  137,  138,  139 
Dissertation    on    Cyder   and    Cyder 

Fruit,  i,  6 

Divorce,  plea  to  obtain,  198 
Dixie,  Sir  Wolstone,  735 
Dobell,  Edith,  602 
Doctors'  Commons,  28 
Dodbrooke,  737 
Doggett,  Simon,  53,  54 
Dolmen  of  Shilstone,  127 
Dolton,  i 

Donegal,  Marquess  of,  773 
Don  Juan  de  Cadiz,  87,  88 
Don  Mathias  Caster,  113,  114 
Dorset,  Earl  of,  243 
Dover,  44 
Dowie,  Dr.,  402 
Dowland,  540 


Downhouse,  123 

Drake,  Sir  Francis,  101 , 200, 204,  248, 

785 

Drake  Walls,  702 
Drama,  The,  23,  30 
Dreams,  warnings  by,  219,  591,  592, 

724 

Drewsteignton,  124,  127,  593 
Dublin,  269,  384 

Duckworth,  Admiral  Sir  J.  T. ,  650 
Dudley,  68 

Duncan,  Admiral,  360 
Dunciad,  The,  245 
Dunning,  John,  1st  Lord  Ashburton, 

618-632 

—  his  early  days,  619,  620 

—  his  repellent  appearance,  621,  625, 

630 

—  his  sharp  practice,  623,  624 

—  Solicitor-General,  624 

—  his  manors  in  Devonshire,  628 

—  in  Berlin,  629 
Dunsland,  47,  57 
Duntze,  Sir  John,  479 
Durant,  217 

D'Urfey,  Tom,  52,  57,  238,  247 

—  is  popular  at  Court,  242 

—  his  fills  to  Purge  Melancholy,  246 
Durnford,  the  Misses.  See  Alphington 

Ponies 

Durston,  Dr.  William,  712 
Dyer,  Mr.,  510 
Dymond,  Robert,  324,  632 

Earthworks,  Saxon,  212 

Eastaway,  Elias,  599 

Eastchurch,  Elizabeth,  275 

Eastchurch,  Thomas,  275 

Eastcott,  Rev.  Mr.,  352 

East  India  Company,  380,  388 

Eastlake,  Sir  C.  L.,  572 

Ebford,  458 

Ebsworthy    family,    the,    213,    217, 

218 

Ebsworthy,  213,  217 
Ebsworthy,  Peter,  217 
Ecclesiastical  Court  at  Lyons,  239 
Economy,  false,  746,  747 
Eddy,  Mrs.,  402 
Edgecombe,  Richard,  222 
Edinburgh,  356,  405,  485 
Edinburgh,  Duke  of,  775 
Edmonds,  216 
Edward  II,  229 
Edward  IV,  183 


INDEX 


797 


Edward  VI,  229,  265,  369 

Edward  VII,  783 

Edwards,  Dr.,  354 

Edwards,  Susannah,  274,  275 

Eggesford,  546,  772 

Egyptian  Hall,  473 

Elford,  Robert,  61 

Elford,  Susannah,  61 

Eliot,  Lord,  569 

Eliot,  Nicolas,  596 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  185,  230,  262-270, 

735.  773 

Elliott,  Mr.,  162,  164 
Elworthy,  Mr.  F.  T.,  513 
English  Garner,  The,  94 
Epistola    Ho -E  lianas  ;    or  Familiar 

Letters,  251 
Epitaph  on  Andrew  Brice,  511 

—  on  F.  Flood's  legs,  180 

—  on  Joanna  Southcott,  400 

—  on  John  Gay,  424 

—  on  Margaret  Gould,  618 

—  on  Sir  W.  Jones,  631 
Epsom,  241 

Esdell,  James,  698 
Essex,  Earl  of,  204 
Eumer,  159 
Evans,  Anne,  292-300 

—  executed,  299 
Evelyn's  Diary,  514 
Examiner ;  The,  21,  30 
Excise  Bill,  the,  4 
Exe  River,  107,  150 

Exeter,  4,  7,  8,  13,  19,  42,  65,  71,  79, 
80,  101,  103,  105,  123,  131,  152, 
162,  168,  169,  176,  212,  214, 
223,  231,  238,  239,  252,  257, 
260,  274,  276,  295,  296,  298, 
302,  320,  321,  323,  324,  332, 
352,  353.  356,  366>  367,  368, 
373,  390,  39i,  393,  423,  430, 
431,  437,  441,  442,  445,  458, 
463,  478,  479,  48i,  482,  483, 
484,  485,  502,  503,  508,  511, 
529,  534,  55i,  558,  58i,  582, 
591,  592,  603,  604,  608,  609, 
612,  615,  618,  623,  630,  634, 
718,  741,  746,  747,  770,  785 

Exeter  Grammar  School,  123,  437, 
592 

Exmoor,  225,  426,  533,  539,  546 

Exmoor  Scolding  and  Courtship, 
510,  513 

Exmouth,  150,  583,  584,  587,  616, 
630 


Experiment,  The,  107 
Eynesso,  Manuel,  37 

Fables,  416 

Facye,  Richard,  597 

Fairfax,  Sir  Thomas,  487 

Falconbridge,  Lady,  263 

Falkener,  Sir  William,  168 

Falkirk,  375 

Falmouth,  264,  302,  317,  742 

Farinelli,  246 

Farinellfs  Ground,  245 

Farley,  Samuel,  504,  511 

Farmer,  Thomas,  240 

Fellow,  Anne,  276 

Fellowes,  Hon.  Newton,  546 

Fenton,  Lavinia,  418-420 

Fey,  Francis,  171-173 

—  is  ill-treated  by  ghosts,  171 

Fig,  Dr.  Kennicott's,  373 

Fielding,  Henry,  51,  425 

Figuier,  Louis,  499 

Fisher,  Dr.,  Bishop  of  Exeter,   125, 


590 
iley, 


Fishley,  540 
Fittey,  Robert,  698 
Fitzford,    185,    186,   187,    188,   190, 
195,    196,   197,   199,  200,   202, 

204,  206,  208,  209,  210 

Fit*  of  Fitzford,  Notes  to,  209 
Fitz,  Mary,  185,  187,  193-210 

—  four  times  married,  195-196 

—  an  unnatural  mother,  208,  209 

—  appears  after  death,  209,  210 
Fitz,  John,  185-187 

Fitz,  Sir  John,  186-193 

—  becomes  insane,  191,  193 
Fleet  Prison,  200,  248,  715 
Fleet  Street,  248,  249 
Flood,  Frances,  177-180 
Florida,  266,  267 
Flower,  518,  519 


Floyd,  552 

Foley,   Rev.  T.    P.,   392,   396, 


404 


note 


Fond  Husband,  The,  or  the  Plotting 

Sisters,  240,  247 
Fontelautus,  581-589. 

—  a  vain  child,  585 

—  obsessed  by  evil  spirits,  586 

—  his  voice  heard  after  death,  587, 

588 

Fontenoy,  434 
Foote,  Maria,  21-34 

—  a  second-rate  actress,  23 


798 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Foote,  Maria,  her  benefit,  30 

—  her  connexion  with  Col.  Berkeley, 

24-26 

—  her  marriage,  33 

—  wooed  by  Hayne,  25-29 
Foote,  Mr.,  21,  22,  27,  28,  29,   30 
Foote,  Mrs.,  21,  22,  25,  26,  30 
Foote,  Samuel,  21 

Footprints   of  Former  Men  in   Far 

Cornwall^  52 
Ford,  451 
Ford,  Philip,  698 
Forez,  239 

Forked  Way,  The,  212 
Fort  Sainte  Marie,  388 
Fort  St.  George,  388 
Fortye,  Lieutenant,  670,  695 
Foundling  Institution,  The,  44 
Fowey,  93,  737 
Fox,  Charles  James,  5 
Francemass,  or  Franken  Days,  6 
Francis,  Mrs.,  133,  134 
Frankfort,  166 
Frankin,  6 
Franklyn,  591 
Fraser's  Magazine,  329 
Free-traders.     See  Smuggling 
Freeman,  21 

French  prisoners,  639,  746 
Friar's  Green,  80 
Friend's  Adventure,    The,   136,   138, 

139,  151 
Frise,  Henry,  the  village  poet,  59; 

buys  a  wife,  59 
Frithelstock,  414 
Frost,  520,  523 
Frost,  Elizabeth,  251 
Froude,  Hurrell,  545 
Froude,  J.  A.,  271  note,  329,  545 
Froude,  Rev.  John,  544-562 

—  encounters  his  bishop,  532,  557 

—  as  horse-dealer,  536,  553 

— his  knavish  tricks,  548-550, 555,560 

—  "only  drunk,"  561 
Froudiana,  563 
Fuller,  266 

Fun,  329 

Furze,  Mr.  Philip,  170,  171 

Fuseli,  462 

Gadshill,  322 

Gainsborough,    Thomas,    608,    610, 
6n,  743 

—  an  amateur  musician,  610 
Gair,  John,  699 


Galaford,  212 

Gambia,  116,  120,  121 

Gambling,  mania  for,  639 

Gardeners'  Magazine,  The,  12 

Gardiner,  282,  285 

Gardner,  Edward,  699 

Garrick,  David,  509 

Garrison,  Cornelius,  698 

Garrow,  Mr.,  18 

Gascoigne,  Judge,  181-182 

Gatchell,  John  G.,  690,  691,  692,  696 

Gatti,  Messrs.,  420 

Gaudry,  J.  E.,  511 

Gavulford,  212 

Gay,  John,  245,  414-424 

—  writes  The  Beggars'  Opera,  416 

—  writes  his  own  epitaph,  424 
Gayer,  Sir  John,  380,  382 
Gazetteer,  The  Grand,  509,  513 
General  System  of  Divinity,  124,  125, 

127 

Gentleman's  Magazine,  The,  256,  257 
Geographical  Dictionary,  389 
George  III,  satirized  by  Peter  Pindar, 

745 

Georgenympton,  535,  536 
German,  Jacob,  703,  704 
Germo,  605 
Germyn,  Gilbert,  213 

—  charges  against,  215 

—  his  heresies,  217,  218 
Ghent,  207,  643 

Ghosts,    57,     129,     170-173.     2°9. 

286-291,  586-592,  719 
Ghost,  the  Sampford,  286-291 

—  noisy  manifestations  of,  287 

—  probably  caused  by  maid-servants, 

291 

Giardini,  610 
Gibbon,  627 
Gibbons,  Grinling,  773 
Gibraltar,  107,  783,  784,  786 
Gibson,  Captain,  377,  378,  379 
Giddy,  Mr.,  738 
Gidleigh,  565 
Gidley,  Mrs.,  171 
Giflfard,  Baron,  590 
Giffard  family,  the,  414,  436 
Gifford,  Edward,  437,  438 
Gifford,  William,  436-456,  751 

—  edits  The  Quarterly,  452 

—  his  education,  438,  440,  446 

—  his  hardships,  439,  440,  441 

—  his  love  of  mathematics,  443 

—  satires,  writer  of,  443,  444.  45° 


INDEX 


799 


Gifford,  William,  681 
Gilbert,  Sarah,  123 
Giles,  Sir  Edward,  218 
Gill,  Mr.,  27 
Gillespie,  Elizabeth,  572 
Gist,  Thomas,  274 
Gittisham,  177,  390 
Gladding,  Major,  661 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  775 
Glandfeeld,  Mr.    See  Glanville 
Glanville,  John,  97 
Glanville,  Judge,  95-106 

—  M  P.  for  Tavistock,  97 
Glanville,  Mr.  George,  505,  506,  508 
Glanville,  Nicholas,  102 

Glimpses  of  the  Supernatural ',  258 

Glubb,  Mr.,  541 

Goddess  of  Death,  the,  211 

Godolphin,  Sir  Francis,  97 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  327,  627 

Golds  worthy,  414 

Goletta,  158 

Gomera,  108,  in,  112 

Goodleigh,  754 

Goodrich,   Rear-Admiral  J.    G.    C., 

786 
Goodridge,  George  Medyett,  332-350 

—  goes  sealing  in  the  Pacific,  333 

—  is  shipwrecked,  335 

—  his  life  on  the  island,  383 

—  is  rescued,  347 
Gorges,  Sir  Arthur,  187 
Gorham,  Rev.  G.  C,  48 
Gosling,  Mr.,  410,  411,  412 
Gould,  Edward,  438,  619,  622 
Gould,  W.  Drake,  622 
Gower,  Lord,  234,  236 
Gravesend,  281 

Gray,  John,  698 

Greathead,  Bertie,  450 

Greenhithe,  362 

Greenlaw,  James,  679  note,  683 

Greenwich,  484 

Grenofen,  772 

Grenville,  Elizabeth,  206-209 

Grenville  family,  the,  565,  710,  785 

Grenville,  Lord,  418 

Grenville,  Sir  Bernard,  232 

Grenville,  Sir  Richard,  197-207,  279 

—  imprisoned,  200,  206 

—  hanged  in  effigy,  203 

—  takes  possession  of  Fitzford,  204 
Grey,  James,  158 

Grey,  Miss,  429 

Grey  Woman,  The,  129-135 


Grills,  William,  196 

Grimspound,  701 

Grose,  226,  232 

Grosvenor,  Earl,  448,  450,  451,  452 

Groves,  James,  682 

Grunsall,  George,  162,  164 

Guatham,  618,  632 

Guildhall,  Plymouth,  63,  96 

Guiller,  Charles,  640 

Gulwell,  619 

Gunstone,  Sir  Thomas,  235 

Gutch,  46 

Hagabets,  John,  699 
Halberton,  490 
Halhead,  Mr.,  393 
Hall,  772 
Hall,  Bishop,  249 
Hall,  Mr.  S.  C.,  576 
Hall,  Stephen,  676 
Halley,  Dr.,  126 
Halsbury,  414,  436 
Halse,  Miss,  558 
Hamlet,  John,  687 
Hamlyn,  Joe,  703 
Hammett,  Sir  Benjamin,  105 
Hamoaze,  633,  634,  640 
Hampton  Court,  499,  746 
Handel,  609,  614,  615 
Hankford,     Sir     William,     succeeds 
Judge  Gascoigne,  182 

—  at  Annery,  182 

—  his  accidental  death,  183 

—  his  monument,  184 
Hanmer,  Rev.  John,  414,  415 
Harborne,  329 

Hare,  405 

Harkett,  133 

Harrington,  Countess  of.     See  Maria 

Foote 

Harrington,  Earl  of,  33 
Harris,  Sir  Christopher,  187,  280 
Harris,  Mrs.,  100,  133 
Harris  family,  the,  217 
Harrison,  G.  H.,  606 
Hart,  Mr.  Charles,  21 
Hartland,  236 
Hartland  Chronicle,  The,   234  note, 

237  note 

Harwood,  Colonel,  399 
Hastings,  577 

Hatherleigh,  54,  539,  540,  710,  712 
Hatton,  Lady  Elizabeth,  195 
Hawker,  John  H.,  459,  460 
Hawker,  Rev.  R.  S.,  52,  53 


8oo 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Hawker,  Rev.  T.,  456 
Hawkins,  Daniel,  222 
Hawkins,  John,  514 
Hawkins,  Sir  John,  785 
Haydon,    Benjamin,    400,    457-477, 
566,  567 

—  and  David  Wilkie,  462 

—  commits  suicide,  474 

—  his  inordinate  vanity,  472,  477 

—  imprisoned  for  debt,  471,  473 
Haydon  family,  the,  457,  458 
Hayes,  Catherine,  105 
Haymarket,  353 

Hayne,  Joseph,  25-30 

Haywood,  John,  689,  698 

Hazlitt,  William,  454 

Headland  Warren,  700 

Heanton  Punchardon,  329 

Heath,  Justice,  482 

Heathfield,  Lord,  479 

Heavitree,  105 

Heideloff,  565 

Hele,  Colonel  Sir  Thomas,  220 

Hele,  Eliseus,  369 

Hele,  Walter,  196 

Hell  described,  53 

Hellier,  Elizabeth,  250 

Hellier,  Mary,  502 

Helmore,  "Old,"  210 

Helston,  741 

Hemyock,  737 

Hennock,  123 

Henry  II,  549 

Henry  III,  226-228,  248 

Henry  IV,  181 

Henry  V,  181,  182,  183 

Henry  VI,  182 

Henry  VII,  47 

Henry  VIII,    194,    229,    262,    490, 

58i 

Heralds'  Visitation,  97,  102,  726,  754 
Herbert,  Lord,  487,  498 
Herefordshire,  4 
Heron,  Sir  Nicholas,  269 
Hey  wood,  John  Modyford,  189 
Hext,  John,  628 
Highway  robbery,  322,  622 
Hill,  Hilary,  97 
Himalaya^  775 
Hine,  Mr.  J.,  577,  580 
History  of  Devonshire,  254 
History  of  England,  271  note 
History  of  the  Great  Rebellion,  21 1 
Hobart,  William,  689 
Hockin,  Helen,  599 


Hodge,  William,  64 

Hogarth,  William,  420,  469,  472 

Holcombe  Burnell,  581 

Hole,  Mary,  125 

Holdsworth,  Mr.,  440 

Hollar,  196 

Holman,  Mr.,  353 

Holmden,  Robert,  659,  684 

Holmes,  Addison,  679 

Holmes,  John,  48 

Holne,  622 

Holsworthy,  47,  50,  563 

Holwell,  86,  97 

Homan,  Rev.  C.  S.,  261 

Honeychurch,  710 

Honiton,  103,  177,  322 

Hood's  Comic  Annual,  329 

Hook,  520 

Hooke,  Dr.,  495,  496 

Hooker,  Mr.,  543 

Hooper,  334 

Hoppner,  442,  455 

Hore,  David,  222 

Horoscopes,  186 

Horse-dealing,  all  fair  in,  536,  553 

Horswell,  Mr.,  763 

Houlditch,  Mr.,  553,  554 

House-hunting,  130 

How,  495 

Howard,  Elizabeth,  196 

Howard,  Frederick,  698 

Howard,  George,  201,  207,  208 

Howard,  Lady.     See  Mary  Fitz 

Howard,  Mary,  196,  199,  209 

Howard,  Sir  Charles,  196,  201 

Howard,  Sir  Thomas,  195,  196 

Howe,  Mr.,  398 

Howell,  James,  86, 248,  249, 251,252, 

257 

Hubbard,  John,  692,  696 
Hubbard,  Richard,  403 
Hull,  Homer,  684 
Hume,  Lady  Elizabeth,  201 
Humphrey,  608 
Hunny,  Nicholas,  595 
Hunt,  George,  716 
Hunt,  William,  578,  580 
Hunting,  by  parsons,  529 
—  worship  subservient  to,  533,  534 
Huntsman,  the  Wild,  57 
Huxtable,  520 
Hysteria  cured,  759 

Ibrahim,  154,  155 
Iddesleigh,  535,  539,  54°,  542 


INDEX 


80 1 


Iddesleigh,    Earl    of,     i.      See    also 

Sir  S.  Northcote 
Ide,  458 

Ilbert,  Roupe,  533 
Ilfracombe,  231 
Ilsington,  482 
Inglett  family,  the,  217 
Inn  Play,  or  Cornish  Hugg  Wrestler. 

524 

Introduction  to  Knowledge ,  441 
Instow,  775,  784 
Invention  due  to  accidents,  497 

—  of  steam-propelled  fountain,  487 

—  paddle  boat,  490,  493 

—  pumping  engines,  492,  493 

—  steam  engine,  498,  501 
Ireland,  Dr.  John,  442,  453,  456 
"Irish  Gaffney,"  523 

Isle  de  Laon,  86 

Jackman,  519 

Jackson,  Edward,  688 

Jackson,  Thomas,  698 

Jackson,  William,  352,  608-617,  741 

—  his  sons,  616 

—  musical  education,  609 

—  life  in  Exeter,  612 

—  vanity,  614,  615 
Jago,  Dr.,  209 

Jamaica,  120,  121,  189,  696,  738 
James  I,  84,  190,  278-285,  773 
James  II,  241,  243 

arvis,  Captain,  310 

avasu,  38,  45 

avasu,  Princess  of.    See  Caraboo 

edda,  382 

ekyll,  Parson,  551,  552 

ennings,  Sir  John,  107 

errold,  Douglas,  368 
Jesus  Christ,  77 
Jesus,  son  of  Sirach,  71 
Jezreelites,  the,  402 
Joannites,    the,  392,  394,  398,  400, 

401 

Johns,  Ambrose  Bowden,  566,  568 
Johnson,  Captain  Charles,  375,  382, 

387,  389 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  627 
Johnson,  Joseph  Toker,  698 
Johnson,  Robert,  691 
Joliffe,    Major,    645,  658,  659,  662, 

682,  685,  688,  689,  695,  696 
Jones,  Sir  William,  626,  627,  630 
Jonson,  Ben,  451,  491,  514 
Jordan,  Johnny,  518,  519,  520 


Journal,  Brices  Weekly,  504,  506 

—  Farley 's  Exeter,  504,  510 
Judd,  Robert,  596 
Junket,  Devonshire,  176 
Justice  of  the  J'eace,  60 
Jutsham,  Henry,  619 

Kaolin,  60 1,  605 

Karslake,  Prebendary,  547 

Kavanagh,  269,  270 

Keenan,  Mr.,  608 

Keinsham,  179 

Kelloway,  i.     Set  Stafford 

Kelly,  78,  219,  222 

Kelly,  Philippa,  219,  222 

Kelly,  William  Kelly  of,  219,  220 

Kendall,  William,  616 

Kenn,  257 

Kennicott,     Benjamin,     D.D.,     369- 

374 

—  master  of  charity  school,  369 

—  bell-ringer,  370,  371 

—  education,  372 

—  his  fig,  373 

—  revisits  Totnes,  373 
Kennicott  family,  the,  369 
Kensington,  258 
Kenyon,  Lord,  620 
Keppel  Street,  25,  27,  29 
Kilkenny,  226 
Kilkhampton,  232 
Kilworthy,  95 

King,  Captain,  280,  281 

King,  Charles,  663,  672 

King,  Humphrey,  251 

King,  Mr.,  509 

King,  O.,  271  note 

King's  Bench  Prison,  471 

King's  evil,  80 

King  of  the  Beggars.  See  Bampfylde- 

Moore  Carew 

Kingsbridge,  123,  602,  737 
Kingsley,  Charles,  255 
Kingston,  Duchess  of,  625 
Kingston-on-Thames,  191,  731 
Kingswear,  317 
Kinsale,  267,  270 
Kitson  Hall,  25 
Knighton,  123 
Knock,  William,  no 
Knole  Park,  35-41,  45,  243 
Knowstone,  532,  544 
Knowstone-cum-Molland,  545>   552» 

554,  558,  S^o,  563 
Korner,  174 


802 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


La  Chesnee,  281 

Ladysmith,  786 

Laguna,  112 

Lainshaw,  631 

Laira,  601 

Lake,  Dr.,  324 

Lambhay,  298 

Lamerton,  222 

Landkey,  531,  542,  543,  754 

Landor,  Walter  Savage,  329 

Land's  End,  570 

Lane,  Mr.  John,  563,  580  note 

Lanes,  Devonshire,  303 

Lang,  Dorothy,  598 

Lang,  William,  594-599 

—  misdemeanours  of,  594-598 

Langdon,  Anne,  171 

Langford,  97 

Langford,  Margaret,  97 

Langford,  Moses,  97 

Lansdowne,  Lord,  207,  211 

Lanyon,  Mr.  Charles,  505 

Lapthorn,  Stephen,  694 

Larder,  Robert,  115,  117,  I2O 

Larkbeare,  630 

Larpent,  Francis  Seymour,  663,  672 

La  Rochelle,  239 

Las  Rozas,  269 

Launceston,  14,  210,  212,  302,  565, 

570 

Lawhitton,  222,  599 
Lawrence,  Sir  Thomas,  442 
Lawrence,  William,  586,  587 
Le  Catel,  641 
Le  Clerc,  281,  282 
Le  Due,  Viollet,  564 
Lee,  Mr.  Henry,  422 
Leeds,  394,  400,  401,  499 
Lee  Moor,  60 1 
Lega-Weekes,  Ethel,  717 
Legends  and  Superstitions  connected 

with  the  Sacraments,  58 
Leghorn,  165 
Leicester  House,  415 
Leisure  Hour,  608 
Leith,  356 
Le  Keux,  575 
Leman,  Mr.,  439 
Lennard,  Captain,  207 
Lepanto,  271 
Le  Puy,  239 
Lethbridge,  752 
Letters  of  Nathan  Hogg^  71 
Levant,  35 
Leverage,  William,  698 


Lew  River,  212 

Lew  Trenchard,  80,  622,  624 

Ley,  189 

Lezant,  716 

Lidstone,  Mr.  Thomas,  495 

Life  and  Adventures  of  Captain  John 

Avery,  375 
Life  and  Death  of  Captain  Thomas 

Stukeley,  273 
Life  and  Srirprising  Adventures  of 

James  Wyatf,  122 
Life  and  Times  of  Sir  Peter  Carew, 

Knight,  230 
Lift  on,  222 
Lightfoot,  Mr.,  377 
Lile,  Matthew,  598 
Lile,  Prudence,  222 
Lile,  Robert,  597 
Lilly,  William,  203 
Limehouse,  332 
Limoges,  605 
Lincoln,  Ephraim,  699 
Lisbon,  93,  107,  272 
Liskeard,  64,  517,  570,  738 
Literary  History  of  Barnstaple,  103 
Little  Horton,  68 
"Little  Jan,"  515 
Liverpool,  718,  721 
Lloyd,  Temperance,  274,  275,  276 
Lock,  Mrs.,  133 
Lockjaw  cured,  7^5>  7^7 
London,  3,  4,  42,  51,  98,  169,  174, 

I9I>  J93>  20°»  226>  249>  262> 
269,  276,  279,  280,  285,  291,  302, 
329,  350,  358,  366,  368,  375,  396, 
401, 403,  408, 413,  425,  449,  462, 
472, 483,  493, 499,  510,  514,  520, 
548,  57i,  572,  594,  596, 602, 609, 
728,  732,  738,  742 

Longabrook,  123 

Lopes,  Sir  Manasseh,  189 

Lord  How,  614 

Lorkin,  Rev.  T. ,  285  note 

Lott,  Susannah,  105 

Lourdes  miracles,  81 

Lovell,  Mrs.,  96 

Luck,  Robert,  415 

Lundy  Island,  224,  225,  236,  285 

—  occupied  by  French,  233 

Mariscoes,  225,  228,  229 

Spanish,  232 

Turks,  231 

—  refuge  of  pirates,  231,  233 
Lundy  Island,  a  History  of,  22$  note 
Lustleigh,  124,  125,  127 


INDEX 


803 


Luttrell,  Mr.  H.  Fownes,  372 
Lyde,  Robert,  136-151 

—  a  frequent  captive,  137,  138 

—  overcomes  his  captors,  142 
Lydford,  205,  212 

Lyme,  310,  314 
Lymington,  393 
Lymington,  Lord,  774 
Lympston,  152 
Lyons,  239 

Lysons,  Mr.,  95,   103,  248-250,  253, 
255,  414,  754 

Mabinogion,  the  Welsh,  225 

Macartney,  Lord,  616 

Mace,  417 

Maclean,  Sir  John,  229 

Macleod  family,  the,  631 

Madagascar,  379,  387,  388,  389 

Madame  Pickle,  240 

Madeira,  115,  315 

Madness,  homicidal,  176 

Madras,  388 

Madrid,  92,  269 

Maviad,  450,  451,  455 

Magdalen  Reformatory,  43 

Magnet  Britannia,  248,  250,  414 

Magna  Charta,  5 

Magrath,   Dr.,   656  nete,  659,  667, 

676,  677,  679,  684 
Mahometan  cruelty,  156 
Mahon,  Lord,  624 
Maiden  Bradley,  431 
Maid  of  Sker,  549,  556,  561 
Malaga,  108 
Malborough,  494 
Manchester,  570 
Mandins,  The,  38 
Mania,  religious,  390,  392-398 
Manila,  776,  777,  784 
Mann,  James,  698 
Manning,  Mr.,  28 
Manning,  Joseph,  685 
Mannourie,  280,  283 
Manse,  Mr.,  26 
Mansell,  Sir  Robert,  84,  85 
Mansfield,  Lord,  620 
Marburg,  489,  493 
Margate,  405 
"Marianne,  Old,"  75-78 

—  her  recipes,  77 

Marisco,  William  de,  225,  228 

—  Jordan  de,  225,  226 

—  family,  229,  285 
Maristowe,  189 


Marlborough,  26 

Marlborough  College,  564 

Marmion,  Frances,  239 

Marriage,  conceptions  of,  69 

Marriott,  Mr.,  290,  291 

Marryatt,  Mr.,  607 

Marshall,  Edward,  249 

Marshalsea,  284,  716 

Marston,  Chancellor,  214 

Mary,  Queen,  151,  263,  265 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  33 

Maryland,  234,  235,  430,  431,  434 

Mary  Tavy,  6r,  514 

Massinger,  451 

Mathews,  Joe,  708 

Mathews,  Mrs.,  42,  43 

Mathews,  Prebendary,  556,  563 

Maxwell,  Hon.  Mr.,  133 

Mayne,  Dr.  Jasper,  710 

Mayoralty  House,  Plymouth,  95 

Mazora,  332,  349 

McFarlane,  Robert,  684 

McHardy,  Anne,  356 

Mears,  Henry,  68 

Mecca,  159,  381 

Medical  advice,  726,  740,  754,  758, 

761,  768,  769 
—  misinterpreted,  765 
Medina,  Duke  of,  88,  91 
Medina,  first  described  by  Pitts,  159 
Meggor,  Captain,  232 
Melish,  John,  698 
Memoirs  and  Correspondence  of  John 

Murray,  the  Publisher,  456 
Memoirs  of  Jack  Rattenbury,  307 
Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Mission  of 

Joanna  Southcott,  403 
Memoirs  of  Prout,  577 
Memorials  of  Old  Devonshire,  319 

note 

Menhirs,  127 
Mentz,  167 

Mercurius  Rusticus,  221 
Mercury,  502 
Mere,  289 
Merripit  Hill,  703 
Merry  Conceited 'Jests ,  734 
Merry,  Robert,  450 
Meshaw,  548 
Methodist  preacher  and  Black  John, 

Methodist  revivalistic  preaching,  390, 

508 

Metr,  264 
Mevagissey,  318 


804 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Mile  Hill,  431 

Milford  Haven,  231 

Milford,  Mr.  S.  F.,  485 

Mill  Bridge,  409 

Milton  Abbot,  209,  222 

Miners'  Friend,  The,  492 

Mining,  tin,  491,  701,  705 

Minorca,  420 

Miraculous  cures.  See  White  Witches 

Mitchell,  John,  674 

Mitchell,  William,  692 

Mithian,  742 

M'Kinnon,  Kiel,  689 

Mobiad,  The,  510 

"Mock  Election  in  Prison,"  471 

Modbury,  63,  189,  489,  490,  619 

Mogridge,  Mr.,  257,  258 

Mogul,  the  Great,  376,  380,  384 

Mole-catcher,  spectre  of,  170 

Moles,  735 

Molesworths,  family  of,  47,  48,  56 

Molesworth,  the  Rev.  Paul  W.,  48, 

Si.  53 

Molesworth,  Sir  John,  56 
Molesworth,  Sir  W.,  Bart.,  48 
Molesworth,  William,  50 
Molland,  545,  551,  561 
Molt,  Thomas  Burgess,  683 
Money,  by  fair  means  or  foul,  729, 

730,  750 

Monk,  Anthony,  278 
Monk,  Frances,  278 
Monk,  General,  242,  590 
Monkleigh,  182,  184 
Monmouth,  Duchess  of,  415 
Montbrison,  238 
Montcalm,  Henry,  698 
Moon,  Mr.,  42 
Moonshine,  Mr.,  451 
Moore,  Thomas,  67 
Moorhead,  Mr.,  353 
More,  Hannah,  625,  750 
Morgan,  Colonel,  487 
Moreton  Hampstead,  79>   I23>  I27> 

1 86,  517,  700,  703,  746 
Morice  Town,  520 
Morland,  Sir  Samuel,  489 
Morland,  William,  608 
Morleigh,  608 
Morley,  Lord,  714 
Morning  Chronicle,   The,  396,  780, 

784 

Morris,  Mr.,  540 
Morshead,  William,  56 
Mortimer,  Mr.,  41 


Mott,  Thomas  Burgess,  689 
Mountain,  Mr.,  353 
Mount  Edgcumbe,  Earl  of,  567 
Mount  Edgcumbe,  Lady,  750 
Mount  Pleasant,  409,  410 
Mumper,  a  professional.     See  B.-M. 

Carew 
Murray,  450 
Mutiny  at  the  Nore,  356,  358,  359, 368 

—  of  American  prisoners,  645 

—  on  the  high  seas,  379 

Mutiny  at  Spit  head  and  the  Nore,  368 

Nankevill,  306 

Nan  Tap,  71 

Nantes,  206 

Naples,  725 

"  Napoleon  Musing,"  457 

Napp,  235 

Nares,  George,  256,  257 

Narracott,  73 

Narrator,  702 

Narrative  of  a  Singular  Imposition,  46 

Narrative  of  the  Demon  of  Spraiton, 

A,  174 

Natt,  Philip,  598 
Navy,  unsatisfactory  condition  of  the, 

355 

Neale,  Mrs.,  41 
Nelson,  Lord,  484,  785 
Newark,  400 
New  Brunswick,  725 
Newcastle,  429 
Newcastle,  Penn.,  430 
New  Collection  of  Songs  and  Poems, 

241 
Newcomen,  Thomas,  487-501 

—  his  family  history,  494 

—  his  secrecy  in  experimenting,  495 

—  patents  with  Savery,  497 
Newell,  115 

New  England,  384 

Newfoundland,  152,  428,  440,  718 

Newgate,  105,  416 

New  Jersey,  697 

Newlands  Weir,  710 

New  London,  430,  431 

Newlyn,  505 

New  Orleans,  779 

Newquay,  318 

Newton  Abbot,  703,  770 

Newton  St.  Petrock,  754 

New  York,  309 

New  York  Herald,  784 

Nicholl,  Anthony,  596 


INDEX 


805 


Night  her  Blackest  Sables  Wore,  The, 

241 

Nimmo,  J.  C.,  734 
Nit,  Anthony,  732,  733 
Noake's  Worcestershire  Relics,  13 
Nore,  the,  356,  357,  360,  363 
Norris,  Mrs.,  377 
North,  Lord,  630 

North  Bovey,  64,  65,  701,  716,  707 
Northcote,  571,  572 
Northcote,  Sir  Henry,  Bt. ,  I 
Northcote,  Sir  Stafford,  479,  616 
Northcote,  Mr.,  462 
Northcott,  John,  187 
North  Devon  Journal,  543 
Northernhay,  79 
Northesk,  Lord,  360 
North  Lew,  371 
North   Tawton,   81,  251,   709,   714, 

754,  755,  770 
Northumberland,  Earl  of,   193,  194, 

263,  264,  735 
North  Wyke,  709 
—  forcible  possession  taken  of,  713 
Norton,  Sir  Fletcher,  630 
Notes  and  Gleanings,  368,  403 
Nottingham,  Earl  of,  231,  283 
Nutt,  Captain  Robert,  231 

Observations  on  the  Present  State  of 
Music  in  London,  614,  615 

Ockment,  540 

Oddy,  Mrs,  260 

Odiorne,  John,  677,  678,  680,  68  i, 
691 

Okehampton,  7, 59,  209,  210,  218,  570 

Okery  Bridge,  638 

Old-a-Port,  619 

Old  Bailey,  105,  730 

Old  Dartmoor  Days,  544 

"  Old  Dawty,"  53 

Old  England  for  Ever,  478,  486 

Old  English  Home,  An,  74 

Old  Swinford,  392 

Oliver,  Dr.,  509,  512 

Oliver,  Mr.  Francis,  8 

Olver,  Francis,  519 

On  and  Off  the  Stage,  33 

Opie,  John,  566,  608,  741,  752 

Oporto,  n,  138,  313 

Orchards  neglected,  12,  13 

Orinoco,  278,  279 

Orne,  William  B.,  689 

Orpheus  Caledonicus,  241 

O.  T.  D.,  48 


Otter,  322 
Otterton,  584,  590 
Ottery  St.  Mary,  390,  451 
Ovid,  244 

Owen,  Mr.  Robert,  725 
Oxenford,  John,  325 
Oxenham  family,  the,  249-254,  257- 
261 

—  fictitious  members  of,  250,  252 
Oxenham,  Miss  Anne,  260 
Oxenham,  G.  N.,  258,  260 
Oxenham,    Rev.    Henry   Nutcombe, 

258 
Oxford,  13,  123,  202,  203,  324,  372, 

448,  547,  612,  726 
Oxford,  Lady,  735 

Packsaddle  Bridge,  710 
Paganel,  Sir  William  de,  62 
Page,  Eulalia,  95-106 

—  executed,  96 

—  omitted  from  pedigree,  97 

—  privy  to  her  husband's  death,  100 
Page,  Mr.,  95,  98 

—  strangled,  96,  99 
Paignton,  332,  333,  350 
Painsford,  371 

Palk,  Captain  John,  700-708 

—  exacts  obedience,  703 

—  buys  Vitifer  mine,  702 
Palk,  Governor,  447 
Palk,  Mr.,  20 

Palk,  Sir  Lawrence,  20,  479,  482,  483 

Palk,  Sir  Robert,  479 

Palladio,  575 

Palma,  108 

Palmer,  Roundell,  756 

Papin,  Denis,  489,  492,  496,  497,  499 

Paris,  281,  434,  499,  616,  641 

Paris,  Matthew,  227 

Parker,  "Admiral"  Richard,  355-368 

—  executed,  363 

—  is  ringleader  of  mutiny,  356,  361 

—  his  wife's  distress,  363 
Parker,  Edmund,  713 
Parker,  John  C.,  367 
Parkham,  414,  436,  754 
Parkins,  Sir  Thomas,  516,  517,  524 
Parnel,  334 

Pasley,  Sir  Thomas,  361 
Passaford,  540 
Passports  for  heaven,  392 
Pastorals,  447 
Patch,  Claude,  430 
Payne,  34 


8o6 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Peace  of  Ryswick,  377 

Peach,  John,  699 

Peachum,  Polly,  417,  418 

Pearce,  Mr.  John,  591,  702,  703 

Peckettsford,  710 

Peckham,  590 

Peeke,  "  Manly  "  Richard,  84-94 

—  his  pamphlet,  94 

—  is  freed  for  prowess,  91 

—  wounds  and  is  wounded,  87 
Peele,  George,  726-736 

—  a  quack,  727 

—  is  compelled  to  work,  728 

—  a  rogue  at  large,  730 
Pelham,  Camden,  355,  367,  368 
Pell,  Mr.  Sergeant,  481 
Pencarrow,  54,  56 
Pendennis  Castle,  220 
Pengelly,  William,  221,  500  note 
Penguins,  342 

Penkenner,  56 

Penn,  William,  698 

Pennington,  John,  232 

Penzance,  260,  483,  505,  738 

Pepusch,  417 

Perceval,  Isaac,  347,  348,  349 

Percy,  Sir  Allan,  195 

Perigo,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  394 

Perim,  382 

Perouse,  353 

Perrot,  Sir  John,  262 

Perry,  John,  699 

Perry,  Mr.,  109 

Peter,  Mrs.  Thomas,  259 

Peter  Pindar.     See  John  Wolcot 

Petersham,  Viscount,  33 

Petertavy,  702 

Petherbridge,  349 

Pett,  George,  688 

Philadelphia,  45,  430,  644,  698 

Philip  II  of  Spain,  267-272 

Philip's  Norton,  177 

Phillpotts,  Henry,  Bishop  of  Exeter, 

.  48,  529,  53 1 ,  538,  556,  557 
Phipps,  Stephen,  699 
Picard,  388 
Picaroons,  301 
Pills  to  Purge  Melancholy,   52,   57, 

244,  246 
Pilton  Bridge,  2 
Piozzi,  Mrs.,  450 
Pirates,  King  of.     See  Captain  John 

Avery,  375 
Pirates,  Algerme,  84,  152 

—  English,  267 


Pirates  on  Lundy,  228 

—  in  Madagascar,  388,  389 
Pitt,  Captain,  388 

Pitt,  Hon.  Thomas,  605 

Pitt,  William,  3,  6,  481-484,  750 

Pitts,  John,  152 

Pitts,  Joseph,  152-169 

—  turns  Mohammedan  perforce,  153, 

.156,  159 

—  his  escape,  165 
Plague  at  Exeter,  103 
Plancy,  Colin  de,  58 
Playford,  publisher,  244 
Plotting  Sisters,  The,  247 
Plumleigh,  Captain,  231 
Plymouth,  2,  21,  62,  81,  89,  93,  96, 

101-103,  106,  108,  204,  278, 
283,  292,  296,  298,  300,  377,  385, 
407, 440, 458, 463,  520,  565,  568, 
570,  578,  602,  606,  633,  645, 
673,708,712,746,755,757,770, 
784,  786 

Plymouth  and  Devonport,  in  Times  of 
War  and  Peace,  62,  64  note,  106, 
300,  641 

Plymouth  Sound,  93,  280,  786 

Plymtree,  392 

Pocahontas,  278 

Pocket-boroughs,  189 

Poetry  and  blank  verse,  difference 
between,  706 

Poisoning,  cases  of,  293,  597 

Pole,  Sir  W.  T.,  584 

Polkinghorne,  518-523 

Pollard,  Mark,  232 

Pollard,  Sir  Lewis,  262 

Poltergeist,  174,  291 

Polwhele,  254,  511,  621,  741 

Pomeroy,  Mr.,  391 

Pomeroy,  Mrs.,  391-393 

Ponies,  Alphington,  17 

Pontefract,  66 

Poole,  428 

Pop,  Ashburton,  478 

Pope,  Alexander,  244,  416,  736 

Pope  Pius  V,  271 

Pope  Gregory  XIII,  272 

Porcelain,  604 

Porchester,  429 

Porlock,  533 

Port  Arthur,  779 

Port  Eliot,  569 

Porter,  Captain  Thomas,  86,  88 

Porteus,  Bishop,  750 

Portland  Bill,  311 


INDEX 


807 


Porto  Farino,  158 

Portsmouth,  350,  440,  634 

Portsmouth,  Earl  of,  546,  774 

Port  St.  Maria,  86 

Post  Bridge,  706 

Postman    Poet,    the.    See    Edward 

Capern 

Potheridge,  278 
Potter,  Humphrey,  498 
Poughill,  534 
Poundstock,  56 
Powell,  Mr.,  98 
Powlett,  419 
Praed,  Mr.,  18 
Prat,  Rev.  R.,  584 
Pratt,  Miss,  484 
Press-gang,  313,  314 
Pressoville,  Captain,  232 
Preventive  men,  307 

—  outwitted,  303,  304,  305 
Prideaux,  John,  606 
Prideaux,  Robert,  97-104 
Pridhamsleigh,  438,  618,  622,  628 
Prince,  182,  183,  191,  257 

Prince     Charles    and    the    Spanish 

Marriage,  285 
Prince  Rock,  298 
Princess  Sophia,  Electress  Dowager 

of  Hanover,  243 
Princetown,  186,  407 
Prisons,  state  of,  485,  505 

—  debtors  in,  505 

—  See  Dartmoor,  Fleet,  etc. 
Probus,  569 

Prouse  family,  arms  of,  565 
Prout,  Samuel,  564-580 

—  delicate  health  of,  566 

—  his  passion  for  music,  567 

—  his  piety,  577 

—  his  Studies  and  other  works,  572 

—  in  Cornwall  with  Britton,  568,  570 

—  painter  of  architecture,  568 
Puckering,  Sir  T.,  283,  285  note 
Pugin,  Augustus,  575 

Pugin,  A.  Welby,  575 
Pugsley,  Christopher,  597 
Punch,  420 
Puntal,  86 

Purcell,  Henry,  240,  245 
Putford,  599 
Pycroft,  George,  580 
Pynes,  I,  12,  616 

Quaker  meetings,  603,  704 
Quarterly  Review,  The,  452 


Quarter-staffe,  90,  94 
Queensberry,  Duke  of,  421 
Quicke,  John,  295-300 
Quebec,  721 

Radford,  187,  194,  279 

Radford,  Mrs.,  194,  209,  211,  768 

Radish,  Captain,  107 

Raglan  Castle,  487 

Raleghana,  285 

Raleigh,  772 

Raleigh,  Sir  John,  772 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  278-284,  785 

—  arrested,  279 

—  plans  escape,  280 
Rattenbury,  Jack,  301-319 

—  deserter,  313,  318 

—  his  hairbreadth  escapes,  314,  317, 

3i8 

—  turns  smuggler,  315 

Recipe  for  burns  or  scalds,  77,  78 

—  a  sprain,  77 

—  stanching  blood,  77 

—  toothache,  77 

—  whooping  cough,  77 

—  eczema,  77 
Redruth,  520 

Reece,  Dr.  Richard,  396,  397,  404 
Reeves,  James,  694 
Reeves,  John,  692 
Reeves,  Sims,  420 
Reinagle,  469 

Reminiscences  of  an  Old  West-country 
Clergyman,  64,  537  note,  550,  563 
Rendal,  Mr.,  613 
Rendall,  George,  232 
Rennel,  Dr.,  593,  608 
Resurrection    of   J.    Southcott,    the 

expected,  398-401 

Resurrectionists,  the  Stoke,  405-413 
Resurrections,  unexpected,  55,  593 
Revenge,  The,  108,  121 
Reynolds,  Rev.  Mr.,  592 
Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  442,  6il,  627, 

743 

Rhodes,  162-164 
Rich,  Mr.,  417,  418 
Richard  II,  182 
Richards,  Dr.,  535 
Richardson,  Captain,  45 
Richardson,  Rev.  J.,  472 
Richmond,  Duke  of,  263 
Rickman,  Mr.,  564,  575 
Riots  in  Exeter,  482 
Risdon,  183,  254 


8o8 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Risdon  family,  the,  414 

Rivers,  Earl,  195 

Roberts,  John,  699 

Roberts,  Miss,  259 

Roberts,  Mr.,  65 

Robertson,  Mrs.,  450 

Robins,  Mr.,  27 

Rochester,  364,  366 

Rock,  Mr.  W.  F.,  327 

Rockingham,  Marquess  of,  630 

Rogers,  Captain  Woods,  387,  389 

Roland  for  an  Oliver,  A,  34 

Rolfe,  Thomas,  278 

Rolle,  Lady,  20,  591 

Rolle,  Lord,  319,  479 

Rolle,  Mr.,  747 

Roman  road,  212 

Rome,  240,  271 

Romero,  Julian,  270 

Roscoff,  306 

Ross,  109,  272 

Ross,  Dr.,  112,  113 

Ross,  John,  Bishop  of  Exeter,  747 

Rotterdam,  168 

Rouen  Cathedral,  573 

Rowe,  Cornelius,  695 

Rowe,  Nicholas,  222 

Rowles,  William,  687 

Rowley,    Rear-Admiral    Sir   Josias, 

650 

Royal  George,  126 
Royal  Wilding,  6-9,  12,  13 
Royal  William,  313 
Roy  Cades,  104 
Ruan-Lanyhorne,  570 
Rudiments  of  Landscape,  572 
Runt,  Mrs.,  133 
Rural  Sports,  4 1 5 
Ruskin,  John,  573,  575,  577,  578, 

580 
Russell,  Parson  Jack,  530-544,  556 

—  encounters  his  bishop,  531,  532 

—  his  schooldays,  535 

—  tests  a  curate,  543 

—  his  views  on  sport,  540-542 
Rust,  John,  685 

Ryan,  William,  in 
Ryde,  451 
Ryder,  Mary,  737 

Saddles,  a  judge  of,  479 

Sadler's  Wells,  353 

Sales,  M.  de,  388 

Salisbury,  21,  43,  280,  281,  590,  747 

Salisbury,  Marquess  of,  45,  779 


Salisbury  Plain,  43 

Salkeld,  Captain,  231 

Salmon,  389 

Salter,  Dr.  Anthony,  712,  713 

Saltfleetby,  494 

Salford  Museum,  396 

Saltford,  177 

Salthill,  465 

Sampford  Courtenay,  716 

Sampford  Ghost,  The,  286-291 

Sampford  Peverell,  286,  291 

Sandridge  Park,  301,  632 

Santa  Cruz,  111-114 

Sanxay,  James,  48 

Satires  on  King  and  Court,  744 

Satirists,    two    eminent.      See  John 

Wolcot  and  William  Gifford 
Saunders,  John,  686 
Savery,  Mr.,  458 
Savery,  Rev.  S.,  44« 
Savery,  Thomas,  487-501 

—  his  family  history,  489 

—  invents  paddle-boat,  490 

—  patents  with  Newcomen,  496 
Savile,  Rev.  Bourchier  Wrey,  725 
Savoy,  Duke  of,  265 

Saxon  conquest,  site  of,  212 

Scarlett,  Mr.,  29 

Schaggel,  Mr.  Peter,  292 

Schneeburg,  604 

Schnorr,  604 

Schomberg,  Captain,  650 

School  of  Shakespeare,  The,  262 

Scilly  Islands,  136 

Scio,  161,  163,  164 

Scorrier,  544 

Scott,  Sir  Gilbert,  564 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  451,  452,  455 

Seacroft,  632 

Seal-hunting,  333,  339,  349 

Sea-sickness,  758 

Seaton,  310 

Seddons,  Mr.,  395 

Selby,  Anne,  631 

Semple,  Francis,  241 

Senegal,  119,  120,  121 

Sevres,  605 

Seymour,  Lord,  229 

Seymour,  Sir  Edward,  432 

Shakespeare,  William,  181,  273 

Shakespeare  Society's  Papers,  97 

Shaldon,  624 

Shan  O'Neil,  266,  267,  268 

Sharp,  the  engraver,  393,  400 

Sheepstor,  517,  702 


INDEX 


809 


Sheerness,  358,  359,  361,  363,  364 

Sheppard,  Rev.  H.  H.,  210,  371 

Sherborne,  280 

Sherwell,  533 

Sherwill,  773,  784 

Shiloh,  the  expected,  394, 395, 401, 404 

Shilston,  217,  490 

Shilstone,  dolmen  of,  127 

Shipwreck,  333 

Shore,  Juliana  Susannah,  584 

Short,  Anthony,  196 

Short  History  of  Social  Life  in  Eng- 
land, 51 

Short,].,  256,  257 

Shortland,  Capt.  Thomas  G.,  642, 
643,  650,  666,  696 

—  charges  against,  653 

—  his  account  of  the  massacre,  659 

—  orders  massacre  of  prisoners,  646 

—  practical  joke  on,  645 

Short  View  of  the  Profanencss  and  Im- 
morality of  the  English  Stage,  242 
Shute,  367 
Sibley,  402 
Sidmouth,  257,  307 
Sidney,  269 

Siege  of  Memphis,  The,  240 
Simmins,  Dick,  525 
Simpson,  Richard,  262 
Sims,  Dr.,  396 

Skellum  Grenville.     See  Sir  Richard 
Skirrett,  John,  97 
Skisdon,  56 
Skynner,  William,  232 
Slade,  458 

Slanning,  Gamaliel,  191 
Slanning,  Nicholas,  188-191 
Slaughter,  315 
Sleeman,  Mr.,  531,  532,  543 
Smerdon,  Hugh,  438,  440,  444 
Smerdon,  Rev.  Thomas,  446 
Smiles,  Samuel,  454,  456,  490,  498 
Smith,  Gerard,  691 
Smith,  Mr.,  115,  592 
Smith,  Sarah,  590 
Smith,  Thomas,  698 
Smith,  William,  687 
Smugglers,  301-319 

—  desperate,  306,  318 
Smuggling,  301,  378 

—  adventures  while,  315 

—  conveniences  for,  301-305 
Smyrna,  84,  160,  161,  162 
Snell,  Mr.,  319  note 

Snow,  Miss  Marianne,  718 


Snow,  Mistress,  72 

Snowe,  Richard,  597 

Soathern,  John,  695 

Somerset,  Duke  of,  263,  264 

Somerstown,  752 

Songs  of  the  West,  57,  210,  368  note 

"Sons  of  the  Blue,"  56 

Soper,  John,  345,  346,  347,  348 

Sourton  Down,  212 

South  Brent,  210 

Southcott,  Joanna,  390-404 

—  authorities  for  the  life  of,  403 

—  comes  under  Methodist  influence, 

390 

—  expected  resurrection  of,  398 

—  issues  certificates  for   the  millen- 

nium, 394 

—  mother  of  Shiloh,  394 

—  prophetess,  391 
Southcote,  Mary,  711 
Southey,  392 

Southgate,  Exeter,  320,  504,  505 

South  Hams,  9-11 

Southill,  535 

.Southmolton,  285,  437,  519,  536,  538, 

544,  546,  555,  560 
South  Tawton,  248,  250,   253,  254, 

709 

Southwark,  185 
South  Zeal,  250 
Speedwell,  152 

Spesinick,  Dominic,  345-348 
Spitchwick,  627 
Spithead,  313,  359 
Sport  advocated  by  Parson  Russell, 

540,  541 

Spreyton,  170,  171 
Spry,  Mr.,  508 
Spry,  Thomasine,  52 
Stafford,  Bridget  Maria,  I 
Stafford  family,  the,  I 
Stafford,  Hugh,  1-15 

—  experiments  in  cyder,  1 1 
Stage,  licentiousness  of  the,  23,  242 

—  defended  by  Brice,  508 
Stamford,  the  Earl  of,  221 
Standard,  The,  785 

St.  Andrew's  Church,  Plymouth,  36, 

567,  578 

Stanhope,  Charles,  33 
Stanwich,  George,  95-104 
Stapeldon,  Bishop,  438 
Starcross,  150 
St.  Austell,  524,  570,  601,  602,  605, 

704 


8io 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Staverton,  618,  622,  624 

St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital,  413 

St.    Columb,    518,    520,    524,    6,05, 

754 

St.  Dunstan's,  251 
Steam-propelled  fountain,  487 
Steam  pumping-engines,  492,  496 
Stephens,  Mary,  251 
Stewart,  Dr.,  757 
St.  Genny's  Church,  56 
St.  German's,  569 
St.  Giles'  Hospital,  42 
St.  James,  Westminster,  247 
St.  John,  Sir  William,  281 
St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  564 
St.  Just,  Count  of,  239 
St.  Lawrence's  Chapel,  438 
St.  Leger,  268 
St.  Leger,  Frances,  278 
St.  Malo,  136,  137,  139,  141 
St.  Martin's,  353 
St.  Mary  Major,  356 
St.  Michael's  Mount,  206 
Stockleigh  English,  533 
Stockleigh  Pomeroy,  533 
Stoke  Church,  409-411 
Stoke  Fleming,  494 
St.  Omer,  265 
Stone,  James,  519 
Stone,  Tom,  97-104 
Stoneham,  Isaac,  136 
Stonehouse,  459 
Stonehouse  Creek,  409 
Story,  Mr.  Douglas,  782 
Stourbridge,  404  note 
Stow,  231 

Stowford.    See  Stafford 
Stowford,  Sir  John,  2 

—  builder  of  Pilton  Bridge,  2 
St.  Paul's,  401,  609,  752 

St.  Peter,  77,  246 

St.  Peter's  Hospital  for  Vagrants,  37 

St.  Quintin,  265 

Strangwidge.     See  Stanwich 

Strode,  William,  200 

St.  Sebastian,  231 

St.  Sidwell,  19 

St.  Stephen's,  371,  565,  605,  616 

St.  Thomas's,  505,  507,  591 

Stucley  family,  the,  262,  278,  710 

Stucley,  Thomas,  262-273,  278,  2$S 

—  rumoured  illegitimacy  of,  262 

—  escapes  arrest,  265,  269 

—  as  a  pirate,  267 

—  character  of,  272,  278 


Stukeley,  Sir  Lewis  ( "Judas")  278-285 

—  arrests  Raleigh,  279 

—  his  madness  and  death,  285 

—  robs  and  betrays  his  cousin,  280, 

282 

St.  Vincent,  Lord,  785 
St.  Yrleix,  605 
Successful  Pyrate,  The,  377 
Suffolk,  Earl  of,    196,  199,  200-202, 

207,  263 
Sumatra,  37 
Sunday  Monitor,  398 
Sun-gleams  and  Shadows,  329 
Superstition  concerning  death,  255 
Surat,  380,  381 
Sussex,  Earl  of,  267 
Sutton  Pool,  763 

Swanage,  311,  312  % 

Swanwick,  Mr.,  115,  118 
Swift,  Jonathan,  416,  737 
Switzer,  492,  496 
Swymbridge,  530,  531,  534,  542-544, 

754 

Sydenham,  222 
Sydenham,  Mary,  185,  186 
Sydenham,  Sir  John,  185 
Synge,  M.  B.,  51 

Tailbois,  Elizabeth,  263 

Tally,  Mr.,  286,  290 

Tamar  Green,  520,  521 

Tamerton  Foliot,  189 

Tappa-Boo,  38 

Tar  Steps,  551,  552 

Taunton,  42,  291 

Taunton  Cotirier,  The,  286,  287,  290 

Taunton  Dean,  175 

Tavistock,  85,  94-98,  102,  104,  123, 
185-190,  198,  201,  204,  209,  570, 
599,  636,  700,  702,  708,  772 

Tavy  River,  702 

Taw  River,  2,  710 

Tawney,  Robert  Willet,  698 

Taylor,  Mr.  Thomas,  446,  459 

Teignmouth,  591,  718 

Teignmouth,  Lord,  584 

Teign  River,  755 

Temple,  Lord,  6 

Templer,  Colonel,  591 

Tenby,  310 

Teneriffe,  108,  111-113,  3*5 

Terdrew,  Robert,  597 

Tetcott,  47,  54 

—  register  of,  48,  49 

Tew,  Captain,  385 


INDEX 


811 


Thackeray,  W.  M.,  105 
Theatres,  Cheltenham,  24 

—  Covent  Garden,  23,  420 

—  Drury  Lane,  377  note,  416 

—  Gaiete,  499 

—  Haymarket,  353,  418 

—  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  417 

—  Olympic,  32 

—  Plymouth,  21 
Thomas,  Grace,  274,  275 
Thomas,  Hannah,  276 
Thomas,  Mr.,  353 
Thompson,  Hartley,  68 
Thomson,  James,  241 
Thomson,  Joseph,  67 
Thorncombe,  430 
Thome,  518 

Thornton,  Rev.  W.  H.,  64,  537  note, 

550,  563 

Three  to  One,  Being  an  English- 
Spanish  Combat,  94 

Thrushelton,  737 

Thurlow,  Mr.,  621 

Thynne,  Thomas,  Lord  Weymouth, 

433 

Tickell,  Mr.,  716 

Ticknor,  George,  453 

Tilbury,  207 

Tindale,  Thomas,  695 

Tiverton,  14,  72,  81,  286,  291,  318, 
326,  426,  438,  535,  553,  556 

Tomlinson,  Mr.,  606 

Tom  Thumb,  474 

Tooke,  Home,  620 

Tooker,  Joan,  251 

Topsham,  136,  138,  150,  168 

Tor  Abbey  Avenue,  16 

Torbay,  150,  350,  643 

Tordown,  542 

Torgate,  16 

Torquay,  16-18,  332,  418 

Torridge  River,  182 

Torrington,  Black,  544,  563 

Torrington,  Great,  65,  103,  182, 
370,  597 

Tosse,  Mr.,  19 

Totnes,  170,  171,  369-373,  490,  520, 
632,  634 

Tower  Hill,  366 

Tozer,  John,  685 

Tozer,  Rev.  W.,  399,  403 

Transactions  of  the  Devonshire  Asso- 
ciation, 1870,  225  note 

—  1874,  423 

—  1876,  456,  603  note,  606,  632 


Transactions  of  the  Devonshire  Asso- 
ciation, 1878,  374 

—  1879,  94 

—  1880,  324 

—  1882,  258,  500  note,  617,  354 

—  1886,  230  note 

—  1888,  510  note,  513 

—  1890,  195  notet  211 

—  1900,  261  note 
Transvaal,  775 

i  ravers,  John,  609 
Treason,  petty,  104 
Trefry,  Will,  515 
Tregonnin  Hill,  605 
Trelawny  family,  the,  738 
Trembles,  Mary,  274,  276 
Trowbridge,  107 
Trowbridge,  John  T.,  685 
Truely,  Thomas,  698 
Truro,  508,  570,  605,  740,  741,  754 
Tucker,  Mistress,  71,  72 
Tuckfield,  Mr.  593 
Tunis,  154,  158 
Turnarine,  John,  754 
Turnbull,  James,  699 
Turner,  J.  M.  W.,  578 
Tutt,  John,  687 
Twickenham,  192,  194 
Twigg,  Mark,  597,  599 

Ulphe,  Pierre,  238 
Underbill,  J.,  414 
Underwood,  Ann,  399 
Universal  Magazine,  502  note 
Universal  Traveller,  389 
Upton  Hellions,  351,  352 
Ure,  Mr.,  606 
Urfe,  Peter,  238.     See  D'Urfey 

Van  Diemen's  Land,  350 
Vandyke,  196 
Vane,  Sir  Ralph,  264 
Vanity,  inordinate,  475,  585 
Veale,  Captain,  332,  334,  340,  345 
Veale,  Mr.,  540 
Veale,  Mrs. ,  220 
Veitch,  Messrs.,  12 
Venice,  577 
Vernon,  209 
Vestris,  Madame,  32 
Vetus  Testamentum  Hebraicum,  372 
Victoria,  Queen,  783 
Vigers,  Thomas,  597 
Vigo,  270,  313 


812 


DEVONSHIRE   CHARACTERS 


Vindication  of  Sir  Richard  Grenville, 

211 

Vines,  Rev.  Mr.,  577 

Virginia,  136,  234,  236,  237,  279,  605 

Virte,  Baroness  de,  631 

Visions,  583,  725.   See  also  Warnings 

Vitifer  mines,  700-704 

Wakelin,  William,  694 

Walker,  J.,  750 

Walker,  Richard,  693 

Walkhampton,  618 

Walpole,  Sir  Robert,  4,  419,  420 

Walreddon,  187,  196,  202,  208,  209 

Want,  Mr.,  397 

Wapping,  230 

Warburton,  Mr.,  405,  412 

Ward,  William,  693 

Wardship,  law  of,  194 

Warminster,  434 

Warne,  Mr.,  702 

Warnings  of  death,  586, 590,  591,  719. 

See  also  Bird  of  the  Oxenhams 
Warren,   David  Spencer,  669,   682, 

693 

Warren  Inn,  700,  702,  703,  707 
Warren,  James,  520 
Washfield,  14 
Washington,  697 
Washington,  John,  698 
Water  ford,  269 
Waterhouse,  Henry,  697 
Watts,  G.  F.,  457,  476 
Waugh,  Edwin,  326,  328 
Waymouth,  Peter,  494 
Wayside  Warbles,  328 
Wearmouth,  Susanna,  602 
Webber,  Simon,  519 
Weekes,  Katherine,  712-715 
Weekes,  Richard,  709-717 
—  takes  possession  of  North  Wyke, 

713 

Weekes  family,  the,  710 
Weekly  Times,  The,  558 
Weeks,  William,  and  family,  292-296, 

300 

Welcombe,  534 
Welland,  135 

Welland,  Anna  Maria,  133,  134 
Welland,  John,  133 
Wellington,  175,  553 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  18,  19 
Wells,  463 
Wells,  James,  699 
Wemble,  Captain,  108 


Wembury,  107 

Wesley,  John,  508 

West,  Benjamin,  571,  745 

Westbury,  41 

West  Combe  Park,  419 

Westcote,  183 

Western  Antiquary,  The,  502  note 

West  Indies,  387 

Westminster,  373 

Westminster  Abbey,  421,  456 

Weston,  Mrs.  Elizabeth,  257 

West  Webburn,  700 

West  Worlington,  262 

Wexford,  269 

Weymouth,  158,  314,  315 

Weymouth,  Lord,  as  a  beggar,  432, 

433,  434 
Wharton,  418 
Wharton,  Duke  of,  243 
What  a  Blunder,  353 
Wheal  Fortune,  499 
Wheeler,  Amos,  685 
Whimple,  14 

Whitaker,  Rev.  John,  511,  570 
Whitbread,  745 
Whitchurch,  97,  532 
White,  Ensign,  670 
White,  Nicholas,  269 
Whitechapel  Churchyard,  367 
Whitefield,  George,  430 
Whiteford,  S.  T.,  368 
White-Sour  cyder,  10,  13 
Whitestone,  7,  8,  56 
Whiteway,  Mr.  H.,  13,  i^note 
White  Witches,  70 

—  Mistress  Tucker  of  Exeter,  71 

—  Mistress  Snow  of  Tiverton,  72,  80 

—  Old  Marianne,  74 

—  at  Callington,  81 

—  their  wonderful  perception,  73 

—  levy  blackmail,  74 

—  their  recipes,  77,  79 

—  modern  instances  of  their  craft,  82 
Whitfeld,  Mr.  F.,  62,  64,  106,  300, 

641 

Whitford,  Joseph,  662 
Whittlebanks,  Edward,  698 
Whyte,  R.N.,  Commander  R.  C.,  783 
Widdecombe-on-the-Moor,  518,  622, 

624,  627,  707 
Widworthy,  772 
Wife-sales,  58-69 

—  advertisement  of,  60 

—  rules  for,  64,  69 
Wilkie,  David,  462 


INDEX 


813 


Wilkinson,  Dr.,  40,  41 

Willcocks,  Mary.     See  Caraboo 

Willcocks,  Mr.,  44 

Willet,  John,  698 

William  III,  232-234,  242,  243,  384, 

388,  492 
William  IV,  367 
Williams,  Gabriel,  597 
Williams,  John,  687 
Williams,  Mr.,  544 
Williams,  Mrs.,  422 
Williams,  Sir  Trevor,  487 
Williamson,  Isaac  H.,  697 
Willinghull,  763 
Willis,  Captain,  312 
Willmead,  126 
Wilmot,  Sir  Zachary,  175 
Wilson,  John,  632,  699 
Wilson,  Peter,  699 
Wimbledon,  Lord,  85,  93 
Wincherdon,  243 
Winchester,  105 
Winde,  Sir  Robert,  283 
Windeatt,  Mr.  Edward,  374 
Wine  of  the  West  Country,  14 
Winkleigh,  126 
Winsford,  552 
Winsor,  Justin,  698 
Winter,  Captain,  115,  120 
Wit  and  Mirth,  or  Pills  to  Purge 

Melancholy,  244 
Witches,  the  Bideford,  274-276 

—  meet  the  devil,  275,  276 

—  inflict  injuries,  274,  275,  276 

—  executed,  274,  276 

—  See  also  White  Witches 
Witheridge,  42,  44 
Wolborough,  65 

Wolcot,  John,  451,  613,  737-753 

—  as  painter,  742 

—  as  parson,  739 

—  as  satirist,  743 

—  as  surgeon,  738,  739,  741 
Wollacott,  737 
Wollocombe,  I 
Wollocombe  family,  the,  I 
Wollocombe,  Rev.  J.  H.  Bidlake,22i 
Wollocombe,  Rev.  John  Stafford,  221 
Wollocombe,  Rev.  Robert,  8,  9,  1 1, 14 
Wolverhampton,  499 

Wood,  Alexander,  714 
Wood,  Anthony  a,  728 


Wood,  Mr.,  248 

Woodall,  Mrs.,  591 

Woodbury,  107 

Woodley,  Robert,  251 

Woodroffe,  Thomas,  597 

Woodstock,  227 

Woolton,  John,  Bishop  of  Exeter,  215 

Woolwich,  282 

Worall,  Mrs.,  35-45 

Worall,  Samuel,  35,  37 

Worcester,    Marquess  of,  487,  489, 

491,  498 

Worcester  opposes  cyder  tax,  4,  5 
Worcestershire  Relics,  13 
Worcester,  William  of,  229 
Worth,  R.  N.,  603  note,  606 
Worthies  of  Devon,  182 
Wrays,  William,  215 
Wreford,  William,  519 
Wrestlers,  Devonshire,  518-520 
Wrestling,  notice  of  match,  534 

—  matches,  518-523 

—  rules  for,  515,  522,  527,  528 

—  song  of,  525 
.Wyatt,  James,  107-122 

—  an  Admirable  Crichton,  112-114 

—  rights  against  Moors,  116-118 

—  his  adventures  on  the  Revenge,  108 

—  his  escape,  115 
Wyatt,  Mr.,  472 
Wycombe,  726 
Wyke,  Thomas,  225 
Wykes-Finch,  Rev.  William,  717 
Wyot,  Philip,  103,  104 

Xeres,  88 

Yarmouth  Roads,  360 
Yeo,  2,  545,  774 
Yeo,  John,  595 
Yeo,  Robert,  595 
Yes  Tor,  709 
York  Minster,  574 
Youlston,  772,  773,  784 
Young  family,  arms  of,  619 
Young  Neptune,  115 
Young,  Sir  Samuel,  616 
Young,  William,  231 

Zankwell,  Mr.,  742 

Zeal  Monachorum,  249,  250,  253,  713 

Zemzem,  393 


BOOKS   OF  THE   WEST   COUNTRY 

THE  LIFE  AND  LETTERS   OF 
ROBERT    STEPHEN    HAWKER 

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FOOTPRINTS  OF  FORMER 
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the  common.  ...  In  its  grasp  of  character  and  circumstance,  in  its  rare  wisdom, 
and,  above  all,  in  its  unerring  insight  into  the  deep  springs  of  human  action,  it  is 
a  remarkable  achievement  which  entitles  its  author  to  a  first  place  in  the  ranks  of 
contemporary  novelists.  This  is  high  praise,  but  we  venture  to  prophesy  it  will 
be  endorsed  by  critics  and  readers  alike." 

STANDARD. — "  It  is  an  excellent  thing  for  any  reader  to  come  across  a  book 
so  fresh  and  fervent,  so  instinct  with  genuine  passion  and  emotion,  and  all  the 
fierce  primitive  joys  of  existence,  as  is  the  '  The  Wingless  Victory "...  really  a 
book  of  remarkable  strength  and  glow  and  insight." 

DAILY  NEWS— "  Miss  Willcocks  shows  wonderful  insight  into  character  .  .  . 
and  her  skill  in  this  regard  and  in  her  descriptions  of  the  wild  beauty  of  the 
Cornish  scenery  often  make  us  feel  that  she  is  a  novelist  with  a  great  future." 

ACADEMY. — "Mr.  John  Lane  is  to  be  congratulated  on  having  discovered 
Miss  Willcocks,  and  if  her  latest  work  is  not  a  great  success,  it  will  not  be  creditable 
to  the  discernment  of  the  reading  public." 

WIDDICOMBE  :    A   Novel.     By  M.   P. 

WILLCOCKS.     Crown  8vo,  6s. 

MORNING  POST.—"  The  characterisation  is  both  discriminating  and  subtle." 
EVENING  STANDARD.— "Wonderfully  alive  ...  a  fine,  rather  unusual 
novel.     There  are  some  striking  studies  of  women." 

A  CHILD   OF  THE  SHORE:    A   Ro- 

mance  of  Cornwall.     By  S.  M.  Fox.     Crown  8vo,  6s. 

MORNING  LEADER.—"  A  remarkable  book,  glowing,  fanciful,    and  fan- 
tastic by  turns." 
OUTLOOK.— "  An  unusually  good  piece  of  imaginative  work." 

THE    FISHERS  :    A    Novel.     By  J.   H. 

HARRIS.     Crown  8vo.     6s. 

MORNING  POST.—"  A  notable  book." 

TIMES.— "A  fascinating  story;  the  author  is  thoroughly  well  informed  as  to 
his  subject." 

THE  CHRONICLE  OF  A   CORNISH 

GARDEN.  By  HARRY  ROBERTS.  With  7  Full-page 
Illustrations  and  a  Cover  Design  by  F.  L.  GRIGGS. 
Crown  8vo,  53.  net. 

THE  LITERARY  WORLD.— "  The  Chronicle  is  wrhten  in  a  frank, 
unaffected  style,  and  will  suggest  useful  ideas  to  other  garden  lovers." 


BOOKS   OF   THE   WEST   COUNTRY 

SIR    BEVILL 

By  ARTHUR    CHRISTOPHER   THYNNE 

With    7    Illustrations    by   J.    LEY    PETHYBRIDGE,   and 

a    Portrait    of    Sir    Bevill    Granville    after    Vandyck. 

Crown  8vo,  6s. 

ACADEMY.—"  Altogether  delightful,  setting  the  reader  amid 
broom  and  heather  on  the  Devon  moors,  or  by  the  sounding  sea  on  the 
Cornish  coast.  ...  All  the  everyday  life  is  admirably  rendered,  and 
many  of  the  side  characters  are  brilliantly  sketched." 

S A  TURD  A  Y  REVIEW.—"  Master  Teague  is  almost  as  magnifi- 
cent in  his  hypocritical  villainy  as  our  old  friend  Trusty  Tomkins  of 
'Woodstock.'  .  .  .  The  stag  hunt,  the  witch  hunt,  the  gipsy  camp, 
the  Court  masque,  and  the  battle  are  admirable." 

OUTLOOK.— "  A  very  living  and  lovable  bit  of  work,  sweet  with 
the  scent  of  heather  and  breath  of  the  sea." 

DAILY  MAIL. — "A  rollicking  good  romance  of  Stuart  days." 

DAILY  EXPRESS.—"  Well  written,  exciting,  and  breezy  of  the 
western  moors." 

MR.  G.  R.  SIMS,  in  REFEREE.—  A  most  delightful  book,  the 
work  of  an  old  friend  of  mine,  Canon  Thynne,  who  has,  in  '  Sir 
Bevill,'  told  with  skill  and  charm  and  authority,  a  story  of  the 
days  of  Charles  I.  I  have  spent  some  sleepless  nights  very  pleasantly 
with  « Sir  Bevill.'" 

DAILY  CHRONICLE.—  "The  author  describes  well,  and  has 
the  gift  of  telling  incident." 

CORNISH    SAINTS 

AND    SINNERS 

By  J.  HENRY  HARRIS 

With  upwards  of  70  Drawings  by  L.  RAVEN   HILL. 
Crown  8vo,  6s. 

LONDON  :  JOHN  LANE,  THE  BODLEY  HEAD,  VIGO  ST.,  W. 


WO  TICE 

Those  who  possess  old  letters,  documents,  corre- 
spondence, ^MSS.,  scraps  of  autobiography,  and  also 
miniatures  and  portraits,  relating  to  persons  and 
matters  historical,  literary,  political  and  social,  should 
communicate  with  <£Mr.  John  Lane,  'The  Bodley 
Head,  Vigo  Street,  London,  W.,  who  will  at  all 
times  be  pleased  to  give  his  advice  and  assistance, 
either  as  to  their  preservation  or  publication. 


LIVING  MASTERS  OF  MUSIC 

An  Illustrated  Series  of  Monographs  dealing  with 
Contemporary  Musical  Life,  and  including  Repre- 
sentatives of  all  Branches  of  the  Art.  Edited  by 
ROSA  NEWMARCH.  Crown  8vo.  Cloth,  zs.  6d.  net 
each  volume. 

HENRY  J.  WOOD.     By  ROSA  NEWMARCH. 

SIR  EDWARD   ELGAR.     By  R.  J.   BUCKLEY. 

JOSEPH   JOACHIM.     By  J.   A.   FULLER  MAITLAND. 

EDWARD    MACDOWELL.       By  L.  OILMAN. 

EDVARD  GRIEG.     By  H.  T.  FINCK. 

THEODOR  LESCHETIZKY.     By  A.  HULLAH. 

GIACOMO  PUCCINI.      By  WAKELING  DRY. 

ALFRED  BRUNEAU.      By  ARTHUR  HERVEY. 

IGNAZ  PADEREWSKI.     By  E.  A.  BAUGHAN. 

The  following  Volumes  are  in  preparation  : 

RICHARD  STRAUSS.     By  A.  KALISCH. 

CLAUDE  DE  BUSSY.     By  FRANZ  LIEBICH. 

STARS    OF   THE    STAGE 

A  Series  of  Illustrated  Biographies  of  the  Leading 
Actors,  Actresses,  and  Dramatists.  Edited  by  J.  T. 
GREIN.  Crown  8vo.  zs.  6d.  each  net. 

*#*  It  was  Schiller  who  said ;  "  Twine  no  wreath  for  the 
actor,  since  his  work  is  oral  and  ephemeral."  ''Stars  of  the 
Stage"  -may  in  some  degree  remove  this  reproach.  There  are 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  playgoers,  and  both  editor  and  publisher 
think  it  reasonable  to  assume  that  a  considerable  number  of  these 
would  like  to  know  something  about  actors,  actresses,  and 
dramatists,  'whose  work  they  nightly  applaud.  Each  volume 
will  be  carefully  illustrated,  and  as  far  as  text,  printing,  and 
paper  are  concerned  will  be  a  notable  book.  Great  care  has  been 
taken  in  selecting  tJie  biographers,  who  in  most  cases  have 
already  accumulated  much  appropriate  material. 

First  Volumes. 

ELLEN  TERRY.     By  CHRISTOPHER  ST.   JOHN. 
HERBERT  BEERBOHM  TREE.  By  MRS.  GEORGE  CRAN. 
W.  S.   GILBERT.     By  EDITH  A.  BROWNE. 
CHAS.  WYNDHAM.    By  FLORENCE  TEIGNMOUTH  SHORE. 
GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW.      By  G.  K.  CHESTERTON. 
ARTHUR  WING  PINERO.     By  E.  A.  BAUGHAN. 
HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES.     By  ANTHONY  ELLIS. 


A   CATALOGUE    OF 

MEMOIRS,  VIOGPHIES,  ETC. 


UPON  S^APOLEON 

NAPOLEON  dfTHE  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND  : 

The  Story  of  the  Great  Terror,  1797-1805.  By  H.  F.  B. 
WHEELER  and  A.  M.  BROADLEY.  With  upwards  of  100  Full- 
page  Illustrations  reproduced  from  Contemporary  Portraits,  Prints, 
etc.  ;  eight  in  Colour.  Two  Volumes.  3  2/.  net. 

***  Hitherto  no  book  dealing  exhaustively  ivith  Napoleons  colossal  plans  for  imjading 
the  United  Kingdom,  and  our  own  strenuous  measures  to  resist  his  coming,  has  appeared 
in  the  English  language.  This  work,  which  has  been  in  preparation  for  several  years,  is 
a  careful  study  of  this  neglected  phase  of  Napoleonic  history.  It  not  only  deals  with  the 
military  and  naval  preparations  made  by  both  nations,  but  with  the  more  picturesque 
side  of  their  campaign.  While  Napoleon  was  riding  along  the  sands  of  Boulogne 
encouraging  the  shipbuilders  and  organising  the  A  rmy  of  England  —  which  was  to  conquer 
half  Europe  as  the  Grand  Army  —  Pitt  was  drilling  Volunteers  at  W  aimer  Castle,  Fox 
was  exercising  as  a  private  in  the  Chertsey  Volunteers,  and  the  peace-loving  Addington 
appeared  in  the  House  of  Commons  in  military  uniform.  The  churches  were  stored  with 
anus,  and  two  hours'  drilling  was  undergone  every  Sunday,  to  say  nothing  of  week-days. 
Never  before  or  since  has  the  pencil  of  the  cartoonist  played  so  important  a  part  in  the 
formation  of  public  opinion.  Patriotism  on  paper  was  rampant.  From  1798  till  1805, 
when  Trafalgar  lifted  the  war-cloud  which  hung  over  the  Kingdom,  pen  and  press  were 
turning  out  history  in  pictures  by  hundreds,  as  well  as  popular  songs.  Caricatures, 
squibs,  and  broadsides  against  Napoleon  and  the  threatened  invasion  did  much  to 
encourage  the  population  to  prepare  to  resist  the  legions  of  France.  The  facile  pencils  of 
Gillray,  the  Cruikshanks,  Ansell,  Rowlandson,  West,  \Voodward,  and  a  score  of  lesser 
lights,  were  never  idle.  Many  unique  cartoons  and  other  illustrations  appear  in  these 
volumes,  which  also  include  important  letters,  never  before  published,  of  George  III,  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham,  Lord  Brougham,  Decies,  Richard  Cumberland,  Thomas  Order 
Powlett,  Mrs.  Piozzi,  and  other  celebrities, 

THE     FALL     OF     NAPOLEON.        By    OSCAR 

BROWNING,  M.  A.,  Author  of  "The  Boyhood  and  Youth  of  Napoleon." 
With  numerous  Full-page  Illustrations.  Demy  8vo  (9  x  5f  inches). 
izj.  64.  net. 

***  The  story  of  the  fall  of  Napoleon  has  never  been  adequately  written  for  English 
readers,  and  great  misconception  still  exists  in  this  country  even  zuith  regard  to  the  most 
material  facts.  The  present  volume  at  tempts  to  supply  this  omission,  and  makes  use  of 
the  copious  recent  literature  on  this  portion  of  Napoleons  life,  which  adds  so  largely  to  our 
knowledge  of  the  subject.  The  narrative  begins  with  Napoleon's  return  to  Paris  after  the 
Russian  disaster.  It  gives  a  complete  account  of  the  campaigns  of  1813  and  1814,  based 
very  largely  upon  personal  knowledge  of  the  battlefields.  The  events  connected  with  the 
abdication  at  Fontainebleau  are  carefully  described.  The  life  in  Elba  is  painted,  and 
the  marvellous  march  to  Paris  dealt  with  in  detail.  In  treating  of  the  Hundred  Days 
the  attitude  of  the  English  Government  has  received  much  attention,  and  the  Waterloo 
campaign  has  been  dealt  with  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  best  and  most  recent  authori- 
ties. The  book  concludes  with  a  minute  account  of  Napoleons  surrender  at  Aix,  which 
has  never  before  been  properly  presented  in  an  English  dress,  and  leaves  Napoleon  on  board 
the  "  Northumberland."  The  book  will  form  a  companion  volume  to  "  The  Boyhood  and 
Youth  of  Napoleon,"  by  the  same  author. 


A    CATALOGUE    OF 


THE  BOYHOOD  dr.  YOUTH  OF  NAPOLEON, 

1769-1793.  Some  Chapters  on  the  early  life  of  Bonaparte. 
By  OSCAR  BROWNING,  M.A.  With  numerous  Illustrations,  Por- 
traits, etc.  Crown  8vo.  $s.  net. 

Daily^News. — "Mr.  Browning  has  with  patience,  labour,  careful  study,  and  excellent  taste 
given  us  a  very  valuable  work,  which  will  add  materially  to  the  literature  on  this  most 
fascinating  of  human  personalities." 

Literary  World. — ".  .  .  Mr.  Browning  has  examined  all  the  available  sources  of  informa- 
tion and  carefully  weighed  his  historical  evidence.  His  discriminating  treatment  has 
resulted  in  a  book  that  is  ...  one  that  arrests  attention  by  the  conviction  its  reasoned 
conclusions  carry." 

World.—"  The  story  of  Napoleon's  childhood  could  not  have  had  an  abler  or  more  sympa- 
thetic narrator  than  the  author  of  this  very  fascinating  work." 

THE  DUKE  OF  REICHSTADT (NAPOLEON  II.) 

By  EDWARD  DE  WERTHEIMER.  Translated  from  the  German. 
With  numerous  Illustrations.  Demy  8vo.  2is.  net.  (Second 
Edition.) 

Times. — "A  most  careful  and  interesting  work  which  presents  the  first  complete  and 
authoritative  account  of  the  life  of  this  unfortunate  Prince." 

Westminster  Gazette. — "This  book,  admirably  produced,  reinforced  by  many  additional 
portraits,  is  a  solid  contribution  to  history  and  a  monument  of  patient,  well-applied 
research." 

Public  Opinion. — "No  student  of  Napoleon's  life  can  afford  to  miss  this  book,  which  tells 
the  story  of  his  son,  who  was  variously  known  as  King  of  Rome,  the  Duke  of  Parma, 
Napoleon  II,  and  the  Duke  of  Reichstadt.  .  .  .  The  story  of  his  life  is  admirably  told." 

Bookman. — "This  is  the  first  authoritative  book  on  the  subject  of  the  Duke  of  Reichstadt 
(Napoleon  II)  and  his  short,  dramatic  life.  The  present  biography  is  full  of  fresh 
interest,  and  is  exceptionally  valuable  owing  to  the  numerous  portraits  which  are 
included." 

NAPOLEON'S  CONQUEST  OF  PRUSSIA,  1806. 

By  F.  LORAINE  PETRE,  Author  of  "  Napoleon's  Campaign  in 
Poland,  1806-7."  With  an  Introduction  by  FIELD-MARSHAL 
EARL  ROBERTS,  V.C.,  K.G.,  etc.  With  Maps,  Battle  Plans, 
Portraits,  and  16  Full-page  Illustrations.  Demy  8vo  (9  x  5f 
inches),  iz/.  6d.  net. 

Scotsman. — "  Neither  too  concise,  nor  too  diffuse,  the  book  is  eminently  readable.  It  is  the 
best  work  in  English  on  a  somewhat  circumscribed  subject." 

Outlook.—1'  Mr.  Petre  has  visited  the  battlefields  and  read  everything,  and  his  monograph  is 
a  model  of  what  military  history,  handled  with  enthusiasm  and  literary  ability,  can  be." 

NAPOLEON'S  CAMPAIGN  IN  POLAND,  1806- 

1807.  A  Military  History  of  Napoleon's  First  War  with  Russia, 
verified  from  unpublished  official  documents.  By  F.  LORAINE 
PETRE.  With  16  Full-page  Illustrations,  Maps,  and  Plans.  New 
Edition.  Demy  8vo  (9  x  5f  inches).  12s.  6a;.  net. 

Army  and  Navy  Chronicle. — "We  welcome  a  second  edition  of  this  valuable  work.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Loraine  Petre  is  an  authority  on  the  wars  of  the  great  Napoleon,  and  has  brought 
the  greatest  care  and  energy  into  his  studies  of  the  subject." 


MEMOIRS,   BIOGRAPHIES,   ETC.       5 
RALPH  HEATHCOTE.    Letters  of  a  Diplomatist 

During  the  Time  of  Napoleon,  Giving  an  Account  of  the  Dispute 
between  the  Emperor  and  the  Elector  of  Hesse.  By  COUNTESS 
GUNTHER  GROBEN.  With  Numerous  Illustrations.  Demy  8vo 
(9  x  5 f  inches).  12s.  6d.  net. 

***  Ralph  Heathcote,  the  son  of  an  English  father  and  an  Alsatian  mother,  was  for 
some  time  in  the  English  diplomatic  service  as  first  secretary  to  Mr.  Brook  Taylor,  minister 
at  the  Court  of  Hesse,  and  on  one  occasion  found  himself  very  near  to  making  history. 
Napoleon  became  persuaded  that  Taylor  was  implicated  in  a  plot  to  procure  his  assassina- 
tion, and  insisted  on  his  dismissal  from  the  Hessian  Court.  As  Taylor  refused  to  be 
dismissed,  the  incident  at  one  time  seemed  likely  to  result  to  the  Elector  in  the  loss  of  his 
throne.  Heathcote  came  into  contact  with  a  number  of  notable  people,  including  the  Miss 
Berrys,  with  whom  he  assures  his  mother  he  is  not  in  lor>e.  On  the  2vhole,  there  is  much 
interesting  material  for  lovers  of  old  letters  and  journals. 

MEMOIRS  OF  THE  COUNT  DE  CARTRIE. 

A  record  of  the  extraordinary  events  in  the  life  of  a  French 
Royalist  during  the  war  in  La  Vendee,  and  of  his  flight  to  South- 
ampton, where  he  followed  the  humble  occupation  of  gardener. 
With  an  introduction  by  FREDERIC  MASSON,  Appendices  and  Notes 
by  PIERRE  AMEDEE  PICHOT,  and  other  hands,  and  numerous  Illustra- 
tions, including  a  Photogravure  Portrait  of  the  Author.  Demy  8vo. 
izs.  6d.  net. 

Daily  News. — "We  have  seldom  met  with  a  human  document  which  has  interested  us  so 

much." 
Dundee  Advertiser. — "The  identification  and  publication  of  the  Memoirs  of  Count  de 

Cartrie  are  due  to  as  smart  a  piece  of  literary  detective  work  as  has  been  reported  for 

many  years." 
Liverpool  Courier. — "Mr.  Lane  and  his  French  coadjutors  are  entitled  to  the   utmost 

credit  for  the  pains  which  they  have  taken  to  reconstruct  and  publish  in  such  complete 

form  the  recollections  of  an  eyewitness  of  important  events  concerning  which  even  now 

no  little  dubiety  exists." 
Atheneeum. — "  As  a  record  of  personal  suffering  and  indomitable  perseverance  against 


opposing  circumstances  the  narrative  of  De  Cartrie's  escape  to  t 

the  disguise  of  a  master-gunner,  could  not  easily  be  surpassed." 

yrld. — "The  book  is  very  entertaining,  and  will  be  read  with  plea 


World. — "The  book  is  very  entertaining,  and  will  be  read  with  pleasure  by  all  who  delight 
in  the  byways  of  history." 

WOMEN    OF    THE    SECOND    EMPIRE. 

Chronicles  of  the  Court  of  Napoleon  III.  By  FREDERIC  LOLIEE. 
With  an  introduction  by  RICHARD  WHITEING  and  53  full-page 
Illustrations,  3  in  Photogravure.  Demy  8vo.  2 is.  net. 

Standard. — "  M.  Frederic  Loliee  has  written  a  remarkable  book,  vivid  and  pitiless  in  its 
description  of  the  intrigue  and  dare-devil  spirit  which  flourished  unchecked  at  the  French 
Court.  .  .  .  Mr.  Richard  Whiteing's  introduction  is  written  with  restraint  and  dignity." 

Mr.  JAMES  DOUGLAS  in  the  Star. — "At  a  moment  when  most  novels  send  you  to  sleep,  let 
me  whisper  the  name  of  a  book  which  will  amuse  you  in  most  melancholy  mood.  One 
of  the  freshest,  gayest,  and  wittiest  volumes  of  gossip  and  anecdote  I  have  ever  read." 

Sunday  Times. — "A  delicious  banquet  of  scandal,  contributions  to  which  have  been  secured 
by  the  artful  device  of  persuading  ladies  not  so  much  to  make  their  own  confessions  as 
to  talk  about  their  friends.  .  .  .  The  illustrations  present  us  with  a  veritable  galaxy 
of  beauty." 

Daily  Telegraph. — "  It  is  a  really  fascinating  story,  or  series  of  stories,  set  forth  in  this 
volume.  .  .  .  Here  are  anecdotes  innumerable  of  the  brilliant  women  of  the  Second  Em- 
pire, so  that  in  reading  the  book  we  are  not  only  dazzled  by  the  beauty  and  gorgeousness 
of  everything,  but  we  are  entertained  by  the  record  of  things  said  and  done,  and  through 
all  we  are  conscious  of  the  coming  'gloom  and  doom'  so  soon  to  overtake  the  Court. 
Few  novels  possess  the  fascination  of  this  spirited  work,  and  many  readers  will  hope  that 
the  author  will  carry  out  his  proposal  of  giving  us  a  further  series  of  memories  of  the 
'Women  of  the  Second  Empire.'" 


A    CATALOGUE    OF 


MEMOIRS     OF     MADEMOISELLE     DES 

ECHEROLLES.  Translated  from  the  French  by  MARIE 
CLOTHILDE  BALFOUR.  With  an  Introduction  by  G.  K.  FORTESCUE, 
Portraits,  etc.  5/.  net. 

Liverpool  Mercury. — ".  .  .  this  absorbing  book.  .  .  .  The  work  has  a  very  decided 
historical  value.  The  translation  is  excellent,  and  quite  notable  in  the  preservation  of 
idiom." 

JANE  AUSTEN'S  SAILOR  BROTHERS.    Being 

the  life  and  Adventures  of  Sir  Francis  Austen,  G.C.B.,  Admiral  of 
the  Fleet,  and  Rear-Admiral  Charles  Austen.  By  J.  H.  and  E.  C. 
HUBBACK.  With  numerous  Illustrations.  Demy  8vo.  1 2s.  6d.  net. 

Morning-  Post. — ".  .  .  May  be  welcomed  as  an  important  addition  to  Austeniana  .  .  .; 
it  is  besides  valuable  for  its  glimpses  of  life  in  the  Navy,  its  illustrations  of  the  feelings 
and  sentiments  of  naval  officers  during  the  period  that  preceded  and  that  which 
followed  the  great  battle  of  just  one  century  ago,  the  battle  which  won  so  much  but 
which  cost  us — Nelson." 

Globe. — "  The  book  is  doubly  fortunate  in  its  appearance,  for  it  appeals  not  only  to  the 
lovers  of  Jane  Austen's  novels,  but  also  to  those  who  value  sidelights  on  the  most 
stirring  times  of  the  Navy." 

POETRY   AND   PROGRESS   IN   RUSSIA.     By 

ROSA  NEWMARCH.  With  6  full-page  Portraits.  Demy  8vo 
(9  x  5  J  inches),  js.  6d.  net. 

%*  This  book  deals  ivith  an  aspect  of  Russian  literature  hitherto  unjustly  neglected  in 
favour  of  the  school  of  realistic  fiction.  Nevertheless,  the  poets  of  the  earlier  half  of  trie 
iqth  century  were  the  pioneers  of  the  intellectual  progress  which  culminated  in  i he  work 
of  that  Pleiad  of  novelists :  Gogol,  Tourgeniev,  Dostoievsky,  and  Tolstoi.  The  spirit  of 
Russia  can  never  be  more  than  imperfectly  understood  by  those  who,  without  preparation, 
plunge  straightway  into  this  tide  of  realism  which  marks  only  the  second  stage  in  the 
evolution  of  the  national  genius.  Mrs.  Neivmarch's  volume  covers  a  period  extending 
from  the  first  publications  of  Poushkin,  in  1814,  to  the  death  of  Nadson,  in  i836,  and 
consists  of  an  Introduction  and  six  studies,  as  follows  '.  Poushkin,  the  first  and  greatest 
of  the  Russian  national  poets ;  Lermontov,  the  meteoric  poet  of  the  Romantic  School; 
Koltsov,  the  Russian  Burns;  Nikitin,  the  singer  of  Russian  rural  life;  Nekrassov,  the 
poet  of  revolution  ;  and  Nadson,  whose  work  is  characteristic  of  the  decadence  of  Russian 
poetry. 

THE  LIFE  OF  PETER  ILICH  TCHAIKOVSKY 

(1840-1893).  By  his  Brother,  MODESTE  TCHAIKOVSKY.  Edited 
and  abridged  from  the  Russian  and  German  Editions  by  ROSA 
NEWMARCH.  With  Numerous  Illustrations  and  Facsimiles  and  an 
Introduction  by  the  Editor.  Demy  8vo.  zu.  net.  Second  edition. 

The  Times. — "A  most  illuminating  commentary  on  Tchaikovsky's  music." 

World.—"  One  of  the  most  fascinating  self-revelations  by  an  artist  which  has  been  given  to 

the  world.  The  translation  is  excellent,  and  worth  reading  for  its  own  sake." 
Contemporary  Review. — "  The  book's  appeal  is,  of  course,  primarily  to  the  music-lover  ;  but 
there  is  so  much  of  human  and  literary  interest  in  it,  such  intimate  revelation  of  a 
singularly  interesting  personality,  that  many  who  have  never  come  under  the  spell  of 
the  Pathetic  Symphony  will  be  strongly  attracted  by  what  is  virtually  the  spiritual 
autobiography  of  its  composer.  High  praise  is  due  to  the  translator  and  editor  for  the 
literary  skill  with  which  she  has  prepared  the  English  version  of  this  fascinating  work  .  .  . 
There  have  been  few  collections  of  letters  published  within  recent  years  that  give  so 
vivid  a  portrait  of  the  writer  as  that  presented  to  us  in  these  pages." 


MEMOIRS,   BIOGRAPHIES,   ETC.      7 


COKE   OF   NORFOLK   AND    HIS   FRIENDS: 

The  Life  of  Thomas  William  Coke,  First  Earl  of  Leicester  of 
the  second  creation,  containing  an  account  of  his  Ancestry, 
Surroundings,  Public  Services,  and  Private  Friendships,  and 
including  many  Unpublished  Letters  from  Noted  Men  of  his  day, 
English  and  American.  By  A.  M.  W.  STIRLING.  With  20 
Photogravure  and  upwards  of  40  other  Illustrations  reproduced 
from  Contemporary  Portraits,  Prints,  etc.  Demy  8vo.  2  vols. 
32J.  net. 

***  The  name  of  Coke  of  Norfolk  was  once  known  throughout  the  civilized  world,  now 
it  is  familiar  to  very  few.  Coke  occupied  a  unique  position  in  his  generation:  as  a 
landlord-owner  he  -was  credited  with  having  transformed  the  agriculture  of  both 
hemispheres;  as  a  politician  he  remained  for  over  half  a  century  the  "Father"  of  tJie 
House  of  Commons,  exercising  by  the  force  of  his  example  a  peculiar  influence  upon  tJie 
political  world  of  his  day.  He  was  offered  a  peerage  seven  times  for  his  services  by  seven 
different  Prime  Ministers.  Coke  was  especially  fortunate  in  his  friendships,  and  he 
preserved  his  correspondence.  The  letters  of  the  noted  -men  of  his  day  recreate  Coke's 
generation  for  us,  and  we  see  many  famous  men  in  a  guise  with  which  we  are  but  little 
acquainted.  We  see  Lafayette  as  the  humble  farmer,  absorbed  in  rearing  his  pigs  and  his 
cattle;  Lord  H astings  as  a  youth  climbing  a  volcano  during  an  eruption;  George  IV as 
the  fickle  friend,  pocketing  humiliation  in  'order  to  condone  deceit,  or,  at  a  period  of 
exciting  national  danger,  filling  his  letters  to  Coke  with  characteristically  trivial 
speculations  whether  the  Sergeant  whom  he  was  sending  to  recruit  the  Holkham  Yeomanry 
would,  or  would  not,  get  drunk.  Again,  we  see  Fox  as  a  slovenly  schoolboy  playing pitch- 
and-toss  at  Eton;  Nelson,  but  as  the  delicate  son  of  an  obscure  Norfolk  clergyman. 
Incongruous  in  their  endless  variety,  the  characters  move  across  the  pages — Pope 
Clement  XIV,  Louise  of  Stolberg,  Dr.  Parr,  Amelia  Opie,  Honest  King  William, 
the  Duke  of  Sussex,  Chantrey,  Lord  Erskine,  Gainsborough,  Roscoe,  Sir  James  Smith, 
Sir  Humphry  Davy  —  statesmen,  scientists,  artists,  literati,  a  great  international 
train,  amongst  whom,  and  perhaps  more  remarkable  than  all  at  that  especial  date,  are 
celebrities  from,  the  United  States — at  a  date  when,  be  it  remembered,  all  who  came  thence 
W£re  looked  at  askance  as  the  recent  foes  of  England,  and  were,  as  Raitres  remarks — 
"  Foreigners,  and  of  a  nation  hitherto  but  little  known  in  our  circles."  And  for  all  this 
we  have  had  to  wait  sixty-five  years,  because,  of  the  many  biographies  commenced,  the  one 
that  swallowed  up  all  the  rest  was  eventually  lost.  A  feature  of  this  book  is  the  wealth 
of  illustrating  material,  including  many  hitherto  unpublished  pictures  by  famous  hands. 

DEVONSHIRE  CHARACTERS  AND  STRANGE 

EVENTS.  By  S.  BARING-GOULD,  M.A.,  Author  of  «  Yorkshire 
Oddities,"  etc.  With  58  Illustrations.  Demy  8vo.  2is.  net. 

*„.*  Notices  of  some  of  the  most  singular  characters  and  events  connected  with  the 
County  of  Devon — a  county  that  has  been  exceptionally  prolific  of  such.  The  personages 
named,  and  whose  lives  are  given,  belong  to  a  lower  plane  than  the  great  men  of  the 
county  who  have  made  their  mark  in  history.  But  the  range  of  characters  is  really 
wonderful.  The  volume  is  profusely  ilfastrated  with  reproductions  from  old  and 
rare  prints. 

THE    HEART    OF    GAMBETTA.      Translated 

from  the  French  of  FRANCIS  LAUR  by  VIOLETTE  MONTAGU. 
With  an  Introduction  by  JOHN  MACDONALD,  Portraits  and  other 
Illustrations.  Demy  8vo.  js.  6d.  net. 


8 A    CATALOGUE    OF 

THE  MEMOIRS  OF  ANN,  LADY  FANSHAWE. 

Written  by  Lady  Fanshawe.  With  Extracts  from  the  Correspon- 
dence of  Sir  Richard  Fanshawe.  Edited  by  H.  C.  FANSHAWE. 
With  38  Full-page  Illustrations,  including  four  in  Photogravure 
and  one  in  Colour.  Demy  8vo  (9  x  5^  inches).  i6s.  net. 

***  This  Edition  has  been  printed  direct  from  the  original  manuscript  in  the  possession 
of  the  Fanshawe  Family,  and  Mr.  H.  C.  Fanshawe  contributes  numerous  notes  which 
form  a  running  commentary  on  the  text.  Many  famotts  pictures  are  reproduced,  includ- 
ing-paintings  by  Velazquez  and  Van  Dyck. 

THE  TRUE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE  :  an  Auto- 

biography  by  ALICE  M.  DIEHL,  Novelist,  Writer,  and  Musician. 
Demy  8vo.  los.  6d.  net. 

*»*  These  confessions,  -written  with  a  naive  frankness  rare  in  present  times,  have  been 
pronounced  by  an  authority  to  be  a  human  document  of  utmost  importance  to  all  interested 
in  the  great  subjects  of  life  and  genius.  During  the  years  following  a  remarkable  child- 
hood of  prodigies  of  literary  and  musical  attainments,  the  Author  made  brilliant  careers, 
first  in  the  "world  of  music,  then  in  that  of  literature.  A  n  intimate  friend  of  the  late 
Sir  Henry  Irving,  his  confidences  to  her  throw  a  new  light  on  the  inner  life  of  this  some- 
what  enigmatical  man.  But  the  same  may  also  be  said  of  her  friendship  or  acquaintance 
with  many  other  personages  of  world-wide  renown.  In  music,  we  read  of  Berlioz, 
Ferdinand  Hiller,  Jenny  Lind,  Sivori,  Thalborg,  Henselt  (her  master  in  his  Silesian 
Castle),  Piatti,  Sainton  and  his  wife,  Pietzius,  Cruvelli,  the  Princess  Czartoryska,  and 
other  eminent  pupils  of  Chopin,  as  well  as  a  host  of  others  known  in  all  countries  and 
climes.  In  literature,  besides  such  stars  as  Robert  Browning,  Bret  Harte,  "  Ouida," 
Miss  Braddon,  Mrs.  Riddell,  Amelia  B.  Edwards,  R.  E.  Hichens,  the  work  abounds  in 
familiar  sketches  of  former  men  and  women  whose  names  are  so  well  known  that  any 
information  about  their  personalities  is  of  absorbing  interest. 

THE   LIFE   OF    ST.  MARY   MAGDALEN. 

Translated  from  the  Italian  of  an  Unknown  Fourteenth-Century 
Writer  by  VALENTINA  HAWTREY.  With  an  Introductory  Note  by 
VERNON  LEE,  and  14  Full-page  Reproductions  from  the  Old  Masters. 
Crown  8vo.  5*.  net. 

Daily  News. — "  Miss  Valentina  Hawtrey  has  given  a  most  excellent  English  version  of  this 

pleasant  work." 
Academy. — "  The  fourteenth-century  fancy  plays  delightfully  around  the  meagre  details  of 

the  Gospel  narrative,  and  presents  the  heroine  in  quite  an   unconventional  light.  .  .  . 

In  its  directness  and  artistic  simplicity  and  its  wealth  of  homely  detail  the  story  reads 

like  the  work  of  some  Boccaccio  of  the  cloister ;  and  fourteen  illustrations  taken  from 

Italian  painters  happily  illustrate  the  charming  text." 

MEN  AND  LETTERS.     By  HERBERT  PAUL,  M.P. 

Fourth  Edition.     Crown  8vo.      5/.  net. 

Daily  News. — "  Mr.  Herbert  Paul  has  done  scholars  and  the  reading  world  in  general  a  high 

service  in  publishing  this  collection  of  his  essays." 
Punch. — "  His  fund  of  good  stories  is  inexhaustible,  and  his  urbanity  never  fails.     On  the 

whole,  this  book  is  one  of  the  very  best  examples  of  literature  on  literature  and  life." 


MEMOIRS,   BIOGRAPHIES,   ETC.       9 
HUBERT  AND  JOHN  VAN  EYCK  :  Their  Life 

and  Work.  By  W.  H.  JAMES  WEALE.  With  41  Photogravure 
and  95  Black  and  White  Reproductions.  Royal  410.  £$  $s.  net. 

SIR  MARTIN  CONWAY'S  NOTE. 

Nearly  half  a  century  has  passed  since  Mr.  W.  H.  James  Weale,  then  resident  at 
Bruges,  began  that  long  series  of  patient  investigations  into  the  history  of  Netherlandish 
art  which  was  destined  to  earn  so  rich  a  harvest.  When  he  began  work  Memlinc  was 
still  called  Hem  ling,  and  was  fabled  to  have  arrived  at  Bruges  as  a  wounded  soldier. 
The  van  Eycks  vuere  little  more  than  legendary  heroes.  Roger  Van  der  Weyden  was  little 
more  than  a  name.  Most  of  the  other  great  Netherlandish  artists  were  either  wholly 

forgotten  or  named  only  in  connection  with  paintings  with  which  they  had  nothing  to  do. 
Mr.  Weale  discovered  Gerard  David,  and  disentangled  his  principal  works  from  Mem- 
line's,  with  which  they  were  then  confused.  During  a  series  of  years  he  published  in  the 
"  Beffroi,"  a  magazine  issued  by  himself,  the  many  important  records  from  ancient 
archives  which  threw  a  flood  of  light  upon  the  whole  origin  and  development  of  the  early 
Netherlandish  school.  By  universal  admission  he  is  hailed  all  over  Europe  as  the  father 
of  this  study.  It  is  due  to  him  in  great  measure  that  the  masterpieces  of  that  school, 
which  by  neglect  were  in  danger  of  perishing  fifty  years  ago,  are  now  recognised  as  among 
the  most  priceless  treasures  of  the  Museums  of  Europe  and  the  United  States.  The 

publication  by  him,  therefore,  in  the  ripeness  of  his  years  and  experience,  of  the  result  of 
his  studies  on  the  van  Eycks  is  a  matter  of  considerable  importance  to  students  of  art 
history.  Lately,  since  the  revived  interest  in  the  works  of  the  Early  French  painters  has 
attracted  the  attention  of  untrained  speculators  to  the  superior  schools  of  the  Low 
Countries,  a  number  of  wild  theories  have  been  started  which  cannot  stand  upright  in  the 

face  of  recorded  facts.  A  book  is  now  needed  which  will  set  down  all  those  facts  in  full 
and  accurate  form.  Fullness  and  accuracy  are  the  characteristics  of  all  Mr.  Weale' s  work. 

VINCENZO  FOPPA  OF  BRESCIA,  FOUNDER  OF 

THE  LOMBARD  SCHOOL,  His  LIFE  AND  WORK.  By  CONSTANCE 
JOCELYN  FFOULKES  and  MONSIGNOR  RODOLFO  MAJOCCHI,  D.D., 
Rector  of  the  Collegio  Borromeo,  Pavia.  Based  on  research  in  the 
Archives  of  Milan,  Pavia,  Brescia,  and  Genoa,  and  on  the  study 
of  all  his  known  works.  With  over  100  Illustrations,  many  in 
Photogravure,  and  100  Documents.  Royal  4to.  ^5.  5*.  net. 

***  No  complete  Life  of  Vincenco  Foppa,  one  of  the  greatest  of  tJte  North  Italian 
Masters,  has  ever  been  written :  an  omission  which  seems  almost  inexplicable  in  these  days 
of  over-production  in  the  -matter  of  biographies  of  painters,  and  of  subjects  relating  to  the 
art  of  Italy.  In  Milanese  territory — the  sphere  of  Foppa  s  activity  during  many  years — 
he  was  regarded  by  his  contemporaries  as  unrivalled  in  his  art,  and  his  right  to  be 
considered  the  head  and  founder  of  the  Lombard  school  is  undoubted.  His  influence  was 
powerful  and  far-reaching,  extending  eastwards  beyond  the  limits  of  Brescian  territory, 
and  south  and  westwards  to  Liguria  and  Piedmont.  In  the  Milanese  district  it  was 
practically  dominant  for  over  a  quarter  of  a  century,  until  the  coming  of  Leonardo  da 
Vinci  thrust  Foppa  and  his  followers  into  the  shade,  and  induced  him  to  abandon  Pavia, 
which  had  been  his  home  for  more  than  thirty  years,  and  to  return  to  Brescia.  The  object 
of  the  authors  of  this  book  has  been  to  present  a  true  picture  of  the  master  s  life  based 
upon  the  testimony  of  records  in  Italian  archives;  all  facts  hitherto  known  relating 
to  him  have  been  brought  together]  all  statements  have  been  verified;  and  a  great  deal  of 
new  and  unpublished  material  has  been  added.  The  authors  have  unearthed  a  large 
amount  of  new  material  relating  to  Foppa,  one  of  the  most  interesting  facts  brought  to 
light  being  that  he  lived  for  twenty-three  years  longer  than  was  formerly  supposed.  The 
illustrations  will  include  several  pictures  by  Foppa  hitherto  unknown  in  the  history  of  art 
and  others  which  have  never  before  been  published,  as  well  as  reproductions  of  every 
existing  work  by  the  master  at  present  known. 


K> A    CATALOGUE    OF 

JUNIPER  HALL:  Rendezvous  of  certain  illus- 
trious Personages  during  the  French  Revolution,  including  Alex- 
ander D'Arblay  and  Fanny  Burney.  Compiled  by  CONSTANCE 
HILL.  With  numerous  Illustrations  by  ELLEN  G.  HILL,  and  repro- 
ductions from  various  Contemporary  Portraits.  Crown  8 vo.  5J.net. 

Daily  Telegraph. — "  .  .  .  one  of  the  most  charming  volumes  published  within  recent  years. 
.  .  .  Miss  Hill  has  drawn  a  really  idyllic  and  graphic  picture  of  the  daily  life  and  gossip 
of  the  stately  but  unfortunate  dames  and  noblemen  who  found  in  Juniper  Hall  a 
thoroughly  English  home." 

The  Times. — "  This  book  makes  another  on  the  long  and  seductive  list  of  books  that  take 
up  history  just  where  history  proper  leaves  off  ...  We  have  given  but  a  faint  idea  of 
the  freshness,  the  innocent  gaiety  of  its  pages  ;  we  can  give  none  at  all  of  the  beauty  and 
interest  of  the  pictures  that  adorn  it." 

Westminster  Gazette. — "  Skilfully  unified  and  charmingly  told." 

JANE   AUSTEN  :   Her  Homes  and  Her  Friends. 

By  CONSTANCE  HILL.  With  numerous  Illustrations  by  ELLEN  G. 
HILL,  together  with  Reproductions  from  Old  Portraits,  etc.  Crown 
8vo.  5J-.  net. 

World. — "  Miss  Constance  Hill  has  given  us  a  thoroughly  delightful  book.  .  .  ." 

Spectator. — %<  This  book  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  Austen  lore." 

Daily  Telegraph. — "Miss  Constance  Hill,  the  authoress  of  this  charming  book,  has  laid  all 

devout  admirers  of  Jane  Austen  and  her  inimitable  novels  under  a  debt  of  gratitude." 
Manchester  Guardian. — "The  volume  is   the  most   valuable  accession   made  since  the 

publication  of  her  Letters,  to  our  knowledge,  of  Jane  Austen." 
The  Times. — "Related  with  an  engaging  naivete." 

THE    HOUSE    IN    ST.    MARTIN'S    STREET. 

Being  Chronicles  of  the  Burney  Family.  By  CONSTANCE  HILL, 
Author  of  "  Jane  Austen,  Her  Home,  and  Her  Friends,"  "  Juniper 
Hall,"  etc.  With  numerous  Illustrations  by  ELLEN  G.  HILL,  and 
reproductions  of  Contemporary  Portraits,  etc.  Demy  8vo.  2is.net. 

World. — "This  valuable   and   very  fascinating  work.  .  .  .  Charmingly  illustrated.  .  .  . 

Those  interested  in  this  stirring  period  of  history  and  the  famous  folk  who  were  Fanny 

Burney's  friends  should  not  fail  to  add  '  The  House  in  St.  Martin's  Street '  to  their 

collection  of  books." 

Mr.  C.  K.  SHORTER  in  Sphere. — "  Miss  Hill  has  written  a  charming,  an  indispensable  book." 
Graphic. — "  This  is  the  most  interesting,  as  well  as  the  most  charming  collection  of  Fanny 

Burney's  letters  that  we  remember  to  have  seen.     Miss  Constance  Hill  has  written  and 

compiled  this  volume  in  a  truly  admirable  manner,  and  all  readers  owe  her  a  deep 

debt  of  gratitude." 
Bookman.—1'''  To  lay  down  this  book  is  like  being  forced  to  quit  a  delightful  and  congenial 

company." 
Morning  Post. — ".  .  .  the  authoress  of  this  book  has  made  a  compilation  which  is  full  of 

charm  and  entertainment,  and  she  may  fairly  be  said  to  have  succeeded  in  her  object  of 

recreating  some  of  the  domestic  atmosphere  of  a  very  delightful  family." 
Globe. — "  This  is  a  thoroughly  engaging  book,  bright  and  thoughtful,  and  delightful  in  its 

simple  humanness." 

STORY  OF  THE  PRINCESS  DES  URSINS  IN 

SPAIN  (Camarera-Mayor).  By  CONSTANCE  HILL.  With  12 
Illustrations  and  a  Photogravure  Frontispiece.  New  Edition. 
Crown  8vo.  5/.  net. 

Tiuth. — "  It  is  a  brilliant  study  of  the  brilliant  Frenchwoman  who  in  the  early  years  of  the 
eighteenth  century  played  such  a  remarkable  part  in  saving  the  Bourbon  dynasty  in 
Spain.  Miss  Hill's  narrative  is  interesting  from  the  first  page  to  the  last,  and  the  value 
of  the  book  is  enhanced  by  the  reproductions  of  contemporary  portraits  with  which  it  is 
illustrated." 

British  Weekly. — "  We  rejoice  to  see  this  new  and  cheaper  edition  of  Miss  Hill's  fascinating 
and  admirable  book." 


MEMOIRS,   BIOGRAPHIES,   ETC,     n 
NEW    LETTERS    OF    THOMAS    CARLYLE. 

Edited  and  Annotated  by  ALEXANDER  CARLYLE,  with  Notes  and 
an  Introduction  and  numerous  Illustrations.  In  Two  Volumes. 
Demy  8vo.  251.  net. 

Pall  Mall  Gazette.—"  To  the  portrait  of  the  man,  Thomas,  these  letters  do  really  add 

value ;  we  can  learn  to  respect  and  to  like  him  the  more  for  the  genuine  goodness  of  his 

personality." 

Mtrning Leader. — "These  volumes  open  the  very  heart  of  Carlyle." 
Literary  World.—"  It  is  then  Carlyle,  the  nobly  filial  son,  we  see  in  these  letters  ;  Carlyle, 

the  generous  and  affectionate  brother,   the  loyal  and  warm-hearted  friend,  .  .  .  and 

above  all,  Carlyle  as  the  tender  and  faithful  lover  of  his  wife." 
Daily  Telegraph. — "The  letters  are  characteristic  enough  of  the  Carlyle  we  know  :  very 

picturesque  and  entertaining,  full  of  extravagant  emphasis,  written,  as  a  rule,  at  fever 

heat,  eloquently  rabid  and  emotional." 

THE  NEMESIS  OF  FROUDE  :   a  Rejoinder  to 

"  My  Relations  with  Carlyle."  By  SIR  JAMES  CRICHTON  BROWNE 
and  ALEXANDER  CARLYLE.  Demy  8vo.  $s.  6d.  net. 

Glasgow  Herald. — ".  .  .  The  book  practically  accomplishes  its  task  of  reinstating  Carlyle  ; 

as  an  attack  on  Froude  it  is  overwhelming." 
Public  Opinion. — "The  main  object  of  the  book  is  to  prove  that  Froude  believed  a  myth 

and  betrayed  his  trust.     That  aim  has  been  achieved." 

NEW  LETTERS  AND  MEMORIALS  OF  JANE 

WELSH  CARLYLE.  A  Collection  of  hitherto  Unpublished 
Letters.  Annotated  by  THOMAS  CARLYLE,  and  Edited  by 
ALEXANDER  CARLYLE,  with  an  Introduction  by  Sir  JAMES  CRICHTON 
BROWNE,  M.D.,  LL.D.,  F.R.S.,  numerous  Illustrations  drawn  in  Litho- 
graphy by  T.  R.  WAY,  and  Photogravure  Portraits  from  hitherto 
unreproduced  Originals.  In  Two  Volumes.  Demy  8vo.  251.  net. 

Westminster  Gazette. — "  Few  letters  in  the  language  have  in  such  perfection  the  qualities 
which  good  letters  should  possess.  Frank,  gay,  brilliant,  indiscreet,  immensely  clever, 
whimsical,  and  audacio_us,  they  reveal  a  character  which,  with  whatever  alloy  of  human 
infirmity,  must  endear  itself  to  any  reader  of  understanding." 

World. — "Throws  a  deal  of  new  light  on  the  domestic  relations  of  the  Sage  of  Chelsea. 
They  also  contain  the  full  text  of  Mrs.  Carlyle's  fascinating  journal,  and  her  own 
'  humorous  and  quaintly  candid '  narrative  of  her  first  love-affair." 

Daily  News. — "  Every  page  .  .  .  scintillates  with  keen  thoughts,  biting  criticisms,  flashing 
phrases,  and  touches  of  bright  comedy." 

EMILE    ZOLA  :    NOVELIST   AND    REFORMER.      An 

Account  of  his  Life,  Work,  and  Influence.  By  E.  A.  VIZETELLY. 
With  numerous  Illustrations,  Portraits,  etc.  Demy  8vo.  2  is.  net. 

Morning-  Post. — "Mr.  Ernest  Vizetelly  has  given  .  .  .  a  very  true  insight  into  the  aims, 

character,  and  life  of  the  novelist." 
Athenaum. — ".  .  .  Exhaustive  and  interesting." 
M.A.P. — ".  .  .  will  stand  as  the  classic  biography  of  Zola." 
Star. — "  This  '  Life'  of  Zola  is  a  very  fascinating  book." 
Acade-my. — "  It  was  inevitable  that  the  authoritative  life  of  Emile  Zola  should  be  from  the 

pen  of  E.  A.  Vizetelly.     No  one  probably  has  the  same  qualifications,  and  this  bulky 

volume  of  nearly  six  hundred  pages  is  a  worthy  tribute  to  the  genius  of  the  master." 
Mr.  T.  P.  O'CONNOR  in  T.P.'s  Weekly. — "It  is  a  story  of  fascinating  interest,  and  is  told 

admirably  by  Mr.  Vizetelly.    I  can  promise  any  one  who  takes  it  up  that  he  will  find  it 

very  difficult  to  lay  it  down  again." 


12  _  A    CATALOGUE    OF  _ 
MEMOIRS  OF  THE  MARTYR  KING:  being  a 

detailed  record  of  the  last  two  years  of  the  Reign  of  His  Most 
Sacred  Majesty  King  Charles  the  First,  1646-1648-9.  Com- 
piled by  ALLAN  FEA.  With  upwards  of  100  Photogravure 
Portraits  and  other  Illustrations,  including  relics.  Royal  410. 
^.  net. 


Mr.  M.  H.  SPIELMANN  in  The  Academy.  —  "  The  volume  is  a  triumph  for  the  printer  and 

publisher,  and  a  solid  contribution  to  Carolinian  literature." 
Pall  Mall  Gazette.  —  "  The  present  sumptuous  volume,  a  storehouse  of  eloquent  associations 

.  .  .  comes  as  near  to  outward  perfection  as  anything  we  could  desire." 

AFTER  WORCESTER  FIGHT  :  being  the  Con- 

temporary  Account  of  King  Charles  II.  's  escape,  not  included  in 
"  The  Flight  of  the  King."  By  ALLAN  FEA.  With  numerous 
Illustrations.  Demy  8vo.  15^.  net. 

Morning  Post.—  "The  work  possesses  all  the  interest  of  a  thrilling  historical  romance,  the 

scenes  of  which  are  described  by  the  characters  themselves,  in  the  language  of  the  time, 

and  forms  a  valuable  contribution  to  existing  Stuart  literature." 
Western  Morning  News.  —  "  Mr.   Fea  has  shown  great   industry  in  investigating  every 

possible  fact  that  has  any  bearing  on  his  subject,  and  has  succeeded  in  thoroughly 

establishing  the  incidents  of  that  romantic  escape." 
Standard.  —  "  .  .  .  throws  fresh  light  on  one  of  the  most  romantic  episodes  in  the  annals  of 

English  History." 

KING    MONMOUTH  :    being   a   History    of  the 

Career  of  James  Scott,  the  Protestant  Duke,  1649-1685.  By 
ALLAN  FEA.  With  14  Photogravure  Portraits,  a  Folding-plan  of 
the  Battle  of  Sedgemoor,  and  upwards  of  100  black  and  white 
Illustrations.  Demy  8vo.  2  is.  net. 

Morning  Post.  —  "  The  story  of  Monmouth's  career  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  in  the 
annals  of  English  History,  and  Mr.  Fea's  volume  is  singularly  fascinating.  Not  only 
does  it  supplement  and  correct  the  prejudiced  though  picturesque  pages  of  Macaulay, 
but  it  seems  to  make  the  reader  personally  acquainted  with  a  large  number  of  the 
characters  who  prominently  figured  in  the  conspiracies  and  in  the  intrigues,  amorous 
and  political,  when  society  and  politics  were  seething  in  strange  cauldrons." 

FRENCH  NOVELISTS  OF  TO-DAY  :   Maurice 

Barres,  Rene  Bazin,  Paul  Bourget,  Pierre  de  Coulevain,  Anatole 
France,  Pierre  Loti,  Marcel  Prevost,  and  Edouard  Rod.  Bio- 
graphical, Descriptive,  and  Critical.  By  WINIFRED  STEPHENS. 
With  Portraits  and  Bibliographies.  Crown  8vo.  5/.  net. 

*»*  The  writer,  who  has  lived  much  in  France,  is  thoroughly  acquainted  with  French 
life  and  with  the  principal  currents  of  French  thought.  The  book  is  intended  to  be  a 
guide  to  English  readers  desirous  to  keep  in  tovch  with  the  best  present-day  French 
fiction.  Special  attention  is  given  to  the  ecclesiastical,  social,  and  intellectual  problems 
of  contemporary  France  and  their  influence  upon  the  works  of  French  novelists  of  to-day. 


MEMOIRS,   BIOGRAPHIES,   ETC.     13 
THE    LIFE    AND    LETTERS    OF    ROBERT 

STEPHEN  HAWKER,  sometime  Vicar  of  Morwenstow  in  Cornwall. 
By  C.  E.  BYLES.  With  numerous  Illustrations  by  J.  LEY 
PETHYBRIDGE  and  others.  Demy  8vo.  js.  6d.  net.  (Popular 
Edition.) 

Daily  Telegraph. — "  ...  As  soon  as  the  volume  is  opened  one  finds  oneself  in  the  presence 
of  a  real  original,  a  man  of  ability,  genius  and  eccentricity,  of  whom  one  cannot  know 
too  much  .  .  .  No  one  will  read  this  fascinating  and  charmingly  produced  book  without 
thanks  to  Mr.  Bytes  and  a  desire  to  visit — or  revisit — Morwenstow." 

Pall  Mall  Gazette. — "There  is  scarcely  a  page  of  this  book  that  does  not  tingle  with  the 
ruddy  and  exuberant  vitality  of  one  of  the  most  living  men  of  his  day.  Those  who 
want  the  portrait  of  Hawker  the  man,  not  the  poet  merely,  or  the  eccentric,  or  the 
'  theologian '  (if  he  can  be  said  to  have  had  a  theology),  must  in  future  come  to 
Mr.  Byles's  work.  ...  It  is  Hawker  the  poet,  in  his  life  more  poetic  than  in  his 
writings,  that  will  live  long  in  the  memory  of  Cornwall  and  of  England." 

THE  LIFE  OF  WILLIAM  BLAKE.  By  ALEXANDER 

GILCHRIST.  Edited  with  an  Introduction  by  W.GRAHAM  ROBERTSON. 
Numerous  Reproductions  from  Blake's  most  characteristic  and 
remarkable  designs.  Demy  8vo.  ics.  6d.  net.  New  Edition. 

Birmingham  Post. — "Nothing  seems  at  all  likely  ever  to  supplant  the  Gilchrist  biography. 

Mr.  Swinburne  praised  it  magnificently  in  his  own  eloquent  essay  on  Blake,  and  there 

should  be  no  need  now  to  point  out  its  entire  sanity,  understanding  keenness  of  critical 

insight,  and  masterly  literary  style.     Dealing  with  one  of  the  most  difficult  of  subjects, 

it  ranks  among  the  finest  things  of  its  kind  that  we  possess." 
Daily  Mail. — "It  would  be  difficult  to  name  a  more  fascinating,  artistic  biography  in  the 

language." 
Western  Morning  News. — "  This  handsome  volume  should  direct  attention  anew  to  a  man 

whose  work  merits  remembrance." 
Public  Opinion. — "  .  .  .  The  form  in  which  this  Life  is  now  published  calls  for  the  warmest 

praise." 

MEMOIRS  OF  A  ROYAL  CHAPLAIN,  1729-63. 

The  correspondence  of  Edmund  Pyle,  D.D.,  Domestic  Chaplain  to 
George  II,  with  Samuel  Kerrich,  D.D.,  Vicar  of  Dersingham,  and 
Rector  of  Wolferton  and  West  Newton.  Edited  and  Annotated 
by  ALBERT  HARTSHORNE.  With  Portrait.  Demy  8vo.  i6j.net. 

Truth. — "  It  is  undoubtedly  the  most  important  book  of  the  kind  that  has  been  published 
in  recent  years,  and  is  certain  to  disturb  many  readers  whose  minds  have  not  travelled 
with  the  time." 

Westminster  Gazette. — "How  the  world  went  when  George  II  was  king,  and  what  the 
Church  made  of  it,  are  matters  revealed  with  a  good  deal  of  light  in  this  entertaining 
volume,  edited  and  annotated  by  Mr.  Hartshorne." 

Great  Thoughts.—  "  The  Pyle  letters,  though  not  so  well  known  as  other  similar  correspon- 
dence of  a  public  nature,  are  well  worth  the  vast  amount  of  labour  and  care  bestowed 
upon  their  publication." 

GEORGE    MEREDITH  :     Some    Characteristics. 

By  RICHARD  LE  GALLIENNE.  With  a  Bibliography  (much  en- 
larged) by  JOHN  LANE.  Portrait,  etc.  Crown  8vo.  5^.  net.  Fifth 
Edition.  Revised. 

Punch. — "All  Meredithians  must  possess  'George  Meredith;  Some  Characteristics,'  by 
Richard  Le  Gallienne.  This  book  is  a  complete  and  excellent  guide  to  the  novelist  and 
the  novels,  a  sort  of  Meredithian  Bradshaw,  with  pictures  of  the  traffic  superintendent 
and  the  head  office  at  Boxhill.  Even  Philistines  may  be  won  over  by  the  blandishments 
of  Mr.  Le  Gallienne." 


£4 A    CATALOGUE    OF 

LIFE  OF  LORD  CHESTERFIELD.    An  account 

of  the  Ancestry,  Personal  Character,  and  Public  Services  of  the 
Fourth  Earl  of  Chesterfield.  By  W.  H.  CRAIG,  M.A.  Numerous 
Illustrations.  Demy  8vo.  1 2s.  6d.  net. 

Daily  Telegraph. — "Mr.  Craig  has  set  out  to  present  him  (Lord  Chesterfield)  as  one  of  the 
striking  figures  of  a  formative  period  in  our  modern  history  .  .  .  and  has  succeeded  in 
giving  us  a  very  attractive  biography  of  a  remarkable  man." 

Times. — "  It  is  the  chief  point  of  Mr.  Craig's  book  to  show  the  sterling  qualities  which 
Chesterfield  was  at  too  much  pains  in  concealing,  to  reject  the  perishable  trivialities  of 
his  character,  and  to  exhibit  him  as  a  philosophic  statesman,  not  inferior  to  any  of  his 
contemporaries,  except  Walpole  at  one  end  of  his  life,  and  Chatham  at  the  other." 

Daily  Graphic. — "Reparation  was  due  to  Lord  Chesterfield's  memory;  and  this  book  which 
at  last  does  him  justice  is  a  notable  contribution  to  historical  biography." 

Saturday  Review. — "Mr.  W.  H.  Craig's  book  is  the  first  connected  account  of  the  public 
life  of  Lord  Chesterfield,  and  the  most  elaborate  attempt  to  appreciate  his  value  as  a 
serious  statesman." 

Standard. — "  Mr.  Craig  has  written  an  interesting  book." 

A  QUEEN  OF  INDISCRETIONS.     The  Tragedy 

of  Caroline  of  Brunswick,  Queen  of  England.  From  the  Italian 
of  G.  P.  CLERICI.  Translated  by  FREDERIC  CHAPMAN.  With 
numerous  Illustrations  reproduced  from  contemporary  Portraits  and 
Prints.  Demy  8vo.  2  is.  net. 

The  Daily  Telegraph. — "  It  could  scarcely  be  done  more  thoroughly  or,  on  the  whole,  in 
better  taste  than  is  here  displayed  by  Professor  Clerici.  Mr  Frederic  Chapman  himself 
contributes  an  uncommonly  interesting  and  well-informed  introduction." 

Westminster  Gazette, — "The  volume,  scholarly  and  well-informed  .  .  .  forms  one  long  and 
absorbingly  interesting  chapter  of  the  ckronique  scandalcuse  of  Court  life  .  .  .  reads 
like  a  romance,  except  that  no  romancer  would  care  or  dare  to  pack  his  pages  so  closely 
with  startling  effects  and  fantastic  scenes." 

The  Times. — "Signer  Clerici  has  brought  to  his  task  immense  pains,  lucidity,  and  an 
impartiality  of  mind  which  does  not  prevent  a  definite  view  from  emerging.  Mr.  Chap- 
man has  done  the  translation  admirably  well,  and  his  own  introduction  is  a  careful 
assistance  to  thoroughness." 

Academy. — "Caroline's  life  was  an  astounding  romance,  .  .  .  Mr.  Chapman  especially 
lends  colour  to  her  adventures  in  his  clever  introduction  by  the  way  in  which  he  shows 
how,  for  all  her  genius  for  mischief,  and  for  all  her  tricks  and  wantonness.  Caroline  never 
lost  a  curious  charm  which  made  her  buoyancy  and  reckless  spirit  lovable  to  the  last." 

LETTERS    AND    JOURNALS    OF    SAMUEL 

GRIDLEY  HOWE.  Edited  by  his  Daughter  LAURA  E. 
RICHARDS.  With  Notes  and  a  Preface  by  F.  B.  SANBORN,  an 
Introduction  by  Mrs.  JOHN  LANE,  and  a  Portrait.  Demy  8vo 
(9  x  5  J  inches).  i6s.  net. 

Outlook. — "This  deeply  interesting  record  of  experience.  The  volume  is  worthily  produced 
and  contains  a  striking  portrait  of  Howe." 

Dundee  Advertiser. — "  The  picturesque,  animated,  and  deeply  interesting  story  of  his  career 
is  now  open  in  a  considerable  volume  entitled  'Letters  and  Journals  of  Samuel  Griuley 
Howe  during  the  Greek  Revolution.'  This  is  helpfully  edited  by  his  daughter  Laura 
E.  Richards,  and  has  an  introduction  and  notes  by  his  old  friend,  F.  B.  Sanborn,  besides 
an  illuminating  preface  by  Mrs.  John  Lane  .  .  .  The  journals  are  written  with  sincerity 
and  realism.  They  pulsate  with  the  emotions  of  life  amidst  the  difficulties,  privations, 
and  horrors  of  the  battle  march,  siege  and  defeat." 

Daily  Neivs.—"  Dr.  Howe's  book  is  full  of  shrewd  touches  ;  it  seems  to  be  very  much  a  part 
of  the  lively,  handsome  man  of  the  portrait.  His  writing  is  striking  and  vivid  ;  it  is  the 
writing  of  a  shrewd,  keen  observer,  intensely  interested  in  the  event  before  him.  When- 
ever his  attention  is  arrested  he  writes  with  living  force." 


MEMOIRS,   BIOGRAPHIES,   ETC.     15 
A    LATER    PEPYS.     The   Correspondence  of  Sir 

William  Weller  Pepys,  Bart.,  Master  in  Chancery,  1758-1825, 
with  Mrs.  Chapone,  Mrs.  Hartley,  Mrs.  Montague,  Hannah  More, 
William  Franks,  Sir  James  Macdonald,  Major  Rennell,  Sir 
Nathaniel  Wraxall,  and  others.  Edited,  with  an  Introduction  and 
Notes,  by  ALICE  C.  C.  GAUSSEN.  With  numerous  Illustrations. 
Demy  8vo.  In  Two  Volumes.  32^.  net. 

DOUGLAS  SLADEN  in  the  Queen. — "This  is  indisputably  a  most  valuable  contribution  to  the 
literature  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  is  a  veritable  storehouse  of  society  gossip,  the 
art  criticism,  and  the  -mots  of  famous  people." 

Academy  and  Literature.— •' 'The  effect  consists  in  no  particular  passages,  but  in  the  total 
impression,  the  sense  of  atmosphere,  and  the  general  feeling  that  we  are  being  introduced 
into  the  very  society  in  which  the  writer  moved." 

Daily  News. — "  To  Miss  Alice  Gaussen  is  due  the  credit  of  sorting  out  the  vast  collection  of 
correspondence  which  is  here  presented  to  the  public.  .  .  .  Her  industry  is  indefatigable, 
and  her  task  has  been  carried  out  with  completeness.  The  notes  are  full  of  interesting 
items ;  the  introduction  is  exhaustive ;  and  the  collection  of  illustrations  enhances  the 
value  of  the  book." 

World. — "Sir  William  Pepys's  correspondence  is  admirable." 

ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON,  AN   ELEGY; 

AND   OTHER   POEMS,   MAINLY    PERSONAL.     By 

RICHARD  LE  GALLIENNE.     Crown  8vo.     4/.  6^.  net. 

Daily  Chronicle. — "Few,  indeed,  could  be  more  fit  to  sing  the  dirge  of  that  'Virgil  of 
Prose'  than  the  poet  whose  curiosafelicitas  is  so  close  akin  to  Stevenson's  own  charm." 

Globe. — "The  opening  Elegy  on  R.  L.  Stevenson  includes  some  tender  and  touching 
passages,  and  has  throughout  the  merits  of  sincerity  and  clearness." 

RUDYARD  KIPLING  :  a  Criticism.     By  RICHARD 

LE  GALLIENNE.  With  a  Bibliography  by  JOHN  LANE.  Crown 
8vo.  3-r.  &d.  net. 

Guardian. — "  One  of  the  cleverest  pieces  of  criticism  we  have  come  across  for  a  long  time." 

Scots-man — "  It  shows  a  keen  insight  into  the  essential  qualities  of  literature,  and  analyses 

Mr.  Kipling's  product  with  the  skill  of  a  craftsman  .  .  .  the  positive  and  outstanding 

merits  of  Mr.  Kipling's  contribution  to  the  literature  of  his  time  are  marshalled  by  his 

critic  with  quite  uncommon  skill." 

ROBERT    BROWNING:    Essays    and   Thoughts. 

By  J.  T.  NETTLESHIP.  With  Portrait.  Crown  8vo.  §/.  6d.  net. 
(Third  Edition.) 

POEMS.     By  EDWARD  CRACROFT  LEFROY.     With  a 

Memoir  by  W.  A.  GILL,  and  a  Reprint  of  Mr.  J.  A.  SYMONDS' 
Critical  Essay  on  "  Echoes  from  Theocritus."  Photogravure 
Portrait.  Crown  8vo.  $/.  net. 

The  Times. — "  .  .  .  the  leading  features  of  the  sonnets  are  the  writer's  intense  sympathy 
with  human  life  in  general  and  with  young  life  in  particular ;  his  humour,  his  music,  and, 
in  a  word,  the  quality  which  'leaves  a  melody  afloat  upon  the  brain,  a  savour  on  the 
mental  palate.'" 

Bookman. — "The  Memoir,  by  Mr.  W.  A.  Gill,  is  a  sympathetic  sketch  of  an  earnest  and 
lovable  character  ;  and  the  critical  estimate,  by  J.  Addington  Symonds,  is  a  charmingly- 
written  and  suggestive  essay." 


1 6    MEMOIRS,   BIOGRAPHIES,  ETC. 
BOOKS    AND    PERSONALITIES:    Essays.      By 

H.  W.  NEVINSON.     Crown  8vo.     5/.  net. 

Daily  Chronicle. — "  It  is  a  remarkable  thing  and  probably  unique,  that  a  writer  of  such 
personality  as  the  author  of  '  Between  the  Acts '  should  not  only  feel,  but  boldly  put 
on  paper,  his  homage  and  complete  subjection  to  the  genius  of  one  after  another  of 
these  men.  He  is  entirely  free  from  that  one  common  virtue  of  critics,  which  is 
superiority  to  the  author  criticised." 

BOOKS   AND    PLAYS  :    A  Volume  of  Essays  on 

Meredith,  Borrow,  Ibsen,  and  others.  By  ALLAN  MONKHOUSE. 
Crown  8vo.  $s.  net. 

LIBER     AMORIS  ;    OR,    THE    NEW    PYGMALION. 

By  WILLIAM  HAZLITT.  Edited,  with  an  introduction,  by  RICHARD 
LE  GALLIENNE.  To  which  is  added  an  exact  transcript  of  the 
original  MS.,  Mrs.  Hazlitt's  Diary  in  Scotland,  and  Letters  never 
before  published.  Portrait  after  BEWICK,  and  facsimile  Letters. 
400  copies  only.  410.  364  pp.  Buckram.  21  s.  net. 

TERRORS  OF  THE  LAW  :    being  the  Portraits 

of  Three  Lawyers — the  original  Weir  of  Hermiston,  "Bloody 
Jeffreys,"  and  "  Bluidy  Advocate  Mackenzie."  By  FRANCIS 
WATT.  With  3  Photogravure  Portraits.  Fcap.  8vo.  4*.  6d.  net. 

The  Literary  World. — "The  book  is  altogether  entertaining;  it  is  brisk,  lively,  and 
effective.  Mr.  Watt  has  already,  in  his  two  series  of  'The  Law's  Lumber  Room,' 
established  his  place  as  an  essayist  in  legal  lore,  and  the  present  book  will  increase  his 
reputation." 

CHAMPIONS  OF  THE  FLEET.     Captains  and 

Men-of-War  in  the  Days  that  Helped  to  make  the  Empire.  By 
EDWARD  ERASER.  With  16  Full-page  Illustrations.  Crown  8vo. 
5/.  net. 

%*  Mr.  Fraser  takes  in  the  whole  range  of  our  Navy's  story.  First  there  is  the  story 
of  the  "  Dreadnought"  told  for  the  first  time :  how  the  name  was  originally  selected  by 
Elizabeth,  'why  she  chose  it,  the  launch,  how  under  Drake  she  fought  against  the 
Armada,  how  her  captain  was  knighted  on  the  quarter-deck  in  the  presence  of  the  enemy. 
From  this  point  the  name  is  traced  down  to  the  present  leviathan  which  bears  it.  This  is 
but  one  of  the  "  champions"  dealt  with  in  Mr.  Fraser  s  volume,  which  is  illustrated  by 
some  very  interesting  reproductions. 


JOHN   LANE,   THE    BODLEY    HEAD,   VIGO   STREET,   LONDON,   W. 
V 


DA  Bar ing-Gould,   Sabine 

670  Devonshire  characters  and 

D5B37       strange  events 


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