Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall

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FOOTPRINTS OF FORMER
MEN IN FAR CORNWALL

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FOOTPRINTS OF
FORMER MEN IN
FAR CORNWALL

BY R. S. QAWKER

VICAR OF MORWENSTOW
EDITED WITH INTRO-
DUCTION BY C. E. BYLES
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY J. LEY PETHYBRIDGE

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♦•••-^

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^1

LONDON AND NEW YORK
JOHN LANE . MDCCCCIir

EXETER : . JAMES G. COMMIN
LAUNCESTON : WALTER WEIGHELL
TRURO : . . JOSEPH POLLARD

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HARVARD COLLEflE LIBRARY

FROM THE LIBRARY
OF F. L. GAY
NOV. 8, 1918

WILLIAM CLOWES AND SOMSi LIMITBDi LOIIDOI# AND BBCCLBS.

PREFACE

TT AWKER'S prose sketches appeared originally
as contributions to various periodicals, and
in 1870 they were published for him in book
form by Mr. John Russell Smith, as " Footprints
of Former Men in Far CornwaU." In 1893,
eighteen years after his death, a new edition was
issued by Messrs. Blackwood, entitled "The
Prose Works of Rev. R. S. Hawker," containing
two essays previously unpublished, "Humphrey
Vivian" and "Old Trevarten." The late Mr.
J. G. Godwin, who was Hawker's friend and
adviser in literary matters, edited the volume, and
added the bibliographical footnotes to the several
papers. In the present edition it has been
thought appropriate to revert to Hawker's own
more picturesque title, and this is to be done also
in the case of his poetical works, which will
shortly be re-issued as "Cornish Ballads and
other Poems." The two books will thus form
companion volumes. It is interesting to read
them concurrently, and to compare his treatment
of the same themes in prose and verse. An

vi Preface

attempt has been made in the notes to assist
such a comparison by indicating some of the
more obvious parallels. In the prose, as in the
poems, there is the same deep and peculiar love
of symbol and miracle and superstition, but the
prose further reveals, what might not be sus-
pected from the poems alone, that Hawker was
a humourist as much as a mystic.

Hawker won his literary reputation as a
ballad-writer, but his prose also deserves a share
in his feme. He has the gift of style. Like his
handwriting, which makes a manuscript of his
a thing of beauty in itself, it is bold and clear,
free from prettlness or affectation, but with the
massive grace of his native rocks, and made
distinctive by a characteristic touch of archaism.
The rugged scenery of his abode had its influence
upon his work. He was a hewer of words, as
Daniel Gumb was a hewer of stone, and his
language has the strength of rough masonry
wrought in a broad and homely manner out of
solid granite. The sea, and the great spaces of
lonely moorland that surrounded him, gave to his
work a sense of breadth and freedom. He is
always at his best in describing his own dearly
loved Cornwall, and in particular the wild coast
by which all his years were spent. Perhaps the
finest passage of this kind is that which concludes
the legend of Daniel Gumb, and which forms

Preface vii

a prose counterpart to that grand ending of " The
Quest of the Sangraal : "

" He ceased ; and all around was dreamy night :
There stood Dundagel, throned : and the great sea
Lay, a strong vassal at his master's gate.
And, like a drunken giant, sobb'd in sleep."

There is an element of fiction in Hawker's bio-
graphical studies. He never let facts, or the absence
of them, stand in the way of his imagination, and
he had a Chattertonian habit of passing off com-
positions of his own as ancient manuscripts.

His letters are full of complaints that legends
" invented " by himself have been regarded by
others as common property. But this is not
surprising when the said inventions wear the
solemn garb of history. Hawker had many of
the qualities necessary to historical romance. His
rich native humour, and his rare gift for telling
a story ; his vivid presentment of scene, character,
and situation, make it a matter of regret that he
did not apply his powers more fully in this direc-
tion, just as it is a matter of regret that his fine
poem, "The Quest of the Sangraal," is only a
fragment, though a fragment worthy to rank
beside " Hyperion."

Both in his prose and his poetry there is a
disappointing lack of sustained effort. His
literary manner and antiquarian tastes bear many

viii Preface

points of resemblance to those of Scott, whose
novels it was his custom to re-read every year as
Christmas-time came round. In his local and
scanty degree Hawker has done for the legends
and worthies of old Cornwall what Sir Walter did
for those of Scotland.

The prose impulse seems to have moved
Hawker somewhat late in life, all the following
papers having been published since 1850, when
he had reached the age of forty-seven. These
papers, as a matter of £ict, represent a brave
effort in years of increasing pecuniary anxiety to
add to his income by his pen. His letters con-
tain many interesting allusions to his literary
struggles and his dealings with the editors of his
day, among whom were Froude and Dickens.
He also met or corresponded with several other
famous contemporaries, including Tennyson,
Longfellow, Kingsley, and Cardinals Newman and
Manning. Earlier, too, he had a correspondence
with Macaulay. But on these matters it will
be more fitting to enlarge in the new memoir
of Hawker, which is in course of preparation.

It remains for me to express my warmest
thanks to those who have helped in the produc-
tion of this volume. Mr. R. Pearse Chope has
been indefatigable in collecting matter for the
Appendix, and his are the notes on "Mor-
wenstow," " Daniel Gumb's Rock," " Cruel

Preface ix

Coppinger," and "Thomasine Bonaventure." This
Appendix^ it is hoped, will be of interest both in
itself and as showing the sources of Hawker's
information. It enables us, too, to judge his
power of imparting colour and romance to a
plain record of facts. The account of old Stowe
and the Granvilles, and their gigantic retainer,
Antony Payne, has been kindly furnished by a
descendant of the great Sir Bevill, the Rev.
Prebendary Roger Granville, and it has thus a
double interest. Mrs. Waddon Martyn of
Tonacombe Manor, Morwenstow, and her son,
Mr. N. H. Lawrence Martyn, have been
especially kind and helpful. The Rev. John
Tagert, Vicar of Morwenstow, and his daughter.
Miss Tagert, Miss Rowe of Poughill,'Miss Louisa
Twining, Mr. and Mrs. William Shephard, the
Rev. Canon Bone, the Rev. LI. W. Bevan of
Stratton, Mr. J. Sommers James, and the Rev.
H. Upton Squire of Tetcott, have also rendered
generous and valuable assistance. The portraits
of Black John, Arscott of Tetcott, and Parson
Rudall have been reproduced from pictures kindly
lent by Mrs. Calmady, Mrs. Ford of Pencarrow,
and the Rev. S. Baring-Gould respectively. The
portrait of Black John was formerly in the posses-
sion of Mr. Hawker.

These acknowledgments would be incomplete
if they did not refer to the zealous care bestowed

X Preface

by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge on his charming
illustrations. His work has been to a large extent
a labour of love. Thanks are also due to the
various photographers, amateur and professional,
who have lent their aid. Mr. George Penrose,
Curator of the Royal* Institution of Cornwall at
Truro, kindly photographed the painting of Antony
Payne and the flask which formerly belonged to
the giant. The Manning tomb is from a photo
by Mr. T. W. WoodrufFe. The interior of Mor-
wenstow Church as it was in Hawker's time is by
S. Thorn of Bude, as is also the piscina.

C. E. Byles.
Jim$j 1903.

CONTENTS

PAGE

morwenstow . i

The First Cornish Mole ..... 27

The Gauger^s Pogkbt 32

The Light of Other Days 41

The Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar ... 46

Black John 79

Daniel Gumb's Rock 90

Antony Payne, a Cornish Giant . .109

Cruel Coppinger 123

Thomasine Bonaventure 139

The Botathen Ghost 158

A Ride from Bude to Boss 176

HoLAcoMBE ........ 199

Humphrey Vivian 216

Old Trevarten : A Tale of the Pixies . 234

APPENDICES 241

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGB

Portrait of Rev, R. S. Hawker . . FronHsfUce i
From a phoU^rapk by the laU Dr* Budd, of Barnstaple,

The Piscina in Morwenstow Church .12

From a photograph by S, Thorn, ofBude,

The Shield of David (Fig. i) and the Pentaclb of

Solomon (Fig. 2), on Bosses in the Roof of

Morwenstow Church

From engrainngs in J, T, Blighfs ** Ancient Crosses and other
Antiquities in the East of Cornwall,**

Fig. 3, Antony Payne^s Flagon (see p. 120) . 14
From a photograph by Mr. George Penrose,

Interior of Morwenstow Church in Hawker's

Time . .16

From a photograph by S, Thorn, ofBztde,

Old Doorway at Stanbury . . .22

Drawn in lithography by Mr, J, Ley Pethybridge,

The Manning Tomb in Morwenstow Churchyard . 24
From a photograph by Mr, T. W. Woodruffe,

Tonacombe Manor 30

Drawn in lithography by Mr, J, Ley Pethybridge,

xiv List of Illustrations

PACK

"Black John" 80

From a picture lent by Mrs. Caltnady, and formerly belonging

to Mr, Hawker,

Arscott of Tetcott .82

From a picture in the possession of Mrs, Ford^ ofPencarrow,

The Devil's Wring, commonly known as The

Cheesewring 92

Drawn in lithography by Mr, J, Ley Pethybridge,

Antony Payne's House at Stratton, now the

Tree Inn no

Drawn in lithography by Mr. /, Ley Pethybridge.

Stowe. The second house, built by John, Earl
OP Bath, son of Sir Bevill Granville, and

PULLED DOWN IN I739 . . • . . II8

From the picture in the possession of Mrs, Waddon Martyn,

at Tonacombe Manor,

Antony Payne 120

From the picture by Sir Godfrey Knelhr, now in the Museum
of the Royal Institution of Cornwall at Truro.

Galsham, once the home of Cruel Coppinger . 128
Drawn in lithography by Mr, J, Ley Pethybridge,

St. Stephen's Church, Dunheved, by Launceston . 154
Drawn in lithography by Mr, /. Ley Pethybridge.

Doorway of the old "Chantry and School at
Week St. Mary, founded by Thomasine

Bonaventure 156

Drawn in lithography by Mr, J, Ley Pethybridge.

"Parson Rudall " 160

From a picture in the possession of Rev, S, Baring-Gould,

List of Illustrations xv

FAGB

"The Place" of Botathen 164

Drawn in lithography by Mr, /. L^ Pethybridge.

BoscASTLB Harbour 184

Drawn in lithography by Mr. /. Ley Pethybridge.

The Design on the Title-page, by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge,
represents the Carving of The Fruitful Vine, in Welcombe
Church.

The F^nel Design on the Front Cover represents a Bench End
in Morwenstow Church ; that of the Border is the Vine Carving
of the Roof (sec p. 15).

The Panel Design on the Back represents the Carving of The
Barren Fig-tree, in Welcombe Church.

footprints' of former
men in far cornwall

MORWENSTOW '

nr^HERE cannot be a scene more graphic in
•^ itself, or more illustrative in its history
of the gradual growth and striking development
of the Church in Celtic and Western England,
than the parish of St. Morwenna. It occupies the
upper and northern nook of the county of Corn-
wdl ; shut in and bounded on the one hand by
the Severn Sea, and on the other by the offepring
of its own bosom, the Tamar River, which gushes,
with its sister stream the Torridge, from a rushy
knoll on the eastern wilds of Morwenstow.^

^ The foundations of this article first appeared in Mr. Blight^s
** Ancient Cornish Crosses,"* Penzance, 1850; in an article entitled
** A Cornish Churchyard/* in Chambers*! Jourtud^ 1852 $ also^ as
the "Legend of Morwcnstow," in Willis* s Current Notes, i^sS^
and in its present extended form, in ** Footprints of Former Men in
Far Cornwall,*' 1870, embodying the author's latest corrections and
impressions.

* WooUey Moor.

B

2 Footprints in Far Cornwall

Once, and in' the first period of our history, it was
one wide wild stretch of rocky moorland, broken
with masses of dun stone and the sullen curve of
the warrior's barrow, and flashing here and there
with a bright riU of water or a solitary well.
Neither landmarks nor fences nor walls bounded
or severed the bold, free, untravelled Cornish
domain. Wheel-tracks in old Cornwall there
were none ; but strange and narrow paths gleamed
across the moorlands, which the forefathers said
in their simplicity, were first traced by angel's
feet.^ These, in truth, were trodden and worn by
refigious men — by the pilgrim as he paced his
way toward his chosen and votive bourn, or by
the palmer, whose listless footsteps had neither a
fixed keblah nor a future abode. Dimly visible by
the darker hue of the crushed grass, these straight
and narrow roads led the traveller along from
chapelry to cell, or to some distant and solitary
cave. On the one hand, in this scenery of the
past, they would guide us to the " Chapel-piece of
St* Morwenna," a grassy glade along the gorse-
dad clifli where to this very day neither will
bramble cling nor heather grow ; and, on the
other, to the walls and roof and the grooved stone
for the waterflow, which still survive, halfway
down a headlong precipice, as the relics of St.

^ *< Ah I native Comwall^ throned upon the hills.
Thy moorland pathways worn by Angel feet."

Sl^st of the Sangraal,

Morwenstow

Morwenna's Well.* But what was the wanderer's
guidance along the bleak, unpeopled surface of
these Cornish moors ? The wayside cross. Such
were the crosses of St. James and St. JcJin, which
even yet give name to their ancient sites in
Morwenstow, and proclaim to the traveller that,
or ever a church was reared or an altar hallowed
here, the trophy of old Syria stood in solemn
stone, a beacon to the wayfaring man, and that
the soldiers of God's army had won their honours
among the unbaptised and barbarous people !

Here, then, let us stand and survey the earliest
scenery of pagan Morwenstow. Before us lies
a breadth of wild and rocky land ; it is bounded
by the billowy Atlantic, with its arm of waters,
and by the slow lapse of that gliding stream of
which the Keltic proverb said, before King
Arthur's day, —

'^ Let Uter Pendragon do what he can,
The Tamar water will run as it ran."

Barrows curve above the dead ; a stony cross
stands by a mossed and lichened well ; here and
there glides a shorn and vested monk, whose
function it was, often at peril of life and limb,
to sprinkle the brow of some hard-won votary,

* ** If, traveller, thy happy spirit know

That awful Fount whence living waters flow,
Then hither come to draw : thy feet have found
Amidst these rocks a place of holy ground/'

The WeU of St. Morwfttna,

4 Footprints in Far Cornwall

and to breathe the Gospel of the Trinity on the
startled ear of the Keltic barbarian. Let us close
this theme of thought with a few faint echoes
from the River of the West : —

" Fount of a rushing river ! wild flowers wreathe
The home where thy first waters sunlight claim :
The lark sits hushed beside thee while I breathe.
Sweet Tamar spring, the music of thy name !

On ! through thy goodly channel, to the sea :
Pass amid heathery vale, tall rock, £iir bough.

But never more with footsteps pure and free.
Or face so meek with happiness as now !

Fair is the future scenery of thy days.

Thy course domestic, and thy paths of pride ;

Depths that give back the soft-eyed violet's gaze ;
Shores where tall navies march to meet the tide !

Thine, leafy Tetcott, and those neighbouring walls.
Noble Northumberland's embowered domain :

Thine, Cartha Martha, Morwell's rocky falls.
Storied Cotehele, and ocean's loveliest plain.

Yet &lse the vision, and untrue the dream.
That lures thee from thy native wilds to stray :

A thousand griefs will mingle with that stream :
Unnumbered hearts shall sigh those waves away.

Scenes fierce with men thy seaward current laves,
Harsh multitudes will throng thy gentle brink ;

Back ! with the grieving concourse of thy waves ;
Home ! to the waters of thy childhood shrink !

Morwenstow

Thou heedest not ! thy dream is of the shore ;

Thy heart is quick with life, — on ! to the sea !
How will the voice of thy far streams implore

Again amid these peaceful weeds to be !

My soul ! my soul ! a happier choice be thine ;

Thine the hushed valley and the lonely sod :
False dream, far vision, hollow hope resign.

Fast by our Tamar spring — ^alone with God !

n

Then arrived, to people this bleak and lonely
boundary with the thoughts and doctrines of the
Cross, the piety and the legend of St. Morwenna.
This was the origin of her name and place.

There dwelt in Wales in the ninth century a
Keltic king, Breachan ^ by name — it was from him
that the words " Brecon " and " Brecknock "
received origin ; and Gladwys was his wife and
queen. They had, according to the record of
Leland, the scribe, children twenty-and-four. Now
either these were their own daughters and sons,
or they were, according to the usage of those
days, the offspring of the nobles of their land,
placed for loyal and learned nurture in the palace
of the king, and so called the children of his house.

Of these Morwenna was one. She grew up
wise, learned, and holy above her generation ;
and it was evermore the strong desire of her
soul to bring the barbarous and pagan people

^ Breachan figures as a saint on a window in St. Neot's church,
called "The Young Women's Window," erected in 1529 at the cost
of the maidens of the village. Mr. Baring-Gould says that
"Brychan" lived in the fifth century, and that Morwenna was
probably his grand-daughter.

6 Footprints in Far Cornwall

among whom she dwelt to the Christian font.
Now so it was that when Morwenna was grown
up to saintly womanhood there was a king of
Saxon England, and Ethelwolf was his noble
name. This was he who laid the endowment
of his realm of England on the altar of the
Apostles at Rome, the first and eldest Church-
king of the islands who occupied the English
throne. He, Ethelwolf, had likewise many
children ; and while he intrusted to the famous
St. Swithun the guidance of his sons, he besought
King Breachan to send to his court Morwenna,
that she might become the teacher of the Princess
Edith and the other daughters of his royal
house.* She came. She sojourned in his palace
long and patiendy ; and she so gladdened King
Ethelwolf by her goodness and her grace, that at
last he was fain to give her whatsoever she sought.
Now the piece of ground, or the acre of God,
which in those old days was wont to be set apart
or hallowed for the site of a future shrine and
church, was called the ** station," or in native
speech the ** stowe," of the martyr or saint whose
name was given to the altar-stone. So, on a
certain day thus came and so said Morwenna to
the King : ** Largess, my lord the king, largess,
for God's sake I " " Largess, my daughter ? "

^ According to Mr. Baring-Gould, this story is full of ana-
chronisms, arising from the confusion of three different saints,
Morwenna of Cornwall, Modwenna of Burton-on-Trent, and
Monynna of Newry.

Morwenstow

answered Ethelwolf the king ; ^^ largess 1 be it
whatsoever it may/' Then said Morwenna :
^* Sir, there is a stern and stately headland in thy
appanage of the Tamar-land, it is a boundary
rugged and tall, and it looks along the Severn
Sea ; they call it in that Keltic region Hennacliff
— that is to say, the Raven's Crag — because it
hath ever been for long ages the haunt and the
home of the birds of Elias.^ Very often, from
my abode in wild Wales, have I watched across
the waves until the westering sun fell red upon
that Cornish rock, and I have said in my maiden
vows, ^ Alas 1 and would to God a font might be
hewn and an altar built among the stones by
yonder barbarous hill.' Give me, then, as I
beseech thee, my lord the king, a station for a
messenger and a priest in that scenery of my
early prayer, that so and through me the saying
of Esaias the seer may come to pass, ^In the
place of dragons, where each lay, there may be
grass with reeds and rushes.' "

Her voice was heard ; her entreaty was ful-
filled. They came at the cost and impulse of
Morwenna ; they brought and they set up yonder
font, with the carved cable coiled around it in
stone, in memory of the vessel of the fishermen
of the East anchored in the Galilaean Sea. They
built there altar and arch, aisle and device in
stone. They linked their earliest structure with

1 Compare Hawker's poem *^ A Croon on Hennacliff/'

8 Footprints in Far Cornwall

Morwenna's name, the tender and the true ; and
so it is that notwithstanding the lapse of ten
whole centuries of English time, at this very day
the bourn of many a pilgrim to the West is the
Station of Morwenna, or, in simple and Saxon
phrase, Morwenstow. So runs the quaint and
simple legend of our Tamar-side ; and so ascend
into the undated era of the ninth or tenth age
the early Norman arches, font, porch, and piscina
of Morwenstow church.^

The endowment, in abbreviated Latin, still
exists in the registry of the diocese.' It records
that the monks of St. John at Bridgewater, in
whom the total tithes and glebe-lands of this
parish were then vested, had agreed, at the re-
quest of Walter Brentingham, the Bishop of
Exeter, to endow an altar-priest with certain
lands, bounded on the one hand by the sea, and
on the other by the Well of St. John of the
Wilderness, near the church. They surrendered,
also, for this endowment the garbae of two bartons
of vills, Tidnacomb^ and Stanbury,the altarage, and
the small tithes of the parish. But the striking
point in this ancient document is that, whereas
the date of the endowment is a.d. 1296, the
church is therein referred to by name as an old

1 This prose description of Morwenstow church has its metrical
counterpart in " Morwennae Statio." The poetry in stone has never
been more beautifully expressed than by those strong and simple lines.

2 See Appendix A.

3 A mistake for " Tunnacomb." See Appendix A.

Morwenstow

and well-known structure. To such a remote
era, therefore, we must assign the Norman relics
of antiquity which still survive, and which,
although enclosed within the walls and outline
of an edifice enlarged and extended at two subse-
quent periods, have to this day undergone no
material change.

We proceed to enumerate and describe these
features of the first foundation of St. Morwenna,^
and to which I am not disposed to assign a later
origin than from a.d. 875 to a.d. 1000.

First among these is a fine Norman doorway at
the southern entrance of the present church. The
arch-head is semicircular, and it is sustained on
either side by half-piers built in stone, with
capitals adorned with different devices ; and the
curve is crowned with the zigzag and chevron
mouldings. This moulding is surmounted by a
range of grotesque faces — the mermaid and the
dolphin, the whale, and other fellow-creatures of
the deep ; for the earliest imagery of the primeval
hewers of stone was taken from the sea, in
unison with the great sources of the Gospel, — the
Sea of Galilee, the fishing men who were to haul
the net, and the " catchers of men." The crown
of the arch is adorned with a richly carved, and
even eloquent, device : two dragons are crouching
in the presence of a lamb, and underneath his
conquering feet lies their passive chain.

^ See Appendix Ka.

lo Footprints in Far Cornwall

But it is time for us to unclose the door and
enter in. There stands the font in all its em-
phatic simplicity. A moulded cable girds it on
to the mother church ; and the uncouth lip of
its circular rim attests its origin in times of a
rude taste and unadorned symbolism. For well-
nigh ten centuries the Gospel of the Trinity has
sounded over this silent cell of stone, and from
the Well of St. John^ the stream has glided in,
and the water gushed withal, while another son
or daughter has been added to the Christian
family. Before us stand the three oldest arches
of the Church in ancient Cornwall. They curve
upon piers built in channelled masonry, a feature
of Norman days which presents a strong contrast
with the grooved piUars of solid or of a single
stone in succeeding styles of architecture. The
western arch is a simple semicircle of dunstone
from the shore, so utterly unadorned and so
severe in its design that it might be deemed of
Saxon origin, were it not for its alliance with the
elaborate Norman decoration of the other two.
These embrace again, and embody the ripple of
the sea and the monsters that take their pastime
in the deep waters. But there is one very graphic
" sermon in stone " twice repeated on the curve
and on the shoulder of the arch. Our forefathers

^ The water for baptisms at Morwenstow is always drawn from
this well, which Hawker won for the glebe by a law-suit soon after
his appointment to the living.

Morwensiow 1 1

called it (and our people inherit their phraseology)
"The Grin of Arius." The origin of the name
is this. It is said that the final development of
every strong and baleful passion in the human
countenance is a fierce and angry laugh. In a
picture of the Council of Nicaea, which is said
still to exist, the bafHed Arius is shown among
the doctors with his features convulsed into a
strong and demoniac spasm of malignant mirth.
Hence it became one of the usages among the
graphic imagery of interior decoration to depict
the heretic as mocking the mysteries with that
glare of derision and gesture of disdain, which
admonish and instruct, by the very name of
" The Grin of Arius." Thence were derived the
lolling tongue and the mocking mouth which are
still preserved on the two corbels of stone in this
early Norman work. To this period we must
also allot the piscina,^ which was discovered and
rescued from desecration by the present vicar.

The chancel wall one day sounded hollow when
struck ; the mortar was removed, and underneath
there appeared an arched aperture, which had been
filled up with jumbled carved work and a crushed
drain. It was cleared out, and so rebuilt as to
occupy the exact site of its former existence. It
is of the very earliest type of Christian architecture,
and, for aught we know, it may be the oldest
piscina in all the land. At all events, it can

1 See Appendix A.

12 Footprints in Far Cornwall

scarcely have seen less than a thousand years.
It perpetuates the original form of this appanage
of the chancel ; for the horn of the Hebrew altar/
as is well known to architectural students, was
in shape and in usage the primary type of the
Christian piscina. These horns were four, one
at each corner, and in outline like the crest of a
dwarf pillar, with a cup-shaped mouth and a
grooved throat, to receive and to carry down the
superfluous blood and water of the sacrifices into
a cistern or channel underneath. Hence was
derived the ecclesiastical custom that, whenever
the chalice or other vessel had been rinsed, the water
was reverently poured into the piscina, which was
usually built into a carved niche of the southward
chancel wall. Such is the remarkable relic of former
times which still exists in Morwenstow church,
verifying, by the unique and remote antiquity
of its pillared form, its own primeval origin.

But among the features of this sanctuary none
exceed in singular and eloquent symbolism the
bosses of the chancel roof. Every one of these is
a doctrine or a discipline engraven in the wood by
some Bezaleel or Aholiab of early Christian days.
Among these the Norman rose and the fleur-de-lis
have frequent pre-eminence. The one, from the
rose of Sharon downward, is the pictured type of
our Lord ; the other, whether as the lotus of the

1 In Blight's book on *< Ancient Cornish Crosses/" etc., there is
an engraving of the Morwenstow Piscina and a Hebrew altar, with
a note by Hawker.

a

Morwenstow 13

Nile or the lily of the vale, is the type of His
Virgin Mother ; and both of these floral decora-
tions were employed as ecclesiastical emblems
centuries before they were assumed into the shields
of Normandy or England. Another is the double-
necked eagle, the bird of the Holy Ghost in the
patriarchal and Mosaic periods of revelation, just
as the dove afterwards became in the days of the
Gospel ; and, mythic writers having asserted that
when Elisha sought and obtained from his master
** a double portion of Elijah*s spirit," this miracle
was portrayed and perpetuated in architectural
symbolism by the two necks of the eagle of Elisha.
Four faces cluster on another boss, — ^three with
masculine features, and one with the softer impress
of a female countenance, a typical assemblage of
the Trinity and the Mother of God. Again we
mark the tracery of that " piety of the birds,** as
devout writers have named the fabled usage of
the pelican.' She is shown baring and rending
her own veins to nourish with her blood her
thirsty offspring, — a group which so graphically
interprets itself to the eye and mind of a Christian
man that it needs no interpretation.

But very remarkable, in the mid-roof, is the

^ Among some unpublished MSS. of Hawker^s is the following
verse, dated 1840 : —

<< Thus said the pious Pelican unto her thirsty Young,
< Drink, drink 1 my desert children : be beautiful and strong.
What tho^ it be the lifeblood from my veins ye drain away ;
Ye will grow and glide in glory, and for me, O let me die/ '*

14 Footprints in Far Cornwall

boss of the pentade ^ of Solomon. This was the
five-angled figure which was engraven on an
emerald, and wherewith he ruled the demons ; * for
they were the vassals of his mighty seal : the five
angles in their original mythicism, embracing as
they did the unutteraUe name, meant, it may be,
the fingers of Omnipotence as the symbolic Hand
subsequently came forth in shadows on Belshazzar's
wall. Be this as it may, it was the concurrent
belief of the Eastern nations that the sigil of the
Wise King was the source and instrument of his
supernatural power. So Heber writes in his
" Palestine •'—

*^To him were known, so Hagar's ofispring tell.
The powerful sigil and the starry spell :
Hence all his might, for who could these oppose ?
And Tadmor' thus and Syrian Balbec rose/*

1 Hawker had a teal engntved with this pentade. Compare the
lines in his poem << Baal-2^hon.'*

<< Oh for the Sigil I or the chanted spell !
The pentacle that Demons know and dread/'

In a letter to Miss Louisa Twining, Hawker writes : << The
pentacle of Solomon, or five-pointed figure, was derived from his seal
wherewith he ruled the genii. It was a sapphire, and it contained
a hand alt*ve which grasped a small serpent, also alive. Through the
bright gem both were visible, the hand and the « worm* as of old
they called it. When invoked by the king, the fingers moved and
the serpent writhed and miracles were wrought by spirits which
were vassals of the gem. . . . Because of this mystic Hand the
pentacle or five-pointed (fingered) figure became the Sigil of
Signomancy in the early ages."

* For an instance of its use in exorcism, see the " Botathen Ghost "

story, p. 158.

» « And Solomon built . . . Baalath, and Tadmor in the

Wilderness" (1 Kings ix. 17-18).

^.1. ifti':

- . jj. -jj. .jj(. •^-

Morwenstoii) 15

Hence it is that we find this mythic figure^ in
decorated delineation, as the signal of the bound*
less might of Him whose Church bends over all,
the pentacle of Omnipotence I Akin to * this
graphic imagery is the shield of David, the theme
of another of our chancel-bosses. Here the out-
line is six-angled: Solomon's device with one
angle more, which, I would submit, was added
in order to suggest another doctrine — the man-
hood taken into God, and so to become a
typical prophecy of the Incarnation. The frame-
work of these bosses is a cornice of vines.
The root of the vines on each wall grows from
the altar-side ; the stem travels outward across
the screen towards the nave. There tendrils cling
and clusters bend, while angels sustain the entire
tree.

" Hearken ! there is in Old Morwenna's shrine^
A lonely sanctuary of the Saxon days,
Reared by the Serern Sea for prayer and praise.

Amid the carved work of the roof a vine.
Its root is where the eastern sunbeams fall
First in the chancel, then along the wall,

Slowly it travels on — a leafy line

With here and there a cluster ; and anon

More and more grapes, until the growth hath gone

Through arch and aisle. Hearken! and heed the
sign ;
See at the altar-side the stead£ist root,
Mark well the branches, count the summer fruit.

So let a meek and faithful heart be thine,

And gather from that tree a parable divine !

M

1 6 Footprints in Far Cornwall

A screen^ divides the deep and narrow chancel
from the nave. A scroll of rich device runs
across it, wherein deer and oxen browse on the
leaves of a budding vine. Both of these animals
are the well-known emblems of the baptised, and
the sacramental tree is the type of the Church
grafted into God.

A strange and striking acoustic result is accom-
plished by this and by similar chancel-screens :
they act as the tympanum of the structure, and
increase and reverberate the volume of sound. The
voice uttered at the altar-side smites the hollow
work of the screen, and is carried onward, as by
some echoing instrument, into the nave and aisles ;
so that the lattice-work of the chancel, which at
first thought might appear to impede the transit
of the voice, does in reality grasp and deliver into
stronger echo the ministry of tone.

Just outside the screen, and at the step of the
nave, is the grave of a priest. It is identified by
the reversed position of the carved cross on the
stone, which also indicates the self-same attitude
in the corpse. The head is laid down toward the
east, while in. all secular interment the head is
turned to the west. Until the era of the Reforma-
tion, or possibly to a later date, the head of the
priest upon the bier for burial, and afterwards in

1 This screen was constructed by Mr. Hawker from the rescued
remnants of an older screen^ pieced together with ironwork. It has
since been taken down, and the old carving placed in other parts of
the church.

Morwenstow 1 7

the grave, was always placed " versus altare ; *' and,
according to all ecclesiastical usage, the discipline
was doctrinal also. The following is the reason
as laid down by Durandus and other writers.
Because the east, "the gate of the morning,"
is the keblah of Christian hope, inasmuch as
• the Messiah, whose symbolic name was " The
Orient,'* thence arrived, and thence, also, will
return on the chariots of cloud for the Judgment :
we therefore place our departed ones with their
heads westward, and their feet and faces towards
the eastern sky,^ that at the outshine of the Last
Day, and the sound of the archangel, they may
start from their dust, like soldiers from their
sleep, and stand up before the Son of man
suddenly 1 But the apostles were to sit on future
thrones and to assist at the Judgment : the
Master was to arrive for doom amid His
ancients gloriously, and the saints were to judge
the world. These prophecies were symbolised by
the burial of the clergy, and thence, in contrast
with other dead, their posture in the grave. It
was to signify that it would be their office to
arise and to " follow the Lord in the air," when
He shall arrive from the east and pass onward,
gathering up His witnesses toward the west Thus,
in the posture of the departed multitudes, the sign
is, " We look for the Son of Man : ad Orientem
Judah." And in the attitude of His appointed

^ Sec Appendix A6.

C

1 8 Footprints in Far Cornwall

ministers, thus saith the legend on the tombs of
His priests, " They arose and followed Him."

The eastern window of the chancel,^ as its legend
records, is the pious and dutiful oblation of
Rudolph, Baron Clinton, and Georgiana Eliza-
beth his wife. The central figure embodies the
legend of St. Morwenna, who stands in the atti-
tude of the teacher of the Princess Edith, daughter
of Ethelwolf the Founder King ; on the one side
is shown St. Peter, and on the other St. Paul.
The upper spandrels are filled with a Syrian lamb,
a pelican with her brood, and the three first letters
of the Saviour's name. The window ^ itself is the
recent offering of two noble minds ; and while on
this theme we may be pardoned for the natural
boast that the patrons of this chancel have called
by the name of Morwenna one of the fair and
graceful daughters of their house. "Nomen,
omen," was the Roman saying, — " Nomen,
numen," be our proverb now ! But before we
proceed to descend the three steps of the chancel
floor, so obviously typical of Faith, Hope, and
Charity, let us look westward through the

1 The chancel has been restored by Lord Clinton. The old altar
ornaments used by Mr. Hawker are preserved in the vestry.

2 See note on p. 6. Two new lancet windows have since been
placed in the chancel, one by Mrs. Waddon Martyn, of Tonacombe,
in memory of her husband, the other by friends of the Rev. J. Tagert,
to commemorate the restoration of the church during his vicariate.
A larger memorial window has also been placed by the Martyn
family at the east end of the north aisle.

Morwenstow 19

tower-arch ; and as we look we discover that the
builders, either by chance or design, have turned
aside or set out of proportional place the western
window of the tower. Is this really so, or does
the wall of the chancel swerve ? The deviation
was intended, nor without an error could we
render the crooked straight. And the reason is
said to be this : when our Redeemer died, at the
utterance of the word rcreXcoTat, " It is done ! "
His head declined towards His right shoulder,
and in that attitude He chose to die. Now it
was to commemorate this drooping of the Saviour's
head, to record in stone this eloquent gesture of
our Lord, that the " wise in heart," who traced this
church in the actual outline of a cross, departed
from the precise rules of architect and carpenter.

The southern aisle, dedicated to St. John
the Baptist, with its granite and dunstone
pillars, is of the later Decorated order, and is
remarkable for its singular variety of material in
stone. Granite pillars are surmounted by arches
of dunstone ; and, vice versa^ dunstone arches
by pillared granite. This is again a striking
example of doctrine proclaimed in structure, and
is symbolic of the fact that the Spiritual Church
gathered into one body every hue and kind of
belief ; whereas " Jew and Greek, Barbarian and
Scythian, bond and free," were to be all one in
Christ Jesus : so the material building personified,
in its various and visible embrace, one Church to

20 Footprints in Far Cornwall

grasp, and a single roof to bend over all. This,
the last addition to the ancient sanctuary of St.
Morwenna, bears on the capital of a pillar the date
A.D. 1475,^ *^d ^^s the total structure stands a
graphic monument of the growth and stature of
a scene of ancient worship, which had been
embodied and completed before the invention
of printing and other modern arts had worked
their revolution upon Western Europe.

The worshipper must descend three steps of
stone as he enters into this aisle of St. John ; and
this gradation is intended to recall the time and
the place where the multitude went down into the
river of Dan " at Bethabara, beyond Jordan, where
John was baptising."

The churchyard of Morwenstow is the scene of
other features of a remote antiquity. The roof
of the total church— chancel, nave, northern and
southern aisles — is of wood. Shingles of rended
oak occupy the place of the usual, but far more
recent, tiles which cover other churches ; and it
is not a little illustrative of the antique usages of
this remote and lonely sanctuary, that no change
has been wrought, in the long lapse of ages, in
this unique and costly, but fit and durable, roofing.
It supplies a singular illustration of the Syriac
version of the 90th Psalm, wherein, with prophetic
reference to these commemorations of the death-

1 This appears to be an error, as the date on the pillar (in Roman
figures) is 1564. (Sec Appendix A.)

Morwenstow 2 1

bed of the Mcssias, it is written, ** Lord, Thou
hast been our roof from generation to generation."
The northern side of the churchyard is, accord-
ing to ancient usage, devoid of graves.^ This is
the common result of an unconscious sense among
the people of the doctrine of regions — a thought
coeval with the inspiration of the Christian era.
This is their division.* The east was held to be
the realm of the oracles, the especial gate of the
throne of God ; the west was the domain of the
people^-the Galilee of all nations was there ;
the south, the land of the mid-day, was sacred to
things heavenly and divine ; but the north was
the devoted region of Satan and his hosts, the lair
of the demon and his haunt. In some of our
ancient churches, and in the church of Welcombe,^
a hamlet bordering on Morwenstow, over against
the font, and in the northern wall, there is an
entrance named the Devil's door : it was thrown
open at every baptism, at the Renunciation, for
the escape of the fiend ; while at every other time

* See Appendix Kb*

^ Compare the apportionment of the regions among the four great

knights, Lancelot, Perceval, Tristan, and Galahad, in ^ The Quest of

the Sangraal."

**Let us arise

And cleave the earth like rivers ; like the streams

That win from Paradise their immortal name :

To the four winds of God, casting the lot , . . "

The mystic attributes of the foiir regions are told in Ikies of
inccnnparable grandeur.

^ More about this village is to be found in the article ''HolacombeJ^

22 Footprints in Far Cornwall

it was carefully closed. Hence, and because of
the doctrinal suggestion of the ill-omened scenery
of the northern grave-ground, came the old dis-
like ^ to sepulture on the north side, so strikingly
visible around this church.

The events of the last twenty years have added
fresh interest to God's acre, for such is the exact
measure of the grave ground of St. Morwenna.
Along and beneath the southern trees, side by
side, are the graves of between thirty and forty
seamen, hurled by the sea, in shipwreck, on the
neighbouring rocks, and gathered up and buried
there by the present vicar and his people. The
crews of three lost vessels, cast away upon the
rocks of the glebe and elsewhere, are laid at rest
in this safe and silent ground. A legend for one
recording-stone thus commemorates a singular
scene. The figurehead ^ of the brig Caledonia^ of
Arbroath, in Scotland, stands at the graves of her
crew, in the churchyard of Morwenstow : —

u

We laid them in their lowly rest.
The strangers of a distant shore ;

We smoothed the green turf on their breast,
'Mid baffled ocean's angry roar !

And there — the relique of the storm —

We fixed £iir Scotland's figured form.

* This dislike is disappearing. WTien I was at Welcombe recently
a grave was being dug on the northern side of the church. The
grave-digger said he had been christened and married by Mr.
Hawker : "one of the best passons,** he added, "us ever had." — Ed.

* See p. 62.

«:

o .j..j..t..t"J"J-.

Morwenstow 23

She watches by her bold — her brave —
Her shield towards the £ital sea ;

Their cherished lady of the wave
Is guardian of their memory !

Stern is her look, but calm, for there

No gale can rend, or billow bear.

Stand, silent image, stately stand !

Where sighs shall breathe and tears be shed ;
And many a heart of Cornish land

Will soften for the stranger-dead.
They came in paths of storm — they found
This quiet home in Christian ground.'

*9

Halfway down the principal pathway of the
churchyard is a granite altar-tomb. It was raised,
in all likelihood, for the old " month*s mind," or
" year's mind," of the dead : and it records a
sad parochial history of the former time. It was
about the middle of the sixteenth century that
John Manning, a large landowner of Morwen-
stow, wooed and won Christiana Kempthorne, the
vicar's daughter. Her father was also a wealthy
landlord of the parish in that day. Their marriage
united in their own hands a broad estate, and in
the midst of it the bridegroom built for his bride
the manor-house of Stanbury, and labelled the
door-heads and the hearths with the blended
initials ^ of the married pair. It was a great and
a joyous day when they were wed, and the bride

1 These initials are still to be seen at Stanbury, now a farmhouse.
The scene of Mr. Baring-Gould's novel " The Gaverocks " is partly
laid there.

24 Footprints in Far Cornwall

was led home amid all the solemn and festal
observances of the «time. There were liturgical
benedictions of the mansion-house, the hearth,
and the marriage-bed ; for a large estate and a
high place for their future lineage had been
blended in the twain. Five months afterwards,
on his homeward way from the hunting-field,
John Manning was assailed by a mad bull, and
gored to death not far from his home. His
bride, maddened at the sight of her husband's
corpse, became prematurely a mother and died.
They were laid, side by side, with their buried
joys and blighted hopes, underneath this altar-
tomb — whereon the simple legend records that
there lie " John Manning and Christiana his wife,
who died a.d. 1546, without living issue."

When the vicar of the parish arrived, in the
year 1836, he brought with him, among other
carved oak furniture, a bedstead of Spanish chest-
nut, inlaid and adorned with ancient veneer : and
it was set up, unwittingly, in a room of the
vicarage which looked out upon the tombs. In
the right-hand panel of the framework, at the
head, was grooved in the name of John Manning ;
and in the place of the wife, the left hand,
Christiana Manning, with their marriage date
between. Nor was it discovered until afterwards
that this was the very couch of wedded benedic-
tion, a relic of the great Stanbury marriage, which
had been brought back and set up within sight of

Morwenstaw 25

the unconscious grave ; and thus that the sole
surviving records of the bridegroom and the bride
stood side by side, the bedstead and the tomb, the
first and the last scene of their early hope and
their final rest.

Another and a lowlier grave bears on its record-
ing-stone a broken snatch of antique rhythm,
interwoven with modern verse. A young man ^
of this rural people, when he lay a-dying, found
solace in his intervals of pain in the remembered
echo of, it may be, some long-forgotten dirge ;
and he desired that the words which so haunted
his memory might somehow or other be engraved
on his stone. He died, and his parish priest ful-
filled his desire by causing the following death-
verse to be set up where he lies. We shall close
our legends of Morwenstow with these simple
lines.' The fi-agment which clung to the dying
man's memory was the first only of these
lines : —

" ' Sing ! from the chamber to the grave ! *
Thus did the dead man say, —

* A sound of melody I crave
Upon my burial-day.

1 Richard Cann, who died February 1 5, 1 842. Compare Hawker's
head-note to the poem in ^* Cornish Ballads/' where it is called
« The Dirge."

^ It may be said that the first editions of some of Hawker's poems
are on the grave-stones in Morwenstow churchyard. Other verses of
this kind are those « On the Grave of a Child," and some of the
prose inscriptions bear traces of the same authorship.

26 Footprints in Far Cornwall

* Bring forth some tuneful instrument.

And let your voices rise :
My spirit listened as it went
To music of the skies !

* Sing sweetly while you travel on,

And keep the funeral slow :
The angels sing where I am gone ;
And you should sing below !

* Sing from the threshold to the porch,

Until you hear the bell ;
And sing you loudly in the church
The P^lms I love so well.

* Then bear me gently to my grave :

And as you pass along.
Remember, *twas my wish to have
A pleasant funeral-song !

* So earth to earth — ^and dust to dust—

And though my bones decay,

My soul shall sing among the just.

Until the Judgment-day ? ' '*

THE FIRST CORNISH MOLE^

A MORALITY FROM THE ROCKY LAND

A LONELY life for the dark and silent mole !
Day is to her night. She glides along her
narrow vaults, unconscious of the glad and glorious
scenes of earth and air and sea. She was born, as it
were, in a grave ; and in one long, living sepulchre
she dwells and dies. Is not existence to her a kind
of doom ? Wherefore is she thus a dark, sad exile
from the blessed light of day ? Hearken !

Here, in our bleak old Cornwall, the first mole
was once a lady of the land. Her abode was in
the far west, among the hills of Morwenna, beside
the Severn Sea. She was the daughter of a lordly
race, the only child of her mother ; and the father
of the house was dead : her name was Alice of
the Combe. Fair was she and comely, tender and
tall ; and she stood upon the threshold of her
youth. But most of all did men marvel at the
glory of her large blue eyes. They were, to look
upon, like the summer waters, when the sea is
soft with light. They were to her mother a joy,
and to the maiden herself, ah ! benedicite^ a pride.

^ "From Notes & Sljferiesyi9tfX!t^yo\,\i,^,2Z$, 1850. SeeAppen.B.

27

28 Footprints in Far Cornwall

She trusted in the loveliness of those eyes, and in
her face and features and form ; and so it was
that the damsel was wont to pass the whole
summer day in the choice of rich apparel and
precious stones and gold. Howbeit this was
one of the ancient and common usages of those
old departed days. Now, in the fashion of her
stateliness and in the hue and texture of her
garments, there was none among the maidens of
old Cornwall like Alice of the Combe. Men
sought her far and near, but she was to them all,
like a form of graven stone, careless and cold.
Her soul was set upon a Granville's love, fair Sir
Beville of Stowe — the flower of the Cornish
chivalry — that noble gendeman ! That valorous
knight ! he was her star. And well might she
wait upon his eyes ; for he was the garland of the
west. The loyal soldier of a Stuart king — he Was
that stately Granville who lived a hero's life and
died a warrior's death I He was her star. Now
there was signal made of banquet in the halls of
Stowe, of wassail and dance. The messenger had
sped, and Alice of the Combe would be there.
Robes, precious and many, were unfolded from
their rest, and the casket poured forth jewel and
gem, that the maiden might stand before the
knight victorious. It was the day — the hour —
the time — her mother sate at her wheel by the
hearth — the page waited in the hall— she came
down in her loveliness, into the old oak room.

The First Cornish Mole 29

and stood before the mirrored glass — ^her robe

was of woven velvet, rich and glossy and soft ;

jewels shone like stars in the midnight of her

raven hair, and on her hand there gleamed afar off

a bright and glorious ring ! She stood— she

gazed upon her own fair countenance and form,

and worshipped 1 " Now all good angels succour

thee, my Alice, and bend Sir Seville's soul 1

Fain am I to greet thee wedded wife before I die I

I do yearn to hold thy children on my knee !

Often shall I pray to-night that the Granville

heart may yield 1 Ay, thy victory shall be thy

mother's prayer." ** Prayer I '* was the haughty

answer : " now, with the eyes that I see in that

glass, and with this vesture meet for a queen,

I lack no trusting prayer I " ^ Saint Juliot

shield us ! Ah ! words of fatal sound — there

was a sudden shriek, a sob, a cry, and where was

Alice of the Combe ? Vanished, silent, gone !

They had heard wild tones of mystic music in the

air, there was a rush, a beam of light, and she

was gone, and that for ever I East sought they

her, and west, in northern paths and south ; but

she was never more seen in the lands. Her

mother wept till she had not a tear left ; none

sought to comfort her, for it was vain. Moons

waxed and waned, and the crones by the cottage

* Compare " The Silent Tower of Bottreaux."

'* Thank God, thou whining knave I on land.
But thank, at sea, the steersman's hand/'

30 Footprints in Far Cornwall

hearth had whiled away many a shadowy night
with tales of Alice of the Combe. But at the
last, as the gardener in the pleasaunce ^ leaned one
day on his spade, he saw among the roses a small
round hillock of earth, such as he had never seen
before, and upon it something which shone. It
was her ring ! It was the very jewel she had worn
the day she vanished out of sight 1 They looked
earnestly upon it, and they saw within the border,
for it was wide, the tracery of certain small fine
runes in the ancient Cornish tongue, which said —

" Beiyan erde
Oyn und perde ! "

Then came the priest of the place of Morwenna,
a grey and silent man ! He had served long
years at his lonely altar, a worn and solitary form.
But he had been wise in language in his youth,
and men said that he heard and understood voices
in the air when spirits speak and glide. He read
and he interpreted thus the legend on the ring, —

** The earth must hide,
Both eyes and Pride ! "

Now as on a day he uttered these words, in
the pleasaunce, by the mound, on a sudden there
was among the grass a low faint cry. They be-
held, and oh, wondrous and strange ! There was
a small dark creature, clothed in a soft velvet
skin in texture and in hue like the Lady Alice

^ The scene of this legend is pointed out in^the garden ai
Tonacombe Manor.

ift

^»- :«:--i

The First Cornish Mole 31

her robe, and they saw, as it groped into the
earth, that it moved along without eyes, in ever-
lasting night ! Then the ancient man wept, for
he called to mind many things and saw what they
meant ; and he showed them how that this was
the maiden, who had been visited with a doom
for her Pride! Therefore her rich array had
been changed into the skin of a creeping thing ;
and her large proud eyes were sealed up, and she
herself had become

The First Mole of the Hillocks of Cornwall I

Ah, woe is me and well-a-day 1 that damsel so
stately and fair, sweet Lady Alice of the Combe,
should become, for a judgment, the dark mother
of the Moles 1 Now take ye good heed, Cornish
maidens, how ye put on vain apparel to win love !
And cast down your eyes, all ye damsels of the
west, and look meekly on the ground I Be ye
ever good and gentle, tender and true ; and when
ye see your own image in the glass, and ye
begin to be lifted up with the loveliness of that
shadowy things call to mind the maiden of the
vale of Morwenna, her noble eyes and comely
countenance, her vesture of price, and the glitter-
ing ring I Set ye by the wheel as of old they
sate, and when ye draw forth the lengthening
wool, sing ye evermore and say —

" Beryan crde
Oyn und perde ! "

THE GAUGER'S POCKET'

pOOR old Tristram Pentire ! How he comes
•■• up before me as I pronounce his name ! That
light, active, half-stooping form, bent as though he
had a brace of kegs upon his shoulders still ; those
thin, grey, rusty locks that fell upon a forehead
seamed with the wrinkles of threescore years and
five ; the cunning glance that questioned in his eye,
and that nose carried always at half-cock, with a
red blaze along its ridge, scorched by the departing
footstep of the fierce fiend Alcohol, when he
fled before the reinforcements of the coast-guard.
He was the, last of the smugglers ; and when
I took possession of my glebe, I hired him as my
servant-of-all-work, or rather no-work, about the
house, and there he rollicked away the last few
years of his careless existence, in all the pomp and
idleness of " The parson's man." He had taken
a bold part in every landing on the coast, man
and boy, full forty years ; throughout which time
all kinds of men had largely trusted him with
their brandy and their lives, and true and f^thful
had he been to them, as sheath to steel.

Gradually he grew attached to me, and I could

1 From Household IVords^ vol, vi. pp. 515-517. 1853.

3*

The Ganger^ s Pocket 33

but take an interest in him. I endeavoured to
work some softening change in him, and to
awaken a certain sense of the errors of his former
life. Sometimes, as a sort of condescension on
his part, he brought himself to concede and to
acknowledge, in his own quaint, rambling way —

" Well, sir, I do think, when I come to look
back, and to consider what lives we used to live,
— drunk all night and idle abed all day, cursing,
swearing, fighting, gambling, lying, and always
prepared to shet [shoot] the gauger, — I do really
believe, sir, we surely was in sin ! "

But, whatever contrite admissions to this ex-
tent were extorted from old Tristram by misty
glimpses of a moral sense and by his desire to
gratify his master, there were two points on
which he was inexorably firm. The one was, that
it was a very guilty practice in the authorities to
demand taxes for what he called run goods ; and
the other settled dogma of his creed was, that it
never could be a sin to make away with an excise-
man. Battles between Tristram and myself on
these themes were frequent and fierce ; but I am
bound to confess that he always managed, some-
how or other, to remain master of the field.
Indeed, what Chancellor of the Exchequer could
be prepared to encounter the triumphant demand
with which Tristram smashed to atoms my
suggestions of morality, political economy, and
finance ? He would listen with apparent patience

D

34 Footprints in Far Cornwall

to all my solemn and secular pleas for the
revenue, and then down he came upon me with
the unanswerable argument — '

" But why should the king tax good liquor ?
If they must have taxes, why can't they tax some-
thing else ? "

My efforts, however, to soften and remove his
doctrinal prejudice a^ to the unimportance, in a
moral point of view, of putting the officers of his
Majesty's revenue to death, were equally unavail-
ing. Indeed, to my infinite chagrin, I found that
I had lowered myself exceedingly in his estimation
by what he called standing up for the exciseman.

** There had been divers passons," he assured
me, " in his time in the parish, and very learned
clergy they were, and some very strict ; and some
would preach one doctrine and some another ; and
there was one that had very mean notions about
running goods, and said 'twas a wrong thing to
do ; but even he, and the rest, never took part
with the gauger — never 1 And besides," said old
Trim, with another demolishing appeal, " wasn't
the exciseman always ready to put m to death
when he could ? "

With such a theory it was not very astonishing
— although it startled me at the time — that I was
once suddenly assailed, in a pause of his spade,
with the puzzling inquiry, " Can you tell me the
reason, sir, that no grass will ever grow upon the
grave of a man that is hanged unjustly ? "

The Ganger's Pocket 35

" No, indeed, Tristram. I never heard of the
fact before."

" Well, I thought every man know*d that from
the Scripture : why, you can see it, sir, every
Sabbath-day. That grave on the right hand of
the path, as you go down to the porch-door, that
heap of airth with po growth, not one blade of
grass on it — that's Will Pooly's grave that was
hanged unjustly."

" Indeed ! but how came such a shocking deed
to be done ? "

" Why, you see, sir, they got poor Will down
to Bodmin, all among strangers, and there was
bribery, and false swearing ; and an unjust judge
came down — and the jury all bad rascals, tin-and-
copper-men — ^and so they all agreed together, and
they hanged poor Will. But his friends begged
the body and brought the corpse home here to
his owni parish ; and they turfed the grave, and
they sowed the grass twenty times over, but 'twas
all no use, nothing would ever grow — he was
hanged unjustly."

" Well, but, Tristram, you have not told me
all this while what this man Pooly was accused
of : what had he done ? "

" Done, sir ! Done ? Nothing whatever but
killed the exciseman ! "

The glee, the chuckle, the cunning glance, were
inimitably characteristic of the hardened old
smuggler ; and then down went the spade with

36 Footprints in Far Cornwall

a plunge of defiance, and as I turned away, a
snatch of his favourite song came carolling after
me like the ballad of a victory : —

C(

On, through the ground-sea^ shove !

Light on the larboard bow !
There's a nine-knot breeze above.

And a sucking tide below I

Hush ! for the beacon £iils :

The skulking gauger's by.
Down with your studding-sails.

Let jib and foresail fly !

Hurrah for the light once more !

Point her for Shark's-Nose Head ;
Our friends can keep the shore.

Or the skulking gauger's dead.

On, through the ground-sea, shove !

Light on the larboard bow !
There's a nine-knot breeze above,

And a sucking tide below ! "

Among the " king's men," whose achievements
haunted the old man's memory with a sense of
mingled terror and dislike, a certain Parminter
and his dog occupied a principal place. This
officer appeared to have been a kind of Frank
Kennedy ^ in his way, and to have chosen for his
watchword the old Irish signal, " Dare 1 "

" Sir," said old Tristram once, with a burst of
indignant wrath — " Sir, that villain Parminter and

* A oharacter in ** Guy Mannering."

The Ganger's Pocket 2n

his dog murdered with their shetting-irons no less
than seven of our people at divers times, and they
peacefully at work in their calling all the while I "
I found on further inquiry that this man
Parminter was a bold and determined officer,
whom no threats could deter and no money bribe.
He always went armed to the teeth, and was
followed by a large, fierce, and dauntless dog,
which he had thought fit to call Satan. This
animal he had trained to carry in his mouth a
carbine qr a loaded club, which, at a signal from
his master, Satan brought to the rescue. "Ay,
they was bold audacious rascals — that Parminter
and his dog — but he went rather too far one
day, as I suppose," was old Tristram's chuck-
ling remark, as he leaned on his spade, and I
stood by.

" Did he. Trim ; in what way ? "
" Why, sir, the case was this. Our people had
a landing down at Melhuach,^ in Johnnie Mathey's
hole, and Parminter and his dog found it out.
So they got into the cave at ebb tide, and laid in
wait, and when the first boat-load came ashore,
just as the keel took the ground, down storms
Parminter, shouting for Satan to follow. The
dog knew better, and held back, they said, for
the first time in all his life : so in leaps Parminter
smash into the boat alone, with his cutlass drawn ;

^ A cove some six miles S.W. of Bude. Hawker has a poem
on the death of a noted smuggler, '* Mawgan of Melhuach/^

40 Footprints in Far Cornwall

there, grown over with moss and lichen, with a
movable slice of rock to conceal its mouth, old
Tristram pointed out, triumphantly, a dry and
secret crevice, almost an arm*s-length deep.
" There, sir," said he, with a joyous twinkle in
his eye, — ^\ there have I dropped a little bag of
gold, many and many a time, when our people
wanted to have the shore quiet and to keep the
exciseman out of the way of trouble ; and there
he would go, if so be he was a reasonable officer,
and the byword used to be, when 'twas all right,
one of us would go and meet him, and then say,
* Sir, your pocket is unbuttoned ; ' and he would
smile and answer, * Ay, ay ! but never mind, my
man, my money's safe enough ; ' and thereby we
knew that he was a just man, and satisfied, and
that the boats could take the roller in peace ; and
that was the very way, sir, it came to pass that
this crack in the stone was called for evermore
« The Gauger's Pocket.' "

V

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS^

^TpHE life and adventures of the Cornish clergy
^ during the eighteenth century would form
a graphic volume of ecclesiastical lore. Afar off
from the din of the noisy world, almost un-
conscious of the badge-words High Church and
Low Church, they dwelt in their quaint grey
vicarages by the churchyard wall, the saddened
and unsympathising witnesses of those wild, fierce
usages of the west which they were utterly power-
less to control. The glebe whereon I write
has been the scene of many an unavailing contest
in the cause of morality between the clergyman
and his flock. One aged parishioner recalls and
relates the run — that is, the rescue — of a cargo of
kegs underneath the benches and in the tower-
stairs of the church. " We bribed Tom Hocka-
day, the sexton," so the legend ran, " and we had
the goods safe in the seats by Saturday night.
The parson did wonder at the large congregation,
for divers of them were not regular church-goers
at other times ; and if he had known what was
going on he could not have preached a more

1 From Household Words^ vol. viii. pp. 305, 306. 1853.

41

42 Footprints in Far Cornwall

suitable discourse, for it was, * Be not drunk with
wine, wherein is excess/ One of his best sermons ;
but there it did not touch us, you see, for we
never tasted anything but brandy or gin. Ah !
he was a dear old man our parson, mild as milk ;
nothing ever put him out. Once I mind, in the
middle of morning prayer, there was a buzz down
by the porch, and the folks began to get up and
go out of church one by one. At last there was
hardly three left. So the parson shut the book
and took off his surplice, and he said to the clerk,
^ There is surely something amiss.' And so there
certainly was ; for when we came out on the cliff
there was a king's cutter in chase of our vessel,
the Black Prince^ close under the land, and there
was our departed congregation looking on. Weil,
at last Whorwell, who commanded our trader, ran
for the Gullrock (where it was certain death for
anything to follow him), and the revenue com-
mander sheered away to save his ship. Then off
went our hats, and we gave Whorwell three
cheers. So, when there was a little peace, the
parson said to us all, * And now, my friends, let
us return and proceed with divine service.' We
did return ; and it was surprising, after all that
bustle and uproar, to hear how Parson Trenowth
went on, just as nothing had come to pass : ' Here
beginneth the Second Lesson.' " But on another
occasion, the equanimity and forbearance of the
parson were sorely tired. He presided, as the

The Light of Other Days 43

custom was, at a parish feast, in cassock and
bands, and had, with his white hair and venerable
countenance, quite an apostolic aspect and mien.
On a sudden, a busy whisper among the farmers
at the lower end of the table attracted his notice,
interspersed as it was by sundry nods and glances
towards himself. At last one bolder than the rest
addressed him, and said that they had ;a great
wish to ask his reverence a question if he would
kindly grant them a reply : it was on a religious
subject that they had dispute, he said. The
bland old man assured them of his readiness to
yield them any information or answer in his
power.

" But what was the point in debate ? "

** Why, sir, we wish to be informed if there
were not sins which God Almighty would never
forgive ? "

Surprised and somewhat shocked, he told them
"that he trusted there were no transgressions,
common to themselves, but, if repented of and
abjured, they might clearly hope to be forgiven."
But, with a natural curiosity, he inquired what
kind of iniquities they had discussed as too vile
to look for pardon. "Why, sir," replied their
spokesman, "we thought that if a man should
find out where run goods was deposited and
should inform the gauger, that such a villain was
too bad for mercy."

How widely the doctrinal discussions of those

44 Footprints in Far Cornwall

days diflfered from our own ! Let us not, how-
ever, suppose that all the clergy were as gentle
and unobtrusive as Parson Trenowth. A tale is
told of an adjacent parish, situate also on the
sea-shore, of a more stirring kind. It was full sea
in the evening of an autumn day when a traveller
arrived where the road ran along by a sandy
beach, just above high-water mark. The stranger,
who was a native of some inland town, and
utterly unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways,
had reached the brink of the tide just as a " land-
ing " was coming off. It was a scene not only to
instruct a townsman but also to dazzle and surprise.
At sea, just beyond the billows, lay the vessel
well moored with anchors at stem and stern.
Between the ship and the shore boats laden to the
gunwale passed to and fro. Crowds assembled
on the beach to help the cargo ashore. On the
one hand a boisterous group surrounded a keg
with the head knocked in, for simplicity of access
to the good cognac, into which they dipped what-
soever vessel came first to hand : one man had
filled his shoe. On the other side they fought
and wrestled, cursed and swore. Horrified at
what he saw, the stranger lost all self-command,
and, oblivious of personal danger, he began to
shout, " What a horrible sight ! Have you no
shame ? Is there no magistrate at hand ? Can-
not any justice of the peace be found in this
fearful country ? "

The Light of Other Days 45

«

" No — thanks be to God," answered a hoarse,
grufF voice ; " none within eight miles."

" Well, then," screamed the stranger, ** is there
no clergyman hereabout ? Does no minister of
the parish live among you on this coast ? "

" Ay ! to be sure there is," said the same deep
voice.

" Well, how for off does he live ? Where is
he ? "

"That's he yonder, sir, with the lanthorn."
And sure enough there he stood, on a rock, and
poured, with pastoral diligence, the light of other
days on a busy congregation.

THE REMEMBRANCES OF A
CORNISH VICARS

TT has frequendy occurred to my thoughts that
^ the events which have befallen me since my
collation to this wild and remote vicarage, on the
shore of the billowy Adantic sea, might not be
without interest to the reader of a more refined
and civilised region. When I was collated to the
incumbency in i8 — ^ I found myself the first
resident vicar for more than a century. My
parish was a domain of about seven thousand
acres, bounded on the landward border by the
course of a curving river,' which had its source
with a sister stream * in a moorland spring within
my territory, and, flowing southward, divided two
counties in its descent to the sea. My seaward
boundary was a stretch of bold and rocky shore,
an interchange of lofty headland and deep and
sudden gorge, the cliflfe varying from three
hundred to four hundred and fifty feet of per-
pendicidar or gradual height, and the valleys
gushing with torrents, which bounded rejoicingly

1 From All the Year Rounds vol. xiii. pp. 153-156. 1865.
81834. ^ThcTamar. * The Toiridgc.

46

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 47

towards the sea, and leaped at last, amid a cloud
of spray, into the waters. So stern and pitiless is
this iron-bound coast, that within the memory of
one man upwards of eighty wrecks have been
counted within a reach of fifteen miles, with only
here and there the rescue of a living man. My
people were a mixed multitude of smugglers,
wreckers, and dissenters of various hue. A few
simple-hearted farmers had clung to the grey old
sanctuary of the church and the tower that looked
along the sea ; but the bulk of the people, in the
absence of a resident vicar, had become the
followers of the great preacher^ of the last century
who came down into Cornwall and persuaded the
people to alter their sins. I was assured, soon
after my arrival, by one of his disciples, who led
the foray among my flock, that my ^* parish was
so rich in resources for his benefit, that he called
it, sir, the garden of our circuit." The church
stood on the glebe, and close by the sea. It was
an old Saxon station, with additions of Norman
structure, and the total building, although of
gradual erection, had been completed and con-
secrated before the middle of the fifteenth century.
The vicarage, built by myself, stood, as it were,
beneath the sheltering shadow of the walls and
tower. My land extended thence to the shore.
Here, like the Kenite,^ I had " built my nest upon
the rock," and here my days were to glide away,

1 John Wesley. ^ And like Daniel Gumb. See p. 107.

48 Footprints in Far Cornwall

afar from the noise and busde of the world, in
that which is perhaps the most thankless office in
every generation, the effort to do good against
their will to our fellow-men. Mine was a
perilous warfare. If I had not, like the apostle,
to " fight with wild beasts at Ephesus," I had to
soothe the wrecker, to persuade the smuggler,
and to " handle serpents," in my intercourse with
adversaries of many a kind. Thank God I the
promises which the clergy inherit from their
Founder cannot fail to be fulfilled. It was never
prophesied that they should be popular, or wealthy,
or successfid among men ; but only that they
" should endure to the end," that " their genera-
tion should never pass away." Well has this
word been kept !

Among my parishioners there were certain
individuals who might be termed representative
men, — quaint and original characters, who em-
bodied in their own lives the traditions and the
usages of the parish. One of these had been for
full forty years a wrecker — that is to say, a watcher
of the sea and rocks for flotsam and jetsam, and
other unconsidered trifles which the waves might
turn up to reward the zeal and vigilance of a
patient man. His name was Peter Burrow, a
man of harmless and desultory life, and by no
means identified with the cruel and covetous
natives of the strand, with whom it was a matter
of pastime to lure a vessel ashore by a treacherous

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 49

light, or to withhold succour from the seaman
struggling with the sea. He was the companion
of many of my walks, and the witness with my-
self of more than one thrilling and perilous scene.
Another of my parish notorieties, the hero of
contraband adventure, and agent for sale of
smuggled cargoes in bygone times, was Tristram
Pentire,^ a name known to the readers of these
pages. With a merry twinkle of the eye, and in
a sharp and ringing tone, it was old Tristram's
usage to recount for my instruction such tales of
wild adventure and of " derring-do " as would
make the foot of an exciseman iBdter and his cheek
turn pale. But both these cronies of mine were
men devoid of guile, and in their most reckless
of escapades innocent of mischievous harm. It
was not long after my airival in my new abode
that I was plunged all at once into the midst of a
fearful scene of the terrors of the sea. About
daybreak of an autumn day I was aroused by a
knock at my bedroom-door ; it was followed by
the agitated voice of a boy, a member of my
household, "Oh, sir, there are dead men on
vicarage rocks ! "

In a moment I was up, and in my dressing-
gown and slippers rushed out. There stood my
lad, weeping bitterly, and holding out to me in
his trembling hands a tortoise alive. I found
afterwards that he had grasped it on the beach,

* Vide p. 32, it seq,

£

50 Footprints in Far Cornwall

and brought it in his hand as a strange and
marvellous arrival from the waves, but in utter
ignorance of what it might be. I ran across my
glebe, a quarter of a mile, to the cliflfe, and down
a frightful descent of three hundred feet to the
beach. It was indeed a scene to be looked on
once only in a human life. On a ridge of rock,
just left bare by the falling tide, stood a man,
my own servant ; he had come out to see my
flock of ewes, and had found the awful wreck.
There he stood, with two dead sailors at his feet,
whom he had just drawn out of the water stiff
and stark. The bay was tossing and seething
with a tangled mass of rigging, sails, and broken
fragments of a ship ; the billows rolled up
yellow with corn, for the cargo of the vessel had
been foreign wheat ; and jever and anon there
came up out of the water, as though stretched out
with life, a human hand and arm. It was the
corpse of another sailor drifting out to sea. " Is
there no one alive ? " was my first question to my
man. " I think there is, sir," he said, "for just
now I thought I heard a cry." I made haste in
the direction he pointed out, and, on turning a
rock, just where a brook of fresh water fell
towards the sea, there lay the body of a man in
a seaman's garb. He had reached the water
faint with thirst, but was too much exhausted
to swallow or drink. He opened his eyes at our
voices, and as he saw me leaning over him in

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 5 1

my cassock-shaped dressing-gown, he sobbed,
with a piteous cry, " O mon pire, mon pfere ! "
Gradually he revived, and when he had fully
come to himself with the help of cordials and
food, we gathered from him the mournful tale
of his vessel and her wreck. He was a Jersey
man by birth, and had been shipped at Malta, on
the homeward voyage of the vessel from the port
of Odessa with corn. I had sent in for brandy,
and was pouring it down his throat, when my
parishioner, Peter Burrow, arrived. He assisted,
at my request, in the charitable office of restoring
the exhausted stranger ; but when he was re-
freshed and could stand upon his feet, I remarked
that Peter did not seem so elated as in common
decency I expected he would be. The reason
soon transpired. Taking me aside, he whispered
in my ear, "Now, sir, I beg your pardon, but
if you'll take my advice, now that man is come
to himself, if I were you I would let him go his
way wherever he will. If you take him into your
house, he'll surely do you some harm." Seeing
my surprise, he went on to explain, " You don't
know, sir," he said, " the saying on our coast —

'^ ^ Save a stranger from the sea.
And he*ll turn your enemy/

There was one Coppinger^ cast ashore from a
brig that struck up at Hartland, on the Point.

» See the essay, " Cruel Coppinger," and Appendix F.

52 Footprints in Far Cornwall

Farmer Hamlyn dragged him out of the water
and took him home, and was very kind to him.
Lord, sir ! he never would leave the house again 1
He lived upon the folks a whole year, and at
last, lo and behold ! he married the farmer's
daughter Elizabeth, and spent all her fortin
rollicking and racketing, till at last he would
tie her to the bedpost and flog her till her father
wovdd come down with more money. The old
man used to say he wished he'd let Coppinger
lie where he was in the waves, and never laid
a finger on him to save his life. Ay, and divers
more I've heerd of that never brought no good
to they that saved them."

" And did you ever yourself, Peter," said I,
" being, as you have told me, a wrecker so many
years — did you ever see a poor fellow clambering
up the rock where you stood, and just able to
reach your foot or hand, did you ever shove him
back into the sea to be drowned ? "

"No, sir, I declare I never did. And I do
believe, sir, if I ever had done such a thing, and
given so much as one push to a man in such
a case, I think verily that afterwards I should
have been troubled and uncomfortable in my
mind."

" Well, notwithstanding your doctrine, Peter,"
said I, ^* we will take charge of this poor fellow ;
so do you lead him into the vicarage and order a
bed for him, and wait till I come in."

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 53

I returned to the scene of death and danger,
where my man awaited me. He had found, in
addition to the two corpses, another dead body
jammed under a rock. By this time a crowd of
people had arrived from the land, and at my
request they began to search anxiously for the
dead. It was, indeed, a terrible, scene. The
vessel, a brig of five hundred tons, had struck, as
we afterwards found, at three o'clock that morning,
and by the time the wreck was discovered she had
been shattered into broken pieces by the fixry of
the sea. The rocks and the water bristled with
fragments of mast and spar and rent timbers ;
the cordage lay about in tangled masses. The
rollers tumbled in volumes of corn, the wheaten
cargo ; and amidst it all the bodies of the helpless
dead — that a few brief hours before had walked
the deck the stalwart masters of their ship —
turned their poor disfigured faces toward the sky,
pleading for sepulture. We made a temporary
bier of the broken planks, and laid thereon the
corpses, decently arranged. As the vicar, I led
. the way, and my people followed with ready zeal
as bearers, and in sad procession we carried our
dead up the steep cliflF, by a difficult path, to
await, in a room at my vicarage which I allotted
them, the inquest. The ship and her cargo were,
as to any tangible value, utterly lost.

The people of the shore, after having done
their best to search for survivors and to discover

54 Footprints in Far Cornwall

the lost bodies, gathered up fragments of the
wreck for fuel, and shouldered them away, — not
perhaps a lawful spoil, but a venal transgression
when compared with the remembered cruelties of
Cornish wreckers. Then ensued my interview
with the rescued man. His name was Le Daine.
I found him refreshed, and collected, and grateful.
He told me his Tale of the Sea. The captain
and all the crew but himself were from Arbroath,
in Scotland. To that harbour also the vessel
belonged. She had been away on a two years'
voyage, employed in the Mediterranean trade.
She had loaded last at Odessa. She touched at
Malta, and there Le Daine, who had been sick
in the hospital, but recovered, had joined her.
There also the captain had engaged a Portuguese
cook, and to this man, as one link in a chain of
causes, the loss of the vessel might be ascribed.
He had been wounded in a street-quarrel the
night before the vessel sailed from Malta, and lay
disabled and useless in his cabin throughout
the homeward voyage. At Falmouth whither
they were bound for orders, the cook died.
The captain and all the crew, except the
cabin-boy, went ashore to attend the funeral.
During their absence the boy, handling in
his curiosity the barometer, had broken the
tube, and the whole of the quicksilver had run
out. Had this instrument, the pulse of the storm,
been preserved, the crew would have received

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 55

warning of the sudden and unexpected hurricane,
and might have stood out to sea. Whereas they
were caught in the chops of the Channel, and thus,
by this small incident, the vessel and the mariners
found their fate on the rocks of a remote head-
land in my lonely parish. I caused Le Daine
to relate in detail the closing events.

" We received orders," he said, " at Falmouth
to make for Gloucester to discharge. The captain,
and mate, and another of the crew, were to be
married on their return to their native town.
They wrote, therefore, to Arbroath from Fal-
mouth, to announce their safe arrival there from
their two years' voyage, their intended course to
Gloucester, and their hope in about a week to
arrive at Arbroath for welcome there."

But in a day or two after this joyful letter,
there arrived in Arbroath a leaf torn out of my
pocket-book, and addressed "To the Owners of
the Vessel," the Caledonia of Arbroath, with the
brief and thrilling tidings, written by myself in
pencil, that I wrote among the fragments of their
wrecked vessel, and that the whole crew, except
one man, were lost " upon my rocks." My note
spread a general dismay in Arbroath, for the crew,
from the clannish relationship among the Scots,
were connected with a large number of the
inhabitants. But to return to the touching details
of Le Daine.

"We rounded the Land's End," he said, "that

56 Footprints in Far Cornwall

night all well, and came up Channel with a fair
wind. The captain turned in. It was my watch.
AH at once, about nine at night, it began to blow
in one moment as if the storm burst out by
signal ; the wind went mad ; our canvas burst
in bits. We reeved fresh sails ; they went also.
At last we were under bare poles. The captain
had turned out when the storm began. He sent
me forward to look out for Lundy Light. I saw
your cliff." (This was a blxiifand broken head-
land just by the southern boundary of my own
glebe.) " I sung out, * Land ! * I had hardly
done so when she struck with a blow, and stuck
fast. Then the captain sung out, 'All hands to
the maintop 1 ' and we all went up. The captain
folded his arms, and stood by, silent."

Here I asked him, anxious to know how they
expressed themselves at such a time, " But what
was said afterwards, Le Daine ? "

" Not one word, sir ; only once, when the
long-boat went over, I said to the skipper, * Sir,
the boat is gone ! ' But he made no answer."

How accurate was Byron*s painting —

" Then shrieked the timidy and stood still the brave " !

" At last there came on a dreadfid wave, mast-
top high, and away went the mast by the board,
and we with it, into the sea. I gave myself up.
I was the only man on the ship that could not
swim, so where I fell in the water there I lay. I

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 57

felt the waves beat me and send me on. At last
there was a rock under my hand. I clung on.
Just then I saw Alick Kant, one of our crew,
swimming past. I saw him lay his hand on a
rock, and I sung out, * Hold on, Alick I * but a
wave rolled and swept him away, and I never
saw his face more. I was beaten onward and
onward among the rocks and the tide, and at last
I felt the ground with my feet. I scrambled on.
I saw the cliff, steep and dark, above my head. I
climbed up until I reached a kind of platform
with grass, and there I fell down flat upon my
face, and either I fainted away or I fell asleep.
There I lay a long time, and when I awoke it was
just the break of day. There was a little yellow
flower just under my head, and when I saw that
I knew I was on dry land." This was a plant of
the bird's-foot clover, called in old times Our
Lady's Finger. He went on : "I could see no
house or sign of people, and the country looked
to me like some wild and desert island. At last
I felt very thirsty, and I tried to get down towards
a valley where I thought I should find water ; but
before I could reach it I fell and grew faint again,
and there, thank God, sir, you found me."

Such was Le Daine's sad and simple story,
and no one could listen unmoved or without a
strong feeling of interest and compassion for the
poor solitary survivor of his shipmates and crew.
The coroner arrived, held his 'quest, and the

58 Footprints in Far Cornwall

usual verdict of " Wrecked and cast ashore "
empowered me to inter the dead sailors, found
and future, from the same vessel, with the service
in the Prayer-book for the Burial of the Dead.
This decency of sepulture is the result of a some-
what recent statute, passed in the reign of George
IIL Before that time it was the common usage
of the coast to dig, just above high-water mark,
a pit on the shore, fand therein to cast, without
inquest or religious rite, the carcasses of ship-
wrecked men. My first funeral of these lost
mariners was a touching and striking scene. The
three bodies first found were buried at the same
time. Behind the coflins, as they were solemnly
borne along the aisle, walked the solitary mourner,
Le Daine, weeping bitterly and aloud. Other
eyes were moist, for who could hear unsoftened
the greeting of the Church to these strangers from
the sea, and the "touch that makes the whole
earth kin," in the hope we breathed that we, too,
might one day " rest as these our brethren did " ?
It was well-nigh too much for those who served
that day. Nor was the interest subdued when,
on the Sunday after the wreck, at the appointed
place in the service, just before the General
Thanksgiving, Le Daine rose up from his place,
approached the altar, and uttered, in an audible
but broken voice, his thanksgiving for his
singular and safe deliverance from the perils of
the sea.

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 59

The text of the sermon that day demands its
history. Some time before, a vessel, the Hero of
Liverpool, was seen in distress, in the offing of a
neighbouring harbour, during a storm. The crew,
mistaking a signal from the beach, betook them-
selves to their boat. It foundered, and the whole
ship's company, twelve in number, were drowned
in sight of the shore. But the stout ship held
together, and drifted on to the land so unshattered
by the sea that the coast-guard, who went im-
mediately on board, found the fire burning in the
cabin. When the vessel came to be examined,
they found in one of the berths a Bible, and
between its leaves a sheet of paper, whereon some
recent hand had transcribed verses the twenty-
first, twenty-second, and twenty-third of the
thirty-third chapter of Isaiah. The same hand
had also marked the passage with a line of ink
along the margin. The name of the owner of
the book was also found inscribed on the fly-leaf.
He was a youth of eighteen years of age, the son
of a widow, and a statement under his name
recorded that the Bible was "a reward for his
good conduct in a Sunday-school." This text,
so identified and enforced by a hand that soon
after grew cold, appeared strangely and strikingly
adapted to the funeral of shipwrecked men ; and
it was therefore chosen as the theme for our
solemn day. The very hearts of the people
seemed hushed to hear it, and every eye was

6o Footprints in Far Cornwall

turned towards Le Daine, who bowed his head
upon his hands and wept. These are the words :
"But there the glorious Lord will be unto us
a place of broad rivers and streams ; wherein shall
got no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship
pass thereliy. For the Lord is our judge, the
Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king ; He
will save ' us. The tacklings are loosed ; th^
could not well strengthen their mast, they could
not spread the sail : then is the prey of a great
spoil divided; the lame take the prey." Shall
I be forgiven for the vaunt, if I declare that there
was not literally a single face that day unmoistened
and unmoved ? Few, indeed, could have borne,
without deep emotion, to see and hear Le Daine.
He remained as my guest six weeks, and during
the whole of this time we sought diligently, and
at last we found the whole crew, nine in number.
They were discovered, some under rocks, jammed
in by the force of the water, so that it took some-
times several ebb-tides, and the strength of many
hands, to extricate the corpses. The captain I
came upon myself lying placidly upon his back,
with his arms folded in the very gesture which
Le Daine had described as he stood amid the
crew on the maintop. The hand of the spoiler
was about to assail him when I suddenly ap-
peared, so that I rescued him untouched. Each
hand grasped a small pouch or bag. One con-
tained his pistols ; the other held two litde log-

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 6i

reckoners ^ of brass ; so that his last thoughts
were full of duty to his owners and his ship, and
his latest efforts for rescue and defence. He had
been manifestly lifted by a billow and hurled
against a rock, and so slain ; for the victims of
our cruel sea are seldom drowned, but beaten to
death by violence and the wrath of the billows.
We gathered together one poor fellow in five
parts ; his limbs had been wrenched off, and his
body rent. Curing our search for his remains,
a man came up to me with something in his hand,
inquiring, " Can you tell me, sir, what is this ?
Is it a part of a man ? " It was the mangled sea-
man's heart, and we restored it reverendy to its
place, where it had once beat high with life and
courage, with thrilling hope and sickening fear.
Two or three of the dead were not discovered
for four or five weeks after the wreck, and these
had become so loathsome from decay, that it was
at peril of health and life to perform the last duties
we owe to our brother-men. But hearts and
hands were found for the work, and at last the
good ship's company — captain, mate, and crew —
were laid at rest, side by side, beneath our church-
yard trees. Groups of grateful letters from Ar-
broath ^ are to this day among the most cherished

■ These are still preserved. They are little sand-glasses, shielded
with brass, cylindrical in shape. The sand in one takes twenty-
eight seconds to run, that in the other fourteen.

' Hawker is not forgotten in Arbroath. A lecture was delivered

62 Footprints in Far Cornwall

memorials of my escritoire. Some, written by
the friends of the dead, are marvellous proofs of
the good feeling and educated ability of the
Scottish people. One from a father breaks off
in irrepressible pathos, with a burst of "O my
son ! my son ! " We placed at the foot of the
captain's grave the figurehead ^ of his vessel. It
is a carved image, life-size, of his native
Caledonia, in the garb of her country, with sword
and shield.

At the end of about six weeks Le Daine left
my house on his homeward way, a sadder and
a richer man. Gifts had been proffered from
many a hand, so that he was able to return to
Jersey, with happy and grateful mien, well clothed,
and with ;^30 in his purse. His recollections of
our scenery were not such as were in former
times associated with the Cornish shore ; for three
years afterward he returned to the place of his
disaster accompanied by his unde, sister, and
affianced wife, and he had brought them that, in
his own joyous words, "they might see the very
spot of his great deliverance : " and there, one
summer day, they stood, a group of happy faces,
gazing with wonder and gratitude on our rugged

there on February i8, 1903, by the Rev. A. E. Crowder, on "Corn-
wall : its Scenery, People, Antiquities, and Folklore." The lecturer
referred to Hawker and the wreck of the CaUdoma,
^ For Hawker's poem on this occasion, see p. 22.

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 63

cliffs, that were then clad in that gorgeous vesture
of purple and gold which the heather and gorse
wind and weave along the heights ; and the soft
blue wave lapping the sand in gentle cadence, as
though the sea had never wreaked an impvdse of
ferocity, or rent a helpless prey. Nor was the
thankfulness of the sailor a barren feeling. When-
soever afterward the vicar sought to purchase for
his dairy a Jersey cow, the family and friends of
Le Daine rejoiced to ransack the island until they
had found the sleekiest, loveliest, best of that
beautiftil breed ; and it is to the gratitude of that
poor seaman and stranger from a distant abode
that the herd of the glebe has long been famous
in the land, and hence, as Homer would have
sung — hence came

" Bleehtah, and Lilith, Neelah, Evan Neelah, and Katy."

Strange to say, Le Daine has been twice ship-
wrecked since his first peril — with similar loss of
property, but escape of life ; and he is now the
master of a vessel in the trade of the Levant.

In the following year a new and another wreck
was announced in the gloom of night. A schooner
under bare poles had been watched for many
hours from the cliffs, with the steersman fastened
at the wheel. All at once she tacked and made
for the shore, and just as she had reached a creek
between two reefs of rock, she foundered and
went down. At break of day only her vane was

64 Footprints in Far Cornwall

visible to mark her billowy grave. Not a vestige
could be seen of her crew. But in the course of
the day her boat was drifted ashore, and we found
from the name on the stern that the vessel was
the Phttnix of St Ives. A letter from myself by
immediate post brought up next day from that
place a sailor who introduced himself as the
brother of a young man who had sailed as mate in
the wrecked ship. He was a rough plainrspoken
man, of simple religious cast, without guile or
pretence : one of the good old seafaring sort — the
men who "go down to the sea in ships, and
occupy their business in great waters : " these, as
the Psalmist chants, "see the wonders of the
Lord, and His glories in the deep." At my side
he paced the shore day after day in weary quest
of the dead. "If I could but get my poor
brother*s bones," he cried out yearningly again
and again, ^^ if I could but lay him in the earth,
how it would comfort dear mother at home 1 "
We searched every cranny in the rocks, and we
watched every surging wave, until hope was
exchanged for despair. A reward of meagre Im-
port, it is true, offered by the Seaman's Burial
Act, to which I have referred, and within my own
domain doubled always by myself, brought us
many a comrade in this sickening scrutiny, but
for long it was in vain. At last one day, while
we were scattered over a broken stretch of
jumbled rocks that lay in huddled masses along

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 65

the base of the cliiFs, a loud and sudden shout
called me where the seaman of St. Ives stood.
He was gazing down into the broken sea— it was
on a spot near low-water mark — and there, just
visible- from underneath a mighty fragment of
rock, was seen the ankle of a man and a foot still
wearing a shoe. *^ It is my brother ! " yelled the
sailor, bitterly ; " it is our own dear Jem — I can
swear to that shoe ! " We gathered around ; the
tide ebbed a very litde after this discovery, and
only just enough to leave dry the surface of the
rock under which the body lay. Soon the sea
began again to flow, and very quickly we were
driven by the rising surges from the spot. The
anguish of the mourner for his dead was thrilling
to behold and terrible to hear. " O my brother !
my brother 1 " was his sob again and again ;
"what a burial-place for our own jlear merry
boy ! " I tried to soothe him, but in vain : the
only theme to which he could be brought to listen
was the chance — and I confess it seemed to my
own secret mind a hopeless thought — that it
might be possible at the next ebb-tide, by skill
and strength combined, to move, if ever so little,
the monstrous rock, and so recover the corpse.
It was low water at evening tide, and there was a
bright November moon. We gathered in num-
bers, for among my parishioners there were kind
and gentle-hearted men, such as had " pity,
tenderness, and tears," and all were moved by the

F

66 Footprints in Far Cornwall

tale of the sailor, hurled and buried beneath a
rock, by the strong and cruel sea. The scene of
our first nightly assemblage was a weird and
striking sight. Far, far above loomed the tall and
gloomy headlands of the coast : around us foamed
and raged the boiling waves : the moon cast her
massive lowering shadows on rock and sea —

^' And the long moonbeam on the cold wet sand
Lay, like a jasper column, half upreared/' ^

Stout and stalwart forms surrounded me, wield-
ing their iron bars, pickaxes, and ropes. Their
efforts were strenuous but unavailing. The tide
soon returned in its strength, and drove us, bafHed,
from the spot before we had been able to grasp or
shake the ponderous mass. It was calculated by
competent judges that its weight was full fifteen
tons : neither could there be a more graphic image
of the resistless strength of the wrathfid sea than
the aspect of this and similar blocks of rifted stone,
that were raised and rolled perpetually, by the
power of the billows, and hurled, as in some
pastime of the giants, along the shuddering shore 1
Deep and bitter was the grief of the sailor at our
failure and retreat. His piteous wail over the
dead recalled the agony of those who are recorded
in Holy Writ, they who grieved for their lost ones,

1 «Gebir/' Book L, lines 216, 217. The usual yertion has
*< hard wet sand/^ Hawker and Landor (it may be remarked by the
way) were in many respects kindred spirits.

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 67

" and would not be comforted because they were
not ! " That night an inspiration visited me in
my wakeful bed. At a neighbouring harbour^
dwelt a relative * of mine, who was an engineer,
in charge of the machinery on a breakwater and
canal. To him at morning light I sent an appeal
for succour, and he immediately responded with
aidance and advice. Two strong windlasses,
worked by iron chains, and three or four skilful
men, were sent up by him next day with instruc-
tions for their work. Again at evening ebb we
were all on the spot. One of our new assistants,
a very Tubal-Cain in aspect and stature, and of
the same craft with that smith before the Flood,
plunged upon the rock as the water reluctantly
revealed its upper side, and drilled a couple of
holes in the surface with rapid energy, to receive,
each of them, that which he called a Lewis-wedge
and a ring.^ To these the chains of the windlasses
were fastened on. They then looped a rope
around the ankle of the corpse and gave it as the
post of honour to me to hold. It was on the
evening of Sunday that all this was done, and I
had deemed it a venial breach of discipline to
omit the nightly service of the Church in order
to suit the tide. A Puseyite bishop might have

1 Bude.

2 Probably Mr. George Casebourne, Civil Engineer, who married
a sister of Mr. Hawker^ and was for some years superintendent of
the fiude Canal

68 Footprints in Far Cornwall

condemned my breach of Rubric and Ritual, but
I exercise episcopal authority in my own parish,
and accordingly I absolved myself. Forty strong
parishioners, all absentees from evening prayer,
manned the double windlass power ; I intoned the
pull ; and by a strong and blended effort the
rocky mass was slowly, silently, and gently up-
heaved : a slight haul at the rope, and up to our
startled view, and to the sudden lights, came forth
the altered, ghastly, flattened semblance of a man !
** My brother ! my brother ! " shrieked a well-
known voice at my side, and tears of gratitude
and suffering gushed in mingled torrent over his
rugged cheek. A cofRn had been made ready,
under the hope of final success, and therein we
reverently laid the poor disfigured carcass of one
who a little while before had been the young and
joyous inmate of a fond and happy home. We
had to clamber up a steep and difficult pathway
along the cliflF with the body, which was carried
by the bearers in a kind of funeral train. The
vicar of course led the way. When we were
about halfway up a singular and striking event
occurred, which moved us all exceedingly. Un-
observed — for all were intent on their solemn
task — a vessel had neared the shore ; she lay to,
and, as it seemed, had watched us with night-
glasses from the deck, or had discerned us from
the torches and lanterns in our hands. For all at
once there sounded along the air three deep and

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 69

thrilling cheers I And we could see that the crew
on board had manned their yards. It was mani-
fest that their loyal and hearty voices and gestures
were intended to greet and gratulate our fulfil-
ment of duty to a brother mariner's remains.
The burial-place of the dead sailors in this church-
yard is a fair and fitting scene for their quiet rest.
Full in view and audible in sound for ever rolls
the sea. Is it not to them a soothing requiem
that

^' Old Oceaxiy with its everlasting voice,
As in perpetual Jubilee proclaims
The praises of the Almighty '* ?

Trees stand, like warders, beside their graves ;
and the Saxon and shingled church, " the mother
of us all," dwells in silence by, to watch and wail
over her safe and slumbering dead. It recalls the
imagery of the Holy Book wherein we read of the
gathered relics of the ancient slain : " And Rizpah
the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it
for her upon the rock from the beginning of
harvest until water dropped upon them out of
heaven, and suflFered neither the birds of the air
to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field
by night." In such a shelter we laid our brother
at rest, rescued fi-om the unhallowed sepulture of
the rock ; and there the faithful voice of the
mourner breathed a last farewell. " Good-bye,"
he said, " good-bye ! Safe and quiet in the
ground ! "

70 Footprints in Far Cornwall

A year had passed away when the return of
the equinox admonished us again to listen for
storms and wrecks. There are men in this
district whos? usage it is at every outbreak of
a gale of wind to watch and ward the cliffs from
rise to set of sun. Of these my quaint old
parishioner, Peter Burrow, was one. On a wild
and dreary winter day I found myself seated on
a rock with Peter standing by, at a point that
overhung the sea. We were both gazing with
anxious dismay at a ship which was beating to
and fro in the Channel, and had now drifted
much too near to the surges and the shore.
She had come into sight some hours before
struggling with Harty Race, the local name of a
narrow and boisterous run of sea between Lundy
and the land, and she was now within three or
four miles of our rocks. ** Ah, sir," said Peter,
^•^the coastmen say,

" * From Padstow Point to Lundy Light,
Is a watery grave, by day or night.*

And I think the poor fellows off there will find it
siD." All at once, as we still watched the vessel
labouring on the sea, a boat was launched over
her side, and several men plunged into it one by
one. With strained and anxious eyes we searched
the billows for the course of the boat. Sometimes
we caught a glimpse as it rode upon some surging
wave ; then it disappeared a while, and no trace

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 71

was visible for long. At last we could see it no
more. Meanwhile the vessel held down Channel,
tacked and steered as if still beneath the guidance
of some of her crew, although it must have been
in sheer desperation that they still hugged the
shore. What was to be done ? If she struck,
the men still on board must perish without help,
for nightfall drew on ; if the boat reappeared,
Peter could make a signal where to land. In hot
haste, then, I made for the vicarage, ordered my
horse, and returned towards the clifi^. The ship
rode on, and I accompanied her way along the
shore. She reached the offing of a neighbouring
haven, and there grounded on. the sand. No boat-
man could be induced to put off, and thick dark-
ness soon after fell. I returned worn, heart-sick,
and weary on my homeward way ; there strange
tidings greeted me,— the boat which we had
watched so long had been rolled ashore by the
billows empty. Peter Burrow had hauled her
above high-water mark, and had found a name,
" T^he Ahnzo^ of . Stockton-on-Tees," on her
stern. That night I wrote as usual to the owner,
with news of the wreck, and the next day we
were able to guess* at the misfortunes of the
stranded ship : a boat had visited the vessel, and
found her freighted witfi iron from Gloucester
for a Qvjeen's yard round the Land's End. Her
papers in the cabin showed that her crew of nine
men <liad been reported all sound and well three

72 Footprints in Far Cornwall

days before. The owner's agent arrived, and he
stated that her captain was a brave and trusty
officer, and that he must have been compelled by
his men to join them when they deserted the ship.
They must all have been swamped and lost not
long after the launch of the boat, and while we
watched for them in vain amid the waves. Then
ensued what has long been with me the saddest
and most painful duty of the shore : we sought
and waited for the dead. Now there is a folk-
lore of the beach that no corpse will float or be
found until the ninth day after death. The truth
is, that about that time the body proceeds to
decompose, and as a natural result it ascends to
the surface of the current, is brought into the
shallows of the tide, and is there found. The
owner's representative was my guest for ten days,
and with the help of the ship's papers and his
own personal knowledge we were able to identify
the dead. First of all the body of the captain
came in ; he was a fine, stalwart, and resolute-
looking man. His countenance, however, had a
grim and angry aspect, and his features wore
somewhat of a fierce and reproachful look — just
such^ an expression as would verify the truth of
our suspicion that he had been driven by the
violence of others to forsake his deck. The face
of the dead man was as graphic a record of his
living character as a physiognomist could portray.
Then arrived the mate and three other men of

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 73

the crew. None were placid of feature or calm
and pleasant in look, as those usually are who are
accidentally drowned or who die in their beds.
But many of them had that awful expression of
countenance which reminded me of a picture once
described to me as the result of an experiment
by certain artists in France. It was during the
Revolution, and amid the anarchy of those times,
that they bought a criminal who had been con-
demned to die, fastened him to a cross, and
painted him for a crucifixion ; but his face wore
the aspect, not of the patient suffering which they
intended to portray, but a strong expression of
reluctant agony. Such has been the look that I
myself have witnessed in many a poor disfigured
corpse. The death-struggle of the conscious
victim in the strong and cruel grasp of the
remorseless sea was depicted in harsh and vivid
lines on the brow of the dead.

But one day my strange old man, Peter
Burrow, came to me in triumphant haste with
the loud greeting, "Sir, we have got a noble
corpse down on your beach ! We have just laid
him down above high-water mark, and he is as
comely a body as a man shall see ! " I made
haste to the spot, and there lay, with the light of
a calm and wintry day ^ing on his manly form,
a fine and stately example of a man : he was six
feet two inches in height, of firm and accurate
proportion throughout ; and he must have been.

74 Footprints in Far Cornwall

indeed, in life a shape of noble symmetry and
grace. On his broad smooth chest was tattooed
a rood — that is to say, in artist phrase, our
blessed Saviour on His cross, with, on the one
hand. His mother, and on the other St. John the
evangelist : underneath were the initial letters of
a name, "P. B." His arms also were marked
with tracery in the same blue lines. On his right
arm was engraved "P. B.'' again, and "E. M.,"
the letters linked with a wreath ; and on his left
arm was an anchor, as I imagined the symbol of
hope, and th^ small blue forget-me-not flower.
The greater number of my dead sailors — and I
have myself said the burial service over forty-two
such men rescued from the sea — were so deco-
rated with some distinctive emblem and name ;
and it is their object and intent, when they
assume these pictured signs, to secure identity for
their bodies if their lives are lost at sea, and then,
for the solace of their friends, should they be cast
on the shore and taken up for burial in the earth.
What a volume of heroism and resignation to a
mournful probability in this calm foresight and
deliberate choice, to wear always on their living
flesh, as it were, the signature of a sepulchral
name I The symbolic figures and the letters which
were supposed to designate our dead were all
faithfully transcribed and duly entered in the
vicar's book. We carried the strangely decorated
man to his comrades of the deck ; and gradually.

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 75

in the course of one month, we discovered and
carefully buried the total crew of nine strong men.
These gathered strangers, the united assemblage
from many a distant and diverse abode, now
calmly slept among our rural and homely graves,
the stout seamen of the ship Alonzo^ of Stockton-
on-Tees ! The boat which had foundered with
them we brought also to the churchyard, and
there, just by their place of rest, we placed her
beside them, keel upward to the sky, in token
that her work, too, was over and her voy^e
done. There her timbers slowly moulder still,
and by-and-by her dust will mingle in the scenery
of death with the ashes of those living hearts and
hands that manned her, in their last unavailing
launch and fruitless struggle for the mastery of
life ! But the history of the Alonzo is not yet
closed. Three years afterwards a letter arrived
from the Danish consul at a neighbouring seaport
town, addressed to myself as the vicar of the
parish ; and the hope of the writer was that he
might be able to ascertain through myself, for two
anxious and grieving parents in Denmark, tidings
of their lost son. His name, he said, was Philip
Bengstein, and it was in the correspondence that
this strange and touching history transpired. The
father, who immediately afterward wrote to my
address, told me in tearful words, that his son,
bearing that name, had gone away from his native
home because his parents had resisted a marriage

76 Footprints in Far Cornwall

which he was desirous to contract. They found
that he had gone to sea before the mast, a position
much below his station in life ; and they had
traced him from ship to ship, until at last they
found him on the papers of the AlonzOj of
Stockton-on-Tees, Then their inquiry as to the
fate of that vessel had led them to the knowledge
through the owners that the vicar of a parish
on the seaboard of North Cornwall could in all
likelihood convey to them some tidings of their
long-lost son, I related in reply the history of the
death, discovery, and burial of the unfortunate
young man. I was enabled to verify and to
understand the initial letters of his own name,
and of her who was not to become his bride —
although she still clung to his memory in loving
loneliness in that foreign land ! Ample evidence,
therefore, verified his corpse, and I was proudly
enabled to certify to his parents the reverent burial
of their child. A letter is treasured among my
papers filled to overflowing with the strong aiuJ
earnest gratitude of a stranger and a Dane for the
kindness we had rendered, to one who loved " not
wisely," perchance, "but too well," to that son
who had been lost and was found too late : one,
too, " whose course of true love " had brought
him from distant Denmark to a green hillock
among the dead, beneath a lonely tower among
the trees, by the Cornish sea ! What a picture
was that which we saw painted upon the bosom

Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar 77

and the limbs of a dead man, of fond and faithful
love, of severed and broken hearts, of disappointed
hope, of a vacant chair and a hushed voice in a
far-away Danish home ! Linked with such themes
as these which I have related in this Remembrance
are the subjoined verses, which were written on a
rock by the shore.

THE STORM

War ! 'mid the ocean and the land !
The battle-field Morwenna's strand,
Where rock and ridge the bulwark keep,
The giant warders of the deep !

They come ! and shall they not prevail,
The seething surge, the gathering gale ?
They fling their wild flag to the breeze.
The banner of a thousand seas !

They come, they mount, they charge in vain.
Thus far, incalculable main !
No more ! thine hosts have not o'erthrown
The lichen on the barrier stone !

Have the rocks faith, that thus they stand
Unmoved, a grim and stately band, ,
And look, like warriors tried and brave.
Stem, silent, reckless, o'er the wave ?

Have the proud billows thought and life
To feel the glory of the strife.
And trust one day, in battle bold.
To win the foeman's haughty hold ?

78 Footprints in Far Cornwall

Mark, where they writhe with pride and shame.
Fierce valour, and the zeal of &me ;
Hear how their din of madness raves,
The baffled army of the waves !

Thy way, O God ! is in the sea ;
Thy paths where awful waters be :
Thy Spirit thrills the conscious stone ;
O Lord ! Thy footsteps are not known.

BLACK JOHN^

A PICTURE hangs in my library — and it is one
of my most treasured relics of old Cornwall
— the full-length and " counterfeit presentment,"
in oil, of a quaint and singidar dwarf. It exhibits
a squat figure, uncouth and original, just such
a one as Frederick Taylor would delight to
introduce in one of his out-of-door pieces of
Elizabethan days, as an appendage to the rural
lady's state when she rode afield with her hawk
on her wrist. His height is under four feet,
hump-backed and misshapen ; his head, with
tangled elfy hair falling wildly on his shoulders,
droops upon his chest. Negro features and a
dark skin surround a loose and flabby mouth,
which teeth have long ceased to harmonise and
fill out. He is clad in a loose antique russet
gaberdine, the fashion of a past century : one
hand leans on a gnarled staflF, and the other holds
a wide-brimmed felt hat, with humble gesture and
look, as though his master stood by.

The traditionary name of this well-remembered
character on the Tamar-side is Black John. He

1 From AU tiu Year Rmnd^ voL xiii. pp. 454^-456. 1S65.

79

8o Footprints in Far Cornwall

lived from the commencement to the middle of
the eighteenth century in the household of an
honoured name, Arscott of Tetcott,^ an ancestor
of one of the distinguished families of Cornwall ;
and as his master was wellnigh the last of the
jovial open-housed squires of the West of Eng-
land, so was Black John the last of the jesters or
makers of mirth. When the feast was over, and
the " wrath of hunger " * had been assuaged, while
the hare's or fox's head, the festive drinking-cup
of silver, went round with the nectar of the
Georgian era, "strong punch for strong heads,"
the jester was called in to contribute by merry
antic and jocose saying to the loud enjoyment of
the guests. Such were the functions sustained
by my pictured and storied dwarf, and many an
anecdote still survives around us in hearth and
hall of the feats and stories of the " Tetcott merry-
man." Two of his usual after-dinner achievements
were better suited to the rude jollity and coarse
mirth of our forefathers than to the refinements
of our own time ; although they are said to exist
here and there, among the ** underground men "
and miners of Western Cornwall, even to this

1 See Appendix C.

^ Compare Hawker's fine description of the feast at Dundagel in
** The Quest of the Sangraal " —

*^ Strong men for meat, and warriors at the wine,
They wreak the wrath of hunger on the beeves,
They rend rich morsels from the savoury deer.
And quench the flagon like Brun-guillie dew ! **

t *B 'aJr'mt'a&'^'-^^r'

:*:

fep^fr:|:JfriS".|fS^^r

Black John 8i

day. These were " sparrow - mumbling " and
swallowing living mice, which were tethered to
a string to ensure their safe return to light and
life. In the first of these accomplishments, a
sparrow, alive, was fastened to the teeth of the
artist with a cord, and he was expected to mumble
off the feathers from the fluttering and astonished
bird, with his lips alone, until he was plucked
quite bare without the assistance or touch of
finger or hand. A couple of projecting tusks or
fangs, such as are called by the Italians Bourbon
teeth, were of singular value as sparrow-holders
to Black John ; but these were one day drawn by
violence from his mouth by an exasperated black-
smith, whose kitten had been slain, and who had
been persuaded by a wretch, who was himself the
actual assassin, that it was the jester who had
guillotined the poor creature with his formidable
jaws. The passage of the mouse was accomplished
very often, amid roars of rude applause, down
and up the gullet of the dwarf.

A tale is told of him, that one day, after he
had for some time amused the guests, and had
drank his full share of the ale, he fell, or seemed
to fall, asleep. On a sudden he started up with
a loud and terrified cry. Questioned as to the
cause of his alarm, he answered, " O sir," to his
master, " I was in a sog [sleep], and I had such a
dreadful dream ! I thought I was dead, and I
went where the wicked people go ! "

o

82 Footprints in Far Cornwall

" Ha, John," said Arscott of Tetcott, in his
grim voice, wide awake for a jest or a tale, ** then
tell us all about what you heard and saw."

** Well, master, nothing particular."

« Indeed, John ! "

" No, sir ; things was going on just as they
do upon airth — here in Tetcott Hall — the gentle-
folks nearest the fire."

His master's house was surrounded with all
kinds of tame animals and birds so bold and
confiding, from long safety and intercourse, that
the rooks would come down at a call and pick
up food like pigeons at the very feet of a man.
Among the familiar creatures of the Hall were
two enormous toads : these were especial favourites
with Mr. Arscott, who was a very Chinese in his
fondness for the bat and the toad, and who used
to feed them very often with his own hands. One
morning the family were aroused by sounds near
the porch, of battle and fight. A guest from a
distant town, who had arrived the night before
on a visit, was discovered prone upon the grass,
and over him stood as conqueror Black John,
belabouring him with his staflF. His story was,
when rescued and set upon his feet, that on going
out to breathe the morning air he had encountered
and slain a fierce and venomous reptile — a big
bloated creature that came towards him with open
mouth. It turned out to be one of the enormous
toads, an old and especial pet of master and man,

i

fp^f^r^r^cg. .w.

Black John 83

who had heard a sound of feet, and came as usual
to be fed, and was ruthlessly piit to death ; not,
however, unavenged, for a wild man of the woods
(so the townsman averred) had rushed upon him
and knocked him down. When Mr. Arscott had
heard the story, he turned on his heel, and never
greeted his guest ^ with one farewell word. Black
John sobbed and muttered vengeance in his den
for many a day for the death of " Old Dawty " —
the household name of the toad.

Black John's lair was a rude hut, which he
had wattled for a snug abode, close to the kennel.
He loved to retire to it, and sleep near his chosen
companions, the hounds. When they were un-
kennelled, he accompanied and ran with them
afoot, and so sinewy and so swift was his stunted
form that he was very often in their midst at the
death. Then, with the brush of the fox elaborately
disposed as the crest of his felt hat, John would
make his appearance on the following Sunday at
church, where it was displayed, and pompously
hung up above his accustomed seat, to his own
great delight and the envy of many among the
congregation. When the pack found the fox, and
the huntsman's ear was gladdened by their shrill
and sudden burst into full cry. Black John's shout
would be heard in the field, with his standing jest,

^ Another yerslon of the story says that he was a shoemaker
come on business, and that he never made boots for Mr. Arscott
again. For the fate of the other toad, see end of Appendix C.

84 Footprints in Far Cornwall

" There they go ! there they go ! like our missus
at home in one of her storms I" As he grew
older, and less equal to the exertion of his strong
and youthful days, John too|c to wandering, gipsy-
fashion, about the country-side ; and he found
food and welcome at every cottage and farm-
house. His usual couch was 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 hedgeboar, round his own nose."
One day, in bitter snowy weather, he was found
wanting from his accustomed haunts — " one morn
they missed him on the usual hill" — and after
long search he was discovered shrouded in snow,
cold, stiffened, and to all outward appearance
dead. He was carried home, and in due course
was coffined and borne towards the grave. But
there, just as the clergyman * who read the service
had reached the solemn words which commit the
body to the ground, a loud thumping noise was
heard within the coffin. The bystanders rent
open the lid in hot haste, and up started Black
John alive, in amazement, and in furious wrath.
He had been in a long deliquium^ or death-trance,^
from cold, and had been restored to life by the

* The Rev. Robert Martyn, then Vicar of Stratton.

^ On another occasion Black John awoke from a less serious
trance. The parson in his sermon was speaking of '< that blessedness
which on earth it is impossible to find/' when a well-known voice
from the gallery shouted, <' Not find ! Us be sartain to find un
to-morrow in Swannacott Wood I "

Black John 85

motion and warmth of his own funeral ride. As
he told the astonished mourners, " He heard the
words *dust to dust,* and then/* said he, "I
thought it was high time to bumpy/* His words
passed into a proverb ; and to this very day,
when Cornish men in these parts are placed in
some sudden extremity, and it becomes necessary
to take strong and immediate measures for extrica-
tion, the saying is, " It is time to bumpy, as Black
John said." In his anger and mental confusion.
Black John ever after attributed his attempted
burial to the conspiracy and ill-will of the clergy-
man, whose words he had interrupted by his
sudden resurrection. More than once the reverend
gentleman was suddenly assaulted in his walks by
a stone hurled at him from a hedge, followed by
an angry outcry, in a well-known voice, of " Ha !
old Dust-to-dust ; here I be, alive and kicking ! '*
It may be easily believed that Black John was
a very refractory subject for clerical interference
and admonition. The result of frequent clerical
attempts to reform his habits, was a rooted dislike
on his part of the black coat and white neckcloth
in all its shades and denominations. The visit of
the first field-preacher to the precincts of the Hall
was signalised by an exhibition of this feeling.
John waylaid the poor unsuspecting man, and
offered to guide him on his road by a short cut
across the park, which, John alleged, would save
him a " considerable bit of way.'* The treacherous

86 Footprints in Far Cornwall

guide led him along a narrow path into a paddock,
wherein was shut up for safety Mr. Arscott's
perilous favourite bull. This animal had grown
up from calf-hood the wanton but docile com-
panion of Black John, whose wonderful skill in
taming all manner of wild animals had made the
" sire of the herd " so familiar with his strange
warder, that he would follow him and obey his
signals and voice like a dog. What took place
between the bull and the preacher could only be
guessed at.^ A rush was heard by a passer-by,
and a yell ; then the rustling of the branches of
a tree, and finally a dead thud upon the grass.
From the paddock gate some little time after
emerged Black John with a fragment of a white
cravat in his hand, and this was all, so he stead-
fastly averred, that ever he could find of "the
preacher's body." Actually, it was the sole relic
of his arrival and existence that survived in those
wild parts. He was never heard of more in that
region. And although there were rural sceptics
who doubted that the bull could have made such
quick work of a full-grown man, the story was
fearful enough to scare away all wandering preachers
from that district while the dwarf lived. On the
Sunday following the terrific interview between
the preacher and the bull, John took his usual

^ In another version of the tale, Black John said to the preacher,
" Only just take your hat off and say two words of gospel to *im,
and her won't touch *ee.*

Black John 2ri

place in church, but, to the astonishment of those
who were not in the secret, instead of the usual
fox's brush, a jaunty pennon of white rag floated
as the crest of the well-known felt hat.

Black John was long and fondly cherished . by
his generous master. Mr. Arscott lived like
Adam in the garden, surrounded by his animals
and pets, each with its familiar and household
name ; and no man ever more fully realised the
truth of the saying that " love makes love," and
that the surest way to kindle kindness is to be
kind. Accurately has it been said of him —

^' Oh, for the Squire ! that shook at break of morn
Dew from the trees with echo of his horn !
The gathering scene, where Arscott's lightest word
Went, like a trumpet, to the hearts that heard ;
The dogs, that knew the meaning of his voice.
From the grim foxhound to my lady's choice :
The steed that waited till his hand caressed :
And old Black John that gave and bare the jest ! " ^

None, high or low, during the lifetime of the
squire, were allowed with impunity to injure or
harass his cross-grained jester, and many a mis-
chievous escapade was hushed up, and the sufferer
soothed or pacified by money or influence. When
gout and old age had imprisoned Mr. Arscott in
his easy-chair. Black John snoozed among the

^ This is one stanza from Hawker's own poem, "Tetcott, 1831 ;
in which year Sir William Molesworth caused the old house to be
taken down, and a new one built." (See Appendix C.)

88 Footprints in Far Cornwall

ashes of the vast wood fires of the hearth, or lay
coiled upon his nig like some faithful mastiff,
watching every look and gesture of his master ;
starting up to fill the pipe or the tankard of old
ale, and then crouching again.

*' This lasted long ; it fain would last
Till autumn rustled on the blast," ^

and the good old squire, in the language of the
Tamar-side, "passed out of it." At his death
and funeral, the agony of his 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 neighbourhood
of the grave. He made himself another lair, near
the churchyard wall, and there he sobbed away
the brief remnant of his days, in honest and un-
availing grief for the protector whom he had so
loved in life, and from whom in death he would
not be divided. Thus and there, not long after,
he died, as the old men of the parish used to
relate, for the " second and last time.** He had
what is called in those parts a decent funeral, for his
master had bequeathed to him an ample allowance
for life and death in his last will. The mourners
ate of the fat and drank of the strong, as their
Celtic impulses would suggest ; and although
some among them, who remembered John*s

t These lines are from Hawker^s poem, **A Legend of the
Hive."

Black yohn 89

former funeral, may have listened again for a
token or sign, poor Black John, alas for him I
had no master to come back to now, and declined
" to bumpy " any more.

A singular and striking circumstance attended
the final funeral of Black John. An aged crone,
bent and tottering, " worn Nature's mournful
monument," was observed following the bier, and
the people heard her muttering ever and anon,
" Oh, is he really dead ? He came to life again
once you know, and lived long after." When
assured that all indeed was over, even her wild
hope, she cried with a great sob, " O poor dear
Johnny ! he was so good-looking and so steady
till they spoilt him up at the Hall ! " Her words
recalled her to the memory of some old men who
were there, and they knew her as a certain Aunty
Bridget, who had been teased and worried, long
years agone, at markets and fairs, as " Black John's
sweetheart."

DANIEL GUMB'S ROCK^

^ I ''HERE is no part of our native country of
^ England so little known, no region so
seldom trodden by the feet of the tourist or the
traveller, as the middle moorland of old Cornwall.
A stretch of wild heath and stunted gorse, dotted
with swelling hills, and interspersed with rugged
rocks, either of native granite or rough-hewn
pillar, the rude memorial of ancient art, spreads
from the Severn Sea on the west to the tall ridge
of Carradon on the east, and from Warbstow
Barrow on the north to the southern civilisation
of Bodmin and Liskeard. Throughout this
district there is, even in these days, but very
scanty sign of settled habitation. Two or three
recent and solitary roads traverse the boundaries ;
here and there the shafts and machinery of a mine
announce the existence of underground life ; a
few clustered cottages, or huts, for the shepherds,
are sprinkled along the waste ; but the vast and
uncultured surface of the soil is suggestive of
the bleak steppes of Tartary or the far wilds of
Australia, and that in the very heart of modern

1 From Ail the Year Round, vol. xv. pp. 206-210. 1866. See
Appendix D.

90

Daniel Gumb's Rock 91

England. Yet is there no scenery that can be
sought by the antiquary or the artist that will so
kindle the imagination or requite the eye or the
mind of the wanderer as this Cornish solitude.
If he travel from our storied Dundagel, eastward,
Rowter,^ the Red Tor, so named from its purple
tapestry of heather and heath, and Brunguillie,^
the Golden Hill, crested with yellow gorse like
a crown, will win his approach and reward, with
their majestic horizon, the first efforts of his
pilgrimage. The summits and sides of these
mountains of the west are studded with many a
logan-rock^ or'shuddering-stoneof the old super-
stition. This was the pillar of ordeal in Druid
times, so poised that while it shook at the slight
faint touch of the innocent finger, it firmly with-
stood the assailing strength of the guilty man.

Passing onward, the traveller will pause amid
a winding oudine of unhewn granite pillars, and

* spelt "Routorr" in the lines quoted on p. 234. It seems
more natural to take the word as meaning "rough, or rugged, tor."
Hawker spells it **Roughtor " on p. 124.

2 Now called " Brown Willy." See the lines quoted on p. 80.

3 Compare the lines on Sir Lancelot in "The Quest of the
Sangraal,"' and Hawker's note —

" Ah me ! that logan of the rocky hills,
Pillar'd in storm, calm in the rush of war.
Shook at the Jight touch of his lady's hand ! "

The ballad on "The Doom Well of St. Madron" records a
similar test of iimocence. For Carew's description of a logan-rock,
see end of Appendix D.

92 Footprints in Far Cornwall

he will gradually discover that these are set up to
represent the coils of a gigantic serpent, traced, as
it were, in stone. This is a memorial of the
dragon-crest of a Viking, or the demon-idol and
shrine of an older antiquity. Not for off there
gleams a moorland lake or mimic sea, with its
rippling laugh of waters — the Dozmere Pool ^ of
many an antique legend and tale, the mystic scene ^
of the shadowy vessel and the Mort d* Arthur of
our living bard. A sheep-track — for no other
visible path will render guidance along the moor
— Pleads on to Kilmarth Tor, from the brow of
which lofty crag the eye can embrace the expanse
of the two seas which are the boundaries of Corn-
wall on the right and left. There, too, looms in
the distance rocky Carradon, with the valley of
the Hurlers at its foot. These tall shapes of
granite, grim and grotesque, were once, as local
legends say, nine bold upstanding Cornish men
who disdained the Sabbath-day ; and as they
pursued their daring pastime and " put the stone "
in spite of the warning of the priest, they were
changed, by a sudden doom, where they stood
up to play, and so were fixed for ever in monu-
mental rock. Above them lowers the Devil's
Wring, a pile of granite masses, lifted, as though
by giant or demon strength, one upon another ;

^ See Appendix D/z.

2 ** On one side lay the Ocean, and on one

Lay a great water, and the moon was full/*

*:!:' li."

I
I

?.^"i

Daniel Gumb's Rock 93

but the upper rocks vast and unwieldy, and the
lower gradually lessening downward, until they
rest, poised, on a pivot of stone so slender and
small that it seems as though the wind sweeping
over the moor would overtopple it with a breath ;
and yet centuries many and long have rolled over
the heath, and still it stands unshaken and un-
swerved. Its name is derived from the similitude
of the rocky structure to the press wherein the
ancient housewives of rude Cornwall were ac-
customed to "wring" out the milk from their
cheese.

Not far off from this singular monument of
"ages long ago" there is found to this day a
rough and rude assemblage of moorstone slabs,
some cast down and others erect, but manifestly
brought together and arranged by human hands
and skill. There is still traceable amid the frag-
ments the outline of a human habitation, once
divided into cells, and this was the origin and
purpose of this solitary abode. It was the work
and the home of a remarkable man — an eccentric
and original character among the worthies of the
west— and the place has borne ever since the
early years of the last century the name of Daniel
Gumb's Rock. He was a native Cornishman,
born in a cottage that bordered on the moor, and
in the lowlier ranks of labouring life. In his
father's household he was always accounted a
strange and unsocial boy. In his childhood he

94 Footprints in Far Cornwall

kept aloof from all pastime and play, and while
his companions resorted to their youthful amuse-
ments and sports, Daniel was usually seen alone
with a book or a slate whereon he worked, at
a very early age, the axioms of algebra or the
diagrams of Euclid. He had mastered with
marvellous rapidity all the books of the country-
side, and he had even exhausted the instructions
of the schoolmaster of the neighbouring town.
Then it became his chosen delight to wander on
the moors with some favourite volume in his
hand, and a crust from his mother's loaf in his
bag ; with his inseparable tools, also, the chisel
and the mallet, wherewithal to chip and gather the
geological specimens of his own district. Often
he would be absent whole nights, and when he
was questioned as to his place of shelter, he would
reply, " Where John the Baptist slept," or " At
Roche, in the hermit's bed ; " for the ruined cell
of a Christian anchorite stood, and yet stands,
above the scenery of the wanderings of that
solitary boy.

But Daniel's principal ambition was to know
and name the planets and the stars. It was at the
time when the discoveries of foreign astronomers
had peopled the heavens with fresh imagery, and
our own Newton had given to the ethereal phe-
nomena of the sky a "local habitation and a name."
It is very striking to discover when the minds of
any nation are flooded with new ideas and original

Daniel GumVs Rock 95

trains of thought, how soon the strange tidings
will reach the very skirts of the population, and
borne, how we know not, will thrill the hamlet
and the village with the wonders that have
roused and instructed the far-off and civilised
city. Thus even Daniel's distant district became
aware of the novel science of the stars, and this
intelligence failed not to excite and foster the
faculties of his original mind. Local legends still
record and identify the tall and craggy places
where the youthful " scholar " was wont to ascend
and to rest all night with his face turned upward
to the sky, " learning the customs of the stars,"
and " finding out by the planets things to come."
Nor were his studies unassisted and alone. A
master-mind of those days, Cookworthy^ of
Plymouth, a learned and scientific man, still

1 William Cookworthy (1705-1780) started life as a small
druggist in Nut Street, Plymouth. He had been educated by the
Society of Friends, and at thirty-one he retired from trade, became a
Quaker minister, and continued so for twenty-five years. About
1758, having discovered a new process of making porcelain, he set
up a manufactory at Plymouth, which was after his death transferred
to Bristol, and thence to the Potteries. *' Cookworthy is said to
have been a believer in the d&ujsing or divinmg-rod for discovering
mineral veins, and we learn that he became a disciple of Sweden-
borg. . . , As a lover of science he was much appreciated, as is
proved by the hxX that Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, and Captain
Cook, dined with him at Plymouth before their voyage round the
world" ("Dictionary of National Biography"). His duties led
him to travel about the mining districts of Cornwall, and he was a
great friend of Nancarrow of Godolphin, a superintendent of mines.
It would be on these journeys, no doubt, that he came across Daniel
Gumb. Cookworthy died on October 16, 1780, aged 76.

96 Footprints in Far Cornwall

famous in the west, found out and fostered the
genius of the intelligent youth. He gave him
access to his library, and allowed him to visit
his orrery and other scientific instruments ; and
the result of this kindness was shown in the tastes
and future peculiarities of the mind of Gumb.
The stern necessities of life demanded, in the
course of time, that Daniel should fulfil the
destiny of his birth, and win his bread by
the sweat of his brow ; for the meagre resources
of his cottage-home had to be augmented by his
youthful labour. In the choice of an occupation
his early habits were not without their influence.
He selected the craft of a hewer of stone, a very
common calling on the surrounding moors ; and
there he toiled for several years of his succeeding
life, amid the cydopean models of the early ages.
The pillared rocks of that wild domain were the
monoliths of Celtic history, and the vast piles of the
native moor were the heaped and unhewn pyramids
of an ancient and nameless people. All these sur-
rounding scenes acted on his tastes and impulses.
" So the foundations of his mind were laid ! "
His father died, and Daniel became his own
master, and had to hew his way through the
rugged world by what the Cornish call ^^ the pith
of his bones." That he did so his future history
will attest ; but it was not unsoothed nor alone ;
nor was it without the usual incident of human
existence. No man ever yet became happily great

Daniel GumUs Rock 97

or joyfully' distinguished without that kindling
strength, the aiFectionate presence of a woman.

" He who Joy would win.
Must share it : Happiness was bom a twin."

Such was the solace that arrived to soothe the
dreary path of Daniel Gumb. He wooed and
won a maiden of his native village, who, amid
the rugged rocks and appellatives of Cornwall,
had the soft Italian name of Florence. But where,
amid the utter poverty of his position and
prospects, could he find the peaceful and happy
wedding-roof that should bend over him and his
bride ? His friends were few, and they too poor
and lowly to aid his start in life. He himself had
inheritedSnothing save a strong head and heart,
and two stalwart hands. He looked around him
and afar off, and there was no avenue for house or
home. Suddenly he recalled to mind his wandering
days and his houseless nights, the scanty food, the
absorbing meditation, and the kindly shelter of
many a^^nook in the hollow places of the granite
rock. He formed his plan, and made it known
to his Ature and faithful bride ; she assented with
the full-hearted strength and trusting sacrifice of
a woman's love. Then he went forth in the might
of his simple and strong resolve, — his tools in his
scrip, and a loaf or two of his accustomed house-
hold bread. He sought the well-known slope
under Carradon, searched many a mass of Druid

H

98 Footprints in Far Cornwall

rock, and paced around cromlech and pillared
stone of old memorial/ until he discovered a
primeval assemblage of granite slabs suited to his
toil. One of these, grounded upon several others,
the vast boulders of some diluvian flood, had the
rude semblance of a roof. Underneath this
shelving rock he scooped away the soil, finding,
as he dug on, more than one upright slice of
moorstone, which he left to stand as an inner
and natural wall. At last, at the end of a few
laborious days, Daniel stood before a large cavern
of the rocks, divided into chambers by upstand-
ing granite, and sheltered at a steep angle by a
mountainous mass of stone. Nerved and sustained
by the hopeful visions which crowded on his
mind, and of which he firmly trusted that this
place would be the future scene, he toiled on
until he had finally framed a giant abode such
as that wherein Cyclops shut in Ulysses and his
companions, and promised to "devour No-man
the last." Materials for the pavement and for
closing up the inner walls were scattered
abundantly around — nay, the very furniture for
that mountain-home was at once ready for his
hand ; for as Agag,^ king of the Amalekites, had

1 << On many a cairn's grey pyramid,
Where urns of mighty chiefs lie hid."

Litf of the Last ^nstreL

^ It was not Agag, but Og, the king of Bashan, who had the
bedstead of iron. See Deuteronomy iii. 11.

Daniel GumUs Rock 99

his vaunted iron bed, so did Gumb frame and
hew for himself and Florence, his wife, table and
seat and a bedstead of native stone. Then he
smoothed out and shot into a groove a thick and
heavy door, so that, closed like an Eastern
sepulchre, it demanded no common strength to
roll away the stone. When all had been pre-
pared, the bridegroom and the bride met at a
distant church ; the simple wedding-feast was
held at her father's house ; and that night the
husband led the maiden of his vows, the bride of
his youth, to their wedding-rock 1 If he had
known the ode, he might have chanted, in
Horatian ^ verse, that day —

'' Nunc scio quid sit amor, duris in cotibus ilium "
" Now know I what true love is ; in rugged dens he dwells."

Here the wedded pair dwelt in peace long and
happy years, mingling the imagery of old romance
with the sterner duties of practical life. As a fer-
famed hewer of stone, the skill and energy of this
singular man never lacked employ, nor failed to

* This is probably a slip of the pen for " Virgilian." The line
occurs in VirgiPs " Eclogues," 8, 43. There is no stop at " ilium."
The sentence is carried on to the next lines —

<' Aut Tmaros aut Rhodope aut extremi Garamantes
Nee generis nostri puerum nee sanguinis edunt.''

Conington translates the passage thus : << Now know I what love
is ; it is among savage rocks that he is produced by Tmarus or
Rhodope or the Garamantes at earth^s end \ no child of lineage or
blood like ours.'" Hawker's translation, it must be owned, is
preferable as far as it goes.

loo Footprints in Far Cornwall

supply the necessities of his moorland abode.
Like a patriarch in his tent amid the solitudes of
Syria, he was his own king, prophet, and priest.
He paid neither rent, nor taxes, nor tithe. When
children were born to him, he exercised unwit-
tingly the power of lay-baptism which was granted
in the primitive Church to the inhabitants of a
wilderness, afar from the ministry of the priesthood,
and his wife was content to be " churched " by
her own cherished husband, among the altars of
unhewn stone that surrounded their solitary cell.
Who shall say that this simple worship of the
father and the mother with their household, amid
the paradise of hills, was not as sweet, with the
balsam of the soul, as the incense-breathing psalm
of the cathedral choir ? Rightly or wrongly, it
is known that Daniel entertained an infinite con-
tempt for "the parsons" whose territories bor-
dered on the moor. Not one of them, it was his
wont to aver, could cross the Asses* Bridge of his
favourite Euclid, a feat he had himself accomplished
in very early youth ; nor could the most learned
among them all unravel the mysteries of his chosen
companions, the wandering stars that travelled
over Carradon every night. Long and frequent
were his vigils for astronomical researches and
delight. To this day the traveller will encounter
on the face of some solitary rock a mathematical
diagram carefully carved by some chisel and hand
unknown ; and while speculation has often been

Daniel Gumb's Rock loi

rife as to the Druidical origin of the mystic figure,
or the scientific knowledge of the early Kelts, the
local antiquary is aware that these are the simple
records of the patient studies of Daniel Gumb.

When the writer of this article visited the
neighbourhood in 1 83-, there still survived relics
and remembrances of this singular man. There
were a few written fi-agments ^ of his thoughts and
studies still treasured up in the existing families
of himself and his wife. Here is a transcript :
" Mr. Cookworthy told me, when I saw him last,
that astronomers in foreign parts, and our great
man Sir Isaac here at home, had thought that
the planets were so vast, and so like our earth in
their ways, that they might have been inhabited
by men ; but he said, * their elements and
atmosphere are thought to be unfit for human life
and breath.' But surely God would not have so
wasted His worlds as to have made such great
bright masses of His creation to roll along all
barren, as it were, like desert places of light in the
sky. There must be people of some kind there :
how I should like to see them, and to go there
when I die I "

Another entry on the same leaf: ** Florence
asked me to-day if I thought that our souls, after
we are dead, would know the stars and other wise

1 Evidences of thought and style make it almost certain that
these ingenious ** fragments " are Hawker's " own invention." See
note on p. 104.

I02 Footprints in Far Cornwall

things better than we can now. And I answered
her, Yes ; and if I could — that is, if I was allowed
to — the first thing I would try should be to square
the circle true, and then, if I could, I would mark
it and work it out somewhere hereabouts on a flat
rock, that my son might find it there, and so make
his fortune and be a great man. N.B. — Florence
asked me to write this down."

On a thick sheet of pasteboard, with a ground-
plan of a building on the other side, he had
written: " January i6, 1756. — ^A terrible storm last
night. Thunder and lightning and hail, with a
tempest of wind. Saw several dead sheep on the
moor. Shipwrecks, no doubt, at sea. A thought
came into my mind. Why should such harm be
allowed to be done ? I read some reasons once
in a book that Mr. Cookworthy lent me, called
* The Origin of Evil ; ' but I could not under-
stand a word of it. My notion is, that when evil
somehow came into the world, God did not
destroy it at once, because He is so almighty that
He let it go on, to make manifest His power and
majesty ; and so He rules over all things, and
turns them into good at the last. N.B. — ^The
devil is called in the Bible the Prince of the
Powers of the Air : so he may be, but he must
obey his Master. The poor wretch is but a slave
after all I "

On the fly-leaves of an old account-book the
following strange statement appears : " June 23,

Daniel GumUs Rock 103

1764. — To-day, at bright noon, as I was at my
work upon the moor, I looked up, and saw all at
once a stranger standing on the turf, just above
my block. He was dressed like an old picture I
remember in the windows of St. Neot*s Church,
in a long brown garment, with a girdle ; and his
head was uncovered and grizzled with long hair.
He spoke to me, and he said, in a low, clear voice,
* Daniel, that work is hard ! ' I wondered that
he should know my name, and I answered, * Yes,
sir ; but I am used to it, and don't mind it, for
the sake of the faces at home.' Then he said,
sounding his words like a psalm, ^Man goeth
forth to his work and to his labour until the
evening ; when will it be night with Daniel
Gumb ? ' I began to feel queer ; it seemed to
me that there was something awful about the
unknown man. I even shook. Then he said
again, *Fear nothing. The happiest man in all
the earth is he that wins his daily bread by his
daily sweat, if he will but fear God and do no
man wrong.' I bent down my head like any one
confound^, and I greatly wondered who this
strange appearance could be. He was not like a
preacher, for he looked me full in the face ; nor
a bit like a parson, for he seemed very meek and
kind. I began to think it was a spirit, only such
ones always come by night, and here was I at
noonday, and at work. So I made up my mind
to drop my hammer and step up and ask his name

I04 Footprints in Far Cornwall

right out. But when I looked up he was gone,
and that clear out of my sight, on the bare wide
moor suddenly/ I only wish that I had gone
forward at once and felt him with my hand, and
found out if he was a real man or only a resem-
blance. What could it mean I Mem. to ask
Mr. C."

This event is recorded in a more formal and
painful handwriting than the other MSS. which
survive. Nothing could be further removed from
• superstition or fear than this man's whole
character and mind. E^ard as one of his native
rocks, and accurate as a diagram, yet here is a
tinge of that large and artless belief which is so
inseparable from a Keltic origin, and which is so
often manifested by the strongest and loftiest
minds. Another paragraph, written on the blank
page of an almanac, runs thus : " Found to-day,
in the very heart of a slab rock that came out
below the granite, the bony skeleton of a strange
animal, or rather some kind of fish. The stone
had never been broken into before, and looked
ages older than the rocks above. Now, how
came this creature ^ to get in, and to die and
harden there ? Wab it before Adam's time, or
since ? What date was it ? But what can we

* It was a trick of Hawker's style to end a sentence with this or
similar adverbs. Instances occur on pp. 17 and 172. Elsewhere he
writes : << As the lightning leaps from the dark cloud suddenly.""
Little points like this suggest the real authorship of Daniel Gumbos
diary.

Daniel Gumb's Rock 105

tell about dates after all ? Time is nothing but
Adam's clock — a measurement that men invented
to reckon by. This very rock with the creature
in it was made, perhaps, before there was any
such thing as time. In eternity may be — that is,
before there were any dates begun. At all events,
when God did make the rock, He must have put
the creature there." This appears to be a singular
and rude anticipation of modern discovery, and a
simple solution of a question of science in our
own and later time. It is to be lamented that
these surviving details of a thoughtful and original
life are so few and far between.

Gumb appears to have united in his native
character the simplicity of an ancient hermit and
the stern contempt of the solitary student for the
busy hum of men, with the brave resolution and
independent energy of mind which have won
success and feme for some of our self-made sons
of science and skill. But his opportunities were
few, and the severance of his life and abode from
contact with his fellow-men forbade that access to
the discoveries and researches of his kind which
might have rendered him, in other days, the
Hugh Miller of the rocks, or the Stephenson or
Watt of a scientific solitude. He and his wife
inhabited their wedded cell for many years and
long. The mother on her stony couch gladdened
her anxious husband with sons and daughters ;
but she had the courage to brave her woman's

/

io6 Footprints in Far Cornwall

trials alone, for neither midwife nor doctor were
ever summoned to " the rock." These, as may
well be imagined, were all literally educated at
home ; but only one of their children — his name
was John — ^appears to have inherited his father*s
habits or energy. He succeeded to the caverned
home after Daniel's death, and when his mother
had returned to her native village to die also, the
existence of John Gumb is casually seen recorded
as one of the skilful hewers of stone at the foot of
Carradon. But Daniel died " an old man full of
days," and he was carried after all ad plureSj and
to the silent society of men, in the churchyard
of the parish wherein stood afar off his rocky
home. He won and he still deserves a nook of
remembrance among the legendary sons of the
west, "the giants" of Keltic race, "the mighty
men that were of old, the men of renown." His
mind, though rough-hewn, like a block of his
native granite, must have been well balanced :
resolute and firm reliance on a man's own re-
sources, and disdain of external succour, have
ever been a signal of native genius. To be able
to live alone, according to the adage of an ancient
sage, a man must be either an angel or a demon.
Gumb was neither, but a simple, strong-hearted,
and intellectual man. He had the "mens sana
in corpore sano" of the poet's aspiration. A
scenic taste and a mind " to enjoy the universe "
he revealed in the very choice of his abode. In

Daniel GumVs Rock 107

utter scorn of the pent-up city, and dislike for the
reek of the multitude, he built like " the Kenite,
his nest in the rock ; *' * nor did he pitch his stony
tent by chance, or in a casual place in the wild.
He chose and he fixed his home where his eye
could command and exult in a stretch of circum-
ferent scenery a hundred and fifty miles in sur-
rounding extent. In the east, he greeted the
morning sun, as he mounted the rugged saddle of
Dartmoor and Exmoor for his daily career. To
the west, Roche, the rock of the ruined hermitage,
lifted a bold and craggy crest to the sky, where
long centuries before another solitary of more
ascetic mind lay, like the patriarch on his pillow
of granite, and reared a ladder to heaven by the
energy of nightly prayer. Far, far away to the
westward the haughty sun of England went into
the storied sea of Arthur and his knights, and
touched caressingly the heights of grim Dundagel
with a lingering halo of light. These were the
visions that soothed and surrounded the worker
at his daily toil, and roused and strengthened the
energies of the self-sustaining man. The lessons
of the legend of Daniel Gumb are simple and
earnest and strong. The words of supernatural
wisdom might be graven as an added superscrip-
tion on his rock, *^ Whatsoever thou doest, do it

1 Numbers xxiv. zi, *' And he (Balaam) looked on the Kenites,
and took up his parable, and said, Strong is thy dwelling-place, and
thou puttest thy nest in a rock/*

io8 Footprints in Far Cornwall

with all thine heart." If thou be a man friendless
and alone, the slave of the hammer or the axe,
and doomed to the sweat of labour day by day
till the night shall come that no man can work,
" aide-toi et Dieu t'aidera " — aid thyself and God
will succour thee.

ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH

GIANT '

ON the brow of a lofty hill, crested with
stag-horned trees, commanding a deep and
woodland gorge wherein "the Crooks of Combe" ^
(the curves of a winding river) urge onward to
the "Severn Sea," still survive the remains of
famous old Stowe, — that historic . abode of the
loyal and glorious Sir Beville,^ the Bayard of old
Cornwall, "sans peur et sans reproche," in the
thrilling Stuart wars. No mansion on the Tamar-
side ever accumulated so rich and varied a store
of association and event. Thither the sons of the
Cornish gentry were accustomed to resort, to be
nurtured and brought up with the children of Sir
Seville Granville and Lady Grace ; for the noble
knight was literally the " glass wherein " the
youth of those ancient times " did dress them-
selves," There their graver studies were relieved

* From AH the Year Rounds vol, xvi. pp. 247-249. 1866. See
Appendix £.

3 See Appendix B.

* Compare Hawker^s poem, "Sir Beville — the Gate Song of
Stowe/' See alto Appendix 'Ea.

109

no Footprints in Far Cornwall

by manly pastime and athletic exercise. Like the
children of the Persians, they were taught "to
ride, to bend the bow, and to speak the truth."
At hearth and hall every time-honoured usage
and festive celebration was carefully and reverently
preserved. Around the walls branched the massive
antlers of the red deer of the moors, the trophies
of many a bold achievement with horse and
hound. At the buttery-hatch hung a tankard
marked with the guests* and the travellers* peg,
and a manchet, flanked with native cheese, stood
ready on a trencher for any sudden visitant who
might choose to lift the latch ; for the Granville
motto was, " An open door and a greeting hand.**
A troop of retainers, servants, grooms, and varlets
of the yard, stood each in his place, and under
orders to receive with a welcome the unknown
stranger, as well as their master*s kinsman and
friend.

Among these, at the beginning of the seven-
teenth century, appeared a remarkable personage.
He was the son of an old tenant on the estate,
who occupied the manor-house of Stratton, a
neighbouring town. His parents were of the
yeoman rank in life, and possessed no singularity
of personal aspect or frame, although both were
comely. But Antony, their son, was from his
earliest years a wonderful boy. He shot up into
preternatural stature and strength. His propor-
tions were so vast that, when he was a mere lad,

S>t ™^ .jj. .^. .jj. .^. .j^.

Antony Payne, a Cornish Giant iii

his schoolmates were accustomed to " borrow his
back," and, for sport, to work out their geography
lessons or arithmetic on that broad disc in chalk ;
so that, to his mother's amazement and dismay,
he more than once brought home, like Atlas, the
world on his shoulders, for her to rub out. His
strength and skill in every boyish game were
marvellous, and, unlike many other large men,
his mental and intellectual faculties increased with
his amazing growth.

It was Antony Payne's delight to select two
of his stoutest companions, whom he termed ^^his
kittens," and, with one under each arm, to climb
some perilous crag or cliff in the neighboiu-hood
of the* sea, " to show them the world," as he said.
He was called in the school " Uncle Tony," for
the Cornish to this day employ the names " uncle
and' aunt" as titles of endearment and respect.
Another relic of his boyhood is extant still : the
country lads, when they describe anything of
excessive dimensions, call it, **As long as Tony
Payne's foot."

He grew on gradually, and in accurate pro-
portion of sinews and thews, until, at the age of
twenty-one, he was taken into the establishment
at Stowe. He then measured seven feet two
inches without his shoes,^ and he afterwards added
a couple of inches more to his stately growth.

^ It is said locally that Antonyms stocking would hold a peck of
wheat.

112 Footprints in Far Cornwall

Wide-chested, fuU-armed, and pillared Hke a rock
on lower limbs of ample and exact symmetry, he
would have gladdened the critical eyes of Queen
Elizabeth, whose Tudor taste led her to exult in
** looking on a man." If his lot had fallen in later
days, he might have been hired by some wonder-
monger to astonish the provincial mind, or the
intellect of cities, as the Cornish Chang. But in
good, old, honest, simple-hearted England, they
utilised their giants, and deemed that when a
cubit was added to the stature of a man, it was
for some wise good end, and they looked upon
their loftier brother with added honour and
respect.

So for many years Payne continued to fulfil
his various duties as Sir Seville's chief retainer at
Stowe. He it was who was the leader and the
authority in every masculine sport. He em-
bowelled and flayed the hunted deer, and carried
the carcass on his own shoulders to the HaU,
where he received as his guerdon the horns and
the hide. The antlers, cleansed and polished,
were hoisted as a trophy on the panelled wall ;
and the skins, dressed and prepared, were shaped
into a jerkin for his goodly chest. It took the
spoils of three fidl-grown red deer to make the
garment complete. His master's sons and their
companions, the very pride of the West, who
were housed and instructed at Stowe, when re-
leased from their graver studies, were under his

Antony Payne ^ a Cornish Giant 113

especial charge. He taught them to shoot, and
fish, and to handle arms. Tilt-yard and bowling-
green, and the hurler's ground, can still be
identified at Stowe. In the latter, the poising-
place and the mark survive, and a rough block
of graywacke is called to this day "Payne's cast;"
it lies full ten paces beyond the reach whereat the .
ordinary players could " put the stone."

It is said that one Christmas-eve the fire
languished in the Hall. A boy with an ass had
been sent to the woodland for logs, and the driver
loitered on his homeward way. Lady Grace lost
patience, and was displeased. All at once a sudden
outcry was heard at the gate, and Sir Seville's
Giant appeared with the loaded animal on his
mighty back. He threw down his burden in
triumph at the hearth-side, shouting merrily,
" Ass and fardel I ass and fardel for my lady's
Yule ! " Another time he strode along the path
from Kilkhampton village to Stowe with a bacon-
hog of three hundredweight thrown across his
shoulders, and merely because a taunting butcher
had doubted his strength for the feat. Among
the excellences of Sir Seville's Giant, it is told of
him that he was by no means clumsy or uncouth,
as men of unusual size sometimes are, but as
nimble and elastic, and as capable of swift and
dexterous movement, as a light and muscular
man. Added to this, his was a strong and acute
intellect ; so happy also in his language, and of

114 Footprints in Far Cornwall

such a ready wit, that he was called by a writer ^
of the last century, from his resemblance, in these
points only, to Shakespeare's knight, " the FalstafF
of the West."

But a great and sudden change was about to
come over the happy halls of Stowe. The king
and his Parliament were at fatal strife ; and there
could be but one place in the land for the true-
hearted and chivalrous Sir Seville, and that was at
his royal master's side.^ The well-known rallying
cry went through the hills and valleys of Cornwall,
^* Granville's up ! " and the hearts and hands of
many a noble knight and man-at-arms turned
towards old Stowe. Mounted messengers rode
to and fro. Strange and stalwart forms arrived to
claim a place in the ranks. Retainers were en-
rolled day and night ; and the smooth sward of
the bowling-green and the Fawn's Paddock were
dinted by the hoofs of horses and the tread
of serried men. Foremost among these scenes
we find, as body-guard of his master, the bulky
form of Antony Payne. He marshalled and
manoeuvred the rude levies from the western
mines, " the underground men." He served

> C. S. Gilbert in his « History of Cornwall/'
^ <' Ride ! ride 1 with red spur, there is death in delay,
^Tis a race for dear life with the devil \
If dark Cromwell prevail, and the king must give way.
This earth is no place for Sir Beville."'

^he Gate Song ofSKywe,

Antony Payne^ a Cornish Giant 115

out arms and rations, and established order, by
the mere terror of his presence and strength,
among the wild and mixed multitude that gathered
" for the king and land."

Instead of the glad and hospitable scenery of
former times, Stowe became in those days like a
garrison surrounded by a camp. At last, one day
tidings arrived that the battalions of the Parlia-
ment, led by Lord Stamford, were on their way
northwards, and not many miles off. A picked
and goodly company marched forth from the
avenue of Stowe, and among them Payne, on his
Cornish cob Samson, of pure Guinhilly breed.
The next day, eight miles towards the south, the
batde of Stratton Hill was fought and won by the
royal troops. The Earl of Stamford was repulsed,
and fled, bequeathing, by a strange mischance, his
own name, though the defeated commander, to
the field of battle. It is called to this day Stam-
ford Hill.^ Sir Beville returned that night to
Stowe, but his Giant remained with some other
soldiers to bury the dead. He had caused certain
large trenches to be laid open, each to hold ten
bodies side by side. There he and his followers
carried in the slain. On one occasion they had
laid down nine corpses, and Payne was bringing
in another, tucked under his arm, like one of

1 There is a description of this battle in Q's novel, <* The Splendid
Spur/' one of the most vivid and stirring battle pictures in modem
fiction.

ii6 Footprints in Far Cornwall

" the kittens " of his schoolboy days, when all at
once the supposed dead man was heard pleading
earnestly with him, and expostulating, ** Surely
you wouldn't bury me, Mr. Payne, before I am
dead ? " "I tell thee, man,'* was the grim reply,
^* our trench was dug for ten, and there's nine in
already ; you must take your place." " But I
bean't dead, I say ; I haven't done living yet ; be
massyful, Mr. Payne — don't ye hurry a poor
fellow into the earth before his time." " I won't
hurry thee : I mean to put thee down quietly
and cover thee up, and then thee canst die at thy
leisure." Payne's purpose, however, was kinder
than his speech. He carried his suppliant care-
fvdly to his own cottage not far off, and charged
his wife to stanch, if possible, her husband's
rebellious blood. The man lived, and his descen-
dants are among the principal inhabitants of the
town of Stratton to this day.*

That same year the battle of Lansdown, near
Bath, was fought. The forces of the Parliament
prevailed, and Sir Beville nobly died. Payne was
still at his side, and, when his master fell, he
mounted young John Granville, a youth of

^ In a letter dated September 21, 1866, to his brother-in-law, the
late Mr. John Sommers James, Hawker says, ** He (Antony Payne)
was an Ancestor of Captain Parsons and Sam. He was going to
bury your Great Grandfather at Stamford Hill alive, wounded among
the other Rebels, but he spared him, and, as I have stated, his
* descendants are among the most conspicuous of the Inhabitants of
Stratton to this day.' "

Antony Payne, a Cornish Giant 117

sixteen, whom he had always in charge, on his
father's horse, and he led the Granville troop into
the fight. A letter^ which the faithful retainer
wrote to his lady at Stowe still survives. It
breathes in the quaint language of the day a noble
strain of sympathy and homage. Thus it ran : —

" Honoured Madam, — 111 news flieth apace.
The heavy tidings no doubt hath already travelled
to Stowe that we have lost our blessed master by
the enemy's advantage. You must not, dear lady,
grieve too much for your noble spouse. You
know, as we all believe, that his soul was in heaven
before his bones were cold. He fell, as he did often
tell us he wished to die, in the great Stuart cause,
for his country and his king. He delivered to me
his last commands, and with such tender words for
you and for his children as are not to be set down
with my poor pen, but must come to your ears
upon my best heart's breath. Master John, when
I mounted him on his father's horse, rode him
into the war like a young prince, as he is, and our
men followed him with their swords drawn and
with tears in their eyes. They did say they would
kill a rebel for every hair of Sir Beville's beard.
But I bade them remember their good master's
word, when he wiped his sword after Stamford

^ The authenticity of this letter is doubtful. If spurious, how-
ever, it is interesting as an example of Hawker^s Chattertonian
propensities and his skill in catching the antique style. (See
Appendix £.)

ii8 Footprints in Far Cornwall

fight ; how he said, when their cry was, * Stab and

slay ! * * Halt, men ! God will avenge.' I am

coming down with the mournfuUest load that ever

a poor servant did bear, to bring the great heart

that is cold to Kilkhampton vault. Oh, my lady,

how shall I ever brook your weeping face ? But

I will be trothftd to the living and to the dead.

"These, honoured madam, from thy saddest,

truest servant,

"Antony Payne."

At the Restoration the Stowe Giant reappears
upon the scene in attendance on his young master,
John Granville. Sir Beville's son had been instru-
mental in the return of the king, and had received
from Charles II. largess of money, great offices,
and the earldom of Bath. Among other places of
trust, he was appointed Governor of the Garrison
at Plymouth. There Payne received the appoint-
ment of Halberdier of the Guns, and the king,
who held him in singular favour, commanded his
portrait to be painted by the Court artist. Sir
Godfrey Kneller.* The fate of this picture was

^ Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-172 3), a German by birth, was
Court painter to five English sovereigns, Charles 11., James II.,
William III., Anne, and George I. He came to England in 1675,
and if Charles II., who died in 1685, commanded him to paint the
portrait of Antony Payne, it must have been between those years
that the picture was executed. According to the dedication under
Gilbert's engraving, however, it was done at the expense of the Earl
of Bath. The Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro, has published
a pamphlet (price 2^.) entitled "A Short Account of Anthony
Payne, the Cornish Giant, and the History of his Portrait/* This

1 i

! I

*.

-3
-3

s-

■^

Antony Payne, a Cornish Giant 119

one of great vicissitude. It hung in state for
some years in the great gallery at Stowe ; thence,
when that mansion was dismantled at the death of
the Earl of Bath, it was removed to Penheale,
another manor-house of the Granvilles, in Corn-
wall ; but it ceased to be highly esteemed, from
ignorance of the people and the oblivion of years,
insomuch so that when Gilbert, the Cornish his-
torian, travelled through the county to collect
materials for his work, he discovered the portrait
rolled up in an empty room, and described by the
farmer's wife as " a carpet with the effigy of a
large man upon it." It was a gift to her husband,
she said, from the landlord's steward, and she was
glad to sell it as she did for ;^8 ! When Gilbert
died his collection of antique curiosities was sold
by auction at Devonport, where he lived, and this
portrait of Payne, which had been engraved as
the frontispiece to the second volume of his
" History of Cornwall," was bought by a stranger
who was passing through the town, and who had
strolled in to look at the sale, at the price of forty
guineas. The value had been apparently enhanced
by oil, and varnish, and frame. This stranger
proved to be a connoisseur in paintings : he

states that the picture was painted in 1680. ''Ten reigning
sovereigns in all sat to Kneller for their portraits. His sitters
included almost all persons of rank, wealth, or eminence, in his day,
and examples of his brush may be found in nearly every historic
mansion or palace in the kingdom. . . . Kneller can best be studied
at Hampton Court " (" Dictionary of National Biography ").

I20 Footprints in Far Cornwall

conveyed it to London, and there it was ascertained
to be one of the masterpieces of Kneller ; it was
resold for the enormous sum of ;£8oo. This
picture, or even the engraving in Gilbert's work,
reveals still to the eye the Giant of Old Stowe,
** in his natural presentment " as he lived. There
he stands before the eye, a stalwart soldier of the
guard. One hand is placed upon a cannon, and
the other wields the tall halberd of his rank and
office as yeoman of the guns. By a strange acci-
dent this very weapon ^ and a large flask or flagon,"
sheathed in wicker-work, which is said to have
held "Antony's allowance," a gallon of wine,
and which is placed in the picture on the ground
at his feet — both these relics of the time and the
man are now in the possession of the writer of
this article, in the Vicarage House, near Stowe.
It was in Plymouth garrison, and in his later days,
that an event is recorded of Payne which testifies
that even after long years " his eye had not grown
dim, neither was his natural force abated." The
Revolution had come and gone, and William and
Mary had been enthroned. At the mess-table of

1 In the letter to Mr. J. Sommere James quoted above Hawker
refers to Antony Payne as " owner of the spear your brother Henry
gave me years ago."

2 This flagon was given by Mr. Hawker to Mr, Thomas
Shephard, of Stratton, whose daughter, Mrs. William Shephard, ot
Barnstaple, has presented it to Truro Museum. (See illustration
facing p. 14.) The Shephards are descendants of Antony Payne, and
Mr. William Shephard has in his possession a pewter shaving cup
that belonged to Antony's father.

Ml

•S""S'-3-

Antony Payne, a Cornish Giant 121

the regiment in garrison, on the anniversary of
the day when Charles I. had been beheaded, a sub-
officer of Payne's own rank had ordered a calf s
head to be served up in a " William-and-Mary
dish." This, in those days of new devotion to
the house of Hanover, was a coarse and common
annual mockery of the beheaded king ; and delf,
with the faces of these two sovereigns for orna-
ment, was a valued ware (the writer has one large
dish). When Payne entered the room, his com-
rades pointed out to him the insulting and
practical jest — to him, too, most offensive, for he
was a Stuart man. With a ready and indignant
gesture he threw out of the window the symbolic
platter and its contents.

A fierce quarrel ensued and a challenge, and at
break of day Payne and his antagonist fought with
swords on the ramparts. After a strong contest —
for the offender was a master of his weapon — Payne
ran his adversary through the sword-arm and dis-
abled him. He is said to have accompanied the
successful thrust with the taunting shout, ^* There's
sauce for thy calf s head ! " When the strong man
at last began to bow himself down at the approach
of one stronger than he, the Giant of Stowe obtained
leave to retire. He returned to Stratton, his native
place, and found shelter and repose in the very
house and chamber wherein he was born.

After his death, neither the door nor the stairs
would afford egress for the large and coffined corpse.

122 Footprints in Far Cornwall

■ — - — - -

The joists had to be sawn through, and the floor
lowered with rope and pulley, to enable the Giant
to pass out towards his mighty grave. Relays of
strong bier-men carried him to his rest, and the
bells of the tower, by his own express desire,
"chimed him home." He was buried outside
the southern wall of Stratton church.* When
the writer was a boy, the sexton one day broke,
by accident, through the side wall of a vast but
empty sepulchre. Many went to see the sight,
and there, marked by a stone in the wall, was a
vault, like the tomb of the Anakim, large enough
in these days for the interment of three or four of
our degenerate dead. But it was empty, desolate,
and bare. No mammoth bones nor mysterious
relics of the unknown dead. A massive heap of
silent dust 1

* Gilbert says "in the north aisle." Possibly Hawker altered
this in accordance with the superstition mentioned on p. zi. See
end of Appendix £.

CRUEL COPPINGER*

A RECORD of the wild, strange, lawless
'^ ^ characters that roamed along the north
coast of Cornwall during the middle and latter
years of the last century would be a volume full
of interest for the student of local history and
semi-barbarous life. Therein would be found
depicted the rough sea-captain, half smuggler,
half pirate, who ran his lugger by beacon-light
into some rugged cove among the massive head-
lands of the shore, and was relieved of his freight
by the active and diligent " country-side." This
was the name allotted to that chosen troop of
native sympathisers who were always ready to
rescue and conceal the stores that had escaped
the degradation of the gauger's brand. Men yet
alive relate with glee how they used to rush at
some well-known signal to the strand, their small
active horses shaved from forelock to tail, smoother
than any modern clip, well soaped or greased from
head to foot, so as to slip easily out of any hostile
grasp ; and then, with a double keg or pack slung
on to every nag by a single girth, away went the

* From AUthe Tear Round, vol. xvi. pp. 537-540. 1866. For
the historical basis of this article, see Appendix F.

123

124 Footprints in Far Cornwall

whole herd, led by some swift well-trained mare,
to the inland cave or rocky hold, the shelter of
their spoil. There was a famous dun mare — she
lived to the age of thirty-seven, and died within
legal memory — almost human in her craft and
fidelity, who is said to have led a bevy of loaded
pack-horses, unassisted by driver or guide, from
Bossinney Haun to Roughtor Point. But beside
these travellers by sea, there would be found ever
and anon, in some solitary fermhouse inaccessible
by wheels, and only to be approached by some
treacherous foot-path along bog and mire, a strange
and nameless guest — often a foreigner in language
and apparel — who had sought refuge with the native
family, and who paid in strange but golden coins
for his shelter and food ; some political or private
adventurer, perchance, to whom secrecy and con-
cealment were safety and life, and who more than
once lived and died in his solitary hiding-place on
the moor.

There is a bedstead of carved oak still in
existence at Trevotter — a farm among the midland
hills — whereon for long years an unknown stranger
slept. None ever knew his nation or name. He
occupied a solitary room, and only emerged now
and then for a walk in the evening air. An oaken
chest of small size contained his personal posses-
sions and gold of foreign coinage, which he paid
into the hands of his host with the solemn charge
to conceal it until he was gone thence or dead — a

Crtcel Coppinger 125

request which the simple-hearted people faithfully
fulfilled. His linen was beautifully fine, and his
garments richly embroidered. After some time
he sickened and died, refusing firmly the visits
of the local clergyman, and bequeathing to the
farmer the contents of his chest. He wrote some,
words, they said, for his own tombstone, which,
however, were not allowed to be engraved, but
they were simply these — " H. De R. Equees &
Ecsul." The same sentence was found, after his
death, carved on the ledge of his bed, and the
letters are, or lately were, still traceable on the
mouldering wood.

But among the legends of local renown a
prominent place has always been allotted to a
personage whose name has descended to our times
linked to a weird and graphic epithet — "Cruel
Coppinger." There was a ballad in existence
within human memory which was founded on
the history of this singular man, but of which the
first verse ^ only can now be recovered. It runs —

^ In the original form of this article, a second verse was added,
and the first was slightly different.

*• Will you hear of the bold, brave Coppinger ?
How he came of a foreign kind ?
He was brought to us by the salt water ;
He^ll be carried away by the wind.

For thus the old wives croon and sing.

And so the proverbs say.
That whatsoever the wild waves bring

The winds will bear away."

126 Footprints in Far Cornwall

" Will you hear of the Cruel Coppinger ?
He came from a foreign kind ;
He was brought to us by the salt-water.
He was carried away by the wind."

His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was
signalised by a terrific hurricane. The storm came
up Channel from the south-west. The shore and
the heights were dotted with watchers for wreck —
those daring gleaners of the harvest of the sea. It
was just such a scene as is sought for in the proverb
of the West —

'^ A savage sea and a shattering wind.
The clifB before, and the gale behind.*'

As suddenly as if a phantom ship had loomed in
the distance, a strange vessel of foreign rig was
discovered in fierce struggle with the waves of
Harty Race. She was deeply laden or water-
logged, and rolled heavily in the trough of the sea,
nearing the shore as she felt the tide. Gradually
the pale and dismayed faces of the crew became
visible, and among them one man of herculean
height and mould, who stood near the wheel with
a speaking-trumpet in his hand. The sails were
blown to rags, and the rudder was apparently
lashed ^r running ashore. But the suck of the
current and the set of the wind were too strong
for the vessel, and she appeared to have lost her
chance of reaching Harty Pool. It was seen that
the tall seaman, who was manifestly the skipper

Cruel Coppinger 127

of the boat, had cast ofF his garments, and stood
prepared upon the deck to encounter a battle with
the surges for life and rescue. He plunged over
the bulwarks, and arose to sight buffeting the
seas. With stalwart arm and powerful chest he
made his way through the surf, rode manfully
from billow to billow, until with a bound he
stood at last upright upon the sand, a fine stately
semblance of one of the old Vikings of the
northern seas. A crowd of people had gathered
from the land, on horseback and on foot, women
as well as men, drawn together by the tidings of
a probable wreck. Into their midst, and to their
astonished dismay, rushed the dripping stranger :
he snatched from a terrified old dame her red
Welsh cloak, cast it loosely around him, and
bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young
damsel, who had ridden her father's horse down
to the beach to see the sight. He grasped her
bridle, and, shouting aloud in some foreign
language, urged on the double-laden animal into
full speed, and the horse naturally took his home-
ward way. Strange and wild were the outcries
that greeted the rider, Miss Dinah Hamlyn,
when, thus escorted, she reached her father's door
in the very embrace of a wild, rough, tall man,
who announced himself by a name — never after-
wards forgotten in those parts — as Coppinger, a
Dane. He arrayed himself without the smallest
scruple in the Sunday suit of his host. The

128 Footprints in Far Cornwall

long-skirted coat of purple velveteen with large
buttons, the embroidered vest, and nether garments
to match, became him well. So thought the lady
of his sudden choice. She, no doubt, forgave his
onslaught on her and on her horse for the com-
pliment it conveyed. He took his immediate
place at the family board, and on the settle by the
hearth, as though he had been the most welcome
and long-invited guest in the land. Strange to
say, the vessel disappeared immediately he had
left her deck, nor was she ever after traced by
land or sea. At first the stranger subdued all the
fierce phases of his savage character, and appeared
deeply grateful for all the kindness he received at
the hands of his simple-hearted host. Certain
letters which he addressed to persons of high
name in Denmark were, or were alleged to be,
duly answered, and remittances from his friends
were supposed to be received. He announced
himself as of a wealthy family and superior rank
in his native country, and gave out that it was to
avoid a marriage with a titled lady that he had
left his father's house and gone to sea. All this
recommended him to the unsuspecting Dinah,
whose affections he completely won. Her
father's sudden illness postponed their marriage.
The good old man died to be spared much evil
to come.

The Dane succeeded almost naturally to the
management and control of the house, and the

t .

5;

n

»:

Crtiel Coppinger 129

widow held only an apparent influence in domestic
afllairs. He soon persuaded the daughter to
become his wife, and immediately afterwards his
evil nature, so long smouldering, broke out like
a wild beast uncaged. All at once the house
became the den and reftige of every lawless
character on the coast. All kinds of wild uproar
and reckless revelry appalled the neighbourhood
day and night. It was discovered that an organised
band of desperadoes, smugglers, wreckers, and
poachers were embarked in a system of bold
adventure, and that " Cruel Coppinger " was their
captain. In those days, and in that unknown and
far-away region, the peaceable inhabitants were
totally unprotected. There was not a single
resident gentleman of property or weight in the
entire district ; and the clergyman, quite insulated
from associates of his own standing, was cowed
into silence and submission. No revenue officer
durst exercise vigilance west of the Tamar ; and
to put an end to all such surveillance at once, it
was well known that one of the " Cruel " gang
had chopped off a gauger's head on the gunwale
of a boat, and carried the body oflF to sea.^

Amid such scenes Coppinger pursued his un-
lawful impulses without check or restraint. Strange
vessels began to appear at regular intervals on the
coast, and signals were duly flashed from the
headlands to lead them into the safest creek or

1 See p. 38.

K

130 Footprints in Far Cornwall

cove. If the ground-sea were too strong to allow
them to run in, they anchored outside the surf,
and boats prepared for that service were rowed or
hauled to and fro, freighted with illegal spoil.
Amongst these vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner,
soon became ominously conspicuous. She bore
the name of the Black Prince, and was the private
property of the Dane, built to his own order in a
dockyard of Denmark. She was for a long time
the chief terror of the Cornish Channel. Once
with Coppinger on board, when under chase, she
led a revenue cutter into an intricate channel near
the Gull Rock, where, from knowledge of the
bearings, the Black Prince escaped scathless, while
the king's vessel perished with all on board. In
those times, if any landsman became obnoxious to
Coppinger's men, he was either seized by violence
or by craft, and borne away handcuffed to the
deck of the Black Prince ; where, to save his life,
he had to enrol himself, under fearful oaths, as
one of the crew. In 1 835, an old man of the age
of ninety-seven related to the writer that, when a
youth, he had been so abducted, and after two
years' service had been ransomed by his fi-iends
with a large sum. " And all," said the old man,
very simply, "because I happened to see one
man kill another, and they thought I should
mention it."

Amid such practices ill-gotten gold began to
flow and ebb in the hands of Coppinger. At one

Cruel Coppinger 131

■ ■ I ■■ ■■■■■II Ml ■■■■■■ iMIi » ■ I II ^^^m^^ ■■■ — »■ I ■ ■■ ■ I ■ ■ ■ H l^»^^^^ ■ ■■«

time he chanced to hold enough money to pur-
chase a freehold farm bordering on the sea.
When the day of transfer arrived, he and one of
his followers appeared before the astonished lawyer
with bags filled with various kinds of foreign coin.
Dollars and ducats, doubloons and pistoles, guineas
—the coinage of every foreign country with a
seaboard — ^were displayed on the table. The man
of law at first demurred to such purchase-money ;
but after some controversy, and an ominous oath
or two of " that or none," the lawyer agreed to
take it by weight. The document bearing Cop-
pinger's name is still extant. His signature is
traced in stern, bold, fierce characters, as if every
letter had been stabbed upon the parchment with
the point of a dirk. Underneath his autograph,
also in his own writing, is the word ^* Thuro." ^

Long impunity increased Coppinger*s daring.
There were certain byways and bridle-roads along
the fields over which he exercised exclusive control.
Although every one had a perfect right by law to
use these ways, he issued orders that no man was
to pass over them by night, and accordingly from
that hour none ever did. They were called
"Coppinger's Tracks." They all converged at
a headland which had the name of Steeple Brink.
Here the cliflF sheered off, and stood three hundred
feet of perpendicular height, a precipice of smooth

^ Hawker himself used a seal engraved with the one word,
<< Thorough/* the motto, as he said, of Archbishop Laud.

132 Footprints in Far Cornwall

rock toward the beach, with an overhanging face
one hundred feet down from the brow. There
was a hollow entrance into the cliff, like a huge
cathedral door, crowned and surrounded with
natural Saxon arches, curved by the strata of
native stone. Within was an arched and vaulted
cave, vast and gloomy ; it ran a long way into
the heart of the land, and was as large and tall —
so the country-people said — as Kilkhampton
church. This stronghold was inaccessible by
natural means, and could only be approached by
a cable-ladder lowered fi-om above and made fast
below on a projecting crag. It received the name
of " Coppinger*s Cave," and was long the scene
of fierce and secret revelry that would be utterly
inconceivable to the educated mind of the nine-
teenth century. Here sheep were tethered to the
rock, and fed on stolen hay and corn till their
flesh was required for a feast : kegs of brandy
and hollands were piled around ; chests of tea ;
and iron-bound sea-chests contained the chattels
and the revenues of the Coppinger royalty of the
sea. No man ever essayed the perilous descent
into the cavern except the captain's own troop,
and their loyalty was secured, not only by their
participation in his crimes, but by a terrible oath.

The terror linked with Coppinger's name
throughout the coast was so extreme that the
people themselves, wild and lawless as they were,
submitted to his sway as though he had been the

Crttel Coppinger 133

lord of the soil and they his vassals. Such a
household as Coppinger's was of course far from
happy or calm. Although when his wife's father
died he had insensibly acquired possession of the
stock and farm, there remained in the hands of
the widow a considerable amount of money as
her dower. This he obtained from the poor
helpless woman by instalments ; and when pre-
text and entreaty alike failed, he resorted to a
novel mode of levy. He fastened his wife to
the pillar of her oak bedstead, and called her
mother into the room. He then explained that
it was his purpose to flog Dinah with the sea-cat,
which he flourished in his hand, until her mother
had transferred to him such an amount as he
required of her reserved property. This deed of
atrocity he repeated until he had utterly exhausted
the widow's store. He had a favourite mare, so
fierce and indomitable that none but Coppinger
himself could venture on her back, and so fleet
and strong that he owed his escape from more
than one menacing peril by her speed and endur-
ance. The clergyman had spoken above his
breath of the evil doings in the cave, and had
thus aroused his wrath and vengeance.^ On a

^ Mr. Baring-Gould, in his " Vicar of Morwenstow " (Edition
1899, P* 'io)> gives another reason for Coppinger's wrath : — ^''The
Kilkhampton parson hated rook-pie. Coppinger knew it. He
invited him to dine with him one day. A large rook-pie was served
at one end of the table, and roast rooks at the other, and the parson,
who was very hungry, was forced to eat of them. When he departed

134 Footprints in Far Cornwall

certain day he was jogging homeward on his
parish cob, and had reached the middle of a wide
and desolate heath. All at once he heard behind
him the clattering of horse-hoofs and a yell such
as might have burst from the throat of the visible
demon when he hurled the battle on the ancient
saint. It was Cruel Coppinger with his double-
thonged whip, mounted on his terrible mare.
Down came the fearful scourge on his victim's
shuddering shoulders. Escape was impossible.
The poor parson knew too well the difference
between his own ambling galloway, that never
essayed any swifter pace than a jog-trot, and that
awful steed behind him with footsteps like the
storm. Circling, doubling like a hare, twisting
aside, crying aloud for mercy, — all was vain. He
arrived at last at his own house, striped like a zebra,
and as he rushed in at the gate he heard the part-
ing scoff of his assailant, " There, parson, I have
paid my tithe in full ; never mind the receipt ! "

It was on the self-same animal that Coppinger
performed another freak. He had passed a festive
evening at a farmhouse, and was about to take
his departure, when he spied at the corner of the
hearth a litde old tailor of the country-side, who
went from house to house to exercise his calling.

he invited Coppinger to dine with him on the following Thursday.
The smuggler arriyed, and was regaled on pie, whether rabbit or
hare he could not decide. When he came home he found a cat's
skin and head stuffed into his coat pocket, and thereby discovered
what he had been eating/*

Cruel Coppinger 135

He was a half-witted, harmless old fellow, and
answered to the name of Uncle Tom Tape.

" Ha, Uncle Tom 1 " cried Coppinger ; " we
both travel the same road, and I don't mind
giving thee a hoist behind me on the mare."

The old man cowered in the settle. He
would not encumber the gentleman, — was un-
accustomed to ride such a spirited horse. But all
his excuses were overborne. The other guests,
entering into the joke, assisted the trembling old
man to mount the crupper of the capering mare.
Off she bounded, and Uncle Tom, with his arms
cast with the strong gripe of terror around his
bulky companion, held on like grim death. Un-
buckling his belt, Coppinger passed it around
Uncle Tom's thin haggard body, and buckled it
on his own front. When he had firmly secured
his victim, he loosened his reins, and urged the
mare with thong and spur into a furious gallop.
Onward they rushed till they fled past the tailor's
own door at the roadside, where his startled wife,
who was on the watch, afterwards declared " she
caught sight of her husband clinging on to a
rainbow." Loud and piteous were the outcries
of Tailor Tom, and earnest his shrieks of entreaty
that he might be told where he was to be carried
that night, and for what doom he had been
buckled on. At last, in a relaxation of their pace
going up a steep hill, Coppinger made him a
confidential communication.

136 Footprints in Far Cornwall

" I have been," he said, " under a long promise
to the devil that I would bring him a tailor to
make and mend for him, poor man ; and as sure
as I breathe, Unde Tom, I mean to keep my
word to-night ! '*

The agony of terror produced by this revela-
tion produced such convulsive spasms, that at last
the belt gave way, and the tailor fell off like a log
among the gorse at the roadside. There he was
found next morning in a semi-delirious state,
muttering at intervals, " No, no ; I never will.
Let him mend his breeches with his own drag-
chain, as the saying is. I will never so much as
thread a needle for Coppinger nor his friend."

One boy was the only fruit of poor Dinah's
marriage with the Dane. But his birth brought
neither gladness nor solace to his mother's
miserable hearth. He was ^r and golden-haired,
and had his father's fierce, flashing eyes. But
though perfecdy well formed and healthful, he
was born deaf and dumb. He was mischievous
and ungovernable from his birth. His cruelty to
animals, birds, and to other children was intense.
Any living thing that he could torture appeared
to yield him delight. With savage gestures and
jabbering moans he haunted the rocks along the
shore, and seemed like some uncouth creature
cast up by the sea. When he was only six
years old he was found one day upon the brink
of a tall cliff, bounding with joy, and pointing

Cruel Coppinger 137

— — ■■_- ^ ^ - ■..-. .-■ .. ^ ^ ._. — ■

downward towards the beach with conviilsions of
delight. There, mangled by the fall and dead,
they found the body of a neighbour's child of his
own age, who was his frequent companion, and
whom, as it was inferred, he had drawn towards
the steep precipice, and urged over by stratagem
or force. The spot where this occurred was ever
afterwards his favourite haunt. He would draw
the notice of any passer-by to the place, and then
point downward where the murdered child was
found with fierce exultant mockery. It was a
saying evermore in the district, that, as a judgment
on his father's cruelty, his child had been born
without a human soul. He lived to be the
pestilent scourge of the neighbourhood.

But the end arrived. Money had become
scarce, and the resources of the cave began to fail.
More than one atrmed king's cutter were seen day
and night hovering off the land. Foreigners
visited the house with tidings of peril. So he
** who came with the water went with the wind."
His disappearance, like his arrival, was com-
memorated by a turbulent storm. A wrecker,
who had gone to watch the shore, saw, as the sun
went down, a fiill-rigged vessel standing off and
on. By-and-by a rocket hissed up from the Gull
Rock, a small islet with a creek on the landward
side which had been the scene of many a run of
smuggled cargo. A gun from the ship answered
it, and again both signals were exchanged. At

138 Footprints in Far Cornwall

last a well-known and burly form stood on the
topmost crag of the island rock. He waved his
sword, and the light flashed back from the steel.
A boat put off from the vessel with two hands at
every oar — for the tide runs with double violence
through Harty Race. They neared the rocks,
rowed daringly through the surf, and were steered
by some practised coxswain into the Gull Creek.
There they found their man. Coppinger leaped
on board the boat, and assumed the command.
They made with strong efforts for their ship. It
was a path of peril through that boiling surf.
Still, bending at the oar like chained giants, the
man watched them till they forced their way
through the battling waters. Once, as they drew
oflF the shore, one of the rowers, either from ebbing
strength or loss of courage, drooped at his oar.
In a moment a cutlass gleamed over his head, and
a fierce stern stroke cut him down. It was the
last blow of Cruel Coppinger. He and his boat's
crew boarded the vessel, and she was out of sight
in a moment, like a spectre or a ghost. Thunder,
lightning, and hail ensued. Trees were rent up
by the roots around the pirate's abode. Poor
Dinah watched, and held in her shuddering arms
her idiot-boy, and, strange to say, a meteoric stone,
called in that country a storm-bolt, fell through
the roof into the room at the very feet of Cruel
Coppinger's vacant chair.

THOMASINE BONA VENTURE^

^TpHE aspect of rural England during the
-*- fifteenth and sixteenth centuries must have
presented a strange and striking contrast, in the
eye of a traveller, to the agricultural scenery of
our own time. Thinly peopled — ^for the three
millions of our chief city nowadays are in excess
of the total population of the whole land of the
Edwards and the Henrys — the inhabitants occu-
pied hamlets few and far between, and a farm or
grange signified usually a moated house amid a
cluster of cultivated fields, gathered within fences
fi-om the surrounding forest or wold, and gleam-
ing in the distance with rich or green enclosures,
rescued from the wilderness, to give " fodder to
the cattle, and bread to strengthen the heart of
man." But the great domains of the land for the
most part expanded into woodland and marsh and
moor, with glades or grassy avenues here and there
for access to the lair of the red deer or the wild
boar, or other native game, which afforded in that
day a principal supply of human food. Yonder

1 From AUthe Year Roumif vol. xvii. pp. 276-280. 1867. For
the origins of this story, see Appendix 6.

139

140 Footprints in Far Cornwall

in the distance appeared ever and anon a beacon-
tower, which marked the place and ward for the
warning of hostile advances by night, and for the
gathering rest of the hobbelars or horsemen, whose
office it was to scour the country and to keep in
awe the enemies of God and the king. Wheel-
roads, except in the neighbourhood of cities or on
the line of a royal progress, there were none ; and
among the bridle-paths men urged their difficult
path in companies, for it was seldom safe for an
honest or well-to-do man to travel alone. Rivers
glided in silence to the sea without a sail or an
oar to ruffle their waters ; and there were whole
regions, that now are loud with populous life, that
might then have been called void places of the
uninhabited earth. But more especially did this
character of uncultured desolation pervade the
extreme borders of the west of England, the
country between the Tamar and the sea. There
dwelt in scattered villages, or town-places as they
are called to this day, the bold and hardy Keltic
people, few in number, but, like the race of the
Eastern wild man, never taught to bear the yoke.
Long after other parts of England had setded
into an improved agriculture, and submitted to
the discipline of more civilised life, the Cornish
were wont to hew their resources out of the bowels
of their mother earth, or to haul into their nets
the native harvest of the sea. Thus the merchan-
dise of fish, tin, and copper became the vaunted

Thomasine Bonaventure 141

staple of their land. These, the rich productions
of their native county, were, even in remote
periods of our history, in perpetual request, and
formed, together with the wool of their moorland
flocks, the great trade of the Cornish people.
From all parts, and especially from that storied
city whose merchants were then, as now, princes
of the land, men were wont to encounter the
perilous journey from the Thames to the Tamar,
to pursue their traflic with the "underground
folk," as they termed the inhabitants of Corn-
wall, that rocky land of strangers, as, when
literally interpreted, is the exact meaning of its
name.

It was in the year 1463, whei^ Edward IV.
occupied the English throne, that a tall and portly
merchant, in the distinctive apparel of the times,
rode along the wilds of a Cornish moor. He sat
high and firm upon his horse, a bony gelding,
with demipique saddle. A broad beaver, or, as
it was then called, a Flanders hat, shaded a grave
and thoughtful countenance, wherein shrewdness
and good-humour struggled for the mastery and
the latter prevailed, and his full brown beard was
forked — a happy omen, as it was always held, of
prosperous life. His riding garb displayed that
contrast of colours which was then so valued by
native taste, insomuch that the phrase " motley "
had in its origin a complimentary and not an
invidious sound. Behind him and near rode his

142 Footprints in Far Cornwall

'- ■ - ■ - ■ - -

servant, a stout and active-looking knave, armed
to the teeth.

The traveller had crossed the ford of a moor-
land stream, when he halted and reined up at a
scene that greeted him on the bank. There, on
a green and rushy knoll and underneath a gnarled
and wind-swept tree, a damsel in the blossom of
youth stood leaning on her shepherd-stafF : her
companion, a peasant boy, drew back, half shaded
by a rock. Sheep of the native breed, the long-
forgotten Cornish Knott, gathered around. As
he drew nigh, the stranger discovered that the
maiden was tall and well formed, and that her
rounded limbs had the mould and movement of
a natural grace that only health and exercise could
develop or bestow. The sure evidence of her
Keltic origin was testified by her eyes of violet-
blue and abundant hair of rich and radiant brown
— ^the hue that Italian poets delight to describe
as the colour of the ripe chestnut,^ or the stalks
and fibres of the maidenhair fern. She had also
the bashful nose that appears to retreat from the
lip with the unmistakable curve of the Kelt. She
was clad in a grey kirde of native wool, and her
bodice also was knitted at the hearth by homely
hands. The merchant was first to speak.

^ '^ Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand ;
Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair
In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within."

Tennyson, The Brook,

Thomasine Bonaventure 143

" Be not scared," said he, " fair damsel, by a
stranger's voice. My name is John Bunsby, of
the city of London, and I am bound for the hostel
of Wike St. Marie, which must be somewhere
nigh this moor. What did thy gossips call thee,
maiden, at the font ? "

" My name, kind sir," she answered, modestly,
"is Thomasine Bonaventure, and my father's
house is hard by at Wike. These are my master's
sheep."

'* The evening falls fast," said the traveller ;
" I would fain hire safe guidance to yonder inn."

She beckoned to the youth and whispered a
word in his ear, to which, however, he seemed to
listen with reluctance or dislike, and then, with
her crook still in her hand, she herself went on
to guide the stranger on his way. They arrived
in due course at the hostel-door, at the sign of
the Rose : but it was the Rose, mere, and with-
out an epithet ; for mine host had wisely omitted,
in those dangerous days, to designate the hue of
that symbolic flower. The traveller dismounted
at the door, thanked and requited his gentle guide,
and signified that as soon as his leisure allowed he
would find his way to her father's house. After a
strict command to his own servant and the varlet
of the stable that his horses should receive due
vigilance and abundant food. Master Bunsby at
last entered the inn. A hecatomb of wood blazed
on the earth, shedding light as well as heat around

144 Footprints in Far Cornwall

the panelled room — for in those times of old
simplicity a single apartment was allotted for
household purposes and for the entertainment of
guests. The traveller took an offered seat on the
carved oak settle, in the place of honour by the
fire, and looked on with interest at the homely
but original scene. At his right hand a vast oven,
with an entrance not unlike a church-door, was
about to disgorge its manifold contents. Rye-
loaves led the way, sweet and tasty to the final
crust (wheat was in those days a luxury unknown
in Cornwall) ; barley-bread and oaten cakes came
forth in due procession from the steaming cave ;
and, last of all, the merchant's sight and nostrils
were greeted by the arrival of a huge and
mysterious pie from its depths. The achieve-
ments of the dame, who was both cook and
hostess in her own person, were duly and tri-
umphantly arrayed upon the board, and the
stranger-guest took the accustomed seat at the
right hand of " mine host." His eyes were fixed
with curiosity and interest on the hillock of brown
dough which stood before him, and reeked like a
small volcano with steaming puffs of savoury
vapour. At last, when the massive crust which
lay like a tombstone over the mighty dish had
been broken up, the pie revealed its strange con-
tents. Conger-eels, pilchards, and oysters were
mingled piecemeal in the mass beneath, their
intervals slushed with melted butter and clotted

Thomasine Bonaventure 145

cream, and the whole well seasoned, not without a
savour of garlic, with spices, pepper, and salt.
The stranger's astonishment was manifest in
gesture and look, although he by no means
repulsed the trencher which came towards him
loaded with his bountiful share.

" Sir guest," said the host, " you doubtless
know the byword — *The Cornish cooks make
everything into a pie.' Our grandames say that
the devil never dared cross the Tamar, or he
would have been verily put under a crust."

Satisfied with his fare, the merchant now
inquired for the dwelling-place of his guide. It
was not far off. The parents of the shepherdess
inhabited a thatched hut in the village, with the
usual walls of beaten cob, moulded of native clay :
all within and without bespoke extreme poverty
and want, but there Master John Bunsby soon
found himself an honoured visitor seated by the
hearth, with a blazing fire of dry gorse gathered
from the moor to greet his arrival. There, while
the mother stood by her turn or wheel, and span,
and the maiden's nimble fingers flashed her
knitting-needles to and fro by the fitful light of
the fire, the old man her father and the merchant
conversed in a low voice far into the night, on a
theme of deep interest to both. The talk was of
Thomasine, the child of the house. The merchant
related his own prosperous afiikirs, and spoke of
his goodly house in London, governed by a thrifty

146 Footprints in Far Cornwall

and diligent wife : the household was one of
grave and decent demeanour, with good repute in
the vast city wherein dwelt the king. He had
taken an immediate interest, he declared, in the
old man's daughter, and desired to rescue her
from the life she led on the bleak, unsheltered
moor. He pledged himself, if they should con-
sent, to convey her in safety to London, and to
place her in especial attendance on his wife ;
and there, if her conduct were in unison with her
looks, he doubted not she would win many
friends, and secure a happy livelihood for the rest
of her days. He would await their decision at
the inn, where he should be detained by business
two or three days. Earnest and anxious were
their thoughts and their language in the cottage
that night and the next day. The aspect and
speech of the rich patron were such as invited
confidence and trust ; but there were the love and
fear of two aged hearts to satisfy and subdue.
There was the fierce and stubborn repugnance
also of the youth, the companion of the maid, who
stood with her under the tree upon the moor.
He was her cousin, John Dineham,^ of Swanna*-
cote, and they had grown up together from
childhood, till, unconsciously to themselves, the
tenderness of kindred had strengthened into love.
The damsel herself could not conceal a natural

^ One of Mr. Hawker^s sisters was the wife of John Dineham^
surgeon, of Stratton.

Thomasine Bonaventure 147

longing to visit the great city, where, they said,
but it might be untrue, " that the houses were
stuck as close together as Wike St. Marie church
and tower ; " but she would at all events behold
for once in her life the dwelling-place of the king.
" She would store up every coin, and come back
with money enow to buy a flock of sheep of her
own, which she and John would tend together, as
aforetime, on the moor." All this shook the scale.

When the merchant arrived to seek their
decision, it was made, and in favour of his wish.
A pillion or padded seat was obtained from some
neighbouring farm, and belted behind the saddle
of the merchant's man. Thereon, with a small
fardel in her hand, which held all her worldly
goods and gear, mounted Thomasine Bonaven-
ture, while all the villagers came around to bid
her farewell — all but one, and it was her cousin
John. He had gone, as he had told her, to the
moor, and there among the branches of the tree
which marked the greeting-place of Master Bunsby
the youth waited to watch her out of sight. He
lifted up his hand and waved it as she passed on
with a gesture of warning, but which she inter-
preted and returned as a silent caress.

The travellers arrived at their journey's end
after being only a fortnight on the road — a speed
so satisfactory and unusual, that it was Dame
Bunsby's emphatic remark that she verily thought
they must have flown.

148 Footprints in Far Cornwall

Her mistress received Thomasine with a kind
and hearty welcome, and ratified, by her everyday
approval, her husband's choice of the Cornish
maid. When she was first told that her name
was Bonaventure, and her husband explained that
it signified good luck, she said, " Well, sweetheart,
when I was a girl they used to say that the name
was a fore-sign of the life, and God grant that
thine may turn out [so] to be."

Time passed on, and in a year or two the wild
Cornish lass had grown into a frame of thorough
symmetry, firmness, and health. Her strong
thews, of country origin, rendered her capable of
long and active labour, and she had acquired with
gradual ease the habits and appliances of city life.
She was very soon the favoured and the favourite
manager of the household. Her mistress, born
and reared in a town, had been long a frail and
delicate woman ; and life in London in those
days, as now, was fraught with the manifold perils
of pestilent disease. To one of those ancient
scourges of the population, the sweating-sickness.
Dame Bunsby succumbed. Her death drew nigh,
and, with the touching simplicity of the times, she
told her true and tender husband, with smiling
tears, that she thought he could not do better
than, if they so agreed, to put Thomasine in her
place when she was gone. " Tell her it was my
last wish."

This gentle desire so uttered— her strong and

Thomasine Bonaventure 149

grateful feelings towards the master who had taken
her, as she expressed it in her rural speech, lean
from the moor, and fed her, so that her very bones
belonged to him — her happy home, and the power
she would acquire to make the latter days in the
cottage at Wike St. Marie prosperous and calm, —
all these impulses flocked into Thomasine*s heart,
and controlled for the time even the remembrance
of Cousin John. That poor young man, when
the tidings came that she was about to become
her master's wedded wife, suddenly disappeared,
and for a while the place of his retreat was un-
known ; but it afterwards transpired that he had
crossed the moor to a ** house of religious men,'*
called the White Monks of St. Cleer, and pleaded
for reception there as a needy novice of the gate.
His earnest entreaties had prevailed ; and six
months after his first love, and his last, had put
on her silks as a city dame, and begun her rule as
the mistress of a goodly house in London, her
cousin had taken the vows of his novitiate, and
received the first tonsure of St. John.

Her married life did not, however, long endure.
Three years after the master became the husband,
he took the " plague sore," and died. They were
childless ; but he bequeathed " all his goods and
chattel property, and his well-furnished mansion,
to his dear wife Thomasine Bonaventure, now
Bunsby ; " and the maid of the moor became one
of the wealthy widows of London city. Among

150 Footprints in Far Cornwall

the MSS. which still survive, there is a letter
which announces the event of her husband's death
and bequest, and then ptxxreeds to notify her
solemn donation, as a yearVmind of Master
Bunsby, of ten marks to the Reeve of Wike St.
Marie, ^* to the intent that he shall cause skeelfid
masons to build a bridge at the Ford of Green-a-
Moor : yea, and with stout stonework well laid ;
and see," she wrote, "that they do no harm to
that tree which standeth fast by the brook, neither
dispoyle they the rushes and plants that grow
thereby ; for there did I passe many goodly hours
when I was a simple mayde, and there did I first
see the kind face of a fathful frend." But in
another missive to her mother, about the same
date, there is a touch of tenderness which shows
that her woman's nature survived all changes, and
was strong within her still. She writes : ** I know
that Cousin John is engaged to the monks of St.
Cleer. Hath he been shorn, as they do call it, for
the second time ? Inquire, 1 beseech, if he seeketh
to dispart from that cell ? And will red gold
help him away ? I am prospered in pouch and
cofier, and he need not shame to be indebted unto
me, that owe so much to him." But this frank
and kindly effort — ^^ the late remorse of love " —
did not avail. John had broken the last link that
bound him to the world, and was lost to love and
her. Reckless thenceforward, therefore, if not
fancy-free, and it may be somewhat schooled by

\

^

Thomasine Bonaventure 151

the habits and associations of city life, she did not
wear the widow*s wimple long. After an interval
of years, we find her the honoured wife " of that
worshipful merchant-adventurer, Master John
Gall of St. Lawrence, Milk Street."

Gall was very rich, and he appears to have
emptied his money-bags into his wife's lap, as the
gossip of the city ran, for it is on record that soon
after her second marriage she manifested her pro-
sperity like a true-hearted Cornish woman by
ample "gifts'* and largess to the borough of
St. Marie, ** my native place." Twenty acres of
woodland copse in the neighbourhood were
bought and conveyed by that kind and gracious
lady. Dame Thomasine Gall, to feoffees and trust-
men for the perpetual use of the poor of the
paroche, "for fewel to be hewn in parcels once
a-year, and justly and equally divided for ever-
more on the vigil of St. Thomas the twin." To
her mother she sends by "a waggon which has
gone on an enterprise into Cornwall for woollen
merchandise, a chest with array of clothing, fair
weather and foul, head-gear and body raiment to
boot, all the choice and costly gifts to my loving
parents of my goodman Gall, and in remembrance,
as he chargeth me to say, that ye have reared for
him a kindly and loving wife." But the graphic
and touching passage in this letter is the message
which succeeds : " Lo 1 I do send you also here-
withal in the coffer a litel boke : it is for a gift to

152 Footprints in Far Cornwall

my Cousin John. Tell him it is not written as
the whilom usage was, and he was wont to teach
me my Christ Cross Rhime ; ^ but it is what they
do call emprinted with a strange device of an iron
engin brought from forrin parts. Bid him not
despise it, for although it is so small that it will
lie on the palm of your hand, yet it did cost me
full five marks in exchange.'* But her marriage
life was doomed to bring her only brief and transi-
tory intervals of wedded happiness. Five years
after the date of her letter above quoted, she was
again alone in the house. Master Gall died, but
not until he had endowed his " tender wife with
all and singular his moneys and plate, bills, bonds,
and ventures now at sea," etc., with a long in-
ventory of the "precious things beneath the
moon," too long to rehearse, but each and all to
the sole use, enjoyment, and behoof of Dame
Thomasine, whose maiden name of Bonaventure
was literally interpreted and fulfilled in every
successive change of station.

We greet her then once more as a rich and
buxom widow of city fame. Her wealth, added
to her comeliness — for she was still in the prime
of life — brought many "a potent, grave, and
reverend seignor " to her feet, and to sue for her

* Hawker has a pretty poem for children with this title —

" Teach me, Father John, to say
Vesper-yerse and matin-lay :
So when I to God shall plead,
Christ His Cross shall be my speed/'

Thomasine Bonaventure 153

hand. Nor did she long linger in her choice.
The favoured suitor now was Sir John Perceval,
goldsmith and usurer — that is to say, banker, in
the phrase of that day ; very wealthy, of high
repute, alderman of his ward, and in such a
position of civic advancement that he would have
been described in modern language as next the
chair. He wooed and won the " Golden Widow '*
— for so, because of her double inheritance of
the wealth of two rich husbands, she was merrily
named. Their wedding was a kind of public
festival, and the bride, in acknowledgment of her
own large possessions, was invested with a stately
dower at the church-door. One year after their
marriage her husband, Sir John, was elected to
that honourable office which is still supposed by
foreign nations to be only second in rank to that
of the monarch on the throne, Lord Mayor of the
city of London.

Thus, by a strange succession of singular
events, the barefooted shepherdess of a Cornish
moorland became the Lady Mayoress of metror
politan fame ; and the legend of Thomasine
Bonaventure — for it was now well known — was
the popular theme of royal and noble interest
among the lords and ladies of the Court. She
demeaned herself bravely and decorously in her
ascent among the great and lofty ones of the land.
Like all noble natures, her spirit rose with her
personal elevation, and took equal place with her

154 Footprints in Far Cornwall

" ■ , ■ ■ ■ . ■^^^^^^^^M^^^—^— M^^^^M^^^^M^— a^ ■■■»■■■■■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ I ■ I I ^ ■■■! ^

compeers of each superior rank. Nor did her true
and simple woman's nature undergo any deprecia-
tion or change. It breathes and survives in every
sentence of her family letters, transcripts of which
have been perpetuated and preserved to our own
times. One part of her personal history is illus-
trative of a scene of life and manners when
Henry VII. was king.

"Sweet mother," she wrote, **thy daughter
hath seen the face of the king. We were bidden
to a banket at the royal palace, and Sir John and
I dared not choose but go. There was such a
blaze of lords and ladies in silks and samite, and
jewels and gold, that it was like the city of New
Jerusalem in the Scriptures ; and I, thy maid
Thomasine, was arrayed so fine, that they brought
up the saying that I was dressed like an altar.
When we were led into the chamber of dais,
where his highness stood, the king did kiss me
on the cheek, as the manner is, and he seemed
gentle and kind. But then did he turn to my
good lord and husband, and say, with a look
stark and stern enow, * Ha, Sir John ! see to it
that thy fair dame be liege and true, for she
comes of the burly Cornish kind, and they be
ever rebels in blood and bone. Even now they
be one and all for that knave Warbeck,^ who is
among them in the West.* You will gesse, dear

^ The love of the Lady Katherine Gordon for Perkin Warbeck
is the subject of Hawker's poem, '< The Lady of the Mount/'

Sr

2i."Ji.-« Jt.-^wji.- J..-^.-^.« J» •

'••^'■S'^*

Thomasine Bonaventure 155

mother, how my heart did beat. But withal the
king did drink to me at the banket, and did
merrily call, * Health to our Lady Mayoress,
Dame Thomasine Perceval, which now feedeth
her flock in the rich pastures of our city of
London.* And thereat they did laugh, and fleer,
and shout, and there was flashing of tankards and
jingling of cups all down the hall.'*

With increase of wealth came also many a
renewed token of aflFectionate regard and sterling
bounty to her old and well-beloved dwelling-place
of Wike St. Marie. As her wedding-gift of re-
membrance she directed that " a firm and steadfast
road should be laid down with stones,*' at her
whole cost, along the midst of Green-a-Moor,
and fit for man and beast to travel on, with their
lawftd occasions, from Lanstaphadon to the sea.
At another time, and for a New Year's gift, she
gave the sum of forty marks towards the building
of a tower for St. Stephen*s church, above the
causeway of Dunheved ; and it was her desire
that they should carry their pinnacles so tall that
" they might be seen from Swannacote Cross, by
the moor, to the intent that they who do behold
it from the Burgage Mound may remember the
poor maid which is now a wedded dame of
London citie."

During her three marriages she had no children,
and it was her singular lot to survive her third
husband. Sir John : it was in long widowhood

156 Footprints in Far Cornwall

after him that she lived and died. Her will,
bearing date the vigil of the Feast of Christmas,
A.D. 1 510, is a singular document, for therein the
memory and the impulses of her early life are
recalled and condensed. She bequeaths large sums
of money to be laid out and invested in land for
the welfare of the village borough, whereto, amid
all the strange vicissitudes of her existence, her
heart had always clung with fond and lingering
regret. She directs that a chantry ^ with cloisters
was to be built near the church of Wike St.
Marie, at the discretion and under the control of
her executor and cousin, John Dineham, the un-
forgotten priest. She endows it with thirty marks
by the year, and provides that there shall be es-
tablished therein "a schole for young children
born in the paroche of Wike St. Marie ; and such
to be always preferred as are friendless and poor."
They are to be " taught to read with their fescue
from a boke of horn, and also to write, and both
as the manner was in that country when I was
young." The well-remembered days of her girl-
hood appear to tinge every line of her last will.
Her very codicil is softened with a touch of her

1 The remains of this old building have been embodied in some
cottages. The doorway shown in the illustration forms the front
door of one of these. The other is occupied by the Cornwall County
Police, and the unsuspecting pilgrim who rambles round without
permission is liable to be startled by the gruff remark, ** You*m
trespassing ! ** Thus are we recalled from ^ the baseless fabric " of
t he past to the stem realities of the living present.

M
I

Thomasine Bonaventure 157

first and fondest love. In it she gives to the
priest of the church, where she well knew that
her cousin John would serve and sing,^ " the
silver chalice gilt, which good Master Maskelyne
the goldsmith had devised for her behoof, with a
leetle blue flower which they do call a forget-me-
not wrought in Turkess at the bottom of the
bowl, to the intent that whensoever it is used
the minister may remember her who was once a
simple shepherd-maid by the wayside of Wike
St. Marie, and who was so wonderfully brought
by many great changes to be the Mayoress of
London citie before she died."

> Hawker gives a romantic turn of his own to this part of the
story.

THE BOTATHEN GHOST'

^ I '•HERE was something very painful and pecu-
"■■ liar in the position of the clergy in the west
of England throughout the seventeenth century.
The Church of those days was in a transitory
state, and her ministers, like her formularies,
embodied a strange mixture of the old belief with
the new interpretation. Their wide severance
also from the great metropolis of life and manners,
the city of London (which in those times was
civilised England, much as the Paris of our own
day is France), divested the Cornish clergy in
particular of all personal access to the master-
minds of their age and body. Then, too, the
barrier interposed by the rude rough roads of
their country, and by their abode in wilds that
were almost inaccessible, rendered the existence of
a bishop rather a doctrine suggested to their beliet
than a fact revealed to the actual vision of each
in his generation. Hence it came to pass that
the Cornish clergyman, insulated within his own

1 From All the Year Rounds vol. xvii. pp. 501-504. 1867
The story occurs in C. S. Gilbert's ** Historical Survey of Cornwall/
in Mrs. Bray^s "Trelawny of Trelawn,*' and in <' Histories ot
Launceston/' by R. and O. B. Peter.

158

The Botathen Ghost 159

limited sphere, often without even the presence of
a country squire (and unchecked by the influence
of the Fourth Estate — for until the beginning
of this nineteenth century, FlindelVs Weekly Mis-
cellany distributed from house to house from
the pannier of a mule, was the only light of the
West), became developed about middle life into
an original mind and man, sole and absolute
within his parish boundary, eccentric when com-
pared with his brethren in civilised regions, and
yet, in German phrase, "a whole and seldom
man " in his dominion of souls. He was ** the
parson," in canonical phrase — that is to say. The
Person, the somebody of consequence among his
own people. These men were not, however,
smoothed down into a monotonous aspect of life
and manners by this remote and secluded exist-
ence. They imbibed, each in his own peculiar
circle, the hue of surrounding objects, and were
tinged into distinctive colouring and character by
many a contrast of scenery and people.^ There
was the " light of other days," the curate by the
sea-shore, who professed to check the turbulence
of the *^ smugglers' landing " by his presence on
the sands, and who " held the lantern " for the
guidance of his flock when the nights were dark,
as the only proper ecclesiastical part he could take
in the proceedings.^ He was soothed and silenced
by the gift of a keg of hoUands or a chest of tea.

^ AH this 18 singularly applicable to Hawker himself. ^ See p. 45.

i6o Footprints in Far Cornwall

There was the merry minister of the mines, whose
cure was honeycombed by the underground men.
He must needs have been artist and poet in
his way, for he had to enliven his people three or
four times a-year, by mastering the arrangements
of a "guary," or religious mystery, which was
duly performed in the topmost hollow of a green
barrow or hill, of which many survive, scooped
out into vast amphitheatres and surrounded by
benches of turf, which held two thousand specta-
tors. Such were the historic plays, ** The Creation '*
and " Noe*s Flood," which still exist in the original
Celtic as well as the English text, and suggest what
critics and antiquaries Cornish curates, masters of
such revels, must have been, — for the native'
language of Cornwall did not lapse into silence
until the end of the seventeenth century. Then,
moreover, here and there would be one parson
more learned than his kind in the mysteries of
a deep and thrilling lore of peculiar fascination.
He was a man so highly honoured at college for
natural gifts and knowledge of learned books
which nobody else could read, that when he
"took his second orders" the bishop gave him
a mantle of scarlet silk to wear upon his shoulders
in church, and his lordship had put such power
into it that, when the parson had it rightly on, he
could " govern any ghost or evil spirit," and even
" stop an earthquake."

Such a powerful minister, in combat with

-.—.ew •• li_ ,

"Sr ^: :*: ^j* "^ ■ -i' %' "*■

The Botathen Ghost i6i

supernatural visitations, was one Parson Rudall/
of Launceston, whose existence and exploits we
gather from the local tradition of his time, from
surviving letters and other memoranda, and in-
deed from his own " diurnal " ^ which feU by chance
into the hands of the present writer. Indeed the
legend of Parson Rudall and the Botathen Ghost
will be recognised by many Cornish people as a
local remembrance of their boyhood.

It appears, then, from the diary of this
learned master of the grammar-school — for such
was his office as well as perpetual curate of the
parish — " that a pestilential disease did break forth
in our town in the beginning of the year a.d.
1665 ; yea, and it likewise invaded my school,
insomuch that therewithal certain of the chief
scholars sickened and died." "Among others
who yielded to the malign influence was Master
John Eliot, the eldest son and the worshipful heir
of Edward Eliot, Esquire of Trebursey, a stripling
of sixteen years of age, but of uncommon parts
and hopefal ingenuity.^ At his own especial
motion and earnest desire I did consent to preach

1 John Ruddle, or Rudall, A.M., was instituted Vicar of St.
Mary Magdalene, Launceaton, on Christmas Day, 1663, on which
day he began his ministry. He is entered in the Visitation Book
of 1665 as vicar, and in that of 1692 as curate. He became a pre-
bendary of Exeter. On July 15, 1671, he married Mary Bolitho,
a widow. He was buried on January a 2, 1698. (See Appendix H.)

^ It is a question whether these documents ever existed outside
Hawker^s brain. See note on p. loi.

' See Vivian's ** Visitations of Cornwall," p. 148.

M

1 62 Footprints in Far Cornwall

his funeral sennon." It should be remembered
here that, howsoever strange and singular it may
sound to us that a mere lad should formally solicit
such a performance at the hands of his master, it
was in consonance with the habitual usage of those
times. The old services for the dead had been
abolished by law, and in the stead of sacrament
and ceremony, month's mind and year's mind,
the sole substitute which survived was the general
desire " to partake," as they called it, of a post-
humous discourse, replete with lofty eulogy and
flattering remembrance of the living and the dead.
The diary proceeds : —

" I fulfilled my undertaking, and preached
over the coffin in the presence of a full assemblage
of mourners and lachrymose friends. An ancient
gentleman, who was then and there in the church,
a Mr. Bligh of Botathen,^ was much affected with
my discourse, and he was heard to repeat to him-
self certain parentheses therefrom, especially a
phrase from Maro Virgilius, which I had applied
to the deceased youth, * Et puer ipse fuit cantari
dignus.'

" The cause wherefore this old gentleman was
thus moved by my applications was this : He had

^ For the pedigree of the family of Bligh, of Botathen, see
Vivian's « Visitations of Cornwall," p. 38. William Bligh, baptized
May 18, 1657, was the son of William, who was baptized June 9,
1633, and was, therefore, only thirty-two in 1665. According to
ancestries given by Carew and Gilbert, it is probable that the Earls
of Darnley are descended from the Blighs of Botathen. (See App. H.)

The Botathen Ghost 163

a first-born and only son — a child who, but a very
few months before, had been not unworthy the
character I drew of young Master Eliot, but who,
by some strange accident, had of late quite fallen
away from his parent's hopes, and become moody,
and sullen, and distraught. When the funeral
obsequies were over, I had no sooner come out of
church than I was accosted by this aged parent,
and he besought me incontinently, with a singular
energy, that I would resort with him forthwith to
his abode at Botathen that very night ; nor could
I have delivered myself from his importunity, had
not Mr. Eliot urged his claim to enjoy my
company at his own house. Hereupon I got
loose, but not until I had pledged a fast assurance
that I would pay him, faithfully, an early visit the
next day."

"The Place," as it was called, of Botathen,
where old Mr. Bligh resided, was a low-roofed
gabled manor-house of the fifteenth century,
walled and muUioned, and with clustered chimneys
of dark-grey stone from the neighbouring quarries
of Ventor-gan. The mansion was flanked by a
pleasaunce or enclosure in one space, of garden
and lawn, and it was surrounded by a solemn
grove of stag-horned trees. It had the sombre
aspect of age and of solitude, and looked the very
scene of strange and supernatural events. A
legend might well belong to every gloomy glade
around, and there must surely be a haunted room

164 Footprints in Far Cornwall

somewhere within its walls. Hither, according to
his appointment, on the morrow, Parson Rudall
betook himself. Another clergyman, as it appeared,
had been invited to meet him, who, very soon
after his arrival, proposed a walk together in the
pleasaunce, on the pretext of showing him, as a
stranger, the walks and trees, until the dinner-
bell should strike. There, with much prolixity,
and with many a solemn pause, his brother minister
proceeded to " unfold the mystery."

**A singular infelicity," he declared, "had
befallen young Master Bligh, once the hopeful
heir of his parents and of the lands of Botathen.
Whereas he had been from childhood a blithe and
merry boy, * the gladness,* like Isaac of old, of his
father's age, he had suddenly, and of late, become
morose and silent — nay, even austere and stern —
dwelling apart, always solemn, often in tears. The
lad had at first repulsed all questions as to the
origin of this great change, but of late he had
yielded to the importunate researches of his
parents, and had disclosed the secret cause. It
appeared that he resorted, every day, by a path-
way across the fields, to this very dergyman's house,
who had charge of his education, and grounded
him in the studies suitable to his age. In the
course of his daily walk he had to pass a certain
heath or down where the road wound along
through tall blocks of granite with open spaces of
grassy sward between. There in a certain spot.

*.

*

*

The Botathen Ghost 165

and always in one and the same place, the lad
declared that he encountered, every day, a woman
with a pale and troubled face, clothed in a long
loose garment of frieze, with one hand always
stretched forth, and the other pressed against her
side. Her name, he said, was Dorothy Dinglet,^
for he had known her well from his childhood,
and she often used to come to his parents' house ;
but that which troubled him was, that she had
now been dead three years, and he himself had
been with the neighbours at her burial ; so that,
as the youth alleged, with great simplicity, since
he had seen her body laid in the grave, this that
he saw every day must needs be her soul or ghost

* Questioned again and again,* said the clergyman,

* he never contradicts himself ; but he relates the
same and the simple tale as a thing that cannot be
gainsaid. Indeed, the lad's observance is keen and
calm for a boy of his age. The hair of the
appearance, sayeth he, is not like anything alive,
but it is so soft and light that it seemeth to melt
away while you look ; but her eyes are set, and
never blink — no, not when the sun shineth full
upon her face. She maketh no steps, but seemeth
to swim along the top of the grass ; and her hand,
which is stretched out alway, seemeth to point at

' 1 This is no doubt a mis-spelling for ''Dingley.*^ A James
Dingley was vicar of the parish of South Petherwin, where the
ghost appeared) in the same reign, and assisted Parson Rudall in his
ministrations at Launceston. The name Dingley exists in that
town and district at the present day.

1 66 Footprints in Far Cornwall

something far away, out of sight. It is her con-
tinual coming ; for she never faileth to meet him,
and to pass on, that hath quenched his spirits ;
and although he never seeth her by night, yet
cannot he get his natural rest/

" Thus far the clergyman ; whereupon the
dinner clock did sound, and we went into the
house. After dinner, when young Master Bligh
had withdrawn with his tutor, under excuse of
their books, the parents did forthwith beset me
as to my thoughts about their son. Said I, warily,
^ The case is strange, but by no means impossible.
It is one that I will study, and fear not to handle,
if the lad will be free with me, and fulfil all that
I desire.* The mother was overjoyed, but I per-
ceived that old Mr. Bligh turned pale, and was
downcast with some thought which, however, he
did not express. Then they bade that Master
Bligh should be caUed to meet me in the
pleasaunce forthwith. The boy came, and he
rehearsed to me his tale with an open counte-
nance, and, withal, a modesty of speech. Verily
he seemed * ingenui vultus puer ingenuique
pudoris.* Then I signified to him my purpose.
^To-morrow,* said I, *we will go together to
the place ; and if, as I doubt not, the woman
shall appear, it will be for me to proceed accord-
ing to knowledge, and by rules laid down in my
books.' "

The unaltered scenery of the legend still

The Botathen Ghost 167

survives, and, like the field of the forty foot-
steps in another history, the place is still visited
by those who take interest in the supernatural
tales of old. The pathway leads along a moor-
land waste, where large masses of rock stand up
here and there firom the grassy turf, and clumps
of heath and gorse weave their tapestry of golden
and purple garniture on every side. Amidst all
these, and winding along between the rocks, is
a natural footway worn by the scant, rare tread
of the village traveller. Just midway, a some-
what larger stretch than usual of green sod
expands, which is skirted by the path, and which
is still identified as the legendary haunt of the
phantom, by the name of Parson Rudall's Ghost.
But we must draw the record of the first
interview between the minister and Dorothy from
his own words. " We met," thus he writes, " in
the pleasaunce very early, and before any others
in the house were awake ; and together the lad
and myself proceeded towards the field. The
youth was quite composed, and carried his Bible
under his arm, from whence he read to me verses,
which he said he had lately picked out, to have
always in his mind. These were Job vii. 14,

* Thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me
through visions ; * and Deuteronomy xxviii. 67,

* In the morning thou shalt say. Would to God
it were evening, and in the evening thou shalt
say. Would to God it were morning ; for the fear

1 68 Footprints in Far Cornwall

of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and
for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt
see.*

" I was much pleased with the lad's ingenuity
in these pious applications, but for mine own part
I was somewhat anxious and out of cheer. For
aught I knew this might be a diemonium meridianum^
the most stubborn spirit to govern and guide that
any man can meet, and the most perilous withal.
We had hardly reached the accustomed spot,
when we both saw her at once gliding towards
us ; punctually as the ancient writers describe the
motion of their * lemures, which swoon along the
ground, neither marking the sand nor bending
the herbage.' The aspect of the woman was
exactly that which had been related by the lad.
There was the pale and stony face, the strange
and misty hair, the eyes firm and fixed, that
gazed, yet not on us, but on something that they
saw far, far away ; one hand and arm stretched
out, and the other grasping the girdle of her
waist. She floated along the field like a sail upon
a stream, and glided past the spot where we stood,
pausingly. But so deep was the awe that over-
came me, as I stood there in the light of day, face
to face with a human soul separate from her bones
and flesh, that my heart and purpose both failed
me. I had resolved to speak to the spectre in
the appointed form of words, but I did not. I
stood like one amazed and speechless, until she

The Botathen Ghost 169

had passed clean out of sight. One thing re-
markable came to pass. A spaniel dog, the
favourite of young Master Bligh, had followed
us, and lo ! when the woman drew nigh, the
poor creatiu'e began to yell and bark piteously,
and ran backward and away, like a thing
dismayed and appalled. We returned to the
house, and after I had said all that I could to
pacify the lad, and to soothe the aged people, I
took my leave for that time, with a promise that
when I had fulfilled certain business elsewhere,
which I then alleged, I would return and take
orders to assuage these disturbances and their
cause.

^^ January 7, 1665. — At my own house, I find,
by my books, what is expedient to be done ; and
then, Apage, Sathanas 1

" January 9, 1 665. — ^This day I took leave of
my wife and family, under pretext of engagements
elsewhere, and made my secret journey to our
diocesan city, wherein the good and venerable
bishop then abode.

^^ January 10. — Deo graHaSy in safe arrival at
Exeter ; craved and obtained immediate audience
of his lordship ; pleading it was for counsel and
admonition on a weighty and pressing cause ;
called to the presence ; made obeisance ; and then
by command stated my case— the Botathen per-
plexity — which I moved with strong and earnest
instances and solemn asseverations of that which

lyo Footprints in Far Cornwall

I had myself seen and heard. Demanded by his
lordship, what was the succour that I had come
to entreat at his hands ? Replied, licence for my
exorcism, that so I might, ministerially, allay this
spiritual visitant, and thus render to the living
and the dead release from this surprise. ^But/
said our bishop, * on what authority do you allege
that I am intrusted with faculty so to do ? Our
Church, as is well known, hath abjured certain
branches of her ancient power, on grounds of
perversion and abuse.' * Nay, my lord,* I humbly
answered, * under favour, the seventy-second of
the canons ratified and enjoined on us, the clergy,
anno Domini 1604, doth expressly provide, that
*^no minister, unless he hath the licence of his
diocesan bishop, shall essay to exorcise a spirit,
evil or good.'* Therefore it was,' I did here
mildly allege, *that I did not presume to enter
on such a work without lawful privilege under
your lordship*s hand and seal.' Hereupon did
our wise and learned bishop, sitting in his chair,
condescend upon the theme at some length with
many gracious interpretations from ancient writers
and from Holy Scripture, and I did himibly rejoin
and reply, till the upshot was that he did call in
his secretary and command him to draw the afore-
said faculty, forthwith and without further delay,
assigning him a form, insomuch that the matter
was incontinendy done ; and afrer I had disbursed
into the secretary's hands certain moneys for

The Botathen Ghost 171

signitary purposes, as the manner of such officers
hath always been, the bishop did himself affix his
signature under the sigillum of his see, and deliver
the document into my hands. When I knelt
down to receive his benediction, he softly said,
* Let it be secret, Mr. R, Weak brethren ! weak
brethren I ' "

This interview with the bishop, and the
success with which he vanquished his lordship's
scruples, would seem to have confirmed Parson
Rudall very strongly in his own esteem, and to
have invested him with that courage which he
evidently lacked at his first encounter with the
ghost.

The entries proceed: ^^ January 11, 1665. —
Therewithal did I hasten home and prepare my
instruments, and cast my figures for the onset of
the next day. Took out my ring of brass, and
put it on the index-finger of my right hand, with
the scutum Davidis ^ traced thereon.

^^ January 12, 1665. — Rode into the gateway
at Botathen, armed at all points, but not with
Saul's armour, and ready. There is danger from
the demons, but so there is in the surrounding
air every day. At early morning then, and alone,
— for so the usage ordains, — I betook me towards
the field. It was void, and I had thereby due
time to prepare. First, I paced and measured
out my circle on the grass. Then did I mark

* Sec p. 15.

172 Footprints in Far Cornwall

my pentade ^ in the very midst, and at the inter-
section of the five angles I did set up and fix my
crutch of raun"^ [rowan]. Lastly, I took my
station south, at the true line of the meridian,
and stood facing due north.^ I waited and
watched for a long time. At last there was a
kind of trouble in the air, a soft and rippling
sound, and all at once the shape appeared, and
came on towards me gradually. I opened my
parchment-scroU, and read aloud the command.
She paused, and seemed to waver and doubt ;
stood still ; then I rehearsed the sentence again,
sounding out every syllable like a chant. She
drew near my ring, but halted at first outside, on
the brink. I sounded again, and now at the third
time I gave the signal in Syriac — the speech which
is used, they say, where such ones dwell and
converse in thoughts that glide.

^^ She was at last obedient, and swam into the
midst of the circle, and there stood still, suddenly.*
I saw, moreover, that she drew back her pointing
hand. All this while I do confess that my knees

1 The pentacle of Solomon. See p. 14.

' Compare the lines on Merlin in '* The Quest of the Sangraal " —

'* He raised his prophet-staiF: that runic rod,
The stem of Igdrasil — the crutch of Raun«**

to which Hawker appends the following note: ** Igdrasil, the
mystic tree, the ash of the Keltic ritual. The Raun, or Rowan, is
also the ash of the mountain, another magic wood of the northern
nations.^*

3 See Appendix Kb» ^ See note on p. 104.

The Botathen Ghost 173

shook under me, and the drops of sweat ran
down my flesh like rain. But now, although face
to face with the spirit, my heart grew calm, and
my mind was composed. I knew that the pen-
tacle would govern her, and the ring must bind,
until I gave the word. Then I called to mind
the rule laid down of old, that no angel or fiend,
no spirit, good or evil, will ever speak until they
have been first spoken to. N.B. — ^This is the
great law of prayer. God Himself will not yield
reply until man hath made vocal entreaty, once
and again. So I went on to demand, as the books
advise ; and the phantom made answer, willingly.
Questioned wherefore not at rest ? Unquiet,
because of a certain sin. Asked what, and by
whom ? Revealed it ; but it is sub sigillo^ and
therefore nefas dictu ; more anon. Inquired, what
sign she coidd give that she was a true spirit and
not a false fiend ? Stated, before next Yule-tide
a fearful pestilence would lay waste the land and
myriads of souls would be loosened from their
flesh, until, as she piteously said, * our valleys will
be full.* Asked again, why she so terrified the
lad ? Replied : * It is the law : we must seek a
youth or a maiden of clean life, and under age, to
receive messages and admonitions.' We con-
versed with many more words, but it is not lawful
for me to set them down. Pen and ink would
degrade and defile the thoughts she uttered, and
which my mind received that day. I broke the

174 Footprints in Far Cornwall

ring, and she passed, but to return once more
next day. At even-song, a long discourse with
that ancient transgressor, Mr. B. Great horror
and remorse ; entire atonement and penance ;
whatsoever I enjoin ; full acknowledgment before
pardon.

" January 13, 1665. — At sunrise I was again
in the field. She came in at once, and, as it
seemed, with freedom. Inquired if she knew my
thoughts, and what I was going to relate ?
Answered, * Nay, we only know what we perceive
and hear ; we cannot see the heart* Then I
rehearsed the penitent words of the man she had
come up to denounce, and the satisfaction he would
perform. Then said she, * Peace in our midst.'
I went through the proper forms of dismissal,
and fulfilled all as it was set down and written
in my memoranda ; and then, with certain fixed
rites, I did dismiss that troubled ghost, until she
peacefully withdrew, gliding towards the west.
Neither did she ever afterward appear, but was
allayed until she shall come in her second flesh to
the valley of Armageddon on the last day."

These quaint and curious details from the
" diurnal " of a simple-hearted clergyman of the
seventeenth century appear to betoken his per-
sonal persuasion of the truth of what he saw and
said, although the statements are strongly tinged
with what some may term the superstition, and
others the excessive belief, of those times. It is

The Botathen Ghost 175

a singular fact, however, that the canon which
authorises exorcism under episcopal licence, is
still a part of the ecclesiastical law of the Anglican
Church, although it might have a singular effect
on the nerves of certain of our bishops ^
if their clergy were to resort to them for the
faculty which Parson Rudall obtained. The
general facts stated in his diary are to this day
matters of belief in that neighbourhood ; and it
has been always accounted a strong proof of the
veracity of the Parson and the Ghost, that the
plague, fatal to so many thousands, did break out
in London at the close of that very year. We
may well excuse a triumphant entry, on a sub-
sequent page of the " diurnal," with the date ot
July 10, 1665: "How sorely must the infidels
and heretics of this generation be dismayed when
they know that this Black Death, which is now
swallowing its thousands in the streets of the
great city, was foretold six months agone, under
the exorcisms of a country minister, by a visible
and suppliant ghost ! And what pleasures and
improvements do such deny themselves who
scorn and avoid all opportunity of intercourse
with souls separate, and the spirits, glad and
sorrowful, which inhabit the unseen world 1 "

1 Hawker was quite capable of submitting a poser of this kind
to his own bishop, Dr. Phillpotts. It is on record that he once
exorcised a rebellious vestry, but whether he obtained the bishop^s
licence in this case is not stated.

A RIDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS^

BY TWO OXFORD MEN^

T^EAR old Oxford I • amid the brawl and
^^ uproar of the latter days, and with many
a frailty in the curtains of the Ark which the
weapons of the Philistines have found and pierced,
yet alma mater^ mother mild, like our native
England, ** with all thy faults I love thee still."
And when I recall my own undergraduate life of
thirty years and upwards agone, I feel, notwith-
standing modern vaunt, the laudator temporis acti
earnest within me yet and strong. Nowadays, as
it seems to me, there is but little originality of
character in the still famous University ; a dread
of eccentric reputation appears to pervade College
and Hall ; every " Oxford man," to adopt the

1 From Belgrai^ia, vol. iii. pp. 328-337. 1867.

2 The author and Rev. Dr. Jcune, afterwards Bhhop of Peter-
borough, father of Sir Francis Jeune.

3 « o type of a far scene I the lovely land.

Where youth wins many a friend, and I had one ;
Still do thy bulwarks, dear old Oxford, stand ?
Yet, Isis, do thy thoughtful waters run ? "
TAe Token Stream of* Ttdna ' Combe,

(See Appendix A.)

176

A Ride from Bade to Boss 177

well-known name, is subdued into sameness within
and without, controlled as it were into copyism
and mediocrity by the smoothing-iron of the nine-
teenth century,^ Whereas in my time, and before
it, there were distinguished names, famous in
every mouth for original achievements and " deeds
of daring-do." There were giants in those days —
men of varied renown — and they arose and won
for themselves, in strange fields of fame, record
and place. Each became in his day a hero of the
« Iliad " or « Odyssey " of Oxford life— a kind of
Homeric man. Once and again in the course of
every term, the whole University would ring with
some fearless and ^practical jest, conceived and
executed with a dash of original genius which
betokened future victories in the war of wit and
the world of men. How well do I remember
a bold travesty of discipline* which once set the
common-rooms in a roar, and even among " mine
ancients," made it

" merry in hall
Where beards wagged all *' !

A decree had been issued by the " authorities " of

1 Comp^e Tennyson, " In Memoriam " —

" For, * ground in yonder social mill
We rub each other^s angles down,

' And merge,^ he said, 'in form and gloss.
The picturesque of man and man." ""

^ Such things have been known to occur even in these degenerate
days.

N

178 Footprints in Far Cornwall

a well-known College (it was in the pre-ritual
days) that no undergraduate should present him-
self at morning chapel service 'with his scarlet
hunting-coat underneath his surplice — z, costume
neither utterly secular nor completely ecclesi-
astical, and therefore a motley garb which it did
not seem unjust or unreasonable to forbid in a
sacred place. However, the order was implicitly
obeyed at the ensuing matins, with solemn and
suspicious exactitude. Alas ! it was " the torrent's
smoothness ere it dash below ; " for on the third
morning, when the College servants arrived to
take down the shutters and to light the fires, they
discovered that ^' a change had come over the
spirit of their dream." Every one of the panelled
doors throughout the Quadrangle of the Canons,
the very seat of hoar and reverend authority, had
been artistically painted during the night with the
hue of Nimrod, a glowing hunter's red 1 The
gates were immediately closed and barred, and
every member of the College convened before a
grand divan of the Dons, to undergo immediate
scrutiny on the origin of that which some of the
undergraduates irreverently termed this ultra-
observance of the rubric (their wit would be
obscure to those who are unaware that ruhrica^ the
etymon of our Church rules, signifies ruddy or
red). The authors of this outrage escaped detec-
tion, although every painter in Oxford was sum-
moned for examination, and all the dealers in

A Ride from Bude to Boss 1 79

colours and oils. It was subsequently whispered
among the initiated that the artist, with his brushes
and materials, had been brought down from Lon-
don in a post-chaise-and-four, secretly introduced
through an unnoted postern, and when his work
was done, hospitably feasted^ and paid, and then
sent back at full speed through the night to town.
Another "merrie jest," but with a lowlier
scene and an humbler dramatis personay raised the
laugh of many a common-room and wine-party
about the same period of my own undergraduate
recollections. There was an ancient woman, blear-
eyed and dim-sighted, "worn nature's mournful
monument," ^ who had the far and wide repute of
witchcraft among the College servants and the
" baser sort " in the suburbs of the town ; but in
reality she was a mere " wreck of eld," a harmless
and helpless old creature, who stood at more than
one college-gate for alms. Her well-known name
was Nanny Heale. Her cottage, or rather decayed
old hut, leaned against a steep mound by the
casde-wall, and was so hugged in by the ground
that, from a path along the ramparts a passer-by
might cast a bird's-eye look down Nanny's
chimney, and watch well her hearth and home.
One winter evening certain frolicsome wights, out
of College in search of a channel for the exuberant
spirits of their age, were pacing, like Hardicanute,
the wall east and west, when a glance down the

^ A variant of a line in Hawker's poem, <^ A Legend of the Hive/"

i8o Footprints in Far Cornwall

witch's chimney revealed a quaint and simple
scene of humble life. There she crouched, close
by the smoking embers, peering into the fire ;
and before her very nose there hung, just over
the fire, a round iron vessel, called in the western
counties a crock, filled to the brim with potatoes,
and without a cover or lid. This utensil was sus-
pended by its swing-handle to an iron bar, which
went from side to side of the chimney-wall. To
see and to assail the weak point in a field of battle
is evermore the signal of a great captain. The
onslaught was instantly planned. A rope, with a
hook of iron at the end, was slowly and noiselessly
lowered down the chimney, and, unnoted by poor
Nanny's blinking sight, the handle of the iron pot
was softly grasped by the crook, and the vessel
with its mealy contents began to ascend in silent
majesty towards the upper air. Thoroughly
roused by this unnatural and ungrateful demeanour
of her lifelong companion of the hearth, old
Nanny arose firom her stool, peered anxiously
upward to watch the ascent, and shouted at the
top of her voice : ** Massy *pon my sinful soul I
art gwain ofE — taties and all ? " ^

The vessel was quietly grasped, carried down
in hot haste, and planted upright outside the
cottage-door. A knock, given for the purpose,
summoned the inmate, who hurried out and

^ The Oxford crone speaks with a Cornish accent, and some
think that she hailed from Stratton.

A Ride from Bude to Boss i8i

stumbled over, as she afterwards interpreted the
event, her penitent crock,

"So then," was her joyful greeting — "so
then ! theer't come back to holt, then I Ay, 'tis
a cold out o* doors/'

Good came out of evil ; for her story, which
she rehearsed again and again, with all the energy
and firm persuasion of truth, at last reached the
ears of the parish authorities, and they, on inquiry
into the evidence, forthwith decreed the addition
of a shilling a-week to poor old Nanny's allowance,
on the plea that her faculties had quite failed her,
and that she required greater charity because of
her wandering mind. Yet the fact which she
testified met the criterion of evidence demanded
by Hume, for the event occurred within the
experience of the witness herself

It was by outbreaks of animal spirits such as
these that the monotony of collegiate life in those
days was relieved, for the University supplied but
little excitement of mental kind. The battle-cries
of High Church and Low Church — " that bleating
of the sheep and that lowing of the oxen " which
nowadays we hear — had not yet begun to rouse
the Oxford mind ; ^ and the only war about
vestments that I recollect was our hot fierce

^ Hawker came in contact, however, with some of the leaders of
the Oxford Movement, as we learn from a letter where he says :
" How I recollect their faces and words — Newman, Pusey, Ward,
Marriott ; they used to be all in the common-room every evening,
discussing, talking, reading/' Hawker went up to Oxford in 1822,

1 82 Footprints in Far Cornwall

struggle after a festive assembly to get first out
into the lobby, and to grasp as a spoil the best
caps and gowns one by one, until the unhappy
freshman who arrived last had to put up with
such ragged specimens of University costume as
would hardly have satisfied the veriest Puritan for
the performance of divine service.

Well, for us two — the subjects of this paper —
the life of Oxford, with its freaks and its discipline,
for a time was over ; we had each passed the
final examination so graphically named " the Great
Go ; ** and that so as to be, what man so seldom
is in this world, satisfied. In high heart, and with
spirits running over, my friend and I appointed
a tryst in a small watering-place on the north
coast of Cornwall as a starting-point for a ride
**all down the thundering shores of Bude and
Boss." In due time, and on a glorious summer
day, we mounted our *^ Galloway nags," and, like
the knights of ancient ballad, *^ we laughed as we
rode away." The start was from Bude, and we
made our first halt at a place twelve miles towards
the south-west ; a scene of general local renown,
and which bears the parochid name of Warbstow
Barrow. It stands upon a lofty hill that soars
and swells upward into a vast circular mound,
enthroned, as it were, amid a wild and boundless
stretch of heathy and gorsy moorland. It was

and won the Newdigate in 1827, when Newman was a Tutor of
Oriel and Keble was publishing ** The Christian Year."

A Ride from Bude to Boss 183

soothing to the sight to look down and around
on the tapestry of purple and gold intermingled
in natural woof, and flowing away in free undula-
tion on every side. The view from this mountain-
top was of wonderful extent, but wild, desolate,
and bare. Beneath, on three sides, spread the
moor, dotted here and there with a grey old
church, that crouched toward the shadow of its
low Saxon batdemented tower, as if it still sought
shelter, after so many ages, from the perils of
surrounding barbarism. On the fourth side
swelled the sea. But the brow of this hill, like
that of many others in the west, dropped into
the shape of a mighty circular bowl — a kind of
hollow valley turfed with grass, and surrounded
by a rim ; an amphitheatre, however, large enough
to hold five thousand people at once.^ On the
flat level floor of this round crater, and in the
exact midst, still swells up uninjured the outline
of a viking's grave, unlike other burial-mounds ^
so common in Cornwall and elsewhere,

" Where the brown barrow curves its sullen breast
Above the bones of some dead gentile's soul,""

and that on every hillside and plain. The shape
of the great hillock at Warbstow is neither oval

^ One of the kind so often used by Wesley for his open-air
sermons in Cornwall. See p. i6o.

* Compare Hawker^s poem,"Trebarrow," and his footnote thereto.

' Prom the description of Carradon in <<The Quest of the
Sangraal/'

184 Footprints in Far Cornwall

nor round, but survives the exact image of the
dragon-ship of northern piracy and war.^ More-
over, not the shape only, but the size of the
ancient vessel of the dead, is perpetuated here.
Measured and graduated by scale, this oblong,
curved, and narrow grave would yield the dimen-
sions of a boat of fifty tons, which would be about
the weight of a Scandinavian serpent of the sea.

We saw that an effort had been made to open
this barrow at one of the ends ; but an old woman,
whom we found at a cottage not far off, assured
us *^that they that tried it were soon forced to
give up their dig^ng and flee, for the thunders
came for 'em, and the lightnings also/'

We endeavoured to sound the local mind of
our informant as to the history of the place and
origin of the grave ; but all we could drag out of
her, after questions again and again, was ^^ great
warriors, supposing, in old times." Such was the
dirge of the mighty dead, and their requiem, at
Warbstow Barrow. But the sun had begun to
lean, and we were bound for Boscastle, the breviate
of Bottreau ^ Castle, and the abode of the earls ^ of
that name.

1 *' Kings of the main their leaders brave,
Their barks the dragons of the wave.^

Lay of the Last Minstrel,

2 Compare Hawker's well-known ballad, "The Silent Tower of
Bottreaux."

3 There were no '* earls" of Bottreaux. Knights, or barons,
would be more correct.

'2' .:/"s=.

I§l

A Ride from Bude to Boss 185

. I • ' . , I . I ■ ■ ■

Strange, striking, and utterly unique is the
first aspect of this village by the sea. The gorge
or valley lies between two vast and precipitous
hills, that yawn asunder as though they had been
cleft by the spells of some giant warlock ^ of the
West, like the Eildon Hill by Michael Scott.'" As
you descend the hill from the north you discover
on the opposite side clusters of quaint old-fashioned
houses, grotesque and gabled, that appear as though
they clung together for mutual support on the
slope of that perilous cliff. Between the houses,
and sheer down the mountain side, descended, or
rather fell, a steep and ugly road ; which led, how-
ever, to the " safety of the vale," and landed the
traveller at last in a deep cut or gash between the
hills, where the creek ebbed and flowed, which was
called by strangers in their courtesy, and by the
inhabitants, with aboriginal pride, " the Harbour "
— Cornice ** Hawn." There " went the ships," so
that they did not exceed sixty tons in freight ; and
thither arrived, at certain intervals, coals and
timber in bulk and quantity, which can be as-
certained, no doubt, by the return of imports
laid before Parliament by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.

We reached in safety our bourn for the night
at the bottom of the hill, and discovered the
hostelry by the sign which swung above the door.
This appeared to us to represent a hian's shoe ;

» Wizard. « See Appendix J.

1 86 Footprints in Far Cornwall

but when we had read the legend, we found that it
signified the Ship Inn, and was the " actual effigy "
of a vessel which belonged to the port. Here we
received a smiling welcome from the hostess, a
ruddjr-visaged widow, — ^Joan Treworgy was her
Keltic name — fiibby and interjectional in figure,
and manifestly better adapted for her abode at the
foot of the hill than at any mansion further up.
She was born, as she afterwards related, two doors
oflF: and, except that she had travelled up the
hill to Forraburry church to be married there, it
appeared that a diameter of five yards would have
defined the total circumference of her wandering
life.

As soon as we arrived, she called up from some
vasty deep underneath her house a grim and
shaggy shape, who answered to the name of Tim,
but whom we identified as Caliban on the spot,
and charged him to take proper care of the
Captains* horses (for by that tide all strangers in
sound garments and whole hats are saluted in the
land of the quarry and the mine), and to be sure
that they had plenty of whuts. She then invited
us to enter her "parrolar," a room rather cosy
than magnificent ; for when our landlady had
followed in her two guests, and stood at the door,
no one beside could have forced an entrance any
more than a canon-ball could cleave through a
feather-bed. We then proceeded to confer about
beds for the night, and, not without misgiving.

A Ride from Bude to Boss 187

inquired if she could supply a couple of those
indispensable places of repose. A demur ensued.
All the gentry in the town, she declared, were
accustomed to sleep "two in a bed," and the
officers that travelled the country, and stopped at
her house, would mostly do the same ; but, how-
ever, if we commanded two beds for only two
people, two we must have ; only, although they
were both in the same room, we must certainly
pay for two, and sixpence a piece was her regular
price. We assented, and then went on to entreat
that we might dine. She graciously agreed ; but
to all questions as to our fare her sole response
was, " Meat — meat and taties." " Some call *em,"
she added, in a scornful tone, " * purtaties,* but we
always say * taties * here." The specific differences
between beef, mutton, veal, etc., seemed to be
utterly or artfully ignored, and to every frenzied
inquiry her calm inexorable reply was, " Meat —
nice wholesome meat and taties."

In due time we sat down in that happy
ignorance as to the nature of our viands which
a French cook is said to desire ; and although
we both made a not unsatisfactory meal, it is a
wretched truth that by no effort could we ascertain
what it was that was roasted for us that day by
widow Treworgy, hostess of the Ship, and which
we consumed. Was it a piece of Boscastle baby ?
as I suggested to my companion in the midst of
his enjoy nient ; and the question caused him to

1 88 Footprints in Far Cornwall

arise and rush out to inquire once again, and insist

on knowing the whole truth ; but he soon came

back baffled, and shouting, '^ Meat and taties ! *'

There was not a vestige of bone nor any outline

that could identify the joint, and the not unsavoury

taste was something like tender veal. It was not

until years afterwards that light was thrown on

our mysterious dinner that day by a passage which

I accidentally turned up in an ancient history of

Cornwall. Therein I read ** that the sillie people

of Bouscastle and Boussiney do catch in the summer

seas divers young soyles [seals], which, doubtful

if they be fish or flesh, conynge housewives will

nevertheless roast, and do make thereof very

savoury meat." **Ay, ay," said my friend and

fellow-traveller, when I had transcribed and sent

him this extract — " Ay 1 clear as day — meat and

taties ; how I wish I had old mother Treworgy

now by the throat I I would make her walk up

that hill every day for a month, and stop her meat

and taties till she was the size of other people."

When the hour arrived that should have been the

time of rest, we mounted a cabin-ladder, which

our hostess assured us was "the stairs." We

found the two beds which had been allotted to

us, but, as it was foretold, in one small, hot, stuffy

room. As we entered the narrow door, a solitary

casement twinkled on one side of the opposite

wall, flanked by a glazed cupboard door, paned to

match, on the other. This latter, the false light.

A Ride from Buck to Boss 189

my friend opened by mistake — he was near-sighted,
and our single dip was dim — to sniiF, as he said,
the evening air ; but he shut it up again in quick
disgus^ declaring that the whole atmosphere of
the village was impregnated with onions and
cheese. To bed, but not to rest. Every cubic
inch of ozone was exhausted long before midnight,
and, as the small hours struck on the kitchen clock
below, we found that ^^Boscastle had murdered
sleep, and therefore Oxford could sleep no more."
With the first feint glimmer of day we arose and
stole gently out into the dawn. Before us stood
the one-arched bridge spanning the river bed.
Lower down the creek the mast and rigging of
a sloop at anchor was visible, like network traced
upon the morning sky. But the lowly level had
no attraction for our path : there lay the sluggish
mist of night, and it seemed to our distempered
fancy like the dull heavy breath of the snorers in
that village glen ; but above and upwards stretched
the tall ascending road, like Jacob's ladder resting
on the earth and reaching to the sky. Surely on
the brow of that mountain top there must be breath
and room. We turned, therefore, to climb, and
for once "vaulting ambition did not overleap
itself." Slow and difficult was the way, but
cooler and more bracing the air every yard that
we achieved.

We stood at last on the brow of the vast gorge,
and fiill five hundred feet above the sea, where

IQO Footprints in Far Cornwall

church and tower crowned the clifF like a crest.
The scene we looked upon was indeed exhilarating,
stately, and grand. On the right hand, and to
the west, arose and stood the craggy heights or
Dundagel, island and main, ennobled by the
legends of old historic time. To the left, a
boundless reach of granite-sprinkled moor, where
barrow, logan rock, and cromlech stood, the
mute memorials of Keltic antiquity.^ Beneath,
and afar off, the sea, at that silent hour, like some
boundless lake, "its glad waves murmuring all
around the soul ; " near, and at our feet, the
jumbled village, crouching on either side of
the steepy road, and clinging to its banks as
if the inhabitants sought to secure access for
escape when the earthquake should rend or
the volcano pour. We prepared to return and
descend ; but this was by no means an easy feat,
from the extreme angle at which the roadway fell.
At the first look on the inclined plane it seemed
easier to sit down and slide ; but on the whole we
thought it better to walk, and pause, and creep.

Another and a new feature in the scene now
met our gaze. Annexed to every human abode
a small hut had been stuck on to the walls for the
home of the " gendeman " that, in Cornwall as

1 Compare Tennyson —

^ that gray king, whose name, a ghost,
Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak,
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still/'

A Ride from Bude to Boss 191

in Ireland, pays the rent — Keltice^ the pig. The
hovels of these bristly vassals, like the castles of
their lords, were cabined and circumscribed in the
extreme. There was just room enough to breathe,
but not to snore without impediment of tone. A
sudden inspiration awoke in our minds. Surely
it would be an act of humanity and kindness to
enable these poor suffocating creatures once in
their lives to taste the balmy breath of a summer
morning. It will be to us, we said and thought,
a personal delight to see them emerge from their
close and festering abodes and rush out in the
free, soft radiance of the dawn 1 Action followed
close on thought. Hastily, busily, every rude
rough bar was drawn back, door and substitute
for door unclosed ; and a general jail-delivery of
imprisoned swine was ruled and accomplished on
the spot. Undetected by a single human witness,
without interruption from slumbering master or
lazy hind, the total deed was done. Gradually
descending the hill, and scattering, like ancient
heroes and modern patriots, freedom and deliver-
ance as we went, never did the children of liberty
so exult in their unshackled deliverance as these
Boscastle hordes. There was one result, however,
which we had not foreseen, and its perilous con-
sequences had quite escaped anticipation. The
inmates of every sty, as soon as their opportunities
of egress had been ascertained by marching out
of their prison-doors and arriving unchecked at

{

192 Footprints in Far Cornwall

the roadside — ^when they looked upward and sur-
veyed the steep and difficult ascent, and* counted
mentally the cost of attempting to surmount the
steep, they all, as with one hoof and mind, turned
down the hill. Sire and dam, lean and corpulent,
farrow and suckling, all uno impetUy selected and
rushed down the facilis descensus Avemi; and
although, in all likelihood, they had never pon-
dered the contrast of the Roman poet, yet they
spontaneously moved and seconded, and carried
the unanimous resolution that revocare gradum^
hie lahor^ hoc opus est. The consequence of this
choice of way was too soon apparent. Just as
we had drawn the last bar, and were approaching
the bottom of the steep, we looked back and saw
that we were pursued, and should speedily be
surrounded, by a mixed multitude of porcine
advocates for free discussion in the open air, such
as might have gladdened the heart of any critic
on the original and cultivated breeds of the west
of England. Prominent among them the old
Cornish razor-back asserted its pre-eminence of
height and bone, nor were punchy representatives
of the Berkshire ^ and Suffolk genealogies absent

^ ^ One breed may rise, another fall \
The Berkshire hog survives them all/*

It was, perhaps, in commemoration of this episode that Hawker
when afterwards curate of North Tamerton, kept a tame Berkshire
pig. Another paison-poet, Robert Herrick, is also said to have had
a pet porker.

A Ride from Bude to Boss ,193

on this festive occasion. Growing now appre-
hensive of the consequences of discoveiy, if an
early rising owner should ascertain the authors
of this daring effort to *MeIiver their dungeons
from the captive," we hastened to secure ourselves
in the shelter of pur hostelry of the Ship, and
fortunately found, on reaching our " little chamber
on the wall," that the widow and her household
were still fast asleep. We fastened the door and
listened for results. The outcries and yells were
fearful. By-and-by human voices began to mingle
with the tumult ; there were shouts of inquiry
and surprise, then sounds of apparent expostu-
lation and entreaty, and again a " storm of hate
and wrath and wakening fear." Many a battle
of soldiers must have fought and ended with less
uproar. At last the tumult pierced even the ears
of our hostess Joan Treworgy. We heard her
puff and blow, and call for Tim. At last, after
waiting a prudent time, we thought it best to
call aloud for shaving-water, and to inquire with
astonishment into the cause of that horrible dis-
turbance which had roused us from our morning
sleep. This brought the widow in hot haste to
our door.

" Why, they do say. Captain," was her dole-
ful response, "that all the pegs up-town have
a-rebelled, and they've a-be, and let one the
wother out, and they be all a-gwain to sea huz-
a-muz, bang ! "

o

194 Footprints in Far Cornwall

Although this statement was somewhat obscure
in its phraseology, and the Keltic byword at the
close, wherein the ** sense is kindred to the sound,"
yet we understood too well that the main facts
of the history were as true as if Macaulay had
recorded them ; so we pretended to dress in great
haste, and hurried down to see the war. It was
indeed an original scene ;

** For chief intent on deeds of strife.
Or bard of martial lay,
Twerc worth ten years of peaceful life.
One glance at their array ! "

Here a decently dressed woman made many fruit-
less endeavours to coax put of the brawl five or six
squealing farrows, the ofi^pring of a gaunt old
dam that, like the felon sow of Rokeby,* was " so
distraught with noise" that "her own children
she mought clean devour." There a stalwart
quarryman, finding all other efforts fruitless, had
seized his full-grown porker by the legs and
hoisted him on his shoulders to ride home pickaback
uttering all the while yells of fierce expostulation
and defiance. One hot little man, with a red face
and gesticulating hands, had grasped a long pole,
and laid about him in mad fiiry, promiscuously,
until a tall and bristly hog rushed at him from
behind, and carried him off down the hill seated
at full charge like a knight of King Arthur's
Court, with " semblance of a spear," and tilted

^ Compare p. 204.

A Ride from Buck to Boss 195

him at last head over heels in the bed of the
stream. But some way up the hill we came
suddenly upon a scene which demanded all our
sympathy ; help there was none. A panting old
woman had singled out her hog and separated
him from the crowd ; and a fine fat animal he
was — four hundred-weight at least — and so un-
fitted for the slightest exertion, that unless he had
resorted to sliding and rolling, it was diflficult to
conceive how he had accomplished even his down-
hill journey from the sty. But up hill — as his
obdurate mistress appeared to propose, — no, no.
There was a look in his eye, as he glanced back
at his despairing owner, that seemed to suggest a
grunt in strong German emphasis, das geht nicht.
He had thrust his snout and half his nose through
the bars of a gate ; and there he stuck, and
manifestly meant to stick fast, while she belaboured
him with strokes like a flail. She paused as we
approached the spot, and with an appealing look
for our assent, she piteously exclaimed, "My
peg's surely mazed, maister, or he's ill-wished ;
some ennemie hath a-dond it ! " My thought
responded to her charge ; it was certainly no
enemy of the pig that " dond it," whatsoever he
might be to his owner.

We left " her alone in her glory," and returned
to the inn, communing as we went on the store
of legend, tale, and history we had laid up for
future generations in thus opening a field of

196 Footprints in Far Cornwall

achievement for the Boscastle swine. What
themes of marvel would travel down by the
cottage hearth, there to be rehearsed by wrinkled
eld ! — the wondrous things always the more
believed as they became more incredible. Doubt-
less the local event would very soon be resolved
into demoniac agency, because, ever since the
miracle of Gadara, the people have always linked
the association of demons and swine ; and they
refer to the five small dark punctures always
visible on the hoof of the hog as the points of
entrance and departure for the fiend.^

Once in after-life did this fitftil freak ^ recur to
our minds. We separated, my companion of this
ride and myself — I to a country cure, and my
friend back to Oxford, " to climb the steep where
fame's proud temple shines afar." He ascended
step by step until he became Dean of the College ^
to which we both bdonged. In course of time,
after the usual interval, I went up to take my
M.A. degree. Now the custom was, and is, that
the Dean takes the candidate by the hand, leads
him up to the chair of the Vice-Chancellor, and
presents him for his degree in a Latin speech.
We were all assemUcd in the appointed place,
the Dean, my friend, taking us up in turn one by

* Compare p. 202.

^ An escapade with pigs occurs in Tennyson's poem, " Walking
to the Mail/'

* Pembroke.

A Ride from Bude to Boss ion

one. Among the group was a stout burly man,
a gentleman commoner, sleek and fat, and mani-
festly well-to-do in life. With him the Dean had
trouble ; unwieldy and confused and slow, it was
difficult to get him through the crowd and up to
his place in time. They passed me in a kind of
struggle, — ^the Dean leading and endeavouring to
guide, the candidate hanging back and getting
pitched in the throng. Just then I managed to
whisper —

" Why, your peg*s surely mazed, maister ! "
I was hardly prepared for the result when I
"struck the electric chain wherewith we are
darkly bound." The association came back ; the
words called up the scene among the swine ; and
when the crowd gave way, there stood the Dean
before the Vice-Chancellor*s chair, greeting him,
not with a Latin form, but in spasms of un-
controllable laughter I

To return to the original scene. We ordered
Caliban with our ponies to be ready at the door,
and we in the meanwhile called on our hostess to
produce her bill. She hum'd and ha'd and
hesitated, and seemed at a loss to produce the
" little dockyment,*' which is usually supposed to
be a matter of very fluent composition at an inn.
It was not until we had again and again explained
that we desired her to state in writing what we
had to pay, that she seemed at last to comprehend.
A deal of scuffling about the kitchen ensued.

/

198 Footprints in Far Cornwall

There ^as a quick passing to and fro, in and out ;
there were several muttered discussions of the
lower house ; a neighbour, who appeared to be a
glazier, was sent for ; and at last the door opened,
and our red pursy little hostess bustled in, bobbed
a curtsey, and presented for our perusal her small
account, chalked upon the upper lid of the kitchen
bellows, which she gracefully held towards us by
the snout. Poor old Joan Treworgy ! how utterly
did thy rough simplicity put to shames the vaunt-
ing tariff and the " establishment charges " of this
nineteenth century of Messrs. Brag and Sham !
The 'bill, which we duly transcribed, and which
was then paid and rubbed out, thus ran : —

Captens.

T for 2 06

Sleep for 2 10

Meat and Taties and Bier . . .16
Bresks 16

Four shillings and sixpence for bed and board for
two wolfish appetites for a night and a day, to say
nothing of the pantomime performed gratuitously
for our behoof, at a very early hour, by Boscastle
amateurs 1 Good day, Mrs. Treworgy 1 good day I
" To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

HOLACOMBE

nr^HERE is a small oudying hamlet in my
^ parochial charge, about two miles from my
vicarage, with a population of about two hundred
souls, inhabiting a kind of plateau shut in by lofiy
hills and skirted by the sea. These rural and
simple-hearted people, secluded by their remote
place of abode from the access of the surrounding
world, present a striking picture of old and Celtic
England such as it existed two or three hundred
years ago. A notion of their solitude and simplicity
may be gathered from the fact that, whereas they
have no village postman or office, their only mode
of intercourse with the outer life of their kind is
accomplished through the weekly or other visit
of their clergyman. He carries their letters, which
contain "the short and simple annals of the poor,*'
and he receives and returns their weekly and
laborious literary compositions to edify and instruct
their distant and more civilised correspondents.
The address on each letter is often such as to

* Welcombc, to which Mr. Hawker became curate in 1850, and
which he continued to serve until his death. There is an allusion
to Welcombe church on p. zi.

199

200 Footprints in Far Cornwall

baffle all ordinary curiosity, and unless deciphered
by the skill of the experts of the post-office, must
often furnish hieroglyphics for the study of the
Postmaster-General as obscure, if not so antique,
as the legends on a pyramid or Rosetta stone.
A visit to a distant market-town is an achievement
to render a man an authority or an oracle among
his brethren ; and one who has accomplished that
journey twice or thrice is ever regarded as a daring
traveller, and consulted about foreign countries
with a feeling of habitual respect.

They have amongst them no farrier for their
cattle, no medical man for themselves, no beer-
house, no shop ; a man who travels for a distant
town supplies them with tea by the ounce, or
sugar in smaller quantities still. Not a newspaper
is taken in throughout the hamlet, although they
are occasionally astonished and delighted by the
arrival from some almost forgotten friend in
Canada of an ancient copy of the Toronto
Gazette. This publication they pore over to
weariness, and on Sunday they will worry . the
clergyman with questions about Transadantic
places and names of which he is obliged to con-
fess himself utterly ignorant, a confession which
consciously lowers him in their veneration and
respect. An ancient dame once exhibited her
Prayer-book, very nearly worn out, printed in the
reign of George II., and very much thumbed at
the page from which she assiduously prayed for

Holacombe 201

the welfare of Prince Frederick, without one mis-
giving that she violated the article of our Church
which forbids prayer for the dead.

Among the singular traits of character which
are developed amid these, whom I may designate
in the German phrase as my mossy ^ parishioners,
there is one which I should define, in their extreme
simplicity, as exuberant belief, or rather faith in
excess. I do not, however, intend by this term
any kind of religious peculiarity of tenet or creed,
but only a prostration of the intellect before certain
old traditionary and inherited impulses of the
human mind. They share and they embrace those
instinctive tendencies of their Celtic nature which
in all ages have led their race to cherish a credence
in the existence and power of witches, feiries, and
the force of charms and spells. It is well known
that all such supernatural influences on ordinary
life are singularly congenial to the ancient and the
modern Cornish mind. I do not exaggerate when
I aflirm at all events my own persuasion, that two-
thirds of the total inhabitants of Tamar-side im-
plicitly believe in the power of the Mai Occhio^ as
the Italians name it, or the Evil Eye. Is this
incredible in a day when the spasms and raps and
bad spelling of a familiar spirit are received with

1 Hawker writes in one of his letters : *' And now enough of
myself. Solitude makes men self-praisers, and a Bemdoster Herr —
as the Germans call lonely readers— a mossy vicar likes to talk
about his own importance/*

202 Footprints in Far Cornwall

acquiescent belief in polished communities, and
even in intellectual London ? The old notion
that a wizard or a witch so became by a nefarious
bargain with the enemy of man, and by a surrender
of his soul to his ultimate grasp, although still
held in many a nook of our western valleys, and
by the crooning dame at her solitary hearth^
appears to have been exchanged in my hamlet of
Holacombe (for such is its name) for a persuasion
that these choosers of the slain inherit their faculty
from their birth. Whispers of forbidden ties
between their parents, and of monstrous and un-
hallowed alliances of which these children are the
issue, largely prevail in this village. There it is
held that the witch, like the poet, is so born. I
have been gravely assured that there are well-
known marks which distinguish the ill-wishers
from all beside. These are black spots under the
tongue ; in number five, diagonally placed : " Like
those, sir, which are always found in the feet of
swine," ^ and which, according to the belief of my
poor people, and which, as a Scriptural authority,
I was supposed unable to deny, were first made
in the unclean animals by the entrance of the
demons into the ancestral herd at Gadara. A
peculiar kind of eyeball, sometimes bright and
clear, and at others covered with a filmy gauze,
like a gipsy's eye, as it is said, by night; or a
double pupil, ringed twice ; or a larger eye on

^ Compare p. 196.

Holacombe 203

the left than on the right side ; these are held to
be tokens of evil omen, and accounted to indicate
demoniac power, and certain it is that a peculiar
glare or a glance of the eye does exist in those
persons who are pointed out as in possession of
the craft of the wizard or witch. But an ancient
man, who lived in a lone house in a gorge near
the church, once actually disclosed to me in
mysterious whispers, and with many a gesture of
alarm and dread, a plan which he had heard from
his grandfether, and by which a person evilly
inclined, and anxious for more power than men
ought to possess, might at any time become a
master of the Evil Eye.

" Let him go to chancel," said he, " to sacra-
ment, and let him hide and bring away the bread *
from the hands of the priest ; then, next midnight
let him take it and carry it round the church,
widdershins — that is, from south to north,' crossing
by east three times : the third time there will
meet him a big, ugly, venomous toad,^ gaping
and gasping with his mouth opened wide, let him
put the bread between the lips of the ghastly
creature, and as soon as ever it is swallowed down

^ A similar sacrilege occurs in Hawker's poem^ << A Legend of
the Hive."

* See Appendix Kb.

^ An echo from Shakespeare —

*' . . . the toad, ugly and venomous.
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

2o6 Footprints in Far Cornwall

and it is he who has not only exposed the name
and arts of the parish practitioner of evil, but
has supplied an antidote in the shape of baffling
powders and " charms of might."

Some years agone a violent thunderstorm
passed over the hamlet of Holacombe, and
wrought great damage in its course. Trees were
rooted up, catde killed, and a rick or two set on
fire. It so befell that I visited, the day after, one
of the chief agricultural inhabitants of the village,
and I found the farmer and his men standing by
a ditch wherein lay, heels upward, a fine young
horse quite dead. " Here sir," he shouted, as
I came on, ^^ only please to look ! is not this a
sight to see ? " I looked at the poor animal, and
uttered my sympathy and regret at the loss.

*' One of the fearful results," I happened to say,
" of the storm and lightning yesterday." " There,
Jem," said he to one of his men, triumphantly,
" didn't I say the parson would find it out ? Yes,
sir," he said, " it is as you say : it is all that
wretched old Cherry^ Parnell's doing, with her
vengeance and her noise ! " I stared with astonish-
ment at this unlooked-for interpretation which he
had put into my mouth, and waited for him to
explain. "You see, sir," he went on to say,
" the case was this : old Cherry came up to my
place, tottering along and mumbling that she
wanted a fagot of wood. I said to her, ^ Cherry,*

^ Charity is the full name.

Holacombe 207

says I, * I gave you one only two days agone, and
another two days before that, and I must say that
I didn*t make up my woodrick altogether for you.'
So she turned away, looking very grany, and
muttering something about * Hotter for me here-
after.' Well, sir, last night I was in bed, I and
my wife, and all to once there bursted a thunder-
bolt, and shaked the very room and house. Up
we started, and my wife says, *0 father, old
Cherry's up 1 I wish I had gone after her with
that there fagot.' I confess I thought in my
mind I wish she had ; but it was too late then,
and I would try to hope for the best. But
now, sir, you see with your own eyes what that
revengeful old woman hath been and done. And
I do think, sir," he went on to say, changing his
tone to a kind of indignant growl — "I do think
that when I call to mind how I've paid tithe and
rates faithfully all these years, and kept my place
in church before your reverence every Sabbath-
day, and always voted in the vestries that what
hath a be ought to be, and so on, I do think that
such ones as old Cherry Parnell never ought to
be allowed to meddle with such things as thunder
and lightning." What, could I — what could any
man in his senses — say to this ?

The great charmer of charms * in this strange
corner of the world is a seventh son born in direct

^ There is a chapter on charms in Hunt's *^ Popular Romances
of the West of England/'

2o8 Footprints in Far Cornwall

succession from one father and one mother. Find
such a person, and you have " the sayer of good
words '* always at your command. He is called
in our folk-lore the doctor of the district. There
is such an old man in my hamlet, popularly called
Uncle Tony Cleverdon. He was baptised Anthony;
but this has been changed by kindly village par-
lance and the usage of the West. For with us
the pet name is generally the short name, and any
one venerable from age and amiable in nature is
termed, without relationship, but merely for en-
dearment, " unde " and " aunt." * Uncle Tony
has inherited this endowment in a family of
thirteen children, he being the seventh born. He
often says that his lucky birth has been as good
as '^ a fortin " to him all his life ; for although he
is forbidden by usage and tradition to take money
for the exercise of his functions, nothing has
hindered that he should always be invited to sit
as an honoured guest at the table furnished with
good things in the houses of his votaries. Uncle
Tony allowed me, as a vast favour, to take down
from his lips some of his formularies : they had
never been committed to writing before, he said ;
not, as I believe, for more than three centuries,
for they smack of the Middle Ages. He very
much questioned whether their virtue would not

* Compare Hawker^s poem, " Modryb Maiya " —

^ Now the holly with her drops of blood for me :
For that is our dear Aunt Mary's tree."

Holacombe 209

be utterly destroyed when he was gone, by their
being " put into ink."

Uncle Tony was like an ancient augur in the
science of birds. *^ Whenever you see one
magpie alone by himself/' said he, with a look of
ininvitable sagacity, " that bird is upon no good :
spit over your right shoulder three times, and
say —

Clean birds by sevens.

Unclean by twos.
The dove in the heavens

Is the one I choose ! "

u

Among the myriads of sea and land birds that
throng this coast, the raven is king of the rock.^
The headland and bulwark of the slope of Hola-
combe is a precipice of perpendicular rock. There,
undisturbed (for no bribe would induce a villager
to slay them, old or young), the ravens dwell,
revel, and reign. One day, as we watched them
in their flapping flight, said Uncle Tony to me,
"Sometimes, sir, these wild creatures will be so
merciful that they will even save a man's life."
" Indeed ! how ? " " Why, sir, it came to pass
on this wise. There was once a noted old wrecker
called Kinsman : he lived in my father's time ; and
when no wreck was onward, he would get his
wages by raising stone in a quarry by the sea--shore.
Well, he was to work one day over yonder, half
way down Tower CliflF, and all at once he heard

1 Compare the poem, <^ A Croon on HennacHff."

P

2IO Footprints in Far Cornwall

a buzz above him in the air, and he looked up,
and there were two old ravens flying round and
round very near his head. They kept whirling
and whirling and coming so nigh, and they seemed
so knowing, that the old man thought verily they
were trying to speak, as they made a strange
croak ; but after some . time they went away, and
old Kinsman went on with his work. Well, sir,
by-and-by they both came back again, flying
above and round as before ; and then at last, lo
and behold ! the birds dropped right down into
the quarry two pieces of wreck-candle just at the
old man's feet." (Very often the wreckers pick
up Neapolitan wax-candles from vessels in the
Mediterranean trade that have been lost in the
Channel.) " So when Kinsman saw the candles,
he thought in his mind, * There is surely wreck
coming in upon the beach : ' so he packed his
tools together and left them just where he stood,
and went his way wrecking. He could find no
jetsam, however, though he searched far and wide,
and he used to say he verily believed that the
ravens must have had the candles at hand in their
holt, to be so ready with them as they were.
Next day he went back to quarry to his work,
and he always used to say it was as true as a
proverb : there the tools were all buried deep out
of sight, for the craig above had given way and
fallen down, and if he had tarried only one hour
longer he must have been crushed to death I So

Holacombe 211

you see, sir, what knowledge those ravens must
have had ; how well they knew the old man, and
how fond he was of wreck ; how crafty they were
to hit upon the only plan that would ever have
slocked him away : and the birds, moreover, must
have been kind creatures, and willing to save
a poor fellow's life. There is nothing on airth
so knowing as a bird is, unless it may be a snake.
Did you ever hear, sir, how I heal an adder's
bite ? You cut a piece of hazelwood, sir, and you
fasten a long bit and a short one together into the
form of a cross ; then you lay it softly upon the
wound, and you say, thrice, blowing out the words
aloud like one of the commandiments —

** * Underneath this hazelin mote

There's a Braggoty worm with a speckled throat.

Nine doable is he :
Now from nine double to eight double,
And from eight double to seven double,
And from seven double to six double.
And from six double to ^ve. double.
And from five double to four double.
And from four double to three double,
And from three double to two double.
And from two double to one double.
And from one double to no double.

No double hath he ! *

" There, sir," said uncle Tony, " if David had
known that charm he never would have wrote the
verse in the Psalms about the adder that was so
deaf that she would not hear the voice of the

212 Footprints in Far Cornwall

charmer, charm he never so wisely. I never knew
that charm fail in all my life 1 " Tony added,
after a pause — " Fail ! of course, sometimes a
body may fail, but then *tis always from people's
obstinacy and ignorance. I dare say, sir, you've
heard the story of Farmer Colly's mare, how
she bled herself to death ; and they say he puts
the blame on me. But what's the true case ?
His man came rapping at my door after I was in
bed. I got up and opened the casement and
looked out, and I asked what was amiss. ^O
Tony,' says he, * master's mare is blooding
streams, and I be sent over to you to beg you
to stop it.' * Very well,' I said, * I can do it just
as well here as if I came down and opened the
door : only just tell me the name of the beast,
and I'll proceed.' * Name,' says he, * why, there's
no name that I know by ; we alius call her the
black mare.' * No name ? ' says I ; * then how
ever can I charm her ? Why, the name's the
principal thing ! Fools I never to give her a
name to rule the charm by. Be off ! be off ! I
can't save her.' So the poor old thing died
, in course." " And what may your charm be,
Tony?" said I. "Just one verse in Ezekiel,
sir, beginning, * I said unto thee when thou wast
in thy blood. Live.' And so on. I say it only
twice, with an outblow between each time. But
the finest by-word that I know, sir, is for the
prick of a thorn." And here it follows from my

Holacombe 213

diary in the antique phraseology which Uncle
Tony had received from his fore&thers through
descending generations : —

" Happy man that Christ was bom !
He was crownM with a thorn :
He was piercM through the skin,
For to let the poison in ;
But His five wounds, so they say.
Closed before He passed away.
In with healing, out with thorn :
Happy man that Christ was bom !"

}>

Another time Uncle Tony said to me, " Sir,
there is one thing I want to ask you, if I may be
so free, and it is this. Why should a merry-maid "
(the local name for mermaid), " that will ride about
upon the waters in such terrible storms, and toss
from sea to sea in such ruxles as there be upon the
coast — why should she never lose her looking-
glass and comb ? " " Well, I suppose," said I,
" that if there are such creatures, Tony, they must
wear their looking-glasses and combs fastened on
somehow — ^like fins to a fish," ^ " See ! '* said
Tony, chuckling with delight ; ** what a thing it
is to know the Scriptures like your reverence 1 I
never should have found it out. But there's
another point, sir, I should like to know, if you
please ; I've been bothered about it in my mind

^ Hawker was no doubt reminded of his own impersonation of a
mermaid at Bude. For many quaint legends about mermaids and
mermen, see Hunt's <* Popular Romances of the West of England.*'

214 Footprints in Far Cornwall

hundreds of times. Here be I, that have gone up
and dowtl Holacombe clifls and streams fifty years
come next Candlemas, and I've gone and watched
the water by moonlight and sunlight, days and
nights, on purpose, in rough weather and smooth
(even Sundays, too, saving your presence), and my
sight as good as most men's, and yet I never
could come to see a merry-maid in all my life !
How's that, sir ? " " Are you sure, Tony," I
rejoined, *^ that there are such things in existence
at all ? " " Oh, sir, my old father seen her twice I
He was out once by night for wreck (my father
watched the coast like most of the old peo{de
formerly), and it came to pass that he was down
by the duck-pool on the sand at low-water tide,
and all at once he heard music in the sea. Well,
he croped on behind a rock, like a coastguard*man
watching a boat, and got very near the noise.
He couldn't make out the words, but the sound
was exactly like Bill Martin's voice, that singed
second counter in church. At last he got very
near, and there was the merry-maid very plain to
be seen, swimming about upon the waves like a
woman bathing — and singing away. But my
father said it was very sad and solemn to hear —
more like the tune of a funeral hymn than a
Christmas carol by far — but it was so sweet that
it was as much as he could do to hold back from
plunging into the tide after her. And he an
old man of sixty-seven, with a wife and a houseful

Holacombe 215

of children at home ! The second time was down
here by Holacombe Pits. He had been looking
out for spars : there was a ship breaking up in the
Channel, and he saw some one on the move just
at half-tide mark. So he went on very softly,
step and step, till he got nigh the place, and there
was the merry-maid sitting on a rock, the booti-
fuUest merry-maid that eye could behold, and she
was twisting about her long hair, and dressing it
just like one of our girls getting ready for her
sweetheart on the Sabbath-day. The old man
made sure he should greep hold of her before
ever she found him out, and he had got so near
that a couple of paces more and he would
have caught her by the hair as sure as tithe or
tax, when, lo and behold ! she looked back and
glimpsed at him. So in one moment she dived
head-foremost off the rock, and then tumbled
herself topsy-turvy about in the waters, and cast a
look at my poor father, and grinned like a seal ! "

HUMPHREY VIVIAN

A MONG the changes that have passed over
-^^ the face of our land vnth such torrent-like
rapidity in this wondrous nineteenth century of
marvel and miracle, none are more striking and
complete than that which has transformed the
torpid clergy of past periods into the active and
energetic ministers of our own Church and time.
The country incumbent of Macaulay*s ** History,'*
the guests at the second table of the patron and
the squire — ^the Trullibers and the Parson Adams
of Fielding and Smollett — ^would find no deutero-
type in the present day. But in the transition
period of our ecclesiastical history there are here
and there fossil memorials of the former men that
would enable a thoughtful mind to construct
singular specimens of character which, while em-
bodying the past, would also indicate the future
lineaments of gradual change and improvement.
Among these is one, a personal friend of the
writer when he first entered the ministry, whose
kindliness of heart and originality of character
may supply sundry graphic and interesting remi-
niscences. As old Johnson would have said, had

2l6

Humphrey Vivian 217

^■^— — ^— — "^^^i^^^-^^^— ^ ■■■■ I ■ ■■■ ■■■ ■■■» ■■ ■■■■! ■ ■ « ■ ■■■..ai ■ ■ I .p I ■ ly, .^^^^^ ■ I III— 111 I II ■■ ^ I I 11 ■■■■■■>

he written his life, so let me say of Humphrey
Vivian, that he was at once the stately priest, the
genial companion, and the faithful, facetious friend.
Let me indulge some of these recollections, arid
gather up some materials of personal history,
which are by no means wanting. For it was his
great delight, when a guest at my table, after he
had done more than justice to the viands set
before him, when his gold snufF-box had been
produced and ceremoniously offered to all around,
and his glass filled with his favourite wine — ^* sound
old Tory port " — to recall in whole volumes the
events of his youth and manhood, and to dilate
with emphatic gusto on the contrasts of the age
and times.

The personal aspect of my friend presented an
imposing solemnity to the eye. Tall, even to the
measure of six feet two inches, but slender withal
as the bole of a poplar-tree, with small feat;ures
and twinkling eye, and a round undersized head,
and yet with a demeanour so pompous, such a
frequency of condescending bows, and such a roll
of words, that he took immediate rank as a gentle-
man of the old school. And as to his mental
endowments, be it enough to record that there
were few men as wise as he looked. His garb
was that of a pluralized clergyman of the days of
the Georges, — fine black broadcloth, that hung
around him in festive moments like mourning on
a Maypole. His vest was of rich silk with wide

2i8 Footprints in Far Cornwall

pockets, roomy enough to hold the inevitable
snufF-box, the gold ituiy and the small cock-fighter's
saw, which was used to cut away the naturd spur
of the bird when it was replaced with steel. This
last was a common equipment of a country gentle-
man, lay or clerical, in those days. His apparel
terminated in black silk stockings and nether
garments, buckled with gold or silver at the knee.
Buckles also clasped his shoes. Thus attired, he
was no unfit representative of the clergy who ruled
and reigned in their parochial domain in the west
of England in the early part of the eighteenth
century. His conversational powers were amj^e
and amusing; but it was when he could be
brought to dilate on his own adventures and
history in earlier life that he most surely riveted
and requited the attention of his auditors.

At my table one day the topic of discourse
was the marriage of the clergy. "The young
curates," said he, ** should always marry, and that
as soon as ever they are ordained. Nothing
brightens up a parsonage like the ribbons of a
merry wife. I, you know, have buried three Mrs.
Vivians ; and when I come to look back, I really
can hardly decide which it was that made the
happiest home. If I had to live my life over
again, I should certainly marry all three. And
yet I did not win my first love, after all. Her
grumpy old father came between us and blighted
our days, as the Psalmist puts it. Ah 1 the very

Humphrey Vivian 219

sound of her name is like a charm to me still.
Bridget Morrice I But * Biddy ' she was always
called at home ; and very soon she was * Biddy
dear * to me,

"I was at Oxford then, and when I came
down for the *Long* I used to be very duly at
church, because there I could see Biddy. Her
pew was opposite to mine ; and there was I in
full rig as we used to dress in those days, — long
scarlet coat, silk waistcoat with a figured pattern,
and tights. One Sunday after prayers up comes
old Morrice, roaring like a bull, *Mr. Vivian,'
he growled, *ril trouble you to take your eyes
^K my daughter's face in church. I saw you, sir,
when you pretended to be bowing in the Creed.
You were bowing to Biddy, my daughter, sir,
across the aisle ; and that you call attending
divine service, do you, sir ? ' However, in spite
of the old dragon, we used to meet in the garden,
and there, in the arbour, what fruit Biddy used
to give me ! Such peaches, plums, and some-
times cheesecakes and tarts ? Talk of a sweet
tooth ! I think that in those days I had a whole
set ; and now I have but one left of any kind,
and that is a stump. But Biddy treated me very
unkindly after all. There was a regiment of
soldiers stationed in the town, and of course lots
of gay young officers fluttering about in feathers
and lace. Well, one day it was rumoured about
that old Morrice and his wife were going to give

220 Footprints in Far Cornwall

a spread, and these captain fellows were to be
there, head and chief. There were to be dinner
and a dance, and I of course thought that, some-
how or other, Biddy would manage with her
mother to get me a card and a corner. I waited
and watched ; but no— none came. So at last
away I went to the house, angry and fierce, and
determined to have matters cleared up. Old
Morrice, luckily, was out, and his wife with him ;
but there was Biddy, up to her elbows in jellies
and jams, fussing and fuming like a maid to get
things nice and toothsome for cockering up those
red rascals, that I hated like grim death. * WeD,
Biddy,' I sdd, * do you call this pretty, to serve
me so ? Here you ask everybody to your feasts
and your junkets — yes, every one in the town but
me ! ' And what with the vexation and the smell
of the cookery, I actually burst out sobbing like a
boy. This made Biddy cry too, and there was
a scene, sure enough. * It is father's fault, Henry,
utterly and entirely : he is so mad against you
because he thinks you want me for the sake of
my money.* * Money, Biddy dear ! * I said —
* money ! Now I do think that if I bring blood
your father ought to bring groats ! *

" Just then some one lifted the latch, and poor
Biddy began to scream : * O Henry, dear 1 what
shall I do ? That's father come back. He'll
surely kill you or me, or do some rash deed.
What can I do ? Here, here,' she said, opening

Humphrey Vivian 221

a kind of closet-door, * step in, that's a dear, and
wait till I can get you out. Don't cough or
sneeze, .but keep quiet and still as a mouse till
I come to call you.' In I went, and Biddy shut
the door. Well, do you know, I found she had
put me in a sort of storeroom, where they kept
the sweets ; and on a long table there was such
a spread : raspberry-creams, ices, jellies, all kinds
of flummery, and in the middle a thing I never
cotdd resist — a fine sugary cake. Didn't I help
myself ! and when I began to think that all these
niceties were got up to fill up the waistcoats of
those rollicking fellows that had cut me out of my
Biddy's heart, it did make me half mad. How-
ever, when I thought of that cake, I said to
myself, * Not one crumb of that lovely thing shall
go down their horrid throats after all — see if it
does 1 ' We wore long wide pockets in those
days, big enough to hold a Christmas-pie. So
in went the cake ; and there was room besides for
a whole plate of macaroons. Presently Biddy was
at the door, and in such a way. ^ Make, haste,
Henry, dear — quick ; and do go straight home !
I would not have you meet father for the world I '
You may guess how I scudded away through the
streets with my skirts bulging out, and the boys
shouting after me, * There goes the Oxford scholar
with his humps slipped down 1 '

** Next time I met Biddy, it was coming out
of church. She could hardly tell whether to

222 Footprints in Far Cornwall

bugh or cry. * How could you, Henry, dear ? *
she said, — * how could you carry off our beautiful
cake ? ' * How ? Biddy, dear,* said I ; *.why, in
my pocket, to be sure.*

" But the worst of all was that Biddy was cold
to me from that very time ; and when I came
home from coU^e the next year I heard that she
was engaged to a Giptain Upjohns, and she was
married to him not long afrer. So he had Biddy
and I had the cake. But she was my first love ;
and I do think, after all, notwithstanding the
three Mrs. Vivians, she was verily my last love
also. People say that Queen Mary declared that
if she was opened after her death, Calais would be
found graven on her heart.^ And I, too, say often,
that if my dead bosom were examined, it would
be found that Biddy Morrice was carved on

mine.^

" Well, well ; time passed away — ^years upon

^ Compare Browning's lines —

"Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me —
(When fortune's malice
Lost her — Calais) —
Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, « Italy/ "

2 The same conceit, humorously applied, occurs in Calverley —

**• And the lean and hungry raven,
As he picks my bones, will start
To observe * M.N.' engraven
Neatly on my blighted heart.''

Humphrey Vivian 223

years. I was ordained, and served half-a-dozen
curacies — three at once for some time ; and then
I got, one after another, my two first livings. I
was a widower. I had lost the first — no, no, I
am sorry to say the second Mrs. Vivian, when
one day I heard that Biddy Morrice was a rich
widow. Old Upjohns, it seems, had died and left
her no end of money. And then the thought
occurred to me that we two might come together
after all. * 'Twould be like a romance,' I said.
I found out that she was settled in great style at
Bath. So up I went and found, sure enough,
she had a splendid house. A fine formal old
buder received me, and I sent up my name. I
was shown into a splendid drawing-room, with
rich furniture, like a bishop's palace, all velvet and
gold. I sat down, thinking over old times, when
Biddy used to come to meet me with her rosy
cheeks and her strawberry mouth, and a waist you
might span with your hand. At last the door
opened, and in she came.. But alack, alas ! such
a cat I oh dear, oh dear ! and with such a bow-
window : it was surprising, — more like old Mrs.
Morrice than my Biddy. I was aghast. I never
kissed her, as I intended, but I stood staring like
a gawky. I remember I offered her a pinch of
snuflF, which she took. We had a talk, but it was
all prisms and prunes with Biddy. However,
she invited me to dinner the next day, and I went.
Everything first-rate, — turbot and haunch, and so

224 Footprints in Far Cornwall

on, all upon silver ; fine old Madeira, and glorious
port ; and that sleek fellow, the butler, ruling over
all I There was a moderate dessert, and on the
middle dish there was such a cake I * I remember,*
said Biddy, but without the shadow of a smile —

* I remember that you are fond of cake.* Well,
after the doth was removed, I felt all the better
for my dinner, and it is at that time I always have
most courage, particularly after the third glass.
As I looked on the sleek butler and his pompous
ways, I thought to myself, * I should like to
dethrone that rule, and reign myself over her
cellar.*

"So I broached the subject of my wishes.

* Don't you think, Biddy dear,' said I, ' now that
my second Mrs. V. has gone, and old Upjohns

also out of the way, that we two ? * * O

Henry, Henry,' she broke in ; ^ the old Adam is
still, I see, strong as ever in you. As sweet
Mr. Gheekey says at our Bethesda, " We are all
criminally minded to our dying day." ' Never
believe me if Bridget had not turned Methodist,
and all that. And so, in short, she cut me dead.
However, she sent me this snufF-box, and I had
her picture put under the lid. Sweet face, isn't
it ? But then it was taken thirty years before
that dinner at Bath."

But it was when the conversation turned upon
curacies, and stipends, and the usual topers among
clerical guests, that our friend Humphrey's

Humphrey Vivian 225

remembrances became of chief interest and value.
^^ Oh, the changes that I have lived to see ! " was
his favourite phrase. " I remember so well when
I was ordained deacon, and came down in my
brand-new bombasine bachelor's gown, and a hood
that made me look behind like a two-year-old
goat, and bands half a yard long, what a swell I
used to think myself to be I Talk of your one
good curacy ! why, when I began to work I
served four. Ay, and I had ;^io apiece for them,
and thought myself in paradise. I remember
there were three of us. John Braddon — he had
two curacies and the evening lecture ; and Miller-
ford we thought' very low down — he had two and
no more. We aU lived, sir, in the town, and
boarded and lodged together. £pLO a year each
we paid the unfortunate fellow that took us in.
Our first landlord was old Geake, the grocer. He
stood it twelve months, and then broke all to
pieces, and was made bankrupt by his creditors.
He actually said in court that we had eaten and
drunk all his substance. Well, then, a man called
Stag undertook us. He was a market-gardener ;
and, do you know, after a time he went too ! He
said it was not so much the meat we consumed,
but he had no more vegetables to sell. So we cut
him. At last an old fellow named Brewer came
forward, and said he would try his luck with us.
He stood it pretty well, but then his wife had
private property of her own ; but she used to

226 Footprints in Far Cornwall

say it all went under the waistcoats of the young
clergy. She had no family ; but she said she
would rather have had six children of her own
than keep us three. But, no doubt, she ex-
aggerated. Women will do so sometimes."

" Did you live well, Mr. Vivian ? " we inter-
posed.

"Like fighting-cocks, sir. We insisted on
good breakfasts, plain joints and plenty for dinner,
and nice hot suppers. We didn't care much about
tea — nobody did in those days. But then, behind
the parlour door there was always a keg of brandy
on tap, and we had a right to go with our little
tin cups and draw the spigot twice a day."

" No doubt, Mr. Vivian, you worked hard in
those days ? "

** Didn't we ? To be sure it was only on
Sundays, but it was enough for all the week.
We used to start in the morning and travel on
foot to all the points of the compass, every man
of us with his umbrella. My first service was at
nine o'clock in the morning, prayers and sermon.
Then on to Tregare at half-past eleven. West
Lariston at two o'clock, and Kimovick at four,
and home in the evening, pretty well done up.
Braddon and Millerford just the same tramp.
But then, how we did enjoy our roast goose,
sirloin, or leg of mutton afterwards I We bar-
gained expressly for a hot dinner on Sundays, and
we had it too. Then what fun afterwards 1 Every

Humphrey Vivian 227

man had something to tell about his parish. I
remember Millerford had to call and see an old
woman, a reputed witch. He was to examine
her mouth, and see if the roof had the five black
marks ^ that stamped an old woman as a witch.
He wished to save her, and he declared that she
had but four, and one of them doubtful. One
day Braddon had christened a man-child, as he
thought, Thomas ; but the next week the father
came in great perplexity. * 'Twas the mistake of
the nurse. 'Tis a girl. How shall us do ? Us
can never call a maid Tom. You must christen
her over again, sir.* As this could not be, we
had to put our heads together, and at last we
advised Braddon to alter the name to Thomasine
(pronounced Tamzine), and so he just saved
her sex.

" One day I had a good story of my own to
relate about a pinch of snufF. It was always the
custom in those days for the clergyman after the
marriage to salute the bride first, before any other
person. Well, it was so that I had just married
a very buxom, rosy young lady, and when it was
over I proceeded to observe the usual ceremony.
But I had just before taken an enormous finger-
and-thumb-ful of snuflF; so no sooner had the
bride received my kiss — and I gave her a smart
kiss for her good looks — than she began to
sneeze. The bridegroom kissed her, of course,

1 See pp. 196, 202.

228 Footprints in Far Cornwall

and he began also. Then the best man advanced
to the privilege. Better he hadn't, for he began
to sneeze awfully ; and by-and-by the bridesmaids
also, for they were all kissed in turn, till the
whole party went sneezing down the aisle, and
the last thing I heard outside the church door was
UchUy 'tchUy 'tchUy till the noise was drowned by the
bells from the tower."

"But I suppose, Mr. Vivian, you did not
remain long a curate ; you must have received
some of your several livings at an early period of
life?''

" So I did, sir, sure enough. My text on
such subjects was, * Ask not^ and you shall never
receive.^ First of all, I had the vicarage of
Percombe, up towards the moors. This came
from a private friend. Next, the Duchy gave me
the rectory of South Wingley. I had trouble
enough to get it. I went up to London, and
besieged the Council two or three times a day.
People said they gave me the living to get rid of
me from town. But it wasn't so. Next I had
Trelegh from the second Mrs. Vivian's uncle.
Yes, yes, preferment enough for one man. By-
the-by, did you ever hear how near I was once to
the lawn^sleeves and the bench ? That was a
close shave ! I was staying in Bath, at the York
House, and there I always dined in the coffee-
room. Well, one day a gentleman came in and
ordered dinner in the next box to mine — a sole

Humphrey Vivian 229

and a chop. I observed a bottle of Madeira
wine ; and from his nicety and parlour ways, I
judged him to be some big-wig, and very rich.
I saw he looked about for a news Gazette^ so
I offered him mine, and exchanged a few words
by way of getting known to him. He offered me
a glass of wine, and of course I took it, and sat
down to converse. We grew very friendly, and
by-and-by it turned out that his name was Vivian,
and spelt exactly like mine. It was growing late,
and he took leave, but, to my surprise, invited
me to dine with him the next day at Lansdowne
Crescent. I was only too glad to go. It was a
noble house, with a troop of servants and superb
furniture, and, what was most to the purpose, a
glorious feed. After dinner, at dessert-time, while
we were talking over our wine, I saw, over the
mantelpiece, a fine picture of Perceval, the Prime
Minister at that time.^ So I ventured to ask, * Is
Mr. Perceval, sir, a relative of your family ? *
* No, sir, no,' he said. * I have his picture because
I like his politics, and respect him as a Minister
and as a man. I have been introduced to him,
however, and I can claim some personal acquaint-
ance with him. * Have you, my friend ? ' thought
I. ^Then, take my word for it, I will make
use of you as a stepping-stone in life.* So,
when it was nearly time to wish him good

^ Perce^'al was Prime Minister from 1809 to 181 2, in the time
of the Regency and the Peninsular War.

230 Footprints in Far Cornwall

night, I said, * I have a favour to ask you, sir.
I am going to town in a day or two, and I shall
be deeply obliged if you will write a letter to
Mr. Perceval, merely telling him that the bearer
is a friend of yours, a clergyman in quest of
some preferment, and that as he is the patron of
so many good things in the Church, you will be
much obliged to him if he will bestow something
valuable on your friend.* He looked rather glum
at this, and twirled his fingers a bit, and at length
said, * Why, no, Mr. Vivian, I can't go so far as
that. Consider, I have known you only a few
hours, and have never heard you officiate —
although, no doubt, you are well qualified to hold
preferment in the Church. But I'll tell you what
I will do. I have a friend, the rector of the
parish where Mr. Perceval lives, and I know he
always attends his church. I will give you a letter
to him, and he may suggest some opportunity of
promoting your plan.' Of course I jumped at
this, took my letter, and was off by the mail the
very next day. The first man I called on was,
of course, the clergyman. It was on a Saturday,
and by good luck he had been taken ill. I was
shown in where he lay on a sofa, looking quite
ghastly. * Have yoii got a sermon with you, Mr.
Vivian ? ' said he ; * anything will do.' I always
took with me, wherever I went, some half-dozen,
and I said so. ^ Because, as you see, I cannot go
to church to-morrow, and a friend who was to

Humphrey Vivian 231

have taken my duty has disappointed me. I shall
be indeed thankful if you will undertake the
work/ This was the very thing ; and accordingly
I was in the vestry-hall the next morning, an horn-
before time, rigged out in full canonicals, hired
for the day — silk and sarcenet — and my hair well
frizzed, as you may suppose. Just before service
I said to the clerk, * I am told that Mr. Perceval
attends your church ; can you point out to me his
pew ? ' * That I can, sir,' said he, * in a moment.
There it is in full front of the desk and pulpit,
the third pew down, with the brass rods and silk
curtains.' Well, the service began ; but the said
pew was empty till the end of the Belief, when,
lo and behold ! in came the beadle, marching with
great pomp, and after him Mr. Perceval and some
friends. You may guess after that what eyes and
ears I had for the rest of the congregation. There
was the Prime Minister ; I see him now, in his
purple coat and cuffs, silk waistcoat — fine as
Sisera's — and with a wig that looked like wisdom
itself. He was very attentive. I watched him,
^nd saw how careful he was to keep time with all
the service. At length came the last psalm, and
up I went. The pulpit fitted me as if it had been
made for me ; and the cushion, I remember, was
all velvet and gold. My text was, * Where is
the wise man ? where is the scribe ? where is the
disputer ? ' etc. I saw that Mr. Perceval never
took his eyes off my face all through the discourse.

232 Footprints in Far Cornwall

It was one of my very best sermons. I saw that
he was delighted with it ; and when I came to
the end, I observed that he turned round and
looked up at me, and whispered something to a
gentleman who was with him, and then they both
looked up at me and smiled. Said I to myself,
* Humphrey, the golden ball is cast ; thy fortune
is made, as sure as rates and taxes. Look out
for a bishopric, and that soon ! ' I never was so
happy in all my life. I dined that night at the
Mitre in Fleet Street, on a rump-steak ; and I
often caught myself smiling and slapping my
thigh and muttering. I saw the waiter stare when
I said to myself, but in an audible voice, * Done
for a guinea ! Make way for my lord ! ' Next

day I went into the City to meet , who was

in town on business. After he had settled what
he came to do, he walked some way home with
me. Well, sir, when we came to the Strand
there was a dreadful uproar, people talking very
low and seriously. At length a gentleman said
to my companion, * Have you heard the dreadful
news ? A rascal called Bellingham ^ has shot

1 The *< Dictionary of National Biography " gives the follow-
ing account of this event : <' There was a certain bankrupt named
John Bellingham, a man of disordered brain, who had a grievance
against the Government originating in the refusal of the English
Ambassador at St. Petersburg to interfere with the regular process
of Russian law under which he had been arrested. He had applied
to Perceval for redress, and the inevitable refusal inflamed his crazy
resentment. On Monday, May ii (1812), the House of Commons

Humphrey Vivian 233

Mr. Perceval dead in the lobby of the House of
Commons ! ' It was like a deathblow to me.
Poor fellow I It cut me through like a knife.
I was indeed a crushed man, clean dissolved, as
the psalm says. And from that very hour I have
been convinced and persuaded — ay, I do believe
it like the Creed — that the very same ball that
shot poor Perceval cut away a mitre from my
head as clean as a whistle. Yes, I have never
swerved from that belief all these years ; and up
to this day, when I say my prayers, as I do after
I am in bed, I always begin with the Confirmation
from * Defend, etc., this Thy servant.' "

went into Committee on the orders in Council, and began to examine
witnesses. Brougham complained of Perceval's absence, and he was
sent for. As he passed through the lobby to reach the house,
Bellingham placed a pistol to his breast and fired. Perceval was
dead before a doctor could be found. . . . Bellingham was tried at
the Old Bailey on May 15, and the plea of insanity being set aside
by the court, he was hanged on May 18."

OLD TREVARTEN:

A TALE OF THE PIXIES »

^ Mount and follow ! stout and cripple !
Horse and hattock, ' but and ben ; ' *
Horses for the Pixie people,
Hattock for the Brownie men.**

R. S. Hawker.

pEOPLE may talk if they please about the
^ march of agriculture, and they may boast
that by the discoveries of science a man will soon
be able to carry into a large field enough manure
for its soil in his coat-pocket, but there has been
the ready answer, "Yes, and bring away the
produce in his fob." I am half inclined to agree
with an old parishioner of mine, who used often
to say, "It was an unlucky time for England
when the phrase 'gentleman farmer' came up,
and folks began to try their new-fangled plans —

1 Robert Hunt has a delightful chapter on <<The Elfin Creed of
Cornwall," in his ** Popular Romances of the West of England/'

2 Compare « The Doom-Well of St. Madron "—

« < Now horse and hattock, both but and ben,*
Was the cry at Lauds, with Dundagel men.
And forth they pricked upon Routorr side,
As goodly a raid as a king could ride."

*34

Old Trevarten 235

such as clover for horses and turnips for sheep."
"Rents," he declared, "were never lower than
when a tenant would pare and burn,^ and take
their crops out of every field, so as to carry off
the land as much as he brought on it " — a theory
on which, being a renter himself, he had thriven,
and put by money for full fifty years. Equally
original, by the way, were the devices cherished
by my aged friend for the repair of roads. When
Macadam had driven his first turnpike through
the West, a public dinner was given in honour
of the event ; and being presented with a free
ticket, and well coaxed into the bargain. Old
Trevarten made his appearance as a guest. But
it was observed that, amid all the jingling of
glasses and cheering of toasts, he sat motionless
and mute, if not actually sulky. At length the
engineer, somewhat piqued at his silence, said,
during a pause, "Why, sir, I am afraid that I
have not had the honour of gaining your approval
in this undertaking of mine."

" To tell you the truth, sir," was the slow and
sturdy answer, " I don't like your road at all, by
no means."

"Well, but what are your reasons, sir, for
disliking what most people are pleased with ? "

"Why, sir, you have had a brave lot of

1 A reference to a custom, still followed to some extent in Devon
and Cornwall, of paring the turf of grass-fields and burning the
sods. It is called << bait-burning/* or '< burning bait."

236 Footprints in Far Cornwall

money out of the country, and there's nothing
as I see to show for it — 'tis all gone ! **

" Gone, sir, gone ! Why, bless me, isn't
there the road — the fine, wide, level road ? "

^* Well, yes, sartainly ; but where's they mate-
reyals that cost such a sight of taxes ? You've
smashed mun to nort : there's pilm [dust] in the
drought, and there's mucks [mud] in the rain,
but nowt else that I see. Now, when I wor way-
warden of Wide Widger, I let the farmers have
something to show for their money. Why, sir,
'tis ten year agone come Candlemas that I wor in
office for the ways, and I put down stones as big
as beehives, and there they be now I "

Access to such a living volume of bygone
usages and notions was an advantage not to be
despised, and it was long my custom to resort to
"mine ancient" for information difllicult to be
obtained elsewhere. Once ** I do remember me "
that I encountered him in the middle of a reedy
marsh on his farm. He paused, and awaited my
approach, leaning on his staff just where the path
crossed a bed of the cotton-rush, then in fiiD
bloom. I had gathered a handful of the stalks,
each with its pod of fine white gossamer threads,
like a bunch of snowy silk.

" Ha ! " said he, with a kind of half alarm,
" you bean't afeared to pick that there ? "

" Afraid ? No ; why should I be ? "

"Why, some people think it's unlucky to

Old Trevarten 237

carry ofF the pisky wool ; but perhaps you know
from the Scriptures how to keep ofFany harm."

I did know better than to reason against such
fancies with a Cornish yeoman of threescore and
fifteen, and I thought it a good opening for a saw
or ancient instance.^ "Pixies ! " was my leading
answer ; " and who are they ? "

" Ancient inhabitants," was the grave reply —
"folks that used to live in the land before us
Christians comed here. So, at least, I've heerd
my mother say. They are a small people."

" And what about this wool ? What use do
they make of it."

" Why, they spin it for clothing, and to keep
'em warm by night. They'd do a power of work
for the farmers, and for a very small matter to
eat and drink, too ; and they would sing, even-
ings — sing and crowdie like a Christmas choir."

The solemn tones of his voice, and the grim
gravity of visage with which old Trevarten made
known these mysteries, attested his own deep belief
in their reality and truth. " Had I never seen
those rings on the grass upon Hennacleave Hill —
circles about a foot wide, of a darker colour than
the rest of the turf? " he inquired, well knowing
that I had, but rather rejoicing in an opportunity
of enlightening me with scientific revelations of
his own. " Did I know how they came there,
and who made them ? "

> '< Full of wise saws and modern instances." — As You Like It.

238 Footprints in Far Cornwall
« No."

" Well, that was surprising : he thought that
the college teached such things, or why did it cost
so much money to go there to learn ? How-
somever, he would let me know about they rings.
The piskies made mun, dancing hand-in-hand by
night. They rise about midnight, and they put
on their Sunday clothes, and they agree to meet
in such or such a spot, and there one will crowdie
and the others daunce, and beat out the time with
their feet, till they Ve worn the shape of a round-
about in the grass, and nort will wear out that ring
for evermore I "

Deeply grateful for this information, I ventured
to inquire, "And did you ever see any of these
pixy people yourself ? "

" Why, I can't say for sartain that I didno seed
mun ; my mother hath — so IVe yeerd her tell
divers times. No ; but I've seed their works,
such as tying up the manes of the colts in stirrups
for riding by night, and terrifying the cows into
the clover till they wor jist a bosted with the wet
grass. And I've been pisky-eyed more than once
coming home from the market or fair ; and I've
yeerd mun at their rollicking night-times fray-
quendy, but I can't say that I ever seed their
faytures, so as to know 'em again another
time."

" Well, said I, as a sort of closing and clench-
ing remark, ^^ all I can say is that I wish I could

X)ld Trevarten 239

lay hold of one of these pixies, just to look at —
that's aU."

*^ Do you ? " was his quick rejoinder ; " do
you really desire it ? I daresay I can oblige you
one day. It is not a month agone that I'd all but
catched one."

" Indeed ! " said I, half bewildered. " How ?
Where was it ? "

" Why, sir, you see the case was this. I'd a
bin to Simon Jude fair, and I stayed rather latish
settling with the jobber Brown for some sheep,
and so it wor past twelve o'clock at night before I
come through Stowe wood ; and just as I crossed
Combe Water, sure enough I yeerd the piskies.
I know'd very well where their ring was close by
the gate, and so I stopped my horse and got off.
Well, on I croped afoot till there was nothing but
a gap between me and the pisky ring, and I could
hear every word they said. One had got the
crowder, and he was working away his elbow to
the tune of ^ Green Slieves ' bravely, and the rest
wor dauncing and singing and merrymaking like
a stage-play. It made me just 'mazed in my head
to look at 'em. Well, I thort to myself, if I could
but catch one of these chaps to carry home ! I've
yeerd that there's nothing so lucky in a house as
a tame pisky. So I stooped down and I picked
up a stone, oh, as big as my two fistes, and I
swinged my arm and I scrashed the stone right
into the ring. What a screech there was ! Such

240 Footprints in Far Cornwall

a yell I and one in pertickler I yeerd screaming
and hopping with a leg a>brok like a drashel.
That one I was pretty sure of. But still, as it
was very late, and my wife would be looking for
me home, and it was dark also, so I thout I
might as well come down and fetch my pisky in
the morning by daylight. Well, sure enough,
soon as I rose, I took one of these baskets with a
cover that the women have invented — a ridicule,
they call it — and down I goes to the ring. And
do you know, sir, they'd a be so cunning — they'd
a had the art for to carry their comrade clear oflf^
and there wasn't so much as a screed of one left !
But, however," said my venerable friend, seeing
that I did not look quite satisfied with the evi-
dence, "however, there the stone was that I
drashed in amongst mun I "

Alas ! alas ! how often in after-days^ when I
have encountered the theories of men learned in the
'ologies, and pondered the prodigious inferences
which they had deduced from a stratum here
and a deposit there, — how irresistibly have my
thoughts recurred to old Trevarten and his
amount of proof, " There the stone was that I
drashed in amongst mun " I

APPENDICES

BY

THE REV. PREBENDARY ROGER GRANVILLE,
THE LATE REV. W. WADDON MARTYN

AND

R. PEARSE, CHOPE

APPENDIX A (p. 8)

MORWENSTOW

By R. PEARSE CHOPE

The " endowment " referred to by Mr. Hawker is a
copy of the original document, which was executed on
May 20th, 1296, by Bishop Thomas de Bytton. The
church was appropriated by his predecessor, Bishop
Peter Quivil, to the Hospital of St. John the Baptist at
Bridgwater, on November i6th, 1290. Bishop Bytton's
Register having been lost, the " endowment " was copied
by William Germyne, Registrar to John Woolton,
Bishop from 1579 to 1593-949 on a blank page of the
Register of Thomas de Brantyngham, Bishop from 1370
to 1394. The name " Walter Brentingham " is probably
due to some confusion between this Thomas de Brantyng-
ham and Bishop Walter de Stapeldon, for there was no
Bishop of Exeter having the first name. Germyne's
copy is printed in full in the Register of Bishop Brantyng-
ham, edited by the Rev. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph
(Part I. p. 106), and is here reproduced.

" Universis presentes Literas inspecturis Thomas,
permissione Divina Exoniensis Episcopus, salutem et
pacem in Domino sempiternam. — Noverit Universitas
vestra quod, cum olim bone memorie Petrus, tunc
Exoniensis Episcopus, Ecclesiam de Morewinstowe, cum
juribus suis et pertinenciis, Religiosis viris, Magistro et
Fratribus Hospitalis Sancti Johannis de Bridgwater,

243 R 2

244 Appendices

Bathoniensis Diocesis, de consensu Capituli sui appro-
priasset, et concessisset eisdem in usus proprios imperpe-
tuum possidendam, salva competenti Vicaria, per ipsum et
Successores suos taxanda et ordinanda juxta juris exigen-
ciam in eadem ; nos, eidem postmodum succedentes in
onere et honore, cum res Integra adhuc existeret, pensatis
ejusdem Ecclesie facultatibus, habita super hoc cognicione
debita que requiritur in hiac parte, de expresso consensu
dictorum Magistri et Fratrum, ipsam Vicarianii quod in
subscriptis porcionibus consistat imperpetuum, tenore
Presentium ordinamus ; videlicet, quod Vicarius qui pro
tempore in Ecclesia supradicta fuerit habeat et percipiat,
nomine Vicarie, omnes fructus, proventus, et obvenciones
totius alterlagii Ecclesie supradicte; sub quo, preter
ceteros proventus, decimam feni totius Parochie, simul
cum tota decima molendinorum ejusdem Parochie, volumus
comprehendi ; cum Sanctuario jacente a parte Occidental!
curie et croftarum Parsonatus Ecclesie supradicte, sursum
a veteri via que ducit usque ad mare et usque ad deorsum
ad rivulum in valle, cum duabus croftis subter Ecclesiam
a parte Boreali, et cetera terra ibidem usque ad quendam
fontem Johannis, quatuor acras terre continente et ultra ;
cum tota decima garbarum ville de Stanburie et trium
villarum de Tunnacombis ; volentes et ordinantes quod
dicta Religiosi omnes Libros et Ornamenta dicte Ecclesie^
si que deficiunt, vel usu seu vetustate consiunpta fuerint,
que, tamen, ad ipsos parochianos non pertinent, suis
sumptibus de novo invenient ; alia, vero, si per repara-
cionem fuerint per tempus non breve duratura, in, statum
congruum et sufficientem reparent et reficiant hac vice
prima ; quodque extunc custodia eorundem et reparacio
pro tempore successuro, una cum omnibus oneribus
ordinariis integraliter, et extraordinariis pro quarta parte
dumtaxat, ad Vicarium qui pro tempore hierit pertineant;
residua parte dictorum onerum extraordinariorum, una
cum sustentatione, reparatione, et reedificatione Cancdli
ipsius Ecclesie dictis Religiosis totaliter incumbente.*-— In
cujus rei testimonium nos, Thomas, Exoniensis Episcopus
supradictus, sigillum nostrum, et nos, prefati Magister et

Appendices 245

Fratrcs sigillum nostrum commune Presentibus duximus
apponendum. — Data apud Chidleghe, xiijo Calendas Junii
[May 20th], Anno Domini Millesimo ducentesimo non-
agesimo sexto.

" Hec Taxatio vere est Registrata,

"WiLLELMUS GeRMYNE.*'

The Editor points out, in an interesting note, that
the certified copy of this, which was used by Mr. Hawker,
has " Tidnacombis " instead of " Tunnacombis.** In the
Register itself the letter " u " is turned up at the end, the
usual contracted form of " un," but the writing is obscure ;
and, although experts would read it correctly without
hesitation, it might easily, in this case, be mistaken for
" id '* by others. One of Mr. Hawker*s most beautiful
poems is entitled ** The Token Stream of Tidna Combe."
It is interesting to note that Stanbury was the birthplace
of John Stanbury, Bishop of Hereford, who died 1474.
He was confessor to Henry VI., and was nominated the
first Provost of Eton College, although he never took up
the office.

The following curious tradition relating to the ex-
tremely rude font is quoted by Lieut.-Colonel Harding in
a paper on Morwenstow Church in the ** Transactions
of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society " (Second
Series, vol. i. p. 216). It has been preserved among
some valuable MSS. which belong to the Coffin family of
Portledge, near Bideford, and were collected by an
antiquary of that family about three hundred years ago.

" Moorwinstow, its name is from St, Moorin. The
tradition is, that when the parishioners were about to
build their church, this saint went down under the cliff
and chose a stone for the font which she brought up upon
her head. In her way, being weary, she lay down the
stone and rested herself, out of which place sprang a well,

246 Appendices

from thence called St. M oorin's well. Then she took it
up and carried it to the place where now the church
standeth. The parishioners had begun their church in
another place, and there did convey this stone, but what
was built by day was pulled down by night, and the
materials carried to this place ; whereupon they forbare,
and built it in the place they were directed to by a
wonder."

The date on one of the capitals seems to be 1564
instead of 1475. The inscription runs round the capital,
each of the twenty letters being on a separate face, thus —

"THIS WAS MADE ANNO MVCLX4

»f

The next capital has the following inscription, upside
down —

"THIS IS THE HOVSE OF THE L."

The supposed piscina, according to the Rev. S. Baring-
Gould, is merely " the base of a small pillar, Norman in
style, with a hole in it for a rivet which attached to it the
slender column it supported " (" The Vicar of Morwen-
stow," ed. 1899, p. 60). It has also been stated that
Mr. Hawker obtained the piscina from the ruined chapel
at Longfurlong, Hartland, and placed it in his church at
Morwenstow (Rev. T. H. Chope, "Hartland Parish,"
1896, p. 17).!

^ Hawker's account (on p. 11) of the discoyery of the piscina in
the chancel wall at Morwenstow is, however, very circumstantial. If
'' the jumbled carved work and a crushed drain," which, he says
came to light when the mortar was removed, proceeded from his
imagination, it is a touch of genius in fabrication. In a letter to
Mr. Richard Twining dated October 25th, 1855, Hawker writes:
<^Will you have the kindness to present the inclosed drawing to
Miss L. Twining in my name and with my best regards. It is of a
piscina discovered by me in the south wall of my chancel, where it

Appendices 247

has been hidden by mortar full 300 years, and existed there before that
date full 500 years more."

The whole passage from Mr. Baring-Gould is as follows :
''The ancient piscina in the wall is of early English date. Mr.
Hawker discovered under the pavement in the church, when reseating
it, the base of a small pillar, Norman in style, with a hole in it for a
rivet which attached to it the slender column it supported. This he
supposed was a piscina drain, and accordingly set it up in the recess
beside his altar." Mr. Baring-Gould evidently uses the word
*' piscina ** as meaning the whole '' recess *' beside the altar. Mr. Chope
appears to use it for the pillared structure within the recess.
Hawker^s own words seem to show that he found the whole piscina,
/.^. the recess with the drain inside it, '' in the chancel wall." He
says nothing of any discovery "under the pavement," and Mr.
Baring-Gould does not give his authority for this statement.

At any rate, if the piscina, or piscina drain, or pillar-base, which-
ever it be, was abstracted from the ruined chapel at Longfurlong, it
presumably was not discovered under the pavement of Morwenstow
Church, unless by another stroke of genius.

It may be of interest to add that, on thrusting a piece of grass
down the hole which Hawker took for a piscina drain, and which
Mr. Baring-Gould says is a rivet-hole, I found that it went right
through to the floor of the recess, a depth of about 13 inches.
It is quite possible, therefore, that, if connected with another hole
through the wall, it might at one time have served the purpose of a
drain. — Editor.

APPENDIX Ka (p. 9 and foil.)

MORWENSTOW CHURCH

By the Late Rev. W. WADDON MARTYN

One of the most beautiful of Mr. Hawker's poems com-
mences with the words ^^ My Saxon shrine." It becomes
of interest, therefore, to examine as far as possible into
the dates which attach to the different periods of archi-
tecture of the truly venerable church of Morwenstow.

It is very likely that Mr. Hawker is correct when he
speaks of the first church here dedicated to God's service
as being of Saxon times, but it is equally true that, with
the exception of perhaps the font, no trace of that early
building remains. The earliest portion of the present
building consists of the south porch and the three Norman
arches which form the western portion of the north
arcade. There is a difierence in the elaboration of the
work of these three arches, but it is scarcely likely that
they could have been erected at different times. It is
more probable that they are intended to show the varied
methods of dealing with the semi-circular arch at that
early period. It is of perhaps more interest to decide
whether the pattern of the Norman arch bisected, which
occurs on the easternmost of the Norman pillars, was
placed there at the time of the Norman church or at the
time of the construction of the two Gothic arches on the
same side. If the former supposition be correct, it will
signify, of course, that the whole structure was made at

248

Appendices 249

the close of the purely Norman period ; if the latter, it
would be intended to explain the reason why the archi-
tecture of that period passed so strangely from the round
to the pointed arch.

Before passing on to speak of the second date of archi-
tecture, which was certainly of the pure Gothic or early
English character, it may be interesting to speak of the
size and shape of the church as it stood in the early
Norman times. Taking everything into consideration,
it would seem likely that the Norman church consisted of
a nave, north aisle, and chancel. The Norman porch
consequently stood twelve or fourteen feet further in than
at present, the boundary of this church being clearly
marked by the foundation plainly visible outside the north
wall.

We pass on to consider the next step in the work of
enlargement, which consisted in the extension of the
north aisle and the erection of two fine, though somewhat
rudely constructed, arches with circular pillars. By this
means the chancel became absorbed in the new portion
of the aisle, and consequently the present ohancel was
erected further on to the eastward.

The next step consisted in the erection of the three
bays of very beautiful polyphant stone on the south side
exactly co-extensive with the three Norman arches, so
that a line drawn from the foundation-stones of the
Norman church southwards through the church would
mark the boundary of the polyphant extension also. It
is difficult to assign a date to this very beautiful addition,
but we must suppose that the present wall-plate, with its
richly and boldly carved foliage, dated from this period.
There would seem to be good ground for this argument,
inasmuch as the last addition to the church in 1564,
when the two granite arches were erected on the south-
eastern side of the church, had a piece of wall-plate

250 Appendices

specially carved for that new portion. It is quite certain
that the whole roof of the church was put up in 1564 at
the time of the erection of the granite arches, and I have
no doubt that this roof was placed upon the older and
magnificent wall-plate, since much injured by the leaks
which a defective roof has caused in so many places. It
is worth noting that, although the polyphant arches were
erected prior to the granite ones, yet they were taken
down and the whole arcade entirely rebuilt at the same
time. This I consider proved by the fact that the reliev-
ing arches are so very similar in character. The effect,
meanwhile, on the wall-plate on the south side of the
nave was not good, the exactly perpendicular line of the
pillars and arches not catching it on every point, and thus
giving it a somewhat ragged appearance which it will
require care to rectify.

A word here on the height of the building. It is pro-
bable that the present height was attained when the early
English arches were erected. Before that time the church
was evidently lower. This, again, may be proved by the
additional stonework which was added above the Norman
arches, and which must have been so added at the
next additional work, as the two lofty arches (especially
that at the east) would really require it.

A very interesting question remains, as to whether the
portion of ground now spanned by the granite arches was
formerly disused, or whether it formed a Baptistery or
other building in connection with the church, such as
priests' chambers, etc. That it was separated off from
the portion of the church at the west end of the south
aisle is evident by the discovery of a portion of the
wall which so separated it, running southwards from
the westernmost of the granite pillars. I may add
that in the same way traces of the Norman chancel
further to the west than the present chancel were

Appendices 25 1

found when the workmen were engaged in the work of
restoration.

There only remains to notice the last period of
restoration, the first time in which, as far as we can judge,
granite was introduced into the building. The date may
be found on the westernmost of the two pillars — MDLX4 :
on the other the words, " This is the House of the Lord."
It is noticeable that the half polyphant pillar, which had
at one time formed the boundary of the arcade towards
the east, was then carried forwards and placed against the
wall of the chancel. It thus seems to mark, not only
that the arcade was designed at diflkrent periods, but that
it was ultimately (the former portion being taken down)
all built together.

It was at this time (c. 1564) that the whole fabric of
the church (possibly not the chancel) was built [it may
be clearly seen where the new work stands on the old
early English foundations on the north side], the only
remaining portion untaken down being the Norman and
early English pillars, and a portion of the wall by the
south porch, and (as before observed) possibly the chancel.

The tower was, we may consider, built at the same
time as the church, in 1564.

The seats, with their magnificent carving, followed in
1575, as is testified by an inscription^ on the rail of the
front seat touching the pulpit. This will, however, be
removed in due course, the position of these few seats
being contrary to the original plan. I should think that
this rail and the seats also were formerly fixed where the
font at present stands at the end of the church.

As we stand within the walls and beneath the bending

1 The inscription runs as follows : "THIS . WAS . MADE .
IN . THE . YERE • OF . OURE . LORDE . GOD . 1575." The
pew bearing it now stands (1903) at the east end of the north aisle,
facing south. — Editor.

252 Appendices

roofs of this magnificent building, our mind naturally
inquires what teaching its designs serve to afford us — the
cable on its font, the dog-tooth pattern on its Norman
arches. Is it really true that, following out the established
teaching of the nave, whereby the ship with inverted
side was depicted to us — is it really true that, following
out this idea, the cable implied the anchor by which every
soul baptized into Christ was bound to Christ ? Does
the pattern, with its many points {^ dog-tooth," as it is
generally spoken of), really signify the ripple on the Lake
of Gennesaret \ Do the three steps by which we enter
allude in very deed to the Baptism of John, the saint of
dedication ? It would certainly seem probable that, having
acknowledged the church to be the nave or ship, we
should not find that the imagery would end here, but that
it would pass into other matters which the mediaeval times
knew so well how to formulate. If so, we have a rich
vein of thought to be wrought out firom this ancient
sanctuary of the West, all untouched as it is by ruthless
and destructive hands*. Solemn be the thoughts of all who
enter here ! Lowly and humble the hearts that here bend
at the feet of their great Liberator and Saviour ! In the
words of one who will long be remembered in the parish
which he loved so well, Robert Stephen Hawker —

^' Pace we the ground ! our footsteps tread

A cross — the builder's holiest form :
That awfiil couch, where once was shed

The blood, with man's forgiveness warm.
And here, just where His mighty breast

Throbb'd the last agony away,
They bade the voice of worship rest.

And white-robed Levites pause and pray."

APPENDIX Kb (pp. 1 6, 20, 203)

SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT NORTH AND EAST

Hunt, in his **Popular Romances of the West of England,"
quotes the following translation by the Rev, J* C.
Atkinson from Hjrlten Cuvalliec's " Warend och Wir-
durne," pp. 287-88. It agrees with many of Hawker's
ideas.

^^ Inasmuch as all light and all vigour springs from the
sun, our Swedish forefathers always made their prayers
with their faces turned towards that luminary. When
any spell or charm in connection with an ^earth-fast
stone' is practised, even in the present day, for the
removal of sickness, the patient invariably turns his face
towards the east, or the sun. When a child is to be
carried to church to be baptized, the Wflrend usage is for
the godmother first to make her morning prayer, face
towards the east, and then ask the parents three several
times what the child's name is to be. The dead are
invariably interred with their feet lying eastward, so as to
have their faces turned towards the rising sun. Fransolsy
or with or in a northerly direction, is, on the other hand,
according to an ancient popidar idea, the home of the evil
spirits. The Old Northern Hell was placed far away in the
North, When any one desires to remove or break any
witch-spell, or the like, by means of ^reading' (or
charms), it is a matter particularly observed that the stone
{i.e. an * earth-fjast ' one) is sought to the northvirard of the
house. In like manner also the ^ bearing tree ' (any tree
which produces fruit, or quasi fruit, apples, pears, &c.,

253

254 Appendices

rowan tree^ especially, and white thorn herbs), or the
shrew mouse, by means of which it is hoped to remedy
an evil spell, must be met with in a northerly direction
from the patient's home. Nay, if one wants to charm
away sickness over (or into) a running stream, it must
always be one which runs northwards. On the self-same
grounds it has ever been the practice of the people of the
Warend district, even down to the present time, not to
bring their dead frhnsols — or to the northward — of the
church. In that part of the churchyard the contemned
frSmlings kogen (strangers' burial-place) always has its site,
and in it are buried malefactors, friendless wretches,
and utter strangers. A very old idea, in like manner,
connects the north side of the church with suicides'
graves," etc.

APPENDIX B (pp. 27 and 109)

The following quaint verses have been found among
some unpublished manuscripts in Hawker*s handwriting : —

THE MAID OF THE CROOKS OF COMBE.

There's a Face will o'ershadow all faces !

There's an Eye that will brighten a room :
There's a Form that would win mid the Graces :

The Maid of the Crooks of Combe !

There's a Heart that is harder than Granite :

There's a Voice that will thrill you with gloom :
There's a Look — how a Lover would ban it —
The Maid of the Crooks of Combe !

Good Lord ! what a World we do pine in !

Where the Rose on the Bramble will bloom :
Where a Fiend like an Angel is shining :
The Maid of the Crooks of Combe.

The " Crooks of Combe " is a name given to the wind-
ings of the stream that runs down Combe Valley to the
sea (see p. 109). It seems possible that these verses may
have been written to accompany the story of Alice of the
Combe, and then discarded. On the other hand, the
legend of the mole is associated with Tonacombe Manor,
and Tonacombe and Combe are two different valleys.
The poem may have been addressed to Miss Kuczynski

255

256

Appendices

(afterwards Mrs. Hawker), who used to visit Combe and
was fond of riding about the valley. The third line of
the last verse is an echo from Coleridge's poem ** Love."
This poem was marked in a copy of Coleridge given by
Hawker to his future wife.

APPENDIX C (pp. 80 and 87)

ARSCOTT OF TETCOTT

This was John Arscott, whose epitaph in the parish
church of Tetcott ran as follows : —

"Sacred to the memory of John Arscott late
of Tetcott in the Parish, Esqr«, who died
the 14^^* day of January 1788.
What his character was need not here
be recorded. The deep impression which
his extensive benevolence and humanity
has left in the minds of his friends and de-
pendents will be transmitted by tradition
to late Posterity."

A little paper*covered book, entitled ^^ J. Arscott, Esq.,
of Tetcote, and his Jester, Black John," was published at
Plymouth in 1 880 by W. H. Luke. From this we take
the following : —

"The Arscotts, of Tetcot, were descended from the
Arscotts, of Holsworthy, an ancient family that ramified
into the several branches of Annery, Tidwell, Hols-
worthy and Tetcot. A descendant of the Arscotts of
Holsworthy, at a remote period, purchased the manor
and demesne of Tetcot from the Earl of Huntingdon
and made it his principal residence, and the other branches
of the family having become dispersed, and married into
di£Ferent houses, the representation of the family and
property at Holsworthy and elsewhere became vested in

257 s

258 Appendices

Arscott, of Tctcot. * The last descendant of that name —
John Arscott, — the subject of the annexed song, died
without issue, and devised Tetcot, with its manor and
appurtenances, to his relation, the late Sir Arscott Ourry
Molesworth, Bart., of Pencarrow. The late celebrated
Dartmoor sportsman, known as the Foxhunter Rough
and Ready, Paul Ourry Treby, Esq., of Goodamoor, was
a near connection of the Tetcot patriarch, and inherited
the tastes and followed the pursuits of this collateral
ancestor. The lairds of Tetcot had been Sheriils of the
County of Devon, a.d. 1633-38. C. I., 1678-28. C. II.,
and 1755-15. G. III. The family was noted for its
loyalty, and the Tetcott dependents mustered in full
force and did their duty at Stratton fight on May 16,
1643, whilst hunters and men were in full working
condition."

The writer proceeds to say that the hunting song in
honour of Mr. Arscott was written " 170 years ago *' [i.e.
1710), but as the last John Arscott lived till 1788, he
would hardly have been of an age to inspire hunting
songs in 1710. There was an earlier John Arscott,
whose epitaph, with that of his wife, is also to be seen in
Tetcott church. These epitaphs read as follows : —

" Here lieth the bodv of John Arscott Esq*"*
who married the daughter of Sir Shilston
Calmady. He died while SheriflFe of the
County the 35*** day of September 1675
aetatis suae 63.

Here also lieth the body of Gertrude
wife of the deceased John Arscott Esq^c
who died the iS^^* day of October 1699
aged 77.'

»

If the song existed in 17 10, and referred to this John
Arscott, it was no doubt written still earlier. The last of
the Arscotts, however. Black John's master, would seem

Appendices 259

more likely to be the subject of it. Mr. Baring-Gould,
who includes it among his " Songs of the West," says
that one of the many versions supplied to him was dated
1772, which would suit this theory. Hawker himself
published the song in "Willis's Current Notes" for
December, 1853, and it has since his death been erro-
neously included in his poems, for apparently he only
claimed to have been the Hrst to print it, though he doubt-
less added some touches of his own. Black John is
mentioned in his version, and Mr. Baring-Gould says
that " the author of the song is said to have been one
Dogget, who used to run after Arscott's fox-hounds on
foot." A search for this name in the parish registers of
Tetcott and Stratton has proved unsuccessful. Mr.
R. P. Chope found a version of the song current at
Hartland, and an old man there (over eighty in 1903)
says that his father used to sing it seventy years ago.

From Luke*s book we learn that —

" The Old house at Tetcott, which, as well as the
mansion of Dunsland, had been built under the superin-
tendence of the Architect sent by the government of
Charles II. to build Stowe for the £!arl of Bath, was taken
down in 1831, and a Gothic cottage constructed in its
stead. The demolition of the ancient structure was a
very unpopular act, and the old crones of the neighbour-
hood shake their heads and say that Black John and
Driver (a staghound), when the Cottage was burnt down
a few years only after it had been built, were seen yelling
and dancing round the flames. The origin of that fire
was never ascertained."

Hawker's poem, "Tetcott, 1831," which is all his
own, is an elegy on the destruction of the old house.
He quotes one stanza of it on p. 87 of the present
volume. The present representative of John Arscott's

26o Appendices

femily, Mrs. Ford, of Pencarrow, describes Tetcott as
"an imposing Queen Anne's house," and speaks of "the
front door steps under which John Arscott*s pet toad
resided, and every morning came out to be fed by his kind
master till the envious peacock killed himJ

»»

Mrs. Calmady, of Great Tree, Chagford, writes as
follows : —

**An old retainer, called Oliver Abbot, who, with
his fore&thers, had worked at Tetcott for generations,
told me that Arscott of Tetcott kept not only a well-
known pack of foxhoimds, but a pack of foumart hounds,
which he hunted by night.^ The song, * Arscott of
Tetcott,' was undoubtedly not written concerning the
Arscott who married Gertrude Calmady, but of the more
recent John Arscott, who died in 1788, and was Black
John's master. Gossips will still tell how Black John,
though pleasant and amusing enough when things went
smoothly, became dangerous when roused. One day,
Sir William Molesworth playfully tried to push him into
one of the fishponds, when Black John, wrathfidly ex-
claiming, ^ Turn sides, brother Willie, turn sides ' (and,
although a dwarf, he was very strong), soon had Sir |
William in the water, and, in his rage, would have {
drowned him, had not a man named Beare come to the {
rescue. ^ I

" It is said that Arscott of Tetcott still appcallb on a j
phantom horse, with a phantom pack, on the win moors \
he used to hunt, and that their cry portends death or J
misfortune to the unlucky wayfarer ; but I am inclined to j
agree with the man who, when told the devil appeared
to people on Cookworthy Moor, replied, * I've been out
on the moor all hours of the day and night ; had there
been e'er a devil, I must a seen un.' During the thirty
years that Mr. Calmady lived at Tetcott, he kept up with

1 The foumart is now extinct in England, though, I believe, to
be met with in parts of Scotland.

Appendices 261

zeal the sporting reputation of the place by keeping a
pack of foxhounds and otter hounds, and showing such
sport as will long be remembered in the West. During
those years, I heard many a story of the olden times.
One ascribed, whether rightly or wrongly, to that grand
old sportsman, Paul Treby, was to the efiect that, on
some one asking the meaning of Dosmary Pool, he replied,
* Don't e knaw ? Why, Do, Dos, Dot damme Mare,
give*d up from the Zay, to be Zure.'

^^Some years ago I obtained from a cottage in
Tetcott an old Staffordshire jug, decorated with game.
It was said to have been formerly in the possession of
Arscott of Tetcott. This jug 1 have since given to
Mr. Lane, the publisher."

The surname of Black John, and the place and date
of his birth, death, and burial are unknown. The editor
would be glad to hear from any one who could supply
information on these points.

APPENDIX D (p. 90)

DANIEL GUMB'S ROCK

By R. PEARSE CHOPE

A LONG account of Daniel Gumb is given in C. S. Gilbert's
" Historical Survey of Cornwall " (vol. i. p. 166). When
Gilbert visited the spot in 18 14, some remains of the
habitation could still be traced, and on the entrance,
graven on a rock, was inscribed " D. Gumb, 1735/* (See
also Bond's ** Looe," p, 203.) ** Unfortunately they have
now altogether disappeared before the march of the bar-
barians known as quarrymen." ,

The Cheesewring itself was claimed by Dr. Borlase as
a Rock Idol, in accordance with the quaint Druidical
theories of the early antiquaries. He says —

^^ From its having Rock-basons, from the uppermost
Stone's being a Rocking-stone, from the well-poised
structure and the great elevation of this groupe [of rocks],
I think we may truely reckon it among the Rock-Deities,
and that its tallness and just balance might probably be
intended to express the stateliness and justice of the
Supreme Being. Secondly, as the Rock-basons shew that
it was usual to get upon the top of this Karn, it might
probably serve for the Druid to harangue the Audience,
pronounce decisions, and foretell future Events." (" An-
tiquities of Cornwall," p. 174.)

The Rev. S. Baring-Gould gives in his "Book of
the West" (vol. ii. p. 107) a curious instance of the
persistency of tradition in connection with a cairn near

262

Appendices 263

the Cheesewring, in which a gold cup was found a few
years ago.

" The story long told is that a party were hunting
the wild boar in Trewartha Marsh, Whenever a hunter
came near the Cheesewring a prophet — by whom an
Archdruid is meant — who lived there received him, seated
in the stone chair, and offered him to drink out of his
golden goblet, and if there were as many hunters approach,
each drank, and the goblet was not emptied. Now on
this day of the boar-hunt one of those hunting vowed that
he would drink the cup dry. So he rode up to the rocks,
and there saw the grey Druid holding out his cup. The
hunter took the goblet and drank till he could drink no
more, and he was so incensed at his failure that he dashed
what remained of the wine in the Druid's face, and
spurred his horse to ride away with the cup. But the
steed plunged over the rocks and fell with his rider, who
broke his neck, and as he still clutched the cup he was
buried with it."

In Carew*s "Survey of Cornwall" (1602) occurs the
following quaint description of a logan-stone called
Mainamber : —

" And a great rocke the same is, aduaunced upon some
others of a meaner size, with so equal a counterpeyze,
that the push of a finger, will sensibly moue it too and
fro : but farther to remooue it, the united forces of many
shoulders are ouer-weake. Wherefore the Cornish
wonder-gatherer, thus descrybeth the same.

Be thou thy mother natures worke.

Or proof of Giants might :
Worthlesse and ragged though thou shew,

Yet art thou worth the sight.
This hugy rock, one fingers force

Apparently will moue ;
But to remooue it, many strengths

Shall all like feeble prooue."

APPENDIX Da (p. 92)

DOZMERE POOL

The following is extracted from Hunt's * Popular
Romances of the West of England.'

^Mr* Bond, in his 'Topographical and Historical
Sketches of the Boroughs of East and West Looe^'
writes —

' This pool is distant from Looe about twelve miles
off. Mn Carew says —

Dosmeiy Pool amid the moores.

On top stands of a hill ;
More than a mile abont, no streams

It empty nor any £11.

It is a lake of freshwater about a mile in circiunference^
the only one in Cornwall (unless the Loe Pool near
Helston may be deemed such), and probably takes its
name from Dome-Mery sweet or fresh water sea. It is
about eight or ten feet deep in many parts. The notion
entertained by some, of there being a whirlpool in its
middle, I can contradict, having, some years ago, passed
all over in a boat then kept there/

Such is Mr. Bond's evidence; but this is nothing
compared with the popular belief, which declares the pool
to be bottomless, and beyond this, is it not known to
every man of faith that a thorn-bush thrown into Dosmery

262

Appendices 265

Pool has sunk in the middle of it, and after some time
has come up in Falmouth (? Fowey) Harbour ?

Notwithstanding that Carew says that ^ no streams it
empt, nor any fill/ James Michell, in his parochial history
of St. Neot's, says : * It is situate on a small stream called
St. Neot's River, a branch of the Fowey, which rises in
Dosmare Pool.'

There is a ballad, * Tregeagle ; or Dozmar^ Poole :
an Anciente Cornish Legende, in two parts,' by John
Penwarne. . . • Speaking of Dozmar£ Pool, Mr. Pen-
warne says —

^ There is a popular story attached to this lake,
ridiculous enough, as most of those tales are. It is, that
a person of the name of Tregeagle, who had been a rich
and powerful man, but very wicked, guilty of murder and
other heinous crimes, lived near this place ; and that, after
his death, his spirit haunted the neighbourhood, but was
at length exorcised and laid to rest in Dozmari Pool.
But having in his lifetime, in order to enjoy the good
things of this world, disposed of his soul and body to the
devi^ his infernal majesty takes great pleasure in torment-
ing him, by imposing on him difficult tasks, such as
spinning a rope of sand, dipping out the pool with a
limpet shell, etc., and at times amuses himself with hunt-
ing him over the moors with his hell-hounds, at which
time Tregeagle is heard to roar and howl in a most
dreadful manner, so that, "roaring or howling like
Tregeagle " is a common expression amongst the vulgar
in Cornwall.' "

APPENDIX E (p. 109)

ANTHONY PAYNE

By The Rev. Prebendary ROGER GRANVILLE

According to the Episcopal Registers of the diocese of
Exeter, a marriage license was granted on September I2thy
1 61 2, to ** Anthony Payne of Stratton, and Gertrude
Deane of the same." These were evidently the parents
of the famous Cornish giant, who served as henchman
to Sir Bevill Grenvile at Stowe.

When the Civil War broke out, Anthony Payne
followed Sir Bevill to the battlefield, and was doubtless
present with him at the engagements of Bradock Down,
Modbury, and Sourton, in the early months of 1643.
On the 1 6th of May the battle scene had shifted to his
own home at Stratton, where every inch of ground must
have been perfectly fiuniliar to him. The Earl of
Stamford had occupied a strong position on a hill within
a mile of the little town. From five in the morning till
three in the afternoon the battle raged, and though the
Parliamentarians had the superiority both of numbers
and position, they could not prevail over the brave
Royalists. At three word was brought to Hopton and
Grenvile that their scanty stock of powder was almost
exhausted. To retreat would have been fatal. A supreme
effort had to be made. Trusting to pike and sword alone,

266

Appendices 267

the lithe Cornishmen pressed onwards and upwards^ led,
can we doubt it, by Anthony Payne ?

'^ His sword was made to match his size,
As Roundheads did remember ;
And when it swung, 'twas like the whirl
Of windmills in September."

The boldness of the attack seems to have struck their
opponents with terror. Stamford's Horse turned and fled,
and in vain Chudleigh attempted to rally his Foot. He
was surroimded and captured, and his men, left without a
commander, at once gave way and retreated, and soon
the victorious commanders embraced one another on the
hard-won hill-top, thanking God for a success for which,
at one time, they had hardly ventured to hope.

The following July Anthony Payne was at the battle
of Lansdowne, near Bath, where his brave master was
mortally woimded. When Sir Bevill fell the fight would
have been lost for the King, and in another moment the
Cornish would have crowded down the hill. It was the
quick nobility of Anthony Payne which won the battle,
and the deed should give him an enduring place in history.

"Catching his master's horse, with a fine knightly
impulse, he set little John Grenville, a lad of sixteen,
who had followed his gallant father close, on the hacked
and gory saddle, and led him to the head of his father's
troop. There was no more giving way after this sight,
and the Cornish followed the lad up the hill like men
possessed. By this time, too, the musketry had practically
routed the Parliament Horse, which were already retreat-
ing ; and so, while Sir Bevill lay dead on the hillside, his
own regiment, led by his giant servant and his little son,

Sined the top." (Norway's " Highways and Byways in
evon and Cornwall," p. 196.)

268 Appendices

There is surely ^no finer story to be told than this ;
nor can there have been, since first men began ta. slay
each other, many sights more noble than that of the child,
tearful, excited, triumphant, set upon the great charger, a
world too high for him, and led up the hill at the head of
his dying father's troop.'* What wonder that the King
knighted the boy-warrior at Bristol on the 3rd of August
following, for his bravery at Lansdowne fight (cf. Metcalfe's
" Book of Knights," p. 200), or that Prince Charles, his
own contemporary in age, attracted by his heroism, chose
him out of all others to be his personal attendant and
intimate friend ever afterwards — z, friendship that was
only broken by death !

We wish that we could bring ourselves to believe that
the letter (on page 117), breathing the spirit of rare
nobility, and stated by Mr. Hawker to have been written
to Lady Grace Grenvile after her valiant husband's death
by his true-hearted giant retainer, was authentic. We
fear, however, that it originated in the study at Mor*
wenstow, and is the product of Mr. Hawker's own versatile
and gifted pen.

What became of Anthony Payne after this is not
certainly known. Did he return with his master's body
to Stowe, and remain on there to protect his mistress
during the four unquiet years of her widowhood ? There
is, indeed, a tradition which would bear out this sup-
position, if it is true. It relates that the poor Queen, in
her flight (within a week after her confinement) firom
Exeter, to avoid capture by Lord Essex, escaped to
Okehampton with a small body of attendants, where she
was met by Anthony Payne, who guided her to Stowe by
a series of tracks and lanes, in order to secure greater
secrecy, and that from Stowe she went to Lanherne, and
so on to Falmouth, whence she escaped to France* In
confirmation of this theory a letter is said to have been

Appendices 269

seen from Lady Grace, in which she mentions the fact of
the Queen having slept at Stowe, and of her departure to
Lanherne. But the letter is no longer extant, if it ever
existed, and it has been proved pretty conclusively by Mr.
Paul Q. Karkeek, in a very interesting paper on the subject
of the Queen's flight, that from Okehampton the Queen
went to Launceston, the most direct route, under the escort
of Prince Maurice, and from Launceston to Falmouth,

Or did Anthony Payne remain on with his yoimg
master, who narrowly escaped meeting his father's fate at
the second battle of Newbury, and afterwards took a
prominent part in the defence of the West under his
uncle, Sir Richard Grenvile, and who so gallantly defended
the Scilly Islands, the last rallying point of the Royalists,
against Admiral Blake, in 1 65 1, that he obtained exception-
ally favourable terms when he was at last compelled to
capitulate ?

Nothing is heard of Payne again till the Restoration,
Then honours were showered thickly on the Grenviles
in recognition of all that they had done and sacrificed for
the royal cause, and especially of the signal services they
had rendered, in conjunction with their cousin, George
Monk, in restoring the Monarchy. Sir John Grenvile
was created Earl of Bath, and made Governor of
Plymouth, where he at once undertook to rebuild and
strengthen the fortifications, which had been much
damaged in the late war. Upon their completion Lord
Bath appointed Payne, whom he evidently still held in
great favour, as a yeoman of the guard and halberdier of
the guns. The King made a surprise visit by sea in
July, 1 67 1, to inspect the new citadel, accompanied by
the Dukes of York and Monmouth and a large retinue.
They were entertained by Lord Bath at his own cost
with great profusion, and the Merry Monarch professed
himself highly pleased with his visit. It was probably on

270 Appendices

this occasion that be commanded Sir Godfrey Kneller to
paint Payne's portrait^^ which is now in possession of the
Royal Institution of Cornwall, at Truro, and which was
engraved as a frontispiece to the first voliune of Gilbert's
** History of Cornwall."

Payne remained at Plymouth until old Time pulled the
giant down. Obtaining leave to retire, he returned home
to Stratton, and died in the same house in which he was
born. It is now **The Tree Inn." On the wall is the
following inscription, on a tablet which formerly marked
the battle-field.

In this Place
Y« Army of y« Rebels under yc command
of y« Earl of Stamford received a signal
overthrow by yc valour of Sir Bevill Gren-
ville and y« Cornish Army on Tuesday y«
1 6th of May 1643.

But the only memento of poor Anthony Payne is a hole
in the ceiling, through which his cofEn, being too large
to be taken out of the window , or down the stairs in the
usual way, was lowered from the room above. Even
the very place of his burial is uncertain. Some say he
was buried in the n^r/Zr, others in ^'t south aisle of Stratton
Church, on July 13th, 1 691, at an age which was little
short of eighty years. Let us hope that a sufficient number
of appreciative friends may shortly be found who shall
be willing to contribute towards the erection of some
memorial in Stratton Church worthy of one who proved
himself all his days a faithfU, loyal, true-hearted servant.

Note by the Editor.

In the parish register of Stratton, which begins in the
year 1687, the following entries appear : —

^ See note on p. 118;

Appendices ttj i

Burials,

Sibilla, wife of Anthony Payne

Anthony Payne

William and Mary Payne . . ,

William Payne

Richard, son of Anthony Payne

George „ „ „ „

Nicholas Payne

9 Juiy> 1691

20 Aug., „

>» M 1697

27 March, 1699
1708
I Aug., 1 7 10

The occurrence of four deaths so close together in
1 691 suggests that they may have been caused by some
epidemic. The previous book has unfortunately been lost,
so that it is impossible to verify the dates of Anthony's
baptism and marriage.

The sexton points out a spot in the south aisle
where he says that he saw a large grave opened, 8 ft. by
3 ft., at the restoration of the church in 1887, and that
this was generally supposed to be the grave of Anthony
Payne. Among the many skeletons unearthed at that
time was a thigh bone 2 ft. 9 in. long.

During some excavations in the west end of the north
aisle a slate stone came to light, very thin and decayed,
bearing the names of Nicholas and Grace Payne. These
were thought locally to be the parents of the giant, but
there is no proof of this.

The Rev. Canon Bone, of Lanhydrock, who was
Vicar of Stratton when the church was restored, has
kindly supplied a copy of the inscription on the stone.
One corner had been broken off, and the remainder bore
the following words : —

"Nicholas Payne of Hols in this towne
Yeoman . . . nd also neer by him lieth
Grace his wife buried the 22 day of
January 1637."

272 Appendices

Canon Bone says —

" The stone was removed to the Vicarage, but it had
worn so thin that it broke up, and unfortunately the
fragments were lost. I do not know whether the
attribution of the stone to Antony Payne's parents was
more than a likely guess/'

v»

The Paynes were evidently a numerous clan in
Stratton about that time, but though many names and
dates are available, there is little to establish the relation-
ship of the different members of the family. According
to a pedigree in the possession of Mr. Herbert Shephard,
an Anthony Payne married a Miss Dennis, and had by
her a son Hugh. No date appears on the document, but
it will be seen below that a Hugh Payne is mentioned
as riding to Launceston in i688. As the giant died in
1 69 1, this Hugh might be his son.

It should be mentioned that in the old registers his
Christian name is spelt " Anthony," the omission of the
** h '* being peculiar to Hawker.

In the records of the Blanchminster Charity in the
parish of Stratton (compiled by R. W. Groulding, 1898)
the names of several Paynes appear. The following are
some of the entries : —

(1603) "Paid to Nicholas Paine for writtinge of the
Quindecem booke 8 [rf.].'*

By a "Feoffment,** dated "12 Jan., 161 8-9," Walter
Yeo and another make over to William Arundell
and others, including Anthony Payne and Nicholas
Payne, certain property at Mellhoc and elsewhere.

(Either of these, Anthony or Nicholas, might be the
father of the giant.)

In a "Feoffment" dated "20 March, 14 Charles 11.

Appendices ttjz

(1662)," the names of Nicholas and William Payne
appear.

"18 March 1688. Item pd Hugh Payne p Riding to

Launceston upon the Report yt (that)
the flfrench were landed 00 02 06."

"After the Stockwardens* account for 17 19 there is a
statement by Anthony Payne," etc.

(This Anthony Payne might be a son of the giant.)

The flagon which contained the giant's allowance of
liquor is mentioned by Hawker in a private letter. He
says —

" It is now safe in its usual place under my Escritoire.
. . . The Bottle itself is Antony Payne's Allowance
which used to be filled for him every morning at Stowe,
and as I measured it last week and found it Six Quarts it
ought to have sufficed him.^

»

From " Collectanea Cornubiensia," by G. C. Boase
(1890), we get the following details as to the portrait of
Anthony Payne. In August, 1888, the collection of
antiquities at Trematon Castle, near Saltash, was sold by
auction on behalf of the executors of Admiral Tucker.
One of the lots was the portrait of Payne, and it was
sold to a Plymouth dealer for about ^^4. Through the
good offices of Major Parkyn of Truro, Mr. Harvey, on
February 12th, 1889, purchased the picture from Skardon
& Sons of Plymouth, and presented it to the Royal
Institution of Cornwall at Truro.

[The Editor will be very glad to hear from any reader
who may be able to supply further information about
Anthony Payne, his birth, life, will, etc., that could be
added to a future edition of this book.]

APPENDIX Ea (p. 109)

STOWE AND THE GRANVILLES

By The Rev. Prebendary ROGER GRANVILLE

Hals states that Sir Thomas Grenvile {temp. Henry VI,)
was the first of the family who resided at Stowe, but
Bishop Brantyngham licensed a chapel there for Sir
John de Grenvile on August 30th, 1386, and Henry de
Grenvile was buried at Kilkhampton about 1327, and the
inquisition after his death was taken there, and I believe
that Henry de Grenvile was the first to reside regularly
at Stowe. His father, Bartholomew, constantly signed
deeds at Bideford, and Bishop Stapledon granted him a
license for the celebration of divine service ** in capelld
SU& de Bydeford." So that I think it is safe to say that the
Grenviles resided at Stowe from at least the reign of
Edward III.

The place was maintained in much style, I expect, in
the time of Sir Roger de Grenvile, "the great house-
keeper," famed far and wide for his princely hospitality.
Charles Kingsley's description of the old house in Eliza-
bethan times is probably pretty accurate.

^^ A huge rambling building, half castle, half dwelling-
house. On three sides, to the north, west, and south,
the lofty walls of the old ballium still stood, with their
machicolated tiu'rets, loop-holes, and dark downward
crannies for dropping stones and fire on the besiegers,
but the southern court of the ballium had become a

274

Appendices 275

flower-garden, with quaint terraces, statues, knots of
flowers, clipped yews and hollies, and all the pedantries of
the topiarian art. And towards the east, where the vista
of the valley opened, the old walls were gone, and the
frowning Norman keep, ruined in the wars of the Roses,
had been replaced by the rich and stately architecture of
the Tudors. Altogether the house, like the time, was in
a transitionary state, and represented faithfully enough the
passage of the old Middle Age into the newer life that
had just burst into blossom throughout Eiurope, never, let
us pray, to see its autumn and winter," etc.

Hawker's reference to Stowe having been turned into
an academy for all the young men of family in the county
is correct. He is quoting from George Granville's (Lord
Lansdowne) letter to his nephew, who tells us that Sir
Bevill—

"provided the best masters for all kinds of education,
and the children of his neighbours shared the advantage
with his own. Thus, in a manner, he became the father
of his county, and not only engaged the aflFection of the
present generation, but laid a foundation of friendship for
posterity which ha^ not worn out to this day.'

99

John Granville, Earl of Bath, pulled down old Stowe,
and in its place, though on a different site a little farther
from the shore, built a magnificent new mansion (cover-
ing 3I acres of ground, and containing, it is said, 365
windows) out of the moneys he had received from the
Government as a debt owing to himself and his father
for their sacrifices to the royal cause. Dr. Borlase de-
scribes this new house as " by far the noblest in the west
of England, though with not a tree to shelter it." And
in the MS. diary of Dr. Yonge, F.R.S., a distinguished
ph)rsician of the latter part of the seventeenth century, the
following entry occurs in the year 1685 : —

276 Appendices

^ I waited on my lord of Bathe, then Governor of
Plymouth, to his delicious house Stowe* It lyeth on y«
ledge of y« North Sea of Devon,— 4 most curious Shriek
beyond sul description.''

f»

Here lived John, Earl of Bath* His son Charles, Lord
Granville, shot himself (accidentally the jury found) while
preparing for the journey into Cornwall to take down his
father's body for burial, and they were both buried together
in Kilkhampton Church, September 27th, 1701* His boy,
William Henry, then nine years of age, succeeded, but
died of small-pox, unmarried. May 17th, 1711, aged
nineteen.

The next male heir was George Granville the poet,
who presented his cousin, Chamond Granville, to the
Rectory of Kilkhampton on October 22nd, 171 1> and
on December 31st, 171 1 (after serving in the Parliaments
called in the fourth and seventh years of Queen Anne),
he was created Lord Lansdowne of Bideford, ^^ a pro-
motion justly remarked to be not invidious, inasmuch
as he was at that time the heir of a family in which two
peerages, that of the Earl of Bath and Lord Granville of
Potheridge, had recently become extinct."

Lord Lansdowne's claim to the estates of the Earls
of Bath was, however, disputed by the two surviving
daughters of John, first Earl of Bath, viz. Lady Jane
Leveson-Gower and Lady Grace Carteret. A family
law suit was the result of this claim, which lasted for
some years. With the death of Queen Anne (who had
specially honoured him with her favour, making him
Comptroller of her household, and also Secretary of
State for War, and afterwards Treasurer) Lord Lans-
downe's prospects darkened. He was supposed to be in
favour of the exiled Stuarts rather than of the House of
Hanover ; and there seems no little doubt that he was more
or less implicated in the scheme for raising an insurrection

Appendices 277

in the West of England, which Lord Bolingbroke and
the Duke of Ormonde were at the head of* At any
rate, Lord Lansdowne was seized as a suspected person,
and on September 26th, I7i5> was committed, along with
Lady Lansdowtle, to the Tower, where they were con-
fined as close prisoners. Whilst there he compromised
the law suit for ^^30,000, and the Devonshire property
passed to Lady Jane Leveson-Gower, and the Cornish to
Lady Grace Carteret, who was created Countess Gran-
ville in her own right.

Stowe, having stood for a little over half a century,
was pulled down in 1739* In Polwhele's "History
of Cornwall" it is stated that a man of Stratton lived
long enough to see its site a cornfield before the building
existed, and after the building was destroyed a cornfield
again. The materials were sold piecemeal by auction*
The carved cedar wood in the chapel, executed by
Michael Chuke,^ was bought by Lord Cobham and
applied to the same purpose at his mansion of Stowe in
Buckinghamshire. The staircase is at Prideaux Place,
Padstow, while the Corporation of South Molton, who
were then building a new Town Hall, Council
Chamber, etc., purchased the following : —

Lady's fine Bed-chamber and planching 35 o o

9 shash windows at 10/6 and 2 at 11 /6 517 6
no. 27 y« winscott w^^^out yc chimney

and door casings ... ... ... 11 13 o

6 squares of Planching i 16 o

A Tunn and \ of Sheet & Pipe at 13/ 19 10 o

7 pi's* of winscott window shutters at 0/ 2 16 o

^ The cedar wainscot which lined the chapel is said to have
been bought out of a Spanish prize, and the carving is mentioned
by Defoe, in his '< Western Tour/* as the work of Michael Chuke,
and not inferior to Gibbon's. (C. S. Gilbert, "Survey of Com-
walV vol. ii, p. 554.)

278 Appendices

172 rustic quoins at I .., 8 12 o

4 Corinthian Capitalls & Pillasters ... 2 2 o

Y^ caseing and ornaments of 3 windows i 1 1 6
3 Architraves w^ Pedemt»« for doors &

27 yd». of winscott in the Lobby ... 2 2 o
A carved Cornish and Triumph of K.

Charles II. . . . ... ... ... 7 7 o

2 right panel doors i i o

These articles, with many others, were taken to
Bude, shipped to Barnstaple, and thence carted to South
Molton. The outlay for the whole only amounted to
^178 ! The ** carved Cornish and Triumph of Charles
II.*' is still to be seen over the fireplace in the old dining-
room in the Town Hall at South Molton.

No doubt the isolated position of Stowe, and the
long distance from London was one cause of its being
destroyed. Lord Carteret was appointed Lord Lieu-
tenant of Devonshire in 1 7 16, and the previous year
he had been doing all he could in support of the new
Hanoverian establishment. While the Jacobite rebellion
was at its height in the north, Carteret was writing from
Stowe to Robethon, the French Secretary of George I. —

** I am now two hundred long miles from you, situated
on a cliff overlooking the sea, and every tide have fresh
prospects in viewing ships coming home. In this corner
of the earth have I received your letter, and without that
I should have heard nothing since I came. Sept. 25,
1715." — Brit. Mus. Sloane MSS. 4107, fol. 171, etc.

Another cause may have been the bursting of the
" South Sea Bubble," in which Countess Granville and
the Carterets had invested a good deal of money. Lord
Carteret wrote to a friend in October, 1720 —

^^ I don't know exactly how the fall of the South Sea

Appendices 279

has affected my family, but they have lost considerably of
what they had once gained/"

w

The stables alone remain, and these have been con-
verted into a farmhouse, the tennis-court into a sheepcote,
and the great quadrangle into a rick-yard, and civilisation,
spreading wave after wave so fast elsewhere, has surged
back from that lovely corner of the land, let us hope only
for a while.

Referring to this ruined mansion, Edward Moore
exclaimed —

^' Ah ! where is now its boasted beauty Hed ?
Proud turrets that once glistened in the sky.
And broken columns, in confusion spread,
A rude mis-shapen heap of ruins lie !

Where, too, is now the garden's beauty fled,
Which every clime was ransacked to supply ?

On the dread spot see desolation spread,
And the dismantled walls in ruin lie.

Along the terrace walks are straggling seen
The thickly bramble and the noisome weed,

Beneath whose covert crawls the toad obscene.
And snakes and adders unmolested breed."

APPENDIX F (p. 123)

CRUEL COPPINGER

By R. PEARSE CHOPE

The real Coppinger, around whose name Mr. Hawker
has woven such a fascinating legend, has been identified
by the Rev. S. Baring*Gould, in a footnote to his account
of "The Vicar of Morwenstow" (edit. 1899, p. 113),
with an Irishman of that name, having a wife at Tre-
whiddle, near St. Austell, by whom he had a daughter,
who married a son of Lord Clinton. However, there
can be little doubt that the Coppinger Mr. Hawker had
in his mind lived nearer at hand, in the adjoining parish
of Hartland, where several of these tales, together with
others of a similar nature, are still told about him. His
name was Daniel Herbert Coppinger or Copinger, and
he was wrecked, probably at Welcombe Mouth, the end
of the romantic glen which separates Welcombe from
Hartland, on December 23rd, 1792. He was hospitably
received and entertained, not by Mr. Hamlyn, but by
Mr. William Arthur, another yeoman &rmer, at Golden
Park in Hartland. While there he scratched the foUow-
ing inscription on a window-pane, which was preserved
for many years, but has now disappeared : —

"D. H. Coppinger, shipwrecked December 23rd,
1792 ; kindly received by Mr. Wm. Arthur."

In the following year he married Ann Hamlyn, the

280

Appendices 281

elder of the two daughters of Mr. Ackland Hamlyn, of
Galsham, and his wife Ann, who was one of the last of
the ancient and gentle family of Velly of Velly, a family
which had held a prominent position in the parish for at
least five hundred years. The marriage is thus entered
in the parish register : —

" Daniel Herbert Coppinger of the King's Royal Navy
and Ann Hamlyn mard (by licence) 3 Aug.*'

Far from being ^' a young damsel," the bride was of
the mature age of forty-two. Two years later her sister,
Mary, was married to William Randal, but there is no
record or local tradition of any issue from either marriage.
What rank Coppinger held in the Navy is not known,
but his name does not appear in the lists of commissioned
officers.

For about two years he carried on his ne&rious business
of smuggling, and stories are still told of the various methods
he adopted of outwitting the gauger. His chief cavq was
in the cliff at Sandhole, but another is pointed out in
Henstridge Wood, a couple of miles inland. On one
occasion, perhaps after Coppinger's time, the caves were
watched so closely that the kegs of brandy which had
been landed were deposited at the bottom of the %ess^ as
the pile of sheaves in a barn is called, of an accommodating
farmer. The gauger, who had his suspicions, wished to
search the zess, but the farmer was so willing to help him
in turning over the sheaves that his suspicions were
allayed, and he went away without finding any of the
incriminating articles. On another occasion the result
was not so satisfactory for the farmer. On the arrival of
. the gauger, he produced some empty kegs in order to give
his wife an opportunity of hiding a supply of valuable
silks which had been left in their care. The safest place
she could think of in her hurry was the oven, but she

282 Appendices

forgot that it had been heated for baking a batch of bread.
The result was that, although the gauger failed to find
them, they were burnt to ashes.

Mrs. Coppinger's mother went to live with her other
daughter and son-in-law at Cross House in Harton« She
was the owner of G^lsham, and retained possession of her
husband's money, and the tale runs that, in order to obtain
money from her, Coppinger, having been refused admission,
had been known to stand, with a pistol in each hand, on
the lepping-'Stocky or horse-block, in front of the house and
threaten to shoot any person who appeared at the door
or any of the windows unless the required sum was
produced. It is even said that once, as he was passing
the house, he saw his brother-in-law, Randal, at the
window, and fired at him without provocation, but luckily
missed his aim.

Mrs. Ann Hamlyn was buried on September 7th, 1800,
after which date the hxm became the property of Mrs.
Coppinger. Coppinger spent what he could, but apparently
became bankrupt, for in October, 1802, he was a prisoner
in the King's Bench, in company with a Richard Copinger,
who is stated to have been a merchant in the island of
Martinique. What became of him afterwards does not
seem to be known, but it is said that he lived for many
years at Barnstaple, in receipt of an allowance from his
wife. She herself went there to live out her days, and
died there on August 31st, 1833, at the age of eighty-two.
She was buried in the chancel of Hartland Church, in the
grave of her friend, Alice Western, and by the side of her
mother. Coppinger's name can still be seen, inscribed in
bold characters " D. H. Copinger " on a window-pane at
Galsham. Galsham is now the property of Major
Kirkwood of Yeo Vale.

Writing to his brother-in-law, Mr. J. Sommers James,
in September, 1866, Mr. Hawker asks him, ^*Do you

Appendices 283

remember Bold Coppinger the Marsland Pirate? He
died eighty-seven (?) years ago. I am collecting materials
for his Life for All the Year Round i^ and again in
November of the same year, ** Hadn't you an Aunt called
Coppinger ? "

It is interesting to note that Coppinger has " entered
fiction'* through the pages of Mr. Baring-Gould's "In
the Roar of the Sea."

APPENDIX G (p. 139)

THOMASINE BONAVENTURE

By R. PEARSE CHOPE

The tale of the shepherdess who became Lady Mayoress
was told by Carew in his ** Survey of Cornwall," and her
biography has since been sketched by many different authors,
such as Lysons in ** Magna Britannia," W, H. Tregellas
in "Cornish Worthies," and in the "Dictionary of
National Biography," and G. C. Boase in " Collectanea
Cornubiensia." An account appears also in the " Parochial
History of Cornwall ; " and a book by E. NicoUs, entitled
" Thomazine Bonaventure ; or, the Maid of Week St.
Mary," was published at Callington in 1865, only two
years before Mr. Hawker's article appeared in All the Tear
Round. The Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Mary
Woolnoth, from which extracts were given in the
GentlemarCs Magavdne for 1854 (vol. xlii. p. 41), and rn
the " Transcript of the Registers of the United Parishes
of St. Mary Woolnoth and St. Mary Woolnoth Haw,"
by J. M. S. Brooke and A. W. C. Hallen (1886, p. xvi.),
contain the following entries : —

" 1539. — ^Item recevved of the Master and War-
dens of the Merchint Tayllours for the beame light of
this church according to the devyse of Dame Thomasyn
Percyvall widow late wyf of Sir John Percjrvall Knight
deceased xxvj«- viij^»

Item receyved more of the Master and Wardens
of Merchint Tayllors for ij tapers thoon of vij lb. and

284

Appendices 285

the other of v Ih. to brenne about the Sepulture in this

Church at Ester ij'- iiij«** and for the churchwardens

labor of this church to gyve attendance at the obit of

Sir John Percyvall and otherwyse according to the

devyse of Dame Thomasyn Percyvall his wyf iiij'-

vj*. iiij<J.

Item receyved of the said Master and Wardens of
Merchint Taillors for the Repacions of the ornaments
of this church according to the will of the said Sir
John Percyvall vj*«

Item receyved of the Maister and Wardens of
Merchint taillors for a hole yere for our Conduct for
kepying the Antempur afore Saint John with his
children according to the will of the said Dame
Thomasyn Percyvall xx**"

A monument erected to Sir John Percival in the old
church is mentioned by Stow, but it is no longer in
existence. Sir John's will hangs in the present church.

The following accoimt of the chantry founded by Dame
Percival at Week St. Mary was extracted by Oliver from
the Chantry Rolls of Devon and Cornwall, preserved
among the records of the Court of Augmentations : —

" Saynt Marye Weke. — See Cert. 9, No. 6. The
chauntrye called Dame Percyvalls, at the altar of Seynt
John Baptist, in the north yeld within the same church.
Founded by Dame Tomasyne Percyvall, wyf of syr John
Percival, knt., and alderman of London. To iynd a
pryste to praye for her sowle in the paryshe churche of
Saynt Marye Weke ; also [to] teach children freelye in
a scole founded by [her] not farr distant from the sayd
parishe churche ; and he to receyve for his yerelye stipend
xijii. vj«» To fynde a mancyple also to instructe chil-
dren imder the sayd scolemaster, and he to have yerelye
xxvj«« viij<^« To a laundresse for the scolemaster and
mancyple yerelye xiij*. iiij^. And the remayne of the
lands (all charges of reparacons of the tenements and
houses, chalys and ornaments, being first allowed) should

i^^^^Bsitf^^^

286 Appendices

be expended in an obytt verelye for her in the parjrshe
church. — Cert. 10, No. 8, xiij«» iiij^- to y« pore peple
yerelye.

^^ The yerelye value of the lands and possessions,

xvi»' xiiij«« viij<^»

"Cert. 9, No. 6. M**-That one John Denham, of
Tyston [Devon], one of y« feoflFees of founders of
the said scole, kepyth land named Ashe in Broadworth
and other quylytts thereto adjoinyng, parcel of possessions
g3rven for sayd scole ; and with yc profy tts thereof payeth
iiijii- yerely to y« manciple ther, and xin»« iiij**- to jr^ launder
of y« said scole-house." (Oliver, " Monasticon Dioecesis
Exoniensis," p. 483.)

Carew's quaint account is worth quoting in full : —

**S. Marie JVike standeth in a fruitfull soyle, skirted
with a moore, course for pasture, and combrous for
travellers. This village was the birth-place of Thomasine
Bonaventurey I know not, whether by descent, or event,
so called : for whiles in her girlish age she kept sheepe
on the fore-remembred moore, it chanced, that a London
marchant passing by, saw her, heeded her, liked her,
begged her of her poore parents, and carried her to his
home. In processe of time, her mistres was summoned
by death to appeare in the other world, and her good
thewes, no lesse than her seemely personage, so much
contented her master, that he advanced her from a servant
to a wife, and left her a wealthy widow. Her second
marriage befell with one Henry Gall : her third and last.
Sir John Percivaly Lord Maior of London, whom she also
overlived. And to shew, that vertue as well bare a part
in the desert, as fortune in the meanes of her preferment,
she employed the whole residue of her life and last widdow-
hood, to works no lesse bountifull, than charitable :
namely, repayring of high waies, building of bridges,
endowing of maydens, relieving of prisoners, feeding and
apparelling the poor, &c. Amongst the rest, at this S.
Mary Wikey she founded a Chaunterv and free-schoole,
together with faire lodgings, for the Schoolemasters,

Appendices 287

schoUers, and officers, and added twenty pound of yeerely
revennue, for supporting the incident charges : wherein
as the bent of her desire was holy, so God blessed the
same with al wished successe : for divers the best Gent,
sonnes of Devon and Cornwall were there vertuously
trained up, in both kinds of divine and humane learning,
under one Cholwely an honest and religious teacher, which
caused the neighbours so much the rather, and the more
to rewe, that a petty smacke onely of Popery, opened a
gap to the oppression of the whole, by the statute made
in Edw. the 6, raigne, touching the suppression of
Chauntcries." (Carew, " Survey of Cornwall," edit. 1769,
p. 119.)

Mr. W. H. Tregellas states that at the death of Sir
John Percyvall, about 1504, his widow retired to her
native place ; but Carew's words do not appear to justify
this inference, and it is stated in the Stocken MSS. in
the Guildhall Library that she was buried at St. Mary
Woolnoth. Mr. Tregellas does not appear to have been
able to trace the will ; but Lysons, whose account was
published in 18 14, says definitely that the will was dated
1 5 12, and this statement has been accepted by subsequent
writers. By this will she bequeathed to her brother, John
Bonaventer, £flO\ she made her cousin, John Dinham,
who had married her sister's daughter, residuary legatee,
and committed to his discretion the chantry and grammar
school founded in her lifetime ; she gave a little gilt goblet,
having a blue flower in the bottom, to the Vicar of
Liskeard, to the intent that he should pray for her soul ;
and towards the building of the tower of St. Stephen's
by Launceston she left 20 marks. Robert Hunt, in his
** Popular Romances of the West of England," says
that Berry Comb, in Jacobstow, was once the residence
of Thomasine, and was given at her death to the poor
of Week St. IVfcry. The "Parochial History of Cornwall "
gives 1530 as the approximate date of her death.

APPENDIX H (pp. 161-62)

EPITAPHS OF RUDDLE AND BLIGH

The following is extracted from a little book entitled
" Some Accoimt of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene,
Launceston," by S. R. Pattison, 1852 : —

'^ Adjoining is a marble monument, in memory of
Sarah, the wife of the Rev. John Ruddle, interred near
this place, in 1667. Below the family arms is the foUo^v-
ing epitaph, entitled " The Husband s Valediction : " —

^' Blest soul, since thou art fled into the slumbers of the dead.

Why should mine cya
Let fall unfruitful tears, the ofispring of despair and fears.

To interrupt thine obsequies.
No no, I won't lament to see thy day of trouble spent ;

But since thou art gone.
Farewell ! sleep, take thy rest, upon a better Husband's breast.

Until the resurrection."

A stately monument of fine variegated marble, in the
south aisle, is charged with the arms of Bligh, and the
following Latin inscription : —

" Juxta hoc marmor jacet Carolus Bligh, Gen.
Aldermanus et hujus municipii saspius Praetor

Qui cum sibe satis, suis panun diu vixerat

Pietate plenus obiit a.d. 17 16, Die 8bris 2do

Hunc jam ^ternitatem inhians ludith uxor 27 Maii

An. Dni.
171 7mo secuta est."

The Botathen Ghost story, as told by " the Rev. Mr.
Ruddell *' himself, occupies five pages of C. S. Gilbert's
" History Survey of Cornwall, 181 7 " (vol. i. pp. 11 5-1 19).
Gilbert does not mention how he came by it. Hawker's
version is obviously a paraphrase of this, with some
embellishments of his own.

288

APPENDIX J (p. 1 8 s)

MICHAEL SCOTT AND EILDON HILL

Michael Scott, the Wizard of the North, was a
mediaeval scientist around whose memory many traditions
have gathered. Compare " The Lay of the Last Min-
strel," canto 2, stanza 13. The Monk speaks.

** In these far climes it was my lot
To meet the wondrous Michael Scott ;

A wizard of such dreaded fame.
That when, in Salamanca's cave.
Him listed his magic wand to wave,

The bells would ring in Notre Dame !
Some of his skill he taught to me,
Andy warrior, I could say to thee
The words that cleft Eildon Hills in three,

And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone :
But to speak them were a deadly sin ;
And for having but thought them my heart within,

A treble penance must be done."

In the note on this passage Sir Walter says —

" In the South of Scotland any work of great labour
or antiquity is ascribed either to the agency of Auld
Michael, of Sir William Wallace, or of the devil.**

Gilfillan tells an amusing anecdote that —

** when Sir Walter was in Italy he happened to remark to
Mr. Cheney that it was mortifying to think how Dante
thought none worth sending to hell except Italians, on

289 u

290 Appendices

which Mr. C. remarked that he of all men had no
right to make this complaint, as his ancestor Michael is
introduced in the ^Inferno/ This seemed to delight
Scott/'

The passage in the ^* Inferno '* occurs in Canto 20 —

*^ Quell' altro che ne' fianchi h, cosi pocoy
Michele Scotto fu, che veramente
Delle magiche firode seppe il giuocho."

translated by Gary thus :—

*'That other, round the loins
So slender of his shape, was Michael Scott,
Practised in every slight of magic wile."

Boccaccio also mentions him (Dec. Giorn. VIII.,
Nov. 9): ^^It is not long since there was in this city
(Florence) a great master in necromancy, who was called
Michele Scotto, because he was from Scotland." Legend
has obscured the real fame of Michael Scott He lived
between 1175 and 1234, studied at Oxford, Paris,
Palermo, Toledo (where he translated Aristode firom
Arabic), and became court phjrsician and astrologer to the
Emperor Frederick II. He took Holy Orders, but declined
the Pope's offer of an Irish archbishopric on the ground
of not knowing the Irish language. He probably died in
Italy, but &ble connects his burial with Holme Coltrame
in Cumberland, or with Melrose Abbey. It is said that
Sir Walter Scott confused him with another Michael
Scott, of Balwearie, and that he ^^ more probably belonged
to the border country whence all the families of Scot
originally came, and where the traditions of his magic
power are common " (" Diet, of Nat. Biog.**). The best
book on the subject is the ^^ Life and Legend of Michael
Scot (i 175-1232)," by Rev. J. Wood Brown, M.A.,
1897.

[/AT PREPARATION']

The Life and Letters

of

Robert Stephen Hawker

Vicar of Morwenstow

A FULL and authentic biography of the late Rev. R. S.
Hawker, by his son-in-law, is in course of preparation, and
will be issued next Spring. It was originally intended to
prefix this as an introduction to the present volume^ but so
much new material has come to light that it could not well be
compressed within the limits of a short memoir. This new
material includes a most interesting account, written by
Hawker himself, of Tennyson^s visit to Morwenstow in 184S,
and their conversation. Many unpublished letters of
Hawker^s have also been collected. The book will contain
numerous illustrations, consisting partly of photographic
reproductions, and partly of lithographic drawing^ by Mr. J.
Ley Pethybridge. No pains or expense will be spared to
produce a picturesque record of the man and his environment,
both so picturesque and romantic in themselves.

Should this notice meet the eye of any one who knew
Hawker, or could in any way supply further material for the
biography, in the shape of letters, manuscripts, relics, anec-
dotes, or reminiscences, such will be gladly received, and may
be addressed to the editor of the present volume, care of the
publisher.

Julj, 1903.

JOHN LANE, Publisher, LONDON & NEW YORK

[IH PREPJtH^nON}

Cornish Ballads

jad

Other Poems
br

ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER

Vicar of M anfenstofr

niiutnted bjr

J. LEY PETHYBRIDGE

5<.i»et.

This book will be bsued in the Autumn of the present year
(1903). It is a lerised edition of Hawker's Complete Poems,
published in 1S99 at js, 6d. The chief difecnoes oonsirt of
the reduction^ in pricey the incfaisioa of a number of ficoh
illustntions and a few additional poems^ and a genenl im-
piorement in the '^ get-up " of the book. In binding it will
be uniform with ** Footprints of Former Men in Far Com-
walL** The new illustntions will include some or sdl of the
following : —

nxOSTKATiOlf.

7> iOmsirmU

v^Jovtt^r ••• ••• •«• ••«

The Black Rock, Wldemooth ...

St. Nectan's Kieve

MorweDStow Ghaich (Exterior) ...
The Well of St. Morwenna

The Wdl of St. John

The Sooroe of tile Tamar
LaunceUs Chmch

The Figure-head of the Cole- ...

donia
Boscastle diffis in a stonn

Hartland Church

St. Madron's WeD

Hennacliflf ... ... ... ...

Tlntagel

El&gr of Sir Ralph de Blanc- ...
Mmster in Stratton Church

Sharpnose Point

Portrait of Sir Bevill Granville ...
The Font in Morwenstow Church

" Ckivdlf."

" Featherstone's Doom."

" The Sisters of den Nectan."

" Morwennae Statio."

"TheWeUofSL Morwenna."

"The WeQ of St. Jcrfm."

" The Tamar Spring."

"The Ringers of Lanncells

Tower."
"The FignreJiead of the Gde-

doma at her Captein's Grave. "
"The Silent Tower at Bot-

" The CeU by the Sea."

"The Doom-WeU of St. Mad-

ion.
"A Croon on Hennadiff."
" The Quest of the SangxaaL"
** Sir Ralph de Blanc-Minster of

Bien-Aun6."
"The Smuggler's Song."
" The Gate Song of Stowe."
"The Font."

JOHN LANE, Publisher, LONDON Sf NEW YORK

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