“Time is over for one more”;
“Time is over for one more”;
and on the back,
“Soon shall thy own life be o’er.”
“Soon shall thy own life be o’er.”
The Culmstock set is an interesting collection of bells, but not one of them is adorned with mottoes such as those. One bears the inscription “Ave Maria Gracia Plena,” and this was cast by Roger Semson, a West-country founder of repute, who was dwelling at Ash Priors, in Somerset, in 1549, and who stamped his initials on the bell. Another of his bells, at Luppitt, is at once more and less explicit on this point, since the inscription runs “nosmes regoremib.” To make sense, this must be read backwards. Two modern bells, placed in the Culmstock belfry in 1852 and 1853 respectively, awaken proud or painful memories. The former was cast in memory of the Duke of Wellington, the cost being defrayed by subscription, while the latter was “the free gift of James Collier, of Furzehayes, and John Collier, of Bowhayes.” John Collier, who was killed by lightning at Bowhayes, was the sporting yeoman with the otter hounds, to whom Blackmore alludes. The old house, by the way, was reputed to be haunted, and for years no one would live in it.
Blackmore’s description of the vicarage is literally correct, save that he calls it “the rectory.” A long and rambling house it certainly is, and the dark, narrow passage, likea tunnel, beneath the first-floor rooms, is a feature explained by the higher level of the front of the house “facing southwards upon a grass-plot and a flower-garden, and as pretty as the back was ugly” (Perlycross, chapter vi.).
Image unavailable: HEMYOCK (page 26).HEMYOCK (page 26.)
AlthoughCulmstock and its immediate vicinity is somewhat deficient in what I have ventured to term “live” interests, it must not be inferred that the neighbourhood has nothing further to show; and among the objects that deserve to be scheduled as worthy of attention are the colossal stone quarries at Westleigh, which, whether viewed from the parallel line of railway or from the opposite height on which stands Burlescombe Church, present an imposing spectacle. For ages they have been the principal source of supply for the district, huge quantities of limestone having been drawn from them for building and agricultural purposes. Much of it was formerly conveyed to Tiverton in barges towed along the canal, the terminus of which was fitted with a number of kilns. These, in my boyhood, I have often seen burning, and regarded with no little awe, owing to stories that were circulated of persons having gone to sleep on the margin, fallen over into the glowing furnace, and been consumed to powder. They are now a picturesque ruin. Older men can recall a yet earlier time when pack-horses came to Westleigh from Tiverton and fetched lime inboxes. In front was a man riding a pony, and the horses followed without compulsion.
The string of pack-horses mentioned in chapter ii. ofLorna Doone, as arriving from Sampford Peverell, may be a reminiscence of this traffic.
Not far from the entrance to the Whiteball tunnel, and in the neighbourhood of the great limestone quarries, in a pleasant meadow facing south, are the ruins of Canonsleigh Abbey. To a connoisseur like Mr F. T. Elworthy, these remains tell their own story, and it is thanks to that gentleman’s investigations and researches that we are able to furnish a concise account of the ancient nunnery. A gateway yet stands, though unhappily disfigured by the desecrating touch of modern man, and near it is a doorway of red sandstone leading to a staircase doubtless belonging to the porter. In the upper storey, square-headed windows—wrought, we may believe, in the fourteenth century—command the approach in either direction; other features are less easy to determine, since there are modern walls and a modern roof, which have been added for the purpose of turning the place into a shed, and incidentally obscure the older architecture.
Without spending more time here, let us pass to a quadrangular building of massive construction, and supported at two of its angles by solid buttresses. Situated at the east end of the convent, this is considered to have been a great flanking tower communicating, by means of strong walls (fragments of which yet remain), at the angles opposite to the buttresses, with the residential portions. The outer or enclosing wall of the abbey precincts started from the middle ofthe east wall of the tower; and under the middle of the tower flowed a stream, which issued through a covered exit and continued its course outside the boundary wall, washing its base. The reason for this somewhat peculiar arrangement was a good one—the supply of the abbey stews; but its effect was to throw the tower out of line with the walls and the other buildings.
Inside the walls were two spaces, irregular in shape, and clearly open courtyards, from one of which a doorway led into the tower. The chief entrances seem to have been from the two or more floors of the domestic quarters. On the side next the convent, approached by a massive doorway, is a narrow chamber, conjectured to have been a “guard-room” for refractory nuns. Over this, but running the entire length of the building, and not, like the lower floor, divided by wall and doorway, is a floor supported by beams.
This tower, with the plaster clinging to its walls—how can we explain its survival when the rest of the once stately abbey has vanished? Probably the reason lies partly in its strength and partly in its plainness and the absence of wrought stone tempting human greed. As has been well said, “it still stands a picturesque and sturdy relic of an age of good lime-burners and honest masons.” The wrought stone of one or two windows in the adjacent walls has been removed, but what indications remain suggest the close of the twelfth century as that virtuous age.
The Priory of Leigh was founded, Dr Oliver says, in the latter half of the twelfth century, and Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph opines, before1173. In its infant days, it seems to have been a dependency of Plympton Priory—at any rate, in the estimation of the latter monastery, whose head claimed the right to appoint the superior of Leigh. This demand was resisted, and in 1219 the then Bishop of Exeter composed the quarrel by deciding, as a sort of compromise, that the Prior of Plympton might, if he chose, be present at the election.
In the second half of the thirteenth century there were scandals at Leigh calling for episcopal cognisance and visitation; and these disorders proving incurable, Bishop Quivil went the length of ejecting the prior and canons, and transferring the monastery, with all its belongings, to a body of canonesses of the same rule of St Augustine. And Matilda de Tablere became the first Prioress of Leigh. Next year, Matilda de Clare, Countess of Gloucester and Hertford, presented the convent with the (then) great sum of six hundred marks, in acknowledgment of which Bishop Quivil erected the priory into an abbey, and appointed the countess its abbess.
The patron saints, under the old régime, had been the Blessed Virgin Mary and St John the Evangelist. St Ethelreda the Virgin was now added, and practically displaced St Mary, whose name is omitted in later descriptions. Another change affected the name of the place, “Mynchen” being often substituted for “Canon”-leigh. “Mynchen” is the old English feminine of “monk,” and therefore equivalent to the modern “nun.”
The indignant canons did not take their extrusion meekly. They appealed to the archbishop,and, through him, to the king, against the usurpation of the “little women,” but they appealed in vain.
Sad to relate, the ladies do not appear to have behaved much better than their predecessors. In 1314 Bishop Stapledon, Quivil’s successor, addressed a letter to his dear daughters in Christ, telling them in Norman-French that he had heard of manydeshonestetes, and calling particular attention to the fact that there was an entrance into the cellar where a man brewedle braes, and another under the new chamber of the abbess! These he ordered to be closed by a stone wall before the following Easter.
The abbey was suppressed in February 1538, and at the end of the same year the king granted a lease of the site and precincts, with the tithes of sheaf and the rectories of Oakford and Burlescombe, to Thomas de Soulemont, of London. The inmates, however, were not turned adrift on the charity of the cold world. Each received a pension, and this, in the case of the abbess, Elisabeth Fowell, was considerable. There were eighteen sisters in all, and some of them, as is proved by their names—Fortescue, Coplestone, Sydenham, Carew, Pomeroy—were of good West-country extraction.
In course of time the property passed through various hands, and out of the spoils of the abbey a certain owner appears to have built a mansion, which was demolished in 1821.
From Canonsleigh let us away to Dunkeswell, about equidistant from Culmstock, but in another direction. On the journey we may look again at the grassy plateau which has Culmstock Beaconat one extremity and the Wellington Monument, set up in honour of the Iron Duke and his victories, at the other. This stretch of moorland is yet in its primitive state, and the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, whose property it is, exercise zealous supervision over it. Time was when the villagers depastured their donkeys thereon, but of late years the privilege seems to have been withdrawn.
The Blackdowns, generally, have been enclosed and turned into farms; and although one sometimes stumbles on desolate fields with patches of gorse, mindful of their ancient savagery, this does not affect, to any appreciable extent, the character of the country. On the whole, a ride or walk across the long level chines is not specially delightsome, save indeed for the wholesome air and an occasional glimpse of a fairy-likemappa mundispread out at their base. It is only when one descends into charming little villages, like Hemyock, or Dunkeswell, or Broadhembury, with their orchards fair and hollyhocks, that complete satisfaction is attained, and then itisattained.
Amidst so much that is bare (and on this subject we have not said our last word) the ivied ruins of Dunkeswell Abbey, nearer Hemyock than Dunkeswell village, and lending its name to a very respectable hamlet, assuredly deserve remark. Situated in a charmingly secluded spot, they consist merely of parts of the gatehouse and fragments of walls. The latter have a blackened appearance as if the destruction of the buildings had been accelerated by fire; more probably, however, this is due to the mould of age. In itsheyday the abbey boasted an imposing range of buildings, the outlines of which may still be traced in the grass, when, in the drought of summer, it withers, more rapidly than elsewhere, over the foundations.
The history of the abbey is almost as scanty as its remains. It was founded in 1201 by William Lord Briwere or Bruere, on land that had previously belonged to William Fitzwilliam, who, having borrowed from one Amadio, a Jew, was compelled to mortgage his manor of Dunkeswell. According to one version, Briwere redeemed the land from the Hebrew, but a charter of King John shows the vendor to have been Henry de la Pomeroy. There is clearly a tangle. Possibly Pomeroy bought Dunkeswell from the mortgagee and resold it to Briwere, who, in any case, bestowed it on the Cistercians of Ford.
Just outside the north wall of the modern church may be seen a stone coffin, with depressions for the head and heels. It is one of two that were discovered some thirty years ago covered with plain Purbeck slabs, and containing skeletons—a man’s and a woman’s; in all likelihood, those of the powerful Lord Briwere and his good lady. The body of the founder, it is known, was laid to rest in 1227 in the choir of the abbey church; and it is only natural to suppose, though there is no evidence to prove it, that husband and wife shared a common tomb. The bones, placed together in one of the coffins, were reinterred, while the other coffin, as I said, has been suffered to remain above-ground, a gazing-stock for posterity.
The abbey was richly endowed by its founderwith lands and tenements, including the manor of Uffculme and the mill there; and his munificence was supplemented by liberal gifts from the monks of Ford and others. At the date of its surrender, February 14, 1539, the annual value of the property amounted to £300—a large income in those days.
Most of the notices relating to the abbey are drawn either from the Coroners’ or De Banco Rolls, and, as they are concerned with actions for debt or trespass, are anything but entertaining. The one exception is the account or accounts of the storming of Hackpen Manor by John Cogan, of Uffculme, his son Philip, and others, in the year of grace 1299. Entering the buildingsvi et armis, they ejected the monks and lay brethren, who, after the custom of their order, were carrying on farming operations there; and beat and wounded two of the abbot’s servants to such purpose that he was deprived of their services for a year or longer. Moreover, they were said to have captured three score oxen and a score of cows, and driven them to Cogan’s manor of Uffculme, whither also they bore certainfurcæ, which were there burnt.
To this grave indictment Cogan replied, denying the trespass, and alleging that the two manors adjoined, and that the abbot desired to “lift”furcæ, etc., the property of Cogan, whereupon he instructed his men to prevent him, which they did. Now as to thosefurcæ. Writing aforetime on the subject, I fell into the pardonable error, if error it be, of supposing that the term, being employed in an agricultural or pastoral context, denoted “pitchforks.” It is my present
Image unavailable: CULMSTOCK BRIDGE (page 13).CULMSTOCK BRIDGE (page 13.)
belief that thesefurcæwere the kind of thing that gave its name to Forches Corner, just over the Somerset border—in other words, gallows. The abbot, as lord of Broadhembury, had not only assize of bread and beer in that manor, but, very certainly, a gallows. The Lady Amicia, Countess of Devon, had at least one gallows, and considering the extent of her domains, probably gallows galore; and apparently John Cogan had one. The Abbot of Dunkeswell, it seems to me, must have had at least two. If this reading be correct, the undignified squabble was all about that grisly symbol of mortality and power.
It is possible that a distorted version of this affair yet lingers in Culmstock tradition. I have heard from a Methuselah of the place that, according to an old tale, a band of freebooters named Sylvester made an eyry of Hackpen, whence they descended to the more fertile regions below, raiding the farms, and carrying off the fleecy spoil to their hold on the hill.
On the break-up of the monastery the site of the buildings, the home farm, and other lands were assigned by letters patent to John, Lord Russell, who showed himself an utter vandal. The lead of the roofs and the bells, of which there were four in the church tower, were the special objects of his rapacity; but all was grist that came to his mill, and, as the result, the fabric was left in a condition in which it was bound to become “to hastening ills a prey.” As there was never an abbey at Culmstock, either Canonsleigh or Dunkeswell probably served as a model for the ruins described inPerlycross. The latter is the more likely, owing to thepresence of the “district” church built by Mrs Simcoe, close to the remains of the ancient abbey.
At the southern end of the Blackdowns is Hembury Fort, an old British encampment, of triple formation and considerable extent, which commands perhaps the finest view in the neighbourhood. It is believed by some to have been also a Roman station—the Moridunum (or Muridunum) of Antonine. On this point, however, there is considerable doubt, there being other claimants, of which High Peak on the coast is one, and Honiton another. The very latest view of the matter is that given by Canon Raven inThe Antiquaryof December 1904, in which he inclines to the opinion that the legion divided the year between a winter at Honiton and a summer at Hembury, with the advantage of a strong fort to retire upon in case of Dumnonian risings.
In writing of these distant ages, I have often felt how remote they are in another sense. Such a term as “Dumnonian,” for instance, though we know its geographical significance as referring to the inhabitants of south-west Britain—how little it conveys, and perhaps can be made to convey, to us of the life that people lived, even if we are sure that beneath their breasts beat human hearts like our own, with interests and affections strong and manifold! Much gratitude, therefore, is due to the late Rev. William Barnes, author of the classic Dorset poems, for his bold attempt to reconstruct for us the mode of existence and surroundings of those ancient Britons, of whom all have heard from their childhood. This also may be poetry, but it is worth perusingonly as such. The picture he describes is that of a little pastoral settlement occupying a valley, and finding refuge in time of war in a great camp that crowns a neighbouring hill; and the season is the end of summer, after the reaping of oats and rye and the mowing of lawns and meadows round the homesteads.
“The cattle are on the downs, or in the hollows of the hills. Here and there are wide beds of fern, or breadths of gorse and patches of wild raspberry, with gleaming sheets of flowers. The swine are roaming in the woods and shady oak-glades, the nuts are studding the brown-leaved bushes. On the sunny side of some cluster of trees is the herdsman’s round wicker-house, with its brown conical roof and blue wreaths of smoke. In the meadows and basins of the sluggish streams stand clusters of tall elms waving with the nests of herons; the bittern, coot, and water-rail are busy among the rushes and flags of the reedy meres. Birds are ‘charming’ in the wood-girt clearings, wolves and foxes slinking to their covers, knots of maidens laughing at the water-spring, beating the white linen or flannel with their washing bats; the children play before the doors of the round straw-thatched houses of the homestead, the peaceful abode of the sons of the oaky vale. On the ridges of the downs rise the sharp cones of the barrows, some glistening in white chalk, or red, the mould of a new burial, and others green with the grass of long years.”
Close to Hembury Fort is a house built by Admiral Samuel Graves, whose best title to fame is that he invented the lifeboat. The fortis in the parish of Payhembury. The adjacent parish of Broadhembury, a picturesque village among the hills, could vaunt in ancient days a cell of Cluniac monks belonging to Montacute Priory, Somerset; and from 1768 to 1775 the incumbent was none other than Augustus Toplady, author of “Rock of Ages.” The Grange, a fine old Jacobean manor house, long the residence of the Drewes, was built in 1610 by an ancestor of theirs, who was sergeant-at-law to Queen Elizabeth—Edward Drewe. It was modernised about the middle of the last century.
At one time the Blackdowns must have presented a very different appearance from that which they do now, and the cause of the transformation may be found in a measure passed in the thirty-ninth year of His Majesty King George the Third, up to which time the commons of Church Staunton, Clayhidon, and Dunkeswell produced little but heath, fern, dwarf-furze,[5]and very coarse, tough and wiry herbage. At the beginning of the last century these lands were taken in hand with a view to cultivation or planting.
The Napoleon of the reclamation was General Simcoe, an officer who, having greatly distinguished himself in the American War, afterwards settled down on the Blackdowns. Altogether he enclosed about twelve thousand acres, and partof his design was to build two or three farmhouses, assigning to each of them about three hundred acres. The remaining allotments he portioned out to adjacent farms belonging to him, or converted into plantations. At Wolford Lodge—the name of his residence—he carried out some interesting experiments in arboriculture.
One practice adopted at Wolford, and apparently with success, was that of pruning the young oak, the stem being left clean to a height of twenty feet, and a proportionate top being allowed. The wounds soon healed and became covered with bark, and the result is said to have been a notable increase in the strength and substance of the stock.
General Simcoe paid much attention also to the culture of exotic trees. The black spruce of Newfoundland, the red spruce of Norway, the Weymouth pine, pineaster, stone and cluster pine, the American sycamore or butterwood, the black walnut, red oak, hiccory, sassafras, red bud, together with many small trees and shrubs of the sorts which, in the Western hemisphere, compose the undergrowth of the forests—all these different species were introduced and found to flourish at Dunkeswell.
The soil of Dunkeswell Common consisted chiefly of a brown and black peaty earth on beds of brown and yellow clay and fox-mould, all resting ultimately on a deep stratum of chip sand. Wherever the chip sand and marl emerged, the more retentive stratum of the latter held up the water, which burst forth into springs or formed “weeping ground”—“zogs,” as it is termed by the natives, who add that you mustbe careful where you plant your foot. Many of the morasses and peaty margins along the declivities and side-hills abounded with bog-timber. Out of a bed of peat near Wolford Lodge was raised an oak of this description, about twenty feet long and squaring thirteen inches at the butt. The whole of its sap was gone, and, to judge from its appearance, it might have been a fork of a much larger tree. Before it was taken up, General Simcoe received and refused an offer of five guineas for it. Local opinion favours Roughgrey Bottom, Dunkeswell, as the original of Blackmarsh or the Forbidden Land ofPerlycross. The situation is fairly suitable; it was not far from the Blackborough quarries (see chapter xxxviii.).
There is probably still preserved at Wolford Lodge, which is a treasure-house of interesting curios, a specimen of the serpent stone, orcornu ammonis, found at the Blackborough quarries, which in their time have produced a large crop of fossilised shells, and delighted the geologist with instructive visions of the underworld. The specimen in question exceeded fourteen inches in diameter.
Once upon a time the Blackdowns were generally known as the Scythestone Hills, and travellers often digressed from the beaten track in order to pay a visit to the whetstone pits at Blackborough, which were justly regarded as a remarkable scene of industry, and, indeed, one of the sights of the West. These quarries were worked in the following way. A road or level about three feet wide and about five and a half feet high was driven from the side of the hill to a distance of three or four hundred yards. All theloose sandstones within eight or ten yards of the road were extracted, pillars being left to support the roof of the mine, until, having served their purpose, these also were gradually worked out and the whole excavation suffered to fall in. The size of the stones rarely exceeded that of a horse’s head; and all were more or less grooved and indented, their appearance suggesting that they had been subjected to the action of rills or running water. Many years have elapsed since the pits were in full working order. A little while ago there were two shafts remaining; to-day there is only one, and, most probably, by the time this paragraph is in print, the doom of the mines will be irrevocably sealed, and Finis appended to their history. Dr Fox’s strange adventure in this weird spot must be in the recollection of all readers ofPerlycross(chapter xii.).
But there is another wonder at Blackborough besides the quarries, and that is Blackborough House—a great rambling mansion, with windows and doors innumerable. The building, which is rented by an aged lady and her daughter, is so utterly inconsequent as to inspire curiosity concerning its origin in this lonely out-of-the-way place. Well, a good many years ago, Dr Dickinson, of Uffculme, was in one of the eastern counties when he fell in with an old admiral who knew the spot, knew its former owner—the eccentric Lord Egremont—and told him all about it. Long before, the earl and the admiral were looking over the property, when the latter chanced to remark that it might be a good thing to erect a residence there. My lord was impressed with the notion, and the construction of this gigantictenement—in its way almost as extraordinary as Silverton House, now demolished, which stamped him as anaedificatorthat neither reckoned nor finished—was his mode of giving effect to the idea.
In the middle of the last century Blackborough House was a warren of young students professedly reading with the Rev. William Cookesley Thompson, most of whom were of Irish nationality. They were a wild set, and enjoyed nothing so much as sharing in one of the country revels, which were then so common in Devonshire. On one occasion they made their way to Kentisbeare Revel, where an old woman had a gingerbread stall. Evening came on, and to avoid a slight sprinkling of rain, the dame took refuge in the doorway of the inn. At the same instant a wagonette or some such vehicle emerged from the adjoining passage, and turning a sharp corner, overturned the old woman’s stall, whose contents, tilted into the roadway, were eagerly scrambled for by children. Of course there were profuse, if not very sincere, apologies, and sympathetic promises of compensation, but whether they were ever honoured in the sequel my informant is inclined to query.
One great feature of a revel was wrestling, and this reminds me that at Kentisbeare there are about fifty acres of common, which were once the subject of debate between that parish and Broadhembury. After much bickering it was agreed to settle the point by “fair shoe and stocking,” with the result that the men of Kentisbeare were victorious, and acquired firm possession of the disputed territory.
Image unavailable: OLD BLUNDELL’S SCHOOL, TIVERTON.OLD BLUNDELL’S SCHOOL, TIVERTON.
In1837 R. D. Blackmore underwent a momentous experience, that being the year in which he entered, a trembling novice, the portals of the famous school, founded by Mr Peter Blundell, clothier. With all its many virtues as a place of learning, Tiverton School long maintained a reputation for roughness, and those days were among its roughest. It might have appeared, therefore, a providential circumstance that the boy had a sturdy sponsor in Frederick Temple, with whom he at first lodged in the simplicity of Copp’s Court, though afterwards he became a boarder inside the gates. Nor can it be doubted that Temple, ever “justissimus unus,” must sometimes have interposed to prevent any unconscionable bullying of his delicate charge. Unfortunately he seems to have taken a severe view of his duties as amateur father; and on one occasion, many years later, when he handed to a prize-winner a copy ofLorna Doone, he mentioned, with a humorous twinkle, that he had often chastised the author by striking him on the head with a brass-headed hammer. We have it onthe authority of Mr Stuart J. Reid that Blackmore neither then nor subsequently felt the least gratitude for these attentions, and was wont to refer to his distinguished contemporary in language the reverse of flattering. And what he felt about his schoolfellow, he felt—or Mr Reid is mistaken—about his school, the retrospect of the misery and privations of his boyhood affecting him to his latest hour with a lively sense of horror and reprobation.
One would not have thought it. The opening chapters ofLorna Doone, though candid, seem written with relish of the little barbarians at play, just as if Blackmore had settled with himself that the trials of child’s estate were goodly exercises for the larger palæstras of life and literature. The filial note is never wanting, and those classic pages, so redolent of the place, and so descriptive of its customs, even to the verge of exaggeration, appeal to the younger generation of “Blundellites” as a splendid and enduring achievement, to which Mr Kipling’sStalky and Co., and Mr Eden Phillpott’sHuman Boy, and evenTom Brown’s Schooldays, must humbly vail.
It would be a considerable satisfaction to report that the scenes which Blackmore pictured are still in all respects as he painted them; but to do so would be to tamper with truth, and lead to unnecessary disappointment. In the first place, the school, as a society of men and boys, was removed in 1882 to a new and more convenient abiding-place about a mile distant, where it has renewed its youth, and flourishes with such a plentitude of numbers as was never known on the traditional site by the bank of the Lowman.The venerable buildings—it moves a nausea to tell—have been remodelled into villas. Apparently there was no remedy, for, although there was talk at the time of acquiring them as a local museum and library, like the Castle at Taunton, nothing came of it all, Tiverton being a small town, and philanthropists few and far between. To be sure, some stipulation was required that the elevation should be preservedin statu quo; but this has been only partially observed. The new residents could not be expected to live in dungeons, and so, for the admission of air and sunshine, the Jacobean windows have been extended and deprived of their pristine proportions. Within, the carved oak ceilings and panels have fled before an invasion of varnished deal, and the whole of the beautiful interior has become a memory.
Would that I could stop here, but stern Clio bids me go on and declare that, a quarter of a century ago, might have been seen over the outer gateway an original brass plate with a curiously inaccurate inscription, recording the circumstances of the foundation in 1604, with a pair of ambitious elegiacs, which not even the most lenient Latinist could with safety to his soul pronounce elegant. This brass is now at Horsdon, in charge of the new school, which has also the mystic white “P.B.” pebbles that adorned the pathway outside the boundary wall. The pathway is another ghost. Not only have the pebbles, both white and black, been uprooted, but sacrilegious hands have been laid on a most sensible and delightful old barricade, formed of heavy posts and heavy angular beams, which ran the whole length ofthe wall, and was closed at each end with a gate. How Dr Johnson would have loved it!
But the zeal for improvement, which set in during the seventies, is not accountable for all the changes that have marked the spot since Blackmore’s time; and without more explanation, many of the allusions inLorna Doonemust appear mysterious and unintelligible. When Blackmore was at the school, the converging lines of railway, with their passengers and goods stations, and multiplex ramifications, and the adjacent coal-yards and slaughterhouse, were still in the future, and the sites they now occupy were pleasant meadows. At the north-west corner, the point nearest the school, was a “kissing”-gate, whence a footpath, traversing the first meadow, led to another gate of the same amorous description. The main path then struck across to the right and joined the coach route, afterwards called the “old” London road, opposite Zephyr Lodge. Another track pursued an easterly direction to a pretty white timber bridge, which spanned the Lowman with a shallow arch, and near which was the celebrated Taunton Pool. This bridge afforded access to Ham Mills, remembered as a couple of low, white thatched cottages, very picturesque, whither it was the custom of the inhabitants to repair for Sunday junketings.
From the entrance-gate near the school to the corner of the London road ran a quickset hedge, which extended to a point over against a comparatively modern building, which still exists and formerly served as a turnpike, the old London road having been moved further upthe hill to make room for the Exe Valley railway bridge. In a similar fashion, the construction of the branch line to the Junction, or “Park” station, as the old people call it, necessitated a great diversion of the Lowman, which previously described a zigzag erratic course, and shot much nearer to the Lodge and London road, so that the little torrent, known to the natives as the Ailsa, and to Blackmore and his boarders as the Taunton brook, joined it almost at right angles.
Blackmore, of course, described the locality as he knew it in his own schooltime. He does not appear to have urged his researches so far back as the assigned age of John Ridd, or he would have eschewed certain anachronisms which, in default of this precaution, have crept into his narrative. They are of no particular consequence, but may be mentioned, as it were, by the way.
To begin with, there were no iron-barred gates for the boys to lean against in 1673, nor for twenty years afterwards. Until 1695, there were only wooden gates, with a small door for entrance, and it may be noticed incidentally, that at the time of their removal they were much decayed. Nor again, in 1673, were there any porter’s lodges. These accessories were first built at the close of the seventeenth century. There being no lodges, the porter was evidently the invention of a later date—1699, apparently. The “old Cop” of the romance, with his sympathetic boots and nose, was the identical functionary of Blackmore’s youth. His name was George Folland, and he succeeded Hezekiah Warren in 1818.
Another chronological error has to do withthe Homeric fight between John Ridd and Robin Snell, which the author paraphrases as an “item of importance.” As such I will treat it—to the extent of proving that it can never have taken place. The fleshly existence of the victor has been warrantably challenged, but no such question can arise as to his antagonist. Not that he was called Robin, but the voluntary statement that he became thrice Mayor of Exeter is a plain indication of the person implicated. Now, a visit to the north aisle of the choir of Exeter Cathedral will reveal the presence of three gravestones placed there to the memory of his father, his mother, and himself, with their arms. The inscription which mostly concerns us here is the following:—
“Here, at the Feet of his Father, lyeth the Body of John Snell, Esq., who served this City three times as Mayor, and several times as one of her Representatives in Parliament, served her faithfully and diligently, fearing God and honouring the King. He died ye 26 of Aug. A.D. 1717, ætat suæ 78. Here also lyeth Hannah, his virtuous and religious wife.”
The Rev. John Snell, the mayor’s father, was a notable man. Son of the Rev. Arthur Snell, M.A., and born at Lezant, Cornwall, in or about 1610, he was educated at Blundell’s School, Tiverton, and Caius and Gonville College, Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. In February 1634-5, he was instituted to the rectory of Thurlestone, South Devon, from which he was ejected in or about 1646. Reinstated in his living at the Restoration, he was, in 1662, elected Canon Residentiary of Exeter Cathedral. Thishonourable post he resigned January 4, 1678-9, and died the following April. It may be added, as an almost, if not quite unprecedented circumstance, that he was succeeded in his canonry by two of his sons, Thomas and George; and, as a Rev. John Snell, Vicar of Heavitree, died Canon of Exeter, September 4, 1727, I am by no means certain that a fourth member of the family—probably a grandson of the original John Snell—did not rise to the same office and dignity.
It is natural to inquire whether there can be found any explanation of this prosperity. The answer is partially, yes. As chaplain to the Royalist garrison, the rector of Thurlestone went through the siege of Fort Charles, Salcombe, and in Walker’sSufferings of the Clergymay be read the story of his persecution by the lying Roundheads, when his first-born son was a boy in jackets.
Many more particulars might be adduced—especially the tradition that “Robin” Snell was killed in a riot—but enough! There remains the question, how came the novelist to know or care aught about this personage. On this point there can be no mistake, as I had it from Mr Blackmore himself that he remembered a schoolfellow named Snell, who must have been either my father or my uncle, the late Mr W. H. Snell, who entered the school on the same day (August 16, 1837) as Blackmore. The latter was uncommonly well posted up in the history of his family, and from him probably the information was derived. There are many Snells in Devonshire. The principal families of that name were long settled in the neighbouring parishes ofChawleigh and Lapford, where they were small landowners, and intermarried with the Kellands and Melhuishes. Curiously, as one may think, in John Ridd’s time Grace Snell, of Lapford, wedded Dr Thomas Bartow, son of Peter Bartow, of Tiverton, and thus became sister-in-law to Philip Blundell, of Collipriest, who was of the kindred of the famous Peter, and a feoffee of the school.
While it is natural to regret, and needful to state the alterations that have taken place in the time-honoured premises and their immediate surroundings, it must not be supposed for a moment that modern vandalism has wiped out every feature of interest. The “Ironing Box,” or triangle of turf, whereon John Ridd fought his great fight with Robin Snell, is still there. So also are the paved causeways and rows of mighty limes (save for sad gaps caused by a recent storm), and the porches and the lodges,—all vestiges of former days of which the present generation of Blundellites are not unmindful. Every seven years do they meet—old boys and new—in the historic Green, thence to perform a pilgrimage on St Peter’s Day to St Peter’s Church, after the example of their ancestors, which pleasant and pious custom neither time nor circumstance will, it is to be hoped, cause to fall into desuetude.
“Blundellites” isà laBlackmore; the more usual, the official, appellation is “Blundellians.” The school magazine is calledThe Blundellian, and I am indebted to an anonymous letter which appeared in its columns (April 1887), and was indited, no doubt, by my late friend, the Rev. D. M. Owen, for quotations from a private communication,unquestionably the production of R. D. Blackmore himself. The extracts are as follows:—
“I am much obliged for a copy of theBlundellite, which certainly was the ancient and therefore more classical form of the word. My father always called himself a ‘Blundellite,’ and so did my uncles, and I believe my grandfather. All went from Peter to Ex. Coll. (Oxford); however, the juniors have fixed it otherwise and so it must abide.... ‘Blundellian,’ if anything, is the adjectival form, at least according to my theories, though even then ‘Blundelline’ would seem more elegant. ‘Scholæ Blundellinæ Alumnus’ is in most of my father’s school-books (in 1810). And I think we find the distinction between the ‘ite’ and the ‘ian’ in good writers,e.g., a ‘Cromwellite,’ but the ‘Cromwellian’ army, a ‘Jacobite,’ a ‘Carmelite,’ etc.... All, I maintain, is that, in my days, we never heard of a ‘Blundellian,’i.e., in school talk, or from the masters.”
Blackmore’s mention of his grandfather, by which he evidently intends his paternal grandfather, having been at Blundell’s school, is worthy of note. Many years ago the novelist himself acquainted me with the fact, but the curious thing is that the name of John Blackmore, the elder, apparently does not occur in the school register. This has recently been edited by Mr Arthur Fisher, who shows that during certain periods it was ill kept, and there seem to have been frequent omissions. One of the uncles must have been a brother of his mother, and, strange to say, his name also is wanting. Theentries referring to other members of the family are:—
1162.John Blackmore, 15, son of John Blackmore, clerk, Charles, South Molton, Aug. 13, 1809—June 29, 1812.1498.Richard Blackmore, 15, son of John Blackmore, clerk, Charles, South Molton, Feb. 19, 1816—Dec. 18, 1817.1258.Richard Doddridge Blackmore, 12¼, son of Rev. John Blackmore, Culmstock, Wellington, Aug. 16, 1837—Dec. 16, 1843; elected to an exhibition on—— 1843; Giffard Scholar at Exeter Coll., Oxford.
1162.John Blackmore, 15, son of John Blackmore, clerk, Charles, South Molton, Aug. 13, 1809—June 29, 1812.
1498.Richard Blackmore, 15, son of John Blackmore, clerk, Charles, South Molton, Feb. 19, 1816—Dec. 18, 1817.
1258.Richard Doddridge Blackmore, 12¼, son of Rev. John Blackmore, Culmstock, Wellington, Aug. 16, 1837—Dec. 16, 1843; elected to an exhibition on—— 1843; Giffard Scholar at Exeter Coll., Oxford.
Blackmore’s schooldays are now so remote, the survivors so few, that it is hard to recover many details. I have been favoured, however, with communications from two of his contemporaries—Colonel H. Cranstoun Adams and the Rev. E. Pickard-Cambridge; and at this distance of time it is not likely that much more can be gleaned. Colonel Adams writes:—
“He was a very quiet little fellow, and was looked upon as being very clever. He was always ready to help any juniors in their work, and often assisted me. There was really nothing very particular about him, except that he was quieter than the average run of boys. He joined in all the games, and I recollect his having one fight in which he got very much knocked about; but he was extremely plucky about it, and his opponent got a caning for daring to fight a monitor, which Blackmore was at the time.... He was a popular boy, and kind-hearted; but, although he was looked upon as clever, I don’t think any of us thought he would become the author of such a work asLorna Doone.”
Mr Pickard-Cambridge sends the following:—
“R. D. Blackmore was a day-boy, and Ibelieve remained so; but it is so long since my schooldays that my memory fails me. He was a clever boy at schoolwork. I used to go and stay with him at his father’s vicarage, Culmstock, at the Easter holidays, and when there became acquainted with Temple and his relations. After we left school, I never saw him, but learned his mode of life from public reports.
“He was a small, unhealthy-looking boy, and I could never have dreamt that he would turn out such as I see him in his photograph by Mr Jenkins.
“Now it may be interesting if I tell you what happened one afternoon as I and Blackmore were walking up the Lowman. We came to a gate at the end of a field, and just before we got over it, I saw something sitting on the gate at the opposite end of the field. It was a figure dressed in white clothing, no head appearing, and while I was wondering what it was, it suddenly disappeared to the right of a gate thro’ a hedge.
“I said to Blackmore, ‘Did you see that white figure sitting on the gate?’
“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I could not make out what it was.’
“When we got to the gate, we hunted the hedge and all about by the stream, but could not find or see anything; so we came to the conclusion that it must have been a ghost. When we got back to the school, I believe we told what we had seen; anyhow, we thought no more about it. But about three days afterwards, some people coming by the coach from Halberton saw the same apparition about the same spot,and told of it in the town, and it came to our ears, and then we immediately related what we had seen.
“This was a great confirmation of our story, and there it must end. But I can state that all that I have said was true. I am no great believer in ghosts, but have related the above whenever in conversation ghosts have come to the front.”
Animaginative mind, anxious for exercise, might easily find a worse pretext than the probable appearance of Tiverton at different epochs in its history. Three monstrous fires—in 1598, 1612, and 1731—have reduced the town to ashes, so that, despite its antiquity, it presents, on the whole, an extremely modern aspect, which, as time goes on, tends to become accentuated. Still certain buildings remain—not many, I fear—from which, like Richard Owen in another sphere of palæontology, the lover of the past may gather ideas for his reconstructive task.Ex pede Herculem.
Every stranger, on arriving at Tiverton, is at once struck by the Greenway almhouses, with their quaint little chapel. These were miraculously preserved in the earlier devastations, when, according to contemporary notices, the fire “invironed those sillie cottages on every side, burning other houses to the grounde which stood about them, and yet had they no hurt at all.”[6]In the third welter of flame the almhouses were less fortunate, and it is a singular fact that theonly life lost on this occasion—on the two previous there had been many victims—was that of an inmate who obstinately refused to quit the building, saying, “Who ever heard of an almshouse being burnt?” When, at last, he was convinced of the peril of optimism, and he would fain have made good his escape, it was too late—all egress was barred. Even in this, however, there was something miraculous, for, though the almshouses were burnt and transformed into fiery catacombs, the chapel was inexplicably preserved, and remains to this day, with all its rich ornaments and emblematical figures untouched. The inscriptions, however, or, as Blackmore playfully expresses it, “the souls of John and Joan Greenway” are not “set up in gold letters.” Had the name “Gold Street” anything to do with this idea?
The founder of the almshouses was John Greenway, born about 1460, of whom little is known that is authentic. Apparently of lowly origin, “by ability and industry he acquired an ample income” as a merchant. So says Harding, but it is seldom that ample incomes are acquired by brains and diligence alone. The stroke of luck may almost always be charged as a contributory factor. If legend may be believed, Greenway was positively inspired to wealth-making. A simple weaver, young and without prospects, he dreamed a dream which was thrice repeated. Each time a mysterious voice admonished him to proceed to London town, and there, on London Bridge, to await a cavalier on a white nag, who would have a message for him. The sanguine youth obeyed these supernatural instructions;and, taking his stand on the appointed spot, was accosted by an unknown horseman, by whom he was told to return forthwith to Tiverton and dig in a certain quarter. Again Greenway obeyed, and was rewarded by the discovery of a crock or pot of gold, which, as his initial capital, enabled him to launch out into business, and ultimately to found these almshouses in 1517. There is a notion that amidst the exterior carvings of St Peter’s Church, where Greenway built him a lovely chantry with wagon roof and Renaissance door, is sculptured the crock of plenty, but hitherto—owing perhaps toembarras de richesse—it has escaped detection.
Now the embellishments of Greenway’s two chapels deserve close attention, not only on account of their beauty, but for other reasons that will immediately appear. Greenway is represented by his arms (a chevron between 3 covered cups, on a chief 3 sheep’s heads erased), his staple-mark, and his cipher, which are figured on shields inserted in the quatrefoil of the cornices of the chapel in Gold Street and its porch; and by the following rhyme inscribed in bold letters under the main cornice:—