“Have grace, ye men, and ever prayFor the sowl of John and Jone Grenway.”
“Have grace, ye men, and ever prayFor the sowl of John and Jone Grenway.”
“Have grace, ye men, and ever prayFor the sowl of John and Jone Grenway.”
These marks of parentage are merely what one would expect, but the walls have other symbolism, some of which demands comment. In two compartments of the upper cornice are to be found the arms of Courtenay and an eagle rising from a bundle of sticks. These devices are repeated on a larger scale over the archway, with the additionof the arms of England. The eagle montant, to borrow a term from falconry, is understood to typify the mythical phœnix, and may be regarded as alluding to the vicissitudes of that illustrious and ever-resurgent family.
The arms of England present no difficulty. They are to be explained by the marriage of William Courtenay, 10th Earl of Devon, with Katherine, youngest daughter of Edward IV., her elder sister Elizabeth being the consort of Henry VII. Miss Strickland, by the way, records a quaint incident in connection with a tournament held at the wedding of Prince Arthur, when “Lord William Courtenay (brother-in-law of the Queen) made his appearance riding on a red dragon led by a giant with a large tree in his hand.” What time the almshouses were building Katherine de Courtenay was actually resident at Tiverton Castle, and she was buried, in 1527, with immense pomp in the Earl of Devonshire’s chapel, which was destroyed by the Puritans, and is believed to have stood on the north side of the chancel in St Peter’s Church. In her honour was erected that large achievement in the centre of the porch, consisting of Courtenay and Rivers quarterly, impaling quarterly, 1st France and England quarterly, 2nd and 3rd Burgh, 4th Mortimer. It is surmounted with the Courtenay badge before-mentioned, and the supporters are St George and a woman.
It would be incompatible with the limits of this work to enter upon a minute description of all the charming imagery of this beauteous chantry. Much of it speaks for itself, but it may be as well to put the reader on his guard against a falseblazoning of one of the coats of arms, which displays what looks suspiciously like a tiara. It may possibly be permissible to use the term, but subject to the understanding that we have here nothing to do with any papal insignia.The three clouds radiated in base, each surmounted with a triple crown, are for the Drapers’ Company; just as theBarry nebulée;a chief quarterly, on the 1st and 4th a lion passant guardant, on the 2nd and 3rd two roses, are for the Merchant Venturers of London. Attention may also be drawn to a series of sermons in stones, or small sculptures illustrating the chief events in the life of our Lord; on account of the height at which they are ranged, they might easily be passed unnoticed.
Viewing the decorations generally, we cannot but observe that the place of honour is assigned to the Courtenays; and, probably on the strength of this fact, Harding speaks of the Marquis of Exeter as Greenway’s great patron. In this he may be mistaken, since, on the death of her husband, the Lady Katherine succeeded to the manor of Tiverton, and doubtless exerted much influence in the town and county during the sixteen years of her widowhood. This brings us to the stately home in which, more than anywhere else, those sorrowful years were spent.
Due north of St Peter’s churchyard, from which only a wall parts them, are the precincts of Tiverton Castle whereof there exist somewhat extensive remains in varying degrees of preservation. This was for several centuries one of the chief residences of the Courtenays, and in the Middle Ages was a strong place of arms. On the west is a precipice, which runs down sixty feetsheer to the River Exe and secured the castle on that side; in other directions it had towers and turrets, and ramparts and moats, and all that military science then knew in the way of elaborate fortification. Two of the towers yet stand—a square and a round, while the ivy-covered ruin, which is detached from the rest of the buildings, at the south-west angle of the castle grounds, is supposed to represent the oratory or chapel. From its position it was evidently distinct from the Earl of Devonshire’s Chapel, mentioned above, and must have been a private sanctuary reserved to the household.
The castle is stated to have been built by Richard de Redvers or Rivers, who was an Earl of Devon in his time—about 1106; it came into the possession of the Courtenays on the extinction of the Redvers family in 1274, when Hugh de Courtenay, great-grandson of Mary de Redvers, succeeded to all their estates. His immediate predecessor was Isabella de Fortibus, born Redvers, who is credited with the gift of an ample stream of water known as the Town Lake, a section of which, enclosed between paved banks, may be observed in Castle Street. She, of course, wasnota Courtenay; and it is with these rather than with other possessors of the castle that we are mainly concerned. As, with brief intervals, they were the ruling element in the town for a period of three centuries, it is natural to inquire what manner of men were those great lords, and how it went with the neighbourhood when they were uppermost.
With their emblems around us, and with the odour of sanctity investing the places wherethose emblems appear, there is a palpable danger of attributing to the Courtenays a larger measure of piety than is at all their due. Of him who is called sometimes the Good, sometimes the Blind Earl, no word of censure may be spoken; and as for the husband and descendants of Katherine—William, Henry, Edward—their tragic fates evoke that infinite compassion for which the blood of the innocent cries always, and never in vain. Even the guilty Courtenays were not devoid of redeeming qualities; they were stout warriors, and loyal to their king. Yet two of the race, father and son, both of them named Thomas, were the authors of a felon deed—a deed as black as any that soils the pages of history, or swells the calendar of crime. To all appearance the plot was hatched in Tiverton, and Tiverton yeomen were the willing, or unwilling, instruments of the scandalous theft, the inhuman murder. The whole may not be told here; let what follows suffice.
On Thursday, October 23, 1455, Nicholas Radford, sometime “steward” of the Earl of Devon, now an old man and a justice, was dwelling in God’s peace and the king’s in his own place at Upcott, in the parish of Cheriton Fitzpaine. The same day and year came Sir Thomas Courtenay, eldest son of the earl, with a body of retainers to the number of ninety-four, armed with jacks, sallets, bows, arrows, swords, bucklers, etc., who beset the house at midnight, and with a great shout fired the gates. Naturally at that hour Radford, his wife, and his servants, were in bed, but awakened by the sudden commotion, the good old man opened his window, anddemanded whether there were among them any gentlemen.
“Here is Sir Thomas Courtenay,” answered one of the yeoman; and almost at the same moment the knight called out to him, “Come down and speak with me.”
The old man, however, would not comply, until Courtenay swore as a true knight and gentleman, that neither his person nor his property should be molested. Relying on this promise Radford descended with a lighted torch and ordered the gates to be thrown open, whereupon, much to his alarm, the rabble of followers began to stream in. The knight reassured him, and standing by his cupboard, condescended to drink of his wine. Whilst Courtenay held the master of the house with tales, his men plundered the mansion of its treasures. Money and bedding, and furs, and books, the ornaments of his chapel and the like—they carried them all away on Radford’s own horse, and did not spare even his sick wife, but rolling her out of bed, took away the sheets she was lying in.
Sir Thomas now said to the justice, “Have done, Radford, for thou must need go with me to my lord my father.” The old man expressed his readiness, and bade his servant saddle a horse, only to receive the reply that his horse had been removed and laden with his own goods. Hearing this, Radford said to his visitor,
“Sir, I am aged, and may not well go upon my feet, and therefore I pray you that I may ride.”
“No force (odds), Radford,” was the answer, “thou shalt ride enough anon, and therefore come on with me.”
Accordingly they went on together about a stone’s throw, when Sir Thomas, having secretly conferred with three of his men—two of them Tiverton yeomen—set spurs to his horse and rode on his way, exclaiming, “Farewell Radford!”
In a trice Nicholas Philip slashed the old justice across the face with his sword, and as he lay on the ground, dealt him another stroke, which caused the brain to drop out from the back of his head. His brother, Thomas Philip, cut the victim’s throat with a knife, while the third man, with surely supererogatory caution, pierced him through the back with a long dagger. Thus was Nicholas Radford feloniously and horribly slain and murdered.
As an aggravation of the crime, on the following Tuesday the old man’s godson, Henry Courtenay, with certain of the ruffians, arrived at Upcott, where the body of Radford lay in his chapel, and opened a mock inquest. One of them, Richard Bertelot, sat as coroner, and the murderers were summoned by strange names. They answered, “scornfully appearing,” made what presentment they chose, and gave out that they should accuse Radford of his own death. They then compelled his servants to carry the body to the church of Cheriton Fitzpaine, John Brymoor,aliasRobyns, a singer, leading the way with derisive songs and catches, as it was borne along.
Gaining the churchyard, they took the murdered man out of his coffin, rolled him out of his winding-sheet, and cast him all naked into the grave, where they threw upon his headand body sundry stones that Radford had provided for the making of his tomb, crushing them. They had no more pity or compassion for him than for a Jew or a Saracen.
It seems that in January of this year the justice had sold a good deal of land, including the manors of Calverleigh, Poughill, and Ford, for £400, and this large sum in cash is believed to have been the incentive of the murder. The Earl of Devon, who was no doubt accessory before the fact, speedily prepared an expedition to Exeter in order to obtain possession of such goods and chattels as Radford had lodged with the Dean and Chapter; and in November, he and his son Thomas assembled an armed retinue of a thousand or more at Tiverton, and marched to the city. We need not follow their proceedings there—they were outrageous—and, as signalising the barbarous character of the age, be content to note that neither the Earl nor his son received the penalty they deserved. Providence, however, suffered neither of them to escape. The Earl was poisoned at Abingdon, and his son and successor beheaded at York, after being taken prisoner at the battle of Wakefield, 1461.
The subsequent history of the castle must be traced briefly. After passing through various hands, it was purchased by Roger Giffard, fifth son of Sir Roger Giffard, of Brightleigh, in the parish of Chittlehampton, who pulled down the greater part of the buildings, and named it “Giffard’s Court.” Nevertheless, it was in a condition to repel an attack by the Parliamentarian forces under Massey in October 1645, though two days later it was stormed by SirThomas Fairfax at the head of an army outnumbering the somewhat disaffected garrison by thirty to one. The owner of the castle was then Roger Giffard, grandson of the first-named Roger, and despite the fact that the defence of the place was entrusted to Sir Gilbert Talbot, as military governor, there is no reason to suppose that Giffard was an absentee. Like his more famous kinsman, Colonel John Giffard, of Brightleigh, Roger was a devoted Royalist, and is mentioned among those persons who were fined for their loyalty. Blackmore’s reference to bales of wool used in the defence is strictly historical (seeLorna Doone, chapter xi.).
The modern house was built in 1700 for Peter West, who came of an old Tiverton mercantile stock connected with the Blundells. In 1594 John West had married Edy, daughter of James Blundell, and niece of Peter Blundell and his sister Elinor, wife of John Chilcott, of Fairby, and mother of Robert Chilcott, the founder of Chilcott’s School, which stands at the lower end of St Peter Street, and, with its mullioned and transomed windows, its handsome archway, and solid, iron-studded, black oak door, forms an interesting specimen of Jacobean architecture. Peter West’s daughter Dorothy took for her bridegroom Sir Thomas Carew, of Haccombe, and thus manor and castle passed into the possession of the distinguished family which still owns them.
We have enjoyed many opportunities of estimating the wealth and importance of the “woollen” merchants of Tiverton; but, if anything yet lack, the reader may station himselfbefore the great House of St George, nearly opposite Chilcott’s School, and consider it at his leisure. This seemly residence, with its garden close, was built apparently by George Skinner, merchant, whose initials were formerly to be seen on the northern termination of the hood-mould. On the southern termination is the date 1612—the date of the second great fire. As the house is thoroughly Jacobean in style, it is natural to conclude that it is in all essentials the identical structure erected in that memorable year, but the confused account in Harding’sHistory of Tivertoncontains documentary evidence showing that it was “demolished and consumed by reason of the late unhappy wars” (i.e., the Civil War), and suggests that the “messuage” was rebuilt at various periods, from 1541 onwards. I shall not attempt to unravel the mystery, but content myself with observing that, beyond any question, the building has been altered, and that within living memory. Once, and for long, it rejoiced in another storey, but modern wisdom having determined that the edifice was “top-heavy,” the upper portion was removed.
About the year 1740 the manufacture of serges, druggets, drapeens, and the like began to decline, and, later, the effects of the American Revolution were severely felt in the town. In 1790, however, there were still a thousand looms and two hundred woolcombers in the neighbourhood. Then came the great war with France, which almost paralysed the local firms; and on its cessation the Tiverton manufacturers vainly endeavoured to restore old connections with the Continent. It was plain that the ancient trade
Image unavailable: CHAPEL, GREENWAY’S ALMSHOUSES, TIVERTON (page 61).CHAPEL, GREENWAY’S ALMSHOUSES, TIVERTON (page 61.)
in wool, on which so many depended, was in its last throes. The end was sudden and dramatic. One morning, when the workpeople were at breakfast, the inhabitants of Westexe were startled by the loud report of a gun, and the news soon spread that Mr Armitage, the manager of a large mill, which had been built in 1790, and in which, as in a last refuge, the remains of the staple industry were concentrated, had shot himself in the counting-house.
The ruin of the place now seemed certain. Happily, however, the following year (1815), Messrs Heathcoat, Boden, and Oliver purchased the mill, and by extensive additions, converted it into an immense lace factory. In 1809 they had obtained a fourteen years’ patent for a greatly improved bobbin-net machine, of which Mr Heathcoat was the inventor, and erected a factory at Loughborough. The firm removed to Tiverton in consequence of the injury done to the machines by the Luddites, and thither a number of their men accompanied them. Some of the Leicestershire “hands,” about the year 1820, had a dispute with Mr Heathcoat, who had become sole proprietor of the factory, and, this having ended in their discharge or voluntary retirement from his service, they determined to set up an opposition concern. It is believed that the artisans had machines of their own brought down along with those of Mr Heathcoat and installed in the mill under some arrangement with him. Anyhow, they resolved to start lace-making on their own account.
Money, of course, had to be provided, and this to a limited amount—very limited for sucha venture—was found them by a physician of the town named Houston, whilst premises were secured behind, or near what is now the Golden Lion Inn, Westexe. Here the quixotic scheme was launched, and here it came to an inglorious end, after a futile imitation of the frog in the fable. The credulous doctor, who lived in a house, now a saddler’s shop, next the “White Ball,” and whose backyard abutted on the infant factory, lost what he had lent, and no doubt learnt a lesson.
Hardly more felicitous was Mr George Cosway’s attempt to resuscitate the woollen industry. Mr Cosway “took up arms against a sea of troubles”; his capital was none too large, and in the face of powerful competition in other parts of the country, his factory in Broadlane was never a conspicuous success. On his death it was closed, and that finally. Mr Cosway belonged to the same family as the famous miniaturist, one of whose larger paintings, designed for an altar-piece, hangs on the north wall of St Peter’s Church. The subject is “St Peter delivered by an Angel,” and the picture was Richard Cosway’s gift to the town of which he was a native. The larger painting on the other side of the vestry door, the subject of which is “The Adoration of the Magi,” is a very fine work by Gaspar de Crayer, and an almost exact reproduction of a picture by Rubens in the Antwerp gallery.
It would be improper, I suppose, to refer to Tiverton without mentioning Lord Palmerston, whose Parliamentary connection with the borough extended from 1835 to 1865—just thirty years.As an Irishman, the popular statesman must have been perfectly at home in the town, which is always lively at election times, and during his early acquaintance with it, had an unenviable reputation as a rival to Donnybrook Fair. Most of the inhabitants had their chosen inn, the tradesmen being accommodated in the parlour, the artisans in the bar, and the labourers in the kitchen; and the consumption of beer and spirits almost exceeds belief. One would make ten glasses of grog his nightly quantum, another was not content with fewer than eighteen, while a third drank gin and water by the bucketful. Every now and then women would have a fight in the streets. A ring would be formed, whereupon the trulls grappled with each other, and with their long hair streaming down their backs, and blood down their faces, presented a pitiful and degrading spectacle. Things are better now.
Speaking of the Tiverton inns reminds me that John Ridd and Fry lodged, on the eve of their departure, at the “White Horse,” in Gold Street. This tavern is still in existence, and as it is not specially picturesque, the reader may be at a loss to conceive why Blackmore should have selected this particular house of entertainment. The novelist, however, knew what he was about. In the seventeenth century it may have been the most important inn in the town. On the entry of the Royalists into the town in the month of August, 1643, they were stoned by the mob, many of whom were killed or wounded by the fire of the soldiers; “and,” says Harding, in recounting the circumstance, “the effect producedwas a dispersion of the remainder, when one, John Lock, a miller, was taken and executed at the sign of the White Horse, on the north side of Gold Street” (History of Tiverton, vol. i., p. 58).
Thecountry between Tiverton and Bampton reminds us how comparatively new are many of our main roads. Beginning with the town, although Bampton Street is one of the principal thoroughfares, this is not the case with Higher Bampton Street; and of both it may be stated with absolute assurance that they do not owe their names to accident or caprice. They were christened thus because they were a direct continuation of the old road from Bampton, the whole of the present route through the picturesque Exe valley not having been constructed until long after the days of John Ridd and the less mythical Bampfylde Moore Carew. For this reason “Jan,” on his way home, would have proceeded first to Red Hill, with the inn at its foot;[7]and hereafter we shall cease to wonder that Carew and his companions fell in with theconvivial gipsies at the same “Brick House,” since it adjoined the king’s highway. Hence, he climbed the steep ascent of Knightshayes, from whose summit he might have cast a last lingering look at the town. Afterwards he would, for some time, have seen nothing but the hedgerows and a stretch of desolate road.
Even to Ridd, however, the glory of the Exe was not utterly forbidden, inasmuch as from Bolham onwards there was some kind of road. Moreover, on the opposite side of the river was an accommodating lane, from which lesser lanes scamper off to the “weeches” of Washfield and Stoodleigh Church, and which, steadily pursued in its northward trend, has coigns of vantage imparting grateful visions of Rock, with its sweet old cottages, and the romantic Fairby Gorge, and the woody amphitheatre of Cove Cliff, together with such pretty accessories as a wayside spring, trim dairies, rich orchards, a modern suspension bridge, an old-world bridge, and beside it a quaint little lodge, with its porch and its bonnets of thatch—a miracle of rustic beauty! But it really matters not from which side the landscape is viewed, the prospects are equally charming; and the only cause for regret, from an æsthetic standpoint, is the railway, whose rigid track, bisecting the valley as far as the Exeter Inn, brusquely intrudes on its soft contrasts of forest, stream, and lea.
From the inn, one branch of the new road still follows the river through a sylvan paradise, while another, nearly parallel with an older lane, yclept Windwhistle, leads on to Bampton along the tributary Batherum, On quitting thathighway of loveliness, the Exe, one is conscious of a difference—the outlook is more tame. However, as one approaches the town, the scenery improves, and of the town itself it must be conceded that it is beautifully situated among the hills.
For me, Bampton is a place with sacred memories; but I am well aware that, to sound its depths of sentiment, an initiation is necessary. A stranger strolling listlessly through the churchyard, or seated with callous heart against a walled-up yew—to him it is all a void. What can he know of all the unrecorded history which, for certain souls, has transfigured the spot into a shrine? Moreover, although a fair resident informed me recently that Bampton “stands still,” I have an uncomfortable conviction, forced upon me in a brief visit, that this is not quite the case, that it has exchanged some of its old Sabbatic calm for an irreverent spirit of enterprise and strivings to be “up-to-date.” Thanks to a disciple and friend of the late Mr Cecil Rhodes, the quarries have been galvanised into stupendous energy, and, aided by the contrivances of modern science, are now working at high pressure, and all Bampton is cock-a-whoop over the same. Well, well, one must have patience. Only suffer me to write ofmyBampton, which was also Blackmore’s Bampton, not the Bampton that now is.
In those far-off days of 1891-3, the quarries were not wholly quiescent; even then they were shedding their riches, but in a decent, leisurely way, leaving many a grass-grown plot and fern-clad lovers’ walk, and tokens of vanished industry in what we termed “the rubble-heaps.” Thedistinctive feature of Bampton stone is that it contains a large proportion of “chert” or flint, which makes it good for roads. The principal structures in the neighbourhood—including the county and other bridges—are built of it, and, judging from the age of the church tower, these black limestone beds have been worked for at least six hundred years.
The topography asks some explaining. A noter hies here, noting. Somebody has told him of Bampton Castle, and forthwith the heady ass swoops on a circular shed on the quarry plane as a relic. To be sure, at the south-east entrance of the town there are plentiful suggestions of military operations. The wind-swept knoll, whence you catch the first glimpse of Bampton, would be a fine station for a park of French artillery, to which the exposed railway station, with its less warlike engines, could offer but a faint resistance. A few paces further on, and you come to what is uncommonly like a bastion, crowned by the pseudo-Bampton Castle. Of the real Bampton Castle, at the opposite end of the town, nothing remains but the site and some rather doubtful fortifications in what is now an orchard.
But therewasa castle, for in 1336 Richard Cogan had a licence from the Crown to castellate his mansion-house at Bampton, and to enclose his wood at Uffculme, and three hundred acres for a park. The exact site of the castle is believed to have been on a lower level, but closely adjacent to the existing Mote. The origin and purpose of this great mound, which is artificial, is not perhaps free from obscurity, but a former resident favours the following elucidation: The name of
Image unavailable: COMBE, DULVERTON (page 91).COMBE, DULVERTON (page 91.)
the place is derived from the Saxon wordmotorgemot(a “meeting”), and it was probably the seat of the Hundred-mote, or court of judicature, Bampton being the head manor of the hundred.[8]It was also a burgh, or fortified place, and by the laws of King Edgar the Burghmote, or Court of the Borough, was held thrice a year. The parish, it may be observed, is still divided into Borough, East, West, and Petton quarters, and the ancient office of portreeve is yet retained. Some time before Domesday and the Geldroll, the king gave Bampton to Walter de Douay. From Walter’s son, Robert de Baunton, the lordship passed through the Paynells to the Cogans, and from the Cogans to the Bourchiers, Earls of Bath, who, so far as is known, were the last owners of the barony to reside at the castle. The Bourchier knot is to be seen in the church—on the screen and the roof-bosses.
Apart from such rather dry particulars, it is not much that I can tell you of the public annals of Bampton, but one morsel relating to the Bourchier reign you must swallow, if only for its rarity. In May 1607, Walter Yonge, of Colyton, thus wrote in his diary: “There were earthquakes felt in divers parts of this realm, and, namely, at Barnstaple, Tiverton, and Devonshire; also I heard it by one of Bampton credibly reported that there it was felt also. And at Bampton, beingfour”—Tush, Squire Yonge, it is full seven—“miles from Tiverton, there was a little lake which ran by the space of certain hours, the water whereof was as blue as azure, yet notwithstanding as clear as possible might be. It was seen and testified by many who were eye-witnesses, and reported to me by Mr Twistred, who dwelleth in the same parish, and felt the earthquake.”
Can it be that this “little lake”—good Devonshire for running water—was the shut-up and buried, but by no means dared or dead, Shuttern stream? Perchance it was. Flowing under broad Brook Street, in times of flood he emerges and revenges himself for his confinement, spreading across the roadway, and swamping the sunken cottages, and waxing a lake indeed, in the Biblical acceptation of the term. But the Shuttern was not shut up or buried for many a year after the miracle. He flowed muddily along in open channel, though straitly enclosed by banks and spanned at intervals by bridges—a poor copy of a Venetian canal and a rare playground for the oppidan ducks. Now they have to waddle their way, and a long way it is for some of them, to the Batherum, a few, it may be, tumbling down the hill from Briton Street. And let not Master Printer, in his wisdom, correct to “Britain Street,” as he hath aforetime been moved to do. For “Briton” is the recognised and official spelling, and who is he that he should alter and amend what has been approved by lawful authority?
The Conscript Fathers of the town are greatly exercised at such odious disguisings ofthe true and proper form, which they rightly decline to sanction or accept. I am with them, heart and soul. Here in Beamdune, in this very street, the ancient Britons—’twas in 614—fought a great fight for freedom against the West Saxons, and there were slain of them forty and two thousand. The present inhabitants are descended from the vanquished, the Britons. You doubt it? Then little you know of their intermarriages. An outsider has no chance. Why even the pedlars and pedlaresses complain of Bampton’s closeness. “They’re no use,” they exclaim, “they deal only with their own people.” You still doubt? Then I renounce you as a heathen man and a publican.[9]
Bampton’s chief boast is its fair, which is held on the last Thursday in October, and attracts thousands of visitors, many of them coming from considerable distances. It is not easy to say precisely why, since there are other places nearer the moor, but for a long succession of years the town has served as the principal mart for the wild Exmoor ponies, deprived of which the fair would no doubt rapidly dwindle. These shaggy little horses—a good number of them mere “suckers”—are sold by auction, and the incidents connected with their coming and going, and their manners in the sale-ring, constitute the “fun of the fair.”
On the last occasion when I travelled to Bampton Fair, my compartment was entered by a gipsy belle with abundance of raven hair in traces, the dark complexion of her race, the regulation earrings and trinkets, and much conversational fluency. She had come up from Exeter on the chance of meeting with some of her people whom she had not seen for several years. That brought to my recollection a prevalent belief that the Romany folk have a septennial reunion, no doubt intended to be cordial and friendly in the extreme. Nevertheless, I can answer for it that the intention is not always fulfilled, for on one fair day two rival tribes fought a pitched battle with blackthorns, etc., in the orchard of the Tiverton Hotel. And the women will fight like the men, and with the men. They are artful beggars. A gipsy matron guided round a youngster of three or four years, with his small legs already encased in trousers, to claim a penny, because on one hand he had little excrescent thumbs. The boy could hold a penny between these thumbs, and, on being given a coin, was told to say “Thank you,” his mother expressing her gratitude with the wish, “May you enjoy the lady you loves!”
It is a safe assumption that no one visits a place of the size of Bampton—at all events, at ordinary times—without having a look at the church. Ten years ago you would have been rewarded with the spectacle of high pews, over the backs of which I can remember feminine eyes taking stock of the congregation. Nose and mouth were not visible, and consequently the fair damsels had somewhat the appearanceof hooded Turkish ladies. Now that Bampton Church has been swept and garnished and the arcade straightened—it fell over quite two feet and crushed the timbers in the aisle—the building hardly seems the same, but the most valuable features, to an antiquary, remain untouched.
Entering the chancel from the churchyard, you will find against the north wall fragments of bold and graceful sculpture, with tabernacle work, tracery, shields, the symbol I.H.S., and the Bourchier knot and water bouget, or budget, as it is sometimes written. Perhaps “bucket” may be permissible as a variant, since the bearing, which is in the form of a yoke with two pouches of leather appended to it, was originally intended to represent bags slung on a pole which was carried across the shoulders—an arrangement adopted by the Crusaders for conveying water over the desert. To return to the fragments, they were part of two ancient monuments which, according to the Rev. Bartholomew Davy, formerly stood in the chancel; on their removal, about a hundred years ago, the sides were used to line the wall.
That the monuments covered the remains of Sir John Bourchier, knight, Lord Fitzwarner, created Earl of Bath July 9, 1536, and those of his father, is certain. The will of the former, bearing date October 20, 1535, and proved June 11, 1541, expressly directs that his body shall be buried in the parish church of Bampton, Devon, in the place there where his father lies buried, and that a tomb or stone of marble be made and set over the grave where his bodyshall be buried, with his picture, arms, and recognisances, and the day and the year engraven and fixed on the same tomb within a year after his decease. During the restoration the workmen discovered under the place where the organ now stands, a vault containing several ridged coffins, believed to be those of members of the Bourchier family, but, as the dates were not taken, this is merely a matter of speculation.
Behind the organ is a triptych of black marble, one compartment of which perpetuates the memory of a lady. The two others contain the following inscriptions:—
“Vnder lyeth the body of Arthur the sone of John Bowbeare of this Town, Yeoman, who departed this life the 17 day of December Anno Dom 1675.”
“Here vnder lyeth ye body of John the sone of John Bowbeare of this Town, Yeoman, who departed this life the 12 day of May Anno Domi 1676.”
According to local tradition, Arthur and John Bowbeare were giants, like John Ridd; and it will be noted as a further coincidence that they were of the yeoman class. The name is still preserved in Bowbear Hill, to the south-east of the town, and in Higher and Lower Bowbear Farms. Another interesting point is that John Ridd may have entered the town of his fellow-giants, who were still alive, though soon to die, not by the old Tiverton road, but by an ancient track which ran down Bowbear Hill. This track, now disused, was an old Roman road, and, having been paved, is still known as Stony Lane.
Giants are said to be usually short-lived—a charge which cannot be laid against the Vicars of Bampton. On consulting the list I find that from 1645 to 1711 the living was held by the Rev. James Style, from 1730 to 1785 by the Rev. Thomas Wood, and from 1785 to 1845 by the Rev. Bartholomew Davy. In the case of the last-mentioned divine—familiarly known as “old Bart Davy”—the patience of some member of his flock was evidently exhausted, for one fine morning there was found, nailed to the church door, the following lamentation:—
“The Parson is a-wored out,The Clerk is most ado;The Saxton’s gude vor nort—’Tis time to have all new.”
“The Parson is a-wored out,The Clerk is most ado;The Saxton’s gude vor nort—’Tis time to have all new.”
“The Parson is a-wored out,The Clerk is most ado;The Saxton’s gude vor nort—’Tis time to have all new.”
According to the son of the last parish clerk of Bampton, there was a servant of Mr Trickey, of the Swan Inn, named Joe Ridd, or Rudd, who amused the townspeople of a generation or two ago with stories of the “girt Jan Ridd,” of Exmoor, ostensibly an ancestor. One of these stories was that the huge yeoman, “out over,” broke off the branch of a tree and used it as a weapon. This circumstance gives special point to the statement in chapter liii. ofLorna Doone, that “much had been said at Bampton about some great freebooters, to whom all Exmoor owed suit and service, and paid them very punctually.” Moreover, in Mr Snow’s grounds at Oare is a mighty ash, whose limbs incline downwards, they (it is said) having been bent out of their natural set by the constraining power of the matchless Ridd.
Blackmore not only conducts his hero and heroine through Bampton as a place on their line of route, but alludes to it respectfully (see chapter xiii.) as one of the important towns on the southern side of the moor, though he dare not for conscience’ sake compare it with metropolitan Taunton.
Image unavailable: A BIT OF OLD DULVERTON.A BIT OF OLD DULVERTON.
Thestage from Bampton to Dulverton was not easy for John Ridd and his serving-man, nor is it easy for us. From the very heart of the town is a toilsome ascent to High Cross, fitly so named, and reputed to be haunted. Chains have been heard to rattle there, and the enemy of mankind is alleged to have a predilection for the spot. On this subject an old Bamptonian once told me an amusing story. In the days when the “bone-shaker” wooden bicycle was a novelty, and the Barretts (relations of Mrs Barrett Browning) resided at Combehead, someone belonging to the house was riding down the hill in the twilight on his machine, which was rattling and creaking to a merry tune. Half-way down he encountered a labourer, who, never having seen or heard of anything of the kind, and totally at a loss to account for the phenomenon in the“dimpse,” as he would have called it, incontinently jumped to the conclusion that the strange shape advancing towards him was that of Apollyon, and, in abject terror, turned and fled.
Whatever the explanation may be—whether it is the beetling trees or the unfrequentedness—there is no doubt, as is proved by the universal testimony of those who have used the road, especially by night, that it differs from most roads in being distinctly uncanny.
Combehead is the property of the lord of the manor (Mr W. H. White), and the manor is, roughly speaking, the parish. But just as there are wheels within wheels, so there may be manors within manors, and it happens that Mr Wensley, an excellent yeoman who lately purchased the farm which he had previously occupied as a tenant—Birchdown, at the right base of the hill—is also a lord, though he modestly disclaims any intention of proceeding to the Upper House of Parliament. Locally, however, he has his rights, and I believe the other lord has to pay his lesser brother “quit-rent” for certain land “within the ambit” of the manor of Bampton.
From the summit of Grant’s Hill one gains the first sight of Somerset, and very prepossessing one finds it, with the twin valleys of the Exe and Barle cleaving the high ground, and Pixton enthroned between. By their junction the two rivers form a wide basin in which lies the township of Exebridge. This, as will be shown, was the scene of one of the exploits of the famousFaggus. There is nothing uncanny about Exebridge; indeed, it may be called an open, sunny hamlet. Nevertheless, the river here has its black pool, to which was “banished”—when or for what reason I cannot say—Madam Thorold, of Burston, an old house in the neighbourhood. In like manner, but rather less cruelly, Madam Gaddy, of Great House, Bampton, was “banished” to Barton, with leave to return at a cock’s-stride a year. When she gets back, she will be horrified to find her grand old mansion gone and a modern public-house usurping its name and place. Similarly, the late Captain Musgrove, of Stone Farm, Exford, is reputed to have been conjured away by so many parsons to Pinkery Pond, whence he is on his way back at the conventional cock’s-stride.
As chance wills, without going out of my way, I have it in my power to supplement these brief, but poignant, accounts of the supernatural with other and more detailed ghost-stories derived from the history or traditions of the Sydenham family. Close to Dulverton Station are two roads branching off to the left; either of these will conduct you to the village of Brushford, and from there to the entrance to Combe, a beautiful Elizabethan manor-house built in the usual shape of an E. The Sydenhams were a distinguished Somersetshire family, and, although some of its branches are extinct, and others fallen from their high estate, there are left ample proofs of its former greatness, and, if I may be permitted to say so much of those whom I have been privileged to know as friends, “still in their ashes glow their wonted fires.”
It was in 1568 that John Sydenham boughtthe manor of Dulverton from Francis Babington, a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, but the connection of the family with Dulverton is of much longer standing; and as a John de Sydenham is mentioned as marrying Mary, daughter and heir of Joan Pixton, of Pixton, in the fourteenth century, this may perhaps be taken as the period of their first settlement in the neighbourhood. They had other homes in Somerset—notably at Brympton d’Evercy, near Yeovil, now the property of Sir Spencer Ponsonby Fane; and the canopied monument, erected in the little church hard by, to a Sydenham by a Sydenham, is worth going a day’s journey to see.
So far as the house and estate of Combe are concerned, they first came into the possession of the Sydenhams through the marriage of Edward, son of John Sydenham, of Badialton (Bathealton), with Joan, daughter and heir of Walter Combe, of Combe, in 1482. Part of the original mansion still remains, and is used as servants’ quarters; the house, however, was rebuilt during the reign of Elizabeth, and probably towards its close, as two medals, struck to commemorate the defeat of the Armada, were found, some few years ago, beneath the floor of the entrance porch. The main entrance of the older building appears to have been in the east wing, where cross-beams, over what were once two very wide doorways, are still to be seen. The second doorway opened into the inner court or quadrangle. The stone, a species of shillett, was quarried near the house, and, instead of mortar, clay was largely used. A better sort of stone was employed in the laterbuilding, with plenty of lime and sand. The oak work is magnificent.
There was a close connection between the Sydenhams of Combe and those of Brympton. Humphry, well-known as the “silver-tongued,” Sydenham, was a scion of the latter branch. He entered at Exeter College, Oxford, became Fellow of Wadham in the same university, and then chaplain to Lord Howard, of Escrigg, and Archbishop Laud successively. Appointed rector of Pockington and Odcombe, he resided in the latter place (Tom Coryate’s native village); and his preferments included a prebendal stall at Wells. On the establishment of the Commonwealth, he was deprived of his living by the Commissioners, and retired to Combe, where he performed the church service for tenants and others who chose to attend in the chapel-room over the hall. This eloquent divine was buried at Dulverton.
Major Sir George Sydenham, another brother of Sir John Sydenham, of Brympton d’Evercy, and a knight-marshal in the army of Charles I., had married his cousin Susan, daughter of George Sydenham, of Combe; and, whilst staying with his wife at her father’s house, received an urgent summons to accompany his brother on some public occasion. Nothing more was heard of him until one night, as his wife was sleeping peacefully, he appeared to her in his military dress, but deathly pale. Starting up in affright, she exclaimed that her husband was dead, and announced her intention of joining him. Accordingly, the next morning she set out, and on the way was met by a messenger who unluckilyconfirmed her presentiment, saying that her lord had died suddenly.[11]
Ever since then the spirit of the major has had an uncomfortable trick of turning up at unexpected hours in the mansion in which he made his first apparition. One day Mrs Jakes, a tenant of the family, was ascending the stairs, when she met a strange figure coming out of one of the rooms, and, according to her account, motioned as if he would snuff the candle for her. She was not alarmed, because Sir George looked kindly on her, and it was only later that she remembered the story of the ghost.
More extraordinary still were the circumstances of another visit. When the late rector of Brushford was a young man, he invited a college-friendto stay with him. The evening of his arrival was spent in the usual way, with plenty of fun and pleasantry, after which the party broke up for the night. The following morning the guest came down in the same good spirits, but he had a tale to tell.
“You fellows thought you were going to frighten me last night,” he observed. Everybody disclaimed such an intention, and begged to know what he meant. There were signs of incredulity on the part of the collegian, and then he was induced to explain that an old cavalier arrayed in a wide cloak and Spanish hat had presented himself at his bedside. The spectacle, however, had given him no concern, as he had taken it for a practical joke.
Major Sydenham’s portrait was painted at Combe, and is still in the possession of the family. It is that of a man with the pointed beard and moustache of the period, wearing a cavalier’s hat and feather; and within living memory was concealed behind curtains. In view of what was said about the subject, this was not unnatural, but the picture itself had a peculiar quality. A boy, it is remembered, refused to look at it, and hid under the table, because the eyes followed him.
I have not yet done with the Sydenham phantom. As may easily be supposed, the country-side has its legends of these great people, who, it is averred, drove a carriage with six or eight horses shod with silver. Amongst the legends is one that narrates the laying of Major Sydenham’s ghost, whose visits became so frequent and inopportune that the family atCombe resolved on serious measures to prevent their recurrence. They communicated with the Vicar of Dulverton, desiring him to perform the rite of exorcism, and accordingly that divine, attended by his curate, proceeded to the large upper room still known as “the chapel,” where, as we have seen, the “silver-tongued” Sydenham had so often read prayers under the Commonwealth. At the conclusion of the service the man-servant was ordered to lead a handsome watch-dog to Aller’s Wood, on the border of the present highway to Dulverton, and there release him. Particular instructions were given him on no account to hurt or ill-use the animal, but these he seems to have disobeyed. The result was a sudden flash of lightning, followed immediately by a loud clap of thunder, in the midst of which the dog disappeared. On returning to the house the terrified emissary reported the occurrence, but the opinion was expressed that the spirit had been effectually laid.
The country-side, however, was unwilling to resign its ghost, and, amongst other “yarns,” the following has been told. There is a stone staircase at Combe, and one step was always coming out. If it was put back one day, it was found dislodged the next; and this was believed to be Major Sydenham’s work. At length the two Blackmores, father and son, were sent for. They were masons of Exebridge, and skilled men at their trade, of which they were proud. They thought they had secured the step in its place firmly.
“Damme, Major Sydenham, push it out if