but, returning, fell in with the _Duke of York_ cutter, in consequence
of getting too near her boat in a fog without perceiving her. Being
unable to make our escape, we were immediately put on board the
cutter, and the crew picked up some of our kegs which were floating
near by, but we had previously sunk the principal part. As soon as we
were secured, the captain called us into his cabin, and told us that
if we would take up the kegs for him, he would give us our boat and
liberty, on the honour of a gentleman. To this proposal we agreed,
and having pointed out where they lay, we took them up for him. We
then expected that the captain would have been as good as his word;
but, instead of doing so, he disgracefully departed from it, and a
fresh breeze springing up, we steered away hard for Dartmouth. When
we came alongside the castle, the cutter being then going at the rate
of 6 knots, I jumped overboard; but having a boat in her stern, they
immediately lowered her with a man. I succeeded, however, in getting on
shore, and concealed myself among some bushes; but two women who saw
me go into the thicket inadvertently told the boat’s crew where I was,
upon which they retook me, and I was carried on board quite exhausted
with the fatigue and loss of blood, for I had cut myself in different
places.”
Next morning Rattenbury was brought up before the magistrates at
Dartmouth along with his comrades in misfortune, and they were
sentenced to pay a fine of a hundred pounds each, or else to serve
on board a man-of-war, or go to prison. They elected the last, and
were confined in a wretched den where they could hardly move and
breathe. Worn out by their discomfort, they agreed to enlist, and were
liberated and removed to a brig in Dartmouth roads. On coming on board
he found all the officers drinking, and that the mainsail had been
partly hoisted so that the officers could not command a prospect of the
shore. Seizing his opportunity he jumped overboard, and seeing a boat
approaching held up his hand to the man in it, as a signal to be taken
up. The fellow did so, and in less than five minutes he was landed at
Kingswear, opposite Dartmouth. He paid the fisherman a pound, and made
his way to Brixham, where he hired a fishing-smack and got safely home.
Soon after he purchased part of a galley, and resumed his smuggling
expeditions, and made several successful trips in her, till he lost
his galley at sea. Then he went to Alderney in an open boat, with two
other men, to get kegs, but on their way back were chased, captured,
and carried into Falmouth, where he was sentenced to be sent to gaol at
Bodmin.
“We were put into two post-chaises, with two constables to take
care of us. As our guards stopped at almost every public-house,
towards evening they became pretty merry. When we came to the ‘Indian
Queen’--a public-house a few miles from Bodmin--while the constables
were taking their potations, I bribed the drivers not to interfere.
Having finished, the constables ordered us again into the chaise, but
we refused. A scuffle ensued. One of them collared me, some blows
were exchanged, and he fired a pistol, the ball of which went close
to my head. My companion in the meantime was encountering the other
constable, and he called on the drivers to assist, but they said it
was their duty to attend the horses. We soon got the upper hand of our
opponents, and seeing a cottage near, I ran towards it, and the woman
who occupied it was so kind as to show me through her house into the
garden and to point out the road.”
Eventually he reached Newquay with his comrade. Thence they hired
horses to Mevagissey, where they took a boat for Budleigh Salterton. On
the following day they walked to Beer.
This is but a sample of one year out of many. He was usually engaged
in shady operations, getting him into trouble. On one occasion he
undertook to carry four French officers across the Channel who had made
their escape from the prison at Tiverton, for the sum of a hundred
pounds, but was caught, and narrowly escaped severe punishment. Soon
after that he was arrested as a deserter, by a lieutenant of the
sea-fencibles when he was in a public-house drinking along with a
sergeant and some privates. But he broke away and jumped into the
cellar, where he divested himself of shirt and jacket, armed himself
with a reaping-hook, and closing the lower part of a half-hatch door
stood at bay, vowing he would reap down the first man who ventured to
attack him. His appearance was so formidable, his resolution was so
well known, that the soldiers, ten in number, hesitated. As they stood
doubtful as to what to do, some women ran into the house crying out
that a vessel had drifted ashore, and a boy was in danger of being
drowned, that help was urgently needed. This attracted the attention
of the soldiers, and whilst they were discussing what was to be done,
Rattenbury leaped over the hatch, dashed through the midst of them, and
being without jacket and shirt slipped between their fingers. He ran to
the beach, jumped into a boat, got on board his vessel, and hoisted
the colours. The story told by the women was a device to distract the
attention of his assailants. The lieutenant was furious, especially
at seeing the colours flying, as a sign of triumph on the part of
Rattenbury, who spread sail and scudded away to Alderney, took in a
cargo of contraband spirits, and returned safely with it.
Occasionally, to give fresh zest to his lawless transactions, he did an
honest day’s work, as when he piloted safely into harbour a transport
vessel that was in danger. We need not follow him through a succession
of hair’s-breadth escapes, of successes and losses, imprisonments
and frauds. He carries on his story to 1836, when, so little had he
profited by his free-trading expeditions, that he was fain to accept a
pension from Lord Rolle of a shilling a week.
/Note./--There is an article by Mr. Maxwell Adams on “Jack
Rattenbury” in Snell’s _Memorials of Old Devonshire_.
JOHN BARNES, TAVERNER AND HIGHWAYMAN
The “Black Horse” was an old inn near Southgate, Exeter. The south
gate was perhaps the strongest of all the gates. It was defended by
two massive drums of towers, and there was a double access to the
town through it, the first gate leading into a yard with a second
gate behind. Holy Trinity Church, with a red tower and pinnacles, was
close to the inner gate, and nigh by that swung the sign of the “Black
Horse.” The whole group was eminently picturesque. All was effaced in
1819; the gabled houses have been destroyed, not a stone left upon
another of the noble gateway; even Trinity Church was pulled down, and
a despicable cardboard edifice erected in its room as a specimen of the
utter degradation to which art had fallen at that period.
John Barnes was taverner at the “Black Horse” in and about the years
1670-5, during which he had three children christened in Trinity
Church. He kept his tavern well. His wife was reputed to be a quiet,
tidy, and respectable woman, and John Barnes professed to be a hot and
strong Presbyterian, and he made of his house a rallying-place of the
godly who were in a low way after the Restoration and the ejection
from their benefices of the ministers who had been intruded into them
during the days of the Commonwealth, when the Church pastors were
ejected. It was turn and turn about. These latter had been thrown out
of their nest by Independent and Presbyterian cuckoos, and now the
cuckoos had to go and the original owners of the nests were reinstated.
But the cuckoos did not like it, and the Puritans were very sore
afflicted, and liked to meet and grumble and testify, over ale and
cyder, in John Barnes’ tavern. And when a private prayer meeting was
held, mine host of the “Black Horse” was sure to be there, and to give
evidence of his piety by sighs and groans. But he testified against
prelacy more efficaciously than by upturned eyes and nasal whines, for
he refused to have his children baptized by the Church clergy, and was
accordingly prosecuted in the Exeter Consistory.
About 1677 Barnes abandoned the “Black Horse” in Exeter, and took an
inn at Collumpton, where he threw off the “religious mask” and ran
into debt and evil courses. One of his creditors was a smith, “a stout
fellow of good natural courage.”
Barnes could not or would not discharge the debt, and he suggested to
the blacksmith that there was an opening for doing a fine stroke of
business that would at once liquidate the little bill and make him a
man for ever. The plan was to waylay and rob the Exeter carrier on his
way up to London, charged with a considerable amount of money sent to
town by the merchants for the purchase of sundry goods. The blacksmith
agreed, but it was deemed prudent to have another confederate, so a
woolcomber was prevailed on to join.
The old Exeter road, after leaving Honiton, ascends a barrier of hill
now pierced by the South Western Railway that there passes through a
tunnel. This ridge stands between the stream bottoms of the Otter
and the Corry, and is bleak, with habitations very wide apart along
it. The distance from Collumpton to Honiton was so considerable and
intercommunication so infrequent that the confederates hoped to escape
recognition and detection by making their attempt far from home.
We are not informed at what hour the carrier’s van was waylaid, but
there can be little doubt that it was early in the morning. One day out
of Exeter was the stage to Honiton, and there the carriers had put up.
Upon a cold and stormy night, when wetted to the skin,
I bear it with contented heart, until I reach the inn;
And there I sit a-drinking, boys, with the landlord and his kin.
Say wo! my lads, say wo! Drive on, my lads, I-ho!
Who would not lead the stirring life we jolly waggoners do?
When Michaelmas is coming on, we’ll pleasure also find,
We’ll make the red gold fly, my boys, as chaff before the wind;
And every lad shall take his lass, so merry, buck and hind.
Say wo! my lads, say wo! Drive on, my lads, I-ho!
Who would not lead the stirring life we jolly waggoners do?
The highwaymen heard the tinkle of the horse-bells, as the team of four
drew the carrier’s van up the long hill, and listened to the shout of
the walking driver to the horses to put a good breast to it, as the top
of the ascent was not far off. It would have been still dusk, when the
three men leaped from behind some thorn bushes upon the carriers, and
presented loaded pistols at their heads. It was customary for carriers
to start before daybreak, as we know from the scene on the way to
Gadshill in _Henry IV_, Part I.
Whilst two of the ruffians held the carriers and passengers quiet, with
their pistols presented at full cock, Barnes ransacked the van, and
secured six hundred pounds. Then the three men disappeared, mounted
their horses, and galloped back to Collumpton.
But Barnes had left out of count that he was well known by voice and
face in Exeter, and that a change of domicile and the space of one
year would not have eradicated from the memory of carriers and such as
frequented taverns the canting publican of the “Black Horse.”
The carrier’s men at once gave information, and before long both Barnes
and his confederates were apprehended and conveyed to Exeter Gaol,
but not before the blacksmith had managed to secrete a file about his
person. There they were fettered, but during the night by means of the
file the blacksmith relieved himself and the other two of their chains,
and all three broke out of prison.
One of them escaped, but the other two, including the taverner, were
retaken next morning, and both were sentenced to die. The narrative
proceeds to state that “there were many Women of Quality in Exeter that
made great intercession for the said innkeeper to get him a Reprieve,
not so much for his sake, as out of charity to his poor innocent Wife
and Children; for she was generally reputed a very good, careful,
industrious and pious Woman, and hath no less than nine very hopeful
children; but the nature of the Crime excluded him from mercy in this
World, so that he and his Comrade were on Tuesday, the 13th of this
instant August (1678), conveyed to the usual place of Execution, where
there were two that presently suffered; but the Innkeeper, desiring
two hours’ time the better to prepare himself, had it granted, which
he spent in prayer and godly conference with several Ministers; then,
coming upon the ladder, he made a long Speech, wherein he confessed not
only the Crime for which at present he suffered, but likewise divers
other sins, and particularly lamented that his Hypocrisie, earnestly
begging the Spectators’ prayers, and exhorting them not to despair
in any condition ... and so with all the outward marks of a sincere
Penitent, submitted to his sentence, and was executed.”
Dr. Lake, whose _Diary_ has been published by the Camden Society,
happened to be visiting a prisoner in the gaol when Barnes and his
accomplice were brought in. The doctor says that he was “a notorious
Presbyterian,” and that “the evening before hee went forth to execute
his design”--of robbing the carrier--“hee pray’d with his family two
hours.”
The authority for this story is a unique tract in the Bodleian Library,
Oxford, of which the late Robert Dymond, of Exeter, made a copy, and to
which he refers in his paper on “The Old Inns and Taverns of Exeter,”
in the _Transactions_ of the Devonshire Association for 1880.
EDWARD CAPERN
The Postman Poet, Edward Capern, has been hailed as the Devonshire
Burns, but he has no right to be so entitled. Burns, at his best, sang
in the tones and intonation of his class and country, and it was at
his worst that he affected the style of the period and of culture,
such as it was. Now Capern aspired to the artificiality and smoothness
of the highly educated and wholly unreal class of verse writers of
the Victorian period, of whom John Oxenford may be thrust forward as
typical, men who could turn out smooth and finished pieces, rhythm and
rhyme correct, but without a genuine poetical idea forming the kernel
of the “poem.”
What can be said for verses that begin as this to the Wild Convolvulus?
Upon the lap of Nature wild
I love to view thee, Beauty’s child;
And mark the rose and lily white
Their charms in thy fair form unite.
And this to the White Violet?
Pale Beauty went out ’neath a wintry sky
From a nook where the gorse and the holly grew by,
And silently traversed the snow-covered earth
In search of a sign of floriferous birth.
And this to an Early Primrose?
Pretty flow’ret, sweet and fair,
Pensive, weeping, withering there;
Storms are raging, winds are high,
I fear thy beauty soon will die.
Who is not familiar with this sort of stuff? It is to be found in
“Keepsakes,” in those old pocket-books in leather, with a dozen badly
engraved steel-plate landscape scenes at the beginning, and a budget of
verses and rhapsodies that follow, before we come to the calendar and
the sheets for notes.
Of himself, Capern wrote:--
He owns neither houses nor lands,
His wealth is a character good;
A pair of industrious hands,
A drop of poetical blood.
It was a drop, and a small drop. He had an ear for rhythm; he had a
warm appreciation of Nature; he had sentiment--but not ideas, the germs
of mental life to be carried on from generation to generation. The
leaves of poetic expression, graceful diction, fade and wither. It is
ideas alone that are the fruit of the tree of mental life that will
survive. Of such we find none in Capern’s volumes.
His verses are very creditable to the man, considering his position,
but he is not to be named in the same breath with Robert Burns and
Edwin Waugh. Capern had the poetic faculty, but he trod wrong paths,
with the result that nobody henceforth will read his verses, which are
not likely to be republished. Edward Capern was born at Tiverton on 21
January, 1819, where his father carried on business as a baker. When
Edward was about two years old, the family removed to Barnstaple, and
his mother becoming bed-ridden, young Edward, then about eight years
old, found employment at a local lace factory, toiling often, for a
scanty wage, twenty out of the twenty-four hours. The long hours and
the trying nature of the work permanently injured his eyesight, and
seriously affected his after life.
Compelled to abandon his work in the factory in 1847, he ultimately
obtained the post of letter-carrier from Bideford to Buckland Brewer
and its neighbourhood, distributing the mail through a discursive walk
of thirteen miles daily, and receiving a salary of half a guinea per
week.
[Illustration: EDWARD CAPERN, THE POSTMAN-POET OF DEVONSHIRE
_From a painting by William Widgery, in the Free Library, Bideford_]
Capern’s first book of Poems was published in 1856. A Mr. W. F. Rock,
having seen his verses, thought there was merit in them, and undertook
to collect subscribers; and by worrying certain noblemen into taking
four, five, or six copies, and canvassing through the county, he
succeeded in getting enough subscribers to enable him to publish.
But Capern wanted to have all he had written included. Mr. Rock had to
be firm.
“What!” exclaimed Capern. “Exclude my ‘Morning’ and the ‘Apostrophe to
the Sun’! Why, sir, I wrote those pieces when I had but four shillings
a week to live upon, which gave but frugal meals.”
Precisely, but that did not constitute them poems. Mr. Rock says: “It
is not my intention even to touch upon the trying incidents of Mr.
Capern’s early life. He is a rural letter-carrier ... for which his
salary is ten shillings and sixpence per week. He has a real poet’s
wife; his Jane, a charming brunette, is intelligent, prudent, and good.
He has two children, Charles, a boy of seven, and Milly, a girl just
three years of age.
“Mr. Capern’s features have a striking resemblance to those of Oliver
Goldsmith; he has also the Doctor’s sturdy build, though not his
personal height. Nor is this the only point of resemblance to our dear
Goldy. Mr. Capern has an ear for music, he plays touchingly on the
flute, and sings his own songs to his own tunes with striking energy or
tenderness.”
He certainly enjoyed his life as a postman. He says:--
O, the postman’s life is as happy a life
As any one’s, I trow;
Wand’ring away where dragon-flies play,
And brooks sing soft and low;
And watching the lark as he soars on high,
To carol in yonder cloud,
“He sings in his labours, and why not I?”
The postman sings aloud.
In 1858, Capern published a second volume, entitled _Ballads and
Songs_, and in 1865 a third, _Wayside Warbles_. There was yet another,
_The Devonshire Melodist_, in which he set his own songs to tunes of
his own composition. But here again he was at fault. Devonshire is full
of folk music of the first order. Burns set his songs to folk tunes
then sung by the people, but to gross words. He rescued the melodies
by giving to them verses that could be sung by decent and clean-minded
people. Now had Capern done this for the music of the neighbourhood of
Barnstaple he would have been remembered along with these delicious
airs, as is Burns along with the Scotch melodies. But not so, he must
set his verses to the tootling of his own pipe, entirely without
melodious idea in the tunes.
Probably Edward Capern had never heard of Edwin Waugh, who wrote the
most delicious, simple, and sweet poems in Lancashire and Yorkshire
dialect; every one is a gem. Probably, had he seen these, Capern would
have despised them. They breathe the life, the passion, the tenderness,
the genius of the North-countrymen. Capern’s verses have none of this
merit. They are respectable _vers de société_, such as any man of
culture could have written. His great achievement was, that, not being
a man of culture, he could write such respectable “poems.” He took a
wrong course from the outset; and unhappily he maintained it. What
tells its own tale is this. Next to the British Museum, the London
Library is the largest in the Metropolis, and it has not been deemed
worth while to include in it one of Capern’s volumes of verses.
His last volume published was _Sun-gleams and Shadows_ (1881), and,
unless I am mistaken, all owed their success to subscribers.
In 1866 Capern left Marine Gardens, Bideford, and went to live at
Harborne, near Birmingham. His verses found their way into various
periodicals, _Fun_ and _Hood’s Comic Annual_. But his heart was in
his native county and thither he returned. He received a pension from
the Civil List of £40 a year, which was afterwards increased to £60.
It was due to his wife’s ill-health that he left the neighbourhood
of Birmingham in 1884, and rented a pleasant cottage at Braunton.
There he lost his wife in February, 1894. The two old people had been
tenderly attached, and her admiration for and pride in her husband
were unbounded. He did not long survive her, for he died on 4 June in
the same year as his wife, and they were buried side by side in the
churchyard of Heanton Punchardon. The expenses of his funeral were
defrayed by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, to whom he had dedicated the
second volume of his poems.
It was unfortunate for Capern in a measure that he had been patted
on the back by such men as James Anthony Froude, who wrote of him in
_Fraser’s Magazine_: “Capern is a real poet, a man whose writings
will be like a gleam of summer sunshine in every household which they
enter”; and Walter Savage Landor, who pronounced him to be “a noble
poet”; also Alfred Austin, who wrote of him:--
O, Lark-like Poet: carol on,
Lost in dim light, an unseen trill:
We, in the Heaven where you are gone,
Find you no more, but hear you still.
In the summer of 1864, the American literary blacksmith, Elihu Burritt,
spent three days with Capern, on his “Walk from London to the Land’s
End and back,” and gave an excellent description of his host. He says:
“Edward Capern, of Bideford, is a poet, and he is a postman, and both
at once, and good at each. He is as faithful and genial a postman as
ever dropped a letter in a cottage door, with an honest and welcome
face, itself a living epistle of good will and friendly cheer. I can
attest to that most confidently; for I went with him in his pony-cart
two days on his rural rounds. That he is a poet who has written songs
that will live and have a pleasant place among the productions of
genius, I am equally confident, though pretending to be no connoisseur
in such matters myself. Better judges have awarded to them a high
degree of merit. Already a considerable volume of his songs and ballads
has gone to its second edition; and he has sufficient matter on hand to
make another of equal size and character. His postal beat lies between
Bideford and Buckland Brewer, a distance of more than six miles. Up
to quite a recent date, he walked this distance twice a day in all
weathers; starting off on winter mornings while it was yet dark. Having
grown somewhat corpulent and short-winded, he has mounted, within a
year or two, a pony-cart, that carries him up and down the long, steep
hills on his course. It takes him till noon to ascend these to Buckland
and distribute letters and papers among the hamlet cottages and
roadside farmhouses on the way. Having reached the little town on the
summit-hill, and left his bag at the post-office, he has three hours to
wait before setting out on his return journey. These are his writing
hours; and he spends them in a little, antique, thatched cottage in one
of the village streets. Here, seated at one end of a long deal table,
while the cottager’s wife and daughters are plying their needles, and
doing all their family work at the other, he pens down the thoughts
that have passed through the flitting visions of his imagination while
alone on the road. Here he wrote most of his first book of ballads, and
here he is working up his glowing rollicking songs for a new volume.
Sometimes the poetic inspiration comes in upon him like a flood on
his way. He told me that he once brought home with him six sonnets on
six different subjects, which he had thought out and penned in one
of his daily beats. When the news of the taking of the Redan reached
England, the very inner soul of his patriotism was stirred within him
to the proudest emotion. As he walked up and down the long hills with
his letter-bags strapped to his side, the thoughts of the glory his
country had won came into his mind with a half-suffocating rush, and he
struggled, nearly drowned by them, to give them forms of speech. The
days were short, the road was long, and hard to foot, and the rules of
the postal service were rigid. He could not hold fast the thoughts the
event stirred within him until he reached the cottage. Some of the best
of them would flit out of his memory, if he delayed to pen them as they
arose. So he ran with all his might and main for a third of a mile,
all panting with the race for time, found he had caught enough of it
for pencilling on his knee a whole verse of the song. Thus he ran and
wrote, each stanza costing him a race that made the hot perspiration
fall upon the soiled and crumpled paper, on which he brought home to a
wife prouder than himself of the song,--‘The Lion Flag of England.’”
GEORGE MEDYETT GOODRIDGE