cadet house of Honeychurch and Broadwood Kelly, Richard Weekes, of
Hatherleigh, of the latter branch, comes upon the scene at North Wyke
in the character of the villain of the piece!--a crafty interloper,
who ousts those of the rightful line from their inheritance. He
makes a gallant appearance and brings with him some of the glamour
of the Restoration Court, for he was a member of “the Honourable
Corps of Gentlemen at Arms,” or, as they were then called, “Gentlemen
Pensioners” of Charles II--a band of “fifty gentlemen of blood and
fortune” who formed the King’s nearest guard.
Richard was not, indeed, possessed of any estate; but he was related
to the Grenvilles, Stukeleys, and other influential families. He
probably learned the trade of arms under his father, Francis Weekes,
of Broadwood Kelly, who in 1635 commanded the 2nd Regiment of trained
soldiers of the North Division of county Devon.
Possibly his uncle, Dr. John Weekes, Dean of Burian, chaplain to the
Duke of Buckingham, or Dr. Jasper Mayne, the Court playwright (a native
of Hatherleigh), may have had a hand in his promotion.
[Illustration: NORTH WYKE]
The Merry Monarch was, however, a bad paymaster; and Richard focussed
a covetous gaze on the North Wyke property. The owner was a sickly
youth, ill qualified to cope with the entanglements of debts and
mortgages with which his father and grandfather, in their devotion to
the Royalist cause, had encumbered the estate. His mother and sister,
both strong-willed women, wielded masterfully the reed they could not
lean upon. Richard ingratiated himself with them, and making much of
his alleged “near relationship,” which they afterwards repudiated, and
which does not appear to have been established, seems to have persuaded
them that their own interests, and the desire of the childless young
John, that North Wyke should continue in the name of Weekes, could
best be served by inducing the said John to constitute _him_, Richard
Weekes, his heir, on condition of giving the mother an annuity of £100,
and the sister a marriage portion of £2000, besides paying young John’s
debts, amounting to £5000, and his funeral expenses.
Now the rightful heir was young John’s uncle, John Weekes of Blackhall,
but he had mortally offended Mistress Weekes immediately on her
widowhood, by contesting with her both the care of her children and the
custody of the family deed-box.
This latter he had violently raided, though he is said to have soon
returned it undespoiled, and without having mastered its contents, he
being “a man of very slender understanding in matters of the law.”
But “his specious pretence to do his nephew good and undertake his
tuition,” had been vehemently rejected by the mother, to whom it may
have occurred that if little John and his sister were to be confided
to their grasping uncle’s control, such another tragedy as that of the
_Babes in the Wood_ might stain the annals of Dartmoor!
Mistress Weekes who, as Mary Southcote, had married before the
settlements were executed, had received no jointure. She could expect
no generosity from uncle John, and was naturally anxious about her
future.
She accordingly _preferred_--in both senses--Richard’s claim,
and--apparently by mutual understanding--the deed by which young John’s
grandfather had entailed the estate on the heirs male was suppressed.
In the summer of 1661, young John being evidently in a rapid decline,
was persuaded to ride to Plymouth to be treated by Dr. Anthony Salter,
and his son-in-law Dr. William Durston, Richard’s cousin. When young
John was in Salter’s house, another cousin of Richard’s, a barrister,
was introduced, and by his advice--and it is more than insinuated under
undue pressure--on 29 August John signed a conveyance of his estates
on the prearranged lines, to Salter and Durston as trustees on behalf
of Richard Weekes of Hatherleigh and his heirs for ever. But John had
sufficient wit to insist upon endorsing the settlement with a clause
giving him power of revocation.
Shortly after the execution of this deed, at his urgent request, John
was carried home to North Wyke on a horse-litter, accompanied by
Richard of Hatherleigh, Dr. Durston, and others, and three days later,
i.e. on or about 1 September, he departed this life. By that time,
the attitude of Katherine Weekes, the sister of John, had undergone
a complete _volte-face_. This defection may safely be attributed to
the treacherous influence of Dr. Salter, who, having seen North Wyke,
evidently thought that it might as well come into his family as go to
Richard Weekes; for at this period he began to make strenuous efforts
to bring about a marriage between Katherine and his son, and she, it
is said, “did entertain his son to be a suitor.” The plan was now to
secure the whole estate to herself. She accordingly declared that
young John had always promised that _she_ should be his heir, and that
on his death-bed he had repented of his conveyance to Richard, and had
by word of mouth, in the presence of several witnesses, revoked it.
Scarcely was the breath out of the body of young John, says one
deponent, before she drew from beneath his pillow a “portmantea”
containing the said writing, and concealed it with intention to burn
it; but Richard came upstairs into the room where she was with this
deponent and others, and took it from where it was hidden, “and _did
keep_ the same.” Thus was war openly declared between Richard Weekes on
the one side, and his quondam confederate Salter and Katherine on the
other.
The funeral did not take place till three weeks after the decease, a
fact somewhat remarkable, but not extraordinary.[57] To do Richard
justice, he had the funeral conducted with all the pomp befitting the
old position of the family, and “was at about £400 or £500 charges over
it.”
On “the day after the day of the funeral,” i.e. on Sunday, 22
September, Richard proceeded in a very practical manner to take
possession. A company of fifteen or sixteen persons, mostly relations
of the deceased, had been invited by him to sup in the hall, and
scarcely was the meal over when Richard, proclaiming that he was “now
to do the Divell’s work and his own,” rose, and drawing his sword,
commanded all to quit the house, saying that, as God was his judge,
if they did not presently depart he would run them through. Several
resisted, including Mr. Richard Parker, of Zeal Monachorum, Katherine’s
trustee, whose brother, Edmund Parker, of Boringdon (ancestor of Lord
Morley) she eventually married. Katherine, her mother, and the other
ladies endeavoured to return to their chambers, but Richard Weekes,
with bared sword, stood in the doorway of the parlour, from which
room the stairs ascended to that part of the house in which the deeds
were kept, and swore that he would suffer no one to go up the said
stairs. On Katherine’s making a second attempt to do so, he “threw her
violently on the ground upon her head.” Mr. Parker, seeing this done
in the presence of a justice of the peace, Alexander Wood, of North
Tawton, rightly apprehended that he was a partisan of Richard, and
determined to ride off in quest of a more impartial justice.
Stepping out of the house in his “_pantables_” (pantoufles, slippers)
to get his horse in readiness, and returning to the hall door for his
boots, Parker was refused admittance, “and his boots denied to be
delivered to him, although he desired they might be delivered to him
out of the window, so that he was forced, having been indisposed that
day, and by that means in his pantables, to take his servant’s boots,
which he caused to be pluckt off on purpose.”
Richard then turned the guests out into the dark, many of whom, “though
gentlewomen of quality,” were forced to sleep “at mean houses, and
some to lie in hay-lofts.” But Katherine, her mother, and grandmother
were allowed to sit up all night in the hall. At about midnight, to
their dismay, Katherine and her companions heard Richard Weekes and his
myrmidons go up the stairs and smash open, “with hatchet and iron bar,”
the locked doors of her own chamber and of the muniment-room.
Among the “writings” that Richard thus got hold of was the deed of
entail, which was her last weapon against him, albeit a double-edged
one that might be turned against herself, since by virtue of that deed
the estates should revert to the inimical uncle John.
In the morning Richard finally ejected the ladies, and barred the house
doors against them.
The story of the legal proceedings that ensued is too long and too
complicated for these pages, but may be summed up in the moral that
“possession is nine points of the law.” Katherine and her mother
obtained a judgment against Richard for detention of their personal
effects, etc., for £900, plus costs, which sum he never paid. He
perhaps counted on immunity from imprisonment by reason of his position
in the King’s service. From a “State paper” it appears that the Earl
of Cleveland, Captain of the Gentlemen Pensioners, was applied to for
leave to arrest Richard, at the suit of his creditors, and refused
permission; notwithstanding which Richard was arrested and committed to
the Fleet Prison for debtors. From the moment of his incarceration all
resentment of Richard’s iniquities may well be quenched in compassion,
so grievous were the sufferings and degradations undergone by the
inmates of those noisome and infectious precincts.
The old Fleet Prison was destroyed by the Great Fire of London on 4
September, 1666; and Richard was probably among the prisoners who
were temporarily accommodated in Caron House, South Lambeth, and
conveyed back to the Fleet on its re-erection, 21 January, 1668.
But--though it may seem somewhat audacious to controvert on this point
the deposition of his own son--he did not die therein. A “Coram Rege
Roll” of the King’s Bench, dated 22-23 Charles II, bears record that
Richard Weekes, of North Weeke, in county Devon, was then in custody
for debt to one William Jolly, to whom he had given a bond for £40.
Now the prison pertaining to the King’s Bench at that time became the
Marshalsea Prison in 1811. It adjoins the burial-ground of St. George’s
in the Borough; and in the registers of that church, under Burials,
5 February, 1670-1, is “Richard Week’s, /K.B./” His relations
declare that he “died not worth a groat,” and that a “gathering” (i.e.
a collection) was made to defray the expenses of his funeral.
The demands of poetic justice are met by the fact that Richard Weekes,
though virtually possessor of North Wyke, never reaped a penny from it.
All that it brought in was consumed by the lawyers and his creditors;
and Chancery suits between the several claimants to the estate were
waged over it down to the eighteenth century.
The rightful line of Weekes proprietors had ended in John, the wrongful
line ended in another John, Richard’s grandson, who is accused of
having practised the “black arts,” and who, after a roving life, was
buried at Lezant in Cornwall. The little boys of the neighbourhood,
ever since his time, have found his tombstone a convenient surface for
the game of marbles; but there is a crack in it through which one of
these treasures occasionally disappears, so that the cry has become
traditional, “There goes another down to old Weekes!” This John sold
North Wyke, in consideration of an annuity, to George Hunt of North
Bovey, who had married his sister Elizabeth, and Hunt’s grandsons
divided the property and house into two, and sold the eastern moiety to
one Tickell, of Sampford Courtenay, and the western, in 1786, to one
Andrew Arnold, yeoman. Thus North Wyke was completely alienated from
the race that had built and, for many centuries, had owned it. It has,
however, returned by purchase to one of the old blood (on the distaff
side), the Rev. William Wykes-Finch, who, by his extensive restorations
and additions, is giving the time-worn place a fresh start in local
history.
/Ethel Lega-Weekes./
STEER NOR’-WEST
I have seen a water-colour drawing made by a great-aunt of mine,
Miss Marianne Snow, of Belmont, near Exeter, of Torquay before it
was “invented” and turned into a fashionable winter residence and
watering-place. It was a quiet fishing-village, consisting of a few
cottages, under richly wooded hills.
In one of these cottages, at the close of the eighteenth century, at
the time when this water-colour was made, lived a sailor named Robert
Bruce.
Bruce is not a Devonshire name, and we may shrewdly suspect that he
was a Browse, and that his shipmates called him by the better-known
Scottish name, which sounds almost identical with Browse. The Browses
formed a considerable clan about Torquay and Teignmouth. But whether
of Scotch origin or not, he was a native of Torquay. When he reached
the age of thirty he became first mate of a ship sailing between
Liverpool and St. John, New Brunswick. On one of these periodical
voyages westwards, after having been at sea six weeks, and being near
the Banks of Newfoundland, the captain and mate, after having taken an
observation, went below into the cabin to calculate their day’s work.
The mate, Robert Bruce, absorbed in his reckonings, which did not
answer his expectations, had not noticed that the captain had risen and
left the cabin as soon as he had completed his calculations. Without
raising his head, he called out, “I say, cap’n, I make the latitude and
the longitude to be so-and-so. Not what it ought to be. What is your
reckoning?”
As he received no reply, he repeated the question, and glancing over
his shoulder and seeing, as he supposed, the captain figuring on his
slate, he asked a third time, and again without eliciting a reply.
Surprised and vexed, he stood up, and to his inexpressible astonishment
saw that the seated man, engaged on the slate, was not the captain, but
an entire stranger. He noted his features and his garments, both wholly
different from those of his superior officer. At the same moment the
stranger raised his head and looked him full in the eyes. The face was
that of a man he had never seen before in his life. Much disturbed, he
slipped up the ladder, and seeing the captain, went to him, and in an
agitated voice told him that there was a total stranger in the cabin,
at the captain’s desk, engaged in writing.
“A stranger!” exclaimed the captain. “Impossible! You must have been
dreaming. The steward or second mate may have gone down for aught I
know.”
“No, sir; it was neither. I saw the man occupying your arm-chair. He
looked me full in the face, and I saw him as plainly as I see you now.”
“Impossible!” said the captain. “Do you know who he is?”
“Never saw the man in my life before--an utter stranger.”
“You must be gone daft, Mr. Bruce. Why, we have been six weeks at sea,
and you know every man Jack who is on board.”
“I know that, sir; but a stranger is there, I assure you.”
“Go down again, Mr. Bruce, and ask his name.”
The mate hesitated. “I’m not a superstitious man,” said he; “but, hang
it, I don’t relish the idea of facing him again alone.”
“Well, well,” said the captain, laughing, “I don’t mind accompanying
you. This is not like you, Bruce, not like you at all--you’re not in
liquor. It is a mere delusion.”
The captain descended the stairs accompanied by the mate; and, sure
enough, the cabin was empty.
“There you are, convicted of dreaming,” said the former. “Did not I
tell you as much?”
“I can’t say how it was, sir,” replied Bruce, “but I could take my oath
on the Gospels that I saw a man writing on your slate.”
“If he wrote, there must be something to show for it,” said the
captain, as he took up the slate, and at once exclaimed, “Why--good
God! there is something here. Is this your fist, Mr. Bruce?”
The mate examined the slate, and there in plain, legible characters
stood the words “/Steer to the Nor’-West/.”
“You have been playing tricks,” said the captain impatiently.
“On my word as a man and a sailor, sir,” replied Bruce, “I know no more
about this matter than just what I told you.”
The captain mused, seated himself, and handing over the slate to
the mate, said, “You write on the back of this slate, _Steer to the
Nor’-West_.”
Bruce did as required, and the captain narrowly compared the two
writings; they differed entirely.
“Send down the second mate,” he ordered.
Bruce did as required. On entering the cabin, the captain bade him
write the same words, and he did so. The handwriting was again
different. Next, the steward was sent for, as also every one of the
crew who could write, and the result was the same. At length the
captain said, “There must be a stowaway. Have the ship searched. Pipe
all hands on deck.” Every corner of the vessel was explored, but all
in vain. The captain was more perplexed than ever. Summoning the mate
to attend him in the cabin, and holding the slate before him, he asked
Bruce what he considered this might mean.
“That is more than I can say, sir,” replied Bruce, “I saw the man
write, and there you see the writing. There must be something in it we
don’t understand.”
“Well,” said the captain, “It does look like it. We have the wind fine,
and I have a good mind to keep her away and see what comes of it all.”
“If I were in your place, sir, that is what I would do. It’s only a few
hours lost, at the worst.”
“It shall be so. Go and give the course _Nor’-west_, and, Mr. Bruce,
have a good look-out aloft; and let it be a hand you can depend upon.”
The mate gave the required orders; and about 3 p.m. the look-out
reported an iceberg nearly ahead, and shortly after, that he observed
a vessel of some sort close to it. As they approached, by aid of his
telescope, the captain discerned a dismantled ship, apparently wedged
into and frozen to the ice, and he was able to distinguish a good many
human beings on it. Shortly after, he hove to, and sent out boats to
the relief of the sufferers.
The vessel proved to be one from Quebec, bound to Liverpool, with
passengers on board. She had become entangled in the ice, and finally
frozen fast, and had been in this condition for several weeks. She
was stove in, her decks swept, and was, in fact, a mere wreck. All
her provisions and almost all her water had been consumed, and crew
and passengers had despaired of being saved, and looked out for a
watery grave. Their gratitude for this unexpected deliverance was
proportionately great.
As one of the men, who had been brought away in the third boat that had
reached the wreck, was ascending the ship’s side, the mate, catching
a glimpse of his face, started back in astonishment. He recognized
the identical face that he had seen in the cabin, three or four hours
before, looking up at him from the captain’s desk. When the man stood
on the deck, Bruce examined him closely. Not only was the face the
same, but in person and dress he corresponded exactly with his vision.
So soon as the exhausted crew and passengers had been fed and cared
for, and the bark was on her course again, the mate called the captain
aside, and said, “That was no ghost, sir, that I saw this morning. The
man is here, alive, and on board our boat.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sir,” said Bruce very gravely. “One of the passengers we have just
saved is the very same person that I saw writing on your slate at noon.
I would swear to the identity in any court of justice.”
“This is becoming more strange and inexplicable every minute,” said the
captain; “let us go and have a look at the man.”
They found him in conversation with the captain of the derelict vessel,
when both expressed their warmest gratitude for deliverance from a
terrible fate, either starvation and exposure, or drowning should the
iceberg capsize.
The captain replied that he had done no more than was his duty, and
that he was quite sure that they would have done the same for him
under similar circumstances; and then he requested both to step down
with him into his cabin.
When that was done, turning to the passenger he said: “Will you excuse
the liberty I am taking with you, if I desire you to write a few words
on the slate?”
“Certainly I will do so,” said the passenger. “What shall I write?”
“Nothing more than this: _Steer to the Nor’-West_.”
The passenger looked amazed and puzzled; however, he held out his
hand for the slate. This the captain extended to him, with that side
uppermost on which Bruce and the crew had written, and which writing
he had effaced with a sponge. The man wrote the required words. The
captain took back the slate, stepping aside whilst the passenger was
not observing, turned the slate over, and presented it to him, with the
side uppermost on which was the mysterious inscription.
Tendering the slate again to him, he said: “You are ready to swear,
sir, that this is your handwriting?”
“Of course it is; you saw me write.”
“Look at it attentively and make sure that it is the same.”
“I have no doubt about it. I make my _s_ in the midst of a sentence in
the old-fashioned way, long. And there it is, attached to the _t_ at
steer and west.”
“And this also?” asked the captain, turning the slate over.
The passenger looked first at one writing, then at the other, quite
confounded. “I don’t understand what this can mean,” said he; “I wrote
the words once only. Who wrote the other?”
“That, sir, is more than I can say. My mate informs me that _you_
wrote it, sitting at my desk at noon to-day.”
“That is impossible. I was on the wreck miles away.”
“I saw you there writing it, as distinctly as I see you now,” put in
Bruce.
The captain of the wreck turned to the passenger, and said: “Did you
dream that you wrote on a slate?”
“Not that I can recall,” replied he.
“Now you speak of dreaming,” said the skipper, “may I inquire what the
gentleman was about at noon to-day?”
“Captain,” said the other, “he had become greatly exhausted, and
fell into a heavy sleep, some time before noon, and remained in that
condition for over an hour. When he awoke he said to me, ‘Captain, I
am confident that we shall be relieved this very day.’ When I asked
him his reason for so saying, he replied that he had dreamt that he
was on board a vessel, and that he was convinced she was coming to
our rescue. He described her appearance and outward rig, and, to our
astonishment, when your vessel hove in sight, she corresponded exactly
to his description. We had not, I must admit, much confidence in his
assurance. As it has happened, it looks uncommon like as if Providence
had interfered to save us in a very mysterious manner.”
“There can be no doubt about that,” replied the other captain. “It is
due to that writing on the slate, however it came about, that all your
lives are saved. I was steering at the time considerably south of west,
and I altered my course to nor’-west, on account of the writing on the
slate.” Then, turning to the passenger, he inquired, “Did you dream of
writing on a slate?”
“Not that I am aware of. I have no recollection of _that_; but I may
say that everything here on board seems to me familiar; yet I am
certain that I was never in your vessel before. It is very perplexing.
May I ask what your mate saw?”
Thereupon Bruce related the circumstances already detailed.
The above extraordinary account was related to Mr. Robert Owen,
formerly American Minister at Naples, by Captain J. S. Clarke, of the
_Julia Hallock_, a schooner trading in 1859 between New York and Cuba,
who had received it directly from Robert Bruce himself. They sailed
together for nearly two years, in 1836 and 1837; so that Captain Clarke
had the story from the mate about eight years after the occurrence.
Bruce after that became master of the brig _Comet_, trading to New
Brunswick, and she was eventually lost at sea, and Bruce is believed to
have perished in her.