December, 1896, a labourer died here, aged seventy-two. For upwards of
forty years he had worked at Botathan. He told me that one of the
fields was called the Higher Brown Park (he did not know the name of
Quartells) until the field was ploughed up. He told me there was a
little path in it which they called old Dorothy Dinglet's [_sic_]
path, and that they used to frighten the farm apprentices with stories
about her, but he had never met her himself. The farm has been sold of
recent years. There is a part of the old house left used for a cider
cellar. They call it Dorothy Dingley's chamber."
The Rev. James Dingley was vicar of South Petherwin from 1682 until
1695. He was born 1655, just ten years before the apparition was seen
by young Bligh.
Authorities: A. Robbins, "A Cornish Ghost Story," in the _Cornish
Magazine_, 1898; A. Robbins, _Launceston Past and Present_, 1889. The
portrait of the Rev. John Ruddle is in my possession. The descendants
of Parson Ruddle or Rudall are still on the land, but are in a humble
condition.
JOHN COUCH ADAMS,
ASTRONOMER
Thomas Adams was a small tenant farmer in the parish of Laneast, at
Lidcott, renting under John King Lethbridge, Esq., of Tregeare, in
Laneast. He married Tabitha Knill Grylls, of Stoke Climsland, who
inherited a very little land in this latter parish.
Laneast lies on the Inny River--that is to say, the village with its
church occupies the southern slope of Laneast Down that falls to this
beautiful stream. But Lidcott lies on the north side of the down, that
rises to eight hundred feet above the sea, one long swelling mass of
moor brown with heather, save when in August it blushes like a modest
girl, the heather all a-rose with flower.
For three miles the highway from Camelford to Launceston crosses this
moor, one white strip drawn through a mass of umber. At night the
sheep that grazed on the down would lie on the warm road, and many a
time have the coach-horses stumbled over them in the night.
On this road, about the year 546, S. Samson was pursuing his way from
Padstow, where he had landed, to Southill. He had with him a wagon
drawn by horses he had brought with him from Ireland, and as he
proceeded over the down he was aware of music and dancing on the
left-hand side of the road in the direction of Tregeare, and he found
that the heathen people were having a festival about a rude upright
stone. He stopped, harangued them, condemned their idolatrous
practice, and with his own hand cut a cross upon the stone.
It is possible that this is the very rude stone cross that still
stands on the slope of the moor above Lidcott.
John Couch, son of Thomas Adams and Tabitha, was born at Lidcott on
5th January, 1819, but no notice of his baptism occurs in the parish
register at Laneast. Possibly he may have been taken to Egloskerry.
He received his early education at a dame's school in his native
parish; but was early employed by his father to tend the sheep on
Laneast Down. It was then and there, on that great upland stretch of
moor, with a vast horizon about him, that, lying in the heather and
looking up into the sky, the mystery of the heavenly firmament laid
hold of him. He soon learned to distinguish the planets from the fixed
stars; he watched the rising and the setting of the constellations,
Charles's Wain revolving nightly about the extremest star in what he
called the tail of the Plough; Orion with his twinkling belt and
curved sword, "louting on one knee."
To the west and south stood up against the evening glow the ridge of
the Bodmin Moors, Brown Willy, Rough Tor, Kilmar, and Caradon. To the
north nothing interrupted the view, for there lay the vast Atlantic;
and on stormy nights the boom of its waves might be heard from that
highway over the down. To the east and south-east the far-off range of
Dartmoor, blue as a vein in a girl's temple, on a summer day.
Many a chiding did John Couch get from his father for being out late
at night upon the moor; the old farmer was unable to understand what
the attraction was which drew the lad from home and from his
supper, to be out, either lying on the road or leaning against the
old granite cross, star-gazing. Happily Mrs. Adams had a simple book
on astronomy that had belonged to her father, and this her son Jack
devoured, and now he began to understand something of the motions of
the heavenly bodies. He established a sundial on the window-sill of
the parlour, and constructed out of cardboard an apparatus for taking
the altitude of the sun.
[Illustration: I C ADAMS A M
_From the collection of Mrs. Lewis Lane_]
His father, finding that his inclinations were not for farm work, sent
him to study with a relative of his mother, the Rev. P. Couch Grylls,
who had a school at Devonport, but later moved to Saltash. All his
spare time John Couch spent in reading astronomical works, which he
obtained from the library of the Mechanics' Institute; he drew maps of
constellations and computed celestial phenomena. A day long to be
remembered by him as one of the happiest in his life was that in which
he obtained a look through a telescope at the moon. "Why," he
exclaimed, "they have Brown Willy and Rough Tor up there!"
His account of a solar eclipse viewed at Devonport through a small
spyglass got into print in a London paper. After three weeks' watching
he caught sight of Halley's Comet on 16th October, 1839.
His father now with considerable effort arranged to send him to the
University of Cambridge, and he entered S. John's College as a poor
sizar in October, 1839; he graduated as Senior Wrangler in 1843, and
was first Smith's prizeman, and soon elected Fellow and appointed
tutor of his college.
At the age of twenty-two he was struck with the disturbance in the
course of the planet Uranus, and he perceived that this must be due to
the attraction possessed by some other planet, as yet unseen and
unsuspected, that produced these perturbations. How this led to the
discovery of the planet Neptune shall be told from the _Reminiscences_
of Caroline Fox:--
"1847, October 7th.--Dined at Carclew, and spent a very interesting
evening. We met Professor Adams, the Bullers, the Lord of the Isles,
and others. Adams is a quiet-looking man, with a broad forehead, a
mild face, and an amiable and expressive mouth. I sat by him at
dinner, and by general and dainty approaches got at the subject on
which one most wished to hear him speak. He began very blushingly, but
went on to talk in most delightful fashion, with large and luminous
simplicity, of some of the vast mathematical facts with which he is so
conversant. The idea of the reversed method of reasoning, from an
unknown to a known, with reference to astronomical problems dawned on
him when an undergraduate, with neither time nor mathematics to work
it out. The opposite system had always before been adopted. He, in
common with many others, conceived that there must be a planet to
account for the disturbances of Uranus; and when he had time he set to
work at the process, in deep, quiet faith that the fact was there, and
that his hitherto untried mathematical path was the one which must
reach it; that there were no anomalies in the universe, but that, even
here, and now, they could be explained and included in a higher law.
The delight of working it out was far more than any notoriety could
give, for his love of pure truth is evidently intense, an inward
necessity, unaffected by all the penny trumpets of the world. Well, at
length he fixed his point in space, and sent his mathematical evidence
to Airy, the Astronomer Royal, who locked the papers up in his desk,
partly from carelessness, partly from incredulity, for it seemed to
him impossible that a man whose name was unknown to him should strike
out a new path in mathematical science with any success. Moreover,
his theory was, that if there were a planet, it would not be
discovered for one hundred and sixty years; that is, until two
revolutions of Uranus had been accomplished. Then came Leverrier's
equally original, though many months younger, demonstration; Gull's
immediate verification of it by observation; and then the other
astronomers were all astir. Professor Adams speaks of those about whom
the English scientific world is so indignant in a spirit of Christian
philosophy, exactly in keeping with the mind of a man who has
discovered a planet. He speaks with warmest admiration of Leverrier,
specially of his exhaustive method of making out the orbits of the
comets, imagining and disproving all tracks but the right one--a work
of infinite labour. If the observer could make out distinctly but a
very small part of a comet's orbit, the mathematician would be able to
prove what its course had been through all time. They enjoyed being a
good deal together at the British Association Meeting at Oxford,
though it was unfortunate for the intercourse of the fellow-workers
that one could not speak French nor the other English. He had met with
very little mathematical sympathy, except from Challis, of the
Cambridge Observatory; but when his result was announced there was
noise enough and to spare. He was always fond of star-gazing and
speculation, and is already on the watch for another planet. Burnard
told us that when Professor Adams came from Cambridge to visit his
relatives in Cornwall he was employed to sell sheep for his father at
a fair. He is a most good son and neighbour, and watchful in the
performance of small acts of thoughtful kindness."
"1863, July 2nd.--Have just returned from a visit to Professor Adams at
Cambridge. He is so delightful in the intervals of business, enjoying
all things, large and small, with a boyish zest. He showed and
explained the calculating machine (French, not Babbage's), which saves
him much in time and brain, as it can multiply or divide ten figures
accurately. We came upon an admirable portrait of him at S. John's
College, before he accepted a Pembroke Fellowship and migrated thither."
The first mention of the name of Adams as the discoverer of Neptune was
by Sir John Herschel, in the _Athenæum_, on October 3rd, 1845. And a
letter from Professor Challis to that journal on 17th October described
in detail the transactions between Adams, Airy, and himself. Naturally
enough the French were highly incensed at the notion that an obscure
Englishman had forestalled Leverrier in the discovery, and Airy himself
was annoyed at his own negligence in not looking into the memoir by
Adams, and took up the matter with some personal feeling. It was
certainly startling to realize that the Astronomer Royal had had in his
possession data that would have enabled the planet to be discovered
nearly a year before Leverrier had, by a different course of argument
and calculation, arrived at the conclusion that there existed a planet
which was the disturbing element in the orbit of Uranus. As to Adams
himself, he had not a particle of conceit and pride in him; he did not
care to have his name proclaimed as the discoverer. Forty years later,
he said simply and characteristically that all he had wished for was
that English astronomers to whom he had communicated the result of his
calculations, pointing out the precise spot in the sky where a planet
was to be found, would have taken the trouble to turn their telescopes
upon that point and discover the planet, so that England might have had
the full credit of the discovery.
[Illustration: EX·LIBRIS
JOHANNIS COUCH ADAMS]
His long-suppressed investigation was not laid before the Royal
Astronomical Society till November 13th, 1846.
The publication, of course, stirred up much controversy, and the
scientific world was divided into Adamite and anti-Adamite factions.
Adams refused knighthood in 1847, and declined the office of
Astronomer Royal on Airy's retirement in 1881.
John Couch had a brother, William Grylls, also a man of some eminence
in the scientific world. He was born at Lidcott 12th February, 1836,
and became Professor of Natural Philosophy and of Astronomy in King's
College, London.
I was wont, when at Cambridge, to meet John Couch Adams at Professor
Challis', and also at the house of the Rev. Harvey Goodwin, afterwards
Bishop of Carlisle. Professor Adams took some notice of me, as coming
from his neighbourhood, though not on the Cornish side of the Tamar.
He was a small man, as simple as a child in many things. Indeed, he
struck me forcibly by his great modesty and sweetness of manner. He
loved a joke, and would laugh heartily over the very smallest. He
loved children, and would play with them in their little games with
infinite zest. Professor Glaisher, whom I also knew, wrote of him:
"Adams was a man of learning as well as a man of science. He was an
omnivorous reader, and his memory was exact and retentive. There were
few subjects upon which he was not possessed of accurate information.
Botany, geology, history, and divinity, all had their share of his
care and attention."
He was always happy to return to his humble father's farm; and after
he was a noted man, on one of these occasions the old man sent him
into Launceston with a drove of sheep to sell them in the market. He
complied cheerfully, but how he succeeded in selling them I have not
heard. This is the incident alluded to by Caroline Fox given above.
"The honours showered upon him," wrote Dr. Donald MacAlister, "left
him as they found him--modest, gentle, and sincere." He was not a man
who ever asserted himself.
He married in 1863 Eliza, daughter of Haliday Bruce, of Dublin. He
died of a sudden illness on January 21st, 1892, and was buried in S.
Giles' Churchyard, Cambridge.
Portraits were taken of him by Mogford in 1851, and by Herkomer in 1888;
both are in the Combination-room of St. John's College, Cambridge.
A biographical notice of him was prefixed by Professor Glaisher to his
scientific works, edited by W. G. Adams, in 1896-8.
See also A. De Morgan's _Budget of Paradoxes_, 1872, and the
_Mechanics' Magazine_, 1846.
DANIEL GUMB
All that is really known of this eccentric character is found in a
letter of J. B. to Richard Polwhele, dated September, 1814. His
correspondent says:--
"Daniel Gumb was born in the parish of Linkinhorne, in Cornwall, about
the commencement of the last century, and was bred a stone-cutter. In
the early part of his life he was remarkable for his love of reading
and a degree of reserve even exceeding what is observable in persons
of studious habits. By close application Daniel acquired, even in his
youth, a considerable stock of mathematical knowledge, and, in
consequence, became celebrated throughout the adjoining parishes.
Called by his occupation to hew blocks of granite on the neighbouring
commons, and especially in the vicinity of that great natural
curiosity called the Cheesewring, he discovered near this spot an
immense block, whose upper surface was an inclined plane. This, it
struck him, might be made the roof of a habitation such as he desired;
sufficiently secluded from the busy haunts of men to enable him to
pursue his studies without interruption, whilst it was contiguous to
the scene of his daily labour. Immediately Daniel went to work, and
cautiously excavating the earth underneath, to nearly the extent of
the stone above, he obtained a habitation which he thought
sufficiently commodious. The sides he lined with stone, cemented with
lime, whilst a chimney was made by perforating the earth at one side
of the roof. From the elevated spot on which stood this extraordinary
dwelling could be seen Dartmoor and Exmoor on the east, Hartland on
the north, the sea and the port of Plymouth on the south, and S.
Austell and Bodmin Hills on the west, with all the intermediate
beautiful scenery. The top of the rock which roofed his house served
Daniel for an observatory, where at every favourable opportunity he
watched the motions of the heavenly bodies, and on the surface of
which, with his chisel, he carved a variety of diagrams, illustrative
of the most difficult problems of Euclid, etc. These he left behind
him as evidences of the patience and ingenuity with which he
surmounted the obstacles that his station in life had placed in the
way of his mental improvement.
"But the choice of his house and the mode in which he pursued his
studies were not his only eccentricities. His house became his chapel
also; and he was never known to descend from the craggy mountain on
which it stood, to attend his parish church or any other place of
worship.
"Death, which alike seizes on the philosopher and the fool, at length
found out the retreat of Daniel Gumb, and lodged him in a house more
narrow than that which he had dug for himself."
Bond in his _Topographical and Historical Sketches of the Boroughs of
East and West Looe_, 1873, describes the habitation of Daniel Gumb as
seen by him in 1802:--
"When we reached Cheesewring--our guide first led us to the house of
Daniel Gumb (a stone-cutter), cut by him out of a solid rock of granite.
This artificial cavern may be about twelve feet deep and not quite so
broad; the roof consists of one flat stone of many tons weight;
supported by the natural rock on one side, and by pillars of small
stones on the other. How Gumb formed this last support is not easily
conceived. We entered with hesitation lest the covering should be our
gravestone. On the right-hand side of the door is 'D. Gumb,' with a date
engraved 1735 (or 3). On the upper part of the covering stone, channels
are cut to carry off the rain, probably to cause it to fall into a
bucket for his use; there is also engraved on it some geometrical device
formed by Gumb, as the guide told us, who also said that Gumb was
accounted a pretty sensible man. I have no hesitation in saying he must
have been a pretty eccentric character to have fixed on this place for
his habitation; but here he dwelt for several years with his wife and
children, several of whom were born and died here. His calling was that
of a stone-cutter, and he fixed himself on a spot where materials could
be met with to employ a thousand men for a thousand years."
[Illustration: _J. Farington, R.A., del. Letitia Byrne, sculp._
THE CHEESE-WRING]
The Rev. Robert S. Hawker wrote an account of Daniel Gumb for _All the
Year Round_ in 1866, and this has been reprinted in _Footsteps of
Former Men in Cornwall_.
He pretends that when he visited the Cheesewring in 183-, there still
existed fragments of Daniel Gumb's "thoughts and studies still
treasured up in the existing families of himself and his wife." And he
gives transcripts from these, and also from what must have been a
diary. But Mr. Hawker embroidered facts with so much detail drawn from
his own fancy, that his statements have to be taken with a very large
pinch of salt.
It must be remembered, in his justification, that his stories of
Cornish Characters were intended as magazine articles to amuse, but
without any purpose of having them regarded as strictly biographical
and historical. They were brief historical romances, and were not
intended to be taken seriously.
I will give but one quotation, and the reader can judge for himself
therefrom whether it does not look like an extract "made in
Morwenstow." Mr. Hawker says:--
"On the fly-leaves of an old account book the following strange
statement appears: 'June 23rd, 1764. To-day, at bright noon, I looked
up and saw all at once a stranger standing on the turf, just above my
block. He was dressed like an old picture I remember in the windows of
S. Neot's Church, in a long brown garment, with a girdle; and his head
was uncovered and grizzled with long hair. He spoke to me, and he said
in a low, clear voice, "Daniel, that work is hard!" I wondered that he
should know my name, and I answered, "Yes, sir; but I am used to it
and don't mind it, for the sake of the faces at home." Then he said,
sounding his words like a psalm, "Man goeth forth to his work and to
his labour until the evening. When will it be night with Daniel Gumb?"
I began to feel queer; it seemed to me that there was something awful
about the unknown man. I even shook. Then he said again, "Fear
nothing. The happiest man in all the earth is he that wins his daily
bread by his daily sweat, if he will but fear God and do man no
wrong." I bent down my head like any one dumbfounded, and I greatly
wondered who this strange appearance could be. He was not like a
preacher, for he looked me full in the face; nor a bit like a parson,
for he seemed very meek and kind. I began to think it was a spirit,
only such ones always come by night, and here was I at noonday and at
work. So I made up my mind to drop my hammer and step up and ask his
name right out. But when I looked up he was gone, and that clear out
of my sight, on the bare, wide moor, suddenly.'"
Now, in the first place, no trace or tidings of these notes so
treasured up by the family are to be found in the parish of
Linkinhorne, to which Gumb and his wife belonged.
In the second place, Mr. Hawker makes Daniel remark that his
mysterious visitant was not like a Dissenting preacher because he
looked him straight in the face, and this is significantly like a
remark Hawker often made with regard to these gentry.
Another of these pretended notes refers to the finding of a fossil
fish embedded in granite. This alone suffices to wake suspicion that
the extracts are not genuine. Fossils never have been found in
granite, and never will be. But Hawker himself did not know this, as
he was totally ignorant of the first principles of geology.
LAURENCE BRADDON
Laurence Braddon, second son of Captain William Braddon, of Treworgy,
in S. Gennys, was called to the bar of the Middle Temple, and worked
at his profession diligently. He entered Parliament in 1651, but did
not attract special notice till the occasion of the suicide of the
Earl of Essex in the Tower, in 1683.
The people of England had been, and still were, greatly troubled about
the succession to the throne, in the event of the death of Charles II.
They had no mind to have the throne occupied by a Popish prince, and
several plots were hatched to prevent such a contingency. Monmouth,
with Lord Essex, Shaftesbury, Lord Howard of Escrick, Russell,
Algernon Sidney, and John Hampden, held meetings to found an
association to agitate and compel the King to assemble Parliament, to
take measures to secure a Protestant succession and the exclusion of
the Duke of York. On other points they disagreed. Monmouth hoped to
have his legitimacy established and to secure the crown for his own
brows. Sidney and Essex were for the establishment of a commonwealth.
Russell and Hampden intended only the exclusion of the Duke. As to
Lord Howard, he was a man of no principle, and his sole desire was to
fish in troubled waters and get out of them what he could.
More desperate spirits schemed plans of assassination, and a plot was
formed for murdering Charles and the Duke of York as they passed the
Rye House on the road from London to Newmarket, but there is no evidence
that the noble schemers had any knowledge of the Rye House Plot.
Both projects were betrayed, and though they were wholly distinct from
one another, the cruel ingenuity of the Crown lawyers blended them
into one.
The Earl of Shaftesbury fled to the Continent; Monmouth absconded;
Russell was committed to the Tower; Howard, who had concealed himself in
a chimney, was drawn forth by the heels, and to secure his neck betrayed
Essex, Sidney, and Hampden, who were all committed to the Tower.
Several of the conspirators in the Rye House Plot were sentenced to
death and at once executed. From their confessions it appeared that
the conspiracy had wide ramifications, and that a scheme of
insurrection throughout the country had been formed, and that steps
had been taken to organize it.
On the day upon which Lord Russell was brought to trial the Earl of
Essex was found in the closet of his chamber with his throat cut, and
this but just after a visit to the Tower by the King with the Duke of
York.
An inquest was at once held, at which it was shown that Lord Essex was
a man of a despondent temper, that he had been lately in a lugubrious
mood, and in the depths of melancholy; and evidence was conclusive
that he had cut his own throat with a razor. The jury accordingly
found a verdict of _felo de se_.