“’COMBE” IN HISTORY--MODERN ’COMBE--THE OLD CHURCH
Ilfracombe occupies one of the strangest sites on this strangely
contorted coast. Down upon it, on either hand, look the great rocky
hills of Hillsborough and the razor-backed, spiny ledges of the
Runnacleaves, and the Tors; while amidst the winding roads of the town
itself run smaller hills and vales, and down by the sea, where other
seaside resorts usually have a conventional flat parade running by
the shore, there are the Lantern Hill, overlooking the harbour, and
the Capstone Hill, placed just where the usual sea-front would be, if
the site of Ilfracombe were other than it is. Fortunately it is not.
Between the two is Compass Hill. The Capstone Hill--it was formerly,
and should still be, “Capstan”--runs up towards the sea from the town,
and presents, as it were, a lawn, inclined at an angle of something
like forty-five degrees. When people most furiously do make holiday,
in August, this expanse is covered over, day by day, with hundreds of
figures, looking quite tiny in the scale of things. Sometimes, when
Sunday Schools, or other institutions, come to Ilfracombe for their
annual day out, they display their massed forces in living devices or
letters of the alphabet, on the hillside, in view of the whole town.
[Illustration:
_E. D. Percival_]
CAPSTONE HILL AND THE CONCERT PARTIES.
[_Ilfracombe._
]
There is not, it has already been shown, any conventional front; and
indeed at one time it was only possible to approach the shore at
Ilfracombe at infrequent and isolated spots, such as Wildersmouth,
or Chain Beach. That was in the times before seaside holidays were
invented, and when Ilfracombe was only a small port. When the modern
town began to rise, it was felt that a little more of the sea would
be thought desirable, and consequently the present “Capstone Parade”
was constructed in 1843, in the more or less perpendicular face that
Capstone Hill presents to the waves. It is a semicircular roadway
carved out of the rock, with rocky cliff above and more beneath, and
beneath that, the sea, dashing in violently. The Capstone “Parade” has
after all, you see, the conventional name; but, happily, it is not the
conventional thing.
Since we cannot treat of Ilfracombe without touching upon its ancient
history, it had better be done at once, and an end made of it
forthwith. To begin with, it is not certain how the name derived. In
Saxon times it was “Alfreincombe,” and from that has been hazarded the
theory of its having once belonged to Alfred the Great. Then stepped
in that eternal factor of the letter H, and it became “Halfrincombe.”
I wonder if any contemporary, uncertain in his aspirates, ever called
the great monarch, “Halfred”? It is a fearful thought.
Then the place, having been crowned with an H, of course those who
should have kept the letter, vulgarly elided it, and the name became
“Ilfardcombe,” or “Ilfridecombe,” and so remained until, with the
introduction of printing, the style became irrevocably fixed at what it
is now.
The town was then nothing more than a few waterside houses down by
the harbour, that curious, almost pool-like inlet intended by nature
for the purpose, but the place speedily prospered, chiefly by reason
of this natural haven, and in 1346 the port was sufficiently wealthy
and populous to be able to assist Edward the Third with a contingent
of six ships and ninety-six seamen, to help in the French war and the
reduction of Calais. That appears to have been the high-water mark of
Ilfracombe’s old-time prosperity, for thenceforward Barnstaple and
Bideford took up the position of rivals, and wrested away much of its
trade.
Little is heard of the town until the beginning of the Civil War. The
sentiment of the townsfolk was strongly anti-Royalist, and it occurred,
therefore, to Sir Francis Doddington, a Royalist commander who had
helped his cause well at Appledore, that it would be the properest
thing to teach them a lesson while the success of his party there was
still fresh, to serve as a moral lesson here. What happened we may read
from a contemporary account, in the _Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer_,
September 3rd, 1644. It is couched something in the sarcastic vein:
“At a town called Ilford-combe in Devonshire, that saint-like Cavalier,
Sir Francis Doddington, set that town on fire, burnt 27 houses in the
town, but was beaten out by the townsmen and sailors, and lost many of
his men.”
So the teacher was taught, but the Roundhead success was not lasting,
for, before the end of the month, Doddington had captured the town,
together with twenty pieces of ordnance, twenty barrels of powder, and
two hundred stand of arms. The Royalists then held Ilfracombe until
April 1646.
The port continued to decline, and is described by Blackmore, speaking
of the eighteenth century, in the “Maid of Sker,” as “a little place
lying in a hole, and with great rocks all around it, fair enough to
look at, but more easy to fall down than to get up them”--the laws of
gravity being no more suspended here than elsewhere.
One of the many inlets here deserves particular note. This is Rapparee
Cove, opening out just beyond the harbour.
Rapparee Cove is known to have borne that name certainly as far back
as 1598, when it appears to have originated in some obscure connection
with the Earl of Tyrone’s rebellion in Ireland, where the bulk of the
rebels were armed with a species of small pike, called “raparys.” North
Devon seems to have been in general a refuge for the fugitives from
Ireland, and Ilfracombe, as a recognised port for the south of Ireland,
to have been particularly favoured by them. Neighbouring Combemartin
retained until 1837 an odd reminiscence of that time, suggested, no
doubt, by the refugees. This was an annual pageant, or merry-making,
the hunting of the Earl of “Rone”; in which hobby-horses, much rough
music, and a considerable deal of drunkenness figured.
Rapparee Cove was in 1782 the scene of the disastrous wreck of a large
vessel, variously stated to have been a prize captured from the Spanish
by Rodney, or a Bristol slave-ship. For long afterwards, following
storms, the beach was a happy hunting-ground for gold and silver coins,
and for the less desirable relics of the many drowned, in the shape of
skulls and bones.
The entrance to Ilfracombe harbour has been lighted from the earliest
times by a beacon on the hill overlooking it, called, from that
friendly gleam for the incoming mariner, “Lantern Hill.” Whose care
it was, thus to befriend the sailor, we are not told; but, from the
old-time readiness of the Church to perform such-like good deeds, and
from the undoubted fact that the building on the hilltop was once a
chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas, it would seem that those who tended
the light were no mere secular lighthouse men.
Whatever may have been the character of the old chapel in past ages,
the interior is no longer of any interest, disclosing only a plain
whitewashed room. The time-worn exterior, partly overgrown with ivy,
and the lantern, crowned with a fish for weather-vane, afford more
satisfaction. A light is still shown at nights, from the end of
September until the beginning of May.
The harbour, long, like Ilfracombe in general, the manorial property
of the Bourchiers, Earls of Bath, in succession to the Champernownes,
Bonvilles, Nevilles, and others, and then of the Bourchier Wreys, now
belongs, together with Lantern Hill, to the Corporation.
[Illustration: IN THE HARBOUR, ILFRACOMBE.]
Now let us turn to a consideration of Ilfracombe to-day. People with
a passion for comparisons and parallels--dear, good people who would
trace a family likeness between an elephant and a dromedary--seek in
conversation to find points of resemblance between Ilfracombe and (say)
Torquay, Hastings, Brighton; half-a-dozen other seaside resorts. They
are mostly amateurs at the art of discovering likenesses where they
do not exist, and may be excused. But there have been those who in
cold print have instituted resemblances. For these there is no excuse,
acceptance, or encouragement. Ilfracombe is--just Ilfracombe, and not
only does Ilfracombe insist upon its own individuality and declares “I
am I,” but every other among the half-dozen naturally demands the like
justice.
The nearest parallel is, of course, to be found in this same county of
Devon; but that is sufficiently remote, geographically, and in most
other ways. A superficial likeness, in its hilly site, (and in its lack
of sands) may be discovered to Torquay, but that is all. Torquay is in
greater part residential and quietly aristocratic, with a tendency to
pious works and clerical tea-fights: Ilfracombe is a “popular resort,”
and becomes ever more so; with what it would be a mere inadequacy to
term a “tendency” to open-air concerts and amusements for the crowd. We
who stay, communing with nature, elegantly housed in the more refined
hotels of Lynmouth, or the even yet primitive Clovelly, shudder at the
August crowds at Ilfracombe, and recount across the dinner-tables,
what time the tender evening closes in upon the quiet harbour, how
we adventured there for half a day and watched the trippers at their
strenuous tripping. Indeed, those who people Ilfracombe so numerously
in the height of the season go there determined to have a “good
time,” and expend a considerable amount of energy during the day in
securing that desirable consummation; but when evening is come they
unanimously clamour to be amused: hence the entertainments in
the conservatory-like structure, known officially as the “Victoria
Pavilion,” and unofficially and shamefully as the “Cucumber Frame”;
and hence also the open-air concerts on the “Montebello Lawn,” and
elsewhere: “Montebello” being a name, the most unprejudiced must
agree, as little characteristic of Devon as are the “pierrots,” who
make alleged fun for the aimless crowd. The days are indeed past when
we were “insular.” We have, instead, become more than a thought too
cosmopolitan. “Ods bodikins!” as Sir Richard Grenville might have said,
“beshrew me, but these things like me not.”
[Illustration: LANTERN HILL, ILFRACOMBE.
[_After W. Daniell, R.A._
]
The study of seaside “holiday amusements,” from the time when the
sea and the countryside themselves palled, and the holiday-maker
ceased to be able to amuse himself, might form an interesting theme
for the social philosopher. Here we can but glance at the subject,
and slightly trace the first footsteps of the nigger-minstrel and
the barrel-organist, down to the German bands who extract unwilling
tribute from a long-suffering public, and the piano-organ men, the
immediate precursors of the “pierrots” aforesaid. It should not be
difficult to become a “pierrot.” You procure a silly suit of white
linen clothes, of no particular fit, that might have been made for a
person four times your own size, whiten your silly face, place on your
idiotic head a foolish sugar-loaf white felt hat, and, with a garnish
of red or black balls, according to fancy, there you are, plus a little
native impudence, fully equipped. I do not love the old burnt-cork
nigger minstrel more, I only dislike him less than this ostensibly
French importation that is already so hackneyed; but I declare I could
welcome the return of even _his_ extravagant figure, beery breath, and
untutored banjo, by way of relief.
But these are, doubtless, the views of an unreasonable recluse. They
are not shared by the holiday crowds, nor by the ruling powers that
control the destinies of Ilfracombe. Entertainers fill a “felt want,”
felt very acutely by the class of people who most resort to the town
in these days, and the governing body of the town develops it along
these lines of least resistance. Only, as I stand, when darkness has
fallen over the summer evening, a little aloof, and look down from some
convenient height upon the garish lights and the blatant merriment,
the black hills seem, to this observer, to frown reproachfully upon
the scene, and the twinkling stars seem like so many bright tear-drops
for the folly of it all. In short, the romantic natural setting of
Ilfracombe is utterly unsuited to this sort of thing. One may deplore,
yet not resent, it at Yarmouth or at Blackpool, where Nature is at her
tamest, but found amid the bold rocks and frowning cliffs of North
Devon, one does both. Nor is there any easy escape anywhere within the
town. The brilliantly-lighted Pavilion glitters across the lawns, under
the Capstone Hill, and across the intervening space you dimly see,
maybe, a jigging figure within, executing a clog-dance. You may even
hear the clatter of his clogs, drowned at last in a very hurricane of
applause.
If you remain, you must, perforce, listen to the celebration of
mysterious sprees, in this wise:
(_Confidentially_)
“I went out on the tiddly-hi.
Oh, fie!
On the sly!
I came home with a head;
I put me boots in the bed
An’ slep’ on the mat instead;
Yus (_proudly_) I’d bin out on the tiddly-iddly,
twiddly, fiddly, hi, hi, HI. (_Crescendo_).
“When you’ve bin out on the tiddly-hi.
Oh, my!
(You try!)
You feel confoundedly cheap, and dry.
‘You’ve bin on the bend,’ the guv’nor said,
‘_You’ve_ bin painting it red.’
_I’d_ bin wanting a rise,
But ’_e_ giv me a nasty surprise;--
For (_dolefully, dimuendo_) I got the push instead;
An’ _that’s_ the result of goin’ out-on-the-blooming--
tiddly, iddly (_but, with returning confidence,
fortissimo_) HI, TI-HI.”
But, wearying for local colour, rather than for more of this sort
of thing, which, after all, is done very much better in the London
music-halls, you resort to the harbour. There indeed--if anywhere--you
look for something characteristically Devonian. But even there the
streets are brilliant till late at night with dining-rooms and
the like--merciful powers, how every one must eat and drink at
Ilfracombe--and the fishermen, if the samples heard by the present
auditor are representative, are pre-eminently the foulest-mouthed to be
found on many a varied coast-line.
I know not what the quiet holiday-maker may find to do at night
at Ilfracombe. He may, at any rate, go to bed, but even there he
is pursued by sounds of revelry. He undresses to the refrain of
tiddly-iddly, diddy-dum-dey, or something equally intellectual, and his
first dreams mingle with the distant, but distinctly audible,
“I ’eard the pitter-patter of ’er feet,
Oh, so neat!
Pitter-patter on the pyvement of the street.
On ’er fyce I tried to look,
An’--good grycious, ’twas the cook!”--
And thus, in the Cockney celebration of mean intrigue, the melody
merges into the mesh of visions.
What, indeed, shall the lonely visitor to Ilfracombe do with himself in
the evenings? He may wander around the walks of the Capstone Parade or
the Tors, and feel himself reduced to a singular loneliness amid the
amorous couples who there most do congregate; or feel not less lonely
in exploring the endless “gardens,” “terraces,” and “crescents,” where
every house is a boarding-house; or, in the finer flavour of euphonious
avoidance of the commonplace truth, “an establishment for the reception
of visitors.” There, alas! he feels himself lonely indeed, as, passing
the endless array of lighted rooms with open windows, he sees the
holiday-making families assembled.
But morning in Ilfracombe is more endurable for such an one. Bustling,
democratic Ilfracombe has, then, none of that illuminated vulgarity
and would-be, shop-soiled wickedness that characterise it overnight.
Nature gets her chance again in the light of day, and in the long,
narrow High Street you see the crowds in pursuit of natural enjoyments.
Some are shopping, some are making for the bathing-coves; others are
going on one or other of the many coaching excursions to “places of
interest in the adjacent country,” as the notices have it. It may be
observed that not yet have motor waggonettes and the like replaced the
coaches and other horsed vehicles at Ilfracombe, and that drivers and
guards still affect the traditional red-coats associated of old with
coaching. More than ever are there popular joys attendant upon one of
these coaching-trips to Berrynarbor, to Combemartin, or Lynton; for in
these fiercely enterprising times the local photographers take views,
day by day, of the laden coaches as they prepare to set out; and so,
at trifling cost, you have a permanent pictorial voucher as to the way
in which you fleeted the sunny hours at Ilfracombe. Not, by any means,
that all hours are sunny, this especial spot in North Devon being
notoriously rainy; but it is at worst but an April-like raininess,
and even as the showers come down, the sun that is to dry them up
smiles through the watery sky. Thus, no one minds the “soft weather” of
Ilfracombe.
It is many, many years since Charles Kingsley wrote of Ilfracombe
in this manner: “Be sure, if you are sea-sick or heart-sick, or
pocket-sick either, there is no pleasanter place of cure than this same
Ilfracombe, with quiet nature and its quiet luxury, its rock fairyland
and its sea walks, its downs and combes, its kind people, and, if
possible, its still kinder climate, which combines the soft warmth
of South Devon with the bracing freshness of the Welsh mountains.”
The climate is the only thing that has not suffered change since that
description was penned. The kind people are, doubtless, at bottom, as
kind as of old--such of them as are Devonshire folk--but they are now
urban (which, despite the etymology of the word, does not now indicate
what is in these times understood by “urbanity”)--and to be urban in
these days is to be, colloquially, “on the make.” Ilfracombe, in fact,
like any other large seaside resort, has turned its scenery and its
climate to commercial account, and, as the local Urban District Council
frankly acknowledges, exists for, and on, the visitor. It is a town of
hotels, lodging-houses, and boarding-houses, few of whose proprietors
can be natives. All the natural features are exploited, and, lest the
visitor be in doubt what there is to see and do, the Council has taken
in hand the task of placing notices in prominent places, indicating
the things to be seen and to be done. Thus, kindly shepherded, you
lose all personal enterprise, and do, like an obedient fellow, what you
are bidden. From these official productions you learn instantly the
features of the place, as thus:
“Capstone Parade and Hill. Bands. _Free._
Victoria Pavilion. Concerts. Morning and Evening. _Free._
Cairn Top. Pleasure Grounds. _Free._
Hillsborough Hill Pleasure Grounds. _Free._
Hele Bay and Beach. _Free._
Chamberscombe and Score Woods. Ideal Picnic Spots. _Free._”
There are, however, in this list so many things that, obviously, could
not be anything else but free, that the ordinary stranger stands struck
with astonishment at the moderation which has not included on the
“free” list such items as the Bristol Channel, the air, and the roads.
But where so many things are trumpeted as “free,” the suspicious person
looks for others that are not; and, sure enough, he discovers them, in--
“Pier, and Lantern Hill. _Toll, 2d._
Tors Walks. _Toll, 2d._”
It is not, of course, the fault of the local authority that the Tors
Walks are subject to toll, for the place is private property; but the
fact is especially unfortunate in a place like Ilfracombe, lacking
sands or foreshore, except the one tiny beach of Wildersmouth Bay.
Nor can you well bathe in the sea without paying for the “privilege.”
The present circumstances of Ilfracombe are largely conditioned (to use
for once a horribly illegitimate verb) by its nearness to the great
manufacturing and seaport towns of Bristol and South Wales. Cardiff,
Swansea, Barry, are all within easy reach by steamboat, only twenty
miles across Channel, and the excursion to Ilfracombe from all these
places is a favourite one. At any time in the summer, from four to six
very large steamers from these places, lying in the harbour, form a
familiar sight, and the “white funnel” and the “red funnel” steamers
are very fine, commodious and well-found boats. They bring an immense
concourse of people into the town, some to stay, but the majority for
only a few hours. Compared, of course, with such places as Margate or
Ramsgate, these numbers would not be remarkable, but then you have to
remember the difference in the sizes of the respective places. Margate
has a reputation for vulgarity. All classes resort there, and so they
do here. Ilfracombe has hotels as expensive on the one hand, or as
cheap on the other, as you could wish, and, I doubt not, there are
cultured visitors to be discovered in them. “Discovered” is, indeed,
precisely the word, for they would require some seeking amid the mass.
It is the commonest of errors to think vulgarity is the especial
attribute of the poorer, or even of the middle classes. It is rather a
condition of mind than of pocket, and resides in every social stratum.
It is only the snob who thinks the poor are by reason of their poverty,
vulgar, or the rich, by favour of their wealth, refined. There are
vulgar millionaires and cultured crossing-sweepers, for all the world
to see. But the intellectually vulgar seem to select Ilfracombe, above
all places on the North Devon coast, as their habitat. Originally
a very delightful place, they are reducing it to their own level,
aided and abetted by the local building fury, in which landowners
are unwittingly, in destroying the natural beauties of the locality,
engaged in the antique game of killing the goose that lays the golden
eggs. To descend from the language of hyperbole, they are erecting tall
terraces of houses on all the outskirts, with the result, already seen,
of shutting out the views over sea and cliffs; and with other results,
presently to accrue, that the town will be overbuilt and even the
vulgarian miss the vanished rustic graces.
It is amusing to note how antipathetic are those who resort by choice
to Lynmouth and Clovelly to those others who find in Ilfracombe
everything to satisfy them. To make excursion from Ilfracombe to
Lynton or Clovelly and back in half a day forms an easy and delightful
trip, but to _see_ those places and look upon them with an amused
and indulgent eye is sufficient for your typical Ilfracombe visitor.
Such an one would consider it impossible to stay there. I heard
such a critic describe Lynmouth as an ’ole (or was it “a nole”?).
Geographically, of course, she was correct, for Lynmouth, by the
seashore, is several hundred feet below the summit of Holiday Hill;
but of course we all know that a ’ole (or even a hole) is more, in
this conjunction, than a mere geographical expression. It was a term
of contempt, in this instance, for a place without open-air concerts
and minstrels, a place where you are reduced to amusing yourself; a
horrible fate when you find yourself so empty of entertainment to
yourself. _Per contra_, those who stay by choice at Clovelly and
Lynmouth, and adventure for half a day to sample Ilfracombe, have been
known to describe it, in their way, as “vulgah.” But, since they cannot
stay to see Ilfracombe at night, if they wish to return that day to the
place of their choice, they cannot know how vulgar it can be.
This is not to say that Ilfracombe has lacked due recognition. It has
been patronised by the most distinguished, and it is in recognition
of this fact that what was once the “Britannia” Hotel, down by the
harbour, is now nothing less than the “Royal Britannia.”
[Illustration:
_E. D. Percival_]
ILFRACOMBE.
[_Ilfracombe._
]
There are great numbers of amiable, but characterless, people, who
have so little individuality or so much exaggerated loyalty for
Royal personages and reverent respect for the aristocracy, that the
well-advertised fact of those bright and shining ones having visited
this resort, that, and the other is sufficient to make the fortune of
those places. Many years ago, the then Prince of Wales made holiday at
Ilfracombe, and the local guide-books have never allowed visitors to
forget the fact, even although it was when he was a boy. He went out
riding a pony known afterwards to fame as “Bobby.” Alas! poor Bobby.
As the guide-books have cleverly discovered, even “the fact of
having carried a Royal personage did not render Bobby immortal, and
his death deprived Ilfracombe of an attraction to its visitors, and a
large income to its owner.” It was a sorry thing for Bobby that ever
he carried a Prince of Wales, for, ever afterwards, he was condemned
to the drudgery of long, long days carrying the children of the lower
middle (and super-loyal) classes. To seat little Frankie or little
Cissie upon that sanctified pony was, in some vague way, to come into
touch with the Royal family; to give him a carrot was equivalent to
(but less expensive than) presenting a purse to a Princess at a charity
meeting. Bobby was transfigured, like the objects sung by the satirist:
“A clod--a piece of orange-peel--
An end of a cigar--
Once trod on by a princely heel,
How beautiful they are!”
But the poor animal’s glory was hardly earned. Loyalty, expressed in
terms of an unending burden of children, at last wore him out, and he
died.
For a loving list of the great who have visited the town, you must
please to look in those guide-books for yourselves, but we learn that
“no year passes without some distinguished personage treading the
ground of beautiful Ilfracombe, and giving another start to a new
chapter of the town’s progress as a fashionable resort.” That remains
true; I, myself, was there last year.
The old parish church has of late been little altered. It stands high
at the west end of the principal street, midway between the deeps of
the harbour and the alpine heights on which the railway terminus is
placed, and its approach is by a steep flight of stone stairs.
There is something of almost every architectural period in Ilfracombe
church, but the workmanship was ever of so homely a character that the
styles all blend into one rude mass. The tower ascends in a singular
diminishing fashion. In the large and crowded churchyard you notice
most distinctly, as you are indeed intended to do, a stone recording
no fewer than nine centenarians who lived and died at Ilfracombe
between 1784 and 1897. This by way of advertisement of the astonishing
salubrity of the place; but an inhabitant of Brighton chancing this way
would be amused. At Brighton there are generally to be found half a
dozen hale and hearty centenarians.
Odd names are not infrequent; for example, “Humphrey Rottenberry,” and
Ann of the same name, who died aged 94, and thus nearly became one of
those witnesses to the supreme value of the Ilfracombe air. Herapaths,
too, abound.
The interior of the church is something of an architectural puzzle,
owing to the additions made in succeeding ages. The grotesque
thirteenth-century stone corbels supporting the waggon-roof and its
array of wooden angels, are particularly interesting. They form a
strange assemblage of monsters, in which some see only a freakish
imagination; but many of them are illustrations of legends once
current in this romantic shire. Prominent among them are the lean
cow, Chiche-vache, and the well-conditioned cow, Bycorn: the first
in so sorry a condition because her only food, according to the old
story, was good women; the second so plump by reason of her diet being
exclusively good and long-suffering husbands--and such, we all know,
abound.
[Illustration: ILFRACOMBE CHURCH-TOWER.]
Among the curious monuments of the Parmynter family is a tablet with an
epitaph little, if anything, less than blasphemous in modern thought,
to Katherine Parmynter. Of her we read:
“Scarce ever was Innocence and Prudence so lovely: But had you
known her conversation, you would have said she was the daughter of
Eve before she tasted the apple. A servant of Christ Jesus sought
her to wife; but his master thought him unworthy, and soe tooke her
unto Himself.”
With much more to the same effect. This crown and glory of her sex died
in 1660.
The monument of Captain Richard Bowen, who fell at Teneriffe, in the
service of his country, has a lengthy inscription, which is, however,
not unworthy of being copied here, as a very full-blown example of the
florid patriotic style that once obtained:
Sacred to the Memory
of RICHARD BOWEN, Esq.,
Captain of His Majesty’s Ship, the _Terpsichore_
This Monument was erected by his afflicted Father.
Of Manners affable and liberal, in private Life:
He was beloved by his Family, and respected by his Friends
He was generous, humane, and modest,
And they who knew him best esteemed him most
By the vigorous Exertion of superior Abilities
with which Providence had blest him,
He overcame Difficulties surmountable by no common Powers:
And raised himself to Eminence in a Profession where Eminence
is most difficult.
Amongst distinguished Characters he was himself distinguished
In the Service of his King and Country he was faithful, vigilant,
and zealous:
In the Day of Peril he gave Proofs
of the most daring Intrepidity corrected by the coolest Judgment.
Full of Resources, Spirit, and the most decisive Activity, he at
once humbled the Foe and saved the Friend.
The Post of Danger, to which he was so often appointed,
unequivocally attests his superior Courage, Abilities, and
Patriotism,
Of a life thus spent, and spending, in the sacred Cause of his
King and Country
The Career was stopt, in the unfortunate Enterprize at Teneriffe,
(under the Command of Rear-Admiral _Sir Horatio Nelson_, K.B.)
where he fell!
Yet full in the Path of his Duty and of Glory,
at the Head of his own Ship’s Company;
on the 24th of July 1797; in the 37th Year of his Age.
Of such a Man and such a Relation it were unjust to say less:
whilst his Friends are soothed by the pleasing Reflection
that as long as private Worth or public Virtue command Respect
and Veneration,
He will live in the Remembrance of his Family
and the Regret of a grateful Country.
... _Usque post era
Crescet laude recens_ ...