attendance on his young master, John Granville. Sir Beville’s son
had been instrumental in the return of the king, and had received
from Charles II. largess of money, great offices, and the earldom
of Bath. Among other places of trust, he was appointed Governor
of the Garrison at Plymouth. There Payne received the appointment
of Halberdier of the Guns, and the king, who held him in singular
favour, commanded his portrait to be painted by the Court artist, Sir
Godfrey Kneller.[86] The fate of this picture was one of great
vicissitude. It hung in state for some years in the great gallery at
Stowe; thence, when that mansion was dismantled at the death of the
Earl of Bath, it was removed to Penheale, another manor-house of the
Granvilles, in Cornwall; but it ceased to be highly esteemed, from
ignorance of the people and the oblivion of years, insomuch so that
when Gilbert, the Cornish historian, travelled through the county to
collect materials for his work, he discovered the portrait rolled up
in an empty room, and described by the farmer’s wife as “a carpet with
the effigy of a large man upon it.” It was a gift to her husband, she
said, from the landlord’s steward, and she was glad to sell it as she
did for £8! When Gilbert died his collection of antique curiosities
was sold by auction at Devonport, where he lived, and this portrait
of Payne, which had been engraved as the frontispiece to the second
volume of his “History of Cornwall,” was bought by a stranger who
was passing through the town, and who had strolled in to look at the
sale, at the price of forty guineas. The value had been apparently
enhanced by oil, and varnish, and frame. This stranger proved to be a
connoisseur in paintings: he conveyed it to London, and there it was
ascertained to be one of the masterpieces of Kneller; it was resold
for the enormous sum of £800. This picture, or even the engraving in
Gilbert’s work, reveals still to the eye the Giant of Old Stowe, “in
his natural presentment” as he lived. There he stands before the eye,
a stalwart soldier of the guard. One hand is placed upon a cannon, and
the other wields the tall halberd of his rank and office as yeoman
of the guns. By a strange accident this very weapon[87] and a large
flask or flagon,[88] sheathed in wicker-work, which is said to have
held “Antony’s allowance,” a gallon of wine, and which is placed in
the picture on the ground at his feet--both these relics of the time
and the man are now in the possession of the writer of this article,
in the Vicarage House, near Stowe. It was in Plymouth garrison, and
in his later days, that an event is recorded of Payne which testifies
that even after long years “his eye had not grown dim, neither was his
natural force abated.” The Revolution had come and gone, and William
and Mary had been enthroned. At the mess-table of the regiment
in garrison, on the anniversary of the day when Charles I. had been
beheaded, a sub-officer of Payne’s own rank had ordered a calf’s head
to be served up in a “William-and-Mary dish.” This, in those days of
new devotion to the house of Hanover, was a coarse and common annual
mockery of the beheaded king; and delf, with the faces of these two
sovereigns for ornament, was a valued ware (the writer has one large
dish). When Payne entered the room, his comrades pointed out to him the
insulting and practical jest--to him, too, most offensive, for he was
a Stuart man. With a ready and indignant gesture he threw out of the
window the symbolic platter and its contents.
[Illustration: FIG. 3
ANTONY PAYNE’S FLAGON (P. 120)]
A fierce quarrel ensued and a challenge, and at break of day Payne
and his antagonist fought with swords on the ramparts. After a strong
contest--for the offender was a master of his weapon--Payne ran his
adversary through the sword-arm and disabled him. He is said to have
accompanied the successful thrust with the taunting shout, “There’s
sauce for thy calf’s head!” When the strong man at last began to bow
himself down at the approach of one stronger than he, the Giant of
Stowe obtained leave to retire. He returned to Stratton, his native
place, and found shelter and repose in the very house and chamber
wherein he was born.
After his death, neither the door nor the stairs would afford egress
for the large and coffined corpse. The joists had to be sawn through,
and the floor lowered with rope and pulley, to enable the Giant to pass
out towards his mighty grave. Relays of strong bier-men carried him
to his rest, and the bells of the tower, by his own express desire,
“chimed him home.” He was buried outside the southern wall of Stratton
church.[89] When the writer was a boy, the sexton one day broke, by
accident, through the side wall of a vast but empty sepulchre. Many
went to see the sight, and there, marked by a stone in the wall, was a
vault, like the tomb of the Anakim, large enough in these days for the
interment of three or four of our degenerate dead. But it was empty,
desolate, and bare. No mammoth bones nor mysterious relics of the
unknown dead. A massive heap of silent dust!
FOOTNOTES:
[77] From _All the Year Round_, vol. xvi. pp. 247-249. 1866. See
Appendix E.
[78] See Appendix B.
[79] Compare Hawker’s poem, “Sir Beville--the Gate Song of Stowe.” See
also Appendix E_a_.
[80] It is said locally that Antony’s stocking would hold a peck of
wheat.
[81] C. S. Gilbert in his “History of Cornwall.”
[82]
“Ride! ride! with red spur, there is death in delay,
’Tis a race for dear life with the devil;
If dark Cromwell prevail, and the king must give way,
This earth is no place for Sir Beville.”
_The Gate Song of Stowe._
[83] There is a description of this battle in Q’s novel, “The Splendid
Spur,” one of the most vivid and stirring battle pictures in modern
fiction.
[84] In a letter dated September 21, 1866, to his brother-in-law, the
late Mr. John Sommers James, Hawker says, “He (Antony Payne) was an
Ancestor of Captain Parsons and Sam. He was going to bury your Great
Grandfather at Stamford Hill alive, wounded among the other Rebels, but
he spared him, and, as I have stated, his ‘descendants are among the
most conspicuous of the Inhabitants of Stratton to this day.’”
[85] The authenticity of this letter is doubtful. If spurious, however,
it is interesting as an example of Hawker’s Chattertonian propensities
and his skill in catching the antique style. (See Appendix E.)
[86] Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723), a German by birth, was Court
painter to five English sovereigns, Charles II., James II., William
III., Anne, and George I. He came to England in 1675, and if Charles
II., who died in 1685, commanded him to paint the portrait of Antony
Payne, it must have been between those years that the picture was
executed. According to the dedication under Gilbert’s engraving,
however, it was done at the expense of the Earl of Bath. The Royal
Institution of Cornwall, Truro, has published a pamphlet (price 2_d._)
entitled “A Short Account of Anthony Payne, the Cornish Giant, and the
History of his Portrait.” This states that the picture was painted
in 1680. “Ten reigning sovereigns in all sat to Kneller for their
portraits. His sitters included almost all persons of rank, wealth, or
eminence, in his day, and examples of his brush may be found in nearly
every historic mansion or palace in the kingdom.... Kneller can best be
studied at Hampton Court” (“Dictionary of National Biography”).
[87] In the letter to Mr. J. Sommers James quoted above Hawker refers
to Antony Payne as “owner of the spear your brother Henry gave me years
ago.”
[88] This flagon was given by Mr. Hawker to Mr. Thomas Shephard, of
Stratton, whose daughter, Mrs. William Shephard, of Barnstaple, has
presented it to Truro Museum. (See illustration facing p. 14.) The
Shephards are descendants of Antony Payne, and Mr. William Shephard has
in his possession a pewter shaving cup that belonged to Antony’s father.
[89] Gilbert says “in the north aisle.” Possibly Hawker altered this
in accordance with the superstition mentioned on p. 21. See end of
Appendix E.
CRUEL COPPINGER[90]
A record of the wild, strange, lawless characters that roamed along
the north coast of Cornwall during the middle and latter years of the
last century would be a volume full of interest for the student of
local history and semi-barbarous life. Therein would be found depicted
the rough sea-captain, half smuggler, half pirate, who ran his lugger
by beacon-light into some rugged cove among the massive headlands of
the shore, and was relieved of his freight by the active and diligent
“country-side.” This was the name allotted to that chosen troop of
native sympathisers who were always ready to rescue and conceal the
stores that had escaped the degradation of the gauger’s brand. Men
yet alive relate with glee how they used to rush at some well-known
signal to the strand, their small active horses shaved from forelock
to tail, smoother than any modern clip, well soaped or greased from
head to foot, so as to slip easily out of any hostile grasp; and then,
with a double keg or pack slung on to every nag by a single girth,
away went the whole herd, led by some swift well-trained mare, to the
inland cave or rocky hold, the shelter of their spoil. There was a
famous dun mare--she lived to the age of thirty-seven, and died within
legal memory--almost human in her craft and fidelity, who is said to
have led a bevy of loaded pack-horses, unassisted by driver or guide,
from Bossinney Haun to Roughtor Point. But beside these travellers by
sea, there would be found ever and anon, in some solitary farmhouse
inaccessible by wheels, and only to be approached by some treacherous
foot-path along bog and mire, a strange and nameless guest--often a
foreigner in language and apparel--who had sought refuge with the
native family, and who paid in strange but golden coins for his shelter
and food; some political or private adventurer, perchance, to whom
secrecy and concealment were safety and life, and who more than once
lived and died in his solitary hiding-place on the moor.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF GALSHAM, once the home of Cruel Coppinger.]
There is a bedstead of carved oak still in existence at Trevotter--a
farm among the midland hills--whereon for long years an unknown
stranger slept. None ever knew his nation or name. He occupied a
solitary room, and only emerged now and then for a walk in the evening
air. An oaken chest of small size contained his personal possessions
and gold of foreign coinage, which he paid into the hands of his host
with the solemn charge to conceal it until he was gone thence or
dead--a request which the simple-hearted people faithfully fulfilled.
His linen was beautifully fine, and his garments richly embroidered.
After some time he sickened and died, refusing firmly the visits of
the local clergyman, and bequeathing to the farmer the contents of
his chest. He wrote some words, they said, for his own tombstone,
which, however, were not allowed to be engraved, but they were simply
these--“H. De R. Equees & Ecsul.” The same sentence was found, after
his death, carved on the ledge of his bed, and the letters are, or
lately were, still traceable on the mouldering wood.
But among the legends of local renown a prominent place has always been
allotted to a personage whose name has descended to our times linked
to a weird and graphic epithet--“Cruel Coppinger.” There was a ballad
in existence within human memory which was founded on the history of
this singular man, but of which the first verse[91] only can now be
recovered. It runs--
“Will you hear of the Cruel Coppinger?
He came from a foreign kind;
He was brought to us by the salt-water,
He was carried away by the wind.”
His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was signalised by a terrific
hurricane. The storm came up Channel from the south-west. The shore and
the heights were dotted with watchers for wreck--those daring gleaners
of the harvest of the sea. It was just such a scene as is sought for in
the proverb of the West--
“A savage sea and a shattering wind,
The cliffs before, and the gale behind.”
As suddenly as if a phantom ship had loomed in the distance, a strange
vessel of foreign rig was discovered in fierce struggle with the waves
of Harty Race. She was deeply laden or waterlogged, and rolled heavily
in the trough of the sea, nearing the shore as she felt the tide.
Gradually the pale and dismayed faces of the crew became visible, and
among them one man of herculean height and mould, who stood near the
wheel with a speaking-trumpet in his hand. The sails were blown to
rags, and the rudder was apparently lashed for running ashore. But the
suck of the current and the set of the wind were too strong for the
vessel, and she appeared to have lost her chance of reaching Harty
Pool. It was seen that the tall seaman, who was manifestly the skipper
of the boat, had cast off his garments, and stood prepared upon the
deck to encounter a battle with the surges for life and rescue. He
plunged over the bulwarks, and arose to sight buffeting the seas. With
stalwart arm and powerful chest he made his way through the surf, rode
manfully from billow to billow, until with a bound he stood at last
upright upon the sand, a fine stately semblance of one of the old
Vikings of the northern seas. A crowd of people had gathered from the
land, on horseback and on foot, women as well as men, drawn together
by the tidings of a probable wreck. Into their midst, and to their
astonished dismay, rushed the dripping stranger: he snatched from a
terrified old dame her red Welsh cloak, cast it loosely around him, and
bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young damsel, who had ridden
her father’s horse down to the beach to see the sight. He grasped her
bridle, and, shouting aloud in some foreign language, urged on the
double-laden animal into full speed, and the horse naturally took his
homeward way. Strange and wild were the outcries that greeted the
rider, Miss Dinah Hamlyn, when, thus escorted, she reached her father’s
door in the very embrace of a wild, rough, tall man, who announced
himself by a name--never afterwards forgotten in those parts--as
Coppinger, a Dane. He arrayed himself without the smallest scruple in
the Sunday suit of his host. The long-skirted coat of purple velveteen
with large buttons, the embroidered vest, and nether garments to match,
became him well. So thought the lady of his sudden choice. She, no
doubt, forgave his onslaught on her and on her horse for the compliment
it conveyed. He took his immediate place at the family board, and on
the settle by the hearth, as though he had been the most welcome and
long-invited guest in the land. Strange to say, the vessel disappeared
immediately he had left her deck, nor was she ever after traced by land
or sea. At first the stranger subdued all the fierce phases of his
savage character, and appeared deeply grateful for all the kindness he
received at the hands of his simple-hearted host. Certain letters which
he addressed to persons of high name in Denmark were, or were alleged
to be, duly answered, and remittances from his friends were supposed
to be received. He announced himself as of a wealthy family and
superior rank in his native country, and gave out that it was to avoid
a marriage with a titled lady that he had left his father’s house and
gone to sea. All this recommended him to the unsuspecting Dinah, whose
affections he completely won. Her father’s sudden illness postponed
their marriage. The good old man died to be spared much evil to come.
The Dane succeeded almost naturally to the management and control
of the house, and the widow held only an apparent influence in
domestic affairs. He soon persuaded the daughter to become his wife,
and immediately afterwards his evil nature, so long smouldering, broke
out like a wild beast uncaged. All at once the house became the den
and refuge of every lawless character on the coast. All kinds of wild
uproar and reckless revelry appalled the neighbourhood day and night.
It was discovered that an organised band of desperadoes, smugglers,
wreckers, and poachers were embarked in a system of bold adventure, and
that “Cruel Coppinger” was their captain. In those days, and in that
unknown and far-away region, the peaceable inhabitants were totally
unprotected. There was not a single resident gentleman of property or
weight in the entire district; and the clergyman, quite insulated from
associates of his own standing, was cowed into silence and submission.
No revenue officer durst exercise vigilance west of the Tamar; and to
put an end to all such surveillance at once, it was well known that one
of the “Cruel” gang had chopped off a gauger’s head on the gunwale of a
boat, and carried the body off to sea.[92]
Amid such scenes Coppinger pursued his unlawful impulses without check
or restraint. Strange vessels began to appear at regular intervals on
the coast, and signals were duly flashed from the headlands to lead
them into the safest creek or cove. If the ground-sea were too strong
to allow them to run in, they anchored outside the surf, and boats
prepared for that service were rowed or hauled to and fro, freighted
with illegal spoil. Amongst these vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner,
soon became ominously conspicuous. She bore the name of the Black
Prince, and was the private property of the Dane, built to his own
order in a dockyard of Denmark. She was for a long time the chief
terror of the Cornish Channel. Once with Coppinger on board, when under
chase, she led a revenue cutter into an intricate channel near the Gull
Rock, where, from knowledge of the bearings, the Black Prince escaped
scathless, while the king’s vessel perished with all on board. In those
times, if any landsman became obnoxious to Coppinger’s men, he was
either seized by violence or by craft, and borne away handcuffed to
the deck of the Black Prince; where, to save his life, he had to enrol
himself, under fearful oaths, as one of the crew. In 1835, an old man
of the age of ninety-seven related to the writer that, when a youth, he
had been so abducted, and after two years’ service had been ransomed by
his friends with a large sum. “And all,” said the old man, very simply,
“because I happened to see one man kill another, and they thought I
should mention it.”
Amid such practices ill-gotten gold began to flow and ebb in the hands
of Coppinger. At one time he chanced to hold enough money to purchase
a freehold farm bordering on the sea. When the day of transfer arrived,
he and one of his followers appeared before the astonished lawyer with
bags filled with various kinds of foreign coin. Dollars and ducats,
doubloons and pistoles, guineas--the coinage of every foreign country
with a seaboard--were displayed on the table. The man of law at first
demurred to such purchase-money; but after some controversy, and an
ominous oath or two of “that or none,” the lawyer agreed to take it
by weight. The document bearing Coppinger’s name is still extant.
His signature is traced in stern, bold, fierce characters, as if
every letter had been stabbed upon the parchment with the point of a
dirk. Underneath his autograph, also in his own writing, is the word
“Thuro.”[93]
Long impunity increased Coppinger’s daring. There were certain byways
and bridle-roads along the fields over which he exercised exclusive
control. Although every one had a perfect right by law to use these
ways, he issued orders that no man was to pass over them by night, and
accordingly from that hour none ever did. They were called “Coppinger’s
Tracks.” They all converged at a headland which had the name of
Steeple Brink. Here the cliff sheered off, and stood three hundred
feet of perpendicular height, a precipice of smooth rock toward the
beach, with an overhanging face one hundred feet down from the brow.
There was a hollow entrance into the cliff, like a huge cathedral
door, crowned and surrounded with natural Saxon arches, curved by the
strata of native stone. Within was an arched and vaulted cave, vast
and gloomy; it ran a long way into the heart of the land, and was as
large and tall--so the country-people said--as Kilkhampton church.
This stronghold was inaccessible by natural means, and could only be
approached by a cable-ladder lowered from above and made fast below
on a projecting crag. It received the name of “Coppinger’s Cave,” and
was long the scene of fierce and secret revelry that would be utterly
inconceivable to the educated mind of the nineteenth century. Here
sheep were tethered to the rock, and fed on stolen hay and corn till
their flesh was required for a feast: kegs of brandy and hollands
were piled around; chests of tea; and iron-bound sea-chests contained
the chattels and the revenues of the Coppinger royalty of the sea.
No man ever essayed the perilous descent into the cavern except the
captain’s own troop, and their loyalty was secured, not only by their
participation in his crimes, but by a terrible oath.
The terror linked with Coppinger’s name throughout the coast was so
extreme that the people themselves, wild and lawless as they were,
submitted to his sway as though he had been the lord of the soil
and they his vassals. Such a household as Coppinger’s was of course
far from happy or calm. Although when his wife’s father died he had
insensibly acquired possession of the stock and farm, there remained
in the hands of the widow a considerable amount of money as her dower.
This he obtained from the poor helpless woman by instalments; and when
pretext and entreaty alike failed, he resorted to a novel mode of levy.
He fastened his wife to the pillar of her oak bedstead, and called her
mother into the room. He then explained that it was his purpose to
flog Dinah with the sea-cat, which he flourished in his hand, until
her mother had transferred to him such an amount as he required of
her reserved property. This deed of atrocity he repeated until he had
utterly exhausted the widow’s store. He had a favourite mare, so fierce
and indomitable that none but Coppinger himself could venture on her
back, and so fleet and strong that he owed his escape from more than
one menacing peril by her speed and endurance. The clergyman had spoken
above his breath of the evil doings in the cave, and had thus aroused
his wrath and vengeance.[94] On a certain day he was jogging homeward
on his parish cob, and had reached the middle of a wide and desolate
heath. All at once he heard behind him the clattering of horse-hoofs
and a yell such as might have burst from the throat of the visible
demon when he hurled the battle on the ancient saint. It was Cruel
Coppinger with his double-thonged whip, mounted on his terrible mare.
Down came the fearful scourge on his victim’s shuddering shoulders.
Escape was impossible. The poor parson knew too well the difference
between his own ambling galloway, that never essayed any swifter pace
than a jog-trot, and that awful steed behind him with footsteps like
the storm. Circling, doubling like a hare, twisting aside, crying aloud
for mercy,--all was vain. He arrived at last at his own house, striped
like a zebra, and as he rushed in at the gate he heard the parting
scoff of his assailant, “There, parson, I have paid my tithe in full;
never mind the receipt!”
It was on the self-same animal that Coppinger performed another freak.
He had passed a festive evening at a farmhouse, and was about to take
his departure, when he spied at the corner of the hearth a little old
tailor of the country-side, who went from house to house to exercise
his calling. He was a half-witted, harmless old fellow, and answered
to the name of Uncle Tom Tape.
“Ha, Uncle Tom!” cried Coppinger; “we both travel the same road, and I
don’t mind giving thee a hoist behind me on the mare.”
The old man cowered in the settle. He would not encumber the
gentleman,--was unaccustomed to ride such a spirited horse. But all
his excuses were overborne. The other guests, entering into the joke,
assisted the trembling old man to mount the crupper of the capering
mare. Off she bounded, and Uncle Tom, with his arms cast with the
strong gripe of terror around his bulky companion, held on like grim
death. Unbuckling his belt, Coppinger passed it around Uncle Tom’s
thin haggard body, and buckled it on his own front. When he had firmly
secured his victim, he loosened his reins, and urged the mare with
thong and spur into a furious gallop. Onward they rushed till they fled
past the tailor’s own door at the roadside, where his startled wife,
who was on the watch, afterwards declared “she caught sight of her
husband clinging on to a rainbow.” Loud and piteous were the outcries
of Tailor Tom, and earnest his shrieks of entreaty that he might be
told where he was to be carried that night, and for what doom he had
been buckled on. At last, in a relaxation of their pace going up a
steep hill, Coppinger made him a confidential communication.
“I have been,” he said, “under a long promise to the devil that I would
bring him a tailor to make and mend for him, poor man; and as sure as I
breathe, Uncle Tom, I mean to keep my word to-night!”
The agony of terror produced by this revelation produced such
convulsive spasms, that at last the belt gave way, and the tailor fell
off like a log among the gorse at the roadside. There he was found next
morning in a semi-delirious state, muttering at intervals, “No, no; I
never will. Let him mend his breeches with his own drag-chain, as the
saying is. I will never so much as thread a needle for Coppinger nor
his friend.”
One boy was the only fruit of poor Dinah’s marriage with the Dane. But
his birth brought neither gladness nor solace to his mother’s miserable
hearth. He was fair and golden-haired, and had his father’s fierce,
flashing eyes. But though perfectly well formed and healthful, he was
born deaf and dumb. He was mischievous and ungovernable from his birth.
His cruelty to animals, birds, and to other children was intense. Any
living thing that he could torture appeared to yield him delight. With
savage gestures and jabbering moans he haunted the rocks along the
shore, and seemed like some uncouth creature cast up by the sea. When
he was only six years old he was found one day upon the brink of a tall
cliff, bounding with joy, and pointing downward towards the beach with
convulsions of delight. There, mangled by the fall and dead, they found
the body of a neighbour’s child of his own age, who was his frequent
companion, and whom, as it was inferred, he had drawn towards the steep
precipice, and urged over by stratagem or force. The spot where this
occurred was ever afterwards his favourite haunt. He would draw the
notice of any passer-by to the place, and then point downward where
the murdered child was found with fierce exultant mockery. It was a
saying evermore in the district, that, as a judgment on his father’s
cruelty, his child had been born without a human soul. He lived to be
the pestilent scourge of the neighbourhood.