cottages of Rockbeare, and the depressing outlying houses of Honiton
Clyst, situated on the little river Clyst, with the first of the
characteristic old red sandstone church-towers of the South Devon
looking down upon the road from the midst of embowering foliage. Then
the squalid east end of Exeter and the long street of Heavitree, where
Exeter burnt her martyrs, come into view, and there, away in front, with
its skyline of towers and spires, is Exeter, displayed in profile for
the admiration of all who have journeyed these many miles to where she
sits in regal grandeur upon her hill that descends until its feet are
bathed in the waters of her godmother, the Exe. Her streets are steep
and her site dignified, although it is partly the level range of the
surrounding country, rather than an intrinsic height, which confers that
look of majesty which all travellers have noticed. The ancient city
rises impressive in contrast with the water-meadows, rather than by
reason of actual measurement. Wayfarers approaching from any direction
brace themselves and draw deep breaths preparatory to scaling the
streets, which, at a distance, assume abrupt vistas. Villas, with
spacious gardens, and snug, prebendal-looking houses, eloquent of a
thousand a year and cellars full of old port, clothe the lower slopes of
this rising ground, to give place, by degrees, to streets which, as the
traveller advances, grow narrower and more crooked, their lines of
houses becoming ever older, more picturesque, and loftier as they near
the heart of the city. Modernity inhabits the environs, antiquity is
seated, impressive, in the centre, where, on a plateau, closely hemmed
in from the bustling, secular life of the streets, rises the sombre mass
of the cathedral, the pride of this western land.
XLIII
Exeter is called by those who know her best and love her most the ‘Queen
City of the West.’ To historians she is perhaps better epithetically
remembranced as the ‘Ever Faithful,’ loyal and staunch through the good
fortune or adversity of the causes for which she has, with closed and
guarded gates, held fast the Key of the West. She has suffered much at
different periods of her history for this loyalty; from the time when,
declaring against the usurpation of Stephen, her citizens fought and
starved within the walls; through the centuries to the time of Perkin
Warbeck, the impostor, and so on to the Civil War between King and
Parliament, when the citizens were more loyal than their rulers and were
disarmed and kept under surveillance until the Royalists came and took
the place, themselves to be dispossessed a few years later.
[Sidenote: _THE KEY OF THE WEST_]
Loyalty, tried for so many centuries at so great a cost, broke down
finally in 1688, and the city gates were opened to the Prince of Orange.
Had James been less of a bigot, and had his hell-hounds, Jeffreys and
Kirke, been animated with less zeal, who knows what these Devonshire men
would have done? Possibly it may be said that William’s fleet would,
under such circumstances, never have found its way into Tor Bay, nor
that historic landing have been consummated at Brixham. True enough; but
granting the landing, the proclamation at Newton Abbot, and the advance
to the gates of Exeter, how then if James had been less of the stubborn
oak and more of the complaisant willow? Can it be supposed that they
would have welcomed this frigid, hawk-nosed foreigner of the cold eye
and silent tongue? And if the Dutchman and his mynheers had been
ill-received at Exeter, what then? Take the map and study it for answer.
You will see that the ‘Ever Faithful’ stands at the Gates of the West.
The traveller always has had to enter these portals if he would go in
either direction, and the more imperative was this necessity to those
coming from West to East. Even now the traveller by railway passes
through Exeter to reach further Devon and Cornwall, equally with him who
fares the high-road.
What chance, then, of success would a foreign expedition command were
its progress barred at this point? Less mobile than a single traveller,
or party of mere travellers, it could not well evade the struggle for a
passage by taking another route. William and his following might, in
such an event, have at great risk forced the passage of the treacherous
Exe estuary, but even supposing that feat achieved, there is difficult
country beyond, before the road to London is reached. To the northwards
of his march from Brixham lies Dartmoor and its outlying hills, and let
those who have explored those inhospitable wastes weigh the chances of
a force marching through the hostile countryside in the depth of winter
to outflank Exeter.
But all hope for James’s cause was gone, and although the spirits of the
ambitious William sank when, on entering the streets of Exeter, he was
only received with a chilly curiosity, he was not to know--for how could
that most stony of champions read into the hearts of these people?--that
their generous enthusiasm for faith and freedom was quite crushed out of
existence by the bloody work of three years before, when the peasantry
saw with horror the progress of the fiendish Jeffreys marked by a line
of gibbets; when they could not fare forth upon the highways and byeways
without presently arriving at some Golgotha rubricated with the
dishonoured remains of one or other of their fellows; and when many a
cottage had its empty chair, the occupants dead or sold into a slavery
worse than death.
The people received William with a well-simulated lack of interest,
because they knew what would be their portion were he defeated and James
again triumphant. They could not have cherished any personal affection
for the Prince of Orange, but can only, at the best of it, have had an
impersonal regard for him as a champion of their liberties; and of
helping such champions they had already acquired a bitter surfeit. Thus
it was that the back of loyalty was broken, and Exeter, for once in her
story, belied her motto, _Semper Fidelis_, the gift of Queen Elizabeth.
[Sidenote: _THE CITY SWORD-BEARER_]
The gifts that loyalty has brought Exeter may soon be enumerated, for
they comprise just a number of charters conferred by a long line of
sovereigns; an Elizabethan motto; a portrait of his sister, presented by
Charles the Second; a Sword of Honour, and an old hat, the gifts of
Henry the Seventh in recognition of Exeter’s stand against Perkin
Warbeck in 1497. Against these parchments, this picture, and the
miscellaneous items of motto, sword, and old hat, there are centuries of
lighting and of spoliation on account of loyalty to be named. It seems a
very one-sided affair, even though the old hat be a Cap of Maintenance
and heraldically notable. Among the maces and the loving-cups, and all
the civic regalia of Exeter, these objects are yet to be seen. Old
headgear will wear out, and so the Cap, in its present form, dates back
only to the time of James the First. It is by no means a gossamer,
weighing, as it does, seven pounds. As may be seen by the accompanying
illustration, it is a broad-brimmer of the most pronounced type.
The crown fixed upon the point of the sword-sheath belongs to the same
period, while a guinea of the same reign may be seen let into the metal
of the pommel. On occasions of State, at Exeter, this sword is carried
before the Mayor and Corporation by their official Sword-Bearer.
[Illustration: THE EXETER CITY SWORD-BEARER.]
The dignified effect of the affair, however, is generally spoiled by
the commonplace black kid gloves worn by him, and by his everyday
clothes visible under the official robes, which can be seen in the
illustration.
Of late the Cap has been replaced by one built on the lines of those
worn by the Yeomen of the Guard in the Tower of London, the old Cap
being thought too historical to be any longer exposed to the danger of
being worn, while possibly some feelings of humanity towards the
Sword-Bearer may have dictated the replacing of the seven-pound hat by
something lighter. It is now preserved in the Guildhall, where it may be
seen by curious visitors.
XLIV
It is a relief to turn from the thronging streets to the absolute quiet
of the cathedral precincts, shaded by tall elms and green with trim
lawns.
Externally, the cathedral is of the grimiest and sootiest aspect--black
as your hat, but comely. Not even the blackest corners of St. Paul’s
Cathedral, in London, show a deeper hue than the west front of St.
Peter’s, at Exeter. The battered, time-worn array of effigies of saints,
kings, crusaders, and bishops that range along the screen in mutilated
array under Bishop Grandison’s great west window are black, too, and so
are the gargoyles that leer with stony grimaces down upon you from the
ridges and string-courses of the transepts, where they lurk in an
enduring crepuscule.
[Sidenote: _A COACHING STRONGHOLD_]
The sonorous note of Great Peter, the great bell of the cathedral,
sounding from the south transept tower is in admirable keeping with the
black-browed gravity of the close, and keeps the gaiety of the
surrounding hotels within the limits of a canonical sobriety.
Elsewhere are ancient hostelries innumerable, with yawning archways
under which the coaches entered in the byegone days. The ‘Elephant,’ the
‘Mermaid,’ and the ‘Half Moon’ are the chief among these, and have the
true Pickwickian air, which is the outstanding note of all inns of the
Augustan age of coaching. It must have been worth the journey to be so
worthily housed at the end of the alarums and excursions which more or
less cheerfully enlivened the way.
Exeter and the far West of England were the last strongholds of the
coaching interest. The Great Western Railway was opened to Exeter on 1st
May 1844, and up to that time over seventy coaches left that city daily
for London and the cross-country routes. Nor did coaching languish
towards the close. On the contrary, it died game, and, until finally
extinguished by the opening of the railway, coaching on the old road
between London and Exeter was a matter of the utmost science and the
best speed ever attained by the aid of four horses on a turnpike road.
Charles Ward, the best-known driver of the old ‘Telegraph’ Exeter coach,
driven from his old route, retreated westwards and took the road between
Exeter and Devonport, retiring into Cornwall when the railway was opened
to Plymouth on 1st May 1848; but not before he had brought the time of
the ‘Telegraph’ between London and Exeter down to fifteen hours.
The ‘Half Moon’ is the inn from which the ‘Telegraph’ started at 6.30 in
the morning, breakfasting at Ilminster, dining at Andover, and stopping
for no other meal, reaching Hyde Park Corner at 9.30 P.M. It was kept in
1777 by a landlord named Hemming, who had a very good understanding with
the highwaymen Boulter and Caldwell, and doubtless with many another.
There is a record of those two knights of the road being here, one of
them with a stolen horse, when a Mr. Harding, of Bristol, being in the
yard, recognised it. ‘Why, Mr. Hemming,’ said he, ‘that is the very mare
my father-in-law, Mr. James, lost a few months ago; how came she here?’
To which the landlord replied, ‘She has been my own mare these twelve
months, and how should she be your father-in-law’s?’
‘Well,’ replied Harding, ‘if I had seen her in any other hands, or met
her on the road, I could have sworn to her.’ Boulter and Caldwell were
at that moment in the house at dinner, so the landlord took the first
opportunity of warning them.
For the rest, Exeter is still picturesque. It possesses many quaint and
interesting churches, placed in the strangest positions; while that of
St. Mary Steps has a queer old clock with grotesque figures that strike
the hours and chime the quarters. The seated figure is intended to
represent Henry the Eighth, and those on either side of him men-at-arms,
but the local people have a rhyming legend which
[Sidenote: _EXETER CASTLE_]
[Illustration: EXETER, FROM THE DUNSFORD ROAD.]
would have it that the King is a certain ‘Matty the Miller’:--
The people around would not believe
That Matty the Miller was dead;
For every hour on Westgate tower,
Matty still nods his head.
And, in fact, the King kicks his heels against the bell and nods with
every stroke. The Jacobean Guildhall of Exeter, too, is among the most
striking relics of this old-world city; while away from the High Street,
but near the continual clashing of a great railway station, there stand
the remains of Exeter Castle, the appropriately named Rougemont, that
cruel Blunderbore, drunken in the long ago with the blood of many a
gallant gentleman. At the end of a long line of those who suffered were
Colonel John Penruddocke and Hugh Grove, captured at South Molton after
that ineffectual Salisbury rising. Executed in the Castle Yard, in the
very heart of this loyal city of Exeter, many a heart must have ached on
that fatal morning for these unhappy men. ‘This, I hope,’ said
Penruddocke, ascending the scaffold, ‘will prove like Jacob’s Ladder;
though the feet of it rest upon the earth, yet I doubt not but the top
of it reaches to Heaven. The crime for which I am now to die is Loyalty,
in this age called High Treason.’
[Illustration: ‘MATTY THE MILLER.’]
They knew both how to fight and how to die, those dauntless Cavaliers.
The Earl of Derby, who suffered at Bolton, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir
George Lisle, barbarously shot at the taking of Colchester; gray-haired
Sir Nicholas Kemys at Chepstow, and many another died as valiantly as
their master--
Who nothing little did, nor mean,
But bowed his shapely head
Down, as upon a bed.
It is away through the city and across the Exe, to where the road rises
in the direction of Dartmoor, that one of the finest views back upon the
streets and the cathedral is obtained. Exeter from the Dunsford road,
glimpsed by the ancient and decrepit elm pictured here, is worth seeing
and the view itself is worth preserving, for elm and old-world
foreground, with the inevitable changes which the growth of Exeter is
bringing about, will not long remain. Like many another relic of a past
era along this old highway, they are vanishing even while the busy
chronicler of byegone days is hastening to record them.
[Illustration: THE END]
INDEX
Abbot’s Ann, 153
Alderbury, 183
Amesbury, 1, 2, 8, 12, 154, 195, 209
Andover, 1, 94, 123, 132-145, 217, 219
Ashe, 124
Automobile Club, 212
Axminster, 2, 9, 296
Bagshot, 3, 18, 69, 89, 96-98, 103
Bagshot Heath, 95-98
Basing House, siege of, 114-120, 123
Basing, Old, 113, 122
Basingstoke, 101, 113, 122
Bedfont, East, 78-80
Bedford Park, 92
Blackwater, 100, 101
Blandford, 2, 7, 9, 12, 242-216, 256-265
‘Bloody Assize,’ 273-275
Bokerley Dyke, 237
Bredy, Little, 283
Bredy, Long, 283, 284, 286, 289
Brentford, 16, 33, 34, 53, 56-63, 92, 93
Bridehead, 283
Bridport, 2, 94, 220, 280, 290-292, 295
‘Broad Stone,’ the, 280
Bryanstone, 265
Camberley, 99, 101
Cambridge Town, 99, 101
Charlton Downs, 265
Charmouth, 293-296
Chettle Common, 247
Chideock, 292
Chilcombe, 285
Chiswick High Road, 92
Clerken Green, 124
Coaches--
‘Celerity,’ 12, 195
‘Comet,’ 15, 18, 25
‘Defiance,’ 12, 105, 195
Devonport Mail (_see_ ‘Quicksilver’)
‘Diligence,’ 186
‘Exeter Fly,’ 2, 9, 15, 292
‘Express,’ 91
‘Fly Vans,’ 10, 106
‘Herald,’ 12
‘Old Times,’ 91
‘Pilot,’ 12
‘Post Coach,’ 186
‘Prince George,’ 12
‘Quicksilver,’ 3, 8, 11, 12, 22, 25, 27, 30, 33
‘Regulator,’ 8, 12, 21, 25, 105
‘Royal Mail,’ 8, 9, 11, 32, 69, 162-165, 186
Short Stages, 33
‘Sovereign,’ 8, 12
Stage Waggons, 11, 106
‘Subscription,’ 12, 195
‘Telegraph,’ 2, 3, 8, 10, 11, 30, 33, 69, 195, 309, 310
‘Traveller,’ 12
Coaching, 2, 7-31, 62, 69, 81, 91, 102-108, 127, 141,
157, 162-165, 184-188, 195, 309
Coaching Notabilities--
Mountain, Mrs., 29
Nelson, Mrs., 2
‘Nimrod,’ 12
Nobbs, Moses James, 31
Ward, Charles, 69, 309
Coombe Bissett, 234, 242
Cranborne Chase, 237, 238, 245-250, 254
Cuckold’s Corner, 285, 286
_Dead Drummer_, the, 238-242
Deane, 124
Deer-stealers, 246-248
Dickens, Charles, 184-186, 212-215
Dodington, George Bubb, 250-255
Dorchester, 2, 12, 94, 95, 227, 268-279
Eastbury Park, 250-256
Egham, 86, 89-91, 94
Exeter, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 30, 31, 33, 93, 94, 95, 303-314
Fares, 11, 22, 28, 106
Feltham Industrial School, 77
Fenny Bridges, 300
Fordington, 271, 272
Freefolk, 126
Gay, John, 59, 85, 292
Gibbon, Edward, 261
Great Western Railway, 31, 299, 309
Gunnersbury, 92, 93
Hammersmith, 56, 89, 254
Hardy, Thomas, 155, 166, 268, 276
Hartford Bridge, 21, 22, 102-110
Hartford Bridge Flats, 22, 101
Hartley Row, 100, 101, 221, 222
Hatton, 73
Hazlitt, William, 73, 157-162, 186
Highwaymen, 70, 74, 98, 187, 215-232
Biss, 216, 310
Blagden, Isaac, 217
Boulter, Thomas, 217
Boulter, Thomas, junr., 218-228, 310
Caldwell, James, 223-228, 310
Davis, William, 98, 216
Du Vail, Claude, 70, 99
‘Golden Farmer,’ the (_see_ Davis, William)
Peare, William, 228
Turpin, Richard, 70
Whitney, Capt. James, 216
Highwaywoman (Mary Sandall), 228
Holloway College, 90
Honiton, 1, 2, 95, 297-299
Hook, 101, 110
Hounslow, 16, 17, 32, 65, 69, 92
Hounslow Heath, 69-71, 75-78
Hurstbourne Priors, 125, 131
Hurstbourne Tarrant, 132
Hyde Park Corner, 1, 16, 33, 38, 40, 62
Inns (mentioned at length)--
‘Anchor,’ Charmouth, 295
‘Bell,’ Hounslow, 65
‘Bells of Ouseley,’ Old Windsor, 87-89
‘Black Dog,’ East Bedfont, 79
‘Bull,’ Aldgate, 2
‘Bull and Mouth,’ St. Martin-le-Grand, 12
‘Cashmoor,’ 242, 247
‘Deptford,’ Wilton, 13
‘Elephant,’ Exeter, 309
‘Fair Mile,’ 300
‘George,’ Andover, 136, 142-145
‘George,’ Axminster, 296
‘Gloucester Coffee House,’ Piccadilly, 34, 38
‘Goose and Gridiron,’ St. Paul’s Churchyard, 37
‘Green Dragon,’ Alderbury, 183
‘Green Man,’ Hatton, 74
‘Half Moon,’ Exeter, 2, 310
‘Hotel Victoria,’ Northumberland Avenue, 91
‘Jolly Farmer,’ Bagshot, 99
‘King’s Arms,’ Bagshot, 97, 98
‘King’s Arms,’ Dorchester, 275, 276
‘Mermaid,’ Exeter, 310
‘New London,’ Exeter, 8, 12
‘Old White Hart,’ Hook, 110
‘Park House,’ Amesbury, 1, 195
‘Queen’s Arms,’ Charmouth, 295
‘Ship,’ Morecomblake, 294
‘Swan-with-Two-Necks,’ Lad Lane, 8, 11, 12, 62
‘Thickthorn,’ 242
‘Thorney Down,’ 242
‘Traveller’s Rest, 286-289, 290
‘Wheatsheaf,’ Virginia Water, 91
‘White Bear,’ Piccadilly, 26
‘White Hart,’ Hook, 110
‘White Hart,’ Milborne St. Andrew, 267
‘White Hart,’ Whitchurch, 127, 123
‘White Horse Cellars,’ Piccadilly, 26
‘Winterslow Hut,’ 110, 156-165, 186, 218, 223
‘Woodyates,’ 94, 234-241, 247
Jeffreys, Judge, 273
Kensington, 53-56, 89
Kilmington, 297
Kingston Russell, 283
Knightsbridge, 48
Laverstoke, 125
Lioness attacks Mail, 162-165
Little Ann, 153
Little Bredy, 283, 289
Little Wallop, 155, 265
Lobcombe Corner, 156
Long Bredy, 283, 284
M’Adam, John Loudon, 17, 29
Mail coaches established, 9
Mapledurwell Hatch, 113
Market-gardens, 73-76
_Martin Chuzzlewit_, 183-186
Matcham, Jarvis, 241
_Mayor of Casterbridge_, 146, 155, 271, 276
Middle Wallop, 155
Milborne St. Andrew, 266
Monmouth’s Rebellion, 237, 273, 291, 297
Morecomblake, 95, 292-294
Mullen’s Pond, 1, 195
Nately Scures, 110
Nether Wallop, 154-156
New Sarum, 167, 170
Oakley, 124
Old Basing, 113, 122
Old Sarum, 94, 167-170, 191
Old Windsor, 87
Old-time travellers--
Charles II., 291, 293-296
Cobbett, Richard, 75, 89, 90-101, 109, 110, 125, 142-145, 192, 300
Conyngham, Lord Albert, 140
George III., 238, 275
Knighton, Sir William, 10, 187
Monmouth, Duke of, 237, 291, 297
Newman, Cardinal, 127
Payne, George, 141
Pepys, Samuel, 187, 19
Taylor, John (the ‘Water Poet’), 80
Trollope, Thomas Adolphus, 26-30
Omnibuses, 34, 40
Overton, 124, 125
Over Wallop, 154-156
Patteson, Dr., 299
Piccadilly, 2
Piddletown, 265, 267
Pimperne, 248, 256
Police, the, 51
Roman Roads, 8, 82-85, 92-95, 279
Russells, the, 283
St. George’s Hospital, 38, 40
St. Mary Bourne, 94
Salisbury, 1, 4, 9, 165-183, 313
Salisbury Plain, 102, 191, 195-199, 203, 209, 212-217, 230-232, 238, 242
Sarum, New, 167, 170
Sarum, Old, 94, 167-170, 191
Shrub’s Hill, 92, 93, 95
Shute Hill, 297
Staines, 1, 17, 72, 81-86, 92
Staines Stone, 82-84
Stevens, Alfred, 262
Stonehenge, 188, 196-212
Sunningdale, 89, 95
Sunninghill, 89
Tarrant Gunville, 248, 256
Tarrant Hinton, 242, 256, 265
Thorney Down, 94, 242
Troy Town, 268
Turnham Green, 56, 92
Turnpike Gates, 44-48, 154, 267, 298
Upper Wallop, 154-156
Virginia Water, 89, 91, 95
Wallops, the, 154-156, 265
Watchmen, the old, 51
Wesley, Rev. Bartholomew, 295
Wesley, John, 265
West Harnham, 234
Weyhill, 1, 94, 154
Weyhill Fair, 133, 142, 145-152
Whitchurch, 1, 32, 124, 127-131, 221
Wilmington, 297
Windsor, Old, 87
Winterborne Abbas, 280
Winterborne Whitchurch, 265, 267
Worting, 115, 123
Yellowham Hill, 268
Yeovil, 1, 12
York Town, 99, 100, 101
Young’s Corner, 92
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] ‘Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where
is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your
souls.’
[2] Yes, but the time was cut down to fourteen hours a few years later.
[3] Waggons travelling at the rate of not more than four miles an hour
were exempt from excise duty.