OTTERTON—EAST BUDLEIGH—SIR WALTER RALEIGH
At the summit of High Peak is the common of Muttersmoor, whence the way
goes steeply down into the valley of the River Otter, at length reaching
the village of Otterton, down the sides of whose one quaint street, of a
rustic, straw-littered, farm-like untidiness, flow streamlets bridged by
little brick and timber spans.
Otterton is thoroughly Devonian. What it is to be so will, perhaps,
not be understood by those unfamiliar with rustic Devon; but here is
the recipe for such a characteristic place. Take an Irish, a Welsh, a
Highland, and a Breton village, stir them up well in a fine, confused
Celtic medley, add abundance of flowers, wild and cultivated, and then
leave in the sun.
On a rise, above the river and the village street, stands the “fayre
howse” built by Richard Duke, who in 1539 bought the Otterton property
of Sion Abbey, and set up for lord of the manor. His shield-of-arms,
sculptured over the door, is still visible, but his fair house has come
down in the world, and the line of Duke of Otterton ended in 1775, when
the Rolles acquired their belongings. The traveller in South East Devon
very soon has a surfeit of Rolles, who seem to be pervading the land and
rebuilding the interesting churches, and generally occulting everything.
Here again the old church has been replaced by a new.
Below church and manor-house runs the lovely Otter to the sea. The Otter
is twin brother to the Axe, and the Exe is the big brother of both. The
strath—that is to say the verdant, low-lying meadowland—of the Otter
is of that quiet, wooded, pastoral beauty which makes the nearness of
the sea seem strange. But the speciality of the Otter seems to be its
pebbles, or “popples,” as the name is, locally. There are more pebbles on
the Chesil Beach; but then, that is one of the two greatest repositories
for them in the world, and the popples of the Otter and of the seashore
at Budleigh Salterton, where they are not only numerous, but very fine
and large as well, are a class to themselves. Little beaches of them
skirt the course of the river, and the matter of two and a half miles
up-stream from Otterton is a village, as one may say, dedicated to
them, in its name of Newton Poppleford; and there the popples muster as
strongly as ever by the ford, which is now superseded by a bridge.
But now, crossing the Otter, we come to East Budleigh, by threading the
mazes of two or three byways.
East Budleigh is a pretty village, with a little stream, clear-running,
down one side of its street and a great church on the rise at the end;
but, for all that, I should not have come out of the way to see it, were
it not that a landmark of more than common interest lies half a mile on
the other side. That landmark is Hayes Barton, the still extant farmstead
that was the birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh.
[Illustration: EAST BUDLEIGH.]
The first part of the name of Hayes Barton derives from the Anglo-Saxon
_haga_, a hedge, or cultivated enclosure from surrounding wastes, and
there are, to this day, “hayes,” and “hays,” in abundance in this shire
of Devon. Even in the urban circumstances of Exeter we find them, in
the enclosed public pleasure-ground of Northernhay, and the square
of Southernhay. “Barton” has a variety of meanings, from granary,
rickyard, farmyard, and cattle-shed, to a large farm; a small farm
being generally, in Devon, styled a “living.” In the time of Sir Walter
Raleigh’s father, Hayes Barton was sold to the Duke family, of Otterton,
and from its old name of Poerhayes, or Power’s Heys, it became known as
Dukesheyes. In the eighteenth century, as we have already seen, it passed
to the Rolles, whose paws have comprehended so much of the land between
Seaton and Exmouth.
The old farm-house, smartened up with a facing of that stucco which is
so beloved by Devon folk that it is almost a wonder they don’t make it
an article of diet, stands now as ever in a hollow of the hills, remote;
for although Budleigh Salterton has expanded into a townlet, I do not
suppose the village of East Budleigh has grown appreciably in all these
centuries. Bating that stucco, and the sixty-year-old brick outhouses,
the farm must be much the same, and you may still see the old woodwork
and the old stone flags of the lower rooms, and may even, by courtesy,
peep into the bedroom—that is the window of it, the upper window in the
left-hand gable—where that gallant soul first saw the light of day.
Here, in this modest farmstead, that great Elizabethan was born, in 1552,
son of Walter Raleigh and his wife Katherine, who came of that old Devon
family, the Champernownes of Modbury. She had first married Otto Gilbert,
who died leaving her with two sons, themselves to grow up explorers and
colonists. She would seem, therefore, to have been a woman of remarkable
character.
[Illustration: HAYES BARTON: BIRTHPLACE OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH.]
The Raleighs seem to have been gentlefolk of long descent, of many
relationships among the storied names of Devon—the Carews, the
Grenvilles, Gilberts, and others—but of only modest worldly possessions.
The Raleigh genealogy is fragmentary, and the early history of the family
vague, but that they had once been locally rich and powerful, before the
famous Sir Walter’s day, seems evident enough in the names of the two
neighbouring parishes of Withycombe Raleigh and Colaton Raleigh, which
show that in more prosperous times his forbears had been lords of those
manors. In common with many of their contemporaries, the Raleighs seem
to have spelt their name according to individual taste and fancy; nor
even did the same individual always select, and adhere to, one method.
Thus we find the father of the greatest of all Raleighs signing himself
“Ralegh,” his eldest son, Carew, affecting “Rawlegh,” and the future Sir
Walter, in his first known signature, writing “Rauleygh,” and afterwards
adopting “Ralegh,” and the form “Raleigh,” which posterity has finally
decided to accept. Queen Elizabeth herself spelled the name “Rawley.”
Sentimentalists have united to draw a wholly imaginary picture of
the boy, Walter Raleigh, ranging from the inland valley in which his
birthplace stands, climbing the intermediate woody hill, and straying
down to the margin of the sea at Budleigh Saltern, as Budleigh Salterton
was then styled. They have drawn fanciful pictures of him among the
amazing pebbles of that beach, listening wide-eyed, to the yarns of
sailor-folk telling of strange histories from the Spanish Main; and
they have pictured him exploring away down to Exmouth, which was in
those times a port of considerable commerce. I have no doubt he did all
these things, and for my part can readily envisage them; can see, too,
the little, crisp-haired, ruddy-cheeked Walter, in russet doublet and
stockings of the same, being taken to church on Sundays at East Budleigh,
half a mile away, where you may still see the family pew with the
heraldic “fusils” of Raleigh impaling the “rests” of Grenville, boldly
sculptured in heart of oak on a massive bench-end.
But while we can picture all these things, with sufficient readiness,
it yet remains certain that we know nothing of the hero’s earlier years,
and but vaguely gather that from Oxford, whither he was sent, he went to
the wars on the Continent, between the Protestants and the Catholics, and
then, by some occult family influence, became attached to the brilliant
Court of our own astounding virginal Gloriana. They were a coruscating
Renaissance group, who circled round Elizabeth, and were gifted in a
singular variety of ways. They were noblemen and gentlemen who could,
and did, turn their hands to anything, from captaining some desperate
enterprise, negotiating treaties, steering frail flotillas through
unknown seas into unheard-of lands, buccaneering, and filibustering,
down to duelling, intriguing and backbiting among each other; practising
literature and the liberal art of sonneteering, and dallying in the
dangerous pastime of flirting with that too towardly Queen herself. One
thing only they could not do; they could not be commonplace. None may say
how much of truth, or how much legend there may be in the famous story
of how Raleigh first attracted the Queen’s notice by flinging down his
velvet cloak over a muddy place, so that she might pass, clean-footed;
but the story was current, in the time of those contemporary with both,
and being possible at all, shows us the spirit of the time and of the
Queen’s surroundings.
Raleigh’s excellent early services in Ireland, where he broke down the
rebellion in the south, recommended him to the Queen, his youthfulness
interested her middle-aged sentimentalism, and his dark, florid manhood
enslaved her. For this was a very hero in look, as in deed; standing
six feet high, with black hair, full-bearded, ruddy-cheeked, like the
apples of his native shire; and Elizabeth loaded him with gifts and
grants. Meanwhile he had begun the colonising schemes and the exploratory
enterprises by which his name is largely known. He equipped, and was
at the cost of, the expedition which in 1584 discovered that shore of
North America he christened, in honour of the “Eternal Maiden Queen,”
“Virginia.” At the close of that year a knighthood rewarded his flattery.
Already he was become a man of vast wealth, the holder of highly
remunerative grants and monopolies, and was keenly desirous of refounding
the house of Raleigh in visible form in Devon. To this end he wrote in
July, 1584, to Mr. Duke of Otterton, into whose possession this farm of
Hayes Barton had by some unexplained means come, desiring to repurchase
it. The letter is still in existence, and runs:
“MR. DUKE,
“I wrote to Mr. Prideux to move yow for the purchase of hayes
a farme som tyme in my fathers prossession. I will most
willingly give yow what so: ever in your conscience yow shall
deeme it worthe, and if yow shall att any tyme have occasion
to vse mee yow Shall find mee a thanckfull frind to yow and
youres. I have dealt wᵗʰ Mʳ. Sprint for suche things as he
hathe att colliton and ther abouts and he hath pmised mee
to dept wᵗʰ ye moety of otertowne vnto yow in consideration
of hayes accordinge to ye valew and yow shall not find mee
an ill neighbore vnto yow here after. I am resolved if I
cannot intreat yow to build at colliton but for the naturall
dispositio’ I have to that place being borne in that howse I
had rather seat my sealf ther than any wher els this leving the
mattr att large vnto Mr. Sprint I take my leve resting redy to
countervaile all your courteses to ye uttermost of my power.
“Court the xxvj of July 1584
“Your very willing frinde
“in all I shall be able”
“W. RALEGH.”
It is surely no unamiable trait in a man, that he should wish to purchase
the house in which he was born; but Mr. Duke, “from that jealous
disposition which can bear no brother near the throne,” did not choose
to sell or to have so great a man for so near a neighbour, and so the
Raleighs never again entered into possession of Hayes Barton.