but there is still a memorial to be soon of another kingly procession
that once passed down this street. Perkin Warbeck, after “mightily
and tempestuously,” but quite vainly, assaulting the walls of Exeter,
was pursued by Henry VII. to Taunton, and “about midnight departed in
wonderful celerity” to the sanctuary of Beaulieu. Then the King rode into
Exeter in state, and in his gratitude unbuckled the sword that Perkin
had not waited to see, and took the beaver from his head, and gave both
sword and hat to the citizens in acknowledgment of their “lusty hearts
and manly courage.” Here, in this old grey building that projects across
the pavement on our left, we may see them still. In this fairest street
of Exeter there is nothing now so fair as the Guildhall with the granite
pillars and the massive door of oak and the fluted panelling of Tudor
days. In the gallery above the great hall are the two swords that won
the crown of England, so to speak: the simple sword of Edward IV. and
the splendid gilded one of Henry VII.; and with them, cased in rich
embroidery, the black beaver hat in which Henry gained his easy triumph
over Perkin. And among the pictures on the dark walls of the hall itself
are two that have a special meaning in this place: Sir Peter Lely’s
portraits of the young Duchesse d’Orléans and of the Duke of Albemarle.
For it was in Exeter, in a house that has now vanished, that Charles I.’s
daughter Henrietta was born; and when the Articles of Surrender were
drawn up at Poltimore after the long siege, there was special provision
made for the safety of the little princess; so that it was in a “fit and
convenient carriage” that she started on that famous journey to Dover
which she ended, to her great annoyance, in the disguise of a French
peasant-boy. It was in Exeter, too, that young George Monk began his
fighting career by thrashing the under-sheriff of Devon. The exploit
drove him into the army, and when his talent for fighting had made him
Duke of Albemarle the civic authorities let bygones be bygones, and set
up his portrait here. Perhaps they recognised that the under-sheriff had
richly deserved his chastisement.[2]
Unfortunately the same Articles that provided a convenient carriage for
Princess Henrietta also decreed the destruction of Rougemont Castle, and
there is nothing but a tower and a gateway left of the stronghold that
Athelstane founded and William the Conqueror rebuilt. Yet even in this
fragment there is one window, they say, of Saxon date, one window that
has looked out on all the wild scenes that have been acted round the Red
Mount. Exactly how many sieges this scrap of masonry has endured I do
not know, nor how many crowned heads it has helped to shelter. William
the Conqueror and Stephen took possession of it in person; Edward IV.
and Richard III. visited it; and it was probably here that Henry VII.
stayed when he came to Exeter at the time of the Warbeck rebellion, to
try “the chief stirrers and misdoers.” “The commons of this shire of
Devon,” he wrote to the Mayor of Waterford, “come daily before us in
great multitudes in their shirts, the foremost of them having halters
about their necks, and full humbly with lamentable cries for our grace
and remission submit themselves unto us.” In the same vivid letter he
expresses a hope that Perkin’s wife will soon come to Exeter, “as she is
in dole.” It is not from Henry himself that we learn, however, that when
the poor lady actually arrived in this city he “wondered at her beauty
and her attractive behaviour.”
When William of Orange rode into the town with all his retinue of blacks
and Finlanders it was not to Rougemont that he came, for Fairfax had
nearly altogether destroyed it. He slept at the deanery, and on the
following day entered the cathedral in state. It has not altered since
then. He saw the stately Norman towers as we see them, and like ourselves
passed into the building through the vaulted porch and rich mouldings of
the west doorway. Over his head was the splendid tracery that is over
ours, and on each side of him were the clustered pillars that we see.
“And as he came all along the body of the church the organs played very
sweetly, and the quire began to sing _Te Deum_.” Whether that _Te Deum_
rang quite true upon the vaulted roof is open to doubt, for the choir,
apparently, sang it with much reluctance and left the church hurriedly
when their work was done, lest trouble should come of it. Meantime the
prince sat down beneath the towering canopy of the throne that the bishop
had deserted, and Burnet, standing at the foot of the pulpit, read aloud
the declaration that gave England her liberties.
On the base of the throne are the painted effigies of the four bishops
who made Exeter Cathedral what it now is: Warelwast, who built the
towers; Quivil, who designed the Decorated building as it stands;
Stapledon, who set up this carved and pinnacled throne, and the beautiful
sedilia, and the “sylver altare” that has vanished; and Grandison the
magnificent, who made the vaulted roof. Close at hand on the north side
of the choir, with a restored canopy and a figure “very lively cut in
the same stone,” is the tomb where Stapledon’s desecrated dust was laid.
The enthroning of this bishop, says Carew the chronicler, was more than
ordinarily splendid. Canons and vicars-choral in their habits led him to
the throne, while “abundance of gentlemen of place and quality” followed
after. Very splendid, too, was his burial in this choir. There had,
however, been a burial of another sort in London; for, having been made
Keeper of the City by Edward II., he was attacked by the mob who took the
part of Queen Isabel. They dragged him from his refuge in St. Paul’s,
“and having grievously beaten and wounded him, haled him along the
streets to the great cross in Cheap, where those sons of the devil most
barbarously murdered him.” His headless body lay buried in a sand-heap
till the Queen ordered it to be brought hither in great honour.
[Illustration: CLOISTER, EXETER CATHEDRAL.]
The “grave, wise, politic” Grandison, though much addicted to pomp, was
personally simpler than the murdered bishop, who possessed no fewer than
ninety-one rings. Grandison’s splendour was shown in hospitalities and
lavish gifts to his cathedral. It owes much to him: among other things, I
believe, the minstrels’ gallery that we see above us on our right as we
walk down the nave--the gallery that was built, they say, in order that
the Black Prince might be fittingly welcomed with music when he visited
his duchy. The west front is Grandison’s, too. He once defended it and
the dignity of his office with a body of armed men, on an occasion when
the Archbishop of Canterbury came on a visitation. Here at the west door
the angry prelates faced each other. Grandison won the day, and the
archbishop, says Fuller, died of a broken heart.
It was possibly owing to the presence of Fairfax, who reverenced all that
was ancient and beautiful, that the soldiers of the Parliament did so
little harm to the cathedral, beyond destroying the cloisters. How much
else they destroyed in the close I do not know: it is certain that much
has vanished, for in Leland’s day it had four gates, and was “environid
with many fair housis.” There are still several fair houses in Cathedral
Yard that have survived the Civil War, but not all of them have been
admired by Leland. He did not see, for instance, the curious outline and
picturesque bow-windows of “Mol’s Coffee House,” nor the panelled room
that is emblazoned with the shields of heroes and statesmen, of Talbot
and Somerset, of Cecil and Throgmorton, of Drake and Raleigh and Gilbert.
Tradition says that the bearers of these sounding names were wont to
discuss the affairs of the nation in this room.
Before leaving Exeter we have a weighty matter to settle: our choice of
a road. There are four ways of reaching Cornwall. Of these the shortest
is by Okehampton to Launceston, and this has the advantage of passing
through the bewitching village of Sticklepath: the best as regards
surface is by Ashburton and Ivybridge to Plymouth: the most beautiful
is the road that leads across the Moor by Moretonhampstead and Two
Bridges to Tavistock: the most interesting and varied is the long way
round by the coast, by Torquay and Dartmouth, Kingsbridge and Modbury.
In the matter of hills the second of these roads is the least severe,
and therefore on the whole I advise those who desire to reach Cornwall
quickly to skirt the Moor upon the south; passing through Buckfastleigh,
which has a new abbey on an old site, and Dean Prior, where Herrick lived
so reluctantly, and Plympton, where old Bishop Warelwast died. There is
no really steep gradient on this road, and though near Exeter there is
a long climb followed by a long descent, there are several surprising
miles, near Plymouth, that are almost level. The surface is usually very
good. The scenery is not so strikingly beautiful as on the other roads,
but in places it is very lovely, and everywhere there are the special
charms of Devonshire: the shadowing trees, the high banks and trailing
ivy, the stone walls green with myriads of tiny ferns, the gardens full
of sunshine and flowers. Dean Prior, where Herrick lived for many quiet
years, singing in sweet measures “how roses first came red and lilies
white,” and dreaming wistfully of “golden Cheapside” and his Julia--and
others--seems at first sight an unlikely place to be hated. Indeed, I
think his hatred of it and its inhabitants was merely a mood. The same
kind of mood that made him hurl the manuscript of his sermon at his
congregation made him describe his neighbours as
“A people currish, churlish as the seas,
And rude almost as rudest savages,”
while all the time he was well aware that Robert Herrick was ruder than
either. There were other days when he wrote very affectionately of
his little house and his placid life in this village where he has so
long been lying at rest. There is an ugly modern monument to him in his
church, but his grave and that of his housekeeper Prue are unmarked by
any stone. The beautiful epitaph he wrote himself will serve them well:
“Here’s the sunset of a tedious day:
These two asleep are; I’ll but be undressed,
And so to bed; pray, wish us all good rest.”
The Plympton through which this road passes is not the birthplace of Sir
Joshua Reynolds, but has an interest of its own in being the site of a
monastery that was founded by Warelwast, the bishop who built the towers
of Exeter Cathedral. When he was very old he came hither to die. But
Plympton Earle is not a mile away; and most of us will find time to drive
into the little town and pause for a moment by the old house with the
colonnade, wherein a little boy used long ago to sit studying perspective
“with avidity and pleasure,” or copying his sister’s sketches. Sir Joshua
loved this place where he first held a pencil, and in after years
painted his own portrait for the town. The town sold it.
This road, then, is not without its attractions. Infinitely greater,
however, are the charms of the two other alternative ways from Exeter to
Cornwall--the one that bisects Dartmoor and the one that skirts the coast
more or less closely. Those whose object is a short tour in South Devon
I would advise to combine these two routes by driving from Exeter across
the Moor to Tavistock, thence turning south to Plymouth on a splendid
road through beautiful scenery, and returning to Exeter leisurely by way
of Dartmouth and Torquay.
The traveller who chooses to leave Exeter by the Moretonhampstead road is
likely to feel that he has chosen well.
Like all these roads that run towards the west it begins by crossing
the river Exe, the river that for three centuries was commercially
useless because two men quarrelled about a pot of fish. In the market of
Exeter--so runs the story--three pots of fish were waiting to be sold
one day, more than five hundred years ago. Upon this fish the retainer
of the Earl of Devon cast an appreciative eye at the very moment when
the servant of the Bishop of Exeter had determined to buy it. In the
fourteenth century there could be but one result of this coincidence.
The matter, after a lively quarrel, was laid before the mayor, and he,
with prudence that deserved to be more successful, apportioned one pot to
each customer and the third to the market: whereupon the Earl of Devon
revenged himself upon the corporation, against whom he already had a
grudge or two, “by stopping, filling, and quirting the river with great
trees, timber, and stones, in such sort that no vessel or vessels could
passe or repasse;” and Topsham became the port of Exeter. Now Topsham was
on the Earl of Devon’s land.
We go out of the town on a perfect surface, and although, of the twelve
miles between Exeter and Moretonhampstead, there is only one that is
level and eleven that are steep in varying degrees, the beauty that
surrounds us leaves us with no breath for complaint. Whether we are
climbing slowly to the summit of a ridge, with valleys dipping deeply on
each side and beyond the valleys fold on fold of wooded hills, or gliding
down past Culver into the shade, or running softly through a little green
glen, there is nothing but content in our hearts. Presently we cross the
Teign upon an old stone bridge. Beneath us the river makes slow, soft
music on its mossy stones; on each side the hills rise steeply; here and
there a great red rock pierces the green and purple of the slopes; and
as the road winds up the long hill through the woods we are shadowed
by hazels and larches and birches, and the scarlet tassels of the
mountain-ash hang heavily over our heads. When at last we finish the long
climb Moretonhampstead lies below us. From this height it appears to be
in a hollow, but after running down a steep hill for a mile and a half we
find ourselves unexpectedly looking up to it.
Moreton is the best centre, I think, from which to see the Moor. Chagford
is in a lovelier position, hemmed about with hills, and is larger and
more ambitious, with electricity to light its streets; but it is not
nearly so central as Moreton, which stands at the junction of four
good roads. Gray’s Hotel, though it makes no profession of smartness,
is comfortable and clean, and has a capital new garage. The importance
of staying in this neighbourhood for a day or two lies in the fact that
there are several lovely places within a radius of a few miles which
cannot easily be seen _en route_. Of course, those who prefer more
stately quarters can use Exeter as their centre very comfortably.
It is not to us who move at various speeds from place to place--by
motor-car, or bicycle, or train, or even on foot--that Dartmoor will
reveal itself. Do not let us deceive ourselves. We may have driven on
every road and every tortuous lane between the Teign and Tavistock, yet
we need not dream that we know the Moor. That knowledge comes only with
the slow years, only with the passionate love that begins in childhood
and lasts for life.
[Illustration: LUSTLEIGH.]
That is no reason why we should not see as much of the Moor as we can,
and love it dearly in our own poor fashion. There is much, very much of
its beauty which he who runs--and even he who motors--may read. And the
most beautiful part of it, I think, is this eastern side.
Quite a short run from Moreton is to Bovey Tracey, Hey Tor, and
Manaton. We drive out of the little town, as we drove into it, past the
seventeenth-century almshouses, whose thatched roofs are supported on
a row of granite pillars, and whose features are feebly reproduced on
the opposite side of the street--a case in which imitation is very far
from flattery. A narrow road follows the course of the Bovey through its
pretty valley. At a point where road, rail, and river nearly touch one
another a little by-way crosses a bridge to Lustleigh, which has a great
reputation for beauty, and deserves it; for with its church and modern
cross, its thatched cottages, its stream and little bridge, half hidden
in their setting of woods and orchards, it is a very lovable village. Its
spaces, however, are limited. Drivers of large cars must turn near the
church under the elms, and see Lustleigh on foot, for there is no turning
place further on, and the road beyond the village is impracticable. Its
beauty is very alluring, but its steepness is serious, and such is its
narrowness that even a car of moderate size brushes the hedge on each
side. It is far easier to return to the main road, or rather the main
lane to Bovey, which has a good surface, though it is narrow and winding.
The fine church that stands above the street of Bovey Tracey was founded,
it is said, by the Tracy who was one of Becket’s murderers, to atone
for the deed by the convenient method of the Middle Ages. But all its
splendour of carving and gilding, its painted screen and pulpit, its
porch with the groined roof and grotesque bosses, are of a later century
than the twelfth.
There is nothing here to see except this church and some restored stone
crosses. For no one knows, I believe, where the cavaliers were quartered
on that famous winter evening when Cromwell rode into Bovey with a band
of horse and foot, and brought dismay with him. “The Enemy in Bovey,”
says Joshua Sprigge, “were put to their shifts, yet through the darkness
… most of the men escaped.” The shift the officers made was an ingenious
one. They were playing cards when Cromwell’s men marched up to their
door, and with admirable presence of mind they flung the stakes out of
the window. By the time the soldiers had finished picking up the money
the royalists had escaped by the back door, and were beyond the river.
Almost as soon as we have crossed the same river we find ourselves on
the fringe of the Moor, and begin to rise slowly on a fine curving road,
through a scene that grows in beauty moment by moment. On one side are
the sweeping lines and satisfying colours of the moorland, the heather
and the yellow grass, the greens and browns of the bracken: on the other
are all the graces of a copse of birch-trees. At every turn the view
widens, till on the skyline Hey Tor appears, very sharp and dark. As the
road sweeps round it the Moor is everywhere about us, an endless series
of rounded hills, with the line of their curved shoulders broken here and
there by jagged tors. Everywhere the rim of the landscape is blue beyond
all experience. When green has melted into grey, and grey has deepened
into an indigo so strong that it seems no colour can be bluer, there is
still beyond it a line of hills as purely, piercingly blue as the sky in
June.
We run on between Saddle Tor and Rippon Tor over hill and dale,
till we look down on the famous goal of a certain historic grey
mare--Widdecombe-in-the-Moor; then past Hound Tor and round by the pretty
village-green of Manaton to the woods through which the Becka’s waters
dance and sing. Here by the wayside the car must wait a little time,
while we are carried to fairyland on a magic carpet of moss. Long, long
ago, say the fairies, this was a stony, barren slope. Some wild spirit of
the storm had flung upon it a host of mighty boulders, which lay there
bare and grey beneath the open sky. At last the fairies came, and wove
their wonderful carpet of moss, soft and green, and laid it gently over
the great stones and over the earth, and scattered their enchanted seeds
upon the ground so that the tall trees rose thickly upon the hillside,
and a mysterious, dusky veil of leaves hid the river from the sky. Then
the fairies made their home here; and we may walk with them through the
woods to that strange fall that in summer is no waterfall, but a cascade
of gigantic rounded stones, flung from the height in a confused mass,
through which a thin stream trickles.
As we drive out of the dark and spellbound wood we suddenly find
ourselves on a heathery hillside, all space and colour and light; and by
a winding road we return to Bovey and Moretonhampstead.
Quite near to Moreton is one of those unforgettable places of charm so
rare that they dwell in one’s mind for ever as types of beauty. This is
Fingle Bridge, which crosses the Teign where the valley is narrow and
its sides are high and very steep, and the brown river flows quickly
among woods and beds of fern, and a huge slope, completely carpeted with
heather, towers close at hand. The best road is by Sandy Park, and beyond
that point even this is by no means good. In Drewsteignton, indeed, a
prudent owner of any car that has more than a nine-foot wheel-base will
get out and walk, for between that delightful village and the Teign
there is an extremely steep and narrow lane, with a surface that is
chiefly made of stones both large and loose. There is, moreover, no good
turning-place in the narrow gorge through which the river runs.
A longer run than either of these is through Bovey Tracey and Ashburton,
and across the Moor to Two Bridges by a road whose hills are grimly
described in the contour-book as “all highly dangerous.” The description
is justified, and it cannot even be pleaded that the surface is good; but
the sweeping moorland, and the woods that veil the hurrying Dart near
Charles Kingsley’s birthplace at Holne, and the valley at Dartmeet, will
compensate for much. From Two Bridges the road to Moreton is the same by
which we must cross the Moor on our way to Tavistock.
[Illustration: HOLNE BRIDGE.]
It is no hardship to travel twice upon this road. The run from east to
west, from Moreton to Tavistock, is one to repeat as often as may be,
and to remember whenever life seems dull. It is a glorious run. The road
is hardly ever level, of course, but the surface for the most part is
fairly good, and the hills, if steep, are straight. And from our feet a
wide sea of fern rolls away on every side, billow beyond billow, till
its waves break at last upon the rocks of a hundred tors. There are
certain scenes that remain with one, a possession for ever. One of them
is on the hill where Grimspound lies. A little by-road takes us quickly
to the wild spot where neolithic man built himself this dwelling, with
the object, doubtless, of keeping an eye upon his neighbours rather than
that of enjoying the view. Whatever his motive he chose well. He saw this
splendid panorama--a pageant of green and purple and indescribable blue.
One thing only he did not see: the tragic thing that gleams so suddenly
and whitely in the far distance, when a sunbeam chances to fall upon
it--Dartmoor Prison.
When we have passed the stony stream and pack-horse bridge of Postbridge
the scenery is less interesting for a mile or two, for this is the
more civilised part of the Moor--a fact that has a brighter side in a
comfortable luncheon at Two Bridges. Unless we change our minds and take
the beautiful road to Plymouth, we turn to the right here after crossing
the stream, and leave Princetown and all its heavy hearts behind us on
the left. When the highest point of this road is passed and the long
descent begun, the scenery is again of that well-wearing kind that can be
stored and put away for the winter. And if I pay scant attention to the
vast host of most venerable relics with which Dartmoor is dotted--I had
almost said _crowded_--this is not because neolithic man seems to me a
person of little account, but because the study of his life and times is
not one that can be taken up suddenly on a motor-tour. For one wayfarer
who takes heed of the menhir, and the stone-row, and the pound near
Merivale Bridge, there will always be a hundred to gaze eagerly from the
hilltop at the long line of dark and rugged tors that stretches across
the immense landscape, and at the gleaming Hamoaze on the left, and at
the clear outline of Brent Tor Chapel on its rock, and above all at blue
Cornwall meeting the blue sky. In the middle of this picture Tavistock
lies, and we run down into it on a splendid road.
The abbey that once gave renown to Tavistock has nearly vanished, but
even its fragments--an archway and an ivy-covered tower--are enough to
bring beauty and distinction into these pleasant streets. Ordgar, the
man who founded it, was the father of Elfrida, the wicked Queen who gave
her stepson a stirrup-cup, and had him stabbed while he was drinking
it. It was in Tavistock or near it that she spent her childhood, and
to Tavistock that Ethelwold was sent by the King, to see if her beauty
deserved a crown. Ethelwold, seeing her, forgot all else and married her
himself. “She is in noe wise for feature fitt for a king,” he told King
Edgar. Then the King, whom men did not lightly deceive, came hither to
Tavistock to judge for himself, and Ethelwold at bay told the truth to
his wife, begging her--poor ignorant man!--“to cloath herself in such
attire as might least set forth her lustre.” Elfrida smiled; and when
her lord was gone arrayed herself in all she had that was most rich and
beautiful, so that “the sparkle of her fair look” made the King mad for
love of her. The next day he took Ethelwold out upon the Moor to hunt,
and left him there with an arrow through his heart; and after all Elfrida
became a queen.
The abbey her father founded was famous, not only for its splendour, but
also for its learning. Though nearly all its stones are gone there are
still some of its documents to be seen in the church, and certain ancient
books which were printed, I believe, in the printing-press of these
progressive monks.