lies in a hollow among the fir-clad hills, and makes an idyllic picture
with its stream and bridge; and here the road turns and winds up to a
fine expanse of true moorland. It is sterner than Dartmoor. There is no
luxuriance of bracken here, nor acres of purple, but mile beyond grassy
mile of stately, rolling hills, very austere at noonday, but in the light
of a summer sunset transfigured into splendour. The new road to Lynmouth
turns abruptly back upon the hillside, and on it we plunge into the green
depths.[17]
If Nature is austere upon these hills, in the valley she is riotous. We
seem to be dropping down and down into her generous heart, and, like the
poet, we bless ourselves with silence. Far above us, as we wind beside
the river, the tall sides of the valley are clear-cut against the sky;
but just below the line of rock and heather the rich woods rise up and
take triumphant possession of the hills, and fill every curve and hollow,
and clothe the steep heights, and hang over the stream, and rustle by the
wayside. We have dropped so suddenly and deeply into these green waves
that we almost expect them to close over our heads. And as the road winds
on we think at every corner that all this beauty must come to a sudden
end. Surely we have passed the climax: surely the next curve will take
us out of this enchanted valley into the world we know. But the beauty
does not end. It grows; and only finds its climax in the red and green
headlands, and in the lovely village that lies between the hills where
the valley ends in the sea.
Lynmouth below and Lynton above, when one recalls them, seem, like
Clovelly, too good to be true. All the charms of Devon are here.
Charms that elsewhere seem incongruous are here in accord; grandeur
and homeliness agree together; the lion lies down with the lamb. Boats
and heather are in the same picture; the cliffs are clothed with woods
almost to the water’s edge. The two places cannot be compared; they are
so different that neither is complete without the other. Some love best
the boats and shallow pools and shaded river of Lynmouth; and to some the
wide view from Lynton hill seems the fairest thing in England.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM LYNTON.]
Wherever we stay ourselves, there is little to be gained by taking the
car up the cliff. The only roads that lead away from Lynton are the
Parracombe road and the road to Hunter’s Inn, which is not open to
motors--that wonderful road that runs through the wild Valley of Rocks,
and past the Castle Rock with its fine views of the coast, and past Lee
Abbey on its grassy plateau, and then for miles along the face of the
cliff, with dense woods closing round it on every side, and, through the
trees, hints of a blue sea very far below. This narrow way that is hung
so high in air, and has so many sharp corners and steep pitches, is truly
not a motoring road. It turns inland where a gap comes in the cliffs, and
ends at Hunter’s Inn, in a narrow gorge that is sheltered from every wind.
From Lynton we look over the roofs of Lynmouth to Countisbury Hill and
the red road that climbs it--apparently quite perpendicularly. Into the
mind there steals a hope that this is not our road. But it is.
We may avoid it, of course, by going back to Simonsbath and taking the
road through Exford and Whiddon Cross to Dunster--a road that is fairly
good, if dull. But most of us will think the loss of all the beauty of
the moors and woods is too heavy a price to pay for ease of travelling.
The lower part of Countisbury Hill, it is true, is quite as rough and
nearly as precipitous as the hill to Lynton, but as we rise the surface
becomes quite good, and the gradient is nowhere so steep as at the
bottom. And from the top of the cliff we look away across the heather to
the high uplands of Exmoor, and see below us on the right the green cleft
in the hills that is the Doone Valley.
[Illustration: RIVER LYN.]
THROUGH SOMERSET AGAIN
SUMMARY OF SECOND RUN THROUGH SOMERSET
DISTANCES.
Porlock
Taunton 30 miles
Ilminster 12¼ ”
Yeovil 13¾ ”
--------
Total 56 miles
ROADS.
No steep hills.
Surface on the whole very good.
VII
THROUGH SOMERSET AGAIN
Porlock is a word of dread significance to those who are interested in
the roads of England. A precipitous hill nearly three miles long, with a
surface of sand and stones and several sharp corners--such is the vision
that this name invokes. There is, however, not the least necessity to
lower ourselves into Porlock on these alarming gradients. Near the top of
the hill there is a private road that turns off to the left, and may be
used for the sum of one shilling. It is narrow, and has a poor surface
and two “hairpin” turns, but it is nowhere steep, and the woods through
which it runs are entrancing. The car slips gently down among the birches
and rowan-trees, and soon we see the bay below us with its dark grey
beach, and Porlock under the hill.
[Illustration: PORLOCK.]
The two roads join, and run into the village together, at the corner
where the “Ship” Inn and the cottages round it, with their thatched roofs
and porches and gay creepers, make a pretty picture with the green hill
for background. Indeed, all Porlock is made of pretty pictures: an inland
village could hardly be more decorative. There was a time when it was not
an inland village, but a favourite landing-place for visitors of various
nations but of one marauding aim. It does not to-day appear a promising
field for a robber of any ambition, but time was, I believe, when it was
quite a stirring place, with a royal palace and much prosperity. When the
Danes landed here in the night they were routed to their ships with empty
hands: but when, a hundred and fifty years later, no less a man than
Harold Godwinson sailed in from his exile in Ireland, he was not content
with plundering and burning Porlock itself, but made it a centre for
expeditions. He built himself a fort here, whence he could comfortably
raid the country that was afterwards his own kingdom. The French invasion
of the seventeenth century turned out to be a false alarm, but none
the less the inhabitants arose as one man, armed themselves valiantly
with scythes and pikes, and hurried away to Exeter to join William of
Orange--which seems an original way of repelling invasion.
There is an interesting church here. The alabaster figures of a knight
and his lady in elaborate headdresses represent Lord Harington of
Aldingham and his wife, afterwards Lady Bonville; whose finely carved
garments and faces have been thickly covered with deep-cut initials by
those who love antiquities as the Conqueror loved the tall deer.
Those whose love of antiquities is of another kind will find it worth
their while to run to the “Anchor” Inn at Porlock Weir, where every room
is rich in ancient furniture and vessels of copper and brass. The road
that leads to it is excellent, and so is the one that takes us on to
Dunster, though the redness of its surface adds a new terror to dust. We
pass through Allerford with a fine view of the hills and a glimpse of
the old pack-horse bridge; but when we reach the by-way to Selworthy we
shall do well to turn aside. For this pretty lane, which is roofed with
foliage as completely as a pergola, leads not only to an interesting
church and a tithe-barn, but to a group of almshouses that is unequalled
in its simple way: half a dozen thatched and gabled cottages ranged, not
in a stiff row, but round a sloping green, with wild woods to shelter
them, and walnut-trees to shade them, and hollyhocks and fuchsias to make
them gay. Between them and the woods a tiny stream trickles through the
moss, and over it a rough tree-stem has been flung to serve as bridge.
After a few more miles on the fine red road, with Dunkerry Hill
conspicuous on the right, we see, first Minehead lying by the sea and
spreading up the hill, and then the watch-tower of Dunster. A minute
later we drive into the Middle Ages.
This street of Dunster makes one half in love with the feudalism that
could produce so perfect a picture. On one side are the porch and archway
of the “Luttrell Arms”; on the other the octagonal yarn-market, gabled
and tiled and mossy, with a little mullioned window in each gable;
between them lies the straight, wide street; and in the background,
dominating and protective, the castle towers are lifted high upon
their wooded hill. Through all the centuries between the Conquest and
to-day this castle has had no masters but the Mohuns and the Luttrells,
and there is nothing in Dunster that is not connected, directly or
indirectly, with one of these two ancient names. These buildings to right
and left of us, for instance--this inn with the mediæval porch and the
beautiful north wing, and this market-house that used to be the scene of
“a very celebrate market at Dunstorre ons a wekes”--were both built by
George Luttrell of the sixteenth century and repaired by George Luttrell
of the seventeenth. And if we walk down the wide street and turn to the
left we shall find the church of the Mohuns’ priory, the Benedictine
priory that the first Mohun of Dunster founded, “pricked by the fear of
God.”
[Illustration: DUNSTER.]
It is a very notable church. “The late priory of blake monkes,” says
Leland, “stoode yn the rootes of the north-west side of the castelle,
and was a celle to Bathe. The hole chirch of the late priory servith
now for the paroche chirch. Afore tymes the monkes had the est parte
closid up to their use.” Of late years the church has been restored
to the form it had aforetimes, with the seats of the prior and monks,
and the monastic choir. The very beautiful rood-screen with the canopy
of fan-tracery, which was set up in the fifteenth century, forms the
entrance to the parish choir: the choir of the monks is reached through
the curious arch that is wider below than above--an arrangement made by
the brothers themselves to allow room for their processions. Round about
the high altar of the priory are monuments of the Luttrells. Thomas
Luttrell, whose great Elizabethan memorial is in the south-east chapel,
was the father of the man who rebuilt the castle and did so much for
Dunster--George Luttrell, who kneels here in effigy; and the slab that
now lies under the window of the south aisle once covered the grave of
the Lady Elizabeth who, as a widow, bought the manor of Dunster from
the widow of Sir John de Mohun. On the north side of the altar is the
alabaster figure, though probably not the tomb, of her son Sir Hugh,
first Luttrell of Dunster, Great Seneschal of Normandy, Steward of the
Household to Queen Joan, a warrior who won much renown in fighting the
French and the great Glyndwr and the little Perkin Warbeck. Most of the
Mohuns were buried at their abbey of Bruton, but here in the monks’
choir, under a canopy, is the figure of Dame Hawise, wife of the second
Sir Reynold de Mohun.
Near the church are some remains of the monastic buildings: the
refectory, the prior’s apparently impregnable barn, a couple of archways,
and, in the vicarage garden, a lovely thirteenth-century dovecot with a
tiled roof and hanging creepers.
Although the “glory of this toun rose by the Moions,” and though the
memory of them is everywhere, it is so many centuries since they went
away to Cornwall--to Hall near Fowey, and later to Boconnoc--that there
are few actual relics of them left. Of the three castles that they built
successively upon the hill there remains little more than a gateway
of the third, the gateway with the massive door and the mighty knocker
of iron. It is just within the main entrance, and strangely enough
was built by the husband of Dame Hawise, whose tomb is the only Mohun
monument in the church. The castellated gatehouse itself is the work of
the first Luttrell of Dunster. His descendants still live in the great
red dwelling-house with the martlets of the Luttrells over the door,
but by their kindness we are allowed, with a guide, to climb the steep
path under the yew-hedge that is sixty feet high; and to see the strange
half-tropical plants of the gardens, the cork-tree and the lemon-tree
upon the wall; and then to climb still higher to the bowling-green and
look out upon the park and the Severn Sea.
This was not always a bowling-green. It was here that the keep stood
till great Robert Blake, as formidable on shore as at sea, brought all
his batteries against it, and the Parliament finally dismantled it. The
whole castle, indeed, would have been ruined if it had not been wanted
as a prison for poor Mr. Prynne. Some years earlier, while there was a
royalist garrison in the castle, young Prince Charles was sent hither for
safety; and here, as elsewhere, tradition has assigned a certain Red Room
to him, for no other reason than that it contained a hiding-hole.[18]
There is a real delight, after all our experiences on the rough
precipitous hills of Devon, in swinging away from Dunster on a good
and level road--the road that is on the whole the best in Somerset. So
pleasant is it that some, no doubt, will stoutly refuse to pause or turn
aside for many a mile. For others, however, the lure of ancient stones
is very strong; and these will leave the highway more than once between
Dunster and Taunton. In Washford, for instance, there is a turn to the
right that leads in a moment to the Abbey of Cleeve. Here in a rough
field stands the gatehouse with the genial motto, _Patens porta esto,
ulli claudaris honesto_, and the statue of the abbey’s patron-saint, and
upon the inner side the crucifix and the tablet with the builder’s name,
Dovel. Poor William Dovel, last abbot of Cleeve, had a sore heart when
he passed out under these pointed arches that he had raised for others,
not himself, to use, and saw his own name overhead upon the masonry,
and remembered all his loving, futile work upon the walls of his abbey.
It was a poor Cistercian house, with a small income and no jewels nor
golden chalices to tempt a king; but even trifling sums were acceptable
to Henry, and though a thousand marks were offered for “his grasious
goodnes,” the abbey was doomed. So William Dovel went forth of this gate,
and with him “XVII prystes off very honest lyffe and conversation,” who
“kept alwayes grett hospytalyte to the relyffe off the countre.” There is
much of Dovel’s work in the buildings of the monastery. As we enter the
garth the western cloister is on our left, with Perpendicular windows and
mossy roof; facing us are the little pointed windows of the dormitory,
and below them the Early English doorway of the vaulted chapter-house.
Dovel’s refectory, with timbered roof and carved finials, is reached by
a staircase on the southern side of the quadrangle, and behind it in a
little garden is a pavement of heraldic tiles, bearing the arms of many
benefactors. Of the church hardly anything remains.
[Illustration: GATEHOUSE, CLEEVE ABBEY.]
Our good road takes us on, through Williton, to the foot of the
Quantocks, with the sea and the distant Welsh shore upon the left.
Beyond the railway we bear round to the right and drive below the green
and purple slopes of the hills that were loved and often trodden by
Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Hazlitt, the hills on which the writing
of the _Ancient Mariner_ was planned. At Crowcombe among the trees there
is a tall cross in the village, and a beautiful one in the churchyard,
and a porch with fan-tracery. About three miles beyond this we may turn
aside for a moment to Combe Florey, and see the old red manor-house of
the Floreys with their three flowers over the gateway, and the village
where Sydney Smith’s blue pills were a doubtful blessing, and the church
where he preached, and the vicarage on the hill, where he tried to impose
upon his London visitors by fastening antlers to his donkeys’ heads. It
was here that Henry Luttrell spent a day with him. “He had not his usual
soup-and-pattie look,” wrote Sydney Smith, “but a sort of apple-pie
depression, as if he had been staying with a clergyman.… He was very
agreeable, but spoke too lightly, I thought, of veal soup.”[19]
At Bishop’s Lydeard is a church that is fine enough in itself to wile us
from the highway. The bishop who gave it its name was the learned and
literary Asser, who has told us himself how King Alfred asked for his
friendship, which indeed seems to have been worth having. “He asked me
eagerly to devote myself to his service and become his friend, to leave
everything I possessed … and he promised he would give me more than an
equivalent for it in his own dominions.” This manor of Bishop’s Lydeard
was part of the equivalent he gave, when Asser, after some hesitation,
left St. David’s and came to be Bishop of Sherborne. Having forsaken
the main road to see the splendid tower of this church, and the painted
screen and bench-ends, and the tall cross in the churchyard, we may as
well drive on a little further to the very foot of the wooded Quantocks,
to the church and manor-house of Cothelstone. For many centuries this
land was owned by the Stawells, who have left their cross-lozengy above
the house-door and in the church; and in later years it became the home
of Shelley’s blue-eyed daughter, Ianthe. As we pass the outer gateway,
on which two of Jeffreys’ victims swung in Lord Stawell’s despite, we
can catch a glimpse of the inner gatehouse and of the red-tiled roof and
Jacobean doorway beyond. This is but a fragment of the old manor-house,
for when that “loftie proud man,” Sir John, raised four troops for
Charles I. he was sent to prison for it, and his house was brought low by
Blake.
There is a letter still existing, yellow now with age and very fragile at
the folds, in which Sir John’s bailiff writes to him piteously concerning
this disaster. “The cruell and base dealyng,” he says, “wch is now acted
at Cothelstone doth astonish and amaze all people wch do either see it or
heare of it; for they have now taken downe all the Leads of the house …
and have already taken downe that part of the house wch is over against
my Ladye’s garden.… I am very sorry that ther is occasion gyven me to
make soe sadd a relation unto you.… I beseech God to send us better
tymes.” It was in the eighteenth century that this restored wing of the
old house passed to the Esdailes, ancestors of that Edward Esdaile who
married Shelley’s daughter.
Behind the house is the church that was once the private chapel. It has
some carved bench-ends and some old glass, but its special features are
the two beautiful tombs in the south chapel: the finely carved figures
of a fourteenth-century Stawell and his wife, with their painted shields
below them, and the still more beautiful Elizabethan tomb with the
effigies of marble. In a corner of the churchyard is a white stone “in
sweet memory of Ianthe.”
Again we return to our high-road, and this time do not pause till
we drive into the market-place of Taunton, the quiet centre of a
country-town, where cabbages are bought and sold, and loitering cabmen
smoke their pipes without a thought of Monmouth or of Jeffreys. Yet some
of these very houses were wreathed with flowers at the coming of the
foolish duke: here where the fountain is he stood and smiled while the
pious maids of Taunton, made rebels by his handsome face, gave him a
Bible, and a fine banner of their own working, “One would have thought
the people’s wits were flown away in the flights of their joy.” Here
he was proclaimed King James and called King Monmouth, and here his
followers paid for their ill-placed devotion in torrents of blood. Into
this market-place came Kirke and his Lambs with their victims in chains;
and over there at the corner of Fore Street and High Street stood the
“White Hart,” whose signpost was the gibbet. Hither came Jeffreys of the
sinister face. “He breathed death like a destroying angel,” says Toulmin,
“and ensanguined his very ermines with blood. The victims remained
unburied; the houses and steeples were covered with their heads, and
the trees laden almost as thick with quarters as with leaves.” He went
in to his monstrous work through that arch with the embattled towers;
and passed on through the inner entrance of yellow stone, where Henry
VII.’s shield and Bishop Langton’s are above the door. Within it is
the great hall, with the timbered roof and the whitewashed walls that
were hung with scarlet while Jeffreys, “mostly drunk,” stormed at his
victims of the Bloody Assizes. The little girl--she was hardly more than
a child--who had won Monmouth’s easy smiles by her speech among the June
flowers in the market-place was ransomed with her schoolfellows; but her
sister had seen the Judge’s face, and died of the terror of it.
[Illustration: TAUNTON CASTLE.]
Such are some of the memories of quiet, prosperous Taunton. Nor is the
rest of its long history much more placid. The eighth-century castle
of wood to which King Ina of the West Saxons called his “fatherhood,
aldermen, and wisest commons, with the godly men of his kingdom, to
consult of great and weighty matters,” only survived for twenty-one
years. In the twelfth century the Bishop of Winchester built another,
which was improved and enlarged by his successors, and has partly
weathered the many storms and stresses of its long experience: Wars of
the Roses, invasion by Perkin, and the siege of the Civil War. Taunton
held for the Parliament, consistently, but at the first not very stoutly.
No sooner did the royalists come near the town, says Clarendon, than
two “substantial inhabitants” were sent out to treat with the general;
while the garrison settled the matter by departing, like Perkin on a
former occasion from the same castle, “with wonderful celerity.” A year
later, however, the Parliament took Taunton again, and making Blake its
defender, kept it. For Blake, who afterwards summed up a sailor’s duty
in memorable words--“It is not for us to mind state affairs, but to
keep the foreigners from fooling us”--knew the duty of a soldier too.
“As we neither fear your menaces nor accept your proffers,” he answered
the summons to surrender, “so we wish you for time to come to desist
from all overtures of the like nature unto us.” Wyndham, Goring, Hopton,
Grenville, all did their utmost in vain. It remained for Charles II.’s
spite to ruin Taunton’s defences. The castle that defied the King was
dismantled, and the town-walls utterly wiped away.
Of the Augustinian Priory that was founded by Bishop Giffard of
Winchester and supported by so many noteworthy people--by Henry de Blois
and the Mohuns, Montacutes and Arundels, William of Wykeham and Jasper
Tudor--there is nothing left but a barn, the priory church of St. James,
and the splendid chapel of St. Mary Magdalen, now the parish church. The
graceful tower from which Macaulay looked out over a land flowing with
milk and honey was shortly afterwards taken down, but the present one,
with its three tiers of Decorated windows and its pinnacles and parapet,
is exactly copied, it is said, from the original.
From Taunton we pass, through pretty undulating country, by way of Hatch
Beauchamp to Ilminster. After the wild scenery of Devon this quiet land
is not exciting; but there are pleasant woods here and there, and the
villages of Somerset need fear no comparisons with any in England. The
towns are less attractive, except in the matter of churches. Ilminster,
for instance, is clean and old-fashioned, but has no real beauty save
the church of yellow stone with the fine tower. When Monmouth made his
successful progress through this country in his youth, from hospitable
house to flower-strewn town, he came to this church one Sunday morning
from White Lackington. He saw the tower with the triple windows and Sir
William Wadham’s fifteenth-century transepts; but the nave has been
rebuilt since then, and betrays the fact. In the northern transept is the
enormous tomb of the builder, inlaid with brasses; and near it is the
ponderous but unlovely monument of Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, founders
of Wadham College. They “lie both interr’d under a stately monument,”
says Prince, “now much defaced, the greater is the pity, by the rude
hands of children and time.”