BIDEFORD
Ugly modern buildings--"Westward Ho!"--Roman roads--The
Torridge--The story of King Edmund--The ravages of the sons
of Lodbrog--Hingvar and Hubba defeated at Appledore--Brictric
the Golden-haired--Bideford Bridge--The herriot--Sir
William Coffin--The Newfoundland Fisheries--Sir Richard
Grenville--Colonisation of Wokohen--Captain White--The story
of the life of Sir Richard Grenville--The _Revenge_--The
north coast to Wellcombe--The Hobby Drive--Hartland--S.
Nectan--The Promontory of Hercules--Wellcombe--Mutilation of the
Church--Wear Gifford.
Barnstaple and Bideford are towns that the jerry-builders have
done their utmost to make hideous with white brick villas banded
with red. It is a curious fact, but fact it is, that a builder
without a grain of taste, if ambitious to make one of his domestic
monstrosities attractive, will look into the pattern-book of a maker
of terra-cotta, and select the most obtrusive ridge-tiles and, above
all, hip-knobs he can find, frizzle the spine of his roof with the
former, clap the latter on his gable, and think that the product is
stylish. The foliations of the ridge-tiles get broken after a frost,
and the roof acquires a mangy look, but not till after the villa has
been let as a handsome suburban residence.
[Illustration: SMITHY, HARTLAND]
When one encounters this sort of thing, repeated again and again,
the heart turns sick, and the visitor is impatient to fly from towns
thus vulgarised.
To Bideford he comes full of thoughts of "Westward Ho!" and expects
to find an Elizabethan flavour about the place, only to be woefully
disappointed. Even the church is new; only the bridge remains, and
that has been menaced with destruction.
Bideford has memories, but modern Bideford has made herself
æsthetically unworthy of them.
To begin with, the old Roman, or pre-Roman, road from North Cornwall
passing through Stratton, that takes its name from the street or
road, ran to the ford on the Torridge and passed on to Barnstaple.
At the beginning of the ninth century the estuary of the Taw and
Torridge (_Dur_, water, and _Dur-rhyd_, the water ford[13]) invited
the entry into the land of the Northmen.
[13] The ford gave its distinctive appellation to the river above it.
A memorable incident in one of these incursions is connected with a
romantic story that shall be told in full.
Roger of Wendover gives the tale, founding it on old ballads.
"There was, not long ago, in the kingdom of the Danes, a certain
man named Lodbrog (Hairy-breeches), who was sprung from the
royal race of that nation, and had by his wife two sons, Hingvar
and Hubba. One day he took his hawk and went unattended in a
little boat to catch small birds and wild-fowl on the seacoast
and in the islands. While thus engaged he was surprised by a
sudden storm, and carried out to sea, and after having been
tossed about for several days and nights, was at last carried
in sore distress to the English coast, and landed at Redham,
in the province of Norfolk. The people of that country by
chance found him with his hawk, and presented him as a sort
of prodigy to Edmund, king of the East Angles, who, for the
sake of his comely person, gave him an honourable reception.
Lodbrog abode some time in the court of the monarch, and as
the Danish tongue is very like English, he began to relate
to the king by what chance he had been driven to the coast
of England. The accomplished manners of King Edmund pleased
Lodbrog, as well as his military discipline and the courtly
manners of his attendants. Emulous of the like attainments,
Lodbrog asked permission of the king to remain in his court,
and having obtained his request, he attached himself to the
king's huntsman, whose name was Bjorn, that he might with him
exercise the hunter's art. But such was the skill of Lodbrog,
that he was always successful in hunting or hawking, and being
deservedly a favourite with the king, Bjorn became jealous of
him, and giving way to deadly hatred, one day, when they were
hunting together, he attacked him and slew him, and left his
body in a thicket. This done, the wicked huntsman called off his
dogs with his horn, and returned home. Now Lodbrog had reared a
certain greyhound in King Edmund's court, which was very fond of
him, and, as is natural, when the huntsman returned with his own
dogs, remained watchful by his master's body.
"Next day, as King Edmund sat at table, he missed Lodbrog
from the company, and anxiously asked his attendants what had
befallen him, on which Bjorn, the huntsman, answered that he had
tarried behind in a wood, and he had seen no more of him. But as
he was speaking, Lodbrog's dog came into the hall and began to
wag his tail and fawn on all, and especially on the king, who,
on seeing him, said to his attendants, 'Here comes Lodbrog's
dog; his master is not far behind.' He then began to feed the
dog, hoping soon to see his master. But he was disappointed, for
when the greyhound had satisfied his appetite, he returned to
keep his accustomed watch over his master's body. After three
days he was compelled by hunger to return to the king's table,
and Edmund, greatly wondering, gave orders to follow the dog
when he left the hall, and watch whither he went. The king's
servants fulfilled his commands, and followed the dog till it
led them to Lodbrog's lifeless body. On being informed of this
the king was greatly disturbed, and directed that the body
should be committed to a more honourable sepulchre. King Edmund
then caused diligent inquisition to be made touching the death
of Lodbrog; and Bjorn, the huntsman, was convicted of the crime,
and by order of the king, the captains and wise men of his court
passed sentence on him. The judges unanimously agreed that the
huntsman should be put into the boat in which Lodbrog had come
to England, and should be exposed on the sea without sail or
oar, that it might be proved whether God would deliver him."
Roger of Wendover goes on to tell how Bjorn was wafted across to
Denmark, and there was examined by torture by Hubba and Hingvar,
sons of Lodbrog, who recognised their father's boat. Bjorn, under
torture, declared that Lodbrog had been put to death by Edmund, king
of the East Angles. The Danes accordingly assembled an army and
invaded East Anglia to avenge on Edmund the murder of their father.
The Norse story does not agree with this at all. According to the
Sagas, Ragnar Lodbrog was seized by Ælla, king of the Northumbrians,
and was thrown into a dungeon full of serpents, in which he sang
his dying song, the famous Krakumal. His sons, they say, were
called Eirekr, Agnarr, Ivar, Bjorn Ironside, Hvitserkr, and Sigurd
Worm-in-the-eye.
Edmund encamped at the royal vill of Haelesdune (Hoxne), when
Hingvar and Hubba landed at Berwick-on-Tweed, and ravaged the
country on their march through Northumbria. In 870 Hingvar entered
East Anglia, and was attacked by Edmund whilst his force was divided
from that of Hubba. Both sides suffered severely. Hubba joined
Hingvar at Thetford, and the united army fought Edmund again. His
force was far outnumbered. He was routed, and he and Humbert,
bishop of Elmham, were taken in a church; Humbert was despatched
with the sword. Edmund was tied to a tree, and the Danes shot at
him with their arrows, till they were tired of the sport, when he
was decapitated, and his head flung into a thicket of the forest of
Hoxne.
So far we have had nothing about Bideford. But now we come to this
parish.
Hingvar and Hubba (Agnarr and Ivar of the Norse version) were
provided by their sisters with an ensign before starting, on which,
with their needles, they had wrought the figure of a raven, in
symbol of the carnage that their brothers were to cause in revenge
for the death of their father. Hingvar and Hubba in 866 ravaged East
Anglia and Mercia; they wintered in Essex, and in 867 crossed the
Humber and took York. In 868 they devastated as far as Nottingham.
In 870 Edmund fell. Every successive year was marked by fire and
slaughter. In 876 the Danes were in Exeter, and again in 877. In the
winter of 878 Hubba came with twenty-three ships into the estuary
of the Taw and Torridge with the raven standard, and landed at
Appledore (_Aweddwr_, W. running water). Here the men of Devon were
encamped at Kenwith,[14] now Henny Castle, north-west of Bideford,
where earthworks remain to this day in the wood. The Danes attacked
the camp, and were repulsed, with the loss of twelve hundred men and
their raven banner. Hubba was also slain. He was buried on the shore
near his ships, and a pile of stones was thrown up over him. The
place bears the name of Whiblestone, or Hubbastone, but all traces
of the cairn have disappeared, swept away by the encroachment of the
sea. So the men of Devon avenged the blood of S. Edmund and of the
men of Mercia and East Anglia.
[14] Observe the Goidelic for _Cen_ for the Brythonic _Pen_. Kenwith
is "The Head of the Wood."
In the time of Edward the Confessor the manor of Bideford belonged
to Brictric the Golden-haired. He was sent by the king to the
court of Baldwin V., Count of Flanders, where Matilda, the Count's
daughter, cast on him an eye of affection. But Brictric did
not reciprocate, and Matilda felt all the rage and resentment
entertained by a flouted fair. Her chance came at last. She
was married to William the Bastard, who conquered England. For
fourteen years she had waited, nursing her wrath. Now, at last, the
opportunity had arrived for revenge. At her instigation Brictric was
made to surrender all his honours and lands, and was conveyed to
Winchester, where he died in prison, and was hurriedly buried.
William the Conqueror gave Bideford to the son of Hamo the Toothy,
Richard de Grenville, and the place has never since lost its
association with the Granville family.
Sir Theobald Granville in the fourteenth century was a large
benefactor to the town in assisting in the building of the bridge,
rendered advisable by the great loss of life at the ford or in
the ferry. It was, however, said to have been set on foot at the
prompting of Richard Gurney, the parish priest, who dreamed two
nights running that there was a rock below the ooze on which a pier
might rest. But one pier did not suffice, and how to sustain others
on mud was a puzzle. It was--so tradition says--solved by sinking
bags of wool and laying the bases of the piers on these, a story not
so improbable as appears on the face.
For a long time the vicars of Bideford had a herriot, that is, a
right to the second best horse or cow of any parishioner who died.
In 1529 this led to a scene. Sir William Coffin was passing one
day by the churchyard, when, seeing a crowd collected, he asked
the occasion, and learned that a corpse had been brought there to
be interred, but that the vicar refused to read the burial service
unless the dead man's cow were surrendered. But as the deceased had
left no other property whatever, the heirs demurred. On hearing
this Sir William sent for the priest, and reasoned with him on the
impropriety of his conduct; however, the vicar was obstinate and
would not give way.
"Very well, then," said the knight, "stick me in the grave, and
cover me up instead of the corpse, and you shall have my second best
cow."
He was proceeding to get into the grave, when the vicar thought
prudent to yield. I suppose that the matter became notorious by
the complaint of the parson, for Sir William was actually summoned
before Parliament on a charge of violating the rights and privileges
of the Church. But partly through his favour at court, and partly
by his being able to represent the mischievous consequences of the
arbitrary demand for "mortuaries," Parliament passed an act which
put a stop to them, or, at all events, in favour of the poor,
limited the extent of these claims.
Bideford was not a place of much importance till the reign of Queen
Elizabeth; it started into significance through the Newfoundland
cod-fisheries, which were almost entirely in the hands of the
Barnstaple, Bideford, and Bristol men as far as England was
concerned.
As early as 1504 the Portuguese had begun to catch fish on those
coasts. In 1578 England had fifty vessels, Portugal as many, and
France and Spain together, a hundred and fifty, occupied in reaping
the harvest of the sea in the North Atlantic. From 1698 to 1700
Bideford had twenty-eight vessels engaged in the fishery, whilst
Barnstaple had only seven or eight; London sent out seventy-one, and
Topsham thirty-four.
But the raising of Bideford into a port of importance was due mainly
to the enterprise of the famous Elizabethan admiral, Sir Richard
Grenville.
"Sir Richard was born most probably at Stowe, the Cornish seat
of the family, in the parish of Kilkhampton, in the year 1546.
His father, Roger, was a captain in the navy, and met with a
watery grave at Portsmouth, in a ship called the _Mary Rose_, a
vessel of 600 tons, and one of the finest in the navy, commanded
by Sir George Carew. She sank with all on board, July 19th,
1545, from a similar accident to that which happened to the
_Royal George_ near the same place, June 28th, 1782. Being at
anchor in calm weather with all ports open, a sudden breeze
caused the ship to heel over, when the water entered through the
lower ports and sank her. Some guns recovered many years after
are preserved in Woolwich Arsenal. Richard Granville was early
distinguished among his companions for his enthusiastic love
of active exercises, and at the age of sixteen he, in company
with several other chivalrous scions of our nobility, obtained
a licence from Queen Elizabeth to enter into the service of the
Emperor of Hungary against the Turks."[15]
[15] GRANVILLE (R.), _History of Bideford_, _n.d._
He was engaged in the battle of Lepanto, in which Don Juan of
Austria, with the combined fleets of Christendom, destroyed the
Turkish galleys. One can but wish that a combined fleet would once
more try conclusions with the Turk.
Then Richard Granville in 1569 was made Sheriff of Cork, but he
remained in Ireland two years only. By his interest with Queen
Elizabeth he obtained for Bideford a charter of incorporation, 1574.
He was High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1578, and was then knighted. But
the bias of his mind was towards adventure at sea, and he united
with his relative, Sir Walter Raleigh, in the exploration which led
to the discovery of Virginia and Carolina in 1584.
"Two ships belonging to Sir Walter's company, and in the
command of Captain Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow, brought
home that important news. The magnitude and eligibility of the
territory acquired by the Crown were on everyone's lips; for the
accounts of those who had been eye-witnesses of the country,
its productions and inhabitants, hastened onwards Raleigh's
preparations for taking possession of his newly-found dominions.
As soon as the good news spread among the country people in
the west, hundreds of hardy adventurers offered themselves as
the pioneers of colonisation in that quarter. A fleet of seven
ships, of which Sir Richard took the command, was got ready
with all possible despatch, and when the anchor was weighed at
Plymouth on the 9th of April, 1585, there were none amongst
the thousands there assembled but shared the belief that their
relatives and friends were departing for a land flowing with
milk and honey. The voyage was a pleasant one, being favoured
with a prosperous wind, but the inveterate hostility of Sir
Richard towards our national enemies, the Spaniards, led him
to prolong its duration. He accordingly pursued his course by
the roundabout way of the West India islands, and was rewarded
by the capture of several valuable prizes during his cruise
there. They did not reach the island of Wokohen, on the coast
of Carolina, until the 26th of June, thus consuming valuable
time on their passage. We are told they were in about 34 degrees
North latitude, when, just as they were on the point of entering
the roads, the admiral's ship, from some mischance or other,
drove on a reef of rocks and went to pieces. It was fortunate
that no loss of life heightened the gloom of this inauspicious
opening. After great exertions the men rescued the crew of the
doomed vessel, and proceeded for the island of Roanoke, a little
farther to the northwards. The admiral went at once from that
island to the continent, and, on his landing, proceeded to see
what sort of country the promised land was. Whilst engaged in
this survey, the natives, who were unaccustomed to the sight
of beings so different from themselves in colour, costume, and
bearing, crowded around, plying them with questions by signs
and gestures. Sir Richard appeased their inquisitiveness with
the few trifling articles he had designed for them as presents;
but their appetites being rather sharpened than appeased by
these acquisitions, one of the natives, instigated by the rest,
entered Sir Richard's tent, and, attracted by a massive silver
goblet belonging to that knight, without more ado walked off
with it. The despoiled owner happened at the time to be employed
in 'prospecting' the country, but on his return instantly
missed the favourite piece of plate. Enraged at this mark of
ingratitude when from his conciliatory kindness he had expected
good faith, he adopted severe measures on the natives around.
He soon after set sail to Roanoke, which all accounts concur
in representing as an incommodious station, deficient in all
the requisites for a good harbour, and all but uninhabited.
Here, having founded a settlement, he left in it a company of
180 men. Mr. Ralph Lane, a man of experienced judgment, was
elected governor of the infant colony, which ranked among its
members several names not unknown to fame. Men well skilled
in the different sciences were there, to instruct and improve
the growing intelligence of the colony. Of these, Hariot, a
mathematician of first-rate eminence in his day, is especially
mentioned. Sir Richard made for home with the avowed intention
of procuring a reinforcement sufficiently powerful to subdue
and colonise the continent of Virginia and Carolina. His good
fortune led him in his homeward voyage to fall in with a Spanish
register ship, almost as richly laden as the treasure ship the
_Cacafuego_, which had enriched, by its capture, his relative
Sir Francis Drake and his crew. In this vessel, which Sir
Richard engaged and boarded, was stowed away a cargo worth more
than £50,000 sterling."[16]
[16] _Grenvilles of Stowe_, by "A BIDEFORDIAN."
When Sir Richard Granville had retired, the colonists wasted their
time in searching for gold in place of cultivating the soil.
Consequently they were in a condition of starvation when Sir Francis
Drake, touching there on his way to England, rescued them from their
impending fate.
"Not long after, Sir Richard Granville with three ships hove
in sight. Ignorant of what had happened he landed with the
confident hope of adding vigour and strength to the infant
colony for whose welfare he had toiled and sacrificed; but
after making the most laborious searches for the absentees,
without obtaining any indications of their fate, he set
sail, leaving fifteen of his crew ashore for the purpose of
retaining possession. This handful of men soon became involved
in hostilities with the natives, and were by them destroyed
to the last man. However disheartening this unlooked-for
succession of disasters might have proved to men of ordinary
stamp, they only incited the elastic dispositions of Raleigh
and Granville to more vigorous operations. Early, therefore, in
the following year (1587), they fitted out three more ships,
which were entrusted to the command of Captain John White, a
native of Devonshire, a man well versed in all the difficulties
and trials attending enterprises of this nature. He brought
together a more numerous and determined body of adventurers
than had composed the former expedition under Lane; but upon
their arrival the same disadvantages which had daunted their
predecessors in the colony appeared so forcibly before their
senses that, deeming the continuous mass of forest and the
endless savannahs of the country only fit for the abode of
savages, they with one accord solicited their leader, White, to
return to England and bring a fresh supply of articles, that
their uncomfortable position might at least be made tolerable.
He accordingly retraced his footsteps, arriving in this country
at a time when the eyes of the entire nation were intent upon
warfare, and, receiving no encouragement from their patrons,
the unfortunate colony in Roanoke obtained no assistance; and
the painful fact must be repeated, that our first settlers in
Virginia were suffered to perish miserably by a famine or to
fall ignominiously from the savage hatred of the tribes who
surrounded them."
Kingsley is wrong in stating that Sir Richard was at sea, and
assisted in the destruction of the Armada; at the time he was acting
under orders to remain in Cornwall.
Three years after, in 1591, he was in command of the _Revenge_,
as Vice-Admiral of England, in which he achieved the glorious
action off the Azores in which he met his death. His object was to
intercept the richly-laden fleet of the Spaniards, on its return
from the West Indies; a service of the utmost importance, as thereby
England stopped the sources of Philip's power.
Towards the end of August, the Admiral, Lord Thomas Howard, with six
of Her Majesty's ships and as many small vessels, was at anchor at
Flores, when news arrived of the near approach of the great Spanish
fleet. Many of the Englishmen were ill on shore, and others were
filling the ships with ballast. Imperfectly manned and ballasted as
they were, there was nothing for it but to make an attempt to escape
out of the trap in which they were caught, and the ships slipped
their cables. Sir Richard, as Vice-Admiral, was the last to start,
delaying to do so till the final moment, in order to collect those
of his sick crew who were on shore; and this delay was fatal.
The two great Spanish squadrons hove in sight and intercepted him.
However, he resolved to force his way through. The Spanish fleet
consisted of fifty-three vessels. Eleven out of the twelve English
ships had escaped. Sir Richard weighed, uncertain at first what to
do. The Spanish fleet were on his weather bow, and he was advised to
cut his mainsail, cast about, and run before the wind, trusting to
the fleetness of his ship. But Sir Richard utterly refused to turn
his back on the enemy, alleging that he would die rather than show
that to a Spaniard.
The wind was light. The _San Philip_, a huge high-cargoed ship of
1500 tons, hove to windward, took the wind out of the sails of the
_Revenge_, and attempted to board her. The Spanish vessels were
filled with soldiers: in some two hundred, in some five hundred, in
others eight hundred.
The _San Philip_ had three tiers of ordnance, with eleven pieces on
every tier.
Then, as Tennyson tells the tale:--
"Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so
The little _Revenge_ ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below,
For half of their fleet to the right, and half to the left were seen,
And the little _Revenge_ ran on thro' the long sea-lane between."
The fight began at three o'clock in the afternoon and continued
all that evening. The _San Philip_, having received the lower tier
of the _Revenge_, charged with cross-bar shot, was to some extent
disabled, and shifted her quarters. Repeated attempts made to board
the English vessel were repulsed. All that August night the fight
continued, the stars shining overhead, but eclipsed by the clouds of
smoke from the cannon. Ship after ship came in upon the _Revenge_,
so that she was continuously engaged with two mighty galleons,
one on each side, and with the enemy boarding her on both. Before
morning fifteen men-of-war had been engaged with her, but all in
vain; some had been sunk, the rest repulsed.
"And the rest, they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqeteers,
And a dozen times we shook 'em off, as a dog that shakes his ears,
When he leaps from the water to land."
All the powder at length in the _Revenge_ was spent, all her pikes
were broken, forty out of her hundred men were killed, and a great
number of the rest wounded.
Sir Richard, though badly hurt early in the battle, never forsook
the deck till an hour before midnight, and was then shot through the
body while his wounds were being dressed, and again in the head, and
his surgeon was killed while attending on him. The masts were lying
over the side, the rigging cut or broken, the upper work all shot in
pieces, and the ship herself, unable to move, was settling slowly in
the sea, the vast fleet of the Spaniards lying round her in a ring,
like dogs round a dying lion and wary of approaching him in his last
dying agony. Sir Richard, seeing it was past hope, having fought for
fifteen hours, ordered the master-gunner to sink the ship; but this
was a heroic sacrifice that the common seamen opposed. Two Spanish
ships had gone down, above fifteen hundred men had been killed, and
the Spanish admiral could not induce any of the rest of the fleet to
board the _Revenge_ again, as they feared lest Sir Richard should
blow himself and them up.
Sir Richard was lying disabled below, and too weak and wounded
to contest with those who opposed the sinking of the vessel. The
captain now entered into parley with the Spanish admiral, and
succeeded in obtaining for conditions that all their lives should
be saved, the crew sent to England, and the officers ransomed. Sir
Richard was now removed to the ship of Don Alfonso Barsano, the
Spanish admiral, and there died, saying in Spanish:--
"Here die I, Richard Granville, with a joyful and quiet mind,
for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do
that hath fought for his country, queen, religion, and honour:
whereby my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body, and
shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant
and true soldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do."
Froude well says:--[17]
[17] _Forgotten Worthies._
"Such was the fight at Flores in that August, 1591, without
its equal in such of the annals of mankind as the thing which
we call history has preserved to us. At the time England and
all the world rang with it. It struck a deeper terror, though
it was but the action of a single ship, into the hearts of the
Spanish people, it dealt a more deadly blow upon their fame
and naval strength, than the destruction of the Armada itself,
and in the direct results which arose from it it was scarcely
less disastrous to them. Hardly, as it seems to us, if the most
glorious actions which are set like jewels in the history of
mankind are weighed one against the other in the balance, hardly
will those three hundred Spartans, who in the summer morning sat
combing their long hair for death in the passes of Thermopylæ,
have earned a more lofty estimate for themselves than this one
crew of modern Englishmen. After the action there ensued a
tempest so terrible as was never seen or heard the like before.
A fleet of merchantmen joined the armada immediately after
the battle, forming in all one hundred and forty sail; and of
these one hundred and forty, only thirty-two ever saw Spanish
harbour; the rest all foundered or were lost on the Azores. The
men-of-war had been so shattered by shot as to be unable to
carry sail; and the _Revenge_ herself, disdaining to survive her
commander, or as if to complete his own last baffled purpose,
like Samson, buried herself and her two hundred prize crew under
the rocks of St. Michael's."
[Illustration: CLOVELLY]
Bideford is the starting-point for the north coast of Devon, from
the mouth of the Torridge to the Cornish border, and thence to Bude.
The beauty of this coast is almost unrivalled, equalled only by that
from Ilfracombe to Minehead.
Clovelly, with the Hobby Drive, is something to be seen, and one's
education is incomplete without it.
And one can combine archæology with the quest of beauty, if a visit
to Clovelly be combined with one to the "Dykes," sadly mutilated by
roads cut through the embankments. Nevertheless, sufficient remains
of Clovelly Dykes to make it a fair representative of a British
king's _Dun_. Beyond Clovelly, somewhat spoiled by being a place of
resort, but always maintaining much picturesqueness, is Hartland,
the settlement of S. Nectan, reputed son, but probably grandson,
of King Brychan of Brecknock. He is represented in a niche on the
tower. His name is Irish; Nectans were not uncommon in the Green
Isle.
Very little is known of S. Nectan. He is said to have been killed,
his head cut off--not improbably by the chief at Clovelly Dykes, who
cannot have relished having the country overrun and appropriated by
a horde of half Irish half Welsh adventurers. And this took place
precisely at the time when the Irish grip on Britain was relaxing.
A stone was marked with his blood where he was killed. He got up
and carried his head to where now stands the church. But "they all
did it." These Celtic saints had a remarkable faculty for not only
losing their heads, but finding them again.
There is a grand screen painted and gilt in the church.
At Hartland Point, the promontory of Hercules of the ancients, is
a lighthouse. When the wind is from the west the Atlantic thunders
and foams on one side of the headland, whilst on the other in the
bay the sea lies glassy, and reflects the purple-red slaty cliffs.
The point rises 300 feet out of the sea, and was probably at one
time occupied by a cliff-castle. A visit to Hartland Quay reveals
the most extraordinary contortions in the slate rock. The cliffs are
sombre, the strata thrust up at right angles to the sea, and over
them foam streamlets that discharge themselves into the ocean.
Hartland Abbey was founded by Gytha, the wife of Earl Godwin, and
mother of Harold, in honour of S. Nectan, who, she believed, had
come to the assistance of her husband in a storm and saved him from
shipwreck--as if a true Celtic saint would put out his little finger
to help a Saxon! But there was unquestionably a monastery here long
before--from the sixth century, when S. Nectan settled on this wild
headland.
The large parish was at one time studded with chapels, but these
have all disappeared, or been converted into barns. The church is
two miles from the village of Hartland.
A walk along the cliffs may be carried to Wellcombe, another
foundation of S. Nectan, where is his holy well, recently repaired.
The church contains a screen earlier in character than is usually
found. There were interesting bench-ends with very curious heads.
At the "restoration" a few of the ends were plastered against the
screen, and their unique heads sawn away so as to make them fit the
place into which they were thrust, but never designed to occupy.
Their places were taken by mean deal benches. I suppose as the
patron, S. Nectan, lost his head, these chief ornaments of the
church were doomed to the same fate.
Wellcombe Mouth is worth a visit; a narrow glen descending to the
sea, which here rages against precipitous cliffs.
Another excursion from Bideford should be made to Wear Gifford,
where is one of the finest oak-roofed halls in England.
The mansion stands on a slope, rising gently from the meadows near
the Torridge, yet rears itself into the semblance of a stronghold by
a scarped terrace, which extends along the south front.
Half concealed in luxuriant vegetation, on the right is the
embattled gateway tower, still one of the entrances. In approaching
the house we see two projecting gables, and between them is the
entrance and the hall, the latter with its massive chimney.
From the entrance the broad oak staircase, having a handsome
balustrade, is ascended. The walls are hung with tapestry. On
reaching the minstrels' gallery an excellent view is obtained of
the superb roof, "one of the most ornate and tasteful specimens of
Perpendicular woodwork to be met with in England. Every portion
is carved with the spirit and stroke of the true artist; and the
multiplied enrichments seen in detail from our elevated position
quite surprise the spectator."[18]
[18] ASHWORTH: "The Ancient Manor House of Wear Gifford," in _Trans.
of the Exeter Diocesan Architect. Soc._, vol. vi., 1852.
Elaborately carved wainscot panelling surrounds the walls, covering
about ten feet in height. It is adorned with heraldic shields, and
opposite the fireplace are the arms of Henry VII.
This small, perfect, and beautiful specimen of an old English
mansion was the cradle of one of the best of Devonshire families,
the Giffards, a branch of which was at Brightley. The last of the
Wear Gifford stock conveyed the estate and mansion with his daughter
and heiress to the Fortescues. But the Giffard race is by no means
extinct, it is now well represented by the Earl of Halsbury.
NOTE.--Book on Bideford:--
GRANVILLE (R.), _History of Bideford_. Bideford, 1883.
[Illustration: STAPLE TOR]