TAVISTOCK
Origin of Tavistock--Foundation of the Abbey--S.
Rumon--Edgar and Elfrida--Abbot Aylmer--Aldred--The Parish
Church--Glanville--The Story of Mrs. Page--John Fitz--The
Story of Sir John Fitz--The Story of Lady Howard--Sir Richard
Grenville--Early inscribed stones--Statue of Sir Francis
Drake--Buckland Abbey--Morwell--Lydford, its castle, ravine, and
waterfall--Brent Tor--Endsleigh--Mary and Peter Tavy--Whit Tor.
Certain towns tell you at a glance what was their _raison d'être_;
Tavistock has clustered about its abbey, that lay low near its
fish-ponds, whereas Launceston clings about its castle, that stood
high to command the country round.
Very possibly the original Saxon stockade was where still some
earthworks remain, above the South Western Railway, but the centre
of life moved thence on account of the fancy coming into the head
of Ordulf, Earl of Devon, to found an abbey by the waterside in the
valley beneath him. The legend, as told in a cartulary summarised
in Dugdale's _Monasticon_, is that, in the reign of Edgar, Ordulf
was one night praying in the open air, when he saw a pillar of fire
brighter than the sun at noon hovering where now anyone, on any day,
may see a lowering cloud of smoke. That same night an angel bade
him go forth at dawn and explore the spot where he had seen the
fire, and then build an oratory to the four evangelists. I think
I can explain the vision. The farmer was "swaling." At a certain
period a good many pillars of fire may be seen about Tavistock,
when either the furze is being burnt, or the farmers are consuming
the "stroil"--the weeds from their fields. So I do not reject the
story as altogether fabulous, but as "improved." What Ordulf had a
mind to do was to establish a monastery for the comfort of his soul,
having, I doubt not, bullied and maltreated the poor Britons without
compunction. His father had had a mind the same way, but had died
without performing what was his intent.
[Illustration: BRENT TOR]
Next day Ordulf went to the spot where he had seen the fire, and
there beheld four stakes, marking out the ground, and this fact
confirms me in my opinion. For it was the custom of the natives
thus to indicate the bounds of their fields. The stakes were called
_termons_. In like manner miners indicated their setts by cutting
four turves annually at the limits of their grounds.
Ordulf now set to work and erected an oratory with buildings for an
abbot and brethren, and he gave them of his inheritance Tavistock,
Milton, Hatherleigh, Burrington, Rumonsleigh, Linkinhorne, Dunethem,
and Chuvelin, which I cannot identify. He also bestowed on the
monastery his wife's dower.
When the monastic church was built he moved to it the bones of his
father, mother, and brother, and after his death was there laid
himself.
However, before he graced it with his own relics, he transferred to
it the remains of S. Rumon or Ruan (960), who, if we may judge from
some place-names, had been there at a considerably earlier period as
a missionary; for there is near Meavy a Roman's cross, and between
Tavistock and Bere Ferrers is Romansleigh, and on the Tamar Rumleigh.
The saint reposed in the church of Ruan Lanihorne (Llan-ruan) in
Cornwall, but Ordulf did not scruple to rob a mere West Welsh church
to give honour and glory to one of his own founding.
Rumon was by no means a saint with a name and not a story. He had
been a convert of S. Patrick, a Scot of Ireland. As I shall say
something concerning him when we come to his field of labours in the
Lizard district, I will say no more about them here.
Ordgar, Earl of Devon, was father of the beautiful Elfrida, who
accordingly was sister of Ordulf. Her story, though tolerably well
known, must not be passed over here.
King Edgar was a little man, but thought a good deal of himself--a
merciful dispensation of Providence accorded to little men to make
up for their lack of inches. He was of a warm complexion. He once
carried off a nun from her convent, and was reprimanded for it by
S. Dunstan, who forbade him for this disreputable act to wear his
crown for seven years. His first wife was Ethelfleda, called the
Duck--Duckie, doubtless, by her husband--and after her death he
looked out for another, as is an infirm way that widowers have.
Edgar, hearing that Elfrida, daughter of Ordgar, was the loveliest
woman in England, with a true Devonshire complexion of cream and
heather-bloom, sent Ethelwald, Earl of the East Angles, to interview
her before he committed himself. Ethelwald no sooner saw her than
he was a "gone coon," and he asked the hand of Elfrida from her
brother. Having received his consent, he hurried back to the king
and told him that the lady was much over-rated, that her chief
beauty lay in her wealth; as her only brother Ordulf was childless,
she had expectations of coming in for his fortune when it should
please Providence, and so on.
So, as though looking only to her expectations, Ethelwald asked
the king to give him the lady. Edgar yielded his consent, and
Ethelwald married Elfrida, and became by her the father of a boy
whom he persuaded the king to take as his god-child, and to whom he
gave the name of Edgar. Then Ethelwald was glad, for he knew that
according to the laws of the Church, they had contracted a spiritual
relationship which would prevent the king from ever marrying Elfrida
and removing himself, the obstacle which stood in the way should he
contemplate an union.
Now the report reached the king that he had been "done," done out of
the loveliest woman in Christendom, and the little man ruffled up
and became fiery red, and vowed he would a-hunting go, and hunt in
the royal chase of Dartmoor. So he sent word to Ethelwald that he
purposed visiting him at his Castle of Harewood, and solicited a bed
and breakfast.
Harewood is situated on a tongue of land about which the Tamar
makes a great loop--at one time assuredly a very strong camp; then
it became a gentleman's place, now it is a ruin.
Ethelwald felt uneasy. He told his wife the story of the deception
he had practised, which shows how soft and incapable of dealing
with women he was. Then he went on to ask of her the impossible--to
disguise her beauty. As if any woman would do that!
But when Elfrida knew the story she also ruffled up, not a little,
and made a point of dressing herself in her most costly array,
braiding her lovely hair with jewels, and washing her pretty face in
milk and _eau de_--elder-flowers. Edgar became madly enamoured, and
to boot furious with the man who had deceived him.
As they were together one day hunting, and were alone, the king
smote Ethelwald with a javelin so that he died, and he took Elfrida
to be his wife; and to expiate his peccadillo, erected a convent in
the Harewood forest.
Edgar died in 975, and he was but thirty-two years old when he died.
Now, is there any truth in this story?
The tale comes to us from Geoffrey Gaimar and from William of
Malmesbury, and their accounts do not quite tally, for Gaimar makes
the king send off the obnoxious husband to the wars, to fall by the
hand of the rebels in Yorkshire, and this looks like a cooking-up
of the story of David and Uriah. On the other hand, William of
Malmesbury's tale smells somewhat of an English version of the story
in the Nibelungenlied of Sigurd and Kriemhild.
Both historians certainly drew from ballads, but these ballads were
the vehicle through which history in early times was preserved. It
has been supposed that the Harewood in question was Harewood near
Leeds, in Yorkshire, but surely Elfrida would be on her inheritance
in the West. Another difficulty is that there was no convent of nuns
near the place. But this may have been thrown in as a sort of moral
to the tale--if kings or other men do naughty things, they will have
to pay for it.
Tavistock Abbey had some men of rare ability to rule over it.
One was Aylmer, chosen in 981, who lived in difficult times,
when the Vikings came and harried the coasts, ran up the rivers,
and plundered and burned wherever they went. When the Danes were
spoiling the land, driving off the cattle and burning the farms,
he gave out of the revenues of the abbey a double danegeld or
contribution for the relief of those in distress. But presently his
own abbey was surrounded, pillaged, and burnt. This was in 997, by a
horde that had first landed at Watchet, and then returned round the
Land's End, and had run up the Tamar. They went as far as Lydford,
and burnt and slew everything and every person they could lay hands
on.
But a far abler man was Lyfing, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, and
at the same time of Devon and Cornwall.
Another admirable man was Aldred, who succeeded Lyfing in the see
of Worcester in 1046, after having been Abbot of Tavistock fourteen
years; and he was made Archbishop of York in 1060, and died in
1069, broken-hearted at the misery that came in the wake of the
Conquest. The lives of both these men, showing how to steer a
difficult course in a troubled sea among many rocks, are worth a
study, and for that I refer the reader to Mr. Alford's _Abbots of
Tavistock_. (Plymouth, 1891.)
The Abbey Church of Tavistock was second only to Exeter for size and
dignity in the West. It has completely disappeared, and the road in
front of the Bedford Hotel now runs over what was the nave of the
great church.
Where now stands the hotel was in ancient days the Saxon school; it
was pulled down in 1736, when the inn, then the house of the Dukes
of Bedford, was erected on its site and out of its materials.
The parish church is large, in the Perpendicular style, and somewhat
uninteresting. But it must be remembered that the Devon and Cornish
churches were built with intent to have their chancels and side
chapels cut off by a very rich screen. Such a screen did once exist
at Tavistock, and were it in place and complete, the church would
at once appear well proportioned. It looks now unfurnished, like a
railway station. It was repaired in 1845, and for the period the
work was really marvellously well done. The carved oak benches were
faithful copies of those in Bere Ferrers Church, and there was no
scamping in the material. The new glass in the windows ranges from
very good to execrably bad. Some objects of interest connected with
the history of the church, among these the reputed thigh-bones of
Ordgar and Ordulf, are preserved.
There is a fine monument to John Fitz, who died in 1590. Opposite it
is one of Judge Glanville, Serjeant-at-Law in 1589 and Justice of
Common Pleas in 1598. He died July 27th, 1600. He had by his wife a
fair family. Now here comes in a question of some interest.
The current tradition is that one of Glanville's daughters, Eulalia
by name, was married to a John Page, whom she murdered, and for
the crime she was sentenced to be burned alive; which sentence was
carried into effect in 1590 at Barnstaple.
I will give the story as contained in a letter by Mr. Daniel Lysons,
author of the _Magna Britannia_, in 1827:--
"The Judge's daughter was attached to George Stanwich, a young
man of Tavistock, lieutenant of a man-of-war, whose letters,
the father disapproving of the attachment, were intercepted. An
old miser of Plymouth, of the name of Page, wishing to have an
heir to disappoint his relatives, who perhaps were too confident
in calculating upon sharing his wealth, availed himself of
this apparent neglect of the young sailor, and settling on
her a good jointure, obtained her hand. She took with her a
maidservant from Tavistock, but her husband was so penurious
that he dismissed all the other servants, and caused his wife
and her maid to do all the work themselves. On an interview
subsequently taking place between her and Stanwich, she accused
him of neglecting to write to her, and then discovered that
his letters had been intercepted. The maid advised them to get
rid of the old gentleman, and Stanwich at length, with great
reluctance, consented to their putting an end to him. Page
lived in what was afterwards the Mayoralty House (at Plymouth),
and a woman who lived opposite hearing at night some sand thrown
against a window, thinking it was her own, arose, and looking
out, saw a young gentleman near Page's window, and heard him
say, 'For God's sake stay your hand!' A female replied, ''Tis
too late; the deed is done.' On the following morning it was
given out that Page had died suddenly in the night, and as soon
as possible he was buried. On the testimony, however, of his
neighbour, the body was taken up again, and it appearing that he
had been strangled, his wife, Stanwich, and the maid were tried
and executed. It is current among the common people here that
Judge Glanville, her own father, pronounced the sentence."
That sentence would be one for petty treason, burning alive. It
was not till 1790 that the law requiring women to be burnt alive
for putting to death their husbands or their masters was repealed.
A woman was so burnt in 1789. A poor girl of fifteen was burnt
at Heavitree, near Exeter, on July 29th, 1782, for poisoning her
master. Eulalia Page and her servant were actually executed at
Barnstaple and George Stanwich was hanged. All that is certain.
But the question about which a difficulty arises is--Was Eulalia a
daughter of Judge Glanville?
There is a contemporary tract that contains an account of the
transaction, which was reprinted by Payne Collier.[31] From this
we learn that Mrs. Page having failed in an attempt to poison her
husband, prevailed on one of her servants, named Robert Priddis
(Prideaux), to assist her, and on the other side Strangwich
(Standwich) hired one Tom Stone to assist in the murder.
[31] _Bibliographical Catalogue of Early English Literature_, 1865,
ii. pp. 83-6.
The deed was accomplished about ten o'clock on the night of February
11th, 1591, and all four were tried at Barnstaple, whither the
assizes had been moved from Exeter because the plague was raging in
the latter city, and were executed on March 20th following. Philip
Wyot, town clerk of Barnstaple, kept a diary at the time, extracts
from which have been printed. He gives some particulars:--"The
gibbet was sat up on the Castle Green and xviij prisoners hanged,
whereof iiij of Plimouth for a murder." These four were the
murderers of Page. How it was that Ulalia was hanged instead of
being burnt, in contravention of the law, does not appear, and
we may doubt the statement. Three of those hanged were buried in
the churchyard at Barnstaple, but Ulalia Page was laid in that
of Bishops Tawton. Now as to the statement that Judge Glanville
sentenced his own daughter.
In the first place, _was_ she his daughter? It appears not; for from
the tract already referred to, "in the town of Testock (Tavistock)
... there dwelled one Mr. Glandfield (Glanville), a man of good
wealth and account as any occupier in that cuntrie," whose daughter
Eulalia was; and she set her affections on George Strangwich, who
was in her father's employ. Mr. Glanville, of Tavistock, almost
certainly was a near relative of the judge. The Glanvilles were
tanners of Whitchurch, in trade, but the family was respectable.
They have been given a fanciful pedigree from a Norman Lord of
Glanville near Caen, but it is deficient in proof. What is clear
is that the family occupied a respectable position near Tavistock
in the reign of Elizabeth; they had their tan pits, and they went
into trade without scruple. In fact, John Glanville, father of the
judge, was himself a merchant, _i.e._, shopkeeper in Tavistock. That
Eulalia was a _sister_ of the judge is possible enough. That her
name was not inserted in the pedigree as recorded in the Herald's
Visitation may easily be understood.[32]
[32] Glandfeelde is the same as Glanville; so in the Tavistock
register, Grenville is entered as Greenfeelde.
The next point is--Did Judge Glanville preside at the trial?
Now we are informed by E. Foss (_Biographia Juridica_, 1870, p.
303) that Glanville "was promoted to the bench as a Justice of the
Common Pleas on June 30th, 1598." Consequently he was not a judge at
the time that Eulalia Page was tried. The judge who tried the case,
as we learn from Wyot's diary, was Lord Anderson. Nevertheless,
Glanville was present at Barnstaple at the assizes, for Wyot
mentions him as Serjeant Glandye, who was one of the principal
lawyers present, and he had been "called to the degree of the coif,"
Ford records, two years before. So, as far as we can discover:--
1. Eulalia was very probably _sister_ of Judge Glanville, she
being daughter of a merchant Glanville, of Tavistock, as he was
son of one.
2. That she really was executed for the murder of her husband,
Page, along with her lover, George Strangwich, and two
assistants.
3. That Strangwich had not been in the Navy, but was a shop
assistant of Mr. Glanville.
4. That John Glanville, Serjeant-at-Law, presumably her brother,
was present at the trial, but was not judge at the time.
The tragic story was not only turned into ballads, but also was
dramatised by Ben Jonson and Decker. In Halliwell's _Dictionary of
Old English Plays_ (1860) is this entry:--
"Page, of Plymouth. A play by Ben Johnson and Decker, written in
1599, upon the story of the murder of one Page at Plymouth."[33]
[33] Dr. Brushfield has sifted the whole story in the pages of _The
Western Antiquary_, ix., p. 35.
A little way out of the town on the Plymouth road, by the Drake
statue, is the gateway of old Fitzford House. About this a good deal
of both history and legend hangs.
The house was that of old John Fitz, whose splendid monument is
in Tavistock Church. Late in life he had a son of the name also
of John, an only child, whose story is tragical. The heir was
fourteen only when he lost his father. John Fitz, who was "a very
comely person," was married before he had attained his majority to
a daughter of Sir William Courtenay. Of this marriage one child,
Mary, was born in 1596, when her father was just twenty-one years
old.[34] The young gentleman being now of age, and finding himself
free from all restraint, began to live a very rackety life for three
years, when an incident happened that ought to have sobered him.
What follows is quoted, condensed, from _The Bloudie Booke: or The
Tragical End of Sir John Fitz._ London, 1605.
[34] The story of John Fitz and of Lady Howard has been worked
out very carefully by Mrs. George Radford, to whose paper in the
_Transactions of the Devonshire Association_, 1890, I am much
indebted for what follows.
"Meeting (June 4th, 1599) at Tavistocke a dinner wyth manie of
his neighbors and friends, with great varietie of merriments
and discourse they outstript the noontide. Amongst other their
table-talk Sir John (he was not knighted at the time) was
vanting his free Tenure in holding his lande, boasting that he
helde not a foote of any but the Queene in England; to whoome
Mayster Slanninge replyed, that although of ceurtesie it were
neglected, yet of dewe hee was to paye him so muche by the yeere
for some small lande helde of him; uppon which wordes Sir John
told him with a great oath he lyed, and withall gave fuell to
his rage, offering to stab him. But Maister Slanning with a
great knife warded the hazard."
Friends intervened and the quarrel was patched up, so that presently
Slanning left and departed for his home at Bickleigh. He had not
gone very far before, dismounting, he bade his man take the horses
along the road, whilst he walked by a short cut across the fields.
At that moment he heard the tramp of horses, and saw John Fitz and
four more galloping after him. So as not to seem to be running
away Slanning remained on the spot, and on John Fitz coming up
asked what he wanted. Fitz drew his sword and raved that he would
revenge the insult offered him, and Slanning was forced to defend
himself. He was wounded, and someone struck Slanning from behind,
whereupon he staggered forwards and Fitz ran him through the body.
Local tradition, and Prince in his _Worthies_, will have it that the
affray took place at Fitzford Gate.
Nicolas Slanning was buried in Bickleigh Church, which, when
"restored" and made desperately uninteresting, lost the great
feature of Slanning's monument, which was fine, though of plaster.
Now the inscription alone remains:
"Great was the lamentation that the country side made for the
death of so beloved a Gentleman as Maister Slanning was."
John Fitz, then aged twenty-four, fled to France, where he remained
until, by his wife's exertions, a pardon was procured for him,
December 16th, 1599.
He returned home, and for a year or two led a blameless life--at
least he did not murder any more of his friends--and at the
coronation of King James I. was knighted.
Whether the honour conferred on him was too much for him, or whether
there was a mad strain in his blood, cannot be said, but on his
return from London he broke out into wild ways again. Finding the
presence of his wife and only child a restraint on him, he turned
them out of the house, and surrounded himself with dissolute
companions, chief among whom was "Lusty Jacke, one whose deedes were
indeed meane, whose good qualities altogether none."
In the summer of 1605 he received a summons to London to appear
before the courts, in answer to a claim of compensation for their
father's death made by the children of Nicolas Slanning. He set out
attended by a single servant. He was a prey to terrors, particularly
afraid of his father-in-law, Sir William Courtenay, who he knew was
very incensed with him because of his behaviour to his wife, the
daughter of Sir William. He had moreover been squandering money
which had been settled on her by deed. Every day his fancies got
more disordered, till he put up at Kingston-on-Thames, his last
resting-place before reaching London; but there, a prey to alarms
and fancies, he would not lie, and rode on to Twickenham, where he
stopped at "The Anchor," a small hostelry kept by one Daniel Alley,
whom he roused out of his bed about 2 a.m. The host, to accommodate
him, was forced to surrender to him his own bed, and send his wife
to sleep with the children. But the knight could not rest after
he had lain down, and was heard crying out that he was pursued by
enemies.
Very early, the host rose that he might go out and mow a field, but
his wife entreated him not to leave the house. He laughed at her
alarms, but she persisted, and a neighbour who was going to help in
the mowing came in. Sir John Fitz started out of sleep on hearing
voices, and persuaded that his fears were verified, rushed from his
room in his nightgown, with his sword, and ran Alley through the
body. He then wounded the unhappy wife, and finding the error into
which he had fallen, finally mortally wounded himself. A doctor was
sent for, but he tore off the bandages, and so died, lamented of
none save Lusty Jack.
No sooner was he dead than the Earl of Northumberland hastened
to buy the wardship of the little heiress, Mary Fitz, then nine
years and one week old. At the time the Crown became the guardian
of orphans whose lands were held _in capite_ or direct from the
Crown, and was wont to sell the wardships to the highest bidders.
The guardian had complete control, to the exclusion of the mother,
over the ward, and he could marry the ward as he liked, this also
being generally an affair of money. As soon as Mary Fitz was twelve,
the Earl, as she was a desirable heiress, disposed of her to his
brother, Sir Allan Percy, aged thirty-one; she did not, however,
live with her husband, but was placed under the charge of Lady
Hatton. Sir Allan died in November, 1611, three years after, and
then it was said:--"Sir Allan Percy is gone the way of all flesh,
dying, his lady the way of all quicke flesh, having stolen out of
my Lady Eliz. Hatton's house in London, in the edge of an evening,
and coupled herself in marriage with Mr. Darcy, my lord Darcye's
eldest son." This was on December 18th, 1611, just about a month
after the death of husband number one. He was of her own age, and
no doubt she found him to her liking; however, he lived only a few
months after his marriage, and Lady Mary was again a widow, and was
imposed (1612), hardly by her own choice, on Sir Charles Howard,
fourth son of Thomas, Earl of Suffolk. So she had number three
when scarcely sixteen. Sir Charles died in 1622; consequently they
were together for ten years. She had two daughters by Sir Charles
Howard, and a son, George Howard, is mentioned, but there is some
doubt as to his parentage. In 1628 she took a fourth, Sir Richard
Grenville, the younger brother of the gallant Sir Bevil. He was a
very disreputable, bad-tempered, altogether ill-conditioned fellow.
Lady Howard took good care, before accepting number four, to have
her property well tied up to herself, so that he could not touch
it. When he discovered this he was furious, and treated her with
insolence and violence. By him she had two daughters, Elizabeth, who
died early, and Mary.
The condition of family broil became at last so intolerable that
she was forced to appeal to the justices of peace against him, and
finally to endeavour to obtain a divorce, 1631-2. The revelations
then made on both sides are not pleasant reading. If he was abusive,
she did not keep her tongue shut behind her teeth.
The story of her further troubles during the Civil War, of Sir
Richard's playing fast and loose with one party and then the
other, of his masterful seizure of her house at Fitzford and her
estates in Devon, need not here be told at length. She lived in
London, and was put to desperate shifts for money. At last Sir
Richard was thrown into prison, but escaped to France, 1646. Lady
Grenville, or as she now called herself--for she held herself to be
divorced--Lady Howard, at once returned to Fitzford, found it gutted
and in a wretched condition, and set to work to cleanse, repair,
and refurnish. Her son, George Howard, managed her business for her
till his death in September, 1671, without issue. His mother, at
this date very old, was probably bedridden; the shock of her son's
death was too much for her, and she died a month later. Knowing
her to be ill, her first cousin, Sir William Courtenay, hastened
to her bedside, and, probably with the connivance of a trusted
maid, Thomasine Wills, persuaded the old lady to make over to him
all her landed estates, to the exclusion of her two daughters, who
were alive and married. It was an infamous piece of roguery, and it
brought no luck on the Courtenays.
Popular feeling was outraged and has revenged itself on her, who
really was not so much to blame as Sir William Courtenay, in
painting her in the blackest colours. She is popularly represented
as having murdered her first three husbands, as conceiving a deadly
hatred against her daughter Elizabeth, who apparently died early,
but cannot be traced, and as not exactly _walking_ but _riding_
after death. When the clock strikes twelve every night she is
supposed to start in a coach made of bones from the gateway of
Fitzford House, drawn by headless horses; before the carriage runs a
sable hound with one eye in the middle of his forehead. The spectral
coach makes its way to Okehampton, where the hound plucks a blade
of grass from the castle mound, and then the _cortège_ returns to
Fitzford, where the blade is laid on the threshold of the gate. This
is Lady Howard's penance, and it will last till every blade of grass
on the mound of Okehampton Castle hill has been plucked, which will
not be till the crack of doom, as the grass grows faster than the
hound can carry it off.
I frequently heard of the coach going from Okehampton to Tavistock
when I was a boy; and there was a ballad about it, of which I was
able to recall a few fragments, which I completed and published
along with the original air in my _Songs of the West_. As a child I
remember the deadly fear that I felt lest I should be on the road at
night, and my nurse was wont to comfort me by saying there was no
fear of the "Lady's Coach," except after midnight.
In the vicarage garden are some very early inscribed stones
collected from the neighbourhood. There is no token on them that
they are Christian. Their inscriptions are:--
1. Neprani fili Condevi
2. Sabini fili Maccodecheti
3. Dobunii Fabri fili Enabarri.
This latter has on it also in oghans _Enabarr_. The second has the
test word _Mac_ for _Map_ or _Mab_, indicative of Irish occupation.
Moreover Dechet was a name, probably of a _sept_ or tribe in Kerry,
where several stones inscribed with the same name are found.[35]
[35] A member of the same clan or tribe was buried at Penrhos
Llygwyin, Anglesea--"_Hic jacet Maccudecheti_."
The third is interesting, for Dobun was a _faber_ or smith. In
Celtic organisation every _tuatha_ or tribe had its chief smith,
and every _fine_ or clan had its smith and forge as well, all whose
rights and dues were determined by law; moreover, the head smith of
the tribe was a man of very considerable consequence, social and
political.
_Dobuni_, in the third, is the Latin for the genitive _Douvinias_,
also a Kerry name. A stone at Ballintaggart bears an inscription to
a son of Dobunus, MUCCOIDOVVINIAS. Another stone of another son is
at Burnham, also in Kerry, in Lord Ventry's collection. Here, then,
we have written and engraven in stone for our learning the record of
an Irish settlement from Kerry in the neighbourhood of Tavistock. If
S. Rumon preached there he could preach in Gaelic and be understood.
Of the abbey of Tavistock there are but poor remains. Betsy
Grimbal's tower in the vicarage garden was a gate-house, and
takes its name from a woman who was murdered there by a soldier.
A porch into the refectory or abbot's hall is the dairy of the
"Bedford Inn." Some fragments of the monastic buildings are united
and converted into library and municipal buildings, but they are
dominated and oppressed by an architectural monstrosity--an absurd
Town Hall in nondescript style.
The Drake statue is of bronze, and fine, in front of the Fitzford
gate, and possesses the bas-reliefs on the base, in which the
_replica_ on Plymouth Hoe is deficient. Sir Francis Drake was born
at Crowndale, the first farm down the Tavy valley. The old house
has been destroyed. The Drakes were of yeoman origin in Whitchurch,
nothing more. They laboured to prove a kinship to the ancient family
of Drake of Ash, but failed, and Sir Francis Drake was granted an
entirely new coat of arms.
The story is told that Sir Francis and Sir Bernard,--the latter the
head of the Ash family--had a heated quarrel over the matter in the
presence of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Bernard objecting to the navigator
assuming the wyvern gules.
"Well," said Bess, "I will give Sir Francis a new coat, a ship in
full sail, with the wyvern turned head over heels at the poop."
But Sir Bernard was too important a man to be offended; she thought
better of it, and gave Sir Francis the noble coat of a fess wavy
between two pole stars.
The story is pronounced to be apocryphal.
Sir Francis became possessor by purchase of Buckland Abbey (1581),
which is not only beautifully situated, but is interesting. It is,
in fact, the cruciform abbey church converted into an Elizabethan
mansion. The nave has been floored, and the drawing-room upstairs is
in it; the hall below is also in part therein. There is here some
splendid plaster-work. The choir was pulled down and a kitchen wing
built at right angles. In the grounds are some remarkably fine tulip
trees.
Buckland Monachorum Church is large, Perpendicular, but cold, and
has a naked, unfurnished look internally from being without its
screen.
There are two points on no account to be missed by a visitor to
Tavistock, and both can be combined in one drive or walk--the Raven
Rock above the Virtuous Lady Mine, opposite the point where the
Walla falls into the Tavy; the other the better known Morwell Rocks.
The former, hardly inferior to the other, but less known, is reached
from the Bere Alston road.
At Morwell is the hunting-lodge of Abbot Courtenay, cousin of Bishop
Grandisson, and appointed by him to Tavistock Abbey. It was a very
unsatisfactory appointment. He alienated the property of the abbey,
and allowed its buildings and discipline to fall into decay, and
got the monastery into a debt equivalent to twenty thousand pounds
of our money. All he cared for was sport, like the jolly monk in
Chaucer's _Prologue_.
The quadrangle, which was in a singularly untouched condition, with
hall and butteries and kitchens, was somewhat wantonly mutilated
some fifty years ago and turned into farmhouse and cottages.
From Tavistock Lydford can be visited with ease. This was a very
strong place at one time, a sort of inland cliff-castle, situated
in a fork between ravines, with mounds and trenches drawn across
the neck. The castle, an uninteresting ruin, occupies a natural
mound artificially shaped; it was long the Stannary prison. The
waterfall is graceful rather than fine, a steep slide of seventy
feet in height in the midst of woods. From this the river Lyd should
be ascended for three miles by a path through a ravine that grows
in grandeur till it is spanned by a bridge. The ascent may well
be continued to Kits Steps, another fall of a totally different
character, much spoiled by refuse-heaps from an abandoned mine. From
Lydford a visitor should take a walk across the shoulder of Hare Tor
to the rocks of Tavy Cleave, perhaps the grandest scene on Dartmoor.
Another excursion is to be made to Brent Tor, a subaqueous volcanic
cone, crowned by a little church. The base of the hill has been
fortified. The banks are most perfect on the east. The view from
the top of the tor is remarkably extensive and fine. Endsleigh,
the country seat of the Duke of Bedford, is almost unsurpassed in
England for beauty of scenery. Mary Tavy Church has a good new
screen, and Peter Tavy a scrap of an old one and remains of a
magnificent early Tudor pew, wantonly demolished.
From either Whit Tor may be ascended, a tor of gabbro, or volcanic
traplike formation. The summit has been fortified. On Peter Tavy
Moor is a fine circle of upright stones, and a menhir. Peter Tavy
Combe should on no account be passed over unseen.
NOTE.--Books on Tavistock:--
ALFORD (Rev. D.), _The Abbots of Tavistock_. Plymouth, 1891.
BRAY (Mrs.), _The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy_, 2 vols.
new edition. London: Kent and Co., 1879. A valuable book for
old stories and superstitions. Mr. Bray was also the first to
explore Dartmoor for its antiquities. But all the rubbish about
Druids must be put aside. When written in 1832 antiquaries knew
no better; they talked and wrote nonsense on such subjects.
EVANS (R.), _Home Scenes; or, Tavistock and its Vicinity_.
Tavistock, 1846; now not easily procured.