Chapter IV: Part 4

"1847, October 7th.--Dined at Carclew, and spent a very interesting evening. We met Professor Adams, the Bullers, the Lord of the Isles, and others. Adams is a quiet-looking man, with a broad forehead, a mild face, and an amiable and expressive mouth. I sat by him at dinner, and by general and dainty approaches got at the subject on which one most wished to hear him speak. He began very blushingly, but went on to talk in most delightful fashion, with large and luminous simplicity, of some of the vast mathematical facts with which he is so conversant. The idea of the reversed method of reasoning, from an unknown to a known, with reference to astronomical problems dawned on him when an undergraduate, with neither time nor mathematics to work it out. The opposite system had always before been adopted. He, in common with many others, conceived that there must be a planet to account for the disturbances of Uranus; and when he had time he set to work at the process, in deep, quiet faith that the fact was there, and that his hitherto untried mathematical path was the one which must reach it; that there were no anomalies in the universe, but that, even here, and now, they could be explained and included in a higher law. The delight of working it out was far more than any notoriety could give, for his love of pure truth is evidently intense, an inward necessity, unaffected by all the penny trumpets of the world. Well, at length he fixed his point in space, and sent his mathematical evidence to Airy, the Astronomer Royal, who locked the papers up in his desk, partly from carelessness, partly from incredulity, for it seemed to him impossible that a man whose name was unknown to him should strike out a new path in mathematical science with any success. Moreover, his theory was, that if there were a planet, it would not be discovered for one hundred and sixty years; that is, until two revolutions of Uranus had been accomplished. Then came Leverrier's equally original, though many months younger, demonstration; Gull's immediate verification of it by observation; and then the other astronomers were all astir. Professor Adams speaks of those about whom the English scientific world is so indignant in a spirit of Christian philosophy, exactly in keeping with the mind of a man who has discovered a planet. He speaks with warmest admiration of Leverrier, specially of his exhaustive method of making out the orbits of the comets, imagining and disproving all tracks but the right one--a work of infinite labour. If the observer could make out distinctly but a very small part of a comet's orbit, the mathematician would be able to prove what its course had been through all time. They enjoyed being a good deal together at the British Association Meeting at Oxford, though it was unfortunate for the intercourse of the fellow-workers that one could not speak French nor the other English. He had met with very little mathematical sympathy, except from Challis, of the Cambridge Observatory; but when his result was announced there was noise enough and to spare. He was always fond of star-gazing and speculation, and is already on the watch for another planet. Burnard told us that when Professor Adams came from Cambridge to visit his relatives in Cornwall he was employed to sell sheep for his father at a fair. He is a most good son and neighbour, and watchful in the performance of small acts of thoughtful kindness."

"1863, July 2nd.--Have just returned from a visit to Professor Adams at Cambridge. He is so delightful in the intervals of business, enjoying all things, large and small, with a boyish zest. He showed and explained the calculating machine (French, not Babbage's), which saves him much in time and brain, as it can multiply or divide ten figures accurately. We came upon an admirable portrait of him at S. John's College, before he accepted a Pembroke Fellowship and migrated thither."

The first mention of the name of Adams as the discoverer of Neptune was by Sir John Herschel, in the _Athenæum_, on October 3rd, 1845. And a letter from Professor Challis to that journal on 17th October described in detail the transactions between Adams, Airy, and himself. Naturally enough the French were highly incensed at the notion that an obscure Englishman had forestalled Leverrier in the discovery, and Airy himself was annoyed at his own negligence in not looking into the memoir by Adams, and took up the matter with some personal feeling. It was certainly startling to realize that the Astronomer Royal had had in his possession data that would have enabled the planet to be discovered nearly a year before Leverrier had, by a different course of argument and calculation, arrived at the conclusion that there existed a planet which was the disturbing element in the orbit of Uranus. As to Adams himself, he had not a particle of conceit and pride in him; he did not care to have his name proclaimed as the discoverer. Forty years later, he said simply and characteristically that all he had wished for was that English astronomers to whom he had communicated the result of his calculations, pointing out the precise spot in the sky where a planet was to be found, would have taken the trouble to turn their telescopes upon that point and discover the planet, so that England might have had the full credit of the discovery.

JOHANNIS COUCH ADAMS]

His long-suppressed investigation was not laid before the Royal Astronomical Society till November 13th, 1846.

The publication, of course, stirred up much controversy, and the scientific world was divided into Adamite and anti-Adamite factions.

Adams refused knighthood in 1847, and declined the office of Astronomer Royal on Airy's retirement in 1881.

John Couch had a brother, William Grylls, also a man of some eminence in the scientific world. He was born at Lidcott 12th February, 1836, and became Professor of Natural Philosophy and of Astronomy in King's College, London.

I was wont, when at Cambridge, to meet John Couch Adams at Professor Challis', and also at the house of the Rev. Harvey Goodwin, afterwards Bishop of Carlisle. Professor Adams took some notice of me, as coming from his neighbourhood, though not on the Cornish side of the Tamar. He was a small man, as simple as a child in many things. Indeed, he struck me forcibly by his great modesty and sweetness of manner. He loved a joke, and would laugh heartily over the very smallest. He loved children, and would play with them in their little games with infinite zest. Professor Glaisher, whom I also knew, wrote of him: "Adams was a man of learning as well as a man of science. He was an omnivorous reader, and his memory was exact and retentive. There were few subjects upon which he was not possessed of accurate information. Botany, geology, history, and divinity, all had their share of his care and attention."

He was always happy to return to his humble father's farm; and after he was a noted man, on one of these occasions the old man sent him into Launceston with a drove of sheep to sell them in the market. He complied cheerfully, but how he succeeded in selling them I have not heard. This is the incident alluded to by Caroline Fox given above.

"The honours showered upon him," wrote Dr. Donald MacAlister, "left him as they found him--modest, gentle, and sincere." He was not a man who ever asserted himself.

He married in 1863 Eliza, daughter of Haliday Bruce, of Dublin. He died of a sudden illness on January 21st, 1892, and was buried in S. Giles' Churchyard, Cambridge.

Portraits were taken of him by Mogford in 1851, and by Herkomer in 1888; both are in the Combination-room of St. John's College, Cambridge.

A biographical notice of him was prefixed by Professor Glaisher to his scientific works, edited by W. G. Adams, in 1896-8.

See also A. De Morgan's _Budget of Paradoxes_, 1872, and the _Mechanics' Magazine_, 1846.

DANIEL GUMB

All that is really known of this eccentric character is found in a letter of J. B. to Richard Polwhele, dated September, 1814. His correspondent says:--

"Daniel Gumb was born in the parish of Linkinhorne, in Cornwall, about the commencement of the last century, and was bred a stone-cutter. In the early part of his life he was remarkable for his love of reading and a degree of reserve even exceeding what is observable in persons of studious habits. By close application Daniel acquired, even in his youth, a considerable stock of mathematical knowledge, and, in consequence, became celebrated throughout the adjoining parishes. Called by his occupation to hew blocks of granite on the neighbouring commons, and especially in the vicinity of that great natural curiosity called the Cheesewring, he discovered near this spot an immense block, whose upper surface was an inclined plane. This, it struck him, might be made the roof of a habitation such as he desired; sufficiently secluded from the busy haunts of men to enable him to pursue his studies without interruption, whilst it was contiguous to the scene of his daily labour. Immediately Daniel went to work, and cautiously excavating the earth underneath, to nearly the extent of the stone above, he obtained a habitation which he thought sufficiently commodious. The sides he lined with stone, cemented with lime, whilst a chimney was made by perforating the earth at one side of the roof. From the elevated spot on which stood this extraordinary dwelling could be seen Dartmoor and Exmoor on the east, Hartland on the north, the sea and the port of Plymouth on the south, and S. Austell and Bodmin Hills on the west, with all the intermediate beautiful scenery. The top of the rock which roofed his house served Daniel for an observatory, where at every favourable opportunity he watched the motions of the heavenly bodies, and on the surface of which, with his chisel, he carved a variety of diagrams, illustrative of the most difficult problems of Euclid, etc. These he left behind him as evidences of the patience and ingenuity with which he surmounted the obstacles that his station in life had placed in the way of his mental improvement.

"But the choice of his house and the mode in which he pursued his studies were not his only eccentricities. His house became his chapel also; and he was never known to descend from the craggy mountain on which it stood, to attend his parish church or any other place of worship.

"Death, which alike seizes on the philosopher and the fool, at length found out the retreat of Daniel Gumb, and lodged him in a house more narrow than that which he had dug for himself."

Bond in his _Topographical and Historical Sketches of the Boroughs of East and West Looe_, 1873, describes the habitation of Daniel Gumb as seen by him in 1802:--

"When we reached Cheesewring--our guide first led us to the house of Daniel Gumb (a stone-cutter), cut by him out of a solid rock of granite. This artificial cavern may be about twelve feet deep and not quite so broad; the roof consists of one flat stone of many tons weight; supported by the natural rock on one side, and by pillars of small stones on the other. How Gumb formed this last support is not easily conceived. We entered with hesitation lest the covering should be our gravestone. On the right-hand side of the door is 'D. Gumb,' with a date engraved 1735 (or 3). On the upper part of the covering stone, channels are cut to carry off the rain, probably to cause it to fall into a bucket for his use; there is also engraved on it some geometrical device formed by Gumb, as the guide told us, who also said that Gumb was accounted a pretty sensible man. I have no hesitation in saying he must have been a pretty eccentric character to have fixed on this place for his habitation; but here he dwelt for several years with his wife and children, several of whom were born and died here. His calling was that of a stone-cutter, and he fixed himself on a spot where materials could be met with to employ a thousand men for a thousand years."

THE CHEESE-WRING]

The Rev. Robert S. Hawker wrote an account of Daniel Gumb for _All the Year Round_ in 1866, and this has been reprinted in _Footsteps of Former Men in Cornwall_.

He pretends that when he visited the Cheesewring in 183-, there still existed fragments of Daniel Gumb's "thoughts and studies still treasured up in the existing families of himself and his wife." And he gives transcripts from these, and also from what must have been a diary. But Mr. Hawker embroidered facts with so much detail drawn from his own fancy, that his statements have to be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

It must be remembered, in his justification, that his stories of Cornish Characters were intended as magazine articles to amuse, but without any purpose of having them regarded as strictly biographical and historical. They were brief historical romances, and were not intended to be taken seriously.

I will give but one quotation, and the reader can judge for himself therefrom whether it does not look like an extract "made in Morwenstow." Mr. Hawker says:--

"On the fly-leaves of an old account book the following strange statement appears: 'June 23rd, 1764. To-day, at bright noon, I looked up and saw all at once a stranger standing on the turf, just above my block. He was dressed like an old picture I remember in the windows of S. Neot's Church, in a long brown garment, with a girdle; and his head was uncovered and grizzled with long hair. He spoke to me, and he said in a low, clear voice, "Daniel, that work is hard!" I wondered that he should know my name, and I answered, "Yes, sir; but I am used to it and don't mind it, for the sake of the faces at home." Then he said, sounding his words like a psalm, "Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening. When will it be night with Daniel Gumb?" I began to feel queer; it seemed to me that there was something awful about the unknown man. I even shook. Then he said again, "Fear nothing. The happiest man in all the earth is he that wins his daily bread by his daily sweat, if he will but fear God and do man no wrong." I bent down my head like any one dumbfounded, and I greatly wondered who this strange appearance could be. He was not like a preacher, for he looked me full in the face; nor a bit like a parson, for he seemed very meek and kind. I began to think it was a spirit, only such ones always come by night, and here was I at noonday and at work. So I made up my mind to drop my hammer and step up and ask his name right out. But when I looked up he was gone, and that clear out of my sight, on the bare, wide moor, suddenly.'"

Now, in the first place, no trace or tidings of these notes so treasured up by the family are to be found in the parish of Linkinhorne, to which Gumb and his wife belonged.

In the second place, Mr. Hawker makes Daniel remark that his mysterious visitant was not like a Dissenting preacher because he looked him straight in the face, and this is significantly like a remark Hawker often made with regard to these gentry.

Another of these pretended notes refers to the finding of a fossil fish embedded in granite. This alone suffices to wake suspicion that the extracts are not genuine. Fossils never have been found in granite, and never will be. But Hawker himself did not know this, as he was totally ignorant of the first principles of geology.

LAURENCE BRADDON

Laurence Braddon, second son of Captain William Braddon, of Treworgy, in S. Gennys, was called to the bar of the Middle Temple, and worked at his profession diligently. He entered Parliament in 1651, but did not attract special notice till the occasion of the suicide of the Earl of Essex in the Tower, in 1683.

The people of England had been, and still were, greatly troubled about the succession to the throne, in the event of the death of Charles II. They had no mind to have the throne occupied by a Popish prince, and several plots were hatched to prevent such a contingency. Monmouth, with Lord Essex, Shaftesbury, Lord Howard of Escrick, Russell, Algernon Sidney, and John Hampden, held meetings to found an association to agitate and compel the King to assemble Parliament, to take measures to secure a Protestant succession and the exclusion of the Duke of York. On other points they disagreed. Monmouth hoped to have his legitimacy established and to secure the crown for his own brows. Sidney and Essex were for the establishment of a commonwealth. Russell and Hampden intended only the exclusion of the Duke. As to Lord Howard, he was a man of no principle, and his sole desire was to fish in troubled waters and get out of them what he could.

More desperate spirits schemed plans of assassination, and a plot was formed for murdering Charles and the Duke of York as they passed the Rye House on the road from London to Newmarket, but there is no evidence that the noble schemers had any knowledge of the Rye House Plot.

Both projects were betrayed, and though they were wholly distinct from one another, the cruel ingenuity of the Crown lawyers blended them into one.

The Earl of Shaftesbury fled to the Continent; Monmouth absconded; Russell was committed to the Tower; Howard, who had concealed himself in a chimney, was drawn forth by the heels, and to secure his neck betrayed Essex, Sidney, and Hampden, who were all committed to the Tower.

Several of the conspirators in the Rye House Plot were sentenced to death and at once executed. From their confessions it appeared that the conspiracy had wide ramifications, and that a scheme of insurrection throughout the country had been formed, and that steps had been taken to organize it.

On the day upon which Lord Russell was brought to trial the Earl of Essex was found in the closet of his chamber with his throat cut, and this but just after a visit to the Tower by the King with the Duke of York.

An inquest was at once held, at which it was shown that Lord Essex was a man of a despondent temper, that he had been lately in a lugubrious mood, and in the depths of melancholy; and evidence was conclusive that he had cut his own throat with a razor. The jury accordingly found a verdict of _felo de se_.

Now it so fell out that on the following Sunday Laurence Braddon went to visit a Mr. Evans, of the Custom House, at his country house at Wanstead, in Essex, where was also a Mr. Halstead, and Evans was telling Halstead that he had heard from a kinsman of his named Edwards, also in the Customs, that his boy had been in the Tower yard on the morning of the death of Lord Essex, and that he had seen a hand thrust out of that nobleman's window, and a razor stained with blood thrown down on the pavement of the yard. Next moment a maid-servant wearing a white hood had run out, secured the razor and carried it within, and that he had heard cries from within of "Murder! Murder!"

Braddon listened, walking up and down the room, as Evans told this story. He was greatly excited by it, and thought that it pointed to a murder having been committed, and that probably at the instigation of the Duke of York.

Accordingly Braddon went next day to the quay and got Evans and Edwards to meet him at the "Star" public-house and repeat the story. It seemed that Edwards had two boys who were in Merchant Taylors' School, and that one of their sisters was married and living in the Tower. On the morning of the death of Lord Essex the lads were on their way to school, when, passing the Tower, they heard that the King and the Duke of York were in it, whereupon the younger, an urchin of twelve or thirteen, gave his brother the slip, and ran in to see the King and the Duke. After they had departed he remained in the yard playing chuck-farthing with other boys, when he saw a hand thrust forth from a window and throw a bloody razor into the court, and after that a maid or woman in a white hood and stuff coat took it up and went in, and then he heard a noise as of "Murder!" cried out. Braddon then went to the house of Edwards to question the boy, who prevaricated. Braddon believed that the child's mother and sister had been at him, telling him that he was likely to get them all into trouble if he persisted in his tale, and urged by them, professed that he had told a lie.

The matter became common talk on the quay and the purlieus of the Tower.

Braddon had no great difficulty in finding a little girl named Jane Lodeman, aged thirteen, who was in the same tale. This is what he took down:--

"Jane Lodeman was in the Tower on Friday morning, 13th July last, and standing almost over against the late Earl of Essex's lodging window, she saw a hand cast a razor out of my lord's window, and immediately upon this she heard shrieks, and that there was a soldier by my lord's door, who cried out to those within the house that somebody should come and take up a razor which was thrown out of the window, whereupon there came a maid with a white hood out of the house, but who took up the razor she can't tell."

Dated 8th August, 1683.

On July 20th Braddon had gone to Whitehall before he had obtained this corroborative evidence, and had laid information before the King and Council, and produced a written deposition as to what the boy Edwards had said he had seen; but the boy's sister deposed that Mr. Laurence Braddon had forced her brother to sign it. Soon after Braddon had taken this step, he heard a rumour that the fact of the violent death of the Earl of Essex had been known and discussed in Frome Selwood the same day, and he hurried off to make inquiries into this. But on reaching Salisbury he was arrested, thrown into prison, and brought back to London. Another gentleman, a Mr. Speeke, had also been spreading the report that Lord Essex had been foully murdered, and it was hinted that the Duke of York, if not the King, had ordered the assassination. Speeke also was arrested.

Narcissus Luttrell's account of the death of Essex is as follows:--

1683, 13th July.--"About nine in the morning, the Earl of Essex, prisoner in the Tower of London, upon account of this new plott, did most barbarously cut his own throat from one ear to the other with a razor. What occasioned it is doubtfull: some say, the sense of his guilt; others, the shame for being accused of such a crime, when his father, the Lord Capell, died for his loyalty to the late King; however, the coroner's jury have satt on his body, and found him _felo de se_, tho' some stick not to say 'tis impossible he should murther himself in so barbarous a manner; and his Majesty hath been pleased to give his goods, which were forfeited by his killing himself, to his son."

On November 6th he says: "Mr. Speak was brought to the Court of King's Bench, and charged with two informations: the 1st, for saying the King was as great a Papist as the Duke of York; that the Duke durst not doe what he did but that the King did animate him; that what Pilkington had formerly said of the Duke of York was true; with much other such scandalous stuff; and 2nd was for sayeing that the Earl of Essex was killed and murdered by those that attended on him in the Tower; to both these he pleaded Not Guilty."

1683-4, February 7th.--"Mr. Lawrence Braddon and Mr. Hugh Speke were tried at the Court of King's Bench, by a jury of Middlesex, upon an information reciting the commitment of the late Earl of Essex to the Tower for treason in conspiring the death of the King, etc., and that the 13th July last he cut his own throat, and was found _felo de se_ by the coroner's inquisition; the said Braddon and Speke did conspire by writing and otherwise, to spread a false and scandalous report, that the said Earl was murdered by some persons about him, and endeavoured to suborn witnesses to testifye the same. The evidence for the King, was first, the warder of the Tower, who testified as to his Lordship's commitment; then the coroner, and the inquisition taken before him, whereby his Lordship was found _felo de se_, was read; then the particular evidence against Mr. Braddon was, by severall persons, how busy and sollicitous he was to take persons' informations, and to examine a little child about ten years old, about a discourse that ran through the town that a bloody razor was thrown out of his Lordship's window; and that the cry of Murder was heard; and that a servant maid came presently out of the house of the Lord of Essex, and took up the razor, and carried it in; and that then it was said the Lord of Essex had killed himself. Then the severall informations Braddon had taken in writing relating to this matter were read, and some of the informants themselves examined, whose testimony much differ'd from their informations, then severall testified the confident and strange discourse this Braddon frequently us'd concerning the matter. The evidence against Mr. Speke was only a letter writt by him to Sir Robert Atkins th' elder, and carried by Mr. Braddon, but was seized about him when he was going thither, which contained severall expressions in commendation of Mr. Braddon and his zeale, with reflexions on this matter; then the evidence was given of his Lordship's cutting his own throat with a razor, which was proved by his own servant, a Frenchman; by the warder, by the centinell, and by Capt. Hawley. The defendants' proof was, first, Braddon pretended he did nothing but out of zeale to have the truth come out: then he call'd some witnesses to prove that there was a discourse of the Lord of Essex's being killed, and a razor thrown out, before he concern'd himself in it. Speke had little to say against the letter, but own'd it to be his hand; so that the jury, after a little while, agreed of their verdict, and found the defendant Braddon guilty of all that was laid in the information, and the defendant Speke guilty of all except the conspiring to suborn witnesses.

"'Twas strange any man should concern himself in an affair of this moment on the information of a boy ten years old, who had denied all after he had confess'd it, and did at his tryall, and make all this rent that was about it."

April 21st, 1684.--"Mr. Laurence Braddon and Mr. Hugh Speke, convicted last term upon an endeavour to lay the murder of the late Earl of Essex upon the Government, were brought to the Court of King's Bench to receive their judgments; which was, that Braddon should pay a fine of £2000, and Speke £1000 to the King; that they find sureties for their good behaviour during their lives, and be committed to the King's Bench prison till they doe so."

Hugh Speke, who was tried along with Laurence Braddon, was an inveterate plotter. Macaulay thus describes him: "Hugh Speke (was) a young man of good family, but of a singularly base and depraved nature. His love of mischief and of dark and crooked ways amounted almost to madness. To cause confusion without being found out was his business and his pastime; and he had a rare skill in using honest enthusiasts as the instruments of his cold-blooded malice."

Referring to the case of Braddon, Macaulay adds: "He had attempted, by means of one of his puppets, to fasten on Charles and James the crime of murdering Essex in the Tower. On this occasion the agency of Speke had been traced; and though he succeeded in throwing the greater part of the blame on his dupe, he had not escaped with impunity."

He was certainly a clever scoundrel, for he managed to cover up most of his traces in the affair of the charge of the murder of Essex.

Braddon was sincere, while Speke was not. Braddon was convinced that a murder had been committed, and he had not a well-balanced mind to weigh evidence. Speke cared nothing whether crime had been committed or not so long as he could disturb men's minds with a suspicion that one had been committed, and that by the King's brother and heir presumptive to the Crown.

The evidence produced by Laurence Braddon was practically worthless. He had but the word of two little children, and the boy had retracted and acknowledged that he had told lies. As to the fact of the death of Lord Essex being known at Frome on the 13th, showing that the murder had been premeditated and was part of a widely ramified scheme of the Papists, it was shown that nothing was known there of it till many days later.

The evidence for the King was Bomeny, the valet de chambre of Lord Essex. He stated that the Earl had long nails, and that morning had asked for a penknife so as to pare them. Bomeny had commissioned a footman, William Turner, to get one, and bring it along with some provisions ordered for the Earl's breakfast. Turner brought the provisions, but had forgotten about the penknife, whereupon Lord Essex began to cut his nails with his razor, and the footman was again despatched for a penknife. Just then the King and the Duke of York arrived at the Tower, and there was great bustle in the yard, and Bomeny left the Earl's room. When he met the footman with the knife he returned, but not finding Lord Essex in his chamber, he tried to open the closet door, when he found that there was an obstruction. Somewhat alarmed, he ran to Russell, the warder, whose door was almost opposite on the same staircase, and both went to the closet, and found Lord Essex lying in it with his throat cut and his feet against the door.

Russell corroborated this evidence, and added that no one could possibly ascend the stair and enter Lord Essex's chamber without his knowledge. The soldier, Lloyd, who acted as sentinel at the entrance to the Earl's quarters, testified that there was no truth in the children's tale about the razor, and that no maid had issued from the door to pick one up.

It was further established that the closet window did not look into the main yard, and was so arranged that a hand could not be passed out of it.

Judge Jeffreys conducted the investigation, and that in a most unseemly manner. Apparently he was drunk at the time, and was so confused that he was not able to follow the evidence. He browbeat the witnesses in the most offensive way.

On November 6th, 1684, a French Protestant refugee, named Borleau, was indicted for selling a scandalous book called _L'Esprit de Monsieur Arnaud_, in which he declared that the Earl of Essex had not cut his own throat, but had been foully murdered. He pleaded guilty, and the King graciously allowed him to be fined only 6s. 8d., and to be discharged without paying his fees. There was most certainly fish made of one and fowl of another.

Again, in December of the same year a book appeared entitled _An Enquiry about the Barbarous Murder of the Earl of Essex_, that was vended surreptitiously, and a broadside written by Colonel Danvers, giving the evidence that he was murdered, was thrown in at open doors and distributed in the streets of London. A hundred pounds was offered for the apprehension of Danvers. As to the book, it was from the pen of Laurence Braddon, and was later, when it could be done safely, acknowledged by him. On January 23rd, 1684-5, a Mr. Henry Baker pleaded guilty to an information for using scandalous words about the Duke of York, and at the same time a printer, Norden, did the same to an indictment for publishing the "scandalous libell in vindication of the lord of Essex." And on February 3rd one of the jury at the inquest, Launcelot Colston by name, was had up before King's Bench on a charge of having said that he did not believe that the Earl had cut his throat, for he could not have done so himself in the way in which he was found. Norden was sentenced to pay 200 marks, and to stand in the pillory at Ratcliffe, and to be bound to his good behaviour for seven years, and be committed to prison till this was done.

In 1685, on the landing of the Duke of Monmouth, in the Proclamation he published, he charged King James with the murder of Essex, with his own hand.

In January, 1689, a Captain Hawley, Major Whitley, and some two or three more were imprisoned for maintaining that Essex had not committed suicide. But this was at the moment when all power was slipping out of the hands of King James II; the Prince of Orange came to the throne, and on February 23rd a Captain Holland was arrested and thrown into prison on the charge of having been concerned in the murder of the Earl, and this was followed by numerous other arrests. But the prison-doors were thrown open for Laurence Braddon to issue forth and recommence his accusations of murder. He republished the "Enquiry into and Detection of the Barbarous Murther of the late Earl of Essex; or a Vindication of that Noble Person from the Guilt and Infamy of having Destroyed himself."

Even before the throne, vacated by King James, had been filled by the Prince of Orange, the Lords had appointed a committee to examine into the truth of the frightful stories circulated relative to the death of Essex. The committee, which consisted wholly of zealous Whigs, continued its inquiries till all reasonable men were convinced that he had fallen by his own hand, and till Lady Essex, his brother, and his most intimate friends requested that the investigation might be pursued no further. That under Judge Jeffreys had been open to suspicion, this could not. But nothing would alter the persuasion of Braddon that this was a case of murder.

Next year, 1690, he came out with a fresh pamphlet, "Essex's Innocency and Honour Vindicated, or Murther, Subornation, Perjury, and Oppression, justly charged on the Murtherers of that Noble and True Patriot Arthur (late) Earl of Essex," etc.

It had become a matter of party feeling, and it was held by all true Protestants to be their duty to believe in the murder, so as to blacken the character of James II. The evidence, however, was too poor to convince a cool-minded man like Bishop Burnet, and in his _History of His Own Times_ he spoke of Essex having cut his own throat. Thereupon Laurence Braddon resumed his pen and published an attack on the Bishop: "Bishop Burnet's History charged with great partiality and misrepresentations, to make the present and future ages believe that Arthur, Earl of Essex, in 1683, murdered himselfe, with observations upon the suppos'd poysoning of King Charles the Second," 1724.

In 1695 Braddon was appointed solicitor to the wine-licensing office, with a salary of £100 per annum.

In one point Braddon showed great perspicuity and good feeling. In 1717 he published a pamphlet entitled "The Miseries of the Poor, a National Sin and Shame"; and when his scheme for the relief of the poor had been animadverted upon unfavourably, in 1722, he answered these objections in another tractate: "Particular answers to the most material objections made to the proposal humbly presented to His Majesty for relieving, reforming, and employing all the poor of Great Britain," 1722.

Laurence Braddon died on Sunday, 29th November, 1724.

The Braddons must have been a family of some consequence in S. Gennys, although their arms and pedigree are not recorded in the Heralds' Visitations. At the trial of Laurence, it was stated that his father's income from his property was fully £800 per annum. Laurence derived his fiery Protestantism from his father, who had been a Parliamentarian officer of some distinction in the Civil War. His father is buried in the chancel of S. Gennys, and some verses are inscribed on the ledgerstone, beginning:--

In war and peace I bore command,
Both gun and sword I wore.

The arms borne by the family are: _Sable_, a bend lozengy, _arg._--arms that in their beautiful simplicity proclaim their antiquity.

The old mansion of the Braddons in S. Gennys has been pulled down and a modern farm-house erected on the site.

THOMASINE BONAVENTURA

Week S. Mary stands in a treeless wind-swept situation, 530 feet above the sea, near the source of two small streams rising in the desolate downs to the south, which unite their waters at Langford, and have sawn for themselves deep clefts that are well wooded. At a remote period this district must have been the scene of contests, for it is studded with earthworks. There was a castle at Week, but camps also crowning a height in Westwood and in Swannacott Wood; and Week S. Mary with its castle stood aloft, defended by one of these on each side. Formerly there was not so much enclosed land as there is at present; but it was precisely the moorland that extended over so large a portion of the parish that constituted its wealth, for on this waste pastured vast flocks of sheep, whose fleeces were in request at a time when wool was the staple industry in the West of England.

The ridge of bare, uplifted, carboniferous rock and clay, cold and bleak, was formerly scantily provided with roads, and with homesteads few and far between; and to guide the traveller through the waste, certain churches with lofty towers were erected on high ground--Pancrasweek, Holsworthy, Bridgerule, Week S. Mary--to enable him to make his way across country from one to the other. A farm or a manor-house nestled in a combe, sheltered from the wind, from the sea, and the driving rain; but farmer and squire drew their wealth from the sheep on the uplands, which were moreover strewn, as they still are, with barrows, under which lie the dead of the Bronze and Stone ages.

Davies Gilbert absurdly derives the name of the place from the Cornish, and makes it signify "sweet." No more unsuitable epithet could have been applied. It signifies _vicus_, a village or hamlet, and is found also at Pancrasweek, Germansweek, and elsewhere.

In the village are still to be seen the remains of the old school and chantry founded by Thomasine Bonaventura, a shepherd girl, native of the place, whose story is told by Carew and by Hall; and from them we take it.

Thomasine was born about the year 1450, in the reign of Henry VI, and her father was a small farmer who had his flock of sheep pasturing on the wild waste common-lands. Thomasine watched it, and spun from her distaff. Above the desolate moors to the south-west stood up blue against the sky the rugged height of Brown Willy, crowned by its mighty cairns; to the west and south-west stretched the Atlantic, into which the evening sun went down in a blaze of glory.

One day a London merchant, a dealer in wool, came riding over the moor; probably from Tintagel or Forrabury, and making direct for Week S. Mary tower, when he passed a barrow on which sat the shepherd girl spinning, the breeze from the sea blowing her dark hair about, singing some old ballad, but ever keeping her eye on her father's sheep. Behind him trailed a line of horses laden with the packs of wool that he had purchased, led by his men. He halted to speak to the girl, probably to learn from her where he might best ford the stream in the valley below. She answered, and he was pleased with her intelligence, and not less with her beauty. He inquired who she was, what was her name, and what the circumstances of her parents. To all these questions she gave prompt and direct answers. Then, still more taken with her, he asked Thomasine whether she would accompany him to London, to be servant to his wife, and he offered her good wages and kind treatment. She replied, with caution, that she was under the guardianship of her father and mother, and that she could not accept his proposal without their consent.

Thereupon the merchant rode on, and upon reaching Week S. Mary inquired for the house of the parents of Thomasine and laid his offer before them. When they hesitated, he referred them to his customers.

The parents, no doubt, were highly elated at being able to get their daughter into a situation in London, where all the streets were paved with gold. But it may well be doubted whether they dreamt of what was in store for her.

So she parted from her parents, certainly with many tears on her part, and earnest injunctions from father and mother to conduct herself in a modest and obedient manner.

Now these wool merchants and clothiers were men of mighty repute and good substance in the land. In Thomas Deloney's delightful _Pleasant Historie of Thomas of Reading_, 1600, we read: "Among all crafts this was the onely chiefe, for that it was the chiefest merchandize, by the which our Country became famous throwout all Nations. And it was verily thought that the one halfe of the people in the land lived in those dayes thereby, and in such good sort, that in the Commonwealth there were few or no beggars at all: poore people, whom God lightly blessed with most children, did by meanes of this occupation so order them, that by the time that they were come to be sixe or seven yeares of age, they were able to get their owne bread. Idlenesse was then banished our coast, so that it was a rare thing to heare of a thiefe in those dayes. Therefore it was not without cause that Clothiers were then both honoured and loved."

Doubtless so soon as the merchant reached Launceston he placed all the wool he purchased on carts, to convey it to town through Exeter. Deloney tells an amusing story of how King Henry was riding forth west with one of his sons and some of his nobility, when "he met with a great number of waines loaden with cloth coming to London, and seeing them still drive one after another so many together, demanded whose they were. The wainemen answered in this sort: Coles of Reading, quoth they. Then, by and by, the King asked another, saying: Whose cloth is all this? Old Coles, quoth he. And againe anon after he asked the same questions to others, and still they answered, Old Coles. And it is to be remembered that the King met them in such a place so narrow and streight, that hee with the rest of his traine were faine to stand as close to the hedge, whilest the carts passed by, the which at that time being in number above two hundred, was neere hand an hour ere the King could get room to be gone; so that by his long stay, he began to be displeased, although the admiration of that sight did much qualify his furie; but breaking out in discontent, by reason of his stay, he said, I thought Old Cole had got a commission for all the carts in the country to carry his cloth. And how if he have (quoth one of the wainemen) doth that grieve you, good Sir? Yes, good Sir, said our King. What say you to that? The fellow, seeing the King (in asking the question) to bend his browes, though he knew not what he was, yet being abasht, he answered thus: Why, Sir, if you be angry, nobody can hinder you; for possibly, Sir, you have anger at commandment. The King, seeing him in uttering of his words to quiver and quake, laughed heartily at him ... and by the time he came within a mile of Staines, he met another company of waines, in like sort laden with cloth, whereby the King was driven into a further admiration; and demanding whose they were, answere was made in this sort: They bee goodman Sutton's of Salisbury, good Sir. And by that time a score of them were past; he asked againe, saying, Whose are these? Sutton's of Salisbury, quoth they, and so still, so often as the King asked that question, they answered, Sutton's of Salisbury. God send me such more Suttons, said the King. And thus the further he travelled westward, more waines and more he met continually: upon which occasion he said to his nobles, that it would never grieve a King to die for the defence of a fertile country and faithful subjects. I alwayes thought (quoth he) that England's valor was more than her wealth, yet now I see her wealth sufficient to maintaine her valour, which I will seek to cherish in all I may, and with my sword keepe myselfe in possession of that I have."

Judging by what Deloney says, these clothiers were a merry set, and the journey to town was one long picnic. They were--or some were--of good family. Grey, the clothier of Gloucester, was of the noble race of Grey de Ruthyn, and FitzAllen, of Worcester, came of the Fitzallens, "that famous family whose patrimony lay about the town of Oswestrie, which towne his predecessors had inclosed with stately walls of stone."

The most famous wool merchant in the West was Tom Dove, of Exeter, concerning whom this song was sung:--

Welcome to town, Tom Dove, Tom Dove,
The merriest man alive.
Thy company still we love, we love,
God grant thee well to thrive.
And never will we depart from thee,
For better, for worse, my joy!
For thou shalt still have our good will,
God's blessing on my sweet boy!

In London Thomasine comported herself well, was cheerful and obliging. How the mercer's wife relished her introduction into the house we are not informed. But this good lady shortly after sickened and died, and the widower offered Thomasine his hand and his heart, which she accepted.

After three years Richard Bunsby, the mercer, died and left all he had to Thomasine, so that she, who had gone up to town as a serving girl, was now a rich widow, and withal young and pretty and attractive. She soon drew suitors about her, and her choice fell on "that worshipful merchant adventurer, Master John Gall, of S. Lawrence, Milk Street." He as well was wealthy and uxorious, and he allowed his wife to make donations for the relief of the poor of her native village, for which she ever retained a lingering attachment.

After the lapse of five years Thomasine was again a widow, and her second husband had followed the example of the first in leaving to her all his possessions.

She had not to wait long before fresh suitors buzzed about her like flies around a treacle barrel, and now, in the year 1497, she gave her hand to Sir John Percival, who in the following year became Lord Mayor of London. In memory of this event, she is traditionally held to have constructed a good road--as good roads went in those days--from Week S. Mary down to the coast, probably that over Week ford and through Poundstock, to either Wansum or Melhuc Mouth.

She long survived her third husband, and is supposed to have returned to end her days as the Lady Bountiful in her native village. By her will, made in 1510, she left goodly sums of money to Week S. Mary.

But both she and Sir John Percival had been already benefactors in London. Sir John had founded a chantry in S. Mary Woolnoth, and in 1539 is found an entry in the churchwardens' accounts of that parish recording that Dame Thomasine Percival had left money for the maintenance of the "beme light" in the church, i.e. the lamp before the rood. She had also left money to supply candles to burn about the sepulchre in the church on Easter Day, and he had bequeathed moneys for the repair of the ornaments of the church, for bell-ringing, for singers "for keeping the anthem," at his and her obits, and last but not least, "for a potation to the neighbours at the said obit."

Carew says: "And to show that virtue as well bare a part in the desert, as fortune in the means of her preferment, she employed the whole residue of her life and last widowhood to works no less bountiful than charitable, namely, repairing of highways, building of bridges, endowing of maidens, relieving of prisoners, feeding and apparelling the poor, etc. Among the rest, at this S. Mary Wike she founded a chantry and free-school, together with fair lodgings for the schoolmasters, scholars, and officers, and added £20 of yearly revenue for supporting the incident charges: wherein, as the bent of her desire was holy, so God blessed the same with all wished success; for divers of the best gentlemen's sons of Devon and Cornwall were there virtuously trained up, in both kinds of divine and human learning, under one Cholwel, an honest and religious teacher, which caused the neighbours so much the rather and the more to rue, that a petty smack only of Popery opened the gap to the oppression of the whole, by the statute made in Edward VI's reign, touching the suppression of chantries."

This disaster befell it in 1550, when all colleges, chantries, free chapels, fraternities, and guilds throughout the kingdom, with their lands and endowments, were alienated to the King--not because there was a "petty smack of Popery" in them, but because of the rapacity of the courtiers who desired to gather the lands and benefactions into their own soiled hands.

Mr. W. H. Tregellas says: "There are still to be seen in the remote and quiet little village of Week S. Mary, some five or six miles south of Bude, in the northern corner of Cornwall, the substantial remains of the good Thomasine's college and chantry, which she founded for the instruction of the youth of her native place.

"The buildings lie about a hundred yards east of the church (from the summit of whose grotesquely ornamented tower six-and-twenty parish churches may be discerned), and built into the modern wall of a cottage which stands inside the battlemented enclosure is a large carved granite stone (evidently one of two which once formed the tympanum of a doorway), on which the letter T stands out in bold relief. Probably it is the initial of the Christian name of our Thomasine; at any rate, it is pleasant to think it may be such."

The church and its stately tower were probably built by Thomasine, or, at all events, she would have largely contributed towards the building. That church is now, internally, a ghastly sight. At its "restoration" it was gutted, and is as bare as a railway station--a shell, and nothing more. But that it was not so in Dame Thomasine's time we may be well assured. A gorgeous screen extended across its nave and aisles, richly sculptured and coloured and gilt, the windows were filled with stained glass, and the bench ends were of carved oak. All this has been swept away.

In the Stratton churchwardens' accounts for 1513 we find that on the day upon which "My Lady Parcyvale's Meneday" came round--i.e. the day on which her death was called to mind--prayer was to be made for the repose of her soul, and two shillings and two pence paid to two priests, and for bread and ale.

THE MURDER OF NEVILL NORWAY

Mr. Nevill Norway was a timber and general merchant, residing at Wadebridge. He was the second son of William Norway, of Court Place, Egloshayle, who died in 1819, and Nevill was baptized at Egloshayle Church on November 5th, 1801.

In the course of his business he travelled about the country and especially attended markets, and he went to one at Bodmin on the 8th of February, 1840, on horseback.