Chapter IV: Part 4

Plymouth which, as has been already pointed out, is the only large sea-port in the county, has four times as much trade, and is entered and cleared by four times as many vessels as all the other ports of Devonshire put together. Its chief imports are grain (£540,000), timber (£250,000), sugar (£135,000), guano and manures (£110,000), and petroleum (£52,000); and its principal export is £52,000 worth of clay. Its imports and exports taken together amount to 1-3/4 million pounds sterling, and it is entered and cleared by 1656 ships in a year. Its chief foreign trade is with France, but its commerce may truly be said to be world-wide. Thirteen lines of ocean steamers sail from or call at Plymouth, the principal of which are the White Star, American, Norddeutscher-Lloyd, and Hamburg-American for the United States; the Orient and Peninsular and Oriental for Australia; the latter and the British India for India; the Shaw-Savill and New Zealand SS. Co. for New Zealand; and the British and African for the West Coast of Africa. There are also regular sailings of steamers for France, Scotland, Ireland, the Channel Isles, and various home ports.

It is interesting to compare this sea-traffic with that of London, which is entered and cleared by 18,491 cargo-carrying ships in the course of twelve months, and has a total annual import and export trade of 333 millions of pounds sterling; which are respectively about 11 times, and about 190 times as large as the corresponding figures for Plymouth.

But although Plymouth is a place of considerable maritime trade, a busy fishing station and a port of call for ocean-going steamers, for whose accommodation are provided spacious docks and ample quays, its greatest importance and renown--remembering that we include with it its sister towns of Stonehouse and Devonport--rest upon its rank as a naval station, as an arsenal which is second only to that of Woolwich, and as a naval dockyard which is the largest in the kingdom.

The anchorage at the head of the Sound, once very much exposed and dangerous in southerly winds, is now protected by a stone breakwater nearly a mile long, designed to shelter ships of the Royal Navy. It was commenced in 1812 by Rennie, continued by his son, modified in the slope of its sides and improved in stability by violent storms, especially in 1817, and completed in 1840.

Taking all its various features into account, its commerce, its passenger traffic by means of ocean-liners and other steamers, its fisheries, its docks and dockyards, its barracks, its factories of marine appliances, its arsenal, and lastly the vast number of ships of all sizes, belonging to the navy, to the mercantile marine, or to the fishing-fleet, that are constantly leaving or entering the Sound, Plymouth is one of the most important sea-ports in the British Empire.

18. History of Devonshire.

The history of our country begins with the Roman occupation. For although we have ample and striking traces, in the shape of earthworks and stone circles, tools and weapons, pottery and ornaments, of the successive races of men who lived here before Julius Caesar set foot in Britain, those ancient and primitive people left no written records, not so much as an inscription on a single coin, and our knowledge of them is in the highest degree vague and uncertain.

Of many parts of our island the Romans took complete possession, constructing fortresses, making roads, establishing towns, building baths and temples and luxuriously appointed villas, and scattering, wherever they went, the coins whose lettering and devices have revealed to us so much concerning the some time masters of the world. In Somerset, for example, to which the conquerors were attracted partly by the hot and health-restoring springs of Bath, and partly by the silver-bearing lead mines of the Mendip Hills, the relics of their occupation have been found from one end of the county to the other.

In Devonshire, on the other hand, such relics are so few, and are confined to so limited an area that we are driven to the conclusion that, except as regards the city of Exeter, there was no definite Roman occupation at all. There is probably not one camp of Roman workmanship in the whole county. It is doubtful if any Roman road went farther than the river Teign. The sites of only two Roman villas are known with certainty. And although Roman coins have been found in many places, sometimes in hoards of hundreds, and in one case even of thousands, they are not absolute proof of actual occupation. The names Chester Moor, Scrobchester, and Wickchester, all near the Cornish border, may, perhaps, be of Roman origin.

There is, however, no doubt that Exeter, believed to be the _Isca Dumniorum_ of Antonine's _Itinerary_--that wonderful register, planned by Julius Caesar and carried out by Augustus, of distances and stations along all the roads in the Empire--was an important Roman town; and there is reason to think, from the coins that have been found at many points within the walls, that the city was held by the Romans from the latter half of the first century of the Christian era until the time when the legions were recalled from Britain. The site of _Moridunum_, the second Roman station mentioned in the _Itinerary_, has not been identified, but there is some ground for the theory that it was at Hembury, four miles from Honiton.

A few vague and brief allusions in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, believed to refer to this county, describing how "Ina fought against Geraint," how "Cynewulf fought very many battles against the Welsh," and how "Egbert laid waste West Wales from eastward to westward," contain practically all that we know of the Saxon conquest of Devonshire. There is, indeed, so little record of actual fighting that it seems probable that the invaders settled here rather as colonists than conquerors, although Athelstan appears to have found it necessary to expel from Exeter the Britons who had so far shared the town with the Saxons.

The chief events in Devonshire between the departure of the Romans and the Norman Conquest were the repeated descents, spread over a long period of years, of the pirates whom we speak of as Danes or Northmen or Vikings; who pillaged the coast towns, sacked Exeter, sailed up the Tamar, and burnt and plundered Tavistock and Lydford. Victory was not always on the side of the marauders. Their first raid, in 851, was repulsed with great slaughter; and when, five and twenty years later, Guthrum seized Exeter, King Alfred promptly drove him out of it.

During the Saxon period there were mints at Exeter, Barnstaple, Totnes, and Lydford, and thousands of Devonshire-struck silver pennies are in existence. By far the greater number of them are in the royal museum at Stockholm, the most numerous being those of Ethelred II and Canute. Of the former there are in Stockholm 2254 specimens, compared with 144 in the British Museum. These Swedish specimens probably represent partly the plunder carried off by the Northmen, partly the bribes vainly paid to the invaders by Ethelred (whose surname of Unradig, "he who will not take counsel," or "the headstrong," has been misrendered "the Unready"), and partly the results of commerce while Canute was king.

The year succeeding the Battle of Hastings found William the Conqueror before the gates of Exeter, a place already regarded, as it continued to be for many centuries, as the key of the West of England. He took the city after a brief siege and proceeded to secure his hold upon it by building the castle of Rougemont, which was hardly finished when it was unsuccessfully attacked by the Saxons. A year later the sons of Harold also tried in vain to take it. The last man of mark in Devonshire to hold out against Norman rule was Sithric, the Saxon abbot of Tavistock, who, when all was lost, fled to Hereward's camp of refuge in the Fens. A few Englishmen were left by the Conqueror in possession of their estates; but the county, as a whole, was divided among a number of Norman nobles, some of whose descendants, Courtenay, Carew, and Champernowne, for example, still survive in Devonshire. An interesting link with Norman times and customs is the ringing of the curfew bell, which is still kept up at Exeter, Okehampton, and other places. At eight o'clock every evening thirty strokes are sounded for "Curfew," and then eight more for the hour.

In the stormy reign of King Stephen Exeter was the last place to hold out for Queen Maud. The king was admitted into the town by the citizens, but the castle of Rougemont cost him a three months' siege.

The importance of Devonshire sea-ports brought the county into great prominence in mediaeval times. Part of Richard C[oe]ur-de-Lion's crusading fleet, we are told, assembled at Dartmouth--a town which Chaucer, probably regarding it as a typical sea-port, chose for the native place of the Shipman in the _Canterbury Tales_. No other part of England furnished so many ships and men for Edward III's expedition against Calais. Again and again, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the French, in reprisal for what they had suffered by the attacks of England, harried the coast of Devon, plundering and burning Teignmouth, Plymouth, and other places on the coast.

The Black Death, the most terrible and destructive epidemic of which we have any record, which devastated the whole of England in 1348 and 1349, was very severe in this county, paralyzing agriculture and trade, and stopping for a time the building of Exeter cathedral.

Fighting in Devonshire during the Wars of the Roses was confined to an unsuccessful and half-hearted siege of Exeter by the Yorkists, and to attacks on the fortified manor-houses of Shute and Upcott. But many men in the county took sides in the struggle, and some of the great families suffered severely. Sir William Bonville was beheaded after the second Battle of St Albans. Of the ancient house of Courtenay, Thomas, Earl of Devon, was executed at York, Sir Hugh was beheaded at Sarum, and Sir John was killed at Wakefield Green. The county as a whole was Lancastrian. Queen Margaret herself was there after her defeat at Barnet; and French gold coins found in Blackpool sands are believed to be relics of the landing there, in 1470, of Warwick and Clarence. But when in the same year Edward IV visited Exeter, he was so well satisfied with his reception that he presented the corporation with a sword of state, which is still carried in processions before the mayor.

The peace of Devonshire in the fifteenth century was further disturbed by a rising, in 1483, against Richard III; by the march through the county, in 1497, of an army of Cornishmen who had risen in revolt against a heavy war-tax, and who were ultimately beaten at Blackheath; and by the insurrection, also in 1497, of Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be the Richard Duke of York usually said to have been murdered in the Tower, and who made a desperate although vain attack upon Exeter, when some of his men fought their way into the town, but were driven out again by the citizens.

About fifty years later, in 1549, there was a widespread and determined and altogether much more serious rebellion called the "Commotion," caused partly by the suppression of the Monasteries, which was greatly objected to by the poor, and partly by the introduction of the Prayer Book. The insurgents, who had collected from all parts of the West Country, and who were led by such men of mark as Pomeroy, Arundel, and Coffin, laid siege to Exeter and Plymouth, and for a time held the king's troops helplessly at bay. In the end, however, Lord Russell, one of the newly-created Lords Lieutenant, aided by German cavalry and Italian arquebusiers, defeated the rebels with great slaughter in a series of hotly-contested battles. The vicar of St Thomas in Exeter, who had encouraged the rising and who was described as very skilled both with the long-bow and the hand-gun, was hanged "in his Popish apparel" on the tower of his own church, and his body was left there for four years.

The reign of Queen Elizabeth has been called the Golden Age of English History. And among the heroic figures of that stirring time there are few more striking than the little group of Devonshire men who played so gallant a part in making England great:--Drake and Hawkyns, the scourges of Spain; Ralegh, courtier and soldier, sailor and author; Gilbert, the discoverer of Newfoundland; and Grenville, who at Flores, in the _Revenge_ of immortal memory, kept at bay a Spanish fleet of fifty-three sail.

The great event of the reign was the defeat of the Armada. And although Howard of Effingham, the Lord High Admiral, showed himself a skilful and intrepid sailor, it is Drake whom we always think of first in connection with the victory. It was Drake whose buccaneering exploits on the coasts of Spain and her colonies did so much to heighten Philip II's ambition to humiliate England. It was Drake who, in 1587, dashed into Cadiz, where the Armada was preparing, and by destroying 100 ships and vast quantities of stores, delayed for a whole year the sailing of the expedition. And when at last the Armada had been sighted, it was Drake who, according to the commonly received tradition, thinking it wiser to wait until the enemy's fleet had passed Plymouth Sound, and so take them in the rear, persuaded his fellow-captains to stay and finish that never-to-be-forgotten game of bowls, before the English ships, lying ready in the Catwater, should slip their moorings and stand out to sea. It was Drake who was foremost in the attack. It was Drake who took the _Capitana_, the flagship of Pedro de Valdez, and brought her, the first prize of the great victory, into Torbay. And when the English fireships had scattered the hostile fleet in headlong flight, it was Drake who was foremost in the chase.

Among the relics of Devonshire's greatest hero, carefully treasured by his descendants at his old home at Buckland Abbey, are his sword and the famous drum that he carried with him round the world; while at Nutwell Court are flags that he flew while in command of the _Pelican_, the miniature of herself given to him by Queen Elizabeth, and other objects of the greatest historical interest. And among the Royal plate in Windsor Castle is preserved the noble wine-flagon of bold silver-gilt _repoussé_ work, standing nearly a yard high, which Drake took from the _Capitana_ of the Armada and presented to Queen Elizabeth. An illustration of it, from a photograph taken for this book by command of the Queen, is here shown for the first time.

During the retreat to Spain a second Armada vessel, the hospital-ship _St Peter the Great_, was driven ashore in Hope Cove; and the pulpit of St James's church, Exeter, and the timber roof of Tiverton School were, it is believed, made of wood either from this ship or from the _Capitana_.

It was not until this period that Plymouth came into prominence as a naval station. A special tax was levied on the pilchard fishery to provide money for the fortifications, and a leat or water-course was constructed with the primary object, it is said, of supplying fresh water for the royal ships.

A memorable event in James I's reign was the sailing of the _Mayflower_. Preceded by another ship called the _Speedwell_ she set sail from Leyden in the autumn of 1620, having on board a number of Puritan refugees bent on finding in North America the religious freedom denied to them in England. The two vessels having met at Southampton and put into Dartmouth, were finally driven back by stress of weather into Plymouth, whence--her consort having proved unseaworthy--the _Mayflower_ alone continued the voyage, ultimately landing her 101 exiles at Plymouth, Massachusetts, which, however, had received its name five years before.

In the Civil War between Charles I and the Parliament, few counties saw more fighting than Devonshire. The fighting consisted, however, not of pitched battles, but of sieges and attacks on fortified positions; which, indeed, was characteristic of the whole war, in whatever part of the country it was waged. Every Devonshire town of importance, a great number of villages, many castles, manor-houses, and even churches played a part in the struggle.

As a whole, the towns, with the exception of Exeter, sympathised with the Parliament, while the rural districts, encouraged by the great landowners, were mainly for the king. The royal forces were, however, numerous in Devonshire; Goring's army, in 1642, was 6000 strong; and although fortune wavered, and although towns were taken and retaken, there came a time, before the arrival of Fairfax and the New Model Army, when the royal standard flew from nearly every important town in Devon, Somerset, and Cornwall. There was one conspicuous exception. The party of the people never lost its hold on Plymouth, which, at a cost of 8000 lives, or more than the entire population of the town, withstood a blockade lasting from 1642 to 1646, together with many desperate attacks by Hopton, Prince Maurice, and the King himself, enduring altogether a longer siege than any other town in England.

Exeter was early seized for the Parliament, but the majority of the citizens were Royalists, and the city, which was regarded as one of the strongest Cavalier holds in the west, was soon retaken by Prince Maurice. Queen Henrietta was there in 1644, and there King Charles's youngest daughter, afterwards Duchess of Orleans, was born. When Fairfax retook the town in 1646 he allowed the garrison to march out with all the honours of war.

That year saw the final ruin of the Royal cause in the west, and the dispersal of the only army which, although little better than a mob, still kept the field for the King.

One of the most important, and at the same time most fiercely-contested Parliamentary victories, was the storming of the town of Torrington by Fairfax, at midnight, in the winter of 1646. After the battle, the church, which had been used by the king's troops (as also was Exeter cathedral) as a powder-magazine, was blown up, and 200 Royalist prisoners who had been confined in it and many of their guards were killed. The loss of Torrington was the death-blow of the Royal cause in Devon. All that a brave man could do, Hopton did. But the county was sick of the Royalists and their methods. The people had learnt that the well-disciplined troops of Fairfax were not mere robbers, like the ruffians of Grenville and Goring; and after Torrington the Royal army melted away.

The last place in the county to hold out for the King except Lundy, where there was no fighting, but which did not surrender until 1647, was Clifton Castle, or Fort Charles, near Salcombe. After enduring a blockade and siege of four months, with the trifling loss of one man killed and one wounded, the besieged were granted the same terms as the garrisons of Exeter and Barnstaple, and marched out with matches lighted, drums beating, and colours flying.

After the Battle of Worcester, in 1651, Charles II took refuge for a time in Devonshire. Four years later there was an attempt at an insurrection in his favour, known as Penruddock's Rising, and Charles was proclaimed King at South Molton. The movement was promptly suppressed, and its leader, Colonel Penruddock, was executed. It is interesting to remember that, at the Restoration in 1660, Exeter was the first town in England to acknowledge Charles II, and that he was there proclaimed King ten days before he landed at Dover. Seven years later, in 1667, the great Dutch Admiral De Ruyter captured all the shipping in Torbay.

During the Commonwealth and later, when there was no copper coinage in this country, many tradesmen all over England struck money of their own, chiefly in the form of farthings. Nearly 400 varieties of Devonshire "tokens," as they were called, issued by sixty different towns, are known. Ninety-one were struck at Exeter alone, which is more than were issued from any other provincial town except Norwich. At a much later period shillings and sixpenny tokens of leather were in circulation at Hartland.

After the Duke of Monmouth landed at Lyme in Dorsetshire, in 1685, Axminster was the first town that he occupied, and a number of Colyton men are said to have joined his army. Otherwise the rebellion hardly touched Devonshire. Yet Judge Jeffreys put to death, at various places in the county, thirty-seven of the Duke's misguided followers. After the Battle of Sedgemoor, Wade and other fugitives attempted to escape by sea from Ilfracombe, but they were obliged to put back, and were caught in the woods near Lynton.

When, under very different auspices, William of Orange landed at Brixham on the 5th of November, 1688, he marched to Exeter, as the chief city of the west. The citizens at first held aloof, but in the end they gave to the Deliverer their hearty and most valuable support.

Two years later the French admiral Tourville, fresh from his victory over our fleet off Beachy Head, landed a strong force at Teignmouth, and sacked and burnt that part of the town which ever since has been known as French Street.

Both in 1715 and in 1745 the county was suspected of showing sympathy with the exiled Stuarts. But when in the former year the Duke of Ormond, with a small party of French soldiers, appeared in a war-ship off Brixham, expecting to be welcomed by the Devonshire Jacobites, he met with no encouragement.

Several episodes in the history of Devonshire are associated with the French war of the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In 1797 a French squadron, afterwards captured by Admiral Bridport, sank the fishing-boats in Ilfracombe harbour. A few years later, in 1809, Princetown was built for the reception of the rougher class of French prisoners of war, and during the five years that followed 12,679 Frenchmen and Americans were confined there, while many others were billeted at Okehampton, Ashburton, Tavistock, and Moreton Hampstead. The Princetown buildings were afterwards disused--except for a short occupation by a naphtha company--until 1850, when they were converted into a prison for convicts.

It was at this period that Torquay came into note, having become a place of residence for the families of naval officers serving on men-of-war anchored in Torbay. In Torbay, too, was enacted what may be called the last scene of the war. For it was here, on the 24th of July, 1815, that Napoleon was brought a prisoner. And here he remained, except for a few days spent in Plymouth Sound, until the 11th of August, when he was taken to St Helena.

19. Antiquities.

To the archaeologist and the antiquarian Devonshire is one of the most interesting counties in England. With the exception of Cornwall no other district is so rich in relics of the ancient inhabitants of Britain; and it was from the caves of this county that Pengelly obtained that clear evidence of the extreme antiquity of man in this island which proved that he lived here, unnumbered ages back, when such animals as the cave-lion, the hyaena, and the mammoth ran wild in what we now call England.

The people who inhabited Britain before the coming of the Romans are said to have belonged to the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, or the Iron Age, according to the material which they used for their tools and weapons; and the first of these epochs is further divided into the Earlier and the Later Stone Ages, or the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Periods. The implements of the former were very roughly fashioned of chipped, unpolished flint; those of the latter were more skilfully made, and were sometimes very highly finished.

Relics of all these periods have been found in Devonshire, but it is not always possible to say to which age a particular weapon or implement belongs. The use of flint for arrow-heads, for example, certainly continued long after the invention of bronze; and bronze was employed, especially for ornaments, long after iron had come into regular use.

Traces of Palaeolithic man are nowhere common, and they are rare in Devonshire; but they have been found, in the shape of massive tools of roughly chipped flint, in Kent's Cavern near Torquay, in the Cattedown Cave, now destroyed, near Plymouth, and in the river-drift near Axminster. Very fine examples have been obtained from a ballast-pit at Broome.

Remains belonging to the Neolithic Age, on the other hand, are not only much more abundant, but are of greater variety, showing an advance in knowledge of the arts of life, and they include not only axe-heads, spear-points, and arrow-tips of flint, in some cases beautifully finished, but weapons and ornaments of bone and horn, rude pottery, spindle-whorls, and even primitive musical instruments. No traces of the dwellings of the people of this age, except as regards the caves that sheltered some of them and their predecessors of the earlier time, have yet been found, nor of their graves, if we except the Spinster's Rock, two miles west of Drewsteignton. This is a dolmen consisting of three huge stones, on which rests a still larger block, twelve feet long and estimated at sixteen tons in weight; it doubtless was a Neolithic burying-place.

Relics of the Bronze Age are far more abundant, and they form, indeed, the chief archaeological feature of Devonshire. Dartmoor in particular, chiefly perhaps because its great upland wilderness has never been broken up by the plough, is dotted all over with remains of primitive Bronze Age dwellings, sometimes standing alone, sometimes grouped in villages and surrounded by a wall, and also with many stone circles, tumuli, kistvaens, menhirs, and rows of upright stones. It is, moreover, intersected by a network of ancient trackways, linking settlement to settlement.

The best example of an early Bronze Age village is Grimspound, eight miles north-east of Princetown. It consists of twenty-four round huts made of stone slabs set on end and standing about three feet above ground, scattered over a space of about four acres, surrounded by a nearly circular double wall, from nine to fourteen feet thick, and about five feet high, built of blocks of granite, some of which are tons in weight. Half the huts contain fire-hearths, which have been much used; and a good many have raised stone benches, from eight inches to a foot high. Except that the roofs, which were no doubt made of poles and thatch, have disappeared, these primitive dwellings, of which there are hundreds on Dartmoor, are probably much in the same condition as when they were inhabited, perhaps 2000 years ago. It has been suggested that Grimspound, like many ancient camps or hill-forts, was a place of refuge in times of danger, rather than a permanently occupied fortress.

The objects found in these and similar dwellings consist of flint implements, pottery--some of it decorated--spindle-whorls, and cooking-stones such as are still in use among the Eskimo. So far, no fragment of metal of any kind has been discovered, from which it might, perhaps, have been inferred that the huts were the work of a race unacquainted with the use of metal. But the pottery so closely resembles that found in the burial-mounds of the Bronze Age that archaeologists are satisfied that the dwellings belong to that period.

Other remarkable monuments are the stone circles, or upright, unhewn blocks of granite arranged in rings, of which there are many on Dartmoor, and of which some of the finest are the Grey Wethers near Post Bridge, and similar structures near Chagford and on Langstone Moor; the avenues or alignments, consisting of rows of stones set up in straight lines, as at Merivale Bridge, Hurston, and Challacombe; and the menhirs, which are single stones, sometimes twelve feet high, of which the best are at Drizlecombe, at Merivale, and on Langstone Moor.

It is probable that these structures were connected with primitive forms of worship, but Sir Norman Lockyer has endeavoured to show, in one of the most fascinating chapters of archaeological research, that the circles and avenues, and the monoliths or menhirs connected with them, were in all probability set up as rough astronomical instruments for observing the rising of the sun or of particular stars, in order to regulate the true length of the year. It is even possible, he contends, to form some idea of the date of their erection. Thus the two avenues at Merivale were probably laid out at different times, one about 1610 B.C., and the other about 1420 B.C., in order to watch the sunrise in May, which was then regarded as the first month of the year; while the avenues at Challacombe, among the most remarkable of all the monuments, are probably of far older date, perhaps 3500 B.C., and seem to have been arranged for the observation of sunrise in November, a month long accepted by some Celtic tribes as marking the beginning of the year.

Kistvaens, of which nearly 100 have been found, almost all of them on Dartmoor, are small stone burial chambers, generally used for the reception of the burnt ashes of the dead, probably in many instances originally covered with earth, and made of four slabs of granite set on edge, forming a sort of vault, with another and more massive stone laid on the top. Specially good examples have been found at Fernworthy, on Lakehead Hill, and at Plymouth. The most remarkable kistvaen--belonging, however, to a later period, when burial had displaced cremation--was that discovered on Lundy, containing a human skeleton eight feet two inches in length.

Tumuli or burial mounds, called cairns when they are made of small stones, and barrows when they are merely piles of earth, are to be seen in all parts of Devonshire, especially on high ground, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups of from two to ten or twelve, and always round. No long barrows have been discovered in the county.

The men of the Bronze Age reached a much higher stage of civilisation than their stone-using predecessors, and very fine examples of their bronze swords, daggers, spear-heads and axes; of their pottery, some of it finely decorated; and of their ornaments, including beads of shale and clay and amber, and an amber dagger-hilt with studs of gold, have been found at various places in Devonshire.

Relics that can be attributed with certainty to the prehistoric Iron Age are rare, partly, no doubt, because iron so quickly rusts away. Some very remarkable remains of this period were however found on Stamford Hill near Plymouth, during the construction of a fort, when the workmen dug into an ancient burial-ground, in which, in addition to human bones, were discovered red, black, and yellow pottery, mirrors and finger rings of bronze, fragments of beautiful amber-tinted glass, and some much-corroded cutting-instruments of iron. In the old camp called Holne Chase Castle, a man digging out a rabbit came upon about a dozen bars of rusty iron, two feet long, nearly two inches broad, and a quarter of an inch thick, which although at first mistaken, as has been the case elsewhere, for unfinished sword-blades, were subsequently identified as specimens of the iron currency-bars which passed as money among the ancient Britons. British coins of gold, silver, and copper have been found in several places, particularly at Exeter and at Mount Batten near Plymouth. The commonest are of what is known as the Channel Islands type, bearing the effigy of a horse rudely imitated from the Macedonian stater, and probably struck about 200 B.C.

A special feature of the prehistoric antiquities of Devonshire is the great number of camps or hill-forts, of which there are more than 140; some in the heart of the county, some on the coast, often on prominent headlands, and some along the lines of division between this and the adjoining shires; showing in many instances great military skill and knowledge both in construction and in the choice of good, defensive sites. Two of the most remarkable of the many strongholds, both near Honiton, are the great encampment of Dumpdon and the magnificently planned fortress of Hembury--a monument of military skill. Another fine example is Hawkesdown, the strongest of the chain of border forts--of which Membury and Musbury are two important links--built along the river Axe as defences against the ancient inhabitants of Dorsetshire. One of the largest and most elaborate of all is Clovelly Dykes, twenty acres in extent, and defended by from three to five lines of intricate earthworks. Another remarkable fort, and the largest in the county, is Milber Down, two miles south-east of Newton Abbot.

There is no real clue to the makers of these fortresses. Roman coins have been found in several of them, but there is not one which competent authorities attribute to the Romans, and it is probable that they were built by British tribes during the ages of Bronze and of Iron, but perhaps chiefly by the Gaels or Goidels. A few of them have played a part in modern history. Cadbury, for instance, was occupied by Fairfax in 1645; and in 1688 the Prince of Orange parked his artillery in the great fort of Milber Down, a camp which it is thought was not only occupied but adapted by the Romans.

The Romans, as was pointed out in the previous chapter, left comparatively few traces in Devonshire; and at only twelve spots in the county have Roman relics other than coins been discovered. At Exeter, the only town where there seems to have been continuous occupation, there have been found the foundations of the city walls, a bath, several tesselated pavements--one of which has been relaid in the hall of the police-court, on the spot where it was discovered--statuettes in bronze and in stone, engraved gems, lamps--one encrusted with lizards, toads, and newts--many pieces of finely decorated Samian pottery, and great numbers of coins. The finest mosaic pavement was that found at Uplyme, on the site of one of the only two known Roman villas in the county. Coins have been dug up in many places. Considerable hoards have been discovered at Compton Gifford, Holcombe, Tiverton, and Widworthy. The largest, however, was at Kingskerswell, where 2000 were found together. Perhaps the most remarkable Roman relic was a bronze object found on the beach at Sidmouth, believed to be the head of a standard, and representing Chiron the Centaur carrying Achilles.

Except as regards coins, of which great numbers are in existence, especially, as has been stated, in the Royal Museum at Stockholm, few antiquities that can be ascribed to the Saxons have been found in Devonshire. One remarkable relic, now in the British Museum, was a bronze sword-hilt, dug up in Exeter in 1833, finely ornamented with key-pattern, and inscribed LEOFRIC·ME·FEC(IT). Part of the lettering is inverted, a fact which at first entirely disguised the real words. One of the treasures of Exeter Cathedral is an Old English manuscript headed "A Mycel Englisc Bok," placed in the Chapter Library by Leofric, who in 1050 was bishop of the diocese. It contains some of the work of Cynewulf and his school. One poem has been thus translated:

"To the Frisian wife
comes a dear welcome guest;
the keel is at rest;
his vessel is come;
her husband is home;
her own cherished lord
she leads to the board;
his wet weeds she wrings;
dry garments she brings.
Ah, happy is he
whom, home from the sea
his true love awaits."

A Norman relic of the highest interest is the Exeter Domesday Book, also preserved in the Chapter Library, describing in greater detail than is given by the Winchester Survey, especially as regards live stock, the five counties of Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset, and Wiltshire. Among many points of difference between the two books is that where the more general survey gives the letters T.R.E., for _tempore regis Edwardi_, meaning that such were the facts in the time of Edward the Confessor, the Exeter Book uses the phrase "eadie q^a rex·E·f·u·&·m·" for _eâ die qua Rex Edwardus fuit vivus et mortuus_, that is to say, "on the day when King Edward was alive and dead," meaning the day he died, which was the 6th of January, 1066. It is worthy of note that, with one exception, the Devonshire Hundreds were the same in 1086, the supposed year of the completion of the Survey, as they are in our time.

Scattered up and down over Devonshire are many old stone crosses, some in churchyards or by the wayside, probably intended as preaching places, and some standing on the open moor as marks of boundary or of lines of ancient roadway, a few of them bearing brief inscriptions or traces of decoration. Fine examples are those of Addiscot, Helliton, Mary Tavy, and South Zeal, the last-named of which has been restored, and measures, with its steps, eighteen feet in height; the Merchant's Cross near Meavy, the tallest on Dartmoor; the very ancient Coplestone Cross, once decorated with interlaced Celtic ornament, standing where three parishes meet, and named in an Anglo-Saxon charter of 974; and the Nun's or Siward's Cross, inscribed on one side (SI)WARD, and on the other BOC LOND, set up in the twelfth century to mark the boundary between the royal forest and the property of Buckland Abbey.

With these may be mentioned the inscribed stones of Lustleigh, Stowford, Tiverton, and Fardel--the latter now removed. The last-named, and one of the three Tiverton examples, bear inscriptions in Ogham or Irish runic characters.

Among the features of Dartmoor are the so-called "clapper bridges," made of great blocks of unhewn stone. Their date and their builders are matters of conjecture. If, as has been said, they were meant for pack-horse traffic, they may be at least as old as the time of the Norman Conquest, for packhorses are mentioned in the Exeter Domesday. There are fine examples at Dartmeet, Bellaford, and near Scaurhill Circle. But the most striking and perhaps the most ancient is that at Post Bridge, in which two of the stones are fifteen feet long.

The idea has long been abandoned that Logan or rocking stones were the work of man, or that the rock basins which are found on the top of some of the Dartmoor tors had anything to do with Druidical ceremonies. Both are now recognised as of natural origin. But it may here be noted that the largest of the Devonshire Logans is the Rugglestone, at Widecombe, estimated at from 100 to 150 tons, but it can no longer be moved. The largest that will still rock is one of about fifty tons weight at Smallacombe. The largest of the many rock basins, which vary from a few inches to five feet or more, are on Heltor and Kestor.

20. Architecture--(_a_) Ecclesiastical.

The ecclesiastical buildings of Devonshire,--its magnificent cathedral, which is without doubt the finest example of the Decorated style in all England; its many noble churches, some of which, specially remarkable for their interest and beauty, are situated in remote and thinly-peopled rural parishes; and, in a minor degree, the picturesque fragments of its ruined abbeys--form altogether one of the most striking features of the county. Speaking generally, it may be said that Devonshire churches, as a whole, are remarkable for their interiors, very many of them containing beautiful wood-work, especially rood-screens, and finely-carved stone pulpits, to which, in many instances, the addition of gold and colour has lent a still more striking and even gorgeous effect. Some of the exteriors also are very beautiful; but, on the other hand, many of them, partly on account of the intractable nature of the stone of which they were built, are simple and even severe in character. As might be expected, the material varies with the geological formation. Thus, many churches were built of grey limestone. In East Devon much use was made of flints and of freestone from Beer. Round Exeter and Crediton volcanic tufa was often employed, particularly in vaulting. The use of Old Red Sandstone and even of granite greatly affected the style, which in buildings of those difficult materials is plain and with little ornament.

A large proportion of the churches of Devonshire were more or less rebuilt during the Perpendicular period, that is, between 1377 and 1547; but many, probably even the majority of them, contain features of earlier dates, in a few cases going as far back as Saxon times. Some have been skilfully restored. But in too many cases the work of renewal was carried out in an age when church architecture was imperfectly understood, and when the value of old and beautiful, even if time-worn, details was not sufficiently appreciated; and it is unfortunately true that, in order to accomplish needless or barbarous alterations, many interesting features were ruthlessly swept away.

The oldest existing work is the Saxon masonry in the bases of some of the central Norman towers--those of Branscombe, Axminster, and Colyton, for example, and in the crypt of Sidbury. No church is wholly or even largely Norman; but the transeptal towers of Exeter Cathedral are of this period, as are the towers of South Brent, Ilfracombe, and Aveton Gifford, in addition to those named above. There are also fine Norman doorways at Paignton, Kelly, Axminster, Hartland, Bishop's Teignton, and elsewhere. In at least a hundred churches, most of which probably possess no other feature of the time, there are Norman fonts, of which the most remarkable are those at Hartland, Alphington, and Bradsworthy. The font in Dolton church is believed to be Saxon.

Perhaps the best examples of Early English architecture are to be seen in the aisles and transeptal towers--the latter imitated from those of Exeter Cathedral--of the very beautiful church of Ottery St Mary, the finest and most interesting church in Devon. The plain little building on Brent Tor, one of the smallest of churches, measuring only forty feet by fourteen, is probably all Early English. The churches of Sampford Peverell, Haccombe, and Aveton Gifford are almost entirely of this period, as are the transepts and central tower of Combe Martin and the tower of Buckfastleigh, which carries one of the few spires in the county.

The Decorated style is not so well represented as regards the number of examples. But to this period belongs almost the whole of Exeter Cathedral, a great part of the beautiful church of Tavistock, and the nave, chancel, and Lady-chapel of Ottery St Mary. There is also good work of this style at Beer Ferris, Plympton, and Denbury.

So many Devonshire churches, as already remarked, were rebuilt in Tudor times that the majority of the ecclesiastical buildings in the county appear to belong to the Perpendicular period. There is very beautiful Perpendicular work in the church of Tiverton, whose south front and chapel were decorated by their founder, a wool-merchant named Greenway, with very elaborate carvings, some symbolic of his trade, and some representing scenes from the life of Christ. Other notable churches mainly of this period--to name a few only out of a multitude of examples--are those of Crediton, Hartland, Plymptree, Awliscombe, Kenton, Harberton, Dartmouth, and Buckland Monachorum.

To the Perpendicular period belong the finest of the Devonshire towers, which as a rule, however, owing in many instances to the absence or to the poorness of buttresses and pinnacles, lack the majesty of those which are so striking a feature of the ecclesiastical architecture of Somerset. There is a group of three towers in near neighbourhood, assigned by tradition to the same architect, and known as Length, Strength and Beauty, at Bishop's Nympton, South Molton, and Chittlehampton, respectively; and the last of these, a magnificent piece of architecture, is the most beautiful specimen of an enriched tower in Devonshire. Other very fine towers are those of Cullompton, Chumleigh, Berrynarbor, Arlington, Kentisbury, and Combe Martin. The tower of Colyton is unique in character, being crowned by an octagonal lantern supported by slender flying buttresses. There are not now many spires in Devonshire, but there are fine examples at Modbury--which tapers the whole way up--and at Barnstaple, both of the sixteenth century; and there are others at Braunton, Brushford, and West Worlington. One of the towers of Ottery St Mary carries a spire, the other is without.

One of the special characteristics of Devonshire churches is their woodwork, their roofs and bench-ends, their pulpits--although some of the best of these are of stone--and, above all, their rood-screens. The last-named are among the finest in the kingdom, and are not rivalled even in Norfolk and Suffolk.

There are good timber roofs at Cullompton, Widecombe, South Tawton, Hartland, Ashburton, Chittlehampton, Sampford Courtenay, and Hatherleigh. The bench-ends at Abbotsham, Ilsington, Ashton, Mortehoe, Tawstock, Braunton, Monksleigh, Frithelstock, East Budleigh, and Combe-in-Teignhead are specially fine. The seventeenth century seats at Cruwys Morchard are inscribed with the farm names of the parish.

Rood-screens, which are here the most remarkable feature of the Perpendicular period, are very numerous in Devonshire. Although many have disappeared, having been removed or broken up, there are still some 150 in more or less perfect condition. So many of them, moreover, are of such truly exquisite workmanship that it is difficult to say which are the most beautiful. The material, in the majority of cases, is wood, perhaps because of the scarcity of tractable stone--elaborately carved, and very often splendidly decorated with gold and colour. There are, however, magnificent screens of stone in Exeter Cathedral and in the churches of Totnes and Awliscombe.

It is probable that most of the screens were the work of native craftsmen, but there are some whose style shows distinct signs of foreign influence. The beautiful screen at Harberton, for example, suggests Spanish work or influence, that of Colebrook French, that of Kenton Flemish, and that of Swymbridge Italian. While by far the greater number are of the Perpendicular period, that of Washfield is Jacobean, and that of Cruwys Morchard is Georgian. It is perhaps generally considered that the magnificent screen at Kenton is the finest of all; but it has a good many rivals which closely approach it in beauty of design and in excellence of workmanship. Other splendid specimens, all of them of great beauty, are those at Kentisbere, Hartland, Hemyock, Swymbridge, Kingsnympton, Dartmouth, Honiton, Holbeton, Tawstock, Lustleigh, Lapford, Pinhoe, and Uffculme. The last-named, which measures sixty-seven feet, is the longest, and that at Welcombe is believed to be the oldest, in the county.

Carved pulpits are another special feature of Devonshire churches. The finest stone pulpit, which is at Harberton, contains, like the beautiful examples at South Molton and Chittlehampton, full-length figures in panels. Other good stone pulpits are at Pilton, Totnes, Paignton, Dartmouth and elsewhere. Two particularly fine carved oaken pulpits are those of Hartland and Kenton, the latter of which is very richly decorated with gold and colour. There are also good specimens at East Allington, Tor Bryan, Ipplepen, and Holne.

Ancient stained glass is very rare in Devon, much having been destroyed by Puritan fanatics. The best which has survived is at Doddiscombeleigh, where there are four very beautiful windows. There is also very good glass at Cheriton Bishop and Budleigh; and some less striking but noteworthy examples may be seen at Ashton, Christow, Cadbury, Manaton, Atherington and other places. The great east window in Exeter Cathedral contains some very fine coloured glass, and there are a few remains in some of the clerestory windows.

Among the very striking recumbent effigies of warriors and churchmen and great ladies to be found in our churches there are some not to be surpassed in England; and the magnificent examples in Exeter Cathedral, in particular, afford most valuable chronological studies both of costume and of carving. Among the finest of those in the cathedral are the splendid thirteenth century alabaster effigy of Bishop Bronescombe, the fourteenth century mail-clad figures of Humphrey de Bohun and Sir Richard Stapledon, and the sixteenth century effigy of Bishop Hugh Oldham. Perhaps the grandest of those in parish churches, to name a few only out of many, are the fourteenth century effigies of Sir Otho Grandisson and his wife at Ottery St Mary, and the seventeenth century figures of Denys Rolle and his wife at Bicton. Other fine effigies are at Paignton, Broadclyst, Landkey, Tawstock, Haccombe, and Horwood and the Seymour tomb at Berry Pomeroy.

Our county is rich also in monumental brasses, most of which date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Among the finest are the splendid triple-canopied fifteenth century brasses in the church of St Saviour, Dartmouth, in memory of Sir John Hawley and his two wives, the fifteenth century brass of Sir Nicholas Carew in Exeter Cathedral, which is a wonderful representation of the military costume of the period, and the fine sixteenth century brass at Tiverton, in memory of John and Joan Greenway. Other good brasses are in Exeter Cathedral and in the churches of Stoke-in-Teignhead, Stoke Fleming, Clovelly, Braunton, Haccombe, and Clyst St George.

Many of the churches, that of Pilton, for example, have specially musical peals of bells; and there are very old bells at Ogwell, Abbot's Beckington, Alverdiscott and Hittesleigh. At the latter place is the most ancient bell in the county.

By far the most important and remarkable ecclesiastical building in Devonshire is Exeter Cathedral, which, although not one of the largest or--externally, at any rate--one of the most majestic cathedrals in this country, is without doubt the most beautiful example in all England of the Decorated style of architecture. It is built of Beer stone; a material which when first quarried is white and easily worked, but which, in this case, is now dark and crumbling with age.

The two features which specially distinguish this from all other cathedrals are its transeptal towers, of which the only other English example is at Ottery St Mary; and the great length of its roof, which extends unbroken over nave and choir.

The exterior is further remarkable for the statuary on its west front with its figures of kings and knights, saints and angels; for its flying buttresses and its richly carved pinnacles. And the interior, which has been called the finest in Europe, is distinguished for the beautiful tracery of its many Decorated windows, the elaborate details of its side-chapels; its episcopal throne, more than fifty feet high, a marvel of wood-carving, without a rival in the island; its noble screen, one of the best in a county particularly rich in screens; its ancient and quaintly-carved misereres, the earliest in England; its fourteenth century minstrels' gallery, the most nearly perfect known; its long stretch of stone vaulted roof, the longest of the kind in existence; its clustered columns; its richly yet delicately carved bosses and finely sculptured corbels; its many monuments and recumbent effigies of knights in armour and of bishops in their robes of office; and, generally, by the wonderful uniformity and symmetry of its design.

The cathedral is the work of many hands. Hardly one of its long line of bishops but has left his mark upon it. But that it is an architectural masterpiece is due in the first place to the genius of one man, and in the second place to the wisdom of his successors in faithfully carrying out his original design.

The cathedral stands on the site of a Saxon church, of which no trace remains; and of the Norman edifice which succeeded it little is left but the two transeptal towers. These towers, the northern of which has been much altered, and now has strongly-marked Perpendicular characters, were built by Bishop Warelwast (1107-1136), the son of William the Conqueror's sister; and Bishop Marshall (1194-1206), brother of that Earl of Pembroke who helped Henry II in the conquest of Ireland, finished the building in the Norman style. But it was Bishop Quivil (1280-1291) who planned the reconstruction of the whole cathedral in the Decorated style, with the exception of the towers, and himself began the transformation, rebuilding the transepts, the Lady-chapel, and part of the nave. And although the work extended over more than a hundred years after Quivil's time, and was continued far into the Perpendicular period, the architecture was not altered, and there are few features in the building which are not in keeping with the bishop's first design. The magnificent Perpendicular eastern window is filled with beautiful glass of the previous period, and it is believed that its tracery also was originally of the Decorated style.

Of the bishops who succeeded Quivil, Stapledon (1308-1326), a statesman as well as a prelate and an architect, murdered in Cheapside by ruffian partisans of the She-Wolf of France, carried out some of the finest work in the building, including the rood-screen, the episcopal throne, and the stone sedilia. Last of the great builders was Bishop Grandisson (1327-1369), who, in his long tenure of the see, completed and finally consecrated the cathedral, to which, however, some details were added by those who followed him. Bishop Brantyngham (1370-1394), for instance, finished the west front, the great east window, and the cloisters--destroyed by the Puritans and only recently rebuilt. There have been two main restorations of the cathedral; one in 1662, and one between 1870 and 1877, when the reredos and other features were added.