Chapter XXIV: Part 24

_John Saunders_, private in the 1st Regiment of Somerset Militia. “I was with the first party of soldiers that marched into the Market Square; at that time the gate was broken open the prisoners were coming through in a crowd. The alarm bell rang at the time we reached the west guard-house; the officer of the guard was with us, I believe. I believe it was he who ordered us into the square.... Capt. Shortland, after some discourse with the prisoners, ordered to charge--with some difficulty we got the prisoners back to the gates, some of them retiring through the gates.... The square was nearly clear of prisoners before the firing--they did not return into the square, but threw some stones through the rails. I heard the word ‘Fire!’ given, but do not know by whom. There were no prisoners in the Market Square when the first shots were fired. The prisoners had the command of the gates, so as to open them when they thought proper. I fired my musket. The prisoners closed the gates after them, which we opened, and we received orders from the commanding officer to charge the men to their prisons. No muskets were fired in compelling them to their prisons.[53] Just before the firing the prisoners were throwing stones, and insulting the soldiers. Saw no prisoners attempting to wrest the arms from the soldiers. Several shots were fired into No. 3--they were fired into the doorway. I heard no order given for this fire, and heard none to cease firing; there was much disturbance among the prisoners going in, and a stone was thrown out.”

_William Smith_, private in the 1st Somerset Militia. “I heard no order to fire. The firing was in an independent manner, one after another, till nearly all the guard had fired, and then they loaded again. No order was given to fire.”

_John Tutt_, private. “Can’t say exactly who ordered us to charge, but think it was Captain Shortland’s voice.... While charging, a stone knocked off my cap.... I heard the order for the firing in the square; it commenced while I was picking up my cap.”

_William Rowles_, private. “Captain Shortland gave the order to charge.... I heard an order to fire, but don’t know from whom.... I entered the prison yard, saw a soldier level his musket into prison No. 3. I heard no order to the soldier to fire into No. 3; saw no officer there at this time.”

_John Hamlet_, private. “I heard the order to charge by Capt. Shortland.... I was struck by a stone in advancing.... I heard an order to fire given before any firing took place, but don’t know by whom.”

_John Williams_, sergeant. “I heard no order to fire; our guard seeing the state the prisoners were in began firing of their own accord.”

_John Twyford Jolliff_, major commanding, handed in a written statement, dated 7 April, 1815: “Yesterday evening, between the hours of six and seven o’clock, soon after the officers’ dinner, the mess-waiter came into the mess-room and said that the American prisoners had broken out of the prison, and were attempting their escape. I immediately ordered the troops composing the garrison to fall in at the alarm post. Whilst the troops were forming, I heard several shots fired, upon which I immediately took the grenadiers and proceeded to the west guard.... Upon my arrival several of the troops were formed in the market-place, and had fired some shots. I immediately called out to them to cease firing, and finding that the prisoners still refused to go into their prison, I took a party of grenadiers and went into two of the prison yards, and told the soldiers [prisoners?] to go into their prisons, which they very reluctantly did. Several stones were thrown at the military.... The military fired a few shot at the prisoners in the yard, in consequence of their throwing stones and refusing to go into the prison, but the firing was without any orders, and I conceive took place owing to the military being so exasperated. As soon as the prisoners were all gone into their different prisons and properly secured, I returned to the barracks.” He added, “Several shots were fired in the prison yards, but entirely without any command.”

_George Pett_, sergeant, testified to the efforts made by Major Joliffe to put an end to the firing.

_Henry Burgoyne_, private, was on the platform when the alarm bell rang, but left it for the Market Square. “I heard an order to fire, but don’t know who gave it.”

_Edward Jackson_, private of the Derby Militia, was on the platform. “I think there had been two volleys in the Market Square before the men on the platform fired. No order was given to fire on my platform; to the best of my recollection I think I heard a command ‘to commence firing from the right.’ I saw no tumult in the yard before the firing.”

_Thomas Burgess Mott_, prisoner, gave unimportant evidence. “I did not hear the horn sound before the firing.”

Walter Cotton, prisoner and one of the Committee, did not hear the horn. Entirely repudiated any intention on the part of the prisoners to break out; he complained of acts of barbarity committed previously by Captain Shortland; but gave no evidence relative to the “massacre.”

_William Hobart_, one of the Prisoners’ Committee, had not heard the horn sound before the alarm bell rang. Hearing the bell, he went out to know the cause, but did not pass into the Market Square, though within a few yards of the gate; and finding there was danger returned to his ward. He also complained of acts of barbarity previously committed by the Governor.

_William B. Orne_, one of the Committee, gave no evidence of importance.

_Niel M’Kinnon_, prisoner. “I heard an order given to charge and fire, but don’t know by whom.” Seeing a man, Haywood, killed, he went to the gate to speak to Captain Shortland, and begged him to make the firing cease. He told Orne to go to his prison. “I went down to No. 4 yard; while going down the yard a volley was fired into it by the soldiers in the Market Square; there were many prisoners then in the yard.... Was going up the yard, when I met a party of military with an officer, driving along four or five prisoners. I went up to the officer, who I understood was Major Joliffe, and remonstrated with him on the harsh treatment the prisoners were receiving. He put his fist in my face, and swore ‘By God, they would not be trifled with any longer by us.’ I was driven with the rest into No. 4. I entered the prison with my face to the soldiers ... at that moment a musket was fired close to me, which wounded a little boy, who screamed and dropped down; he died next day.” He repudiated any intent of the prisoners to escape.

_John G. Gatchell_, prisoner. “I heard an order to fire, but don’t know by whom; the first volley one man fell. I went to him; he said he was wounded in the breast. I called assistance, and was trying to get him to the receiving-house, when Captain Shortland entered No. 7 gate with two soldiers, and said something which induced the two others to run away and leave the wounded man with me; upon which Captain Shortland, seeing I did not run, said, ‘Kill the d---- d rascal!’ The soldiers charged on me, and a bayonet pierced my clothes and skin, going in about a quarter of an inch. I was then forced to leave the wounded man and run, when a soldier followed me, and Capt. Shortland, urging him on, repeated several times, ‘Kill the d---- d rascal!’ While running on I was pricked three times, and would have been killed, but stepping aside the bayonet ran under my arm, and the soldier with the force of the thrust fell on his knees, by which means I escaped into the prison. While getting in No. 7 I saw Captain Shortland running down the yard towards No. 5 with the soldiers, and heard him order them to fire. He was facing me at the time; was running towards No. 5, and ordering them to fire as they ran, which they did. I did not see that the soldiers hesitated to fire when ordered; they did fire.... Two soldiers came into the gate abreast of Capt. Shortland, but many followed him, thirty or forty perhaps. After the soldiers were in the yard those on the ramparts did not fire.... While the prisoners were running to No. 7 they were cut off by a cross-fire from the ramparts.”

_Andrew Davis_, prisoner. “I went up to No. 1 gate; when I got there, five or six men were bringing a man, who appeared to be badly wounded, into the Market Square. I heard Capt. Shortland order them to let go the wounded man; one of them (this was John Hubbard) remonstrated against it, and Capt. Shortland struck him with his fist. The man then went outside of the gate into the passage, between the two gates, and said to Capt. Shortland, ‘You’ll recollect you have struck me twice; and I’ll have satisfaction for it?’ Captain Shortland told him to go into the prison, or he would order the men to fire on him.”

_John Odiorne_, prisoner, had given evidence before the coroner. He repeated now: “I heard an order to fire, which was from Capt. Shortland as near as I could judge of any man, who had his back to me; it was Captain Shortland’s voice; he was about 100 yards from me. I am as positive as I can be under such circumstances that the order came from him. Captain Shortland appeared to be in a great passion. When entering the square he looked very red, and spoke loud; am confident there was no disposition to break out.”

_Gerard Smith_, prisoner, gave no material evidence.

_Robert Johnson_, prisoner. “I know Gatchell; I was at the gate No. 7 when Captain Shortland spoke to him. I ran directly into the gate from No. 5; at the first firing a wounded man lay about five yards from the gate. Gatchell and two or three others came up to take him away to the receiving-house. When he got into the passage, between the railings, Captain Shortland came in with two or three soldiers, and told him to go back or he would kill them; the soldiers followed. In rushing in, Capt. Shortland stumbled over the wounded man; Gatchell did not go away immediately. Capt. Shortland ordered the soldiers to charge on him; one did charge on him, and another on me. I then made my escape into the prison. I am quite sure Captain Shortland ordered the soldiers to charge. I heard no abusive language from Capt. Shortland.”

_James N. Bushfield_, prisoner, testified mainly to the making the hole in the wall. “I do not suppose a man in the yard knew there was arms in the barrack yard.”

_William Clements_, prisoner. “I heard no order to fire.... I saw Capt. Shortland in the yard, but whether it was him or the other officer who first came in I don’t know.”

_John Hubbard_, prisoner. “I was carrying a wounded man to the hospital. Capt. Shortland came up to me ... he ordered me to drop the man. I told him I should not, for I wanted to take him to the hospital. He gave me a crack on the neck with his fist and ordered the soldiers to charge on us; I then went back and ran in. When I got in I called to Capt. Shortland and told him ‘You will recollect, Sir, you struck me, if you are brought to account for this.’”

_John Reeves_, prisoner. His evidence is not particularly trustworthy, as he admitted, “I was rather groggy that evening.... I heard Captain Shortland sing out ‘Fire!’ twice.... After we were inside No. 1 prison, being mad at being pricked (with a bayonet) I flung a stone myself out at the soldiers. The soldiers had fired into the prison before I did so.”

_William Mitchell_, prisoner, did not hear the horn or the alarm bell.

_David Spencer Warren_, prisoner, who had given evidence before the coroner, now added: “I was within seven or eight feet of Captain Shortland when I heard him give orders to fire. I was inside my own prison yard and Capt. Shortland was close to the gate; that was the first firing I heard; there had been none before. Soldiers had broken up their line when Captain Shortland led them into the prison yard. Captain Shortland was at the head of them, when I heard him tell the men to fire. They did not fire the first time he said ‘Fire!’; it was about a minute afterwards before they fired. He said ‘Fire!’ three times.” He repeated his story of Shortland taking hold of the musket.

_Richard Walker_, private of the Derby Militia. “I heard no order to fire; first one musket was fired; it was by a sentry posted at the bottom of the square, in consequence of the prisoners abusing him. I saw this. I saw them throw no stones before, but after it was fired they did. It might be two minutes before there was firing again. As soon as the prisoners threw stones there was more firing. Don’t recollect I heard any order to fire. Heard several call out ‘Fire!’ and supposed it might be the prisoners who were calling out.... Saw Capt. Shortland come down, break through the guard, and heard him order them to cease firing.”

_William Ward_, private in the Derby Militia. “I came up just after (the firing had begun). Capt. Shortland, after it had continued some time, came up and ordered the soldiers to cease firing. They immediately ceased.”

Some turnkeys were examined, but their evidence was immaterial, as they were employed elsewhere or in taking the wounded to the hospital, except _James Carley_, who was with the bread-wagon; but he could say no more than that he saw Shortland come down “with his hands in his breeches’ pockets”; and _William Wakelin_, who deposed to Shortland pushing one of the prisoners (James Reeves).

_John Bennett_, store clerk. “I heard Captain Shortland tell the prisoners in the market-place to go back to their different prisons, and say how sorry he should be to use force.... Some minutes after a musket went off, and soon after many others. I was then so near Capt. Shortland that I am sure I should have heard it had he given the orders to fire; but I did not, nor did I hear an order from anybody. I did not see the charge.”

_John Collard_, sergeant of the 1st Somerset Militia, heard Shortland give the order to charge. “An order was then given to fire on them (the prisoners); I heard the word given to fire by some one; I think the word given was in my rear.... The prisoners were crying out ‘Fire!’ I could not then see Captain Shortland. I did not look out for him. I had something else to think of when the order to fire was given. Two or three men fired; immediately they obeyed the order; one musket was discharged first, and one or two very soon after.... I think the soldiers fired over their heads; then some prisoner or prisoners said, ‘You---- why don’t you fire? You have nothing but blank cartridges.’ Afterwards the firing became general, and the prisoners were driven into the yard. I heard no word of command for the second firing; the firing was not in a volley, but in small numbers at a time.... I know nothing of what happened afterwards in the prison yard.”

_Stephen Lapthorn_, private in the 1st Somersetshire Militia. “I heard an order given to fire, but don’t know who gave it. I can’t say whose voice it was; am not sure whether it was from the prisoners or the military.... I heard Major Joliffe give orders to cease firing.”

_John Soathern_, private in the Derby Militia. “We went close to the railings; my bayonet pricked them; when we got there, the prisoners began throwing stones; one stone struck me. Just then the firing commenced. After some time Capt. Shortland came in front and said, holding his hands up, ‘For God’s sake, men, cease firing.’ Captain Shortland was not near me when it commenced. The order to fire was given on the left, and it passed through the ranks one after another.”

_Lieutenant Avelyne_, of 1st Somerset Militia. “When I came into the Market Square with Captain Shortland the prisoners had burst No. 1 gate and were rushing through in a crowd.... Capt. Shortland went forward to speak to them.... The soldiers did not charge by my order, nor did I hear Capt. Shortland order it. I considered myself under Capt. Shortland’s orders.... I heard the first musket fired. I could not see where it was fired from.... There was at first a single shot, and almost instantly after several others were fired. I heard no distinct order to fire.... I did not go into the prison yard.”

_Lieutenant Fortye_, of 1st Somerset Militia. “My guard took up the firing from others without any orders.”

_Cornelius Rowe_, prisoner. “I saw the military come down the square and heard Capt. Shortland order them to charge.”

_Thomas Tindale_, prisoner. “I heard Captain Shortland give orders to fire ... he gave orders twice to fire. I was not ten steps from him when I heard him. I heard every word he said; I saw him plainly; the firing commenced by one musket first, then two, and afterwards a whole volley. The firing began when Captain Shortland gave the word the second time. I heard him tell the soldiers to fire low. He was then standing inside the muzzles of the foremost muskets. When I heard the order to fire I was about the middle of gate No. 4; the soldiers charged up to the railings and then fell back four or five paces, when Capt. Shortland gave the order to fire.”

The evidence of Captain Shortland has been already given. He denied the truth of Gatchell’s statements that he had run down the yard; and as to that of Hubbard, he would only admit that he had pushed, not struck him.

In reviewing the depositions it appears evident that the American witnesses were hostile to the Governor, and that their bitterness of feeling coloured their testimony. There is evidence that Captain Shortland entered the inner yard, though he denied it; but that Major Joliffe was there is certain, and it cannot be admitted that he acted with the promptitude that he should have displayed. It is certain that by this time the soldiers had got out of control, and it was no doubt difficult to restrain them.

Captain Shortland was not really a brutal Governor, and the barbarities of which he was accused were not barbarities at all, but the exercise of very necessary discipline. But he was lacking in capacity for such a responsible post, at such a time.

So the British Government must have considered him, for he was promoted to be Superintendent of Port Royal Dockyard in Jamaica, where he died of yellow fever in 1825.

The most thoroughly reliable authority for the “massacre” is the “Message from the President of the United States, transmitting a Report of the Secretary of State, prepared in obedience to a Resolution of the House of Representatives of the 4th inst., in relation to the Transactions at Dartmoor Prison, in the month of April last, so far as the American Prisoners of war, there confined, were affected by such Transactions,” January 31, 1816, “Read and ordered to lie upon the table,” Washington, 1816. Next come “The Prisoners’ Memoirs, or Dartmoor Prison; containing a Complete and Impartial History of the entire captivity of the Americans in England, from the commencement of the late War between the United States and Great Britain, until all Prisoners were released by the treaty of Ghent. Also a particular detail of all the occurrences relative to that Horrid Massacre at Dartmoor, on the fatal evening of the 6th April, 1815. The whole carefully compiled from the Journal of Charles Andrews, a Prisoner in England from the commencement of the War, until the release of all the Prisoners.” New York, 1815.

According to him 269 American prisoners died on Dartmoor between April, 1813, and 20 April, 1815, and twenty-one succeeded in making their escape.

Waterhouse (Henry), _Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, confined at Dartmoor Prison_. Boston, 1816.

He arrived at the Dartmoor Prison but a short while before the outbreak. His account confirms that of Andrews. He gives the Remonstrance of the prisoners on the hasty and hardly impartial manner in which the Commissioners investigated the circumstances.

_The Dartmoor Massacre_, by I. H. W. (Isaac H. Williamson, of New Jersey), 1815. This is, however, a mere rhymed account, based on the narrative in the Boston papers and the _New York Commercial Advertiser_ of 6 June, 1815. “Being the Authentic and Particular Account of the tragic Massacre at Dartmoor Prison in England, on the 6th April last (1815), in which sixty-seven American sailors, prisoners there, fell the victims to the jailor’s revenge, for obtaining their due allowance of bread which had been withheld from them by the jailor’s orders.”

Melish (John), _Description of Dartmoor Prison_. Philadelphia, 1815.

He confirms the account of Andrews, and insists that the examination was not properly and honestly carried out; and he asserts positively that Capt. Shortland gave the order to fire.

Justin Winsor, in his _Narrative and Critical History of America_, has treated of the matter in a temperate spirit.

I subjoin the names of those killed and those wounded.

/Killed/: _John Haywood_, _Thomas Jackson_, _John Washington_, _James Mann_, _Joseph Toker Johnson_, _William Leverage_, and _James Campbell_.

/Wounded/: _Thomas Smith_, needed amputation of the thigh. _Philip Ford_, severely wounded in the back. _John Gray_, arm had to be amputated. _Robert Willet Tawney_, required to have the thigh amputated. _James Bell_, bayonet wound in the thigh. _Thomas Truely_, gun-shot wound in thigh and other serious injury. _Joseph Beyeck_, gun-shot wound in the thigh, through which the ball passed. _John Willet_, fractured hip and shattered upper jaw. _James Esdell_, gun-shot wound in the hip. _Henry Montcalm_, gun-shot wound in the knee. _Frederick Howard_, gun-shot wound in the leg. _William Penn_, gun-shot wound in the thigh. _Robert Fittey_, gun-shot wound in the penis. _Cornelius Garrison_, gun-shot wound in the thigh. _Edward Whittlebanks_, bayonet wound in the back, producing paralysis in the lower extremities. _James Turnbull_, amputated arm. _Stephen Phipps_, bayonet wounds in abdomen and thigh. _James Wells_, gun-shot fracture of sacrum and gun-shot fracture of both bones of the left arm. _Caleb Codding_, gun-shot wound of the leg. _Edward Gardner_, gun-shot fracture of left arm. _Jacob Davis_, gun-shot wound of the thigh. _John Hagabets_, gun-shot wound of the hip. _Peter Wilson_, gun-shot fracture of the hand. _John Perry_, gun-shot wound of the shoulder. _John Peach_, gun-shot wound of the thigh. _John Roberts_, gun-shot wound of the thigh. _John Gair_, amputated thigh. _Ephraim Lincoln_, gun-shot wound of the knee. _John Wilson_, bayonet wound. _William Blake_, bayonet wound.

The rest were not seriously wounded.

CAPTAIN JOHN PALK

In the forties and fifties no man was better known as a character in Tavistock and on the Moor than Captain Palk, or, as he was usually designated, Quaker Palk. He was a sturdy, thick-set man with a shrewd face, sharp keen eyes, and hair short cut and turning grey.

He began life as a miner on his own account at Birch Tor and Vitifer, between the Warren Inn and Moreton Hampstead. To any man travelling over Dartmoor along the main road to the latter town, crossing that portion of the Moor where rise the headwaters of the West Webburn, the aspect of the valley and hillsides must appear strange, welted as they are with old streamworks and mine-heaps. Just beyond the inn are the remains of the King’s Oven; this was the ancient _Furnum Regis_, the tin-smelting place, which tin was the royal due. Here there is a large pound, in one portion of the arc of which are the remains of a circle of upright stones, enclosing a cairn and the relics of a kistvaen; a beautiful flint scraper has been found wedged between the stones of the kistvaen. The oven itself has been destroyed, and the stones carried off for the construction of the buildings of Bush Down Mine, which are hard by, but are now in ruins. On the highest bit of the down is a rude ancient cross called Bennett’s Cross, with W.B. on the face, carved in modern letters, to indicate that it forms one of the boundaries of Headland Warren. It is also a boundary mark of the parish of North Bovey, and of the ground over which the rights belonging to Vitifer Mine extended. The mine works are of many ages, some very ancient, overgrown with heather and gorse bushes; others are more recent and show raw and white against the turf and heather. Above the sources of the Webburn rises Birch Tor, crowned by a grey cairn, its flanks dense with whortle bushes, that supply richer and larger purple berries than almost any Moor slope. Birch Tor is connected with Challacombe Common, a swelling hill to the south, by a neck of land that has been cut through by miners, thereby destroying the first portion of a remarkable series of stone rows leading to a menhîr. The cuttings of the searchers after tin to the west are deep, and here nest ravens to this day. The slender stream that trickles down the depression feeds the Webburn. From the neck of land can be discerned to the east the remarkable enclosure of Grimspound, pertaining to the Early Bronze period.

As already said, John Palk worked as a miner “on his own hook” at Birch Tor, and found a good deal of tin. Finding that he needed capital he induced the Davys of Cornwall, who were his kinsmen, to enter into partnership with him. Richard Davy was subsequently M.P. for Cornwall. The Davys became then possessors of the mines of Vitifer and Birch Tor. Call after call was made on them for money to develop the mines, and the returns were insignificant. They became impatient, and considered the venture unprofitable. On one occasion, when their patience was exhausted, Palk visited them, and showed as usual an unsatisfactory balance sheet, and made a demand for more money.

Richard Davy was angry, and exclaimed, “Hang it, Palk, I wish you would take the confounded business off our hands, and make what you can of it,” and they offered it to him for a ridiculously small sum.

Quaker Palk hummed and hah’d, said, “Friend, I am a poor man, and cannot raise so much, but by the blessing of the Lord I would like to try to earn a bit of bread from it to put into my mouth. Will thee not bate the price to the level of my means?”

Eventually he bought the whole rights over Vitifer and Birch Tor. This was precisely what he had been aiming at. He knew that there was plenty of tin there, but he had hitherto avoided following out the “keenly” lodes, and exploited only the poor veins.

No sooner was the right his own than the complexion of the mine altered, and he is computed to have made from £60,000 to £80,000 out of it, and he retained Vitifer and Birch Tor mines to his death. He also secured rights in Drake Walls, and he had a smelting house there and also in Crown Dale, below Tavistock on the Tavy.

Being flush of money, he erected Palk’s Buildings in Tavistock as well as several other houses, and he bought Baggator farm in Petertavy, and Narrator in Sheepstor parish.

Quaker Palk was a sturdy teetotaller, and a lecturer on the subject, but when he came out to Vitifer, he would call in at the Warren Inn, then kept by a man named Warne, himself an interesting character, and mix himself a stiff glass of grog. On one occasion he had taken out with him Mr. John Pearce of Tavistock, and they entered the tavern. Pearce noticed that Captain Palk, in helping himself to brandy, put his hand round the glass, to hide the quantity he poured in, but when the brown liquid rose above his palm, Mr. Pearce stared and uttered an exclamation.

“Ah, John Pearce,” said Palk, “I tell thee that the Warren Inn is the highest public-house in all England, and one must live up to one’s elevation.”

On his return to Tavistock he would as likely as not appear on a platform and harangue on total abstinence.

The story is told, I believe, of Captain Palk, that on his marriage he opened a drawer, drew out a pair of breeches, flung them to his wife with, “Molly, put them breeches on.”

“Why, John, be thou mazed?”

“I tell thee, thou hast sworn to obey. Put them on this moment.”

After some further remonstrance and hesitation, the wife complied.

“How dost thou think they fit thee, Molly?”

“Why, John, not at all.”

“Then, Molly, never thee try to wear ’em, as long as we are together. The breeches pertain to me, and to me only.”

In driving to Vitifer one winter’s day, the snow came on, and on mounting Merripit Hill he and his horse were exhausted, and could no longer face the snow-laden blast, and he drew aside into a sand-pit that opened on to the road. The snow accumulated, a drift was formed, and they would have been buried, had not some miners passing come to the rescue and extricated him and his trap and horse.

He had some stout Moor men working under him. Joe Hamlyn had mined at Birch Tor for seventy-five years in 1864. Jacob German had been on the same works for sixty years, and had left them only once, and that for a single month to do navvy’s work on the line to Moreton from Newton Abbot.

Palk liked a hare, when he could get one, and Jacob could generally provide him with one.

“Oh, Jacob,” Palk would say, “I hope thou hast not been poaching.”

“Poaching!” Jacob would exclaim; “Lord, sir, if a hare runs across the road, I may knock un on the head, I reckon, and no one say nort.”

“I should like to know just where it was--as a study in nat’ral history.”

“Well, if you must know, Cap’n, it were in Buckland-on-the-Moor, Squire Bastard’s woods.”

“I dare say, friend, it will be all the fatter and better eating.”

In these Buckland Woods larch grew finer than almost anywhere else in England, and the timber was obtained thence for Vitifer and Birch Tor mines. Some forty years ago, as much as a hundred and twenty feet of timber was got out of a single tree.

“Well,” said Palk, “I’ve had Squire Bastard’s larch wood and obliged him. The trees grew too thick. Hares there too thick. It’s a favour to him to thin them out for me. One hand washes the other.”

Palk was an assiduous attendant at the Quakers’ Annual Meetings, both in Devon and in Cornwall. That of Cornwall was held at S. Austell, and it fell at the time when the hay was cut, and that was frequently wet, so that a rhyme was commonly repeated to caution the farmers:--

Now varmer, now varmer,
Take care ov your hye.
For ’tes the Quakkers’ gurt meetin’ to-dye.

At one of these gatherings, when the monthly advices to the members were being read out, and there was one specially enjoining forbearance from “vain sports,” up rose a lately-joined member, and with an anxious voice inquired what these vain sports embraced. “Now,” said he, “Do’ee reckon that kissing the mydens (maidens) in the hye (hay) be a vain sport?--vor my part I can’t see it.”

There was unquestionably a vast amount of roguery in the mining business in Devon and Cornwall. Salting a mine, so as to induce capitalists to embark their money in one, was by no means an uncommon practice. But occasionally a specialist was too sharp to be taken in. “Ah!” said one, handling the ore that professed to have been raised in a new mine on Dartmoor, “Carnbrea tin. How the dickens did that find its way up here?”

Originally the tin was worked by a small company of adventurers with very simple machinery, and the adventurers shared the profits among themselves. The tin lodes on Dartmoor are thin, and in my opinion and in that of those who know best, will never pay for expensive working with costly plant. But little men, working for themselves, have made mining pay there. The abandoned engine-houses, huge wheels, and stamping pans show where large ventures have everywhere proved to be failures.

Chaw Gully, that runs up between Birch Tor and Challacombe Down, is one of the most interesting examples of “old men’s workings” that there are upon Dartmoor. It extends about half a mile. In places it is some forty feet deep, and two or three hundred feet wide. In the bottom are several circular shafts, lined with stones dry-laid, which communicate with a dip formerly used for drainage purposes. There are no “jumper” marks on the rocks in Chaw Gully. In following the shallow lode of tin the old adventurers must have torn out the rock with wedges. Sometimes fire was applied to the rock and then water was dashed on it to crack it; as softened by the heat it was more easily worked. Another system of splitting the granite was to cut a groove on the surface of the rock, fill that with quicklime, and then throw on water. The swelling of the lime rent the rock.

The old works in Chaw Gully were taken in hand by Captain Palk, who deepened and successfully worked a shaft there. A good deal of money was made, but “the eyes of the mine were picked out,” and it is now, like nearly all the Dartmoor mines, a “knacked bal,” a picture of desolation, and the ravens now build in the chasm, on a ledge of the rock.[54]

Palk was intimate with Jonas Coaker, the “Poet of the Moor,” as he styled himself. His poetry was, however, only rhyme, and that often bad.

“What’s the difference between poetry and blank verse?” asked one miner of another.

“Why, the difference be this,” was the reply. “Ef you say,

He went up to the mill-dam
And falled down slam,

that, I reckon, be poetry. But ef you say instead,

He went up to the mill-dam
And falled down wop,

that’s blank verse. Knaw now, do ’ee?”

This was Jonas Coaker’s conception of poetry. He was born at Hartland, Post Bridge, on 23 February, 1801, as he sang:--

I drew my breath first on this moor;
There my forefathers dwell’d.
Its hills and dales I’ve traversed o’er,
Its desert parts beheld.

As a young man he worked on the Moor building new-take walls, and he esteemed himself almost as highly in this capacity as in knocking out verse. Later he became taverner of the Warren Inn, that at that time stood on the opposite side of the road to its present position. The miners frequented it, and they were rough customers, drinking hard, fighting and dancing. On one occasion they broke out into mutiny against Jonas, because he would serve out no more drink; they drove him from the house, and he was compelled to “hidey-peep,” as he termed it, on the Moor, whilst they emptied his barrels. On another occasion two miners fought in the tavern, with a fatal result for one of them, but the survivor was let off with three weeks’ imprisonment, mainly on Jonas’s evidence, for he was able to establish gross provocation.

In an evil hour for himself, Jonas pulled down the old inn and built, at his own cost, the new Warren Inn on the opposite side of the road. Now it happened that the old inn had been on common land of the parish of North Bovey, but where he had built the new inn was on Duchy property. Down on him came the agent for the Duchy, but not till the house was complete, and the last slate nailed on, and said to him, “Now you are on Duchy land you shall pay rent for the inn you have built on _our_ land, without our gracious permission.”

Towards the end of his life Jonas became very infirm and blind; his memory began to fail, and he accounted for this by saying that as he had always possessed a genius for poetry, he supposed he had overwhelmed his brain with too much study. He died on 12 February, 1890, and is buried at Widdecombe. I say no more of him here, as I gave his life and stories about him in my _Dartmoor Idylls_, 1896. There is as well a memoir with his portrait in Mr. Burnard’s _Pictorial Records_, already quoted.

After having made such success with his mines about the Upper Webburn, Quaker Palk became reckless in his speculations, and was soon heavily involved. He was kept on his feet by Mr. Bailey, of Plymouth, and Joe Matthews, who bought Palk’s holding of Birch Tor Mine. He died suddenly 9 February, 1853, aged fifty-nine years.

I think, but cannot be sure, that it was of John Palk that the story was told of two old folks, returning from the funeral, when one said to the other, “Sure and he was a very charitable man.”

“I reckon he were,” replied the other. “He always had three eggs boiled to his breakfast, and gave away the broth.”

His wife survived him thirty-one years, and died in Plymouth 24 May, 1884, aged eighty-five years.

RICHARD WEEKES, GENTLEMAN AT ARMS AND PRISONER IN THE FLEET

In the parish of South Tawton, about three miles from the village and church, and midway on the west road to North Tawton, stands the ancient and interesting mansion of North Wyke.[55] A house so named was there as early as 1243,[56] but experts are at variance as to the age of the several parts of the existing structure. It formed an inner court, two sides of which were stables and offices, and a front court enclosed within high walls, and with gate-house, porter’s lodgings, and domestic chapel. Though the house itself lies in a somewhat sheltered situation, the drive down from the lodge commands a lovely prospect; and from the top of North Wyke Quarry a panorama of three-quarters of a circle extends over miles of undulating country, from the blue sky-line of Exmoor to the three conspicuous heights of the north-east angle of Dartmoor--Yes Tor, Belstone, and Cosdon--the last crowned with a cairn from which beacon fires have flared out many a warning message to arm against a foe, both before and since the coming of the Armada. From Belstone Cleave bursts forth the river Taw that borders the North Wyke lands for fully a mile and a half of its course. After rushing in foaming stickles from under Peckettsford _alias_ Packsaddle Bridge, but before reaching Newlands Weir, the river is joined by a meeker stream that bounds North Wyke on another side. There is said to have been much fine timber on the land before the alienation of the estate, the story of which may now be related.

In the history of the ancient family of Weekes, of North Wyke, and its cadet house of Honeychurch and Broadwood Kelly, Richard Weekes, of Hatherleigh, of the latter branch, comes upon the scene at North Wyke in the character of the villain of the piece!--a crafty interloper, who ousts those of the rightful line from their inheritance. He makes a gallant appearance and brings with him some of the glamour of the Restoration Court, for he was a member of “the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms,” or, as they were then called, “Gentlemen Pensioners” of Charles II--a band of “fifty gentlemen of blood and fortune” who formed the King’s nearest guard.

Richard was not, indeed, possessed of any estate; but he was related to the Grenvilles, Stukeleys, and other influential families. He probably learned the trade of arms under his father, Francis Weekes, of Broadwood Kelly, who in 1635 commanded the 2nd Regiment of trained soldiers of the North Division of county Devon.

Possibly his uncle, Dr. John Weekes, Dean of Burian, chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham, or Dr. Jasper Mayne, the Court playwright (a native of Hatherleigh), may have had a hand in his promotion.

The Merry Monarch was, however, a bad paymaster; and Richard focussed a covetous gaze on the North Wyke property. The owner was a sickly youth, ill qualified to cope with the entanglements of debts and mortgages with which his father and grandfather, in their devotion to the Royalist cause, had encumbered the estate. His mother and sister, both strong-willed women, wielded masterfully the reed they could not lean upon. Richard ingratiated himself with them, and making much of his alleged “near relationship,” which they afterwards repudiated, and which does not appear to have been established, seems to have persuaded them that their own interests, and the desire of the childless young John, that North Wyke should continue in the name of Weekes, could best be served by inducing the said John to constitute _him_, Richard Weekes, his heir, on condition of giving the mother an annuity of £100, and the sister a marriage portion of £2000, besides paying young John’s debts, amounting to £5000, and his funeral expenses.

Now the rightful heir was young John’s uncle, John Weekes of Blackhall, but he had mortally offended Mistress Weekes immediately on her widowhood, by contesting with her both the care of her children and the custody of the family deed-box.

This latter he had violently raided, though he is said to have soon returned it undespoiled, and without having mastered its contents, he being “a man of very slender understanding in matters of the law.” But “his specious pretence to do his nephew good and undertake his tuition,” had been vehemently rejected by the mother, to whom it may have occurred that if little John and his sister were to be confided to their grasping uncle’s control, such another tragedy as that of the _Babes in the Wood_ might stain the annals of Dartmoor!

Mistress Weekes who, as Mary Southcote, had married before the settlements were executed, had received no jointure. She could expect no generosity from uncle John, and was naturally anxious about her future.

She accordingly _preferred_--in both senses--Richard’s claim, and--apparently by mutual understanding--the deed by which young John’s grandfather had entailed the estate on the heirs male was suppressed.

In the summer of 1661, young John being evidently in a rapid decline, was persuaded to ride to Plymouth to be treated by Dr. Anthony Salter, and his son-in-law Dr. William Durston, Richard’s cousin. When young John was in Salter’s house, another cousin of Richard’s, a barrister, was introduced, and by his advice--and it is more than insinuated under undue pressure--on 29 August John signed a conveyance of his estates on the prearranged lines, to Salter and Durston as trustees on behalf of Richard Weekes of Hatherleigh and his heirs for ever. But John had sufficient wit to insist upon endorsing the settlement with a clause giving him power of revocation.

Shortly after the execution of this deed, at his urgent request, John was carried home to North Wyke on a horse-litter, accompanied by Richard of Hatherleigh, Dr. Durston, and others, and three days later, i.e. on or about 1 September, he departed this life. By that time, the attitude of Katherine Weekes, the sister of John, had undergone a complete _volte-face_. This defection may safely be attributed to the treacherous influence of Dr. Salter, who, having seen North Wyke, evidently thought that it might as well come into his family as go to Richard Weekes; for at this period he began to make strenuous efforts to bring about a marriage between Katherine and his son, and she, it is said, “did entertain his son to be a suitor.” The plan was now to secure the whole estate to herself. She accordingly declared that young John had always promised that _she_ should be his heir, and that on his death-bed he had repented of his conveyance to Richard, and had by word of mouth, in the presence of several witnesses, revoked it.

Scarcely was the breath out of the body of young John, says one deponent, before she drew from beneath his pillow a “portmantea” containing the said writing, and concealed it with intention to burn it; but Richard came upstairs into the room where she was with this deponent and others, and took it from where it was hidden, “and _did keep_ the same.” Thus was war openly declared between Richard Weekes on the one side, and his quondam confederate Salter and Katherine on the other.

The funeral did not take place till three weeks after the decease, a fact somewhat remarkable, but not extraordinary.[57] To do Richard justice, he had the funeral conducted with all the pomp befitting the old position of the family, and “was at about £400 or £500 charges over it.”

On “the day after the day of the funeral,” i.e. on Sunday, 22 September, Richard proceeded in a very practical manner to take possession. A company of fifteen or sixteen persons, mostly relations of the deceased, had been invited by him to sup in the hall, and scarcely was the meal over when Richard, proclaiming that he was “now to do the Divell’s work and his own,” rose, and drawing his sword, commanded all to quit the house, saying that, as God was his judge, if they did not presently depart he would run them through. Several resisted, including Mr. Richard Parker, of Zeal Monachorum, Katherine’s trustee, whose brother, Edmund Parker, of Boringdon (ancestor of Lord Morley) she eventually married. Katherine, her mother, and the other ladies endeavoured to return to their chambers, but Richard Weekes, with bared sword, stood in the doorway of the parlour, from which room the stairs ascended to that part of the house in which the deeds were kept, and swore that he would suffer no one to go up the said stairs. On Katherine’s making a second attempt to do so, he “threw her violently on the ground upon her head.” Mr. Parker, seeing this done in the presence of a justice of the peace, Alexander Wood, of North Tawton, rightly apprehended that he was a partisan of Richard, and determined to ride off in quest of a more impartial justice.

Stepping out of the house in his “_pantables_” (pantoufles, slippers) to get his horse in readiness, and returning to the hall door for his boots, Parker was refused admittance, “and his boots denied to be delivered to him, although he desired they might be delivered to him out of the window, so that he was forced, having been indisposed that day, and by that means in his pantables, to take his servant’s boots, which he caused to be pluckt off on purpose.”

Richard then turned the guests out into the dark, many of whom, “though gentlewomen of quality,” were forced to sleep “at mean houses, and some to lie in hay-lofts.” But Katherine, her mother, and grandmother were allowed to sit up all night in the hall. At about midnight, to their dismay, Katherine and her companions heard Richard Weekes and his myrmidons go up the stairs and smash open, “with hatchet and iron bar,” the locked doors of her own chamber and of the muniment-room.

Among the “writings” that Richard thus got hold of was the deed of entail, which was her last weapon against him, albeit a double-edged one that might be turned against herself, since by virtue of that deed the estates should revert to the inimical uncle John.

In the morning Richard finally ejected the ladies, and barred the house doors against them.

The story of the legal proceedings that ensued is too long and too complicated for these pages, but may be summed up in the moral that “possession is nine points of the law.” Katherine and her mother obtained a judgment against Richard for detention of their personal effects, etc., for £900, plus costs, which sum he never paid. He perhaps counted on immunity from imprisonment by reason of his position in the King’s service. From a “State paper” it appears that the Earl of Cleveland, Captain of the Gentlemen Pensioners, was applied to for leave to arrest Richard, at the suit of his creditors, and refused permission; notwithstanding which Richard was arrested and committed to the Fleet Prison for debtors. From the moment of his incarceration all resentment of Richard’s iniquities may well be quenched in compassion, so grievous were the sufferings and degradations undergone by the inmates of those noisome and infectious precincts.

The old Fleet Prison was destroyed by the Great Fire of London on 4 September, 1666; and Richard was probably among the prisoners who were temporarily accommodated in Caron House, South Lambeth, and conveyed back to the Fleet on its re-erection, 21 January, 1668. But--though it may seem somewhat audacious to controvert on this point the deposition of his own son--he did not die therein. A “Coram Rege Roll” of the King’s Bench, dated 22-23 Charles II, bears record that Richard Weekes, of North Weeke, in county Devon, was then in custody for debt to one William Jolly, to whom he had given a bond for £40. Now the prison pertaining to the King’s Bench at that time became the Marshalsea Prison in 1811. It adjoins the burial-ground of St. George’s in the Borough; and in the registers of that church, under Burials, 5 February, 1670-1, is “Richard Week’s, /K.B./” His relations declare that he “died not worth a groat,” and that a “gathering” (i.e. a collection) was made to defray the expenses of his funeral.

The demands of poetic justice are met by the fact that Richard Weekes, though virtually possessor of North Wyke, never reaped a penny from it. All that it brought in was consumed by the lawyers and his creditors; and Chancery suits between the several claimants to the estate were waged over it down to the eighteenth century.

The rightful line of Weekes proprietors had ended in John, the wrongful line ended in another John, Richard’s grandson, who is accused of having practised the “black arts,” and who, after a roving life, was buried at Lezant in Cornwall. The little boys of the neighbourhood, ever since his time, have found his tombstone a convenient surface for the game of marbles; but there is a crack in it through which one of these treasures occasionally disappears, so that the cry has become traditional, “There goes another down to old Weekes!” This John sold North Wyke, in consideration of an annuity, to George Hunt of North Bovey, who had married his sister Elizabeth, and Hunt’s grandsons divided the property and house into two, and sold the eastern moiety to one Tickell, of Sampford Courtenay, and the western, in 1786, to one Andrew Arnold, yeoman. Thus North Wyke was completely alienated from the race that had built and, for many centuries, had owned it. It has, however, returned by purchase to one of the old blood (on the distaff side), the Rev. William Wykes-Finch, who, by his extensive restorations and additions, is giving the time-worn place a fresh start in local history.

/Ethel Lega-Weekes./

STEER NOR’-WEST

I have seen a water-colour drawing made by a great-aunt of mine, Miss Marianne Snow, of Belmont, near Exeter, of Torquay before it was “invented” and turned into a fashionable winter residence and watering-place. It was a quiet fishing-village, consisting of a few cottages, under richly wooded hills.

In one of these cottages, at the close of the eighteenth century, at the time when this water-colour was made, lived a sailor named Robert Bruce.

Bruce is not a Devonshire name, and we may shrewdly suspect that he was a Browse, and that his shipmates called him by the better-known Scottish name, which sounds almost identical with Browse. The Browses formed a considerable clan about Torquay and Teignmouth. But whether of Scotch origin or not, he was a native of Torquay. When he reached the age of thirty he became first mate of a ship sailing between Liverpool and St. John, New Brunswick. On one of these periodical voyages westwards, after having been at sea six weeks, and being near the Banks of Newfoundland, the captain and mate, after having taken an observation, went below into the cabin to calculate their day’s work.

The mate, Robert Bruce, absorbed in his reckonings, which did not answer his expectations, had not noticed that the captain had risen and left the cabin as soon as he had completed his calculations. Without raising his head, he called out, “I say, cap’n, I make the latitude and the longitude to be so-and-so. Not what it ought to be. What is your reckoning?”