Part 16

Sir Richard, on his side, complained, “That they had lived quietly together for the space of two years, and till they came to this Court.... That she hath often carried herself unseemly both in wordes and deedes, and sunge unseemly songs to his face to provoke him, and bid him goe to such a woman and such a woman, and called him a poore rogue and pretty fellow, and said he was not worth ten groates when she married him; that she would make him creepe to her, and that she had good friends in London would beare her out of it. That she swore the peace against him without cause, and then asked him, ‘Art thou not a pretty fellow to be bound to the good behaviour?’ Then she said he was an ugly fellow, and when he was once gone from home, she said, ‘The Devill and sixpence goe with him, and soe shall he lacke neither money nor company!’ That she said such a one was a honester man than her husband, and loved Cuttofer (George Cutteford, her steward) better than him. That there were holes made in the kitchen wall by the lady or her daughter (i.e. Mary Howard), that he gave direction that they should be stopped up, that she might not harken to what the servants said in the kitchen, that she had ten roomes at pleasure, and had whatsoever in the house she would desire. That she locked him into his closett and tooke away the key, and it is true he endeavoured to take away the key from her, and hurt his thumb and rent her pocket.”

Sir Richard certainly comes out best in the case. She was a woman of insuperable pride, and with a violent temper and abusive, insulting tongue. Having fled from Fitzford, and taken refuge with the family of the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Richard for a while breathed free, and rejoiced at her absence, till the tenants refused to pay rent into his hands, whereupon he found himself without money; her pre-nuptial settlement was put in force, and the trustees required the tenants to pay their rents to them. To return to Clarendon. “This begat a suit in Chancery between Sir Richard Grenville and the Earl of Suffolk, before the Lord Coventry, who found the conveyance in Law to be so firm, that he could not only not relieve Sir Richard Grenville in equity, but that in justice he must decree the land to the Earl, which he did. This very sensible mortification transported him so much, that being a man who used to speak bitterly of those he did not love, after all endeavours to engage the Earl in a personal conflict, he revenged himself upon him in such opprobrious language as the Government and justice of that time would not permit to pass unpunished; and the Earl appealed for reparation to the Court of the Star Chamber, where Sir Richard was decreed to pay three thousand pounds to the King, who gave the fine likewise to the Earl; so that Sir Richard was committed to the prison of the Fleet in execution for the whole six thousand pounds, which at that time was thought by all men to be a very severe and rigorous decree, and drew a general compassion towards the unhappy gentleman.

“For some years Sir Richard endured this imprisonment, which made him the more bitter against his wife; he at length escaped his captivity, and fled beyond seas. There he remained till the great change in England having caused many decrees of the Star Chamber to be repealed, and the persons awarded to pay penalties absolved, he came home and petitioned to be heard in mitigation of his case. Before this came on, the rebellion broke out in Ireland.” The proceedings for a divorce were taken by Lady Grenville against her husband whilst he was a prisoner in the Fleet, no doubt acting on the advice of the Earl of Suffolk, elder brother of her late husband; and it was whilst she was in London at his house that her second daughter, Elizabeth, was born. The court after hearing arguments from counsel, decreed divorce _a mensa et thoro_, but that one-half of her means should be paid to Sir Richard annually. In August of the same year (1632), a commission was sent to Fitzford to search the house, as Sir Richard was suspected of clipping the current coin and of coining as well. Sir F. Drake and William Strode visited the house, but notice of their coming had in some way been given. They thoroughly searched “tronkes, chests and cabinetts,” and closely examined Mrs. Abbott, Sir Richard’s aunt “who had the rule of the house.” Pincers, holdfasts, files “smoothe and ruffe,” one of which had been employed for yellow metal, were found, and the servants admitted that they had melted silver lace, etc. All this, though suspicious, was not conclusive, and the charge was not pressed. On 17 October, 1633, Sir Richard escaped from the Fleet and entered the Swedish service in Germany. Nothing is heard of him again till 1639. During these seven years his emancipated wife lived in various places, for the first four or five years with the Earl of Suffolk, and afterwards at her own house in London. She had thrown off her name of Grenville and resumed that of Howard.

Theophilus, Earl of Suffolk, was born in 1584, and was married to Lady Elizabeth Hume, who died in 1533, the year after the divorce. To this period probably belongs an episode that is shrouded in mystery. Lady Howard had a son, George Howard, when born is not recorded.

He is first mentioned in 1644 in a petition made by his mother to the King, and then and afterwards is alluded to as Lady Howard’s son. He certainly was not the son of Sir Charles Howard, for seven years after that gentleman’s death, in 1628, it is stated, in his wife’s pleading before the Court of Chancery, that Sir Charles died “without heires male, leaving only twoe daughters, Elizabeth and Mary.” It is a curious fact that none of the contemporary writers who mention Lady Howard make any aspersions on her morals. That George passed in Tavistock as the son of Sir Charles is certain, but it is just as certain that he was not this. We cannot but suspect a _liaison_ with Theophilus, Earl of Suffolk, in whose house Lady Howard continued to live after the death of his wife. In the confusion of the Civil Wars, and the distraction of men’s minds from family scandals to events of public import, it would have been quite possible for Lady Howard to mislead the Tavistock people as to the true parentage of her son George. The Earl was by no means an old man when the Countess died, in fact, was aged forty-nine years.

During the seven years of Sir Richard’s absence, Lady Howard wrote many letters to her steward Cutteford, who occupied Walreddon and managed her estates in Devon and Cornwall. Whether it was intended as humour or not we cannot say, but she invariably addressed her agent as “Guts,” “Honest Guts,” “Good Guts,” and once “Froward Guts,” and almost every letter was for money. In all the seven years since the decree of divorce, Sir Richard had certainly not received one penny of the sum allotted to him to be paid annually from his wife’s income, and when he returned to England in 1639 he carried his cause before the King’s Council, and claimed of the Earl of Suffolk arrears to the amount of £12,656.

A committee was appointed to hear Sir Richard’s cause, in December, 1640, and so hopeful was he of success, that he actually went down to Fitzford, turned out the caretakers, and installed his aunt there again. Lady Howard wrote to her steward in “a very great distraction” on hearing of these proceedings. But before his case was decided, he was sent by the King to Ireland in command of a troop, and arrived in Dublin in March, 1641-2. He remained in Ireland for more than a year, and earned distinction as a commander. On his return, he learned that the King, who was at Oxford, was short of money, and that the Parliament in London had plenty. He had not been paid for his services in Ireland, so he rode to where the money bags were, assumed the Puritan cant and nasal twang, recounted his great service, and protested his desire to quit the “Tents of Shem and cast in his lot with the righteous,” i.e. to desert the royal cause. The Parliament was delighted, he was at once paid all arrears, was made a major-general of horse in the Parliamentary army, with a regiment of five hundred horse, and power to choose his own officers. On 2 March, 1643-4, he set out with his regiment, riding through London amidst the plaudits of the citizens. His banner was carried in front, displaying a map of England and Wales on a crimson ground, with “England bleeding” in golden letters across the top. The regiment rode on as far as Bagshot, when a halt was called. Then Sir Richard harangued the officers and men, set forth the sinfulness of fighting against their anointed King, and concluded by inviting them to follow him to Oxford, to fight for the King instead of against him. The officers, whom he had not failed to pick out from among his most trusty friends and dependents, all cheerfully assented, and followed by most of his soldiers, Sir Richard rode straight to Oxford and presented himself to the King at the head of a well-equipped troop, and placed his sword at His Majesty’s disposal. The Parliament, duped, was furious, a price was set on Sir Richard’s head, and he was hanged in effigy. A Proclamation was issued, declaring him “traytor, rogue, villain and skellum”--this last word was deemed so appropriate that henceforth he was known as Skellum Grenville. William Lilly, the astrologer, refers to him when he says: “Have we another Red Fox like Sir R. G. acting his close devotions to do our Army mischief? Let’s be wary!”

Sir Richard being now in high favour with the King made petition to be given his wife’s estates in Devonshire, on the ground that her continued residence in London made her a rebel. The King, with monstrous injustice, granted what was asked, and at once--a fortnight after his having marched out of London--he arrived in Tavistock, with powers from the King to take possession of all his wife’s estates. Armed with a warrant from Prince Maurice, then quartered at Tavistock, Sir Richard threw Cutteford and his wife and son into prison, and proceeded to plunder his house, and scrape together what money he could from the tenants. Plymouth was at this time invested by the Royal army; Sir Richard was placed in command, and he remained there till the approach of Essex with a large army compelled him to retreat into Cornwall with his troops, leaving only a few soldiers in his wife’s house, Fitzford, to defend it.

Essex was not slow to avail himself of the chance of punishing Skellum Grenville--the Red Fox--and his own regiment and another proceeded to Fitzford, and after damaging it with cannon, compelled the garrison of one hundred and eighty to lay down their arms. Those who agreed to take the Covenant, about sixty, were enrolled in the Parliamentary army, the rest were detained as prisoners. The house was given up to plunder. There was in it “excellent pillage for the soldiers, even at least £3000 in money and plate, and other provisions in great quantity.”

Unhappily, the plate, the money, the furniture, the provisions did not belong to Skellum Grenville at all, but to Lady Howard, accounted a Parliamentarian. They were his by usurpation only. After the defeat of Essex in Cornwall, the King gave Sir Richard all the Earl of Bedford’s estates and those of Sir Francis Drake, and he resumed command at the siege of Plymouth. He was made Sheriff of Devon in the same year, 1645, and his exactions were great, both as sheriff and as the “King’s General in the West.” But he was not a man to behave with moderation; he speedily abused all these favours, and his acts were so notoriously tyrannical and cruel that they were formally brought as charges against him before the Council, where he was summoned to appear in person and answer for his misdeeds whilst governor of Lydford Castle. One instance of his cruelty deserves particular notice, as it shows the bitterness wherewith he recollected his quarrels with his wife. During the time of her proceedings against him in Chancery she employed an attorney-at-law whose name was Brabant; he bore the character of being an honest man, and loyal to the King. He lived somewhere in this part of Devonshire. Many years elapsed since the decision of that suit against him, before Sir Richard became a man of so much importance by his high military command in the west. No sooner did Brabant learn the news of his arrival, than, well knowing he was not of a disposition to forget or forgive an old adversary, Brabant judged it prudent to keep as much as possible out of the way. Having occasion, however, to make a journey that would take him near Sir Richard’s quarters, he disguised himself as well as he could and put on a montero cap. Sir Richard, who probably had been on the watch to catch him, notwithstanding all these precautions, received intelligence of the movements of the man of law. He caused him to be intercepted on his road, made prisoner, and brought before him. In vain did Brabant protest that he was journeying on no errand but his own private affairs; for Sir Richard affecting, on account of his montero cap, to believe him to be a spy, without a council of war, or any further inquiry, ordered the luckless lawyer to be hanged on the spot. The offences of Sir Richard were so gross that he was sent a prisoner to St. Michael’s Mount, in Cornwall; but on the approach of the Parliamentary army he was allowed to escape on 3 March, 1645-6. He sailed to Brest, and joined his son at Nantes.

Lady Howard, so soon as she heard that Sir Richard was out of England, hastened down to Fitzford, where she found that her steward was dead and her mansion wrecked. When the country was somewhat more peaceful she brought down to it from London her furniture, books, and plate, and set to work to repair the damage that the house had sustained. Her son, George Howard, was with her and managed her affairs eventually, not at first, for if he were born in 1634 he would be still a child.

Sir Richard Grenville and his son Richard wandered about the Continent till 1647, when he formed the rash intention to return to London. What induced him to take this desperate step can only be conjectured. Perhaps he had money in London, which it was only possible to secure personally; possibly he may have desired to get possession of his daughter Elizabeth and take her abroad with him, rightly conjecturing that her mother had no affection, but the contrary, for a child of his. Indeed, it is probable that the tradition of Lady Howard’s persistent hatred displayed towards one of her daughters pertains to this Elizabeth Grenville.

There must have been some very strong reason for Sir Richard’s venturing to England, for he knew perfectly in what estimation he was held by the Puritans. He disguised himself, cutting his hair short and wearing “a very large periwigg hanging on his shoulders,” and blackening his foxy-red beard with a lead comb, so that “none would know him but by his voyse.”

How he fared in England we know not; he did secure his daughter and escaped with his life to Holland, but of his son we hear nothing more, and it is possible that he met his death while in England.

Lord Lansdowne, in his _Vindication_ of his uncle, says, “His only son, unluckily falling afterwards into whose hands, was hanged.”

In 1652 Sir Richard Grenville, being in the Low Countries, seized goods belonging to the Earl of Suffolk that were at Bruges, to the value of £27,000, as some abatement of the debt he considered was due to him out of Lady Howard’s estate.

In 1655 that lady’s son, George Howard, married Mistress Burnby, and by her had a son George who died young, and he had no more children, so that with this child died his grandmother’s hopes of a descendant in the male line. If George Howard, the father, were born in 1634, he would have been one-and-twenty when he married.

Sir Richard Grenville died at Ghent about 1659, attended by his daughter Elizabeth, who shortly after married a privateer captain named Lennard, who cruised the Channel stopping and plundering English vessels, on the principle that all who did not fight for King Charles were his enemies and the enemies of his country. He was taken prisoner 8 February, 1659-60, and only escaped being hanged by the Restoration. He was set at liberty and given the post of captain of the Black Horse at Tilbury; but he did not long enjoy the post, as he died in 1665.

Something must now be said about this daughter, Elizabeth Grenville, concerning whom tradition has a good deal to say, but it is unsupported by documentary evidence.

The story is that Lady Howard hated the child with a deadly hate as the offspring of the plague of her life, Sir Richard Grenville. As she was unkind to it, a lady carried it away, and without the knowledge of the mother brought it up as her own. In after years this lady introduced Elizabeth to her mother under a fictitious name, and Lady Howard became quite attached to her. Seeing this, the lady revealed to her who the young girl was. At this Lady Howard started to her feet, her eyes flaming with rage, and drove Elizabeth from her presence.

A few years passed, and this Elizabeth Grenville made another attempt to see and soften her mother. She went to her at Walreddon, but when Lady Howard saw her she rushed from the room up the stairs pursued by her daughter, who implored her to stay and hear and love her. Elizabeth clung to her mother’s dress on the landing, as Lady Howard passed into one of the upper rooms. The unnatural mother swung back the door with such violence that it broke her daughter’s arm. If this took place at all it was probably before Elizabeth departed for the Continent with her father, when she was aged sixteen. She never after met her mother.

Lady Howard was getting on in life; her son George lived with her at Fitzford and managed her property. Feeling old age creeping on, she by deed made over all her estates to him, in the hopes that when she was gone he would live on in her ancestral home. But in the prime of life George Howard died on 17 September, 1671. To his mother the shock was so great that she did not recover from it, and she also died, just one month after him. Hearing that she was ill, her first cousin, Sir William Courtenay, hurried to her bedside, and gained such power over Lady Howard as to induce her to make a will leaving all her possessions to him, to the exclusion of her daughters. Mary Howard, married to one Vernon, was to be given £500 within four years after her decease, and £1000 to her daughter Elizabeth, married to Captain Lennard, to be paid within two years, and £20 within one year; but should she protest against the will, then what she was to receive would be reduced to £20. The will was signed on 14 October, 1671, and she died on the seventeenth of the same month. “This is the one action of Lady Howard’s life,” says Mrs. Radford, “that seems to have shocked her contemporaries. They have not a word to say against her moral character; but she disinherited her children. Could anything be more dreadful?”

Walreddon to the present day belongs to the Earl of Devon; but Fitzford was sold in 1750 to the Duke of Bedford.

Lady Howard was a person of strong will and imperious temper, and left a deep and lasting impression on the people of Tavistock. Mrs. Bray collected several traditions relative to her, which she published in her _Notes to Fitz, of Fitzford_, in 1828. She bore the reputation of having been hard-hearted in her lifetime. For some crime she had committed (nobody knew what), she was said to be doomed to run in the shape of a hound from the gateway of Fitzford to Okehampton Park, between the hours of midnight and cock-crowing, and to return with a single blade of grass in her mouth to the place whence she had started; and this she was to do till every blade was picked, when the world would be at an end.

“Dr. Jago, the clergyman of Milton Abbot, however, told me that occasionally she was said to ride in a coach of bones up West Street, Tavistock, towards the moor; and an old man of this place told a friend of mine the same story, adding that ‘he had seen her scores of times.’ A lady also who was once resident here, and whom I met in company, assured me that, happening many years before to pass the old gateway at Fitzford, as the church clock struck twelve, in returning from a party, she had herself seen the hound start.”

When a child I heard the story, but somewhat varied, that Lady Howard drove nightly from Okehampton Castle to Launceston Castle in a black coach driven by a headless coachman, and preceded by a fire-breathing black hound; that when the coach stopped at a door, there was sure to be a death in that house the same night. There was a ballad about it, of which I can only recall fragments. Mr. Sheppard picked it up also at South Brent from old Helmore the miller; but being more concerned about the tune than the words, and thinking that I had the latter already, he did not trouble himself to take down the whole ballad.

In the first edition of _Songs of the West_, I gave the ballad reconstructed by me from the poor fragments that I recollected; and as such I give it here:--

My ladye hath a sable coach, And horses two and four; My ladye hath a black blood-hound That runneth on before. My ladye’s coach hath nodding plumes, The driver hath no head; My ladye is an ashen white, As one that long is dead.

“Now pray step in!” my ladye saith, “Now pray step in and ride.” I thank thee, I had rather walk Than gather to thy side. The wheels go round without a sound, Or tramp or turn of wheels; As cloud at night, in pale moonlight, Along the carriage steals.

“Now pray step in!” my ladye saith, “Now prithee come to me.” She takes the baby from the crib, She sits it on her knee. “Now pray step in!” my ladye saith, “Now pray step in and ride.” Then deadly pale, in waving veil, She takes to her the bride.

“Now pray step in!” my ladye saith, “There’s room I wot for you.” She wav’d her hand, the coach did stand, The Squire within she drew. “Now pray step in!” my ladye saith, “Why shouldst thou trudge afoot?” She took the gaffer in by her, His crutches in the boot.

I’d rather walk a hundred miles, And run by night and day, Than have that carriage halt for me And hear my ladye say-- “Now pray step in, and make no din, Step in with me to ride; There’s room, I trow, by me for you, And all the world beside.”

As a fact, Lady Howard did not have a carriage but a Sedan-chair. An inventory of her goods was taken at her death for probate, and this shows that she had no wheeled conveyance. The story of the Death Coach is probably a vague reminiscence of the Goddess of Death travelling over the world collecting human souls.

The authorities for the Life of Lady Howard are:--

Lord Lansdowne’s _Vindication of Sir Richard Grenville_, printed in Holland, 1654, reprinted in Lord Lansdowne’s _Works_, 1732; also Clarendon’s _History of the Great Rebellion_, and Mrs. G. Radford’s “Lady Howard, of Fitzford,” in the _Transactions_ of the Devonshire Association, 1890.

THE BIDLAKES, OF BIDLAKE