Part 8

It is said that one Christmas-eve the fire languished in the Hall. A boy with an ass had been sent to the woodland for logs, and the driver loitered on his homeward way. Lady Grace lost patience, and was displeased. All at once a sudden outcry was heard at the gate, and Sir Beville’s Giant appeared with the loaded animal on his mighty back. He threw down his burden in triumph at the hearth-side, shouting merrily, “Ass and fardel! ass and fardel for my lady’s Yule!” Another time he strode along the path from Kilkhampton village to Stowe with a bacon-hog of three hundredweight thrown across his shoulders, and merely because a taunting butcher had doubted his strength for the feat. Among the excellences of Sir Beville’s Giant, it is told of him that he was by no means clumsy or uncouth, as men of unusual size sometimes are, but as nimble and elastic, and as capable of swift and dexterous movement, as a light and muscular man. Added to this, his was a strong and acute intellect; so happy also in his language, and of such a ready wit, that he was called by a writer[81] of the last century, from his resemblance, in these points only, to Shakespeare’s knight, “the Falstaff of the West.”

But a great and sudden change was about to come over the happy halls of Stowe. The king and his Parliament were at fatal strife; and there could be but one place in the land for the true-hearted and chivalrous Sir Beville, and that was at his royal master’s side.[82] The well-known rallying cry went through the hills and valleys of Cornwall, “Granville’s up!” and the hearts and hands of many a noble knight and man-at-arms turned towards old Stowe. Mounted messengers rode to and fro. Strange and stalwart forms arrived to claim a place in the ranks. Retainers were enrolled day and night; and the smooth sward of the bowling-green and the Fawn’s Paddock were dinted by the hoofs of horses and the tread of serried men. Foremost among these scenes we find, as body-guard of his master, the bulky form of Antony Payne. He marshalled and manœuvred the rude levies from the western mines, “the underground men.” He served out arms and rations, and established order, by the mere terror of his presence and strength, among the wild and mixed multitude that gathered “for the king and land.”

Instead of the glad and hospitable scenery of former times, Stowe became in those days like a garrison surrounded by a camp. At last, one day tidings arrived that the battalions of the Parliament, led by Lord Stamford, were on their way northwards, and not many miles off. A picked and goodly company marched forth from the avenue of Stowe, and among them Payne, on his Cornish cob Samson, of pure Guinhilly breed. The next day, eight miles towards the south, the battle of Stratton Hill was fought and won by the royal troops. The Earl of Stamford was repulsed, and fled, bequeathing, by a strange mischance, his own name, though the defeated commander, to the field of battle. It is called to this day Stamford Hill.[83] Sir Beville returned that night to Stowe, but his Giant remained with some other soldiers to bury the dead. He had caused certain large trenches to be laid open, each to hold ten bodies side by side. There he and his followers carried in the slain. On one occasion they had laid down nine corpses, and Payne was bringing in another, tucked under his arm, like one of “the kittens” of his schoolboy days, when all at once the supposed dead man was heard pleading earnestly with him, and expostulating, “Surely you wouldn’t bury me, Mr. Payne, before I am dead?” “I tell thee, man,” was the grim reply, “our trench was dug for ten, and there’s nine in already; you must take your place.” “But I bean’t dead, I say; I haven’t done living yet; be massyful, Mr. Payne--don’t ye hurry a poor fellow into the earth before his time.” “I won’t hurry thee: I mean to put thee down quietly and cover thee up, and then thee canst die at thy leisure.” Payne’s purpose, however, was kinder than his speech. He carried his suppliant carefully to his own cottage not far off, and charged his wife to stanch, if possible, her husband’s rebellious blood. The man lived, and his descendants are among the principal inhabitants of the town of Stratton to this day.[84]

That same year the battle of Lansdown, near Bath, was fought. The forces of the Parliament prevailed, and Sir Beville nobly died. Payne was still at his side, and, when his master fell, he mounted young John Granville, a youth of sixteen, whom he had always in charge, on his father’s horse, and he led the Granville troop into the fight. A letter[85] which the faithful retainer wrote to his lady at Stowe still survives. It breathes in the quaint language of the day a noble strain of sympathy and homage. Thus it ran:--

“HONOURED MADAM,--Ill news flieth apace. The heavy tidings no doubt hath already travelled to Stowe that we have lost our blessed master by the enemy’s advantage. You must not, dear lady, grieve too much for your noble spouse. You know, as we all believe, that his soul was in heaven before his bones were cold. He fell, as he did often tell us he wished to die, in the great Stuart cause, for his country and his king. He delivered to me his last commands, and with such tender words for you and for his children as are not to be set down with my poor pen, but must come to your ears upon my best heart’s breath. Master John, when I mounted him on his father’s horse, rode him into the war like a young prince, as he is, and our men followed him with their swords drawn and with tears in their eyes. They did say they would kill a rebel for every hair of Sir Beville’s beard. But I bade them remember their good master’s word, when he wiped his sword after Stamford fight; how he said, when their cry was, ‘Stab and slay!’ ‘Halt, men! God will avenge.’ I am coming down with the mournfullest load that ever a poor servant did bear, to bring the great heart that is cold to Kilkhampton vault. Oh, my lady, how shall I ever brook your weeping face? But I will be trothful to the living and to the dead.

“These, honoured madam, from thy saddest, truest servant,

“ANTONY PAYNE.”

At the Restoration the Stowe Giant reappears upon the scene in attendance on his young master, John Granville. Sir Beville’s son had been instrumental in the return of the king, and had received from Charles II. largess of money, great offices, and the earldom of Bath. Among other places of trust, he was appointed Governor of the Garrison at Plymouth. There Payne received the appointment of Halberdier of the Guns, and the king, who held him in singular favour, commanded his portrait to be painted by the Court artist, Sir Godfrey Kneller.[86] The fate of this picture was one of great vicissitude. It hung in state for some years in the great gallery at Stowe; thence, when that mansion was dismantled at the death of the Earl of Bath, it was removed to Penheale, another manor-house of the Granvilles, in Cornwall; but it ceased to be highly esteemed, from ignorance of the people and the oblivion of years, insomuch so that when Gilbert, the Cornish historian, travelled through the county to collect materials for his work, he discovered the portrait rolled up in an empty room, and described by the farmer’s wife as “a carpet with the effigy of a large man upon it.” It was a gift to her husband, she said, from the landlord’s steward, and she was glad to sell it as she did for £8! When Gilbert died his collection of antique curiosities was sold by auction at Devonport, where he lived, and this portrait of Payne, which had been engraved as the frontispiece to the second volume of his “History of Cornwall,” was bought by a stranger who was passing through the town, and who had strolled in to look at the sale, at the price of forty guineas. The value had been apparently enhanced by oil, and varnish, and frame. This stranger proved to be a connoisseur in paintings: he conveyed it to London, and there it was ascertained to be one of the masterpieces of Kneller; it was resold for the enormous sum of £800. This picture, or even the engraving in Gilbert’s work, reveals still to the eye the Giant of Old Stowe, “in his natural presentment” as he lived. There he stands before the eye, a stalwart soldier of the guard. One hand is placed upon a cannon, and the other wields the tall halberd of his rank and office as yeoman of the guns. By a strange accident this very weapon[87] and a large flask or flagon,[88] sheathed in wicker-work, which is said to have held “Antony’s allowance,” a gallon of wine, and which is placed in the picture on the ground at his feet--both these relics of the time and the man are now in the possession of the writer of this article, in the Vicarage House, near Stowe. It was in Plymouth garrison, and in his later days, that an event is recorded of Payne which testifies that even after long years “his eye had not grown dim, neither was his natural force abated.” The Revolution had come and gone, and William and Mary had been enthroned. At the mess-table of the regiment in garrison, on the anniversary of the day when Charles I. had been beheaded, a sub-officer of Payne’s own rank had ordered a calf’s head to be served up in a “William-and-Mary dish.” This, in those days of new devotion to the house of Hanover, was a coarse and common annual mockery of the beheaded king; and delf, with the faces of these two sovereigns for ornament, was a valued ware (the writer has one large dish). When Payne entered the room, his comrades pointed out to him the insulting and practical jest--to him, too, most offensive, for he was a Stuart man. With a ready and indignant gesture he threw out of the window the symbolic platter and its contents.

A fierce quarrel ensued and a challenge, and at break of day Payne and his antagonist fought with swords on the ramparts. After a strong contest--for the offender was a master of his weapon--Payne ran his adversary through the sword-arm and disabled him. He is said to have accompanied the successful thrust with the taunting shout, “There’s sauce for thy calf’s head!” When the strong man at last began to bow himself down at the approach of one stronger than he, the Giant of Stowe obtained leave to retire. He returned to Stratton, his native place, and found shelter and repose in the very house and chamber wherein he was born.

After his death, neither the door nor the stairs would afford egress for the large and coffined corpse. The joists had to be sawn through, and the floor lowered with rope and pulley, to enable the Giant to pass out towards his mighty grave. Relays of strong bier-men carried him to his rest, and the bells of the tower, by his own express desire, “chimed him home.” He was buried outside the southern wall of Stratton church.[89] When the writer was a boy, the sexton one day broke, by accident, through the side wall of a vast but empty sepulchre. Many went to see the sight, and there, marked by a stone in the wall, was a vault, like the tomb of the Anakim, large enough in these days for the interment of three or four of our degenerate dead. But it was empty, desolate, and bare. No mammoth bones nor mysterious relics of the unknown dead. A massive heap of silent dust!

FOOTNOTES:

[77] From _All the Year Round_, vol. xvi. pp. 247-249. 1866. See Appendix E.

[78] See Appendix B.

[79] Compare Hawker’s poem, “Sir Beville--the Gate Song of Stowe.” See also Appendix E_a_.

[80] It is said locally that Antony’s stocking would hold a peck of wheat.

[81] C. S. Gilbert in his “History of Cornwall.”

[82]

“Ride! ride! with red spur, there is death in delay, ’Tis a race for dear life with the devil; If dark Cromwell prevail, and the king must give way, This earth is no place for Sir Beville.”

_The Gate Song of Stowe._

[83] There is a description of this battle in Q’s novel, “The Splendid Spur,” one of the most vivid and stirring battle pictures in modern fiction.

[84] In a letter dated September 21, 1866, to his brother-in-law, the late Mr. John Sommers James, Hawker says, “He (Antony Payne) was an Ancestor of Captain Parsons and Sam. He was going to bury your Great Grandfather at Stamford Hill alive, wounded among the other Rebels, but he spared him, and, as I have stated, his ‘descendants are among the most conspicuous of the Inhabitants of Stratton to this day.’”

[85] The authenticity of this letter is doubtful. If spurious, however, it is interesting as an example of Hawker’s Chattertonian propensities and his skill in catching the antique style. (See Appendix E.)

[86] Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723), a German by birth, was Court painter to five English sovereigns, Charles II., James II., William III., Anne, and George I. He came to England in 1675, and if Charles II., who died in 1685, commanded him to paint the portrait of Antony Payne, it must have been between those years that the picture was executed. According to the dedication under Gilbert’s engraving, however, it was done at the expense of the Earl of Bath. The Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro, has published a pamphlet (price 2_d._) entitled “A Short Account of Anthony Payne, the Cornish Giant, and the History of his Portrait.” This states that the picture was painted in 1680. “Ten reigning sovereigns in all sat to Kneller for their portraits. His sitters included almost all persons of rank, wealth, or eminence, in his day, and examples of his brush may be found in nearly every historic mansion or palace in the kingdom.... Kneller can best be studied at Hampton Court” (“Dictionary of National Biography”).

[87] In the letter to Mr. J. Sommers James quoted above Hawker refers to Antony Payne as “owner of the spear your brother Henry gave me years ago.”

[88] This flagon was given by Mr. Hawker to Mr. Thomas Shephard, of Stratton, whose daughter, Mrs. William Shephard, of Barnstaple, has presented it to Truro Museum. (See illustration facing p. 14.) The Shephards are descendants of Antony Payne, and Mr. William Shephard has in his possession a pewter shaving cup that belonged to Antony’s father.

[89] Gilbert says “in the north aisle.” Possibly Hawker altered this in accordance with the superstition mentioned on p. 21. See end of Appendix E.

CRUEL COPPINGER[90]

A record of the wild, strange, lawless characters that roamed along the north coast of Cornwall during the middle and latter years of the last century would be a volume full of interest for the student of local history and semi-barbarous life. Therein would be found depicted the rough sea-captain, half smuggler, half pirate, who ran his lugger by beacon-light into some rugged cove among the massive headlands of the shore, and was relieved of his freight by the active and diligent “country-side.” This was the name allotted to that chosen troop of native sympathisers who were always ready to rescue and conceal the stores that had escaped the degradation of the gauger’s brand. Men yet alive relate with glee how they used to rush at some well-known signal to the strand, their small active horses shaved from forelock to tail, smoother than any modern clip, well soaped or greased from head to foot, so as to slip easily out of any hostile grasp; and then, with a double keg or pack slung on to every nag by a single girth, away went the whole herd, led by some swift well-trained mare, to the inland cave or rocky hold, the shelter of their spoil. There was a famous dun mare--she lived to the age of thirty-seven, and died within legal memory--almost human in her craft and fidelity, who is said to have led a bevy of loaded pack-horses, unassisted by driver or guide, from Bossinney Haun to Roughtor Point. But beside these travellers by sea, there would be found ever and anon, in some solitary farmhouse inaccessible by wheels, and only to be approached by some treacherous foot-path along bog and mire, a strange and nameless guest--often a foreigner in language and apparel--who had sought refuge with the native family, and who paid in strange but golden coins for his shelter and food; some political or private adventurer, perchance, to whom secrecy and concealment were safety and life, and who more than once lived and died in his solitary hiding-place on the moor.

There is a bedstead of carved oak still in existence at Trevotter--a farm among the midland hills--whereon for long years an unknown stranger slept. None ever knew his nation or name. He occupied a solitary room, and only emerged now and then for a walk in the evening air. An oaken chest of small size contained his personal possessions and gold of foreign coinage, which he paid into the hands of his host with the solemn charge to conceal it until he was gone thence or dead--a request which the simple-hearted people faithfully fulfilled. His linen was beautifully fine, and his garments richly embroidered. After some time he sickened and died, refusing firmly the visits of the local clergyman, and bequeathing to the farmer the contents of his chest. He wrote some words, they said, for his own tombstone, which, however, were not allowed to be engraved, but they were simply these--“H. De R. Equees & Ecsul.” The same sentence was found, after his death, carved on the ledge of his bed, and the letters are, or lately were, still traceable on the mouldering wood.

But among the legends of local renown a prominent place has always been allotted to a personage whose name has descended to our times linked to a weird and graphic epithet--“Cruel Coppinger.” There was a ballad in existence within human memory which was founded on the history of this singular man, but of which the first verse[91] only can now be recovered. It runs--

“Will you hear of the Cruel Coppinger? He came from a foreign kind; He was brought to us by the salt-water, He was carried away by the wind.”

His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was signalised by a terrific hurricane. The storm came up Channel from the south-west. The shore and the heights were dotted with watchers for wreck--those daring gleaners of the harvest of the sea. It was just such a scene as is sought for in the proverb of the West--

“A savage sea and a shattering wind, The cliffs before, and the gale behind.”

As suddenly as if a phantom ship had loomed in the distance, a strange vessel of foreign rig was discovered in fierce struggle with the waves of Harty Race. She was deeply laden or waterlogged, and rolled heavily in the trough of the sea, nearing the shore as she felt the tide. Gradually the pale and dismayed faces of the crew became visible, and among them one man of herculean height and mould, who stood near the wheel with a speaking-trumpet in his hand. The sails were blown to rags, and the rudder was apparently lashed for running ashore. But the suck of the current and the set of the wind were too strong for the vessel, and she appeared to have lost her chance of reaching Harty Pool. It was seen that the tall seaman, who was manifestly the skipper of the boat, had cast off his garments, and stood prepared upon the deck to encounter a battle with the surges for life and rescue. He plunged over the bulwarks, and arose to sight buffeting the seas. With stalwart arm and powerful chest he made his way through the surf, rode manfully from billow to billow, until with a bound he stood at last upright upon the sand, a fine stately semblance of one of the old Vikings of the northern seas. A crowd of people had gathered from the land, on horseback and on foot, women as well as men, drawn together by the tidings of a probable wreck. Into their midst, and to their astonished dismay, rushed the dripping stranger: he snatched from a terrified old dame her red Welsh cloak, cast it loosely around him, and bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young damsel, who had ridden her father’s horse down to the beach to see the sight. He grasped her bridle, and, shouting aloud in some foreign language, urged on the double-laden animal into full speed, and the horse naturally took his homeward way. Strange and wild were the outcries that greeted the rider, Miss Dinah Hamlyn, when, thus escorted, she reached her father’s door in the very embrace of a wild, rough, tall man, who announced himself by a name--never afterwards forgotten in those parts--as Coppinger, a Dane. He arrayed himself without the smallest scruple in the Sunday suit of his host. The long-skirted coat of purple velveteen with large buttons, the embroidered vest, and nether garments to match, became him well. So thought the lady of his sudden choice. She, no doubt, forgave his onslaught on her and on her horse for the compliment it conveyed. He took his immediate place at the family board, and on the settle by the hearth, as though he had been the most welcome and long-invited guest in the land. Strange to say, the vessel disappeared immediately he had left her deck, nor was she ever after traced by land or sea. At first the stranger subdued all the fierce phases of his savage character, and appeared deeply grateful for all the kindness he received at the hands of his simple-hearted host. Certain letters which he addressed to persons of high name in Denmark were, or were alleged to be, duly answered, and remittances from his friends were supposed to be received. He announced himself as of a wealthy family and superior rank in his native country, and gave out that it was to avoid a marriage with a titled lady that he had left his father’s house and gone to sea. All this recommended him to the unsuspecting Dinah, whose affections he completely won. Her father’s sudden illness postponed their marriage. The good old man died to be spared much evil to come.

The Dane succeeded almost naturally to the management and control of the house, and the widow held only an apparent influence in domestic affairs. He soon persuaded the daughter to become his wife, and immediately afterwards his evil nature, so long smouldering, broke out like a wild beast uncaged. All at once the house became the den and refuge of every lawless character on the coast. All kinds of wild uproar and reckless revelry appalled the neighbourhood day and night. It was discovered that an organised band of desperadoes, smugglers, wreckers, and poachers were embarked in a system of bold adventure, and that “Cruel Coppinger” was their captain. In those days, and in that unknown and far-away region, the peaceable inhabitants were totally unprotected. There was not a single resident gentleman of property or weight in the entire district; and the clergyman, quite insulated from associates of his own standing, was cowed into silence and submission. No revenue officer durst exercise vigilance west of the Tamar; and to put an end to all such surveillance at once, it was well known that one of the “Cruel” gang had chopped off a gauger’s head on the gunwale of a boat, and carried the body off to sea.[92]