Part 3

The story of Exeter has no beginning. To Norman and Saxon, Roman and Celt, it was a fortified stronghold, the Gate of the West. For centuries it was the desire of kings, the first thought of the invader, the forlorn hope of the rebel. Yet, as we drive through the dull suburb of Heavitree--which owes its grim name to the gallows--and pass into the heart of the town we see no sign of the walls that endured so many sieges, the walls that were built by Athelstane, that were attacked by Alfred, that fell before the Conqueror, that withstood Warbeck, that defended the cause of Charles: no sign of the towered archway that was once the entrance to Exeter and had Henry VII.’s statue above it: nothing to show us where poor Perkin, the king of straw, battered in his futile way upon the gate, “with casting of stones, heaving of iron barres, and kindling of fire,” nor where William the Conqueror, in ways that were not futile, battered so successfully--“although the citizens smally regarded him”--that it was believed “some part of the walls miraculously of his owne accord fell downe.” Nor is there any sign of the western gate that once stood at the further end of the High Street, the gate through which another William, seeking the same crown, came in a later century. Through this street, which Leland calls the fairest in Exeter, the great procession of William of Orange swept in all its splendour of bright armour and banners. Here where we are driving they passed by: the English gentlemen on Flanders steeds; the two hundred blacks in embroidered fur-lined caps with white feathers; the two hundred men of Finland in bearskins and black armour, with broad flaming swords, very terrible to unaccustomed eyes; the motto of the cause--“God and the Protestant Religion”--fluttering on fifty banners borne by fifty gentlemen; the led-horses and the pages and the grooms; and the prince himself, all glittering in armour upon his milk-white palfry, surrounded by his running footmen and followed by a mighty host. The billeting of this host upon the citizens of Exeter, says an eye-witness in a Letter to a Person of Quality, “was done so much to the content and satisfaction of the inhabitants, and such just payments made for what the soldiers had, and such civil behaviour among them, without swearing and damning as is usual among some armies, that it is admiration to behold.”

Of this brave show that meant so much to England there is no relic left; but there is still a memorial to be soon of another kingly procession that once passed down this street. Perkin Warbeck, after “mightily and tempestuously,” but quite vainly, assaulting the walls of Exeter, was pursued by Henry VII. to Taunton, and “about midnight departed in wonderful celerity” to the sanctuary of Beaulieu. Then the King rode into Exeter in state, and in his gratitude unbuckled the sword that Perkin had not waited to see, and took the beaver from his head, and gave both sword and hat to the citizens in acknowledgment of their “lusty hearts and manly courage.” Here, in this old grey building that projects across the pavement on our left, we may see them still. In this fairest street of Exeter there is nothing now so fair as the Guildhall with the granite pillars and the massive door of oak and the fluted panelling of Tudor days. In the gallery above the great hall are the two swords that won the crown of England, so to speak: the simple sword of Edward IV. and the splendid gilded one of Henry VII.; and with them, cased in rich embroidery, the black beaver hat in which Henry gained his easy triumph over Perkin. And among the pictures on the dark walls of the hall itself are two that have a special meaning in this place: Sir Peter Lely’s portraits of the young Duchesse d’Orléans and of the Duke of Albemarle. For it was in Exeter, in a house that has now vanished, that Charles I.’s daughter Henrietta was born; and when the Articles of Surrender were drawn up at Poltimore after the long siege, there was special provision made for the safety of the little princess; so that it was in a “fit and convenient carriage” that she started on that famous journey to Dover which she ended, to her great annoyance, in the disguise of a French peasant-boy. It was in Exeter, too, that young George Monk began his fighting career by thrashing the under-sheriff of Devon. The exploit drove him into the army, and when his talent for fighting had made him Duke of Albemarle the civic authorities let bygones be bygones, and set up his portrait here. Perhaps they recognised that the under-sheriff had richly deserved his chastisement.[2]

Unfortunately the same Articles that provided a convenient carriage for Princess Henrietta also decreed the destruction of Rougemont Castle, and there is nothing but a tower and a gateway left of the stronghold that Athelstane founded and William the Conqueror rebuilt. Yet even in this fragment there is one window, they say, of Saxon date, one window that has looked out on all the wild scenes that have been acted round the Red Mount. Exactly how many sieges this scrap of masonry has endured I do not know, nor how many crowned heads it has helped to shelter. William the Conqueror and Stephen took possession of it in person; Edward IV. and Richard III. visited it; and it was probably here that Henry VII. stayed when he came to Exeter at the time of the Warbeck rebellion, to try “the chief stirrers and misdoers.” “The commons of this shire of Devon,” he wrote to the Mayor of Waterford, “come daily before us in great multitudes in their shirts, the foremost of them having halters about their necks, and full humbly with lamentable cries for our grace and remission submit themselves unto us.” In the same vivid letter he expresses a hope that Perkin’s wife will soon come to Exeter, “as she is in dole.” It is not from Henry himself that we learn, however, that when the poor lady actually arrived in this city he “wondered at her beauty and her attractive behaviour.”

When William of Orange rode into the town with all his retinue of blacks and Finlanders it was not to Rougemont that he came, for Fairfax had nearly altogether destroyed it. He slept at the deanery, and on the following day entered the cathedral in state. It has not altered since then. He saw the stately Norman towers as we see them, and like ourselves passed into the building through the vaulted porch and rich mouldings of the west doorway. Over his head was the splendid tracery that is over ours, and on each side of him were the clustered pillars that we see. “And as he came all along the body of the church the organs played very sweetly, and the quire began to sing _Te Deum_.” Whether that _Te Deum_ rang quite true upon the vaulted roof is open to doubt, for the choir, apparently, sang it with much reluctance and left the church hurriedly when their work was done, lest trouble should come of it. Meantime the prince sat down beneath the towering canopy of the throne that the bishop had deserted, and Burnet, standing at the foot of the pulpit, read aloud the declaration that gave England her liberties.

On the base of the throne are the painted effigies of the four bishops who made Exeter Cathedral what it now is: Warelwast, who built the towers; Quivil, who designed the Decorated building as it stands; Stapledon, who set up this carved and pinnacled throne, and the beautiful sedilia, and the “sylver altare” that has vanished; and Grandison the magnificent, who made the vaulted roof. Close at hand on the north side of the choir, with a restored canopy and a figure “very lively cut in the same stone,” is the tomb where Stapledon’s desecrated dust was laid. The enthroning of this bishop, says Carew the chronicler, was more than ordinarily splendid. Canons and vicars-choral in their habits led him to the throne, while “abundance of gentlemen of place and quality” followed after. Very splendid, too, was his burial in this choir. There had, however, been a burial of another sort in London; for, having been made Keeper of the City by Edward II., he was attacked by the mob who took the part of Queen Isabel. They dragged him from his refuge in St. Paul’s, “and having grievously beaten and wounded him, haled him along the streets to the great cross in Cheap, where those sons of the devil most barbarously murdered him.” His headless body lay buried in a sand-heap till the Queen ordered it to be brought hither in great honour.

The “grave, wise, politic” Grandison, though much addicted to pomp, was personally simpler than the murdered bishop, who possessed no fewer than ninety-one rings. Grandison’s splendour was shown in hospitalities and lavish gifts to his cathedral. It owes much to him: among other things, I believe, the minstrels’ gallery that we see above us on our right as we walk down the nave--the gallery that was built, they say, in order that the Black Prince might be fittingly welcomed with music when he visited his duchy. The west front is Grandison’s, too. He once defended it and the dignity of his office with a body of armed men, on an occasion when the Archbishop of Canterbury came on a visitation. Here at the west door the angry prelates faced each other. Grandison won the day, and the archbishop, says Fuller, died of a broken heart.

It was possibly owing to the presence of Fairfax, who reverenced all that was ancient and beautiful, that the soldiers of the Parliament did so little harm to the cathedral, beyond destroying the cloisters. How much else they destroyed in the close I do not know: it is certain that much has vanished, for in Leland’s day it had four gates, and was “environid with many fair housis.” There are still several fair houses in Cathedral Yard that have survived the Civil War, but not all of them have been admired by Leland. He did not see, for instance, the curious outline and picturesque bow-windows of “Mol’s Coffee House,” nor the panelled room that is emblazoned with the shields of heroes and statesmen, of Talbot and Somerset, of Cecil and Throgmorton, of Drake and Raleigh and Gilbert. Tradition says that the bearers of these sounding names were wont to discuss the affairs of the nation in this room.

Before leaving Exeter we have a weighty matter to settle: our choice of a road. There are four ways of reaching Cornwall. Of these the shortest is by Okehampton to Launceston, and this has the advantage of passing through the bewitching village of Sticklepath: the best as regards surface is by Ashburton and Ivybridge to Plymouth: the most beautiful is the road that leads across the Moor by Moretonhampstead and Two Bridges to Tavistock: the most interesting and varied is the long way round by the coast, by Torquay and Dartmouth, Kingsbridge and Modbury. In the matter of hills the second of these roads is the least severe, and therefore on the whole I advise those who desire to reach Cornwall quickly to skirt the Moor upon the south; passing through Buckfastleigh, which has a new abbey on an old site, and Dean Prior, where Herrick lived so reluctantly, and Plympton, where old Bishop Warelwast died. There is no really steep gradient on this road, and though near Exeter there is a long climb followed by a long descent, there are several surprising miles, near Plymouth, that are almost level. The surface is usually very good. The scenery is not so strikingly beautiful as on the other roads, but in places it is very lovely, and everywhere there are the special charms of Devonshire: the shadowing trees, the high banks and trailing ivy, the stone walls green with myriads of tiny ferns, the gardens full of sunshine and flowers. Dean Prior, where Herrick lived for many quiet years, singing in sweet measures “how roses first came red and lilies white,” and dreaming wistfully of “golden Cheapside” and his Julia--and others--seems at first sight an unlikely place to be hated. Indeed, I think his hatred of it and its inhabitants was merely a mood. The same kind of mood that made him hurl the manuscript of his sermon at his congregation made him describe his neighbours as

“A people currish, churlish as the seas, And rude almost as rudest savages,”

while all the time he was well aware that Robert Herrick was ruder than either. There were other days when he wrote very affectionately of his little house and his placid life in this village where he has so long been lying at rest. There is an ugly modern monument to him in his church, but his grave and that of his housekeeper Prue are unmarked by any stone. The beautiful epitaph he wrote himself will serve them well:

“Here’s the sunset of a tedious day: These two asleep are; I’ll but be undressed, And so to bed; pray, wish us all good rest.”

The Plympton through which this road passes is not the birthplace of Sir Joshua Reynolds, but has an interest of its own in being the site of a monastery that was founded by Warelwast, the bishop who built the towers of Exeter Cathedral. When he was very old he came hither to die. But Plympton Earle is not a mile away; and most of us will find time to drive into the little town and pause for a moment by the old house with the colonnade, wherein a little boy used long ago to sit studying perspective “with avidity and pleasure,” or copying his sister’s sketches. Sir Joshua loved this place where he first held a pencil, and in after years painted his own portrait for the town. The town sold it.

This road, then, is not without its attractions. Infinitely greater, however, are the charms of the two other alternative ways from Exeter to Cornwall--the one that bisects Dartmoor and the one that skirts the coast more or less closely. Those whose object is a short tour in South Devon I would advise to combine these two routes by driving from Exeter across the Moor to Tavistock, thence turning south to Plymouth on a splendid road through beautiful scenery, and returning to Exeter leisurely by way of Dartmouth and Torquay.

The traveller who chooses to leave Exeter by the Moretonhampstead road is likely to feel that he has chosen well.

Like all these roads that run towards the west it begins by crossing the river Exe, the river that for three centuries was commercially useless because two men quarrelled about a pot of fish. In the market of Exeter--so runs the story--three pots of fish were waiting to be sold one day, more than five hundred years ago. Upon this fish the retainer of the Earl of Devon cast an appreciative eye at the very moment when the servant of the Bishop of Exeter had determined to buy it. In the fourteenth century there could be but one result of this coincidence. The matter, after a lively quarrel, was laid before the mayor, and he, with prudence that deserved to be more successful, apportioned one pot to each customer and the third to the market: whereupon the Earl of Devon revenged himself upon the corporation, against whom he already had a grudge or two, “by stopping, filling, and quirting the river with great trees, timber, and stones, in such sort that no vessel or vessels could passe or repasse;” and Topsham became the port of Exeter. Now Topsham was on the Earl of Devon’s land.

We go out of the town on a perfect surface, and although, of the twelve miles between Exeter and Moretonhampstead, there is only one that is level and eleven that are steep in varying degrees, the beauty that surrounds us leaves us with no breath for complaint. Whether we are climbing slowly to the summit of a ridge, with valleys dipping deeply on each side and beyond the valleys fold on fold of wooded hills, or gliding down past Culver into the shade, or running softly through a little green glen, there is nothing but content in our hearts. Presently we cross the Teign upon an old stone bridge. Beneath us the river makes slow, soft music on its mossy stones; on each side the hills rise steeply; here and there a great red rock pierces the green and purple of the slopes; and as the road winds up the long hill through the woods we are shadowed by hazels and larches and birches, and the scarlet tassels of the mountain-ash hang heavily over our heads. When at last we finish the long climb Moretonhampstead lies below us. From this height it appears to be in a hollow, but after running down a steep hill for a mile and a half we find ourselves unexpectedly looking up to it.

Moreton is the best centre, I think, from which to see the Moor. Chagford is in a lovelier position, hemmed about with hills, and is larger and more ambitious, with electricity to light its streets; but it is not nearly so central as Moreton, which stands at the junction of four good roads. Gray’s Hotel, though it makes no profession of smartness, is comfortable and clean, and has a capital new garage. The importance of staying in this neighbourhood for a day or two lies in the fact that there are several lovely places within a radius of a few miles which cannot easily be seen _en route_. Of course, those who prefer more stately quarters can use Exeter as their centre very comfortably.

It is not to us who move at various speeds from place to place--by motor-car, or bicycle, or train, or even on foot--that Dartmoor will reveal itself. Do not let us deceive ourselves. We may have driven on every road and every tortuous lane between the Teign and Tavistock, yet we need not dream that we know the Moor. That knowledge comes only with the slow years, only with the passionate love that begins in childhood and lasts for life.

That is no reason why we should not see as much of the Moor as we can, and love it dearly in our own poor fashion. There is much, very much of its beauty which he who runs--and even he who motors--may read. And the most beautiful part of it, I think, is this eastern side.

Quite a short run from Moreton is to Bovey Tracey, Hey Tor, and Manaton. We drive out of the little town, as we drove into it, past the seventeenth-century almshouses, whose thatched roofs are supported on a row of granite pillars, and whose features are feebly reproduced on the opposite side of the street--a case in which imitation is very far from flattery. A narrow road follows the course of the Bovey through its pretty valley. At a point where road, rail, and river nearly touch one another a little by-way crosses a bridge to Lustleigh, which has a great reputation for beauty, and deserves it; for with its church and modern cross, its thatched cottages, its stream and little bridge, half hidden in their setting of woods and orchards, it is a very lovable village. Its spaces, however, are limited. Drivers of large cars must turn near the church under the elms, and see Lustleigh on foot, for there is no turning place further on, and the road beyond the village is impracticable. Its beauty is very alluring, but its steepness is serious, and such is its narrowness that even a car of moderate size brushes the hedge on each side. It is far easier to return to the main road, or rather the main lane to Bovey, which has a good surface, though it is narrow and winding.

The fine church that stands above the street of Bovey Tracey was founded, it is said, by the Tracy who was one of Becket’s murderers, to atone for the deed by the convenient method of the Middle Ages. But all its splendour of carving and gilding, its painted screen and pulpit, its porch with the groined roof and grotesque bosses, are of a later century than the twelfth.

There is nothing here to see except this church and some restored stone crosses. For no one knows, I believe, where the cavaliers were quartered on that famous winter evening when Cromwell rode into Bovey with a band of horse and foot, and brought dismay with him. “The Enemy in Bovey,” says Joshua Sprigge, “were put to their shifts, yet through the darkness … most of the men escaped.” The shift the officers made was an ingenious one. They were playing cards when Cromwell’s men marched up to their door, and with admirable presence of mind they flung the stakes out of the window. By the time the soldiers had finished picking up the money the royalists had escaped by the back door, and were beyond the river.

Almost as soon as we have crossed the same river we find ourselves on the fringe of the Moor, and begin to rise slowly on a fine curving road, through a scene that grows in beauty moment by moment. On one side are the sweeping lines and satisfying colours of the moorland, the heather and the yellow grass, the greens and browns of the bracken: on the other are all the graces of a copse of birch-trees. At every turn the view widens, till on the skyline Hey Tor appears, very sharp and dark. As the road sweeps round it the Moor is everywhere about us, an endless series of rounded hills, with the line of their curved shoulders broken here and there by jagged tors. Everywhere the rim of the landscape is blue beyond all experience. When green has melted into grey, and grey has deepened into an indigo so strong that it seems no colour can be bluer, there is still beyond it a line of hills as purely, piercingly blue as the sky in June.

We run on between Saddle Tor and Rippon Tor over hill and dale, till we look down on the famous goal of a certain historic grey mare--Widdecombe-in-the-Moor; then past Hound Tor and round by the pretty village-green of Manaton to the woods through which the Becka’s waters dance and sing. Here by the wayside the car must wait a little time, while we are carried to fairyland on a magic carpet of moss. Long, long ago, say the fairies, this was a stony, barren slope. Some wild spirit of the storm had flung upon it a host of mighty boulders, which lay there bare and grey beneath the open sky. At last the fairies came, and wove their wonderful carpet of moss, soft and green, and laid it gently over the great stones and over the earth, and scattered their enchanted seeds upon the ground so that the tall trees rose thickly upon the hillside, and a mysterious, dusky veil of leaves hid the river from the sky. Then the fairies made their home here; and we may walk with them through the woods to that strange fall that in summer is no waterfall, but a cascade of gigantic rounded stones, flung from the height in a confused mass, through which a thin stream trickles.

As we drive out of the dark and spellbound wood we suddenly find ourselves on a heathery hillside, all space and colour and light; and by a winding road we return to Bovey and Moretonhampstead.

Quite near to Moreton is one of those unforgettable places of charm so rare that they dwell in one’s mind for ever as types of beauty. This is Fingle Bridge, which crosses the Teign where the valley is narrow and its sides are high and very steep, and the brown river flows quickly among woods and beds of fern, and a huge slope, completely carpeted with heather, towers close at hand. The best road is by Sandy Park, and beyond that point even this is by no means good. In Drewsteignton, indeed, a prudent owner of any car that has more than a nine-foot wheel-base will get out and walk, for between that delightful village and the Teign there is an extremely steep and narrow lane, with a surface that is chiefly made of stones both large and loose. There is, moreover, no good turning-place in the narrow gorge through which the river runs.

A longer run than either of these is through Bovey Tracey and Ashburton, and across the Moor to Two Bridges by a road whose hills are grimly described in the contour-book as “all highly dangerous.” The description is justified, and it cannot even be pleaded that the surface is good; but the sweeping moorland, and the woods that veil the hurrying Dart near Charles Kingsley’s birthplace at Holne, and the valley at Dartmeet, will compensate for much. From Two Bridges the road to Moreton is the same by which we must cross the Moor on our way to Tavistock.