Part 9

At Barrington Court and White Lackington manor-house, both near Ilminster, Monmouth was entertained in princely state during his progress through the western counties to win popularity. The latter is a plain gabled house (a portion only of the original) which has suffered by the insertion of sash windows. It seems to bear out its name, for it is very white and staring. But Barrington is one of the most perfect Elizabethan houses in Somersetshire, that is to say exteriorly, for the inside has long since been stripped and modernised. The myriad of pinnacles upon its gable ends, and its general appearance, recall the stately Sussex mansion Wakehurst: the situation, however, is vastly different, for it stands bare of trees on a wide extensive flat. The Spekes of White Lackington and the Strodes of Barrington, it goes without saying, were notorious Whigs; and though the duke's hosts favoured his cause, they both managed to save their necks when the terrible Jeffreys came down upon his memorable Progress. But the name of Speke was enough for the judge, and the youngest son of White Lackington, whose sins did not extend beyond shaking hands with his father's illustrious guest, was swung up on a tree at Ilminster. In the lovely fields around the manor-house it is difficult to imagine a throng of twenty thousand who accompanied the popular duke. The giant Spanish chestnut tree beneath which Monmouth dined in public, and which had braved the tempests of many centuries, fell, alas! a victim to the storm of March, 2, 1897, and with the destruction of "Monmouth's tree" a link with 1680 has departed never to return. Barrington, we understand, has recently been taken under the protecting wing of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, for which all those interested in domestic architecture as well as buildings of historic association must feel grateful.

The little town of South Petherton, midway between Ilminster and Ilchester, is full of old nooks and corners, from its ancient cruciform church to the old hostelry in the High Street. From a very early date it was a place of great importance; but since the days of the Saxon monarch who resided there, the Daubeneys have stamped their identity upon King Ina's palace, of which there are picturesque Tudor remains incorporated in a modern dwelling, which to our mind has robbed it of the poetry it possessed when in a ruinous condition. The villages of Martock above and Hinton St George below are also full of interest; and both possess their ancient market-crosses, but now curtailed and converted into sundials with stone-step massive bases. But the glory of Martock is its grand old church (where Fairfax and Cromwell offered up a prayer for the capture of Bridgwater in 1645), whose carved black oak roof is one of the finest in the west of England.[20] The ancient seat of the Pouletts is an extensive but by no means beautiful house. It has a squat appearance, being only two storeys high, with battlemented towers at the angles and Georgian and Victorian Gothic sash-windows; but on the southern side, a pierced parapet and classic windows give it a less barrack-like appearance. Sir Amias Poulett (or Paulet, as it was formerly spelled), the grandson of the builder of the house, who won his spurs at the battle of Newark-on-Trent, is principally famous from the fact that he put Wolsey in the stocks when that great person held the living of Lymington, and upon one occasion took more than was good for him. But the cardinal afterwards had his revenge, and put fine upon Sir Amias to build the gate of the Middle Temple, which formerly bore the prelate's arms elaborately carved, as a peace-offering from Sir Amias. Lymington in Hampshire is often associated with the stocks' episode, but Lymington near Ilchester, and some ten miles from Hinton, was the place. Sir Amias had the custody of Mary Queen of Scots during the latter part of her long imprisonment, and to him the "Good Queen" (?) more than hinted that it would be a kindness to hasten her victim's end by private assassination. Paulet, however, had a conscience, so Elizabeth had to take upon herself the responsibility of Mary's execution.

The historic stocks of Lymington are now no more, but beneath a big elm tree on the village green at Tintinhull, close by, they still are flourishing. Tintinhull, like Trent and other neighbouring villages, is full of picturesque old houses, sturdy stone Jacobean and Tudor cottages, with garden borderings of slabs of stone set up edgeways, and slabs of stone running along the footway in a delightfully primitive fashion. Tintinhull Court is a stately old pile dating from the reign of Henry VIII. Its oldest side faces the garden, but the main front is a good type of the seventeenth century. We will not repeat here the particulars of Charles II.'s concealment at the old seat of the Wyndhams after the battle of Worcester;[21] but on the spot, and though the greater part of the house has been rebuilt, one may realise the incidents in that romantic episode, for the village of Trent to-day is much the same as the village of 1651.

The manor-house of Sandford Orcas, to the north-east of Trent (which by the way now belongs to Dorset), is quite a gem of early-Elizabethan architecture, with crests upon the gable ends, and the Tudor and Knoyle arms and graceful panels upon the warm-coloured walls of Ham Hill stone. Though a small house, it has its great hall with carved oak screen; and most of the rooms are panelled, and have their original fireplaces. The wide arched Tudor gateway spanning the road bears the arms of the Knoyles, a monument to whom may be seen in the south aisle of the church close by, the tower of which rises picturesquely above the gabled roof of the manor-house. The village, the little there is of it, is buried in orchards, between which the mill-stream winds, the haunt of a colony of quacking ducks whose noisy gossip makes up for the paucity of inhabitants.

Some eight miles away, on the other side of Yeovil, there is a manor-house, which for picturesqueness must take the palm of even Sandford Orcas. This is Brympton D'Eversy, a remarkable mixture of the domestic architecture of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. One would think that the various styles would not harmonise, but they do in a remarkable degree. Add to these the styles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which are conspicuous in portions of the adjacent church, and there is indeed a field from which to study. The northern front of the mansion, with its embattled Gothic bays and rows of latticed windows, is flanked by the quaint little turreted church, and together they form a most striking group not only in outline, but attractive in colour, for grey-green lichens and the peculiar rusty tint of stone blend in perfect sympathy. Picture this house and church in crude white stone, unmellowed and toned by time, and half its charm would be gone. Does not this open up a question worth consideration? A modern house is built with conscientious exactitude in imitation of some beautiful existing example of Gothic or Renaissance architecture. Every detail is perfect, but the result is harsh and new. One must wait almost a lifetime before it makes a picture really pleasing to the eye. Therefore why not take some measures to tone down the staring stone or obtrusive red-brick before the masonry is constructed? True, there are a few exceptions where additions have been made to ancient houses, which cannot be detected; but in the case of an entirely new house, does it often occur to the builder how much more pleasing would be the result if the exterior of his house were more in harmony with the old oak fittings and ancient furniture with which it is his ambition to fill it? Would that all such houses were built of Ham Hill stone, for it has the peculiarity of imparting age much more rapidly than any other.

It is this that gives so venerable an appearance to Montacute House; for, compared with many mansions coeval with it, the ancestral seat of the Phelips family looks quite double the age. The imposing height of Montacute as compared, for instance, with Hinton St. George, gives it stateliness and grandeur, while the other has none. Like Hardwick, the front of the house is one mass of windows; but it has not that formal spare appearance, for here there are rounded gables to break the outline. In niches between the windows and over the central gable stand the stone representations of such varied celebrities as Charlemagne, King Arthur, Pompey, Cæsar, Alexander the Great, Moses, Joshua, Godfrey de Bouillon, and Judas Maccabeus. They look down upon a trim old garden walled in by a balustraded and pinnacled enclosure, with Moorish-like pavilions or music-rooms at the corners. As a specimen of elaborate Elizabethan architecture within and without, Montacute is unique. In Nash's _Mansions_ there is a drawing of the western front, which is still more elaborate in detail, and is earlier in date than the rest of the house; and this may be accounted for as it was added when Clifton Maybank (another house of the Phelips') was dismantled many years ago. But of this old house there are yet some interesting remains.[22] Inside there is a similarity also to Hardwick with its wide stone staircase and its ornamental Elizabethan doorways and fireplaces. The hospitality in the good old days was in keeping with the lordly appearance of the mansion. Over the entrance may still be read the cheery greeting:

"Through this wide opening gate, None come too early, none return too late."

But in these degenerate days the odds are that advantage would be taken of such hospitality; and one marvels at the open-handed generosity such as existed at old Bramall Hall in Cheshire, where the common road led right through the squire's great hall,[23] where there was always kept a plentiful supply of strong ale to cheer the traveller on his way. There can have been but few tramps in those days, or they must have been far more modest than they are to-day.

Montacute Priory, near the village, has a fine Perpendicular tower and other picturesque remains. To see it at its best, one should visit the village late in autumn, when the Virginia creeper, which covers the ancient walls, has turned to brilliant red. Other buildings under similar conditions may look as lovely, but we can recollect nothing to equal this old farmstead in its clinging robes of gold and scarlet.

There are many interesting old inns in this part of Somersetshire, notably in the town of Yeovil, where the "George" and "Angel" are _vis-à-vis_, and can compare notes as to whose recollections go back the farthest. The wide open fireplaces and mullioned windows of the former are of the time of Elizabeth or earlier, but the stone Gothic arched doorway and traceried windows of the latter can go a century better. But important as they both have been in their day, neither has had the luck or energy to keep pace with the times sufficiently to hold younger generations of inns subservient. The old "Green Dragon" at Combe St. Nicholas, near Ilminster, possessed a remarkable carved oak settle in its bar-parlour. It was elaborately carved, the back being lined with the graceful linen-fold panels. At the arm or corner were two figures, one suspended over the other, the upper one representing a bishop in the act of preaching. They were known as "the parson and clerk"; but when we saw the settle the "parson" was missing, having mysteriously disappeared some time before. The "clerk" was so worn out, having occupied his post so for centuries, that his features were scarcely recognisable; but who can wonder when he had been preached to for close upon four hundred years! To be "overlooked" in remote parts of Somersetshire means certain misfortune. Many a poor unoffending old woman, suspected of "overlooking" people, has been knocked on the head that her blood might be "drawn" to counteract the spell. Probably the parson's attitude aroused suspicion, and he was quietly put away; but as his head had not been broken neither had the spell, and the last we heard of the "Green Dragon" was that it had been burnt down.

The old landlady we remember had a firm belief that the death of one of her sons was foretold by a death's-head moth flying in at the window and settling on his forehead when he was asleep in his cradle. The child, a beautiful boy, then in perfect health, was doomed, and her eldest son immediately set forth with his gun to shoot the first bird he chanced to see, to break the spell. However, that night the child died; and upon the wall in a glass case was the stuffed bird as well as the moth, a melancholy memento of the tragedy of thirty years ago.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] See _King Monmouth_.

[19] Illustrations of these relics are in _King Monmouth_.

[20] The open roof of the manor-house, now a cooper's shop, is also worth inspection.

[21] See _The Flight of the King_ and _After Worcester Fight_.

[22] See illustration in _King Monmouth_.

[23] This was formerly the case at "Payne's Place," Worcestershire, a house mentioned in another chapter.

IN WESTERN SOMERSET

Some of the prettiest nooks of old-world "Zoomerzet" are to be found under the lovely heather-clad Quantock Hills. The beauty of the scenery has inspired Coleridge, Wordsworth, and many famous men, not the least of whom was poor Richard Jeffreys, who has written sympathetically of the delightful vale to the west of the range.

To the north and north-west of Taunton the churches of Kingston and Bishop's Lydeard are both remarkable for their graceful early-Tudor towers. Of the two, the former is the finer specimen of Perpendicular work, the soft salmon-yellow colour of the Ham stone being particularly pleasing to the eye. The situation of the church is fine, commanding grand views; and at the intersection of the roads to Asholt and Bridgwater one gets a glorious prospect of Taunton and the blue Blackdown Hills beyond on one side, and on the other the sea and the distant Welsh mountains.

Both churches have good bench-ends full four hundred years old, the designs upon them being as clearly cut as if they had been executed only a few years ago. One of them at Bishop's Lydeard represents a windmill, from which we gather that those useful structures were much the same as those with which we are familiar to-day.

At Cothelstone to the north, approached by a romantic winding road embosomed in lofty beech trees which dip suddenly down into a picturesque dell, the church and manor-house nestle cosily together, surrounded by hills and hanging woods. It is a typical Jacobean manor-house of stone, with ball-surmounted gables and heavy mullioned windows, approached from the road through an imposing archway, with a gatehouse beyond containing curious little niches and windows. In the gardens an old banqueting-room and ruined summer-house complete the picturesque group of buildings. The church has some fine tombs. One of the lords of the earlier manor-house reclines full length in Edwardian armour, his gauntleted hands bearing a remarkable resemblance to a pair of boxing-gloves. A descendant, Sir John Stawel, who fought valiantly for Charles in the Civil War, lies also in the church. For his loyalty his house was ruined and his estate sold by the Parliament, but his son was made a peer by the Merry Monarch in acknowledgment of his father's services. "The Lodge," an old landmark at Cothelstone, can boast a view of no less than fourteen counties, and from a gap in the Blackdown Hills, Halsdown by Exeter may be seen, while close at hand Will's Neck looms dark against the sky.

Beneath the rolling Quantocks the road runs seawards, and at Crowcombe, embowered in woods, brings us to another picturesque group: the church on one side and a dilapidated Tudor building on the other. It is called the "Church House," and, alas! by its ruinous condition one may judge its days are numbered, although its solid timber Gothic roof, now open to the sky, looks still good for a couple of centuries more. A crazy flight of stone steps leads to the upper storey, or rather what remains of it, the floor boards having long since disappeared. In the basement, nature has asserted itself, and weeds and brambles are growing in profusion. This lower part of the building was once used as almshouses, the Tudor-headed doors leading into the several apartments. The upper storey was the schoolroom, and had a distinct landlord from the basement. Difficulties consequently arose; for when the owner of the schoolroom suggested restorations to the roof, the proprietor of the almshouses declined to participate in the expense, declaring that it was his intention to pull his portion of the building down! A more striking example of a house divided against itself could not be found, hence the forlorn condition of the joint establishment of youth and age.

There are fine carved bench-ends in the church, one bearing the date 1534 in Roman figures. Upon another is represented two men in desperate combat with a double-headed dragon. In the churchyard there is a cross, and facing the village street another, the cross complete, which is exceptional.

Crowcombe Court, a stately red-brick house of the latter part of the seventeenth century, has replaced the older seat of the Carews. Among the fine collection of Vandycks is a full-length of Charles I. and his queen, given by the second Charles to the family in acknowledgment of their loyalty. Queen Henrietta looks prettier here than in many of her portraits. There is also a fine Vandyck of James Stuart, Duke of Richmond, and of Lady Herbert, and some of Lely's beauties, including Nell Gwynn and the Countess of Falmouth, whose buxom face recalls some of de Gramont's liveliest pages.

A few miles to the east of Crowcombe, on the other side of the range of hills, is the moated castle of Enmore, whose ponderous drawbridge can still be raised and lowered like that at Helmingham. It is a formidable barrack-like building of red stone, not of any great antiquity. In the earlier structure lived Elizabeth Malet, the handsome young heiress with whom the madcap Earl of Rochester ran away. Pepys on May 28, 1665, relates "a story of my Lord Rochester's running away on Friday night last with Mrs. Mallett, the great beauty of fortune and the north, who had supped at Whitehall with Mrs. Stewart, and was going home to her lodgings with her grandfather my Lord Haly [Hawley] by coach; and was at Charing Cross seized on by both horse and foot men, and forcibly taken from him and put into a coach with six horses, and two women provided to receive her, and carried away. Upon immediate pursuit, my Lord of Rochester (for whom the king had spoken to the lady often, but with no success) was taken at Uxbridge; but the lady is not yet heard of, and the king mighty angry, and the lord sent to the Tower." As may be supposed, with so flighty a husband the pair did not live happily ever after.[24]

The Enmore estate passed to Anne, the eldest of their three daughters, who married a Baynton of Spye Park near Melksham, where memories of the profligate earl linger, as they do at Adderbury.

The famous "Abode" at Spaxton, as impenetrable as Enmore although it has no drawbridge, is close at hand. An adjacent hill, locally said to be a short cut to heaven, commands a superb view of the surrounding country. The original founder of the sect could scarcely have found a prettier nook in England.

A few miles to the north-west of Crowcombe is the picturesque village of Monksilver, the church of which is rich in oak carvings of the fifteenth century. The pulpit and bench-ends are particularly fine, but the screen has been much mutilated. There are some grotesque gargoyles, one representing a large-mouthed gentleman having his teeth extracted.

Near Monksilver is the old seat of the Sydenhams, Combe Sydenham, a fine old mansion, whose lofty square tower is un-English in appearance. The house was built by Sir George Sydenham in 1580, who is locally said still to have an unpleasant way of galloping down the glen at midnight. Perhaps he is uneasy in his mind about the huge cannon-ball in the hall, which he is said to have fired as a sign to his lady-love that he was going to follow after and claim her as his bride. There are portraits of some bewigged Sydenhams of the following century, the famous doctor, perchance, and his soldier brother, Colonel William the Parliamentarian. Some rusty old swords hang on the walls, and there is a curious painted screen of Charles II.'s time which is sadly in need of repairs. The servants' hall, with its open fireplace and tall-backed settle, remains much as it has been for two hundred years or more. All these things point to the fact that the same family has been in possession for generations: at least it was owned by a Sydenham not so many years ago. An effigy of Sir George with his two wives (perhaps this is the cause of his uneasiness) may be seen in Stogumber church, about a mile away.

At the back of Combe Sydenham are the remains of an old mill. The wheel has disappeared, and the waterfall splashing in the streamlet below, together with an ancient barn adjacent, form a delightful picture.

To the west is Nettlecombe, a fine old gabled house, dating from the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, containing ancestral portraits of the Trevelyans and some curious relics, among which is a miniature of Charles the martyr worked in his own hair. The estate belonged originally to the Raleighs, whose name is retained in Raleigh Down and Raleigh's Cross by Brendon Hill.

Elworthy church, to the south-east, commands a fine position, and boasts a painted screen bearing the date 1632 and some carved bench-ends. But the churchyard looked sadly neglected and weed-grown. The great limb of a huge yew tree overhangs the stocks, which we are grateful to observe have been restored, and not allowed to decay as those at Crowcombe.

From here we went farther to the south-east in search of a place locally called "Golden Farm," or properly Gaulden, where, depicted on a plaster ceiling of ancient date, are various scenes from biblical history, from the temptation of Adam downwards. Now, whether the good gentleman who rents the farm has been besieged by classes for the young anxious to learn on the Kindergarten system, or whether the arms of the Turberville family that figure upon a mantelpiece has connected the house with a certain well-known novel and brought about an American invasion, the fact remains that his equanimity has evidently become disturbed. His door was closed, and he was proud that he could boast that he had turned people away who had come expressly across the Atlantic! Sadly we turned away, but with inward congratulations that we had not come quite so far, when, lo! the worthy farmer showed signs of relenting. We might come in for half a guinea, he said condescendingly. We thanked him kindly and declined, observing that the fee at Windsor Castle was more than ten times less. 'Tis little wonder that they call it "Golden Farm."