Part 12 (1/2)

The early chroniclers go back gloriously into the dim mists of antiquity for the origin of Totnes, and when no carping critics insisted on a.n.a.lyzing popular history and distilling all the romance out of it, the story of the town was very fine indeed. The founder of Totnes, then, was Brutus of Troy, who after long wanderings arrived in this charming bit of country, and on this hill made the great announcement:

'Here I stand, and here I rest, And this place shall be called Totnes.'

Moreover, the stone that he stepped ash.o.r.e upon is still here, and the Mayor stands on it whenever it is his duty to proclaim a new Sovereign.

The claims of Totnes have been set forth with no undue modesty. 'It hath flourished, and felt also the storms of affliction, under Britons, Romans, Saxons, and Normans. To speak somewhat of the antiquity thereof, I hope I shall take no great pains to prove it (and that without opposition) the prime town of Great Britain.' Its history is taken in grand strides. Having explained that the coming of Brutus was held by some to be contemporary with the rule of Eli as high-priest in Israel, the writer continues: 'The first conqueror Brutus gave this town and the two provinces, Devon and Cornwall, then but one, to his cousin and great a.s.sistant, Corinoeus, as is well known; whereof the western part is (as they say) called Cornwall; who peopled it with his own regiment; and being an excellent wrestler, as you have heard, trained his following in the same exercises; whereof it comes that the western men in that sport win the mastery and game wheresoever they come.... The second conqueror, William of Normandy, bestowed this town, together with Dartmouth and Barnstaple, on a worthy man named Judaeel.'

The s.p.a.ce of time between the first and second 'conquerors' does not seem to strike the historian as a rather wide gap, and the doings of the one and the other are related with almost equal confidence and with the same air of authority.

Judhael de Totnes is supposed to have built the castle, and although only the walls of the round keep now remain, the trouble of the long climb up to it is well repaid by the lovely view that is gained from the ruin. Fertility and abundance seem to be the characteristics of the land, and the ridiculous suggestion that the town's name has been corrupted from _Toute-a-l'aise_ is one shade less absurd, because that t.i.tle would be so very appropriate. Here and there a silver gleam shows where the river runs between heavily wooded banks. To the east a green and smiling country of gentle hills and valleys leads to that shade of past splendour, the Castle of Berry Pomeroy; and far away to the north-west, it is possible to see the high, sharp tors on Dartmoor.

Looking straight down, the uneven roofs seem tumbled over one another in a way that suggests that different ages have casually showered them into the little town.

Totnes received its first charter from King John, and there are few older boroughs in the country. Originally a walled town, Fore Street is still crossed by the East Gate, which has been rebuilt in comparatively modern times. Within is a room decorated by an early Renaissance frieze and 'linen-pattern' panelling. The upper stories of some of the old houses project over the lower ones, and in the High Street they jut quite across the pavements, and rest upon columns, making piazzas or covered ways along the street. Such piazzas are very uncommon in England, but there is a short one, called the b.u.t.ter Walk, at Dartmouth.

The church is a very fine Perpendicular building, of a warm rose colour, and it has a high battlemented tower from which three figures look out of their niches. Some very grotesque gargoyles peer down from the roof at intervals. The great treasure of the church is its screen, carved so finely that the pattern seems like lacework, and it is difficult to realize that it can be of stone. The main lines of the carving curve and spread upwards almost like the lines of palm-leaves, and the screen is coloured and gilded. There is another beautiful and delicate, though less elaborate, bit of carving which divides a little chapel from the south side of the chancel. Under the tower arch is a curious monument to Christopher Blackhall, who died in 1635, and his four wives, who are kneeling one behind the other. The dates of their deaths are very clearly marked by the different fas.h.i.+ons of their dresses--a compact and upstanding ruff adds to the stiff precision of the first wife's appearance; while the sloping lines of a 'Vand.y.k.e' collar embellish the dress of the fourth.

On the north side of the church stands the old Guildhall, and in front of it another tiny piazza, bordered by granite pillars. Inside 'linen-pattern' panelling lines the walls; there are carved seats all round the upper end, and in the council-chamber beyond are some fragments of fine moulding.

Before leaving the town, a curious custom practised in the eighteenth century must be mentioned--that of taking dogs to help in catching salmon. Defoe came here in his travels in the West, and saw the fish being caught. The fish, he says, in the flowing tide swim into a 'cut, or channel,' which has a 'grating of wood, the cross-bars of which ...

stand pointing inward towards one another.... We were carried thither at low water, where we saw about fifty or sixty small salmon, about seventeen to twenty inches long, which the country people call salmon-peel,' caught by putting in a net at the end of a pole. 'The net being fixed at one end of the place, they put in a dog (who was taught his trade beforehand) at the other end of the place, and he drives all the fish into the net, so that, only holding the net still in its place, the man took up two or three and thirty salmon-peel at the first time.'

He finishes the story by saying that they bought some for dinner at twopence apiece. 'And for such fish, not at all bigger, and not so fresh, I have seen six and sixpence each given at a London fish-market.'

The river leaves Totnes in broad, sweeping curves between the hills, and rolls on past the lovely woods of Sharpham, and on its course to Dartmouth pa.s.ses the early homes of two men who each played a part in English history. At Sandridge, close to the river, lived Captain John Davies, or Davis, whose name is familiar as the discoverer of Davis's Straits. Prince, who himself lived not far away, takes the fascination of Dartmouth, and the longing for the sea that Dartmouth seemed to inspire, as quite natural, and says casually that, living so near this town, 'Mr Davis had ... a kind of invitation, to put himself early to sea.'

These were in the days when the Merchant Adventurers were at the height of their importance and prosperity, and it was in the hope of opening up a trade for the woollen goods of the West-country with India and China that Captain Davis set out to look for the North-West Pa.s.sage.

To face all the hazards of this journey, so very far away from civilization, and the perils and shocks that might await him in the frozen North, he fitted out a little fleet which consisted of the 'Barke _Sunnes.h.i.+ne_, of London, fifty tunnes, and the _Moons.h.i.+ne_, of Dartmouth, thirty-five tunnes, the s.h.i.+p _Mermayd_, of a hundred and twenty tunnes, and a pinesse of tenne tunnes named the _North Starre_.'[5] But in spite of this name of good augury the little pinnace never came home again, and one can only admire with awe the daring that ventured to sail a boat of ten tons across the boisterous Atlantic into the unknown Arctic Seas. Traces of Davis's wanderings along the coasts of North America may still be found in the names he bestowed on different points. 'On sighting first the land, he named the bay which he entered after his friend, Gilbert Sound; we find also Exeter Sound, Totnes Roads, Mount Raleigh, and other familiar t.i.tles. A few years later John Davis found the right course to India and China, and introduced the trade from this country which exists to the present time.'

[Footnote 5: 'An Elizabethan Guild of the City of Exeter,' by William Cotton.]

A greater man than Davis lived farther down the river at Greenaway, opposite the pretty village of Dittisham, which, with its strip of beach and ferry, looks as if it had been 'made for a picture.' Sir Humphrey Gilbert, stepbrother to Sir Walter Raleigh, was a great man to whom Fortune was not overkind, but his 'virtues and pious intentions may be read ... s.h.i.+ning too gloriously to be dusked by misfortune.' His aims were higher than the hopes that stirred most of his contemporaries, and of his 'n.o.ble enterprizes the great design ... was to discover the remote countries of America, and to bring off those savages from their diabolical superst.i.tions, to the embracing the gospel.' He made two efforts to graft a colony with little success, but his third effort was rather happier; and having left Devons.h.i.+re in June, 1583, he 'sailed to Newfoundland and the great river of St Laurence in Canada; which he took possession of, and seized the same to the crown of England, and invested the Queen in an estate for two hundred leagues in length by cutting a turf and rod after the antient custom of England.' From the developments of that great country that are now taking place, it cannot but be interesting to look back along the vista of years to this very simple ceremony.

Later this group of emigrants lost heart, and nearly all returned to England, and possibly Sir Humphrey may have wondered whether this venture also would have but a flickering existence, and would leave no lasting result of the work on which he had spent his years and his strength and his riches. Or it may be that no doubts troubled him, for he had a 'n.o.ble and gallant spirit,' and his dauntless motto was 'Quid non?' The story of his death makes an appropriate ending to his life. He was with his colony in Newfoundland when 'necessaries began to fail,'

and he was urged to return home. He started in the _Squirrel_, a s.h.i.+p of ten tons. When they were far out at sea a violent tempest blew up, and those in the _Golden Hind_ (a larger s.h.i.+p accompanying them) saw with horror the imminent danger that their friends were in. But Sir Humphrey was quite composed, and those in the _Golden Hind_ were near enough to hear him cry 'aloud to his company, in these words: ”We are so near to heaven here at sea as at land.”' In the height of the storm the little boat was swallowed up by the waves, and all on board perished.

A portrait of Sir Humphrey hung in his grand-nephew's house at Compton, where Prince saw it. 'The one hand holdeth a general's truncheon, and the other is laid on the globe of the world, Virginia is written over; on his breast hangs the golden anchor, with the pearl at the peak; and underneath are these verses, which, tho' none of the best, may here supply the place of an epitaph:

'”Here you may see the portrait of his face, Who for his country's honor oft did trace Along the deep; and made a n.o.ble way Unto the growing fame, Virginia.

The picture of his mind, if ye do crave it, Look upon Virtue's picture, and ye have it.”'

The 'golden anchor' was a jewel which the Queen had given him as a special mark of favour, for she looked on him very graciously, in spite of the fact that his efforts did not then seem as if they would be crowned with success. A song was made about the year 1581, in which he and Sir Francis Drake divide the honours.

'_Sir Francis, Sir Francis, Sir Francis_ is come, _Sir William_, and eke _Sir Robert_, his son, And eke the good Earl of _Southampton_ Marcht on his way most gallantly on;

Then came my Lord Chamberlain, with his white staff, And all the people begun for to laugh.

And then the Queen begun to speak, ”You're welcome home, Sir Francis Drake!”

'THE QUEEN'S SPEECH.

'”Gallants all of British blood, Why do ye not sail in th' ocean flood?