Part 17 (2/2)

'You Parents fond that greedy-minded be, And seek to graffe upon the golden tree, Consider well, and rightfull Judges be, And give your doome 'twixt Parents' love and me.

'I was their child, and bound for to obey, Yet not to wed where I no love could lay; I married was to much and endless strife, But faith before had made me Strangwidge wife.

'You Dens.h.i.+re Dames and courteous Cornwall Knights That here are come to visit woefull wights, Regard my griefe, and marke my wofull end, And to your children be a better friend.

'And then, my deare, which for my fault must dye, Be not afraid the sting of death to try; Like as we liv'd and lov'd together true, So both at once, we'll bid the world adue.'

'The Lamentation of George Strangwidge' many times lapses into bathos, but as in a way it answers the other ballad, I will quote a few verses:

'O Glanfield! cause of my committed crime, Snared in wealth, as Birds in bush of lime, What cause had thou to beare such wicked spight Against my Love, and eke my hart's delight?

'I would to G.o.d thy wisdome had been more, Or that I had not ent'red at the door; Or that thou hadst a kinder Father beene Unto thy Childe, whose yeares are yet but greene.

'Ulalia faire, more bright than summer's sunne, Whose beauty had my heart for ever won, My soule more sobs to thinke of thy disgrace, Than to behold my owne untimely race.

'The deed late done in heart I doe lament, But that I lov'd, I cannot it repent; Thy seemely sight was ever sweet to me.

Would G.o.d my death could thy excuser be.'

Kilworthy House, which in those days belonged to the Glanvills, is now the property of the Duke of Bedford.

Tavistock seems to have maintained an open mind, or perhaps was forced into keeping open house, during the Civil War; but Fitzford House, then belonging to Sir Richard Grenville, held out resolutely for the King, until overpowered by Lord Ess.e.x. The people seem to have been rather indifferent to the cause of the war, and very sensible of its hards.h.i.+ps, for it was here suggested that a treaty might be made, 'whereby the peace of those two counties of Cornwall and Devon might be settled and the war removed into other parts.' It was a really excellent method of s.h.i.+fting an unpleasant burden on to other shoulders, but in actual warfare, unfortunately, impracticable, although the treaty was drawn up and for a short time a truce was observed.

At the end of this year (1645) Prince Charles paid a visit to the town, and was so much 'annoyed by wet weather, that ever after, if anybody remarked it was a fine day, he was wont to declare that, however fine it might be elsewhere, he felt quite sure it must be raining at Tavistock.'

One cannot help wondering if his courtiers kept to English tradition of perpetually speaking of the weather.

To walk away from Tavistock along the Tavy's bank is to follow the footsteps of that river's special poet, William Browne. His poems are not so well known as they might be, and his most celebrated lines are nearly always attributed to Ben Jonson--I mean the fine epitaph on 'Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother'--though any doubt as to the author of the lines is cleared up by a ma.n.u.script in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Not very many details of his life are known, but he had the happiness of being better appreciated by his contemporaries than by posterity, and Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton wrote complimentary verses, as a sort of introduction to volumes of his poems when they were published. Browne's work is very uneven, many of his poems are charming, some diffuse and rather poor; but he had a sincere feeling for Nature, and his nymphs and swains revelled in posies and garlands in the shade of groves full of singing birds.

In the third book of his long poem, 'Britannia's Pastorals,' there is a quaint and pretty song, of which one verse runs:

'So shuts the marigold her leaves At the departure of the sun; So from the honeysuckle sheaves The bee goes when the day is done; So sits the turtle when she is but one, And so all woe, as I, since she is gone.'

A deliciously whimsical touch marks his description of a feast of Oberon:

'The gla.s.ses, pure and thinner than we can See from the sea-betroth'd Venetian, Were all of ice, not made to overlast One supper, and betwixt two cowslips cast.

A prettier hath not yet been told, So neat the gla.s.s was, and so feat the mould.

A little spruce elf then (just of the set Of the French dancer or such marionette), Clad in a suit of rush, woven like a mat, A monkshood flow'r then serving for a hat; Under a cloak made of the Spider's loom: This fairy (with them, held a l.u.s.ty groom) Brought in his bottles; neater were there none; And every bottle was a cherry-stone, To each a seed pearl served for a screw, And most of them were fill'd with early dew.'

Now and again in his verses there peeps out a joyful pride in his county, and his love of the Tavy is deep to his heart's core.

Some way below Tavistock is Buckland Abbey, founded by Amicia, Countess of Devon, in 1278, and for long years the home of Cistercians. At the Dissolution the Abbey was granted for a small sum to Sir Richard Grenville (grandfather of the hero of the _Revenge_), who altered it into a dwelling-house. Sir Richard, his grandson, sold it to John Hele and Christopher Harrys, who were probably acting for Sir Francis Drake, and he formally bought it of them ten months later. The house was built in the body of the church, and it is still easy to trace its ecclesiastical origin from some of the windows and architecture. In the hall is a fine frieze, with raised figures in high relief and an elaborate background, the subject a knight turned hermit. The knight, wearing a hermit's robe, is sitting beneath spreading boughs, and a skull is lodged in a hollow of the tree-trunk. His charger and his discarded armour lie near him. In the same hall rests the famous drum that went round the world with Drake, the drum referred to in the traditional promise that Mr Newbolt has put into verse:

'Take my drum to England, hang it by the sh.o.r.e; Strike it when the powder's running low; If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit the port of Heaven, An' drum them up the Channel, as we drummed them long ago.'

A short distance below the Abbey, the Tavy, now broadened into a wide but still shallow stream, ripples and hurries over the pebbles in a deep valley between wooded hills. Returning to Tavistock and going up the river, one arrives at the pretty and very remote village of Peter Tavy.

The houses are scattered about in an irregular group, a stream runs through them to join the Tavy, and just above the wide bridge the brook divides, flowing each side of a diamond-shaped patch, green with long gra.s.s and cabbages. A steep slope leads up to the little church, which stands back, and a tiny avenue of limes leads up to it from the lichgate. The tower is battlemented, and the church must have been partly rebuilt, for parts of it are early English and the rest late Perpendicular. Within are slender cl.u.s.tered columns, supporting wide arches, and different designs are sculptured on the sides of the granite font.

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