Part 27 (1/2)
In 1647 Colonel Seymour's lands and goods were sequestrated, and he himself was kept either in prison or on parole all through Cromwell's days. Letters and papers of this period shed a light on the difficulties and hards.h.i.+ps that in some cases befell the families of Cavaliers. Sir Thomas Fairfax intervened on behalf of Mistress Seymour, who was then at the estate of Maiden Bradley in Wilts.h.i.+re, saying that he had forbidden the soldiers to molest her in any way, and begging the Committee for the County to insure that no civilian 'should prejudice her in the enjoyment of her rights.' The lady had a humbler but very earnest advocate, a servant of Sir Henry Ludlow's, who had been in danger of being ruined 'had she not been means for my preservation.' She had begged his liberty of Colonel Molesworth when the King's soldiers were hunting for him, in order to exchange him for one of their side taken prisoner, 'a blackamoor.' Mistress Seymour, too, gave this poor man a good price for some wheat, 'which then none else would do, and had she not bought it, it is very likely that it would have been taken away by the soldiers, as the corn in the barn was.'
Mistress Seymour was evidently strong-minded as well as charitable, as is shown in a letter written by her husband from the Marshalsea, at Exeter,--an appeal to be given a hearing. He complains that being 'hurried away to prison and no bail taken, no crime or accusation produced, makes me sigh when I remember the liberty due to a freeborn subject in England'; and the thrust is followed by a threat: 'If this request be denied, I have found a way to be even with them; for, if not granted, I intend to send up my wife.... And I pray advise the Council of State from me, in relation to their own quiet, let them grant my request rather than be punished with her importunity.'
The Council were evidently impressed by Colonel Seymour's wisdom, for two months later they granted him a pa.s.s to return home. His liberty was, however, very much clipped, and rather more than two years later the following 'parole' was exacted of him: 'Undertaking to remain at the dwelling-house of Mr Holt in Exeter, and when required to deliver himself a prisoner to Captain Unton Crooke.' _Signed._
Sir Edward Seymour died in 1659, and Colonel Seymour, now Sir Edward, became a member of Parliament a year or so later. His letters to Lady Seymour from London are amusing from their variety of news and gossip.
Sir Edward's style was terse, not to say jerky. One letter he begins by bitter complaints of their 'most undutiful son,' his 'obstinacy' and 'untowardness,' and then pa.s.ses on to speak of his own imminent return.
Then: 'I was this day sennight, which was the last Sat.u.r.day, upon the scaffold, where I saw Sir Henry Vane's head severed from his shoulders.... The Queen perfectly recovered. Cherries are cried here in the streets for a penny a pound.'
Sir Edward received scanty reward for all his sacrifices, but he was reappointed Governor of Dartmouth, and in 1679 his son writes to tell him that he had been 'p.r.i.c.ked Sheriff for the County of Devon ... by the King with all the kindness imaginable,' and an a.s.surance that if Sir Edward felt the work too much for him, a subordinate should be found and the 'chargeable part' made easy. The Earl of Bath wrote by the same post: 'His Majesty declared in Council that he made choice of you, not only because you were the best man of your county, but also a person on whom he could by long experience place his greatest confidence.'
Sir Edward died in the winter of 1688, and his son became the fifth Sir Edward Seymour of Berry Pomeroy in succession.
The new Sir Edward was a very distinguished man, who in 1672 had been unanimously chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. He was the Seymour whose influence Lord Macaulay rated so highly, and whose support was extremely valuable to William of Orange when he arrived in England.
Unfortunately, few of Sir Edward's papers, or papers referring to him, are now to be found. A long and carefully balanced epitaph in Maiden Bradley Church describes him as
A MAN OF SUCH ENDOWMENTS AS ADDED l.u.s.tRE TO HIS WHOLE ANCESTRY, COMMANDED REVERENCE FROM HIS CONTEMPORARIES, AND STANDS THE FINEST PATTERN TO POSTERITY.
THE SENATE, THE BULWARK OF THE ENGLISH LIBERTY, IN WHICH HE PRESIDED FOR SEVERAL YEARS, FOUND HIS ELOQUENCE AN ADVOCATE, HIS INTEGRITY A GUARDIAN, HIS VIGOUR A CHAMPION FOR ITS PRIVILEGES.
About five miles north-east of Berry Pomeroy stands Compton Castle, and there is a tradition that they were once connected by a subterranean pa.s.sage. Compton is a very interesting example of a fortified manor-house, built in the early part of the fifteenth century. It stands low on the slope of a narrow, winding green valley, and on the west the hill has been cut back to make room for the walls.
The castle faces east, a garden-plot lies in front, and the foundations of an ancient wall divide it from the lawn beyond. Close to the central door stands the base and broken shaft of a stone cross. The picturesque western front of the castle is gabled and embattled, and a very high archway is built in the centre of the wall. The colour is difficult to describe, for the castle is very much overgrown with ivy and a faint green lichen has crept over the stones in many parts, but the shades pa.s.s from a rich cream colour to a soft grey. A very marked feature is 'the great number of projections carried on machicoulis, through the openings of which stones and other missiles could be thrown on the heads of a.s.sailants.' Both the chief doorway and a postern gate to the south were defended by portcullises.
On the north side an Early Perpendicular window marks the chapel. The central doorway opened into the large and almost square guard-room, and on the north side of this room a pointed doorway leads into the chapel, which keeps some of its special characteristics. At the east end a square s.p.a.ce is sunk in the wall above the spot where the altar stood, and in this s.p.a.ce the faint traces of a fresco can still just be seen.
In the wall that shuts off the guard-room is a cinquefoiled piscina and a four-light window, the stonework of which is like that in the east window, and this window allowed anyone in the guard-room to join in Divine service. In the west wall is a hagioscope, and from a room next the chapel a newel staircase led to the priest's room on the floor above. A little window with two cinquefoiled openings in his wall enabled the priest to look down into the chapel., and the height of the sill from the floor suggests that it may have served him as a _prie-dieu_. The moulded base of a stone cross still remains over the ancient belfry, which rises out of a ma.s.s of ivy.
There are a bewildering number of rooms, many now inaccessible, and the height of the walls shows that there were two or three, and in the north-east block four, stories. The banqueting-hall, forty-two feet in length and twenty-three in width, has utterly disappeared, and only the gable-marks of the roof against the buildings on the south side have enabled Mr Roscoe Gibbs to draw his very careful deductions. In the kitchen the huge fireplace, stretching the whole width of one wall, still keeps its great fire-bars; next the kitchen is the steward's room, above which two stories still stand, though the upper one is absolutely in ruins.
Outside these rooms is a large open s.p.a.ce, now gra.s.s-grown, and the sprays and buds of a cl.u.s.ter-rose tap against the ma.s.sive walls. Close by lies a heavy round of granite, slightly hollowed out towards the centre, which is shown as one of the stones used for grinding corn. In an upper room is a hiding-place for treasure--two long, shallow cavities in the floor, of which there cannot have been the slightest sign when the floor was covered with planking. A vaulted pa.s.sage leads to the south court, and in one corner of this court rises a watch-tower over a horrible little dungeon or chamber of torture.
The walls throughout the whole building are from two and a half to four feet thick, and a thick and solid wall nearly twenty-four feet high protects an inner court, where even in January the turf is firm, springy, and close. At the farther end, on steps leading into the garden, a peac.o.c.k looks wonderfully appropriate, and some white fantails strutting in front of the heavy walls add very much to the picture.
There is scarcely any sign of the old 'pleasaunce,' except a low and fairly broad box-hedge, which runs each side of a path in the present garden, where a few violets and one or two strawberry-blossoms are tokens of the softness of the air.
The Castle has changed owners many times. 'Stephen' held it of Judhael of Totnes; then it pa.s.sed to the De la Poles; Lady Alice de la Pole gave it to the Comptons, and seven generations later a Compton heiress brought it, in the reign of Edward II, to the family of Gilberts, of whom Sir Humphrey Gilbert was a descendant. The Gilberts seem to have lived alternately at Compton and on their older property, Greenway, and with one interval the castle belonged to them till nearly the end of the eighteenth century. The only trace of them now to be seen is in the spandrels of a small cinquefoil-headed opening on the projecting gabled wing to the south of the central door. Each spandrel is sculptured with their crest, a squirrel holding a hazel branch.
Mr Eden Phillpotts has painted the ruins with a characteristic touch:
'At gloaming time, when the jackdaws make an end of day, when weary birds rustle in the ivy ere they sleep, hearts and eyes, gifted to feel and see a little above the level prose of working hours, shall yet conceive these heroes of old moving within their deserted courts. Some chambers are still whole, and bats sidle through the naked window at the call of dusk; some are thrown open to sun and rain and storm; the chapel stands intact; the scoop for holy water lies still within the thickness of its wall. But aloft, where rich arras once hid the stone, and silver sconces held the torch, Nature now sets her hand, brings spleenwort and harts-tongue, trails the ivy, the speedwell, and the toad-flax....
'Ivy-mantled, solemn, silent, it stands like a sentient thing, and broods with blind eyes upon ages forgotten; when these grey stones still echoed neigh of horse and bay of hound, rattle of steel, blare of trump, and bustle of great retinues.'
The castle of Okehampton stands about half a mile from the town, and looks on one side over fertile hills and valleys, woods, and rich meadows, and the gleaming waters of the West Okement, on the other towards the bold, changeless outlines of the outer barriers of Dartmoor.
The Castle was once surrounded by its park. Risdon mentions that originally there were 'Castle, market, and park adjoining.... The park, which containeth a large circuit of land, King Henry the eighth, by the persuasion of Sir Richard Pollard, disparked and alienated the same.'
The Okement, rippling over a rocky bed--the name _uisg maenic_ means the 'stony water'--hurries past the foot of a knoll on which the castle rises out of a cloud of green leaves that shelter and half hide the walls. Protected by the river and a steeply scarped bank on the south, a natural ravine on the north, and a deep notch cut on the western side, the ma.s.s of slate rock that it stands on was a point of vantage. On the crest of the hill the keep stands on a mound, with which two sets of buildings were connected by curtain walls. These buildings stretch down the slope to the east, the s.p.a.ce between the two blocks narrowing towards the gateway.
Mr Worth observes that in Devons.h.i.+re and Cornwall most of the smaller Norman keeps were round, as at Totnes, Launceston, and Plympton; but the stronger castles had square keeps. Okehampton, though not a large or very strong fortress, was distinguished by its square keep, and 'occupies what may be called a middle position.'