discovered some thirty years ago covered with plain Purbeck slabs, and containing skeletons—a man’s and a woman’s; in all likelihood, those of the powerful Lord Briwere and his good lady. The body of the founder, it is known, was laid to rest in 1227 in the choir of the abbey church; and it is only natural to suppose, though there is no evidence to prove it, that husband and wife shared a common tomb. The bones, placed together in one of the coffins, were reinterred, while the other coffin, as I said, has been suffered to remain above-ground, a gazing-stock for posterity.
The abbey was richly endowed by its founder with lands and tenements, including the manor of Uffculme and the mill there; and his munificence was supplemented by liberal gifts from the monks of Ford and others. At the date of its surrender, February 14, 1539, the annual value of the property amounted to £300—a large income in those days.
Most of the notices relating to the abbey are drawn either from the Coroners’ or De Banco Rolls, and, as they are concerned with actions for debt or trespass, are anything but entertaining. The one exception is the account or accounts of the storming of Hackpen Manor by John Cogan, of Uffculme, his son Philip, and others, in the year of grace 1299. Entering the buildings vi et armis, they ejected the monks and lay brethren, who, after the custom of their order, were carrying on farming operations there; and beat and wounded two of the abbot’s servants to such purpose that he was deprived of their services for a year or longer. Moreover, they were said to have captured three score oxen and a score of cows, and driven them to Cogan’s manor of Uffculme, whither also they bore certain furcæ, which were there burnt.
To this grave indictment Cogan replied, denying the trespass, and alleging that the two manors adjoined, and that the abbot desired to “lift” furcæ, etc., the property of Cogan, whereupon he instructed his men to prevent him, which they did. Now as to those furcæ. Writing aforetime on the subject, I fell into the pardonable error, if error it be, of supposing that the term, being employed in an agricultural or pastoral context, denoted “pitchforks.” It is my present
belief that these furcæ were the kind of thing that gave its name to Forches Corner, just over the Somerset border—in other words, gallows. The abbot, as lord of Broadhembury, had not only assize of bread and beer in that manor, but, very certainly, a gallows. The Lady Amicia, Countess of Devon, had at least one gallows, and considering the extent of her domains, probably gallows galore; and apparently John Cogan had one. The Abbot of Dunkeswell, it seems to me, must have had at least two. If this reading be correct, the undignified squabble was all about that grisly symbol of mortality and power.
It is possible that a distorted version of this affair yet lingers in Culmstock tradition. I have heard from a Methuselah of the place that, according to an old tale, a band of freebooters named Sylvester made an eyry of Hackpen, whence they descended to the more fertile regions below, raiding the farms, and carrying off the fleecy spoil to their hold on the hill.
On the break-up of the monastery the site of the buildings, the home farm, and other lands were assigned by letters patent to John, Lord Russell, who showed himself an utter vandal. The lead of the roofs and the bells, of which there were four in the church tower, were the special objects of his rapacity; but all was grist that came to his mill, and, as the result, the fabric was left in a condition in which it was bound to become “to hastening ills a prey.” As there was never an abbey at Culmstock, either Canonsleigh or Dunkeswell probably served as a model for the ruins described in Perlycross. The latter is the more likely, owing to the presence of the “district” church built by Mrs. Simcoe, close to the remains of the ancient abbey.
At the southern end of the Blackdowns is Hembury Fort, an old British encampment, of triple formation and considerable extent, which commands perhaps the finest view in the neighbourhood. It is believed by some to have been also a Roman station—the Moridunum (or Muridunum) of Antonine. On this point, however, there is considerable doubt, there being other claimants, of which High Peak on the coast is one, and Honiton another. The very latest view of the matter is that given by Canon Raven in The Antiquary of December 1904, in which he inclines to the opinion that the legion divided the year between a winter at Honiton and a summer at Hembury, with the advantage of a strong fort to retire upon in case of Dumnonian risings.
In writing of these distant ages, I have often felt how remote they are in another sense. Such a term as “Dumnonian,” for instance, though we know its geographical significance as referring to the inhabitants of south-west Britain—how little it conveys, and perhaps can be made to convey, to us of the life that people lived, even if we are sure that beneath their breasts beat human hearts like our own, with interests and affections strong and manifold! Much gratitude, therefore, is due to the late Rev. William Barnes, author of the classic Dorset poems, for his bold attempt to reconstruct for us the mode of existence and surroundings of those ancient Britons, of whom all have heard from their childhood. This also may be poetry, but it is worth perusing only as such. The picture he describes is that of a little pastoral settlement occupying a valley, and finding refuge in time of war in a great camp that crowns a neighbouring hill; and the season is the end of summer, after the reaping of oats and rye and the mowing of lawns and meadows round the homesteads.
“The cattle are on the downs, or in the hollows of the hills. Here and there are wide beds of fern, or breadths of gorse and patches of wild raspberry, with gleaming sheets of flowers. The swine are roaming in the woods and shady oak-glades, the nuts are studding the brown-leaved bushes. On the sunny side of some cluster of trees is the herdsman’s round wicker-house, with its brown conical roof and blue wreaths of smoke. In the meadows and basins of the sluggish streams stand clusters of tall elms waving with the nests of herons; the bittern, coot, and water-rail are busy among the rushes and flags of the reedy meres. Birds are ‘charming’ in the wood-girt clearings, wolves and foxes slinking to their covers, knots of maidens laughing at the water-spring, beating the white linen or flannel with their washing bats; the children play before the doors of the round straw-thatched houses of the homestead, the peaceful abode of the sons of the oaky vale. On the ridges of the downs rise the sharp cones of the barrows, some glistening in white chalk, or red, the mould of a new burial, and others green with the grass of long years.”
Close to Hembury Fort is a house built by Admiral Samuel Graves, whose best title to fame is that he invented the lifeboat. The fort is in the parish of Payhembury. The adjacent parish of Broadhembury, a picturesque village among the hills, could vaunt in ancient days a cell of Cluniac monks belonging to Montacute Priory, Somerset; and from 1768 to 1775 the incumbent was none other than Augustus Toplady, author of “Rock of Ages.” The Grange, a fine old Jacobean manor house, long the residence of the Drewes, was built in 1610 by an ancestor of theirs, who was sergeant-at-law to Queen Elizabeth—Edward Drewe. It was modernised about the middle of the last century.
At one time the Blackdowns must have presented a very different appearance from that which they do now, and the cause of the transformation may be found in a measure passed in the thirty-ninth year of His Majesty King George the Third, up to which time the commons of Church Staunton, Clayhidon, and Dunkeswell produced little but heath, fern, dwarf-furze,[5] and very coarse, tough and wiry herbage. At the beginning of the last century these lands were taken in hand with a view to cultivation or planting.
The Napoleon of the reclamation was General Simcoe, an officer who, having greatly distinguished himself in the American War, afterwards settled down on the Blackdowns. Altogether he enclosed about twelve thousand acres, and part of his design was to build two or three farmhouses, assigning to each of them about three hundred acres. The remaining allotments he portioned out to adjacent farms belonging to him, or converted into plantations. At Wolford Lodge—the name of his residence—he carried out some interesting experiments in arboriculture.
One practice adopted at Wolford, and apparently with success, was that of pruning the young oak, the stem being left clean to a height of twenty feet, and a proportionate top being allowed. The wounds soon healed and became covered with bark,