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Understanding
Development
• ••
Understanding
Development
Theory and Practice
in the Third World

John Rapley

L Y N IN E

RI E N N E R.

PUBLISHERS

B O U L D E R

L O N D O N
Published in the United States of America and elsewhere in 1996 by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301

© 1996 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rapley, John, 1963-
Understanding development : theory and practice in the Third World
/ by John Rapley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55587-604-8 (alk. paper).
ISBN 1-55587-625-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Developing countries—Economic policy. 2. Structural
adjustment (Economic policy)—Developing countries. 3. Economic
development. I. Title.
HC59.7.R272 1996
338.9'009172'6—dc20 96-17326
CIP

Printed and bound in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements

(K) of the American National Standard for Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

5 4 3 2 1
 Contents
• • •

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

1 Development Theory in the Postwar Period 5

2 State-Led Development in Practice 27

3 The Neoclassical Answer to Failure 55

4 Neoclassical Reform in Practice 79

5 Development Theory in the Wake of Structural Adjustment 119

6 The Political Economy of Development 135

7 Conclusion 167

Suggested Readings 183

Index 199

About the Book 205

v
 Acknowledgments
• ••

Many people have had a hand in the creation of this book, from its
genesis while I was a postdoctoral fellow at Queen Elizabeth House,
Oxford University, to its completion now, when I am a lecturer in the
Department of Government at the University of the West Indies,
Mona. Generous support from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada made it possible for me to devote two
years of my life to research. Yet, the completion of the book would
have been difficult were it not for the support I received here at the
university from the Institute of Business and from the Mona Campus
Research and Publications Fund.
Frances Stewart, Barbara Harriss-White, Jacques Barbier, Mark
Figueroa, Ashu Handa, Roger Tangri, Colin Leys, Gavin Williams,
and Bob Rapley all assisted me with their useful insights and com-
ments along the way, as did three anonymous reviewers at Lynne
Rienner Publishers. The librarians at Queen Elizabeth House were as
helpful as ever. Tom Forrest helped me with his characteristically
deep insights, offered to me over our breakfasts at the St. Giles Cafe.
Lynne Rienner Publishers, as usual, has proved to be a steadfast sup-
porter, and I have in particular to thank Lynne Rienner, Gia
Hamilton, and Jacqueline Boyle. Of course, at the end of the day,
none of these people bear responsibility for the contents of this book.
As always, I thank my wife and parents. In the end, none of this
would have been possible were it not for their inexhaustible support.
Finally, I owe my boys the gratitude they earned from forcing me out
of bed each morning at an earlier hour than I might have chosen,
whereupon I sat down to write this book. There will be a trip to the
beach for them when this is done.

—J.R.

vii
Understanding
Development
•••
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 Introduction
• • •

The left is dead; long live the left.

In some respects, this phrase captures the present state of the
development debate. The terms "left" and "right" distinguish com-
peting sides of the debate in terms of their attitude to the state's role
in the development process. In the twentieth century, the left—which
included not only socialists and communists but also modern liber-
als—generally, if not always, favored using the state as an agent of
social transformation. The state, it was held, could both develop
economies and alter societies in such a way as to make them suit
human needs. Underlying this was a belief that the state could
embody collective will more effectively than the market, which
favored privileged interests. Although the old right, from conserva-
tives through to fascists, also favored strong states and held an equal
suspicion of the market, as a political force it declined throughout the
post-World War II period. In its place has emerged a new right based
on resurgent classical liberalism, which regarded the state as a poten-
tial tyrant and venerated the freedom and productive potential of the
market.
In the early postwar period, development thought, like conven-
tional economic wisdom, was really neither left nor right. There exist-
ed a broad consensus that economies needed more state intervention
than they had been given in the past (in fact, in Latin America it was
right-wing authoritarian regimes that began employing statist devel-
opment strategies). Meanwhile, the horrors of the Depression and
postwar political developments had given Keynesian economics
pride of place in both academic and policy circles in the First World.
This influenced Third World academics, whose confidence in the
state was further reinforced by the emergence of structuralist eco-
nomics. Aware of the imperfections in the market and global capital-
ism, and confident that the state could overcome them, development
theorists proposed models that assigned the state a leading role in the
economy. Pretty soon, the left came to espouse these models. Many
Third World governments, many of which had just won their inde-

1
2 • INTRODUCTION

pendence, eagerly adopted the models, for they seemed to promise a

rapid journey into the industrial age.
At first, the models seemed to deliver just that. With the postwar
world economy booming, demand for Third World products rose.
This provided Third World governments with the capital they need-
ed to develop their industry and infrastructure. However, as time
went by, problems in these strategies came to light. It became increas-
ingly clear that many Third World economies were growing more
slowly than required to continue improving the standards of living of
the world's poorest citizens. The industrial development that took
place consumed more resources than it generated, a waste exacerbat-
ed by inefficient states. When the postwar boom came to an end in
the 1970s, the shortcomings of state-led development became plain.
It was around this time that the right began to resurface.
Dissident voices belonging to an old school, neoclassical theory, had
for decades been firing occasional volleys from the sidelines of devel-
opment studies. They claimed that the main problem in the Third
World was the state itself, and that rapid development could only
come about if the state was rolled back. At the same time, as earlier
development models became compromised, new left-wing schools of
thought emerged to claim that the market itself was the problem, and
that if anything was needed, it was a greater role for the state. The
development debate polarized. By the late 1970s the left had become
politically weak, its theorists engaged either in internecine squabbles
or in strident defenses of orthodoxy. The time was ripe for neoclassi-
cal theory to start a revolution. First World electorates and govern-
ments, anxious for solutions to the worsening economic situation in
their countries, looked to the new ideas and turned to the new right.
This initiated a long attack on the state and the other institutions,
such as unions, which were seen to be hindering the operation of the
market. First World donor agencies began pressuring Third World
governments to make similar changes in their policies. Many Third
World governments acceded reluctantly, because the debt crisis had
weakened their bargaining power with their creditors. Others rolled
back the state more eagerly, because local constituencies had already
started pushing for reform.
Less state, more market: This was the essential thrust of the strat-
egy, known as structural adjustment, which was soon applied in
much of the Third World. The idea seemed sound, but as time would
tell, structural adjustment contained its own problems. Its shortcom-
ings, which grew more evident with the passage of time, shed a new
and damaging light on neoclassical theory. Structural adjustment
yielded some positive gains in the more advanced Third World coun-
 INTRODUCTION • 3

tries. However, in the poorer countries, those most in need of rapid

change, it was less effective and may even have done more harm than
good. While out of power, neoclassical writers, like any opposition,
could proclaim their theory's perfect virtue and point to the imper-
fections of the governing party. Once in power, though, neoclassical
theorists had to defend policies that were not working in quite the
way the public had been led to expect. Meanwhile, its journey
through the political wilderness had liberated the left. No longer
required to defend sacred truths and orthodoxies—virtually all of
them were dead beasts anyway—it was free to begin a new debate.
Whereas neoclassical theory remains dominant in practice, in the aca-
demic realm the pendulum has begun to swing back toward the
left—though perhaps not as far as it went in the postwar period, and
not even toward the same corner. For if the old left is dead, a new left
has arisen to take its place.
And yet, in many parts of the Third World the pendulum may
swing neither to the left nor the right; it may not be swinging at all.
As we enter the twenty-first century, the really troubling questions
are not those posed by the left or the right, but those raised by the
experiences of people in much, perhaps most, of the Third World
who have benefited little from the development debate, and who are
unlikely to do so soon. One thing seems clear in much of the Third
World today: What works on paper may not work in practice. Neither
neoclassical theory, nor the new statist models, may offer much to the
world's poorest countries. We are left to wonder if an entirely new
development debate is about to begin.
This book charts the rise of statist development theory in the
early postwar period (Chapter 1) and its failures in practice (Chapter
2). Chapter 3 looks at the neoclassical prescription for remedying the
Third World's underdevelopment; Chapter 4 considers the uneven
results the neoclassical recipe produced. Chapter 5 examines the con-
temporary development debate, focusing on the rise of the new stat-
ist development model—the developmental state—that has won so
much admiration among the left. Chapter 6 discusses the feasibility
of this new statism, which appears in doubt. This leads us to consid-
er a new development debate (Chapter 7) and the elements that cur-
rent research tells us will have to be brought into future development
theories.
 . 1 .
DEVELOPMENT THEORY
IN THE POSTWAR PERIOD
• • •

Early in the summer of 1944, allied troop columns rolled eastward

through France. Berlin lay on the horizon. World War II had entered
its final phase and allied victory was just a matter of time.
Having begun to ponder the possible shape of the postwar
world, the allied leaders held a conference to discuss the structure
they would give to the world economy. This meeting took place at a
hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. It began within a month of
D-Day and lasted three weeks. The absence of the USSR signaled the
imminent split of the world economy into two blocs, the Western and
capitalist one, and the Eastern and state-socialist one. The Bretton
Woods conference would provide the blueprint for the postwar capi-
talist economy.
The intellectual shadow of the leading economic thinker of the
age, John Maynard Keynes, loomed large over the conference, and
Keynes made important contributions to its proceedings. Chief
among the concerns of the participants was the desire to create a
favorable international trading environment. They wanted to put
behind them the conditions that had worsened the Depression.
Monetary instability and lack of credit had inhibited trade among
nations and led governments to adopt protectionist policies when
they could not pay for their imports. To this end the Bretton Woods
conference gave rise to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which
became known as the World Bank. In 1947 the Bretton Woods system,
as it came to be known, was rounded out by the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). All were designed to create as stable
and freely flowing an international trading environment as possible.
GATT was a treaty organization that aimed over time to reduce
tariffs, or taxes on imports, thereby lowering the barriers to trade
among member states. The IMF was set up to provide short-term
loans to governments facing balance-of-payments difficulties, the

5
6 • D E V E L O P M E N T THEORY

problem a government encounters when more money leaves its econ-

omy through imports, capital flows, and spending abroad than enters
it. In the past, governments had dealt with this problem by taking
measures to reduce their imports, but this brought retaliation from
the countries whose exports they were blocking. The IMF was to lend
governments the money they needed to cover their balance-of-pay-
ments deficits, so that governments would no longer resort to the sort
of tactics that set off protectionist spirals, reducing trade. Member
governments would pay into the IMF and then draw on its deposits
when necessary. The IMF later extended credit beyond its members'
resources. However, in cases in which governments repeatedly ran
balance-of-payments deficits, the IMF was allowed to demand, as the
price for further loans, government reforms to rectify structural prob-
lems in the economy—in effect, the IMF was to be the world econo-
my's conservative and parsimonious banker, slapping the wrists of
governments that had been careless with their checkbooks. The
World Bank was created to invest money in the reconstruction of war-
ravaged Europe. When it had completed this task it turned its atten-
tion to the development of the Third World.
Finally, to ensure that goods flowed freely across borders, the
world needed a universal medium of exchange, a currency all partic-
ipants in the economy would accept. Because the World Bank did not
have the power to issue currency, the U.S. dollar filled the role by
default. By U.S. law, every thirty-five dollars any individual or gov-
ernment accumulated could be exchanged for one ounce of gold,
from U.S. gold reserves held at Fort Knox. In effect, this made the dol-
lar as good as gold, and virtually all governments, including those in
the Soviet bloc, were willing to accept U.S. dollars for payments.
The Bretton Woods conference failed to take Keynes's advice to
create an International Trade Organization, which would have
enjoyed more power than did GATT to enforce the compliance of
member states, and would also have been able to stabilize commodi-
ty prices. No institution could discipline any government into
improving its trade practices. As a treaty organization, GATT could
only rule when member governments were entitled to retaliate
against other governments; it could not end protectionism, though it
could discourage it and give it some order. Importantly, GATT did
not deal with nontariff barriers such as quotas. As tariff barriers fell,
governments began using nontariff barriers to block trade, which
undermined GATT. Keynes had also recommended that the IMF be
able to pressure balance-of-payments surplus countries into opening
up to trade. Instead, the IMF could only pressure those countries to
which it made loans, namely, deficit countries. Pressure on surplus
 KEYNES IN THE FIRST WORLD • 7

countries would have benefited the world economy by expanding

trade, whereas pressure on deficit countries to curtail their spending
slows the world economy. 1

• THE IMPACT OF KEYNES IN THE FIRST WORLD

The Bretton Woods conference was concerned primarily with

establishing a favorable international environment for economic
growth, but Keynes's influence was evident in another way: His
thinking had come to exercise a profound impact on a generation of
political leaders. Keynes's recipe for economic development was
accepted not only for the international system but for domestic
economies as well. His vision of a smoothly running capitalist econ-
omy involved a much greater role for the state than had been tolerat-
ed in classical and neoclassical models of development, which had
been more concerned with the free market.
Classical political economy, whose key contributors included
Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, and J. B. Say, and whose most last-
ing expression is found in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, stressed
the role of the free market and individual liberty in economic success.
Individuals, unfettered by state interference, would use their ingenu-
ity to the greatest extent. Division and specialization of labor would
allow resources to be used in the most efficient and productive man-
ner possible. If all individuals pursued their narrow self-interests, all
of society would benefit inadvertently. State interventions to relieve
poverty would inhibit initiative, and would stifle investment because
they would rely on increased taxes. Therefore, the prescribed role for
the state in the economy was a minimal one. Smith identified only
three functions for the state to perform: defense of national sover-
eignty, the protection of citizens' rights against violation by one
another, and the provision of public or collective goods. Public or col-
lective goods are those that society needs but the market will not nor-
mally provide because the gains are so widely dispersed. An exam-
ple is traffic signals: Almost everyone depends on them, but no
individual will bear their cost. The state fills the gap by exacting a
small payment from everyone in order to cover the cost of installing
traffic signals wherever they are deemed necessary.
The other important feature of classical political economy was its
conception of citizens' rights, which it was the state's task to defend.
Classical political economy, along with classical and neoclassical lib-
eralism, conceived of individual rights in negative terms. Citizens
8 • DEVELOPMENT THEORY

enjoyed certain liberties from coercion, such as freedom to practice

religion, trade, and economic enterprise, and these could not be vio-
lated by either the state or other individuals. Citizens did not, how-
ever, possess positive rights, that is, rights to something, whether it
be employment, housing, education, or the like. This conception of
rights emerged only with the development of modern liberalism, and
has always been rejected by neoclassical thinkers. To the latter, free-
dom has always meant simply freedom from physical restrictions
imposed by another person or by the state. The price of this negative
freedom is inequality: Because people have different aptitudes,
endowments, and inheritances, some will prosper and others will
not. Neoclassical thinkers, along with their classical forebears, have
always insisted that it is not the state's task to redistribute resources
to equalize society. They contend that, in fact, the least well off in
society benefit more from this inequality—because it speeds up eco-
nomic progress, which in turn benefits them—than they do from an
egalitarian society that inhibits economic progress.
At any rate, classical political economy saw the capitalist system
as a complex and delicate mechanism that could easily break down
once the state started meddling with it. Left to itself, the free market
was seen to be self-regulating: Even when it appeared to have broken
down, it was still functioning and would repair itself naturally.
Hence the term laissez-faire capitalism, which means precisely a cap-
italism which is left alone. For example, in an economic depression
there is a slowdown of economic activity and widespread unemploy-
ment. The economy appears to have stopped functioning. But classi-
cal political economy, and the neoclassical economics this tradition
spawned in the late nineteenth century, sees a silver lining to the gray
cloud. With so many people unemployed, there are more people
competing for fewer jobs; they must offer to work for less than their
competitors. Thus, labor prices drop, and employers respond by hir-
ing more workers. More workers with more money to spend trans-
lates into increased demand for goods and services, which in turn
causes producers to expand their activity, which compels them to hire
more workers, and so forth.
Keynes had no problem with the market economy. He liked the
machine, but judged it to be in need of improvement if it was to oper-
ate well. In particular, Keynes took issue with the conventional eco-
nomic assumption that during a downturn, labor prices drop, caus-
ing employers to hire more workers and thereby mop up
unemployment. The Depression led Keynes to believe that high
unemployment could persist indefinitely. He advocated the use of
fiscal policy—government spending—to deal with recession. This
 KEYNES IN THE FIRST WORLD 9

was an instrument that virtually all governments were then loath to

use. (Even Roosevelt's New Deal eschewed deficit spending, which
Keynes favored.) By building roads and dams, for example, a gov-
ernment could create jobs, which in turn would create more demand
for goods and services, which would cause factories to increase their
output and then to take on more workers, and so on in an upward
spiral. Once good times returned, the government could prevent the
economy from overheating by taking money back out of it. In short,
Keynes's prescription for improving the capitalist economy was for
governments to save in good times, spend in bad.
Keynes was not the first to advise governments to spend their
way out of recessions. However, his innovation was to call on gov-
ernments to borrow, if necessary, to pump money into the economy. 2
The loans would be repaid later from the earnings generated by a
newly robust economy. Neoclassical theorists worried that such pub-
lic spending would worsen inflation, as more money would chase
fewer goods. But Keynes argued that this expansionary fiscal shock
would not cause inflation because increased investment would occur
along with increased demand. It all heralded the advent of managed
capitalism; this revolution in economic policymaking overthrew the
doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism that the Depression had discredit-
ed.
In the late 1940s, governments in Western Europe and North
America started taking Keynes's advice. By then, the USSR had
begun to consolidate its hold on Eastern Europe by establishing
puppet regimes in the six countries it had liberated from Nazi rule
(East Germany, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and
Czechoslovakia). This solidified the iron curtain that Winston
Churchill said had fallen across Europe, dividing it in two. It was
becoming obvious that the new Soviet bloc was not going to join the
economic order prescribed at Bretton Woods. The dust was slowly
settling on Western Europe, though, even if the future looked uncer-
tain immediately after the war, especially with communist parties
threatening to take power in Italy, France, and Greece. Capitalism
only firmly reestablished its hold on Western Europe when the
United States instituted the Marshall Plan, whereby it injected bil-
lions of dollars into the reconstruction of Western Europe's ravaged
infrastructure. At the same time, liberal democratic parties commit-
ted to a more equitable social order came to power in Western
Europe.
What emerged in the politics of Western Europe, and indeed in
virtually all the developed capitalist countries, has come to be known
as the postwar Keynesian consensus. Not only did this innovation
10 • D E V E L O P M E N T THEORY

safeguard capitalism, it also won the support of the Western world's

working classes. Western governments made full employment a top
priority, along with improved social benefits such as public educa-
tion, housing, and health care. Postwar capitalism was to be both
redistributive and managed. Western governments, through nation-
alization of declining or important private companies, regulation of
the economy, public spending, and other means, involved themselves
far more deeply in the management of their economies than ever
before. In its new version, capitalism was to be not only more effi-
cient, but indeed more humane. It was a recipe for social peace like
none seen before: Investors would grow richer—Keynes himself had
grown rich on the stock market—but so too would workers, and
poverty would become a thing of the past. Scholars proclaimed that
correct economic management would prevent there ever being
another Depression, and that the high growth rates that followed in
the 1950s were a permanent feature. 3 All of this was possible because
the ingredient missing from earlier capitalism—an appropriate inter-
ventionist role by the state—was now in place.

• THE EMERGENCE OF THE THIRD WORLD

This was the political and intellectual climate into which the
Third World was born at the end of World War II. The industrial
world had polarized between capitalism and Soviet communism,
while a new form of statist liberalism had taken hold in the capitalist
West.
The term "Third World" originally denoted those countries that
were neither advanced capitalist (the First World) nor communist
(the Second World). In practice, Third World came to refer to all
developing countries, including those that called themselves com-
munist.
A number of features characterize Third World countries. First,
by comparison with the advanced capitalist economies of Western
Europe and North America, their per capita incomes are low. This
poverty translates into shorter life expectancies, higher rates of infant
mortality, and lower levels of educational attainment. Typically, a
high proportion of the population is engaged in agriculture. The sec-
ondary, or manufacturing, sector occupies a relatively less important
place in the economy than it does in the First World, and exports
come mainly from the primary sector (the cultivation or extraction of
natural resources, as in farming or mining). Such a characterization,
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Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Richard Cosway’s gift to the town of which he was a native. The larger
painting on the other side of the vestry door, the subject of which is “The
Adoration of the Magi,” is a very fine work by Gaspar de Crayer, and an
almost exact reproduction of a picture by Rubens in the Antwerp gallery.
It would be improper, I suppose, to refer to Tiverton without mentioning
Lord Palmerston, whose Parliamentary connection with the borough
extended from 1835 to 1865—just thirty years. As an Irishman, the popular
statesman must have been perfectly at home in the town, which is always
lively at election times, and during his early acquaintance with it, had an
unenviable reputation as a rival to Donnybrook Fair. Most of the inhabitants
had their chosen inn, the tradesmen being accommodated in the parlour, the
artisans in the bar, and the labourers in the kitchen; and the consumption of
beer and spirits almost exceeds belief. One would make ten glasses of grog
his nightly quantum, another was not content with fewer than eighteen,
while a third drank gin and water by the bucketful. Every now and then
women would have a fight in the streets. A ring would be formed,
whereupon the trulls grappled with each other, and with their long hair
streaming down their backs, and blood down their faces, presented a pitiful
and degrading spectacle. Things are better now.
Speaking of the Tiverton inns reminds me that John Ridd and Fry
lodged, on the eve of their departure, at the “White Horse,” in Gold Street.
This tavern is still in existence, and as it is not specially picturesque, the
reader may be at a loss to conceive why Blackmore should have selected
this particular house of entertainment. The novelist, however, knew what he
was about. In the seventeenth century it may have been the most important
inn in the town. On the entry of the Royalists into the town in the month of
August, 1643, they were stoned by the mob, many of whom were killed or
wounded by the fire of the soldiers; “and,” says Harding, in recounting the
circumstance, “the effect produced was a dispersion of the remainder, when
one, John Lock, a miller, was taken and executed at the sign of the White
Horse, on the north side of Gold Street” (History of Tiverton, vol. i., p. 58).
 CHAPTER VI

THE WONDERS OF BAMPTON

The country between Tiverton and Bampton reminds us how comparatively

new are many of our main roads. Beginning with the town, although
Bampton Street is one of the principal thoroughfares, this is not the case
with Higher Bampton Street; and of both it may be stated with absolute
assurance that they do not owe their names to accident or caprice. They
were christened thus because they were a direct continuation of the old road
from Bampton, the whole of the present route through the picturesque Exe
valley not having been constructed until long after the days of John Ridd
and the less mythical Bampfylde Moore Carew. For this reason “Jan,” on
his way home, would have proceeded first to Red Hill, with the inn at its
foot;[7] and hereafter we shall cease to wonder that Carew and his
companions fell in with the convivial gipsies at the same “Brick House,”
since it adjoined the king’s highway. Hence, he climbed the steep ascent of
Knightshayes, from whose summit he might have cast a last lingering look
at the town. Afterwards he would, for some time, have seen nothing but the
hedgerows and a stretch of desolate road.
Even to Ridd, however, the glory of the Exe was not utterly forbidden,
inasmuch as from Bolham onwards there was some kind of road. Moreover,
on the opposite side of the river was an accommodating lane, from which
lesser lanes scamper off to the “weeches” of Washfield and Stoodleigh
Church, and which, steadily pursued in its northward trend, has coigns of
vantage imparting grateful visions of Rock, with its sweet old cottages, and
the romantic Fairby Gorge, and the woody amphitheatre of Cove Cliff,
together with such pretty accessories as a wayside spring, trim dairies, rich
orchards, a modern suspension bridge, an old-world bridge, and beside it a
quaint little lodge, with its porch and its bonnets of thatch—a miracle of
rustic beauty! But it really matters not from which side the landscape is
viewed, the prospects are equally charming; and the only cause for regret,
from an æsthetic standpoint, is the railway, whose rigid track, bisecting the
valley as far as the Exeter Inn, brusquely intrudes on its soft contrasts of
forest, stream, and lea.
From the inn, one branch of the new road still follows the river through a
sylvan paradise, while another, nearly parallel with an older lane, yclept
Windwhistle, leads on to Bampton along the tributary Batherum, On
quitting that highway of loveliness, the Exe, one is conscious of a difference
—the outlook is more tame. However, as one approaches the town, the
scenery improves, and of the town itself it must be conceded that it is
beautifully situated among the hills.
For me, Bampton is a place with sacred memories; but I am well aware
that, to sound its depths of sentiment, an initiation is necessary. A stranger
strolling listlessly through the churchyard, or seated with callous heart
against a walled-up yew—to him it is all a void. What can he know of all
the unrecorded history which, for certain souls, has transfigured the spot
into a shrine? Moreover, although a fair resident informed me recently that
Bampton “stands still,” I have an uncomfortable conviction, forced upon
me in a brief visit, that this is not quite the case, that it has exchanged some
of its old Sabbatic calm for an irreverent spirit of enterprise and strivings to
be “up-to-date.” Thanks to a disciple and friend of the late Mr Cecil
Rhodes, the quarries have been galvanised into stupendous energy, and,
aided by the contrivances of modern science, are now working at high
pressure, and all Bampton is cock-a-whoop over the same. Well, well, one
must have patience. Only suffer me to write of my Bampton, which was
also Blackmore’s Bampton, not the Bampton that now is.
In those far-off days of 1891-3, the quarries were not wholly quiescent;
even then they were shedding their riches, but in a decent, leisurely way,
leaving many a grass-grown plot and fern-clad lovers’ walk, and tokens of
vanished industry in what we termed “the rubble-heaps.” The distinctive
feature of Bampton stone is that it contains a large proportion of “chert” or
flint, which makes it good for roads. The principal structures in the
neighbourhood—including the county and other bridges—are built of it,
and, judging from the age of the church tower, these black limestone beds
have been worked for at least six hundred years.
The topography asks some explaining. A noter hies here, noting.
Somebody has told him of Bampton Castle, and forthwith the heady ass
swoops on a circular shed on the quarry plane as a relic. To be sure, at the
south-east entrance of the town there are plentiful suggestions of military
operations. The wind-swept knoll, whence you catch the first glimpse of
Bampton, would be a fine station for a park of French artillery, to which the
exposed railway station, with its less warlike engines, could offer but a faint
resistance. A few paces further on, and you come to what is uncommonly
like a bastion, crowned by the pseudo-Bampton Castle. Of the real Bampton
Castle, at the opposite end of the town, nothing remains but the site and
some rather doubtful fortifications in what is now an orchard.
But there was a castle, for in 1336 Richard Cogan had a licence from the
Crown to castellate his mansion-house at Bampton, and to enclose his wood
at Uffculme, and three hundred acres for a park. The exact site of the castle
is believed to have been on a lower level, but closely adjacent to the
existing Mote. The origin and purpose of this great mound, which is
artificial, is not perhaps free from obscurity, but a former resident favours
the following elucidation: The name of

COMBE, DULVERTON (page 91.)

the place is derived from the Saxon word mot or gemot (a “meeting”), and it
was probably the seat of the Hundred-mote, or court of judicature, Bampton
being the head manor of the hundred.[8] It was also a burgh, or fortified
place, and by the laws of King Edgar the Burghmote, or Court of the
Borough, was held thrice a year. The parish, it may be observed, is still
divided into Borough, East, West, and Petton quarters, and the ancient
office of portreeve is yet retained. Some time before Domesday and the
Geldroll, the king gave Bampton to Walter de Douay. From Walter’s son,
Robert de Baunton, the lordship passed through the Paynells to the Cogans,
and from the Cogans to the Bourchiers, Earls of Bath, who, so far as is
known, were the last owners of the barony to reside at the castle. The
Bourchier knot is to be seen in the church—on the screen and the roof-
bosses.
Apart from such rather dry particulars, it is not much that I can tell you
of the public annals of Bampton, but one morsel relating to the Bourchier
reign you must swallow, if only for its rarity. In May 1607, Walter Yonge, of
Colyton, thus wrote in his diary: “There were earthquakes felt in divers
parts of this realm, and, namely, at Barnstaple, Tiverton, and Devonshire;
also I heard it by one of Bampton credibly reported that there it was felt
also. And at Bampton, being four”—Tush, Squire Yonge, it is full seven
—“miles from Tiverton, there was a little lake which ran by the space of
certain hours, the water whereof was as blue as azure, yet notwithstanding
as clear as possible might be. It was seen and testified by many who were
eye-witnesses, and reported to me by Mr Twistred, who dwelleth in the
same parish, and felt the earthquake.”
Can it be that this “little lake”—good Devonshire for running water—
was the shut-up and buried, but by no means dared or dead, Shuttern
stream? Perchance it was. Flowing under broad Brook Street, in times of
flood he emerges and revenges himself for his confinement, spreading
across the roadway, and swamping the sunken cottages, and waxing a lake
indeed, in the Biblical acceptation of the term. But the Shuttern was not
shut up or buried for many a year after the miracle. He flowed muddily
along in open channel, though straitly enclosed by banks and spanned at
intervals by bridges—a poor copy of a Venetian canal and a rare playground
for the oppidan ducks. Now they have to waddle their way, and a long way
it is for some of them, to the Batherum, a few, it may be, tumbling down the
hill from Briton Street. And let not Master Printer, in his wisdom, correct to
“Britain Street,” as he hath aforetime been moved to do. For “Briton” is the
recognised and official spelling, and who is he that he should alter and
amend what has been approved by lawful authority?
The Conscript Fathers of the town are greatly exercised at such odious
disguisings of the true and proper form, which they rightly decline to
sanction or accept. I am with them, heart and soul. Here in Beamdune, in
this very street, the ancient Britons—’twas in 614—fought a great fight for
freedom against the West Saxons, and there were slain of them forty and
two thousand. The present inhabitants are descended from the vanquished,
the Britons. You doubt it? Then little you know of their intermarriages. An
outsider has no chance. Why even the pedlars and pedlaresses complain of
Bampton’s closeness. “They’re no use,” they exclaim, “they deal only with
their own people.” You still doubt? Then I renounce you as a heathen man
and a publican.[9]
Bampton’s chief boast is its fair, which is held on the last Thursday in
October, and attracts thousands of visitors, many of them coming from
considerable distances. It is not easy to say precisely why, since there are
other places nearer the moor, but for a long succession of years the town has
served as the principal mart for the wild Exmoor ponies, deprived of which
the fair would no doubt rapidly dwindle. These shaggy little horses—a good
number of them mere “suckers”—are sold by auction, and the incidents
connected with their coming and going, and their manners in the sale-ring,
constitute the “fun of the fair.”
On the last occasion when I travelled to Bampton Fair, my compartment
was entered by a gipsy belle with abundance of raven hair in traces, the
dark complexion of her race, the regulation earrings and trinkets, and much
conversational fluency. She had come up from Exeter on the chance of
meeting with some of her people whom she had not seen for several years.
That brought to my recollection a prevalent belief that the Romany folk
have a septennial reunion, no doubt intended to be cordial and friendly in
the extreme. Nevertheless, I can answer for it that the intention is not
always fulfilled, for on one fair day two rival tribes fought a pitched battle
with blackthorns, etc., in the orchard of the Tiverton Hotel. And the women
will fight like the men, and with the men. They are artful beggars. A gipsy
matron guided round a youngster of three or four years, with his small legs
already encased in trousers, to claim a penny, because on one hand he had
little excrescent thumbs. The boy could hold a penny between these thumbs,
and, on being given a coin, was told to say “Thank you,” his mother
expressing her gratitude with the wish, “May you enjoy the lady you
loves!”
It is a safe assumption that no one visits a place of the size of Bampton
—at all events, at ordinary times—without having a look at the church. Ten
years ago you would have been rewarded with the spectacle of high pews,
over the backs of which I can remember feminine eyes taking stock of the
congregation. Nose and mouth were not visible, and consequently the fair
damsels had somewhat the appearance of hooded Turkish ladies. Now that
Bampton Church has been swept and garnished and the arcade straightened
—it fell over quite two feet and crushed the timbers in the aisle—the
building hardly seems the same, but the most valuable features, to an
antiquary, remain untouched.
Entering the chancel from the churchyard, you will find against the north
wall fragments of bold and graceful sculpture, with tabernacle work,
tracery, shields, the symbol I.H.S., and the Bourchier knot and water
bouget, or budget, as it is sometimes written. Perhaps “bucket” may be
permissible as a variant, since the bearing, which is in the form of a yoke
with two pouches of leather appended to it, was originally intended to
represent bags slung on a pole which was carried across the shoulders—an
arrangement adopted by the Crusaders for conveying water over the desert.
To return to the fragments, they were part of two ancient monuments which,
according to the Rev. Bartholomew Davy, formerly stood in the chancel; on
their removal, about a hundred years ago, the sides were used to line the
wall.
That the monuments covered the remains of Sir John Bourchier, knight,
Lord Fitzwarner, created Earl of Bath July 9, 1536, and those of his father,
is certain. The will of the former, bearing date October 20, 1535, and
proved June 11, 1541, expressly directs that his body shall be buried in the
parish church of Bampton, Devon, in the place there where his father lies
buried, and that a tomb or stone of marble be made and set over the grave
where his body shall be buried, with his picture, arms, and recognisances,
and the day and the year engraven and fixed on the same tomb within a year
after his decease. During the restoration the workmen discovered under the
place where the organ now stands, a vault containing several ridged coffins,
believed to be those of members of the Bourchier family, but, as the dates
were not taken, this is merely a matter of speculation.
Behind the organ is a triptych of black marble, one compartment of
which perpetuates the memory of a lady. The two others contain the
following inscriptions:—
 “Vnder lyeth the body of Arthur the sone of John Bowbeare of this
Town, Yeoman, who departed this life the 17 day of December Anno Dom
1675.”
“Here vnder lyeth ye body of John the sone of John Bowbeare of this
Town, Yeoman, who departed this life the 12 day of May Anno Domi
1676.”
According to local tradition, Arthur and John Bowbeare were giants, like
John Ridd; and it will be noted as a further coincidence that they were of
the yeoman class. The name is still preserved in Bowbear Hill, to the south-
east of the town, and in Higher and Lower Bowbear Farms. Another
interesting point is that John Ridd may have entered the town of his fellow-
giants, who were still alive, though soon to die, not by the old Tiverton
road, but by an ancient track which ran down Bowbear Hill. This track, now
disused, was an old Roman road, and, having been paved, is still known as
Stony Lane.
Giants are said to be usually short-lived—a charge which cannot be laid
against the Vicars of Bampton. On consulting the list I find that from 1645
to 1711 the living was held by the Rev. James Style, from 1730 to 1785 by
the Rev. Thomas Wood, and from 1785 to 1845 by the Rev. Bartholomew
Davy. In the case of the last-mentioned divine—familiarly known as “old
Bart Davy”—the patience of some member of his flock was evidently
exhausted, for one fine morning there was found, nailed to the church door,
the following lamentation:—

“The Parson is a-wored out,

The Clerk is most ado;
The Saxton’s gude vor nort—
’Tis time to have all new.”

According to the son of the last parish clerk of Bampton, there was a
servant of Mr Trickey, of the Swan Inn, named Joe Ridd, or Rudd, who
amused the townspeople of a generation or two ago with stories of the “girt
Jan Ridd,” of Exmoor, ostensibly an ancestor. One of these stories was that
the huge yeoman, “out over,” broke off the branch of a tree and used it as a
weapon. This circumstance gives special point to the statement in chapter
liii. of Lorna Doone, that “much had been said at Bampton about some
great freebooters, to whom all Exmoor owed suit and service, and paid
them very punctually.” Moreover, in Mr Snow’s grounds at Oare is a
mighty ash, whose limbs incline downwards, they (it is said) having been
bent out of their natural set by the constraining power of the matchless
Ridd.
Blackmore not only conducts his hero and heroine through Bampton as a
place on their line of route, but alludes to it respectfully (see chapter xiii.)
as one of the important towns on the southern side of the moor, though he
dare not for conscience’ sake compare it with metropolitan Taunton.

A BIT OF OLD DULVERTON.

 CHAPTER VII

WHERE MASTER HUCKABACK THROVE[10]

The stage from Bampton to Dulverton was not easy for John Ridd and his
serving-man, nor is it easy for us. From the very heart of the town is a
toilsome ascent to High Cross, fitly so named, and reputed to be haunted.
Chains have been heard to rattle there, and the enemy of mankind is alleged
to have a predilection for the spot. On this subject an old Bamptonian once
told me an amusing story. In the days when the “bone-shaker” wooden
bicycle was a novelty, and the Barretts (relations of Mrs Barrett Browning)
resided at Combehead, someone belonging to the house was riding down
the hill in the twilight on his machine, which was rattling and creaking to a
merry tune. Half-way down he encountered a labourer, who, never having
seen or heard of anything of the kind, and totally at a loss to account for the
phenomenon in the “dimpse,” as he would have called it, incontinently
jumped to the conclusion that the strange shape advancing towards him was
that of Apollyon, and, in abject terror, turned and fled.
Whatever the explanation may be—whether it is the beetling trees or the
unfrequentedness—there is no doubt, as is proved by the universal
testimony of those who have used the road, especially by night, that it
differs from most roads in being distinctly uncanny.
Combehead is the property of the lord of the manor (Mr W. H. White),
and the manor is, roughly speaking, the parish. But just as there are wheels
within wheels, so there may be manors within manors, and it happens that
Mr Wensley, an excellent yeoman who lately purchased the farm which he
had previously occupied as a tenant—Birchdown, at the right base of the
hill—is also a lord, though he modestly disclaims any intention of
proceeding to the Upper House of Parliament. Locally, however, he has his
rights, and I believe the other lord has to pay his lesser brother “quit-rent”
for certain land “within the ambit” of the manor of Bampton.
From the summit of Grant’s Hill one gains the first sight of Somerset,
and very prepossessing one finds it, with the twin valleys of the Exe and
Barle cleaving the high ground, and Pixton enthroned between. By their
junction the two rivers form a wide basin in which lies the township of
Exebridge. This, as will be shown, was the scene of one of the exploits of
the famous Faggus. There is nothing uncanny about Exebridge; indeed, it
may be called an open, sunny hamlet. Nevertheless, the river here has its
black pool, to which was “banished”—when or for what reason I cannot say
—Madam Thorold, of Burston, an old house in the neighbourhood. In like
manner, but rather less cruelly, Madam Gaddy, of Great House, Bampton,
was “banished” to Barton, with leave to return at a cock’s-stride a year.
When she gets back, she will be horrified to find her grand old mansion
gone and a modern public-house usurping its name and place. Similarly, the
late Captain Musgrove, of Stone Farm, Exford, is reputed to have been
conjured away by so many parsons to Pinkery Pond, whence he is on his
way back at the conventional cock’s-stride.
As chance wills, without going out of my way, I have it in my power to
supplement these brief, but poignant, accounts of the supernatural with
other and more detailed ghost-stories derived from the history or traditions
of the Sydenham family. Close to Dulverton Station are two roads
branching off to the left; either of these will conduct you to the village of
Brushford, and from there to the entrance to Combe, a beautiful Elizabethan
manor-house built in the usual shape of an E. The Sydenhams were a
distinguished Somersetshire family, and, although some of its branches are
extinct, and others fallen from their high estate, there are left ample proofs
of its former greatness, and, if I may be permitted to say so much of those
whom I have been privileged to know as friends, “still in their ashes glow
their wonted fires.”
It was in 1568 that John Sydenham bought the manor of Dulverton from
Francis Babington, a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, but the connection
of the family with Dulverton is of much longer standing; and as a John de
Sydenham is mentioned as marrying Mary, daughter and heir of Joan
Pixton, of Pixton, in the fourteenth century, this may perhaps be taken as
the period of their first settlement in the neighbourhood. They had other
homes in Somerset—notably at Brympton d’Evercy, near Yeovil, now the
property of Sir Spencer Ponsonby Fane; and the canopied monument,
erected in the little church hard by, to a Sydenham by a Sydenham, is worth
going a day’s journey to see.
So far as the house and estate of Combe are concerned, they first came
into the possession of the Sydenhams through the marriage of Edward, son
of John Sydenham, of Badialton (Bathealton), with Joan, daughter and heir
of Walter Combe, of Combe, in 1482. Part of the original mansion still
remains, and is used as servants’ quarters; the house, however, was rebuilt
during the reign of Elizabeth, and probably towards its close, as two
medals, struck to commemorate the defeat of the Armada, were found,
some few years ago, beneath the floor of the entrance porch. The main
entrance of the older building appears to have been in the east wing, where
cross-beams, over what were once two very wide doorways, are still to be
seen. The second doorway opened into the inner court or quadrangle. The
stone, a species of shillett, was quarried near the house, and, instead of
mortar, clay was largely used. A better sort of stone was employed in the
later building, with plenty of lime and sand. The oak work is magnificent.
There was a close connection between the Sydenhams of Combe and
those of Brympton. Humphry, well-known as the “silver-tongued,”
Sydenham, was a scion of the latter branch. He entered at Exeter College,
Oxford, became Fellow of Wadham in the same university, and then
chaplain to Lord Howard, of Escrigg, and Archbishop Laud successively.
Appointed rector of Pockington and Odcombe, he resided in the latter place
(Tom Coryate’s native village); and his preferments included a prebendal
stall at Wells. On the establishment of the Commonwealth, he was deprived
of his living by the Commissioners, and retired to Combe, where he
performed the church service for tenants and others who chose to attend in
the chapel-room over the hall. This eloquent divine was buried at
Dulverton.
Major Sir George Sydenham, another brother of Sir John Sydenham, of
Brympton d’Evercy, and a knight-marshal in the army of Charles I., had
married his cousin Susan, daughter of George Sydenham, of Combe; and,
whilst staying with his wife at her father’s house, received an urgent
summons to accompany his brother on some public occasion. Nothing more
was heard of him until one night, as his wife was sleeping peacefully, he
appeared to her in his military dress, but deathly pale. Starting up in
affright, she exclaimed that her husband was dead, and announced her
intention of joining him. Accordingly, the next morning she set out, and on
the way was met by a messenger who unluckily confirmed her
presentiment, saying that her lord had died suddenly.[11]
 Ever since then the spirit of the major has had an uncomfortable trick of
turning up at unexpected hours in the mansion in which he made his first
apparition. One day Mrs Jakes, a tenant of the family, was ascending the
stairs, when she met a strange figure coming out of one of the rooms, and,
according to her account, motioned as if he would snuff the candle for her.
She was not alarmed, because Sir George looked kindly on her, and it was
only later that she remembered the story of the ghost.
More extraordinary still were the circumstances of another visit. When
the late rector of Brushford was a young man, he invited a college-friend to
stay with him. The evening of his arrival was spent in the usual way, with
plenty of fun and pleasantry, after which the party broke up for the night.
The following morning the guest came down in the same good spirits, but
he had a tale to tell.
“You fellows thought you were going to frighten me last night,” he
observed. Everybody disclaimed such an intention, and begged to know
what he meant. There were signs of incredulity on the part of the collegian,
and then he was induced to explain that an old cavalier arrayed in a wide
cloak and Spanish hat had presented himself at his bedside. The spectacle,
however, had given him no concern, as he had taken it for a practical joke.
Major Sydenham’s portrait was painted at Combe, and is still in the
possession of the family. It is that of a man with the pointed beard and
moustache of the period, wearing a cavalier’s hat and feather; and within
living memory was concealed behind curtains. In view of what was said
about the subject, this was not unnatural, but the picture itself had a peculiar
quality. A boy, it is remembered, refused to look at it, and hid under the
table, because the eyes followed him.
I have not yet done with the Sydenham phantom. As may easily be
supposed, the country-side has its legends of these great people, who, it is
averred, drove a carriage with six or eight horses shod with silver. Amongst
the legends is one that narrates the laying of Major Sydenham’s ghost,
whose visits became so frequent and inopportune that the family at Combe
resolved on serious measures to prevent their recurrence. They
communicated with the Vicar of Dulverton, desiring him to perform the rite
of exorcism, and accordingly that divine, attended by his curate, proceeded
to the large upper room still known as “the chapel,” where, as we have seen,
the “silver-tongued” Sydenham had so often read prayers under the
Commonwealth. At the conclusion of the service the man-servant was
ordered to lead a handsome watch-dog to Aller’s Wood, on the border of the
present highway to Dulverton, and there release him. Particular instructions
were given him on no account to hurt or ill-use the animal, but these he
seems to have disobeyed. The result was a sudden flash of lightning,
followed immediately by a loud clap of thunder, in the midst of which the
dog disappeared. On returning to the house the terrified emissary reported
the occurrence, but the opinion was expressed that the spirit had been
effectually laid.
The country-side, however, was unwilling to resign its ghost, and,
amongst other “yarns,” the following has been told. There is a stone
staircase at Combe, and one step was always coming out. If it was put back
one day, it was found dislodged the next; and this was believed to be Major
Sydenham’s work. At length the two Blackmores, father and son, were sent
for. They were masons of Exebridge, and skilled men at their trade, of
which they were proud. They thought they had secured the step in its place
firmly.
“Damme, Major Sydenham, push it out if

TORR STEPS, HAWKRIDGE (page 109.)

you can,” exclaimed one of them. No sooner said than done.

I now come to what may be either the basis or a variant of the main
tradition, unless, as may well be the case, it is an entirely independent
narrative—namely, a circumstantial relation quoted in the Treatise of the
Soul of Man, which edifying composition was published in 1685. It is, word
for word, as follows:—
“Much to the same purpose is that so famous and well-attested story of
the apparition of Major George Sydenham to Captain William Dyke, both
of Somersetshire, attested by the worthy and learned Dr Thomas Dyke, a
near kinsman of the captain’s, and by Mr Douch, to whom both the major
and captain were intimately known. The sum is this:—The major and
captain had many disputes about the Being of a God and the immortailty of
the Soul, on which points they could never be resolved, though they much
sought and desired it, and therefore it was at last fully agreed betwixt them,
that he who died first should on the third night after his funeral, come
betwixt the hours of twelve and one, to the little house at Dulverton in
Somersetshire; and the captain happened to lie that very night which was
appointed in the same chamber and bed with Dr Dyke. He acquainted the
doctor with the appointment, and his resolution to attend the place and hour
that night, for which purpose he got the key of the garden. The doctor could
by no means divert his purpose, but when the hour came he was upon the
place, where he waited two hours and a half, neither seeing nor hearing
anything more than usual.
“About six weeks after, the doctor and captain went to Eaton, and lay
again at the same inn, but not the same chamber as before. The morning
before they went thence the captain stayed longer than was usual in his
chamber, and at length came into the doctor’s chamber, but in a visage and
form much differing from himself, with his hair and eyes staring and his
whole body shaking and trembling. Whereat the doctor, wondering,
demanded, ‘What is the matter, cousin captain?’ The captain replies, ‘I have
seen my major.’ At which the doctor seeming to smile, the captain said, ‘If
ever I saw him in my life, I saw him but now,’ adding as followeth. ‘This
morning (said he) after it was light, someone came to my bedside, and
suddenly drawing back the curtains, calls, ‘Cap, cap,’ (which was the term
of familiarity that the major used to call the captain by), to whom I replied,
‘What, my major.’ To which he returns, ‘I could not come at the time
appointed, but I am come now to tell you that there is a God, and a very just
and terrible one, and if you do not turn over a new leaf, you will find it so.’
This stuck close to him. Little meat would go down with him at dinner,
though a handsome treat was provided. These words were sounding in his
ears frequently during the remainder of his life, he was never shy or
scrupulous to relate it to any that asked him concerning it, nor ever
mentioned it but with horror and trepidation. They were both men of a brisk
humour and jolly conversation, of very quick and keen parts, having been
both University and Inns of Court gentlemen.”
The intimacy to which this narrative bears witness, though easily
accounted for in officers of the same regiment, is further explained by the
fact they were near neighbours at home. The Sydenhams, as has been
shown, dwelt at Combe, and the Dykes, I may now add, at Pixton, the
former residence of the Sydenhams, whilst the salutation “Cap, cap”
indicates much friendliness. The Dyke dynasty came to an end when Sir
Thomas Acland (seventh baronet) married Elizabeth Dyke, and joined her
estates at Dulverton and elsewhere to his own vast patrimony. With them I
am not concerned, more than to state that they were the grandparents of
John Dyke Acland, who wedded in 1771 the Lady Christian Harriet
Caroline Fox-Strangways, sister of Stephen, first Earl of Ilchester.
In the commonplace book of Thomas Sayer, parish clerk and
schoolmaster of Dulverton, I find the following entries relating to the
family:—
“Jno Dyke Acland, Esq., married Jany 7, 1771. The above Jno Dyke
Acland born Feb. 18, 1746, and died Nov. 15, 1778. The old Sir Thos. Dyke
Acland, Father of above Jno Dyke Acland, born Aug. 12, 1722, and died
Feby 20, 1785.”
The same manuscript includes particulars regarding Pixton House, which
prove the existing structure, the “frozen music” of which is superbly
classical, to be differently laid out from its predecessor, which we may
conjecture to have been of some type of English domestic architecture, and,
according to Saver’s measurements, contained some fine rooms. The old
house was pulled down in February 1803, and the new, built by Hassell, of
Exeter, was finished in November 1805. This work was carried out on the
initiative of Lady Harriet Acland, after whom the private road through the
serried woods of the sequestered Haddeo valley is named “Lady Harriet’s
Drive”—doubtless, because she ordered its construction.
Two or three years ago Mr Broomfield, of Dulverton, showed me an old
picture, dim, dirty, and discoloured, yet significant. Through the crust of
time one could discern a man, a woman, and a boat; and the attitudes and
certain of the details convinced me that the faded, and not very valuable,
heirloom represented a scene in the life of the great lady of Pixton, to which
she must have looked back with horror, and her posterity will ever refer
with pride. I will try to interpret that picture, and conjure up the scene it so
feebly portrays.
It was the year 1777, and Major Acland’s grenadiers, forming the
advanced guard of General Fraser’s brigade, were advancing against the
American insurgents. Lady Harriet had already endured cruel privations,
and in the course of the previous year had nursed her husband through a
dangerous bout of sickness, contracted in the campaign. Now it had begun
again. Only a short time before, the tent they were sleeping in had caught
fire, and most of their clothing had been burnt. It was winter, and bitter
cold.
Now, however brave a woman may be, unless she is a professed
Amazon, she is not expected to fight, and, as an action was about to take
place, Acland requested his wife to remain with the baggage. In a small log-
hut with three other ladies—the Baroness Ruysdael, Mrs Ramage, and Mrs
Reynell—Lady Harriet spent hours of agonising suspense, the high notes of
the incessant musketry fire mingling with the diapason of the artillery, to be
varied erelong by the groans of the wounded borne into their place of
shelter, and littering the ground around.
After a while the news reached Mrs Ramage that her husband had been
killed. Then came another message that Lieutenant Reynell had been
dangerously wounded; and finally, at the close of the day, Lady Harriet
received the information that Major Acland, seriously hurt, was in the hands
of the enemy.
With equal courage and affection, the devoted woman resolved to go in
search of him, and that without delay. Accordingly, with Dr Brudenell,
chaplain of the regiment, she entered a small boat and proceeded down the
river to the enemy’s outposts. Here they were challenged by the sentry, and
Brudenell, hoisting a white handkerchief on a stick, attempted to explain
their errand. The sentinel, however, proved obdurate, not only refusing to
carry any message to the officer in command, but warning them not to
move, or he would fire on the boat. So all through that inclement night,
insufficiently clad, without a particle of food, and in imminent danger of
becoming a target for the foe, they sat and waited.
 With the morning their situation improved. The general, on being made
cognisant of the facts, received the lady with soldierly sympathy, and
accorded her full permission to attend on her husband until his recovery.
Soon after they returned to England, and to Pixton, but Colonel Acland
was born to ill-luck. He fought a duel on Bampton Down, November 11,
1778, with Captain Lloyd, an officer of his own regiment, whom he had
offended by praising the humanity of the American people, and caught a
chill. Four days later he was dead.
Lady Harriet had two children—Elizabeth Kitty and John Dyke. The
latter, after succeeding to the baronetcy, died at the age of seventeen, whilst
his sister married, in 1796, Lord Porchester (afterwards second Earl of
Carnarvon), and died in 1816. Lady Harriet outlived both husband and
children, dying in 1818.
The present possessor of Pixton is the Dowager Countess of Carnarvon;
and her sons are the lineal descendants of the intrepid woman whose
adventures I have described.
Pixton Park, with its beeches and herd of fallow deer, and Lady Harriet’s
Drive, flanked on each side by gorgeous oak woods or oak coppice, vocal
with streams, and centred by brown Haddon, are among the features which
enable Dulverton to maintain its proud claim to extraordinary beauty of
scenery. In this respect it has no superior in the West Country, and
Tennyson, who visited the neighbourhood not long before his death, went
away delighted with it. An account of this visit appears in the life of the
poet by his son, the present Lord Tennyson; and, although rather inaccurate
in some of the details, yet, as a piece of impressionism, deserves to be
reproduced.
“In June, Colonel Crozier lent us his yacht, the Assegai, and we went to
Exmouth, and thence by rail to Dulverton—a land of bubbling streams, my
father called it.
“Lord Carnarvon had told him years ago that the streams here were the
most delicious he knew.
“We drove up the Haddon valley, and to Barlynch Abbey on the Exe.
The ragged robin and wild garlic were profuse. We returned by Pixton Park.
“The Exe is ‘arrowy’ just before its confluence with the Barle, running,
as my father remarked, ‘too vehemently to break upon the jutting rocks.’
We sat next on a wooden bridge over the Exe, and he said to me, ‘That is an
old simile, but a good one: Time is like a river, ever past and ever future.’
“In the afternoon, we drove through the Barle valley to Hawkridge, then
to the Torr Steps, high up among the hills, with an ancient bridge across the
river, flat stones laid on piers. Some tawny cows were cooling themselves
in mid-stream; a green meadow on one side, on the other a wooded slope.
‘If it were only to see this,’ he said, ‘the journey is worth while.’
“We climbed Haddon Down [Draydon Knap?], and then to Higher
Combe—a valley down which there was a most luxuriant view, the
Dartmoor range as background, almost Italian in colouring.”
Lord Tennyson adds, that, at Dulverton, his father began the Hymn to the
Sun in a new metre, for his “Akbar.”
A most exquisite view is to be obtained from Baron’s Down, situated on
the lofty height of Bury Hill. Formerly the seat of the Stucley Lucases (who
were as great in stag-hunting, or nearly so, as Tennyson was in poetry), it
afterwards served as the country-house of Dr Warre, Headmaster of Eton,
who resigned his tenancy, much to the regret of his neighbours and friends,
as recently as last year.
Of Dulverton town, as distinct from its environs, it is impossible to say
much. It is, however, one of the chief centres of Exmoor stag-hunting and
fishing, and the hotels, which thrive on these attractions, provide adequate
accommodation. Owing to the constant stream of fashionable visitors from
all parts of the world, Dulverton, though in point of size a mere village,
wears, during the season, a quite cosmopolitan aspect; and, as if to
emphasise its superiority to other rustic communities, the enterprising
inhabitants have lately caused to be installed a system of electric lighting by
means of high poles with wire attachments.
Here, it will be remembered, dwelt Master Reuben Huckaback, John
Ridd’s maternal uncle, who, when bound on the back of the frightened
mountain pony, described himself as “an honest hosier and draper, serge
and long-cloth warehouseman, at the sign of the Gartered Kitten, in the
loyal town of Dulverton.” Huckaback, I am disposed to think, was
Blackmore’s creation, the name in itself being suspicious. What is
Huckaback? Nuttall defines it as “a kind of linen with raised figures on it,
used for tablecloths and towels”—the sort of thing that a shopkeeper in
Uncle Ben’s line would be likely to sell. Blackmore, no doubt, somewhat
exaggerates the commercial advantages of Dulverton, but in the good old
days, tradesmen managed to subsist very comfortably, and even to retire on
a competence. The premises now occupied by Mr Bayley were probably
those Mr Blackmore had in his eye, though their spick-and-span appearance
does not suggest anything venerable. The proprietor, however, has good
warrant for ascribing a decent antiquity to the house, whose traditional sign
is the Vine, not the Gartered Kitten. That it may have been partially
remodelled or reconstructed since the seventeenth century, is readily
granted, as being in the nature of things, but, having been the head shop at
Dulverton time out of mind, it is, at all events, in the apostolic succession.
Some Dulverton streets bear interesting names. Thus we have Rosemary
Lane and Lady Street. The latter was formerly much narrower at its
entrance into Fore Street, and an old inhabitant once told me that he
believed that anciently it had been built over, and that the front of the
superincumbent structure was adorned with an image of the Virgin Mary.
The widening process involved the demolition of two ancient cottages,
which had formed the Nightingale Inn; and amongst the débris was
discovered an old coin, on seeing which a local connoisseur forthwith
pronounced it Spanish, adding that it had been probably left by the Dons
when they invaded England in 1600. A companion denied that England was
ever invaded by the Spaniards, but the other would not be contradicted. “He
knowed they did, and it weren’t likely they could pass Dulverton without
stopping for a drink.” In point of fact, the coin was a poor specimen of a
sixpenny bit, struck in 1566.
 CHAPTER VIII

BROTHERS BARLE AND EXE[12]

It is now time to quit Dulverton, and one has to face the somewhat complex
question in which direction one’s steps should next be turned. There are
three main routes—by the railway to Barnstaple; by the “turnpike” to
Dunster and Minehead; and by one of several roads to Simonsbath, the
heart of the moor. All these ways lead to interesting places—places much
too interesting to be passed by; and it is at one’s choice which to seek out
first. That is assuming that one intends to establish Dulverton as one’s base,
making longer or shorter excursions to the spots hereafter to be named. To
recommend such a course, however, would be obviously impolite to other
towns equally avid of patronage. They must all be visited in turn—so much
is certain.
As a start must be made, and a selection may not be avoided, I will fall
back on the line I always followed as a boy, and once more breast Mount
Sydenham, with its chaplet of firs. When the panting and perspiring
traveller reaches a turn of the road he may hap to espy a hollow in a field on
the left. That is Granny’s Pit, where an old woman with dishevelled tresses
has been viewed, bewailing her daughter. A few more paces bring us to the
grove of firs, whence the sinuous Barle may be surveyed far below in all his
sylvan glory. This may be Blackmore’s “corner of trees,” if Ridd followed
this route, and not Hollam Lane, which runs parallel with it. Stepping back
into the lane, one soon finds oneself on Court Down, which, though not of
any great extent, is a genuine bit of moorland “debated” by green fern, and
purple heather, and golden gorse, embosomed in which there may stand at
gaze fleecy, white-faced sheep of the horned variety peculiar to Exmoor.
Nature’s “much-admired confusion,” however, is exhibited on a much
grander scale in the undulating sweep of Winsford Hill, which, from
Mountsey Hill Gate to Comer’s Gate, boasts four miles of continuous
brake. This free and joyous expanse is the native heath of Sir Thomas
Acland’s wild Exmoor ponies, which, in their shaggy deshabille may at
times be seen grazing on the rough sward, or scampering playfully over
moss and ling. They suffer none to approach.
At Spire Cross is a confluence of roads, that to the left being one way to
Torr Steps, an old Keltic bridge formed of large, loose slabs laid athwart
low piers, which bears a family likeness to Post Bridge on Dartmoor, but
the latter is grooved for chariots. It is well to point out that this charming
vestige of prehistoric civilisation—a gem in a lovely setting—is by no
means isolated. The remains of several British castles are to be found in the
neighbourhood, Mountsey Castle being quite near; and up on the hill, not
far from Spire Cross, but in the opposite direction, is a menhir. The stone
carries an inscription, which, though extremely rude and partially
obliterated, is yet distinctly legible; and the monument is supposed to mark
the burial-place of a Romanised British chieftain—the “grandson of
Caractacus,” which is the English rendering of “Carataci Nepos.” Dr
Murray recently took a “squeeze” of the face of the stone, from which a cast
was made, now at Oxford; and both he and Professor Rhys, who
accompanied him, were convinced of the genuineness of the scrawl. The
actual lettering appears to be: CVRAACI EPVC. Moreover, beside the road
to Comer’s Gate are three immense cairns, known as the Wambarrows. This
is the highest point of Winsford Hill—1405 feet above the level of the sea.
Around all these spots cluster superstitions weird or bizarre. The menhir
is an index of buried treasure. The Wambarrows are the haunt of a
mysterious black dog. Round Mountsey Castle a spectral chariot races at
midnight, to disappear into a cairn in a field at the foot of the hill. As for
Torr Steps, the legend is that they were placed there by the devil, who
menaced with dire penalties the first mortal that should presume to use
them. The sable monarch took his seat on one bank of the stream, while the
other was occupied by a parson, eager to try conclusions with him. The holy
man was astute, and, as a preliminary measure, dispatched a cat across the
bridge. On touching the opposite side she was ruthlessly rent in pieces,
whereupon, the charm having been shattered, the parson boldly strode over
the causeway and engaged the devil in a conflict of words, each abusing the
other in good set terms. In the end the enemy of mankind retired
vanquished, resigning the bridge to all and sundry. Close above these steps
was one of the two homes of Mother Melldrum (see Lorna Doone, chapter
xvii., where Blackmore alludes to the legend of their origin).
 It appears that the Oxford cognoscenti went down into the stream in a
vain search for more inscribed stones. This reminds me of a curious story of
the Barle, the willows on whose banks, by the way, overhang its amber bed
so as to form almost an arch. On a hill to the right, looking downstream,
stands Hawkridge Church, and what is termed, in contradistinction to the
parish, Hawkridge town. Well, once upon a time a villager was asked to
take the place of the bass-singer in the choir for one Sunday only, and
consented. A day or two later he was discovered by the incumbent, a well-
known hunting parson, wading up and down the little river apparently
without aim or object. The cleric drew rein, and, much amazed, inquired the
meaning of this extraordinary procedure. “Plaze your honour,” was the
reply, “I be trying to get a bit of a hooze on me.”
In other words, he was attempting to catch a cold, so that he might
become hoarse, this being, as he thought, the best means of qualifying
himself for the successful discharge of his duty.

“Where the swift Exe, by Somerset’s fair hills,

In curving eddies, borders pastures deep,
Near fern-fringed slope of lawn, where babbling rills
Sing sweetest music, mid thick foliage peep
Five bridges, and thatched roofs. The grey Church Tower
O’er all looks down on groves of oak and pine:
Red deer, red Devons, ponies of the moor,
Delight the traveller in this home of mine.”

This acrostic, in praise of a charming village, is the composition of the

Rev. Prebendary W. P. Anderson, vicar of Winsford, who has resided there
ever since 1857, and the lines show that his experience of the place has
been like the place itself—happy. Far otherwise was it with one of his
predecessors. In the church porch may be seen a list of the parish
clergymen, not so dry as such lists are wont to be, from which it appears
that early in the fourteenth century Winsford had a blind vicar—one
Willelmus. Being unable to perform all the duties of his office, he was
allowed two coadjutors, of whom it is recorded, to their eternal infamy, that
they were deprived “for starving the Blind Vicar.” This conduct, inhuman at
the best, was the more scandalous in that the Priory of Barlynch, to which
the advowson belonged, had, in 1280, endowed the vicarage with the whole
tithe of wool, lambs, chicken, calves, pigs, sucklings, cheese, butter, flax,
honey, and all other small tithes and oblations and dues pertaining to the
altar offerings. And yet he starved—the Blind Vicar!
Barlynch Priory, a community of Austin Friars stood, where its remains
yet stand, some two or three miles down the Exe. Shaded by what the old
charter calls “the mountain of the high wood of Berlic,” its situation was in
the highest degree romantic; and if the prior had a lust for venery, his taste
might easily be gratified, for in the adjacent woods or “copes,” the deer
would have found abundant shelter, and thither they doubtless resorted to
pass the long summer day under the dense foliage.
Returning to Winsford, Mr Anderson’s lines omit one trait which to
many will seem the chief glory of the village—namely, the old inn. The
“Royal Oak” is a hostelry such as one does not see every day. Its thatched
roofs, and low ceilings, and projecting windows, and general crinkle-
crankle are eloquent of the olden time, and the sign, as was the case with all
ancient signs, hangs from its own post—a reminder of Boscobel. Hence, by
a beautiful rustic lane the traveller wends his way to Exford, and on the
outskirts of the village encounters the church.
On a pedestal in the churchyard stands the mutilated shaft of a venerable
preaching cross, and hard by the gate one observes an “upping-stock,” or
“upstock,” for the convenience of women in mounting their horses after
divine service.
Before Exmoor was disafforested and, yet later, made a parish of itself, it
is probable that Exford was the ecclesiastical capital of the district—at any
rate, of the southern portion of the moor. The parish stands on the very
verge of the old forest, and during the reign of King John was actually
brought within its limits. Lanes in the neighbourhood were, in more
scrupulous times, the forest-bounds, and along these tracks, still passable,
were certain marks mentioned in the Perambulations, almost all of which
can be identified. One such track, partly diverted from its old course—
which, however, may be easily traced—led from what is now a cottage, but
was once a small farmhouse, straight to the church. This cottage bears the
name of Prescott, and still contains a round-headed stone doorway, and a
little square window let into the side of the big fireplace. The late vicar, the
Rev. E. G. Peirson, suggests that this may have been the original priest’s cot
or parsonage house. “I like to think,” he says, “that my predecessors, before
they came into permanent residence here, used to stop at that house when
they came over the moor, and clean themselves before going into the
church.” He adds, however, that in that case the cottage or its name must
date a long way back, as there would seem to have been clergy resident at
Exford early in the twelfth century.
Mr Peirson’s theory is pretty, but a simpler explanation is that the cottage
belonged to the glebe. It is curious that just at the point where the old lane
used to strike the churchyard, a few projecting stones still form a rough stile
over the wall.
Probably it will affect most people with a feeling of surprise that there
should be any connection between a place so far inland as Exford and
smuggling, yet the same is true. In an orchard above West Mill was
formerly an old malt-house, where malt was made and whisky distilled. But
the most interesting spot to excise men lay rather to the north, at Pitsworthy
Cottage. Here was an old stone building used as a turf-house; but the room
where the turf was stowed had a party-wall concealing another chamber, to
which access could be obtained only by a secret entrance under the office of
the thatch. Ordinarily this was blocked by a large stone fitted with a swivel.
Long after, pieces of hoops and decayed staves were discovered in this
hiding-place. Wooden hoops are seen even now round brandy casks, but
these were smaller and adapted to the kegs which the smugglers, landing
under Culbone, transported to Hawkcombe Head, and Black Mire, and
White Cross, and right down to Pitsworthy. There was no road across the
moors in those days—I am thinking of the “forties”—and a man called
Hookway is remembered as travelling from Culbone with pack-horses.
More of smuggling anon. Meanwhile, I am disposed to record, for the
first time, the nefarious doings of Jan Glass and Betty, his wife. Sheep-
stealing was a fashionable pursuit on Exmoor; and at Brendon Forge (see
Lorna Doone, chapter lxii.) the conversation was divided between the hay-
crop and “a great sheep-stealer”—apparently not the same individual whose
hanging set up strife between the manors of East Lyn, West Lyn, and
Woolhanger on account of his small clothes, since he is described as “a man
of no great eminence” (Lorna Doone, chapter lv.). Be that as it may, Jan
was a daring sheep-stealer, and yet, in his way, a public benefactor. Often,
during a hard winter, he would bring into Exford stolen mutton, which he
retailed at twopence a pound, and at such times the inhabitants were fairly
kept alive by him. His modus operandi was to go and gather the sheep—his
own and others—on Kitnor Heath and Old Moor into Larcombe Pound at
the entrance to his farm, where there was a convenient avenue or grove of
beech-trees. Having brought them so far, he would kill the strange sheep,
and turn out his own again over the allotments.
Jan played this trick so often that old Farmer Brewer determined to take
him, if possible, in the act. With this object in view he “redded” his sheep,
and as he could stand in his farm and observe the manœuvres, saw Glass
driving among the sheep some red ones. With all speed Brewer made his
way across, but by the time he reached Larcombe, Glass had killed and
skinned the sheep that were not his own.
In the meantime Betty had not been idle. She had dipped the skins in hot
water, so that the wool had come off as easily as from a lamb’s tail, and had
given the skins to the dogs.
What had become of the wool? Farmer Brewer, anxious to ascertain,
glanced around and spied a large pot. Lifting the cover, he found the
fleeces, and, turning to the disconcerted woman, exclaimed:
“Aw, fy, Betty! Here’s the wool!”
This led to Glass’s conviction, and he was sentenced to seven years’
transportation. He had certainly had a wonderful career. He did not confine
his attention to sheep, but was quite as notorious for stealing colts. Not
being able to keep her from her foal, he had been known to kill the mare
and throw the carcass into the pond. His thefts of sheep from “Squire”
Knight alone used to average fifty or sixty a year. He would gallop into a
flock, pick up one of the sheep, as a hawk or a raven would pick up a small
bird, and carry it home on the top of his saddle. It may seem strange that he
was permitted to indulge in these malpractices so long, but he lived in a
very out-of-the-way place. There were no police in those days, sheep were
gathered only once or twice in the year, and the animal he appropriated
might possibly be crippled or diseased. Anyhow, until Farmer Brewer
interfered, nobody took any notice.
Glass lived to return after being transported, and eventually found
himself on a bed of sickness, when he was visited by an old farmer, James
Moore.
“Jan,” said he, “I yur thee art very bad, and thee hasn’t got nort to eat.
I’ve killed a sheep and brought thee a piece of mutton.”
“Aw, maister,” answered the poor man, “I thort thee’d a bin the last man
to come to zee me.”
 “What vur, Jan?”
“Well, I don’t know, maister, how I can taste the mutton, for I’ve stole
scores o’ sheep from thee at the time you lived to Thurn and the time you
lived to Ashit.”
“Never mind, Jan, I freely forgive thee, and I aup that God’ll do the
same.”
Glass never got over the illness, but soon after this touching interview
gave up the ghost, and was buried in Exford churchyard.
Betty Glass was just as resolute a thief as old Jan, and, whilst at
Larcombe, was very intimate with Sally Bristowe (or “Bursta,” as the name
was pronounced), at Rocks, an adjoining farm. On one occasion, Betty paid
a visit to Sally at harvest time, when young turkeys were about, and after
she had been hospitably entertained, eating what she liked and drinking
what she liked, she had the good taste to go out and steal a score of the
aforesaid small turkeys. Shortly afterwards, Sally happened to open the
door and found the heads of some of the birds lying in the yard, whereupon
she set out in pursuit of old Betty, overtook her, and discovered the bodies
of the turkeys in the old woman’s apron, blood still flowing from them.
“Now, Betty,” quoth the indignant woman, “however could’st thee steal
my turkeys after I’d gi’d thee plenty to eat and drink.”
“Aw, for goodness sake,” was the reply, “keep dark. I’ll give thee a
guinea. Say nort about it.”
Sally thereupon accepted the guinea, deeming it better to do so than
institute proceedings. This was certainly a mistake, for a week or two later,
when Betty was in company with Farmer Brewer, and three sheets in the
wind, she remarked, “Hey, Jimmy, what’s think of Sal Bursta’s spot-faced
yo? D’ye think I be going to give her a guinea for nort?”
From which it was evident that she stole the ewe to make good the loss
of the money. Sal undoubtedly lost the sheep.
During a visit to Minehead, seeing nothing else on which she could
conveniently lay hands, Betty appropriated two 7-lb. weights; but she had
not gone more than a mile or two from the town when she found the
weights too heavy to carry, and dropped them beside the hedge.
At that time the Crown Inn, Exford, was kept by Nicholas and Mary
Harwood. One day when Betty was on the spree, Mrs Harwood entered the
house and looked over the old woman’s wardrobe. To her surprise she
found three of her own dresses and several petticoats, which she brought
down into the kitchen, and, spreading them out before old Betty, inquired
how she came by them.
“Needn’t make so much fuss about it,” was the easy response, “for, if I’d
sold ’em, you’d a had the coin.”
As Betty was a good customer at the Crown, Mrs Harwood “kept dark”
and condoned the offence.
On another occasion, Betty brought a bag into the “White Horse” and
put it behind the settle. A man, called Mike Adams, was in the room, and
mischievously turned the bag mouth downwards, so that when old Betty
took it up, out fell the mutton—very likely a joint of Sal Bristowe’s spot-
faced ewe. On hearing the thud, Mike ran round the settle, and was
immediately “squared” by Betty, who observed, “Say nort, and I’ll sell it
and spend the money.”
Before her marriage with Jan, Betty had an illegitimate son, Jack Reed.
In due time this boy was apprenticed to the husband of Sal Bristowe, who
kept a farm and proved a rough master. Things grew so bad that at last the
lad declared that, if he stayed there, he should be either transported or
hanged. Luckily he had a warm friend in young Sally Bristowe. They had
grown up boy and girl together, and shared each other’s confidences.
Privately, Sally made a collection for Jack, and amassed the large sum of
sixteen shillings, which she placed in his hands.
The ’prentice had now to look out for a favourable opportunity of
escape, and this offered when Farmer Bristowe went to Bratton Fleming
Fair, since by running away at this time the boy was assured of a day’s start.
On going to bed, Jack ostentatiously bolted the door, but unbolted it “with
the same,” so that the old woman might not hear when he made his exit.
The plan worked perfectly, and Jack ultimately settled down at Bristol.
The master of the Devon and Somerset staghounds (Mr R. A. Sanders)
resides at Exford, and here are the kennels of the pack. The latter are
substantial stone buildings with gable ends, and stand on the slope of a hill,
close beside the road to Simonsbath. One enters first the “cooking-house,”
the lobby of which is hung around with antlered heads, brow, bay, and tray.
Some heads are preserved on account of their peculiarities or misshapen
forms; and to each head is attached a plate setting forth the date and place
of the capture of the animal. Advancing, one is conscious of a pungent
odour, which is found to proceed from a chamber where a huge furnace is
burning fiercely, and a seething mass of horse flesh is being boiled off the
bones for the dogs. Some of this boiled flesh is in a large wooden trough,
and, mixed with oatmeal, flour, or biscuit, is undergoing a process of
solidification. In the adjoining room are two larger troughs, in one of which
biscuit is soaking, whilst the other contains a quantity of oatmeal paste.
Both sorts of food are intended for the younger dogs.
The kennels of these hounds, situated at a short distance, are provided
with an extensive boarded-in grass plot, which forms their exercise-yard.
When heavy rain does not permit of a parade, they will be found on the
bench. A magnificent lot of dogs, containing the blood of the most
celebrated hounds in the best packs, they are not much disturbed by the
entrance of strangers. Some of them half step down from the bench, when
you pat and stroke them; they do not attempt to bite, and are, in fact,
exceedingly quiet, unless you are foolish enough to strike them. Then you
will see. Although the hounds are so much alike, the huntsman has the name
of each dog on the tip of his tongue, and when, he calls, the animal is back
in his place in an instant—so absolute is his command.
As regards the older hounds, they are kennelled in the same fashion,
reclining on a bench with a thick layer of clean straw. They have had a
season or two’s “blooding,” and during that time some of them, by their
doings in the pack, have made a name for themselves. A few years ago two
of them had the honour of appearing on several public platforms in
attendance on the huntsman, the late Anthony Huxtable, a merry dog
himself, who, as he could troll a rattling hunting-song, was in great request
at local concerts, and on such occasions brought the hounds with him as a
bit of realism.
Another kennel houses the oldest hounds—dogs which have hunted for
seven seasons or more, and are still fit.
 WINSFORD (page 111.)

It is a curious fact that nothing upsets hounds so much as thunder. A

flash of lightning followed by a loud crash of thunder makes every dog
spring to his feet and relieve his feelings by low whines and growls.
A Faggus incident (see below, chapter xiv.) is duly credited to Exford by
Blackmore, who entrusts the telling of it to John Fry (Lorna Doone, chapter
xxxix.). He appears, however, to have robbed the parish of a still more
thrilling episode (see chapters xiv. and xvi.).
 CHAPTER IX

THE HEART OF THE MOOR

From Exford to Simonsbath the road presents few points of interest. At

White Cross enters the highway that leads from Spire Cross to Comer’s
Gate, and thence between hedges to Chibbet (always so spelt and
pronounced, but query Gibbet?) Post, a rendezvous of the staghounds and
other packs; and perhaps the spot where Red Jem hung in chains, but it is
more than two miles from Dunkery. After White Cross we arrive at Red
Stone Gate, where we alight or not as we choose. Red Stone, having been
mentioned in the perambulation records as a landmark of the old forest, has
some claim to be considered historic. Then we pass what is commonly
known as Gallon House, a white-washed building with a porch, standing
back from the road and formerly a public-house. Its proper name was the
Red Deer, and it is said to have been called Gallon House from the fact that
“drink”—beer is always or often thus described hereabouts—was sold only
by the gallon. That may or may not have been the case, but, as regards
intoxicants, Exmoor is still under restrictions. To ensure the respectability
of the neighbourhood, the “Exmoor Forest” Hotel (late the “William
Rufus”) is limited to the sale of wine, no beer or spirits being obtainable.
This rule was imposed by Sir Frederick Knight, and is maintained in full
force by his successor, Lord Ebrington.
The proper name of Gallon House was the “Red Deer,” but Blackmore
was evidently acquainted with the other description. John Fry is led by a
shepherd to a “public-house near Exford,” where “nothing less than a
gallon of ale and half a gammon of bacon” brings him to his right mind
again (Lorna Doone, chapter xxxi.).
The associations of Gallon House and its vicinage are tragic, since it was
in a cottage situated in the rear that William Burgess, in the fifties of the last
century, murdered his little daughter. He then conveyed her body across the
road and down into the valley, where he buried it; but, fearing detection, he
again removed the poor child’s corpse and threw it down the shaft of the
disused Wheal Eliza, a copper-mine. Here it remained undiscovered for
months, but at last, through the untiring exertions of the Rev. W. H.
Thornton, then curate of Exmoor, it was found, and the unnatural father
expiated his crime on the gallows.
In his privately printed Reminiscences, Mr Thornton has given a detailed
account of the whole episode.
The Wheal Eliza appears to have been the original of Uncle Ben’s gold-
mine, so far as situation is concerned.
The next stage is to Honeymead Two Gates, with Honeymead Farm[13]
lying away to the left. “Two Gates” is quite an Exmoor term. We meet with
it again in Brendon Two Gates, and it stands for an arrangement whereby on
both sides of the posts are suspended separate gates, so hung as to fall
inwards. These effectually prevent stock from getting either in or out of the
enclosures proprio motu, whilst the farmer, by crooking back the near gate
with his whip, and pushing his horse against the other, can pass through
without having to dismount. To judge from the maps, Simonsbath is the hub
of the moor. In some senses this is true and soothfast, but as one travels
along the excellent highway and looks across the country, there is little
suggestion of either moor or forest. The land is evidently poor, but
everywhere one’s glance falls on enclosed fields, and Winsford Hill
harmonises much better with one’s preconceived ideas of Exmoor than this
eminently civilised region. Doubtless the landscape presented a very
different aspect before Mr Knight’s advent in 1818, and one hardly knows
whether to thank him for his pioneer improvements or not. At all events,
one would have preferred the dry-wall system that obtains in the North
Forest, to fences that seem stable and permanent, though shivering sheep
may be of a different opinion.
Cloven Rocks, the next point, has no obvious right to the name. Its
situation, however, may be indicated by stating that it lies at a bend of the
road, and a tiny stream trickles down through the bare turf. It may be
needless to remind the reader that Cloven Rocks is twice mentioned in
Lorna Doone as adjacent to the Wizard’s Slough, a perilous morass that has
since been drained. Whether the story which appears in chapter lviii. of the
romance is based on a real tradition, or is the offspring of Blackmore’s
fertile imagination, I am unable to say. It has, at any rate, a genuine ring,
and all Exmoor once teemed with strange legends, which the present “more
enlightened” generation has chosen to forget.
 Which reminds me. The little stream above referred to is called White
Water, and joins the Barle at Cow Castle, an old British camp, which is
situated on one of three hills. Cow Castle is the name of the principal
eminence as given in the maps, and Cae Castle it is sometimes called by the
learned. To the natives, however, it is known as Ring Castle, and is so
described in a delightful article contributed by the Rev. George Tugwell,
M.A., author of an excellent North Devon Handbook, to Frasers Magazine
in 1857. His delineations of the scenery are worthy of a Blackmore or a
Black, and would that I had room for some of them! As I have not, I must
confine the quotation to the dialogue between the wanderer and a peasant,
carried on by the blaze of the latter’s peat fire.
“ ‘Half an hour before we met you and little Nelly, we discovered an old
British camp—a real discovery, an indubitable camp, with its line of
earthworks as perfect, gateway and all, as when it was first piled—and to be
found in no book or antiquarian memoir in all the three kingdoms. There it
stood, a circular crown on the brow of a lonely conical hill, washed on three
sides by the wanderings of the Barle, out of bow-shot from all the
neighbouring heights, with plenty of water, and provisions in abundance,
for three valleys trended from it in a triple direction, commanding a wide
and glorious view of peak and ravine, centrally placed in the very heart of
“the forest.” In truth, those old Britons knew something of the art of
fastnesses, if they were not well skilled in the art of war. Did you ever see
the stronghold of your ancestors, friend Jan?’
“ ‘I’m thinking we’re somehow about Ring Castle!’ quoth Jan, with sly
good humour in his eye. ‘Camp indeed! I don’t know much about camps
[we omit the Doric]; but all I know is, that it was something far different
which built Ring Castle.’
“Hereupon, dropping his voice, he hurled up the broad chimney a whole
series of mystery-betokening smoke cloudlets.
“ ‘Did you ever hear tell on Pixies?’ quoth Jan again, after a pause. ‘And
fairy rings?’ he added, as Nelly emerged from a dark corner, and nestled
close to her father’s shoulder. We suggested that we had heard of the
Devonshire fairies, a race of spirits peculiar for their diminutive size and
perfect beauty, and for their friendly dealing with mankind.
“ ‘Well,’ said John, ‘this here be all about it.’
 (And he proceeded to tell us so pretty a legend that we cannot refrain
from translating it for the benefit of the uninitiated in the Devonshire
dialect.)
“ ‘Ever so long ago, the Pixies were at war with the mine spirits who live
underground all about the forest and the wild hill-country around. Now, the
Pixies being perfectly harmless, and withal good-natured to excess, weren’t
at all a match for the evil-nurtured earth-demons, who were always forging
all kinds of fearful weapons in their underground armouries, and
overcoming their poor little foes by all manner of unfair and unexpected
stratagems. But the Pixie Queen of those days being like all women, fertile
in resources, bethought her of a means of escape from the unbearable
tyranny of the oppressors. Ever since the days of Merlin, running water, the
numbers three and seven, and the mysteries of the emblematic circle, have
been sure protections against the machinations of the foul fiend and his
allies. And the fairy queen, like a wise woman, recollected this fact, and,
like a wiser woman, applied it; for she assembled all her subjects, and bade
them build on the summit of this central Exmoor Peak that strange circle
which you have seen to-day. But it was no common building this, for with
every stone and turf that the builders laid, they buried the memory of some
kindly deed which the good Pixies had done to the race of men; and so,
when the magic ring was completed, the baffled demons raved and plotted
in vain around its sacred enclosure. Nor was this all; for when the grey
morning broke upon that first night of victory and repose, as the driving
mists rolled upwards and swept along the hill-tops like the advance-guard
of a victorious army [we are not sure that this was Jan’s own similitude],
from the summit of the fairy fortification there rose ring after ring of
faintest amber-tinted vapour, and floated away in the brightening sky, each
on its own mission of safety and peace.
“ ‘For these tiny wreathlets wandered hither and thither all over the
broad expanse of the Exmoor country, and wherever the grass was greenest,
and the neighbouring stream sang most merrily, and the sunlight was purest,
and the moonbeams brightest, there these magic circles sank down softly on
the level sward, and left no trace behind them of what they had been, or
whence they had journeyed.
“ ‘But from each soft resting-place there sprang a ring of greenest grass,
which flourished and grew year by year; and within those safe enclosures
the Pixies danced on moonlight nights in peace and security, unharmed by
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