“‘Omne solum forti patria,’ said the heathen poet: how much more true to the Christian! And now, my son, thou must yet repose a while, and ere noon-tide I will bring our kind host and hostess to see thee; they lost their son, an only child, in the Pilgrimage of Grace, where he fought as a volunteer under Robert Aske. I knew the poor boy; they were strangely moved when thou didst arrive; the mother cried, ‘He is so like our Robin.’”
A few days of calm repose varied by walks, cautiously taken on the breezy moor behind the hall, soon restored the hues of health to Cuthbert’s cheeks, and renewed his earlier vigour. Oh, how sweet the boundless freedom of that wilderness, how invigorating the scent of the pine groves, how bright the glimpses of sea down the valleys. Not far off, scarce two miles, was a large farm house on the road to Budleigh Salterton, where a family of the name of Raleigh lived; but their politics were hostile to those of Sir Robin Tremayne and Sir Walter Trevannion; they, the Raleighs, were men who worshipped the rising sun, and who a few years later were eager in the suppression of the Catholic Rebellion in Devon and Cornwall. In that house which our Cuthbert often saw from a distance, was born a bright star to adorn Elizabeth’s Court but a few years later.[48]
So nearly a month passed away, an interlude between two periods of excitement, and at length came All Hallows Eve, with its memory of the past, and a bright All Saints’ Day, a day when the words of our sweet modern singer might be realized:—
“Why blowest thou not thou wintry wind?
When every leaf is brown and sere,
And idly hangs, to thee resigned,
The fading foliage of the year.”
A chapel was attached to the hall wherein Father Ambrose, for so we shall call him in this connection, celebrated the Holy Mysteries, and they thought of Richard Whiting, as amongst the great multitude which no man could number.
Their plans were now matured; they were to assume the disguise of a farmer and his son, travelling on agricultural business, to stop, one night only, at an inn on the borders of Somerset, and to reach Glastonbury the second day, then to find shelter with old Hodge, and rising at midnight to seek the ruins, and do their appointed work.