I
A philosophical man will go far before he discover a pastime more grateful or better soothing to his mind than painting in water-colours. I have heard angling preached up for a better; and when I answered on behalf of water-colours that it does not matter how ill you do it, was replied to that the same holds with angling if cheerfully practised. Well, then, at angling I make a cast and hitch my line over a bough, or it drops into some thicket, and thereat how can a man keep tranquil? No, no: I had liefer stain paper any day of the week.
On Saturday afternoon, the 10th of August, 1644—a very fair hot day—while I sat in the pleasant shady church of Boconnoc, near by Lord Mohun's house in Cornwall, copying down the writings on the monuments and the scutcheons in the windows in their right colours, it came into my mind to consider much that had happened to me in two years: how that fate had made a soldier of me, a plain Essex squire; how that, not content, it had promoted me to command a troop in his Majesty's regiment of horse; how that I, who had often desired to visit Cornwall for the sake of its ancient monuments, but had never thought (being by habit lethargic) to make so far a journey, was not only arrived there, but had leisure to follow my studies amid the fret and drilling of a great army.
Yet it was all very simple. On the 1st of August we had marched with his Majesty across the passes of the Tamar, the Earl of Essex giving ground before us and daily withdrawing his forces closer around Fowey; where, having a good harbour, he could easily fetch his victuals in from the sea. I will not tell how little by little we prevented him, and at last, surprising a fort by the harbour's entry, cut him off from aid of his shipping. All this was to come. Meanwhile, though pent in a few miles of ground, he had a fair back-door for his needs. The campaign was brought to a lock, and for almost two weeks we pushed matters half-heartedly; I believe, because the King had hopes of bringing the enemy to terms. Many letters came and went by trumpet; but in our camp on the moors over Boconnoc we did little from day to day save meet and picquer with small bodies of the rebel horse.
My duties giving me leisure, I turned to recreation; and Lord! how good it seemed to be antiquary again after two years of soldiering! That afternoon I played with my box of paints as a child who comes home for his first holidays, and takes down his familiar toys from the shelf. "Let others," said I, forgetting all the distractions of our poor realm of England, "let others have the making of history so I may keep the enjoying of it!" They were famous scutcheons, too, that I sat a-copying, the Mohuns having been Earls of Somerset, Lords of Dunster, and a great family in their day. Mohun, indeed, had come with the Conqueror—
Le viel William de Moion
Ont avec li maint compagnon,
said the rhyme, as I remembered: and, behold! a fair monument against the north wall of the chancel (where I began) carried the royal coat of England and France with a label, impaling the ground or and engrailed cross sable of the Mohuns—this for a Philippa of their house that married with Edward, Duke of York, slain at Agincourt: and, beside it, Courtenay's three torteaux and FitzWilliam's three bendlets, Bevill and Brewer, Strange and Redvers, a coat vert with three bucks' heads having their antlers depressed (which I took for Hayre), and another coat to set an antiquary thinking, for it bore azure a bend or, with a label of three points gules. "Scrope or Grosvenor," said I to myself, looking up from my work towards the East windows, where the same scutcheon was repeated. "I wonder which claims you in these parts."
The shield that bore this famous device had it quartered on the sinister side with Courtenay and Redvers; and impaling these on the dexter side were, quarterly: (1) A space patched with clear glass (originally Mohun, no doubt); (2) Vert three stags' heads or (?Hayre); (3) azure three bendlets or (FitzWilliam); (4) a device which again puzzled me. It seemed to be an arm habited in a maunch, or sleeve, ermine, holding in the hand a golden flower.
Now while I painted, an old man had been moving about the far end of the church, whom I took for the sexton. I had passed him in the churchyard outside, when he was scything down the grass upon a grave; and had noted no more of his back than that he wore the clothes of a hind with a scrap of sacking over his shoulders—nor perhaps would have noted so much as this, had not his clothing seemed over-warm for the time of year.