Small Talk at Wreyland. Third Series

by Cecil Torr

There is a Seven Lords’ Land four miles from here; and if you go up there from Bovey, you pass Five Witches on the way. There is a Four Lords’ Land near Combe Martin, and the four were joint lords of a manor there; and Wreyland might likewise have become Four Ladies’ Land, had the last lord Dynham’s sisters all outlived him. I suppose the seven were joint lords of a manor, but I have no record of the fact. Prosaic people say the witches were wych elms.

There were Seven Men of Chudleigh; and the wonder is they never called themselves the Septemvirs, seeing that the schoolmaster called himself Gymnasiarch. There were Four Men of Chagford, Eight Men of Moreton, and other Men of other parish towns. In 1670, when small change was scarce, tokens were issued by the Moreton Men, inscribed, “Ye 8 Men and Feeffees of Morton.” As feoffees they held the parish lands in trust; and in 1756 the sole surviving Man enfeoffed thirteen new Men, and they agreed that if ‘by their mortality’ they should ever be reduced to one, this one should enfeoff not less than seven more; but the agreement was not kept, and the parish lands passed to the last survivor’s heir-at-law as sole trustee. These parish lands were the church-house, the school-house, the almshouse, two public-houses called the White Swan and the Sun, and a rent-charge of 6s. 8d. Like many other public-houses, the White Swan became the Union in 1801 in honour of the United Kingdom and the new Union Jack. A public-house at Bovey has suffered a more drastic change. It was called the King of Prussia in 1760 in honour of Frederick the Great, but in 1914 the obnoxious word was painted out at once: for some while it was ‘The King Of,’ and now it has a brand-new name.

Two fields in Bovey are called the Portreve’s parkes: a Tracey gave them to this Bovey (Bovey Tracey) as endowment for a banquet at the beating of the bounds. But the Charity Commissioners have flouted the pious donor’s wishes, and the rents are now applied to praiseworthy prosaic purposes. Till these Commissioners came, the bounders all rode horses decked with ribbons and flowers; and it was called the Mayor’s Riding. And now we all trudge round on foot, and are reduced to ginger-beer and buns.

There was a story of a landowner near here going to an Exeter lawyer in great alarm, “That scoundrel ***** has forged a Mortgage on my land,” and the lawyer soothing him, “Well, we can forge a Reconveyance.” Such documents could not be forged successfully except by lawyers or their clerks, but anyone can forge a Will. Forgery, however, is not what disappointed relatives suggest, at any rate in Devon: they always say the Will has been destroyed by someone who would profit by a former Will or an Intestacy. The thing is done, though rarely; but such suggestions are quite lightly made, as if it were a thing that anyone would do if he just had the chance. About twenty years ago a farmer told me that a certain person had destroyed the Reconveyance of a Mortgage on his farm. As he said he had the Mortgage, I asked to see it, and found the Reconveyance was endorsed on it. He thought the Reconveyance was a separate document, and seemed annoyed at finding that the other man was not as great a villain as he thought.

Two masons who did not like each other, were working at a granite wall that I was building here in 1906. Hearing angry voices, I went down and found one of them accusing the other of having stolen his spirit-level. I asked him where he used it last, and told him to take a few stones off the wall just there—I knew the way he worked—and there was the spirit-level in the mortar underneath a stone. He had put it there and overlooked it, and now was vexed to find he had no charge to make against the other man.

Thefts are very rare here. If there are goods or parcels for anyone who does not live near a main road, they are put down on the wayside where his road turns off, and he comes over to fetch them. There was a sad case some while ago—near Ipplepen, if I remember right. A man came over on a Monday to fetch some things that had been left for him on the Saturday; and they had gone. And people shook their heads and wondered what the world was coming to, if you couldn’t leave things by the wayside from a Saturday to a Monday without their being carried off.

In going to the Scilly islands in 1907 part of my luggage went astray at Penzance between the railway-station and the pier. I reported this at the police-station, thinking that the things might have been stolen; but the inspector seemed quite hurt at the suggestion, and answered, “No, sir, we have no thieves here.” (The things were found at an hotel, but not until the boat had left.) There was no policeman in the Scillies: no thieves there, and when sea-faring men got drunk, the coastguard quelled them down. So also at Sark I found no policeman on the island, and no need for one, as the Seigneur sent unsatisfactory people into exile. Afghanistan was likewise kept in order in this autocratic way, but by more drastic means: an old Anglo-Indian explained to me that if a man was even suspected of committing a crime there, the Ameer would have him beheaded at once.

Of course, apples are not quite safe here. One of my neighbours had an orchard from which he got no fruit at all; and nobody would buy the crop, as it was always picked by someone else. At last the local policeman bought it; and this caused such a scare among the boys that they left the fruit alone. One does not so much grudge the fruit they take as the damage that they do in taking it—small boys will break a branch off a young tree to get a little fruit. At one time cider apples were secure; but in these democratic days boys think one apple as good as another, and eat sorts that their forefathers would never touch. Cider apples are not good to eat, and if you eat them, you will have less cider; and this was possibly a reason why the wise old folk avoided them.

Cider is perhaps less safe here than the apples, especially if there are converted drunkards or teetotalers about. In a fit of temporary insanity a man will take the pledge and let everybody know that he has taken it. After that he cannot decently buy cider or accept it, if it is offered to him; but he cannot do without it, and therefore has to steal. A man of that sort took to preaching in the open air here; and when people interrupted with, “Who stealed that zider?” his language was un-pulpity.

In the War years, when things had to drift, some of my cider turned so sour that I sold it to a firm of vinegar-makers. It really was vinegar already, and needed no more making; but there was a duty of 4d. a gallon on the sale of cider, and no duty on the sale of vinegar: so I had to prove to the Excise that I was selling vinegar, not cider. One of the Excise officials came here, to prove that it was cider; and I wish I had a snap-shot of the face he made at tasting it. The duty has been taken off now (1923) and cider is free again, as it was from 1916 back to 1830, when the old duties were taken off. The old duties did much harm in Devon, many of the orchards being rooted up soon after 1763, as the profit had become a loss. But there will never be a duty or a tax that does no harm at all.