The Somerset Coast

by Charles G. Harper

Henry accordingly, sallying forth from his own town of Barnstaple, so wrought with William de Mohun and his garrison that, if indeed he could not storm the castle, he could at any rate, coop within it that bold and fiery spirit, and so protect the neighbouring country. Tracy, in fact, did more. He captured a hundred and four horsemen in a single encounter, during one of those sallies from the castle by which de Mohun thought to break the force of the leaguer against him.

DUNSTER CASTLE.

And so the claws of this tiger were cut, and himself rendered harmless until that time when the factious, assured at last that they were too well matched ever to bring the struggle to a decisive issue, made peace, and thus sent the unruly and restless back to an undesired state of order.

We read incidentally, in those old accounts, of Dunster Castle being washed on one side by the sea. That passage places in a yet more picturesque setting the picturesque scene even now presented to the traveller; for where the road now goes past the level meadows on the way from Carhampton to Minehead, the sea then ebbed and flowed in a shallow bay, whose shores reached to the foot of the commanding hill on whose crest the castle turrets still loom up, majestically. Yet, beautiful in its wild original way though it may have been in those days, when the castle was a sea-fortress and the little town of Dunster something in the nature of a port, Dunster Castle in our own times, and on some evening of late summer, when the sun sets gloriously over the hills and irradiates the burnt-up grass to a golden tinge, affords a picture of surpassing beauty, viewed from the road to Minehead, across those level pastures.

The de Mohuns who succeeded the turbulent William of King Stephen’s time make little show in the history of the place, and even that mid-fourteenth century John, Lord Mohun of Dunster, who was one of the original Knights of the Garter, is more notable to us for the doings of his wife, than for any action of his own. He married in 1350 Joan, daughter of Sir Bartholomew de Burghershe. This lady it was who, according to a legend, declared by serious antiquaries to have no real foundation, obtained from her husband the grant of as much common-land for the poor of the town as she could walk barefoot: after the fashion of that Lady Tichborne who, although an invalid, crawled on hands and knees over an amazing acreage in one day.

With this Lord Mohun, the de Mohuns of Dunster came to an end, and the West of England presently witnessed the entire extinction of the family, root and branch; or its gradual decline into obscurity through the growing poverty of landless collaterals who became absorbed by the middle-class, and survive here and there to this day as shopkeepers, and even as agricultural labourers, under the plebeian name of “Moon.” As more peaceful and commercial times succeeded the era in which arms decided the fate of noble families, the fortunes of those who by any chance had lost their lands grew desperate. In the altered circumstances, when law and order had replaced brute force, the sharp sword was no longer a match for sharp wits. Hence the great rise in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of the trading class, to wealth, power, and honours.

But it was not precisely in this manner that the de Mohuns became alienated from the land. That John Lord Mohun of Dunster, who in 1350 married Joan Burghershe, had three daughters, but no sons. A courtier during the greater part of his career, he fell into the extravagant ways of those with whom he associated, and lived and died heavily in debt, and his widow, doubtless in want of ready money, sold Dunster to Lady Elizabeth Luttrell, née Courtenay, widow of Sir Andrew Luttrell, of Chilton, Devon, for the sum of five hundred marks, equal to £3333 6s. 8d., present value. The receipt given for this purchase-money is still a curious and cherished possession of the Luttrells of to-day. The low price at which Lady Mohun disposed of the property is accounted for by the fact that the purchaser was not to come into possession until after the vendor’s death, which did not occur until 1404, thirty years after the date of this transaction. Lady Joan retired from the West when this sale was completed, and was much at Court, and in Kent and Sussex in those thirty years. The curious may find her tomb in the undercroft of Canterbury Cathedral, and may with some difficulty read there the invocation to the piety of the beholder: “Pour Dieu priez por l’ame Johane Burwasche qe fut Dame de Mohun.”

Two of her daughters survived her: Elizabeth Countess of Salisbury, and Philippa, married thirdly to Edward Plantagenet, Duke of York. To her daughter Elizabeth she left a cross, which she had promised to the one she loved best, and a copy of the Legenda Sanctorum. Philippa had merely her blessing, and some choice red wine; but her husband, the Duke of York, became the happy recipient, by bequest of his mother-in-law, of some improving literature, in the shape of a copy of the Legenda, and an illuminated book.

Lady Elizabeth Luttrell, the purchaser of Dunster, did not live to enjoy the property. She predeceased Lady Mohun, and the reversion went to her son, Sir Hugh Luttrell, a distinguished soldier, Lieutenant of Calais, Governor of Harfleur, Seneschal of Normandy, and, holder of many other distinguished posts, much abroad on the King’s service all his life. It was one thing to become legal owner of Dunster, and quite another to obtain actual possession, for the daughters of Lady Joan refused to give up the property, on the ground that Lady Mohun had no right to dispose of it; and law-suits resulted, in which Sir Hugh was at length victorious. It was during his lifetime that the castle, by now grown ancient, was rebuilt under the supervision of his son, John, who occupied Dunster during his father’s long residence abroad.