Built of local ragstone and thatched, the old dwelling has probably not been altered in any particular since the memorable time of that secret conclave, and it still belongs to the Seymours, or St. Maurs, as they now—harking back to the ancient spelling—choose to style themselves. The historic association is the subject of a diffident allusion inscribed in recent times on a stone pillar in the garden:—
William
Prince of
Orange
is said to have
held his first
Parliament
here
in November
1688
The remainder of the voyage up the Dart to Totnes is along a gradually narrowing stream, past the noble hanging woods of Sharpham, to Bridgetown Quay, where the road-bridge and the narrowed river alike forbid further progress.
Of Totnes there is a great deal more to be said than can be set down here. Between the mythical legend of its being founded by Brutus the Trojan and modern times, it has acquired a history which demands volumes. It had a mint in Saxon ages, is described as a walled town in Domesday, and was not without some eminent rottenness as a rotten borough at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It has a mystical castle mound, with a circular shell of a keep on the summit, an ancient gateway spanning the main street, and an interesting old guildhall. Its beautiful church is among the very finest in Devon, and the quaint old piazza shops vie with those of Dartmouth. There is, as may well be supposed, much doubt of Brutus the Trojan having been the founder of Totnes, but the legend is indestructible, from very inability to disprove it; besides, let into the pavement outside 51, Fore Street, you are shown the very granite boulder on which Brutus set foot when he landed! and so he becomes associated, at the beginning of the town’s long story, with a wanderer, in his own way equally remarkable, at its close. For in Totnes you may see, in the open space called “The Plains,” a monument to William John Wills, a native of the town, and son of a local doctor, which narrates how he was born in 1834, emigrated in 1852 to Australia, and, having been “the first of mankind to cross the Australian Continent, perished in returning.” He was a greater traveller than Brutus; and his exploits, as we see, are matters of ascertained fact.
CHAPTER XXI
DARTMOUTH CASTLE—BLACKPOOL—SLAPTON SANDS—TORCROSS—BEESANDS—HALL SANDS
The little coach that runs daily from Dartmouth to Kingsbridge has a steep climb up out of Dartmouth. Here the pedestrian certainly has the advantage, for, tracing his coastwise way round through the woods of Warfleet creek, where a disused limekiln by the waterside looks very like an ancient defensible tower, he comes at last upon the strangely grouped church of St. Petrox, the Castle, and the abandoned modern battery, all standing in a position of romantic beauty, where the sea dashes in violence upon the dark rocks. The “garrison” of Dartmouth Castle in these days is generally a sergeant of garrison artillery retired from active service, or in some condition of military suspended animation not readily to be understood by a logically minded civilian. It is a situation worthy of comic opera: in which you perceive the War Office erecting batteries for defending the entrance to the harbour, and then, having completed them, furnishing the works with obsolete muzzle-loaders, capable of impressing no one save the most ignorant of persons. Then, these popguns having been demonstrated useless, even to the least instructed, they are removed at great expense, and their places left empty: it having occurred in the meanwhile to the wiseacres ruling the Army that, in any case, under modern conditions, a hostile fleet would be able to keep well off shore and to throw shells into Dartmouth, without coming in range of any ordnance ever likely to be placed at the castle.
So the sergeant-in-charge, who lives here with his wife and family, and is apparently given free quarters and no pay, on the implied condition that he makes what he can out of tips given by tourists, is not burdened with military responsibilities. The present incumbent appears to have developed strong antiquarian tastes, is learned in the local military operations of Cromwell’s era, and a successful seeker after old-time cannonballs and other relics of strange, unsettled times.
You cannot choose but explore the interior of the Castle, for as you approach there is, although you may not suspect it, an Eye noting the fact. The Eye is the sergeant’s, and there is that way about old soldiers which admits of no denial when he proposes that he shall show you over. You are shepherded from one little room to another, peer from what the sergeant calls the “embershaws” (by which he means embrasures), and then, offering the expected tribute for seeing very little, depart.