The Blackmore Country

by F. J. Snell

“Hon^rd Sir,—This comes to give you an account of one, not y^e least of y^e rebells, who was taken up last Monday night at a place called Fairleigh in y^e p’ish of Brundun, by Jno. Witchalse, Esq., Ric^d Powell, Rec^t of y^e same, Jno. Babb, serv^t to Jno. Witchalse and Rob. Parris. They haveing some small notice of a stranger to have bin a little before about y^t village, came about nine of y^e clock at night to one Jno. Burtchis house. As soon as they had guarded y^e house round, they heard a noise. Watching closely and being well armed, out of a little back door slipt out this person within named, and two more as they say, and run all as hard as they cold. Babb and Parris espieing them, bid them stand againe and againe. They still kept running, and they cockt their pistols at them. Parris his mist fire, but Babb’s went off, being charg^d w^th a single bullett, w^ch stuck very close in y^e rebells right side; ye entrance was about two inches from y^e spina doris. Y^e bullett lodged in y^e under part of y^e right hypogastrind, w^ch we cut out. Y^e bullett past right under y^e pleura; from the orifice it entered to y^e other, w^ch we were forced to make to extract y^e bullett (having strong convulsions on him): it was in distance between six and seven inches. He was very faint, having lost a great quantity of blood. Y^e orifice we made (y^e bullett lying neere y^e cutis) was halfe an inch higher yⁿ y^e other. It begins to digest, and his spirits are much revived, only this day about 10 of y^e clock he was taken with an aguish fitt, w^ch I suppose was caused by his hard diet and cold lodging ever since y^e rout, he leaving his horse at Illfordcomb. Ever since Tuesday last in the afternoon, Mr Ravening and myself have bin w^th him, and cannot w^th safety move from him. We desire to know his Maties pleasure w^t we shall due w^th his corps, if he dyes, w^ch if he does before ye answer, we think to embowell him. We will due w^t possible we can, for he hath assur^d us, y^t as soon as he is a little better, he will make a full discovery of all he knows, of w^ch this inclosed is part, by w^ch he hopes to have, but not by merrits, his pardon. Here is noe one y^t comes to him y^t he will talk soe freely w^th as w^th us; if you will have any materiall questions of business or p’sons to be askt of him, pray give it in y^rs to us. We will be privat, faithfull, to o^r King, whome God long preserve. W^ch is all at present from them who will ever make it their business to be.—S^r y^r most humble Serv^ts,

“Nic^s Cooke and Henry Ravening.”

The addressee was Sir Bourchier Wrey, of Tawstock, Bart., son of another Sir Bourchier, and grandson of Sir Chichester Wrey, who married Ann, youngest daughter of Edward Bourchier, Earl of Bath.

Bagworthy and Farley are both in the parish of Brendon, but we must not forget that, as regards bodily presence, we are still in the Doone valley, and not far from Oare, where, according to Rupert Doone’s Diary, his ancestors, on quitting Scotland in 1627, first fixed their residence. They then removed to the upper part of the Lyn valley, on an estate bounded on one side by Oare and on the other by Bagworthy. The Doone valley, which used to be called Hoccombe, is a glen lying between Bagworthy Lees and Bagworthy, and Mr Chanter expresses the belief that this name and that of “Lorna’s Bower” were first applied to the small sidecombes by his cousins, the Misses Chanter, soon after the publication of Lorna Doone. Ruins of the traditional “Castle,” rectangular in form, are still to be traced, and consist of two groups. Unfortunately, stones were taken from them to build an adjoining wall, and now it is impossible to state the character of the buildings, some of which were probably houses, and others cattle-sheds. Miss Browne, indeed, is of opinion that they were all of the latter description, and that the real home of the Doones was in the Weir Water valley, between Oareford and the rise of the East Lyn. So far as Hoccombe is concerned, Blackmore has idealised it with a vengeance. The “sheer cliffs standing around,” the “steep and gliddening stairway,” the rocky cleft or “Doone-gate,” the “gnarled roots,” are all purely imaginary. As regards “Doone track” or “Doones’ path,” it directly faces the valley, and after crossing the Bagworthy Water, ascends the Deer Park and Oare Common, and so to Oare. Being covered with grass or hidden by heather and scrub, it is not easy to follow, but viewed at a little distance it presents the appearance of a broad terraced roadway, not improbably Roman, and connecting Showlsborough Castle, near Challacombe, with the coast. The site of the house where the “Squire” was robbed and murdered by the Doones is still visible in the part of the forest known as the Warren (Lorna Doone, chapter lxxii.).

Exmoor was once a paradise of yeomen, thrifty sons of the soil, who owned their own farms. They consisted of two classes: those who did the work themselves, with the assistance of their family and jobbing workmen, to whom they paid good wages; and the owners of large farms, where labourers were constantly employed at a shilling a day. The former sort is entirely extinct. Many of their descendants have been merged in the mass of common labourers; a few have risen to the rank of large farmers; others have emigrated.

The more substantial class of yeomen is still represented in the district. The late Mr W. L. Chorley, Master of the Quarme Harriers, was an excellent specimen of the order, but the most relevant example is that of the Snows, whom Blackmore treats somewhat unfairly. The family may not have been rich in what Counsellor Doone described as the “great element of blood,” but a genuine yeoman of the type in question would hardly have been dubbed “Farmer Snowe,” and he certainly would not have perpetrated such an awful lapse as “pralimbinaries.” I have been informed by a correspondent that Blackmore apologised to the family for his painful caricature, which was only just, in view of their actual status and the esteem in which they are held by their neighbours. About the year 1678, two-fifths of the manor of Oare belonged to the family of Spurrier, and passed by marriage at the beginning of the eighteenth century into the possession of Mr Nicholas Snow, who left it to a son of his own name. The latter, in 1788, purchased the other three-fifths, and, at his death in 1791, bequeathed the manor to his youngest son, John Snow, who died without issue, leaving the property to his nephew, Nicholas Snow—the “Farmer Snowe” of Lorna Doone.

It will be noticed that the Snows did not become landowners at Oare until long after the period of the story. As for the Ridds, or Reds, the only mention of the name in the parish register occurs in the year 1768, when John Red was married to Mary Ley. The real Plover’s Barrows was Broomstreet Farm, in the neighbouring parish of Culbone; at any rate, a John Ridd was resident there. A John Fry, no mere farm-servant, was churchwarden of Countisbury, of which Jasper Kebby was likewise a parishioner. Plover’s Barrows has been identified by Mr Page with Mr Snow’s residence—“according to Blackmore, anciently the farm of the Ridds.” But in Lorna Doone (chapter vii.) the two farms are represented as adjoining, and Plover’s Barrows is evidently further upstream (see Lorna Doone, chapter xiv.: “In the evening Farmer Snowe came up.”) The same writer speaks of the Snows as having been seated at Oare since the time of Alfred. Can Mr Page be thinking of John Ridd’s boast to King Charles (Lorna Doone, chapter lxviii.)?

Oare Church, where the elder Ridd lay buried, where his son stole the lead from the porch to his subsequent shame, and where the brute Carver shot Lorna on her bridal morn, has received an addition in the shape of the chancel