The Blackmore Country

by F. J. Snell

Now as to Saunton Sands, which are perhaps three miles in length, and viewed from the high ground at Braunton, form, with their grotesque hummocks, a weird background to the smiling landscape. Although efforts have been made to bind it by means of vegetation, sand continues to be blown inland, and Westcote states that in his time the wind drove it to large heaps near the house or court, by which he apparently intends Saunton Court, now a farmhouse. Between Saunton and Braunton the ruins of an ancient settlement have been seen amidst trees that have been “thrown down and overwhelmed.” Westcote goes on to declare that a great quantity of the sand was removed every day to serve as manure for the fields, yet there was no diminution in the sum total, the wind constantly supplying the deficiency. On these grounds the old historian makes the name of the place “Sandton, quasi Sand-town.”

To this Mr Wade demurs, his own derivation being “Sancton,” a holy place. It seems that on Saunton Sands were chapels of St Sylvester, St Michael, and St Helen, as well as numerous palmer’s crosses; and he suggests that since the Celtic missionaries set foot in the country in the sixth and seventh centuries, hundreds of acres have been submerged by the sands. This idea is more than probable, and will remind the reader of the early chapters of the Maid of Sker, which contain realistic descriptions of similar visitations on the coast of Wales. In the same work Blackmore frequently alludes to the Saunton Sands, the scene of the fictitious burial of the Bampfylde infants.

More famous than Saunton Sands are Woolacombe Sands, chiefly owing to their associations with the Tracys, some of which are purely mythical. There is a sensational story of two brothers fighting a duel on Woolacombe Sands for the hand of a waif who had been rescued from the sea by their father; and a notion exists that they were possibly Henry de Tracy, who died in 1272, and his brother and co-heir Oliver, who followed him within a year or two after. Dark hints are thrown out that one of the duellists was rector of Ilfracombe from 1263 to 1272.

The most celebrated member of the family came earlier, and he owes his celebrity to the fact that he was one of the four assassins of Thomas à Becket. According to Risdon, who is decidedly wrong, William de Tracy, after the commission of the deed, lived in retirement at Woolacombe; and on the south side of Morthoe Church is an altar tomb, which Risdon and Westcote agree in assigning to the murderer (or patriot). The Devonshire tradition is in flat contradiction to the official version of the Church of Rome, which imputes that William de Tracy died at Cosenza, in Calabria, within four years of the sacrilege; but other accounts testify that four years after Becket’s death Tracy was Justiciar of Normandy, and that he survived his victim fifty-three years. These various stories are clearly irreconcilable, but one thing appears certain, that the altar tomb with the figure engraved on the grey marble and bearing the half-erased inscription, Sqre [Guillau] me de Tracy [gist ici Dieu de son al] me eyt merci, has absolutely nothing to do with any secular person. The figure is that of a priest in his robes, holding a chalice with both hands over his breast, and that priest was William de Tracy, rector of Morthoe, who died in 1322.

Blackmore does not say much of the Tracys, although he brackets them with the Bassets and “St Albyns” as an old West-country family. (See Maid of Sker, chapter lxvi.).

It is singular to find a remote spot like Woolacombe identified with political adventure, although it might have been, at one time, an apt place “to talk treason in.” Odd to say, the Tracys of Woolacombe-Tracy have not been the only men to bring the great world, as it were, to these yellow sands. Already I have quoted the gossiping Cutcliffe; now I will quote him once more. In a letter of October 8, 1728, he writes:

“Last Sunday se’nnight, the Duke of Ripperda (who lately escaped out of the Castle of Segovia) was putt on Woolacombe Sands, out of an Irish barque; he had no one with him but the lady who procured his deliverance, the corporal of the guard, and one servant. He was handsomely treated at Mr Harris’s, and last Tuesday went on to Exon.”

The Mr Harris by whom the stranger was entertained was John Harris, of Pickwell, in the parish of Georgeham, who was twice M.P. for Barnstaple, and died in 1768, aged sixty-four. Who was the Duke of Ripperda?

Protestant, Catholic, Mussulman, soldier, courtier, diplomatist, Dutchman, Spaniard, Moor—all these parts were supported (not, of course, at one and the same time) by the extraordinary character, who appeared momentarily, in his meteoric career, on the north-west coast of Devon. The whole of his chequered life cannot be recorded here. Suffice it to say that he was born towards the end of the seventeenth century, and came of a distinguished family in Holland. Having won his spurs as a soldier, he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Madrid, where he became the trusted minister of Philip V., and was created a duke. Incurring the hostility of the Spanish grandees, he was accused of treason and thrown in 1726 into the Castle of Segovia, whence, at the date of the above letter, he had just escaped. He next turned Mahomedan, and took service with the Emperor of Morocco, who appointed him commander in his army. His attacks on the Spaniards proving unsuccessful, he was imprisoned, and solaced his captivity by elaborating a sort of via media between the Jewish religion and Islamism. In 1734 he was ordered to quit the country, and found an asylum in Tetuan. He died in 1737.

The northern horn of Morte Bay is formed by Morte Point, with Morte Stone in close proximity. As the spot is unquestionably dangerous, there is no risk, I imagine, in accepting the ordinary and obvious etymology—Mort, Morte Point and Morte Stone are as tragedy and comedy. Concerning the latter there is an ancient saw, “Would you remove Morte Stone?” and for centuries it has been held that no one can accomplish the feat save the man who can rule his spouse. Another tradition asserts that the stone can be moved by a bevy of good wives exercising sovereignty over their husbands. In this connection it may be noted that the old fable of Chichevache and Bycorn (the former a sorry cow, whose food is good women; and the latter fat and well-liking, owing to abundance of good and enduring husbands) is represented on the corbels of Ilfracombe Church amidst a menagerie of apes, mermaids, griffins, gnomes, centaurs, cockatrices, and other extinct hybrids too numerous to mention.