"Oft have I heard of Lydford law,
How in the morn they hang and draw,
And sit in judgment after.
At first I wondered at it much,
But since I find the matter such
As it deserves no laughter.
"They have a castle on a hill;
I took it for some old wind-mill
The vanes blown off by weather.
To lie therein one night 'tis guessed
'Twere better to be stoned or pressed
Or hanged, ere you come thither."
"Lydford law" and "Jedburgh justice" seem equally to have been synonyms for arbitrary and summary punishment.
But, leaving this digression, we proceed on our way, past Berrynarbor and the old farm of Bowden, where Bishop Jewel was born, and the beautiful church where he was baptized, with its great Perpendicular tower, built of red and grey sandstone, rising above the wooded combe, and its old lich-gate, set in the thickness of the churchyard wall, and almost hidden by the luxuriant summer foliage; past Combe Martin, famous for its ancient silver-mines rather than its beauty, yet with a very beautiful church, with a Perpendicular tower even higher than that of Berrynarbor, soaring above the sheltering elms, and throwing its long shadow across the stream which curves round the church-yard among the old yew-bushes—a church worth stepping aside to see, with a fine carved oak screen in the interior, of the fifteenth century, the doors of the screen made in such a way that they will not entirely close, in order to show plainly forth to all sinners that the gates of heaven are always open; past Martinhoe village, which was the scene of one of the most cruel and cold-blooded of all the Doone murders, when they carried off the wife of Christopher Badcock, a small tenant farmer, and, in rage at finding nothing in the poor home but a little bacon and cheese, murdered her baby in a fit of senseless brutality, reciting over it this couplet:
"If any man asketh who killed thee,
Say 'twas the Doones of Bagworthy."
And so we come to Heddon's Mouth, and of the seven miles from there to Lynton I shall speak in the next chapter.
The Shepherd's Cottage, Doone Valley
But the twenty miles of hilly road may prove too much even for good walkers, and as the coach service between Ilfracombe and Lynton is suspended at present, owing to the war, it is best to take the little narrow-gauge railway that runs from Barnstaple to Lynton. There might be many more unfavourable ways, too, of seeing this stretch of country. The narrow line twists and winds across the hills, seeming to hang, sometimes, on a tiny viaduct, while many feet below a mountain stream pours down its rocky bed, and, owing to the narrowness of the gauge and the steepness of the gradients, the train progresses hardly quicker than a horse-drawn carriage, and one has leisure and opportunity to observe all that one is passing.