Motor Tours in the West Country

by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell

When William of Orange rode into the town with all his retinue of blacks and Finlanders it was not to Rougemont that he came, for Fairfax had nearly altogether destroyed it. He slept at the deanery, and on the following day entered the cathedral in state. It has not altered since then. He saw the stately Norman towers as we see them, and like ourselves passed into the building through the vaulted porch and rich mouldings of the west doorway. Over his head was the splendid tracery that is over ours, and on each side of him were the clustered pillars that we see. “And as he came all along the body of the church the organs played very sweetly, and the quire began to sing Te Deum.” Whether that Te Deum rang quite true upon the vaulted roof is open to doubt, for the choir, apparently, sang it with much reluctance and left the church hurriedly when their work was done, lest trouble should come of it. Meantime the prince sat down beneath the towering canopy of the throne that the bishop had deserted, and Burnet, standing at the foot of the pulpit, read aloud the declaration that gave England her liberties.

On the base of the throne are the painted effigies of the four bishops who made Exeter Cathedral what it now is: Warelwast, who built the towers; Quivil, who designed the Decorated building as it stands; Stapledon, who set up this carved and pinnacled throne, and the beautiful sedilia, and the “sylver altare” that has vanished; and Grandison the magnificent, who made the vaulted roof. Close at hand on the north side of the choir, with a restored canopy and a figure “very lively cut in the same stone,” is the tomb where Stapledon’s desecrated dust was laid. The enthroning of this bishop, says Carew the chronicler, was more than ordinarily splendid. Canons and vicars-choral in their habits led him to the throne, while “abundance of gentlemen of place and quality” followed after. Very splendid, too, was his burial in this choir. There had, however, been a burial of another sort in London; for, having been made Keeper of the City by Edward II., he was attacked by the mob who took the part of Queen Isabel. They dragged him from his refuge in St. Paul’s, “and having grievously beaten and wounded him, haled him along the streets to the great cross in Cheap, where those sons of the devil most barbarously murdered him.” His headless body lay buried in a sand-heap till the Queen ordered it to be brought hither in great honour.

CLOISTER, EXETER CATHEDRAL.

The “grave, wise, politic” Grandison, though much addicted to pomp, was personally simpler than the murdered bishop, who possessed no fewer than ninety-one rings. Grandison’s splendour was shown in hospitalities and lavish gifts to his cathedral. It owes much to him: among other things, I believe, the minstrels’ gallery that we see above us on our right as we walk down the nave—the gallery that was built, they say, in order that the Black Prince might be fittingly welcomed with music when he visited his duchy. The west front is Grandison’s, too. He once defended it and the dignity of his office with a body of armed men, on an occasion when the Archbishop of Canterbury came on a visitation. Here at the west door the angry prelates faced each other. Grandison won the day, and the archbishop, says Fuller, died of a broken heart.

It was possibly owing to the presence of Fairfax, who reverenced all that was ancient and beautiful, that the soldiers of the Parliament did so little harm to the cathedral, beyond destroying the cloisters. How much else they destroyed in the close I do not know: it is certain that much has vanished, for in Leland’s day it had four gates, and was “environid with many fair housis.” There are still several fair houses in Cathedral Yard that have survived the Civil War, but not all of them have been admired by Leland. He did not see, for instance, the curious outline and picturesque bow-windows of “Mol’s Coffee House,” nor the panelled room that is emblazoned with the shields of heroes and statesmen, of Talbot and Somerset, of Cecil and Throgmorton, of Drake and Raleigh and Gilbert. Tradition says that the bearers of these sounding names were wont to discuss the affairs of the nation in this room.

Before leaving Exeter we have a weighty matter to settle: our choice of a road. There are four ways of reaching Cornwall. Of these the shortest is by Okehampton to Launceston, and this has the advantage of passing through the bewitching village of Sticklepath: the best as regards surface is by Ashburton and Ivybridge to Plymouth: the most beautiful is the road that leads across the Moor by Moretonhampstead and Two Bridges to Tavistock: the most interesting and varied is the long way round by the coast, by Torquay and Dartmouth, Kingsbridge and Modbury. In the matter of hills the second of these roads is the least severe, and therefore on the whole I advise those who desire to reach Cornwall quickly to skirt the Moor upon the south; passing through Buckfastleigh, which has a new abbey on an old site, and Dean Prior, where Herrick lived so reluctantly, and Plympton, where old Bishop Warelwast died. There is no really steep gradient on this road, and though near Exeter there is a long climb followed by a long descent, there are several surprising miles, near Plymouth, that are almost level. The surface is usually very good. The scenery is not so strikingly beautiful as on the other roads, but in places it is very lovely, and everywhere there are the special charms of Devonshire: the shadowing trees, the high banks and trailing ivy, the stone walls green with myriads of tiny ferns, the gardens full of sunshine and flowers. Dean Prior, where Herrick lived for many quiet years, singing in sweet measures “how roses first came red and lilies white,” and dreaming wistfully of “golden Cheapside” and his Julia—and others—seems at first sight an unlikely place to be hated. Indeed, I think his hatred of it and its inhabitants was merely a mood. The same kind of mood that made him hurl the manuscript of his sermon at his congregation made him describe his neighbours as

“A people currish, churlish as the seas,

And rude almost as rudest savages,”

while all the time he was well aware that Robert Herrick was ruder than either. There were other days when he wrote very affectionately of his little house and his placid life in this village where he has so long been lying at rest. There is an ugly modern monument to him in his church, but his grave and that of his housekeeper Prue are unmarked by any stone. The beautiful epitaph he wrote himself will serve them well: