It is said that one Christmas-eve the fire languished in the Hall. A boy with an ass had been sent to the woodland for logs, and the driver loitered on his homeward way. Lady Grace lost patience, and was displeased. All at once a sudden outcry was heard at the gate, and Sir Beville’s Giant appeared with the loaded animal on his mighty back. He threw down his burden in triumph at the hearth-side, shouting merrily, “Ass and fardel! ass and fardel for my lady’s Yule!” Another time he strode along the path from Kilkhampton village to Stowe with a bacon-hog of three hundredweight thrown across his shoulders, and merely because a taunting butcher had doubted his strength for the feat. Among the excellences of Sir Beville’s Giant, it is told of him that he was by no means clumsy or uncouth, as men of unusual size sometimes are, but as nimble and elastic, and as capable of swift and dexterous movement, as a light and muscular man. Added to this, his was a strong and acute intellect; so happy also in his language, and of such a ready wit, that he was called by a writer[81] of the last century, from his resemblance, in these points only, to Shakespeare’s knight, “the Falstaff of the West.”
But a great and sudden change was about to come over the happy halls of Stowe. The king and his Parliament were at fatal strife; and there could be but one place in the land for the true-hearted and chivalrous Sir Beville, and that was at his royal master’s side.[82] The well-known rallying cry went through the hills and valleys of Cornwall, “Granville’s up!” and the hearts and hands of many a noble knight and man-at-arms turned towards old Stowe. Mounted messengers rode to and fro. Strange and stalwart forms arrived to claim a place in the ranks. Retainers were enrolled day and night; and the smooth sward of the bowling-green and the Fawn’s Paddock were dinted by the hoofs of horses and the tread of serried men. Foremost among these scenes we find, as body-guard of his master, the bulky form of Antony Payne. He marshalled and manœuvred the rude levies from the western mines, “the underground men.” He served out arms and rations, and established order, by the mere terror of his presence and strength, among the wild and mixed multitude that gathered “for the king and land.”
Instead of the glad and hospitable scenery of former times, Stowe became in those days like a garrison surrounded by a camp. At last, one day tidings arrived that the battalions of the Parliament, led by Lord Stamford, were on their way northwards, and not many miles off. A picked and goodly company marched forth from the avenue of Stowe, and among them Payne, on his Cornish cob Samson, of pure Guinhilly breed. The next day, eight miles towards the south, the battle of Stratton Hill was fought and won by the royal troops. The Earl of Stamford was repulsed, and fled, bequeathing, by a strange mischance, his own name, though the defeated commander, to the field of battle. It is called to this day Stamford Hill.[83] Sir Beville returned that night to Stowe, but his Giant remained with some other soldiers to bury the dead. He had caused certain large trenches to be laid open, each to hold ten bodies side by side. There he and his followers carried in the slain. On one occasion they had laid down nine corpses, and Payne was bringing in another, tucked under his arm, like one of “the kittens” of his schoolboy days, when all at once the supposed dead man was heard pleading earnestly with him, and expostulating, “Surely you wouldn’t bury me, Mr. Payne, before I am dead?” “I tell thee, man,” was the grim reply, “our trench was dug for ten, and there’s nine in already; you must take your place.” “But I bean’t dead, I say; I haven’t done living yet; be massyful, Mr. Payne—don’t ye hurry a poor fellow into the earth before his time.” “I won’t hurry thee: I mean to put thee down quietly and cover thee up, and then thee canst die at thy leisure.” Payne’s purpose, however, was kinder than his speech. He carried his suppliant carefully to his own cottage not far off, and charged his wife to stanch, if possible, her husband’s rebellious blood. The man lived, and his descendants are among the principal inhabitants of the town of Stratton to this day.[84]
That same year the battle of Lansdown, near Bath, was fought. The forces of the Parliament prevailed, and Sir Beville nobly died. Payne was still at his side, and, when his master fell, he mounted young John Granville, a youth of sixteen, whom he had always in charge, on his father’s horse, and he led the Granville troop into the fight. A letter[85] which the faithful retainer wrote to his lady at Stowe still survives. It breathes in the quaint language of the day a noble strain of sympathy and homage. Thus it ran:—
“Honoured Madam,—Ill news flieth apace. The heavy tidings no doubt hath already travelled to Stowe that we have lost our blessed master by the enemy’s advantage. You must not, dear lady, grieve too much for your noble spouse. You know, as we all believe, that his soul was in heaven before his bones were cold. He fell, as he did often tell us he wished to die, in the great Stuart cause, for his country and his king. He delivered to me his last commands, and with such tender words for you and for his children as are not to be set down with my poor pen, but must come to your ears upon my best heart’s breath. Master John, when I mounted him on his father’s horse, rode him into the war like a young prince, as he is, and our men followed him with their swords drawn and with tears in their eyes. They did say they would kill a rebel for every hair of Sir Beville’s beard. But I bade them remember their good master’s word, when he wiped his sword after Stamford fight; how he said, when their cry was, ‘Stab and slay!’ ‘Halt, men! God will avenge.’ I am coming down with the mournfullest load that ever a poor servant did bear, to bring the great heart that is cold to Kilkhampton vault. Oh, my lady, how shall I ever brook your weeping face? But I will be trothful to the living and to the dead.
“These, honoured madam, from thy saddest, truest servant,
“Antony Payne.”
ANTONY PAYNE (p. 118)
From the picture by Sir Godfrey Kneller