Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall

by Robert Stephen Hawker

Amid such practices ill-gotten gold began to flow and ebb in the hands of Coppinger. At one time he chanced to hold enough money to purchase a freehold farm bordering on the sea. When the day of transfer arrived, he and one of his followers appeared before the astonished lawyer with bags filled with various kinds of foreign coin. Dollars and ducats, doubloons and pistoles, guineas—the coinage of every foreign country with a seaboard—were displayed on the table. The man of law at first demurred to such purchase-money; but after some controversy, and an ominous oath or two of “that or none,” the lawyer agreed to take it by weight. The document bearing Coppinger’s name is still extant. His signature is traced in stern, bold, fierce characters, as if every letter had been stabbed upon the parchment with the point of a dirk. Underneath his autograph, also in his own writing, is the word “Thuro.”[93]

Long impunity increased Coppinger’s daring. There were certain byways and bridle-roads along the fields over which he exercised exclusive control. Although every one had a perfect right by law to use these ways, he issued orders that no man was to pass over them by night, and accordingly from that hour none ever did. They were called “Coppinger’s Tracks.” They all converged at a headland which had the name of Steeple Brink. Here the cliff sheered off, and stood three hundred feet of perpendicular height, a precipice of smooth rock toward the beach, with an overhanging face one hundred feet down from the brow. There was a hollow entrance into the cliff, like a huge cathedral door, crowned and surrounded with natural Saxon arches, curved by the strata of native stone. Within was an arched and vaulted cave, vast and gloomy; it ran a long way into the heart of the land, and was as large and tall—so the country-people said—as Kilkhampton church. This stronghold was inaccessible by natural means, and could only be approached by a cable-ladder lowered from above and made fast below on a projecting crag. It received the name of “Coppinger’s Cave,” and was long the scene of fierce and secret revelry that would be utterly inconceivable to the educated mind of the nineteenth century. Here sheep were tethered to the rock, and fed on stolen hay and corn till their flesh was required for a feast: kegs of brandy and hollands were piled around; chests of tea; and iron-bound sea-chests contained the chattels and the revenues of the Coppinger royalty of the sea. No man ever essayed the perilous descent into the cavern except the captain’s own troop, and their loyalty was secured, not only by their participation in his crimes, but by a terrible oath.

The terror linked with Coppinger’s name throughout the coast was so extreme that the people themselves, wild and lawless as they were, submitted to his sway as though he had been the lord of the soil and they his vassals. Such a household as Coppinger’s was of course far from happy or calm. Although when his wife’s father died he had insensibly acquired possession of the stock and farm, there remained in the hands of the widow a considerable amount of money as her dower. This he obtained from the poor helpless woman by instalments; and when pretext and entreaty alike failed, he resorted to a novel mode of levy. He fastened his wife to the pillar of her oak bedstead, and called her mother into the room. He then explained that it was his purpose to flog Dinah with the sea-cat, which he flourished in his hand, until her mother had transferred to him such an amount as he required of her reserved property. This deed of atrocity he repeated until he had utterly exhausted the widow’s store. He had a favourite mare, so fierce and indomitable that none but Coppinger himself could venture on her back, and so fleet and strong that he owed his escape from more than one menacing peril by her speed and endurance. The clergyman had spoken above his breath of the evil doings in the cave, and had thus aroused his wrath and vengeance.[94] On a certain day he was jogging homeward on his parish cob, and had reached the middle of a wide and desolate heath. All at once he heard behind him the clattering of horse-hoofs and a yell such as might have burst from the throat of the visible demon when he hurled the battle on the ancient saint. It was Cruel Coppinger with his double-thonged whip, mounted on his terrible mare. Down came the fearful scourge on his victim’s shuddering shoulders. Escape was impossible. The poor parson knew too well the difference between his own ambling galloway, that never essayed any swifter pace than a jog-trot, and that awful steed behind him with footsteps like the storm. Circling, doubling like a hare, twisting aside, crying aloud for mercy,—all was vain. He arrived at last at his own house, striped like a zebra, and as he rushed in at the gate he heard the parting scoff of his assailant, “There, parson, I have paid my tithe in full; never mind the receipt!”

It was on the self-same animal that Coppinger performed another freak. He had passed a festive evening at a farmhouse, and was about to take his departure, when he spied at the corner of the hearth a little old tailor of the country-side, who went from house to house to exercise his calling. He was a half-witted, harmless old fellow, and answered to the name of Uncle Tom Tape.

“Ha, Uncle Tom!” cried Coppinger; “we both travel the same road, and I don’t mind giving thee a hoist behind me on the mare.”

The old man cowered in the settle. He would not encumber the gentleman,—was unaccustomed to ride such a spirited horse. But all his excuses were overborne. The other guests, entering into the joke, assisted the trembling old man to mount the crupper of the capering mare. Off she bounded, and Uncle Tom, with his arms cast with the strong gripe of terror around his bulky companion, held on like grim death. Unbuckling his belt, Coppinger passed it around Uncle Tom’s thin haggard body, and buckled it on his own front. When he had firmly secured his victim, he loosened his reins, and urged the mare with thong and spur into a furious gallop. Onward they rushed till they fled past the tailor’s own door at the roadside, where his startled wife, who was on the watch, afterwards declared “she caught sight of her husband clinging on to a rainbow.” Loud and piteous were the outcries of Tailor Tom, and earnest his shrieks of entreaty that he might be told where he was to be carried that night, and for what doom he had been buckled on. At last, in a relaxation of their pace going up a steep hill, Coppinger made him a confidential communication.

“I have been,” he said, “under a long promise to the devil that I would bring him a tailor to make and mend for him, poor man; and as sure as I breathe, Uncle Tom, I mean to keep my word to-night!”

The agony of terror produced by this revelation produced such convulsive spasms, that at last the belt gave way, and the tailor fell off like a log among the gorse at the roadside. There he was found next morning in a semi-delirious state, muttering at intervals, “No, no; I never will. Let him mend his breeches with his own drag-chain, as the saying is. I will never so much as thread a needle for Coppinger nor his friend.”

One boy was the only fruit of poor Dinah’s marriage with the Dane. But his birth brought neither gladness nor solace to his mother’s miserable hearth. He was fair and golden-haired, and had his father’s fierce, flashing eyes. But though perfectly well formed and healthful, he was born deaf and dumb. He was mischievous and ungovernable from his birth. His cruelty to animals, birds, and to other children was intense. Any living thing that he could torture appeared to yield him delight. With savage gestures and jabbering moans he haunted the rocks along the shore, and seemed like some uncouth creature cast up by the sea. When he was only six years old he was found one day upon the brink of a tall cliff, bounding with joy, and pointing downward towards the beach with convulsions of delight. There, mangled by the fall and dead, they found the body of a neighbour’s child of his own age, who was his frequent companion, and whom, as it was inferred, he had drawn towards the steep precipice, and urged over by stratagem or force. The spot where this occurred was ever afterwards his favourite haunt. He would draw the notice of any passer-by to the place, and then point downward where the murdered child was found with fierce exultant mockery. It was a saying evermore in the district, that, as a judgment on his father’s cruelty, his child had been born without a human soul. He lived to be the pestilent scourge of the neighbourhood.