Leading inland from Ilfracombe are 'lovely combes, with their green copses, and ridges of rock, and golden furze, fruit-laden orchards, and slopes of emerald pasture, pitched as steep as house-roofs, where the red long-horns are feeding, with their tails a yard above their heads.' About twenty-two miles to the west, the sea-line is broken by an island, about which there is an indefinable air of romance. Lundy is three and a half miles long, its greatest width is a few yards short of a mile, and it is surrounded by high and dangerous cliffs and rocks—too well known even in the present day by the ships wrecked on them. Perhaps those oftenest heard of are the reefs of the Hen and Chickens, 'fringed with great insular rocks, bristling up amid the sea,' which dashes on them in a never-ceasing cloud of foam on the north, and the fatal Shutter on the south-west. Lundy has been described as a 'lofty table-headed granite rock.... The cliffs and adjacent sea are alive with seabirds, every ledge and jutting rock being alive with them, or they are whirling round in clouds, filling the air with their discordant screams.' Westcote remarked: 'In breeding time, in some places, you shall hardly know where to set your foot but on eggs,' and adds that it affords 'conies plentifully, doves, stares (which Alexander Nectan termeth Ganymede's birds).' Mr Chanter translates 'Ganymede's birds to be gannets, as there were very many of these birds there'; but an older commentator soars higher, and thinks of eagles and ostriches!
A description of Lundy as it was in the middle of the eighteenth century is dimly suggestive of Robinson Crusoe. 'Wild fowl were exceeding plenty, and a vast number of rabbits. The island was overgrown with ferns and heath, which made it almost impossible to go to the extreme of the island. Had it not been for the supply of rabbits and young sea-gulls our tables would have been but poorly furnished, rats being so plenty that they destroyed every night what was left of our repast by day. Lobsters were tolerably plenty, and some other fish we caught. The deer and goats were very wild and difficult to get at. The path to the house was so narrow and steep that it was scarcely possible for a horse to ascend it. The inhabitants by the assistance of a rope climbed up a rock in which were steps cut to place their feet, to a cave or magazine where Mr Benson lodged his goods.' There have been considerable differences of opinion about the name, and Mr Baring-Gould believes: 'Lundy takes its name from the puffins, in Scandinavian Lund, that at all times frequented it; but it had an earlier Celtic name, Caer Sidi, and is spoken of as a mysterious abode in the Welsh Mabinogion.'
Many centuries later it seems to have had the power of inspiring fabulous tales, for Miss Celia Fiennes, who looked at it in her journey from Cornwall, makes a statement almost as wonderful as some of Sir John Mandeville's tales of Barnacle Trees and other marvels. She says: 'I saw the isle of Lundy, which formerly belonged to my Grandfather, William Lord Viscount Say and Seale, which does abound with fish and rabbits and all sorts of ffowles, one bird yt lives partly in the water and partly out and so may be called an amphibious creature; it's true that one foot is like a turkey, the other a goose's foote; it lays its eggs in a place the sun shines on and sets it so exactly upright on the small end, and there it remaines till taken up, and all the art and skill of persons cannot set it up soe againe to abide.'
Legends apart, Lundy has been the scene of many thrilling adventures, and has had an eventful history. The advantages of its position for watching and falling upon richly laden merchant ships on their way to and from Bristol and other towns, and the great difficulties that met any enemy trying to land, resulted in the island being appropriated by one band of pirates after another, of whom the De Moriscoes were the most celebrated. Henry II, getting tired of their turbulence and lawlessness, granted the island to the Knights Templars, but it does not appear they were ever able to establish themselves there. In 1158 the raids of the Moriscoes became so intolerable that a special tax was imposed in Devon and Cornwall for the defence of their ports, and for furnishing means for an attack on Lundy, but Sir William de Morisco seems to have triumphantly survived the storm. Later he was taken prisoner by the French in a sea-fight, but was eventually released.
Sir William, his son, was charged, upon the evidence of a semi-lunatic, with conspiring to assassinate Henry III, and on the strength of it was condemned to death—a sentence that, as he fled to Lundy, was not carried out for four years, when he was taken by stratagem. Lundy was then seized by the King, but forty years later the Moriscoes once more gained possession of it. Edward II granted the island to one of the Despencers, and in his own distress attempted to take refuge here:
'To Lundy, which in Sabrin's mouth doth stand,
Carried with hope (still hoping to find ease),
Imagining it were his native land,
England itself; Severn, the narrow sea;
With this conceit, poor soul! himself doth please.
And sith his rule is over-ruled by men,
On birds and beasts he'll king it once again.
''Tis treble death a freezing death to feel;
For him on whom the sun hath ever shone,
Who hath been kneeled unto, can hardly kneel,
Nor hardly beg what once hath been his own.
A fearful thing to tumble from a throne!
Fain would he be king of a little isle;
All were his empire bounded in a mile.'
But the winds were against him, and he was driven on to the Welsh coast, into the hands of his enemies.
During the reign of Henry VIII, French pirates seized the island, and plundered and robbed at large, but they were accounted for by the valour of Clovelly fishermen, who made a determined attack, and killed or made prisoners of the whole band. In 1608 a commission was held to consider the grievances of merchants who complained of piracy in the Bristol Channel; and in 1610 'another commission was issued to the Earl of Nottingham to authorize the town of Barnstaple to send out ships for the capture of pirates, and the deposition was taken of one William Young, who had been made prisoner by Captain Salkeld, who entitled himself "King of Lundy," and was a notorious pirate.' Two years later 'the John of Braunton and the Mayflower of Barnstaple caught as notorious Rogues as any in England.' After another thirteen years: 'The Mayor of Bristol reports to the Council that three Turkish pirate vessels had surprised and taken the island of Lundy with the inhabitants, and had threatened to burn Ilfracombe.' During an inquiry following this report, evidence was given that seems very curious when one considers the date, nearly halfway through the seventeenth century: 'From Nicholas Cullen, "That the Turks had taken out of a church in Cornwall about sixty men, and carried them away prisoners."'
French pirates made Lundy their headquarters three years later, and in June, 1630, Captain Plumleigh reported that 'Egypt was never more infested with caterpillars than the Channel with Biscayers. On the 23rd instant there came out of St Sebastian twenty sail of sloops; some attempted to land on Lundy, but were repulsed by the inhabitants.'