Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts

by Rosalind Northcote

Queen Victoria's wedding-dress was made at Beer, and of later years there has been a revival of lace-making, especially in the neighbourhood of Honiton and of Beer; and considerable quantities are made by village women living at home.

But lace is not the only thing that comes from Honiton. Cider is made there, and in the reign of George II making it must have been a very profitable occupation. Defoe notes: 'They tell us they send twenty thousand hogsheads of cider hence every year to London, and (which is still worse) that it is most of it bought there by the merchants to mix with their wines—which, if true, is not much to the reputation of the London vintners. But that by-the-bye.' As cider-making was then in such a prosperous condition, it is easy to understand the tremendous outcry that arose a few years later, when Lord Bute imposed the enormous tax of ten shillings per hogshead, to be paid by the first buyer. The storm provoked was so violent, the opposition of country gentlemen of all shades of politics so unanimous, that the Prime Minister modified the tax to one of four shillings on each hogshead, to be paid by the grower, who was thereby rendered liable to the domiciliary visits of excisemen. This alteration was vehemently protested against, and Pitt championed the opposition on the grounds that it was an Englishman's pride that every man's house was his castle, and denounced as intolerable a Bill that allowed excisemen to invade the house of any gentleman who 'owned a few fruit-trees and made a little cider.' The City of London sent petitions to the Commons, the Lords, and the Throne; and the counties of Devon and Hereford, the cities of Exeter and Worcester, urged their respective Members to make all possible resistance to the tax. Lord Bute's personal unpopularity increased enormously, and a shoal of squibs, caricatures, and pamphlets appeared, in which he was held up to ridicule and contempt. One caricature represented him as 'hung on the gallows over a fire, on which a jack-boot fed the flames, and a farmer was throwing an excised cyder barrel into the conflagration. In rural districts he was burnt under the effigy of a jack-boot, a rural allusion to his name.'

An amusing story is told of Lord North in connection with this tax. Not long after it had been imposed, he and Sir Robert Hamilton came to Ashe, near Axminster, on a visit—Lord North, then a Lord of the Treasury, distinctly uneasy as to the risk of coming into Devonshire, for the county was still seething with dissatisfaction against the Government. 'He was one day thrown into great alarm by a large party of reapers, who, having finished cutting the wheat of the estate, approached the house with their hooks in their hands, shouting the usual cry, "We have'n! we have'n!" The portentous words Lord North applied to himself, and, pale with terror, considered himself a dead man. Sir Robert Hamilton seized a sword, and was sallying forth to repulse the visitors, when, meeting a member of the household, an explanation took place, by which the fears so unconsciously excited were removed.'

Sidmouth

It was a most ancient custom in the West—indeed, it is said to be a remnant of the pagan rite of dedicating the first-fruits to Ceres—to set aside either the first armful of corn that was cut or else some of the best ears, and bind them into a little sheaf, called a 'neck'. A fragment of the vivid description given by Miss O'Neill in 'Devonshire Idyls' must be quoted: 'The men carried their reaping-hooks; the sheaf was borne by the old man. Bareheaded he stood in the light of the moon. Strange shadows flecked the mossy sward on sundown as he held the first-fruits aloft and waved his arms.

'"We ha'un!" cried he, and the cry was long and wailing. The strange intimation fell on the ear like an echo from pagan days. One could fancy the fauns and weird beings of old had taught the cadence to the first reapers of earth. "We ha'un!" cried he, and all the men in the circle bowed to the very ground.... "We ha'un!" cried Jonas again, and again the reapers bowed and waved. Then the old men took up another strain, at once more jubilant and more resonant, and with an indescribable drawling utterance sang out "Thee Neck!"—sang it out three times, and twice the waving circle of bright steel flashed.'

On leaving Honiton, if the river is followed upstream for a short distance, the traveller will find himself close to ruined Ottery Mohun, the home of two celebrated families in succession. Unfortunately, it has been entirely destroyed by fire. A farm now stands among the ruins, and two fine Perpendicular archways, and a deeply moulded and hooded arch over the frontdoor, alone bear witness to its former state. In the spandril above the outer archway is carved, 'amid elegant scroll-work and foliage, an arm, vested in an ermine maunch, the hand grasping a golden fleur-de-lys'—the old coat-armour of the Mohuns; and on the other spandril 'three lions passant in pale,' the bearing of the Carews.

The Mohuns were a Norman family of distinction, but in later days were notorious rather than famous. The old peerage having died out in the Middle Ages, a member of a cadet branch, by shameless and persevering begging, induced Charles I to grant him a barony. This title only survived a few generations, and the fifth and last bearer of it was known as 'the wicked' Lord Mohun. His life was short—he was barely over forty when he died—but eventful, for he was twice tried before his peers, each time on the charge of being accessory to a murder, and the story has often been told of the desperate duel in which Lord Mohun was killed by the Duke of Hamilton, whom he had mortally wounded. Spectators burst upon the scene to discover the two principals dying on the ground, and the two seconds fiercely fighting each other.

The history of the Carews is more interesting. Ottery Mohun came to them towards the end of the thirteenth century, through the heiress of the elder branch of Mohuns, whom John Carew married. Their names were eminent in camp, court, and council, in one reign after another; but it is only possible to speak here of two, Sir Gawen, and his nephew Sir Peter, on whose death the branch that had been settled at Ottery Mohun for three centuries became extinct in the direct line. There is not even space for the career of another of Sir Gawen's nephews, to whom Queen Elizabeth wrote, with her own hand, in regard to his efforts in subduing the Irish: