'"Like shrieking mandrakes torn from out the earth."'
Wistman's Wood
Though some of the stone circles on the moor are due to miners rather than to prehistoric man, their antiquity may very well win respect; for, according to the views of the early nineteenth century, it was quite probable that the Phoenicians were trading with this island for tin in the year 1000 B.C.! It is unnecessary to say that the reasoning which supports this theory is very ingenious, and later opinions do not allow that the Phoenicians ever traded directly with Britain at all. The metal, it is held, was brought to the Mediterranean coast through the medium of 'the Veneti of what is now Vannes, and the tin trade was carried through Gaul to Marseilles.' To take a great leap from the date originally suggested, there is certain evidence that British tin was conveyed over this trade route in the year 40 B.C. The Romans taught the Britons better methods of mining, and how tin might be used for household needs. Another long interval without any mention of the subject brings us to the reign of the Normans, when it seems that the mines were almost entirely in the hands of the Jews. On their expulsion by Edward I, the mines were neglected for a few years, and next a charter was granted to several Devonshire gentlemen, at their request, conferring the important privilege of holding plea of all actions relating to the mines, 'those of lyfe, lymme, and lande' excepted. Henceforward the Devonshire miners were separated from the Cornish, and held stannary parliaments on the top of Crockern Tor. The summit is piled with granite, and out of the rock was hewn 'a warden's or president's chair, seats for the jurors, and a high corner stone for the crier of the court, and a table,' says Polwhele; and here the 'hardy mountain council'—twenty-four burgesses from each of the stannary towns—assembled. 'This memorable place is only a great rock of moorstone, out of which a table and seats are hewn, open to all the weather, storms and tempests, having neither house nor refuge near it by divers miles,' wrote Prince. It is much to be regretted that nearly all traces of the court have now disappeared, and a report says that the table and seats were carried away to be used for some buildings not far off. It is said that the last parliament was held on this tor in 1749, but for some time before that date the court merely met on the tor, and, after the jurors had been sworn in, adjourned to one of the stannary towns.
From the charter of Edward I onwards, mining seems to have prospered, with one or two intervals of great depression, and as late as 1861 seventy-four mines were being worked in Devonshire. 'Streaming' for tin was very much practised in the Middle Ages, and the sides of valleys all over Dartmoor are scored with the works of the tin-streamers, who turned about the streams and examined the beds for 'grain-tin.' Many of the ruined 'blowing-houses' are still to be seen on the moor. Mrs. Bray mentions a curious testimony to the wildness and remoteness of the parts in which some of the miners must have worked: 'A very old woodcut ... exhibited a whole pack of hounds harnessed and laden with little bags of tin, travelling over the mountains of Dartmoor; these animals being able to cross the deep bogs of the forest in situations where there were no roads, and where no other beasts of burden could pass.'
It was owing to the mines that Dartmoor became a part of the Duchy, for the 'metalliferous' moors of Dartmoor and Cornwall had, on that account, long been Crown lands; and therefore, when Edward III created his eldest son Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall, the Chase of Dartmoor, and the Castle and Manor of Lydford were granted to him with the estates in Cornwall. Dartmoor has existed as a forest practically from time immemorial, and the date when forest laws were first imposed on it is, in the opinion of the learned, 'lost in antiquity.' The first charter affecting the state of the moor was bestowed in 1204, when King John was compelled reluctantly to grant a Charter of Forests, disafforesting the lands that had been gradually appropriated by the Kings since Henry I. Surrounding the forest proper are lands known as the Commons of Devon, and, usually speaking, they are included in any general reference to Dartmoor. Every parish in Devonshire, excepting Barnstaple and Totnes, has a right to pasture cattle on them for the payment of a small sum. Two classes of men have special rights in the moor: owners and occupiers of tenements within the forest, and venville tenants, or owners of land in particular vills, or towns, adjoining the forest. Claims and counter-claims as to their exact rights and liabilities have been pressed in successive centuries, but various ancient documents set forth these tenants' rights, 'time out of mind, to take all things that might do them good, saving green oak and venison.' These privileges include pasturing all 'commonable beasts' on the moor, digging turf for fuel, stone and sand for mending houses and lands, and taking heath for thatching, 'paying their dues and doing their suits and services.' The 'suits and services' involved attendance at the Prince's Courts, and the tenants' help at the time of the bullock and pony drifts—that is, when the herds are driven off the moor by the moormen to a point chosen by the Duchy steward, and are there identified by their owners.
In the Duchy records appear various well-known names that one does not naturally associate with the Forest. The Conqueror granted it to his half-brother, Robert, Earl of Montaigne; King John gave the Earldom of Cornwall to his second son, Richard Plantagenet, afterwards King of the Romans. This Prince 'much augmented the powers of the stannaries of Devon and Cornwall, and under his auspices they thrived exceedingly.' For a short time the earldom was bestowed on Piers Gaveston; Thomas Cromwell and some others had a lease of the lead-mines on the moor for twenty-one years; the first Earl of Bedford was 'Custos of the Forest or Chase of Dartmoor'; and Sir Walter Raleigh was appointed Ranger and Master Forester, besides being Lord Warden of the Stannaries. The first perambulation of the forest boundaries probably took place in 1224, and others have been made at intervals ever since; yet a long tale of grievances from that date almost up to the present time might be heard from commoners whose rights have been encroached upon.
The bounds of property owned by religious houses at certain points were marked by granite crosses, of which a great number are still to be found on the moor. Some of them, however, were standing long before the monasteries were built. To take one instance, the cross on Sourton Down has an inscription which, it has been declared, belongs to the sixth century, and which can still be deciphered when the sun is setting and the rays slant across it. The Abbot's Way, leading over the moor, is marked by crosses. It ran westwards from Buckfast Abbey, and divided at Broad Rock, near Plym Head, in the middle of the moor—one branch going to Tavistock, and the other to Buckland Abbey. The path cannot now be traced the whole way, but the crosses show the line. Beckamoor Cross (or the Windy Post, as it is sometimes called), between two and three miles south-east of Tavistock, is a typical Dartmoor cross, and a fine example, but it cannot be numbered among the very old ones, for it seems to date from the sixteenth century.
Perhaps the Dartmoor village best known by name is Widdecombe-in-the-Moor, and its fame is spread by the song 'Widdecombe Fair;' this is the most popular of Devonshire folk-songs, and the air served the Devon Regiment as a march in the Boer War. But Widdecombe has more solid claims to consideration, and one of them is the large and beautiful church, with its very fine tower and high crocketed pinnacles, each pointed by a cross. The roof is adorned by 'bosses, carved and painted with heads, flowers and leaves, and also figures or marks which obscurely shadow forth the learning of the alchemist.' The presence of these symbols is explained by a tradition that the church was built by miners. 'On one of the bosses is the combination of three rabbits, each with a single ear, which join in the centre, forming a triangle—a favourite alchemical symbol, called the hunt of Venus.' Parts of the rood-screen remain, and on the panels are painted saints and doctors of the Church, and a king and queen. On October 21, 1638, a terrible storm raged here during service-time. First fell 'a strange darkenesse'; then a terrific thunder-clap; 'the ratling thereof' was much like 'the report of many great cannons.' 'Extraordinarie lightning' flashed, 'so flaming that the whole church was presently filled with fire and smoke,' and a smell of brimstone, and a great ball of fire came in at the window and passed through the church. The church itself was much torne and defaced, 'stones throwne from the Tower as thick as if an hundred men had been there throwing.' Several people were killed and many 'grievously scalded and wounded.' The history of the storm has been told in verse, and the lines were painted on tablets and placed in the church. Mrs Bray found 'the wildest tales' of the storm floating among the people in the neighbourhood, and, amongst them, 'One story is that the devil, dressed in black and mounted on a black horse, inquired his way to the church, of a woman who kept a little public-house on the moor. He offered her money to become his guide; but she distrusted him, in remarking that the liquor went hissing down his throat, and finally had her suspicions confirmed by discovering he had a cloven foot, which he could not conceal even by his boot.'
