Hey Tor
CHAPTER V
The Teign
'Ting (whose banks were blest
By her beloved nymph dear Leman) which addrest,
And fully with herself determined before
To sing the Danish spoils committed on her shore,
When hither from the east they came in mighty swarms,
Nor could their native earth contain their numerous arms,
Their surcrease grew so great, as forced them at last
To seek another soil, as bees do when they cast;
And by their impious pride how hard she was bested,
When all the country swam with blood of Saxons shed.'
Drayton: Poly-olbion.
The Teign rises, as do most of the rivers in Devon, on Dartmoor, and starts across the moorlands towards the north. After a few miles it is joined by the Wallabrook, and at that point turns eastwards.
The moorland country about it is very beautiful, but especially when the heather and furze are in flower together, and far and wide stretches a most royal display of rose-purple and gold. Ferns hang over the transparent brown water, with its glancing lights, and tiny ferns and polypodys peer out from the crannies and hollows of big grey boulders. Here and there bushy willows grow along the edge, or a mountain-ash shows its feathery, deep green foliage and clusters of scarlet berries. A clapper bridge—that is, a bridge formed out of a single slab of granite—over twelve feet long lies across the Wallabrook near the meeting of the streams. Beside it grows a mountain-ash, and the quivering and wavering leaves, and their shadows that quiver and waver in the ripples beneath, make a profound contrast to that massive, immovable stone, that from its look may certainly be included among those Dartmoor antiquities which Sir Frederick Pollock says 'may very well have been as great a mystery to the contemporaries of Julius Cæsar as they are to ourselves.' Modern opinion, however, denies that these bridges on the moor are of a very great age. Close by on the north stands Scorhill Circle, one of those stone circles over the history of which antiquaries still differ.
A little farther down, on the north bank, is a tolmen, and there is a tradition that to creep through the hole brings luck. The rock has, of course, been associated with the Druids and their rites, but the hole is really a natural one.
About three miles farther down the river one arrives at Chagford, and perhaps the two things that a stranger will first notice about this little town are, that the air is very exhilarating and the people particularly courteous. For the rest, though not echoing Lord Clarendon's remark, that, but for the calamity of Sidney Godolphin's death, it is 'a place which could never otherwise have had a mention in this world,' one must admit that it is not very remarkable. The moment when Chagford came most violently into contact with public affairs was that mentioned by Lord Clarendon, and most heartily must the inhabitants have wished themselves back in their usual peaceful solitude. Sir John Berkeley, at that time, 'with a good party, volant, of horse and dragoons,' was descending in 'all places in the surrounding country where Parliamentarians were known to be assembled, "dissolving" them, and taking many prisoners.' Of one of these 'necessary and brisk expeditions' Chagford was the goal, and arriving very early in the morning, still in the dark, they fell upon it before day. The chilly January dawn broke over a much-discomforted town, ringing with shots, the trampling of horses, and the clash of steel, but the Royalist troops were sturdily resisted, and Godolphin was slain, it is said, in the porch of the Three Crowns Inn. Clarendon writes of him: 'There was never so great a mind and spirit contained in so little room;' and in his account of the skirmish he says: 'As his advice was of great authority with all the commanders ... so he exposed his person to all action, travel, and hazard; and by too forward engaging himself in this last received a mortal shot by a musket, a little above the knee, of which he died in the instant.' Sidney Godolphin, it will be remembered, was one of the celebrated 'four wheels of Charles's Wain, all Devonshire and Cornish men, and all slain at or near the same place, the same time, and in the same cause....