'The Lamentation of George Strangwidge' many times lapses into bathos, but as in a way it answers the other ballad, I will quote a few verses:
'O Glanfield! cause of my committed crime,
Snarèd in wealth, as Birds in bush of lime,
What cause had thou to beare such wicked spight
Against my Love, and eke my hart's delight?
'I would to God thy wisdome had been more,
Or that I had not ent'red at the door;
Or that thou hadst a kinder Father beene
Unto thy Childe, whose yeares are yet but greene.
'Ulalia faire, more bright than summer's sunne,
Whose beauty had my heart for ever won,
My soule more sobs to thinke of thy disgrace,
Than to behold my owne untimely race.
'The deed late done in heart I doe lament,
But that I lov'd, I cannot it repent;
Thy seemely sight was ever sweet to me.
Would God my death could thy excuser be.'
Kilworthy House, which in those days belonged to the Glanvills, is now the property of the Duke of Bedford.
Tavistock seems to have maintained an open mind, or perhaps was forced into keeping open house, during the Civil War; but Fitzford House, then belonging to Sir Richard Grenville, held out resolutely for the King, until overpowered by Lord Essex. The people seem to have been rather indifferent to the cause of the war, and very sensible of its hardships, for it was here suggested that a treaty might be made, 'whereby the peace of those two counties of Cornwall and Devon might be settled and the war removed into other parts.' It was a really excellent method of shifting an unpleasant burden on to other shoulders, but in actual warfare, unfortunately, impracticable, although the treaty was drawn up and for a short time a truce was observed.
At the end of this year (1645) Prince Charles paid a visit to the town, and was so much 'annoyed by wet weather, that ever after, if anybody remarked it was a fine day, he was wont to declare that, however fine it might be elsewhere, he felt quite sure it must be raining at Tavistock.' One cannot help wondering if his courtiers kept to English tradition of perpetually speaking of the weather.
To walk away from Tavistock along the Tavy's bank is to follow the footsteps of that river's special poet, William Browne. His poems are not so well known as they might be, and his most celebrated lines are nearly always attributed to Ben Jonson—I mean the fine epitaph on 'Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother'—though any doubt as to the author of the lines is cleared up by a manuscript in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Not very many details of his life are known, but he had the happiness of being better appreciated by his contemporaries than by posterity, and Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton wrote complimentary verses, as a sort of introduction to volumes of his poems when they were published. Browne's work is very uneven, many of his poems are charming, some diffuse and rather poor; but he had a sincere feeling for Nature, and his nymphs and swains revelled in posies and garlands in the shade of groves full of singing birds.
In the third book of his long poem, 'Britannia's Pastorals,' there is a quaint and pretty song, of which one verse runs: