Pleased with her Cornish grace of manner, with her fresh face and honest eyes, he took her to London as servant to his wife, and when the latter died he made her the mistress of his house. Dying himself shortly afterwards, he bequeathed to her a large fortune. She then married a person of the name of Gale, whom also she survived. Then Sir John Percival, Lord Mayor of London, succumbed to her charms of face, and above all of manner, and he became her third husband. But he also died, and she was once more a widow. The lady was by this time content with her experience as a wife, and returning from London to Week S. Mary—think of that! to Week S. Mary, the wind-blown and desolate—she devoted her days and fortune to good works. She founded there a college and chantry, and doubtless largely contributed towards the building of the parish church. She repaired the roads, built bridges, gave dowries to maidens, and relieved the poor. She contributed also to the building of the tower of S. Stephen’s by Launceston.
Her college for the education of the youth of the neighbourhood continued to flourish till the Reformation, and the best gentlemen’s sons of Devon and Cornwall went there for their education. But as there was a chantry attached to the school, this served as an excuse for the rapacity of those who desired to increase their goods at the cost of Church and poor, and school and chantry were suppressed together. Week S. Mary till lately had its mayor, and was esteemed a borough, though it never returned members.
Externally it is fine, the tower remarkably so. In the tower may be observed curious results of a lightning flash.
The coast of North Cornwall right and left of Bude is very fine; the carboniferous rocks stand up with their strata almost perpendicular, but there are bays and coves that allow of descent to the sea. Widmouth promises to become some day a great watering-place.
To see this coast it is in vain to take the coach road to Bideford or to Boscastle. The road runs on the ridge of high land from which the streams descend and spill into the sea. The only way in which to appreciate its wildness and beauty is to take the coast road that climbs and descends a succession of rocky waves. By that means scenes of the greatest picturesqueness and of the utmost variety are revealed. One excursion must on no account be omitted, that to Morwenstow, for many years the home of a fine poet, an eccentric man, the Rev. Robert S. Hawker.
He was born at Stoke Damerel on December 3rd, 1804, and was the son of Mr. Jacob Stephen Hawker, at one time a medical man, but afterwards ordained and vicar of Stratton. Mr. J. S. Hawker was the son of the famous Dr. Hawker, incumbent of Charles Church, Plymouth, author of Morning and Evening Portions, a book of devotional reading at one time in great request.
Young Robert was committed to his grandfather to be educated. He was sent to Oxford, but his father, then a poor curate, was unable to maintain him there, and told him so. The difficulty was, however, happily surmounted. He proposed to a lady rather older than his mother, but who had about £200 per annum. She accepted him; he was then aged twenty and she was forty-one, and had taught him his letters. By this means he was enabled to continue his studies at Oxford. He was given the living of Morwenstow in 1834, and remained there till his death in 1875.
A writer in the Standard of this latter year thus describes his first acquaintance with the vicar of Morwenstow:—
“It was on a solemn occasion that we first saw Morwenstow. The sea was still surly and troubled, with wild lights breaking over it and torn clouds driving through the sky. Up from the shore, along a narrow path between jagged rocks and steep banks tufted with thrift, came the vicar, wearing cassock and surplice, and conducting a sad procession, which bore along with it the bodies of two seamen flung up the same morning on the sands. The office used by Mr. Hawker at such times had been arranged by himself, not without reference to certain peculiarities which, as he conceived, were features of the primitive Cornish Church, the same which had had its bishops and its traditions long before the conference of Augustine with its leaders under the great oak by the Severn. Indeed, at one time he carried his adhesion to these Cornish traditions to some unusual lengths. There was, we remember, a peculiar yellow vestment, in which he appeared much like a Lama of Thibet, which he wore in his house and about his parish, and which he insisted was an exact copy of a priestly robe worn by S. Padarn and S. Teilo. We have seen him in this attire proceeding through the lanes on the back of a well-groomed mule—the only fitting beast, as he remarked, for a churchman.”
We have here an instance out of many of the manner in which he delighted in hoaxing visitors. The yellow vestment was a poncho. It came into use in the following manner:—