Lord Lansdowne’s Vindication of Sir Richard Grenville, printed in Holland, 1654, reprinted in Lord Lansdowne’s Works, 1732; also Clarendon’s History of the Great Rebellion, and Mrs. G. Radford’s “Lady Howard, of Fitzford,” in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1890.
THE BIDLAKES, OF BIDLAKE
The Bidlake family can be traced back to the thirteenth century. Their original seat was Combe or Combebow, in the parish of Bridestowe, where they had a mansion on a knoll of limestone rising out of a narrow valley. The site is of interest. The old Roman road, probably a pre-Roman road from Exeter to Launceston and the West, ran through this contracted glen, on the south-east side of which rises steeply a lofty chain of hills cut sharply through by the Lew River. This ridge goes by the name of Galaford, or the Forked Way, because the ancient roads did fork—that already mentioned ran along one side, and that leading to Lydford ran on the other, the fork being on Sourton Down. At the point or promontory above the cleft cut by the Lew, and immediately above the knoll of Combe, is an extensive series of earthworks, prehistoric and Saxon. The prehistoric camp is oval, with outworks to the south, where the tongue of hill is cut through from one side to the other by an artificial moat with bank.
BIDLAKE
If I am not mistaken, here was the scene of the final contest of the Britons against the Saxons in 823, fought at Gavulford, when the former were routed. This was, in fact, the best position along the road into Cornwall at which they could make a stand. That the Saxons considered it a point of importance is shown by their erecting here a burh or burg in addition to the powerfully entrenched prehistoric fortress. The knoll in the valley below was also probably fortified, but all traces have been swept away by quarrymen who have dug the hill over for lime, only sparing one point that was heaped up with the ruins of the mansion of the Combes.
William de Combe early in the fifteenth century had a son John, who moved to Bidlake, built himself a house there, and called himself John de Bidlake. His grandson, John de Bidlake, married a cousin Alice, daughter of Richard de Combe of Bradstone, and this John had a son, another John, who married a Joan of Bridestowe, his cousin in the fourth degree. Combe came thus to be united to the possessions of the Bidlakes, for one or other of these ladies was an heiress.