In 1651 a fine of £300 was put upon Henry Bidlake, and his estates were sequestrated to the Commonwealth until it should be paid. He had to borrow money from his friends in order to pay his fine. Money was lent him by Nicholas Rowe, of Lamerton, by Daniel Hawkins, of Sydenham, by David Hore, of Coryton, by Prudence Lile, of Lifton, by Richard Edgecombe, of Milton Abbot, by John Baron, of Lawhitton, and by John Cloberry, of Bradstone. His mother-in-law, Philippa Kelly, of Kelly, seems to have repaid these friends, or paid the interest due to them. As security, Henry Bidlake alienated and sold to her his goods and chattels, only reserving his wearing apparel. He got back his property in 1654, but his account with the Parliament seems never to have been settled, and he was liable to repeated vexations. As late as December, 1658, he received a summons along with his wife, from Richard, Lord Protector, to appear before the Chancery Court at Exeter. But next year he died, too early to see—what would have gladdened his heart—the Restoration, and to have learned by painful experience the ready forgetfulness by kings of services rendered in the past.
Bidlake House is a very interesting example of a simple mansion such as suited the small squires of Devon in the seventeenth century. It is Elizabethan, and has a quaint old garden at the back. Like so many old houses, the aspect was not considered, and the sun pours into the kitchen, but hardly a gleam can reach the hall and parlour.
But our ancestors had their reasons for burying their mansions at the foot of hills, and turning their backs against the sun. The great enemy was the south-west wind which they could not exclude. It drove through the walls. Therefore by preference they planted their houses under the lee of a bank of hill that intervened between them and the south, and turned their backs like horses against the driving rain.
THE PIRATES OF LUNDY
In the Bristol Channel,” says Mr. Chanter, “twenty miles from Barnstaple Bar, and nearly equidistant from the two headlands of the bay, lies the island of Lundy, sometimes invisible from the shore, but generally looming dim and mysterious and more or less shrouded in mists, or capped with cloud-reefs; occasionally standing out lofty, clear, and distinct, bright with varied hues of rock, fern, and heather, its granite cliffs glittering as they reflect the rays of the morning sun, and the graceful lighthouse tower and buildings plainly defined; or at night traceable by its strange intermittent light—either suddenly shining out as a star and as suddenly vanishing, or gradually rising and fading according to the atmospheric conditions; but in all its aspects, varying much from day to day. And to those who know how to read them aright, the changing aspects of Lundy are the surest indications of approaching changes of weather—of winds, storms, or settled sunshine.
“As seen nearer the island shows itself a lofty table-headed granite rock, rising to the height of 500 feet, surrounded by steep and occasionally perpendicular cliffs, storm-beaten, riven, and scarred over with grisly seams and clefts, and hollowed out here and there along the shore into fantastic coves and grottoes, with huge piles of granite thrown in wild disorder. The cliffs and adjacent sea are alive with sea-birds, every ledge and jutting rock being dotted with them, or they are whirling round in clouds, filling the air with their discordant screams.
“This island, so little known, so little visited, so wild and mysterious in aspect, possesses an interest in its remote history, its antiquities, its physical features and peculiarities, and in its natural history, almost unrivalled.”[7]
Lundy is an outcrop of the granite that heaved up Exmoor on its back, but there never broke through. Here the superincumbent carboniferous rocks have been cleared away by the action of the sea, and Lundy stands forth a naked shaft of granite. It possesses but a single harbour, at the southern extremity of the island.