As a young man he worked on the Moor building new-take walls, and he esteemed himself almost as highly in this capacity as in knocking out verse. Later he became taverner of the Warren Inn, that at that time stood on the opposite side of the road to its present position. The miners frequented it, and they were rough customers, drinking hard, fighting and dancing. On one occasion they broke out into mutiny against Jonas, because he would serve out no more drink; they drove him from the house, and he was compelled to “hidey-peep,” as he termed it, on the Moor, whilst they emptied his barrels. On another occasion two miners fought in the tavern, with a fatal result for one of them, but the survivor was let off with three weeks’ imprisonment, mainly on Jonas’s evidence, for he was able to establish gross provocation.
In an evil hour for himself, Jonas pulled down the old inn and built, at his own cost, the new Warren Inn on the opposite side of the road. Now it happened that the old inn had been on common land of the parish of North Bovey, but where he had built the new inn was on Duchy property. Down on him came the agent for the Duchy, but not till the house was complete, and the last slate nailed on, and said to him, “Now you are on Duchy land you shall pay rent for the inn you have built on our land, without our gracious permission.”
Towards the end of his life Jonas became very infirm and blind; his memory began to fail, and he accounted for this by saying that as he had always possessed a genius for poetry, he supposed he had overwhelmed his brain with too much study. He died on 12 February, 1890, and is buried at Widdecombe. I say no more of him here, as I gave his life and stories about him in my Dartmoor Idylls, 1896. There is as well a memoir with his portrait in Mr. Burnard’s Pictorial Records, already quoted.
After having made such success with his mines about the Upper Webburn, Quaker Palk became reckless in his speculations, and was soon heavily involved. He was kept on his feet by Mr. Bailey, of Plymouth, and Joe Matthews, who bought Palk’s holding of Birch Tor Mine. He died suddenly 9 February, 1853, aged fifty-nine years.
I think, but cannot be sure, that it was of John Palk that the story was told of two old folks, returning from the funeral, when one said to the other, “Sure and he was a very charitable man.”
“I reckon he were,” replied the other. “He always had three eggs boiled to his breakfast, and gave away the broth.”
His wife survived him thirty-one years, and died in Plymouth 24 May, 1884, aged eighty-five years.