The jackdaws took him at his word, and filled the chimney with their piles of sticks which serve as nests. Somehow rooks were persuaded to settle among the tree-tops of his grove, and there the colony subsists to the present day.
Some years ago, when Dr. Phillpotts was Bishop of Exeter, a visit of the bishop to Morwenstow had been planned and decided upon. Mrs. Hawker insisted on having the blue room fitted up for his lordship. A fire would have to be lighted in the grate: the chimney would smoke unless cleared of nests.
Mr. Hawker stood by whilst Mrs. Hawker and the maid prepared the blue room. He would not have the jackdaws disturbed; he had given them his word of honour. Mrs. Hawker argued that necessity knows no law: the bishop must have a fire, and the jackdaws must make way for the bishop. She prevailed.
“I wrung my hands, I protested, entreated and foretold evil,” was the vicar’s account of the affair.
“Well, and did evil come of it?”
“Yes, the bishop never arrived, after all.”
Mr. Hawker was warmly attached to the Bishop of Exeter, and was accustomed to send him some braces of woodcocks every October.
Not far from the church and vicarage was the Well of St. John, a spring of exquisitely clear water, which he always employed for his font.
Sir J. Buller, afterwards Lord Churston, claimed the well, and an expensive lawsuit was the result. The vicar carried his right to the well, and Sir J. Buller had to pay expenses. Mr. Hawker would tell his guests that he was about to produce them a bottle of the costliest liquor in the county of Cornwall, and then give them water from the Well of St. John. The right to this water had cost several thousands of pounds.
A letter dated 7th Feb., 1852, to a young friend going up to the university, refers to his cats and dogs, and to his annual gift of woodcocks to the bishop, and may therefore be quoted at the conclusion of this chapter.