“Dulce et decorum
est pro patriâ mori.”
The other, being the American, bears the same inscription except that the word “French” is altered to “American.”
After the prison was discontinued as a war prison, various schemes were started for utilising the buildings. The late Prince Consort visited the Duchy Estates in 1846, and the question of making use of the old prison came under his notice. In 1850 began the formation of a Convict Settlement, and gradually the old buildings have been pulled down so that now only one small portion, known as the French Prison, remains. As a convict prison all the prisoners—and the average is about one thousand—are those who have been sentenced to penal servitude. Many are sent specially to Dartmoor for the benefit of their health, the climate, in the early stages of chest complaint, being most efficacious. Medical officers of the prison and elsewhere have from time to time recorded their opinion of the great advantages which are derived by phthisical patients from residence at such an altitude above the sea-level.
Much of the information derived is from Capt. Vernon Harris’ pamphlet, Rowe’s Dartmoor, 3rd Edition, published in 1896, and from the various references thereto. Some of the statistics are contained in the writer’s paper on the prison printed in the transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1901, xxiii. pp. 309–321.
J. D. Prickman.
OTTERY ST. MARY AND ITS
MEMORIES.
By the Right Hon. Lord Coleridge, M.A., K.C.
If the traveller passing down the Vale of Otter by rail looks out to the East, he will see a great grey church with transeptal towers—a rare feature—one crowned with a spire, standing on rising ground backed by a great continuous chine of hill. Around the church nestles a small town, and a clear, swift river hastens by it to the sea. This is the Collegiate Church of Ottery St. Mary, mainly the creation of Bishop Grandisson. Edward the Confessor gave the Manor of Ottery St. Mary in 1061 to the Chapter of the Cathedral Church of Rouen, in Normandy. Bishop Grandisson bought the Manor in 1335, laid the foundations of the college for forty secular monks, and amplified the church to suit the college. Bishop Bronescombe consecrated a church here in 1260. His work is seen in the nave and transepts of the present building. Bishop Grandisson built the nave, lady chapel and side chapels, etc., raised the towers over the transepts, and covered the whole with a stone-groined roof. The church left his hands a miniature cathedral. A wealthy lady, Cicely Bonville, wife, first of the Marquis of Dorset, and then of Henry Lord Stafford, added the north aisle—1503–1523—with its grand fan-tracery groining, a purely indigenous feature, which may be seen repeated at Cullompton, and the whole result is a majesty and variety of external elevation which no building of its size can well surpass. It was the central figure of a group of buildings. Chapter-house, library, cloisters, gate-house, all were there. The houses for the dignitaries stood around. Fragments alone remain. There still stand the vicar’s house, the warden’s house, the chanter’s house, and the manor house containing portions of old work. The houses of the minister, the sacristan, and the canons have disappeared.
From these haunts of ancient peace there was issued, in 1509, Alexander Barclay’s Stultifera Navis, or Ship of Fools, a translation, or rather paraphrase, of the Narrenschiff of Sebastian Brandt, which originally appeared in the Swabian dialect. Barclay’s book contains much original work, and breaks the great period of literary silence between Chaucer and Spenser. When we say, “Man proposes, God disposes,” “skin deep,” “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” “of two evils choose the least,” “from pillar to post,” “sticking like burrs,” “over head and ears,” “you cannot touch pitch and not be defiled,” “making the mouth water,” “out of sight out of mind,” “the burnt child dreads the fire,” we are unconsciously using phrases which appear in their first form in Barclay’s writings.