Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues,
Let ev’ry eye negotiate for itself
And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch
Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.
Orgar, the father of Ordulf, had a daughter named Elfrida, the fame of whose loveliness came to the ears of the King. Edgar, being unwedded, despatched Earl Ethelwold to Tavistock on a mission of observation, and the courtier was empowered, if report erred not, to demand her in marriage for his royal master. Ethelwold came, and saw, and was conquered. Although much older than the fair lady, he fell in love with her, and gained her assent and that of her father to their union. This he could do only by concealing from them the more advantageous offer of a royal alliance. With equal duplicity he kept from the King not only the knowledge of his bride’s surpassing beauty, but the bride herself, being assured that her appearance at court would be fatal. However, in no long time the truth leaked out, and Edgar set out for Dartmoor, ostensibly to hunt. Ethelwold, in desperation, now made full confession to his wife, whom he charged to disguise her charms, but the vain and ambitious woman, angered at his deceit, displayed them the more, and the King, resolved on Ethelwold’s death, actually slew him at Wilverley or Warlwood in the Forest.
After the departure of the Romans and before the final absorption of Devon by the Saxons, there are signs that the Kelts of South-West Britain were in intimate touch with their brethren on the other side of St. George’s Channel. At any rate, the Ogham inscriptions found in the neighbourhood of Tavistock testify to the missionary enterprise of the Island of Saints during the latter part of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth centuries after Christ. For most purposes, the centre of county life has from the first been Exeter, but to this rule there was at one time an important exception, which was not Tavistock, but the little town of Crediton, situated on a tributary of the Exe. An old rhyme has it—
Kirton was a market town,
When Exeter was a fuzzy down.
Little can be said for this view on general historic grounds, but from the standpoint of ecclesiastical Anglo-Saxondom, Crediton had a decided claim to the preference, for was it not the birthplace of Winfrid (St. Boniface), and the seat of the Anglo-Saxon bishops from the year 909 until 1050, when Leofric, for fear of the Danes, transferred the see to Exeter? This prelate was installed by Edward the Confessor and Queen Edith, who, holding him by the hands, invoked God’s blessing on future benefactors.
If the Ogham stones of Dartmoor attest the zeal of Keltic Christianity, Coplestone Cross, a richly-carved monument near Crediton, is a reminder of the early days of Saxon piety, when such crosses were erected as shrines for the churchless ceorls. Coplestone, also, was the name of a powerful race known as the Great Coplestones, or Coplestones of the White Spur, who claimed, but apparently without reason, to have been thanes in Saxon times. In the West Country, no distich is more popular or more widely diffused than the odd little couplet—