THE HOME OF THE EARLS POULETT.
HINTON ST. GEORGE.
It is a bright day in early spring—the ash-buds still look quite black in the front of March—as we mount slowly the steep hill that leads to the quiet village of Hinton St. George. The fresh air breathes out vigour, but still we rest near the top to look back over the lovely browns and purples of the plain below dotted with red-tiled barns and towers of churches—Lopen, Merriott, South Petherton—built of the soft Ham stone of the county.
The road we go by has a rare charm, with tall ash-hedges not yet lopped to the shabby level demanded by the new injunctions. The crescent bending ash saplings with their ebony tips look to be some guard of halberdiers ready to marshal whichever earl eventually wins the day and comes to the old home to claim his heritage.
Primrose buds look out from the hedge-rows, but there is not yet much cheerful colour in the landscape. After the ash saplings come elder-bushes, whose boughs are just breaking in a sad green tinged with purple. The only warm colour that Dame Nature has taken on her brush is the deep blue of the hills that lie beyond Seavington and Shepton Beauchamp.
Busy folk tramping through noisy London streets are much exercised just now about the law-suit that is to be fought over this far-off spot. What a contrast there is between the distant city and this still village so remote that no builder has spoiled the quiet street, the houses with latticed panes and generous bow-windows, the old stone cross with its mutilated figure, and the long low stone farm with green palings sparkling in the sunlight!
Yet it was in the London church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields that Queen Mary Stuart’s gaoler, Sir Amyas Poulett, was buried in 1588, and this most remarkable of a long line of Pouletts was not brought to Hinton—perhaps up this very road—till 1728, when no room could be found for him in Gibbs’ new church. This transference seems to form a link between the busy city and the quiet village.
Another bend brings us to the beautiful perpendicular church with its brightly gilded weather-cock dinted by the shots of a past earl, who used to practise shooting at the vane from the adjoining gardens.
Very lovely is the old churchyard, with the great cedars in the garden beyond for a background, and the tall tower, characteristic of the county, softened into the mellowest greyish yellow and flecked with lichens. We linger over the grave-stones, of which many have some link with the Pouletts, and notice the curious Somersetshire name of Tryphena on the tomb of one old servant who had lived in “exemplary servitude” with the family for forty-four years, dying in 1801. On an altar-tomb, with date 1691, is the curious inscription—