'His praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine.'
The famous deeds of the great man to whom I have now to call attention have been celebrated by such writers as his kinsman Sir Walter Raleigh; by Carew; by that master of portraiture Lord Clarendon; by Charles Kingsley; and by Tennyson; and I shall of course offer no apology for not using any words of my own, where I can use theirs: for, as Fuller said of the Ashburnhams, 'My poor and plain pen, though willing, is unable to add any lustre to this family of stupendous antiquity.'
Sir Richard, then, was born in 1540; and, when only sixteen years of age, served in Hungary, under the Emperor Maximilian, against the Turks, and was present with Don John of Austria, at the battle of Lepanto. He afterwards assisted in the reduction of Ireland; and, whilst there, filled the office of Sheriff of Cork. When Sheriff of Cornwall in 1577, he arrested Francis Tregian for harbouring Cuthbert Mayne, a recusant priest (see sub 'The Arundells'). In 1571 he represented his native county in Parliament, and was knighted. On 19th May, 1585, he sailed from Plymouth with the first colonists, on a voyage to the new-found land of Virginia, of which voyage Thomas Hariot gave a 'Briefe and True Report,' printed in 1588: on his homeward passage he fell in with a Spanish ship of 300 tons, richly laden, from St. Domingo, which he boarded on a raft, his own boats being lost or disabled; and in 1586 he made a second visit to Virginia, pillaging the towns of the Spaniards, and taking many prisoners. With Raleigh he seems to have made one or two similar expeditions, gathering much experience, if not much pecuniary advantage.[9]
When the Spanish invasion was projected, Sir Richard was, almost as a matter of course, elected on the Council for the defence of the country, and he received the Queen's special commands not to quit Cornwall during the peril. On this occasion, he is said to have provided '303 men at his own cost, armed with 129 shot, 69 corsletts, and 179 bows.' Of the result there is no need to speak here; but it has always been a matter of pride for West-country men to think how large a share in the destruction of the Invincible Armada was performed by the gallant sailors who quietly dropped out of Plymouth Sound, and harassed their huge opponents for days, till, what with shot, and storm, and tempest, scarce one of the Spaniards was left to tell the tale of their utter, and irretrievable defeat.
Kingsley has thus admirably described Sir Richard's appearance:[10]
'The forehead and whole brain are of extraordinary loftiness, and perfectly upright; the nose long, aquiline, and delicately pointed; the mouth, fringed with a short, silky beard, small and ripe, yet firm as granite, with just pout enough of the lower lip to give hint of that capacity of noble indignation which lay hid under its usual courtly calm and sweetness; if there be a defect in the face, it is that the eyes are somewhat small, and close together, and the eyebrows, though delicately arched, and without a trace of peevishness, too closely pressed down upon them; the complexion is dark, the figure tall and graceful; altogether the likeness of a wise and gallant gentleman, lovely to all good men, awful to all bad men; in whose presence none dare say or do a mean or a ribald thing; whom brave men left, feeling themselves nerved to do their duty better, while cowards slipped away, as bats and owls before the sun. So he lived and moved; whether in the Court of Elizabeth, giving his counsel among the wisest; or in the streets of Bideford, capped alike by squire and merchant, shopkeeper and sailor; or riding along the moorland roads between his houses of Stow and Bideford, while every woman ran out to her door to look at the great Sir Richard; or sitting in the low, mullioned window at Burrough, with his cup of malmsey before him, and the lute to which he had just been singing laid across his knees, while the red western sun streamed in upon his high, bland forehead and soft curling locks; ever the same steadfast, God-fearing, chivalrous man, conscious (as far as a soul so healthy could be conscious) of the pride of beauty, and strength, and valour, and wisdom, and a race and name which claimed direct descent from the grandfather of the Conqueror, and was tracked down the centuries by valiant deeds and noble benefits to his native shire, himself the noblest of his race. Men said that he was proud—but he could not look round him without having something to be proud of; that he was stern and harsh to his sailors—but it was only when he saw in them any taint of cowardice or falsehood; that he was subject, at moments, to such fearful fits of rage, that he had been seen to snatch glasses from the table, grind them to pieces in his teeth, and swallow them—but that was only when his indignation had been aroused by some tale of cruelty and oppression; and, above all, by those West Indian devilries of the Spaniards, whom he regarded (and in those days rightly enough) as the enemies of God and man.'[11]
And the noble old house at Stow, with its chapel licensed by Bishop Brantingham of Exeter, in 1386,[12] of which no vestige, alas! remains, was worthy of being the abode of such a hero. It would be but unprofitable labour to attempt a fresh description of it after the graphic account which Kingsley gives:
'Old Stow House stands,' says he, 'or rather stood, some four miles within the Cornish border, on the northern slope of the largest and loveliest of those coombes'—which he had just been describing in a memorable passage of a preceding chapter (the sixth) in 'Westward Ho!' 'Eighty years after Sir Richard's time there arose a huge Palladian pile, bedizened with every monstrosity of bad taste, which was built, so the story runs, by Charles II. for Sir Richard's great-grandson, the heir of that famous Sir Bevil who defeated the Parliamentary troops at Stratton, and died soon after, fighting valiantly at Lansdowne over Bath. But like most other things which owed their existence to the Stuarts, it rose only to fall again. An old man who had seen, as a boy, the foundation of the new house laid, lived to see it pulled down again, and the very bricks and timber sold upon the spot; and since then the stables have become a farmhouse, the tennis-court a sheep-cote, the great quadrangle a rick-yard; and civilization, spreading wave on wave so fast elsewhere, has surged back from that lonely corner of the land—let us hope only for awhile. [13]
'But I am not writing of that great new Stow House, of the past glories whereof quaint pictures still hang in the neighbouring houses; ... I have to deal with a simpler age, and a sterner generation; and with the old house, which had stood there, in part at least, from grey and mythic ages ... a huge, rambling building, half-castle, half-dwelling-house.... On three sides, to the north, west and south, the lofty walls of the old ballium still stood, with their machicolated turrets, loopholes, and dark downward crannies for dropping stones and fire on the besiegers; ... but the southern court of the ballium had become a flower-garden, with quaint terraces, statues, knots of flowers, clipped yews and hollies, and all the pedantries of the topiarian art. And, towards the east, where the vista of the valley opened, the old walls were gone, and the frowning Norman keep, ruined in the wars of the Roses, had been replaced by the rich and stately architecture of the Tudors. Altogether, the house, like the time, was in a transitionary state, and represented faithfully enough the passage of the old middle age into the new life which had just burst into blossom throughout Europe, never, let us pray, to see its autumn or its winter.
'From the house on three sides the hills sloped steeply down, and from the garden there was a truly English prospect. At one turn they could catch, over the western walls, a glimpse of the blue ocean flecked with passing sails; and at the next, spread far below, range on range of fertile park, stately avenue, yellow autumn woodland, and purple heather moors, lapping over and over each other up the valley to the old British earthwork, which stood black and furze-grown on its conical peak; and, standing out against the sky, on the highest bank of the hill which closed the valley to the east, the lofty tower of Kilkhampton Church, rich with the monuments and offerings of five centuries of Grenvilles.'