Gray Days and Gold in England and Scotland

by William Winter

The Bear—Devizes.

Devizes impresses a stranger with a singular and pleasant sense of suspended animation,—as of beauty fallen asleep,—the sense of something about to happen, which never occurs. More peaceful it could not be, unless it were dead,—and that is its most alluring charm. Two of its many streets are remarkably wide and spacious, while the others are narrow and often crooked. Most of its habitations are low houses, built of brick, and only a few of them, such as the old Town Hall and the Corn Exchange, are pretentious as architecture. The principal street runs nearly northwest and southeast. There is a north gate at one end of it, and a south gate at the other, but no remnant of the ancient town gates is left. The Kennet and Avon Canal, built in 1794-1805, skirts the northern side of the town, and thereafter descends the western slope, passing through twenty-seven magnificent locks, within a distance of about two miles,—one of the longest consecutive ranges of locks in England. The stateliest building in Devizes is its noble Castle, which, reared upon a massive hill, at once dominates the surrounding landscape and dignifies it. That splendid edifice, built about 1830, stands upon the site of the ancient Castle of Devizes, which was built by Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, in the reign of Henry the First, and it resembles that famous original,—long esteemed one of the most complete and admirable works of its kind in Europe. The old Castle was included in the dowry settled upon successive queens of England. Queen Margaret possessed it in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and Queen Katharine in that of Henry the Eighth. It figured in the Civil Wars, and it was deemed the strongest citadel in England. The poet-soldier, Edmund Waller, when in the service of the Parliament, bombarded it, in 1643, and finally it was destroyed by order of the Roundheads. Toward the close of the eighteenth century its ruins were, it is said, surmounted with a couple of snuff-mills. No part of the ancient fortress now survives, except the moat; but in its pleasant grounds fragmentary remnants may still be seen of its foundations and of the dungeons of a remote age. During the rebuilding of the Castle many relics were unearthed,—such as human bones and implements of war,—the significant tokens of dark days and fatal doings long since past and gone. In the centre of the town is a commodious public square, known as the Market-place,—a wide domain of repose, as I saw it, uninvaded by either vehicle or human being, but on each Thursday the scene of the weekly market for cattle and corn, and of the loquacious industry of the cheap-jack and the quack. On one side of it is the old Bear Hotel, an exceptionally comfortable house, memorable as the birthplace of Sir Thomas Lawrence, the famous artist [1769-1830]. In the centre are two works of art,—one a fountain, the other a cross. The latter, a fine fabric of Gothic architecture, is embellished with thirteen pinnacles, which rise above an arched canopy, the covering of a statue. One face of the cross bears this legend: "This Market Cross was erected by Henry Viscount Sidmouth, as a memorial of his grateful attachment to the Borough of Devizes, of which he has been Recorder thirty years, and of which he was six times unanimously chosen a representative in Parliament. Anno Domini 1814." Upon the other face appears a record more significant,—being indicative equally of credulity and a frugal mind, and being freighted with tragic import unmatched since the Bible narrative of Ananias and Sapphira. It reads thus:

"The Mayor and Corporation of Devizes avail themselves of the stability of this building to transmit to future times the record of an awful event which occurred in this market-place in the year 1753, hoping that such a record may serve as a salutary warning against the danger of impiously invoking the Divine vengeance, or of calling on the holy name of God to conceal the devices of falsehood and fraud.

"On Thursday, the 25th January 1753, Ruth Pierce, of Potterne, in this county, agreed, with three other women, to buy a sack of wheat in the market, each paying her due proportion toward the same.

"One of these women, in collecting the several quotas of money, discovered a deficiency, and demanded of Ruth Pierce the sum which was wanted to make good the amount.

"Ruth Pierce protested that she had paid her share, and said, 'She wished she might drop down dead if she had not.'

"She rashly repeated this awful wish, when, to the consternation of the surrounding multitude, she instantly fell down and expired, having the money concealed in her hand."

That is not the only grim incident in the history of the Market-place of Devizes; for in 1533 a poor tailor, named John Bent, of the neighbouring village of Urchfont was burnt at the stake, in that square, for his avowed disbelief of the doctrine of transubstantiation.