kingsley and “westward ho!”—bideford bridge—the grenvilles—sir richard grenville and the revenge—the armada guns—bideford church—the postman poet
“the little white town of bideford,” wrote kingsley lovingly, “which slopes upward from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and the many-arched old bridge where salmon wait for autumn floods.” he wrote a part of “westward ho!” in the drawing-room of the “royal hotel” at east-the-water, looking across to bideford quay and the little white town that so strongly inspired him; and the room is styled the “kingsley room” at this day. the older part of the house was once the residence of one of those old merchant princes who flourished at many a port, centuries ago, and, amassing wealth swiftly in their overseas ventures, built houses for themselves befitting their dignity. at king’s lynn, at poole, at ipswich, and many another ancient port, the stately residences of those men, who risked much and often gained greatly, are still to be found; and often in the neighbouring churches you see their monuments178 in brass or marble, picturing them in furred robes and linen ruffs, piously upon their knees, with hands devotionally placed, just as though they never had dabbled in piracy and privateering, as undoubtedly they often did.
the house that is now the “royal” was built by one of these merchants in the year 1688. the noble oaken staircase and the elaborately decorated ceiling of the drawing-room survive to show us that he did not think the best obtainable too good for him. the moulded plaster ceiling, designed in festoons of fruit, flowers, and foliage in high relief, is one of the finest works of that local north devon and somerset school of decorative artists already referred to at length.
the “royal,” where kingsley wrote, commands a view along the famous bridge of bideford.
never, surely, was other bridge so praised, sung, and celebrated, in all manner of ways, as this bridge of bideford. the bridge is bideford, to all intents; and only the name of the town fails to reflect its glory. it has obstinately remained, in spite of that bridge, what it was before ever a bridge of any kind was thought possible to be built by hand of man—“by-the-ford.” for that, we are told, was the original name of bideford; or, in its full majesty, the real original name of the place was “renton-by-the-ford,” which many-jointed and inconvenient title has only by degrees arrived at what it is now.
the “kingsley room,” royal hotel, bideford.
it was too late to change the name of the town when at last the bridge was set a-building, about179 1350; or else, be sure of it—so proud has bideford ever been of its bridge—the change would have been made.
i hope no devonian will think the worse of me for comparing bideford bridge with an old stocking. i merely wish to put in a picturesque way the fact that, although it has never been actually rebuilt, it has been so patched, re-cased, widened, re-widened, repaired, and otherwise amended, during some five centuries and a half, that, like a much-darned stocking, little is left of the original. having thus deprecated hostile criticism, we will pass on to details. it has twenty-four pointed arches of various size, and spans the river in a total length of six hundred and seventy-seven feet. as to the original building of it, there are many legends, to take the place of facts lost in the mists of ages. according to these, there were angelic and demoniac contendants for and against; and, indeed, in one way and another, the devil seems to have taken a great interest in old by-the-ford. in the usually received version, it was “sir” richard gourney, a priest (all priests were then “sir” by courtesy), who first began the work, and an angel who in a vision laid the burden of it upon him. the bridge was to be built on that spot where he should find a great stone fixed in the ground.
waking from this dream, he walked by the side of the river, where he had often walked before, and to his astonishment, saw a rock in mid-stream, where never, to his knowledge, had such a thing180 lain. straightway, convinced of the divine origin of the vision, he narrated it to the bishop of exeter, and obtained from him the usual medi?val encouragement for all who might be prevailed upon to contribute to so excellent an enterprise. that is to say, he granted indulgences: liberty to do this and that, and a liberal discount off the usual term of purgatory, which, in the roman catholic scheme of things in the hereafter, awaits the departed soul before it can enter paradise. the pious, and even the wicked, who believed and trembled, and knew a bargain when they saw it, responded liberally, and so at last the thing was done. not without let and hindrance from the devil, be sure of that! for “devil,” however, read quicksands, and we shall probably be nearer the mark; for the broad estuary was full of such, and they rendered building a work of infinite patience and resource. in the end, the bridge was built on patience and prayer, and—on sacks of wool! now whether those who made the bridge did really get in the foundations of the piers on woolsacks thrown into the sand until they touched bottom (something after the manner in which stephenson floated his railway across chat moss on faggots); or whether the story is merely a perversion of bideford’s old and prosperous wool-trade having been taxed for the work—and thus, in a sense, the bridge being “built on woolsacks”—there are no means of saying.
in 1810, the bridge was found—like barnstaple bridge, a few years earlier—too narrow for increasing181 traffic. wheeled conveyances were then replacing pack-horses, and it was necessary to double the road across. fortunately, as in most bridges built in remote times, the sturdy piers were provided with cutwaters projecting far on either side, and on these the semicircular arches of the widening were turned. the cost of this, ￡3,200, seems in our own expensive age, singularly light; and sure enough, a further widening in 1865, cost ￡6,000. were it to do again, perhaps ￡14,000 would hardly suffice.
seal of bideford.
of course, the bridge being so important a means of communication, it was not merely built by pious hands, but was liberally endowed as well; and a chapel stood at the eastern end, on the furthest side from the town, at which few travellers who could afford an offering failed to give something. the bequests and the funds accumulated for its maintenance are now administered by a “bridge trust,” which is a wealthy corporation, performing out of its handsome income of ￡1,000 a year, much good work for bideford, in the way, not only of bridge repair, but extension of quays, schools, and the like. also it gives, or rather gave, excellent dinners. the dinner-giving era is now only a fond memory, since the charity commissioners frowned down feasting at the expense of the trust funds.
all these various legends and functions led charles kingsley to write it down “an inspired bridge; a soul-saving bridge; an alms-giving bridge; an educational bridge; a sentient bridge;182 and last, but not least, a dinner-giving bridge.” the bridge, he proceeds to say, “is a veritable esquire, bearing arms of its own (a ship and a bridge proper on a plain field), and owning lands and tenements in many parishes, with which the said miraculous bridge has, from time to time, founded charities, built schools, waged suits at law, and, finally, given yearly dinners, and kept for that purpose (luxurious and liquorish bridge that it is!), the best-stocked cellar of wine in all devon.”
weep, weep for the days that were, the days that are no more!
the rise of bideford as a port in the reign of queen elizabeth was largely due to the grenville family, then all-powerful in the neighbourhood. the town was incorporated at that time: the borough seal bearing date 1577. shipbuilding then became a most important industry. but never at any time did bideford approach the importance of barnstaple.
the grenvilles, who bulked so largely here and in cornwall, were of norman ancestry, and their ancestor, who came over at the conquest, called cousins with the conqueror. they numbered a long line of gallant and distinguished men, which came to greatest distinction in the reigns of elizabeth and charles the first. since that time they have split up into many distinct families, and even write their names in four different185 ways: grenville, granville, grenfell, and greenfield; but, although branches have acquired peerages, none of the race has won to the fame attained by those who flourished in the long ago.
bideford bridge.
intolerably proud, they at any rate had the driving-force of pride, which kept them at a high level of conduct and made them gallant gentlemen, who would have thought it shame to yield in fight, even though the odds were overwhelming. if a grenville might not always conquer (for even to the brave victory is not assured), at least he might, and did, fight grimly to the end, as it was the tradition of his kind to do.
two grenvilles stand out prominently from that long line, for heroic valour. they were grandfather and grandson. the elder was that sir richard grenville (or “greynvile,” as he wrote his name), who was drake’s right-hand man in the defeat of the armada in 1588. three years later, we find him, with his admiral, lord thomas howard, at flores, off the azores islands, lying in wait for a number of spanish treasure-ships due to pass that way. i do not think that enterprise was a very heroic errand, for howard had sixteen ships, with a fighting force, and the treasure-laden galleons were ill-protected. i figure it on a par with a footpad with a bludgeon, lurking behind a hedge in wait for some plethoric old gentleman and his gold repeater. the result of an encounter, in both instances, would be a foregone conclusion. but, unhappily, howard’s force had not fallen in with those great treasure-laden186 three-deckers before word came of a numerous and well-equipped squadron of spanish fighting-ships on the way. it was a most unfortunate pass. howard’s ships were small and ill-found, and his men suffering from scurvy. they were re-fitting on the islands at the time, and hurriedly completed and stood out to sea, with the intention of evading the superior force, said to have numbered fifty-three vessels, and ten thousand men. this evasion may not sound heroic, but it was prudence, and howard was an admiral who could have been counted upon to fight, had he seen a chance. grenville, with his “intolerable pride and insatiable ambition,” disobeyed the orders of his superior, and instead of evading the spaniards, made, “with wilful rashness,” as those who saw him wrote, to dash through their line, and cannonade them as he went. his little revenge was, however, becalmed in their midst and surrounded, and there, against tremendous odds, was fought out that long fifteen hours’ battle which inspired one of tennyson’s finest lyrics. the heroism of that long tragedy in which the revenge, grenville, and his crew of one hundred and fifty men bore their unflinching part has been made the subject of accumulated legends. the entire hostile force of fifty-three ships and ten thousand men is said to have been employed, but the facts seem to be that a large number of the spanish vessels were supply ships, and that of the twenty ships of war they had, some fifteen, with five thousand men, were engaged in battering the english ship.
187 that is heroism sufficient, without needing exaggeration; one against fifteen, to return shot for shot in a fifteen hours’ battle. tennyson, however, accepts the still more marvellous story:
“he had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,
and he sailed away from flores till the spaniard came in sight,
with his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather-bow.
‘shall we fight, or shall we fly?
good sir richard, let us know;
for to fight is but to die!
there’ll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.’
and sir richard said again, ‘we be all good englishmen;
let us bang these dogs of seville, the children of the devil,
for i never turned my back on don or devil yet.’
* * * * *
“and the sun went down and the stars came out, far over the summer sea,
but never for a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
ship after ship, the whole night long, those high-built galleons came,
ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle, thunder, and flame;
ship after ship, the whole night long, then back with her dead and her shame,
for some were sunk and many were shattered, and so could fight us no more—
god of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?”
the revenge yielded only when, of all her men, there were left only twenty alive, and most of them grievously wounded, the ship herself a wreck, and188 the ammunition expended. such were the elizabethans! “all the powder to the last barrell was now spent, all her pikes broken, the masts all beaten over board, all her tackle cut asunder, her upper worke altogether rased, and in effect euened shee was with the water, and but the verie foundacion or bottom of a ship, pierced with eight hundred shot of great artillerie.” grenville, himself mortally wounded, would have sunk the poor remains of his ship:
“sink me the ship, master gunner—sink her, split her in twain,
fall into the hands of god, not into the hands of spain!”
but the crew, brought to this pass entirely by grenville’s hot-headed bravery, rightly considered something was due to them. after all, a spanish fighting man had also some sense of chivalry, and knew how to respect a brave enemy, conquered by superior force. so the revenge was surrendered on honourable terms, and grenville himself taken aboard the san pablo, the admiral’s ship, to die, three days later, of his wounds. it was no craven surrender, and the battered revenge almost immediately emphasised that, by sinking, with numbers of spanish wounded aboard.
grenville died with, as it were, a confession of patriotic faith. he spake it in the spanish tongue, that all might hear: “here die i, richard grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind for that i have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, that hath fought for his country,189 queen, religion, and honour. whereby my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier, that hath done his duty as he was bound to do.”
sir bevil grenville, grandson of this hero, was born in 1596, and after upholding the king’s standard with success in the west, and winning the battle of stratton, may 16th, 1643, was killed on july 5th, following, at the battle of lansdowne, on the heights above bath. there are now no representatives of the grenvilles left in the neighbourhood of bideford.
they were not all loyalists in the west. we have seen the puritan spirit, militant, at barnstaple; and bideford stood out against the king’s men; the fort erected on the hill-top at east-the-water by major-general chudleigh still remaining, and indeed restored, as a witness to historic times.
other and much more interesting relics than those empty embrasures upon the sky-line are found in the eight armada guns that lie in a row outside the technical school, on the quay and in the neighbourhood of the kingsley statue. or, at any rate, they are reputed to be armada guns; which, with the sure fact that they are foreign, and the probability of their being spanish, is as far as their story is likely to be told. in these parts they were so used to bring home captured ships, and to litter the quays with the spoils of other people, that the thing became commonplace and not worth recording at the time. and by that later190 time, when the story of the relics got beyond recording, and no one really knew anything at all about them, they were all at once found to be curious and interesting—with the key to their story lost. they were then buried half their length in the quay and served the commonplace, if useful, purpose of posts, from which they have now been rescued. long and slender, with long sloping shoulders, something in shape like exaggerated hock-bottles, they certainly resemble the indubitable armada guns found on the wrecked ship at tobermory in recent years. nor are these all existing in the neighbourhood. there is one, astonishingly encrusted with long lying in the sea, thrown carelessly aside, opposite the royal hotel, westward ho!; two that formerly stood as posts on instow quay are now at tapeley park, three are at portledge, three others on the quay at clovelly, and it is currently reported that several have been seen on the sea-bottom off westward ho! at exceptionally low tides.
bideford quay, that figures in circumstances of considerable stress in the great romance by kingsley, is a very different place from the quay of elizabethan days. a broad roadway runs now, where water and mudbanks once stood. kingsley himself would scarce recognise it. paradoxically enough, all these works and improvements have been undertaken since the commerce of the town has declined. there is no fierce energy at bideford to-day, and such shipping as there remains is very casual. some few old houses—older than they191 look from without, remain by quayside; in especial, the “three tuns” inn, with a seventeenth-century plaster mantelpiece in an upstairs room, with figures in the costume of the time, clinging uncouthly to renaissance ornament.
bideford quay.
bideford church is so closely surrounded by narrow lanes that it is not a remarkably conspicuous building. except the tower, it is quite modern, the people of bideford having in the eighteenth century been afflicted with that perversity for destroying gothic buildings and rearing classic in their stead which desolated so many places. in its turn, the fantastic thing that is said to have resembled a lecture-hall, rather than a church, was demolished in 1865. a fine monument to sir thomas graynfylde, 1514, stands on the south side of the chancel, and near by is a brass plate inscribed with the dying speech of sir192 richard grenville, at flores. the register of 1591 describes him as “being in his lifetime the spaniards’ terror.”
the monument of john strange, merchant of bideford, deserves notice, for he was no less brave a man. he died in 1646, the year the plague made such havoc here. it was the fourth year of his mayoralty. all others in authority had fled the infected place, but he remained to take care of the sick; at last, when the scourge was abating, he took the infection and died.
what with civil war and with pestilence, bideford had a stirring time of it. licence was then the order of the day, and it was even possible for sour puritans to defile the font in the church. polwhele is not unduly severe in his remarks upon how it “was appropriated for the purposes of a trough for his swine to feed out of, by one schismatic. and if he had had his deserts, he would have made one of their company.”
from the church, now, to the churchyard, and from the heroic to the eccentric, in the person of henry clark, who seems to have been both spendthrift and lazy, as judged by his epitaph, below:
a tribute
to the memory of
captain henry clark
of this town
who departed this life 28 april 1836
aged 61 years.
193
our worthy friend who lies beneath this stone
was master of a vessel all his own.
houses and lands had he, and gold in store:
he spent the whole, and would if ten times more.
for twenty years he scarce slept in a bed;
linhays and limekilns lull’d his weary head,
because he would not to the poorhouse go,
for his proud spirit would not let him to.
the blackbird’s whistling notes at break of day
used to awake him from his bed of hay.
unto the bridge and quay he then repair’d
to see what shipping up the river steer’d.
oft in the week he used to view the bay,
to see what ships were coming in from sea.
to captain’s wives he brought the welcome news,
and to the relatives of all their crews.
at last poor harry clark was taken ill,
and carried to the workhouse ’gainst his will;
but being of this mortal life quite tired,
he liv’d about a month, and then expired.
bideford has enjoyed a minor fame in more modern times as the home of edward capern, the “postman-poet.” capern was born at tiverton in 1819. his father was a baker in that town, but removed two years later to barnstaple. when eight years of age, the boy was sent to a lace-factory and made to toil long hours, until his health gave way. injured in eyesight and in general health, outdoor occupation became necessary, and he at length found employment as rural postman, between bideford and buckland brewer and district. it was a healthy occupation, but not an easy round—thirteen miles’ walking, daily—and the pay, half-a-guinea a week, certainly was194 not lavish. on his daily rounds he thought in rhyme. himself said of himself:
“he owns neither houses nor lands,
his wealth is a character good;
a pair of industrious hands,
a drop of poetical blood.”
by subscription, in 1856, a volume of his verses was published, followed in 1858 by a second; and in due course by two others, “wayside warbles” and “the devonshire melodist,” the songs set to music also composed by him. a final volume appeared in 1881. none of these had much wider publicity than that of the friendly subscription-list. in 1866 he left bideford and went to live at harborne near birmingham, but returned to devonshire in 1884 and settled at braunton. a civil list pension of ￡40 a year which had been obtained for him was increased to ￡60, and on this his modest wants were sustained until his death in 1894. he was buried at heanton punchardon, near by, where his old-fashioned postman’s hand-bell is placed on his grave.
capern was sometimes moved by the warlike memories of his neighbourhood, and wrote
“whene’er i tread old by-the-ford
i conjure up the thought
’twas here a grenville trod
and here a raleigh wrought.”
but most characteristically devonian is the hymn to clotted cream, written in 1882, at harborne, in reply to a present of some sent to him.
195
devonshire cream
“sweeter than the odours borne on southern gales,
comes the clotted nectar of my native vales—
crimped and golden-crusted, rich beyond compare,
food on which a goddess evermore would fare.
burns may praise his haggis, horace sing of wine,
hunt his hybla-honey, which he deem’d divine,
but in the elysiums of the poet’s dream
where is the delicious without devon-cream?
“talk of peach or melon, quince or jargonel,
white-water, black-hamburg, or the muscatel,
pippin or pomegranate, apricot or pine,
greengages or strawberries, or your elder-wine!
take them all, and welcome, yes, the whole, say i,
ay! and even junket, squab- and mazzard-pie,
only let our lasses, like the morning, gleam
joyous with their skimmers full of clouted cream.
“what a lot of pictures crowd upon my sight
as i view the luscious feast of my delight!
meadows fram’d in hawthorn, coppices in green,
village-fanes on hill-tops crowning every scene,
buttercups, and cattle clad in coats of red,
flocks in daisy-pastures, couples newly wed
happy in their homesteads by a flashing stream;—
but what can be this golden, crimp’d, and bonny cream?
“quintessence of sunshine, gorse, and broomy lea,
privet and carnation, violet and pea,
meadowsweet and primrose, honeysuckle, briar,
lily, mint, and jasmine, stock, and gilly-spire,
woodruff, rose, and clover, clematis and lime,
myrtle and magnolia, daffodil and thyme
is our pearl of dainties—and, to end my theme,
nature’s choice confection is old devon’s cream.”
196 two things in the above, perhaps require explanation; “squab- and mazzard-pie.” squab-pie is a devonshire dish composed of mutton, onions, apples, etc., and mazzards are a kind of wild cherry growing in north devon.
the original manuscript of these verses hangs in a frame in the bideford public library, where there is also a fine oil-painting of capern in middle life, by the elder widgery. for the rest, the library contains little enough, being one of those pretentious carnegie buildings practically without books; an absurdity on a par with a showy restaurant that should provide only the cruets for the hungry to dine upon.
a vast amount of astonished comment has been penned upon the strange thing that a postman should write poetry, but surely it is not so remarkable a thing to find a cultivated mind in the body of a letter-carrier! culture, it would seem, is held to be the prerogative of the wealthy and the leisured. how dreadful, if it really were so!
