W. H. Hamilton Rogers

“ How delightfully-reviving the communion with the purity of Nature, after our thoughts have been saddened by a contemplation of the self-sought miseries of her children. We saunter quietly along under the fine trees that overhang our path, loiter awhile to survey an old moated house, and then pass on by a winding path through mead and lane to Salisbury. Before us is the bright, busy little city, and above it is upreared the remarkable feature that has made its reputation world-wide, the glorious spire of its Cathedral. ”

“ Like many a younger son rejoicing in a titled extraction, coupled with probably only a slender portion of the family patrimony, the wooing of a distaff—who, beside let us hope, being endowed with her full share of love's talisman, personal attractions, enjoyed also the further potent charm of being an heiress to boot—brought the father of our knight from the fens of Lincolnshire to the distant altitudes of Wilts, and in winning the hand of Anne Cheney for a wife, subsequently became in her right the Lord of Broke. ”

“ The figures on the monument at Porlock are sculptured in alabaster, and Lady Harington-Bonville wears cote-hardie and gown, with mantle over, fastened across the breast by cordon and tassels. Around the hips is a rich cincture, and a double chain with dependant jewel encircles the neck. The head-dress is horned, the hair secured in a reticulated caul splendidly embroidered, and with jewelled ornaments filling the interstices. Just over the brow is a band-coronet, studded with pearls and crested by fleurs-de-lys, and her fingers are ornamented with rings. ”

“ Back to the railway station again, and a place among the cohort of the iron horse, for a long journey is before us, even from the open, breezy chalk-plains of Wiltshire, to the marge of the majestic Tamar in westernmost Devon, and the granite-bouldered precincts of east Cornwall, where we hope to get further clue to the haunts of Willoughby when in the flesh. ”

“ Stay thy foot, friend of mine, a short while, ere thou passest out of the sacred enclosure, and scan yon venerable churchyard cross—how rich is Cornwall in these reminders—slightly leaning, yet hale in the strength of the almost imperishable granite, and with the age-worn imagery of the Great Sacrifice, still plainly discernible, insculped on one of the faces of its pediment. There it was before the honour-bedizened noble—whose tomb we have been just surveying—found his way to Callington to enjoy the portion of his great possessions, situate near it ”

“ But no mail-clad warrior, with glance of lance and pennon, salutes us, no wimpled lady passes like a shadow around the old gable corners,—all the signs of life visible are a bevy of ducks busily disporting themselves in the water below, and a group of calves on the opposite brink, thrusting their dappled faces through the bars of the fence, and calling lustily to their foster-mother, the dairy-maid, to bring them their accustomed meal. ”

“ There, rises the lofty church tower much as he witnessed it, but the tall chimney shafts that bear it company have absorbed all the hand-looms that then made busy, by the weaving of kersey and serge, the cottage precincts when he paced its streets.
Through the long, and comparatively quiet main thoroughfare of the little borough, and our thoughts are busy, though our steps are stayed, as we halt to admire the large and handsome west window of the church, perpendicular in style, but with considerable originality of treatment in design; and rising behind it, the massive proportions of the tower. ”

“ But while these suggestive thoughts are haunting us, we have slowly crept up to the warlike precincts of the lower Hamoaze. We pass the huge, cavernous, pent-house-looking, but now empty 'slips,' hanging over the darkling tide, in which the 'wooden walls' of old England were wont aforetime to be built, ere the steam-urged iron monsters of our present new England were dreamt of. And we ruminate a moment over this change of times and things, and mentally ask the question, What is the gain to human development achieved by much of the scientific—ergo mechanical—appliances of the present hour? ”

“ Ambition, cruelty, and callous hardness, trampled under foot all the finer feelings of the heart and mind,—hypocrisy and treachery invaded the most sacred ties of home and blood-relationship, the desire of worldly power, and holding their neighbours in the yoke of bondage, was the prevalent feeling, to which all others were sacrificed, and the opposing factions met each other on the field of battle, and fought for the governing power at the sword's point, with the sacrifice of myriads of human lives. ”

“ We emerge from the shadow of the great bridge, and pass another smart training-ship. Moored there we presume to justify the outrageous and apparently prohibitive stipulation of Parliament,—which required that a railway train should be carried through the air above the masthead of a fully rigged old-fashioned man-of-war,—for we never heard of another performing such a feat. Nor did our sagacious and far-seeing legislators probably dream of the advent of the squat iron-clads, with neither mast or sail, and hulls more under the water than above it, that now form the fleet of the present. ”

“ When crushed by misfortune, his son and grandson having fallen by the sword before his eyes a few weeks previously, and although bowed by age, yet still attracted by the glamour of the deadly conflict,—far away from these happy precincts, with a captive king in his keeping as a ransom, but powerless to save him,—he stood an unfriended prisoner alone in the hands of a relentless enemy, surrounded by the ghastly wrecks of a battlefield, and then hastily perished amid the ghastlier paraphernalia of the scaffold, the axe and block, the executioner in his mask and the jeering soldiery. ”

“ Both are elaborately decorated in their upper portions with carved panels displaying the armories of his descent and alliance, below they exhibit the linen pattern, and on the corners appears his crest sculptured in full relief. Immediately beyond is a large high-tomb, whose massive black marble table records that the bodies of the old knight and his dame repose below, while on the aisle wall immediately above the gallery-pew are two further inscribed brasses to their memories. ”

“ The tide is well up, and a pleasant breeze soon speeds us on our way. We pass the Budshead creek, that extends inland to Tamerton-Foliot, and are soon opposite a second and somewhat larger opening that runs up to Maristow, where, at its far end, the sparkling Tavy, fresh from the granite boulders of Dartmoor, delivereth her waters into the salt bosom of the lower Tamar. At about mid-distance up the creek on its northern shore, a small compact village, with a square battlemented church tower rising in the midst, has its place on the bank that slopes gently down to the water's edge. ”

“ The large number of old Crosses strewn thickly over the wild moorlands or by the solitary wayside, in churchyard or village street, were set up as reminders to the passing foot, of the way to eternal life, and contemporary with them Holy Wells covered the bright springs in the valleys, and appealed with their simple imagery to those who came thither to draw, not to forget to thirst also for the living water that refreshes the soul ”

“ We pass a magnificent white-clad troop-ship, with a beading of red-coats leisurably looking over the forecastle, and glide under the lee of one of those steam-winged brigands of the deep, a steel-built cruiser, whose towering trim spars, and beautiful lines, excite admiration, but chastened with the reflection of the capabilities for destruction she carries in her enormous propelling power and far-reaching guns. ”

“ But why should such striking collapse of this world's artificial grandeur sadden the mind that rejoices in the unobtrusive station, and simple unenvied delights—ever the best—of every-day life? In truth it does not; as we pass out into the pleasant daylight, the olden opulence and state of the departed Cheneys fades into the past as a dream, for a much more healthful sight is before us. ”

“ Last thought of all, as we look back and watch the bright red cross slowly unfold itself on the summer breeze over the taffrail of one of the largest of them,—the hallowed symbol of peace and good will hoisted over these engines of bloodshed,—we muse at the strange antithesis suggested by its display, as if designed in bitterest satire, to justify, or as it were, consecrate their direful mission. ”

“ On the one side a group of cottages, and fine trees planted high on the shoulder of the hill, shews well against the distant sky-line, and patches of houses—broken in their midst by the principal hostelry of the place, staringly obtrusive in the most modern brick and white, perched at the top of the straggling street that leads up to it,—carry the eye across to the further fringe of the elevation on the other side, where an ecclesiastical looking edifice, gabled and pinnacled, cuts into the ether and balances the picture. ”

“ Here, enveloped in the dark shadows of this crypt, and scarcely discernible, where, unless guided, human foot would scarcely dream of taking its way in search of reminiscence to one so memorable, is the monument of the principal Englishman of his era, who held the highest position in the kingdom ecclesiastically and civilly, a statesman also of the first order, the value of whose influence in settling the great quarrel that had so long distracted his native land, and bringing it peace, can now hardly be estimated. ”

“ Thus the Lady Katharine Bonville was sister to Richard Nevill, the "great Earl of Warwick, the king-maker," and aunt to his daughters, the Lady Isabel who married George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward IV., drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Tower, whose son Edward was cruelly beheaded by Henry VII., and whose daughter Margaret, the aged Countess of Salisbury was remorselessly butchered by Henry VIII. ”

“ It would be equally difficult to find a family more unfortunate.
The restless, troubled life of Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, and its importance, as bearing on one of the most noted epochs of English history, is a subject much too large to receive anything beyond a very imperfect outline here; and it has been necessarily more or less comprehensively treated, by all our national historians. ”

“ Thus this fine edifice shared the fate of its predecessor erected by the Peyvres, from whom, through Broughton who married their heiress, Lord Cheney inherited the manor of Toddington, by marrying the heiress of Broughton.
From the dismantled earthly home of the extinct Cheneys to the final one appointed for all, is but the natural sequence of this world's history of human life. ”

“ Here we hope to find some memorials of Paveley, Cheney or Willoughby, for our historic memory recalls to us, that within the fabric there is a Chantry which was formerly attached to Broke Hall, and that its windows were said to be filled with rudders as at their old seat. Our foot crosses the porch threshold, and with intuitive direction leads us at once to the east end of the south aisle, where some apparently well-preserved old oak screen-work, partition off what we rightly divine was the Broke Chantry. ”

“ Now almost all is changed, science has invaded the citadel of living endeavour, and deposed its activity and ambition; while furnished with the results of her conquests, one man practically has become as good as another, the spur of incentive has vanished from the heel of individual aspiration to excellence, with this result, that if to man the privilege of becoming a greater, nobler being, fostered by the soul's glorious activities, as having something to conquer, or win, be denied or removed from him ”

“ A warm sunny morning in early May, and turning our steps from the thriving and somewhat busy town of Trowbridge,—a place which, like its quieter sister of Westbury, "stondith mostly by clothiers,"—its forest of smoking chimneys, garish town-hall, and tall spire,—our path inclines by the broad south-westerly road that leads to Frome and the parts adjacent. The walk is pleasant enough in its way, but without special incident to interest the wayfarer, beyond the ordinary pedestrian and vehicular motion of the hour. ”

“ We have made pilgrimage to, and described what remains of the old ancestral home of the knight in Wiltshire, and our steps next lead us to the locality of the new one he possessed by right of his wife at Beer-Ferrers in Devon. Like all places situate on the estuaries of large rivers such as the Tamar, that are tidal, and fringed by creeks that run considerable distances inland, Beer-Ferrers on the land side is only to be reached by a circuitous route from Plymouth, and therefore we elect the easier and more direct approach to it, by aid of the iron horse to Saltash, and thence by boat. ”

“ George's day last before, the Duke of Somerset being upon a journey towards the north, in case Sir William Herbert, Master of the Horse, had not assured him he should receive no harm, would have raised the people; and that he had sent the Lord Gray before, to know who would be his friends: also that the Duke of Northumberland, the Marquis of Northampton, the Earl of Pembroke, and other lords should be invited to a banquet, and if they came with a bare company, to be set upon by the way; if strongly, their heads should have been cut off at the place of their feasting. ”