Two miles south of Axminster, on our way to Seaton, we came upon the farmhouse of Ashe, at one time the mansion of the Drakes. Here was born, on May 24, 1650, John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough. Here, too, in the private chapel of the house, now used as a cider cellar, was married Lord North, one of that tactless ministry who lost us the New England States. In 1782, the last of the Ashe Drakes died, and five years later the greater portion of the house was destroyed by fire.

In Musbury church, a mile farther down the road, are monuments to Drakes of Ashe. Amongst those commemorated is that Sir Bernard Drake who disputed so hotly with his kinsman the great Sir Francis, most renowned of all Drakes, the question of armorial bearings. When Elizabeth granted the latter a new coat-of-arms, Sir Bernard replied that “though her Majesty could give him a nobler, yet she could not give him an antienter coat than his,” and with that flattering unction, self-administered, he was fain to be content.

To Ashe presently succeeds the straggling village of Axmouth, whence the sea is visible at the farther end of the marshy lands where the Axe struggles out into the Channel over a bed of shingle. Just above Haven Cliff the highroad is carried over the river by a bridge of three arches that gives access to Seaton.

Seaton is in process of rising, and to all who have witnessed the evolution of a seaside town from fishing village to “resort”—that is sufficient to say Verb. sap. sat. It possesses a terminal railway station on a branch line, and is the scene of Sunday “there and back” excursions from London in the summer season. On those occasions the place is crowded for a brief three hours or so, when trippers snatch a fearful joy. At other times Seaton is sluggish and dull, and really the bourgeois plastered buildings of the little town are an insult to the magnificent scenery on either hand.

Visitors there were a few on the beach—quiet folk mostly, and provincial of aspect, save indeed a loathly Cockney worm who had by some mischance missed his Margate, who leaned against a seaworn capstan, the sole representative of his particular stratum of civilisation—lonely, ineffable.

When the rain came down that had been impending all the forenoon, Seaton became doleful. There was nothing to do but take the next train to Exeter in search of a waterproof civilisation.