SUMMARY OF SECOND RUN THROUGH SOMERSET

Distances.

Roads.

No steep hills.

Surface on the whole very good.

VII
THROUGH SOMERSET AGAIN

Porlock is a word of dread significance to those who are interested in the roads of England. A precipitous hill nearly three miles long, with a surface of sand and stones and several sharp corners—such is the vision that this name invokes. There is, however, not the least necessity to lower ourselves into Porlock on these alarming gradients. Near the top of the hill there is a private road that turns off to the left, and may be used for the sum of one shilling. It is narrow, and has a poor surface and two “hairpin” turns, but it is nowhere steep, and the woods through which it runs are entrancing. The car slips gently down among the birches and rowan-trees, and soon we see the bay below us with its dark grey beach, and Porlock under the hill.

The two roads join, and run into the village together, at the corner where the “Ship” Inn and the cottages round it, with their thatched roofs and porches and gay creepers, make a pretty picture with the green hill for background. Indeed, all Porlock is made of pretty pictures: an inland village could hardly be more decorative. There was a time when it was not an inland village, but a favourite landing-place for visitors of various nations but of one marauding aim. It does not to-day appear a promising field for a robber of any ambition, but time was, I believe, when it was quite a stirring place, with a royal palace and much prosperity. When the Danes landed here in the night they were routed to their ships with empty hands: but when, a hundred and fifty years later, no less a man than Harold Godwinson sailed in from his exile in Ireland, he was not content with plundering and burning Porlock itself, but made it a centre for expeditions. He built himself a fort here, whence he could comfortably raid the country that was afterwards his own kingdom. The French invasion of the seventeenth century turned out to be a false alarm, but none the less the inhabitants arose as one man, armed themselves valiantly with scythes and pikes, and hurried away to Exeter to join William of Orange—which seems an original way of repelling invasion.

There is an interesting church here. The alabaster figures of a knight and his lady in elaborate headdresses represent Lord Harington of Aldingham and his wife, afterwards Lady Bonville; whose finely carved garments and faces have been thickly covered with deep-cut initials by those who love antiquities as the Conqueror loved the tall deer.

Those whose love of antiquities is of another kind will find it worth their while to run to the “Anchor” Inn at Porlock Weir, where every room is rich in ancient furniture and vessels of copper and brass. The road that leads to it is excellent, and so is the one that takes us on to Dunster, though the redness of its surface adds a new terror to dust. We pass through Allerford with a fine view of the hills and a glimpse of the old pack-horse bridge; but when we reach the by-way to Selworthy we shall do well to turn aside. For this pretty lane, which is roofed with foliage as completely as a pergola, leads not only to an interesting church and a tithe-barn, but to a group of almshouses that is unequalled in its simple way: half a dozen thatched and gabled cottages ranged, not in a stiff row, but round a sloping green, with wild woods to shelter them, and walnut-trees to shade them, and hollyhocks and fuchsias to make them gay. Between them and the woods a tiny stream trickles through the moss, and over it a rough tree-stem has been flung to serve as bridge.

After a few more miles on the fine red road, with Dunkerry Hill conspicuous on the right, we see, first Minehead lying by the sea and spreading up the hill, and then the watch-tower of Dunster. A minute later we drive into the Middle Ages.

This street of Dunster makes one half in love with the feudalism that could produce so perfect a picture. On one side are the porch and archway of the “Luttrell Arms”; on the other the octagonal yarn-market, gabled and tiled and mossy, with a little mullioned window in each gable; between them lies the straight, wide street; and in the background, dominating and protective, the castle towers are lifted high upon their wooded hill. Through all the centuries between the Conquest and to-day this castle has had no masters but the Mohuns and the Luttrells, and there is nothing in Dunster that is not connected, directly or indirectly, with one of these two ancient names. These buildings to right and left of us, for instance—this inn with the mediÆval porch and the beautiful north wing, and this market-house that used to be the scene of “a very celebrate market at Dunstorre ons a wekes”—were both built by George Luttrell of the sixteenth century and repaired by George Luttrell of the seventeenth. And if we walk down the wide street and turn to the left we shall find the church of the Mohuns’ priory, the Benedictine priory that the first Mohun of Dunster founded, “pricked by the fear of God.”

It is a very notable church. “The late priory of blake monkes,” says Leland, “stoode yn the rootes of the north-west side of the castelle, and was a celle to Bathe. The hole chirch of the late priory servith now for the paroche chirch. Afore tymes the monkes had the est parte closid up to their use.” Of late years the church has been restored to the form it had aforetimes, with the seats of the prior and monks, and the monastic choir. The very beautiful rood-screen with the canopy of fan-tracery, which was set up in the fifteenth century, forms the entrance to the parish choir: the choir of the monks is reached through the curious arch that is wider below than above—an arrangement made by the brothers themselves to allow room for their processions. Round about the high altar of the priory are monuments of the Luttrells. Thomas Luttrell, whose great Elizabethan memorial is in the south-east chapel, was the father of the man who rebuilt the castle and did so much for Dunster—George Luttrell, who kneels here in effigy; and the slab that now lies under the window of the south aisle once covered the grave of the Lady Elizabeth who, as a widow, bought the manor of Dunster from the widow of Sir John de Mohun. On the north side of the altar is the alabaster figure, though probably not the tomb, of her son Sir Hugh, first Luttrell of Dunster, Great Seneschal of Normandy, Steward of the Household to Queen Joan, a warrior who won much renown in fighting the French and the great Glyndwr and the little Perkin Warbeck. Most of the Mohuns were buried at their abbey of Bruton, but here in the monks’ choir, under a canopy, is the figure of Dame Hawise, wife of the second Sir Reynold de Mohun.

Near the church are some remains of the monastic buildings: the refectory, the prior’s apparently impregnable barn, a couple of archways, and, in the vicarage garden, a lovely thirteenth-century dovecot with a tiled roof and hanging creepers.

Although the “glory of this toun rose by the Moions,” and though the memory of them is everywhere, it is so many centuries since they went away to Cornwall—to Hall near Fowey, and later to Boconnoc—that there are few actual relics of them left. Of the three castles that they built successively upon the hill there remains little more than a gateway of the third, the gateway with the massive door and the mighty knocker of iron. It is just within the main entrance, and strangely enough was built by the husband of Dame Hawise, whose tomb is the only Mohun monument in the church. The castellated gatehouse itself is the work of the first Luttrell of Dunster. His descendants still live in the great red dwelling-house with the martlets of the Luttrells over the door, but by their kindness we are allowed, with a guide, to climb the steep path under the yew-hedge that is sixty feet high; and to see the strange half-tropical plants of the gardens, the cork-tree and the lemon-tree upon the wall; and then to climb still higher to the bowling-green and look out upon the park and the Severn Sea.

This was not always a bowling-green. It was here that the keep stood till great Robert Blake, as formidable on shore as at sea, brought all his batteries against it, and the Parliament finally dismantled it. The whole castle, indeed, would have been ruined if it had not been wanted as a prison for poor Mr. Prynne. Some years earlier, while there was a royalist garrison in the castle, young Prince Charles was sent hither for safety; and here, as elsewhere, tradition has assigned a certain Red Room to him, for no other reason than that it contained a hiding-hole.[18]

There is a real delight, after all our experiences on the rough precipitous hills of Devon, in swinging away from Dunster on a good and level road—the road that is on the whole the best in Somerset. So pleasant is it that some, no doubt, will stoutly refuse to pause or turn aside for many a mile. For others, however, the lure of ancient stones is very strong; and these will leave the highway more than once between Dunster and Taunton. In Washford, for instance, there is a turn to the right that leads in a moment to the Abbey of Cleeve. Here in a rough field stands the gatehouse with the genial motto, Patens porta esto, ulli claudaris honesto, and the statue of the abbey’s patron-saint, and upon the inner side the crucifix and the tablet with the builder’s name, Dovel. Poor William Dovel, last abbot of Cleeve, had a sore heart when he passed out under these pointed arches that he had raised for others, not himself, to use, and saw his own name overhead upon the masonry, and remembered all his loving, futile work upon the walls of his abbey. It was a poor Cistercian house, with a small income and no jewels nor golden chalices to tempt a king; but even trifling sums were acceptable to Henry, and though a thousand marks were offered for “his grasious goodnes,” the abbey was doomed. So William Dovel went forth of this gate, and with him “XVII prystes off very honest lyffe and conversation,” who “kept alwayes grett hospytalyte to the relyffe off the countre.” There is much of Dovel’s work in the buildings of the monastery. As we enter the garth the western cloister is on our left, with Perpendicular windows and mossy roof; facing us are the little pointed windows of the dormitory, and below them the Early English doorway of the vaulted chapter-house. Dovel’s refectory, with timbered roof and carved finials, is reached by a staircase on the southern side of the quadrangle, and behind it in a little garden is a pavement of heraldic tiles, bearing the arms of many benefactors. Of the church hardly anything remains.

Our good road takes us on, through Williton, to the foot of the Quantocks, with the sea and the distant Welsh shore upon the left. Beyond the railway we bear round to the right and drive below the green and purple slopes of the hills that were loved and often trodden by Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Hazlitt, the hills on which the writing of the Ancient Mariner was planned. At Crowcombe among the trees there is a tall cross in the village, and a beautiful one in the churchyard, and a porch with fan-tracery. About three miles beyond this we may turn aside for a moment to Combe Florey, and see the old red manor-house of the Floreys with their three flowers over the gateway, and the village where Sydney Smith’s blue pills were a doubtful blessing, and the church where he preached, and the vicarage on the hill, where he tried to impose upon his London visitors by fastening antlers to his donkeys’ heads. It was here that Henry Luttrell spent a day with him. “He had not his usual soup-and-pattie look,” wrote Sydney Smith, “but a sort of apple-pie depression, as if he had been staying with a clergyman.… He was very agreeable, but spoke too lightly, I thought, of veal soup.”[19]

At Bishop’s Lydeard is a church that is fine enough in itself to wile us from the highway. The bishop who gave it its name was the learned and literary Asser, who has told us himself how King Alfred asked for his friendship, which indeed seems to have been worth having. “He asked me eagerly to devote myself to his service and become his friend, to leave everything I possessed … and he promised he would give me more than an equivalent for it in his own dominions.” This manor of Bishop’s Lydeard was part of the equivalent he gave, when Asser, after some hesitation, left St. David’s and came to be Bishop of Sherborne. Having forsaken the main road to see the splendid tower of this church, and the painted screen and bench-ends, and the tall cross in the churchyard, we may as well drive on a little further to the very foot of the wooded Quantocks, to the church and manor-house of Cothelstone. For many centuries this land was owned by the Stawells, who have left their cross-lozengy above the house-door and in the church; and in later years it became the home of Shelley’s blue-eyed daughter, Ianthe. As we pass the outer gateway, on which two of Jeffreys’ victims swung in Lord Stawell’s despite, we can catch a glimpse of the inner gatehouse and of the red-tiled roof and Jacobean doorway beyond. This is but a fragment of the old manor-house, for when that “loftie proud man,” Sir John, raised four troops for Charles I. he was sent to prison for it, and his house was brought low by Blake.

There is a letter still existing, yellow now with age and very fragile at the folds, in which Sir John’s bailiff writes to him piteously concerning this disaster. “The cruell and base dealyng,” he says, “wch is now acted at Cothelstone doth astonish and amaze all people wch do either see it or heare of it; for they have now taken downe all the Leads of the house … and have already taken downe that part of the house wch is over against my Ladye’s garden.… I am very sorry that ther is occasion gyven me to make soe sadd a relation unto you.… I beseech God to send us better tymes.” It was in the eighteenth century that this restored wing of the old house passed to the Esdailes, ancestors of that Edward Esdaile who married Shelley’s daughter.

Behind the house is the church that was once the private chapel. It has some carved bench-ends and some old glass, but its special features are the two beautiful tombs in the south chapel: the finely carved figures of a fourteenth-century Stawell and his wife, with their painted shields below them, and the still more beautiful Elizabethan tomb with the effigies of marble. In a corner of the churchyard is a white stone “in sweet memory of Ianthe.”

Again we return to our high-road, and this time do not pause till we drive into the market-place of Taunton, the quiet centre of a country-town, where cabbages are bought and sold, and loitering cabmen smoke their pipes without a thought of Monmouth or of Jeffreys. Yet some of these very houses were wreathed with flowers at the coming of the foolish duke: here where the fountain is he stood and smiled while the pious maids of Taunton, made rebels by his handsome face, gave him a Bible, and a fine banner of their own working, “One would have thought the people’s wits were flown away in the flights of their joy.” Here he was proclaimed King James and called King Monmouth, and here his followers paid for their ill-placed devotion in torrents of blood. Into this market-place came Kirke and his Lambs with their victims in chains; and over there at the corner of Fore Street and High Street stood the “White Hart,” whose signpost was the gibbet. Hither came Jeffreys of the sinister face. “He breathed death like a destroying angel,” says Toulmin, “and ensanguined his very ermines with blood. The victims remained unburied; the houses and steeples were covered with their heads, and the trees laden almost as thick with quarters as with leaves.” He went in to his monstrous work through that arch with the embattled towers; and passed on through the inner entrance of yellow stone, where Henry VII.’s shield and Bishop Langton’s are above the door. Within it is the great hall, with the timbered roof and the whitewashed walls that were hung with scarlet while Jeffreys, “mostly drunk,” stormed at his victims of the Bloody Assizes. The little girl—she was hardly more than a child—who had won Monmouth’s easy smiles by her speech among the June flowers in the market-place was ransomed with her schoolfellows; but her sister had seen the Judge’s face, and died of the terror of it.

Such are some of the memories of quiet, prosperous Taunton. Nor is the rest of its long history much more placid. The eighth-century castle of wood to which King Ina of the West Saxons called his “fatherhood, aldermen, and wisest commons, with the godly men of his kingdom, to consult of great and weighty matters,” only survived for twenty-one years. In the twelfth century the Bishop of Winchester built another, which was improved and enlarged by his successors, and has partly weathered the many storms and stresses of its long experience: Wars of the Roses, invasion by Perkin, and the siege of the Civil War. Taunton held for the Parliament, consistently, but at the first not very stoutly. No sooner did the royalists come near the town, says Clarendon, than two “substantial inhabitants” were sent out to treat with the general; while the garrison settled the matter by departing, like Perkin on a former occasion from the same castle, “with wonderful celerity.” A year later, however, the Parliament took Taunton again, and making Blake its defender, kept it. For Blake, who afterwards summed up a sailor’s duty in memorable words—“It is not for us to mind state affairs, but to keep the foreigners from fooling us”—knew the duty of a soldier too. “As we neither fear your menaces nor accept your proffers,” he answered the summons to surrender, “so we wish you for time to come to desist from all overtures of the like nature unto us.” Wyndham, Goring, Hopton, Grenville, all did their utmost in vain. It remained for Charles II.’s spite to ruin Taunton’s defences. The castle that defied the King was dismantled, and the town-walls utterly wiped away.

Of the Augustinian Priory that was founded by Bishop Giffard of Winchester and supported by so many noteworthy people—by Henry de Blois and the Mohuns, Montacutes and Arundels, William of Wykeham and Jasper Tudor—there is nothing left but a barn, the priory church of St. James, and the splendid chapel of St. Mary Magdalen, now the parish church. The graceful tower from which Macaulay looked out over a land flowing with milk and honey was shortly afterwards taken down, but the present one, with its three tiers of Decorated windows and its pinnacles and parapet, is exactly copied, it is said, from the original.

From Taunton we pass, through pretty undulating country, by way of Hatch Beauchamp to Ilminster. After the wild scenery of Devon this quiet land is not exciting; but there are pleasant woods here and there, and the villages of Somerset need fear no comparisons with any in England. The towns are less attractive, except in the matter of churches. Ilminster, for instance, is clean and old-fashioned, but has no real beauty save the church of yellow stone with the fine tower. When Monmouth made his successful progress through this country in his youth, from hospitable house to flower-strewn town, he came to this church one Sunday morning from White Lackington. He saw the tower with the triple windows and Sir William Wadham’s fifteenth-century transepts; but the nave has been rebuilt since then, and betrays the fact. In the northern transept is the enormous tomb of the builder, inlaid with brasses; and near it is the ponderous but unlovely monument of Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, founders of Wadham College. They “lie both interr’d under a stately monument,” says Prince, “now much defaced, the greater is the pity, by the rude hands of children and time.”

At the outskirts of the town is Dillington House, where Mr. Speke entertained the popular duke when he came to Ilminster. We pass the entrance to the park as we drive out upon the road to Yeovil—the park whose palings were broken down by the crowd that surged about Monmouth, when he rode in with his self-constituted bodyguard of two thousand horsemen. Our progress, if greeted with less enthusiasm than his, is quicker. We spin through dull scenery upon a splendid road till the bluff outline of Hamdon Hill comes into sight. For a moment we touch the Fosse Way, then swing slowly round the base of the hill through Stoke, and see St. Michael’s Tower above us on the right.

It was this sugar-loaf hill that prompted William de Mortain the swashbuckler to name his castle Montacute, when he built it where the tower now stands. His father Robert de Mortain, who had come successfully through many battles with the standard of St. Michael borne before him, regarded that saint as the particular patron of his family. It was he who dedicated “the guarded Mount” in Cornwall and gave the monastery to its namesake in Normandy, “for the health of his soul.” His son, whose piety was peculiarly spasmodic, not only built his castle here, but founded the Cluniac priory whose lovely fifteenth-century gatehouse still stands at the foot of the hill. Everything at Montacute is lovely: this gatehouse with the oriel windows and the towers and creepers: the church with its many styles of architecture, from Norman to Decorated: the village square with its houses of warm yellow stone, and all its windows made beautiful with drip-stones and mullions: above all, the splendid Tudor front of Montacute House, and its formal, parapeted garden.

The Summer-land, as we leave it, is not beautiful, nor is Yeovil an interesting town. But the road is very good; the engine is singing softly; and as for us—we are remembering.