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The Guildhall, ExeterDEVON
ITS MOORLANDS, STREAMS, & COASTS
BY LADY ROSALIND NORTHCOTE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
AFTER FREDERICK J. WIDGERY
LONDON—EXETER
CHATTO & WINDUS—JAMES G. COMMIN
M CM VIII
Red sunset tides against a red sea-wall,
High lonely barrows where the curlews call,
Far moors that echo to the ringing horn,—
Devon! thou spirit of all these beauties born,
All these are thine, but thou art more than all:
Speech can but tell thy name, praise can but fall
Beneath the cold white sea-mist of thy scorn.
Even now to join our faint memorial chime
To the fierce chant wherewith their hearts were hot
Who took the tide in thy Imperial prime;
Whose glory's thine till Glory sleeps forgot
With her ancestral phantoms, Pride and Time.
Preface
The first and one of the greatest difficulties to confront a writer whoattempts any sort of description of a place or people is almost sure tobe the answer to the question, How much must be left out? In the presentcase the problem has reappeared in every chapter, for Devon is 'a fairprovince,' as Prince says in his 'Worthies of Devon,' and 'the happyparent of ... a noble offspring.'
My position is that of a person who has been bidden to take from a greatheap of precious stones as many as are needed to make one chain; forhowever grasping that person may be, and however long the chain may bemade, when all the stones have been chosen, the heap will look almost asgreat and delightful as before: only a few of the largest and brightestjewels will be gone.
The fact that I have been able to take only a small handful from thevast hoard that constitutes the history of Devon will explain, I hope,the many omissions that must strike every reader who has any knowledgeof the county—omissions of which no one can be more conscious thanmyself. A separate volume might very well be written about the bit ofcountry touched on in each chapter.
This book does not pretend to include every district. I have merelypassed through a great part of the county, stopping here at an oldchurch with interesting monuments, there at a small town whose share inlocal history—in some instances, in the country's history—is apt to beforgotten, or at a manor-house[Pg viii] which should be remembered for itsassociation with one of the many