Baring-Gould Sabine
A Book of the West. Volume I Devon
The side chapels seem also to have been screened in; and there was one Thomas Prideaux who was a liberal contributor to the beautification of the church. In one of the side chapels was a rich, canopied altar-piece with wings. When the chantries and chapels were destroyed, this was carried away by the son, Robert Prideaux, and employed for the decoration of his room. The central piece of the triptych has been lost, but the wings and the canopy remain. Some of the wood-carving of Henry the Seventh's reign in and about Ashburton is of the very finest quality, quite unsurpassed in its style. Work by apparently the same hand may be seen at Fulford in the hall.
In Ashburton stands a quaint slated house-front with the pips on cards cut in slate ornamenting the front. The old ring to which the bull was attached for baiting still remains where was the ancient bull-ring of the town. Ashburton was, as already said, originally composed of two manors – one royal, the other episcopal – and each had its portreeve. The King's Bridge united them, and the river divided one from the other. This was a relic of pre-Saxon times, when the chief of the land and the ecclesiastical chief had their separate establishments. At a later period Ashburton passed wholly into the hands of the Bishop of Exeter. Bishop Oldham, 1504-1519, was a benefactor to the church, and gave it a lectern with an owl, his symbol, supporting the desk. This owl was sold to Bigbury, along with the handsome pulpit. Holne pulpit is very similar to that formerly in Ashburton.
The church of Ashburton has been renovated, and is now very stately and beautiful. It is to be regretted that the architect, the late Mr. Street, was superior to restoring the screen from the fragments that remained, and instead evolved one out of his inner consciousness, quite out of character with the church, and entirely different in feeling from the work common throughout the neighbourhood, which is exquisite in beauty of design and in detail. But such is the way with architects. The Arlers of Gmünd designed Milan Cathedral, but were not allowed to complete it; it was given to sixteen different Italian architects to meddle with and to muddle it; the result is that the exterior is a bit of miserable frippery in marble. Happily the original design for the interior was not interfered with.
But something incomparably worse may be seen near Ashburton, in the interior of Bickington.
Ilsington Church retains a few poppy-head benches of rich work, unique in the county.
In Ilsington is Ingsdon, once the seat of the Pomeroy family, but no relics of the ancient house remain. According to tradition, the Pomeroy ancestor was jester to Robert the Magnificent, father of William the Conqueror. He was a dwarf, full of comical movements as well as of quips and quirks. As he came in with the dessert he was called Pomme-roy, the Apple King. His son became a faithful servant of William, and was rewarded by him with large manors in Devon and Somersetshire. A junior branch was settled at Ingsdon. The tradition is of course groundless, as the family derived from a place Pomeraye in Normandy, near Bayeux. It probably originated with a family tendency to jest, and to a certain grotesqueness of appearance. It is told by Miss Strickland in her History of the Queens of England. But the odd circumstance about it is that there are Pomeroys now in and about Ashburton of humble degree – the children, the plague of the schoolmaster and mistresses, as they are born humourists, and withal have such a droll appearance and expression as to inevitably provoke mirth.
Holne Church has a good painted screen, and the parsonage is the house in which Charles Kingsley was born. The view of the winding of the Dart from the parsonage garden is beautiful.
Dean Prior was long the place to which poor Robert Herrick was banished. He did not love it, nor did he relish the rude ways of his parishioners. It is to be feared he did not labour very hard to better them. He was buried here in the churchyard in 1674. Here also was laid his servant "Prue," recorded in his poems. Her burial is entered in the register as that of "Prudence Balden, an olde maid," and Herrick's trust that the violet might blossom on her grave is perhaps not unfulfilled, although her grassy mound is not now known.
The Abbey of Buckfast is within an easy walk, and should on all accounts be visited. It is the earliest foundation in Devon, going back to long before the Conquest, in fact no documents exist to show when it was founded. "Mr. Brooking Rowe has suggested that Buckfast Abbey probably existed before the coming of the Northmen; that would be before A.D. 787. It may be so, but, at least, it must be grouped with Bodmin and Glastonbury Abbey as one of a trio of monastic churches which had property in Devon before King Edgar's time, and is probably, with the exception of Exeter, the only monastery before that time existing in the county. Its extreme antiquity may be inferred from the fact that Buckfast itself was never assessed." That is, at the taking of Domesday.
Now I have an idea concerning it. Two of its churches were Harford and South Brent, and both are dedicated to S. Petrock. We find S. Petrock again, further down the Dart, at its mouth. Where we find a Celtic dedication, there we may be pretty certain that either the saint founded the church, or that it was given to him, not necessarily in his lifetime.
In Celtic monasteries, when a grant was made, it was not made to the community, but to the saint personally, who was supposed never to die, and all the lands and churches granted became his personal property. Now, as we find two of the churches belonging to this venerable abbey bearing S. Petrock's name, I think it quite possible that the original abbey may have been, like that of Padstow, a foundation of S. Petrock. When, however, the abbey was re-endowed and recast, and occupied by monks belonging to the Latin orders, S. Petrock would be ignored at Buckfast, and the only indication left of his having once owned the whole territory of Buckfast would be the lingering on of his name in some of the churches that belonged to that same territory.
I am not sure that we have not hard by traces of other Celtic saints, S. Wulvella in Gulwell, a Holywell at Ashburton, and her brother S. Paul of Leon at Staverton, though now supplanted by Paul the Apostle.
Buckfast Abbey, after having been given over to the wreckers, has been purchased by French Benedictines, expelled from France in 1882, and they are carefully rebuilding the abbey on its old lines, following all the details as turned up among the ruins. The foundations of the church have been uncovered, and show that it was of great size. It was pulled down in 1806, and the materials employed in the construction of a factory.
Staverton Church is deserving a visit because of its superb screen, that has been most carefully restored. It exhibits a screen complete in all its parts, a thing very rare. Most of these lack what was their crowning glory, the upper member. Indeed there is but one completely intact in the county – Atherington, if we except the stone screen at Exeter.
There are other screens in the neighbourhood; that of Buckland has on it some unexplained paintings.
The Celt was never a builder. His churches were rude to the last degree of rudeness. But what he delighted in was wattle-work, interlacing osiers into the most intricate and beautiful and varied designs. We may conjecture that our Celtic forefathers did not concern themselves much about the stonework of their churches, and concentrated all their efforts on a screen dividing chancel from nave, which with platting and interweaving they made into a miracle of loveliness. And this direction given to decoration hung on in Devon and Cornwall, and resulted in the glorious screens. For them, to contain them, the shells were built. Everything was sacrificed to them, and when they are swept away what remains is nakedness, disproportion, and desolation.
Of the excursions in the neighbourhood of Ashburton to scenes of loveliness I will say but little. Yet let me recommend one of singular beauty – it is called Dr. Blackall's Drive. The Tavistock road is taken till the Dart is passed at New Bridge, then after a steep ascent the highway is abandoned before Pound Gate is reached, and a turf drive runs above the Dart commanding its gorge, the Holne coppice, and Benjie Tor, and the high road is rejoined between Bell Tor and Sharp Tor. This excursion may be combined with a drive through Holne Chase, if taken on a day when the latter is open to the public.
Holne Chase, however, should be seen from both sides of the Dart, as the aspects are very different on the two sides.
Hembury and Holne Chase camps are both fine, and deserve investigation. They commanded and defended the entrance to the moor from this side. Widecombe has been spoken of under the head of Moreton.
Bovey should be visited, with its fine church and screen and painted and gilt stone pulpit, and with the Bovey Heathfield potteries.
Bovey was one of the manors of the De Tracy who was a principal hand in the murder of Thomas à Becket, and it is to this ambitious and turbulent prelate that the church is dedicated. The story goes that William de Tracy built the church at Bovey as penance for his part in the murder; but the church constructed by him was burnt about 1300, and was rebuilt in the Perpendicular style. The story was diligently propagated that De Tracy died on his way to the Holy Land, in a frenzy, tearing his flesh off his bones with his teeth and nails, and shrieking, "Mercy, Thomas, mercy!" But, as a matter of fact, no judgment of God fell on the murderers. Within four years after the murder, De Tracy was justiciary of Normandy. The present Lord Wemyss and Lord Sudeley are his lineal descendants. The pedigree, contrary to all received opinions on the subject of "judgments" on sacrilege, exhibits the very singular instance of an estate descending for upwards of seven hundred years in the male line of the same family. Fitzurse, another of the murderers, went to Ireland, and became the ancestor of the McMahon family.
There are some curious pictures on the Bovey screen which are supposed to have reference to the story of Becket and his quarrels with the king.
Chudleigh is at some distance, but it is worth a visit, partly because of the good screen in the church, but mainly because of the very pretty ravine through which the Kate (Cad, fall) tumbles. The rock here is of limestone, a fine and beautiful marble, and in its face is a cavern supposed to be haunted by the Pixies, with a stalagmite floor that was broken up by Dr. Buckland in 1825, and the soil beneath it examined in the slip-shod, happy-go-lucky style usual with explorers of that period. It deserves to be reinvestigated systematically.
Note. – Books and articles on Ashburton: —
Worthy (C.), Ashburton and its Neighbourhood. Ashburton, 1875.
Amery (P. F. S.), Articles already noticed in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1876 and 1896.
CHAPTER XV.
TAVISTOCK
Origin of Tavistock – Foundation of the Abbey – S. Rumon – Edgar and Elfrida – Abbot Aylmer – Aldred – The Parish Church – Glanville – The Story of Mrs. Page – John Fitz – The Story of Sir John Fitz – The Story of Lady Howard – Sir Richard Grenville – Early inscribed stones – Statue of Sir Francis Drake – Buckland Abbey – Morwell – Lydford, its castle, ravine, and waterfall – Brent Tor – Endsleigh – Mary and Peter Tavy – Whit Tor.
Certain towns tell you at a glance what was their raison d'être; Tavistock has clustered about its abbey, that lay low near its fish-ponds, whereas Launceston clings about its castle, that stood high to command the country round.
Very possibly the original Saxon stockade was where still some earthworks remain, above the South Western Railway, but the centre of life moved thence on account of the fancy coming into the head of Ordulf, Earl of Devon, to found an abbey by the waterside in the valley beneath him. The legend, as told in a cartulary summarised in Dugdale's Monasticon, is that, in the reign of Edgar, Ordulf was one night praying in the open air, when he saw a pillar of fire brighter than the sun at noon hovering where now anyone, on any day, may see a lowering cloud of smoke. That same night an angel bade him go forth at dawn and explore the spot where he had seen the fire, and then build an oratory to the four evangelists. I think I can explain the vision. The farmer was "swaling." At a certain period a good many pillars of fire may be seen about Tavistock, when either the furze is being burnt, or the farmers are consuming the "stroil" – the weeds from their fields. So I do not reject the story as altogether fabulous, but as "improved." What Ordulf had a mind to do was to establish a monastery for the comfort of his soul, having, I doubt not, bullied and maltreated the poor Britons without compunction. His father had had a mind the same way, but had died without performing what was his intent.
Next day Ordulf went to the spot where he had seen the fire, and there beheld four stakes, marking out the ground, and this fact confirms me in my opinion. For it was the custom of the natives thus to indicate the bounds of their fields. The stakes were called termons. In like manner miners indicated their setts by cutting four turves annually at the limits of their grounds.
Ordulf now set to work and erected an oratory with buildings for an abbot and brethren, and he gave them of his inheritance Tavistock, Milton, Hatherleigh, Burrington, Rumonsleigh, Linkinhorne, Dunethem, and Chuvelin, which I cannot identify. He also bestowed on the monastery his wife's dower.
When the monastic church was built he moved to it the bones of his father, mother, and brother, and after his death was there laid himself.
However, before he graced it with his own relics, he transferred to it the remains of S. Rumon or Ruan (960), who, if we may judge from some place-names, had been there at a considerably earlier period as a missionary; for there is near Meavy a Roman's cross, and between Tavistock and Bere Ferrers is Romansleigh, and on the Tamar Rumleigh.
The saint reposed in the church of Ruan Lanihorne (Llan-ruan) in Cornwall, but Ordulf did not scruple to rob a mere West Welsh church to give honour and glory to one of his own founding.
Rumon was by no means a saint with a name and not a story. He had been a convert of S. Patrick, a Scot of Ireland. As I shall say something concerning him when we come to his field of labours in the Lizard district, I will say no more about them here.
Ordgar, Earl of Devon, was father of the beautiful Elfrida, who accordingly was sister of Ordulf. Her story, though tolerably well known, must not be passed over here.
King Edgar was a little man, but thought a good deal of himself – a merciful dispensation of Providence accorded to little men to make up for their lack of inches. He was of a warm complexion. He once carried off a nun from her convent, and was reprimanded for it by S. Dunstan, who forbade him for this disreputable act to wear his crown for seven years. His first wife was Ethelfleda, called the Duck – Duckie, doubtless, by her husband – and after her death he looked out for another, as is an infirm way that widowers have.
Edgar, hearing that Elfrida, daughter of Ordgar, was the loveliest woman in England, with a true Devonshire complexion of cream and heather-bloom, sent Ethelwald, Earl of the East Angles, to interview her before he committed himself. Ethelwald no sooner saw her than he was a "gone coon," and he asked the hand of Elfrida from her brother. Having received his consent, he hurried back to the king and told him that the lady was much over-rated, that her chief beauty lay in her wealth; as her only brother Ordulf was childless, she had expectations of coming in for his fortune when it should please Providence, and so on.
So, as though looking only to her expectations, Ethelwald asked the king to give him the lady. Edgar yielded his consent, and Ethelwald married Elfrida, and became by her the father of a boy whom he persuaded the king to take as his god-child, and to whom he gave the name of Edgar. Then Ethelwald was glad, for he knew that according to the laws of the Church, they had contracted a spiritual relationship which would prevent the king from ever marrying Elfrida and removing himself, the obstacle which stood in the way should he contemplate an union.
Now the report reached the king that he had been "done," done out of the loveliest woman in Christendom, and the little man ruffled up and became fiery red, and vowed he would a-hunting go, and hunt in the royal chase of Dartmoor. So he sent word to Ethelwald that he purposed visiting him at his Castle of Harewood, and solicited a bed and breakfast.
Harewood is situated on a tongue of land about which the Tamar makes a great loop – at one time assuredly a very strong camp; then it became a gentleman's place, now it is a ruin.
Ethelwald felt uneasy. He told his wife the story of the deception he had practised, which shows how soft and incapable of dealing with women he was. Then he went on to ask of her the impossible – to disguise her beauty. As if any woman would do that!
But when Elfrida knew the story she also ruffled up, not a little, and made a point of dressing herself in her most costly array, braiding her lovely hair with jewels, and washing her pretty face in milk and eau de– elder-flowers. Edgar became madly enamoured, and to boot furious with the man who had deceived him.
As they were together one day hunting, and were alone, the king smote Ethelwald with a javelin so that he died, and he took Elfrida to be his wife; and to expiate his peccadillo, erected a convent in the Harewood forest.
Edgar died in 975, and he was but thirty-two years old when he died.
Now, is there any truth in this story?
The tale comes to us from Geoffrey Gaimar and from William of Malmesbury, and their accounts do not quite tally, for Gaimar makes the king send off the obnoxious husband to the wars, to fall by the hand of the rebels in Yorkshire, and this looks like a cooking-up of the story of David and Uriah. On the other hand, William of Malmesbury's tale smells somewhat of an English version of the story in the Nibelungenlied of Sigurd and Kriemhild.
Both historians certainly drew from ballads, but these ballads were the vehicle through which history in early times was preserved. It has been supposed that the Harewood in question was Harewood near Leeds, in Yorkshire, but surely Elfrida would be on her inheritance in the West. Another difficulty is that there was no convent of nuns near the place. But this may have been thrown in as a sort of moral to the tale – if kings or other men do naughty things, they will have to pay for it.
Tavistock Abbey had some men of rare ability to rule over it. One was Aylmer, chosen in 981, who lived in difficult times, when the Vikings came and harried the coasts, ran up the rivers, and plundered and burned wherever they went. When the Danes were spoiling the land, driving off the cattle and burning the farms, he gave out of the revenues of the abbey a double danegeld or contribution for the relief of those in distress. But presently his own abbey was surrounded, pillaged, and burnt. This was in 997, by a horde that had first landed at Watchet, and then returned round the Land's End, and had run up the Tamar. They went as far as Lydford, and burnt and slew everything and every person they could lay hands on.
But a far abler man was Lyfing, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, and at the same time of Devon and Cornwall.
Another admirable man was Aldred, who succeeded Lyfing in the see of Worcester in 1046, after having been Abbot of Tavistock fourteen years; and he was made Archbishop of York in 1060, and died in 1069, broken-hearted at the misery that came in the wake of the Conquest. The lives of both these men, showing how to steer a difficult course in a troubled sea among many rocks, are worth a study, and for that I refer the reader to Mr. Alford's Abbots of Tavistock. (Plymouth, 1891.)
The Abbey Church of Tavistock was second only to Exeter for size and dignity in the West. It has completely disappeared, and the road in front of the Bedford Hotel now runs over what was the nave of the great church.
Where now stands the hotel was in ancient days the Saxon school; it was pulled down in 1736, when the inn, then the house of the Dukes of Bedford, was erected on its site and out of its materials.
The parish church is large, in the Perpendicular style, and somewhat uninteresting. But it must be remembered that the Devon and Cornish churches were built with intent to have their chancels and side chapels cut off by a very rich screen. Such a screen did once exist at Tavistock, and were it in place and complete, the church would at once appear well proportioned. It looks now unfurnished, like a railway station. It was repaired in 1845, and for the period the work was really marvellously well done. The carved oak benches were faithful copies of those in Bere Ferrers Church, and there was no scamping in the material. The new glass in the windows ranges from very good to execrably bad. Some objects of interest connected with the history of the church, among these the reputed thigh-bones of Ordgar and Ordulf, are preserved.
There is a fine monument to John Fitz, who died in 1590. Opposite it is one of Judge Glanville, Serjeant-at-Law in 1589 and Justice of Common Pleas in 1598. He died July 27th, 1600. He had by his wife a fair family. Now here comes in a question of some interest.
The current tradition is that one of Glanville's daughters, Eulalia by name, was married to a John Page, whom she murdered, and for the crime she was sentenced to be burned alive; which sentence was carried into effect in 1590 at Barnstaple.
I will give the story as contained in a letter by Mr. Daniel Lysons, author of the Magna Britannia, in 1827: —
"The Judge's daughter was attached to George Stanwich, a young man of Tavistock, lieutenant of a man-of-war, whose letters, the father disapproving of the attachment, were intercepted. An old miser of Plymouth, of the name of Page, wishing to have an heir to disappoint his relatives, who perhaps were too confident in calculating upon sharing his wealth, availed himself of this apparent neglect of the young sailor, and settling on her a good jointure, obtained her hand. She took with her a maidservant from Tavistock, but her husband was so penurious that he dismissed all the other servants, and caused his wife and her maid to do all the work themselves. On an interview subsequently taking place between her and Stanwich, she accused him of neglecting to write to her, and then discovered that his letters had been intercepted. The maid advised them to get rid of the old gentleman, and Stanwich at length, with great reluctance, consented to their putting an end to him. Page lived in what was afterwards the Mayoralty House (at Plymouth), and a woman who lived opposite hearing at night some sand thrown against a window, thinking it was her own, arose, and looking out, saw a young gentleman near Page's window, and heard him say, 'For God's sake stay your hand!' A female replied, ''Tis too late; the deed is done.' On the following morning it was given out that Page had died suddenly in the night, and as soon as possible he was buried. On the testimony, however, of his neighbour, the body was taken up again, and it appearing that he had been strangled, his wife, Stanwich, and the maid were tried and executed. It is current among the common people here that Judge Glanville, her own father, pronounced the sentence."
That sentence would be one for petty treason, burning alive. It was not till 1790 that the law requiring women to be burnt alive for putting to death their husbands or their masters was repealed. A woman was so burnt in 1789. A poor girl of fifteen was burnt at Heavitree, near Exeter, on July 29th, 1782, for poisoning her master. Eulalia Page and her servant were actually executed at Barnstaple and George Stanwich was hanged. All that is certain. But the question about which a difficulty arises is – Was Eulalia a daughter of Judge Glanville?
There is a contemporary tract that contains an account of the transaction, which was reprinted by Payne Collier.31 From this we learn that Mrs. Page having failed in an attempt to poison her husband, prevailed on one of her servants, named Robert Priddis (Prideaux), to assist her, and on the other side Strangwich (Standwich) hired one Tom Stone to assist in the murder.
The deed was accomplished about ten o'clock on the night of February 11th, 1591, and all four were tried at Barnstaple, whither the assizes had been moved from Exeter because the plague was raging in the latter city, and were executed on March 20th following. Philip Wyot, town clerk of Barnstaple, kept a diary at the time, extracts from which have been printed. He gives some particulars: – "The gibbet was sat up on the Castle Green and xviij prisoners hanged, whereof iiij of Plimouth for a murder." These four were the murderers of Page. How it was that Ulalia was hanged instead of being burnt, in contravention of the law, does not appear, and we may doubt the statement. Three of those hanged were buried in the churchyard at Barnstaple, but Ulalia Page was laid in that of Bishops Tawton. Now as to the statement that Judge Glanville sentenced his own daughter.
In the first place, was she his daughter? It appears not; for from the tract already referred to, "in the town of Testock (Tavistock) … there dwelled one Mr. Glandfield (Glanville), a man of good wealth and account as any occupier in that cuntrie," whose daughter Eulalia was; and she set her affections on George Strangwich, who was in her father's employ. Mr. Glanville, of Tavistock, almost certainly was a near relative of the judge. The Glanvilles were tanners of Whitchurch, in trade, but the family was respectable. They have been given a fanciful pedigree from a Norman Lord of Glanville near Caen, but it is deficient in proof. What is clear is that the family occupied a respectable position near Tavistock in the reign of Elizabeth; they had their tan pits, and they went into trade without scruple. In fact, John Glanville, father of the judge, was himself a merchant, i. e., shopkeeper in Tavistock. That Eulalia was a sister of the judge is possible enough. That her name was not inserted in the pedigree as recorded in the Herald's Visitation may easily be understood.32
The next point is – Did Judge Glanville preside at the trial?
Now we are informed by E. Foss (Biographia Juridica, 1870, p. 303) that Glanville "was promoted to the bench as a Justice of the Common Pleas on June 30th, 1598." Consequently he was not a judge at the time that Eulalia Page was tried. The judge who tried the case, as we learn from Wyot's diary, was Lord Anderson. Nevertheless, Glanville was present at Barnstaple at the assizes, for Wyot mentions him as Serjeant Glandye, who was one of the principal lawyers present, and he had been "called to the degree of the coif," Ford records, two years before. So, as far as we can discover: —
1. Eulalia was very probably sister of Judge Glanville, she being daughter of a merchant Glanville, of Tavistock, as he was son of one.
2. That she really was executed for the murder of her husband, Page, along with her lover, George Strangwich, and two assistants.
3. That Strangwich had not been in the Navy, but was a shop assistant of Mr. Glanville.
4. That John Glanville, Serjeant-at-Law, presumably her brother, was present at the trial, but was not judge at the time.
The tragic story was not only turned into ballads, but also was dramatised by Ben Jonson and Decker. In Halliwell's Dictionary of Old English Plays (1860) is this entry: —
"Page, of Plymouth. A play by Ben Johnson and Decker, written in 1599, upon the story of the murder of one Page at Plymouth."33
A little way out of the town on the Plymouth road, by the Drake statue, is the gateway of old Fitzford House. About this a good deal of both history and legend hangs.
The house was that of old John Fitz, whose splendid monument is in Tavistock Church. Late in life he had a son of the name also of John, an only child, whose story is tragical. The heir was fourteen only when he lost his father. John Fitz, who was "a very comely person," was married before he had attained his majority to a daughter of Sir William Courtenay. Of this marriage one child, Mary, was born in 1596, when her father was just twenty-one years old.34 The young gentleman being now of age, and finding himself free from all restraint, began to live a very rackety life for three years, when an incident happened that ought to have sobered him. What follows is quoted, condensed, from The Bloudie Booke: or The Tragical End of Sir John Fitz. London, 1605.
"Meeting (June 4th, 1599) at Tavistocke a dinner wyth manie of his neighbors and friends, with great varietie of merriments and discourse they outstript the noontide. Amongst other their table-talk Sir John (he was not knighted at the time) was vanting his free Tenure in holding his lande, boasting that he helde not a foote of any but the Queene in England; to whoome Mayster Slanninge replyed, that although of ceurtesie it were neglected, yet of dewe hee was to paye him so muche by the yeere for some small lande helde of him; uppon which wordes Sir John told him with a great oath he lyed, and withall gave fuell to his rage, offering to stab him. But Maister Slanning with a great knife warded the hazard."
Friends intervened and the quarrel was patched up, so that presently Slanning left and departed for his home at Bickleigh. He had not gone very far before, dismounting, he bade his man take the horses along the road, whilst he walked by a short cut across the fields.
