Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

“While we were in the fight, three of our men got into the boat, and kept calling to the rest to come in likewise; which at length we did, retreating all the way with our faces towards the Moors. When we came to the boat, the other three, with the fishing spears, kept off the Moors till we got in, cut the grappling loose, and drove away with the tide.”

It was not possible to get far in this little boat, and the party made for the mainland, where they were at once set upon by other Moors, who stripped them of their shirts, and held them prisoners till those from the island arrived, and these latter fell on them and beat and trampled on them unmercifully, and would have cut their throats had not the mainland Moors restrained them by saying that the King or Sultan of the Gum Coast must be informed that there were European prisoners there, and that he would decide what was to be done with them. They were then tied in pairs back to back and carried back to the island, where they were cast on the floor of a tent, and left thus without food or water for four days. After that they were sparingly fed, untied, and made to work as slaves. After some weeks an officer called Abede arrived with nineteen men, reviewed them, and left. As soon as he was gone Swanwick, the carpenter, was taken away by the island Moors, and no tidings of what became of him ever reached the rest. Sixteen days after the officer had left he returned with orders from the King or Sultan that all who remained of the prisoners were to be transferred to the mainland and conducted across the desert to the French factory at Senegal, where he hoped to receive pay from the French for surrendering them.

The party had been taken prisoners by the Moors on 7 July, 1742, and they were not released and committed to the charge of Abede till 13 November, so that they had remained in durance and in miserable condition for four months and six days. At one time, when deprived of their shirts and exposed to the sun, their faces and bodies were so blistered that they were unable to recognize each other, save by their voices. They had now a long and painful journey over the desert, under the charge of Abede, that lasted till the 23rd December, when they were near Senegal, and Abede dispatched a messenger to the French factors to announce that the European prisoners were at hand, and to bargain for a sum to be paid for their release. They had been tramping over burning sands, insufficiently fed, for forty days. Whilst waiting for news from the factory the Moors killed an ox, and gave the head and guts to the English prisoners. They boiled the meat on the sand and devoured it greedily – it was the first flesh they had tasted for upwards of six months.

“Sometime after we got some caravances. Having eaten no pulse for several months, we hardly knew when we had enough. But we suffered severely for it, for we were presently afterwards taken extremely ill. The Moors seeing we were very bad, gave us the urine of goats to drink. This purged us prodigiously, and we remained ill for several hours; but, when it had worked off, we grew speedily well.”

Five days more elapsed before an answer arrived from the factory. On 28 December the messenger returned in a sloop sent from the factory to bring the prisoners to Senegal. The captain brought clothes for them, and gave them “an elegant entertainment, consisting of fowls, fresh meat, etc.”

On 29 December they were conveyed to the factory at Senegal, and were most kindly received by the French, and they remained there for a month all but a day; and then were sent in a French sloop to Gambia, on 28 January, 1743, which they reached on 31 January. Gambia was an English settlement, a fort, and a factory; and there also the poor fellows were kindly and hospitably entertained, provided with money and all they required.

The time of their sufferings was now over.

“The 1st February I went on board the Robert, Captain Dent, commander, lying in Gambia River. He was hir’d by the African Company and was laden with gum arabick, elephants’ teeth, bees-wax, &c. I told him our case, and that I wanted to come to England; upon which he kindly promised me, or all of us, if we were so disposed, our passage to England gratis, provided we would work our way home. Captain Winter, however, had business to transact in Jamaica, and preferred to wait till a vessel would take him thither; two of the men remained at Gambia, and the rest, saying that they had no homes or friends in England, preferred to go to the West Indies and earn some money before they returned to the right and tight little island.

“It was an unfortunate decision of Captain Winter. He and Larder sailed in a schooner bound for Jamaica, but never reached his destination, as the vessel was lost, and every one of the crew and passengers was drowned.

“We set sail from Gambia the 3rd of February, 1743, and arrived in the river Thames on the 16th of April following; so that we were just two months and thirteen days in our passage to England.”

On the 29th May, 1741, James Wyatt had entered as trumpeter on board the Revenge, privateer, and was away on her almost two years, during which time he had undergone as many hardships as ever man did – enough to break down the health of one who did not possess a constitution of iron.

Wyatt now visited his friends, and was warmly welcomed, and all would have given him money to start him in some business. One gentleman offered to advance him a thousand pounds; but he declined these generous offers. The French at Senegal and the English at Gambia had been so liberal that he had enough for his purpose. He now bought an electrical machine, and turned showman in London, giving people shocks at a shilling a head. This answered for a while, and then public interest in the machine slackened there, so he toured in the country.

“At some towns I scarce took money enough to bear my expenses, the people not knowing the meaning of the word Electricity; nor would they give the price I usually got in London; for, talking of a shilling each person, frightened them out of their wits. In some towns in Kent I had very good business, and saved a pretty deal of money; but, even then, I was forced to lower my price. In these towns the people knew what it meant, and that the thing was very curious and surprising. They came, when the price was not so high, in great numbers, and sometimes many miles, to be electrified.”

He remained in Kent two months and made twelve pounds. Then it occurred to him that he would go with his battery to Jamaica, where the novelty of the machine was certain to create a stir.

Whilst preparing for the voyage, he undertook to manufacture an optical contrivance for a gentleman, and was well paid for it.

Then he bought a pair of gloves and abundance of clothes, as clothes he learned were very dear in the West Indies.

“At length the time of the ship’s sailing being near at hand, I settled my affairs, took my leave of my friends, and went on board the ship on the 25th April, 1747.

“After having experienced various vicissitudes of fortune, I am once more going into a strange land: for, though there is nothing new under the sun, yet the eye is never satisfied with seeing.”

Wyatt had committed his adventures to paper before starting, and had disposed of the MS. to a publisher. The book sold well, and the sixth edition was called for in 1755, but in it no further particulars are given of Wyatt, so that it must be assumed either that he was then dead or that he was still abroad.

What strikes one in reading his Memoirs is the indefatigable energy and the resourcefulness of the man. He could turn his hand to anything. He kept his eyes open, and was ever eager to acquire information.

His Life and Surprising Adventures has his portrait in copper plate prefixed to it. He wears a wig, and a laced and embroidered waistcoat, open at the breast to display his fine frilled shirt.

THE REV. W. DAVY

This is the story of the life of an able, versatile, and learned man, neglected, and his “unregarded age in corners thrown.”

He was born 4 March, 1743, at Downhouse, in the parish of Tavistock, of respectable parents. They moved whilst he was still an infant to a farm belonging to them, Knighton, in the parish of Hennock. As a child he was fond of mechanics, and amused himself with contriving various pieces of machinery. When aged eight years he watched the construction of a mill, and imitated it in small in wood, thoroughly grasping all the points in the mechanism. After a while the workmen engaged on the mill came to a difficulty, and the mill stopped, nor could they rectify the fault. Little Will Davy pointed out the defects; they saw that he was right, remedied the defects, and the mill ran “suently.”

He was educated at the Exeter Grammar School, and at the age of eighteen matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford. Whilst there the idea came into his head to produce a great work of divinity, a compendium of evidence of the origin of the Christian Faith; but the idea lay dormant for a few years.

On leaving college he was ordained to the curacy of Moreton Hampstead, and married Sarah, daughter of a Mr. Gilbert, of Longabrook, near Kingsbridge. When settled into his curacy he began to reduce to order the plan he had devised of writing a General System of Theology, and wrote twelve volumes of MS. on the subject.

Then he shifted to Drewsteignton. His preaching was complained of to the Bishop of Exeter, who sent for him. He took his twelve volumes of MS. with him and showed them to the Bishop, and bade him look through them and mark any lapse from orthodoxy.

This was more than the Bishop was disposed to do; he ran his fingers through the pages, he could do no more. “What the parishioners objected to,” said Davy, “was not that I taught false doctrine, but that I rebuke vicious habits that prevail.” Actually, doubtless, it was his long-winded discourses on the evidence for a God, and for the immortality of the soul, that the people objected to. They, simple souls, no more needed these evidences than they did that they themselves lived and talked and listened.

The Bishop was courteous, and promised Davy that he would give him any living that fell vacant, and asked him if he had a preference for one. Davy humbly replied that there was a certain benefice likely to be vacated very shortly that would suit him exactly. The Bishop promised to remember this, and of course forgot, and appointed some one else, one more of a toady, or better connected.

Davy continued his mechanical work and executed several ingenious pieces of machinery.

Then he was appointed to the curacy of Lustleigh at £40 per annum; but from that sum was deducted £5 for the rent of the rectory in which he had to live, the incumbent being non-resident.

Whilst at Lustleigh he published by subscription six volumes of sermons and lost £100 by the transaction, as many of the subscribers failed to pay for the books sent to them.

Then he took to farming, but he had no experience and lost money by it, and had to abandon the farm.

The ambition of his life was to publish his System of Divinity, which would utterly refute atheism, deism, and every ism under the sun, and establish the doctrine of the Church on a sound basis. But no publisher or printer would undertake the mighty work unless sure of payment; and the price asked was far beyond the means of Davy. Determined to bring his great work before the world, he constructed his own printing press, and bought type, but could not afford to purchase more than would enable him to set up four pages of his book at a time.

Accordingly he did this, struck off forty copies, broke up the type and printed four more, and so on. He taught his servant, Mary Hole, to compose type, and these two worked together, and at last completed the work in twenty-six volumes, each of nearly five hundred pages. When the first volume was completed he sent copies to the Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, the Archdeacon, the Universities, and other persons of repute for learning. But he received no encouragement. Some of those to whom he sent his book did not trouble to acknowledge having received it. When the vast work was complete in twenty-six volumes, he sent a copy to his diocesan, Dr. Fisher, who ungraciously said to Davy, when he called at the Palace, “I cannot be supposed to be able to notice every trifle that appears in print.” To this Davy replied, “If your Lordship considers twenty-six volumes 8vo, the labour of fifty years in collecting, compiling, and printing, to be a trifle, I most certainly cannot allow myself to expect from your Lordship either approbation or encouragement.”

At last he retired from the parsonage of Lustleigh, discountenanced and discouraged, to a small farm of his own, called Willmead. His curacy was now advanced to £60, and he had not to keep up the large rectory. At Willmead he amused his leisure hours with gardening. He moved the granite boulders, arranged terraces among the rocks, and formed a herbaceous garden, in which he took the liveliest interest. Whilst here he invented a diving-bell, and prepared his contrivance for use to raise the guns and other property lost in the Royal George (1782), but he had not the means to cause a model of his machine to be made, and his idea was taken up and carried out by others. But Davy was by no means the first inventor of the diving-bell, Dr. Halley had made one in or about 1720; it was of wood covered with lead, and air was supplied through barrels attached to it. But the plan proposed by Davy was far in advance of this, and was, in fact, practically that of the diving-bell as now in use. It was not till 1817 that the Royal George was surveyed by means of a diving-bell, and portions of the cargo, the guns, etc., were not raised till 1839–42. At length, at the age of eighty-two, Davy was presented in 1825 to the vicarage of Winkleigh, and that not by either the Bishop or the Dean and Chapter.But this preferment coming so late in life was rather a cruelty to him than a favour granted. It removed him from his garden, in which he had spent such happy hours, and which was crowded with his collections of rare plants procured with difficulty and from distances, from all his little contrivances, and from the comforts of his own residence. He had to shift quarters in December, caught a chill in the raw damp vicarage to which he removed, and after holding the benefice for five months, expired there on 13 June, 1826, and was laid in the chancel of Winkleigh.

But this preferment coming so late in life was rather a cruelty to him than a favour granted. It removed him from his garden, in which he had spent such happy hours, and which was crowded with his collections of rare plants procured with difficulty and from distances, from all his little contrivances, and from the comforts of his own residence. He had to shift quarters in December, caught a chill in the raw damp vicarage to which he removed, and after holding the benefice for five months, expired there on 13 June, 1826, and was laid in the chancel of Winkleigh.

After his death three volumes of extracts from his System of Divinity were published, together with a Memoir, by the Rev. C. Davy, Exeter, 1827, and fell as flat as had the twenty-six volumes from which these withered arguments were culled, and no man – not a theologian even – would think it worth his while now to read a dozen pages of the work. But the intention was good – he was persistent in carrying it out, he had the honour and glory of God before his eyes, and he worked for that, and certainly will receive the commendation, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord,” though bishops and deans and archdeacons and the well-beneficed clergy, “bene nati, bene vestiti et moderate docti,” showed him the cold shoulder here below.

But one cannot fail to regret that, placed where he had been, at Moreton, at Drewsteignton, at Lustleigh, his active mind had not been turned to more profitable pursuits. What might he not have gleaned, then, among the traditions of the people! What stores of ballads might he not have collected! What careful plans and descriptions he might have made of the prehistoric relics that then abounded around him, then almost intact, now to such a large extent wrecked and swept away.

At Drewsteignton there was a most remarkable collection of stone circles and avenues and menhirs, and all have gone, not one is now left, only the dolmen of Shilstone remains. One accurate plan drawn by Davy, and draw and plan he could, would have been worth all his twenty-six volumes of System of Divinity.

THE GREY WOMAN

The following curious story is from the pen of the lady whose experience is recorded. I know both her and the localities; also a good many of the particulars, and all the names; but for good reasons it has been thought advisable to disguise both the name of the place and of the persons mentioned. Every particular is absolutely true, excepting the names that are fictitious.

“On the 1st August, 1904, we heard that we had succeeded by the death of an aunt of my husband to a considerable property in South Devon, and as bad luck would have it, the mansion on the estate had been let just two months before on a short lease. It was our duty to make Devonshire our home at once and for the future, and the wearying undertaking was before us of looking out for a suitable house.

“A few days after this I had a dream remarkably distinct and impressive, so impressive was it that on awaking every particular therein was stamped indelibly on my mind.

“I thought that I was looking over a large empty house, and I was conscious at the time that it was in Devonshire. A man was showing me through it, and we had just reached the top of the front and principal staircase, and stood on a broad landing, with many bedroom doors opening on to it. I observed one short narrow passage that led down to a door, and in that doorway, at the end of the passage, I saw a tall handsome woman in grey, deadly pale, with clean-cut features, carrying a little child of about two years of age or under upon her arm. The thought struck me, ‘Who can she be?’ But I almost immediately said to myself, ‘What can it matter to me who she is?’

“The caretaker of the house immediately, and without noticing her, led me to that very room, and went past her without a word or turning his head towards her. I followed, and in so doing brushed past the Grey Woman, also without a word.

“On entering the room I saw that in it was a second door in the same end wall in which was that by which I had come in, and that between these two doors was a broad space. I at once decided that this should be my bedchamber, and that I would place my bed between the two doors, as most convenient for the light and for the fireplace.

“Then, suddenly, without awaking, my dream shifted, and I thought that I was in that identical room, and in my own bed, placed where I had designed to place it; that all my belongings were about me.

“Next, the second door, that by which I had not entered, was opened, and again I saw the Grey Woman come in, with the little one toddling before her pushing before it a round wheel-toy with coloured beads on the spokes. I nudged my husband and said, ‘Alex, there is a nurse with a child in the room.’ True to life he answered, ‘Bosh!’ Nevertheless, I repeated, ‘Alex, look there – a nurse and child really are in the room.’

By this time the pair had walked round the foot of the bed, almost to his side. He raised himself on one arm, and exclaimed, ‘Good Lord! so there is.’ Then I said, ‘And they have both been dead long years ago.’

“After that I remember nothing further till I awoke in the morning.

“The dream had made such an impression on me, that at breakfast I told my daughter, and in the afternoon some friends came in to tea, and I again repeated my story, provoking great interest in the sweet ghost babe – much more so than in the nurse.

“I forgot to state that in my dream I felt quite aware that the doorway through which the Grey Woman and the child had passed did not open out of another bedroom, but communicated with the back part of the house.

“Weeks went by, and the dream, without being forgotten in any single particular, passed from my thoughts, now occupied with more practical matters – considering the lists of houses sent to us by various agents. One of these gentry had forwarded to us a special notice of a house that read like the description of a palace. We, having no ambition that way, put it down, without considering it for a moment.

“Some days later I called on the agent, and then put down the palatial notice on his table, with the remark that this was not at all the sort of mansion that we required.

“Towards the end of September we made another expedition to Devon to see a particular house near B – . I took the train to the station and visited this house, but in ten minutes satisfied myself that it would not do. We had about five hours on hand before the train was due that would take us back to Exeter, and we were at a loss how to spend the time. Suddenly the thought struck me that the impossible house was somewhere in the neighbourhood, and rather than spend hours dawdling on the railway platform, I proposed to my daughter that we should go and see it. The driver of the carriage we had hired said that the distance was seven miles, but that he could very well take us there and back so as to catch the up train. We thought so too – but speedily discovered that his horse was extremely leisurely in its movements, and that we should not be able to spend much time in viewing the house. The day was beautiful, the sun was bright, the sky blue, and the trees just touched with autumn frost, and turning every colour.

“We traversed a maze of lanes and finally reached a lonely house, shut up, and standing in something of a jungle, trees all round it. A farm was near by, and we sent to ask if the keys were kept there. They were, and we were soon inside. We were delighted, and said at once, ‘This is just what we want; the very house to suit us.’ We returned full of it, but it must be admitted after a very hurried run through the inside. There was an entrance hall, thence led a staircase to a broad landing, out of which opened many bedroom doors, and there was a passage leading a short way to another room. But that all this was precisely like my dream did not occur to me at the time. We were in a hurry, afraid to miss our train, and my mind was occupied with house-hunting and the dream was temporarily forgotten. In my dream, it must be remembered, I had not seen the exterior of the house in which appeared the Grey Woman.

“On our return to Exeter we made a full report to my husband of what we had seen and decided; he had been kept from accompanying us by illness.

“We now entered into negotiations, and speedily all was settled. The drains had all to be looked to and put in order before we could take possession, which was not till the first week in December.

“About a fortnight before we moved into the house, after it had been repainted and furnished, my daughter rushed to my room one morning exclaiming, ‘Mother – you have after all taken the Ghost-dream House,’ and so it was in every particular, and I had chosen the very room for mine and arranged to place my bed in the very position I had determined on in my dream.

“At last the move was made, I feeling sure that the Grey Nurse and Little Child were part and parcel of the house.

“In coming into the property an astonishing number of old deeds in many chests had been handed over to us, and demanded sorting and investigation. A large number of them pertained to the estates that my husband owned, some of them going back five hundred years and impossible for those inexperienced in court-hand and legal documents full of contractions to decipher. But there were others that did not belong to our property, that had come into the hands of a collateral great-great-uncle, a noted lawyer, who had taken the remainder of a lease for ninety-nine years of manors and estates, and which manors and estates on the termination of the lease had reverted to the proprietors; nevertheless, the deeds had been retained relative to this particular lease.

“Whilst I was engaged along with an upholsterer daily in hanging curtains, arranging carpets, choosing wall-papers, hanging pictures and the like, my husband and daughter occupied themselves in wading through and cataloguing and assorting the vast accumulation of deeds, to the best of their ability.