Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts | Page 8

From Exmore; when she hath scarcely found
her course, Then Creddy cometh in ... ... her sovereign to assist; As
Columb wins for Ex clear Wever and the Clist, Contributing their
streams their mistress' fame to raise. As all assist the Ex, so Ex
consumeth these; Like some unthrifty youth, depending on the court,
To win an idle name, that keeps a needless port; And raising his old
rent, exacts his farmers' store The landlord to enrich, the tenants
wondrous poor: Who having lent him theirs, he then consumes his own,
That with most vain expense upon the Prince is thrown: So these, the
lesser brooks unto the greater pay; The greater, they again spend all
upon the sea.'
DRAYTON: Poly-olbion.
The river Exe rises in a bog on Exmoor, beyond the borders of
Somersetshire. 'Be now therefore pleased as you stand upon Great
Vinnicombe top ... to cast your eye westward, and you may see the first
spring of the river Exe, which welleth forth in a valley between
Pinckerry and Woodborough,' says Westcote.
But our author has no feeling for the rolling hills, and noble lines, and
hazy blue distances of Exmoor, and without one word of praise
continues: 'Let us for your more ease, and the sooner to be quit of this
barren soil, cold air, uneven ways, and untrodden paths, swim with the
stream the better to hasten our speed.'
The first little town that the Exe comes to in Devonshire is Bampton,
nowadays best known, perhaps, for its pony-fairs, when (so runs one
account) 'Exmoor ponies throng the streets, flood the pavements,
overflow the houses, pervade the place. Wild as hawks, active and
lissom as goats, cajoled from the moors, and tactfully manoeuvred
when penned, these indigenous quadrupeds will leap or escalade lofty
barriers in a standing jump or a cat-like scramble.' Cattle and sheep are

less conspicuously for sale at this popular and crowded fair, held on the
last Thursday in October.
The first fact recorded of Bampton's history is of such ancient date that
it may be hoped the vastness of the achievement has been rounded and
filled out during the flight of time; for the historian, with unconscious
irony, blandly remarks that here 'Cynegils, first Christian King of the
West Saxons,' put twenty thousand (or maybe more) Britons to the
sword. He does not mention how Cynegils continued his propagation of
the Gospel.
The nave of the church at Bampton is built in the manner most
common to this country--that is, early Perpendicular, but the chancel is
Decorated. In many of the churches there is some portion of Decorated
work. The screen and roof of the church are worth seeing, and in the
churchyard are several unusually large and fine old yew-trees, one or
two girdled by stone benches. Leaving Bampton, one passes along a
green and fertile valley, the fields interrupted at intervals by copses,
where thickets of undergrowth and multitudes of young saplings are
struggling for the mastery--a picture of prodigal wealth in plants,
bushes, and trees.
Seven miles to the south is Tiverton. Tiverton is a small town, but its
story is interesting, and incidents cluster round the castle, church, the
well-known school, and the former kersies and wool-market, and,
besides, it is filled with memories of the melancholy experiences it has
passed through--fires, floods, the plague, and at least one siege.
The borough was originally granted by Henry I to his cousin, Richard
de Riparis (or de Redvers or Rivers), Earl of Devon, whose descendants
possessed it for nearly two centuries, when, the direct line failing, the
borough and title passed to a cousin, a Courtenay, in whose family the
title still remains.
Richard de Redvers, 'the faithful and beloved counsellor' of Henry I, is
supposed to have begun the Castle of Tiverton, and he attached to it
'two parks for pleasure and large and rich demesne for hospitality.' His
grandson, William Rivers, was one of the four Earls who carried the

silken canopy at the second coronation of King Richard I, after his
return from Palestine. William's daughter, Mary, married Robert
Courtenay, Baron of Okehampton; and so it was that, when the House
of Rivers became extinct in the male line, their possessions passed to
the Courtenays, and Mary's great-grandson became first Earl of Devon
of the line of the Courtenays.
It is not thought probable that the Castle as it stands contains work
older than the fourteenth century. Part of the building of that date
remains unaltered, and part has been transformed into a modern house.
The old walls are in places covered with ivy, and on the southern side
are pierced by one or two pointed windows whose stonework is more
or less broken. A round tower at the southeastern angle still looks very
solid and undisturbed.