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THE QUANTOCKS 
 AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 A. 
 
SooUe^, one- zrvch to a, MilC' 
 
THE 
 
 QUANTOCKS 
 AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 Rev. WILLIAM LUKE NICHOLS, m.a., f.s.a. 
 
 WITH AN ACCOUNT OF 
 
 2)ot)ington, l3olforl), anb St Hubiice* 
 
 SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED, WITH MAP 
 AND ELEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, AND COMPANY, 
 
 Limited, 
 
 Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.G. 
 1891. 
 
TO 
 
 S/J? ALEXANDER ACL AND HOOD, Bart., 
 
 m St. Entities, 
 
 THE NEW EDITION OF THIS WORK IS DEDICATED BY HIS 
 FAITHFUL AND OBEDIENT SERVANT, 
 
 A. F, NLCHOLS. 
 
How bless'd, delicious scene ! the eye that greets 
 Thy open beauties, or thy lone retreats; 
 The unwearied sweep of wood thy cliffs that scales ; 
 The never-ending waters of thy vales. 
 
 Descriptive Sketches — Wordsworth . 
 
NOTICE. 
 
 The Historic Paper on the Quantocks, by my late brother, 
 issued only for private circulation, has been long out 
 of print. It was his intention to reprint the little work, 
 with Illustrations, adding also an account of the 
 Dodinglon Tragedy, but that intention was frustrated 
 by the repeated spasmodic attacks to which he was 
 subject some time before his death ; he left, however, 
 a carefully revised account of the terrible but romantic 
 circumstances connected with it, of which many gar- 
 bled versions are current. 
 
 I regard it as a fraternal obligation to fulfil my brother's 
 wishes by the re-publication of the original Paper with 
 the additions mentioned. 
 
 Dodington, Holford, and St. Audries are so inseparably 
 connected with the Quantocks, that it was deemed 
 expedient to add a chapter to the original work, giving 
 an account of those interesting features of the locality. 
 
 My friend, Mr. Peach, has kindly assisted me in the editing 
 and revision of the work and in passing it through the 
 press. 
 
 A. F. NICHOLS. 
 
 Uontion, 
 
 September, 1891. 
 
Of this work, on Large Paper, Two Hundred 
 des only are printed. 
 
 The number of this copy is 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 QUANTOCKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS .. .. i 
 
 A QUANTOCK TRAGEDY 37 
 
 DODINGTON 49 
 
 HOLFORD 56 
 
 ST. AUDRIES 58 
 
 APPENDIX 65 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 TO FACE 
 
 MAP .. .. .. .. TITLE 
 
 AUTHOR IN HIS STUDY i 
 
 THE WOODLANDS .. .. .. .. .. 15 
 
 WATERFALL .. .. .. .. .. ..24 
 
 COLERIDGE'S COTTAGE AT NETHER STOWEY .. 26 
 
 ALFOXDEN HOUSE, RESIDENCE OF THE 
 
 POET WORDSWORTH .. .. .. ..33 
 
 FOUNTAIN ON DODINGTON COMMON .. ..48 
 
 INTERIOR OF THE OLD HALL AT DODINGTON 54 
 HOLFORD CHURCH 57 
 
 SCENE IN THE PARK AT ST. AUDRIES .. ..58 
 INTERIOR OF THE HALL AT ST. AUDRIES .. ..59 
 ST. AUDRIES CHURCH AND RECTORY .. ..62 
 
Woodbury Company. 
 
 THE AUTHOR IN HIS STUDY. 
 
THE 
 
 QUANTOCKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 HAVING resided for some time on the borders of the 
 Quantock-hills, I have been requested to give my 
 impressions of the scenery of the district, and especially 
 to note any reminiscences I may have met with of the two 
 great Poets, whose genius has thrown an additional charm 
 over the locality, and made it for ever classic ground. 
 
 The mountain range of the Quantocks, the Oberland of 
 Somersetshire, rises above the wide plain of Bridgwater 
 and the fair valley, or Dean^ as it is called, of Taunton, and 
 runs for nearly sixteen miles in a direction from south-east 
 to north-west between the Bristol Channel and the latter 
 town, and attains its greatest elevation at Wilsneck, an 
 eminence rising between the two rival heights of Cothel- 
 stone and Dousborough. 
 
 The chief characteristic of Quantock scenery I venture 
 to designate as Cheerful Beauty. Unlike the savage 
 grandeur of the Scottish mountains, or the wild and bleak 
 
 ^ This is a parcel of ground round about Taunton very pleasant and 
 populous, containing many parishes, and so fruitful, to use their own 
 phrase, with the gun and zoil, that it needs no manuring at all. The 
 peasantry therein are as rude as rich, and so highly conceited of their 
 own country, that they conceive it a disparagement to be born in any 
 other place. — Grose's Provincial Glossary. For an account of the 
 Manor of Taunton-Dean see Savage's History of Taunton, p. 46. Editor. 
 
2 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 uplands of Northern England, its breezy summits rise in 
 gentle and graceful undulations, and sink into woody 
 combes of the most romantic beauty, thickly clothed, many 
 of them with scrub oak, and each with its own little stream 
 winding through it ; its slopes fringed with gorse and 
 ferns of luxuriant growth, or purple with heather, and 
 abounding everywhere with the pretty little shrub vac- 
 cinium myrtilliis^ or whortleberry, the fruit of which, locally 
 known by the name of whorts " becomes from its sale 
 during the season a source of considerable profit to the 
 surrounding villages. The prevalence of the yew and the 
 holly may also be noted ; the former is found singly in the 
 woods and hedgerows, or in the churchyards, of which few 
 are without one or more specimens, often of majestic growth 
 and venerable age. The holly is still more abundant, and 
 the fine undergrowth of this tree, like those in the grove at 
 Alfoxden, so much admired by Wordsworth, forms quite a 
 speciality of these woods. Nor must the charm which the 
 colour of the soil imparts be forgotten ; — that rich red sand- 
 stone which always gives such a warm tone to the 
 landscape, and so much luxuriance to the foliage. Those 
 numerous combes, however, in the sheltered hollows of 
 which may be found some of the rarest of our native plants, 
 form the most marked feature of the district ; and lying, as 
 they generally do, at right angles to the sea-shore, break the 
 outline of the mountain range into Heads," as they are 
 locally termed, and these eminences, seen from the Bristol 
 
 1 Appendix, note i. 
 
 2 Note ii. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 Channel, gave rise in days of yore to the Keltic name of 
 The Quantocks, ;>., the water-headlands. 
 
 Around the brows of these hills wind beautiful walks 
 that extend for miles through oak woods, once the favourite 
 haunt of the poets and their friends ; such are the valley of 
 the Seven Wells, Cockercombe, Hunter's Dell, and other 
 points of similar interest. They have since been rendered 
 more accessible by the formation of drives that open out 
 the most charming scenes of woodland beauty. Sou they, 
 in one of his letters, affirms that " Devonshire falls very 
 flat after the North of Somerset, which is truly a magnifi- 
 cent country." Few strangers, however, who travel along 
 the public road at the base of these hills would anticipate 
 the countless beauties that lie hidden in the recesses of their 
 '* dingles and bosky dells, " nor the splendid prospects 
 which their heights command. Certainly, as far as my own 
 experience extends, I never met with so much fine moun- 
 tain scenery that could be enjoyed with so trifling an 
 amount of climbing, nor a district in which so many spots 
 impressive from their solitude and seclusion could be so 
 easily reached, an advantage to be appreciated, it 
 may be, by persons somewhat advanced in years, more than 
 by the droves of good people infected by the modern vulgar 
 mania for climbing the snowy peaks of enormous mountains, 
 with, as it would seem, no intelligible object except that of 
 coming down again, and apart from any of those scientific 
 researches which justify and ennoble so great an expendi- 
 ture of time and toil. To such hunters after the sublime I 
 
4 
 
 THE QVANTOCKS, 
 
 cannot commend this part of Somersetshire, nor invite their 
 
 steps to wander — 
 
 On seaward Quantock's heathy hills, 
 Where quiet sounds from hidden rills 
 Float here and there like things astray.i 
 
 Our Quantock scenery, with its gentle features, and a 
 beauty more of expression than of form, would be to them 
 *' as is a picture to a blind man's eye or might affect them 
 much as a pastoral symphony of Beethoven might affect the 
 crowd that is rushing from a " monster concert " at Exeter 
 Hall. 
 
 This exaggerated passion for lofty mountains, so much in 
 vogue of late years, appears to have been unknown to 
 classical antiquity, and the greatest poets and painters 
 would seem to have drawn but little of their inspiration 
 from its influence. Beauty of scenery is in truth independ- 
 ent of mere altitude and expanse, and grandeur is not 
 necessarily connected with magnitude. To persons who 
 are susceptible of the true enjoyment of external nature, 
 and can watch with an intelligent eye the constant changes 
 of shade and colour in landscape, and note the delicate 
 harmonies and manifold transformations in sea, and sky, 
 and cloud, which succeed each other in such infinite 
 variety ;— to them, the wild heathy moorlands, the softly 
 rounded heights, and the deep-sunk combes of the Quan- 
 tocks will, however inferior in scale, be found, in their way, 
 
 ^ Coleridge, Poems, vol. i., p. i8o. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 scarcely less impressive than the passes of the Alps or the 
 mountains of Switzerland. For after all, it is upon the 
 mind which the spectator brings along with him that his 
 acquisitions of pleasure or profit must depend : — 
 
 we receive but what we give, 
 
 And in our life alone doth Nature live. ^ 
 
 Other points of interest remain to be noticed. The 
 mountain heights not only afford views of great extent and 
 grandeur, but are many of them crowned with ancient 
 encampments. Of these perhaps the most considerable in 
 size and most commanding in position is Dousborough, a 
 corruption of How's-borough, i.e., the hill-fort. A long 
 green path of elastic turf leads up for about a mile in 
 nearly a straight line from the gate of my residence, Wood- 
 lands, to the camp on the summit. This has been some- 
 times ascribed to the Romans, but, as appears to me, is 
 evidently a fortress of Belgic-British construction, and is 
 of great size and strength. In form it is nearly oval, but 
 accommodated to the shape of the hill. Its enclosure, 
 partially overgrown with heather and dwarf-oak coppice, 
 contains an area of more than ten acres. A deep fosse and 
 a lofty agger surround it, and the ramparts are pierced by 
 three entrances. On its western declivity may be traced a 
 raised road, or causey, leading to the British trackway, that, 
 running to the ancient ford at Combwitch, skirts the 
 entrenched post at Cannington Park Hill, keeps along a 
 
 ' Coleridge : Poems vol. i., p, 237. 
 
6 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 valley to the south of Nether Stowey, ascends Quantock, 
 passing between Dousborough and Wilsneck, and then 
 descends to the vale of Crowcombe ; next it mounts the 
 Brendon Hills, and stretches far away over the wilds of 
 Exmoor to the mining districts of Cornwall. On the 
 highest point of Dousborough, where stands the flag-staff, 
 a heap of loose masonry marks the sight of a specula^ or 
 watch tower, and beside it are two or three circular pits, 
 which formerly held the beacon fires. These were in 
 correspondence with a chain of other forts of ante-Roman 
 origin on the long ridge of the Mendips and on the opposite 
 Brendon Hills, protecting the Belgic frontiers, communi- 
 cating with both Channels, and ready on the appearance of 
 danger to convey onwards the telegraphic fire-signals, like 
 the flame from Mount Ida that leapt from height to height 
 to announce to Argos the news of the fall of Troy. 
 
 That the Romans, after their subjugation of this part of 
 Britannia Prima, may have occasionally occupied as castra 
 aestiva the military post constructed long before their day, 
 is not improbable. No Roman road, however, comes with- 
 in ten miles of the fort, although a few coins of the Lower 
 Empire have been found at the village of Kilton and 
 elsewhere in the vicinity. An oval-shaped barrow within 
 the enceinte^ with a trench round it, which appears to have 
 been formally opened, is sometimes pointed out as the 
 Pretorium, but more probably marks the grave of some 
 Belgic chieftain, — the oldest form of sepulture and the 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 7 
 
 most durable. There is also at no great distance another 
 sepulchral monument in the hollow below the northern 
 slope of the encampment, on the left of the greensward 
 path leading up to the summit. This is a cairn or heap of 
 loose stones, surrounded by a shallow trench ; and on the 
 hill just above Woodlands, is one of those circular pits so 
 common on the Wiltshire Downs, which Stukely calls, oddly 
 enough, " inverted barrows." This excavation marks the 
 site of an outpost to the fort above, from which it was 
 visible ; it commands the road at the foot of the hill, and 
 was probably roofed over in a bee hive shape to form a 
 shelter for the guard. Many tumuli and but few Roman 
 remains are found scattered over the Quantocks, Other 
 ancient beacons may be traced on Wilsneck, Cothelstone, 
 Morncombe, and elsewhere. 
 
 It was the judicious advice of a distinguished antiquary- 
 the late Sir Richard Colt Hoare, " to avoid above all things 
 the common error of looking for Roman stations on high 
 mountains ; but on the contrary to examine those gentle 
 eminences in the plains, having an open circuit of country 
 around them. This latter quality seems peculiarly to have 
 been considered by the Romans, as we may collect from 
 their historians ; and for this reason, the Britons seldom 
 ventured to attack the enemy in the open, but depended 
 more on surprising them unawares. Hence the Romans 
 fixed on situations for their camps where they could per- 
 ceive at a distance the Britons descending from their strong- 
 holds in the mountains." The Roman generals, although 
 
8 
 
 THE QVANTOCKS, 
 
 they never failed, even on halting for a single night, to 
 throw up entrenchments round their camp, yet relied less 
 upon mountain-heights and huge ramparts than upon the 
 disciplined bravery of their legions and their own superior 
 military tactics. Their camps, although occasionally found 
 intermingled with older British fortifications, were generally 
 smaller, of a square form with four gates, and placed on 
 some gentle eminence with water near at hand. Nor have 
 the Danes a greater claim than the Romans to the con- 
 struction of these grand military works that are sometimes 
 called by their name. Their camps were mostly small and 
 hastily thrown up to serve the purpose of some sudden 
 piratical landing. In the neighbourhood of Watchet and 
 Porlock, near the coast, are several small entrenchments 
 which may with great probability be assigned to this 
 people ; while others, of dimensions equally small, consist- 
 ing of merely a single agger and a fosse, may be found 
 constructed on the hill-sides, or at the head of some little 
 valley, commanding its approach from the sea, and placed 
 so as to defend the interior of the country from these 
 marauding descents. Such are Trendle Ring," on the 
 slope of Quantock, above Bicknoller, and another diminu- 
 tive earthwork, of which I know not the name, on a little 
 rocky promontory a mile further to the west towards 
 Stogumber. 
 
 It is not improbable that the whole of this wild outlying 
 district of the Quantocks, so far removed from the great 
 line of Roman traffic, remained for a considerable time a 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 9 
 
 woody fastness of the Belgic-Britons. An interesting dis- 
 covery, which has been lately made on the Fairfield Estate, ^ 
 goes far to confirm the supposition of their occupancy. It 
 consists of a great variety of objects in bronze, amounting, 
 together with fragments, to nearly 150 pieces. There are 
 portions of swords and their sheaths ; daggers and knives ; 
 spear heads of the leaf shape and of the barbed type ; more 
 than a score of Celts, of sections square or oval ; palstaves ; 
 gouges ; a disc of molten metal ; a number of jets from the 
 necks of moulds, &c. These articles were formerly exhibited 
 at the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries, at Somerset 
 House, and are now arranged in the library at St. Audries. 
 
 The view from the summit of Dousborough is of great 
 extent and variety. Immediately beneath the spectator, on 
 the north, stretching away towards the Bristol Channel, 
 lies a level tract of woodland, inteispersed with meadows, 
 and orchards, and farmsteads, from which shoots up the 
 spire of the fine old Priory Church of Stoke-Courcey, and 
 near it stand the moated walls of its Norman Castle. Hard 
 by is visible the ancient mansion of Fairfield, half hidden in 
 its trees. Across the Channel is seen the Coast of Wales, 
 and the horizon beyond is fringed by the mountains of 
 Glamorgan, Brecknock, and Monmouthshire. The broad 
 expanse of the "Severn-sea," yellow as the Tiber, occupies the 
 middle distance, with the bold, rocky islet of the Steep 
 Holms rising abruptly from its bosom, — an out-lying mass 
 severed from the mountain limestone of the Mendips, and 
 
 1 Formerly part of the Chandos Estate ; now the property of Sir A. 
 A. Hood, Bart., of St. Audries. 
 
lO 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 not without a little history of its own ; for here the sur- 
 vivors of the pirate Danes, after the repulse of their 
 attempted landing at Watchet (A.D, 915), found a brief 
 refuge, and " sat on the island," as the Saxon Chronicle " 
 expresses it, foodless and forlorn, till most of them died of 
 hunger. Gildas, the oldest British historian, is said to have 
 retired to this secluded spot to write his book of lamenta- 
 tions, called a Treatise de excidio Britannice ; and here, 
 after the battle of Hastings, Girtha, the mother of Harold, 
 with some of the noble ladies of her court, found a tem- 
 porary asylum. The island, which has been lately fortified 
 with all the appliances of modern warfare, lies in the very 
 highway of Channel traffic, for here the Severn -sea " 
 becomes free and open to the Atlantic, and anyone of yon- 
 der vessels, whose white sails add so much animation and in- 
 terest to the view, might, it is said, make from hence in a 
 fair wind, without a tack, the harbour of New York. The 
 sister islet, the Flat Holmes, is less visible from hence, 
 except at night, when, as Coleridge describes it, — 
 
 Dark reddening from the channelled isle, 
 Twinkles the watch-fire, like a sullen star. 
 
 Turning towards the east, the long range of the Mendips 
 appears beyond the sandy flats that mark the position of 
 the ancient estuary, Uxella, now reduced, by their accumu- 
 lations, to form the mouth of the river Parret. On the 
 highest point of the range is a beacon, once perhaps the 
 most important watch-tower in the county, being equally 
 visible from the north and south sides of Mendip. At one 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS, 
 
 point, the long outline is obscured by a faint cloud ot 
 smoke which hangs over the busy town and port of Bridge- 
 water, with its factories and foundries; and at another, a 
 sharp fracture indicates the position of the grand ravine of 
 Cheddar. More in advance towards the spectator, the low- 
 lying ridge of Polden, with a Roman road running along it, 
 stretches away towards Sedgmoor ; and standing apart, 
 islanded by its circling marshes, and hidden now and then 
 by their mists, rises St. Michael's famous tower, recalling 
 the lines of a fine descriptive poet .* — 
 
 " How hath it vanished in a hasty spleen, 
 
 The Tor of Glastonbury ! " 
 
 Still further south, Alfred's tower looks out from the 
 woods of Stourhead ; and on a very clear day are visible the 
 double peaks of Montacute. On the west the prospect is 
 limited by high and heathery moorlands, (the haunt of the 
 black game,) except where a depression admits a glimpse of 
 the Brendon hills, and the fine bold headland of Minehead ; 
 and at times the peak of Dunkery, the monarch of western 
 mountains, may be distinguished. Immediately below, to 
 the left of the woods of Alfoxden, and looking across two 
 parallel coombs of great beauty, lies the little valley of 
 Kilve, and beyond its gap the glittering sea. 
 
 The view from Cothelstone Beacon has been so well 
 described in the Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological 
 Society by the late Mr. Warre, that it would be diflScult 
 to add much to the clever sketch he has left us ; and 
 WiLSNECK, although of somewhat greater altitude, has 
 
12 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 little additional interest, and much in common with the 
 
 neighbouring height. Neither elevation, however, affords 
 
 a prospect so fascinating as that from Dousborough, 
 
 although both command a wider expanse of view over the 
 
 central part of the county, embracing a large portion of 
 
 that fair valley known far and wide as Taunton Dean ; a 
 
 goodly landscape, recalling to the recollection of the lover 
 
 of our elder poets the fervid encomium of Drayton in his 
 
 Poly-olbion ; 
 " What eare so empty is, that hath not heard the sound 
 Of Taunton's fruitfull Deane ? not matcht by any ground ; . . . 
 Where sea-ward Quantock stands ." 
 
 Having accomplished the ascent of Wilsneck, the climber 
 (and, if a botanist, he may chance on its higher slopes to 
 light on a specimen of the rare stag's-horn moss), finds 
 himself on the loftiest point of Quantock. As his eye 
 ranges over the fertile campaign below, he will see innum- 
 erable meadows and cornfields, farms, and rural dwellings ; 
 and, rising frequent from the valley, or nestling here and 
 there in the woody openings of the hills, the battlements 
 of some of those unrivalled ' Perpendicular ' Towers for 
 which Somersetshire over all other parts of England reigns 
 supreme. Nor will the survey prove less suggestive to the 
 historian or the antiquary. Within ken are the sites of a 
 score of battle-fields ; the mediaeval castle and the moated 
 grange lend their associations ; nor are wanting old his- 
 toric mansions, and 
 
 " ghostly halls of grey renown, 
 
 '* With woodland honours graced ." 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 On the south, the heights of Blagdon form a rampart to 
 the vale of Taunton, and at their extremity throw out a 
 bold projecting spur, crowned by the strong British en- 
 campment of Castle Neroche. Turning away from this fair 
 scene towards the west, we have at our feet the romantic 
 village of Crowcombe, and, on the opposite slope of the 
 valley, Combe-Florey, a name now well known from its 
 connection with the witty Canon of St. Paul's,^ whose play- 
 ful sallies, never spiced by malice, were always sine felle 
 jocL His glebe is described, in the memoir of his life, as 
 truly a valley of flowers," — *' a lovely little spot where 
 nature and art combined to realise the Happy Valley." 
 The long line of the Brendon hills extends in front of our 
 station, on an outlying point of which is conspicuous 
 Willett Tower, a modern erection; and behind it are the 
 Elworthy barrows, a large Belgic-British earthwork left 
 half finished. Et has formed a subject of fruitless conjecture 
 with antiquaries, why these warlike fortifications were 
 discontinued, and for so many centuries, 
 
 ' * pendent opera interrupta, minaeque 
 
 Murorum ingentes ," 
 
 Yet one other distinction of the Quantocks remains to be 
 noticed, which they possess in common with the hill 
 country south of the Bristol Channel, including the heights 
 of Exmoor and a portion of North Devon ; and that is, the 
 fact that this district is now the last home in South Britain 
 of the wild red-deer, and that here alone still survive some 
 relics of the grand old stag-hunting establishments whose 
 
 i Sydney Smith. 
 
THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 sport and hospitalities are associated with the bye-gone 
 history of the county of Somerset. Here may still some- 
 times be seen the broad-antlered stag or the graceful hind, 
 hotly pursued by a gallant train of horsemen, while the 
 echoes of the Quantocks are roused by the shouts of the 
 gay cavalcade and the voices of the hounds swelling and 
 dying away over the autumn woods, till their deepened note 
 is followed by the wild bugle-call that proclaims " the mort 
 o' the deer." 
 
 Into this charming country there came, between seventy 
 and eighty years ago, two men, destined to exercise by 
 their genius and their writings an influence upon the minds 
 of their generation more profound than any others of their 
 contemporaries. "Perhaps," says a recent critic, ''no two 
 such men have met anywhere on English ground during 
 this century." It was the period when the stir and tur- 
 moil which disturbed men's minds at the outset of the 
 first French Revolution had given place to comparative 
 calm and repose, and the political fever of the nation was 
 subsiding, that Coleridge, the younger of the two, "retired," 
 as he himself informs us, " to a cottage in Somersetshire at 
 the foot of Quantock, to devote himself to poetry and to the 
 study of ethics and psychology, and the foundations of 
 religion and morals."^ Wordsworth, his senior by more 
 
 1 The following letter was addressed by Mr. Nichols to the Rev. 
 J, R. Vernon, Rector of St. Audries, himself the author of an interest- 
 ing work on the same locality, published in the Leisure Hour in 1888. Ed. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 than two years, was attracted to the same neighbourhood 
 by mental sympathy with his brother philosopher and poet, 
 and by a wish to enjoy the society of a man by whose mar- 
 vellous conversation he had been so much impressed. He 
 loved to describe Coleridge's talk as "like a majestic river, 
 the sound or sight of whose course you caught at intervals ; 
 which was sometimes concealed by forests, sometimes lost 
 in sand ; then came flashing out broad and distinct ; and 
 even when it took a turn which your eye could not follow, 
 yet you always felt and knew that there was a connection 
 in its parts, and that it was the same river." Those per- 
 sons who have listened to the discourse of " the old man 
 
 Woodlands, 
 
 HoLFORD, June ii, 1888. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 Pray forgive my delay in replying to your note, I am only just 
 returned from London, and found a long arrear of bills and household 
 matters. 
 
 I wished to illustrate my own booklet with some pictorial embel" 
 lishments, connected with the two poets. After enquiry and personal 
 inspection of the Stowey residence of Coleridge, and the scene of the 
 brief Mara^rfon of Wordsworth at Alfoxden, I found that the former 
 had been so much changed from the pretty low-roofed thatched cottage 
 of the past, by the addition of an upper storey ; the re-casing of the 
 walls and addition of an extra wing, that the bard himself would fail 
 to recognise his former domicile. The small country house of Alfoxden 
 has been replaced by a mansion, and merely one or two smaller rooms 
 within would recall it to Wordsworth if he could re-visit it. The 
 Waterfall alone still "flows on for ever," and the Combe has been 
 intruded on by modern cottages, and the only contemporary one 
 removed. 
 
i6 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 eloquent," in his after years, will recognize the accuracy of 
 this description.^ Yet no two men could be more unlike 
 than the poets who now met beside the Quantocks. 
 Coleridge, a student and recluse from his boyhood, of 
 immense erudition, a heluo librorum ; all his life a vale- 
 tudinarian who scarcely knew what health was — ever 
 planning mighty works — multa et pulcra minans — yet 
 so irresolute and infirm of purpose as never to realize his 
 
 The only perfect existing residence of Coleridge is at Clevedon, 
 where he brought his bride, and spent, perhaps, the happiest days of 
 his married life. 
 
 Soon after my Quantock book appeared, I received a letter from 
 a perfect stranger, Mr. Buxton Forman (now the President of the 
 Browning Society, and editor of the fine edition of the works of 
 England's greatest lyric poet, Shelley, in six octavo volumes), requesting 
 on behalf of himself and a few friends to purchase or obtain the loan 
 of the book, and calling my attention to an article in a public print 
 taken almost wholly from the volume which they requested the gift of, 
 or loan, or purchase. 
 
 But I am almost afraid to look on the long epistle I have troubled 
 you with, and can only regret being unable to offer you a more satis- 
 factory response to your query. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 W. L. N. 
 
 * Coleridge, on his side, speaking in his Biographia LiUraria, of his 
 residence at Stowey, and the blessing he then acquired in the society 
 of Wordsworth, whom he could look up to with equal reverence as a 
 poet, a philosopher or a man, adds " his conversation extended to al- 
 most all subjects, except physics and politics ; with the latter he never 
 troubled himself." — Editor. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 17 
 
 aspirations — the very Hamlet of literature ; — Wordsv\^orth, 
 on the other hand — as robust in body as one of the peasants 
 of his native Cumberland, of indomitable purpose, keeping 
 his way right onward when made the scorn of fools till he 
 became the glory of his age — was no reader of books, except 
 of the great book of nature, and his study " was on the 
 Quantock downs. It was his creed that 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood 
 
 May teach you more of man ; 
 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 
 Than all the sages can. 
 
 Over ''these green hills," observes the same critic, '' the two 
 young poets wandered for hours together rapt in fervid 
 talk, Coleridge no doubt the chief speaker, Wordsworth not 
 the less suggestive. Never before, or since, have these 
 downs heard such high converse." At that period, 
 Benedict de Spinosa was the master spirit whose spirit held 
 temporary sway over the mind of Coleridge ; and doubt- 
 less the somewhat mystical, but ennobling propositions of 
 the famous 5th book of his Ethics, which exercised so 
 profound an influence over the greatest minds of Germany, 
 would form a frequent subject of discussion and possess no 
 small attraction for both poets. But not alone philosophy, 
 poetry would naturally become their theme. Both were 
 disgusted with the inane and artificial versification which 
 then passed under its name, and with the false canons of criti- 
 cism and formal rules upon which it was based, English 
 poetry was indeed at that period at its lowest ebb, repre- 
 
i8 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 sented mainly by the glitter and false taste of Darwin and 
 the turgid twaddle of Hayley. Burns, it is true, had been 
 lately in full song, but his wood notes wild were little known 
 in the south ; and Cowper, the herald of a better day, was 
 timid, and only half emancipated from the prevailing sys- 
 tem. It was at this period that the poems of Wordsworth 
 and Coleridge burst upon the literary world like a new 
 revelation. In after years, the elder poet thus recalled 
 their memorable rambles in those days of promise : — 
 Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved 
 Unchecked, or loitered mid their sylvan combs, 
 Thou in bewitching words, with happy art, 
 Didst chaunt the vision of that Antient man, 
 The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes 
 Didst utter of the Lady Christabel ; 
 And I, associate with such labour, steeped 
 In soft forgetfulness the livelong hours, 
 Murmuring of him who, joyous hap, was found, 
 After the perils of his moonlight ride, 
 Near the loud waterfall ; or her who sate 
 In misery near the miserable thorn. 
 
 The Prelude, Book xiv. 
 
 The result of these musings on the Quantocks w^as the 
 publication in the following year (1798) of the famous 
 Lyrical Ballads, a volume which so startled the critics of 
 that day from their propriety. In anticipation of its recep- 
 tion, Wordsworth, the chief contributor, prefixed to the 
 second edition the motto, afterwards withdrawn, qtcam 
 nihil ad genitim^ Papiniane, tuumj^ and added an explana- 
 tory Preface of considerable length. The Antient Mariner^ 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS, 
 
 and the Christahel^ planned during a walk along the 
 Quantock Hills towards Watchet, time has stamped as, 
 after their kind, unsurpassed by any creation of the poet's 
 own generation, or perhaps of any generation of England's 
 poetry." The Christahel excited the warm admiration 
 of Sir Walter Scott, who frankly acknowledged his own 
 considerable obligations to the poetry of Coleridge, and 
 particularly admired his management of the supernatural. 
 " Why," enquires Sir Walter, " is the Harp of Quantock 
 silent ? " and, in the notes to one of his romances, having 
 occasion to refer to the popular superstition which formerly 
 existed, that evil spirits could not enter an inhabited house 
 unless invited, or even dragged over the threshold, he adds 
 the remark, that " the most picturesque use of this popular 
 belief occurs in Coleridge's beautiful, and tantalizing frag- 
 ment of Christahel.^'' Has not our own imaginative poet 
 cause to fear that future ages will desire to summon him 
 from his place of rest, as Milton longed 
 
 To call him up, who left half-told 
 
 The story of Cambuscan bold ? 
 
 The verses I refer to/' continues Sir Walter, " are when 
 Christabel conducts into her father's castle a mysterious and 
 malevolent being, under the disguise of a distressed female 
 stranger : — 
 
 They crossed the moat, and Christabel 
 
 Took the key that fitted well ; 
 
 A little door she opened straight, 
 
 All in the middle of the gate ; 
 
 The gate that was ironed within and without, 
 
20 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 Where an army in battle array had marched out. 
 
 The lady sank, belike through pain, 
 
 And Christabel with might and main 
 
 Lifted her up, a weary weight, 
 
 Over the threshold of the gate : 
 
 Then the lady rose again, 
 
 And moved as she were not in pain. 
 
 So, free from danger, free from fear, 
 
 They crossed the court : right glad they were." 
 On another occasion, speaking of " the singularly irregular 
 structure of the stanzas, and the liberty it allowed the 
 author to adapt the sound to the sense " which he found in 
 Christabel^ he adds the graceful remark, it is to Mr. 
 Coleridge that I am bound to make the acknowledgement 
 due from the pupil to his master."^ Even Lord Byron 
 owned the charm of what he called " that wild, and 
 singularly original and beautiful poem and to the 
 Christabel we are indebted for the opening lines of one of 
 his now nearly forgotten tales in verse, The Siege of Corinth. 
 Indeed, few persons of sensibility can resist the marvellous 
 skill with which the poet of Stowey gives " a local 
 habitation and a name" to the wild fictions of old romantic 
 superstition. The mysterious Geraldine, with her witch- 
 like beauty, uttering her spell over the sleeping Christabel, 
 chills the blood with creeping horror ; and the wonderful 
 art with which so many minute touches of quaint and 
 picturesque description are thrown in, adds immensely to 
 the magical effect. The mode of narrative, too, by question 
 
 ' Int. to The Lay of the Last Minstrel, p. 24. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 21 
 
 and answer, then so novel and original, imparts spirit and 
 liveliness to the story, and the moonlit forest ; the moated 
 castle and its massive gate ; the angry moan of the old 
 mastiff ; the echoing hall, and the sudden flash of the 
 embers on its hearth, revealing only the serpent-eye of the 
 stranger lady ; the carven chamber, and its fresh-trimmed 
 silver lamp, 
 
 Left swinging to and fro, — 
 combine, one and all, to lay an irresistible hold upon the 
 imagination of the reader. 
 
 The year 1797, which gave birth to two such works of 
 genius as this poem and Tke Antient Mariner, may well be 
 called the annus mirahilis of the poet ! It was probably 
 the happiest year of his life; he had not yet lost the 
 springing hopes of youth, and keenly felt, no doubt, the 
 exhilarating consciousness of his own great powers. His 
 poetic prime," observes his learned daughter, in her Notes 
 on her Father's life, " commenced with the Ode to the 
 Departing Year^ composed at the end of December, 1796." 
 The year following, the five-and-twentieth of his life 
 [during which, and in 1798, he resided in his cottage at 
 Nether Stowey], produced The Ancient Manner^ Love^ and 
 
 The Dark Ladie^ the first part of Christabel, Kiibla Khan, 
 the tragedy cf the Remorse, France, and This Lime Tree 
 Bower. Rears in Solitude^ The Nightingale, and The 
 
 Wanderings of Cain, were written in 1798. Frost at 
 Midnight, The Picture, the Lines to the Rev. G, Coleridge, 
 and those To W. Wordsworth, are all of the same Nether 
 
22 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 Stowey period. "It was in June, 1797,'* continues the 
 poet's daughter, " that my Father began to be intimate 
 with Mr. Wordsworth, and this doubtless gave an impulse 
 to his mind. The poems which succeed are distinguished 
 from those of my father's Stowey life by a less buoyant 
 spirit." With these last T am not concerned in the present 
 paper, which is confined to the period of the poet's 
 residence in this part of Somersetshire. Of the above 
 poems KiLhla Khan^ a dream within a dream, was composed, 
 as the author himself tells us, in a lonely farmhouse 
 between Porlock and Lynton. The Lines to his Brother 
 contain a touching biographical retrospect ; and the noble 
 verses addressed to Wordsworth record his own feelings on 
 hearing the grand poem of The Prelude read by its author. 
 The tragedy of The Remorse was written at the suggestion 
 of Sheridan, and some years afterwards represented at Drury 
 Lane, at the request of Lord Byron, and with great success. 
 In the little artistically-perfect gem, entitled Love^ with 
 which as a poem of the affections, there is nothing antient 
 or modern that, in its way, can bear a moment's comparison, 
 one knows not which most to admire, — its picturesque 
 description, — its apt locality, and the sculpture-like 
 precision of its handling, — its captivating melancholy, or its 
 exquisite blending of the spiritual and the sensuous. 
 
 Most of the poems by Wordsworth contained in the first 
 edition of the Lyrical Ballads (a little volume now of 
 extreme rarity), were produced at Alfoxden, a mansion 
 about three miles from Nether Stowey, the residence of his 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS, 23 
 
 brother poet, and are descriptive of Quantock scenery, or 
 founded on incidents that occurred in the neighbourhood. 
 The picturesque little domain of Alfoxden has naturally 
 acquired some celebrity from the circumstance that the 
 Poet of the Excursion resided there for awhile in his noble 
 poverty. An interesting memorial, now nearly effaced by 
 time, of the Poet's sojourn at Alfoxden, used to be visible— 
 the letters W. W., deeply incised on one of the row of trees 
 on the hill above the house. I have met on the 
 neighbouring downs pilgrims from across the Atlantic on 
 their way to visit the shrine of the Poet, and have been 
 amused by the minute acquaintance they seemed to have 
 acquired at their home in the Dominion of Canada with 
 the names of some of our retired villages merely from their 
 occurrence in the verses of their favourite author, or from 
 the transient honour conferred upon them by his residence. 
 
 Miss Wordsworth, his accomplished sister, thus describes 
 the attractions of the place, as seen on their first arrival. 
 
 There is everything here ; the sea ; woods wild as fancy 
 ever painted ; and William and I, in a wander by ourselves, 
 found out a sequestered waferfall in a dell formed by steep 
 hills covered by full-grown timber trees. The woods are as 
 fine as those at Lowther, and the country more romantic; 
 it has the character of the less grand parts of the lakes. 
 From the end of the house we have a fine view of the sea, 
 over a woody country, and exactly opposite the window 
 where I now sit is an immense wood, whose round top has 
 
24 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 the appearance of a mighty dome. A quarter of a mile 
 from the house is the waterfall of which I spoke." 
 
 It was by the side of this fall that Wordsworth composed 
 one of his sweetest lyrics — the Lines in Early Spring : — 
 I heard a thousand blended notes 
 While in a grove I sit reclined, 
 In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts 
 Bring sad thoughts to the mind. 
 
 In reading a description which he afterwards wrote of 
 this little combe, one doubts whether his verse or his prose 
 be the most beautiful : It was," he says, " a chosen resort 
 of mine. The brook fell down a sloping rock, considerable 
 for that country, and across the pool below had fallen an 
 ash-tree from which rose perpendicularly boughs in search 
 of the light, intercepted by the deep shade above. The 
 boughs bore leaves of green that for want of sunshine had 
 faded into almost lily-white ; and from the under side of 
 this natural sylvan bridge depended long and beautiful 
 tresses of ivy, which waved gently in the breeze that might 
 be called the breath of the waterfall." This dell, once 
 locally known as ^' The Mare's Pool," but now consecrated 
 to all time as " Wordsworth's Glen," was a favourite 
 trysting-place of the two poets and their friends. Coleridge 
 has described it in the graceful verses he addressed to his 
 old school-fellow Charles Lamb, who, with his clever sister, 
 then on a visit to the cottage of the Poet at Stowey, were 
 out on the downs enjoying the breezes of Quantock, while 
 their host, disabled during the whole time of their stay by 
 
THE WATERFALL. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 25 
 
 an accident, was left to his solitary musings in the lime- 
 tree bower in his orchard. He thus follows in imagination 
 the route of his visitors in their charming ramble : 
 they meanwhile, 
 
 On springy heath, along hill top edge, 
 
 Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance. 
 
 To that still roaring dell of which I told. 
 
 The roaring dell, o'er wooded, narrow, deep, 
 
 And only speckled by the mid-day sun ; 
 
 Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock 
 
 Flings arching like a bridge ; that branchless ash, 
 
 Unsunned and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves 
 
 Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still, 
 
 Fanned by the waterfall ! 
 
 «■#***** 
 
 Now my friends emerge, 
 
 Beneath the wide, wide Heaven — and view again 
 
 The many-steepled track magnificent 
 
 Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea, 
 
 With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up 
 
 The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles 
 
 Of purple shadow ! Yes ! they wander on 
 
 In gladness all ; but thou, methinks, most glad. 
 
 My gentle hearted Charles ! for thou hast pined 
 
 And hungered after Nature many a year, 
 
 In the great city pent, winning thy way 
 
 With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain 
 
 And strange calamity ! Ah ! slowly sink 
 
 Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun ! 
 
 Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb, 
 
 Ye purple heath-flowers ; richlier burn, ye clouds I 
 
 Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves ! 
 
 And kindle thou blue ocean ! 
 
 Every reader of taste must be delighted with this grand 
 
26 
 
 THE QC7ANT0CKS, 
 
 and nobly sustained piece of local descriptive poetry ; and 
 persons to whom the scene is familiar will recognise in the 
 latter portion of it the view from Woodlands Down. 
 
 Coleridge, who drew his inspiration far less than his 
 brother poet from external nature, has not failed however 
 to weave into his verses several notices of the neighbourhood 
 of his beloved Nether- Stowey, — clarum et venerahile 
 nomen ! " He thus describes a homeward descent from 
 Dousborough : — 
 
 Through weeds and thorns and matted underwood 
 
 I force my way ; now climb and now descend 
 
 O'er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot 
 
 Crushing the purple whorts 
 
 Homeward I wend my way, and so recalled 
 
 I find myself upon the brow and pause 
 
 Startled ! and after lonely sojourning 
 
 This burst of prospect, — here the shadowing main 
 
 Dim tinted, there the mighty majesty 
 
 Of that huge amphitheatre of rich 
 
 And elmy fields 
 
 And now, beloved Stowey, I behold 
 
 Thy church-tower, and methinks the four huge elms 
 
 Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend ; 
 
 And close beside them, hidden from my view, 
 
 Is my own lonely cottage, where my babe 
 
 And my babe's mother dwell in peace ! 
 Any notice of the sojourn of Coleridge at Stowey would be 
 very imperfect without some reference to the friend to 
 whom he here alludes. This was Mr. T. Poole, ^ who 
 appears to have been one of the most kind-hearted and 
 
 ^ Note iii. 
 
COLERIDGE'S COTTAGE, NETHERSTOWEY. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 27 
 
 liberal of men, ever ready to assist humble merit ; and 
 though it would seem that he had not himself enjoyed the 
 benefit of a learned education, yet he must have been a 
 person of considerable mental culture, and fully capable 
 of appreciating the genius of the poet of whom he was the 
 generous patron. He must indeed have been no common 
 man to have been the " dear friend " of Coleridge and 
 Wordsworth. At the suggestion of this estimable person, 
 who was desirous of securing his gifted friend as a neighbour, 
 Coleridge, with his wife and child, and Charles Lloyd, ^ 
 afterwards the translator of Alfieri, removed to a small 
 house at Nether Stowey, hard by the residence of good Mr. 
 Poole ; and like the poet Cowper at Olney, to obtain 
 greater facility of intercourse, made a communication from 
 his cottage-orchard into the garden of his friend. In this 
 orchard was the "lime-tree bower," the "prison" of the 
 disabled poet. Here too his friend Cottle describes a pretty 
 garden-scene during a visit he paid to him at Stowey; "the 
 orchard laden with fruit, the tripod table in the arbour, 
 with its simple meal, surmounted by a brown jug of the 
 true Taunton ale." " There must have been witchery in 
 our fare," he exclaims, " and the very birds seemed to 
 participate in our felicity. As we sat in our sylvan hall 
 (T. Poole, C. Lloyd, S. T. Coleridge, and myself), Mrs, 
 Coleridge approached with her fine Hartley ; we all smiled, 
 but the father's eye beamed transcendent joy." At the 
 
 * Note iv. 
 
THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 table of this kind neighbour, the poet had the advantage of 
 meeting a number of persons then, or afterwards, of 
 celebrity in literature and science. Seldom, in so retired a 
 village as Stowey, have there been gathered together so 
 many persons of intellectual eminence ; — Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, Southey, Charles Lamb, George Burnet, Davy 
 (afterwards Sir Humphrey),^ Dr. Beddoes, Basil Montague, 
 De Quincey, and a young man of great promise, too early 
 lost, the younger Wedgwood ; — the reputed inventor 
 of photography, and a most generous patron of the two 
 Quantock poets. All these persons occasionally sat around 
 the hospitable board of the Maecenas of Stowey. 
 
 At this distance of time few personal anecdotes can be 
 gleaned of the poet's daily life at Stowey. That he was 
 fond of watching the progress of a water-wheel and mill 
 which Mr. Poole was erecting, and that the poetic 
 philosopher by his abstruse views of mechanical science 
 sometimes sadly puzzled the skilful engineer who was con- 
 structing the work ; that, like many others who are not 
 poets, he often sat up late, and that he sometimes got up 
 afterwards when a bright idea occurred to his mind, is the 
 little that is recorded. 
 
 It was during one of these solitary watchings beside his 
 cottage-hearth at Stowey, that he wrote those fine verses, 
 so full of beauty and pathos, entitled Frost at Midnight, 
 
 * Notev. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 29 
 
 The frost performs its secret ministry, 
 Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry 
 Came loud — and hark, again ! loud as before. 
 The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, 
 Have left me to that solitude which suits 
 Abstruser musings : save that at my side 
 My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. 
 'Tis calm, indeed ! so calm that it disturbs 
 And vexes meditation with its strange 
 And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, 
 This populous village ! Sea, hill, and wood, 
 With all the numberless goings on of life, 
 Inaudible as dreams ! the thin blue flame 
 Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not ; 
 Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, 
 Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. 
 Methinks its motion in this hush of nature 
 Gives it dim sympathies with me who live. 
 
 This fancy leads his thoughts back to his childhood, 
 
 and his sweet birthplace, and the old church tower," and 
 
 its bells, and his school-days, and the wished-for advent of 
 
 the " stranger," prefigured by the fluttering film upon the 
 
 bars. Then he addresses his sleeping babe, and contrasts 
 
 his own melancholy boyhood, in the great city, " pent mid 
 
 cloisters dim," with what he hopes will be the future life of 
 
 his child; and, with singular accuracy of prediction, 
 
 foreshadows the actual locality destined to be the abode in 
 
 after years of the little unconscious Hartley, " cradled by 
 
 his side :" 
 
 But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze 
 By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags 
 Of antient mountain, and beneath the clouds, 
 
30 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores 
 
 And mountain crags 
 
 " Vates " — (prophet and bard) — sic ore effaius amico est .f^ 
 The inhabitants of that populous village " at the time 
 when the poet wrote these lines are now doubtless, all, or 
 nearly all, plunged in a deeper slumber than that which he 
 so impressively described. One of them, the last survivor 
 of those who had enjoyed any personal acquaintance with 
 the poet, died, some three or four years ago, in extreme 
 old age. He was accustomed, with harmless vanity, to 
 claim some small share in the production of The Antient 
 Mariner^ from the fact that he had made, or mended the 
 poet's pens,^ who gratefully conferred upon him the title of 
 his Pennefactor." 
 
 The elder poet, Wordsworth, has connected his verses 
 far more with his own residence and neighbourhood. He 
 himself describes his sojourn at Alfoxden ''as a very 
 pleasant and productive time of his life ; " and indeed he 
 has peopled its groves with the creations of his fancy, and 
 hung a thought on every thorn. The romantic glen 
 already described was the scene of his famous ballad. The 
 Idiot Boy^ a poem which, together with that entitled We 
 are Seven^ was a special favourite with Charles James Fox. 
 The latter poem is an exquisite production ; but in the 
 great statesman's admiration for the other ballad, I am, I 
 confess, unable to share. One stanza, however, of rare 
 
 ^ Note vi. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 31 
 
 beauty occurs in it : — 
 
 By this, the stars were almost gone, 
 The moon was setting on the hill, 
 So pale you scarcely looked at her : 
 Th$ little birds began to stir, 
 Though yet their tongues were still. 
 
 In truth Wordsworth, like his great prototype Milton, 
 
 and his contemporary Schiller, failed when he attempted 
 
 the humorous, of which he had little or no perception. In 
 
 Cowper's ballad of J^ohit Gilpin we find genuine humour. 
 
 In this ballad of Wordsworth's, which he threw in the face 
 
 of the shallow critics of his day, as a kind of wanton affront 
 
 to their prejudices, humour is entirely wanting. The ballad 
 
 was founded on an anecdote related to him by his friend 
 
 Thomas Poole, and was composed, he tells us, in the grove 
 
 at Alfoxden almost extempore. I mention this," he adds, 
 
 "in gratitude to those happy moments, for in truth I never 
 
 wrote anything with so much glee." The Last of the Flock 
 
 was also written here, and the incident on which it was 
 
 founded took place in the street of the village of Holford. 
 
 The affecting ballad of Simon Lee was suggested by a 
 
 homely occurrence near the entrance gate of Alfoxden, 
 
 where the poor man's cottage, now pulled down, stood 
 
 " near the water-fall, upon the village common." He was 
 
 an old huntsman, a retainer of the estate : — 
 
 but no one now 
 
 Dwelt in the Hall of Ivor ; 
 
 Men, dogs, and horses, all were dead ; 
 
 He was the sole survivor. 
 
32 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 The scene of the charming poem RtUh is laid by the bank 
 
 of Tone and on the highlands of Somersetshire, where the 
 
 sound of the wanderer's flute 
 
 At evening in his homeward walk 
 The Quantock woodman hears. 
 
 Expostulation and Reply was composed in front of the 
 house at Alfoxden. The Thorn has vanished from the hill- 
 side of the Quantock, but still lives m the poet's description. 
 Of a number of minor poems written here, a list will be 
 given in the appendix. 
 
 The meeting of our two poets with Thelwall in the glen 
 at Alfoxden has been already noticed. Thelwall was a man 
 of considerable mental powers, but had by his intemperate 
 politics made himself obnoxious to the Government of 
 the day, and became the subject of the satire of Canning 
 in a witty parody of Milton which appeared in the pages of 
 the Anti- Jacobin ; — " Thelwall, and ye that lecture as ye 
 go." He was now, however, quietly engaged in the culti- 
 vation of a farm near Nether Stowey, but his visit to 
 Coleridge gave occasion for the employment of a spy to 
 watch the proceedings of the three supposed conspirators. 
 Coleridge,^ the spy pronounced to be comparatively harm- 
 less, but Wordsworth, who seldom spoke, was a dark and 
 dangerous personage. From the misrepresentations of this 
 man probably, and in spite of the regrets of his friend 
 
 * Mrs. Sandford, in her interesting life of Mr. Poole, throws much 
 light on the proceedings. 
 
ALFOXDEN-RESIDENCE OF THE POET WORDSWORTH. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 33 
 
 Poole, and the indignant protestations of Coleridge — "the 
 hills, and the woods, and the streams, and the sea, and the 
 shores will break forth into reproaches against us, if we do 
 not strain every nerve to keep their poet amongst them " — 
 the ignorant agent who was employed to let the mansion at 
 Alfoxden refused to continue the lease, and — the poet was 
 driven from his paradise ! 
 
 More than forty years afterwards, and in the plentitude of 
 his fame,^ Wordsworth cnce more revisited his old abode. 
 
 We visited," he writes in 1841, *' all my old haunts in and 
 about Alfoxden and Nether Stowey. These were farewell 
 visits for life, and of course not a little interesting." He 
 was accompanied by his wife and daughter and a few chosen 
 friends ; but one friend, alas ! was wanting to share his 
 interest in each well-known scene. That adoring sister,^ 
 who had been for so many years the companion of his walks 
 and the partaker of his thoughts, and to whose manifold 
 excellencies and graces he has paid so many affectionate 
 tributes in his poems, was absent — lying, a melancholy 
 wreck in body and mind, at his home in Westmoreland. 
 As the old man stood once more in his favourite glen, 
 and listened to the waterfall, might not his own delicious 
 lines have come to his mind, and with a new significance ? 
 
 No check, nor stay, this streamlet fears ; 
 How merrily it goes ! 
 
 1 Note vii. 
 
 ^ Note viii, 
 
34 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 'Twill murmur on a thousand years, 
 And flow as now it flows : 
 
 And here on this delightful day, 
 I cannot choose but think 
 How oft, a vigorous man, I lay 
 Beside this fountain's brink. 
 
 My eyes are dim with childish tears, 
 My heart is idly stirred, 
 For the same sound is in my ears 
 Which in those days I heard. 
 
 Thus fares it still in our decay ; 
 And yet the wiser mind 
 Mourns less for what age takes away 
 Than what it leaves behind." 
 
 Here I must pause. I have not undertaken to write the 
 biography of the two poets, but my humbler task has been 
 to bring together a few scattered reminiscences of their 
 residence in the Quantock district. 
 
 To the extended influence of ihe writings of the 
 younger poet, I ought to mention one testimony recently 
 afforded by a royal personage, who, during his brief sojourn 
 amongst us, won golden opinions from the people of this 
 country. One of the earliest visits paid after his arrival in 
 London by the Emperor of Brazil, was to the grave of 
 Coleridge in the old churchyard at Highgate. 
 
 He might there muse upon the genius, the virtues, and 
 the frailties of one of England's noblest poets and profound- 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 est thinkers, and read there the poet's own pathetic epitaph, 
 in which, " he being dead, yet speaketh : " 
 
 Stop, Christian passer-by ! Stop, Child of God ! 
 
 And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod 
 
 A Poet lies, or that which once seemed he ; 
 
 Oh lift a thought in prayer for S. T. C. 
 
 That he who many a year with toil of breath 
 
 Found death in life, may here find life in death ! 
 
 Mercy for praise ; to be forgiven for fame, 
 
 He asked, and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same. 
 
A QUANTOCK TRAGEDY. 
 
a ©uantocK ^Traget)? 
 
 BOUT a mile from Nether Stowey, a pleasant 
 Somersetshire village, or townlet, nestling under 
 the eastern slope of the Quantock Hills, a gentle 
 ascent leads to an eminence called Dodington Common, 
 formerly a wild and lonely spot, but of late years for the 
 most part enclosed, and now crowned with a cluster of neat- 
 looking cottages. It commands one of the most extensive 
 views in the county, but was itself long disfigured by an 
 ' uncanny ' object, properly known and named on the ord- 
 nance map as ' Walford's Gribbet,' ^ a memento of the melan- 
 choly fate of one who on this spot suffered the penalty of that 
 divine decree, which ordains that "Whoso sheddeth man's 
 blood, by man shall his blood be shed." 
 
 It was sometime in the year 1797, that three persons were 
 ascending this hill, two of them bearing names, since become 
 illustrious in the annals of English literature, the third, from 
 his high character and useful life, a local celebrity, 2 but 
 better known beyond his native district from the fact of his 
 friendship with his two companions. These men were 
 William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and 
 Thomas Poole, of Nether- Stowey. 
 
 Naturally enough their conversation turned upon the fate 
 of the unfortunate being suggested by the place, with whom, 
 and his belongings, it chanced that Mr. Poole had been par- 
 
 ^ The road now passes close to the site. Formerly the only road ran 
 through the valley below. 
 
 2 Since more widely known through Mrs. Sandford's admirable work, 
 " Tom Poole and his Friends," 
 
40 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 ticularly acquainted. So deeply interesting did the two poets 
 consider liis narrative, that they requested him to draw up the 
 story in writing. This manuscript is now before me. Its com- 
 position led to a counter-request made by Mr. Poole that 
 Wordsworth, to whose residence at Alfoxden they were 
 most likely proceeding, would make the story the subject 
 of a poem. That poem, hitherto (it is believed) unknown,^ 
 lies also beside the writer of this paper ; it is in the neat 
 autograph of Miss Wordsworth, the poet's accomplished 
 sister, with the exception of two poems in the poet's auto- 
 graph, and occurs in a MS. volume among a number of her 
 brother's early poems, written for the most part during his 
 residence at Alfoxden, and presented by the poet to his friend 
 Mr. Poole, in whose hand- writing it is labelled, ' 'Wordsworth's 
 MSS." By the kind permission of a neighbouring clergy- 
 man and friend who inherits the papers of Mr. Poole, I was 
 indulged with the inspection of this MS. book, and I instantly 
 detected, among a number of the well-known pieces con- 
 tained in the first edition of the ' Lyrical Ballads, ' a poem 
 perfectly new to me ; it bears neither title nor epigraph, 
 some of the lines are unfinished, and the whole poem show 
 signs of perfunctory labour and haste. Mr. Poole's memoir 
 is intolerably prolix and full of obsolete details ; but the main 
 facts of the story, as a romance of humble life, are deeply 
 
 ^ It is right to mention that after this was written, Mr. Nichols became 
 the purchaser of the MSS. and that they are now in possession of the poet's 
 family. They have been seen by two friends of the Editor, who has not 
 thought it desirable to publish the particular poem referred to, 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 interesting, although the poem itself is more suited to the som- 
 bre muse of nature's sternest painter, Crabbe, than the cheerful 
 poet of Rydal Mount. A short sketch of Walford's career 
 drawn for the most part from Mr. Poole's narrative, will not, 
 it is hoped, be deemed out of place in these pages. 
 
 John Walford was born at Over-Stowey, about the year 
 1765. His father, an honest and industrious man, was what 
 is locally called a collier, i.e., a maker of charcoal from wood ; 
 and by his labour, and by keeping a few horses on the hills, on 
 the backs of which he carried to the neighbouring markets the 
 coal he made, he had gained a comfortable provision for his 
 own and his wife's old age. The son was brought up to his 
 father's occupation, and was, from his remarkable good tem- 
 per and generosity, an universal favourite with his comrades 
 and neighbours, but he possessed ardent feelings and strong 
 passions. He had a fine countenance and a stalwart frame, 
 and so great was his bodily strength, that he was wont to 
 boast that he could strike as smart a blow with his fist as a 
 smith with his sledge. His whole expression of feature and a 
 figure singularly compact and well-proportioned, bespoke in- 
 telligence and capability, whatever was required of him. 
 Unhappily he could neither read nor write. 
 
 An affection had grown up between him and one Ann Rice, 
 (the Agnes of Wordsworth's poem,) the daughter of a miller ; 
 a fine well-educated, good girl, and naturally clever. As they 
 intended to marry, she had lived for some time with his step- 
 mother, a malicious and vindictive woman, who for some 
 reason or other opposed the match and unfortunately induced 
 
42 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 him to postpone it. Meantime he pursued his usual occu- 
 pation in the woods. To exercise this, it was necessary that he 
 should live day and night and most commonly alone in the 
 solitary woods that clothe the sides of the deep combes on the 
 eastern slope of the Quantock Hills around Nether Stowey. 
 When in the woods, having brought with him a week's 
 provision of homely food, he lived in a little cabin built with 
 poles and turf in the form of a cone ; and in this hovel he 
 slept on straw, if sleep it could be called, for it was seldom 
 that his work permitted him to lie down for more than an 
 hour or two ar a time, or to take off his clothes, often soaked 
 with snow and rain, and frozen stiff to his back. His drink 
 was water from the brook. On Saturday nights he returned 
 home, and had better food, and on Sundays he constantly 
 appeared remarkably neat and clean at his parish church. 
 It was at rare intervals that any wanderer passed his lonely 
 cabin. On one or two occasions, however, it chanced that a 
 young girl from the village came that way for the purpose 
 ostensibly of picking wood, but with the real object of seek- 
 ing out Walford. She was a poor stupid creature, almost an 
 idiot, slovenly in dress and ordinary in person, yet possessing 
 a considerable degree of natural craftiness. Unfortunately an 
 intercourse took place between them, which resulted in the 
 birth of a child. He subsequently declared that he had never 
 sought her nor invited her company, but that she had always 
 sought him, and that she was doomed to be his ruin. He 
 was however taken into custody by the parish officers, who 
 demanded that he should either marry the woman or give 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 security for the maintenance of the infant. They did not 
 really wish him to marry her, knowing what a fearful sacrifice 
 it would prove ; but Walford had a high spirit, and from pique 
 probably at his step-mother's opposition to his match with Ann 
 nice, did not care to ask any money-favour of her. No 
 security was given, and on the 18th of June, 1789, he was 
 married to the woman. They lived together for some few 
 weeks in apparent tranquillity ; but it was only in appearance, 
 and the poor creature his wife, was wont, at night, when he was 
 expected home to his cottage, ( for since his marriage, he had 
 worked chiefly as a husbandman,) to linger about the houses of 
 the neighbours in the manner graphically described in the 
 poem of Wordsworth. There is good reason for surmising, 
 that, finding his situation with such a mate intolerable, his 
 intention was to quit the country and leave her ; the unhappy 
 man could not however, even with this inducement, make up 
 his mind at once to leave his native hills, and a dire oppor- 
 tunity occurring on the night of the 6th of the following 
 July, lie murdered his wife. 
 
 The fearful deed occurred in this wise. He returned from 
 his work on the Saturday evening, but, finding that his wife 
 had not yet come home, went and sat down with a neighbour- 
 ing family who lived under the same roof, the house being divi- 
 ded into two distinct dwellings. Here he ate his supper with the 
 utmost tranquillity. After waiting a couple of hours, and find- 
 ing that his wife did not return, he wished them a good night, 
 and went into his own part of the house. Soon after, his 
 wife returned home, and he exclaimed, * what, art come, 
 
44 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 Jenny ? ' after which, they were seen sitting peaceably to- 
 gether, the moon shining brightly upon them, for it was now 
 at the full. In a short time their door was observed to be 
 fast, and their neighbours thought they had retired to rest. 
 It chanced however that two young girls were left up in the 
 adjoining cottage, awaiting the return of a sister who was 
 expected home ; and at half-past twelve o'clock, they were 
 startled by the sound of a footstep, or something like it, 
 which, to use their own expression, ' went ^itt patt under the 
 window,' as if the person who walked was bare-footed. They 
 did not know why, but there was something in this sound which 
 made them shudder ; and being much frightened, they flew up- 
 stairs to bed. They were right ; it was the stealthy step of the 
 murderer returning from the deed of blood ; he had taken off 
 his shoes that he might not be heard. 
 
 It appeared that, on his wife's return home, Walford pro- 
 posed to her to go to the Castle of Comfort, a small public 
 house in the parish of Dodington, about a mile from their 
 dwelling, to drink some cider. She had been wishing for cider, 
 which he mentioned to his neighbours the night before, and 
 added in her presence, and with apparent tenderness, ' she 
 shall have as much as she can drink.' He gave her a shilling 
 from his scanty wages, (six shillings weekly,) to purchase this 
 cider ; but, she being averse to go out alone so late at night, 
 he at last agreed to go with her. On their way, according to his 
 own account, which is very probable, some altercation arose ; 
 and being disgusted with his wretched companion, and mad- 
 dened by the thought of the happiness which he had lost, he 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 struck her down with a blow of his fist and laid her dead at 
 his feet. He then made an attempt to drag the body to the 
 month of a deep mine- shaft hard by, the ivied ruins of which 
 overlook the picturesque little church and graveyard of 
 Dodington ; but finding this not an easy task, he took away 
 the shilling he had given her to buy cider, and inadvertently 
 put it into his own pocket. He then left the body lying by 
 the roadside and made his way across the common home- 
 wards. 
 
 Here is a deep valley, leading down to which is a lane, 
 long, narrow, and dark with aspen boughs which over-arch 
 it ; along the bottom of this combe runs a brook fringed with 
 coppice and shadowed with tall trees. The place is called 
 Bincombe. It is one of those tranquil spots which from its 
 seclusion would seem to be out of the reach of the angry 
 passions of the world and secure from its wickedness. Here 
 still stands the murderer's cottage. To Walford the peaceful 
 scene would wear an aspect of gloom and horror, pressing the 
 sense of guilt closer to his heart. Crossing the brook, he had 
 to ascend a pathway up the slope of the opposite hill to 
 reach his dwelling ; and at the end of this path he took off his 
 shoes in order not to be heard ; for, to gain his own door, it 
 was necessary to pass under his neighbour's window, and it 
 was his ghastly step which the two girls heard disturbing the 
 midnight silence. He then took off his blood-stained clothes, 
 threw himself across his bed till the morning broke, and re- 
 mained still in his chamber during the rest of that awful 
 night waiting the event. It was now Sunday morning. 
 
46 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 Between six and seven o'clock the body was discovered. Peo- 
 ple flew to his house calling out to him that his wife was 
 murdered. In about ten minutes he came down dressed in 
 his Sunday clothes. Being prevailed on to go where the body 
 lay, he exclaimed, ' he wished he had never seen his wife, or 
 that he had left the country and then, on his return to his 
 own house, the incident of the shilling occurred just as 
 Wordsworth has described it. He afterwards confessed the 
 deed, but declared that it was committed without the least 
 premeditation. His trial took place at the ensuing assizes, 
 and on the 20th of the following August he was executed on 
 the very spot where he had committed the murder. Just 
 before he gave the fatal signal, an affecting incident occurred ; 
 he enquired if his once affianced bride, Ann Rice,w^ere there. 'Is 
 Ann Rice here ? ' was echoed through the vast concourse of 
 people gathered from every part of the country that covered 
 the common. Some said that she had been seen behind the 
 brow of the hill. She was sought for and dragged up pale and 
 trembling and almost lifeless, the sympathising crowd every- 
 where making way for her ; she knelt on the straw in the 
 cart beside him, and they talked together, or rather he talked 
 to her, for nearly ten minutes ; no one heard what passed, 
 nor did she ever mention it to anyone. She was removedj and 
 after wiping away the tears that for the first time rolled down 
 his cheeks, he exclaimed, ' T am now ready ! ' The usual 
 prayers were then read; he joined in the Lord's Prayer and 
 the Apostles' Creed with an audible voice. He then stood up 
 and addressed the people with a loud, firm, unbroken voice, 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 47 
 
 in the following words : "I am guilty of tlie crime that I am 
 going to die for, but I did it without foreintending it, and I 
 hope God and the world have forgiven me." 
 
 All were amazed, afraid to breathe. It was a silence to be 
 felt. The hum of that vast multitude was so hushed that eveyi 
 the twittering of the birds in the neighbouring woods was dis- 
 tincthj audible. He opened his hand, the handkerchief fell ; and 
 he died instantaneously and without a struggle ; a shivering 
 sound arose, produced by the spectators drawing their breath 
 forcibly through their teeth at the moment. A dead silence 
 succeeded for some ten minutes, when the people began slow- 
 ly to disperse, discussing in whispered tones the sad fate of 
 him, for whom probably not a single human being present 
 went away without a feeling of pity. 
 
 Time has obliterated " Walford's Gibbet," which too long 
 marred one of nature's fairest scenes ; but the pathetic story 
 of "poor Jack Walford " still lingers in the memory of a 
 few of the elder folk among the Quantock peasantry, and 
 sometimes forms the subject of village gossip round the 
 winter hearth. A recently erected fountain pours forth its 
 useful waters hard-by the spot, a welcome refreshment to the 
 weary traveller and a kindly boon from their landlord to the 
 neighbouring cottagers upon Dodington Common. 
 
The hall and the church lie at the foot of a steep hill, 
 about four hundred yards to the north of the Bridgwater 
 road, aiid from that point are entirely hidden from view.'^ 
 
 The notable feature of this little parish is the Beech 
 Grove. Here can be seen some of the very finest trees 
 in the country, and as they grow in a certain regularity 
 they present the spectacle of a very stately avenue. In one 
 of these trees, and one only, the rooks build in large 
 numbers. The ivy covered ruins that rise to the east of 
 the avenue are all that remain of the mining works which 
 at the beginning of this century, were undertaken with 
 great zeal. 
 
 The view from the grove is very grand. To the south 
 and south west lie woods^ of fine larch, beech, and oak 
 coppice which cover the slopes of Dousborough from head 
 to foot, showing in springtime every imaginable shade of 
 green, from the sombre hues of the older plantation to the 
 light green of the young larch. The wood furthest to the 
 west, under which the main road passes in the direction 
 of Holford, is known as Shervage Wood, and the dip in 
 the road at the mouth of a combe down which the rills 
 from Dousborough rush in winter, is known as ^'No 
 
 * Note ix. Page loi. 
 2 A splendid wood massed on the mountain side." 
 
THE QC7ANT0CKS, 
 
 Man's Land." The Duke's Plantation, covers the north 
 side of the hill, close up to the Castle of Comfort} and 
 recalls the memory of the Duke of Buckingham- who 
 was once a considerable land owner here, and is patron of 
 Dodington. The new plantation, called " Sir Alick's Plan- 
 tation" is further to the east, adjoining the road that ascends 
 the hill, and takes its name from Sir Alexander Acland Hood. 
 
 To the north there is a distant view of the country 
 sloping away to the Bristol Channel, and to the east on a 
 clear day Glastonbury Tor can easily be distinguished. 
 There are many deep and sheltered lanes round Dodington 
 whose hedges are covered, even in winter time, with a 
 profuse wealth of green ferns. The thick holly bushes 
 which flourish here along the banks give the lanes a par- 
 ticularly green aspect throughout the year. The drainage 
 of the lower slopes of the Quantocks, which culminate in 
 the highest point at Dousborough, finds its way through 
 Dodington and along the lanes. In winter time and on 
 the occasion of a sudden thaw the roads are quickly in- 
 undated. According to some the first syllable of the name 
 Dod\xig\.on is said to indicate, etymologically, water. Be 
 this as it may, there is abundance of good and clear water 
 which trickles in streams down the sides of the lanes, and 
 
 1 A very neat and, of course, comfoYt^hXo. summer residence for families. 
 
 2 Inherited by Earl Temple after the death of Lord Melcombe, 
 under an early settlement made by a former proprietor, John Syden- 
 ham, who, in 1663, married Hester, daughter of Sir Peter Temple, an 
 ancestor of the Earl. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 keeps them cool and green. Old men say, with every show 
 of reason, that the deep mining shafts which intersect the 
 bowels of the earth have somewhat altered and deranged 
 the flow of water. 
 
 The flora of the place is particularly rich (see paper 
 by Rev. W. Tuckwell, p. 178, vol. 18, of Proceedings of 
 Somerset Archaeological Society). Inter alia^ he says, 
 ''The footpath from the Castle of Comfort^ (which is of 
 course in Dodington parish,) to Over Stowey, above 
 all in the lane from the Bell Inn to Aisholt, the hedge 
 banks and the wide grass margins of the road are scarcely 
 surpassed in beauty by the mosaic of a Swiss meadow or 
 an Alpine slope." 
 
 For the Geology ot the parish see JebouWs West 
 Somerset^ p. 74. The mines at Dodington were worked as 
 recently as 1820. 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 
 Every visible feature belongs to either the 15th, i6th, or 
 17th centuries. Oldest in west window of tower, about 1420, 
 of Ham Hill Stone in three unusually narrow lights with 
 heavy mullions, and rather crowded tracery in the head. 
 The masks of a king and a lady in the headdress of Henry 
 IV.'s reign decorate the hood moulding. This is the best 
 feature in the church. Tower generally above the ground 
 stage is of i6th or 17th century date, meagre in style and 
 rude in execution, with circular headed belfry windows of 
 plain design. It is covered with rough-cast, the groins of 
 
52 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 the local red stone forming a strong cpntrast to the white 
 plastering. 
 
 The porch may be dated from the beginning of the i6th 
 century. It has the original curved and moulded roof, 
 principals and purlins. The wooden shields at the inter- 
 sections, carved with a cross, appear to be modern. 
 
 The nave roof is of similar character and date. That of 
 the chancel is modern. In the porch are the Dodington 
 Arms, and an interesting holy water stoup, in form and size 
 of a small font. This is set on the stone bench in the angle 
 of the west wall of the porch with nave wall, the angle being 
 scooped out to form a rough arched canopy to the basin. 
 In plan it takes three sides of an octagon, except in the 
 bowl, where the figure is complete at the top owing to the 
 cutting away of the angle of the two walls. The upright 
 sides of the bowl are carved with square quatrefoils, having 
 a four- leaved flower in the centre. The stoup stands 2 ft. 
 2 in. from the top of the bench, and is of the hard grey 
 stone of the locality. This feature and the nave door are 
 of similar date to the porch, as are also the nave windows ; 
 whether the chancel be of earlier date is uncertain, its 
 walls being covered with rough cast. The east window is 
 a poor modern erection. The south chapel was the burial 
 place of the Dodington family, and belonged to the adjacent 
 manor house, the garden of which abuts upon the church- 
 yard, being separated by a high wall. (The church and 
 the hall communicate by a small postern). It was built, 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS, 
 
 according to a date in the east wall, in the 17th century, 
 and is a poor piece of work. The roof is an imitation of 
 the earlier porch roof. 
 
 The stem and the base of the churchyard cross remain, 
 though the former is not of its original height, and has 
 lost the cross at the top. The shaft is octagonal in the 
 upper part and square below, and is set diagonally on a 
 square block, having the angles shaped into slopes of a 
 flowing outline. This block rests on a sub-base of irregular 
 shape, which stands on rudely shaped stone steps, all of 
 which, except the top one, are now beneath the ground. 
 The sub-base and steps from their odd shape may have 
 belonged to an earlier cross. The shaft and base appear 
 to belong to the latter part of the 15th century, and are 
 executed in the red stone of the neighbourhood.^ The 
 yew tree in the churchyard is of considerable antiquity. 
 
 The church is dedicated to All Saints, and the patron is 
 Sir A. A. Hood, Bart. 
 
 The date of the institution of the first incumbent of 
 Dodington was November 18, 1473 ; for nearly 200 years the 
 patronage was in the hands of the Dodington family. The 
 population of the parish is about 100, and there is accom- 
 modation for 130 people within the church. There are 
 three stained glass windows, one at the east end of the 
 chancel, in the upper part of which are the original stained 
 glass representation of the heads of Our Saviour and the 
 Virgin Mary, another at the east side of the Dodington or 
 
 * See Pooley's Crosses of Somersetshire. 
 
54 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 south chapel, and a third small one on the north side of 
 the chancel. The arch between the chancel and the side 
 chapel is well constructed. There are no mural tablets 
 now on the walls. 
 
 There are four bells. High up in the north side of the 
 tower on an oval tablet there is a date 1772, indicating 
 probably some kind of decoration. The chancel was 
 restored by Sir Peregrine Acland, Bart., the encaustic tiles 
 and decoration being given by Prebendary Osborn, the 
 predecessor of the present incumbent, the Rev. W. Greswell. 
 
 The parish register which begins in the year 1538, has 
 this curious entry, Feb. 25th, 1770, was buried James Pro- 
 therow a (Welshman), as he was travelling from Carnarvon 
 too Westminster, in London, his parish, being eaten up by 
 lice through the inhumanity of the parish officer, through 
 which he came ; all possible kindness being shown him in 
 this parish, but he lived in it but a few days and died a 
 most miserable spectacle as ever was seen, aged 67." 
 
 THE MANOR HOUSE OR HALL. 
 
 The Manor house adjacent was built in the fifteenth 
 century. It has been and remains a very interesting 
 building, but was grievously pulled about and gutted in 
 that period of darkness and vandalism, — the beginning of 
 the present century. It stands on a terrace which is 
 ascended by a double flight of steps. Over the front door 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 55 
 
 is the figure of a head of a giant eating a child. A passage, 
 the left side of which is formed of hewn oak, leads into the 
 baronial hall which still retains its open oak roof, carried on 
 principals, resting on corbel heads, on the ends of which 
 angels are carved ; the intermediates are connected by most 
 peculiar tie beams, all apparently cut from one wavy tree, 
 these support massive purlins, on which rest the rafters, 
 which are kept in place by windbraces, the lower tiers 
 being of a quatrefoil design, the centre simply arched and 
 the upper angular ; each bay is finished with a band of 
 square quatrefoils, carrying shields and a battlemented 
 cresting. The screen which supports the minstrel's gallery 
 is of solid oak with bold chamfers, stopped at the bottom. 
 The original rude chimney piece was split in two, and 
 was replaced by one taken from the old saloon, now con- 
 verted into bedrooms, and is of the date 1581. ^ 
 The caryatides are grotesques : from the heads of the C^f^cx^t / 
 figures spring the scrolls of the Ionic order, whilst the 
 lower part are shaped like the feet of a lion. Round the 
 necks of these hybrids, hung by cords, are imitation jewels. 
 The coat of arms above the frieze, enclosed in an oblong 
 panel, are those of Dodington, quartered with the Trivetts 
 of Durborough, the Sydenhams of Combe Sydenham, the 
 Warres of Hestericombe and the Wyndhams of Orchard 
 Wyndham, having the suggestive and unique motto — 
 " Support thy Patrymonie," and it would be well if some 
 notable and youthful inheritors of county demesnes also 
 had this motto and acted up to it. 
 
56 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 The few remaining portions of the hall are a testimony 
 to the former importance of a building, which is now un- 
 fortunately lost to the county. 
 
HOLPORD CHURCH. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 57 
 
 1boIfor&. 
 
 The little village of Holford\ one of the most picturesque 
 spots in the West, is situated at the point of a spur of the 
 Quantocks called Hareknaps, which divides the two ex- 
 quisitely wooded valleys, known as Hodder's Combe or 
 Adder's Combe and Butterfly Combe. 
 
 The Hill-ford, as the name suggests, takes you across the 
 twin stream from the combes which make a miniature 
 " waters meet" as they unite in their rapid course over the 
 " Poet's Waterfall," and by many a water slide, and tumbling 
 cascade on their way to Kilve's delightful shore," grooving 
 the red sandstone into the deep ravine familiar to many an 
 artist as Holford Glen. The glen, by far the deepest in 
 Quantock's side, is famous alike for its lofty trees, towering 
 towards the sunlight, its gigantic trusses of fern courting its 
 shade and its deep dark pools, where many a hunted red 
 deer turns to bay. On the east side of the glen lies 
 Alfoxden Park, with its " dome " of oaks facing the house 
 in which the poet Wordsworth for a time dwelt. Anyone 
 who ever walked through those splendid oak woods, with 
 their undergrowth of holly, the warmest walk in winter, 
 the coolest in the summer; anyone who has listened to 
 the waters of that glen, murmuring accompaniment to the 
 ceaseless song of birds, sought shelter from the sun in its 
 
 Note X. Page 104. 
 
58 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 cool silent shades, or climbed up its ferny banks till it 
 brings you upon the velvet sward that leads anon to the 
 poet's path beneath " the beeches " which fringe the 
 southern side of the park as it touches the. open hill with 
 its ever changing coat of purple, yellow or russet-brown, 
 can well imagine how the poet here found inspiration for 
 so much of the pastoral beauty which breathes through 
 all his poems. Passing out of Alfoxden wood over the 
 gien stream, just below the " poet's waterfall," a winding 
 path leads up the opposite bank and takes you into the 
 road to the village, thence through the quiet little church- 
 yard of Holford, with its tiny church, its saddle-back tower, 
 and its ancient village cross. Along this path and by the 
 road 'neath Woodlands' hill the two poets must have always 
 passed on their way to Stowey.^ 
 
 The church, a comparatively modern building, is on the 
 site of an early English church. The tower is mean and 
 incomplete, but an idea is entertained of rebuilding the 
 tower as a memorial to the poet Wordsworth. Designs 
 for this tower modelled on the type of one of the best 
 Somersetshire towers, have been prepared by Mr. Philip 
 Johnston, architect. The drawings, which include some 
 proposed alteration to the church, were printed in 
 The Builder, April nth, 1891. 
 
 1 The village of Stowey once possessed a thriving silk factory, the 
 site of the water wheels, the spinning sheds and dye-house, now 
 covered with ivy, may still be seen. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 The Manor and the patronage of the living of St. Audries^ 
 were purchased by Sir Peregrine Acland, of Fairfield, in 
 1836, and are now in the possession of his daughter and her 
 husband, Sir Alexander and Lady Acland Hood. 
 
 The present house is an addition to and incorporated 
 with the old Manor house,^ the style of architecture being 
 Tudor. It is situated in the midst of lovely scenery, sur- 
 rounded by woods,^ in a park extending from the Quantocks, 
 clothed with heather gorse and fern, to the fertile meadows 
 near the sea, which is within a mile, and just outside is 
 Fire Beacon Hill, more than 1000 feet above the sea, and 
 able to communicate with the Beacons on Dunkery and 
 Dousborough. In the park herds of red and fallow deer roam. 
 
 The principal front is S.W., entered through a tower, 
 which has an octagonal newel staircase at one angle, and 
 
 1 Note xi. Page 105. 
 
 2 Previous to its renovation by Sir Peregrine Acland, it appears to 
 have retained few of its ancient and interesting features. It was a 
 plain two-storied building, having a central facade, and two square 
 projecting side wings. The old hall had been converted into a low 
 hall, with sitting rooms above, and over these attics, in which were 
 found the remains of an old black oak roof, with beautiful mouldings 
 of the Decorated period, too much damaged to admit of restoration. 
 
 3 "Woods are reckoned as indispensable to the furnishing of a country 
 house as carpets and pictures," says Sir Herbert Maxwell, and Sir A. A. 
 Hood fully recognizes the fact. 
 
6o 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 a central oriel window of three stages reaching to the 
 tower's top. Over the doorway is inscribed 
 
 " Except the Lord build the house, 
 They labour in vain who build it." 
 
 Through the tower the hall is entered, which stands 
 partly on the site of the original hall, and is 52 ft. by 26 ft. by 
 40 ft. high, having an open oak roof of the Decorated style 
 of architecture, and a minstrel's gallery. In the windows 
 are some of the emblazoned arms of the possessors of the 
 Fairfield estate from the time of Henry III. In the centre 
 of the N. E. side of the hall is a hooded chimney piece, on 
 each side of which are arches supported on marble columns, 
 behind which runs a corridor the whole length of the hall. 
 On the walls are portraits of the Vernai, Palmer, Wroths, 
 and Aclands, ancestors of Lady Acland Hood ; also of the 
 celebrated Admirals, Lords Hood and Bridport, and 8ir 
 Samuel Hood, with a Russian flag taken by Sir Samuel 
 Hood in the Baltic, and a French flag taken near the 
 harbour of Brest by Capt. Hood, Sir Alexander Acland 
 Hood's grandfather. There are also orders, medals, and 
 swords of honour given for distinguished services, old 
 armour and weapons, the horns of red deer and trophies of 
 the chase. 
 
 In some of the rooms are oil and water colour pictures by 
 Turner, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Honthorst, Elzheiner, &c. 
 Etruscan vases and bronzes, alabaster slabs from Nineveh, 
 Etruscan and Pompeian ornaments and glasses, bronze 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 6i 
 
 celts, palstaves, spear heads, &c., found in draining on the 
 Fairfield estates, and pronounced by the authorities at the 
 British Museum to be pre-Koman — ichthyosauri, &c., &c., 
 mammoths' teeth and tusks found on the beach. 
 
 In the Library are many interesting and most valuable 
 books and manuscripts, which have been all examined by 
 government officials, and carefully described in a Blue 
 Book, under the head of " Sir Alexander Acland Hood's 
 Manuscripts." 
 
 1. A Wickliffe's Bible, vellum, presented as an heirloom 
 by the Countess of Derby to " her nighest relation, Mrs. 
 Palmer, of Fairfield." 
 
 2. Modus Tenendi Parliamentum, a Fifteenth Century 
 Manuscript, beautifully illuminated, large folio, vellum. 
 
 3. Petrus Londinensis de Reparatione Lapsus, a Manu- 
 script of the Thirteenth Century, a work executed 
 before 12 14. The Initials and Letters are floriated and 
 colored with consummate skill. 
 
 4. French Chronicle of Nicholas Tryvet. Translated 
 into English. A large folio in vellum, about .1420. 
 "Wrote to Dame Mary the daughter of Kynge 
 Edward, son of Harry." 
 
 5. Accounts of the Churchwardens of Stoke Courcy 
 from the beginning of the i8th Henry vii. to 38 Henry 
 viii. 
 
 6. An answer to Bishop of Ross on the Title of the 
 
62 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 Queen of Scots to the Crown of England, folio, Six- 
 teenth Century. 
 
 7. A Briefe Abstract of the Qu,estion of Precedency be- 
 tween England and Spayne, folio, Seventeenth Century. 
 
 8. A report of the Lord Ambassador's Entertainment in 
 Spaine, folio, Seventeenth Century. 
 
 9. Sir Francis Bacon's Speech in the Lower House of 
 Parliament, 5 Jacobi, folio, Seventeenth Century. 
 
 10. Account of the family of Wroth, beginning with the 
 writer's great grandfather. Sir Thomas Wroth, Groom 
 of the Stole to Edward VL 
 
 In the Library also is a collection of Etruscan vases, 
 bronze coins, and coins from 650 B.C. to Christian era ; an 
 alabaster slab from Nineveh ; Etruscan and Pompeian 
 glass and ornaments, and a Scarabaeus ring, pronounced 
 by the highest authorities at Cairo and the British Museum 
 to be of the time of Moses; bronze armour and cinerary 
 urns. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 63 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Church is situated above, and about ten minutes 
 from, the house, and was built by Sir Peregrine Acland 
 and Sir Alexander Acland Hood in 1856 on the site of the 
 old Church, which was, in fact, so much dilapidated 
 that it could not be restored ; it was consecrated on Oct. 
 17th, St. Etheldred's day. Mr. Norton was the architect. 
 It was built of red sandstone from the neighbouring Samp- 
 ford Brett quarries —the arches and ashlar used in the 
 interior being of Doulting stone. There is a crypt under 
 the whole church, the walls of which are prevented from 
 coming in contact with the surrounding earth by an area 
 and retaining wall, so that the fabric stands as it were on 
 an island, cut off from the dampness which would have 
 arisen from the high hills around and overhanging it. In 
 this crypt is a rude Saxon or Norman font, a stone coffin, and 
 part of a tabular monument bearing the following inscrip- 
 tion — '•^ Hie jacit dom G. Malet qui obit. p'>^^o die Decem^Yi 
 M,cccc,iii." The church is in the early Decorated style of 
 architecture ; in the tower is a groined baptistery, with a 
 window by Hardman, emblematic of baptism ; the font is 
 of warm tinted Babbicombe marble, supported on eight 
 pillars of Cornish Serpentine, and stands on a base of 
 Plymouth block marble. The columns which support the 
 arches dividing the aisles from the nave are monoliths of 
 Babbicombe marble, rich in grain, and alternately warm in 
 
64 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 colour and grey. The foliated corbels were carved by 
 Farmer ; the roof and open seats are of solid oak, much of 
 which was grown on the Fairfield estate ; the east window 
 of the chancel, by O'Connor, represents the Crucifixion, 
 and was given by Sir Peregrine Acland and Lady Acland 
 Hood, in remembrance of Lady Acland. In the east gable 
 of the south aisle is a window by Kemp, in memory of the St. 
 Albyn family. In the churchyard are the remains of the 
 old Cross. 
 
 St. Audries is, obviously, short for St. Etheldreda, the virgin 
 twice-married Saxon Queen, after whom Ely Cathedral is 
 also named. The church, after nine o'clock matins, is open 
 throughout the day, and is one of the objects of attraction 
 to the many tourists who visit the neighbourhood. 
 
 The surroundings are beautiful, and the whole scene 
 seems to be one that invites contemplation — 
 
 But first, and chiefest, with thee bring 
 
 Him that yon soars on golden wing, 
 
 Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, 
 
 The cherub Contemplation. 
 
 THE RECTORY. 
 
 The Rectory is a renovation of the old one, little of 
 which now remains. The situation, 300 feet above the 
 sea, is very picturesque, backed up by the Quantock hills 
 and woods, in which the wild red deer sometimes stray ; 
 in front are the church and schools, and the ground dips 
 down through the well-timbered park to the sea, across 
 which the Welsh coast and mountains are to be seen on 
 clear days. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE 1. Page 2. 
 
 UR hills are not without special interest for the 
 geologist. A question which I proposed to a 
 scientific friend, who was my guest here last 
 summer, " Are the Quantocks part of the Old red sandstone 
 formation ? " has led to an interesting paper on the subject, 
 from which I extract the concluding summary. I gather 
 from it, that no absolute decision can be arrived at from such 
 roadside sections as alone are accessible. It would seem that 
 a mightier power than the hammer of the geologist is needed, 
 and that unless some potent wizard arise, like " the wondrous 
 Michael Scott," who spake 
 
 the words 
 That cleft the Eildou hills in three,i 
 the interior structure of the axis of the Quantocks will remain 
 a secret of the past. 
 
 1 Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, ii., 13, 7, 
 
66 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 " Suffice it to say, that there are two theories respecting 
 those beds which intervene between the Silurian and Carbon- 
 iferous formations. On the one hand, the late Professor Jukes, 
 correlating them with certain Irish beds with which he was 
 more familiar, and viewing them especially from a physical 
 point of view, pronounced them to be identical with the 
 Carboniferous slates of Cork, which attain in some places a 
 thickness of 2,000 feet. Thus, according to his view, they 
 ought stratigraphically to be placed between the top of the 
 Old red and the base of the Coal measures. On the other 
 hand, Mr. Etheridge, Palaeontologist of H. M. Geological 
 Survey of England, viewing them purely from an English 
 point of view, and laying more stress upon their Palseonto- 
 logical contents, affirms that they are one great and well- 
 defined system called Devonian, divisible into three groups, 
 lower, middle, and upper, each of these divisions characterised 
 by a distinct marine fauna, and possibly equal in time and 
 position to the Old red. In other words, Mr. Jukes would do 
 away with the term "Devonian " altogether as indicating an 
 independent geological system, whereas Mr. Etheridge would 
 preserve it as a useful nomenclature for a group of rocks 
 especially developed in Devonshire. The general body of 
 geologists incline, I think, to uphold the latter view. It is, 
 then, this group of beds to which the Quantocks belong. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 67 
 
 Those who support Mr. Etheridge's view would call them 
 
 Devonian ; those who agree with Professor Jukes would 
 
 consider them Old red sandstone. If fossil evidence is to have 
 
 any weight in deciding the question, (and I know not what 
 
 else, in the absence of direct superposition, can supply its 
 
 place), then certainly this evidence clearly tends to corroborate 
 
 the view that the Quantocks are an easterly continuation of 
 
 the Devonian beds. All will, however, agree that they come 
 
 in the order of stratification between the Silurian on the one 
 
 hand, and the Garhoniferous formations on the other. There 
 
 is much yet to be learnt of the geology of these hills. Let all 
 
 who are interested in the subject narrowly watch every 
 
 section likely to throw any light upon the beds which 
 
 constitute the base or nucleus of the range." 
 
 Since the above was written Mr. W. A. E. Ussher, of the 
 
 Geological Survey, in a paper contributed to the proceedings 
 
 of the Somerset Arch geological and Natural History Society 
 
 for the year 1889, new series, vol. xv., page 21, states that 
 
 the chocolate, lilac, and grey grits interstratified with slates 
 
 forming the northern part of the Quautock hills, belong to the 
 
 Hangman Grit series, thus forming the upper division of the 
 
 Lower Devonian beds/ 
 
 1 Devonian Fossils from the Sandstones on the N.E. of the QuantocTcs, 
 by Rev. H. H. Win wood, M. A., F.G.S., read before the Bath Field Club, 
 11 Dec, 1872. 
 
68 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 NOTE II. Page 2. 
 
 The Flora of the Quantocks does not yield in interest to 
 their geological structure. Indeed it is everywhere so un- 
 usually rich as to win the envy and delight of strangers. So, 
 remarks an accomplished botanist, by whose kind permission 
 I am allowed to enrich these notes with an extract or two from 
 a very pleasant and instructive paper of his on the flora of our 
 hills. " It includes," he says, " almost every English genus 
 manifest in the common turnpike roads which skirt the 
 downs, but revealed in full perfection to those only who 
 penetrate the interior of the range. In the sheltered lanes of 
 the less wooded combes, in the road from Kilve to Parson's 
 Farm, the footpath from the Castle of Comfort to Over- 
 Stowey, above all in the lane from the Bell Inn to Aisholt, 
 the hedge-banks and the wide grass margins of the road are 
 scarcely surpassed in beauty by the mosaic of a Swiss meadow 
 or an Alpine slope. Four different regions should be visited 
 — the hill tops, the bogs, the coppices, and the slopes toward 
 the sea. Heath, furze, bracken, and whortleberries are the 
 four tetrarchs of the hill-tops. The heaths are three — the 
 heather, the cross-leaved heath, and the bottle heath, the last 
 exhibiting rarely a white variety. From beneath their shelter 
 peep the eye-bright, the spring potentil, the heath bed-straw, 
 and the creeping St. John's wort ; amidst them springs the 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 69 
 
 uncommon bristly bent-grass ; everywbere the green paths 
 which wind amongst them are carpeted with the moenchia 
 and the little breakstone, and bordered by the red and yellow 
 sheep's sorrel, and the pale yellow mouse-ear. On many of 
 the prickly furze beds grows the wiry leafless dodder ; every 
 ditch is filled with masses of lemon- scented oreopteris, and 
 every patch of stones is hidden by the pink blossoms of the 
 mountain stone- crop. At 800 feet above the sea we meet 
 with mat grass and the cross-leaved heath. Higher still, we 
 find the slender deer's hair, first cousin to the isolepis of our 
 greenhouse, and highest of all grow, for those who know their 
 haunt, two species of the staghorn club moss. 
 
 " The bogs are very numerous. They form the summits of 
 the combes, and some of them descend the hill until they join 
 a deep-cue stream. All are covered with the turquoise bloom 
 of the forget-me-not, the glossy peltate leaves of the marsh 
 pennywort, and choked with the little water blinks. They 
 all include the liver- wort, with its umbrella-shaped fructifi- 
 cation, sphagnum, marshwort and pearl wort; and on their 
 margins grow the ivy-leaved hare-bell, the lesser spearwort, 
 the lousewort, and the bog pimpernel. In a few of them are 
 found the oblong pond weed and the marsh St. John's wort ; 
 in two combes grows, alone of its genus, the round leaved 
 sun-dew.'* 
 
70 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 " Of the coppices, Cockercombe and Seven Wells are the 
 best known, but their large trees check the growth of flowers, 
 and the botanist will find more to please him in Butterfly 
 Combe and Holf ord Glen, which are smaller and less frequent- 
 ed. Here in early spring masses of the white wild hyacinth 
 rise amid last year's dead leaves ; here grow the cow- wheat 
 wood rush, golden rod, sheep's scabious, wood pimpernel, wild 
 raspberry, sanicle, and twayblade. The helleborine is found 
 in Crowcombe ; in Tetton woods the rare pink lily of the 
 valley ; in Cothelstone the adder's tongue and mountain 
 speedwell ; in Ashley Combe the lypteris ; in Aisholt wood 
 the white fox glove, white herb Robert, and white prunella ; 
 while under the famous hollies of Alfoxden, sacred to the 
 memory of Feter Bell and We are Seven, grow the graceful 
 millet grass and a rare variety of the bramble. 
 
 " On the St. Audries' slope the changed soil and the 
 influence of the sea give birth to several new plants. The 
 autumn gentian, the tufted centaury, the round-headed garlic, 
 and the sea starwort are abundant near the cliffs ; the 
 perfoliate yellow-wort is common ; fluellen grows in the 
 stubbles, the lady's tresses near the lime kiln, the sea pimpernel 
 between the stones, the arrow-grass and hard-grass just above 
 the sea, to which we descend between banks covered, as no 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 71 
 
 other banks are covered, by the magnificent large flowered 
 tutsan. 
 
 " A few rare plants remain. The Cornish moneywort 
 abounds in a small combe near Quantock's Head ; the rare 
 white stone-crop at Over-Stowey; the white climbing cory- 
 dalis is found close to Mr. Esdaile's lodge ; the lady's mantle, 
 goldilocks, and bistort in Aisholt meadows ; the stinking 
 groundsell hard by the remains of Coleridge's lime-tree-bower, 
 near which I have found the purple bloom-rape ; and Wilson's 
 film-fern, one of the rarest of British ferns, is established in 
 the Poets' Glen." 1 
 
 1 am indebted to another friend, ^ also distinguished as a 
 botanist, and a member of the Bath Field Club, for the follow- 
 ing notes of a single morning's walk in the neighbourhood of 
 Woodlands. He tells me that he met with Sihthorjoia Uuropea 
 (a very rare plant out of Cornwall) ; Drosera Anglica ; Anacjallis 
 tenella ; Lastrea Oreopteris ; Hypericum elodes ; and the 
 WaJilenhergia hederacea, a most graceful little plant, which 
 grows all up the sides of the stream in Hayman's Combe. A 
 subsequent more extended walk was not so productive of 
 flowers. " In that respect," he adds, " I give the palm to the 
 
 ^ The Flora of the Quantocks, a paper read before the Somersetshire 
 A. and N. H. Society, Sept. 12th, 1872. By the Rev. W. Tuckwell. 
 
 2 Rev. Canon Ellacombe, Rector of Bitton. 
 
72 
 
 7 HE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 neighbourhood of Woodlands, which deserves more accurate 
 search than I could give it. The most interesting plant I 
 found in my walk was the Burnet rose, the parent of the 
 Scotch rose of our gardens. I had found it in Wales before, 
 but did not know it was a Somersetshire plant." So far my 
 botanical friend. There is a parasitical plant, which I, who 
 am no botanist, sometimes find growing on the fern in my 
 walks on the down, and which interests me, because it is one 
 of several species of plants which Paley, in his Natural 
 Theology, mentions as worthy of a particular notice, either 
 from some singular mechanism, or by some peculiar provision, 
 or by both. This one I refer to is the Cuscuta Europcea. 
 " The seed opens,'' says Paley, " and puts forth a little spiral 
 body, which does not seek the earth to take root, but climhs in 
 a spiral direction, from right to left, up other plants, from 
 which by means of vessels it draws its nourishment. The 
 " little spiral body " proceeding from the seed is to be 
 compared with the fibres which seeds send out in ordinary 
 cases, and the comparison ought to regard both the form of 
 the threads and the direction. They are straight ; this is 
 spiral. They shoot downwards ; this points upwards. In the 
 ruhj and in the exception, we equally perceive design.^' 
 
 I should have added to this short list the Wild Madder 
 (rubia peregrina) a rare plant, but very abundant in the hedges 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 73 
 
 near Blue Anchor : I also found it in the hedges near Stog- 
 umber. On a later visit to Mr. Nichols (April 18, 1888), T 
 had the pleasure of recording for him a valuable addition to 
 the natural history of the Quantocks. About half-way up 
 the hills opposite his house I put up one of the rarest of 
 Enghsh birds, the Golden Oriole ; he got up from the heather 
 and gorse so close to me that I had a full view of his dark 
 wings and golden back ; he dropped into a hollow, and though 
 I tried for some time I could not get a second view of him. 
 It is a bird so well marked, that it is not possible to confuse 
 it with any other British bird, but to make sure I went the 
 following day to the South Kensington Museum and saw the 
 good specimen there. 
 
 The lovers of Wordsworth will be interested to learn that in 
 one of our Combes, at least, may be found his own Osmunda 
 Begalis : — 
 
 that tall fern 
 So stately, of the queen Osmunda named ; 
 Plant lovelier in its own retired abode 
 On Grasmere beach, than Naiad by the side 
 Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Nere, 
 Sole-sitting by the shore of old romance."^ 
 
 NOTE III. Page 26. 
 The biography of Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, might 
 
 1 Poems; vol. i,, p. 353. 
 
74 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 form an instructive chapter in that delightful book, the Self 
 Help of Mr. Smiles. 
 
 Of humble parentage, he received only the rudiments of 
 education common to youths in his station of life, and in due 
 course was apprenticed to his father, ^ a tanner,in his native vil- 
 lage. His natural good sense and force of character soon led 
 him to conclude, that to succeed in life, it would be requisite 
 to add to his provincial training the more scientific knowledge 
 of his calling which London alone could afford. He accordingly 
 placed himself as a workman in the yard of one Mr. Purkis, 
 the most eminent tanner of the time. During this period, it 
 so chanced one day that his master, observing the youth busily 
 absorbed in reading, found on enquiry that a volume of Tasso 
 in the original Italian was the subject of his study. This led 
 to notice and advancement in his employer's service, and his 
 own high character and commanding talents did the rest.-^ 
 
 ^ This, no doubt, was the generally accepted story, and Mr. Nichols 
 relates it as he himself had heard it, and believed it. Mr. Poole's relations 
 with Mr. Purkis long before the period of the incident alleged had been of 
 the most intimate nature ; and the fact negatives the statement that it was 
 in his yard Mr. Poole worked in the manner described. There would seem, 
 indeed, to be some doubt whether the incident in Poole's career ever 
 occurred at all. Mrs. Sandford entertains a doubt about it, and we 
 refer to that lady's own account of the "enterprise" which appears to em- 
 body all that is known in the family traditions. — Life of Thomas Poole, 
 vol. 1.— Pages 80, 81, 82, 83, 84. Editor. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 75 
 
 Such, in brief, was the early history of a man, who not only 
 became by his own exertions one of the leading characters in 
 his native place and its neighbourhood, but was honoured with 
 the intimate friendship of many persons among his contempor- 
 aries of the highest distinction in literature and science, as well 
 as in political life. It is a remarkable circumstance, however, 
 that among so many persons of note who are recorded as the 
 associates of the two poets and their friendly host, not a single 
 clerical name occurs. Such, indeed, was at that time the low 
 state of general education and learning, especially in districts 
 remote from metropolitan influence, that few probably of the 
 rural clergy of his neighbourhood would not have felt them- 
 selves more in place amidst the sports of the mountain and the 
 field than in the brilliant society that met at the house of 
 Thomas Poole. The more worthy of record does the fact 
 appear, that the kindly influence of one man, not himself a 
 member of a learned profession, should have been so success- 
 ful in throwing a gleam of culture and refinement over a little 
 retired Somersetshire town, and in doing much to substitute 
 honest talk and gentle manners for the vulgar gossip and 
 petty squabbles of a country parish. 
 
 Wordsworth says of his friend Poole, "During my residence 
 at Alfoxden I used to see much of him, and had frequent 
 occasions to admire the course of hia daily life, especially his 
 
76 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 conduct to his labourers and poor neighbours. Their wishes 
 he carefully encouraged, and weighed their faults in the scales 
 of charity. After his death, was found in his escritoire, a 
 lock of grey hair carefully preserved, with a notice that it had 
 been cut from the head of his faithful shepherd, who had 
 served him for a length of years. He was much beloved by 
 distinguished persons — Mr. Coleridge, Mr. Southey, Sir H. 
 Davy, and many others, and in his own neighbourhood was 
 highly valued." 
 
 A masculine intellect, matured by diligent reading and 
 foreign travel, enabled Poole to afford valuable assistance, in 
 statistics and matters of local administration, to the govern- 
 ment of the period ; and he had so mastered the political 
 philosophy of Turgot, Adam Smith, and other advanced 
 thinkers, as to suggest the adoption of free trade at a time 
 when it had few or no supporters among the politicians of 
 the day. 
 
 De Quincey, the English Opmm Eater, in one of his marvellous 
 Essays, has given a graphic account of his visit to Coleridge, 
 at Nether Stowey,^who was at the time the guest of Mr. Poole, 
 from which I extract the following description of his worthy 
 
 ^ The house in which Poole lived is now transformed into an " All 
 Sorts" shop. On recently enquiring of the occupant what he knew of the 
 house, he stated that he never heard even the name of Mr. Poole. Editor. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 host : " I found him a stout, plain-looking farmer, leading a 
 bachelor life in a rustic, old-fashioned house ; the house, how- 
 ever, upon further acquaintance, proving to be amply fur- 
 nished with modern luxuries, and especially with a good 
 library, superbly mounted in all departments bearing at all 
 upon political philosophy; and the farmer turning out a 
 polished and liberal Englishman, who had travelled exten- 
 sively, and had so entirely dedicated himself to the service 
 of his humble fellow-countrymen — the hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water in this Southern part of Somersetshire — 
 that for many miles round he was the general arbiter of 
 their disputes ; the guide and counsellor of their 
 difficulties ; besides being appointed executor and guardian 
 to his children by every third man who died in or about the 
 town of Nether Stowey." Coleridge himself, however, was 
 not quite so easily to be met with, his movements being 
 always very uncertain. Nominally a guest of Mr. Poole, he 
 chanced at the time of De Quincey's arrival to be absent at 
 Enmore, on a visit to his neighbour. Lord Egmont, a kind 
 friend and warm admirer of the poet. For the amusing 
 account of his subsequent discovery at Bridgwater by De 
 Quincey I must refer to the pages of that writer. See 
 Autobiograjphical Sketches by T. De Quincey, pp. 144-5. A 
 curious sketch of De Quincey himself, under the pseudonym 
 
78 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 of Papaverius, may be found in Mr. T. Hill Burton's 
 entertaining little volume, The Book Hmiter. For the other 
 particulars contained in this notice of the life of Thomas 
 Poole, I am indebted partly to local information, and partly 
 to the Life of Sir Humphry Davy by Dr. Paris, which 
 contains a number of letters written by Mr. Poole. I have 
 also gleaned a few facts from a very meritorious little book, 
 A Brief Meynoir of William Baker ^ F.G.S., Secretary of the 
 Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 
 by John Bo wen. Mr. Poole died on the 8th of Sept., 1837, 
 aged 72 years, and his remains were interred in the 
 Churchyard of his native parish, Nether Stowey. 
 
 NOTE IV. Page 27. 
 
 Of the other names I have mentioned as associates of the 
 Quantock poets, Charles Lloyd, the son of a wealthy 
 Birmingham banker, and himself a minor poet, deserves a 
 niche in our gallery of Stowey residents. His abode there 
 in the cottage of Coleridge, who describes him as "a young 
 man of great genius," gave occasion to some beautiful lines 
 addressed To a Young Friend, on his purposing to domesticate 
 with the Author. Composed in 1796. At Stowey, Lloyd 
 wrote a dramatic poem of considerable merit, The Duke 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 79 
 
 d'Ormond^ and published in conjunction with Coleridge and 
 Charles Lamb, a volume of Sonnets and Other Poems : Bristol, 
 1797, 12mo. To this little book, now very scarce, Coleridge 
 prefixed the following motto, invented for the nonce, I 
 imagine, by himself, and expressive of his own feelings 
 towards his associate friends : Duplex nohis vinculum^ et 
 amicitice et similium junctarumque Gamcenarum ; quod utinam 
 neque mors solvaf, neque temporis longinquitas. Here Lloyd 
 also published The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri, translated 
 from the Italian : 3 vols., 12mo. He also wrote several 
 novels. Serjeant (afterwards Judge) Talfourd, in his Life 
 of Charles Lamb, remarks of his writings : " In power of 
 discriminating and distinguishing, carried to a pitch almost 
 of painfulness, Lloyd has scarcely been equalled ; and his 
 poems, though rugged in point of versification, will be found 
 by those who read them with the calm attention they require, 
 replete with critical and moral suggestions of the highest 
 value." He was afterwards a neighbour of Wordsworth, at 
 the beautiful hamlet of Brathay, near Ambleside, and died at 
 Versailles, in 1839, in his 64th year. In January, 1797, he 
 paid a brief visit in London to Charles Lamb, who was then 
 sufi'ering under a strange and melancholy domestic calamity. 
 I insert the first two stanzas from an affecting poem in which 
 Lamb expressed his gratitude to his " Unexpected Visitor :" 
 
8o 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 " Alone, obscure, without a friend, 
 A cheerless, solitary thing, 
 Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out ? 
 What offering can the stranger bring 
 
 Of social scenes, homebred delights, 
 That him in aught compensate may 
 
 For Stowey's pleasant winter nights. 
 For loves and friendship far away ? " 
 
 Charles Lamb, tlie most original and amiable of 
 humourists, paid, I think, but a single visit to Stowey. I 
 have already referred to Coleridge's verses on the occasion of 
 his old friend and schoolfellow's presence at his cottage 
 home. Lamb himself thus expresses his own kindly 
 reminiscences of his visit in a letter written shortly after his 
 return home. 
 
 " I am scarcely yet so reconciled to the loss of you, or so 
 subsided into my wonted uniformity of feeling as to sit 
 calmly down to think of you and write to you. But I 
 reason myself into the belief that those few and pleasant 
 holidays, shall not have been spent in vain. I feel 
 improvement in the recollection of many a casual 
 conversation. The names of Tom Poole, of Wordsworth and 
 his good sister, with thine and Sara's, are become familiar in 
 my mouth as household words. You will oblige me by 
 sending my great coat, which I left behind in the oblivious 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 8i 
 
 state the mind is thrown into at parting. Is it not ridiculous 
 that I sometimes envy that great coat lingering so cunningly 
 behind — send it to me by a Stowey waggon, if there be such 
 a thing. But above all that Inscription ! [a poem of 
 Wordsworth.] It will recall to me all your voices, and with 
 them, many a remembered kindness to one who could and 
 can repay you all only by the silence of a grateful heart." ^ 
 
 In another letter to Coleridge he says, " Your company 
 was a cordial. When I can abstract myself from the things 
 present I can enjoy the remembrance of it with a freshness of 
 relish ; but it more constantly operates to an unfavourable 
 comparison with the uninteresting converse I partake in." 
 He goes on to lament, that, of all the great names of 
 literature his neighbours were profoundly ignorant, and then 
 proceeds, " They talk a language I understand not, — I 
 conceal sentiments that would be a puzzle to them. I can 
 only converse with you by letter, and with the dead in their 
 books." 2 
 
 SouTHEY was only an occasional visitor, — coming up now 
 and then from Burton, near Christchurch, or from Bristol. 
 On one occasion, in a letter to a friend (20th August, 1799), 
 he says : 
 
 * Works i., 106. 2 Ibid, p. 167, 
 
82 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 " I write to you from Stowey, and at the same table with 
 Coleridge. ... I have been some days wholly immersed 
 in conversation. In one point of view Coleridge and I are 
 bad companions for each other. Without being talkative, I 
 am conversational, and the hours slip away, and the ink dries 
 upon the pen in my hand." ^ 
 
 Southey, like Wordsworth, at the close of his life (in 1836), 
 paid a farewell visit to the haunis of his youth. In one of 
 his letters to his daughter he has recorded his visits to 
 Stowey, to Fairfield, Dunster, Killerton, and other places in 
 the West of England. 2 
 
 I may be forgiven for bestowing a passing notice on one 
 other and lesser name, referred to in the foregoing pages as a 
 casual associate of our two poets, — that of John Thblwall. 
 He was decidedly the best lecturer on elocution I ever 
 listened to, and had an intimate acquaintance with the 
 choicest English authors. More than thirty years ago, I 
 attended his course at the Hoyal Institution, Bath ; he had 
 lectured on Milton, and his subject for the morrow was, the 
 Burial Service. On reaching the lecture room next morning 
 I found the doors closed. Mr. Thelwall was dead. He 
 expired suddenly in the preceding night. 
 
 * Selections from the letters of R. Southey, i. 78. 
 ^ Letters iv., 476. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 83 
 
 NOTE V. Page 28. 
 One great name still remains to complete tlie Stowey circle 
 — a band of men of whom it is not too much to say that they 
 were moulding English thought and speech into a higher and 
 newer expression of freedom and intelligence. Sir Humphrey 
 Davy was, for thirty years and more, the intimate friend and 
 frequent guest of Thomas Poole, who watched his career from 
 obscurity to distinction with kindly interest. He too, at the 
 close of his days, came here, the wreck of his former self, to 
 revisit the scenes of his youth, and, as he fondly expressed it, 
 " to wander about his dear old walks of Quantock and 
 AJfoxden." Accordingly he took up his abode, during the 
 greater part of the last winter he ever spent in England, in 
 "the comfortable and hospitable house" of his early friend. 
 *' On his arrival, * Here I am,' ho said, ' the ruin of what I 
 was.' But nevertheless,^' continues Mr. Poole, "the same 
 activity and ardour of mind continued, though directed to 
 different objects. He employed himself three hours in the 
 morning on his Salmonia, which he was then writing. He 
 would then take a short walk, which he accomplished with 
 difficulty, or ride ; and after dinner I used to read to him 
 some amusing book. We were particularly interested by 
 Southey's Life of Nelson. ' It would give Southey great 
 pleasure,' he said, ' if he knew how much his narrative 
 
84 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 affected us.' In his Salmonia, he styled it, ' an immortal 
 monument raised by genius to valor.' From Rome in 
 February, 1829, he sent his last letter to his old friend. * I 
 am here,' he writes, 'wearing away the winter — a ruin 
 amongst ruins.' " He died at Geneva on the 29th of May, in 
 the same year. 
 
 To attempt any enumeration of the great scientific 
 discoveries of this illustrious philosopher falls not ^vithin the 
 scope of my paper. It is in his literary capacity chiefly that 
 he has conferred honour upon this part of Western 
 Somersetshire, and especially upon Nether Stowey — half 
 town, half village — nestling under the slope of those 
 Quantock Hills, the beautiful scenery of which retained for 
 him such a life-long charm. Here he wrote his Salmonia. 
 Here after his marriage he contemplated the purchase of an 
 estate. It was here, in his earlier days, that Coleridge said 
 of him, that " if he were not the greatest natural philosopher 
 of the nineteenth century, he would have been its greatest 
 poet," To persons who are acquainted with his sublime 
 quatrains, entitled Spinosis^n, this will scarcely seem 
 exaggerated praise. That the writer who thus records, in a 
 letter to a friend, the feeling of his own intimate communion 
 with nature, was essentially a poet, who can doubt ? 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 85 
 
 " To-day for the first time I have had a distinct sympathy 
 with nature. I was going on the top of a rock to leeward- 
 The wind was high and everything in motion. The branches 
 of an oak tree were waving and murmuring in the breeze. 
 Yellow clouds, deepened by grey at the base, were rapidly 
 floating over the western hills, the whole sky was in motion, 
 the yellow stream below was agitated by the breeze. Every- 
 thing was alive, and myself part of the series of visible 
 impressions. I should have felt pain in tearing a leaf from 
 one of the trees.'' This radiant dream, so exquisitely 
 delineated, is akin to the mood of mind which Wordsworth 
 describes as his own, when as a boy, he says, he " felt a sense 
 of pain" in seeing his own merciless devastation in the hazel 
 grove while engaged in nutting, and bade his companion 
 
 with gentle hand 
 
 Touch, for there is a spirit in the woods. 
 
 Several of Davy^s early minor poems, suggested by the 
 clifis and downs of his native Cornwall, appeared in the 
 Bristol Anthology (a work now extremely scarce) in 1799. 
 Some of his later verses are of such rare beauty and so little 
 known, that every reader of taste will thank me for the 
 perusal of the two brief extracts that my space will allow me 
 to insert ; the first is part of a poem descriptive of Italian 
 scenery : 
 
86 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 Never shall I forget the happy hours 
 
 We passed in Eboli's enchanting bowers, 
 
 Midst palms, and orange groves, and new-born flowers. 
 
 Far in the west Salerno's villas spread, 
 
 Lucana's mountdins rose above our head; 
 
 No single cloud obscured the summer sky, 
 
 And yet the wind was turbulent and high 
 
 And full it blew upon the Tyrrhene sea, 
 
 That rose sublime in billowy majesty, — 
 
 Its waves arose, but not in stormy hue, 
 
 For pure as heaven was their ethereal blue, 
 
 Save where they beat the shore in crested pride, 
 
 White as the snow upon the glacier's side. 
 
 Though loud their murmuring 'midst the mountain trees, 
 
 Yet tuneful Philomel, as if to prove 
 
 More loud as well as sweet the voice of love. 
 
 Poured from the caruba her thrilling song, 
 
 The music of a minstrel wild and strong ; 
 
 And gentle turtle-doves, in thicket nigh. 
 
 Heaved, scarcely audible, the broken sigh ; 
 
 The gale was from a zephyr's softest wing. 
 
 The air was that which summer steals from spring ; 
 
 Life seemed in every moving thing to be — 
 
 The blades of maize, the blossom on the tree ; 
 
 The cones that rattled on the giant pine 
 
 Seemed stirred by impulse of a power divine.^ 
 
 This charming description of Eboli is not overdrawn. 
 Outside the town, just opposite the little Locanda, formerly a 
 
 ^ Fragmentary Remains of Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart. ; edited by John 
 Davy, M.D., F.R.S., p. 205. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS, 87 
 
 Franciscan Convent, in which some years ago I passed 
 several pleasant days, there stood a gigantic umbrella-pine, 
 the only one near, of any size. This I named Davi/s Pine. 
 
 The preceding couplets were composed in the height of his 
 scientific fame, and in the enjoyment of health and 
 happiness. The affecting fragment which follows was 
 written at Ravenna, in failing strength and spirits, not long 
 before the close of his brilliant career. It expresses the 
 feelings of a solitary wanderer, and is not without a 
 reference to his want of domestic happiness : — 
 
 Oh ! could'st thou be with me, daughter of heaven, 
 
 Urania ! I have now no other love : 
 
 For time hath withered all the beauteous flowers 
 
 That once adorned my youthful coronet : 
 
 With thee, I may e'en still in vernal times 
 
 Look upon nature with poet's eye, 
 
 Nursing those lofty thoughts that in the mind 
 
 Spontaneous rise, blending their sacred powers 
 
 With images from mountain and from flood. 
 
 Sir Humphrey's last employment, concluded at the very 
 moment of the invasion of his fatal illness, was the 
 composition of the suggestive little volume, Consolations in 
 Travel, or the last Bays of a Philosopher. The author 
 evidently shews his attachment to the not improbable belief 
 that our intellectual essence is destined hereafter to enjoy a 
 higher and better state of planetary existence, drinking 
 
88 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 intellectual light from a purer source and approaching 
 nearer to the Divine mind. In the letter from Rome, already 
 referred to, he says of this work : "It contains the essence of 
 my philosophical opinions and some of my poetical reveries. 
 It is, like the Salmonia, the amusement of my sickness ; but 
 paulo majora canamus. I sometimes think of the lines of 
 Waller, and seem to feel their truth : — 
 
 The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
 
 Lets in new lights from chinks that time has made." 
 
 One of the latest acts, at a time when he had lost the 
 power of writing, was to dictate the following dedication of 
 his book : 
 
 To 
 
 Thomas Poole, Esq., 
 Of Nether Stowey, 
 In remembrance of 
 Thirty years of continued and faithful friendship, 
 
 NOTE VI. Page 30. 
 
 Since my paper was written, I have learnt that there 
 existed another claimant for the office of ' Pennefactor ;' and, 
 by the courtesy of a lady, the daughter of the Poet's friend, I 
 have been allowed to read several playful letters from 
 Coleridge to her father^ one of which I subjoin : — 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 89 
 
 Octob, 7, 1799. 
 Stowey. 
 
 Most exquisite Pennefactor ! 
 I will speak dirt and dagjgers of the wretch who shall deny thee to be 
 the most heaven-inspired, munificent Penmaker that these latter Times, 
 these superficial, weak, and evirtuate ages, have produced to redeem them- 
 selves from ignominy ! And may he, great Calamist ! who shall vilipend 
 or derogate from thy pen-making merits, do 25enance, and sufier penitential 
 25e^^alty, pcnn'd up in some penurious /peninsula of pevidX fire, pensive and 
 pendulous, pending a huge slice of eternity ! Were I to write till Pentecost, 
 filling whole Pcntateuchs, my grateful expressions would still remain 
 merely a Penumbra of my Debt and Gratitude. 
 
 Thine, 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 To Mr. W , 
 
 This pentagonal letter 
 
 comes pencil'd as well as Your messenger neither came or 
 
 penn'd. returns penniless. 
 
 I often drive past that thatched cottage by the road side at 
 the entrance of the long street of Nether Stowey, where, 
 more than seventy years ago, the above note was written, and 
 the wish has sometimes occurred to me, that it were possible 
 to rescue it from its present use, a village ale-house, — (the 
 Coleridge Cottage Inn). Are there no admirers of Coleridge 
 who would be willing to assist in appropriating to some 
 purpose connected with education — a Free Library, or a 
 village reading room,^the house and orchard of the Poet, 
 where he spent those three marvellous years which formed 
 
90 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 the prime and inan"hood of his poetical life, and where were 
 conceived the splendid dreams of The Manner and the 
 Christabel ? 
 
 NOTE VII. Page 33. 
 
 It is curious and interesting to contrast the different 
 estimate formed of Wordsworth at the two periods of his 
 visits to Alfoxden. Driven from the place in early 
 manhood, by ignorant prejudice and misrepresentation, as a 
 suspected 'conspirator,' the grand old bard after more than 
 forty years' absence, returned to his former abode, as the 
 Poet Laureate of England, with the enthusiastic plaudits 
 of the University of Oxford and the cheers of the House of 
 Commons ringing in his ears. " The latent love of his 
 poetry," observes one of his ablest and most discriminative 
 critics/ "cherished here and there in secret places among 
 the wise and good, had caught and spread into a general 
 admiration." Coleridge had already, in his philosophical and 
 beautiful criticism of the Lyrical Ballads in his Biographia 
 Literaria, established to the conviction of more reflective 
 minds, the fact, that, in spite of his peculiar poetic theory, in 
 itself only partially tenable, Wordsworth was a true and 
 
 h Notes from Books, by Henry Taylor, author of Philip Van Artevelde, 
 &c., p. 181. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 91 
 
 a great Poet ; but one of the earliest popular recognitions of 
 the poet's great merits came from the pen of Professor 
 Wilson in Blacl^wood^s Magazine (August, 1822). 
 
 "We believe that Wordsworth's genius has had a greater 
 influence on the spirit of poetry in Britain than was ever 
 before exercised by any individual mind. He was the first 
 man who in poetry knew the real province of language, and 
 suffered it not to veil the meanings of the spirit. In all 
 these things and in many more, Wordsworth is indisputably 
 the most Original Poet of the Age ; and it is impossible, in 
 the very nature of things, that he can be eclipsed. From his 
 golden urn other orbs may draw light ; but still it will be 
 said of him — 
 
 Then shone tiie firmament 
 
 With living sapphires. Hesperus who led 
 The starry host shone brightest." 
 
 This admirable criticism was soon followed by many other 
 similar tributes, till the homage to the poet's genius, so long 
 denied, swelled into a burst of admiration, which found an 
 echo in the Senate itself. The following eloquent eulogy I 
 copy from the newspaper report of the speech of Sir T. N. 
 Talfourd in the House of Commons on the 18th of May, 
 1837. 
 
92 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 " Let me suppose an author of true, origiDal genius, 
 disgusted with the inane phraseology which had taken the 
 place of poetry, and devoting himself from youth to its 
 service, disdaining the superficial graces which attract the 
 careless, and unskilled in the moving accidents of fortune,— 
 not sailing in the tempest of the passions, but in the 
 serenity which lies above them; whose works shall be 
 scoffed at by fools — whose name made a byeword — yet who 
 shall persevere in his high and holy cause, gradually 
 impressing thoughtful minds with the perception of truths 
 made visible in the severest forms of beauty, until he shall 
 gradually create the taste by which he shall be appreciated — 
 influence one or the other of the master-spirits of his age — be 
 felt pervading every part of the national literature — 
 softening, raising, and enriching it ; and, when at last he 
 shall find his confidence in his own aspirations justified, and 
 the name which was the scorn, admitted to be the glory of 
 his age, he shall look forward to the close of his earthly 
 career, as the event that shall lend the last consecration to 
 his fame, and deprive his children of the harvest he was just 
 beginning to reap. As soon as his copyright becomes 
 valuable it is gone. This is no imaginery case ; I refer to one 
 who 'in this setting part of time,' has opened a vein of 
 sentiment and thought unknown before — who has supplied 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 the noblest antidote to the freezing effects of the scientific 
 spirit of the age — who while he has dictated that poetry 
 which is the essence of the greatest things, has cast a glory 
 round the lowliest conditions of humanity, and traced out the 
 subtle links by which they are connected with the highest — 
 of one, whose name will now find an echo, not only in the 
 heart of the secluded student, but in that of the business of 
 those who are fevered by political controversy — of William 
 Wordsworth^ 
 
 Another estimate of the poet's merits will, I am sure, be 
 read with interest, coming as it does from the pen of one so 
 highly venerated as the present Lord Chancellor : — ^ 
 " Wordsworth I esteem as the greatest and most truthful 
 poetical thinker of his generation, who has done far more 
 than any other man to neutralize the poison of Rousseau's 
 system, and to extract what is good from it, leaving the 
 poison behind. He is a poet conscious of a great vocation, 
 whose works ( to use a metaphor of his own ) are an 
 intellectual temple dedicated to Grod as seen in nature, and in 
 the power, variety, beauty and sacredness of natural human 
 feeling. The whole office and object of his poetry is to 
 harmonise the philosophy of sentiment with natural religion 
 — not opposing natural religion to the Christian scheme (the 
 truth and exclusive sufficiency of which he never fails to 
 
 ^ Earl Selborne. 
 
94 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 recognize) — but appealing to the voice of God in His works, 
 as one, in its moral meaning, admonitions, and tendencies, 
 with the voice in His word."^ 
 
 But the tribute to his genius which gave most pleasure to 
 the poet was that offered by the author of The Christian Year, 
 in the dedication to his Frcelectiones Academicce, which was as 
 follows : 
 
 Viro Vere Philosopho 
 
 Et Vati Sacro 
 Gulielmo Wordsworth 
 Cui Iliad Muaus Tribuit 
 Deus Opt. Max. 
 Ut, Sive Hominum Affectus Caiieret, 
 Sive Terrarum Et Cceli Pulcritudinem, 
 Legentium Animos Semper Ad Sanctiora Erigeret, 
 Atque Adeo, Labeute Saeculo, Existeret, 
 Non Solum Dulcissimae Poeseos, 
 Verum Etiam Divinse Veritatis 
 Antistes. 
 
 Mr. Keble's expression *'ad sanctiora erigeret" was 
 particularly grateful to the poet, indicating, as it does very 
 happily, the main scope of the writings of him who left his 
 laurels to his living and worthy successor — 
 
 ^ The Connection of Poetry with History. A Lecture, by Roundell Palmer, 
 Esq., Q.C, M.P. for Plymouth. Jan. 8, 1852. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 95 
 
 greener from the brow 
 
 Of him who uttered nothing base.^ 
 
 NOTE VIIL Page 33. 
 
 Any reminiscence of the sojourn of Wordsworth under the 
 shadow of our Quantock Hills would be very imperfect, if it 
 failed to include a reference to his accomplished and 
 fascinating sister. During his residence at Alfoxden, she 
 was the cherished associate of her illustrious brother ; the 
 well-informed companion of his mountain walks and of his 
 winter fire-side. She combined with the most charming 
 simplicity an intimate acquaintance with the best and purest 
 literature, and a fund of various knowledge, which was never 
 obtruded. In fact, there was nothing about her at all 
 resembling that irksome personage, the blue-stocking lady, or 
 femme savante. In the poet's early temperament there 
 existed a certain hardness and harshness, which her gentle 
 influence and exquisite sensibility tended to soften and 
 refine ; she diverted his attention from the exciting politics 
 of that stormy period, and 
 
 preserved him still 
 
 A poet ; made him seek beneath that name 
 And that alone, his office upon earth. ^ 
 
 ^ Tennyson : Dedication to the Queen. 
 ^ The Prelude, 309. 
 
96 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 He has recorded in a number of passages Ms obligations to 
 
 his " sole sister," and the power for good which her tenderness 
 
 and the hallowing sway of her fine mind exerted over his own 
 
 sterner nature : it is to her that he refers in this stanza — 
 
 She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, 
 And humble cares and delicate fears ; 
 A heart the fountain of sweet tears, 
 And love, and thought, and joy. 
 
 The few extracts that have been hitherto printed from Miss 
 Wordsworth's " Diary " reveal, if not the actual " accomplish- 
 ment of verse," in her journal about the daffodils, a critic in 
 the Quarterly Review some years ago observed, " Few poets 
 ever lived who could have written a description so simple and 
 original, so vivid and picturesque. Her words are scenes and 
 something more. The poet's own pretty stanzas are only an 
 enfeebled paraphrase." Of this my readers shall judge for 
 themselves : — "We saw a few dafi'odils close to the water-side. 
 As we went along there were more and yet more ; and at last, 
 under the boughs of the trees, we saw there was a long belt 
 of them along the shore. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. 
 They grew among the mossy stones about them. Some rest- 
 ed their heads on these stones as on a pillow ; the rest tossed 
 and reeled, and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed 
 with the wind, they looked so gay and glancing." 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 97 
 
 Favoured by the kindness of an intimate friend of the poet 
 and his sister, Lady Richardson, of Lancrigg", I am enabled to 
 subjoin some pathetic verses (probably the last effort of her 
 pen), which Miss Wordsworth wrote while lying on her couch, 
 hopeless of recovery : — 
 
 AN INVALID'S HYMN. 
 
 The worship of this Sabbath morn 
 
 How sweetly it begins ; — 
 With the full choral hymn of birds 
 
 Mingles no sad lament for sins. 
 
 Alas ! my feet no more may join 
 
 The cheerful Sabbath train ; 
 But, if I inwardly lament, 
 
 Oh ! may a will subdued all grief restrain. 
 
 No prisoner am I on this couch, 
 
 My mind is free to roam, 
 And leisure, peace, and loving friends 
 
 Are the best treasures of our earthly home. 
 
 Such gifts are mine ; then why deplore 
 
 The body's gentle slow decay, 
 A warning mercifully sent, 
 
 To fix my hopes upon a surer stay. 
 
 D. W., March 19th, 1840. 
 
 Miss Wordsworth became, in 1836, as the poet has told us, 
 a confirmed invalid ; yet such was the natural strength of 
 her constitution, that she survived eighteen years ; but her 
 fine mind was clouded long before her decease, and during the 
 latter years of her life became a melancholy blank. The poet 
 
98 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 relates a pleasing iucident of her long sickness. " While con- 
 fined to her room, a red-breast came and took up its abode 
 with her, and at night used to perch npon a nail from which 
 a picture had hung. It used to sing, and fan her face with 
 its wings in a manner that was very touching : 
 
 She long had lain 
 
 With languid limbs and patient head, 
 Reposing on a lone sick-bed ; 
 Where now, she daily hears a strain 
 That cheats her of too busy cares, 
 Eases her pain, and helps her prayers. 
 Now, cooling with his passing wing 
 Her forehead like a breeze of spring. 
 Recalling now, with descant soft. 
 Shed round her pillow from aloft, 
 Sweeb thoughts of angels hovering nigh." 
 
 There are several poems inserted in Wordsworth's collected 
 Works ( ed. 1857), that were written by his sister. The 
 Address to a Child (i. 171). The Gottager to Her Infant 
 (p. 275). Loving and Liking (p. 338). The Floating Island 
 (iv., 332). Miss Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount in 1855, 
 in her 84th year. 
 
 I have now finished my task. It will be a source of much 
 gratification to me, if the few facts I have collected, and the 
 description I have attempted to give, should prove useful to 
 any of my friends who may visit this district, or to others in- 
 to whose hands this little brochure may chance to fall ; and 
 still more so, if its guidance should contribute to lend some 
 additional interest to their walks or rides over our breezy 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 downs, or to their explorations of the countless beauties that 
 lurk in many a nook of our secluded combes.' 
 
 The amount of literary associations that cluster round our 
 Quantock Hills may possibly prove a surprise to some of my 
 readers. Omitting further mention of the other distinguished 
 individuals that I have enumerated, this locality may claim as 
 its own a large share in the fame of two great Poets — the half, 
 and more perhaps, of the choicest writings of one of them ; 
 and, of the immortal productions of the elder bard, no incon- 
 siderable portion owes its inspiration to his wanderings over 
 * smooth Quantock's airy ridge.' It is no exaggeration, there- 
 fore, to designate both of them as Somersetshire Poets, and to 
 assert the claim of the county to inscribe in the long roll of 
 its worthies, the grand names of Wordswoeth and of 
 Coleridge. 
 
 A List of the Poems composed by Wordsworth while resid- 
 ing at Alfoxden, or written elsewhere, and containing allusions 
 to Quantock scenery : — 
 
 We are Seven. Written at Alfoxden in the Spring of 1798, 
 but suggested by an incident which occurred during a visit to 
 the Ruins of Goderich Castle on the Wye. 
 
 An Anecdote for Fathers, Suggested in front of Alfoxden 
 House. 
 
 The Gomi)laint of a Forsaken Indian Woman. Written at 
 Alfoxden. 
 
 The Last of the Flock. Written at Alfoxden : the incident 
 occurred in Holford Village. 
 
100 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 The Idiot Boy. Composed in the Holly Grove at Alfoxdcn. 
 
 S"er Eyes are Wild. Written at Alfoxden. 
 
 A Night Piece. Composed on the road between Nether- 
 Stowey and Alfoxden, 1798. 
 
 Ruth. Written in Germany, but the scene laid on the 
 Quantocks. 
 
 The Thorn. Written at Alfoxden. 
 
 Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey. While 
 resident at Alfoxden. 
 
 Peter Bell. Written at Alfoxden in the summer of 1798. 
 
 A Whirl-Blast from behind the Hill. Written in the Holly 
 Grove at Alfoxden in the spring of 1799. 
 
 Expostulation and Reply. Composed in front of the House 
 at Alfoxden in the spring of 1798. 
 
 The Tables Turned. Ibid, 
 
 Lines Written in Early Spring. Composed in the Glen at 
 Alfoxden, 
 
 To my Sister, Composed in front of Alfoxden House. 
 
 To Simon Lee. Written at Alfoxden. 
 
 Goody Blahe and Harry Gill. Written at Alfoxden, 1798. 
 
 Old Cumberland Beggar. Written partly at Racedown, 1749, 
 partly at Alfoxden, 1798. 
 
 A^iimal Tranquility and Decay, Written while at Alfoxden. 
 
 Some parts of The Excursion ; the fine passages describing 
 the afiliction of Margaret, and the lines which form the con- 
 clusion of the fourth book, were also written at Alfoxden. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 NOTE IX. Page 49. 
 
 At tlie time of the conquest this Holford was a part of 
 Alured de Ispania's manor of Stringston, which manor in the 
 time of Henry II. came into the possession of Adam de 
 Canteville, by his marriage with the daughter and heiress 
 of Ranulph de Stringston, the owner and inhabitant of that 
 township. This Adam, who had his surname from the 
 seignory of Canteville in the duchy of Normandy, by his 
 said wife had issue two sons William and Hugh, of whom 
 William de Canteville, being by his father settled at Doding- 
 ton, then written Dodeton, assumed that title, which con- 
 tinued in his descendants ever after. 
 
 William, eldest son of this William, married Agnes, 
 daughter of Simon Portbrief, and was father of Roger de 
 Dodeton, lord of the manor of Dodington, 14 Edward I., 
 contemporary with whom were Simon and Thomas, perhaps 
 brothers. This Roger was succeeded by his son William, 
 who succeeded 35 Edward I., and left issue Philip, who died 
 18 Edward III. having for his heir and successor Thomas de 
 Dodeton, who died before 36 Edward III., having married 
 Maud, daughter and coheir of Stephen Laundey and Cecilia 
 his wife, daughter and heir of Cecilia, wife of Sir Edward 
 Burnel, knight, and sister and coheir of Sir Thomas Trivet, 
 of Durborough. By the said Maud he had issue another 
 Thomas, who by his first wife Beatrice, daughter of John 
 Buckler, was father of John Dodington, of Dodington ; and 
 by his second wifo Joan, daughter and heir of Thomas 
 
102 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 Gapphey, of Grappliey, in the parish of Meare, had Philip 
 Dodington, ancestor to the Dodingtons of Gapphey, as also 
 to Sir William Dodington, of Bremer, in the coanty of 
 Southampton, knight in the time of Charles I. 
 
 John Dodington, of Dodington, eldest son of Thomas 
 above-mentioned, married Mary, daughter of John Pain, and 
 had issue another John, who was living 2 Richard III., and 
 married Elizabeth, daughter of Oliver Hywish, by whom he 
 had Richard Dodington, of Dodington ; which Richard 
 married Margaret, daughter and heir of John Lyte, and was 
 father of John Dodington, of Dodington, Richard, and Giles. 
 
 John, the eldest son, was twice married ; by his first wife 
 Thomasine, daughter of Thomas Duland, he had issue George 
 Dodington, who succeeded him in the estate of Dodington, 
 and died in 1617; he married Catherine, daughter of Robert 
 Walsh, Esq., by whom he had several children. John, the 
 eldest, was of Dodington, and by Catherine his wife was 
 father of Sir Francis Dodington, knight, which Sir Francis, 
 6 Charles I., was sheriff of Somerset. On the breaking out 
 of the civil wars, he was the first that executed the king's 
 commission of array in this country, after which he joined 
 himself to the Earl of Hertford, and served as a colonel in 
 the western army with such zeal and fidelity, that he was by 
 name excepted in the treaty of Uxbridge, and all other 
 treaties that were afterwards entered into by the parliament 
 with the king. Upon the destruction of the royal party he 
 fled into France, and there maintained himself several years 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 103 
 
 by selling English knives and buckles, till at last a French 
 widow took compassion on him and married him, and by her 
 he had two sons, both bred up in the French army. His 
 first wife Anne, daughter and heir of Sir William Hoby, and 
 relict of John Sydenham, Esq., by whom he had John, his 
 son and heir, who married Hester, daughter of Sir Peter 
 Temple, bart., and died in 1663, in his father's lifetime. 
 After the restoration, Sir Francis Dodington lived privately 
 at Dodington, and though his estate had been greatly wasted 
 by what he did ia the civil war, yet he could never be 
 prevailed upon to ask anything of the crown, having engaged 
 himself (as he always declared) on a mere principle of 
 conscience. John, his son above-mentioned, took another 
 party, and was Secretary to Thurlo, Secretary of State to 
 Oliver Cromwell. He was a learned and ingenious man, and 
 translated several books from the French language, among 
 which was the history of the administration of Cardinal 
 Richlieu, which he dedicated to Thurlo. He left issue 
 George, his only son, who succeeded Sir Francis Dodington, 
 his grandfather, in the estate of Dodington ; which George, 
 in the time of King William, was Secretary to the Earl of 
 Oxford, Treasurer of the Navy, and in the reigns of Queen 
 Anne and George I. was one of the lords commissioners 
 of the admiralty. He married the daughter and heiress of 
 H. Bull, and died in 1720, S.P., leaving this his estate 
 to George Bubb,^ Esq., son of Mary his sister, and 
 
 ^ Bubb Dodington was rather a noisy fussy politician in the time of 
 the first and second Georges. His diary exhibits a large share of vanity, 
 and reveals much about Prince Frederick and his doings, neither very 
 amusing nor edifying. 
 
THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 Jeremias Bubb, Esq., who by act of parliament assumed the 
 arms and name of Dodington. Which George was of 
 Gunvil Eastburj, in the county of Dorset, where liis uncle 
 began a most magnificent building, and intended it for the 
 future seat of his family. He was employed by George I. as 
 his envoy and plenipotentiary in Spain, and was afterwards 
 by the same king made one of the lords commissioners of the 
 treasury, and represented the towns of Bridgwater, Weymouth 
 and Melcomb- Regis, in parliament. In 1761 he was created 
 Baron of Melcomb- Regis, and dying without issue in the 
 year following, the seat and estate of Eastbury, and the 
 manor of Dodington, came by a family settlement to Richard 
 Earl Temple. 
 
 NOTE X. Page 57. 
 
 The property of this parish was at the conquest divided 
 between Roger do Curcelle and William de Mohun, and is 
 thus recorded — " William holds of Roger, Hoi ford. Adelwald 
 held it in the time of King Edward, and gelded for half a 
 hide. The arable is one carucate. There are two cottagers 
 and two servants, and one acre of meadow, and ten acres of 
 pasture, and one acre of wood. It is worth eighteen shillings. 
 Alric holds of Roger, Holeforde. Alward held it in the time 
 of King Edward, and gelded for half a virgate of land. The 
 arable is half a carucate, with which there is one villane, and 
 it renders three shillings. Hugh holds of William Holeford. 
 Alwold held it in the time of King Edward, and gelded for 
 one hide. The arable is two carucates, which are in demesne, 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS, 
 
 with one servant, and one villane, and five cottagers, and one 
 plough. There is a mill of tenpence rent, and three acres of 
 meadow, and sixty acres of pasture, and four acres of wood. 
 
 NOTE XI. Page 59. 
 Lies eastward of St. Decuman's. This Manor was given 
 by the Conqueror to Sir William de Mohun, and is thus 
 recorded in the survey — " William himself holds Cantocheve. 
 Elnod held it in the time of King Edward, and gelded for 
 three hides and a half. The arable is eight carucates. In 
 demesne are three carucates, and seven servants and ten 
 villanes, and four cottagers, with six ploughs. There are 
 sixteen acres of meadow, and fifty acres of wood. Pasture 
 one mile long, and one mile broad. It was worth three 
 pounds, now four pounds. It was held in the time of King 
 John by William de Punchardon, of the Castle of Dunster. 
 At his death this William left several daughters, heiresses to 
 his possessions, of whom Aubrea was married to Hamelyn de 
 Deaudon, of Deaudon, in Devonshire, by whom she had a son 
 named Thomas, who died without issue, and two daughters, 
 Mabil, wife of Sir Baldwin Malet of Enmore, and Joan, wife of 
 Roger of Claville. In the partition of the estates this manor 
 became the property of Malet, and continued in the heirs of 
 that family in a regular descent till the time of Henry VIII., 
 when William Malet, of Enmore, sold it to his younger 
 brother, Baldwin Malet, afterwards Sir Baldwin Malet, the 
 solicitor- general. This Sir Baldwin married — 1, Joan, daugh- 
 ter and heir of John Tacle, of Honiton, and 2, Ann, daughter 
 
io6 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 and heir of Thomas Hatch of WoUej, by both of whom he 
 had children. Those by the first were settled at St. Audries, 
 and continued three generations, till in the time of Ch&rles I. 
 Arthur Malet, great grandson of Sir Baldwin, sold this 
 Manor to Thomas Malet, who was descended by a younger 
 branch from the Malets of Wolley above-named. This 
 Thomas was bred a lawyer, called to the degree of Serjeant 
 in 1635, and in 1641 was made one of the judges of the 
 Court of Common Pleas. He died in 1664, leaving two sons, 
 Sir John Malet and Michael. Sir John married Florence, 
 daughter of John Wyndham, of Orchard, and was father of 
 Baldwin, whose son William was the last of this name that 
 possessed St. Audries. He died in his passage from Lisbon 
 to Jamaica, having married Margaret, daughter of William 
 Baily, chancellor of the church of Wells, who died before 
 him without issue. In 1791 the manor belonged to Robert 
 Everard Balch, Esq. 
 
 Baldwin Malet, in 1702 was appointed Receiver General 
 for Somerset and Bristol, and with his son, William, gave 
 sureties to Queen Anne for £40,000 then £10,000, and again, 
 in 1708, for £45,000. About Lady Day, 1805, Baldwin 
 Malet lent Richard Yeale, of Exeter, a very large sum of 
 money. Veale became bankrupt, and Baldwin and William 
 were unable to pay their debt to the Crown. Baldwin and 
 William obtained an Act of Parliament to sell or raise mort- 
 gages on the following estates belonging to them, — St. 
 Audries, West Quantoxhead, Brompton Ralph — Tolland — 
 Lawrence Lydiard — Lydiard St. Lawrence — Preston Bowyer 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 107 
 
 — Gittisham — Alnscombe — Bucknell — Honiton. The 
 Trustees appointed were Sir John Trevelyan, John Malet, 
 William Clayton. Baldwin and William petitioned Parliament 
 to be permitted to compromise, and their prayers were 
 granted. William succeeded his father, leaving a daughter, 
 Ann. 
 
 DEED DATED JULY 1st, 1737. 
 
 Ann Malet was the only daughter and heir-at-law of 
 William Malet of St. Audries.^ Between William, Earl of 
 West Hartree, John Horner of Barwick, of the 2nd part, 
 Thomas Strangway Horner of Mells, of the 3rd part, 
 William Mayne of West Hartree, of the 4th part, and 
 Baldwin Malet of Doulting, Clerk, uncle and heir-at-law of 
 Ann Malet deceased, only daughter and heir-at-law of 
 William Malet, late of St. Audries, deceased, the said 
 Baldwin Malet being also brother and heir of the said Wm. 
 Malet of the 5th part. John Griass of the 6th part. Edward 
 Dyke of the 7th part, and James Smith of St. Audries of the 
 8th part. By an indenture dated 17th Feb., 1706, made 
 between Sir John Trevellian, John Malet, William Clayton 
 and Richard Shoreditch of the 1st part, the said William 
 Malet of the 2nd part, and Ann Milner of the 3rd part, re- 
 citing that all the Manors belonging to Malet were vested by 
 
 1 Baldwin Malet, the Father of William Malet, married Anne daughter 
 of Sir George Horner, of Wells, by whom he had William, George, 
 Baldwin, Thomas ; and then, secondly, Anne daughter of George Harbeu 
 by whom he had John, Francis, Alexander, Anne and Jane. 
 
io8 THE QC7ANT0CKS, 
 
 a late Act of Parliament in Sir John Trevellian and the other 
 trustees, that they should sell for the best price, or mortgage, 
 any part or parcell of the above manors, so as to raise so 
 much money as to satisfy the money owing to Queen Anne by 
 the said Baldwin Malet, in respect of his having been Receiver 
 General of the County of Somerset, and City and County of 
 Bristol, of divers duties for the years 1702, 1703, and the 
 costs of the said trust. 
 
 In consideration of the sum of £1200 paid to the said 
 Anne Milner on account of the said Baldwin Malet for dis- 
 charging the debt to Queen Anne, the said Wm. Malet agrees 
 to sell to the said Anne Milner the manor of St. Audries and 
 the living, on the condition that if Wm. Malet or his heirs 
 should pay Anne Milner £1200 their bargain to her should 
 terminate. 
 
 The above act is called an Act to enable the Lord High 
 Treasurer to compound with Wm. Malet for the debt of his 
 father for whom he was surety, recites that the said Wm. 
 Malefc had paid ;^4768 : 7 : 0, raised by the sale of lands en- 
 tailed upon him, and that there was still £1614 : 9 : 5|- due, 
 it was therefore enacted for the Lord High Treasurer to 
 compound with Wm. Malet for the said debt by the 29th day 
 of September, 1709. 
 
 On William and Ann*s death, his brother and heir, 
 Baldwin, Rector of Doulting, succeeded to the estate, which 
 was so heavily encumbered that he sold it to James Smith for 
 £8000. He left four daughters. To Elizabeth he left lands in 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 109 
 
 Spaxton, Cannington, and others bought of Sir Robert 
 Smith, Kt. To Francis Langford Budville, with lands bought 
 of Lord Waldegrave ; to Lavinia, St. Audries. Sandhill Farm, 
 AUer, Box ; to Margaret, Lands in Devon, and £9000. 
 Lavinia Smith sold the estate of St. Audries to Robert Balch 
 for £13,662. Robert Balch died and was succeeded by his 
 son, Robert Everard, who died and was succeeded by his 
 brother George, and on his death, he was succeeded by his 
 sister Christiana, who bequeathed her estates at St. Audries, 
 Stowey, and elsewhere to her nearest relation Henry Harvey. 
 He sold St. Audries to the Rev. Elias Webb for £35,000, who 
 sold, in 1836, to the Rev. — Luxton of Widcombe, 69a. 2r. 18p. 
 and 95a. 2r. 14p., and the remainder of the Manor and the 
 Living to Sir Peregrine Acland, who settled these and his 
 property in Sampford Brett and Aller on his daughter, Isabel 
 Harriet, on her marriage with Alexander B. P. Hood, eldest 
 son of Sir Alexander Hood, of Wotton, Bart,, now Sir Alexander 
 Acland Hood, Bart. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Page 
 
 Acland, Lady, Window in St. Audries' Church in remembrance of 64 
 
 Acland, Sir Peregrine . . . . . . . . 54i 59- 60 
 
 Alfoxden, woods of .. .. .. .. .. 11 
 
 Alfred's Tower .. .. .. .. .. .. 11 
 
 Appendix .. .. .. .. .. 6510109 
 
 ,, references to in text, at foot, 2, 11, 26, 27, 28, 30, 33, 49, 57, 59, 
 
 65 to 105 
 
 Beacons, ancient, on Wilsneck, Cothelstone, Morncombe, etc. . . 7 
 
 Beddoes, Dr. .. .. .. .. .. 28 
 
 Belgic-Britons, discoveries relating to . . . . . . g 
 
 Belgic frontiers . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 
 
 Benedict de Spinosa . . . . . . . . . . 17 
 
 Brendon hills .. .. .. .. •• .. 6, 13 
 
 Bridgwater, town and port of .. .. .. .. 11 
 
 British fortifications . . . . . . . . . . 8 
 
 Britannia Prima . . . . . . . . . . , . 6 
 
 Britanniae, Treatise de excidio . . . . . . . . 10 
 
 Burnet, George . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 
 
 Butterfly combe . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 
 
 Byron and Christabel . . . . . . . . . . 20 
 
 Cairn, near Kilton . . . . . . . . . . 76 
 
 Cannington Park Hill . . . . . . . . . . 5 
 
 Castra Aestiva 
 
 Castle Neroche .. .. .. .. .. .. 13 
 
 Coleridge and Wordsworth's earliest visit to, and residence in 
 
 Somersetshire, and poems . . . . 4, 14 
 
 ,, their influence on poetry ., 17 
 
Page 
 
 Coleridge and Wordsworth, contrast between them . . . . 17 
 
 ,, Coleridge's Christabel, when and where planned . . 18, 19 
 
 ,, works produced at Nether Stowey .. .. 21 
 
 ,, first intimacy with Wordsworth . . . . . . 22 
 
 „ Kubia Khan . . . . . . . . . . 22 
 
 The Remorse, written at suggestion of Sheridan .. 22 
 
 ,, Description of " Waterfall," or '• Wordsworth's Glen " 24 
 
 ,, Description of Dousborough .. 26 
 
 Mrs., and her son Hartley .. .. 27 
 
 Frost at Midnight . . . . . . . . 28 
 
 Government spy sent to watch Coleridge, Thelwall, and 
 
 Wordsworth . . . . . . . . 32 
 
 grave of .. .. .. .. 34 
 
 Visit to by Emperor of Brazil ,. 34 
 
 Coins of the Lower Empire . . . . . . . . 6 
 
 Combe Florey .. .. .. .. .. .. 13 
 
 Combwitch . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 
 
 Cothelstone Beacon .. .. .. .. .. n 
 
 Cottle at Nether Stowey . . . . . . . . . . 27 
 
 Cowper, ballad of John Gilpin . . . . . . . . 31 
 
 Cowper, herald of a better day . . . . . . . . 18 
 
 Crowcombe, vale of . . . . . . . . . . 6 
 
 Crowcombe, village of . . . . . . . . . . 13 
 
 Danes, the, repulsed at Watchet . . . . . . . . 10 
 
 Darwin and Hayley . . . . . . . . . . 18 
 
 Davy, Sir Humphrey . . . . . . . . . . 26 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas .. .. .. .. .. 28 
 
 Dodington, parish of .. .. .. .. 49 to 51 
 
 ,, church of .. .. 511054 
 
 Manor House and Hall . . . . 54 to 56 
 
 family of 53, 55 
 
 Drayton's Poly-olbion . . . . . . . . . . 12 
 
 Dunkery Peak ,. u 
 
Page 
 
 Elworthy barrows . . . . . . . . , . 13 
 
 Exmoor .. .. .. .. .. .. ..6,13 
 
 Fire signals . . . . . . . , . . . . 5 
 
 Forts of ante-Roman origin . . . . . . . . 6 
 
 Fox, Charles James, admiration of Wordsworth . . . . 30 
 
 Gildas, the oldest British historian . . . . . . 10 
 
 Greswell, Rev. W. . . . . . . . . . . 54 
 
 Hoare, Sir Richard Colt, on Roman stations . . . . 7 
 
 Hodder's combe . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 
 
 Holford, parish of . . . . . . . . • • 57. 58 
 
 ,, church of . . . . . . . . . . 58 
 
 design for new tower by Mr. Johnston . . . . 58 
 
 „ Lady Acland . . . . . . . . • • 59, 64 
 
 Hood, Sir Alexander Acland . . . . ... • • 53i 59 
 
 Kilve, valley of .. .. .. .. .. .. 11 
 
 Lamb, Charles . . . . . . . . . . , . 24. 28 
 
 Lloyd, Charles . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 
 
 Montacute, peaks of .. .. .. .. .. 11 
 
 Montagu, Basil . . . . . . . . . . 28 
 
 Nichols, Rev. W. L., letter to Rev. J. R. Vernon . . . . 14, 15 
 
 Osborn, Prebendary .. .. ... .. .. 54 
 
 Parret, river . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 
 
 Poetry, and influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge upon it . . 17, 18 
 
 Poole, Thomas, character of .. .. .. 26, 28, 30, 31 
 
 „ Maecenas of Stowey . . . . . . . . . . 28 
 
 life of, by Mrs. Sanford .. .. .. ..39,74 
 
 Protherow, James, death of . . .. .. .. 54 
 
Page 
 
 Quantocks, mountain range of, the Oberland of Somersetshire . . i 
 
 Wilsneck, Cothelstone, Dousborough .. ..1,12 
 
 characteristic scenery of .. .. .. i 
 
 shrubs and plants of .. .. .. .. 2 
 
 ,, "Heads," the .. .. .. .. .. 2 
 
 ,, Keltic name of .. .. .. .. 3 
 
 ,, seven wells of . . . . . . . . 3 
 
 Cockercombe .. .. .. .. 3 
 
 Hunter's dell .. .. .. .. .. 3 
 
 scenery of . . . . . . . . . . 4 
 
 ,, combes of, deep sunk . . . . , . . . 4 
 
 ancient encampments of .. .. .. 5 
 
 Dousborough, a corrnption of Hows-borough, a hill fort 
 
 of Belgic-Britibh origin .. .. .. 5 
 
 "Trendle Ring " .. .. .. .. 8 
 
 view from summit of Dousborough .. .. g 
 
 ,, Wilsneck .. ,. .. .. .. n 
 
 Roman road of Polden .. .. .. .. ,. n 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter and Christabel . . . . . . . . jg 
 
 Smith, Sydney .. .. .. .. .. .. 13 
 
 Southey, Robert . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 28 
 
 Steep and Flat Holms . . . . . . . . . . 9, 10 
 
 Stogumber, earthwork near . . . . . . . . 8 
 
 St. Audries .. .. .. 591062 
 
 ,, works of art, antiquities, &c. .. .. 9,60,61 
 
 Church . . . . . . . . . . 63, 64 
 
 „ Rectory . . . . . . . . . . 64 
 
 Taunton Dean, note on .. .. .. .. ..1,12 
 
 Canning's parody from Milton upon .. .. 32 
 
 Thelwall, meeting Wordsworth in the Glen . . . . . . 32 
 
 Tragedy, a Quantock . . . . . . . . 37 to 47 
 
 Uxella, ancient estuary of . . . . . . . . . . 10 
 
Page 
 
 Watchet and Porlock, entrenchments near the coast . . . . 8 
 
 Wedgwood, the younger . . . . . . . . . . 28 
 
 Wild Red Deer .. .. .. .. 13 
 
 Willett tower .. .. .. .. .. 13 
 
 Wilsneck . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 
 
 Woodlands . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 
 
 Wordsworth, his Lyrical Ballads .. .. .. ., 18 
 
 „ the Prelude & Remorse . . . . . . 22 
 
 „ his early poems and his associations with Alfoxden 22, 23 
 
 his "Waterfall" .. .. .. .. 24 
 
 „ his sojourn at Alfoxden, and origin of hib poems 30 to 35 
 
 „ meeting with Thelwall in the Glen . . . . 32 
 
 ,, Alfoxden revisited, 1841 . . . . . . 33 
 
 „ poems with dates and places, where composed 99, 100 
 
 „ Dorothy, her description of Alfoxden . . . . 23, 40 
 
Shortly will be Published, small 8vo., neatly half bouna, 
 PRICE TWO SHILLINGS. 
 
 A limited number on large thick paper will be issued to Subscribers only, 
 handsomely bound in Cloth, Price FIVE SHILLINGS. 
 
 STREET-LORE OF BATH: 
 
 A RECORD OF CHANGES 
 
 IN THE 
 
 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 
 OF THE CITY. 
 BY 
 
 R. E. M. PEACH. 
 
 Autlior of "Bath, Old and Nezv;" "Historic Houses in Bath;" 
 ''History of the Bath Abbey Church;" ''The Hospital of St. 
 John Baptist;" "Annals of Swainswick ; " Editor of the ReiK 
 W. L. Nichols's "The Quantocks and their Associations ; 
 " Rambles about Bath," editions 6 and 7. 
 
 " I love everything that's old, old friends, old times, old manners, old books, 
 old wine." — Goldsmith. 
 
 BATH: E. R. BLACKETT, 10 STALL STREET. 
 
 and all Booksellers, 
 1891. 
 
New edition in Four Divisions, One Shilling each, 
 in paper covers. 
 
 :6af^, ©Id and ilew, 
 
 A HANDY GUIDE AND A HISTORY. 
 
 With Map and Illustrations. 
 
 By R. E. M. PEACH. 
 
 Also'just published by the same Author, price los. 6d. 
 
 jSni^afe of ^wain^wic^, 
 
 " Historic Houses" size, cloth. 
 Large Paper Copies, Cloth, 25s. ; Half Vellum, 30s. 
 
 J^isloric ^on^es in 3ai^ and 
 iHeiij ^ssocialiong", 
 
 pp. i8c. Small 4to. 1883. 
 Ditto, Second Series, pp. 160, cloth. Uniform. 1884. 
 
 THe ;p:55ey G^urcfi of :fiaffi. 
 
 Its History and Associations. With Seven Illustrations. 
 Price, 6s. Small 4to, cloth. 
 
 T^e jpospifaf of ^1 Jofii\ jSapiisf, 
 
 7/5 History and Associations. Price, 4s. Small 4to. 
 
SULIS WATER 
 
 The Natural Mineral Water of Bath, Aerated, 
 
 ''SUPREME AMONG TABLE WATERS." 
 
 Unequalled for Gout and Rheumatism, 
 
 R. B. CATER, Sole Lessee, 
 
 The Springs, Grand Pump Room, BATH- 
 
 Extract from Mr. A. W. F]reeinen's Work on " The Thermal 
 Baths of Bath:' 
 
 SuLis Water,. IN its medical and general aspects. 
 
 TTEMPTS to aerate the Bath Waters have until now only 
 imperfectly succeeded, or altogether failed, partly owing, it may 
 be, to inadequate machinery, and partly to the fact that no 
 sufficient prospect of final success existed to stimulate the efforts of 
 those by whom they were made. 
 
 In aerating the Bath Waters the experiments have been made 
 under exceptionally favourable conditions. No expense has been 
 spared, the lessee has been privileged to intercept the Waters at their 
 source, whilst the most perfect appliances have been used, together 
 with eminent scientific assistance, not perhaps open to those who have 
 conducted former experiments. The experiments have succeeded 
 beyond all expectations, notwithstanding the anticipation of many 
 scientific men who predicted failure. In 1878, the British Medical 
 Association met in Bath, and on that occasion the lessee submitted to 
 that learned body the first perfect example of Sulis Water. 
 
 The aeration of Mineral Waters is by no means novel. It has been 
 attempted more or less successfully in the case of many Natural 
 Mineral Waters, sometimes for the purpose of making them more 
 agreeable to the taste, and at others to prevent them from deteriorating 
 or decomposing by time ; but in the case of the Bath Waters, neither 
 of these is the object in view, and without wishing to be tedious, the 
 real reason is here scientifically explained. 
 
 The Mineral Waters of Bath present the paradox of being at once 
 the most permanent and yet the most unstable of fluids — permanent, 
 because no appreciable change has taken place in their constituents 
 since their discovery ages ago, but yet unstable, owing to the fact that 
 from the moment of issuing from their source a change takts place, 
 which progresses as the water cools by a process of oxidation from 
 
contact with the air, but which, by the system now brought before the 
 public, can be prevented. These waters, anriong other constituents, 
 contain iron, but in a peculiar and more than usually active form — 
 namely, that of Carbonate of Iron. This substance is of a highly 
 evanescent character. It can easily be prepared in the laboratory, but, 
 to use the words from a well known treatise on Chemistry, " it cannot 
 be washed and dried without losing carbonic acid and absorbing 
 oxygen. Such waters are known by the rusty matter they deposit by 
 exposure to the air." This latter fact is well known to those who 
 have taken the Bath Waters : the peculiar discoloration on the 
 drinking glasses used at the Pump Room is due to a deposit of what 
 originally was Carbonate of Iron, but which, having lost its carbonic 
 acid by decomposition, now assumes the form of the almost inert oxide. 
 
 Now, it is a well known medical fact, that the administration of 
 the Carbonate of Iron in mineral water is often more beneficial as a 
 chalybeate than a much larger quantity of other ferruginous compounds, 
 but its instability which we have explained prevents its use as a 
 medicine. The Bath Waters contain this substance when drawn from 
 the spring, but in a few minutes or, at most, hours they no longer 
 contain it, but in its place a small quantity of oxide. 
 
 To remedy this defect, and to enable patients at a distance to reap 
 much of the advantages of a visit to Bath, is the object of this process 
 of aeration. The change of Carbonate to Oxide of Iron will not take 
 place in the presence of Carbonic Acid Gas, and therefore advantage 
 has been taken of this chemical fact to saturate the Waters with the 
 gas, and thus to preserve them (v;ith the exception of temperature) in 
 their original state as they issue from the spring. 
 
 It should, however, be stated in the strongest manner that this 
 process makes no alteration whatever in the chemical constitution of the 
 Waters. In drinking Sulis Water, a person is drinking Bath Water, 
 pure and simple, plus Carbonic Acid Gas, this addition having a 
 threefold object — ist, to render the Water a refreshing and agreeable 
 beverage ; 2nd, to maintain their medical virtues unimpaired for any 
 length of time; and 3rd, and most important of all, to preserve one of 
 their most important chemical constituents in its original activity as 
 when bubbling from its natural source. 
 
 To those who are unable to visit the Baths and obtain the benefit 
 of the combined external and internal use of the Waters, we strongly 
 recommend a prolonged course of Aquas Sulis, as the next efficacious 
 thing to a visit to the city, and in those mild but troublesome 
 conditions of skin irritation, which arise from many causes — change of 
 season, alteration of temperature, disordered digestion, &c. — these 
 Waters, regularly taken for a few weeks, will not only be a pleasant 
 and cooling beverage, but a most valuable remedial treatment. Indeed, 
 there are few cases of skin disease which will not receive benefit from 
 their administration. It is an excellent tonic, does not distend or 
 weaken the stomach, and it must be emphatically observed that, 
 independent of all medical considerations, experience shows that there 
 is no mineral water that is more agreeable or more suited to the robust 
 and healthy than Siilis Water. 
 
COOLING & SONS' 
 
 GARDEN and FARM SEEDS 
 
 Are used throughout the Country. 
 
 Reliable— Moderate in Price. 
 
 SEED WAREHOUSE : 
 
 11 NORTHGATE STREET, BATH. 
 
 COOLING & SONS' 
 
 NURSERIES, 
 
 Batheaston, near Bath. 
 
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