Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/333

Charles Dickens] on the Tavy, four miles from the town. They still preserve there his portrait by Jansen, his sword, his ship drum, and the Bible, which he carried with him round the world. The house was built by Sir Francis on the pleasant site of an old Cistercian abbey, given him by Queen Elizabeth. The barn and belfry still remain, and four arches of the central tower are built into the garrets. In the abbey orchard hard by he paced, musing of Darien and the Pacific, of Spanish galleons and pieces of eight. Let the crow for a moment be biographical. This terror of the Spaniards was the son of a poor yeoman on the banks of the Tavy. In the days of persecution his father fled into Kent, and in Elizabeth's reign took orders and became vicar of Upnor church, where the royal fleet then usually anchored. Francis became a sailor in a small coaster, and his master eventually leaving him his bark and equipment, he grew a thriving man. Suddenly fired by the exploits of Hawkins against the Spaniards "in the Golden South Amerikies" Drake started for Plymouth, sold his ship, and joined Hawkins's last expedition to the Spanish Main. Losing all in this adventure, Drake swore revenge on Spain, and sailed off with three fishing boats and seventy-three men and boys to plunder Spanish towns, burn Spanish ships, and seize Spanish wealth any where, whether on sea or land. He returned to Plymouth on a Sunday, his frail vessels brimming with gold, and all the townspeople came running from church to welcome the hero.

In his next venture, with only five small vessels and one hundred and sixty-four men, Drake circumnavigated the world, and returned home after an eventful voyage of two years and nearly ten months, having taken a plate ship, and plundered half the sea-port towns of Chili and Peru. From that time forth Drake was a thorn in the side of Spain. Half patriot, half buccaneer, he ravaged the coast of Spain, destroyed four castles and one hundred vessels, and, in fact, "singed the King of Spain's beard" all over. He invaded Portugal; he discovered the secret of the Spanish trade with India; he helped to shatter the Armada. Spanish admirals died of broken hearts at the success of Drake. Then came the miserable expedition to the West Indies, when the leaders quarrelled and everything went wrong. Baskerville failed to cross the Isthmus of Darien, and burn Panama; Hawkins died of vexation; fever broke our at Nombre de Dios; and Drake at last died, partly of disease and partly of a broken heart. The sailors lowered him to his grave in the sea off Porto Bello:

For a smaller mercy Tavistock is also grateful, namely, for being the birthplace of William Browne, a humble contemporary of Spenser and Shakespeare, and author of Britannia's Pastorals, a poem highly eulogised by Lambe, Hazlitt, and others of that school. Browne was a tutor to the Earl of Carnarvon, who was slain at the battle of Newbury, acquired a competency under the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke, purchased an estate, and wrote pastoral verses, without vigour, but never wanting in elegance. Selden, Drayton, Wither, and Ben Jonson admired him, but he soon passed out of mind. His Inner Temple Masque, produced at court, was not printed till a hundred and twenty years after his death, and all his poems but this would probably have perished, but for a single copy of them preserved by Warton. Milton is supposed to have imitated him, and carried him further in L'Allegro and Lycidas. In his prettiest episode, The Love of the Walla and the Tavy, he sings the praises of a brook that runs past Kilworthy and the home of the Glanvilles. One of the choicest passages of the Tavistock poet is his description of a rose:

The Glanvilles were of Tavistock. They were lawyers by right of race. The son of a judge of the Common Pleas, Sir John was speaker and king's serjeant before the civil war. The Puritans took away his seat in parliament, and sent him to prison, to note cases and judgments behind the bars of the Tower. At the Restoration he was again safe for high rank, when death suddenly stepped in and called him out of court. He was made serjeant in company with Dew and Harris, two other Devonshire lawyers, and Fuller describes the three as thus spoken of:

Lastly, Tavistock boasts justly of Mrs. Bray (who has made the bowers of the Tamar and Tavy the scenes of her pleasant stories), Ford of Fitzford, Henry de Pomeroy, and Trelawny of Trelawne.

Near Kilworthy, the seat of the Glanvilles, the crow alights in one of the trees of Rowdon wood, remembering that a strange and exceptional whirlwind visited this place in 1768. A stream of storm swept through the wood, cutting a passage of about forty yards in width, tearing up huge oaks by the roots, as if they had been radishes, and carrying their branches off, like drift on a torrent; it then rolled up the valley of the Tavy, and exhausted its rage in the barren wilderness of Dartmoor. Its coming and its going were alike mysterious.

On its way to Plymouth, the crow descends, near Lamerton, on the chimney of Collacombe Barton, the old seat of the Tremaynes, built by Sir Thomas Wise, in the reign of King James, It was garrisoned for King Charles, and taken by the parliament men. Fuller describes two