A Book of the West. Volume I Devon. Baring-Gould Sabine

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СКАЧАТЬ confined within a conduit, with square dipping-places at frequent intervals. The street runs straight down hill to the bridge and across the Giseage, and up again on the road towards Exeter. The town is completely surrounded by toll-gates; the tolls collected do not go to pay for the maintenance of the roads, but to defray a debt incurred by removing buildings, including the ancient shambles, from the middle of the street early in the century. This accounts for the street being particularly wide.

      The Dolphin, the principal inn, is supposed to still possess some portion of the ancient building once belonging to the Courtenays, whose cognisance is the inn sign.

      S. Margaret's Hospital is one of the points of interest, and is picturesquely pretty. It was intended as a leper hospital, but is now used as almshouses. It was built and endowed by Dr. Thomas Chard, the last abbot of Ford.

      One thing no visitor should fail to see, and that is the superb view from Honiton Hill. It commands the valley of the Otter, with the town beneath, and the old earthworks of Hembury Fort, Buckerell Knap, and Dumpdon towering above. The flat-topped hills and the peculiar scarps are due to the formation being greensand. These scarps may be observed in process of shaping at the head of every combe. The church of S. Paul in the town is modern and uninteresting. It occupies the site of an old chapel of All Hallows. The parish church is S. Michael's on the hill, and this contains points of interest. The fifteenth-century screen is of carved oak, and stretches across nave and both aisles. The church was formerly cruciform, but north and south aisles were added to nave and chancel. Probably it formerly had a central tower. Four carved beams now support the roof where the tower should be, and bear sculptured bosses, representing an angel, a bishop, a priest, and a man in armour. Two finely carved capitals in the chancel carry the sentence, "Pray for ye souls of John Takel and Jone his wyffe." They were liberal benefactors to the church and the town.

      The view from the churchyard is magnificent. On a suitable day Cosdon Beacon on Dartmoor is visible. A row of cypresses in the churchyard was transplanted from the garden of Sir James Shepperd (d. 1730).

      In old times the parsons of Honiton were supposed to have been addicted to field sports, perhaps unfairly, just as one hunting abbot gave a bad name to all the abbots of Tavistock. Barclay, in his Ship of Fools, says: —

      "For if any can flatter and beare a hawke on his fist,

      He shall be made parson of Honington or of Clist."

      There is much deserving of visit within reach of Honiton, Colyton with its fine church, and the tomb of "Little Chokebone," a good monument, long supposed to be that of Margaret, daughter of William, Earl of Devon, and Katherine his wife, seventh daughter of Edward IV., who was supposed to have been choked by a fish-bone in 1512. But there is evidence that the lady lived long after the date of her presumed death. What also tells fatally against the identification is that the arms of Courtenay are impaled with the royal arms, surrounded by the bordering componée, the well-known token of bastardy. Now this belonged to the Beauforts, and the tomb is either that of Margaret Beaufort, wife of Thomas, first Earl of Devon, of that name, or else of one of their daughters.

      Of Colcombe House, the great Courtenay, and then the Pole seat, but a fragment remains. At Colyton is the Great House, a fine old building, once the residence of the Yonges. The last of the family, Sir George Yonge, was wont to say that he came in for £80,000 family property, received as much as his wife's jointure, obtained a similar sum in the Government offices he enjoyed, but that Honiton had "swallowed it all" in election expenses. And when he stood for the last time there, in embarrassed circumstances; because he could not bribe as heavily as formerly, one of the burgesses spat in his face. He died in 1812, aged eighty, a pensioner in Hampton Court, and his body was brought down very privately to Colyton from fear of arrest for debt. Another old house is Sand, the seat of the Huyshe family.

      Honiton has become famous for its lace, although actually the manufacture does not take place to any considerable extent in the town, but in villages, as Beer, Branscombe, Ottery, etc.

      In the beginning of the sixteenth century Honiton was a centre of a flourishing trade in bone-lace, but how it was introduced is very uncertain. It has been supposed, but not proved, that Flemish refugees came to Honiton and introduced the art, but one does not quite see why they should have come so far. There is an inscription on a tombstone in Honiton churchyard to James Rodge, bone-lace seller, who died July 27th, 1617, and bequeathed to the poor of the parish the benefit of a hundred pounds. A similar bequest was made in the same year by Mrs. Minifie, a lace maker, so that both lace dealer and maker may have carried on their business for thirty years before they died.

      In the latter part of James I.'s reign Honiton lace is frequently mentioned by contemporary writers. Westcote, in his View of Devon, 1620, says, "At Axminster you may be furnished with fine flax-thread there spunne. At Hemington and Bradnich with bone-laces now greatly in request." Acts were passed under Charles I. for the protection of the bone-lace makers, "prohibiting foreign purles, cut works, and bone-laces, or any commodities laced or edged therewith;" and these benefited especially the Devonshire workers, their goods being close imitations of the much-coveted Flemish pillow-laces.

      Pillow-lace was preceded in England, as elsewhere, by darned netting and cut-work. A fine example of the ancient English net embroidery may be seen on the monument, in Exeter Cathedral, of Bishop Stafford, who died in 1398.

      The pillow was introduced in the early part of Elizabeth's reign, and at first coarse thread-laces of geometrical design were worked on to it. Plaited and embroidered edgings, or purles, for the ruff, worked in silk, gold and silver wire, or thread came next, and formed the staple article during the first half of the seventeenth century. The patterns were imitated from Italian cut-work and reticella, with some marked peculiarities of workmanship and detail, such as the introduction of stars, wheels, and triangles, which are only found on English laces. The sculptor of Lady Pole's monument in Colyton Church (1623), evidently copied the bone-lace on her cape from a specimen of Devonshire make, and equally characteristic of the ancient patterns of the county is the probably plaited lace on a tucker and cuffs that adorn the effigy of Lady Doddridge in Exeter Cathedral (1614). Illustrations of these interesting examples of early Devonshire workmanship are given in Mrs. Palliser's "History of Lace."5

      There is another very fine specimen in Combe Martin Church, the effigy of Judith Hancock (1637). The figure is life-size, and the dress is covered with point-lace and looped with points of ribbon.

      The reason of the coarseness of early lace was that pins were rare and fetched a high price, and the humble workers in cottages employed fish-bones about which to twist their threads, stuck into the parchment in the shape of the pattern. The bobbins were made of "sheeps' trotters." It is now very difficult to procure specimens of this fishbone-lace.

      The lace produced by James Rodge and his contemporaries had large flowing guipure patterns, united by bride picotees, the latter worked in with the Brussels ground. Brides are the small stripes or connection of threads overcast with stitches which bind the sprigs together. The English lace-makers could not make this exquisite stitch with the thread that England produced, and the thread was brought from Antwerp. At the end of last century it cost from £70 to £100 per pound. Old Brussels lace was made on pillows, while the modern Brussels is worked with needles.

      The visitor to Honiton, Beer, or any village around may see lace-making on pillows. The women have round or oval boards, stuffed so as to form a cushion, and placed on the knees of the worker: a piece of parchment is fixed over the pillow, with the pattern drawn on it; into this the pins are stuck through holes marked for the purpose. Often as many as four hundred bobbins are employed at a time on a pillow. Many of the "bobbins" and "turns" to be seen in Devonshire cottages are very old: the most ancient are inlaid with silver. On some, dates are carved, such as 1678 or 1729. On some, Christian names are cut, such as John and Nicholas; probably those of the sweethearts of the СКАЧАТЬ