Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

The “Black Horse” was an old inn near Southgate, Exeter. The south gate was perhaps the strongest of all the gates. It was defended by two massive drums of towers, and there was a double access to the town through it, the first gate leading into a yard with a second gate behind. Holy Trinity Church, with a red tower and pinnacles, was close to the inner gate, and nigh by that swung the sign of the “Black Horse.” The whole group was eminently picturesque. All was effaced in 1819; the gabled houses have been destroyed, not a stone left upon another of the noble gateway; even Trinity Church was pulled down, and a despicable cardboard edifice erected in its room as a specimen of the utter degradation to which art had fallen at that period.

John Barnes was taverner at the “Black Horse” in and about the years 1670–5, during which he had three children christened in Trinity Church. He kept his tavern well. His wife was reputed to be a quiet, tidy, and respectable woman, and John Barnes professed to be a hot and strong Presbyterian, and he made of his house a rallying-place of the godly who were in a low way after the Restoration and the ejection from their benefices of the ministers who had been intruded into them during the days of the Commonwealth, when the Church pastors were ejected. It was turn and turn about. These latter had been thrown out of their nest by Independent and Presbyterian cuckoos, and now the cuckoos had to go and the original owners of the nests were reinstated. But the cuckoos did not like it, and the Puritans were very sore afflicted, and liked to meet and grumble and testify, over ale and cyder, in John Barnes’ tavern. And when a private prayer meeting was held, mine host of the “Black Horse” was sure to be there, and to give evidence of his piety by sighs and groans. But he testified against prelacy more efficaciously than by upturned eyes and nasal whines, for he refused to have his children baptized by the Church clergy, and was accordingly prosecuted in the Exeter Consistory.

About 1677 Barnes abandoned the “Black Horse” in Exeter, and took an inn at Collumpton, where he threw off the “religious mask” and ran into debt and evil courses. One of his creditors was a smith, “a stout fellow of good natural courage.”

Barnes could not or would not discharge the debt, and he suggested to the blacksmith that there was an opening for doing a fine stroke of business that would at once liquidate the little bill and make him a man for ever. The plan was to waylay and rob the Exeter carrier on his way up to London, charged with a considerable amount of money sent to town by the merchants for the purchase of sundry goods. The blacksmith agreed, but it was deemed prudent to have another confederate, so a woolcomber was prevailed on to join.

The old Exeter road, after leaving Honiton, ascends a barrier of hill now pierced by the South Western Railway that there passes through a tunnel. This ridge stands between the stream bottoms of the Otter and the Corry, and is bleak, with habitations very wide apart along it. The distance from Collumpton to Honiton was so considerable and intercommunication so infrequent that the confederates hoped to escape recognition and detection by making their attempt far from home.

We are not informed at what hour the carrier’s van was waylaid, but there can be little doubt that it was early in the morning. One day out of Exeter was the stage to Honiton, and there the carriers had put up.

Upon a cold and stormy night, when wetted to the skin,
I bear it with contented heart, until I reach the inn;
And there I sit a-drinking, boys, with the landlord and his kin.
Say wo! my lads, say wo! Drive on, my lads, I-ho!
Who would not lead the stirring life we jolly waggoners do?

When Michaelmas is coming on, we’ll pleasure also find,
We’ll make the red gold fly, my boys, as chaff before the wind;
And every lad shall take his lass, so merry, buck and hind.
Say wo! my lads, say wo! Drive on, my lads, I-ho!
Who would not lead the stirring life we jolly waggoners do?

The highwaymen heard the tinkle of the horse-bells, as the team of four drew the carrier’s van up the long hill, and listened to the shout of the walking driver to the horses to put a good breast to it, as the top of the ascent was not far off. It would have been still dusk, when the three men leaped from behind some thorn bushes upon the carriers, and presented loaded pistols at their heads. It was customary for carriers to start before daybreak, as we know from the scene on the way to Gadshill in Henry IV, Part I.

Whilst two of the ruffians held the carriers and passengers quiet, with their pistols presented at full cock, Barnes ransacked the van, and secured six hundred pounds. Then the three men disappeared, mounted their horses, and galloped back to Collumpton.

But Barnes had left out of count that he was well known by voice and face in Exeter, and that a change of domicile and the space of one year would not have eradicated from the memory of carriers and such as frequented taverns the canting publican of the “Black Horse.”

The carrier’s men at once gave information, and before long both Barnes and his confederates were apprehended and conveyed to Exeter Gaol, but not before the blacksmith had managed to secrete a file about his person. There they were fettered, but during the night by means of the file the blacksmith relieved himself and the other two of their chains, and all three broke out of prison.

One of them escaped, but the other two, including the taverner, were retaken next morning, and both were sentenced to die. The narrative proceeds to state that “there were many Women of Quality in Exeter that made great intercession for the said innkeeper to get him a Reprieve, not so much for his sake, as out of charity to his poor innocent Wife and Children; for she was generally reputed a very good, careful, industrious and pious Woman, and hath no less than nine very hopeful children; but the nature of the Crime excluded him from mercy in this World, so that he and his Comrade were on Tuesday, the 13th of this instant August (1678), conveyed to the usual place of Execution, where there were two that presently suffered; but the Innkeeper, desiring two hours’ time the better to prepare himself, had it granted, which he spent in prayer and godly conference with several Ministers; then, coming upon the ladder, he made a long Speech, wherein he confessed not only the Crime for which at present he suffered, but likewise divers other sins, and particularly lamented that his Hypocrisie, earnestly begging the Spectators’ prayers, and exhorting them not to despair in any condition … and so with all the outward marks of a sincere Penitent, submitted to his sentence, and was executed.”

Dr. Lake, whose Diary has been published by the Camden Society, happened to be visiting a prisoner in the gaol when Barnes and his accomplice were brought in. The doctor says that he was “a notorious Presbyterian,” and that “the evening before hee went forth to execute his design” – of robbing the carrier – “hee pray’d with his family two hours.”

The authority for this story is a unique tract in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, of which the late Robert Dymond, of Exeter, made a copy, and to which he refers in his paper on “The Old Inns and Taverns of Exeter,” in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for 1880.

EDWARD CAPERN

The Postman Poet, Edward Capern, has been hailed as the Devonshire Burns, but he has no right to be so entitled. Burns, at his best, sang in the tones and intonation of his class and country, and it was at his worst that he affected the style of the period and of culture, such as it was. Now Capern aspired to the artificiality and smoothness of the highly educated and wholly unreal class of verse writers of the Victorian period, of whom John Oxenford may be thrust forward as typical, men who could turn out smooth and finished pieces, rhythm and rhyme correct, but without a genuine poetical idea forming the kernel of the “poem.”

What can be said for verses that begin as this to the Wild Convolvulus?

Upon the lap of Nature wild
I love to view thee, Beauty’s child;
And mark the rose and lily white
Their charms in thy fair form unite.

And this to the White Violet?

Pale Beauty went out ’neath a wintry sky
From a nook where the gorse and the holly grew by,
And silently traversed the snow-covered earth
In search of a sign of floriferous birth.

And this to an Early Primrose?

Pretty flow’ret, sweet and fair,
Pensive, weeping, withering there;
Storms are raging, winds are high,
I fear thy beauty soon will die.

Who is not familiar with this sort of stuff? It is to be found in “Keepsakes,” in those old pocket-books in leather, with a dozen badly engraved steel-plate landscape scenes at the beginning, and a budget of verses and rhapsodies that follow, before we come to the calendar and the sheets for notes.

Of himself, Capern wrote: —

He owns neither houses nor lands,
His wealth is a character good;
A pair of industrious hands,
A drop of poetical blood.

It was a drop, and a small drop. He had an ear for rhythm; he had a warm appreciation of Nature; he had sentiment – but not ideas, the germs of mental life to be carried on from generation to generation. The leaves of poetic expression, graceful diction, fade and wither. It is ideas alone that are the fruit of the tree of mental life that will survive. Of such we find none in Capern’s volumes.

His verses are very creditable to the man, considering his position, but he is not to be named in the same breath with Robert Burns and Edwin Waugh. Capern had the poetic faculty, but he trod wrong paths, with the result that nobody henceforth will read his verses, which are not likely to be republished. Edward Capern was born at Tiverton on 21 January, 1819, where his father carried on business as a baker. When Edward was about two years old, the family removed to Barnstaple, and his mother becoming bed-ridden, young Edward, then about eight years old, found employment at a local lace factory, toiling often, for a scanty wage, twenty out of the twenty-four hours. The long hours and the trying nature of the work permanently injured his eyesight, and seriously affected his after life.

Compelled to abandon his work in the factory in 1847, he ultimately obtained the post of letter-carrier from Bideford to Buckland Brewer and its neighbourhood, distributing the mail through a discursive walk of thirteen miles daily, and receiving a salary of half a guinea per week.

Capern’s first book of Poems was published in 1856. A Mr. W. F. Rock, having seen his verses, thought there was merit in them, and undertook to collect subscribers; and by worrying certain noblemen into taking four, five, or six copies, and canvassing through the county, he succeeded in getting enough subscribers to enable him to publish.

But Capern wanted to have all he had written included. Mr. Rock had to be firm.

“What!” exclaimed Capern. “Exclude my ‘Morning’ and the ‘Apostrophe to the Sun’! Why, sir, I wrote those pieces when I had but four shillings a week to live upon, which gave but frugal meals.”

Precisely, but that did not constitute them poems. Mr. Rock says: “It is not my intention even to touch upon the trying incidents of Mr. Capern’s early life. He is a rural letter-carrier … for which his salary is ten shillings and sixpence per week. He has a real poet’s wife; his Jane, a charming brunette, is intelligent, prudent, and good. He has two children, Charles, a boy of seven, and Milly, a girl just three years of age.

“Mr. Capern’s features have a striking resemblance to those of Oliver Goldsmith; he has also the Doctor’s sturdy build, though not his personal height. Nor is this the only point of resemblance to our dear Goldy. Mr. Capern has an ear for music, he plays touchingly on the flute, and sings his own songs to his own tunes with striking energy or tenderness.”

He certainly enjoyed his life as a postman. He says: —

O, the postman’s life is as happy a life
As any one’s, I trow;
Wand’ring away where dragon-flies play,
And brooks sing soft and low;
And watching the lark as he soars on high,
To carol in yonder cloud,
“He sings in his labours, and why not I?”
The postman sings aloud.