Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

“Well, I recken it means he must be a purty good rider.”

And Mr. Chapple was not far out. A curate did apply and breakfasted with Russell. The meal over, two likely-looking hunters were brought round ready to be mounted. “I’m going to take ’ee to Landkey,” explained Russell. Off they rode. The young cleric presently remarked, “How bare of trees your estate is,” as they crossed the lands belonging to Russell.

“Ah!” responded the sportsman, “the hounds eat ’em.” Coming to a stiff gate, Russell, with his hand in his pocket, cleared it like a bird, but looking round, saw the curate on the other side crawling over the gate, and crying out, “It won’t open.”

“Not it,” was the reply; “and if you can’t leap a five-barred gate like that, I’m sure you can’t preach a sermon. Good-bye.”

It is not my intention to give a detailed life of the Rev. John Russell. His memoirs by the author of Old Dartmoor Days, published in 1878, are very full. They are very laudatory, written as they were whilst Russell was alive. Cromwell when being painted was asked by the artist about his mole. “Paint the mole and all,” was the Protector’s reply. But others are not so strong-minded and do not care to have portraits too realistic. In 1880, Russell was appointed to Black Torrington.

When he was over eighty he rode a poor hack from Black Torrington to Mr. Williams, at Scorrier, to judge puppies, and Mrs. Williams was alarmed, as the old man was not well on arriving. She proposed to send him back by rail, fearing lest he should be seriously – fatally, perhaps – ill in her house. But although very poorly, he refused, and with one day between, rode home, something like seventy miles each journey.

He died in 1883, 3 May, in the arms of his medical attendant, Dr. Linnington Ash, at Black Torrington, and was buried at Swymbridge.

After the best type of the hunting parson we come to one of the worst, who exercised a good deal of influence over Russell, when he was young, at Southmolton. This was John Froude, vicar of Knowstone, who had succeeded his father, the elder John Froude, in September, 1803, and who held the incumbency, a veritable incubus to it, for forty-nine years till his death, on 9 September, 1852.

Russell himself says: “My head-quarters (after having been ordained) were at Southmolton; and I hunted as many days in every week as my duties would permit with John Froude, with whom I was on very intimate terms. His hounds were something out of the common; bred from old staghounds – light in colour and sharp as needles, plenty of tongue, but would drive like furies. He couldn’t bear to see a hound put his nose on the ground and ‘twiddle his tail.’ ‘Hang the brute,’ he would say to the owner of the hounds, ‘get me those who can wind their game when they are thrown off.’

“Froude was himself a first-rate sportsman, but always acted on the principle of ‘kill un, if you can; you’ll never see un again.’

“He had an old liver-coloured spaniel, a wide ranger, and under perfect command. He used to say he could hunt the parish with that dog from the top of the church tower. You could hear his view-halloo for miles, and his hounds absolutely flew to him when they heard it. Let me add, his hospitality knew no bounds.”

John Froude belonged to a clever family, that produced Archdeacon Froude, rector of Dartington and father of Hurrell and James Anthony, the historian. He had been well educated, and was a graduate of Oxford University. It is said that he had met with great disappointment in love, and early in life retired into what was, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the great retirement from the world of culture and intellectual activity, Knowstone-cum-Molland.

Knowstone stands high on a bleak and wind-swept hill, reached even at this day by a narrow and arduous and often a rough road, when torn up by a descending torrent after a storm. Molland lies distant three and a half miles on a brook flowing down from bleak moors into the Yeo. A sheltered and pleasant spot, with an interesting church, containing Courtenay monuments.

Froude’s church preferment was at the time valuable, and he was, moreover, in possession of some considerable private fortune in addition to his professional income. He had few educated people residing in his neighbourhood. With the quiet, inoffensive clergy about he would not associate; with others he could not, as they held themselves aloof from him. He soon came to associate almost entirely with the rough farmers who inhabited the Exmoor district, and he grew to resemble them in mind, language, habits of life and dress. From them he was principally differentiated by his native wit, his superior education, and his exceeding wickedness.

I have said that there were some with whom he could not associate. Such was the Hon. Newton Fellowes, afterwards Earl of Portsmouth, but at that time a young man with a love of sport, which he maintained to the last, and then without much token of brains, but he developed later. Him Froude detested, mainly because Newton Fellowes busied himself to improve the roads, so that, when at Eggesford, he could drive about the country in his four-in-hand; partly, also, because he was never invited to cross the threshold of Eggesford. He revenged himself with his tongue.

One day he was dining at the ordinary at the George Hotel in Southmolton when Newton Fellowes was there as well. The latter was telling the assembled farmers how he had fallen over a hurdle in a race a few days earlier. “And as the mare rolled,” added he, “I thought I had broken my neck,” and he put his hands to his throat to emphasize the remark. Whereupon Froude, speaking loud enough to command attention, exclaimed: “No, no, Newton, you will never break your neck; we have scriptural warrant for that.”

“How so?”

“The Lord preserveth them that are simple.”

The story stuck to Lord Portsmouth for life. Nor did Prebendary Karslake fare much better. Karslake was a scholar, a good speaker, rector of two parishes, and Prebendary of Exeter Cathedral. He took pupils, and prepared them for Oxford. He was rural dean and inspector of schools, and also chairman of the quarter sessions, farmed largely, and was a keen, all-round sportsman, and very intimate with Newton Fellowes, wherefore Froude hated him.

It was at another farmers’ dinner at the “George” that Froude left his mark upon him. Karslake was not present at this dinner.

Two farmers were engaged in dispute, and one said to the other: “I don’t care for your opinion, for Mr. Karslake says otherwise, and he knows.”

“What!” shouted Froude; “do ’ee quote that little Billy Karslake? He is no better than another – a stone jackass.”

Then a dozen voices together asked: “Why is Parson Karslake like a stone jackass?”

“Well,” said Froude, “’tis plain enough, surely. He ain’t handsome, he ain’t useful, he’s main stupid, but he’s gallous mischievous.”

The nickname of the “stone jackass” stuck to the Prebendary for life. But worse treatment was in store for him.

He was a most active magistrate, and the date of the occurrence I am about to mention was somewhere between 1835 and 1840, before the railways penetrated into the West Country.

It must be understood that Froude fascinated his neighbours, overawing them as a snake is said to fascinate a mouse. If he told them to do a thing, or to keep silent, he was obeyed. They dared not do otherwise.

One evening a young farmer arrived at Mr. Karslake’s door, at Meshaw, and entreated an interview on urgent business. On being admitted he told the magistrate that an atrocious crime had been undoubtedly perpetrated at Knowstone that very day. A little girl of eleven years of age had left the village in the afternoon to return to her parents, who occupied a small farm-house a mile or two distant, and had not been seen since. When search was made for her, on the roadside were found a child’s shoe and a bonnet stained with blood, but no body could be discovered. Karslake took the matter up. He was in the saddle from morning till night, the local constables were stirred up, but all in vain. No further traces of the child were to be found, no clue to the mystery discovered. Karslake then, at his own expense, went up to London, and returned with a first-class detective from Bow Street. But in vain. He was as unable to unriddle the mystery as were the local constables.

About ten days later the baffled magistrate was sitting hearing cases in the court-house at Southmolton, wearied and dejected at his failure, when Mr. Froude walked in, accompanied by a child. “Good morning, Mr. Karslake. I am told you’ve been looking for a little maid lately, and I’ve brought this one for you to see, in case her’s the one you be wanting.”

The child had been kept secreted at the rectory, and the parents had lent themselves to the deception, they being tenants and allies of the rector. What the cost was to Mr. Karslake in money, vexation, wear and tear, and ridicule – to which he was particularly sensitive – nobody knows; but one can conceive his annoyance when the whole court-house – bench and audience – broke out into a roar of laughter at his expense, he being chairman.

Froude had a nicely adjusted scale of punishments for all who offended him, and he had ready assistants to administer them.

From his first arrival at Knowstone he encouraged about him a lawless company of vagabonds who, when they were not in prison, lived roughly at free quarters at the rectory, and from thence carried on their business of petty larceny; and who were, moreover, ready to execute vengeance upon the rector’s enemies, and these enemies, although they lived in continual terror, were numerous.

His satellites ran errands, beat covers, broke in horses, did light farm-work, and found hares for the hounds, which were kept at the rectory.

Blackmore has described him and his gang in The Maid of Sker, in which he calls Froude Parson Chowne. If Froude desired to damage an obnoxious farmer who did not pay his tithes punctually, or who had otherwise offended him, he gave a hint, and the man’s ricks were burnt, or his horses houghed.

As Henry II did not order the murder of Becket, but threw out a hint that it would be an acceptable thing to him to be rid of the proud prelate, so was it with Parson Froude. He never ordered the commission of a crime, but he suggested the commission. For instance, if a farmer had offended him, he would say to one of these men subject to his influence, “As I’ve been standing in the church porch, Harry, I thought what a terrible thing it would be if the rick over yonder of Farmer G – were to burn. ’Twould come home to him pretty sharp, I reckon.”

Next night the rick would be on fire.

Or he would say to his groom, “Tom, it’s my tithe day, and we shall sit on purty late. There’s Farmer Q – behindhand again: this is the second half-year. You’ll be in the room: if I scratch my nose with my fork you’ll know that he has not paid up. Dear me! what a shocking thing were his linch-pin to be gone, and he going down Knowstone Hill, and in such a dark night – and the wheel were to come off.”

And certainly if Tom saw the vicar put his silver fork to his nose, so certainly would Farmer Q – be thrown out of his trap by the wheel coming off, to be found by the next passer along the road with dislocated thigh, or broken arm and collarbone.

A gentleman near had offended him. This person had a plantation of larch near his house. Froude said to Tom, “Bad job for Squire – , if his larch lost their leaders!” Next morning every larch in the plantation had been mutilated.

The Rev. W. H. Thornton says in his delightful book, Reminiscences of an Old West-country Clergyman: “He always had around him a tribe of vagabonds, whom he harboured. They beat the covers when he shot, they found hares for his hounds to hunt, they ran on his errands, they were the terror of the countryside, and were reputed to commit crimes at their master’s instigation. He never paid them anything, or spared or sheltered them from punishment. Sometimes they were in gaol, and sometimes out. They could always have as much bacon, potatoes, bread and cheese, and cider at his house as they pleased, as well as a fire to sit by, and a rough bed to lie down upon.

“Plantations were burned, horses mutilated, chimneys choked, and Chowne’s men had the credit of these misdeeds, which were generally committed to the injury of some person with whom Chowne had quarrelled.

“I have known him say to a young farmer: ‘John, I like that colt of yours. I will give you twenty-five pounds for him.’ The owner had replied that it was not money enough, and Chowne had retorted, ‘You had better let me have him, Jack. I have noticed that when a man refuses an offer for a horse from me, something goes wrong with the animal. It is very curious really that it should be so, but so it is.’ And the horse would be sent to him for twenty-five pounds.

“He was frequently engaged in litigation, and one day Mr. Cockburn (afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England, but then a wild young fellow enough) was engaged against him, and Chowne lost his case. Cockburn then, or so it is said, left the court in the Castle of Exeter in order to have some luncheon.

“In the castle yard he saw an old countryman in yellow leggings and a long blue coat, who had an ash sapling in his hand. As the great lawyer passed him, whack! down came the stick across the silk gown upon his shoulders.

“‘Be you the young rascal who spoke up against me in court just now?’ ‘I suppose that you are Parson Chowne,’ said Cockburn. ‘I was against you, and I am very glad that I succeeded; and now I am inclined to have you up for striking me.’

“‘No you won’t,’ was the reply, ‘you shall come and have luncheon with me instead. You are a deuced clever young chap, and I am hanged if ever I have a case on again without employing you. So come along, you little beggar, and I will stand you a bottle of port.’ Cockburn went, and frequently afterwards he would stay with Chowne.”

The following story shall be told as near as may be in the words of the farmer who was present when occurred the incident he related.

“On Saturday last Mr. Froude drove a fox from Molland to ground in Parson Jekyll’s Wood at Tar Steps. He was going to dig him out, and the men had commenced to work, when down came Mr. Jekyll in a thundering passion. Mr. Froude and he bean’t over friendly, best of times; and the earth is used by the vixens. There was a litter of cubs there only last season. Mr. Jekyll, hearing the hounds stop, came out at once to us, in a tear; I was there myself and I heard him. ‘Mr. Froude,’ says he, ‘I thought you knew better than to go digging in another man’s country without special permission to do so, and late in the season too, with cubs already about. If you don’t desist and take yourself off, I’ll summons you; so blow your horn, sir, and leave.’ ‘I have a terrier to ground, sir,’ replied Froude, ‘and I mean to dig him out.’ ‘If you go away,’ said the other, ‘the terrier will come out. In no case will I allow you to continue to dig.’ With that the old man, Parson Froude, grew white with passion, and says, ‘And do you dare risk a quarrel with me, Mr. Jekyll? Do you not know that to-night on my return I have only to say at Knowstone, Bones, bones at Hawkridge! and, mind you, name no names, and your carcase will be stinking in a ditch within the week?’

“Then he got on his horse and rode down to Winsford and obtained a search warrant from S. Mitchell to search Tar Steps Rectory for his terrier, which he took oath he believed to be there, stolen by Mr. Jekyll and concealed on the premises. And he brought back Floyd, the Winsford constable, with him to Tar Steps; and we all thought Mr. Jekyll would have had a fit, he was that furious, while they searched the house down to the very cellars, and shook up the rector’s old port wine, on suspicion that he might have hidden the terrier in the back of the bin. But the best of the joke was that there had been no terrier out with the hounds that day, and of course none had been put into the hole. So Parson Froude had sworn to what he knew well was a lie.”

Froude had a horse to sell, and one cold morning a gentleman named Houlditch, of Wellington, drove over in a gig from Tiverton to Knowstone, and requested to be shown the horse without delay. Froude, loud in protestations of hospitality, refused his request. “I dine at one o’clock, you’ve had a cold drive, and no man knows better than do I what them hills is like that you’ve come over. So, if you can put up with roast ribs of beef, sir, and a mouldy Stilton cheese to follow, us will top up with a drop of something hot, and then Jack Babbage, my huntsman, shall show ’ee the horse.”