Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXV, No. 1, July 1849

Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXV, No. 1, July 1849

In the commencement of the seventeenth century, there stood among the woody hills and romantic gorges which sweep southwardly down from the bleak expanse of Dartmoor, one of those fine old English halls, which, dating from the reign of the last of the Tudors, united so much of modern comfort with so much of antique architectural beauty. Many specimens of this style of building are still to be found scattered throughout England, with their broad terraces, their quaintly sculptured porticoes, their tall projecting oriels, their many stacks of richly decorated chimneys, and their heraldic bearings adorning every salient point, grotesquely carved in the red freestone, which is their most usual, as indeed their most appropriate material. No one, however, existed, it is probable, at that day, more perfect in proportion to its size, or more admirably suited to its wild and romantic site, than the manor-house of Widecomb-Under-Moor, or, as it was more generally called in its somewhat sequestered neighborhood, the House in the Woods. Even at the present time, that is a very rural and little frequented district; its woods are more extensive, its moorlands wilder, its streams less often turned to purposes of manufacturing utility, than in any other tract of the southern counties; but at the time of which I write, when all England was comparatively speaking an agricultural country; when miles and miles of forest existed, where there now can scarcely be found acres; when the communications even between the neighboring country towns were difficult and tedious, and those between the country and metropolis almost impracticable; the region of Dartmoor and its surrounding woodlands was less known and less frequented, except by its own inhabitants, rude for the most part and uncultured as their native hills, than the prairies of the Far West, or the solitudes of the Rocky Mountains. The few gentry, and lords of manors who owned estates, and had their castellated or Elizabethan dwellings, scattered here and there, at long intervals, among the sylvan scenery of that lonely region, were for the greater part little superior in habits, in refinement, and in mental culture, to the boors around them. Staunch hunters, and hard drinkers, up with the lark and abed before the curfew, loyal to their king, kind and liberal to their dependents, and devout before their God, they led obscure and blameless lives, careless of the great world, a rumor of which rarely wandered so far as to reach their ears, unknown to fame, yet neither useless nor unhonored within the sphere of their humble influence, marked by few faults and many unpretending virtues. To this general rule, however, the lords of Widecomb Manor had long been an exception. Endowed with larger territorial possessions than most of their neighbors, connected with many of the noblest families of the realm, the St. Aubyns of Widecomb Manor had for several generations held themselves high above the squires of the vicinity, and the burghers of the circumjacent towns. Not confining themselves to the remote limits of their rural possessions, many of them had shone in the court and in the camp; several had held offices of trust and honor under Elizabeth and her successor; and when, in the reign of the unfortunate Charles, the troubles between the king and his Parliament broke out at length into open war, the St. Aubyn of that day, like many another gallant gentleman, emptied his patrimonial coffers to replenish the exhausted treasury; and melted his old plate and felled his older oaks, in order to support the kings cause in the field, at the head of his own regiment of horse. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 55362
Author: Various
Release Date: Aug 15, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Chandler, Joseph R. (Joseph Ripley), 1792-1880 , Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878