The Strife of the Roses and Days of the Tudors in the West. W. H. Hamilton Rogers
pertinent to the interest of our little narrative, to be referred to by and by. In front a delightful and typical Devonian landscape extends itself. Sprinkled over with the deserted homes of the olden lesser squirearchy, the antient lords of the vale, and picturesquely varied alternate with copse, plantations, and well-timbered hedgerow, the two valleys of the Coly and the Brinkly bifurcate just at this point, meeting under the shadow of the remarkable pyramid-shaped hill, Waddon Pen, and then stretch away, variously broken into lesser knoll and vale, until lost in the misty outline of the high, far-distant curtain of the Farway hills, with their tiny clumps of trees that just break the even contour, and stand like sentinels on the rampart-appearanced outline against the grey sky. They recall also for the moment to the historic memory, the burthen of a pleasant story, connected with its breezy, and comparatively unfrequented altitude, one of the numberless traditions that throng the hills and vales of the olden region of the Danmonii.
A rest for awhile on the parapet of the bridge spanning the little Morganhayes brook, hastening to join the Coly a few fields' distance below; a rivulet whose banks at Spring time are almost fairy-land with abundance of some of our finest wild flowers, broad stretches of daffodils, myriads of white-starred anemones, gleams of pale primroses and bleached lady-smocks, and sheen of golden-cups in their succession, but specially, when uncertain April brings her tears and sunshine, the haunt of the most gorgeous of them all
THE MEADOW RANUNCULUS.
Close by the rippling streams' translucent marge,
Ranunculus of gold,
Bright to the sun in constellation large,
Thy glowing stars unfold
'Mid all the wealth Spring scatters without stint,
By meadow, bank or stream,
Gay daffodil, or king-cup's myriad glint,
Spread like a golden dream;—
She brings no rival whose attractions may
With thee in all compare,
Brave thy full beauty in its strong array,
And matchless clusters dare.
No, nor sweet Summer when adown the land
Her flower-sprent steps incline,
Bearing the sceptred iris in her hand—
The glory still is thine.
Continuing our pilgrimage, about a mile's distance further brings us to a bridge spanning another small stream, also flowing down to meet the Coly below at a place appropriately named Bournehayne, and immediately at the entrance of the little village of Southleigh. Passing under the shadow of some fine old yews, our steps lead up a little acclivity to the left, into the churchyard. There we halt for a minute to scan the Willoughby tomb, with its grand escutcheon and uncouth caligraphy, and then look inside the little sanctuary, where, owing to the necessity of almost entire rebuilding, only one monument of importance remains, preserved in the chancel, to be further referred to in the course of our little story. On the porch threshold the eye is arrested momentarily by an almost obliterated seventeenth-century flat stone, bearing the still-traceable yeoman-gentleman name of Starre of Beer, and the fragment of another leaning against a grave near, of contemporary date, inscribed with the patronymic of Clode—a name still existent in the parish—and whose earthly calling is described as 'goldsmith,' a strange vocation to find chronicled here in this rural vale, and the memorial probably of one who practised the craft in busier scenes elsewhere, and returned to his native parish, when he finally laid down burnisher and graver, to find his last resting-place.
Down a small meadow below the church, to the rill we crossed on entering the hamlet, and our path inclines along its banks up the valley through which it flows, and a right pleasant vale it is, flanked on the left by extensive plantations of almost every species of useful conifer, which stretch down, exhibiting great luxuriance of growth, their different habits finely contrasting, and adding the great charm of variety; while the opposite ascent is also picturesquely wooded with ordinary foliage. So we leisurely continue a full mile or more, when the valley somewhat expands. Here some fine trees are scattered park-like in appearance around, with a small modern mansion in their midst, and this brings us to our present destination.
Who would imagine, viewing the peace and retirement of this delightful rural solitude, so far removed from the ken and the movements of busy, anxious, restless, ambitious man, and where only the voice of the thrush, the flicker of the butterfly, the hum of the bee, the rustle of the coney, the song of the lark, the bleating of the flock, or the low of the kine, is seen or heard, that a story of wondrous historic interest and significance "take hys begynnyng" from this spot? Yet an apt symbol of how small and comparatively unknown beginnings, at times end in being engrafted into the largest results, lies close beside us. Who shall predict the ultimate destiny of the humble ripple of water that sparkles along at our feet? Down through this valley it hastens to the Coly, then on to join the larger Axe, thence to mingle with the salt tide and be merged in the blue expanse of the Channel, and finally be found adding its tiny tribute to the grandeur of the great Atlantic.
As of the stream, so of the story that has origin here on its banks, and from him who was one of the earliest settlers thereon, back in the twilight of the days of the early Plantagenets, when a country gentleman with no recorded pretension to influence or fame, beyond the inalienable witness of Norman descent, betrayed by his name, to this place found his way and fixed his abode. After sundry generations the descendants of his race, although still holding their original home here, travelled far afield, away from the quietude and peace of these sylvan scenes, lured into the dangerous path of ambition, and became prominent actors in the great, stirring, troublous drama of mediæval English history, as active and devoted partizans in the contending factions, fighting to the death amid the strife of its kings, and shedding their blood unstintedly in the conflict. Then followed the great but dangerous honour of kinship with royalty and its fatal glamour, culminating at last in their aspiration to the possession of the crown itself, with the result, finally, of laying one of their last and most guileless representatives, headless on the steps of the throne to which they laid claim. A relation of real incidents that needs no garnishing of romance to enhance its extraordinary interest.
Wiscombe—Wescombe, probably originally West-combe, is the name given to these historic precincts. The very earliest mention of its ownership assigns it as among the possessions of the Abbey of St. Michael de Monte, in periculo maris, in Normandy, and was at the beginning of the thirteenth century held of its Abbot by Roger de Daldich, of the family of Daldich of East-Budleigh. After awhile came a change of ownership, and then we get the first mention of the name of the family, the outline of whose succeeding generations we propose to attempt, albeit imperfectly, to chronicle. A story, nevertheless, of surpassing interest, even among the crowd of great traditions that form the historic heritage of the famed county of Devon.
This was, according to Pole, its grant, or sale, with the reservation of twenty shillings yearly rent, "about ye middest of the raigne of kinge Henry III.," by the aforesaid Abbot and Roger de Daldich to Nicholas de Bonville, evidently a gentleman of that era, and whose name—de bonne ville—'of the fair or good village'—unmistakably pointed to the original birthplace of his family, as being found in the land immediately beyond the southern sea, from which his ancestor doubtless also migrated in the train of the Conqueror.
All we know of the life of this Nicholas de Bonville, presumably the first of his name as possessor of Wiscombe, is that he married a lady named Amicia, and it was probably he, who in accordance with the religious custom of the age, was the donor of a rent-charge at 'Tuddesheye,' now Studhayes, in Kilmington, to the Abbey of Newenham, in the adjoining valley of the Axe, and in its Conventual church was buried, as described by Mr. Davidson, "lastly against the north wall of the choir, lay Sir Nicholas Bonville, a benefactor to the abbey who died in 1266."[11] He left a son named William.
But according to another account of the early generations of Bonville, the first recorded was Nicholas Bonville who was living in 1199. To him his son William Bonville (not Nicholas), who married Amicia, did homage for lands in Somerset, 6 Feb., 1265, and was succeeded by his son William, who married Joan, a widow.[12]