Motor Tours in the West Country. Rodolph Mrs. Stawell
was not here, but in Dorset. As we look out upon the scene of his undoing let us forget that distant ditch, and the weakness of an exhausted, starving man, and remember only that he made a gallant end. “I shall die like a lamb,” he said on the scaffold. “I have now no fear, as you may see by my face; but there is something within me which does it, for I am sure I shall go to God. I will make no speeches: I come to die.”
Again the road is level, or nearly so; but, as is rare in level country, the surface is bad. We pass under the railway-bridge of the new Great Western line, and soon see Somerton on the crest of a hill. The road to Ilchester climbs the hill at the outskirts of the town, without actually passing through it; but it would be a pity to turn our backs on the ancient capital of the Somersœtas without a glance at its picturesque streets and old houses, whose mellow walls are so characteristic of Somerset. In the silent square that was once dominated by the castle, and is now made beautiful by an arcaded, stone-tiled market-cross, there is nothing to show that Somerton is a town of varied experiences. It has seen a vast amount of life, but prefers to say nothing about it.
Here where the “White Hart” stands, without a sign of age, once stood the palace of King Ina and his pious wife. Ina, King of the West Saxons, was “a rare example of fortitude,” we are told; “a mirror of prudence, unequalled in piety”—though he ascended the throne, as the same chronicler delicately expresses it, “more from the innate activity of his spirit than any legitimate right of succession.” Active he certainly was: a conqueror of the British, a builder of monasteries and churches and castles. We meet the records of his activities at Wells and Glastonbury, at Taunton, and here in Somerton; and even when his determined Ethelburga had persuaded him to abdicate, with some reluctance, he continued to build in Rome. It was on this hill he chiefly lived and made his laws, I believe, but his castle was burnt by the destroying Danish princes, Hinguar and Hubba. On its foundations rose the later castle that served as a prison for King John of France; but even this has left no remnant but some thick masonry in the modest walls of the “White Hart.” In this scene of long past revelry and war there is hardly a sign of life. Somerton is inhabited, apparently, by one man, two children, and a cat.
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