PORLOCK MONUMENTS.* Mits. HALLTDAY's book was "originally intended only for
private circulation ;" but it is published, and is to be bought. Still it
'1' A Description of the Monirrnunt and Effigies in Poriock Church, Somerset, ttc. By Maria Halliday. Torquay : Directory Company. 1882.
would, be unfair not to remember that it was originally intended only for private circulation, and that it would therefore be unreasonable to dwell on all the little personal details and the little outbursts of enthusiasm on small local and personal mat- ters which might seem out of place in a book designed for the world in general. But of course Mrs. Halliday does not in any case write for the world in general; she writes either for those who care locally about Porlock, and therefore for any- thing connected with the place, or for those who care about sepulchral monuments, whether at Porlock or anywhere else. As for the first class, Mrs. Halliday would perhaps be a little amazed to hear that it is possible to take a very consider- able interest in Porlock, and yet to be nearly indifferent to John, fourth Baron Harington. The historic interest of Porlock itself, as distinguished from its lords and its monuments, comes earlier. Porlock lies in that hilly, almost mountainous, region of western Somerset which tourists commonly take to be part of Devonshire. The delusion is akin to that which places Mont Blanc in Switzerland, and to that which cuts off Lanca- shire from its due part and lot in the lakes of northern England. The name of Porlock appears twice in the Chronicles, in 018, when the Danes were defeated there and fled to the Steep Holm; and in the more remarkable account in 1052, of the landing of Harold and Leofwine on their return from Ireland. Their landing was opposed, and a battle followed, in marked contrast to the zeal with which God■vine was welcomed in other parts of England. In Domesday, Porlock appears as a possession of Baldwin of Exeter,—Baldwin the Sheriff, of whom the local history of Devonshire has mach to say ; but there is no particular interest about the entry. Now, as Mrs. Halliday's business lay with tombs in the fifteenth century, perhaps she was not bound to refer to events of the tenth and eleventh ; still, to some minds the name of Porlock would suggest the landing of Harold and Leof wine long before anything else. But if Mrs. Halliday will not give us English truths, she at least need not give us British fables :—
"Before entering directly upon my subject, I must explain that the Church itself [of Porlock] is itself of remote origin, having been founded by St. Dubricius, to whom the present edifice is dedicated. Dubricius was consecrated first Bishop of Liandaff by Germanus, who died about A.D. 612. Consequently, Christianity in Porlook was due to the missionary spirit of the early Church of South Wales, and to the widening influence of the See centred at Cartoon."
Now, why did not Mrs. Halliday turn to the first volume of Haddan and Stubbs, where, at p. 146, she would have found the fable of German and Dubricius cast aside ? Indeed, without turning to Haddan and Stubbs, it is easy to see that Dubricius, the date of whose death in 612 rests on good authority, could not have been consecrated by German in the fifth cen- tury. Then where is the evidence that the Church of Porlock was "founded" by Dubricius? Simply because it is dedicated to him P And why should Christianity at Porlock be due to the missionary spirit of the early Church of South Wales ? Were all the people of West Wales benighted Pagans till the days of Dubricius? And what can be meant by "the widening influence of the See centred at Carleon P" at a time when, if the legends have any truth in them at all, the See had not very long departed from Caerleon altogether. Certainly, these matters have very little to do with the question whether a certain fifteenth-century tomb belongs to Lord Harington, or to anybody else. But these are the positions with which Mrs. Halliday chooses to begin her inquiries about Lord Harington. A slight tribute to Harold and Leofwine and the thirty thegns who fell fighting against them, would surely have come more naturally. So we are set off on another tack, when we read that,—
" The family of Harington or De Haverington is ex- tremely ancient, their descent having even been traced to Elgiva, daughter of Ethelred, King of England. Those who are interested in the highest antiquity of this family are referred to the fifth volume of Dugdale's Monasticon, to the Charter Records of Holm-Cultram A-bboY. and the Carta of Cospatric, son of Orme, of Plerningby, in particular. Harington history is perfectly assured by Inquisitions
post Mortem,' and other public documents, dating from the thirteenth century."
Now, if "Harington history" has anything to do with a daughter of .ZEthelred, or with a Gospatric son of Orm, it at
once awakens„ ” interest in the highest antiquity of that family. But any one who has meddled with such matters
knows the difficulty of arranging his Gospatrics and Orms so as to give each his own father and mother, his own sons and daughters, and not those belonging to somebody else of the same name. A Gospatric undoubtedly figures in the Holm-
Cultram records; several Gospatrica were descendants of IElfgifu, daughter of }Ethelred, and this Gospatric may have been one of them. The Gospatric of the Holm-Cultram charter- has to do with Flemingby ; a Robert of Haverington, in the. same set of charters, has also to do with Flemingby; so Robert, may have been a descendant of Gospatric. Gospatric, son of Orm, had one son, Thomas, and another son, Alan—facts which, like. many others in the same set of charters, are of deep interest in the history of nomenclature—and one of these may have been: the father of Michael, who was the father of Robert of Haver- ington. Mrs. Halliday may have evidence to prove the whole pedigree; if so, it is tantalising to speak of the matter and not to give us the evidence. To many minds, it is a matter of greater interest to know whether a well-known existing English family is or is not sprung from the old Northumbrian Earle, than to know whether a particular tomb at Porlock belongs to, one of them, or not.
So again, even in her own immediate time of the fifteenth century, Mrs. Halliday gives us over again all the old fables about the battle of Wakefield. The head of Duke Richard is, again presented to Queen Margaret,—who was far away in Scot- land. The young Earl of Rutland is again out down from his- historic age of seventeen to his poetic age of twelve ; lie is "barbarously killed" by Lord Clifford, the killing being just as much and just as little barbarous as the killing of anybody else in a merciless pursuit. To be sure, this only proves that Mrs.. Halliday has not compared the well-known story in Hall with the accounts of contemporary writers ; but this repetition of old fables deserves some notice, when it is followed by this piece of solemn moralising :— " I have recalled these terrible scones in their detail, to enable us, more accurately to realise the vindictive passions that possessed both parties in this straggle. It is desirable that all possible light should be thrown upon actual fact, otherwise it will be impossible to judge. impartially of Lord Bonville's character and conduct as a whole. The above-mentioned party conflicts, with their heartrending details and severe domestic losses and trials, were calamities perfectly over- whelming."
Lord Bonville brings us to the immediate subject of the. Porlock tomb. Mrs. Halliday seems to have carefully studied both the general subject of monumental effigies, and the pedi- grees of the chief persons connected with Porlock in the fifteenth century. Indeed, she gets enthusiastic about pedigrees fir general, and as is usual with enthusiasts on that subject, she does not strain at a mythical detail now and then. About Courtenays, it may be, after the example of Gibbon, law- ful to get enthusiastic ; but the laws of ordinary, prosaic criticism claim jurisdiction over Sir Nigel Loring, who figures in the wars of the Black Prince, but whose daughter marries- the son of " Paulinus Peyner, Lord Steward of the Household to Henry 1II." We seem somehow to have got a hundred years wrong in our dates, and we must correct Mrs. Halliday's spell- ing of an illustrious name. Paulinus was not "Peyner," but "Piper," " Peivre," any spelling that will make pepper in Latin, French, or English. Matthew Paris has much to say of him„ specially when he records his death in 1251; so have the Dun- stable Annals much to say about himself, his son, and his' grandson, but nothing which attributes to any of them the amazing length of days implied in Mrs. Halliday's story. More- over there is in the house of Piper a Peter, seemingly brother' of Paul or Paulinus, and his name, one cannot help thinking,. lives in a nursery riddle. But as Porlock fell, not to Margaret, who married John Piper, as we beg leave to call him, but to her sister Isabel, we are not bound to follow the history of any pecks of pepper that either Peter or Paul may have picked. Isabel married Robert, third Lord Harington, and Mrs. Halliday hoped that the tomb was his ; but the archi- tectural details would not allow her to fix it so early, and she rules it to belong to John, the fourth lord, son of Robert and Isabel. Mrs. Halliday makes him one of the lords who were sent to meet King Sigismund in 1416, and we doubt not that she -has some authority, though she gives no reference. She does not forget to remind us that Sigismuncl was euper grammaticam ; we might be inclined to take her to task for not remembering the whole of the saying, and for crowning the" Rex Romanus " Emperor before his time. But we are softened at finding that in the prose of Redman he is " Imperator," that in the hexameters of Elmbam he swells into " Induperator," while in the vulgar tongue of Hall he is, we blush to say, " Era- perour of Almayn." But when Mrs. Halliday had first spoken of the King of the Romans as an "imperial personage," and afterwards as a "royal visitor," if the matter was to be noticed
among the corrections at the end, it would have been better to say "for 'imperial' read 'royal,'" than to say, as she actually does, "for 'royal' read imperial.'" The Lord Harington who was thus called on to assert the independence of England of all foreign rule died in 1418, and he left estates to found a ehantry in the church of Porlock. Mrs. Halliday gives his will in an appendix. It is in English, but it can hardly be a literal copy ; at any rate the spelling must have been modernised. But here comes the curious fact that, though Lord Harington died in 1418, his chantry was not actually founded till 1474. His widow, Elizabeth Courtenay, had. then been only two or three years dead. She seems to have been married a second time to Sir William Bonville, of Chewton, afterwards Lord Bonville. He changed sides—under "domestic influences," according to Mrs. Halliday—during the wars of the Roses, and forsook the Red Rose for the White. For this he was, not unnaturally, beheaded after the second battle of Saint Alban's ; and, just as naturally, when Edward IV. was safe on the throne, he was restored in blood. Mrs. Halliday's guess is that the tomb was set up by this Lord Bonville's grand-daughter, Cecily.
Mrs. Halliday's way of telling her story is confused, and her notions of evidence do not seem very clear. But she has at least put out a very pretty book, which it has clearly been to her a labour of love to put together. The tomb itself is most elabo- rately described and illustrated, and the appendix contains some very curious and interesting documents. Only why does Mrs. Halliday. fall into the fatal mistake of giving the Latin documents only in translations P One cannot fancy that many people wholly ignorant of Latin are much given to researches of this kind; but if any such there be, and it is thought needful to indulge them with a crib, we should at least have the real text as well. All local research of this kind deserves every encouragement ; but at the same time, it should not be forgotten that local research cannot be successfully carried on, except under the guidance of accurate knowledge of general history. This is the way through which a vast mass of his- torical error lives on, after it has been exposed over and over again. Local writers are zealous enough, as Mrs. Halliday is, in making out the immediate local point in hand ; but they are apt to accept, by way of general history, the first statement which they come across, and so they constantly get wrong in their local history also. Mrs. Halliday, who thought it needless to say anything of the real early history of Porlock, might have been saved from repeating fables about German and Dubricius, by simply turning to the most obvious book—one might rather say, the only book—for any one who wishes to know the truth about Welsh ecclesiastical matters. In her own fifteenth cen- tury, in dealing with people whose lives led her at once into the thick of the civil wars of the fifteenth century, she took the popular stories without examination. Lord Bonville is thought by Mrs. Halliday worthy of a long defence ; if so, his story must be worthy of a critical examination, and Lingard long ago showed the doubtfulness of some parts of the received version. We believe that Mrs. Halliday's identification of the tomb itself has been called in question ; but on that point, we do not feel qualified to give judgment either way.
Previous page
