An English holiday with car and camera . he West Country, where heheld his courts, the very name of the infamousjudge is clean forgotten, and if you mentioned it tothe rural folk they would look at you in wonder-ment, not knowing who he was or why you spokeof him. But it is not so, according to our experi-ence, in this corner of Somerset. Indeed, duringour short sojourn there we had pointed out to ustwo other places where the luckless victims of thatjudge were said to have been hanged. Somehow when the simple country folk told usof these far-off tragedies, it seemed to make thepast more real,
An English holiday with car and camera . he West Country, where heheld his courts, the very name of the infamousjudge is clean forgotten, and if you mentioned it tothe rural folk they would look at you in wonder-ment, not knowing who he was or why you spokeof him. But it is not so, according to our experi-ence, in this corner of Somerset. Indeed, duringour short sojourn there we had pointed out to ustwo other places where the luckless victims of thatjudge were said to have been hanged. Somehow when the simple country folk told usof these far-off tragedies, it seemed to make thepast more real, and bring us nearer to it. Of coursewe had to take the stories and the trees on faith, butthat the rural folk believed in them we had no trees must certainly have been very old, werethey really standing in Jeffreys time ; possibly theyare the successors of the original ones, and doingshow duty in their place. It is a quality of a true-born Somerset man, we were informed, never toforget a kindness, and never to forgive a XI A PUGNACIOUS PARSON 183 Also we were further informed that, like his Devonbrother, he is a good fighter; that he was so badlybeaten at Sedgemoor was not due to want ofbravery on his part, but to want of proper weaponsand good generalship. Even the Somerset parsonof old was not always superior to his flock in thisrespect. Indeed, Hannah More, writing fromSomerset to a friend, remarked of one of them, He is intoxicated about six times a week, andvery frequently is prevented from preaching by twoblack eyes, honestly earned by hard fighting ! Shortly before reaching the rectory at Enmoreour host pointed out to us the old house of WestBower, where, as already mentioned, local traditionhas it that Jane Seymour was born, but whetherthis tradition has any foundation in fact I cannotsay. Though now only a pleasant farmstead, in itsday it appears to have been a place of considerableimportance and extent; much of the old buildinghas been pulled down, a
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