. The North Devon coast. t he does resent, most emphatically,the sheer commonplace that dashes his anticipa-tions remorselessly to extinction. The ancient family of Tracy, associated closelywith Barnstaple, and with many another localityin North and Mid Devon, are mentioned inhistories of the neighbourhood as early as thebeginning of the twelfth century. Ever after themurder of Thomas a Becket in 1170, in whichWilliam de Tracy bore a part, the Tracys weresaid, in the wild legends of old, to have always the wind in their faces. The belief provided MORTHOE AND TRACY LEGEND 135 a rough rhyme, and
. The North Devon coast. t he does resent, most emphatically,the sheer commonplace that dashes his anticipa-tions remorselessly to extinction. The ancient family of Tracy, associated closelywith Barnstaple, and with many another localityin North and Mid Devon, are mentioned inhistories of the neighbourhood as early as thebeginning of the twelfth century. Ever after themurder of Thomas a Becket in 1170, in whichWilliam de Tracy bore a part, the Tracys weresaid, in the wild legends of old, to have always the wind in their faces. The belief provided MORTHOE AND TRACY LEGEND 135 a rough rhyme, and satisfied a queer idea of re-tributive justice by which root and branch ahkeof that unfortunate family suffered for the acts ofone who it appears was not himself, after all, ofthat race : having been a de Sudeley by birth, andonly assuming the name of Tracy after his mar-riage with Grace, daughter of Sir William de Tracy,The legends that have gathered like the incrusta-tion on old port-wine bottles, round the assassina-. liPljjiuitimujlwt^^ MORTHOE. tion of Becket and the after-history of the fourknights who murdered him, tell how Tracy fled toMorthoe and passed the rest of his life in prayersand penitence, but it seems to be fully establishedthat he fled the country and died three yearslater, in Calabria ; after having, according to ayet further variant, thrice unsuccessfully at-tempted to make pious pilgrimage to the HolyLand, and being beaten back on every occasionby adverse winds. The legend associating the assassin with 136 THE NORTH DEVON COAST Morthoe would appear to have been invented toaccount for the ancient altar-tomb, covered withan inscribed slab of black marble, bearing thename of one William de Tracy, that still standsin the south chapel of the old church. There wasnot, in the days when this tale originated, thedisposition to criticise any story that imaginativepersons might choose to tell. Research, for thepurpose of recovering facts obscured by lapse oftime, w
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectdevonen, bookyear1908
