reach of any spade; so treasures often lie
unnoticed under our very feet.

Swift ply the black wings through the ebb
and flow of the blue air, over the fine tower
of Stockleigh Pomeroy, and the grand
umbrageous trees of Shobrook Park, and the crow
alights softly on the central tower of Crediton
Church."Kirton," says the local proverb,
"was a town when Exeter was a mere range
of furze and thorns,'' but ages ago ancient
Britons, looking from Down Head, Posbury
Hill, or Blackadown, saw houses clustering
here beside the river Creedy. Anglo-Saxons,
with axes at their belts, and spears in their
hands, must have boasted, just as Kirton men
now do, of the rich Lord's meadow of Sandford,
and that of all the hay in Devonshire, there was
no hay like Kirton hay, and of all Kirton hay,
no hay like the hay of the Lord's meadow. In
that broad pasture stretching down to the
Creedy river the red Devons revel, as well they
may, on the thick flowers and the fresh juicy
grass.

Crediton was the birthplace of one of the
greatest of the Saxon saints, Winfred—better
known as St. Boniface—the first preacher of
Christianity in central Germany, and the
founder of the famous monastery at Fulda, in
Hesse Cassell. This saint, educated at Exeter,
travelled to Rome, received a commission from
Pope Gregory the Second in 719, and then
went as a missionary into Bavaria and
Norwegia, and preached Christianity amid the
forests to the half savage hunters of those
early ages. On his return to Rome he was
made first bishop to the Archbishop of Germany,
still preaching among the wild tribes, and founding
churches whenever the worshippers of Thor
would permit him. He built the Abbey of Fulda,
in 746, but, still untiring, bravely left his abatial
splendour to plunge again among the savage
Germans, and venturing into Friesland was
slain with all his monks and cross bearers in the
summer of 755. His works fill a dusty shelf
still in old ecclesiastical libraries. Boniface
was a great pioneer of civilisation among the
German forests, and the fellow-countrymen
of Luther owe him gratitude. This Devonshire
martyr is the patron saint of innkeepers
(probably in his travels the worthy man learned
to value a good hotel, and on his return perhaps
established an inn or two) and hence his
worship by the class. For several hundred years
after his martyrdom Crediton, then famous for
woollen manufactures (now driven out by
shoemaking), remained the seat of the Devonshire
bishops.

In 1549, when the Roman Catholic peasantry
broke out into rebellion, and bore the crucifix
aloft through many a Devonshire town, the
rebels gathering, too, at Crediton, built up
a great barricade of carts, timber, and stones
at the town's end, and fortified some barns
adjoining. Sir Peter and Sir Jarvais Carew,
riding from Exeter with a score or two of
lances, desired to "have speech of the rebels,"
but, being denied access, dashed at the barricade,
and either set the barns on fire, or compelled the
rebels to burn them to prevent their being held
against them. The rebels after this always
took "the barns of Crediton" as their rallying
cry.

The church at Crediton, in 1315, was the scene
of one of those spurious miracles contrived in
the middle ages to rouse the zeal of the country
people. The bishops of Exeter used to reside
here, and preside in the collegiate church over
the stalls filled with stately rows of eighteen
canons and eighteen vicars. In August, 1315, at
the feast of St. Peter ad Vincula, while Bishop
Walter Stapledon (afterwards torn to pieces by
a London mob) was celebrating mass, a blind
man, who had been praying far away from the
splendour, glitter, and perfume of the central
altar, before a side shrine of St. Nicholas,
suddenly recovered his sight. Some temporary
attack of ophthalmia had at last passed away.
The cry of "a miracle! a miracle!" passed
from worshipper to worshipper, till it reached
the bishop, who instantly held a chapter in the
Lady Chapel, proclaimed it as a bona fide
miracle, and ordered the bells to instantly clash
out a thanksgiving. The man was a fuller, of
Keynsham, who had lost his sight in the
previous Easter week, and had dreamt that
he would be cured if he should visit the Church
of the Holy Cross at Crediton.

In the south chancel aisle is the altar tomb
of Sir John Sully, a knight who fought up
and down Picardy, Saxony, and Spain, side
by side with the Black Prince, and, in spite
of storms of sword strokes, thousands of
spear thrusts, rains of arrows, and many
smashing experiences among maces and war
hammers, lived till he was upwards of one
hundred and five, and was then left here
calmly to his rest; and on the north side of
the chancel Sir William Peryam, a chief baron
of the Exchequer of Elizabeth's time, sleeps
near him.

Now to the ivied bastion of old Rougemont
the crow bears right on, and from the ruined
citadel of Exeter surveys the grand old cathedral,
the great carved tomb of so many illustrious dead,
and the twenty-one tributary parish churches.
Julius Caesar, who is said to have built the Tower
of London, is reported to have set his hands
to work at masonry here also. It is supposed
that some of the Saxon kings next inhabited
Rougemont, and issued from thence their fiery
menaces to the rival potentates of Dorsetshire
and Wiltshire, and the hostile Britons of
Berkshire. Then came the Dukes of Cornwall, one
of whom figures in King Lear, and of whom
the less said the better, history being rather
oblivious about that branch of the early English
peerage. The rough conqueror came here, too,
swearing his great oath, "Fulgore Dei," and
beat at the gates of Rougemont. He altered
the castle to show his power, and then
gave it to the first Earl of Devon, the
husband of his niece Albreda. In Stephen's
troubled reign (one long battle indeed),
the king attacked it, and burnt the outer
works, and so tormented the garrison with
fire that they had to empty all their wine