on the Tavy, four miles from the town. They
still preserve there his portrait by Jansen, his
sword, his ship drum, and the Bible, which he
carried with him round the world. The house
was built by Sir Francis on the pleasant site of
an old Cistercian abbey, given him by Queen
Elizabeth. The barn and belfry still remain,
and four arches of the central tower are built
into the garrets. In the abbey orchard hard
by he paced, musing of Darien and the Pacific,
of Spanish galleons and pieces of eight. Let
the crow for a moment be biographical. This
terror of the Spaniards was the son of a poor
yeoman on the banks of the Tavy. In the days
of persecution his father fled into Kent, and in
Elizabeth's reign took orders and became vicar
of Upnor church, where the royal fleet then
usually anchored. Francis became a sailor in a
small coaster, and his master eventually leaving
him his bark and equipment, he grew a
thriving man. Suddenly fired by the exploits
of Hawkins against the Spaniards "in the
Golden South Amerikies" Drake started for
Plymouth, sold his ship, and joined Hawkins's
last expedition to the Spanish Main. Losing
all in this adventure, Drake swore revenge on
Spain, and sailed off with three fishing boats
and seventy-three men and boys to plunder
Spanish towns, burn Spanish ships, and seize
Spanish wealth any where, whether on sea or
land. He returned to Plymouth on a Sunday,
his frail vessels brimming with gold, and all the
townspeople came running from church to
welcome the hero.

In his next venture, with only five small
vessels and one hundred and sixty-four men,
Drake circumnavigated the world, and returned
home after an eventful voyage of two years and
nearly ten months, having taken a plate ship,
and plundered half the sea-port towns of
Chili and Peru. From that time forth
Drake was a thorn in the side of Spain.
Half patriot, half buccaneer, he ravaged
the coast of Spain, destroyed four castles
and one hundred vessels, and, in fact,
"singed the King of Spain's beard'' all over.
He invaded Portugal; he discovered the
secret of the Spanish trade with India; he
helped to shatter the Armada. Spanish
admirals died of broken hearts at the success of
Drake. Then came the miserable expedition
to the West Indies, when the leaders quarrelled
and everything went wrong. Baskerville failed
to cross the Isthmus of Darien, and burn
Panama; Hawkins died of vexation; fever
broke our at Nombre de Dios; and Drake at
last died, partly of disease and partly of a
broken heart. The sailors lowered him to his
grave in the sea off Porto Bello:

The waves became his winding sheet, the waters were
    his tomb,
But for his fame, the ocean sea was not sufficient room.

For a .smaller mercy Tavistock is also
grateful, namely, for being the birthplace of
William Browne, a humble contemporary of
Spenser and Shakespeare, and author of
Britannia's Pastorals, a poem highly eulogised
by Lambe, Hazlitt, and others of that school.
Browne was a tutor to the Earl of Carnarvon,
who was slain at the battle of Newbury, acquired
a competency under the patronage of the Earl
of Pembroke, purchased an estate, and wrote
pastoral verses, without vigour, but never
wanting in elegance. Selden, Drayton, Wither,
and Ben Jonson admired him, but he soon
passed out of mind. His Inner Temple Masque,
produced at court, was not printed till a hundred
and twenty years after his death, and all his
poems but this would probably have perished,
but for a single copy of them preserved by
Warton. Milton is supposed to have imitated
him, and carried him further in L' Allegro and
Lycidas. In his prettiest episode, The Love
of the Walla and the Tavy, he sings the praises
of a brook that runs past Kilworthy and the
home of the Glanvilles. One of the choicest
passages of the Tavistock poet is his description
of a rose:

Look, as a sweet rose fairly budding forth
    Betrays her beauties to the enamoured morn,
Until some keen blast from the envious north
    Kills the sweet bud that was but newly born.
Or else her rarest smells delighting
    Make herself betray,
Some white and curious hand inviting
    To pluck her thence away.

The Glanvilles were of Tavistock. They
were lawyers by right of race. The son of a
judge of the Common Pleas, Sir John was
speaker and king's serjeant before the civil war.
The Puritans took away his seat in parliament,
and sent him to prison, to note cases and judg-
ments behind the bars of the Tower. At the
Restoration he was again safe for high rank,
when death suddenly stepped in and called
him out of court. He was made serjeant in
company with Dew and Harris, two other
Devonshire lawyers, and Fuller describes the
three as thus spoken of:

        (gained)
One (spent)    as much as the other two.
        (gave)

Lastly, Tavistock boasts justly of Mrs. Bray
(who has made the bowers of the Tamar and
Tavy the scenes of her pleasant stories), Ford
of Fitzford, Henry de Pomeroy, and Trelawny
of Trelawne.

Near Kilworthy, the seat of the Glanvilles,
the crow alights in one of the trees of Rowdon
wood, remembering that a strange and
exceptional whirlwind visited this place in 1768.
A stream of storm swept through the wood,
cutting a passage of about forty yards in width,
tearing up huge oaks by the roots, as if they
had been radishes, and carrying their branches
off, like drift on a torrent; it then rolled up the
valley of the Tavy, and exhausted its rage in
the barren wilderness of Dartmoor. Its coming
and its going were alike mysterious.

On its way to Plymouth, the crow descends,
near Larnerton, on the chimney of Collacombe
Barton, the old seat of the Tremaynes, built by
Sir Thomas Wise, in the reign of King James.
It was garrisoned for King Charles, and taken
by the parliament men. Fuller describes two