f
the Gospel.

The nave of the church at Bampton is built in the manner most common to
this country--that is, early Perpendicular, but the chancel is
Decorated. In many of the churches there is some portion of Decorated
work. The screen and roof of the church are worth seeing, and in the
churchyard are several unusually large and fine old yew-trees, one or
two girdled by stone benches. Leaving Bampton, one passes along a green
and fertile valley, the fields interrupted at intervals by copses, where
thickets of undergrowth and multitudes of young saplings are struggling
for the mastery--a picture of prodigal wealth in plants, bushes, and
trees.

Seven miles to the south is Tiverton. Tiverton is a small town, but its
story is interesting, and incidents cluster round the castle, church,
the well-known school, and the former kersies and wool-market, and,
besides, it is filled with memories of the melancholy experiences it has
passed through--fires, floods, the plague, and at least one siege.

The borough was originally granted by Henry I to his cousin, Richard de
Riparis (or de Redvers or Rivers), Earl of Devon, whose descendants
possessed it for nearly two centuries, when, the direct line failing,
the borough and title passed to a cousin, a Courtenay, in whose family
the title still remains.

Richard de Redvers, 'the faithful and beloved counsellor' of Henry I, is
supposed to have begun the Castle of Tiverton, and he attached to it
'two parks for pleasure and large and rich demesne for hospitality.' His
grandson, William Rivers, was one of the four Earls who carried the
silken canopy at the second coronation of King Richard I, after his
return from Palestine. William's daughter, Mary, married Robert
Courtenay, Baron of Okehampton; and so it was that, when the House of
Rivers became extinct in the male line, their possessions passed to the
Courtenays, and Mary's great-grandson became first Earl of Devon of the
line of the Courtenays.

It is not thought probable that the Castle as it stands contains work
older than the fourteenth century. Part of the building of that date
remains unaltered, and part has been transformed into a modern house.
The old walls are in places covered with ivy, and on the southern side
are pierced by one or two pointed windows whose stonework is more or
less broken. A round tower at the southeastern angle still looks very
solid and undisturbed. At a few yards' distance, on the south of the
Cas