and he wrote to Lady Grenville a letter
which deserves to be recorded for its true and simple dignity:

"HONOURED MADAM,--

"Ill news flieth apace: the heavy tidings hath no doubt already
travelled to Stowe that we have lost our blessed master by the enemies'
advantage. You must not, dear lady, grieve too much for your noble
spouse. You know, as we all believe, that his soul was in heaven
before his bones were cold. He fell, as he did often tell us he wished
to die, for the good Stewart cause, for his country and his King. He
delivered to me his last commands, and with such tender words for you
and for his children as are not to be set down with my poor pen, but
must come to your ears upon my best heart's breath. . . . I am coming
down with the mournfullest burden that ever a poor servant did bear, to
bring the great heart that is cold to Kilkhampton vault. Oh, my lady,
how shall I ever brook your weeping face? . . ."

This perhaps, is Cornish history and not Devonshire, except that the
name of Grenville is so inseparably linked in our minds with Devon.

During the Royalist wars from 1642-1650 Exeter was twice besieged by
the Parliamentarians; Ilfracombe twice changed hands, in 1644 being
taken by Doddington for the Royalists, and two years later falling to
Fairfax after his capture of Barnstaple; Tiverton also was besieged by
the Royalists, though it seems to have held within itself the two
irreconcilable factions. But it was not in Devon that the fiercest
battles of that time were fought, nor the greatest and bitterest
disunion prevailed. Of the subsequent history of Devon I shall say
little. The unhappy expedition of the Duke of Monmouth landed at Lyme
Regis, just on the borders of Dorset and Devon, and he himself was
joyfully received in Exeter; but it was in Somerset that the battle of
Sedgemoor was lost, and Somerset that suffered chiefly from the Bloody
Assizes.

Let us rather turn to the Devon of to-day, realizing with thankfulness
that the traditions of Drake and Frobisher, of Grenville and Hawkins,
still hold; that the heirs of the men who put out in their frail ships
for the New World, now buffet round our wild coasts in minesweeper or
trawler, destroyer or old cargo tubs, on a far more grim adventure.
Without the hope of gain, without the spur of glory, from every port
and harbour, from every creek and bay and inlet of our coasts comes the
patient, silent, heroic service of the men of the s