had never done anything else, I was bound unto
them, and ere this time they had never anything of me in reward; and,
Sire, you know I was but one man alone, but by the courage, aid, and
comfort of them I took on me to accomplish my vow; and certainly I had
been dead in the battle had they not holpen me and endured the brunt of
the day. Wherefore, whenas nature and duty did oblige me to consider the
love they bear me, I should have showed myself too much ungrateful if I
had not rewarded them . . . but whereas I have done this without your
licence, I humbly crave pardon. . . ."

The Black Prince once more embraced him, praised him for his generosity
as much as for his valour, and granted him a further 600 marks in place
of what he had given away.

I have transcribed this episode because it seems to me a pretty tale of
chivalry, of valour and courtesy, of generosity and noble, if fantastic,
ideals.

Under King Athelstan's rule Barnstaple was governed by two Bailiffs, "one
for the King to collect his duties, the other for the town to receive
their customs." Under Henry I it was granted a charter, which was
confirmed by John and enlarged by Elizabeth.

The earliest industries of the town seem to have been pottery and
weaving; the pottery has always been of the cheaper, coarser kind, and
although some attempt was made at the close of the last century, when the
industry was revived, to bring it to a higher artistic level of colour
and glaze, it still, to my mind, continues mediocre, and has neither the
highly finished beauty of such work as the Ruskin pottery, nor the
genuinely simple lines or colouring of "peasant pottery," such as that
from Quimperle in Brittany. The Barum ware has a sort of bourgeois
mediocrity between these two different types, and there is room for a
bold innovator to reform the present models and methods. It is a pity,
perhaps, that he has not yet arisen, for a local industry of this kind
adds greatly to the vitality of a town.

Of the weaving industry, what Westcote calls "lanificium," "the skill and
knowledge of making cloth, under which genus are contained the species of
spinning, knitting, weaving, tucking, pressing, dying, carding, combing
and such-like," we have records from the twelfth century; though until
the reign of Edward IV only friezes and plain coarse cloth were made. In
Edward's reign an Italian, "Anthony Bonvise," is reputed to have taught
Barnstaple the making of fine "kersies