TAUNTON AND DUNSTER. Ixvii. 



nestling under the Castle hill, is a most striking and delightful 

 survival of feudal days. 



Between Dunster and Dorset, there is more than one connecting link. For 

 instance, the Dorset family of de Mohun (afterward abbreviated to the less 

 distinguished and less euphonious form " Moon,") of Fleet (" Moon Fleet ") and 

 Hammoon, are direct descendants of the Norman family of the Mohuns, or 

 Moions, who built the Castle, and from whom it passed by purchase to the 

 present owners. To be precise, after the death in 1376 of John de Mohun, his 

 widow, Lady Joan, sold the reversion to Lady Elizabeth Luttrell. second cousin 

 of the Black Prince, and in the possession of her descendants it remained to the 

 present day. When in Dunster Priory Church, later in the day, the Club 

 observed the incised grave slab of this same Lady Elizabeth Luttrell, with an 

 inscription in Old English characters recording her death in 1400 (MCCCC). 

 Another tie with Dorset is that Colonel Francis Luttrell, of Duuster, in 1680 

 married Mary, the beautiful daughter and heiress of John Tregonwell, of Milton 

 Abbey. They had one son ; but he died young, and thereupon the Dorset 

 property went back to Mary Tregonwell, who afterwards married Sir Jacob 

 Baiicks. 



Mr. Luttrell, before leading the way over the Castle and 

 pointing out the principal apartments and the many objects of 

 interest, value, and beauty which they contain, characterised the 

 building tersely as an Elizabethan front put on to the older 

 fortified structure of the reign of Henry III. 



The grand staircase furnishes a good example of the costly wood- work 

 executed in this country by Italian workers in the reign of Charles II., who is 

 said to have visited the Castle himself. The bedroom he occupied is still shown, 

 with the narrow secret passage, or room, with a seat at the end of it, constructed 

 in the thickness of the wall at the back of the bedstead head, and a place of 

 refuge in case of sudden alarm. Another spacious apartment, commanding a 

 landscape and seascape of surpassing beauty, was occupied as a bedroom by our 

 present King when, as Prince of Wales, he visited the Castle. It was, before 

 that visit, the drawing-room, and has a fine plaster ceiling. In Prince Charles's 

 room is an interesting plaster chimney piece, moulded with figures representing 

 Plenty and Poverty and other subjects, and said to be the work of local workmen 

 in 1620, which year appears on it in Arabic numerals. In another fine apartment 

 the attention of the party was arrested by some beautiful examples of painted 

 leather of Spanish workmanship, of the 17th century, suggestive of tapestry, but 

 bolder and more brilliant. Scenes from the story of Antony and Cleopatra are 

 vigorously represented by the artist. 



In the great hall one notices a modern fireplace of Tudor style, carved with a 

 facsimile of the entry in Domesday recording that in the time of Edward the 



