CROCKERN PARLIAMENT. 409 



sharp conical crown, and in the foreground Crockern 

 Tor, once a place of renown. 



On this bleak and desolate mountain, in the midst 

 of these hoary stones, with only the sky for a canopy, 

 were it clear or cloudy, bright sun or driving rain, soft 

 zephyr or howling storm, met the ancient Stannary 

 Parliament. Each of the four Stannary towns, 

 Chagford, Ashburton, Plympton, and Tavistock, sent 

 twenty-four burgesses to this assembly, when sum- 

 moned by the Lord Warden of the Stannafies. 

 They enacted laws, which, when ratified by the Lord 

 Warden, were in full force in all matters between the 

 tinners, " lyfe and lym excepted." Probability and 

 tradition, however, assign a far higher sanctity to this 

 spot, as the seat of Druid legislature. The Stannary 

 Court was but a form, comparatively modern, of an 

 assembly which had been wont to meet there from 

 earliest times. Polwhele says that in his time there 

 were the president's chair, seats for the jurors, a high 

 corner-stone for the crier of the court, and a table ; 

 all rudely hewn out of the granite of the Tor, together 

 with a cavern, which may have served as a dungeon 

 for the condemned. A moorland patriarch who had 

 known the spot for threescore years, told Mr Howe, 

 in 1835, that he perfectly remembered the stone chair, 

 which was ascended by four or five steps, and that 

 overhead it was protected by a large thin slab of stone. 

 There seems to be little doubt that this chair now 

 stands in Dinnabridge Pound. 



