AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 191 



Kingsbridge have regarded the ten or twelve olive-com- 

 plexioned gentlemen of Spain, whom Anthony Ashley had 

 sent over to their keeping. A good idea of the aspect of 

 Kingsbridge at that period may be formed from an exami- 

 nation of the quaint frontispiece to Mr. Hawkins' History. 

 It is a kind of picture-plan, bearing the date 1586, or only 

 two years before the wreck of the St. Peter the Great. 

 People the scene here depicted with the Jarvises, the Adamses, 

 and the Lidstones, who then, as now, thronged to their 

 market town from the neighbouring South Hams. Imagine 

 groups of these countrymen and countrywomen gathering 

 round the foreigners, who lounged in strange costumes about 

 the ' Cheap House,' which then encumbered the centre of 

 the Fore Street, near the Church. Being, as Ashley says, 

 1 of the best sorte,' these Spaniards most likely had their 

 liberty on parole, and could regale their hosts with many 

 a story of proud endurance of the hardships of their luck- 

 less voyage. Some could doubtless recount tales of personal 

 adventure in the golden colonies of their royal master in 

 the Indies. They may have stirred the blood of these 

 men of Devon by glowing narratives of encounters on the 

 Spanish main, with Raleigh and Drake, and their bold 

 west-country seamen. 



But my present concern is with historical facts, and these 

 conjectures must, therefore, be left with the novelist. The 

 presence of the foreigners could hardly have failed to leave 

 a deep impression on the inhabitants of the district, and 

 possibly some of your readers, possessing, like the author 

 of 'Kingsbridge Estuary,' the advantages of good local 

 sources of information, may find, still lingering in the 

 neighbourhood, traditions whose origin may be traced to 

 the wreck of the St. Peter the Great. 



