on Kent's cavern, Devonshire. 3 



Petre— Sir "William Petro, the statesman, -who obtained the manor of Brent, 

 near Totnes, at the dissolution of Buckfast Abbey, about 1553 ; and William 

 Petro, his nephew. 



Mr. It. Dymond, F.S.A., of Exeter, writing to the Superintendents on the 

 question, says : — " Sir Wm. Petre, the statesman, does not appear to have 

 maintained much connexion with Devonshire after attaining manhood ; and 

 as the date of the inscription in Kent's Cavern (1571) was that of the year 

 preceding his interment in Essex, it would seem unlikely that it referred to 

 him. 



" On the other hand, there is much that points to the conclusion that it was 

 the work of William Petre, his nephew, who owned Hays in St. Thomas, a 

 suburb of Exeter, but who was described as of Tor Newton, and was buried 

 at Tor Brian, near Totnes, in 1614. His mother was a ltidgway of Tor- 

 mohun, the parish in which the Cavern is situate ; and his wife was a 

 South cote of Bovey Tracy, South Devon. Thomas Bidgway, the then owner 

 of the land which contains Kent's Hole, was the trustee of his marriage 

 settlement in 1585. He probably held frequent intercourse with these con- 

 nexions, and was familiar with the objects of interest on their property. 

 His monumental inscription (see Prince's ' Worthies of Devon,' p. 633) docs 

 not state his ago, but he died in 1614. His marriage settlement was 

 apparently a postnuptial one; and he was probably young in 1571, when 

 the youthful freak of carving the name in stalagmite was perpetrated. 



" May we not fairly conclude that he was identical with the ' William 

 Petre ' of the Cavern?— B. D., 20th May, 1877." 



It may not be out of place to add here that Mr. J. T. "White, whilst 

 preparing his ' History of Torquay,' discovered a lease dated December 22nd, 

 1659, and appertaining to " closes, melds, or pieces of ground" forming part 

 of the property in which the Cavern is situate, in which occur the words 

 " one close caUed Kent's Hole ; " thus showing that in the middle of the 17th 

 century the Cavern was so well known as to have given a name to a portion 

 of an estate leased to a " husbandman," and rendering it eminently probable 

 that the inscription of 1571, and all those of subsequent date, may be taken 

 as genuine. 



As Mr. MacEnery broke ground in every part of the Bear's Den, the con- 

 dition in which he found it can only be learned from the description which 

 he has left, and which may be given in the following very condensed form : — 

 " The floor of the Boar's Den was studded with conical mounds of stalagmite, 

 supporting corresponding pendants from the roof. Fallen masses of limestone 

 were strewed about, and some of them wore incorporated in the crust. An 

 irregular sheet of stalagmite, about a foot thick, overspread the floor, and 

 was based on a shallow bed of indurated rubble, containing tubes of stalactite 

 collected in heaps in particular places, a great abundance of album grcecum, 

 an unusual proportion of Bears' teeth, and an iron blade much corroded, 

 Points of stalagmitic cones were observed to protrude upwards into the 

 rubbly bed, and 'were found to rise from a lower sheet of stalagmite. Tho 

 cones of this lower sheet were precisely under those of the upper, denoting 

 that they were successively deposited from the same tubes above ; but the 

 lowermost set exceeded by double the thickness of tho uppermost, and the 

 depth of the stalagmitic sheet was in the same proportion. The lower sheet 

 extended over the entire area of the den ; but the superincumbent bed of 

 rubble, and its overlying thin sheet of stalagmite, disappeared gradually or 

 ' thinned out ' towards the sides. The removal of these partial beds displayed 

 the entire surface of the lower sheet, which exhibited a most singular 



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