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As compared with the sister counties of Cornwall and Dorset, Devonshire is not particularly well represented in memorials of the Roman occupation, although an immense number of Roman coins have been unearthed at various times.
The Duke of Wellington, in after years, said to Lord Mahon, "He had observed on several occasions that Sir Walter was talked down by Croker and Bankes! who forgot that we might have them every day." Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 1. Sir W. Knighton, as a Devonshire man, naturally wished to have the portrait painted by Northcote, who was a brother Devonian.
He felt that his punishment was indeed too heavy for him. At Tilgate and Chetwood next morning, two distinguished households were thrown into confusion by the news in the papers. To Colonel Kelmscott and to Elma Clifford alike that news came with crushing force and horror. A murder, said the Times, had been committed in Devonshire, in a romantic dell, on the skirts of Dartmoor.
Lady Chepstow, planning already for a wedding that was to take place in the early winter, decided to spend the last few months of her widowhood at her country house in Devonshire, and retired to it taking her servants, her little son, and her son's governess with her.
"I am sure, Lionel, the funniest, merriest people that I know, think most about what is right." "Well, that may do in Devonshire perhaps," said Lionel, stretching himself, "but it won't here except with you. Indeed there is nobody else that I know of that does make such a fuss about right and wrong, except Walter, and he hasn't got an atom of fun to bless himself with."
He laid it down as the principle of his legislation on this subject a principle which "he was sure that every gentleman in the House was ready to admit that the consequence of the Union ought to be a perfect freedom of trade, whether of produce or manufacture, without exception, if possible; that a deviation from that principle ought to be made only when adhering to it might possibly shake some large capital, or materially diminish the effect of the labor of the inhabitants, or suddenly and violently shock the received opinion or popular prejudices of a large portion of the people; but that, on the whole, the communication between the two kingdoms should in spirit be free; that no jealousy should be attempted to be created between the manufacturers of one place or the other upon the subject of 'raw materials' or any other article; for it would surely be considered very narrow policy, and as such would be treated with derision, were an attempt made to create a jealousy between Devonshire and Cornwall, between Lancashire and Durham.... He said, then, that the principle of the Union on this head should be liberal and free, and that no departure from it should ever take place but upon some point of present unavoidable necessity."
"Now as Tom was made for a farmer and nothing but a farmer, he must find land somewhere in a climate that does suit him; so his friends have advised him to try a place in Devonshire or Cornwall, where he may train his myrtles and roses over his roof, and grow green peas for the London markets as late as November.
Several of them, however, remained not long ago at a village called Aveton Gifford, in Devonshire, in the neighbourhood of which some of the most opulent of the farmers used to keep two or three dogs each.
The larks insisted on that, jubilantly or sorrowfully according to the stage of their flight. Then something or someone immediately behind him on the other side of the hedge breathed a huge sigh, as if lamenting over his fate. He jumped up. It was a cow. He could see her through the brambles and smell her too, sweet as a Devonshire dairy.
One flower which, for some reason or other, is still held in special honour by them, is the common stichwort of our country hedges, and which the Devonshire peasant hesitates to pluck lest he should be pixy-led. A similar idea formerly prevailed in the Isle of Man in connection with the St. John's wort.
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