r
Winston was eventually forced to compound for so large a sum that it was
convenient for them to live for some years with Lady Churchill's
father.

There is, unfortunately, no space to look at the very interesting
history of the Bonvilles, the ruins of whose old house, Shute, in its
beautiful park, among deer and woods and magnificent cedars, is close to
Ashe. The title became extinct in the Wars of the Roses, for the family
suffered beyond recovery, and the last Lord Bonville had the
overwhelming grief of losing his only son and grandson in the Battle of
Wakefield. The great estates passed to his little great-granddaughter,
Cicely Bonville, who, more than forty years later, built the Dorset
aisle in the church at Ottery St Mary.

The fine building, Newenham Abbey, stood close to the outskirts of the
park, and Sir Nicholas Bonville was a great benefactor to the Abbey, but
it was founded by two brothers, Sir William and Sir Reginald Mohun. The
Abbey Church alone was three hundred feet in length and one hundred and
fifty feet in breadth, and now of all the buildings, there remain but a
few fragments of walls and the stonework of a chapel window.

Axminster, not a mile away, was in Leland's day 'a pratie quik Market
Town.' It was the scene of one very interesting event, for here the Duke
of Monmouth's followers first met the royal troops under the renowned
General Monk, then Duke of Albemarle, and caused them to fly before
their inferior undisciplined numbers. Albemarle dared not risk a battle,
as he became alarmed by the temper of his troops, and feared lest they
might go over to Monmouth if they did but catch sight of their beloved
hero; for the General's troops belonged to the Devonshire militia, and
Monmouth was adored by all the country-people in the West. The General
ordered a hurried retreat, without attempting any engagement, and
Monmouth marched triumphantly to Taunton. The callous brutality of
Sedgmoor, and the atrocious barbarities of the Bloody Assizes following
it, are too intolerable to think of. A ballad has been written called
'The Sorrowful Lamentation of the Widdows of the West', and one wonders
whether its obsequious tone is due to the author being a partisan of
James II, who expressed what he thought they ought to feel, or whether
the verse-maker was one in their midst, who saw that there was indeed
no spirit left in them. I quote a few of the verses:

'Alas! we Widdowes of the West, whose Husb