undred and fifty men were brought from the Peak in Derbyshire, to
work here.' This statement Fuller amplifies by the note that 'It was
forged for the Lady _Eleanor_ Dutchesse of _Barr_, daughter to the said
King, who married the year before.'

In the reign of Edward III the mines yielded the King 'great profits
towards carrying on the French war,' and Henry V 'made good use of
them,' but after that they were neglected for a long while. In Queen
Elizabeth's reign, Adrian Gilbert, Sir Humphrey's brother, began to work
them again, and Sir Beavis Bulmer followed with considerable success,
'by whose mineral skill great quantity of silver was landed and
refined.'

The Queen presented the Earl of Bath with a rich and fair silver cup
made here, bearing this inscription:

'In Martin's-Comb long lay I hid,
Obscure, depress'd with grosser soil;
Debased much with mixed lead,
Till Bulmer came, whose skill and toil
Refined me so pure and clean
As richer nowhere else is seen.

'And adding yet a farther grace,
By fashion he did enable
Me worthy for to take a place
To serve at any prince's table.
Comb-Martin gave the ore alone,
Bulmer fining and fashion.'

The mines have been worked at intervals since, and as late as 1845 a
smelting-house was built in the valley.

The church is of rose-coloured stone, and has a high battlemented tower,
in which are niches with figures in them. There is a good screen, with
paintings of the Apostles on the panels. In the south aisle is a
monument to the wife of William Hancock, 'an effigy the size of life,
exquisitely and elaborately sculptured in white marble. It bears the
date 1634. Dame Hancock is represented in the dress of that time,
covered with point lace and looped with knots of riband; she has a pearl
necklace round her throat and her hair in curls, and bears some
resemblance to the portraits of Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles I.'

From Combe Martin the road to Lynton turns inland and makes a deep curve
to the south, and two or three miles from its most southerly point, and
about ten miles from Ilfracombe, is Arlington Court, the home of one of
the many branches of that great North Devon family, the Chichesters. The
first of this name were settled at Chichester in Sussex, but by marriage
with the daughter and heiress of John de Raleigh, about the middle of
the fourteenth century, John Chichester came into the possession of
several man