A Book of Dartmoor: Second EditionBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A Book of Dartmoor: Second Edition
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Dartmoor (England)
No attempt was made during the lifetime of the Duke to dispute the
legality of the union; neither he nor Elizabeth had the least doubt
that the former marriage had been legally dissolved. But when the Duke
left all his great fortune to Elizabeth, then his nephews were furious,
and raked up against her the charge of bigamy, on the grounds that
the sentence of the Consistory Court was invalid. She was tried in
Westminster Hall before her peers in 1776, and the trial lasted five
days.
The penalty for bigamy was death, but she could escape this sentence by
claiming the benefit of a statute of William and Mary, which commuted
death to branding in the hand and imprisonment. The peers found her
guilty, but she escaped punishment by flying to the Continent, where
she died in 1788.[19]
Harford Hall, where she resided, has about it no architectural
features; it never can have been other than a small mansion, and is now
a mere farmhouse. The trees around it alone indicate that it was at one
time a gentleman's seat.
If now we strike across Stall Moor to the Yealm we come on Yealm
Steps, where the river falls over a mass of granite débris. Here are
two blowing-houses, one above the steps and the other below. The
lower house on the eastern side of the stream is a mere heap of ruins
with, however, the door-jamb standing and facing the north.[20] No
wheel-pit is visible, but there are traces of a watercourse at a high
level to the north-east of the hut. Near the entrance is a stone with
one perfect mould in it, and another imperfect. A second mould-stone
is lying near an angle in the eastern wall of the house. It has in it
two moulds adjoining each other--one at a lower level than the other,
and connected by a channel. The high-level cavity is 15 inches long, 8
inches wide, and 3 inches deep. At one end is a groove one inch deep,
perpendicular, and running down the side of the mould three inches;
that is, from top to bottom.
The low-level mould is 17 inches long, 12 inches wide, and 5 inches
deep. These cavities have been used for the purification of tin,
for the molten metal mixed with furnace impurities poured in on the
high-level hollow would flow in a purer condition into the low-level
mould.
This blowing-house has been excavated, somewhat superficially, but
nothing was found in it to give token of the period to which it
belonged. About a quarter of a mile further up the river, but on the
western bank, is another ruin. The doorway, which is very imperfect,
is on the eastern side. One mould-stone remains, containing a mould 17
inches long, 12 inches wide, and from 4 to 5 inches deep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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