“I wrote to Mr. Prideux to move yow for the purchase of hayes a farme som tyme in my fathers prossession. I will most willingly give yow what so: ever in your conscience yow shall deeme it worthe, and if yow shall att any tyme have occasion to vse mee yow Shall find mee a thanckfull frind to yow and youres. I have dealt wᵗʰ Mʳ. Sprint for suche things as he hathe att colliton and ther abouts and he hath pmised mee to dept wᵗʰ ye moety of otertowne vnto yow in consideration of hayes accordinge to ye valew and yow shall not find mee an ill neighbore vnto yow here after. I am resolved if I cannot intreat yow to build at colliton but for the naturall dispositio’ I have to that place being borne in that howse I had rather seat my sealf ther than any wher els this leving the mattr att large vnto Mr. Sprint I take my leve resting redy to countervaile all your courteses to ye uttermost of my power. “Court the xxvj of July 1584 “Your very willing frinde “in all I shall be able” “W. RALEGH.” It is surely no unamiable trait in a man, that he should wish to purchase the house in which he was born; but Mr. Duke, “from that jealous disposition which can bear no brother near the throne,” did not choose to sell or to have so great a man for so near a neighbour, and so the Raleighs never again entered into possession of Hayes Barton. CHAPTER VIII BUDLEIGH SALTERTON—LITTLEHAM—EXMOUTH—TOPSHAM—ESTUARY OF THE AXE Budleigh Salterton lies at the foot of a steep descent. Only within quite recent years has it been connected by railway with the outer world, and so has not yet quite woke up and found itself, and become self-conscious; although there are plenteous evidences that attempts will be made to convert it into a small modern watering-place, pitifully emulative of its betters. It is not fulsome to say that up to the present it has had no betters, for it has been an individual place, without its fellow anywhere. Conceive a brook running in a deep bed down one side of a village street, and bridged at close upon half a hundred intervals with brick and plank footbridges, leading across into cottages and cottage-gardens; and conceive those cottages, partly the humble homes of fishermen, and partly the simple villas of an Early Victorian, or even a Regency, seaside, and midway down the street imagine that stream crossing under the road, taking the little beach diagonally, and there percolating through the giant “popples.” That is Budleigh Salterton.