“I was myself in some difficulty,” said Mr. Hawker, when telling the story. “The stag would have turned on me when I let go, and I did not quite see my way to escape; but that wretched man did nothing but yell for his wig and hat, which had come off and were under the deer’s feet; as if my life were of no account beside his foxy old wig and battered beaver.” Dr. Phillpotts, the late Bishop of Exeter, not long after this occurred, came to Morwenstow to visit Mr. Hawker. Whilst being shown the landscape from the garden, the bishop’s eye rested on Robin Hood. “Why! that stag which butted and tossed Mr. Knight is still suffered to live! It might have killed him.” “No great loss, my lord,” said Mr. Hawker. “He is very Low Church.” Early next morning loud cries for assistance penetrated the vicar’s bedroom. Looking from his window, he beheld the bishop struggling with Robin Hood, who, like his fellow of Sherwood, seems to have had little respect for episcopal dignity. Robin had taken a fancy to the bishop’s apron, and, gently approaching, had secured one corner in his mouth. There is a story of a Scottish curate, who, when Jenny Geddes seized him by his “prelatical” gown as he was passing into the pulpit, quietly loosed the strings, and allowed Jenny and the gown to fall backward together. There was no such luck for the bishop. He sought in vain to unfasten the apron, which descended farther and farther into Robin’s throat, until the vicar, coming to the rescue, restored the apron to daylight, and sent the “masterful thief” about his business. Mr. Hawker accompanied the late Bishop of Exeter on his first visit to Tintagel, and delighted in telling how the scene, then far more out of the world than it can now be considered, impressed the powerful mind of Dr. Phillpotts. He stood alone for some time on the extreme edge of the castle cliff, while the sun went down before him in the tumbling, foaming Atlantic a blaze of splendour, flaking the rocks and ruined walls with orange and carmine; and as he turned away he muttered the line from Zanga:— I like this rocking of the battlements. Another visitor to Morwenstow was the Poet Laureate; he presented himself at the door, and sent in his card, and was received with cordiality and hospitality by the vicar, who, however, was not sure that the stranger was the poet. After lunch they walked together on the cliffs, and Mr. Hawker pointed to the Tonacombe Brook forming a cascade into the sea. “Falling like a broken purpose,” he observed. “You are quoting my lines,” said the Poet Laureate. “And thus it was,” as Mr. Hawker said when relating the incident, “that I learned whom I was entertaining.” He flattered himself that it was he who had introduced the Arthurian cycle of legends to Tennyson’s notice.