HOW SALVATION YEO SLEW THE KING OF THE GUBBINGS"Ignorance and evil, even in full flight, deal terrible backhanded strokes at their pursuers."--HELPS.
Now I am sorry to say, for the honor of my country, that it was by no means a safe thing in those days to travel from Plymouth to the north of Devon; because, to get to your journey's end, unless you were minded to make a circuit of many miles, you must needs pass through the territory of a foreign and hostile potentate, who had many times ravaged the dominions, and defeated the forces of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and was named (behind his back at least)the King of the Gubbings."So now I dare call them," says Fuller, "secured by distance, which one of more valor durst not do to their face, for fear their fury fall upon him.Yet hitherto have I met with none who could render a reason of their name.We call the shavings of fish (which are little worth) gubbings; and sure it is that they are sensible that the word importeth shame and disgrace.
"As for the suggestion of my worthy and learned friend, Mr.Joseph Maynard, that such as did inhabitare montes gibberosos, were called Gubbings, such will smile at the ingenuity who dissent from the truth of the etymology.
"I have read of an England beyond Wales, but the Gubbings land is a Scythia within England, and they pure heathens therein.It lieth nigh Brent.For in the edge of Dartmoor it is reported that, some two hundred years since, two bad women, being with child, fled thither to hide themselves; to whom certain lewd fellows resorted, and this was their first original.They are a peculiar of their own making, exempt from bishop, archdeacon, and all authority, either ecclesiastical or civil.They live in cots (rather holes than houses) like swine, having all in common, multiplied without marriage into many hundreds.Their language is the dross of the dregs of the vulgar Devonian; and the more learned a man is, the worse he can understand them.During our civil wars no soldiers were quartered upon them, for fear of being quartered amongst them.
Their wealth consisteth in other men's goods; they live by stealing the sheep on the moors; and vain is it for any to search their houses, being a work beneath the pains of any sheriff, and above the power of any constable.Such is their fleetness, they will outrun many horses; vivaciousness, they outlive most men; living in an ignorance of luxury, the extinguisher of life.They hold together like bees; offend one, and all will revenge his quarrel.
"But now I am informed that they begin to be civilized, and tender their children to baptism, and return to be men, yea, Christians again.I hope no CIVIL people amongst us will turn barbarians, now these barbarians begin to be civilized."** Fuller, p.398.
With which quip against the Anabaptists of his day, Fuller ends his story; and I leave him to set forth how Amyas, in fear of these same Scythians and heathens, rode out of Plymouth on a right good horse, in his full suit of armor, carrying lance and sword, and over and above two great dags, or horse-pistols; and behind him Salvation Yeo, and five or six north Devon men (who had served with him in Ireland, and were returning on furlough), clad in head-pieces and quilted jerkins, each man with his pike and sword, and Yeo with arquebuse and match, while two sumpter ponies carried the baggage of this formidable troop.
They pushed on as fast as they could, through Tavistock, to reach before nightfall Lydford, where they meant to sleep; but what with buying the horses, and other delays, they had not been able to start before noon; and night fell just as they reached the frontiers of the enemy's country.A dreary place enough it was, by the wild glare of sunset.A high tableland of heath, banked on the right by the crags and hills of Dartmoor, and sloping away to the south and west toward the foot of the great cone of Brent-Tor, which towered up like an extinct volcano (as some say that it really is), crowned with the tiny church, the votive offering of some Plymouth merchant of old times, who vowed in sore distress to build a church to the Blessed Virgin on the first point of English land which he should see.Far away, down those waste slopes, they could see the tiny threads of blue smoke rising from the dens of the Gubbings; and more than once they called a halt, to examine whether distant furze-bushes and ponies might not be the patrols of an advancing army.It is all very well to laugh at it now, in the nineteenth century, but it was no laughing matter then; as they found before they had gone two miles farther.
