Part 40

But for bell-ringers there must be bells; and who cast those that have been in past years and are still pealed so merrily? A great many were cast by the Penningtons of Lezant, and latterly at Stoke Climsland. The Penningtons were an ancient family in Bodmin, resident there in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Perhaps because not being landed gentry, perhaps because they could not establish the right, they did not record their arms or give their pedigree in the Heralds' Visitations. But the coat they bore or assumed was a goodly one and simple, and therefore ancient--or, in fesse five lozenges azure. Robert Pennington, of Bodmin, had two sons--John, baptized in 1595, and Bernard two years later. John married at Bodmin, and had seven sons baptized there, one of whom was probably the progenitor of the Penningtons of Lezant and Stoke Climsland. The pedigree of the Exeter bell-founders of the family has not been made out; but that they belonged to the stock that sprang up at Bodmin cannot be doubted.

Bernard Pennington, baptized in 1605, was Mayor of Bodmin in 1666, and was a bell-founder. He died in 1674. His son Christopher Pennington, baptized 1631, was also a bell-founder. He died in 1696. Christopher's son of the same name was Mayor of Bodmin in 1726, 1727, and 1733. He died in 1749. The Penningtons seem to have abandoned the bell-casting business at the beginning of the nineteenth century; but, as Sir William Maclean says, "between 1702 and 1818 these popular founders cast nearly five hundred bells in the county of Devon, and, it is believed, as many in Cornwall."

There are sixty-six in Devon cast by John Pennington, of Exeter. The earliest that is dated is at Payhembury, 1635, and the latest 1690 at Kentisbeare. In 1669 T. P. and I. P. appear together on a bell at Merton, as if they were partners; and ninety-five bear the trade-mark of Thomas and John Pennington--large Roman initials with a bell in outline between. The earliest is found at Eggesford, 1618. Sometimes they impressed the coin then current. At Ottery S. Mary, 1671, and at S. Martin's, Exeter, 1675, they used a satirical medal representing a pope and a king under one face, another representing a cardinal and a bishop.

Besides two generations of Penningtons in Exeter, there was, as already stated, Christopher Pennington, who cast a bell at Stowford dated 1710, and one at Philleigh, in Roseland, with C. P. and the skeleton of a bell between, as did the other Pennington. But his earliest known is at Fremington, 1702. He was succeeded by FitzAnthony Pennington, of Lezant, who in 1768, whilst crossing the Tamar in the Antony ferry with a bell he had cast to be set up at Landulph, was drowned. He is buried in the tower of Landulph, and on a mural tablet, beside his age, which was thirty-eight, and the date of his death, April 30th, 1768, are these lines:--

Tho' boisterous winds and billows sore Hath toss'd me to and fro, By God's decree, in spite of both, I rest now here below.

After his death we have the initials of the three brothers, John, Christopher, and William. From their head-quarters, first at Lezant and then at Stoke Climsland, they itinerated through Cornwall and Devon, casting bells wherever they could find deep clay, and sufficient bell-metal was provided by the parish that desired to have a bell in its tower, and generally the bell was cast near the church for which it was intended.

There are as many as 480 bells by this Cornish family from 1710-1818; their latest are at Bridgerule and Bovey Tracey, at this last date.

William Pennington, son of the second Christopher, entered Holy Orders and became vicar of Davidstowe. His progenitors had furnished the voices calling to church from the village towers, and now this member sounded within the church also calling to prayer and praise. His son, William Pennington, purchased the site of the Priory, Bodmin, in 1788, having rebuilt the house some twenty years previously under a lease. He was mayor of Bodmin 1764, 1774, 1787, and died without issue in 1789, bequeathing his possessions to his niece Nancy Hosken, daughter of his sister Susanna, who had married Anthony Hosken, vicar of Bodmin and rector of Lesneuth. Nancy married Walter Raleigh Gilbert, one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, and descended from the ancient Devonshire family of Compton Castle. As Mr. Gilbert died without issue, the Priory passed to his brother, and, consequently, wholly away from the Penningtons.

FOOTNOTES:

Deanery of Trigg Minor, I, p. 301.

At S. Breward the bells were cast in a small garden outside the churchyard fence, since called "Bell garden."

DOCTOR GLYNN-CLOBERY

This amiable and good man was born at Helland, 5th August, 1719, and was the son of Robert Glynn, by Lucy, fourth daughter of John Clobery, of Bradstone, in Devon. A singular fatality attended this ancient family, that possessed a very interesting Elizabethan mansion. John Clobery had eight daughters and only one son and heir, and that son died without issue, and only three of the daughters married. Lucy had but the one son, Robert Glynn, and the fifth daughter, Mary, also only a son; and as these sons died unmarried, the estate passed to remote connections.

Robert Glynn assumed his mother's name and succeeded to the estates on the death of his uncle, William Clobery. Robert Glynn was an M.D. and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, where he resided. He was a simple-minded man, and was completely taken in by the Chatterton forgeries, and for some time strenuously defended them. On which account Horace Walpole speaks of him with great contempt as "an old doting physician and Chattertonian at Cambridge." "I neither answer Dr. Glynn, nor a poissarde. Twenty years ago I might have laughed at both, but they are too small fry, and I am too old to take notice of them. Besides, when leviathans and crocodiles and alligators tempest and infest the ocean, I shall not go a-privateering in a cockboat against a smuggling pinnace." That was in August, 1792.

Dr. Glynn was very fond of seeing young gownsmen at his rooms, and had tea for them and conversed with them; but he never drank tea himself. C. Carlyon says: "His custom was to walk about the room and talk most agreeably upon such topics as he thought likely to interest his company, which did not often consist of more than two or three persons. As soon as the tea-table was set in order, and the boiling water ready for making the infusion, the fragrant herb was taken, not from an ordinary tea-caddy, but from a packet, consisting of several envelopes curiously put together, in the centre of which was the tea. Of this he used, at first, as much as would make a good cup for each of the party; and, to meet fresh demands, I observed that he invariably put an additional teaspoonful in the teapot; the excellence of the beverage, thus prepared, ensuring him custom. He had likewise a superior knack of supplying each cup with sugar from a considerable distance, by a jerk of the hand which discharged it from the sugar-tongs into the cup with unerring certainty, as he continued his walk around the table, scarcely seeming to stop whilst he performed these and other requisite evolutions of the entertainment."

Dr. Glynn or Clobery would only eat when his appetite summoned him imperiously for a meal. A faithful old servant was in constant attendance upon him, and, whenever his master called out for food, he was prepared to set before him some plain dish and a pewter of porter.

Nothing would induce the doctor to believe that gout was hereditary. He once took occasion to mark this with peculiar emphasis, when a writer signing himself W. A. A. consulted him in his first attack, then in his nineteenth year. He observed, "My young friend, you call this gout! Pooh, pooh! You have not yet earned the costly privilege; you must drink your double hogshead first."

"But my father, sir; it is in my blood by right of inheritance."

His reply was, "You talk nonsense. You may as well tell me you have a broken leg in your veins by inheritance."

One Sunday morning he met an undergraduate of his acquaintance on his way to S. Mary's Church, and said to him--

"Well, my master, and whither are you going?"

"I am going to S. Mary's," replied the young gownsman.

"And who is the preacher to-day?"

"I don't know."

"Not know who is the preacher? Then, upon my word, you have no small merit in taking pot-luck at S. Mary's."

During a long illness the good old doctor attended a poor man, of whose family party a pert, talkative magpie made one; and as the patient observed that Dr. Glynn always, when paying a visit, had some joke with the bird, he thought that perhaps the doctor might like to possess it. Accordingly, when the poor man was well again, with overflowing gratitude, but with no money to pay a bill, he thought he could do no better than make his kind friend a present of the magpie; and sure enough the prisoner in its cage was conveyed to his rooms in King's College. There the bearer met with a very kind reception, but was desired to carry back the bird with him. "I cannot," said the doctor, "take so good care of it as can you; but I shall consider it mine, and I entrust it to you to keep for me; and, as long as it lives, I will pay you half-a-crown weekly for its maintenance."

The anecdote was turned into verse by Mr. Plumtre, and is given in Gunning's Reminiscences of Cambridge. When Dr. Glynn assumed the name of Clobery he assumed also the Clobery arms--three bats; and no animal could better symbolize the man, with his curious blindness to what was obvious to most--that the Chatterton papers were forgeries. He went down to Bristol on purpose to examine the chest with its MS. contents. The fact that in one of them the invention of heraldry was ascribed to Hengest, and that of painted glass to an unknown monk in the reign of King Edmund, did not disturb his faith. He entered into vehement controversy with George Steevens, in his endeavour to establish their genuineness. He waxed hot over it, and it took a good deal to put Glynn-Clobery out of his usual placidity and coolness.

He set up to be a poet. His Seatonian prize poem on the "Day of Judgment" was thought much of at the time. Previously Christopher Smart had won the prize over and over again. Glynn wrested the laurels from him. This is not saying much; his poem was not much better, and not at all worse, than the general run of these prize poems. But it had the advantage of pleasing, and has been repeatedly republished, and has even obtained for the old doctor a niche in the temple of Poesy--a notice in a Biographical Dictionary of Poets.