CHAPTER I. THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF BLACKMORE
WHATMANNEROF men were the fathers of Richard Doddridge Blackmore we can only guess, for our actual knowledge of them is very slender. We know that on his father’s side they were yeomen farmers, owning and farming the land down to the time of his grandfather. Among his maternal sires, the Church had been for generations the great end and devotion. Now his paternal grandfather, John Blackmore, gave up the soil for the Church, and the stock, for so long owners and tillers of the soil, became permanently clerical. There is nothing hostile in this background to the character of Blackmore as we know it, meagrely enough, at the present time. There is no inexplicable difference between him and his fathers. Though he never considered the Church as a vocation, he was always a devout man; and to the calling of his earlier ancestors, to loving and careful toil with his hands, he returned with all the affection and patient devotion which they had spent upon their glebes.
Although by the accident of birth, Blackmore was a native of Longworth, Berkshire, he was, in his long residence, and in his sympathies a West-country man. His stock, if we may believe the fragmentary information we have about it, came from Devon; and the Exmoor of which he wrote with such feeling embraces both that county and the county of Somerset. His family had long been associated with Parracombe, a village upon the moors of Devon. In 1640 a Richard Blackmore, resident at Parracombe, married a Margaret Wichehalse, and in 1641 a Richard and a John Blackmore were in Parracombe. Of the exact connection between Margaret Wichehalse and John Blackmore we cannot be certain; but we may be certain that from this John Blackmore, the succession of the family is clear and unbroken. From him, through a series of John Blackmores who carried on the family through the eighteenth century, was descended the John Blackmore (1764-1842) who was Richard’s grandfather. Parracombe parish is still the residence of some of the descendants, and a portion of the land they once owned is in the possession of the novelist’s kin.
The grandfather of Richard went to Blundell’s School at Tiverton and attended Exeter College, Oxford. Later he was ordained the curate of High Bray. He did not return to the pursuits of his ancestors, but in him there had appeared that love of learning which characterized the Blackmores after him. He bought the advowson of Charles, near South Molton, with the intention of living there whenever the incumbent should vacate the post. In the meantime he assumed the oversight of the parish as curate in charge, in 1799. The advowson, however, did not fall vacant until many years later. In the interim of waiting, he became rector of Oare in 1809, and of Combe Martin in 1833, both of which he kept until his death. He occupied his leisure with literary and antiquarian studies, among them the collection of notes for a history of the neighborhood, the copying of the parish registers, and curiously enough, the occasional interpolation among these latter of Latin verses. At some time in the 1790’s he married, and the issue of this union was two sons, both born at High Bray. They were, in the order of their birth, John Blackmore (1794-1858), the father of the novelist; and Richard, his uncle (1798-1880).
When the curacy of Charles fell finally vacant, the father of these two, who were
