[Illustration:  BRENT TOR, TAVISTOCK.]

Tavistock was one of the four Stannary towns in Devonshire, where Stannary Courts were established to deal with all matters relating to tin and the tinners who produced it.  Under a charter of Edward I tin was ordered to be officially weighed and stamped in the towns so appointed.  But while the tinners had the privilege of digging for tin on any person’s land without payment for rent or damage, they were subject to heavy penalties and impositions in other ways, and especially in the case of adulteration of tin with inferior metal.  The forest laws also in those early times were terrible and barbarous.  To enforce the authority of the Stannary Courts a prison was constructed in the thirteenth century out of the keep or dungeon of Lydford Castle, about nine miles north of Tavistock; and in the sixteenth century this prison was described as “one of the most annoyous, contagious, and detestable places in the realm.”  When Sir Richard Granville, who was noted for his extremely cruel disposition, was Governor, prisoners were known to be compelled to swallow spoonfuls of the molten metal they were supposed to have adulterated.  William Browne, a poet born at Tavistock in 1590, in one of his pastorals perpetuated the memory of Lydford Castle: 

  I oft have heard of Lydford law—­
  How in the morn they hang and draw. 
    And sit in judgement after.

[Illustration:  KIT HILL, CALLINGTON.]

We had now to return towards the coast-line from which we had diverged after leaving Plymouth, and we decided to walk from Tavistock to Liskeard and stay there for the night.  The country was rather hilly, and in about three miles we crossed the River Tamar, at the same point passing from Devon into Cornwall, for the river here divided the two counties.  It had made for itself in the course of ages a deep passage through the hills, which for the pedestrian involved a deep descent and a sharp ascent on the other side to and from the river.  Our way now crossed the Hingston Downs, where we came to one of the chief landmarks of Cornwall, named the Kit Hill, at an elevation of 1,067 feet above sea-level, standing quite near our road.  This hill marked the site of a desperate battle in 835, between King Edgar of Wessex on the one side and the Danes combined with the men of Cornwall on the other.  The Saxons lost heavily, but they won the battle, and the neighbouring barrows, or tumuli, were supposed to have covered the remains of those who fell on that occasion.  We were now amongst the tin mines, of which there were quite a number, used and disused, in sight, some right on the top of the hills; and from these highlands we could see the two Channels, the English on one side and the Irish on the other.  It was supposed that the Irish had originally inhabited the whole of Cornwall, but the old Cornishmen were in reality Celts of a different tribe.  One of the miners told us that on his