Devon Notes and Queries. 231 being able to identify the bird) he mounted his horse and rode down the cart track which connects the house with the Hestow lane. Then again the cock crowed lustily, and the sound seemed to come from the hedgerow beyond. The squire upon this dismounted from his horse, and Greenslade, jumping up from the shelter of the ditch, shot him fatally in the head. It appears from the article in the Flying Post that Green- slade robbed him of twelve guineas and of a remarkable watch, and then retreated without having been seen. Mr- Yarde lived for three hours, but did not regain consciousness. He left a widow and eight children, and suspicion naturally fell upon Greenslade, in whose possession the watch was afterwards discovered. A little later, in August, 17839 Greenslade was hanged upon a gibbet erected on Little Haldon above Bishop's Teignton, where now the Yeomanry are accustomed to parade. I have been told on the authority of one of the oldest of the inhabitants of Chudleigh that a man who had committed a murder was certainly buried at Whiteway, with the end of the rope, which still encircled his neck, exposed to view, the better to identify the spot, but he was not sure that this criminal was Greenslade, nor was he sure whether the singular interment was^carried out at Whiteway in King's Teignton, or at the other Whiteway in the parish of Chudleigh. Although not strictly relevant to the story of Mr. Yarde, yet it may interest the students of the past to know that an old woman still lives, or has only very recently died at Chud- leigh, who has often told my informant that she remembers seeing, as a child, the last man who was gibbeted on Haldon pass through Chudleigh to execution in a cart. Moreover, it is recorded that on Nov. 7th, 1816, the fly coach on its way to Plymouth was robbed on Whiteway hill on Haldon by two footpads. If it be permitted to moralise on the story of Mr. Yarde, it would seem to be wiser to abstain from giving unfavourable characters to bad servants in a language not generally under- standable of the people, but to be contented rather with the free and, under the circumstances, perhaps not altogether inappropriate use of the homely vernacular, which our excellent forefathers were accustomed to describe as the vulgar tongue. And we may further possibly reflect with advantage that a
