232 Devon Notes and Queries. quick apprehension of the sights and sounds of Nature may sometimes save the observer from the perpetration of a serious mistake. If the learned, but unobservant, owner of White- way had previously paid proper attention to the voices ever audible in his poultry yard, he would scarcely have been deceived by the clumsy imitations of a Greenslade, and, avoiding the fatal ditch, might possibly have attained to a greater age, and died peacefully in his bed. It is possible to be unobservantly inquisitive and to investigate too much. P.S. — The Yarde family during the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries appears to have lived at Crediton and at Bradley near Newton, as well as at Whiteway in King's Teignton. This latter property still belongs to the family, although it is tenanted, for the second or third generation, by members of the Soper family, now represented by Mr. John Soper. The place is mentioned in Domesday Book with the usual details of bordars and ploughs. ** Formerly it was worth I05. ; now it is worth 155., Witewei." In 1748 {King^s Teignton marriages) we find : — " Mr. Chris- topher Becke, Vicar of King's Teignton, July 21, md. Mrs. Mary Yarde, of the same parish." King*s Teignton burials — July 30, Gilbert Yarde, Esqre., aged 73, 1751. Nov. 3, Edward Yarde, infant, 1763. Oct. 17, Mrs. Rebecca Yarde, 83, 1777. Highiveek burials — Gilbert Yarde, bd. Aug. 31, 1759. Gilbert Yarde, bd. Feb. 17, 1768. James Yarde, bd. Feb. 5, 1775. No mention is made in any instance of untimely death. The present Clerk of the Peace for the County of Devon — also a well-known lawyer and coroner — neither of them know where to look for records of eighteenth century executions. Nevertheless the tradition (as given above) still lingers — ^the spot where the squire fell and the spot where the murderer was hanged are still remembered. I have also heard that a Yarde of Whiteway extraction refused a Bishopric (Norwich) because his father was only a Dean (Bristol). W. H. Thornton.
