security, Henry Bidlake alienated and sold to her his goods and chattels, only reserving his wearing apparel. He got back his property in 1654, but his account with the Parliament seems never to have been settled, and he was liable to repeated vexations. As late as December, 1658, he received a summons along with his wife, from Richard, Lord Protector, to appear before the Chancery Court at Exeter. But next year he died, too early to see—what would have gladdened his heart—the Restoration, and to have learned by painful experience the ready forgetfulness by kings of services rendered in the past.
Bidlake House is a very interesting example of a simple mansion such as suited the small squires of Devon in the seventeenth century. It is Elizabethan, and has a quaint old garden at the back. Like so many old houses, the aspect was not considered, and the sun pours into the kitchen, but hardly a gleam can reach the hall and parlour.
But our ancestors had their reasons for burying their mansions at the foot of hills, and turning their backs against the sun. The great enemy was the south-west wind which they could not exclude. It drove through the walls. Therefore by preference they planted their houses under the lee of a bank of hill that intervened between them and the south, and turned their backs like horses against the driving rain.
