Very likely Pendoggat was of Spanish extraction in spite of his Cornish name. The average Cornishman has a thoroughly good heart, and is, if he be of the true stock, invariably fair. The Cornish man or maid who is dark owes something to foreign blood. There are in Cornwall many men and women so strikingly dark as to attract attention at once; and if their ancestry could be traced back a couple of hundred years it might be found that a Spanish name occurred. While the stout men of Devon were chasing the Armada up channel and plucking the Admiral's feathers one by one, and the patriotic Manacles were doing Cornwall's share by giving the big galleons a hearty welcome, many a shipwrecked sailor found his way into the cottages of fishermen and wreckers, and with the aid of a pocketful of gold pieces made themselves at home. Some possibly were able to return to Spain; others probably seduced their protectors' young women; others were lawfully wedded; others settled down in their new land and took a Cornish name. It is a difficult piece of history to trace, and much must remain pure hypothesis; but it is fairly certain that had there been no Spanish Armada to invade England, and to send Queen Elizabeth to her writing-tablets to reel off a lot of badly-rhymed doggerel in imitation of Master Spenser, there would also have been no Farmer Pendoggat dwelling at Helmen Barton in the parish of Lydford and sub-parish of St. Mary Tavy, as a commoner of Dartmoor and a tenant in name of Elizabeth's descendant the Duke of Cornwall.
There was nothing of a sinister nature about the Barton. Even its name meant simply in its original Celtic the place of the high stone; _hel_ being a corruption of _huhel_, and _men_ one of the various later forms of _maen_; just as huhel twr, the high tor, has now become Hel Tor. Wherever people have been given a chance of dragging in the devil and his dwelling-place they have taken it; actuated, perhaps, by the same motive which impelled the old dame to make a profound reverence whenever the name of the ghostly enemy was mentioned, as she didn't know what would be her fate in a future state, so thought it wise to try and propitiate both sides. The Barton was a long low house of granite, damp and ugly. No architect could make a house built of granite look pleasant; no art could prevent the tough stone from sweating. It was tiled, which made it look colder still. Creepers would not crawl up its walls on account of the winds. One half of the Barton was crowded with windows, the other half appeared to be a blank wall. A good many farm-houses are built upon that plan, the stable and loft being a continuation of the dwelling-house, and to all outward appearance a part of it. There was not a tree near the place. The farm was in a fuzzy hollow; above was a fuzzy down. It ought to have been called Furzeland, a name which is borne by a tiny hamlet in mid-Devon, which nobody has ever heard of, where the furze does not grow. The high stone which had named the place--probably a menhir--had disappeared long ago. Some former tenant would have broken it up and built it into a wall. The commoners' creed is a simple one, and runs thus: "Sometimes I believe in God who made Dartmoor. I cling to my privileges of mining, turbary, and quarrying. I take whatever I can find on the moor, and give no man pay or thanks. I reverence my landlord, and straighten his boundary walls when he, isn't looking. The granite is mine, and the peat, and the rivers, and the fish in them, and so are the cattle upon the hills, if no other man can put forward a better claim. No foreign devil shall share my privileges. If any man offers to scratch my back he must pay vor't. Amen."