Four miles to the south of Tiverton is a pleasant well-wooded valley, in which stands Bickleigh. This village was the birthplace of a rascal, who was such a brilliant and talented rascal that his adventures are very interesting. Witty, courageous, and full of resource, he had, besides, two strong points in his favour. In spite of a very rough and wandering life, his warm affection for his wife never failed, and--all dogs adored him! Bampfylde Moore Carew belonged to a very old family in the West, and his father was rector of Bickleigh. A happy-go-lucky career was foreshadowed at the very outset, for his two 'illustrious godfathers,' Mr Hugh Bampfylde and Major Moore, disputed as to whose name should stand first, and, as they could not agree, the matter was decided by spinning a coin. A few of the most interesting events in his career may be quoted from a little biography first published anonymously in 1745, thirteen years before his death. Carew was sent to Blundell's, where for a while he did well, although his tastes led him to be out with 'a cry' of hounds that the scholars of Blundell's kept among them, whenever it was possible. On one occasion some farmers complained to the head-master of the damage that had been done in hunting a deer over standing corn, and the boy, to escape punishment, ran away from school and joined some gipsies. Carew took very kindly to the life, but repeated accounts of his parents' unhappiness brought him home after a year and a half's wanderings. Though overwhelmed with 'marks of festive joy,' the call 'of the wind on the heath,' was too strong to be resisted, and in a short time he slipped away again and went back to his chosen people. He must have been a very finished actor, with a genius for 'make-up,' to have imposed on half the people that he befooled. Amongst his first rôles were those of a shipwrecked mariner; a poor Mad Tom, trying to eat live coals; and a Kentish farmer, whose drowned farm in the Isle of Sheppey could no longer support his wife and 'seven helpless infants.' Carew's restless disposition took him to Newfoundland, and on his return he successfully played the parts of a nonjuring clergyman, dispossessed of his living for conscience' sake; a Quaker--here is a good example of his wonderful gift--in an assembly of Quakers; a ruined miller; a rat-catcher; and, having borrowed three children from a tinker, a _grandmother_. Carew once wheedled a gentleman, who boasted that he could not be taken in by beggars, into giving him liberal alms twice in one day--in the morning as an unfortunate blacksmith, whose all had been destroyed by fire; whilst in the afternoon, on crutches, his face 'pale and sickly, his gestures very expressive of pain,' he pleaded as a disabled tinner, who, from 'the damps and hardships he had suffered in the mines,' could not work to keep his family.