Transcriber’s Note:

Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and are linked for ease of reference.

Full page illustrations have been moved to the nearest paragraph break.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup.

Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in the note at the end of the text.

From a Drawing by J. M. W. Turner.]

[Engraved by T. Jeavons.

Exeter.

The object of the present volume is to present what may be termed a history of Devon in episode. A comprehensive and, at the same time, detailed record of the county, dealing more or less fully with the principal events of every town’s life, would require many volumes as large as or larger than ours, and yet might fail to impress the reader with the salient features of county life as a whole. In selecting the subjects for the various articles comprised in this work, the Editor’s aim has been to single out such as may be expected, for different reasons, to appeal to all Devonians, and, perhaps, to some unconnected with the beautiful shire. The majority of the articles have been written expressly for the present work, but three have been reproduced, in shortened form, from the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, in which they were published many years ago, and so were in danger of being forgotten. The Editor deems he has no need to apologize for thus enriching the volume with the labours of departed Devonians, whom their compatriots recall with deep reverence, and whom, were they living, the Editor would hail as valued collaborators. Of the other articles, two have already seen print in pamphlet form, in which, after many years, they had naturally viiibecome exceedingly scarce. All the other contributions are new, and most of the papers, both old and new, have been embellished with illustrations, some of them curious and rare.

The Editor takes this opportunity of rectifying two omissions in his preliminary sketch. Owing to some accident, he failed to refer to the defence of Dartmouth against the attack of Du Chastel in 1404. This event was memorable on account of the active part taken by the women, who, Amazon-like, hurled flints and pebbles on the French, and thus expedited their retirement. The other omission concerns the abortive Cavalier rising of 1655. Penruddock and Groves, the leaders in the affair (for which they suffered death at Exeter), were both Wiltshire men, but it is certainly interesting that an attempt which might have antedated the Restoration by five years was initiated by the proclamation of Charles II. at South Molton—a town of the county of which George Monk, to whom the Merry Monarch owed his crown, was a native.

It only remains for the Editor to thank his many able contributors for their generous assistance, and to express the hope that the plan and execution of the work will prove satisfactory to those who desire a fuller acquaintance with the families, persons, and places therein mentioned.

Tiverton, October 1st, 1904.

[Illustration]

No county of England is richer in historic associations and romantic memories than Devonshire, whose sons have proved themselves on many a stubborn day as brave as its daughters are proverbially fair. We may go further, and say that no English shire is richer, and only a few as rich, in those pre-historic remains which will always exercise a weird fascination over cultivated minds that would hold it sin to be incurious as to the beginnings, or, rather, the age-long development, of man upon the earth. The great mausoleum of these remains is Dartmoor, with its menhirs, its logans, its cromlechs (or dolmens), its circles and avenues, and its famous clapper-bridge; but all over the county are specimens of the typical round barrow, encrusted with hoar legends, and possessing, in addition, their strict scientific interest. The legends attach themselves to the individual barrows; the scientific problem is concerned with the almost unvarying form and type. Briefly, it may be stated that the Devonshire round barrow is a late variety of the cairn; the long barrow, which is numerously represented in the neighbouring county of Dorset, being older and corresponding to the long-headed race which preceded the round-headed Kelts in the occupation of Britain. The difference is between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, to which the round barrows belong and bear witness. To the Stone Age are assigned the chambered round barrows, the so-called giants’ graves, and the stone kists of Lundy Island.

2Roughly contemporary with the typical round barrows are those mysterious remains in the great central waste, to which allusion has already been made. Just as false systems of astrology were elaborated before the dawn of clear scientific knowledge, so during the eighteenth century a complete hagiology was constructed respecting these remains, which has become untenable in view of more rigorous historical, philological, and anthropological investigation. In other words, the accepted interpretation of these moorland wonders connected them more or less definitely with Druidism. The prism of imagination presented those hierarchs in crimson hues. If their functions included inhuman sacrifices, they themselves were far from being deficient in dignity. What says Southey in Caradoc?

But whether as priests or mere medicine men, the existence of Druids in Devon has yet to be proved. Drewsteignton derives its initial syllable, not from them, but from Drogo; Wistman’s Wood comes, not from wissen, but is more probably uisg-maen-coed disguised in modern garb. And, as for those basins on the summits of the Dartmoor tors, they are purely natural. So the whole delightful edifice which Polwhele was at such pains to build up, and which Mrs. Bray described to the sympathetic Southey, topples down, or, rather, vanishes into thin air, leaving not a wrack behind.

While the Druids, both locally and generally, belong rather to the region of myth than of solid history, the Romans are an indisputable fact in both senses. Still, their advent in the West Country is not free from obscurity. One thing seems fairly certain, namely, that they did not establish themselves in Devonshire by their 3usual method of conquest. Exeter, however, was a thoroughly Roman city, and traces of the Imperial race are to be found in local names, such as Chester Moor, near North Lew, and in the ruins of Roman villas, as at Seaton and Hartland. The siege of Exeter by Vespasian is one of those fictitious events which, by dint of constant reiteration, work themselves into the brain as substantial verities. The place that Vespasian attacked was not Exeter, but Pensaulcoit (Penselwood), on the borders of Somerset and Wilts. Probably the Romans were content with a protectorate, under which the Britons were suffered to retain their nationality and their native princes.

The Saxons, though known as “wolves,” certainly appeared as sheep or in sheep’s clothing in their earliest attempts to settle in the county. They lived side by side with the Britons, notably at Exeter, where the dedications of the ancient parishes testify to the juxtaposition of British and Saxon. Here, also, it was that the West Saxon apostle of Germany, St. Boniface, was educated in a West Saxon school. But this state of things was not to last. In 710, Ine, the King of the West Saxons, vanquished Geraint, prince of Devon, in a pitched battle; and although there is no reason to think that he extended his borders much to the west of Taunton, the work of subjugation thus begun was continued by Ine’s successors, primarily by Cynewulf (755–784); and since, in 823, the men of Devon were marshalled against their kinsmen, the Cornish, at Gafulford, on the Tamar, the Saxon conquest must by that time have been complete. Still the victors were not satisfied. In 926, as we learn from William of Malmesbury, Athelstan drove the Britons out of Exeter, and, constituting the Tamar the limit of his jurisdiction, converted Devon into a purely Saxon province. The immense preponderance of Saxon names in all parts of the county proves how thoroughly this expropriation of the Kelts was carried into effect. The 4theory held by Sir Francis Palgrave, amongst others, that the conquest of Devon was accomplished by halves, the Exe being for some time the boundary, rests upon no adequate grounds, neither evidence nor probability supporting it. In due course, the whole county was mapped out into tithings and hundreds, in accordance with the Saxon methods of administration, and the executive official was the portreeve.

Parallel with the record of Saxon conquest runs the story of Danish endeavours, stubborn, long-protracted, but, on the whole, less successful, to secure a footing and affirm the superiority. In the first half of the ninth century, the Vikings, in alliance with the Cornish, were routed by Egbert in a decisive engagement at Hingston Down, when, according to a Tavistock rhyme—

During the latter half of the same century, the Danes were again active, and in 877 made Exeter their headquarters. Seventeen years later they besieged the city, which was relieved by Alfred the Great, who confided the direction of church affairs in the city and county to the learned Asser, author of the Saxon Chronicle. In 1001, the Danes, having landed at Exmouth, made an attempt on Exeter, when the Saxons of Devon and Somerset, hastening to the rescue, were overthrown in a severe encounter at Pinhoe, and the piratical invaders returned to their ships, laden with spoil. The following year was marked by a general massacre of the Danes at the behest of Ethelred, and, to avenge this treacherous slaughter, Sweyn (or Swegen) swooped, like a vulture, on the land, and, through the perfidy of Norman Hugh, the reeve, was admitted within the gates of Exeter. As usual on such occasions, red ruin was the grim sequel; but in after days, when the Danish dynasty was in secure possession of the throne, Canute (or Cnut) cherished 5no malice by reason of the tragic horror inflicted on his race, but conferred on Exeter’s chief monastery the dignity of a cathedral.

In a secular as well as in a religious sense, far the most romantic episodes of Saxon rule in Devon centre around the old Abbey of St. Rumon, Tavistock, the largest and most splendid of all the conventual institutions in the fair county. Ordulf, the reputed founder, was no ordinary mortal. He looms through the mist of ages as a being of gigantic stature, whose delight it was, with one stroke of his hunting-knife, to cleave from their bodies the heads of animals taken in the chase, and whose thigh-bone, it is said, is yet preserved in Tavistock Church. But if he had something in common with Goliath and John Ridd, Ordulf was likewise, and very plainly, cousin german to Saint Hubert, for having been bidden in a vision, he built Tavistock Abbey, to whose site his wife was conducted by an angel. An alternative version associates with him in this pious work his father, Orgar. However that may be, the edifice was destroyed by the Danes in the course of a predatory expedition up the Tamar to Lydford. This was in 997. It was re-built on a still grander scale, and bore the assaults of time until the days of the sacrilegious Hal, when it was suppressed and given to William, Lord Russell.

So much for the Abbey. Now for the secular romance, which yields a striking illustration of Shakespeare’s warning:—

Orgar, the father of Ordulf, had a daughter named Elfrida, the fame of whose loveliness came to the ears of the King. Edgar, being unwedded, despatched Earl Ethelwold 6to Tavistock on a mission of observation, and the courtier was empowered, if report erred not, to demand her in marriage for his royal master. Ethelwold came, and saw, and was conquered. Although much older than the fair lady, he fell in love with her, and gained her assent and that of her father to their union. This he could do only by concealing from them the more advantageous offer of a royal alliance. With equal duplicity he kept from the King not only the knowledge of his bride’s surpassing beauty, but the bride herself, being assured that her appearance at court would be fatal. However, in no long time the truth leaked out, and Edgar set out for Dartmoor, ostensibly to hunt. Ethelwold, in desperation, now made full confession to his wife, whom he charged to disguise her charms, but the vain and ambitious woman, angered at his deceit, displayed them the more, and the King, resolved on Ethelwold’s death, actually slew him at Wilverley or Warlwood in the Forest.

After the departure of the Romans and before the final absorption of Devon by the Saxons, there are signs that the Kelts of South-West Britain were in intimate touch with their brethren on the other side of St. George’s Channel. At any rate, the Ogham inscriptions found in the neighbourhood of Tavistock testify to the missionary enterprise of the Island of Saints during the latter part of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth centuries after Christ. For most purposes, the centre of county life has from the first been Exeter, but to this rule there was at one time an important exception, which was not Tavistock, but the little town of Crediton, situated on a tributary of the Exe. An old rhyme has it—

Little can be said for this view on general historic grounds, but from the standpoint of ecclesiastical Anglo-Saxondom, 7Crediton had a decided claim to the preference, for was it not the birthplace of Winfrid (St. Boniface), and the seat of the Anglo-Saxon bishops from the year 909 until 1050, when Leofric, for fear of the Danes, transferred the see to Exeter? This prelate was installed by Edward the Confessor and Queen Edith, who, holding him by the hands, invoked God’s blessing on future benefactors.

If the Ogham stones of Dartmoor attest the zeal of Keltic Christianity, Coplestone Cross, a richly-carved monument near Crediton, is a reminder of the early days of Saxon piety, when such crosses were erected as shrines for the churchless ceorls. Coplestone, also, was the name of a powerful race known as the Great Coplestones, or Coplestones of the White Spur, who claimed, but apparently without reason, to have been thanes in Saxon times. In the West Country, no distich is more popular or more widely diffused than the odd little couplet—

The invincible William knocked at the gates of the Western capital in 1066, and was at first refused admission. If it be true, as Sir Francis Palgrave held, that Exeter was a free republic before Athelstan engirdled it with massive walls, the genius loci asserted itself with dramatic effect when the Conqueror demanded submission, and, in the words of Freeman, “she, or at least her rulers, professed themselves willing to receive William as an external lord, to pay him the tribute which had been paid to the old kings, but refused to admit him within her walls as her immediate sovereign.” Dissatisfied with this response, William besieged the city, which held out for eighteen days, and then surrendered on conditions. Exeter, it may be observed, was at this time one of the four principal cities of the realm, the other members of the quartette being London, Winchester, and York.

8The capitulation was followed by the building of Rougemont Castle, not a moment too soon, for ere it could well have been completed, the sons of Harold led an assault on Exeter. This was repulsed without much difficulty by the Norman garrison, but the Saxons showed themselves still restless in the West. The army of Godwin and Edmund fought with fruitless valour on the banks of the Tavy until, three years after the opening of the struggle, Sithric, the last Saxon abbot of Tavistock, betook himself to the Camp of Refuge at Ely, to be under the protection of the noble Hereward.

Exeter, to which one always returns, stands out prominently among English towns on account of its many sieges. Old Isaacke, happily a much better chronicler than poet, testifies as follows:—

This is sure proof of the immense value attached to the possession of the place in troublous times, and prepares us for the conspicuous part taken by both county and city in the centuries that succeeded the establishment of Norman rule. The first Norman governor was Baldwin de Redvers, whose grandson, another Baldwin, declared for Matilda when civil war broke out between her party and Stephen’s. The citizens, on the other hand, espoused the cause of the King, and were subjected to all sorts of barbarities, until the approach of a vanguard of two hundred horse compelled the retreat of the garrison into the castle. After a three months’ siege, water failed, and the doughty defenders were forced to yield.

From a Photograph]

[by Frith & Co.

Rougemont Castle, Exeter.

Edward I. held a parliament at Exeter, and his great-grandson, the famous Black Prince, must have been well acquainted with the city, as he passed through it more than once en route to Plymouth, whence he sailed to France on the glorious expedition which ended at Poictiers. Its relations with the Black Prince reveal to us how much the county has receded in practical 9importance since medieval times. Plymouth, indeed, maintains her place: she is as great now, perhaps greater, than she was then; and Dartmouth, charming Dartmouth, is still far from obscure. Nevertheless, it is idle to claim for the ports of Devon as a class the relative standing they once enjoyed, when, according to the Libel of English Policy, Edward III., bent on suppressing the pirates of St. Malo—

And when Chaucer has to depict a typical mariner, he begins with the words—

—obviously because of Dartmouth’s national reputation. Topsham, formerly the port of Exeter, is a truly startling instance of decline, since as late as the reign of William III. London alone exceeded it in the amount of its trade with Newfoundland. On the other hand, Bideford never possessed all the importance that Kingsley attributes to it, though relatively of much greater consequence in ancient days than at present. It is a curious fact that Ilfracombe, that popular watering-place, sent six ships to the siege of Calais, as compared with Liverpool’s one, Dartmouth contributing thirty-one, and Plymouth twenty-six.

The Black Prince was the first Duke of Cornwall, and the stannaries or tin-bearing districts of Devon and Cornwall, which in Saxon and Norman times had been a royal demesne, passed to this valiant prince and his successors. The old Crockern Tor Parliament would furnish material for a fascinating chapter in the romance of history, but the present sketch is necessarily too brief to admit of much discussion. Its regulations certainly did 10not err on the side of leniency. “The punishment,” says Mrs. Bray, “for him who in days of old brought bad tin to the market was to have a certain quantity of it poured down his throat in a melted state.” The most important event in the annals of Chagford, one of the stannary towns, is the falling in of the market-house on Mr. Eveleigh, the steward, and nine other persons, all of whom were killed. This sad disaster, which occurred “presently after dinner,” is the subject of a rare black-letter tract, entitled, True Relation of the Accident at Chagford in Devonshire.

Going back to the Wars of the Roses, the West of England for the most part supported the Lancastrian cause. In 1469, Exeter was besieged for twelve days by Sir William Courtenay, in the interest of Edward IV.; and in the following year, Clarence and Warwick repaired to the city prior to embarking at Dartmouth for Calais. When, however, Edward IV., seated firmly on the throne, appeared in Exeter as de facto sovereign of the realm, the citizens, forgetting past grudges, provided such a welcome for the monarch, his consort, and his infant son, that he presented the Corporation with the sword of state still borne before the Mayor. The city had given him a hundred nobles. Just twice that sum was the loyal offering to Richard III. when, in 1483, he arrived at Exeter soon after the Marquis of Dorset had proclaimed the Earl of Richmond King. A gruesome incident marked his visit, for Richard, that best-hated of English rulers, caused his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas St. Leger, to be beheaded in the court-yard of the Castle. The name, Rougemont, jarred on his superstitious nature, the reason being its similarity to Richmond. The point is referred to by Shakespeare in the well-known play:—

11In 1497, that bold adventurer, Perkin Warbeck, claimed admission within the walls, which, so far as the citizens were concerned, would have been readily granted. The Earl of Devon and his son were less accommodating, and, after Warbeck had set fire to the gates, succeeded in beating off his attack. The pretender’s next appearance in the city, where the King had taken up his quarters, was in the character of a prisoner. Henry’s conduct towards his rebellious subjects was worthy of a great prince, and affords a marked contrast to the brutality that characterized the suppression of the next revolt and the still more notorious savagery of “Kirke’s Lambs.” When brought before him, “bareheaded, in their shirts, and halters round their necks,” he “graciously pardoned them, choosing rather to wash his hands in milk by forgiving than in blood by destroying them.”

As is well known, the Reformation was not the popular event in England that it was in Scotland, and the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer in lieu of the Mass was the torch which, in 1549, set the western shires—Cornwall, and Somerset, and Devon—in a blaze. The opposition, started at Sampford Courtenay by a pair of simple villagers, soon came to include leaders of the stamp of Sir Thomas Pomeroy and Sir Humphry Arundel, who barricaded Crediton, the rendezvous of their party. The interests of the Crown were befriended by Sir Peter and Sir Gawen Carew, who, though utterly unscrupulous and barbarous in their methods of warfare, failed to arrest the insurrection. Presently no fewer than ten thousand rebels commenced the investment of Exeter. At this serious juncture, the Lord Lieutenant of the county (Lord Russell) took the helm of affairs, and ultimately raised the siege, the city in the meantime being reduced to terrible straits through famine. But the rebels suffered, too. In all, four thousand peasants fell in the Western Rising. A dramatic episode was the execution of the Vicar of St. Thomas, who was hanged in full 12canonicals on his church, where his corpse remained suspended till the reign of Edward’s successor, when the Roman Catholics regained, for a season, the upper hand.

The geographical position of Devonshire suggests, what is also the fact, that the county had a considerable share in the colonization of the Western Hemisphere. The first port in Devon to send out ships to America for the purpose of establishing settlements was Dartmouth. In this enterprise, Humphry and Adrian Gilbert, who were half-brothers of Sir Walter Raleigh, and whose seat, Greenway, was close to Dartmouth, took the lead. The pioneer expedition, which took place in 1579, was productive of no result; but in 1583, Humphry Gilbert seized Newfoundland, the present inhabitants of which are largely of Devon ancestry. This navigator, though brave and skilful, rests under an ugly imputation which we must all hope is baseless. According to some, he proposed to Queen Elizabeth the perfidious destruction of the foreign fishing fleets which had long made the island their station. During his homeward voyage Humphry was drowned, and the manner of his death is depicted in an old ballad:—

Adrian Gilbert interested himself in the discovery of the North-West Passage, but neither of the brothers did much more than secure for Dartmouth a principal share in the Newfoundland trade, for many and many a year one of the chief props of Devon commerce.

Of far greater practical significance, as a centre of maritime adventure, was Plymouth. Hence sprang William Hawkins, the first of his nation to sail a ship in the Southern Seas. Hence sprang his more famous son, Sir John Hawkins, the first Englishman that ever entered the Bay of Mexico, and who spent the bribes of 13Philip of Spain in defensive preparations against that tyrant’s fleet. Here was organized the Plymouth Company founded for the colonization of North Virginia after the failure of Sir Walter Raleigh (who, like Sir Humphry Gilbert, had made Plymouth his base) to form a settlement. The efforts of the Plymouth Company were at first not very felicitous, but in 1620 it received a new charter, and although its schemes were absurdly ambitious, and fell ludicrously short of realization, and although it was administered for private ends rather than in a large spirit of enlightened patriotism, still the mere existence of the company must have tended to promote the flow of men and money to the new plantations beyond the seas.

In the Great Civil War, the towns generally were in favour of the Parliament, but Exeter, on which city Elizabeth had conferred the proud motto Semper fidelis, appears to have been Royalist in sympathy. As, however, the Earl of Bedford, the Lord Lieutenant, held it for the opposite party, it was besieged by Prince Maurice, to whom it surrendered in September, 1643. In April, 1646, it was recovered by the Roundheads, but ere this many interesting events had come to pass. In May, 1644, Queen Henrietta Maria had arrived in the city, and there, on June 16th, was born the Princess Henrietta Anne, afterwards Duchess of Orleans. Just at this moment, the Earl of Essex made his appearance, and the Queen was fain to escape alone, leaving her infant in the charge of Lady Moreton and Sir John Berkeley, who arranged for her christening in the font of Exeter Cathedral. Her portrait by Sir Peter Lely, which adorns the Guildhall, was the gift of Charles II., who, in 1671, thus testified his appreciation of the city’s good services. The donor himself had been the guest of the Corporation in July, 1644, when his royal father had received from the civic authorities a present of five hundred pounds.

Looking further afield, Devonshire was the theatre of 14many stirring events in that fratricidal struggle. It was in 1642 that the High Sheriff, Sir Edmund Fortescue, of Fallapit, at the instigation of Sir Ralph Hopton, called out the posse comitatus, and so precipitated a conflict. Sir Ralph himself, with the aid of Sir Nicholas Slanning, assembled a force of some two or three thousand men, with which he captured first Tavistock, and then Plympton, afterwards joining Fortescue at Modbury, where a mixed army of trained bands and levies was soon in being. The next proceeding was to have been an attack on Plymouth, but Colonel Ruthven, the commandant of that town, sent out five hundred horse, which, after a feint at Tavistock, dashed through Ivybridge, and delivered a sudden assault on Modbury. In a moment all was over. Exclaiming, “The troopers are come!” the trained bands fled in confusion, while the rest of the army, who knew nothing about soldiering and had no love for the cause, went after them, save for a few friends of the Sheriff, who helped him to defend the mansion of Mr. Champernowne. When this was fired, the movement collapsed, and the Roundheads, who had lost but one man, effected a good haul of county notabilities, including the High Sheriff, John Fortescue, Sir Edmund Seymour, and his eldest son, Edmund Seymour, M.P., Colonel Henry Champernowne, Arthur Basset, and Thomas Shipcote, the Clerk of the Peace. About a score of these worthies of Devon were placed on board ship at Dartmouth, and transported to London.

This initial success of the Roundheads was soon qualified by reverses. Ruthven, having marched into Cornwall, was encountered by Hopton at Braddock Down, and sustained a crushing defeat. In February, 1643, Hopton laid siege to Plymouth, but Fortune again veered, and the Royalists were forced to retire in consequence of a second defeat at Modbury. Attempts were made to bring about a pax occidentalis, by which both parties 15were to forswear further participation in the unnatural strife, but they proved abortive. Encouraged by the defeat of the Earl of Stamford at Stratton, a Cornish army advanced northwards on the disastrous march which resulted in the overthrow at Lansdown, near Bath, and involved the loss of four leading Royalists—Sir Bevil Grenville, Trevanion, Slanning, and Sidney Godolphin—the last of whom fell in a miserable skirmish at Chagford.

Later in the year, Prince Maurice exerted himself to reduce Plymouth, but, although the Cavaliers fought well, the garrison, equally brave and perhaps more pious, drove them back to the cry of “God with us!” Among the besiegers was King Charles himself, but not even the presence of royalty could alter the situation, and he and Maurice presently withdrew from the scene of operations. The siege was not ended till the spring of 1645, in the January of which year Roundheads and Cavaliers occupied the same relative positions as Britons and Boers in the memorable fight at Wagon Hill. Even after this terrible repulse, the Cavaliers did not quite abandon hope, and several small actions took place; but the advent of Fairfax in 1646 led to a precipitate retreat, and the Cavalier strongholds—Mount Edgecumbe and Ince House—gallantly defended throughout, had to be given up.

The last place in Devon to be held for King Charles was Salcombe Castle, and the person who held it was the very Sir Edmund Fortescue who was High Sheriff, in 1642, and, in that capacity, threw down the glove to his opponents. The “Old Bulwarke” was not a promising fort, but it stood a siege of four months, when the garrison were allowed to march out with the honours of war. Among other articles of surrender, it was stipulated that John Snell, Vicar of Thurlestone, who had acted as chaplain to the garrison, should be allowed quiet possession of his parsonage. This condition was not observed. 16However, Parson Snell was not forgotten after the Reformation, as he was appointed Canon Residentiary of Exeter, in which position he was succeeded by his sons. By the 7th of May, the date of the surrender, the cause of King Charles was in extremis; and, accordingly, Fort Charles, as Sir Edmund had re-named the castle, was fully justified in capitulating. The key of the castle is said to be still the treasured heirloom of the hero’s representative.

Devon men took an active part in the Monmouth Rebellion; and, in common with its neighbours, the county experienced the judicial atrocities of the notorious Jeffreys. A “bloody assize” was opened at Exeter on September 14th, 1685, when twenty-one rebels were sentenced, thirteen of whom were executed. Thirteen more were fined and whipped, and one was reprieved. A feature in this assize was the publication of 342 names, all belonging to persons who were at large when the business closed. These comparatively fortunate yeomen had escaped the search of the civil and military powers, and were tenants of the open country, living in copses and haystacks as best they might.

However, vengeance was not long delayed. In 1688, the Prince of Orange landed at Brixham, and marched to Exeter by way of Chudleigh. The account of an eye-witness printed in the Harleian Miscellany gives the impression that his entry into the city, as a spectacle, was somewhat barbaric. The pageant included two hundred blacks from the plantations of the Netherlands in America, with embroidered caps lined with white fur, and crested with plumes of white feathers; and two hundred Finlanders or Laplanders in bear-skins taken from the beasts they had slain, with black armour and broad, flaming swords. The troops were received with loud acclamations by the people at the west gate, and their conduct was excellent. Meanwhile, the position of the authorities was far from enviable. In vulgar parlance, 17they were in a “tight place,” not knowing which way the wind would blow, and being desirous of maintaining the reputation of the city for unswerving loyalty. The Bishop and the Dean adopted the safe, if not too heroic, method of flight, while the Mayor, with more dignity, commanded the west gate to be closed, and declined to receive the Prince. The poor priest-vicars, no less faithful at heart, were intimidated into omitting the prayer for the Prince of Wales, and employing only one prayer for the King. On the ninth, notice was sent to the canons, vicars-choral, and singing lads, that the Prince would attend the service in the Cathedral at noon, and they were ordered by Dr. Burnet to chant the Te Deum when His Highness entered the choir. This they did. The Prince occupied the Bishop’s throne, surrounded by his great officers, and after the Te Deum, Dr. Burnet, from a seat under the pulpit, read aloud His Highness’s declaration. The party then returned to the Deanery, where William had taken up his quarters.

The Prince of Orange was in Exeter for three days before any of the county gentry appeared in his support, and naturally the members of his suite began to feel disconcerted. Presently, however, the gentlemen of Devon rallied to his standard, and in compliance with a proposal of Sir Edward Seymour, formed a general association for promoting his interest. A notable arrival was Mr. Hugh Speke, who, it is said, had been personally offered by King James the return of a fine of £5,000 if he would atone for his support of Monmouth by acting as spy on the Prince of Orange, and had bravely refused. The Mayor and Aldermen now thought it high time to recognise the change in the situation and observe a greater measure of respect towards one who, it seemed likely, would soon be their lawful sovereign. The Dean, too, hastened home to give in his adhesion to the Prince; and William left Exeter with the assurance that the West Country, which could not forgive the Jacobite massacre, 18was heart and soul with him, and that elsewhere the power of his despotic father-in-law was rapidly crumbling.

In a second letter, reproduced in the Harleian Miscellany, we are informed that there had been “lately driven into Dartmouth, and since taken, a French vessel loaded altogether with images and knives of a very large proportion, in length nineteen inches, and in breadth two inches and an half; what they were designed for, God only knows.” Possibly for a purpose not wholly unlike that which inspired the unpleasant visit of some of the same nation to Teignmouth in 1690, when they fired the town. It appears that the county force had been drafted to Torquay with the object of resisting a threatened landing from the French fleet, which was anchored in the bay. Certain French galleys, availing themselves of the opportunity thus afforded them, stole round to Teignmouth, threw about two hundred great shot into the town, and disembarked 1,700 men, who wrought immense damage in the place, already deserted by its inhabitants. For three hours there was pillage, and then over a hundred houses were burnt. A contemporary named Jordan, recounting the circumstances, cannot restrain his righteous indignation. “Moreover,” says he, “to add sacrilege to their robbery and violence, they, in a barbarous manner, entered the two churches in the said town, and in a most unchristian manner tore the Bibles and Common Prayer Books in pieces, scattering the leaves thereof about the streets, broke down the pulpits, overthrew the Communion tables, together also with many other marks of a barbarous and enraged cruelty; and such goods and merchandize as they could not or dare not stay to carry away, they spoiled and destroyed, killing very many cattle and hogs, which they left dead behind them in the streets.” This, the last, invasion of Devonshire, cost the county £11,030, the amount at which the damage was assessed, and which was raised by collections in the churches after the reading of a brief. French Street, 19Teignmouth, conserves by its name the memory of this heavy, but happily transient, disaster.

With the seventeenth century ends the heroic period of Devonian history. From that time it figures merely as a province sharing in the triumphs and distresses of the country of which it forms part, but having no special or distinctive record. The most exciting era was, without doubt, the Napoleonic age, when the dread of a new French invasion was terminated only by the glorious victory of Trafalgar.

In conclusion, it may be mentioned that Sidmouth was the early home of her late Majesty Queen Victoria. Her father, the Duke of Kent, died there in 1820, and the west window of the church was erected as a memorial of this son of George III., whose visit to Exeter in the preceding century gave such delight to the county.

Brutus, son of Sylvius, grandson of Æneas the Trojan, killed his father while hunting, was expelled from Italy, and settled in Greece. Here the scattered Trojans, to the number of seven thousand, besides women and children, placed themselves under his command, and, led by him, defeated the Grecian King Pandrasus. The terms of peace were hard. Pandrasus gave Brutus his daughter, Ignoge, to wife, and provided 324 ships, laden with all kinds of provisions, in which the Trojan host sailed away to seek their fortune. An oracle of Diana directed them to an island in the Western Sea, beyond Gaul, “by giants once possessed.” Voyaging amidst perils, upon the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea they found four nations of Trojan descent, under the rule of Corinæus, who afterwards became the Cornish folk. Uniting their forces, the Trojans sailed to the Loire, where they defeated the Gauls and ravaged Aquitaine with fire and sword. Then Brutus

Such, in its complete form, is the myth of Brutus the Trojan, as told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, sometime Bishop of St. Asaph, who professed, and probably with truth, to translate the British history of which it forms a part from “a very ancient book in the British tongue,” 22given to him by Walter Mapes, by whom it had been brought from Brittany. Geoffrey wrote in the earlier part of the twelfth century, and he does not indicate with more precision than the use of the term “very ancient” the date of his original.

If, however, we are to accept the writings of Nennius as they have been handed down as substantially of the date assigned to them by the author—the middle of the ninth century—the legend of Brutus, though not in the full dimensions of the Geoffreian myth, was current at least a thousand years ago; and in two forms. In one account, Nennius states that our island derives its name from Brutus, a Roman consul, grandson of Æneas, who shot his father with an arrow, and, being expelled from Italy, after sundry wanderings settled in Britain—a statement that agrees fairly well with that of Geoffrey. In the other account, which Nennius says he had learned from the ancient books of his ancestors, Brutus, though still through Rhea Silvia, his great-grandmother, of Trojan descent, was grandson of Alanus, the first man who dwelt in Europe, twelfth in descent from Japhet in his Trojan genealogy, and twentieth on the side of his great-grandfather, Fethuir. Alanus is a kind of European Noah, with three sons—Hisicion, Armenon, and Neugio; and all his grandsons are reputed to have founded nations—Francus, Romanus, Alamanus, Brutus, Gothus, Valagothus, Cibidus, Burgundus, Longobardus, Vandalus, Saxo, Boganus. He is wholly mythical.

Brutus here does not stand alone. He falls into place as part of a patriarchal tradition, assigning to each of the leading peoples of Europe an ancestor who had left them the heritage of his name. This one fact, to my mind, removes all suspicion of the genuineness of these passages of Nennius, which have been sometimes regarded as interpolations. With Geoffrey not only is the story greatly amplified, but it is detached from its relations, and is no longer part of what may fairly be called one 23organic whole. Nennius, therefore, gives us an earlier form of the myth than Geoffrey. I think, too, that the essential distinctions of the two accounts render it clear that the ancient authorities of Nennius and Geoffrey are not identical, from which we may infer that the original tradition is of far older date than either of these early recorders.

But we may go still further. Whether the legend of Brutus is still extant in an Armoric form, I am not aware, but it appears in Welsh MSS. of an early date; the “Brut Tysilio” and the “Brut Gr. ab Arthur” being important. It has been questioned whether, in effect, these are not translations of Geoffrey; but there seems no more reason for assuming this than for disbelieving the direct statement of Geoffrey himself, that he obtained his materials from a Breton source. Bretons, Welsh, and Cornish are not only kindred in blood and tongue, but, up to the time when the continuity of their later national or tribal life was rudely shattered, had a common history and tradition, which became the general heritage. If the story of Brutus has any relation to the early career of the British folk, we should expect to discover traces of the legend wherever the Britons found their way. If this suggestion be correct, if Geoffrey drew from Armoric sources, and if the “Brut Tysilio,” which is generally regarded as the oldest of the Welsh chronicles, represents an independent stream, the myth must be dated back far beyond even Nennius, as the common property of the Western Britons, ere, in the early part of the seventh century, the successes of the Saxons hemmed one section into Wales, another into Cornwall, and drove a third portion into exile with their kindred in Armorica. There is, consequently, good reason to believe that the tradition is as old as any other portion of our earliest recorded history or quasi-history, and covers, at least, the whole of our historical period.

The narrative of Geoffrey does not give the myth in 24quite its fullest shape. For that we have to turn to local sources. Tradition has long connected the landing of Brutus with the good town of Totnes; the combat between Corinæus and Goemagot with Plymouth Hoe. Like the bricks in the chimney called in to witness to the noble ancestry of Cade, has not Totnes its “Brutus stone”? And did not Plymouth have its “Goemagot”?

The whole history of the “Brutus stone” appears to be traditional, if not recent. My friend, Mr. Edward Windeatt, informs me that it is not mentioned anywhere in the records of the ancient borough of Totnes. I fail to find any trace of it in the pages of our local chroniclers, beyond the statement of Prince (Worthies) that “there is yet remaining towards the lower end of the town of Totnes a certain rock called Brute’s Stone, which tradition here more pleasantly than positively says is that on which Brute first set his foot when he came ashore.” The good people of Totnes, so it is said, have had it handed down to them by their fathers from a time beyond the memory of man, that Brutus, when he sailed up the Dart, which must consequently have been a river of notable pretensions, stepped ashore upon this stone, and exclaimed, with regal facility of evil rhyme:—

Why the name should be appropriate to the circumstances, we might vainly strive to guess, did not Westcote and Risdon inform us that it was intended to represent Tout à l’aise! We need not be ashamed of adopting their incredulity, and of doubting with them whether Brutus spoke such good French, or, indeed, whether French was then spoken at all.

The stone itself affords no aid. All mystery departed when it was recently lifted in the course of pavemental repairs, and found to be a boulder of no great dimensions, with a very modern-looking bone lying below. However, 25it is the “Brutus stone,” and I dare say will long be the object of a certain amount of popular faith.^[2]

But, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth himself, Totnes town could not have been intended by him as the scene of the landing of Brutus. It was when Brutus was “holding a solemn festival to the gods, in the port where they had at first landed,” that he and his followers were attacked by Goemagot and his party. There it was that Goemagot and Corinæus had that famous wrestling bout, which ended in Corinæus running with his gigantic foe to the next shore, and throwing him off a rock into the sea. There is no sea at Totnes, no tall craggy cliff; and for Corinæus to have run with his burden from Totnes to the nearest point of Start or Tor Bay would have been a feat worthy even of a Hercules.

We are not surprised to find, therefore, that Totnes has her rivals—Dover, set up by the Kentish folk, and Plymouth,^[3] each claiming to be the scene of the combat between Corinæus and Goemagot, and claiming, therefore, incidentally, also to be the port in which Brutus landed. I do not know that we can trace either tradition very far into antiquity. They do not occur in the chronicles, where, indeed, the very name of Plymouth is unknown. The earliest reference to that locality has been generally regarded as the Saxon Tamarworth. I am not at all sure, however, that Plymouth is not intended by Geoffrey’s 26“Hamo’s Port,” which he assumes to be Southampton. Geoffrey, indeed, says that Southampton obtained the “ham” in its name from a crafty Roman named Hamo, killed there by Arviragus; but if the identification is no better than the etymology, we may dismiss it altogether. On the other hand, the name of the estuary of the Tamar is still the Hamoaze—a curious coincidence, if it goes no further. There is nothing in the story of Hamo itself to indicate Southampton or preclude Plymouth; only a few references to Hamo’s Port occur in Geoffrey. One of these, where Belinas is described as making a highway “over the breadth of the kingdom” from Menevia to Hamo’s Port, may rather seem to point to Southampton; but there is no positive identification, even if we assume the story to be true. Again, “Maximian the senator,” when invited into Britain by Caradoc, Duke of Cornwall, to be King of Britain, lands at Hamo’s Port; and here the inference would rather be that it was on Cornish territory. And so when Hoel sent 15,000 Armoricans to the help of Arthur, it was at Hamo’s Port they landed. It was from Hamo’s Port that Arthur is said to have set sail on his expedition against the Romans—a fabulous story, indeed, but still helping to indicate the commodiousness and importance of the harbour intended. It was at Hamo’s Port that Brian, nephew of Cadwalla, landed on his mission to kill the magician of Edwin the King, who dwelt at York, lest this magician might inform Edwin of Cadwalla’s coming to the relief of the British. After he had killed Pellitus, Brian called the Britons together at Exeter; and it would be fair to infer that the place where he landed was likely to be one where the Britons had some strength. Here, again, whatever we may make of the history, it is Hamo’s Port that is the fitting centre of national life; and it is the Hamoaze that best suits the reference.

This legend of Brute the Trojan was firmly believed in, and associated with these Western shores, by the 27leading intellects of the Elizabethan day. Spenser refers to it in his:—

Drayton verifies the legend in his Polyolbion, and tells us how—

and how that Gogmagog was by Corin—

And this article of faith had then long been popular. Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, says: “Moreover, vpon the Hawe at Plymmouth, there is cut out in ground the pourtrayture of two men, the one bigger, the one lesser, with clubbes in their hands (whom they terme Gogmagog), and (as I have learned) it is renewed by order of the Townesmen when cause requireth, which should inferre the same to be a monument of some moment.” Westcote, writing some half a century later, states of the Hoe—“in the side whereof is cut the portraiture of two men of the largest volume, yet the one surpassing the other every way; these they name to be Corinæus and Gogmagog.” And there these figures remained until the Citadel was built in 1671—a remarkable witness of the local belief that Plymouth had played a prominent part in the affairs of Brutus and his fellows.

We know when these figures ceased to be. Can we form any idea as to when they originated? Their earliest 28extant mention occurs in the Receiver’s Accounts of the borough of Plymouth, under date 1494–5:—

Previous to this date there only remain complete accounts of two years—those for 1493–4 and those for 1486—with a few fragmentary entries; and as the Gogmagog did not come to be “renewed” every year, there are no conclusions to be drawn from the absence of earlier notices. The next entry is in 1500–1, when 8d. was paid for “makying clene of gogmagog.” In 1514–15, John Lucas, sergeant, had the like sum for “cuttyng of Gogmagog”; and in the following year we read of its “new dyggyng.” In 1526–7, the entry runs: “Itm p^d. for Clensying and ryddyng of gogmagog a pon ye howe viij^d.”; and about this time it was renewed almost yearly. In 1541–2, the entry is: “Itm p^d. to William Hawkyns, baker (evidently to distinguish him from William Hawkyns, father of Sir John), for cuttynge of Gogmagog the pycture of the Gyaunt at hawe viij.” In 1566–7, the price had gone up to twenty pence. Probably this ancient monument had been neglected for some years before the last vestiges disappeared in 1671. It is not likely to have been renewed under the Commonwealth, nor do I think it was revived under the Restoration. It is noteworthy that the official entries apparently refer to one figure only, though we know from Carew and Westcote that there were two. Fourpence a day was about an average wage for labourers at Plymouth in the opening years of the sixteenth century, so that the “pyctur” probably took about two days to cleanse, and therefore must, indeed, have been of gigantic dimensions.

Some years ago I threw out the suggestion that as Geoffrey made no allusion to these figures, “it must be assumed either that he did not know of their existence, or that they did not then exist.” Believing the latter the more reasonable conclusion, I suggested, further, “that 29they were first cut in the latter half of the twelfth century, soon after Geoffrey’s chronicle became current, or not long subsequently; unless, as is possible, they had a different origin, and were associated with the wrestling story in later days.” Finally, I put forward the hypothesis, “that the legend, in the first place, did refer to something that occurred in the fifth century at or near the Hoe, and with which the Armorican allies, whom Ambrosius called to his aid about the year 438, were associated; that the Armoricans, on their return to Brittany, between the fifth and twelfth centuries, under the mingled influence of half-understood classical history and of religious sentiment working through the romantic mind, it developed into the full-blown myth of Brutus the Trojan; and that when it returned to England, and was made known under the auspices of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Plymouthians of that day, to perpetuate the memory of what they undoubtedly believed to be sterling fact, cut the figures of the two champions on the greensward of the Hoe.”

I am not inclined now to adopt this hypothesis so broadly as it was then suggested. Probably the story did take shape in Brittany in some such fashion, but I now believe we must look far beyond the fifth century for its origin. There seems, however, little reason to doubt that the “Brutus stone” of Totnes and the Gogmagog of Plymouth originated, like the Gog and Magog of London City, in the popularity of Geoffrey’s book. The name, of course, linked Totnes with the legend, but we have absolutely no knowledge whatever of the reason why Plymouth (any more than Dover) came into the story. Dover, indeed, has no case what-ever—not even a “Gogmagog.”

What, then, are the claims of Totnes?

Now, as to Totnes, it is important, in the first place, to observe that in all the early works, Totnes is generally alluded to as the name of a district, and not of a town. 30For example, in the story of Brutus, as given by Geoffrey of Monmouth, his hero “set sail with a fair wind towards the promised island, and arrived on the coast of Totnes.” Nennius does not mention any place of debarkation. Geoffrey makes Vespasian arrive at the shore of Totnes, and, in quoting Merlin’s prophecy to Vortigern concerning his own fate, says of the threatened invasion of Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon, “to-morrow they will be on the shore of Totnes.” Later in the same chronicle, the Saxons whom Arthur had allowed to depart “tacked about again towards Britain, and went on shore at Totnes.” Though the town seems rather to be indicated here, it is not necessarily so.

However, it is certain that we are to understand the landing to have taken place somewhere upon the south coast, for the invaders made an “utter devastation of the country as far as the Severn sea.” Constantine is said to have landed at the port of Totnes, which again may mean a place so called, or the principal harbour of a district of that name. It is clear, then, all things considered, that we are not dealing in these older chronicles with the present Totnes, great as is its antiquity, though the “Brut Tysilio” does go so far as to specify the place of Constantine’s landing as “Totnais in Loegria.”

Now, Mr. T. Kerslake, of Bristol, who has applied himself with singular acumen to the unravelling of sundry knotty points of our ancient history, is inclined to hold that the Totnes of the chronicles was a distinct place, and he has pointed out that the Welsh chronicles contain “early forms of the names of this favourite British port that has got to be thus confounded with Totnes.” In the “Brut Tysilio,” for example, the place of the landing of Brutus is called “Talnas” (at least, this is the printed form given in the Myvyvian Archæology); “Brut Gr. ab. Arthur” reads “Totonys”; and in a third, the “Hafod Chronicle,” we have “Twtneis.” Mr. Kerslake, therefore, treats “Talnas” as the earliest form of the 31word, and thereon builds the hypothesis that “the name given by the British writers to their port would resolve itself into ‘’t-aln-as’ and if Christchurch Haven should be conceded to be Ptolemy’s estuary of Alaunus, it would also be the port called by the Britons ‘Aln’ or ‘’t-Aln-as,’ from which Vespasian advanced up to Alauna Sylva, or Caer Pensauelcoit—the City in the Head of the High Wood.”

There can be little doubt, I think, that Mr. Kerslake is right in regarding Penselwood as the site of Caer Pensauelcoit, given as Exeter by Geoffrey of Monmouth, not apparently on the authority of his British original, but, as in other cases, for his own gloss; and thenceforward cherished most fondly as one of the worthiest memories of the “ever-faithful” city by its chief men and antiquaries. If it was at Totnes town, or in Torbay, into which some critics have expanded the idea of the “Totonesium littus,” that Vespasian landed immediately before his siege of “Kairpen-Huelgoit,” then there is considerable force in Geoffrey’s comment, “quæ Exonia vocatur.” If Penselwood, on the borders of Somerset, Dorset, and Wilts, were this “Primæval British Metropolis,” then we must give up the idea that Vespasian landed at Totnes town, or anywhere in its vicinity. However, it by no means follows that there was such a place as Totnes in the Talnas sense, as localised by Mr. Kerslake. Talnas is the single exception, so far as I am aware, to an otherwise general concord of agreement in favour of Totnes, at a date when Totnes town had not yet risen into such prominence as to justify or explain its appropriation of this tradition. The general sense of the language used when Totnes and the Totnes shore are mentioned, lead me, as I have already said, to the conclusion that it was rather the name of a district than of a town or port; and it was evidently understood in this sense by Higden, who in his Chronicle quotes the length of Britain as 800 miles,“a totonesie litore,” 32rendered by Trevisa, “frome the clyf of Totonesse,” which I take to be only another form of expression for the Land’s End.

My suggestion is that what we may call the Older Totnes is really the ancient name for the south-western promontory of England, and perhaps may once have been a name for Britain itself, in which case we can understand somewhat of the motive which led early etymologists to derive Britain from Brute or Brutus. The myth may be so far true that an elder name was supplanted by that which has survived, and that it lingered latest in this western promontory, perhaps as a name for the district occupied by the Kornu-British kingdom in its more extended form. Whether the modern Totnes is nominally the successor of the ancient title, the narrow area into which this vestige of far antiquity had shrunk, may be doubtful; for the name is as capable of Teutonic derivation as of Keltic. In my Notes on the Historical Connections of Devonshire Place-names, I pointed out that a Saxon derivation that “would fit Totnes town quite as well as any other would be from ‘Tot,’ an ‘enclosure,’ and ‘ey,’ an ‘island’—Totaneys, allied to Tottenham, and associated with the island by the bridge, one of the Dart’s most notable features.” For the original Totnes I suggested: “Perhaps instead of ‘ness,’ a ‘headland’ (Scandinavian), we should read ‘enys,’ an ‘island,’ and Tot may be equivalent to the Dod or Dodi, which we have in the Dod of the well-known Cornish headland, the Dodman.... Then we may read Toteneys the ‘projecting or prominent island’; or, if ‘Dod’ is read as ‘rocky,’ the ‘rocky island.’” I am satisfied that it is somewhere in this direction we have to look for the origin of the name, which would seem, however, to be corrupted from its earliest form when we first light upon it, and which may, indeed, be a relic of the giant race whom the followers of Brutus extirpated.

The last sentence may sound somewhat strange, but 33my enquiries into this curious story have led me to attach more importance to it than at first sight it seemed to deserve. Stripped of the dress in which it was decked out by Geoffrey, improving on his predecessors; deprived of its false lustre of classicism; cleared from the religious associations of a later day—this myth of Brutus the Trojan loses its personality, but becomes the traditionary record of the earliest invasion of this land by an historic people, who, in their assumed superiority, dubbed the less cultivated possessors of the soil whose rights they invaded “giants,” and extirpated them as speedily as they knew how.

Moreover, though Totnes town has to surrender its mythical hero, it preserves a record of an elder name for this England of ours than either the Britain of the later Kelts or the Albion of the Romans; and if that name be indeed a survival from these early times, makes certain what the general aspect of the story renders highly probable—that it was into this corner of Britain the pre-Keltic or Iberic inhabitants of our island first entered, and that it was here their rude predecessors—who to the diminutive Turanians might indeed appear as “giants”—made their final stand, just as in later days the non-Aryan invaders had to fly before the Kelt, and the Kelt in turn before the Saxon, until the corners of the island became the refuge not only of a gallant, but of a mingled race, with one language, one faith, and a common tradition.

Thus much, indeed, I think we may safely infer from the local associations of the story, supported as that inference is by the yet current traditions of the giant enemies of the Cornish folk.

When in that incomparable romance, Les Trois Mousquetaires, the source and parent of every historical novel of to-day, the author, Alexandre Dumas, wished to impute to the leader of his trinity of heroes the possession of a high and exalted chivalry, he called him Athos.

Probably the intention was to institute a comparison between the lofty attributes of the character and the altitude of the celebrated Greek mountain. Possibly, however, the talented Frenchman may have bestowed this title on the chief personage of his story because he, the author, conceived that no more fitting designation could be given to the embodiment of distinguished and aristocratic qualities than the actual name borne by the founder of one of the most illustrious families that has adorned the brilliant roll of French nobility, has given Emperors to the East, and subsequently established in this land of Devon a noble house which is inseparably connected with the traditions and history of the county.

In the continuation of Aimon’s History of France, an ancient chronicle of the thirteenth century, it is stated that the Châtelain of Chateau Renard had a son, named Athos, who rendered himself famous by his deeds of daring, and, in the reign of King Robert of France—A.D. 1020—fortified the town of Courtenay.

Okehampton Castle, 1734.

(From an Engraving by S. and N. Buck)

From this castle, situated on a hill in the rich and wooded country which stretches over that district anciently called L’Isle de France, the descendants of 35Athos took their title. The name of his wife, the mother of the race, is nowhere recorded, although Bouchet, the historian of the French branch of the Courtenay family, states that she was “une dame de condition”; and the truth of this statement is verified by the fact that in those days, when the prerogatives of birth were universally acknowledged, her progeny were considered fitting mates for the noblest in the kingdom.

Jocelyn de Courtenay, the son of Athos and his unnamed wife, married twice: first, in the year 1060, Hildegarde, daughter of Geoffrey de Ferole, Comte de Gastinois; second, Elizabeth, daughter of Guy, Seigneur de Montlehery, by whom he had three sons—Milo, Jocelyn, and Geoffry.

At this period of history, the countries of Europe were undergoing one of those strange religious convulsions which frequently occurred in the Middle Ages. The passionate pilgrimage of Peter the Hermit drew motley crowds of so-called Christians to the Holy Land. Wherever the small, mean monk of Picardy, seated on his ass, “pusillus, persona contemptibilis et sponte fluens ei non deerat eloquium,” as William of Tyre describes him, preached the holiness of the Cause and the shame to Christendom that the Sepulchre of the Saviour should remain in infidel hands, his earnestness and enthusiasm, if not his eloquence, made thousands of fervid converts.

In those days of lawlessness and violence, few men of rank but had the stain of blood-guiltiness upon their souls. The richer hoped to buy salvation and release from their wrongdoings by founding abbeys and bestowing, out of their abundance, generous grants of land to maintain the same; the poorer went pilgrimages, and purchased the promise of as much future happiness as their possessions would afford.

But to the fighting noble of the day, whatever means he may already have taken to obtain the pardon of the Church, the call to arms by Pope Urban for the defence 36of the Holy Land, proclaimed, as it was, with all the authority of the Head of Christendom, endowed with all the plenitude of Papal indulgence, necessarily possessed a special attraction, for it promised him not only remission of his sins, but also the hope that the remission would be gained by exercising those very same deeds of violence and rapine, the commission of which in his daily life had probably brought him to believe that eternal punishment was his just doom.

Small wonder, therefore, that knights and nobles in large numbers endeavoured thus to gain everlasting advantages. Among the French nobility who passed over to La Terre Sainte, Jocelyn II. de Courtenay is numbered.

The principality of Edessa, a province so situated as not only to be divided by the Euphrates, but by its position specially exposed to enemies who surrounded it on all sides, was then held by Baldwin de Bruges, a renowned knight, cousin to Godfrey de Bouillon. Baldwin’s mother and the wife of Jocelyn, son of Athos, were sisters, their children consequently being cousins.

According to the Archbishop of Tyre, the elder warrior gladly welcomed his young kinsman, yielding to his charge those territories which lay farthest from the enemy, but retaining under his personal supervision the frontier, on which largely depended the safety of the Christian dominions.

Blessed with all the advantages a good administration can bestow, and protected from an unwearying enemy, to a certain extent, by the river, the country ruled by Jocelyn de Courtenay acquired such prosperity and opulence as to excite the envy of the neighbouring Christian Princes. Indeed, as all chroniclers show, when the overpowering personality of Godfrey de Bouillon was withdrawn, the promiscuous host which he led, rent by great diversity of interests, composed of many nations, lost the little cohesion it had once possessed, and rapidly fell apart.

37Baldwin succeeding to the throne of Jerusalem, his cousin held undivided sway over the whole province. For thirty years did the gallant Frenchman defend his domains against the ever-returning infidel hordes, with varying success—at times a conqueror, at times a captive, dying in a manner befitting his life, for in his old age, weak with sickness, broken with wounds, he caused himself to be carried before his troops as he led them to succour their fellow-countrymen besieged by the Sultan of Iconium.

On his advance, the terror his prowess inspired sufficed to force the enemy to retire, news of which reaching the ears of the dying warrior, he gave thanks to God that the last moments of his life should be illumined with victory, and then immediately expired.

He was succeeded by Jocelyn, third of the name, the only son of his first wife, a sister of Levon, an Armenian notable.

It is to be suspected that the wisdom, energy, and endurance which so strongly characterized the father, and by which the little state, threatened with innumerable enemies, could alone be preserved, were, to some extent, deficient in the son, the deterioration probably being caused by the mixture of Asiatic blood in his veins.

In all contemporary records, the Pullani or Poulaines, progeny of Frank Crusaders and Syrian mothers, are spoken of with contempt and disdain, and although no lack of valour or even military qualities can be attributed to Jocelyn II., yet it is plain that the Eastern strain in his descent rendered him unduly disposed towards the seductions of a luxurious life; leading him to prefer the pleasures and ease of residence in the agreeable city of Turbessel to the constant care and hardships inseparable from an habitation in his fortified capital, Edessa.

This lack of vigilance on his own part naturally re-acted on his subordinates, and led, as a logical consequence, to a serious diminution in the military spirit 38and power of the country. In addition, an embittered feud with Raynald, Prince of Antioch, deprived him of the only ally who could, if well disposed, afford prompt and efficient aid.

Therefore, when Zenghi, or Sanguine, as the name has been corrupted by the Latin writers, leader of the Atabeks, with a vast host invaded the city of Edessa, it fell into his hands before either the ruler or the neighbouring Christian Princes were prepared to march to its assistance.

Defeated so often as to be without the means of efficient resistance to the powerful invader, Jocelyn himself before long became the prisoner of some wandering hordes. Carried a captive to Aleppo, he soon died, crushed by the misery of his position and the unwholesomeness of his surroundings, leaving one son, called by the same name as himself, and two daughters.

Beatrice, his widow, for a while, with ability and courage, defended Turbessel against the attacks of Zenghi’s successor, Noureddin, but receiving inadequate support from the King of Jerusalem, she yielded the task of holding the country to the effeminate Greeks, and they proving incapable of the effort, the whole province, which from the time of the Apostles had been the home and refuge of Christianity in the East, was irretrievably overrun by the infidel.

Jocelyn III., with his mother and sister, took refuge in Jerusalem, where, for more than twenty years, he led the existence inseparable from the lot of those who supported the waning dominion of the Christians—one constant struggle, not for supremacy, but for life. His fate is unknown: history has no record of him after the siege of Jerusalem, so it may well be surmised that he shared the fate of the slain when the Holy City fell to the assault of the great Sultan Saladin.

Two daughters were the sole descendants of Jocelyn; consequently, with him ended the House of the Courtenays of Edessa.

39But while one branch of the parent stem had thus died off in less than ninety years, the family tree itself flourished exceedingly, giving great promise of that luxuriance which, in after generations, blossomed into Royal magnificence.

The fall of Edessa, the bulwark of Christianity in the East, caused the Second Crusade. Again in the roll of those who took the Cross is to be found the name of Courtenay, for among the followers of King Louis le Jeune were numbered William and Reginald of that name, and also Peter de France, the King’s brother.

When Jocelyn of Edessa, together with his younger brother, Geoffrey Courtenay, surnamed de Chapalu, sailed, in the year 1101, for La Terre Sainte, the eldest son of the house, Milo de Courtenay, remained in France, succeeding, on the death of his father, to the family domains. He married Ermengarde, daughter of Renaud, Comte de Nevers, and by her had three sons—William, Reginald, and Jocelyn. Of the last, nothing is known but the name. William, who as aforesaid took part in the Crusade, died in the Holy Land, leaving, on the extinction of the Counts of Edessa and the death of Geoffrey de Chapalu, his uncle, Reginald, his younger brother, sole heir to the name and possessions of his forefathers.

In those days, when transit was difficult and the social barriers between the noble and the roturier almost insurmountable, it was the custom, well known to all who plunge into the intricacies of French genealogy, and reasonable enough, considering the circumstances of the times, for the males of a family of rank to marry, hardly without exception, the daughters of their neighbours of like degree.

Life was a very precarious commodity to a man of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He lived in an atmosphere of continuous warfare, and if by nature, mental or physical, he was disinclined for this turbulent existence, the only refuge open to him lay in the celibate 40seclusion of the cloister. It frequently occurred, therefore, that females inherited paternal estates.

To this cause may well be attributed the fact that the possessions of the Courtenays had become largely augmented, for Reginald is described as Seigneur of Montargis, Chateau Renard, Champignelle, Tanlay, Charny, Chantecoq, and several other seigneuries, all situated in the Pays de Gastinois and the country round Sens, many of which, in the time of his progenitors, were unmistakably the property of neighbouring families.

The possession of great wealth, at all periods of the world’s history, has been held as a claim to consideration; and when such opulence is combined with high rank and birth, the fortunate owner may well cherish lofty ambitions.

In the early part of what we call the Middle Ages, the coat armour borne by a warrior surely denoted his lineage and descent, for, unless assumed for purposes of disguise, heraldic insignia were used as a means of showing to which family an individual belonged—not, as now-a-days, to which family an individual wishes the world to think he belongs.

In addition to those claims to nobility which are known to be possessed by Athos, the fact is also acknowledged that he and his descendants used the arms attributed to the ancient counts of Boulogne—three torteaux or, on a field gules—arms which were undoubtedly borne by Eustace de Bouillon, when he and his illustrious brother Godfrey journeyed on the Crusade.

It may, therefore, well be believed that the ancestors of the Courtenays came from the same stock as the even more ancient house of Boulogne; and it is easy to understand that the only daughter and heir female of Reginald de Courtenay was considered a fitting mate for Peter de France, seventh son of King Louis le Gros.

Indeed, the relations between the Crown and the great nobles of the kingdom rested far more on a basis of 41equality than the pretensions of the monarch cared to allow.

Sismondi declares that the real domains of Louis VI. consisted only of five towns, including Paris and Orleans, together with estates, probably large, in the immediate vicinity; the remainder of the country being divided among the great nobles, some of whom possessed equal, if not more, extensive territories than their titular Sovereigns.

The young Prince Peter having but little estate left him by his father, and no title—for he is always styled the “King’s son” or “the King’s brother”—took to himself the name of Courtenay, and from him and his wife, Elizabeth, sprung that branch of the family which flourished in France for more than six hundred years. Five sons and six daughters issued from this union, the eldest daughter, Alix, marrying, as her second husband, Aimar, Comte d’Angouleme, by whom she had one daughter, Elizabeth, who, in her turn, became the wife of John, and the mother of Henry III., both Kings of England.

That portion of the Eastern Empire which, having been conquered by the Latin knights errant remained in their power, for twelve years had been ruled by Baldwin of Flanders and his brother, Henry, a wise and politic prince, upon whose death, in 1217, the male line of the House of Flanders became extinct.

From respect to the laws of succession, the crown was thereupon offered to Peter de Courtenay, son of Elizabeth de Courtenay and Peter of France, who had married Yolande, daughter of the Count of Hainault, and sister to both the late Emperors, Baldwin and Henry. The proffered honour, doubtless, was great, yet the accession to the Imperial purple proved the precursor of heavy calamities to the unfortunate Emperor and his descendants. Peter de Courtenay, it is true, bore the reputation of a valorous knight and a courageous warrior. 42He served with distinction in the Crusade against the Albigenses, prompted, perhaps, by a desire to merit the forgiveness of the Church, whose servants in his own domain he had, if the chroniclers are to be believed, treated with the haughty intolerance characteristic of the arrogant seigneur of the period.

But at that critical time in the history of the Eastern Empire, the wearer of the Imperial Crown required not only courage, but talents and diplomacy of the highest degree, such as Peter neither possessed nor found opportunity of acquiring.

Arriving at Rome in company with his wife, Yolande, and his children, Pope Honorius, after some pressure, was induced to crown him and his consort; but, as Gibbon hints, performed the ceremony in the Church of St. Lawrence, without the walls, lest by the act itself any right of sovereignty over the ancient city should be bestowed or implied.

In pursuance of a promise to the Venetians, the Emperor Peter, having first sent his wife and children by sea to Constantinople, directed his forces against the Kingdom of Epirus, then under the rule of Theodore Comnenus. Failing in his object, he fell, either by force or fraud, into the hands of the Greek despot, and died, by assassination or in prison, without having entered his Imperial dominions.

With a discretion rare, indeed, in those days, Philip, his eldest son, refused the honour of the purple, contenting himself with the Marquisate of Namur, his paternal fief; whereupon Robert, the younger brother, accepted the burden of the crown, and having, with due precaution, journeyed to Constantinople, was there crowned by the Patriarch Matthew, with all pomp and circumstance, in the Cathedral of Saint Sophia.

But in the grandeur of his coronation consisted the only splendour of his reign. All historians combine in representing Robert as deficient in every quality requisite 43for the high station he occupied and the necessity of the realm he had been chosen to rule; even Bouchet, self-appointed laureate to La Maison Royale de Courtenay, after describing the death of the Emperor on his return journey from Rome, whither he had gone to solicit against his own rebellious subjects the thunders of the Pope, is constrained to admit that to the weakness of this ruler may justly be attributed the disgraces which occurred in the reign of his successor.

Robert dying childless, the crown descended to his brother, Baldwin, the infant son of Yolande, born during his father’s captivity. The impossibility of an empire in the throes of dissolution being governed by a child of seven years, compelled the barons of the realm to invite John of Brienne, the old King of Jerusalem, to bring his wisdom and experience to their aid; but the seeds of disintegration had too long been sown. Notwithstanding a two-fold victory against the invader, on the death of the veteran in 1237, the Latin supremacy in the East well nigh vanished.

The youthful Baldwin de Courtenay, during the life of John of Brienne, visited many European courts in the vain hope of obtaining aid, military or pecuniary, for the defence of his forlorn dominions, and in the subsequent five and twenty years of his reign these visits were more than once repeated, each time with less result, and though, in fruitless efforts to raise men and money, he alienated his own patrimony of Namur and Courtenay, although in desperation he sold the sacred treasures of his capital—the Crown of Thorns and other relics reputed equally holy—yet his utmost efforts could in no wise avert the doom which threatened the Empire, but only availed to postpone for a while the final catastrophe.

At last the determination of Michael Palæologus brought the struggle to an end. Constantinople was invested and taken by the Greeks, the last remnant of Latin sway, in the person of the Emperor Baldwin and 44his family, taking refuge on board the Venetian fleet, which lay anchored in the Bosphorous.

With Baldwin and his son Philip, titular Emperor of Constantinople, ended the elder branch of the Courtenay family, for the latter left one daughter only, who married Charles of Valois, a prince aptly described as “son of a King, brother of a King, uncle to a King, and father to a King, but yet himself no King.”

The elevation of three of its members to the Imperial throne undoubtedly conferred great honour on the House of Courtenay, but the after results most adversely affected the surviving members. While other families connected with the French monarchy increased in wealth and influence, the severe struggles made by three generations to maintain their Imperial dignity so impoverished the ancestral domains that the successive holders, though undeniably of Royal descent and near relationship to the reigning dynasty, were not esteemed, and could not obtain recognition of their claims to be considered as Princes of the Blood Royal. It is true, however, that much doubt exists as to whether in the early days of the French nobility, kinship with the King implied any superiority of rank over others nobly born.

Le Comte Boulainvilliers, to whose family the Seigneurie of Courtenay, after its alienation, had been given as a royal fief, declares, in his “Dissertation sur la Noblesse de France”: “The French knew nothing of Princes among themselves; consanguinity (parenté) to Kings gave no rank the same as if descended in the male line. This is evident by the examples of the Houses of Dreux, of Courtenay, and the junior branches of the House of Bourbon.”

Indeed, it is quite apparent to all who read early French history that the King exercised merely nominal authority over the nobility, and was considered but as a chief and leader among those of equal birth and descent, though differing in degree. It cost King Louis VI. a 45vast deal of trouble to reduce the pretensions of the Seigneurs of Montlehery, who, allied by marriage to the houses of Flanders and Courtenay, conceived themselves in all essentials to be equal to and independent of their titular monarch, while even more cogent testimony to the same effect, redolent also to a great degree of the atmosphere of the times, is borne by the subjoined letter from Thibaut, Comte de Champagne, to the Abbot of St Denis, Governor of the Realm in the absence of the King:—“This is to let you know that Renaud de Courtenay hath done great injury to the King, ... for he hath seized on certain merchants that are the King’s subjects, who have discharged their toll at Orleans and Sens, and hath stripped them of all their goods. It is, therefore, necessary, to order him in the King’s name, they be set at liberty and all that belongs to them restored. In case he refuse ... and you be desirous to march an army against him, ... let me know, and I will send you aid.”

After the extinction of the elder branch in the persons of the Emperor Baldwin and his son, the House of Courtenay became so divided that, in the many ramifications of descent and consequent division of goods, the Seigneurs de Champignelles, de Tanlay, d’Arrablay, de Ferté Loupiere, etc., lost their pride of place, and were undistinguishable from the remainder of the nobility, direct evidence of which is furnished by the fact that Bouchet, who certainly loses no opportunity of enhancing the grandeur of the race, places over the arms of the Lord of D’Illier the nine-pointed coronet of a seigneur, and not, as on other occasions, the crown, embellished with fleur-de-lys, which designated the Royal House of France.

Yet the right of the Courtenays to be considered of Royal blood is incontrovertible, testimony to it being borne by many deeds of partition and contracts of marriage to which members of the reigning family affixed 46their signatures, in each case describing themselves as relations and cousins.

Moreover, even in the nineteenth century, the head of the House of Courtenay received a summons to the funeral of Henri Dieudonné, Comte de Chambord, Henri Cinq de France, as “notre parent et cousin.”

Fifteen years after the surviving members had lodged a final petition for the restoration of their rights of blood, “by the eternal doom of Fate’s decree,” the death of Charles Roger de Courtenay, the last male of the line, the controversy was closed; and thus what Gibbon calls the plaintive motto of the House: “Ubi lapsus, quid feci?” for the second time in history received the endorsement of truth.

But while two branches of the race grew, flourished, and fell, a third division rose to rank and fortune in this island, becoming closely allied by links of property and title with Devon, the fairest shire in the English land—links which the space of 750 years has strengthened, the glamour of an historic name, the charm of many a noble nature, have rendered unbreakable.

In olden times, a nation made it a point of honour to claim descent from ancestors who had participated in the siege of Troy. Fashions change. In the twentieth century, if an individual rises to such eminence that he is elevated to the peerage, the world knows he must have had a father, and presumes he had a grandfather. When the presumption can be carried back for a generation or two, the basis of an ancient descent is so firmly laid that a visit to the Heralds’ College will inevitably result in the discovery of a progenitor among those who fought with Norman William at the battle of Senlac, undoubtedly, judging from their reputed descendants, the most prolific band of warriors that ever peopled a conquered country.

In this, as in some other attributes, the Courtenays differ from the modern aristocracy.

The first mention of a Courtenay in English history 47occurs in the reign of Henry II., and although Bouchet, with true prophetic instinct, considers it necessary to allege that a certain Guillaume de Courtenay crossed over with the army of William of Normandy, the Battle Abbey roll of William Tailleur does not contain the name; but a “Cortney” may be found in the probably inaccurate transcriptions of the same, which have been inserted in the Chronicles of Stowe and Holinshed. A certain degree of doubt, however, exists as to the identity of the first Courtenay mentioned in English records.

Dugdale, copying the register of the monks of Forde Abbey—a foundation which benefited largely by the munificence of the family, and, as long as the spring flowed, lost no opportunity of gratifying their ancestral pride—declares that the founder of the name in this country was Reginald, a son of Florus, younger son of Lewis le Gross, King of France, who assumed the name of Courtenay from his mother, the heir female of that family.

History is silent as to whether Peter, seventh son of Louis le Gros, ever bore the designation of Florus; but it is undoubtedly proved by Bouchet and others that the said Peter married a daughter of Reginald de Courtenay, and enjoying her possessions, called himself by the title of her seigneurie. It is also fairly assured that the offspring of this noble couple did not number among them any son of the name of Reginald, and the preponderance of authority seems to show that the Reginald, friend of Queen Alienore of Aquitaine, who, being divorced from King Louis, afterwards married Henry of England, was probably the father of that Elizabeth de Courtenay who became allied with the Royal family of France.

On many occasions a de Courtenay is mentioned as accompanying Henry on his travels; and in the year 1167, Roger de Hoveden records that “Reginald de Curteney” witnessed a treaty of peace between Henry II. of England and Roderick, King of Connaught.

48For services rendered to the State, Henry, in exercise of his prerogative, gave as wards to Reginald de Courtenay, probably the one aforesaid, the two daughters of Matilda, herself daughter of Randolph Avenel.

Reginald immediately married the elder, Hawise, and bestowed her half-sister, Maude, on a William de Courtenay, possibly his son, probably, as Cleveland thinks, his brother.

Hawise, as sole heiress to her father, Robert d’Abrincis, and descended from Baldwin de Brionis, a valorous Norman knight, inherited large estates in the West of England—the Barony of Okehampton, the Shrievalty of Devonshire, the custody of the Castle of Exeter, and the title of Vicecomes or Viscount; both dignities and land, as was the custom in those days, being enjoyed, “jure uxoris,” by her husband, Reginald de Courtenay, passed to the child of their marriage, Robert, who still further augmented the position of the family by marrying in his turn Mary, younger daughter of William de Redvers or Rivers, sixth Earl of Devon, through whom the House of Courtenay finally obtained the title which they retain to this day.

The policy of Henry III. deprived Robert de Courtenay of the Viscounty of Devon and the custody of Exeter Castle, but the Barony of Okehampton still remained in the line, being successively held by John and Henry, son and grandson of the said Robert.

In 1262, by the failure of heirs male, Isabella, daughter of Baldwin, seventh Earl, and his wife, Amicia, became Countess of Devonshire. This masterful lady married William de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarle, and, surviving her husband and children for more than thirty years, exercised despotic sway over the wide domains belonging to her. She erected a weir across the River Exe, even now called Countess Weir, for the benefit, as she declared, of her mills situated on both banks, though the citizens of Exeter were of different opinion, and on their oaths 49did aver that the Countess had “made a great Purpresture or Nusance ... to the Annoyance, Hurt and Damage of the said City.”

At her death, in 1292, the Earldom of Devon reverted to Sir Hugh Courtenay, second of the name, Baron of Okehampton, through his great-grandmother, Mary de Rivers, daughter of William de Ripariis, Redvers or Rivers, sixth Earl.

Some forty years after the death of his predecessor, Sir Hugh was summoned by writ, without any further creation, to take his seat as Earl, but before then he participated in many Parliaments as a Baron, both Stowe and Holinshed alleging that he was one of the two Lords of that rank who carried a solemn message to King Edward II., demanding from him the abdication of the throne.

Chiefly by means of judicious matrimonial alliances, the first members of the English Courtenays added largely to their rank and possessions.

Following the good example, Hugh, third of the name and second Earl, wedded, in 1325, Margaret, daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, Lord High Constable of England, by her obtaining that appanage associated so intimately with the Courtenay name as known in their own county, the beautiful castle and demesne of Powderham. Earl Hugh assigned this residence and estate to his younger son, Philip, from whom is descended the present branch of the family.

High in rank, possessed of great territory, honoured in the council, foremost in the fray, for a hundred and fifty years the Courtenays of Devon occupied a great place in English history. They took part in the battles of Halidon Hill, Creçy, the siege of Rouen, the triumphal entry into Paris; as Admirals of the West, repelled invasion; as Governors of the County, exercised extensive jurisdiction; and in their just pride of station, contended with the Earls of Arundel as to who should 50take precedence as premier Peer in the degree which they held.

Their functions, when acting as rulers of the county, were varied, for it is stated that in 1383 a command was issued to them by the King, ordering the punishment of “certain malefactors and troublers of our peace ... come lately to Topsham and by force of arms have taken Peter Hill, a certain messenger of the Venerable Father, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, and with no small cruelty and threatening compelled him to eat the wax of a certain seal of the said Archbishop.”

This William, son of Hugh, second Earl, at first Bishop of London, afterwards raised to the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, possessed so fully the hereditary courage of his opinions that he not only resolutely opposed the weighty influence of the Duke of Lancaster and Lord Percy of Northumberland, when exercised by them in favour of John Wicliffe, but also as Adam, Archdeacon of Usk, pathetically declares: “Eciam a facie istius regis Ricardi, ille vir perfectissimus Willelmus Cantuariensis Archiepiscopus quia hujus modi taxe resistere volens.” The strength of the superlative epithet is justified by the said tax having been levied solely against the clergy.

But the prosperity of the Courtenays, as of most other noble families in England, was rudely disturbed by the outbreak of civil strife—the Wars of the Roses. Supporting strongly the House of Lancaster, they shared in undue proportions the calamities which befel that party, three successive Earls of Devon, the sons of Thomas, fifth in title, giving their lives for the cause they supported. Thomas, the elder of the three, taken at Towton, was soon after executed, as historians say, to appease the ghost of the Duke of York. A few years later, Henry, his brother, met the same fate; while John, the youngest, fell in the disastrous battle of Tewkesbury, the great estates of the family being escheated by the King.

51Yet once more, with the triumph of Henry VII., the fortunes of the ancient house revived. The King annulled the attainder and restored the ancestral domains to the faithful noble who had followed him into exile and fought by his side at Bosworth Field, subsequently sanctioning also the marriage of the eldest son, Sir William Courtenay, with Katherine, the younger daughter of the late King Edward IV.; though this royal alliance, as was often the case in such connections, only led to suspicion on the part of the reigning monarch and calamity to the aspiring bridegroom.

In the succeeding reign, Henry, the child of this marriage, stood high in the favour of the monarch. As the boon companion of his cousin the King, he tilted with him at Greenwich; as his brother-in-arms, he fought at the Battle of the Spurs; in the office of Lord High Steward, he presided over the trial of those persons who had fallen under the Royal displeasure; and finally the honour of a Marquisate was bestowed, and Henry, seventh Earl of Devon, became the first Marquis of Exeter.

But the friendship of Henry VIII. was almost as deadly as his enmity. Accused of treason, neither personal virtues nor high connections availed anything, and so the Marquis of Exeter was arrested, tried, and executed. Hume, in this connection, remarks: “We know little concerning the justice or iniquity of the sentence pronounced against these men: we only know that the condemnation of a man who was at that time prosecuted by the court forms no presumption of his guilt”; but with characteristic ambiguity he continues: “Though ... we may presume that sufficient evidence was produced against the Marquis of Exeter and his associates.”

In the light of present knowledge, it is not difficult to conjecture the causes of this unfortunate nobleman’s downfall. There were two actions Henry VIII. never forgave: Failure to obey his wishes, tantamount to 52disobedience to his commands; and friendship, or even tolerance, towards those whom he chose to consider his enemies.

There is little doubt that Henry Courtenay committed the former as well as the latter form of “lèse majesté.” A letter from Sir Thomas More to Cardinal Wolsey is still extant, in which he writes:—“And as touching the ouverture made by my Lord Shevers for the marriage of my Lord of Devonshire the King is well content and as me seemyth very glad of the motion, wherein he requireth your Grace that it may lyke you to call my Lord of Devonshire to your Grace and to advise him secretly to forbere any further treate of marriage with my Lord Mountjoy.”

Now, in 1526, Henry, Marquis of Exeter, married, as his second wife, Gertrude, daughter of Lord Mountjoy, as this letter shows in opposition to the wishes of the King; and although, truly, the matter cannot in any way be considered of importance, yet the fact that the lady was a strong supporter of the ancient Church, taken in conjunction with the jealousy obviously shown by Henry towards the power and authority exercised in the West Country by all who bore the Courtenay name, may well have had an influence over the fate of the unfortunate nobleman.

The actual charge, in the State Trial, alleged complicity with the designs of Cardinal Pole and a desire to deprive the King of his prerogatives. At this period of his reign, the one great object of Henry’s life was to assert his supremacy over the English Church—that church in whose services and welfare he showed such deep interest, not only by the extreme frequency with which he celebrated the marriage ceremony, but also by the tenacious affection he displayed for her temporal possessions.

Reginald Pole, at one time Dean of Exeter, born of a royal stock, allied with many noble English houses, a 53Cardinal, and deep in the councils of the Pope, was an unsparing opponent of Henry’s aspirations; so if, as Burnet says, “There were very severe invectives printed at Rome against King Henry, in which there were nothing omitted which could make him appear as the blackest of tyrants, ... and Cardinal Pole’s style was known in some of them,” even a kindly expression, much less a spirit of friendliness towards the author of these attacks would be amply sufficient to draw on anyone, be he gentle or simple, the wrath of Henry, who “never spared man in his anger, or woman in his lust.”

Therefore, as Wriothesley, in his Chronicle, relates: “The third of the same month, the Lord Henry Courtney, Marquis of Exceter and Earle of Devonshire, and the Kinge’s neare kinsman, was arraigned at Westminster Hall ... and there condempned to death, for treason against the Kinge by the counsaille of Raynold Poole, Cardinall ... which pretended to have enhaunsed the Bishop of Rome’s usurped authority againe, lyke traitors to God and their Prince.”

The same strain of royal blood, breeding jealousy and mistrust, which had caused the imprisonment of the grandfather and the death of the father, inflicted also heavy penalties on the son. Edward, only child of Henry and Gertrude Courtenay, though but twelve years old at the date of his father’s execution, was then committed to the Tower, and there remained close prisoner for fifteen years.

Released by Mary on her first regal entry into London, restored to his hereditary titles and property, endowed, moreover, with ample bodily and many mental charms, the youthful Earl of Devonshire rapidly rose into favour, and at one time was even considered as a fitting aspirant for the hand of the Queen.

But to a young man of twenty-seven, the greater part of whose life had been spent amid the gloom and seclusion of a State prison, with only such amusements 54as the translation of Italian theological treatises could afford, or other similar exercises, whether physical or mental, as the gaoler would allow, the freedom of the outer world presented greater temptations than his untrained nature could resist. Yielding to the dissipations of the court and, so ’tis said, the more sordid pleasures of the town, Edward Courtenay sacrificed to the enjoyment of the moment the opportunities which were offered him of gratifying splendid ambitions, and, too high placed to be disregarded, became, as his progenitors before him, an object of mistrust and suspicion to the occupant of the throne.

This unfortunate youth has been accused not only of ingratitude to his royal benefactress by making secret advances to her sister, the Princess Elizabeth, but also of the serious offence of disloyalty and treason towards the monarch. But though, indeed, he may have committed the former mistake, a critical examination of the evidence produced clears him of knowing and wilful participation in any of the serious plots which the proposed marriage of the Queen with Philip of Spain had aroused among her subjects. Sir Thomas Wyat unreservedly absolved Courtenay from all knowledge of his rising, and the leniency with which Mary, little given to clemency, extended towards the Earl shows that she, at least, believed in his innocence.

Probably the truest aspect of the case is shown by Burnet, who declares, when writing of the harsh treatment dealt to Elizabeth by her royal sister: “Others suggest a more secret reason for this dispute. The new Earl of Devonshire was much in the Queen’s favour, so that it was thought that she had some inclination to marry him, but he, either not presuming so high or having an aversion to her and an inclination to her sister, who of that moderate share of beauty which was between them had much the better of her and was nineteen years younger, made his addresses with more than ordinary 55concern to the Lady Elizabeth, and this did bring them both into trouble.”

From the original portrait by Sir Antonio More, at Woburn.]

[Engraved by T. Chambars.

Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire.

It is plain enough that this young man, little older and assuredly not more experienced than a boy, was a tool in the hands of those astute intriguers, de Noailles and Simon Renard, the French and Spanish ambassadors. The one, strenuously opposing the Spanish marriage, the other, equally determined in his advocacy of the alliance, united in using the innocent Earl of Devonshire as a factor in their game, with disastrous results to the unfortunate victim.

Advised to remove himself far from the scene of those intrigues which had caught him in their net, Edward Courtenay departed for the Continent with the declared intention of travelling to distant lands, even to Constantinople. That he had no consciousness of having committed a great offence is evident from his correspondence; for while frequently expressing the hope that he may soon be home again, he asks a friend to give him a buck and some does, so that his park may be stocked with deer, and gleefully relates that the Emperor and King Philip had received him kindly. But his health is not good. He suffers, so he writes, from a disease in his hip from cold; there is, also, much plague about; and then no more is heard until the news arrives from Peter Vannes, the English ambassador to the Venetian Republic, who was staying at Padua, announcing that Edward, Earl of Devonshire, had died in that city, on September 18th, 1556. Ubi lapsus, quid feci?

Noble and honoured in degree, gifted with many admirable and amiable qualities, the fairest prospects open before them, yet, one after the other, successive Earls of Devon, like their even more exalted ancestors, perished in sorrow and adversity, until, as was generally believed, their ancient title became extinct.

Yet, far away in the West Country, beneath the oaks of Powderham, while the elder branches dropped or were 56snapped off, the descendants of Sir Philip Courtenay, youngest son of Hugh, second Earl of Devon, lived and thrived, gaining among their own people a love and devotion which has endured the strain of centuries and the many vicissitudes of fortune.

Through the course of years the Courtenays of Powderham followed the example of their greater kinsmen, taking part in events of national importance, bearing themselves with distinction against the foreign foe; with hereditary courage and self-denial opposing the usurper, Richard of Gloucester, and, in defeat as well as in victory, supporting the cause of Henry VII.

But in all things, great or small, they essentially were Devonshire leaders of Devonshire men—living among their own people, beloved and respected by them.

Peter Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter in 1437, expended his energy and substance in maintaining and improving the Cathedral, and to this day the great bell which he hung in the north tower is called by his name, Great Peter.

Many a Devonshire Courtenay sat as Knight of the Shire for his native County; others of the family filled the office of Sheriff; and thus for 340 years this branch of the house did its duty punctually and well, earning fresh honours and new titles in the place of those which lay in abeyance.

On the death of Edward, eighth Earl, in 1556, at Padua, the Courtenays of Powderham were represented by Sir William Courtenay, who died at the siege of St. Quintin, a few months after the decease of his noble kinsman, his son and successor, also called William, being but four years old at the time.

It may be that the tidings of the death of the head of the house were long in travelling from Italy to distant Devonshire. It may be that none of the living members of the family were cognizant of the facts of the case; but whatever the reasons, for 260 years the Earldom of 57Devon was regarded as lapsed, and no successor claimed its honour and dignity, though some indications may, indeed, be found, both in written records and the behaviour of individuals, of a belief that the title, though latent, was not extinct.

Gibbon, who himself has conferred a great and undying honour on the family by devoting, in his monumental work, a whole chapter to the history of the Courtenays, uses this significant expression: “His personal honours as if they had been legally extinct”; and in 1660, when Charles II. offered the dignity of a Baronetcy to the then Sir William Courtenay, it was, as Cleveland relates, refused, “he not affecting that title because he thought greater of right belonged to him. Indeed, the patent of Baronetcy was never taken out, although his successors were always styled as such.”

It is possible, however, that this refusal may have been due to the natural irritation felt by the head of a great family at seeing his hereditary and ancestral honours conferred on others; for in 1602, James I. created Charles Blunt, Lord Mountjoy, Earl of Devonshire, and on his decease, six years later, gave the same title to William Cavendish, in whose line it remained until changed to a Dukedom.

In the reign of William III., an offer of an English Barony was made to the head of the Courtenays, and again refused; but in 1762, the many services of Sir William Courtenay, eighth of the name, merited a higher honour, and he, accepting a Peerage, took his seat in the House of Lords as Viscount Courtenay of Powderham Castle.

Only surviving his elevation some six months, he was succeeded by his son, who, marrying a lady of less exalted lineage than himself, became the parent of one son and thirteen daughters.

This only son and heir, the tenth in thirteen generations who successively bore the name of William, on the 58advice, it is said, of that distinguished lawyer, Mr. Pepys, afterwards Lord Chancellor and first Earl of Cottenham, in 1830 asserted, by petition to Parliament, his right to the ancient Earldom of Devon. The grounds of the claim were as follows: When, in the year 1553, Sir Edward Courtenay, son of Henry, Marquis of Exeter and Earl of Devonshire, attainted and executed by Henry VIII., after having suffered a long confinement in the Tower, obtained from Queen Mary his release, she annulled the attainder, and created him, by special patent, “to hold the title and dignity of Earl of Devon with the said honours and pre-eminence thereunto belonging, to the aforesaid Edward and his heir male for ever” (“prefato Edwardo et heredibus suis masculis imperpetuum”). And this phrase is again repeated later: “Do grant to the aforesaid now Earl that he and his heirs male may enjoy ... the same pre-eminence as any of the ancestors of the said Earl being heretofore Earl of Devon may have enjoyed.”

With great lucidity and deep knowledge of the subject, Mr. Pepys maintained that, whereas in the majority of patents it was usual to restrict the title to the recipient and his direct descendants (heirs male of his body), in this instance, as shown by the wording of the deed, the Sovereign deliberately intended to restore the Earldom to the heir male of Hugh, second Earl of Devon, which position was undoubtedly occupied by the claimant, William, Viscount Courtenay.

Certain cases were cited in support of this contention, especially the charter given by Richard II. creating William le Scrope Earl of Wiltshire, and special reference was made to a patent of Charles I. appointing Lewis Boyle Baron of Bandon Bridge, which contained a declaration explaining the express intention of words absolutely similar to those used in the deed concerning the Earldom of Devon. The claim was tried before the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords, consisting of the 59Lord Chancellor (Lord Brougham) and Lord Wynford, who himself, as Sir W. Draper-Best, had lately been raised to the peerage, for the reason, as Greville, in his Memoirs, amusingly remarks, “that he is to assist the Chancellor in deciding Scotch causes of which he knows nothing whatever; as the Chancellor knows nothing either, the Scotch law is likely to be strangely administered.” The decision in this case which related to an English peerage, however, was eminently just, and the House resolved and adjudged: “That William, Viscount Courtenay, hath made out his claim to the title, honour, and dignity of Earl of Devon.”

By this decision, William, Lord Courtenay, succeeded to one of the great historical titles of England, for the Earl of Devon is justly entitled to rank with his brothers of Shrewsbury, Derby, Huntingdon, and Pembroke, who, occupying Earldoms created before 1600, have been designated Catskin Earls—a name concerning the derivation of which authorities differ, some alleging that the ancient trimming of an Earl’s gown consisted of cat skin, in the place of ermine; while others are inclined to believe that in early times Peers of this rank were permitted to wear four (quatre) rows of fur on their coronation robes. It is to be feared that now this question “des jupons” will never be definitely settled.

On the successful issue of his claim, William, ninth Earl of Devon, both at Powderham, in London, and in Paris, maintained a state which, however worthy of the vast domains appertaining to his great ancestors, yet cast a heavy burden on the mere moderate appanage inherited by himself, with the inevitable result that the estates were encumbered and the successor to the title seriously embarrassed. He died, a bachelor, in 1835, being succeeded by his cousin, William, the representative of a younger branch of the family derived from Sir William Courtenay, third Baronet.

This nobleman, before his accession to the Peerage, 60sat in the House of Commons as Member for the City of Exeter, at one time also filling the post of Clerk to Parliament. After a long and valuable life, he died in 1859, the succession devolving upon his son, William Reginald, eleventh Earl, whose name is still a household word in the land with which he and his have so long been associated.

Marrying Lady Elizabeth Fortescue, a member of a house also closely and honourably connected with the best traditions of the county, Lord Devon, in all things which he undertook, exercised an influence indeed worthy of his illustrious lineage.

Gifted with a great kindliness of disposition—he was never known to lose his temper or to utter a harsh opinion of others—and a high sense of the duties and responsibilities of his position, he spent his life in earnest endeavours, and whether as President of the Local Government Board in Lord Derby’s Ministry, or as Chairman of the St. Thomas’ Union in the neighbourhood of his own beautiful home, his uniform punctuality and assiduity was only exceeded by his unfailing courtesy and amiability.

It has been said of “Devon’s noblest son,” as he was popularly styled, with equal truth and felicity, that from the date of his accession to the title till the day of his death, he identified himself with every good work, whether in the County of Devon or the City of Exeter; those which had as their aim the spread of religious teaching or the advancement of the Church of England being specially near his heart. So active was the part he played in all ecclesiastical matters, that on one occasion, so it is currently reported, Dr. Temple, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, declared: “Why, Lord Devon is almost a lay Bishop.”

Unfortunately, carried away, perhaps, by a desire to adequately perform the obligations of his rank, Lord Devon’s expenditure largely exceeded the income from 61his property. In the hopes that it would materially conduce to the welfare of that part of Ireland in which his estates were situated, he laid down, mainly at his own cost, a line of railway, the heavy outlay on which and the paucity of returns added considerably to the encumbrances which then burdened him. It should, however, be stated that in the last few years this line, which cost its maker so dearly, has been bought by an important Irish railway company for many thousands of pounds.

The embarrassments which these ventures charged upon the property were, moreover, in no way lightened by the successor to the title, Edward Baldwin, twelfth Earl, whose expenditure as M.P. for East Devon and for the City of Exeter, as well as his fondness for sport in many branches, added costly burdens to an already overweighted exchequer.

And thus, by a proneness to follow the dictates of a benevolent heart or the desire to indulge in magnificence consonant with ancient tradition, without adequate consideration with regard to the means by which the impulse was to be gratified, the glories of the Earldom of Devon have been shorn of their just splendour, and the holders of the dignity deprived of the due means of maintaining their hereditary station.

Edward Baldwin died in 1891, and was succeeded by his uncle, Henry Hugh, thirteenth Earl and Rector of Powderham, who married Lady Anna Maria Leslie, sister to the eleventh Earl of Rothes. By her, whose charity and simple-minded goodness of heart made her universally beloved, he had two sons—Henry Reginald, Lord Courtenay, who married Lady Evelyn Pepys, youngest daughter of the first Earl of Cottenham, predeceasing his father in 1898; and Hugh Leslie, who is still living. Lord Devon died in February, 1904, at the ripe age of 93, having survived his beloved wife by seven years.

Ubi lapsus, quid feci? Surely, if worldly prosperity could be earned by a blameless life and a just discharge 62of every duty, Henry Hugh, thirteenth Earl of Devon, Rector of Powderham, and Prebendary of Exeter, would have enjoyed wealth beyond the desires of man; surely, if the highest place and the greatest honours could be gained by courage and devotion, they would have adorned his noble son, Henry Reginald, Lord Courtenay, who bore the suffering and faced the inevitable end of a dread disease with an heroic courage which more than equalled the deeds of his chivalrous ancestors.

It is to be deplored, in these days, when wealth has usurped to an undue extent that place which used formerly to be the privilege of high birth or great intellectual attainments, that the holders of an historic dignity are deprived, even for a time, of a revenue commensurate with their name and station; but as it was by the legal knowledge and forensic skill of Charles Pepys, Earl of Cottenham, the Courtenays regained their ancestral rank, so, perhaps, it is reserved for a noble daughter of that same distinguished family, by her wise guidance, to assist in reviving the glories of a House which she has graced with her alliance and enriched with her many virtues.

Yet to those who saw the crowds, all sorts and conditions of men, which thronged the little churchyard at Powderham when the last four Courtenays were laid to rest, it was plainly evident that in their own fair county of Devon, the land of the green hill and the flowing river, the love which is felt for all who bear the Courtenay name is not measured by the breadth of their acres or the length of their purse-strings, but in the heart of everyone who knows this ancient house and its kindly members, there exists a genuine and sincere wish that the Royal Courtenays may ever flourish in all fulness of health, honour, and prosperity.

From a Drawing by F. Wilkinson.]

[Engraved by J. Mills, 1830.

Doorway of King John’s Tavern, Exeter.

In one of his oracular and sententious utterances, Dr. Johnson declared that “there is nothing that has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good tavern or inn.” But, inasmuch as Boswell tells us that this opinion was pronounced just after the great doctor had “dined at an excellent inn,” we may fairly receive the sentiment as the pair received their meal—with a grain of salt. It would be foreign to the purpose of this paper to enlarge upon the benefits or to denounce the evils connected with inns and taverns. It is enough to know that they exercised on the domestic lives and habits of our forefathers an influence sufficiently potent to establish their claim to share the attention of historical writers with churches, and monasteries, and castles. The Royalist tendencies of the citizens were shown by the “King John Tavern,” in the Serge Market, at the head of South Street; the “Plume of Feathers,” at the bottom of North Street; the “Unicorn,” in the Butcher Row; the “King’s Head,” formerly in Spiller’s Lane; and the “Crown and Sceptre,” in North Street.

The oldest of Exeter inns having anything like a connected history was known for centuries by the inappropriate title of the “New Inn.” We may enter it now 64without any suspicion of its antiquity. Of the ladies of the present day who are so familiar with the house, which bears over its alluring portal the name of “Green & Son,” probably not one in a hundred suspects that her ancestors knew it equally well as the principal inn in Exeter. The archives of the Corporation and of the Dean and Chapter, to whom it jointly belonged, make frequent mention of the “New Inn,” the earliest being a lease in 1456, by which the Master and Brethren of the Magdalen Hospital granted to Roger Schordych and Joan, his wife, two tenements opposite “le Newe Inne,” in the parish of St. Stephen. It appears from Shillingford’s Letters (p. 85), that the inn was then “newly built,” and one of the frequent squabbles between the Cathedral and the City authorities arose out of a “purpresture” or encroachment said to have been made there by the Chapter. A few years later, as we learn from Mr. Cotton’s Gleanings (p. 11), an entry was made in the accounts of the Receiver to the Chamber of 3s. 4d., disbursed for “four gallons of wine sent to Lord Stafford at the Newynne.” From this time it often occurs on successive renewals of the lease. In John Hoker’s Extracts from the Act Books of the Chamber, we find that on the 16th February, 1554, during the mayoralty of John Midwinter, that body resolved to establish at the “New Inn” the cloth mart previously kept at the “Eagle” from 1472—"The newe Inne to be bought of Christian, the wydowe of Thomas Petefyn, and the same to be converted into a commodious hall for all manner of clothe, Lynnen or wollyn, and for all other m’chandises and w^ch shalbe called the m’chaunts hall." In pursuance of this arrangement, Edward Clase and Elizabeth, his wife, who had succeeded Thomas Peytevin, surrendered their lease to the Chamber in 1555. The Act Book also shows that Thomas Johnson was deprived of the tenure of the “New Inn” on the 25th July, 1582, and was succeeded by Valentine Tooker (or Tucker). This tenant had a 65misunderstanding with the municipal authorities, in which he induced some of his mercantile customers to take up his cause; for amongst the municipal records is a letter addressed to the Chamber on the 20th of June, 1612, in which Matthew Springham, Walter Clarke, John Pettye, and eighteen other London merchants, intercede for Tooker, who had received notice to quit his “nowe dwelling howse, the Newe Inn”; and they pray that in consideration of his years and services “some stipend may be given him.” Shortly after this, Valentine Tooker died, and in 1617 his sons, Thomas and Samuel, state, in a letter to Ignatius Jurdaine, the Mayor, that their father had recovered £43 13s. 4d. from the Chamber by a Decree in Chancery for being compelled to leave the New Inn, of which he had been tenant for many years, and they desired that it might be paid without putting them to the charge of taking out the Decree under the Great Seal. They thought it hard that their father should, without any just cause or indemnity, be thrust out of doors, “after keeping the New Inn for more than thirty years, behaving himself honestly, and paying his rent duly, albeit two or three several times raysed and enhanced therein on the promise afterwards to enjoy it for his life.” Notes are added in favour of the petitioners by the brothers Richard and Symon Baskerville.

This Simon Baskerville, a near relative of the Mayor, was a man of note and influence at this time. He was the son of Thomas Baskerville, an Exeter apothecary, and was born in the city in 1573. He was successively appointed physician to James I. and Charles I., from the latter of whom he received the honour of knighthood. A mural tablet in St. Paul’s, London, records that “Near this place lyeth the body of that worthy and learned gentleman, Sir Simon Baskerville, Knight and Doctor in Physick, who departed this life the fifth of July, 1641, aged 68 years.” The transactions between the sons of Valentine Tooker and the Chamber appear to have closed 66on the 3rd of April, 1618, when they acknowledged the receipt from that body of £6 16s., “in full satisfaction, recompence and payment, of and for the full and uttermoste value of all those selynges, stayned or paynted, clothes, shelfes, and all other goods, chattels,” etc., left by them in the “New Inn.”

After the year 1612, we find many references to the “New Inne Halle” or Merchants’ Hall. This was let separately from the inn, and was used as an Exchange, where the cloth merchants congregated, and where the three great yearly cloth fairs drew together traffickers from all parts to carry on the trade previously conducted at “le Egle,” opposite the Guildhall. These merchants rented stalls or shops, which were also distinct from the inn, and in 1640 they petitioned the Chamber to prevent “foreigners,” by whom they meant non-residents, from buying and selling to one another in the city. They suggested that “the hygher roome of Sent Johns (Hospital) be ordenyd to be a store as a roome annyxt unto the New In halle, to reseve all wols browght unto thys cyttaye by foreners.” These restrictive and protectionist measures, operating with the introduction of steam power, finally caused the great woollen manufacture of the West to depart into districts where trade was freer and coal was cheaper.

The “New Inn” extended as far back as Catherine Street, including what was till lately Mr. Seller’s coach factory. Perhaps the sole relic of the original structure is the well in the cellar under this part of the old premises. When this well was opened, in May, 1872, its circular wrought courses of red sandstone plainly testified to its antiquity. The stabling was on the other side of Catherine Street, on a site still used for that purpose, and belonging to the Duke of Bedford. A fire broke out in these stables in 1723, and their great extent is shown by the following advertisement in Andrew Brice’s Postmaster, or Loyal Mercury: “Whereas there has been a 67Report industriously spread abroad by certain malicious or designing persons, that all or most of the Stables belonging to the New Inn, in the High Street, Exon, are burnt down;—this is to certify that the said Report is vicious and false, there being but one only Stable any way damaged by the said late Fire; and that there are remaining near Three times as much Stable room as belongs to any other Inn House in that City, with handsome Accommodation for Coaches, &c., and above an Hundred Horses.”

The structure already referred to was the first edition of the “New Inn” on that site. About the time of the Restoration of Monarchy the house appears to have been re-built, and then was erected the great Apollo Room, which still remains the chief ornament of the house. This splendid apartment is 32½ feet long by 23½ feet wide, and before the floor was raised by Messrs. Green to increase the height of the shop below, it was 17 feet high. The original contract for the construction of the rich and elaborate ceiling appears to have been made with the Chamber by Richard Over, who was to receive £50 “for his skill and labour in playstering the fore chamber, or dining-room, in the New Inn, according to the form and mould which he hath propounded and laid down in a scheme or map.” But the work appears to have been begun in 1689 by Thomas Lane, a plasterer, for five shillings a yard, and on the following 20th of March he was paid by the Chamber £50 for this admirable work of art. It displays the royal arms, with those of the See of Exeter, and of the county families of Hillersdon, Calmady, Prestwood, Acland, and Radcliffe. The name of this fine room may possibly have been borrowed from the Apollo Club in London, near Temple Bar, a place of great resort in the reign of James I. Its principal room was called the Oracle of Apollo, the bust of the god being set above the door of the room, whilst 68over the entrance to the house were some verses beginning:—

Perhaps our county magistrates sought his inspiration when they met at the “New Inn” for public business. Amongst the many illustrious visitors who have been lodged there, none ever excited more curiosity than that great potentate, Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany, who came with an imposing retinue, on his way to London, in the spring of 1669. The Mayor and Alderman waited on him in full state, and were received in a saloon above stairs, perhaps the one that was afterwards converted into the Apollo Room. His highness graciously desired the Mayor to be covered, listened patiently to the inevitable speech or address, accepted the gift of money (£20), which it was then customary to present to great personages, but politely declined his worship’s invitation to a banquet. The Grand Duke afterwards received Sir John Rolle and his two sons, John and Denys, and on the next day returned the visit at their house in the Close, formerly the town mansion of the Abbot of Buckfast, and now occupied as a school by Mrs. Hellins. The fortunes of the “New Inn” began to decline when the Cloth Fair was removed to St. John’s Hospital in 1778, and its decay was probably hastened by the rivalry of the “London Inn,” now the “Bude Haven Hotel.” In his Grand Gazetteer, published a little before this time, Andrew Brice describes the “New Inn” as “not undeserving mention, not only as having most or all the Properties of an Inn super-excellent, but especially for one most magnificent lofty and large room, called the Apollo; the Fellow of which scarce any Inn in the Kingdom can truly boast. It’s the property of the Chamber. Herein is kept the present Cloth Hall, and at Whitsuntide fairs the whole Court and nearly every Room are filled with Clothiers and their wares. It may casually be acceptable to some 69or other of the worthy Fraternity to note also that the said Apollo is the only constituted Lodge of Exeter Freemasons.” When the testy but clever author of this description ended his long life in 1773, two hundred of his brother Freemasons, members of several lodges, met in full costume at the Apollo Room, and joined the funeral procession to St. Bartholomew’s Yard, singing as they went a solemn Masonic elegy composed for the occasion. It was probably not long after this event that the premises ceased to be used as an inn; but the judges of assize continued to be lodged there until about the year 1836, when they removed to Northernhay Place. In a large upper room, in the rear of the “New Inn” premises, the first popular Literary Society in Exeter held its meetings from the year 1830. It was founded five years earlier in some rooms in South Street, under the title of a Mechanics’ Institute. Soon after the termination of its brief but useful existence, its place was supplied by the still flourishing Exeter Literary Society.

Next, if not equal, in importance to the “New Inn” was the “Mermaid,” whose yard is now worthily occupied by two huge blocks of Industrial Dwellings. There was a great oaken staircase, with carven handrail and ample landings, leading to the assembly and other large rooms, for the quality folks, on the left of the entrance. Dr. Oliver, in a contribution to a newspaper in 1833, mentions this assembly room as having been used for balls within the memory of old people then living. It was 56 feet long and 17 wide. Its arched and moulded ceiling was enriched with gold and colour. On a carved stone in the centre of the mantelpiece (30 inches wide by 25 high), and dated 1632, were impaled the arms of the old Devonshire families of Shapleigh and Slanning. Travellers and casual guests were lodged on the left side of the entrance; and besides the spacious yard there was a large garden with a summer-house, commanding a prospect of fields and distant hills. Here the city merchants could look 70down upon their ships in the haven below, as they smoked their pipes over cups of canary, and held converse touching their foreign ventures. The “Mermaid” was a favourite sign with our forefathers, who had a liking for strange fishes, especially for those connected with fable or mystery. An old book tells how, once upon a time, a long consultation on the choice of a sign ended in the selection of the “Mermaid,” “because,” said the hostess, “she will sing catches to the youths of the parish.” Not from the parish only, but from every quarter of the county, did customers of high degree make their way to the “Mermaid” of Exeter. They sang catches, if she did not. "What things we have seen done at the ‘Mermaid!’" wrote Beaumont to Ben Jonson. Those dashing brethren, Sir Peter and Sir Gawen Carew, with a gallant company of knights and squires and justices of the quorum, rode into its yard, in 1549, after conference with the misguided Catholic insurgents at St. Mary’s Clyst, and there, after supper, words waxed high over the terms of dealing with the rebels.

During the whole of the last century the “Mermaid” was a great rendezvous for carriers; and Edward Iliffe, to whom it belonged in 1764, was a partner with Thomas Parker, of the “New Inn,” and two others, in one of those long vehicles, then called “machines,” advertised to carry passengers from Exeter to London in two days. Iliffe had also “fly waggons,” which performed the journey in four and a half days, setting out from the “Mermaid” every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. It may be doubted whether this promised speed was maintained, for, in the course of some alterations of the covered entrance in 1825, discovery was made of a board announcing under the date 1780, that “Iliffe’s Flying Van leaves this yard every Monday morning for London, performing the journey in six days.” Edward Iliffe sold the “Mermaid,” about the year 1810, to Thomas Bury, a wool-stapler, who erected for himself a substantial brick 71dwelling in the yard. Iliffe prospered in his business, and ended his days at Exmouth, where he lived at Sacheverall Hall, with the title of Esquire, and a mural tablet to his memory may yet be seen in Littleham Church. In later times the yard became the site of a brewery, carried on successively by Mr. Joseph Brutton and the father of the late Mr. John Clench. All traces of its former state are now obliterated, and the “Mermaid” no longer “sings catches to the youths of the parish.”

But although the “Mermaid” has completely vanished, its rival, the “Dolphin,” over the way, still retains the name, and little but the name, that was once so widely known. Francis Pengelly, an Exeter apothecary, its owner at the beginning of the last century, gave it in charity to trustees for certain benevolent purposes, which were not to take effect until after the death of Joan, his wife. Once, in 1725, the “Dolphin” happened to remain unlet for a week, and was kept open by the trustees. Their accounts show that during this short period there came carriers from Moreton, Yeovil, Ashburton, Totnes, and Okehampton, with fifty-six pack-horses amongst them. The regular charge was sixpence per night for each horse. A century before this, the “Dolphin,” like the “Mermaid,” was frequented by guests of a higher class. Amongst the documents preserved in the Record Room of Exeter Guildhall are some lengthy depositions of witnesses on a charge of murder, supposed to have been committed by some of these. From their testimony may be gleaned the following condensed outline of the story. It appears that on a January night, in the year 1611, there was staying at the “Dolphin” Sir Edward Seymour, of Berry Pomeroy, the first Devonshire member of the new order of baronets created by James I. as a means of raising money for his royal needs without the aid of Parliament. Sir Edward was seated in an upper chamber, playing at cards with some friends, when the party was joined by Master William Petre, a member of 72a distinguished family no longer connected with Devonshire, and by John and Edward Drewe, then of Killerton, but whose worthy descendants are now seated at the Grange in Broadhembury. One of the Drewes wore a white hat and cloak, the other was clad in black. Edward carried a short sword, and John a rapier. These three young gallants, already flushed with wine at the “Mermaid” and at the “Bear,” in South Street, drank “a pot or two of beer” and some more wine with Sir Edward Seymour at the “Dolphin.” Perhaps they were in too quarrelsome a mood to be very acceptable company, for after tarrying there an hour, and indulging in a rude practical joke on the tapster, they remounted their horses, dropped in at a few more taverns, and finally rode out of the city through the East Gate. Here Will Petre spurred on at a reckless pace up the broad highway of St. Sidwell, and was soon lost in the darkness. The Drewes gave chase, but stopped at St. Anne’s Chapel, and shouted to their companion by name. Receiving no answer, they groped their way to a house where a light was burning, but the woman of the house had seen nothing of Will Petre. They rode on to his home, at Whipton House, and there found his horse standing, riderless, at the gate, whereupon a servant of the house came forth and opened the gate. He (Edward Drewe) then willed him to take of his master’s horse, and then the servant demanded where his master was. Drewe, contenting himself with the answer that he thought he would come by-and-bye, rode on with his brother to their home at Killerton. The dawn of Sunday morning showed the dead body of Will Petre lying by the causeway near St. Anne’s Chapel, with a ghastly wound on the head. The hue and cry was raised, and the two Drewes were taken as they lay in their beds, and brought before the city justices on the charge of murdering their friend. Some of the witnesses testified to a quarrel between Edward Drewe and Will Petre; but, though the papers 73do not disclose the issue of the trial, I think it must have ended in the discharge of the accused.

The “Bear Inn,” where the three roysterers had called for a quart of wine, was in South Street, at the lower corner of Bear Lane. It probably took its name from the Bere or Bear Gate, which was so styled in 1286, when the Cathedral Close was first surrounded by a wall. It was rebuilt in 1481, and was then the town mansion of the abbots of Tavistock, the wealthiest, if not the oldest, of the monastic houses of Devonshire. It is described as “le Bere Inne alias Bere” in the lease; by which John Peryn, the last abbot, in view of the pending dissolution of his house, leased it, in the year 1539, to Edward Brygeman and Jane, his wife, for a term of sixty years. King Henry VIII., on the 30th January, 1546, granted the freehold of the premises to William Abbot, Esq., by whom, on the 15th February, 1548, they were sold to Griffin Amerideth and John Fortescue, who, on the 28th October, 1549, renewed the lease granted by the abbot to Edward Bridgman. Shortly afterwards the property was held in moieties, one of which belonged to William Buckenham, Mayor of Exeter in 1541, and was, in pursuance of his will, together with the other moiety which he purchased of Edward Ameredith in 1565, conveyed by Buckenham’s executor, Philip Chichester, on the 6th of March, 1566, to the mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty of the city of Exeter, for the benefit of the poor persons lodged in the Twelve (Ten) Cells in Billiter Lane, now called Preston Street. Prince, in his Worthies of Devon, published in 1701, tells us that the arms of Tavistock Abbey and of Ordgar, its founder, were “to be seen in painted glass in the great window of the dining room,” with the figure of a man standing on a bridge. This was, no doubt, a rebus on the name of Bridgeman, the former owner. Even so late as the beginning of the present century, when Jenkins wrote his History of Exeter, he could remember that a “great part of the old buildings, particularly the 74chapel, was standing a few years since; they were built with freestone, of excellent Gothic workmanship, decorated with fretwork panels. Mutilated inscriptions and different sculptures were seen, and over the cornice, even with the battlements, was a cabossed statue of a bear, holding a ragged staff between its paws.” Dr. Shapter is the fortunate possessor of some admirable sketches of bits of the old building from the pencil of the late John Gendall. These show the heavy stone arches of the basement, and a massive stone spiral staircase leading to the floor above, evidently portions of the structure rebuilt in 1481. When newspapers began to be published in Exeter, early in the last century, the “Bear” appeared now and then in their quaint advertisements, and, like the “Mermaid” and the “Dolphin,” it became a noted house for carriers. One of these advertisements announced, in July, 1722, that “Since the widow Wibber has left The Bear, for the Better Accommodation of Merchants, Tradesmen, &c., who frequent the Serge Market, at The Mitre, in the same Street, is commodious Entertainment for Man and Horse by Henry Dashwood.” Simon Phillip advertised that he had taken the “Bear” in 1779, and when he died, in 1796, Mary, his widow, continued the business. She kept it until it ceased to be an inn, and Robert Russell re-modelled it for his great waggon establishment. This gentleman, familiarly known as Robin Russell, offered to assist the Government with three hundred draught horses at the time of the threatened French invasion in 1798. He became wealthy, built himself a house, called Russell House, on the quay at Exmouth, and finally died there in 1822, at the age of 63.

Our final notice must be given to the inn now known as the “Clarence.” It was the first in Exeter, if not the first in England, to assume the French title of hotel, and in its early days was commonly referred to as “The Hotel in the Churchyard.” It was built about the year 1770 by William Mackworth Praed, Esq., a partner in 75the adjacent Exeter Bank, the oldest banking-house in the city. The first landlord of the hotel was Peter Berlon, a clever Frenchman, who nevertheless failed in 1774, and was succeeded by one Connor, from the well-known “Saracen’s Head” in London. Connor remained less than two years, and the house, which was still known as “Berlon’s Hotel,” was entered on by Richard Lloyd, who had kept the old “Swan Inn” in High Street, where Queen Street now joins it. Lloyd succeeded no better than Berlon, and in October, 1778, he went to the “New Inn,” whilst his waiter, Thomas Thompson, took his place, and the house was thenceforward known as “Thompson’s Hotel.” This landlord fared better than his predecessors, for his reign lasted more than twenty years. In 1799, the hotel was kept by James Phillips, but in October, 1813, he was overtaken by the bad fortune of former landlords, and was succeeded by Samuel Foote, from Plymouth. Foote at once proceeded to carry out several improvements, including the restoration of the large assembly-room. For decorating this in the “Egyptian style,” he engaged the services of an artist named De Maria, whose work on the ceiling is described in a newspaper of the day as a masterpiece of “classic taste and elegance.” The new room was opened with a ball in the following year, and in 1815 a meeting was held there to consider a plan for lighting Exeter with gas—an invention which this city was the first place in Devonshire to adopt. Samuel Foote was chiefly known to fame as the parent of Maria Foote, the celebrated actress, whose brilliant career on the stage had just commenced at the time when her father entered on the hotel. She finally quitted the boards in 1831 to become the wife of Charles, Earl of Harrington. The Countess survived until the 27th of December, 1867. Her only son having died in his father’s lifetime, the Earldom passed to his uncle.

Samuel Foote was succeeded by Mr. Congdon, who afterwards took the Subscription Rooms, while Mrs. Street 76became landlady of the hotel. Under Foote and Congdon, the house was visited by many guests of high distinction. In 1799, during Phillips’ time, a great crowd assembled in front to welcome the arrival of Lord Duncan soon after his great victory at Camperdown, and his lordship was presented with the freedom of the city.

The Duke of Kent was there in 1802, and in 1806 Lord Cochrane, with his friend, Col. Johnson, set out from thence in a coach drawn by six horses, decorated with purple ribbons, to visit the electors of the immaculate borough of Honiton. In 1817, Samuel Foote received no less a guest than the Grand Duke Nicholas, afterwards Emperor of Russia. But the event which earned for the hotel its present name of the “Clarence” occurred on the 13th of July, 1827, whilst Mrs. Street was the landlady. The Duchess of Clarence, afterwards Queen Adelaide, came to Exeter on her way to join the Duke, who had arrived at Plymouth by sea. Her carriage was escorted into the city by a procession, and the streets through which she passed were gaily decorated. Lord Rolle and the Recorder received the Duchess at the hotel, and the Bishop and cathedral dons were introduced. On the next morning she went to the Bishop’s Palace and the Cathedral, and then pursued her journey to Plymouth, by way of Teignmouth and Torquay. In later years she visited the city as the Dowager Queen Adelaide, and was again a guest at the “Clarence.”

This sketch of the old inns of Exeter, however imperfect, may at least suffice to prove their importance in the trade of the city, and their influence in moulding the habits of the citizens.

From a Photograph]

[by Frith & Co.

High Street, Exeter.

There are few memorials of county history even in Devonshire at once as authentic, as interesting and as important, as that of which the title of this chapter recalls a single incident. And not only is it authentic and interesting, but the story comes to us at first hand. It is written by one who was an eye-witness of most of the scenes which he describes, who bore an honoured name, and held an honourable office in the City of Exeter in the days of Henry VIII., Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. He was uncle of a man yet more celebrated and gifted than himself—the famous Richard Hooker. His own name was John; his surname is sometimes written with one “o,” sometimes with two, and sometimes it is written as if he had another name altogether—Vowell. Uncle and nephew belonged, as Sir FitzJames Stephen says, to the party of progress in the greatest crisis which the world had seen for many centuries—a greater crisis, in some respects, than any which has followed it.

Moreover, he was brought into contact with two men who in importance are part of the history of their times—Dr. Moreman, the great Cornish schoolmaster, whose influence was immense amongst the West Country rebels who fought at Crediton; and Myles Coverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, who held a service of thanksgiving a little while afterwards among the bodies of the slain 78Cornishmen, “as, with stiffening limbs, they lay with their faces to the stars.”

It is strange that the burning of the barns at Crediton should be a catchword to recall the struggle that for the moment seemed to involve the fate of Exeter and even the religion of England. But the barns at Crediton were like the barns of Hougoumont at the Battle of Waterloo. The fight was critical, and it had decisive consequences.

The Diocese of Exeter appears to have shared in the indifference which throughout the country marked public opinion in the matter of the Pope’s authority. The words of the Act of Henry VIII., “in restraint of appeals” (to Rome), expresses the mind of most men at that time, “by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an Empire.” It is tolerably certain that if the changes brought about in England at the Reformation had been restricted to the abolition of the authority of Rome, there would have been no rising such as that which is here described in opposition to it. But it was otherwise when the changes extended to the order and nature of the services by which the religious life of the time was guided. Then the love which is felt for things familiar came into play. The old order changed, and yielded place to new. But the break of the new day was not cloudless nor serene.

It is so natural to us to think of ourselves in England as a people of one language, and that a very noble language, whatever the pure, not to say pedantic, grammarian may say, that it is hard to think that in this West Country the English tongue was not universal even as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century. Devonshire and Cornwall, which from 1042 to 1877 formed a single diocese, were in some respects for many centuries like countries foreign to each other. The Book of Common Prayer in the mother tongue of the English made no appeal, in the sixteenth century, to the hearts of the 79common people in Cornwall. This most interesting matter does not appear to have attracted the notice which it deserves. If Cranmer and his colleagues could have made these admirable offices speak to the ears of the Cornish, as they speak to the ears of the English, Sampford Courtenay might have been left to fight its own battles, and the Crediton barns would have lacked at the critical moment their most eager defenders.

Long after 1549, in King James’ time, when the Great Bible, despised by the Cornish, despised and rejected as an alien thing, had as a translation lost its hold upon the scholars of England, and its successor in public esteem, the Geneva Bible, was in turn to yield place to what we now call the Authorised Version, the celebrated John Norden, with Royal recommendations in his pocket, was making his journeys and constructing his Speculum, his topographical description of this kingdom. He never completed it; indeed, it was not printed till long after his time. But it is a vivid and for the most part trustworthy survey of the country generally, and the county of Cornwall is minutely described. Nowhere can a better view be had of the condition of the Western part of the Diocese in the distribution of language. Here are his words; the spelling is Norden’s: “Of late the Cornishmen have muche conformed themselves to the use of the English tongue, and their English is equal to the beste, especially in the Eastern partes; even from Truro eastwarde it is in menner wholy Englische. In the West parte of the Countrye, as in the hundreds of Penwith and Kirrier, the Cornish tongue is most in use amongste the inhabitantes, and yet (which is to be marveyled) though the husband and wife, parentes and children, master and servauntes do mutually communicate in their native language, yet there is none of them in manner but is able to convers with a straunger in the English tongue unless it be some obscure people that seldom confer with the better sorte. But it seemeth that in a few yeares 80the Cornish language will be by litle and litle abandoned.” That was how the case stood in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

It is no wonder that two generations earlier the leaders of the Cornish rising demanded that they should be allowed to have the services of the Church as they had been accustomed to have them, for that other new Book was to them a foreign thing. “We will not receive,” they said, “the new service, because it is but like a Christmas game.... And we, the Cornish, whereof certain of us understand no English, utterly refuse the new English.”

Whitaker, himself a Cornish clergyman, though not a Cornishman, who published his History of the Cathedral of Cornwall in 1804, and represents the most intelligent criticism of his time, says, in his vigorous way, as if the old blood still ran in his veins: “The English was not desired by the Cornish, but forced upon the Cornish by the tyranny of England, at a time when the English language was as yet unknown in Cornwall.” “This act of tyranny,” he continues, “was at once gross barbarity to the Cornish people, and a death blow to the Cornish language.” “To use the universal tongue,” says Freeman, “whether understood or not, was no grievance; to have English forced on them was.”

Two centuries before the Book of Common Prayer was issued, a Bishop of Exeter, John de Grandisson, one of the most accomplished and travelled of the whole series of mediæval prelates, was describing the Cornish end of his Diocese to the Pope who had “provided” him to his Bishopric. He speaks of it as if it were a foreign land “adjoining England only along its eastern boundary, being surrounded on every other side by the sea, which divides it from Wales and Ireland on the North. On the South, it looks towards Gascony and Brittany; and the Cornish speak the language of those lands.” The barrier of language was breaking down fast in 1549, but these illustrations will show how real a barrier it was.

81The Act of Parliament which authorised the use of the Book of Common Prayer and, indeed, commanded it to be used, took effect on Whitsunday in 1549. A cold but competent critic, Mr. Goldwin Smith, has remarked of it that “Cranmer’s singular command of liturgical language enabled him to invest a new ritual at once with a dignity and beauty which gave it a strong hold on the heart of the worshipper, and have made it a main stay of the Anglican Church.” He adds, however, that in the backward parts of the country masses of people willing enough to part with papal supremacy and courts ecclesiastic “clung to the ancient faith and still more to the ancient forms.” Various risings against the new order took place. Two chief struggles stand out from the rest: one, in the East of England, with its centre around Norwich, the other, in the West of England, with its centre round Exeter. It is this last, of course, with which the present chapter is concerned, and in telling the story of this fragment of county history, as much use as possible will be made of Hooker’s own language. It is a strange thing, however it may be accounted for, that this racy narrative lay for years in manuscript in the archives of the City of Exeter, and was not printed till 1765. Even then it was left to private enterprise, and was published by subscription. The title runs: “The Antique Description and Account of the City of Exeter, in three parts, All written purely By John Vowell, alias Hoker, Gent. Chamberlain, and Representative in Parliament of the Same. Exon, now first printed together by Andrew Brice, in North Gate Street. M.DCC.LXV.” It is dedicated to the two representatives of the City in Parliament at the time of its publication, and begs them “Candidly to pardon the Presumptions, and benignly accept this little Oblation, of their most respectful and obsequious humble Servant, Andrew Brice.” In such a modest moment was this precious document given to the world.

82“It is apparent and most certain that this rebellion first was raised at a place in Devon named Sampford Courtneie, which lieth Westwards from the City about sixteen miles.” Then Hooker marks the day. It was Monday; it was in Whitsun-week; it fell that year on the tenth of June. It was indeed a memorable day. For, as already has been said, the Book of Common Prayer was ordered to be used on Whitsunday, and was so used in Exeter as elsewhere, and in Exeter “the day passed off quietly.” Hooker says the statute was “with all obedience received in every place, and the common people well enough contented therewith every where, saving in this West Country, and especially at this said Sampford Courtneie.” “For upon the said Monday, the Priest being come to the Parish Church of Sampford, and preparing himself to say the service as he had done the day before, ... they said he should not do so.... The Priest in the end, whether it were with his will, or against his will, he relied (sic) to their minds, ... and forthwith ravisheth himself in his old Popish attire, and sayeth mass, and all such services as in Times past accustomed.”

Then the movement took shape. Leaders were chosen, or chose themselves. “William Underhill or Taylor and one Segar, a labourer,” joined afterwards as “Captains” by Maunder, a shoemaker, and Aishcaredge, a fish-driver. “Like lips, like lettice,” says Hooker, “as is the cause so are the rulers.” These leaders were good enough for the Sampford Courtenay men, but it was otherwise when the prevailing discontent, slowly gathering strength at first, and directed as much against the Lord Protector Somerset and “the gentlemen” who suddenly had become rich at the cost of the poor, as at the alteration in the services of the Church, brought more powerful persons and larger bodies of men upon the scene. Then the dimensions of the rebellion revealed themselves. Devonshire sent knights like Sir Thomas Pomeroie; Cornwall sent squires like Arundell and Winneslade, doomed to 83end their lives at Tyburn. Arundell’s history is illuminative of the times in which he lived and of the events in which he took part. Ten years before, at the dissolution of the monasteries, he had obtained the revenues of St. Michael’s Mount. It was by his advice that the rebels laid siege to Exeter. If he had marched on, his army would have gathered as it marched. The “ten thousand” who were at his heels at Exeter would have been fifty thousand before he reached London; but Exeter held out stubbornly, and Arundell it was, not Exeter, that surrendered. But this is anticipatory; and it is necessary to return to Sampford Courtenay on Whitsun Monday.

When the news of the disturbance at Sampford had spread through the neighbourhood, the local magistrates met together to endeavour to pacify the people. They temporised and were timid; “they were afraid of their own shadows,” and “departed without having done anything at all.” So things went on till the news reached the King and his Council, who already had enough on their hands elsewhere. Sir Peter Carew and Sir Gawen Carew, Devonshire men, were sent down with commissions to deal with the rising as on consideration and conference with the magistrates might seem best. Lord Russell was to follow. The two knights came with all haste to Exeter, and sent for the Sheriff, “Sir Peter Courtneie,” and the Justices of the Peace, “and understanding that a great Company of the Commons were assembled at Crediton, which is a town distant about seven miles from Exeter, ... it was concluded that the said Sir Peter and Sir Gawen, with others, should ride to Crediton, ... and to use all the good ways and means they might to pacify and appease them.... But the people being by some secret intelligence advertised of the coming of the Gentlemen towards them, and they (being) fully resolved not to yield one jot from their determinations, but to maintain their cause taken in hand, do arm and make themselves strong, with such armors and furnitures as they 84had, they intrench the highways and make a mighty Rampire at the Town’s End, and fortify the same, as also the Barns next adjoining to the same Rampires with men and munitions, having pierced the walls of the Barns with Loops and Holes for their Shot.”

When “the Gentlemen” reached the “Rampire,” they were surprised to find all conference refused, and Hooker says: “The Sun being in Cancer and the mid-summer moon at full, their minds were imbrued with such follies, and their heads carried with such Vanities, that ... they would hear no man speak but themselves, and thought nothing well said but what came out of their own mouths. The warlike knights, after conference, attempted the barrier, but a volley from the Barns repelled them with a loss of some, and the hurt of many.” But a servant of Sir Hugh Pollard, whose name was Fox, set one of the barns on fire, and the defenders fled. When the magistrates entered the town, they found none in it but old women and children. And so it might seem that the incident was closed, and the rebellion stamped out and quenched. It was not so. Here Hooker’s account must be given without alteration or abridgment:—

“The noise of this Fire and Burning was in Post-haste, and as it were in a moment, carried and blazed abroad throughout the whole Country; and the common people, upon false Reports, and of a Gnat making an Elephant, noised and spread it abroad, that the Gentlemen were altogether bent to over-run, spoil and destroy them. And in their Rage, as it were a Swarm of Wasps, they cluster themselves in great Troops and Multitudes, some in one place and some in another, fortifying and entrenching themselves as though the Enemy were ready to invade and assail them.” Thus “the barns of Crediton,” in themselves of small importance, became, as in our days for a moment “Remember Mitchelstown” was, a war cry in a movement of high and lasting importance.

While the country was in this excited state on the 85West side of Exeter, an incident of no great apparent importance stirred up a new outbreak on the Eastern side. The father of Sir Walter Raleigh was riding through Clyst St. Mary, when he overtook an old woman on her way to church, telling her beads as she went. Quite needlessly, but also quite after the fashion of the time, he entered into a polemical discussion, and so angered the old lady that she rushed into church, and shouted that she and her religion had been insulted, and that a “gentleman” had threatened that if they did not give up their beads, their holy bread, and their holy water, he would burn them out of their homes. This was enough to set the heather on fire on the eastern side of Exeter.

By this time Exeter was the centre of a district in full revolt, and amongst the country gentlemen and magistrates there was weakness and division.

It was at this stage that there arrived from Cornwall and North Devon the promise of support from men of more mark than the leaders of the village revolutionists. The barns of Crediton had done their work; the eyes of all men turned now to the walls of Exeter. The annals of Exeter are rich in records of worthy conduct. The proud motto, Semper fidelis, has been no inglorious boast. Amongst all her chronicles none is more to her credit than her behaviour throughout this siege. Around the walls thousands of men were encamped, or came and went as opportunity offered or necessity compelled. The Cornishmen brought to the siege men skilled in “underground” labour, and these dug beneath the walls and prepared mines. Exeter had also at least one man of skill in like arts. Setting pans of water over suspected places, he watched till the vibrations of the water revealed the blows of the pick-axe below. It was at once deliverance and merry relaxation of the strain upon the mind to divert all the slop and drainage of the city into the besiegers’ mines. John Newcomb was this man’s name; and like the name of the man who fired the barn 86at Crediton, it bears witness to the genuineness of the narrative.

Meantime, during this five weeks’ siege, strange things had happened. One of the Carews had been to London to convince the Court of the reality of the peril, and with blunt directness had driven the conviction that the case was urgent, home to the minds of the Council. Troops were promised, Germans chiefly, and though their number was not great, they were used to discipline—war was their profession, not their pastime—their arrival soon made a difference. The citizens were cheered and depressed alternately, as news reached them from the villages, that Lord Russell and the Carews were coming. The darkest hour, it is said, is that before the daybreak. It was so in Exeter at the end of July and the beginning of August. The siege had lasted five weeks, when news reached the city that the relieving troops had been defeated. Sunday, the fourth of August, was the darkest day of the siege. While the citizens were at Church, and, in obedience to the law, were using the new order of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, news had reached the ill-affected in the city that the King’s troops had suffered defeat. A violent mob paraded the streets, hungry and angry, shouting: “Come out, these heretics and twopenny bookmen! Where be they? By God’s wounds and blood, we will not be pinned in to serve their turns. We will go out and have in our neighbours; they be honest, good, and godly men.” The Mayor drove them back to their dwellings, and then the most faithful of the defenders entered into a covenant of fidelity to each other, no matter what might befall the city. Bedford House should be their citadel, and if and when that ceased to be tenable, they would go out by the postern gate into Southernhay, and cut their way through or die together. That very day the reported defeat was turned into victory. The relieving army, after reverses all but fatal, finally won the field. Monday inside 87the city was strangely quiet; before midnight the invading Cornish, the besieging multitude, had melted away. When the morning of Tuesday broke, Exeter was free.

Such is the bare outline of the last siege but one of the many which Exeter has sustained. “The barns of Crediton” raised the country side; the bridge of Clyst St. Mary pacified it. Between the place where the fighting began and the place where it ended stood, and still stands, the ancient city which so often in the past had been a place of defence to the interests of the country, but never in all the long roll of her achievements had borne herself more bravely, more nobly, and more successfully than when she disdained to surrender at the cry of hunger the rôle of law-abiding fidelity which was the crown and glory of her mayor and municipality in the July and August of 1549.

Strangely enough, but fitly, too, the struggle closed where it began. Back through Crediton, past the blackened barn, the Royal troops marched. At Sampford Courtenay the shattered forces of the insurgents had collected. Once more they fought, “and never gave over until that both in the town and in the field, they were all or the most taken and slain. And so,” says Hooker, “of a traitorous beginning they made a shameful ending.”

It is a pathetic thing to read the Collect for Whitsunday, with its prayer for a right judgment in all things, and to think that the first result of ordering it to be said in the mother tongue was the series of battles, sieges, and executions which make up the terrible history that began to unroll its woes outside the Barns of Crediton.

What memories of the past crowd into the mind as we stand upon the far-famed Plymouth Hoe, and gaze seaward towards the open Channel! Looking out over Plymouth Sound, crowded with shipping from all parts of the world, one is apt to lose one’s twentieth-century identity, and to wander in thought over long-past and well-nigh forgotten days.

For, in truth, there is a glamour and a halo of romance about Plymouth Hoe which can be found nowhere else; for there, beyond and around us, spread the blue waters ebbing and flowing as they have ebbed and flowed for countless ages, and pregnant with mighty secrets and a wondrous retrospect.

Beneath those waters lie buried many strange tragedies, and of the shores are told many wonderful legends; but there are many living stories connected with our national and naval history that are to be found enshrined in our glorious annals. The Hoe, as regards its position and outlook, has changed but little since the days of Trojans, Phœnicians, Romans, Danes, Normans, Bretons, and Spaniards, all of whom in their turn have brought their ships within the bold headlands to east and west in quest of spoil or possessions.

The watchers on Plymouth Hoe may have witnessed many novel sights from their elevated standpoint, and may have joined in the welcome accorded to many distinguished visitors.

From a drawing by J. M. W. Turner.]

[Engraved by W. J. Cooke.

Plymouth Hoe.

89From a very early period, Plymouth has occupied a prominent position in the naval affairs of the kingdom, and on many occasions has been privileged to supply men, ships, money, and other requisites for the fitting out of expeditions—some of a warlike character, against our aggressive neighbours or foreign foes; others of a more peaceable intent, destined for the discovery of new countries and the exploration of unknown seas. From its position as one of the most westerly ports, and possessing, as it does, one of the finest harbours in the world, Plymouth has naturally been chosen as the starting-point of many of those daring enterprises which have astonished the world; and doubtless the Hoe has witnessed many interesting scenes, including the departure of these diversified expeditions and their triumphant homecoming. It would seem to us but as a matter of course that our forefathers should have betaken themselves to this famous place of outlook when anything unusual was going forward, even as we do at this time under similar circumstances. But in olden time there were many reasons beside those of mere idle curiosity to prompt the inhabitants of Plymouth to assemble on the Hoe. With what eager interest must they have repaired thither in those early days, when the French, with fire and sword, descended upon it, and made havoc wherever they went! Small and insignificant as the town then was, it appeared, nevertheless, to have possessed a peculiar attraction for our French neighbours, who, upon several occasions, paid their unwelcome visits. Thus, in 1339, we find it recorded that the French burnt the greater part of the town; again, in 1377, the same depredations were committed; in 1399, the French attacked Plymouth, but were defeated by the people of the town and neighbourhood, under Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devon, the enemy losing five hundred men, and flying in disorder to their ships; in 1403 it was burnt by the French; and again, in 1405, the Bretons 90invaded Plymouth, and burnt six hundred houses. The name Breton or Briton Side, given to a street in the lower part of the town, and still in evidence, is traceable to a connection with this event.

But the brave seamen of gallant little Plymouth were on other occasions amply revenged for these outrages. Thus, in 1346, the battle of Cressy and siege of Calais are recorded, and it is a matter of historical fact that the latter town was blockaded by twenty-six ships and over six hundred men mustered by the town of Plymouth, while Saltash, Millbrook, and other neighbouring places also sent their quota of help. Again, in 1354, a fleet of three hundred ships sailed from hence, and within sight of the watchers on Plymouth Hoe, for the invasion of France, under the command of the King (Edward III.), the Black Prince, and other noted leaders. The watchers on Plymouth Hoe may have also taken part in the enthusiastic reception given by the people to the Black Prince, on the occasion of his landing here, after his memorable victory at Poictiers in 1356, bringing with him as hostages John, King of France, that monarch’s youngest son, and some of his principal nobles.

It is, however, to the age of Elizabeth that we must turn to find the greatest interest centreing around Plymouth. In that reign, the town attained a degree of importance that it has never since lost; and, as a matter of course, Plymouth Hoe was, as in still earlier times, from its commanding position and extent, the rendezvous for the townsfolk, as well as the muster-ground for troops. Many scenes of intense interest that have been witnessed from this historic spot, rise to the mind’s eye.

“The brave sea-captains it (Plymouth) produced made a glorious history for England in the reign of Elizabeth. Drake, first of England’s vikings, as a sailor, went out with his little fleet of schooners from this port on the 15th of November, 1577, to plough with their small keels a track through all the seas that surround the globe. 91The birth-roll of Plymouth is rich and illustrious with names of seamen who wrote them on the far-off islands and rough capes of continents they discovered. Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, Oxenham, and Cook sailed on their memorable expeditions from this port.”^[4]

Many a time and oft did the people of Plymouth his away to the Hoe to bid Drake and his gallant company God-speed on their voyages of discovery and warfare. And it was no empty curiosity that led them to do this, for Drake was their hero, beloved by everybody, and his ship’s company numbered many Plymouth men, the husbands, sons, and brothers of those who looked wistfully and through blinding tears at the little vessels fast disappearing in the distance, out into the great unknown.

And if they thus watched the outgoing, what about the home-coming? That was an anxious time for the watchers on Plymouth Hoe, for no one knew until the ship actually arrived in port how many of their loved ones had succumbed to the rigours of the varying climate, disease, storm, and, worst of all, the dreaded Spaniards, with their horrible Inquisition. It is very evident that the townsfolk did take a very great interest in the events and expeditions of this period, for one old chronicler informs us that “Sir Francis (then Captain) Drake returning from one of his voyages, and arriving at Plymouth on Sunday, August 9th, 1573, in sermon time, and the news of his return being carried into the church, there remained few or no people with the preacher, all running to observe the blessing of God upon the dangerous adventures of the captain.”

But this home-coming of Drake’s, and the reception then given him, was as nothing compared to that accorded him when he returned from his voyage of circumnavigation. As stated before, he left Plymouth on the 15th of 92November, 1577, and returned on the 11th September, 1580. In this voyage he had completely surrounded the globe—a feat which, it is alleged, no commander-in-chief had accomplished before. He had five vessels at starting, the aggregate tonnage of which did not reach three hundred tons, and a company of men, gentlemen, and sailors, all told, amounting to one hundred and sixty-four. Before this voyage was half done, Drake had parted company with several of his ships, and returned from that voyage with only one ship, The Golden Hind, otherwise known as The Pelican. But, alas! there came a time when the watchers on Plymouth Hoe looked in vain for their hero; for both he and his companion, Hawkins (of a noted Plymouth family), died at sea, and were buried in the ocean, within a few weeks of each other. It was said of Drake—

But we have anticipated matters a little. It must not be forgotten that Drake and Hawkins, with many another Plymouth captain of renown, fought the Armada of Philip the Second in 1588. All other events in the annals of Plymouth and Plymouth Hoe pale into insignificance beside that culminating event in the history of the time—that grandest of all England’s triumphs—described by Camden as “the only miraculous victory of that age.” For out there, well within sight of the watchers on Plymouth Hoe, was assembled the English fleet of a hundred and twenty sail, which was destined, by the Providence of God, to cause the destruction of that magnificent armament, “whose descent upon our shores had lighted up the beacon fires of British defiance from the Lizard to the Hoe, and roused the spirit of our loyal tars to drive the proud invaders from the seas.”

93Let us, for a moment, imagine ourselves thrown back to that eventful summer’s evening in 1588, so graphically described by Macaulay, when—

bringing the important and alarming news that the Spaniards were within sight of our shores. We take up our position on the Hoe, then, as now, the favourite resort of the townsfolk, and find much to interest us. Near the Hoe is “The Pelican” Inn, with its terrace bowling green, and there we find a noble company assembled. “Chatting in groups, or lounging over a low wall which commands a view of the shipping far below, are gathered almost every notable man of the Plymouth fleet—that fleet which will to-morrow begin the greatest sea fight the world has ever seen.”

There we see Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral of England, Sir John Hawkins, Admiral of the Port of Plymouth, Sir Francis Drake, Lord Sheffield, Sir Richard Grenville, the hero of the great fight with the Spaniards a few years later, Sir Robert Southwell, Martin Frobisher, John Davis, and possibly Sir Walter Raleigh.

These and many others were on the Hoe at Plymouth that summer’s evening the day before the coming of the Armada. Some were enjoying a game of bowls, and tradition says that in the midst of the game intelligence was brought that the Armada were in the offing. Howard called upon the captains to lay aside their toys, and prepare to shoot in another and more serious game; but Drake, with that coolness which was one of his most marked characteristics, respectfully answered his chief: “There is time enough to finish our game, and to fight the Spaniards afterwards.” So the game was fought to its finish, and then there was hurry and bustle on land and sea, men thronging to the shore to gain their ships, sails being spread, all sorts of commands being given, and then 94came a waiting time, till the darkness of night fell, till—

and the warning radiance spread from hill-top to hill-top, from cape to cape, until in a few short hours the whole land was told that the dreaded and much-vaunted Armada was at last in the English Channel. There is no need to follow the story further, as the scene is shifted from Plymouth Hoe, and the doings of Howard, Drake, Hawkins, and their brave companions have passed beyond our ken.

A few years later, in 1620, a little bark lay out there on the waters of the Sound having on board her the seeds of a mighty empire; for in the little Mayflower were the pilgrims who alienated themselves from home and friends for religion’s sake, and sought in a new clime a haven of rest and peace. They found it after many days and the endurance of much hardship. Elihu Burritt, an American writer, giving his reminiscences of Plymouth Hoe and the Pilgrim Fathers, says:—

How these seeds of Empire have borne fruit may be seen in the marvellous growth of the United States of America, which has now a population exceeding eighty millions.

A few years later, viz., in 1625, all Plymouth flocked on to the Hoe, attracted thither by the presence of the King, Charles I., who there reviewed 10,000 troops from the counties of Devon and Cornwall. Twenty years after, the Royalist forces were encamped on Staddon Heights over yonder, holding the rebel town under close 95siege, and the people who ventured on Plymouth Hoe noted the white tents of the opposing forces with a feeling somewhat akin to dismay, for they did not know what a day might bring forth. But Plymouth remained staunch to the Parliamentary cause, and withstood Charles and his armies throughout the whole period during which the Civil War lasted.

Then, in 1652, a mournful procession landed under the Hoe with the body of Admiral Blake, who had succumbed to wounds received in a sharp fight with the Dutch. His heart was buried in St. Andrew’s Church; his body received honourable interment in Westminster Abbey.

The next memorable scene was the building of the Citadel—that huge fortification to the east of the Hoe proper—which served the double purpose of repelling invaders and of menacing the rebellious townsfolk, the memory of whose disaffection still rankled in the minds of Charles II. and his advisers. This was in 1670.

Another notable scene was doubtless witnessed by the watchers on the Hoe on the 14th of November, 1698, when Henry Winstanley completed and lighted the first lighthouse on the Eddystone reef. The story is well told by Jean Ingelow in a graphic poem, for which we have only space for a few lines:—

The sequel to this episode is a sad one, for it is recorded that the tower was destroyed on the 26th of November, 1703, and its public-spirited and confident designer perished with it.

Other scenes rise up before us as the centuries roll on. We see the good citizens of Plymouth crowd on to the Hoe to witness the departure of Captain Cook on his various voyages of exploration in the South Seas; we note the pregnant comings and goings attending the great war with France, stately vessels sailing from the Sound in all their warlike glory, anon coming back crippled and wounded, with half their men killed or maimed. Then, later, we see the arch-cause of all this bloodshed—the great Napoleon—a prisoner on board the Bellerophon in Plymouth Sound, while the waters below us teem with the boats and craft of all descriptions of the curious sightseers.

The years slip by. This time we are at war with Russia, with France as our ally, and we stand on the Hoe to watch the stately troopships sailing off with the flower of our army to court death in the Black Sea or in the Baltic. History tells the tale.

At another time we watch the first shipload of emigrants bound for the Antipodes to plant New Englands in Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere; and so it goes on through the centuries—the Plymouth Hoe beautified by the hands of men, and surrounded by stately buildings, and within sound of a teeming population, but in its general character and appearance little changed since the days of which we have spoken; and Plymouth men of to-day congregate on the Hoe, and 97watch the huge liners and leviathan battleships coming and going, even as their far-away ancestors noted the coming and going of Drake and his fighting ships that bore over the blue waters of the Sound those pioneers of empire—the sea-dogs of Devon.

The family of Grenville claimed descent from Rollo the Sea-King, and they did not belie their fierce and adventurous ancestor. They were fighters to the core. Rightly they had for their bearing three horseman’s rests, in which the lance or tilting spear was fixed. Some, of course, through the long centuries, were senators, magistrates, ecclesiastics; but as a rule they were men of the sword, serving their country by land and sea.

The first Sir Richard de Grenville, “near kinsman to the Conqueror,” sheathing his sword after the Conquest of South Wales, settled on the borders of Devon and Cornwall beside the Severn Sea. Concerning any feats of arms achieved by his immediate descendants the chronicles are silent. We have only their frequent summonses “to go with the King beyond the seas for their honour and preservation and profit of the Kingdom”; but another Sir Richard was Marshal of Calais under Henry VIII., and in the quaint language of Carew, “enterlaced his home magistracy with martial employments abroad”; whilst his son, Sir Roger, a sea captain, and the father of the future hero of the Revenge, after fighting the French off the Isle of Wight in 1545, went down in the Mary Rose off Portsmouth, when that ill-fated vessel, like the Royal George, two centuries later, capsized and sank with all on board.

100His son, Richard, was then but two years old. The story of his boyhood has yet to be discovered, but he first gave vent to his fierce fighting spirit when, a stripling of some eighteen summers, he took service under the Emperor Maximilian against the Turks, obtaining therein the commendation of foreign historians for his intrepidity and early knowledge of the art of war. Next we find him taking part in suppressing the Irish rebellion, and though after this he settled for a while on his English estates, his restless spirit and natural thirst for distinction led him to participate in the perils and glories of the brilliant engagement at Lepanto in 1572, when Don John of Austria, with the combined squadrons of Christendom, defeated the Ottoman fleet. On his return to England he was knighted.

One of the features of the Elizabethan era was the zeal for colonization which pervaded the West of England. In common with Gilbert, Raleigh, and many others, Grenville petitioned the Queen to allow an enterprise for the discovery of “sundry ritche and unknowen landes.” Their request was granted, and in 1584 two ships, provided by Raleigh and Grenville, discovered Virginia; and the following spring, Sir Richard took command of seven ships fitted with the first colonists of that country. On his return journey he sighted a Spanish vessel of 300 tons, and his ship, the Tiger (which was but 140 tons), out-sailing the rest of his little squadron, had nearly overhauled the chase, when the wind suddenly dropped, and the little Tiger and her big quarry lay becalmed. Sir Richard’s boats had all been carried away in a gale of wind, but, determined not to lose his prize, he “boarded her,” says Hakluyt, “with a boat made with the boards of chests, which fell asunder and sank at the ship’s side as soon as ever he and his men were out of it.” The Spaniard proved richly laden, and Grenville’s dare-devilry won him £50,000 in prize money.

But his δαιμονίη ἀρετὴ (as Froude calls it) was soon 101to be exemplified in a still more striking manner in that last great service for his Queen and country, in which he so nobly sacrificed his life, and which has been told by Raleigh and Tennyson in “Letters of Gold.” To his great mortification, he had been prevented from sharing in the glories of the defeat of the Armada, having received the Queen’s special commands not to quit Cornwall during the peril; but in the summer of 1591 he was appointed Vice-Admiral, under Lord Thomas Howard, and despatched to the Azores to intercept an unusually rich treasure fleet, which was lying at Havannah ready for the homeward voyage. Grenville’s ship was the Revenge, a second-class galleon, carrying twenty-two heavy guns, twelve light ones, and twelve small pieces used for repelling boarders. She had carried Drake’s flag against the Armada three years before, and was considered one of the best types of a fighting ship.

On the 31st of August, Lord Thomas Howard’s squadron, consisting of six men of war and nine or ten victuallers and pinnaces, was riding at anchor in the bay of Flores; many of the crews were ashore digging for ballast, filling water casks, and obtaining fresh provisions and fruit for the sick, who numbered nearly half the strength of the fleet, for fever and scurvy had made havoc among the ships’ companies. Suddenly an English pinnace, the Moonshine, swept round a headland into the bay with the alarming intelligence that an armada of twenty Spanish men-of-war and over thirty transports and smaller craft were close at hand, despatched by Philip II. to protect his treasure ships.

Howard at once determined that he was in no condition to fight a force so superior, and accordingly made signal to weigh anchor instantly. All obeyed but the Revenge, Grenville being delayed, according to Raleigh, in getting his sick men brought on board from the shore; and when at last she got under way, she had lost the wind, and was unable to follow the other vessels as they 102ran past the Spanish fleet to windward. A second line of retreat was still open to him: by cutting his mainsail, he could run before the wind, pass the Spaniards to leeward, and rejoin the flag in the open sea. But to pass an enemy to leeward was a confession of inferiority to which Grenville would not stoop, and, though urged to this course by his officers and crew, he scornfully and passionately refused, and, sword in hand, drove his men to their posts, swearing that he would hew his way single-handed through the whole Spanish fleet, or perish in the attempt.

For a while he prevailed, compelling several of the foremost to give way, who sprang their luff and fell under the lee of the Revenge. But his success was short-lived; the Revenge, coming under the lee of the great San Philip, of 1,500 tons, was becalmed. This was about three o’clock in the afternoon; and while the Revenge was hotly engaged with this gigantic adversary, four more Spanish ships-of-war ranged alongside, and, after a furious cannonade, attempted to board her, but in vain; and the San Philip, after receiving from the lower tier of guns of the Revenge an especially deadly salvo, “discharged with cross-bar shot, shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking her first entertainment.” But her place was at once taken by another Spaniard, and, indeed, through the twelve or fifteen hours during which the battle lasted, Grenville’s ship was constantly fighting against overwhelming odds. All through the August night the fight continued under the quiet stars, ship after ship washing up on the Revenge like clamouring waves upon a rock, only to fall back foiled and shattered amidst the roar of artillery:—

103Though wounded early in the day, Grenville was able to fight his ship from the upper deck till an hour before midnight, when he was again wounded, this time in the body, with a musket ball. The sailors carried him below, and as his wounds were being dressed, a shot crashed through the Revenge, stretched the doctor lifeless, and inflicted an injury to Sir Richard’s head from which, in two or three days, he died.

And still the battle raged; and still ship after ship drew out of action, utterly defeated by the splendid gunnery and desperate courage of Grenville’s men. Gradually the fire slackened; before daylight it ceased altogether, for the Spaniards abandoned their attempts to sink the Revenge or carry her by board. Yet fifteen out of their twenty men-of-war had been hotly engaged with her: two of them she had sunk outright; a third was so damaged that her crew ran her on shore to save their lives; a fourth was in a sinking condition. Dawn found the enemy’s immense fleet encircling the one English ship like wolves round a dying lion, and wary of approaching him in his last agony. When the sun rose, the survivors of the crew began to realise their desperate plight. Sir Richard commanded the master-gunner to split and sink the ship, that thereby nothing might remain of glory or victory to the Spaniards, and endeavoured to persuade the crew “to yield themselves to God and to the mercy of none else, but as they had, like valiant resolute men, repulsed so many enemies, they should not now shorten the honour of their nation by prolonging their own lives by a few hours or a few days.”

The chief gunner and a few others consented; but the rest having dared quite enough for mortal men, refused to blow up the ship, and surrendered to the enemy. Grenville was carried in a dying condition to the ship of the Spanish Admiral, and as he lay upon his couch on the deck, the captains of the fleet crowded round to see the expiring hero, who, feeling his end 104approaching, showed not any sign of faintness, but spake these words in Spanish, and said: “Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, that hath fought for his country, Queen, religion and honour. Wherefore my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do.”

Such was the fight at Flores in that August of 1591—“a fight memorable even beyond credit and to the height of some heroic fable.” It has been called “England’s naval Thermopylæ.” It was from the first as hopeless a battle as that of the Spartans under the brave Leonidas, and its moral effects at the time were hardly less than that of Thermopylæ. Froude tells us it struck a deeper terror, though it was but the action of a single ship, into the hearts of the Spanish people—it dealt a more deadly blow upon their fame and moral strength than even the destruction of the Armada itself, and in the direct results which arose from it it was scarcely less disastrous to them. Men may blame Sir Richard Grenville for his obstinacy, and what they deem his false notion of honour in scorning to turn his back upon the foe when the odds were so overwhelmingly against him, but at least it must be conceded that his courage and that of his crew have immortalised his name.

Sir Bevill Grenville.
(From an Oil Painting.)

Passing over Sir Richard’s son, John, who followed Drake and was drowned in the ocean, “which became his bedde of honour,” and also another son, Sir Bernard, we come to the latter’s famous son, Sir Bevill—a man no whit inferior in loyalty and courage to his illustrious grandsire, and whom men called the English Bayard. When Charles I., in 1639, raised an army against the Scots, Bevill Grenville joined the Royal Standard at the head of a troop of horse at York. “I cannot contain myself within my doors,” he wrote, “when the King of 105England’s standard waves in the field upon so just an occasion, the cause being such as must make all those that die in it little inferior to martyrs. And for my own part, I desire to acquire an honest name or an honourable grave. I never loved my life or ease so much as to shun such an occasion, which if I should, I were unworthy of the profession I have held, or to succeed those ancestors of mine who have so many of them in several ages sacrificed their lives for their country.”

History shows this to have been a bloodless campaign, but the above extract proves Grenville’s hereditary spirit, and the King, in token of his approval, knighted him at Berwick-on-Tweed before the army broke up; and when, three years later, the storm at last burst over England, which had been so long threatening, Charles I. had no more loyal supporter than Sir Bevill Grenville. Clarendon says he was “the most generally loved man in Cornwall.” He was the soul of the Royalist cause there, and his influence was so great that he readily raised a body of volunteers fifteen hundred strong. At Bradock Down, near Liskeard, where the first important encounter with the Parliamentarian troops took place, Sir Bevill led the van. Describing the fight to his wife, he writes: “After solemn prayers at the head of every division, I led my part away, who followed me with so great a courage, both down the one hill and up the other, that it struck a terror into them,” with the result that twelve hundred prisoners were captured, and all the guns. The next engagement took place at Stratton (distant only a few miles from Grenville’s own home in the adjoining parish of Kilkampton) on May 16th, 1643, where he was again conspicuous for his personal courage. The Earl of Stamford, who commanded the Parliamentarian troops, which numbered close on 6,000, all perfectly equipped and victualled, had encamped in a very strong position on the top of a hill, now called Stamford Hill, near the village of Stratton. It is an isolated grassy hill on a 106ridge which runs nearly due north and south. The sides on the east and south are the steepest, whilst the western slope has an ancient earthwork near the summit, which Stamford had defended with guns that ought to have rendered it impregnable. The Royalist troops, less than half their number, short of ammunition, and so destitute of provisions that the best officers had but a biscuit a day, lay at Launceston. They nevertheless marched the twenty miles to Stratton “with a resolution to fight with the enemy upon every disadvantage of place or number.” In the evening they halted, footsore and hungry, a mile from the base of the high hill on which the Parliamentarian troops lay in overwhelming strength, and determined to attack them at daybreak. Weary as they were, the men stood to their arms all night, for the enemy were too near to make rest possible, and with the first light, Sir Bevill, to whom every inch of the ground was, of course, perfectly familiar, and to whom, consequently, was committed the ordering of the fight, divided the troops into four storming parties. The little army was too small to merit, when divided into such parts, any other designation. In the morning the fight commenced, and continued till the afternoon was well advanced, but no impression could be made by the gallant Cornishmen, who were repulsed again and again. At last powder began to fail, and it became a question between retreat, which implied certain disaster, or victory. A final and heroic effort was made; muskets were laid aside, and, trusting to pike and sword alone, the lithe Cornishmen pressed onwards and upwards. Grenville led the party on the western slope, and Sir John Berkeley that on the northern, while Hopton and the other commanders scaled the south and east sides. Their silent march seems to have struck their opponents with a sense of power, and the defence grew feebler. Grenville first reached the crest, and seized the entrenchment, and captured the thirteen brass field-pieces and one mortar by which it was defended; and when 107Berkeley prevailed on the north side, the Parliamentarian horse fled from the hill headlong down the steep descent, and made off. This had its moral effect on the defenders of the other two sides of the camp, and their resistance perceptibly slackened. Soon the other two storming parties, who had had the steepest climb, pressed upward, and the enemy, despite the efforts of their officers to rally them, made off to the adjoining heights. The victorious commanders embraced one another on the hard-won hilltop, thanking God for a success for which at one time they had hardly ventured to hope. It was no time to prolong their rejoicings, as the enemy, demoralised though they were, appear to have rallied somewhat, and to have shown a disposition to renew the combat; but Grenville quickly turned their own captured cannon on them, and a few rounds sufficed to dislodge them. Panic ensued, and a general stampede, in which arms and accoutrements were flung aside, concluded the fight of Stratton. By this decisive victory, not only was Cornwall cleared of the enemy and secured for the King, but the whole of Devon, excepting a few of the principal towns, fell into the hands of the Royalists. The King was not unmindful of the gallant Sir Bevill’s share in the fight, but wrote him a gracious letter promising further proofs of his bounty and favour.

The following June, the Cornish army joined that under Prince Maurice and the Marquis of Hertford at Chard, and soon Taunton, Bridgwater, Glastonbury, and Dunster Castle were taken. They then proceeded to attack Sir William Waller, who had occupied an extremely strong position on the lofty ridge of Lansdown, near Bath. There he had raised a breastwork behind which his guns were posted, and he had so distributed his foot and horse as to defend all points of access. Realising the tremendous strength of his position, the Royalists wisely resolved not to break themselves upon it, and were actually turning to resume their march when the whole 108body of Waller’s horse came thundering down the hill upon their rear and flank, striking them with a crash they could not withstand, and throwing them into disorder from which they could not recover, till Slanning came up with a party of three hundred Cornish musketeers, and with his aid the enemy were beaten off and chased back to the hill again. Hopton now assumed the offensive. The blood of the whole army was beating hotly. It is said that the Cornishmen, under Sir Bevill, coveted Waller’s cannon, and begged at least to be allowed “to fetch off those cannon.” Leave was given, and up the steep height the Cornishmen went with a rush: the horse on the right, the musketeers on the left, and Sir Bevill himself leading the pikes in the centre. In this order the Cornish moved forward, much as they had moved at Stratton, slowly and doggedly. In the face of the enemy’s cannon and small shot from their breastworks, they at length gained the brow of the hill, having sustained two full charges from Waller’s horse, but in the third charge Sir Bevill’s horse had given way; the cohesion of the pikes was broken, and instantly the enemy was in among them, hewing them down; the officers were falling fast, and Sir Bevill himself, sorely wounded and fighting valiantly, was struck out of his saddle by a pole-axe, of which hurt he died very shortly. Young John Grenville, a lad of sixteen, sprang, it is said, into his father’s saddle, and led the charge, and the Cornishmen followed with their swords drawn and with tears in their eyes, swearing they would kill a rebel for every hair of Sir Bevill’s beard; and at last the whole Royalist force surged over Waller’s breastworks, and the victory was theirs.

Never was a man more universally or deservedly beloved than Sir Bevill, and it is said that his untimely death was as bitterly lamented by the Parliamentarian troops as it was by his own followers.

Of a very different character and temperament was his brother, another Sir Richard Grenville, of whose life as 109a soldier only the very briefest sketch can be given. He seems to have had little in common with the long line of his illustrious predecessors, except their just pride of ancestry and their appetite for fighting; for he was undoubtedly a brave soldier of no little experience and skill. He entered the army at an early age, and left England when he was eighteen, and saw much service in France, Holland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Next he took part in the disastrous expeditions to Cadiz and the Island of Rhe, in both of which he was accompanied by his young cousin, George Monk, who always regarded him as his father-in-arms. Like Sir Bevill, he accompanied Charles I. to Scotland, having also raised a troop of horse; and in 1641 he took a prominent part in suppressing the rebellion in Ireland, when in fire and blood the wretched Irish were made to do penance for their outburst of savagery, to which they had been goaded by Strafford’s imperious rule. Having been recalled to England in 1643 for insubordination to the Marquis of Ormond, Sir Richard pretended to adopt the Parliamentarian cause, and was made a Major-General of Horse; but having learnt all the secrets of their campaign, he treacherously marched his soldiers to Oxford, and joined the King. For such abominable treachery he was rightly denounced, and no epithets were too choice to apply to him. He was, moreover, excepted from all pardon, both as to life and estate. Shortly afterwards he was placed by Prince Rupert in command of the troops that were besieging Plymouth, and it was mainly by his successful tactics that Lord Essex was utterly defeated in Cornwall in 1644, when the King commanded the Cavaliers in person.

After this he was appointed “The King’s General in the West,” a title of which he was justly proud, and which was eventually carved on his tombstone at Ghent. Considering himself thus constituted Commander-in-Chief, he afterwards refused, when called upon to do so by the Prince’s Council, to act in any subordinate position; 110and hence arose those unhappy dissensions and jealousies which finally wrecked the royal cause in the West. Grenville was placed under arrest, and cashiered from his command without any court-martial. In spite of his overbearing manners and tyrannical conduct, of which frequent complaints had been made, public opinion was strongly in his favour and clamoured for his release, whilst the soldiers refused to be commanded by Hopton or anyone else, and both officers and men, to the number of four thousand, petitioned the Prince in his favour. Sir Richard’s imprisonment and the dissensions that arose in consequence undoubtedly gave the finishing stroke to the war in the West; the service everywhere languished; the soldiers gradually deserted, and Lord Hopton was compelled, after some faint resistance, to disband, and accept of such conditions as the enemy would give. Sir Richard, it must be confessed, represented the worst type of Cavalier. He was frequently actuated by the dictates of a violent and revengeful disposition, and was intriguing and unscrupulous. He died abroad in exile in 1659.

The heroism of young John Grenville, Sir Bevill’s son, in taking command of his father’s regiment at Lansdown when the latter fell mortally wounded, met its recognition a month later at Bristol, when he was knighted. After this he served under his uncle, Sir Richard, at the siege of Plymouth and in Cornwall, and apparently accompanied Charles I. in his march from the West after the defeat of Lord Essex; for the next time we hear of him is at the second battle of Newbury (27th October, 1644), where he narrowly escaped his father’s fate. Being in the thickest of the fight, and having received several other wounds, he was at last felled to the ground with a very dangerous one in the head from a halberd, which rendered him unconscious, and he was left for dead, nor was he discovered until a body of the King’s horse, charging the enemy afresh and beating them off the 111ground, found him covered with blood and dust, but still living. He was carried to where the King and Prince of Wales were, who sent him to Donnington Castle hard by, to be treated for his wounds; but no sooner were the armies drawn off from the field of battle than the castle itself was besieged by the enemy, and their bullets constantly whistled through the room where the young sufferer lay, during the twelve days which elapsed before the defenders were relieved by the King at the third battle of Newbury. On his recovery from his wounds, Sir John Grenville was promoted to the rank of a Brigadier of Foot, and the following year was appointed a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, who had formed a strong attachment for him, which proved lifelong. He remained with the Prince accordingly during the rest of the war, and accompanied him in his flight to the Isles of Scilly, and afterwards to Jersey.

Towards the end of the year 1648 the Scilly Islands revolted from the Parliament, and became the last rallying point of the Royalists under Grenville, who was appointed Governor to hold them for the King; but he had scarcely been there three weeks when tidings reached him of the King’s execution. With passionate indignation, he at once proclaimed Charles II. King, and could find no words hard enough for Cromwell and the Regicides. He fortified the islands, already strong from their natural position and existing earthworks; and in this he was ably assisted by his brother, Bernard, then barely eighteen, who had run away from his tutor, and lay concealed at Menabilly, near Fowey, whence he managed to carry considerable reinforcements for the defence of the islands. For two years Sir John carried on a guerilla warfare against the English republic, and seized many merchant and other vessels; but when Van Tromp made overtures to him to cede the islands to the States General, and offered £100,000 as a bribe, Grenville indignantly refused to yield an inch of British soil to a stranger, saying he was 112there “to contend against treason, not to imitate it.” Admiral Blake, who was in pursuit of Van Tromp, next appeared, and again attempted negotiations for the cession of the islands, but Grenville was resolved to hold them for the King alone, and for a whole month made such a stubborn resistance that when at last Blake prevailed, Grenville secured terms so exceptionally favourable to the Royalists that the Parliament refused to ratify them, till Blake insisted and threatened to resign his commission.

Sir John Grenville’s future career and the prominent part he took, in conjunction with his cousin, George Monk, in the Restoration of Charles II., who created him Earl of Bath, and showered countless honours and endowments upon him, do not belong to a paper confined to giving the fighting qualities of the family. These, however, found expression in his two sons, Charles, Lord Lansdown, and John, afterwards created Lord Granville of Potheridge. The latter was in the navy, and took part in most of the naval engagements of his time, behaving with great bravery and skill, particularly at the siege of Cork in 1690. Lord Lansdown took part in the wars of Hungary against the Turks, and was present at the battle of Kornenberch, the siege of Vienna, at Baracan, Gran, and several smaller engagements, in all of which he displayed such unwonted valour and intrepidity for one so young, that the Emperor Leopold, as a special mark of honour, created him a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, with the distinction of bearing his paternal coat-of-arms upon the breast of the Roman Eagle. He also took part in the constant reprisals, which marked the reign of William III., by the English and French upon one another’s shores; and in one of these assisted in the bombardment of his ancestral Norman town, Granville, and in another in the defence of Teignmouth and Torbay.

The fighting spirit of the family was still handed on in another member of the family—a second Sir Bevill, 113the eldest son of the Honourable Bernard Granville (as the name was now spelt), who appears to have inherited all the courage of the grandfather whose name he bore. On leaving Cambridge, he entered the army, and served with distinction in his uncle, Lord Bath’s, regiment in Ireland and Flanders, and was knighted by James II. at the head of that regiment on Hounslow Heath on the 22nd of May, 1686. When Lord Bath revolted to the side of the Prince of Orange, Sir Bevill was despatched to Jersey to disarm the Papists and secure the island—a mission which he carried out with complete success. After this he took part in the Continental war against the French, and behaved with conspicuous bravery at the battle of Steinkirk, August 4th, 1692. The battle was going against King William, when Prince Casimer of Nassau, who was in command of the troops, galloped back to the English in his right rear, and begged them to advance, as Count Solmes refused to bring up his infantry. Rapidly forming Bath’s regiment, with the pikes in the centre and the grenadiers and musketeers on either flank, Sir Bevill put himself at its head, and, closely followed by the Buffs, moved out from the line. He was only just in time. Baron Pibrach, the Colonel of the Luxemburgers, had been desperately wounded whilst endeavouring to rally his men, who were flying in disorder, hotly pursued by the French. Suddenly out of the crowd of fugitives hurrying to the rear there emerged a line of glistening steel, and Bath’s regiment, scarcely discernible from its foes in its scarlet stockings and breeches, its blue coats and buff cross-belts, strode sternly forward, its three red banners waving overhead. A hail of musket balls smote it in the face; a storm of iron from the batteries mangled and tore its flanks; but it pressed irresistibly on, and amid a hurricane of cheers that drowned even the roar of the cannons, hurled the French infantry from its path, and recovered the position. But only for a moment. Again and again the French batteries worked up in dense 114masses along Granville’s front, only to surge back again, rent and maimed by a pitiless fire. So for another hour the carnage grew, till Prince Casimer, galloping to Granville’s side, gave him the order to retire. It was six in the evening. The allied drums were everywhere beating the retreat. William had at last given up the struggle, and the columns were slowly winding to the rear. There was no pursuit. Sir Bevill’s gallantry was long remembered and talked of with grateful admiration by the British camp fires.

This paper must now close with a brief quotation from a letter written by one who was the last but one of the representatives of this ancient house in the senior male line, namely, George Granville (younger brother of the last-mentioned Sir Bevill), afterwards created Baron Lansdown of Bideford. Although no opportunity arose for him to distinguish himself otherwise than in politics and as a poet, the old fighting spirit was not lacking in him, and he was eager to gain his father’s permission to take up arms against the Prince of Orange:—

No unworthy extract, this, surely, wherewith to close the annals of six centuries of stainless loyalty in a family whose motto has always been: “Deo, Patriæ, Amicis.”

THE AUTHOR OF BRITANNIA’S| PASTORALS AND TAVISTOCK.^[5] | |By the Rev. D. P. Alford, M.A.

If beautiful country could beget good poets, Tavistock ought to abound in them. For, on one side, there is Dartmoor, with its rugged grandeur, stretching out protecting arms to Brent Tor and Whitchurch Down; on the other side, there is the majestic Tamar, winding through its deeply-wooded valley, from Latchley Weir, past New Bridge and the Morwell Rocks, to Gawton Quay; whilst through the midst, the sportive Tavy runs down from its lonely cleave, and gathering up the Walla on its way, with bright and tawny waters, now creeps, now rushes past, to break through the beetling cliffs beyond Crowndale, and glide beneath the Ramsham woods, to its happy meeting with the Walkham, and thence to the copse-covered banks at Denham Bridge.

Perhaps it was the rich and varied beauty round his home that forced some scraps of verse from the rugged soul of our Puritan incumbent, Thomas Larkham. At all events, two hundred years later, Vicar Bray was versifying in the quiet seclusion of his vicarage, and inscribing his best lines on slate slabs for the garden walls; and at the same time, Mrs. Bray was writing her local tales in 117imitation of Scott, sending letters to Southey about the borders of the Tamar and Tavy, and commending to his kindly notice her poetical protegée, the modest and gentle maid-servant, Mary Collins. Then, also, Miss Rachel Evans was writing verse, as well as prose; and her brother-in-law, Mr. H. S. Stokes, was beginning his career as a west-country poet here in Tavistock.

West View of Tavistock Abbey, 1734.
(From an Engraving by S. and N. Buck.)

All these, however, are local celebrities; and our one poet of public fame is William Browne, the reverent disciple of Sidney and Spenser; the personal friend of Wither and Drayton, Selden and Ben Jonson; the poet’s poet, who suggested more than one idea to Milton, was admired by Keats, and highly commended by Mrs. Browning. He was a bright little man, beloved by his brother-poets for his simple manners and gentle character; such another as Hartley Coleridge, without his weakness of will; so that he was known amongst them as “Bonny Browne” and “Sweet Willy of the Western Main.”

William Browne probably came of a knightly family near Great Torrington; but he was born here in Tavistock in 1591—just the most stirring time for minds and morals that England has ever known. The Reformation had stimulated the conscience, as the New Learning had liberated the mind; and then our wonderful deliverance from the mighty power of Spain had produced an extraordinary national exultation. What wonder that this newly-awakened energy should find expression in Spenser and Shakspere, in Hooker and Bacon, and their innumerable, not unworthy satellites?

But apart from the general excitement, Tavistock had its own special atmosphere of stirring influences, both from the past and in the present. The inscribed stones in the vicarage garden show that the country was occupied by a Gaelic tribe of Celts early in the Roman times. But the town owed its fame, and probably its very existence, to the great Benedictine monastery, founded 118by Earl Ordulf, and sanctified by the relics of St. Rumon in the days of Edgar the Peaceable. For almost six centuries it had reflected, and even, for a short while, directly influenced, through its abbots, the changeful course of England’s progress. Two of its earlier abbots were leading statesmen, as well as active prelates. Lyfing, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, was Canute’s fellow-traveller to Rome in 1026, and the staunch friend of the patriotic Earl Godwin. Aldred, also Bishop of Worcester, and then Archbishop of York, was the wise counsellor of Edward the Confessor and of Harold, and the brave rebuker of William I.; he was the great church-builder and church-reformer of his time, and he was the first English Bishop to visit Jerusalem.

Our later abbots often illustrate public feeling, though they could not guide it as these two had done. Thus the general confusion at the close of Henry III.’s reign found such a bad sample in our monastery that Abbot John Chubbe was suspended in 1265, and deposed in 1269. The growing luxury and indifference of the fourteenth century was seen too plainly in Abbot John de Courtenay, who was reproved by the good Bishop Grandisson, in 1348, for neglecting his duties to the abbey and alienating its property, whilst he kept dogs for hunting. Bishop Brantyngham’s strong injunctions to Abbot Thomas Cullyng, in 1387, to restore discipline and to keep the monastic rules, show that disorder and dissipation had been tending from bad to worse.

But there is a brighter side to this picture of the past, and most of our abbots were more learnedly or more clerically disposed. Some had been slowly collecting a good library—an early promise of the present Public Library, the best, for the size of the town, in the West of England. Others had fostered the “Saxon School,” probably founded in the early days of the thirteenth century, and still represented by the Grammar School. In the spring of 1318, under Abbot John Campbell, Bishop 119Bronescombe consecrated the Parish Church, which had been rebuilt in the beautiful Decorated style of the day; and in the autumn of the same year, he came again to consecrate the Conventual Church, which, in its grand proportions, was almost a rival of Exeter Cathedral. Under Robert Bonus, in 1325, was established the Guild of the Brothers and Sisters of the Light of St. Mary in the Parish Church; and in 1370, Abbot Stephen Langdon showed his concern for the good of the town by appealing to the faithful to help in restoring the stone bridge over the rude waters of the Tavy. John Denyngton probably rebuilt much of the Abbey in the Perpendicular style then in vogue; and he certainly added to his own dignity and to that of his monastery by gaining the permission of Henry VI., in 1458, to apply to the Pope, Pius II., for the privilege of wearing the pontificalia. This, our first mitred abbot, like his predecessor, Allan of Cornwall, two hundred years earlier, had come back to Tavistock from presiding over the dependent Priory of Tresco, in the Isles of Scilly. Abbot John Banham was more ambitious than Denyngton; in 1513 a grant of Henry VIII. made him a spiritual peer, as Baron Hurdwick, and four years later, a bull of Leo X. exempted him from episcopal visitation. It was probably to Banham that the abbey owed an honour more considerable and more in keeping with the spirit of the age—the setting up within its precincts of the first printing-press in the West of England.

But the glory of our abbey had scarcely reached its height, before it faded suddenly and for ever. Anticipating the blow which shattered the larger monasteries in the spring of 1539, our abbot, John Peryn, not emulous of the fate of the abbots of Glastonbury, Woburn, and Fountains, assembled his twenty monks in the Chapter-house on March 20th, and then and there resigned all their claims into the hands of the King. For this ready surrender they were rewarded with their lives and various 120pensions. With his pension of £100 a year, the abbot withdrew to Stonepost, in West Street, and was probably the “Sir John Peryn” who, in 1543, was paid £6 as “Jesus’ Priest.”

When William Browne was a lad, middle-aged men must have known the last Abbot of Tavistock; and old people could recall—the poorer sort with regretful sighs, the good old times, when the frequent services still sounded from the Abbey Church, and the monks distributed alms at the arched gateway, beneath the present library. Even Browne himself, a child of the Renaissance, who hated superstition and loved the Pagan mythology, could grudge the misuse of sacred buildings; and amongst other evils done by the Tavy in flood, he tells us how the stream—

But though he was fond of Chaucer and our older poets, and though he felt the influence of the stately ruins that surrounded his school-house, he loved nature more than art, and was too full of present life to care very much for the past. As a boy with boys, he would spend his holidays breaking away from

chasing the “nimble Squirrel” in “Blanchdown Woods”; or, with his rod, following his “native Tavy” in her “many mazes, intricate meanders.” But as thought came with years, he would be stealing away alone to cherish his “Spring of Poesie” with Sidney’s Sonnets or Spenser’s Faërie Queen, as he wandered over the “Dazied Downes” that “sweetly environed” his home, or nestled beneath some shade in “Sweet Ina’s Combe,” half lulled to sleep by the Walla’s murmurings, or rousing himself to compose “the pleasing cadence of a line” in tune with those gentle murmurings.

121Nor, indeed, had all the honour of Tavistock departed with the overthrow of her abbey. The Russells, who succeeded to the property, did not neglect the duties connected with it. They began—as they have continued—to maintain the religious and educational endowments. They supplied the borough with statesmen for Members of Parliament, in the generous patriot, Lord William Russell, in Lord John, the leader of Reform, and in the thoughtful, far-sighted Lord Arthur. They improved the town with wide streets and public buildings, and, more recently, with a fine statue, the first in the country, of Francis Drake.

Browne was but a little lad of five when his greatest townsman finished his heroic course in a sea-grave off Nombre de Dios, in 1596; but he kept his exploits in remembrance, and presently celebrated him as the—

Besides the Drakes, there were several families of distinction in and about Tavistock when Browne was a boy: there were Slannings, Kellys, and Champernownes near by; and in the parish, Glanvills, Maynards, Peeks, and Fitz.

In that year, 1596, there was born in the mansion at Fitzford the daughter of John Fitz and Bridget Courtenay, who, as Lady Howard, was to be so cruelly maligned by false rumours and fictitious romance. The family had been long settled at Fitzford, and a John Fitz was M.P. for Tavistock in 1427. Lady Howard’s grandfather married Mary Sydenham, of Brympton, Somerset; and at the back of their quiet tomb in the Parish Church is the kneeling figure of her father, Sir John Fitz. He was but a youth of fifteen at his father’s death, in 1589; and his riotous, wasted life was an ironical commentary on his kneeling posture. After a wild and reckless youth, in 1699, when he was twenty-five, he killed Nicholas Slanning, of Bickley, in a cowardly 122brawl. Coming home from a short sojourn abroad, he was more quiet for a while; but presently, returning from London, whither he had gone to be knighted at the Coronation of James I., he was more dissipated than ever. He drove his wife and daughters to seek refuge at Powderham, and upset the usually decent parish with drunkenness and disorder. At last, on a second journey to London, in a fit of mad panic, he killed the innkeeper at Twickenham, and then so stabbed himself that he died in a few days.

His nine-year-old daughter, the prey of greedy guardians, after being forced into early marriages, enjoyed some years of wedded happiness with her third husband, Sir Charles Howard, fourth son of the Earl of Suffolk. Then, having suffered years of neglect and annoyance from her fourth husband, the clever soldier, but treacherous politician, Sir Richard, brother of the chivalrous Sir Bevil Grenville, at last, after Fitzford had been sacked by the Roundheads, and her husband had fled the country, she settled down in her old home for twenty-five quiet years, from 1646 to 1671. Her son, George Howard, managed her property, joined her in such local contributions as that, in 1670, for the “redemption of captives in Turkey,” and represented Tavistock with Lord William Russell in 1660. But as he died some weeks before her, Lady Howard left her large estates bordering the Tavy, the mansion of Fitzford, the pleasant country house of Walreddon, with many goodly farms, Browne’s favourite Ramsham amongst them, to her first cousin, Sir William Courtenay, of Powderham.

It was about the year 1606 that William Browne left the Grammar School for Exeter College, Oxford. He did not then matriculate or take his degree, but he made friends with his colleagues, several of whom showed their poetical taste in commendatory verses to his Pastorals in 1613. Meanwhile, in November, 1611, Browne had passed on to the Inner Temple, where he largely increased his 123poetical acquaintance. He was on good terms with Ben Jonson, Chapman, and Massinger amongst our dramatists, and was therefore probably known to Shakspere; but his most intimate friends were John Davies, the able author of Nosce Teipsum; Christopher Brooke, the close ally of the famous poet and preacher, John Donne; George Wither, and Michael Drayton. He and Brooke, in 1613, published in one volume their elegies on the death of Prince Henry. He had much in common with the early poems of Wither: their Pastorals exhibit the same charming simplicity, the same full content in verse-making, the same indifference to irresponsive maidens. These lines of Browne:—

strike the same note as that of Wither’s spirited song:—

To Drayton, as his “Honor’d Friend,” Browne addressed some verses introductory to the second part of the Polyolbion. Regretting the loss to letters when great Eliza died, with Chapman’s Homer in mind, he boasts that we can still render the classics into English without loss:—

Browne’s regret at the general falling-off since the death of Elizabeth suggests that the verses in her honour, which were removed with the plastering from Tavistock Parish Church in 1845, may have been amongst his earliest efforts. They ended with these flattering words:—

124Browne’s elegy on Prince Henry was reprinted as one of the songs in the first book of his Britannia’s Pastorals, which was also published in 1613, with commendatory verses from Drayton and Brooke and the learned Selden, besides those from his college friends. In doing the same kindly office for the second book, in 1616, Ben Jonson spoke thus highly of the care and finish of Browne’s work:—

Other verses prefixed to this book came from Tavistock, and were written by Sir John Glanvill, probably Browne’s relation, and an old schoolfellow.

After the Fitz, the Glanvill family was the most important in Tavistock. Settled at Holwell, in Whitchurch, for many generations, about 1550 they sent a younger son into the town as a merchant. His son, John, passed from an attorney’s office to the Bar, and in 1598, two years before his death, he was made a Justice of the Common Pleas. In 1615, the fine Jacobean monument against the south wall of the chancel was erected to his memory by his widow, probably in gratitude to her sons, who in that year had conveyed to her Sortridge, her own family estate, also in Whitchurch, probably forfeited by her second marriage; for in the interval she had married Sir Francis Godolphin, and become a second time a widow. She occupied a dower house in Barley Market Street, and her second name still lingers in the “Dolvin Road,” across the Tavy. The Judge, Prince tells us, lived in part of the Abbey, this being, most likely, the Abbey House, which Oliver says was occupied in 1635 by Serjeant Maynard. The Barton at Kilworthy was bought by Judge Glanvill, but it was his eldest son, Sir Francis, who built the mansion and laid out the terrace gardens, of which some charming portions are still in use. 125This Sir Francis Glanvill sat, as M.P. for Tavistock, in 1625 and 1628, with the great Commoner, John Pym. On January 21st, 1626, his son, Francis, was baptized at Mary Tavy, by reason of the plague raging so fiercely at Tavistock. So dreadful was the scourge, that six hundred people died in twelve months; and the little town had scarcely recovered its normal population in a hundred and fifty years. The younger Francis dying without issue, left Kilworthy to his nephew, Francis Kelly; and he left it to the Manatons, who held it till it was bought by the Russells about 1770. By his sisters, daughters, and grand-daughters, Judge Glanvill’s family became allied to the Brownes, Hamlyns, and Glubbs of Tavistock, the Grylls of Launceston, to Heles, Eastcourts, and Polwheles; to the Fowells, the Sawles of Penrice, and the Doidges of Hurlesditch; besides the Kellys and Manatons. One of his sisters was the second wife of Robert Knight, probably the first married Vicar of Tavistock; and his third son, George, was Vicar from 1662 to 1673.

Sir John Glanvill, the second son, was equally distinguished in law and politics. He was made Recorder of Plymouth in 1614, Serjeant in 1637, and Recorder of Bristol in 1640. As M.P. for Plymouth from 1614 to 1628, he was attached to the country party with Elliott and Pym, and he had charge of the Petition of Right before the Lords. Returned for Bristol in 1640, he was chosen Speaker of the Short Parliament, as a man of reasonable judgment and soothing speech; but having joined the King at Oxford in 1643, from 1645 to 1648 he was imprisoned in the Tower as a delinquent. He was re-appointed King’s Serjeant at the Restoration, and died soon after at Broad Hinton, his estate in Wiltshire. It was this worthy fellow-townsman who, in 1616, addressed William Browne in verses overflowing with kindly appreciation, and beginning:—

126Another eminent fellow-townsman, John Maynard, might have been with Browne at the Grammar School, and certainly followed him to Exeter College and to the Inns of Court. Like Sir John Glanvill, Maynard was a man of mark, both in law and politics; but he was more of a time-server. He was clever enough to be leader of the Western Circuit during fifty of the most turbulent years of our annals. He was “Protector’s Serjeant” under Cromwell; “Ancient Serjeant” under Charles II. and James II.; and “Lord Commissioner” after the Revolution of 1688. He also sat in every Parliament from the first of Charles I. to the first of William and Mary. He was presented to the new King at Whitehall when he was nearly ninety; and William observed that he must have outlived all the lawyers of his time. “Yes, sire,” he promptly replied; “and if your Highness had not come over to help us, I should have outlived the law, too.” As Maynard took part both in the impeachment of Strafford and also of Sir Henry Vane, it is no wonder that Roscommon, Strafford’s nephew and godson, should write of him:—

or that the author of Hudibras should enquire, in his witty doggrel:—

It is to Maynard’s credit that he spent part of his fortune in founding a free school at Bere Alston, which he had represented in Parliament. Maynard and Courtenay are names still pleasantly associated in Tavistock with provision for the deserving poor, in convenient almshouses; whilst an exhibition to help some “Grammar scholar,” “of the best ingenuity and towardliness,” on his way to the University, is a lasting memorial of Sir John Glanvill.

127In 1626, Browne probably received from another old schoolfellow, Richard Peeke, a copy of his Three to One, a short and vigorous account of his recent exploits in Spain. This Richard Peeke, a gentleman of good family in Tavistock, had volunteered, in 1625, for the ill-starred expedition to Cadiz, and being taken prisoner, by his prowess in defeating three fully-armed Spaniards with a quarter-staff, had won his life and liberty, and was presently celebrated in ballads as “Manly Peeke,” and in a fine old play as “Dick of Devonshire.” He was invited by King Philip IV. to serve him by land or sea, but Peeke said he must return to the wife and children who were sighing for him in Tavistock; so he came back to settle down quietly in the old home, and, as one of our pewter flagons tells, he was churchwarden in 1638.

And what was William Browne doing all this time? In 1614 he had written his masque of “Ulysses and Circe” for the Inner Temple, where it was performed 13th January, 1614–5. The subject may have been suggested by Chapman’s Odyssey, printed in 1614, or by Samuel Daniel’s lyric, “Ulysses and the Siren” (1605), and it is more than likely that Browne’s masque gave Milton some hints for his “Comus.” In 1614 he also contributed seven Eclogues to the “Shepheard’s Pipe,” the other contributors being C. Brooke, Davies, and Wither. Browne worked into his first Eclogue the “Jonathas” of the little-known Occleve, and the fourth is an Elegy on Thomas, the son of Sir Peter Manwood.

Our little and learned poet, as Prince describes him, is said to have been appointed, in 1615, Pursuivant of Wards and Liveries for life. He married a daughter of Sir Thomas Eversfield, and had two sons, who both died young. In 1624 he returned to Oxford as tutor to the Hon. Robert Dormer, afterwards Earl of Carnarvon, who was killed at Newbury in 1643. Browne, being thirty-three, matriculated from Exeter College on 30th April, 1281624, and on 16th November took his M.A., being commended for his knowledge of humane letters and the fine arts. He seems to have gone abroad with his pupil, and in 1640 he wrote from Dorking to Sir Benjamin Ruddyerd, congratulating him on his “late speech in Parliament, wherein they believe the spirit which inspired the Reformation, and genius which dictated the Magna Charta, possessed you. In my poore cell and sequestration from all businesse, I blesse God and praye for more such members in the Commonwealth.” Anthony Wood says he was afterwards domesticated with the Herberts at Wilton, and prospered there; and it has been fairly proved that he, and not Ben Jonson, wrote that most perfect epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke:—

We do not know when or where our poet ended his days, but if, oppressed with sorrow or sickness, he turned with longing to the native scenes which in early youth he had loved so well, it is likely enough that he is referred to in the simple entry of the Tavistock register:—“27th March, 1643, William Browne was buried.”

As poets will, Browne went on writing all through life, but he published nothing new after 1616. He left in MS. a third book of the Pastorals, which was first printed in 1852, and a number of smaller poems, sonnets, epistles, visions, allegories, epigrams, epitaphs, and some jocular pieces. Amongst the last were the Lydford stanzas, which contained the first notice of the wild Gubbingses, and the sharp satire on Lydford Law; about 1630 they were “commonly sung by many a fiddler” as a Devonshire ballad.

Why did Browne print nothing new after 1616? He 129had not lost the poetic gift, for much that he left in MS. is as good as anything he ever wrote. We have examples in the first and second songs of the third book of the Pastorals, and nothing that he published is brighter than the song in the Lansdowne MS. with the pleasant refrain:

In truth, William Browne was, as his friend Drayton styled him, “a rightly-born Poet.” If, like the “Faërie Queene,” his Pastorals are vague and diffuse in narrative, and deficient in human interest, yet, like the “Faërie Queene,” they abound in happy visions, and fine descriptions, and wholesome thoughts, expressed in easy, flowing melody. Browne was akin to Keats and Tennyson in his love of well-sounding words and sonorous lines. It gave him keen pleasure—

And his enjoyment of the simple beauties of nature was as true and heartfelt as Cowper’s. Vivid pictures of country scenes, and homely sketches of country life, are presented to us again and again in verse that is always clear and lucid, though soft and sweet, or rough and rugged, according to the subject. His carefully-constructed verses, in their clearness and in their varying tone, would really seem to have been attuned to the “voiceful Tavy” which he loved so dearly and celebrated so gladly, and by whose side many of them were written.

Why, then, with such a gift, so obviously unexhausted, did he decline to publish anything after the appearance of the second book of Britannia’s Pastorals, in 1616? Probably he felt, as S. Daniel had felt before him, that a people entirely devoted to action and incident could have little taste for pure poetry. Even as early as 1613 he had described a poor poet, sitting up late, wasting ink 130and paper, and wearing out “many a gray goose quill,” in the vain hope of immortal renown:—

And, in 1623, when he wrote his commendatory verses for Massinger’s Duke of Millaine, he was convinced that there was no demand for any poetry but the drama:—

It would be easy to make a pleasant little volume of selections from the more striking or more beautiful passages in Browne’s Pastorals, but here we can hardly find room for half-a-dozen specimens. Of death he writes:—

Of cheerful content:—

Of the Good Shepherd he says that from

In Book 2 we have such satire as this, of the “fawning citizen,”

such strong lines as this of the sea:—

such vivid pictures as this:—

131or sweetly-soothing verses like these, on the stillness of nightfall:—

Such passages as these must be admired by every lover of nature, but the poet will always be doubly dear to those who have lived amongst the scenes he describes so tenderly and so faithfully. My own feeling of indebtedness to one whose poetry had given a sort of sacredness to his native haunts was thus expressed when I was in clerical charge of the Tamar side of Tavistock, more than thirty years ago:—

The town of Great Torrington played a not inconspicuous part in the Civil Wars, the culminating and dramatic incident of which was the blowing up of the Parish Church after the defeat and flight of the Royalist forces who were then in the town. The fight at Torrington, too, was the last important engagement of the campaign in the West, being the final decisive blow to the Royalist cause there. A very accurate and full account of the whole of the doings in North Devon during this stirring time is to be found in the late Mr. R. W. Cotton’s invaluable work on Barnstaple and the Northern part of Devonshire during the Great Civil War, 1642–1646, and the incidents more particularly relating to Great Torrington were collected by me and embodied in a little book entitled, A few Pages of Great Torrington History, 1642–1646, and the blowing up of the Church is also dealt with in my paper in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the year 1894.

Though of far less importance than the final battle, there were two other previous engagements at Great Torrington. The first of these took place in December, 1642, when a party of Parliamentarian horse and foot from Barnstaple attacked the Royalists then in the town. From the varying accounts given by each party, it is, however, uncertain which side came off best in the encounter.

Great Torrington Church (Old).

Great Torrington Church (New).

133There are entries of burials in the Parish Register of Great Torrington of this date, one being that of Christopher Awberry, a trooper of Sir Ralph Hopton, who was killed by the “goeing off of a muskett unawares upon the maine gard,” and was buried “Souldier Like,” and another of Thomas Hollamore, “slaine by ye goeing off of a muskett.”

In the next year another attack was made on the Royalist forces under Colonel Digby in Great Torrington, resulting in a fight on the Commons on the north side of the town, in which the attacking force was repulsed. A description of this engagement is given by Lord Clarendon in his History of the Rebellion.

Between this last date and that of the blowing up of the Church, there is the following interesting entry in the Register of Burials of July, 1644:—

The “Colonell Thomas Moncke” in this entry was the father of the unfortunate lieutenant, and brother of the celebrated George Monk, Duke of Albemarle and Earl of Torrington, who subsequently played the leading part in the Restoration of King Charles II. Potheridge, in the parish of Merton, which is now converted into a farm-house, was the family seat of the Monks.

On the morning of Monday, the 16th February, 1645, the Parliamentarian Army, with Fairfax as General and Cromwell Lieutenant-General, marched from Ashreingney viâ Stevenstone, reaching Great Torrington late in the evening, and after some hard fighting in the dark succeeded in forcing their way into the town and driving the Royalist soldiers, under Lord Hopton, through the streets and across the Torridge in the direction of Cornwall. Hardly had the victors effected an entrance, before 134the Church, which had been used by the Royalists as a magazine for their powder, was blown up, the explosion wrecking the surrounding houses and dealing ruin and destruction in all directions.

There are several very graphic accounts of the catastrophe and the incidents immediately leading up to it, by eye witnesses, which cannot be excelled in accurate and vivid description by any additional embellishments. The following is that of Joshua Sprigge, the chaplain of Fairfax:—

136From other sources we learn that the main body of the Royalist Horse was stationed at the end of the barricade on the north side of the town, and the Prince’s Guards were in the Castle Green. The word for the night was, “We are with you,” and the signal was a handkerchief tied round the right arm. The word for the night of the Parliamentarian Army was, “Emmanuel, God with us,” and each man carried a sprig of furze in his hat.

Fairfax himself also gives a detailed account of the affair in a letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons, in which he says:—

A letter of John Rushworth, the Secretary to Fairfax, written at Torrington on the 22nd of February, 1645–6, states that:—

This was the celebrated Hugh Peters, the Puritan preacher, who attended the army in its journeyings.

The following curious certificate is given in the preface to a work by the Rev. John Heydon, dedicated to Sir Thomas Fairfax, the title page of which reads:—

The certificate runs:—

Further on Mr. Heydon says:—

The blowing up of the Church of Great Torrington is recorded on two stones built into the walls of the south transept. The inscriptions on these stones run as follows:—

and

140Under the date of February, 1645, there is this entry in the Register of Burials:—

and other entries appear in July and August of the same year of interments of soldiers.

In the Journal of the House of Lords (Vol. x., 318) is the following entry respecting the re-building of the Church:—

The only external part of the Church which appears to have escaped is the vestry, though a few of the piers and arches at the east end seem to be in their original condition, and perhaps also the arch of the north transept.

The little village of Dean Prior, five miles from Brent on the high road from Plymouth to Ashburton, is indissolubly associated with the name of one of the greatest of our lyric poets; a poet, indeed, who has a certain touch and power which is quite unique in English poetry. Robert Herrick was vicar of this parish for about thirty-two years. The main facts of his life may be very shortly told. Born in London in 1591, he was educated at St. John’s College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He spent the earlier part of his life, after taking his degree, probably partly in Cambridge and partly in London. It was not till 1629, when he was thirty-eight years old, that he was ordained and presented to Dean Prior. Here he remained till 1648, when he was ejected, and a certain John Syms, a Puritan of some fame and worth, established in his place. Herrick went to London and there published his two books of verse, Hesperides and Noble Numbers. In 1662 he was sent back to his living, and there spent the remainder of his days. He died and was buried in the churchyard of Dean Prior in 1674.

There is not much in this little parish at the present day to remind one of Herrick. The vicarage is probably an enlargement of the poet’s house. The newer part stands on a somewhat higher level than the old, and this last is probably the “cell,” whose humble comforts Herrick extols in one of his most true and charming pieces. The present vicar, Mr. Perry-Keene, who is himself something 142of a poet, and knows and loves well his great predecessor, showed me what he believes to be Herrick’s “byn.”

Just opposite the Vicarage stands the Church, which Mr. Perry-Keene tells me has been altered a great deal. It now contains a monument to Herrick erected in 1857 by a remote kinsman, Mr. William Perry Herrick.

Opposite this recent memorial, in the south aisle, stands a far more interesting monument. It is a brass with three figures—husband, wife, and son—but no name or inscription which might give a clue to the name is legible. Underneath it, however, run the following verses:—

This beautiful and interesting epitaph is printed by Mr. Grosart in his fine edition of Herrick, as being indisputably the work of the poet. Mr. Grosart also states positively that the figures on the monument are those of Sir Edward and Lady Giles, of whom the former died at Dean Court in 1637. Mr. Grosart speaks on these points with such certainty that I was surprised to find that the external evidence for both statements is absolutely nil. As a matter of fact, the monument itself hardly appears to belong to Herrick’s time. Mr. Perry-Keene’s opinion is (and I confess that my own very slight knowledge of such subjects would have led me to the same conclusion) that the figures are Elizabethan rather than Caroline. It seems, therefore, hardly safe to print the inscription as being undoubtedly Herrick’s work. At the same time I do believe that the lines are Herrick’s. There is a very distinct Herrickian ring about them, particularly about the last three, which to my mind is almost unmistakeable. 143Observe the phrase “I’ll but be undrest.” It borders on the grotesque; in almost any other poet’s hand it would have been grotesque. In his hand it acquires a certain beautiful quaintness, becomes what Herrick himself calls a “phrase of the royal blood.” I commend this charming epitaph, therefore, to the reader as the one existing memorial which connects Dean Prior with Herrick, though I think he should at the same time be cautioned, that the ascription of the lines to the poet is based solely on internal evidence.

About a mile from the Church stands Dean Court, now a farm-house, in Herrick’s time a manor house, and occupied during his incumbency by the above-mentioned Sir Edward Giles, and afterwards by the Yardes. To-day it looks what it is, and unless there has been considerable alteration and demolition, it seems a poor house for such important families.

A charming village is Dean Prior, as indeed are all the villages on the outskirts of Dartmoor. No wonder that essayists on, and editors of, Herrick have traced his freshness and quaintness to the simplicity of a West Country parish, and that the perfume of flowers which pervades his pages almost ad nauseam seems to his readers to be inspired by the soft and luxurious air of Devonshire. In a word, Herrick’s Hesperides has seemed to be the work of a Devonshire man drawing his inspiration from Devonshire, as Barnes from Dorset or Burns from Ayrshire.

I am bound, however, to say that I believe this to be true only with considerable limitations. Generally speaking, I hold that while the Noble Numbers do undoubtedly belong to the Dean Prior period, the same cannot be said with equal certainty of the Hesperides, or at least of that part of the Hesperides which has given Herrick his immortality. The book contains, no doubt, several pieces, perhaps some sixty in all, which are shewn by internal evidence to have been written later 144than 1628, but of these, few, if any, are of special merit. The real Apples of the Golden Garden are practically undated.

Now we must remember that not only was Herrick thirty-eight when he went to Devonshire, an age at which many poets have produced their best work, but that he hated, or, to use his own oft-repeated expression, “loathed” Devonshire. This hatred is expressed in numerous passages. The following, written at the time of his ejection from the living, may serve as a specimen:—

“No bird,” says Plato, “sings when it is cold or hungry or suffering any pain,” and it is a natural inference from passages like this of Herrick’s that his native genius suffered rather than gained from his sojourn at Dean Prior. But on this point he has left us his own testimony in two important passages. The first runs thus:—

The second is—

At first sight these two passages seem contradictory, but the contradiction vanishes when we remember that 145Herrick’s book of sacred poems is called Noble Numbers. To these and these only, as it seems to me, the “ennobled numbers” of the second passage refers, and the plain meaning of these lines is that Herrick, as vicar of Dean Prior, felt his old powers of song-making gone, and gave his attention mainly to sacred poetry.

To the same conclusion point some lines in the “Farewell to Poetry,” written probably when he took orders:—

But he adds:—

I do not of course suggest that all this is to be taken quite literally, or that we are to affirm positively that all Herrick’s best lyrics date from an earlier period; but that it is generally true I see no reason to doubt, more especially as in the many hundred lyrics which

there is, so far as I can see, little or no trace of Devonshire.

The great poets—whom Herrick looked on as his masters—Catullus and Horace, understood the magic of a name, and were fond of grouping their best thoughts round the names of the particular spots which they knew. Anyone who reads Catullus’s lines on Sirmio, or Horace’s on Tivoli, anyone, we may add, who knows Burns, or Wordsworth, or Scott, will feel the significance of the fact that Herrick only once mentions by name any place in Devonshire. It is not that he dislikes localising, for he lingers affectionately enough over the names of

146And on the one occasion, when a Devonshire scene is described by name, it is in the following lines on “Dean, a rude river in Devon, by which he sometimes dwelt”:—

The reader of Herrick will remember that he goes on to say that the “currish, churlish” people of Dean are as rocky as their river. Herrick could hardly be expected to admire Dartmoor itself. The love of moor and mountain hardly existed in his time; but the glen of Dean Bourne is a different thing, and surely nothing but invincible prejudice can have made Herrick describe it in such “currish and churlish” terms.

Herrick is par excellence the poet of flowers and fruits. Cherries, cowslips, daffodils, and primroses are inseparably connected with his verse. That the rich luxuriance of Dean Prior must have been a source of continual pleasure to him we cannot doubt. Yet even in this department of nature one misses local touches. Where are the high hedgerows, the ferns, and the fox-gloves? and where are the apple orchards of Devon?

Herrick was very fond of observing village festivities and studying folk-lore, and it is generally assumed that the poems which deal with these subjects were written in Devonshire and based on Devonshire observations. This may be so, though I do not know of any evidence in favour of it. On the other hand there is one small circumstance which seems to me significant. In Herrick’s descriptions of barley-breaks, harvest homes, and Christmas festivities, there is much mention of beer but none of cider. Cider making had its poetry for Keats:—

It seems strange that it should never be mentioned by the poet of cider-land.

One of Herrick’s parishioners stands out pleasantly 147in the pages of Hesperides—“my Prue,” otherwise Prudence Baldwin, the house-keeper, who apparently followed him to London at his ejection and returned with him in 1662. It is generally assumed that the persons attacked in the epigrams were parishioners. If so, no wonder they were churlish. It does not appear that many of the fifty or sixty persons addressed in what Mr. Grosart calls “verse-celebrations,” were West-Country people, and on the whole there is as little of local life as of local scenery in the Hesperides.

The critics, then, seem to me perverse, who, in spite of Herrick’s assurances, declare that he only pretended to dislike Dean Prior. They rely, presumably, on his keen eye for country beauties. Now I venture to doubt whether Herrick, as we see him in the Hesperides, is one of the real nature-poets. He knows and loves certain aspects of nature, more particularly fruits and flowers, bright colours and sweet smells. Even amongst these he is often happiest when he can trace some likeness to human beauty. The famous “Cherries ripe” grew on Julia’s lips, not in an orchard. Above all poets he understands the picturesqueness of dress, and when after a catalogue of Julia’s silks and laces in their “wild civility” he confesses that he dotes less on nature than on art, he probably speaks the truth. It is the same with country life; he has none of the deep respect for the peasant’s healthy and thrifty life, which lies at the bottom of Virgil and Horace and Wordsworth’s work. He has plenty of interest in their May-days and other merry-making, but little, I think, in their life as a whole. And the few praises of country life to be found in the Hesperides do not seem to me to ring very true.

If, then, I read Herrick’s life at Dean Prior aright, he is not the genial parson, moving light-heartedly among the people, drinking in the soft air of Devonshire and pouring it out in spontaneous song, passing from his sermon to the Maypole, blending Paganism with 148Christianity and ribaldry with religion, without sense of harm or incongruity—writing, in fact, the Hesperides on weekdays and the Noble Numbers on Sundays. Rather it was by the Cam and the Thames that he imbibed his inspiration, made love to his half-imaginary mistresses, and learnt—

In Devonshire he is a changed man, sobered partly by isolation and partly by clerical responsibility. He has, no doubt, his light-hearted and even wanton moods, and often writes poetry in the old vein; but he feels that the old lyrical effusiveness is going or gone, and finds his main occupation in writing sacred poetry.

At any rate he did not write gross or indecent verse during this period. This all too plentiful element of the Hesperides need not be fathered on Dean Prior. He himself calls it—

There is surely no reason why these words should not be taken in their literal sense, which is that they were written in Herrick’s youth and before he took orders, and the pilgrim to Dean Prior need not harrow his imagination with the revolting picture of this elderly bachelor sitting in the little vicarage spinning out these miserable and often pointless indecencies. No doubt it may be asked why, if these were poems of Herrick’s youth, condemned by his better judgment, he published them in 1648. Two answers may be given to this question, though I do not say that either of them is an excuse. In the first place he had been turned out of his living and probably wanted money. In the second place, the fact that he describes himself on the title page as Robert Herrick, Esq., seems to indicate that he considered his clerical profession had gone with his incumbency, and if so, he very probably 149had deluded himself into the idea that clerical responsibility had gone also.

I will devote the rest of my allotted space to a few remarks on that part of Herrick’s work which undoubtedly belongs to the Dean Prior period. I mean the “pious pieces,” or Noble Numbers. Now it is not to be denied that there is a great deal of poor stuff in the Noble Numbers. Nobody is likely to care much for the metrical creeds, or the tawdry and sensuous poems on the Nativity or Passion. Still the little book contains some pieces which English literature could ill spare. There is, for instance, the strange and, indeed, startling “litany to the Holy Spirit.” This hymn is actually included in one at least of our popular hymn-books, and I have sometimes heard parts of it sung in a village church. I wonder what the congregation would have thought of these two stanzas, which, needless to say, are not to be found in the hymn-book version:—

Probably they would be greatly shocked, and indeed everyone must admit that the stanzas show a certain strange devilry mixing itself with Herrick’s most reverent thoughts. At the same time, I do not think there is any real or intentional irreverence in them. There is one stanza in the “Litany” which has, I think, a personal interest:—

150Now compare this with the following:—

And again—

I infer from these that Herrick suffered much from sleeplessness, and if so, may we not with considerable probability trace the genesis of this celebrated litany to some sleepless nights in the little vicarage of Dean Prior?

Again it is to the Noble Numbers that we owe the beautiful “Lord, Thou hast given me a cell.” Familiar as this poem is, it is only a just tribute to Dean Prior that these sweet praises of its simple plenty should be set down here.

And now let me ask the reader to note the following triplet, which occurs in a Christmas Anthem in Noble Numbers:—

152I think if we compare these two poems, which embody Herrick’s attitude to nature and country life during the Dean Prior period, with some of the earlier (as I think) lyrics in the Hesperides, we shall feel that if Dean Prior took something from him, it also gave him something. Compare them, for instance, with “Fair Daffodils, we weep to see,” or the song to “Meddows,” which begins “Ye have been fresh and green.” These last are beautiful fancies, among the most beautiful in our language, but they have not the depth or fulness of feeling which the triplet has. That breathes the spirit of the true lover of rural life, and so it seems to me that if Herrick, in this little out-of-the-way village, felt the lyric power gone, if the “fairy fancies” no longer “ranged” or “lightly stirred” as before, on the other hand, something of the peace of a country village, something of the peace which Wordsworth felt two centuries later, had descended upon him.

Finally, let me call the reader’s attention to the two “Graces for little children,” also to be found in Noble Numbers:—

And again—

If I may indulge in a little fancy, I should say that this last was written for some small Dean Prior “maid”; 153written on one of those delicious balmy days which a Devonshire spring sometimes, though not, alas! always, brings; written during the first half of Herrick’s first incumbency, when peace still “flourished” at Dean Prior, though perhaps the shadows of the coming trouble were not unfelt by those who could read the signs of the times. Both these “Graces” always seem to me to have a peculiar charm and freshness, and even by themselves they would go far to justify the view that has been maintained in this essay, that Herrick’s genius, if hampered and enfeebled in some ways, was in other ways matured and mellowed by his sojourn in “dull Devonshire.”

The following passage, which is an extract from an article in the Quarterly of August, 1809, by Mr. Barron Field, may be of some interest:—

From a Painting by T. Stothard, R.A.]

[Engraved by George Noble.

The Landing of William III. at Torbay.

The landing of the Prince of Orange—the Prince who "saved England"—on the shores of Devon in 1688, must always be a matter of interest. The subject has been dealt with by Macaulay and other historians with more or less detail. I certainly should not, therefore, have ventured on the subject myself had it not been for the fact of having had placed in my hands, through the courtesy of Mr. J. B. Davidson, of Secktor, a somewhat rare pamphlet, containing many interesting facts not noted in the papers referred to by Mr. Pengelly, and from my being the repository of some local anecdotes worth preserving.

The pamphlet I have referred to is entitled, “An Exact Diary of the late Expedition of His Illustrious Highness The Prince of Orange (now King of Great Britain), from his Palace at the Hague to his Landing at Torbay, and from thence to his arrival at Whitehall. Giving a particular account of all that happened and every Day’s March. By a Minister Chaplain in the Army.” It consists of seventy-three pages, was printed for Richard Baldwin, near the Black Bull, in the Old Bailey, in 1689, licensed April 23rd, 1689. It is dedicated to the Earls of Bedford and Portland, Viscount Sidney of Sheppy, and Sir John Maynard, one of the Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal; and from the Dedication it appears that the writer was one “John Whittle.”

156This Sir John Maynard was at this time Recorder for this borough, and member for the borough during the Long Parliament. He was a very able lawyer, and at this time near ninety. It is related of him that when he came “with the men of the law” to welcome the Prince, the latter took notice of his great age, and said that he had outlived all the men of the law of his time. Whereupon Maynard replied, he had like to have outlived the law itself if his Highness had not come over.

That this pamphlet is genuine, and was written by an English clergyman who accompanied the expedition throughout, there is strong internal evidence; and Macaulay cites it as one of the authorities for several of his statements with reference to the expedition, though he does not quote largely from it.

In this diary or, more strictly, narrative, which enters more fully into particulars than the other pamphlets, Mr. Whittle gives a graphic account of the arrangements for, and the departure of, the expedition, the storm which sent it back again, its refitting, second departure, and safe (if not miraculous) arrival in Torbay, of all of which the writer was evidently an eye-witness.

Whittle gives the following account of the final departure of the expedition:—

Whittle brings the fleet to the English shores, and thus continues:—

Whittle then brings us down to the morning of Monday, the 5th of November, and proceeds as follows:—

The bells were evidently ringing for the 5th of November, and I find that the bells of the parish church of Brixham are still rung on that day, but I apprehend that the custom has been continued in commemoration of the landing of the Prince.

All who know Brixham, even in its present populous condition, can corroborate the accuracy of Whittle’s description of the coast, and recognize his felicitous expression of the people on shore being “on the brow of the mountain.”

Whittle proceeds as follows:—

He then proceeds with the following account of the landing:—

161Whittle does not give many particulars of the landing of the Prince himself. Probably they did not land at the same time. It is interesting as to this to refer to the details given by Blewitt in the Panorama. His account is as follows:—

This story Mr. White very properly calls an absurd one, as the Prince was not a King, and tea was a fabulous price.

In a note to this account, said to have been communicated by the Rev. H. F. Lyte, it is stated as follows:—

I find that this story of the little fisherman carrying the Prince on shore is still current at Brixham, the reason given for it being that it was low tide at the time; the ending of the story as given to me being that the “little man” who journeyed to London to see the Prince, owing to being in difficulties from having lost his horse, and his boat being out of repair, did see the King, and received a large sum of money, said to be £100, with which he built a house in Brixham and lived “happily for ever after.” His name was Varwell, and one story is that the Prince, on being carried safely on shore, desired him to ask a favour of him, upon which the fisherman desired that no press-gang might be sent to Brixham. The actual spot on which the Prince landed was where the fish market now stands, and the stone on which the Prince first placed his foot was long preserved there and pointed out with pride and veneration. In 1828 William IV., then Duke of Clarence, having come into Torbay, landed at the New Quay at Brixham, and this stone was removed from the fish market to this place to have the additional honour of receiving the second Prince of that name who had dignified Brixham by his presence; and while the Duke stood on the stone the Rev. H. F. Lyte, on the part of the inhabitants, presented him with a box of heart of oak eight hundred years old, a portion of the timber of the old Totnes bridge, lined with velvet, containing a small portion of the stone, which the Duke in his reply promised to preserve as a precious relic.

The stone itself was built into a small granite column erected to commemorate the landing of the two Princes, and was set up in the fish market; but in consequence of 163its inconvenient situation it was taken down and subsequently erected on the Victoria Pier.

Blewitt remarks that the landing of the Prince on the shoulders of the little fisherman was a very different kind of landing to that which Northcote has assigned to William in his celebrated picture. An old Dutch print, at present in my possession, purporting to be a delineation of the landing, represents on the land a large and imposing castle, into which the troops as they land are triumphantly marching, the Prince’s flag flying from the summit.

To return to Whittle’s narrative, we find him giving the following account of the proceedings subsequent to the landing:—

The little “ale-house” was probably the Buller’s Arms, which is still in existence. Report says that the Prince himself slept there, though this is doubtful, and that he left behind him there, or where he slept, a ring, which fell into the possession of the landlord, and was preserved with great care by subsequent possessors, eventually coming into the possession of one Mary Churchward, who died somewhere about twenty years ago, from whom the ring was stolen some years before her death by a thief who entered her bedroom at night and carried it off owing to the lady being in the habit of sleeping with her window open. Persons now in Brixham remember the lady bitterly lamenting the loss of the ring on account of its having belonged to the Prince of Orange.

Whittle continues:—

Whittles reference to the fact that many people from the adjacent places came flocking to see the Prince is confirmed by other writers.

Local tradition in my own family, handed down from parent to child with no little pride, says that among those who flocked to see the Prince from here were two Windeatts, Samuel and Thomas—father and son, and a lady whose great niece subsequently intermarried with the Windeatts. At the time of the Prince’s landing, Samuel Windeatt, a man about forty, and a strict Nonconformist, was living in Bridgetown, where the family had been settled for some years. Hearing the joyful news that the Protestant Prince of Orange was in Torbay, he immediately set off to “Broxholme” on horseback, taking his little son Thomas, then about eight years old, in front of him, to see the Deliverer of England and his troops. They narrated the fact on their return that the country people around brought quantities of apples and rolled them down the hill to the soldiers; and the truth of this incident was curiously confirmed some years since. A member of my family having mentioned this to a gentleman who in his early days farmed in this part of the country, he gave me the following interesting account of the stories handed down to him:—

I merely mention this to show how easily tradition can be handed down, requiring only three or four individuals, for two centuries.

The lady I referred to as one of those who flocked to see the Prince was a Miss Juliana Babbage, from a brother of whom the late Charles Babbage, the famous mathematician, was descended. She came, when a girl of twelve, from Barbadoes, and was also a decided Nonconformist. On the 5th November, 1688, she was attending the old meeting-house in Totnes, at a thanksgiving service for the discovery of the gunpowder plot, and while there was told that the Prince of Orange was in Torbay landing his troops. She also hailed the news with joy, and as soon as service was over set off to walk to Brixham, accompanied by an old lady of her acquaintance, and making their way to the Prince, they boldly welcomed him to England. He shook hands with them, and gave them some of his proclamations to distribute, which they did so industriously that not one was left in the family as a memorial. A crimson velvet and gold purse, a pincushion, and a gold chain, which she is said to have worn on the occasion, as well as a curious gold locket with hair belonging to her, are still in the possession of our family.

These stories come to me from a relative who has attained an honoured old age, who, owing to the early death of her mother, passed her childhood and girlhood in an old family circle, and heard from the lips of those elderly relatives tales of old times, which they had received in like manner from their relatives. This lady says her grandmother told her she well recollected her father joking her mother as to what might have happened if the Prince had not succeeded, saying, “Oh! mistress, your aunt might have swung for it!”

167The terror infused into the minds of the men of the West by the bitter persecution which followed the unsuccessful rising on behalf of the Duke of Monmouth, was doubtless sufficient to deter the leading men from openly espousing the Prince’s cause at this moment.

The first gentleman of any position to do so, and this he probably did at Brixham, as he lived in the neighbourhood, was Mr. Nicholas Roope, who was appropriately rewarded for his adhesion to the Prince by being appointed, within a short time of the Prince reaching St. James’, Governor of Dartmouth Castle, in the room of Sir Edward Seymour the elder, who had then recently died.

In an interesting letter from the last Governor of Dartmouth Castle (Governor Holdsworth) to Sir H. P. Seale, Bart., dated May 1st, 1857, the warrant for his appointment is set out in full. It runs in the name of William Henry, Prince of Orange, and is dated 7th of January, 1688–9, and this was followed, on the 18th July of the same year (1689), by a regular commission, when the Prince had become King of England.

The authority for the statement that Mr. Roope was the first to join the King is contained in a letter from Mr. Roope to the Earl of Nottingham in reply to one from his Lordship containing a complaint against him. These letters are set out in full in Governor Holdsworth’s letter.

At Berry Pomeroy, some few miles distant from the scene of the Prince’s landing, was then living Sir Edward Seymour the younger, sometime Speaker of the House of Commons, son of the Seymour who was Roope’s predecessor in the Governorship of Dartmouth Castle, and one of the most influential men of his time, whose birth, says Macaulay, put him on a level with the noblest subjects in Europe, and who, in political influence and in Parliamentary abilities was beyond comparison the foremost among the Tory gentlemen of England. He openly joined the Prince at Exeter, and he it was who contributed greatly to the success of the Prince’s cause by suggesting 168that an association should be founded, and that all the English adherents of the Prince should put their hands to an instrument binding them to be true to their leader and to each other. He doubtless was well informed of what was now going on at Brixham, and we can hardly imagine him to have been a passive spectator of the great enterprise. Tradition says that the Prince had a secret interview with him at a house, now a cluster of labourers’ cottages, still known as Parliament House, situate on the confines of Berry parish on the road from Berry House to Brixham, and that there he agreed to come out for the Prince at Exeter, for which city he was member. Another account gives the place of meeting at Marldon, at a spot now called Parliament Hill. The present Duke of Somerset, with whom I have communicated on this point, has been good enough to inform me that he believes the building called Parliament House to have been the place where the country gentlemen assembled and agreed to support the Prince, and that the latter probably had some interview with Seymour at that time, as it was by his inducement that the country gentlemen, when they met at Exeter, signed their names to the paper I have been referred to, promising to support the Prince, and that for this probably the Prince appointed him Governor of Exeter.

His Grace also informs me that the late Duke, who had the family papers examined, said that all documents relating to these transactions appeared to have been carefully destroyed, and that this precaution was natural after the recent failure of Monmouth’s landing in the West of England, though it deprives us, as he says, of many incidents that would now be very interesting.

There is little information to be gained from the parish records of Brixham on the subject of this paper, but from them it appears that at least one poor nameless foreigner was left behind at Brixham when the Prince’s army began its march to Exeter, and probably succumbed to the effects of the voyage, which, from Whittle’s narrative, appears to 169have been fatal to five hundred horses; for in the Register of Burials for the parish for the year 1688 there appears the following entry:—

In another book, containing an account of those buried in woollen, in accordance with the law passed to encourage that trade, the entry is as follows:—

There is a steep lane leading from the outer harbour up the hill to where the station now stands, which the present vicar of Brixham considers derives its name, Overgang, apparently a Dutch word, from “Obergang,” or Gang-ober or “over,” and that it arose from the fact of troops after the landing being repeatedly ordered to gang over this hill. This may be so; but as I find that the word “gang,” meaning to go or to walk, was in use in England in the time of Spenser, it is not improbable that this lane gained its name before the advent of the Prince of Orange.

The Prince’s army marched from Brixham on its way to Newton on the 6th or 7th November, passing along the narrow lanes of Churston, Paignton, Cockington, and Kingskerswell, taking apparently a part of two days on the march, the roads being so bad as to make locomotion slow and tedious.

Report says that at a place called Collins’ Grave, near the higher lodge at Churston, where there is high ground overlooking the river, the army encamped one night; also that the Prince himself stayed at a house in Paignton, now the Crown and Anchor Inn. A room there is still shown as the “Prince’s room.”

In a Protestant sense it is interesting that William landed within sight of the Bible Tower at Paignton, where Coverdale, the translator of the Bible, undoubtedly dwelt, and where he is said to have been probably engaged 170on his translation; and doubtless this tradition was not lost sight of by those about the Prince on his sleeping at the “Crown and Anchor,” just outside the palace wall.

The following is Whittle’s graphic account of the march to Newton:—

Arrived near Newton, the Prince, as Whittle says, went to Ford House, within a short distance of the town, the residence of Sir William Courtenay, who endeavoured cautiously to abstain from doing anything to compromise himself with the King, should the latter prevail, and so managed not to be at home on the Prince’s arrival, but left directions that he should be hospitably lodged and feasted. Here he probably stayed two nights to enable the whole of the troops to come up and be in order for the march to Exeter, to which place Dr. Burnet and Lord Mordaunt with four troops of horse were sent on in advance.

The room at Ford House in which the Prince slept is still pointed out; it is called the “Orange room,” and is papered and upholstered in orange.

Mr. Blewitt, in the Panorama of Torquay, says:—“It is said that his first proclamation was read from the base of the ancient cross at Newton by the Rev. John Reynell, the minister of Wolborough”; and Mr. White, in his valuable History of Torquay, published in 1878, repeats this statement as a fact. The stone pedestal on which formerly stood the ancient cross, still remains near the tower at Newton, in the parish of Wolborough, and is now surmounted by a public lamp. On this pedestal is the following inscription:—

173That the Prince’s declaration was read from the old cross there can be little doubt, but that the inscription cannot be looked upon as much of an authority is clear from the statement that the declaration was read on the 5th; for the Prince’s army did not commence to land at Brixham until that day, and could not have possibly reached Newton until the 7th; and that it is erroneous also in stating that it was read by Reynell is evident from the following very interesting paragraph from Whittle’s Diary:—

Oldmixon, in his History of the Reign of the Stuarts, simply says that “the first place the Prince of Orange’s Declaration was publicly read was Newton Abbot, a market town near Exeter, and the first man who read it was a clergyman.” No doubt the fact that it was read by a clergyman gradually changed into the statement that it was read by the clergyman of the parish, and so Reynell became credited with a bold act, which, from Whittle’s account, he was far too cautious a man to commit, however favourable he may have been to the Prince’s cause. The lettering of the inscriptioninscription is evidently modern, and the Rev. H. Tudor, the present Rector of Wolborough, informs me that a man, now dead, told him he was employed to cut or re-cut it, and was never paid for doing so.

The question remains, and it is an interesting one, who was the divine who first proclaimed the Prince by reading the Declaration? I was first inclined to believe, from the detailed manner in which the story was told, that it was Whittle himself. It is not improbable, however, that it was the renowned Dr. Burnet, afterwards Bishop Burnet. He was the Prince’s own chaplain, and doubtless the head 175and chief of the clergy who accompanied the Prince, and from his undaunted spirit, and the leading part he took in the Cathedral at Exeter, he was undoubtedly the divine most likely to have performed this act. One gentleman with whom I have been in communication on the point, and whose opinion always carries weight, says:—

No information is to be gleaned from the parish registers or the books I have inspected relative to what occurred at Newton during the time of the Prince’s visit, but I have been favoured with the following interesting story from a lady now residing at Newton, of the advanced age of ninety-six, told her by her father, who heard it from his grandmother, who was a Miss Joan Bearne, the daughter of Mr. Bearne, a lawyer of Newton Abbot; viz., that when a girl of sixteen, there was a stranger staying at her father’s house for about three weeks, who was only known as “the gentleman,” and who was out during the day, and only returned in the evening; that on the entry of William of Orange into Newton from Ford House, her father took her out to see him, and that walking by the side of the Prince was the strange gentleman, who, on passing where Mr. Bearne was standing, pointed him out as “his host for three weeks” to the Prince, who at once lifted his hat to him.

Any interest attaching to Plympton belongs to the olden time. Of many other places it may be said that the new has entirely supplanted the old. Modern business requirements, new warehouses, and thoroughfares, have had the effect of stamping out all vestiges of the past, and even the traditions of them. An unpretending Railway Station and a dozen or more new houses have not had this effect at Plympton. The town has no novelties to shew us; the lions are just what they were two hundred years ago.

Plympton in the olden time had its castle and its priory, its two churches, and later its Guildhall and Grammar School. Not quite in the olden time, but only just on the verge of our prosaic modern time, Plympton gave to the world England’s greatest painter—a circumstance which (though forgotten by the native, who on being asked by a tourist where Sir Joshua Reynolds was born, replied he “never heeard of sich”) should indeed make this honoured little town almost as famous as Stratford-on-Avon.

In the Doomsday Book, Plympton is designated “Terra Regis,” so also are Tavistock, Ashburton, and Tiverton, “all which places were then the King’s demesne towns,” but not boroughs.

From an Engraving]

[by J. E. Wood.

The Cloisters, Plympton Grammar School.

From an Engraving]

[By J. E. Wood.

Norman Doorway, Plympton Priory.

A date anterior to the Norman Conquest has been ascribed to the castle, on the ground of its similarity to Trematon, Launceston, and Restormel castles, which 177Borlase and Grose assert to have been built before the year 900. The antiquaries, however, of the eighteenth century are often extremely inaccurate in their classification both of military and ecclesiastical structures. St. German’s Church, the ancient cathedral of Cornwall, is designated Saxon by them, whereas its features, as any tyro will now see, are undoubted Norman; in fact, there are no remains of Saxon architecture in Cornwall, and it would be surprising if there were, seeing that the Saxons never had any permanent hold on this part of Britain; for, though Egbert is said to have reduced the Cornish Britons to “nominal subjection” about the year 810, we find that Athelstan as late as 936 was in conflict with the British forces, and drove them across the Tamar, and not until that year had Exeter been subjected to his government.

Restormel Castle is undoubtedly of Norman construction, and it is probable that the most ancient portions of Launceston Castle are nearly two centuries later than the date ascribed by Borlase.

Although, therefore, from the naturally strong position of all these castles, it is probable that the Britons occupied these positions for defence, no visible remains can be considered as anterior to the Norman Conquest. In the absence of any architectural details at Plympton Castle—the masonry in the walls being somewhat analogous to the British masonry found in different parts of Cornwall—there may be more room for doubt and conjecture here than in respect to the other castles; yet the rudeness of the masonry may be accounted for by supposing that only the vassal inhabitants of the neighbourhood were employed in the works, under Norman architects and overseers.

The vestiges of Norman rule are clearly traceable in the county and borders of Devon. The same independent character which Exeter maintained against the Saxon authority, that city endeavoured to assert against the Conqueror; and the obedience of the western capital 178required to be insured by a number of castles, of a date not long subsequent to the Conquest. The castles of Barnstaple, Exeter, Totnes, Plympton, and Trematon guarded the rivers which gave access to the interior of the county; and the fortresses of Okehampton, Launceston, Lydford, Berry, and Tiverton, the inland passes. Of the castles enumerated here, Berry at least has been entirely rebuilt at a later period.

Plympton Castle was the chief residence of the Earls of Devon and Lords of Plympton. King Henry, the youngest son of the Conqueror, in the first year of his reign, granted the Lordship to Richard de Redvers or Rivers and his posterity, to enjoy also the title and possessions belonging to the Devonshire Earldom. The said Richard was one of William the Conqueror’s generals in the battle of Hastings, and obtained the barony of Okehampton from William Rufus. He was one of the chief councillors of Henry the First, and was so highly esteemed by him that he was created first Earl of Devon since the Conquest. The castle stood on the north side of the town, occupying a space of about two acres, extending 700 feet from east to west, including the ditch, and 400 feet from north to south. Leland says of this structure, in his Itinerary, “On the side of the town is a fair large castelle and dungeon in it, whereof the walls yet stand, though the lodgings be clean decayed.” At present there only remains a portion of the circular keep or tower, fifty feet in diameter, on a mound about sixty feet high. The ruined walls average fourteen feet in height and are nine feet thick, grouted with mortar or concrete as hard as the stones themselves. Around the keep in the thickness of the wall is a plastered flue, fifteen inches by ten inches, the purpose of which is not obvious. It has been suggested that it was designed for the conveyance of sound. It seems more probable that it was for ventilation. There is a similar flue at Rochester Castle. The habitable 179portions of Plympton Castle must have been of considerable extent. These, including the state apartments, and lodgings (as Leland calls them) for the military and retainers, were within the outer castle walls, and built around a spacious basse-court. The ballium wall—embattled and flanked with towers—was raised on a platform about 30 feet above the fosse or ditch, in the position now indicated by a modern path, and by a belt of trees planted about a hundred years ago. The basse-court has long been a quiet village green, and the site of the ballium wall, where stern warriors peered over frowning battlements, is now a “lovers’ walk.” Such are the tendencies of modern civilization. Surrounding the castle wall was a deep moat about 40 feet wide, still to be traced, except on the eastern side, where it has been filled up. In Leland’s time it was full of water, and stored with carp. There are no remains whatever of the great gateway of the castle (with its drawbridge and portcullis), which, as shewn by the seal of the Lords of Plympton, was on the north side. There were probably towers at the different angles.

In the time of Baldwin de Rivers, second Earl of Devon and Lord of Plympton, the castle was the scene of events which strikingly illustrate the then unsettled state of the country, and the insubordination of even the most privileged class. Baldwin de Rivers was considered one of the richest and bravest men of the age; but having with some other nobles rebelled against King Stephen, on account, it is said, of the king refusing to confer certain honours on them, he fortified himself in his castle at Exeter, where he was besieged by the monarch; and it appears that certain knights, to whom he had entrusted his castle of Plympton, being apprehensive of the Earl’s danger, or alarmed about their own safety, treated for the surrender of Plympton; and the king sent two hundred men with a large body of archers from Exeter to Plympton, who unexpectedly appeared 180under the walls of the castle about daybreak, and, according to the chronicler, the fortress was then almost entirely destroyed.

The lands of the Earl, which extended far and wide round Plympton Castle, and said to have been abundantly stocked and well cultivated, were harried by the king’s troops, who drove off to Exeter many thousands of sheep and oxen.^[6] Baldwin was then dispossessed of all his honours, and banished the kingdom; but afterwards siding with the Empress Matilda, in the civil wars which ensued, he was restored to all his honours and possessions by Henry II. He died A.D. 1155, and was succeeded by his son, Richard de Redvers.

Baldwin, the eighth Earl, was the last of the male Redvers or Rivers who held the barony of Plympton. His death, by poison, occurred in France in 1262, and the inheritance of the Earls of Devon and Lords of Plympton descended to Isabella de Redvers, the wife of the Earl of Albemarle, who styled herself Countess of Devon. Their only issue was a daughter, Aveline, who married the Earl of Lancaster, and she dying in 1293, without issue, Hugh Lord Courtenay, next heir to Isabella, Countess of Devon, and lineally descended from John Courtenay, Lord of Okehampton, who married the daughter of Sir William de Redvers, became ninth Earl.

The possession by the Courtenays during succeeding centuries of the Earldom of Devon and the Barony of Plympton, was marked by many interesting and even tragical incidents, but these have no very immediate connection with the subject of this paper.^[7]

181The barony of Plympton was subdivided in the reign of Queen Mary. In the beginning of the eighteenth century it was in the hands of three families. It is now invested in the Earl of Morley.

The castle (probably rebuilt after its partial demolition in the time of Baldwin de Rivers, second Earl) does not appear to have been much molested between the reigns of Stephen and Charles I.; at least, we have no record of any memorable event during that long interval.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Plympton was the headquarters of the force which the Royalists then had in the county. It was one of the principal quarters of Prince Maurice’s army whilst besieging Plymouth, from October, 1642, to January, 1643. The King had a garrison here, which, however, was taken by the Earl of Essex, in the month of July, 1644. The castle at this period was mounted with eight pieces of ordnance.

The fertile valley of the Plym was often a tempting field for plunder to the Plymouth parliamentary troops, as it had been to the archers of King Stephen five centuries before. Its rich pasturage and produce induced a fraternity of pious monks at a very early period to settle here; which brings me to speak of the once famous priory of Plympton, the richest and most flourishing in Devon.

The first monastery or college existing here is said to have been founded by one of the Saxon kings, possibly Ethelwolf, who had a palace, so tradition informs us, at Yealmpton, about four miles distant. This establishment, however, early came to grief. Leland says:—

The second establishment, then—dedicated to the Virgin Mary and SS. Peter and Paul—of the Order of St. Augustine, was founded in 1121 by William Warelwast, Bishop of Exeter, the nephew and chaplain of William the Conqueror. He was one of the most gifted and energetic ecclesiastics of his day, and to him we are indebted for the earliest existing portions of Exeter Cathedral, including the two noble Norman towers. He seems to have set his heart on making Plympton priory the richest and most important in this part of the kingdom, and conveyed to it very large properties in Exeter. Many noblemen followed his example.

The rental of the priory shows that certain lands and rents were attached to the several conventual offices of almoner, precentor, cellarer, and chaplain of the infirmary.

Some idea of the wealth of the monastery may be gathered from the fact that at the dissolution it was rated at £912 12s. 8d. per annum, whereas the whole annual revenue of the 173 Augustine priories in the kingdom amounted to £33,027, the average being about one-fourth that of Plympton.

The founder, Bishop Warelwast, was buried here (as Leland says) in the chapter house of the priory, as were also the remains of his nephew, the fifth Bishop of Exeter. “Whoever is acquainted,” says Dr. Oliver, 183“with the deeds and writings of subsequent bishops, the immediate patrons of Plympton Priory, must have observed how closely they imitated the zeal of the founder in watching and guarding its interests and promoting its welfare.” Amongst other privileges, the prior and convent possessed the right of appointing the rural dean of Plympton.

The venerable building had been destroyed before Leland’s time, as is evident from his saying “the chirch that there a late stood,” meaning, of course, the priory church.

“At present,” says Dr. Oliver, “scarcely a vestige remains of any of the conventual buildings”; but in this respect, as we shall hereafter see, he is not quite correct.

Within one hundred and fifty years after the erection of the priory church, another sacred edifice was required for the growing population around; and Bishop Stapeldon, on Friday, October 29th, 1311, consecrated one in honour of the Virgin Mary, for the use of the parishioners. The present chancel and north aisle of Plympton St. Mary Church are portions of the church then dedicated, the great body of the church, as we now see it, having been re-built in a later age and style. It was situate “infra cemeterium prioratus”; and,and, as a mark of subjection, the parishioners were required to assist at divine service in the conventual church on the feast of its dedication, and to receive the blest palms there on Palm Sunday, and walk in the solemn procession of that day. This obligation was sanctioned by Archbishop Courtenay, when he made a visitation of the diocese of Exeter in 1387, and confirmed by Pope Boniface IX. For some neglect of this ancient custom Bishop Lacy expressed his high displeasure, and enjoined its strict observance in the future.

In Plympton St. Mary parish there were several chapels, subject to the priory—one at Newnham, another 184at Hemerdon, and a chapel attached to a lazar-house, of which there are now no remains. Sutton or South-town, now part of Plymouth, belonged to the priory of Plympton. “In the priors’ court there the portreve of the commonality was elected and sworne into office by his steward, and the markets, the instruments of punishment, and the assize of provisions belonged to him.”

Those were not exactly the “furzy down” days of Plymouth; but it was quite an insignificant place at that time, compared with its more wealthy neighbour, Plympton. Its great market, in fact, was Plympton. As Plymouth grew into more importance, as a naval as well as fishing station, and as the inhabitants became more influential, they naturally became anxious to obtain independence and the right of self-government, with municipal privileges. Accordingly, the inhabitants petitioned the king and parliament to be incorporated as early as 1412, and the answer to the petition was, “Let the petitioners compound with the lords having franchises before the next parliament, and report to them of their having made an agreement.” As a matter of course, the prior and convent at first opposed their views, but when the inhabitants succeeded, in 1439, in obtaining the royal licence and an Act of Parliament, which constituted them a corporation, under the title of the Mayor and Commonalty of the Borough of Plymouth, it was time for the prior and convent to come to terms with the reformers; and animated with an excellent feeling, they addressed a petition to Bishop Lacy, representing that it would be desirable to convey to this municipal body certain lands, tenements, franchises, fairs, markets, mills, and services, which they had possessed therein from time immemorial, and praying his consent to dispose of them. In January, 1440, as bishop and patron, he directed a commission to the archdeacon of Totnes to hold an inquisition, and to report to him the verdict of the jury. Accordingly, a public inquisition was 185held in the nave of the priory church of Plympton, on the 7th of January, the gates of the monastery, and the doors of the church, being thrown wide open for all comers to enter. That was a memorable day for the young town; and no doubt many Plymouthians flocked to the priory, anxious to know the award. The jury being sworn, found that the premises of the priory, within Sutton-Prior, had in part been burnt by a hostile descent from Brittany; that the yearly rental of the lands and tenements there was £8; of the courts, fairs, and markets, 60s.; and the clear profit from the mills something more than £10 yearly; that the offer by the mayor and corporation of the yearly fixed pension of £41 for the premises aforesaid was deemed by the prior and convent a satisfactory compensation, and that they were willing to accept the same; and the jury concurred in recommending such alienation and sale on such terms.

The parish church of St. Andrew, in Plymouth, continued an appendage to the priory nearly until the dissolution of the house. Its perpetual vicar, William de Wolley, became a professed religious at Plympton; and on resigning this benefice, the prior and convent granted, November 23rd, 1334, to Bishop Grandisson, the nomination of an incumbent, saving, however, their yearly pension of sixty marks. The bishop nominated Nicholas de Weyland, a canon of Plympton, December 23rd.

The chapel of St. Katherine on the How also belonged to the priory; but the following list of chapels appendant to this house will give some idea of the immense patronage which it enjoyed:—SS. Mary and Thomas, Plympton, Brixton, Wembury, Plymstock, Saundford-Spiney, Egg Buckland, Lanhorn (or Lanherne), Tamerton, Maristowe, Thrushelton, Uggeburgh, Exminster, Islington, Newton, Stoke-in-Teignhead, Blackhauton, Bratton, Meavy, St. Just, Petertavy, etc.; and the tithes of these places were appropriated to the priory for the promotion of hospitality and charity.

186Two subordinate priories or cells depended on Plympton priory—St. Mary de Marisco, commonly called Marsh Barton, in Alphington parish, and the cell of St. Anthony in the deanery of Powder, in Cornwall.

Most of the churches appendant to the Plympton priory have the parvise over the south porch, as at both the Plympton churches and at Ugborough. Here were probably deposited books written by the monks in their hours of study—missals with rich borders, as well as writings of a more secular character; and possibly the preaching monks tarried in these chambers between the hours of divine service.

Dr. Oliver gives the names of thirty Priors of Plympton, from Ralph, the first prior, to John How, the last, who subscribed to the King’s supremacy in 1534. During the administration of some of the priors, the hospitality of the establishment seems to have been unbounded. In consequence of the great confluence of the nobility and their retinues to the priory, the house became overcharged with debt, and Bishop Oldham, after his first visitation of the house, in 1505, authorized the prior, David Bercle,^[8] to retire to a distant cell until a new system of economy could be arranged.

The refectory was by no means an unimportant portion of the priory. It and the cellar under (which was in charge of a much-envied functionary, known as 187the cellarer) are the only considerable remains existing of the once extensive monastic buildings at Plympton. Here the monks, according to the seasons, had their one meal or two meals a day; the usual allowance being “one white loaf, another loaf called Trequarter, a dish called General, another dish of flesh or fish called Pitance, three potells of beer daily, or three silver halfpence” for the teetotalers. This is said to have been the ordinary bill of fare, but it was, no doubt, amplified to any extent when the lords and squires were entertained by the prior, and especially when, as in 1348, Edward the Black Prince dined at his hospitable table.

But the time was coming when there would be “no more cakes and ale”—when the prior and brethren would leave the monastery gates, never again to re-enter them; when, with their “occupation gone” (like the stage coachmen and guards of the nineteenth century), they would be lost in the crowd of a bustling world, and never seen or heard of more. There was a dark side to the picture which England then presented; and perhaps the saddest sight was when, on the morrow after the dissolution, the mendicant knocked at the almonry door, knowing no change, and least of all in charity, and for the first time found no bread or alms for him.

The priory remains, though little known, are of considerable interest. Besides the Norman cellar, and the Early English refectory over, there are some scattered remains of the chapel and cloisters. The cellar is sixty-one feet six inches by fourteen feet within, stone-arched, and lighted on the south side by four small semi-circular-headed windows. The masonry is of great thickness; and on the north side and east end, in the width of the wall, is a passage two feet six inches wide, which probably was nothing more than a dry area, though the common notion is that it is the commencement of a subterranean way (now blocked up) leading to the castle, about a quarter of a mile distant. The original 188entrance to the cellar was by a fine Norman doorway on the south side. It was only after diligent search that I found it, encased with many coats of plaster. There are engaged shafts on each side, and the chevron ornament is carried round the jambs as well as the arch, which latter is formed of alternate voussoirs of grey and green stone.

Above the cellar is the almost perfect outline of the refectory, with its original fire-place, windows, and roof, all of an Early English character. The kitchen, a detached building of the fifteenth century, situated to the east of the refectory, remains in a tolerably perfect state, and the position of the old priory mill is indicated by a modern structure erected about seventy years ago.

Adjoining the mill is the priory orchard, said to be the oldest in England.

At some distance to the north-west of the domestic buildings were the chapel and cloisters, of which some vestiges remain in their original positions, but around them modern walls and hedges have been formed. The bases of a doorway, deeply recessed, having four detached shafts on each side, and beautifully moulded, lead to the supposition that the Priory as a whole was a most important architectural work. I also found several scattered fragments of Early English foliage. No doubt many interesting objects lie buried in the priory lands, and possibly even the tombs of the two bishops Warelwast.

In the Norman and Early English and Decorated work about here we find that granite was never used, although to be obtained in the immediate locality.^[9] It was probably rejected, not merely because it was hard to work, but on account of its cold and colourless appearance. Thus, in the Priory and in the most ancient portions of the two churches, i.e., the chancels, you will 189find no dressings or moulded work in that material, but in the beautiful and durable green slate-stone from St. Germans or Boringdon, and in Caen stone; and to give still more artistic effect to their buildings, they used sparingly a close red sandstone, obtained from a distance. There are some rather old-looking houses in Plympton, which are said to be built entirely of stone from the priory, and in one front in particular may be observed this beautiful masonry of the thirteenth century, in green and red, arranged almost like a draught board.

The Perpendicular builders were not, as a rule, remarkable for artistic feeling. They saw beauty in size, uniformity, and in the endless repetition of a stereotyped panel; and one can imagine archæologists of the fifteenth century regarding contemporary architects much as we look upon the designers of the glass and iron palaces of the present day. The greater part of the churches of Plympton St. Mary and Plympton St. Maurice are Perpendicular and built of granite, in large blocks, and there is not that sharp and elegant detail in this as in the earlier work.

St. Mary’s is a pretty and picturesque church now; but it was probably more than two hundred years before the granite began to tone down, and the ivy and lichen to cling to it—neither, as a rule, “take kindly,” as the saying is in Devonshire, to granite.

The limits of this paper will not allow of my giving anything like a detailed description of Plympton St. Mary Church. Full justice has already been done this edifice by the late Rev. W. I. Coppard, who was largely instrumental in its being restored. The Early Decorated chancel—with its fine east window and elaborate sedilia and piscina—is one of the best specimens of the period in the county. Not the least interesting part of the church is the south porch and parvise over, which the late Mr. H. H. Treby took most commendable pains to restore. The groining of the porch is admirable, though 190in the re-dressing and chiselling of the ribs and bosses the original character of the work has been partially impaired. In restorations, much is lost through the desire to see things look fresh and new.

In the Strode, or St. Catherine chapel, is the monument of Sir William Strode, with the effigies of the knight and his two wives:—

And over the knight:—

The Town Church of Plympton, originally dedicated to Thomas à Becket, but, when rebuilt in the fifteenth century, to St. Maurice, consists of a nave, north and south aisles, and a fine tower at the west end, in the Perpendicular style of the fifteenth century, and a chancel, as at St. Mary’s, of an earlier date, having an interesting sedilia and good decorated window at the east end—speaking of the masonry, and not of the glass, which is extremely bad. The south porch has a vaulted roof and parvise over, as at the other church.

Much has been done of late years towards improving this parish church, but its internal effect is entirely marred by the unsightly plastered roof of the nave, and the close pews or pens. The nave-roof, I find by reference to the vestry book, was re-constructed in the year 1752, after the model of the new roof in Stoke Damerel Church, then recently put up. That was the dark age of English taste. How very dark may be imagined from this plagiarism.

191There are memorial windows in this church to members of the Treby family, and monuments to the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, Admiral Cotton, and other local celebrities. The following epitaph is the most curious:—

The shaft of a large granite cross, probably the market cross, was discovered about forty-two years ago embedded in a wall of the Guildhall, taken down in the course of some alterations.

In the register of this parish are some curious entries. Thus, there is record of a plague which carried off a great number of the inhabitants; and on one occasion forty marriages are said to have taken place in one day, by proclamation, at the Market Cross. This was during the Commonwealth, when the religious ceremony was ignored, and against the entry some stout Royalist or disappointed bachelor has written: “This was the hour and power of darkness.”

We have yet to touch on the politics of the town.

Plympton became a borough town, with the privileges of a market and fairs, by a charter from Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon, dated March 25th, 1241. The 192borough sent members to Parliament as early as the twenty-third year of Edward I.’s reign, and continued to do so until disfranchised in 1832. It was a very respectable constituency of nearly a hundred free burgesses, who were sworn in by the corporation, which consisted of a mayor, recorder, and eight aldermen, called the Common Council.

The Strode influence was great in the town from a very early time, and several members of that family sat in Parliament for Plympton. In Elizabeth’s reign, Sir John Hele, a distinguished lawyer, and at one time King’s Sergeant, was returned for the borough. A little later, Sir Francis Drake, nephew of the great Sir Francis, and successor to the baronetcy, became member. In Charles I.’s reign, Sir William Strode, one of the most distinguished of the great party which then resisted the undue authority of the Crown, and who, with three other members, was committed to the tower by the King, sat in Parliament for Plympton. Another famous member for Plympton was Sir Nicholas Slanning, a staunch Royalist, who distinguished himself, especially, as a brave soldier in the siege of Bristol. Then we have the memorable names of Sir George Treby (ancestor of the late Mr. H. H. Treby) and Sir John Maynard, and at quite a late period in the history of this borough, Lord Castlereagh represented it in Parliament.

In an interesting address delivered by the last recorder of the town, Mr. Deeble Boger, on the occasion of the corporation resigning their functions in 1859, it was stated that the borough was “what was called a nomination borough, that is, those two families who had the greatest number of friends, and to whom, from the period of the revolution, the gratitude of the borough was justly due—the Trebys, in whom great interest naturally centred, and the Edgcumbes, who were connected with the borough in the same way—possessed the power of nominating a member, and this nomination consisted in 193their recommending him for election. This power was subject to one limitation, that the person recommended should be of the same politics as the electors.”

Perhaps the greatest representative the borough ever had was Sir Christopher Wren. It was in May, 1685, that this distinguished architect was elected Member of Parliament for Plympton. How this came to pass, and which of the two great parties he represented, we are not precisely informed, but may easily conjecture, as Plympton was always a Tory borough. No doubt he occasionally thought, though he might not say, with Mercutio, “A plague on both your houses,” for men of science and artists—and he was in a high degree an artist—are seldom very ardent politicians. Still, we know he was a staunch Royalist and Churchman. His father was Dean of Windsor; his uncle, the Bishop of Ely, had been imprisoned in the Tower for nearly twenty years during the Commonwealth; he himself was a Fellow of All Souls’, Oxford, and held a professorship at that University, at an extremely orthodox period. There are other reasons for supposing that he stuck pretty close to the court and government of the day. His father being Dean, and Sir Christopher himself having only the year before been appointed Comptroller of the Works at Windsor, we may readily imagine that he came down to the independent electors of Plympton with a rather strong recommendation from the Dean and Chapter, who were, as they are still, the patrons of the living in this borough. And when he came (always supposing that he did come, and that he did not merely send his respects from London), he was, no doubt, well entertained by the gentlemen of his party in the town, and lustily cheered by the agricultural non-electors, who always exhibited a great deal of enthusiasm under the stimulating influence of an election, and were never heard again to express their sentiments until the next parliament brought down a new member for the eyes of all Plympton—not to say 194“all Europe”—to gaze upon. Many of the inhabitants, however, who were acquainted with Sir Christopher’s fame, may be supposed to have regarded their representative with admiration and pride. Just nineteen years before, the terrible Fire had devastated the metropolis, and now London was rising like a phœnix from the ashes by his magic wand. Exactly ten years before he had himself laid the foundation stone of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and now the first stage of that great work had been just completed, the choir and its side aisles, and critics, who remembered old St. Paul’s in its Gothic glory, and had seen Inigo Jones defacing and tinkering the venerable fane with his Palladian porticoes and urns, were flocking to the churchyard. The new structure was already too grand and unique not to be commended; but there was yet a quarter of a century’s laborious and incessant work before the top stone could be raised, and the gilded cross could crown the noble dome. The same architect, the same master-builder, and the same bishop, who witnessed the beginning of the great work in 1675, saw its close in 1710.

Sir Christopher Wren, the member for Plympton, was probably the first architect ever returned to the House of Commons. There have been several since then, and their presence in Parliament has no doubt tended to advance public taste, and to further many great and important national works.

The Guildhall was built or, rather, restored in 1696, some years after Sir Christopher Wren represented the town, and it may be safely asserted that he had no hand in designing the present elevation, because, quaint and picturesque though it is, his style is nowhere stamped on it. It is, however, said (with what truth I cannot say) that he was the architect of Plympton House, a large and substantial mansion, with a façade of Portland stone, erected in the reign of Queen Anne for Mr. Commissioner Ourry, of Plymouth Dockyard. It is a plain but 195costly building, in the then newly-adopted style, with a certain French character about it. The large and broad barred sash windows, with their weights and pulleys, which were novelties at that time, must have greatly puzzled Snug, the joiner of Plympton, who had been accustomed all his days to the old English casements.

The Guildhall has more of the mediæval character about it, with its pillars and arches and covered way, like the Chester Rows, and probably it was intended to have some resemblance to the Guildhall in the county town—a humble but by no means unsuccessful imitation. Thus we follow suit in buildings as in everything else, though the architecture of our towns would, no doubt, be more entertaining if we oftener aimed at originality, and played a card of our own occasionally.^[10]

Speaking of cards reminds me that in the same street with the Guildhall are some curious old slated fronts, in which the slates have been cut in the shape of clubs, 196spades, hearts, and diamonds. Under these fronts we have also the covered way.

We now come to a building a little to the south-east of the church, around which so many treasured associations cluster, that we hardly know whether we have yet said adieu to the sacred edifices of Plympton. The old Grammar School is the most venerable and interesting school of art in all England. Here the greatest English painter—a man for “all time”—learnt the first principles of drawing. The house in which he was born overlooks his schoolroom and his playground. Here, too, Northcote, his clever and eccentric pupil, acquired his, perhaps not very classic, education. This, also, was the first school of the late distinguished President of the Royal Academy, Sir Charles Eastlake, and the Alma Mater of poor Benjamin Haydon. A mournful interest, indeed, attaches to the building as connected with the last-mentioned name. The year before he died Haydon visited the old Grammar School, and wrote his name in pencil on the wall, where you may still see it:—

This was only a few months before a dark and impenetrable cloud shrouded the clear intellect of this gifted man, and his life—so useful, but so ill-requited—closed in saddest gloom.

The key-stone of the doorway under the cloister gives the date of the building as 1664. Strange to say, it is a Gothic structure of the most picturesque design and arrangement. At the time it was built, architecture had been given over almost entirely to the Renaissance and Italian schools. It is singular, therefore, to find here at Plympton an unconventional style adopted at such a time, but it has been suggested that the same eccentric architect 197who designed the fine Gothic church of Charles in Plymouth in the middle of the seventeenth century built also the Grammar School in the neighbouring town, and the points of resemblance are certainly very great. We have the same evidence of the desire to do something good and true in both—the same good outline and arrangement of parts, and the same superadded faults in little details, as though the designer himself knew what he was about, but could not bring his workmen up to the mark. No wonder little Reynolds saw something to admire in the outline and shadows of the cloisters, for nothing can be better than the proportions of the pillars and arches, and the banding of the masonry over in alternate courses about six inches high, of granite and dark limestone. In fact, the lower portion of the building is the most pleasing piece of masonry in this neighbourhood; and though the large square-headed windows over are not so good, yet the angle of the roof is excellent, and the large Perpendicular windows at the ends not without merit. The schoolroom is about sixty-three feet long by twenty-six feet in width, the master’s desk at one end, and on each side of the window (over) a rudely-painted shield, with the armorial bearings of Hele and Maynard. Overhanging the entrance on one side is a small gallery, approached from a chamber probably once used as a class or flogging room, but now too dilapidated for either practical purpose, and much in keeping with the rest of the building, which is rather out at elbows. In fact—what with the Castle, Priory, and Grammar School—the description which the American gave of Rome will apply to Plympton—“Quite a nice place, but the public buildings very much out of repair.” The Master’s house adjoins the school-room, and here the great painter was born. The front appears to be comparatively modern, but the bedroom in which he is said to have first seen the light is in the back and older part of the house, with a window overlooking the school and playground, 198as before mentioned. Some rough sketches, drawn by Reynolds in his youth, were to be seen on the walls of this room when Haydon and Wilkie visited the house in 1809, but have since been obliterated by some barbarous whitewasher. The engraving represents the cloisters of the Grammar School, the subject of almost the first drawing Reynolds ever made.

Sir Joshua Reynolds was born on the 16th July, 1723, and was baptized on the 30th of the same month, when, by mistake, his name was entered in the register as Joseph.

It is unnecessary here to give anything like a sketch of the great painter’s career, but one or two incidents connected with the place of his birth (to which throughout his life he was strongly attached) may be mentioned. He regarded with the greatest satisfaction and pleasure his visit to Devonshire with Dr. Johnson in 1762. It was on this occasion that Northcote first saw his great master. It seems that Sir Joshua went to Plymouth Dock, in company with the Doctor, on a certain day when there was a great commotion in reference to some local matter, probably the water question. “I remember,” says Northcote, “when he was pointed out to me at a public meeting, where a great crowd was assembled, I got as near to him as I could from the pressure of the people, to touch the skirt of his coat, which I did with great satisfaction to my mind.”

In 1772, Sir Joshua was elected to the Aldermanic gown of Plympton, Lord Mount Edgcumbe acquainting him by letter of the circumstance. The letter in which he acknowledges the honour, with most hearty thanks, is in the Cottonian Museum at Plymouth. In the following year he was chosen Mayor of the borough, and he declared that this circumstance gave him more gratification than any other honour which he had received during his life; and this sentiment he expressed when it was rather out of place, as the following circumstance related 199by Northcote will shew. Reynolds had built for his recreation on Richmond Hill a villa, of which Sir William Chambers was architect, and in the summer season it was the frequent custom of Sir Joshua to dine at this place with select parties of his friends. “It happened some little time before he was to be elected Mayor of Plympton that, one day, after dining at the house, himself and his party took an evening walk in Richmond Gardens, when, very unexpectedly, at a turning of one of the avenues, they suddenly met the King, accompanied by a part of the Royal Family; and when, as his Majesty saw him, it was impossible for him to withdraw without being noticed. The King called to him, and immediately entered into conversation, and told him that he had been informed of the office that he was soon to be invested with—that of being made the Mayor of his native town of Plympton. Sir Joshua was astonished that so minute and inconsiderable a circumstance, which was of importance only to himself, should have come so quickly to the knowledge of the King; but he assured his Majesty of its truth, saying it was an honour which gave him more pleasure than any other he had ever received in his life; and then, luckily recollecting himself, added, ‘except that which your Majesty was graciously pleased to bestow upon me,’ alluding to his knighthood.”

On the occasion of his being elected Mayor, he presented to his much-loved native town his own portrait, painted, as it seems, expressly to commemorate the occasion. It was placed in the Corporation dining-room, but sold by the Common Council for £150 when the town was disfranchised! That this was “the hour and power of darkness” there cannot be a doubt.

Sir Joshua Reynolds died on the 23rd February, 1792, and was interred in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral with every honour that could be shewn to worth and genius. His tomb, adorned by one of Flaxman’s best works, is 200almost close to that of Sir Christopher Wren—England’s greatest painter, we may almost say without any qualification, and England’s greatest architect—each, during some portion of life connected with this honoured little town of Plympton, though by different ties and at different periods of its history; both resting from their labours in the great temple which Wren built, and which Reynolds sought to adorn with his matchless pencil.

The great honour which belongs to Plympton deserves to be held in lasting remembrance, not merely by every inhabitant of that town, but by all who have any appreciation of art or desire for its advancement.

From a Drawing by S. Prout, Jun.]

[Engraved by Neele.

The “War Prison” on Dartmoor, 1807.

In the early part of the nineteenth century Mr. Thomas, afterwards Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, who held the office of Lord Warden of the Stannaries under the then Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., originated the idea of building a prison on Dartmoor for the numerous prisoners of war then in Great Britain, who were at that time mostly confined in hulks and military and naval prisons. The Government of that day took up the idea, and, adopting the plans of Mr. Daniel Alexander, proceeded to carry them out, the first stone of the prison being laid by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt on the 20th March, 1806.

The site of the prison—about seven miles east of Tavistock and about fifteen (straight across the moor) south of Okehampton—was granted by the Prince of Wales, as Duke of Cornwall and Lord of the Forest of Dartmoor.

The building as then built is described in the Notes to Risdon’s Devonshire, published in 1811, as follows:—

202The total cost of the work was nearly £130,000, and it was completed somewhere about the year 1809, and the collection of houses gradually formed what is now known as Princetown.

The first set of prisoners was sent there on the 29th May, 1809, and the buildings continued to be used as a war prison from then until the 22nd April, 1814, during which time no less than 12,679 prisoners underwent confinement there. During the years 1809, 1810 and 1811, deaths at the prison were very numerous from one cause and another, so much so, that a Return was asked for in the House of Commons, by which it appears that from May, 1809, to June, 1811, no less than 622 prisoners died.

The following is a copy of such Returns:—

In the year 1812 no less than 6,280 prisoners of war were confined in the buildings. The total number of deaths during the whole time the buildings were used as a war prison was 1,117; of these 1,095 were French, and 22 American, prisoners.

Of the life of the prisoners inside the prison little is known. We know that Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt procured the privilege of holding a market and a fair at Princetown, and that daily markets were held within the precincts of the prison for the sale by the country people of vegetables, etc., to the prisoners. There are rumours that the prisoners gambled away their clothing and rations; but their life as prisoners on Dartmoor must have been infinitely preferable to that endured by those who were previous thereto confined in hulks and transports; but the details of the life are wanting, and even the pamphlet written by Capt. Vernon Harris, for many years Governor of Dartmoor Prison after it was re-opened, gives no great information on the subject. Many writers of fiction have founded romances on the prison and the prisoners, but for the most part on imagination. Probably the best of the kind, and most accurate in detail, is The Queen of the Moor, by the Rev. Frederick Adye, who was for many years resident in the district, and therefore well acquainted with the surrounding country and the rumours of the neighbourhood. Monsieur Jules Poulain, a Frenchman 204who is said to have lived at Princetown to be near a friend who was confined there, has written in the French language an interesting book entitled Dartmoor, or the Two Sisters. He, in describing Dartmoor, says:—“Think of the ocean waves changed into granite during a tempestuous storm, and you will then form an idea of what Dartmoor is like,” which indeed gives rather a vivid picture of the rolling hills and valleys.

Many of the prisoners of war were allowed out on parole. From Capt. Vernon Harris’ interesting pamphlet we learn the form of parole was as follows:—

The following towns in Devon and Cornwall were set aside for prisoners on parole:—Ashburton, Okehampton, Moretonhampstead, Tavistock, Bodmin, Launceston, Callington, Roscoe and Regilliack, but probably prisoners were from time to time billetted in other towns such as Tiverton (mentioned later) and elsewhere.

TheThe following notice was sent and posted as notice to the inhabitants of the town selected for residence of the prisoners allowed out on parole:—

In reference to Tavistock, the Prison Commissioners reported that there were 150 prisoners there allowed out on parole, and that their conduct was exemplary. The Report further stated—

When allowed out on parole the prisoner was assigned to some place of residence, after which he received a fixed sum for his maintenance, and was permitted to engage in any kind of business or occupation, and to use any additional funds he might possess. Many of the prisoners occupied their time in teaching languages, and in carving various things such as chessmen, etc.

There are instances of attempts by the prisoners on parole to escape. At the Devon Summer Assize, 1812, Richard Tapper, described as of Moretonhampstead, Carrier, Thomas Vinnacombe and William Vinnacombe (his brother) of Cheriton Bishop, described in the indictments as Smugglers (a curious and, one would have thought, a somewhat prejudiced description of their occupation), were indicted and convicted of misdemeanour for 206aiding and assisting, with divers other persons unknown, Casimer Baudouin, an officer in the French Navy; Allain Michel and Louis Hamel, Captains of Merchant Vessels; Pierre Joseph Dennis, a Second Captain of a Privateer; and Andrew Fleuriot, a Midshipman of the French Navy, to escape from Moretonhampstead. The French prisoners paid £25 down, and subsequently £150 for the assistance rendered. They were taken on horseback to Topsham, and placed in a large boat described as eighteen feet long, but in going down the estuary of the Exe, however, not far from Exmouth, the boat grounded on the Bar, and they were apprehended. The story is somewhat graphically, though at considerable length, told in the records of the proceedings.

The French prisoners formed no less than twenty-six Lodges and Chapters of Freemasons in England and elsewhere. The only one in the neighbourhood of Dartmoor was at Ashburton, and the only evidence of it is an undated certificate granted to one Paul Carcenac, described as Assistant Commissary, the Lodge being described as “Des Amis Reunis” (the Re-united Friends). A copy of the certificate and many further interesting details concerning this and other Lodges, notably those at Abergavenny, “Enfants de Mars et de Neptune”; at Plymouth “Amis Reunis”; at Tiverton, “Enfants de Mars” (see Bro. Sharland’s Freemasonry in Tiverton, published in 1899), are given in a most interesting book by Bro. John T. Thorp entitled French Prisoners’ Lodges, published in 1900, and printed at Leicester by Bro. George Gibbons, King Street.

There appear to be but few records of the prisoners at the various towns, and only the vaguest reminiscences. In Okehampton it is said that there were about 150 prisoners on parole. In the Churchyard is a tombstone—a rough slate slab—on which appears the following:—

Another close by bears the following inscription:—

Many prisoners on parole died and were buried at Moretonhampstead, but the grave-stones are not easily decipherable. The following entries of burial appear in the Register:—

Of the numerous French prisoners who died at Princetown no account appears in the parish register, and to quote again from Capt. Vernon Harris’ book:

This will be readily understood when it is remembered the prison remained unoccupied from 1816 until about the year 1850. To Capt. Stopforth, who was Governor of the prison in 1865, belongs the honour of collecting the remains of the prisoners and burying them in two separate enclosures on the northern side of the prison way from the public road, and erecting monuments which are at present existing, being granite columns; the one on the left or western side being the French, bears the following inscription:—

The other, being the American, bears the same inscription except that the word “French” is altered to “American.”

After the prison was discontinued as a war prison, various schemes were started for utilising the buildings. The late Prince Consort visited the Duchy Estates in 1846, and the question of making use of the old prison came under his notice. In 1850 began the formation of a Convict Settlement, and gradually the old buildings have been pulled down so that now only one small portion, known as the French Prison, remains. As a convict prison all the prisoners—and the average is about one thousand—are those who have been sentenced to penal servitude. Many are sent specially to Dartmoor for the benefit of their health, the climate, in the early stages of chest complaint, being most efficacious. Medical officers of the prison and elsewhere have from time to time 209recorded their opinion of the great advantages which are derived by phthisical patients from residence at such an altitude above the sea-level.

Much of the information derived is from Capt. Vernon Harris’ pamphlet, Rowe’s Dartmoor, 3rd Edition, published in 1896, and from the various references thereto. Some of the statistics are contained in the writer’s paper on the prison printed in the transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1901, xxiii. pp. 309–321.

If the traveller passing down the Vale of Otter by rail looks out to the East, he will see a great grey church with transeptal towers—a rare feature—one crowned with a spire, standing on rising ground backed by a great continuous chine of hill. Around the church nestles a small town, and a clear, swift river hastens by it to the sea. This is the Collegiate Church of Ottery St. Mary, mainly the creation of Bishop Grandisson. Edward the Confessor gave the Manor of Ottery St. Mary in 1061 to the Chapter of the Cathedral Church of Rouen, in Normandy. Bishop Grandisson bought the Manor in 1335, laid the foundations of the college for forty secular monks, and amplified the church to suit the college. Bishop Bronescombe consecrated a church here in 1260. His work is seen in the nave and transepts of the present building. Bishop Grandisson built the nave, lady chapel and side chapels, etc., raised the towers over the transepts, and covered the whole with a stone-groined roof. The church left his hands a miniature cathedral. A wealthy lady, Cicely Bonville, wife, first of the Marquis of Dorset, and then of Henry Lord Stafford, added the north aisle—1503–1523—with its grand fan-tracery groining, a purely indigenous feature, which may be seen repeated at Cullompton, and the whole result is a majesty and variety of external elevation which no building of its size can well surpass. It was the central figure of a group of 211buildings. Chapter-house, library, cloisters, gate-house, all were there. The houses for the dignitaries stood around. Fragments alone remain. There still stand the vicar’s house, the warden’s house, the chanter’s house, and the manor house containing portions of old work. The houses of the minister, the sacristan, and the canons have disappeared.

From these haunts of ancient peace there was issued, in 1509, Alexander Barclay’s Stultifera Navis, or Ship of Fools, a translation, or rather paraphrase, of the Narrenschiff of Sebastian Brandt, which originally appeared in the Swabian dialect. Barclay’s book contains much original work, and breaks the great period of literary silence between Chaucer and Spenser. When we say, “Man proposes, God disposes,” “skin deep,” “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” “of two evils choose the least,” “from pillar to post,” “sticking like burrs,” “over head and ears,” “you cannot touch pitch and not be defiled,” “making the mouth water,” “out of sight out of mind,” “the burnt child dreads the fire,” we are unconsciously using phrases which appear in their first form in Barclay’s writings.

The town was dominated by the College. The bridge by which you entered the town from the west was the bridge of the Holy Saviour. In one of its recesses the sacred light was ever kept burning, inviting those who passed to pray. We have Pater-noster Row, Jesu Street, Chapel Lane, Butts (St. Budeaux) Hill, Paradise; names of a flavour ecclesiastical. In the Flexton, as the open space is called where now the Town Hall and a Jubilee Memorial Pillar to Queen Victoria stand, the markets and fairs were held, and in the churchyard may still be seen the ancient stocks. Great fires, however, in 1604, 1767, and 1866, have destroyed much of interest in the town.

Henry VI. visited the College in 1451, and Henry VII. in 1497.

The College disappeared at the Reformation. Some portion of its funds were used to found the King’s 212Grammar School, which took root in what remained of the collegiate buildings. The fortunes of the school varied with the capacities of the head masters. It was successful under the Rev. John Coleridge, 1760–1781, and under his son, the Rev. George Coleridge, 1794–1808, it became almost the equal of Blundell’s School at Tiverton. It subsequently slowly declined, the buildings were unsuited to modern requirements, and it finally disappeared, reviving recently on another site in another form under a scheme of the Charity Commission.

The town must have sadly suffered for a time from a dissolution of the College. But as soon as the rule of Philip II. in England was over, and his fanaticism began to work in the Netherlands, the Flemings flying to England added a great impetus to our wool trade. Some, I think, must have come to Ottery St. Mary, for a flourishing woollen industry sprang up here about this time, and a small outlying portion of the town still bears the name of Dunkirk. The pastoral character of the Vale of Otter, and the ample water-power of the river were advantageous to the trade, which was only killed by the discovery of steam.

The great factory built by Sir George Yonge, the Secretary of State for War in 1790, a prominent feature to the passer-by, shows the extent to which the industry once flourished.

In Mill Street there stood a house “beturreted and wearing a monasterial aspect,” which Sir Walter Ralegh, who was born at Poer’s Hayes, now Hayesbarton, further down the valley, is said once to have inhabited. A house built in the quiet, dignified style of the eighteenth century, called Ralegh House, marks the site.

Our town and vale were not unnoticed by poets. William Browne, the author of Britannia’s Pastorals, full of quaint conceits, but with a true vein of poetry running through them, alludes to the Naïads who fish and swim in the clear stream of Otter. And he is believed, on the 213authority of Southey, to be the author of two fine inscriptions in the small south chapel of the church, one on John Sherman and his son, who died on the same day in 1617, and one on the wife of Gideon Sherman, who died in the first week of her marriage.

Michael Drayton thus described the broad pastoral character of our vale:—

At the time of the Great Rebellion, Ottery St. Mary was for a time occupied by the King’s troops. At the advance of the Parliamentary army, however, in 1645, they withdrew beyond Exe, and the Roundheads took their place. The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Thomas Fairfax, took up his quarters at the Chanter’s House, then owned by Robert Collins, a strong sympathiser. Fairfax was accompanied by Ireton as Commissary, and John Pickering as Colonel. In the dining-room, which still exists, and was then called the Great Parlour, he met Lord General Cromwell, and determined on the plan of campaign against the King’s forces in the West, which terminated in the capitulation of Sir Ralph Hopton in Cornwall in March, 1646. This room Polwhele calls “the Convention Room.” Here also a number of members of Parliament, in the name of both Houses, presented Fairfax with a fair jewel set with diamonds of great value, which they tied with blue ribbon and hung about his neck in grateful recognition of his signal services at Naseby.

Sickness overtook the army during its stay, and they removed to Tiverton. Local opinion at the Restoration swung round to the Monarchy, the Stuarts, and the Church of England. Violent strife, political and ecclesiastical, embittered social life. The Rev. Robert Collins, of the Chanter’s House, a descendant of the host of Fairfax, was the leader of the Nonconformists, and Mr. Haydon, of Cadhay, a fine quadrangular Tudor House in the 214neighbourhood, upheld the dominant party. Robert Collins insisted on disobeying the Act of Uniformity, 1662, and the Conventicle Act, 1664. Haydon resolved to see the law obeyed. There was a constant besetting of the Chanter’s House to discover the holding of an unlawful prayer-meeting, and finally persistent persecution drove Robert Collins and his family to Holland in 1685, where he died, brave and unflinching to the last, bequeathing money to the building of the Independent Chapel at Ottery St. Mary.

This chapel, built of old-time furze-burnt bricks in the manner known as “the Flemish bond,” is one of the oldest in the kingdom, has an air of Quaker-like seclusion, and is surrounded by a small graveyard occupying the site of an ancient bowling green. There existed a trap-door in the floor at the back of the pulpit, through which the minister could fly in case of danger, into the vaults which still exist below the schoolroom. The parish workhouse, now converted into cottages, stands near St. Saviour’s Bridge. Here, on the ground floor, were ranged the chained lunatics, to whom passers-by would throw scraps of bone and odds and ends to appease their raving hunger.

At the Vicar’s House was born, in 1772, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His father, the Rev. John Coleridge, vicar and schoolmaster, was an erudite Hebrew scholar, and assisted Dr. Kennicott in his literary labours. He was a pious, simple soul, beloved by his family, whose amusing absence of mind is described in a diverting anecdote by De Quincey, not quite fit to be repeated here. One of his scholars was Francis Buller, who sat for twenty-two years as a puisne judge, through whose influence Samuel Taylor Coleridge obtained a nomination at Christ’s Hospital.

From the Portrait]

[By Peter Vandyck.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

This is not the place to describe at length the career of Ottery St. Mary’s most gifted son. But we can read in his poems of the profound influence of early scenes in the home of his boyhood upon the poet’s imagination. In 215his sonnet to the river Otter, his “native brook, wild streamlet of the West,” in after years he calls up the vision of the crossing plank, the marge with willows grey, the bedded sand, the flung stone leaping along its breast.

The last two lines describe with exquisite felicity the peaceful passages between the “stickles” of the bickering river.

In the year 1789, he cut his initials, “S. T. C.,” on the rock just outside Pixie’s Parlour, a small cavern in the sandstone on the left bank half a mile down stream.

Always keenly sensible to music, the cadence of the old church bells rang in his ears in later life when far away from home, for he sings:—

He spoke of them to Charles Lamb, his schoolfellow; for though Charles Lamb never came to Ottery St. Mary and never heard the bells, he makes his characters allude to them thus:—

A. W. Kinglake, the author of Eothen and the History of the Crimean War, was educated here at Rock House, now Sandrock, under the Rev. Edward Coleridge, who kept a successful private school. In the year 1849, Thackeray published the novel Pendennis. He lived as a 216youth at Larkbeare House, and the scene of many of his incidents is laid in the neighbourhood. We read of the little river running off noisily westward, of the fair background of sunshiny hills that stretch towards the sea, of the pattens clacking through the empty streets, of the schoolboys making a good, cheerful noise, scuffling with their feet as they march into church and up the organ-loft stair, and blowing their noses a good deal during the sermon; of the factory, of the single pair of old posters that earned their scanty livelihood by transporting the gentry round to the county dinners; of the hollow tree in Escot Park (then a noble house built by Inigo Jones, since burnt down, and now replaced by a modern building, the seat of the Right Hon. Sir J. H. Kennaway), in which the young lovers deposited their letters; and above all of the great grey towers rising up in purple splendour, of which the sun illuminates the delicate carving, deepening the shadows of the huge buttresses and gilding the glittering windows.

The town contributed its share to science. Here, in 1806, in Ralegh House, was born Edward Davy. In 1836 he sketched out a plan of telegraphic communication, and in 1837 he laid down a copper wire round the inner circle at Regent’s Park, and made wonderful experiments in electricity with it. In March, 1837, he took the first step to patent his invention by “entering a caveat,” and deposited with Mr. Aikin, Secretary of the Society of Arts, a sealed description of his invention, anticipating Cook and Wheatstone by two months. His invention and that of Cook and Wheatstone were held not to be quite identical. In 1839 he emigrated to Australia, leaving the field to his rivals.

The inhabitants are remarkable for the love which they bear towards their birthplace. In London a society of over one hundred members of townsfolk who have left to seek their fortunes in other scenes meet at regular intervals to talk over the present local gossip and call 217up past associations, and to renew or form a community of feeling based on common love of home. And when the members take a holiday, the first object of their pilgrimage, the shrine towards which their footsteps are directed, is the dear old town of Ottery St. Mary.

Buried in the vestry vault of the churchyard of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, London, so near that their coffins actually touch, are the mortal remains of two remarkable Englishmen.

The one is a Worcestershire worthy, Samuel Butler, the author of Hudibras, a caricaturist in verse of the times in which he lived. His chief character, giving name to the book by which he is best known, was suggested by Sir Samuel Luke, his puritan patron, whilst the book itself, commenced in 1663 and modelled after the Don Quixote of Cervantes, is in its faithful exposure of cant and hypocrisy scarcely inferior to its spirited Spanish prototype.

From a Painting by Opie.]

[Engraved by C. H. Hodges.

Dr. Wolcot (“Peter Pindar”).

The other distinguished person who found a resting-place so near him, also a satirist and an accomplished genius with many and varied gifts, was Dr. John Wolcot, a Devonian, born at Kingsbridge, or, more accurately, 219Dodbrooke, who is better known as Peter Pindar, whose lively writings were most popular in the time of the later Georges, and who then enjoyed a large measure of favour with society, whose questionable manners he so fearlessly portrayed, and for a while at least with the Court, every one of whom in turn, from the King and Prince Regent down to the royal kitchen maids and cooks, he mercilessly, cleverly, and continuously lampooned.

It is with this latter curious and cosmopolitan poet and satirist that we have to do. We shall be obliged to tread carefully as we follow the track of his life and his literature, for at the very outset we must remember that the times in which he lived were coarse and in many ways objectionable, and that he was, if not a product, at least a reflection of them.

We may wonder why he took upon himself the name of Pindar with the added apostolic difference—Peter. Was it done playfully or satirically, as was usual with him? Perhaps it was a joke at the expense of his neighbours, whose talk was so seldom on literature and art, but so often on oves et boves. Turning to the Biographia Classica, which he very possibly used, we read:—“Pindar, the first of the lyric poets born in Bœotia.... He quitted his native country, which was proverbial for the stupidity of its inhabitants, and went to Athens, where the greatest honours were bestowed upon him.... Such was the respect paid to his memory that when the Lacedemonians took Thebes, they spared his house, as also did Alexander the Great.” To this historical fact Wolcot frequently alluded, as, for instance, in the clever poem entitled—

221His allusions to Pindar the Greater make one fear that he has paid an ill compliment to his old friends, and that in his choice of a nom de plume he has allowed, as in many other instances, his merciless satire to overcome his evenness of judgment. Like his namesake, he turned from the country to find his laurels in the town, and there the parallel ends. It is not true that the people of South Devon, who singularly combine agricultural skill with good seamanship, so that they handle equally well the plough and the oar, are open to any implication of special dulness.

There is little in common between the two Pindars, the ancient and the modern. Peter displayed great skill of a kind in his versification, but no one can say it was to any extent truly lyrical. We cannot imagine the people singing his productions. They were popular, readable, pungent, savoury (too much so by a long way), but certainly not lyrical, for he had not the singer’s heart or the singer’s sweetness. Beyond the attraction of “apt alliteration’s artful aid,” we can see no great reason why he should have gone so far as Thebes in 540 B.C. to appropriate the name of that ancient singer of triumphal hymns for classic warriors.

There is a pretty story of the older Pindar that a swarm of bees lighted on his cradle in his infancy and left honey on his lips; but we fear in the case of our hero they were wasps that came, and that they left some of the caustic venom of their stings.

The odes of Pindar the Great have survived and are to be admired “for sublimity of sentiment, grandeur of expression, energy and magnificence of style, boldness of metaphors, harmony of numbers, and elegance of diction.” According to Horace he was inimitable, and all succeeding writers have agreed in extolling his genius.

Peter Pindar also called his favourite productions odes. We have them before us in bulky quartos as originally published, and in numerous volumes of pocket 222size as collected in 1816 by Walker. They were written in Cornwall, Devon, the West Indies, Bath and London, and covered a very wide range of subjects. He approached the realm of poetry as George Morland did that of pictorial art, refusing no subject on account of its coarseness, and yet with his fidelity of treatment in describing both rustic and town life, has often shown a fine appreciation of truth and of the beautiful.

Like George Morland he was spoiled by moral laxity, and like him always gives us a sad impression of what he might have been and might have done, if his clever genius had been kept within bounds by moral restraint. But, alas! even as an old man, he retained a taste for the follies which corrupted his youth, and continued to reflect too faithfully the spirit of those immoral days when the scandalous manners of the court were injurious alike to the Church and the State. It would have been better for him to have taken the advice he gives in one of his odes:—

The name of the classic Pindar has been associated with other writers than Dr. Wolcot, who probably have better claims to use it than ever he had.

Thomas Gray (1716–1771), whose monument in Westminster Abbey bears these lines:

Jean Dorot (1507–1588) and Pouce Denis Debrun (1729–1807), have each worn the title of French Pindar, whilst Gabriello Cluobrera (1552–1637) was the acknowledged Italian Pindar. Peter’s work has been translated into most 223of the continental tongues, and has been appreciated in Germany especially but not in France, his Francophobia being all too evident in many allusions to the French people. His poetry is too full of the localisms of his native county to be fully appreciated by any but Devonians, and too full of personal and political references and allusions to persons about the court and in the London society of that day to appeal successfully to readers of the present generation.

Our Dr. John Wolcot was the fourth child of Dr. Alexander Wolcot, himself a surgeon’s son residing at Kingsbridge, on the bank of the estuary at the foot of the town. The grounds of the family dwelling extended from the old Dartmouth Road at the back down to the water’s edge, and the house, though much altered, still retains its name of Pindar Lodge. His baptismal register, preserved at the Church of St. Thomas à Becket, Dodbrooke, is dated May 9th, 1738. Of his mother we have not been able to gather much information beyond her name—Mary Ryder—and that she belonged to a local family. The Ryders are still numerously represented in the townships both of Kingsbridge and Dodbrooke.

The Grammar School of Kingsbridge, erected at the cost of the old Puritan, Thomas Crispin, Merchant of Exeter, and endowed by him in 1670, was the place where he commenced his education under the mastership of John Morris. It is to be regretted that no roll of scholars earlier than 1830 is extant, so that we have to depend upon indirect though undoubted evidence as to his connection with this school, but there are lively legends of his school days preserved in the folk-lore of the district, one of which is too characteristic to be omitted.

A certain cobbler whose shop was in the street leading to the Grammar School, a man disliked by the boys, and specially so by young Wolcot, was, to the amazement and horror of the whole township, reported to have been cruelly murdered whilst sitting at his stall. The neighbours, 224on looking in, were terror-stricken to find the man and his shop from floor to ceiling bespattered with blood. The cobbler was certainly living, but too terrified to speak of the nature of his wounds, his features being covered with gore. He was not, however, seriously injured; indeed he was much frightened and little hurt. What had happened was this. Young Wolcot, whose threats of vengeance against the offender had been somewhat mysterious for several days, had procured an old blunderbuss from his father’s house and had duly charged it with powder, but instead of shot had loaded it with bullock’s blood, and deliberately fired it in the cobbler’s face; of course in one moment transforming the whole appearance of things, and creating in the peaceful neighbourhood a great sensation.

Such escapades no doubt made it desirable that he should change his quarters, and he was presently transferred to the care of an uncle practising as a surgeon at Fowey, in Cornwall. He attended the Grammar School for awhile at Liskeard, and after that at Bodmin, under the mastership of a clergyman named Fisher.

After this he spent one year in completion of his education in France (1760). He failed to appreciate the French, and the dislike was quite mutual. Of them he said in one of his odes:—

On his return to England he became his uncle’s pupil and medical student for seven years. A reflection of his duties is cleverly given in one of his lyrics, apparently addressed to Opie, his pupil in art:—

225Drawing, painting, and classical reading seem, however, to have claimed too much of his time, and his verse-making occupations were no doubt hindrances to his professional progress, for in them he was quite industrious, and from Fowey, in 1756, he sent his poem on the elder “Pitt’s recovery from Gout” to Martin’s Magazine.

His apprenticeship over, he spent a short time in the medical schools of London; then he returned to Devon, where Dr. Huxham, a celebrated Plymouth physician, did him the good service of examining him as to his competency in medicine and surgery, and recommended him to a northern university—that of Aberdeen—for a degree by diploma, which he was fortunate enough to get conferred upon him, receiving his M.D. in September, 1767.

In the same year came an opportunity for foreign travel, of which he eagerly availed himself. Sir William Trelawney, a connection of the family on his mother’s side, and a patient of his uncle’s in Cornwall, was that same year appointed Governor of the island of Jamaica, and taking young Wolcot with him, in a short time made the new-fledged doctor Physician General to the Forces in the island.

Whilst there, in 1769, the idea seems to have occurred to his patron rather than to himself that if he could give his young friend nothing more in the way of official promotion, there was yet the hopeful field of Church preferment, which, in the West Indies, he was able to command. The rich living of St. Ann’s, Jamaica, then enjoyed by an invalid clergyman, was likely to be soon vacant by his demise. Sir William was the patron, and without sufficient thought, as it seems to us, of Wolcot’s unfitness for such a solemn responsibility, urged him to go at once to England and qualify by ordination for the post.

This curious candidate for holy orders was actually ordained deacon on June 24th, 1769, and the following day priest, but he did not on his return secure the living of St. Ann’s, as the incumbent recovered his health and lived 226on for years. He was, however, solaced by the inferior living of Vere, a parish for which Wolcot procured the services of a curate, himself continuing to reside in the Government House at Spanish Town. The history of this transaction and the profanity of the language in which it is recorded are alike scandalous.

“Go,” said Sir William, “and get japanned. You may safely say that you have an inward call, for a hungry stomach can speak as loudly as a hungry soul!” O tempora, O mores! How very few persons ever imagine Peter Pindar in clerical guise. Sir William Trelawney died, Wolcot returned to England in company with his widow, who died on the voyage. Once more in England, he showed his good sense by reverting, despite the axiom “once a clerk always a clerk,” for his future occupation to medicine, letters, or the fine arts, leaving the sacred office to others.

As a medical man Peter Pindar was a modified failure at the best. He was cordially disliked by his brother practitioners in the Truro district, who in the end drove him out of it. His treatment of fever patients with copious libations of cold water roused their wrath, and they utterly despised the theory expressed in his own words that “a physician can do little more than watch Dame Nature and give her a shove on the back when he sees her inclined to do right.”

In letters he was far more successful, and was undoubtedly the most popular satirical poet of the Georgian period. Whether he lampooned individuals, or public bodies, the Royal Academicians, or Royalty itself, his versatile genius displayed such a wide range of accomplishments that he attracted hosts of readers, and his books commanded a prodigious sale. All the world has read of the King’s visit to Whitbread’s Brewery, and his wondering how the apples got into the apple dumplings, and not a few readers have felt for Sir Joseph Banks, James Boswell, and Benjamin West, as they came in turn under his stinging lash.

227His principal poems were issued from time to time as shilling or half-crown pamphlets. They were written in irregular, rollicking metre, the most important of them in the form of odes. In these he shines as a critic of music, painting, and literature. In all these directions he was, as he describes himself, “the most merciless Mohawk that ever scalped.” By such an expression he puts himself out of court as a safe and equitable judge. His appreciations of Wilson, of Gainsborough, of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and of J. M. W. Turner, have been endorsed by the foremost art writers of our time. Of Turner he said:—

Perhaps his least-known verses are those written for music and published from Exeter in the time of Jackson, the Cathedral organist, who was responsible for the airs to which they were sung. His own musical accomplishments were undoubtedly varied and sound.

Dr. Wolcot had much of the Bohemian in his constitution. He lived in a town where to this day a Puritan simplicity of manners marks the habits of the middle-class people. Quakers, Baptists, and Independents of the early Presbyterian type were numerous in the Kingsbridge of his day. If the old barn to which he addressed some of his odes could speak, it would tell of the visits of strolling players who, anathematised elsewhere, but welcomed by Peter Pindar, were allowed there to perform their bloodcurdling tragedies and questionable farces, to the scandal of the “unco guid.” And besides all this, old Richard Stanley, the king of the gipsies, grandfather of the present Romany patriarch of that name, was welcomed year by year to a shake-down in the straw when he came horse-dealing to Kingsbridge or to Dodbrooke Fair. Wolcot stoutly maintained that he never lost an egg or a chicken by his hospitality to the gipsies. We have heard the Bucklands, the Stanleys, and the Lees speak of his memory 228as of one who was kind to their fathers, and we have conversed with old people who have spoken of the building, which now stands almost unaltered, as the only theatre in Kingsbridge. Its interior is wonderfully like the picture of Hogarth’s called the “Strolling Players.” The fact that Bamfield Moore Carew, the king of the beggars, frequently lodged in it, adds historical interest to the picturesque and venerable shanty.

Dr. Wolcot’s real kindness to John Opie, whom he discovered as a lad working in a saw pit; his industrious endeavours to educate and refine him; and his generous assumption of fullest responsibility for his maintenance, together with his introduction of him to the world in London, form a creditable chapter in his history which ought never to be omitted from Peter’s life story. In Dugdale’s British Traveller will be found the copy of a written contract made by Opie in favour of his patron and friend. It begins—

Opie stood to this obligation, but always made his friend pay eighteenpence for the canvas!

Opie is said to have paid great deference to Dr. Wolcot’s instructions. Whilst that gentleman was painting, he would sometimes lean over him and exclaim, “Ah! if I could ever paint like you!” to which Pindar replied, “If I thought thou wouldst not exceed me, John, I would not take such pains with thee.” For two years he never painted a single picture without the judgment of his friend.

It was at the Doctor’s suggestion that his name was changed from Hoppy to Opie, a name worn by a good family in Cornwall, and more likely to attract favourable notice in London, whither they both went together in 1780, their joint expenses being supplied from one purse. Out of this last circumstance grew a dispute and estrangement, 229never fully settled. The communistic arrangement lasted for a short time only. One morning, when Sir Joshua Reynolds was breakfasting with Wolcot and Opie, Sir Joshua remarked of Opie, “Why, this boy begins his art where other people leave off!” Very numerous are the portraits of his patron which Opie has left behind, representing Pindar in different stages of his career, most of them having been engraved and published in various editions of his works, or in miscellanies containing contributions from his pen.

If a watchful editor did not restrict us for space, we should have liked to show how that facile pen of Peter’s could run on “from grave to gay, and from lively to severe.” Perhaps there may be room for a sample of each. We wish he had given us a little more of such quiet and pathetic writing as

230Is not that a genuine piece of pure pastoral writing—grave and truthful? Of his gay writing there is more than enough, and much of it is as unfit for modern quotation as some of the classics in whom he delighted. As Thomas Bewick could not be persuaded that anything he actually saw was unsuited for pictorial representation, however vulgar, if the drawing were true to nature, so Pindar shocks our sense of propriety continually and without apology. He could, however, play on the whole gamut of the soul’s passions, as witness his touching threnody on “Julia, or the Victim of Love,” in his Smiles and Tears, a piece no man without a tender heart could ever have written.

Many jocular little pieces like the following are strewn among his verses:—

A Kingsbridge gentleman having recently come across the original manuscript of one of the characteristic pieces written by Peter Pindar, has kindly allowed its publication. It will be seen that the rhyme describes in his forceful and not over polite style the outcome of a magistrates’ meeting at Morleigh after the passing of the law against poaching. It is in the Devonshire dialect:—

The late Rev. Treasurer Hawker, M.A., in his sketch of Wolcot, written for the Devonshire Association in 1877 and published in their Transactions, describes most 233accurately Pindar’s very humorous account of George the Third’s visit to Exeter in Brother Jan’s Epistle to Zester Naw. He says:—

He quotes these stanzas as characteristic alike of the humour and the dialect. Introducing the Royal entry:—

The King was not entertained at the Palace, but was sent to the Dean. Peter says:—

Peter affected to have heard the King’s remarks about the cathedral:—

The unhappy reference of Farmer Tab to the King’s mental condition, though concealed by his dialect, was simply cruel, and, of course, was carefully preserved by Peter:—

234The King is befogged by the Devonshire word:—

Jan Ploughshare is made to say in a later stanza that he has found royalty so disappointing a show that when he gets home to Moreton and reads his Bible he shall for the future “skep the books of Kings.”

The late Rev. Treasurer Hawker further says:—

A writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica gives this most accurate appreciation:—

The same writer truly says that many of his serious pieces were marked by taste and feeling, and his translation of Thomas Warton’s Latin epigram on sleep dwells in the memory through its happy simplicity.

The story is told of the bargain which he made with the London publishers, who, hearing that he proposed to sell his copyrights, told off one of their representatives to negotiate with him. The agent found the old Doctor quite ready for him, sitting up in bed with a fine churchyard cough in splendid development, and with a side-table furnished with an impressive array of medicines. At first a 235sum was offered which Peter considered contemptibly small. He asked at once a payment of some three hundred pounds a year, and amidst much painful coughing managed to say, “I shall not live, I know, to enjoy it long, as you may see, so there is no excuse for meanness in my case.” The agent was quite impressed by the scene, and the bargain was closed for two hundred and fifty pounds yearly for his life, with the condition that all future writing was to be for them alone. This was in 1795, and to the chagrin of his publishers he displayed the vitality so often seen in annuitants, and actually lived on for nearly a quarter of a century to enjoy their reluctant generosity.

His minor poems are oftener quoted because they are freer from objectionable matter. The Razor Seller, and The Pilgrim and the Peas are well known, and have been used as recitations, but his longer odes and letters had more than a passing notice, they were so strong in their satire, and so numerous as to have affected public opinion. The very Government were alarmed and pressed upon him a pension as a means of preventing further onslaughts upon the foibles and peculiarities of the king. Some preliminary payments were actually received by him, and all was at one time apparently settled in his favour when he suddenly returned the monies paid him, objecting to the conditions of silence and declining all further favours.

Cruel to the peculiarities of others, he was most sensitive himself to criticism, and hungry for praise, as he admits in an appeal to his reviewers:—

It must have been hateful to him to have found at 236last, in Gifford, the scholar and critic who attacked him in the anti-Jacobin magazine in an article entitled “Nil admirari, etc.,” a foeman whose satire was as strong as his own. Gifford speaks of Peter Pindar as “this disgusting subject, the prolific reviler of his Sovereign and impious blasphemer of his God”; hard words for one to put up with, however clearly he may have deserved them. Though his character is not exemplary, and cleverness must not be allowed to atone for lack of moral sense, we do not wish to paint him of too black a hue, if only for charity’s sake. Gifford’s attack was strong and straight, and it may be doubted if Peter’s reputation ever survived it. There was a common fight between these two in which Peter came off worst. He deserved it, for he was the aggressor. Discredited in the popular estimation, he lingered on for a while, and though from 1811 to 1819 he was suffering from blindness and infirmity, he dictated verses until within a few days of his death.

Commencing his London residence in 1781, soon after the publication of his first book of lyric odes, he lived in many different houses, in Southampton Row (1793); Tavistock Row (1794); Chapel Street, Portland Place (1800); 8, Delany Place, Camden Town (1802); 94, Tottenham Court Road (1807); and Latham Place, Somer’s Town, where he died on the 14th January, 1819.

Of his personal appearance much has been said. He has been described as “a thick, squat man with a large, dark and flat face and no speculation in his eye.” There are many portraits of him published, most of them by his protégé, Opie, the “Cornish boy,” as he calls him, whom he both educated and boomed in the press, a genius of undoubted merit as a painter. Unless these pictures outrageously flatter him, his must have been a fine physiognomy. We have seen eight or nine portraits, taken at different periods of his life, and in all he appears like a well-bred and handsome man of the style and period of George the Fourth. There is a miniature of him, however, 237in the National Portrait Gallery, which is said with candour to express many of the disagreeable features of his character. Our own portrait appended to this sketch is from a painting by Opie, engraved by C. H. Hodges, and reproduced in photography by Bailey, of Kingsbridge. One of his most faithful portraits is a miniature by Lethbridge, a Kingsbridge artist of some fame, who was born at Goveton, a little hamlet not far from the town.

Probably the last public compliment ever received by Peter Pindar was the dedication by his scholarly neighbour to him of the well-known History of Kingsbridge, published in 1819 (the year of Pindar’s death) by A. Hawkins, Esq., F.H.S. With the terms of that dedication we might fitly close our notice:—

If in our sketch of Peter Pindar we have “extenuated aught,” we have been wishful to “set down naught in malice,” and can only endorse the universal opinion as to his talent, with the unconcealed wish that such great power had been allowed to exert itself on a higher plane and to a nobler purpose.

Situated in the fertile vale of the Otter, surrounded by wooded hills and combes, the quiet little town of Honiton slopes down a hill, crosses the river, and ends at the old Hospital of St. Margaret. The picturesque street seems to have a repose amid its beautiful surroundings commensurate with the peaceful industry that has made its undying fame; for thanks to its having been the head-quarters of the beautiful lace manufacture, the name of Honiton is better known than that of many a big city. That its renown should have overshadowed other places is doubtless owing to its being situated on the great coach roads from London and from Bath to Exeter and the ports beyond; travellers were brought to the spot, who would alight while their horses rested; they would then be offered a box of lace at the inn to select from, while the work-girls themselves looked out for the arrival of the coaches and pressed their wares on the occupants, who took away their purchases to other parts of the country as a speciality of Honiton.

Risdon^[12] speaks of it as “a great Market and Thorough-Fair, from East to West,” and Westcote^[13] writes:—“It is a great thoroughfare from Cornwall, Plymouth, and Exeter to London; and for the better receipt of travellers, very well furnished with Inns.”

From a Photograph]

[By Miss Alice Dryden.

Honiton Lace.

239Lace-making has been practically limited to that part of the county south of Exeter which lies between Dorset and the Exe. The industry found its way to Devonshire, if the generally accepted theory be correct, by the Flemish refugees flying from the persecutions of the Duke of Alva. Lace was made on the pillow in the Low Countries about the middle of the sixteenth century, so by the date of the Alva persecution (1568–77) the people might have learnt it in sufficient numbers to start it wherever they set up their new home.

There is much probability to support this theory, and some names of undoubted Flemish origin did and do still exist in Honiton, as Gerard, Murch, Groot, Trump. On the other hand, if there had been any considerable number of Flemings in Devonshire they would surely have founded a Company of their Reformed Church, and no reference is found in the published books of the Archives of the London Dutch Church of any such Company in Devonshire; whereas references abound to places in the eastern counties and Midlands where Flemings were established.

It was not till we read of bone^[14] lace that it may be taken to mean pillow lace, made either with fish bones as pins or sheep’s trotters as bobbins. That bones were used as bobbins is stated by Fuller;^[15] but the fish bone theory is also possible; pins were very high priced at that time, and it would have been perfectly possible to use fish bones fine enough for the geometrical laces of the sixteenth century.

Queen Elizabeth was much addicted to the collecting and wearing of beautiful clothes, but no definite mention of English lace seems to occur in the Royal Wardrobe Accounts.

240The earliest mention of Honiton lace is by Westcote—“At Axminster you may be furnished with fine flax thread there spun. At Honiton and Bradnidge with bone lace much in request”;^[16] and, referring again to Honiton—“Here is made abundance of bone-lace, a pretty toye now greatly in request”; and therefore the town may say with merry Martial—

The famous inscription on a tombstone in Honiton Churchyard, together with Westcote, proves the industry to have been well established in the reign of James I. The inscription runs:—

There have been traditions that Rodge was a valet who accompanied his master abroad and there, learning the fine Flemish stitches, taught some Devonshire women on his return home, and was enabled to make a comfortable competence by their work.

Rodge was not the only benefactor to the town connected with the industry; there are two others recorded in the seventeenth century. “Although the earliest known MS., Ker’s Synopsis, 1561, giving an account of the different towns in Devonshire, makes no mention of lace, we find from it that Mrs. Minifie, one of the earliest named lace-makers, was an Englishwoman.”^[17] “She was a daughter of John Flay, Vicar of Buckrell, near Honiton.”^[18] She died in 1617, and left money for the indigent townspeople, as did Thomas Humphrey, of Honiton, lace-maker, in 1658.

241The advantages of the lace trade were realized by the time of the Commonwealth. Fuller,^[19] writing during that period, says of bone lace:—

The English were always ready to protect their own trades and manufactures, and various were the Acts passed to prohibit the importation of foreign lace, for the encouragement of home workers. In 1698 it was proposed to repeal the last Prohibition, and from the text of a Petition sent to the House of Commons, some interesting light is thrown on the extent of the trade at that date.

Here follows the numbers of the people in a few places which get their living by making of lace. Those quoted in Devonshire as interesting to compare with the present day are:—

The Dragoons suppressing Monmouth’s Rebellion in 1680 are stated to have despoiled the poor lacemakers greatly, and at Colyton broke into the house of a dealer in bone lace, Burd by name, and stole his goods to the value of £325.

243The trade was still advancing when Defoe wrote in 1724:—

Later still we find the people at Honiton make “the broadest sort that is made in England.”^[20] Just previously, in 1753, the first prize was awarded by the Anti-Gallican Society, which encouraged home trade, to Mrs. Lydia Maynard, of Honiton, “in token of six pairs of ladies’ Lappets of unprecedented beauty.” This date seems to have been the zenith of the lace prosperity, and reverses soon after set in.

Two fires occurred in Honiton, causing much distress, and the second, in 1765, was of so devastating a character that the town had to be rebuilt. Shawe says, writing at the end of last century:—

The American war had an evil effect upon the lace trade; still worse was the French Revolution, and also the change of the fashion in dress; lace was no longer used in profusion in the ladies’ wardrobe, and the demand for it declined to a serious extent for the workers. Worse yet, however, was the introduction of machine net, the first factory being set up at Tiverton in 1815. Lysons^[21] writes just afterwards:—

No other reference to Bath Brussels lace is forthcoming; the reason of the name Bath is not apparent. The thread seems always to have been and is still a difficulty to contend with in English lace. It seems impossible to get the very fine, silky, pure flax thread in the home market. A greater part of the lace made at the present time is wasted labour by reason of the coarse cottony thread used.

The evolution (if it may be termed so) of Honiton lace is briefly this. The bone or bobbin lace before mentioned at first consisted of a small and simple imitation of the early Italian pillow laces—mere narrow strips made by coarse threads plaited and interlaced. They got wider and more elaborate as the workers gained experience. Specimens may be seen on three Devonshire monuments of the first part of the seventeenth century. Whether the lace of the district is imitated or not it is probably similar to what would have been made there at that time. On the effigy of a Lady Pole in Colyton Church, her cape is edged with three rows of bone lace. Another, which is in excellent preservation, is on an effigy of Lady Dodderidge in Exeter Cathedral, her cuffs and tucker being a good pattern of geometric design. The third is on an effigy in Combe Martin Church, 1637.^[22]

Bobbin laces soon became popular, as they were so much cheaper than the elaborate points; they became so eminently the speciality of Belgium as to make her the classic country of pillow work. Belgium was noted for her linens and delicately spun flax; in consequence, the 245Flemings departed from the style of their Italian masters, and made laces of their own fine threads; the fashion of wearing flat linen collars, in the early part of the seventeenth century, encouraged the new style. They worked out their own designs, and being fond of flowers, it naturally came about they composed devices of blossoms and foliage.

These alterations, in course of time, found their way to England, there being much intercourse between their brethren here established and those remaining in Flanders. The lace continued to get finer and closer in texture, the flax thread being required so fine that it became necessary to spin it in damp underground cellars. That the workers in England could not compete successfully against the foreigner with their home-made threads we find over and over again. They also altered the Brussels designs, and instead of the beautiful fillings and openwork stitches substituted heavy guipure bars. The vrai réseau or pillow net ground succeeded the bride towards the end of the seventeenth century. During the eighteenth century the flowers were made separately and worked in with the net afterwards, or rather the net was worked into the flowers on the pillow. The best réseau was made by hand with the needle, and was much more expensive. The advantages of making the net separately soon declared themselves, and it formed an extensive branch of the trade. The mode of payment seems tedious but primitive in its simplicity; the net was spread out on the dealer’s counter, and the worker covered it with shillings; as many as it took to cover it she had as the value of her work. “A piece bought previous to the introduction of machine net, 18 ins. square, cost £15. At the commencement of machine net, in 1808, it could be bought for as many shillings, and in 1851 for as many pence.”^[23]

246Trolly lace comes next in order; it was quite different from the Honiton type, and resembled many of the laces made in the Midlands at the present time. It was made with coarse British thread, heavier, larger bobbins, and worked straight on round the pillow. The origin was undoubtedly Flemish, but it is said to have reached Devonshire at the time of the French Revolution through the Normandy peasants, driven by want of employment from their own country, where lace was a great industry in the eighteenth century. Be this as it may, lappets and scarves were certainly made of Trolly lace at an earlier date; Mrs. Delaney, in one of her letters (1756) speaks of a “trolly head.” Trolly lace, before its downfall, has been sold at the extravagant price of five guineas a yard.^[24] The origin of Trolly is from the Flemish Trolle Kant, where the design was outlined with a thick thread.

The most startling change in the lace industry occurred after 1816, when the introduction of machine net caused the vrai réseauréseau to go out of fashion. The cheap mechanical net took the place of the hand-made ground, throwing hundreds of hands out of work in a few years, and upsetting the social economy of the district. Application on machine net became universal, and the prices decreasing, the workers lost heart, and gave up their good old patterns, taking to inventions out of their heads, and frequently down to the present time copying some frightful design from a wall paper!

Queen Adelaide, in answer to a petition sent up by the lace makers, ordered a dress made of Honiton sprigs on machine net, in which every flower was to be copied from nature. It was executed at Honiton.^[25] The bridal dress of Queen Victoria, which she ordered from Devonshire, was carried out at Beer, and cost £1,000. It was made in the 247guipure fashion, the sprigs being connected by openwork stitches on the pillow. The trade from that time revived, as lace came once more into fashion, the guipure being the description made, the sections of the pattern united on the pillow, or sewn on to paper and joined by the needle with the various lace stitches; purling is made by the yard, for the edge.

The lace schools of this time were a great feature, there being many in every village, and as few other schools existed, boys in addition to the girls of the place attended and learnt the industry.^[26] The usual mode of procedure was this. The children commenced attending at the age of five to seven, and were apprenticed to the mistress for an average of two years, who sold all their work for her trouble; they then paid 6d. a week for a time, and had their own lace, then 3d., and so on according to the amount of teaching they still required. The young children went first from 10 to 12 in the morning to accustom them to work by degrees. At Honiton the full hours were 8 to 8 in the summer and in the depth of winter, but in spring and autumn less on account of the light; as candles were used only from nutting day, the 3rd of September, till Shrove Tide. The old rhyme runs:—

At Sidbury it was de rigeur that directly a girl married, however young, she wore a cap; but till then the lace-makers were famous for their good hair being beautifully dressed. When school began they stood up in a circle to read the “Verses”; if any one read “jokily” they were given a penalty, and likewise for idleness—so much extra work. In nearly all schools they were taught reading from the Bible, and in some they learnt writing.

248The Honiton pillows run rather smaller than those for Buckingham lace, and do not have the multiplicity of starched coverings—only three “pill cloths” over the top, and another each side of the lace in progress; two pieces of horn, called “sliders,” go between to take the weight of the bobbins from dragging the stitches in progress; a small square pincushion is on one side, and stuck into the pillow is the “needle pin,” a large sewing needle in a wooden handle, used for picking up loops through which the bobbins or “sticks” are placed. These last are mostly turned box-wood, small and light, and no coloured beads or “gingles” at the end, as that would make them too heavy for the fine threads. Some of them are of great age. Mrs. Treadwin found an old lace-maker using a lace “turn” for winding sticks, having the date of 1678 rudely carved on the foot.

The pillow has to be frequently turned round in the course of the work, so no stand is used, and it is rested against a table or doorway, or formerly, in the golden days, in fine weather there would be rows of workers sitting outside their cottages resting their “pills” against the back of the chair in front.

Ever since the Great Exhibition of 1851 drew attention to the industry, someone or some society has been trying to encourage better design and better manufacture; but the majority of the people have sought for a livelihood by meeting the demand for cheap and shoddy articles—that dreadful bane of modern times. Good patterns, good thread, good work, have been thrown aside, the workers and small dealers recking little of the fact that they themselves were ruining the trade as much as machinery; tarnishing the fair name of Honiton throughout the world among those able to appreciate a beautiful art. Fortunately there were some able to lead in the right path, and all honour must be given to Lady Trevelyan, who, at Seaton and Beer, about 1850–70, designed and superintended the working of naturalistic flowers and sprays; 249also to Mrs. Treadwin at Exeter, who started reproducing old laces, and with her workers turned out excellent copies of old Venetian rose-point, Valenciennes, or Flemish. Mrs. Treadwin was a woman of culture and taste who had the best interests of the trade at heart.

In the present work there is a straining after novelty with no capable designers at the helm. We ought, as a national duty, to encourage to our utmost any industry that can be worked in the rural districts. Let the Education Authorities frankly acknowledge that our Art Schools cannot turn out lace designers, and import one of our clever French neighbours to help the Devonian workers. It would, after all, only be a case of L’histoire se répète toujours since the days of Benedict Biscop, who imported vestments which gave the English their first lesson in embroidery.

The Devonshire Regiment, of which the Haytors now form a battalion, was raised so far back as 1685, has seen a vast amount of service, and has ever served with distinction before the enemy in the two centuries of its history. During the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, in 1685, many new corps were raised, and among them a regiment of musketeers and pikemen by the Duke of Beaufort. It was composed of loyal men of Devon, Somerset, and Dorset, and was known as “The Duke of Beaufort’s Musketeers.” In the same year, after the rebellion had been crushed at Sedgemoor, the Duke resigned the colonelcy to his son, the Marquis of Worcester. At that time regiments were named after their colonels. The corps was distinguished by tawny-coloured ribbons in their hats, scarlet coats lined with tawny-coloured shalloon, tawny-coloured breeches, stockings, and sashes. Lord Worcester was succeeded in 1687 by Lord Montgomery, who was devoted to the interests of James II. In 1688 the regiment was in garrison at Hull, when the Prince of Orange landed at Torbay. The Governor of Hull was also a supporter of James. The regiment, however, led by its Lieutenant-Colonel, Sir John Hanmer, declared with the inhabitants of Hull for the Prince of Orange and the Protestant party. Sir John Hanmer was made Colonel, and in 1689 took part with his regiment in the famous relief of Londonderry. In 2511690 it served under the eye of William III. at the Battle of the Boyne, where it repulsed three cavalry charges and materially assisted to secure the Protestant succession. In 1707, under Colonel Hill, it was present at the terrible battle of Almanza, in Portugal, where, after performing deeds of valour, it was overpowered and cut to pieces. Twenty-six officers and nearly all the men were killed, wounded, or taken. In 1709 it served under Marlborough in the Netherlands, took part in the siege of Mons, where it greatly distinguished itself in repulsing a sortie, in which ten officers and 150 men were lost. In 1715, under Colonel Montague, it took part against the rebellion under the Earl of Mar in Scotland, and at the battle of Dunblane lost eight officers and 108 men. In 1738, Colonel Cornwallis was appointed, and as Cornwallis’ regiment took part in the war of Austrian succession. It was present at the battle of Dettingen, in 1743, where George II. in person commanded the army, and received a French cavalry charge in line. Cornwallis’ and another battalion executed a difficult manœuvre, which brought the enemy’s cavalry under fire. The name of Dettingen is borne on the colours. In 1745, at Fontenoy, it again broke through the French lines, and almost secured victory; its losses were seven officers and 212 men. It was re-called to England during the Pretender’s rebellion in Scotland, and sent again into the Low Countries in 1746, where, as Graham’s regiment, it took a prominent and honourable part in the desperate battle of Roucoux against the renowned Marshal Saxe, where it lost twelve officers and 206 men.

1st July, 1751.—A royal warrant was issued, regulating the clothing and colours of every regiment. It was now numbered as 11th Regiment of Foot, and the “facings spoken of as being green,” but when they were changed from tawny is not known. The drummers were clothed in green, faced with red. 1756.—The strength was increased to twenty companies, which were divided into two battalions. 1758.—The second battalion was constituted the 252Sixty-fourth Regiment, illustrating the birth of new regiments. The 11th took part in the Seven Years’ War, 1760 to 1763, under the Prince of Brunswick. In 1782 county titles were given to regiments in order to facilitate recruiting, and the 11th was designated the “North Devon Regiment,” and the officers were enjoined to cultivate an intercourse with that part of the county, so as to create a mutual attachment between the inhabitants and the regiment. Exactly a century afterwards similar orders and changes took place for a like purpose. In 1793, when England was threatened with invasion by the French Republic, and volunteers were being drilled, the 11th was defending Toulon against Napoleon. It was evacuated after a gallant defence by twelve thousand men of five different nations, over a line of outposts extending fifteen miles in circumference, against an army of between thirty and forty thousand men. The 11th formed part of the garrison under Lord Mulgrave, and distinguished itself in several sorties, especially that on 30th November, 1793, when the French were driven from their batteries and guns spiked. In this affair, Napoleon Bonaparte, then an artillery officer, received a bayonet wound in his thigh. Thus the first contact the future Emperor made with a British battalion was with our Devon Regiment; and he did not again come face to face with us until the Battle of Waterloo, although he is said to have watched some of the battles in the Pyrenees from a distance. In 1798, it was sent to Ostend on a very hazardous expedition to cut the Great Canal; it did its work, but was unable to re-embark owing to a storm, and 24 officers and 456 men were captured. In 1800, the 11th was sent to the West Indies, took part in the capture of St. Bartholomew, St. Martin’s, St. Thomas, St. John, and Santa Cruz; in 1807 to Madeira. In 1808, a second battalion was again added, which formed a part of the Walcheren expedition in 1809. At the taking of Flushing they took a set of brass drums belonging to the 11th French Regiment, 253and enlisted the musicians of a Prussian band serving in the French army, when all the men joined with their instruments. In 1810 and 1811, they took part in the Peninsula War. On 22nd July, 1812, the regiment won glory at the decisive battle of Salamanca, which led to the French being driven out of Spain. The 11th, 53rd, and 61st Regiments formed a brigade in the Sixth Division, commanded by Major-General Clinton. Lord Wellington had noticed that in manœuvring his troops the French marshal had so extended his forces as to be unable to support each other. To take advantage of this mistake, the 11th, as leading its brigade, was pushed forward under a heavy fire, and was soon engaged in a desperate struggle, and drove the French from their ground. At the close of the action a French division made a very determined stand to recover the retreat. The 6th British Division again attacked, led by the 11th, and as the darkness came on overpowered the French, who fled in confusion. They lost 16 officers, 325 men; only 4 officers and 67 men came out unwounded. The 11th captured a battery of guns and a green standard without an eagle. The 122nd French Regiment, which was opposed to the 11th with two battalions, numbering 2,200 strong, the next day only mustered 200 men; they were mostly taken prisoners. Captain Lord Clinton, uncle of our late Lord Lieutenant, was despatched with the news direct from the field, and carried with him the green standard. He landed at Plymouth, and in a chaise and four rattled up the road to London. As he passed through the towns on the way he exhibited the standard, and persons now living in Ashburton remember seeing him pass through; he was at that time Lord of the Borough of Ashburton. The 11th earned the nickname of “The Bloody Eleventh” from the part it had taken in that terrible day. It suffered severely in the battles in the Pyrenees and following movements, which resulted in driving the French across the frontier. It was not present at Waterloo, and in 1816 the 254Second Battalion was disbanded at Gibraltar, the men being incorporated in the First Battalion. In 1825, new colours were presented to the regiment whilst at Cork, on which were added the names of the Peninsula battles. During the years of peace it moved from station to station, and was not in the Crimea. During the Indian Mutiny a Second Battalion was again raised, but did not take part. In 1879–1880, the 11th took part in the Afghan War; in 1881, the regiment ceased to be the 11th and became the “Devonshire Regiment,” but the green facings were changed to white, in common with other line regiments, and are alone borne by the junior battalion, viz., the Haytor Volunteer Battalion. The Devonshire Territorial Regiment now consists of two line battalions for foreign service, two militia battalions, five volunteer battalions, of which the 1st and 2nd are rifles, total nine.

The reformation and development of the volunteer force in the middle and latter half of the nineteenth century, with its embodiment into the territorial line regiments, has tended to increase the local esprit de corps throughout the kingdom, and especially in Devon, where the movement had its birth. A short sketch of the formation and growth of the volunteers in Devon will, therefore, not only be of local interest, but will be an illustration of the steps taken in times of danger for the defence of our shores in the times of our grandfathers, and continued through the years of peace under our late imperial Sovereign, Queen Victoria.

Plymouth and its immediate neighbourhood is the cradle in which the spirit of volunteer defence has been nurtured; frequently before the sixteenth century have French and Spaniards made or attempted landings there for pillage or destruction, but in each case they suffered severely from the resolute resistance of the townspeople. In the Civil War the inhabitants formed themselves into trained bands and resisted the Royalist siege. In 1745, when Prince 255Charlie, the young Pretender, landed in Scotland and gained the battle of Prestonpans, Plymouth again raised a body of volunteers; and in 1759, when France determined on a descent on England and had 18,000 men ready to embark on board the French fleet, Plymouth again raised two companies of volunteers to strengthen the militia, one of which undertook to clothe and feed itself. The destruction of the French fleet by Admiral Hawke, at the mouth of Quiberon Bay, and the decisive battle of Minden, where the 20th, or East Devon Regiment, learned its celebrated “Minden Yell,” removed for a time the fear of French invasion. When, therefore, in 1779, the combined fleets of France and Spain held for a time the possession of the English Channel, and the gallant Elliot was holding the rock of Gibraltar against famine and bombardment, and most of our army was fighting in America, the Spanish and French fleets suddenly appeared off Plymouth, causing great alarm for the safety of the dockyard and the numerous French prisoners in the port, the inhabitants were again ready to enroll themselves. Mr. William Bastard, of Kitley, the great grandfather of the present Mr. B. J. B. Bastard, the first Lieutenant-Colonel of the Haytor Volunteer battalion, offered to raise a force of 500 men as a corps of Fencibles, and in two days had 1,500 young men to select from, who wished for the honour of serving under him. On 23rd August, 1779, he escorted 1,300 war prisoners to Exeter for safety, and on the 25th delivered them to the commanding officer there, and at once returned with his regiment to Plymouth. I have been unable to find any traditions of this march preserved in the towns through which they must have passed, but we may be sure at the time it caused much excitement along the road and at the places they rested the two nights. The whole of this eventful period at Plymouth is well described by Miss Peard in her charming little book, Mother Molly. The example of Plymouth was followed by the citizens of Exeter, who also raised a Volunteer 256corps. For these services the King, on the 24th September, signed a warrant for a baronetcy for Mr. Bastard, who, however, modestly declined the honour. The supremacy in the Channel was soon restored by the return of the fleet, and the victories of Admiral Rodney rendered our shores safe for a time.

In 1794, the effects of the French Revolution had made themselves felt in England, and several elaborate plots were formed to supersede Parliament by a National Convention after the French model, and to abolish the Monarchy. Great distress prevailed in the country, which always forms the best weapon of revolutionists. The rate of interest rose to seventeen per cent.; the Bank of England only saved itself by the suspension of cash payment. Monge, the French Minister of Marine, threatened to land in England with 50,000 red caps of liberty, and to overthrow the Government of the country.

It was at this crisis that the Government called on the different counties to take steps for the defence of the kingdom, and a meeting of magistrates was called by Lord Fortescue, the Lord Lieutenant, and presided over by the High Sheriff, J. S. Pode, Esq., on the 22nd April, 1794. 1795, 7th January, returns showed two troops of cavalry and twenty-three companies of infantry to have been raised and equipped by subscription. March 23rd, the Lord Lieutenant, Earl Fortescue, ordered monthly returns from each corps. 7th April, 1795, the twelve corps in the eastern part of the county were formed into a battalion, under Col. Mackenzie. 2nd June, Colonel Orchard, of Hartland Abbey, reported that he had inspected his own regiment, viz., corps at Fremington, Westleigh, Northam, Hartland, and two companies at Bideford. This appears to be the six western companies of the north battalion. 1796 returns showed two troops of cavalry, twenty-two companies of infantry—1,651 men. In this year an attempt was made by the French to land in Bantry Bay, which, however, failed, and the expedition was glad to get back 257to Brest, with the loss of four ships of the line and eight frigates. Early in 1797, another expedition, under Tate, appeared in the Bristol Channel, off Ilfracombe, with the intention of burning Bristol. The North Devon Volunteers turned out with great zeal, and were prepared to dispute the landing on their coast. The French, however, turned northward and landed in Wales, where they soon surrendered to a far inferior force of militia, yeomanry, and volunteers, commanded by Lord Cawdor, and supported by a reserve of Welsh women in red cloaks. 1798 saw the nation in the most serious crisis of its history. The French Directory having made terms with the European powers, were able to turn all their attention to the invasion and conquest of the British Isles. Former expeditions were designed to stir up the disloyal and assist them to overthrow the Government, but now a French army was to land on our shores. The Spanish and Dutch fleets had been pressed into the French service, but British courage and seamanship had effectually disposed of them in the great naval battles of St. Vincent and Camperdown. Nevertheless, an army was organized, named the Army of England, and distributed along the French coast in readiness for embarkation. Flat-bottomed boats were prepared for landing troops and for service on our rivers. The bankers of Paris were called upon to advance a loan on the security of English property. The greatest calamity, however, was a general mutiny in the Channel Fleet at the Nore, which expelled their officers, elected their own admiral and captains, hoisted the red flag, and blockaded the mouth of the Thames; they seriously discussed the expediency of making the whole over to the French. If England could not depend on her fleet she must fall. Had not prompt measures been taken and the mutiny quelled, invasion on a large scale would certainly have taken place. To add to these troubles a formidable rebellion broke out in Ireland, and its leaders arranged for the support of the French army, under Hocke, a general of great experience. 258A brigade of 1,000 men actually landed in Ireland, under General Humbert, beat the local troops, and advanced into the country, but were compelled to surrender to Lord Cornwallis; and Admiral Warren caught a French fleet with 3,000 troops on their way to support them, and only one of the nine ships returned to France. Such being the state of public affairs, it cannot be denied that our great grandparents had good grounds for alarm. There is hardly a district or family in Devon but has some tradition of that period. Nervous people were afraid to take off their clothes at night. Old gentlemen provided themselves with hollow walking-sticks filled with guineas to carry with them in their flight. At Totnes my great-grandfather’s family permanently engaged a post-chaise in which the women and children might escape to Bristol; the family plate was packed ready to be taken off, and a belt of guineas provided. The schoolboys enjoyed it, for there was no school, as the seniors were too much engaged in obtaining and discussing news to attend to them. The saying still exists at Totnes, “Going to Paignton to meet the French,” for “meeting trouble half-way.” Beacon fires were prepared to spread the news of any landing. A story is told of a tramp at Dawlish who, in lighting his pipe, set a hay rick on fire; the watchers at the nearest beacon took it for a signal of an invasion, and lighted their fires, which were answered in every direction, and the people sprang to arms until “That time of slumber was as bright and busy as the day.” One old sailor, however, had his wits about him, when his daughter shook him out of a deep sleep with the news that the French had landed. Rubbing his eyes, he told her to go and look at the weather-cock. She came back saying the wind was from the north. “I thought so,” said he, “and so it was yesterday. The French can’t land with this wind.” And so the ancient mariner turned round and went to sleep again.

The next place in the history of volunteers was the extension of the area of their service. Up to 259this date the condition of service was confined to the county of Devon, and in the case of the early Exeter corps to the defence of the city only. The military authorities saw the impossibility of mobilising the volunteers, even to a small extent, who had enlisted under these conditions. The County Committee were, therefore, instructed to accept no offers except for service throughout the military district. It was, however, ultimately arranged for all volunteers to accept the new conditions, but cities or large towns should be allowed to maintain a local corps composed of respectable householders only, to aid the civil power to protect property. Most of the corps appear to have been willing to extend their services to the military district. In January, 1799, it was resolved that no further offers should be accepted. Each parish was required to appoint a man and horse to act as guide. The battle of the Nile and the extinction of the Irish rebellion seem to have quieted men’s minds for a time. But in April Devonshire was again astir, for the Committee of Secrecy of the House of Commons reported that undoubted intelligence had been received that plans of an invasion and insurrection in Ireland were being made in France. That the utmost diligence was being observed in the ports of France in preparing another expedition to co-operate with the rebels in Ireland, that it was intended at the same time to land a French force at different parts of the coast. That the instructions to Tate, who was taken prisoner in Wales in 1797, and those of General Humbert, who landed in Ireland, and who had been destined to command an expedition against Cornwall, had fallen into the hands of the Government, and were as follows:—The legion was to land in Cornwall and to cross the Tamar as quickly as possible, and to establish itself in the district between it and the Exe, or, as we should say, in the South Hams. The “passes and mountains” (Dartmoor) would afford an easy and safe retreat from the pursuit of the enemy. Thus Dartmoor was selected both by the French Directory and 260by the English officers for a place of refuge. There, indeed, in the Dartmoor prisons, many French soldiers and sailors were destined to find a safe retreat.

But as time went on, and no invasion took place, things became quieter; the Defence Committee seldom met; the volunteers, however, continued to drill and to hold reviews.

In 1801, the separate corps were consolidated into battalions and regiments. The two 1st Devon troops of cavalry, with those at Bicton, Tiverton, and Cullompton, united in the “Royal 1st Devon Yeomanry Cavalry,” under Lord Rolle as Colonel, Sir Stafford Northcote as Lieutenant-Colonel. The North Devon Corps of Infantry became the 3rd North Devon Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Fortescue. The Loyal Exminster Hundred Regiment of Volunteers, under Lord Courtenay, was similarly formed. In 1802 came the “Peace of Amiens,” or, as it is frequently called, the “Cloamen Peace.” It was a fragile, patched up affair, by which Bonaparte gained breathing time. “It was a peace everyone was glad of and nobody proud of.” Volunteer affairs became quiet, many corps were disbanded, among them the Ashburton Sergebacks. Old soldiers were discharged from the line regiments, and militiamen sent to their homes.

In May, 1803, Bonaparte suddenly declared war, and then, as Emperor, prepared in earnest to invade England. A camp of 100,000 men was formed on the cliffs at Boulogne, and a host of flat-bottomed boats gathered for their conveyance across the Channel. At last the Emperor Napoleon appeared in camp; all was ready. “Let us be masters of the Channel for six hours,” he is reported to have said, “and we are masters of the world.” But he never was able to be master of the Channel for six hours. The army waited and drilled, the old Bayeaux tapestry, which illustrates the conquest of England by William of Normandy, was searched out to create enthusiasm, and show what had once been done; all kinds of schemes were resorted to to obtain the naval assistance 261of other nations, and with success, for the Spanish fleet joined him. Still, the English fleet, under Lord Nelson, held the Channel, but any accident might give the six hours’ mastery, and so England had to be prepared. The County Defence Committee again assumed the direction of affairs. The arrangements made in 1798 were once more put in force. It was in 1803 that the Haytor Regiment was formed, and commanded by Lord Seymour; it was 1,000 strong, with 250 artillery attached, and appears to have been made up of all the volunteers in the Haytor Hundred with those of several towns and parishes adjoining. Newton Abbot was the headquarters, where Captain Babb, afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel Babb, was captain. In the former arming of 1798 Ashburton had formed the 9th Devon Corps, under Captain Walter Palk; they had clothed themselves with local-made serge, and so gained the name of Sergebacks; they were disbanded at the Peace of Amiens, but now again formed and became a company in the Haytor Regiment, under Captain Tozer. Bridgetown, being in Berry Pomeroy parish, also was in the Haytor district. Mr. Milford Windeatt, a relative of the present Captain Windeatt, held a commission in the Haytor Corps. Totnes, however, formed a separate corps, being in the Stanborough Hundred, as did also Highweek, Kingsteignton, Chudleigh, and Bovey Tracey, which were in Teignbridge. The Stanborough Regiment, in which Kingsbridge formed a part, was connected with Plymouth. Torquay, Paignton, and Brixham supplied artillery men under Colonel Cary, of Tor Abbey. For the protection of Tor Bay the authorities garrisoned Berry Head, which, being in the Haytor Hundred, was committed to a detachment of the regiment under Colonel Cary. Many stories remain of this period of service. I cannot say how long the volunteers were out; probably they relieved each other. One story frequently told was of the French fire-ships, for which they were on the lookout, to be sent among the fleet in the bay, and which 262caused much stir. One night, as the full moon rose red and fiery out of the sea, the sentry at the headland, who had come from an inland parish, mistook it for a fire ship, discharged his musket, and aroused the garrison. The uniform was similar to the line regiments of the period, viz., scarlet swallow-tailed coats, turned out with yellow, blue-black breeches, white cross belts, with a brass plate having Haytor Regiment thereon; the pouches were black, the buttons had H.V.R. (Haytor Volunteer Regiment); officers wore cocked hats, others tall shakoes. The regiment assembled for field days and drill at various points in the district. Lord Clifford has a plan of a sham fight on Bovey-heathfield, but the movements appear to have been very simple. Lieutenant-Colonel Babb, whose tablet is in Wolborough Church, Newton Abbot, commanded the regiment at one time. On 21st October, 1805, Lord Nelson caught the combined French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar. His last and famous signal, “England expects every man to do his duty,” was observed and obeyed, and although he fell in the hour of victory, twenty battleships had struck their flags ere the day was done. Pitt explained, in his last public words, “England has saved herself by her courage; she will save England by her example.” The crisis had again passed, England could breathe freely once more, still the volunteers were kept enrolled for a time. The Haytors were disbanded about 1809, and the old colours laid up in Wolborough Church until time had consumed them. The time of peace continued for about forty years, until the Crimean War, in 1853, left the country almost without troops to garrison her arsenals. Then several Volunteer corps were raised, among them the “Exeter and South Devon,” under Colonel Sir Edmund Prideaux. At the peace in 1856 it was not disbanded, but remained embodied until the memorable circular of 12th May, 1859, in which the Secretary of State for War suggested the formation of Volunteer corps throughout the 263country as a means of preventing the frequent war scares caused by the uncertain actions of the French under Napoleon III. The Exeter corps then became the first in the kingdom, and through them Devonshire stands at the top in the precedence of the counties. On 24th May, 1859, the Plymouth corps was formed, but the date of its acceptance was later on. The movement had life because it was in accordance with the feelings of the people, which was shown by almost every town in Devon holding meetings for the purpose of forming corps, and persons of every social position offered their services, and in a large proportion undertook their own outfits. These offers were mostly accepted by Her Majesty; each corps became an independent body, and was numbered in the order in which they were accepted, but joined into administrative battalions for drill purposes. In 1880, the administrative battalions were consolidated into corps, which in 1885 were incorporated as volunteer battalions of the county regiment, of which they have since formed a part, and in the South African war sent two companies, fully officered and equipped, to the front. This brings us to the eve of the proposed changes in the constitution of our army and military system, and possibly the close of the volunteer system as we have known it.

John Rattenbury—or, as he is commonly called, the “Rob Roy of the West”—was born at Beer in 1788. His father was a shoemaker by trade, but before his son John was born, he went to sea on board a man-of-war, and was never again heard of. His mother supported herself by selling fish, while Jack was allowed to run wild, spending his time chiefly at the water-side, where he acquired a taste for the sea and for those daring adventures which made him subsequently so notorious. When about nine years of age, he induced his uncle, who was a fisherman, to take him with him in his fishing expeditions. This was the beginning of his sea training, and continued for some time, until one day, being left in charge of the boat, while his uncle was on shore at Lyme, he lost her rudder. For this negligence his uncle chastised him with a rope’s end, whereupon a separation ensued. Jack then joined a Brixham fisherman as an apprentice, but after a space of twelve months, finding this occupation uncongenial, he engaged himself to the master of a coasting vessel of Bridport, trading between that port and Dartmouth.

“Jack” Rattenbury.
(From a Lithograph by W. Bevan.)

About this time war broke out between England and France, and fearing the press-gang, he returned to Beer. There he found his uncle engaged in collecting men for privateering, an enterprise which appealed to his roving spirit, and joining the crew, he, with twenty-two others, 265was conveyed to Torquay and put on board the Dover, commanded by Captain Matthews. In due course the Dover was ready for sea, and in March, 1792, started for her first cruise off the Western Islands. He thus describes his feelings on this occasion:—

The privateering enterprise, however, does not appear to have been very successful. After cruising about the Western Islands for several weeks without meeting with any adventure worth relating, the Dover at last fell in with three American merchant ships laden with French goods, but as their commanders contended that they were not lawful prizes, they were allowed to go. It transpired later on that these very vessels were afterwards taken by an English cruiser. Not long after, the Dover was captured by a French ship, and the crew, including John Rattenbury, were taken to Bordeaux and confined in the prison of that place. He does not appear to have been badly treated by his jailers, and he was allowed a certain amount of liberty, which enabled him to make the acquaintance of the master of an American vessel, then lying in Bordeaux harbour, Captain Prowse by name, who, taking a liking to the lad, allowed him to conceal himself on board his ship. It was, however, more than twelve months before the vessel was allowed to leave the port in consequence of an embargo on all foreign shipping, when, having taken in a cargo of wine, etc., it was cleared for New York, which port was reached after a passage of forty-five days. Here Rattenbury engaged himself as 266cook and cabin boy on board a ship sailing for Havre de Grâce. On arrival there he was anxious to get home again. He therefore transferred himself to an American merchantman belonging to Boston named the Grand Turk, bound for London, as he supposed, but much to his disappointment it proceeded to Copenhagen instead. He returned in her to Havre de Grâce, and thence after sundry adventures found himself in Guernsey, where, to his delight, he met his uncle, who took him back to Beer.

He was now sixteen years of age, and remained quietly at home for six months, part of which time he spent in fishing. After the roving life he had led, he found this occupation most uncongenial, and the smuggling trade, which was then being plied very briskly in the neighbourhood, offering great inducements, he determined to try his fortune at it. He accordingly joined a vessel engaged in this trade between Lyme and the Channel Islands, but after four months he engaged on another vessel, the Friends, a brig, commanded by Captain Jarvis. While in Tenby harbour she was captured by a French privateer. He thus narrates the incident:—

By good fortune the Nancy, a cutter belonging to the Custom’s Service, happened to be lying in Swanage Bay, under the command of Captain Willis, who, giving chase, re-captured the brig and brought her into Cowes Roads. She was restored to her owners, on their paying salvage, but Rattenbury received no reward for his services, and two days after re-joining the brig, was impressed into the 268Royal Navy and put on board a cutter cruising off the Channel Islands. On her return to Spithead, Rattenbury escaped on board a fishing smack and was landed at Portland, whence he proceeded, on foot, to Beer, exchanging his cap with a young man whom he met on the way for a hat. Some days after a party from the cutter sent in search of him reached Lyme, but although they failed to catch Rattenbury they had arrested the young man with whom he had exchanged hats. He was released, however, when they discovered that he was not the man they were in search of.

During the next six months he occupied himself with fishing and smuggling, but his roving spirit once more took him to sea, and in March, 1800, we find him sailing for Newfoundland on board a brig belonging to Topsham, commanded by Captain Elson. He was now twenty-two years of age. On its way out the brig put into Waterford for provisions, but had not been at sea many days before it had to put back to Waterford for repairs, having sprung a leak. These were speedily effected owing to the kindness of Lord Rolle, who lent seventeen of his soldiers to assist in the work. In due course they reached St. John’s, Newfoundland, and after discharging a part of their cargo, proceeded to Placentia and afterwards to Pacee, where the ship was laid up for three months, while the crew were employed in catching and curing cod. When they had secured sufficient for a cargo, they set sail, in November, for Oporto, but they had not been at sea many days before they were chased and captured by a Spanish privateer, and a prize crew put on board. Rattenbury and an Irish lad were, however, allowed to remain on board, and the former, by making himself generally useful, gained the confidence of the Spanish prize-master, so that when the prize reached Vigo, Rattenbury, instead of being sent to a prison, was taken by the prize-master to his own house, and given such a good character that the owner of the privateer gave him 269his liberty and presented him with thirty dollars and a mule to take him to Vianna, where the British Consul gave him a pass to Oporto. Here he met his late captain and ship-mates, who had also been given their liberty, and after some days found a vessel bound for Guernsey, on which he was engaged as mate. After an exceedingly rough passage he reached Guernsey on the 25th March, 1801, where he found a packet about to sail for Weymouth, in which he took a passage, and thus reached Beer once more.

On the 17th April, 1801, he married a young woman to whom he had become engaged before setting out for his last voyage and settled down at Lyme. Failing to find any regular employment, he determined to try privateering again, and accordingly joined the Alert, a lugger belonging to Weymouth, commanded by Captain Diamond. In her he sailed, in May, for Alderney, where, having taken in a stock of wine and spirits, a course was steered for the Western Islands in the expectation of falling in with Spanish vessels, but the venture was not successful, and the Alert returned to Weymouth on the 28th December, 1801.

Rattenbury now remained at home for four years, and was employed in piloting and victualling ships. One day, while at Bridport, he was taken by the press-gang. He managed, however, to escape, and was pursued by the lieutenant and nine men of the Greyhound. During the chase his wife appeared on the scene, and seized the lieutenant round the neck. A scuffle ensued, in which the townspeople joined, and Rattenbury was able to get clear away. After this adventure he went to live at Beer, and made many trips in smuggling with varied success; but the lieutenant of the Greyhound was his most persistent enemy, and was determined to capture him. On one occasion, at Weymouth, hearing that the lieutenant was on his track, he took refuge in a public-house, the landlord of which was 270a friend of his. The lieutenant having received information as to his hiding-place proceeded to the spot, and at two o’clock in the morning roused up the house, threatening to fire at the landlord through the window and force an entrance if he did not immediately come down and open the door. On the alarm being given, Rattenbury concealed himself in the chimney, and remained there for about an hour, while the premises were being searched. On the departure of the lieutenant he came out of the chimney in a parlous condition, black with soot and much bruised, but, as he says, “triumphing over the sense of pain itself, in the exultation which he experienced at having once more escaped out of the clutches of this keen-eyed Lieutenant and indefatigable picaroon.”

Becoming sick of being constantly hunted, he determined to take to privateering again, and shipped accordingly on board the Unity, a cutter then fitting out at Weymouth, commanded by Captain Head. About February, 1805, they proceeded to sea, touching at Alderney to take in provisions and spirits, and steered a course for Madeira, Teneriffe, etc., in the hope of falling in with prizes; but they met with no success, and returned to Beer in August of the same year. In consequence of his continued want of success in privateering, he determined never again to engage in it, “a resolution,” he says, “which I have ever since kept, and of which I have never repented.”

Rattenbury now settled down ostensibly to a life of fishing, but actually of smuggling, in which he met with many adventures and every variety of fortune. He had not been long at this employment when he was captured by the Roebuck while off Christchurch, in Hampshire; but during the chase one of the man-of-war’s men, named Slaughter, had his arm blown off in the act of firing one of the guns. The captain was anxious to land the wounded man, and ordered a boat alongside to take him ashore, into which Rattenbury smuggled himself, and on 271reaching shore got clear off. That same evening he borrowed a boat and rescued his companions from the Roebuck, together with three kegs of gin, part of his contraband cargo which had been seized.

In the spring of 1806, he was captured by the Duke of York, cutter, in a fog, and was taken to Dartmouth. On nearing that port, he jumped overboard, swam ashore, and concealed himself in some bushes. Two women, however, who had seen him, inadvertently revealed his place of concealment, and he was re-taken. When he came on board again

The smugglers were all tried by the magistrates of Dartmouth, who sentenced them to a fine of £100, to go on board a man-of-war, or to jail. They unanimously agreed to the last condition, but by six o’clock in the evening they were all so heartily sick of their quarters, which resembled the “Black Hole of Calcutta,” that they agreed to serve in the Navy, and were accordingly entered for the Kite, then lying in the Downs. They were removed the same evening to the Safeguard, brig, which lay in Dartmouth Roads. Next morning Rattenbury asked permission to go on board the Duke of York, on the pretext that he had a private communication to make to the captain. While on board, he seized an opportunity for escaping, jumped down on the bob-stay, and signalling with his finger a small boat which was passing at the time dropped into her, and in five minutes was landed at Kingswear, opposite Dartmouth, whence he made his way home by land.

Later on he was captured by the Humber, sloop, commanded by Captain Hill, and taken to Falmouth, where he was committed by the magistrates to jail. Next 272morning he and one of his shipmates were put into two post-chaises in charge of two constables to be taken to Bodmin. As the constables stopped for liquid refreshment at every public-house on the road they came to, they became somewhat merry towards evening. This was Rattenbury’s opportunity. While the constables were taking their potations at the “Indian Queen,” a public-house a few miles from Bodmin, he bribed the drivers not to interfere in what was to follow, and as soon as the constables came out they were overpowered by the smugglers. Rattenbury ran to a cottage close by, and the woman who occupied it showed him a way through the back door and garden, and having run a mile, on looking back, he saw his companion, who had escaped in the same way. That night they reached Newquay together, and next morning found their way on hired horses to Mevagissey, whence they took a boat to Budleigh Salterton.

On another occasion he defended himself in a cellar for four hours with a reaping hook and a knife, against a sergeant and ten men, all armed, and only escaped capture through a diversion created by some women arriving with a made-up story that a vessel had drifted ashore and that a boy was in danger of drowning.

Towards the end of 1808, through the influence of Lord Rolle, the soldiers posted at Beer for the purpose of catching Rattenbury were ordered away, and the ever-present fear of capture being thus removed, he determined to settle down as a law-abiding citizen, and with this object in view took a public-house, spending his leisure hours in fishing. But unfortunately this business did not prosper, so that about November, 1812, he reverted to his old trade of smuggling. In due course he was captured by the Catherine, a brig commanded by Captain Tingle, and brought to Brixham. While there his wife was allowed to visit him, and with her he arranged a plan of escape. She, in company with the wives of his shipmates, were to come alongside the Catherine on the next 273day with a good boat. This was done, and Rattenbury, with his companions, jumped into the boat for the avowed purpose of helping “the ladies” out of her up the side of the brig. As soon as the women were all out of the boat, Rattenbury gave the order to “shove off,” and although chase was immediately given and shots fired, the smugglers managed to land at a headland called “Bob’s Nose.” They quickly scrambled up the cliff, but Rattenbury, taking off his coat and hat and leaving them at the top of the cliff, rolled himself down again to the beach and made for Torquay. On the next day he met his wife, and they set off together for Beer. His companions, however, were pursued, the chase being watched from the neighbouring hills by several hundred people from Brixham, but only two were re-taken.

Rattenbury remained in his public-house till November, 1813, when he was obliged to close it owing to want of business and the bad debts he had contracted. He was now in a bad way, without any obvious means of subsistence, except fishing, which did not pay, and with a wife and four children to support. To add to his misfortunes, in the autumn of the same year, he lost his boat in a gale. He, nevertheless, managed to pick up a little by piloting, and in the beginning of 1814 was fortunate enough to obtain employment with a Mr. Down, of Bridport, who kept a small boat for fishing. With the wages thus obtained he was enabled by August to buy another boat.

During the next few years he was engaged in running contraband cargoes from Cherbourg, and some of his expedients for outwitting the revenue officers are very ingenious. On one occasion the officer who was searching his ship for contraband goods came across a goose, which he was desirous of purchasing, but as it was stuffed with fine lace instead of the orthodox sage and onions, Rattenbury naturally preferred not to sell it. At another time he had soldered up some valuable French 274silks in a tin box, so that when his boat was being overhauled he was able to throw it overboard while the searchers were in another part of the boat, and the package being buoyant was subsequently recovered.

One dark night he landed a cargo at Seaton Hole, and began carrying the kegs one by one on his back up the cliff, when he tumbled over a donkey lying in the path. The beast set up such a vigorous braying that it awoke the preventive officer, who was asleep at the foot of the cliff, and the whole cargo was consequently seized.

In the summer of 1820, he contemplated building himself a house, and bought a piece of land for the site. He at once commenced collecting stones on the coast in his boat, and till the end of the year was superintending building operations.

In 1825, while returning from a smuggling expedition, he was captured off Dawlish by the crew of a coastguard boat and lodged in Exeter jail, where he remained till the 5th April, 1827, when he was released through the influence of Sir William Pole. In May, and again in July, he was in London giving evidence in connection with a scheme for the construction of a harbour at Beer and a canal from Beer to Thorverton. He then remained at home engaged in his old occupations till 1829, when Lord Rolle got him into the Royal Navy, but falling sick, he was discharged on 6th January, 1830. His last smuggling adventure happened in January, 1836. He was bringing twenty tubs of brandy in a cart from Torquay to Newton Bushel, and when within a mile of the latter place, at ten o’clock at night, he was overtaken by some mounted officers, and the horse, cart, and its contents were seized. Rattenbury, however, effected his escape. This adventure ended his career as a smuggler. At the Exeter Assizes, held in March, 1836, he appeared as a witness on behalf of his son, who was charged with having been engaged with others in an affray on Budleigh Salterton beach, in which some revenue officers were roughly handled. The case 275excited considerable interest, and Rattenbury’s cross-examination by Mr. Sergeant Bompas afforded much amusement. The following are some extracts from a contemporary account of the trial:—

Rattenbury’s adventures now come to an end, and he appears to have settled down to a quiet life for the remainder of his days, Lord Rolle having generously allowed him a pension of one shilling a week for life.^[27]

Barnstaple Fair, although now deprived of some of its ancient commercial importance by the establishment of great markets at other centres in North Devon, still attracts great numbers of purchasers of horses, Exmoor ponies, cattle, and sheep, reared by the agriculturists of the neighbourhood. Buyers attend the fair not only from all parts of Devonshire, but also from places beyond the borders of the county, among others cavalry officers come in some years to purchase horses for the military service of the country, while visitors from a wide district around the town arrive in large numbers to enjoy the “fun of the fair.”

This annual event has a very ancient history, for the claim of the town to the right to hold the fair is granted in Charters and recognized in Inquisitions from an early period, in one of which Inquisitions the jurors say that among divers liberties and free customs used and enjoyed by the burgesses of the Borough by the Charter of the Lord Athelstan, of famous memory, King of England, is the right to hold one fair in the year. The date of the fair was anciently July 21st, 22nd, 23rd, and 24th, as appears from the following regulations, which were in force for a long period:—

From a Lithograph]

[by J. Powell.

Queen Anne’s Walk and the Quay, Barnstaple.

The time for holding the fair was changed subsequently, probably during the reign of King James I., the new regulations being as follows:—

Another change was made in the year 1852, the fair being then fixed to commence on the Wednesday nearest to September 19th, and to continue for the two days following only, and this is the present regulation respecting its date and duration. By the latest arrangement the dealings in horses and ponies are limited to Thursday, the second day, the first being still devoted to the sale of cattle and sheep, and the third being par excellence the pleasure day, although the shows, swings, “horses,” and other attractions, and the stalls, do a great trade on the other days also.

The place for holding the fair has also been changed. A century ago the cattle were disposed of in Boutport Street, the horses in the North Walk, and the shows and stalls for pleasure-seekers were located in the Square. For a few years, about 1880, the cattle and sheep were placed in Victoria Road, but by the present arrangement the cattle and sheep are disposed of in the Cattle Market, the horses in the Strand, and the pleasure-seekers find their shows and other attractions in the North Walk. It has already been mentioned that the cattle and sheep now sold, though still many, are not so many as in the old days when Barnstaple fair was the only event of the kind in North Devon. In the year 1824, it was recorded that 2781,440 bullocks were driven in by the northern entrance into the town, over Pilton Bridge, of which not 300 were driven out by that road, and of these more than half were sold, and that it was calculated that £20,000 was expended in the purchase of cattle.

In the Borough Records we have accounts of the sales of horses and cattle at an early period, which are interesting as showing the mode in which security was given by the purchasers and the prices paid. The following are extracts from these records:—

279The total number of horses disposed of at this fair was 44, while 6 were exchanged; the prices of two are not given; the remaining 36 average £2 0s. 0½d. each, the highest price paid being £4 5s. for “one bay nagge,” and the lowest 10s. for the bay mare sold by the Bristol dealer.

At fairs in other years the business done in horses was as follows:—

The absence of sales during the years 1644–46, and the small number disposed of in 1641–3, may be accounted for by the following entry in the Parish Register:—

The following prices were realized for cattle sold at the various fairs mentioned above:—

280The opening of the fair takes place with the ceremonies which have attended it for many generations. On the morning of the first day a large stuffed glove, fixed at the end of a pole, is displayed from a window of the Guildhall, having before the year 1852 been exhibited from the west corner of the Quay Hall, which was demolished in that year to widen the street and quay, and which had been, until the dissolution of religious houses by Henry VIII., an ecclesiastical building, known as St. Nicholas’ Chapel. In the Receiver’s accounts for 1615 occurs the entry:—

and in those for 1622:—

Another entry in the same account being:—

from which it may be inferred that bull-baiting was one of the amusements provided for visitors. The display of the glove is usually considered to be a symbol of the welcome extended to all comers. In the Guildhall meanwhile the sergeants-at-mace are busy preparing for all comers who care to partake of it the toast and spiced ale, the latter according to a recipe handed down for centuries. With this ale are filled the handsome flagons belonging to the Corporation, and the loving cups charged from them are passed round to the assembled guests. A few toasts are then given, among them that of “The Ladies,” the response to which often affords a good deal of amusement, for humorous Mayors have been known to astonish a bachelor in the company, sometimes “a young man from the country,” by calling upon him to respond; and while some orators have passed the ordeal successfully, others have found the situation an embarrassing one. The speeches ended, and the toast and ale consumed, about 281noon a procession of the Mayor, Corporation, and officials is formed, and, escorted by a large crowd of on-lookers, the Town Clerk reads the following proclamation at the High Cross and other places in the Borough:—

In the olden time it was the custom to have a stag hunt on the second day, and the “fair ball” is still, and has long been, kept up. It was formerly the practice for many tradesmen to keep open house during the fair, of which practice some of their customers took very liberal advantage. Calling on one shopkeeper to pay a small account, they and members of their family who accompanied them would enjoy a hearty meal, and after an hour or two in the fair would repeat the proceeding with another, and sometimes with a third. This has now been put a stop to by the reduction of profits, through the competition brought about by the advent of Co-operative Societies and Companies, and other causes. Not only have the glories of 282Barnstaple fair been celebrated in prose, but the poet has sung of them, and this sketch may be appropriately concluded by giving one of the compositions that used to be sung:—

Towards the close of the year 1903 the Earl of Harrowby generously presented to the Mayor and Corporation of Tiverton a very complete collection of manuscripts carefully preserved by his ancestors and relating to the Parliamentary connection between themselves and the old Corporation of Tiverton, swept away by the municipal Reform Act of 1834–5. The general nature of the tie has long been known. It was a political nexus binding privileged burgesses to an influential family, and the sanction was interest. The motto might have been, on both sides, do ut des, for, while there were many professions of personal attachment, which may have been real, it was well understood that the cornerstone of the whole edifice was mutual advantage. As the connection, venal in origin, crystallized into permanence and respectability, it lost something of its sordid character. Sentiments of honour and loyalty, and even chivalric devotion, were spoken and cultivated, but these were the accidents, the trimmings. The substance remained what it had always been—reciprocal profit. All this was vaguely familiar to the present generation of townspeople, to whom traditions of the ancien régime had descended from their forefathers, but the arrival of twenty-six stout files, crowded with an infinite variety of curious particulars, has made an evident change in the situation. We no longer behold through the dark windows of distorted memory. Now at last we see face to face; and for the authors of some of 285those “human documents” the Day of Doom would have already dawned, but for the screen of their own insignificance, which incriminating papers may remove, but the discretion of the censor at once re-erects.

From a Lithograph]

[by W. Spreat, Jun.

St. Peter’s Church, Tiverton.

Before we speak of Tiverton as an appanage of the Ryders, it will be desirable to glance at the subject of pocket boroughs in general. There are no pocket boroughs or rotten boroughs now, and readers who have bestowed no special attention on political or constitutional developments, may be glad of some measure of illumination as to their rise and their place in the representative system of England. An impression formerly prevailed that the institution dated from the great Revolution, but this, it will be easy to show, was a fallacy. It was much older. On the other hand, the pocket-borough was never substituted by the arbitrary action of the Crown for the open borough, although it was the settled belief of many of the inhabitants of Tiverton that under the provisions of that mighty instrument, Magna Carta, the right of returning members had been inalienably secured to them, and the circumstance that this right was in fact exercised by neighbouring towns, like Barnstaple and Taunton, was considered proof that the local potwallers, or potwallopers, were the victims of invidious and illegal discrimination. “Magna Carta,” said Sir Edward Coke, “is such a fellow that he will not fear an equal”; and if it had been true that open voting in the boroughs had been promulgated as the law of the land after Runnymede, it has been judicially determined that no departure from that principle, brought about by the use of the Royal prerogative or by any other means, would have been recognized as valid. The terms of Magna Carta, however, do not countenance the view that the burgesses of any given town became entitled at their own option to send deputies to Parliament, or that universal suffrage was the rule. On the contrary, Parliamentary representation had at that time no existence either in theory or in practice. The Commons were simply tenants in capite of the Crown. 286After 1265, no doubt, elections began to be held, and many little places were summoned to return members, who received salaries from their constituencies in payment of their services. This charge rendered the honour a costly burden, and Edward I., one of the wisest of our princes, varied the direction of the writs so as to distribute the maintenance of the new third estate over as wide an area as possible. The towns themselves did not greatly value the franchise, and, in many instances, petitioned to be relieved of the dubious privilege. It seems unquestionable that the mere receipt of an occasional summons did not create or confirm any inherent or indefeasible right of unbroken representation, nor do we meet with any attempt to institute such a system until the days of the Reformation, when a new spirit invaded the country and the Commons, as a branch of the Legislature, made rapid strides in numbers and importance.

Then it was that the lawyers of the Inns of Court, many of them Puritan in sympathy, disinterred the ancient records, and, on the strength of one or two summonses, insisted that such demesne towns, some mere villages, were boroughs by prescription, and as such possessed the right to send representatives to Parliament for all time. The consequence was that about thirty towns, in which great men at Court had an interest, resumed their lapsed privileges, and by the reign of Queen Elizabeth the Lower House had received an accession of sixty fresh members. This seems to have been brought about in the first instance by the sheriffs sending precepts to the places in question, and although in the thirteenth year of Elizabeth a debate took place regarding the admission of members from towns not hitherto represented, the practice was not seriously challenged owing to the efficient patronage and protection of the courtiers before named. In subsequent reigns the Commons themselves proceeded to enlarge their body. James I., indeed, talked of reform, but that pedantic monarch, far from checking the growth of the borough 287system, was the very sovereign to whom Tiverton was indebted for its charter.

The small borough, in the nature of things, tended to become a pocket-borough. In the reign of Elizabeth the Earl of Leicester “owned” the town of Andover; and the degree to which this form of property was stretched is amusingly illustrated by the well-known story of Ann Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, who lived in the days of the Merry Monarch. The Secretary of State, Sir Joseph Williamson, had sent her a letter in which he named a particular candidate for her borough of Appleby. Incensed at this presumption, the haughty dame returned the following reply: “I have been bullied by an usurper, I have been neglected by a court, but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man shan’t stand.”

The system, it goes without saying, lent itself to numberless kinds of abuse. It has been stated that at one period a mistress of the King of France acquired some borough, and that the Nabob of Arcot was able to secure the return of seven or eight members, all pledged to his interest. These assertions may be true or they may not, but the possibility of such anomalies did not deter apologists from affirming that the system was not by any means an unmixed evil.

This brief sketch will perhaps suffice as an explanation of the origin and character of the borough system in general. Let us now turn to the case of Tiverton in particular. As has been intimated, many of the inhabitants believed that Tiverton was a borough by prescription, and 288that accordingly the crown could not by its charter limit the right of election to members of the corporate body alone. Naturally the evidence relied on was that of State papers. An inquisition post mortem a^o 51 Edw. III. sets out the extent and value of the manor and borough, from which it appears that the two were distinct as to rents and services, and that each had a separate court. By Letters Patent a^o 1 Edw. IV., the King grants the manor, borough and hundred to Humphry Stafford, Knight, in special tail without any other description. These data are obviously insufficient, and search was made at the Rolls Chapel from the thirty-third year of Henry VIII., the year of the earliest return to Parliament extant since the reign of Edward IV. The result was not satisfactory to the enthusiasts who instituted the inquiry, the first return discovered being that of 18 James I., when John Bamfylde and John Davye, Esqrs., were returned by indenture dated the 20th December, by the Mayor, capital burgesses, and assistants. It may be added that in Prynne’s Brevia Parliamentaria there occurs no mention of Tiverton, which, on all these grounds, can hardly have been a borough in the sense desired.

Tiverton, then, we may take it as certain, did not enjoy the right of returning members until the thirteenth year of the reign of James I., when the Mayor, Capital Burgesses, Assistant Burgesses of the town and parish, or the major part of them, were empowered to choose and nominate two discreet and sufficient men to be burgesses of the Parliament. The charter was renewed in the same terms in the fourth year of James II., and again in the reign of George II., so that we need feel no surprise that, when the potwallopers from time to time threatened to assert their supposed right, the members of the Common Council, assured of their legal position, treated such vapourings with calm superiority. Until the tidal wave of reform demolished the bulwarks of their monopoly, the twenty-four were sole masters and arbiters. It was they who had 289the right to decide who should sit in Parliament for the ancient town—they and they alone. But how that right was exercised, if we except the bare list of the Council’s nominees, there is for a long period no evidence to show.

However, there was always material for a deal, and in the former half of the eighteenth century Tiverton already figures as a political tied-house. The overlordship afterwards acquired by the Ryder family was then vested in a politician of some note, who in 1728 was one of the representatives of Tiverton, though the Parliamentary connection of his house with Honiton was even closer and of much longer standing, lasting, indeed, from 1640 to 1796. We allude to Sir William Yonge. Martin Dunsford, the first real historian of Tiverton, describes him as “a popular man and closely attached to the minister, Sir Robert Walpole,” adding that he “had great influence over the leading members of the Corporation of Tiverton, and generally directed their choice of burgesses.” The same writer, referring to Sir Edward Montague and Charles Gore, Esquire, who in 1761 held one of the seats successively, makes bold to assert that “there is reason to believe these members were never in Tiverton, but bargained for their seats at a distance either with Sir William Yonge or with Oliver Peard, Esq., the primum mobile, of the Corporation.” With regard to the former, there is clearly some misapprehension, as he had died in 1755, but the tradition that this eminent Devonshire worthy was dictator at Tiverton must have rested on a solid foundation. It behoves us, therefore, to render some further account of him.

In the course of his successful career Sir William, who was the fourth holder of the baronetcy, became one of the Lords of the Treasury, and on the restoration of the order in 1725, was created a Knight of the Bath. Subsequently he was appointed Secretary at War and Privy Councillor, and over and above these political distinctions, was entitled to write after his name the honourable symbols 290LL.D. and F.R.S. As Dunsford implies, he was a great personal friend of Walpole, and his support was of inestimable value to that statesman, “the glory of the Whigs.” Outside the house he does not appear to have counted (save, of course, in Devonshire), but inside, partly by reason of his high ability, and partly on account of his voice, which is stated to have been peculiarly melodious, his speeches were eagerly listened to. One curious fact preserved concerning him is that Sir Robert could speak from notes taken by Yonge, and by no other.

During the local supremacy of this statesman, and doubtless under his auspices and sponsorship, there was introduced to the Corporation of Tiverton a member of the Bar, Dudley Ryder, Esq., who in 1735 became their representative. In 1741, the same gentleman, but now known as Sir Dudley Ryder, Solicitor-General, was re-elected; and he continued to hold the seat until 1754, when he was elevated to the great office of Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench. Mr. Nathaniel Thomas Ryder succeeded him, but only for a short time, after which Mr. Nathaniel Ryder occupied the seat, and remained one of the members till, in 1776, he was called to the House of Lords by the title of Baron Harrowby. As the Hon. Dudley Ryder was still an infant, Mr. John Wilmot was permitted to fill the vacancy, but on the clear understanding that he would at the proper time make way for Lord Harrowby’s son and heir. This condition was eventually carried out in the most honourable manner, and, on the part of Lord Harrowby, with a patriotic regard for the public interests.

Thus, little by little and step by step, the Ryders firmly consolidated their political influence in the town, and though only one of the seats was claimed for a member of the family, the other seat also was evidently at their disposal. This for a long series of years was entrusted to the Duntzes, rich merchants of Exeter, who became 291baronets. Apart from politics, the Ryders had no connection with Devonshire, which they seldom visited, but Sir John Duntze, living at Rockbeare, and a member of the Tiverton Corporation, was able to keep a watchful eye on the local barometer, of whose subtle changes he (and most of his colleagues) kept Lord Harrowby sedulously and punctually informed through the post. On the other hand, poor Duntze, a perfect martyr to rheumatism, experienced, owing to the exposure of the long journey by coach, considerable difficulty in attending to his Parliamentary duties, and for practical purposes Lord Harrowby, or his nominee, was the London agent of the Tiverton Corporation. From the point of view of convenience no arrangement could have been happier.

The above remarks apply to the first Lord Harrowby and the first Sir John Duntze. The second Lord Harrowby, after a distinguished official career, was advanced to the dignity of an earldom, and locally much regret was expressed that he did not take his second title from the town so long represented by his grandfather, his father, and himself. Had this been the case, the present Lord Chancellor, whose eldest son enjoys the courtesy title of Viscount Tiverton, must have looked elsewhere for a subsidiary territorial designation. The second Sir John Duntze lived at Tiverton in a large house, which he either erected or restored for himself in the centre of the town; and an old man named Court, who is still alive, but almost totally blind, told me a year or two since of a lively incident which he can remember as taking place in front of the floridly decorated mansion. The potwallopers of the place, he said, organized a torchlight procession, the principal feature of which was a cavalcade of four-and-twenty bedizened donkeys. The point could not be missed. The asses were aggressively emblematic of the “corporators,” and their riders of the family of which Lord Harrowby was the head.

In 1832, the Parliamentary connection ended with the 292passage of the Reform Bill. The alliance had always been with the Corporation rather than with the town, although many of the inhabitants, directly and indirectly, had been repeatedly benefited by the generous consideration of Lord Harrowby and his relations. There was, however, in the town a strong body of malcontents numerous enough to carry their point, and a potent counter-attraction had arisen in the person of Mr. John Heathcoat, a resident manufacturer, whom his opponents derisively styled “Lord Tiverton.” In view of these facts, Lord Harrowby’s friends felt it their duty to notify him that no member or adherent of his family would stand a chance of being returned at the approaching open election. The members of the Common Council, loyal to the end, refused the least countenance or support to any of the new candidates until his lordship’s wishes had been disclosed, but the day of their predominance was already past. Politically, the game was up. Both Lord Harrowby and his brother, the Hon. Richard Ryder, consented to remain members of the Corporation, but three years later the “iron hand of Parliament,” as the Town Clerk expressed it, “terminated the long continuance and interchange of friendly communications.” At present the chief, if not the sole surviving, link between the family of Ryder and Tiverton is the large share of the ecclesiastical patronage of the borough still in the hands of Lord Harrowby.

And now for the Ryder correspondence. The earliest letters appear to date from the time when the Georgian lawyer was elevated to the bench and the seat which he had occupied, no doubt to his immense advantage, passed by inheritance to his son, then a young man fresh from college. We have the very epistles written by the gentleman whom Dunsford so grandly names “the primum mobile of the Corporation,” congratulating him on taking his master’s degree and absolving him from the unnecessary trouble of a journey to the south in order to attend his cut-and-dried election. A letter from Mr. Osmond 293acquaints him with the departure from the town of a “pretty partner” whose lively manners had enhanced the enjoyment of a visit, whilst the member for Tiverton was yet a callow bachelor. Eight years later Mr. Ryder had joined the noble army of Benedicks, and then we find Mrs. Peard afflicted with an unselfish anxiety to gratify his lady with a fine collection of shells.

Such pleasing gifts were the regular accompaniment and sweetener of the more serious transactions, the graver obligations which formed the mainstay of the connection. On the part of the members there was the annual present of a pair of bucks for the municipal banquet, and one of the oddest passages in this vast epistolary jungle is to be found in a letter of Sir John Duntze, in which he informs his colleague that a member of the Corporation, on bad terms with another member, announced as the ostensible cause of the quarrel, that he had been improperly helped to venison on the occasion of this important festival. Allusions to the subject are so frequent and unctuous, that one is tempted to conclude that in those gay, convivial days the yearly consignment of venison was a more considerable factor in the case than we should now deem possible. Thus, Mr. Mayor observes, with the distinctive air of a man of the world:—

This brings us to the topic of the social status of the Corporation, which was comparatively high. Its critics, indeed, complained that it included attornies, “very improper persons to be elected”; and the members were frequently laughed at for “having Mayors in trade.” In reply to this heavy indictment it was alleged by one of their number that at least twenty-two out of the twenty-four 294had landed property either in the town or in the parish. This was in 1831. In the reign of William and Mary the “burgesses” are described some as esquires, others as merchants, and one or two as yeomen; and this standard, there is reason to think, was consistently maintained. Tiverton, it may be well to say, was for centuries an important centre of the woollen trade. Instead of one big factory, as now, for the production of lace, there were many modest firms engaged in the manufacture and sale of serges, etc., and consequently the Common Council was, above all things, the valued preserve of families enriched by commerce, some of whom had acquired all the attributes of gentle birth and breeding. Mr. Worth, of Worth, and Mr. Cruwys, of Cruwys Morchard, belonged to two of the oldest families of Devon, and an ancestor of the former had sat in Parliament for Tiverton in days when the choice of members was apparently free and unfettered. With such the Ryders corresponded in the most genial, unaffected, and friendly way, and, in their somewhat infrequent visits to the place, were glad to accept their hospitality. They would, for instance, occasionally stay with Mr. Dickinson, of Knightshayes, an ancestor of the present Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Sir W. H. Walrond), and once, at least, Air. George Owen, of Lowman Green, was honoured by a surprise visit from the younger nobleman.

In the year 1808, this second Lord Harrowby condescended to be Mayor—a concession which resulted in a somewhat diverting misconception. It appears that a Barnstaple correspondent, interested in the working of the mails, had written to him in the belief that he was a “common or garden” mayor—a plain Mr. Mayor. His consternation on learning the truth does not need to be imagined, for he has pictured it himself:—

Lord Harrowby was coached for the inaugural ceremonies by the cousins Wood, the elder of whom, Mr. Beavis Wood, who long filled the office of Town Clerk, was by far the shrewdest of the Ryders’ multitudinous correspondents. Even now his clever, incisive letters, lit up with many a happy jest, are a pleasure to peruse, and neither in his earlier nor in his later ones was he inclined to spare the feelings and eccentricities of those with whom his lot was cast. Thus, on August 5th, 1808, he writes:—

Tempora mutantur. Of the old times and the old Christians Mr. Wood had told Lord Harrowby not a few entertaining stories, which are still preserved in his faded but excellent handwriting. Possibly at some future date they may be printed for the benefit of students of human nature, together with extracts from other correspondence, but with one more specimen of his admirable humour this paper must be brought to a close.

• Abbey of St. Rumon, Tavistock, 5, 73.
• Abbot of Buckfast, former town house of, 68.
• Abbot of Tavistock, Aldred, 118.
  • ”    ”  Banham, John, 119.
  • ”    ”  Campbell, John, 118.
  • ”    ”  Chubbe, John, 118.
  • ”    ”  Cullyng, Thomas, 118.
  • ”    ”  de Courtenay, John, 118.
  • ”    ”  Denyngton, John, 119.
  • ”    ”  Langdon, Stephen, 119.
  • ”    ”  Lyfing, 118.
  • ”    ”  Peryn, John, 119.
• Abbot Sithric, last Saxon Abbot of Tavistock, 8.
• Adelaide, Queen, at “Clarence,” Exeter, 76.
• Adye, Rev. Frederick, Romance of, 203.
• Albemarle, George Monk, Duke of, 133.
• Alexander, Plans of Mr. David, 201.
• Alfred the Great, Relief of Exeter by, 4.
• Amicia, Countess of Devon, 48.
• Ancient Cathedral of Cornwall, 177.
• Annals of Chagford, 10.
• Apollo Room, New Inn, Exeter, 67-69.
• Archbishop of Canterbury, William Courtenay, 50.
• Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Temple, 60.
• Armada, Coming of the, 93.
  • ”  Fight with the, 92.
• Arms of Sir George Treby, Plympton Guildhall, 195.
• Arundel, Sir Humphrey, 11, 82, 83.
• Asser, Saxon Chronicle of, 4.
• Athelstan, Charter to Barnstaple from King, 276.
  • ”  Drives Britons out of Exeter, 3.
• Athos, Founder of illustrious family, 34.
• Attack on Pensaulcoit, 3.

• Babb, Lieutenant Colonel, 261.
  • ”   ”    ”  Tablet of, 262.
• Babbage, Charles, famous mathematician, 166.
• Babbage, Miss Juliana, 166.
• Ball, Barnstaple Fair, 281.
• Barclay, Alexander, “Stultifera Navis” of, 211.
• Barnstaple Borough, 295.
  • ”     ”  Charter to, 276.
  • ”     ”  records, 278.
  • ”   Fair, 276, 281, 284.
  • ”   poem on, 282.
  • ”   Guildhall, 280.
  • ”   Quay Hall, 280.
• Baronet, First Devonshire, 71.
• Baskerville, Sir Simon, Mural tablet of, 65.
• Bastard, Mr. William, of Kitley, 255.
• Battle of Stratton, 105.
  • ” ” Steinkirk, 113.
• “Bear Inn,” The, Exeter, 73.
• Bearne, Story of Miss Joan, 175.
• Beaufort, Duke of, 256.
• Beer, Harbour construction at, 274.
•  ” birthplace of Jack Rattenbury, 264.
•  ” return to, of Jack Rattenbury, 268, 269.
•  ” to Thorverton Canal, 274.
• Bercle, David, Prior of Plympton, 186.
• Berry Pomeroy, Sir Edward Seymour of, 71.
• 298Bideford, Importance of, 9.
• Bishop of Exeter, Peter Courtenay, 56.
• Black Prince, Relations of Exeter with the, 8.
• Blake, Admiral, Death of, 95.
•  ”   ”  Pursuit of Van Tromp, 112.
• Blewitt, account of the landing of the Prince of Orange, 161–163.
• Blewitt, “Panorama of Torquay,” 172.
• “Bob’s Nose” headland, 273.
• Boger, Mr. Deeble, Recorder of Plympton, 192.
• Bompas, cross-examination by Mr. Sergeant, 275.
• Bonville, Lady Cicely, 210.
• Bray, Mrs., description of Druidic remains, 2.
• Bray, Mrs., Local tales of, 116.
• “Brevia Parliamentaria,” Prynne’s, 287.
• British Revolution, George Moore’s History of the, 287.
• Brooke, Christopher, 123.
• Browne, William, Tavistock poet, 117–212.
• Brutus, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.
•  ” Stone, 24.
• Brut, Tysilio, 23.
•  ” Gr. ab Arthur, 23.
• Buller, Francis, puisne judge, 214.
• Burnet, Dr., proclamation of the Prince of Orange, 17, 174.
• Burritt, reminiscences of Elihu, 94.
• Butler, Samuel, caricaturist in verse, 218.

• Cadhay, Ottery St. Mary, 213.
• Caer, Pensauelcoit, 31.
• Canal, Beer to Thorverton, 274.
• Canterbury, William Courtenay, Archbishop of, 50.
• Canute, 4.
• Captain Cook, departure from Plymouth, 96.
• Capture of Jack Rattenbury by French privateer, 266.
• Cardinal Reginald Pole, 52.
• Carew, Sir Peter, 11, 70, 83.
•  ”  Sir Gawen, 11, 70, 83.
• Carew’s “Survey of Cornwall,” 27.
• Cargoes from Cherbourg, 273.
• Cary, Colonel, 261.
• Castle of Rougemont, 8.
•  ”  Plympton, 177, 178.
•  ”  Salcombe, 15.
• Cathedral, ancient, of Cornwall, 177.
• Catskin Earls, Origin of, 59.
• Catullus, 145.
• Chagford, Annals of, 10.
• Chancellor, Earl of Halsbury, present Lord, 291.
•   ”    of the Duchy of Lancaster, present, 294.
• Chanters House, quarters of Sir Thomas Fairfax, 213.
• Chapel at Ottery St. Mary, Independent, 214.
• Charles I., King, 94.
•   ”    Lord Lansdowne, 112.
• Cherbourg, cargoes from, 273.
• Chronicle of Higden, 31.
• Church, Colyton, Effigy of Lady Pole in, 244.
• Church, Plympton Town, 190.
•  ”   ”  St. Mary, 189.
•  ”  St. Germans, 177.
• Churchyard, ring of Mary, 164.
• “Clarence” Inn, Exeter, 74.
•   ”   ” ”  Duchess of Clarence at the, 76.
• Clinton, Captain Lord, 253.
• Close, house in the, 68.
• Cluobrera, Gabriello, the Pindar of Italy, 222.
• Clyst St. Mary, 85.
• Coke, Sir Edward, on Magna Carta, 285.
• Coleridge, Rev. John, 212, 214.
•   ”   ” George, 212.
•   ”   ” Samuel Taylor, Birthplace of, 214.
• Collection of manuscripts, 284.
• College of Ottery St. Mary, 211.
• Collins, Mary, maid to Mrs. Bray, 117.
• Collins, Rev. Robert, Nonconformist leader, 213, 214.
• Comte de Chambord, Funeral of the, 46.
• Consort, late Prince, visit to the Duchy Estates, 208.
• Convention Room, 213.
• Convict Settlement, Formation of, 208.
• Coplestone Cross, 7.
• Coplestones of White Spur, Race of the, 7.
• 299Corinæus, 25.
•   ”  Rule of, 20.
•   ”  Combat of, 21.
• Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany, 68.
• Cottenham, First Earl of, 58, 61, 62.
• Cotton, R. W., on Barnstaple, 132.
• Courtenay, Baronetcy refused by family of, 57.
•   ”  Barony refused by family of, 57.
•   ”  Edward, 53–55.
•   ”  Edward Baldwin, 12th Earl of Devon, 61.
•   ”  Henry, 80.
•   ”  Henry Hugh, 13th Earl of Devon, 61, 89.
•   ”  Henry Reginald, Lord, 61.
•   ”  John, 50.
•   ”  Lord, 260.
•   ”  Made Viscount, 57.
•   ”  Peter, Bishop of Exeter, 56, 183.
•   ”  Philip, 49.
•   ”  Sir Hugh, 49, 180.
•   ”  Sir William, 51.
•   ”  Sir William of Powderham, 56, 122, 172.
•   ”  Thomas, 80.
•   ”  William, 9th Earl of Devon, 59.
•   ”  William, 10th Earl of Devon, 59.
•   ”  William Reginald, 11th Earl of Devon, 60.
• Courtneie, Sir Peter, Sheriff of Exeter, 83.
• Coverdale, Myles, 77.
•   ”  translator of the Bible, 169.
• Crediton, town of, 6, 83.
• Crockern Tor Parliament, 9.
• Cynewulf, King of Wessex, 3.
• Cruwys, Mr., of Cruwys Morchard—old Devon family, 294.

• Danes at Exmouth, 4.
• Dartmoor, King Edgar on, 6.
•   ”  Pre-historic Remains on, 1.
•   ”  Rowe’s, 209.
• Dartmouth Castle, Last Governor of, 167.
•   ”  Charming, 9.
•   ”  French Vessel taken at, 18.
•   ”  Jail, 271.
•   ”  Trade with Newfoundland, 12.
• Davidson, J. B., of Secktor, 155.
• Davy, Birthplace of Edward, 216.
• Dean Bourn, 146.
•  ” Court, 143.
•  ” Prior, Village of, 141, 143.
• Debrun, Ponce Denis, Pindar of France, 222.
• de Courtenay, Baldwin, 43.
•  ”  ”  Jocelyn, 35, 39.
•  ”  ”   ”  II., 36.
•  ”  ”   ”  III., 37.
•  ”  ”   ”  IV., 38.
•  ”  ”  Peter, 41.
•  ”  ”  Reginald, 39, 40.
•  ”  ”  Robert, 42.
•  ”  ”  William, 39.
• de Courteney, John, Abbot of TavistockTavistock, 118.
•  ”  ”  Reginald, 47.
•  ”  ”  Robert, 48.
• de Grandisson, John, 80.
• de Grenville, First Sir Richard, 99.
•  ”  ”  Sir Richard, Marshal of Calais, 99.
•  ”  ”  Sir Richard, Capture of Spanish Vessel, 100.
•  ”  ”  Sir Roger, sea captain, 99.
• Delaney, letters of Mrs., 246.
• Denyngton, John, Abbot of Tavistock, 118.
• De Quincey, Anecdote of, 214.
• Devon, Amicia, Countess of, 48.
•  ”  Edward Baldwin, 12th Earl of, 61.
•  ”  Edward, Earl of, 55.
•  ”  Henry Hugh, 13th Earl of, 61, 89.
•  ”  Notes to Risdon’s, 201.
•  ”  William, 10th Earl of, 57.
•  ”  William Reginald, 11th Earl of, 60.
• Dickinson, Mr., of KnightshayesKnightshayes, 294.
• Dodbrooke, birthplace of Dr. John Wolcot, 219.
• Dodderidge, Effigy of Lady, 244.
• “Dolphin” Inn at Exeter, 71, 72.
• Dolvin Road, 124.
• Dorot, Jean, a French Pindar, 222.
• “Dover,” adventures of the, 264.
• 300Drake, Sir Francis, 90, 91, 93, 192.
•  ”   ”   Statue of, 121.
• Drayton, Michael, poet, 27, 123, 129, 213.
• Drewe, John and Edward, of Killerton, 72.
• Druids in Devon, 2.
• Duchess of Clarence (afterwards Queen Adelaide) at Exeter, 76.
• Duchy of Lancaster, present Chancellor of, 294.
• Dugdale, copying register, 47.
• Duke of Kent at Exeter, 76.
•  ” ” ” Death of, 19.
• “Duke of Millaine,” Massinger’s, 130.
• Duncan, Arrival in Exeter of Lord, 76.
• Dunsford, Martin, historian of Tiverton, 289.
• Duntze, family of, 291.

• Earl of Cottenham, Mr. Pepys, afterwards first, 58, 61, 62.
• Earl Ethelwold, 5.
• Earl of Harrowby’s present to Tiverton, 284.
• Earl of Torrington, George Monk, 133.
• Earls, Catskin, Origin of, 59.
• Eastlake, First school of Sir Charles, 196.
• Eddystone Lighthouse, Completion of, 95.
• Edgar, King, 5.
• Edith, Queen, 7.
• Edward the Confessor, 7.
• Edward I. varies direction of writs, 286.
• Effigy of Lady Pole, 244.
•  ” ”  ” Dodderidge, 244.
• Elfrida, Loveliness of, 5.
• Elizabeth, Queen, 239.
• Emperor of Russia, Grand Duke Nicholas, afterwards, 76.
• Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke, 128.
• Ethelwolf, Saxon King, 181.
• Evans, Poetry and prose of Miss Rachel, 117.
• Exeter, 3, 85, 86.
•  ”  Arrival of Lord Duncan at, 76.
•  ”  “Bear Inn” at, 73, 233.
•  ”  “Clarence” at, 74.
•  ”  Danes at, 4.
•  ”  “Dolphin Inn” at, 71, 72.
•  ”  Free Republic of, 7.
•  ”  Headquarters of the Danes at, 4.
•  ”  Henry, first Marquis of, 51, 52.
•  ”  History of, Jenkin’s, 73.
•  ”  “Mermaid” Inn at, 69.
•  ”  “New” Inn, 63–68.
•  ”  Peter Courtenay, Bishop of, 56.
•  ”  Royalist, 13.
•  ”  Sieges of, 8, 10, 87.
•  ”  William Warelwast, Bishop of, 182.
• Exmouth, Danes at, 4.

• Fair ball, Barnstaple, 281.
• Fair, poem on Barnstaple, 282.
• Fairfax, Letter to Speaker from General, 136.
•  ”  March to Great Torrington by General, 133.
•  ”  Sir Thomas, 213.
•  ”  Sir Thomas, Wonderful preservation of, 138.
• Field, Mr. Barron, on Dean Prior, 153.
• Firing of Teignmouth, 18.
• First Earl of Cottenham, Pepys, afterwards, 58, 61, 62.
• First Marquis of Exeter, 51.
• Foote, Maria, celebrated actress, 75.
• Former Town Mansion of Abbot of Buckfast, 68.
• Fortescue, Lord, 256.
•   ”  Lieutenant-Colonel, 260.
•   ”  Sir Edmund, 14.
• Freemasons, French, in England, 206.
• Free Republic of Exeter, 7.
• French landing at Torquay, 18.
• French privateer, capture by, 266.
• Froude on Sir Richard Grenville, 100.
• Fuller on bone lace, 241.

• Geoffrey, of Monmouth, 21.
• George III., Memorial to son of, 19.
•  ”  ” Visit to Exeter, 233.
• Gilbert, Adrian and Humphry, 12.
• Glanville of Kilworthy, Judge, 124.
•  ”  John, 125.
•  ”  Sir Francis, 125.
• Goegmagot, 25.
• 301Gogmagog, 27, 28.
• Grammar School of Plymouth, 197.
•   ”  ”  Kingsbridge, 223.
• Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosmo III., 68.
•  ”  ” Nicholas received by Samuel Foote, 76.
• Grandisson, Bishop, 185, 210.
• Granville, George, created Lord Lansdown, 114.
•   ”  Lord of Potheridge, 112.
•   ”  Sir Bevill, at Steinkirk, 113.
• Gray, Monument of Thomas, 222.
• Great Coplestones, race of, 7.
•  ” Torrington, Fight at, 133.
• Grenville, Bevill, supporter of Charles I., 104.
•  ”    ” knighted at Berwick, 105.
•  ”    ” brother of Sir Richard, 122.
•  ”   John, drowned, 104.
•  ”   2nd John, leads charge at Lansdown, 108.
•  ”   2nd John, knighted at Bristol, 110.
•  ”   John, brother of Sir Bevill, Flight of, 122.
•  ”   Sir John, flight to Scilly Isles, 111.
•  ”   Sir Richard, 108.
•  ”   3rd Sir Richard, fight with Spanish at Flores, 103.
•  ”   3rd Sir Richard Death of, 104.
•  ”   4th Sir Richard, Death in exile of, 110.
• “Greyhound,” lieutenant of the, 269.
• Grosart, Mr., statement re brasses, 142.
• Guildhall, Barnstaple, 280.

• Hall, Barnstaple Quay, 280.
• Hamoaze, The, 26.
• Hamo’s, Port, 26.
• Hanmer, Londonderry, 250.
• Harbour construction at Beer, scheme for, 274.
• Harris, Form of parole by Captain Vernon, 204.
• Harris, Pamphlet by Captain Vernon, 203.
• Harrowby, present Earl of, 284.
• Harrowby, 1st Lord, 290–291, 295.
•   ”  2nd Lord, first Earl, 291.
• Hawker, Sketch by late Reverend Treasurer, 232–234.
• Hawkins, Sir John, 12, 92.
•   ”  William, 12.
• Haydon, Benjamin, last visit to Grammar School, 196.
• Headland, “Bob’s Nose,” 273.
• Heathcoat, Mr. John, “Lord Tiverton,” 292.
• Hele, Sir John, distinguished lawyer, 192.
• Henry Courtenay, first Marquis of Exeter, 51, 52.
• Heydon, Curious certificate of Rev. John, 138, 139.
• Higden, Chronicle of, 31.
• Hill, Colonel, in Portugal, 251.
• Historian of Tiverton, Martin Dunsford, 289.
• History of Kingsbridge, 237.
•   ”  ”  Torquay, 172.
• “History of the British Revolution,” George Moore’s, 287.
• Hoker, John, alias of John Vowell, 81.
• Holdsworth, Governor of Dartmouth Castle, 167.
• Honiton, 238.
•  ”  Mrs. Lydia Maynard of, 243.
• Hopton, Defeat of Lord, 133, 135.
• Horace, 145.
• Howard, Disposal of estates of Lady, 122.
•  ”  Lord Thomas, 101.
•  ”  Romance of Lady, 121.

• Ilfracombe, 9.
• Independent Chapel, Ottery St. Mary, 214.
• Ine, King of West Saxons, 3.
• Ingelow, Jean, poem on Eddystone Lighthouse, 95.
• Inns of Court, lawyers of, 286.
• Inscriptions, Ogham, 6.
• Isaacke, Chronicler, 8.

• Jail, Dartmouth, 271.
• Jenkin’s History of Exeter, 73.
• Johnson, Dr., on Inns, 63.
•  ”   ” visit to Devonshire, 198.
• Jonson, Ben, on Browne’s “Britannia’s Pastorals,” 124.

• 302Keats on Cider making, 146.
• Kennicott, Dr., 214.
• Kerslake, Mr. T., 30.
• Killerton, John and Edward Drewe of, 72.
• King Charles besieging Plymouth, 15.
•  ” Stephen, 8.
• Kinglake, W., 215.
• Kingsbridge Grammar School, 233.
• King’s Grammar School, Ottery, 212.
• Knightshayes, Mr. Dickinson of, 294.

• Lacy, Petition to Bishop, 184.
• Lamb, Schoolfellow of Charles, 215.
• Lancaster, ancestor of present Chancellor of Duchy of, 294.
• Landing of the Prince of Orange, 16.
• Langdon, Stephen, Abbot of Tavistock, 119.
• Lansdown, Attack on Sir William Waller at, 107.
• Lansdown, Charles, Lord, 112.
• Larkham, Thomas, Puritan incumbent, 116.
• Last Governor of Dartmouth Castle, Letter from, 167.
• Late Prince Consort, visit to Dartmoor, 208.
• Lawyers of Inns of Court, 286.
• Leicester, Earl of, 287.
• Leland on Plympton Castle, 178, 179, 181.
• Leofric, Bishop, 7.
• Letter to Dr. Oliver, 186.
• Lieutenant of the “Greyhound,” enmity of, 269.
• Lighthouse, First Eddystone, 95.
• Lord Russell, 11.
• Lowman Green, Tiverton, Mr. George Owen of, 294.
• Lydford Law, Satire on, 128.
• Lyte, Communication from Rev. H. F., 161.
• Lyte, Rev. H. F., presentation to William IV., 162.

• Mackenzie, Colonel, 256.
• Magna Carta, 285.
• Manuscripts, collection of, 284
• Marquis of Worcester, 250.
• Massinger’s “Duke of Millaine,” 130.
• Maurice, Prince, 15.
•  ”  ” at Chard, 107.
• “Mayflower,” Sailing of the, 94.
• Maynard, John, eminent townsman, 126.
•   ”  Sir John, Lord Commissioner, 155.
•   ”  Sir John, Recorder of Brixham, 156.
•   ”  Sir John represents Plympton, 192.
•   ”  of Honiton, Mrs. Lydia, 243.
• “Mermaid” Inn at Exeter, 69.
• Monk, George, Duke of Albemarle, in Scotland, 109.
• Monk, George, Duke of Albemarle, Restoration of Charles II., 112, 133.
• Monmouth Rebellion, 16.
• Montgomery, Colonel, 251.
•   ”   Lord, 250.
• Monument to Sir William Strode, 190.
•   ”  to Thomas Gray, 222.
• Moore’s “History of the British Revolution,” 287.
• “Mother Molly,” Miss Peard’s, 255.
• Mural Tablet to Sir Simon Baskerville, 65.

• Napoleon on board the Bellerophon, 96.
• Nennius, 22.
• Newfoundland seized, 12.
• “New Inn,” Exeter, 63–67.
•  ” ”  ”  Apollo room in the, 67–69.
•  ” ”  ”  “Inne Halle,” 66.
• Norden, John, 79.
• Northcote, Education of, 196.
•   ”  Sir Stafford, 260.
• Notes to Risdon’s “Devonshire,” 201.

• Offering to Richard III., 10.
• Ogham Inscriptions, 6.
• Oldham, Visitation to Plympton Priory by Bishop, 186.
• Oliver, Dr., 69, 182, 183, 186.
•  ”  ” Letter to, 186.
• Opie, John, 228, 229, 237.
• Orchard, Colonel, 256.
• Ordulf, founder of St. Rumon’s Abbey, 5.
• Owen, Mr. George, of Lowman Green, Tiverton, 294.

• 303Paignton, Bible Tower at, 169.
• Palgrave, Sir Francis, Theory of, 4.
• Palk, Captain Walter, 261.
• “Panorama of Torquay,” Blewitt’s, 161, 172.
• Parliament, Crockern Tor, 9.
• Peard, Miss, 255.
• Peeke, Exploits in Spain of Richard, 127.
• Pembroke, Ann Clifford, Countess of, 287.
•   ”  Epitaph on the Countess of, 128.
• “Pendennis,” Thackeray’s, 215.
• Pensaulcoit, Attack on, 3.
•   ”  Caer, 31.
• Penselwood, 31.
• Perkin Warbeck, 11.
• Perry-Keene, Rev., Vicar of Dean Prior, 141.
• Peryn, John, Abbot of Tavistock, 119.
• Peters, Hugh, Puritan preacher, 138.
• Petre, Master William, 71.
• Pindar, first lyric poet of Bœotia, 219.
• Pindars, French and Italian, 222.
• Pixie’s Parlour, 215.
• Plato on birds, 144.
• Plymouth, 12.
•   ”  Port of, 89.
•   ”  Siege of, 15, 25.
• Plympton, 176.
•   ”  Castle, 177, 178.
•   ”  Grammar School, 196.
•   ”  Guildhall, 195.
•   ”  David Bercle, Prior of, 186.
•   ”  Priory, 181, 182, 187.
•   ”  St. Mary Church, 190.
•   ”  Town Church, 190.
• Pode, J. S., 256.
• Poem, “Barnstaple Fair,” 282.
• Pole, Cardinal Reginald, 52.
•  ” Effigy of Lady, 244.
•  ” Influence of Sir William, 274.
• Polwhele, 2, 213.
• “Polyolbion,” Drayton’s, 27.
• Pomeroy, Sir Humphry, 11.
• Port, Hamo’s, 26.
• Port of Topsham, 9.
• Poulain, Interesting book of Mons. Jules, 203.
• Powderham, Sir William Courtenay of, 56.
• Powderham, Viscount Courtenay of, 57.
• Pre-historic Remains on Dartmoor, 1.
• Present Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster, 294.
• Prideaux, Colonel Sir Edmund, 262.
• Prince Consort, the late, visit to Duchy Estates, 208.
•  ”  Maurice, 15, 107.
•  ”  of Orange, Landing of the, 16.
•  ”  “Worthies of Devon,” 73.
• Princess Henrietta Anne, born at Exeter, 13.
• Privateer, capture by French, 266.
• Privateering, 264.
• Prynne’s “Brevia Parliamentaria,” 288.
• Pym, John, 125.

• Quay Hall, Barnstaple, 280.
• Queen Adelaide, 246.
•  ”   ”   at the “Clarence,” Exeter, 76.
•  ”  Elizabeth, Fondness for dress of, 239.
•  ”  Victoria, 246.
•  ”   ”   Early home of, 19.

• Raleigh, Sir Walter, 13, 212.
• Rattenbury, Jack, amusing cross-examination of, 275.
•   ”   ”  birthplace at Beer, 264, 274.
•   ”   ”  capture by French privateer, 266.
•   ”   ”  pension allowed to, 275.
• Rebellion of Monmouth, 16.
• Records, Barnstaple Borough, 278.
• Republic, Free, of Exeter, 7.
• Revolt of Scilly Isles, 111.
• Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 176.
•   ”  ”  ” admiration of cloisters, 197.
•   ” Sir Joshua, Appreciation of, 227, 229.
•   ” Sir Joshua, astonished by the King, 199.
•   ” Sir Joshua, Birth of, 198.
• Richard II., Offering to, 10.
• Risdon’s Notes to “Devonshire,” 201.
•  ”  Honiton, 238.
• 304Rivers, Sir Richard, 178.
• Rolle, Lord, 260, 268, 272, 274, 275.
•  ” Sir John, 68.
•  ”  ” ” House in the close, 68.
• Roope, Mr. Nicholas, first openly to espouse the Prince of Orange, 167.
• Roscommon, nephew of Strafford, 126.
• Rougemont Castle, 8.
• Rowe’s “Dartmoor,” Information derived from, 209.
• Russell, Lord, 11, 83, 86.
•  ”  Arthur, 121.
•  ”  John, Leader of Reform, 121.
•  ”  William, Patriot, 121.
• Russells of Tavistock, The, 121.
• Ryder, family of, 290–296.

• St. Boniface of Germany, 3.
• St. German’s Church, ancient cathedral, 177.
• St. Mary’s Church, Plympton, 189.
• Salcombe Castle, 15.
• Sampford Courtney, 82.
•   ”   ”  Battle of, 87.
•   ”   ”  Whitsun Monday at, 83.
• Saxon Abbots, Last of Tavistock, 8.
• Saxons, The, 3.
• “Saxon School” of Tavistock, 118.
• Scilly Isles, Revolt of the, 111.
• Seale, Letter to Sir H. P., 167.
• Secktor, Mr. J. B. Davidson of, 155.
• Secretary of State, Sir Joseph Williamson, 287.
• Seizure of Newfoundland, 12.
• Sergeant Bompas, amusing cross-examination by, 275
• Seymour, Lord, 261.
•   ”  Sir Edward, Proposal of, 17.
•   ”  Sir Edward, the younger, 167
• Ship of Fools, “Stultifera Navis,” 211.
• Siege of Plymouth, 15, 25.
• Sieges of Exeter, 8, 10.
• Sithric, Abbot, 8.
• Slanning, Sir Nicholas, at the siege of Bristol, 192.
• Smith, Mr. Goldwin, 81.
• Snell, John, 15.
• Sonnet to the River Otter, 215.
• Speke, Arrival of Hugh, 17.
• Spenser, 27.
• Sprigge, Joshua, Chaplain to Fairfax, 133.
• Stamford, Earl of, Parliamentarian commander, 105.
• Stapledon, Bishop, consecrates Plympton Church, 183.
• Statue of Sir Francis Drake, 121.
• Steinkirk, Battle of, 113.
• Stephen, King, 8, 179.
• Stokes, Mr. H. S., as West Country poet, 117.
• Stratton, Battle at, 105–107.
• Strode, Sir William, member for Plympton, 192.
• Strode, Sir William, Monument to, 190.
• “Stultifera Navis,” or Ship of Fools, 211.
• Survey of Cornwall, Carew’s, 27.
• Sweyn, Revenge of, 4.

• Tablet to Lieutenant-Colonel Babb, 261.
• Tavistock Abbey, 5, 73.
•   ”  Beauty of, 116.
•   ”  Last Saxon Abbot of, 8.
•   ”  Tamar side of, 131.
•   ”  Town Mansion of Abbots of, 73.
• Teignmouth, Firing of, 18.
• Temple, Dr., Archbishop of Canterbury, 60.
• Thackeray, Youthful home of, 215.
• The Armada, Appearance off Plymouth of, 93.
•  ”  College of Ottery St. Mary, 211.
•  ”  Conqueror, William, 7.
•  ”  Convention Room, Ottery St. Mary, 213.
•  ”  “Dover,” adventures of, 265.
•  ”  Earl of Leicester, 287.
•  ”  Earl of Stamford, 105.
•  ”  “Greyhound,” lieutenant of, 269.
•  ”  Guildhall, Barnstaple, 280.
•  ”  Hamoaze, 26.
•  ”  Marquis of Worcester, 250.
•  ”  Mayflower, Sailing of, 94.
•  ”  present Lord Chancellor, 291.
•  ”  Prince of Orange, Landing of, 16.
•  ”  Quay Hall, Barnstaple, 280.
•  ”  Revenge, naval battle at Flores, 101, 102.
• 305 ”   ”  Surrender of, 103.
•  ”  River Otter, Sonnet to, 215.
•  ”  Russells of Tavistock, 121.
•  ”  Saxons, 3.
•  ”  Tiger, Sir Richard Grenville’s Ship, 100.
• Theory of Sir Francis Palgrave, 4.
• Thorverton, canal from Beer to, 274.
• Thurlestone, Vicar of, 15.
• Tiverton, 243, 284–296.
• Tiverton, Martin Dunsford, historian of, 289.
• Topsham, Port of, 9.
• Torquay, French landing at, 18.
• Torrington, George Monk, Earl of, 133.
• Totnes, Claims of, 29.
•  ”  Landing of Brutus at, 24.
•  ”  Port of, 30.
• Town Church, Plympton, 190.
•  ” Mansion of Abbots of Tavistock, 73.
• Treadwin, Mrs., 248, 249.
•   ”  ”  Younger days of, 247.
• Treby, Sir George, 192.
•  ”  ”  ” Arms of, 195.
• Trelawney, Sir William, 225, 226.
• Trevelyan, Lady, 248.
• Trevisa, 32.
• Turner, J. M. W., 227.
• Tyrwhitt, Sir Thomas, lays first stone of Dartmoor Prison, 201.
• Tyrwhitt, Sir Thomas, Privileges procured by, 203.

• Van Tromp attempts to bribe Grenville, 111.
• Vicar of Thurlestone, 15.
• Village of Dean Prior, 141.
• Vowell, John, 77, 81.

• Waller, Sir William, attacked at Lansdown, 107.
• Walpole, Sir Robert, 289, 290.
• Walrond, Sir W. H., 294.
• Warbeck, Perkin, 11.
• Warelwast, William, Bishop of Exeter, 182.
• Westcote, 27.
•  ”  on Honiton, 238.
•  ”  on lace, 240.
• White, Mr., contradiction of story, 161.
•  ”  ” History of Torquay, 172.
• Whittaker on the Cornish language, 80.
• “Whittle, John,” pamphlet on landing of the Prince of Orange, 155.
• Wilkie visits Plympton Grammar School, 198.
• Williamson, letter to Countess of Pembroke from Sir Joseph, 287.
• William the Conqueror, 7.
•   ”  IV. landing at Brixham, 162.
• Windeatt, Mr. Edward, 24.
•   ”  Mr. M., 261.
•   ”  Samuel and Thomas, 165.
• Winstanley, Henry, completion of first Eddystone Lighthouse, 95.
• Wolcot, Dr. Alexander, father of Dr. John Wolcot, 223.
• Wolcot, Dr. John, “Peter Pindar,” 218–223.
• Wood, Mr. Beavis, 295.
• “Worthies of Devon,” Prince’s, 73.
• Worth, Mr., of Worth—old Devon family, 294.
• Wren, Sir Christopher, distinguished representative, 193.
• Wren, Sir Christopher, first architect returned to Parliament, 194.

• Yonge, Sir George, Factory built by, 212.
•  ” Sir William, 289.
• Youthful home of Thackeray, 215.

MEMORIALS OF OLD BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.

Edited by the Rev. P. H. Ditchfield, M.A., F.S.A. Dedicated by kind permission to the Right Hon. Lord Rothschild, Lord Lieutenant of the County. With numerous illustrations of historic and archæological interest. Demy 8vo, cloth, price 12/6 net.

“A charming book to those who love the corners and byeways of England.... There are some admirable photographs.”—Daily Mail.

“One of greatest interest to historian, antiquarian, or anyone who delights in the beautiful.”—Bolton Evening News.

MEMORIALS OF OLD NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.

Edited by Alice Dryden. With numerous illustrations. Demy 8vo, handsome binding, cloth extra, gilt top, price 15/- net.

“Exceedingly interesting reading, and well written.”—St. James’s Gazette. “This is a valuable, well illustrated, and interesting book.”—Queen. “A volume of much interest, with good illustrations, mostly photographs.”—Times.

MEMORIALS OF OLD OXFORDSHIRE.

Edited by the Rev. P. H. Ditchfield, M.A., F.S.A., Editor of “Memorials of Old Buckinghamshire.” Dedicated by kind permission to the Right Hon. the Earl of Jersey, G.C.B., G.C.M.G. With numerous illustrations. Demy 8vo, handsome binding, cloth extra, gilt top, price 15/- net.

“This beautiful book contains an exhaustive history of ‘the wondrous Oxford’ to which so many distinguished scholars and politicians look back with affection. We must refer the reader to the volume itself ... and only wish that we had space to quote extracts from its interesting pages.”—Spectator.

“One does not need to be acquainted with the county of Oxfordshire to find enjoyment in this book.”—St. James’s Gazette.

MEMORIALS OF OLD DEVONSHIRE.

Edited by F. J. Snell, M.A., Author of “A Book of Exmoor,” &c. Dedicated by kind permission to the Right Hon. Viscount Ebrington, Lord Lieutenant of the County. Demy 8vo, handsome binding, cloth extra, gilt top. With numerous illustrations. Price 15/- net.

The list of Contributors includes Lord Coleridge, Rev. Chancellor Edmonds, B.D., Rev. Prebendary Granville, M.A., Miss Alice Dryden, F. H. Colson, M.A., W. H. K. Wright, and other eminent writers.

MEMORIALS OF OLD HEREFORDSHIRE.

Edited by the Rev. Compton Reade, M.A., Author of “Vera Effigies,” “A Memoir of Charles Reade, D.C.L.,” &c., &c. Dedicated by kind permission to John Hungerford Arkwright, Esq., Lord Lieutenant of the County. Demy 8vo, handsome binding, cloth extra, gilt top. With many illustrations. Price 15/- net.

The list of Contributors includes The Hon. and Very Rev. the Dean of Hereford, Rev. Custos Duncombe, Right Rev. Prior Cummins, and other eminent writers.

HISTORY OF OLD ENGLISH PORCELAIN | AND ITS MANUFACTORIES.

With an Artistic, Industrial and Critical Appreciation of their Productions. By M. L. Solon, the well-known Potter Artist and Collector. In One handsome Volume, Royal 8vo, well printed in clear type on good paper, and beautifully illustrated with 20 full-page Coloured Collotype and Photo-Chromotype Plates and 48 Collotype Plates on Tint. Artistically bound. Price £2 12s. 6d. net.

“Mr. Solon writes not only with the authority of the master of technique, but likewise with that of the accomplished artist, whose exquisite creations command the admiration of the connoisseurs of to-day.”—Athenæum.

“Like the contents and the illustrations, the whole get-up of the book is excellent to a degree which is not often met with even in English books. Those who are interested from any point of view in the history of English bone porcelain may be warmly recommended to study the book, which is a real mine of information and a beautiful work of art.”—Tonindustrie-Zeitung, Berlin.

“Written in a very clear and lucid style, it is a practically exhaustive account of the evolution of English Porcelain.”—Connoisseur.

THE ART OF THE OLD ENGLISH POTTER.

By M. L. Solon. An Account of the Progress of the Craft in England from the earliest period to the middle of the eighteenth century. The work forms a handsome volume in imperial quarto, printed on Dutch hand-made paper, with 50 Plates etched on copper by the Author. Only 250 copies were printed, and the plates destroyed after publication. Messrs. Bemrose & Sons, Ltd., have a few copies left, which are offered at 105/- each net.

Second Edition, Revised. With an Appendix on Foreign imitations of English Earthenware. Illustrated by the Author. Demy 8vo, cloth, price 10/6; large paper, 21/-.

THE CERAMICS OF SWANSEA AND NANTGARW.

A History of the Factories. With Biographical Notices of the Artists and others, Notes on the Merits of the Porcelains, the marks thereon, &c. By William Turner, F.S.S. Also an Appendix on the Mannerisms of the Artists, by Robert Drane, F.L.S. Illustrated with Collotype Plates, plain and coloured, and half-tone engravings. Crown 4to, buckram. Price 63/- net. Only a few copies left.

“A welcome contribution to the already large library of potters and lovers of pots.”—Athenæum.

THE CORPORATION PLATE AND INSIGNIA OF OFFICE OF THE CITIES AND TOWNS OF ENGLAND AND WALES.

By the late Llewellynn Jewitt, F.S.A. Edited and completed with large additions by W. H. St. John Hope, M.A. Fully illustrated, 2 vols., Crown 4to, buckram, 84/- net. Large paper, 2 vols., Royal 4to, 105/- net.

THE RELIQUARY: AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE FOR| ANTIQUARIES, ARTISTS AND COLLECTORS.

A Quarterly Journal and Review devoted to the study of primitive industries, mediæval handicrafts, the evolution of ornament, religious symbolism, survivals of the past in the present, and ancient art generally. Edited by J. Romilly Allen, F.S.A. New Series. Vols. 1 to 10. Super Royal 8vo, buckram, price 12/- each net. Special terms for sets. Prospectus will be sent on application.

GARDEN CITIES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.

Being an Amplification of a Paper on the Potentialities of Applied Science in a Garden City, read before Section F of the British Association. By A. R. Sennett, A.M.I.C.E., M.I.M.E., &c. Large Crown 8vo. Two vols., attractively bound in cloth. With many plans and illustrations. Price to Subscribers, 21/- net. Prospectus will be sent on application.

ACROSS THE GREAT SAINT BERNARD.

The Modes of Nature and the Manners of Man. By A. R. Sennett, A.M.I.C.E., M.I.M.E., &c., with original drawings by Harold Percival, and nearly two hundred illustrations. Large Crown 8vo, attractively bound in cloth. Price 6/- net.

TRACES OF THE NORSE MYTHOLOGY IN THE ISLE OF MAN.

A Paper read before the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society. By P. M. C. Kermode, F.S.A.Scot., &c. Demy 8vo. Illustrated with 10 plates, paper cover, price 2/6.

“This brochure is undoubtedly a very valuable addition to our scanty knowledge of an obscure yet extremely fascinating subject.”—Reliquary.

CHURCH AND PRIORY OF S. MARY, USK.

By Robert Rickards. Demy 8vo, paper boards, illustrated, price 3/6 net.

“It contains much valuable and interesting matter. The original documents in the Appendix are not the least valuable portions of the work.”—The Western Mail.

“Church historians will find a volume abounding in interest.”—Daily News.

A SHORT HISTORY OF SEPULCHRAL CROSS-SLABS.

With Reference to other Emblems found thereon. By K. E. Styan. With Notes and 71 Plates and Illustrations of Examples found in the British Isles. Demy 8vo, cloth, price 7/6 net.

This volume is intended as a short popular history on the Sepulchral Cross-Slabs of the early centuries, for the use of both students and general readers.

“Really a work of art. The slabs selected by the author for her well-drawn illustrations number about seventy. In the introductory chapters a good deal of information is given which will help visitors to churches where these monuments of piety have escaped the spoilers’ hands to fix approximately the dates of the slab. We almost believe that some of the parish priests, who at present are not much inclined to value such treasures, may be led to take more care of them if they will learn from Miss Styan what there is to admire in them.”—Church Times.

THE ROMAN FORT OF GELLYGAER IN THE COUNTY OF GLAMORGAN.

By John Ward, F.S.A., Curator of the Welsh Museum, Cardiff, &c. Printed by order of the Committee of the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society. The book is well illustrated, containing a General Plan (30 ft. to 1 in.), 13 Plates, and 22 Illustrations in the text, and is printed in the best style upon good paper. Demy 8vo, 120 pp., cloth, gilt, 7/6 net.

The work is the outcome of the excavation of the site of this Roman Fort by the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society in the years 1899, 1900, and 1901.

“Mr. Ward, evidently, has spared no pains to give the fullest and clearest description of these interesting remains, and the illustrations, of which there are a large number, are excellent. They are illustrations in the truest sense of the word.”—Border Counties Advertiser.

306LLANDAFF CHURCH PLATE.

By George Eley Halliday, F.R.I.B.A., Diocesan Surveyor of Llandaff, with 59 illustrations in line and half-tone. Royal 8vo, cloth, price 12/6 net.

“A thoroughly good contribution to the history of Church Plate.”—Reliquary.

THE REGISTERS OF THE PARISH OF ASKHAM, IN THE COUNTY OF WESTMORELAND,

from 1566 to 1812. Copied by Mary E. Noble, Editor of the “Bampton Parish Registers” and Author of “A History of Bampton.” Demy 8vo, cloth, price 21/- net.

These Registers contain many interesting entries of the Sandford, Myddleton, Collinson, Bowman, Law, Holme, Wilkinson, and Langhorne families, and others, and some reference to Parochial events. A list of Vicars is included, and some Local Notes.

“Miss Noble has followed up her admirable edition of the “Bampton Parish Registers” by copying and publishing the Registers of the adjoining parish of Askham, which go back to the year 1566. She has discharged her self-imposed task with her accustomed care and ability, and the handsomely printed and substantially bound volume of 250 pages is not merely a record of marryings, buryings, and christenings in this ancient parish ... but a valuable contribution to the history of the border land.”—The Carlisle Patriot.

MATLOCK MANOR AND PARISH.

Historical and Descriptive, with Pedigrees and Arms, and Map of Parish reduced from the Ordnance Survey. By Benjamin Bryan. Crown 8vo, cloth, 12/6; large paper, 15/-.

“Mr. Bryan’s history is an excellent record of the rise and progress of the Matlocks up to the present time, and for many years to come local people will regard it as the standard work for consultation on all questions arising out of local customs, local government, local institutions, local events, and prominent local people.”—Derby Mercury.

HOW TO WRITE THE HISTORY OF A PARISH.

An Outline Guide to Topographical Records, Manuscripts, and Books. By Rev. J. Charles Cox, LL.D., F.S.A. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, buckram. Price 3/6.

THE FRENCH STONEHENGE.

An Account of the Principal Megalithic Remains in the Morbihan Archipelago. By T. Cato Worsfold, F.R.Hist.S., F.R.S.L., Member of the Council of the British Archæological Association; Author of “Staple Inn,” “Antwerp, Past and Present,” “Porta Nigra, the Treasure of Treves,” &c. Second Edition. With numerous additions and Illustrations. Size 9 in. by 6 in., cloth, price 5/-.

“Mr. Worsfold has compressed into a small space a great amount of interesting detail with regard not only to the megalithic and other stone monuments, but also to the Roman and early Mediæval remains in the district he has sought to illustrate. His style is easy and attractive, and his little work may induce visitors to France, who are interested in objects of remote antiquity, to take the opportunity of seeing a part of the country which abounds with them.”—Athenæum.