Part 15
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 its 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:—
As soon as the Prince had viewed well the Ground upon the top of the Hill, and found the most commodious place for all his Army to encamp, he then gave Orders for everything, and so returned down the Hill unto the Fishermen’s little Houses: One of which he made his Palace at that time, instead of those at Loo, Honsterdyke, and the Hague. The Horse Guards and some Foot were round about him at other Houses, and a strong Guard but a little below the House wherein his Highness was. All the Lords were quartered up and down at these Fishermen’s Houses, whereof these poor Men were glad. Now the camp began to be filled with Officers and Souldiers; for no Officer must move from his Company or Post. The Foot Guards belonging to the Prince of Orange did encamp within an enclosure of plowed Land, about which there was a natural Fence, good Hedges and little Stone Walls, so that no Horse could touch them; Count Solms being their Colonel or Commander. Count Nassau’s Regiment encamp’d in another Craft or Inclosure joyning to that of the Guards, having the like Fence about it as before. The Regiment belonging unto Colonel Fagell encamp’d in a Craft or Inclosure next to that of Count Nassau, and so all the English, Dutch, French, and Scots encamp’d according to the aforesaid manner. The Souldiers were marching into the Camp all hours in the Night; and if any straggled from their Companies, it was no easy matter to find them in the dark amongst so many thousands; so that continually some or other were lost and enquiring after their Regiments.
It was a cold, frosty night, and the stars twinkl’d exceedingly; besides, the Ground was very wet after so much Rain and ill Weather; the Souldiers were to stand to their Arms the whole Night, at least to be all in a readiness if anything should happen, or the enemy make an Assault; and therefore sundry Souldiers were to fetch some old Hedges and cut down green Wood to burn therewith, to make some Fire. Now one Regiment beginning all the rest soon followed their Example. Those that had Provision in their Snap-sacks (as most of the Souldiers had) did broil it at the Fire, and others went into the villages thereabouts to buy some fresh Provisions for their Officers, being we were newly come from Sea; but alas! here was little Provision to be gotten. There was a little Ale house amongst the Fishermen’s Houses which was so extremely throng^d and crowded that a Man could not thrust in his Head, not get Bread or Ale for Mony. It was a happy time for the Landlord, who strutted about as if indeed he had been a Lord himself, because he was honoured with Lords’ Company.
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:—
On the morrow after we landed, when all the Souldiers were encamp’d, the Prince with sundry Noblemen rode and viewed each Regiment, and then return’d to Dinner at this little House. The number of his Highness’s Regiments landed here at this Bay was about six and twenty, the number of Officers about one thousand, the number of Field Officers about seventy-eight. The number of all his Forces and Souldiers about fifteen thousand four hundred and odd men. You might have seen several hundred Fires all at once in this Encampment, which must needs signify to the Country round about that we were landed. The Prince here was pleased to accept of Peoples Good-Will for the Deed, because things were not here to be bought for Mony, no Market-Town being near. Many People from all the adjacent places came flocking to see the Prince of Orange. The Horses were landed with all the speed that might be, and truly were much out of order, and sorely bruised, not able to find their Legs for some days: Everything that was of present use was posted to shoar, but the Artillery, Magazine, and all sorts of Baggage and cumbersome things were left on Shipboard, and order’d to meet us at Exeter.
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:—
There are few now left who can say as I can that they have heard their father and their wife’s father talking together of the men who saw the landing of William the Third at Torbay. I have heard Capt. Clements say he as a boy heard as many as seven or eight old men each giving the particulars of what he saw then. One said a ship load of horses hauled up to the Quay and the horses walked out all harnessed, and the quickness with which each man knew his horse and mounted it surprised them. Another old man said, “I helped to get on shore the horses that were thrown overboard and swam on shore, guided by only a single rope running from the ship to the shore”; and another would describe the difference in the rigging and build of the ships, but all appeared to welcome them as friends.
My father remembered only one “Gaffer Will Webber,” of Staverton, who served his apprenticeship with one of his ancestors, and who lived to a great age, say, that he went from Staverton as a boy, with his father, who took a cart-load of apples from Staverton to the high-road from Brixham to Exeter, that the soldiers might help themselves to them, and to wish them “God-speed.”
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!”
The 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 that 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 have been fatal to five hundred horses; for in the Register of Burials for the parish for the year 1688 there appears the following entry:—
Nov. 21, a fforeigner belonging to the Prenz of Oringe.
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:—
November 21, a Dutchman cujus nomen ignotum.
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 on 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:—
Upon Wednesday about Noon, Order was given to march towards Exeter, and so every Souldier was commanded by their Officers to carry something or other besides his own Arms and Snap-sack, and this made many murmur exceedingly. Sundry scores of Horses were thrown overboard which died at Sea, so that by just Computation the Prince lost about six hundred Horses at least by the Storm. As we marched here upon good ground, the Souldiers would stumble and sometimes fall, because of a dissiness in their Heads after they had been so long toss’d at Sea, the very ground seem’d to rowl up and down for some days, according to the manner of the Waves: Therefore, it is the Lords Goodness that our Foes did not come upon us in this juncture and unfit Condition. The whole Army marched all the same way, in a manner which made very ill for the Rear Regiments, and cast them much behind. Many Country People which met us did not know what to say or think, being afraid that we should be served as the D. of Monmouth’s handful of Men were. Notwithstanding, some were so courageous as to speak out and say, truly their Hearts were for us, and went along with us, and pray’d for the Prince of Orange; but they said the Irish would come and cut them in pieces if it should be known. Some Souldiers asked them if they would go with them against the Popists? and many answered they were enough themselves, and wanted no more. His Highness, with Mareschal Scomberg, Count Sohms, Count Nassau, Heer Benting, Heer Zulustein, Earl of Shrewsbury, Earl of Macclesfield, Viscount Mordaunt, Lord Wiltshire, and divers other Knights and Gentlemen, came in the Rear of the middle Line; for as soon as we could conveniently, we were to march in three Lines, and the Prince was commonly or always in the middlemost Line, which was the meetest place. So he went unto a certain Gentleman’s House, about two miles off, where the last Line encamp’d the Second Night, and lodged there, his own Guards being with him. The first day we marched some hours after Night in the Dark and Rain; the lanes hereabout were very narrow, and not used to Wagons, Carts or Coaches, and therefore extreme rough and stony, which hindered us very much from making any speed. Divers of the Dutchmen being unaccustomed to such bad ways and hard marching in the Dirt, wished themselves back again in their own Country, and murmured because of the Dark and Rain. At length we came to the Corn-stubble Inclosures on the side of a Hill, where we encamp’d that Night. It was a red clay, and it rain’d very hard the greatest part of the Night; the Winds being high and stormy. Nevertheless, the poor Souldiers being much wearied with the Tent-Polls, Spare Arms, and other Utensils for War, which they had carried all Day and some hours after Night, as well as with the badness of the March, lay down to take their Repose; and verily the water run over and under some of their legs the major part of the Night, and their Heads, Backs and Arms sunck deep into the Clay, being so very wet and soft, notwithstanding they slept all Night very sweetly, in their Pee or Campagne Coats. The Souldiers here fetch’d some old Hedges and Gates to make their Officers and themselves some Fire (as they had done the night before), else some would have perished in the Cold, being all over in a Froth with Sweat in marching. And the old Hedges and Gates not being enough, they fetch’d away the new ones, for the Weather was not only raw and cold but we ourselves were so too, having nothing to eat or drink after so bad a day’s journey. The Souldiers had some good Holland’s Beef in their Snap-sacks, which they brought, and their Officers were very glad to get part with them, so they broil’d it at the Fire; some had bought Chickens by the way, but raw, which they broil’d and eat as a most delicate Dish. Sundry Captains offer’d any Mony for a Guide to bring them to a House thereabout, where they might have some provision for their money, but no Guide could be found; it was exceeding dark, and being all Strangers and unacquainted with the Country, we could not tell where to find one House, for those few that were scattering here and there were either in some little grove of Trees, and so hid from our Eyes, or else in a bottom amongst the Hills, and so could not be seen. These Quarters did not content our Minds, for tho’ we got as near to the Hedges as we could possible with our Fires, yet we could not be warm. Many of the Souldiers slept with their feet in the Ditch, and their Heads on the side thereof. We thought this Night almost as long as that in the Storm at Sea; and judged it to be the dawn of Day some hours before it was. The Morning appearing rejoiced our very Hearts, for we thought now we should march presently; and we were sure of this, that worse Quarters we could never meet with, but much better we hoped to find. A private souldier, therefore, going in the next Croft for to seek a convenient place, he found it to be an Inclosure with Turnips, so bringing his Burden away with him, he came to the Fire and gave those there some, telling his Comrades of the Place, who soon hastened thereto, and brought enow with them: Some roasted them and others eat them raw, and made a brave Banquet. The Souldiers were busy in discharging their Musquets, after the Wet and Rain, for they durst not trust to that Charge; and about 11 of the Clock the Army received Orders to march.
The Prince of Orange with the Lords and Gentlemen, rode from this place unto Sir William Courtenay’s, within a mile of Newton Abbot, the first Line being about Newton, and the last on their march thither. The Place where we encamped was trodden to Dirt, and stuck to our Shoes wretchedly. Now the Regiments marched sundry Roads, of which we were right glad, hoping to meet with better Quarters than the Marl and Clay Crofts. The People came in flocks unto the Cross-ways to see the Army, but especially the Prince. We met with much civility on the Road; now they began to give us Applause, and pray for our Success; sundry Persons enquired for the Declaration of his Highness.