UCSB LIBRARY 
 
THE 
 
 OTTERY S. MARY. 
 
 A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE CHURCH 
 
 INSTITUTE, IN SEPTEMBER, 1897, 
 
 BY 
 
 LORD COLERIDGE, Q.C. 
 
' LONDON : 
 
 HUTCHINGS AND CRCUVSLEY, PRINTERS. 123 FULHAM EOAD, 
 S.W. 
 
At the request of my friends I set out this 
 lecture exactly as I delivered it. 
 
 I only wish it were a more worthy expression 
 of the love which I bear towards the home of my 
 birth. 
 
 COLERIDGE. 
 
 HEATH'S COURT, 
 
 OTTERY S. MARY. 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE TOWN 
 
 OF 
 
 OTTERY S. MARY. 
 
 HE history of our Church having been already 
 described to you by Mr. Dickinson, with so 
 much charming learning, I have chosen as my 
 subject the History of our Town. 
 
 A friend of mine said to me the other day, 
 '* You surely do not seriously mean to give a lecture on the 
 History of our Town ?" "Why not ?" said I. ' Because," 
 said he, " our Town has no history !" 
 
 Wait a bit, my friend. To every town of any antiquity 
 there is a history. Though men, as individuals, be born and 
 die, yet, collectively, each town is a small fragment of 
 enduring humanity. 
 
 It is a mirror, wherein are reflected the manners and the 
 customs, the joys and the sorrows, the charities and the 
 tyrannies, the loves and the hatreds, of each succeeding age. 
 And although our town may not have stood sieges, or 
 crowned kings, in the simple tenor of its simple life we have 
 a history, interesting enough to him who loves it. 
 
 Our town then our dear old town in which most of us 
 were born, in which most of us will pass away, how came it 
 here, who lived here, what happened here, in a word, what is 
 its history ? 
 
 On the hills which surround us lie the tombs of an 
 extinct race, those barrows which still remain. 
 
 " The grassy barrows of the happier dead," 
 sometimes bare, sometimes crowned with an appropriate 
 group of pines. 
 
 The men who sleep under them looked down upon this 
 broad vale, then clothed with the thick forest which grew 
 over all the richer and less elevated soils. Clearings were 
 
gradually made as the tools men worked with became more 
 efficient, and certain spots, favoured by Nature, became the 
 settlements of increasing population. Such a spot was the 
 site of Ottery S. Mary. Favoured indeed by Nature, and 
 as one old writer quaintly puts it 
 
 " On a sweet wholsom advanc'd ground," 
 for the Teap Stream, which runs through the town, and has 
 lately been closed in, ran down a lateral valley and joined 
 the Otter, the " wild streamlet of the West," and the whole 
 site was one 
 
 " looking to the West and fed 
 with honeyed rain and delicate air." 
 
 More than 800 years ago they came. They cleared the 
 forest, tilled the lands, which consisted of what Gilbert 
 White describes as " a warm, forward, crumbling loam," and 
 the tracks, by which they went to their fields, remain in the 
 meandering lanes through which we stroll to-day. They 
 ground their corn in the town mill, and in the time of Edward 
 the Confessor, more than 800 years ago, they dammed the 
 river at Head Weir, and took its waters along the mill stream 
 as we see it flowing. 
 
 When the Normans came I doubt not that the inhabi- 
 tants were all tenants of one Lord of the Manor, forbidden 
 to quit their native home, and compelled one and all to grind 
 their corn at the Lord s mill. .Personally I should not object 
 to the revival of this antient custom ! 
 
 In the year 1061 the bounds of the Manor and Parish 
 were fixed by Edward the Confessor, who granted the Manor 
 to the Chapter of the Cathedral at Rouen in Normandy at a 
 rental of 66 marks. Thus early was the prosperity of the 
 town hindered and checked by absentee landlordism. For 
 much of the wealth produced by the inhabitants went to feed 
 the monks at Rouen, as in our day it goes to support the 
 clerics of St. George's at Windsor. 
 
 Doubtless from earliest days our forefathers worshipped 
 in some church, and probably on the site of the present 
 building. All trace of such an early structure has passed 
 away. 
 
 This much we know. In the year 1260, Bronscombe, 
 Bishop of Exeter, consecrated a church here, how much 
 remains of which has already been described to you by 
 Mr. Dickinson in his lecture on the Church. 
 
Down to the year 1337 men were born, lived, and died 
 in this peaceful sleepy hollow, for the most part undisturbed 
 by the rise and fall of Kings, or the drums and tramplings of 
 foreign, or of civil wars. 
 
 But in the year 1337 a new era began in the history of 
 our town. For in that year John de Grandisson, Bishop of 
 Exeter, to whose pious memory every true Ottregian should 
 bare his head, having purchased the Manor from the 
 Chapter of Rouen, laid the foundations of the College, and 
 proceeded to amplify, if not rebuild our Church. From 1337 
 until 1545, a period of 200 years, the town of Ottery S. Mary 
 enjoyed a prosperity to which it has since been a stranger. 
 Down to the year 1337 she had seen much of the rents 
 produced by the tillers of the soil annually drawn away by 
 France, and she, as I said, suffered from the evils of absentee 
 landlordism. But from 1337 until 1545, she became an 
 absentee landlord herself. 
 
 To the College was granted the Manor with its emolu- 
 ments and rents, and revenues flowed in from London, 
 Northam, Ipplepen, Ilsington, Ford, Chilsworthy, and 
 Wysford Rivers. The College consisted of 40 members, 
 Warden, Precentor, Minister, Sacristan, Priests, Clerks, 
 Choir-boys, and a Master of Grammar. 
 
 Let us in fancy pay a visit to our town during this 
 flourishing period. 
 
 On the hill overlooking the inhabitants stood the great 
 Collegiate Church, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and 
 to Edward the Confessor. In outward form it differed little 
 from its aspect now, save that the Dorset aisle had not then 
 been built, the roof of the nave and chancel was some few 
 feet higher than now, and I doubt not that a spire stood upon 
 each tower. The windows were filled with glorious stained 
 glass, rich and dark in colour, filled with armorial bearings of 
 the founder and his relatives, and plunging the interior into 
 mysterious gloom. Various altars and rood screens met the 
 eye, and the walls and roof were glowing with colour. 
 
 Pass outside. To the south of the South Tower, and 
 adjoining it, stood the Chapter House, and along the wall 
 bordering on what we still call the college, where 
 flourishes the avenue of pollard elms, ran the cloisters, 
 probably of wood, and forming a solemn walk for pious medi- 
 tation. The entrance to the churchyard still remains, 
 facing down the street, but no steps were there, the entrance 
 
8 
 
 being on the flat, and over the entrance stood a noble gate- 
 way, which was afterwards turned into a house which was 
 standing early in the present century. On the eastern side 
 of the gateway there was a stile, giving in to the churchyard, 
 from whence on the other side ran the church path in later 
 times to Cadhay House. 
 
 At the entrance to the college stood an arched stone 
 gateway covering a massive pair of gates, closed at night, 
 forming the eastern limit of the sacred precincts of the 
 college. Pass through these gates. What a noble vista ! 
 On the left stretched a long line of monastic buildings, 
 storied windows, lofty and delicately carved gables, deep 
 shadowy doorways. The present back door of the Manor 
 House stood in one of these, and on one of its great iron 
 stays you may see the same design as at Sand, in Sidbury, 
 Knightstone, and other places. These buildings stood in one 
 continuous line to the Warden House, round the corner, and 
 as far as where the Manor House now stands. Along the 
 south churchyard wall the cloisters ran. Within the college 
 gateway and upon the south first came the " clink," or 
 antient guardhouse, where malefactors were detained. A 
 shed there still bears the name. Then came the various 
 domestic buildings. The present Vicarage contains walls 
 belonging to the Minister's house. A fragment of the 
 Warden's house still stands where the Warden of the 
 College lived. It was a stately building, thrusting forth two 
 lateral wings towards the south, and hanging gardens 
 dropped towards Hinde Street. 
 
 Right royal was the hospitality here displayed. Before 
 a noble carved fire-place, still to be seen at the Vicarage, 
 once hung the Warden's spits. At Heath's Court, so called 
 from the family of the Heaths, which gave a Judge to the 
 English Bench, stood the house of the Precentor, called the 
 Chanter's House. The square block of Heath's Court 
 fronting the garden consists of the walls of the Chanter's 
 House, and we still reverently preserve in our Porch the 
 painted oak beams which, from the roof, looked down upon 
 the Precentor, and listened to the holy chanting of the Quire. 
 Between the Chanter's House and the Manor House stood 
 the house of the Sacristan. On the site of the present Manor 
 House stood the Manor Hall, where Courts were held, and 
 tenants came to do suit and service to their Lord, the 
 College. Great oak beams supported the arched roof, and it 
 
was much the size of the present Town Hall. Sloping down 
 from the Manor Hall, towards the Holcombe Brook, stood all 
 the outhouses belonging to the College. 
 
 It was a goodly pile ot buildings this, which covered the 
 "sweet wholsom advanc'd ground." 
 
 ALEXANDER BARCLAY. 
 
 From the seclusion of these cloistered haunts came 
 forth, in 1509, one of the great books of the English language- 
 It was the work of Alexander Barclay, a Scotchman, v,ho 
 had been appointed Chaplain to the College by his friend 
 the Warden Bishop Cornish, Suffragan Bishop of Bath and 
 Wells. It purports to be a translation of Sebastian Brandt's 
 "jStultifera Navis," or " Ship of Fools," which fifteen 
 years before had appeared in Germany written in 
 the Swabian dialect, and had obtained wide fame in 
 Europe. Barclay's work is a paraphrase rather than a 
 translation. It contains much original work, and is 
 thoroughly English in its character and allusions. In this 
 allegory he finds a whipping-post whereat to lash the vices 
 and follies of man. Let us ship off all fools to their native 
 
10 
 
 land. The ship, it is true, is almost sinking under its 
 burden, but still he will find room on deck for his neighbours 
 the secondaries at the College. The ship must not start 
 without them ! Standing midway in the blank space 
 between Chaucer and Spenser, the writings of Barclay 
 have an historical value apart from their literary merit. It 
 is curious how many of our commonest sayings find their 
 origin in his writings. When we say, " Man proposes, God 
 disposes," " skin deep," " robbing Peter to pay Paul," " of 
 two evils choose the least," " sticking like burrs," " over 
 head and ears," " from pillar to post," " 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. 
 
 While the Canons could pray they could feast also right 
 royally. 
 
 Hither came Henry VI. in 1451, and was entertained 
 sumptuously for two nights at the College. The next royal 
 visitor was Henry VII., who came in 1497, at the termination 
 of the insurrection of Perkin Warbeck. 
 
 Let us take a stroll through the town. It did not 
 then present the somewhat mean aspect which I am sorry to 
 say most of our streets exhibit. This is due partly to the 
 destructive fires which took place in July, 1604, on March 16, 
 1767, and on May 25, 1866, partly to the total lack of artistic 
 feeling which seems to characterise the more modern 
 buildings of the West. You have only to visit Kent, Surrey, 
 Sussex, or Hampshire, to mark the difference. 
 
 Beautiful stone-mullioned windows met the eye at every 
 turn : At the head of Jesu Street, now Yonder Street, there 
 was a chapel, dedicated to St. Budeaux, from whence we get the 
 name " Butts Hill." It was a sweet old custom to invite the 
 wayfarer on entering the town to stop, for however short a 
 time, to pray. Hard by the chapel, close to '' the Shutts," 
 stood the great Poarth House, which was standing in 1747, 
 every stone of which is gone. 
 
 In Mill Street, partly on the site of the present Ralegh 
 House, stood the house, " be-turreted, and wearing a 
 monasterial aspect," which the great Sir Walter Ralegh, 
 who was born at Peer's Hayes, now Hayesbarton, for a time 
 inhabited. Ralegh's father occupied Peer's Hayes as a 
 tenant of the great Duke family. In after years, Ralegh, 
 
11 
 
 when a powerful man at the Court of Queen Elizabeth, 
 wished for the love of his birthplace to buy the estate. The 
 Mr. Duke of the day, wishing neither to sell the estate nor to 
 offend Sir Walter Ralegh, replied that it was such an 
 honour to be Sir Walter's landlord that he could not find it 
 in his heart to bring the connection to a close, and so the 
 incident ended. The only relic of the house in Mill Street 
 which Ralegh occupied is the carved head which you may 
 see over the front door of the present Ralegh House, 
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH. 
 
 Beyond the Town Mill, which stood on a Mill green, 
 there were other mills, leather and tucking mills, and after- 
 wards fulling mills, and beyond again, a chapel of St. 
 Saviour, which gave its name to St. Saviour's Bridge, then 
 a stone arched bridge, containing in the depths of one of its 
 piers a small altar, with sacred flame alight, and not the 
 usetul, but hideous, structure which now spans the stream. 
 This is the supplanter of an old stone bridge which was 
 washed away December 7, 1849. Would that another 
 such flood would come ! 
 
 In the neighbourhood at Holcombe stood a stately 
 house, of the beautiful architecture of the Middle Ages, 
 within the precincts of which was enshrined a chapel 
 
12 
 
 dedicated to St. Leonard. Not one stone of this old house 
 remains. Rude hands, in the memory of persons still alive, 
 destroyed the last relics of this antient seat, and the occupier 
 now lives in a square box, with mean roof, in the " packing 
 case " style of architecture, with square holes cut in the 
 walls for windows. I hope he is comfortable ! Some fine 
 old woodwork, the only salvage from the wreck, may yet be 
 seen in the prayer-room at the Manor House. This building 
 is only too typical of the decay of art in the West of 
 England. Knightstone was once the possession of the 
 stately race of Bonville, and it is to Cecily Bonville, first 
 Marchioness of Dorset, and afterwards Marchioness of 
 Stafford, that we owe the beautiful addition to our Church 
 of the Dorset aisle, a facsimile of the roof of which is seen 
 in a similar addition to the Church at Collumpton. On the 
 attainder of her son, Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, Knight- 
 stone passed to the Crown, and was bought by a member of 
 the Sherman family. In 1567 Gideon Sherman, a merchant 
 of Ottery S. Mary, built the house as now we see it, with its 
 modest, yet dignified, elevation, its ample and well-propor- 
 tioned hall. Mr. Matthew Ellis may well be congratulated 
 on the possession of so picturesque and interesting a home. 
 May the fate of Holcombe never overtake it ! John 
 Haydon lived at Cadhay, and there he built the lordly 
 quadrangular house which by its beauty preserves still green 
 the memory of him who bid it rise from the level meadows 
 bordering on the stream. 
 
 The Haydons of England are extinct ; but they are a 
 numerous and flourishing colony in America. Not long ago 
 they deputed one of their family to come over and collect 
 information about their ancestors. It was from Woodbury 
 that the Devon branch of the family sprang, in which church 
 you may still see the great slabs of tombstones which once 
 covered their remains. The sacrilegious hands, however, of 
 the restorers have, tor the sake of putting down some paltry 
 tiles, removed their tombstones from the remains they 
 cover. On them you may read : " Here lies the body of 
 John Haydon, "&c. The body does not lie there. The people 
 who do such things have been described for all time by 
 Charles Lamb as " those sapient trouble-tombs ! " 
 
 The College was dissolved by Henry VIII., and the 
 Corporation and the King's School took possession of the 
 antient buildings. The Manor, granted to the Earl of 
 
13 
 
 Hertford, afterwards the Protector Somerset, reverted to the 
 Crown on his execution for high treason, in 1552, and was 
 afterwards sold by Charles I. The great tithes on which 
 the College flourished found their way to the Dean and 
 Chapter of Windsor. It is noteworthy that on the 
 restoration of the Church in 1849 no farthing towards the 
 expence was contributed by that august and reverend body. 
 
 With the dissolution of the College most of the glory of 
 our town departed. The great buildings of Grandisson fell 
 gradually into decay, and a severe Protestantism removed 
 all marks of the Roman Catholic religion in and about the 
 Church and elsewhere. 
 
 On the death of Henry VIII. the Protector Somerset 
 ruled the land in the minority of the young king, Edward VI. 
 Somerset was penetrated with reforming zeal. Much that 
 he did was the truit of sincere sympathy with the poor. He 
 encouraged husbandry and tillage, " the Paunch," as was 
 said, " of the Commonwealth.'' But he fell into the mistake 
 of believing that the poorer people could happily be made to 
 work by law, and that thty were all as fervid Protestants as 
 himself. Away went the rood-skreens and images from the 
 Church, on which the pious gaze of generations had been 
 fixed. Away went the Mass in Latin, and in came the 
 Liturgy in English. 
 
 The faiths of men cannot be changed by law. In 1549 an 
 insurrection against the new policy arose in the West. 
 Exeter was besieged by the Roman Catholics, and Mohun's 
 Ottery, four miles from Honiton, of which a stately gateway 
 yet remains, became the gathering ground of the Protestant 
 forces, which were ultimately to subdue the rising. 
 
 At Mohun's Ottery lived Sir Peter Carew, a noble 
 member of a generous race. Gathering his forces together 
 he, with his uncle, Sir Gawen Carew, of Wood, in Kentis- 
 beare, Lord Russell, and others, marched on Exeter to raise 
 the siege. A bloody skirmish was fought at Fenny Bridges, 
 and the slain are said to have numbered 600 men. 
 
 Under the floor of the North Vestry lie six feet of human 
 bones. They are the bones of bodies that must have been flung 
 there in a heap. It is believed that the bones of the slaugh- 
 tered soldiers have found in that sacred spot their last resting- 
 place. Let us hope that they have found in death that unity 
 of spirit which must always exist between men who hold 
 their faiths so keenly that they are ready to die for them. 
 
14 
 
 Our vale and river were not unnoticed by poets. William 
 Browne, the author of Britannia's Pastorals, who lived some 
 time in Ottery S. Mary, and who is said, on the authority of 
 Southey, to have written the two fine inscriptions in the 
 small South Chapel ; 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, 
 speaks of 
 
 " The nymphs by Tamar, Tavy, Exe, and Taw, 
 By Torridge, Otter, Ock, by Dort and Plym, 
 With all the Nayades that fish and swim 
 In their cleare streams." 
 
 His poetry is full of loving descriptions of natural 
 scenery, though at times overloaded with conceits. 
 
 Sometimes, however, he rises to a lofty strain. Thus, 
 invoking Metanoia, or Repentance, he sings : 
 Vain man, doe not mistrust 
 
 Of Heaven winning, 
 Nor, though the most unjust, 
 
 Despaire for sinning, 
 God will be seen his sentence changing, 
 If He behold thee wicked ways estranging. 
 
 Climbe up where pleasures dwell 
 
 In flowery allies, 
 And taste the living well 
 
 That decks the vallies, 
 Faire Metanoia is attending, 
 To crowne thee with those joys which know no 
 ending. 
 
 The parish Register contains an entry of the burial of 
 " William Browne," on December i, 1645. 
 
 Michael Drayton, who died in 1631, in his Polyolbion, 
 that great poem hymning the streams of England, comes 
 to our valley. Its broad pastoral character strikes his eye, 
 for he says : 
 
 Here I'll unyoke awhile, and turn my steeds to meat, 
 The lane grows large and wide, my team begins to sweat. 
 
 I will now pass over a hundred years and come to the 
 time of the Great Civil War. England was divided into 
 two armed camps. On the one side fought those who 
 upheld " the right Divine of Kings to govern wrong," on the 
 other, those who maintained the right of Parliament to 
 
15 
 
 govern the Commonwealth to be supreme. The horror of 
 that time no words can bring before you. Father fought 
 against son, and brother against brother. Even our parish 
 clerk in the general overturn forsook his duties and ceased 
 to make entries of births, deaths, and marriages, in our 
 Parish Register. 
 
 Our town became the quarters of the King's troops. 
 They withdrew, however, further west beyond Exe, on the 
 advance of the Parliamentary army. Hither came on 
 
 SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX. 
 
16 
 
 October 29, 1645, the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Thomas 
 Fairfax, accompanied by Ireton as Commissary, and John 
 Pickering as Colonel, to join the forces of the Commonwealth 
 which were already quartered in the town. 
 
 Fairfax stayed from October 29 December 6, at the 
 Chanter's House, the house in which I live, and in our dining 
 room, then called the Great Parlour, he met the Lord General 
 Cromwell, and it is said, determined on the plan of campaign 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 against the King's forces in the West, which culminated in 
 the capitulation on honourable terms of Sir Ralph Hopton 
 in Cornwall in the following March. Here also a graceful 
 ceremony was performed. 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 the battle of 
 Naseby. 
 
17 
 
 One day a trumpeter came from Prince Charles, after- 
 wards Charles II., upon a design of a mediation of peace, 
 whom Fairfax referred to his masters the Parliament. It is 
 said that Cromwell issued a requisition to the inhabitants to 
 supply him with arms and money, which they refused to do. 
 
 Sickness overtook the army during its stay. They died 
 at the rate of seven, eight and nine a day for several weeks 
 together of the new disease, akin to the plague, which broke 
 out and which necessitated their removal to Tiverton on 
 December 6. Colonel Pickering, who had fought at 
 Naseby, had been present at the storming of Bridgewater, 
 who had been the first within the enemy's works at the 
 capcure of Bristol, described as ' an active pious gentleman, 
 who lived so much to God and his country," fell a victim. 
 It is said, though I do not vouch for the accuracy of the fact, 
 that he lies in full armour under the floor of the Church in 
 the middle aisle of the nave. 
 
 Forty years roll by and we come to 1685. That was the 
 year of the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, which had 
 its source in the undisguised attempt of James II. to force 
 the religion of the Roman Catholics upon the Protestants of 
 England. 
 
 Sir Walter Yonge, of the Great House, Colyton, was 
 then building his house at Escot, of which the antient stone 
 pillars at Fairmile, which marked the beginning of the 
 avenue which led to the house, alone remain. Built from the 
 designs of Inigo Jones, one of England's greatest architects, 
 it was burnt to the ground in 1808. John Locke, the 
 philosopher, a friend of Sir Walter Yonge, is said to have 
 stayed there and to have planted some of the beeches which 
 still stand in the park, notably the Horse-shoe clump. 
 
 Sir Walter Yonge was known to be a sympathiser with 
 the Monmouth party, though discreetly absent from the 
 spot, and his workmen building his house threw down their 
 tools, shouldered pikes and staves, and joined the rebel army 
 at Sedgemoor, near Bridgewater. The slaughter of the poor 
 half armed peasants was pitiful. Some, taken alive, were tried 
 before Judge Jefferies. The Assizes which he held have always 
 been called, and rightly called, the Bloody Assizes. With a 
 view of inspiring terror the poor prisoners were sent to be 
 executed in the neighbourhood from which they came, and 
 to warn Sir Walter Yonge and others, some were executed 
 at Bittery Cross, not far from Talaton, and, tradition says, at 
 
18 
 
 Spence Cross too. They probably were buried where they 
 hung, silently, and with the burial of a dog, or else hung in 
 chains till the flesh rotted off the grinning skeletons. 
 
 Poor souls ! had they but waited ! for in four years time 
 the king against whose tyrannies they rose, was an exile in a 
 foreign land. In 1688, favoured by a " Protestant wind," as 
 the wind from the North-East was ever afterwards called, 
 William III., on whom the hopes of the friends of religious 
 and political freedom were fixed, landed in Torbay and, after 
 resting at Ford House, near Newton Abbot, and Exeter, 
 dined in our town on November 21, on the way to Honiton, 
 and James II. fled the country, happily never to return. 
 
 By this time another public building had been added to 
 the town. In this street stands one of the oldest Non- 
 conformist places of worship in the Kingdom. It was built 
 on the site of an old bowling green where our forefathers 
 practised that antient West country game. " Stay," said 
 Sir Francis Drake, when the news of the advent in sight of 
 the Spanish Armada came to him as he was bowling on the 
 Hoe at Plymouth, " Stay, and let us first finish the game ! " 
 Built of bricks in the style known as " the Flemish bond," 
 o'erhued with rich colours from the palette of Time, it 
 testifies to the austere yet deep-seated piety of the men who 
 raised it. To my eye the existence of this simple and old- 
 world house of prayer is both historically and artistically a 
 charming feature of our town. Round it sleep the members of 
 its congregation. May the quiet graveyard never be disturbed. 
 
 Time was when, if more than five people beyond a 
 family met to worship there, or elsewhere, in any other 
 manner than was allowed by the practice of the Church of 
 England, the worshippers were criminals, liable, if they 
 persisted, to be sentenced by a single magistrate to trans- 
 portation, deprived of the right of trial by jury, on the 
 evidence of spies and informers. Tradition says there once 
 existed a trap door in the floor, at the back of the pulpit, 
 through which the minister could bolt, in case of danger, 
 into the vaults below, which still exist below the present 
 schoolroom. This old pulpit, a fair oaken structure, was, 
 within our time, taken away and destroyed to make room for 
 the present organ ; an act of barbarism strongly and justly 
 resented at the time. Those who wantonly break these links 
 with the past, are guilty of that which nothing can repair 
 or justify. 
 
19 
 
 I am afraid that the charity and good feeling of our 
 townsfolk were not sufficient to make the use of this means of 
 escape unnecessary, as the following story will show : 
 
 In the time of Charles I., a Mr. Pynsent held two 
 benefices, one in Cornwall and one at Talaton. How he 
 managed to attend to them both may excite our pardonable 
 curiosity. But he was ejected from his living in Cornwall for 
 gross immorality. No one, however, complaining against 
 him at Talaton, he continued there to minister to souls. 
 When Cromwell became the Lord Protector of the Common- 
 wealth he proceeded to purge the church by the casting out 
 of scandalous ministers, and we do not wonder that Mr. 
 Pynsent was removed and the living sequestrated. The 
 cure was given to a Mr. Sprat, the father of the Bishop of 
 Rochester, and on his death to Mr. Robert Collins. This 
 Mr. Robert Collins was an Ottery man and a man of substance. 
 He lived in the Chanter's House, now Heath's Court. His 
 ministrations at Talaton were somewhat disturbed by Mr. 
 Pynsent. Mr. Pynsent, though he had to leave the parsonage 
 at Talaton, continued to live in the parish. He swore that 
 he would never go to church till the church was restored to 
 him. He regularly attended Divine service however 
 outside peeping through the windows, which must have 
 been somewhat disturbing to the congregation and to the 
 pulpit eloquence of Mr. Collins ! 
 
 On the restoration of Charles II., Mr. Pynsent, 
 scandalous minister though he was, was promptly restored to 
 his benefice, and Mr. Collins as promptly ejected. But, alas 
 for his oath that he would never enter the church till he was 
 restored to the living, for on the day of his restoration he 
 was smitten with paralysis, and never entered the church again 
 until he was carried thither four years later to be buried. 
 We need not wonder at the people regarding his calamity as 
 the just visitation of an offended God. 
 
 But we have not done with Mr. Collins. The Act of 
 Uniformity, passed in 1662, declared that every minister 
 should declare his assent and consent to everything contained 
 in the Book of Common Prayer, on pain of being ipso facto 
 deprived of his benefice. It was owing to Mr. Collins being 
 unable, for conscience sake, to subscribe his assent, that he, 
 with 2000 other ministers, was ejected, and became in the eye 
 of the law a Nonconformist. He likewise disregarded the Con- 
 venticle Act, passed in 1664, of which I have already spoken. 
 
20 
 
 So on Sept. 25, 1670, the churchwardens and 
 constables, with a great mob after them, beset the Chanter's 
 House upon an information that some schoolboys had given, 
 that a meeting had been kept there. They declared " that 
 he might be as godly as he would on week-days, but that he 
 should not be so godly on Sundays." Sir Peter Prideaux, of 
 Netherton Hall, issued a- warrant to break open the doors of 
 the Chanter's House and secure the person of Mr. Collins and 
 others, and bring them before him, which was done. Sir 
 Peter courteously assured him that he was the minister of 
 the devil ! A descent was made upon his property to answer 
 for the fine levied. 
 
 No persecution could break down the resolve of Mr. 
 Collins to pray to God in his house, if he chose, with his 
 friends and neighbours. 
 
 On August 20. 1675, there being no service or sermon 
 in the Parish Church, many of the leading inhabitants of 
 Ottery S. Mary desired Mr. Collins to preach there. He 
 refused to do that, but preached in his own house, and people 
 thronged to hear him both in the forenoon and afternoon. 
 A prosecution followed. 
 
 Mr. Collins was convicted and fined, so was Mr. 
 Warwick Ledgingham, the Lord of the Manor, and in 
 particular Mr. Farrington, for knowing of the meeting, but 
 not discovering it ! 
 
 On August 20, 1679, Mr. Haydon, of Cadhay, broke 
 open his gates and doors and made a strict search. Nobody 
 was there but his household. But upon discovery afterwards 
 that twenty-three persons had been there, they were all 
 indicted at the sessions for an unlawful assembly. 
 
 On May 15, 1681, Mr. Haydon, with several officers, 
 demanded admission, which being denied, they broke open 
 the great gate and then the doors. But they only found 
 three persons there beside the family, and five being necessary 
 to constitute the offence of attending a meeting, Mr. Haydon 
 was foiled 
 
 But not for long. For ten days afterwards he arrested 
 Mr. Collins as he was on horseback attending a funeral. He 
 shut him up and proceeded to demand that he should take 
 the Corporation Oath, and on refusal he imprisoned him for 
 six months. He employed his time when in jail in preaching 
 and praying with the criminals, especially with one poor 
 wretch under sentence of death. 
 
21 
 
 The magistrates repeatedly convicted him of the offence 
 of not going to church, while the ecclesiastical courts excom- 
 municated him, which made it illegal for him to do so ! 
 
 He was also convicted of the offence of living in his 
 home, it being within five miles of the place where he had 
 been minister. 
 
 At last this constant persecution broke him down. In 
 1685 he sold the Chanter's House to Mr Thomas Heath, and 
 withdrew with his family to Holland, where he died, brave 
 and unflinching to the last. His last act was to bequeath a 
 sum of money (^"20) to the building of the meeting-house. 
 Such men deserve to be remembered. 
 
 Near St. Saviour's Bridge you may see a dignified and 
 substantial building now divided into separate dwellings. 
 This was the Parish Workhouse, erected in 1738. It was 
 built to hold 200 inmates when crowded. I have spoken to 
 persons who remember chained lunatics inhabiting the 
 ground-floor rooms, to whom pass n rs-by would toss bones 
 and scraps through the open window, which were eagerly 
 seized and devoured by the poor raving creatures, to whom, 
 in those days, little compassion was shown. It was not 
 until 1838 that the Parish Workhouse was closed on the 
 opening of the Union Workhouse at Honiton. 
 
 In the year 1760 came the Rev. John Coleridge from 
 the Grammar School at South Molton to be schoolmaster at 
 the King's School. He was a profound mathematician, a 
 learned divine, and a correct and ardent scholar, and from 
 the present oak pulpit, the work of an Ottery carpenter, he 
 used to declaim to the gaping congregation quotations from 
 the Bible in Hebrew, they being always taken by the 
 worshippers as the very words of the Holy Ghost. He 
 brought with him, as a scholar, Francis Buller, who 
 subsequently sat for twenty-two years as a Judge of the 
 High Court, and was one of the ablest of his brethren- 
 In those days it was generally supposed that a man might 
 legally chastise his wife, provided that the stick which he 
 used was thin enough to go through the wedding ring. But 
 Judge Buller was said, I believe erroneously said, to have 
 laid down the law that the stick might be as thick as his 
 thumb. Great curiosity was exhibited on the part of 
 husbands to know how thick that was. Alas ! modern 
 civilization has long taken away this privilege from the 
 unhappy husbands of shrewish wives ! 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 Here, in 1772, was born the poet, Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge. As a boy he rambled on the banks of the Otter, 
 and has expressed his love for it in the well-known sonnet 
 Dear native Brook ! wild streamlet of the West, 
 How many various fated years have passed ; 
 What blissful, and what anguish hours, since last 
 I skimmed the smooth, thin stone along thy breast, 
 Numbering its light leaps ! Yet so deep impressed 
 Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes 
 I never shut amid the sunny blaze; 
 But straight with all their tints thy waters rise ; 
 Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey, 
 And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes, 
 Gleamed through thy bright transparence. On my way 
 Visions of childhood ! oft have ye beguiled 
 Lone manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs. 
 Ah ! that I once more were a careless child ! 
 In the year 1789 he cut his initials in the rock at Pixie's 
 Parlour, whither he would roam by himself, and muse on the 
 peaceful beauty of the scene, picturing to himself the Pixies 
 dancing their antics around. 
 
23 
 
 " Then with quaint music hymn the parting gleam, 
 By lonely Otter's sleep persuading stream ; 
 Or where his wave, with loud unquiet song, 
 Dashed o'er the rocky channel, froths along ; 
 Or where his silver waters smoothed to rest, 
 The tall tree's shadow sleeps upon his breast." 
 Going from Ottery up to Christ's Hospital, London, he 
 there met Charles Lamb, prince of English essayists. To 
 Charles Lamb he must have spoken of the melody of our 
 church bells haunting his ears, for although Charles Lamb 
 never came to our Town, and never heard the bells, yet in 
 one of the plays which he wrote, he mikes his characters 
 allude to them thus : 
 
 Marg. : Hark the bells, John ! 
 
 John : Those are the church bells of S. Mary Ottery. 
 Marg. : I know it. 
 
 John : S. Mary Ottery, my native village, 
 In the sweet shire of Devon. 
 Those are the bells. 
 
 In this passage we seem to hear the boy Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge, in the midst of the smoke and din of the London 
 streets, with his imagination slipping back to the sights and 
 sounds of his childhood, pouring forth his recollections to his 
 boy friend, Charles Lamb. 
 
 Nor could Thomas Hood prevent himself from punning 
 on the name of our town, for we read in his " Angler's 
 Farewell " the following libel on our river : 
 Oh ! there is not a one-pound prize, 
 To be got in this fresh-water lottery ; 
 What then, can I deem 
 Of so fishless a stream, 
 But that 'tis like St. Mary's" Ottery." 
 
 The year 1790 saw a great impetus given to the serge 
 trade of the town by the erection of the factory. It was 
 built by Sir George Yonge at a cost of 40,000, and in the 
 field below Cadhay you may yet see the place whence the 
 bricks were dug. It contained at that time, I believe, the 
 largest water wheel in the kingdom, and to this day its size, 
 I am told, is only exceeded by the Forster's wheel on the 
 Wharf at Bradford. Bishop Selwyn, of New Zealand, and 
 afterwards of Lichfield, coming here in 1867, with his 
 experience of the Black Country, held up his hands in 
 
24 
 
 amazement at the sight of a factory, with ivy climbing on it 
 to the roof, and no smoke ! 
 
 Escot saw a gay and festive sight on August 13, 1789, 
 when George III. and the three Princesses visited Sir George 
 Yonge, then Secretary of State for War, and were entertained 
 by him right royally. We may be sure that our townsfolk 
 were not behindhand in welcoming their Sovereign, who 
 gloried as he said in the name of Briton, and who was the 
 first king since the Revolution who was so regarded by the 
 people. They had not then read the savage satire of Peter 
 Pindar on his visit, at whose japes we still laugh. 
 
 We now come to the time when this country and 
 France were at deadly war, and we catch a fleeting glimpse 
 of the national hero Lord Nelson. After the battle of the 
 Nile, when by the destruction of the French fleet the 
 schemes of Buonaparte for the conquest of Great Britain 
 were, for the time, frustrated, the nation, in a fit of 
 generosity, thought of buying a country estate, and 
 presenting it to Nelson, as was done in the case of ths Duke 
 of Marlborough. Hembury Fort House was suggested, and 
 Nelson came down to inspect it. My grandfather well remem- 
 bered seeing the great Admiral riding on horseback through 
 the lanes by Buckerell. He lay at what was then the old 
 Golden Lion Inn at Honiton, now partly turned into the 
 Post Office. 
 
 There is a pretty story of him, which makes one under- 
 stand the personal devotion which he inspired in his 
 subordinates. While at Honiton he remembered that it was 
 the home of Captain B. Westcott, who had served under 
 him. He inquired whether any members of his family still 
 lived there. On being told that an aunt, Miss Westcott, 
 was alive, he sent for her. In course of conversation he asked 
 whether the family had any medal, and being told that they 
 had not, he took a medal from his breast and handed it to 
 her. This pretious relic is still treasured as an heirloom in 
 the family. 
 
 Those were the days when the whole country side was 
 up to repel the threatened invasion. The British fleet swept 
 the Channel. The duty of the British ships was to confine 
 the French fleet within the harbour of Brest. Bernard 
 Frederick Coleridge, a brother of my grandfather, set forth 
 from Heath's Court as a middy, aged 12, to join H.M.S. 
 41 Impeteux." They fared hard in those days, owing to the 
 
25 
 
 scandalous peculations at the Admiralty, which Lord 
 Cochrane, one of the most brilliant naval captains in our 
 history, first member for Honiton, and afterwards for 
 Westminster, in vain exposed from his place in Parliament. 
 The little lad writes to say that the only water to drink is 
 stinking, " of the colour of the bark of a pear tree, with 
 plenty of little maggots and weavils in it," and as for the 
 biscuit " it quite makes your throat cold in eating it, owing 
 to the maggots, which are very cold when you eat them, like 
 a calf's foot jelly or blancmange, being very fat indeed." 
 He longs for a bit of cheese, " for the maggots do not taste 
 well without a bit of cheese." The boys played marbles on 
 the poop, and sometimes were called away to see a poor 
 fellow-creature subjected to the awful floggings of those days, 
 sometimes consisting think of it ! of five dozen lashes ! 
 
 The next year the boy was promoted to a frigate, the 
 " Phoenix," then lying in Plymouth Harbour. On Dec. 10, 
 1805, m a fit f boyish exultation he ran up the rigging to 
 the topmast, lost his footing, fell down on the deck, and was 
 killed on the spot. 
 
 Many of you know a tall Scotch pine which grows on 
 our terrace, right against our house. That tree was planted 
 by the little middy on the eve of his departure from his 
 beloved home, which he was to revisit no more. On his 
 tomb in Antony Churchyard you may still read the pathetic 
 and appropriate inscription, 
 
 " He fell, to rise again." 
 
 At the head of the Volunteers and Militia of this part 
 was General Simcoe, of Wolford Lodge. He had com- 
 manded the Queen's Rangers in the American War, he had 
 been 1791-1796 the first Governor of Canada, and was a fine 
 specimen of the cultivated man of arms. His son, Frances 
 Gwillim Simcoe, educated at the King's School, under the 
 Rev. George Coleridge, following in his father's profession, 
 fell in the breach at Badajoz.in 1812. Col. James Coleridge, 
 of Heath's Court, was General Simcoe's aide-de-camp, whom 
 old Reed used to describe as "the finest disciplyned man, 
 sir, that ever entered the British army. Between you and 
 me, sir, I believe he was as good as Napoleon." 
 
 From the summit of the Hilly Field in the grounds ot 
 Heath's Court you can see with a telescope Wolford Lodge. 
 Every morning up went the Colonel with his field-glass, 
 and if a towel was hung on a stick out of a certain window, 
 
26 
 
 it was a summons to go up at once to the General. The 
 town would then gape for the possible news of the landing of 
 Buonaparte. On Telegraph Hill stands the ruin of the hut 
 in which dwelt the man who worked the semaphore, which, 
 with whirling arms signalled messages to St. Cyres Hill, on 
 the east, and to Haldon on the west. There was a camp on 
 Woodbury Common, and in the House on Black Hill may 
 still be seen the Officers' Mess Room, from which the whole 
 country could be surveyed. In the field across the river by 
 St. Saviour's Bridge, still called the Barrack Field, were 
 erected the barracks for the soldiers, and for some time this 
 peaceful place echoed to the sound of trumpets and drums, 
 and presented the aspect cf a garrison town. 
 
 In 1806 General Simcoe issued his valedictory address 
 to the Yeomanry and Volunteer Force of the Western 
 District, on being employed on a foreign station. In contrast 
 with the arms of precision and long ranges of to-day, close 
 hand-grips with the bayonet was then the advice of the 
 military authorities. 
 
 " The Major-General therefore desires that the volunteer 
 in the charge may be exercised to increase his pace by 
 degrees, so as to arrive with rapidity at the distance of 300 
 yards without any disorder, and in perfect breath and 
 readiness to grapple with any opponent. The closing with 
 the enemy becomes the courage of the country, and is firmly 
 supported by that activity in which the Englishman 
 participates with the Southern nations, and that strength in 
 which he equals those of the North. A combination of those 
 qualities and a due exercise therein must ensure victory. To 
 close with the enemy has been the foundation of all our 
 superiority by sea and by land ; it was the principle of Marl- 
 borough, and the practice of Wolfe." 
 
 Happily for the troops the plague which drove away the 
 Puritan soldiers in 1645 did not again appear, and in 1814, 
 with the capture of Paris by the Allies, and the banishment 
 of Buonaparte to Elba, the camp was broken up. 
 
 I do not know whether extreme longevity is much to be 
 desired. But Mrs. Oldridge, the present Mother of the 
 Parish, cannot compete with Mrs. Heath, who died at 
 Heath's Court, and was buried on June 30, 1785, at the age 
 of 113. She was the widow of Staplehill Heath, he being 
 her second husband, she having been previously Mrs. 
 
27 
 
 Elizabeth Bartlett. She could well remember King William's 
 visit 97 years before ! 
 
 The faculties of our folk are, I believe, acute. But I 
 doubt if we could any of us do what Mr. Beedell, of Ottery 
 S. Mary, did in 1823. He wrote, with the naked eye, in the 
 circumference of a common -sized pea, the Lord's Prayer, the 
 Belief, and two verses of the Third Psalm, all without the 
 least abbreviation, certainly an amazing display of the 
 power of the human eye, so much so as to attract the 
 attention of the public journals of the day. 
 
 W. M. THACKEEAY. 
 
 In the year 1849 Thackeray published the novel 
 " Pendennis." He lived as a youth at Larkbeare House, 
 and the scene of many of the incidents is laid in our neigh- 
 bourhood. Clavering St. Mary is Ottery S. Mary, Chatteris 
 is Exeter, Baymouth is Sidmouth, and the River Brawl is 
 the Otter. In the first edition, illustrated by his own hand, 
 we can see a picture of the Cock Tower of our church. 
 
 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 tney march into church and up the organ- 
 loft stair, and blowing their noses a good deal during the 
 
28 
 
 sermon, of the factory, of the single old pair of posters that 
 earned a scanty livelihood by transporting the gentry round 
 about to the county dinners (and have we not often seen 
 Bowers and the blue-roan horse issuing from the King's 
 Arms on a similar errand ?), of the hollow tree in Escot Park 
 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. 
 
 These and other things, full of local colour, are they not 
 written in a book, which can be bought for a small sum, and 
 which is within the reach of almost anyone who loves our 
 town and who can read and enjoy ? 
 
 Nor does our town lag behind in producing men of 
 eminence in science. Here in 1806 was born Edward Davy. 
 His father lived in the present Ralegh House. It occupies 
 part of the site of the house in which Sir Walter Ralegh 
 lived. The only stone left of the latter is the old carved 
 head which is the keystone of the arch over the front door- 
 way of the present building, which is an admirable specimen 
 of the quiet, homely family dwelling, dating from the end of 
 the last century, and was built by Edward Davy's father. 
 
 Edward Davy was looked on by his family as a vision- 
 ary, for in 1836 he sketched out a " Plan of Telegraphic 
 Communication, by which intelligence may be conveyed, 
 with Precision, to Unlimited Distances, in an Instant of 
 Time, Independent of Fog or Darkness." 
 
 At the beginning of 1837 he laid down a copper wire 
 round the Inner Circle at the Regent's Park, in London, and 
 made wonderful experiments with it, and in March, 1837, he 
 took the first step to patent his invention, by what was called 
 "entering a caveat," and he deposited with Mr. Aikin, Sec- 
 retary of the Society of Arts, a sealed description of his 
 invention, anticipating Cook and Wheatstone, who have 
 gone forth to the world as the original inventors, by two 
 months. In May, 1837, Cook and Wheatstone applied for a 
 patent, against which Davy entered an opposition. The 
 Solicitor-General, however, allowed the patent to pass on 
 the ground that the two inventions were different. No doubt 
 there were differences, but there were identities as well. In 
 November, 1837, a working model of his invention was 
 shown at the Belgrave Institution, and from December 29, 
 
29 
 
 i837> to November 10, 1838, he exhibited his discovery in a 
 room rented at Exeter Hall. If he had had funds at his 
 disposal to perfect and push his discoveries his fame might 
 now be world-wide. Unfortunately, for private reasons, at 
 the critical moment, he was obliged to emigrate to Australia 
 on April 13, 1839, leaving the field to his rivals, Cook and 
 Wheatstone. 
 
 In 1840 the machines were sent down from London and 
 stowed in Ralegh House, where they remained for years, and 
 were finally broken up and sold for old metal on the removal 
 of the family to the adjoining house, called Colby, after a 
 former occupant. ' The Daniell Cells, huge things of three or 
 four gallons capacity, and some other relics found quite 
 lately in an adjoining field, whither they had been carried, 
 have now been carefully preserved. Edward Davy had a 
 successful career in Australia, and only died in 1884. 
 
 Many other worthies have been connected with our 
 town within living memory. 
 
 George James Cornish, 1794-1849, who sang the praises 
 of St. Mary's Tower, the School, the Pixie's Bower, and the 
 Maiden Pool, wherein the boys used to bathe, which was in 
 the bend below Gosford Bridge before the course of the river 
 was straightened ; Henry Nelson Coleridge, 1798-1843, 
 brilliant scholar and man 'of letters ; Richard Hurrell 
 Froude, 1803-1836, a leader of Oxford thought ; William 
 Hart Coleridge, 1789-1849, first Bishop of Barbadoes, who, 
 is said, acting as Curate, to have christened Benjamin 
 Disraeli, then a young man, St. Andrew's, Holborn ; John 
 Coleridge Patteson, 1827-1871, Missionary Bishop of 
 Melanesia, whose noble death is recorded on the wayside 
 memorial at Spence Cross; John Taylor Coleridge, 1790-1876, 
 the Judge, of whom it does not become me to speak, and 
 to whose memory friends and neighbours dedicated the 
 beautiful cross in our Churchyard, all these were scholars at 
 the old King's School; Sir John Kennaway, the father of 
 the present Baronet, upright, scholarly, pious ; Dr. Cornish, 
 Vicar and Schoolmaster, who grew so rooted in the soil of 
 the place, that he became, as it were, its living embodiment ; 
 Thomas Selway, beloved of men, all these and many others 
 I must pass by. 
 
 Nor can I do more than simply mention such events as 
 the splitting up of our immense parish into several, the 
 
30 
 
 building of our schools, the destruction of the old market- 
 place in the Flexton, and the building of the common-place 
 Town Hall, of the opening of the Cotttage Hospital through 
 the munificence of Mrs. Elliot, of the advent of the Railway. 
 Time bids me draw to a close. I am not able to 
 bring complete upon the scene events or persons still 
 
 SIR JOHN TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 remembered by us. I have rather tried, in all too 
 fragmentary a way to call up the more distant part. 
 
 What then of our town to-day ? It is different indeed 
 from what it was in former times. Let us not bewail the 
 vanished pomp of Grandisson. It did its work, its day is 
 gone. Of old when travelling was difficult our little 
 town enclosed a little world, self-interested, self-supporting, 
 self-contained. Now the great towns, especially the greatest, 
 London, absorb too much I think of the hopes, the aims, 
 
31 
 
 the ambitions of our folk. I suppose it is in vain to struggle 
 against the tendency, although we may lament it. 
 
 But this much we can do. We can preserve all things 
 of interest and beauty in the place. We may treasure and 
 keep green the memory of its worthies. And if our lot 
 should drive us far from home to seek our fortunes in 
 other scenes, we may always keep a warm corner in our 
 heart for the dear old town of Ottery S. Mary. 
 
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