i/vy
SOLD HY
THOMAS BAKKR, 72 Newman Street,
THE HISTORY
OF THE
CITY OF EXETER
BY THE
REV. GEORGE OLIVER, D.D.
WITH A SHOKT MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR,
AND
AN APPENDIX OF DOCUMENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
EXETER: WILLIAM ROBERTS, BROADGATE.
LONDON : LONGMAN, GKEEN, LONGMAN, AND ROBERTS.
1861.
<!*, \ U-CJ{^«A~. vrt ^
^
.
,
*
EXETEB.
CONTENTS.
PREFATORY NOTICE AND MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR xi
CHAPTER I.
Exeter under the Britons and Romans 1
CHAPTER II.
The fruits and effects of Christianity on the Pagan Britons — Their con- sentient faith with the Christian churches of the Continent — The subjugation of our island by the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles — The happy conversion of these new settlers to the Catholic Church . . 4
CHAPTER III.
Exeter besieged by Penda, King of Mercia, in 633, but effectually relieved
by the British King, Cadwalinus. Submits to the sovereigns of Wessex 12
CHAPTER IV.
Exeter besieged by Sweyn, King of Denmark — Its gallant and successful
resistance — Infamous policy of King Ethelred — Sweyn returns to
. invest the city, which, through the treason of its Governor, falls
into his hands on the 19th of August, 1003, and is demolished —
Canute, the son of Sweyn, succeeds to the sovereignty of England .. 18
CHAPTER V.
The influence of religion on the heart and government of Canute — His special favour to Exeter — The restoration of the Saxon line in the person of Edward the Confessor — Prosperity of this city, and the removal of the See to it from Crediton 22
CHAPTER VI.
Harold, son of Earl Godwin and brother of Queen Editha, assumes the reins of Government, with the good will of the nation, but loses the crown with his life at the battle of Hastings — William, Duke of Normandy, is declared King of England — Exeter, opposed to his sovereignty, submits after a siege of eighteen days — To overawe the spirit of insurrection, the citadel or castle is rebuilt — The Domes- day — Foundation by the Conqueror of St. Nicholas's Benedictine Priory — The King's7 death at Rouen — Strange event at his funeral in St. Stephen's Church at Caen 29
^ CONTENTS.
CHAPTEK VII. page
Henry I. befriends Exeter - Bishop William Warelwast rebuilds its ^thcHlral-The prevalence of Simony in the middle ages -The Ll shipwreck of the heir to the Crown - Charter of King Stephen - Siege of Exeter - Accession of King Henry II. .^
CHAPTER VIII.
Bright prospects of Henry Plantagenet at his accession-State of the contest on the rights of the Church between the King and the Pri- mate, Thomas a Becket — The conduct of our townsman, Bishop Bartholomew, in that controversy
CHAPTER IX.
Reigns of Richard Cteur de Lion and John — The Crusades, the Inter- dict, and the subjugation to Papal Domination — Queen Berengaria — Extraordinary floods in England 49
CHAPTER X.
Henry III. succeeds to the English crown, and grants to his brother Richard the Earldom of Cornwall, to which he attaches the city of Exeter with its castle — This new Earl elected King of the Romans — The history of Exeter Bridge t 54
CHAPTER XI.
Accession of Edward I. — The first Prince of Wales — Character of the King — Death of the Lord-Paramount — Privileges of the City — Question of the murder of Walter de Lechlade — Parliament held in Exeter — The King's grant of a new Seal to the City — Great Dio- cesan Council of Exeter 61
CHAPTER XII.
Accession of Edward II.— Recall of Piers Gaveston — Edward the Black Prince Lord- Paramount — Captivity of John, King of France — The Black Pestilence ; its disastrous effects on Exeter— Bishop Grandisson. His recognition of the distinction between the ecclesiastical and civil powers 71
CHAPTER XIII.
Reign of l;id.;inl II . — Exhausted exchequer — Insurrection against the ition tax — Energy of the King — His subsequent misgovern- m-nt and deposition — Accession of Henry V. — John Wickliffe — 'lln- I.«>H;ir«!s
CONTENTS. vii
CHAPTER XIV.
Page
Henry VI. — His reception at Exeter — Civil war — Edward IV. assumes the crown — Visit to this city — Death of the King — Usurpation of Kichard III. — Murder of the Princes in the Tower — The King killed at Bosworth Field — Perkin Warbeck repulsed at Exeter — His surrender at Taunton, and imprisonment in this city — Henry VII. at Exeter — Royal charters — Visit of Princess Catherine — Mar- riage with Prince Arthur, and subsequently with Henry VIII. — Progress of literature — Degeneracy of morals 79
CHAPTER XV.
Prosperous state of the nation at the accession of Henry VIII. — The woollen trade of Exeter — Extravagance of the King — Embarassed state of the exchequer — Appeal to parliament for pecuniary aid — Resistance to the proposal of a property-tax — Bridgeman the member for the city — Thomas Cromwell's influence with the King — Degra- dation of parliament — Oppressive taxation 90
CHAPTER XVI.
Accession of Edward VI. — Changes in the tenure of land — State of the poor — Prayer-book of King Edward VI. — Resistance to its intro- duction — Siege of Exeter — Loyalty and fidelity of its inhabitants — Death of the King — The Lady Jane Grey — Queen Mary — Her marriage with Philip of Spain — Royal letter to the citizens of Exeter — Age of religious persecution — Its inconsistency with the spirit of Christianity
CHAPTER XVII.
Elizabeth's persecution of the Catholics — Charters of the city con- firmed — Loyalty of Exeter — Title of " Semper fidelis " conferred — Elizabeth's encouragement of commerce — First Act for the relief of the poor — Accession of James I. — His predilection for the Scotch — Parliamentary control over the Royal prerogative — Charles I. — Coronation repeated at Edinburgh — Plague of 1625 — Spread of disaffection — Intolerance towards the Catholics — Their adoption of the King's cause — Parliamentary party at Exeter — Capitulation to Prince Maurice — The Queen, a refugee at Exeter, gives birth to the Princess Henrietta — She embarks at Falmouth — Visit of the King to Exeter — The city surrenders to Fairfax — Puritan desecration of the churches — State prisoners and executions at Exeter — Barbary pirates on the west coast 105
•D/l
G90
.£5049
^ CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Page
Protectorate of Cromwell - His son Richard proclaimed his successor - iDeath of Richard near Winchester - Connection of Genera Monk, ^restorer of monarchy, with Exeter - Charles II. recalled by he new Parliament- Rejoicings at his proclamation in Exeter- Visit of the Grand Duke of Tuscany to the city- Stay of .the King at Exeter on his route to London - Character of his reign- His demand for the surrender of civic charters
CHAPTER XIX.
James II. — His character — Rebellion of the Duke of Argyle — Land- ing of Monmouth at Lyme Regis — His defeat at Sedgmoor and subsequent execution — Judge Jeffreys and the " Bloody Assize"— National discontent with James's rule — Birth of a prince royal — Landing of William Prince of Orange at Torbay — His reception at Exeter and progress to London — Abdication of the King . . . . 139
CHAPTER XX.
The Revolution — Character of the reign of William III. — Former neglect of sanatory measures in Exeter — Provisions for lighting the city _ Preservation of the peace -.- Supply of water — The Work- house — Pictures contained in its Board-room 146
CHAPTER XXI.
Observations on some of the Churches in Exeter 153
CHAPTER XXII.
Devon and Exeter Hospital — Labours of Dr. Alufed Clarke to secure its establishment— Opened January 1st, 1743 — Portraits in the Board- room—The County and City Prisons — Cemeteries — Avenues and approaches of the city — Bridge over the Exe — Markets — General advantages of the city — Extensive nature of the physical and moral improvements effected 161
CONTENTS. ix
PART II.
CHAPTEK I.
Page
HISTORY OF THE CASTLE OF EXETER 179
CHAPTEK II.
THE ANCIENT PREBENDAL CHURCH within the Castle of Exeter . . . . 193
List of Prebendaries of Hayes .. 199
„ „ Cutton .. 200
„ „ Carswell 203
Ashclist 204
CHAPTEE III.
DESCRIPTION OF THE GUILDHALL 205
Armorial Bearings . .. 208
Portraits 214
City Swords and Cap of Maintenance 222
City Seals 224
CHAPTEE IV.
List of Mayors .. 226
„ Kecorders 235
„ Sheriffs .. 237
„ Town Clerks 241
„ Chamberlains 242
Swordbearers 243
CHAPTEE V.
REPRESENTATIVES OF EXETER IN PARLIAMENT 245
. CHAPTEE VI.
HISTORY OF THE HAVEN OR CANAL OF EXETER 249
CONTENTS.
APPENDIX
OF
DOCUMENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
I. — Chronological Table of ACTS OF PARLIAMENT relating to the COUNTY and CITY of EXETER, and the DEVON and COUNTY
PRISONS situated at Exeter 269
II. — Table showing the Date of Commencement of the CATHEDRAL
and PAROCHIAL REGISTERS of EXETER and its suburbs . . . . 277
III.— Chronological Table of CHARTERS of the CITY of EXETER . . . . 278
CHARTER OF KING CHARLES I. to the City of Exeter . . . . 289
IV.— COURT ROLLS and ACCOUNT ROLLS of EXETER 305
Abstract of the Roll of the Curia Civitatis 26, 27 Ed. III. .. 312
Abstract of the Compotus Civitatis 42, 43 Ed. Ill 319
V. — Extracts from the EXETER DOMESDAY relating to the City .. 323
Observations on the Extracts 325
PREFATORY NOTICE
AND
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.
THE Author of the ' Lives of the Bishops of Exeter ' did not long survive the publication of that work. He left behind him, in a state fit for publication, a Civil History of the City of Exeter ; but had, unfortu- nately, made very little progress in preparing any documentary Appendix of the nature of that which has given great value to the ecclesiastical portion of his History.
It is with a view to supply this deficiency (at least to some small extent), as well as to correct any over- sight that might occur in the text itself, that the writer of this notice has undertaken to assist in carry- ing the present work through the press.
The late lamented Author enjoyed the confidence both of the Municipal and the Ecclesiastical authorities of this city, and might doubtless have obtained access to the important and valuable records of the city as easily as to the registry of the diocese ; but it is to be regretted that he availed himself only very par- tially of this facility in respect of the former class of documents. Hence the rise and progress, the fate and fortunes, of the municipal organization and internal history of Exeter must await the researches of some future historian. Meantime the present work is cer-
xii niKFAToiiv NOTICE.
tain! y in every respect superior to the History published by the Author in 1821, especially in the second part, which has been wholly recast, and contains much valuable information.
The writer of this prefatory notice does not profess to coincide entirely with all the views of the learned Author. He leaves them, untouched, to the critical judgment of the reader ; but he can bear testimony, from personal knowledge, to the great diligence, candour, and love of truth which distinguished him, and the readiness with which he was wont to impart the stores of his extensive local researches and his tenacious memory for the benefit of his numerous friends, and even of those who had no other passport to his assist- ance than their desire of information or the gratification of literary curiosity. On more than one occasion Dr. Oliver had the good fortune to render important aid in the conduct of^ genealogical and judicial inquiries. Of his printed works, those which are best known, and on which his literary character must mainly de- pend, are his Parochial Antiquities of the Diocese, of which part only has been yet published ; his ' Lives of the Bishops of Exeter;' and, above all, his ' Mo- nasticon of the Diocese of Exeter,' which must ever be regarded as a repertory of information, for which Dugdale's well known work, even in its latest and most enlarged form, will be searched in vain. For this purpose, the registers and records of the cathedral were opened to him by the liberality of the officers of the Bishop and Chapter ,• and by these, as well as by i IK- friendly aid of Lord Arundel of Wardour, and of "tin. -. mlnm-i,, whose family muniments were made
PREFATORY NOTICE. xm
accessible to him, or whose official or other sources of information were made available on his behalf, he was enabled very largely to extend the scanty collection of Dugdale so far as relates to the Western diocese. It is much to be wished that his parochial collections, many of which are still extant only in unavowed communica- tions to local journals, may hereafter be published in a more permanent and methodical form.
Of Dr. Oliver's family and personal biography, it is believed that little was known in his lifetime even to his most intimate friends. On such topics he was not usually communicative. He was born of respectable parents ; of whom his father was a native of Scotland and a Presbyterian, and his mother a native of Sligo and a Eoman Catholic. She survived her husband many years, and had the charge and education of her four children. The Author, who was the eldest, was born at Newington, Surrey, on the 9th of February, 1781, and was educated at Sedgeley Park and Stony- hurst, where he is said to have acquitted himself with credit. In 1806, he was admitted to holy orders by Dr. Gibson, titular Bishop of Acanthus, and in the following year was appointed to the Exeter mission, where he arrived in October of that year. He was not, as some have supposed, a member of the " Society of Jesus."
From that time until his death in the month of March of the present year, he was continually resident, with few and short intervals, in this city, where he obtained the general respect and regard of his fellow citizens of all professions and conditions. In 1844, the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on him by
xiv PREFATORY NOTICE.
the late Pope Gregory XVI. He left an unmarried sister, his nearest surviving relative and one of his legatees, who is still living, but is unhappily afflicted with hopeless blindness.
Dr. Oliver was an earnest and honest adherent of the tenets of his own Church, and it would be idle to deny that his partialities are very perceptible in his narra- tive of political events so far as they are connected with the ecclesiastical or secular history of Exeter. But his private intercourse and literary correspondence were free from any tincture of asperity or intolerance.
The writer of this brief notice is glad to have this opportunity of recording the sentiments of esteem and respect with which he regarded him during an un- interrupted friendship of more than thirty years.
He wishes to repeat here, what is stated hereafter, that the reader must consider himself much indebted to the aid and assistance of the writer's friend, Mr. John Gidley, for supplying the materials for the do- cumentary Appendix.
EDWARD SMIRKE. Auguxt, 1861.
cn_
HISTORY
OF
THE CITY OF EXETER.
CHAPTER I.
Exeter under the Britons and Romans.
WITHOUT recurring to unauthenticated legends and traditions of Trojan founders and governors of Exeter, we may safely pronounce that its beautiful and com- manding elevation — its rapid and navigable river, fed by so many tributary streams — the salubrity of its atmosphere, and the fertility of the surrounding country, must have invited and attracted the native Britons to establish a settlement here at a very early period. By them, as we learn from Asserius (de Rebus Gestis Aelfridi), it was called Cairwich [or Caerisfc], the City of Waters.
The Romans, as their conquest of the island pro- gressed in this direction, would naturally wish to profit by the same local advantages. Whether there is suffi- cient authority in the Chronicon of the Church of Exeter for the assertion that in the year 49 of the Christian sera, Yespasian, the Roman general, besieged this British city for eight days, when it was relieved by King Arviragus (by some supposed to be Carac- tacus), may be fairly questioned. " Anno dni xlviiij. Yespasianus, cum exercitu Romano, civitatem Exoni- eiisem octo diebus obsedit, et minime prsevaleret, Arvi- rago Rege civibus prsestante auxilium." We have the authority of Eutropius, that the Emperor Claudius,
HISTORY OF EXETER.
the fifth Caesar, sent Vespasian into Britain, where he fought thirty-two battles, and subjected two very powerful tribes, twenty towns, and the adjoining Isle of Wight to the Eoman empire. That it gradually and eventually yielded submission to that persever- ing and belligerent nation, cannot admit of contra- diction. A Eoman encampment was formed in the very heart of our city; tesselated pavements have been discovered, even in our days, across the upper part of South Street, and in the inclosure on the North side of the Cathedral. Penates have been found near the old Broadgate; baths near the upper market; besides innumerable Eoman coins,1 ancient pottery, and several sepulchral urns. For the better pro- tection of their conquest, a summer camp was also erected on Stoke Hill. Whilst subject to the Eoman authorities, the arts of industry and civilization would be fostered; agriculture would be encouraged and rewarded; commercial enterprise would be promoted and patronized. In a poem quoted by Henry of Hun- tingdon, our city is described as famed for the expor- tation of metals, " Excestria clara metallis."
But empires, like individuals, have their limited periods of existence and prosperity. All must be subject to the common mutability of earthly things, and alike experience the vicissitudes of the times. Distracted with intestine divisions, invaded on every side by hosts
1 Westcote, in his « View of Devon,' completed in 1630, relates that " some eight years since two or three labourers making a dike to fence a plot of ground, a small way distant from the Castle of Exeter, where no dike was in former times, found certain bricks three feet deep in the earth, and under them a little pot of the same matter, wherein were divers pieces of Roman coins, l>oth wlver and gold. The youngest of time was Antoninus Pius. Thirty came to my hands, most of them of divers stamp, and fair. Somewhat nearer the Castle there was found in the garden a
fair ring, in which was a beautiful stone set, and thereon engraved the true idea of Cleopatra, with the asp at her breast." Stukeley, in his 'Itinerary' (1724), mentions " two pecks of coins lately dug up near St. Martin's Church, and a great Roman pavement of white square stones behind the Guildhall." See Dean Milles' Report of Discove- ries near Broadgate, in 1778, in vol. vi. of the Archroologia ; also Shortt's Sylva Antiqua Iscana. Dr. Bonnet lias shown distinctly that our Isca was onfe of the Roman military stations in Britain.
ADVENT OF THE SAXONS. 3
of barbarians, the overgrown empire of Eome was tot- tering to its ruin, and hastening to complete its destiny :
" Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit."
By an unwise policy, her governors here, especially Maximus 2 (who had been proclaimed emperor by the troops, and, crossing over to Gaul, made Treves the seat of his empire), had drained the island of its warlike youth to fight the battles of the Eastern and tbe Western empires ; and the actual storming of Rome by the Goths compelled the Caesars to withdraw the vete- ran3 legions from Britain. The Saxon Chronicle says, that "in the year 418 the Romans collected all their hoards of treasure in the island, and some they hid in the ground " (no doubt with the hope of eventually re- turning to resume possession), " and some they carried with them into Gaul." To the same purpose Ethelwerd says " Scrobibus occultant thesaurum." Lib. 1, Chronic. The defenceless population of Britain lay then exposed to the merciless irruptions and depredations of the Picts and Scots. In their excess of misery the Britons are said to have supplicated their former masters to afford them adequate protection ; but in vain. Driven finally to despair, embroiled in civil discord, and suffer- ing from famine and pestilence, their proud tyrant, as Gildas describes their sovereign Vortigern, with his infatuated council, sent an invitation to the two Saxon buccaneers Hengist and Horsa to become their auxi- liaries. They readily accepted the offer, and, as the Saxon Chronicle relates, at first they slew or expelled those northern invaders; but "in the sequel turned their arms against their employers, and destroyed them also by fire and the edge of the sword." Flushed with
2 This perfidious tyrant, after reign- ing about five years, was defeated by Theodosius, and beheaded on the 28th of July, A.D. 388.
3 It is generally believed that there were never more than four Koman le-
gions in the island, besides auxiliaries, viz., the 2nd, called "Legio Augusta," the 9th, the 14th, subsequently relieved by the 6th, and the 20th, "Vicesima victrix."
B 2
4 HISTORY OF EXETER.
victory, these daring chieftains urged their countrymen, the Jutes and Angles, to come and share their good fortune and form settlements in the island. Eeinforced by these hosts of marauders, within a century and a half the whole of the country, with tlje exception of Wales, and, as Dr. Lingard observes (Hist, of England, vol. i. p. 233), of the tract of land from the Land's End to the River Exe, and one-half of Exeter, fell under their domination. Their exterminating policy drove a considerable portion of the aborigines along our western shores to the opposite maritime coast of Armorica, which, from such colonization, obtained the name of Britannia Minor, or Brittany. Bishop Gran- disson in his Register, vol. i. fol. 27, A.D. 1328, adverts to the identity of the languages of these colonists and of Cornwall : " Minor Britannia, cujus lingua ipsi utun- tur Cornubici."
CHAPTER II.
The fruits and effects of Christianity on the Pagan Britons — Their consentient faith with the Christian churches of the Continent — The subjugation of our island by the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles — The happy conversion of these new settlers to the Catholic Church.
CHRISTIANITY is the parent of innumerable blessings to the human race. It softens and refines the manners, imposes a curb on the passions, purifies and regulates the affections, excludes selfish feelings, exerts a favour- able influence on the useful and ornamental arts, respects and honours and dignifies the female sex, encourages the decencies, proprieties, and charities of domestic and social life, and improves the condition of every rank in the commonwealth. It teaches the poor to be contented with their present lowly state, to submit from conscientious principles to the constituted
INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 5
authorities, and to approve themselves as useful and exemplary members of the community ; whilst it ad- monishes the great and the opulent to be meek and humble of heart — moving in the perpetual presence of the same Creator and future Judge ; and to regard themselves, not so much as the proprietors of their wealth and superiority, as His trustees and stewards for the benefit of others — as the very almoners of the Deity for the relief, comfort, and protection of their less-favoured fellow creatures. The truth of these reflections is illustrated in the case of the Britons, the original population of this island. Their manners and social habits were barbarous and revolting in the extreme. Their Druidical worship was a melancholy compound of absurdity and of cruelty, tinctured, it seems, by a Pythagorean belief in the transmigra- tion of souls. But when the light of Christian faith beamed on this benighted people, a marvellous change of ideas, habits, and manners succeeded amongst them.
In the investigation of this extraordinary revolution, the historian must ever bear in mind that his province is not to invent, but to relate events ; that, whilst matters of opinion may admit of desultory or speculative essays, matters of fact must be delivered with great integrity and judgment. It is reasonable then to infer from the constant intercourse between Eome, the seat of empire, and Britain, that the knowledge of the Christian faith was introduced into this province in the earliest times ; though, at this distant period, it is utterly impossible to ascertain the names of the first heralds of the Gospel. Grildas, the British monk, who wrote in 560, laments the absence in his time of all national records, adding that, if such had ever existed, they must have perished in hostile conflagrations, or been conveyed out of the country by exiled citizens, — " si qua fuerint, aut ignibus
HISTORY OF EXETER.
hostium exusta, aut civium exilii classe longius de- portata, non compareant."
St. Paul congratulates the Romans (i. 8) that "ttieir faith was spoken of throughout the whole world." During the reign of the Emperor Claudius, Pomponia Graecina, a native of Britain and the wife of the proconsul Aulus Plautius, had embraced Chris- tianity, or, as Tacitus describes her, was "supersti- tionis externse rea." Claudia Rufina is mentioned as a Briton by Martial, and with her husband Pudens, the senator, is noticed by St. Paul (2 Tim. iv. 21).2
From the ' Ecclesiastical History of' Britain,' com- posed by Bede upwards of a century after Gildas, we learn that Lucius, a tributary sovereign in the island to the Roman Emperors, sent a message to Pope Eleutherius (who filled the chair of St. Peter at Rome from the year 176 to 192), requesting that, through his means, he might be made a Christian — that he soon obtained the effect of his petition — that the Britons retained the faith so received inviolate in all its integrity, and practised the same without molesta- tion until the reign of Diocletian, " sumptam fidem Britanni, usque in tempora Diocletiani principis, invio- latam integramque, quieta in pace, servabant ; " that during the ten years of persecution by that remorseless tyrant, Britain was ennobled by the martyrdom of Alban at Verulam, and of Aaron and Julius at Caerleon upon Usk. He adds in his Chronicon, what Gildas had stated before him, that they suffered in company with many other victims of both sexes, " cum aliis plurimis viris ac fceminis felici cruore dam- navit persecutio." The same venerable historian pro-
1 Every lover of historic truth would do well to consult Dr. Lingard's work on the Anglo-Saxon Church, and es- IH nully Note a, in tho Appendix to vol. i
2 [See an ingenious essay on Claudia and Pudens, by the late Archdeacon of Cardigan.]
KECOGNITION OF THE PAPAL SUPREMACY.
ceeds to show that with the return of peaceful times, the faithful emerged from their hiding-places in the forests, deserts and caverns of the earth, rebuilt by degrees their temples, which had been levelled to the ground, and then openly celebrated divine worship.
The orthodoxy of our British ancestors, their con- sentient belief with the other Christian churches on the continent, is attested by their sending Eborius Bishop of York, Restitutus Bishop of London, and Adelfius Bishop of Lincoln, as their representatives in the Council of Aries, A.D. 314. Other prelates moreover were sent by them to the Council of Sardica in 347, as well as three to the Council of Rimini in 359, as we learn from Sulpicius Severus.
That the seven Bishops of Britain did not reject the Papal Supremacy, seems probable from the following facts : — 1st, That St. Augustin, the envoy of Pope Gregory the Great, invited and importuned them to co- operate with him in preaching the Word of God to the Saxons ; and 2nd, from their own confession, that his doctrine was true, " veram esse viam justitise quam prse- dicaret Augustinus" (Bedse Hist. lib. ii. cap. 2). As to the question of the right time of keeping Easter, that could be solved only by astronomical observation. The errors of former computations had been corrected in every other part of the Church ; but the sequestered Britons and Scots continued to employ the old cycles, and thus opposed themselves not merely to the custom of Rome, but also to the express decree of the General Council of Nice in the year 325. The whole subject is sensibly and dispassionately discussed by the late learned and Rev. John Whitaker,3 Rector of Ruan Lanyhorn
3 This great scholar was born at Manchester in 1736, and was buried in his church of Ruau Lanyhorn, 14th November, 1808, to which he had been
instituted 23rd August, 1777, on the presentation of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
8 HISTORY OF EXETER.
in Cornwall, in his History of the Cathedral of Corn- wall, vol. ii. p. 231.
" The great Council of Nice in 325 settled the dispute for ever in that decisive mode in which half of the disputes of man must be settled at all, by making the minority yield to the majority; and determining for Sunday next after the 14th day of the moon." He then shows that " the British Christians had not con- formed to the sentiments of St. Polycarp, but did conform to the opinions of St. Anicetus, the Bishop of Rome ; that the Britons derived their Christianity, with all their modes of Christian worship, immediately from their masters the Komans." And in a note, p. 234, he adds, " Dr. Borlase supposes the error of the Cornish to have been their refusing to acknowledge the Papal authority, when the very cycle for which the Cornish Britons contended was originally Roman itself; and when therefore the only contention could be for one cycle against another equally Roman. In writing upon these points, our authors," he continues, "are almost sure to show their Protestantism at the expense of their understandings," We might refer our readers to Wilkins' < Councils,' vol. i. p. 8, where mention is made of a synod holden by St. David in 519, and his subsequent one at Victoria, when all the Welsh clergy attended and admitted the decrees as a standard, after receiving the sanction of the Roman Church, " Ecclesia Romana auctoritatem adhi- bente et confirmante."
But though there was a community of religious belief in the Roman and British Churches, yet owing in part to the inroads of Arianism and Pelagianism and to civil commotions, and to habits of incessant warfare with the Picts, Scots and Saxons, a woeful relaxation <lisn|.line and morals was introduced; and the corruption, according to Gildas, prevailed almost uni-
ANGLO-SAXON SUBJUGATION. 9
versally. He informs us that about the middle of the sixth century the Britons were governed by no less than five distinct princes, viz., Constantine, Aurelius, Yortiporius, Cuneglass, and Maglocunus; all men of blood, polluted with iniquity, who seemed to set at defiance all laws human and divine. Amongst these profligate sovereigns, Constantine ruled over Dam- nonia, which comprised a considerable part of Devon and the whole of Cornwall. He upbraids him with his gross perversion of justice, with the violation of his most solemn promises at God's altar, with living in open adultery, discarding his lawful wife notwith- standing the prohibition of Christ, and of the Doctor of the Gentiles, " What God hath joined together, let no man separate " (Matt. xix. 6), and " Husbands, love your wives " (Ephes. v. 25). He conjures him no longer to prove himself the enemy of his own soul ; nor expose himself to the avenging and unquenchable flames of hell ; to return to Christ, who willeth not the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live. He implores him to break asunder his bonds, and abandon his vicious courses, and return like the pro- digal son (Luke xv.) to the tenderest of fathers, and he then will experience " how sweet is the Lord." The Welsh annals appear to testify to this king's reforma- tion of manners before his death.
We have sufficiently referred to the consentient belief and doctrine of the British and Continental Churches, although in matters of discipline (which vary according to times and circumstances) there was not the same uniformity. From the Britons we may now pass to the Anglo-Saxons, who from mercenary auxiliaries, eventually became the lords and proprie- tors of the soil, and at one period established eight independent sovereigns, one of which was elected and designated Brit-Walda, or Bryton-Walda, i. e. the
10 HISTORY OF EXETER.
Wielder of British power. The first Britwalda was JEtta, king of the South Saxons or Sussex; the second was Cealwin, king of the West Saxons or Wessex ; the third was Ethelbert, king of Kent ; the fourth was Raedwall, king of the -East Angles; the fifth Edwin, king of the Northumbrians; the sixth Oswald, who succeeded Edwin in his king- dom; the seventh Oswio, the brother of the said Oswald ; and the eighth was Egbert 9 the king of the West Saxons. Originally the Saxons formed them- selves into the three kingdoms of Sussex, Essex and Wessex : the Angles retained for their dominion Nor- folk, Suffolk, Cambridge, and the Isle of Ely, but in process of time added to these, by conquest, the two kingdoms of Bernicia (which extended from the River Tees to the Firth of Forth) and of Deira (which com- prehends the lands between the Tees and the Humber) ; and eventually merging these two kingdoms in that of Northumbria. The Mercians formed their kingdom out of the inland counties on either side of the Trent; whilst to the Jutes, from Jutland, were assigned the County of Kent and the Isle of Wight. Such par- titions of territory amongst the conquerors perhaps facilitated the expulsion, or retirement, of the Britons from these respective allotments, but must have con- tributed to sow the seeds of jealousy and intestine discord; and thus prepare them also to succumb to the descents of daring and successful pirates. Un- questionably they served to alienate the Britons from co-operating with St. Augustin in the labour of con- verting these warlike races to Christianity, and thus o retard the progress of the all -civilizing Cross. When Pope Gregory the Great in 596 had de- rmmed on the attempt to convert these kingdoms, th this view, directed Augustin with about bis religious companions to proceed forthwith
MISSION OF ST. AUGUSTIN. 11
towards England. The enterprise was regarded on the Continent as appalling and dangerous. It was con- sidered prudent by these foreign missionaries to sail for the Isle of Thanet, within the dominions of Ethel- bert, King of Kent, whose authority extended to the south side of the Humber. He had married Bertha, a Christian daughter of Caribert, King of Paris, son of Clotaire I. ; and her husband had guaranteed to her the free exercise of her religion, and had assigned to her the ancient British church of St. Martin, near Canter- bury, where her chaplain, Luidhard, Bishop of Senlis, performed for her the divine services. On landing, Au- gustin despatched a messenger to the king, stating that in obedience to Pope Gregory they had travelled from Eome to bring to England the glad tidings of salvation. Ethelbert returned a gracious answer ; desired them to remain where they were for the present ; and issued orders for their being supplied with all necessaries. After a few days he visited the island and honoured them with an audience ; thanked them for the bene- volent zeal which had prompted them to undertake so fatiguing an expedition for his benefit and the welfare of his subjects ; assured them of his protection, provided them with a residence in his capital, the city of Can- terbury, with a liberal maintenance, and permitted them the use of the said Church of St. Martin, where they began to keep choir, and to celebrate masses, says Yenerable Bede, and preach and baptize, until they obtained, after the Sovereign's conversion to the faith, a more ample licence to preach and to build and reconcile temples for the solemnization of religious rites (lib. i. c. 26). From this central focus, religion gradually extended her light and cheering influence. Both king and people were edified and charmed with the innocent and regular lives of the missionaries, with their disinterested and indefatigable zeal, their meek-
12 HISTORY OF EXETER.
ness, patience, and charity ; they crowded to their spiritual instructions, and when the king was publicly baptized at Pentecost 597, his example was voluntarily followed by many of his subjects ; for he faithfully adhered to the lessons he had received from his teachers and guides, observes Venerable Bede, that he must never force any one to embrace Christianity ; for the service of Christ must be free and spontaneous, and never compulsory. Happy would it have been for man- kind, if so just an estimate of the Deity's forbearance and clemency — so sweet to all, and whose mercies are above all His works (Ps. cxlv. 9), had been taught and practised by all succeeding rulers ; that legislators had equally respected the weaknesses and prejudices of their fellow creatures, and had never resorted to penal laws or coercive restrictions on the sacred and inalien- able rights of conscience.
CHAPTER III.
Exeter besieged by Penda, King of Mercia, in 633, but effectually relieved by i British King, Cadwalinus. Submits to the sovereigns of Wessex.
IF, in the silence of the Saxon Chronicle, we may believe Matthew of Westminster in his ' Flores His- toriarum,' we must state that about this time Exeter was besieged by Penda, the powerful and ferocious King of Mercia. He invested the city with a large army, but was suddenly attacked, and made prisoner by Cadwalmus King of the Britons; and, as the sequel shows, redeemed his liberty, by entering into an offensive fensive treaty with his conqueror.1 Yet before
DOMINATION OF THE KINGS OF WESSEX.
13
the end of the 7th century the city succumbed to the dominion of the kings of Wessex ; and under the mild, benevolent and firm government of Ina, the early legislator — who, after conquering the "Welsh and Bri- tons, placed them under the protection of equal laws, and of Egbert the friend of Charlemagne, who, as early as 809, had added Cornwall to his dominions2 — Exeter must have felt comparative security, and have advanced in civilization. During the subsequent reigns of such sovereigns as Alfred, Athelstan, and Edgar, it must occasionally have been favoured and cheered by the royal presence. In the course of this chapter we shall lay before our readers what scanty details we have been able to glean of this period of our annals.
That Exeter had a monastery before the end of the 7th century is manifest from the life of St. Win/rid or Boniface? consecrated Bishop on the 30th of November, 723. by Pope Gregory XI., and afterwards promoted to the Archbishopric of Mentz, and to this day regarded as the Apostle of Germany. This extraordinary man sprang from a good family in Crediton, and at an early age was sent for education to the monastery in this city, " in Exanchester, quod modo Exonia dicitur," then governed by the Abbot Wolphard, as we read in Bishop Grandisson's Legenda Sanctorum, ob. June 5, 755.
In the time of this Winfrid or Boniface there lived in or near this city Sidwella, eldest of the devout sisters Juthwara, Wilgitha and Gadwara, daughters of Benna, a noble Briton. At her father's death her cruel stepmother,
niam petivit, consertoque prselio, Penda de tali tumultu non promunitus, con- tinue captus est, et ejus exercitus dissi- patus. At Penda cum aliam evadendi yiam non haberat, Cadwalino fidelitatem juravit, et obsides de subjectione inve- nit," &c. — Flores Historiarum, p. 210, London ed. 1570. 2 " Earn regionem, quae Cornubia di-
citur, Egbertus subjugavit sibi et suo adjecit regno." — Matthew of West- minster, A.D. 809.
3 Both before and after his consecra- tion, he and others used these names indiscriminately. — See the Epistles in Dr. Giles's edition, Nos. 36, 41, 73, 91, &c.
11
HISTORY OF EXETER.
covetous of the fortune of Sidwella, which was con- siderable in the eastern suburbs of the city, engaged one of her servants, a reaper or mower (fceniseca), to dispatch her whilst employed in her devotions near a well in " Hedwell mede " at a short distance from the Parish church, which still bears her name. Unfortu- nately her Acts have perished since the destruction of the city by Sweyn. All that is said of her in the ancient Martyrology of this Cathedral is comprised in the following sentence :— " Augusti secunda die, in Britannia foras murum civitatis Exonie, Sancte Sativole Virginis et Martyris." The Church, subsequently erected in her honour and name, was believed to contain her tomb. In the catalogue of relics said to have been given to the said Monastery of Exeter by King Athel- stan, we find a portion of the " Keliquise S. Sativolse Yirginis et Martyris." 4 But a dark cloud was gathering in the political horizon. The Danish and Northern sea-kings were in the habit of sailing forth early in the spring, seeking whom they might devour. They had paid a cursory visit to our defenceless coast as early as 787, but the decisive victory of Egbert at Hengston Hill in 835 had taught them caution for a time; till they reappeared with redoubled strength. Their ap- proach spread dismay; for their progress was every- where marked by carnage and conflagration.
We believe their first descent on Exeter itself was in the year 876. In the ensuing year a body of cavalry from Wareham in Dorsetshire proceeded to join their comrade freebooters in this city, and, though hotly pursued by King Alfred, they succeeded " in getting within the fortress, where they could not be come at,"
. ThcJ?. u rOQa°n to suppose that
Vine,. K.chard, the wl2KT<rf St.
Bomfcce, and hia three children, Wine-
bald, Willifeald, and Walburga, BO venerated for sanctity, were also na- tives of this neighbourhood.
RAVAGES OF THE DANES. 15
as the Saxon Chronicle expresses it ; nor did they leave their quarters until midwinter. During their stay, the monastery must have been sacked and demolished. In 894 these scourgers of God reappeared before the city and invested it; but Alfred hastened to the relief of the burgesses, and the Danes hurried back to their > ships, and contented themselves with ravaging the coast. This sovereign, the founder of the British Navy, befriended Exeter ; but he gave its revenue, with his royalties in Wessex and Cornwall, to his learned tutor and biographer Asserius, who tells us of his royal master's unexpected liberality — " ex improviso dedit mihi Exanceastre, cum omni parochia quae ad se pertinebat in Saxonia et in Cornubia " (De Eebus Gestis JSlfridi Eegis). After a reign of thirty years, this heroic sovereign died in 901. Mr. Sainthill, in the first volume of his ' Miscellanies,' has engraved a penny of this king struck at Exeter.
To Athelstan, who governed the realm from 925 until his lamented death on October 27, 941, Exeter must ever look up as her special benefactor. He frequently honoured her with his presence ; he refounded her minster or monastery dedicated to SS. Mary and Peter, which eventually was transformed into a cathe- dral by Edward the Confessor ; and he surrounded the
1C HISTORY OF EXETER.
city with regular fortifications, and built its castle. To add to its rank and importance he gave it the privilege of a double Mint. That diligent investigator, Mr. Sainthill, has discovered a rare specimen coined here. Instead of the king's bust, the obverse presents but a simple cross. The circular legend proclaims him King of the whole of Britain :
JEDELSTAN REX TO. BRIT.
The reverse supplies the name of the Mintmaster, perhaps one of the Reynold race :
R^EGENOLD MO. EXONIE CIV.
^ This true father of his country, after expelling the disaffected Britons from Exeter, where they had there- tofore enjoyed equal rights and privileges with the Saxon inhabitants, and compelling them to retire be- yond the Tamar, and after extending his conquests to the Land's End, near which he founded the Sanctuary or church of St. Burian,1 spent Christmas here with his nobles and court, and held a Witenagemote or Parliament, when a body of laws was enacted, which lay be seen in Brompton's Chronicle, for the due protection of property, the impartial administration )t jus ce and the condign punishment of transgressors. » we may notice the strange assertion of Izaacke, that our city was formerly Moncton, from the multitude of its monas- es, from the year 450 until the reign of King Athe stan who, in the year 932, first called it Exeter » chart^ to which they refer, if it be genuine (its manifestly inaccurate and the names
1 See hi* charter in the • Monaaticon Dioc. Exon.' p. 8. .
ANGLO-SAXON BOUNDARIES.
17
of the witnesses belong to an antecedent period) can bear no such construction. For the king professes to grant to the Monastery of St. Mary and St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, at Exanceaster, a manse called Munecatun ; and then are distinctly specified the bound- aries of this manse in the Saxon language. We believe the property lay along the Sut Brook? which rises in the south-east part of St. Sidwell's parish and is fed by several springs and wells ; but it is now in great measure covered over in Newtown, passes along the bottom of Paris Street and Holloway, and empties itself into the Exe below the quay. The late Mr. Kemble attached im- portance to the accuracy of the boundaries described in Anglo-Saxon charters, for they were obtained by actual perambulation ; and he adds, that " Names unknown to the present owners of property remain sacred in the memory of the surrounding peasantry, and of the labourer that tills the soil. I have more than once walked, ridden, or rowed, as land and stream required, round the bounds of Anglo-Saxon estates, and have learnt with astonishment, that the names recorded in my charter were still used by the woodcutter or the shepherd of the neighbourhood." (Archaeological Journal, No. 54, June, 1857). But let us resume our narrative.
Though Athelstan had refounded the monastery there, his premature death had left his work incom- plete. During the Danish visitations and inroads, the religious members of such sanctuaries of piety and learning throughout the country had been mas- sacred or dispersed : the minds of the population had become more disposed to the profession of arms
5 So distinguished from North Brook; the source of which is near the higher hedge of Little Gratnor field, Stoke Hill. Passing down the valley through Polsloe (where it was sometimes called
Mynchyn Lake), thence through East Wonford as Wonhroke, it crosses the road to Topsham, and finally discharges itself into the Exe below Northbrook House.
18 HISTORY OF EXETER.
than the uniform routine of the cloister ; and it was reserved for the peaceful reign of Edgar to restore the ancient order of things. Accordingly we read in the Chronicle of Florence of Worcester, that, in the year 968, he obtained a colony of monks for Exeter and placed over them an exemplary Abbot, called Sideman, whose merits within five years later raised him to the dignity of bishop of Crediton. It is more than probable that our illustrious monarch honoured Exeter with his presence both before and after his marriage with Elfrida, the daughter of Ordgar, the Earl of Devon who was buried in this city in 971. In Mr. SainthilFs Miscel- lanies (vol. ii. page 152) is engraved a coin of King Edgar, which presents the peculiarity of an X (the designation of Exeter) both on the obverse and re- verse. To the grief of the nation he was summoned away by death on October 27th, 975. Of him the Saxon poet sung, " There was no fleet so proud, no host so strong, as to seek food in England while this noble king swayed the sceptre. He reared up God's honour : he loved God's law : he preserved the people's peace.
God was his helper ; and kings and earls
bowed to him and obeyed his will ; and without battle he ruled all, as he pleased."
CHAPTER IV.
Exeter besieged by Sweyn, King of Denmark— Its gallant and successful resist- ance - Infamous policy of King Ethelred — Sweyn returns to invest the city, ich, through the treason of its Governor, falls into his hands on the 19th of August, 1003, and is demolished — Canute, the son of Sweyn, succeeds to the sovereignty of England.
Tm-: imbecile government of Ethelred, the son of Edgar, his inaptitude for business and love of pleasure, and the aversion of the nation towards his unnatural mother
SWEYN'S SIEGE OF THE CITY. 19
Elfrida, held out encouragement to the Northern pirates and freebooters to renew, their predatory descents on Britain. Incapable of opposing effectual resistance, the king sought to bribe and purchase their forbearance from hostilities at any price ; and perhaps his frequent subsidies may in some measure account for the immense amount of his coinage still preserved in the Royal Museum at Stockholm.1 But these ferocious and covetous barbarians valued truces and treaties only so far as they suited present convenience. Under Swegen, or Sweyn, King of Denmark, their fleet ap- peared off Exmouth in 1001, and soon the flames of villages — the groans of their expiring victims — the shrieks of the fugitives — announced the rapid approach of the enemy towards Exeter. Its citizens relying on the strength of their fortifications, and conscious of the utter ruin that must await them if they fell into the invader's hands, determined to oppose a desperate re- sistance. He had calculated on taking the city by storm ; but was wofully disappointed, and gallantly foiled in the attempt. A diversion was made in their favour by the combined forces of Devon, Somerset and Dorset, under the generals Cola and Eadsig. The battle was fought at Pinhoe near this city. On this occasion Pallig,2 to whom Ethelred had proved a most generous benefactor, . " contrary to all his plighted troth/' says the Saxon Chronicle, deserted the king's cause, joined his Danish countrymen with a considerable force, and enabled Sweyn to obtain a decisive victory. The next morning, " after burning the villages of Pinhoe and Cliston, and many good villages which we are unable to name," he deemed it prudent to abandon Exeter and to re-embark his troops at Exmouth.
1 See Mr. Sainthill's vol. ii. of Mis- cellanies, p. 137.
2 This naturalized Northman met his
his countrymen late in the following year, in the presence of his Christian wife, Gunilda, and his children.
tragical end in the general massacre of
c 2
20 HISTORY OF EXETER.
Our infatuated sovereign, in the course of the year 1002, was alarmed by a report that the Danes, domiciled in England, were preparing " to bereave him of his life, and afterwards all his counsellors ; and then to take possession of his kingdom without any gainsaying.' ' Without further proof, he determined to sacrifice them all at once to his suspicious and short-sighted policy. On one and the same night — the feast of St. Brice, 13th November — great and small of either sex, " majores et minores utriusque sexus," says Florence, fell, the unsuspecting victims of the royal vengeance. We believe, however, that hoctide was not subse- quently kept up in memory of this detestable massacre, but was instituted nearly half a century later in com- memoration of the national joy at being rescued from Danish sovereignty, and at the glorious coronation of Edward the Confessor at Winchester, at the solemnity of Easter.3
As might be expected, this tragical expedient served but to exasperate the foes of England. Sweyn had been stung with disappointment at his unsuccessful attempt against Exeter; but on hearing of this un- paralleled massacre of his countrymen, and of the brutal murder of his own sister, he vowed indignant revenge. In the course of the spring of 1003 he embarked with a powerful fleet and army; and in due time re-appeared before this city. The inhabitants might again have offered a successful resistance, the banner of England might have continued to wave in proud defiance on the castle, if the governor had not been a traitor. He was a Northman named Hugh, indebted for his position to merit or talent, but to the preponderating in- e of Queen Emma in the state councils. This per- i man introduced the enemy on the 19th August,
termhmtion °f the
BETRAYAL BY HUGH THE GOVERNOR.
21
1003, as we learn from the Chronicon of the Church of Exeter. Never was calamity more signal — never destruction more summary. The brave inhabitants were immolated to the insatiate vengeance of the victor ; the churches with their annexed libraries and archives were wantonly consumed in the flames, — " Ecclesiae, in quibus numerosse et priscae Bibliothecae continebantur, cum libris incensse sunt" (Wm. Malmes. lib. ii. cap. 4):4 the monuments of art were dashed to pieces ; public and private property given to pillage ; the fortifications utterly demolished, and the city re- duced to a pile of ashes. To those inhabitants who survived the general onslaught, it may have been some consolation to witness the traitorous governor dragged off in chains by the enemy. (See Brompton, after Henry of Huntingdon, the Saxon Chronicle, Florentius, and Simeon of Durham.) The king, per- ceiving that affairs grew worse, proposed a truce, which was accepted on his paying 36,OOOZ. ; an enor- mous sum in those days. Never was England more humbled ; never so prostrate at the feet of its van- quisher ; and never was it doomed to be governed by such a despicable monarch. He died unpitied in London on 23rd April, 1016. Sweyn had died on 3rd February, two years before, and had appointed his son Canute to succeed him. Had Edmund Ironside, the spirited son of Etheldred, been permitted to live, his prowess might have achieved the independence of his country; but on 30th November, 1016, he also was snatched away by a sudden and violent death at Oxford, and Canute was proclaimed sole monarch of England without opposition.
4 There was an old saying, and a a castle without an armoury." — Merry- true one, prevalent in those days, " that weather's Bibliomania, p. 50. a monastery without a library was like
22 HISTORY OF EXETER.
CHAPTER V.
Tho influence of religion on tbo heart and government of Canute — His special favour to Exeter — Tbo restoration of the Saxon line in the person of Edward the Confessor— Prosperity of this city, and the removal of the See to it from Crediton.
CANUTE exhibited in-his government a wonderful proof of the benign influence which the spirit of Christianity exercises over the human heart. He had been educated in a bad school, where rapine, perfidy, sacrilege, and murder were unblushingly taught and practised ; but when he was once securely fixed on the throne, it was his study to expiate the cruel wrongs inflicted by his father and himself on his new subjects, and to ingratiate himself by acts of conciliation, by easing their burthens, by administering the laws with strict impartiality, by restoring church property and doing honour to religion in the persons of its ministers.1 Exeter very soon experienced the benefit of his protection. He invited and encouraged the fugitives to return ; he assisted in rebuilding its fortifications, and in the erection of houses and churches. In his charter, preserved in the Register of Bishop Bronescombe, fol. Ill, and granted in the year 1019, he sets forth that he had been credibly informed by the " Dux " Dekelwerdus, that his officers in the province of Devon had imposed the yoke of vassalage on the estates appropriated to God's Church, to St. Mary and All Saints, which Exewestre, and that its monastery had been stroyed by the pagans and its royal charters con- : by fire. In virtue of his supreme authority in
1 William of Mahnesbury, lib. 2 v xi, tl,ua Bribes bis system of
«W oonciliarc ; awjuum ilhs jus
Danis suis in consessu, in consilio, in prcBlip concedere. Monasteria per Angliam, suis et patris excursionibus partim foadata, partimeruta, reparavit."
GOVERNMENT OF CANUTE. 23
the land, for his soul's welfare, and for the redemption of his own transgressions, and to secure the blessing of God upon his kingdom, he granted a charter to the new Abhot Akelwoldus, and his present and future brethren abiding in the said monastery, which would put them in full possession of all their previous rights and privileges. The royal signature is attested by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, five bishops, five dukes, five abbots, and five officers ; but in the copy printed in vol. ii. of the Monasticon Anglicanum, page 536, this number of witnesses is more than doubled.
The course of his reign was signalised by deeds of beneficence and charity. In the fifteenth year of his government, 1031, he proceeded to Borne ; and our early historians take delight in commemorating his liberality and piety. He was accompanied by Livingus, the very discreet Abbot of Tavistock (whom he after- wards promoted to the united sees of Crediton and St. Germans). The memorable letter which he despatched by that favourite ecclesiastic to his English subjects, fortunately preserved by William of Malmes- bury and Florentius, is so graphic and interesting that we make no apology for submitting it to our readers.
" Canute, King of all England and Denmark and the Nor- wegians and a part of the Swedes, to Egelnoth, the Metro- politan, and to Alfric, Archbishop of York, and to all Bishops and Prelates, and to all the nation of the English, as well Nobles as Commoners, greeting. I signify to you that I lately repaired to Kome to pray for the remission of my sins and the safety of my realms and of the people subject to my authority. Long since I had vowed to perform this pilgrimage, but had hitherto been prevented by state affairs and other impediments. But now I very humbly thank my Almighty God, who has allowed me life to visit his Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and every sacred place within and without the city of Kome, and, according to my wishes, to honour and venerate them in person. And I have done so principally because I have learnt from wise
21 HISTORY OF EXETER.
men that St Peter the Apostle received from the Lord the great power of binding and loosing, and that he was the key- fceeper of the heavenly kingdom; and therefore I considered it highly profitable to seek his patronage with the Lord.
" Moreover be it known to you, that at the Easter solemnity there was a great concourse of nobility, with the Lord Pope John (XIX.) and the Emperor Conrad, and all the princes of the nations from Mount Garganus to the nearest sea ; who gave me an honourable reception, and made me valuable presents, especially the Plmperor, who bestowed various precious gifts of gold and silver vessels and rich mantles and robes. I availed myself then of the opportunity to represent to the Emperor and to our Lord the Pope, and to the assembled princes, the grievances of all my subjects, English and Danish, that they might be granted a more reasonable permission and safer pro- tection in their journeys towards Rome, and freedom from de- tention in the way by so many obstacles, and from unjust taxa- tion ; and the Emperor acceded to my wishes, as also did King Kodolf,2 who was the master of those barriers; and all those princes decreed that my men, as well merchants as pilgrims, should henceforth travel to and return from Eome in peace and lawful security, without any detention at barriers or demands of officers.
" I next complained to the Lord Pope and stated my great disapprobation of the large sums required of my archbishops, who, pursuant to custom, repaired to the Apostolic See to receive the pallium. A decree was consequently enacted that this was never to occur again. Whatever I solicited from the Lord Pope, and from the Emperor and King Eodolf, and the other princes through whose territories lies our passage to Eome, was most willingly conceded for the accommodation of my people, and the grant was confirmed by their oaths under the testimony of four archbishops and twenty bishops, and in the presence of a numberless multitude of dukes and nobles. Wherefore I render my heartfelt tribute of thanksgiving to Almighty God that I have successfully accomplished whatever I had desired and pur- posed, and that all my wishes are fully satisfied.
'Now let it be known to you all that I have humbly devoted my future life to the all-powerful God and to reform my conduct entirely, to govern my realms and subjects justly and piously ; things to observe the strictest equity ; and if heretofore, by the impetuosity of youth or negligence, I have acted wrong- fully, I am prepared with God's help to make ample atonement. I entreat and command my council, to whom I have
MRodolph m. (ca led by Ingulphus
of
»* «.iug 01 oorffondy I ui dated to have conveyed his do-
minions to Henry III., king of the Romans, sou of the Emperor Conrad.
CANUTE'S LETTER TO HIS SUBJECTS. 25
committed the charge of the government, that on no account, for fear of me, or to win the favour of any person in power, they consent to any injustice, or suffer it to spring up in any part of my dominion. Moreover I command all sheriffs and provosts of the realm, as they value my friendship or their own safety, that they abstain from doing an unjust act to any man, rich or poor ; but to allow all persons, noble or ignoble, rich or poor, to possess their legal rights, and that no deviation from justice be connived at, either to favour the King, or to serve any powerful nobleman, or to increase the royal exchequer ; for I need not money acquired by injustice and extortion.
" I wish you now to know that I am proceeding to Denmark, with the advice of my Danish council, to conclude a firm peace and treaty with those nations which had impotently desired to rob me of my crown and existence; but God destroyed their power. May He continue, in His mercy, to preserve us in integrity of life and honour, and to dissipate and bring to nought the power and strength of all our enemies ! At the conclusion of peace with the neighbouring nations, and after settling the concerns of my eastern dominions, so that all appre- hension of hostilities be removed, I purpose to embark for England in the course of the summer. But I have sent this letter as my precursor, that all my subjects may rejoice at my prosperity: for you are all aware that I have never spared myself any labour, neither will I, to promote the welfare of all my people.
" And now I command and conjure all my bishops and provosts, by the fidelity which they owe to God and to me, that before my return to England ye cause all debts owing to God, according to the ancient law, be discharged: viz. the plough- alms — the tithes of cattle born during the present year — the Peter's pence 3 due from towns and villages — the tithes of fruit in the middle of August — and the church-shot payable to the parish church at Martinmas. For these and similar dues, unpaid at my return, distress will be enforced according to law. Fare ye well."
This powerful and religious sovereign survived his return for several years, and died at Shaftesbury on 12th November, 1035. Many of his coins, struck in the Exeter Mint, are engraved in Mr. Sainthill's work before mentioned. To Canute's praise we must add that, as early as 1022, he had ordered the Laws of King
3 Charlemagne, 200 years before, had established this payment in Gaul. See Pope Gregory VII.'s ninth letter.
26 HISTORY OF EXETER.
Edward the Elder, the son of Alfred, to be translated from the Saxon into Latin, and to be observed by all his subjects in Denmark and England, for their supe- rior wisdom and equity — " propter earum eequitatem," writes Matthew of Westminster.
The unexpected death of King Harold, surnamed Harefoot, and King Hardicanute, within seven years, opened the way to the throne of England for Prince Edward, a lineal descendant of the old Saxon race of Cerdic, and the son of Etheldred by Emma. He was now at the mature age of forty, and had been severely trained in the school of adversity. Illustrious by birth, he was known to be more illustrious by his virtues, and therefore his accession was hailed with unbounded joy by the nation. His subjects, conceiving themselves to be emancipated from a foreign yoke, justly felt that now they had got the right man in the right place, and in the fittest conjuncture of affairs. " Quae tune, quaeso erat Anglis omnibus laetitia, cum rediisse cerne- rent antiquam successionem et patriae liber tatem." 4 The goodness of his heart — his affability of manners — his moderate habits — his contentment with the patri- monial demesnes of the crown — his voluntary relin- quishment of that odious impost called the Danegeld — his anxious study to relieve the public burthens— his incredible charities to the poor— and his bountiful gifts to churches and monasteries — made him the idol of his people ; whilst the code of laws which he had digested from the varied local customs of his English, Danish, and Mercian subjects, and the enactments of preceding sovereigns (with such alterations and amendments as time and experience suggested to his wisdom), rded sufficient protection for life and property, and the people feel they had a constitution worth
in Fcfito a Edwardi-
REIGN OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
27
defending. For a long period the laws and customs of " the good King Edward " continued to be household words in the mouths of our forefathers, who regarded his auspicious and peaceful reign as the era of Eng- land's prosperity. During his time we believe the parochial division of the kingdom was effected, and each inhabitant acquired the knowledge of his proper spiritual shepherd.
But if the country at large had cause for congratu- lation on possessing such a wise and benevolent sove- reign, with what affectionate gratitude did Exeter regard him as her greatest benefactor ? Under his auspices she grew into greatness. Her population rapidly increased. Her trade, internal and external, was flourishing. William of Malmesbury thus de- scribes Exeter : — " Ubi omne abundat mercemonium, ut nihil frustra desideres, quod humano usui conducibile judices " (' De Gestis Pont. Angl.' p. 145). Being a well-fortified city, the King determined, with the approbation of the Pope Leo IX., to transfer the now united sees of Cornwall and Devon from the little village of Crediton, " a Cridiensi villula," to this im- portant f place. Leofric, who had filled the office of chaplain of the court, as well as of chancellor, and probably was well known to his Holiness, when, as Bruno, the latter governed with such high reputation the bishopric of Toul, had recently been nominated to the See of Crediton, and had felt the expediency of such removal. To do the prelate greater honour, the King, with his accomplished Queen Editha,5 with both the archbishops, several bishops, and an immense concourse of the nobility and dignified clergy, graced
5 William of Malmesbury describes her as " Foemina, in cujus pectore om- nium liberalium artium esset Gymna- sium." Her encouraging condescension to Ingulphus, whilst a young scholar, afterwards the learned Abbot of Croy-
land, is beautifully recorded in his his- tory, page 62. Dying 5th April, 1075, she was buried near her husband at Westminster. We hope Miss A. Strick- land will employ her talents in doing justice to such a queen.
28 HISTORY OF EXETER.
his translation with their presence. In the royal charter bearing date A.D. 1050, the king announces his having placed the endowment of the new bishopric of Exeter on the altar of St. Peter; that he then conducted the prelate by the right arm, whilst the queen supported the left arm, to instal him in the episcopal chair. (See Bishop Brantyngham's 'Reg/ vol. i. fol. 106.) 6 The 'Domesday' sets forth the munificent endowment by this pious monarch. How Exeter must have exulted at the contrast, of seeing a conventual church converted into a cathedral ! and, instead of the services being per- formed by eight monks, to witness their celebration by a bishop, twenty-four canons, twenty-four vicars, four- teen choristers, besides a considerable number of clerks and officers! Under the fostering care of this' first Bishop of Exeter, and his immediate successor Bishop Osborn, religion made such unprecedented progress, that we learn from the old missal of St. Martin's Church (dedicated on the 5th July, 1065), that in the following reign, the city could boast of its twenty-nine churches, to each of which William the Conqueror allowed the Provost of Exeter to pay a small annual sum from the public taxes,7 at Easter and Martinmas. *
We need not add that the death of this father of his country, — " honor et gloria Anglorum dum vixit, eorum ruina dum moritur," (Chron. de Mailros, 160), on 5th January, 1065-6, after a short illness, plunged the country into mourning. "Plangebatur amarissime," says Simeon of Durham.
• (The genuineness of this charter
baa, however, been called in question 1
" Infra xv dies post Pascha solvendi
•* ix«, xxix capellis per manus
*;l«o«toruin Exome quos dedit Rex Willielmus de collecta
"Item, in Octabis Sci Martini sol- vendi aunt iterum per manum Prepo- sitorum Exome, ut supra, infra quinde- cim dies post Pascha." The silver penny of the time may have been equi- valent to the present half-crown.
SUCCESSION OF HAROLD.
29
CHAPTER VI.
Harold, son of Earl Godwin and brother of Queen Editha, assumes the reins of Government, with the good will of the nation, but loses the crown with his life at the battle of Hastings — William, Duke of Normandy, is declared king of England — Exeter, opposed to his sovereignty, submits after a siege of eighteen days — To overawe the spirit of insurrection, the citadel or castle is rebuilt — The Domesday — - Foundation by the Conqueror of St. Nicholas's Benedictine Priory — The King's death at Kouen — Strange event at his funeral in St. Stephen's Churcli at Caen.
As an Anglo-Saxon burgh, Exeter possessed the ad- vantage of municipal government. Domesday re- cords that its burgesses had lands without the city amounting to twelve carucates, which paid no custom but to the city itself, and that it enjoyed the same pri- vileges as London, York, and Winchester. Its chief officer was the Wic-reeve or Provost. He had to collect the King's revenue, and he exercised the same authority in the town as the sheriff did in the county of Devon. Both officers were appointed by the Crown.
Shortly before his death Edward had named the Queen's brother, Count Harold, as his successor to the throne, as a reward for his faithful services ; * for, says the Saxon Chronicle, " to him was committed the realm who at all times had faithfully obeyed his rightful lord by words and deeds, and neglected nothing needful to the service of his sovereign King/' On 6th January, at the conclusion of the Eoyal obsequies at Westminster, the crown was placed on the head of the new king, but he was not destined to wear it long. Unfortunately he had to oppose his own brother Tostig, the exiled Earl of Northumberland, who was leagued against him with
1 This is corroborated by the admis- sion of the partisans of his rival William. Ordericus says, " JEgrotus Princeps con- cessit Haraldo ;" and William of Poitou, " Dono Edwardi, in ipsius fine." It is amusing to read in Abbe Feller's ' Dic- tionnaire Historique,' art. William I.,
"St. Edouard, Eoi d'Angleterre, 1'ap- pella au trone par son testament," when William himself acknowledged on his death-bed, he had no better right to England than what he had derived by the sword of conquest.
30
HISTORY OP EXETER.
the powerful King of Norway, and also William, Duke of Normandy,2 who had long coveted the prize. The former opponents had scarcely been crushed at Stam- ford Bridge, on the Derwent in Yorkshire, in one of the bloodiest conflicts recorded in our annals, when he learnt that William had actually effected his landing at Pevensey on Michaelmas-day.3 By a rapid movement he arrived with his army at Senlac, a place formerly so called, in the neighbourhood of Hastings; where, after achieving prodigies of valour in that memorable and decisive battle of 14th October, he fell mortally wounded ; and with him perished for a time the hopes and liberties of England.
William, though victorious and crowned on the Christmas-day of the year 1066, was conscious that the heart of the nation was adverse to him. Naturally of an overbearing and headstrong character, presenting a striking contrast to the saintly Edward, the new sovereign showed that he preferred to be feared rather than loved by his subjects. Acting on the principle that all the lands in England were, by right of con- quest, derived or holden mediately or immediately from himself,4 he hastened to grasp the estates and property of Englishmen and to transfer them to his Norman barons and his foreign auxiliaries and adventurers ; he depo-
2 This extensive province, part of the ancient Neustria, derives its name from the Northmen, inhabitants of the penin- sula of Jutland, the islands of the Baltic, and the shores of the Scandinavian continent, who perpetrated ravages throughout France during the ninth and tenth centuries. In 886 they advanced up to Paris and Sens, scattering devas- tation around them. King Charles sur- namwl Le Simple, ceded to their chief- tain liollo, for a settlement erected into a duchy, this valuable territory, and further gave him in marriage his daugh- 'Msclla, with Mans and Bretagno about the year 912. Rollo received SagS- •«» took the name of Robert William the Seventh duko in Buccti
sion, and commonly called the Con- queror, was the illegitimate son of duke Robert, by Herleva. This concubine subsequently married Herluin, and had Robert, Earl of Mortain, and Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, who were thus ute- rine brothers of the Conqueror. In this province were the bishoprics of Rouen, Lisieux, Evreux, Seez, Bayeux, Cou- tances, and Avranches, so often occur- ring in the Domesday.
3 He had crossed over in a ship called Mora, the gift of his wife Matilda. See note in Provost's edition of Ordericus Vitalis, vol. ii. p. 125.
4 [This "principle" was adopted rather as a ^conventional legal maxim than as a fundamental fact.]
THE NORMAN CONQUEST.
31
pulated whole districts 5 to administer to his passion for hunting ; he enacted the forest laws written in blood ; he revived the odious Danegeld ; he ordained that all legal proceedings in the Royal courts should be conducted in the Norman-French language instead of the vernacular tongue ; he strove to force upon the parishes a foreign clergy ; he required that all parties and companies should disperse, all fires and candles should be extinguished, between eight o'clock in the evening and four o'clock in the morning, at the tolling of the melancholy curfew, when Anglo-Saxons in solitary darkness might brood over their grievances. But let us confine our attention to Exeter.
Its citizens " wealthy and brave " (as Ordericus re- presents them, lib. iv. Eccl. Hist.) were animated with most deadly hatred against the Norman. A band of his mercenaries on board of a squadron of his fleet had been driven by a tempest into the port of Exeter, and had been treated with insult and inhumanity by the populace. The burgesses, sensible of their danger, made preparations for self-defence, improved their fortifica- tions, and despatched emissaries to excite a similar spirit of resistance, which, as appears from the Domesday Survey, was specially successful at Lidford and Barn- staple. When William sent a message to this city that he required their oaths of fealty to his person and the admission of a garrison within their walls, they returned a peremptory refusal, but at the same time consented to pay him such dues and service as they had been in the habit of rendering to their native monarchs.
5 To obtain sufficient extent for his new forest he demolished thirty-six parish churches, and without scruple sent adrift a large population attached to the soil. In so doing he had also a political motive, viz., to provide a place of refuge for his Norman adherents opposite their own coast, in the event of a general insurrection of the English.
With this view he erected strong castles at convenient distances — at Christ- church, at Malwood, at Porchester, and atSarum,and improved the fortifications of Winchester. But how fatal did this New Forest prove to his family!— to Kichard his second son, to William his third son, and to his nephew Kobert ! See William of Malrnesbury, lib. iii.
32 HISTORY OF EXETER.
William was little accustomed to submit to conditions dictated by his subjects. He raised a considerable force, of which a large portion was composed of Englishmen, and advanced with a determination to inflict summary vengeance on the audacious insurgents.- At four miles' distance he was met by the magistrates, who implored his clemency and gave hostages for their fidelity. With 500 horse he approached one of the gates, and to his astonishment found it barricaded against him, and a crowd of combatants bidding him defiance from the walls. It was in vain that, to intimidate them, he or- dered one of the hostages to be deprived of his eyes. The siege continued for eighteen days ; nearly fifty houses, as we learn from the Domesday, were destroyed ; in different assaults the besiegers sustained severe losses of men, but by the sudden falling of a portion of the walls a passage was opened to the enemy ; the citizens at last submitted, but on more favourable conditions than could have been anticipated. Political expediency, joined to respect for valour, prompted William to be satisfied with their oath of allegiance and the admission of a garrison ; but their lives, pro- perty, and immunities were secured, and the besieging army was removed from the vicinity of the gates to prevent all opportunity of plunder. This must have occurred in the winter of 1067. The King, after re- ducing Cornwall to submission, returned to Winchester to keep Easter. In the following spring Githa, the ther of the late King Harold, dreading the rapacity -brutality of the Normans, sought refuge within our walls, and succeeded eventually in escaping to Flanders th many of our inhabitants ; « cum multis de civitate " (bimeon of Durham\
In 1069 the malcontents in Cornwall attempted
duce our citizens from their allegiance to the
nqueror, and on their refusal to join them, proceeded
THE DOMESDAY BOOK. 33
to invest the place, but they were seasonably relieved by the King's lieutenants Fitzosborne, Earl of Here- ford, a principal commander at the battle of Hastings, and Brian, son of the Earl of Bretagne.
Of all the king's despotic measures, the most revolt- ing to the national taste and feeling was the inquisi- torial survey, called Domesday, of every acre of land, and in some places of stock, within the conquered coun- try. The Exchequer copy of the survey was commenced in 1083 and finished three years later. Amongst the muniments belonging to the chapter of this cathedral is a manuscript transcript of the original rolls or re- turns made by the Eoyal Commissioners for the counties of Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset, and Wilts, de- scending to the minutest details.5 The population must indeed have been completely overawed, to swear evi- dence against their own interests ; but he set at defiance public opinion, and maintained a large standing army to crush disaffection and opposition at its first appearance.
Truth, however, compels us to admit that if the spirit of the nation was humbled and broken, and if its own nobility had disappeared under the sword of conquest, or been impoverished, or exiled, or incarcerated, yet in the progress of time considerable improvement was apparent in the manners of society, in public security, and in the cultivation of the arts and sciences ; for, at the period before us, the Normans ranked amongst the most civilized and polished people of Europe, their
5 Our readers are aware that the Ex- chequer copy was printed at the expense of Government in 1783. Thirty years later the same authority decided on publishing the 'Exeter and Winton Domesdays,' the 'Boldon Book,' and the 'Tnquisitio Eliensis;' and accord- ingly these valuable records issued from the press in 1816 ; but it was discovered that fol. 327 was then wanting in the original Exeter manuscript. About eleven years later, the present Sir
Walter C. Trevelyan, Bart., in arranging some family papers, met with that missing folio, and lost no time in sub- mitting it to our present respected Chapter Clerk, Ralph Barnes, Esq., who has restored it to its proper place, This folio has been printed in the same type as the rest of the vol. of the year 1816. [The reverend author pronounces too severe a judgment upon this cele- brated survey.]
34
HISTORY OF EXETER.
clergy were better trained and disciplined, better in- formed and more efficient. They re-animated the torpid state of religion in this country, and William of Malmes- bury confesses that he saw churches and monasteries arising in every direction in a new and superior style of architecture, and that the wealthy nobility vied with each other in founding costly monuments of their genius
and piety.
We learn from the Norman writers that the king selected a commanding site within our walls for the erection of a castle, and appointed Baldwin de Sap, otherwise called de Molis, or de Brioniis, and some- times de Exonia (from having made Exeter for a time his principal residence here), to superintend the works, and to establish a competent garrison. But this will form the subject of a separate chapter in Part II.6
In the Monasticon of the Diocese of Exeter, we have shown that the king was the original founder of St. Nicholas* Benedictine Priory, a dependency of his noble abbey of Battle. To this establishment he seems to have granted Harold's fee in this city and vicinity. At the suppression of this priory, the Crown sold this fee, or St. Nicholas' fee, to the Mayor and Chamber of Exeter, who, as long afterwards as the 8th April, 1560, resolved "that there shall be provided a seale of purpose wherewith all copies made for any parcel of that lande shall be sealed " (1st Act Book, page 184).
With all his accumulation of power and wealth, William was not happy. Eeflecting in his solitary hours on the course of his eventful life, he felt that he ruled over a justly discontented people impoverished by his wrongs ; that in his immoveable purpose he had spread wide wasting misery and desolation over a flou-
6 Thia officer, a kinsman of the
.'H-r-.r, was rewarded with the
Manor and Barony of Oakhampton and
its castle, and the Shrievalty of Devon, " in which county alone he was granted 159 lordships," as Rellmm has stated.
DEATH OF THE CONQUEROK. 35
rishing and beautiful country. His conscience now up- braided him with acts of cold-blooded oppression and multiplied wrongs, for each of which he was soon to render an account to Him who is no respecter of persons, and anticipated the calamities that were to be visited on his children. Death deprived him of everything at Eouen, on 9th September, 1087, and his corpse lay abandoned and disregarded, until by the charity of Herlouin it was conveyed to St. Stephen's church at Caen for interment. During the funeral service, after a sermon by the Bishop of Evreux, there stepped forth a burgess of the town, called Asselin, and loudly pro- tested against the corpse being buried there, calling the living God to witness that the ground was still his ; that the late King robbed his father of it to build an abbey here, without making any compensation to him for it. "I now reclaim it by Clameur de Haw, and I forbid you to inter the body here." Henry, the king's youngest son, amidst the general consternation, now came forward and made the required payment. The service then went on, and the body was lowered into the ground in a stone coffin, and there lay until the grave was rifled in the civil wars in the year 1562.
CHAPTER VII.
Henry I. befriends Exeter — Bishop William Warelwast rebuilds its cathedral — The prevalence of Simony in the middle ages — The fatal shipwreck of the heir to the Crown — Charter of King Stephen — Siege of Exeter — Accession of King Henry II.
PASSING by the reign of the impious and voluptuous despot "William Rufus, who was so suddenly bereaved of his crown and life by the visitation of God, we come to that of his youngest brother Henry. He had profited by a liberal education, and, though possessing the here-
D 2
HISTORY OF EXETER.
ditary duplicity and stubborn self-will of his family, he is said to have consulted the feelings of his English subjects by abrogating the curfew law, and by partially restoring the laws of Edward the Confessor. To this commercial and thriving city he granted a charter of freedom from all imposts and duties known by the name of tolls and customs in the other towns and cities of England — an important privilege in those days — and he attached a forfeiture of ten pounds to the act of disturbing our burgesses in the exercise of this their chartered right. He further granted them the fee- farm of their city for the yearly payment to the Crown of 39/. Is. 6d. This sum he made over to his queen, Matilda, the daughter of Malcolm, King of Scotland, by his wife Margaret, sister of Edgar Atheling. With the consent of her husband Queen Matilda appropriated two-thirds of that pension in perpetuity to her founda- tion of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, London ; the re- sidue lapsed to the Crown on her death in 1118, and was increased by King Edward by his charter, dated Waltham Cross, 6th February, 1332. The memory of this benefactress to Exeter was held in special venera- tion by her citizens during the four ensuing centuries ; and the Act Books of the Chamber show that, until 4th September, 1528, "the obit of Molde the good Queene" was duly maintained at the costs of the Mayor and Council.
Early in Henry's reign his kinsman William Warel-
wast, our diocesan, whose biography we have given in
our Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, undertook to
ebuild our cathedral. The Chronicon of the church
simply specifies the year 1112, "anno MOXII primo
tundata est Exoniensis ecclesia."
For the preceding half-century the emperors of Ger-
2 »'"! ** kings of France had exhibited to Chris-
endom the unseemly and scandalous spectacle of retain-
EEIGN OF HENRY I. 37
ing in their hands vacant abbeys and bishoprics until they could find pliant tools unfit for the office of pastor, or else purchasers at their own price and standard. The late king, William Rufus, in his lust of power and sacrile- gious avarice, gloried in following their mercenary and disgraceful traffic, nor did his successor, notwithstand- ing the oath he had taken at his coronation to maintain " the laws of the Church," hesitate to walk in his brother's footsteps, to trample on the canons and violate the an- cient legal immunities which the Church possessed in the reign of St. Edward the Confessor. To such inno- vations, to such abuses, as even Voltaire calls them in his * Annales de 1'Empire,' the Popes offered a vigorous op- position. They studiously laboured to eradicate simony and to point out the line of demarcation between the spiritual and temporal power. A compromise was accomplished before the death of our primate Anselm, but a formal concordat between the respective monarchs of Europe and the Holy See might have prevented those collisions of authority which too often disgrace the middle ages.
By his Queen Matilda, the king had only two children, William and Matilda. The former in his eighteenth year met with an untimely fate on 25th November, 1120, off Barfleur, on board the White Ship, bound for Southampton to join his father, who had sailed over on that morning ; but they were never to meet again. All the passengers, in number nearly 300, were buried with the vessel in the waves, except one named Berold. This sad catastrophe at once determined Henry to venture on a second marriage, and on the 2nd of February next ensuing he took to wife Adelaide, the beautiful daughter of Geoffry, Duke of Louvain ; but here his hopes of issue were disappointed, perhaps in punishment of his conjugal infidelities, for he had
38
HISTORY OF EXETEK.
many illegitimate children. He had given his only daughter above-mentioned in marriage to the Emperor Henry V., when she was but twelve years of age ; but after a union of eleven years 1 the Emperor died at Utrecht in 1125, when her father decided on recalling her, and matching her with Geoffry Plan- tagenet, a youth of sixteen, son of Fulco, Earl of Anjou and subsequently King of Jerusalem. By this stroke of policy he calculated on securing protection to his continental dominions, and on preventing his nephew Stephen de Blois from succeeding to his throne. But he was obliged to proceed with caution, for he anticipated that his Norman as well as English barons would be opposed to the novelty of a female reign. Late in 1126 he convoked an assemblage of the leading nobility and clergy in London, and proposed, in the event of his dying without male issue, that they would accept his daughter, the ex-empress, as heir-apparent to the throne. To this proposal they consented, and ratified their consent by a solemn oath ; and none dis- played more earnestness in the matter than his nephew Stephen. In the meanwhile the king was secretly negotiating the marriage, which according to Matthew of Westminster was performed 3rd April next ensuing. It proved a most unhappy union ; for though it pro- duced to him three grandsons, Henry, Geoffry, and Wil- liam, the remainder of his days was embittered by the jarring contentions and final separation of their parents. He died, after a short illness, at St. Denys le Froment, near Rouen, at midnight, 1st December, 1135, set. 72.2
1 Tho fruit of this union was a daughter, Christina. See Laurence Patavt-1, vol. i. p. 101.
y's lit,- terminated on 7th
1150, nt 41. Hia separated wife
survived uutil 10th Sept. 1107, and was
buried at Rouen; but part of her re- mains were deposited at Bee Abbey, and were discovered on 2nd March, 1684, and again in levelling the ground in 184(5.
USURPATION OF STEPHEN.
39
The crown of England had been the object of Stephen's ambition, since the fatal shipwreck of his cousin Prince William. He had won the popular favour by his frankness of manner, easiness of access, libe- rality, and chivalry. Hastening to London, he was welcomed with acclamation, and proceeded to Win- chester, where he took possession of the immense treasures of the late sovereign, which he lavished amongst his partisans, and actually procured himself to be crowned at Westminster, on St. Stephen's day, *26th December, nearly a fortnight before the burial of the deceased monarch.3 After assisting at the solemn obsequies of his uncle at Beading, the new king pro- ceeded to Oxford, where he published to the world his celebrated charter of the liberties of the English church and of the national rights. We submit a translation from the original Latin charter in the possession of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, to which is still attached a portion of the seal, representing the king seated on his throne: — "I Stephen, by the grace of God, and with the assent of the clergy and people elected King of the English, and consecrated as such by William, Archbishop of Canterbury and Legate of the Holy Roman Church, and confirmed by Innocent (II.) Pontiff of the Holy Roman See,4 from my reverence and love of God do grant, that the Holy Church be free ; and I confirm unto it due reverence, and I promise that I will neither do nor permit anything simoniacal in the Church and affairs ecclesiastical. I admit and confirm that the justice and power of ecclesiastical persons and
3 According to Gervase, the corpse reached England on the 4th of January, where it was met by Stephen, and ho- nourably conducted to Beading, for final interment in his presence. — See Wm. de Malmes.
4 See the Bull of Pope Innocent II.,
in Richard of Hexham's Hist, de Rebus Gestis Stephani Regis. The Papal confirmation is simply grounded on Stephen's election, " communi voto et unanimi assensu tarn procerum quam populi."
40 HISTOKY OF EXETER.
all clerks, and the distribution of ecclesiastical favours, be vested in the hand of the bishop. I decree and grant that the dignities of the churches confirmed by privileges and ancient custom remain inviolate. I grant that all the possessions and tenures holden on the day when King William my grandfather was living and died, be free and quit of any re-claim of suitors. But if the Church should hereafter challenge anything, which it now has not, of what it held and possessed before the death of the said king, that I reserve to my favour and dispensation for recovery or investigation. Moreover I confirm whatever has been granted to them since the death of the said king by the munificence of other sovereigns, or the donation of princes, by the offerings or purchase, or any conveyance of the faithful. I promise that I will maintain peace and justice in all things, and to my utmost preserve their rights. I reserve to myself the forests made and maintained by my grandfather William, and my uncle William ; but all the additional forests made by King Henry I restore and concede to the churches and the realm. If any bishop or abbot, or other ecclesiastical person shall, before his death, reasonably dispose of his own property, or should have decided as to its dis- posal, I grant that it remain valid ; but should he be surprised by death, let the distribution thereof be made for his soul's health at the discretion of his church. And whilst the seats continue vacant by the death of the proper pastor, I will commit them with all their appurtenances to the hand and custody of clerks until a pastor be canonically substituted. All exactions and rnrngs and misdemeanours improperly introduced, *her by the sheriff or any other persons, I absolutely fcnate, I will o
I will observe good laws and ancient and t Customs m murders and pleas and other causes, and
CHAKTER OF KING STEPHEN. 41
I command and ordain their observance. All these things I grant and confirm, saving my royal and just dignity.
" WITNESSES — William, Archbishop of Canterbury. Hugh, Archbishop of Eouen. Henry, Bishop of Winchester. Eoger, Bishop of Sarum. Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln. Nigel, Bishop of Ely. Everard, Bishop of Norwich. Simon, Bishop of Worcester. Bernard, Bishop of St. David's. Owen, Bishop of Evreux. Eichard, Bishop of Avranches. John, Bishop of Eochester. Atheluf, Bishop of Carlisle. Eoger, the Chancellor. Henry, the King's Nephew. Eobert, Earl of Gloucester. William, Earl Warren. Ealph, Earl of Chester. Eobert, Earl of Warwick. Eobert de Vere,
Milo of Gloucester,
-o • ± ^ in i» Constables.
Briant, the Earl s son,
Eobert de OiUy,
William Martin.
Hugh Bigot.
Humphry de Bohun.
Simon de Beauchamp, Steward of the Household.
William de Albini.
Eudo Martin, the Butler.
Eobert de Ferrers.
William, the Proctor of Nottingham.
Simon de Saint Liz.
William de Albemarle.
Paganus Fitz-John.
Hamo de Sancto Claro.
Ilbert de Lacy.
" Given at Oxford in the year from our Lord's Incarnation 1136 to wit, the first year of my Eeign."
42 HISTORY OF EXETER.
If the king had stood faithful to this engagement, he would have disarmed all serious opposition ; the pre- tensions of the haughty ex-empress, who delayed land- ing in England until 30th September, 1136, would have vanished into air, and the sad calamity of a civil war would have been averted. But he soon violated his solemn promises, insomuch that even his own bro- ther Henry, the influential Bishop of Winchester, dis- countenanced him. Exeter, "ever faithful," took the lead against the perjured monarch. The want of good faith — the disregard of plighted promises and solemn oaths — was lamentably characteristic of the middle ages.
In the preceding chapter we have alluded to Baldwin de Exonia. He had married Albreda, the Conqueror's niece ; had received a grant of the signory and castle of Nehou in Normandy, and for his services in the suc- cessful invasion of England had been rewarded with 159 lordships in Devon alone. On his death, his eldest son Richard succeeded to his honours and estates ; and according to Monsieur Greville (Anciens Chateaux du Departement de la Manche, page 100),' assumed the cognomen of De Ripkriis, Redvers, or Rivers. King Henry I. treated him with such favour and confidence that he created him Earl of Devon, and added to his extensive territory the manors of Tiverton and Plymp- ton and the Isle of Wight At his demise, his son Baldwin, with a grateful sense of the obligations of his amily to the late sovereign, was the very first to raise the standard of loyalty in the cause of Matilda, the ex-empress.' With his family and retainers he fixed
i headquarters in this his city and castle, « in Exces- oppidosruo (says Simeon of Durham). « Balde-
STEPHEN'S SIEGE OF THE CITY. 43
regem firmavit " (Ricardus de Gestis R. Stephani) ; he strengthened the fortifications with the determination of suffering every extremity rather than consent to a surrender. Stephen hastened to invest the city, with an army composed of English and Flemish troops, and for three months pressed the siege with unabated vigour. The garrison and citizens opposed a gallant and skilful defence ; but at length were compelled to capitulate for want of water. It might have been expected that this protracted resistance, which had cost the victor an immense expenditure, would have been visited with exemplary vengeance ; but the historians on both sides agree that he exercised the most con- siderate clemency, and that he amply indemnified the clergy of this cathedral for the injuries inflicted during this lengthened siege. He seems to have contented himself with seizing the property and exiling the person of his prisoner Baldwin from England and Normandy, who nevertheless succeeded eventually in recovering his honours and estates.
The king, after a distracted and turbulent reign, after experiencing the vicissitudes, calamities, and horrors of civil war, and rendering the realm a prey to con- flagration, rapine, and carnage, at length listened to the overtures of reconciliation, and entered into a solemn compact with Henry Fitz-Empress on No- vember 7th, 1153 (for death had snatched away his own ambitious son Eustace about three months before) ; by which he at once adopted Henry for his son, and declared him to be his heir and successor to the crown in the event of his death. The earls and barons swore that if either of the parties violated this pacification, they would renounce him and support the cause of the unoffending rival. The king survived this happy event until October 25th of the following year ; and
44
HISTORY OF EXETEK.
Henry succeeded tranquilly to the throne, and was crowned with extraordinary pomp at Westminster on Sunday, December 19th, the same year (1154).6
CHAPTEK VIII.
Bright prospects of Honry Plantagenet at his accession — State of the contest on the rights of the Church between the King and the Primate, Thomas a Becket — The conduct of our townsman, Bishop Bartholomew, in that con- troversy.
FEW sovereigns in our annals have ascended the vacant throne with more brilliant prospects than Henry Plantagenet. He was twenty-four years of age, brave and comely ; his continental dominions had been greatly extended by the death of his father Greoffry, and by his own marriage with Eleanor, the daughter of William, Earl of Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine ; he was already blessed with a son and heir, and with the prospect before him of a large family, so that there was little chance of a disputed succession. The clergy and barons had joyfully witnessed his solemn vow to govern the nation according to law, and protect his subjects in all their rights and privileges; and England con- gratulated herself that the golden age, the peaceful government of St. Edward the Confessor, was restored. To add to the general satisfaction, Cardinal Nicholas Breakspeare, a native of Langley in Hertfordshire, had just been elected for his superior merits to the Chair of St. Peter ; who took the title of Adrian IV., and was the
Amongst the 136 letters and char-
tliut were in the Treasury of this
CuilM.lral in BJHhop Walter Brones-
O.I..U-H time (1258-1280), were Kin«>
i-HH confirmation to William
I want, Bi*hop of Exeter, of the
possessions of his see ; his charter, granting 11. 10«. to the Church of St. Peter "in manerio de Colinton cum 1 ni nd redo ;" and several grants to the Sou uiul members of the Chapter.
ACCESSION OF HENEY II.
45
first Englishman that had attained this chief dignity in the Christian world. So overjoyed was the king with his people at this event, that a special embassy was despatched to congratulate his Holiness on an elevation so honourable to himself and to his country. But in sober truth we may express our regret, that the pontiff, professing himself to be "the servant of the servants of God," and the vicar of Him who has proclaimed "My kingdom is not of this world'* (John xviii. 36), should have deluded himself into the fancy, not merely of being an accepted umpire between contending suitors, but of inheriting the right of disposing of Ireland, a Christian country, in favour of the ambitious Henry. The Papal Bull may be seen in Ealph de Diceto's 'Historia,' p. 529. The miserable juris- prudence of the feudal ages admitted this abuse of power, as we witness in the cases of several Emperors of Germany ; and we read with disgust, how readily rival princes, in the giddiness of senseless passion and ambition, sought and accepted - such papal donations. Thank God, for the peace of mankind, such pretensions have long been exploded ! 1 For the best report of this
1 How admirably is traced the line of demarcation between the civil power of the State, and the spiritual power of the Church, in the ' Declaration of the Catholic Bishops in Great Britain, A.D. 1828,' page 14 !—
"The allegiance which Catholics hold to be due and are bound to pay to their sovereign and to the civil authority of the state, is perfect and undivided. They do not divide their allegiance be- tween their sovereign and any other power on earth, whether temporal or ecclesiastical. They acknowledge in the sovereign, and in the constituted government of these realms, a supreme civil and temporal authority, which is entirely distinct from, and totally inde- pendent of, the spiritual and ecclesias- tical authority of the Pope and of the Catholic Church. They declare that neither the Pope nor any other prelate or ecclesiastical person of the Roman
Catholic Church has, in virtue of his spiritual or ecclesiastical character, any right, directly or indirectly, to any civil or temporal jurisdiction, power, superior- ity, pre-eminence, or authority within this realm ; nor has any right to interfere, directly or indirectly, in the civil go- vernment of the United Kingdom, or any part thereof ; nor to oppose in any manner the performance of the civil duties which are due to his Majesty, his heirs and successors, from all or any of his Majesty's subjects; nor to enforce the performance of any spiritual or ec- clesiastical duty by any civil or temporal means. _They hold themselves bound in conscience to obey the civil govern- ment of this realm in all things of a temporal and civil nature, notwithstand- ing any dispensation or order to the contrary had, or to be had, from the Pope, or any authority of the Church of Rome. " Hence
-in
HISTORY OF EXETER.
discreditable transaction, we refer our readers to the fourth volume of Lanigan's Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. In the sequel, very many persons in this county and city adventured settlements in that distracted country.
Exeter is stated to have suffered very severely in the year 1161, as well as Canterbury, London, and Winchester, from conflagration (Angl. Sacra, vol. i. p. 300); and about this period the king issued his charter to his citizens of Exeter, which was attested by Bishop Bartholomew, Reginald Earl of Cornwall, and Thomas Becket his Chancellor, confirming all the right customs which they had possessed in the reign of his grandfather Henry I., as freely, honourably, and justly as the Barons of London, " Barones de London," —i.e. the leading members of the municipality, the aldermen and merchant-princes of the metropolis, — then held and enjoyed their liberties.
The king was naturally able, but self-willed, impatient of contradiction, very suspicious, furiously vindictive, and jealous of all power that did not emanate from, and centre in, himself. The venerable primate Theobald and the Chancellor above-mentioned retained some influence over him ; and, distinctly fore- seeing that a contest was coming on between the civil and ecclesiastical courts, addressed a letter to the King just before his death, which occurred on April 18th, 1161, recommending to him " the liberties of the Church," and cautioning him against the machinations and intrigues of its enemies. Whether such liberties ought to have been conceded to it by the State—
wo declare, that by render- III," Obedtenee m ^ritual matters to the Catholics do not withhold any
<>f their allegiance to their BBC, uiul that their allegiance is entire uii.1 umlivi.1.,1; th, civil power of the 8t»*e, nn<I the xpiritual authority of the
Catholic Church, being absolutely dis- tinct, and being never intended by their Divine Author to interfere or clash with each other.
"'Render unto Cscsar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.' "
CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL CONTEST. 47
whether they were expedient or not, as a counterpoise to the then undefined prerogative of the Crown — whether they served as a bulwark and breakwater against the tide of wanton despotism, — are questions with which the historian, as simply the relater of facts, has nothing to do. He is not called upon to justify or condemn the policy of Constantine the Great, of Theodosius, of Justinian, of Charlemagne, of our own Alfred, and Edward the Confessor, in conferring and confirming such immunities on their clerical subjects ; but he has to beware of confounding ancient with modern times and opinions : he has merely to state the usages of the feudal ages, to ascertain if such were chartered liberties — part and parcel of the constitution and law of the country, and as such, sworn to be main- tained by the sovereigns, at their respective coronations. If that can be proved, then the parties, lay or clerical, to whom privileges have been accorded, must be warranted to defend established rights by every legal means. Deny, then, this constitutional liberty of asserting and exercising self-defence ; and you are compelled to with- hold your admiration of Cardinal Stephen Langton and the Barons of England for wringing Magna Charta from the hands of King John : we must cease from extolling the spirit which prompted the cry, " Nolumus leges Anglise mutari ! " ; we should erase the names of the patriots who bled in the field or died on the scaffold, or who boldly stood forward to maintain their muni- cipal or collegiate franchises. For if they be entitled to praise and honour, it is solely because they clung with desperate courage to what they believed the law gave them — because they gallantly appeared in the breach against supposed arbitrary encroachment.
During the contest between Henry II. and the Primate Thomas, the merits of which are so much dis- cussed and variously represented by modern historians,
48 HISTORY OF EXETER.
we are therefore bound to transfer ourselves to me- diaeval times; to become, as it were, contemporaries with the parties, without being influenced by actual usages and opinions and the altered judicature of the country. We should bear in mind, that the primate had filled the office of chancellor with great credit, was thoroughly acquainted with the king's character, and of all men most competent to form a correct judgment whether he had law, equity, and justice on his side. Again it is undeniable, that the king himself subse- quently renounced his innovations called customs, and engaged never to exact them in future. (See Concilia, vol. xxxii. page 392, Paris ed. A.D. 1644.) It is contended by some of our writers, that Bartholomew, the then learned and distinguished Bishop of Exeter, took part against his primate. It is true that, in the early stage of the contest, he sought, from his love of peace, to moderate and reconcile differences ; but these writers ought not to have suppressed the fact that he soon discovered his mistake, — that he offered the primate to share in the exile he had chosen to give place to wrath — and on being dissuaded from such a step by this persecuted superior, he employed his in- terest and means at home, to serve him, notwithstand- ing the imminent danger of incurring the king's dis- pleasure. (See Giraldus Cambrensis, Ralph de Diceto, &c.) Bartholomew was selected by his fellow bishops
t/ XT
to pronounce the discourse at the reconciliation of the cathedral-church of Canterbury on December 21st, 1172 (the Saint's natal day), which had been desecrated by the barbarous murder of the primate nearly a twelvemonth before. Our bishop was also the author of a narrative of that tragic event, which, we suspect, was used by Bishop John Grandisson, when he com- piled those Lessons which were formerly read in our Oftthedral on December 29th, and the octave day,
RICHARD L — KING JOHN. 49
January 5th. Bishop Bartholomew was a stanch advocate of the liberties and interests of his see and its churches. We have printed his appeal to King Henry II. in favour of Colbroke, concluding thus : — • " Humbly and devoutly, 0 illustrious King and dearest Lord! I have recourse to your dignity and wisdom, that for the love of God and reverence of the holy Apostles, Peter arid Paul, and for the hope of an eternal recompense, you would graciously protect the rights and possessions of this church of Exeter, and preserve them harmless, entire, and inviolate."
CHAPTER IX.
Reigns of Richard Cceur de Lion and John — The Crusades, the Interdict, and the subjugation to Papal Domination — Queen Berengaria — Extraordinary floods in England.
KING HENRY II. closed a chequered life, embittered with domestic misery, at Chinon on July 6th, 1189, and was succeeded by his undutiful son Richard, who met his untimely fate within ten years later, when the throne was seized by his perfidious brother John. Neither of these princes, from their headstrong passions, produced much benefit to their subjects. Richard, though he dazzled the world by his deeds of chivalry, exhausted the resources of the country by his impru- dence and extravagance.1 His successor, by his tyranny and lust, entailed disgrace on himself and misery on his subjects.
During this period little is recorded of our city. Both
1 To pay the king's ransom from captivity, England was drained of im- mense sums, which never returned for circulation. Towards this payment Exeter paid a large proportion. This
may possibly account for the rarity of the coins of his reign, and that of his father. [But we know little about the medium f abroad at this ;
77!
s'
f 8T. (
\ COLLEGE
50 I :; HISTORY OF EXETER.
Henry and his two succeeding sons had granted and confirmed its charters. King John2 allowed it the privilege of annually choosing a representative of the Crown from amongst her burgesses or middle class ; such chief magistrate to be dignified wjth the title of Mayor, as in Winchester, London, and Canterbury. Our city, justly regarded as the metropolis of the west, the centre of commerce and the seat of letters, was now irradiated by three of its natives : Bartholomew, its Bishop; Baldwin, the Primate of Canterbury; and Joseph, the first Latin poet of his age. Of the first of these contemporaries we have elsewhere treated in our Lives of the Bishops of Exeter ; on the other two we may have to enlarge in another place. But we may here observe that Joseph, in his Antiocheis,3 sung the praises of Exeter in such glowing strains as to enrapture Leland, who informs us, in his interesting work, De Scriptoribus Britannicis, that he found a copy in Abingdon Abbey : — " Urbem Exonise tarn exquisite, tarn dextre, tarn denique magnified vel ad scthera tollit, ut facile credas, Musas ipsas, cum pro- fluente Helicone toto, vati ea concinenti, prsesentis-
* King John was partial to this city, and to its Priory of St. Nicholas a
rial benefactor. The Close Rolls k- that he and his Queen Isabella made some stay within its walls on their return from Poitou the last time, 1207. Sec 'Close Rolls,' fol. 433 b. May it not be on that occasion he as- signed a mayor to the city ?
1 The learned T. Duffus Hardy, Esq , in
Iris ' Description of the Close Rolls,' p.
179, relates that a French translation of
the Antiocheis was borrowed, on the
17th of May, 1250, from the Master of
tin- Knights Templar, London, by King
H.-nry III. for the use of his Queen
'Klraiior of Provence); and that, on
the 5th of Juno following, the said
• ••iiiiiimndi-d an artist, viz., Edward
"i Weftntingtor, to paint the "History
tory') of Antioch" in the
1 chamber within the Tower of
LOBM ; and that eleven years before
this he had ordered his royal uncle Ri- chard's " Single Combat " to be painted in a chamber within Clarendon Palace. Hoker, in his MS. History of Exeter, p. 237, says of this Joseph, that " he is believed to be a priest of our cathedral ;" adding, "he was excellently well learned yn all good letters, but especially yn poetrie, and for his excellencie yn the Greeke and Latyn tounges he was sayde to excelle all others yn his tyme." But we must differ from Hoker, when he claims another illustrious scholar for a native, and for prior of the Benedictine Priory of St. Nicholas here, in the per- son of Alexander Neckham. The truth is, he was not connected with Exeter. He never was a member of the Bene- dictine Order, but followed the rule of St. Augustin, and dying abbot of their monastery of regular canons, at Ciren- cester, in 1217, was buried in Worcester Cathedral.
CRUSADES — INTERDICT — PAPAL SUBJECTION. 51
simas adfuisse." How unfortunate that he has not copied and perpetuated this description !
It may not be inappropriate here to allude to three subjects connected with this period: — 1, the crusades;
2, the general interdict of the city and kingdom ;
3, the inglorious vassalage attempted to be entailed on our beloved country by the pusillanimous King John, who dared to subject it to papal domination.
Our readers are aware that the crusades were expeditions undertaken by the Christian princes of Europe, partly to rescue the Holy Land from the possession of the infidels, and partly with a view of stemming the progress of those barbarians, who medi- tated the subjugation of the whole of Christendom. " Nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet."
The Turks and Saracens were then the sworn ene- mies of Christianity, and it has been justly observed (Quarterly Review, January 7th, 1814, page 460), that " as long as the maxim of the Turkish Government was perpetual war, it was undoubtedly the right and duty of Christians to combine for the expulsion or extirpation of their common enemy." It may also have proved good policy to make the enemy's country the seat of war ; for experience teaches, that men are more generally energetic when they act on the offensive than when they confine themselves to defensive operations. And it is very certain that the infidels were much disconcerted by these crusades — that they learnt to respect the valour of their assailants, and to entertain a wholesome fear themselves of it. If these expeditions eventually proved unsuccessful, we must take into con- sideration the want of concert amongst the Christian chieftains — the national jealousies of the heterogeneous masses — the absence of discipline, which is the life and soul of the military service — the insalubrity of the climate — the difficulty of obtaining regular reinforce-
E 2
52 HISTORY OF EXETER.
ments, accoutrements, and provisions— but especially the bad faith of the Greek emperors. Yet, notwith- standing the ultimate failure, it must be confessed that Europe derived considerable benefit. by the in- troduction of useful knowledge, by ^improvements in navigation and commercial enterprise, and military
science.
The interdict — that desperate remedy, never to be resorted to but with the utmost moderation and circum- spection— was promulgated on the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation of Lady Day (March 24th) 1208, and continued in force until July 2nd, 1214. During this long interval, the churches of the land were closed, the bells were silent ; no burials of the dead were permitted in consecrated ground, and then without any funeral service ; marriages and churchings took place in the porches of the churches. On Sundays sermons were preached in the open air within the churchyard ; the administration of baptism to infants, and of penance and communion to the dying, only could be allowed. This sudden plague of darkness filled the country with consternation, and undermined the cheerfulness of temperament hitherto so characteristic of the English people.
The faithless and profligate John, finding that a general disaffection to his government prevailed amongst his people, and that Pope Innocent III. had proceeded to depose him and release his subjects from their allegiance to him, and even to authorise the King of France to make a conquest of England, was abject enough to tender homage and fealty to papal domination, and to pay a yearly tribute of a thousand marks to be enabled to wear his crown. It is heart-cheering to witness the sterling patriotic spirit manifested by our ancient English historians, in condemnation of these unwarrant- able pretensions of the pope, and of the despicable
QUEEN BERENGARIA. 53
cowardice of the monarch. Probably our noble country would have become a province of France, if the tyrant's unexpected death from chagrin had not let loose the indignation of the people against such usurpation. But whilst we reprobate the pope, with other modern writers of honest English hearts — such as Dr. Milner (History of Winchester, vol. i. 237) and Dr. Lingard (History of England, vol. ii.) — for pretending to dis- pose of a kingdom which was not his own to bestow, are we not equally bound to despise the acceptors of such unrighteous donations ? Even John himself could hardly complain of such abuse, when he had invoked its exercise, to recover Normandy from the King of France.
In concluding this chapter we may notice the fact, that King Richard I. assigned this city of Exeter — " Civitatem Exoniae " — as parcel of the large dowry * of his Queen Berengaria. He had married this accom- plished princess, daughter of Sancho, King of Navarre, at Cyprus on May 12th, 1191. After the death of her lord, she fixed her residence at Mans, and there finished her days about the year 1230. She had compounded with John, her brother-in-law, for her dowry of 2000 marks, or 1333/. 6s. Sd., payable half- yearly ; but his avarice made him meanly neglectful, insomuch that Pope Innocent III., by a letter dated January 21st, 1208, admonished him to consider how he tarnished his character and provoked Almighty God, the father, protector, and vindicator of the widow, by such dishonourable conduct. But, though he mani- fested some show of repentance and shame, yet at the period of his death, October 19th, 1216, her arrears amounted to no less than the sum of 4040/. We are
4 The estates lay in Berks, Devon, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hants, Here- fordshire, Lincolnshire, Northampton-
shire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Sussex, and Wilts.
54 HISTORY OF EXETER.
not satisfied, however, with Miss Strickland's statement (Lives of the Queens of England, vol. i. page 323) that the non-payment of the queen's arrears by that " felon-king " was the cause of the interdict,5 or that she never had honoured England with her presence.
From Ealph de Diceto we collect, that, at the com- mencement of this inauspicious reign, our island was visited with extraordinary floods, and that a calamity BO destructive of life and property was specially felt in this city: — "Anno 1199 subita et improvisa aguarum inundatio pluribus in locis per Angliam facta est; unde plures homines submersi sunt et domus eversse, viaxvme apud Excestre"
CHAPTER X.
Henry HI. succeeds to the English crown, and grants to his brother Richard the Earldom of Cornwall, to which he attaches the city of Exeter with its castle — This new Earl elected King of the Romans — The history of Exeter Bridge.
BY the death of John, the crown devolved to his eldest son Henry (III.), a child but nine years old. Fortu- nately he had faithful guardians, and the heart of the nation was with him ; so that, the cause of Louis of France visibly declining, he judged it politic to with- draw from the kingdom. It appears, however, from Henry's letter to Geoffry de Mariscis, Justiciary of Ireland, dated "Exeter, February 12th (1218), the second year of our reign," that the king had contracted a heavy debt with the French prince to induce him to ^"depart out of our realm, which at length the Lord
the Bi8hops of
PEINCE RICHARD GOVERNOR OF THE CITY. 55
hath marvellously and mercifully" accomplished. (See Hardy's Description of the Close Rolls, p. 156.) The youthful sovereign added much to his popularity by confirming the Great Charter on February llth, 1224.1 During the contest between the Barons and John, the latter had manifested a partiality for foreigners, and had lavished his bounty upon them. As the son felt himself more securely seated on his throne, he began to withdraw his confidence also from the old nobility and tried friends, and to make himself the tool of foreigners and favourites. Amongst other ill-advised measures, he demanded the indiscriminate surrender of wards and castles ; and he proceeded to deprive Robert de Courtenay of his hereditary right of Governor of the Royal Castle of Exeter, and after a short period created his own brother, Prince Richard, Earl of Poitou and Cornwall, granting, on August 10th, 1231, with a limitation to him and his heirs for ever, the city and the castle of Exeter as an appendage to the Earldom of Cornwall. Occasionally Prince Richard kept his court in this city, and is recorded to have behaved with condescension and liberality towards its burgesses. Enriched, as it is said, by his tin mines and ample dotation of lands, he freely spent his money in erecting his noble castle of Wallingford ; and in founding the Cistercian Monastery of our Lady of Hales in Gloucestershire ; and on November 9th, 1251, the date of its dedication, he sumptuously entertained there the king and his queen, thirteen bishops, most of the barons of England, and more than three hundred knights. Unfortunately he was dazzled with the offer of a crown by the Electors of Germany, and was in- stalled " Romanorum Rex, semper Augustus/' at Aix-
1 The reader will do well to bear in mind the subsequent enactment, 45 Edward III. cap. 4 — " If any statute be made contrary to the Great Charters,
it shall be holden for none." [Such a prospective nullity would now be inef- fectual, and has, in fact, never been re- garded by any parliament at any time.]
56
HISTORY OF EXETER.
la-Chapelle,2 on the Feast of Holy Innocents, December 28th, 1256. It was a dearly-purchased honour, and a severe drain on his revenues, compelling him often to return home to replenish his coffers. On the 7th of May, in the third year of his reign, .he granted to the mayor, bailiifs, and citizens of Exeter and their heirs for ever, the fee-farm of Exeter for the ancient stipulated sum of 131. 9s., payable in even portions at Easter and Michaelmas, reserving to himself and his heirs the right of taxing this city, as often as the kings of England should impose a tax on their cities and bo- roughs. This charter was sealed " sigillo nostro regio." The absence of our royal Lord -Paramount on the continent encouraged the discontented barons to break out into open sedition against the government of King Henry. They had indeed much cause of complaint, for the sovereign preferred strangers to his native subjects, was "very exacting, unfaithful to his word, and little disposed to the improvement of his country. At first his brother Kichard, a man of moderate views and more foresight, suggested to the king the expediency of attending to the correction of abuses ; but, finding him bent on pursuing his evil courses in Church and State, he took part with Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who had married his sister Eleanor, and with the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford, in opposing his brother ; though he could never be persuaded to join in invading the just rights and prerogatives of the Crown. Returning from Germany, he found his country embroiled in civil war. To the king he lent his best services, and with him was taken prisoner in the disastrous battle of Lewes on May 14th, 1264; but
Dom Martine observes that the
Uernmn emperors wore a triple crown
-a silver one as kings of Germany, an
iron one as kings of Lombardy, and a
,'..1,1, „ ,ino as kings of Rome ; and that
3 kings of Germany wore to be
crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, by the Archbishop of Cologne, assisted by the Archbishops of Mayence and Troves. See p. 203 and 207 ' De Antiquis Ec- clesire Kitibus.'
REIGN OF HENRY III. 57
by the gallantry of Prince Edward, the heir apparent, who obtained the victory of Evesham on August 12th of the ensuing year, the royal cause was restored, and the tranquillity of the realm gradually re-established. Our Lord-Paramount was thus enabled to revisit his foreign dominions ; but disappointments and domestic afflictions compelled him to return to England. Dying at Berkhampstead in Herts, in February, 1272, he was buried near his queen, Sanchia, and their second son, Henry, who had been brutally murdered in the church of Yiterbo by his outlawed cousins, the Mont- forts, a twelvemonth before, and his English honours and estates descended to his surviving son, Prince Edward. The king enfeebled in body and mind expired at Westminster nine months after his royal brother, viz., November 16th, 1272.
During his long and eventful reign, our city had merited his favour and confidence by its stanch and inviolate fidelity. Twice at least he had confirmed its liberties and privileges ; he had authorised its burgesses to raise the toll of murage for building and maintaining their city walls ; and there is every probability that from the year 1265 they were empowered to elect their representatives in parliament. Perhaps no town suffered less during the baronial contests. Industry and commerce seem to have thriven, and two newly- founded religious communities — the Dominicans and Franciscans — were, after some opposition, established amongst us.
We cannot conclude this chapter without recording the munificent and invaluable service achieved by one of our citizens, Walter Gervase, or Gervys, " a notable man of God," as Hoker describes him. During the years 1231 and 1239 he discharged the office of mayor; &nd with the example before him of the considerate zeal and charity of Benezet, who had succeeded in
58
HISTORY OF EXETER.
1184 in throwing a stone bridge over the Ehone at Avignon, our Walter Gervys undertook a similar bene- volent work for the benefit of Exeter. The transit of the river Exe by ferry had long been felt a source of inconvenience and risk, especially during inunda- tions. The narrow wooden bridge for foot-passengers was often swept away by the rapidity of the current. By active and perseverant applications, far and near, to the humane, and by his own liberality, he accumu- lated, says Hoker (p. 242), nearly ten thousand pounds towards erecting a* stone bridge of twelve arches. Our readers should bear in mind that the river Exe, which had long been the property of the city, from Checkston3 at its mouth up to Exeter, was then navigable to this point, and that boats came up directly with the tides, laden with wines and other merchandise, to its quay. For the perpetual mainte- nance of this useful work — the piers of which rested on piles, while the stones of the foundations were cramped with iron and run with lead — Guardians of the bridge were appointed ; and we find in fol. 63 of the Cartulary of St. John's Hospital, that the rental for its support (February 2nd, 1401), arising from tene- ments and gardens, amounted to 15£. 11s. 4d. This public benefactor died in 1259, and was probably buried in the Chantry Chapel of the blessed Virgin Mary, which he and his first wife Alice had founded 4 on the bridge nearly opposite St. Edmund's Church. He had indeed expressed a wish in his will5 dated on the
3 Bee the inquisition taken here on 29th August, 1290, before Malcolm Har- lege. Isabella, the Countess of Devon, had, six years before, obstructed the navigation by the erection of the Tops- ham wear, commonly called, from her Count«-.ss Wmr.
4 In a deed of our Chamber, dated Jlli Frl.ruary, 1403, is their appoint- ment of Thomas Losquiet, clerk, to serve this chantry then vacant, and
specially to pray and celebrate for the souls of Walter Gerveys and Alice his wife, the founders of this chantry, and for the souls of their predecessors and successors, and also for the Mayor and Commonalty of Exeter, and for all be- nefactors to the said bridge. His salary was to be 4Z., paid quarterly. Moreover, the said Thomas " in eadem cantaria personal! ter resideat." 5 The will may be seen in Hoker's
THE BRIDGE OF EXETER.
59
Saturday in Easter week 1257 to be buried in the public cemetery of St. Peter's Cathedral near the remains of his father, Nicholas Gervys,- and he gives his horse as a mortuary ; but when the Chantry was taken down in July, 1833, the only skeleton found was that of a tall man, lying about eighteen inches below the surface, with the feet towards the door, the body lying in a direct line ; and it was decently re-interred in the same 'site.6
Our learned town-clerk, John Gidley, Esq., has kindly called my attention to a passage in Hardy's Description of the Close Rolls, page 167: — "Peter de Colechurch, the incumbent of St. Mary Colechurch, near Mercers' Hall, and the celebrated architect of the first London Bridge built with stone, is stated, in the Annals of Waverley, to have died in the year 1205 and to have been buried on the bridge. During the demolition of that bridge in 1832, the remains of a body were discovered in clearing away the chapel-pier, and were probably those of the said architect. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that the place in which they were found was under the lower floor of the chapel in an inclosure, built up in small courses of freestone."
From our episcopal registers we collect, that this original stone bridge over the Exe suffered much from inundations, and that the parochial chapel of Cowic, dedicated to St. Thomas Mart., at its western extremity, was, in consequence, utterly demolished, and that a new church, at a distance from the river and, as it were, in the centre of the parish, was provided. This was consecrated by Bishop Edmund Stafford on Tuesday,
large MS., fol. 303. One clause is curious, viz., an annual charge of five shillings on his estate, " ad susten- tationem lampadis continue ardentis coram corpore Christi in Ecclesia S. Jacobi in civitate Exon, in parochia ubi primo accepi sacramentum."
6 By his wife he left two daughters, one married to Sir William Speke, Knt., with a fortune, in land, of 201. per annum ; the other, wife to Sir John Fitz Geoffry, had an equal fortune. Walter's second wife was called Mar- garet.
00 HISTORY OF EXETER.
October 4th, 1412 (Reg. Stafford, vol. ii. fol. 287). In a subsequent flood, the bridge itself was threatened with destruction. In a memorial addressed by our Mayor, John Xhi^ingford? in 1448> to Cardinal John Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury, he represents that the damage cannot be repaired under a cost of two thousand pounds ; that " the bridge was of the length or nearly, and of the same mason-work, as London Bridge, except the housing upon it;" and implores him to exert his influence with the executors of the will of Henry Beaufort, late Bishop of Winchester (ob. April llth, 1447, proved in the Prerogative-court of Canter- bury, September llth, 1447), for the appropriation of a part of his alms-deeds to this good and necessary work. Our charitable Bishop Lacy, on February 2nd, 1448-9, granted an indulgence of forty days to all the faithful contributing to the building of a new belfry, novi campanilis, for the church of St. Edmund on the said bridge ; and on June 15th following he encouraged them in the like manner to assist in the repairs, recon- struction, and maintenance of the bridge itself (Reg. vol. iii. fols. 307-317). Leland, in his Itinerary, assigns to the bridge fourteen arches. William of Worcester, who had seen it above eighty years before, gives it sixteen, and says its length was 400 feet. Mr. Jenkins, in p. 21 G of his History of Exeter, 1806, gives thirteen only, " not two alike." 7
The patronages of the parish-church of St. Edmund's as well as of St. Mary's Chantry, both coeval with the erection of the bridge, were vested in the Mayor and Chamber of this city. The first rector of St. Edmund's " super pontem Exon " is Vivian, admitted by Bishop Walter Bronescombe, on August 25th, 1265, "ad presentationem majoris et civium civitatis Exonise ve-
tho probable conversion of small arches into
ACCESSION OF EDWARD I. - 61
rorum patronorum" (Kegister, fol. 33). But a chapel dedicated to St. Edmund had previously existed in the vicinity, as ,the deed of Peter de Palerna alone suffi- ciently demonstrates.
Hoker, in his MS. History, records that "about the end of November, 1539, one of the my die arches of Exe- bridge fell down, and was now buylded by Edward Bridgeman, then Warden of Exebridge, for which he bought great store of stones at St. Nicholas' late dissolved ; and then the prophecie was fulfilled, which was, as it was then saide, the ryver of Exe should run under St. Nicholas Church." We suspect the cut stone now serving for a curb-stone at the east corner of Gandy Street, and evidently the shaft of an ancient cross, was amongst the debris of this purchase. When this bridge was demolished in 1778, the late William Nation, Esq., bought this remarkable shaft for one guinea, and fixed it against the corner of his house, where it still remains undisturbed.
CHAPTER XL
Accession of Edward I. — The first Prince of Wales — Character of the King — Death of the Lord - Paramount — Privileges of the City — Question of the murder of Walter de Lechlade — Parliament held in Exeter — The king's grant of a new Seal to the City — Great Diocesan Council of Exeter.
HENRY III. died on 16th November, 1272, during the absence of his son and heir Prince Edward in the Holy Land. Owing to several impediments he was unable to reach England before 2nd August, 1274. His coro- nation at Westminster followed on 19th of the same month and year. After subjugating Wales, and during his stay at Caernarvon, his Queen Eleanor was brought to bed, on 25th April, 1284, of her fourth child, Prince
G2 HISTORY OF EXETER.
Edward. The natives claimed him for their country- man, and their joy was unbounded when he was sub- sequently created Prince of Wales— a title usually conferred ever since on the heir-apparent to the British crown.
Our valiant monarch was ambitious to annex the crown of Scotland to his empire. A sanguinary and ruinous warfare, with varied success, was continued against that hardy and belligerent race for thirteen years; and in all probability he would have reduced Scotland to a province of England, if death had not interposed and cut him off at Burgh on the Sands, near Carlisle, on 7th July, 1307.
Our learned commentator on the laws (vol. iv. p.
418) writes thus : — " Edward the First may be justly
styled the English Justinian ; for in his time the law
did receive so sudden a perfection, that Sir Matthew
Hale does not scruple to affirm, that more was done in
the first thirteen years of his reign to settle and
establish the distributive justice of the kingdom, than
in all the ages since that time put together." He
might have added a reference to his enactment that
" all judgments given against the Great Charter shall
be void and holden for nought ; that it should be read
before the people in every cathedral-church twice in
the year; and excommunication should be pronounced
by the archbishops and bishops against all those that
by word, deed, or counsel, do contrary thereunto."
But, to confine our attention to Exeter, our new Lord- Paramount, Edmund Earl of Cornwall, occasionally honoured this city with his presence. Such was his high character for fidelity and discretion, that the king his cousin, during two absences abroad, confided to him the government of the realm. But, for some unknown cause, our mayor and citizens had incurred in the spring of 1286 the earl's displeasure; for, in his
DEATH OF THE LORD-PARAMOUNT. 1
63
letter [or writ] dated Berkhampstede on the Monday before Midsummer-day of that year, he assured them of his pardon, and at the request of his cousins, the daughters of Edward the illustrious King of England, consented to give back 50 marks of the sum of 250 due by their bond ; reserving, however, his right to reclaim it if they deviated from their duty towards him. He was a kind and religious prince — a considerate benefactor to the Franciscan establishment in this city, and the munificent founder of the Augustinian House of Ashridge, Bucks. Dying 1st October, 1300, he was buried in the choir of its conventual church ; and, leaving no issue, his honours reverted to the Crown, and his splendid inheritance to the king, his first cousin, next akin and heir-at-law.
In the ninth year of his reign Edward issued a writ of quo warranto to try by what authority this city held its fee-farm and other privileges. The return of the burgesses before Solomon Eoff and his com- panions, the king's justices, showed satisfactorily that they held the fee-farm since the reign of Henry I., by the yearly payment to the crown of 39Z. Is. 6c?., and that they had enjoyed their privilege since the Con- quest of a fair on 1st August, and a market on three days of the week, viz. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The king thereupon confirmed the whole under the great seal.
We may now direct the reader's attention to the homicide of the Precentor of Exeter, in November 1283. Hoker, and Izaacke (his copyist) contend, that King Edward I. and his queen (Eleanor of Castile), at Bishop Quivil's request, came hither and kept the Christmas1 of 1285 within this city of Exeter, " chiefly
1 They took up their residence in the Bishop's palace ; but Mr. Jenkins states apparently upon his own authority (p.
49, History of Exeter) that they and their suite lodged in the convent of the Black Friars (lately Bedford House).
Cl HISTORY OF EXETER.
occasioned through the death of one Walter Lichlade, the first chaunter of this church, who was murthered as he came from matins; that upon an inquisition Alphred Duport, late mayor, and the porter of South- gate, were both indicted, arraigned, . found guilty, and executed accordingly, for that the Southgate was that night left open, by which means the murderer escaped." And they add, that the Close round the cathedral was formed in consequence of this murder.
Without noticing the incorrectness of the assertion that Walter Lechlade was the first precentor — for that office was in fact coeval with Leofric's translation of the See from Crediton to Exeter, in the year 1050; and both those writers had previously stated, that John the Chaunter, or precentor, had been advanced from that office to be the seventh bishop of this church, a century before this murder2 — we had come to a conclusion that no such event transpired, and for the following reasons : —
First. — From the silence of the Register of Bishop Peter Quivil, who had collated the said Walter, a canon of his church, to the office of its precentor, on the 1st of August, 1282, void by the resignation of Henry de Somerset (Reg. 118). Walter held it' until his death ; which the obituary of the cathedral fixes on the 9th of November, 1283. The same register records the collation on the 19th of November, 1283, of Andrew de Kilkenny to the precentorship of the church of Exeter, void by the death of the same Master Walter (fol. 122), and on the very same day the bishop collated the Queen's nephew (James de Hispani&) to the prebend in this church, void also by the death of the said Walter de Lechlade. Now how could we account, in those days of clerical influence, that no
'Andrew Brico in his « Mobiad,' I this John the Chaunter was murdered > m 1738, will have it that | as he was going early to matins.
WALLING-IN OF THE CLOSE.
65
allusion throughout the register is made to such an astounding act of violence ?
Secondly. — In King Edward the First's charter, dated "Exeter, 1st day of January, fourteenth year of our reign," 1285-6, licensing the formation of the Close,3 and also in the composition between our Dean and Chapter of the one part, and the Mayor and citizens of the other part, dated on the Monday after Lady-day, 1286, a perfect silence is maintained as to the sacri- legious murder of this dignitary.
Thirdly. — Several such licences for similar inclosures around cathedrals were obtained of the Crown by the deans and chapters of Lincoln, York, London, and Wells, at this very period, as a general measure of secu- rity. (See Prynne's Records, vol. in., pp. 345, 346.)
Fourthly. — In a deed preserved in our chapter ar- chives of Brother John,4 Prior of St. John the Baptist's Hospital, Wells, bearing date the 30th of September,
3 CARTA DOMINI REGIS de venellis claudendis portis ac posternis con- struendis.
Edwardus Dei gratia rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et dux Aquitanie omnibus ad quos presentes littere per- venerint, Salutem. Sciatis quod cum per nocturnes incursus latronum et aliorum malefactorum per vicos et venellas in procinctu cimiterii cathedra- lis Ecclesie Sancti Petri Exonie et in cimiterio illo multociens de nocte va- gancium homicidia fornicationes et alia mala pluries haetenus fuerint perpe- trata, et formidetur quod adhuc con- similia vel majora pericula per hujus modi incursus in vicis et venellis et cimiterio ac procinctu predictis poterunt eyenire nisi contra pericula ilia reme- dium apponatur ; nos ad honorem Dei et dicte Ecclesie ac sanctorum quorum corpora requiescunt in eadem nee non ad securitatem et quietem canonicorum et ministrorum predicte Ecclesie et suorum ibidem residentium, concessi- mus pro nobis et heredibus nostris quantum in nobis est dilectis nobis in Christo Petro Episcopo loci illius et decano et capitulo Ecclesie predicte,
quod cimiterium illud et procinctum muro lapideo circumquaque includere et sic inclusa sibi et successoribus suis tenere possint sine occasione et impe- dimento nostri et lieredum nostrorum imperpetuum. Tta tarn en quod portas et posternas faciant in locis necessariis et competentibus ibidem et quod porte ille et posterne singulis diebus aperte sint ab aurora diei usque ad noctem. Ita quod omnes et singuli ibidem trans- ire volentes pro voluntate sua et sine impedimento predictorum episcopi de- cani et capituli et successorum suorum seu ministrorum ejusdem Ecclesie quo- rumcunque liberum ingressum habeant per portas et posternas supradictas, et ita quod porte ille et posterne de nocte claudantur, et in aurora diei aperiantur sicut predictum est. In cujus rei tes- timonium has literas nostros fieri feci- mus patentes. Teste me ipso apud Exon primo die Januarii, anno regni nostri quarto decimo. [1286.]
The great seal of England is ap^ pendant in green wax.
4 This prior was unknown to the editors of the ' Monasticon Anglica- num,' vol. vi., p. 664.
F
66
HISTORY OF EXETER.
1292, is a minute statement of his expending the moneys which had been placed in his hands by the executors of the late Master Walter Lechlade, of happy memory — that he had succeeded in obtaining, through the kindness of Bishop Bitton, the ad^vowson of West Down (in the North of Devon), for the maintenance of the perpetual obit of the said Walter in Exeter Cathe- dral—that the body of the deceased lay opposite St. Edmund's altar there — that a chantry priest would ever celebrate there " pro anima supradicti defuncti " — that on his anniversary a distribution of money would be given to the clergy who should assist at the service; but no reference whatever is made to his murder.
Fifthly. — We could not reconcile it with the character of our English Justinian, King Edward I., to order the execution of Alfred Duport, who stood so high in the estimation of his fellow-citizens, as to elect him their chiof magistrate eight several times. Moreover we have seen a deed witnessed by this Alfred,5 the Sunday
4 Indorsed "Carta W. de Doderigge " (lato in Sept. 1285).
Die Dominica proxima post festnm beati Mathei Apostoli, anno regni regis Edwardi tertio decimo, ita convenit inter Petnim Dei gratia Exon Episco- pum, decanum et capitulum Ecclesie beati Petri ejusdem loci, ex parte una et Waltenim de Dodderigg et Benedic- tam uxorem ejus ex altera, videlicet quod idem Walterus asseiisu et consensu dicte Benedicte uxoris sue, obstruere cpnccBBcrit pro se, heredibus et assigua- tis suiB, onmia hostia cujusdam tene- ment! sui, quod quando fuit Philippi Le Lorim do Exonia, quo quidcm hostia anncxa fuerunt cimiterio beati Petri oiiwdi-ra loci ; ita tamen quod prefati Wult4;ru8 et Bcnedicta, heredes seu as- eignati sui, aliquem ingrossum seu egressum imposterum habere non pos- Biiit. Pro hac autera concessione gratis habondn, wpedicti Petrus episcopus, decanus, et capitulum, relaxaverant et iiii|».T|.<-iMiii,i quietam clamaverunt dic- ta Wultrru t-t liciM.lirt,-, heredibus et ia quatuordecitti solidos r,.l,lin.,, .JMJ <!,• prctextato tene-
mento dictorum Walteri et Benedicte prenominate Ecclesie annuatim debe- bantur : ita tamen quod idem Petrus episcopus, decanus et capitulum, aliquid juris seu clamii cujuscunque in redditu antedicto imperpetuum exigere seu vendicare non. poterunt, nee aliquem aliuin redditum de memorato tenemento, quatuor solidis duntaxat exceptis. Ce- terum licitum est sepedictis Waltero et Benedicte, heredibus et assignatis suis, domos suas ex parte cemeterii antedicti tegere ac meremia sua in eodem ponere et dirigere ad domos suas sustiuendas quando necesso fuerit sine aliqua con- tradictione. In cujus rei testimonium tarn sigilla predictorum Petri episcopi decani et capituli quam sigilla prefato- rum Walteri et Benedicte, huic conven- tionali scripto bipartite sunt apposita. Hiis, testibus, magistro Hamundo tune ballivo civitatis Exon, Johanne de Fenton, Aluredo de Porta, Richardo Aleyn, Thoma do Gatepath, Johanne Rok, David Cissore, et aliis.
Dodderigge's seal is attached, a squirrel feeding on a nut.
MURDER OF WALTER LECHLADE. 67
after the Feast of St. Matthew (late in September 1285, nearly two years after the alleged murder), by which Walter de Dodderigge, and Benedicta, his wife, sur- rendered their right to the dean and chapter of egress and ingress, through the doors of their house in the High Street, into the cathedral cemetery.
Lastly, the silence of all our ancient chronicles dis- poses us to question, and even to discredit, the narrative of Messieurs Hoker and Izaacke.
There is, however, no reasoning against recorded facts ; and we cannot refuse our credit to the following letters to King Edward I., recently discovered in the Tower of London, by that indefatigable investigator of historical truth, Thomas Duffus Hardy. With his per- mission, we submit the following translations of them to the reader.
(No. 1855.) — First Letter of PETER QUIVIL, Bishop of Exeter.
To the most Serene Prince his Lord, Edward, by the grace of God, the illustrious King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Acquitaine, Peter, by the mercy of the same, Bishop of Exeter, health in Him by whom kings reign and princes exercise dominion. Whereas, John, called Pycot of Exeter, priest, arraigned for the murder of Mr. Walter de Lechelade, of happy memory, once precentor of our church of Exeter, and by your Justices then committed to our prison, has canonically purged himself before us of the murder aforesaid, by trustworthy and discreet men, according to the liberty of the Church and custom of the realm ; we humbly request and beseech your Excellency to order the restitution of his goods and possessions according to the demand of justice, if it be pleasing to you ; that as in person, so in goods and possessions, as the liberty of the Church requires, he may be restored to his former state and honour in all things. May the Most High preserve your Majesty to His holy Church and the realm for a lengthened period.
Given at Exeter, the 8th Kal. of August (25th of July), in the year of our Lord 1286.
(No. 1856.) — Second Letter of the said Bishop ; date the same.
To the most Serene Prince his Lord, Edward, by the grace of God the illustrious King of England, Lord of Ireland, and
F 2
68
HISTORY OF EXETER.
Duke of Acquitaine, Peter, by the mercy of the same, health in Him by whom kings reign and princes exercise dominion. Whereas, John de Christenestowe, priest, vicar of Hevetre, of our diocese, arraigned for the murder of Master Walter de Lechelade of happy memory, once precentor of our church of Exeter, and by your Justices then committed to our prison, has canonically purged himself before us of the* murder aforesaid, by trustworthy and discreet men, according to the liberty of the Church and the custom of the realm ; we humbly request and beseech your Excellency to order the restitution of his goods and possessions, if it be pleasing to you, according to the demand of justice ; that as in his person, so in goods and possessions, as the liberty of the Church requires it, he may be restored to his former state and honour in all things. May the Most High preserve your Majesty to His holy Church and realm for a lengthened period. Given at Exeter, the 8th Kal. of August, 1286.
(No. 1857.)— Letter of JOHN PECKHAM,6 Archbishop of Canterbury.
To the most excellent Prince and the Lord Edward, by the grace of God illustrious King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Acquitaine, Brother John, by the Divine permission the humble minister of the church of Canterbury, Primate of all England, health and peace in Him by whom kings reign and princes exercise dominion. Whereas, our beloved son, Master Lucas, of St. Leonard, clerk, of our diocese, had been defamed as consenting to the death of Master Walter de Lechelade, once precentor of the church of Exeter, there sometime since bar- barously slain, and before your Justices in the county of Devon convicted of this upon suspicion (" ymaginarie ") and by the judg- ment of the Justices delivered up to us, as his ordinary, to be detained in safe custody ; at length having summoned the parties concerned and proclamations made publicly and solemnly in fit place and time that all that wished to offer opposition or believed themselves interested, might appear before our official of Canterbury, our special Commissary in this matter, to pro- pose or show legitimate or canonical evidence, if they had any, why the purgation of the said Luke, clerk, concerning the premises objected to him, should not be admitted in form of law. And whereas, against the admission of such purgation,
and few more zealous and self-denying prelates have adorned our English Church. After governing his see for fourteen years, he died on the 8th of December, 1292.
'>Q'i Britanni-
, p. 328, deMribei this Franciscan as maguus pUJMophai juxta ac theo- Jogua. Unquestionably he was one of the moat inMKrlual men of his n<s
MURDER OF WALTER LECHLADE. 69
nothing was proposed or shown by any one, that could in the least degree impede such purgation or any wise retard it, the aforesaid Master Lucas appearing in person before our said Commissary according to the laws and custom of the realm of England hitherto used and obtained, purged himself legitimately and canonically of every thing imputed to him concerning the death of the aforesaid Walter. Wherefore, we humbly and devoutly supplicate your Koyal Excellency, that you would vouchsafe to command that all the lands, possessions, the goods moveable and immoveable of the clerk aforesaid, taken and seised in your hands by reason of the counts of the indictment aforesaid, may be restored according to the custom of the realm without diminution, to the same clerk or his attorney, and that he may be set at liberty. May the Lord protect your Excel- lence for a lengthened period.
Given at Tenham, the 6th Ides of March (10th), in the year of our Lord 1285-6.
(No. 1858.)— Letter of Bishop QUIVIL.
To the most Serene Prince, his Lord, Edward, by the grace of God, illustrious King of -England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Acquitaine, Peter, by the mercy of the same, Bishop of Exeter, health in Him by whom kings reign and princes exercise dominion. Whereas, John de Wolrington, priest, vicar of Ottery St. Mary,7 of our diocese, arraigned for the murder of Master Walter de Lechelade, of good memory, formerly pre- centor of our church of Exeter, and by your Justices some time committed to our prison, has purged himself of the murder afore- said, canonically before us by trustworthy and discreet men according to the liberty of the Church and the custom of the realm ; we humbly request and beseech your Excellency that you would order his goods and possessions to be restored to him, if it pleaseth you, according to the demand of law, so that in eifects and possessions, as the liberty of the Church requires it, he may be restored to his former state and honour in all things. May the Most High preserve your Majesty to His holy Church and the realm for a lengthened period.
Given at Exeter, the 8th Kal. of August (25th July), 1286.
With this superabundant evidence before us, no doubt can remain of the fact of the revolting murder ; but,
7 It is not generally known that the Dean and Chapter of Rouen leased to this precentor for his life their manor of Ottery St. Mary ; and that Bishop
Quivil, on the 6th of July, 1283, ap- proved of his taking it. See his ' Re- gister,' folio 121.
70
HISTORY OF EXETER.
perhaps, the name of the assassin may remain a secret until the final day of manifestation of all human guilt. We regret our inability to throw further light on the history of the mayor, Alfred de Porta ; yet we cannot bring ourselves to believe that the king, even from respect for his own character and the feelings of the citizens of Exeter, could be guilty of consigning their innocent and estimable chief magistrate to an igno- minious execution.8
During his Majesty's stay in Exeter, at Christ- mas 1285, he held a parliament, when a statute was enacted to remedy the abuses of coroners. At the period before us, inquests were taken not only in cases of murder, but also of felony and depredation. In con- sequence of the late turbulent times, these officers had become remiss in the discharge of their duties. By this " statute of Exeter " the strictest investigation of all inquests was demanded since his Majesty's accession to the Crown. The returns were to be forwarded to him, and he is authorised to punish the offending coroners according to the discretion of his justices.
The city assumed a new seal on 22nd August, 1292, representing the king crowned, with a lion passant and regardant on his breast, and a castle on either side, in allusion to his incomparable wife Eleanor, daughter to Ferdinand II., King of Leon and Castile. She died universally lamented, on 27th November, 1290. The legend on the obverse is —
8 . EDW . REG . ANG . AD . RECOGN . DEBITOR . APVD . EXON.
(*'. e. The seal of Edward King of England for the recognizance of debts at Exeter.)
The reverse of this beautiful seal bears a lion couchant, surrounded by CIVITATIS . EXONIE. This is
8 [The complicity of these "purged" oOndcn is J>\ no mains negatived by the scvcml writs above cited. The
award of the civil courts was probably adverse to them.]
ACCESSION OF EDWARD II.
71
not to be confounded with the seal of the mayor of the staple of Exeter, which may not have been made until the statute was enacted anno 27 Edwardi III. (1353).9
In concluding this chapter, we must notice the great diocesan council held in this city by its bishop after the Easter of 1287. The Acts may be seen in Spelman and Wilkins; and we have not failed to dwell upon them in the biography of that energetic prelate in our Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, to which we refer the reader.
CHAPTER XII.
Accession of Edward II. — Kecall of Piers Gaveston — Edward the Black Prince Lord-Paramount — Captivity of John, King of France — The Black Pesti- lence ; its disastrous effects on Exeter — Bishop G-randisson. His recognition of the distinction between the ecclesiastical and civil powers.
SCARCELY had the king breathed his last, when his son and successor, Edward II., in violation of his solemn promise to his late parent, recalled from banishment that worthless minion and evil counsellor, Piers de Gaveston ; and, as if to insult the nation, created him Baron of Wallingford, gave him his niece Margaret de Clare in marriage, appointed him regent of the realm during his temporary absence in France, and at his coronation, celebrated with unprecedented splendour, on St. Matthias' day, 24th February, 1308, assigned to him the honour of carrying the crown, and of walking in the procession immediately before the sovereign. The predilection manifested for this obnoxious favourite, combined with his elevation to the earldom of Cornwall, provoked the universal wrath of the country, and pre-
9 ["The above seal is in the usual form of such seals elsewhere, and was used by authority of a statute, and not by grant of the crown.] The common seal — the workmanship of one Lucas, and
the gift of William Prudum, the founder of St. Alexias's Hospital, behind St. Nicholas's Priory, A.D. 1170; the Mayor's official seal; and the seal of the Pro- vosts, will be described in the Appendix.
72
HISTORY OF EXETER.
pared the way for Gaveston's untimely fall and execu- tion. From such a Lord-Paramount Exeter could not have derived honour or advantage. Our imbecile and vacillating sovereign continued to be surrounded with false friends and interested counsellors, with the honourable exception of that incorruptible loyalist and able minister Walter de Stapeldon, bishop of this city and diocese. But indeed the king was to be pitied ; and the historian is almost disposed to overlook his errors and infatuations, when contrasted with the unnatural conduct of his profligate queen, and the lawless and perfidious excesses and unprincipled combinations of avowed traitors.
To our wise and irreproachable bishop we have endeavoured to do justice in our Lives of the Bishops of Exeter. In these perilous times this diocese clung with desperate fidelity to the cause of their ill-fated sovereign,1 proud to emulate the noble example of its illustrious prelate.
We may now confine our attention to the immediate concerns of this city. In Bishop Brantyngham's Register (vol. i. p. 236) is inserted a composition between Bishop Stapeldon and his chapter on the one part, and the mayor and commonalty of Exeter on the other, concluded on the Monday after the Feast of St. Hilary (January, 1322), by which the former con- cede to the latter the right of surveying and repair-
1 Prom a MS. account, taken from the Berkeley Records, we collect that tliis dethroned monarch was placed during the day-time in a room called the Dungeon Chamber, of Berkeley Castle; that this chamber is im- mediately over the vault or dungeon itself; in its floor is a trap-Soor opening into the dungeon below, which is twenty-eight feet deep, down to the very foundations of the castle dOBgeoo was filled with putrid carcases of aninmlH, &c., the rising ftunoe from which the keepers expected
would produce fever, and accelerate the king's death. The unhappy prisoner bitterly complained of this to some car- penters at work upon the castle, from the window of that little bedroom to which he was taken every night, and in which he is stated to have been hor- ribly murdered.
Sir Thomas de Berkeley, the owner of the castle, was tried by a jury of twelve knights for being instrumental in this murder, but was acquitted (Hateell's Precedents, vol. iv. p. 81).
THE BLACK PKINCE LORD-PAKAMOUNT.
73
ing the walls of the close abutting on the episcopal palace, and the residences of the chancellor of the cathe- dral, and of the archdeacons of Exeter and of Cornwall. As the document has been hitherto unpublished, we have inserted it in the Appendix to our work above al- luded to. The turbulent reign of the ill-used father was redeemed by the triumphant career of his son King Edward III. The decisive victory of Halidon Hill over the Scotch on 19th July, 1333, and of Creci on 26th August, 1346, followed by that of Poictiers on 19th September, 1356, established the fame of our superior skill and valour, and must for ever immor- talize our country in the pages of history. In the two last-mentioned engagements, our Lord-Paramount,2 Edward the Black Prince, eclipsed the achievements of his gallant comrades. Yet there is no truth in the assertion of some of our modern writers, misled by the authority of Henry Knyghton and Polydore Yergil, " that the prince landed at Plymouth on 5th May, 1357, with John the captive king of France," and " from thence came to this city, where they were honourably received, and so conveyed to London." The fact is, they landed at Sandwich, and proceeded by easy journeys to the metropolis. This is incontestably proved by Froissart in his ' Chronicle.' 3 The fleet, with the royal prisoners on board taken at Poictiers, sailed for England from Bordeaux, and, after -being detained at sea for eleven days and nights, reached Sandwich on the twelfth day of the voyage, viz., the
2 John of Eltham, the second son of King Edward II. and Queen Isabella, was created by liis royal brother, in 1328, the Earl of Cornwall. Soon after his death the earldom was formed into a duchy, of which Exeter was made a parcel, viz. 18th March, 1337, in favour of Edward the Black Prince, who now became the receiver of its farm-rent, 201, per annum.
3 John Froissart was born at Valen- ciennes, in 1337, and died about 1402. The best, as well as the rarest edition of his 'Chronicle,' was printed at Lyons, in four vols. folio. For a time he was chaplain to King Edward III., and attended the court at Bordeaux, whore Kichard his son was born 6th January, 1366.
74 HISTORY OF EXETER.
5th of May. After remaining there two days to refresh themselves, they proceeded to Canterbury, visited the cathedral, and made their offerings. Early the next morning they started for Rochester, where they passed on that day. The following day witnessed their arrival at Deptford, where every preparation had been made by the public authorities to give them an honourable reception. The entry into London on the ensuing day resembled a triumph. The royal prisoner was mounted on a white courser covered with the richest trappings, whilst his modest conqueror rode by his side on a black hackney. The cavalcade at last stopped at the Savoy Palace, which had been fitted up for John's residence, where King Edward and his queen frequently came to visit and console him ; and shortly afterwards Windsor Castle was assigned to the French monarch and his suite, as may be seen in Froissart's Narrative, vol. i. chapter 173.
With the greater part of Christendom, our city had to experience the frightful ravages of the disease called the Black Pestilence. Its progress from India was marked with desolation to man and beast. From France it tra- velled to Southampton at Michaelmas, 1348 ; it soon reached Winchester, the coast of Dorset, Bristol, and thence was imported into this diocese. The episcopal registers here show its wide-wasting fatality among the population, and especially in religious communities.4
Of the numbers swept away by this disastrous visi- tation within this city we have no means of discovery ; but we well know that it arrested the building of the cathedral nave, that it paralysed our woollen trade
How frightful ite ravages were in and very many canons fell victims.
tlM- (Uootte .,t Winchester, may bo When in 1361 the plague broke out
lered from Biahop Edyngdon'a Re- : again, it carried off two abbesses at
« Ml!', not a single in- ! Wherewell, two abbesses at St. Mary's,
Baadowu Hospital escaped j Winchester, the abbot of Chertsey, and
Hli, aii.l two abbesses, eleven priors, I eight or nine priors of various houses.
THE BLACK PESTILENCE. 75
and all commercial enterprise, and suspended agri- cultural pursuits, and that its effects weighed heavily on our population for upwards of three years. It burst out again in 1361, but in a mitigated form. During this calamity, Exeter was fortunate indeed in possess- ing such a pastor and bishop as John de Grrandisson. He had a commanding influence and large pecuniary resources ; and he was never so happy as when he could console and relieve his afflicted and indigent fellow-creatures.
We close this chapter with observing, that this sterling English prelate, to whom Exeter and the diocese must ever be indebted, fully recognized and asserted the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal power of the Holy See. On reaching Eng- land in February, 1328, he hastened to meet his sove- reign at York ; and, though he had been provided to this see by Pope John XXII., he openly and expressly renounced, before his liege lord the king, every ex- pression in the papal bulls that could entrench on the rights of the Crown of England. This act of renuncia- tion had been required by our monarchs for a con- siderable period back, before they put bishops in possession of the temporalities of their respective sees ; and it was a reasonable and expedient measure, dis- tinctly marking the boundaries between the ecclesi- astical and civil powers.
CHAPTER XIII.
Reign of Richard II. — Exhausted exchequer — Insurrection against the capita- tion tax — Energy of the King — His subsequent misgovernment and deposition — Accession of Henry V. — John Wickliffe — The Lollards.
EDWARD the Black Prince, the hope and darling of his country, died 8th June, 1376 ; his only surviving
76 HISTORY OF EXETER.
son Richard, now ten years of age, was acknowledged by Parliament to be heir-apparent to the throne, and to which he succeeded on the death of his royal grand- father a twelvemonth later. The protracted wars with France had completely exhausted the treasury, but the commons and the clergy were liberal with their sub- sidies, and, moreover, voted a capitation-tax, graduated according to the rank and estate of each individual, to meet the public exigences. The collection of this capitation-tax gave occasion to the formidable insurrec- tion in 1381, which threatened the life of the sove- reign and the subversion of all constitutional govern- ment. In this critical conjuncture the youthful king displayed a chivalrous coolness and courage far above his years. But as he grew older he disappointed the expectations of the country. He had been taught by his mother and her friends to estrange himself from his uncles, especially John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster ; he grew mistrustful of the ancient nobility, and seemed in his choice of favourites to have for- gotten the memorable fate experienced by his great grandfather King Edward II. His was a period of national fermentation and turbulence, and of undefined prerogative; and in taking the reins of government into his own hands, he was betrayed into errors and lamentable excesses. His wars with France and Scot- land, and the extravagant expenditure of his household, gradually compelled him to be a humble suitor to Par- liament to extricate him from pecuniary emergency. His necessities threw him at their mercy; and, by occasional attempts to set himself above the law, he weakened and at length forfeited the affection of the people, without which a king is but a cipher in a con- stitutional monarchy. By degrees he sunk so low in s own estimation as to consent to the act of his own 'It-position, which was, in his case, almost tantamount to
DEPOSITION OF RICHARD II.
77
the signing of his own death-warrant. If sovereigns could anticipate what misfortunes they might avert from themselves, their dynasty, and their country, by pursuing a direct, conciliatory, and legal course, they would never calculate on that deceitful power produced by their passions, but solely on the moral strength founded on reason, justice, and integrity of character. They would act on the conviction that the maintenance of the rights of every member of the body politic would give stability to the whole ; and that encroachment on the liberties of the people must shake their thrones, if not subvert them. Could subjects, on the other side, foresee the wrongs, the bloodshed and ruin, entailed and perpetuated by revolutions, they would contract their ambitious views, and be satisfied that success may be purchased at too dear a rate. Well might King Richard II. exclaim on 13th August, 1399, " Alas, what trust in this false world ! "
During this disastrous reign, if Exeter was not dis- tinguished by any important events,1 it was exempted at least from many calamities that afflicted other parts of the kingdom. Its citizens remained tranquil and submissive to the legally constituted authorities ; and amidst the defection of faithless statesmen and counsel- lors, they were content to be guided by the example of their irreproachable bishops, Thomas Brantyngham and Edmund Stafford. When ingratitude and violence had seated Henry of Bolingbroke on the throne, they quietly yielded to legalised usurpation, and acquiesced in the new order of things.
Unfortunately the country was heaving with the earthquake of religious and political feelings occasioned by the doctrines of John Wickliffe, who died rector
1 On Michaelmas-day, 1397, the king created his uterine brother, John Hol- land, the first Duke of Exeter ; but he
held his honours but for a short time, being executed on the 9th of January, 1400.
78 HISTORY OF EXETER.
of Loughborough, 31st December, 1384, and of his followers the Lollardists— doctrines partially borrowed from the Poor Men of Lyons, from the Albigenses, and the Bohemian Brethren. Had their views been confined to theory, had they not threatened disturb- ance, and even ruin, to public and private property, the government might have left them unheeded. Even Archbishop Parker (Antiq. Brit. p. 275) contends, " that it was not without good reason that the law of the second year of Henry V. was made to suppress them, on account of their numbers and the tumults they occasioned to the disturbance and even to the terror of the civil government." And most certainly such licentiousness of teaching and practis- ing levelling principles would not be tolerated, even in these days, by the constituted authorities of our country. The Commons, in their address to King Henry V., affirm, that these insurgents " sought to destroy the Christian Faith, and the king, the spiritual and temporal estates, and all manner of policy and law." The king himself announces, in his proclamation, that " they had plotted to destroy him and his brothers during the Christmas festivities at Eltham, in 1413, with several of the spiritual and temporal lords, and to confiscate the property of the Church, and to divide the realm into districts, and to appoint Sir John Oldcastle President of the Common- wealth." Dr. Fiddes also, in his Life of Cardinal Wolsey (pp. 35-39), maintains that in all these pro- ceedings the Church acted in subserviency to the authority of the State, and by virtue of standing and express laws; and that "it was not for their specu- lative opinions, considered purely as such, but because in certain respects these innovators maintained prin- ciples derogatory to the rights of the prince, injurious to society, and contrary to the laws then in force."
HENRY vr. 79
For our own part, we must ever deem the sanguinary punishment of mental errors as a departure from the genius and spirit of the Founder of Christianity ; that it can only serve to provoke and embitter fanaticism, and is therefore irreconcileable with sound policy and even humanity.
CHAPTER XIY.
Henry VI. — His reception at Exeter — Civil war — Edward IV. assumes the crown — Visit to this city — Death of the King — Usurpation of Richard III. —Murder of the Princes in the Tower — The King killed at Bosworth Field — Perkin Warbeck repulsed at Exeter — His surrender at Taunton, and im- prisonment in this city — Henry VII. at Exeter — Royal charters — Visit of Princess Catherine — Marriage with Prince Arthur, and subsequently with Henry VHI. — Progress of literature — Degeneracy of morals.
WE have had occasion already to lament the mis- fortune of the succession of minors to the throne in troublesome times. By the premature death of King Henry V., on 31st August, 1422, in the zenith of his military glory, the crown devolved to his son Henry, a babe but nine months old. It was indeed a critical period, for the council was divided, and his two uncles, John Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, stood in opposition to each other — the former one great in the field, the latter in council ; but the infant sovereign was permitted to be crowned at Westminster on 6th November, 1429, and even at Paris, on 17th November, 1431, where the French nobility swore allegiance to him. By the death of his uncles he lost the main pillars to his throne. Innocent, gentle, religious, and devoted to the cultivation and patronage of the liberal arts and sciences, he was little qualified to wrestle with such boisterous times ; he found himself the sport of the vicissitudes of fortune ; he beheld his father's conquests melting away before
80 HISTORY OF EXETER.
him, and eventually deprived of his crown and his life by those who had sworn fealty to him.
Amidst the turmoils and carnage, amidst the alter- nate reverses and successes of the Houses of Lancaster and York, which for so many years spread disunion and desolation in families, which revolutionized the tenure of property, unhinged public credit, and plunged the country into mourning, Exeter could not fail of experiencing her full share of the general affliction. Under the House of Lancaster she had prospered. The sixth Henry had honoured her with his presence, and she had abundant opportunities of witnessing and admiring his benevolent and peaceful virtues. The reception that he met with here must be interesting to the reader. He had long cherished a special regard for our bishop, Edmund Lacy ; and in his progress westward, in the early part of the summer of 1452, he would testify his esteem of this aged and venerable prelate and trustworthy friend by taking up his abode in the episcopal palace within this city. On entering Devon, he rested a night at Ford Abbey; the next day he proceeded to St. Mary's collegiate establishment at Ottery, where he stayed two days. On Monday, 17th July, he left for this city, ac- companied by a prodigious concourse of knights, gentlemen, and yeomanry. The mayor and com- monalty of our loyal city, in full state, were waiting at Honiton Clist to welcome their sovereign. The communities of the Franciscan and Dominican convents and the rural clergy were assembled at St. Clara's Chapel, Livery Dole, to join in the procession. On reaching the great Cross without the Southgate, the Benedictine Prior of St. Nicholas and the Augustinian Prior of St. John's Hospital met him with the paro- chial clergy and chaplains, bearing two crosses before them, and offered incense to the King, who saluted
HENRY VI. AND EDWARD IV. AT EXETER. 81
the cross. Then the Mayor delivered to him the keys of Southgate, and rode in advance, carrying the mace before him. The streets were richly hung with silks and tapestry. At Broadgate he alighted, where the bishop, canons, and choristers were in full attendance, and in solemn procession advanced to the west door of the cathedral, and thence to the high altar. After spending some time in devotion and making his offer- ing, he adjourned to the bishop's palace adjoining. The next day the judges in commission sat in the bishop's hall, where two men were indicted, arraigned, and sentenced to death for treason ; but, at the inter- cession of the bishop and his chapter, the king graciously extended his mercy and forgiveness to the convicts. Hoker supposes that the king left the city for Honiton on the following Wednesday. Izaacke prolongs his visit for eight days ; but Mr. Hardy collects, from records in the Tower, that he was actually in this city on 29th July. Perhaps he quitted on that day for Honiton ; for he reached Gloucester, on his way to London, on the fourth day of August.
Eighteen years had not elapsed when King Edward IY. visited Exeter, viz., on Saturday 14th April, 1470. He had come in pursuit of the Duke of Clarence, the Earl of Warwick, and other leaders of the Lancastrian cause, but they had effected their escape, and embarked at Dartmouth. His heart was not disposed in favour of Exeter, which had afforded harbour and hospitality to his enemies, and successfully sustained a siege of twelve days very shortly before against his adherent Sir William Courtenay of Powderham, Knight ; but he rnay have deemed it expedient to dissemble his dis- pleasure, and try to conciliate the good feelings of those who had manifested fidelity to their old sovereign. The Mayor, with four hundred of the citizens in red gowns,
G
82 HISTORY OF EXETEB.
received him respectfully. Thomas Douriche, the Re- corder, complimented him in a set oration ; a purse, containing one hundred nobles, was benignantly ac- cepted ; and the keys and maces were presented, but graciously re-delivered to the Mayor. ^ The next day was Palm Sunday, when this stately monarch, the handsomest man of his age, walked in the customary procession bearing the blessed palm in his hand. From Bishop Stapeldon's Register (fol. 168) we learn that the yearly processions on Palm Sunday and Corpus Christi day extended beyond the eastern gate of the city from the cathedral, so that all had the opportunity of viewing and admiring their sovereign. After dinner on the Tuesday the King departed on horseback, " giving great thanks to the Mayor for his entertainment, as also showing himself very loving and bountiful to the people" (Hoker's MS.). His sword, which he is said to have presented to the city on this occasion, is still carefully preserved.
But such is the uncertainty of human affairs, that within six months afterwards Edward was a fugitive to the coast of Holland ; and Henry VI. was conducted with great pomp from the Tower, and replaced upon his throne, and Parliament hastened to proclaim Ed- ward an usurper, to attaint his adherents, and to repeal all the acts done under his authority. The ensuing Easter witnessed the fugitive and exiled monarch the con- queror at the battle of Barnjet,1 and again, within three weeks later, at the decisive battle at Tewkesbury, and the unfortunate sovereign Henry immured in the Tower,
1 To show how slowly news travelled in those days, the issue of the battle of Bornet, fought on the 14th of April, 1471, was not known in Cornwall on the 23rd of that month and year I have seen a deed dated Llandulph, on
" Kedemptionis regiro potestatis anno primo." Henry had recovered posses- sion on the previous 6th of October. But what is more surprising, the news of Queen Elizabeth's death, on the 24th of March, 1603, did not transpire in Ire-
the banks of the Tamar, near Ply- land until the 9th dav of April, mouth, on the 23rd of April, 1471,
MURDER OF THE PRINCES. 83
whence his dead body was brought forth, shortly after, to be exhibited to the public previous to its interment.
King Edward IV. granted to our Mayor, Bailiffs, and Commonalty the goods of felons and outlaws, and the confiscated property of citizens and inhabitants of Exeter, and all fines ; also a fair, to commence on 21st July, the eve of the Feast of St. Mary Magdalen, and to continue during the two following days. He also confirmed the incorporation of the Cordwainers' Com- pany, which had been created nearly a century before, and incorporated the city guilds of the glovers, tailors, and bakers. Had he been less suspicious, less volup- tuous and cruel, this king might have proved a blessing to the nation. Death marked him for his victim in the forty-first year of his age, 9th April, 1483. His un- natural and remorseless brother Richard is charged with the murder of the two youthful sons of the king, to clear his way to the Crown. He had first appointed the 4th of May for the coronation of his nephew Edward V. ; then the 22nd day of June was ultimately fixed for the grand festivity ; but this in- sidious Protector's object was to gain time for maturing his plans, for removing the most confidential ministers of his late sovereign in the interim, for assembling in the capital his friends as well as several of those whom he suspected to be his enemies, to be present at the coming coronation. Then he threw off the mask, and a parliament was found base enough to admit and support his pretensions. On 6th July, 1483, with extraordinary pomp, Richard was crowned with his queen Anne, daughter of Richard late Earl of War- wick. The list of dukes, earls, lords, and knights is given in S. Bentley's Excerpta Historica (p. 384). Our bishop, Peter Courtenay, with several others, especially Margaret, the mother of Henry of Richmond, the queen's trainbearer, must indeed have been
G 2
v 1 HISTORY OF EXETER.
sorely mortified to be obliged to assist at the cere- mony, but they had no means of escaping the office. To ingratiate himself with his subjects, he spent several weeks in making a royal progress with the queen and court, dispensing honours and favours ;. and the whole ceremony of the coronation was repeated at York on Sunday the 8th of September of the same year.
But whilst the felon-king was indulging in ex- pensive pageantry and dissipation in the northern part of his dominions, a widely extended confederacy was formed and matured against him in the southern and western parts, by the united friends of the Houses of York and Lancaster. The 18th day of October was marked for a general rising in favour of Henry, the young Earl of Eichmond, who had pledged himself to marry the Princess Elizabeth of York. On the appointed day, Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, proclaimed Henry in this city. The usurper lost no time in hastening to Exeter (having first caused the Duke of Buckingham's head to be struck off in Salis- bury market-place on Sunday, November 2nd — Hist. Croyland) with a considerable force to surprise the daring insurgents. Early in November, John Atwill, the mayor, at the head of the municipality went forth to meet him beyond Eastgate ; the recorder, Thomas Hexte, presented a congratulatory address, and a purse containing 200 nobles was then handed to his Majesty, and graciously accepted. The bishop's palace, which had been abundantly stored with provisions, was at once occupied by the royal retinue ; for Peter Courtenay, the diocesan already mentioned, his brother Sir Walter, the dean, John Arundell, and a large concourse of political guests had succeeded in effecting their escape, and had reached the opposite coast. Comparatively few were executed here ; for his brother- in-law, Sir John St. Leger, and Thomas Rame were
DEATH OF K1CHARD HI. 85
the only persons who suffered death for conspiring against him. And though, on his return to town, he met a parliament ready to confirm his title to the crown,- and to enact a bill of attainder of his opponents, as " undoubted traitors, rebels, and enemies," yet he was haunted with alarms at the preparations which Henry Earl of Eichmond was making in France. His mind was racked with suspicions of the fidelity of his pro- fessed adherents. On August 1st, 1485, Henry sailed from Harfleur, landed at Milford-Haven, and directed his steps towards Shrewsbury. A week elapsed before Richard heard of his landing. Staking his crown and his life on the issue of the battle at Bosworth on August 22nd, he lost both. He that went forth to the field, wearing his crown, was found a corpse hideous with ghastly wounds, and, with every circumstance of indig- nity, was thrown across a horse " with a halter hang- ing from his neck," as the continuator of the Hist, of Croyland informs us, and conveyed to Leicester for interment (p. 575) ; thus leaving an awful example of a name that will live only in his country's curses, and showing that guilty ambition provokes the wrath of Heaven (Ps. v. 6) ; — that there is no peace for the wicked — and that no measure can be either beneficial or honourable, which is not based upon justice and integrity.
With the unhonoured Richard were buried the glories of the House of Plantagenet; and by the fortunate union of the victorious Henry with Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward IY., the feuds of the white and red Roses were closed for ever ; unless we except the abortive attempt of the king's enemies in the person of their tool, Perkin Warbeck. That impostor's life and adventures may be read in Sir Frederick Madden' s lucid dissertation, printed in vol. xxvii. of the Proceedings of the Archaeological Sociej^r-^^Btinice it
S(j HISTORY OF EXETER.
to say, that Warbeck landed from Cork at Whitsand bay, Cornwall, on September 7th, 1497, with a small force — that he appeared ten days later before this city, calculating only on a feeble opposition ; but was wofully disappointed. " Such," says Hoker, " was the courage and valiant stomach of the citizens, that they decided on suffering every extremity, rather than sub- mitting to a surrender. The enemy burnt Northgate, and actually forced an entrance into Eastgate,2 as far even as Castle Lane; but were gallantly foiled and driven back with great slaughter. Hearing that Sir Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, was approaching with a considerable force, that the king was ex- pected to join him with a formidable army, and that a proclamation had offered a reward of a thousand marks to the first person who should bring him alive to the King, he fled to Taunton, and thence, on September 21st, to Beaulieu Abbey for sanctuary ; but was soon forced to surrender, and brought to the king at Taunton, October 5th. The king made his public entry into this city on October 7th. In a letter dated Exeter, Oct. 23rd, 1497, which he addressed to Don Rodriguez Gonzales, the Spanish envoy, the king informs him that he had sent to the queen the Lady Catherine Huntley (whom the impostor had married), "but we hold Perkins here, ' penes nos? in safe custody, and we shall bring him with us on our return to London, which we hope will be soon ; when you will be able to see him." The king remained in Exeter until November 3rd, when he proceeded to Ottery St. Mary. During his stay at Exeter we learn from a deposition, made in 1554, that one Richard Beale, then 80 years
1 Eastgate had been so much shaken l»y this assault, that in 1511 the Cham- ber resolved to rebuild it. Robert Poke, of Thorverton, mason, contracted
to complete the job for 281. The statue of Henry VII. was placed in a niche over the inner entrance.
KOYAL CHARTER FOR CIVIC GOVERNMENT. 87
old, remembered when eight of the sixteen trees that stood in St. Peter's Close between the north door of the cathedral and the treasury were taken down, that the king, standing in the new window of the treasurer's house, might see the rebels, who came bareheaded with halters round their necks before him, and that they cried out for mercy and pardon. The king then addressed them in a short speech, and granted them his clemency ; upon which they made a great shout, hurled away their halters, and cried " God save the king ! " (Hoker's MS.)
The King, who in the beginning of his reign had confirmed all the charters granted to Exeter by his royal predecessors, now presented his sword and his cap of maintenance, commanding both to be carried in state before the mayor for the time being for ever. On reaching London he granted a new charter for regulating the election of the mayor and for the better government of the city.3
Within four years Exeter was honoured with another royal visit, viz. of the Princess Catherine, daughter of Ferdinand King of Spain. She landed at Plymouth on October 9th, 1501, after a tedious and stormy passage. In her suite were the Archbishop of Compostella and many noble persons. Proceeding by Tavistock, Oke- hampton and Crediton, she arrived in this city on October 21st and made the deanery her headquarters,
3 Here we lament the loss of the " by which means all the records from 4 Black Boll,' made in 1489, which con- the Conquest until the end of King taincdthe ancient orders, privileges and . Henry III.'s reign were entirely lost," customs of the city, and which was | says Hoker. The same historian in- usually delivered to the mayor on being forms us that he himself had found one
of the Court Rolls of Henry III.'s reign
sworn into office. It was lent to Sir William Cecyll, secretary to King Ed- ward VI., and could never be recovered. Many documents had also disappeared before the mayoralty of Mr. John Nos- worthy, in 1521. Until his time the records lay abroad and in great disorder,
(1216-1272) in a tailor's shop beyond the Eastgate, and that the above men- tioned John Nosworthy caused a large press to be made, where the records might be kept in order and in safety.
^S HISTORY OF EXETER.
for the See was then vacant, by the recent translation of Bishop Redmayne to Ely.
The noise of the weathercock surmounting the spire of the adjoining church of St. Mary Major so disturbed the princess during the first of the two nights she passed here, that it was taken down. By easy journeys she reached Lambeth on November 9th, and was married to Arthur, Prince of Wales, on the 14th. For their residence, Ludlow Castle was appointed ; but, to the disappointment of the nation, the prince died there on April 2nd, within five months, in the sixteenth year of his age, without having consummated the marriage, as several matrons attested, and as she herself re- peatedly declared. Under these circumstances, her father-in-law encouraged his surviving son Henry, who became passionately attached to her, to marry her. The king's increasing illness and his subsequent death on April 9th, 1509, delayed the nuptial ceremony ; but, with the unanimous consent of the council, this union was eventually accomplished on June 3rd that year. Subsequent events make it not impertinent to notice that her bridal dress was that of a maiden. Afterwards, in public court, in the confidence of inno- cence and truth she made this significant appeal to her husband : — " God knows, when I came to your bed I was a virgin, and I put it to your own conscience to say whether it was not so."
In closing this chapter, the -attentive observer of events in taking a retrospect of the fifteenth century,— notwithstanding the din of arms, bloody revolutions, multiplicity of attainders, and transfers of power and property from one family to another, notwithstand- ing the successes of the Turks, those barbarous foes of civilization,-— cannot fail to discern that this western hemisphere was at this time irradiated by genius, learning, and the general cultivation of polite lite-
L1TERATUKE AND MORALS. 89
rature amongst the peoples. Italy, that amercatura bonarum artium," of course took the lead. Thither the Greek fugitives, especially from Constantinople, found an asylum for classic literature, for architecture, painting and sculpture ; and the happy discovery of printing served to unfold hidden treasures and to pro- pagate science with electric rapidity. England was soon illustrated with numerous schools and colleges ; insomuch that Erasmus, writing to Paul Bembi, declares that " amongst the English good letters triumph ; and the royal court abounds with such eminent scholars, that it is rather a museum than a palace, and might vie with any school of philosophy in Athens itself."
On the other hand, the observer of the ambitious competitors and political characters of this period must often be shocked at their want of good faith, at their systematic dissimulation, and their disregard of their pledged word and solemn oaths whenever their inte- rests were concerned, forgetful of the awful truth that unprincipled success ever engenders the cancer of self- destruction.
Lastly, the observer must lament the growing laxity and degeneracy of national morals. May not this in some measure be accounted for by the non-residence of the bishops in their respective dioceses — by those per- petual translations from one see to another — their cringing obsequiousness to the party in power, and the consequent neglect of vigilance over their charge, and thus suffering the tares to multiply ? (Matthew vi. 24, xiii. 25 ; Osee iv. 9.) Translations of bishops, made without cogent reasons of necessity, had been con- demned by the fifteenth canon of the General Council of Nice in the year 325, as introductory of ambition, sloth, and avarice into the sanctuary.
90 H1STOBY OF EXETER.
CHAPTER XV.
•
Prosperous state of the nation at the accession of Henry VIII. — The woollen trade of Exeter— Extravagance of the king — Embarrassed state of the exchequer — Appeal to parliament for pecuniary aid — Kesistance to the proposal of a property-tax — Bridgeman the member for the city — Thomas Cromwell's influence with the king — Degradation of parliament — Oppressive taxation.
IT may fairly be questioned if any of our preceding sovereigns mounted the throne with brighter prospects than Henry YIII. Foreign and domestic opposition to his title had equally died away ; the leading powers of Europe courted his alliance ; his deceased parent, who had confined all his expenses within his income, had left him a sum almost incredible in those times in ready money — one million seven hundred thousand pounds sterling (Walker's4 Hist. Discourses,' p. 299). A scholar himself, his court embraced a galaxy of literary characters; his cabinet was graced by sage and ex- perienced statesmen ; in truth, England had almost reached the zenith of her fame ; and no nation enjoyed to a greater degree plenty, security of personal property and freedom, and commercial credit and prosperity, than the realm of England in the early part of his reign.
The staple trade of Exeter was wool. In the reign of Edward III. we find that the wools of Devon and Cornwall were reputed to be of inferior quality, and comparatively of little value : " Lanae de Com. Cornub. et Devon, grossae, et modici valoris existunt " (G-randis- son's Reg., vol. i. fol. 23). From Westcote's Yiew of Devon (p. 59) we learn that only frieze and coarse plain cloths were made of it until the time of King
WOOLLEN TRADE OF EXETER. 91
Edward IV., when an Italian, Anthony Bonvisi,1 " taught us the knowledge of making kersies, and our women to spin with the distaff ;" yet within a century an astonishing progress and improvement succeeded through the active energy and enterprise of our merchants. Hoker, in his MS. History, so often referred to, relates " this city to have been chiefly inha- bited by clothiers and workers of broadcloths, which were of such good and substantial making that the names of Exeter cloths be yet had in remembrance in the south and Spanish countries." Antwerp was our principal market, and subsequently Calais. The Sta- tute-book unfortunately shows how the trade was cramped and crippled by our sovereigns ; that the exportation of wool was made felony ; that the wearing of any cloth but of English manufacture was prohibited to all ranks, though the king, the queen, and royal children, who might be considered as giving the ton to fashion, were exempted from such prohibition. These coercive restrictions on free-trade, the frequent inter- ference with the price of labour, and the confinement of exportation to a single town, argued a short-sighted policy, and cast a damp on commercial enterprise. But of this subject we may have to speak more at large when we treat of our haven or canal, for which an Act of Parliament was passed in 1539 — said to be the earliest instance of artificial inland navigation in this country. Hitherto imported goods were generally un- loaded at Topsham, and thence conveyed by carts into Exeter by Holloway, then called Carten Street.
The king gradually became so devoted to tourna- ments and pageantry, and so passionately fond of
1 I suspect that he had a brother or j the king's use, 1340Z. Jls. Id." In the son called Lawrence. In the privy } previous month 2068Z. 4s. lid. had been purse expenses of King Henry VII., ordered to be delivered to the same to we read, " 1 June, 1494, delivered to be employed for the king. Lawrence Bonvisi, for to bye wulles for !
92 HISTORY OF EXETER.
expensive warfare, that at length his thoughtless extra- vagance discovered to him an empty exchequer. In his embarrassments he applied to Parliament to supply the ways and means to continue his wayward career, but the nation still retained a portion of its early spirit, demurred, and declined to grant the exorbitant sums demanded by the minister. In the Convocation Richard Fox, the venerable Bishop of Winchester, ex- erted his powerful influence to ward off the extortion intended to be practised on the clergy ; and when Car- dinal Wolsey, in April, 1523, dictated to the Commons the imposition of a property-tax of 20 per cent. (Sir Thomas More then being Speaker of the House), the proposal " was received with a marvellous silence." His Eminence attended the House to overawe it by his pre- sence ; but, perceiving the reluctance of the Commons to proceed to business, retired much discontented. From Hoker (MS., p. 339) we find that at the debate on the motion " no man spake more earnestly and effectually against it than John Bridgeman, the representative of this city in Parliament — a wise man, and of great experience, — which thing being made known to the cardinal, he sent for him, and very sharply rebuked him for it ; but he maintained his sayings. And at his next coming to the Lower House, when the said Bill was again read, Mr. Bridgeman spake against it. But he had little thanks for his labour ; and, being again most sharply rebuked, he never enjoyed him- self, but returned to his lodgings, fell sick and died, and was buried in the Savoy in the Strand, London." Yet Parliament, soon after the death of Bishop Fox and the Primate Wareham, lost its patriotic character, and sunk into the most abject subserviency to the royal dictation. Intoxicated with success and adulation, and, after the fall of Wolsey, guided by Thomas Cromwell, an upstart statesman of the Machiavellian school, the
SUBSERVIENCY OF PARLIAMENT. 93
king adopted his suggestions on his divorce and on the spiritual supremacy. This unprincipled minister, trans- porting, as it were, his sovereign to the pinnacle of the Temple, displayed before him the fair possessions of the Church, of the religious houses, so numerous and wealthy, and the goodly manors of the bishops and the patrimony of the clergy — all of which but awaited and courted his gracious use ; for the king had but to nod his pleasure, and parliament was ready to obey and enforce his every wish. To the lover of liberty and of country it is indeed revolting to witness the servility of an English parliament, degraded to become the mere automaton of royal caprice. The Statute-book proclaims that it was the instrument to say and unsay, to affirm and to contradict — that it consented that the king's proclamations should have the force of law — that it released him in 1529 (21st Hen. VIII. cap. 3) from the payment of a number of loans advanced to him by his subjects during the previous six years, though his securities had, by sale, by gift, or by bequest, passed into other hands — that the succession of the crown was several times altered — that the fundamental laws of the land were set at nought — that treasons were dangerously multi- plied— that sport was made of the property, the rights, the freedom, and the lives of the people of England. In truth, this realm had never groaned before under such despotism; and no domestic, no foreign enemy, could have so humbled and enslaved it as its own Parliament. Yet, notwithstanding the incredible spoils voted to the sovereign, more taxes were imposed on the nation than by all preceding sovereigns together since the Conquest. " Like snow this vast sacrilegious accumulation had melted away," says Sir Edward Walker (' Historical Discourses,' p. 299). And Heylyn (p. 11, 'Hist.') remarks, "The king was neither the
94 HISTOKY OF EXETER.
richer in children by so many wives, nor ^ much im- proved in revenues by such horrible rapines." And in page 17 he adds, that " the money of the realm was so imposed (counterfeit) and mixed, that it could not pass for current amongst foreign nations, to the great dis- honour of the kingdom and the loss of the merchant ; and that, soon after the universal spoil and dissolution of religious houses, he was feign to have recourse to parliament for moneys ; that the clergy had to give a subsidy of six shillings in the pound, payable out of all their spiritual promotions ; that he next pressed his subjects for a Benevolence, and shortly after he obtained a grant of all chantries, hospitals, colleges, and free chapels within the realm, though he lived not to enjoy the benefit of it."
This city was a mournful witness and victim of the innovations around her, of the invasions of Magna Charta, and of the removal of the ancient landmarks of her forefathers, by the proscription and dispersion of the Benedictine, Augustinian, Dominican, and Fran- ciscan priories, and of St. Catherine's nunnery at Polslo. If it be a proof of innocence, as Dr. Burnet admits, when the members of religious communities were awarded pensions by the royal visitors and com- missioners, we may fairly conclude that the monastic brethren and sisters in this city and diocese must have lived in good repute, for they were generally favoured and gratified with annuities. But the poor of Exeter, and the artizans and tradesmen, were the unhappy sufferers by the change of masters and owners. But, to their honour, they patiently submitted to their hard fate after the example of the primitive Christians, under the pressure of privation and persecution, without having recourse to violence. For details of this momen- tous revolution in property and religion we refer our readers to the Monasticon of this diocese ; and we
NEW PRIVILEGES CONFERRED ON THE CITY.
95
submit to the justice of the assertion of a popular writer (see the Times of 17th February, 1823), "If Henry VIII. had not plundered the Church, the word Poors- rate would never have been known in England."2
In dismissing this reign of blood and terror, we must not forget that Henry VIII., on 16th February, 1535, constituted our mayor, recorder, and aldermen justices of the peace for the city : hitherto the mayor and bailiffs only had possessed that privilege. He further confirmed the chartered rights of the citizens ; and, on the 23rd August, 1537, the twenty-ninth year of his reign, erected Exeter into a county of itself, separate and distinct from the county of Devon, with the excep- tion, however, of the castle of Exeter and the adjoining county jail.
2 " There was a principal parliamen- tary motive, which did facilitate the rest ; for it was propounded in parlia- ment, that the accession of abhey lands would so enrich the Crown, as the people should never be put to pay sub- i sidies again. This was plausible both [ to Court and country. Besides, with j the overplus there should be main- • tained a standing army of 40,000 men, ! for a perpetual defence of the kingdom. This was safety at home, terrour and honour abroad. The parliament would , make all sure. God s part, religion, hath been reasonably well preserved, but it hath been saved as by fire, for the rest is consumed and vanished. The I
people have paid subsidies ever since, and we are now in no very good case to pay an army."— Extract from Sir Ben- jamin Rudyard's speech, delivered in the House of Commons, on 21st June, 1641.
We may add, that if any one will read No. Ixxix. Collection of Records, at the end of Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 21, he will be satisfied, that in the division of the property of the Church, cunning stewards, pettifogging lawyers, and greedy courtiers obtained the lion's share ; and, as another ex- presses it, " the king's cheese was lost in the parings."
!MI HISTORY OF EXETER.
CHAPTER XVI.
•
Accession of Edward VI. •- Changes in the tenure of land— State of the poor
Prayer-book of King Edward VI. — Resistance to its introduction — Siege of
Exeter Loyalty and fidelity of its inhabitants — Death of the King — The
Lady Jane Grey — Queen Mary — Her marriage with Philip of Spain — Royal letter to the citizens of Exeter — Age of religious persecution — Its inconsistency with the spirit of Christianity.
THE death of Henry VIII., on 28th January, 1547, introduced a wonderful alteration in public affairs. His son Edward, a minor of weakly constitution, was in the- hands of profligate ministers solely intent on their own aggrandizement. Within the realm discon- tent generally prevailed : the new practice of letting lands at rack-rents had driven from