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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2010
Anno Domini 1604 was the greatest pestilence in London that ever was heard of or known by any man living. There died above 3000 weekly.
page 2 note * The pestilence reached Exeter. In the collection of papers referring to the history of Lyme in the possession of the writer of these notes is an entry in a Mayor's book of expenses for 1590, which is not very intelligible:—“Paid those that did watch by day for fear of the sickness for i days, Is. 6d.” This watching was probably to prevent intercourse with some infected house or one suspected. The plague raged many weeks at Axminster in 1613, and consumed a great number of the inhabitants.
page 2 note * In the reign of Elizabeth two famous seminaries were instituted for the education of English priests in the Roman Catholic religion; one at Valladolid, the other at Douay, Hence priests educated in these were called Seminary Priests, or Seminaries.
page 3 note * Jean d'Isle, a maniac, was the criminal alluded to. Attempts had been made upon this King's life in 1593 and in 1597.
page 3 note † Theodore de Bèze, or according to his Latinized name Beza, the head of the Genevese church after Calvin, was born at Vezelay, in Nivernois, in 1519. He took an active part in the important events of the civil and religious wars of France. This should not be viewed as a mere obituary entry. It is greatly expressive of the feeling of the Puritan writer. All of that party looked with the deepest interest to Geneva—the cradle and seat of Calvinism, the theology of Calvin, and of the Calvinistic or Presbyterian system. The writer's family continued attached to these opinions; which, after they were avowed by separatists from the Church of England, were the object of severe legislative enactments in the reign of Charles II. It was the writer's great-grandson who received the Duke of Monmouth, the Protestant champion or friend of the Dissenters or Non-conformists, at Colyton, in his Western progress in 1680, and who was expected to join the Duke in his dissenting rebellion as it has been styled, commenced at Lyme Regis in 1685.
Collections for Geneva were made at Lyme, and the country round, in 1582. Mr.Yonge's friends gave some 10s. each.
page 4 note * Edmund Snape was a puritan who had suffered imprisonment in Elizabeth's reign for “setting up a new discipline and a new form of worship,” &c.
page 4 note † The Commons asserted that, notwithstanding the six-and-thirty statutes which had been made to check the monstrous abuses of Purveyance, the practice was enforced by the Board of Green Cloth, who punished and imprisoned on their own warrant; that the royal purveyors did what they liked in the country, seizing carts, carriages, horses and provisions, felling trees without the owner's consent, and exacting labour from the people which they paid for very badly or not at all.
page 5 note * Henry Garnet was the superior of the Jesuits in England, and is sometimes called Saint Garnet.
page 6 note * Charles Blount, a highly honoured courtier and favourite of Elizabeth, had been an adversary of the Earl of Essex. The Earl's beautiful sister, Penelope, had engaged in mutual affection with Blount before she entered into a joyless wedlock with Robert Lord Rich. After engaging in illicit passion, Lady Rich was divorced and married Blount, who died after succeeding to his brother's title of the sorrow which his self-indulgence had sown for him. This courtier had Weycroft, the castle and park of the attainted Lord Cobham, in the parish of Axminster, given him.
page 6 note † Grervase Babington.
page 7 note * The red cross was St. George's Cross, and the white, St. Andrew's Cross. These were to be respectively displayed in the fore top. These two crosses united were to be borne in the main top by the subjects of Great Britain. Could we but personify the Union Jack, what feelings of degradation must we ascribe to it at this period,—pirates and Algerine corsairs in the Channel, and our tars kept out of their pay and poisoned with bad victuals! The poursuivants who brought a proclamation to Lyme received from Mr. Mayor 2s. 6d. “by consent.”
page 7 note † The Peryams were numerous at this time in Devonshire. Bodley, ancestor of the founder of the Bodleian library, and Peryam, merchants of Exeter, lent money to Lord Russel, in 1519, when he was sent to suppress the Cornish and Devon rebellion about the change of religion, and had not received his expected remittances from the court. A branch of the Peryams settled at Butleigh Wooton, co. Somersetshire. An heiress, married the late Captain Alexander Hood, R.N., who fell in command of the Mars when engaging L'Hercule, a French line-of-battle ship. His son is the present Sir Alexander Hood, Bart. M.P.
page 8 note * Aggrieved spirits looked to a parliament as their only hope against the great evils of the time.
page 8 note † Christian IV., the Queen's brother, did arrive, and the scenes of riot and intoxication attendant upon his entertainment (of which a sad picture is drawn by Sir John Harrington) must have added to the writer's previous hatred of masques and court banquets. Full particulars of the King's entertainment in England are collected in Nichols's “Progresses, &c, of King James the First.”
page 8 note ‡ This lady was married at fifteen, and died aged thirty-eight, having borne nine children, of whom three sons were at a birth. The four daughters of Sir William Peryam, co-heiresses, married Sir William Pole, Sir Robert Basset, Sir Robert Pointz, and William Williams, Esq. Sir John Peryam, brother of the Lord Chief Justice, left three daughters, co-heiresses, who married Reynell, Speccot, and Walter Yonge, the writer of this Diary.
page 9 note * Cecil, if not the King himself, is supposed to have been no stranger to this report, which may have been intended to quicken the generosity of the Commons.
page 9 note † There is a great deal of meaning in this brief entry. It serves to introduce an explanation that will be useful to the understanding many allusions in this Diary.
At this date ministers and preachers were distinct characters. The ordinary minister, beneflced or not, was not allowed to take the higher office of preaching without a licence from the bishop of the diocese, that he was “a sufficient or convenient preacher.” Without a licence the minister was only allowed to read plainly and aptly (without glossing or adding) the Homilies (49 Canon). If heneficed, when the living allowed it, he had to procure, once a month, the services of a licensed preacher (46 Canon). The people not respecting the “unpreaching ministers,” as inferiors in ability, refused to have their children baptized by them, or to receive the sacrament at their hands. The 57th Canon threatens such with excommunication, and ministers who baptized children belonging to another parish, with suspension.
The 54th Canon, sent forth A.D. 1603, menaced all licensed ministers with loss of licence if they did not conform to the laws, ordinances, &c. of the Church. So soon as 1606 ministers had their licences recalled for the purpose of having new ones issued, which would be withdrawn from those who were deemed to have been imbued with Geneva doctrine. Hence the lament of the writer. The opinions of his party as to preaching are reserved for a future note.
A recent proposed plan for creating an inferior order of clergy in the Church of England will have conferred interest upon this note; and especially as to the reception and treatment of an inferior clergy.
page 10 note * King James dispatched Sir Henry Wotton as ambassador to Venice, where there appeared, in consequence of a quarrel between Pope Paul V. and the Venetians, a disposition to commence a Reformation in the Church. Spain declared for the pope: James sent a “Premonition to all Christian princes and states” to the senate. The presentation of this paper was deferred till St. James's day, then not distant. When this day arrived, the Venetians thanked the ambassador, but declined making any alteration in their religion, as their differences with the Pope had been adjusted.
page 11 note * The West of England had the Spaniards too long for a frontier enemy to be soon reconciled.
page 11 note † The Orcades or Orkneys and Shetlands, though pawned to the crown of Scotland by Denmark a century before, were only yielded to Scotland as a dowry upon the marriage of Anne of Denmark to James VI. of Scotland, our James I. Mr. John Forbes, minister of Awford, was Moderator. The banishment was for life.
page 11 note † See a preceding entry respecting the prevention of “preaching ministers” from preaching, though preachers for twenty years, without a new licence.
The neighbouring borough of Lyme Regis, seven miles from the town of Colyton, was at this time torn by religious feuds; and some mention of these may tend to illustrate the state of society and the operation of religious differences upon it. The important body in every borough was the corporation. The members of this body at Lyme espoused different sides in religious matters, though all were within the pale of the Church of England. John Creare is a name of frequent mention at this date as the personification of all disturbing causes, broils, and contentions. He is sometimes described as “an unbeneficed preacher,” and had probably lost his licence to preach. The views he entertained of religious matters and observances were adopted by some zealous followers. Too earnest to rest in the quiet enjoyment of his owp views, he attempted to compel others to conform to his notions. He proceeded at law against the mayor and his brethren and the cobb-wardens (cobb, the ancient harbour) for the “using of profane and religious abuses.” Robert Hassard, gent, who possessed the manor of Seaton, a friend of the writer of this diary, greatly favoured the puritan minister. Others of the court party in the corporation charged him with misdemeanors wilfully committed in his mayoralty, and laid the matter before the Star Chamber, and he was accordingly dismissed from his rule and place of magistrate. For being a professed favourer of John Greare, and not having cleared himself by a judicial hearing before the Star Chamber, Hassard was expelled. John Viney was likewise suspended, and “was deemed unworthy of his place till by some worthy fruits of his conformity and amendment the mayor, &c. be moved to alter or change the order.” Lyme was a type of other boroughs. The puritan party gained the ascendant at the time of the civil war, and held it till the Restoration. At the passing of the Bartholomew Act in 1662 the ejected vicar formed a dissenting congregation.
page 12 note * Thomas Holland, fellow of Balliol college, made Divinity Professor in 1689, and Rector of Exeter college 1592.
page 12 note † Of Richard Haydock, M.D., the “sleeping preacher,” a full account will be seen in a letter of Edward Lascelles in Lodge's Illustrations of History. See also Wood's Athenee Oxonienses, (by Bliss,) vol. i. col. 678.
page 13 note * Sir Richard Prideaux was the writer's wife's great-uncle. (Authority of I. Davidson, esq. of Secktor House.)
page 13 note † This entry does not clearly set forth the precise meaning of the writer. The object he had in view was probably to expose the attempted fraud of a religious body he detested, in pretending that a seventh son, without a woman child born between, exercised great powers of healing. The writer would perhaps have never doubted the ability of the seventh son of a seventh son, and no woman child lorn between, to effect miraculous cures by touch alone.
It is now believed that a seventh son can cure diseases, but that a seventh son of a seventh son can cure the king'1s evil. In the History of Lyme Regis appears an anecdote of my being at Newenham Abbey farmhouse, in the parish of Axminster, where one child was allowed to touch my pencils, though the other children were made to stand back. I perceived there was something remarkable connected with the little boy, when the mother told me the child was a seventh son. Having expressed myself to be very desirous to know what a seventh son could do, the civil parent told me that “She did think to cure all diseases it should be the seventh son of a seventh son; but that many folk did come to touch her son /” So much for the boasted nineteenth century.
page 14 note * Fuller in his “Mixt Contemplations on these Times” speaks of the sad overflowing of the Severn sea on both sides; of which John Stowe, the industrious chronicler, wrote an account from the communications of Dr. Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and three other gentlemen. Fuller moralises the mention of dogs, cats, foxes, hares, conies, moles, mice, and rats having saved themselves upon some eminences—an unhappy family, still peaceably disposed towards each other. At Bamstaple, the water rose five or six feet higher than was ever remembered. This was doubtless a terrific storm in the British channel. One hundred persons lost their lives. The damage was estimated at £1000.
page 14 note † Edward Bourchier, Earl of Bath, died in 1636, He resided at Tawstock, now the seat of his descendant, Sir Bourchier Wrey, Bart.
page 14 note † Baker, in his Chronicle, couples an account of its raining blood with the appearance of a monstrous cock that came out of the sea at Portland, in the reign of Henry VI. So long as an opinion existed that great events were foreshadowed by preternatural appearances, individuals were to be found who boldly asserted they had witnessed the strangest sights.
page 15 note * The writer's abhorrence of all scenic exhibitions, stage-plays, interludes, masques, mixt-dancing, &c. was so great as to lead him to believe that “they tended to the high provocation of God's wrath.” During the reign of the long parliament, the order prescribed for demolishing the stage, galleries, seats, &c. of theatres, would exactly answer to that for the destruction of the interiors of dissenting meeting-houses in the reign of Charles II. Players were to be whipped and dealt with for the second offence as incorrigible rogues.
page 15 note † Beza.
page 16 note * Anthony Babington, of Dethick, in Derbyshire, a young gentleman of good family, who, though he at first objected to any attempt upon the life of Queen Elizabeth, at length proposed that six persons should be associated for the assasination of her Majesty. Babington was arraigned 13 Sep. 1586, and the whole of the conspirators were executed.
page 16 note † Whether the vicissitudes of the seasons were greater in former centuries than our own is a question that would demand to be treated of separately. Particular seasons that now produce no very serious inconvenience to the agriculturist beyond the greater consumption of hay were at this date attended with great loss to the farmer, who was exposed to the greatest trial in order to subsist his cattle, when long-continued frosts and a late spring had produced an unusual backwardness of vegetation. It was not till just half a century after this that Bligh in his “Improver Improved” pointed out the advantage of growing clover, and Sir Richard Weston enlightened our countrymen by an account of the cultivation of TURNIPS in Flanders, by which cattle and sheep might be fattened in winter.
The price of hay, taking into account the value of money, was extremely high, 81. Us. per ton, or nearly the value of three fat bullocks, in 1643.
In the archives of Sir William Pole, Bart., at Shute House, is a note or bill of the supplies furnished the parliamentary garrison of Lyme, 15 fat bullocks, some whereof oxen, 73Z., or 41. 17s. id. each; two fat bullocks 61. or Zl. each; 104 score truss of hay, 361., being a “very small value” at 4s. the truss.
page 18 note * Five shillings each, or twenty-five pounds.
page 19 note * He farmed some land. This last remark proves that this country gentleman had land in hand. Sir John Harington writes of his oves and loves.
page 19 note † The Court of Wards, instituted by statute 32 Hen. VIII. was not abolished until the restoration of Charles II.
page 19 † Monopolies were not abolished by statute until the 21st of this reign, 1623.
page 20 note * Well might this be written in strange characters, for the first on the list, the Earl of Northampton, proceeded in the Star Chamber in 1613 against several persons who had defamed him as a papist.
page 20 note † James I. adopted the name of Great Britain for his title, which Queen Elizabeth had first used as a collective appellation. A proclamation Oct. 23, 1604 set forth that the King had changed his title. His eldest son Henry was created Prince of Wales on the 4th June 1610.
page 21 note * Ash was the name of an ancient family settled at Sowton, now extinct.
page 21 note † James Montagu, Bishop of Bath and Wells.
William Cotton.
page 22 note * Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, was stadtholder and captain general of Holland and Zealand.
page 24 note * This happened at Newmarket, according to a letter printed in Nichols's Progresses, &c. of King James I. vol. ii. p. 607.
page 24 note † The writer, as here appears, carefully corrects the entries made by him when correct information enables him to do so. He sometimes added the word “True.”
page 25 note * Legatt before being sent to the bishops had been questioned by the royal schoolman. Another Arian, or as it is now termed Unitarian or Socinian, named Wightman, who was crazed, was burned at Lichfleld about the same time. These executions have an historic interest that must increase from year to year. Legatt and Wightman were the last victims at the stake of religious persecution! The age had advanced to this point of humanity, that it evinced such signs of horror, that rulers and ecclesiastics refrained from any persecution of erring mortals in matters of mere faith, without reference to politics, beyond harassing them by exclusion and imprisonment. No fire has been since lighted in our happy realm. The writer of the diary, like Stowe the chronicler, coolly records their fate without an expression of pity for the sufferers. The intolerance of the Puritans was remarkable. They banished settlers from Massachusetts because they were of the Church of England. The true principles of religious toleration were utterly repudiated by them. “God forbid,” said Dudley, one of their most esteemed leaders, “our love for the truth should be grown so cold that we should tolerate errors!”
page 26 note † This is incorrectly stated. The Baronets had precedency given them before knights bachelors, but not before knights of the bath, or knights bannerets, which were those made in the field under the King's banner displayed.
page 27 note † This old Somersetshire minister had attracted attention by preaching puritanically, with some intemperance perhaps. His study having been broken into, a sermon or treatise in MS. was found which had never been preached nor probably was ever intended to be preached. The King's fondness for dogs, dances, banquets, and costly dresses, and the frauds and oppressions practised by his government and officers, found a place in it. There was likewise a passage about “the King being stricken with death on the sudden, or within eight days, as Ananias or Nabal.” James insisted that the offence amounted to high treason. Coke took it to be a criminal slander, but not treason. Sir Francis Bacon drew up certain questions, which were put to our aged West-countryman before torture, during torture, between torture, and after torture 11 Within twelve years from this date, torture was abolished. Edmund Peacham's case was one of the worst of this reign. Judge Hobart being about to ride the western circuit, (judges did not use coaches at this time,) Peacham was sent into Somersetshire to be tried. He was condemned, but died in prison.
page 28 note * The latter was soon after Lord Chief Justice; see p. 29.
page 28 note † See “The Great Oyer of Poisoning. The trial of the Earl and Countess of Somerset for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. By Andrew Amos, Esq. 1846.”
page 29 note * The lord chancellor repealed a judgment at common law, and committed the defendants, who refused to obey his orders. The matter was referred to the King's attorney, solicitor, and Serjeant, who decided for the lord chancellor. Lord Campbell in his “Lives of the Chancellors” states that the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery to stay by injunction execution on judgment at law was thus finally established.
page 30 note * The same effect precisely has been witnessed by the writer of this note after a continuance of easterly wind and frost in early November, when the wind suddenly shifts to the south-west, and blows gently from that quarter. I do not doubt but that the same effect is always similarly produced at this season. The phosphorescence is surprising.
page 31 note * There was no post yet established. Letters were dispatched by private hands. The driver of the horses that carried the fish to London from Lyme probably conveyed many letters.
page 31 note † Antonius de Dominis, archbishop of Spalatro, had quarrelled with the Pope and made common cause with the Venetians, renounced popery, and visited the United Provinces, but eventually came to England. He was made Master of the Savoy and Dean of Windsor, and had the honour of frequently preaching before the lords of the Council. After a residence of some time in England, distinguished in various ways, the Spanish ambassador offered to negotiate his return to Rome, with a prospect of his being made a cardinal by Gregory XV. It is uncertain whether this was in good faith, or to prove to James I. the insincerity of De Dominis' conversion. This remarkable man now retracted all he had said and written; was ordered by James to leave England in three days, and went to Rome, where Gregory XV. received him well; but his successor Urban VIII. threw him into the Inquisition. “He suffered,” writes Baker, “the death of a heretic, though not the shame; had the punishment of a martyr, but not the honour; and was publicly burnt, yet not burnt alive, but, dying in prison, and then buried, his body was afterwards taken up and burnt,” while his ashes were scattered to the winds.
page 32 note * James Montague, who had been translated from Bath and Wells, 26 June, 1616. Sir Francis Bacon was made Lord Keeper 7 March, 1616-17: there was then no Chancellor.
page 33 note * Long before he finally retired lie had solicited his release from the toils and cares of office. It was only with reluctance James consented to accept his resignation. See his letter in Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. ii. 254.
page 33 note † The intestine divisions of Bohemia between the Romanists, Lutherans, and Calvinists belong to the page of general history. After a revolt from Austria the Calvinistic insurgents declared their crown to have been elective, and offered it to the Elector of Saxony, who declined the honour, and then to the Elector Palatine Frederick, who had married the princess Elizabeth, the King of England's daughter. Without making a proper estimate of his means to resist the house of Austria and the Catholics, Frederick consented to be crowned at Prague, 4 Nov. 1619. James I. foretold the unhappy termination of the affair; though he sent a small force eventually to meddle with the affairs of Germany, as the British have since done on account of Hanover, it was only because he could not resist the cry of indignation raised at home. The excited English viewed this, which eventually ran into the Thirty Years' War, as a war of religion. The writer of this diary records the Palsgrave of the Rhine as the champion of Protestantism, as led by God. He could not have been made to believe that, when his friend Sir Walter Erie and party seized and held Lyme for the cause of the Parliament and religion, the Palsgrave's son, Prince Maurice, would advance against this neighbouring borough with an army of Irish Catholics.
page 34 note * James I. proposed that the different Christian powers should unite to destroy the great piratical haunt, Algiers, and burn the ships there.
page 34 note † Count Mansfeldt was Ernest, natural son of Count Peter Ernest, Count of Mansfeldt. He served the Emperor and the King of Spain, but eventually entered the service of the Duke of Savoy against Spain. After a life of great military fame he died in 1626. From his want of regular authority and resources, the house of Austria named him the “Attila of Christendom.”
page 35 note * Dragons, afterwards styled dragoons, from a short sword so called which they wore, first raised in the year 1600 by Marshal de Brisae.
page 35 note † Waivode of Transylvania, that made himself master of Hungary.
This was a false report. Gustavus Adolphus married Eleonora of Brandenburg.
page 36 note * An opinion hastily set up, that bribery was customary and therefore somewhat excusable, is now exploded, Latimer preached against the corruption of receiving bribes. Justice Hale carried his scruples regarding presents to an extent which exposed him to ridicule from some, and to the imputation of pharisaical uprightness from others. Thus the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury having a case to try before him on the western circuit, he insisted on being allowed to pay for the six sugar-loaves which according to long established custom they presented to him. The acceptance of bribes was common, says the Edinburgh Reviewer, but never otherwise than as a thing which was disapproved and discountenanced by all good men. The practice of etrennes is abolished in France.
The Mayors of Lyme Regis made presents whenever they became suitors, as a few extracts from the archives of that borough attest.
page 37 note * Judge of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury; 'died 1627. See the peerage, tit. Earl of Tankerville.
page 37 note † Of all patent monopolists Sir Giles Mompesson was the most notorious and abhorred. He and Sir Francis Miehell had two patents: one for making gold and silver thread, and another for licensing inns and alehouses. They had used other than foreign gold, contrary to the law; and their other monopoly had been the cause of great hardship. The King abandoned Mompesson and the prerogative to the Commons. The offender escaped: Michell was fined l,000Z. and imprisoned. Yelverton, who owed his rise to Somerset, was implicated through the malice of Buckingham. He was sentenced to be fined and imprisoned for life; but released two months after, “with hope that his fine shall be remitted.” He was afterwards a judge. See Nichols's Progresses, &e. of King James I. vol. ii. p. 703; vol. iii. p. 610.
page 39 note * The Due de Rohan was the son-in-law of Sully, and brother of the Count de Soubise.
page 39 † Francis de Bonne, Duke of Lesdiquièes of Dauphiné, born in 1543, was chosen their chief by the Calvinists of that province, and took Grenoble in 1590. After the death of De Luynes nothing but his religion prevented him from succeeding as Constable of France. This obstacle waa removed by his abjuration of Calvinism in 1622. His great merits were sullied by several vices. He died in 1626.
page 40 note * Sir James Ley, afterwards Lord Treasurer, and Earl of Marlborough. See his epitaph in Hoare's Modern Wiltshire, Hundred of Westbury, p. 15.
page 41 note * Though this fleet did not encounter the Dutch, it approached Algiers, without, however, the promised supply of ships from Spain. Sir Robert Mansell attacked the Algerines, and set fire to their ships; but a tremendous fall of rain extinguished the flames, and with the exception of two all were preserved from the British, and booms thrown across prevented another attack.
page 42 note * This unfortunate accident occurred at Bramshill, the seat of Lord Zouch, where the archbishop shot the keeper with his cross-bow, both being on horseback at the time. The King's reception of the news, the result of the coroner's inquest, and the subsequent eonduct of the special commission of trial, will be found in Nichols's Progresses, &c. of King James the First, vol. iii. p. 709. After nearly five months, the proceedings were closed by a royal pardon, which is printed in Rymer's Fcedera, vol. xvii. p. 337.
page 42 note † The first attempt to introduce the pure Arabian blood into this country was made in this reign. The experiment does not appear to have met with the support it deserved. After a lapse of many years the Arabian was again resorted to, as lately as the reign of Queen Anne. See Bell's History of British Quadrupeds.
page 44 note * Blank in the MS.
page 44 note † Williams, Laud, Davenant, and Cary, the bishops elect, scrupled to be consecrated by Archbishop Abbott, whom they disliked, as being of the Low Church or Puritan party, owing to his accident.
page 45 note * The Devonshire word for starlings.
page 46 note * John Tzerelaes, Count of Tilly, descended from a noble family of Brussels, was at first a Jesuit, afterwards a celebrated general. He commanded the troops of Bavaria; opposed and expelled the Duke of Brunswick from the Palatinate, and had the chief command against the Protestant forces led by the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus. His name is infamous from his cruelties at the sack of Magdeburg. He died from a shot after a battle with Gustavus in 1632.
page 48 note * De Luynes died of grief at the failure before Montauban.
page 48 note † See several accounts of this accident in Nichols's Progresses, &c. of King James I. vol. iii. pp. 749, 750. The water was the New River.
page 48 note ‡ The erroneous impression that death by drowning proceeds from the quantity of water swallowed is not yet wholly exploded, nor the consequent illtreatment of the sufferer, notwithstanding the admirable directions for such cases issued by the Royal Humane Society.
page 49 note * This piece of the “thunderbolt” was most probably a nodule of sulphuret of iron, or iron pyrites. The former appellation of this substance was thunderbolt, which from its smell and appearance was popularly judged to have been formed in the sky by the action ef the electric fluid. Sulphuret of iron is found upon the shore near the landslip of Dowlands and Eastward of Lyme, where the poor collect it for parties who procure the extraction of sulphur, &c, at Plymouth. Sulphuric aeid used to be made from these nodules. Sir William Strode lived at Newenham Plympton, near Plymouth. His daughter Elizabeth married the writer's son, John Yonge, who became the first baronet, by whom he had five sons and four daughters.
page 49 note † The writer means laws passed that were intended to be in operation not permanently, but only for a certain definite period, and then to cease unless renewed.
page 49 note ‡ Sir Eobert Phelips of Montacute House, near Yeovil, Somerset, the son of Sir Edward Phelips, a serjeant at law, Speaker of the House of Commons in 1603, was the nephew of Sir Thomas Phelips, Bart.
page 50 note * James I. dared not execute Somerset. There was some guilty secret–a mystery into which Dr. Taylor leaves others to penetrate.—Bentley's Miscellany, Dec. 1846. Lord Ellesmere resolutely refused to affix the great seal to the extraordinary pardon of Somerset and his wife
page 50 note † This news greatly interested the writer, who marked the same with a rose in the margin.
page 50 note ‡ By tradesmen is meant those workmen or operatives who followed some particular manufacture called a trade, as clothing, linen trade, &c.
page 51 note * For having been “agents” or active members, they were sent upon forced commissions into Ireland, in order to punish and get rid of them.
page 52 note * These laws had been passed not permanently, but only for a definite period, at the expiration of which they required to be renewed. The writer complains of the neglect in allowing them to expire. A proper officer now keeps a register of such laws.
page 52 note † The ancient remedies applied to the diseased body politic are interesting. One class of traders alone appears to have had the cure assigned to them.
page 52 note ‡ Payments were all this reign for the most part in gold. In 1614 the price of gold was raised two shillings in the pound, or ten per cent.—Wilson.
page 53 note * The writer's alarm on account of a system of punishing reluctant parties by sending them on forced missions was a just one. The plan was adopted to the letter.
page 53 note † The factory system had not yet obtained. Weavers took the yarn to their own homes and there wove it.
page 56 note * The West of England had been the seat of the cloth manufacture for a considerable time. The Norman peasantry wore our kerseys. The workpeople took their master's materials to be manufactured at their own homes, and not in great buildings, as under the factory system. The cloths were exported in an undyed and undressed state, to be finished by the foreigner, who made 500,000l. by doing so. Much of this work was done at Amsterdam: the goods were then sold in Spain and Portugal as Flemish bays. James I. in 1608, prohibited the export of undyed cloths, and granted an exclusive right to Alderman Cockayne of dying and dressing cloths. The states of Holland and the German cities upon this prohibited the importation of all English-dyed cloths. Cockayne could only sell his cloths at home; they were dearer and not so good as the cloths finished in Holland. The offensive patent was annulled in 1615. The English clothiers had adopted a new method, that of dying wool before weaving it. The commissioners appointed to inquire into the causes of the decline of trade, the fall in the price of wool, &c. were to consider if it was not behoveful to put in execution the laws still in force which obliged merchant-strangers to lay out the proceeds of the merchandize imported by them on the native commodities of the realm. The method of producing a fine scarlet dye was taught by a Dutchman twenty years from this date; and, the art of fixing the colours made of logwood being acquired, the act for prohibiting the use of logwood was repealed in 1660. The West of England has now ceased to be a great manufacturing district, and the trade has gone to the North.
page 56 note † Pilots used to be sent up to London to be examined, as these clothiers were. Commissioners now collect evidence upon the spot and view the locality, a mode much more efficient in eliciting the truth.
page 57 note * Don Carlos de Coloma: see Finetti Philoxenis, pp. 103, et seq.
page 57 note † The worthy writer appears to treat the “breaking of the heart” literally. Who does not know in the present day that the expression before quoted is a figurative one? In the intimate connection between mind and body, great and sudden grief often affects the stomach and interrupts the due exercise of the functions of the body, when death ensues.
page 60 note * Tobias, eldest son of Tobias Matthew, Bishop of Durham and afterwards Archbishop of York. He was a man of singular character, and, in his travels having met with the Jesuit Parsons, changed his religion and became a Jesuit. He was banished by an Order in Council, and the House of Commons acquiesced, though he was a member. He retired to Spain till 1617, when he returned through the intercession of the Duke of Buckingham, but was obliged again to abscond, and he finally returned from Spain with the Prince of Wales, was knighted Oct. 10,1623, and devoted himself to poetry and the welfare of the Romish Church in England.
page 62 note * The Vice-Chancellor sent the sermon to the King; who in argument with the preacher found him ready to be refuted, and so spared him for his reasonableness. The young preacher said he had imbibed these sentiments from the works of Paraæus, a Calvinistic divine of Heidelberg. The King now compelled all graduates to sign a declaration of the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistwnce, the contrary opinion to that now advanced, and which was always dwelt upon at the execution of Dissenters after Monmouth's rebellion by the clergy of the Church of England. The court now stood committed against the Calvinists.
page 62 note † Viscount Grrandison, with remainder to Sir Edward Villiers, the Favourite's halfbrother, in whose family the dignity has descended to the present Earl of Jersey.
page 63 note * There can be no mistake as to the species of fish. It was the phoccma melas or Caaing whale of Bell's cetacea. Several hundreds of these fish run ashore or are driven ashore upon the Shetland isles at one time. Whether the blowing at the pole is that of air or water is still a disputed matter. In the year 1845 no less than 2,500 of these fish came ashore in the British isles.
page 63 note † Quealed, curled up; davered, withered. A real Devonshire person will excuse any explanation of these words: to him this is quite unnecessary.
page 65 note * This extraordinary occurrence is recorded by Baker in his Chronicle.
page 65 note † The discontents between the gentry and commonalty in some counties respecting inclosures grew to a petty rebellion in this reign. Sanderson gives a story of James I. being about, when on a hunting excursion in Berkshire, to dine with a man of title, when he came to a fellow in the stocks. The King asked him what was the cause of his restraint. The man of title said it was for stealing a goose from the common. The fellow in the stocks appealed to the King as to who was the greater thief, he for stealing geese from the common, or his worship for robbing the common from the geese? “By my saule, sir,” said the King, “I'se not dine to-day on your dishes till you restore the common for the poor to feed their flocks.” The man was set free, and the restoration of the common quieted the country.
page 66 note * Proclamations were current coin, which the people took for good payment a great while, till the multitude of them lessened their value.—Wilson.
page 66 note † This West-countryman, like the writer of our diary, felt deeply for the distressed Lady Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia. “The Lieutenant of Middle Temple played a game this Christmas time whereat his Majestie was highly displeased. He made choise of some thirty of the civillest and best-fashioned gentlemen of the house to sup with him, and, being at supper, took a cup of wine in one hand and held his sword drawn in the other, and so began a health to the distressed Lady Elizabeth, and, having drunk, kissed his sword, and, laying his hand upon it, took an oath to live and die in her service; then delivered the cup and sword to the next, and so the health and ceremonie went round.”—Rev. Joseph Meade, in Sir H. Ellis's Original Letters.
page 67 note * Sir Edward Villiers was named in remainder to the dignity of viscount Grandison, conferred on his wife's uncle Sir Oliver St. John, but he never became a peer himself.
page 69 note * Mr. Justice Doddridge, whose tomb as Sir John Doddridge is to be seen in Exeter Cathedral, died in 1628. He was a considerable antiquary, and a native of Devonshire, which from early times has been distinguished as the nursing mother of eminent lawyers; so that Puller deemed this county “innated with a genius to study law.”
page 69 note † Buckingham was the first subject made a duke who was unconnected with the royal blood.
page 69 note ‡ Chancellor Williams said recusants were pardoned and leniently dealt with to secure better treatment for Protestants abroad.
page 70 note * A rare pamphlet by Samuel Clark, pastor of Benet Pinek, entitled “The Fatal Vespers,” contains a “true and full narrative of the signal judgment of God upon the papists.” On the Lord's day, Oct. 26, according to the English account; but Nov. 5, according to the popish account or style. The congregation was a mixed one of Protestants and Roman Catholics. Lady Web and Lady Blackstone's daughter were amongst the slain. Drury, a man of great parts, and Redyates, another priest, were both killed. Two floors gave way. Upon the under floor were many who could not find room above, where the preacher was pressing the sacrament of penance.
page 71 note * During this reign were the roaring boys, bravadoes, roysters, &c. The streets of London swarmed day and night with drunken quarrels.
page 72 note * On a forced mission, as a punishment for their objectionable speeches and actions.
page 73 note * Sir Walter Aston, Kt. of Tixall, Staffordshire, was made a Baronet in 1611, and was sent ambassador to Spain in 1620 to propose the match between the Prince and the Infanta. He was created a Scotch peer by the title of Baron Aston, of Porfar in 1627; was the patron of Drayton the poet, and died in 1627.
page 73 note † Thomas first Lord Arundell of Wardour, so created 1605, had been previously, in 1595, made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire by the Emperor Rodolph.
page 74 note * The writer lived to hear of a priest being arrested on the eobb of Lyme Regis in 1635, who from a contrary wind could not sail within the time prescribed. He was executed at Dorchester.
page 75 note * This refers to what is known in history as the Massacre of Amboyna. The Dutch had captured this island from the Portuguese. The East India Company formed a little settlement in the island, which excited the jealousy of the Dutch to such a degree that, pretending a conspiracy, they tortured and put to death ten Englishmen and nine Japanese.
page 76 note * Brother to the Countess of Middlesex, the wife of the late Lord Treasurer (Cranfield): see further of this aspirant in the Progresses of King James I. vol. iii. pp. 970, 984.
page 76 note † The Low Countries were thS school in which the younger sons of our gentry learned the art of war. Many came home a few years from this time to practise that art against their fellow countrymen at the beginning of the civil commotions.
page 79 note * At this period of our history the men of the West of England were ever complaining of the “Dunkirk frigates,” which certainly carried great alarm to their coast. The city and port of Dunkirk was the stronghold of the Spaniards; but many of the ships that sailed thence were rovers.
page 80 note * This is according to the old style; the new style would be April 8. The Puritans made a point of not using the new style, as emanating from what they took to be the modern Babylon, Rome. To do so was considered eminently papistical until the legal alteration of the style.
page 82 note * At the beginning of the Diary is this note: “Plagues of England noted by figures in the margin.” Against the present paragraph the author has drawn a rose, marking outsoldiers as one of the greatest plagues of the country. During their stay all kinds of violence abounded. Under modern discipline, the people of an invaded country suffer less than did the counties formerly at the hands of their own countrymen in arms. Hence the gratuities to officers to march further, that no demands might be made during the halt for hose, shoes, shirts, and conduct money.
page 83 note * From July 2 to July 27 there died of the plague in London 2,491 persons.
page 84 note * Dr. Montague was the author of a Treatise of Invocation of Saints, 1624, and other works of controversial divinity, the titles of which will be found in Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual. The Commons took him into custody; and, though the King interfered, would not let him go till he had given bail in 2,000l. The doctor was made bishop of Chichester 1628, and translated to Norwich 1638.
page 85 note * The French Protestant fleet at sea, sent out from Roohelle by Soubise and his party, was too powerful for the Catholic fleet. Richelieu applied to Charles for assistance. The King and Buckingham agreed to aid the French Catholics against the Protestants, but under pretence of joining France against Genoa. So neglected was the navy, that only one man of war, the Vanguard, was ready for sea. Seven merchant vessels of the largest size were pressed into the service. A warrant under the great seal was issued to call the ships' companies aboard, with orders to repair to such port as the French ambassador might direct. Off Dieppe, the Lord Admiral of France, the Duke of Montmorency, communicated the intelligence that French sailors and soldiers were to be taken on board, and that the expedition was Against THE Protestants of Rochelle! Captains and men refused, and forced the Admiral Pennington to sail back to the Downs.
The French Protestants implored King Charles not to employ his forces against his Protestant brethren, and had good words and hopes from the King. Buckingham with a manliness above paltry insincerity said the ships must and should go. Historians inform us how infamously the sailors were again tricked to go against Genoa, reached Dieppe, and tried to sail away; but were fired upon by Pennington by Charles's express orders, and forced to remain, except Sir Ferdinand Gorge, in the Neptune. The gallant sailors compelled to sail to Rochelle either joined the Huguenots or returned home. Their treatment formed one of the charges against Buckingham. Eternal infamy rests upon Charles I. for his conduct throughout this affair.
page 86 note * Ash House, the seat of the Drake family in the parish of Musbury.
page 86 note † Hinton House, the seat of Mr. Poulett, soon after created Baron Poulett, the ancestor of the present Earl Poulett, in the parish of Hinton St. George, near Crewkarne, called by the people George Hinton, to distinguish it from Bower Hinton, &c.
page 86 note ‡ In 1644 this nobleman marched to the relief of Lyme Regis, then being besieged by Prince Maurice, at the head of “Christ's Army Royal.”
page 86 note § Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, who died at Padua in 1644. It was to his house that old Parr went in his visit to London. The Arundels had a seat at Chideoek, five miles east of Lyme, in the parish of Whitchurch Canonioorum, for many years. Colyford is a small village, once a borough, one mile south of Colyton, situated on the road from London to Exeter.
page 87 note * Ford House is in the parish of Woolborough, one mile from Newton Abbot, near Teignmouth.
Sir Richard Reynell was a learned and eminent lawyer of the Middle Temple and autumn reader of that house 12 James I. He held an office in the Exchequer, and obtained great wealth, which enabled him to purchase the estate and to build the mansion yet standing there.
Thursday, Sept. 15, after dinner his Majesty conferred the honour of knighthood in the dining room on Sir Richard Reynell, of West Ogwell, near Ford House, where the ancient mansion of the Reynells stood, which has been supplanted by a modern house; on Thomas Reynell, his brother, who at that time was his majesty's servant and sewer in ordinary to his person; and on John Yonge, in presence of their wives and divers lords and ladies, saying to them “God give you joy.” After that the King went on to Plymouth, and returned to Ford the 24th of the same month, and the Sunday following went to Woolborough church.
Lysons's Devon contains, from Chappie's collections, a copy of the steward's account of the provisions sent in for his Majesty's entertainment; with the expense of the same that were purchased. A great proportion consisted of presents; so that the cost of the reception of royalty is not accurately estimated.
The provision for the first visit consisted of a buck and a side of venison, sent by Mr. Reynell, of Ogwell, and a buck from Mr. Poulett, of Hinton. Amongst the fish, three dories, two mullets, two gurnets, twenty-five peels, two salmons, and eight pair and a half of soles. Of game and fowls, 140 partridges, seven pheasants, sixty-one chickens, fortysix capons, ten ducks, fourteen pullets, six geese, seventy-one turkeys, twenty-eight pigeons, one pea-hen, two mallards, two green plovers, eight plovers, one gull, three dozen of larks, thirty-eight rabbits, and one hare; besides mutton, veal, Iamb, &c.; six artichokes were among the vegetables; the whole expense of the first entertainment was 281.18s. 5d.
For the second entertainment, Sir Amias Poulett gave a buck; Mr. Luff, of Torre, a doe; Dr. Clifford, a hunted teage (a doe of a year old); Mr. Beard gave a mutton, killed and dressed. The fish consisted of eight score mullets, three dozen and a half whitings, four salmons, seven peels, seven dories, twenty-one plaice, twenty-six soles, fortyeight lobsters, 550 pilchards, &c. Among the fowls and game, sixty-nine partridges, five pheasants, twelve pullets, fourteen capons, 112 chickens, four ducks, six geese, thirtyseven turkeys, sixty-nine pigeons, ninety-two rabbits, one barnacle, one hernshaw, twelve sea larks, eleven curlews, twenty-one and a half dozen of larks, one heath-pult, two nynnets, six sea-pyes, one stone curlew, four teals, three pea-hens, and two gulls. Among the more substantial provisions, were six oxen and kine, five muttons, two veals and a half; besides several entries of ribs of beef, quarters of mutton, chines, tongues, a side of lamb, and a Westphalia gammon. The liquors enumerated, are, two hogsheads of beer, a barrel of canary wine, and thirty-five quarts of white wine. The whole expense of the second entertainment was 551. 5s.
The writer calls Sir Richard Reynell, of Ogwell, his Cousin, (using the word in the general sense of kinsman,) though he was in fact only the husband of his wife's niece.
page 88 note * Thus the command of the greatest joint-naval power that had ever spread sail upon salt water—the Dutch contributing sixteen sail and the English eighty sail—was given to a very unsuccessful general, a landsman whom the sailors, vexed at his appointment, viewed with contempt.
page 88 note † To raise money by pawning the crown jewels and plate. He raised 300,000l.
page 88 note ‡ These principal parliament-men were especially obnoxious to the King, who, because sheriffs could not sit in the House, made the appointments on purpose to exclude them.
page 89 note * By a feudal law this was obligatory. About lOO.OOOl. were raised by this harassing proceeding from compositions. Sir David Fowlis was fined 5,000l. for dissuading a friend from compounding.
page 92 note * The judges did not venture to hold the assizes at Exeter; but rode to Tiverton and sat in the great school-room at Blundell's Grammar school. See Lysons's Devon.
page 93 note * Arminianism or the doctrine taught by Arminius in the university of Leyden in this reign—the very opposite of Calvinism, then established in Holland, on an important point. The follower of Arminius believes the salvation of every man to depend not on the absolute predestination and irresistible grace of God; but on each individual's use of his own free will to accept or reject the grace purchased by Christ's blood. The Pelagians followed Pelagius, a native of Britain of the fifth century, in maintaining that we derive no corruption from the fall of our first parents, but that, in general terms, we have powers sufficient to work out our own salvation. The Ninth Article of the Church of England condemns the Pelagian heresy.
Both these doctrines were directly opposed to Calvinism, the sheet-anchor of the Puritan party; and as such are here placed in juxta-position. Arminian sentiments in theology were held to be inclinations towards Popery and absolute monarchy. The Commons assailed Neile and Laud as addicted to Arminianism, “a damnable and slave-making heresy.” Sir Simonds D'Ewes writes of Arminius and his followers as “a rabble of jesuited Anabaptists.”
page 94 note * George Chudleigh, Esq. of an ancient family settled at Ashton, co. Devon, was created a Baronet in 1622.
page 95 note * This marriage was afterwards concluded at Christmas, 1634; but the young Lord Herbert, being sent on his travels, died of the small-pox at Florence, in Jan. 1635.
page 96 note * Some county gentleman generally managed a county for the King. This ancestor of the present Earl Poulett had been visited by his Majesty, and was created Lord Poulett. Under Charles II. the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Mew, was all powerful in that county, and was a correspondent of the court.
page 97 note * Sir John Richardson had been Speaker of the last Parliament of James I. He was very unpopular, as may be seen by the stories related in the Society's volume of Anecdotes and Traditions, pp. xxi. 19, 53. His wife abovementioned was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Beaumont, of Stoughton Grange, co. Leicester, and widow of Sir John Ashburnham, of Ashburnham, Sussex. In 1628, she was created a Baroness of the kingdom of Scotland, with remainder, not to her own children (she had a family by Ashburnham, but none by Richardson), but to those of her husband by his former marriage, and Sir John Richardson's grandson consequently succeeded on her death in 1651. It was the first creation of a peerage to a female in Scotland. See Douglas's Peerage, by Wood, vol. i. p. 363.
page 99 note * Moon, through the inadvertence of the writer, was spelt as he perhaps pronounced it, and as those who still retain the Devonshire dialect pronounce it, viz. mune.
page 99 † This report was perhaps altogether unfounded; the Earl of Bristol lived to 1653.
page 100 note * Dru Drury, Esq. repeated some lines of which these are a version at Bury Lent Assizes, 1627, so near Sir Nicholas Hyde, then sitting on the bench, that some thought he must have heard.
Learned Coke, curt Montague,
The aged Lea, and honest Crew.
Two prefer‘d, two set aside,
And then starts up Sir Nicholas Hide.
They were the five successive Chief Justices of the King‘s Bench. Sir Edward Coke was removed in 1616; Sir Henry Montagu and Sir James Ley were each promoted to be Lord Treasurer in 1620 and 1624; Sir Ranulph Crewe resigned in 1626, when Sir Nicholas Hyde succeeded.
Sir N. Hyde died in 1631, of fever, taken in riding fifty miles one hot day on the circuit, in a whitish blue cloak, to which objection was taken, as it made him look more like a clothier than a judge.
page 102 note * The gallant and witty Marshal de Bassompierre was the first who exhibited a coach with glass windows. Born in 1579, he died in 1646. He was the friend of Henry IV. and exercised great power over Mary de Medicis and Louis XIII. Richelieu caused him to be imprisoned in the Bastille in 1631, where he remained twelve years.
page 103 note * There are now but small remains of this castellated mansion. Ilton Castle was built by Sir John Chiverston, in 1335, who had a grant from the Crown for that purpose. It came to the Courtenays by marriage, and is now the property of the Earl of Devon.
page 103 note † Pewter plate was in great demand when silver did not so much abound, and when china dinner-services were unknown. The poor used wooden trenchers. Boroughs had their town-pewter for their civic feasts. This at Lyme Regis was sold in 1704 during the mayoralty of Nathaniel Butler. It consisted of 22 platters; 4 pye plates; 2 pasty plates; 72 trencher plates, all weighing 411 lbs. at 7d. per 1b.—11l. 19s. 8d. Private collection of the Editor.
page 103 ‡ Lest pirates might be confounded with privateers or even with enemies, as mentioned in an entry for June of this year, 1627, a short picture of the state of our channel may be introduced, which must dispel all ideas of the grandeur and true power of the British at sea as compared with what they now lay claim to and really possess beyond any other nation. The ships, however small, were often manned by men not mariners, and by officers not bred to a seafaring life—the greater part of whom were useless from sicknesswhen a second reef was taken in, like the crews of some French and Spanish ships in the present day. There are many entries in this diary illustrative of the state of the navy, the bad provisions, the failure to pay the mariners, their lawlessness in consequence, and other memorable proofs of the effects of bad government. There was a nucleus for the formation of a great navy in the true mariners and officers, strictly speaking, sailors, and the pirates that abounded.
It was a Scotish freebooter or pirate that gave notice of the approach of the Spanish armada. Such pirates abounded. A letter was sent in 1557 by the Lords of the Privy Council to the Mayor of Poole and his brethren, desiring them to use vigilance for defence of the towns and coasts against the enemy. Again in 1577 against the pirates, and further in 1584 the Lords of the Council ordered the Mayor of Poole to fit out a ship against the pirates infesting the coast. No wonder that pirates continued if their suppression depended upon the exertions of a corporate body. We are reminded of the town of Palos being commanded to set out Columbus upon his memorable voyage.
Pirates must not be confounded with the privateers of later wars: these had letters of marque granted by the executive, and went forth openly to cruize against the most defenceless of the enemy's vessels. The pirates of this earlier date were genuine searobbers, and thorough-going seamen, though we recoil from their personal character.
Some of the most noted Englishmen who earned that infamous appellation, Ward, Bishop, Sir Francis Verney, and Glanville, turned Turks and lived at Tunis. Assisted by Englishmen, the Barbary corsairs not only scoured the English and St. George's channels, but even disembarked, pillaged the villages, and carried the inhabitants into slavery, to the number of several thousands.—(Stafford's Letters). Scaliger had affirmed of our countrymen Nulli melius piraticam exercent quam Angli. One vessel the Algerines captured was worth 260,000l. The Dutch resumed their fishing without a licence, and captured two rich East Indiamen. France, Spain, and Holland violated the neutrality, and insulted the English flag. The French scoured the Severn in 1628; but the dreaded Spaniards did not land in the West after 1595, when they disembarked at Mousehole, near Penzance. Towns on the coast had scarcely any houses visible from the sea, and were on that side well surrounded with walls and little forts. “Pirates and other enemies” were sometimes repulsed, as at Lyme, A. D. 1513. The collections in the West for redeeming prisoners from captivity in Algiers were possessed of a local interest, as were bequests of money for the “mainteynance of the towne gonnes.”Gunpowder, however, began to be manufactured by Englishmen in the time of James I. In 1597, France and England were mutually complaining and quarrelling about the violence and injury committed by the pirates of either nation. Lawless men when on the seas, before civilization had advanced, were ever prone to robbery to furnish means for vicious enjoyment. In the reign of Henry III. there was quite a petty warfare at sea carried on by the towns of Lyme and Dartmouth in the same bay, though the men of the latter place then spoke Cornish. So late as the year 1633, Lord Wentworth, appointed lord-deputy of Ireland, names noted pirate vessels off the coast of Ireland, and their captures. The Turks carried off a hundred captives from Baltimore, in Ireland, in 1631. They landed their poor captives at Rochelle and marched them in chains to Marseilles. And in 1645, the Turks carried off twenty-six children at one time from Cornwall. The Editor has a curious bill of expenses for sending pirates with their hands tied behind them on horseback to Dorchester gaol.
page 104 note * To the present day every fire in in the dockyards is attributed to the agency of foreigners by perhaps the majority of our countrymen, who reject “spontaneous combustion,” the assigned cause in many instances.
page 105 note * The Duke of Buckingham now recovers his popularity with the Puritans by leading a force to the support of the Protestants at Eochelle.
page 106 note * Dr. John Cosin was a high churchman, afterwards Bishop of Durham. A member of the House charged Dr. John Cosin with having changed the word minister in the Common Prayer into that of priest, and had put out the word elect. Dr. Cosin had written a book to bring odium upon the Puritans, and especially to represent Cartwright, their leader, as privy to designs of sedition and treason. He became an exile during the Civil War and Protectorate. After his death in 1672, it was pretended he had left a black box containing a contract of marriage between Charles II. and the mother of the Duke of Monmouth. See Life of the Duke of Monmouth, vol. i. 82, by G. Roberts.
page 107 note * The great mound of earth thrown up on this occasion in order to the erection of a fort on the summit, stands on the broad shingle beach, a little to the eastward of the sea front, if front it can be said to possess, of Seaton. By a corruption it is called The Burrow, instead of its correct appellation The Barrow. No one knew in 1845 how it came there, which proves how tradition often fails to perpetuate the recollection of really important transactions. The Barrow cost 24l.
Nothing whatever is said of orders from the Council; the worthy magistrates proceeded at once to tax the country by issuing out warrants, feeling the ancient precept to be binding on them, Ne quid detrimenti respublica caperet. The country responded to their call; and perhaps discriminated correctly between the genuine interest felt by a Prideaux, Pole, Drake, and Yonge, and the heartlessness of a debauched court. A beacon on Trinity-hill, near Axminster, was erected by warrants from magistrates in this county in 1678. Axminster and adjoining parishes bore the expense, viz. 28l. as appears in the collection of James Davidson, Esq. Secktor House.
page 107 note † The minister alluded to was the famous Dr. Sibthorp, vicar of Brackley, who was a preacher of the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance. On one occasion he chose the text Rom. xiii. 7, “Render, therefore, to all their dues.” He likewise told the people that even if the prince, the anointed of the Lord, should command a thing contrary to the laws of God or of Nature, still the subjects were bound to submit to the punishment, only praying secretly that Heaven might turn the prince from the error of his ways, but offering no resistance, no railing—nothing but a passive obedience. His great proof for all this was a verse in Ecclesiastes, viii. 4. “Where the word of a king is, there is power; and who may say unto him, What doest thou?” See the Life of the Duke of Monmouth by George Roberts, vol. ii. 289. The Dissenters, the representatives of the Puritans, were much pestered respecting this doctrine when at the gallows after Monmouth's rebellion in the reign of James II. The sermon is said to have been purposely sent to try the archbishop. Laud licensed it.
page 108 note * The manor of Axminster, and that of Shute adjoining Colyton, belonged at this time to Lord Petre, whose residence was at Ingatestone, and afterwards at Horndon Hall, in Essex.
page 108 note † Dr. Williams, late Lord Keeper.
page 108 note ‡ The meaning evidently is, that the offending parties were to be sent upon “forced missions.” Sir Dudley Digges, Sir Thomas Crew, Sir Nathaniel Rich, and Sir James Parott had been sent on a commission into Ireland as a sort of cover for banishment, on account of their free conduct in the House of Commons.
page 109 note * See further entries respecting the imprisonment of the writer's friend and neighbour \ Sir Walter Erie, of Bindon, the site of the famed landslip. Mr. Justice Erie is the descendant of this ancient family.
page 110 note * The reason must be expressed upon every commitment for which it is made, that the court upon an habeas corpus may examine into its validity; and according to the circumstances of the case may discharge, admit to bail, or remand the prisoner. This remark is deemed necessary to prevent any mistake as to the statute 16 Charles I. and the famous Habeas Corpus Act, another Magna Charta of the kingdom. See Blackstone's Commentaries.
page 110 note † The family mansion at Curry Malet is not kept up. Capt. Pyne and the Rev. W. Pyne are the representatives of this ancient family, who were zealous advocates of liberty as set forth by the country party. The return of these country gentlemen after imprisonment at the hands of the court was a kind of triumph.
page 110 note ‡ Sir Walter Erie took possession of Lyme Regis for the Parliament fourteen years after this date, in 1642. An army commanded by Prince Maurice, son of the Palsgrave of the Rhine and King of Bohemia, the idol of the Puritans, advanced against the town and was unable to take it after that “unfortunate siege” whose effects upon the fate of King Charles I. belong to the page of history. See the History of Lyme Regis, by G. Roberts.
page 111 note * Ash House, in the adjoining parish of Musbury, the scat of the writer's friend, Mr. Drake.
page 112 note * John Drake, Esq. eldest son and heir of Sir Bernard Drake. He married, writes Mr. Davidson, Dorothy, daughter of William Bitton, of Alton, co. Wilts, and was buried at Musbury, 2 April 1628. It is surprising that Prince, who is very circumstantial about such matters, did not note the death and private interment of this gentleman. Though the plague was not rife this year, there may have been suspicious circumstances attending the death, which occasioned the hastened funeral. This gentleman sold Netherton to Sir Edmond Prideaux, Bart. (Mr. Davidson.)
I find that Sir Simonds D'Ewes kept his grandfather's corpse at Coxden for fourteen days; but his own father's body was despatched from London towards Suffolk the third day after his decease. Mr. Boldero, his friend, a lawyer, was buried the day after his death, aa was an old servant of the family. Of two children, each was interred the day after his decease. Mr. Willoughby of Pehembury, Devon, who died at the age of 86, was buried one week after.
page 113 note * Actually afloat, and surrounded by men armed for conflict with foreign foes, these commanders might, one would imagine, have engaged in convivial intercourse with their friends without being obnoxious to much censure. But their offence was not a venial one in the eyes of the Puritan party. Hugh Peters, a few years from this time, expressed his abhorrence of the “idolatrous drinking of healths,” and “that too upon unsanctified knees.” The offence was the posture used in honour of a human creature, which the censuring parties deemed worthy alone of the Supreme Being.
page 114 note * The success of this French squadron justifies the foresight of the worthy writer, and other justices who were so prompt in fortifying Seaton.
page 114 note † This must have been Waldron of Bradfleld House, in the parish of Uffculm, in East Devon.
page 115 note * Sir John Stawell lived at Cothelston Lodge, near Taunton, and was a great supporter of the court. His insolent interference with the right of election is interesting. Taunton took part against the King, and was for many years considered as the “hot-bed of sedition of the West.” Lord Stawell was busy in the destruction of the interior fittingsup of meeting-houses in the reign of Charles II.; but could not sanction the enormities of Judge Jeffreys, who caused a rebel to be executed opposite his house, to annoy his lordship.
page 116 note * This last mention of Rochelle, the fate of which the writer of the Diary had close at heart, as many entries fully attest, calls for a note as to the final result of that dreadful siege of fourteen months, when Cardinal Richelieu commanded in person, who caused a dyke of 1640 yards to be thrown up to block up the harbours. The garrison were reduced to such a state of fearful famine that the Duchess of Rohan and her daughter, as a noble example, confined themselves to a portion of horseflesh and five ounces of bread daily between both. They still continued to resist, expecting the arrival of the fleet from England, when the news of Buckingham's assassination at the hands of Felton reached them, and destroyed their last glimmer of hope. After a siege of eleven months, during which time the numbers had dwindled from twenty-seven thousand to five thousand, the city surrendered, 28th Oct. 1628.
page 118 note * The Works of Richard Greenham, Minister and Preacher of the Word of God: edited by Henry Holland.
page 118 note † This is not mentioned by Wats or Lowndes. “Time's Lamentation, or an Exposition of the Prophet Joel, by Edward Topsell, 1599,” 4to. was dedicated to Sir Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy.
page 118 note ‡ Subversion of Robert Parsons his Treatise of three Conversions of England. By Matthew Sutcliffe. London, 1606, 4to.
page 118 note § An Exposition on the Lordes Prayer, by way of Catechising. By William Perkins, a very eminent Puritan divine.