AN EXHILARATING SIGHT, ON THE ROAD TO EXETER, 1818.

  According to The Exeter Flying Post of 25th June 1818,  Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, the grand Tory who for 17 years was a  Member of Parliament for the County of Devon, rode from Killerton to Exeter at the head of a cavalcade (the mot juste) of respectable yeomen and other respectables, respectably mounted. 

"....at least a thousand of the most respectable Yeomanry in this part of the County, accompanied by many Gentlemen and Clergy voluntarily joined and met him on his road to Exeter.

"A more exhilarating sight, and a more decisive testimony to character, we never recollect to have witnessed, than this orderly cavalcade, extending nearly a mile in length, respectably mounted, bearing in their hats the oak leaf, the antient designation of the Acland Family, and evidently appearing to be inspired with a high, but well regulated enthusiasm, for the cause of the worthy Baronet, who by their own request rode at their head."

It  seems remarkable, this cavalcade, how it assembled on the road, arriving from all quarters, organised somehow by Acland's agents.  There is no mention, I note, of Yeowomen,or Ladies trotting along!  1818 was election year and feelings were running high.   In Exeter the mob was waiting for him and he was to be heckled in public to the point where he could not speak and, indeed he lost this election and was out of office for two years.

The antient ,in 1818, association of  the oak-leaf with, the Acland family (this must surely be a reference to some heraldic  device but I have not traced it) and,also, it would seem, with local Toryism generally,  was well established at this time.  It probably faded away with the Acland descendants becoming Whigs, Liberals, and even, like the one who taught me at St. Luke's, of the Labour Party.

There was an oak-leaf ballad in this same number of the Flying Post:

Come, ye Lads, who wish to share/ In your County's glory,/Wave the Oak-leaf high in air,/ and carry all before ye.  &c.

Now, that is a sweet image:  Georgian Devonshire Tory Lads waving their oak-leaves high in the air!!!