HENRY EXETER, EXETER, 1840

Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, in accordance with custom, signed his many letters 'Henry Exeter'. 

 When, in October 1840 a poor man called Henry Exeter was brought to the  Exeter County Assizes  and sentenced to fourteen years transportation for stealing fifty-odd pounds from a widow in Culmstock, The Western Times, delighting in the coincidence, headed it's report on the case ' HENRY EXETER IN TROUBLE'.

The next week it was able to publish the following: 

"HENRY EXETER. - The sentence of this CONVICT, whose trial we reported in our last, seems  to have called into requisition the various faculties of pun and quip which our merry contemporaries indulge in on all occasions.  Our friend the Chronicle takes pains to let his readers know that the convict, Henry Exeter, is not the eminent prelate, whose official signature, is the same.  We are surprized that our friend should have thought such a notice necessary to quiet the apprehensions of the diocese."

Phillpotts was,  The Western Times would agree,  the most worldly of men and one quite unsuited to be a bishop, - hence the fun! 

I don't suppose Henry Exeter, the convict, waiting to be shipped off to Van Diemen's Land, would have been much amused.

Then as now, newspapermen seem to have a love of bad puns and silly quips and  misleading coincidences.  

Sources The Western News, 24th and 31st October, 1840.   

THE GREEN ORES, THE EXE ESTUARY, 1837

H. J Holt Esq. of Exmouth, was keen on wildfowling.  The Western Times  of 14th January 1837 tells the story how, the week before, he went up the river in his shooting boat:

"On a sand-bank, near the Green Ores, he saw what he at first took for a heap of snow; but by the help of his glass discovered to be nine wild swans, squat and pluming themselves."

His customary boatman, Old Jack, was not with him,  'only a boy, whose strength at skulling could hardly stem the strong ebbing tide'.   Nevertheless H. J. Holt managed to kill one of the swans with his swivel gun loaded with duck-shot:   

...down he tumbled from a great height.  What a flapping, splashing and dashing, the wing being only broken - but with a smart whack from the small gun he sung out and died.  Oh! it was a snow-white beauteous bird, and such a one as Leda loved.  It is now in the hands of a famous bird-stuffer in Exeter." 

I remember seeing what was possibly the last of the Exe duck punts, but this was a one-man version built like a kayak, complete with an ancient , dangerous-looking swivel gun, buoyed in the Lympstone moorings in the sixties.    The owner, I thought, was a bad-tempered, little man.  He would disappear before sunrise.  I don't know if he ever killed anything.  Today to shoot at a swan, even a wild one, seems barbaric but Mr. Holt was clearly proud of his kill.  He probably wrote the piece!

'The Green Ores' sound wonderfully exotic - pure poetry!  Ores here means weed.  It is, I think, a  local, that is  to say a West-Country, dialect word.  The swans were probably up-river near what is now called Greenland.

H. J Holt , Esq is now long dead and buried but his beauteous swan might still be floating around somewhere.  Ars longa, via brevis!

MRS PETERSWOLD, NEWTON ABBOT, 1836

 Mrs. Peterswold died on  the last day of the year 1836.  Notice of her death in The Western Times of 7th January 1837 informs us that she died aged 94 and that:

"This lady had her coffin made 21 years since, and kept it under her bed,  her headstone was kept at the bottom of the stairs,  and her shroud was knitted and frequently given away to some poor person, and a new one provided."

The legal requirement to be buried in woollen was still in force when Mrs. Peterswold's first shroud was knitted.   I like the idea of various poor persons scurrying  around Newton wrapped in this lady's old shrouds but perhaps she only gave them to paupers who had someone to bury. 

Mrs. P's provision for her departure from this world made me think of the many leaflets that the postman has been  bringing me for the last 13 years  (ever since I reached three score and ten!) asking me to consider my funeral arrangements and pay in advance.  I shall continue to ignore them - after all,  I might live another 21 years.

That headstone at the foot of the stairs must have proved a nuisance.

A PUBLIC PENANCE, EXETER, 1836.

 I was under the impression that public penance in Anglican churches had long gone out of fashion by 1836 but in Exeter, in the parish of Saint Olave, a hellier (roofer) by the name of Henry Turpin was 'adjudged to do penance' for calling his sister-in-law, Mrs Charlotte Heath, several names impugning her chastity, &c. &c.

I suppose Henry could have opted out of the Anglican Church but that clearly was not for him an alternative.

There was a ceremony at the church.  A large crowd  assembled to see the fun.  Henry was "dressed in a white fustian coatee, breeches and gaiters to match, but was not arrayed in a white sheet, according to the popular notion."

The clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Birch, read the warrant:

"By authority of the Venerable John Moore Stevens, Clerk, Master of Arts, Archdeacon of the Archdeaconry of Exeter, lawfully constituted, it is ordered that Henry Turpin, of the parish of St. Olave in the City of Exeter, and within our Archdeaconry, hellier, shall, upon some day,...come before the minister, and churchwardens of the parish... and repeat the following words."

The Reverend Birch then read, and Henry Turpin repeated:

"I, Henry Turpin, do hereby acknowledge and confess that I have abused and defamed the said Charlotte, wife of  Robert Heath, by saying that she is a black bastard  ------&c. &c. &c., for which I beg her pardon, and promise no more for the future to defame and abuse her again in the like manner."

The Western Times  (24th September, 1836.)  commented that:

"the 'congregation' ...seemed to think that Mr. Turpin's slander and Mrs. Heath's reputation were not the most solemn subjects to be settled at Church, and joined in the ceremony with much fun and merriment."

It is to be noted that in 2022 Henry's choice of insults, the one that The Times though fit to print,  would  have got him into trouble with the criminal law of England, never mind the Church!

EVERY TOWN HAS NOT ITS NORNEY, EXETER, before 1814.

In the diaries of Samuel Curwen, an American loyalist taking refuge in England at the time of the War of Independence, (1775 to 1783) we learn that, during his stay in Exeter, he enjoyed taking walks on Norney.  

Norney, of course, is Northernhay.  It is a fine example of Devon elision.   Just as Exeter is Exter, Topsham is Topsam, Lympstone is Limson  so Northernhay is Norney .  

 In The Derby Mercury of 1st December, 1785 and in most of the papers nationwide. was this remarkable report:

"There is now living at Norney, near the city of Exeter, one John Follart, a Woolcomber, who is now in the 121st Year of his Age; this Prodigy of old Age works at his Business, retains all his Faculties, and was in good Health on Wednesday last."

I doubt that the remarkable John Follart  was quite that old,  In some of the papers he was not 121 but 124.  Just like today, the newspapers did not necessarily let the truth rob them of a good story.

It seems clear that the contracted name was not just a familiar nickname;  Norney, was used on formal occasions:  In The Morning Chronicle 12th December, 1803, was this wedding notice:

"MARRIED: On Saturday,  H.T. Cooper, Esq. to Miss Eliabeth Anne Bailey, niece to James Bailey, Esq. of Norney House, near Exeter."

When, in 1802,  Robert Southey, not yet the poet-laureate, came to Exeter, he was much impressed by the Gardens:

"Close to our inn is the entrance of the Norney or public walk.  The trees are elms, and have attained their full growth; indeed I have never seen a finer walk; but every town has not its Norney... I was shown a garden, unique in its kind, which has been made in the old castle ditch.  The banks rise steeply on each side; one of the finest poplars in the country grows in the bottom and scarcely overtops the ruined wall.  Jackson, one of the most accomplished men of his age, directed these improvements; and never was accident more happily improved."   (my emphasis)

(Source: Robert Southey (under the sobriquet, Espriella),  Letters from England , Longman 1814. 3rd edition - the letter dated,  Sunday, April 24, 1802.)

Southey had clearly passed from Northernhay into Rougemont Gardens, something which nowadays it is impossible to do. This is because a philistine City Council, which does not value Exeter's unique inheritance, Northernhay Gardens , as a public walk, has blocked the way.  It is a council which is happier locking up,  blocking up, fencing off, closing down and generally neglecting the Gardens while at the same time renting them out to short-term, incoming, polluting, destructive and vulgar events, the organising of which has  involved long periods when the elegant neglected, ironwork gates have quite simply been locked against the people.  

It is shameful that old Norney has not been freely available to the citizens of Exeter and to visitors for more than a quarter of the past year. 

One can only hope that the time will come when a wiser city council will realise that the Gardens properly cared for, controlled and imaginatively improved, perhaps by someone to sort them out like that accomplished Jackson of the eighteenth century, would attract  visitors from all over the country and beyond and add to the prosperity and reputation of this once dignified and proud city.