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.