The Exeter Flying Post of June 24th, 1841" reported:
"On the evening of the 12th inst as the Hon. Newton Fellowes was on his return to the city to his seat at Eggesford; when near Newton St. Cyres, he met a farmer's boy driving an empty cart at a very furious rate.
"Although the hon. gentleman had ladies with him, he turned his carriage, gave chase to , and, after pursuing hem some distance, took the offender into custody; and bringing him to the Magistrates' Clerk, at Crediton, convicted him on his own view, and fined him £2.
"The most serious accidents are constantly occurring from the wild and furious manner in which empty vehicles of all descriptions are driven on our roads."
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One of the joys of reading stories in old newspapers is that one can label people as goodies ot baddies to one's own satisfaction without much thought and without further ado. One can take sides. In this case the Hon. Newton Fellowes, who was only a couple of weeks off his 69th birthday, is, for me, a vicious old aristocrat with no sense of humour and I rate the farmer's boy as an unfortunate lad who must have suffered from being so strangely pursued and judged and fined.
I should have liked to have been an observer when this cart-and-carriage-chase took place.
It seems to me that the Hon. Newton Fellowes sweating his horses, and with ladies aboard, in pursuit of a happy farmer's boy was the more irresponsible of the two speed-hogs. And then for the old man to judge the case 'on his own view' seems to me to have been a travesty of justice.
It is no surprise, however, that The Flying Post found the actions of Newton Fellowes to be altogether in the public interest.
Some twelve years after this incident the Hon, Newton Fellowes, politician and an 'energetic supporter of Liberal policies' succeeded to the peerage as the 4th Earl of Portsmouth but had only a few weeks of life to enjoy being an earl.
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