EASY LESSONS, EXETER, 1845.

Under this title The Western Times of 25th January 1845 published a correspondent's curious attempt at humour in the matter of the perceived shift towards the much feared Church of Rome of Henry Phillpotts,  Bishop of Exeter. The passage is in the style of a Victorian child's first 'reader',  hence the hyphens between the syllables.     

"Har-ry Phill-pots of Ex-on was a sad naugh-ty lad.  He did not wish to say his pray-ers right, and he was a bad boy in the Church.

"The Queen did tell him he must wear a gown, but he did not like to wear it.  What a sad boy was he to try to cast off the gown which his Queen did tell him he must wear. 

"Har-ry was like the dog in the man-ger.  He did not want the gown him-self and he did not wish oth-ers to wear it; but if he does not take care, they say the Queen will make him give his gown to some good boy who will like to wear it, and she will al-so take away his big wig, of which he is so proud.

"Har-ry did shake a paw with a sly Pus-sey; but one day Pus-sey will put forth his sharp claw, and will scratch him, and will bite him too if he does not mind, for Pus-sey is ve-ry sly!!"

By Pus-sey, of course, is meant Edward Bouverie Pusey, a leader of the Tractarian Movement at Oxford, and his Puseyite followers.

The writer of the above piece had no reason to fear that Henry Phillpotts might lose his big wig. Phillpotts was, in fact, to be the longest serving English bishop since the fouteenth century, driving his many enemies mad by his continuance in office until 1869.

The Western Times and its correspondents, seem never to make up their minds how to spell Phillpotts.  One suspects they only do it to annoy because they know it teases.

Dog in the man-ger: do young people still know their Aesop?

The title 'Early Lessons' may be an echo of the title of a chapbook, populsr, 2830 - 1839m, viz. The First Book or Step to ||Learning.  Short and \Easy Lessons for Children, R Elliott, Hereford.

 

A "GREEN HORN". EXETER, 1845

In 1845, the Reverend Henry Courtenay was the Perpetual Curate at St. Sidwells church.  He was a young Puseyite straight from Oxford and was related to the Earl of Devon, - this was enough to make him unpopular with his parishioners and the radical Western Times.  Young Courtenay liked the idea of preaching the Gospel wearing the Surplice - the "white shirt" his parishioners called it.  The congregation rebelled and protested.  They walked out of his services and they mobbed him on his way home.  The Times, predictably, was with the parishioners:

"We presume that this young man is a fair example of what a Puseyite education will do for a weak youth..  He was "plucked" three times in the "little go" - that is he was turned back three time in a minor examination, and three times pronounced to be a dunce.

"Being well-bred and doubtless a well behaved youth with aristocratic lineage, he was made a Perpetual Curate of St. Sidwells.  The barbers give their apprentices a sheep's head to shave, as the initiatory step to a human chin.  The parish of St. Sidwells is presented to an aristocratic clerical green horn to enable him to practice upon the flock.

"To say that this young man is fit for the office of the priesthood, appears to be a most egregious blunder.  To say that he is fit for anything else would be perhaps as great a blunder. He must, however, have an aptitude for something or another - for Providence has not made the most insignificant of its creatures without adapting them to some purpose of divine wisdom, if man in his brief authority and fantastic tricks would not interpose to prevent its operation.  But whatever he may be fit for, he is certainly not fit to be minister of St. Sidwells...."

I like very much the image offered here of apprentice barbers shaving sheeps' heads.  It reminds me of how, in the army, we practiced sewing sutures on wounded oranges.

Green horn for greenhorn is cute.

It seems to me that the idea of divine providence as here expressed is problematic. How, if divine providence be predicated, can the fantastic tricks of men be thought to affect the issue? 

Being plucked in the little go sounds painful!

Source: The Western Times, 25th January 1845.

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY, EXETER, 2025.

 A lot of people  went to a lot of effort to make Remembrance Sunday 2025 a relative success.    The service was well conducted and  more dignified than in former years.   Nevertheless, I am re-blogging my comments of Remembrance Sunday 2024 because, within 48 hours the gates of the city's Gardens were again been locked against the citizens. This annual disrespect to the veterans of many wars is a scandal and I am not the only veteran in Exeter who thinks so.  This is the time of year when citizens throughout the nation remember.  The wreaths so sincerely inscribed and so solemnly laid will not  properly be seen again until Christmas by which time, if they survive, they will hardly be in any condition to remind the nation of it's debt to dead servicemen. 

The irony is that the motive behind this civic disrespect is shortage of funds.  Ironic because if the Exeter City Council only gave sensitive thought how to make these unique, historic Gardens more attractive to visitors, i.e. to promote them as 'gardens' rather than as a field wherein to mount 'events', they would do far more for the reputation and the prosperity of the city than they now do with the vulgar abuse to which they are exposed.   

From the archive:

On Remembrance Sunday, 2024, in Exeter there was no ceremony to remember the dead of Devon at the County war-memorial in the Cathedral Yard.   This was just as well for the Sons (and Daughters) of Mammon had built their houses (The Christmas Market!) so close to the Devon war-memorial that they had not left room for the Lord-lieutenant to lay his wreath.

Respect for those Devonians who gave their lives for the causes of this nation was therefore registered, subsumed, in the moving ceremony that took place in the Northernhay Gardens, Exeter's sacred corner, its Valhalla and the jewel in the city's crown, where stands the very fine Exeter war-memorial executed by the Devon sculptor, John Angel, and where also is a rather sad war-memorial raised to those who have lost their lives in more recent conflicts.  A larger crowd than usual, therefore, turned up to see the Mayor of Exeter and other dignitaries, civil and military, lay wreaths to the memory of the fallen.

The following day, yesterday as I write, was Armisitice Day and the gates of Northernhay Gardens are once again locked against city folk and county folk and all.  None will have access to the Gardens until 22nd November.  The wreaths lie at the war-memorials in what has officially become a 'construction site' with only the 'constructors' to see them.  They will inspire no remembrance. Exeter's will be the war-memorial least visited in the kingdom. The Lord Mayor, who so sincerely bade us remember the sacrifice of so many, and his Council, have rented out the Gardens to be once again a 'Winter Wonderland' which is to say a rather tatty and harmful, to the Gardens, funfair.

The Gardens, for Health and Safety reasons, are now denied to the public.  When they are opened again the city's war-memorial wil be surrounded by all the fun of the fair and by plastic 'rudolfs', 'santas' and such.  Not much thought will be given to the glorious dead. 

There will be a further week of Health and Safety closure while the 'Wonderland' is packed away.  Shortly before Christmas the people of Devon and Exeter will have their war-memorial back, the wreathes, so 'respectfully' laid will have wasted, degraded by the rains and winds of winter and much of Northernhay Gardens, no doubt, will exhibit swathes of the mud that one associates with Flanders Field.

A SMART, ACTIVE, INTELLIGENT SOLDIER, EXETER, 1845.

 According to The Western Times of 18th January 1845, the young Puseyite clergymen of Exeter were in the business of  slandering those citizens who disapproved of them.  One such victim of their foul weapons  was George Augustus Moore, a worthy and respectable member of society and an Exeter auctioneer who lived opposite St. Sidwell's church:  The newspaper was quick to nail the libel:

"He is charged with havng been flogged, and drummed out of the army.  This atrocious falsehood, originating in pure and incomprehensible malice, and circuated for the gratification of the most diabolical feelings, puzzles almost as much as it disgusts one.

"We are at a loss to contrive how it can possibly serve the cause of the surplice, Divine right and Apostolical succession, to invent so black a falsehood against a harmless and unoffending, and comparatively humble man.

"What is stranger still, is that Mr. Moore has not taken any active part in the meetings.  He has neither spoken nor acted at them in any way to excite observation.  He happened, however, to leave the church, on Sunday morning last on the Rev. Perpetual Courtenay going into the pulpit in his surplice.

"In the afternoon Mr. Moore stood at his own door, opposite the church, and observing the crowd proceed to follow the clergyman, actually interfered for his protection.  For this service he is rewarded with this atrocious slander.

"And now for the slander itself.  Mr Moore, at the age of between fifteen and sixteen, left his apprenticeship, (his father having pais £100 premium) and enliisted in the 6th Light Dragoons (subsequently the 16th Lancers).

"Mr Moore having entered the army for love of military adventure, became a smart, active and intelligent soldier.  He was generally employed as an orderly, a duty always bestowed on picked men, and rapidly rose to ne Serjeant. He was orderly to the Duke of York, at Bushy Park, to th Marquis of Anglesea on the field of Waterloo, saw him wounded, and assisted him to the litter.   He was then tranferre to General Sir John Vandeleur, who took the command after the Marquis was disabled, in which service Mr. Moore lost his horse from under him.  Having been rehorsed, he subsequently saved the life of his Captain (Wayland) at the expence of a sabre and lance wound in his right arm, which service Captain Wayland handsomely acknowledged by a gratuity.  Mr Moore was offered to be made Regimental Clerk and Serjeant on the field, in consequence of the death of the |Regimental Clerk, but he preferred active servicemin the ranks, and respectfully declined.  The day after the battle,  Mr Moore was dispatched with secret orders to Capt. King, of the 16th, who was at the rendezvous of the allied Generals, at Amiens.  This service through the retreating forces of the Frrench required courage, tact and fidelity, and would not have been entrusted to any man who had not acquired the  esteem and confidence of his superiors.

"On his return to England, Mr Moore, having been made Serjeant, - served as orderly in Ireland, to Earl Wentworth, the Lord Lieutenant, and afterwards to Earl Talbot, the Lord Lieutenant, and finally,his friends purchsed his discharge from the regiment in which he had served six years.

We have his discharge and his Waterloo medal now lying before us.  The former bears testimony to his good conduct,  the latter speaks for itself."

I felt it was fortuitous that I found myself reading this account of George Augustus Moore's honourable military service on Remembrance Sunday 2025. 

Wearing the surplice was one of the symbols of the retreat to the old Roman Catholic forms of worship much feared and hated by Anglicans in Exeter.

George was 49 in 1845.  He died 20 years later at Devonshire House, Heavitree, later known as. Heavitrree House  This had been the picturesque house, the home of the famous traveller and writer, Sir Richard Ford, who had died in 1858.   The house had a celebrated Spanish Garden.  I like to think of George enjoying it.

George was married and had issue.  His wife, Maria, died, back in Verney Place, St. Sidwell's, in 1881. 

George Augustus Moore witnessed the Marquis of Anglesey, who was still very much alive in 1845, losing his leg, which, so goes the anecdote, occasioned the memorable exchange beteen the Marquis, then Lord Uxbridge, and the Iron Duke: :

Uxbridge:   "By God , sir, I believe I have lost my, leg!"

Wellington:  "By God, sir,  so you have!" 

A DECEASED PIG, EXETER, 1845.

 "The carcase of a deceased pig was detected on Saturday, in the market, by Ellicombe, the warden of the shambles, who combines the experience of a practical butcher with the acute scent of a policeman

"The owner of the carrion, Charles Clements of Cheriton Fitzpaine, was admonished by the Mayor and the pig sentenced  to be burned.

"The execution of the sentence took place in the waste spot near the City Prison."

*

The word shambles, meaning a butcher's' row, according to Eric Partridge, derives curiously from a shambling  or unsteady walk.  Shamble is an obsolete word  meaning an (unsteady?) bench, especially one used by butchers to chop meat.   Hence the shambles becomes the  meat market and hence also a place of slaughter where gobbets of flesh are to be found lying around and the occasional deceased pig.  Ellicombe was the warden of the shambles at the Market  in Exeter.  Artificial Intelligence seems to think shambles derives from an anglo-saxon word fleshammels meaning flesh shelves.  Others derive shamble, a bench directly from the latin scammel, a bench,

The City Prison stood where now the Mercure Rougemont Hotel stands.  I am told there are still traces of the prison in cellars beneath the hotel.  The County Jail was not opened until 1853.

I imagine the burning of the diseased deceased to have been publicly executed outside the city wall to the amusement of young and old.

Source: The Western Times, 11th January 1845.