SEMPER FIDELIS

Fidelis is a lovely word and was a favourite name for faithful dogs in the Victorian years. (Willie Maddison's father's old dog was called Fidelis) and, in its shortened form of Fido, (Abraham Lincoln's favourite dog was called Fido ) there are still enough faithful hounds to be found.

Exeter, as every Exonian knows, has the motto Semper Fidelis which translates as Ever Faithful. This is something of a distinction. Most cities have to manage without a motto and none has one so simple, straightforward and honourable as is ours. It is ancient too. It was suggested in the year of the Armada, 1588, in a letter written by Queen Elizabeth l to the citizens of Exeter thanking them for a gift of money towards the expense of seeing off the Spanish. We who today are citizens of Exeter should not forget that mighty monarchs have written thank-you letters to us.

In the preface to his 1878 Reminiscences, Mr James Cossins, the corresponding tobacconist of Paris Street, likes to use Ever Faithful and Semper Fidelis as synonyms for Exeter.  For example he writes in his preface that his book will be perused with some feeling of interest by those who like myself, have always felt a warm attachment to the "Ever Faithful" and elsewhere he writes. :"Persons who have been absent from "Semper Fideis" for many years, on re-visiting the old city, declare that it is improved and so much altered they cannot recpgnise some of the localities." This seems to me a worthy usage to which we, in our modern age, might well return. One might then perhaps expect to hear on the Cathedral Green snatches of conversation such as: "The homeless seem to be attracted to Semper Fidelis like fleas to a faithful old dog."

UNWELCOME LONDON VISITOR, EXETER, 1862.

I have been looking at Mr James Cossins' book Reminiscences of Exeter Fifty Years Since, the Second Edition 1878 and I am grateful to Mr Cossins, who died in 1883 and was a tobacconist in Paris Street, for introducing me to the Norfolk Howards. Norfolk Howards, I was delighted to learn, are bugs. No more, no less! Their story starts in 1862 with this hilarious advertisement in the Times of London:

  " I Norfolk Howard, heretofore called and known by the name of Joshua Bug. late of Epsom. in the county of Surrey, now of Wakefield, in the county of York, and landlord of the Swan Tavern in the same county, do hereby give notice. that on the 20th day of this present month of June, for and on behalf of myself and heirs, lawfully begotten. I did abandon the use of the surname of Bug, and assumed, took and used, and am determined at all times hereafter; in all writings, actions, dealings, matters and things, and upon all other occasions whatsoever, to be distinguished, to subscribe, to be called and known by the name of Norfolk Howard only. I further refer all whom it may concern to the deed poll under my hand and seal. declaring that I choose to renounce the use of the surname of Bug and that I assume in lieu thereof the above surnames of Norfolk Howard, and also declaring my determination, upon all occasions whatsoever, to be called and distinguished exclusively by the said surnames of Norfolk Howard, duly enrolled by me in the High Court of Chancery. - Dated this 23rd day of June,1862. Norfolk Howard, late Joshua Bug." 

The originator of this little masterpiece, this prime example of English humour, is apparently unknown but my bet is that it was marinated in wine and/or spirits and penned at either a London club or an Oxbridge college. None of which has anything to do with the city of Exeter except that I first met the Norfolk Howards in Mr Cossins' book where, a decade or more after The Times advertisement, he writes:

"Visitors arriving from London - the great dread was the uninvited ones, 'Norfolk Howards' of which at this time every house in London was suppose(sic) to have more than agreeable, and to avoid any importation of the above-named, trunks, boxes, &c., were taken to the rear of the premises, opened and examined previous to anything being taken to bedrooms, and, if necessary, underwent the process of fumigating with brimstone."

I am alarmed at the idea of these Georgian hotel or boarding-house servants in Exeter rummaging through the trunks and cases of the London visitors and fumigating the contents with poisonous sulphur-dioxide. Yet is there not in these days of plague, someting thought-provoking, perhaps even heuristic, about Exeter's pragmatic attitude to new arrivals?

THE BLOOD OF CHRIST

I am fascinated by, and have already blogged, the fifteenth century Five Wounds Window in Sidmouth church.   For one thing, what is represented is not so much five wounds as five glass phials filled with blood.

The window depicts five glass phials with 'heavenly crown' lids containing blood taken from the wounds of Christ.  Each of the phials is labelled,  thus:

blood from the right hand:   phial of wisdom.
blood from the left hand:     phial of mercy.
blood from Christ's side:     phial of everlasting life.
blood from the right foot:    phial of grace.
blood from the left foot:      phial of ghostly comfort.

All of which seems very strange and unique.   Such a window was probably intended to stimulate prayer.  There was a special mass dedicated to the five wounds and prayers to the wounds were deemed to be very powerful and could earn very large dispensations and indulgences saving the devout Christian many centuries of pain in Purgatory.   Praying to the wounds of Christ was linked to the rosary and could be prayed to at designated intervals as the contrite sinner worked his or her way around the beads.

 I don't know whether the different wounds were generally linked, in the medieval mind, with the virtues and rewards indicated by the phials of Sidmouth church  but clearly one could not pray better than for wisdom, mercy and so on.  Ghostly comfort presumably was what the sinner hoped to gain from confession to a holy (ghostly) father of the church.        

THE SALCOMBE AND SID LENDING LIBRARY

The little school at Salcombe Regis in 1850 housed a lending library.  We know this, if not from elsewhere, from a remarkable polemic by Thomas William Christie entitled " Extracts from Books Taught at Salcombe Regis National School with Remarks on their Popish Character."  published in Sidmouth by J Harvey, Fore Street and in London, 1850 and now to be found in the British Library.   The title and rules of the lending library seem first to have been promulgated in 1847.  The title was The Salcombe and Sid Lending Library, interesting perhaps in that at so late a date the Regis was not found in an official title but Christie uses it three years later.

It was not much of a library!  There were only 152 books and all of them seem to have been religious works.  The charge made for borrowing a large book was one penny.   A halfpenny would let you take away a small book and for a farthing you could borrow a tract.  Anyone connected with the school, including the children, could read the books without paying.

This Thomas William Christie, was a prolific writer and ferreter-out of papists and according to the Alumni Cantab.  was "a faithful preacher of the faith of God's elect."  He seems to have been something of a Irish peripatetic trouble-maker.   In 1850 he was living or lodging at Salcombe Mount.   

I intend to blog more on the nineteenth century Puseyites of Salcombe Regis as and when.

THE FIVE WOUNDS

This is fun!

Theodore H Mogridge, a local doctor,  in his descriptive sketch of Sidmouth, 1836, describes the great east window of Sidmouth church in some detail.  He notes a piece of glass which he recognises to be mediaeval and thinks he is looking up at an ancient coat of arms.  Not only does he note it, he blazons it for posterity. "argent, five piles on saltire gules." and he wonders whose arms they can be.

But it is not a coat of arms at all!

It is, as that remarkable Sidmothian, Peter Orlando Hutchinson, (1810 - 1897) recognised "The five wounds of Christ crowned and bearing mottoes."   In his Sidmouth Guide  he lets us know:  "The piece of glass in the vestry window was another of my protégés.  It was taken out of the great east window and lost sight of for some time, but after an outcry on my part it was produced, when I had it placed where it is and a wire guard outside."

It  is there to be seen in Sidmouth Church today,  It would seem to be a very rare depiction, in England at any rate, and all credit to Orlando for finding it and preserving it.

MACKEREL DYING, SIDMOUTH 1836

There is nothing here we did not already know and it is galling for today's fishermen to read of the great shoals of yesteryear but I think this passage (with my italics) from Theodore H Mogridge's "Descriptive Sketch of Sidmouth 1836" is worth blogging if only for the sake of Theodore's wonderful purple prose:

"Occasionally however vast multitudes of the finny and scaly nation are caught opposite the town and during the season it is no very unfrequent ocurrence for from five to ten thousand mackerel to be brought to shore at a single haul of the seine,   At such periods to survey the fishermen at their employments and the fruit of their labours is interesting; the eye is rivetted by the diversity of tints, the ever-varying colours, the silver white shaded by purple dyes alternately fading to a light green and a thousand variations marked with exquisite delicacy produced by the agonies of dissolution or, as humanity hopes, by simple muscular contractions of the expiring inhabitants of the liquid world."

This season I have caught none of the finny and scaly nation despite trying.  My son-in-law, with much effort,  has taken a dozen or so mackerel and one bass.  Mogridge was a local doctor; hence perhaps his interest in the death and pain of the fish.   

A PUZZLE

Whose stone is this I do not know.  It is so degraded as to prove something of a puzzle.  The stone is flaking away.  It is embedded into the South wall of Salcombe Regis church and has presumably been in the church since the seventeenth century.   I think the verse must  have been composed by Philip Avant, the parson poet whom I have already blogged under the title A GLORIOUS DAY with reference to  his long published poem welcoming King Billy whose ships sailed up the Exe in 1688.

The verse, here 'modernised' is in parts illegible but must, I think, read:

We within this earthly shell

for a time with worms may dwell

till the morning when the just

shall be awaked out of their dust.

Our bless'd redeemer then will raise

us up, his glorious name to praise.

With saints and angels we shall sing

hosannas to the heavenly king.

The memory of such are blessed

and precious to him is their dust.

This is a memorial to a man and his wife.   The man died in 1674, his wife in the March of a subsquent year.  His name seems to begin ELI (Elias perhaps?)  and his surname to end in P (a Clapp perhaps?)  These are wild guesses.