LANDING OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE
The landing was completed in three hours, without a hitch and was
followed by divine service on the beach, concluded by all the troops
singing the 118th Psalm, which is at once a psalm of thanksgiving for
mercies received, and a bidding for others. Reading it, you conceive
the Psalmist as timorously thankful, buoyed up by faith to a certain
degree, and yet horribly frightened; and thus, there can be no doubt,
it was highly appropriate to the situation in which all at that moment
found themselves. We may, perhaps, suspect that the eighth verse, which
deprecates confidence being put in princes, was omitted for this occasion.
An absurd story tells us that the inhabitants of Brixham (or “Broxholme,”
as the Dutch called it), presented an address to the prince, in this form:
“And please your majesty, King William,
You’re welcome to Brixham Quay,
To eat buckhorn, and drink bohea
Along with we
And please your majesty, King William.”
The individually quite sufficient objections to this are that the prince
was not yet acknowledged king, and that tea was then unknown at Brixham;
and in any case, it would have been an expensive luxury far beyond the
reach of fisherfolk. What “buckhorn” may have been is a mystery not
revealed to the present generation.
The place was thronged that day and night with the expeditionary force,
and the landlord of the one inn that then sufficed for the thirst of
the whole community—it was probably the “Buller’s Arms,” quite recently
rebuilt—was, according to the diarist who recorded all these things,
so puffed up with the honour of serving so many lords that he almost
imagined himself to be one.
William himself was lodged in the house, still standing in Middle Street,
the home of the little man, Varwell, who afterwards marched with the
army on to Exeter, and was promised a reward for his services. Unhappy
Varwell! He went later, to London, and fell to gossiping with strangers
in a tavern, with the result that they drugged him and sent one of their
confederates to Whitehall to claim the promised recompense. He was paid a
hundred guineas, and when the real Varwell put in an appearance, he was
not only sent empty away, but received a good thrashing as well.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE WHERE WILLIAM OF ORANGE SLEPT.]
William’s army, having camped in the fields overnight, marched from
Brixham about noon on November 6th, in very rainy weather and along
bad roads. They made but four miles that day, and halted the night at
Paignton, where tradition says William slept at the “Crown and Sceptre,”
within sight of that old red sandstone tower in which, according to
another tradition, Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, another sturdy
Protestant protagonist, had translated the Bible.
Meanwhile William had been receiving assurances of support from
influential personages. Nicholas Roope, of Dartmouth, was the first
considerable person to join him. But others exhibited a not unnatural
timidity and caution. Memories of the ferocious revenge taken upon the
sympathisers with Monmouth, three years earlier, were keen, and the
influential and the great did their negotiation as secretly as might be.
That is why records of those early days are so scarce and traditions are
our only resort.
The greatest and the proudest personage then in the neighbourhood of
Brixham was Sir Edward Seymour, of Berry Pomeroy Castle. He it was who,
when William asked if he were not of the family of the Duke of Somerset,
replied: “Pardon me, the Duke of Somerset is of my family.” There you see
the head of the original stock venting his spleen on the younger branch
of the Seymours, upon whom the accident of fate had bestowed a proud
title, while the elder was fobbed off with a mere knighthood.
Sir Edward joined the Prince of Orange at Exeter, when it was tolerably
clear to most people that the cause of James was lost; but when the
Prince was but newly landed, that cautious Sir Edward, and a number of
equally cautious gentlemen with him, met him secretly at Aish, a lonely,
out-of-the-way hamlet between Brixham and Totnes, to discuss the support
to be given. The cottage where they met is still standing, and is called
“Parliament House,” while all the country-folk know the road to it by the
name of “Parliament Lane.”
[Illustration: BRIXHAM HARBOUR: STATUE OF WILLIAM THE THIRD.]
That caution was very noticeable, all the way to Exeter. When William
came to Newton Abbot, and stayed at Ford House two nights, Sir William
Courtenay, the owner, although he left directions that the prince was to
be hospitably entertained, found it convenient to be elsewhere on urgent
business that would brook no delay, and when the clergyman at Newton
handed over the keys of the church, in order that the bells might be
rung in honour of the proclamation in the market-place, of the Prince
as King William the Third, he made it clear, _pro formâ_, that he only
relinquished those keys on compulsion.
There is some curious food for the whimsical mind in the fact that the
Prince of Orange should have crossed the river Lemon, on his way past
Newton Abbot; and there is ample room for criticism of the inscription on
the famous Proclamation Stone in Newton Abbot market-place, in which it
is stated that the Rev. John Reynell proclaimed the Protestant Deliverer
there, November 5th. Reynell—the clergyman who was so cautious as to
hand over the keys of the church only “on compulsion”—was not a man
rash enough to proclaim any king who might presently become a fugitive,
and thereby possibly find himself arraigned before the ferocious
Jeffreys. No: Reynell did not proclaim the new king. It was probably
Dr. Burnet—who accompanied the expedition—who did so, and certainly not
before November 7th. Meanwhile, we will leave William to march on to
Exeter and thence to London, where he arrived December 18th.
The stone on which William’s foot rested on his landing has been
jealously preserved, but it has been moved about overmuch. The landing
was on the site of the present fishmarket, and there the obelisk partly
enclosing the stone was first erected; but when another William—the Duke
of Clarence, afterwards William the Fourth—came ashore at Brixham in
1828, it was removed to its present position, on what was then called the
New Quay. The weird passion for utility that characterises Englishmen,
and has spoiled so many monuments, has caused this obelisk to be crowned
with a gas-lamp.
It was left to modern times to fitly commemorate this great event in our
history, for on the two hundredth anniversary the marble statue of the
king that now forms so striking a feature of the harbour was erected. He
is represented at the moment of his stepping ashore and, hand to heart,
declaring, “The liberties of England and the Protestant religion I will
maintain.”
Those who gaze upon the statue and pronounce the face of it ugly forget
that William was not handsome. He was consumptive, asthmatic and
hollow-cheeked, and the sculptors have rendered him, not idealistically,
but as he was, with the very necessary reservation that he is here of
heroic size, while in life he was small and undersized.
For the rest there are few records at Brixham of the coming of William of
Orange. No blood was shed there, and the only note of that stirring time
to be found in the parish registers is the pathetic burial entry: “1688,
November 21, a foreigner belonging to the Prenz of Oringe,” with another
entry of the same date referring to the same person being buried in
woollen: “a Dutch man, cujus nomen ignotum.” He was probably some humble
follower, who fell sick aboard, and so died on the threshold of this land
flowing with milk and honey, in which so many of his fellow mynheers
flourished so well.
The _Brill_, the vessel on which William came to England, had a strange
after-history. She was re-christened _Princess Mary_, and converted into
a yacht. So she remained through the reign of Queen Anne; but when the
Hanoverian line began, and sentiment was cut off at the main, she was
sold to some London merchants, who re-christened her the _Betsy Cairns_
and sent her trading to the West Indies. From that condition the poor old
vessel declined to that of a collier, and so continued for an incredible
number of years, being wrecked on the Black Middens, off Tynemouth, in
quite recent times.