Plantagenets & Tudors, Catholics & Protestants – The legacy of rival Queens & the daring of West Country seafarers.
As we walk the coast path, nearly every village we encounter is heralded by a parish church tower. Each of these churches is unique, a product of its own particular history, many stand today on ground that has been regarded as holy or magic for thousands of years. Each share in the tide of events that shaped the West Country and its people, these places are free museums and art galleries, which reflect the everyday life of common folk, the politics of monarchs, and the adventures of great families. The great age of church building is over, we are fortunate that so many in the south west date back to medieval times and consequently, virtually all bear the scars of the great upheaval from some 750 years of the Catholic faith in England to the Protestant reformation.
The Old Feudal Order and Reverence for the Catholic Faith in England Weakens
To understand the roots of the protestant revolution of the Tudor age we need to reach back into medieval times. In the mid-1300s, pestilence took a hammer blow to the economic underpinning of the social order. Over a third of the population died in the Black Death, which came to Britain in the guts of infected fleas, hosted by black rats, initially through the port of Melcombe Regis, now part of Weymouth. Villages were devastated and abandoned as the plague spread. West Ringstead along the coast path, east of Weymouth, is a poignant example, and due to its proximity to the source, an early victim. In the fields it’s still possible to see unusual ‘hummocks’ in the ground, ghostly traces of houses. In the aftermath of waves of plague over the decades, no-longer could the local nobles or the abbots, lords of the rich monastic estates, call the shots. There was a joke that if only the Abbess of Sherborne and the Abbot of Glastonbury could marry, their son would be richer than the King of England. The peasant could demand higher wages for his labour and if his feudal Lord quibbled – well there were others more alive to the new economic reality.
Social mobility, upheaval, revolt, civil war, followed on the back of plague through the succeeding century. Richard II, Plantagenet, boy-king, faced down the demand for the end of serfdom and defeated the Peasants Revolt of 1381, which spread as far west as Bridgwater and Ilchester. Richard preferred a courtly life rather than the war camp of his father the Black Prince, or grandfather, Edward III. No longer were the great magnates enriched by foreign wars, they were sidelined in favour of new, and in their eyes, lesser men. Inevitably there was a reaction amongst the nobles, leading to a successful coup led by Richard’s cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, heir to the Duchy of Lancaster, crowned Henry IV in 1399. Henry IV’s son, Henry V, brilliant, ruthless, charismatic, renewed the war with France, creating a new patriotic fervour through his crushing victory of Agincourt and the capture of Paris.
Trade and the Importance of West Country Ships
Today the summer visitor to Warfleet Creek in Dartmouth may see paddle-boards or kayaks, the Dart is thronged with yachts. In the past there was equal bustle, but of a different, more purposeful, kind. Dartmouth, along with Fowey, Barnstaple, and the ports of Exeter and Plymouth were full of merchant ships – ‘Cogs’ averaging perhaps 50 -200 tons. Warfleet still has traces of an old quay. In peace, these ships carried the main exports of the west country – cloth, tin, hides, and fish. In the 100-year war with France, conducted by the late medieval Plantagenet kings, they carried troops, war horses, and military stores. We can catch a glimpse of the importance of this seafaring trade, and what these ships were like, in the lively carved bench-ends of a few West Country churches. All Saints, East Budleigh, a couple of miles north of the path at Budleigh Salterton, has over 50 late medieval bench carvings, all secular, not one has a religious symbol. A ship has 2 sailors in the rigging, a woman with a plater, turnspit, and chicken in perhaps her kitchen, preparing the meal? On another, a man is eating a chicken leg – little changes. These carvings are a window on life of the time. A bench-end features a wool merchant with cloth shears, comb, and a bowl of teasels. For a real glimpse of the wealth of the late medieval cloth trade, the chief west country export during these times, we must journey further inland to the English unique perpendicular style of the magnificent fan vaulted, carved chapels of the super-rich merchant John Greenway at St Peters, Tiverton, or that of John Lane and his wife at St Andrew’s in Cullompton.
Demise of the Plantagenets and Rise of the Tudors
Henry V’s glorious, unifying patriotism was not to last. The French recovered their lands, the two wings of the Plantagenet dynasty turned on themselves, ‘’Yorkists’ verses ‘Lancastrians’, and in the last half of the fifteenth century the country was riven by what we know today as the ‘Wars of the Roses’. The key battles were fought in the midlands, but in this 30-year struggle it was inevitable that the West Country was drawn in. It is 1483, Sir Henry Bodrugan, one of the most powerful magnates in Cornwall is instructed by Richard, Duke of York, now Richard III, to arrest Sir Richard Edgcumbe, supporter of Lancastrian, Henry Tudor. A colourful, unscrupulous, character, Bodrugan owns ships in Fowey and has even been accused of pirating English ships bound for St Ives. Sir Richard, surprised at his home, the manor of Cotehele, flees through the woods to a low bluff, thinking quickly, he throws his cap into the fast-flowing River Tamar to fool his enemies and makes his escape to join Henry Tudor in exile.
Henry Tudor defeats Richard III, last of the Plantagenet kings at Bosworth in 1485. The boot is on the other foot, Edgcumbe is now charged by King Henry to arrest Bodrugan. There is another pursuit, this time on horseback, Bodrugan leaps from the cliffs to a waiting boat which spirits him away to Ireland. The cliffs are still ‘Bodrugan’s Leap’. Edgcumbe becomes a member of the new king’s privy council. The Edgcumbe’s were to prosper in successive centuries and build a new house at Mount Edgcumbe, whose grounds are now a spectacular country park through which the coast path runs. Cotehele, a dozen or so miles up the Tamar, was left largely untouched. A picturesque retreat. The residents of Edgcumbe maiden aunts and the repository for unfashionable 17th century tapestries, which still hang like wallpaper in practically every room. There is no electric light, and the oldest working clock in the UK, dating from 1493, ticks the hours. It is the finest medieval manor house in the SW, now in the care of the National Trust, and well worth a visit. Richard Edgcumbe did not forget his narrow escape. In the woods, overlooking the river is a small chapel built in 1485-9 to commemorate his deliverance.
Henry Tudor inherited a poor country on the fringes of Europe. He needs money and energetically sets about reform. Cornwall had retained a high degree of independence. Previous kings had granted successive ‘stannary’ charters which strengthened the rights of Cornish tinners, establish special stannary courts to settle disputes and absolve the tinners from certain taxes. The original 5 ‘stannary’ towns, Lostwithiel, Bodmin, Liskeard, Truro and Helston assessed the ore for ‘fineness’ and arrange to pay ‘coinage’, the tax on tin, to the Duke of Cornwall. Coinage refers to the practice of knocking off a corner of the standard tin ingot, which was then due to the Duchy. The whole system was administered from 1292 to 1751 under a Cornish Parliament, established in Lostwithiel at the head of the Fowey estuary, where there is a fine 14th century bridge. The 700-year-old remains of the Duchy Palace, and Parliament Hall in Lostwithiel can still be seen, unfortunately these great buildings were put to the torch in 1644. The surviving parts of the Duchy Palace were finally restored by the Duchy in 2008. King Henry decided to tax his new Cornish subjects to pay for his Scottish war. The Stannary Parliament was abolished in 1496. The Cornish rebelled in 1497, were crushed, and rose again. In 1508 Henry in a compromise settlement, restored the Stannary Parliament, largely removing the smouldering Cornish grievance against Tudor Whitehall authority. The original leaders of the first 1497 rebellion, Michel Joseph, village blacksmith and Thomas Flamank, a Bodmin Lawyer, are commemorated by a statue in St Keverne, where the rebellion started, a couple of miles inland from the path, between Coverack and Porthallow.
The Battle of the Queens – Catherine vs Anne, Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries
The 17-year-old Henry VIII succeeded his father in 1509. Henry immediately declared he would wed his elder brother’s widow – Katherine of Aragon. Katherine was then a 23-year-old dark-eyed beauty. Daughter of the 15th century power couple of the age, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. We often think of Katherine as Henry’s first royal victim, but she was tough, cultured, and sophisticated. During her widowhood in England, she had been appointed Ambassador for the Aragonese Crown to England. The first known female Ambassador appointment in Europe. For six months in 1513, she served as regent of England while Henry VIII was skirmishing in France. During that time the English defeated a serious Scottish invasion at the Battle of Flodden, an event in which Katherine played an important part with an emotional speech about courage and patriotism. Katherine sent the bloody surcoat of the dead king of Scots to Henry in France. She was dissuaded from sending his head. Katherine was formidable, which makes the story of the ‘dual’ between Katherine and another sophisticated, worldly, woman, Anne Boleyn, for the position of Queen of England so remarkable. Henry needed a male heir, he was captivated by the young, vivacious, glamorous Anne, who had been brought up in the most fashionable courts of Europe. Henry would have preferred a divorce within the Catholic religion, conferred by the Pope, an exception, but not that exceptional, in the high politics of the age. Unfortunately, the Pope was in the power of Katherine’s nephew, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke of Austria, and King of Spain. The most powerful ruler in Europe. Stalemate.
In 1530 Anne resolved the situation by placing in Henry’s hands a tract by William Tyndale, ‘On the Obedience of a Christian Man’. This was dynamite, it proposed the idea that Monarchs should control a Country’s Church, not the Pope. Tyndale’s work to translate original Greek and Hebrew bible texts into English was considered a heresy by the Catholic church. Tyndale’s New Testament was printed in Worms and smuggled into England, where Henry’s Chancellor Sir Thomas More, a leading Catholic, had been burning copies, and, when he could catch them, adherents of the new Protestant faith for the crimes of reading the bible in English and denying the sanctity of the Catholic Mass. Anne reinforced her arguments by setting up a commission headed up by her chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, to research historical precedents for the Royal Supremacy over the English Church. The more Henry thought about the idea, the more he liked it. The divine right of Kings. In 1531 Henry had Parliament appoint him Supreme Head of the Church of England. He wasn’t a love-struck fool. He divorced Katherine and married Anne. He knew it meant trouble with the Pope, and the two Catholic European super-powers of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and French King Francis I. Fortunately, Charles and Francis were rivals, often at war. Thomas Moore, a diehard Catholic went to the block and was canonised by the Catholic Church as a martyr – Saint Thomas Moore. Henry’s new Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell – a man with Protestant sympathies was a hard-headed realist. Thomas knew King Henry needed money, lots of it. Where to get it – the rich monasteries of Catholic England.
To gauge the wealth and power of English monasteries, we only need to visit the magnificent survivals of either Glastonbury, or Cleeve, near Watchet, both English Heritage sites. Cleeve has the most impressively complete and unaltered set of monastic cloisters in England.
Only the Catholic Church preached the doctrine of ‘purgatory’, a place of suffering for sinners awaiting the expurgation of their sins before entering heaven. Remission from purgatory could be purchased on earth by the sale of indulgences authorised by the Pope, the setting up of Chantries serviced by monks to pray for souls, and pious gifts of land and endowments to the monasteries. For centuries every manor and Parish in England had been paying taxes ‘Peters Pence’ to the Pope. The cosmopolitan, lavish, court of the Renaissance Popes hardly gave confidence that this English money was being spent wisely in Rome. England politically and socially was drawing away from Europe. So, the protestant reformers Thomas Cromwell and the newly ordained Archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, worked hand-in-hand under the patronage of Anne to sweep Catholic tradition away. Henry loved building, he now had money to do this in style, by the end of his reign he had 50 Palaces. More importantly, the majority of monastery lands were sold to the elite to bind them into the new religious settlement. Torre Abbey, adjacent to the path in Torquay, to the Pollards in 1539. The Priory of St Germans now renamed Port Elliot, to the Champnons in 1540, Buckland Abbey, near Plymouth, now National Trust, sold to the Grenvilles in 1541. Henry did not neglect his close servants, he rewarded William Abbot, the Keeper of his enormous wine-cellar at Hampton Court with the gift of Hartland Abbey in 1539. All four ex-abbeys can be visited. Torre and Buckland are particularly interesting since both have very visible remains of the old abbey architecture in various rooms.
The Threat of Invasion by the Catholic Powers – Henry VIII Builds West Country Castles on an Epic Scale
The Pope excommunicated Henry. Thomas Cromwell and Henry used the money pouring in from the dissolution to build between 1539 and 1547, a chain of new artillery forts or castles along the south coast to protect the major ports and landing places from invasion by the Catholic powers. In the south-west, we have, from west to east, the new castles of Pendennis and St Mawes guarding Falmouth, St Catherines Castle guarding Fowey, Devils Point Artillery Tower in Plymouth, Portland Castle and Sandisfoot Castle guarding Weymouth, and Brownsea Castle, Poole. Of these, St Mawes is the most perfect survivor and well worth a stopover on the Path. By 1536, Henry was growing tired of Anne and courting Jane Seymour. In January 1536, Katherine had died, altering the dynamics of England’s foreign policy. Now an alliance could be remade with Katherine’s nephew, Charles V, who had embarked that year on his third war with France. Katherine had given Henry a daughter, Mary, like her mother, a fervent Catholic. Anne also had a daughter, Elizabeth. Henry had disinherited Mary on the annulment his marriage to Katherine. Peace with Charles V could not be made without reinstating Mary in the line of succession, which Anne would never agree to, since her daughter would then be second to Mary’s claim. QED, Anne had to go. Besides Henry needed a son, and his attention was now firmly fixed on Jane Seymour. So, Anne was tried on trumped-up charges and executed. Mary reinstated at Court, Jane Seymour became Queen Jane, Henry’s third wife. In October 1537 Jane gave birth to Henry’s longed for son and heir. The Tudor dynasty was now safe in Henry’s eyes. Two weeks later Jane was dead of post-natal complications. We can pass over the next 3 of Henry’s Queens, none gave him any more children.
Order, Counter-Order, Disorder & the State Despoliation of English Parish Churches
The story turns to the astonishing roller-coaster of the remaining Tudor monarchs. Henry VIII died in 1547, he believed he had ‘settled the kingdom’. Yes, there had been a reformation, but he had not gone the whole hog. True the monasteries were no more, but they had owned around a quarter of the whole country. Half of Wiltshire. The King, as Head of the Church of England, considered himself entitled to this enormous wealth, which in addition to new palaces had paid for castles and a new navy to protect the realm. Henry had been essentially a religious conservative, the parish churches, guild chapels and chantries were largely untouched. Although the great bible of 1539, paved the way for services in English, not Latin, the form of prayer book was still essentially the same. This mattered, in Tudor England everyone went to church and most revered the old, Catholic, ways. The new King, Edward VI was 9 when he succeeded to the throne, power was in the hands of his uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, who led his Council. King Edward had been brought up a protestant. ‘Protector Somerset’ was a fervent protestant and Henry VIII had not left a full treasury despite the dissolutions, so Somerset turned his attention to the endowments and wealth of the parish churches, guild chapels, and chantries. In 1548, Edward’s Council directed that all things ‘corrupt, vain and superstitious, meaning paintings, and statues, including the great Rood, should be taken down and destroyed’. Shrines were smashed, wall paintings obliterated with whitewash and everything of value – gold and silver plate, rings and jewels – whatever its religious significance, were taken. Even the brass of the tombs was ripped out and sold. Some churches were left with only a plain chalice for the taking of communion and a bell. Berry Pomeroy Castle bears witness to the wealth and power which accrued in time to the Seymour family, Dukes of Somerset.
So, when we visit an ancient English Parish Church, it is likely to be a mere ghost of its former self. In the Catholic Mass, only the priest took communion in a mysterious ritual in the chancel by the altar, chanting all the while in Latin. The priest was expected to use the wall-paintings, stained glass and statues to explain to an illiterate people assembled in the nave on the other side of the rood screen, the Christian truths. Over centuries parish churches and chapels had accumulated the rich trappings of Catholic ritual such as we may only see today in Italy or Spain. Now the word, the English word through scripture, bible readings, and prayer were the way, the truth and the light for a more literate people – no more idolatrous images of Saints to distract from biblical truth. Can we glimpse this lost world, so dear to our ancestors? Remnants remain. The medieval rood screen, beautifully carved, ablaze with gilding and glowing with colour, was the perfect expression of the collaboration between carpenter, woodcarver, and painter. It was the crowning glory of every parish church in the west country. Today perhaps fewer than one in ten can boast even a mutilated part of their original rood screen. And all that is left of the rood loft, statues, and richly carved balustrade is a sorry reminder high up on the wall to the north of the chancel arch – the doorway which once led on to the rood loft, now a doorway to nowhere. In the southwest, a few churches, perhaps protected by powerful nobles, or rich merchants, burgesses on the town or village councils, kept some of their decoration.
Blisland Church of St Protus and St Hyacinth, on the western shoulder of Bodmin Moor, gives a taste of what we have lost. This Norman church was extensively renovated in the 19th century with a restored rood. The poet, broadcaster, and celebrated campaigner for Britains historic buildings, John Betjeman, considered Blisland to be the loveliest church in the West Country. A region he knew well.
Equally atmospheric, because they are precious survivors, are the medieval screen paintings in Ashton Church of St John the Baptist, among Devon’s best, deep in beautiful countryside some 6 miles SW of Exeter. There are 32 saints, some disfigured, including St George and the dragon.
However 10 better paintings are on the altar side of the screen. Although religious in subject, these pictures are original, and by a fine artist, not a local journeyman painter. Some 600 years old, they are an astonishing survival, depicting figures in the clothes and style of the 15th century.
Kenton All Saints is one of the few churches in the country with its original rood loft intact. Kenton is a couple of miles west of the Exe Estuary not far from Powderham Castle, itself dating from the 14th century and home of the Earls of Devon. The purpose of Kenton’s rood loft was as a minstrel gallery, it is believed to date from the 1470s, although the church is a century older.
Edward died in 1553. Desperate to maintain the Protestant faith, he and his ministers sought to disinherit Mary in favour of Lady Jane Grey. Mary rallied her Catholic supporters, deposed and beheaded Queen Jane and violently reversed the protestant reforms. Churches were again to be bright with colour, resound to the Latin mass, and the worship of Saints. It was not to be. In a disastrous political miscalculation Mary married the heir to Charles V, Philip of Spain. Philip became King of England. He succeeded Charles to become Philip II of Spain, however he was careful to exclude his English subjects from trade with the Spanish Empire. Protestants in England, and English Catholic nationalists alike were united in their disenchantment with Queen Mary I, her persecutions, and her husband, King Philip.
Elizabeth I – Gloriana – England’s Virgin Queen. England goes Global, War with Spain, the Armada of 1588
Mary died in 1558. Her half-sister Elizabeth, came to the throne. Elizabeth reversed Mary’s Catholic reforms. There is a marvellous 18th-century song, ‘the Vicar of Bray’, which reflects the determination of one parish priest to keep his living despite the turmoil. It comes from the following story published in 1662.
“The vivacious vicar [of Bray] living under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, was first a Papist, then a Protestant, then a Papist, then a Protestant again. He had seen some martyrs burnt (two miles off) at Windsor and found this fire too hot for his tender temper. This vicar, being taxed [attacked] by one for being a turncoat and an inconstant changeling, said, “Not so, for I always kept my principle, which is this – to live and die the Vicar of Bray.”
Elizabeth had a difficult balancing act, but she was a brilliant politician, clever, and self-assured. She had inherited from Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII an understanding of the relationship between power and display. A natural actress, she loved to be loved. An unwise Pope excommunicated Elizabeth and absolved anyone who assassinated her of any crime. Creating an awful dilemma for English Catholics – however patriotic, to keep the faith was to be suspect. Elizabeth, short of cash, turned a blind-eye to the depredations of English adventurers seeking to break into her half brother-in-law, Philip’s Spanish dominions. Particularly the riches of the New World. Decreed by the Pope to be exclusive Spanish and Portuguese possessions. A succession of English adventurers were granted charters by Elizabeth to create new colonies. Today deep in the quiet Devon countryside, a few miles inland from Torquay, is Compton Castle, for 500 years home to the Gilberts. Now National Trust, Compton has a display telling the story of the colonisation by Sir Humphrey Gilbert of ‘Newfoundland’, now in Canada. Devon’s most famous explorer is of course Sir Francis Drake. Drake, schooled by his prominent seafaring relatives, the Hawkins family of Plymouth, was the second man, and first Englishman, to circumnavigate the World between 1577 and 1580. Bringing back plunder from the closed Spanish Empire, he earned the gratitude of Elizabeth, a joint stock holder in his voyage, and the enmity of Philip of Spain, which led to war. Drake’s home, Buckland Abbey, and the ‘Box’ museum in Plymouth tell the story of Drake’s exploits. Chief amongst the exhibits is Drake’s drum. Henry Newbolt’s poem captures the drama of the age…
“Drake he was a Devon man, an’ ruled the Devon seas,
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?),
Rovin’ tho’ his death fell, he went wi’ heart at ease,
An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe,
Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,
Strike et when your powder’s runnin’ low;
If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll quit the port o’ Heaven,
An’ drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago.”
It is said the drum sounds a ghostly beat when England is in danger. Legend surrounds the drum. In 1938, when Buckland Abbey was partly destroyed by fire, the drum was rescued and taken for safety at the rebuilt Buckfast Abbey near Buckfastleigh. Plymouth was devastated in the Air Raids that followed, reminding some of the ancient legend that ‘If Drake’s Drum should be moved from its rightful home, the city will fall’. The drum was returned and the city remained safe for the rest if the war. The drum was reported to have been heard to beat last in 1940 when the Army was surrounded at Dunkirk.
In 1588, Philip sent his great Armada to invade, depose Elizabeth, and bring England back into the Catholic fold. The English sea-captains rallied. Drake, second-in-command, played bowls on Plymouth Hoe awaiting wind and tide to get his squadron of the Fleet to sea. Elizabeth, magnificently mounted and in armour, gave the greatest speech of any English monarch to her assembled troops at Tilbury, at the mouth of the Thames Estuary.
‘My loving people.
We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.
I know I have the body but of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Palma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field’.
Who could possibly top that? Elizabeth was to die childless. Her great rival the Catholic, Mary Queen of Scots was to triumph from the grave. Mary’s son, the protestant-educated James VI of Scotland was to succeed Elizabeth as James I of England, ushering in the equally turbulent times of Stuart England. A tale for next time.
Written by Bob Mark
Chair, South West Coast Path Association
This article is the third in a series exploring the history around the landscape of the South West Coast Path. Read the other articles in the series:
History Around the SW Coast Path – Part I – Prehistory – The Age of Megaliths, Bronze and Iron
History around the SW Coast Path – Part II – Medieval
Discover a selection of Heritage Walks on our website and explore the past as you travel.
The South West Coast Path 