‘I’d rather walk a hundred miles,
And run by night and day,
Than have that carriage halt for me
And hear my ladye say –
‘Now pray step in, and make no din,
Step in with me to ride;
There’s room, I trow, by me for you,
And all the world beside.’
Sabine Baring-Gould, 1908
For Bette
A great lady
A generous soul
May she enjoy the rest of her journey
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks go to my parents for reading early versions of this book and offering corrections and encouragement. The research started as a play called The Advocate which was first performed as a public reading in London, for Amnesty International – thanks to all the cast and production team who made that possible. And I must thank my friend Lisa Tetley for all her wonderful, generous support for both the play and the book over all this time. Many others have also contributed and offered their support over the years, including, in no particular order: Ade Morris; Andrew Smaje; Mike Kaloski-Naylor; Ben Mitchell; Angela Sherlock; Danny Reilly; Colin Archer; David Lane; Robert Chapman and Dr Tom Greeves. Dr Greeves gave me some wonderful feedback on an early draft.
My family have had to support me through some difficult times over such an extended period, so huge thanks to them, and thanks to all those who so graciously contributed photographs and images. The Archive Staff at the Inns of Court; Plymouth and West Devon Record Office;West Sussex Record Office and Devon Record Office were just wonderful. I am particularly grateful to all those who have explored the story before me, from Mrs G. Radford and Amos C. Miller for the Devonshire Association, to more recently Gerry Woodcock and Kevin Hynes. I hope I have remembered you all in the References section and given you the credit you deserve. I am also indebted to Cate Ludlow at the History Press for all her hard work and advice, and for believing in the project.
My final thanks goes to everyone who is researching their family and local histories – your efforts and contributions have maintained so many research services that otherwise might have failed for lack of funding, and have recently made available so much new material. It is both humbling and fascinating to be involved in such an enormous endeavour on the part of so many people. I am delighted to see communities preserving their own histories in a continuum of study, investigating why things are as they are now, and how things have changed. Remembering previous generations is so essential to understanding ourselves. The efforts of those individuals discovering, exploring and translating parish and other records, and making them available online for everyone to access should be celebrated – it is a terrific achievement and long may their generous and inspirational work continue.
I do hope that everyone enjoys the book, finished at last. All mistakes are my own and any comments and corrections are gratefully and graciously received.
My journey ends here.
Laura Quigley, 2011
CONTENTS
Title
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Notes on the Text
Principle Characters and Locations
1 A Tale of Three Fathers
2 The Terror Begins
3 Revenge Served Cold
4 An Heir Apparent
5 The Devil Comes to Dartmoor
6 A Marriage Under Fire
7 Declarations of War
8 Triumph of a Traitor
9 A Fool and His Money
10 A Man of Means
11 A Spirited Lady
Timeline
Family Trees:
The Courtenays of Powderham
The Cutteford and Halse Families
The Grenville Family
The Howard Family of Saffron Walden
References
Plates
Copyright
Notes on the Text
The seventeenth century was a turbulent era in European history, a time of global exploration, epidemics and, it seems, perpetual conflict. In Britain in the 1640s, there were a series of very well-documented battles which are collectively called the ‘English Civil War’ and I, like most others, have retained this name for clarity. However, these wars destroyed lives across Scotland, Wales, Ireland, England and parts of France, and imported mercenaries from all over Europe. Thousands of Scots were killed or enslaved and sent to the New World in the midst of this English Civil War, and the brutal events did not end with the execution of King Charles I. Their impact was felt across Britain and Ireland and into Europe for many years, and I am sorry not to be able to present more of the story in this book. I have concentrated here on characters in Devon and must leave those other stories for better writers and scholars than I.
It could be argued that this English Civil War was led by opposing factions in London, the English gentry battling amongst themselves for supremacy; it was ‘English’ in that sense, but if ever a war was incorrectly named, this one was. Some historians are now referring to these wars as the ‘British Civil Wars’ or the ‘Wars of the Three Kingdoms’, titles which are perhaps more appropriate, but the term ‘English Civil War’ still predominates, so I use it here merely for continuity.
The calendar year used to start in March, so, like many writers, I have amended some year dates for a modern audience, and to maintain a consistency with other histories. For example, January 1643 in their calendar is translated to January 1644 in ours, while dates from April to December remain unchanged.
England in the early seventeenth century was a very different country, before de-regulation of the markets, before universal suffrage, before national health care systems, and before law and order was systematically co-ordinated. Corruption was expected, land ownership was the signifier of success, and religion was an essential aspect – some might even say the defining characteristic – of any community. Yet in exploring the lives of the people of seventeenth-century Devon, I have been surprised and at times shocked by their modern attitudes and thinking, by the similarities with modern-day Britain, by the ideas they conceived, thoughts would still be influencing the world some 400 years later.
Essentially this book is a love story, and like all great love stories, I make no apologies for the characters’ flaws. They were human beings just like us, often overwhelmed by emotions and ambitions, trying to do their best in a world that was descending into madness.
Principle Characters and Locations
At Fitzford, Tavistock
Mary Fitz
Sir John Fitz and Bridget Courtenay (her parents)
Sir Alan Percy, Sir Thomas Darcy, Sir Charles Howard and the villain of the piece Sir Richard Grenville – her husbands
Mary Vernon (née Howard), Richard Grenville, and Elizabeth Lennard (née Grenville) – her children
At Walreddon, near Tavistock
George Cutteford, his wife Grace, and their children, George, John, Eleanor, Grace, and Anne
Richard Halse and his family
George Halse/Howard, son of Mary Fitz and George Cutteford (who became a ward of Sir Francis Trelawney of Venn)
At Powderham Castle, near Exmouth
Sir William Courtenay, Earl of Devon
Sir Francis Courtenay (his son)
Sir William Courtenay (his grandson)
At Audley End, Saffron Walden
Sir Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk
Theophilus Howard (his son), also living at Lulworth Castle in Dorset
James Howard and George Howard (his grandsons)
In Oxford in 1644
King Charles I
Prince Charles, Prince of Wales; Prince James, Duke of York (his sons)
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Edward Sackville, Earl of Dorset, Lord Chamberlain to the King (also with houses at Knole in Kent, and Withyham in Dorset)
Sir John Maynard, once attorney to King Charles I
In Exeter, 1644
Sir John Berkeley, Royalist Governor of Exeter
Chapter One
A Tale of Three Fathers
Mary Howard’s ghost, it is said, haunts the heart of Dartmoor. Some say they have seen her spectral form at the gatehouse of her old home in Tavistock; others that they have glimpsed a mysterious coach travelling across the moors. The spectre of her dog, with demonic eyes, has been seen running along the dark lanes to Okehampton Castle. The stories have been told over and over in the old pubs in Tavistock and Okehampton, perhaps as a warning to unwary travellers or to hurry the drunks off home to bed. Even the famous lyricist and historian Sabine Baring-Gould1 recalled a number of eyewitness accounts of the famous white lady who appears every night at midnight by the Tavistock gatehouse. There she boards a spectral coach made of human bones; the skulls of her four husbands are at each corner, and it is driven by a headless coachman. A skeletal black dog with fiery eyes accompanies her, running alongside the coach, as she rides across the winding roads of Dartmoor, past the ruins of old Lydford Gaol and out towards Okehampton. On arrival at Okehampton Castle, she plucks a blade of grass, and then rides back again, all the way back to that gatehouse, back and forth every night from midnight till dawn. She must make this same journey every night for eternity as penance for her sins, for murdering her four husbands, so they say, and when she has taken every blade of grass from Okehampton Castle, the world will end.2
Elizabeth I.
If someone sees the white lady on the road, according to the legend, there will be a death. Perhaps there is some truth in that, as from the moment an attorney called George Cutteford met the young Mary Howard, his life would be marked by tragedy.
The story of Mary Howard and her attorney, however, starts many years before she was born, when, in 1582, a sailor called William Cutteford climbed the steps to an attorney’s office on the Sutton Pool docks in Plymouth, to have his will written for him.3
A sailor’s life in Elizabethan England was a precarious one. William Cutteford would have worked for hire on many different ships, perhaps for merchants or the navy, perhaps for the customs officers who regularly battled smugglers and pirates along the many harbours and inlets around the coast of south-west England. Sailors frequently died at sea, in accidents, in battle, or by disease. William Cutteford now had a family to care for, and, like any responsible parent, he entered the attorney’s office determined to ensure his family would be looked after in the event of his death.
To his wife Ann, William bequeathed their dwelling, just a single room in one of the many terraced houses around the Plymouth docks. As many as six families could be living in each of these tiny three-storey houses, their men at sea for many months. William wanted to be sure that after his death, Ann would have somewhere to live for the rest of her life. To his daughter, Jane4, William left 20s, and his brother John Cutteford would have William’s best woollen doublet. William saved the better portion of his possessions for his only son, who was not yet twenty-one and probably unmarried. To the young George Cutteford, he left the princely sum of £400. Around £10 a year was the usual earnings for a humble sailor of the time, so his sailing exploits had obviously been very profitable for William to have left his son so much.
THE ELIZABETHAN ERA
Elizabeth, the only child of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, succeeded her Catholic sister Mary to the throne in 1558, and reigned for forty-four years, until her death in 1603. Elizabeth’s court established the Church of England with the monarch as its Supreme Governor, putting an end to the anti-Protestant persecutions of Queen Mary, though this now left Catholics persecuted. When Elizabeth’s cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, returned from France, there was a Catholic uprising, determined to put Mary on the English throne. The uprising failed, and Mary was imprisoned and eventually executed. Her son was subsequently declared James VI of Scotland, inheriting the English throne when Elizabeth I died childless.
Elizabeth’s long reign is remembered as one of relative stability and progress in England, an age of global exploration, rising prosperity and the writings of William Shakespeare and John Donne, amongst others. Elizabeth’s infamous privateers such as Sir Francis Drake brought home great wealth from their attacks on the Spanish treasure ships returning from South America and the Caribbean. In 1588, Philip II of Spain retaliated by sending the Spanish Armada, a fleet of the largest ships ever built, to invade England’s south east coast, but misfortunes and the weather plagued them. The English used ‘fire ships’ – ships set ablaze and made to drift towards the enemy – to break the Armada’s formation. The smaller, faster English ships could then take on the Spanish ships one at a time. The defeat of the Spanish Armada became useful propaganda for Elizabeth and the Protestants; the famous English ships and their charismatic admirals brought both wealth and power to Elizabethan England.
* * *
As executor of the will, William Cutteford appointed his best friend, John Maynard, who was also one of the witnesses to the signing of the will. The Maynard family were very influential in Devon, cousins to the Elizabethan hero Sir Francis Drake. Many of the Maynard family were attorneys and philanthropists, establishing almshouses, schools and other charitable establishments in Plymouth and Devon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. John Maynard’s descendant namesake became a famous attorney who would influence events in England throughout the seventeenth century.
It was this friendship between William Cutteford and the elder John Maynard that would decide the fate of Cutteford’s descendants. As William sat in the attorney’s office, the clerk’s pen carefully recording his wishes for the future in a series of intricate pronouncements that William himself could not read, he would have realised that the sea was no future for his son. William would have felt the importance of the man behind the desk. At that moment, William might have dreamed of his son becoming a clerk, perhaps even an attorney, and the philanthropist John Maynard was the man to make that happen.
It was a friendship that would have an astonishing outcome, for just thirty years later, the grandson of William Cutteford would become one of the wealthiest men in Devon. The notorious Mary Howard would be instrumental in his success.
In 1582, however, William Cutteford had only his son’s future in mind. John Maynard’s relative Alexander was an attorney living in Tavistock and it is quite possible he took on a young apprentice as a clerk, one George Cutteford. Certainly by 1607, George was himself established as an attorney in Tavistock.5
George would never have any formal qualifications – there was not the money for him to enter the realms of the Inns of Court in London where lawyers were trained, and George Cutteford was just the son of a sailor, so had no status for such admission. The Inns of Court were there for the sons of landowners and wealthy men, with members of the landed gentry as guarantors for their rent and working space, and the Cutteford family had never owned any land. They were common people; the name Cutteford, in its many different spellings, could be found throughout the south west; possibly related to the first farmers in Chard in Somerset, who were drawn to the south west during the conscriptions of Henry VIII, desperate for fighting men to go to sea to defend his coastlines against the French.6 There is still a place called Cuttifords Door in Somerset. ‘Cutty’ meant something short or small, often referring to a small tobacco pipe or a spoon. ‘Ford’ was the old word for a river crossing, so at some time the family must have derived the name from a small river crossing near where they lived.
INNS OF COURT
In the seventeenth century there were four Inns of Court in London, established in the fourteenth century for the training of lawyers: Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple. The Temples were established on land formerly owned by the Kn
ights Templar, and subsequently the Hospitallers. There was also a Serjeants Inn for the training of specialist Serjeants at Law, whose work is dramatically portrayed in the series of Shardlake books by C.J. Sansom. The Inns of Court were described by Sir Edmund Coke in 1602 as England’s third university, along with Oxford and Cambridge, training those heading for a career in the Law as well as educating the sons of nobility and landowners who required good knowledge of contractual law. The education was expensive, and candidates for entry to the courts, as well as being themselves wealthy, had to provide the names of two wealthy landowners as guarantors for their rent and living expenses. This was education for the elite. Most attorneys in England, little more than clerks, were trained through apprenticeships.
Sir Walter Raleigh was a famous member of the Middle Temple – and proved to be a skilled advocate in his own trials. Sir Francis Drake, though not a member, also had close ties with the Middle Temple. The Cup Board, the table where graduating barristers stand to write their names into the Inn’s books, is made from the fore hatch of Sir Francis’ famous ship The Golden Hind.7
* * *
Men from the southern regions of England would have been conscripted into the Elizabethan navies to guard the south-west English ports in times of war and piracy. Around Exmouth, the Cuttiford name was frequently misspelled as Cutteford, as Cutters were the ships most often used by the customs men, themselves called ‘cutters’ or cutter men. By the seventeenth century, the homes around Exmouth and nearby Plymouth were filled with families of the sea-going Cuttefords.
The Devil Comes to Dartmoor Page 1