15. All Saints Church and the Conant family: More on 'Leavers' and 'Remainers'

'Embarkation of the Pilgrims' (1857) by the artist Robert W. Weir, Collection of the United States Capitol, Washington DC. Protestant pilgrims are shown on the deck of the ship Speedwell before their departure for the New World from Delft Haven, Holland, on July 22, 1620.  

Roger Conant’s arrival in America, following so closely on that of the Pilgrim Fathers, might lead you to believe that he shared their religious convictions and that like them he had fled Europe because of persecution. The reality was different: Roger’s reasons for starting a new life in a distant land were mainly economic.  Yet religion played a significant part in his family's life.  

The statue of Sir Walter Ralegh (2006) in East Budleigh by Vivien Mallock, and the village pub sign. At this time of writing, so close to Halloween, you may have noticed something rather spooky about the statue’s shadow. When I took the photo in 2009 the timing was entirely by chance: Sir Walter’s ghost was telling me something. I promise no photoshopping took place 

Most visitors to East Budleigh’s parish church of All Saints are drawn there by the name of the statue which stands nearby – and of course by the pub which similarly honours Sir Walter Ralegh. It used to be called The King’s Arms.

The tomb of Joan Drake in All Saints Church 

The church has a link to another name as famous as that of Ralegh. In the centre of the nave, under a large slab of grey stone is the body of Joan Drake (1506-30). The second marriage of Joan's father John Drake (1474-1554) would lead to the birth of Sir Francis Drake. Joan Drake was the first wife of Walter Raleigh Sr (c.1496-1581), whose third marriage, to Katherine Champernowne, would result in the birth of Sir Walter Ralegh.  

A carved oak bench end in All Saints Church, East Budleigh, bears the Conant arms

The Conant name is less prominent but Roger’s family actually had the closest links with All Saints Church. 

His father Richard (c.1548-1630) and grandfather John (c.1520-96) were churchwardens, just as Raleigh’s father had been.

Portrait of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger.  The King – a principal ‘Leaver’ who engineered England's break from the ‘tyranny’ of Rome and the Pope – sought sovereignty for 'the people of this country', infuriating 'Remainers'. Of course he had personal reasons too!

Church life in East Budleigh during Roger Conant’s childhood was calmer compared with the religious conflicts of the English Reformation during the mid-16th century that had marked village life while Raleigh was a boy.  

You could say that the break from Rome started by Henry VIII marked a struggle between ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’ more vicious than any we can think of today.

Left: The eminent Sir Walter Ralegh scholar Dr T.N. Brushfield in the library at his home The Cliff in Budleigh Salterton. The blue plaque was set up in Dr Brushfield's honour by Friends of Fairlynch Museum in 2017

Among violent changes to the building of All Saints brought about as a result of the Protestant Reformation under King Edward VI, the historian Dr T.N. Brushfield noted that the holy water stoup in the south porch had been ‘very rudely torn out of its site, leaving only a small portion behind, and the hole hastily filled in.’  He reckoned that Ralegh’s father, as a churchwarden with Protestant leanings, would have had a hand in this work. 

Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I by the Exeter-born painter Nicholas Hilliard c.1547-1619

Clearly the death of the Catholic Queen Mary and the accession of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth in 1558 marked a final victory for the ‘Leavers’ over the ‘Remainers’, and brought about a welcome period of relative calm in religious affairs.    

Dr Brushfield observed that at All Saints there is no record of disturbances in church arrangements between the twelfth year of Elizabeth’s reign and 1642, the start of the English Civil War.  

But there were still those ‘Leavers’  - the Puritans - who felt that the Reformation had not gone far enough, that the break with Rome had not been sufficiently ‘hard’.  The belief had been widespread in every class of society. Queen Elizabeth I herself was a committed Anglican, but many of her advisers shared Puritan views. 

Mayflower II, a replica of the original 1620 ship at Plymouth, on Cape Cod MA. The replica was built in Devon and has been refurbished in time for the 400th anniversary celebrations in 2020

And then there were the ‘no deal’ Separatists whose views were so hard – seeking a total break not just from the Catholic but from the Anglican Church –  that they fled to exile in Holland.  In 1620 the first group left for America in the ‘Mayflower’.

A road sign at the approach to the town of Brewster MA announces that it is twinned with Budleigh Salterton. The two towns are actually quite similar in many ways

Incidentally, among them was William Brewster, born at
Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire in 1566. Some years ago, efforts were made to twin Budleigh Salterton with the Cape Cod town named after him.

The Exeter Martyrs Memorial on the corner of Barnfield Road and Denmark Road. Do go and contemplate this largely unknown Exeter monument. The Protestant Agnes Prest was burnt at the stake at Southernhay in 1557, when 'Remainers' during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary were in the ascendancy. Sir Walter Ralegh's mother is said to have visited the poor woman the night before her death, and to have been impressed by the strength of Agnes' Protestant faith  

Puritanism was especially  strong in East Devon, being an important aspect of  Exeter’s social and political history during the late 16^th and  early 17^th centuries. It influenced the thinking of most members of the Conant family. 

Roger’s elder brother John Conant (1586-1653), also brought up in East Budleigh, was instituted Rector of Lymington, near Ilchester, Somerset, in 1619.   The living was in the gift of the Sir Henry Rosewell, a known Puritan.

The Assertion of Liberty of Conscience by the Independents of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, as painted by John Rogers Herbert (1810-1890)

On 23 July 1643, John Conant was one of the so-called Westminster Assembly of Divines who preached a celebrated sermon before the House of Commons, calling for it to reform the Church of England because he and his fellow-Puritans believed that the break with Rome had not been ‘hard’ enough. 

In fact the ‘Leavers’ had become so suspicious of the King, believing him to be a secret ‘Remainer’ that Civil War had broken out between the groups in the previous year.

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Portrait by Samuel Cooper (d.1672).  

An increasingly savage conflict raged, with the ‘Leavers’ led to victory by Oliver Cromwell, who had always refused any deal.  The rather foolish and stubborn King Charles I was tried as a traitor and executed on 30 January 1649.  Puritans and ‘Leavers’ had triumphed!  

A 19th-century representation by Henry Edward Doyle of the massacre at Drogheda, 1649. First published in 1868    

There were still plenty of 'Remainers' in Ireland of course. Cromwell's brutal treatment of them is still remembered by their descendants. But for this 'Arch-Leaver' the fate of the Irish Catholics was, as he put it, 'a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches'. 

Irish sources in the 1660s claimed that 4,000 civilians had been put to the sword by Cromwell's soldiers, denouncing the sack of the town as 'unparalleled savagery and treachery beyond any slaughterhouse' 

Irritated by what he saw as the 'immoral principles & practices' of the English Parliament he closed it down in 1653 and ruled as a dictator! 'Ye are grown odious to the whole nation', he is said to have told the MPs.  Sounds familiar?

Portrait of the Revd Dr John Conant by an unknown artist

Another noted clergyman from Roger’s family was his nephew John Conant (1608-1694), born at Yettington, a mile north of East Budleigh.  In 1649 he was appointed Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, proving a popular choice with students and with Oliver Cromwell

For his advanced students John Conant led a study of biblical prophecy, inspired by the writings of the New England nonconformist minister Thomas Parker (1595–1677),  who in 1634 had embarked for America, where he founded the township of Newbury, in Massachusetts. Parker's best known work was 'The Visions and Prophecies of Daniel Expounded' (1646), which asserted that the Pope was the Antichrist.  

Oliver Cromwell obviously appreciated John Conant’s strong Puritan beliefs, awarding him income from the rectory at Abergele, Denbighshire, and Cromwell's son Richard 

appointed him as vice-chancellor of Oxford University. 

Sadly for Richard Cromwell, or 'Tumbledown Dick' as he was later known, the ebb and flow of political life meant that by 1660 the British people were finding life under the hard ‘Leavers’ and extreme Puritans rather boring.

Portrait of King Charles II (1630-85) by John Michael Wright. Was the King a secret 'Remainer'?  His brother James, who succeeded him as King James II, was a devout Catholic. 

Jolly times returned with the Restoration and coronation of Merry Monarch King Charles II, accused by some of being a closet Catholic. 

All Saints Church, East Budleigh, with a list of its vicars

Richard Conant (1621-1688) was another of Roger’s nephews from the East Budleigh area who was a clergyman with Puritan sympathies.  

Following the Restoration he found it difficult to obtain a living, and was listed  as one of Devon’s nonconformist ministers.  He finally became East Budleigh’s vicar  in 1672, being later described as ‘a hardworking, painstaking and exemplary clergyman’.

As most people know, the conflict between Catholics and Protestants would continue for some centuries, and not just within the British Isles.  

But East Devon seems to have been distinctly a land of ‘Leavers’. Colyton, the town which was home to Roger Conant’s mother, is famous for being known as ‘the Most Rebellious Town in Devon’ because of its part in the 1685 uprising against the Catholic King James II.  

You can read about the Monmouth Rebellion at https://www.colytonhistory.co.uk/colyton-history-rebel.php 

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