53. Fishing in the Archives

 

Many books have been written about East Budleigh’s best known historical figure Sir Walter Raleigh. About the village’s other heroic explorer with transatlantic links, understandably not so much! The last biography of Roger Conant, founder of Salem in Massachusetts, was published in 1945.

But still, plenty about him, written by descendants or by Massachusetts historians, has appeared online – including what I am writing now.

 

Frederick Odell Conant’s massive History and Genealogy of the Conant family in England and America thirteen generations 1520-1887, first published in the late 19^th century, is also now digitally available.  

What I didn’t expect to find as a source for Roger’s story was an apparently dry-as-dust report on the state of the 19^th century American fishing industry by a civil servant called Lorenzo Sabine. But Sabine was much more than a bureaucratic pen-pusher. He engaged in a number of careers, including some unsuccessful business ventures, and also held public office for a time in the Maine House of Representatives  and as Deputy Commissioner of Customs.

 As an author, in his research and his publications he showed a passionate desire to reach the truth, being encouraged and applauded by no less a person than the revered historian Jared Sparks, President of Harvard College, now Harvard University.

 

Writing about what an author considers to be the truth can be controversial, and Sabine’s best-known work was no exception, landing him in hot water with ‘patriotic’ Americans. We all know that the American Revolution War between 1775 and 1783, also known as the War of Independence, resulted in a humiliating defeat for Britain.

Not everyone knows that British troops were helped by Loyalists in the American colonies who rejected the idea of republicanism and remained staunchly devoted to the Crown, supporting British rule in the colonies.  I didn’t know that the terms Whig and Tory, first used in 17th century English politics, were used across the Atlantic to distinguish between the rebels – or patriots, as Americans today would call them – and the Loyalists.

Celebrating an American victory on 14 October 1781: ‘Storming a Redoubt at Yorktown’ by the French artist Eugène Lami  (1800–1890). Image credit: Wikipedia

From early childhood, Lorenzo Sabine, in his own words, was ‘revolution-mad.’ But, not until 1821, when he moved to the state of Maine and was close enough to pursue his passion, did he realize how much rich material there was for an historian to study, based on the memories of people who had fought on the two sides. 

Prior to his revelations, most Americans  believed, in his words, that ‘every “Tory” was as bad as bad could be, every “son of Liberty” as good as possible.’   Sabine discovered, as he put it, that ‘there was more than one side to the Revolution’.

In 1847, sixty or so years after the dramatic events which led to American independence, Lorenzo Sabine published the results of his research in the North American Review, the United States' first literary magazine. His studies, he wrote, had convinced him that ‘all who called themselves Whigs were not necessarily disinterested and virtuous, and the objects of unlimited praise, and the Tories were not to a man selfish and vicious, and deserving of unmeasured and indiscriminate reproach.’ 

William Franklin FRSE (1730 –1813), a steadfast Loyalist throughout the American Revolutionary War, was an American-born attorney, soldier, politician, and colonial administrator. He was the acknowledged illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin. His father by contrast was one of the most prominent of the Patriot leaders of the American Revolution and a Founding Father of the United States.  The painting is attributed to the American artist Mather Brown (1761-1831). Image credit: Wikipedia

 Sabine’s findings were controversial, but his ideas appeared in book form. His Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, with an Historical Essay, was published in two volumes by Little, Brown and Company in Boston. 

In his preface he pondered on the question of why so little was known of the Loyalists. ‘The reason is obvious,’ he concluded. ‘Men who, like the Loyalists, separate themselves from their friends and kindred, who are driven from their homes, who surrender the hopes and expectations of life, and who become outlaws, wanderers, and exiles, - such men, leave few memorials behind them. Their papers are scattered and lost, and their very names pass from human recollection.’

For Sabine, Roger Conant similarly resembled one of those forgotten historical figures. His Report on the Principal Fisheries of the American Seas, prepared for the Treasury Department of the United States was published in Washington in 1853.  

Judging by the title it appeared to be a somewhat unexciting document; it was destined, as the front page tells us, to be submitted by the Hon. Thomas Corwin, Secretary of the Treasury as ‘a part of his annual report on the nation’s finances at the second session of the thirty-second Congress’. In fact Sabine’s report, along with the tables and statistics that one might expect from such a report, included a lively and most readable history of the American fishing industry from earliest times. It included his own theory that the Plymouth Pilgrims had set sail for the New World on the Mayflower partly to profit from the plentiful fishing grounds of America’s east coast.  

Thomas Corwin, incidentally, was known for his sharp wit, being quoted for this aphorism by the Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock: ‘The world has a contempt for the man who amuses it. You must be solemn, solemn as an ass. All the great monuments on earth have been erected over the graves of solemn asses.’

 Sabine expressed similar feelings in relation to Roger Conant’s place in history. ‘If men would be remembered by those who come after them, they must win battles, or acquire positions in the State,’ he wrote in his Report on the Principal Fisheries for Thomas Corwin. ‘Roger Conant was but a humble superintendent of a fishery, and of a plantation undertaken among the bare rocks of Gloucester, and is forgotten.’

 

He went on in his report to tell the story of Conant’s intervention ‘at the point of collision and bloodshed’ in the stand-off between the Cape Ann fishermen and the Plymouth Puritans at Cape Ann, the subject of John Washington’s recent painting seen above. 

 

 The Myles Standish Monument in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Image credit: Pete Forsyth; Wikipedia

Myles Standish, incidentally, he describes as ‘the renowned Indian-slayer’ – perhaps a bitter reflection on the fame achieved in battles won by English settlers against Native American tribes thanks to the skills and ruthlessness of this Plymouth Puritans’ military officer. The later 19^th century in America would see a number of monuments dedicated to Standish, as well as at least two forts, two towns and a forest named after him. The Duxbury monument shown above, finished in 1898, is the third tallest monument to an individual in the United States.

Roger Conant had achieved nothing like such fame in 1853. ‘His history has not been written; it exists only in fragments,’ reads the Report on the Principal Fisheries. ‘He was a good man. He possessed the true test of merit, for he never clamored, or even asked, for reward.’  

Sabine had evidently read the petition of 1671 which Conant had addressed to the magistrates of the General Court at Salem and felt that he did indeed deserve reward. He had, after all, remained steadfast and continued to lead the party of settlers at the colony of Naumkeag – later to be named Salem – when many of them had absconded, either returning home or going further south.

In Conant’s own words, when, ‘in the infancy thereof’, Naumkeag ‘was in great hazard of being deserted, I was a means, through grace assisting me, to stop the flight of those few that were heere with me, and that by my utter deniall to goe away with them, who would have gon either for England or mostly for Virginia, but thereupon stayed to the hassard of our lives.’

Sabine went on to mention Conant’s wish to change the name of the town of Beverly, frustrated by the refusal in 1671 of the magistrates of the General Court at Salem. ‘In his old age, he did indeed petition, that as “Budleigh,” in England, was his birthplace, so “Budleigh,” in America might be his burial place; but this poor boon was denied to the Christian hero, who stood by and saved the colony in the hour of extremity.’

John Wingate Thornton in 1870. Image credit: Wikipedia

Lorenzo Sabine’s wish to see Roger Conant’s achievements recognised was partially  fulfilled in the year after his fisheries report was published. The lawyer and author John Wingate Thornton’s book The Landing at Cape Anne or The Charter of the first permanent colony on the territory of the Massachusetts Company (1854)  has this judgement of Salem’s founder:  

‘Conant was moderate in his views, tolerant, mild and conciliatory, quiet and unobtrusive, ingenuous and unambitious, preferring the public good to his private interests; with the passive virtues he combined great moral courage and an indomitable will. His true courage and simplicity of heart and strength of principle eminently qualified him for the conflicts of those days of perils, deprivation, and trial.’

 

The Conant memorial window in the church at Dudley, Massachusetts. Image credit: Chris Mayen

Sabine did not live to see the first-ever monument in America which honoured Roger Conant. This was the fine memorial window commissioned for the Conant Memorial Church in Dudley, Massachusetts, but sadly destroyed during a storm on 8 June 1946.  Roger’s descendant, the 19^th century inventor and industrialist Hezekiah Conant, who funded the church, published a souvenir booklet in 1883. This is what he wrote about his ancestor:   

‘The memorial window, representing Roger Conant separating the combatants, is appropriate and not objectionable, it seems to me, and I prefer it to any picture of celestial beings. It represents an event in history, and it also shows a characteristic of that eminent person. I do not know that he was strictly a Puritan, yet he was a religious man, and a person who commanded the confidence and respect of the community in which he lived, and his character has no stain. And though he never was canonized by any ecclesiastical authority, yet when he prevented this quarrel he certainly was entitled to the reward promised by Christ himself, who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” 

 

Lorenzo Sabine’s grave. Image credit: www.findagrave.com

Lorenzo Sabine died in Roxbury, Massachusetts on 14 April 1877. He was interred in Hillside Cemetery at Eastport in the state of Maine.

I know that he would be delighted with what we are doing in Roger Conant’s home village of East Budleigh to honour this decent, modest pioneer of American history. Contributions towards the cost of the blue plaque to commemorate him are most welcome. You can read more at  

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/michael-downes-1

 

52. Budleigh and Beverly: what's in a name?

 

John Balch House, Beverly, Massachusetts, as seen from Cabot Street in 2005. Image credit: Daderot; Wikipedia

Roger Conant is perhaps best known for founding the city of Salem, originally called Naumkeag.  But he is also credited with establishing the nearby Massachusetts communities of Peabody, Danvers and Beverly. It was in Beverly that he spent his later years and where he died in 1679.    

According to his biographer, Clifford K. Shipton, it was Conant who headed a petition dated 9 May 1659 addressed to the General Court at Salem.  The petition sought permission for the founding of the new community which would become Beverly, formerly known as the area of Bass River. Or, in the actual wording, ‘that we may be a towneship or villedg of & by ourselves’.

By 1671 the petition had been granted, and Bass River had become Beverly, named after the English town in Yorkshire. It would finally become a city in 1894.

 

The copy of the 1671 petition addressed by Roger Conant to the General Court. Image credit: Dr Donna Seger

But for Roger Conant the new name had become a problem, causing annoyance and embarrassment to him and his fellow-residents. In another petition of 1671 to the General Court at Salem he wrote of ‘the great dislike and discontent of many of our people for this name of Beverly, because (wee being but a smale place) it hath caused on us a Constant nickname of beggarly’.

 

Roger’s request for a name change is shown in the East Budleigh RC400 group's design for the blue plaque 

Roger suggested an alternative name which reveals his abiding attachment to his birthplace, and which he felt would be more appropriate. As he pointed out, all those settlers who were with him when he first arrived at Salem, ‘being all from the western part of England, desire this western name of Budleigh’, the place ‘where myself was borne.’  

Sadly for Roger this petition was not successful. A note of 1 June 1671 written on the document stated: ‘The Magistrates having pursued and considered this request, see no cause to alter the name of the place as desired, their brethren the deputies hereto consenting’.

Most citizens of today’s Beverly are probably quite happy with the name. But they are proud of their founder, and they approve of East Budleigh residents’ wish to honour him.  

One of them wrote recently with a donation towards the blue plaque: ‘As a resident of Beverly Massachusetts I'm actually rather glad he wasn't successful in his name change attempt but to make [up] for that, I'm glad to support the addition of a plaque in his honor.

 

 

The cover of  The Autobiography of Robert Rantoul, published by Historic Beverly in 2018  

 In fact Beverly honoured its founder as early as 1838, when at the suggestion of one of its leading citizens, Robert Rantoul Sr, a main thoroughfare was named Conant Street.

Rantoul has been described as a significant player in local politics and had a special interest in Beverly’s street layouts and place names.  He was a justice of the peace and an acting trial justice from 1808 to 1858, also serving in that period as the ‘overseer of the poor’. He was elected as a state senator of Massachusetts from 1821 to 1823. A transcription of his autobiography, with notes and index, was published by Historic Beverly in 2018.

 

 The arms of Budleigh Lodge, Beverly, Massachusetts

The 20^th century saw a partial granting of Roger Conant’s wish with the use of Budleigh’s name in the Beverly community. On 27 December 1920, Budleigh Lodge A.F. & A.M. – the A.F. & A.M. meaning Ancient Free and Accepted Masons – was instituted at 134 McKay Street in Beverly by the city’s Freemasons. 

It was, we read, ‘dedicated to attracting good men who want to realize greatness through fellowship with like minded and principled men’. This was surely an aim which harmonized perfectly with what we know of Roger Conant, for, as his descendant Frederick Odell Conant had written in 1887, ‘during his whole life he bore a character of strict integrity and devotion to principle’.

 A detailed history of the Lodge on the Masonic Genealogy website explained that it was named after the home town of Roger Conant in Cornwall, England, and how Roger, ‘leader of the first settlers in Gloucester, Salem and Beverly’ wanted Beverly to be called Budleigh. ‘It was thought fitting to perpetuate the name of his old home in England by calling the new Lodge Budleigh.’ 

My only quibble is with the statement that Budleigh is in Cornwall. It is of course in Devon! You can read the history here

 

 A 1912 postcard showing Budleigh Hall, later destroyed by fire

Another descendant of Roger Conant had commemorated his ancestor’s birthplace in the previous century, when the inventor and philanthropist Hezekiah Conant* named his summer residence in Dudley, Massachusetts, as Budleigh Hall.   

But it was in the period following World War One that English traditions and culture became fashionable in America in a phenomenon described as Anglo-Saxonism.

 

At the Hayes Barton Café and Dessertery in Raleigh NC

In the city of Raleigh, North Carolina, for example, two districts were named Budleigh and Hayes Barton – clearly associated with Sir Walter Raleigh’s birthplace of East Budleigh, Hayes Barton being the actual name of the house where he was born. Both districts were planned in the early 20th century, Hayes Barton being designed by the landscape architect Earle Sumner Draper.  

The developers appealed to the Anglophile fashion of the times, reads the informative document published by the Raleigh Historic Development Commission. ‘Politicians and professionals - plentiful group in the state’s capital city - chose Hayes Barton as home in the 1920s, buying into the developers’ promise of exclusivity and separation from the urban ills of the center city.’

Hayes Barton was ‘the first real nice suburb that Raleigh had developed,’ as Draper himself stated according to a 2002 record in the National Register of Historic Places, published by the United States Department of the Interior National Park Service. ‘Therefore the neighborhood was complete with covenants protecting the racial and social values of its residents.’ 

But back to Beverly! At some point, perhaps in the 1920s, perhaps inspired by the city’s Freemasons, it was decided that a road should be named Budleigh Avenue. Roger Conant would indeed be pleased. However I wonder how many Beverly residents today are aware of the connection.

* For the story of Hezekiah Conant click here.

Contributions towards the cost of the blue plaque to commemorate Roger Conant in his home village of East Budleigh are most welcome. You can read more at 

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/michael-downes-1

51. Salem’s story: the Clinton connection

 

Looking for frightfully fun events around Halloween this year? For haunted happenings? It’s a time when visitors from all over the USA flock to ‘The Witch City’, also known as Salem, Massachusetts.  If you’re feeling energetic there’s even a Witch City 5k Road Race on 15 October, when you can run through Salem’s supposedly haunted streets. ‘The ghouls, ghosts and goblins will be with you in spirit this year!’ promise the organisers.  

Collins Cove, Salem, Massachusetts 

One of Salem’s ghosts in particular is said to be that of a young woman dressed in a cape who can be seen walking along the shores of Collins Cove on foggy nights. She is said to be looking for her beloved lost husband who was buried apart from her. Or perhaps she is searching for her own lost grave, or pining away seeking a return to her home in the English countryside of 400 years ago.

Indeed she was English, with deep roots in the county of Lincolnshire, yet with family links that would bind her to Devonshire, even to this part of East Devon.  

To understand her rather poignant connections between the homeland of Ralegh and Conant, the Lincolnshire Wolds and the so-called Witch City you need first to look at this logo which displays the arms of the Clinton barony. You see it everywhere in the Budleigh area, from farm vehicles to industrial estates. 

Lord Clinton and me in my amazing costume at the opening of the Raleigh 400 exhibition at Fairlynch Museum, Budleigh Salterton, 28 May 2018. Image credit: Lizzie Mee  

The 22^nd Baron Clinton, pictured above, with his family seat at Heanton Satchville in North Devon is the largest private landowner in the county, holding 25,000 acres of land managed by Clinton Devon Estates, a land management and property development company.  

 

Away from Devon and the West Country, on the other side of England, is Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire. Next to it you see the arms of the Earls of Lincoln, described in heraldic terms as  'Argent, six crosses crosslets, three, two, and one, sable, on a chief azure two mullets or pierced gules'.  

For over a century, Tattershall Castle, less than 30 minutes’ drive south-west of Lincoln, was the property of the Earls of Lincoln, of the Clinton family. Edward Clinton served four Tudor monarchs in various roles, including as Governor of Boulogne and Lord High Admiral, and was created 1^st Earl in 1572 by Queen Elizabeth I.

 

The ‘Darnley Portrait’ of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Image credit: Wikipedia

However the following century saw the English monarchy in trouble. Elizabeth had successfully steered a middle way in religious matters. On one side were the Puritans who felt that the Church of England, while Protestant in name, needed further reform to rid it of ‘popish’ trappings. On the other were traditionalists who were still attached to Anglo-Catholic practices and beliefs.  

 

Portrait of King James I and VI after the artist John de Critz, c. 1605. Image credit: Wikipedia

Elizabeth’s reign came to an end with her death in 1603.  For many Puritans the accession of King James I must have seemed an opportunity to further reform the Church of England, especially as the new king had been brought up in Scotland where the Protestant Reformation had been strong, led by theologians like John Knox.

 

Early in his reign, James was presented with a list of requests contained in the Millenary Petition, said to have been signed by 1,000 Puritan ministers. The document expressed Puritans’ distaste for many Anglican customs and ceremonies, including what they saw as superstitious practices with echoes of Catholicism.

The Hampton Court Conference of 1604, presided over by the king, resulted in the acceptance of some of the Puritans’ demands, but the more radical among them remained dissatisfied.

Adding to the tensions  between king and Parliament was the political opposition to the idea of a Spanish marriage for the heir to the throne, James’ son Charles, Prince of Wales. High level negotiations to secure the marriage were conducted over a decade between 1614 and 1623. It never took place, but the plan provoked much anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic feeling.

Radical Puritans, particularly in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, had been persecuted during the reign of Elizabeth, with fines imposed by the government for failure to attend services in their parish church. By 1605 some of them were forming separatist congregations. 

 

Memorial at Immingham, Lincolnshire, to the departure of congregation members for Holland in 1608. Image credit: Paul Glazzard www.geograph.org.uk

Although Tattershall Castle remains today the most imposing of the Earls of Lincoln’s properties the Clinton family home was actually in the Lincolnshire village of Sempringham. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the English Reformation Edward Clinton, the 1^st Earl, used the site of the former priory to build a mansion which is thought to have been almost as large as some of the great Tudor palaces of the day. 

Nothing remains of the mansion today, but in the Sempringham Register we find this burial record relating to the 2^nd Earl: ‘Henry, layt Earl of Lincoln, departed out of this life at his manor house of Sempringham, this XXIX day of September, anno domini 1615.’

The parish church of St Andrew, Sempringham, where the Rev Samuel Skelton was curate. Image credit: Richard Croft; Wikipedia

It was here that one of the most significant centres of Puritanism took root. The Reverend Samuel Skelton, an ardent Puritan, became curate of Sempringham in 1615.  Later he would move to New England, having been recruited by John Endecott, the longest-serving governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who considered him as his spiritual father.

 

 

Elizabeth Fiennes de Clinton, Countess of Lincoln, painted by the Master of the Countess of Warwick. Image credit: Wikipedia

The 3^rd Earl, Thomas Fiennes Clinton (1571-1619), is described in the History of Parliament as ‘a strong puritan’. His wife, born Elizabeth Knyvet (c.1570-1638) was certainly following Puritan views when in 1622 she wrote an advisory pamphlet entitled The Countess of Lincoln's Nursery, one of the earliest treatises on the advantages of breast-feeding.

John Dod by Thomas Cross, from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Image credit: Wikipedia

The previous year had seen the publication of a work by the dissenting clergyman John Dod, developed from a 1598 pamphlet by his co-author Robert Cleaver. In A Godly Form of Household Government (1621), they stated that maternal breast-feeding was both natural and divinely ordained: ‘Amongst the particular duties that a Christian wife ought to perform in her family, this is one, namely, that she nurse her owne children: which to omit, and to put them foorth to nursing, is both against the law of nature and also against the will of God.’  

A 1617 edition of John Dod's A plaine and familiar exposition of the tenne commandements.  

Image credit:  www.prphbooks.com

Ejected in 1607 from his parish at Hanwell, Oxfordshire, because of his Puritan views, Dod was known as ‘Decalogue Dod’ for his emphasis on the Ten Commandments. Four years earlier he had published A plaine and familiar exposition of the tenne commandements, printed in London in 1603. Described as one of the backbones of Puritan piety, especially with the appended Catechism ‘containing briefly all the principall grounds of Christian Religion’, the work went into numerous editions, including one published by William Brewster in 1617 at Leyden, Holland, as shown above.  

This sign at the approach to the Massachusetts town of Brewster proclaims 'Brewster welcomes you Twinned with Budleigh Salterton, England'. The second statement may surprise many Budleigh people. Image credit: Christopher Wroten

Some local residents will be familiar with Brewster as the name of the town on Cape Cod with which Budleigh Salterton is said to be twinned.

 

A first-person historical interpreter portraying Elder William Brewster at Plimoth Plantation. Image credit: Becurry 

The Massachusetts town was named in honour of William Brewster, born around 1566, most probably at Scrooby, Nottinghamshire. He was famous as the elder and leader of the Puritan separatist community which had started with the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620. As one of the group who had left Immingham secretly in 1608, he began clandestinely printing books with co-religionist Thomas Brewer in Holland from 1617 to 1619 until their press was shut down by the Dutch authorities.  

William Gouge (1575-1653) by the British artist Gustavus Ellinthorpe Sintzenich 1821-1892. Image credit: Wikipedia

Another Puritan supporter of maternal breast-feeding with a link to the Budleigh area was the preacher and writer William Gouge. His book Domesticall Duties, published in the same year in which the Countess of Lincoln’s work appeared, went through twelve printings over the course of the century, ten after 1626. It celebrates breast-feeding as the highest expression of motherly love: ‘How can a mother better express her love to her young babe than by letting it suck of her owne breasts?’ he wrote. A member of the Westminster Assembly like Roger Conant’s elder brother John, he was also minister for 45 years from 1608 at the church of St Ann Blackfriars, London, where Roger Conant married Sarah Horton in 1618.  

Sempringham’s mansion and indeed Tattershall Castle must have been lively homes, with eighteen children born to the Earl and Countess of Lincoln between 1599 and 1615. Religion would have been a popular subject of conversation with the family against the area’s background of so many separatist Puritans who wanted a complete break from the Church of England.    

 

View of Emmanuel College Chapel in 1690 by the British artist David Loggan (1634-1692). Image credit: Wikipedia

A significant influence on Thomas and Elizabeth’s eldest son Theophilus, born in 1599,  would have been his attendance at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. 

The so-called ‘famous hot-bed of Puritanism’ had been founded by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Queen Elizabeth I, with the intention of educating Protestant preachers.  

 

Emmanuel College window installed in 1884. It depicts, left, former student John Harvard  (1607-1638) the Puritan clergyman founder of Harvard University; next to him is an image of Laurence Chaderton (1536-1640), a Puritan divine who was the first Master of Emmanuel College. Image credit: Dolly442-Wikipedia

It has been shown that of 130 men from English universities who took part in the religious emigrations to America before 1646, no fewer than 100 had studied at Cambridge, of whom 35 had been at Emmanuel.

 

Portrait of Anthony Tuckney (1599-1670) by the engraver Robert White (1645-1703) in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Image credit: Wikipedia

When Theophilus Clinton-Fiennes inherited the title as the 4^th Earl of Lincoln on his father’s death in 1619, it was only natural for him to appoint as his household chaplain a contemporary of his from his time at Emmanuel, the Lincolnshire-born Puritan divine Anthony Tuckney pictured above. 

The Puritan gentry and nobility believed in the importance of religion when marriage was being considered by a family, and Theophilus must have felt that he had found a suitable wife in Bridget Fiennes. Born in 1604 at the family seat of Broughton Castle, near Banbury, Oxfordshire, she was the only daughter of William Fiennes, 8^th Baron Saye and Sele and his wife, the former Lady Elizabeth, Baroness Dasset Temple.

William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele (1582-1662) by the Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–1677)  From the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. 

Image credit: Wikimedia

Lord Saye, the new earl’s father-in-law, was a staunch Puritan who shared the aims of the Banbury area’s representatives in Parliament, namely promotion of Protestantism and opposition to the Crown’s fiscal policies. His son, James Fiennes who became Member of Parliament for Banbury in 1626, had attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge, like Theophilus.

 

 
L-r: Actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes and explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes OBE, all members of the Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes family and descendants of William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele. Image credit: Wikipedia

And for those readers interested in such things descendants of the family include the actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes and the explorer Ranulph Fiennes. 

Soon after the marriage of his daughter to Theophilus, Lord Saye found himself as one of the most vociferous leaders of the opposition to the government. He refused to contribute to the benevolence – a sum of money disguised as a gift. The king had requested the contribution in order to aid his son-in-law Frederick, Elector of the German state of the Palatinate. So vigorous was his opposition that Saye was arrested and spent eight months in London’s Fleet Prison from 6 June 1622.   

Charles I in Three Positions by the Flemish painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599 - 1641). Image credit: Wikipedia

Theophilus similarly found himself at odds with royal authority when in 1626 he opposed James’ successor, King Charles I. The new king tried to raise money without Parliament through a forced loan levied on all taxpayers and imprisoned without trial a number of those who refused to pay it. Among them was Theophilus, Lord Lincoln who was imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was said to be the author of a pamphlet which accused the king of seeking ‘the overthrow of parliament and the freedom that we now enjoy’. 

Theophilus also shared his father-in-law's enthusiasm for colonising America. When the Providence Island Company was founded in 1629 to settle that area of the Caribbean, Lord Saye was one of the shareholders. Later, in 1635, Saye would co-found with Robert Greville, the second Baron Brooke of Warwick Castle, the independent colony of Saybrook in Connecticut, named after the pair.

Thomas Dudley had joined the Lincoln household at Sempringham in 1616 as steward to the 3^rd Earl. With a military background, like the young Walter Ralegh many years previously, he had fought for the Huguenots in the French Wars of Religion before gaining some legal training and entering the Earl’s service. According to Dudley’s biographer Augustine Jones he also had an important role in securing the engagement of Theophilus Clinton to Lord Saye's daughter Bridget Fiennes.

The accession of Charles I as king in 1625 marked a new period of persecution for Puritans, particularly with the growing influence of the future Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud and his drive for uniformity in the Church of England.   

 

Queen Henrietta Maria by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, in the collection of San Diego Museum of Art. Image credit: Wikipedia

 

Lincolnshire’s Puritans would have been disturbed by the news that the new king’s wife, Henrietta Maria, was a Catholic and would be free to practise her religion. There is evidence that Thomas Dudley played an important role in the plan to colonise America for religious motives, discussing the idea with members of the Sempringham household.  

 

The memorial plaque for John Cotton, near the John Adams Courthouse, Boston, Massachusetts. Image credit: Wikipedia 

He had been inspired by the preaching of the Puritan minister John Cotton, vicar of St Botolph’s in Boston, and according to a letter that he later wrote to the Countess of Lincoln, it was in about 1627 that he and friends in Lincolnshire ‘fell into discourse about New England and the planting of the Gospel there’.  

The idea was evidently taken seriously, for by the following year, after dispatching ‘letters and messages to some in London and the West Country’ and ‘with often negotiations so ripened’, royal permission was obtained. ‘We procured a patent from His Majesty for our planting between Massachusetts Bay and Charles River on the south, and the River Merrimac on the north, and three miles on either side of those rivers and bay,’ explained Dudley.

The venture for which this patent was obtained was first styled the New England Company, later to be renamed the Massachusetts Bay Company. Some of the investors in the new enterprise had previously invested in Pastor John White’s Dorchester Company which had established a short-lived settlement at Cape Ann with Roger Conant as its governor. 

Portrait of the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Endecott, by an unknown artist. Image credit: Wikipedia

A preliminary expedition of about 50 ‘planters and servants’ was led by John Endecott, who would become the longest-serving governor of what became known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It set out for the New World on 20 June 1628 aboard the Abigail, landing at Naumkeag – later to be called Salem.

Sempringham’s curate Samuel Skelton, who may have acted as chaplain to the Earl of Lincoln, has been described by some historians as Endecott’s spiritual father.

Together with his family he arrived at Naumkeag on 23 June 1629. He would become the first pastor of the First Church of Salem, seen as the original Puritan church in North America.

Portrait of John Winthrop by an unknown artist. Image credit: Wikipedia

 

At around this time the Puritan lawyer John Winthrop became involved with the Massachusetts Bay Company. He may have learnt of its plans through the Rev John Cotton. The two of them had both been students at Trinity College Cambridge. Cotton would go on to study at Emmanuel College before becoming vicar of St Botolph’s, Boston, in 1612.

 

In March 1629, King Charles dissolved Parliament, having resolved to rule Britain alone. Puritans like Winthrop were increasingly convinced that religious freedom could be achieved only by emigrating. On 20 October he was elected as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company in succession to the London merchant Matthew Cradock,

a Puritan shipowner with international business interests and a fleet of at least 18 vessels.  

 

 

An image of the replica of Arbella built for the 300th anniversary of Salem in 1930 in conjunction with the city’s Pioneer Village. Image credit: Wikipedia

On Thursday 8 April 1630 the first of the 11 ships that became known as the Winthrop Fleet set sail from Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, including its flagship the Arbella. The Fleet carried a total of about 700 passengers, some of them on vessels that set out in the following month.  

 Many of the passengers were economic migrants, resulting from the recession from which much of Eastern England and the West Country had been suffering since the early 1620s. 

From the Earl of Lincoln’s Sempringham household and also aboard the flagship were his steward Thomas Dudley accompanied by his wife Dorothy and their children Thomas, Samuel, Mercy, Sarah, Patience and Anne, the latter with her husband Simon Bradstreet who had succeeded Dudley as the Earl’s steward.  

Theophilus himself stayed in England, but his brother Charles Fiennes-Clinton and his sister Arbella sailed on the flagship which had been renamed in her honour, having been previously named the Eagle. 

Lady Arbella Johnson, as she was known, was accompanied by her husband the Rev Isaac Johnson, a Puritan clergyman who was the largest shareholder of the Massachusetts Bay Company.  The couple would reach the New World when the flagship arrived in Salem Harbour on 12 June 1630.  

But Lady Arbella had been taken ill on the voyage and died at Salem in August of that year ‘thus remaining ever young and beautiful’ as one of America’s legendary figures, as my fellow-blogger and Salem historian Donna Seger puts it.

The death a month later of her husband Isaac – ‘young, articulate, wealthy, committed to the cause, and apparently very much in love with the fair Arbella’ – could only add to the pathos. ‘Certainly one of the most romanticized women in Salem’s history’ is how the lady is described if you click  here

Or, if you believe the Halloween stuff, possibly Salem's oldest English ghost.

But I like to think of Lady Arbella as one of the links between Salem and Devon. A second link was forged when yet another Puritan marriage was made for a Clinton family member.  That took place in 1643 when Lady Arbella’s niece, the younger daughter of Theophilus, Lady Arabella Fiennes-Clinton married the descendant of yet another English clan which, like the Earls of Lincoln, owed its immense wealth to the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the Reformation. 

Arabella’s husband was Robert Rolle, the great-great-grandson of George Rolle, a Dorset-born London lawyer who was elected Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in North Devon during the 1540s and purchased much ex-monastic property, becoming the founder of one the county’s great landowning dynasties.

The Rolle Arms, one of East Budleigh’s two pubs. In Budleigh Salterton, one of the town’s best hotels was The Rolle Arms on the High Street, since demolished and converted to flats as The Rolle

A biographer of Robert Rolle has written that the whole Rolle clan was seen as deeply and traditionally Puritan, having a hatred of practices such as usury, gaming at cards and dice. 

Naturally enough, such influential landowners with Puritan leanings would back Parliament rather than the King during the English Civil Wars. Dissenting from the Establishment, they would play a key role when the country rejected Stuart autocracy in favour of rule by the people in the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688. But dissent still had some way to go!