60. Of Flour and Salt: Roger Conant the Salter

The Salters' Company arms. The Latin motto means 'Salt Savours All'

Roger Conant's father Richard has been described as East Budleigh's miller, and the village mill house has traditionally been viewed as the family home. Recent research has shown that such stories need to be taken with a pinch of salt. (Sorry!)

 It is known that by 1620, when he was living in London, Roger Conant described himself as a salter. He may well have gained experience of the salter’s trade in his native Devon.

‘The horrid history of Hugo the salter’, sculpture by Angie Harlock in Budleigh Salterton's Fairlynch Museum. The display tells how the Prior of Otterton supposedly discovered the body of one of his salt workers who sadly drowned in a barrel of salted herring 

Salt had been harvested on the coast since Roman times, contributing to the prosperity of Otterton Priory. But by the 17^th century it was being imported rather than harvested locally on Budleigh’s salt marshes.

And in any case the trade of a salter had evolved from merely gathering salt from brine in salt-pans. The term was used to refer to both employees of a salt works and to specialists in salting fish or meat. By 1726 Daniel Defoe was using it to describe traders involved in the ‘buying of cochineal, indigo, galls, shumach, logwood, fustick, madder, and the like’.

The modern day association of the London-based Salters’ Company with chemistry and science can be traced right back to salters’ use of chemical preparations involving such ingredients in a variety of industries.

Left:  Interior of a bag, purse and glove maker's workshop (woodcut by Jost Amman, 1568); 16th century kid gloves, on loan from Dents Museum, displayed in 2018 at Fairlynch Museum’s Raleigh 400 exhibition 

Leather workers were especially skilled in the art of transforming raw hides into the delicate material used to make these gloves, exhibited as part of Fairlynch Museum’s Raleigh 400 display in 2018.

Hides being processed at J. & F.J. Baker’s tannery 

Image credit: https://www.colvilleleather.co.uk

Salt was traditionally used in the leather industry to prevent hides from rotting before they are tanned. It is still part of the process used at the centuries-old tannery of J. & F.J. Baker, in Colyton, home to the family of Roger Conant’s mother.  

Christopher's, the former tannery in East Budleigh

Image credit: Otter Valley Association

Could Roger Conant have learnt some of the salter’s skills nearer home? Until the 1830s East Budleigh had its own tannery at the house known today as Christopher's, a Grade II listed cob, stone and thatch cottage.  For 300 years it flourished as a tannery, supplying tanned hides for boots, shoes, and saddlery, including, it is said, buckets produced for the Tudor navies.

In 1609, aged 21, Roger’s brother Christopher Conant was sent to London, where he was apprenticed to Thomas Allen, a grocer, and was admitted to the freedom of the Grocers' Company on 14 March 1616.

Like the Salters, many members of the Grocers’ Company were associated with food preservation, important at a time when meat was often so ‘off’ that it needed spices to make it palatable!  

The Pepperers’ Guild, first mentioned in 1180 AD, was a forerunner of the Grocers’ Company, and was concerned with the import and storage of pepper and other spices: cloves feature on the Company’s coat of arms, above. Some Grocers were also apothecaries; indeed in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries, some were prosecuted by the College of Physicians for practising medicine. 

Roger also left Devon for the capital to learn a trade, but no similar documentation exists for him: the records of The Salters’ Company were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Top: ‘Men carry meat and other wares through the streets of London’ - c. 1615–16 Michael van Meer    © The University of Edinburgh; The Fish Market,1568, by Joachim Beuckelaer 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

During his time as an apprentice salter, Roger Conant would have learnt further about how salt was used.  Before the advent of refrigeration, along with drying, pickling and smoking, heavy salting was one of the main means of preserving food. Hard cured fish could be stored for months and sometimes years. 

Apart from the tanning and leather industries, salt was also used in dyeing fabrics and in the formulation of medicines and ointments. 

Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. One of the roads in the town is named Tobacco Close  

Image credit https://www.cotswolds.info

The diversity of salters' interests can be seen in the case of the London merchant John Stratford, a member of the Salters' Company. In 1619, he purchased spare land in and around Winchcombe in Gloucestershire and planted tobacco, seen at this time as having medicinal qualities.  Unfortunately for him, the Act of Parliament banning tobacco growing in England was passed in that year, just as the first crop in Winchcombe was ready to harvest.

The Great Fire of London, depicted by an unknown painter (1675), as it would have appeared from a boat in the vicinity of Tower Wharf on the evening of Tuesday, 4 September 1666. To the left is London Bridge; to the right, the Tower of London. St. Paul's Cathedral is in the distance, surrounded by the tallest flames.  

Image credit: museumoflondonprints.com

Both St Ann’s and All Hallows Church were destroyed in the Great Fire of London, along with records of the Salters’ Company

It was in London, on 11 November 1618, at St Ann’s Church, Blackfriars, that Roger Conant married Sarah Horton. One might have expected the marriage to take place at  All Hallows’ Church, next to Salters’ Hall in Bread Street, where most salters attended.

Portrait of William Gouge by Gustavus Ellinthorpe Sintzenich (1821-1892) Collection of Mansfield College, Oxford 

But St Ann’s was known as a Puritans’ church; William Gouge (1575–1653), was the minister and preacher for 45 years, from 1608.

He was also a member of the 1643 Westminster Assembly of Divines, as was Roger’s elder brother John Conant. 

The Puritan tradition remained strong in the Conant family of East Devon.

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57. Conant connections: Colyton town

 

 

A Monmouth rebel greets you at the car park in Colyton  

Most Devonians know that East Budleigh was the birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh, and by now, I hope, quite a few more know that it was also where Roger Conant was born.

Less than 20 miles north-east of the village is the attractive little town of Colyton. Like East Budleigh it’s noted for its picturesque old buildings but is more celebrated as ‘the most rebellious town in Devon’ because of the role that many of its inhabitants played in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 during the reign of the Catholic King James II.

The town was one of the main areas of religious dissent in East Devon. When the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of King Charles II, landed on the coast of Dorset in June that year, 105 men from Colyton - more than any other Devon  town - chose to follow him rather than remain loyal to the Crown.  

 

The Battle of Sedgemoor is often referred to as the last pitched battle fought on English soil.  The four playing cards from this commemorative pack of 1685 illustrate incidents in Monmouth’s rebellion and were evidently produced as government propaganda: the ‘King’ card depicts devils in the air bewitching Monmouth’s army. Image © The Trustees of the British Museum

Monmouth was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July. It’s not known how many Colyton men were killed in the battle, but thirty-three were taken prisoner. Twenty-four were sentenced to be transported into slavery, and fifteen were hanged.

Just over a century earlier, Colyton people showed a similar independence of spirit during the reign of Henry VIII. But the circumstances were less bloody and the events are very much part of Roger Conant’s story.

 

Henry Courtenay, KG, shown 2nd from left wearing a mantle displaying his arms, detail from procession of Garter Knights in the Black Book of the Garter, c.1535. Image credit: Royal Collection, Windsor; Wikipedia

Much of the land in Devon and Cornwall was owned by Henry Courtenay, 1st Marquess of Exeter and Earl of Devon, who was a cousin and friend of Henry VIII. But the religious and political upheavals of the English Reformation in the 1530s led Courtenay into rivalry with Thomas Cromwell.

 

Portrait of Thomas Cromwell in 1532-3 by Hans Holbein the Younger. Image credit: The Frick Collection; Wikipedia

As Henry’s chief minister, Cromwell had sufficient influence at Court to destroy his enemies, and in November 1538, Courtenay was arrested on suspicion of treason. After a brief trial he was beheaded on 9 December at Tower Hill in London. His lands were seized by the Crown and the Earldom of Devon was declared forfeit.

 

 

Old Church House near St Andrew’s Church dates from 1612, and is a three-storey building formerly used by the Colyton Feoffees. Feoffee is an ancient word meaning a trustee who holds a 'fief', i.e. an estate in land for the use of the beneficial owner.   

A group of 20 Colyton merchants saw an opportunity to create, with royal agreement, a form of self-government in the town, and travelled to Westminster to state their case in 1546.

The King agreed to the sale of Courtney’s estates in the town – ‘the manor of Coliton’ – subject to the proceeds being used for ‘good, godly and commendable uses’.  On 6 January 1546, the Colyton Chamber of Feoffees was established.

The door of Old Church House

Colyton is still run by the Feoffees, who now meet in this Tudor revival style building, dating from around 1927.

 

Not just any old town council building. The inscription above the front door proudly states that it is the Feoffees Town Hall

 

The front of Colyton Grammar School in 2013. The School moved in 1927 from Colyton to its present site in the nearby village of Colyford Image credit: Bookwork72; Wikipedia  

The English Reformation had a major impact in the area of education. What has become known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries was followed by a surge in the number of grammar schools. By 1540 all the abbeys, friaries and other religious houses with their cloister schools had been abolished.

Nine miles west of Colyton, at Ottery St Mary, the choir school established by Bishop Grandisson in 1335 was replaced by a grammar school and named The King’s School in 1545.

One of the first acts of the Feoffees was the founding of Colyton Grammar School ‘for the goodly and virtuous education of children in Colyton forever’.  

This Grade II listed building, next to St Andrew's Church in Colyton, was built in 1835. For a time it was used by Colyton Grammar School before the move in 1927. Thanks to Jane Dauncey for this information. Jane organises walking tours of Colyton. See www.colytonhistory.co.uk/colyton-history-tours.php

The astute Colyton merchants during their visit to London may even have suggested that the new school be named in the monarch’s honour like Ottery St Mary’s grammar school. They would have guessed that following suit would be an obvious way of flattering King Henry to achieve their aim of self-government.

Prominent among these merchants who travelled to London in 1546 was John Clarke, whose daughter Agnes would marry Roger Conant’s father, Richard.  Clarke’s importance in the town is evident from the entry in parish records following his death:  

"John Clarke, the elder of Coliton, merchant was buried IX of Aprill, who in his lyfe time was the cheffest traviler of the purchas of the manor of Coliton, and the markets, with other lyberties pertaining the same, as aperieth by the pattent - and deceased the VI day of Aprill 1585."

A walking tour of Colyton might include all the buildings that would have stood in John Clarke’s time. No doubt Roger Conant would have been familiar with them during visits to his grandparents.

 

Brerewood House

On the west side of St Andrew’s Church stands Brerewood House, currently the vicarage. It was the home of Dr Thomas Brerewood, who was Vicar of Colyton from 1524 to 1544 and Chancellor to John Veysey, Bishop of Exeter from 1519 to 1551.

 

The front entrance to Brerewood House

 

The Merchant’s House

Other houses in Colyton like this building, known as the Merchant’s House, are evidence of the town’s wealth in the past. The elegant plasterwork of the ceilings in the front part of the house dates from the early 17^th century. The building now includes the Colyton Heritage Centre.

 

The Great House

Away from the town centre on South Street is the Great House. It was home to the Yonge or Young family who settled in Devon during the reign of King Henry VII and were prominent wool merchants. The building is largely early 17^th century, but two Tudor fireplaces indicate that it was originally an Elizabethan mansion.

 

The tannery of J. & F.J. Baker & Co Ltd. King Street, Colyton

My tour of Colyton ended at this unprepossessing building next to a nice garden centre. It’s something of a contrast to the town’s ancient buildings but appearances can be deceptive. J. & F.J. Baker is Britain's only remaining traditional oak bark tannery.

Oak bark leather has been tanned here on the banks of the River Coly since Roman times, with a process that has hardly changed for centuries.The long slow tannage ensures that the natural fibres that make up a hide are allowed to remain in their natural weave. This produces a nice firm, hard wearing piece of leather, with good water resistance. Baker's leather is used for bespoke shoe-making and is also ideal for saddlery and harness leathers due to its high tensile strength.

 

The yard is split into 72 pits, each with a progressively stronger concentration of the tanning solution. New hides will spend the first three months working their way up the yard from the weaker to stronger solutions. They’re suspended from sticks throughout their progress to ensure an even colour is absorbed all over each pelt. Image credit: www.colvilleleather.co.uk

I included the Colyton tannery because of Roger Conant’s experience as a salter. Salt was used in so many processes in the past apart from the preservation of food. As I was told at the tannery it was used in the curing of animal hides; the skins were soaked in a saltwater brine.

 

A tannery had been in existence since the 16^th century in East Budleigh, at the house now known as ‘Christophers’, pictured above. It apparently produced buckets for the Tudor navy as well as the usual leather products of boots, shoes and gloves.  

It was located on the village outskirts; tanneries tended to be smelly places. The Conant family would surely have been aware of their economic importance. Did Richard Conant choose an apprenticeship with the Salters’ Company for young Roger having visited such manufacturing sites in East Budleigh and Colyton? Who knows?   

Continued at https://conant400.blogspot.com/2022/07/conant-connections-past-and-present-at.html