The old house of the Oxenham family is in the neighbourhood, but has passed away into other hands. To this family belonged, there can be little doubt, the John Oxenham who was such an adventurous seaman and explorer in the Elizabethan days. He was one of those who accompanied Francis Drake in the expedition to Nombre de Dios in 1572, and afterwards, in an adventure on his own account, was the first Englishman who launched a keel on the Pacific Ocean, or South Sea, as it was then called. He fell into the hands of the Spaniards, and was carried to Lima, where he was executed as a pirate. His story has been worked into Kingsley's _Westward Ho!_ The omen of the appearance of a white bird before death, supposed to belong to the family, is there effectively introduced. The house of Oxenham is of the last century, and was built about the year 1714, the date which is sculptured on one of the granite pillars of the entrance gates. The family does not seem to have been qualified to bear arms in 1620, the last Herald's visitation, but the coat borne by the family is _ar. a fess embattled between 3 oxen sa._ The story is told that once upon a time a certain Margaret Oxenham was about to be married to the man of her choice. In the midst of the preparations on the wedding morn, when all was going merrily, the white bird appeared and hovered over the bride-elect. The ceremony, however, proceeded, and at the altar of South Tawton the hapless bride was stabbed to death by a rejected lover. There is a remarkably circumstantial printed account of some appearances of the family omen in the year 1635 in a very rare tract, entitled, _A True Relation of an Apparition in the likenesse of a Bird with a white brest, that appeared hovering over the Death-Beds of some of the children of Mr. James Oxenham, of Sale Monachorum, Devon, Gent._ Prefixed to the tract is a quaint engraved frontispiece. It is in four compartments; in each of the first three is a representation of a person lying in a bed of the four-post type, and in the fourth is a child in a wicker cradle. Over each individual is a bird on the wing, hovering. At the foot of these pictorial compartments are the names of those above whom the bird appears: John Oxenham, aged 21; Thomasine, wife of James Oxenham the younger, aged 22; Rebecca Oxenham, aged 8, and Thomasine, a babe. This tract may have been provoked by a letter of James Howell to "Mr. E. D.," dated 3rd July, 1632, and written from Westminster:-- "I can tell you of a strange thing I saw lately here, and I believe 't is true. As I pass'd by St. Dunstans in Fleet-street the last Saturday, I stepp'd into a Lapidary, or stone-cutter's shop, to treat with the Master for a stone to be put upon my Father's Tomb; and casting my eyes up and down, I might spie a huge Marble with a large inscription upon 't, which was thus to my best remembrance:--