A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon : $b being an introduction to Devon and CornwallBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon : $b being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Devon (England)
Henry was tactless, and he replied that the visit to Windsor
previously had cost his grandfather two of his best manors, and that
he really could not afford it. Queen Bess was highly incensed, and
found occasion against Henry Champernowne to mulct him of four or
five fine manors, as a lesson to him not to return such an answer
to a royal mistress again. This marked the beginning of the decline
of the Champernowne family at Modbury. The manor passed from them
in 1700. But although the Champernownes are gone, the band is still
there. It has never ceased to renew itself, and Modbury prides
itself as of old on its "consort of fine musicke."
Bigbury takes its name from some great camp or bury that has
disappeared under the plough. In the church is a very fine carved
oak pulpit, like that of Holne, given by Bishop Oldham to Ashburton
Church in or about 1510. At the same time he presented an owl as
lectern to Ashburton Church, the owl being his badge. In 1777 the
wiseacres of Ashburton sold pulpit and owl to Bigbury for eleven
guineas. When the Bigbury folk saw that they had got an owl instead
of an eagle, they were disgusted, sawed off the head and sent it to
Plymouth, with an order for an eagle's head of the same dimensions.
Accordingly, now the lessons are read in the church from a lectern
that has an owl's body with an eagle's head. But really--as in the
puzzle pictures--one is disposed to ask, "Where is the owl?" and
to look for it first among the Ashburton folk who sold their bird,
and secondly among the Bigbury folk who objected because he was an
owl. There are some brasses in the church to the Burton family, into
which married the De Bigburys.
At S. Anne's there are an old chapel and a holy well. S. Anne did
not come into fashion as a saint till the fifteenth century, and
there are no early representations of her, or dedications to her.
But Anne was the mother of the gods among the Celts, and the name
was given to several notable women, as the mother of S. Samson, and
the daughter of Vortimer, king of the Britons, mother of S. Wenn,
who married Solomon, king of the Dumnonii; and a suppressed cult of
the old goddess went on under the plea of being directed to these
historic women, till the great explosion of devotion to Anne, mother
of the Blessed Virgin--known to us only through the apocryphal
gospels.
Ane or Anne was the mythical mother of the Tuatha de Danan, the race
found in our peninsula, in Scotland from the Clyde to the Firth
of Forth, and throughout Ireland, called by the classic writers
Dumnonii. They were subdued in Ireland by the Gaels or Scots.
Undoubtedly throughout Devon and Cornwall there must have been a
cult of the great ancestress. She has given her name to the Paps
of Ane in Kerry and to S. Anne's (Agnes') Head in Cornwall, and
as surely the holy wells now attributed to S. Anne were formerly
regarded as sacred fountains of the great mother of the race, whose
first fathers were gods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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