Mr Windeatt, writing in 1880, gives an astonishing instance of how few links a chain may sometimes need in order to stretch from century to century. He says a gentleman gave him the following account: 'There are few now left who can say, as I can, that they have heard their father and their wife's father talking together of the men who saw the landing of William III at Torbay. I have heard Captain Clements say he as a boy heard as many as seven or eight old men each giving the particulars of what he saw then. One saw a shipload of horses hauled up to the quay, and the horses walked out all harnessed, and the quickness with which each man knew his horse and mounted it surprised them. Another old man said: "I helped to get on shore the horses that were thrown overboard, and swam on shore guided by only a single rope running from the ship to the shore"; and another would describe the rigging and build of the ships, but all appeared to welcome them as friends. 'My father remembered only one--"Gaffer Will Webber," of Staverton, who served his apprenticeship with one of his ancestors, and who lived to a great age--say that he went from Staverton as a boy with his father, who took a cartload of apples from Staverton to the highroad from Brixham to Exeter, that the soldiers might help themselves to them, and to wish them "Godspeed."' The gentlemen of the county were more tardy in their welcome, and perhaps this is not very surprising, when one considers that they can scarcely have recovered from the terrible vengeance that seared all who had followed Monmouth only three years before. Sir Edward Seymour, formerly Speaker of the House of Commons, was one of the first and, says Macaulay, the most important of the great landowners who joined the Prince at Exeter. He was 'in birth, in political influence, and in parliamentary abilities ... beyond comparison the foremost among the Tory gentlemen of England.' Sir Edward evidently rode in great state, for the Duke of Somerset, his descendant, still has a very imposing red velvet saddle, elaborately embroidered with heraldic and other designs in silver, that 'Mr Speaker Seymour' used on this occasion.