An interesting sidelight upon the ecclesiastical manners of those far-off times is thrown by one of the ancient registers of the Bishops of Exeter, which tells in language comparing favourably with the “vivid at all costs” style of “our own correspondents” of the present day, how a feud raged between one John Eustace, the incumbent of West Teignmouth Church and his parishioners. We are told that so hot grew the dispute, and so high ran local feeling, that a large number of the parishioners set upon their priest even with “diabolical fury,” and that in retaliation John Eustace (who truly must have carried a hot heart beneath his priest’s cassock) so far forgot that he should preach and practice peace and not the sword, that he hired some one unknown to stab his bitterest opponent, one Henry Baker, with a knife. As often happened in those far-off days, the merits of the case seem to have been rather overlooked, and judgement, as was also not infrequently the case, was given of a most comprehensive kind. The priest was removed from his office, and the recalcitrant parishioners were promptly excommunicated. That this local disturbance of long ago was of a serious and somewhat widespread character is to be gathered from the fact that the populace of Teignmouth almost to a man (to say nothing of the women, who sided mostly with the priest) took sides, and eight years after the excommunication and suspension the feud was still burning. So much so, indeed, that the attention of the King himself was called to the fact. The then rector of Bishop’s Teignton (who had much to do with the affairs of West Teignmouth Church), wise man that he was, did not seek to settle the matter, but when the parishioners showed signs of once more getting out of hand, he promptly applied for a licence to enable him to leave his cure and travel abroad! His excuse was that he required the permission to enable him to proceed on a pilgrimage to Rome, and for study. Thus did Sir William Kaignes or Keynes exercise that discretion which a cynic has declared is the better part of valour, leaving the Bishop of Exeter himself to settle the points in dispute, and bring the parishioners to a sense of their contumacy and wrongdoing. Eight years or more after the feud broke out the Bishop received the submission of the parish; every man, woman and child in which it would seem, from a contemporary account, had not only actually or tacitly to acknowledge their wrongdoing and ask pardon, but also do penance to obtain it.