Moreover, he was brought into contact with two men who in importance are part of the history of their times—Dr. Moreman, the great Cornish schoolmaster, whose influence was immense amongst the West Country rebels who fought at Crediton; and Myles Coverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, who held a service of thanksgiving a little while afterwards among the bodies of the slain Cornishmen, “as, with stiffening limbs, they lay with their faces to the stars.” It is strange that the burning of the barns at Crediton should be a catchword to recall the struggle that for the moment seemed to involve the fate of Exeter and even the religion of England. But the barns at Crediton were like the barns of Hougoumont at the Battle of Waterloo. The fight was critical, and it had decisive consequences. The Diocese of Exeter appears to have shared in the indifference which throughout the country marked public opinion in the matter of the Pope’s authority. The words of the Act of Henry VIII., “in restraint of appeals” (to Rome), expresses the mind of most men at that time, “by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an Empire.” It is tolerably certain that if the changes brought about in England at the Reformation had been restricted to the abolition of the authority of Rome, there would have been no rising such as that which is here described in opposition to it. But it was otherwise when the changes extended to the order and nature of the services by which the religious life of the time was guided. Then the love which is felt for things familiar came into play. The old order changed, and yielded place to new. But the break of the new day was not cloudless nor serene. It is so natural to us to think of ourselves in England as a people of one language, and that a very noble language, whatever the pure, not to say pedantic, grammarian may say, that it is hard to think that in this West Country the English tongue was not universal even as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century. Devonshire and Cornwall, which from 1042 to 1877 formed a single diocese, were in some respects for many centuries like countries foreign to each other. The Book of Common Prayer in the mother tongue of the English made no appeal, in the sixteenth century, to the hearts of the common people in Cornwall. This most interesting matter does not appear to have attracted the notice which it deserves. If Cranmer and his colleagues could have made these admirable offices speak to the ears of the Cornish, as they speak to the ears of the English, Sampford Courtenay might have been left to fight its own battles, and the Crediton barns would have lacked at the critical moment their most eager defenders.