Many rood-lofts were taken down by Henry VIII and Edward VI, but several were put up again by Mary, and some were never taken down at all. Opinion was divided; and this compromise of Elizabeth’s (which covered many other points) was “for the avoiding of much strife and contention that have heretofore arisen among the Queen’s subjects in divers parts of the realm.” In this part of England the strife and contention had taken the form of open rebellion in 1549; and the rebels came to Bovey. In answer to some interrogatories, 4 January 1602, Richard Clannaborough of Lustleigh, yeoman, “of the age of fowerscore and ten yeares or there aboutes,” said he had known Bovey mill “ever synce the Commotion in the tyme of the raigne of the late Kinge Edward the Sixth.” This rebellion, usually called the Commotion, began on Whitmonday, 10 June, the new prayer-book having come into use on Whit-sunday; and it went on until 6 August, when the King’s men defeated the rebels on Clyst Heath and raised the siege of Exeter. The siege had lasted for five weeks, and seemed likely to end in a capitulation, as supplies were running short and many of the citizens were in favour of the rebels. These rebels carried the Host with them on a wagon--as at the Battle of the Standard in 1138--and these were some of their demands. ‘Wee wil have al the general councels and holy decrees of our forefathers observed kept and performed; and whosoever shal again-say them, we hold them as hereticks.’ ‘We wil have the Bible and al books of Scripture in English to be called in again.’ ‘We wil not receive the new service, because it is but like a Christmas game; but we wil have our old service of Mattins, Mass, Evensong and Procession in Latine, as it was before. And so we the Cornish men, whereof certain of us understand no English, utterly refuse this new English.’ Those rebels (or their leaders) showed great sense in their demands for Latin prayers and books. They wanted something sonorous to which they could give a general assent, and saw that if it were in English they would soon be squabbling over details. And people have been squabbling over details ever since. Mesopotamia is notoriously a blessed word, but in some cases a mistranslation. Parapotamia is less sonorous, but sometimes more exact--the country on the west side of the Euphrates, not the east side. But people do not care much where such places were, provided that the names sound well. One day some foreigners were here; and somebody heard me talking to them, and then went telling everybody else, “Strangers come here from all parts to visit’n, and to each one of’n he speaketh in their own tongues, Parthians and Medes and Elamites and all the rest of’n.”