[Illustration: THE HOUSE WHERE WILLIAM OF ORANGE SLEPT.] William’s army, having camped in the fields overnight, marched from Brixham about noon on November 6th, in very rainy weather and along bad roads. They made but four miles that day, and halted the night at Paignton, where tradition says William slept at the “Crown and Sceptre,” within sight of that old red sandstone tower in which, according to another tradition, Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, another sturdy Protestant protagonist, had translated the Bible. Meanwhile William had been receiving assurances of support from influential personages. Nicholas Roope, of Dartmouth, was the first considerable person to join him. But others exhibited a not unnatural timidity and caution. Memories of the ferocious revenge taken upon the sympathisers with Monmouth, three years earlier, were keen, and the influential and the great did their negotiation as secretly as might be. That is why records of those early days are so scarce and traditions are our only resort. The greatest and the proudest personage then in the neighbourhood of Brixham was Sir Edward Seymour, of Berry Pomeroy Castle. He it was who, when William asked if he were not of the family of the Duke of Somerset, replied: “Pardon me, the Duke of Somerset is of my family.” There you see the head of the original stock venting his spleen on the younger branch of the Seymours, upon whom the accident of fate had bestowed a proud title, while the elder was fobbed off with a mere knighthood. Sir Edward joined the Prince of Orange at Exeter, when it was tolerably clear to most people that the cause of James was lost; but when the Prince was but newly landed, that cautious Sir Edward, and a number of equally cautious gentlemen with him, met him secretly at Aish, a lonely, out-of-the-way hamlet between Brixham and Totnes, to discuss the support to be given. The cottage where they met is still standing, and is called “Parliament House,” while all the country-folk know the road to it by the name of “Parliament Lane.” [Illustration: BRIXHAM HARBOUR: STATUE OF WILLIAM THE THIRD.] That caution was very noticeable, all the way to Exeter. When William came to Newton Abbot, and stayed at Ford House two nights, Sir William Courtenay, the owner, although he left directions that the prince was to be hospitably entertained, found it convenient to be elsewhere on urgent business that would brook no delay, and when the clergyman at Newton handed over the keys of the church, in order that the bells might be rung in honour of the proclamation in the market-place, of the Prince as King William the Third, he made it clear, _pro formâ_, that he only relinquished those keys on compulsion.