The States at once gave orders for the replenishing of all stores, the princess, for her part, ordered prayers four times daily, and at last, on the evening of November 1st, the fleet again put forth, with an east wind. The original idea was to have landed in the mouth of the Humber, and it must have seemed, to many of the Englishmen who accompanied the expedition, an ill-omen that they were carried down channel into that identical West Country which had proved so fatal to Monmouth.
The English fleet was assembled, watchful, at the mouth of the Thames, but unable, in the teeth of the east wind, to emerge; and saw, with helplessness, the great concourse of ships go, full sail, down channel. Despite the fears of those who looked upon the west as ominous of ill, the elements were thus working for the success of William, who thus, unchallenged, arrived off the coast of Devon. Arrived there, the more timorous began to fear being carried too far west to Plymouth, or beyond, from which the intended march to the capital, along the heavy roads of autumn, would be a toilsome and hazardous undertaking.
But all things made for success, and, arrived in Torbay on the night of November 4th, the easterly wind ceased and changed to soft breezes from the south. The next morning the landing began, in this harbour of Brixham. It was November 5th, the auspicious anniversary of the famous failure of the Popish “Gunpowder Treason and Plot,” and the bells of Brixham rang out joyously, to celebrate History made, and History in the making.
OBELISK MARKING THE SPOT WHERE WILLIAM OF ORANGE LANDED.
Brixham Quay was then just a quay, and little else. The crowded houses of this later age were represented only by a few scattered fish-cellars and sheds, and in place of the stone piers and artificial harbour we now see was merely a pool formed by nature, unassisted by art.
Many legends of this landing survive at Brixham. One tells how the prince, standing in the boat that brought him towards the shore, exclaimed in the best English he could command, to the people who crowded the quay, “Mine goot beoble, I mean you goot, I am come here for your goot—for all your goots”; but I think that is suspiciously like one of the famous Ben Trovato’s stories, and it certainly has been told of other aliens coming to these shores. The legends then go on to tell how the prince asked if he were welcome, and being assured of the fact replied that, if he were really welcome, they should come and fetch him; which means no more than that there were then no stairs to the water, and that, if a fine gentleman wished to land dry and clean, he must needs be carried ashore.
One Peter Varwell, a fisherman, described as a short, thick-set little man, then jumped into the water and carried the Deliverer to land. We are not told how the Duke of Schomberg and Bishop Burnet, among other great ones, came ashore; I am afraid they had to hoof it through the water and the fish-offal. But when Burnet did set foot upon the quay, the prince, turning to him and taking his hand, asked if he did not believe now, more than ever, in predestination. This was by way of a gentle rebuke to that distinguished Churchman’s want of faith during the preparations for the expedition, when at every mischance he had dejectedly said the enterprise seemed to be predestined to failure.