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.
There is some curious food for the whimsical mind in the fact that the Prince of Orange should have crossed the river Lemon, on his way past Newton Abbot; and there is ample room for criticism of the inscription on the famous Proclamation Stone in Newton Abbot market-place, in which it is stated that the Rev. John Reynell proclaimed the Protestant Deliverer there, November 5th. Reynell—the clergyman who was so cautious as to hand over the keys of the church only “on compulsion”—was not a man rash enough to proclaim any king who might presently become a fugitive, and thereby possibly find himself arraigned before the ferocious Jeffreys. No: Reynell did not proclaim the new king. It was probably Dr. Burnet—who accompanied the expedition—who did so, and certainly not before November 7th. Meanwhile, we will leave William to march on to Exeter and thence to London, where he arrived December 18th.
The stone on which William’s foot rested on his landing has been jealously preserved, but it has been moved about overmuch. The landing was on the site of the present fishmarket, and there the obelisk partly enclosing the stone was first erected; but when another William—the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William the Fourth—came ashore at Brixham in 1828, it was removed to its present position, on what was then called the New Quay. The weird passion for utility that characterises Englishmen, and has spoiled so many monuments, has caused this obelisk to be crowned with a gas-lamp.
It was left to modern times to fitly commemorate this great event in our history, for on the two hundredth anniversary the marble statue of the king that now forms so striking a feature of the harbour was erected. He is represented at the moment of his stepping ashore and, hand to heart, declaring, “The liberties of England and the Protestant religion I will maintain.”
Those who gaze upon the statue and pronounce the face of it ugly forget that William was not handsome. He was consumptive, asthmatic and hollow-cheeked, and the sculptors have rendered him, not idealistically, but as he was, with the very necessary reservation that he is here of heroic size, while in life he was small and undersized.
For the rest there are few records at Brixham of the coming of William of Orange. No blood was shed there, and the only note of that stirring time to be found in the parish registers is the pathetic burial entry: “1688, November 21, a foreigner belonging to the Prenz of Oringe,” with another entry of the same date referring to the same person being buried in woollen: “a Dutch man, cujus nomen ignotum.” He was probably some humble follower, who fell sick aboard, and so died on the threshold of this land flowing with milk and honey, in which so many of his fellow mynheers flourished so well.
The Brill, the vessel on which William came to England, had a strange after-history. She was re-christened Princess Mary, and converted into a yacht. So she remained through the reign of Queen Anne; but when the Hanoverian line began, and sentiment was cut off at the main, she was sold to some London merchants, who re-christened her the Betsy Cairns and sent her trading to the West Indies. From that condition the poor old vessel declined to that of a collier, and so continued for an incredible number of years, being wrecked on the Black Middens, off Tynemouth, in quite recent times.