Teignmouth of to-day, with its modern houses and bright, sunny streets, has little left of antiquity. Probably the most ancient dwelling does not date back two centuries, and except for the tower of St James’s Church, West Teignmouth, there is little left of antiquarian interest. One must not, though, forget the really beautiful reredos (alas! disfigured by texts in the niches where once stood figures of beautiful workmanship) with its exquisite moulding of leaf and knot design, and its small figures of saints so perfectly carved as in most cases to be easily identifiable.
Not a few ancient writers have accounted for the red colour of the cliffs throughout this part of the Devon coast by the old tradition that the Danes in ancient times killed so many of the inhabitants hereabouts that the blood of the slain dyed the soil for all time. And Teignmouth is by several stated to have been the landing place of the Danish pirates on several of their expeditions or raids, but there would not appear to be any very sound historical basis for this assertion. It seems beyond question, however, that the marauders did land somewhere along the Devon coast, and enter the valley of the Teign, burning and ravaging as they went. In the first year of the eleventh century they were out on one of their expeditions, and burned what is described in the chronicles as Teigntun or Tegntun, which may have been any of the “Teigntons,” either Bishop’s Teignton or Kingsteignton. It is also not unlikely that the little settlement at the mouth of the river now known as Teignmouth, but which is not even mentioned in Domesday (although certainly existing) received a share of their attention. The Saxon fortress church of St Michael, which, unhappily, was pulled down and re-erected in the third decade of the last century, was most probably originally built to place a check upon the depredations of the invaders, and to defend the town.
Edward the Confessor granted the Manor of Dawlish, till then a Royal Manor, to Leofric, his chaplain and chancellor, in or about the year 1044, and the boundary to the south-west was Teignmouth. The original grant, in which St Michael’s Church is mentioned, is preserved amongst the documents and charters of Exeter Cathedral, and serves, at least in some measure, to date the old and former church. In time this same Leofric became Bishop of Crediton, but transferred the seat of the Bishopric to St Peter’s Church, Exeter, and at his installation, which was a most imposing ceremonial, both his patron the King and the Queen were present. With the coming of the Conqueror many changes ecclesiastical as well as civil took place, but Leofric was permitted to retain his See and its possessions. And after the siege of Exeter was a thing of the past, the Conqueror confirmed the gift of Edward the Confessor to his faithful “Bishop Leofric,” but with this difference, the manors were granted to him “for the See of Exeter,” and not, as formerly, for his private use and enjoyment.
Leofric appears to have left all his lands and possessions to the See, but a subsequent holder, Bishop Bruywere, towards the middle of the thirteenth century, gave Dawlish and the portion of Teignmouth to the Cathedral itself to endow the Dean. The Bishops of Exeter appear always about this period to have reserved the Manor of Bishop’s Teignton for their personal benefit. They were undoubtedly powerful, and unless history slanders them “were not so law-abiding as one might have anticipated,” seeing they were the spiritual leaders of men. Indeed, there are several mentions of illegal markets being held under the Bishops’ auspices, which doubtless brought money to their treasuries, and accounted for their refusals to abandon their privilege.
FISHING FOR MACKEREL OFF EXMOUTH
Regarding the history of Teignmouth in the Middle Ages it is sufficient to mention that the town enjoyed some considerable measure of prosperity, as the different historical documents relating to it prove. The port was situated at West Teignmouth, and that there was a foreign trade of some extent seems certain. It was one of several towns which were called upon to furnish jointly a ship for use in Edward I’s expedition to Scotland, but in those days enforcement of such orders must have been attended with some difficulty, if one may judge from the way in which they were successfully set at defiance. There then existed extensive salt works or salterns, which originally were features of many low-lying strips of sand dunes and land along the south coast, when salt was a far more valuable article than it is nowadays.
An interesting sidelight upon the ecclesiastical manners of those far-off times is thrown by one of the ancient registers of the Bishops of Exeter, which tells in language comparing favourably with the “vivid at all costs” style of “our own correspondents” of the present day, how a feud raged between one John Eustace, the incumbent of West Teignmouth Church and his parishioners. We are told that so hot grew the dispute, and so high ran local feeling, that a large number of the parishioners set upon their priest even with “diabolical fury,” and that in retaliation John Eustace (who truly must have carried a hot heart beneath his priest’s cassock) so far forgot that he should preach and practice peace and not the sword, that he hired some one unknown to stab his bitterest opponent, one Henry Baker, with a knife.
As often happened in those far-off days, the merits of the case seem to have been rather overlooked, and judgement, as was also not infrequently the case, was given of a most comprehensive kind. The priest was removed from his office, and the recalcitrant parishioners were promptly excommunicated. That this local disturbance of long ago was of a serious and somewhat widespread character is to be gathered from the fact that the populace of Teignmouth almost to a man (to say nothing of the women, who sided mostly with the priest) took sides, and eight years after the excommunication and suspension the feud was still burning. So much so, indeed, that the attention of the King himself was called to the fact. The then rector of Bishop’s Teignton (who had much to do with the affairs of West Teignmouth Church), wise man that he was, did not seek to settle the matter, but when the parishioners showed signs of once more getting out of hand, he promptly applied for a licence to enable him to leave his cure and travel abroad! His excuse was that he required the permission to enable him to proceed on a pilgrimage to Rome, and for study. Thus did Sir William Kaignes or Keynes exercise that discretion which a cynic has declared is the better part of valour, leaving the Bishop of Exeter himself to settle the points in dispute, and bring the parishioners to a sense of their contumacy and wrongdoing. Eight years or more after the feud broke out the Bishop received the submission of the parish; every man, woman and child in which it would seem, from a contemporary account, had not only actually or tacitly to acknowledge their wrongdoing and ask pardon, but also do penance to obtain it.
One of the most stirring incidents of Teignmouth history occurred in 1340, about Lammastide, when a body of French—called in those times pirates, rightly or wrongly, as one happened to regard retaliatory measures of the foe across the water—entered the harbour and sailing up the river set fire to the town and sacked it, besides “barbarously putting to the sword sundry of its inhabitants.” But whatever may have been the extent of the damage effected, the place made a satisfactory recovery in a very short time, for seven years afterwards we find the port and inhabitants contributing seven ships and 120 seamen towards the fleet that Edward III was gathering together for the siege of Calais. It is not presuming too much to imagine that Teignmouth men, like most of their kind along fair Devon’s coast, set out with some alacrity to avenge the deeds of the “pirates” of seven years before, and saw the tree-crowned Ness which marks the western side of the harbour entrance dip beneath the blue water astern, with mingled feelings of regret and exultation.