Plymouth is one of those “ancient places in the making of which all periods of national history have had a share.” It even disputes with Totnes the honour of having been the landing place of Brutus the Trojan, when some three thousand years ago he paid a visit to these shores. The story that the Trojan champion Corianaeus and a giant of the West Country, one Gogmagog, wrestled a fall on or near the famous Hoe, in which the latter was ultimately vanquished and cast into the sea, is a part of the Brutus legend. The Plymouth Fathers of old time evidently accepted it as having some foundation in fact, as they caused a representation of the giant to be cut in the turf of the Hoe, which remained to remind the townsfolk and seafarers alike of the combat until about the time of the Restoration.
Of the doings and history of the town of Plymouth, known in the Domesday Book as Sutton or South Town, then having about half a score of inhabitants, prior to the Norman Conquest (if any town existed, which one may doubt, notwithstanding Geoffrey of Monmouth) there are practically no records or traces of any kind. Eventually the Domesday hamlet increased and became divided into two portions, Sutton Prior, or the eastern portion, falling to the Priory of Plympton, and the western part coming through grant by the Crown into the possession of the family of Valletort, which still forms one of the subsidiary titles of the Edgecumbe family, whose connexion with Plymouth is so intimate.
The rise of the port was destined to be rapid, for towards the end of the fourteenth century only three other towns in England had larger populations. Two of these, it may be noted, were ports—London and Bristol—and the third the seat of an archbishopric, York. Long before this period, however, Plymouth possessed a market, and had sent representatives to Parliament. And in the reign of Henry II it received its Charter—the first granted by Act of Parliament, a unique privilege, of which the city fathers have always been justly proud. The first mayor in pursuance of this charter was elected in 1439, William Ketherick by name; who (according to records which have been preserved) was a noted sportsman, and the possessor of “an appetite of right goodlie proportions, though he was but a little man.” There is a story that at the banquet he gave on his election, lest his appetite and that of his guests should run the risk of remaining unsatisfied, there was included amongst the numerous dishes, joints, and delicacies provided, a monster pie, into which “every beast, bird, and fish was put, with spices and other matter,” which measured nearly five yards in length and one and a half in breadth, and indeed speaks volumes for the digestions of those times.
Like its neighbour Dartmouth, Plymouth has been almost from time immemorial the home of daring adventure and warlike enterprises. And like the sister port it possesses a fine and commodious harbour (though one less easily defended), singularly well adapted as a base for expeditions of the kind which marked the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries more especially. But although many of the ships and fleets which sailed out of the Sound for the coasts of France, Spain, and the Americas in bygone times were unauthorized freebooters, early in the existence of Plymouth more truly national expeditions set sail from its quays. For example, towards the close of the thirteenth century a great fleet of upwards of 320 vessels assembled for an attack upon the French coasts; and in 1355—some sixty years later—Edward the Black Prince came here for a similar purpose. And during the wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster there was stir in the old streets by the waterside marking from time to time the arrival of some Royal fugitive or exile. Here, too, came unfortunate Margaret of Anjou, the dauntless, sleepless foe of Edward IV; and the not less unfortunate Duke of Clarence. In the first year of the sixteenth century there landed at Plymouth yet another ill-starred lady, the Princess Katherine of Aragon, on her way to marry Prince Arthur, and destined afterwards to become the wife of his brother Henry VIII. She was entertained right royally by the citizens of Plymouth, chiefly by one of the merchant princes of the port, named Paynter, who lived in a magnificent mansion not far from the waterside, which has, alas! in recent years shared the fate of most historical buildings that come in the way of modern and commercial progress.
But although many books might be written concerning the sailing of the Plymouth corsairs against “the damnable pirates out of St-Malo, Morlaix, and Brest,” and other smaller ports of the Breton coast, and afterwards of the daring doings of ships which, leaving the port as honest traders to the Spanish Main, or West Coast of Africa, yet, when on the high seas, hoisted the black flag of piracy, we have no space to spare in which to describe them in detail. Nor, indeed, to deal with the “bloody adventures of bold seamen out of Plymouth, on the opposite coasts,” nor to recount the marvellous exploits of those who ranged the Spanish Main, and became passing rich by reason of the singeing of the Dons’ beards, and the booty which fell to daring enterprise and bold adventure, where no man valued either his own life or the lives of his foes.
It is impossible, however, to pass without a somewhat detailed mention of the most eventful period of the town’s history when “by some concatenation of Fortune and circumstance so many brave and gallant men of skill and resource dwelt in or came to Plymouth, that they might in the hour of England’s need take upon themselves her strong defence.”
It is not too much to say that Plymouth came to its own in the great days of Elizabeth. For then the magnificent harbour for a time became the centre and focus of all that was noblest and most strenuous in national life and effort. And the position that Plymouth then attained has never been entirely lost. It is the one great old-time port of the South-West coasts which has known no decline and seen no decay.
In the streets of the old town, which has largely passed away to make room for the needs of strenuous modern commerce, were enacted stirring scenes; which, indeed, as one writer phrases it, “made the very pavement stones and quays of the town the stage of history.” Here were gathered, at all events, most of the foremost actors in the great pageantry of the Elizabethan age and the Armada period. Here came Drake, Sir John Hawkins, Martin Frobisher, Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Howard of Effingham, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Lord Seymour, and many more sea lords of the Channel and the wider seas beyond. It was the work of these, and others almost as famous and equally daring and patriotic, to raise England to the pinnacle amongst the nations of the world that she occupied by the end of the reign of Elizabeth, and has never since lost. To them in a large measure must be given the credit of planting the seeds of Empire throughout the then known world, which by their efforts in adventure and discovery was so considerably extended during the latter part of the sixteenth century. To these intrepid seamen and explorers of Plymouth and other Western ports we owe not only that shining gem India, but also the vast America we so unhappily lost, the Empire in the South Seas, and the territory of the frozen North lands which cling close to the Pole.
It is, however, more particularly with the great Armada and the setting forth of that band of intrepid adventurers for conscience’ sake, the Pilgrim Fathers, that the history of Plymouth is linked with that of the nation for all time. On the Hoe, now “tamed,” but otherwise much as it was in Drake’s and Raleigh’s time, the merchant princes of Plymouth were in those far off days wont to forgather, to discuss the news of the day, and to watch the outgoing and incoming of the ships in which their fortunes were embarked. And it was to the Hoe that the bold adventurers, who sailed forth into unknown as well as known seas, bearing with them the fortunes of others with their own lives as surety, turned their last gaze as they dropped away down the Sound out into the deep waters.
It is recorded, too, that when any ship was setting forth on an errand of importance, not only did the vessel salute the shore with guns, and the music of the ship’s band (where such could be mustered), but the guns upon the Hoe were fired, the crowd gathered upon it to witness the departure huzza-ed, and music was played.