After the Battle of Worcester, in 1651, Charles II took refuge for a time in Devonshire. Four years later there was an attempt at an insurrection in his favour, known as Penruddock's Rising, and Charles was proclaimed King at South Molton. The movement was promptly suppressed, and its leader, Colonel Penruddock, was executed. It is interesting to remember that, at the Restoration in 1660, Exeter was the first town in England to acknowledge Charles II, and that he was there proclaimed King ten days before he landed at Dover. Seven years later, in 1667, the great Dutch Admiral De Ruyter captured all the shipping in Torbay.
During the Commonwealth and later, when there was no copper coinage in this country, many tradesmen all over England struck money of their own, chiefly in the form of farthings. Nearly 400 varieties of Devonshire "tokens," as they were called, issued by sixty different towns, are known. Ninety-one were struck at Exeter alone, which is more than were issued from any other provincial town except Norwich. At a much later period shillings and sixpenny tokens of leather were in circulation at Hartland.
After the Duke of Monmouth landed at Lyme in Dorsetshire, in 1685, Axminster was the first town that he occupied, and a number of Colyton men are said to have joined his army. Otherwise the rebellion hardly touched Devonshire. Yet Judge Jeffreys put to death, at various places in the county, thirty-seven of the Duke's misguided followers. After the Battle of Sedgemoor, Wade and other fugitives attempted to escape by sea from Ilfracombe, but they were obliged to put back, and were caught in the woods near Lynton.
When, under very different auspices, William of Orange landed at Brixham on the 5th of November, 1688, he marched to Exeter, as the chief city of the west. The citizens at first held aloof, but in the end they gave to the Deliverer their hearty and most valuable support.
Two years later the French admiral Tourville, fresh from his victory over our fleet off Beachy Head, landed a strong force at Teignmouth, and sacked and burnt that part of the town which ever since has been known as French Street.
Both in 1715 and in 1745 the county was suspected of showing sympathy with the exiled Stuarts. But when in the former year the Duke of Ormond, with a small party of French soldiers, appeared in a war-ship off Brixham, expecting to be welcomed by the Devonshire Jacobites, he met with no encouragement.
Several episodes in the history of Devonshire are associated with the French war of the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In 1797 a French squadron, afterwards captured by Admiral Bridport, sank the fishing-boats in Ilfracombe harbour. A few years later, in 1809, Princetown was built for the reception of the rougher class of French prisoners of war, and during the five years that followed 12,679 Frenchmen and Americans were confined there, while many others were billeted at Okehampton, Ashburton, Tavistock, and Moreton Hampstead. The Princetown buildings were afterwards disused—except for a short occupation by a naphtha company—until 1850, when they were converted into a prison for convicts.
It was at this period that Torquay came into note, having become a place of residence for the families of naval officers serving on men-of-war anchored in Torbay. In Torbay, too, was enacted what may be called the last scene of the war. For it was here, on the 24th of July, 1815, that Napoleon was brought a prisoner. And here he remained, except for a few days spent in Plymouth Sound, until the 11th of August, when he was taken to St Helena.