A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon

by S. Baring-Gould

At S. Anne's there are an old chapel and a holy well. S. Anne did not come into fashion as a saint till the fifteenth century, and there are no early representations of her, or dedications to her. But Anne was the mother of the gods among the Celts, and the name was given to several notable women, as the mother of S. Samson, and the daughter of Vortimer, king of the Britons, mother of S. Wenn, who married Solomon, king of the Dumnonii; and a suppressed cult of the old goddess went on under the plea of being directed to these historic women, till the great explosion of devotion to Anne, mother of the Blessed Virgin—known to us only through the apocryphal gospels.

Ane or Anne was the mythical mother of the Tuatha de Danan, the race found in our peninsula, in Scotland from the Clyde to the Firth of Forth, and throughout Ireland, called by the classic writers Dumnonii. They were subdued in Ireland by the Gaels or Scots. Undoubtedly throughout Devon and Cornwall there must have been a cult of the great ancestress. She has given her name to the Paps of Ane in Kerry and to S. Anne's (Agnes') Head in Cornwall, and as surely the holy wells now attributed to S. Anne were formerly regarded as sacred fountains of the great mother of the race, whose first fathers were gods.

There is a rock at sea, reached at low tide, called Borough Island, on which is a little inn. It was formerly, judging by the name, a cliff fortress.

Ringmore, the adjoining parish to Bigbury, has a church and village nestling into a pleasant, wooded combe. The church has a small spire, and the basement serves as a porch. Anent this tower is a tale.

During the civil wars, a Mr. Lane was rector, as also incumbent of the adjoining parish of Aveton Gifford. He mustered the able-bodied men of his parish, drilled them, obtained some cannon, and formed a battery manned by his fellows, to command the bridge below Loddiswell, by which Parliamentary troops were marching to the siege of Salcombe Castle, and caused them such annoyance that during the siege of Plymouth by the Parliamentary forces, several boats full of armed men were despatched from Plymouth to capture and shoot the sturdy rector. Forewarned, Mr. Lane took refuge in a small chamber, provided with a fireplace, in the tower of the church, and there he remained in concealment for three months, secretly nourished by his parishioners. His most painful experience at the time was on the Sundays, when the minister intruded by the Parliament harangued from the pulpit in terms audible in his secret chamber. Then Mr. Lane could hardly contain himself from bursting forth to refute his heresies and denounce his disloyalty.

The soldiers are said to have landed at Ayrmer Cove and proceeded to the rectory, which they thoroughly ransacked, but although they searched the neighbourhood, they were unable to find the man they were sent to capture.

The old historic parsonage has been demolished, and its site is marked by a walled garden, but the secret chamber in the tower remains.

At Aveton Gifford is a fine screen, carefully restored. Walter de Stapledon was rector of this parish, and was raised thence to be Bishop of Exeter in 1307, and in 1314 he was the founder of Exeter College, Oxford. He was for several years High Treasurer to Edward II. His story is really worth giving in short. On the vacancy of the see, the king sent down congé d'élire on October 6th, 1307. The chapter sat. Of twenty-three canons fifteen chose Stapledon, three selected the Dean, three the Archdeacon of Totnes, and two voted for the Dean of Wells. When the result of the counting was announced, then another voting was proceeded with, and Stapledon was elected unanimously.

The result was announced to the king and he gave his assent on December 6th. But meanwhile a troublesome fellow, Richard Plymstoke, Rector of Exminster, had sent an appeal to the Pope against nine of the canons, whom he pronounced to be disqualified for election, and one of these was Stapledon. Here was an unpleasant intervention, only too sure to be eagerly seized on by the Roman curia for the sake of extorting money. To make matters worse, the Pope had suspended the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he had gone to France, to Poitiers, to meet the Pope and solicit, and buy, his relief. On January 18th the Archbishop, who had been restored and empowered to investigate the complaint of Plymstoke, issued his commission; and on March 10th poor Stapledon wrote a bitter letter to the Cardinal, Thomas Joce, to complain of the condition of poverty into which he had been reduced. "It is hard on me; at the present moment I am destitute even to nakedness."

To make matters worse, the queen, Isabella, wrote to him requiring him to find a prebendal stall and a revenue for her chaplain—a foreigner with an outlandish name—Jargono. He replied that he could not give a canonry to this stranger, and as to finding him an income, he said that he was overwhelmed with debt, on account of the intolerable burden of costs incurred by the appeal to Rome, and in preparing for his consecration.