Eventually he reached Newquay with his comrade. Thence they hired horses to Mevagissey, where they took a boat for Budleigh Salterton. On the following day they walked to Beer.
This is but a sample of one year out of many. He was usually engaged in shady operations, getting him into trouble. On one occasion he undertook to carry four French officers across the Channel who had made their escape from the prison at Tiverton, for the sum of a hundred pounds, but was caught, and narrowly escaped severe punishment. Soon after that he was arrested as a deserter, by a lieutenant of the sea-fencibles when he was in a public-house drinking along with a sergeant and some privates. But he broke away and jumped into the cellar, where he divested himself of shirt and jacket, armed himself with a reaping-hook, and closing the lower part of a half-hatch door stood at bay, vowing he would reap down the first man who ventured to attack him. His appearance was so formidable, his resolution was so well known, that the soldiers, ten in number, hesitated. As they stood doubtful as to what to do, some women ran into the house crying out that a vessel had drifted ashore, and a boy was in danger of being drowned, that help was urgently needed. This attracted the attention of the soldiers, and whilst they were discussing what was to be done, Rattenbury leaped over the hatch, dashed through the midst of them, and being without jacket and shirt slipped between their fingers. He ran to the beach, jumped into a boat, got on board his vessel, and hoisted the colours. The story told by the women was a device to distract the attention of his assailants. The lieutenant was furious, especially at seeing the colours flying, as a sign of triumph on the part of Rattenbury, who spread sail and scudded away to Alderney, took in a cargo of contraband spirits, and returned safely with it.
Occasionally, to give fresh zest to his lawless transactions, he did an honest day’s work, as when he piloted safely into harbour a transport vessel that was in danger. We need not follow him through a succession of hair’s-breadth escapes, of successes and losses, imprisonments and frauds. He carries on his story to 1836, when, so little had he profited by his free-trading expeditions, that he was fain to accept a pension from Lord Rolle of a shilling a week.
NOTE.—There is an article by Mr. Maxwell Adams on “Jack Rattenbury” in Snell’s Memorials of Old Devonshire.
JOHN BARNES, TAVERNER AND HIGHWAYMAN
The “Black Horse” was an old inn near Southgate, Exeter. The south gate was perhaps the strongest of all the gates. It was defended by two massive drums of towers, and there was a double access to the town through it, the first gate leading into a yard with a second gate behind. Holy Trinity Church, with a red tower and pinnacles, was close to the inner gate, and nigh by that swung the sign of the “Black Horse.” The whole group was eminently picturesque. All was effaced in 1819; the gabled houses have been destroyed, not a stone left upon another of the noble gateway; even Trinity Church was pulled down, and a despicable cardboard edifice erected in its room as a specimen of the utter degradation to which art had fallen at that period.
John Barnes was taverner at the “Black Horse” in and about the years 1670–5, during which he had three children christened in Trinity Church. He kept his tavern well. His wife was reputed to be a quiet, tidy, and respectable woman, and John Barnes professed to be a hot and strong Presbyterian, and he made of his house a rallying-place of the godly who were in a low way after the Restoration and the ejection from their benefices of the ministers who had been intruded into them during the days of the Commonwealth, when the Church pastors were ejected. It was turn and turn about. These latter had been thrown out of their nest by Independent and Presbyterian cuckoos, and now the cuckoos had to go and the original owners of the nests were reinstated. But the cuckoos did not like it, and the Puritans were very sore afflicted, and liked to meet and grumble and testify, over ale and cyder, in John Barnes’ tavern. And when a private prayer meeting was held, mine host of the “Black Horse” was sure to be there, and to give evidence of his piety by sighs and groans. But he testified against prelacy more efficaciously than by upturned eyes and nasal whines, for he refused to have his children baptized by the Church clergy, and was accordingly prosecuted in the Exeter Consistory.
About 1677 Barnes abandoned the “Black Horse” in Exeter, and took an inn at Collumpton, where he threw off the “religious mask” and ran into debt and evil courses. One of his creditors was a smith, “a stout fellow of good natural courage.”