Now he liveth
In Heaven’s joy,
And never more
To feel annoy.
The shaft of a large granite cross, probably the market cross, was discovered about forty-two years ago embedded in a wall of the Guildhall, taken down in the course of some alterations.
In the register of this parish are some curious entries. Thus, there is record of a plague which carried off a great number of the inhabitants; and on one occasion forty marriages are said to have taken place in one day, by proclamation, at the Market Cross. This was during the Commonwealth, when the religious ceremony was ignored, and against the entry some stout Royalist or disappointed bachelor has written: “This was the hour and power of darkness.”
We have yet to touch on the politics of the town.
Plympton became a borough town, with the privileges of a market and fairs, by a charter from Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon, dated March 25th, 1241. The borough sent members to Parliament as early as the twenty-third year of Edward I.’s reign, and continued to do so until disfranchised in 1832. It was a very respectable constituency of nearly a hundred free burgesses, who were sworn in by the corporation, which consisted of a mayor, recorder, and eight aldermen, called the Common Council.
The Strode influence was great in the town from a very early time, and several members of that family sat in Parliament for Plympton. In Elizabeth’s reign, Sir John Hele, a distinguished lawyer, and at one time King’s Sergeant, was returned for the borough. A little later, Sir Francis Drake, nephew of the great Sir Francis, and successor to the baronetcy, became member. In Charles I.’s reign, Sir William Strode, one of the most distinguished of the great party which then resisted the undue authority of the Crown, and who, with three other members, was committed to the tower by the King, sat in Parliament for Plympton. Another famous member for Plympton was Sir Nicholas Slanning, a staunch Royalist, who distinguished himself, especially, as a brave soldier in the siege of Bristol. Then we have the memorable names of Sir George Treby (ancestor of the late Mr. H. H. Treby) and Sir John Maynard, and at quite a late period in the history of this borough, Lord Castlereagh represented it in Parliament.
In an interesting address delivered by the last recorder of the town, Mr. Deeble Boger, on the occasion of the corporation resigning their functions in 1859, it was stated that the borough was “what was called a nomination borough, that is, those two families who had the greatest number of friends, and to whom, from the period of the revolution, the gratitude of the borough was justly due—the Trebys, in whom great interest naturally centred, and the Edgcumbes, who were connected with the borough in the same way—possessed the power of nominating a member, and this nomination consisted in their recommending him for election. This power was subject to one limitation, that the person recommended should be of the same politics as the electors.”