His Grace also informs me that the late Duke, who had the family papers examined, said that all documents relating to these transactions appeared to have been carefully destroyed, and that this precaution was natural after the recent failure of Monmouth’s landing in the West of England, though it deprives us, as he says, of many incidents that would now be very interesting.
There is little information to be gained from the parish records of Brixham on the subject of this paper, but from them it appears that at least one poor nameless foreigner was left behind at Brixham when the Prince’s army began its march to Exeter, and probably succumbed to the effects of the voyage, which, from Whittle’s narrative, appears to have been fatal to five hundred horses; for in the Register of Burials for the parish for the year 1688 there appears the following entry:—
Nov. 21, a fforeigner belonging to the Prenz of Oringe.
In another book, containing an account of those buried in woollen, in accordance with the law passed to encourage that trade, the entry is as follows:—
November 21, a Dutchman cujus nomen ignotum.
There is a steep lane leading from the outer harbour up the hill to where the station now stands, which the present vicar of Brixham considers derives its name, Overgang, apparently a Dutch word, from “Obergang,” or Gang-ober or “over,” and that it arose from the fact of troops after the landing being repeatedly ordered to gang over this hill. This may be so; but as I find that the word “gang,” meaning to go or to walk, was in use in England in the time of Spenser, it is not improbable that this lane gained its name before the advent of the Prince of Orange.
The Prince’s army marched from Brixham on its way to Newton on the 6th or 7th November, passing along the narrow lanes of Churston, Paignton, Cockington, and Kingskerswell, taking apparently a part of two days on the march, the roads being so bad as to make locomotion slow and tedious.
Report says that at a place called Collins’ Grave, near the higher lodge at Churston, where there is high ground overlooking the river, the army encamped one night; also that the Prince himself stayed at a house in Paignton, now the Crown and Anchor Inn. A room there is still shown as the “Prince’s room.”
In a Protestant sense it is interesting that William landed within sight of the Bible Tower at Paignton, where Coverdale, the translator of the Bible, undoubtedly dwelt, and where he is said to have been probably engaged on his translation; and doubtless this tradition was not lost sight of by those about the Prince on his sleeping at the “Crown and Anchor,” just outside the palace wall.
The following is Whittle’s graphic account of the march to Newton:—