Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

Three times entreating, – all in vain;
They even that request refused me,
And ordered me ashore again.

As the hour drew nigh, she saw her husband appear on deck walking between two clergymen. She called to him, and he heard her voice, for he exclaimed, “There is my dear wife from Scotland.”

Then, happily, she fainted, and did not recover till some time after she was taken ashore. By this time all was over, but the poor woman could not believe it so. She hired another boat, and again reached the Sandwich. Her exclamation from the boat must have startled all who heard it. “Pass the word,” she cried in her delusion, “for Richard Parker!”

The ballad says: —

The yellow flag I saw was flying,
A signal for my love to die;
The gun was fir’d, as was requir’d,
To hang him on the yard-arm high.
The boatswain did his best endeavour,
I on the shore was put straightway,
And there I tarried, watching, weeping,
My husband’s corpse to bear away.

On reaching the Sandwich she was informed that all was over, and that the body of her husband had just been taken ashore for burial. She immediately caused herself to be rowed ashore again, and proceeded to the cemetery, but found that the ceremony was over and the gate was locked. She then went to the Admiral and sought the key, but it was refused to her. Excited almost to madness by the information given her that probably the surgeons would disinter the body that night and cut it up, she waited around the churchyard till dusk, and then clambering over the wall, readily found her husband’s grave. The shell was not buried deep, and she was not long in scraping away the loose earth that intervened between her and the object of her search. She tore off the lid with her nails and teeth, and then clasped the hand of her husband, cold in death, and no more able to return the pressure.

Her determination to possess the body next forced her to quit the cemetery and seek the assistance of two women, who, in their turn, got several men to undertake the task of lifting the body. This was accomplished successfully, and at 3 a.m. the shell containing the corpse was placed in a van and conveyed to Rochester, where, for the sum of six guineas, the widow procured another wagon to carry it to London. On the road they met hundreds of people all inquiring about, and talking of, the fate of “Admiral Parker.”

The rude ballad thus relates the carrying away of the body: —

At dead of night, when all was quiet,
And many thousands fast asleep,
I, by two female friends attended,
Into the burial-ground did creep.
Our trembling hands did serve as shovels
With which the mold we moved away,
And then the body of my husband
Was carried off without delay.

At 11 p.m. the van reached London, but there the poor widow had no private house or friends to go to, and was constrained to stop at the “Hoofs and Horseshoe” on Tower Hill, which was full of people. Mrs. Parker got the body into her room, and sat down beside it; but the secret could not long be kept in such a place, more particularly as the news of the exhumation had been brought by express that day to London.

An immense crowd assembled about the house, anxious to see the body of Parker, but this the widow would not permit.

The Lord Mayor heard of the affair, and came to ask the widow what she intended to do with her husband’s remains. She replied, “To inter them decently at Exeter or in Scotland.” The Lord Mayor assured her that the body would not be taken from her, and eventually prevailed on her to consent to its being decently buried in London. Arrangements were made with this view, and in the interim it was taken to Aldgate Workhouse, on account of the crowds attracted by it, which caused some fears lest “Admiral Parker’s remains should provoke a civil war.”

Finally, the corpse was buried in Whitechapel Churchyard, and Mrs. Parker, who had in person seen her husband consigned to the grave, gave a certificate that all had been done to her satisfaction. But, though strictly questioned as to her accomplices in the exhuming and carrying away of the body, she firmly refused to disclose the names.

Parker had, as he said, made a will, leaving to his wife the little property he had near Exeter. This she enjoyed for a number of years, but ultimately lost it through a lawsuit with Parker’s sisters, who claimed that it was theirs by right. She was thrown into great distress, and, becoming almost blind, was obliged to solicit assistance from the charitable. King William IV gave her at one time £10, and at another £20.

In 1836 the forlorn and miserable condition of poor Parker’s widow was made known to the London magistrates, and a temporary refuge was provided for her. But temporary assistance was of little avail to one whose physical infirmities rendered her incapable of any longer helping herself. When Camden Pelham wrote in 1840, she was aged seventy, blind, and friendless; but time and affliction had not quenched her affection for the partner of her early days. However, in 1828, John C. Parker, the son of the mutineer, obtained a verdict against his aunts for the possession of the little estate of Shute that had belonged to his father’s elder brother. The question turned on the legitimacy of the plaintiff, which was proved by his mother, a woman who then exhibited the remains of uncommon beauty, and who was able to prove that she had married Richard Parker in 1793.

Then farewell, Parker, best beloved,
That was once the Navy’s pride,
And since we might not die together,
We separate henceforth abide.
His sorrows now are past and over,
Now he resteth free from pain —
Grant, O God, his soul may enter
Where one day we meet again.[16 - The ballad, with its melody, is given in Songs of the West, 2nd ed., 1905.]

The melody to which the ballad of the “Death of Parker” is set is much more ancient, by two centuries at the least, than the ballad itself. It is plaintive and very beautiful, and the words are admirably fitted to the dainty and tender air.

Richard Parker was a remarkably fine man. The brilliancy and expression of his eyes were of such a nature as caused one of the witnesses, while under examination, to break down, and quail beneath his glance, and shrink abashed, incapacitated from giving further testimony.

Douglas Jerrold wrote a drama upon the theme of the “Mutiny at the Nore.” But it is a mere travesty of history. The true pathos and beauty of the story of the devoted wife were completely put aside for vulgar melodramatic incidents.

For authorities, the Annual Register for 1797; The Chronicles of Crime, by Camden Pelham, London, 1840; The Mutiny at Spithead and the Nore, London, 1842; “Richard Parker, of Exeter, and the Mutiny of the Nore,” by S. T. Whiteford, in Notes and Gleanings, Exeter, 1888.

BENJAMIN KENNICOTT, D.D

Benjamin Kennicott was born at Totnes on 4 April, 1718, and was the son of Benjamin Kennicott, the parish clerk of that town. The family had been one of some respectability, as in 1606 one Gabriel Kennicott was mayor of Totnes. Probably, if a well-to-do tradesman family at one time, it had sunk, and Benjamin senior was quite content to act as clerk on a small stipend. His son was educated at the Grammar School, founded by King Edward VI in 1554, and held in a building adjoining the Guildhall, both of which occupy a portion of the old dissolved priory of Totnes, on the north side of the church. The trustees of Eliseus Hele had endowed the school, and the corporation were empowered to send three boys to the school to receive their education free of expense; and there can be little doubt that Benjamin the younger was one so privileged. After quitting school he was appointed master of a charity school for poor children, male and female, at Totnes; which same charity children were provided with quaint and antiquated garbs. Young Kennicott now doubtless thought that he was provided for for life.

In 1732, when he was only fourteen years of age, the bells of Totnes tower were recast, and at the same time the ringers presented to the bell-ringing chamber an eight-light brass candlestick inscribed with the names of the ringers. Benjamin Kennicott the elder headed the list, and Benjamin Kennicott the younger brought up the tail. But in 1742, when new regulations were drawn up and agreed to by the ringers, the youngest ringer had become the leader.

Bell-ringing was a pastime dearly loved and much practised in Devon at the time. There were contests between the ringers of various churches, and challenges, the prize being either money or a hat laced with gold. All over the county one comes on old songs relating to these contests, and in these songs are recorded the names of ringers who are now only represented by moss-grown stones in the churchyard. A party of ringers, say of Totnes, would sally forth to spend a day in contest with those of Ashburton or Dartmouth, and all day long the tower would be reeling with the clash of the bells. Here is one of the songs touching the ringers of Torrington: —

1. Good ringers be we that in Torrington dwell,

And what that we are I will speedily tell.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6; 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
The first is called Turner, the second called Swete,
The third is a Vulcan, the fourth Harry Neat.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6; 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

2. The fifth is a doctor, a man of renown,
The tenor the tailor that clothes all the town.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6; 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
The breezes proclaim in their fall and their swell,
No jar in the concord, no flaw in a bell.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6; 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

3. The winds that are blowing on mountain and lea,
Bear swiftly my message across the blue sea,
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6; 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
Stand all men in order, give each man his due,
We can’t be all tenors, but each can pull true.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6; 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

There is another, wedded to an exquisitely sweet and expressive melody, concerning the ringers of North Lew, who challenged Ashwater, Broadwood, S. Stephen’s, and Callington. I give but the opening verse: —

One day in October,
Neither drunken nor sober,
O’er Broadbury Down I was wending my way,
When I heard of some ringing,
Some dancing and singing,