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On the face of it, Sampford Courtenay is just another beautiful Devon village with pretty thatched cottages and a church built on the wealth of the wool trade. And yet in 1549 this isolated Devon village was at the forefront of rebellion in both its initiation and its conclusion.
The 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion is usually considered a Cornish rebellion, but the Cornish—angered over the imposition of a prayer book in the Saxon tongue rather than their own Cornish language—found that worshippers in Devon were equally outraged at the wider changes being implemented in their churches during the reign of Edward VI. In addition to changing the prayer book from Latin to English, priests were to wear plainer robes, altars were to be replaced by simple tables, prayers for purgatory were outlawed, and the doctrine of trans‑substantiation was challenged. It was even more galling for many worshippers that Henry VIII, who had instituted a limited and conservative challenge to Papal power but kept much doctrine untouched, had stated in his will that his son would not change religious practices until Edward reached maturity in 1561. Until that time, a regency had been established under Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, the young King’s ambitious uncle. Somerset, a strong Protestant, knew he had to push reforms quickly in case Edward’s Catholic half‑sister returned to the throne (which she indeed would only a few years later). His policies were due to come into effect on Whitsun Day in 1549.
The Cornish rising had begun at the start of June on the anniversary of the death of the unpopular Archdeacon of Cornwall, William Body, who had been removing statues from churches in Cornwall. A promise that his killers would be pardoned was not honoured, which further enraged many Cornish. They gathered at Bodmin and captured Trematon Castle before heading north up the Tamar Valley just days before the Whitsun reforms were to be implemented.
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The Rector of St Andrew’s Church at Sampford Courtenay was William Harper, and he took the service on the Sunday, which enraged many members of the congregation. The following day a large group of locals gathered, seething with disgust and talking openly of joining the Cornish marching in their direction. A local yeoman called William Hellyons stood on the steps outside the Church Room just in front of the church, imploring them not to get involved in rebellion, but his message fell on deaf ears. It is not clear whether he fell and broke his neck or was assaulted and killed outright, but the first blood of the Prayer Book Rebellion was spilled here in Sampford Courtenay. There was now no turning back, and the local people joined with the Cornish and marched on Crediton, Exeter, and as far as Fenny Bridges with as many as 10,000 rebels under the command of Arundell.
The government forces were caught off guard, not helped by the fact that they were at war with the French and the Scottish too. Hence they had to rely on an eclectic mix of mercenaries from Spain, Italy and Germany. They would later be joined by a Welsh contingent. These Landsknechts and arquebusiers wore fantastically colourful uniforms and, to add insult to injury, many of them were Catholic fighting for a Protestant paymaster against rebels who wanted to retain Catholic traditions and rituals.
They failed to seize Exeter, and a growing government army managed to contain their advance and start pushing them back, although not without considerable losses in the process—largely at the hands of Westcountry longbowmen who could fire far faster than the arquebusiers could manage. What the rebels really lacked, though, was cavalry, and so they struggled to exploit opportunities or react to dangers.
Arundell had reluctantly retreated with the remains of his army—perhaps a couple of thousand—to Sampford Courtenay itself and a camp on Green Hill just to the east in August 1549. It was here that 9,000 government forces, including the recently arrived Welsh, set upon the rebels camped on Green Hill. Arundell saw the rebels being pushed back by superior numbers and tried to sally out with forces from the village but was pushed back into it. The government army waited for yet more forces to arrive before delivering a determined attack on the barricaded village and church. The defenders were eventually overwhelmed, suffering some 700 casualties in the process. Many fled but were ruthlessly pursued, and many were hanged, drawn and quartered for treason.
The rebellion had crossed its Rubicon with the death of William Hellyons in Sampford Courtenay back in June and rather fittingly finished in almost exactly the same spot some nine weeks later. On the face of it, it was a failure, and many thousands of Westcountrymen were executed for challenging the power of the state. And yet the most powerful victim of all was the Duke of Somerset, whose rush to implement Protestant reforms was blamed for igniting the rebellions. He himself would be executed in 1552 by his successor, John Dudley, the Earl of Warwick.
Intriguingly, the original wooden altar table used at that Whitsun service in June 1549 is still in the church. It is now used as the altar table in the Lady Chapel, but it provides a chance to touch and feel the Protestant Reformation in a raw physical manifestation. The changes demanded by the government upon the church did indeed motivate thousands to open rebellion, knowing full well the consequences of their actions—which indeed were inflicted savagely. The small altar table’s appearance inspired hostility and rebellion.
Of course, the church holds far more history than just the events of the summer of 1549. We noticed a dedication to John Arscott, a Paymaster in the 3rd Dragoon Guards who died in 1824. He had trained as a surgeon. It transpires that he had been captured in 1812 whilst fighting in the Peninsular War and was eventually released as part of a prisoner exchange by the Duke of Wellington himself.
There was a sad memorial inscribed by Jane Edwards for her husband Richard, who had been the rector and died in 1797, made even more poignant when it points out that she had also lost three of her children in their infancy.
At the other extreme was a memorial to Mary Tickell, who, it says, “enjoyed the unimpaired possession of her faculties to nearly the Age of Ninety”. Although child mortality was horrific, if you survived to adulthood and led “a life of temperance” like Mary did, you might well live to a grand old age indeed.
Of course, it is war that cuts down the young and healthy, and in addition to a war memorial for the dead of the village is a sad memorial to Edwin John Hawkins, who fought with the Somerset Light Infantry and tragically died of his wounds just two weeks before the end of hostilities in 1918.
There is only a little part of the rood screen left in the church, although you can plainly see where the rood loft entrance would have been—and in fact that would still have been in place in 1549. Rood lofts were not removed until the reign of Queen Elizabeth a decade later. Interestingly, the church also retains some of its original medieval glass, which again would have been there during the fighting of 1549.
If you look up, though, you see some magnificent carved bosses looking down on the congregation—including quite a collection of Green Men. Often you might find a single Green Man hidden away, but here there are at least four. And I don’t know if it is a coincidence or not, but when the church was renovated by the Victorians they used the old pew ends as a dado around the wall and installed chairs dyed a very distinctive green colour.
Next to the church is the Church House mentioned earlier, where William Hellyons was to meet his end and catapult the village into rebellion against the Crown with tragic consequences. Not many of these Church Houses survive. They were a venue to raise money for the church, often through selling church ale, and also a venue for manor courts to arbitrate on local matters. On the outside is where you will find plaques honouring the parish’s war dead and William Hellyons and the Prayer Book Rebellion.
We walked through the village and past the Village Hall with a view to following a bridle trail to Honeychurch, but we have had so much rain of late the bridle path was just a muddy quagmire, so we backtracked and walked along pretty country lanes to Honeychurch instead.
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Now, you could not ask for a greater contrast in two neighbouring churches if you tried. St Andrew’s in Sampford Courtenay oozes the wealth of the wool trade in a thriving market town, in a largely 14th‑century church expanded and renovated beyond recognition over the centuries. St Mary’s in Honeychurch, on the other hand, is one of the best‑preserved nave‑and‑chancel Norman churches in the country. Having no local manor or squire with deep pockets to fashion the church with the latest architectural innovations, a humbler and simpler church it is hard to imagine. It really is a tiny capsule of history, with small ancient wooden pews pointing to a very basic altar table. There is only a single memorial within the church. Intriguingly, though, for such a tiny church there are no fewer than three dedications to the Crown. Two of these take the form of coat‑of‑arms plaques to Charles II and to George III. However, there is also a magnificent, if faded, painted coat of arms dedicated to Elizabeth I. Now, why might such a small church feel the need to display its loyalty to the Crown quite so ostentatiously? Perhaps it may well be connected to the nearby rebellions at Sampford Courtenay. This coat of arms would have been painted within living memory of those upheavals. In fact, they were not even a decade from Elizabeth’s accession—although the tumult of Mary I’s reign had to be endured before the return of a Protestant monarch. Tiny Honeychurch may well have had a personal connection to the rebellions; I note that one of the leaders of the rebels was a John Sloman—and in the tiny graveyard we stumbled across mention of the Sloman family. Usually you only find one coat of arms dedicated to the Crown—very occasionally two—but three? That is unusual indeed.
There is a beautiful 12th‑century font that is probably contemporaneous with the church being rebuilt in stone. There are also some interesting 12th‑century corbels either side of the door, which really connect you back to its original builders.
Inside there is a wooden chandelier for the candles (what could possibly go wrong). There are also beautiful metal candle stands that would be used on dark days to help read the Bible or a sermon. You really could imagine an intimate candlelit service in this tiny little church. The contrast with the vastness of St Andrew’s was hard to ignore.
There was one more treat in the graveyard as we came across the unusual name of Lancaster Satow commemorated on headstones. Lawrence Lancaster Satow had been awarded a Military Cross in the First World War for his work in the Royal Army Medical Corps. His citation reads: “For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He established a dressing station within effective range of the enemy's position, where he attended to the wounded throughout the day and the following night under fire the whole time. It was entirely owing to his disregard of danger and his devotion to duty that many of the wounded were collected and evacuated.” Even the tiniest, most isolated churchyards can be connected to the First World War.
The weather was quite wild, with strong winds, showers blowing through, but bright sunshine peeking out whenever it could. We headed back towards Sampford Courtenay, but sadly kept to the roads due to all that groundwater. Daffodils were finally poking out, hinting that spring was arriving.
We had one more place to visit, and that was the New Inn at the southern end of Sampford Courtenay. Not so new, as I am sure. It was new in the 16th century when it was built! But it can be hard to change a name once everyone has got used to it.
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The New Inn provided the setting for one of M. R. James’s ghost stories, Martin’s Close, written in 1911 and turned into a Christmas BBC ghost story by Mark Gatiss a few years back. In the story, the narrator uncovers the long‑forgotten case of George Martin, a young Devon gentleman executed in 1684 for murdering Ann Clark, a simple village girl he had mocked and mistreated. Through a recovered trial transcript, he learns that Martin was relentlessly haunted by Ann’s ghost, most vividly at the New Inn in Sampford Courtenay, where witnesses heard her unmistakable voice singing the tune he once used to tease her, saw a dripping figure slip into a closet, and watched wet footprints trail across the floor after the candles blew out. The same apparition later rose from the pond where her body was found, following Martin with the same excited arm‑waving Ann had shown in life. Even in prison he was disturbed by unseen visitations outside his cell. By the time he faced Judge Jeffreys, Martin was half‑broken with terror, and after his conviction he fainted when the judge coldly remarked that Ann Clark might visit him before his execution. The narrator ends by noting that the tune “Madam, will you walk, will you talk with me?” remains unlucky in Sampford Courtenay.
Even the most remote of Devon’s villages are packed with fascinating history. Sampford Courtenay’s is more interesting than most—indeed, one of the largest battles in Devon’s history took place in this tranquil and beautiful village. But if you do go to the magnificent church in the village, you must visit the tiny hamlet of Honeychurch and contrast it with the beautifully untouched church there. You really can appreciate the evolution of our churches when you see one of the few that has escaped the ravages of modernisation and updating. But it is no less interesting for its simplicity—indeed, it enhances it. These two churches and the pub provide a fascinating insight into our history of rebellion, loyalty, religious change and sacrifice.
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