Richard Zachariah Mudge was the eldest son of William Mudge the surveyor and map-maker, who was a grandson of Zachariah Mudge, which made Richard his great-grandson.

He was born in Plymouth in 1790, and was educated at Blackheath and at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.  He received a commission as second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1807, and promoted to first lieutenant in the same year.

This was at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, with British troops being sent regularly to the Iberian peninsula to fight with the Spanish against the French, so in 1809, Mudge was sent to Lisbon to fight with the army under Sir Arthur Wellesley, later to become the Duke of Wellington.  He was present at the famous battle of Talavera, which was a very hard fought battle on both sides, with heavy casualties, but ending with the enemy withdrawing, abandoning their position in front of Talavera.  Sad to say, many of the wounded died when the battlefield itself caught fire in the searing heat.  Mudge went on to reconnoitre the river Alberche, following its left bank until he reached Escalona, but he then decided  to complete this reconnaissance, by crossing to the right bank, where he was taken by surprise by the French.  He managed to escape, but lost his attendant with his horse and baggage.  He  then accompanied the army in the retreat from Talavera, and worked on the construction of lines to Lisbon.  He returned to England in a poor state of health.

Back in England, he worked under his father on the Ordnance Survey, and for some years was in charge of the drawing department at the Tower of London.  In 1818, he was made responsible for the surveying of the county of Lincoln.

His moment of glory came in 1830.  There had been a boundary dispute in North America, between the state of Maine in the US, and the province of New Brunswick in Canada, then of course ruled by the United Kingdom, which had led to the so-called Aroostook War, otherwise known as the Pork and Beans War. I say,  ‘so-called’  because it involved clashes between local civilian militias rather than the regular army.  In the event, no-one was killed, and only one person injured.   Basically, the United States had proposed a boundary which would have prevented a direct route from New Brunswick to Quebec, and would have left the border on mountains running perilously close to Quebec.  The King of the Netherlands had proposed a compromise solution, which the Americans found unacceptable, so two surveyors from England, Richard Mudge and George Featherstonehaugh, went out at the behest of the British Government to physically investigate the area. This included a fairly arduous journey by canoe along rivers in the disputed territories, with the help of the native Indians, until they reached Quebec, though Mudge took a detour without Featherstonehaugh to see the Niagara Falls.  They gave their report in !840, which was only partially accepted.  The issue was finally resolved by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842.

Mudge retired from the Army in 1850, having reached the rank of regimental lieutenant-colonel in 1837.  He died in Teignmouth four years later in 1854, aged 64.

Mudge married an Alice Watson, daughter of Jane Watson Hull of Great Baddow and County Down, Ireland, and left two daughters, Jane, who died in 1883 and Sophia Elizabeth.

One feels, however, that at this point there is a falling off of the Mudge magic, and that his career as a surveyor owed as much to his father’s fame as it did to his own talents.

Richard Mudge was born in Bideford in 1718, and baptized in St.Mary’s Church, on 26 December .  He was the third son of Zachariah Mudge, who was the first headmaster at Bideford Grammar School.  Like his older brother, Thomas, and his younger brother, John, he would have been educated at Bideford  Grammar School, probably by his own father, and was the first member of the family to go to university.  In 1735, he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford, gaining a BA in 1738, and an MA in 1741.

 He studied theology with the aim of becoming a Church of England priest,  but .whilst at university developed a keen interest in music as well.  He was ordained as a curate in Little Packington and Great Packington, Warwickshire, eventually becoming a rector of the latter in 1745.  He had not been there very long  when he began to complain of the lack of cultural activity in the locality, but this was soon rectified when he was invited along to Packington Hall, the home of Heanage Finch, Lord Aylesbury, who was a talented amateur musician himself, and who held regular concerts for amateur musicians at his house.

It was at this time that Mudge started writing music , and it was there that he wrote his best known work ‘Six Concertos for Seven Parts’.  It was there too that he met the wealthy Charles Jennens, who wrote the libretti for many of Handel’s best known works, including the ‘Messiah’, and it was through Jennens that Mudge became acquainted with Handel, whose music heavily influenced his own.

But Mudge was intent on moving to Birmingham, and in 1750, his patron, Lord Aylesbury, reluctantly found him a post as rector in St, Martin’s, Birmingham, where he became a popular

preacher.  Six years later he moved to Bedworth, Warwickshire, where he eventually stood down as rector, remaining there until his death in1763, still only in his mid-forties.

He married Mary Hopkins in 1747, and they had a daughter, also Mary, born in 1752.

Richard was an accomplished organist, and also wrote an Organ Concerto.  He also wrote a Medley Concerto, which was a lighter piece, based on Scottish dance tunes, but this latter piece was published anonymously, as it was written for a series of Medley concerts or variety shows given at the Little Haymarket Theatre in London in 1757, and being a reverend gentleman, he thought it best that its authorship remain anonymous.  In fact, it is only relatively recently that scholars have realised that Rev.  Richard Mudge, and the composer of the Medley Concerto are one and the same person.

There are, in fact, recordings of the ‘Six Concertos’ on CD, and the Organ Concerto is available as an American import.  The Medley Concerto was recorded in the year 2000, but unfortunately is not currently obtainable on disc, though the score is commercially available.

Richard Mudge was largely forgotten as a composer after his death and tastes changed, until his work was championed by the modern composer, Gerald Finzi in the 1950s, who described several of his string concertos as  “of outstanding beauty and dignity”.   .

There are other surviving instrumental works by Mudge, including violin and trio sonatas, and it is possible that there are more works to discover.

But it is interesting to find that a composer of such accomplishment was born and bred in Bideford, even if he was the ‘black sheep’ of the family in that after leaving Bideford he never returned, and as a consequence, I would  guess, his name is completely unknown in his home town, and his music never played by his fellow Bidefordians.

I’m just about to play a movement from his Organ concerto, and it’s just possible that this is the first time the music of Richard Mudge has ever been played in his home town in public.  The entire piece is only  11 minutes long.  If I were to be asked for my unbiased opinion of it, I would describe it as rather fine, but judge for yourself.

I’ve discovered in the last few days, that all the six concertos from his Six Concertos for Seven Parts

are available on YouTube on your computer, so you can listen to any or all of them at your leisure when you get home.  They are all quite short, between ten and fifteen minutes long.

Protheroe Smith was born in 1809 in Bridgeland Street, Bideford, the son of a doctor, William Smith, and one of twenty children.  He was educated at Bideford Grammar School and was destined for a military career, but he injured his hip whilst participating in some kind of athletic activity, which put paid to his career as a soldier, and he therefore intended to become a military surgeon , but then decided that medicine and not soldiering was his real interest, and entered on a medical career instead.  In 1833, he qualified as a surgeon, at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London,where he was appointed Lecturer in Midwifery and Diseases of Women, one of only two such posts in  Great Britain and Ireland, the other being in Dublin.

At this time, gynaecology was very much in its infancy, and very definitely a cinderella subject.

Smith was only the second person ever to carry out an ovariotomy without anaesthetics ( on a woman who lived another 45 years), and the first to do the same operation with anaesthetics.  An argument raged at the time, as to whether anaesthetics should be used during childbirth, as the Bible appeared to forbid it.  Protheroe Smith argued from the Bible itself that the use of anaesthetics was perfectly acceptable, and wrote a well-known paper on the subject.  The matter was sealed ,however, when Queen Victoria gave birth to her eighth child with the use  of anaesthetics.

He was also an enthusiastic inventor of surgical gadgetry.

However, his most important achievement was the founding of the first hospital in the world specifically for women.

In those pre-NHS days, hospitals were funded by subscription, but this proved to be an unpopular cause, partly because of its original name, which was the Hospital for Diseases of Women, which meant only one thing to the prudish Victorians: venereal disease.

It took five years and a lot of hard work for Protheroe Smith and a committee of pioneering doctors to get proper support and funding for it, but  it finally  opened in 1843 in Red Lion Square in London, transferring soon afterwards to larger premises in Soho Square, and renamed the Hospital for Women.  By 1849, it had 5000 outpatients, with 20 beds.

Once the hospital was opened, interest was shown by other cities in England and the USA, and general hospitals soon had gynaecological wards, where females could be treated with more privacy and dignity, and where medical expertise could be developed in diseases of women. Before this, doctors were completely ignorant of female complaints, and simply turned women away.

A later report stated: “The foundation of this the first hospital devoted entirely to diseases peculiar to women is a great milestone in British medicine and gynaecology and has hardly received the recognition it deserves: still less has the proper position of Protheroe Smith.”

He retired from his official post at the hospital in 1885, and died in 1889, aged 80.

A memorial plaque celebrating his life and work came be found on the south wall in St. Mary’s Church.  Possibly. Protheroe Smith  has done more for humanity than any other Bidefordian, and his story should be better known.

Chris Trigger

On Tuesday 2 June 1906, Jonathan Henderson of Westward Ho! died, aged 93.  He was almost certainly the last survivor of the Battle of Navarino, which took place in 1837 off the coast of western Greece, between the British, French and Russian forces on the one hand and the Turco-Egyptian forces on the other.

The Ottoman Empire was beginning to crumble, and the Russians were eager to secure a Mediterranean base . The British were anxious for this not to happen, so joined forces with the French and Russians to repel the Ottomans, the decisive battle of which was  that at Navarino, and which ultimately led to Greek independence.

Jonathan Henderson was born in October 1813 in Morice Town, near Devonport.  He entered the Navy in 1824, joining HMS Genoa as a second class boy, and it was in this ship that he sailed at Navarino.

He retained vivid memories of the battle itself.  Admiral Codrington was in supreme command, and sent a boat out from his frigate, presumably with orders on board which he wished the Ottomans to follow, but the enemy misinterpreted his intentions and perceived it as an act of aggression, so the boat was fired upon with a volley of musketry, killing an officer and several men.  One of the allied frigates fired a cannon in reply, and the melee began.

Henderson was standing beside two officers, Captains Bathurst and Morse, when they were killed, and another boy named Fisher was decapitated by cannon fire.  Henderson himself did not survive without injury., being wounded in four places,, and for years, kept a relic of a piece of shell extracted from his right thigh.  He was eventually carried to the cockpit, where the surgeon operated, and remembered seeing a party of marines picking up ‘pieces of humanity.’

The following morning there was so much smoke that the gunners couldn’t see whether they were fighting friend or foe.  Nine women on board the Genoa, who had all survived unscathed were seen tending to the wounded ‘with great tenderness’.

The Battle of Navarino was a great allied victory.  It was unusual in two respects: it was fought with most of the ships at anchor, and was the last major naval battle to be fought entirely with sailing ships.

After the battle, Henderson was temporarily pensioned off, but rejoined the service again in 1829, plying up and down the south-east coast coast of the USA and the West Indies until 1835, after which he joined the Coastguard Service.

In 1887, he was transferred at his own request to Appledore Coastguard Station, which itself was subsequently moved to Westward Ho!  The coastguard cottages were situated at Westbourne Terrace, and he called the one in which he lived (no.4), Navarino House.

He spent the last 36 years of his life in retirement at this address.  He was said to be a small, genial man, who took a keen interest in all matters concerning the Royal Navy and the Coastguards.  He had one grandson who was already receiving a pension from the Navy when he died, and two others still serving.

He actively participated in the local Trafalgar Day celebrations, and, in 1897, he ran up  Nelson’s signal on the cairn at Bone Hill, Northam, where many of the country’s naval heroes are commemorated.

He died on 6 February 1906, aged 92.  His wife, Frances Trevorthan, predeceased him on 24 March, 1885.  One of his daughters, a milliner and straw-hat maker, was buried with his wife and himself in 1936.

Sources:  Wikipaedia, The Battle of Navarino

                Westward Ho!  History Society paper

                Obituary in the Daily Mail, quoted in Queanbeyan Age NSW

One of the dates of death in this article incorrect.

In  Bideford Town Hall, you will find a portrait of John Strange, four times Mayor of Bideford, and an unusual man. There is a copy of it in the Burton Art Gallery.  In the background of the portrait are certain objects (cliff, arrow and bridge) which symbolise episodes from his youth in which he might easily have been killed.  When he was a boy he fell off a cliff whilst bird-nesting, but remained unhurt, was hit in the forehead with an arrow but it left him with only a slight scar, and on another occasion, a robber threw him him over the Long Bridge, but again he remained unscathed.  John Strange was obviously destined for other things.

By trade, he was a merchant ship owner and worked in conjunction with another Bidefordian, George Shurtt.  Between them they owned a small fleet of ships, including the ‘Friendship’ (80 tons) and the ‘Fellowship’ (170 tons), and some of these ships  would be sent out to the Newfoundland Fisheries.  Strange was also instrumental in setting up the Virginia Company, in which blankets were sent out to Virginia in return for tobacco.  He also helped in establishing trade with New England.

However, his moment came in 1646, when the plague struck Bideford.  The tale is told that a Spanish ship carrying a cargo of flea-ridden and plague- infested wool, moored in Bideford, and three children playing amid  the sacks brought the plague ashore, for within a few days these same three boys, the sons of local surgeon, Henry Ravening, and their father, had died . The mayor at the time, fearing for his life, hastily left the town, and John Strange, who had been Mayor three times before, stepped into the breach as Mayor again.  He put guards at the entrances of the town, to prevent the disease from spreading, made sure the sick were cared for, the dead buried, and the bereaved comforted.  The official death toll was 229, though more were butied than appeared on the official lists, including the Ravening family above, but more would have died if not for the efforts of John Strange.

One of the people who succumbed to the disease was John Strange himself, who died on 30^th July 1646, aged 56.

John was married to a wife, Katherine, and they lived at Ford House.  They had one daughter, and four sons, all of whom died young and predeceased him, except his youngest son, also called John, who grew into adulthood, married and eventually emigrated to Virginia. 

In the meantime, a sea captain, whose life John had saved in a shipwreck, came to Bideford to thank him, only to be told that he had recently died, so the captain made sure that a monument was placed in St. Mary’s Church in his memory.  Unfortunately, when  the church was rebuilt in the nineteenth century, it was placed too high up the wall to be able to read the inscription without a ladder, which is a pity, as it is very fulsome in its praise of this heroic character, who gave his life to save others.

Even in death, John Strange was very generous, leaving in his will enough money to build 5 almshouses in Meddon Street ‘for poor old people’.  These still stand , and are now listed buildings.

Chris Trigger

John Mudge was born in 1721, and was the fourth son of Zachariah Mudge, who was the first headmaster of Bideford Grammar School.  He was the second son to have been born in Bideford, and the third son to have been educated at Bideford Grammar School under the tutelage of his father.  However, whilst there, his father took up an ecclesiastical post in Plymouth, and he finished his education at Plympton Grammar School.

He studied medicine at Plymouth, and afterwards developed a large practice there, helped by his family connexions, his skill and his affable manner.  In 1777, he published a dissertation on smallpox, and how it could be prevented by inoculation, and the paper showed a considerable advance in knowledge and understanding than anything that had been written before.

In May of that year, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

In his spare time, he set about building telescopes, and in that same year, 1777, he was awarded the Copley Medal for his ‘Directions for Making the Metals for Reflecting Telescopes’, on which he gave a talk to the Society, and in which he brought the science of making telescopes to a new level.

Anyone acquainted with the Copley Medal will know that it is the Society’s highest award, is not awarded lightly, and is not given at all in years when no-one is thought worthy of it.  After winning the award he continued to build even larger telescopes, two with magnifications of two hundred times.  Both are now in private hands.

At around this time, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine by King’s College, Aberdeen.

A year later, in 1778, he published a book entitled ‘A Radical and Expeditious Cure for recent Catarrhous Coughs’, with a drawing of a remedial inhaler.  He patented it, and it was found to be very effective.  It looked like a beer tankard, with a flexible nozzle in the top, through which alternate breaths of steam and cold air could be taken.  It proved to be very popular, and became known as the Mudge Inhaler.  Herbs and other medicines such as opium could be added to the water.  When news of surgical anaesthesia came from America, it was the natural choice for the administration of ether.  It was used well into the twentieth century, when more sophisticated treatment became available.

At this time, a little coterie of well-known people was beginning to form in Plymouth, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, the artist and co-founder of the Royal Academy, whose 250^th anniversary we are celebrating this year, who was himself a Plymothian, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who liked to visit Sir Joshua,  Zachariah Mudge himself, now his son, John, and John Smeaton, the engineer, who was at this time building the first Eddystone Lighthouse in Plymouth Sound.

When the lighthouse was finally completed, it is said that he and Zachariah  Mudge went to the top of the lighthouse, singing hymns and praising God, but then Smeaton reminded his friend that a lighthouse was to be measured by how it stood up to stormy weather, not calm, and it therefore remained to be seen how sturdy a structure it was.  He mentioned that he needed a local man to go out in a storm to see how the lighthouse fared, and of course John Mudge volunteered without hesitation.

His opportunity came in 1762, when a great storm hit Plymouth, causing £80,000 worth of damage to Plymouth and the Sound, but John reported that so little damage had been done to the lighthouse that all the repairs could be done with a pot of putty.

John Mudge was busy on the domestic front as well.  He married three times, and had twenty children   His affability obviously extended to his wives as well as his patients.

He died 26 March 1793, aged 71,and is buried near to his father in St. Andrew’s Church, Plymouth, where a memorial bust was erected, honouring him, soon after his death.

Samuel Johnson said of him to a patient, that if his medicine didn’t cure her, his conversation would,.

The Cutcliffes were a well-to-do North Devon family, probably descended from the fifteenth century Thomas Cutliff of Hartland.  They acquired the estate of Damage Barton, near Ilfracombe in about 1505, and later Lee Manor at Lee Bay, and amongst other properties, eventually acquired Weach Barton in Westleigh, near Bideford.

Two of John’s ancestors were of note: his grandfather, Charles Cutcliffe, was one of the first  pupils of Bideford Grammar School, under the tutelage of Rev. Zachariah Mudge, and went on to become

a solicitor in Bideford, but, after his father’s death, decided to take up the life of a country squire;  and Charles Newall Cutcliffe, who was also a Bideford solicitor and one of the founding partners of North Devon’s first bank, which opened in 1791, under the name of ‘Cutcliffe, Roche, Gribble and Co’, but more commonly known as ‘The Old Bank’.

John, however, chose the Army for his career.  He was  born at Alverdiscott, near Bideford, in 1778, but resided in his early years at the family estate at Westleigh.

He had a distinguished military career.

He entered the Army in 1800, as a Cornet in the 23^rd Light Dragoons.  In 1801, he was made a Lieutenant, and in the same year took part in the Egyptian Campaign, which successfully cut off Napoleon’s troops in Egypt.  In 1804, he was made a Captain, and from 1809 onwards, he served in Portugal and Spain in  the Peninsular War, and was present at the Battle of Talevera, near Madrid.  This battle was both bloody and inconclusive.  The 23^rd suffered serious casualties:  207 killed, wounded and missing, and 105 captured, giving them a 70% casualty rate.  He was promoted to Major in 1813, and he accompanied his regiment in the campaign on the eastern coast of Spain, before taking part in the operations in the Netherlands.

Here, he was present at the Battle of Quatre Bras on the 16 June 1815, the action at Genappe on the 17 June, and then on the 18 June, he commanded the 23^rd Light Dragoons at the Battle of Waterloo.

According to one source, he was seriously wounded early on in the day, and on the recommendation of the Duke of Wellington, was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.  A few days later, he was awarded the Turkish Order of the Crescent for his services in Egypt, and on the 22 June was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath.

The most interesting aspect of his story, however, is how he came to be in command of his regiment, the 23^rd, at the Battle of Waterloo.

This was originally the post of the Earl of Portarlington.  However, he decided to go into nearby

Brussels on the eve of the battle for some entertainment, but on his way back, found himself caught up in the traffic of troops and supplies moving towards the battlefield, on the one hand, and civilians evacuating the scene to avoid the fighting, on the other.  Heavy rain fell that night, only compounding the situation, and the whole area became a quagmire.

The Earl made it back in time to take part in the battle, joining the 18^th Hussars, with whom he fought valiantly, but he was unable to rejoin his own regiment, so his second-in command, John Cutcliffe, had to take his place.

The Earl was ashamed of what had happened, but in spite of a letter of support and encouragement

and the gift of a snuff box from John Cutcliffe and his fellow officers in the 23^rd, the Earl drank and drugged himself to an early death soon afterwards, having been reduced to living in a hovel in London.

John Cochet was born on 3 August 1760 in Rochester, Kent, and entered the Navy as an ordinary seaman in 1775. Between this date and his retirement, he served on fourteen ships in several theatres of war.  He started by cruising along the North American coast, before moving on to the Apollo, where he became a midshipman in October 1798.  In January 1799, he helped in the capture of the 26-gun frigate, L’Oiseau, after a bloody battle that lasted an hour and a half.  On 15 June, he further contributed to the defeat of the 26-gun French ship Stanislaus off Ostend.  From the following December, until his first commission, he served in American, Home and Mediterranean stations, variously on the Amphion, the Charleston, the Powerful, the Southampton, the Zebra and the Phaeton.

His most notable action was in 1794, when the Phaeton, captained by his friend Sir A.S. Douglas, and himself as first lieutenant, captured the French privateer, Le General Doumourier, which itself had captured the Spanish galleon, the St. Jago, carrying an immense fortune on board, valued today at £100 million.  No doubt he was awarded some of the prize money.  From here, he was posted to Earl Howe’s ship, the Queen Charlotte, where he served in the action of the Glorious First of June,1794.

Two years later, Captain John Cochet was in command of the HMS Abergavenny, which was responsible for the safe evacuation of French and English troops out of Port-au-Prince in Haiti, after the slave rebellion there under the leadership of Toussaint L’Ouverture.

He returned to England in 1799, but saw further action in 1813/14 at Bermuda.  He was promoted to full admiral on 28 November 1841.  He married, first, Miss Charlotte Jeffrys on 19 May 1796, and remarried, on 5 July 1811, Lydia, the widow of Capt. Long of the 89^th Regiment,, who died on 9 September 1839.

During the years 1810 – 1825, Captain Cochet lived a life of some luxury in a Georgian town-house in Bath, now The Admirals Hotel, but at a later date, perhaps because he wanted to keep in touch with maritime affairs in his retirement, he moved to Bideford, where he lived in a house in Mill Street, where Wildens Tools Shop used to be.  He died in Bideford in 1854.

Although most of the wills deposited at Exeter were destroyed during the Exeter Blitz, that of Admiral Cochet survives.  He fell out with a neighbour just before he died, apparently because he

was not permitted to attend his neighbour’s wife’s funeral.  There is a clause in his own will  excluding the neighbour from his own funeral, a rather sad ending to a long and illustrious career.  There is a memorial to him in St.Mary’s Church which reads: Sacred/to the memory of/ John Daniel Cochet Esq/An Admiral of Her Majesty’s/Red Squadron/ who served his country with zeal/ and assiduity for 70 years/and who died the 10 June 1851/In the 91st Year of His Age.

John Barry was born in Tiverton in 1775.  He started off life as a farmer’servant, then joined the North Devon Militia, and finally, the Third Regiment of the Line-the Buffs, in 1809.

He fought in many battles during the Peninsular War against Napoleon, including Oporto (1809), Talavera (1809), Busacoa (1810), Albuera (1811, where the British were outnumbered and defeated by the French in a hard-fought battle), Almarez (1812, Burgos (1813), and Vittoria (1813), .  Finally, with Napoleon exiled in Elba, he was sent off to fight in the !812 war against the USA, where he was involved in the attack on the city of Plattsburgh.  During these campaigns, he sustained injuries to his head and face.. He arrived back in France in 1815, to find the battle of Waterloo had been fought and won by the Allies, and he became part of the occupying force in Paris.

He was discharged in 1816.  He was given a medal, but because he had only signed on for seven years, he had no pension, and went to live in Northam., where he worked as a labourer, until, in his eighty-fourth year, he finally ended up in the Bideford Workhouse, where even at that advanced age, he ws employed by the parish, breaking stones on the highway, walking four miles twice a day to and from his place of work at Appledore.

Eventually an Army General came to visit him, and asked  him if he would still fight for his country.  Without hesitation, he said yes , but complained that nowadays he was rather stiff in the arms.  The general gave him a half-crown, and asked him to drink the General’s health, humouring John by saying that if he was to ride down Pall Mall on a charger with a suitable uniform on, he could  easily have been mistaken for the Duke of Wellington himself.

In his last years, he became the porter at the Union Workhouse.  When not doing his portering duties, he could be found in his office, reading his Bible.

Eventually, Queen Victoria got to hear of her loyal subject, and gave him a gift of £5 ‘to procure any little comfort for the old soldier, John Barry.’  As a result, he took a glass of port wine at 11 oclock every night, with which to drink the health and long life of Her Majesty..

He died in the Workhouse in 1875, at the age of 101.

Chris Trigger

I am a native Bidefordian, and have to confess that I only came across the following poem,

‘A Ship Comes Up To Bideford’ by Herbert Ashley Asquith by accident, whilst researching something completely different.

[The poem is interpolated at this point]

 Its author was the second son of the Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith (1908-1916), with whom he was often confused, and about whom not an awful lot has been written.  Born in 1881, he was nicknamed ‘Beb’ by his family.  He  was educated at Winchester College with his brothers, then went to Oxford, where he became President of the Oxford Union, and later became a lawyer, as well as a novelist and a poet, being called to the bar in 1907. In 1910, he married Cynthia Charteris, who was herself a writer.  He served as Captain with the Royal Artillery in France during the First World War, which seems to have had a considerable effect upon him, as several of his best poems, written about soldiers who had fallen in the war, testify.

He would have had plenty of opportunity to visit Bideford during his life.  His father was invited and accepted invitations by Mrs Hamlyn to several house-parties held at Clovelly Court whilst he was Prime Minister.  At a later date, his younger brother, Arthur, married the inheratrix to the Clovelly Court estate, (Mrs Hamlyn having died with no direct heirs), and to which he retired at the end of the war, after a distinguished war career, and where he lived until his death in 1939.

His older brother, Raymond, was unfortunately killed during the First World War.

Herbert Ashley died in 1947.

It is a rather fine poem, as are many that you can find by him on the internet.  The North Devon folk

group ‘Hearts of Oak’, sadly now defunct, set it to music, where it gained a regular place in their repertoire, and can still be found on YouTube.

Chris Trigger