Posts Tagged With: Stuart’s

We didn’t visit Colyton.

In fact, until a few days ago I knew virtually nothing about it. We were simply driving through Devon on our way to Lyme Regis when a roadside sign caught my attention.

Goose Fayre.

Now, as a Nottingham boy, I have certain proprietary instincts where those two words are concerned. Admittedly ours is generally spelled Fair, rather than Fayre, but that’s beside the point. Goose Fair is Nottingham. Seven hundred-odd years of history, the Forest Recreation Ground, fairground rides appearing on the skyline, mushy peas with mint sauce, and the annual certainty that it will rain at some point.

So seeing a Goose Fayre advertised in Devon was enough to make me wonder what was going on.

Then another sign appeared.

Colyton — Devon’s Most Rebellious Town.

Steady on.

Now they’re nicking Nottingham’s other thing.

Because Nottingham likes to think of itself as a rebellious place too. Robin Hood provides the largely mythical version, but there is plenty of real history behind it: kings and castles, Luddites and Chartists, and the very real rioters who burned Nottingham Castle during the turmoil surrounding the 1831 Reform Bill — assorted people, in other words, with a tendency to become rather cross when someone tells them what to do.

Two signs had lodged themselves in my head.

We carried on to Lyme Regis, and had a lovely day!

And I subsequently disappeared down a rabbit hole later whilst chilling out.

So why is Colyton rebellious?

It turns out Colyton has considerably more justification for the boast than I had imagined.

The answer takes us to 1685 and the death of Charles II. His brother succeeded him as James II, giving England something that made a substantial part of the population deeply uncomfortable: an openly Catholic king.

One possible alternative was James Scott, Duke of Monmouth.

Monmouth was Charles II’s eldest illegitimate son. Protestant, charismatic and popular in parts of the country, he had no legitimate claim to the throne unless you accepted disputed claims that his parents had secretly married.

Monmouth decided that he did.

On 11 June 1685 he landed with a small force at Lyme Regis, raised his standard and called upon people to join him against James II.

Which was the point at which I realised that our destination that day wasn’t merely incidental to the story at all.

We’d been travelling towards the place where the rebellion began.

And just a few miles away, Colyton answered Monmouth’s call in extraordinary numbers.

One hundred and five men and boys from the town joined the rebellion.

For a small community, that was an enormous commitment. Colyton had a strong tradition of Protestant Nonconformity and religious dissent, and when a Protestant challenger to James appeared almost on its doorstep, a significant proportion of its able-bodied men apparently decided that overthrowing the king seemed like a reasonable use of their summer.

Suddenly Devon’s Most Rebellious Town didn’t seem quite such an extravagant claim.

Unfortunately for them, it didn’t go well.

Monmouth’s improvised army marched through the West Country before meeting the royal army at Sedgemoor in Somerset on 6 July 1685.

The rebels were defeated.

Monmouth was captured and executed.

Then came the retribution.

Judge George Jeffreys presided over the proceedings that became infamous as the Bloody Assizes. Hundreds of captured rebels were condemned to death or transportation.

Colyton paid heavily for its enthusiasm.

Seven of its rebels were eventually executed in the town itself.

The rebellion was over.

James II had won.

For about three years.

Which is where Nottingham comes back in

At this point my two roadside signs had already provided a perfectly satisfying little historical diversion.

Colyton had its Goose Fayre. Colyton had its rebellious history. Nottingham had ours.

Nice coincidence.

Except the more I looked at the rebellion, the more the two places began to intertwine.

To explain why requires going backwards before going forwards.

In August 1642, Charles I came to Nottingham.

There, on what was then known as the Castle Hill, he raised his royal standard. It’s now called Standard Hill, it has a plaque and everything!

It’s traditionally regarded as the symbolic beginning of the English Civil War.

The symbolism is slightly complicated by the fact that Nottingham itself was hardly a dependable Royalist stronghold. The town subsequently sided with Parliament and Nottingham Castle was held for Parliament by Colonel John Hutchinson.

Still, the image remains: a Stuart king raising his standard at Nottingham and calling upon his subjects to rally to him.

Forty-three years later, his grandson Monmouth raised another standard at Lyme Regis.

This time the call was to rebel against Charles I’s son.

And the men of Colyton answered it.

Charles I had been executed in 1649. His son Charles II had eventually been restored to the throne. Charles II’s brother James II succeeded him. Charles II’s illegitimate son Monmouth then tried to overthrow his uncle.

The Stuart family tree was not exactly conducive to peaceful government.

But the symmetry gets better.

Because although Monmouth and the Colyton rebels failed in 1685, another attempt to remove James II followed just three years later.

This one succeeded.

Back to Nottingham

In November 1688, William of Orange landed in England.

The event we now rather politely call the Glorious Revolution was underway.

James’s support began to collapse, and uprisings broke out in his opponents’ favour.

One of the places where they gathered was Nottingham.

On 22 November, the nobility, gentry and common people assembled there issued a declaration complaining that their religion, liberties and properties were threatened by James’s government and declaring their support for William.

Nottingham became a rendezvous for the Midlands rising.

Even more remarkably, James II’s own daughter Anne fled her father’s court and ultimately joined his opponents there.

Think about that sequence for a moment.

1642: Nottingham.

Charles I raises his standard, summoning support for a Stuart king whose authority is being challenged.

1685: Lyme Regis and Colyton.

Charles I’s grandson raises his standard against Charles I’s son. More than a hundred people leave one small Devon community to join him.

They lose.

1688: Nottingham.

Opponents of that same son of Charles I gather in the place where his father had raised the royal standard.

This time James II loses.

The Nottingham declaration supported William of Orange, James’s Protestant son-in-law, and James’s own daughter joined the opposition.

Within weeks James had fled England.

The men of Colyton had backed the wrong rebellion by three years.

Of geese and rebels

None of this answers the question that started the whole thing.

What was a Goose Fayre doing in Devon?

The slightly disappointing answer is that Nottingham does not, in fact, possess exclusive historical rights to geese.

Autumn fairs involving livestock were once commonplace, and geese were traditionally driven considerable distances to market at the appropriate time of year. Nottingham’s Goose Fair is extraordinary not because nobody else ever had one, but because ours survived and evolved into the enormous event it is today.

Colyton’s modern Goose Fayre is a community revival of its own old fair tradition.

So there doesn’t appear to be some lost historical connection between the two Goose Fairs.

Which, actually, I rather like.

Because the connection I thought I’d spotted wasn’t there.

Instead I found a much better one.

A Devon town’s claim to a Goose Fayre caught the attention of someone from Nottingham. Its claim to rebelliousness made me look twice.

Then I followed that rebellion back to Lyme Regis, where we happened to be going in the first place, through the catastrophically dysfunctional Stuart dynasty, and eventually all the way back to Nottingham.

We never visited Colyton.

We just drove past the signs.

Sometimes that’s all it takes.