The landing was completed in three hours, without a hitch and was followed by divine service on the beach, concluded by all the troops singing the 118th Psalm, which is at once a psalm of thanksgiving for mercies received, and a bidding for others. Reading it, you conceive the Psalmist as timorously thankful, buoyed up by faith to a certain degree, and yet horribly frightened; and thus, there can be no doubt, it was highly appropriate to the situation in which all at that moment found themselves. We may, perhaps, suspect that the eighth verse, which deprecates confidence being put in princes, was omitted for this occasion.

An absurd story tells us that the inhabitants of Brixham (or “Broxholme,” as the Dutch called it), presented an address to the prince, in this form:

The individually quite sufficient objections to this are that the prince was not yet acknowledged king, and that tea was then unknown at Brixham; and in any case, it would have been an expensive luxury far beyond the reach of fisherfolk. What “buckhorn” may have been is a mystery not revealed to the present generation.

The place was thronged that day and night with the expeditionary force, and the landlord of the one inn that then sufficed for the thirst of the whole community—it was probably the “Buller’s Arms,” quite recently rebuilt—was, according to the diarist who recorded all these things, so puffed up with the honour of serving so many lords that he almost imagined himself to be one.

William himself was lodged in the house, still standing in Middle Street, the home of the little man, Varwell, who afterwards marched with the army on to Exeter, and was promised a reward for his services. Unhappy Varwell! He went later, to London, and fell to gossiping with strangers in a tavern, with the result that they drugged him and sent one of their confederates to Whitehall to claim the promised recompense. He was paid a hundred guineas, and when the real Varwell put in an appearance, he was not only sent empty away, but received a good thrashing as well.

William’s army, having camped in the fields overnight, marched from Brixham about noon on November 6th, in very rainy weather and along bad roads. They made but four miles that day, and halted the night at Paignton, where tradition says William slept at the “Crown and Sceptre,” within sight of that old red sandstone tower in which, according to another tradition, Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, another sturdy Protestant protagonist, had translated the Bible.

Meanwhile William had been receiving assurances of support from influential personages. Nicholas Roope, of Dartmouth, was the first considerable person to join him. But others exhibited a not unnatural timidity and caution. Memories of the ferocious revenge taken upon the sympathisers with Monmouth, three years earlier, were keen, and the influential and the great did their negotiation as secretly as might be. That is why records of those early days are so scarce and traditions are our only resort.

The greatest and the proudest personage then in the neighbourhood of Brixham was Sir Edward Seymour, of Berry Pomeroy Castle. He it was who, when William asked if he were not of the family of the Duke of Somerset, replied: “Pardon me, the Duke of Somerset is of my family.” There you see the head of the original stock venting his spleen on the younger branch of the Seymours, upon whom the accident of fate had bestowed a proud title, while the elder was fobbed off with a mere knighthood.

Sir Edward joined the Prince of Orange at Exeter, when it was tolerably clear to most people that the cause of James was lost; but when the Prince was but newly landed, that cautious Sir Edward, and a number of equally cautious gentlemen with him, met him secretly at Aish, a lonely, out-of-the-way hamlet between Brixham and Totnes, to discuss the support to be given. The cottage where they met is still standing, and is called “Parliament House,” while all the country-folk know the road to it by the name of “Parliament Lane.”

That caution was very noticeable, all the way to Exeter. When William came to Newton Abbot, and stayed at Ford House two nights, Sir William Courtenay, the owner, although he left directions that the prince was to be hospitably entertained, found it convenient to be elsewhere on urgent business that would brook no delay, and when the clergyman at Newton handed over the keys of the church, in order that the bells might be rung in honour of the proclamation in the market-place, of the Prince as King William the Third, he made it clear, pro formÂ, that he only relinquished those keys on compulsion.

There is some curious food for the whimsical mind in the fact that the Prince of Orange should have crossed the river Lemon, on his way past Newton Abbot; and there is ample room for criticism of the inscription on the famous Proclamation Stone in Newton Abbot market-place, in which it is stated that the Rev. John Reynell proclaimed the Protestant Deliverer there, November 5th. Reynell—the clergyman who was so cautious as to hand over the keys of the church only “on compulsion”—was not a man rash enough to proclaim any king who might presently become a fugitive, and thereby possibly find himself arraigned before the ferocious Jeffreys. No: Reynell did not proclaim the new king. It was probably Dr. Burnet—who accompanied the expedition—who did so, and certainly not before November 7th. Meanwhile, we will leave William to march on to Exeter and thence to London, where he arrived December 18th.

The stone on which William’s foot rested on his landing has been jealously preserved, but it has been moved about overmuch. The landing was on the site of the present fishmarket, and there the obelisk partly enclosing the stone was first erected; but when another William—the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William the Fourth—came ashore at Brixham in 1828, it was removed to its present position, on what was then called the New Quay. The weird passion for utility that characterises Englishmen, and has spoiled so many monuments, has caused this obelisk to be crowned with a gas-lamp.

It was left to modern times to fitly commemorate this great event in our history, for on the two hundredth anniversary the marble statue of the king that now forms so striking a feature of the harbour was erected. He is represented at the moment of his stepping ashore and, hand to heart, declaring, “The liberties of England and the Protestant religion I will maintain.”

Those who gaze upon the statue and pronounce the face of it ugly forget that William was not handsome. He was consumptive, asthmatic and hollow-cheeked, and the sculptors have rendered him, not idealistically, but as he was, with the very necessary reservation that he is here of heroic size, while in life he was small and undersized.

For the rest there are few records at Brixham of the coming of William of Orange. No blood was shed there, and the only note of that stirring time to be found in the parish registers is the pathetic burial entry: “1688, November 21, a foreigner belonging to the Prenz of Oringe,” with another entry of the same date referring to the same person being buried in woollen: “a Dutch man, cujus nomen ignotum.” He was probably some humble follower, who fell sick aboard, and so died on the threshold of this land flowing with milk and honey, in which so many of his fellow mynheers flourished so well.

The Brill, the vessel on which William came to England, had a strange after-history. She was re-christened Princess Mary, and converted into a yacht. So she remained through the reign of Queen Anne; but when the Hanoverian line began, and sentiment was cut off at the main, she was sold to some London merchants, who re-christened her the Betsy Cairns and sent her trading to the West Indies. From that condition the poor old vessel declined to that of a collier, and so continued for an incredible number of years, being wrecked on the Black Middens, off Tynemouth, in quite recent times.