How Religion Split and Changed Town

A meeting of the South Devon Group of the Devon Humanists on 26 July at Birdwood House, Totnes, was reported in the Herald Express (7 August 2007).

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Images of Royalist cavalry clattering through the centre of Totnes, and the execution of a local priest for supporting rebels, have been brought to life.

The role of local people in the making of modern England was highlighted at a recent South Devon Humanist lecture.Dr Kevin Dixon was the guest speaker at the event at Birdwood which focussed on how religious beliefs changed during the Reformation and up to the start of the Civil War.

Dr Dixon said:

Totnes gives a fine example of how people in Devon changed their beliefs and acted to change the world.

When John Leland visited Totnes in the 1540s to record monastic libraries he saw the abandonment of the castle and decay of the walls as signs of decline.

Yet, by this time the town was the 16th richest in England, surpassing Gloucester and Lincoln.

The Benedictine Priory of St Mary had been dismantled and its 12 monks dismissed with many Totnesians welcoming the new religious ideas that fitted in with new ways of organising their society.

For instance, we have the merchant Thomas Bodley promoting Protestant ideas and having to flee into exile, and later we see Totnesian wealth fitting out the Crescent and Harte ships to defeat the Armada.

Religion gave people a set of political ideas and we can see a Devon divided. The Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549 saw the deaths of 4,000 insurgents, with Totnes men besieged in Exeter defending the Protestant cause while Harberton's vicar was executed for his support of the rebels.

Thus, Totnes seems to have welcomed changes in contrast to Dartington which had a history of resistance to the Reformation.

Here we see hidden Catholic images brought out when Queen Mary came to the throne in 1553, while the parish was excommunicated for disobedience during Elizabeth's reign.

Dr Dixon finished his lecture by arguing that the same divisions between religious ideas led to Chagford's allegiance to the king in the English Civil War and cloth-making Moretonhampstead's support for Parliament.

The lecture was one of a series of events organised by SDH, focussing on non-partisan views of society and history.