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The Worlds of Gilbert and Sullivan

Francis Drake's Story!

Prologue: Brothers in Devon!

Brother Mark and a younger Brother Paul were returning with their pony and cart from an expedition to Exeter, where they lodged in the Town House belonging to their abbey. Wearing their best black habits, they had set out some two weeks earlier from the Benedictine Abbey in Tavistock; a round trip of about 80 miles. Travel on English roads in the 1530s was a laborious and often dangerous business. (No more than muddy tracks really, over limestone or chalk outcrops, or causeways constructed on lower, softer ground by some more enterprising landowners. In wet weather, nearly impassable.)  So they were pleased to be returning safely to the peaceful seclusion of their 'home'.

Mark and Paul were lay brothers (not ordained priests). Mark was a carpenter and something of an artist, and Paul a general blacksmith. Both were essential contributors to the smooth running of the extensive and well endowed Abbey and the township of Tavistock. They were hard working, peaceable, well liked and respected by their religious masters and colleagues, and were often entrusted with the task of carrying out sales and purchases on behalf of the Abbey. On this occasion they had been selling some of the Abbey's wool, also cloth (a serge woven from Dartmoor sheep's wool into 'kersies', called 'tavistocks'), and wines in Exeter, and were returning with salt and spices for the kitchens, and a shopping-list of other requests which the community could not provide itself.

The roads through and around Dartmoor (Sorry, tracks) were busy routes in fine weather, used by all sorts of pony and  Shank's-pony traffic. Predominantly these were carts or mule trains carrying silver, tin and copper, from the local mines to be "stannaried" in Tavistock {the King's portion deducted, then stamped with the royal arms}; before proceeding to the ships at Southampton and Plymouth, or to the ancient ports of Exeter and Morwellham Quay to be sold. On this return leg of their journey our two intrepid Brothers caught up with a troupe of strolling players headed for Tavistock's St Rumon's Fair on their West-Country circuit. They consisted of itinerant musicians, actors, dancers and jugglers; but their cart, which carried all their props and gear, had broken down and shed one of its wheels, and they were having great difficulty repairing it.

Immediately the two Brothers offered their help, which was gratefully accepted by the anxious company. The wheel was soon temporarily repaired and the cart fixed, with a promise to finish the repair when they arrived at Tavistock and access to tools and equipment in their own workshops. Only last month, Paul recalled, he used all his skills to help repair the state-of-the-art 'edge-tool watermill' invented by the monks to grind the cloth-workers' shears. The players invited their 'saviours' to join them for a meal at their campfire. This was followed by an evening of fine entertainment. The troupe went through their routine for the next show in Tavistock - music, song and dance, and storytelling, which was a wondrous treat for the two Brothers. Mark sat sketching the troupe as they worked. His skill amused and amazed the performers. Each art-form complemented, inspired and complimented the other with consummate ease. And of course the news from the players was always welcome and informative (Travellers were the main purveyors of news of their day).

One dancer in the group reminded Paul of Marianne, a trainee in the Abbey's library, who also helped the Accounts Keeper in the Almoner's office. Her presence made Paul glad he hadn't yet taken his Abbey vows! Marianne was a lively girl, with an equally lively but perhaps more cautious younger sister, Lucy, who was a helper in the Abbey hospital. Paul recalled the time when the fair visited the town and one of the visitors' puppy-dogs inadvertently fell into the adjacent fast-flowing River Tavy. It became entangled in the treacherous reeds, with the added danger of being swept against the mid-stream rocks and down the mill-race towards the churning mill-wheel. Without a second thought Marianne leaped down the steep bank into the swirling waters and, with help from onlookers with ropes, dragged the struggling pup to the bank and safety. This caused a flurry of excitement among the crowd, particularly the Fair-folk who carried Marianne on their shoulders in triumph through the main street. The news of her bravery travelled as far as Plymouth and perhaps even beyond. (Maybe you heard about it where you live?).

When she arrived back home to change into dry clothes her sister Lucy wasn't very pleased - "That was too impulsive, Marianne". (This was stern stuff - she usually called her sister 'Merry' when not angry). "What if you had been trapped  and dragged down by the reeds? What if you'd been  swept into the mill-wheel? Others have," she protested. "What then?" Marianne just smiled.

The interaction between Abbey and town was a very special one covering nearly all aspects of life. Although completely separate, they were in effect one. The Abbey with its land and riches created the original borough outside its gates and provided employment and succour for the inhabitants. And the developing town provided the expertise and labour that the Abbey needed to operate its many farms, activities and business operations. Each depended heavily on the other for success and survival. Most of the twenty or so Monks were extremely practical - farm-managers, millers, clothing manufacturers, librarians, printers operating the Abbey's unique and widely recognised printing-press; two or three were bakers, cooks, viniculturists or gardeners; quite a few worked in the hospital manufacturing medicines and looking after the sick and the infirm; several were excellent scholars and wrote many learned treatises. A recent inspection¹ of the Abbey rated it as excellent, except the bell-ringers who were rated negligent. (We must take these bell-ringers in hand if they are to pull their weight!)

Delights on entering the Abbey at sunrise included the welcoming warmth of the bakery fire, the aroma of bread baking, and the sight of pretty maids carrying pails of milk for the making of butter, cheese and other products in the dairy. One May morning, Paul remembered,  he was offered a crisp, crusty, freshly-baked hot bread roll, with fresh clotted cream (a new invention of the Tavistock Abbey Cook) and a dribble of honey, in return for a repair-job well done. Delicious! (Some of us might have preferred the nice fish paste the cook makes. But that's probably a matter of personal opinion!)

One monk - the Italian Brother Roger was an extremely talented musician who built and played the very rare Abbey organ, and directed the Abbey Church orchestra and choir. These were so popular they attracted musicians and singers from far afield, and established a fine choral tradition of ancient plainsong as well as the new Italian music.

Another popular monk, Spanish Brother Arthur (Not his real name - Which to us was lengthy and unpronounceable!), was a shoe-maker and repairer. Paul often spent hours watching Arthur in his workshop, fascinated by this magical process. He was sorely tempted to change from his Blacksmith's trade to the craft of Cordwainer (From shoeing Horses to shoeing people, so to speak!). Both skills were very much in demand, so his thinking cap was constantly twitching!

Most of the Monks were teachers and provided education for the children of the area. The famous Saxon School for educating promising young men was part of the Abbey. The Monks conducted marriage ceremonies for young (and young at heart) lovers; and gave comfort to the sick - their specialism was the treatment of leprosy among returning Crusaders from the wars. All were students of the scriptures, and followed a severely ordered and often austere lifestyle. The community of monks and laypeople was almost self-sufficient; and above all, happy and contented with their hard-working lot.

Mark thought about a recent incident when one of the students from the Saxon School was caught in a compromising situation with a young lady who was one of the Abbot's maids, in a part of the Abbey known as Betsy Grimbal's Tower. It was rumoured that they both received a firm telling off from the Abbot, who lectured them on the parable of the 'forbidden fruit'. They knew they had violated a trust, one a promising candidate for further training at Gloucester College, Oxford (now subsumed into Worcester College, Oxford), the other a valued domestic servant. They listened politely and apologised profusely. However, shortly afterwards they both absconded; the forbidden fruit perhaps having proven to be more potent and addictive than they originally considered. (Who knows?) He later heard they had married and settled in Plymouth.

Brother Paul fondly remembered his crush on Marianne. But she was attracted to another Lay-brother, Matthew, an Acolyte with special responsibilities for candle-power, and a student of the science of Alchemy. Matthew helped her with her Almoner's accounting, (using a Chinese calculating machine called a computator, or abacus, or something). 'What chance have I got against such competition?' mused Paul. Brother Matthew subsequently persuaded her to marry him and go to seek their fortunes in London. They have moved on from London since, we are told. Alchemists and Acolytes (particularly with computators) are always in demand and he was probably head-hunted like all men of skill and distinction. Any information on their whereabouts will be welcome!

The following morning they had been travelling about two hours when a very dishevelled and traumatized family from Tavistock stopped the group and alerted them about an unprovoked attack on the Abbey. Mark recognised the man as William, a down-to-earth farmer who ran the pig farm in the east of the Abbey Estate. His wife and young daughter were seated on the family pony, their terrified eyes confirming their plight. It reminded Mark of the day he helped William pull his daughter out of the farm well. She had been playing on its wooden lid which had partially rotted, with the inevitable result. It took nearly two hours of patient work to rescue her from the ledge which had saved her life.

He was jerked back from his reveries on hearing William gasp: 'On the orders of King Henry. We were told that the King had proclaimed the Abbey should be made unsuitable for use; and that any who offered resistance were to be summarily executed'. The Abbot and his monks had been paid off and evicted, he reported. (Although the Abbot later became a vicar in the area.) And parts of the Abbey, particularly the irreplaceable library and treasures stolen, defaced or destroyed. The award-winning fish pond had been ruined, and the magnificent Abbey Church reduced to a ruin. Crops of wheat and the vineyards had been put to the torch. The bake-house, apiary (We must look this up!)² and dairy were totally demolished. The refectory and the hospital had both suffered the same grim fate. But the patients had apparently been spirited away to safety by Lucy and some of the monks. 

Sheep, pigs, cattle and horses had been stolen or slaughtered, and their pens, styes, barns, and stables wrecked. Rabbits were released from the warren, and the Warrener was severely injured trying to protect his charges. And the looms and mills of the weavers and clothiers, as well as the Abbey's water-mill for grinding corn, were smashed beyond repair. Hundreds of invaluable books from the library had been piled up in the courtyard and callously burned (It will be another 150 years before books are again printed in the West Country). The young enthusiastic preacher Edwin Drake of the new Tavistock Protestant Movement had tried his best to remonstrate with the terrorists, but was soundly whipped for his intervention, and possibly badly wounded. And Brothers Roger and Arthur, and a dairy-maid, who had tried to resist these destructive raiders, had been murdered in cold blood. ('To teach others a brutal lesson in not interfering', they had been told.)

There was now no Abbey, William declared. What remained, and its lands and the town were to be given to John, Lord Russell, and no-one knew what their futures held. The Fair-folk said they had heard vague rumours of similar, and even more brutal, incidents elsewhere. But they were shocked and distraught at this news; particularly about the murders of the dairy-maid, Brother Roger - a greatly admired and favourite musician, and Brother Arthur - a revered high-tech craftsman. Mark and Paul were numbed with horror and alarm. In sheer disbelief they thanked William and tried to console him and his family; they then sped as swiftly as possible towards Tavistock to see for themselves. William, meanwhile meandered mournfully on his way, leading the loaded pony and muttering: "My beautiful Gloucester Oldspots . . . All gone".

On the way 'home' they encountered numerous other frightened refugees who implored them to turn round and flee for their lives. In desperation, however, they pressed on, but as they approached the Abbey perimeter farms they witnessed whole swathes of wheat and stacks of hay burned to the ground. The vegetable plots had been trampled into useless pulp. There were carcasses of sheep, pigs, cattle and horses littering the fields and footpaths. Finally, as they crested the hill above Tavistock and approached the walled Abbey grounds they saw smoke rising from the buildings. They raced down the hill, across the Tavy bridge and through the gate into the Great Court. The heat from the fires was still intense. Most buildings were totally destroyed and everyone had disappeared. Even the dovecotes were a wrecked shambles. The bodies of the three murdered victims lay where they fell, together with dead chickens, geese and doves. Brother Roger, in permanent repose, was still clutching a slaughtered lamb to his bosom. Everything was in chaos! Brothers Mark and Paul stopped in their tracks.

'But, it can't be true, it's been here for hundreds of years', they pondered incredulously! Incredulity, however, was harshly jerked into stark reality; the truth was manifestly written in the scene: the ruins, the devastation, death, danger, and despondency. Now they had nowhere to go. Their 'homes', 'families', livelihoods and security had, in a few short hours, been wantonly and irreversibly destroyed.

"No! No! No! No!" wailed Paul, in sheer anguish." This can't be the end, can it?"
"No!" ominously declared Mark, with suppressed bitterness and anger in his voice. " . . . . This end is simply another beginning . . .!"

Wow! There is undoubtedly going to be a reaction to this unbelievable act of Royal vandalism. The only issues in question are when, what form it will take, and what will be the 'final' outcome . . .

Where do we go to find out? Click the awaiting blue yacht to set the sails and move into deeper waters for the next episode of Francis Drake's Story:-

Introduction: The Last of the Tudors!

(But keep a weather-eye on those off-shore rocks!)

Footnote I    Yes they really did have inspections! Check in our MusicSmiles bibliography  in due course for further details. Return to story.

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