56 ANTIQUITIES OF OKEHAMPTON. 



his son being slain v presently after at Tewksbury, their castle, 

 honor, and manor of Okehampton became escheated to the crown. 

 ITiey were bestowed on Sir John Dynham, whose tenure however 

 was short, for two years after they were again granted to George, 

 Duke of Clarence, the king's brother, said to have been drowned 

 in the Tower in a butt of Malmsey. It must have been about 

 this period that William of Worcester's visit occurred ; he men- 

 tioning it as being a royal fortress. But Edward Courtenay, 

 anno 12 Henry VII., having raised the siege of Exeter, then 

 beset by the rebels under Perkin Warbeck, the attainder was re- 

 moved, and their honors restored in person of his son William, 

 who afterwards became allied by marriage to the crown itself. 

 Yet the highest ranks, at this period were but the most exposed 

 to the reverses of fortune : — Philip de Comines says that he saw 

 a duke following an equipage without shoes, and serving for his 

 livelihood as a footman. Thus, in Henry the eighth's time, Henry 

 de C'ourtenay, Marquis of Exeter, and the king's cousin, who had 

 broken a lance against the French monarch in the camp of " Cloth 

 of gold," fell into disgrace with a court, where disgrace was death : 

 his accusation lay in having held a secret correspondence with 

 the cardinal Pole. Edward Courtenay, son of the last mentioned, 

 who had been sent prisoner to the tower was released by Queen 

 Mary and as Risdon informs us, died in his travels beyond seas 

 at Padua without issue, but not without suspicion of poison: — 

 with iiirn fell the earls of Devonshire. It is beyond my purpose 

 to say more than that the present Lord Courtenay, of Powderham, 

 is descended from a junior branch of this noble house. 



Such then was the family who so long held the castle and 

 lordship of this town. " The history," as Prince, in his Worthies 

 of Devon, observes, ** of the illustrious but unfortunate line of 

 Courtenay, has not been confined to genealogists ; but has sedu- 

 ced into a pardonable digression the author of the " Decline and 

 Fall of the Roman empire." Gibbon has traced for us the fortunes 

 of this house in its three principal branches. " In peace, he says, 

 the earls of Devon resided in their many castles and manors of 

 the west, in war the Courtenays of England fulfilled the duties 

 and deserved the honors of chivalry." The manners of their age 

 did not debar them from a mercenary's service, and when war 

 or the tournament failed them at home the English Courtenays 

 were found foremost in many a field where their onset might be 

 shouted " St. George for merry England." 

 'To be continued. 



