JOHN PRINCE. 359 
Richard Coffin, of Portledge, was Sheriff of Devon; and in the 
letters of his Under-sheriff, Thomas Northmore, of St. Thomas, 
Exeter, are graphic accounts, first, of the orders of the Lord 
Lieutenant to the Sheriff on the rebellion breaking out, June, 
1685, and in August and October of the same year, of his (the 
Under-sheriff’s) journey to Wells, where he meets Jeffreys, to try 
and save his master what he could “of the extraordinary charge of 
whippinge and executinge the prisoners,”’ wherein, he says, he “ got 
some mitigation.’’ Quarters and heads of the rebels were, however, 
ordered to be sent to Honiton, Axminster, Barnstaple, Torrington, 
Tiverton, Plymouth, Dartmouth, and Totnes; and when Prince 
came into Totnes he would see the ghastly relics exhibited as a 
warning to all who might in future be inclined to rebellion. 
News of Monmouth’s landing must quickly have reached Totnes, 
He landed at Lyme on the 11th of June, 1685; and I find in the 
Corporation Book an eutry, under date 19th of June, to the effect 
that Samuel Hyre, of Totnes, brasier, was bound over ‘For re- 
portinge that he had received a letter from his father (a lieutenant 
in the King’s army against Lyme), wherein was said that the Duke 
of Monmouth had 12,000 men;” and two days before the battle 
of Sedgemoor was fought, and the rebellion crushed (viz., on the 
4th of July, 1685), one Joanna Punchard, of Totnes, spinster, was 
bound over ‘‘ For declaring that she did not care who was king soe 
she enjoyed her religion.”’ 
Prince, as a strong Royalist, would, I think, look on Monmouth 
and his followers as blind enthusiasts, or worse; in fact he refers 
to Jeffreys and the Bloody Assize in the coolest terms possible, 
comparing it with Judge Whiddon’s Assize in the North of England 
for the trial of those who rebelled against Queen Mary; and he 
would no doubt congratulate himself that he had retired from the 
borough town which he could not but remember had sided with 
the Parliament in the Civil War of forty years before. On this 
occasion Totnes furnished at least one recruit to the Duke of 
Monmouth, and it may have been more. The one we know of 
appears to have escaped detection, and not to have fallen into 
Jeffreys’ hands; but his father, James Cole of Totnes, shoemaker, 
was bound over ‘‘for conveying away James Cole, his son, who 
was in the rebellion with Monmouth.” ‘Totnes too sheltered from 
Jeffreys one of the ‘‘fair maids” of Taunton who helped to work 
Monmouth’s banner. ‘This young lady found refuge in the house 
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