COMBE RALEIGH

One rate survives for this East Devon parish located less than two miles north of Honiton. Between 1518 and 1529 John Adams was involved in a court case which involved lands, rents and services in Combe Raleigh and Awliscombe which were intended to support the chantry. He served as the chantry priest for Our Blessed Lady and St Erasmus the Martyr which had been established in 1498 by John and Alice Bonevyle on the north side of the church. At the time this church rate was made there was a dispute over the rector, which was less colourful than that involving a subsequent vicar, Samuel Knott, who was accused of trying to put his hands up a parishioner's skirt. Knott may have been the parish's vicar who had the most unusual character. It was said that he wore ‘an old, torn, furred cap which was a very uncomely sight and made him look both ugly and ridiculous, thereby causing very much laughter in the congregation, it being a thing fitter to be worn by a player upon the stage than by a minister in the church’. In 1714 John Walker wrote he lived ‘a sort of retired and melancholy life, was looked upon by the generality of the common people as a conjurer. He pretended likewise to, and practiced physic. I have been informed that he was in truth an excellent scholar; but was certainly altogether unfit for any ecclesiastical cure’. The British Library holds a number of rare twelfth- to fifteenth-century medical and theological manuscripts which had belonged to Knott.

42. COMBE RALEIGH, Church Rate, 1596

DHC, Diocese of Exeter, Principal Registry, Combe Raleigh Church Rates, 1596

Note: The rate, a fair copy to which the signatures and signs were added in a darker ink, was written on a sheet of paper which measures approximately 6 inches in width and 14½ inches in length. The sheet has been torn along the top edge. The numerals are Roman with the exception of the year and the total sum. At the base are the rental fees for three seats.