A History of Devonshire. With sketches of its leading worthies

Front matter

A. A HISTORY OF DEVONSHIRE. A HISTORY OF DE VONSHIRE. WITH SKETCHES OF ITS LEADING WORTHIES. BV R. N. WORTH, F.G.S., Etc, AUTHOR OF • THE HISTORIES OF PLYMOUTH si ND DEVONPORT; ' TOURISTS GUIDE TO DEVONSHIRE; • IVEST-COUNTRY GARLAND; ETC. CHEAP EDITION. LONDON : ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1895. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTORY NOTE .... vii I. EARLY HISTORY , . . . .1 II. EXETER . . . . . .12 III. EXMOUTH AND THE EXE ESTUARY . . 47 IV. AXMINSTER AND THE AXE. . . -59 V. SIDMOUTH . . . . . .74 VI. HONITON ... 79 VII. OTTERY ST. MARY . . , . .84 VIII. COLLOMPTON AND BRADNINCH . . -87 IX. TIVERTON . . . . . 91 X. BAMPTON . . . . . .98 XI. SOUTH MOLTON . . . . . IOI XII. CREDITON . . . . . sl°5 XIII. CHULMLEIGH . , . . .112 XIV. BARNSTAPLE . . . . ■ IX5 XV. ILFRACOMBE AND LYNTON . . . .128 XVI.

LUNDY ISLAND . . . . . 1 36 XVII. BIDEFORD . . . . . . 141 XVIII. GREAT TORRINGTON . . . • J54 XIX HOLSWORTHY AND HATHERLEIGH . . .162 Contents. VI CHAPTER PAGB XX. OKEHAMPTON . . . . . 167 XXI. LYDFORD . . . . . I 73 XXII. TAVISTOCK . . . . . 179 XXIII. BUCKLAND MONACHORUM . . . 1 94 XXIV. PLYMOUTH, DEVONPORT, AND STONEHOUSE . 201 XXV. PLYMPTON . . . . . . 230 XXVI. MODBURY ...... 240 XXVII. KINGSBRIDGE AND SALCOMBE . . . 245 XXVIII. TOTNES ...... 254 XXIX. DARTMOUTH . . . . . 267 XXX. ASHBURTON AND BUCKFASTLEIGH . . • 277 XXXI. TORQUAY, PAIGNTON, AND BRIXHAM . .291 XXXII. NEWTON . . . . . . 305 XXXIII. TEIGNMOUTH AND DAWLISH . . . 3II XXXIV. CHUDLEIGH AND BOVEY TRACEY . . . 316 XXXV. MORETONHAMPSTEAD AND CHAGFORD . . 320 XXXVI. DARTMOOR ...... 326 XXXVII. DIALECT AND FOLK-LORE .... Sixty years have passed since the last successful attempt was made to produce a complete History of Devonshire ; and the volume of the brothers Lysons has remained from that day to the present the most valuable contribution to the general historical literature of the county.

Of late, however, many revisions have been made in local history : and though Devon has not again been treated as a whole, there are few of its corners which have not been made the subject of independent and painstaking research ; while immense masses of original materials have been collected which were either unknown or inaccessible when the Lysonses were engaged on their great work. With what has been done at the State Paper Office, all who are interested in these topics are familiar. The local inquiries of the Historical Manuscripts Commission have thrown great light upon many obscure places of the Devonian record. Much attention has been paid to the archives of public bodies. The muniments of the Cor poration of Exeter, and of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral, have been arranged and calendared by Mr. Stuart Moore, who has also investigated those of the Corporation of Dartmouth.

Chapter I. Early History

Devonshire stands alone among the counties of England in its peculiar relation to the question of the antiquity of the human race. Traces of Palæolithic man are indeed scattered throughout the kingdom, but in Devon only is there fairly consecutive evidence. The contemporaneity of man with the extinct quaternary mammalia was lifted from the level of argument to that of demonstration by the discoveries at the Windmill Hill Cave, at Brixham, in 1858. The retrospect of Devon is thus inferior in antiquity to that of no part of the British Isles, if we assign due proportion and weight to the inferential and material narrative which commonly passes under the name of prehistoric ; and, moreover, it is a record of singular completeness. That the men of Palæolithic times inhabited, or at least visited, the whole county of Devon, is proved by the manner in which their traces have been found on every hand.

The caves at Brixham and Torquay; the submerged forests in Barnstaple Bay, and at other points of the Devon coast; the beds of the rivers; the depths of the peat-bogs ; the wild wastes of the moors ; the cliffs, as at Croyde and Bovisand ; the low-lying gravels of the Axe Valley — these teem with the Mint-chips, arrow-heads, axes, and scrapers of the earliest Devonians who have left a trace behind. Mr. Pengelly, F.R.S., has advanced cogent reasons for the belief that the earliest men of the most famous of the Devon caves, Kent's Hole, Torquay, were ' inter-glacial, if not pre-glacial.' The ' earliest men ' — for it is a remarkable fact that the investigations in Kent's Cavern have yielded evidence of the existence of man in Devon from the Palæolithic, in the Neolithic, the Bronze, and the Iron Ages.

Next to the Palæolithic men of Devon came the Barrow builders ; but the gap between the two is so wide that, while the cave-men of Palæolithic date were of the period of the extinct cave mammalia, no barrow has yielded even fragmentary traces of these animals. Of the two great classes of barrows, the long and the round, the latter only occur in Devon. This is a curious fact ; for long-barrows are peculiarly abundant in the adjoining counties of Dorset and of Wilts, and round barrows yet exist in Devon by hundreds, almost thousands. The inference seems either that the long-barrow builders did not dwell farther west than Dorset, or that all vestiges of them have been destroyed on the western side of the Dorsetshire border. In all probability the Devonians of the long-barrow period were of a different race to the long-barrow people — possibly the direct descendants of the later Palæolithic men, supplanted and driven into the corners of the country by the long headed long-barrow builders, as these were supplanted and driven by the round-headed builders of the round-barrows, and as in historic times Kelt and Saxon were in turn hunters and hunted.

The long-barrow period seems to be represented in the West by chambered round-barrows, and by interments which have received the trivial name of 'giants' graves.' The most remarkable examples of these were discovered at Lundy Island, where two stone kists were found to contain two gigantic skeletons, the larger covered with limpet-shells. Like the long-barrows, with which they are presumably contemporaneous, these 'giants' graves' and chambered-barrows belong to the Age of Stone. The round-barrows are the most important factor in the earlier history of Devon. Abounding in every part of the county, either continuously or by record, they illustrate almost evenvariety of barrow interment asso ciated with the Bronze Age, thus indicating the occupation of the West by a bronze-using people over a very long time.

How far back this may extend we cannot say. The Barrow Period was undoubtedly of great duration ; but there is good reason to believe that barrow interment continued down even to post-Roman days. It is im portant to note, as indicating variations in race, in time, or in custom, of a very important character, that inter ment by cremation is all but universal in the barrows of Devon and of Cornwall ; while in Wilts and Dorset the proportion of unburnt bodies is as high as a third and a fourth. Moreover, while in Devon the few unburnt in terments are in the contracted form, as usual, in Dorset the extended position prevails. One of the most difficult questions of Western Archæo logy is that of the age and origin of the Bronze Period, to which these round-barrows in the main belong. It is seen almost from the first in somewhat settled form, and it is traceable downwards until it merges in historic civilization ; but its connection with the Stone Period is to all appearance hopelessly obscured.

There is, how ever, evidence of vast antiquity. The Western Peninsula was the chief, if not the only, source of tin for the bronze users of Europe, save, perchance, upon Asiatic confines. The tin-mining of the West, therefore, dates back to the introduction of the use of metals on the Continent ; and i — when we attempt to give to this great epoch in the history of man a definite chronological position, ' Cornwall proves that tin-streaming was carried on at Carnon and Pentuan at a time when the mammoth either still existed in the West of England, or had not long disappeared ; and when the general level of Devon and Cornwall was at least thirty feet higher than it is now.' Within the historic period no such change has taken place. Considerations of this kind led Dr. Wibel to conclude that the civilization of the Bronze Age originated in the West of England; while M. Furnet has suggested a European civilization contemporary with that of the East, dealing with minerals before the arrival of the Kelts and their intervention in metallurgy.

The fact that the early bronze weapons were evidently made for a small-limbed people gives marked support to the latter theory. That there was a distinct and well-marked civilization in the West in pre-Roman times is indeed shown, not only by the references of Greek and Roman writers to the ancient tin trade of the Cassiterides with the Mediterranean ports, but by the relics of the later Bronze Age which Devon has yielded. Coins of the type which Dr. Evans, F.R.S., assigns to about 150 B.C. have been found in the county at Cotley, near Axminster, Exeter, and Mount Batten, near Plymouth ; while an ancient cemetery in the last locality has yielded mirrors, and various implements, ornaments, and weapons of bronze (now preserved in the Museum of the Plymouth Institution), all the characters of which are Keltic, and not Roman.

In some localities such remains would undoubtedly suggest a post-Roman origin. Here they are evidently the final types of the older pre-Roman civilization ; not necessarily of any great antiquity, nor free from foreign characters, but influenced alike in origin and progress by an earlier intercourse with the civilized world than that of Roman date. This superior civilization of the West was probably the leading cause of the peculiar form taken by the Roman occupation in the ancient Keltic Kingdom of the Dun monii, which included both Devon and Cornwall. Attempts have been made to prove the existence of Roman roads and Roman stations throughout the extreme West of England, but without success. The so-called Roman roads of the older antiquaries are really the British trackways, which here as elsewhere the Romans adapted to their purpose.

The British Fosseway ran from Exeter over Dartmoor, crossed the Tamar near Tavistock, and continued along the central highlands of Cornwall by Cenion (Truro) to Giano (Marazion) in Mount's Bay. There was only one Roman station of any note within Devonian confines — the Isca Dunmoniorum of the ' Itinerary ' of Antonine. This undoubtedly is Exeter. Moridunum, which in the ' Itinerary ' intervenes beween Isca and Durnovaria (Dorchester), was in Devon, but the site has not been clearly identified. The long-accepted story of Roman conquest and sway in Devon rests solely upon a mistaken identification and a forgery. The false identification is the gloss of Geoffrey of Monmouth, or one of his editors, that the Caer Pen saulcoit which Vespasian besieged was Exeter, instead of Penselwood, on the Wilts and Somerset borderland.

The forgery is the ' Chronicle ' attributed to Richard of Ciren cester. There is thus no evidence that the Dunmonii were ever conquered by the Romans ; and the conclusion of Mr. Beale Poste appears irresistible — that ' they re tained their nationality under their own native princes.' The same long-continued foreign intercourse which had given the Western Peninsula its superiority in civilization prompted its residents rather to welcome than oppose the people with whom they were on such friendly terms, and from whom they derived so much advantage. Exeter, indeed, was both a Roman station of importance and the head of the Roman power in the district. The only other points in Devon that appear by their names to indicate the presence of Roman soldiery are on the same parallel, near North Lew — Chester Moor, Scob chester, and Wickchester.

West of Exeter no proofs of Roman occupation, beyond an individual settlement here and there, have ever been found, though traces of Roman intercourse are by no means wanting. North and east of Exeter there are only remains of Roman villas, as at Hannaditches, near Seaton, while another is said to have occupied the crest of a cliff near Hartland. The full significance of these facts, in considering the character of the Roman Period in Devon, is best seen when we compare non- Roman Devon with thoroughly Romanized Somerset, in which Roman structural and other relics of importance — temples, potteries, villas, mines — have been found in over one hundred places. The later Dunmonii were a numerous as well as a fairly civilized race. In every part of the county there are to be found earthworks, some of very considerable magnitude, which have commonly been classed by antiquaries as hill-forts, camps, or castles.

By far the greater majority of these are, however, simply the enclosures of ancient villages or towns — the evidence, not of long continued or desperate warfare, but of a settled and comparatively dense population. Whether, when the Romans left Britain, and the Britons had to rely upon their own efforts for protection against northern and sea-borne marauders, Devon shared to the full extent in the general despair is doubtful. The preservation of an independent, or quasi-independent, status would tell in its favour. It is impossible to credit the assertion that Picts and Scots carried their raids so far west. Probably Dunmonia, continuing its trade in metals with the East, enjoyed for a while comparative quiet, and was one of the last places visited by Saxon or by Dane. The Saxons were familiar with the Channel Ear ly History. 7 coast, ' the Saxon shore,' long ere they reached Devon and Cornwall ; and the Danes make their first historical appearance in the West as the allies of the Cornish race against their own Teutonic kin in the reign of Ecgberht, when they were defeated by the Saxons in a great battle just over the Tamar at Hingston Down.

Obscurity shrouds the advent of the Saxons in Devon. The only important contemporary record is the ' Anglo- Saxon Chronicle;' and that does not carry us further back than the eighth century in its Devonian references. Saxon intercourse with Devon began in an individual form, and by colonization rather than by conquest. When the Saxons of Wessex reached the county they had become Christians, and had begun, as Mr. J. B. David son says, ' to make progress by colonization as well as by the sword.' And the late Mr. R. J. King showed how in all probability settlements were pushed beyond the border ' by small bodies of men, either by force or peace ably, but on the whole establishing themselves in more peaceful fashion than would be the case when an entire district lay at the mercy of the conqueror after a great battle.' The peculiar character and distribution of the place-names of Devon lends great support to this view ; and as immigrant peoples usually accepted the place names they found until further distinctions became neces sary, and as the Keltic names of Devon can only have been retained where there was continuity of occupation, or association, it follows that wherever in Devon such names are most plentiful, there we have the best proof of extended intercourse and early Saxon colonization.

This would not have been the case, however, had not the Saxon completed by war what he had begun in peace. Colonization in the end did give place to conquest. Mr. J. B. Davidson has shown conclusively that the Saxon annexation of Devon must be placed somewhere between 710— in which year Ine fought the Welsh king Gereint, and shortly after which he made Taunton the chief defence of his new frontier — and 823, in which the Weala and the Defena — that is, the men of Cornwall and the men of Devon — fought a battle at Gafulford, probably an ancient passage on the Tamar. In 710 the whole force of Devon and Cornwall was wielded by Gereint ; in 823 the men of Devon and the men of Cornwall were mar shalled as two opposing hosts. But, inasmuch as there is no reason to suppose that Ine pushed his conquests further, and as the ' Chronicles ' expressly state that in 813 Ecgberht harried the West Wealas, while William of Malmesbury defines that monarch's first great military act as the conquest of Cornwall, the possible limit of the subjugation of Devon is narrowed between the years 728 and 800.

Of the kings of Wessex who fill this interval, the only one to whom the conquest can be assigned is Cynewulf — 755-784 — who is recorded to have fought many battles against the Brit-Wealas. It is possible that William of Malmesbury may have used the word Corn wall to include part of Devon, in which case the work begun by Cynewulf was completed by Ecgberht. If he employed that term with modern limitations, Cynewulf brought all Devon under his sway. A theory that there was a partial conquest of Devon by the Saxons, and that the Exe became a frontier between the Welsh and English, has been held by several dis tinguished authorities, including the late Sir Francis Palgrave. But the data are insufficient. Sir F. Pal grave based his hypothesis upon an agreement ascribed to the reign of ÆSelred, between certain Dunsæta.

Read ing this Devnsæta, or Defena, Sir Francis interpreted it to be an agreement ' between the Wylisc Devonshire men and the Englisc Devonshire men.' The reference, how ever, is not to Devonshire men at all, but to certain ' dwellers on the downs,' probably inhabitants of Wales proper. True, William of Malmesbury states that in 926 ÆSelstan drove the Britons out of Exeter, which they had inhabited sharing equal rights with the English, and fixed the boundary of his province along the Tamar. Mr. T. Kerslake has also shown that Exeter is really divisible by the dedications of the ancient parishes into British and Saxon quarters. A certain joint occupancy of that city must therefore be held proven. It is further probable that, at the time of Cynewulf's invasion, Exeter was more Saxon than Keltic ; and there is reason to believe that then, and long after, it enjoyed a kind of independence.

But however this may be, it is manifest that under ÆSelstan the county at large was cleared of the Keltic race — save, perhaps, in a few isolated spots — and that whatever Keltic blood there is now in Devon must date from before the Saxon Conquest, or have been acquired mainly from Cornwall, since directly it is tested this * ingenious theory of a bisected Devonshire, half Saxon, half British, with Exeter as a border fortress, and the river Exe as a boundary, vanishes into thin air.' One of the most cogent arguments against the theory is the fact that we find no trace in the place-names of Devon of a graduated Keltic element westward, which must be apparent if the county had been so parcelled, or the Saxon expulsion of the Britons had not been complete and final. The Saxon element in the local topographical nomenclature is quite as decided on the eastern bank of the Tamar as it is upon the north coast ; and the Keltic names in the former locality are not a whit more plentiful than in some other parts.

It has been thought that the Tecesses of Dartmoor may have retained their Keltic population long after the rest of Devon had fallen under Saxon rule ; but this cannot have been so, for Dartmoor has hardly a Keltic name left, save upon the borders, with which Saxon dwellers in the lowlands must have been more or less familiar. We may call in aid, too, the Saxon place-names to supply the great gaps in the recorded history of the county which the ' Saxon Chronicle ' fails to cover. They show that the early Saxon occupation of Devon must have been mainly of the individual and peaceful kind already suggested. The ordinary enclosure of the ' tun ' is scattered throughout the county, and is not predominant anywhere, though somewhat less frequent in the north west than the south. The more defensible ' stocks ' are commonly associated with the navigable rivers, then the great highways of piratical marauders, and needing rallying-points and strongholds, especially when Danish inroads became periodical.

The frequent ' burys ' are in many cases not of direct Saxon origin, but mark the site ol some old earthwork. The three most distinctive and notable marks of Saxon occupation are to be found in the affixes ' worthy,' ' cot,' and ' hay,' which have a very peculiar and suggestive distribution. ' Worthy ' — probably in the main a farm-place, with enclosures to protect the cattle from the ravages of wild beasts — is most common on the borders of Dartmoor, and particularly to the south and west, where not only the name but the thing still exists in the traces of the original walls and banks. ' Cot,' which shows the fullest evidence of individual action, and on the smallest scale, is almost peculiar to the west and north-west. ' Hay,' which represents an enclosure of a field character, has its chief centre in the east.

There has, so far, only been found in Devon one definite trace of the Teutonic mark — the existence of a certain tenure of ' landscore ' in the neighbourhood of Plymouth. But the mark would only survive in a modified form when Devon was absorbed into Wessex. The existence of the family group is not much clearer. Personal and individual settlements abound, and there are some few traces of associative effort ; but we do not find, nor can we expect to find, precisely the same polity as is presented by the shires and kingdoms first settled by the Saxons, which was complete of its kind. The constitution of Devon, however, is purely Saxon from village to shire : each of its hundreds has a Saxon name, each of its ancient municipalities originated in a Saxon community ; and in some of its towns, as Tavistock and Ashburton, the elder form of government is still easily distinguishable in the continued existence of the portreeve, or portgerefa, of the original free township, elected by the freeholders as representatives of the estates of the original settlers.

As far as we may judge from the hundred lists, as given in ' Domesday,' the original hundreds of Devon numbered twenty-six, which would give a Saxon population of the county when Saxon government was first completely established of about 15,000. The population enumerated in ' Domesday ' is 17,434 ; and the free dwellers would not make the total exceed some 25,000. But the purport of this chapter is mainly to summarize the prehistoric times of Devon — those antecedent to the Saxon Conquest. That end served, the further details of the county history will be found under the various heads.

Chapter II. Exeter

Those who believe that this island derives its name from Brutus, the Trojan, will have no difficulty in accepting the allied legend that before Brute built London he founded Exeter. But as these once popular articles of faith are sadly at a discount, wo may dismiss them with out further concern. The origin of the city is really unknown. The hill round which the Exe flowed long ages since, as it flows still, was chosen by the Kelts for the site of one of their towns, and it may have had a yet earlier appropriation. When the Romans made the castrum of the Exe the headquarters of a legion and the chief seat of their power in the extreme West of England, Exeter was already a place of importance and antiquity ; and thst is all we really know. It may have been one of the marts where the ancient Briton trafficked with the merchants of Phœnicia, but the authority for saying so is very small.

Palgrave held that the city was a free republic before the reduction of the inhabitants of West Britain, and that it enjoyed fran chises and liberties ' before any Anglo-Saxon king had a crown upon his head or a sceptre in his hand.' At what ever date, then, the first hut was built in the forest on the ' red hill ' above the marshes of the Exe, Exeter flashes into history already a great town. Each race dominant Exeter. 13 in England has made it a stronghold — Kelt, Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman. Hardly a great party in the State, though its proud motto is Semper fidelis, but has ruled therein in turn. A few feet beneath the modern city lie remains which show that Exeter was no Roman station in name only. Its claims to be the Isca Dunmoniorum have been seriously, but fruitlessly, questioned.

Roman coins by the thousand, with pottery and other articles of kindred origin, have been found in almost every excavation within the circuit of the ancient walls, and are still discovered. When the Romans left Exeter it retained a large pro portion of the specialized civilization they had imported. Moreover, its trading status, by keeping up a connection with the exterior world, would have the effect of con tinuing its more polished characteristics. Exeter did not rise, therefore, to note under the Saxons when it was chosen as the meeting-place of a Witenagemot, and when ÆSelstan replaced its rude earthworks by massive walls and towers. It simply maintained the position which had belonged to it for ages. So when Eadweard the Con fessor transferred thither the See of Devon and Cornwall from Crediton, Exeter was merely asserting its position, not only as the chief town of Devon, but as the most im portant city of all the West.

Never was this shown more completely than when the Conqueror appeared before its walls ; and when, in the eloquent words of Dr. Freeman, Exeter ' stood forth for one moment to claim the rank of a free imperial city, the chief of a confederation of the lesser towns of the West — when she, or at least her rulers, professed themselves willing to receive William as an external lord, to pay him the tribute which had been paid to the old kings, but refused to admit him within her walls as her immediate sovereign.' And though the city had to yield, it yielded on such terms as fairly secured its ancient liberties, and left it still one of the four chief cities of the realm, holding equal rank with London, York, and Winchester. There has never been a time of intestine strife, from the dawn of history down to the Wars of the Common wealth, in which Exeter has not been regarded as the key of the West.

Well indeed might the quaint city chronicler, Izaacke, tell us : ' In midst of Devon, Exeter city, seated Hath with ten sieges grievously been straitned.' In the wars between Charles and the Parliament, indeed, Plymouth, by i<"s obstinate and unbroken adhesion to the popular side, led the fortunes of the Western Peninsula ; and the possession of Exeter was, for the first time, of secondary importance. The prestige was recovered, however, when William of Orange made it the focus of his operations, and within the walls of Exeter won the adhesion of Devon, Somerset, and Dorset, and thence a kingdom. Forty royal charters are said to have been conferred upon the ancient city ; and royalty has been a frequent guest within its walls. Edward IV. gave the Corporation one of their swords of state; Henry VII. another sword. and a cap of maintenance; Henry VIII. made it a county ; Edward VI. rewarded its stubborn resistance to the Western Rebels by the gift of a manor ; Elizabeth conferred the proud motto ' Semper fidelis,' which candour compels the admission has been chiefly shown in a staunch adherence to the ruling powers ; the second Charles, as his mark of favour, gave the citizens the portrait of his Exonian sister ; the third William re-established the ancient mint.

Setting aside the story ot the capture of Exeter by Vespasian as something more than mythical, the first siege of the city recorded in history, if Matthew of West minster is to be accepted as sufficient authority, was in 633, when Penda was the leader of the besiegers and Exeter. 15 Cadwalinus (whose nephew Brian held the city) the chief of the relieving host. There is nothing intrinsically im probable in this ; and it is certain that Saxon influence had made itself felt in the vicinity at quite as early a date. There are grounds, however, for believing, as already shown, that the Saxon made his way in Devon to a large degree by the more peaceful methods of immigra tion, and that it was not until the time of ÆSelstan that Exeter became a thoroughly Saxon town. But long before ÆSelstan Exeter had been harried by a foreign foe, more savage even than the early Saxon.

The Danes took up their winter quarters there in 877, and in 894 their siege of the city was raised by Ælfred, who com mitted the spiritual oversight of the city, and in effect the ecclesiastical headship of the Saxons in Devon, to his favourite Asser. The first great historical disaster recorded of Exeter is its capture by Swegen in 1003. Two years previously the Danes in large numbers had landed at Exmouth and marched on Exeter, which was stoutly defended. The forces of Devon and Somerset gathered with all speed under their reeves, Eadsige and Kola, and were utterly defeated at what is now the suburb of Pinhoe. Then the Danes burnt the ' hams ' at Pinhoe and Clyst, ' and rode over the land ; and their " after " was ever worse than their " former," ' and they returned with great booty to their ships.