A Look Back at the History of Exeter England

09/17/2024
By Kenneth Maxwell

Margaret Rice, who is my sister, launched her latest book, The Chappell Family: Mayors and Merchants of Tudor Exeter recently.

The launch of her new book took place in Tucker’s Hall, the 14th century home of The incorporation of Weavers, Fullers and Shearman which were the major guild of the Exeter woolen cloth traders over the centuries.

She gave an illustrated talk over two days.

The Lord Mayor of Exeter, Councillor Kevin Mitchell, and the Earl of Devon, Lord Charles Courtenay, were in attendance,

Tucker’s Hall. Exeter

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the First, the Chappell family provided three mayors of Exeter, Margaret Rice has disinterred their histories after years for diligent research in local, national, and international archives.

She tells a fascinating story.

But the real key to her book is intimate detail it provides of the daily lives of Exeter’s most prominent mayors during a critical historical period.

She has examined their wills and orphan court records to reveal the furnishings in their houses, their economic activity in Exeter and beyond, their clothes and furniture, the goods they sold in their shops, the dealings they had as mayors, the financing they made to support a ship that took part in the Fleet that took on and defeated the Spanish Armada, their charitable giving, and their international dealings with France and the wide variety of international good they dealt in.

Above all it shows the real sinuses of the period in the lives of the men and the women and the children who lived through it.

And it is a wonderful compliment her first book on Henry Bagwell, who was an apprentice to the Chappell family in Exeter, and was the son of a Chappell daughter, and who was Shipwrecked on Bermuda on the way to Virginia, eventually arriving the mouth of the Chesapeake  just at the moment that the Jamestown residents were about to be abandon the settlement.

He later became the first clerk of the court on Virginia’s eastern shore: Virginia of course being named in honour of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth the First.

It is an also very good to know that our ancestors had such a distinguished role in the early history of Exeter, and the remaining personal links to that past in Tucker’s Hall, as well as in what later became the United States of America.

Here was the announcement of the event:

Book launch Information RR 2 Heritage Week June 9th Final
Margaret Rice at the launch of her book on the Chappel family Mayors and Merchants in Tudor Exeter at the fourteenth century Tucker’s Hall in Exeter She is with Lord Courtenay, the 19th Earl of Devon, the Lord Mayor of Exeter, Councillor Kevin Mitchell, and the Lord Mayor’s consort, Ian Rutland. The photo is by the courtesy of the Incorporation of Weavers,Fullers and Shearmen.