3. ‘The Martyrdom of Agnes Prest' (1909) by Harry Hems (1842-1916), with some East Budleigh history

The bronze panel seen above shows the burning of the Cornishwoman Agnes Prest, executed on 15 August 1557 at Southernhay, Exeter during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary Tudor.  

It is one of four panels on the Protestant Martyrs' Memorial in St Leonard’s, Exeter, which was erected as the result of a public subscription. Another panel shows Thomas Benet, executed at Livery Dole, Exeter, in 1531. 

The Memorial was unveiled by the MP for Honiton Sir John Kennaway on 20 October 1909, following a service in the now demolished Bedford Chapel in Bedford Circus, Exeter.  

 

A page from the first edition of Actes and Monuments, also known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, published in 1563. Image credit: Wikipedia

According to John Foxe in his Book of Martyrs  Agnes Prest was taken by her husband and neighbours to the local priest and imprisoned in Launceston, before being transferred to Exeter. There she was charged with the crime of ‘Heresy chiefly against the Sacrament of the Altar and for speaking against Idols’, and ordered to give up her beliefs, but she refused to recant.

 

Harry Hems at work in his studio in Longbrook Street in Exeter, on 12 June 1896. Image from Stone Magazine, June 1899; Wikipedia

Harry Hems was an English architectural and ecclesiastical sculptor who was particularly inspired by the Gothic architecture prevalent in Europe from the 12^th to the 16^th centuries, and was a practitioner of the Gothic Revival movement which started in the mid-18^th century.

 

The former workshop of Harry Hems in Longbrook Street, Exeter.  It now houses a restaurant on the ground floor with other businesses above. Image credit: Smalljim

He founded and ran a large workshop in Exeter which produced woodwork and sculpture for churches all over the country and abroad. A large part of the collection of medieval woodwork that he accumulated during his working life is now in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter.

Because of its location on the corner of Barnfield Road and Denmark Road, in a residential part of Exeter away from the city centre, I don’t suppose that the Protestant Martyrs' Memorial attracts many visitors. Which is a shame in many ways, because it is a fine example of Harry Hems’ work. 

Yet perhaps the graphic nature of the artist’s depiction of the martyrdom and the quiet location of the monument next to a couple of benches encourages the visitor to contemplate more fully those terrible times of religious intolerance and the cruelty of the persecutors.  

 

Hayes Barton, birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh, on Hayes Lane, East Budleigh

I have found no evidence of the artist’s strong feelings about such times. But the depiction of Agnes Prest’s death is particularly fitting in regard to East Budleigh's Salem Chapel - imagined as a Peace Museum - because of its connection with East Budleigh. 

According to the Book of Martyrs, Agnes Prest was visited in prison by Sir Walter Raleigh’s mother Katherine née Champernowne, described by Foxe as ‘a woman of noble wit and godly ways’. Katherine is said to have returned to her home at Hayes Barton, impressed by the martyr’s deeply held faith.

There is every reason to think that the young Walter Raleigh would have been inspired in his enmity towards Catholicism by his mother’s account of the event. As a teenager he gained his first military experience in France, fighting with a force made up of Devon’s Protestant families to support the Huguenots during the French Wars of Religion.   

Historians have recognised that rather than being inspired by feelings of pacifism such monuments in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries were motivated by anti-Catholicism of the time. ‘They were created by the Protestant Alliance and other anti-Tractarians because they believed that "the Roman Church was not content with equal rights but rather sought to make herself the National Church again"’, writes Exeter University’s Dr Laura Sangha in an article of 2014.

A particular supporter of the campaign to build a monument was Emma Miller, Honorary Secretary of the Exeter Protestant Martyrs’ Memorial Committee, who is described as instrumental in its creation. She was presented with an illuminated address and a duplicating machine by the memorial committee in recognition of her work towards providing the memorial. Born in 1861, unmarried and living at 11 St John’s Road in Exeter, she died in 1928 and is buried in the city’s Higher Cemetery. It is perhaps significant that her grave is in the Dissenters’ part of the cemetery.

Yet why position the monument here, asks Laura Sangha. ‘How did the memorial end up on a street corner?’

An inscription on the monument tells us that it was ‘near this spot’ that the martyrs met their deaths. In fact we are some distance from the places of execution of Benet and Prest, the monument standing as it does mid-way between Livery Dole and Southernhay.  But there may be another explanation.

 

‘The second oldest girls’ school in the country’.  Photo Credit: The Maynard School

Overlooking the monument is The Maynard School, proud of its setting ‘in a leafy area of central Exeter’.  Founded in 1658 by Sir John Maynard, a lawyer and reputedly a strong Presbyterian, The Maynard School has the distinction of being the second oldest girls’ school in the country.  

When Hems created the monument in 1909, the school had only thirty years before, moved into its new premises in the district of St Leonard’s.

Could the monument commemorating Agnes Prest have been placed deliberately near The Maynard School’s new building to inspire its young ladies to remain true to their Protestant faith, asserting their freedom of belief and demonstrating feminine courage.  On another panel of the monument are inscribed Christ’s words from the Book of Revelation “FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH” to reinforce the message.   

Was Emma Miller a former pupil? If so, could she have suggested the location to the Exeter Protestant Martyrs’ Memorial Committee? Unfortunately many of the School’s records were destroyed in the Exeter blitz of 1942. We have no proof that Emma Miller did attend the School, but equally she could have been a former pupil as membership of the Old Girls’ Society was optional. 

Whatever the reason for its location, the Protestant Martyrs' Memorial stands as a moving tribute to victims of persecution. Centuries would have to pass before ideas about freedom of expression and religious toleration started to be accepted by society.