29. Silverton. LIKE many others of the Devonshire Churches, this at Silverton is beautifully situated; it is at the southern extremity of the village, and presents a striking object from the surrounding country-seen amid the grove of elms and limes that cover the side of the knoll on which it is placed. With its massive tower it is about 88 feet long, by 42 feet wide, and consists of a chancel and nave opening to aisles on the north and south by four arches, supported by clustered columns with richly carved capitals; and a south porch, over the doorway of which is a very beautiful niche, where was formerly to be seen a figure of the Virgin Mary, to whom the church is dedicated.

The north aisle was erected in the 15th. century by the bequest of John Swyfmore, a rector of the parish, who by his will dated the 18th June, 1478, after directing his body to be buried before the image of the Virgin Mary in the Church, left £40 for the erection of this aisle, and granted all his lands and tenements in Silverton for the support of a priest to sing masses in it. In the south aisle is the burial place of Dr. Gilbert Bourn, the deprived Bishop of Bath and Wells, who died at Exeter on the 10th. September, 1569.

The royal arms on the wall at the west end bear the date of 1660, the year of the Restoration; thus early was this parish in testifying its loyalty: it had indeed experienced bitter proof of puritan superstition and intolerance in the persecution of their late respected clergyman, the Rev. W. Cotton, in the breaking down of their churchyard-cross, and the destruction of the Rood-loft* and Screen; the remains of a staircase leading to the Rood-loft may still be seen in a turret projecting from the south wall.

The following account of the persecution of Mr. Cotton, by the puritans, is taken from Walker's sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England during the great Rebellion, who, to the number of 7000, were driven out of their several preferments. "He was the eldest son of Dr. W. Cotton, then late Bishop of Exeter. Besides his spiritual preferments he was possessor of several considerable temporal estates; all which, together with his ecclesiastical livings, he was deprived of, (tho' allowed afterwards, as I guess, to compound for some of his temporals,) and not only turned out of them, but plundered also: and to add to the bitterness of his sufferings one of the chief actors in them was one Barton, of Silverton, his near neighbour, and one whom Mr. Cotton had saved from being plundered, and being treated as a rebel deserved, when the King's forces were in these parts. He had at the time of the sequestration, a wife and eight children, whom he sheltered for some time in a little house that he rented, in or near the town of Silverton, but was himself forced to fly into the county of Cornwall, for the safety and security of his person, where at length he died at his seat of Botreaux Castle, about the year 1649."

* The Rood-loft was not without a deep and mysterious signification;-Stavely, Church History, p. 199, says, "the body of the Church was said to represent the Church Militant, and the Chancel the Church Triumphant, and those that would pass out of the former into the latter, must go under the Rood- loft, that is, they must go under the Cross and suffer affliction." See also, "Sparrow's Rationale," the chapter on "Chancels, Altars, and Fashions of Churches." The word Rood, that is Cross, is of frequent occurrence in Chaucer, who calls the Cross of the Crucifix the Roode-tree, and the floor on which it was raised the Roode-beam. Chiefly extracted from Remarks upon Hasely Church, Oxford.

Mr. Cotton's son. Dr. Edward Cotton, left considerable charities to the poor of the parish, who did not receive parochial relief.

The manors of Silverton and Combe Sachville are the property of the Right Hon. the Earl of Egremont, who is building a noble mansion on the site of the manor house of Combe Sachville, having altered the name to that of Silverton Park, by which it is now generally known. The present Incumbent of the Rectory of Silverton is the Rev. Dr. Tripp.

[Text may be taken from a different source or edition than that listed as the source by Somers Cocks.]