Budleigh Past and Present

With the American city of Salem, Massachusetts, marking its 400 th  anniversary in 2026, we may see more visitors from the USA crossing the Atlantic to explore a particular link between Salem and East Budleigh. The village has quite a few other interesting transatlantic links.   Raleigh’s statue. The shadow tells us how he died  Born in East Budleigh where his statue stands near the church of All Saints, Sir Walter Raleigh (c.1552-1618) never set foot in North America, but he certainly encouraged early English colonisation of the continent. And there’s another aspect of his influence on America.   The title page of Raleigh’s History of the World, published in 1614 Raleigh’s  History of the World angered King James I (1566-1625) who believed in the Divine Right of Kings and described the work as ‘too saucie towards princes’. With its criticism of tyrant rulers, the book inspired American revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), one of the US...

Continued from  https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2024/07/around-town-and-over-pond-13-looking.html AROUND THE TOWN AND OVER THE POND A walk around Budleigh Salterton to interest transatlantic visitors. Every so often there’s a diversion which may inspire you to visit places like East Budleigh, Exeter, Sidmouth, Colyton or even places in the United States and Canada.        The walk is set out in parts. Here’s the fourteenth part:   14. LOOKING BACK AT FAIRLYNCH: ADMIRAL PREEDY AND THE VICTORIAN INTERNET   (2017) Summary: How a retired naval officer and Budleigh resident played a key role in building ‘the highway of thought between the Old World and the New’.   The text in the above stained glass window reads: 'In memory of George William Preedy CB, who when Captain of HMS Agamemnon with the Captain of the USS Niagara successfully laid the first Transatlantic Cable uniting Europe and America in 1858.' Anniversaries make a good re...