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Browsing: Diary of John Adams, Volume 3
28th
Docno: DJA03d191
Date: 1787-07-28
We left Axminster and proceeded to Exeter. Here we put up at the Hotell in the Church yard and opposite to the Cathedral Church. At this place lives Mr. Andrew Cranch the Eldest Brother of Mrs. Palmer
{p. 208}
and Mr. R. Cranch. We went to visit him. A Mr. Bowering a very Worthy Tradesman came to see us, and as he lives near to Mr. Cranch, he persuaded the old Gentleman to come and drink Tea with him. He is very infirm and about 78 years old, is very poor and past his labour, bears a Good Character as a man of great integrity and industery. His wife is near as old as he, a small woman, but very lively and active and looks like to last many years. Mr. Bowerings Brother married with1
1. Here AA's journal breaks off, but the substance of this incomplete sentence is supplied in her letter to Mrs. Cranch, 15 Sept. 1787 (MWA): “Mr. [Andrew] Cranchs daughter married Mr. Bowerings [John Bowring's] Brother, they have three Sons. She is a sprightly woman like her Mother, and Mr. Bowering's daughter married a Son of Mr. Natll. Cranchs, so that the family is doubly linked together.”
The travelers remained in Exeter from Saturday the 28th until Monday the 30th. “From Exeter we went to Plimouth. There we tarried several days [30 July-4 Aug], and visited the fortifications, Plimouth Dock, and crossed over the Water to Mount Edgcume [Edgcumb Mount, Devon, on the Tamar River, near Saltash]; a Seat belonging to Lord Edgcume” (same).
[Memoranda on a Tour from London to Plymouth, July–August 1787.] 1
Docno: DJA03d192
Date: 1787-07 - 1787-08
Michael Sawrey, at Plymouth2
Gillies St. Martins Lane. Garthshores
Sastres Edgware Road. No. 20.
fallitur egregio quisquis sub Principe credit,
Servitium: nunquam Libertas, gratior exit [extat]
quam sub Rege pio. Claud. Lib. 3. in Stillic.
quos praefecit ipsi [praeficit ipse], regendis rebus, ad arbitrium Plebis, Patrumque reducit.3
Mad. La Marquise de Champsenets au Chateau de Thuilleries.
To Epsom, Guilford, Farnham, Alton, Winchester, Salisbury. Blandford, Dorchester, Bridport, Axminster, Honniton (Valley), Exeter.
Niccolaides. Chambourgs Rhodes.
Gentlemans Pocket Farrier.
Truslers practical Husbandry. Baldwins P[ater] N[oster] Row.
O fair Columbia, hail.
An original Sir. W. Rawleigh, by Cornelius Jansen, at Mr. J.
{p. 209}
Cranch's, Axminster.4 Sir W. was born at Hays in the Parish of Bodley, Devon.—John Bowering. Andrew Cranch.
Ingratitude thou marble hearted fiend, more hideous when thou shewest thee in a Child than a sea Monster. S'pear.
1. These highly miscellaneous jottings are on a loose folded sheet separated from the Diary and filed under its assigned date in the Adams Papers. On the fourth and last page is a list in JA's hand of six military companies in Boston, with their commanders, beginning “Boston Troop of Horse, Swan.” Possibly this list was put down from a newspaper account of forces mustered to deal with the Shays insurgents during the winter of 1786–1787. The notes printed here are mere scraps of information that JA wished to remember and were doubtless mainly taken down during the family excursion to the west of England. But from the fact that the name of Michael Sawrey of Plymouth heads the list they may have been begun in London, for some of the notes that follow pertain to persons and things encountered by JA before he reached Plymouth.
2.
“At Plimouth we were visited by a Mr. and Mrs. Sawry; with whom we drank Tea one afternoon; Mr. Sawry is well known to many Americans, who were prisoners in Plimouth jail during the late war. The money which was raised for their relief, past through his Hands and he was very kind to them, assisting many in their escape”
(AA to Mrs. Cranch, 15 Sept. 1787, MWA).
3. From Claudian's Consulship of Stilicho, book 3, lines 113–116, but carelessly copied by JA as usual. Corrections have been inserted from the Loeb Classical Library text of Claudian (London and N.Y., 1922). The Loeb translation is as follows: “He errs who thinks that submission to a noble prince is slavery; never does liberty show more fair than beneath a good king. Those he himself appoints to rule he in turn brings before the judgment-seat of people and senate.”
4. See note 3 on entry in AA's Diary for 26[–27] July, above.
Cite web page as: Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses, ed.C. James Taylor. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2007.
http://www.masshist.org/ff/
http://www.masshist.org/ff/