This is St Peter's Church, Tiverton. It has been a place of worship since the 11th Century; the current building is largely the result of restorations and improvements from the mid 1800s.
Tiverton is 13 miles north of Exeter, and was one of the places where the body parts of the hundreds of people who were executed were displayed in autumn 1685 for having supported the failed rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth (see previous post here).
"... Hangings were followed by the gruesome business of drawing and quartering: entrails were removed from the hanged corpse and burnt, and the corpse was they beheaded and quartered, the head and limbs being boiled in salt and then tarred for preservation. Finally these remains were set up for public view in towns and villages of the county ...
The remains were still on poles at Tiverton more than three years later when a troop of cavalry, bringing news of the landing of the Prince of Orange at Torbay in November 1688, took them down and buried them outside the little south door of St Peter's church ..."
– from The Monmouth Rebellion- a Guide to the Rebellion and the Bloody Assizes by Robert Dunning (1984).
At Exeter, 500 names appeared on a list of those merely suspected of treason. 28 were tried as having been actual rebels. A further 12 were tried for having used seditious words and were hanged at Honiton, Ottery St Mary, Colyton and Axminster. For using words.
This is why freedom of speech always has been, and always will be, the benchmark for personal and communal liberty. Just over three years later, in the Bill of Rights of 1689, enshrined in law by William of Orange and his co-monarch Queen Mary II as their very first Act of legislation, was the right to complain to the King –
Right to petition.
That it is the Right of the Subjects to petition the King, and all Commitments and Prosecutions for such Petitioning are Illegall.
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