in your belief, it is very true that 140 threads of woollen
yarn spun in that town were drawn together through the eye of a tailor's
needle; which needle and threads were, for many years together, to be
seen in Watling-street, in London, in the shop of one Mr Dunscombe.'

Crediton was once, for a brief but fateful moment, the focus of a very
serious movement. During 1549 discontent showed itself in many parts of
England, and very gravely in the West, where a rising of Devonshire and
Cornish men brought about the 'Affair of the Crediton Barns,' and
culminated in the siege of Exeter. The first definite outbreak was at
Sampford Courtenay, on Whit Monday, June 10. On Sunday the Book of
Common Prayer was used for the first time, but the people were
dissatisfied. They did not care to hear the service in their own tongue
instead of in Latin, and they resented all the other changes. And when
on Monday the priest was 'preparing himself to say the service as he had
done the day before ... they said he should not do so.... In the end,
whether it were with his will or against his will, he ravisheth himself
in his old Popish attire, and sayeth Mass, and all such services as in
Times past accustomed.'

The news of this incident spread; other villages followed suit, and the
local magistrates unwillingly recognized that the ferment of rebellion
was working, and met together to try and reason the people into a more
submissive frame of mind. But the movement was too full of force to be
arrested by such gentle methods, and the justices, 'being afraid of
their own shadows, ... departed without having done anything at all.'
Unfortunately, their reasoning had merely an irritating effect, so that,
when a certain gentleman named Helions tried mildly to enforce some of
the remonstrances, a man struck him on the neck with a billhook and
killed him. This blow seems to have stirred the mob into taking a
definite course of action, and they marched on Crediton. News of the
disturbance had, meanwhile, reached the King, and Sir Peter and Sir
Gawen Carew were sent down in haste to deal with the matter. From
Exeter, they and several other gentlemen rode to confer with the people;
but the people, having had notice of the arrival of the knights, 'they
intrench the highways, and make a mighty rampire at the Town's End, and
fortify the same' and 'also the Barns of both sides of the way.' The
walls were pierced with 'loops and holes for their shot,' and 'so