The Elizabethans

A field report from Totnes War-Correspondent, Freddy Four-Feathers.

Under Oat Milk
Tall Tales of an Alternate Totnes.

I’m sitting in the back seat of an old Range Rover. A Happy Apple tote bag has been pulled over my head for ‘security reasons’ and I’m blind to the world. There’s a burly bloke sitting in silence either side of me.

I’m being driven to a secret military destination, and about to enter the rabbit-hole of historical enactment societies – more Frayed Lunacy, than Sealed Knot.

Judging by our slow speed and the profusion of speed bumps and bottle-necks, it’s laughingly obvious that we are on the old Dartington Hall Estate, previously home to choral clusters, summer luvvie-ins, errant poets, and ecstatic lissom dancers.  Alas, now sadly sold for a pound to a Japanese business consortium, and one of Europe’s largest golf courses.

We arrive at a small woodland area. The bag is pulled from my head, and in the evening’s half-light true enough, I can see the Great Hall’s clock face, arched by it’s pair of gold-plated golf clubs, and to my left a perfectly manicured, sand-bunkered golf course, part of which used to be the Deer Park. The park’s viewing platform is still there. It’s a nice touch, as visitors to the golf course can observe the Tribe of Pringle in their natural habitat.

Closer to hand are a dozen or so canvas bell tents, intermittently illuminated by small camp fires, around which men, dressed in Jacobean military attire, sit wide-legged and in good cheer.

A handsome looking woman with reliable ankles, wearing a wimple, is pouring mead from a large jug into their tankards, and true to cos-play form, the men are making ribald remarks. Some foot soldiers are huddled together taking an Instagram pic – one of them, somewhat incongruously, is holding a selfie stick. All of them are grinning widely, revealing their authentically blacked-out teeth.

I’m ushered into one of the bell tents. There are men of military rank pointing with clay pipes at a table-sized model of Totnes Market Square, fashioned from Riverford Farm veg boxes.

Their leader is Captain Stanwix-Sprottle. A thick-set man with a bay-window beer belly, the gentle stoop of deskbound middle-management, and a clammy handshake similar to grasping a bag of uncooked sausages.

He’s a walking battle hymn for the Jacobean cause, and is particularly riled by the Totnes Elizabethan Tuesday Market. Upon being introduced to him, he quickly launches into a well-rehearsed tirade.

“The Elizabethan Market has been bed-blocking the Jacobeans for too long with their off-era produce; hand-knitted toilet roll covers, running-shoe insoles, second-hand fondue sets, spring-scented candles? All ridiculous!  They are pretenders to the crown, and tomorrow, at the annual ceremonial opening of their market, the Jacobeans will march upon them. We are on a war footing, and we have the merch.”

He proudly points to the trestle tables heaped with ‘authentic’ Jacobean craft produce at the side of the tent. They’ve been busy.  Shiny shoe-buckles crafted from recycled spoons, smoke-less Defra-approved witch-burning kits, black narrow-brimmed hats with “Bless Me Quick, Jimmy” stickers on them, sweetmeats and fluke-free flat beds from the JacoBites Food Stall, and a pile of King James plastic bath-book bibles – all are good to go.

I spend the rest of the evening at his behest ‘combat training’ with his band of merry men, which involves chasing around and beating each other over the head with inflated pig bladders on sticks.

You have to wonder why some men end up like this. Similarly on any given Sunday you’ll find 100’s of retired bank managers, unbridled from the exactitudes of office, prancing around in pub car-parks waving hankies and wearing bells on their knees. It’s a DNA thing. Like the puerile joy of a grown man wearing a tea cosy as a comic hat, there’s nothing can be done for it.

And so, at first light, I walked with the Jaco Lads, as they trundled their wooden carts up South Street to the Totnes Market Square. Muskets primed, jaws set resolutely for combat, many still concussive from the mead and bladdering.

But like all things in a small town, word gets around. The Elizabethan vendors were ready to rumble.

Without warning, a soft salvo of cat-print cushions and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage Jigsaw puzzle boxes arced upwards from the Market Square. The Jacobeans raised their muskets and let loose at the incoming ordnance. Plumes of gunpowder smoke, snow-like cushion feathers and swirling jigsaw pieces filled the air – a filmic sight, and perfect for the battle-ballet that was about to kick off.

However, the market manager, a tall, fine-figured, dandy of a man, dressed in knee-sagged stockings, a hi-vis ruff, and a resplendent bejewelled Elizabethan codpiece, strode forward. With aplomb – hands to hips, elbows akimbo, codpiece thrust to the fore – he fearlessly stood before the Jacobeans, and at town-crier volume screamed: “Dost thou have thee correct wherewithal?” – which is confused old speak for “Market Traders’ Public Liability Insurance Cover” – normally set at around five million scrotes per stall.

Crestfallen, the Jacobeans stopped in their tracks. Despite all their campaign planning, no one had bothered to read the small print, and with hearts heavier than their laden carts, they retreated back down the hill, bowed by the vagaries of modern-day bureaucracy.

Epilogue

Days later, Captain Stanwix-Sprottle is brought before Ye Olde High-Backed-Chair Town Council. Charged with Petty Treason, and sentenced to an entire summer’s season sitting in stocks at The Elizabethan Market, where tourists gleefully threw wet sponges at him at a pound a pop, he oddly gets a taste for it, and divested of all things Jacobean, now runs a successful ‘wet-play’ BDSM Dungeon in the Guildhall’s prison cells.