Darla's From Devon?

Dear Juliet

Found this church in Bridgnorth while I was trying to find a customer!

Bits of St. Leonard's date from the 12th century, but most of it got blown up during the English Civil War because Roundhead troops used it as an ammunition store. A cannonball fired by Cavaliers scored a direct hit in 1646 and it wasn't fully restored until Victorian times.

Although St. Leonard's wasn't directly involved, it also looks like purges of Puritans in and around Bridgnorth and elsewhere (mainly East Anglia and the West Country) forced many Dissenters and Nonconformists to flee to New England between ca. 1630-1680.

So for all I know, Darla may have been a Salopian although it's far more likely she was from Suffolk or Devon...

It seems there were only four Shropshire children on board the Mayflower itself, but the reason why they were there derives from an obscure scandalous family feud involving a local squire. This Guardian article explains it in more depth than I can manage at the moment.

Just thought I'd mention it, though.

Love,

James





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Buffy the Infantry Officer...

Image
Buffy the Vampire Slayer : New Sunnydale 's pilot  has been filmed, Sarah Michelle Gellar is working with a crack team to continue ( not reboot) the Buffy saga and Ryan Keira Armstrong is an extremely talented young actress. So what could possibly go wrong? Just about everything, probably. And before anyone else does, I will admit my own bias. Yes, I think they should all do it my way but that's not going to happen. There are about three main reasons which, from my skewed perspective, mean that Buffy II is most likely buggered. The first one's a doozy! As previously explained, an extraordinary and seemingly inexplicable series of events threw myself, Dru and Juliet together, sent me halfway across the world to a mythic meeting on Sunset Boulevard and (it seems) presented me with the lost story arc . The way to continue Buffy , develop many of the existing characters' story arcs in completely unexpected ways and turn the Slayerverse upside down. The odds against all t...
Read more

Back to the Yellow Brick Road?

Image
Two recent occurrences reminded me of time's ripple effect ( in which one tiny alteration to the past can drastically change the future ) and the tantalising possibility of a resurrected  Buffy the Vampire Slayer making an end run around the ripple by following a metaphorical Yellow Brick Road to a glorious and surprising finale.. First, that glorious drunkard, The Critical Drinker, explained how 2025 was turning out to be the year that broke Hollywood . According to The Hollywood Reporter, box office revenues for this October were  the lowest in twenty-seven years . Then  Dave Cullen dissed the return of nostalgia reboots . Old shows who had their day long ago being brought back in a desperate and probably doomed attempt to draw in the madding crowds. Shows like Malcolm in the Middle , Scrubs ... And Buffy . Normally, I'd agree with Dave, revel in the Drinker's sarcastic commentary about the latest disaster caused by Hollywood's current catastrophic cycle of creative ...
Read more

Of All the Gin Joints in All the Towns in All the World... (part one)

Image
I've talked a lot about all those strange coincidences which came together for me as easily as pie and all the disasters which befell Buffy because they didn't do it my way, so it wouldn't surprise me if most of you think I'm full of shit. That no one could be that lucky. That it was all coincidence. That, like Psycho-Pirate in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths (1986), I'm locked up in Arkham Asylum, gibbering about multiple universes ... Or like Buffy herself, in the episode Normal Again ... So for argument's sake I'll tell you another story, never before written down, about one of the greatest Buffy -related coincidences I ever experienced. Post-pandemic, I started travelling abroad again. In this case to Seattle (a destination neither Buffy nor Landau-related) in September 2022. One fine day, I took the ferry across to Bainbridge Island, found the famed Madison Diner and enjoyed a fantastic burger. That was all. I booked another trip to Seattle i...
Read more