I was Born at Woodbury near Exeter on the 22nd of January 1791 and died on the … My Father Jacob Butter and my Mother Catherine each lived to the age of 77 years and died leaving three children – two sons and one daughter.

A remarkable circumstance attended my birth and the subject of this narrative. I had seven grandfathers and grandmothers all living at my birth and had I been born 3 months earlier I might have had eight. Another remarkable circumstance is that my father and mother were not married until they had passed their thirtieth year of age and that I was not born for 15 months after their marriage. At my Christening another remarkable circumstance occurred: two of my great-grandmothers, both above 90 years of age, rode on a horse with side-saddle pillion two miles forward and two miles backward and the united ages of the three, including the horse, amounted [to] 206 years.

My father practised the Medical Profession at Woodbury and the surrounding parishes above half a century and succeeded his grandfather Langdon in that parish. I and my brother Jacobus both received a classical education at the Exeter Grammar School under the Revd Mr Bartholomew. We both chose the medical profession.

1807

On leaving school at 16 I performed my first surgical operation by a tooth for my own Father whose sufferings prompted him to ride to Exmouth and Budleigh without success for the purpose of getting this Tooth extracted. Necessity obliged him to instruct a Schoolboy in the art of using a German Key+ with which I extracted my Father's Tooth so much to his ease and comfort that it induced him to present me with my first fee. I then undertook the treatment of a poor boy in the village who had long been afflicted with scald head alias Tincea Capita.+ This patient had bid defiance to my Father's skill and had baffled the treatment received at the Devon & Exeter Hospital. He was cured by taking a Plesner's pill every night and a purging powder twice a week, and externally by the application of Tar Ointment to the head every night, covered with a silk cap and washed off every morning with a lather of yellow soap.

General Introduction

The Memoir is essentially John Butter's life story, from his birth in Woodbury, Devon, in 1791, to the middle of 1853, shortly before he went blind. He died in Plymouth in 1877. Why he wrote, and for whom, is not clear, although, in describing a device for removing fishhooks from the throats of careless anglers [1820], he does write that ‘this notice may be useful to others’, and there are several other apparent indicators of an intention to publish. Apart from fishhook removal, he gives many valuable insights into

• • the history of medicine and of medical education, in pursuit of which he spent time in London, on the continent, and in Edinburgh, where he was responsible for the introduction of the stethoscope to Scotland;

• • the history of medicine and of medical education, in pursuit of which he spent time in London, on the continent, and in Edinburgh, where he was responsible for the introduction of the stethoscope to Scotland;

• • the foundation and growth of the Plymouth Royal Eye Infirmary;

• • his experiences with the South Devon Militia, particularly during its acquaintance with the Luddites;

• • his life as a physician and a surgeon;

• • his travelling, both at home and on the continent;

• • his love of hunting and game-shooting;

• • his social life in and beyond Plymouth; and

• • his ventures into the property market.

The Memoir is written in nineteen notebooks, 3¾ x 6¼ inches in size. They are virtually identical, except that volumes one to three have pale orange covers (and, on the front, somebody else's illegible name crossed-through), volume five is blue and the rest green. All except volume five, which is blank, have a calendar for 1854 inside the back cover, and an almanack for the same year inside the front. So far, so good, but the very first entry is an apparently arbitrary and isolated date, ‘12 December 1865’. The situation is further confused by the fact that volumes one and two have the date 1864 inscribed on their front covers as, presumably, the time at which they were written. Volume three is dated 1864/5, volumes five to seven 1866, and all the others are undated. What happened? Did Butter suddenly come across a cache of ten-year-old books? Had he bought them in order to write his life story, and then not got around to it before he went blind? Why does the first of the 1864 books start with a date right at the end of 1865? When were the undated volumes written?

3.1 Buckland Abbey

Buckland Abbey was founded in 1278 by Amicia de Redvers, the widowed countess of Baldwin de Redvers, 6th Earl of Devon and Lord of the Isle of Wight. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that the new abbey was colonised by an abbot and seven monks from Quarr Abbey, which had been founded on the island many years earlier by the first Baldwin Earl of Devon, who is buried there. Buckland was the fifth Cistercian abbey to be built in Devon, after Buckfast (rebuilt as a Cistercian establishment in 1147), Ford, now Forde and no longer in Devon (developed out of a very short-lived priory at Brightley, and completed between 1141 and 1148), Dunkeswell in 1201, and Newenham, near Axminster, in 1246. It was possibly the last Cistercian foundation in England and certainly the most westerly. Amicia endowed the abbey generously, with a large outlying estate in east Devon and some 20,000 acres nearer to home.

The Cistercians became a major influence on the religious and economic life of medieval England, but Buckland was a very late addition, and remained one of the order's more obscure houses. The property occupies an ancient site (an Iron Age earthwork exists to the east of the cloister area) in a sheltered cleave beside a small stream, on the eastern side of the Tavy valley. It lies between the village of Buckland Monachorum and the hamlet of Milton Combe. The Cistercian abbey was built to the traditional monastic plan, the abbey church and three ranges of buildings being grouped around the cloister, with its open central court. Ancillary buildings were further afield; they included a gatehouse, various parts of the home farm, and a huge barn, one of the largest medieval barns still in existence. All the buildings were of shillet, a local slate, quarried on the estate. The dressings were of Roborough granite, another local stone, which weathers to look like limestone.

The nature of the site drainage dictated that the cloister be situated to the north of the abbey rather than the more usual south. The east side of the cloister range included the chapter house and, above it, the monks’ dormitory. A section of medieval wall opposite the church indicates where the north wall of the cloister stood, and this contained the refectory.