On the evening of 4/5 August, as Lord Russell’s troops rested following their capture of Bishop’s Clyst, the Western rebels drew forces from the siege lines around Exeter to strengthen the survivors of the previous day’s fighting and resume battle the following morning. Accordingly, shortly after dawn on 5 August, the loyalist encampment atop Sandy Gate Hill came under fire from rebel artillery, which had been deployed overnight to support insurgents who had dug in amongst the enclosed portions of Clyst Heath alongside the highway towards Exeter. While the rebels’ guns, sighted in the hours of darkness, were unlikely to have been particularly accurate, the barrage would have caused both confusion and casualties amongst the enemy forces. In response, the loyalists formed up into three battles and moved out to engage the insurgents, with accounts suggesting that Russell employed pioneers to cut a path through the intervening enclosures, outflanking his opponents while other elements of his force advanced to pin them in place. Encircled by the loyalists and with no line of retreat from the Heath, the insurgents fought stubbornly, reportedly winning praise from Lord Grey for their ‘valour and stoutness’, but were nonetheless defeated. Whilst the rebels may have had the worst of the engagement, casualties were probably low on both sides and it seems likely that at least some of the rebels were able to escape before the arrival of Russell’s flanking force, and that claims of the entire band being annihilated are inaccurate. 

Locating the battlefield is a difficult task due to a lack of clear descriptions within contemporary sources. The prominence occupied by Russell’s forces is readily identifiable as Sandy Gate Hill, which lies directly over the river from Bishop’s Clyst, and so seems a likely site to pitch camp after the battle. The engagement itself was once thought to have occurred in Clyst Heathfield Plantation, which local tradition indicates was the same spot as an earlier battle fought between Lord William Bonville and Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, in 1455. Although human remains were reportedly recovered from this area in the nineteenth century, the site’s proximity to Sandy Gate Hill makes this a more plausible location for the mass grave of insurgents killed after the battle of Bishop’s Clyst, rather than being directly related to the events of the following day. Instead, it seems more likely that the action on 5 August occurred further west along the highway towards Exeter, possibly on its north side, however there are no further indications to tie the action to the landscape. As a result, there is no specified area occupied by the battlefield, and there are only limited chances of archaeological survival following extensive mineral extraction and development in the Heath area during the second half of the twentieth century.

An assessment of the Prayerbook Rebellion battlefields undertaken by Dr Glenn Foard and Alex Hodgkins on behalf of Devon County Council in 2009 is available from Archaeological Data Services at https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/issue.xhtml?recordId=1208573.

This entry has been provided by Alex Hodgkins.