Wetheringsett cum Brockford village sign (detail)

Image: © Adrian S Pye Taken: 12 Mar 2015

The sign depicts the church tower and leaning against it are two men famed for very different reasons. Dressed in red is Richard Hakluyt. A Renaissance scholar, diplomat and spy he became friendly with Francis Drake and Humphrey Gilbert and chronicled their voyages. A year after the defeat of the Spanish Armada he wrote “Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation.” The work was superseded by another work which contained one and a half million words and was written while he was the rector at Wetheringsett. He went on to become Archdeacon of Westminster in 1604 and never ventured further than Paris. The second figure is George Ellis who falsified documents and became the rector at Wetheringsett from 1883 to 1888, and despite being unordained, baptised, buried and married couples, and was the cause of an Act of Parliament. In fact the only one of its type in England. Briefly the Act said that any marriage solemnised by a person falsely pretending to be an ordained clergyman of the Church of England, despite the marriage being legally invalid, should be deemed valid by order of the Queen, under The Marriages Validation Act 1888. He served time in prison for his crime and was warmly welcomed when he revisited the village after his release. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4295628

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