Oliver at Tiverton

A correspondent told Hone that at Tiverton on 29 May young men dressed in the style of the seventeenth century and armed with swords paraded the streets collecting money. At their head walked a man called Oliver, dressed in black with his face and hands smeared with soot and grease and held back by a strong cord round his body. Others followed with great oak branches, and four men carried a child on a throne of oak boughs. The boys pelted Oliver with dirt, and any he caught had his face blacked, and the day ended with a feast paid for from the collection.