The picture which forms the frontispiece to this volume is a faithful one of the mill yet standing on the Conant lands at East Budleigh. This mill was owned and occupied by Richard Conant, father of Roger the Pilgrim. It will be observed that the part of the stone building at the end farthest from the water-wheel is now used as a residence. Whether it was so occupied by Richard Conant the author has been unable to ascertain. There are indications that a residence had been located back from the mill and on rising ground farther from the road. The mill is a long stone structure. In front of the part used as a dwelling is a yard, and at one side farm buildings. Mr. Green, the present Rector of East Budleigh, assured the author that there is no doubt of its being the identical building and mill occupied and used by Richard Conant. The family records (parish register) are in Mr. Green’s care. There are entries of the birth of John Conant in 1520 and of his son Richard, born in Devon in 1548. These are on parchment, the latter yellow, covered with leather, wood-bound and worm-eaten.
Back of the house and mill a small spring creek runs. It has been turned from its bed by the rising ground, so that no artificial dam is needed, and to-day, as in 1560, it runs over the wheel and pours from the flume. In volume it is four inches deep and twenty wide, and is about six feet above the wheel. The latter, of course, has been renewed, being an overshoot about fourteen feet in diameter, but its foundations are now just as Richard Conant originally laid them. The lands owned by Richard Conant probably amounted to about two hundred acres. The glebe land, extending nearly to the mill, which is about five hundred yards from the church, and the Conant lands extending to the farm of Sir Walter Raleigh, we may conclude to be the probable extent of the property.
Roger’s father, Richard, inherited the mill from his father. He graduated at Emanuel College, and was also Rector of East Budleigh. The book of his charities accounts is still extant. On the fly-leaf are the words, “This book was bought in 1600, to mark the amounts of charities,” etc. It is in Richard’s handwriting. Every few pages are signed by him, and the entries are neatly made, not a blot, erasure or scratch upon the well inscribed pages. The amounts vary from one penny to sixpence. All this is evidence of the careful upbringing and piety practised in the home of Roger Conant, the man destined later to exert so beneficent an influence for the well-being of the Massachusetts Colony in America.