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THE

PAROCHIAL HISTORY

OF

J. B. NICHOLS AND SON, 25, PARLIAMENT-STREET.

THE

PAROCHIAL HISTORY

OF

CORNWALL,

FOUNDED ON THE MANUSCRIPT HISTORIES

OF

MR. HALS AND MR. TONKIN;

WITH ADDITIONS AND VARIOUS APPENDICES,

BY

SOMETIME PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY,
F.A.S. F.R.S.E. M.R.I.A. &c. &c.
AND D.C.L. BY DIPLOMA FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED BY J. B. NICHOLS AND SON;

AND SOLD BY

J. LIDDELL, BODMIN; J. LAKE, FALMOUTH; O. MATTHEWS, HELSTON; MESSRS. BRAY AND ROWE, LAUNCESTON; T. VIGURS, PENZANCE; MRS. HEARD, TRURO; W. H. ROBERTS, EXETER; J. B. ROWE, PLYMOUTH; AND ALL OTHER BOOKSELLERS IN CORNWALL AND DEVON.

1838.

Having read in the earliest portion of my life the small part of Mr. Hals’ Parochial History published about the year 1750, I entertained from that time a strong desire for seeing the remainder also in print; this desire grew up with my years, increased perhaps by an understanding that the manuscript had disappeared, no one seemed to know in what way, and that it might possibly have been destroyed.

At last, the manuscript was recovered by the most justly celebrated Mr. Whitaker, from a bookseller at Exeter, who had retained the papers as a pledge for some debt; from Mr. Whitaker they have come to his son-in-law Richard Taunton, Esq. M.D. who has with great liberality placed them in my hands; mutilated, however, as to the histories of several parishes, from want of care and of attention on the part of the individual holding them as a deposit, although he must have deemed them to be of pecuniary value.

Mr. Tonkin’s papers were preserved by his niece Miss Fosse, who died more than fifty years ago, at a place that may now be termed, without offence, the village of Michell. This lady must have been the last of Mr. Tonkin’s near relations; for, although the property left at her decease could ii not have amounted to anything of importance, the funeral was attended by many scores of persons, claiming shares of whatever could be found. Under such circumstances every moveable was soon converted into money, and the manuscript of the Parochial History, complete as Mr. Tonkin left it, got into the possession of Lord Dunstanville, by whom it was instantly offered to me, on my preparing to edit the Parochial History of Mr. Hals. And as Mr. Tonkin copied largely from Mr. Hals, many of the lost parishes are at least partially supplied.

The late Mr. Lysons got possession of a beautifully transcribed copy of the whole that remains of Mr. Hals’ Parochial History; this was purchased at the sale of his books by the Earl of Aylesford, who without any personal acquaintance whatever, has had the liberality to allow me the use of this splendid folio volume, during the whole time of my work passing through the press.

Mr. Gregor has supplied me with an original copy of the last Heraldic Visitation of Cornwall; and to Doctor Boase I am indebted for a geological description of every parish.

Previously to my taking this task on myself, I endeavoured to preserve the works of Mr. Hals and Mr. Tonkin for the public, by the more easy expedient of advancing money in aid of the publication; but not having obtained success, I at last adventured on what is now done, little aware, however, of the pains, and time, required for editing the histories of more than two hundred parishes; iii although I have to a considerable extent relieved myself from the most irksome duty of correcting the press, by obtaining the assistance of Messrs. Nichols and Son, on the condition of their taking, what is very unlikely to accrue, any profit arising from the publication, and my sustaining, the more probable alternative, all the loss.

Mr. Hals’ work is given without alteration, except considerable omissions of long histories, from the Bollandists and other writers of legends, relative to obscure Saints, little known, or deserving of being known; and in many cases owing their supposed connection with Cornwall, entirely to the writer’s imagination; and in the opposite extreme, of the lives of personages most worthy of being preserved and studied in general history, of Apostles, of Emperors of Rome, and Kings, but quite as irrelevant as the former, to a History of Cornwall.

I have been also unable to retain the greater part of the derivations assigned to the names of manors, families, or places; they are generally referred to some word of a similar sound in modern English, after a manner scarcely less ludicrous than the mock etymologies of Dr. Swift.

Lastly, I have omitted various anecdotes, containing simple scandal, without any thing illustrative of the age or country.

Other anecdotes of a public nature are retained; on a conviction that events long passed by, and incapable from their very nature of being suppressed, neither will, nor ought to excite any unpleasing iv feeling in the minds of those who may be directly or collaterally descended from the persons to whom they relate.

I have not throughout the whole work intentionally used a single expression disrespectful to any one, nor have I retained from either of the manuscripts, nor added of my own one new anecdote or tale capable by possibility of giving the least pain.

If an expression should be found, which in the opinion of any individual is at variance with these assertions, I beg permission to apologize before I am accused, and to declare that the fault has been involuntary, and that I am not aware, at this instant, of any such fault existing.

Mr. Tonkin has mainly copied from Mr. Hals, and these portions of course have not been printed over again; but all his additions are preserved, with the greater part of his derivations, apparently much more accurate than those they are intended to confute.

Here it would have been wise, certainly it would have been prudent, for me to have concluded the work; but having acquired, through the course of a long life, the knowledge of many incidents, which, although of little general importance, may amuse persons taking an interest even in trifles connected with their immediate neighbourhoods, I have been induced to add under each parish, such matters as happened to occur to my recollection; using also in many cases the information drawn by Mr. Lysons from sources accessible v only to himself, in consequence of his situation in the Tower.

I have further had recourse to the works treating on monasteries and religious establishments; but without considering myself bound or pledged to make out a complete history in any case, either by researches into documents not in my possession, or, still less, (at my time of life and distant residence) by investigations on the spot.

This part of the work will be found very unequally executed; but it was never intended to be otherwise.

At the end of each parish I have added the common statistics:—the number of acres from the measurement of Mr. Hitchins; the value of the real property; the account of poor rate, and of the population at the four periods of numeration, from the Parliamentary Returns. And through the great kindness and liberality of Doctor Boase, I have been enabled to subjoin to these the geology of each parish, deduced from an actual survey in person of the whole county, by that very intelligent and experienced geologist, chemist, and physiologist.

And here it may be right to observe, that, as the formations are not merely similar, but identical, over many contiguous parishes, and again in parishes disjoined from each other, the plan of referring from one to another became indispensable, to avoid repetition after repetition, and adding, without any utility, to the size of the work.

In the form of Appendices will be found several vi matters relative to Cornwall, either not previously in print, or that cannot be obtained separately from large works, of which they form a part.

Mr. Scawen’s Works, so far as they are contained in the Bodleian Library.

Leland’s Itinerary.

Drayton’s Polyolbion.

The Transcript of a Manuscript from the British Museum; proving, I believe, that even Mr. Whitaker, one without doubt among our most able and learned antiquaries, may be mistaken on a subject connected with the objects of his peculiar research.

There will be also some miscellaneous matters, and among them an Index to Mr. Carew’s History; an addition greatly demanded also by another work, which would then become the most useful Corpus Historicum relating to our county.

There are several other manuscripts of Mr. Tonkin, chiefly copies from Mr. Hals of pedigrees, &c. but these I have not touched. And I have purposely abstained from every general topic relating to the county at large, as these have been amply discussed by our various historians.

The first in order of time, the most interesting and most entertaining, is Mr. Carew.

This work was first published in 1602, a second edition came out in 1723, and a third, chiefly through the exertions of the late Mr. John Price of Penzance, in 1769. But the edition far exceeding all the others, with highly valuable additions, and with copious notes, was given to the public in 1811 by the late Lord Dunstanville, in one vol. 4to, vii 457 pages, with an excellent engraving of the author, from a picture at Anthony.

Mr. Richard Carew was of a very ancient and respectable family; he inherited Anthony from a long line of ancestors, and has transmitted it to his descendants.

Wood says, in the Athenæ Oxonienses, that he was born in the year 1555, became a gentleman commoner of Christ Church at a very early age, but had his chambers in Bradgate Hall (since Pembroke College), and that at fourteen he disputed, extempore, with Sir Philip Sidney, in the presence of several distinguished visitants to the university.

After three years’ residence at Oxford, Mr. Carew removed to the Middle Temple, where he passed three years more, and then went with his uncle on an embassy to Poland.

In the year 1577 Mr. Carew married Juliana Arundell, of Trerice, and served the office of Sheriff in 1586. It is recorded that he was intimate with most of the noted scholars of those times, and especially with Sir Henry Spelman.

He died in November 1620, and is buried in his parish church of Anthony, (see the epitaph, p. xxiv).

Mr. Carew’s life is given in considerable detail as an introduction to his History of Cornwall. He wrote and translated several other works; but they seem not to have survived.

Soon after Mr. Carew’s History, Mr. John Norden’s was composed, with the title of “Speculi Britanniæ Pars. A Topographical and Historical viii Description of Cornwall, by the Perambulation, View, and Delineation of John Norden.”

This work has been well characterized by Mr. Tonkin, as “a mean performance, full of egregious mistakes, with most defective and erroneous maps of every hundred, yet containing several things in it not to be met with elsewhere.”

Our next historian, but after a considerable interval of time, was Mr. William Scawen, a fragment only of whose work is known to be extant, and which will appear in these volumes.

He was of an ancient family, well educated, and possessed of an ample fortune. He represented St. German’s in Parliament, and received the appointment of Vice-Warden of the Stannaries, immediately after the Restoration of King Charles the Second.

Of Mr. Hals and Mr. Tonkin I have not any better information than what is given by Mr. Lysons. He says:

“About the year 1685, Mr. William Hals, a gentleman of an ancient Devonshire family, which had been some time settled at Fentongollan, in St. Michael-Penkevill, began to make collections for a parochial history of Cornwall, which he continued for at least half a century; it was brought down by him to about the year 1736. Mr. Hals died in 1739; his parochial history being at that time nearly completed. About the year 1750, the publication of this work was undertaken by Mr. Andrew Brice, then a printer at Truro, who afterwards removed to Exeter, where he published an useful geographical ix dictionary and other books. The account of seventy-two parishes arranged alphabetically, from Advent to Helston inclusive, was printed in folio in ten numbers, which are extremely scarce. The publication is said to have been suspended for want of purchasers; occasioned by the scurrilous anecdotes it contained, and reflections thrown on some of the principal families. It is probable, however, that the inaccuracies with which it abounds, and the tedious legends of saints to whom the churches are dedicated, which occupy at least half the work, would have operated more to the prejudice of its sale than the scandalous anecdotes which occasionally occur, many of which had been omitted by the editor. The most valuable part of the work is the account of families and the descent of property; but in these he is frequently inaccurate; and, as Dr. Borlase observes, ‘what he says should not have too great stress laid upon it, when it stands upon his single authority.’

“Contemporary with Hals, as a collector of materials for a parochial history of Cornwall, was Thomas Tonkin, Esq. of Trevaunance, some time member for Helston, a gentleman of an ancient family, who had made great progress in preparing such a history for the press, and had completed several parishes. Mr. Tonkin began to write his parochial history in 1702, at which time he had the use of Hals’s collections. Dr. Borlase seems to have supposed that Hals’s collections were brought down from 1702 to 1736 by Tonkin; the truth is, that they both brought down their collections x to that period, without any communication with each other, which seems to have ceased soon after the first period above-mentioned. Mr. Tonkin himself says, speaking of Hals in the year 1739, ‘it is between twenty-five and thirty years since I have seen any of his collections, and, I believe, at least twenty since I have seen him. I am told that he has greatly improved and polished them since that time; but as his method is quite different from mine, and that I have some other reasons not necessary to be mentioned for not corresponding with him, I can safely say, that in this present work of mine, I have not made use of one single line out of his compositions.’ Mr. Tonkin, in one of his MSS. dated March 27th, 1733, desires that, ‘if by death, or any other accident, his MSS. should fall into other hands, they would by no means publish them in the dress in which they then appeared, but be pleased to new-model them after the method followed in those few which had received his last corrections, such as at St. Agnes, St. Piran in the Sands, St. Michael-Penkevil,’ &c. In 1737 he had made sufficient progress in his collections to enable him to put forth proposals, in which he announced the plan of his publication.

“In the year 1739, Mr. Tonkin had completed his MS. of the first part of his work, which was to treat of the county of Cornwall in general; his epistle dedicatory of that date is printed at the beginning of Lord de Dunstanville’s edition of Carew, addressed to Sir William Carew, Bart. and Sir John St. Aubyn, Bart. then representatives in xi Parliament for the county of Cornwall. In this letter he recapitulates what had been done towards the topography of his native county. Besides the works of Leland, Camden, Norden, and Carew, he mentions the general collections of Hals and Anstis, and those of Pearce and Gwavas on the Stannaries, the Cornish language, &c. Towards the conclusion of his epistle, he says, ‘I wish I could say that many more of my countrymen had assisted me with their kind endeavours. I do not yet despair of having several; for which reasons I have, in my proposals, enlarged the designed time of the publication of this part. I hope they will be so good as to send in contributions. If they persist in their refusal, they must be contented with such coarse fare as I am able to give them, which I will endeavour to make as palatable for them as I can; perhaps, when they come to taste of this, they may be prevailed on to supply me with something better towards the two remaining parts. All that I can promise them is, that I will give them the best account I can, without the least partiality; neither shall any one person have a just occasion given him to charge me with any wilful omission or sophisticated truth.”

Very little was done by Mr. Tonkin to the parochial department of his intended history after the date of this letter; he died in 1742, and in the latter part of his life, being unhappily involved in pecuniary difficulties, he grew less attentive to study, and died without printing any part of his intended history.

xii Doctor William Borlase more than meditated a parochial history, having made some collections towards it. If this design had been carried into execution, all further attempts might have been deemed superfluous.

His Antiquities and Natural History of Cornwall gave ample proof of the ability, the ingenuity, and of the diligence possessed by this excellent man, who had the deserved good fortune of being equally esteemed and admired, not by the neighbourhood alone, but by the most learned and scientific persons throughout Europe.

The Antiquities were first published in 1754.

The second edition in 1769.

The Natural History in 1758. All in quarto.

Respecting the Natural History, it may be expedient to remind the reader, that in the last edition of Chambers’s Encyclopædia, four volumes of the largest size, with one volume of plates, printed in 1783, the very word Geology does not occur; and that some years later, chemical lectures were publicly given on the phlogistic theory of Becher and Stahl.

Mr. Polwhele has published in seven parts, beginning with the date 1803, and ending with that of 1816, making in all two quarto volumes, of about 1200 pages, in small type, and abounding with notes and extracts in a type still smaller, an immense collection of matter relative to the antiquities, the biography, the literature, the history military and civil, &c. of Cornwall; arranged under distinct heads, and enriched with prints of distinguished persons, with figures of ancient castles, xiii churches, monuments, &c. and with views of towns, and of romantic scenery. One is astonished at the great labour bestowed on this work, and still more so when it is recollected, that the author has distinguished himself in every branch of elegant literature, and most of all in that department, where the fire of genius is believed somewhat to diminish the aptitude for patient toil.

The next work on Cornwall deserves particular attention on various grounds,—its extensive plan, arrangement, and parochial history, and the situation in life of its author, Mr. C. S. Gilbert, who at the time of his executing “An Historical Survey of the County of Cornwall; to which is added a complete Heraldry of the same, with numerous engravings,” resided as a druggist in Plymouth or Devonport; and he is said to have acquired a knowledge of this trade by accompanying one of those itinerant doctors in medicine, who are in the habit of attracting customers by exhibitions little suited to the gravity of a profound science.

Mr. Gilbert is understood to have collected information which induced him to believe, that he might claim a descent from the Gilberts of Compton Castle; and under that persuasion he applied himself to the study of antiquities, with genealogy, heraldry, and every collateral science, which led him by degrees to undertake the History of Cornwall, and to complete it in two quarto volumes, usually bound in three; all which he executed with such eagerness, zeal, and disregard of expense, as to involve him during the latter part of xiv his life in considerable difficulties. For Compton Castle, and the family from which this gentleman thought himself derived, and which is now represented by the Reverend J. Pomeroy Gilbert, of Bodmin, see Prince’s Worthies of Devon, p. 420, edition of 1810.

About the same time that Mr. C. S. Gilbert’s work appeared, another very similar to it came out sanctioned by the names of Mr. Samuel Drew of St. Austell, well known by his profound metaphysical writings, and of Mr. Malachy Hitchins, son of the celebrated astronomer, who, residing at St. Hilary, three hundred miles from London, conducted the Nautical Almanack from the second year of its appearance 1768, to the conclusion of his life in 1809, during a period of more than forty years.

A well written and perspicuous life of Mr. Drew, has been given to the public by his son Mr. Jacob Halls Drew, in which many interesting particulars are given of this distinguished writer; together with a fair and impartial account of his various works, of which the most known, and perhaps the best, is his Essay on the Human Soul. This treatise, published in 1802, contains every argument that can be found in the Phædon of Plato, with additions; and the whole is not inferior to its prototype. But the observation of an ancient peripatetic philosopher, Alexander of Appodisia, a city of Caria in Lesser Asia, is equally applicable to both:

Αλλ’ εστι πολλα των ὁντων, ἁ την μεν ὑπαρξιν εχει γνωριμωτατην, αγνωστοτατην δε την ουσιαν· ὡσπερ ἡτε Κινησις, και ὁ xv Τοπος, ετι δε μαλλον ὁ Χρονος. Εκαστου γαρ τουτων το μεν ειναι γνωριμον και αναμφιλεκτον· τις δε ποτε εστιν αυτων ἡ ουσια των χαλεπωτατων οραθηναι.

Εστι δε δη τι των τοιουτων και Ἡ Ψυχη· το μεν γαρ ειναι τι την Ψυχην γνωριμωτατον και φανερωτατον· τι δε ποτε εστιν, ου ῥαδιον καταμαθειν.

Our reason convinces us of its own separate existence apart from matter and organization; beyond that, we must submit to learn from higher authority.

Alexander, therefore, does not go beyond the sphere of human knowledge, when he adds of the soul as capable of a separate existence, Μηδε την αρχην Οργανῳ τινι Σωματικῳ προσχρησθαι προς την ληψιν των νοουμενων, αλλ’ αρκεισθαι αυτον αυτῳ προς το γνωναι το νοουμενον.

Mr. Hitchins gave several proofs of genius; but his life was cut short at an early period.

Various descriptions and accounts of local districts, and of particular places in Cornwall may be found; of these I shall mention three as by far the best, and highly deserving of attention.

Topographical and Historical Sketches of the Boroughs of East and West Looe, with an account of the Natural and Artificial Curiosities and Picturesque Scenery in the Neighbourhood. By Thomas Bond, Esq.

Dr. Maton’s Tour; and

A Guide to the Mount’s Bay and the Land’s End. By Dr. Paris.

As this must in all probability be the last time of my addressing the inhabitants of my native county through the medium of any permanent xvi work, I shall so far presume as to offer a few lines respecting myself, nearly in the words used by two among the most distinguished of modern writers.

Since it has pleased Almighty God so to constitute the world, that the human race should every where increase up to the very limit of subsistence, all countries must witness by far the greater portion of their inhabitants exposed to the dangers of privation, of poverty, and of distress, incapable of being mitigated in any way, except by the prudence, the care, and the general good conduct of the parties themselves; but easily and fatally susceptible of being augmented, almost to an unlimited degree, by the establishment of permanent charities, by distributions in the shape of largesses, and above all, by the greatest and most melancholy achievement of human weakness and short-sighted folly, the English system of poor laws, extending premiums to idleness and improvidence, on a basis of indefinite relief to claimants multiplying without end.

“My lot might have been thrown among these; it might have been that of a savage, or a slave: nor can I reflect without gratitude on the bounty of Nature, which has cast my birth in a free and civilized country, in a family decently endowed with the gifts of Fortune, in an age of science and of philosophy, where years outrun in discoveries and in improvements the advances of former centuries.”

It is not for me to determine how far these advantages have been improved by myself; but at the age of threescore years and ten, I may justly say with the other writer alluded to—

xvii “The retrospect of life recalls to my view many opportunities of good neglected, much time squandered upon trifles, and more lost in idleness and vacancy. I leave many great designs unattempted, and many great attempts unfinished; but, my mind being free from the burden of any heavy crime, I compose myself to tranquillity: I endeavour to abstract my thoughts from hopes and cares, which, though reason knows them to be vain, still try to keep their old possession of my heart: I humbly expect the hour which Nature cannot long delay; and with the most profound adoration of the Divinity, I hope to possess in a better state of existence, that happiness which here I could not find, and that virtue which here I have been unable to attain.”

Davies Gilbert, 1837.

I have to acknowledge my obligations to various gentlemen for assistance in the progress of this work, but especially to the following:

To Richard Taunton, Esq. M.D. for his loan of Mr Hals’s Manuscript.

To the late Right Honorable Francis Basset, Baron De Dunstanville, for his supplying me with Mr. Tonkin’s Manuscript.

To Henry S. Boase, Esq. M.D. for his most liberal communication of an abstract for each Parish, taken from an accurate and minute xviii Geological Survey of the whole County, made by himself.

To the Right Honorable Heneage Finch, Earl of Aylesford, for his allowing me the use of a Transcript of Mr. Hals’ Parochial History as it now exists, formerly belonging to the late Mr. Lysons.

To Gordon William Francis Gregor, Esq. for his supplying me with an emblazoned copy of the last Visitation of Cornwall by the Heralds in 1620.

To Sir Henry Ellis, K.H. F.R.S. Sec. S.A. for the communication of his MS. additions to Tanner’s Notitia Monastica for Cornwall.

To the Rev. Josiah Forshall, M.A. F.R.S. late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and now Keeper of the Manuscripts in the British Museum, for his extracts from a very ancient Manuscript relative to the See of Bodmin.

I have to acknowledge, with my best thanks, the assistance of Thomas Hingston, Esq. M.D. afforded by his arrangement of Extracts relating to Cornwall, from the Itinerary of William of Worcester; and by an original communication on the Etymology of Names of Places within the county.[1]

The only existing Manuscript of Mr. Tonkin’s Work having remained for some years in the possession of Mr. Whitaker, he added to it various xix notes and ilustrations, frequently interlined, or blended with the original writing, so as to render the task difficult, in many cases, to distinguish the one from the other. In almost every passage of any length, Mr. Whitaker’s additions are marked with a [W.]

Geology having pressed forward during the present century, at a pace unexampled in other sciences, may reasonably be expected to reach new discoveries in comparatively short intervals of time; these have been reduced, however, almost to instants in respect to Cornwall. After the very able, minute, and laborious investigation made by Doctor Boase, of every district, of every parish in the whole county, the work of discovery would seem to have been completed, at the least for several years; but Mr. de la Beche came soon afterwards into Cornwall, under the sanction of Government, assisted by officers of the Engineers employed on the great Trigonometrical Survey; and this eminent Geologist has, in consequence, been enabled to lay down the various main lodes, the cross courses, the elvans, &c. together with the junctions of granite, greenstone, and killas, with an accuracy and discrimination never before attained, nor ever approximated to, except by Mr. Richard Thomas, in his survey of the mining district, made about twenty years ago.

Mr. De la Beche has also been enabled to deduce several general laws observed in the direction of cleavages, in the dip of strata, in the heaves and slides of lodes, all of which will be detailed in an eagerly expected volume, together with a discovery xx most unexpected. The saxa metallifera of Cornwall had always been supposed referable to a very remote period of geological epochs, far anterior to the age of organic remains; till this opinion became shaken by the discovery of shells, or of their impressions, in the hard schist rocks near Tintagell: others were subsequently found more to the south and west; till at last Mr. De la Beche has detected the remains of organized life adjacent to a productive Copper Lode.

Two other eminent geologists, whom it would be equally idle and presumptuous for me to praise, have established the fact of a formation in the northern parts of Cornwall and Devon, not less unexpected than the discovery just noticed.

Professor Sedgwick and Mr. Murchison having investigated the deep-seated rocks in Wales, and in the adjacent districts, have finally traced the carboniferous series under the Severn, and so far west as the level ridge of land, extending from near Launceston to the sea coast between St. Gennys and Botreaux Castle, along which plane the escarpment manifests itself in a very conspicuous manner.

While these discoveries may be considered as in progress, a Cornish gentleman, but one whose genius does honour to the nation, Mr. Robert Weare Fox, has deduced from galvanic action on metals, on their oxides, on their sulphurets, and on their saline solutions in water, the only theory that has yet accounted for the various phenomena observed in metallic lodes; and extending still further his investigations to the recently discovered connection xxi between electric energies and terrestrial magnetism, Mr. Fox has been enabled to give more than probable reasons for the extraordinary fact of some metals usually selecting, in all parts of the world, lodes or fissures running nearly east and west, and why other metals prefer rents at right angles to the former; and in respect to the fissures themselves, Mr. Fox has remarked appearances inducing him to believe that lodes of considerable breadth have not been formed by any one great and sudden rending of the earth; but that, in a manner similar to the rising or to the sinking of land, by the gradual action of causes now well known to exist, those clefts have been enlarged from time to time, and have as frequently received additional deposits, easily discriminated from each other.

Mr. Fox appears also to have settled beyond the possibility of doubt, the long-agitated question respecting the temperature of mines, by establishing a general relation between increases of heat and depth; although the ratio cannot be reduced to any definite formula, being liable to vary with the presence of more or less water, and with the different conducting power of rocks, since mines in granite and in killas differ by several degrees of heat at the same level: yet the increase corresponds so generally with greater descents into the earth, that elevation of temperature, and not the expense, nor the difficulty of exhausting water, appears likely to oppose the final limit to the progress of mines in depth.

In continuation of the same trains of reasoning xxii and of thought, Mr. Fox has been led to investigate the important elements of variation and dip of the magnetic needle; and in pursuing these inquiries, he has invented an instrument possessed of far greater accuracy than any one previously employed, and which at this moment is in actual use, through the enlightened liberality of our own and other governments, in various and distant portions of the globe.

Mr. Henwood is about to lay before the Public a Work containing the results of more extensive and scientific researches into the nature of Lodes and Fissures, than have perhaps been ever executed by any individual. Mr. Henwood is well known to geologists: I shall therefore only add what I think myself bound in duty to notice, that an original appointment in the Stanneries, and a subsequent promotion, have been bestowed on Mr. Henwood, through the medium of Her Majesty’s Duchy Officers, and principally of Sir George Harrison, in consideration of his scientific attainments, and of his desire to render these attainments available to the development of further inductions.

I have endeavoured to render the work cheap by adopting the octavo form, and by abstaining from all decoration, except a slight sketch of the Pitt Diamond, which by raising that family into an influential situation, has modified the fate of Europe in a degree impossible to have been contemplated xxiii by the Regent Duke of Orleans, when he purchased that bauble at the expense of an hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds; and excepting also the Tomb of Archbishop Tregury, a view of Cotehele house, and the Seal of a Corporation, all of which had been previously cut on wood. I have abstained from further expense with the view of placing my work in the hands of as many persons in Cornwall as I possibly could, thereby diffusing the entertainment likely to arise from Local Anecdotes, from Provincial Occurrences, and from Historical Events, not of sufficient general importance for securing to themselves a place in national records. I have caused an ample Index to be prepared for the whole work; and among the Appendixes will be found an Index to the Survey of our most respected historian Mr. Carew; and I will add as a proof of my own disinterestedness, that I have engaged to leave with the Publishers all the profits, if any should arise, reserving to myself the much more probable alternative of sustaining the loss.

The concluding paragraph proves the least agreeable of my work. I am sorry to say, that the Typographical errors far exceed my expectation. I must entreat of all my readers to excuse them, and to correct the Text from the too extensive Tables of Errata. The want of early habit, dimness of sight, and absence from the Press, must be alleged on my behalf; perhaps the compositor may plead unusual names or terms, and subjects not rendered familiar by his ordinary practice.

Davies Gilbert, 1837.

[1] While this sheet is passing through the press, we have to lament the premature decease of Dr. Hingston, at Falmouth, on the 15th July 1837.

AN INTRODUCTION

TO

THE GEOLOGY OF CORNWALL.

By Dr. BOASE.

The geological notices inserted in this Work, are necessarily so brief and so unconnected, on account of the alphabetical arrangement of the parishes, that it is desirable that a few introductory remarks should be made that this defect may be in some measure obviated.

Cornwall does not possess a great variety of rock formations, being composed of primary and transition or intermediate groups, covered here and there with deposits of gravel, sand, and clay, which belong to the modern epoch. But this limited range of formations is more than compensated for by the great facilities which the geologist here enjoys in his investigations; the very extended line of cliffs which deeply indent the Cornish shores proffer numerous and instructive sections; and the vast mining operations have brought to light most important phenomena. Indeed, no country of equal extent can, in these combined advantages, be compared with Cornwall.

On a general view of this country, the surface exhibits two systems of valleys; one running parallel xxvi with the central ridge, which is highest near Launceston, and gradually, but irregularly, declines till it terminates at the Land’s End, in cliffs about a hundred feet in height; the other intersecting the longitudinal valleys at right angles; and as all the intermediate hills are more or less rounded, the country has an undulating appearance in both directions, not unaptly compared to the waves of the sea. Through these two systems of valleys, the rivers flow, seeking outlets into the sea by the nearest continuous descent; sometimes they effect this along the longitudinal, at others through the transverse valleys, receiving tributary streams on either hand from the lateral valleys, or curved hollows which they intersect. But sometimes the river is diverted in its course more than once, in consequence of the concavity of a cross curve rising above its level—or by that of the other system descending below this point—by which irregularity the stream is compelled to flow along the more favourable drainage; thus the Camel rises about four miles from the sea, in the moors near Davidstow, and flows more than twenty-five before it empties itself into the sea at Padstow. In the hollows of these valleys the drainage is often sufficiently obstructed to produce marshy ground; but seldom of such extent as to deserve the name of a lake.

As regards the soil, on the high grounds it is frequently very shallow and barren; but in the valleys it is very productive, and here and there is well wooded, more particularly on the southern coast. On the northern coast, in the vicinity of the sea, xxvii it is very sandy, owing to the light testaceous sand of the shore being carried inland by high winds; in this manner no inconsiderable tracts of fertile land have been devastated.

Let us now turn our attention to the internal or geological structure of Cornwall. The highest parts of the central ridge, already alluded to, are composed of granite, which occurs in the form of four large insulated patches, so disposed at nearly equal distances from each other as to resemble a chain of islands extending from Launceston to the Land’s End, that is in the direction of N.E. and S.W. On the same ridge, but rather parallel than continuous thereto, is the great granitic group of Dartmoor in Devon, the whole of which is sometimes called the Ocrynian Range.

The granitic patch of Dartmoor is by far the most extensive, being nearly twenty miles in diameter; that of Launceston is ten miles in length by six or seven in breadth at its widest part; and its most elevated hills, Rough-tor and Brown-Willy, do not much exceed 1,300 feet in height. The granitic rocks of this patch, like that of Dartmoor, are not much exposed by artificial excavations, so that their varieties cannot be easily examined; the weathered blocks, which on the summit and sides of the hills form tors and detached masses, consist of the hard or siliceous varieties of the common and fine-grained granites, such as have withstood the action of the elements. One of the most curious of these tors is the Cheese Wring, near Liskeard, a pile of single blocks, each being larger than the one immediately beneath. Proceeding xxviii along the ridge towards the Land’s End, the next, or St. Austel patch of granite will be found, much less than the last, but more interesting both in a scientific and a commercial point of view. In addition to the kinds of granite already noticed, it contains beds of talcose granite, or protogine, which by its decomposition furnishes that valuable substance china clay or kaolin, many thousand tons of which are annually exported for the potteries. The third, or Redruth patch of granite, affords many varieties of this rock, and has been well explored by numerous mines which have been productive in both tin and copper ores, affording also to the mineralogist a great variety of rare specimens. But the fourth, or Land’s End granite, is by far the most important to the geologist, for the land becoming here very narrow, the sea has produced cliff-sections, both in the granite, and also at its point of junction with the slate, exhibiting many interesting phenomena. Among these, the veins of granite in the slate are beautifully displayed, and have long been a great attraction to geologists; but the modes in which these rocks meet and unite, are not less deserving of notice. But for a detailed description of these curious facts, the reader may be referred to my “Treatise on Primary Geology.”

Besides these four principal patches of granite, there are four others: 1st. that of Kitt Hill, near Callington; 2nd. that of Tregonning and Godolphin, near Helston; 3d. that of Cligga Point, near St. Agnes; and lastly, that of the celebrated St. Michael’s Mount. The two first are of some size, xxix and at the surface are both subdivided near the middle, by the overlapping of the slate: the other two are small, but very interesting to the geologist.

It is worthy of remark that the fertility of these granitic groups gradually increases as they diminish in elevation; and it is a curious but not surprising coincidence, that the number of parish churches thereon follows the same order:—thus on the eastern and most extensive tract of granite, near Launceston, there is only one church; on the next there are three; on the Redruth patch six; and on the Land’s End granite no less than nine, within a space considerably less than that of the eastern tract.

Each of these insulated groups of granite is surrounded by schistose rocks, the layers of which, on all sides, incline from the granite at various angles, from 20° to 40°. Although these groups are thus separated from each other by the slate at the surface, yet it is the general opinion that they gradually approach beneath, until they are all united into one and the same mass—the intermediate hollow spaces (the valleys, as it were, between the granitic mountains) being occupied by the slate. It might, however, be maintained that the granite is imbedded in the slate, in large rounded masses, which would also account for the former rock underlying the other, within the limits of mining operations: and such an opinion would derive some support from the fact, that small insulated masses of granite in the slate are not of unfrequent occurrence.

xxx The slate formation consists of two very distinct groups, when the most characteristic rocks are alone regarded; but it is not easy to trace the boundary between them, as the contiguous rocks appear to pass gradually into each other. These groups have one character in common: viz. that they consist of several distinct kinds of rocks, each genus of which respectively may be subdivided into schistose and compact rocks; the latter are imbedded in the former—are more crystalline—and often contain clusters of their constituent minerals: so that the complicated composition of these rocks is made known by Nature’s own analysis.

The group next the granite is primary, the more remote one is transition, or as they are termed in the following pages the porphyritic and calcareous series of the slate formation. The series next the granite is characterised by its beds of porphyry, and by its abounding in veins of tin and copper ores; the other series by the frequent occurrence of calcareous spar and strata of limestone, with occasional organic remains, and by its being sparingly metalliferous, containing no tin-ore, but being productive of lead and antimony. It is within the last series that the magnesian or serpentine rocks occur, and which in the Lizard district are developed to a large extent, forming one of the most interesting geological features of Cornwall. Those who are desirous of more information concerning this slate formation, will find a copious account in the fourth volume of the Transactions of the Geological Society of Cornwall. xxxi It is there proposed to give these rocks, whenever they possess well-marked characters, distinct names, and not to refer a great variety of rocks to the vague and indefinite genera of clay-slate and greywacké. An accurate and more extended nomenclature would have rendered the following notices much more intelligible.

In describing the general features of Cornwall, we must not omit to mention the metalliferous veins—the great source of its commercial prosperity—and the channel through which much curious information has been obtained, concerning the structure of the earth. These veins traverse indifferently both the granite and the slate, but are most abundant in the latter rock, in the vicinity of the granite. The general direction of the tin and copper veins (or lodes, as they are provincially called) is nearly E.N.E. and W.S.W., and they are crossed by another system of veins, nearly at right angles, which are not commonly metalliferous, and when they do contain ores these are often of lead, antimony, silver, and other metals. This is not however a general rule, for in the parish of St. Just, Penwith, the tin and copper ores occur in the cross veins. The course of the veins is not straight, but they are always more or less undulating, both in their direction and in their dip or underlie. Various interesting phenomena result from their meeting with and intersecting each other, known to the miner under the names of heaves, throws, and slides. This subject is replete with curious facts, but would require considerable space for their enumeration; the reader must xxxii therefore be again referred to the work already alluded to on “Primary Geology.”

Before concluding this brief sketch, a few words must be said on the beds of clay, sand, and gravel which cover the low grounds, both on the granite and on the slate. These may be resolved into two kinds: 1st. those resulting from the decomposition of the rocks, and which are in their original position; and 2d. those which are not in situ, affording by their appearance, composition, and position, evidence of their having been transported. These deposits belong to three distinct periods, and alternate with terrestrial and marine remains, according to their situation in respect to the sea-level at their respective epochs. Each of these transports was accompanied, or followed by, a change in the sea-level: the last corresponds with that now existing; the previous one, by the elevated ancient beaches, indicates that the sea was about fifty feet above its present level; and the earliest transport, being covered with sub-marine forests, shows that the sea was at that epoch at least fifty feet lower than it now is. (See 4th vol. Geol. Trans. of Cornwall, pp. 466, et seq.) In the lowest or oldest deposit the tin-ore (stream-tin) is found in the form of sand and gravel mixed with earthy substances: it affords the purest kind of tin, known in the market by the name of grain-tin; and appears to be the source from which the ancients derived all their tin. The notices under each parish will furnish more particulars concerning these interesting deposits.

VOLUME I.

VOLUME II.

VOLUME III.

VOLUME IV.

HISTORY

OF THE

PARISHES OF CORNWALL.

HALS.

Advent is situate in the hundred of Les-newith, i. e. new breadth, extent, or division.[2] It hath upon the north Lantegles; east, Altar Nun and St. Cloather; south, Brewer; west, Michaelstow. In the Domesday (Roll or) Tax, 2d of Will. I. 1068, this district was rated either under the names of Tegleston or Helleston, manors contiguous therewith.

For the modern appellations of this parish, they were taken from the church after its erection and consecration (which goes in presentation and consolidation with Lanteglos), and is called Advent, from Advent Sunday, (on which probably it was consecrated and dedicated to God, in the name of St. Anne, by the Bishop of Exon,) viz. the nearest to the feast of St. Andrew, and refers to the coming of Christ,—Advent pro adveniant, coming.

This church is consolidated in Lanteglos, and goes in presentation with it; the patronage in the Duke of Cornwall, who endowed it.[3]

This parish of Advent alias St. Anne was rated at the 4s. per pound land tax,[4] ann. Dom. 1696; at which time the author of this work, with other commissioners at Bodmin, settled the respective charges or sums upon all the parishes or towns in Cornwall for all future ages.

TONKIN.

The right name of this parish is St. Alhawyn, by abbreviation Advent.

The place of chief note in this parish is Trethym. In the time of the Usurpation, Sir Henry Rolle, of Honiton, retired here, as being a pleasant seat (especially in summer) for hunting; and soon after it was the seat, by lease from him, of Matthew Vivian, Gent. a younger brother of John Vivian, Esq. of Truan, and as noted a cavalier as his brother was a partisan on the other side. Mr. Matthew Vivian had several daughters, one of whom being the first wife of —— Beale, of St. Teath, brought him this barton, which he gave to her eldest son, Matthew Beale, Gent. whose widow now enjoys it (1715): of whom see more in St. Teath. [From them it passed to the Gwatkins, by which family it was held until the year 1814, when it was sold by Robert Lovell Gwatkin, Esq. to Mr. Allen Searell. Hitchins.]

WHITAKER.

Ridiculing the etymology of Advent suggested by Hals, Mr. Whitaker says, “The appellation is merely personal, and that of the church’s saint,” Adwen. This was one of a numerous family of saints, whose history, as they have left their names to several parishes and churches in Cornwall, it may be desirable to detail in this place, as it is quoted by Leland from the Life of St. Nectan, who was the eldest brother. “Brechan, a petty king of Wales, from whom the district of Brocchanoc (Brecknock) derived its name, had by his wife Gladwise twenty-four sons and daughters, whose names were: Nectan, John (or Ivan), Endelient, Menfre, Dilic; Tedda, Maben, Wencu, Wensent; Merewenna, Wenna, Juliana, Yse; Morwenna, Wymp, Wenheder, Cleder, Keri; Jona, Kananc (or Lalant), Kerhender, Adwen, Helie, Tamalanc. All these sons and daughters were 3 afterwards saints, martyrs, or confessors, leading the life of hermits in Devon and Cornwall.” The same story is related by Giraldus Cambrensis and William of Worcester. Whitaker’s Cathedral, vol. II. p. 91, 98.

LYSONS.

Advent contains the small villages of Treclogoe or Trelogoe, Pencarow, and Tresinny. Most of the estates in this parish are parcel of the duchy of Cornwall, being held as free and customary lands of the manor of Helston in Trigg. The manor of Trelagoe, Treclegoe, or Trenelgoe, after having been for some descents in the family of Phillipps, was bequeathed by the late Rev. William Phillipps, Rector of Lanteglos and Advent, to his nephew John Phillipps Carpenter, of Tavistock, Esq. whose son is the present proprietor.

THE EDITOR.

Advent contains 2,844 statute acres.

or 43½ per cent. increase in thirty years.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

The eastern part of this parish consists of granite, forming a portion of an extensive group of this rock, in which are situated Roughtor and Brown Willy, the highest hills in Cornwall. This granite is of the ordinary kind, large grained, and often porphyritic. It contains beds of fine-grained rocks, in some of which crystalline felspar, quartz, and mica, constitute the entire mass; but in others these minerals are embedded in a basis of compact, or rather of granular felspar, which is itself apparently a compound of felspar and quartz. 4 The junction of the granite with slate is concealed by a large track of marsh and bog; adjoining to which is a dreary waste of common, resting on an irregular bed of quartzose gravel, derived from the granite hills, and evidently of diluvial origin. This eastern part is sterile, merely affording a scanty subsistence to cattle during the summer. The remainder of the parish is composed of felspar and hornblend rocks, traversed here and there by courses of granitic elvan, a rock in every respect similar to that occurring in the granite. One of these courses may be seen by the road side near the rivulet of Pencarrow. Here the country is wooded and cultivated, exhibiting some picturesque scenes of hill and dale; so characteristic of the hornblend rock near granite.

[2] See Mr. Whitaker’s remark on this etymology, hereafter under the parish of Lesnewth.

[3] Jewell contra Harding, p. 582.

[4] In the Exchequer 61l. 17s.

HALS.

St. Agnes is situate in the hundred of Pyder.

At the time of the Conqueror’s tax there was no such parish or district as Saint Agnes; but the same passed in rates under the jurisdiction of the Earl of Cornwall’s manor, now Duchy, of Twarnhayle; together with Peransand: which now parish of St. Agnes was taxed to the four shillings in the pound land-tax, 9th William and Mary, 1696, 137l. 5s.

The present church of St. Agnes was of old only a small free chapel dedicated to her, without endowment, till the same was augmented and rebuilt, of three roofs, as it now stands, by charitable collections, and the proper charge and cost of the inhabitants thereof, in 1484; consecrated and dedicated to the honour of Almighty 5 God, in the name of St. Agnes, as a daughter church to Peransand, by Dr. Peter Courtenay, then Bishop of Exon.[5]

St. Agnes was a Roman by birth, anno Dom. 285, descended of noble ancestors, and being beautiful of body and mind, at 13 years of age was courted in marriage by the son of Sempronius, then governor of Rome; but because he was no Christian she utterly refused his address, who complained thereof to his father; that immediately he sent for Agnes, and renewed the proposals of marriage made to her by his son, making larger offers for her advantage, which altogether proving ineffectual, Sempronius asked her whether she would adore and sacrifice to the Roman gods, and abandon the superstition of the Christians, but she, proving constant to her religion, utterly refused to do that also; whereupon she was committed to prison, from thence, after much hard durance, sent among persons of ill fame, where her innocence and purity were miraculously preserved, till at length, by the Governor’s order, she was committed to the flames, which immediately parted asunder, and did her no harm; whereupon the Governor, and Auspitius his agent, commanded her to be taken out of the fire, and forthwith to be beheaded by the common hangman, 20 January, anno Dom. 304, in the latter end of the reign of Dioclesian, or in the beginning of Constantius and Galerius. St. Ambrose wrote her life. St. Isidore, St. Augustine, Demetrius, and Prudentius, with Aloysy Lessomanus, Bishop of Seville, have all written very commendable things of her. In the glass windows of this church I remember to have seen written the remains of a broken inscription,—“in carcere serat Agnes,”—referring, I suppose, to her sowing or preaching the Word 6 in the prison, jail, or hold, to which she was confined as aforesaid. The parish feast is holden on the Sunday following St. Agnes’ Day.

In this parish stands Carne Bury-anacht, or Bury-anack, synonymous words, only varied by the dialect; id est, the still, quiet, spar-stone grave, or burying-place, where, suitable to the name, on the natural, remote, lofty circumstances thereof, stand three sparstone tumuli, consisting of a vast number of those stones, great and small, piled up together, in memory of some one notable human creature before the 6th centuary interred there.

This is that well-known place called St. Agnes’ Ball, that is to say, St. Agnes’ pestis, or plague, so named from the hard, deep, and dangerous labour of the tinners there, out of which mountain hath been digged up, for at least 150 years’ space, about ten thousand pounds worth of tin per annum; which keeps daily employed about the same 1,000 persons, who for the most part spend their time in hard and dangerous labours as aforesaid, in order to get a poor livelihood for themselves and families, in the pursuit of which, here and in other places, many of those poor men yearly by sad accidents lose their lives.

The natural circumstances of this Ball is a subject as worthy the consideration of the most sage virtuosos, or natural philosophers; for, though it be a stupendous and amazing high mountain, abutting upon the Irish sea, or St. George’s Channel, rising pyramidally from the same at least 90 fathom above the sea and contiguous lands, yet on the top thereof, under those spar-stone graves, or burying-places, is discovered by the tinners, five foot deep, good arable land or earth; under that, for six foot deep, is found a fine sort of white and yellow clay, of which tobacco-pipes have been made; beneath this clay is a laying of sea-sand and nice totty-stones. Two or three hundred fathoms from the sea, 7 and about eighty fathoms above it, under this sand, is to be seen for about five foot deep, nothing but such totty-stones as are usually washed on the sea-shore, and in many of them grains of tin. Under those stones the soil or matter of the earth, for five or six feet deep, is nothing to be seen but carne-tyer, id est, spar-stone land or earth, under which spar-stone earth appears the firm rock, through which tin-loads are wrought or pursued by the tinners fifty, sixty, and seventy fathoms deep. This Ball, or lands containing this diversified matter or soil, contains about eighty acres in circumference; which amuseth most men how the earth, clay, sand, totty-stones, or spar-stone land, should yet be so high above the solid rocks to the top of this mountain, unless Noah’s flood was universal, and reached to this island, as the labouring tinners believe and tell us. More sure I am, from ocular demonstration, that a quantity of the white sort of sand in this Ball, or hill, washed in a stream or river of clear water, will instantly turn the same water into a milk-white colour, and not to be discerned from milk, as long as you continue to pour the said sand into the river; but this is to be understood only of such clean white sand as is made use of and prepared for writing sand-boxes.

The manor of Mithi-an, i. e. of whey, a notable grange for cows and milk (otherwise, if the name be compounded of my-thyan, Saxon, my servant or villain by inheritance) was formerly the lands of Winslade of Tregarick, in Flint, an hereditary esquire of the white spur, who forfeited the same, with much other lands, by attainder of treason, tempore Edward VI.; so that that King or Queen Mary gave those lands to Sir Reginald Mohun, of Hall, knight, or his father, who settled them upon his younger son, by which conveyance it lineally descended to my very kind friend William Mohun, of Tenervike, Esq. now in possession thereof. 8 In this manor is an ancient free chapel, now converted to a dwelling-house, wherein God was duly worshipped in former ages by the tenants thereof. [William Mohun, Esq. the last heir male of this family, bequeathed this estate to his wife Sibella, (who was afterwards married to John Derbyshire Birkhead, Esq.) and his sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Prowse. Sir Christopher Hawkins, Bart., who is the present proprietor of the whole, bought it in 1777; one moiety of Mr. Birkhead, and the other of Matthew Grylls, brother and heir of Robert Grylls, who had purchased it in 1758 of the devisees of Mrs. Prowse. Lysons.]

Treu-ellis, i. e. the son-in-law by the wife’s town; otherwise, if the word be compounded of Tre-vell-es, it signifies the well or spring of water town; is the dwelling of Michael Crocker, Gent. that married Gwynn, and giveth for his arms, Argent, a chevron engrailed Gules between three crows Proper, originally descended from the Crockers of Ireland. Croker, after the English Saxon, is a crock-maker or seller. [It belonged afterwards to Mr. Joseph Donnithorne,[6] and is now the property of Mr. Chilcot. The mansion is occupied as a farm-house. Lysons.]

Tre-vaw-nanes, i. e. the town of the boys’ valley, alias Tre-vawn-nanes, i. e. the town of the fanning or vawning valley; where continually great numbers of boys, or human youths, are employed about washing, cleansing, or vanning tin in the rivulets thereof, is the dwelling of Thomas Tonkin, Esq. that married Kempe, his father Vincent, his grandfather Bawden, his great-grandfather Guye; and giveth for 9 his arms, by virtue of a late record taken forth of the College of Arms tempore William III. in a field Sable, an eagle displayed Or. The name Tonkin, alias Tankin, synonymous words, signifies a person or thing in the tank or tonk, viz. an artificial cistern, pool, pond, or fountain of water.

TONKIN.

This being the first parish in the hundred of Pider, I take the opportunity of stating my opinion, that the name clearly imports the fourth,—Perwith, Kesrier, Powder, and Pider, all of which meet in one point, where the four parishes of Redruth, Gwennap, Kenwyn, and St. Agnes, actually touch; and the spot is called Kyvere Ankou, the place of death, on account of the frequent burial there of felones de se, or persons who have destroyed themselves.

Trevannence I believe to mean the town in a valley of springs. This barton has belonged to my family upwards of five hundred years, so that we have used the name de Trevannence, by customary inheritance of the manor of Tywarnhails. But in 1559 Henry Earl of Rutland, then Lord of the Manor, sold the fee of his right in Trevannence to Richard Carne the younger, of Camborne, Gent. who reconveyed it the same year to John Jeffry; and he conveyed it, in 1593, to Thomas Tonkin.

[This estate was the property and the seat of Thomas Tonkin, of Trevaunance, Esq. who made large collections for a parochial History of Cornwall. Mr. Tonkin enjoyed his estate but a few years; he died in 1742. His two sons, who did not long survive him, successively inherited his estates, which, after their death, were for a while in the possession of Thomas Heyes, Esq. who married the daughter and heir of his son 10 James, but left no issue; the only child of his daughter, who married Foss, having died unmarried, they descended to the representatives of the three daughters of Thomas Tonkin, who died in 1672; which daughters had married into the families of Jago, Cornish, and Ley. Mr. John Jago, and Mr. Hugh Ley, the immediate descendants of two of the daughters, are now possessed of two thirds of the manor of Trevaunance, and of such portion of the manor of Lambourn as extends into this parish, and was part of the Tonkin estate (except some lands sold to J. Thomas, Esq. of Chiverton). The other third part has been subdivided. Mr. Thomas has one half of it by purchase, the other is divided between Mr. Geach, a descendant of the family of Cornish, and Mr. Paul Clerk.[7] Trevaunance House was taken down a few years after the death of Mr. Tonkin; there is now a cottage on its site. Lysons.]

The above-named Richard Carne gave for his arms (as appears by his seal) a pelican in her nest, with wings displayed, feeding her young ones, which coat is still to be seen in Trevannence seats, and in the roof of St. Agnes’ church. He was descended from the Carnes of Glamorganshire, in Wales, who derive their pedigree from Ithal, King of Gwent, whose direct ancestor was Belimaur, the father of Cassibelan; which Carne settled in Cornwall, as we have it by tradition, upon his ancestor’s marriage with the heiress of Tresilian, of Tresilian in the parish of Newlyn.

Westward of Breanis riseth with a gentle ascent the great hill commonly called St. Agnes’ Beacon; formerly Carne Breanic. On the top are three stone barrows; to the westward of the one now used for a beacon, are visible remains of a small square fortification.

This parish is of a large extent, but for the most part barren, with abundance of wortzel and downs; but 11 withal very populous, and not without some parcels of very good land, particularly from Trevannence to Perwennack, Tewan, Trevisick, Mewla, Meuthion; and neither are the barren grounds the least considerable, as producing large quantities of excellent tin, according to the Cornish saying,

As likewise in some places very good copper, with some quarries which produce excellent stone for building; and some of slate for roofing, but not of the best quality. The land lies very heathy and dry, but too much exposed to the raging north-west wind for trees to thrive on it.

From the top of the first hill a part of Devonshire may be seen; also the North and South Seas; with thirty-four parishes. The Bowden or Boen Marks, called in sea charts the Cow and Calf, lie about two miles from the shore.

LYSONS.

An attempt was made by the Tonkin family to form a harbour at Trevaunance-Porth as early as the year 1632; it was attempted again in 1684, and, after a considerable expence had been incurred, again given up. In 1699, a third attempt was made with the assistance of Mr. Winstanly, the celebrated engineer; the works then constructed were destroyed by a violent storm in 1705. Mr. Tonkin, from whose notes this account was taken, again commenced his works in 1710, at the expense of £6,000; he formed the foundation with large masses of rock laid in hot lime made of lyas stone from Aberddaw, in South Wales. These works having become decayed, a jetty pier of moorstone was built about the year 1794, at the expense of £10,000, by a company of gentlemen, and a considerable trade in coals, lime, slate, &c. is now carried on with Ireland and Wales. The proprietors are enlarging the harbour, and rendering it 12 more commodious and safe for shipping. A small stream of water which rises in the manor of Tywarnhaile, turns several stamping mills in Trevaunance Comb.

The market, for which there does not appear to be any charter on record, has been held from time immemorial for all sorts of wares and provisions, except corn. In 1706, Mr. Tonkin procured the Queen’s patent for a weekly market and two fairs; but after the writ of ad quod damnum had been duly executed, and the Queen’s sign manual obtained, the grant was revoked in consequence of a petition from the inhabitants of Truro. A small market is nevertheless kept up; the market day is Thursday.

In a dingle called Chapel-comb, was an ancient chapel known by the name of Porth Chapel, the ruins of which were taken down about the year 1780. Near this spot is St. Agnes’ well, of which many miraculous stories are told; the water is of an excellent quality, and much esteemed. Hals speaks of an ancient free chapel in the manor of Mythian, which had been made a dwelling house. There are remains of an ancient chapel at Mola. Nicholas Kent, of Mingoose, by his will bearing date 1688, gave for the term of 499 years a dwelling house, divided into four tenements and a garden, for poor widows of this parish, and charged his lands of Mingoose and Tereardrene with the repairs of the house; but it does not appear that it was endowed. One of the schools, founded by the trustees of the fund left for charitable uses by the Rev. St. John Elliot, who died in 1760, is at St. Agnes; the endowment is £5 per annum. There is a Sunday school at St. Agnes, supported by subscription, and numerously attended.

THE EDITOR.

For various particulars respecting the Tonkin family see the edition of Carew by Lord Dunstanville, vol. I. 1811, 4to. p. 353-357, with monumental inscriptions 13 in St. Agnes church. The arms of Tonkin are noticed in a copy of the last Heraldic Survey, communicated to the Editor by Mr. Gregor of Trewanthenick, although a pedigree is alone recorded in the original. Sable, an eagle displayed Or, armed and langued Gules, a crescent for difference. Crest, an eagle’s head erased Or. See the exemplification of them by Robert Cooke, Clarenceux Roy d’Armes, temp. Reg. Eliza.

The reason of the arms being then omitted was this: Mr. Tonkin of Trevannence, the chief representative of their family, was more than eighty years of age in 1620, a bed-lier, and had been blind for many years, so that he was not able to appear himself; and, the chief business of the Heralds at their Visitations being to put money into their own pockets, they never registered any arms without their fees. The ancient motto used by this family is said to have been:

St. Agnes contains 6,657 statute acres.

Increase on an hundred in thirty years 59.63, or nearly 60 per cent.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

This parish is one of the great mining districts of Cornwall, abounding in tin and copper ores, but more particularly in the former. It differs, however, from all the other districts, in being remote from the great central masses of granite. This peculiarity has often attracted the notice of several observers, and has long been considered as a strange anomaly by geologists.

14 The case is not, however, without example; for, although this tract is distant from the granite both of Redruth and of St. Dennis, yet a small mass of that rock does not exist at Cligga Point, on the confines of the parish. This granite has, indeed, been called by some an elvan, and by others a secondary formation of granite, as has been also that of St. Michael’s Mount; but, although the rock is not in this place of any great extent, it has all the mineralogical and geological characters of the larger masses.

Large courses of granite elvan are common in the northern part of the parish, containing short irregular veins and bunches of tin ore. These courses are extensively exposed in the cliffs, and present a singular appearance, somewhat resembling a bank of earth perforated by rabbits’ burrows, in consequence of the miners having taken the ore wherever it has been exposed to view.

The Beacon, a high hill near the church town of St. Agnes, merits particular attention. The lower part is formed of a schistose rock, composed of granular felspar intermixed with particles of quartz and minute scales of mica. Ascending towards the summit, the quartz gradually increases in quantity, till at last it becomes the prevailing ingredient of the rock, and preserves it against the natural causes of decay; whilst lower down, where the felspar abounds, the rock is extensively disintegrated. On the side of the hill, about three or four hundred feet above the level of the sea, is a deep deposit of diluvium, consisting of alternate layers of clay and sand. To point out the origin of these layers, and to explain the reason of their occurrence in such an elevated situation, would require long details. For this, and for other interesting particulars respecting the phenomena of this parish, the fourth Volume of Transactions, published by the Geological Society of Cornwall, may be consulted.

15 St. Agnes’ Beacon was chosen as one of the principal western stations in the great Trigonometrical Survey of England. The position of the summit was then determined with extreme accuracy: Latitude 50° 18′ 27″, Longitude 5° 11′ 55″.7. In time 20 m. 47″.7. Height above low water 621 feet. See the Philosophical Transactions for 1800, pp. 636 and 714.

[5] It appears, however, by Mr. Tonkin’s notes, that St. Agnes was deemed a distinct parish, and had a parochial chapel in it, so early as the year 1396. A licence to build a new chapel was dated Oct. 1, 1482. Lysons.

[6] This gentleman was the lessee of the great mine before described. Borlase says, “It is judged that the late Mr. Donnithorne, who had the whole adventure, and worked it at his own expense, in a few years last past got at least 40,000l. clear by this mine, and much more he might have raised yearly if he pleased.”

[7] For the latter name Hitchins substitutes Thomas Warren, Esq. and Mr. John Tregellas, of St. Agnes.

HALS.

St. Allen is situate in the hundred of Pow-dre-ham, id est, the hundred of the old ancient county or province town (viz. Lestwithell), for so it is called in the first Duke of Cornwall’s charter 1336—now contracted and corrupted to Powder Cantred.

At the time of the Norman Conquest this district of St. Allen was taxed under the jurisdiction of Laner or Lanher, i. e. templer; so called, for that long before that time was extant upon that place a chapel or temple dedicated to God in the name of St. Martin of Tours, the memory of which is still preserved in the names of St. Martin’s fields and woods, heretofore perhaps the indowments of that chapel or temple; this Laner is still the voke lands or capital messuage of the Bishop of Exeter’s manor of Cargoll, whereunto it was annexed; in which place of Lanher (formerly a wood or forest of trees) the Bishops of Cornwall, and afterwards the Bishops of Exon, had one of their mansion or dwelling-houses for many ages,[8] till Bishop Voysey, tempore Henry VIII. leased those manors to Clement 16 Throckmorton, Esq. cup-bearer to Queen Katherine Parr, from whom it passed by sale to Williams, and so from Williams to Borlase, by whom this mansion or barton of Laner was left to run to utter ruin and dilapidation, having now nothing extant of houses but old walls, stones, and rubbish. Out of this manor of Lanher the Bishop of Exon endowed the church of St. Allen with the glebe lands thereof now in being, and the sheaf of two tenements, viz. Laner and Tretheris,[9] so that the said church is a vicarage endowed, and was valued by Oliver Sutton, Bishop of Lincoln, and John de Pontefexia, Bishop of Winchester, to the Pope’s taxation of benefices, in order to take his first-fruits, 20 Edward I. 1294, Ecclesiam de Sancto Alune, in Decanatu de Powdre;—vi s. & viii d. The patronage of this church is still in the Bishop of Exon for the time being, the incumbent Richards. The rectory or sheaf formerly in Cook, now Boscawen [Viscount Falmouth]; and the parish as aforesaid rated to 4s. per pound Land Tax, in 1696, 157l. 14s. 10d.

Gwarn-ike, i. e. lake, river, or leate, summons, notice, or warning, so called from Gwarnike Castle, a treble intrenchment or fortification lately extant on the woody lands thereof, is the voke lands of the manor and barton of Gwarnike, the old inheritance and dwellinge of the once rich and famous family of the Bevills for many generations; whose ancestor came out of Normandy into England with William the Conqueror, and was posted an officer at Truro under William Earl of Morton and Cornwall (or Robert his father). Of his posterity, tempore Edward III. Sir Richard Bevill held by the tenure of knight service 20l. per ann. in lands and rents, and therefore was commanded by that king to attend him, with a horse-trooper furnished cap-a-pee, 17 on his expedition into France, in the 25th year of his reign. (Carew’s Survey of Cornwall.) John Bevill of this place was sheriff of Cornwall 5 Richard II. Finally, the name, blood, and estate of those Bevills terminated in two daughters and heirs of John Bevill, Esq. sheriff of Cornwall 16 Eliz. 1573, married to Grenville of Stowe, and Arundell of Trerice, to whose younger son by Bevill’s heir this barton and manor of Gwarnike was given, but the said Mr. Arundell, commonly called the Black Arundell by reason of his complexion, dying without issue, gave those lands to his kinsman Mr. Prideaux, of Fewburrow in Devon, whose heir sold the same to Mr. Kempe, of Penryn, now in possession thereof. Over the entry door of this house, in a stone or piece of brass, is cut the arms of Bevill, viz. Ermine a bull passant Sable, surmounted with an oak-tree Proper or Vert; near which is this inscription likewise in stone in Saxon-English letters:

Man, aboue all thinge
Feare god and the kinge.

[In 1704 it was sold by the Prideaux family to Jamss Kempe, of Penryn, and in 1731 purchased by Edward Prideaux, Esq. of Place House, Padstow, ancestor to the Rev. Charles Prideaux Brune, of the same place, who is the present proprietor. There were formerly two chapels at Gwarnike; one at a small distance from the house, which was demolished before the year 1736, and another attached to it, which, together with “the old hall, curiously timbered with Irish oak,” was then remaining. These old buildings were not long ago pulled down, and a farm-house built on the site with the materials. Talgrogan, in this manor, was some time the seat of a younger branch of the Prideaux family. Lysons.]

For the name of this parish (Allen), Alfred the Saxon grammarian and Verstegan tell us that it is plain Saxon, and is the common contraction of Alwyn, all-beloved, 18 or beloved of all, and for St. Allen church must be construed as the holy or consecrated church, beloved of all Christians, which perhaps was the old name of that little ancient chapel, now the minister’s chancel, to which in after ages the present church of St. Allen was annexed; however, let it be remembered also, that in Armoric-Cornish, St. Alan or Allen is holy breath or respiration, or gift of speech.

Treon-ike, Saxon-Cornish, trees on the lake, or spring leate, or bosom of waters, in this parish, is the dwelling of James Borlase, Gent. who married Hobbs, and his father Cooke’s heir, by whom he had this place; and giveth for his arms in a field Ermine, on a bend Sable two hands issuing out of two clouds, or nebules, tearing of a horseshoe in sunder Argent (see St. Wenn). Otherwise, Tre-on-ike is the town or tenement situate on the lake or river of water.

[Mr. Hals here relates a story of some child being missed by his parents and afterwards found; imputing the temporary loss to supernatural agency, perhaps of fairies, usually denominated in Cornwall “The Small People, or Piskies.”]

From the inferior officers of this church, the sexton and clerk, or sub-deacon tempore James I. have sprung two notable rich and eminent families in those parts, of justice of the peace and senators or parliamentary degree; viz. Tregeagle and Vincent; viz. Vincent from the clerk of Resheafe, and Tregeagle from the sexton of Bosvallack, of whom more in their proper places; the one burgess or member of Parliament for Truro, the other for Mitchell, whose sons by ill conduct have wasted and sold all their lands, tempore George II.

In this parish, at Tretheris, is yet extant the walls and ruins of an ancient free chapel and cemetery, wherein heretofore God was duly worshipped, built perhaps by the Bishops of Cornwall and Exon, when they resided at Lanher aforesaid contiguous therewith.

TONKIN.

Partly in this parish is the great lordship of Gwairnick, id est, the Hay River; a name not unsuitable to the circumstances of the place, for a pleasant river passeth through most fertile meadows beneath the house.

This place was the seat of the Bevill family, whose ancestor came into England with the Norman Duke, and was an officer under William Earl of Morton and Cornwall. One of his posterity married a Gwairnick heiress, and so it became the seat of the Bevills for about ten descents; and then, for want of issue male, this lordship, with other fair lands, descended to the two daughters of the last gentleman of that name, who were married to Grenville of Stow and to Arundell of Trerice.

The manor of Boswellick, which I take to signify the house by the mill-river, upon the division of Bevill’s estates between Grenville and Arundell, this fell to Grenville, who sold it to Sir Richard Roberts, of Truro. This gentleman, afterwards Lord Roberts, was in possession of the estate towards the latter part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, for his son John Roberts, first Earl of Radnor, was nursed here by Mrs. Tregeagle, the daughter of Degory Polwhele, Esq. and wife of John Tregeagle, Gent. who held a lease of this estate from Sir Richard Roberts. And this was the rise of the Tregeagles; for John Tregeagle, their son, being foster-brother to the said Earl, was afterwards by him made his chief steward, and brought forwards in the world. [The heiress of Tregeagle brought the lease to the Cleathers, who continued to possess it for several generations. The manor is now the property of John Thomas, esq. Vice-Warden of the Stannaries, by purchase from the representatives of the Robartes family. Lysons.]

Adjoining to this barton is Nancarrow; and this being the first occasion for noticing the adjunct word 20 “carrow,” I shall be somewhat the more prolix in discussing of it. Karo, or Caro, signifying in Cornish a hart or deer, Nancarrow has generally been considered to be the deer’s valley, and Pencarrow the head of the deer; but how improperly let any one guess who sees these places. I rather take Carrow therefore to be softening of Karrog, a brook or rivulet, so as to signify, in this instance, the valley of brooks; and in Pencarrow, the head of the brooks. Nancarrow was formerly inhabited by a family of that name, one of whom was stannitor for Blackmore in the Convocation of 13th Elizabeth. It passed by sale to the Borlases of Treludra, and from them to the Scawns. [It now belongs to Mr. Oliver Adams Carveth. Lysons.]

Adjoining to the barton of Gwerick, which means simply “on the river,” is a tenement called the Gerras, that is, “the summit or top,” from its high situation; which I notice in this place on account of its lead mines.

Trerice in this parish belonged to a younger branch of the Arundells of Trerice in Newlyn; from whom it is said to have been wrested not very fairly, by an attorney, Mr. John Coke. The estate now belongs to Lord Falmouth.

Near to Trerice is Trefronick, contracted, as I believe, from Tre-vor-in-ick,—“the dwelling in the way to the rivulet.” This also belonged to the Arundells; passed to John Coke, from him to Borlase, and from Borlase to Kempe.

Adjoining is Talcarne—“the high heap of rocks of stones.” Tal properly signifies the forehead, and hence any high or eminent thing; whereas Tol, often confounded with it, means a hole.

LYSONS.

The principal villages in this parish are Lane and Zela or Zealla, through which the high road from 21 Exeter to the Land’s-End passed, before the present turnpike road was made. The antient mile-stones remain, and a house at Zelah is still called the Tavern.

THE EDITOR.

Nothing satisfactory appears to be ascertained respecting the name of this parish; nor does the anniversary of the Feast afford any clue, as it is celebrated on Rogation Sunday, that is on the Sunday before Easter.

St. Allen contains 3493 statute acres.

Increase of population on a hundred, in thirty years 76.9, or 77 per cent.

Present Rector, Rev. Nicholas Dyer, instituted in 1794.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

To the geologist this parish does not afford many interesting objects. It is, however, more favourable than the last to agriculture; although it contains several tracts of barren ground of the same nature as Prince’s Common, which will be described in another place. Its rocks are not distinctly characterised, being situated on the transition between the porphyritic and the calcareous groups of slate formation.

[8] William of Worcester describes the Bishop’s castle here as dilapidated temp. Edw. IV.

[9] The church of St. Allen was given to the college of Glaveney by Bishop Stapleton, and appropriated to the vicars of that college in 1314. Rot. Pat. 8 Edw. II. p. 2. m. 15.

HALS.

Altar Nun is situate in the hundred of Lesnewth, and hath upon the north Davidstow and St. Cleather, south part of Northill and Lawanack, east Trewenn, west Temple, 22 and was taxed in Domesday Roll either under the name Trewint, Treuint, the spring, fountain, or well town, situate upon the fens or springs, otherwise under the jurisdiction of Trewen. In the inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester aforesaid, 1294, this church was rated to the Pope’s first-fruits, Ecclesia de Altar Nun, in Decanatu de Lesnewith viiil.. the vicar xls.. In Wolsey’s inquisition 1521, temp. Hen. VIII. 18l. 14s. 10d.; the patronage in the Dean and Chapter of Exon, who endowed it; the incumbent Hatton. This parish was rated to the 4s. per pound Land-tax 1696, 204l. 16s.

For the modern name of this church, Mr. Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, is of opinion it is derived from the Altar of St. Nun’s Pool in this parish, heretofore much frequented for the cure of mad people, the manner of which cure is set down by him, liber ii. p. 123, (p. 289 of Lord Dunstanville’s edition,) but, for my own part, I conceive the word Altar in this place is not to be construed as a derivative from altare, an altar, whereon offerings or sacrifice was made to God by fire or otherwise at this pool; but rather, as I am better informed, the chancel of the present church was a chapel pertaining to the nuns or nunnery once here, afterwards augmented and converted to a vicarage church as it now stands; and that the ground whereon the vicarage house is now extant. Contiguous therewith was of old the nunnery-house itself, wherein those virgins resided; the stones and materials of which old house are concerted in the new vicarage brave mansion, and, to prove this tradition, there yet appears in the fields the channel or water-course wherein the waters of St. Nun’s Pool was carried into this old nunnery-house in former ages.

So that I conclude the name Altar Nun must be interpreted as a corruption of or derivative from Alter-Nun, to alter or change from one thing to another, from that of a nunnery of religious votaresses, to that 23 of a parochial and vicarage church, from whence the same hath its present denomination, as aforesaid.

In this parish stands the barton of Tre-lawn-y, id est, the oak grove town, or, “I am the oak grove town,” a name at first given and taken from the natural circumstances of the place, situate between two hills, then notable for woods or groves of oak timber. Though now there is not left standing any house or trees to countenance this etymology, yet I have been told by some of the inhabitants of this parish, that tradition saith the greatest part of the stones that built the present church and tower of Altar Nun, were brought from the dilapidated walls of Trelawny, and much of the oak timber that roofs the same was also cut and carried from that barton.

From this place was denominated that old and famous family of gentlemen surnamed Trelawney, now baronets, as I was informed by my very kind friend Coll. John Trelawney, of Trelawney, deceased, and that one Sir William de Trelawney, lord of this place, suffered it to go in marriage with his base daughter to ——, from whose heirs, by descent or purchase, it came to Cloberry Hickes, and —— now in possession thereof, and is now set for about 70l. per ann. The arms of those Trelawneys were, in a field Argent, a chevron Sable between three oak-leaves Vert, probably in allusion to the leaves of that sort of timber whereof this lawne consisted.

In this parish, tempore Charles II. lived Peter Jowle or Joull, id est, Peter the Divell, under clerk or deacon of this church, who was 150 and odd years old when he died, and at the age of 100 years had new black hairs that sprung forth on his head amongst those that long before were white with age; and then also new teeth grew up in his jaws in the places of those that many years before were fallen out of his head. [The name of Joll is still extant in the village; and the family have 24 been remarkable for longevity; but we cannot learn that any tradition exists relating to Peter Joll, nor does his name appear in the register. Lysons.] Fuller tells us, that John Sands, of Horborne in Staffordshire, lived 140 years old, and his wife 120, he died 1625. Thomas Parr lived 153 years old, and is buried in Westminster Abbey, tempore Charles II. It is reported of Zamkees, the Samothracian, that after he had lived 104 years, new young teeth sprung up in his jaws in the room of those that were fallen out long before. Henry Brenton, of St. Wenn, weaver, lived 103 years old, and died tempore George I.

This parish hath in it tin loads and streams.

TONKIN.

It is obvious to any one, that the name of this parish can signify no other than an Altar or church dedicated to St. Nunne; which St. Nunne, being in some accounts called Naunita or Nannites, and in others Novita, is (as Leland tells us) said to have been the daughter of an Earl of Cornwall, and mother of St. David, the famous Archbishop of Menevia, from him called St. David’s.

THE EDITOR.

St. Nun is stated to have been the mother of St. David. About a mile from the cathedral of St. David’s are the remains of a chapel, near a consecrated pool or well, dedicated to St. Nun, where trifling oblations are said to be still made. This coincidence of the two pools is curious, although I do not find that the water at Menevia has the virtue of curing insanity. The account given by Mr. Carew of the practice at Altar Nun is as follows:

“The water running from St. Nun’s well fell into a square and inclosed walled plot, which might be filled at what depth they listed. Upon this wall was the frantic person set to stand, his back towards the pool; 25 and from thence, with a sudden blow in the breast, tumbled headlong into the pond; where a strong fellow, provided for the nonce, took him, and tossed him up and down, alongst and athwart the water, till the patient, by foregoing his strength, had somewhat forgot his fury. Then was he conveyed to the church and certain masses sung over him; upon which handling, if his right wits returned, St. Nun had the thanks; but if there appeared small amendment, he was bowssened again and again, while there remained in him any hope of life or recovery.”

The second of March is dedicated to St. Nun, and said formerly to be observed throughout Wales, as was the third to St. Lily, surnamed Gwas-Dewy, David’s men.

This parish is the largest in Cornwall. It measures 12,770 statute acres. The principal villages are Tredawl, Trethym, Treween, and Trewint. At Five-Lanes, in this parish, are fairs for all sorts of cattle, on the Monday week after June 24th, and the first Tuesday in November. The tower of Alternon church, which is said to be the highest in the county except Probus, was much damaged by storms in 1791 and 1810.

Increase of population on each hundred in thirty years, 57.44, or 57½ per cent.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

The western and south-western parts of this extensive parish are composed of granite and of hornblend rocks, which surround the former, and recline upon them. This portion is in every respect similar to the parish of Advent. At Trewint a very fine compact felspar occurs, imbedded in green stone; and proceeding eastward on the 26 Launceston road, hornblend slate prevails, and affords a very fertile soil. Descending the hill to Pellaphant, masses of compact rock protrude from beneath the soil. They are composed of compact felspar, aggregated with lamellar hornblend, forming a kind of sienite. But the most interesting object in this parish is to be found a little to the north of this last place, on the side of the hill sloping down to the river Inny. It is a magnesian rock, and it is quarried for building-stones, yielding large blocks, which are sufficiently soft at the time of their being raised, to allow of their being cut through by a common handsaw. A considerable quantity of this stone has been used in building a very large house, denominated a cottage by the Duke of Bedford, at Ensleigh, on the eastern bank of the Tamma. The stone appears, however, to have one bad quality: the surface, after a slight disintegration from exposure to the atmosphere, becomes covered over with ocherous spots, owing to the presence of a scaly mineral resembling diallage, which is disseminated through the rock. This magnesian rock has all the characters of pitstones, the lapis ollaris of the ancients; and it is a curious circumstance, that on opening some old workings near this place, several antique vessels were found resembling pipkins and shallow pans made out of this material.

The immediate connection of this bed of ollareous serpentine with the adjacent rocks, is not disclosed; but it is succeeded by talc ore, slate, and limestone, on the other side of the river.

HALS.

St. Anthony in Powder is situate in the hundred of Powder; and hath upon the east Gerance and St. Just; north, Carike road, or part of Falmouth harbour; upon the south and west the British Channel. 27 In Domesday Roll there is no such parish or district charged as St. Anthony, neither therein had any church in Cornwall the appellation of Saint given to it, except St. Wene or St. Wena. But this district was then taxed under the jurisdiction of Treligan or Tregeare, and obtained not the name of St. Anthony till the year of our Lord 1124, at which time William Warlewast, Bishop of Exon, founded here a church, and dedicated it to St. Anthony, having before dissolved the dean and four prebendaries in the collegiate church founded at Plympton in Devon by the Saxon kings, and in the room thereof erected a priory of Black Canons (and dedicated the same to the Virgin Mary): who also in this church of St. Anthony erected a priory or cell of two Black Canons, canons regular or Augustines, under the same tutelar guardian as its superior, so called from St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in Africa, who died in the 4th century, and was institutor of their rule; viz. 1. to live in common as the Apostles did, on the stock revenues or endowment of their church. 2. That all such as received baptism should for several days wear a white garment in token of their new birth. 3. That all priests should wear a black cassock over their white garment, as himself did; such afterwards became the habit of his order, whether collegiate or hermits. 5. Over their sculls he appointed a hood or scapular of the same black cloth as their cloaks, and the hair of their heads to be worn at full length, whereas the monks were always shaved. 6. He gave a liturgy or rule to be observed by those of his order in time of divine service (whereas before every one in a monastery served God, prayed, and fasted, as they best liked). 7. To live single persons, without marriage. This Priory was called St. Mary de Vall or de Valle, to distinguish it from St. Mary de Plym in Devon, so named from the rivers on which they are situate. This priory, together with its superior’s revenues, when it was dissolved, was valued at 912l. 28 12s. 8d. per ann. 26 Henry VIII. See Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum.

Ecclesia de Sancto Antoni, in Rosland, 20 Edward I. was valued to the Pope’s first fruits xls. though its value be not mentioned in Valor Beneficiorum, or Wolsey’s Inquisition 1521. The patronage formerly in the Prior of Plympton, afterwards in Hals of Fentongolan, now Boscawen, its revenues being wholly impropriated. The parish rated to the 4s. per pound land tax 1696, 45l. 4s.

St. Anthony’s name is derived from ανθος (anthos) flos, a flower; and for his person, he was a native of Egypt, about the yeare of our Lord 253: a most strict and severe Christian, that lived a retired and hermetical and begging life in the deserts thereof.

Plase, Place, id est, in Cornish a palace, was heretofore the mansion and dwelling of the prior and his two black canons, erected here as aforesaid. This house and barton is now in possession of Arthur George Sprye, Esq. that married Bullock; his father Martyn; his grandfather Heale, his great-grandfather, of Blisland, attorney-at-law, married ——. He gives for his arms, in a field Azure, two bars and in chief a chevron Or. The name Spry, Sprey, Spray, is Cornish, and signifies a sprout, branch, sprig, twig, split, or slip of any matter or thing. The name Spye I take it is local, from some place called Spye in Devon.

This promontory of land, commonly called St. Anthony point, which on the east side boundeth Falmouth harbour from the British Ocean, not only from the name of the priory here St. Mary de Vall aforesaid, but from the natural circumstances of the place, I take to be the Valuba or Valubia of Ptolemy, which consisteth of a compound of two British words Val and Ubia, which signifies the Vale point or promontory, or the point or promontory of land that bounds or terminates the river Val as aforesaid. Note also, that in British Cornish, B, V, and F, are letters indifferently used one 29 for the other; so that Falubia and Valubia are synonymous words. Otherwise, Val-eba is the ebbing or reflux of the river Val.

TONKIN.

In this parish lies the manor of Bohurtha, or Boswartha. The higher house or dwelling under Boswartha, is situated on a small creek of a sea, a small place called Porth: this belongs to the family of Spry. The land immediately beyond it, being covered with sand, is known by the name of Tower, which is common to all like places along the coast.

THE EDITOR.

Mr. Hals states St. Anthony, the hermit of Egypt, to be the patron Saint of this parish, and of the other two known by the same name. This St. Anthony is the reputed founder of the ascetic Anchorites, from whose assemblies in after times, monks, and subsequently friars, or begging monks, derive their origin. He is said to have lived from the year 251 to the year 356; to have been the friend of St. Athanasius, and to have held some correspondence with Emperor Constantine. But as the two western points form part of the sea coast, and the third is situated on a navigable river, it seems to be most probable that they are all dedicated to the more popular Saint in modern times, St. Anthony of Padua, the universal patron of fishermen.

This St. Anthony was a native of Lusitania, having been born at Lisbon in 1195, and christened Ferdinand, which name he laid aside for that of Anthony, in honour of the Egyptian hermit, on his entering into the order of St. Francis. His long residence at Padua is said to have procured for him the cognomen of that place, but the addition of Padua is much more likely to have derived its origin from the locality of his legendary miracle. Actuated by the spirit of fanaticism common in those times, St. Anthony endeavoured to conceal and to render useless all the learning and all the powers of eloquence 30 which he had previously acquired as a canon regular of St. Austin at Lisbon, and during a residence of eight years with the same order at Coimbra. Having become a friar, he employed himself as a menial in the kitchen, or in sweeping the cells, till an accident discovered to the superiors the value and importance of their newly acquired brother. The intelligence was conveyed to St. Francis, the renowned founder of the Friars Minors, from whom a letter to our Saint is preserved:

“To my most dear brother Anthony, Friar Francis wisheth health in Jesus Christ. It seemeth good to me, that you should read sacred Theology to the friars; yet so that you do not prejudice yourself by too great earnestness in studies; and be careful that you do not extinguish in yourself or in them the spirit of holy prayer.”

All the accounts remaining of St. Anthony agree in representing him to posterity as an example of learning, of piety, and of zeal. These qualities, possessed however in common with thousands of others, would have failed to make his name known to after times, if a legend had not established his fame as a Saint, and elevated him to the high station of protector and patron of fishermen all over the Christian world.

The legend may be best conveyed in the poetry of Dr. Darwin:

The parish feasts do not serve in these parishes to indicate the patron saint.

Anthony in Kerrier has its feast on the Sunday nearest St. Stephen’s day, December 26th.

Anthony in Powder on the Sunday nearest to the 10th of August.

Anthony in East has not any feast.

The day consecrated to St. Anthony of Egypt is January the 17th; to St. Anthony of Padua June the 13th.

The measurement of this parish is 571 statute acres.

Decrease on a hundred in thirty years 8.83, or somewhat less than nine per cent.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

St. Anthony is situated in the calcareous group of the slate formation, and is composed of a glossy blue and fine grained slate, which alternates with a coarse blue rock abounding in scales of mica, and is more or less lamellar according to its proportion of this mineral: this compact rock readily disintegrates, assuming various yellowish tints, and an arenaceous appearance; indeed, it is seldom seen but in that condition, and it has therefore been sometimes mistaken by geologists for a variety of sand-stone.

At Porth there is a narrow neck of land, on the upper part of which lies a sandbank abounding in perfect shells, which are arranged in layers, and appear similar to those of the adjacent beach. This bank is at least thirty 32 feet above high water-mark, and it is covered with a stratum of earth in cultivation. The sand is silicious, and becomes in the lower part intermixed with pebbles, resembling in this respect the banks on the shores of Mount’s Bay. This affords an example of an ancient beach elevated above the one now in existence. The whole coast of Cornwall furnishes numerous instances of this occurrence, and the former beach is uniformly at the same elevation above that actually in existence, indicating that the sea must, at some former period, have joined the land at a line now higher than the present beach by that difference.

HALS.

St. Anthony hath upon the north St. German’s Creek; south, St. John’s; east, Tamesworth Haven, or Saltash River, with part of Sheviock. This parish is situate in the hundred of Eastwell-shire, so called from Mark’s-Well, in Landrake, that is to say, the Earl’s well, viz. the Earl of Cornwall’s well, perhaps by some of those princes founded, and accordingly from them denominated, who were originally lord of all the Cornish cantreds. At the time of the Conqueror’s tax, as I said before, there was no such district charged therein as Anthony; so that this parish or tract of land then was rated either under the names of Abbi-town, now St. German’s or Cudan-Beke. In the Pope’s inquisition into the value of benefices in Cornwall, 20 Edward I. 1294, Ecclesia de Antoni, in decanatu de Eastwellshire, was rated to first fruits vil. In Wolsey’s inquisition, 1521, and Valor Beneficiorum, 12l. 17s. 6d. the patronage in ——; the incumbent Taylor. The rectory, or sheaf, in possession of ——. This 33 parish was rated to the 4s. per pound land tax, 1696, 244l. 4s.

East Anthony, in this parish, is the dwelling of the ancient and famous family of gentlemen, the Carews, now Baronets; which lands descended to them by marriage from one of the daughters of Sir Edward Courtney, Knt. of Boconock, whose mother was Philippa, the sole daughter and heir (or one of the coheirs) of Sir Warren Archdeacon, Knt. of this place, a person and family of great fame and estate in former ages; for thus it is recorded that Thomas Archdeacon, of this place, was Sheriff of Cornwall 7th Edward II. Walter L’erch-Deacon was also Sheriff of Cornwall 6th Rich. II. 1383. Which family gave for their arms, in a field Argent, three chevronels Sable, which was lately extant in the glass windows of Leskeard church.

From Sir Nicholas Baron Carew’s fourth son, Alexander, by the aforesaid Jone Courteney (he is called Baron St. Carew, for that he was summoned by writ, and by that name to sit in Parliament 3d Edward IV. as a Baron), the gentlemen ever since, and him now in possession of this lordship, are lineally descended. The said Alexander Carew, Esq. was Sheriff of Cornwall 3d Henry VII. His son, John Carew, Esq. was Sheriff of Cornwall 6th Henry VIII. His grandson, Richard Carew, Esq. author of the Survey of Cornwall, was Sheriff thereof the 24th of Elizabeth; whose son, Richard Carew, Esq. was, by letters patents bearing date the 9th of August, 17th Charles I. 1641, created the 278th Baronet of England; whose son or brother, Sir Alexander Carew, was executed for pretended treason against the Parliament of England, about endeavouring to deliver up to Kinge Charles the Island of Plymouth, whereof he was Governor, 23d Dec. 1644. His son, Sir John Carew, Baronet, was one of the Shire Knights of this County 1660, who died about the year 1686, and left issue by ——, daughter of Sir William 34 Morrice, Knt. Sir Richard Carew, Bart. and William his brother.

Mr. John Carew, son or brother of Sir Alexander last mentioned, was executed as one of the Regicides of King Charles I. 1661. Mr. Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, p. 65, (p. 180 of Lord Dunstanville’s edition,) tells us that his first ancestor came out of France with William the Conqueror, by the name of Karrow. In the same book, p. 103, (p. 246 of Lord Dunstanville,) he said that Carew, of ancient Carru, was, and Carrue is, a plough in French; but then it should have been written Carue, or Charoue; and to countenance this opinion of this family’s French descent, Camden, in his Remains, p. 143, tells us that the same holds by tradition, I know not how truly, that Adam, or rather Arnold de Montgomery, marrying the daughter of Carew of Molesford, her son, relinquishing his own name, left to his posterity his mother’s name, Carew, from whome the Carews of Surrey, Devon, and Cornwall, are descended. Contrary to this opinion, Prince, in his Worthies of Devon, p. 148, saith that Walter de Windsor, about the time of the Norman Conquest, a Norman Frenchman, (as some say Governor, Castellan, Constable, or Steward of Windsor Castle, son of that Otho, that came in with William the Conqueror,) had issue William and Gerald his sons, who styled themselves after the mode of that age, William and Gerald of Windsor from the places of their residence, or for that they were born there; from William, the Lord Windsor is descended, and from Gerald, the Fitz-Geralds Earls of Kildare, and the Carews of England. Gerald of Windsor was Steward or Castellan of the Castle of Pembrook, of Carew, in Wales, upon whom King Henry I. bestowed Molesford, in Berkshire; he married Nesta, daughter of Rosse, Prince of South Wales, to whom the said King gave the Castle of Carew in those parts; Gerald had issue by Nesta, Otho de Windsor, 35 who had issue William de Windsor or Carew, to whom King John, by deed dated 1212, made a further grant of Molesford, reciting the former deed of King Henry I. to his grandfather. So that this William was the first of this family that assumed the name of Carew. Thus Prince again, the author of the Antiquities of Oxford, is positive that this family of Carew was denominated from Castle Carew, in Pembrokeshire, and not otherwise. Thus God in his providence, to check our presumptious inquisitions and pretensions, hath wrapped all things in uncertainty, bars us from long antiquity, and bounds our search within the compass of some few ages, scarcely affording any true record of pedigrees or descents as far back as the Norman Conquest, whatsoever to the contrary is by some men and families pretended.

Lastly, as this family was denominated from one of their ancestors being Constable or Castellan of the Castle of Carew, in Pembrokeshire, for carew doth not signify a plough in British, for ardar, aradr, arar, is a plough in Welsh, Cornish, and Armoric, and kaer, caer, is a castle or fortified place. Carew, caer-ew, care-eff, is he, his, or her, Castle, as ipie, ipea, ipeum. See Ffloyd. Caer-eau, British Saxon, is a castle or fortified place of water, referring perhaps to the medical or purgative waters there.

As Mr. Carew saith his family was denominated from one Carrow or Karrow that came into England with William the Conqueror, so I must tell you that there was in Cornwall and Devon, not long since, a genteel family surnamed Carrow (id est, deer) who gave for their armes, as appears from Nich. Upton’s Latin manuscript book of Heraldry, before printing was invented, now in my custody, dated 1444, in those words, “Monsieur Joh’is de Carrow, port d’or iii lyons passant sable,” which is now the arms of those gentlemen before-mentioned, named Carew. Care-w, after the English Cornish, is he, his, or her care, watchfulness, or circumspection.

36 In this parish or manor, as I take it, stands Intsworth, alias Inis-worth, synonymous words signifying an island of worth, price, or value, viz. a peninsular formed by rivers of water, which leaves between them an angled or three-cornered promontory of land, called in British inis, signifying the same as amnicus mediamnis in Latin. See Gluvias. This place, before the Norman Conquest, was the land of Condura and Cradock, Earls of Cornwall, by one of whose daughters or granddaughters, Agnes, it came by marriage to Reginald Fitz-Harry, base son of King Henry I. by Anne Corbet; who, in her right, long after William Earl of Cornwall, of the Norman race, forfeited the same to the King by attainder of treason, was made Earl thereof, from whose heirs it passed to the Dunstanvills and Valletorts; and by Valletort’s daughter Joan, the widow of Sir Alexander Oakston, Knt. who turned concubine to Richard Earl of Cornwall, King of the Romans, who had by her a sole daughter named Joan, married to Richard Champernowne, a second —— Champernowne, of Clift Champernowne, in Devon, in whose posterity it remained till Henry VII.’s days, when, his issue male failing, his three daughters and heirs were married to Monk, Fortescue, and Trevillian, from some of whose heirs it came by purchase to Edward Nosworthy, Esquire, Member of Parliament for Saltash, son of Edward Nosworthy, merchant and shopkeeper in Truro, temp. Charles II. who married Hill of that place, as his son aforesaid did Maynard and Jennings. The arms of Nosworthy are (see St. Stephen’s by Saltash). The name Nos-worthy signifies a “night of worth,” price or value so called, for that the first propagater thereof was born by night, or was notable for some profitable fact done at that season. And John Nosworthy was steward of Exon 1521.

TONKIN.

East Anthony. Mr. Carew hath given a full account how this manor came to his family (p. 244 of Lord Dunstanville’s edition); I shall therefore only take notice here that the present Lord of East Anthony, so called in respect of its situation from the church, is Sir William Carew, a gentleman that in every respect comes up to the merits of the greatest of his ancestors. He married the Lady Anne Coventry, only daughter and heir of Gilbert Earl of Coventry, by whom he hath one son, Coventry Carew, Esq. He had also a daughter, Anne, who died in the bloom of her age. Sir William Carew hath lately built a stately house here of Penteran stone; and hath adorned it with gardens, &c. suitable to it. From the bowling-green above the house is a beautiful prospect of the river, and of all the country round.

Thanks, in this parish; perhaps from Angosa conspectus, sight through Angosa, the sight or view as lying open to the river. This was formerly the seat of a family, Searle, who gave for their arms, Argent, a chevron Sable, between three birds Azure, with breasts, bills, and legs Gules. Thanks now belongs to Thomas Graves, Esq. who hath been for several years a captain of a man-of-war. [Ancestor of the present Lord Graves.]

THE EDITOR.

I may repeat the words of Mr. Tonkin, in respect to the Right Hon. Reginald Pole Carew, the present possessor of East Anthony in right of his mother (1832)—“He is a gentleman that in every respect comes up to the merits of the greatest of his ancestors.”

This parish measures 2,903 statute acres.

In the church is a monumental tablet to Richard 38 Carew, author of the Survey of Cornwall; several other memorials to the Carew family; and an elegant monumental brass of Margery Arundell, lady of the manor of East Anthony, who died in 1428.

Increase on an hundred in 30 years 72.65, or about 72⅔ per cent.

Present Incumbent, the Rev. Duke Yonge, presented by R. P. Carew, Esq. in 1806.

Dr. Boase states that the geology of this parish includes the same group of rocks as those found in the western St. Anthony, although the two parishes are so remote from each other, and separated by such ranges of hills. The slate is, however, more coarse and argillaceous in this parish, and the massive rocks imbedded therein are more compact, and almost entirely quartzose. The whole formation is evidently more remote from the granite.

HALS.

St. Anthony in Kerrier is situate in the hundred of Helston and Kerrier, West Louer or Consort, and hath upon the east the harbour of Helfon, north Manackan, west St. Kevorne, south the British Channel. This parish, as those before of this name, are not mentioned in the Domesday tax, neither do I know under what title it then passed. In the Pope’s Inquisition, as to the value of its first fruits, 20 Edward I. 1294, Eccles’ de S’cto Antony in Decanatu de Kerryar, is rated iiiil. xiiis. iiiid. the vicar thereof xiiis. iiiid. In Wolsey’s Inquisition, 1541, £4. 15s. 11d. The patronage in the Bishop of Exon for the time 39 being, whose predecessors endowed it; the incumbent Edwards; the Rectory or Sheaf in possession of ——; and the parish rated to the 4s. per pound land tax, 1696, £66. 12s. And the tutelar guardian of this Church is St. Anthony before-mentioned.

Tre-woth-ike in this parish, “the town of the known or familiar cove, creek, or bosom of waters” (Tre-werh-ike or ick, is evidently the town, on the water, or cree,—Editor;) alias Tre-wood-ike, “the town of the wood creek or bosom of waters,” was formerly the lands of Tre-gow (id est, “the wood town,” in or about those parts) gentlemen that flourished here for several generations in good fame and credit till about the middle of the reign of King Charles II. when Mr. Tregoze sold this lordship to John Vaughan, of Ottery, in Devon, Esq. who married Drew, his father Hals of Efford, sister to Sir Nich. Hals, Knt., his grandfather ——, and giveth for his arms, in a field, —— three boars heads erased. The arms of Tregose were, Azure, two bars gemelles, in chief a lion passant Or, langued Gules, which name and tribe I think is now quite extinct.

Roscruge or Rossereige Burough, in this parish (id. est, the valley and promontory or highland, tumulus or burying place) gave name and original to a family of gentlemen now or lately in possession thereof, who gave for their arms ——. Otherwise Roscrugh, may be interpreted as the valley or covered tumulus for or of music.

In this parish are the two camps or treble intrenchments of our ancestors the Britains, called Denis and Great Denis or Dunes, words of two import, signifying the great castle and the little castle, fort, fortress, or fortified place, wherein the inhabitants heretofore posted themselves for their safety against foreign invaders. See St. Colomb Major.

TONKIN.

By this church is a small promontory of land running out into the sea, which, from its resemblance to Pendinas, is called the Little Dinas. It was formerly fortified, and had some guns planted upon it to secure the entrance of Hailford harbour, which not being very broad it well may command. And in time of wars, it were very convenient there should be still some guns there, for the safety of the ships that trade to and again in this harbour, which, as the case now stands, may be easily carried off by privateers. Thus much may be said for the honour of this place—it was the last which held out for King Charles in Cornwall;[10] for, after the taking of Pendinas, it sustained a siege of several weeks, and at last was forced to surrender for want of ammunition.

THE EDITOR.

The measurement of this parish is 1265 statute acres.

Increase on an hundred in 30 years 14.9, or very nearly 15 per cent.

On an estate near the churchyard, celled Lantenny, foundations of buildings and remains of human bodies have been found; the presumed relics of a cell of black monks of Angiers, belonging to the priory of Tywardreth, which existed at this place as early as the reign of Richard I. Lysons.

Dr. Boase remarks that the rocks of this parish are precisely similar to the rocks of St. Anthony in Powder, 41 on the other side of Falmouth Harbour; and that it is a very curious circumstance that three parishes of the same name should be all based on the same kind of rocks, notwithstanding their being situated at a considerable distance from each other, and respectively belonging to distinct groups of granite.

[10] Except, says Lysons, the Mount and Pendennis Castle. Little Dinas was surrendered to Sir Thomas Fairfax in March 1646.

HALS.

St. Austell is situate in the hundred of Powder, and hath upon the north Roach, east St. Blaze, west Mewan, south the British Channel; in Domesday Roll, 1087, the modern name of this parish was not extant, but the same and the districts of St. Blazy, Mewan, and Menagnissy, passed then in tax under the jurisdiction of Earl Cradock’s manor of Towington, now duchy, Treverbyn, Trenance, and Pentewan. Note further, that, if Saint Austell be a corruption of Sancto Hostell, it signifies the holy inn or court.

The Prior of Tywardreth, with divers other benefactors, as appears from the carving and inscriptions on the stones thereof, founded and endowed this church, within the town of Trenance, now St. Austell Town, after which it was indifferently written Trenance Prior (Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, p. 57), that is to say, the valley town prior (or pertaining to him) and again by him Trenance Austell (id est, the cell, chapel or hole, valley town); and again, Tre-nance Aus-tell (id est, the valley town out, or remote cell or chapel) so called in respect of Tywardreth, its superior or mother church. The patronage now in the King; the incumbent Tremayne; the rectory or sheaf 42 in May. In the Bishop of Lincoln and Winchester’s Inquisition into the Pope’s Value of Benefices in Cornwall, 1294, Ecclesia de Sancto Austello in Decanatu de Powdre, was rated to first fruits xl. xiiis. iiiid. The vicar xls. In Wolsey’s Inquisition, 1521, £21. This parish was charged to the 4s. per pound land tax, 1696, £432. 6s. (See Tywardreth.)

From this place was denominated an old family of gentlemen surnamed De Austell, of which family William de Austell was Sheriff of Cornwall 25 Henry VI. as also of Somerset and Dorset 27 and 28 of King Henry VI.; who gave for his arms, Argent, a saltire raguled Vert, but in what families the name, blood, and estate of those gentlemen are terminated I know not, or where they dwelt. At the town of St. Austell, alias Trenance, is weekly held upon Friday a considerable market, wherein is vended all commodities necessary for the life of man at a reasonable price.[11] Its also privileged 10th fairs or greater marts, on the 30th of November, Palm Sunday, and Thursday after Whitsunday, which benefits were doubtless first obtained from the Earls of Cornwall, by the Priors of Tywardreth aforesaid.

Treverbyn, alias Tre-verbin, in this parish, was the voke lands of considerable manor long before the Norman Conquest, as appears from the Domesday tax aforesaid (it signifies in Cornish the herb, rape, root, or navew town, famous it seems in former ages for those vegetables,) from which place was denominated that old and knightly family of the Treverbins (who had there free chapel and burying place here lately extant), and of public use before the Church of St. Austell was erected; of which house was Walter Treverbyn, Sheriff of Cornwall 1223, the successor of Reginald de Valletort 7 Henry III. who had issue Sir Walter Treverbyn, 43 Knight, who had a daughter married, named Katherine, to Peter Prideaux, of Boswithgye in Luxsillian 10th Edward II. From this Walter also lineally descended Sir Hugh Treverbyn, Knight, tempore Henry VI. whose two daughters and heirs were married to Edward Courtenay, of Boconnock or Haccomb, in Devon, and Trevannion, of Caryhays, in whom the name, blood, and estate of those Treverbins ended. But Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exon, and Earl of Devon, forfeited one moiety of those lands to the Crown by attainder of treason against that butcher of the branches of the house of York, Henry VIII.; so that the same is now in copartnery between the King of England and Trevanion.

Penrice, alias Penric, in this parish, (id est, head jurisdiction or dominion) perhaps heretofore, if not now, the voke lands of some manor (otherwise it must be interpreted the head or chief lopping of trees, or rice, faggots) is the dwelling of my very kind friend Joseph Sawle, Esq. that married Trevanion, his father Glanvill, his grandfather Rashleigh, a gentleman notably famous for his humanity, hospitality, and charity to the poor, who giveth for his arms, Argent, a chevron between three falcons’ heads Sable. Originally, the first ancestor of this family came out of Normandy, a soldier under William the Conqueror, 1066, and in all probability he was posted in those parts, an officer under William or Robert Earls of Morton and Cornwall, some time after in those standing troops of soldiers the Conqueror kept here, in order to awe the people thereof to a submission to his dominion. For I take it beyond the records of time at Towan in this parish, and elsewhere in Devon, this family or tribe hath been extant in fame and splendor as the descendants of that Sauley or Sawle, mentioned in Battle Abbey Roll in the year above-mentioned.

Mena-Gwins, in this parish, i. e. white hills or hills 44 white, is the dwelling of Francis Scobell, Esq. (in English broom) that married one of the coheirs of Sir Joseph Tredenham, Knight, his father Carlyon’s heir, and giveth for his arms, as I take it, the same as the Scobhalls, of Devon, viz. Argent, three fleurs de lis, two and one, Gules; perhaps originally descended from that family. [At Mena-Gwins resided Richard Scobell, clerk of the Parliament to Oliver Cromwell. Lysons.]

Ros-eundle, (id est, bundle of rushes,) in this parish, is the dwelling of Charles Trubody, Gent.

At Roscorla, in this parish, (that is the promontory and fat valley of land,) is the dwelling of that old family of gentlemen from thence denominated De Roscorla. The present possessor George Roscorla, Gent. that married Bullock. [The seat of the ancient family of Roscorla has been pulled down. George Roscorla, the present representative of this decayed family, is a day-labourer at Roche. Lysons.]

Trenaran, (id est, the still lake, leat, creek, cove, or bosom of waters,) in this parish, is the dwelling of Samuel Hext, Gent. attorney at law, who by his skill and conduct in that profession, hath advanced his reputation and estate to a considerable pitch in those parts: he married Moyle of this place.

Merther in St. Austell, bordering on the sea, and joining to the Perr, was formerly the seat of the Laas, but now the lands of Hext, who in the reign of Queen Elizabeth came from Kingston, in Stuerton, Devonshire, an ancient seat of that family. His coat is, Or, a castle triple-turreted, between three battle-axes Sable.

[Mr. Hals exhibits the strong feelings of his time in the story of Laa, when he says,]

At the time of the unhappy Rebellion, when the Lord Hopton had disbanded his army, some of Fairfax’s forces entered the house at Merther, threatening to murder Mrs. Laa and the family, for being too dilatory in dressing meat for them. Mr. Laa, then riding about his 45 estate, had intimation that the rebels were in his parlour, carousing at the expense of his bacon, poultry, and strong beer. He with all possible expedition alighted at the door, enters the kitchen, which is opposite to the parlour, and being warmed with an honest zeal for his King, took down a loaded gun from the chimney-piece, and shot one of the rebels, who was at the head of the table, dead on the spot. Immediately he took horse, and rode towards the Perr, and preserved his life from the vile pursuers, being providentially well mounted, by leaping a five-barred gate, and swimming across the Perr, it being at that time high water.

In the town of St. Austell liveth Henry Hawkins, Gent. attorney at law (younger brother of Mr. Hawkins of Creed), who by his judgment, skill, care, and pains, in his calling hath exalted his fame and estate to a great degree. He married Scobell, and giveth for his arms, Argent, on a saltire Sable, five fleur de lis. His two sons by Scobell died without issue, and his daughters were married to Hoblyn, Moyle, Hext, and Hawkins, of Helston; and the youngest of that sex, with all his lands and riches, was married to Tremayne, of St. Ive, Esq.

The manor of Tow-ing-ton, alias Taw-ing-ton aforesaid, taxed in the Domesday Book, 1087, is invested with the jurisdiction of a court leet; and signifies “silence in town,” or “extraordinary silence in town,” viz. when that court sitteth; which was afterwards by King Edward III. 1336, concerted or fixed into the Duchy of Cornwall, by charter (see Lestwithell), with its appurtenances.

In this parish was born Jonathan Upcott, son of George Upcott, Gent. by Mrs. May, of High Cross, Ranger of the Parks to John Lord Robartes in Cornwall, as also in Ireland, when he was Lord Deputy there. This gentleman, having risen through various steps in the army, during the reigns of Charles II., James II. 46 and William III. commanded a company in Flanders in the great war against France under Lewis XIV. At last, being ordered to take part in a desperate assault on the French at Enghein, where the Dutch and Spanish soldiers had proved better men at their heels than at their hands, he bravely lost his life, together with the greater part of his men.

King William is said in the course of this war to have grown prodigal of Englishmen’s valour, blood, and lives, as he had before been of their money; for when any dangerous fort was to be attempted, which the Dutch and Spanish soldiers refused, he commanded the English to perform it, who, being led away by the vanity of being accounted valiant soldiers, and for the honour of the English nation, quickly undertook such direful posts, though to their own destruction.

NORDEN.

Polruddon, the ruynes of an auntient howse somtymes the howse of John Polruddon, whoe was taken out of his bed by the Frenche in the time of Henry the 7. and caried away with violence, and then began the howse to decaye, and Penwarn, the howse of Mr. Otwell Hill, was buylded with Polruddon stones. The howse (as by the ruyns it appeareth) was a large howse, and by the arched freestone windowes which it had curiouslye wroughte, testifieth it to be for the time elegant. [Polruddon was afterwards rebuilt, and became a seat of the Scobells. It belonged to the late Sir Christopher Hawkins, Bart. who was descended from that family in the female line. It is occupied as a farm house. Lysons]

TONKIN.

The manor of Tewynton, alias Tewington, takes its name from the chief place, Tewor, which, though it generally means “heaps of sand,” cannot be so interpreted here; and much less applicable is the etymology 47 given by Mr. Hals, of “silence in town,” but Tewor means a hillock generally, so that Tewynton means, in the mixed derivation common in Cornwall from British and Saxon, “the town on a small hill.” This place was the seat of the Sowles before they removed to Penrice, and affords a quarry of excellent stone.

Pentwan, the “head of the hillocks of sand.” Lower Pentwan is situated at the mouth of the St. Austell river, which would form a pretty little port, were it not for the bar of sand made by the waste brought down from the tin-works, so that small craft only can get in, and that at spring-tides. It is a handsome village, and in good seasons great stores of fish are brought in here.

Pelniddon, “the top of the ford,” from “nyd,” a ford, was the seat of the knightly family bearing the same name.

Trenorren, which I take to be compounded of Tre-nore-en, “the town of the point,” from the Bleak Head, close by which it lies.

THE EDITOR.

In Henry the Eighth’s reign, Leland described St. Austell as a poor village, nor is it mentioned as a place of any consequence either by Carew or Norden. It first rose into consequence from its vicinity to Polgooth and other considerable mines: it is now a considerable thoroughfare; the great road from Plymouth to the Land’s End was brought through it about the year 1760. The export of china clay, the decomposed or never consolidated felspar, to all the great manufactories of earthenware throughout England, affords employment to industry and to capital, in a manner more steady, and therefore more permanently beneficial, than can ever be produced by the working of mines.

To facilitate their commerce, and generally to improve the whole district, a harbour was constructed at Seaforth about forty years ago by Mr. Charles Rashleigh; 48 a gentleman who will long be remembered, as uniting strong abilities with energy of mind, and liberality as well of practice as of sentiment. His name is perpetuated in the port and in the buildings surrounding it, which have received by public acclamation the appropriate distinction of Charlestown. [The spot was formerly called Porthmear, and was too inconsiderable to be mentioned in Martyn’s map. In 1790 it contained only nine inhabitants. In consequence of the commodious harbour, the docks, and shipwrights’ yards, and the pilchard fishery established by Mr. Rashleigh, it has gradually increased to be a large village. Lysons.]

More recent inventions have suggested an iron railway from St. Austell along the descending vale to a new harbour at Puntner, The works are just now completed (1832), and they promise to add still greater facilities to commerce than those at Charlestown.

The other principal villages in this parish are Carvath, Corbean, Pentewan or Pentuan, Porthpean, Rescorla, Tregonissy, Tregorick, Trenarren, and Trethergy.

The church and town of St. Austell are well worthy of notice. The church is much decorated on its exterior surface of freestone by figures and scrolls worked on the stone; and over the south porch is an ancient inscription, KYCH INRI, never explained (engraved in Lysons, p. ccxxxii). The tower, although not so lofty as that at Probus, is perhaps more elegant in its form and proportion. The inside of the church presents a light and pleasing appearance, in consequence of the large space occupied by the windows.

The font is in the form of a bowl, carved with rude monsters, standing on a round column, and supported by four small pillars, which have monks’ heads for their capitals. It is engraved in Lysons, p. ccxxxiii.

An almshouse, with six apartments for poor persons, was erected in 1809.

49 In the Archæologia, vol. ix. pl. viii. and vol. xi. pl. vii. are engravings of a silver cup, several rings, and other pieces of jewellery, of very early workmanship, which were found, together with a coin of Burgred king of Mercia (expelled from his dominions in 874), in a stream-work in this parish, in the year 1774. They were deposited in a silver cup, which has since been used for the sacramental wine at the church; and therefore had probably been originally collected at some earlier period.

St. Austell measures 10,018 statute acres.

Increase on an hundred in thirty years, 131.2, or above 131 per cent.

Present incumbent, the Rev. T. S. Smyth, presented in 1815 by the King.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

This parish, so important in an economical point of view, on account of its minal production, affords a vast fund of geological information. Its northern part is composed of granite; its southern part of various rocks belonging to the porphyritic group. Its granite on the eastern side is like that of Alternun, and contains layers which abound in porphyritic crystals of felspar. On the western side it comprises several kinds of this rock; some characterised by the proportions of shorl that enter into their composition; and others by containing talc instead of mica, and by the felspar being prone to an extensive decay, in which state it furnishes porcelain clay (or china clay) for the potteries. A more particular description of these kinds of granite 50 will be given hereafter, in the accounts of St. Stephen’s, and of the adjacent parishes. Carclaze tin mine must not, however, be passed by, as it is one of the greatest curiosities in Cornwall. This mine is worked “open to the day” (according to the miners’ term), that is, like a quarry. It is of a considerable depth; and its superficies exceeds several acres in extent. It is excavated entirely in a white granite, somewhat similar to the disintegrating variety above alluded to; and when the sun shines, the reflection of light is so exceedingly dazzling as to be almost insupportable. The tin ore occurs here intermixed with shorl and quartz, in the form of short irregular veins, which traverse the granite in every direction, and so abundant, that the whole rock requires to be pounded and washed to complete an entire separation of the ore.

Hornblend rocks succeed the granite, and produce a red fertile soil. These extend a little to the south of the town of St. Austell, and are followed by a blue lamelar slate, in which the mines are situated. This rock is much softer, and more argillaceous than the hornblend slate, and decomposes into a light-coloured soil. The matrix of its lodes abound in chlorite: it is probably a chlorite schist. This formation is traversed by several beds of felspar, porphyry (elvan courses), in the western side of the parish, which run north-east and south-west, in a somewhat tortuous manner, and dip towards the granite. One of these elvans, near Pentewan, has been extensively quarried, and is much esteemed as a building material. This chlorite slate also contains, in the cove at Duporth, a bed of compact magnesian rock, abounding in asbestos; and passes on either hand into the surrounding slate, by means of layers of talcous schist.

This parish has long been celebrated for its stream works, which are diluvial beds containing tin ore. They are generally found in deep vallies where rivulets flow, which are used in separating the tin ore, by its inferior 51 specific gravity, from common stones or pebbles; hence the name of “stream-works.” The nature of these deposits varies according to the positions which they occupy between the sea and the granite; whence the stanniferous strata were derived.

Pentewan stream-work is one of the most interesting in the whole county. Its lowest bed consists of pebbles, gravel, and tin ore, and it rests on the solid rock. Immediately above this tin-ground is a black stratum of vegetable remains, among which are stumps of trees, standing erect, with their roots penetrating downwards into the bed of gravel. This subterranean forest stands forty-eight feet below high-water mark; showing that there must have been a change in the relative sea level. On this vegetable bed reposes a thick stratum of silt, intermixed with horns of deer, and with other relics of land animals, and also with detached pieces of timber. This silt is of the same description as that now forming in the Truro river, and in other estuaries on the coast; and it contains layers of shells peculiar to such situations.

This silt is covered by a deep deposit of siliceous sand, in which occur various remains, principally of marine origin; and lastly, over this lies another bed of silt like the preceding, which reaches to the surface, where a thin marsh soil is now in a state of cultivation. The upper bed of silt is nearly on a level with the sea, being separated and protected from it by the interposition of a sandy beach.

Many theoretical observations and reflections would naturally present themselves, after a statement of these facts; but such would be more appropriate to a separate treatise, than to a series of notices on individual parishes.

[11] The market continues to deserve this character; the tolls, persuant to the charter of Queen Elizabeth, are assigned to the relief and maintenance of the poor.

HALS.

St. Blazey is situate in the hundred of Powdre, and hath upon the east Tywardreth and the Parc; south, the British Channel; north, Luxulion; west, St. Austell. At the time of the Norman Conquest this district was rated either under Tywardreth, Towington, Trenance, or Treverbyn. In the Inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester, 1294, before mentioned, Ecclesia de Fanum, appropriata Dom’ni de Tywardreth, in Decanatu de Powdre, this parish was taxed to the Pope’s first fruits, or annats, iiiil. vicar ejusdem nihil propter paupertatem. In Wolsey’s Inquisition, and Valor Beneficiorum, it goes as a daughter church in presentation and consolidation with St. Austell. The patronage in the King, the incumbent Hugoe, the sheaf or rectory in Mr. May; and the parish rated to the 4s. in the pound tax, 1696, £92. 3s.

Quæry, whether the word fanum be not, by the scribe, a corruption of Foy-town? In the inquisition aforesaid, however, let it be remembered that, Ecclesia de Fanum must be interpreted as the church or temple, consecrated to divine service, appropriated to the house of Tywardreth, as both those churches of Fowey and St. Blazey are. As for the tutelar guardian from whom the same and the parish is denominated, Blaze, he was born in Sebaste, a city of Cappadocia in Asia, whereof he was bishop, and governed his church so well, that the priests of the idols (then worshipped comparatively all the world over,) took distaste at him for his preachments against idolatry; and exhibited a complaint against him to Agricolaus, the emperor Dioclesian’s president in those parts, by whom he was examined as to this and other parts of Christian religion; which he 53 would not retract; wherefore he was by him committed to prison, scourged with the utmost severity that could be invented, and afterwards, by a special order, under the hand of Agricolaus, beheaded by the common hangman, 15th Feb. anno Dom. 298, temp. Dioclesiani. The church celebrateth the festival of this famous saint, bishop, and martyr, February 3. The Council of Lyons, ann. Dom. 1244, under the Emperor Frederick and Pope Innocent the Fourth, amongst other things instituted certain new festivals for canonizing of saints; after which time, in the Inquisition but now mentioned, we shall find most of the names of our Cornish churches distinguished by the prefixed title of saint, viz. such person as the same when first consecrated was dedicated to (who before that time had been canonized by the church of Rome); though, as I hinted before, there is but one church or person named in Domesday Roll to whom is given the appellation of saint, about two hundred years before. In this church town of St. Blazey there is a public fair kept on the festival day of this saint, February 3, and the festivals of most other Cornish saints, to whose guardianship churches are dedicated, are solemnly kept yearly in other places.

Ro-sillian, in this parish, formerly the lands of Kellyow, is now the dwelling of Henry Scobell, Gent. brother to Mr. Scobell of St. Austell, before mentioned, who giveth the same arms as that family doth.

In this parish also, not long since, lived Hugh Williams, Gent. attorney-at-law, youngest son of Richard Williams, of Trewithan in Probus, that married Robins and Frowick, and gave the same arms as that family doth; who at length, upon some discontent, with a rope or halter privately hanged or strangled himself to death in his own house (as was reported), though the coroner’s inquest found it a chance only, tempore William III. Upon news of this fact of Mr. Williams, the uncharitable 54 country people, whom he had persecuted with lawsuits, wished that all the rest of his brethren of the inferior practice of the law, would make up of the same expedient to hasten out of this life to Paradise as he did, for the ease and public good of the inhabitants of this county.

In this parish liveth Cur-lyon, Gent. that married Hawkins, and giveth for his arms, in a field ——, a bezant between two castles. Now, though the name be local, from a place in Keye parish so called, yet if I were admitted to judge or conjecture, I would say this family of Cur-Lyon, by its name and arms, were the descendants of Richard Curlyon, alias King Richard I. of whom our chronologers say, that a priest of France told him he had three daughters, Pride, Covetousness, and Lechery; which three daughters the King replied he would thus dispose of: 1, Pride to the Templars and Hospitalers; 2, Covetousness to the Monks of the Cistertian order; and, 3, Lechery to the clergy in general.

TONKIN.

St. Blaze, usually called St. Blazey. In this parish is Roselian, or Rose-Sillian, an ancient seat belonging to the family of Kellio, and was lately the residence of Shadrack Vincent Vincent, Esq. in right of his wife, daughter of Richard Kellio, Esq.

This Shadrack Vincent was the second son of Henry Vincent, of Tresimple. He signalized himself in the wars of Flanders, and since the Revolution he has been member of parliament for the borough of Fowey, and has nobly founded a school there.

Adjoining to Roselian is Trenawick, which was sold by —— Kellio, Esq. to Hugh Williams, Gent. son to Williams of Trewithon in Probus, who built a new house on the estate.

The manor of Trengreene, or Tregoryon, is the dwelling 55 of Thomas Carlyon, Gent. a branch of the Menagwins family, who has lately built a very neat new house here, which being seated on a rising grround, from whence there is a good prospect of the sea, and having a fruitful spot of land around it, is as pleasant a seat as any in the neighbourhood. His son Thomas has married Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Mr. Philip Hawkins, of Pennance, by whom he hath several children. This last Thomas was in the commission of the peace, and died in this present Jan. (1732) leaving his eldest son, Philip, a minor. This property belonged in former times to the Bodregens.

THE EDITOR.

The popular legends of St. Blaze relate that he was most barbarously lacerated with wool-combs, which sufficiently accounts for his having been adopted as the patron of all persons concerned in the manufacture of cloth.

There is an idle tradition of the exact spot where St. Blaze landed; but it is quite certain that he never was in the west of Europe; nor can any reason now be assigned for the selection of this saint, beyond that of his general popularity. About the year 1774 a curious piece of machinery was exhibited all over England, which represented the whole manufacture of broadcloth, from the shearing of the wool to the last operation of pressing. A small figure was actually at work on each separate process; and over them all, as a general director, and arrayed in his pontifical habit and mitre, appeared Bishop Blaze. He is the patron of Ragusa.

The derivation of Carlyon from Richard Cœur de Lion, seems to be equally puerile, unfounded, and absurd. Car, or Caer, is evidently a fortified place; and Lyon must be one of those corruptions, more common than any other, of a word which has lost its appropriate 56 meaning, into another word of a similar sound and in common use. The arms of Carlyon are, Argent, a chevron Gules between three moor cocks Sable, limbed and wattled Gules.

In modern times St. Blazey has acquired distinction by giving birth to Ralph Allen, known over England as Mr. Allen of Bath. This gentleman acquired a large fortune through the medium of conferring important benefits on his country, and he employed it in promoting literature and sciences on the most extensive scale. Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, were the inmates of his house. Warburton was mainly through his influence advanced to the highest station in our church. And,

This extraordinary man was the son of an innkeeper in a village on the road-side, called St. Blazey Highway. He is stated by Mr. Polwhele to have been placed under the care of his grandmother, who kept the post-office at St. Columb; and that an inspector was so much struck by the neatness and regularity of young Allen’s accounts as to procure for him some situation in a more extensive establishment. It is probable that he must have been placed in the post office at Bath. Mr. Polwhele adds that he was there patronised by General Wade.

Previously to this period, letters were conveyed along certain great roads emanating from the capital, but without any communication one with the other. Mr. Allen first conceived the idea of uniting these lines by what has been termed cross posts, and Bath became the original station of this most important contrivance, which has now expanded itself over the whole country like the meshes of a net, affording such facility and speed as to astonish those who experience their benefit, and which could not have been hoped for in times past.

It is much to be lamented that the progress of Mr. 57 Allen, from the commencement of his career in this most interesting pursuit, up to the attainment of his object by its complete establishment at Bath cannot be traced; nor the source ascertained from whence his funds were derived. It appears that Mr. Allen risked the chance of taking the revenues to be derived from his new institution for a term of years, at a certain annual payment to the State; or, in official language, that he farmed them; and his success proved commensurate to the ability, exertion, and persevering industry employed in carrying the plan into effect: so that on the expiration of the first term, a renewal was taken at an advanced rent of some tens of thousands a-year.

Mr. Allen fixed himself at Bath, and built the splendid mansion of Prior Park with the oolite of that district, or Bath stone, which he first quarried on an extensive scale and brought into general use. At Prior Park every man distinguished in any way was a welcome guest, and the proprietor has received most justly, deserved tributes of applause from many capable of erecting monuments to his memory more durable than those of brass or stone; but one frequently noticed has ever appeared to me inadequate. It does indeed represent the image of a private gentleman, endowed with goodness of heart, some learning, and a tolerable judgment; but if Mr. Fielding’s Allworthy was really meant to pourtray Mr. Allen, one may seek in vain for any resemblance of a man, who, by energy of mind and indefatigable exertions conferred so great a benefit on his country, that the wealth acquired by himself seemed no more than the necessary appendage to such public service.

Mr. Allen died in 1764; but his spirit still hovered over Bath, and impelled individuals brought forward in his school, to make the second and last improvement in our mail conveyances by substituting the rapid speed of a coach, with its safety and accommodation of passengers, for the slow and solitary progress of a postman on 58 horseback. This system commenced in 1784, twenty years after Mr. Allen’s decease. Mail coaches led to a general improvement of roads, and this again to an increase in the speed of coaches, while the reticulations of cross posts became more fine, with intersections in every possible direction, and the whole continues still improving; so that, morally speaking, the illustrious founder still lives and breathes among us.

Mr. Allen had a sister, whom I faintly remember the widow of a Mr. Elliott, and left with an only daughter. The old lady had great pleasure in relating what she had seen and heard at Prior Park, her having been there in company with Pope, Swift, Thomson, &c. and from her is derived the story related by Mr. Polwhele of Mr. Hugh Boscowen.

The daughter married Mr. Thomas Daniell, then chief clerk to Mr. Lemon, an individual not moving in a sphere so splendid as that of Mr. Allen, but probably at least his equal in all the qualities essential to those who fix a new era in the history of whatever they undertake. On Mr. Lemon’s decease in 1760, Mr. Daniell was enabled by the bounty of his wife’s uncle to take all the large mercantile concern on himself, and having soon afterwards constructed a residence in Truro, Mr. Allen presented him with several ship-loads of Bath stone; and thus Truro, having quarries of excellent silicious building-stone almost in its streets, and with granite distant only a few miles, exhibits the front of its most handsome house encrusted with oolite from Bath. To a similar act of liberality on the part of Mr. Allen, the hospital of St. Bartholomew in London is indebted for an exterior casing of the same stone; which, in consequence of the recent improvements and extension of inland navigation, is now brought in great quantities to the metropolis, to Oxford, and to places still more remote from the quarries.

I may here perhaps introduce with propriety a relation 59 descriptive of the immense difference between our own times and those of Queen Anne, in respect to the sources and to the diffusion of intelligence.

Mr. Sidney Godolphin, occupying the office of Lord High Treasurer, visited more than once the seat in Cornwall from which he derived his appellation of Earl; no regular conveyances at stated intervals proceeded further west than Exeter, but when certain masses of letters had accumulated, the whole were forwarded by what was called the post. The Lord High Treasurer had a weekly messenger from Exeter bringing letters, despatches, and a newspaper; and on the fixed day of his arrival all the gentlemen assembled at Godolphin from many miles round to hear the newspaper read in the great hall. This was told to my father by Mr. John Borlase, father to the two Doctor Borlases, who had himself been present. From ten to twenty daily papers now reach Penzance in about forty hours from London.

Within my own remembrance a letter leaving London on Monday night arrived at Penzance on Friday morning, a letter and its answer occupying at present precisely that time.

This parish measures 1480 statute acres.

Increase on an hundred in 30 years, 361.45, or more than 361 per cent.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

The northern part of this parish rests on granite, and it approaches very nearly to the church. Proceeding southward, the granite is succeeded by the same kind of slate as that which is found in the adjacent parish of St. Austell, both parishes lying parallel to 60 each other, in respect to a line extending from the granite hills to the sea shore, have the same geological structure.

It is known that within the memory of the last generation the sea flowed up to St. Blazey Bridge; and various indications of its having reached half a mile further up the river have been detected: thus showing that the sea, which has encroached on most parts of the coasts of Cornwall, has at the same time been driven back from the land. This effect is usually attributed to the accumulation of detritus brought down from the hills by rivers, more especially when they are in flood, and undoubtedly this must be a generally operative cause; but in this particular instance the effect must be mainly ascribed to the wearing away of the diluvial sand-bank at the head of the adjoining bay. The volume of this river, and its consequent momentum, not having been sufficient to counteract the deposition of sand by the waves running up the estuary, with which, in their rapid motion, they are always charged.

HALS.

Blisland is situate in the hundred of Trig-minor, id est, sea-shore the less; so called minor, to distinguish it from Trig-major, which encompasseth a larger tract of land on the sea-shore of the Irish Channel, viz. that now divided into Strator and Lesnewith; and hath upon the east, Temple; west, Helland; north, Brewer and St. Udye; south, Cardinham. The modern name Blisland is a corruption of Bliss-lan, id est, happy, rejoicing, gladsome temple or church, which is testified by the Bishop of Lincoln and Winchester’s inquisition 61 into the value of benefices, in order to the Pope’s annats 1294, Ecclesia de Bliss-lan in Decanatu de Trigminorshire, vil. In Wolsey’s Inquisition and Valor Beneficiorum, £13. 10s. The patronage lately in Sprye, Parker, Reynolds, in right of the manor of Blis-land, now Molesworth; the incumbent Hicks. This parish was rated to the four shillings in the pound land tax 1696, £104. At the time of the Norman Conquest I judge it was taxed under Udy or Pengally.

This manor of Blisland was heretofore invested with the jurisdiction of life and limb within its precincts (the lords whereof doubtless built or endowed the present church); and within memory of the last age, the inhabitants will tell you, that a person was executed, in the gallows-field there, for robbing this parish church of its silver cup and pattens belonging to the altar (vide Mitchell). This manor of Blisland, tempore Hen. VII. was the lands of ——, who forfeited the same by attainder of treason in Flammock’s rebellion, whereby it fell to the crown; from whence it was conveyed to the Stanhopes, and from them to Parker, and from Parker to Reynolds, from Reynolds to Sprye, from Sprye to Molesworth.

In this parish somewhere liveth Trese, Gent. The name Tres, or Treas, is Cornish British, and signifies in that language “the third,” and was a name taken up in memory of the third son or person of the family from whence he was descended, and is derived from the same Japhetical origin as τριτος, tertius, “the third,” as the Latin word tres. Treas is also “the third” in the Scots and Irish tongues.

This parish hath in it loads and streams of tin.

TONKIN.

The etymology of this parish is plain, being wholly Saxon, bless and land, as contrasted with the moors 62 and craggy hills around it. Norden says that the sheriff’s writ runneth not within this parish.

THE EDITOR.

Number of statute acres 6025.

Increase on an hundred in 30 years 47.4, or more than 47 per cent.

It is worthy of remark, that Mr. Pye, the present incumbent, has been in possession of the living fifty-three years; and that his predecessor, Mr. Hicks, held it during sixty-two years; so that one change of rectors has alone taken place in the long period of an hundred and fifteen years; a case of successive longevity almost unparalleled; and the more extraordinary in comparison with the inheritance of family estates, when it is recollected that each of those gentlemen must at the least have completed the twenty-fourth year of his age before he received induction to the benefice.

GEOLOGY.

Doctor Boase remarks the eastern half of this parish is situate on granite, which is of the same kind, and belongs to the same insulated group, as that extending into the parishes of Advent and of Alternun. The western half consists of alternate layers of schistone and of compact rocks, some of which approach near to greenstone. These rocks are, however, more fully exposed in the adjacent parish of St. Breward, or Simonward, under which head they will be described.

HALS.

Boconnoc is situate in the hundred of West-well-shire, so called from foys-fenton in St. Cleother, id est, walled well or spring of water, the original fountain of the fay’s river, to distinguish it from East-well-shire aforesaid; and hath upon the north, Bradock; west, St. Wenow; south, St. Neepe; east, St. Pynock. For the compound name Bo-connoc, it is taken from the barton and manor of land still extant there, with reference to the beasts that depastured thereon; and signifies, prosperous, successful, thriving cows, kine, or cattle. Which place it seems was the voke lands of a considerable tithing or lordship, with jurisdiction, at the time of the Norman Conquest; for by the name of Boconnoc it was taxed in Domesday roll 2d William I. 1087.

However, let it be observed that at the time of the inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester, before mentioned, 1294, there was no such endowed church extant in Cornwall as Boconnoc; though in Wolsey’s Inquisition 1521, it was taxed to the Pope’s annats 9l. 17s. 3d. The patronage is in the Lord Mohun in right of his lordship of Boconnoc aforesaid; and the parish rated to the 4s. 8d. per pound tax, temp. William III. 80l.

This barton and manor of Boconnoc, in the time of Edward III. was the lands of Sir John Dawney, of Sheviock, knight, whose daughter and heiress Emelyn, was married to Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon (and third of that name and title, being the son of Hugh Courtenay the 10th Earl of Devon, by Margaret, daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, the 8th Earl of Hereford and Essex, by Elizabeth his wife, daughter of King 64 Edward I.) and had issue by the said Emelyn Dawnay, Edward Courtenay the 12th Earl of Devon, surnamed the blind (that married Eleanor, daughter of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March and Ulster, by whom he had issue Edward Courtenay the 13th Earl of Devon) and Hugh Courtenay his second son, to whom his mother gave Boconnoc, in the beginning of the reign of King Henry IV. 1416. Upon this Hugh Courtenay, afterwards Sir Hugh Courtenay, Knight, his elder brother Edward, surnamed the blind, at the especial request and instance of his mother, Emelyn, (as Brooke, York Herald, informs us) did by his indenture, bearing date the 2d of King Henry V. confirm and assure to him, his heirs and assigns for ever, the manors of Gotherington, Southallington, and Slancomb-Dawney (from whence that family was denominated) in the county of Devon, who afterwards married Philippa, one of the daughters and heirs of Sir Warren Archdeacon, Knight, of Haccomb in the county of Devon, after which time he lived sometimes in that place, at other whiles at Boconnoc; whence it is we find in some authors this gentleman is called Sir Hugh Courtenay of Boconnoc, and Sir Hugh Courtenay of Haccomb, as if they had been different persons. This Sir Hugh Courtenay had issue, by Archdeacon’s daughter, Edward Courtenay of Haccomb; who after the death of Humphrey Stafford was restored in blood, and made the 16th Earl of Devon, in the first year of the reign of King Henry VII. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Courtenay, of Moland, Knight, and had issue William Courtenay, 17th Earl of Devon, who married Katherine daughter of King Edward IV. and by her had issue, Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, executed for treason, temp. Henry VIII. 1538. He married Elizabeth Blount, by whom he had issue Edward Courtenay the 18th Earl of Devon (and last of the family of these Courtenays) that died at Padua, in Italy, without issue, 1556, 4th of October.

65 Edward Courtenay of Haccomb, or Boconnoc, aforesaid 16th Earl of Devon, had four sisters, as is set down in his will, dated 1509, in the first year of the reign of King Henry VIII. which were thus disposed of in marriage,—Elizabeth was married to John Trethyrfe of Trethyrfe, from whom Courtenay of that place, and Vyvyan of Trelowarren is descended; Maud to John Arundell of Tolverne, from whom the Arundells of Sythney, and by females the Trefusis of Trefusis, and the Halses late of Fentongollan are descended: Isabel, the third daughter, was married to William Moune, from whom the Lord Mohun descended: Florence, the fourth sister, was married to John Trelawney, from whom the Trelawneys of Trelawne are descended.

Whether this lordship of Boconnoc fell to the Crown by attainder of treason, upon the death of Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, or was purchased from the Crown, or of the sisters and heirs of the said Edward Courtenay, by Carmenow of Fengollan, I know not; he sold it to the Earl of Bedford; as the said Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford sold it, in 1566, to Reginald Mohun, Esq. (son or grandson of William Moune, who married Isabel Courtenay aforesaid) that married Joan daughter of Sir William Trevanion, Knt. whose son, Sir —— Mohun, Knt. married Joan, one of the sisters and coheirs of Sir John Horsey, Knt. by whom he had issue, Sir Reginald Mohun, Knt. that married two wives; the first, Sir William Killigrew’s daughter; the second, a daughter of —— Heale, of Wembury in Devon; the which Sir Reginald, 15 November 1612, was created a Baronet of England, temp. James I. and had issue, John Mohun, Esq. who in the lifetime of his father was created Baron Mohun of Oakhampton in right of his grandmother Isabel——, sister of Edward Courtenay, the 16th Earl of Devon, lord of the manor, honour, and borough of Oakhampton, who married and had issue Warwick Lord Mohun, who had issue Charles Lord 66 Mohun, who had issue, as I take it, another Charles Lord Mohun, who was slain in a duel between him and the Duke of Hamilton, who both died on the spot, temp. Queen Anne: after which his daughters and heirs sold this lordship and all his lands to Mr. Thomas Pitt, recently returned from the East Indies.

The ancestor of this ancient and famous family of the Mohuns came into England with William the Conqueror, by the name of William Mowne or Sapell, and was after the Conquest by him made Governor of Dunster Castle, who had issue William Mowne the second Lord of Dunster Castle, whose son, the third William, as Matthew Paris saith, did keep and fortify the same against King Stephen, for the use of Maud the Empress. It is told us by our chronologers and historians, that he was made Earl of Somerset by King Henry the First, 1135, and that he was founder of a priory of Black Canons of Bruton in Somersetshire, where Edgar Earl of Cornwall had before founded an abbey of Benedictine monks. (Vide Monasticon Anglicanum, tom. ii. p. 205,) to which charter were witnesses William de Moyn, his son, and others.

This William Earl of Somerset had issue another William, who is said also to have been Earl of Somerset: but Brooke, York Herald, says that this William and his son Reginald Lord Dunster both died in the time of William Earl of Somerset, so that Reginald de Moyn his grandson was the second and last Earl of Somerset of his name and family, who lost this hereditary office by siding with the Barons against King Henry the Third, A.D. 1297, after it had remained in his family about fifty years.

After the family became private gentlemen at Boconnoc, their names are found sometimes noticed; the first Sheriff of Cornwall, 6th Edw. VI. 1 Eliz. 13 Eliz. and 19 Eliz.

TONKIN.

Bo-con-oke; the name is Gaulish-Saxon,—the town or village of Stunt Oke.

After copying Mr. Hals’ narrative, Mr. Tonkin adds, Charles Lord Mohun, the last Baron of this family, being killed in a duel by the Duke of Hamilton, on the 5th of November 1712, left his whole estate by will, dated some time before, to his widow, who sold all the Cornish and Devonshire estates in 1717 for fifty-four thousand pounds (a very cheap bargain) to Thomas Pitt, Esq. commonly called Governor Pitt, in whose possession the manor of Boconnoc now remains.

This Charles Lord Mohun was a nobleman of very bright parts, and great natural endowments both of body and mind; but having had the misfortune to lose his father, while he was yet in the cradle—and the estate being left to him much involved in lawsuits between his nearest relations, and with a considerable debt—he had not an education bestowed on him suitable to his birth; and happening to fall into ill company, he was drawn into several extravagancies: but, however, as his years increased, he became so much reclaimed as to give great hopes that he would one day equal the greatest of his predecessors; when he was thus unfortunately cut off in the flower of his age.

He was twice married. First to Charlotte daughter of —— Manwaring, Esq. by whom he had only one daughter, whom he never owned, and he lived for several years separated from his wife. He had the good fortune, however, to get rid of her at last, she being drowned in a passage to Ireland with one of her gallants, about six or seven years before his own death.

Fitton Gerrard, Earl of Macclesfield, her maternal uncle, to make him some amends for his bad bargain, gave him by will a good part of his estate, in 1701, which was the occasion of the quarrel between his 68 Lordship and the Duke of Hamilton; so fatal to them both.

His second wife was the widow of Colonel Griffin, of the Green Cloth, by whom he had not any issue. His sister died before him unmarried.

THE EDITOR.

Boconnoc is universally allowed to be the finest seat in Cornwall. The house stands on an elevation near the union of two valleys, each rendered interesting, beautiful, and picturesque by streams of water flowing through uneven ground, and by native woods of beech and oak, rivalling the trees of our most favoured inland counties, although these vallies originate in wild tracts of land where not a stunted shrub is to be seen.

Mr. Thomas Pitt, although remotely descended from a good family, is said to have been the son of a person concerned in trade at Brentford. He must have gone to India at a time when some merchant adventurers, wholly unconscious of impending events, were engaged in laying the foundation of an Empire so vast as to exceed in the number of its subjects even the majesty of Rome itself. Mr. Pitt returned to Europe possessed of a diamond, superior, perhaps, in its combination of size and transparency, to any one ever exhibited in the western world. It was offered to Queen Anne, and ultimately sold to the Regent Duke of Orleans for the French nation, at a sum exceeding one hundred thousand pounds.[12] With about half of this large sum Mr. Pitt acquired the property in Cornwall of the last Lord Mohun, and settled at Boconnoc. He also purchased the burgage tenures, giving the right of franchise at Old Sarum, and represented that place in Parliament.

69 He had two sons, Robert and Thomas. Robert Pitt who succeeded him at Boconnoc, married Harriet Villiers, third sister of John Earl Grandison. He died in May 1727, leaving two sons, Thomas Pitt, and William, afterwards Earl of Chatham. Thomas Pitt, his brother, was created Earl of Londonderry, in consequence of his marrying the heiress of Ridgeway, who had borne that distinction; this younger branch became extinct in 1764. Thomas Pitt, his son, engaged most extensively in the political speculation, for which Cornwall was then become an ample field. But, having supported the party of Frederick Prince of Wales, he failed of obtaining any of the objects to which most speculations are supposed to lead. He married Christiana, sister of George first Lord Lyttelton; by whom he left Thomas Pitt, who, on the elevation of his first cousin, William Pitt, to the chief office in the State, when under twenty-five years of age, was created Baron Camelford in Jan. 1784. He died in 1793, leaving a son Thomas Pitt, the second and last Lord Camelford, and a daughter married to William Wyndham Grenville, Lord Grenville, the present possessor 70 of Boconnoc, having succeeded to her brother in 1804.

The personal history of this young man is curious and extraordinary. He became an object of attention in Cornwall almost from his birth. On the event of his christening, in 1775, Boconoc was thrown open for public and indiscriminate entertainment, accompanied by exhibitions of the peculiar athletic exercise in which the Cornish boast to excel all their contemporaries, and to rival the Palæstræ of ancient Greece. A silver bowl of fifteen guineas was the prize of the victor (the first who threw five falls), and about fifty pounds were distributed among the vanquished.

His education was conducted under a private tutor alone in the seclusion of Boconnoc; but having made an excursion to Plymouth at a time when naval preparations were in full activity, he acquired a passion for the sea so strong and rooted, as not to be overcome by all the efforts of authority or of advice.

He went on the perilous voyage of discovery conducted by Captain Vancouver, and in the course of it, he is said to have experienced some harsh treatment on the part of the commmander, which seems to have stamped a new impression on his mind, rendered permanent by the long period during which it was necessarily concealed.

On Lord Camelford’s return to England, the effects burst forth in acts of violence against Captain Vancouver, and from that time,

It is impossible not be struck by a general resemblance between the two individuals who last possessed Boconnoc, of the families of Mohun and Pitt. Both seem to have been men of ability and of genius, of intrepid courage and of honour, fond of enterprise, and with vigour of body commensurate to their mental energies; 71 but each unfortunately, obeying the impulse of passion and of strong feelings rather than the dictates of reason, was hurried on to an untimely fate. The latter fell by the hand of a person born to the situation of a gentleman, but in other respects little entitled to that distinction.

The first Lord Camelford might not only claim a full share of the hereditary talent connected with the names of Lyttelton and of Pitt;[13] but also literary acquirements and taste obtained under the guidance of his two uncles William Pitt Lord Chatham, and Lord Lyttelton. His gratitude to the latter is commemorated at Boconnoc by a lofty obelisk.

Lord Camelford introduced to the rectory of his parish the Reverend Benjamin Forster, a contemporary at Cambridge of congenial taste, and worthy of his friendship, the associate of Gray and of Mason; and with a mind like theirs suited for retirement and for literary leisure.[14] In his hours of relaxation he adorned the woods and shades, the vales and the rivulets, of Boconnoc with descriptive and appropriate illustrations from ancient and from modern poetry. To the Glebe-house he applied,

Mr. Forster has been long since deceased, his rectory taken down, and most of his friends departed from this life. His memory is for the present preserved by a tablet (brevi et ipsa interitura) bearing the following inscription:

72 Underneath rest the remains of Benjamin Forster, B.D. of C.C.C. Cambridge 1760; Lady Camden’s Lecturer at Wakefield in Yorkshire 1766; Rector of St. Mary Abchurch in London 1772; from thence removed to the Rectories of Boconock with Braddock in Cornwall, and to Carshayes, St. Michael, St. Stephens, and St. Dennis, in the same county, 1773.

Born Aug. 7, O.S. 1736. Died Dec. 2, N.S. 1805.

Epitaph written in the 33d year of his age:

Finally, Boconnoc-house is distinguished by having been the head quarters of King Charles the First in August and September 1684, when the army commanded by General Lord Essex, capitulated at Fowey.

This parish contains 1772 statute acres.

Or somewhat more than 22 per cent. in 30 years.

The Geology of this parish has nothing peculiar or characteristic. Dr. Boase remarks that the eastern part is a continuation of the barren downs which extend nearly to Lostwithiel, and that the southern, which is the fertile part, belongs to the calcarious series of the schistose group, but that the rocks are too much concealed under the alluvial soil to allow of their nature being very evidently manifest.

[12] The exact weight of the diamond is said to be 136¾ carats. A carat is equal to 3⅙ grains (see the Universal Cambist by Dr. Kelly, vol. i. p. 220, article London). It weighed therefore 433 grains, very nearly nine-tenths of an ounce troy of 480 grains.

For these 433 grains of diamond, the Regent Duke of Orleans is stated to have given 135,000l. or two thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine pounds troy of standard gold, or nearly one ton one hundred and a quarter avoirdupoise; above thirty-eight thousand four hundred times its own weight, or seven thousand five hundred and eighty times its bulk.

The Regent and his two successors in the government of France, used this diamond as an ornament to their hats on occasions of state. It was stolen during the license of the great Revolution, but recovered.

Napoleon had it placed between the teeth of a crocodile, forming the handle of his sword, unaware perhaps of how much this gem had contributed towards raising up the most formidable opponent to his ambition and ultimate aggrandisement.

[13] A series of his letters to Mr. Justice Hardinge has been published in Nichols’s Literary Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century, vol. vi. p. 74-139.

[14] A large quantity of Mr. Forster’s lively correspondence with Richard Gough, esq. Director S. A. and John Nichols, esq. F.S.A. has been printed in Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. ix. p. 648-650, and the Literary Illustrations, vol. vi. p. 290-328, 860-864.

HALS.

Bodmin is situate in the hundred of Trigg, and hath upon the north Helland, south Lanhydrock, west Lanivet, east Cardinham. In Domesday Roll 1067, or 1087, it was rated by the name of Bod-ran, id est, command, authority, or jurisdiction share, or division. In some other ancient manuscripts, Bod-man.

[Mr. Hals gives here a long detailed account of the supposed Bishopric of Bodmin, and of the Bishops themselves, with a great variety of collateral incidents; but the late Mr. Whitaker has shown, in his learned work on “The Cathedral of Cornwall,” that the whole is devoid of any foundation whatever. It is therefore omitted; and the reader desirous of information and entertainment is referred to that curious production of our learned antiquary.]

Algar Earl of Cornwall, successor of Ailmer, (as the Monasticon Anglicanum, tom. i. p. 213, and tom. ii. p. 205, informs us,) at his own proper cost and charges re-edified the church of St. Peter at Bodmin, as it now stands; consisting of three roofs, each sixty clothyards long, thirty broad, and twenty high, so that for bulk and magnificence it is parallel to the cathedral of Kirton, and little inferior to that of Exeter. Earl Algar gave the church to a society of Augustines or Black Canons.

Afterwards, if Leland’s manuscripts may be credited, those Black Canons were displaced, and succeeded by St. Benedict’s monks; and then again those monks were displaced, and succeeded by a nunnery of Benedictine nuns. Then again, saith he, those nuns were displaced, and succeeded by secular priests; who also were again displaced, and Canons Regular, or Black Canons Augustine, restored to their places; under which circumstance of religious men Leland found it when 74 King Henry the Eighth sent him into Cornwall, to inspect the orders and revenues of the religious houses therein. And in this state it was found by the Commissioners, 26 Henry VIII. when dissolved, at which time its revenue yearly was valued at 270l. 11s. Dugdale; 269l. 11s. 11d. Speed. Now this value, the reader must observe, was only the conventionary or annual rent reserved on leases of the priory land, set out to tenants for 99 years, determinable upon lives, and the common way of valuing those old rents was after the rate of ten per cent.; so that 270l. rent was then worth 2,700l. now worth 6,000l. per annum: which lands and rents are now chiefly in the hands and possession of Godolphin, Buller, Robarts, Morrice, Prideaux, Vivian, Rashleigh, Nicholls, Moyle, Molesworth, and many others.

The churches appropriated to this priory were, 1. Bodmin, 2. St. Wenn, 3. Withiel, 4. St. Kew, 5. St. Breock, 6. Little Pederick, 7. Padstow, 8. St. Ervan, 9. Crantock, 10. Cubert, 11. St. Colomb-minor, 12. Tregony, 13. St. Minver, 14. Lanhydrock, and some others, whereof the priors were either patrons or founders.

The Prior of this church of St. Peter kept his treasurer, his steward, almoner, hospitalarius, et infirmarius, that took care of sick and weak beggars and travellers. The priory-house wherein he dwelt is yet extant, though his domestic chapel and burial-place be dilapidated and demolished, all contiguous with the church aforesaid.

The jurisdiction and royalty over the river Alan, from Camelford to Padstow Rock, was given to this Prior by Algar Earl of Cornwall, in right of his manor of Helston, in this hundred, excepting the right of free fishing to the tenants thereof; a river famous for infinite number of those kings of fishes called salmon, which between Midsummer and Christmas are taken there, reputed, by such as are skilled in the gusto or palate, the best of that kind in Cornwall (except the salmon of the Val 75 river, in this county). But, since the dissolution of this priory by King Henry the Eighth, this royalty is disjointed, if not dismembered from it, and enjoyed in co-partnership by such as are the now owners of its lands and revenues, and by some others whose lands are contiguous with that river; though the now Duchy tenants of the manor of Helston aforesaid still pay barbe-agu, or bar-ba-gut money, id est, barbed-spear money, annually to the Duke of Cornwall, who is Lord thereof, for free fishing with salmon-spears.

The list or catalogue of the names of the Priors of this church is lost, except Thomas Vivian, the last save one;[15] a man famous in his days for his piety and charities, as his benefactions make him still memorable in ours; for he built the rectory-house at Withall, the mansion-house at Ryalton, the south roof at Edleshayle church, and the lofty spire and steeple lately upon his prioral, now parochial church of Bodmin aforesaid, which was all struck down with lightning and thunder anno Dom. 1699, and since again re-edified as it now stands, without a spire, at the proper cost and charge of the inhabitants of Bodmin town and parish.

This Prior Vivian was by the Pope consecrated Bishop of Megara, in Achaia, a city of Greece. He lies entombed with his bust or skeleton within a costly and curious stone chest or monument, about seven feet long, and three feet high above ground, on the top of which is cut at full length his portraiture as a man, and on this figurative body his episcopal robes, his mitre on his head, his staff or crosier in his hand, his face encompassed over with the wings of two cherubim standing by: somewhat defaced in the interregnum of Cromwell, as a superstitious monument. This tomb is also adorned round with crosses; the arms of his Bishopric of Megara, viz. in a field Gules, three human thigh-bones saltirewise Or, or Proper; the arms of his priory aforesaid; 76 the arms of England, France, and Ireland; and lastly, that of his own or his ancestors’ arms, viz. in a field Argent, on a chevron Azure three annulets, between three bears’ heads erased and muzzled Sable, on a chief Gules three martlets Or; which are arms of a strange confused bearing, according to the rules of heraldry, composed or consisting of two of the honourable ordinaries, a chevron and a chief, and the same charged with martlets and annulets, of colours yellow, white, red, blue, and black, charge upon charge, and colours upon colours; all which monument is surrounded with an ancient and broken inscription to this purpose:

Hic tumulatus venerabilis Pater Thomaus Vivian, Megarensis Episcopus, hujus domus Prior; qui obiit tertio die Junii, anno Dom. 1533. Cujus animæ propitietur Deus. Amen.

This church of the Prior’s, after dissolution of the priory aforesaid, was converted to a parochial church for the parish and town of Bodmin, and the secular church of Beni left to fall into utter ruin and decay, as it now stands; and is discontinued either for use of living or dead human creatures, the tower only standing, and cattle daily depasturing in the same, and the cemetery thereof, as in other places.

Also this prioral rectory church, long before its dissolution, was converted by the Prior into a vicarage church; for in the Inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester before mentioned, anno Dom. 1294, Eccles. de Bodmin, in Decanatu de Trigg minor, was taxed to the Pope’s annats vil. xiiis. 4d. Vicar ibidem nihil propter paupertatem. The rectory or patronage now in Prideaux, the Incumbent Wood (Key), and the parish rated to the 4s. per pound Land Tax, 1696, 89l. 1s. per annum; the borough of Bodmin 178l. 12s.; in all 267l. 13s.

In Bodmin churchyard is a well-built school-house, built over a very spacious charnel-house or grott, where 77 are piled up the dry bones of such men and women as are found in new-made graves, to put the scholars and townsmen in mind of mortality; and is now commonly called the Bone-house. This school Queen Elizabeth endowed with about 16l. 13s. 4d. per annum revenues out of the Exchequer for ever.

The name Bodmin anciently comprehended no more than the town or borough itself, as it is now taxed in the Exchequer; for in the Domesday tax Beni, Lanlaran, now St. Lawrence, and Lantallan, were districts rated by themselves, though now consorted under that name of Bodmin parish and town. It is called a burge, or burghs, from the same Japhetical original as the Cornish word purguse, πυργος [purgus], turris, a tower, castle, fenced or fortified place, from whence the Latins had their word burgus, of the same import; and suitable thereto, notable it is, this town hath in it still a place called Tower-hill; as also, that every considerable town or burg in Cornwall heretofore had near it, for its defence, some castle, tower, or citadel, to defend it from the invasion of enemies. And agreeably to this interpretation and custom, Bodmin town, upon the east part thereof, upon a high-mounted hill, hath still extant the ruins and downfalls of a treble British entrenchment, containing above twelves acres of ground, formerly and still called Castle Kynock, alias Cunock, synonymous words, i. e. the King’s, or the supreme and sovereign castle. (See Truro, Launceston, Saltash, Helston, &c. for the like.)

Hence it is in the Cornish-British we have πυργες, purges, Anglice burgess, or a citizen (from whence the Latins had their word burgensis), which signifies an inhabitant of such a place as kept a tower, castle, fort, or hold, or had a college-court of purgesses (now burgesses) in it. And I doubt that, long before the Norman Conquest, or bishopric here was erected, this town of Bodmin 78 by prescription was invested with the jurisdiction of a court-leet, (id est, a court that kept a law-day, or festival,) though the same was not confirmed by a charter or incorporated before King John, A.D. 1216, granted one thereto; whereby he privileged the same with the tribunal also of a mayor, recorder, town clerk, twelve aldermen, and twenty-four common-councilmen, or assistants, who have power to nominate and elect a new mayor annually by the majority of voices, as also members of parliament. The mayor and town clerk, and last preceding mayor, justices of the peace for one year after within the said borough; the town clerk during life. This town and borough is held of the King of Great Britain, and pays annually to the King’s Audit at Launceston between five and six pounds per annum rent, beyond the records of time.

By the same charter it was made also one of the towns for coinage of tin, though long since discontinued (see Lostwithiel for the Tinners’ Charter); and made also the only staple town in Cornwall where in a public market merchants might carry their goods for wholesale, and whereby the mayor and town clerk also were authorized to take the acknowledge of statute staple bonds between party and party as the law directs.

Now to remove an action depending in this court-leet of Bodmin to any superior court, the writ must be thus directed:

Majori et Communi Clerico Burgi sui de Bodmin, in comitatu Cornubiæ, salutem.

The chief men within this town, and within the circumstances aforesaid, are Mr. Philipps, Mr. Bullock, Mr. Hobbs, Mr. Bligh, Mr. Wymond, Mr. May, Mr. Smith, Mr. Tomm.

The precept for electing members of parliament is thus directed: Majori et Burgensibus Burgi sui de Bodmin, &c.

79 This town, for number of inhabitants (as in Mr. Carew’s time, 1602) far exceeds any other town in Cornwall; which is also privileged by its charter with keeping a weekly market on Saturdays, wherein is vended of all creatures both living and dead, corn, fish, and fowl, and all other things necessary for the life of man, in such great abundance, and at a moderate price, as the same equals if not exceeds the markets of Tavistock and Exeter, in Devon. It is also appurtenanced with fairs, upon January 25th, December 6th, Saturday after Mid-lent Sunday, and on Wednesday before Whitsun-day. There is a street in this town called Cassiter-street, that is to say, Woodland-street. (See Falmouth, for Cassiter and Cassiteros.)

I have been told that, within the memory of sixty years last past, there was extant within this town and parish the remains, ruins, and dilapidated walls of no less than 13 churches or free chapels, wherein heretofore God was duly worshipped, perhaps first erected by those religious persons mentioned by Leland, who had so often been displaced or turned out from the priory as aforesaid.

But, above all others, there is still extant in this town the stately church of the Franciscan Friars, dedicated to St. Nicholas, and their cells, consisting of one roof twenty clothyards high and fifty long, with two stone-windows, admirable for height, breadth, and workmanship; which, after the dissolution of their house and order by King Henry the Eighth, the justices of the peace of this county appointed for a house of correction for such vagrant and idle persons as the same afforded, by the name of the Friary and Shire-hall; which the townsmen taking notice of, soon after converted or profaned it further to a common market-house, for selling corn, wool, and other commodities weekly; yea, and within the same is kept yearly several fairs for selling all sorts of merchandize, the altars being pulled down, and in the churchyard, or burial-place, a fair for cattle. 80 It also lately made the tribunal or hall for the judges of assize yearly, and the justices of the peace in their sessions, and is undoubtedly, except Westminster Hall, the fairest and best in England.

The stone font of this church for baptizing infants is now converted to a measure for corn in this hall, which also, as I said, is the weekly market-house. On the same is an inscription in old characters, which I leave for abler capacities than mine to interpret.

The founder of those Cordelier or Franciscan Friars was Francis of Assium, in Italy, who was born about the year 1140. His parents placed him to school for some time to study the liberal arts and sciences, and afterwards placed him to the trade and occupation of a merchant, which in Italy still, as anciently it was amongst the Jews, is so reputable an employment that even princes themselves are merchants: which trade or occupation Francis followed, with small gain or advantage, in a fair and righteous way, for some time, but growing discontented thereat, and not knowing thereby well how to subsist, he resolved, as others did, to follow indirect arts and practices to get more riches, by stealing the duties of such goods and merchandize as he bought and sold, which then was, and still is, a capital crime in Italy; and accordingly put the same in practice, and much enriched himself thereby, though at length his fraud was detected, himself indicted, tried for his life, and condemned to death for the same. Whereupon, in order to prevent the sentence inflicted upon him, and to avoid the halter, he gave the greatest part of his goods and estate to his prince, to grant or procure his pardon, and the other part to pious uses, in relieving the poor, and re-edifying and endowing three churches. Afterwards he fell into such great horror and trouble of conscience for those facts, and that he was fully informed from Hosea xii. 7 and 8, that a merchant cannot be without guile, nor a victualler without 81 sin, it so wrought upon him, that he did not only renounce his trade of a merchant, but also forsook all worldly affairs, and took upon himself the vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity; and under the habit of a grey cover, or scapula, and a coat of the same, surrounded or girded in the middle with a twisted rope, cord, or halter, in memory of his deliverance from it and the gallows, as aforesaid, with naked legs and discalceated feet, he forsook his house, and went about the country preaching the Gospel gratis, subsisting only on the alms and charity of his hearers, and what was wanting in that particular was made up by downright beggary. And in short time he so far prevailed with the people by his predicatements, that divers brethren went about with him, following the same manner of life, under the rules and habit aforesaid, which gave him occasion or opportunity to lay the foundation of the first convent in Christendom of his order at Assissium aforesaid, and obtained a confirmation of his rule from the Pope; and two years after his death, 4th Aug. 1228, was by him canonized for a saint.

However, let it be remembered here, that afterwards St. Bonaventure, being at the 18th year of his age entered of this order of St. Francis, and in the general chapter of Narbonne chosen minister general of those friars, he then so altered and regulated his rule and order, or rather reformed it, that ever since it might more aptly be called the order of St. Bonaventure than that of St. Francis. Which St. Bonaventure afterwards being made a Bishop, and one of the Cardinals of Rome, wrote the Life of St. Francis in Latin, and therein recounted so many stories of his conversion as aforesaid, of his perfection, religion, reparation of three churches, his sincere, mortified life, and the manner of preparing creatures for his refection, his humility, obedience, condescension, and bowing downwards of himself, his love of poverty, the wonderful supply of his 82 wants, his affections towards piety, his desire of martyrdom, his study, and virtuous orations, his skill in Scripture and spirit of prophecy, his efficacious predicatements, his sacred marks, and holy chastisements of his body, his patience in undergoing the pangs of death, 4th Oct. 1226, that in this place I have only room to name them. And as a surplusage thereto, St. Bonaventure, as also Alosi Lepomani, Bishop of Seville, ascribe to St. Francis, before and after his death, the doing of no less than 113 miracles, or supernatural acts, which, I think, are more than are recorded by the sacred writings to be done by our Saviour Jesus.

But, notwithstanding all that is done and said by St. Bonaventure in praise of St. Francis, he did not much rely upon the merit of him or any other Saint, since it is an established sanction at the end of all his hymns pertaining to this order of Franciscans,

Now though this Order of St. Francis, after convents were erected and endowed, for the most part lived in convents under these rules as aforesaid, without alms or begging, yet a particular sort of them went abroad to preach the Gospel in parochial churches and free chapels, where the rector, vicar, curate, or chaplain was no preacher, and administered the sacraments as occasion required; having, moreover, committed to their charge or jurisdiction, by the Pope, the commutation of penance for sins committed; and, because by their rule they were not to take money, they took the same in corn, wool, fruits, fields, goods, and chattels, for their Superior. Those kind of missionaries were called Friars Observants, and went at large as supervisors, who pretended to a stricter observation of their rule than the master conventuals that went not abroad. What revenues this stately church of St. Francis at Bodmin had at its dissolution I know not, neither doth the Monasticon Anglicanum inform me; besides five quarterly pence, and 83 twenty penee by the year out of every family or dwelling-house in Cornwall, that was not excused propter paupertatem. Supplication of Beggars to Henry the Eighth, p. 2.

Those Franciscan friars, Mendicant or Minors, came not into England till Henry the Third’s days (since which time this church at Bodmin must be erected) in all but nine in number, who landed at Dover; five of which went to Canterbury, where, by the King’s leave, they built the first convent in England of their order; four went to London, and had a place given them in St. Nicholas Shambles, anno Dom. 1260, to erect another convent or monastery, by John Jewyn, merchant. However, let it be remembered that the Black Friars Mendicant, or Augustines, were founded by William de Paris, and first brought into England in the time of William the Conqueror, to whom Robert Kilwarby, Archbishop of Canterbury tempore William I. at the west end of London, on the bank of the Thames, founded and endowed there a monastery to them. For White Friars, or Cistersians, see Kilkhampton; for Dominicans, St. Dominick. Carmelite Friars were founded at Carmellus, a town in Syria; as also a latter order of those discalceated friars were founded by St. Mary de Theresa, of Jesus, of the blessed Lady of Mount Carmel, 1540. She was a native of Castile, and died 4th October, 1582, in the 68th year of her age, and 47th of being religious. She was canonized by Pope Gregory XV. 12th March 1622. The Friars of St. Francis of Paula, in Italy, were founded by him 1414; little different from those others. Finally of these friars: Bishop Usher, in his Discourse of the Primitive Church, fully demonstrates that, before the Reformation of religion, besides monks there were in this land, of the five orders, above thirty thousand begging friars.

At Lan-car, in this parish, (rest-rock, or rock-temple, if ever any church or chapel was extant here, otherwise, 84 by the rock may be signified some notable stone-quarry found in those lands,) was the dwelling of John Mountstephens, Esq. sometime member of parliament for West Looe, who purchased the same from Mr. Bullock. He was the son of Mounts or Stephens, alias Mountstephen, of St. Mabyn, and had his first education under Mr. Stephens, sometime schoolmaster of Bodmin, to whom at length he became usher; afterwards was clerk or servitor to William Lilly, Esq. and so became an undergraduate in Oxford; and, being recommended by him to the notice of the Earl of Sunderland, Lord President of the Council temp. James II. he made him one of his clerks or secretaries, which circumstance further brought him to the knowledge of Jonathan Lord Bishop of Bristol, by whose interest he obtained a burgess-ship at West Looe for the parliament, and was afterwards made one of the Commissioners for the King’s Tin-farm in those parts; by which ways and means he got himself considerable wealth and reputation.

But, notwithstanding all those his prosperous successes of fortune, in the month of December, or beginning of January, 1706, aged about 60 years, when he was at London, a member of parliament as aforesaid, and in his own house till eleven of the clock, one day upon some discontent went from his company, and so into a more retired apartment, where he took a razor and cut his own throat, and instantly fell dead on the spot, the razor by his side all bloody, to the great terror and amazement of his domestics, who found him in that posture.

Various were the reports and sayings of people upon occasion of this sad accident; some said it was for that he made addresses of marriage to a gentlewoman above his degree, who rejected his amours, upon account of some concubine, or bedfellow, he kept at Truro; others, with more probability, gave out that he was detected by the Earl of Sunderland (who raised him) for eighteen years’ space to have been a French pensioner, and to have 85 received a great sum of money annually for communicating the secrets of the Queen and Parliament to the Secretary of the French King, which as soon as he understood, by a letter shown him under his own hand, he instantly went home to his lodgings, burnt all his papers, and committed the felo-de-se aforesaid.

Bo-carne,[16] in this parish, id est, cows, kine, cattle, and white spar-stones, comparatively rocks, is the dwelling of William Flammock, Gent. that married Reynolds, and giveth for his arms, out of a supposed allusion to their name, Argent, a chevron between three estoiles Sable, (that is, in a wavy or flaming posture,) for flammock, after the Cornish-British, must be interpreted a flame and smoke; since the Latin words flamma, or flame, or bright burning fire-sparkle, and flammans, burning, flaming, are both derived from the British word flam; for exæstuo is the proper and native word, to burn, or flame.

Again, this family indifferently wrote their name Flam-mank, Flam-manc, id est, in Cornish, flaming or burning glove, sleeve, or gauntlet; so called, perhaps, for that some of this family was a notable soldier, and famous in the combat at sword and gauntlet, (viz. military glove,) or a sleeve and gorget of mail, as the above name. And flammock may relate to some soldier of this tribe that was as renowned in his charge with the fusee or firelock, soon after the invention of guns: for Camden, in his Remains, tells us that in Edward the Third’s French wars gunaria, or gunarii, had its pay; which was before the invention of guns in Germany.

But if flammeck, flammeg, flammock, be a monosyllable, and not a compound or conjugated word, it signifies in British blear-eyed-ness, or one that hath a sparkling or flaming eye, either by natural or accidental infirmity, an obstruction of sight.

I take this gentleman to be the lineal descendant of 86 that Mark Le Flemanc who was possessed of 16l. rents in lands and tenements in Cornwall, 40th Henry III. (Carew’s Survey,) that were held by the tenure of knight’s service, and was no knight; who was obliged by his tenure to send into the King’s army a man and horse armed with lorica, capello ferri, gladio, et cultello, a breastplate, a brigandine, an iron headpiece, a sword and cuttler. As was also that Thomas Flammock, a lawyer, in the reign of King Henry VII. 1496, who, together with Michael Joseph, a smith of these parts, stirred up the Cornish people to a rebellion against that prince, under the pretence of the severity of a land tax, though it was but a subsidy of an hundred and twenty thousand pounds, charged by Act of Parliament for one year of the thirty-seven shires of England, towards the Scotch war; which, after the severest imposition, could not amount to above 2,500l. on this county. But really the ground and design of this insurrection was to depose King Henry from his crown and dignity, and in his stead to set up Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, the true heir male of the House of York, sister’s son to King Edward the Fourth. Which being well understood by the inhabitants of Cornwall, gave Flammock and Joseph opportunity to raise such an army, as thereby to become so formidable that John Basset, of Tehidy, then Sheriff, with his posse comitatus, dared not encounter them. Whereupon they marched with their army, consisting of about six thousand men, from Bodmin to Launceston, and from thence into Devon; where also they appeared so tremendous that Sir William Carew, Knight, then Sheriff thereof, with his posse comitatus, would not venture a battle with them, but suffered them (either through fear or affection) to pass through his Bailiwick into Somersetshire, and so Taunton there; in which place they slew the Provost Perrin, a commissioner for the subsidy aforesaid, and then advanced to Wells; where James Touchet, Lord Audley, knowing the mystery of their 87 design, confederated with them, and became their general. Soon after, they published their declaration of pretended grievances, chiefly concerning the said land tax, and wholly laying the blame of that exaction upon John Martin, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Reginald Bray, Knt. two of the King’s Council, whom they would have removed from that station.

Upon which pretence (and the secret reserve aforesaid) the people, being better affected to the House of York than to that of Lancaster, suffered these rebels quietly to march from Wells to Salisbury, from Salisbury to Winchester, and from thence into Kent, where they expected great aid and assistance; but when they came there, contrary to promise and to expectation, no person came to their help: but on the contrary, for the King there appeared in arms against them, with the Earl of Kint, the Lord Abergavenny, Sir John Brook, Lord Cobham, and divers other gentlemen, with great forces, to stop their further proceedings that way. Upon which disappointment, the rebels turned their march towards London, and encamped upon Blackheath, about four miles from thence; where they had not long been before they were encountered by Giles Lord Daubeny, King Henry’s general, who, after a short conflict with them, and the loss of three hundred soldiers on the King’s part, and two thousand on the Rebels’ side, the remainder of them fell into despair, threw down their arms, craved mercy, and yielded themselves prisoners. The King pardoned many; but of the chief authors of the insurrection none. The Lord Audley was committed to Newgate, and from thence drawn to Tower-hill in his coat-armour (painted on paper), reversed and torn, where he was beheaded. Flammock and Michael Josepp the smith, were hanged, drawn, and quartered, and has their heads and quarters pitched upon stakes set up in London and other places, June 26, 1496. [See Lord Bacon’s History of King Henry the Seventh. An opinion 88 is still prevalent in Cornwall, that after themselves the people of Kent are the most brave in England.]

This town and parish of Bodmin is also notable for the rendezvous of Perkin Warbeck’s army from St. Michell’s Mount, which he had also raised to the number of six thousand in opposition to King Henry the Seventh, anno Dom. 1498, as the pretended Richard of Shrewsbury, second son to King Edward the Fourth; where he was proclaimed King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, by the name of Richard the Fourth: but he and his army at length underwent the same fate as the former rebels did. (See St. Michael’s Mount, in this our History.)

Here also was the rendezvous of the Cornish rebels under Humphrey Arundell, Esq. anno 3 Edward VI. who pitched their camp upon Castle Kynock aforesaid, and imprisoned such gentlemen as would not willingly ride with them, till the King’s forces vanquished the one, and delivered the other, at and near Exeter. (See St. Hillary.)

Now Sir Anthony Kingston, Provost Martial of the King’s Army, coming from Exeter to do justice in Cornwall according to the law of arms against such rebels as had escaped thence, executed Thomas Boyeer, the mayor of this town, and the miller’s man, is set forth in Mr. Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, p. 124 (p. 292 of Lord Dunstanville’s Edition).

In this parish is St. Laurence, so called from the chapel dedicated to his guardianship. The name is derived from the Latin words, laureat and ensis, that is, a laureat sword, or a sword of triumph. St. Laurence was a native of Osca, in Spain, born about the year 280. He received holy orders from St. Xysten, who was raised to the chair of St. Peter in 257. During the persecution by the Emperor Valerian, St. Laurence, finding that not even the sacred vestments nor the decorations of the church were safe from profane hands, availed himself 89 of the office of chief deacon, which he then held, to dispose of the whole, and to distribute the wealth thus acquired among the indigent of his spiritual brethren. This having been made known to the Prefect of Rome, a man devoted to the worship of false gods, but more, as the biographer observes, to the adoration of silver and gold, he demanded from St. Laurence the riches of the church, who promised in three days to produce them; and on the third day he returned with the poor persons among whom their value had been divided. When the Prefect, transported with rage, is said to have ordered his destruction by the most cruel death. The legend reports him to have been fastened on an iron bed, and consumed by fire placed under it. Hence the familiar emblem attributed to this martyr, of a gridiron. The event is referred to the 10th of Aug. 261.

In this parish the town, or rather village of St. Laurence, is situated between two hills, and with a pleasant river running through its street, about a mile and a half west from Bodmin. In it stands a lawres hospital, that is to say, a hospital for lepers (loure, or lower, in British is a leper), which hath good endowment of lands and revenues appertaining thereto, founded by the piety and charity of the well-disposed people of this county in former ages, for the relief, support, and maintenance of all such people as should be visited with that sickness called elphantiasy, in Latin lepra or elphantia, in English leprosy, in British lowerery; being a white infectious scurf running all over the bodies of such persons as are tainted therewith. Which disease heretofore in many families was hereditary, and infected the blood for generations.

This disease, though common in Asia, was thought to have been first brought into England from Egypt by seamen and traders, so that generally it spread itself over this kingdom about the year 1100. Soon after 90 which, a general collection of charitable benevolences was gathered throughout the land by one of the Mowbrays, a gentleman tainted with the disease, for erecting and endowing the lazar-house or hospital of Burton, in Leicestershire, to which place was made subject all other hospitals of this sort in England, as the Master of Burton Hospital was afterwards made subject to the Master of St. John’s Hospital of Jerusalem, in London, and then, soon after the erection of lazar-houses throughout this kingdom, was invented that writ called Leproso amovendo, for removing a leper from his country-house to the hospital. But the custom in this place was such, that none were to be admitted by the governors of the same for the time being, unless the person so brought in paid them 5d. a pot for dressing their meat, a purse and a penny in it to receive alms. At present I hear of no lepers in this hospital, nor any person visited with this disease in Cornwall: however, daily in the chapel of Lawrence, by the townspeople, God is duly worshipped by a chaplain in deacon’s orders, who reads divine service to them according to the church of England; and at three several times at least in the year the Vicar of Bodmin, and Rector of Lannerat, for a small stipend preach and administer the sacraments to them. Infants baptized, and the dead bodies thereof buried, at Bodmin church.

The lands, customs, and privileges of this lazar-house,[17] or lower hospital, were much augmented or enlarged, and also confirmed by a charter from Queen Elizabeth, in the beginning of her reign, with the jurisdiction of a court-leet within the precincts of its manor of Ponteby, (id est, by the ford or bridge whereon the town of St. Lawrence is situate,) the white-rod erected or held up yearly whilst the court is sitting. It is also by that charter privileged with a weekly market, to be kept on Wednesday, within the town of St. Lawrence, though of 91 late discontinued; as also with fairs yearly on the 10th of August and the 18th of October.

TONKIN.

In respect to the etymology of the name Bodmin, or Bodman, I have no difficulty. I looke upon the word as Saxon-Kernawish, bode and man, or bode-men in the plural, which may safely, and without a catachræsis, be interpreted, the preacher-man, or men. That bode signifies priest, or preacher, in the Cornish, the Gaelic, and other cognate tongues, I confirm by the authority of Alfred, the Saxon grammarian, and of Verstegan, from which is derived our modern Kernawish word for a priest.

And this sense is preserved in the names of divers other churches throughout the land; as in the hundred of Weston, Herefordshire, where we find Boddenham Vicarage, bod-den-ham, preacher-man-dwelling, den being in Kernawish synonymous with man.

[The remainder of Mr. Tonkin’s narrative agrees so nearly with that of Mr. Hals as not to require its insertion.]

WHITAKER.

“The paroch chirch standith at the est end of the town, and is a fair large thyng,” says Leland, an author with whom Mr. Hals had no acquaintance (though the Itinerary of that author was published in 1710, and in some years immediately following; and the Collectanea in 1715); “there is a cantuarie chapel at th’est ende of it.” This is the present school, situated a few yards east of the eastern end, raised upon vaults, ascended by steps, entered by an arched door of stone peaked, 92 having a large arched window peaked; at the east two windows in the arch, two on the south, arched and peaked; with three stalls of stone on the south, near the eastern end. The space below, lately a bone-house to the church, now atttached to the school, must formerly have been a walk under the vault.

“Bodmyn hath a market on every Saturday, lyke a fair for the confluence of people.” (Itin. ii. 114.) Bodmin was then at the height of its glory: it began soon afterwards to sink. The many decayed houses, says Carew, 120 years afterwards, prove the town to have been once very populous. What occasioned this decay was the Reformation, probably, throwing the revenues of the priory, and of the house of friars, into the hands of men laical and distant.

“There was a good place of Gray Freres in the south syde of Bodmin town. One John of London, a merchaunt, was the beginner of this house. Edmund Erle of Cornewaul augmentid it. There lay buried in the Gray Freres Sir Hugh and Sir Thomas Peverel, Knightes, and benefactors to the house.”—(Leland.) The remains of this form the south side of an open space, which must have been the quadrangle or court of the Friars, and have been surrounded by its buildings, on the east, the north, and the west. On the west end, near the grand door in these remains, was the church-yard, or burying-place, which Mr. Hals says was made a fair for cattle; and here were very lately found, by sinking a saw-pit, bones in a considerable quantity.

The remains themselves are, a long and lofty room, once a church, but since used as Mr. Hals describes. It has a fine window at the east end, peaked in the arch; the only part of it that is not blocked up being very pleasingly broken into small parts by mullions of stone.

It has another arch for a window to the west, but not so fine; and four arches on the north and south sides, all peaked, but those most easterly more sharply 93 than the others. What Mr. Hals calls a font is still there; and a font it assuredly is, the Friars having just as much right to a font as to a burying-place; but the inscription upon it is on two or three squares of the hexagon in which the font is shaped, and is too modern to mean any thing.

“There is a chapel of St. —— at the west ende of the toune. There is another chapel in Bodmyn beside that at the west ende of the toune, and an almose house, but not endowid with landes.” (Leland, Itin. ii. 114, 115.) Query, says Tanner, respecting the latter, Whether this alms-house was St. Anthony’s or St. George’s? for the will of John Killigrew, proved A.D. 1500, gives legacies Pauperibus Sancti Antonii de Bodmyn, et Pauperibus Sancti Georgii de Bodmyn. Both these chapels had an almshouse. The latter is that chapel which stood on the summit of a hill north of Bodmin, called Berry, from some castle or fort upon it, I suppose, and giving name to the valley below it, Berrycoomb, or Bereum. The remains of this chapel are merely a tower, neat but slight, making a considerable object to the road from its elevation, yet small in its rise, or its pitch, and carrying a face of no great antiquity, being merely three hundred years old. The town, says tradition, stood formerly here, was burnt down, and then removed to its present site. That this is false as history we know for certain, as we know the town to have been where it now stands, but that the town in the days of its high prosperity had shot out hither.

“The showe and the principale of the toun of Bodmyn,” says Leland, “is from west to est along in one streate.” (Itin. ii. 114.) There were (says Mr. Hals upon the credit of information) within these sixty years past no less than thirteen churches, or free chapels, remaining either whole or ruined in the town and parish, and this was one.

94 The church of the priory, notes Mr. Hals, after the dissolution of religious houses, was converted to a parochial church. It was, indeed, such from the beginning: so Leland tells us concerning it in his time, “that the parish church standeth at the east end of the town,” &c. It was even converted as such from a rectorial to a vicarial church before 1290.

This prioral rectory church, Mr. Hals himself informs us, (long before the dissolution, and therefore not after the dissolution of the priory, as said before,) was converted by the Prior into a vicarage church; for in the Inquisitions of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester, Ecclesia de Bodman was rated to the Pope’s annats at 6l. 13s. 4d. Vicar. ejusdem nihil propter paupertatem. So directly does Mr. Hals confute himself; but the words of the record are not cited fairly, and are in reality these:

Nor could any one of the thirteen be a free chapel, as no such chapels existed in the first or in the second valuation, and therefore none are mentioned therein.

Vivian’s “tomb is adorned round with crosses.” In truth, it has only one, and that is upon the northern side. “The arms of his Bishopric of Megara,” the arms of this Priory, and lastly, “those of his own or of his ancestors.” But there are three fishes repeated as arms twice; and Mr. Hals affirms himself that the jurisdiction and royalty over the river Alan, from Camelford to Padstow Rock, was given to this Priory by Algar Earl of Cornwall; and in further testimony of Algar’s donation of the royalty of this river, he gave for the perpetual arms of him and his priory, In a field Azure, three salmon-fishes in fess barwise Argent; which arms were lately extant in all the church windows of the churches under the priory.

Castle Kynock, as called by some to this day, but called simply the Castle by the generality, lies more than half 95 a mile to the south-west, has two ditches and two ramparts; the outer are very deep and very massy, the inner are much shallower and slighter. It takes in the whole crest of the hill, the ground within rising from the sides to the summit; is circular in form, because the hill is so; and has its only entrance on the east, denoted as an original entrance by the bridge of earth, as it were, which leads across the hollow of the ditches into it. The whole is double, I believe, to the extent that Mr. Hals gives it; and, from the position of the entrance on the east, appears to be Roman in its origin.

THE EDITOR.

It is not my intention to enter on any discussion relative to the remote and obscure antiquity of Bodmin. Tanner, in his Notitia Monasticon, says Bodmin, or Bodmanna.

There was a church built here to the memory of St. Petroc, a religious man born in Wales, but who, coming from Ireland, is said to have built a monastery on the north coast of Cornwall, about A.D. 520, and to have been there buried; but his body being afterwards removed to Bodmin, a church was built to his memory, and the episcopal see for Cornwall was believed to have been therein placed by King Edward the Elder and Archbishop Plegmund, A.D. 705. Here King Æthelstan is reported to have met with old Saxon, or rather British, monks following the Rule of St. Benedict, to whom he granted so great privileges and endowments that he is accounted founder of the monastery here, about A.D. 926. That settlement was destroyed by the Danish pirates, A.D. 981; yet the religious continued here under several shapes, and much alienation of their lands, both before and after the Conquest, till about the year 1120, when Earl Algar, with the King’s license, and the consent of William Warlewach, Bishop of Exeter, re-established this religious-house, and placed 96 therein regular canons of the Order of St. Austin, who continued till the general suppression, when it was styled the Priory of St. Mary and St. Petroc, and was valued at 270l. per annum according to Dugdale, and 289l. 12s. according to Speed. The site, with the demesnes, were granted, 36th of Henry VIII. to Thomas Sternhold, one of the first translators of the Psalms into English metre.

Any one desirous of learning all that can be known or conjectured respecting the Western Bishopric, is referred to “The Ancient Cathedral of Cornwall historically surveyed,” by the Rev. John Whitaker; where that subject and various others are discussed, with the eloquence, ability, erudition, and confidence, usually displayed by that eminent writer; who appears always to assume throughout the whole of his work the very questionable fact, that monastic historians, distant both in time and in space from the events which they relate, are possessed of perfect information, and that their narratives flow with unerring accuracy, at a period when none of the inventions for rapidly carrying intelligence, and for stamping it with the authentic impression of public notoriety, had yet occurred to the human mind.

I willingly leave these recondite, and, in truth, little interesting researches, for others of a more modern date, the objects of which are still extant, and their effects influencing the present times. Those connected with Bodmin we owe, in a great measure, to the ability, the industry, and the laudable zeal of Mr. John Wallis, the present vicar, on whom I would readily bestow more praise, if his merits had not rendered commendation from me superfluous.

One event, however, intermediate between the Saxon antiquities of Bodmin and those disclosed by Mr. Wallis, is so very curious, and so illustrative of opinions and of habits long passed away, that I cannot help inserting the details of it from Benedictus Abbas, an author of high reputation, Abbot of the great monastery of St. 97 Peter at Medeshamsted, or Peterborough, and contemporary with the transactions which he relates.

In his work “De Vita et Gestis Henrici secundi et Ricardi primi,” ex editione Thomæ Hearnii, Oxon. 1735, 2 vols. 8vo. vol. i. pp. 228-229.

Eodem anno, quidam Canonicus de Abbatiâ Bothmeniæ, quæ in partibus Cornubiæ sita est, Martinus nomine, statim post Epiphaniam Domini, furtivè asportavit Corpus Sancti Petroci; et cum eo fugiens transfretavit, et illud secum detulit usque ad Abbaciam Sancti Mevenni, sitam in partibus Minoris Britaniæ. Quod cùm Rogero Priori Bothmeniæ & Canonicis ibidem Deo servientibus innotuisset, predictus Prior, consilio Fratrum suorum, D’n’m Regem Angliæ Henricum, filium Matildæ Imperatricis, adiit, ut, per ipsius potentiæ auxilium, Corpus Sancti Petroci, quod per furtum amiserant, recuperassent. Ad instantiam autem illorum, concessit eis præfatus Rex auxilium suum; & mandavit per litteras suas Rollando de Dinamno Justiciaris Britanniæ, quod sine dilatione faceret illud Corpus reddi. Audito itaque mandato Regis, prædictus Rollandus venit cum armatâ manu & potenti ad Abbatiam Sancti Mevenni, et præcepit illud corpus reddi; quod cùm Abbas et Monachi ejusdem loci reddere nollent, ipse minas addidit, jurans se per vim, nisi celerius redderetur, extrahere velle illud. Quod ipsi audientes, noluerunt iram prefati Regis Angliæ incurrere: sed beatum Corpus illud reddiderunt prænominato Rogero Priori Bothmeniæ, die Dominicâ Clausi Pentecosten, festo scilicet Sanctorum Gervasii et Prothasi, Martyrum, scilicet 13 kalendas Julii; redditumque est ei corpus illud Sanctum cum omni integritate, & sine aliquâ diminutione, Abbate & Monachis Ecclesiæ Sancti Mevenni, jurantibus super Reliquias ejusdem Ecclesiæ quòd de Corpore illo nihil retinerent, sed idem Corpus non alternatum redderent. Quod cùm factum fuisset, prænominatus Prior Bothmeniæ cum gaudio in Angliam rediens, Corpus beati 98 Petroci in Teca Eburnea reconditum, usque Civitatem Wintoniæ detulit; et cùm in conspectu Regis allatum fuisset: Rex, viso eo & adorato, permisit prædictum Priorem in pace, cum Sancto suo, ad Abbatiam Bothmeniæ redire.[18]

Which may be thus translated:

“In the same year (1177), immediately after the Epiphany of our Lord, a certain Canon of the Abbey of Bodmin, in Cornwall, by name Martinus, secretly took away the body of St. Petroc. Flying with it, he passed beyond the seas, and carried the body to the Abbey of Saint Mevennus, in Lesser Britany.

“When this transaction became known to Roger the Prior of Bodmin, and to the Canons who served God in the same place, the aforesaid Prior, with the advice of his brethren, went to Henry King of England, son of the Empress Matilda, that by his powerful aid they might again get possession of the body of St. Petroc, of which they had been fraudulently deprived. The King granted his aid to their entreaty, and by his letters commanded Rollandus de Dinamnus, the Justiciary of Britanny, that, without any delay, he should cause the body to be restored. When, therefore, Rollandus had received the King’s command, he came with a powerful and armed band to the Abbey of St. Mevennus, and ordered that the body should be given up; and when the 99 Abbat and the Monks were unwilling to comply, he added threats, that, unless the body were yielded immediately, he would use force and take it; which when they heard, they feared to incur the displeasure of the King of England, and therefore restored that blessed body to the before-named Roger, Prior of Bodmin, on the Lord’s Day (Clausi Pentecostes), being the feast of St. Gervasius and of St. Prothasius, martyrs, the thirteenth before the calends of July (June the 19th). And that sacred body was restored in all its integrity, without the least diminution; the Abbat and Monks of St. Mevennus having sworn on the relics belonging to their church that they had not retained any part of the body, but had restored it wholly unaltered.

“When this was done, the before-named Prior of Bodmin, returning with joy into England, brought the body of the blessed Petroc, closed in an ivory case, to the City of Winchester. And when it was brought into the King’s presence, the King, having seen and adored it, permitted the Prior to return in peace with his Saint charge to the Abbey of Bodmin.”

It would appear that such depredations must have frequently occurred, since one precisely similar, but not followed by a restoration of the relics, took place in the neighbouring monastery of St. Neot. In this case, the stolen body of the Saint, having been enshrined at Eynesbury, in Huntingdonshire, bestowed his name as a new appellation to the place. See “A Description, accompanied by sixteen coloured plates, of the Church of St. Neot, in Cornwall,” by J. P. Hedgeland, 1 vol. 4to. 1830, with Illustrations by Davies Gilbert.

Mr. Wallis has collected a very great variety of curious and interesting particulars respecting this town and parish, and given them to the public in a work entitled, “The Bodmin Register; or, Collections relative to the past and present State of the Parish of Bodmin.” And, in doing so, he has proved that the antiquities of a 100 county cannot in any way be illustrated, except by the exertions of individuals locally residing in the district to which their attentions are directed, and that from zeal and ability in such persons every thing may be expected.

The following are extracts from this publication:

The benefice is a vicarage in the gift of Lord de Dunstanville, situated in the Deanery of Trigg Minor, and in the hundred of Trigg. The following are the dimensions of the church: length 151 feet, breadth 63 feet. The greater part was built in the reign of King Edward the Fourth. It was roofed in 1472, as appears by an inscription on the cornice on the northern side of the south aile of the chancel. The northern chancel and the tower appear to be of an earlier date. The walls of the tower are eight feet thick at the base, made for the support of a lofty spire, which was destroyed by lightning, between seven and eight o’clock on Saturday evening, December the 9th, 1699. The present awkward pinnacles were then erected: three of them are dangerous from the decay of the stone.

The ancient building in the church-yard, adjoining to the vicarage-house, was, it is believed, a chantry chapel dedicated to St. Thomas. The interior, 44 feet 9 inches by 19 feet, was used till lately for the free grammar-school. It is now converted to a national school for girls. Under is a crypt or bone-house.

The isolated tower at Berry, on the north of the town, belonged to the chapel of the Holy Rood. The building of this tower was commenced on the 12th of September, 17th of King Henry VII. 1501.

Since the year 1814, both the church and church-yard, which were in a very ruinous and neglected state, have been greatly altered and improved.

Over the porch are the remains of two small rooms, each about eleven feet square, formerly the record and the council rooms of the corporation. The floor of the higher one, the record room, gave way about eighty 101 years ago, as some gentlemen were inspecting the documents. In the lower room some valuable records had remained for a long time neglected, till in the year 1807 or 1808 they were removed to the guild-hall, and there examined and arranged. They contain many curious particulars relative to the history of the parish, and incidentally of the county, during a period of five hundred years, the oldest document bearing date in the 14th Edward II. (1320). Among them is a charter of the 36th Edward III. (1362); another, in good preservation, of the 3d year of Richard II. (1380), having reference to the reigns of Henry the First and Second. A minute of the receipts and payments for the rebuilding of the church, in the years 1469, 1470, and 1471; and also for the erection of Berry Tower, in 1501; the contract with Matthy More, carpenter, for making the pulpit and open seats throughout the church in 1491, the carved remains of which are at present much admired; Resolutions of the Corporation on the destruction of the spire in 1699; also a Petition to King Henry the Eighth, on the eve of the Reformation, conveying some ludicrous charges against the Prior; with various others.

In the north chancel is the altar-tomb of Prior Vivian, the inscription on which has been inserted in page 76. The tomb was repaired, and placed between two pillars of the chancel, in 1819, by the late Sir Vyell Vyvyan, of Trelowarren.

The very splendid organ was given, in the year 1775, by Mr. James Laroche and Mr. George Hunt, at that time Members for the town.

Mr. Wallis enters into a very minute detail of particulars highly interesting to the immediate neighbourhood, but which would occupy too much space in a general parochial history of Cornwall.

The carving in the church is indeed greatly admired, but a large part of that admiration is excited by the appropriate and judicious manner in which it has been rendered ornamental by the present vicar.

102 The inscriptions on various monuments are noticed by Lysons, and other writers.

But a splendid addition has been recently made to the decorations of the church by Lord De Dunstanville, on his retiring from the office of recorder in the corporation. The large east window of the chancel is entirely filled with painted glass, and the middle part contains a well-drawn representation of the Ascension.

Bodmin parish contains 5279 statute acres.

Increase on a hundred in 30 years, sixty-four and a half per cent.

GEOLOGY.

Dr. Boase says of the Geology: the town of Bodmin is about midway between two insulated groups of granite, and it is principally built of a stone quarried on the spot, and which well deserves the attention of geologists. This rock in the deeper parts of the quarry becomes more blue; but its common appearance presents various shades of drab or fawn colour, with irregular spots of an ochreous yellow. It breaks into thick laminæ, or slabs, which are traversed by parallel joints; so that, with care, this stone may be obtained in oblong quadrangular masses. It is soft; sometimes so much so as to lose its cohesion. The substance appears to be almost entirely argillaceous.

103 All the cultivated parts of this parish, north and north-west of the town, rest on this rock: and the barren parts on a schistose rock, which is very siliceous, affording by its partial disintegration no more than a shallow, meagre soil; silica predominating in the one, and argillaceous earth, or alumine, in the other. The characteristic rocks of these genera occur next to the granite in the parishes of Blisland and St. Breward, and they will be noticed in the description of the latter parish.

The editor is aware that the article Bodmin has extended to a very great length. It might easily have been extended much further from interesting materials collected by Mr. Wallis relative to the past and present state of this chief seat of our ecclesiastical establishments. On their abolition the town unquestionably fell into great decay, till about the middle of the last century, when roads were made in all directions, and Bodmin, from being almost inaccessible by the modern system of travelling, became an extensive thoroughfare; the market has grown into one of the first in Cornwall, and the whole town is renovated by trade and industry.

If any further apology is required, the editor hopes that he may be excused for some partiality towards a place which he has represented in eight successive Parliaments, after as many unanimous elections.

[15] Speccot.

[16] Bocarne, or Boscarne, seems evidently the house [on] a rock.

[17] This establishment having completely degenerated, and become a mere receptacle for persons of the very worst description, the charter was, about twenty years ago, declared forfeited; and the revenues have been attached to the county hospital, reserving a preference for lepers over all other patients, if any such should present themselves.

[18] A similar account of this curious affair is given by Hoveden, another contemporary author, who continued the history of England from the year 731, where that of Bede ceases, to 1202, the fourth year of King John.

A.D. 1177. Eodem Anno, Martinus, canonicus regularis ecclesiæ de Bomine, furtivè asportavit corpus Sancti Petroci, et fugiens secum detulit in Britanniam ad Abbatiam Sancti Mevenni. Quo comperto, Rogerus Prior Ecclesiæ de Bomine, cum saniore parte capituli sui, adiit Regem Angliæ Patrem; et adversus cùm effecit, quòd præcipiendo mandavit Abbati et Conventui Sancti Mevenni, ut sine delatione redderent corpus Beati Petroci, Rogero Priori de Bomine, jurantes super Sancta Evangelia, et super sanctorum reliquias, quòd ipsi idem corpus, et non alternatum, cum omni integritate reddiderunt.

But King Athelstan is said to have given a part of the bones, the hair, and the garments of this saint to the church of St. Peter at Exeter.

HALS.

Is situate in the hundred of East, and hath upon the north, Pillaton; south, Salt-Ash, and part of St. Stephen’s; east, Landulph; west, Landrake. For the first name, it signifies “Flemings’ Parish;” for blo, bleau, pleu, in Cornish, is of that signification (viz. a parish); 104 for the second name, it signifies “Flemings,” making amends, or supplying defects (see Verstegan on the word Bote), and seems from the name to be a church founded or endowed by some gentlemen of that name, in order for the commutation of penance for sins committed, and to pray for the founder’s soul, his ancestors, and relatives; by which expedients most religious houses and churches heretofore were built. Originally these Flemings came from Stoke Fleming in Devon, so called, for that once a nobleman of Flanders resided there, and was lord thereof: one of whose posterity, tempore Richard I. in this place, held by the tenure of knight’s service seven knights’ fees, by the name of Stephen Flandrensis (Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, p. 48), who probably was the founder of this church, still bearing his name. His son Richard Flandrensis was sheriff of Cornwall three years, from the third to the sixth year of King John’s reign. Finally, the estate, name, and blood of those Flemings, tempore Henry IV. ended in a daughter and heir, which was married to John Coplestone, of Coplestone, in the county of Devon.

This district of Bote-Fleming, at the time of the Norman Conquest, was rated under the name of Pillaton, still contiguous therewith. But at the time of the inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester into the value of benefices in Cornwall 1294, in order to the Pope’s annats, Ecclesia de Bote-fflemmen in Decanatu de Est Wellshire, was rated iiis. iiiid. In Wolsey’s Inquisition, 1521, £16. 15s.; and the parish rated to the 4s. per pound Land Tax 1696, £103. 14s.

Mutten-ham, id est, the Mutton dwelling or habitation, alias Mott-an-ham, the meeting or court dwelling, in the year 1689 was the dwelling of my kind friend John Waddon, Esq. (a justice of peace and deputy-governor of Pendennis Castle for King James, under John Earl of Bath); in which house and place his lordship first treated with the Prince of Orange’s Commissioners, in order to render into his possession the 105 castles of Pendennis and Plymouth, which soon after was performed, on condition of the Earl’s holding his former dominion as governor of those places under him; whereupon he caused the Prince’s declarations to be first proclaimed or published in those garrisons amongst the soldiers; who received and heard the same with great joy, shouts, and acclamations, to the utter destruction of King James’s jurisdiction and power in Cornwall and Devon, and establishing that prince’s.

At this time were dispersed those rhymes, said to be made by father Peters:

The dispersion of which two papers, made all possessors of church lands and impropriators, together with all rectors and vicars of churches in Cornwall (except Mr. Beauford of Lantegles, and Mr. Polwhele of Newland,) to renounce their allegiance to King James, and to take an oath of fealty to the Prince of Orange, after his accession to the crown of England.

TONKIN.

I shall take leave to add this interpretation of the words making up the name of this parish. Bote signifies help, succour, aid, or advantage; as in Bridgebote, Burgbote, Ploughbote, &c.; and Fleming, from its ancient lords the Flemings, which family was heretofore of good esteem in this county. In the times of Richard I. and of Henry III., the Flemings are recorded as having large possessions in Cornwall.

THE EDITOR.

The following very extraordinary occurrence has taken place with respect to the estate of Hatt in this parish.

A brother of the last Mr. William Symons went through his clerkship as an attorney with Mr. Rashleigh 106 at St. Austell. He there formed an attachment to a respectable young woman, but in a situation of life so much inferior to his own as to excite a violent opposition against this marriage on the part of his friends. In consequence Mr. Symonds suddenly disappeared; no trace could be discovered, nor was any information received about him, either by his relations or by the deserted object of his affection.

The elder brother died unmarried, and his sisters or their families took possession of his property; till, about forty years after Mr. Symonds had left Cornwall, a young man claimed the whole as his eldest son, and finally substantiated his claim by the verdict of a jury, and to the entire satisfaction of a full court. His father had disappeared about the year 1780; he had employed himself in various humble, but not disreputable occupations, married, and finally settled in Liverpool, where he was accidentally drowned. His family then first acquired, from inspecting his papers, any knowledge of Cornwall, or of the stock from whence they were derived; they found his articles of clerkship, with various letters and documents, which placed his identity beyond all doubt, and the son now possesses the manor house, with a fair private gentleman’s estate.

This parish contains 995 statute acres.

Increase on a hundred in 30 years 32.86, or nearly 33 per cent.

Present Rector, Rev. William Spry, instituted 1826.

This parish is said by Doctor Boase not to be favourable for geological pursuits, the rocks being generally covered with a fertile soil; they belong, however, to the calcareous species.

HALS.

Boyton is situate in the hundred of Stratton, and hath upon the east the Tamer River, south Warrington, north Tamerton, west North Pedyrwyn, and as a mark of its antiquity and grandeur it was taxed in the Domesday Roll 1067 or 1087, by the present name. In the Inquisition of the Bishop of Lincoln and Winchester before-mentioned, Capella de Boyeton, in Decanatu de Stratone, was rated xxxs. but whether rectory or vicarage I am ignorant; the same not being mentioned either in Wolsey’s Inquisition or Valor Beneficiorum. The patronage in ——. The incumbent ——. This parish rated to the 4s. per pound Land Tax, 1696, £89. 14s.

Most probable it seems to me, that this place was denominated Boyton in memory of a colony of the Boii Gauls, that out of that country of Gaul first planted themselves here; who were a people on the further side of the Rhine, that with the Helvetians first invaded Gaul, as Cæsar informs us, and placed themselves amongst the Hedui, a people of Gallia Celtica, near the Loire River, and possessed a great part of Burgundy; Cæsar also makes Boia in Gaul the name of a town.

Bradridge in this parish, the broad ridge or farrow of land (Saxon), is the dwelling of John Hoblyn, Esq. barrister at law, son of Mr. Hoblyn, attorney at law, of Bodmin; which place came to this gentleman by marriage with the sole daughter and heir of William Symons, Gent. attorney at law, as it did to him by marriage with the daughter and heir of Heale.

The Heales’ arms are, Party per fess Argent and Sable, a pole counterchanged with three trefoils, one on each side the pole in chief, and the other thereon, in base counterchanged.

108 At Northcott, in this parish, temp. Queen Mary, lived Agnes Prest, but where born, or what her maiden name was, is to me unknown, whose merit challengeth to be recorded in this place, as being the only martyr that suffered death for the Protestant religion in the diocese of Exon during the said Queen’s reign. She is described by Holinshed, Howell, alias Hooker, and by Fuller from them, to be a contemptible woman in respect of her person, (as St. Paul was for a man,) little, and short of stature, and of a brownish complexion. She was indicted, as Mr. Vowell says, at Launceston, in this county, upon Monday the fourth week in Lent, the 2d and 3d of Philip and Mary, before the Grand Jury there assembled. The matter suggested in the Bill was: “For that she denied the Real Presence in the sacrament of the altar; and for saying the same was but a sign and figure of Christ’s body; and that no Christian doth eat the body of Christ carnally, but spiritually.” The evidence against her were her own husband and children; from whom she fled, for that they would compel her, by force, to be present at the celebration of mass. Notwithstanding, upon their testimonies the bill was found, and indorsed, “Billa vera.” Whereupon she came to her trial before William Starford, then Justice of Assize, (probably he that wrote the Pleas of the Crown,) where, upon a full hearing of the case, the Petty Jury also found her guilty, on the testimony aforesaid; after which she was presented to James Turbervill, Bishop of Exeter, for further examination on the premises, but she persisting in her former opinion, was by him condemned as a heretic.

After her condemnation, she refused to receive any money from well-disposed people, that formerly relieved her, saying, she was going to that City where money had no mastery. Soon after she was delivered over to the secular power to be burnt, to Robert Cary, of Cockington, Esq. then Sheriff of Devonshire, or to his Under Sheriff, who saw her executed at Southernhay, without the walls of Exon, in the 54th year of her age, and in 109 the month of November, 1558. This was the only person in whose persecution Bishop Turbervill did appear, in matters of religion, during the time he sat in that see, (consecrated Sept. 8, 1555, deprived in January 1560,) and, as Dr. Fuller saith, her death was procured more by the violence of Blackston, the Chancellor, than by any persecution of the Bishop.

And here it may not be impertinent to show, that our ancestors the Britons of Cornwall received and took the blessed Sacrament in the same sense as this martyr Agnes Prest did receive it; that is by faith only, contrary to the doctrine of Transubstantiation: as is evident from Mount Calvary, a manuscript in verse in the Cornish tongue, written about five hundred years since, a copy of which is now in my own custody, which containeth the history of the Incarnation and Passion of Christ, according to St. John’s Gospel; wherein, amongst others, verse the 79th containeth these words:[19]

Which sounds thus in English:

110 Anno Dom. 1050, Berengarius, a deacon of Angiers in France, disproved and refuted the doctrine of Transubstantiation in a large manuscript, which he sent with letters to Lanfrank, then Abbat of Caen in Normandy, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury from 1070 to 1089, which letters and reasons, in the absence of Lanfrank, being opened by some of his clergy, the same were transmitted to Pope Leo IX. whereupon calling a council at Rome, and the letters and reasons of Berengarius being read, he was condemned for an heretic in 1051. In France also the same year, Pope Leo IX. assembled another council at Versailles against Berengarius, which likewise condemned him for a heretic. The like did Victor II. successor of Pope Leo IX. in 1055, in which council Berengarius answered personally for himself; That, as to the doctrine he taught concerning the Sacrament, he adhered to no particular opinion of his own, but to that which was the ancient and common doctrine of the universal Church.

After Pope Victor II. his successor Pope Nicholas II. assembled at Rome a council of a hundred and thirteen Bishops against Berengarius’ doctrine; who thereupon submitted the same to the Pope and his councils’ correction, who prescribed him a form of recantation. But afterwards he published a refutation of that recantation, and of the doctrines therein contained, anno 1059. Notwithstanding which, the fourth council of Lateran, under Pope Innocent III. in 1160, (Frederick II. being then Emperor), consisting of four hundred bishops and holy fathers, established the Roman doctrine of Transubstantiantion, which was afterwards further confirmed by another council at Lateran, in Rome, under Pope Innocent V. an. Dom. 1215.

TONKIN.

The etymology of this name, Boyeton, may be either from the Cornish word “byu,” which is pronounced like 111 “boy,” or from the French “bois,” a wood, which agrees extremely well with its situation in the midst of woods.

I take most if not all the parish to be a part of or holden from the manor of Boyton, which belonged to the Priory of Launceston, and was ultimately given, inter alia, by King Henry the Eighth, to the Duchy of Cornwall, in exchange for the honour of Wallingford.

THE EDITOR.

For a detailed account of Berengarius, see Le Grand Dictionaire Historique, par Moreri, under the word Berenger, who refers to a great variety of authorities.

The account given of Agnes Prest is curious, if she alone suffered in the whole diocese of Exeter during Queen Mary’s persecution. They still exhibit at Exeter the place of her martyrdom, and are persuaded that grass has refused to grow on the spot ever since.

The measurement of this parish is 3,710 statute acres.

Increase on an hundred in 30 years 41.7, or more than 41½ per cent.

Present Vicar, Rev. Edward Rudall, instituted 1826.

The hamlet of Northcot lies in Devonshire, and is therefore not included.

Dr. Boase observes, the dunstone of Devonshire, so ably described by the late Rev. J. E. Conybeare, in the 2d vol. of the Transactions of the Geological Society of London, p. 495, constitutes the rock of this parish. Its compact varieties are very quartzose, and form barren hills; but the schistose dunstone produces a good substratum, which near the Tamar affords productive arable and pasture land.

[19] The whole of Mount Calvary, with a translation by Mr. John Keigwin, made in the year 1682, has been printed by the Editor of this work from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The passage above cited occurs in the 44th and 45th stanzas. The general meaning appears to be the same, but the words are differently spelt and divided. The Editor has also printed “The Creation of the World, with Noah’s Flood,” a Play, or Mystery, in the Cornish language, and a Translation into English by the same Mr. John Keigwin; both from the office of Mr. Nichols, No. 25, Parliament-street, London, the printer of this work.

HALS.

St. Bradock is situate in the Hundred of West, and has upon the south Boconock, the west St. Wennow, east St. Pynnock, north Cardinham, and by this name Bradock or Brodock it was taxed in the Domesday Roll. If its etymology is Saxon the name means broad oak.

In the Pope’s Inquisition into the value of benefices before mentioned, anno 1294, Capella de Bradock in decanatu de Westwells, appropriata domui de Lanceston, was valued at xiiis. ivd.; from whence it appears that this church was endowed by the college of St. Stephen, near Launceston. In Wolsey’s Inquisition and Valor Beneficiorum, at viiil. xiiis. ivd. The patronage in the Bishop of Exeter; and this parish was rated to the 4s. per pound Land Tax for one year in 1696 at 57l.

TONKIN.

This church is a vicarage; the patronage in Samuel Wetton, Esq.; the incumbent, Mr. James Pearce, who has also the sheaf.

The manor of Bradoke is one of the two hundred and eighty given by the Conqueror to Robert Earl of Morton.

THE EDITOR.

This living, which is stated in the Liber Valorum to be a rectory, was consolidated with Boconnoc in the year 1742, and the clergyman’s residence has recently been removed to Bradock. The united parishes are now in the presentation of Lord Grenville.

Bradock down was the scene of two important events in the civil war.

113 First, a victory obtained by the King’s forces early in 1623 under the command of Sir Bevill Granville, Sir Nicholas Glenning, Sir Ralph Hopton, Arundell, Trevanion, and other gentlemen of the county, over a much larger force commanded by Ruthven, Governor of Plymouth. The victory was so complete that Ruthven with difficulty reached Saltash, accompanied by a few only of his troops, from whence they were speedily driven across the Tamar; and this advantage mainly contributed to the more splendid victory at Stratton, obtained on the 16th of May of the same year; a victory which, rolling on its tide of success through Devonshire and Somersetshire, over Lansdowne and Bristol, might have swept the whole of England but for the recoil of its waves from the walls of Gloucester.

The second event was on a more extensive scale.

Lord Essex having conducted a large army into Cornwall, was followed by the King in person, till they approached so near that the King had his head quarters at Boconnoc, and Lord Essex at Lanhidrock, when, after various skirmishes and proposals for negotiation on the part of the King, Lord Essex at last, on the 30th or 31st of August 1644, accompanied by Lord Robartes, and some other officers, abandoned his army, and reached Plymouth by sea; and on the same day Sir William Belfour, with Col. Nicholas Boscowen, Lieut.-Col. James Hals, of Merther, Henry Courtenay, of St. Bennet’s in Lanivet, Col. John Sentaubyn of Clawanar, his Lieut.-Col. Briddon, Col. Carter, and others of the horde of two thousand five hundred cavalry, forced their passage through the King’s army, over St. Winnow, Boconnoc, and Bradock Downs, to Saltash, and from thence to Plymouth. Their escape is said to have been mainly owing to the negligence of General Goring, whose ill conduct and exactions in Cornwall, have left his name as a term of severe reproach up to the present time.

114 After these discouraging events, Major-Gen. Skippon found himself in command of the infantry, for whom he obtained a favourable capitulation, the particulars of which may be seen in Lord Clarendon’s History, and they are given by Mr. Hals, from whose statement the above is chiefly abridged.

Mr. Hals adds a circumstance illustrative of the animosity excited by internal dissensions; and, as his feelings and opinions were all on the royal side, the narrative may be esteemed deserving of credit.

Notwithstanding the articles, the disarmed soldiers of the Parliament, as they marched by the King and his army on Boconnoc and Bradock Downs, and elsewhere, were barbarously slaughtered and shot upon by the King’s soldiers, so that many perished thereby, others were stripped comparatively naked, and robbed of their money, others had their horses taken from them; whereupon Major-General Skippon, with undaunted courage, rode up to the King’s troop, and told him personally of the injury and violence offered, and the slaughter of his men, contrary to the articles, which in such cases were kept inviolable by all nations of men; and therefore prayed the King to be just, and to prohibit those barbarities of his soldiers for the future, which the King forthwith commanded to be done. But his word and authority were little regarded while his army were in sight of the Parliamentary soldiers.

This total discomfiture of Lord Essex’s army left the King without an enemy in arms through the whole of Cornwall, and a letter is preserved in the hands of Lord Dunstanville from his ancestor Sir Francis Basset, respecting the last words addressed to him by the King: “Mr. Sheriff, I leave the county entirely at peace in your hands.”

Bradock contains 2935 statute acres.

being an increase of 74½ per cent. in 30 years.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

This parish may be geologically considered as a part of Boconnoc. The substratum is the same. The rocks and stones are rather more quartzose, accompanied by an increased appearance of shorl.

HALS.

St. Breock is situate in the hundred of Pyder, and hath upon the north St. Issy; east, Wadebridge on the Alan river; south, St. Wenn and Withiel; west, St. Columb Major.

The name is derived from St. Breock or Briock, the patron of this church, of one in the island of Guernsey, and perhaps of Breage near Helston.

This St. Breock was a native of Ireland, born at Cork about the fifth century. A man famous in his day, for the most strenuous support of the orthodox faith in opposition to Arianism, the heresy at that time distracting the Latin Church. He was bishop of a diocese in Armorica, now called Britany, where the place of his residence is at this day distinguished by his name.

This parish does not appear in the Bishop of Lincoln’s valuation; but in that of Wolsey it is rated at 41l. 10s. 6d.

116 In the Domesday survey this parish was rated under the district of Pelton or Penpow, now Powton.

This Powton was the voke lands of a manor given to the See of our Cornish Bishop; afterwards to the Bishop of Kirton, and then to Exeter; finally to the Priory of St. Petroc at Bodmin. After the dissolution of monasteries, this barton, together with the extensive manor to which it belonged, passed through a great variety of hands by sale, so that Mr. Hals says the manor had sixteen lords of different families in about sixty-two years; a mutability not to be instanced in any other lands in Cornwall, except Fentongellon in St. Michael Penkivell, which also contained a religious house, but in 26 Henry VIII. was converted to secular purposes.

This manor of Pelton has always possessed a court leet, where writs might be entertained without any limit of amount; but, the lord of the manor having suffered from various escapes of persons confined for debt, the prison, and with it the judicial functions of the court, have been discontinued. Sir William Morice, the secretary of state and friend of General Monk, acquired this manor by purchase. His second daughter, Barbara Morice, married Sir John Molesworth of Penconnow, and brought this property into that family, where it still remains.

Hurston in this parish, which I take to be from the Saxon, and to mean wood town, is still situated in a wood, and formerly belonged to the Cormynews of Fentongellon.

Tredinick gave name and origin to an ancient family of gentlemen. Christopher Tredinick was sheriff of Cornwall in 22 Henry VIII.; he gave for his arms, In a field Or, on a bend Sable three bucks’ heads caboshed Argent. His family and name are now, I take it, both extinct. In the time of Charles II. this property came by purchase to Lord Robartes.

[Mr. Hals adds a fanciful derivation of this name; 117 but since “doon” and “din” are well known to signify a place tenable either by nature or art, and “ick” is unquestionably water, Tre-din-ick will be either the fortified town, or the hill town, near a river.]

Trevorder, meaning the further town, or the one most distant; also Trevorder Bickin, the far-off beacon-town, belonged to the Carmynews of Fentongellon, having come to them by the heiress of Trenowith, as Trenowith had acquired it by the heiress of Tregago. It passed by sale from the Carmynews to Vyell, and has subsequently split between six coheiresses, who married Prideaux, Vyvyan, Dennis, Grensill, Rinden, and Smith.

TONKIN.

Mr. Tonkin has not any thing worth inserting that differs from Mr. Hals, except perhaps his etymology of the name Dunveth, a place belonging once to Tredinick, and situated near the churchyard, and therefore named the hill of graves; beth being a grave in Welch and Cornish, and the labials b and v perpetually changing into each other.

THE EDITOR.

This parish measures 6875 statute acres.

being an increase of rather more than 50 per cent. in 30 years.

Present Vicar, the Rev. W. Molesworth, presented in 1816 by Sir W. Molesworth, Bart.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

On the north and north-eastern parts of this parish, in the vicinity of the Camel, the land is fertile, resting on a rock which sometimes resembles a calcareous schist, 118 but more commonly that kind of clay-slate which abounds in the calcareous series. This slate at Penquean splits into very thin leaves, and is then quarried as a roofing slate, but is softer and has less lustre, and is not so durable as that raised at Delabole near Camelford. The south and south-western parts of the parish consist of barren downs; the rock forming the substratum is, however, very similar in appearance to what occurs in the other division; but it contains more silex and is less laminated, does not easily cleave, and is less susceptible of decomposition than the former, and therefore produces only a meagre, arenaceous soil.

HALS.

Is situate in the hundred aforesaid, and hath upon the north, Crowan; west, Germow; east, Sithney; south, the British Channel. Of the name and titular guardian of this church I have spoken before. By the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester, to the Pope’s annats, 1294, ecclesia Sancti Breuc in decanatu de Kerryer, was rated 16l. Vicar ejusdem 36s. It is now the mother church of Cury, Germow, and Gunwallo, and goes in presentation and consolidation with them, though at the time of the inquisition aforesaid they were taxed separate. In Wolsey’s Inquisition 1521, and Valor Beneficiorum, they are valued together in first fruits 33l. The patronage in the crown, the incumbent Trewinard. This parish was rated to the 4s. per pound Land Tax 1696, 230l. 4s. temp. William III. At the time of the Norman conquest, if this parish was not taxed under the jurisdiction of Lanmigall, i. e. Michael’s Temple or Church, (now St. Michael’s Mount,) the priors whereof, or the king or duke, endowed it, together with those other before named, it was rated under the 119 district of Treskeaw, that is to say the skeawe, or elder-tree town, a place, as I am informed, well known and still extant there.

In the pleas of the crown in the Exchequer, 12th Edward I., I found it thus written of Pengelly in this parish.

“Johannes de Treveally tenet in Pengelly, in comitatu Cornubiæ, dimidium acram terræ Cornubiensem, (above a hundred English,) per sergiantiam recipiendi unam capam de grisando ad Pontem de Penleton, cum Rex fuerit inveniendus versus Cornubiam; et intrando Domino de Cabilla, qui eam in adventu domini Regis ibidem deferre debet, et eam tradere eidem Johanni, qui quidem Johannes eandem capam ferre debet cum domino Rege pro totam in Cornubiam;” which Mr. Hals interprets, that the half acre Cornish is held by the duty of its owner receiving a great coat from some one in Devonshire at Penleton Bridge, and to carry it about for the King’s use, so long as he remains in Cornwall.

In this parish stands the barton and manor of Good-ol-gan, also God-al-gan, synonymous words, only varied by the dialect, meaning a place that was altogether a wood down, a name anciently given and taken from the natural circumstances thereof. Otherwise, if the name consist of English-Cornish, God-ol-gan signifies a place that was altogether God’s downs. As for the modern name Good-ol-phin, God-ol-fyn, it, in like manner as the former, admits of no other etymology or construction than that it was a place that was altogether a wood, fountain, well, or spring of water, or altogether God’s fountain or spring of water. But because the words god, gud, good, in Cornish, Belgic, and British, are always taken and adopted in the first sense, to signify only a wood, and the words Du, Due, and Dyu, are the proper appellations of God, and no other in Cornish, I cannot apprehend how that sacred name is concerned in the initial part of this word, Godolphin, which refers, 120 as I said before, to the circumstances of the place, viz. that no table, fountain, well, or spring of water here, that passeth beneath the house, through the gardens, and the woods and groves of timber that still surround the same.

Contrary to this etymology, Mr. Carew, in his “Survey of Cornwall,” page 153, says that godolphin signifies a white eagle, than which nothing can be more untrue; for, in all those compound words, there is not one particle or syllable relating thereto, or any other than the British language whatsoever: for wen erew, wen eryr, wen eriew, and by contraction wen-er, is a white eagle in the Welch, Little-Britannic, and Cornish tongues. [See Dr. Davis’s British Lexicon, and Floyd upon Aquila.] In like manner Verstegan tells us, that, in the Saxon tongue, blond erna is a white eagle; as also in the German and Dutch tongues; and the French dictionaries inform us that blanch ægle, or aegle, is a white eagle; ἀετος [aetos] in Greek; aquila, in Latin; nesher in the Hebrew; from whence our British erew, erier, eryr, eriew, is derived.

In opposition to all those etymologies of the word godolphin, Mr. Sammes in his Britannia, and the author of the additions to Camden’s Britannia, tells us that godolac in the Phenician tongue signifies a land of tin, from whence they apprehend the name of godolphin is derived, especially because tin is found in the precincts thereof, but surely not comparable in quantity to what is made in forty other places in Cornwall, that yet come not under that denomination of godolphin, as being tin land.

From the name I proceed to the matter or thing itself, viz. the manor and barton of Godolphin; which lands, in the time of Edward III., were the lands of Sir John Lamburne, Knight, of Lamburne in Peransand, whose daughter and heir was afterwards married to Sir Renphry, or John Arundell, of Lanherne, Knight, one 121 of whose posterity, viz. Edmond Arundell, Knight, tempore Henry VI. sold the same to one Stephens, upon condition of a kind of domineering, lording, or insulting tenure, and reservation of rent to his manor of Lamburne in Peransand, viz. “that once a year for ever the Reeve of the said Manor should come to Godolphin, and there boldly enter the hall, jump upon the table, or table-board, and there stamp or bounce with his feet or club, to alarm and give notice to the people of his approach, and then and there make proclamation aloud three times, ‘Oyes! oyes! oyes! I am the Reeve of the Manor of Lamburne in Peransand, come here to demand the old rent, duties, and customs, due to the lords of the said Manor from the lands of Godolphin.’ Upon which notice there is forthwith to be brought him 2s. 8d. rent, a large quart of strong beer, a loaf of wheaten bread worth sixpence, and a cheese of the like value; which the Reeve having received, he shall drink of the beer, taste the bread and cheese in the place, and then depart, carrying with him the said rent and remainder of those viands, to the lords of the Manor aforesaid, to whom they are still duly paid, which at present are Sir John Seyntaubyn, Bart. and others, who claim it in right of the two daughters and heirs of the said Edmund Arundell, which were married to Danvers and Whitington, as Whitington’s heirs were married to St. Aubyn and others.

After Stephens purchased those lands of Godolphin from Arundell, and came possessed thereof, his only daughter and heir was married to Ralph Knava, or Nava, of ——; which name or word is of quite another signification in the British tongue than what it signifies in the English; for knava, nava, nawe, naue, signifies the same as servus, servulus, famulus, minister, administer, ministrator, in Latin; hence it is that in Trevisa’s and Tyndale’s translation of the Bible into English, the word is used in this sense by them; Titus 122 i, v. 1, “Paul a knava of Jesus Christ;” and the like, 2nd Timothy, chap. i. v. 1, “Paul a nava of Jesus Christ;” which words, in the translation of the Bible in James I.’s time, the translators have rightly rendered into new English, by the names of “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ;” and “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ;” that is, a messenger, an ambassador, or servant, sent, as apostolus; in the original Greek δουλος (doulos), servus και et αποστολος (apostolus); and in all other places in the Old and New Testament, where they met with the Greek words doulos and apostolus, they are by them so rendered.

From the British names nave, nava, nawe, knawe, the old name or distinction of this tribe or family may be plainly inferred, for that the first ancestor or progenitor thereof was of a mere British extraction; a servant, steward, ambassador, minister, or messenger of God, Christ, his king, prince, or other master, (for those words are all synonymous, only by the dialect varied with the transposing of a vowel,) and is a name of office of one that is a substitute or vicegerent, and acts under another.

But more certain I am that John Knava, of Godolphin, Esq. was struck Sheriff of Cornwall by King Henry VII., 1504, who declared his great liking of that gentleman in all circumstances for the said office, but discovered as much dislike of his name after the English, not understanding the import thereof in Cornish, and so further said, that, as he was pater patriæ, he would transnominate him to Godolphin, whereof he was lord; and accordingly caused or ordered that in his letters patent under the broad seal of England, for being Sheriff of Cornwall, he should be styled or named John Godolphin, of Godolphin, Esq. and by that name he accounted at the year’s end with that king for his office in the Exchequer, and had his acquittance from thence, as appears from the record in the Pipe Office there.

123 Since which time his posterity have (ever since) made Godolphin the hereditary name of their family. His son, William Godolphin, Esq. was Sheriff of Cornwall 21 Henry VIII.; William Godolphin, Knight, was Sheriff of Cornwall 29 Henry VIII.; William Godolphin, Knight, was Sheriff of Cornwall, 3 Edward VI.; William Godolphin, Knight, was Sheriff of Cornwall 12 Elizabeth; Francis Godolphin, Esq. afterwards Sir Francis, was Sheriff of Cornwall 21 Elizabeth; Francis Godolphin, Knight, was Sheriff of Cornwall 2nd James I.; Francis Godolphin, Esq. afterwards Knight, was Sheriff of Cornwall 13 Charles I., whose son, Sir William Godolphin, was by Charles II. created the five hundred and fifty-second Baronet of England 29th April 1661. His younger brother, Sidney Godolphin, Esq. Member of Parliament for Helston, one of the Commissioners of the Treasury, who had been sent several embassies to foreign princes, was by King Charles II. by letters patent bearing date 8th Sept. 1684, created Lord Godolphin and Baron of Rialton.

Certes, from the time that this family was seised of Godolphin, such a race of famous, flourishing, learned, valiant, prudent men have served their prince and country in the several capacities of members of Parliament, justices of the peace, deputy lieutenants, sheriffs, colonels, captains, majors, and other officers, both military and civil, as scarce any other family this country hath afforded, which I do not mention (for that my great-grandmother on the one side, the wife of Sir John Arundell, of Tolverne, Knight, was daughter of the aforesaid Sir Francis Godolphin, Knight, Sheriff of Cornwall 21 Elizabeth,) but as their just character and merit; and I challenge the envious justly to detract from the same.

This Right Honourable Sidney Lord Godolphin aforesaid, was a commissioner for the Treasury about twenty years, which trust and office he discharged with 124 unquestionable justice, fame, and reputation, during the reigns of King Charles the Second, King James the Second, and till the latter end of the reign of King William the Third, when he voluntarily resigned his office. After that King’s death he was by Queen Anne made sole Lord High Treasurer of England, 1701, in which station he continued with unblamable conduct till the year 1710, the time of his death, (having been before, by that Queen, created Earl Godolphin,) a place of such import, trust, grandeur, and honour, as no Cornishman before him ever arrived to, except the Lord Benham, (or rather their name of old Cardinham,) temp. Henry VII. Two such persons perhaps for their skill in accounts, rents, revenues of the crown, and other matters pertaining to the exchequer, equal to, if not superior to, any Lord Treasurer of England before them.

The paternal coat-armour of this noble family are, Gules, an imperial eagle with two necks between three fleurs-de-lis argent.

Pen-gar-wick in this parish, also Pen-gars-wick, id est, the head word, or command, fenced or fortified place; so called from the command or authority of the lord thereof heretofore in these parts, and the strength of the house and the tower thereof, otherwise Pen-gweras-ike, i. e. the creek, cove, or bosom of waters, head help, as situate upon the sea, or waters of the British Channel. This barton and manor, in the latter end of the reign of Henry VIII., was purchased by one Mr. Milliton, a gentleman of the county of —— where having wilfully or accidentally committed murder, or slain a man, in order to shun or avoid justice he privately made the purchase aforesaid in the name of his son, and so immured himself in a private chamber of the tower of Pengarwick, that he was not seen of any person but his trusty friends, so that he finished the natural course of his life without detection of his person, or punishment for the crime aforesaid; but, alas! notwithstanding his concealment, 125 and design of perpetuating his name and tribe in this place, his son Job Milliton, Esq. 1st Edward the Sixth, made Governor of St. Michael’s Mount, (in the room of Renphry Arundell, Esq. executed for rebellion,) who married Godolphin, and had issue William Milliton, Esq. sheriff of Cornwall 7th Elizabeth, 1565, that died without issue, and six daughters, that became his heirs, married 1. to Erisy, afterwards to Sir Nicholas Parker; 2. to Lanyon; 3. to Trefusis, and Tregothick; 4. to Trenwith, Arundell, and Herle; 5. to Bonython; 6. to Abbot, from some of which heiresses, Sir Nicholas Hals, Knight, at his first coming from Efford in Devon into Cornwall, purchased their parts of this lordship, with leases from the rest of the coparceners, and for some time made it and Trewinard the places of his dwelling till he removed to Fentongollen. This place afterwards, by his unthrifty son and heir, John Hals, had all its timber cut down that was growing upon it, and sold, which tradition saith was great store; the lands also were sold to Godolphin and some others.

The arms of Milliton were, out of a supposed allusion to their name, a chevron between three millet fishes hariant or erected; whereas Milli-ton is a mill town.

TONKIN.

There is not any thing in Mr. Tonkin of importance, differing from Mr. Hals.

He gives the Cornish distich, which has often been repeated,

“Germow was a king—Breaga a midwife;” which he explains in a spiritual sense.

In the church-yard of Germoe, is a small alcove called King Germoe’s Throne: it may perhaps have been a plain, simple shrine.

THE EDITOR.

Mr. Sidney Godolphin must be considered as the most eminent statesman and politician of this county, not excepting Lord Chatham, if his birth at Boconnoc should be deemed sufficient to make him a Cornish man.

Advanced to the honour of Earl of Godolphin, decorated with the Garter, and placed in high office as Lord High Treasurer, he mainly conducted the great national affairs at home, while the Duke of Marlborough vindicated, by splendid victories in the field, the religious and civil liberties of the world.

To Lord Godolphin we are also indebted for conducting to a successful conclusion a measure most beneficial to this whole island, the Union with Scotland; and the whole tenour of his administration procured for him, with the consent of all parties, the appellation of Wise.

In an ode inscribed to the Earl of Sunderland on his receiving the Garter, is this stanza:

Sidney Earl of Godolphin died in 1712, and was succeeded by his son Francis, then called Lord Rialton, who had married Henrietta Churchill, eldest daughter of the Duke of Marlborough.

This lady became Duchess of Marlborough on the decease of her father in 1722, under the provision of a special Act of Parliament, but dying in 1733 without issue, the Dukedom and property devolved on her nephew 127 Charles Spencer Earl of Sunderland, son of her sister Ann Churchill.

The Earldom of Godolphin expired also on the death of Francis Godolphin in 1766; but a Barony had been conferred on him, with remainder to the heirs of his uncle Henry Godolphin; this fell to his first cousin Francis Lord Godolphin. On his decease in 1785 the name and honour of Godolphin became extinct. But Mary, daughter and eventually sole heir of Francis the second and last Earl of Godolphin, had married Thomas Osborne, fourth Duke of Leeds, and his great-grandson Francis Godolphin D’Arcy Osborne, Duke of Leeds, inherits the property as heir-at-law.

The Godolphins appear never to have possessed an estate in land beyond the limits of what might fairly belong to a private gentleman; but the produce of tin has been very great from the period recorded by Mr. Carew, so that the name of the place may well be derived from that metal; subsequently, the produce of copper has exceeded that of the tin. The whole parish of Breage is covered by mines, and the largest and most productive, and most expensive tin mine ever known, is now producing a greater quantity of metal than was yielded in former times by the whole county. Whele Vor, now employing several steam-engines of the largest size to exhaust the water, and numerous others to draw up the ore, and afterwards to reduce it into the state of a fine powder, is said to have used, about a century ago, the first steam-engine ever seen in Cornwall.

Pengelly in this parish was the residence, for many generations, of the Spernons or Sparnons. The family became extinct on the death of a gentleman in the medical profession at Lostwithiel, and the property was sold about fifty years ago.

For an anecdote respecting newspapers and despatches, see the notice of Mr. Ralph Allan in St. Blazey.

This parish contains 6456 statute acres.

103 per cent. or 3 per cent. above doubled in 30 years.

Present Vicar, the Rev. R. G. Grylls, presented by the King in 1809.

GEOLOGY, BY DOCTOR BOASE.

This extensive parish includes nearly the whole of that granitic patch known by the names of Tregonning and Godolphin Hills; and it also comprises the greater part of the country lying between those hills and those of the opposite range of granite in Wendron and Crowan, called the Forest. Its mines, quarries, and sea cliffs afford most interesting geological sections.

The granite of Godolphin Hill is of the common kind, containing in several places an intermixture of shorl, and it is traversed by numerous thick veins of quartz, which sometimes pass into compact shorl rock. The granite of Tregonning Hill is of two kinds; one fine-grained like free-stone, which is extensively quarried on the western side of the hill, and used for ornamental building, under the name of Breage stone; the other, abounding in talc, and in a state of considerable decomposition, affording, like the similar granites of St. Austell and St. Stephen’s, the china clay, which is here worked for economical purposes, but not to any great extent.

The western part of the celebrated mine Whele Vor is situated in Breage; and, as the workings approach the granite, they exhibit a highly interesting arrangement of rocks, the granite and slate alternating in the same manner as they have been observed to do at Delcoath in Cambourne. The composition of these rocks, and the nature of their connection, are very evidently seen 129 in the heaps of fragments piled round the shafts; but they are better and more clearly illustrated in the cliffs near Trewaras Head.

It would occupy two much space to enter into details on this important subject. It may, however, be noticed that both the granite and the slate gradually pass into each other; and that they appear to differ very little in their mineral composition. These facts seem to explain, in a satisfactory manner, the nature of granite veins. For, if both rocks have a similar composition, and have been produced at the same time, the form, position, contents, and other circumstances of these veins, are no longer perplexing.

HALS.

St. Breward is situate in the hundred of Trigg, and hath upon the north Advent, south Blisland, east Altar Nun, west St. Tudy. There was not such parish or church extant in Cornwall at the time of the Norman Conquest as Brewer; probably it was taxed under Tudy. In the inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester, in order to the Pope’s annats, 1294, Ecclesia de Bruerd, in Decanatu de Trig-minor-shire, was valued at 7l. vicar ejusdem 20s. In Wolsey’s inquisition, 1521, and Valor Beneficiorum, 8l.; the patronage in the Dean and Chapter of Exeter; the incumbent Downes, the rectory or sheaf, in ——, and the parish rated to the 4s. per pound land-tax, 1696, by the name of Brewer, 111l. 12s. The present name of this church is celebrated in memory of its founder, William Brewer, (son of William Lord Brewer, Baron of Odcombe in Somerset,) who was consecrated Bishop of Exeter, 1224, and was afterwards, by King Henry III., sent on divers 130 embassies to foreign princes, and to conduct Isabel, sister of the said King Henry, to be married to Frederick the Emperor, whom he and Peter de Rupibus, Knight, afterwards accompanied into Palestine, and were made generals of 40,000 men against the Turks. And after all those fatigues, as Bishop Godwin saith, he returned home safely to his see of Exeter, and spent the remainder of his days in building and endowing churches, adorning and enriching his own cathedral church, and instituting within the same a dean and twenty-four prebendaries, allowing the latter a stipend of 4l. per annum, since augmented to 20l. (which is no more than 4l. in those days was worth). He also set up a chantor, chancellor, and treasurer within the same. To the chantor and subdean thereof he appropriated the rectory of Rainton and Chudleigh in Devon, and the rectory then, now a vicarage, of Egloshayle, in Cornwall. To the chancellor he appropriated (or impropriated) the vicarage of Newlan in Cornwall, and Stoke Gabriel in Devon, on condition that he should preach a sermon once a week. To the canons a lecture in Divinity, or on the Decretals, within the cathedral of Exeter, and in case the chancellor should fail in this particular, it should be lawful for the bishop thereof for the time being to resume the said churches so appropriated, into his own hand, and bestow them at his pleasure; as appears from a deed between the said bishop, dean, and chapter, 12th May, 1662, as Hooker saith. But this covenant is exactly kept ever since by the chancellor or his clerk, who once a week, at six o’clock morning prayers, preach a sermon to the canons.

This Bishop Brewer appropriated this church bearing his name to the dean and chapter of this cathedral, which he had as aforesaid erected. He lies buried in the middle of the choir thereof, with an inscription still legible, which, amongst others, containeth these words: Hic jacet Willielmus Brewer, quondam hujus Ecclesiæ 131 Cathedralis Episcopus; fundator etiam quatuor principalium ejusdem Ecclesiæ Dignitatum. By the four principal dignities or dignitaries of the church, I suppose, is meant the dean, chantor, chancellor, and treasurer thereof.

The deanery of Exon was founded by William Briwere, Bishop of Exon 1225.[20]

TONKIN.

This parish of St. Breward is also called Simon Ward; and the popular legend has changed a pious and venerable bishop into one Simon Ward, a domestic brewer to King Arthur. I rather conjecture that on the division of parishes it was called Brewer from “bruiers,” which in the French tongue is “heath.”

THE EDITOR.

The principal villages in this parish are Lank Major, Lank Minor, without doubt Lank Vrauz, and Lank Vean; perhaps lank may be lan, varying with local pronunciation in the absence of all orthography, when the names will signify the great and small inclosure; also Swallock. Mr. Lysons states that the ancient manor of Hamethy, or Hametethy, is situated in this parish, five-sixths belonging to Mr. Mitchell of Hengar, in the adjacent parish of St. Tudy, and the other sixth to Mr. Kekewich.

But this parish is distinguished from all others in Cornwall by the locality of Roughtor and Brown Willy; these hills, pre-eminent from their elevation, and from the granite crags studded over the whole expanse of their surfaces, may be seen from an elevation crossed by the road near Ilfracombe in the north of Devon, and 132 from the high land in Zennor, about ten miles from the Land’s End.

This parish contains 8552 statute acres.

increase on a hundred in 30 years of 22²⁄10 per cent.

Present Vicar, the Rev. T. J. Landon, presented in 1815 by the Dean and Chapter of Exeter.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

The greater part of this parish is situated on granite, including within its boundaries Roughtor and Brown Willy, the highest hills in Cornwall, the latter being 1368 feet above the level of the sea. The composition of this granite has been already noticed under the head of Advent: it affords few varieties, which may be owing to its offering few opportunities for examination.

The circumstance most attractive of attention is the great sterility of this extensive district; some few contracted spots are indeed brought into cultivation; some parts afford summer pasturage for cattle, and others turf for fuel; but by far the greater portion of the whole lies entirely unproductive. And this character belongs to the whole insulated patch of granite more than ten miles in diameter; and the church of St. Breward is the only one to be found on this extensive surface of perhaps from forty to fifty thousand acres; while nine churches are to be found on the granite district of the Land’s End, where this substratum, departing from its usual qualities, gives fertility to the soil.

The western extremity of this parish is fertile, resting on a peculiar kind of slate, which possesses geological interest. It may be seen at Combe, at Penrose, and at other places near the river Camel, and appears to be a 133 variety of mica slate, being composed of granular felspar, interlaminated with mica. It contains beds of dark purple felspar rock, very similar to that which abounds in the mining district in the western part of the county. This micaceous slate gradually passes into a thick lamellar rock, which extensively disintegrates and becomes argillaceous, exactly resembling the stone quarried for building at Bodmin.

[20] This is written in a different hand.

HALS.

Bridgerule is situate in the hundred of Stratton, i. e. street or highway town. Now the part of the parish that is on the north side of the river Tamar, hath upon the north Launcells, west Marham Church, south Whitstone, east the Tamar river. The church stands on the Devonshire side, in the Halisworthy hundred, so that this rule or dominion of the Bridge extendeth itself into both counties, as to spirituals and temporals. In the Valor Beneficiarum, it is called Brige Rowell. Ecclesia de Bridge Rule, in Decanatu de Stratone, was taxed to the Pope’s annats, in 1294, at vl. iiis. 8d. Vicar ibidem nihil propter paupertatem. In Wolsey’s Inquisition it was taxed at 14l., and the parish was rated to the 4s. land-tax, in 1696, at 45l. 3s.

At the time of the Domesday Roll, 20 W. Conq. this district was taxed under the name of Tacabere, which place is now the dwelling place of Mr. Samuel Gilbert.

TONKIN.

Mr. Risdon, in his History of Devon, part ii. p. 298, gives the true etymology of this place, in those words, “Bridge Renold, of the vulgar Bridge Rule, anciently 134 Brige, by which name it is simply so called before the Norman Conqueror bestowed it upon Reginald[21] Adobed, and hence it took the adjunct of its owner.” The original of the primitive name is the bridge connecting the two parts across the Tamar.

The manor of Tackbere, in Domesday called Tacabere, was one of those which the Conqueror bestowed on his half-brother the Earl of Morton.

THE EDITOR.

This manor of Tacabre, or Takkebere, which appears to have been very extensive, is said by Mr. Lysons to have been bestowed by King Edward the Third on the Abbey of St. Mary of Graces, which appears in Tanner’s Notitia Monastica to have been founded by that king in the years 1349-50, in the new church-yard of the Holy Trinity, eastward of the Tower of London. The manor has since acquired the name of Merrifield, probably Maryfield, from the monastery. It was for many years the property of Gilberts, a branch from the Gilberts of Crompton Castle, near Torbay. The only daughter of the last Mr. Gilbert, of Tackbere, married Mr. Cotton Amy, of Botreaux Castle, who left two daughters; Anne, who survived her sister, but died unmarried after a long insanity; and Grace, married to Mr. Jonathan Phillipps, of Camelford, and of Newport, near Launceston, who was subsequently knighted in 1786, on the memorable occasion afforded by Margaret Nicholson. This lady had several children: two daughters were alive at the time of her decease in 1788, but they both died in twelve months after their mother, and Tackbere has ascended through the two female lines, and become vested in the right heirs-at-law of Mr. Samuel Gilbert, the father of Mrs. Amy.

The portion of this parish which is situated in Cornwall, 135 measures no more than 851 statute acres.

giving an increase of just 31 per cent. in 30 years.

Present Vicar, the Rev. Thos. Hockin Kingdon, B.D.

Doctor Boase has not noticed this small division of a parish. The geology will probably be stated with that of some parish adjoining.

[21] The Domesday surname, however, is still nearer to the modern orthography; being, not Reginald, but Ruald.—Edit.

HALS.

Budock is situate in the hundred of Kerrier, and hath upon the north Gluvias, east Falmouth, west Mawnan, south the British channel; and by the name of Bowidoc it was taxed in Domesday Roll, a corruption of Bud-oc, or Bud-ock, signifying a bay, cove, creek, haven, or inlet of waters, and oak; according to the ancient natural circumstances of the place.

In the inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester, 1294, into the value of benefices, in order to the Pope’s annats, ecclesia de Sancto Budoco, in decanatu de Kerrier, is rated at 6l. At that time, it seems, it was not consolidated into Gluvias; though afterwards, in Wolsey’s Inquisition, they were united, as will appear in that place. The patronage in the Bishop of Exeter, the incumbent Collyer; the rectory or sheaf in possession of Pendarves, and the parish rated to the 4s. per pound land-tax, 1696, 122l. 11s.

Against the south wall of this church stand some 136 funeral monuments, pertaining to the ancient and famous family of the Killigrews, particularly that of Sir John Killigrew, Knight, that married Wolverston, temp. Elizabeth, and some others. The barton of Arwinike, their chief seat in former ages, being within this parish, till Falmouth parish where it now stands was dismembered from it by Act of Parliament 1663, near which monument is a stone fastened to the wall of the said church, also containing the memorial of Sir Nicholas Parker, Knight, some time Governor of Pendennis Castle, who married the widow of Erisey, one of the coheirs of Militon of Pengerwick, and died 1608, who was succeeded in that dignity by Sir Nicholas Hals of Fentongollan, Knight.

The arms of Parker were, as I take it, Chequy, a fess.

Ros-meran in this parish, was of old the lands of Killigrew.

Trescobays, also Triscobays, Triscovays, in this parish, (synonymous words, signifying treble or threefold kisses,) was the dwelling of William Gross, gentleman, that married Erisey the widow of Charles Vyvyan, of Merthin, Esq. mother of Sir Richard Vyvyan, Baronet, who, upon some jealousy or discontent of his wife, drank a pint or quart of brandy, entered his chamber, took a pistol and charged it with a brace of bullets, and then forthwith shot himself dead, about the year 1693.

At Treon, Trone, (id est, Saxon, a tree,) for two or three descents, was the dwelling of the Thomases, transnominated to Carnsew, by living at Carnsew in Mabe; id est, the dry rock, where they married Tripcony, Seyntaubyn, and —— finally Thomas Carnsew, gentleman, attorney-at law, sold those land to Trewinard, and in testimony of the truth of the said transnomination, this family still give for their arms the same as Thomas, and not that of Carnsew; viz. in a field Argent, a chevron between three talbots Sable. Trewinard hath since sold it to Rundle.

TONKIN.

On the western side of this parish, behind Arwinnick, the seat of Sir Peter Killigrew, is a large pool, like a little harbour, between two hills, but that it hath a bar of sand and pebbles, which keepeth out the sea, like that of the Loe near Helston. It is commonly called the Swan Pool, for that Sir Peter Killigrew, to whom it belongs, kept abundance of swans here.

Trewoon, or Treoon, in this parish, the downy dwelling, or house —— in the downs, was the seat of the Carnsews, who had their name from their habitation at Carnsew in Mabe, where they formerly possessed a fine estate, which, being wasted by extravagant living, this barton was at first mortgaged, and a little after the late Revolution, sold by Mr. John Carnsew to Joseph Trewinnard, rector of Mawnan.

THE EDITOR.

The manor of Penwerris, become of great value by its proximity to Falmouth, is the property of Lord de Dunstanville, derived from his grandmother Mary Pendarves of Roscrow. The best part of Falmouth itself is now built on this property, and distinguished by the name of Green Bank.

Budock measures 3507 statute acres.

being an increase on an hundred of 131 per cent.

The parish feast is celebrated on the Sunday before Advent.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

The extreme western part, adjoining Mabe, consists of granite of a very crystalline variety, and excellent for 138 building; it is exported in great quantities from Penryn. Nearly the whole western half of the parish is coarse; but the eastern part is well cultivated. The soil rests on a species of hornblend slate, which furnishes deep soil by its decomposition.

On the sea shore at Swanpool a most interesting phenomenon occurs in a bed of felspar porphyry, (elvan course,) which runs north-east and south-west for several hundred feet: near low water it exhibits that appearance called by the miners a heave. The course terminates abruptly, and begins again about twenty feet further to the south, from whence it goes on as before the heave.

This porphyry is decomposed at the surface and to some depth, into a fine white clay, from which bricks of a good quality are made on the spot.

HALS.

Burian is situated at the western extremity of the county, having two adjoining parishes, Senner and St. Levan annexed; the former of which includes the Lands’ End. In Domesday tax this district was rated by the name of Beriand, for Berian or Bury-an; synonymous words, signifying a cemetery or burying place for human creatures; that is to say, that place which is now called the churchyard, which was an inclosure, as in most other places, converted to that use before and since the church was erected therein. This instance of a Domesday Roll, wherein this district is named Beri-an, overthrows the story of Camden’s conjecture, that the name thereof was derived from one St. Buryana, an 139 Irishwoman that was the tutelar guardian of this church, whereas the appellation of Saint, as I have elsewhere observed, at that time was not given to but one church in Cornwall. Besides, this Irish saint is not to be found in the Roman legend, or calendar, nor in Capgrave’s catalogue of English and Irish Saints.

This church was founded and endowed by King Athelstan, about the year 930, after such time as he had conquered the Scilly Islands, as also the county of Devon; and made Cornwall tributary to his sceptre. To which church he gave lands and tithes of a considerable value for ever, himself becoming the first patron thereof, as his successors the Kings of England have been ever since: for which reason it is still called the royal rectory, or regal rectory, and the royal or regal peculiar. Signifying thereby that this is the church or chapel pertaining to the king, or immediately under the jurisdiction of him as the supreme ordinary, from when there is no appeal; whereas other peculiars, though exempt from the visitation or jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop within whose see they stand, yet are always subject to the provincial archbishops of Canterbury and York, or other persons.

This church or college consisted of canons augustines, or regular priests, and three prebendaries, who enjoyed the revenues thereof in common, but might not marry; and the lord chancellors of England of old visited this peculiar, which extended only over the parishes of Burian, Sennen, and St. Levan, for the king.

One of the Popes of Rome, about the time of Edward III. obtruded upon this church, the canons and prebends thereof, a dean to be an inspector and overseer over them: whom he nominated to be the bishop of Exon for the time being, who for some time visited this church as its governor, as the lord chancellor did before; which encroachment of the Pope being observed by Edward III., as appears from the register of the writs, 140 folio 40 and 41; 8 Edward III. rot. 97. This usurpation of the Pope was taken away.

[Mr. Hals here enters into long dissertations respecting secular canons, regular canons, the state generally of the church and of the clergy, benefices held in commendam, &c. which, not having any particular relation to the parochial history of Cornwall, are omitted.]

Boscawen-ros in this parish, compounded of Boscawen-ros, is a name given and taken from the natural circumstances of the place, and signifies in Cornish-British “a valley, notable for skeawe or scawen” trees. And indeed this place, being naked and exposed to the sea on the cliffs of the British Channel, anciently, as it seems, produced no other trees than scawen, (i. e. elder,) proper to that part of the country; neither, I think, is there any other trees at present that grow there. From this place was transnominated an Irish gentleman that settled here either by marriage or purchase, in the latter end of the reign of Edward IV., who discontinued his paternal name, and styled himself John de Boscawen, which latter name hath been the hereditary name of his posterity ever since; who from hence transplanted their dwellings to Tregameer in St. Colomb Major; and Trevallock in Creed or St. Stephen’s; and from thence, by marriage with the daughter and heir of Tregothnan by Lawrence Boscawen, gentleman, attorney-at-law, temp. Henry VII., who died 1567, and lieth buried in the north aile of St. Michael Penkivell Church, as is testified by a brass inscription on his gravestone, there lately extant, upon which, on a lead escutcheon, was engraved his paternal coat armour, viz. in a field Vert, a bull passant Argent, armed Or; on a chief Ermine, a rose Gules; crest a boar Argent:—out of a supposed allusion to their present name, as if it had signified a white bull and a rose. In the reign of James I. his posterity discontinued this bearing, and gave only for their arms, Ermine, a rose; which, I take it, also is the hereditary 141 coat armour of Beverley. See St. Michael Penkivell. Since the writing hereof this place is become the hereditary honorary title of Hugh Lord Boscawen, Baron of Boscawen-rose, and Viscount of Falmouth.

Upon Boscawen downs, some of which was lately the lands of Mr. Christopher Davis, stands a monument called Dance Meyns, that is to say the dance stones; which are nineteen pyramidal stones, about six foot high above ground, set in a round circle, distant from each other about twelve feet, having in the centre one pitched far bigger than the rest; a little to the north of those are two admirable great stones in perpendicular manner, much bigger than the rest, those are vulgarly called the Pipers. But since it is not probable that those stones were either dancers or pipers, I take the common appellation dance meyns, only by the dialect to be a corruption of dans meyns, id est, men’s stones; that is to say stones set up in memory of once so many famous men that lived in those parts, or lie interred there, before the sixth century.[22] Mr. Davis aforesaid informed me, that, contiguous with those dans meynes, he caused not long since divers barrows of earth to be carried abroad in order to manure his lands, in several of which burrows he found two or three urns or earthern pots, sound and firm, having in them pieces of bones, and ashes.

142 About twenty years past, the sexton of this parish sinking a grave four feet deep in the ground, he met with a large flat marble or other stone, which he lifted up out of the earth, on which was cut or engraved a long plain cross, surmounted on four grieces or steps; on the border of this stone, round the said cross, was an inscription in Norman French, which soundeth thus in English:—“Clarice, the wife of Geffery de Bolleit, lies here; whosoever shall pray for her soul shall have ten days’ pardon. Amen.”[23] There is a place still extant in this parish called Bolait, or Bolaith, i. e. a place of slaying or killing cows, kine, or cattle; otherwise it may be interpreted cow’s milk, or a place notable for the same.

Trove, in this parish, is, in Cornish and Armorick, a dent, pit, a cavern, or valley: a name doubtless taken from the natural and artificial circumstances of the place, situate between two hills, on a cavern; also Trewoofe, that is to say the town or dwelling of ob-yarn, such as the sail-spinsters make, in order to be woof, or woven cross the warp in pieces of cloth, stuff, or serges, from whence was denominated a family of gentlemen named Trewoofe; who, out of a mistaken etymology of their name, (as many others in Cornwall,) gave for their arms, in a field —— three wolves’ heads; whereas, try-bleith, try-bleit, is three wolves in Cornish; the heiress of which family was married to Leveale, temp. Henry VIII. of the old Norman race, whose posterity flourished here in good fame for several descents, till, for want of issue male, Lewis Leveale’s daughter and heir, by Cooke of Tregussa, carried this place, together with herself in marriage, to Mr. Uspar or Vospar, temp. Charles I. who had issue Arthur Vosper, his son and heir, who married Eyans, of Eyanston in Oxfordshire, who had issue by her two daughters, married to Mr. 143 Marke of Woodhill and Mr. Dennis of Leskeard. This last gentleman, Mr. Vospur, bathing himself in the river Isis in Oxfordshire, with other young men, was there unfortunately drowned, about the year 1679. The name Vosper or Vospur, in British-Cornish, signifies a pure or immaculate maid or virgin. The arms of Leveale were three calves or veals.

In the middle of this barton of Trove, on the top of a hill, is still extant the downfalls of a castle or treble intrenchment called ——, in the midst of which is a hole leading to a vault under ground. How far it extends no man now living can tell, by reason of the damps or thick vapours that are in it; for as soon as you go an arrow flight in it or less, your candles will go out, or extinguish of themselves, for want of air. For what end or use this vault was made is uncertain, though it is probable it was an arsenal or store-house for laying up arms, ammunition, corn, and provision, for the soldiers of the castle wherein it stands, in the wars between Charles I. and his Parliament. Divers of the royal party, pursued in the West by the Parliament troops under Sir Thomas Fairfax, were privately conveyed into this vault as far as they could proceed with safety, where Mr. Leveale fed and secured them till they found opportunity to make their escapes to the king’s friends and party. See St. Evall.

Pentre, otherwise Pendrea, in this parish, id est, the head town, or town at the head of some other, denominated a family of gentlemen from thence called Pendre, who gave for their arms, Argent, on a bend Gules and Sable, three fleurs de lis of the Field. John Pendre, the last of this tribe, temp. Henry VI. leaving only two daughters that became his heirs, who were married to Bonython of Carclew, and Noy. To Noy’s share fell this tenement of Pendrea, which was the dwelling of him and his posterity for several descents; and here was 144 born, as I was informed, William Noy, the Attorney-general to Charles I., who designed to have built a notable house here but was prevented by death, having before brought great quantities of materials to this place in order thereto; his grandson, William Noy, Esq. sold this place and several others to my very kind friend Christopher Davis, Gent. now in possession thereof.

Burnewall, in this parish, id est, the walled well or well-pit of waters, so called from some such place on the lands thereof, was also formerly the lands of the said William Noy, who sold it to the said Mr. Davis, who conveyed it to his nephew Henry Davis on his marriage with Hester, daughter of Humphrey Noy, Gent. younger brother of the said William Noy, now in possession thereof, and hath issue. The arms of Davis are, Argent, a chevron Sable between three mullets Gules, which also is the coat armour of Davey of Creedy in Devon.

Leah, also Lahe, id est, lawe, or leh, a place or dwelling, is the seat of Oliver Ustick, or Usteck, Gent. (id est, Nightingale; otherwise, Eus-teck is fair nightingale,) that married Roscrow of Penryn.

From Als, now Alse, and Alsce, viz. lands towards or upon the sea-coast, as this whole parish and its members are situate, was denominated John de Als, or from Bar-Als-ton in Devon; temp. Henry I. and King Stephen, ancestor of the De Alses, formerly of Lelant, now Halses, see Lelant; which place was heretofore the voke lands of a considerable manor, now dismembered and in the possession of Trevanion and others. This family, in Edward III.’s days, wrote their surname De Als, now Halse. See Prince’s Worthies of Devon, upon Hals.

TONKIN.

This parish is of large extent, and the land generally good, and lying very warm on the South Sea, which, 145 with the desire of living quiet, has induced several gentlemen to settle themselves in this remote corner of the kingdom, where they may liberally entertain all such as out of curiosity come to visit the Land’s End.

Mr. Francis Paynter was brother to Doctor William Paynter, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, (elected in 1690, died Feb. 19, 1715, aged eighty, was rector of Wootton in Northamptonshire, where he is buried,—Editor;) both younger brothers to Mr. Paynter of Trelisick’s father, who by his skill in husbandry, in which he has scarce his fellow, not his superior in the county, and some helps of the law, has purchased to himself a very fair younger brother’s inheritance. Though this place lies near the sea, and very much exposed, yet has this gentleman, by the means of furze ricks and other ingenious contrivances, raised several fair walks of trees about it, and made it a pleasant and profitable seat, which I mention here, that those who live under the same inconveniences may imitate his industry. At Leigha liveth Mr. Oliver Ustick, married to Julia the eldest of two daughters of —— Roscrow of Penryn, of the family of Roscrows of Roscrow. Leigha is part of the manor of Rosemadans, now the property of Mr. Grosse.

Boscawanrose, in this parish, gave name and habitation to the famous and honourable family of Boscawan, who, led away, as many other Cornish gentlemen have been, by the similarity of sound between words in the Kernawish tongue and others in French or in Latin, have mistaken rose a valley, for the flower a rose; and more anciently they are said to have borne in their arms, besides a rose, an ox, having mistaken the word bos, which signifies a house or dwelling, for the name of that animal.

THE EDITOR.

It seems very improbable that King Athelstan, after founding and splendidly endowing a church to commemorate 146 or to sanctify his conquest of Cornwall, should bestow on it a name so very indiscriminate as The burial-ground; more especially at a time when missionaries from Ireland had recently converted the inhabitants to Christianity, and had left to posterity a reputation for piety so elevated as to invest them at once with the appellation of saints, and to procure for them, in after times, the dedication of almost all the churches throughout the County.

St. Burian is mentioned by Leland, Camden, Tanner, and various other antiquaries, as a holy woman from Ireland, to whom King Athelstan dedicated this church, and in Doctor Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints, &c. her festival is given on the 4th of June.

The establishment consisted of a dean and three prebendaries, who are said by Mr. Lysons to have held from the King by the service of saying a hundred masses and a hundred psalters for the souls of the King and of his ancestors. It is not stated how frequently those recitations were to take place.

Bishop Tanner, in the Notitia Monastica, states that this deanery was seised into the king’s hands in the time of Edward III. under the pretence that John de Mount, the third dean, was a Frenchman. In 18 Henry VI. this deanery was given to his college (King’s) in Cambridge; and afterwards, by Edward IV. probably in the true spirit of party, to the collegiate church of Windsor. It was, however, soon separated from Windsor, and continues, according to the foundation of Athelstan, exempt from all inferior jurisdiction, and consequently since Henry VIII.’s assumption of all temporal power exercised by the Pope, there is not any appeal from the local authorities but to the king himself; a constitution most inexpedient, and likely to produce the most serious inconvenience, if matters of much importance ever came for investigation and decision before a court wholly unfitted, from its very nature, from entertaining 147 them; and yet empowered to declare a judgment final to all intents and purposes, unless it is immediately revised by the highest and most expensive ecclesiastical tribunal.

This exemption from all episcopal authority has, in times not very remote, admitted of such abuses in the administration of divine service, and of the spiritual care of the three parishes, as would not otherwise have been endured. It would be worse, however, than useless to expatiate on a system which is fortunately passed by.

I believe that no dean has resided since the final dissolution of the college; the Royner’s hand having been there so forcibly applied as to wrest off the whole glebe, not leaving even an habitation, nor the smallest portion of land on which a house could be built. The nominal deanery of St. Burian, like that of Battle and two or three more, is not esteemed a dignity in the church: yet with cure of souls, and for no better reason than its not being mentioned eo nomine in the canons and acts of Parliament, this living is allowed to be tenable with all other preferments, and at all distances.

Pendrea, the birth place and property of Mr. William Noye the attorney-general, was sold by his eldest son, Edward Noye, to Mr. Davies of Burnuhall, and by his grandson to Mr. Tonkin, whose great grandson, the Rev. Uriah Tonkin, possesses it at this time. At Burnuhall there still remains a curious performance of shell-work, said to have been made by Mr. Davies’ daughters, strongly expressive of the political feelings then almost universal throughout Cornwall. King Charles II. is represented flying from his enemies, and one of them, in full pursuit, has a legend, “This is the heir! come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be our own!” whilst an angel exclaims in the same manner from a cloud “Is it not written, Thou shalt 148 do no murder?” The material of this work is found in great variety and beauty round the coast, and particularly at Porth Kernow, near the Logging Rock.

The last Mr. Davies of Burnuhall married —— Kegwin of Newlyn; he wasted the remains of a property which had been gradually diminishing in the hands of his father and of his grandfather; so that about the year 1750, Burnuhall and some other farms were sold to Admiral Boscawen.

Boskenna is the property and residence of Mr. Francis Paynter, a very respectable gentleman and magistrate, the great-grandson, I believe, of the individual distinguished by Mr. Hals for his skill in husbandry. There is a tradition of his having purchased the place of one whose family had long possessed it, but who had ultimately become the huntsman of a pack of hounds kept originally as his own.

Mr. Francis Paynter, uncle of the gentleman now possessed of Boskenna, was greatly distinguished for his wit and humour. He was either the sole or joint author of a poem made in imitation of Prior’s Alma, and in ridicule of the then dean of Burian, called “The Consultation.” Mr. Paynter practised his profession of the law near St. Columb. He married Miss Pender of Penzance, and left several sons. The exercise of wit is not always, perhaps not frequently, associated with pecuniary gain. The Editor has heard Mr. Paynter declare that “The Consultation” prevented his obtaining a valuable stewardship from the family of which the dean was a member.

The Vyvyans of Trelovornow are said to have originated from Treviddror in this parish. And Lord Chief Justice Tresilian was from Burian, in whose descendants Pendor and Ristchurch, after the lapse of nearly five centuries, some of his property still remains.

From about fifty to seventy years ago Boskenna attracted much attention, and gave occasion to various 149 conjectures over the whole neighbourhood, in consequence of a gentleman and lady residing there under the assumed name of Browne, and withdrawing themselves entirely from public observation. They were conjectured to be members of some distinguished family on the continent implicated in political disputes; or at the least, some very eminent persons of our own country, till at last the mystery was explained by a disclosure of their real name and condition.

Mr. Berty Birge, having been involved in the pecuniary affairs of an individual who subsequently became insane, found himself obliged to retire, although it is understood that nothing discreditable to his character occurred in the transactions. On that individual’s decease Mr. Birge resumed his real name, and removed to Penzance, where he passed the remainder of his life.

The church of St. Burian is among those most distinguished for size and beauty in the west of Cornwall. It is situated on high ground, with a lofty tower, conspicuous therefore from a very great distance. It possessed, till within these few years, a curious rood-loft.

A station of the great trigonometrical survey was placed in 1796 very near Burian church, and in the Philosophical Transactions for 1800, the latitude of the tower is stated to be 50° 4′ 32.8″, and the longitude is 5° 36′ 10.5″, or in time 22′ 24.7″ west of Greenwich.

Burian measures 6274 statute acres.

being an increase of 47 in a hundred in 30 years.

Present Rector, the Hon. F. Stanhope.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.150

The whole of this parish, with the exception of a small patch of slate at Rosemodris, rests on granite. Judging from what occurs in the eastern part of Cornwall, one might be led to expect that the land of St. Burian must be sterile. In some elevated spots it undoubtedly is so, but in general the parish is well cultivated and highly productive.

This difference in the granitic soils of east and of west Cornwall, may be, in part, explained by the gradual diminution of height towards the west, accompanied by a corresponding improvement of the climate; but in this part of the county more of the debris, especially of diluvial clay, is retained on the surface, that of the more elevated eastern ridges having been in great measure swept away.

This circumstance must not, however, be omitted. The granite of Burian exhibits more varieties than have been yet found in the eastern district. The slate in the cliffs at Rosemodris is a felspar rock, and its contact with the granite is distinctly seen; where it may be observed at the eastern extremity traversed by numerous granite veins; and the granite near this junction abounds in shorl.

NOTE BY THE EDITOR.

Doctor Paris has remarked on the granite of this district, that it contains full twenty-five per cent. of felspar, which he says at once explains the rapidity of this stone’s decomposition, and the fertility which is so very unusual in granitic countries; and that this granite in a state of decomposition, when it is provincially called growan, has actually been applied to some lands as a manure, and with the best effect.

I had the pleasure of attending Doctor Withering (author of the Arrangement of British Plants, &c.) to 151 the Land’s End in 1793, when he expressed much surprise at the fertility of a granitic soil, and explained it as Doctor Paris has since done, by observing that in all the granite he had previously seen siliceous matter abounded, and that the very word was synonymous with sterile, but that here felspar and fertility appeared together.

Felspar is said to contain nearly a third part of its weight of alumine, about an eighth part of lime, and a twentieth of soda.

[22] That there exists, however, a prevalent connection of these monuments with allusions to dancing, is shown in the Essay on Dracontia, by the Rev. J. B. Deane, F.S.A. in Archæologia, vol. xxv. The name of Dans Maen is generally given to the various stone circles in the county of Cornwall. Dr. Borlase remarks that there are four circles in the hundred of Penrith, having nineteen stones each; viz. Boscawen-ûn, Rosmodrevy, Tregaseal, and Boskednan, the two most distant being not eight miles apart. Of Boscawen-ûn there are views in the works of Borlase and Stukeley, as well as among the more accurate etchings by William Cotton, Esq. 4to. 1827. He has also given a view and plan of the dans-meyne at Bolleit in this parish; and two obeliscal stones at the same place are represented in Borlase, pl. 10. See also in pl. 14 the hanging stone in Karn Boscawen, and a Maen Tôl, or holed stone, both in Burian; as is the circle called Rosmodrevy.—Edit.

[23] Engraved in Gough’s Camden, vol. I. pl. 1.

THE EDITOR.

Neither Mr. Hals nor Mr. Tonkin notice this parish. It is appended to the parish of Southill. The name is pronounced Kelliton in the immediate neighbourhood.

Callington is situated in the hundred of East, having Southill and Stoke Climsland on the north; Calstock on the east; St. Mellior and St. Dominick to south; and St. Ive to the West.

The town is said to have sent members to Parliament so early as the reign of Henry III., when the privileges of markets and fairs were granted; but the first authentic return was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

In the time of Henry III. the manor and lordship of Callington were vested in the family of Ferrers, by a grant from the earls of Cornwall; the possession has passed by heiresses to several families; and finally, through Dennis, Rolle and Walpole, to Mr. George William Trefusis of Trefusis, in Milor; together with the barony in fee of Clinton, created by a writ directed John de Clinton, 17 Edward I. A.D. 1299. His grandson sold the property to Mr. Alexander Baring, at a period when some adventitious circumstances, no longer 152 in existence, added materially to its value. The church and town are handsome specimens of the gothic architecture which distinguishes the west of England; and there exist several ancient monuments of individuals formerly lords of the manor.

This parish contains 2387 statute acres.

giving an increase of 70 per cent. in 30 years.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

The north-eastern part of this parish extends to the east of Kitt Hill, the most elevated point of Hingston Downs, which is composed of granite. The slate adjoining thereto resembles that which occurs in similar situations in the parishes of St. Austell and St. Blazey; and this district has been the scene of considerable mining speculations. In former ages it abounded in stream tin to such an amount that the Cornishmen of those days expressed their opinion of its value by the distich

As the town of Callington is approached, the slate becomes of a darker blue, and passes into hornblend rock, which prevails in the other parts of the parish, and in several places so much abounds in quartz as to form barren downs. This rock, however, has not any marked character, and it is not often exposed to view; near St. Ive it appears to graduate into the calcareous series.

HALS.

Calstock is situate in the hundred of East, and hath upon the north Stoke Clemsland, west Kellaton, south St. Dominick, east the Tamar river.

The rectory of Calstock church seems to be extant before Domesday Tax, since it passed then by that name, and hath never admitted of any change of name or alteration since, and was undoubtedly founded and endowed by the Earls of Cornwall, out of their manor of Calstock, wherein it is situate; and the Duke of Cornwall, or the King, in that right, are still patrons thereof. Ecclesia de Calstock, in Decanatu de Estwellshire, was valued to the Pope’s annats, 1294, cs.; in Wolsey’s Inquisition and Valor Beneficionum, 26l. 4s. 4d. The patronage as aforesaid, the Incumbent Blackburn, and the parish rated to the 4s. per pound Land Tax, 1696, temp. William III. 302l. 0s. 2d.

It appears from the ancient survey of the Duchy of Cornwall in the Exchequer, and Blount’s Tenures from thence, p. 122, that the tenants of this manor had granted them, by the Earls or Dukes thereof, its lords, the liberty of free fishing on the Tamar river, in his verbis: “Nativi tenentes de Calstock, in comitatu Cornubiæ, reddunt per annum de certo redditu, vocato Berbiagium, sine barbague, ad le Hoke-day, 19s. 6d.” Now barbague, barbagyu, is, in Cornish, a bearded or barbed spear, such as is commonly used for killing salmons in the Tamar and other rivers. [See Stoke-Clemsland.] The salmon wear, here built over the Tamar, is, by lease from the Duke of Cornwall, in possession of Sir John Carew, baronet, and hath formerly been set for 120l. per annum. [See Helston in Trigg for Barbiague. Tenants on the Alan river there.]

154 Cuthill, in this place, I take it was the most ancient seat of the knightly family of Edgecombes in Cornwall, and is still in their possession; and here lived Sir Richard Edgecombe, knight, that assisted Henry the Seventh against Richard the Third, who was bountifully rewarded for his services by that prince.

TONKIN

has merely transcribed from Hals.

THE EDITOR.

Calstock, or Calstoke, has of late become a mining parish on an extensive scale. The manor having been sold by the Duchy for the redemption of Land Tax, has ultimately become the property of Mr. John Williams, one of the most skilful and successful miners in Cornwall.

Cotehele is preserved by Lord Mount Edgecombe as a faithful representative of what were the residences of country gentlemen or barons in the ancient acceptation of that word.

“It came,” says Lysons, “into the possession of the Edgecombe family, by the marriage of Hilaria, daughter and heir of William de Cotehele, with William de Edgecombe, in the reign of Edward III. After this marriage, Cotehele became for a while the chief residence of the Edgecombe family.” Carew, speaking of this place, says, “the buildings are ancient, large, strong, and fayre, and appurtenanced with the necessaries of wood, water, fishing, park, and mills, with the devotion of (in times past) a rich-furnished chapel, and with the charity of almshouses, for certain poor people, whom the owners used to relieve.”

The beauty of its situation, the river and ancient ponds, united with the antiquities of the place, render Cotehele one of the most curious and worthy of attention in the West of England; and the following description, 155 taken in 1830 by an architectural correspondent of the Gentleman’s Magazine, is therefore extracted from that miscellany for 1833.

“There is a singularity about this Mansion, which requires to be accounted for. It cannot claim an origin in very remote antiquity, the earliest parts being not older than the reign of Henry the Seventh; yet the narrowness of the windows and other openings, and the tower above the gateway, would lead to the idea that it was built in an early insecure period. This, I think, may be accounted for from the fact that the builder, Sir Richard Edgecombe, had encountered personal danger in the wars of the Roses, and probably erected his mansion in the early part of the reign of Henry the Seventh, so soon after the conclusion of the conflict, that he might be impressed with the fear that the reign of the newly enthroned monarch might not be more peaceable than that of his predecessors, and he adopted under these impressions the style which the mansion now displays.

“The house is quadrangular, with a court-yard in the centre; and, like the generality of the mansions of antiquity, has the appendage of a hall and chapel. It is built of moor-stone in irregular courses, though some of the blocks are exceedingly large. The west front is not imposing, from the want of height, which detracts from its general appearance. The entrance is not in the centre, and is only wide enough for foot passengers; it consists of an obtuse pointed arch, slightly moulded with foliage on the spandrils, which is inclosed within another of larger dimensions with a weather cornice, and on the space between the two is a blank shield accompanied by two bold leaves. The windows are situated high in the wall; they are of small dimensions, being in fact little more than enlarged loopholes. The chimneys are square, having caps formed with coping stones. Above the entrance is a tower of a cubical form, with an embattled parapet. On entering the court through 156 the gateway, the Hall is seen in the front, and near it, on the west side of the quadrangle, the lantern window of the Chapel.

“The interior of the Hall is very interesting. The roof is timber, and arched; and on the walls hang various pieces of armour and weapons of considerable antiquity, with a complete suit of armour, which is probably not older than the Civil wars. In the end walls are apertures in the shape of a quatrefoil, which admit a view of the hall from adjacent apartments, and would allow the motions of persons assembled in it to be watched. There are some specimens of ancient furniture in the hall; in particular a chair having the date 1627. In the windows are several armorial shields in stained glass.

“The Chapel projects from the western side of the mansion. It is small and neat, and has a small bell-tower. The square window in the west end is unglazed; the aperture being secured by wide bars; but allowing 157 any person standing on the outside to see the altar. At the distance of a few feet from the door lies an ancient font, 19 inches square by 14 inches deep; it is formed of a block of moorstone, and panelled at the sides. The interior of this chapel is approached from the mansion by the hall, to which it communicates through a small room. The roof is timber, ribbed and panelled; and coved in the form of an obtuse arch. In the south window St. Anne and St. Katherine are represented in painted glass. The altar is oak, with upright panels, having quatrefoil heads. An ancient altar cloth is preserved in the house; it is formed of red velvet powdered with fleur-de-lis, and the part which was shown when it was laid on the altar, had a crucifix in the centre, accompanied by the twelve apostles in rich embroidery, and the arms of Edgecombe.

“The limit of a single visit would not allow me to particularize the various articles of furniture contained in the mansion. In the drawing-room the screen to the doorway appears to be of the date of the building; on the door itself are roses in lozenges. The bedroom, called King Charles’s, has a fine ancient state bed, with a profusion of carved work about it; and a steel mirror. The dog-inns, some of which are probably as old as the mansion, remain in the fire-places. Two chairs commemorate a visit from King George the Third and Queen Charlotte in 1789.

“In the grounds is another chapel, which derives its interest from the circumstance of its having been erected by Sir Richard Edgecombe in commemoration of his escape from his pursuers by concealment near the spot. It is much injured by modern alterations made in 1769, and externally retains little of its original features. In the interior are several ancient paintings, which probably formed the decorations of an ancient altar-piece; when entire, it represented the Annunciation. In the east window are St. George, and a female saint with a 158 sword, in painted glass, and several coats of arms. There is also an ancient painting of the monument of the founder of the chapel, who was buried in the conventual church of Morlaix in Bretagne, in September 1489; and a carving in wood of St. Thomas a Becket.”

It is a curious circumstance in the history of Cornwall, that several of the principal gentlemen from this remote county, took active parts on either side between King Richard the Third and his antagonist Henry the Seventh: many were present at the battle of Bosworth. Mr. Carew relates (p. 269, Lord Dunstanville’s edition) the almost miraculous escape of Sir Richard Edgecombe of Cotehele, when he was pursued (as I apprehend) by Bodrigar, who, in his turn, found himself obliged to fly after the defeat of King Richard; and his property was divided between Edgecumbe and Trevanion, with whom a large part of it still remains.

The river from Cotehele to New Bridge exhibits a magnificence of scenery very rarely to be found: the cliffs on the east and north-eastern bank affording here the steep and bold scarpment, as in all other similar situations throughout the country.

Harewood, in this parish, although in the different style of a modern seat, almost rivals Cotehele: this spacious and elegant house was built almost forty years ago by Mr. Foot; but the place was sold after his decease, and it is now the property and residence of Mr. William Salusbury Trelawney, heir of that ancient and distinguished family. Mr. Trelawney married Miss Carpenter, of Mount Toby, near Tavistock, and now (1833) represents the eastern division of Cornwall in Parliament.

Sandhill is another handsome seat in this parish, occupied by Mr. Williams, who, since his purchase of the manor, has improved the waste lands, planted such elevated or steep portions as were unfit for agriculture, and in every way contributed to the prosperity of the place and of its inhabitants.

This parish contains 5035 statute acres.159

being an increase of about 111 per cent. in 30 years.

Present Rector, the Rev. Edward Morshead, presented by the King in 1796.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

The Geological structure of this parish is precisely similar to that of Callington; but, as it is better developed, it will admit of a little more detail.

The northern part consists of the granite of Hingston Down, which is crystalline, and it is extensively quarried for economical purposes. The quarries near the summit of Kitt Hill afford excellent illustrations of the internal structure of the granitic mass. On this Down, beds of fine-grained granite project here and there above the surface, resembling that which occurs as Elvan courses in the adjacent slate. The latter rock consists of a basis of granular felspar, spotted and spangled with a shining mineral like mica. This slate, as well as the granite, have been long explored for tin and copper. Shorl and mica generally abound in the lodes; and the former mineral is often so intimately combined with the quartz, as to form a dark-coloured compact shorl rock. Southward the slate becomes more blue, and is fissile into extended slabs. Near the village of Calstock it is soft and lamellar, having evidently graduated into the calcareous series. At Cotehele, near the landing place, a beautiful oved-coloured calcareous schist is quarried, which is said to prove a good material for lining kilns and ovens: it has a shining talcose appearance, resembling that of Trenalt, near Pallephant, in Alternon.

160 Nearly opposite to the Rectory, built by Bishop Blackbourn, and pleasantly situated on the river, may be seen the debouch of a canal from Tavistock, with an inclined plane, descending into the Tamar. This canal, in one part of its line, passes through a hill at the depth of seventy fathoms.

HALS.

Camborne is situate in the hundred of Penwith, and hath upon the east Redruth, north Illugan, west Gwynier, south Crowan. For its modern name, Camborne, which was not extant at the time of the Norman Conquest, signifies a crooked or arched burne, or well.

This parish is said to derive its name from a holy well situated within it, to which great numbers of persons resorte from a high opinion of its great medical virtues, in addition to its sanctity.

Ecclesia de Camborne, in Decanatu de Penwid, 1294, was rated to the Pope’s annats viiil. In Wolsey’s Inquisition, 1521, and Valor Beneficiorum, £39. 16s. 9d. The patronage in Basset, the incumbent Newcombe; the parish rated to the 4s. per £1. Tax, 1696, £203. 16s.

Pendarves in this parish, I am informed, transnominated a family of gentlemen from Tresona, i. e. the charm town, in St. Enoder, to Pendarves, temp. Eliz. William Pendarves, Esq. Sheriff of Cornwall 30th Cha. II. 1680, married Adiston, daughter of Edmund Prideaux, Esq. but died without issue; whereby his estate descended to his second brother’s son; and he dying without issue, it descended to his third brother’s son, viz. Sir William Pendarves, knight, now in possession thereof, who married Godolphin, the widow of Hoblyn of Nanswidon. 161 His father, Thomas Pendarves, clerk, rector of St. Colomb Major, and St. Mawgun in Pider, married Hoblyn of Nanswiddon; his grandfather, Arundell of Menadarva; his great-grandfather Humphrys; and giveth for his arms, in a field Sable, a falcon Argent displayed, between three mullets Or.

Menadarva, in this parish, is the dwelling of William Arundell, Esq. descended from the Arundells of Trerice, to whose ancestor, temp. Charles I. it was given by the last will and testament of John Arundell, of Trerice, Esq. (commonly called John of Tilbury, for that with Queen Elizabeth, at that place, he was an officer under her in the standing army posted in that place in expectation of and to oppose the Spanish Armada 1588), in those words amongst other—“Item, I give to my naturall son, John Arundell, my mannor and barton of Menadarva in Camburne, and to his heirs lawfully begotten for ever.”

The last gentleman of this family dying without issue male, his sisters for a time, married to Tresahar and others, became possessed of this lordship; but it happened that a brother of theirs also, who was a merchant factor in Spain, who married an innkeeper’s widow there, in Malaga or Seville, of English extraction, was said to be dead without issue, but it seems before his death had issue by her an infant son, which was bred up in Spain till he came of age, without knowledge of his relations aforesaid; who, being brought into England with his mother, temp. Will. III. delivered ejectments upon the barton and manor of Menadarva, and the occupants thereof, as heir-at-law to Arundell, and brought down a trial upon the same at Lanceston, in this county; where upon the issue it appeared, upon the oaths of Mr. Delliff and other Spanish merchants of London, that the said heir was the legitimate son of Mr. Arundell aforesaid in Spain, and born under coverture or marriage; he obtained a verdict and judgment thereon for the same, 162 and is now in possession thereof. He married Tremanheer of Penzance, and hath issue. The arms of this family are the same as those of the Arundells of Trerice, with due distinction.[24]

Roswarne, in this parish, gave to its owner the name of De Roswarne, one of which tribe sold those lands, temp. James I. to Ezekiel Grosse, gent. attorney-at-law, who made it his dwelling, and in this place got a great estate by the inferior practice of the law; but much more,[25] as tradition saith, by means of a spirit or apparition that haunted him in this place till he spake to it (for it is notable that sort of things called apparitions, are such proud gentry that they never speak first), whereupon it discovered to him where much treasure lay hid in this mansion, which, according to the (honest) ghost’s direction he found, to his great enriching; after which this phantasm or spectrum become so troublesome and direful to him day and night, that it forced him to forsake this place (as rich, it seems, as this devil could make him) and to quit his claim thereto by giving or selling it to his clerk John Call; whose son, John Call, gent. sold it again to Robert Hooker, gent. attorney-at-law, now in possession thereof. The arms of Call were, in a field three trumpets, in allusion to the name in English; but in Cornish British, call, cal, signifies any hard, flinty, or obdurate matter or thing, and hirgorne is a trumpet.

Crane, adjoining Roswarne, gave name to its possessor Cit-crane, who gave bustards or cranes for his arms; for as Crana, Krana, is as grus in Latin, so it is a crane in English; garan and cryhyr is in the Welsh. One of which gentlemen sold this tenement also to Gross, who conveyed it to Call, as Call hath to Hooker aforesaid.

Treswithan, or Trease-withan, in this parish, compounded of Tres-with-an, was of old the seat of the De 163 Brayes, gentlemen heretofore of great antiquity, good note, and considerable revenues in those parts; though in the time of Charles I. their estate was much impaired, so that the last gentleman of this family dying much indebted, and no heir appearing, occasioned a memorable lawsuit between Sir Francis Basset, knight, lord of the manor of Tyhiddy, of which those lands of Treswithan were held, and the creditors of Mr. Braye, then in possession of the premises: when in fine, upon the issue at law at Lanceston, the jury gave it in escheat, for want of issue, to Sir Francis Basset, in right of his manor aforesaid, the verdict passing against the creditors; whereby the posterity of Sir Francis are possessed of it to this day.

TONKIN

has merely copied from Mr. Hals.

THE EDITOR.

Camborne has risen more rapidly into wealth and importance than any other parish in Cornwall. The church tower is so large and well-built, and it possesses with a market so many appendages of a regular town, that the prefix church may well be omitted.

Pendarves was given by Mrs. Percevall, surviving sister of Sir William Pendarves, to Mr. John Stackhouse, second son of Doctor William Stackhouse, Rector of St. Anne, who married Miss Williams, heiress of that branch of the Williamses of Probus, which had settled at Trehane. Mr. John Stackhouse married Miss Acton, with whom he acquired a very large property in Shropshire: his son, Mr. Edward William Wynne Pendarves is now the proprietor. Pendarves has become a very handsome seat in consequence of the successive improvements made by the late Mr. Stackhouse and himself. He has adopted the name of Pendarves in the place of Stackhouse, and added Wynne in gratitude 164 of a large addition made to his fortunes by the late Reverend Luttrell Wynne, LL.D.

Mr. Pendarves has followed the examples of his two immediate predecessors, by marrying a considerable heiress, Miss Triste, from Devonshire. He has been twice elected member for the county, and now (1833) represents the western division of Cornwall.

Menadarva was purchased by the late Mr. Basset, and belongs to his son, Lord Dunstanville.

Rosewarne was the residence of Mr. William Harris, who greatly increased his fortune by skill and success in mining. He served the office of sheriff in 1773. His only daughter and heiress is married to Mr. Winchcombe Hartley, a gentleman of Berkshire.

Crane, with several adjoining farms, became the property of Mr. John Oliver Willyams, of Carnanton, in right of his mother, and the whole, on his demise, was purchased by Lord Dunstanville.

I cannot close my short additions to Camborne without noticing Mr. Richard Trevithick. No one, with the exception of Mr. Watt, has probably contributed in so great a degree to the improvement of steam-engines, the most important and the most philosophical of all mechanical inventions. His enterprise has also equalled the abstract powers of his mind, and for several years he laboured in South America to give the mines of that great continent the advantage of European machinery; but civil wars, and the instability of Governments, defeated his best endeavours, so as to render them, up to the present time, unavailing either to those mines or to himself.

Camborne contains 5933 statute acres.

giving an increase of 60 per cent. in 30 years.

GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.165

The eastern and south-western sides of this parish are situate on granite, the greater part consisting of high and barren hills, including Carnbrea and Carnkie. This rock is large-grained, and not very prone to disintegrate; it is occasionally traversed by beds of felspar porphyry.

On the boundaries of this granite, and in the adjacent slate, are numerous tin and copper-mines, the most interesting of which are Delcoath and Cock’s Kitchen; the latter extends into the parish of Illogan, but is a continuation of the Camborne lodes. Delcoath has been for many years the deepest mine in Cornwall. It stands at the surface, about fifty fathoms (300 feet) above the level of the sea, and the deepest shaft is about a hundred and eighty fathoms (1080 feet) below the sea level, making on the whole a depth from the surface of nearly 1400 feet.

These mines exhibit the curious geological phenomena of alternating granite and slate; that is, in sinking a perpendicular shaft, the miner passes repeatedly out of one of these rocks into the other. Various theoretical opinions have been entertained on this subject: some geologists supposing that the layers are no more than irregular protuberances from the main mass of the rock; whilst others consider them as large veins dipping towards and communicating with the granite at a great depth. But it is ascertained that these granite layers are sometimes detached or insulated masses, whilst at other times they form large veins or courses, which have regular bearings to a considerable distance, and are then called elvans; to form, however, a correct idea of the features of these phenomena, we must become acquainted, not with the appearance only, but with the nature and composition of these two rocks.

Granite and slate are usually considered, from their exterior character, as very dissimilar, whereas in this situation their real composition is nearly alike.

166 The granite immediately in contact with the slate, consists of compact felspar, containing particles or crystals of felspar, quartz, and mica, in variable proportions, but the whole generally increasing towards the centre of the mass. So that the granite is changed into a felspar rock or porphyry rock, scarcely ever resembling a well characterised granite; while the slate in contact has received the various names of greywacke, greenstone, clayslate, and killas; but it appears to be a rock sui generis, consisting almost entirely of compact felspar, coloured purple or blue by its intimate union with a dark-coloured micaceous mineral, sometimes seen distinct on the surface of the slate, and from which it appears to derive its lamellar structure. The bases of these two rocks are therefore the same, and at the point of contact it is often difficult to draw a line between them; for the slate passes into white compact felspar by the gradual disappearance of its colouring mineral; and this granite rock, by the more and more additions of felspar, quartz, and mica, reassumes its usual character.

On this view of the subject, it is easy to comprehend why the granite and the slate alternate and mutually pass into each other; and an explanation may also be given of the complicated phenomena of granite veins in slate, when it is assumed that both rocks are not only of contemporaneous origin, but likewise similar in their mineral composition.

Between this mining district and a line drawn east and west across the parish, a little north of the church town, the land is in most places very good; but north of this line, at the extremity of the parish, where it abuts on the sea, the ground is almost entirely uncultivated, affording nothing more than a slight pasturage for sheep. At Godrevy Point there is laid open an interesting section of diluvial deposits: one of the beds, composed of shelly sand and pebbles, is consolidated with sandstone and conglomerate.

[24] See Symons of Halt in Botus Fleming.

[25] Here the word “fire-side” is interlined; and at ‡ the words “good now” in the same hand with the paragraph within brackets.

HALS.

Cardinham is situate in the hundred of West, and hath upon the north Blisland, Temple, and part of Altarnun; south, Bradock and Warleggan; west, Bodmin. For the name, it is compounded of those particles, car-din-ham, id est, the rock-man’s-home or habitation; also car-dyn-an, i. e. the rock man, or a man that dwells upon, or has his residence amongst rocks, or in a rocky country, with which sort of inanimate creatures the north part of this parish aboundeth. It takes its denomination from the manor and barton of old Cardinham; as from thence did its lord and owner Robert de Cardinan, temp. Richard I., the same gentleman mentioned in Mr. Carew’s “Survey of Cornwall,” that by the tenure of knight-service held in those parts seventy-one knight’s fees; which undoubtedly then was the greatest estate pertaining to any private man in this province. He was not only the founder and endower of the Alien Priory of St. Andrew at Tywardreth, (of which more in that place,) but also of this rectory church. By the Inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester into the value of benefices in Cornwall, as aforesaid, 1294, Ecclesia de Cardinan in Decanatu de Westwellshire, was rated 6l. 8s. 4d. In Wolsey’s Inquisition, 1521, and Valor Beneficiorum, 24l. 17s. 6d., by the name of the Rectory of Cardenham, synonymous with Cardinham. The patronage in the Lord Dynham’s heir, Arundell, and others; the incumbent, Waddon; this parish was taxed to the 4s. per pound Land Tax, 1696, temp. William III., 161l. 8s.

And here it must be observed, that there was no such parish or church extant at the time of the Norman conquest as Cardinham; for in the Domesday Rate, 1087, 20 William I., this division passed then under the 168 districts of Cabulian, Dovenot, and Glin, (see the Domesday Catalogue); but after the building and endowing of this church, Glin was converted into Cardinham parish, and Cabulian into Warliggon; under which name and title they have hitherto passed, as members thereof. I find it much controverted amongst antiquaries and historians, whether the Dynhams, that afterwards became possessed of this manor and barton, were the descendants of this Robert de Cardinan, or not; some averring one thing and some another; but certain I am they were possessed thereof as his heirs and assigns; but whether denominated from thence, or the local places of Dynham in St. Menvor, or Dinham-bridge in St. Kew, I know not. Nevertheless, contrary to both those conjectures, Mr. Camden tells us that those Dinhams were a French tribe that came into England with William the Conqueror; particularly one Oliver de Dinant, one of whose sons, viz. Galfrid de Dinham, temp. Henry II. was a great augmenter of the Abbey of Hartland; and changed the secular priests founded there by Githa, wife of Earl Godwin, into Black Canons Augustine. See Monasticon Anglicanum, in Devon.

One Oliver de Dinant, or Dinham, was by writ of summons called to Parliament as a Baron, 24 Edward I. who had issue Josce, who had issue John, who had issue John, who had issue John, who had issue John; who were all knighted; which last John had issue, by Sir Richard Arche’s heir, John Dinham, of Old Cardenham, Esq., sheriff of Devon, 39 Henry VI., 1460, who then resided at his barton of Nutwell, in Woodberry parish, eight miles from Exeter, who at that time made use of his authority in promoting the safety of the Duke of York’s friends, viz. the Earls of March, Salisbury, and Warwick, and others, then attainted of treason by Act of Parliament, who, in order to the preservation of their lives, fled into Devonshire, 169 where they were concealed by the said John Dinham at Nutwell aforesaid, till he had opportunities from Exmouth to convey them to Guernsey, from whence they were transported to Calais, which place they secured for the Duke of York. But as soon as King Henry and the Parliament understood thereof, immediately the Duke of Somerset was dispatched with a commission to be governor of that place; who no sooner approached the harbour of Calais with his ships, but those fugitive lords ordered the train of artillery at Rysbank (there) immediately to be fired upon the Duke of Somerset and his companions, as they were coming on shore, which so obstructed their design that they were forced, with some damage and loss, to return to their ships, weigh anchor, spread sails, and bear off for the English coast, and dropped anchor safely at Sandwich in Kent; from whence King Henry and Queen Margaret had some notice from the Duke of Somerset of the affront offered his Majesty and him at Calais, whereupon the King ordered his navy royal, as soon as possible, to be in readiness to attend and assist him, in order to reduce Calais to his obedience.

But, alas! maugre those contrivance, the said John Dynham, before the King’s navy could be provided and got together, out of affection to the Duke of York, the Earl of March and his confederates, like a daring, valiant, courageous, and invincible hero, as he was, with a small company of armed men, boarded the Earl of Somerset’s ships in the harbour of Sandwich, and therein took the Lord Rivers, designed for his admiral against Calais, and by a strong hand carried him and all his ships thither; and then, with the same ships, conveyed the Earl of March and his friends from Calais to the Duke of York his father, then fled into Ireland.

After the restoration of the House of York to the crown, in the person of Edward IV. we find this John Dynham was knighted. In the 6th Edward IV. he was 170 by writ summoned to Parliament as a Baron thereof, by the name of John Dinham, Baron Dinham, of Cardinham. In the 9th Edward IV. he obtained a grant of the custody of the forest of Dartmoor, the manor and borough of Lidford, and the manor of South Teign in Devon, during his life, under the yearly rent of 100 marks, and 6s. 8d.; and soon after he got a grant of the office of steward of the honours, castles, manors, and boroughs of Plympton, Oakhampton, Tiverton, Sampford Courtney, and some others, and was made Knight of the Garter; and in the first year of Henry VII., 1485, he was by letters patent created Baron Dinham, of Cardinham; afterwards he was made Lord High Treasurer of England, which office he held fifteen years, and died 17 Henry VII. aged seventy-two years. He left issue Charles Dinham, Esq. his son and heir, sheriff of Devon, 16 Edward IV., 1476, that married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Lord Fitzwalter, who died without issue; by reason whereof his four sisters became his heirs, and were married, Jane, to Baron Zouch, of Totness; Joan, to Lord Arundell, of Lanherne, knight; Margaret, to Nicholas Baron Carew, of Molesford, in Berkshire; and Elizabeth, to Foulk Bourchier, of Tavistock, Lord Fitzwarren. The arms of Dinham were, in a field Gules, three fusils in fess Argent, within a border Ermine; but Nicholas Upton, in his manuscript of heraldry, 1440, written before the invention of printing, tells us, Monsieur Oliver de Dinham port de Goules un fess engrelle de Ermine, un bordure endentee Argent.