Baring-Gould Sabine
A Book of Cornwall
The right of voting for this distracted borough had already been changed from one of nominees of the patron to one purely democratic, and now, in 1701, it was again changed. This time it was invested in the portreeve, and in the inhabitants paying scot and lot.
For nearly half a century no election petition came up from Mitchell, but in 1754 the scandals became more flagrant than before, and the interest of the political world was drawn to this obscure and ragged hamlet. Lord Sandwich had squared the returning officer, and his candidate was elected by thirty against twenty-five. The Duke of Newcastle now disputed this election. There were, at that period, two taverns at Mitchell, each with its picturesque projecting porch on granite pillars. Each of these became the centre of party cabal and caucus, and this continued for ten months, during which ale and wine flowed and money circulated, and the electors ate and drank at the expense of the Earl of Sandwich and the Duke of Newcastle, and devoted all their energies to swell their several factions at the expense of the other. At last the duke's candidates, Luttrell and Hussey, were returned vice Clive (a cousin of the Indian Clive) and Stephenson, who were sustained by the earl.
After this "stranger succeeded stranger in the representation of Mitchell." In 1784 the two patrons were Lord Falmouth and Francis Basset, Esq. No sooner was the election declared than a petition against the return was sent up to the House, and the Committee found that the evidence of bribery and corruption by one of the returned members was so gross that he was forthwith unseated.
Sir Christopher Hawkins of Trewithen, Bart., was sole owner of the borough between 1784 and 1796, and he held it with an iron grasp. By means of pulling down houses, this crafty baronet thinned down the electors to sixteen, and finally further reduced the number to three. Sir Christopher held Grampound and Tregony as well in his fist, and had runners at his several boroughs to keep him informed how election proceedings went on in each place. His high-handed proceedings and his closeness in everything not connected with elections made him vastly unpopular. One morning a paper was found affixed to the gates of Trewithen.
"A large house, and no cheer,
A large park, and no deer,
A large cellar, and no beer.
Sir Christopher Hawkins lives here."
Sir Kit died in 1829, unmarried, when the title became extinct, but his memory continues green, if not sweet, in the minds of Cornishmen of the parts where he ruled.
In 1806 one of the representatives of the borough was Arthur Wellesley, the subsequent Duke of Wellington.
During eleven years, 1807-1818, there were nine elections at Mitchell. No event of importance occurred after 1818, except the extraordinary and significant revelation made at the contested election of 1831, when Hawkins, the nephew of Sir Christopher, got two votes; Kenyon, a Tory, five; and Bent three. In the following year the five electors of Mitchell found their borough disfranchised.
There were, when I visited Mitchell in 1893, two old men, brothers, of the name of Manhire, one aged ninety-four, who could recollect the last election, and could tell some good stories about it.
Trerice, the ancient seat of the Arundells, is near Mitchell, which, it may be remembered, was made into a borough because completely under their control. But their influence rapidly declined, and they lost all power over the voters. The old house is converted into a farm, and is no longer in the possession of the Arundells. Its fine carved oak furniture was scattered.
More charmingly idyllic than Trerice is Lanherne, another seat of the Arundells. Roger de Arundell was at home when the Conqueror came to England. William Arundell had his lands forfeited for rebellion in the reign of King John, but they passed to his nephew, Humphrey Arundell, in 1216. His son, Sir Renfrey Arundell of Treffry, married the daughter and heiress of Sir John de Lanherne in the reign of Henry III., and since then Lanherne became one of the favourite family seats of a house that acquired the baronies of Wardour and Trerice.
Lanherne lies in the loveliest vale in Cornwall, shut in and screened from the blasts that sweep from the Atlantic. The old house was abandoned in 1794 to the nuns of Mount Carmel, who fled to England for refuge from the storms of the French Revolution. The front of the mansion is of the date 1580, and is eminently picturesque. A modern range of buildings has been added for the accommodation of the nuns, but it is not unsightly. The lovely pinnacled tower of the church of S. Mawgan rises beside the ancient mansion, at a considerably lower level, and the interior is rich with sculptured oak, and with monuments of the Arundells.
Alas! the mighty family that once dominated in Cornwall, second in power only to the Princes of Wales, royal dukes of that duchy, is now represented in Cornwall by empty mansions, alienated to other holders, and by tombs.
The motto of the family is "Deo data-Given by God." It might be properly supplemented, If the Lord gave, the Lord hath also taken away.
Lanherne is in the parish of S. Mawgan. The church has been coldly and unsympathetically renovated by Mr. Butterfield. It contains very fine carved bench-ends and a screen that deserve inspection. The tower of the church is peculiarly beautiful, and the church rises above a grove of the true Cornish elm, growing like poplars, small-leaved.
Carnanton was formerly the dwelling of William Noye, a farmer of Buryan, who was bred as student-at-law in Lincoln's Inn, and afterwards became M. P. for S. Ives in Cornwall, in which capacity he stood for several Parliaments in the beginning of the reign of Charles I., and was one of the boldest and stoutest champions of the rights of Parliament against absolute monarchy. Charles I. then made him his attorney-general, 1631, whereupon his views underwent a complete change, "so that," as Halls says, "like the image of Janus at Rome, he looked forward and backward, and by means thereof greatly enriched himself." He it was who contrived the ship-money tax, which was so obnoxious, and was a principal occasion of the Rebellion.
The attorney-general one day was entertaining King Charles I. and the nobility of the court at dinner in his house in London. Ben Jonson and other choice spirits were at the same time in a tavern on the opposite side of the street, very much out of pocket, and with their stomachs equally empty.
Ben, knowing what was going on opposite, wrote this little metrical epistle and sent it to the attorney-general on a white wood trencher: -
"When the World was drown'd
No deer was found,
Because there was noe Park;
And here I sitt
Without een a bitt,
'Cause Noyah hath all in his Arke."
The presentation of this billet caused great amusement, and Noyes sent back a dish of venison with the rhymes recast, at the dictation of the king, in this fashion: -
"When the World was drown'd
There deer was found,
Althoe there was noe Park;
I send thee a bitt
To quicken thy witt,
Which comes from Noya's Arke."
Halls says: -
"William Noye was blow-coal, incendiary, and stirrer up of the Civil Wars by assisting and setting up the King's prerogative to the highest pitch, as King James I. had done before, beyond the laws of the land. As counsell for the King he prosecuted for King Charles I. the imprisoned members of the House of Commons, 1628; viz., Sir John Elyot, Mr. Coryton, and others; whom after much cost and trouble he got to be fined two thousand pounds each, the others five hundred pounds."
A portrait of William Noye, by Cornelius Jansen, is at Enys, the property of D. G. Enys, Esq.
S. Mawgan, the founder of the church, as also of that in Kerrier, was a man of extraordinary importance to the early Celtic Church in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall. He was the great educator of the saints, and perhaps the first head of a college in Britain. He had under him S. David, Paulinus, and the ill-conditioned Gildas; and he is probably the same as Maucan, "the master," entrusted by S. Patrick with the education of the clergy for the Irish mission. S. Euny and S. Torney were disciples of his, and it was he who gave to Brig, or Breaca, the rules by which a religious community of women should be governed.
His great educational establishment was at Ty Gwyn, or the White House. This was planted on the slope of Carn Llidy, a purple, heather-clothed crag close to S. David's Head in Pembrokeshire, whence in the evening the sun can be seen setting behind the mountains of Wexford.
Here remains of a rude old chapel can be traced, and around it are countless very early interments in unhewn stone graves, pointing east and west. In fact, this is the necropolis of the great missionary home whence streamed the first Christian teachers into Ireland, and whence Scotland, Cornwall, and Wales were supplied with evangelists.23
His establishment was a double one, of female disciples as well as of males, and the consequences were not always satisfactory.
A British king named Drust (523-28) sent his daughter to Ty Gwyn to be educated. In the college were at the time Finnian, afterwards of Clonard, and two other Irishmen, Rioc and Talmage. Rioc fell in love with the girl, and bribed Finnian to be his go-between and get her for him as wife by the promise of a copy of all Mawgan's books that he undertook to make. Finnian agreed, but by treachery, or as a joke, did the courting for Talmage in place of Rioc. When the circumstances came to the ears of Mawgan he was very angry, and he gave his boy a hatchet, and told him to hide behind the chapel, and when Finnian came to matins to hew at him from behind. But instead of Finnian, the first to arrive was Mawgan himself, and he received the blow destined for Finnian. Happily, either because the boy missed his aim in the dark, or more probably because the order had been given to beat Finnian and not kill him, Mawgan was not mortally wounded.
Non, the mother of S. David, was brought up in the same house, and was there when it was visited by Gildas the historian, whose works we have.
It does not at all appear that the rule of celibacy was required of clergy, even of abbots, in the early Celtic Church, for this same Gildas was father of two founders of churches in Cornwall-S. Eval and S. Filius, of Philleigh; and S. Kenneth, the crippled Abbot of Gower, was the father of S. Enoder.
S. Patrick in Ireland did not require his bishops to be unmarried; all he demanded of them was that they should follow the apostolic rule, and that each should be the husband of one wife. The same regulation continued in force in Wales till the Norman invasion in the twelfth century.
S. Patrick was no doubt mainly guided in making his rule by what was ordered in Scripture, but he was also doubtless satisfied that on practical grounds it was the best course, for he had a difficult team of missionaries to drive. This comes out clearly enough in the "Lives" extant.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LIZARD
Meneage-The meaning of Lizard-The character of the district-Helston-The Furry Day-Pixy pots-Loe Pool-Tennyson-Serpentine-The Cornish heath-The Strapwort-Other plants-Woad-S. Piran and the woad-Windmill-Peter Odger-Mullion-Tregonning Hill-S. Ruan-S. Winwaloe-One and All-Gunwalloe Church-Cury-The colonisation of Brittany-Wrecks.
"The learned Scotus," says Addison in the 174th number of the Tatler, "to distinguish the race of mankind, gives to every individual of that species what he calls a seity, something peculiar to himself, which makes him different from all other persons in the world."
What the learned Scotus said of individuals may as truly be said of localities; and indisputably the seity of the Lizard is most pronounced.
In itself the district is not beautiful. It consists of a tableland elevated a few hundred feet above the sea, very bald and treeless, and without hills to break its uniformity.
Properly it is not the Lizard at all, but Meneage, i. e. the land of the Minachau, the monks. Lizard-Lis-arth, the high-placed or lofty Lis(court) – applies merely to the head and point where stands now Lizard Town, and where was formerly the enclosed court of a prince of the district, or perhaps that of the Irish monks, who occupied the region and appropriated it.
It is almost an island, for the Helford river runs up to Gweek, five miles from the Helston river, that opens into Loe Pool.
Helston is not a particularly interesting place in itself. It consists of a long street leading to the old bowling-green, which is preserved, and stands above the ravine of the Cober (Gael. cobhair, foam), where is an archway to William Millett Grylls, designed for execution in sugar-candy, and carried out in granite.
What makes Helston interesting is the annual observance of the Furry Day, on May 8th. It has been often described. The morning is ushered in by a peal of bells from the church tower, and at about nine o'clock the people assemble and demand their prescriptive holiday. They then collect donations, and repair to the fields "to bring home the May."
About noon they return, carrying flowers and branches, and a procession of dancing couples is formed at the Town Hall; and this proceeds down the town, dancing in at the front door of every house and out at the back, and so along their way, with a band preceding them, performing the traditional Furry Dance tune, which is not of any remarkable age, being a hornpipe. The dancers first trip in couples, hand in hand, during the first part of the tune, forming a string of from thirty to forty couples, or perhaps more; at the second part of the tune the first gentleman turns, with both hands, the lady behind him, and her partner turns in like manner as the first lady; then each gentleman turns his own partner, and they trip on as before. The other couples pair and turn in the same way and at the same time.
It is considered a slight to pass a house and not to dance through it. Finally the train enters the Assembly Room, and there resolves itself into an ordinary waltz.
As soon as the first party has finished another goes through the same evolutions, and then another, and so on; and it is not till late at night that the town returns to its peaceful propriety.
The dancers on the first day are the gentlemen and ladies. The servants go through the same proceedings on the morrow.
I have given both the song and tune in my Songs of the West.
A few years ago the celebration was discontinued; but this provoked such dissatisfaction that it was revived with fresh zest.
The visitor to Helston may see an occasional pixy pot on a roof-ridge of an old house. This is a bulbous ornament, on which the pixies are supposed to dance, and in dancing drop luck on the house below.
Loe Pool is the largest lake in Cornwall; the only other is Dozmare. It is a beautiful sheet of fresh water cut off from the sea by a pebble ridge, which it was wont to overflow, but a culvert has been bored through the rocks to enable the Cober to discharge without, as formerly rising and inundating the land below Helston.
It is really marvellous to see how the mesembryanthemum flourishes here, throwing up masses of pink and white blossom.
In the neighbourhood it is fondly dreamed that this was the tarn into which Arthur had Excalibur cast.
"On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water-"
After the sword had been cast in, hither Arthur was carried by Sir Bedivere.
"To left and right
The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag, that rang
Sharp smitten with the dint of armed heels-
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon."
Hither came the "dusky barge" that was to bear Arthur away to the isles of the blessed. This is very pretty; the lake, the black serpentine rocks agree well enough, but how was the fairy barge to get over the pebble ridge? Mr. Rogers had not then cut the culvert. No doubt it was brimming, but it must have been risky over the bar. I do not believe a word of it. Arthur never was down there. The reputed site of the battle is at Slaughter Bridge, near Camelford. But before we settle where the battle was fought, we must fix Arthur himself, and he is slippery (historically) as an eel.
What makes the Lizard district interesting is in the first place the serpentine rock that forms it, and then the plants which luxuriate on the serpentine.
The serpentine lies to the west, reared up in the magnificent cliffs of Mullion and Kynance coves, but the main body of the upheaved plateau consists of another volcanic rock called gabbro. The serpentine is so called because it has something of the glaze and greenness of a snake's skin.
The Lizard rocks have long been an object of interest and dispute among geologists. For a study of them I must refer to the papers of Mr. T. Clark in the Transactions of the Polytechnic Institution of Cornwall.
The most casual visitor must be struck, if in Meneage at the season of flowering, with the abundance of the beautiful Cornish heath (Erica vagans), which in growth and general appearance cannot for a moment be mistaken for the common heath. The Rev. C. A. Johns says of it in his Week at the Lizard: -
"The stems are much branched, and in the upper parts very leafy, from two to four feet high. The flowers are light purple, rose-coloured, or pure white. In the purple variety the anthers are dark purple; in the white, bright red; and in all cases they form a ring outside the corolla until they have shed their pollen, when they droop to the sides. On the Goonhilley Downs in Cornwall these varieties of heath grow together in the greatest profusion, covering many hundreds of acres, and almost excluding the two species so common elsewhere."
It flowers from July to September.
Another heath found there and near Truro is the Erica ciliaris, with bright purple flowers of oblong form; it is by far the most beautiful of our English heaths. The flowers are half an inch in length, growing down the upper part of the stem, and the leaves are delicately fringed with hairs. It has a somewhat glutinous feel. It is rare except in Cornwall.
A rare plant, and pretty withal, is the strapwort (Corrigiola littoralis), trailing among the shingle on the bar of Loe Pool. It has minute white flowers and glaucous leaves. The plant has a curious habit of shifting its quarters almost every year from one part of the shore to another.
"Sometimes, for instance, it abounds on the slaty beach at Penrose, but scarcely a single specimen is to be found on the opposite side of the lake. Next year, perhaps, it grows in profusion on the eastern beaches, but has disappeared from its former station." (Johns.)
The strapwort grows nowhere else in Britain but here and in two places in Devonshire.
On the cliffs may be seen the sky-blue vernal squill in May and June, but by midsummer it has disappeared to make room for the autumnal squill, a much less beautiful species.
In marshy spots may be found the pale pinguicula and the buckbean. Four kinds of genistas are to be seen in flower, bright and yellow.
The purple allium, or chive garlic, may be found where water has stood during the winter.
The common asparagus grows in great abundance in the clefts of the rocks. In ravines flourishes the blood-red crane's-bill, and the common harebell, so desiderated on the granite formation, but not found there, may here be met with.
Mr. Johns says: -
"A sloping bank on the right hand of Caerthillian valley, about a hundred yards from the sea, produces, I think, more botanical rarities than any other spot of equal dimensions in Great Britain. Here are crowded together in so small a space that I actually covered with my hat growing specimens all together of Lotus hispidus, Trifolium Bocconi, T. Molinerii, and T. Strictum. The first of these is far from common, the others grow nowhere else in Great Britain."
The cross-leaved heath, found elsewhere pretty generally, with its little cluster of pale waxlike bells at the head of the stalk, does not affect the Lizard.
The woad, wherewith our British ancestors dyed themselves, flourishes abundantly in the Meneage peninsula. It has bright yellow flowers in panicles growing on an upright stem, some two or three feet high, and appears in June and July.
The woad (Isatis tinctoria) yields true indigo, but it contains only about one-thirtieth of the quantity found on the indigo tinctoria cultivated in India. The leaves are ground to a paste in a mill, and then allowed to ferment during eight or twelve days. After that they are formed into balls and dried.
In ancient times this pasty mess was directly used in dyeing by those who carried on all kinds of domestic works at home. During the putrefactive fermentation of the woad ammonia is formed and hydrogen evolved. The latter, while in the nascent state, reduces the blue indigo to the state of white indigo, which, being soluble, can penetrate the wool to be dyed, where it is deposited in the insoluble state as blue indigo, on exposure to the oxygen of the air.
There is an incident in the life of S. Piran, or Kieran, who founded a church, S. Keverne, in the Lizard district, which is connected with dyeing with woad.
His mother was one day engaged in preparing the dye, called by the Irish glasin. Kieran, then a child, was present; and as it was deemed unlucky for a male person to witness the preparation of the dye, she bundled him out of the cabin, whereon he uttered a curse, "May there be a dark stripe in the wool," and the cloth in dyeing actually did exhibit a dark grey stripe in it. The glasin was again prepared, and again Kieran was turned out of the house, whereon he again cursed the process that the material to be dyed might be whiter than bone, and again it was as he had said. The woad was prepared a third time, and Kieran's mother asked him not to spoil it, but, on the contrary, to bless it. This he did with such effect that there was not made before or after a glasin that was its equal, for what remained in the vat served not only to colour all the cloth of the tribe, but made the cats and dogs that touched it blue as well. The explanation of the miracle is very simple. The two failures were due to imperfect fermentation in one case and over-fermentation in the other, accidents to which woad was always liable, especially when prepared, as it was in ancient times, from the fresh leaves, in different stages of growth, and at one period of the year, when the weather was warm and changeable.24
We can see in this story how a fable of a miracle grew up. The circumstance certainly may have happened, and it was afterwards attributed to the saintly boy being turned out of doors, and ill-wishing the dye-vat.
Before the introduction of indigo, woad was specially cultivated in Europe, but after the former was brought in, the woad was no longer raised. At first, indeed, indigo and woad were employed together in dyeing; then came the plan of using certain chemicals in place of woad, which injured the wool and destroyed the quality of cloths; so that in Thuringia orders were issued by the Government prohibiting the employment of indigo.
There is plenty of material for dyeing to be found in Meneage. The moss Hypnum cupressiformum is still employed in the county of Mayo for the purpose of giving wool for stockings a reddish brown colour mottled with white. The white woollen yarn to be dyed is made into skeins; these are tied at intervals by very tight ligatures of linen thread, and then put into the dye vat. The binds prevent the dye from penetrating into that portion of the wool compressed by them, and these portions remain pure white, whereas the rest comes out a rich orange-brown colour. When this thread is knitted into stockings it produces a pretty mottled pattern-the heather, as it is now called. And in all probability the speckled garments to which old King Brychan owed his name were thus produced.
Bed-straw and madder again yield yellow and red, and alder and bogbean a fine black. So the Lizard, when other trades fail, can go in for dyeing.
There is a single windmill in the district.
The story goes that at one time it was rumoured that a second was about to be constructed. The miller was concerned. He went to see the man who entertained the scheme.
"I say, mate, be you goin' to set up another windmill?"
"I reckon I be; you don't object? There's room for more nor one."
"Oh, room, room enough! But there mayn't be wind enough to sarve us both."
An old chap named Peter Odger lived near Mullion. He was somewhat given to the bottle. One day he went with a cart and horse along the road, and took a keg of cider with him. The day was hot, the cider got into his head, and he fell asleep. Some boys found the horse standing in the road feeding. They took the brute out and drove it away.
An hour later Peter awoke, rubbed his eyes, and sat up. "Well, if iver!" said he. "Be I Peter Odger or be I not? 'Tes contrary any way. If I be Peter Odger, I've lost an 'orse; if I bain't, why I've gained a cart."
Peter and his wife did not get on very "suant" together. At last Peter could endure domestic broils no longer; so one day he took every penny he had, and started for the United States. He shipped from Liverpool.
As the vessel neared the Newfoundland coast it got into the cold current setting down from the north, and an iceberg hove in sight. This was too much for Peter. "I likes warmth," said he, "and the only warmth I don't like is when my wife gives it me. I reckon I'll go home." So he covenanted to work his passage back, and by some means or other he did not surrender his ticket for the passage across.
Without landing in America, Peter returned in the vessel in which he had gone out, and with his ticket in his pocket. He walked quietly into his cottage, and put the ticket up on the mantel-shelf.
"Thear, old woman," said he, "I've been and got your ticket for the other world. It cost a sight o' money, but I don't grudge it."
Mrs. Odger in the meanwhile had been hard put to it, with no money in the house, and had led a hand-to-mouth existence, mainly on charity. She did not like it. She was glad to see Peter back.
"You've been a long time away," she said.
"Ees, I reckon. I just tripped over to see that all were ready for you in the other world. They'm expectin' of you, and here's your ticket."
It is said that Mrs. Odger was amiable after that. The ticket was ever held in terror over her head.
At Mullion, once a quiet, lost corner of the world, are now three monster hotels with electric light; their windows look out seaward across the great bay towards Penzance and the granitic headlands of Penwith. From the Lizard the only prominent hill visible is Tregonning, which was held by the Irish colony in the beginning of the sixth century against the Cornish King Tewdrig, and is still crowned with their stone camp.
One of the Irish who settled in Meneage was S. Ruan, or Rumon. How long he remained there we do not know, but he not only founded two churches in the Lizard district and blessed there a holy well, but he also planted an establishment at Ruan Lanihorne, near Tregony, and a chapel at the mouth of the Fal; his bones were translated to Tavistock Abbey in 960. He was a convert of S. Patrick, but left his native island early for Britain, where he was ordained. On leaving Cornwall he visited Brittany, and got into trouble there, for the people took it into their heads that he was a magician, who every night went about in the form of a wolf and devoured their sheep and carried off their children. One woman even denounced him to the prince, Gradlo, for having eaten her daughter. The prince, or duke, could not directly oppose the superstition of his people, so he announced that he would expose Ruan to his wolf-dogs, and if they smelt anything of the wild beast about him they would tear him to pieces. This was a satisfactory decision; it promised sport. But, in the meantime, Gradlo suffered his hounds to be with Ruan, and to be fed from his hand. Accordingly, when the old Irish monk was produced before his accusers and the hounds let in on him, they licked his hands. The people were quite satisfied, and Ruan doubtless then had a hint to make tracks for Cornwall once more, where there were no wolves-at least, in the Lizard district.
Mullion Church is perhaps dedicated to S. Melyan, a prince of Cornwall, who was treacherously murdered by his brother-in-law, Riwhal, at a conference. I have already told the story. But it is also possible that the patron saint may be a Brittany bishop.
Landewednack and Gunwalloe are foundations of S. Winwaloe, related to the Cornish royal family, but chiefly known as a founder in Brittany.
His great foundation there was Landewennec; but that he visited Britain to see what was the rule observed in British monasteries is what we are expressly told in his Life. However, he clearly came to Britain to make foundations as well, and he not only established the Cornish Landewednack and Gunwalloe in the Lizard district, but churches near Launceston, and Portlemouth on the estuary of the Kingsbridge creek in Devon.
His mother is called Gwen the Three-breasted, and she is actually represented with three breasts on a monument in Brittany. She was niece of Constantine I. of Cornwall and Devon, and cousin of Geraint. Gwen had been married before, and had become the mother of S. Cadfan. She and her husband had a rough time of it when they landed in Brittany, at Brehat, at the mouth of the Gouet, as the region was almost void of population, and given up to wilderness and wood. Winwaloe was sent into the little islet of Brehat to S. Budoc, who lived there and received and taught disciples. It is interesting to know that the circular huts, or foundations of the huts, of his monastery still exist there as well as the cemetery, and the abbot's beehive habitation is kept in repair as a landmark for fishermen.
