Baring-Gould Sabine
A Book of Cornwall
When Winwaloe came to man's estate he resolved on founding a monastery of his own. He gathered together a certain number of disciples, thirteen in all, and they settled on a bleak island off the western coast, and remained there for three years.
On this islet was a rocky hill, whereon S. Winwaloe sat and taught; and far away to the east, as he taught, he saw the green forests and the smiling pastures of the mainland golden with buttercups, and there rose the smoke from the hearths of the inhabitants.
Now when the three years were ended, one day there came an extraordinary ebb-tide. And when the saint saw that there was a way dry, or almost dry, to the land, "Arise," said he; "in God's name let us go over;" and he bade his disciples follow him. "But," said he, "let none go alone; let one hold my hand, and with his other hand hold his brother's, and so let us advance in chain, and we shall peradventure be able to reach the land before the tide turns and overwhelms all. Let us hold together, that the strong may support the weak, and that if one falls the others may lift him up."
Now when Winwaloe said this, he spoke like a true Cornishman, and it shows that the great Cornish principle of One and All was seated in his heart all those centuries ago; in fact, in the sixth century.
An old miner from Australia said to me the other day, "Never saw such fellows as those Cornishmen; they hold together like bees. When I was out in Australia there was a Cornishman with me, my pal. One day someone said to us, 'There is a Cornishman from Penzance just landed at Melbourne.' 'Where's his diggings?' asked my pal. 'Oh, he is gone up country to – ' I forget the name of the mine. Will you believe it, off went my pal walking, I can't tell you how far, and was away several days from his work-gone off, to see that newly-arrived chap; didn't know his name even, but he was a Cornishman, and that was enough to draw him."
Sir Redvers Buller told me a story. He was on his way with a regiment of soldiers to Canada. Off the entrance to the S. Lawrence the vessel was enveloped in fogs and delayed, so that provisions ran short. Now there was a station on an islet there for shipwrecked mariners, where were supplies. So Sir Redvers went ashore in a boat to visit the store and ask for assistance.
When he applied, he found a woman only in charge.
"No," said she; "the supplies are for those who be shipwrecked, not for such as you."
"But this is a Government depôt, and we are servants of the Crown."
"Can't help it; you'm not shipwrecked."
Now there was a very recognisable intonation in the woman's voice. Sir Redvers at once assumed the Cornish accent, and said, "What! not for dear old One and All, and I a Buller?"
"What! from Cornwall, and a Buller! Take everything there is in the place; you'm heartily welcome."
Gunwalloe is a chapelry in the parish of Cury. It has a singular tower standing by itself against the sandhill at the back. There is a holy well on the beach, but the tide has filled it with stones. It was formerly cleared out on S. Gunwalloe's Day, but this, unfortunately, is one of the good old customs that have fallen into neglect.
About Cury a word must be said. It is dedicated to S. Corentine, a saint of Quimper, in Brittany, and this is probably a place where Athelstan placed one of the batches of Bretons who fled to him for protection in 920, but whom he could not have planted in Cornwall till 936. That Cornwall should have received refugees from Brittany was but just, for Brittany had been colonised from Devon and Cornwall to a very considerable extent. As the facts are little known, I will narrate them here.
The advance of the Saxons and the rolling back of the Britons had heaped up crowds of refugees in Wales and in Devon and Cornwall, more in fact than the country could maintain. Accordingly an outlet had to be sought.
The Armorican peninsula was thinly populated.
In consequence of the exactions of the decaying empire, and the ravages of northern pirates, the Armorican seaboard was all but uninhabited, and the centre of the peninsula was occupied by a vast untrodden forest, or by barren stone-strewn moors. Armorica, therefore, was a promising field for colonisation.
Procopius says that in the sixth century swarms of immigrants arrived from Britain, men bringing with them their wives and children. These migrations assumed large dimensions in 450, 512-14, and between 561 and 566.
So early as 461 we hear of a "Bishop of the Britons" attending the Council of Tours. In 469 the British settlers were in sufficient force at the mouth of the Loire to become valuable auxiliaries against the invading Visigoths.
The author of the Life of S. Winwalloe says: -
"The sons of the Britons, leaving the British sea, landed on these shores at the period when the barbarian Saxon conquered the isle. These children of a beloved race established themselves in this country, glad to find repose after so many griefs. In the meantime the unfortunate Britons who had not quitted this country were decimated by plague. Their corpses lay without sepulchre. The major portion of the isle was depopulated. Then a small number of men, who had escaped the sword of the invaders, abandoned their native land to seek refuge, some among the Scots (Irish), the rest in Belgic Gaul."
The plague to which reference is made is the Yellow Death, that carried off Maelgwn Gwynedd, King of Wales, 547.
The invasion was not a military occupation; the settlers encountered no resistance. Every account we have represents them as landing in a country that was denuded of its population, except in the district of Vannes and on the Loire.
In or about 514 Riwhal, son of a Damnonian king, arrived with a large fleet on the north-east coast, and founded the colony and principality of Domnonia on the mainland.
One swarm came from Gwent, that is to say, Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire, where the Britons were hard pressed by the Saxons; and this Gwentian colony planted itself in the north-west of the Armorican peninsula, and called it Leon, or Lyonesse, after the Caerleon that had been abandoned.
This Leon was afterwards annexed to Domnonia in Brittany, so as to form a single kingdom.
Again another swarm took possession of the western seaboard, and called that Cornu, either after their Cornwall at home, or because Finisterre is, like that, a horn thrust forward into the Atlantic.
By degrees Vannes, itself a Gallo-Roman city, was enveloped by the new-comers, so that in 590 the Bishop Regalis complained that he was as it were imprisoned by them within the walls of his city. The Gallo-Roman prelate disliked these British invaders and their independent ways. S. Melanius of Rennes and S. Felix of Nantes shared his dislike. The prelates exercised much of the magisterial authority of the imperial governors, and to this the newly-arrived Britons refused to submit. The Britons brought with them their own laws, customs, and organisation, both civil and ecclesiastical, as well as their own language.
They were at first few in numbers, and did not desire to emancipate themselves wholly from Britain. Consequently, although establishing themselves in clans, they held themselves to be under the sovereignty of their native princes at home.
This appears from the coincidence of the names of the kings in Armorica and in insular Domnonia.25
About the downs may be seen numerous cairns and barrows. Some of these have been explored, and some fine urns of the Bronze Age, that were found near Gunwalloe, are now in the Truro Museum.
Alas! there is one thing for which Lizard is notorious, and that is wrecks. The last great tragedy of that nature was the loss of the Mohegan, in 1898. A mysterious loss, for the two lights of Lizard shone clear to the left, and she was steered straight on the deadly Manacles, where she went to pieces. The churchyards of S. Keverne, Landewednack, and Mullion contain the graves of many and many a drowned man and woman thrown up by the sea. But, be it remembered, formerly those thus cast up, unless known, were not buried in churchyards, but on the cliffs, as there was no guarantee that the bodies were those of Christians. For this reason it is by no means uncommon on these cliffs to come on bones protruding from the ground on the edge of the sea-the remains of drowned mariners, without name, and of an unknown date. Indeed, it was not till 1808 that an Act was passed requiring the bodies of those cast up by the sea to be buried in the parish churchyard. "What is the usual proceeding?" said a curate to some natives, as a drowned man from a wreck was washed ashore. "In such a case as this what should be done?"
"Sarch 'is pockets," was the prompt reply.
Note.-Books on the Lizard: -
Johns (C. P.), A Week at the Lizard. S.P.C.K., 1848. Though an old book, quite unsurpassed.
Harvey (T. G.), Mullyon. Truro, 1875.
Cummins (A. H.), Cury and Gunwalloe. Truro, 1875. Good, but all these books are wild in their derivation of place-names, and not too much to be trusted in their history, as, for instance, when they mistake the Breton Cornouaille for Cornwall, and relate as occurring in the latter what actually belongs to the Breton Cornouaille.
CHAPTER XVII
SMUGGLING
A cache-Smugglers' paths-Donkeys-Hiding-places-Connivance with smugglers-A baronet's carriage-Wrecking-"Fatal curiosity" – A ballad-Excuses made for smuggling-Story by Hawker-Desperate affrays-Sub-division of labour-"Creeping" – Fogous-One at Porth-cothan.
The other day I saw an old farmhouse in process of demolition in the parish of Altarnon, on the edge of the Bodmin moors. The great hall chimney was of unusual bulk, bulky as such chimneys usually are; and when it was thrown down it revealed the explanation of this unwonted size. Behind the back of the hearth was a chamber fashioned in the thickness of the wall, to which access might have been had at some time through a low walled-up doorway that was concealed behind the kitchen dresser and plastered over. This door was so low that it could be passed through only on all-fours.
Now the concealed chamber had also another way by which it could be entered, and this was through a hole in the floor of a bedroom above. A plank of the floor could be lifted, when an opening was disclosed by which anyone might pass under the wall through a sort of door, and down steps into this apartment, which was entirely without light. Of what use was this singular concealed chamber? There could be little question. It was a place in which formerly kegs of smuggled spirits and tobacco were hidden. The place lies some fourteen or fifteen miles from Boscastle, a dangerous little harbour on the North Cornish coast, and about a mile off the main road from London, by Exeter and Launceston, to Falmouth. The coach travellers in old days consumed a good deal of spirits, and here in a tangle of lanes lay a little emporium always kept well supplied with a stock of spirits which had not paid duty, and whence the taverners along the road could derive the contraband liquor, with which they supplied the travellers. Between this emporium and the sea the roads-parish roads-lie over wild moors or creep between high hedges of earth, on which the traveller can step along when the lane below is converted into the bed of a stream, also on which the wary smuggler could stride whilst his laden mules and asses stumbled forward in the concealment of the deep-set lane.
A very curious feature of the coasts of the West of England, where rocky or wild, is the trenched and banked-up paths from the coves along the coast. These are noticeable in Devon and Cornwall and along the Bristol Channel. That terrible sea-front consists of precipitous walls of rock, with only here and there a dip, where a brawling stream has sawn its course down to the sea; and here there is, perhaps, a sandy shore of diminutive proportions, and the rocks around are pierced in all directions with caverns. The smugglers formerly ran their goods into these coves when the weather permitted, or the preventive men were not on the look-out. They stowed away their goods in the caves, and gave notice to the farmers and gentry of the neighbourhood, all of whom were provided with numerous donkeys, which were forthwith sent down to the caches, and the kegs and bales were removed under cover of night or of storm.
As an excuse for keeping droves of donkeys, it was pretended that the sea-sand and the kelp served as admirable dressing for the land, and no doubt so they did. The trains of asses sometimes came up laden with sacks of sand, but not infrequently with kegs of brandy.
Now a wary preventive man might watch too narrowly the proceedings of these trains of asses. Accordingly squires, yeomen, farmers, alike set to work to cut deep ways in the face of the downs, along the slopes of the hills, and bank them up, so that whole caravans of laden beasts might travel up and down absolutely unseen from the sea, and greatly screened from the land side.
Undoubtedly the sunken ways and high banks are some protection against the weather. So they were represented to be, and no doubt greatly were the good folks commended for their consideration for the beasts and their drivers in thus, at great cost, shutting them off from the violence of the gale. Nevertheless, it can hardly be doubted that concealment from the eye of the coastguard was sought by this means quite as much as, if not more than, the sheltering the beasts of burden from the weather.
A few years ago an old church house was demolished. When it was pulled down it was found that the floor of large slate slabs in the lower room was undermined with hollows like graves, only of much larger dimensions, and these had served for the concealment of smuggled spirits. The clerk had, in fact, dug them out, and did a little trade on Sundays with selling contraband liquor from these stores.
The story is told of a certain baronet, who had a handsome house and park near the coast. By the way, he died at an advanced age only a couple of years ago. The preventive men had long suspected that Sir Thomas had done more than wink at the proceedings of the receivers of smuggled goods. His park dipped in graceful undulations to the sea, and to a lovely creek, in which was his boathouse. But they never had been able to establish the fact that he favoured the smugglers, and allowed them to use his grounds and outbuildings.
However, at last, one night, a party of men with kegs on their shoulders was seen stealing through the park towards the mansion. They were observed also leaving without the kegs. Accordingly, next morning the officer in command called, together with several underlings. He apologised to the baronet for any inconvenience his visit might occasion-he was quite sure that Sir Thomas was ignorant of the use made of his park, his landing-place, even of his house-but there was evidence that "run" goods had been brought to the mansion the preceding night, and it was but the duty of the officer to point this out to Sir Thomas, and ask him to permit a search-which would be conducted with all the delicacy possible. The baronet, an exceedingly urbane man, promptly expressed his readiness to allow house, cellar, attic-every part of his house and every outbuilding-unreservedly to be searched. He produced his keys. The cellar was, of course, the place where wine and spirits were most likely to be found-let that be explored first. He had a cellar-book, which he produced, and he would be glad if the officer would compare what he found below with his entries in the book. The search was entered into with some zest, for the Government officers had long looked on Sir Thomas with mistrust, and yet were somewhat disarmed by the frankness with which he met them. But they ransacked the mansion from garret to cellar, and every part of the outbuildings, and found nothing. They had omitted to look into the family coach, which was full of rum kegs, so full that to prevent the springs being broken, or showing that the carriage was laden, the axle-trees had been "trigged up" below with blocks of wood.
Wrecking was another form of sea-poaching. Terrible stories of ships lured to destruction by the exhibition of false lights are told, but all belong to the past. I remember an old fellow-the last of the Cornish wreckers-who ended his days as keeper of a toll-gate. But he never would allow that he had wilfully drawn a vessel upon the breakers. When a ship was cast up by the gale it was another matter. The dwellers on the coast could not believe that they had not a perfect right to whatever was washed ashore. Nowadays the coastguards keep so sharp a look-out after a storm that very little can be picked up. The usual course at present is for those who are early on the beach, and have not time to secure-or fear the risk of securing-something they covet, to heave the article up the cliff and lodge it there where not easily accessible. If it be observed-when the auction takes place-it is knocked down for a trifle, and the man who put it where it is discerned obtains it by a lawful claim. If it be not observed, then he fetches it at his convenience. But it is now considered too risky after a wreck to carry off anything of size found, and as the number of bidders at a sale of wreckage is not large, and they do not compete with each other keenly, things of value are got for very slender payments.
The terrible story of the murder of a son by his father and mother, to secure his gold, they not knowing him, and believing him to be a cast-up from a wreck-the story on which the popular drama of Fatal Curiosity, by Lillo, was founded-actually took place at Boheland, near Penryn.
To return to the smugglers.
When a train of asses or mules conveyed contraband goods along a road, it was often customary to put stockings over the hoofs to deaden the sound of their steps.
One night, many years ago, a friend of the writer-a parson on the north coast of Cornwall-was walking along a lane in his parish at night. It was near midnight. He had been to see, or had been sitting up with, a dying person.
As he came to a branch in the lane he saw a man there, and he called out "Good-night." He then stood still a moment, to consider which lane he should take. Both led to his rectory, but one was somewhat shorter than the other. The shorter was, however, stony and very wet. He chose the longer way, and turned to the right. Thirty years after he was speaking with a parishioner who was ill, when the man said to him suddenly, "Do you remember such and such a night, when you came to the Y? You had been with Nankevill, who was dying."
"Yes, I do recall something about it."
"Do you remember you said 'Good-night' to me?"
"I remember that someone was there; I did not know it was you."
"And you turned right, instead of left?"
"I dare say."
"If you had taken the left-hand road you would never have seen next morning."
"Why so?"
"There was a large cargo of 'run' goods being transported that night, and you would have met it."
"What of that?"
"What of that? You would have been chucked over the cliffs."
"But how could they suppose I would peach?"
"Sir! They'd ha' took good care you shouldn't a' had the chance!"
I was sitting in a little seaport tavern in Cornwall one winter's evening, over a great fire, with a company of very old "salts," gossiping, yarning, singing, when up got a tough old fellow with a face the colour of mahogany, and dark, piercing eyes, and the nose of a hawk. Planting his feet wide apart, as though on deck in a rolling sea, he began to sing in stentorian tones a folk-song relative to a highwayman in the old times, when Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate at Westminster, put down highway robbery.
The ballad told of the evil deeds of this mounted robber of the highways, and of how he was captured by "Fielding's crew" and condemned to die. It concluded: -
"When I am dead, borne to my grave,
A gallant funeral may I have;
Six highwaymen to carry me,
With good broad swords and sweet liberty.
"Six blooming maidens shall bear my pall,
Give them white gloves and pink ribbons all;
And when I'm dead they'll tell the truth,
I was a wild and a wicked youth."
At the conclusion of each verse the whole assembly repeated the two final lines. It was a striking scene; their eyes flashed, their colour mounted, they hammered with their fists on the table and with their heels on the floor. Some, in the wildness of their excitement, sprang up, thrust their hands through their white or grey hair, and flourished them, roaring like bulls.
When the song was done, and composure had settled over the faces of the excited men, one of them said apologetically to me, "You see, sir, we be all old smugglers, and have gone agin the law in our best days."
There is something to be said in extenuation of the wrongfulness of English smuggling.
The customs duties were imposed first in England for the purpose of protecting the coasts against pirates, who made descents on the undefended villages, and kidnapped and carried off children and men to sell as slaves in Africa, or who waylaid merchant vessels and plundered them. But when all danger from pirates ceased, the duties were not only maintained, but made more onerous.
It was consequently felt that there had been a violation of compact on the side of the Crown, and bold spirits entertained no scruple of conscience in carrying on contraband trade. The officers of the Crown no longer proceeded to capture, bring to justice, and hang notorious foreign pirates, but to capture, bring to justice, and hang native seamen and traders. The preventive service became a means of oppression, and not of relief.
That is the light in which the bold men of Cornwall regarded it; that is the way in which it was regarded, not by the ignorant seamen only, but by magistrates, country gentlemen, and parsons alike. As an illustration of this, we may quote the story told by the late Rev. R. S. Hawker, for many years vicar of Morwenstow, on the North Cornish coast: -
"It was full six o'clock in the afternoon of an autumn day when a traveller arrived where the road ran along by a sandy beach just above high-water mark.
"The stranger, a native of some inland town, and entirely unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways, had reached the brink of the tide just as a landing was coming off. It was a scene not only to instruct a townsman, but to dazzle and surprise.
"At sea, just beyond the billows, lay a vessel, well moored with anchors at stem and stern. Between the ship and the shore boats laden to the gunwale passed to and fro. Crowds assembled on the beach to help the cargo ashore.
"On the one hand a boisterous group surrounding a keg with the head knocked in, into which they dipped whatsoever vessel came first to hand; one man had filled his shoe. On the other side they fought and wrestled, cursed and swore.
"Horrified at what he saw, the stranger lost all self-command and, oblivious of personal danger, he began to shout: 'What a horrible sight! Have you no shame? Is there no magistrate at hand? Cannot any justice of the peace be found in this fearful country?'
"'No, thanks be,' answered a hoarse, gruff voice; 'none within eight miles.'
"'Well, then,' screamed the stranger, 'is there no clergyman hereabouts? Does no minister of the parish live among you on this coast?'
"'Aye, to be sure there is,' said the same deep voice.
"'Well, how far off does he live? Where is he?'
"'That's he, sir, yonder with the lantern.' And sure enough, there he stood on a rock, and poured, with pastoral diligence, 'the light of other days' on a busy congregation."
It may almost be said that the Government did its best to encourage smuggling by the harsh and vexatious restrictions it put on trade. A prohibitory list of goods which might under no conditions whatever be imported into Great Britain included gold and silver brocade, cocoanut shells, foreign embroidery, manufactures of gold and silver plate, ribbons and laces, chocolate and cocoa, calicoes printed or dyed abroad, gloves and mittens.
Beside these a vast number of goods were charged with heavy duties, as spirits, tea, tobacco. The duties on these were so exorbitant, that it was worth while for men to attempt to run a cargo without paying duty.
To quote a writer in the Edinburgh Review, at the time when smuggling was fairly rife: -
"To create by means of high duties an overwhelming temptation to indulge in crime, and then to punish men for indulging in it, is a proceeding wholly and completely subversive of every principle of justice. It revolts the natural feelings of the people, and teaches them to feel an interest in the worst characters, to espouse their cause and to avenge their wrongs."
Desperate affrays took place between smugglers and the preventive men, who were aware that the magistracy took a lenient view of the case when one of them fell, and brought in "murder" when an officer of the Crown shot a "free-trader."
One of the most terrible men on the Cornish coast, remembered by his evil repute, was "Cruel Coppinger." He had a house at Welcombe on the north coast, where lived his wife, an heiress. The bed is still shown to the post of which he tied her and thrashed her with a rope till she consented to make over her little fortune to his exclusive use.
Coppinger had a small estate at Roscoff, in Brittany, which was the headquarters of the smuggling trade during the European war. He was paid by the British Government to carry despatches to and from the French coast, but he took advantage of his credentials as a Government agent to do much contraband business himself.
I remember, as a boy, an evil-faced old man, his complexion flaming red and his hair very white, who kept a small tavern not in the best repute. A story of this innkeeper was told, and it is possible that it may be true-naturally the subject was not one on which it was possible to question him. He had been a smuggler in his day, and a wild one too.
On one occasion, as he and his men were rowing a cargo ashore they were pursued by a revenue boat. Tristram Davey, as I will call this man, knew this bit of coast perfectly. There was a reef of sharp slate rock that ran across the little bay, like a very keen saw with the teeth set outward, and there was but one point at which this saw could be crossed. Tristram knew the point to a nicety, even in the gloaming, and he made for it, the revenue boat following.
He, however, did not make direct for it, but steered a little on one side and then suddenly swerved and shot through the break. The revenue boat came straight on, went upon the jaws of the reef, was torn, and began to fill. Now the mate of this boat was one against whom Tristram entertained a deadly enmity, because he had been the means of a capture in which his property had been concerned. So he turned the boat, and running back, he stood up, levelled a gun and shot the mate through the heart; then away went the smuggling boat to shore, leaving the rest of the revenue men to shift as best they could with their injured boat.
The most noted smuggling centre between Penzance and Porthleven was Prussia Cove, and there to this day, stands the house of John Carter, "The King of Prussia," as he was called, the most successful and notorious smuggler of the district. His reign extended from 1777 to 1807, and he was succeeded by his son-in-law, Captain William Richards, under whom Prussia Cove maintained its old celebrity.
The story goes that John Carter, as a boy, playing at soldiers with other boys, received the nickname of "The King of Prussia." Formerly the cove was called Porthleah, but in recollection of his exploits it is now known as Prussia Cove.
On one occasion, during his absence from home, the excise officers carried off a cargo that had lately arrived for Carter from France. They conveyed it to the custom-house store. On his return, Carter summoned his men, and at night he and they broke into the stores and carried off all that he held to be his own, without touching a single article to which he considered he had no claim. On another occasion, when Carter was pursued by a revenue cutter, and sore pressed, he ran through a narrow passage in the reefs, and fired on the cutter's boat sent after him. The fire was continued till night fell, and Carter was then able to effect his escape.
Three classes of men were engaged in the smuggling business. First came the "freighter" – the man who entered on the business as a commercial speculation. He engaged a vessel and purchased the cargo, and made all the requisite arrangements for the landing. Then came the "runners," who transported the goods on shore from the vessels. And lastly the "tub-carriers," who conveyed the kegs on their backs, slung across their shoulders, up the cliff to their destination.
The tub-carriers were usually agricultural labourers in the employment of farmers near the coast.
These farmers were in understanding with the smugglers, and on a hint given, supplied them with their workmen, and were repaid with a keg of spirits.
The entire English coast was subjected to blockade by the Government to prevent the introduction into the country of goods that had not paid duty, and the utmost ingenuity and skill had to be exercised to run the blockade. But after that was done the smuggler still ran great risk, for the coast was patrolled.
Smuggling methods were infinitely varied, depending on a great variety of circumstances. Much daring, skill, and cleverness were required. The smuggler and the preventive man were engaged in a game in which each used all his faculties to overreach the other.
One means employed where the coast was well watched was for the kegs to be sunk. A whole "crop," as it was called, was attached to a rope, that was weighted with stones and fastened at both ends by an anchor. When a smuggling vessel saw no chance of landing its cargo, it sank it and fixed it with the anchors, and the bearings of the sunken "crop" were taken and communicated to the aiders and abettors on land, who waited their opportunity to fish it up.
