Baring-Gould Sabine
Cornish Characters and Strange Events
THE ORIGIN OF THE ROBARTES FAMILY
Colonel Symonds, who accompanied Charles I when he was in the West, says in his diary: "A gentleman of the county told me the original of the Lord Roberts his family. His great-grandfather was servant to a gentleman of this county – his hynd. Afterwards lived in Truro, and traded in wood and fferzen – got an estate of 5 to £600. His son was so bred, and lived there too, putt out his money, and his debtors paid it him in tynn. He engrossing the sale of tyn, grew to be worth many thousands – £30,000. His son was squeezed by the Court in King James his time of £20,000, so was made a Baron, and built the house of Lanhydrock, now the seat of Lord Roberts" (pp. 45, 46). The hind, who founded the family, and sold wood and furze for the tin smelting, was Richard Roberts of Truro, who married Joan Geffrey of S. Breage, and died in 1593. His son, who continued the wood store and got paid in tin, was John Roberts, who married Philippa, daughter of John Gaverigan, of a very ancient family. He died in 1615.
Before the introduction of coal in tin smelting, the fuel employed was peat, furze, i.e. gorse that produced a quick, fierce blaze, and wood. Rapidly the trees in Cornwall were disappearing, as the produce of tin ore became greater, and the lack of the necessary fuel was becoming a serious impediment.
Carew, speaking of the woods in Cornwall, when he compiled his Survey, says that in the west of the county they were scarce, and the few that were preserved were principally employed in making charcoal for the blowing-houses. "This lacke," he adds, "they supply either with steam-coal from Wales, or dried turfes, some of which are also converted into coal to serve the tinners' turne."
From the charters of King John and Edward I we learn that power was granted to the tinners to take turf and wood where they could for the purpose of smelting the ore; but as the woods disappeared, and the turf was being used up in the neighbourhood of the works, they could not travel to great distances to procure the needful fuel. Richard Roberts saw his opportunity and seized it. He made contracts with the owners of coppices and furzy downs and peat bottoms, and gathered his supplies in one great store at Truro. He did more – he obtained coals from Wales, and sold to the mining adventurers at a handsome profit to himself, thus saving them the waste of time in wandering about obtaining fuel where they could. Thus he laid the foundations of a business that was largely increased by his son John. But this latter embarked on another branch of money-making. He lent cash to the adventurers in the mines. "As poor as a tinner" was a proverbial expression in Cornwall, and "a tinner is never broke till his back is broke." But if the working miner remained poor, the moneylender waxed wealthy on the miners' work.
Carew observes that the parishes in which the tin was worked were in a "meaner plight of wealth" than those which were agricultural. Vast amounts of tin were raised, but little of the profit stuck to the hands of the toilers in the mines.
Tinning was not carried on by large companies, but by small men; three or four would combine to take a set. They cut four turves at the bounds, paying a certain sum down to the Duchy or to the private owner of the land, as rent; and also owing a toll of the tin raised to the proprietor of the land. These small men were without capital, and they were constrained to borrow of Roberts, and he let them have the requisite money at a rate of interest we should consider extortionate. Queen Elizabeth was unable to borrow money of the estates of Holland under 25 per cent, and we may judge what would be the rate of interest demanded by the usurer of the working miner.
But that was not all. The miner did not pay the interest in cash, but in tin, and tin at the value pretty arbitrarily laid down by the moneylender, so that he had the adventurer in two ways. Nor was this indeed all. He often advanced to the miner not cash alone, but the tools for his trade, the timber for shoring up the shafts, and the machinery, such as it was, for pumping the water out of the mines.
There was an additional means of getting money, and also of acquiring lands. Carew gives us a curious account of the manner in which the London merchants of his time took advantage of any want of money Cornish gentry in London might experience in order to defray their expenses there, by binding them to furnish tin for money advanced, at great ultimate loss to the Cornish men. They also had their agents in Cornwall, who advanced money to the needy tinners, partly in wares and partly in money, upon agreement that they should furnish certain quantities of tin at the next coinage, by which the tinners experienced great loss.
With regard to the loans to the adventurers, Roberts possessed the inestimable advantage of being on the spot, and so prepared to supply them with the fuel and the capital they needed. But there were Cornish gentry who wanted to go to London, and desired loans to cover their expenses in town. They went to Roberts: he furnished the supplies. As may be well expected, these gentry did not make money in London, they became greatly impoverished there, and Roberts, we may infer, was able to take their estates, or large slices out of them, on the security of which he had made the advances.
How hard the work of the poor tinners was, on whom the usurers preyed, we learn from Carew. "In most places," he says, "their toyle is so extream, as they cannot endure it above four hours a day, but are succeeded by spels; the residue of the time they weare out at coytes, kayles, or like idle exercises."
Richard Roberts, the son of John, amassed great wealth, and was knighted 11 November, 1616. At this time he was threatened with prosecution by the Privy Seal for usury, and he only escaped trial by paying a bribe of £12,000. He bought a baronetcy of James I in 1621, and was created Baron Truro in 1625. One of the charges brought against Buckingham, when impeached in the House of Commons, was that he had received a bribe of £10,000 from Richard Roberts for negotiating for him his elevation to the Barony of Truro. This is confirmed by the deposition of Roberts himself (Calendar State Papers, 1677-8, p. 220; cf. 1625-6, p. 298).
Richard Roberts married Frances, daughter of John Hender of Botreux Castle or Boscastle, a co-heiress, and died in 1634. He was evidently a very shrewd and grasping man, and particularly desirous of pushing ahead and obtaining a position to which his only claim was wealth. By the marriages of father and son, the very plebeian family of Roberts brought strains of gentle blood into the veins of their descendants. He it was who built the stately mansion of Lanhydrock. He died 19th April, 1634, but was not buried at Lanhydrock till July 4th in the same year.
His son and heir John Roberts, second Baron Truro, was sent to be educated at Exeter College, Oxford. He entered as Gentleman Commoner in 1625, when aged seventeen, the year of his mother's death. At college, according to Wood, he "sucked in evil principles both as to Church and State."
By his marriage with the Lady Lucy, daughter of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, he became allied to the leaders of the opposition among the peers, and during the Long Parliament his vote was almost always given with the popular party among the Lords. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall in 1642, and became colonel of a regiment of foot in the army of Lord Essex. He fought at Edgehill, and commanded a brigade in the battle of Newbury. In 1644 he held the position of Field Marshal in the army of Essex, and he was with him in the west when he advanced further into Cornwall, getting into a position which eventually led to a humiliating defeat, among a population fanatically affected to the Royal side.
The King with Prince Maurice was in full pursuit, driving him into a corner, the narrow extremity of Cornwall. The King was now joined by Sir Richard Grenville with Cornish levies, cutting off some of the Parliamentarian foraging parties. But the sea as yet was open, and the Earl of Warwick, who attended the motions of the army, was off the coast. "It was therefore now resolved to make Essex's quarters yet straiter, and to cut off even his provisions by sea, or a good part thereof." Fowey was in the possession of Essex, "and it was exceedingly wondered at by all men, that he being so long possessed of Foy, did not put strong guards into the place, by which he might have prevented his army's being brought into these extreme necessities." Sir Richard Grenville possessed himself of Lanbetherick, a strong house belonging to Lord Roberts, and lying between the Parliamentarian army and the little harbour, and Sir Jacob Astley made himself master of View Hall, which was opposite to Fowey, and then cut off supplies from reaching the camp of Essex.
For eight or ten days the armies lay inactive, and then Charles drew closer the toils in which the hostile army was held. He drove them from a rising ground called Beacon Hill, and immediately raised a square work on it, and placed there a battery that threw a plunging fire into their quarters. Then Goring was sent with the greatest part of the royal horse, and fifteen hundred foot, to S. Blazey, to drive the enemy yet closer together, and to cut off the provisions they received from that direction. The dashing, daring Goring executed his commission with complete success, and the Parliamentarians were reduced to that small strip of land that lay between the river Fowey and that of S. Blazey, which was not above two miles in breadth and little more in width, and which had already been eaten bare by the cavalry. The destruction of the whole army now appeared inevitable; but through the carelessness of Goring, one dark night all the horse of the enemy were allowed to slip unperceived through the lines, on the night of the 30th and 31st August, 1644, and the Earl of Essex with Lord Roberts and many of his officers fought his way to the shore near the mouth of the Fowey, and there they embarked on board a ship which Warwick had sent round, and sailed away to Plymouth on September 1st, leaving the foot, cannon, and ammunition to the care of the gallant Skippon, who had nothing left for it but to make the best capitulation he could. Essex left Roberts in command at Plymouth, which he successfully defended against the attacks made during the ensuing months, and his popularity is attested by the petitions made by the Plymothians that he might be left in command of the town.
Lord Roberts must have suffered considerably in the Civil War, for his estates were alienated from him and granted by the King to Sir Richard Grenville, whilst his home of Lanhydrock was occupied by the Royalists, and his children were detained from him. He was a staunch Presbyterian, hating Prelacy, believing in exclusive salvation, the perquisite of those who believed in Calvin, and he had no love for the Independents.
Since 1643 an assembly for the regulation of religion had been sitting at Westminster. It had substituted Presbyterianism for the Episcopacy, as the established religion of England, and had abolished the Prayer Book and issued in its stead a book called the Directory. These changes had been confirmed by Parliament. But this settlement of the religious question was quite contrary to the views of the Army, which was mainly – at all events that portion commanded by Cromwell in the North – composed of Independents.
Sir Harry Vane, Oliver Cromwell, Nathaniel Fiennes, and Oliver St. John, the solicitor-general, were regarded as their leaders. Dissentions broke out in the House of Commons; Cromwell and Lord Manchester cast imputations on each other. Cromwell desired to remodel the Army, of which the House of Commons had already become suspicious, and how to effect this project was the difficulty, and his object could only be attained by a circuitous course. At his instance a committee was chosen to frame what was called the "Self-denying Ordinance," by which the members of both Houses were excluded from all civil and military employments, except a few offices which were specified. After a great debate, the Ordinance passed both Houses (April 3rd, 1645), and Essex, Warwick, Manchester, Denbigh, Roberts, and many others resigned their commands, and received the thanks of Parliament for their past services.
Lord Roberts's zeal for the cause rapidly cooled. He and Essex both protested against the passing of the Ordinance on March 13th, 1646, that made the new Presbyterian Established "Church" subordinate to Parliament.
On January 3rd, 1648, it was passed in both Houses that thenceforth no addresses should any more be sent to the King; he was virtually dethroned, and the whole constitution was formally overthrown; and by orders from the Army the King was shut up in close confinement, his servants removed, and his correspondence with his friends prevented. When the Army threatened to intervene, Roberts deemed it his most prudent course to absent himself from the House of Lords, and suffer the act to pass.
He took no part in the trial of the King, and after the execution of Charles withdrew from further share in public affairs. He was, however, not hostile to the Protectorate, and at the Installation of the Protector he suffered his son to be in his train.
At the Restoration he was received into favour, and became a Privy Councillor, and was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland, and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal in May, 1661. In July, 1679, he was created Viscount Bodmin and Earl of Radnor.
With the latter part of his life we have no concern, as this article has to do only with the rise of the family of Roberts to an Earldom from a store of wood and furze, and the sordid desk of an usurer. Pepys, in his Diary, describes him as "a very sober man," and Clarendon as "a sullen, morose man, intolerably proud," and as having a "dark countenance," and Burnet as a "sullen and morose man." He died July 17th, 1685. His son Robert seems to have deemed it expedient to differentiate his family name from the thousands of Roberts's in humble life, by the alteration of the spelling of the name, by the transfer of the e and the addition of an a, and the vulgar Roberts bloomed into Robartes.
The motto assumed by the first Lord Roberts, "quæ supra" expressed the sincere aspiration of the man, who was certainly sincere in seeking "those things which are above," as the guiding principle of his life.
The Robartes or Roberts family became extinct in the male line in 1757; but Mary Vere Robartes, daughter of the Hon. Russell Robartes, married Thomas Hunt, of Mollington, and left issue Thomas Hunt, who had an only child, Anna Maria, who married Charles Reginald Agar, third son of James, Viscount Clifden, and carried the wealth of the Robartes family into that of Agar; and in 1822 Thomas James Agar, her son, assumed the name and arms of Robartes, and was created Baron Robartes of Lanhydrock and Truro in 1869. The descent is, however, so remote and through females, that the present family can hardly be considered to represent the original Robertes or Roberts stock.
THEODORE PALEOLOGUS
In the church of Landulph is a small brass attached to the wall that bears the following inscription: "Here lyeth the body of Theodore Paleologus, of Pesaro in Italye, descended from ye Imperyal lyne of ye last Christian emperors of Greece, being the sonne of Camillio, ye sonne of Prosper, the sonne of Theodoro, the sonne of John, ye sonne of Thomas, second brother of Constantius Paleologus, the 8th of that name, and last of ye lyne yt rayned in Constantinople until subdued by the Turks, who married wt Mary, ye daughter of William Balls, of Hadlye in Souffolke, Gent., and had issue 5 children, Theodore, John, Ferdinando, Maria, and Dorothy; and departed this life at Clyfton, ye 21st of Jany 1636." Above the inscription are the imperial arms of the empire of Byzantium – an eagle displayed with two heads, the two legs resting upon two gates; the imperial crown over the whole, and between the gates a crescent, for difference as second son.
There were eight Emperors of the East of the family of the Paleologi. The family descended from a General Andronicus Paleologus, who died in 1246. The Emperor Manuel, who deceased in 1425, had five sons: John II, Emperor, who died in 1449; Theodore, despot in Lacedemon; Andronicus, despot in Thessalonica; Constantine, despot of the Morea. John II was associated with his father, and succeeded him. Andronicus, the second son, died of leprosy in 1429. Theodore, Constantine, Demetrius, and Thomas wasted their resources in mutual contests, but Theodore was constrained to adopt the monastic profession. On the death of John II the royal family was reduced to three princes – Constantine, Demetrius, and Thomas. Demetrius at once claimed the vacant throne, but failed in his attempt, and Constantine succeeded, the last and greatest of the Paleologi. "Demetrius and Thomas now divided the Morea between them; but though they had taken a solemn oath never to violate the agreement, differences soon arose, and Thomas took up arms to drive Demetrius out of his possessions; Demetrius hereupon retired to Asan, his wife's brother, by whose means he obtained succours from Amurath, and compelled Thomas to submit the matters in dispute to the Emperor's (Constantine's) arbitration. But that prince refusing to deliver to his brother the territories that fell to his share, Mohammed ordered Thuraken, his governor in the Morea, to assist Demetrius."
Shortly after this, on the fatal May 29th, 1453, Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and the gallant Constantine was killed.
Immediately after the capture Mohammed proceeded to make war on Demetrius and Thomas, whereupon the Albanians, subjects of Thomas, revolted. Fresh disputes broke out between the brothers, each endeavouring to supplant the other, and in 1459 Mohammed entered the Morea and reduced Corinth. At the first news of his approach Thomas fled to Italy with his wife and children, and Demetrius submitted to the Sultan, who carried him away to Constantinople, where he died in abject slavery in 1470. Thomas was received in Italy by Pope Pius II in 1461, who allowed him a pension of six thousand ducats.
Historians record only two sons, Andrew and Manuel, but according to the inscription in Landulph church there was a third, John, whom Italian writers have not mentioned.
Andrew, the eldest, married a woman from the streets of Rome, and dying childless, in 1502, bequeathed his empty honours to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, having previously sold them to Charles VIII of France. Manuel Paleologus, the second son, revisited his native country. He was granted a train of Christians and Moslems to attend him to his grave. Gibbon says: "If there be some animals of so generous a nature that they refuse to propagate in a domestic state, the last of the imperial race must be ascribed to an inferior kind; he accepted from the Sultan's liberality two beautiful females; and his surviving son was lost in the habit and religion of a Turkish slave." Thomas, who had been despot of Morea, died in 1465. By his wife, Catherine Zaccaria, he had one daughter, in addition to the sons mentioned, and this was Helen, who married Lazarus II, King of Servia, and died in 1474.
Why Theodore Paleologus came to England we do not know, but possibly in the train of Sir Henry Killigrew and Sir Nicholas Lower. Sir Nicholas had married Sir Henry's daughter, and as they were both advanced in life and childless they may have been disposed to befriend the Paleologi, and Lady Killigrew was one of the learned daughters of Sir Anthony Coke, celebrated for her knowledge of Greek, and she may have inspired her daughter, Lady Lower, with the same fondness for the classic languages. This is but conjecture; but this at least is certain, that the Paleologi were given Clifton, in Landulph, as their residence, and this was a mansion that belonged to the Lowers.
Theodore Paleologus married Mary Balls in 1615, and by her had three sons, Theodore, John, and Ferdinando, and two daughters.
Theodore was a lieutenant in the Parliamentary army in 1642, under Lord St. John, and was buried in Westminster Abbey in 1644.
There are no traces to be found of John and Ferdinando. Mary, one of the daughters of Theodore and Mary Balls, died unmarried, and was buried at Landulph in 1674. Her sister Dorothy married, in 1656, William Arundell, and died in 1681, he in 1684.
There was a Theodore Paleologus who died at sea on board the Charles II under Captain Gibson, in 1693. In his will Theodore mentions only his wife Martha, and we do not know who was his father.
We do not know who was the William Arundell whom Dorothy Paleologus married. Unhappily the registers of S. Dominic, where she and her husband lived, have been lost, and we cannot say whether the Mary Arundell who married a Francis Lee soon after the death of her presumed parents was a daughter. But if so, as Dr. Jago suggests in a paper in the Archæologia, "The imperial blood perhaps still flows in the bargemen of Cargreen."
