perhaps, in the following record. Our party consisted of five men
working in a sink. Two of them were my younger brothers. Over our
heads the ground was expended, and there was a huge cavern higher and
further than the light of the candle would reveal. Here hung huge
rocks as if by hairs (!) and we knew it not. We were all teachers in a
Sunday-school, and on the tea-and-cake anniversary remained out of our
working to attend the festival. Some men who laboured near us, at the
time when we were in the green field singing hymns, heard a fearful
crash in our working, and on hastening to see what it was found the
place full of flinty (?) rocks. They had suddenly fallen from above,
exactly in the place where we should have been, and would have crushed
us to powder were it not for the Sunday-school treat."
Moving in his little circle, surrounded by the ignorant, it is no wonder
that John Harris was puffed up with vanity, and thought himself a poet.
He was very urgent in the promotion of the cause of peace and
arbitration between nations, and wrote a series of tracts entitled
_Peace Pages_, of which some hundreds of thousands were distributed,
and produced as much effect on the policy of nations as waste paper.
In the year 1864 a prize was offered for the best poem on the
tercentenary of the birth of Shakespeare. It was competed for by over
a hundred persons in Great Britain and America. Mr. Harris gained the
prize, and was presented with a gold watch. It is not possible to
estimate its value, poetically, without a knowledge of the "poems"
that failed, and the discrimination of the judges.[41] From first to
last John Harris published no less than sixteen volumes of verse. He
died in 1884, and was buried in Treslothian Churchyard, near Camborne.
He had received a grant of £50 per annum from the Royal Literary Fund,
1872-75, and £200 from the Royal Bounty Fund in 1877.
He had a son, John Alfred Harris, born at Falmouth in 1860, who became
a wood engraver, working in a recumbent position owing to a spinal
affliction. He illustrated some of his father's works. Another son,
James Howard Harris, born in 1857, became master of the Board School,
Porthleven, and wrote a memoir of his father.
John Harris had the faculty of receiving impressions from the objects
of nature, as does a mirror, but had no power to give forth flashes of
genius, for of genius he had none. His verses read smoothly and
pleasantly, but will not live, as there is no vital spark in them. He
stands, however, on a higher level than Edward Capern, the Devonshire
postman "poet," but immeasurably below Burns and Waugh.
He published, moreover, a series of addresses, but all marked with
the same paucity of idea, lack of original thought. A good but very
self-satisfied man, he reaped far higher applause in his day as he
deserved, and in another generation will be clean forgotten. He called
himself the miner poet, but he is not even a minor poet. There is
something pathetic in the contemplation of a man of this sort. I have
come across several instances--men who have a love of nature, an
appreciation of the beautiful and the good and the true, but have no
genius, no originality, who can imitate but create nothing. It is the
same with musicians. There are a thousand who can write songs, but
only one in a thousand who can produce a pure melody. The mirror
reflects objects, but the burning-glass focusses the sun's rays in a
pencil of fire that kindles whatever it falls on. Such is the
difference between the versifier and the poet.
Nulla placere diu, nec vivere carmina possunt
Quæ scribuntur aquæ portoribus.
Hor. _Ep._ I. 19.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] _Od._ I, 1; II, 20.
[41] These were Lord Lyttleton, G. Dawson, and C. Bray.
EDWARD CHAPMAN
Hals tells the following story of Mr. Edward Chapman, of Constantine.
But before giving it, it will be well to say a few words of the
Chapman family. The name suffices to show that it was not Cornish by
origin, and indeed in the _Heralds' Visitation_ it is recorded to have
come from the North. Why they came down one cannot say, but they
married well. One John Chapman, of Harpford, in Devon, had to wife a
daughter of Chichester, of Hall, and his son Edward married a
Prideaux, and settled at Resprin in S. Winnow, and as that was a manor
that belonged to the Prideaux family it is probable that his wife was
an heiress. Edward, the grandson, baptized at S. Winnow May 12th,
1647, was probably the person mentioned by Hals, to whom the adventure
is attributed. He was married to a daughter of Bligh, of Botathen.
"This gentleman received from God's holy angels a wonderful preservation
in the beginning of the reign of William III when returning from Redruth
towards his own house about seven miles distant, with his servant, late
at night, and both much intoxicated with liquor (as himself told me);
nevertheless having so much sense left as to consider that they were to
pass through several tin mines or shafts near the highway, on the
south-east side of Redruth town, alighted both from their horses, and
led them in their hands after them. The servant went somewhat before his
master, the better to keep the right road in those places, which
occasioned Mr. Chapman's turning aside somewhat out of the way, whereby
in the dark he suddenly fell into a tin mine above twenty fathoms deep,
at whose fall into this precipice his horse started back and escaped; in
this pit or hole Mr. Chapman fell directly down fifteen fathoms without
let or intermission, where meeting with a cross drift (above six fathoms
of water under it), he in his campaign coat, sword, and boots, was
miraculously stopped, when, coming to himself, he was not much sensible
of any hurt or bruises he had received, through the terror and horror of
his fall; when, considering in what condition he was, he resolved to
make the best expedient he could to prevent his falling further down
(where, by the dropping of stones and earth moved by his fall, he
understood there was much water under), so he rested his back against
one side of the ruin, and his feet against the other, athwart the hole,
and in order to fix his hands on some solid thing, drew his sword out of
its sheath, and thrust the blade thereof as far as he could into the
opposite part of the shaft, and so in great pain and terror rested
himself.
"The suddenness of this accident, and the horse's escaping in the dark
as aforesaid, was the reason why Mr. Chapman's servant, who went before
him, did not so soon find him wanting as otherwise he might, which as
soon as he did, he went back the roadway in quest of him, calling him
aloud by his name; but receiving no answer, nor being able to find his
horse, he concluded his master had rode home some other way, whereupon,
giving up all further search after him, he hastened home to Constantine,
expecting to have met him there; but contrary to his expectations, found
he was not returned. Whereupon his servants, early next morning, went
forth to inquire after him, and suspecting (as it happened) he might be
fallen into some tin-shafts about Redruth, hastened thither, where,
before they arrived, some tinners had taken custody of his horse (with
bridle and saddle on), which they found grazing in the Wastsell Downs.
Whereupon, consulting together about this tragical mishap, it was
resolved forthwith that some of these tinners, for reward, should search
the most dangerous shafts in order to find his body, either living or
dead; accordingly they employed themselves that day till about four
o'clock in the afternoon without any discovery of him. Finally, one
person returned to his company, and told them that at a considerable
distance he heard a kind of human voice underground; to which place they
repaired, and making loud cries to the hole of the shaft, he forthwith
answered them that he was there alive, and prayed their assistance in
order to deliver him from that tremendous place; whereupon, immediately
they set on tackle ropes and windlass on the old shaft, so that a tinner
descended to the place where he rested, and having candle-light with
him, bound him fast in a rope, and so drew him safely to land, where, to
their great admiration and joy, it appeared he had neither broke any
bone, or was much bruised by the fall; verifying that old English
proverb, that drunkards seldom take hurt; for, as the tinners said, if
he had fallen but two or three feet lower, he must inevitably have been
drowned in the water. But maugre all these adverse accidents, after
about seventeen hours' stay in the pit aforesaid, he miraculously
escaped death, and lived many years after, and would recount this story
with as much pleasure as men do the ballads of 'Chevy Chase' or
'Rosamond Clifford.'"
JOHN COKE, OF TRERICE
There is no thriving on ill-gotten goods, says the proverb, and this
was exemplified in the case of the Cook or Coke family of Trerice, in
S. Allen.
According to Hals, John Coke, attorney-at-law, came into these parts
of Cornwall in the reign of Queen Elizabeth from Ottery S. Mary, in
Devon, "without money or goods, and placed himself a servant or
steward under Sir Francis Godolphin, Knight, where he began from, and
with, his ink-horn and pen, to turn all things that he touched into
gold, and that by indirect art and practices as tradition saith." This
Cook or Coke derived from a Henry Cooke, a citizen of Exeter, who
married the sister and heiress of Roger Thorne, in Ottery S. Mary; and
the eldest branch of the family remained at Thorne till the end of the
seventeenth century, when it became extinct.
Sir Francis Godolphin, finding John Coke a clever business man, left
in his hands the management of his estate and his tin mines.
Coke took care that all the tin of his master's mines should be run into
blocks and stamped with the dolphin, to show whence they came and whose
they were. But after a while, as he saw that he was not specially
overlooked, and that opportunity was afforded him for peculation, he had
a considerable share of the block tin produced at the blowing-houses of
Sir Francis for himself, and to distinguish it from that of his
master's had it stamped with the figure of a cat, as cats are on the
Coke arms; and this he disposed of to his own advantage, and eventually
it was found that from the Godolphin mines more tin was produced and
sold marked with the cat than was with the dolphin.
Hals says: "Sir Francis's lady being informed of his ill practices,
and resolving by the next coinage to be better instructed in this
mystery, at such time as Godolphin blowing-house was at work,
privately, with one of her maids, in a morning, on foot went to that
place, where according, as common fame reported, she found many more
blocks or slabs of tin marked with the cat than there were with the
dolphin; the one part pertaining to Sir Francis, the other to Mr.
Coke. Whereupon, abundantly satisfied, she returned to Godolphin
House, but could not be there timely enough against dinner; whereat
Sir Francis was greatly distasted, having at that time several
strangers to dine with him. At length the lady being arrived, she
asked all their pardons for her absence, and told them it did not
proceed from any neglect or want of respect, but from an absolute
necessity of seeing a strange and unheard-of piece of curiosity, which
could not be seen at any other time; viz. to see a cat eat the
dolphin. And then gave an account of the premises, to their great
wonder and admiration; whereupon, soon after, Sir Francis dismissed
him from his service. But by that time he had gotten so much riches
that forthwith he purchased the little barton and manor of Trerice, in
S. Allen, and made that place his habitation till he purchased the
barton and manor of Tregasa, and seated himself there, where, by
parsimony and the inferior practice of the law, he accumulated a very
considerable estate in those parts. But maugre all his thrift and
conduct in providing wealth for himself and posterity, his grandson,
Thomas Coke, succeeding to his estate, upon the issueless decease of
his elder brother, Christopher Coke, and buying in his widow's
jointure at a dear rate, and also undertaking the building of the
present new and finely contrived house at Tregasa, though never
finished, yet the said fabric was so costly and chargeable to him,
together with the vain extravagance of his wife Lance, that he was
necessitated to sell divers parcels of lands in order to raise money
for his necessary occasions, and finally to mortgage the manor and
barton of Tregasa and all his other lands that were before unsold, for
about fourteen thousand pounds, to Hugh Boscawen, of Tregothnan, Esq.;
and lastly, for that consideration and others, did, by lease and
release, fine and proclamation, convey the same to the said Hugh
Boscawen, his heirs and assigns, for ever. Soon after this fact Mr.
Coke fell into great want and distress, together with his wife and
children, and died suddenly by a slip of his foot into a shallow pit,
wherein he was searching for tin, out of a conceited opinion he had
that he should at last raise his fortune by tin, as his grandfather
before him had done."
What Hals has omitted to state is that John Coke married a Godolphin,
Prudence, daughter of William Godolphin, of Trewarveneth, by whom he
had three sons--John, Edward, and Francis. Thomas Coke, who came to
such grief, the sins of the grandfather visited on the grandchild, was
Sheriff of Cornwall in the year 1651 under the Commonwealth.
THOMAS PELLOW, OF PENRYN
Thomas Pellow was born at Penryn, in all probability in 1704, and was
educated in the Latin school of that place. But loving adventure
better than books, and impatient to escape _propria quæ maribus_, he
implored his uncle John Pellow to allow him to embark with him in the
good ship _Francis_, owned by Valentine Enys, merchant, of Penryn,
that was bound with a cargo of pilchards for Genoa. He soon began to
regret having left the school bench, for his uncle not only made him
work as a common seaman, but when not so employed held him to those
hated books, and if he shirked, gave him the cat-o'-nine-tails. "So
that by the time we got to Genoa I thought I had enough of the sea,
being every day, during our voyage out, obliged (over and above my
book learning) to go up to the main-top mast-head, even in all
weather." On the return voyage when off Cape Finisterre the vessel was
captured by Sallee pirates, and it with the crew conveyed to Morocco
as captives. Thomas Pellow was in but his eleventh year, and his
Moorish masters thought that they would have little difficulty with
him in making of him a Mussulman.
He remained in Morocco for twenty-three years, during which time he
kept a diary, and this was published in London in 1739 and 1740, but
no date is affixed to the two editions. A third edition was published
in 1775, and recently his record of adventure has been included in
the "Adventure Series," edited with an introduction by Dr. Robert
Brown, and published by Mr. Fisher Unwin, London, 1890. In this
edition the narrative extends to 330 pages, and it is not my intention
to give even a summary of its contents, the book itself being easily
accessible. What must suffice is some account of the beginning of his
bondage and an idea of the condition of Morocco whilst he was there.
Thomas Pellow was given as slave to Muley Spha one of the Sultan's
favourite sons, but, as Pellow says, a sad villain. "My business now
was to run from morning to night after his horse's heels; during which
he often prompted me to turn Moor, and told me, if I would, I should
have a very fine horse to ride on, and I should live like one of his
best esteemed friends." As Pellow declined this invitation, "he
committed me prisoner to one of his own rooms, keeping me there
several months in irons, and every day most severely bastinading
me.... My tortures were now exceedingly increased, burning my flesh
off my bones by fire; which the tyrant did, by frequent repetitions,
insomuch, that through my so very acute pains I was at last
constrained to submit, calling upon God to forgive me, who knows that
I never gave the consent of the heart, though I seemingly yielded by
holding up my finger."
He was then, after having been instructed in the Moorish language,
appointed to be chief porter to the Sultan's harem, where resided the
Sultana and thirty-eight concubines. He received strict orders that no
one should be admitted without due notice. On one occasion the Sultan
arrived and knocked to be admitted without having previously intimated
his intention of paying a visit to his harem. The outer porter made
no difficulty in admitting him, but Thomas Pellow absolutely refused
to admit His Majesty as he had received no notice that he was coming,
and when the Sultan continued to knock, he discharged his blunderbuss
through the door. The Sultan was so delighted at his trustworthy
character and behaviour on the occasion, that he cut off the heads of
the two complaisant door-keepers, and promoted Pellow to be one of his
bodyguard.
After a few years the Sultan, "being on the merry fun, ordered to be
brought before him eight hundred young men, and soon after as many young
women, and he told the men, that he had on several occasions observed
their readiness in obeying him, he would therefore give every one of
them a wife; and which indeed, he soon did, by giving some by his own
hand (a very great condescension), and to others by the beckoning of his
head, and the cast of his eye, where they should fix. After they were
all coupled and departed, I was also called forth, and bid to look at
eight black women standing there, and to take one of them for a wife, at
which sudden command, I (being not a little confounded) immediately
bowing twice, falling to the ground and kissing it, and after that the
Emperor's foot, humbly entreated him that he would be graciously pleased
to give me one of my own colour. Then, forthwith sending them off, he
ordered to be brought forth seven others, who all proved to be
mulattoes, at which I again bowed to the ground, still entreating him to
give me one of my own colour; and then he ordered them also to depart,
and sent for a single woman, full dressed, with two blacks attending
her. I being forthwith ordered to take her by the hand and lead her off,
perceived it to be black also, as soon after I did her feet; at which I
started back, and being asked what was the matter, I answered him as
before; when he, assenting, ordered me to lift up her veil and look at
her face; which I readily obeying, found her to be of a very agreeable
complexion, the old rascal crying out in the Spanish language, _Bono,
bono_, ordering me a second time to take her by the hand, lead her off,
and keep her safe."
By this wife Pellow had a daughter. The Sultan was a monster of
cruelty, but according to Pellow there was not much choice in rotten
apples; he saw the rise of several, and one was as bad as another. He
says of the first he served: "He was of so fickle, cruel, and sanguine
a nature, that none could become for one hour secure of life. He had
many despatched, by having their heads cut off, or by being strangled,
others by tossing; but scarce would he on those occasions afford a
verbal command, he thinking that too much--generally giving it by
signs or motions of his head and hand.
"The punishment of _Tossing_ is a very particular one and peculiar to
the Moors. The person whom the Emperor orders to be thus punished is
seized by three or four strong negroes, who, taking hold of his arms,
throw him up with all their strength, and at the same time turning him
round, pitch him down head foremost; at which they are so dexterous by
long use, that they can either break his neck at the first toss,
dislocate his shoulder, or let him fall with less hurt. They continue
doing this as often as the Emperor has ordered.
"The Emperor's wrath is terrible, which the Christians have often
felt. One day, passing by a high wall on which they were at work, and
being affronted that they did not keep time in their strokes, he made
the guards go up and throw them off the wall, breaking their legs and
arms, and knocking them on the head. Another time he ordered them to
bury a man alive, and beat him down along with the mortar in the wall.
"In the year 1721 the Emperor despatched El Arbi Shat, a man of one of
the best families in Barbary, being descended from the Andalusian
Moors, and deserved the esteem both of his own countrymen and of us.
Part of the crime laid to his charge was for going out of the country
without the Emperor's knowledge, and having been friendly himself with
Christian women, and often been in liquor. He was also accused of
being an unbeliever. Early one morning he was carried before the
Emperor, who commanded him to be sawed in two; upon which he was tied
between two boards and sawed in two, beginning at the head and going
downwards, till the body fell asunder, and must have remained to have
been eaten by dogs, if the Emperor had not pardoned him--an
extravagant custom, to pardon a man after he is dead, but unless he
does so, nobody dares bury the body."
Pellow describes the condition of the Christian slaves: "The severest
labour and hardships inflicted on malefactors in Europe are levity
compared with what many worthy persons undergo in this modern Egypt.
At daybreak the guardians of the several dungeons, where the Christian
slaves are shut up at night, rouse them with curses and blows to their
work, which consists in providing materials for the Emperor's
extravagant buildings, stamping earth mixed with lime and water, in a
wooden box near three yards long and three feet deep, and of the
extended breadth of the wall. Their instrument for this is a heavy
wooden stamper. Others prepare and mix the earth, or dig in quarries
for lime stones; others burn them. Some are employed to carry large
baskets of earth; some drive wagons drawn by six bulls and two horses,
and, after the toil of the day, these miserable carters watch their
cattle in the field at night, and in all weathers, as their life must
answer for any accident. The task of many is to saw, cut, cement and
erect marble pillars, and of such as are found qualified, to make
gunpowder and small arms; yet does not their skill procure them any
better treatment than those who, having only the use of their limbs
without any ingenuity, are set to the coarsest works, as tending
horses, sweeping stables, carrying burdens, grinding with hand-mills.
They have all their respective taskmasters, who punish the least stop
or inadvertency, and often will not allow the poor creatures time to
eat their bread. After such a wearisome day, it frequently happens
they are hurried away to some filthy work in the night time. Their
lodgings in the night are subterranean dungeons, round, and about five
fathoms diameter and three deep, going down by a ladder of ropes,
which is afterwards drawn up, and an iron grate fastened in the mouth;
and here they lay upon mats. Neither has their fare anything more
comfortable in it, consisting only of a small platter of black barley
meal, with a pittance of oil per day. This scantiness has put several
upon hazarding a leap from very high walls only to get a few wild
onions that grow in the Moors' burying place."
Pellow developed considerable military ability and was employed in
military operations against rebels; he was made a captain, and was
present at several sieges, and witnessed the barbarity wherewith were
treated the men of a captured town. On one occasion the troops were
required to cut off the heads of all the male inhabitants and bring
them to the Sultan; but as the number was so great and the stench
threatened to breed a pestilence in the army, the general was
compelled to slice off the ears and pickle them in barrels and convey
these only to the Sultan at his capital, who graciously under the
circumstances accepted the ears in lieu of the heads.
Pellow was several times wounded, and he made occasional abortive
attempts to escape. When wounded, returning from one of his
expeditions, he received news that his wife and daughter were dead,
and he calmly observes: "I must own that it gave me very little
uneasiness, as I thought them to be by far better off than they could
have been in this troublesome world, especially this part of it; and I
was really very glad that they were delivered out of it, and therefore
it gave me very little uneasiness."
It is startling to think that in the reign of George I there should be
such numbers of English as well as French, Spanish and Italian
captives in Morocco and Algiers and Tunis, and that their redemption
should have to be the work of private charity, and not be a determined
undertaking of Government.