of _Glasney Collegiate Church_ (Camborne, 1903).
Footnote 94:
_Monasticon_, p. 135.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IX
CORNISH HERMITS
The subject of English hermits and anchorites has been so exhaustively
dealt with by Miss Rotha M. Clay[95] that a writer may well hesitate
before he ventures to enter upon a small portion of the ground which she
has covered. Miss Clay has performed her task with great judgment,
learning and literary skill and with consummate diligence. So
conscientiously and so impartially has she performed her task that the
reader will seek in vain to discover whether she is in full sympathy
with the hermit’s vocation or the reverse. Her book will be read with
pleasure and with profit by all.
The present writer wishes to acknowledge his obligations to Miss Clay,
whose researches have both confirmed and supplemented conclusions
already formed. The titles of the several chapters of her book are
illuminating and suggestive, and the contents abundantly justify the
distinction she has made between one type and another. We find ourselves
introduced in succession to hermits of island and fen, forest and
hillside, cave, lighthouse, highway and bridge, town, church and
cloister.
Unless the student keeps in mind the fact that the eremitical impulse
fulfilled itself in varied activities he will fail to understand its
true nature and purpose. Here was no lawless spirit, disdaining the
restraints of an ordered life, but “the fiery glow that whirls the
spirit from itself away” to make it the ready instrument in God’s hands
for works of mercy, charity, counsel and service while seeking by
prayer, meditation, vigil and fasting to attain unto perfection.
Again, while it is allowable to assume that the hermit who dwelt apart
and in solitude was the precursor of the conventual body—the word monk
implies as much—it nevertheless seems certain that, at the time when he
first emerges into the clear light of Celtic history he is not, as
popular fancy has imagined, a distraught enthusiast seeking refuge and
rest from an evil and adulterous generation, but a tried soldier who has
learnt in the convent by precept and by practice the art of war, and who
goes forth in all the panoply of celestial might to fight singly and
alone the enemies of his soul and to bring deliverance to others. No
sooner has he achieved his own salvation than he sets about the
salvation of his fellow-men. He has little in common with the
self-regarding Christian of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_. He is eager to be
of use. He becomes a minister to the dwellers amid untrodden ways and in
remote corners, it may be as a waywarden, a bridge repairer, or a light
keeper, but in any case as the guide, the counsellor, the friend of all.
Inevitably his sphere of influence widens out. Soon he has become
equally necessary to the pilgrim, the traveller and to those who are
round about him. As time goes on his cell and the little sanctuary where
he and they have met for worship become hallowed by association, and,
when he dies, a successor must be sought to carry on the tradition. The
hermitage thus remains as a memorial of its founder long after his name
has been forgotten.
Or, it may be, the hermit is joined by others like-minded and founds a
religious community, a _lan_ whose growth and permanence are promoted by
the industry and self-denial of its members. This would seem to have
been the normal course of events in Cornwall. In this case the
individual founder is often content to leave his work to be carried on
by others during his lifetime. He may be a bishop, priest, deacon or
layman who determines to undergo the hardships of the wilderness for a
season, but who has no intention of devoting his whole life to solitude.
Diversities of gifts under the spell of a common impulse give rise to
diversities of ministration and of operation.
Of the hermits of the Celtic period in Cornwall we have very little
historical evidence. Presumptive evidence we have which, if it told
against the traditional interpretation of early Christianity, would
doubtless be held to possess great value. For example, we have, in the
lives of the saints, references to ecclesiastical types and economic
conditions which had been obsolete for centuries when some of those
lives are held to have assumed their present literary form.
We have holy wells bearing the names of saints which are not the names
of the patron saints of the parishes in which the wells are situated. We
have legends which, for the purpose of comparative mythology, are highly
esteemed. There are, for example, holy wells at St. Ingunger, Chapel Uny
(St. Uny’s) and Jetwells, but these are not the patrons of the parishes,
though they are all three well-known Celtic saints. On the other hand,
there are wells bearing the names of St. Levan, St. Madron, St. Clether,
St. Keyne and St. Just (Venton—east) situated in the parishes which do
bear their names. If the ancient Cornish churches derived their names
from their founders or founders’ kin it seems probable that the holy
wells acquired their names from association with the saints whose names
they bear.
There would be the same inducement for a hermit to fix his abode near a
spring of water as there is for an Australian squatter to choose a
similar spot for the headquarters of his sheep or cattle station. So
late as A.D. 1086, when Domesday Book was compiled, the county of
Cornwall was very sparsely populated. In the place-names may be
recognised traces of a fauna long extinct but nevertheless extant in
Celtic times.[96] It is necessary to bear in mind the transformation of
the county, which during the last thirteen centuries has resulted from
increased settlement and the more extensive cultivation of land, in
order to be in a position to estimate the value of the evidence supplied
by the hagiographer.
Early in the sixth century St. Petrock succeeded St. Guron at Bodmin;
such is the tradition. Leland (circa 1540) thus records the event,[97]
_Bosmana, id est, mansio monachorum in valle, ubi St. Guronus solitarie
degens in parvo tugurio, quod reliquen(s) tradidit St. Petroco_. Guron
was doubtless a hermit. Petrock enlarged the hermitage, which was
situated in the valley where the town now stands and near the well which
still bears the hermit’s name, so as to make it capable of sheltering
himself and three brethren. Guron is probably the same as Goran, the
name-saint of the parish in the ancient deanery of Powder. Traces of the
name are to be found in Brittany.[98]
William of Worcester (1478) introduces us to three Cornish hermits,
Vylloc or Willow, Mybbard and Mancus. They were companions.
The first is described as a hermit and martyr born in Ireland and
beheaded by Melyn’s kinsfolk (_Melyn ys kynrede_) near the place (in
Lanteglos-by-Fowey) where Walter, bishop of Norwich, was born.
From this place to the bridge of St. Willow, a distance of half a mile,
he carried his (head) to a spot where the said church was built in his
honour.[99] Mybbard, otherwise Calrogus, is stated to have been a
hermit, the son of a King of Ireland, and his body is said to rest
within the shrine (_scrinio_) of Cardynham Church. Mancus, their
companion and a hermit, is said, on the authority of Robert Bracey, to
lie in the church of Lanreath, within two miles of Fowey, and, on the
authority of the canons of Launceston, in the parish of Lanteglos
presumably at Bodinnick. All three are said to be commemorated on the
same day, viz. the Thursday next before Whitsunday. William of
Worcester’s account of the three hermits is prefaced by the sentence
“there were three brothers under the name of St. Genesius and each
carried his head, one of them archbishop of Lismore.” Is it possible
that St. Gennys may be a corruption of a Latinised Greek word συγγενεις
(kinsmen)? It is curious, in any case, that the feast of Cardynham and
St. Gennys should be held on Whitsunday, that of Lanteglos having been
abandoned and that of Lanreath, whose patron is now given as Marnarch,
being kept on the third of August. Anciently there was a chapel at
Bodinnick bearing the name of St. John the Baptist. St. Willow is
regarded as the patron of Lanteglos and Mybbard as the patron of
Cardynham. When all due allowance has been made for accretions and
errors in transmission it seems impossible to doubt that three Irish
hermits were martyred at or near Lanteglos and commemorated by churches
built in their honour.
St. Neot represents a prevalent type of religious which, from the first
days of British Christianity until the eleventh century, combined the
habits and aspirations of the hermit with the practical usefulness of
the missionary. Neot was born in the earlier years of the ninth century
of parents who were nearly related in blood to the West-Saxon Kings.
Forsaking a military career for which he had been intended, he entered
the monastery of Glastonbury, where he received Holy Orders and became
eminent for piety, learning, wisdom and counsel. The fear of popular
applause drove him forth into the wilderness. He fixed his abode in the
Cornish parish which now bears his name, near to a hamlet then known as
Hamstoke and therefore apparently already a Saxon settlement. Here he
lived seven years. At the end of that time he visited Rome and was
advised by the Holy Father to renounce his habit of solitary devotion to
return home and scatter the word of God among the people of Cornwall.
He came back to Hamstoke and founded there the college of priests of
which mention is made in Domesday Book. At Hamstoke he was visited more
than once by his kinsman Alfred the Great, who hunted in the
neighbourhood and who is said to have been healed at the shrine of St.
Guerir of a malady which had afflicted him from boyhood.
St. Neot’s hermitage was near the spring which is about half a mile west
of the church and is known as St. Neot’s well. In his day there appear
to have been two pools, one of them with an unique unfailing supply of
three fishes, of which one only was to be caught in a day, and the
other, a pool in which the saint was wont to stand daily while repeating
the Psalter. Many stories are told of the saint’s sojourn by the well.
The fox which stole his shoe, the rescue of the doe from the hounds, the
theft of his working bullocks and the employment of stags for the
ploughing of his land are sufficiently well known.
By the advice of St. Neot King Alfred is said to have restored the
English school at Rome. The saint continued to be abbot of his own
foundation until his death, which took place on the 31st of July, 877.
He was buried in the church which he had built on the site of the chapel
of St. Guerir. About a century later his bones were fraudulently removed
to the monastery of Eynesbury in Huntingdonshire.
There are several points of interest. There does not appear to have been
any marked difference between St. Neot’s eremitical career and that of
others of Cornish origin. This may be owing to the late composition of
the lives of many of the saints. The substitution of St. Neot for St.
Guerir as the name-saint of the church has many precedents and would
call for no remark here did it not afford a good example of what was
also in Cornwall a fairly general practice, of which the proofs are not
abundant—that of calling churches after the names of their
founders.[100]
At this point it is convenient to call attention to the story of
_Tristan and Iseult_, which has been shown to be of Cornish origin and
which assumed literary form probably towards the end of the eleventh
century. Most of the places mentioned in the story are found in Cornwall
and, although the actors in the drama are presumed to have lived some
five centuries before their deeds were committed to writing, there are
nevertheless inferences to be derived from the record of them which have
a direct bearing upon our subject even if we suppose the setting of the
story to have been, at the time, comparatively modern. The following
episode is an example. During the sojourn of Tristan and Iseult in the
forest of Morrois (Moreske), which then extended from the Fal to the
Helford river, they meet with a hermit, Ogrin by name, who does not
hesitate to give them some much-needed advice. He calls them to
repentance and then listens patiently to Tristan’s excuses. It is not
suggested that in admonishing them he is exceeding his duty. He is
described as a hermit with a hermitage in the forest, a personage quite
distinct from the parish priest, whose sphere of influence had already
become a recognised geographical unit, as is shown by the following
passage:
En Cornoualle n’a parroise
Ou la novele n’en angoise
Que, qui porroit Tristan trover
Qu’il en feïst le cri lever.
Ogrin, as a man of sense, advises the Queen to return home, and himself
undertakes the delicate task of reconciling the lovers to King Mark.
Throughout the narrative he is represented as a man of God. It does not
seem to have occurred to the romancer that there is something slightly
incongruous in selecting a hermit for a shopping expedition to the
market of St. Michael’s Mount, where, for the fair Iseult:
Assés achate ver et gris
Dras de soie et de porpre bis,
Escarlates et blanc chainsil,
Asez plus blanc que flor de lil,
Et palefroi souef amblant
Bien atorné d’or flanboiant.
The hermit, as a man of affairs, may have been familiar to those for
whose ears the romance was intended. It is difficult, otherwise, to
assign a reason why the writer exaggerated his character beyond the
bounds of recognition. The position which the hermit occupied in the
popular estimation, august as it undoubtedly was, was not more exalted
than that which was voluntarily conceded to him by those who were highly
placed. To this fact must doubtless be attributed the more or less
successful attempts to perpetuate the office when its occupant was
removed by death. It is therefore possible that in the hermit of
Colemanshegg, mentioned in a Roll of 1258, we have a reference to one of
Ogrin’s successors.[101] Of this latter personage we know nothing save
that Richard hermit of Colemanshegg received 50s. yearly to find a
chaplain to celebrate divine service for the soul of Catherine the
King’s daughter.
But for this mention of Richard of Colemanshegg the earliest notice of a
Cornish hermit after the Norman Conquest would have been that contained
in the Assize Roll of the 30th year of Edward I (1301-1302) in which it
is recorded that _Thomas de Penmargh noctanter intravit domum Andreae
Paugan heremitae infra capellam Divi Justi et eum occidit. Johannes
filius Andreae heremitae primus invenitor_. The entry is under the
heading of the hundred of Penwith. Penmargh is doubtless Penmarth in
Wendron. Pagan, of which Paugan may be a variant, is not uncommon as a
personal name in early records. We are not told why Thomas of Penmargh
killed Andrew, or how long it was before John discovered the dead body
of his father, but it looks as if Andrew had been seen alive the day
before his death and found dead by his son the day after. Where was the
hermitage? It is described as below the chapel of St. Just, but St. Just
was not a chapel (_capella_). It was a church (_ecclesia_), and the
terms are never used indiscriminately. If it be allowable to render the
passage “below a chapel of St. Just,” that is, below a chapel in the
parish of St. Just, the record is very significant.
For one of the most interesting spots in that parish is Chapel Carn
Brea, upon the summit of which stood until 1816 a chapel of which a
sketch was made by Dr. Borlase, who described it as being approached
from the south side by a large flight of steps and as being twenty feet
in height, and the roof arched with stone well wrought. Hals tells us it
was about ten feet wide and fourteen feet long, with a window in the
east end. Both writers speak of an immense heap of stones lying around
it, suggesting a large vault or hermitage underneath. The chapel was
pulled down in 1816 to build a barn elsewhere. When, in 1879, Mr. W. C.
Borlase made an examination of the confused mass of stones which
remained, and still remain, he failed to discover any trace of a
hermit’s cell, and concluded that the greater portion of the debris had
done service as a covering for the prehistoric chambered grave which was
found at a lower level. While it is not unlikely that the tumulus
suggested, at a very early period, the site for the chapel to the first
Christian solitary who found his way to that remote spot, the amount of
stone there at the present time is too great to warrant the conclusion,
unless the tumulus was of a type and size which has no rival in the
county.
Some building doubtless existed besides the chapel, the size of which
was obviously too small for public worship.
The most striking feature of Chapel Carn Brea is the commanding view
which it affords not only of the Channel but of the whole of Penwith and
of a large portion of the Lizard. No better spot could be chosen for a
beacon.
Within a couple of hundred yards is the ancient mule track from Marazion
to the Land’s End. After reading Miss Clay’s chapter on hermits as
light-keepers, it seems impossible to doubt that the hermit of Chapel
Carn Brea was one of those who in the day of small things performed that
function, and whose simple signal was to the seafarer no less than to
the traveller over the lonely moor a bright beacon of God. Andrew Paugan
was probably only one of a long line of hermits who dwelt on the hill. A
curious extract is found in Dr. Borlase’s collections which, as one of
the latest specimens of Cornish literature, has a value all its own and,
as the witness of a tradition extant in the latter half of the
seventeenth century, is useful for the present purpose. I am indebted to
Mr. Henry Jenner for a transcript and translation of it.
“The Accusation of the Hermit (who liv’d in Chapel Karn Bray in
Buryan) address’d to ye Duchess.
Rag an Arlothus woolaes Kernow
Dreth ’guz kibmias beniggas.
Why ra cavas dre eu an gwas Harry ma Poddrack broas.
Kensa, wit a hagar-awal iggeva gweel do derevoll war ren ny Keniffer
termen dre ra ny moas durt Pedden an woolaes do Sillan. Nessa, wit
an skavoll Crack-an-codna iggava setha war en cres a’n awles ewhall
(cries tutton Harry an Lader) heb drog veeth. Tregga, wit an gurroll
iggeva gwell gen askern skooth Davas, etc.”
To the Countess of the Dominion of Cornwall.
By your sacred leave.
You shall find by him that this fellow Harry is a great witch.
First, from the stormy weather he does work to raise upon us every
time that we do go from the end of the Land to Silly. Second, from
the break-neck stool which he can (or does) sit upon in the middle
of the high cliff (call’d The Chair of Harry the Thief), without any
hurt. Thirdly, from a ship he does make with the bone of a shoulder
of mutton.
Mr. Jenner is inclined to think that the “seat of Harry the thief”
(Tutton Harry an Lader) refers to a piece of cliff at Tol Pedn Penwith
called “Chair Ladder.” The whole passage as it stands detached from the
context (which has been lost) is little more than so much gibberish.
Possibly it may have been so intended, for the romance, of which it is a
fragment, was written by Mr. Boson for his children. But this
consideration, assuming it to be well founded, would not rob the
allusions of their evidential value. Quite the contrary. Every romance
requires some element of fact or vraisemblance to recommend it to the
popular imagination. Not more than half a mile from Chapel Carn Brea, at
the foot of the hill, is Crows-an-Wra, the Witch’s Cross, which may have
suggested the character personified by Harry the Wizard of the
break-neck stool. Some vague memories of the hermit who served the
little chapel, tended the beacon and directed the travellers across the
desolate moor doubtless still survived. Andrew Paugan was only one of
the occupants of the cell, one who like many others in various parts of
England spent his life in solitude, enduring privation and hardship and
cultivating piety by prayer, meditation and active philanthropy. He was
probably a widower when he gave himself to the career which Thomas of
Penmargh, in the stillness of night, for some unknown reason brought to
an untimely end.
The next mention of Cornish hermits is found in the _Inquisitio
post-mortem_ of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall.[102] Following the inventory
of honours, lands and services held by him at the time of his death
there is a list of the charges upon his estates and among them the
entry: “alms to St. Philip of Restormel, hermit, and St. Robert of
Penlyn, hermit.” The earldom and its possessions reverted to the King on
Earl Edmund’s death, and we are therefore not surprised to find an entry
in the Close Roll of the following year, 1301, which reads as follows:
“To the sheriff of Cornwall. Order to deliver to brother Robert of
Penlyn, hermit, the island surrounded (_inclusam_) by the water of Fawe
with a rent of 56s. 2d. from certain tenants of the manor of Penkneth,
to be held by him for life as he held them before the death of Edmund,
Earl of Cornwall, by reason of whose death the sheriff took them into
the King’s hands; on the same terms as the earl granted them, together
with the houses built on the island, to Robert by his charter which the
King has inspected.”[103]
All attempts to identify the island have hitherto failed. The manors of
Penlyn or Pelyn and Penkneth or Pennight are in the parish of Lanlivery,
of which the river Fowey is, roughly speaking, the eastern boundary, but
no island is now to be discovered in its course. The site of the
hermitage of Restormel is also uncertain. It may have been that of the
chapel of the Holy Trinity in the park, sometimes called the King’s free
chapel, to which frequent reference is made in the Rolls, and from
which, according to an inventory made in 1338, a bell weighing 100 lbs.
had been removed to the chapel within the castle walls of Restormel.
There is nothing to lead us to suppose that St. Philip and St. Robert
had successors. It is not improbable that royal chaplains were
substituted for them.
In 1339 the Patent Roll records the King’s protection granted to Roger
Godman, hermit of the chapel of St. Mary by Liskeard (Liskerith),
collecting about the realm the alms whereon he depends for
subsistence.[104] It is probable that the chapel of St. Mary was the
same as the King’s free chapel of St. Mary in the park of Liskeard to
which Edward II appointed Roger de Aqua his chaplain in 1316.[105] It
must be distinguished from that of the Hospital of St. Mary Magdalen.
The former appears to have become a chantry, for, in 1378, a royal grant
was made to Richard Lagge, chaplain, that he might celebrate service in
it, and in the same year the bishop issued a licence to him in which it
is stated that he is to celebrate for the welfare of the King.[106] The
chantry was suppressed by Edward VI, and the “Chapel of our Laydye”
granted to Thomas Pomray in 1549.[107] It is interesting to compare the
fortunes of this chapel with that of the Holy Trinity in the park of
Restormel. Both of them appear to have been served originally by
hermits, to have been converted into royal chapels and to have shared
the same fate.
A little more than half a century later, in 1403, the following entry
occurs in Bishop Stafford’s register: “One Cecilia Moys, desiring to
lead the contemplative life of an anchorite[108] in a certain house in
the cemetery of Marhamchurch, the bishop on the 4th of May, 1403,
commissioned Philip, abbot of Hartland, and Walter Dollebeare, vicar of
Southill, to place her there under proper protection, assigning her till
Christmas as a time of probation.”
Churchyards were regarded as places specially suitable for the dwellings
of anchorites as being dead to the world. It was, moreover, an obvious
advantage to the parish priest that they should be near the church for
the purpose of Communion. A second entry in the same bishop’s register
probably refers to the same anchorite, though the name is given as that
of Lucy Moys, anchorite of Marhamchurch.