Here I shall add some remarks that will illustrate the origin of this
town more than Mr. Tonkin has done.
Truro takes its name from its castle. This, in Leland’s time, belonged
to the Prince of Wales as Earl of Cornwall, and was therefore one of
the castellated palaces of the Cornish Earls; it was only a small one,
however. This the ground of it shows when the walls are gone. Even in
Leland’s time, it was “clene doun;” and the area was used as a place
of exercise for shooting with bows and arrows, and for other
diversions. It “is now,” says Mr. Tonkin, “more like an old Danish
camp or round than a place that had been once inhabited.” What ideas
Mr. Tonkin had of an “old Danish camp,” I cannot say; but the castle
carries no appearance of a camp at all, either Danish, Saxon, or
Roman. Nor is it more like a round, if by “a round” Mr. Tonkin means a
Cornish one, like the amphitheatrical “round” of Piran. The only
remains of the castle, indeed, are the name, a waste area, and the old
mount or keep, the earth of which is nearly gone, and is daily
vanishing by application of it to other purposes. This artificial
mount marks the centre of the castle, had the main tower upon it, and
constituted the principal part of the whole; and a small ward must
have gone round it, standing on the natural ground, and forming the
offices to this petty palace.
This was plainly the origin of the town:――where an ancient Earl’s
house was, however small in its extent, and however occasional in its
use, it naturally drew the traders of the country to it. The wants of
such a Lord’s household, and the accompanying treasury of a kingdom in
a county, created such a call for wares, and produced such a currency
of wealth, as made it for its season the little centre of trade to the
adjoining country; and a town grew up in time, the weakly child of its
castle at first, but able to subsist without the castle at last. Such,
undoubtedly, was the origin of Truro. This lay upon the more westerly
of the two currents; the westerly side of the town, therefore, would
be the primitive and original part of it; accordingly, we see the
White Friars’ house constructed with it. From this current it
extended, as it enlarged, to the easterly one. The erection of a
church on that side, when a district was taken out of Kenwin parish,
and the peninsulated ground between the currents was formed into a
parish of itself, drew it easterly with great power. The town
consisted at first, probably, of the street running from the foot of
the hill on a part of which the castle stood, and extending backwards
with its yards and gardens to the western current; and this part of
course adopted the previous appellation of the castle, and was called
with it Tre-vereu, Tre-ureu, or Truru, Treuro, or Truro, the house or
castle upon the Uro or Uru, the same denomination of a river with that
of the Vere in Hertfordshire, the Vera-lamium of the Itineraries, the
Uro-lanium of Ptolemy, and with that of the Eure in Yorkshire, the
Uluracum, and the Is-urium of the geography and itineraries.
So originating from the castle, in that primary part of the whole, the
western side of the town, and in that most primary point of all, the
line of houses above, the town would naturally shoot out next in the
line of houses opposite to this on each side of the opening towards
the church, and beside the church on each side, drawn on by the strong
attraction of the church itself. The roads into the town from east and
west would then allure it down to their respective passes over the
current; the road from the west then coming down, as it still does, at
the bottom of the first line of houses; and that from the east coming
within these thirty years by the narrow street near the church, at the
corner of which is the rectory-house. The town would then extend from
the western access into it, in a street of houses running at right
angles with the original street of the whole, and pushing directly in
a line from the access. These must have been the three streets from
which Camden supposed the name to have been derived: “Truro,
Cornwallice Treuru, a tribus plateis dictum,” (page 138); but this
last street was afterwards split by the corporation into two, by the
erection of a town-hall above and a market-house below, along the
middle of it. In this state stood the town probably for some time,
with the continuance of this middle row of buildings, with the
erection of a coinage-hall for tin a little beyond the termination of
it, and with the extension of the two original sides of this third
street up to it. It then stretched up the hill towards the castle,
ranged over the confining currents on the east and west, into the
parishes of St. Clement’s and Kenwin, and expatiated down to the quay
and beside it. It ranged over the western current, now probably
covered with a bridge, before it pushed up the hill towards the
castle, as that line of houses is called Kenwin-street, even by
Leland, and this is denominated St. Pancras-street by Mr. Tonkin; that
was then the way, the circuitous way to Kenwin Church, when this is
the direct way, and the present; and the principal alteration which
has happened to Truro since, has resulted from the erection of a new
bridge over the eastern current, longer and grander than the other, a
few yards lower in the channel than it, lining with the eastern road,
and leading directly to the Town-hall and market-house. This naturally
produced a Bridge-street, leading up at one end of the Coinage-hall,
so falling into what was then the principal stem of the town, and thus
communicating with all the branches; and all will be consummated in a
few years by executing an Act of Parliament which has already passed,
in taking down that middle row of buildings which is formed by the
town-hall and its accompaniments, restoring this street to its
original width, and multiplying houses for the dislodged inhabiters in
the extreme parts of the town.
When the church was originally built I know not, but it was then
dedicated to St. Pancras, I apprehend, though it is now to St. Mary,
as the street leading down to one corner of the large area at it,
which is popularly denominated Pider-street at present, is still
denominated St. Pancras-street by Mr. Tonkin; but the present church
of St. Mary is of that light and elegant sort of Gothic architecture
which took place among us in the reign of Henry VII. and which perhaps
might be wished to have still continued among us, as being a happy
union of the solemn solidity of the Gothic and of the luminous
lightness of the Roman. At this period the church must have been
built, the architecture of London by degrees reaching out its
influence into Cornwall; and accordingly in the southern window, which
is the third from the east, is a date of 1518.
But let me be more particular concerning the antiquity of Truro. The
castle is not mentioned in Domesday Book;[6] it was therefore later
than the Conquest. It was built by some of the Norman Earls of
Cornwall, and was one of the rural palaces, as it were, which they had
in the county subordinate to their grand capitals at Launceston,
Tremarton, and Restormel. The town must be still later than the
castle; yet it is noticed within a century after the Conquest, so
nearly coeval was it with its cause, the castle. It is noticed above
to have been in the possession of Richard de Lucy. It was
incorporated, says the Visitation above, “as appeareth by record, by
Richard Lucy, alias Lacam.” “Truro, Truru, or Trevereu,” adds that
best investigator of our constitutional antiquities, because the most
grounded on the evidence of records, Dr. Brady, “was some time in the
possession of Richard de Lucy, a person of great note in the reigns of
King Stephen and Henry II. in the eighth of whose [Henry’s] reign,”
or, an. Dom. 1162, “he was made Justice of England.”[7] This Richard
had got possession of this part of the old estates of the earldom,
either by one of those half-alienations, which were only
sub-infeodations in reality, or (as we shall soon see) by being Earl
of Cornwall himself. He actually resided in the castle, as he is
styled in an instrument of Henry the Second’s, “Ricardi de Lucy
de Trivereu;” and he encouraged the little town of the Earls, by
incorporating it, and so giving it a legal dignity in granting it an
internal jurisdiction. He even proceeded to allow it that last and
highest privilege of a borough, a freedom of exemption from toll; nor
was this confined to the borough itself; it extended beyond it; it
extended into all the country round; it was commensurate with the
whole county; and Richard must, therefore, have acted with a power,
not merely of the lord of the borough, but of the earl of the county,
as no one less than an earl could have given such an ample sweep of
exemption. The proof of all this lies in the original charter of the
town, not now in existence, but referred to in a succeeding charter,
and particularised so as to be equal to the very charter itself. The
town thus began about the year 1100, was incorporated about 1130
perhaps, and was made a free borough (as we shall instantly see)
before 1140.
In the reign of King Stephen, who came to the throne in 1135, and in
the fifth year of it, or 1140, Lucy resigned up the possessions of the
earldom; as then, “Reginald Fitzroy, who was one of the illegitimate
sons of King Henry the First, was created Earl of Cornwall.”[8]
Reginald was, therefore, invested with all that Lucy had possessed.
This he retained till his death, which happened in the 21st of Henry
II.[9] or the year 1175. We accordingly find him extending his more
than half-royal graces to his borough of Truro, by granting it a
charter confirmatory of the privileges which Lucy had conceded to it
before. “The town and borough of Truro,” says the Visitation, “was
incorporated by the name of the Mayor and Burgesses, by Reignald Earl
of Cornwall, natural son to Henry the First (which, as appeareth by
record, was done by Richard Lucy, alias Lacam), testibus Rogero de
Valitort, Roberto de Edune Anvilla, Ricardo de Radiona, Aldredo de
St. Martino, sealed with an ancient seal, with a man on horseback.”
This description shows the charter to have been actually inspected by
the visitors; yet Dr. Brady knows it only from the recital of a
subsequent charter.[10] The original is lost in the Tower, I suppose,
while its counterpart is preserved at Truro; and it runs thus in the
Inspeximus, 13 Edw. I. No. 61. “Reginaldus Regis Filius,” not as in
descriptive terms the son of the King, but merely as a personal and
family appellative, Fitzroy, “Comes Cornubiæ; omnibus Baronibus
Cornubiæ, et omnibus militibus, et omnibus libere tenentibus, et
omnibus tam Anglicis quam Cornubiensibus, salutem. Sciatis, quod
concessi,”――a word that shows even confirmatory charters to do, what
our legal antiquaries are naturally unaware that they do, to use the
language of granting just as if they were original charters, and so
leave us to decide from other circumstances, which are original and
which confirmatory――“Liberis Burgensibus meis de Trivereu,” where the
note of previous freedom in the Burgesses proves them to have been
already freed from toll, “habere omnes liberas consuetudines et
urbanas,” the same exemption from toll that all cities (which were in
the King’s demesne) had, “et easdem in omnibus quas habuerunt in
tempore Ricardi de Lucy,” a plain evidence that they had “free
customs,” and that they themselves, therefore, were “free Burgesses”
in the time of Richard de Lucy, “scilicet Sacham et Socham, et Tholl
et Them, et Hinfangenethuf [Infangthief],” that is, all those rights
of judicature over themselves, and over others who came among them,
that then belonged to all the manorial courts, and that were
necessarily given to the Burgesses of Truro when they were
incorporated, and by incorporation were enabled to exercise a
jurisdiction independent of the common officers of justice: “et
concessi eis, quod non placitent in Hundredis, nec Comitatibus, nec
pro aliquâ summonitione eant ad placitandum alicubi extra villam
Trivereu,” a privilege consequent upon the grant of an internal
jurisdiction, and necessary to its completion: “et quod quieti sint de
Tholneo dando per totam Cornubiam, in feriis et in foris, et ubicunque
emerint et vendiderint,” a privilege which must have been a very
valuable one to a society of traders, and the more valuable from its
long reach over all the fairs and markets of the county: “et quod, de
pecuniâ eorum accreditâ et non redditâ, namium capiant in villâ suâ de
debitoribus suis,” by distraining the cattle, and arresting the
persons of their debtors, that came into the town, though they did not
belong to it.[11] This charter is without a date; with so many and
such witnesses no date being necessary; and as it must have been prior
to the Earl’s death, it was before the year 1175.
Henry the Second confirmed Reginald’s charter, as Reginald confirmed
Lucy’s; and all were re-confirmed by Edward the First in 1284.[12] But
in all these charters, we have no intimation of that grand privilege
which we are sure Truro to have possessed, and which is alluded to in
the Visitation above. “We find also,” says the Visitation, “that the
Mayor of Truro hath always been, and still is, Mayor of Falmouth, as
by an ancient grant, now in custody of the said Mayor and Burgesses,
doth appear.” The superiority of Truro over all the harbour of
Falmouth we see is here attested by a record of 1622; and “an ancient
grant, now in the custody of the Mayor and Burgesses,” is appealed to
by the record. This distinguishing privilege had been ceded to Truro
by a grant of a particular nature; but from the manner in which the
Visitation refers to it, the grant must have been so early as to be
without a date, and so be like Reginald’s and Lucy’s charters before;
and it was probably, therefore, about the same age with them.
[WHITAKER.]