St. Mawgan Rectory in Pider, hath upon the north the Irish Sea, east
St. Evall, west Lower St. Coumb, south St. Columb Major and Colan.
In the Domesday Book, 20 William I. 1087, this district was taxed
under the name of Lan-cherit; here was an endowed rectory, chapel or
church before that time; and the same endowed by the Prior of the
Priory of Plympton (founded by the West Saxon Kings). Afterwards, when
this old church was re-edified and enlarged to the mode and bulk it
now shows, it was then consecrated or dedicated to the honour of
Almighty God, in the name of St. Mawgan aforesaid; and this is
evidenced from the Inquisitions of the Bishops of Lincoln and
Winchester, 1294, into the value of Benefices, in decanatu de Pidre,
Sancti Maugani £6. 13_s._ 4_d._, and the Prior of Plympton received
£1. 6_s._ 8_d._ In Wolsey’s Inquisition, 1521, Mawgan Rectory, without
the Saint, is rated £26. 13_s._ 4_d._ After the first Inquisition into
the value of the revenues of this church, it follows in that book,
Prior de Plymton percipit de Ecclesia Sancti Maugani 26_s._ 8_d._ per
annum. The patronage, since the dissolution of that Priory, 26 Henry
VIII. in Arundell of Lanherne; the incumbent Tregenna; and the parish
rated to the 4_s._ per pound Land Tax, 1696, £178. 9_s._
From this church is denominated the manor and barton house of
Lanherne, contiguous therewith; which of old was the lands of Symon
Pincerna, id est Butler; so called for that, as tradition saith, he
was butler of the cellar, or waited upon the cup, bottle, or glass of
King Henry II. and is mentioned from the Records of the Exchequer, in
Mr. Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, page 45, to have held by the tenure of
knight service in Lanherne, one knight’s fee; which gentleman was also
lord of the manor of St. James’s in Middlesex, at Westminster, who
exchanged the same with King Henry II. or King Henry III. for the
manor of Conerton, in the parish of Gwythian and hundred of Penwith in
this county; which deeds of conveyance are yet to be seen at Lanherne.
The issue male of the Pincernas failing, the two daughters and heirs
of his family were married, temp. Edward III. to Arundell, of
Trembleth in St. Ervan, and Umphravill; hence it is we read in the
Rolls of the Exchequer and Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, page 43,
Johannes de Umfranvill tenet in decanatu de Pidre, ratione Aliciæ
uxoris suæ, unam mag. feod. in Lanherne, 3d Henry IV.
After Arundell’s match with Pincerna’s heir, he removed to Lanherne,
which hath ever since been the seat of that famous and flourishing
family, who derive their name from John de Arundell, temp. Henry I.;
since which time (for about twenty-three descents) they have married
with the inheritrixes of Trembleth, Pincerna, Lamburne, Lescor,
Lanbaddern, Tresithny, Carmenow, Grey, Denham, and several others; so
that by reason of their wealth, or great estates, the country people
heretofore entitled them by the name of the Great Arundells, (see Mr.
Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, page 144,) though there was a great
diminution of their ancient estate at and after the time that John
Arundell, temp. Queen Mary, married Anne, the daughter of Sir Henry
Gernigan, Knight, Master of the Horse, or Captain of the Guards to
that Queen. However, I take it his son or grandson, John Arundell,
Esq. married the coheir of Chydiock, and thereby repaired part of that
loss, and had by her issue John Arundell, Esq. afterwards knighted,
who married Elizabeth Roper, daughter of the Lord Teynham, and by her
had issue two sons that died without issue, and Elizabeth, married to
Sir Richard Billinge, knight; ―――― married to Sir Robert Bedingfield,
knight; and ―――― that was entered into a monastery of Benedictine nuns
in France, as I am informed.
Sir John Arundell, knight, (my very kind friend,) after his lady’s
decease, took for his second wife ―――― daughter of John Arundell, of
Trerice, esq. the relict of John Trevanion, of Caryhayes, esq. by whom
he had no issue. Whereupon the said Sir John Arundell, having by fine,
proclamation, and recovery, docked his estate tail to bar the
remainder, settled the same upon his grandson, Richard Billinge, Esq.
by his last will and testament; on condition that he and his posterity
for ever should assume the surname of Arundell, in conjunction with
that of Billinge, or separate, anno Dom. 1701.
The first gentleman of this family that appears on public record to
have served the state or the country, was Sir John Arundell, knight,
Sheriff of Cornwall, 6 Henry V. 1418, when Stephen Durneford was
Sheriff of Devon. Renfry Arundell, esq. his son, was Sheriff of
Cornwall 16 Henry VI. 1443, (when one Thomas Arundell was Sheriff of
Devon,) Renfry Arundell, esq. was Sheriff of Cornwall 3 and 4 Edward
IV. 1483.
John Arundell, son of the said Renfrye, had his first education in the
college of Canons Augustine in St. Columb, partly founded and endowed
by his ancestors; from whence he removed to Exeter College, in Oxford,
where, after he had taken his degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts,
he was ordained Priest, and presented by his father to the great
rectory of St. Columb Major in Cornwall; and accordingly, had
institution and induction thereto from the Bishop of Exeter;
afterwards he was chosen Dean of Exeter, when Doctor Fox was Bishop
thereof, 1490; where after he had sat for some time, upon the
translation of William Smith, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, to
Lincoln, (the successor of John Hals, who died 1492,) he had bestowed
upon him by King Henry VII. that bishoprick, and was consecrated anno
Dom. 1496; afterwards, upon the death of Dr. Redman, Bishop of Exeter,
1504, he was translated to that diocese, and was installed Bishop
thereof 1504; where, after he had well governed that diocese for about
two years space, he died at London, 19 February 1506, and lies buried
in St. Clement’s Church without Temple Bar.
From this family, by younger branches, were descended, temp. Richard
III. the knightly family of the Arundells late of Tolvorne (from
whence the writer of those lines by females is descended); as also the
Arundells, late of Trevithick, in St. Columb Major, temp. Edward VI.;
as also the Baron Arundells of Wardour in Wiltshire, temp. James I.;
as also the Arundells of Gloucestershire, temp. Charles I.
Though this family by the name of Arundell is set forth in Battle
Abbey corrupted roll, to have come out of France with the Conqueror, I
take it to be denominated from Arundell town and castle in Sussex,
(for as Sir John Arundell, the last possessor of Lanherne, told me he
could never understand there was any such local place in France as
Arundell, though he lived long in that country and made strict inquiry
after it,) for Ederick the Saxon was Earl of Arundell town and castle
aforesaid, before William the Conqueror landed here, who after the
death of King Harold was displaced and disinherited by the Conqueror,
and Roger de Montgomery made Earl thereof in his place, to whom his
estate was given. However, notwithstanding that this family, out of a
supposed allusion to their name, give for their arms, in a field Sable
six swallows, in pile three, two, and one, Argent or proper, for that
Arond in Gaulish French is a swallow; now corrupted after the Latin to
hirundelle; guenol, Tisbicock, guenvoll, British: as (χελιδων, hirundo
in Greek) in Armoric guinib is a swallow. Arond in French,
Ar-ran-dell, British, is the lake of water division valley.
One Bishop of this parish, in his youth, was, after his school
education at Retallock, in St. Columb Major, in the Latin and Greek
tongues, under Mr. John Coode, that famous schoolmaster, taken by the
cost and care of Sir John Arundell, of Lanherne, from thence, and
placed by him in Douay College in Flanders, where he took orders as a
Catholic Roman Priest, and afterwards returned into England, and
became house chaplain to the said Sir John Arundell, knight; and from
thence visited and confirmed the Roman Catholics in those parts for
many years, by the pretended surname of Mr. Gifford; he died at
Hammersmith, near London, 20 March 1733, aged 99 years, and ordered
his body to be opened and his heart to be taken out, and sent to Douay
aforesaid, and kept in spirits, and his body to be buried in Pancras
church, in London. (London Gazette, 23 March 1733.) He was made Doctor
of Divinity by his College aforesaid, and consecrated Bishop of
――――[5] in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, in the last year of King
James II.
Car-nan-ton in this parish, id est, the Rock Valley Town, was the voke
lands of a considerable manor, taxed in the Domesday Book 1087. As it
was then so it is now, a franchise royal, pertaining in chief to the
Crown, invested with the jurisdiction of a Court Leet within its
precincts, and had lately its steward and bailiff, to attend the
public services in trials at law between party and party, on pleas of
debt and damage; and here Robert Thomye held the fourth part of a
knight’s fee of land, temp. Henry IV. as Mr. Carew informs us.
It was lately the dwelling of William Noye, of Pendrea in Buryan, Esq.
farmer thereof; who was first bred a student at law in Lincoln’s Inn;
afterwards, having taken his degrees therein, he was chosen Member of
Parliament for the town of St. Ives in Cornwall, in which capacity he
stood for some Parliaments in the beginning of the reign of King
Charles I. and was specially famous for being one of the boldest and
stoutest champions of the subject’s liberty in Parliament that the
Western parts of England afforded; which being observed by the Court
party, King Charles was advised by his Cabinet Council that it would
be a prudent course to divert the force and power of Noye’s skill,
logic, and rhetoric another way, by giving him some Court preferment;
whereupon King Charles made him his Attorney-general, 1631; by which
expedient he was soon metamorphosed from the assertor of the subjects’
liberty and property to a most zealous and violent promoter, beyond
the laws, of the despotic and arbitrary prerogative or monarchy of his
Prince; so that, like the image of Janus at Rome, he looked forward
and backward, and by means thereof greatly enriched himself.
Amongst other things he is reflected upon by our chronologers for
being the principal contriver of the Ship-money tax, laid by King
Charles upon his subjects, for setting forth a navy or fleet of ships
at sea, without the consent of Lords or Commons in Parliament; which
moneys were raised by writ to the Sheriffs of all counties, and
Commissioners for a long time brought into the Exchequer twenty
thousand pounds per mensem, to the great distaste of the Parliament,
the Laity, and Clergy, who declared against it as an unlawful tax.
Nevertheless all the twelve judges after Noye’s death, except Hutton
and Crook, gave their opinions and hands to the contrary, in Hampden’s
case; viz. Branston, Finch, Davenport, Denham, Jones, Trevor, Vernon,
Berkeley, Crawley, and Weston. (See Baker’s Chronicle, printed 1656.)
However, out of kindness to the clergy, the King wrote to all the
Sheriffs of England, requiring that the clergy, possessed of
parsonages or rectories, should not be assessed above a tenth part of
the land rate of their several parishes, and that regard should be had
to vicars accordingly; by which rule the quanto or sum of this
Ship-money Tax by the month may be calculated. But I shall conclude
this paragraph of Noye in the words of Hammon Le Strange, Esq. in the
Life of King Charles I. viz. “Noye became so servilely addicted to the
King’s prerogative, by ferreting up old penal statutes, and devising
new exactions, for the small time he enjoyed his power, that he was
the most pestilent vexation to the subject that this latter age
afforded,” &c. He died on Saturday, August the 9th 1634, and was
buried in the church of New Brentford, Middlesex, with an inscription
on a stone to this purpose: “Here lyes the body of William Noye, Esq.
som tyme Atturney Generall to Kinge Charles I.” This gentleman writ
that excellent book of the law called Noye’s Reports; he married ――――
and had issue: Edward Noye, his eldest son, killed in a duel soon
after his father’s death; and Humphrey Noye, his second son. He
married Hester, daughter of the Lord Sands of Hampshire, and by her
had issue two sons, William Noye and Humphrey Noye, that died without
issue, and Katherine, married to William Davies, gentleman, of St.
Earth; and Bridgman, to John Williams of Rosworthy, Esq. sometime
Commissioner for the Peace, temp. Queen Anne, in whose right he is now
in possession of this barton of Carnanton, but by her he had no issue;
after her decease he married Dorothy, daughter of Peter Day,
gentleman, and by her hath issue, and giveth for his arms, in a field
Argent a fess checky Gules and Vert, between three griffin’s heads
erased Vert, each gorged with a ducal crown Or; the paternal coat
armour of the Williams’s, of Dorset or Wiltshire; his grandfather
coming from thence a steward to the Arundells of Lanherne.
The arms of Noye are: Argent, three bendlets and a canton Sable, on
the canton a cross of the Field; and another, Azure, three crosses
botony in bend Argent.
The Attorney-general on a day, having King Charles I. and the
principal officers and nobility of his Court, at a dinner at his house
in London, at which time the Arch Poet Ben Jonson, and others, being
at an inn on the other side the street, and wanting both meat and
money for their subsistence, at that exigent resolved to try an
expedient to get his dinner from the Attorney-general’s table; in
order to which, by his landlord at the inn aforesaid, he sent a white
timber plate or trencher to him, when the King was sat down to table,
whereon was inscribed these words:
When the world was drowned
No deer was found,
Because there was noe Park;
And here I sitt
Without ere a bitt,
Cause Noyah hath all in his Arke.
Which plate being presented by the Attorney-general to the King,
produced this effect, that Jonson had a good dish of venison sent him
back by the bearer, to his great content and satisfaction; on which
aforesaid plate, by the King’s direction, Jonson’s rhymes were thus
inverted or contradicted:
When the world was drowned
There deer was found,
Although there was noe park;
I send thee a bitt
To quicken thy witt,
Which comes from Noya’s Arke.
William Noye, anagram, I moyle in Law. He was the blow-coal,
incendiary, or stirrer up of the Civil Wars between King Charles and
his Parliament, by asserting and setting up the King’s prerogative to
the highest pitch, as King James I. had done before, beyond the laws
of the land as aforesaid; and as Counsell for the King he prosecuted
for King Charles I. the imprisoned Members of the House of Commons,
1628: viz. Sir John Elyot, Mr. Coryton, and others; whom after much
cost and trouble he got to be fined two thousand pounds each, the
others five hundred pounds, and further to be sentenced,
notwithstanding they paid those fines, not to be delivered from prison
without submission and acknowledgment of their offences, and security
to be put in for their good behaviour for the future.
Den-sill, alias Dyn-sill, in this parish, synonymous words, signifying
man-chapel or church, or a man of the church or chapel; otherwise
Den-sell is either man-great or great-man; and upon the confines of
those lands, on the high and lofty downs, is situate Densill Barrow,
that is to say Densill grave or burying place; a notable tumulus,
wherein some person of this little barton, after the ancient British
manner, was, before or soon after Christianity prevailed, here
interred. The rubbish and down-fallen walls of a free chapel,
heretofore on this place, prove the truth of this etymology, known now
by the name of Chapel Garder; garda, gerder, is a churchyard or field.
From this place was denominated an ancient family of gentlemen,
surnamed de Densill, or Densell; and the first of those gentlemen that
have come to my knowledge was Thomas Densill, that married Skewish,
temp. Henry VI. who had issue by her John, that married the daughter
and heir of Trenowith, of St. Colomb Major, temp. Edward IV.; on whose
right he annexed the lands of Trenowith to his manor of Densell, as it
remains to this day; (those Trenowiths lye interred in the north side
of St. Colomb Church, now pertaining to Mr. Vivian;) by Trenowth’s
heir the said John had issue, John Densill, esq. barrister at law, who
had his education at Lincoln’s Inn, afterwards was made Serjeant at
law, 1531, married Mary, daughter of Sir ―――― Lucas, of Warwickshire,
by whom he had issue two daughters, that became his heirs; Anne,
married to William Hollis, of Houghton, in Nottinghamshire, knight,
ancestor of the Earls of Clare, and now Duke of Newcastle; Alice to
Mr. Reskymer, father of Sir John Reskymer, of Reskymer, knight,
Sheriff of Cornwall 27 Henry VIII. This John Densill, Serjeant at law,
died 3 January 1535, and was buried in the church of St. Giles in the
Fields.
The name, estate, and blood of those Densills, being thus terminated
in Hollis and Reskymer, the Hollis’s have long time made it a font
name in their family, to preserve the memory thereof; in particular,
there was lately extant Densill Hollis, created Baron Hollis, of
Ifield, 2 April 1661, Privy Councillor to King Charles II. Lord High
Steward of the honours, manors, and revenues to his Queen Catharine;
Extraordinary Ambassador in France 1663, 1664, 1665, 1666; afterwards
Ambassador and Plenipotentiary at Breda, 1667; uncle unto John and
Gilbert late Earls of Clare.
This little barton and manor of Densill was by the Earl of Clare sold
to Buller, temp. Charles II.; from Buller to Vivian, of Truan; and by
Vivian to Pendarves, temp. William III. 1700; and from Pendarves to
Upton, now in possession thereof, as I am informed.
From the family of Densill, by a younger branch, was descended the
Densills of Philley, in Devon; in particular Richard Densill, younger
brother to the Serjeant’s father, whose only daughter and heir was
married to Martin Fortescue, Esq. who first brought Buckland Filleigh
to that family, as I am informed; after his decease she was married to
Sir Richard Pomeroye, of Bury Pomeroye, in Devon, Knight of the Bath
at the creation of Henry Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry VIII.
Quere whether John de Mawgan Sheriff of Cornwall 12 and 19th of
Richard II. were not of this parish or St. Mawgan in Kerryer; as also
the Mawgans of Essex, who gave for their arms, Argent, two bars, in
chief three mullets Sable.