St. Mewan rectory is situate in the hundred of Powder, and hath upon
the north St. Stephen’s and Roach, east St. Austell, south Mevagissey,
and south-west Creed.
In the Domesday Book this district was taxed either under the
jurisdiction of Branell, Tybesta, Towington, or Refishoe, perhaps now
Lefisick. In the Inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester
into the value of Cornish Benefices, 1294, Ecclesia de St. Mewany in
decanatu de Powdre, was rated 40_s._; in Wolsey’s Inquisition, 1521,
£10. The patronage in Hamley, formerly in the prior of Tywardreth, who
endowed it; the incumbent Mitchell; and the parish rated to the 4_s._
per pound Land Tax, 1696, temp. William III. £91. 6_s._ 4_d._
Pol-godh, Pol-goth, is in this parish. Out of which mine hath been
taken up, in less than forty years’ space, about five hundred thousand
pounds weight of tin; to the great enriching the labourers,
adventurers, bond-owners, and lords of the fee or soil; the same lying
for the most part in coarse wastrell ground, therefore boundable, in a
valley between two lofty hills. Sir John Arundell, of Lanherne,
knight, one of the lords of the soil, did for about twenty years space
receive alone one thousand pounds per annum free to his part, as the
fifth dish of black tin there made, and other lords proportionable
quantities of tin or money, as interested in the lands thereof.
Lefisick in this parish, which I take to be that Refishoc taxed in the
Domesday Book, is the dwelling of ―――― Edwards, Gent. that married
Bedford.