The manor and barton of Penkevil belonged in the reign of Edward the
First to the family of De Wen, from whom Hals supposes it passed in
marriage to the Penkevils; it is however quite as probable that the
property remained in the same family, they assuming a new name from
the place of their abode. This family, says Hals, flourished for
several descents in a genteel degree, till the reign of Queen
Elizabeth, when Penkevil was given or sold to George Courtenay, gent.
whose great-grandson alienated it to Hender Molesworth, esq. by whom
it was conveyed to Hugh Boscawen, esq.
The manor of Fentongolland, which extends into the parish of Merther,
is said to have belonged at an early period to a family of the same
name, from whom it passed by a succession of female heirs, to the
families of Trejago and Trenoweth. John Trenoweth, who died in 1497,
left four daughters, coheirs. The eldest, Philippa, brought this manor
to John Carminow, of Resprin, (a younger branch of the Carminows, of
Carminow,) who became, in consequence of this match, as Mr. Hals says,
“more famous for his wealth than any other of his name or house, or
than any other family in Cornwall.” Thomas, son of this John Carminow,
was gentleman of the privy chamber to King Henry the Eighth. Hals,
speaking of the hospitality of John Carminow, the grandson, says,
“That he kept open house for all comers and goers, drinkers,
minstrels, dancers, and what not, during Christmas time; and that his
usual allowances of provisions for these twelve days were twelve fat
bullocks, sixty statute bushels of wheat, thirty-six sheep, with hogs,
lambs, and fowls of all sorts, and drink made of wheat and oat malt
proportionable, for at that time barley malt was little known or used
in those parts.”
Oliver Carminow, son of this John, is said to have squandered away the
greater part of his very valuable estates. He left two daughters,
married to Salter and Cole, by whom this manor was sold, in the year
1600, to the Holcombes. Sir Nicholas Hals purchased this estate in
1603, and made Fentongollan his residence; his son sold it to Ezekiel
Grosse, whose daughter and heiress brought this and several other
estates to Francis Buller, Esq. of Shillingham. It was purchased of
that family about the year 1676, by Hugh Boscawen, Esq. who soon
afterwards pulled down the fine old mansion-house of the Carminows,
with its lofty towers and chapel. A farm-house now occupies the site.
Tregothnan, the seat of Lord Viscount Falmouth, came to the Boscawens
in marriage with the heiress of Tregothnan in the fourteenth century.
Treganyan, or Tregonian, formerly the seat of a family bearing the
same name, passed by successive female heirs to the Haleps and Sayers;
by bequest from the latter to Trevelyan; and by a coheiress of
Trevelyan to Rowe. It was purchased of the Rowes by Mr. George
Simmons, who conveyed it to Lord Falmouth. The barton-house is now
occupied by a farmer.
Nancarrow, in this parish, was also the property of a family to whom
it gave its name.
* * * * *
The family of Boscawen is unquestionably of very great antiquity, of
Norman or British origin, having either imparted their name to
Boscawen Rose, in St. Burian, or received it from that place.
The peninsula west of the Mount’s Bay, little frequented in former
ages, and scarcely accessible to strangers, abounded, as all similar
districts have been found to do, with long settled possessors of
landed property; who, content with the small fortunes transmitted from
their ancestors, lived on in succession the protectors, the
benefactors, and the paternal governors of their neighbourhoods. Such
were the Boscawens, Vyvyans, Levelas, Trevilians, Noyes, and perhaps
Usticks, Davieses, Kegwins, and some others, all inhabitants for
centuries of this remote portion of Cornwall, and all arranged on
similar scales of property and influence. The Boscawens however
emerged in the fourteenth century, and pursued with great perseverance
and success the only path then leading to advancement in the world.
They married heiress after heiress, and acquired extensive properties
in various parts of the county.
The Boscawens were among the few Cornish gentlemen in the western
division, who took what may now be called the liberal side in the
Civil War, and they continued to oppose the arbitrary principles of
the faction, having at its head the two last brothers of the house of
Stuart――and assisted in the glorious Revolution which secured us from
civil and religious despotism, by placing the Prince of Orange on our
vacant throne.
Hugh Boscawen married Margaret Clinton, eventually coheiress of the
Earl of Lincoln, by whom he had a numerous family, all of whom died
before him, with the exception of Bridget, married to Hugh Fortescue,
ancestor of Earl Fortescue; and with this lady, Mr. Hals states that
Mr. Boscawen gave lands and money to the value of a hundred thousand
pounds; he died in 1701, and was succeeded by his relation of the same
name. This gentleman is understood to have possessed very considerable
talents, and powers of exerting them. He continued ably to support the
Revolution government, and brought to it a powerful aid arising from
the peculiar feature which distinguished Cornwall up to the year 1832.
In 1714, on the German accession, hopes, fears, expectation, and party
violence, burst forth with all the fury that had driven them into
action thirty years before. Vigorous proceedings were therefore
demanded, and may be justified by the exhortation at Salamis, Νυν ὑπερ
παντων Αγων. Yet in moments of cool reflection, and at the distance of
a hundred and twenty years from this agitated period, one cannot
refrain from thinking that Mr. Boscawen was carried beyond the limits
of duty to his country, or zeal for his associates embarked in the
same cause, when he undertook and executed the task of arresting his
countrymen, and probably his former friends, on the suspicion of their
entertaining opinions more favourable than his own to monarchical
power, and to what in modern phrase might perhaps be termed
conservative principles.
Sir Richard Vyvyan was seized at Trelowarren, conveyed by water to
Pendennis Castle, and from thence to the Tower. Mr. Basset, of Tehidy,
would also have been arrested if he had not left his house; and other
proceedings were taken of equal violence.
These acts, however necessary at the time, produced their moral
effects of creating feuds and permanent irritations, so that while the
principal agent was admired by one party, and received the reward of
an hereditary seat in parliament, as was industriously propagated, in
return for these services, the opposite party detested his name, and
usually joined to it an epithet drawn from the inferior apparitors of
the common law.
This gentleman, created Viscount Falmouth in 1720, married Charlotte,
daughter and coheir of Charles Godfrey, Esq. and his wife Charlotte
Churchill, sister of the great Duke of Marlborough. They had a very
numerous family; the eldest son, Hugh Boscawen, succeeded of course to
his father’s estate and hereditary seat in parliament; very little is
remembered about him. He is believed to have been kind and benevolent
in private life, and the Editor is anxious to avail himself of this
opportunity for acknowledging an act of generous and feeling
liberality exercised by this gentleman to the benefit of a near
relation, about fourscore years ago. In ability he probably fell much
below the usual standard of his family, for he is known to have been
cajoled into marrying a kept mistress; and idle tales are circulated
of his mistaking “Optat ephippia Bos” for the Latin of his own name,
and Horace Walpole for the Roman poet. It is probable these mistakes
never literally happened, but such anecdotes are usually
characteristic of the individual; if however they really were made,
the credit of the family has been amply redeemed by a nephew, who has
given to the public one of the best translations of Horace extant in
any language.
Of his various brothers very little also is known or remembered,
excepting of one, and that one is Admiral Boscawen, the glory not of
Cornwall but of his country, the Nelson of his time.
Edward Boscawen went early to sea, expecting (as the Editor has heard
from one to whom he related the circumstances) to be advanced almost
immediately through family interest and connection to the station of a
Lieutenant; when the order was suddenly made for subjecting all
midshipmen to a service of six years at the least. “To this order,” he
was accustomed to say, “I owe all my knowledge of seamanship, and to
this order the British Fleet is mainly indebted for the superior
knowledge and skill of its officers.”
The young man was properly advanced as occasions offered themselves;
and from the period of his commanding a ship, his whole career was one
of glory and of deserved success. Besides engagements with single
ships, and their capture, his achievements are recorded at Porto
Bello, Carthagena, Cape Finisterre, the East Indies, the Coast of
Spain, and above all at Louisbourgh Harbour, in Cape Breton, where he
effected a conquest most gallant in itself, and essential to the
subjugation of Canada by General Wolfe; and what may equal the spolia
opima of Rome, he three times made M. Hoquart, the French commander, a
prisoner in the course of one war.
Admiral Boscawen was beloved throughout the navy for his care and
attention to the health, the comfort, and the happiness of every one
under his command, to as high a degree as he was admired for skill,
for prudence, and for valour; throughout Cornwall he was adored. So
that, notwithstanding the rule observed in that county, of considering
every gentleman who obtains a seat in the Upper House of Parliament,
as relinquishing for himself of course, and also for his family, in
favour of other gentlemen, all claim to the county representation,
Admiral Boscawen, standing completely on his own personal merits, and
founding a new branch from an ancient family, was invited to accept
the situation of member for Cornwall. The general election arising
from the accession of George the Third was approaching, when a fever
closed the life of this great man, on the 10th of January 1761, in the
50th year of his age.
Admiral Boscawen married Frances, daughter of William Evelyn
Glanville, a lady possessed of every quality that could adorn the
highest station, or that could render her amiable in domestic life.
They had several children:
The eldest, called after his father’s name, died at Spa in Germany, in
early life, on the 17th of July 1774.
The second son, William Glanville Boscawen, having engaged in the sea
service, anxious to emulate the splendid example given by his father,
and having become a Lieutenant, was most unfortunately drowned in
Jamaica, on the 21st of April 1769. On this melancholy occasion the
following elegy was composed by Doctor John Walcot.
This gentleman was bred to the medical profession under an uncle at
Fowey, where he afterwards practised, but standing high in the
estimation of Sir William Trelawny, appointed Governor of Jamaica,
Doctor Walcot, provided with a medical degree, went out with him as
his physician; and in times when propriety and decorum were less
attended to than at present, he was also admitted into holy orders,
and thus became qualified for holding a living in the Island, one of
which he actually obtained; but having returned to England after the
Governor’s decease, he relinquished the preferment, which could not be
held without residence, and abandoned the character of a clergyman.
No one can read this poem, somewhat perhaps too nearly resembling an
ode of Collins, nor many other of his more elegant productions, his
sonnets set to music by Jackson, &c. without regretting the change of
style and of subject which he afterwards adopted under the assumed
name ―――― Pindar.
Along the twilight vale I rove
My sorrows o’er the youth to shed,
Where Honour wraps the silent grave,
That darkling seems to mourn the dead.
And oh! tho’ far from thee I stray,
Remembrance oft shall haunt the gloom,
Her tear bedew thy lonely clay,
Her hand with roses strew thy tomb.
On Fancy’s ear shall swell the sigh
By blooming virgins breath’d in vain,
On Fancy’s ear the knell shall die,
That sadden’d all the weeping plain.
Tho’ forced from thee I wander far,
Thy fate shall cloud my rising Morn;
And oft with Evening’s silent star
I’ll hover o’er thy distant urn.
And when to Melancholy’s sigh
The Muse her sorrowing voice shall join,
Thy hapless fate shall fill her eye,
And melt with woe the tender line.
And oft shall memory impart
The smile that shone on Albion’s brow,
When kindling in thy youthful heart
She saw the beams of valour glow.
How few the sighs of Virtue mourn;
How few, alas! the friends she knows;
But here she comes, a pilgrim lorn,
To bid thy gentle ghost repose.
With sculpture let the marble groan,
Let Flattery mock the lifeless ear;
How nobler far the nameless stone
Bedew’d by Pity’s generous tear.
Mr. George Evelyn Boscawen, third son of the Admiral, succeeded his
uncle as third Viscount Falmouth in July 1782, and married two years
afterwards Elizabeth Anne, daughter of John Crewe, esq. Their eldest
son, Edward Boscawen, advanced to the dignity of an Earl, married in
August 1810, Ann Frances, daughter of Henry Bankes, esq. repeatedly
member for Corfe Castle, and for the county of Dorset; they have an
only son, who with the double portion of honour that invests young men
who apply themselves to learning or science, without the ordinary
stimuli of pecuniary benefit, or of advancement in the world, obtained
the high distinction at Oxford in 1832 of being included in the first
class of literary merit.
Tregothnan, from its bold and elevated situation, commanding an
extensive view, intersected by various branches of the Falmouth river,
and of the harbour, from the abundance of its trees and woods, and
from the integrity of its surrounding property fenced in by natural
boundaries, must be considered as the first gentleman’s seat in
Cornwall, with the exception perhaps of Mount Edgcumbe. The house
standing there till within these few years, bore the appearance of
considerable antiquity, and harmonized with the surrounding scenery;
the ruins of Fentongollan could not have been used for building this
house, as Mr. Hals relates: they may have supplied materials for
repair, or for additional offices.
The present proprietor has taken down the old house, and replaced it
by a new one, that may compete with the best in England for real
utility, and for decorations harmonizing with its bold situation and
surrounding landscape.
The old parish church, and its massive tower, supported by immense
buttresses, form altogether a venerable and impressive group, visible
for a great distance in almost every direction. The advowson of the
living was acquired with Fentongollan.
This parish measures 961 statute acres.
Annual value of the Real Property, as £. _s._ _d._
returned to Parliament in 1815: 847 0 0
Poor Rate in 1831 84 3 0
Population, { in 1801, | in 1811, | in 1821, | in 1831,
{ 154 | 178 | 167 | 179
giving an increase of 16 per cent. in 30 years.
Present Rector, the Rev. Granville Leveson Gower, presented in 1818
by the Earl of Falmouth.