This place ranks among the principal seats in Cornwall. It stands on a
commanding situation, possesses extensive plantations, and looks over
those to the south and east into vallies highly cultivated and
rendered beautiful by wood and water, the two most pleasing
ingredients in rural landscapes. The house was in part built by Mr.
Courtenay Williams, who is said to have dissipated a handsome fortune
by indulging himself in low pursuits and in low company, and
especially by maintaining a set of people to accompany him from parish
to parish, for (what seems quite ludicrous in present times) the
purpose of ringing the bells; yet about the middle of the last century
a new peal of bells was procured for Kenwyn Church, to accommodate the
principal inhabitants of Truro with that exercise and amusement.
After the purchase of this place, together with the manor of Probus,
the appropriated share of the great tithes, the lease under the Church
of Exeter conveying the remainder part for lives, &c. Mr. Philip
Hawkins made Trewithan his residence, and represented Grampound in
three or four Parliaments in the Reign of George the Second; but not
having any family himself, nor his brothers, almost the whole of their
landed properties were devised to their eldest sister Mary, who had
married her distant relation, Mr. Christopher Hawkins of Helston, and
of Trewinnard in St. Erth. Their only son Mr. Thomas Hawkins,
succeeded his uncle at Trewithan, and also represented Grampound: he
married Ann, daughter of James Heywood, esq. of London; but being
unfortunately taken out of this life while he endeavoured to introduce
the most important discovery ever made in medicine, for the benefit of
others as well as of himself, he left five children minors, Philip,
Christopher, Thomas, John, and a daughter. Philip and Thomas died in
early life; the estate, therefore, devolved on Christopher, who having
never married, died in May 1829, and in consideration probably of the
large fortune possessed by his brother, devised the whole of his real
property to Henry Hawkins, his brother’s younger son, then about eight
years old, to whom it now belongs.
But the affair which most peculiarly distinguishes this parish is the
persecution of Mr. Tregion.
It appears from Camden’s Annales of Queen Elizabeth, inserted above,
and from contemporary historians, that, although enactments were made
(they must not be honoured with the name of laws) against Catholics,
imposing penalties and disabilities, and prohibiting altogether the
celebration of their peculiar rites supposed to conciliate the Divine
favour――yet if masses were performed without ostentation, and under a
decent veil of secrecy, or if auricular confessions were made and
absolutions received in private, little notice was taken of them, nor
were priests eagerly sought after, who divested themselves in public
of all peculiar and discriminating habits, and abstained from
attempting proselytism. But when the Church of Rome thundered its
excommunications against the Queen, when plots became more manifest at
home, connected also with the individual nearest to the Crown, if the
custom of hereditary succession were preserved; measures of great
severity were adopted, on the ever doubtful plea of state necessity:
so that more victims to religious opinions are said to have suffered
death, banishment, or the loss of liberty, under this reign, than
under that of Mary Tudor, whose very name we have all been taught to
associate with an epithet denoting the utmost horror: but her
persecutions were conducted without disguise, in the name of religion,
and to make forced converts, while Elizabeth professed to act from
motives of temporal policy; moreover, the religion of one has been
deprived of all its endowments, and been proscribed for two centuries;
that of the other, most happily for ourselves, has flourished through
the whole period.
It seems this Mr. Tregion and his connections were among the first
sufferers under this cruel policy. His father married an Arundell, and
himself a daughter of Lord Stourton, both families that have continued
up to the present times in the profession of the ancient faith. Mr.
Tregion had moreover a very large estate, calculated to excite the
zeal of a well-known and detested class of men, who from the time of
the Cæsars, and doubtlessly from a period long before, have used all
means and all pretences, sacred or profane, to advance their own
fortunes by the ruin of others.
Mr. Tregion, it appears, was the first or among the first accused
under the inflamed passions and the persecuting spirit of those times,
and the sheriff came in person to search his house; but the sheriff is
stated to have been a personal friend, or at all events as a
countryman and a neighbour, to have made a slight examination, and
then to have dined, and unfortunately to have drank with the
individual accused: when
――――Subita incantum Dementia cepit,
Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes,
which induced him, in the pride and confidence inspired by wine, to
reproach his guest with the insufficiency of his search, and to
conduct him to a part of the house or premises clearly indicative of
his temporary imprudence and contempt. The sheriff, probably heated
also by wine, immediately renewed his examination, and finally
discovered in a secret hole under a turret, a Catholic clergyman,
called Cuthbert Mayne.
On this they were both arrested, and subsequently arraigned at the
Assizes, and both convicted of those atrocious crimes: Mr. Mayne of
being a Catholic Priest, and found in England; and Mr. Tregion of
having received into his house a minister of that religion in which he
had been bred, of the religion of his forefathers, of the religion of
the father and forefathers of the highly talented Female who then
mainly directed the affairs of the state, and of the undisputed and
sole religion of the whole country about half a century before. And
for these ideal offences, (one scruples to stain the paper with so
foul a record!) was Mr. Mayne actually hanged, and Mr. Tregion, under
the sentence of a premunire, was deprived of his whole property, and
suffered an imprisonment of twenty years.
Whether we contemplate the cold-hearted tyranny of Henry the Seventh,
the wild despotic sway of Henry the Eighth, the civil dissensions in
the nominal reign of his son, the bigotry and unrelenting persecutions
of Mary, or the cruelties, however necessary, exercised by Elizabeth,
we may indeed rejoice that the great work of the Reformation has been
achieved, at any price, by the House of Tudor; but we must join in the
exclamation,
Oh! dearest God, forefend
Such times should e’er return.
Probus measures 7349 statute acres.
Annual value of the Real Property, as £. _s._ _d._
returned to Parliament in 1815 9392 0 0
Poor Rate in 1831 902 12 0
Population, { in 1801, | in 1811, | in 1821, | in 1831,
{ 1013 | 1163 | 1353 | 1350
giving an increase of about 33 per cent in 30 years.
Present Vicar, the Rev. Robert Lampen, collated by the Bishop of
Exeter in 1828.