St. Roach, in the hundred of Powder, hath to the west St. Dennis and
St. Stephen, to the north Great St. Columb, St. Wen, and Withiell, to
the east Lanivet and Luxilian, to the south St. Austell.
This parish takes its name from, and is dedicated to St. Roche, born
at Montpelier in France, of which city his father was lord. After his
father and mother were dead, though but then twenty years of age, he
took a resolution to dispose of part of his estate, which he
distributed amongst the poor, left the administration of the remainder
to his uncle, and from a prince became a pilgrim. He took the way to
Rome, and both in his journey thither, and in that city, cured several
people of the plague, by making only the sign of the cross. Being at
last attacked by it himself, he withdrew into a wood, where a
neighbouring gentleman’s dog brought him every day a loaf of bread; at
last, being cured, he returned to his own country, but it being in
troublesome times, he was taken up for a spy, and by his uncle (who
did not know him) shut up in prison, where he suffered incredible
evils; and dying there in 1327, he was at last discovered by a writing
found about him. The church celebrates his memory the 16th of August.
[But this parish was called Roch before this saint was born, without
the addition of saint; for it is named De Rupe in Taxat. Ben. 1291,
from its remarkable rock, and was then dedicated to St. Conant, whose
memory is still preserved by his well on Trefrank, his park and meadow
corruptly called St. Gonnet’s. W.]
It is a rectory, valued in the King’s Book, £20. 0_s._ 0_d._; the
patronage in the heirs of Sir John Arundell; the incumbent Mr.
Treweek, dead in 1733, now Mr. John Tregenna, Rector of Mawgan in
Pider, who holds them both together by [dispensation,] having bought
the perpetual patronage of three times out of four from Lord Arundell,
[which was sold again by his daughters and heirs to a Society in
London, self-combined for the laudable purpose of purchasing the
advowsons of livings, to confer them on religious clergymen. And on
the death of Mr. Tregenna in 1754, the representatives for the Society
nominated Samuel Furley, M.A. the present rector, the sale of the
patronage having been so far completed as to belong to the Society,
and yet not so far as to enable it legally to present. W.]
This parish was valued (Tax. Ben.) in anno 1291, 20 Edw. I. at £6.
6_s._ 8_d._ having never been appropriated.
There being several manors in this parish, I shall begin with one of
the largest extent, royalties, &c. viz. the manor of Tregarick, so
called by corruption [rather by the customary variation of a letter in
composition, from carick, a rock, the dwelling of the rock, as having
in it the famous great rock, which (as is said above) gave the name to
this parish. W.] This was antiently the seat of a family of the same
name, whose pedigree I have not been able to recover, or to say any
more of them, than that John Tregarrek was knight of the shire, 7
Richard II.; [and that] the last of them, ―――― Tregarick, left only
one daughter and heir, Matilda, married to Ralph Trenowth of
Fentongollan, esq. anno ――――, by whom she had only one daughter and
heir Johanna, who as being heir to her mother, carried this manor to
her husband, Hugh Boscawen of Tregothnan, esq. anno ―――― [about 1400,
see Peerage.] Ever since which it hath been in the possession of this
family, the Lord Viscount Falmouth being the present lord thereof.
[Authors cannot always draw conclusions from their own premises: we
have an instance of this here. The parish of Roch has no relation to
the noble pilgrim of France. It was called Roch before this saint was
born; and the saint of the church was St. Conant, whose memory is
still preserved by his well on Trefrank, his park and meadow,
corruptly called St. Gonnet’s. But this saint was afterwards
superseded by a more modern one, a nameless one, who, actuated with
the spirit of the pilgrim in France, renounced the world, retired to
this rock, built a small house of stone upon a point at one end of it,
and there spent his days in hermetical devotions. The house is still
entire in the shell of it, having a small sort of common window at the
outer end of it, and a little flat for a garden upon one side; this,
from its proximity to the church and church town, was very near to the
haunts of men for a hermitage, but it was raised upon a most
extraordinary mass of rock, that here rises upon the ridge of a heath
in a rough and huge kind of carcass, and spreads in its large limbs to
a considerable distance along the heath. On a tall and pillar-like
spire of this rock, ascendible only by a ladder, is the hermitage, and
the view from it must have been then, not much more wild and savage
than it is at present; the house and lands of Tregarick being just
under it. Indeed, the hermitage must have been built by the family
itself, as it is planted upon their ground. Even one of the family I
suppose was the very hermit. Nor could it have been constructed for
this purpose at any period earlier than 1291, as appears from the
Valor of Edward, which calls the parish only Roche, and knows of no
saint of the name; the look of the whole building, and the form of the
window particularly, concur to fix the hermit probably as late as the
year 1400, and to mark him perhaps for the last of the Tregaricks.
Deprived of all male issue, he perhaps grew disgusted with the world,
resigned up his mansion and his estate to his daughter, and devoted
himself for the remainder of his life to poverty, to sequestration,
and to prayer; and from the natural tendency of mankind to revere
those virtues of self-denial and devoutness in others, which they are
too gross and too indulgent to practise themselves; he became revered
in his life, he was canonized after his death, and the parish took its
denomination from its native saint, its saint of the rock, and its own
St. Roche, preferring him to its old saint, Conant, and for his sake
attaching the name of saintship to its old name of Roche. W.]