There is a very striking singularity in the nature of the present
parish, which is but slightly or hardly noticed, by Mr. Tonkin. It has
been taken out of the parish of Carhayes, and yet is actually distant
from it. It is considered as one living with Carhayes, and yet has
Probus and Creed in a first line, Tregony and Cuby in a second, Veryan
and St. Ewe in a third, successively coming betwixt Carhayes and it.
It is now held with St. Dennis as its daughter, and Carhayes as its
mother, by a clergyman who holds Boconnock and Braddock as one church,
together with it; and who therefore stands forward to the curious eye,
a most singular instance under the present forms of ecclesiastical
law, of one man lawfully possessing five churches. But how is all this
phenomenon in parochial formations to be accounted for? It can be
accounted for, I think, only in this manner. The manor of Carhayes was
originally a royal one, I suppose. The house was therefore the seat
occasionally of our Cornish kings. It was a seat peculiarly
frequented, I also suppose, for the sake of the adjoining forest of
Brannel. And the donation of Brannel by William the Conqueror to
Robert Earl of Morton, when he made him Earl of Cornwall, proves it to
have been in the hands of the Crown at the time, and intimates it to
have been a part of the Cornish demesnes originally. The lands that
had belonged to the Cornish Crown, would certainly be attached to the
English, on the suppression of kings, and would assuredly be conferred
on the Earldom of Cornwall, when the Kings were succeeded by Earls. In
this condition of the parish and the forest, when the latter was
annexed to the house, and so became a part of the former, any house
that was raised in the forest for the temporary reception of the king,
was necessarily considered to be as much in the parish as it was in
the manor. When other houses were built, and a perpetual inhabitancy
took place in them, a chapel was naturally erected for the
participation of the inhabitants in divine offices, and the rector of
Carhayes was called upon to officiate in person or by proxy at it; in
person while the king was there, by proxy when he was not. And he had
the tithes of this newly cultivated part of the woodland, to repay him
for his trouble or his expense. This accounts satisfactorily, I think,
for the strange extension of the parochial compasses here. One leg was
centered at the house of Carhayes, and therefore the other stretched
over all the intermediate regions, and took its footing on the
woodland of Brannel beyond. Nothing but the regality of both could
have permitted such a vast stride as this. A Neptune may stalk from
promontory to promontory, and a king may take a colossal step from
Carhayes to Brannel. The very name too seems to concur with all this:
called Bernel, Beranel, and Brannel, and originally belonging to the
crown, it speaks the royal relationship at once; Brenhin, or Brennin
(W.) being a king, brennyn, brein, brenn (C.) royal, Bran being the
Welsh name for the famous Brenhind (W.) and consequently brennol (C.)
once, being kingly or royal. The house also at Carhayes has a royal
kind of appearance with it, being built in the old style of grandeur
round a court having a chapel, a wall, and all the uncomfortable
vastness of a princely house. In this manner did St. Stephen’s go on
to form a new kind of parish, by encroaching upon the royal woodland,
and peopling these gloomy deserts. Considered at first as a chapelry
to Carhayes, it was valued with it in 1291. It afterwards became
parochiated, and is valued as a distinct parish in the Valor of Henry
VIII.; but before the period of this second Valor, St. Dennis, which
was wholly unknown in 1291, had risen upon St. Stephen’s, just as St.
Stephen’s had risen upon Carhayes before. The daughter of Carhayes
thus became a mother to St. Dennis; and the wildest and remotest part
of this antient forest of our kings coming to be peopled, and
requiring a church for its inhabitants, St. Stephen’s stands in the
new Valor, accompanied with its chapel of St. Dennis.
N. B. The only variation from the account here given, is what a sight
of Pope Nicholas’s Valor has suggested to me. There Caerhayes is not
mentioned at all. The only church noticed is “Ecclesia Sancti
Stephani.” This, therefore, included Caerhayes, then the larger
included the smaller; and Caerhayes, which is little more (I believe)
as a parish, than its own demense and park, (which, as royal demesne,
I suppose, was not parochiated,) became annexed to St. Stephen’s, when
this was parochiated,――when, therefore, the royal relation of both had
ceased; and was so annexed in the Valor of 1291. June 16, 1794.