St. Stephen’s near Launceston, is situated in the hundred of East, and
hath upon the north Werrington, east the Tamer river, south
Launceston, west St. Thomas.
At the time of the Norman Conquest, this district (in the Domesday
Book 1087,) was taxed under the jurisdiction of Lan-san, or Lan-sen,
i. e. signifying a holy church or temple, though at that time this
superior church had in this place a famous collegiate church dedicated
to St. Stephen, consisting of secular priests, who might marry wives,
founded and endowed by the Bishops of Bodman, and Earls of Cornwall,
long before William the Conqueror’s days. Reginald Fitz-Harry, base
son of King Henry I. by Anne Corbet, created Earl of Cornwall by King
Stephen, in the 5th year of his reign 1140, was a great benefactor to
this collegiate church; and besides all that, endeavoured with all his
power and interest with King Stephen to bring back the bishopric of
Cornwall, transferred or translated to Kirton and Exeter, and fix the
bishop’s see and cathedral in this place and church of St. Stephen
1150, which Robert Warlewast, then Bishop of Exeter, opposed; and in
his first triennial visitation of the Cornish Diocese from Lanwhitton,
came and visited this collegiate church, and suppressed the order of
secular priests conversing at large in the world, not tied to monastic
life, and in the room of them brought in black monks or canons
Augustine (see St. Anthony,) and converted this church and college
into an abbey or priory of monks, by the name of the abbey or priory
of St. Stephen’s, whose governor was indifferently called the abbat
and prior of St. Stephen’s and Launceston.
And to this purpose we read in the first inquisition into the value of
Cornish Benefices before-mentioned 1294, these words: Prior de
Lanceston precipit de Vicar’ de Lankinhorne, xxvi_s._ viii_d._ Those
monks before that inquisition, out of a covetous desire after wealth
and riches, which they had obtained by gift or purchase, had wholly
impropriated and turned into small vicarages the revenues of all such
churches as to their abbey were annexed, and of which they were
patrons.
None of which churches’ revenues, because wholly impropriated before
the first inquisition, are rated or named in the Pope’s or King’s
Books of First Fruits to this day. This parish of St. Stephen’s was
rated to the four shillings per pound Land Tax 1696, £174. 18_s._
In this parish are kept annually three fairs or public marts, viz. the
1st May, the 20th of July, and the 14th of September.
In this parish or Launceston was also a Friary.