The history relating to the more ancient ecclesiastical establishments
in this parish does not seem to be very clear or distinct, although
the general facts are well ascertained, and accord with the prevailing
spirit of the times in which they occurred.
William Warlewast, who held the see of Exeter about twenty years in
the beginning of the twelfth century, suppressed a college of secular
priests attached to St. Stephen’s Church, and founded a monastery of
regular monks near the place where St. Thomas’s Church now stands.
This house he endowed with the lands of the former college, and
dedicated it to the same saint. It was constituted a priory of the
order of St. Austin, and remained till the general dissolution.
Mr. Lysons treats of the three parishes together, as Launceston and
St. Thomas were originally portions of St. Stephen’s; and there is
scarcely a doubt but that the Cornish having by some accident adopted
the Greek name of the Protomartyr, called the church of Dunheved,
Lan-Stephanon, or Stephen’s Church, which easily glided into Lanston,
written Launceston; but in this, as in a thousand other instances, the
common pronunciation approaches nearer to the true origin of a name,
than the established orthography, as Excester much more corresponds
with a camp on the Ex than Exeter.
In St. Stephen’s and in St. Thomas’s, the parishioners nominate the
perpetual curates; and the latter parish is tithe free.
The church of St. Stephen, although it cannot reach back nearly to the
time of the college suppressed by Bishop Warlewast, is yet on a scale
superior to most others; and seated on an eminence with a lofty tower,
it presents an object worthy of associating with the superb keep of
Launceston Castle.
There is an inscription within the Church, recording the munificence
of Charles Cheney, Lord Viscount Newhaven, then Member for Newport, in
re-building a part of the fabric, and probably in repairing the
remainder according to the ill taste prevalent about the early part of
the eighteenth century, so as to make the interior of the Church quite
at variance with its exterior Gothic.
The late Sir Jonathan Phillips inhabited a good house adjoining the
street, which, with the attached property, has since been united to
the great political influence of the place.
The barton of Carnedon, an ancient possession of the Blighes, and
afterwards of the Cloberrys, is now the property of Thomas Bewes,
Esq.; and the barton of Tredidon, formerly a seat of a family bearing
the same name, is now the residence of George-Francis-Collins Browne,
Esq. who assumed the latter name on succeeding to the property of his
maternal grandfather, Mr. George Brown, of Bodmin.
The modern history of this parish chiefly relates to the borough of
Newport, and to its connection with the adjacent parish and seat of
Werrington.
Newport is little more than a street of Launceston, extending, with
some interruption, to the northward. Its political importance must
have grown out of the religious establishments.
Various accounts are given by Browne Willis and others respecting the
ancient constitution of this borough; but it had practically arrived
at the state of a burgage tenure; and two officers elected by a homage
in the Lord’s Court presided over the elections. They were denominated
vianders; but no such word occurs in any usual books of reference.
Werrington appears to have belonged entirely to the Abbey of
Tavistock. At the time of the dissolution the manor paid £141. 17_s._
11_d._ And under another head is this entry: Worrington――Pensio de
Ecclesia Sancti Martini £2. 10_s._
The barton is known to have been one of the country residences
appropriated to the Lord Abbat, to whom the mitre was granted by a
papal bull in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and on whom King Henry the
Eighth, in consideration of the especial devotion which he bore
towards the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of Christ, and to St. Rumon,
bestowed the privileges of a spiritual lord of Parliament in the fifth
year of his reign.
At Werrington the Lord Abbat had a deer park, which still remains in
existence, his piscatories, and all the appendages suited to a feudal
baron.
This property, together with all the other possessions of the
monastery, passed by a grant from King Henry the Eighth, in the 31st
year of his reign, to the family of Russel, with whom a considerable
part of this immense largess still remains; but Werrington was sold to
a successor of the renowned circumnavigator Sir Francis Drake, who
parted with it to Sir William Morris. This gentleman was the son of a
clergyman from Wales, who had obtained a Canonry of Exeter; and he
rose in station and in fortune by an early and close intimacy with
General Monk, when that military adventurer sacrificed not only his
political associates, but the liberties of his country, even to
the Petition of Rights, for the purpose of assuring his own
aggrandisement, a misconduct which entailed on the nation all the
doubtful and vacillating struggles in the reign of Charles the Second,
and demanded for its final remedy the glorious Revolution of 1688.
Werrington continued in Sir William Morris’s family till the year
1775, when it was sold to Sir Hugh Smithson, created Duke of
Northumberland in consequence of his marriage with Elizabeth only
daughter of Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and of Elizabeth, sole
daughter and heir of Josceline Percy, Earl of Northumberland. The Duke
of Northumberland wishing to pursue the path of ambition which then
lay open to any man of wealth, acquired with Werrington the commanding
property at Newport and the influence at Launceston, and having made a
similar acquisition lower down on the banks of the Tamar, he had the
satisfaction of attaining the objects kept steadily in his view.
Although the parish of Werrington is completely in Devonshire, and is
believed to have formed a part of the original endowment of Tavistock
Abbey by Ordgar Earl of Devonshire about the year 960; yet in
spiritual matters it forms a part of the Archdeaconry of Cornwall. At
the last census this parish contained sixty-six inhabitants; and the
annual value of the Real Property was returned in 1815 at £2809.
St. Stephen’s, with its little town of Newport, are obviously too near
Launceston to allow of their possessing any separate market. Three
fairs are, however, holden, as is not unusual in the suburbs of most
towns.
As so few persons attain the age of a hundred years, it may be worth
remarking, that the Editor remembers, about fifty years ago, an aged
person called Sarah Coat, in the service of Sir Jonathan Phillips’s
family. She lived to 1814, and completed her hundred and fourth year.
This parish measures 3401 statute acres.
Annual value of the Real Property, as £. _s._ _d._
returned to Parliament in 1815 3,467 0 0
Poor Rate in 1831 430 18 0
Population, { in 1801, | in 1811, | in 1821, | in 1831,
{ 738 | 896 | 977 | 1084
giving an increase of 47 per cent. in 30 years.
Present Perpetual Curate, the Rev. C. H. Lethbridge, presented by
the Trustees in 1818; net income in 1831, £80.