Having read in the earliest portion of my life the small part of Mr.
Hals’ Parochial History published about the year 1750, I entertained
from that time a strong desire for seeing the remainder also in print;
this desire grew up with my years, increased perhaps by an
understanding that the manuscript had disappeared, no one seemed to
know in what way, and that it might possibly have been destroyed.
At last, the manuscript was recovered by the most justly celebrated
Mr. Whitaker, from a bookseller at Exeter, who had retained the papers
as a pledge for some debt; from Mr. Whitaker they have come to his
son-in-law Richard Taunton, Esq. M.D. who has with great liberality
placed them in my hands; mutilated, however, as to the histories of
several parishes, from want of care and of attention on the part of
the individual holding them as a deposit, although he must have deemed
them to be of pecuniary value.
Mr. Tonkin’s papers were preserved by his niece Miss Fosse, who died
more than fifty years ago, at a place that may now be termed, without
offence, the village of Michell. This lady must have been the last of
Mr. Tonkin’s near relations; for, although the property left at her
decease could not have amounted to anything of importance, the funeral
was attended by many scores of persons, claiming shares of whatever
could be found. Under such circumstances every moveable was soon
converted into money, and the manuscript of the Parochial History,
complete as Mr. Tonkin left it, got into the possession of Lord
Dunstanville, by whom it was instantly offered to me, on my preparing
to edit the Parochial History of Mr. Hals. And as Mr. Tonkin copied
largely from Mr. Hals, many of the lost parishes are at least
partially supplied.
The late Mr. Lysons got possession of a beautifully transcribed copy
of the whole that remains of Mr. Hals’ Parochial History; this was
purchased at the sale of his books by the Earl of Aylesford, who
without any personal acquaintance whatever, has had the liberality to
allow me the use of this splendid folio volume, during the whole time
of my work passing through the press.
Mr. Gregor has supplied me with an original copy of the last Heraldic
Visitation of Cornwall; and to Doctor Boase I am indebted for a
geological description of every parish.
Previously to my taking this task on myself, I endeavoured to preserve
the works of Mr. Hals and Mr. Tonkin for the public, by the more easy
expedient of advancing money in aid of the publication; but not having
obtained success, I at last adventured on what is now done, little
aware, however, of the pains, and time, required for editing the
histories of more than two hundred parishes; although I have to a
considerable extent relieved myself from the most irksome duty of
correcting the press, by obtaining the assistance of Messrs. Nichols
and Son, on the condition of their taking, what is very unlikely to
accrue, any profit arising from the publication, and my sustaining,
the more probable alternative, all the loss.
Mr. Hals’ work is given without alteration, except considerable
omissions of long histories, from the Bollandists and other writers of
legends, relative to obscure Saints, little known, or deserving of
being known; and in many cases owing their supposed connection with
Cornwall, entirely to the writer’s imagination; and in the opposite
extreme, of the lives of personages most worthy of being preserved and
studied in general history, of Apostles, of Emperors of Rome, and
Kings, but quite as irrelevant as the former, to a History of
Cornwall.
I have been also unable to retain the greater part of the derivations
assigned to the names of manors, families, or places; they are
generally referred to some word of a similar sound in modern English,
after a manner scarcely less ludicrous than the mock etymologies of
Dr. Swift.
Lastly, I have omitted various anecdotes, containing simple scandal,
without any thing illustrative of the age or country.
Other anecdotes of a public nature are retained; on a conviction that
events long passed by, and incapable from their very nature of being
suppressed, neither will, nor ought to excite any unpleasing feeling
in the minds of those who may be directly or collaterally descended
from the persons to whom they relate.
I have not throughout the whole work intentionally used a single
expression disrespectful to any one, nor have I retained from either
of the manuscripts, nor added of my own one new anecdote or tale
capable by possibility of giving the least pain.
If an expression should be found, which in the opinion of any
individual is at variance with these assertions, I beg permission to
apologize before I am accused, and to declare that the fault has been
involuntary, and that I am not aware, at this instant, of any such
fault existing.
Mr. Tonkin has mainly copied from Mr. Hals, and these portions of
course have not been printed over again; but all his additions are
preserved, with the greater part of his derivations, apparently much
more accurate than those they are intended to confute.
Here it would have been wise, certainly it would have been prudent,
for me to have concluded the work; but having acquired, through the
course of a long life, the knowledge of many incidents, which,
although of little general importance, may amuse persons taking
an interest even in trifles connected with their immediate
neighbourhoods, I have been induced to add under each parish, such
matters as happened to occur to my recollection; using also in many
cases the information drawn by Mr. Lysons from sources accessible only
to himself, in consequence of his situation in the Tower.
I have further had recourse to the works treating on monasteries and
religious establishments; but without considering myself bound or
pledged to make out a complete history in any case, either by
researches into documents not in my possession, or, still less, (at my
time of life and distant residence) by investigations on the spot.
This part of the work will be found very unequally executed; but it
was never intended to be otherwise.
At the end of each parish I have added the common statistics:――the
number of acres from the measurement of Mr. Hitchins; the value of the
real property; the account of poor rate, and of the population at the
four periods of numeration, from the Parliamentary Returns. And
through the great kindness and liberality of Doctor Boase, I have been
enabled to subjoin to these the geology of each parish, deduced from
an actual survey in person of the whole county, by that very
intelligent and experienced geologist, chemist, and physiologist.
And here it may be right to observe, that, as the formations are not
merely similar, but identical, over many contiguous parishes, and
again in parishes disjoined from each other, the plan of referring
from one to another became indispensable, to avoid repetition after
repetition, and adding, without any utility, to the size of the work.
In the form of Appendices will be found several matters relative to
Cornwall, either not previously in print, or that cannot be obtained
separately from large works, of which they form a part.
Mr. Scawen’s Works, so far as they are contained in the Bodleian
Library.
Leland’s Itinerary.
Drayton’s Polyolbion.
The Transcript of a Manuscript from the British Museum; proving, I
believe, that even Mr. Whitaker, one without doubt among our most able
and learned antiquaries, may be mistaken on a subject connected with
the objects of his peculiar research.
There will be also some miscellaneous matters, and among them an Index
to Mr. Carew’s History; an addition greatly demanded also by another
work, which would then become the most useful Corpus Historicum
relating to our county.
There are several other manuscripts of Mr. Tonkin, chiefly copies from
Mr. Hals of pedigrees, &c. but these I have not touched. And I have
purposely abstained from every general topic relating to the county at
large, as these have been amply discussed by our various historians.
The first in order of time, the most interesting and most
entertaining, is Mr. Carew.
This work was first published in 1602, a second edition came out in
1723, and a third, chiefly through the exertions of the late Mr. John
Price of Penzance, in 1769. But the edition far exceeding all the
others, with highly valuable additions, and with copious notes, was
given to the public in 1811 by the late Lord Dunstanville, in one vol.
4to, 457 pages, with an excellent engraving of the author, from a
picture at Anthony.
Mr. RICHARD CAREW was of a very ancient and respectable family; he
inherited Anthony from a long line of ancestors, and has transmitted
it to his descendants.
Wood says, in the Athenæ Oxonienses, that he was born in the year
1555, became a gentleman commoner of Christ Church at a very early
age, but had his chambers in Bradgate Hall (since Pembroke College),
and that at fourteen he disputed, extempore, with Sir Philip Sidney,
in the presence of several distinguished visitants to the university.
After three years’ residence at Oxford, Mr. Carew removed to the
Middle Temple, where he passed three years more, and then went with
his uncle on an embassy to Poland.
In the year 1577 Mr. Carew married Juliana Arundell, of Trerice, and
served the office of Sheriff in 1586. It is recorded that he was
intimate with most of the noted scholars of those times, and
especially with Sir Henry Spelman.
He died in November 1620, and is buried in his parish church of
Anthony, (see the epitaph, p. xxiv).
Mr. Carew’s life is given in considerable detail as an introduction to
his History of Cornwall. He wrote and translated several other works;
but they seem not to have survived.
Soon after Mr. Carew’s History, Mr. JOHN NORDEN’S was composed, with
the title of “Speculi Britanniæ Pars. A Topographical and Historical
Description of Cornwall, by the Perambulation, View, and Delineation
of John Norden.”
This work has been well characterized by Mr. Tonkin, as “a mean
performance, full of egregious mistakes, with most defective and
erroneous maps of every hundred, yet containing several things in it
not to be met with elsewhere.”
Our next historian, but after a considerable interval of time, was Mr.
WILLIAM SCAWEN, a fragment only of whose work is known to be extant,
and which will appear in these volumes.
He was of an ancient family, well educated, and possessed of an ample
fortune. He represented St. German’s in Parliament, and received the
appointment of Vice-Warden of the Stannaries, immediately after the
Restoration of King Charles the Second.
Of Mr. Hals and Mr. Tonkin I have not any better information than what
is given by Mr. Lysons. He says:
“About the year 1685, Mr. WILLIAM HALS, a gentleman of an
ancient Devonshire family, which had been some time settled
at Fentongollan, in St. Michael-Penkevill, began to make
collections for a parochial history of Cornwall, which he
continued for at least half a century; it was brought down
by him to about the year 1736. Mr. Hals died in 1739; his
parochial history being at that time nearly completed. About
the year 1750, the publication of this work was undertaken
by Mr. Andrew Brice, then a printer at Truro, who afterwards
removed to Exeter, where he published an useful geographical
dictionary and other books. The account of seventy-two
parishes arranged alphabetically, from Advent to Helston
inclusive, was printed in folio in ten numbers, which are
extremely scarce. The publication is said to have been
suspended for want of purchasers; occasioned by the
scurrilous anecdotes it contained, and reflections thrown on
some of the principal families. It is probable, however,
that the inaccuracies with which it abounds, and the tedious
legends of saints to whom the churches are dedicated, which
occupy at least half the work, would have operated more to
the prejudice of its sale than the scandalous anecdotes
which occasionally occur, many of which had been omitted by
the editor. The most valuable part of the work is the
account of families and the descent of property; but in
these he is frequently inaccurate; and, as Dr. Borlase
observes, ‘what he says should not have too great stress
laid upon it, when it stands upon his single authority.’
“Contemporary with Hals, as a collector of materials for a
parochial history of Cornwall, was THOMAS TONKIN, Esq. of
Trevaunance, some time member for Helston, a gentleman of an
ancient family, who had made great progress in preparing
such a history for the press, and had completed several
parishes. Mr. Tonkin began to write his parochial history in
1702, at which time he had the use of Hals’s collections.
Dr. Borlase seems to have supposed that Hals’s collections
were brought down from 1702 to 1736 by Tonkin; the truth is,
that they both brought down their collections to that
period, without any communication with each other, which
seems to have ceased soon after the first period
above-mentioned. Mr. Tonkin himself says, speaking of Hals
in the year 1739, ‘it is between twenty-five and thirty
years since I have seen any of his collections, and, I
believe, at least twenty since I have seen him. I am told
that he has greatly improved and polished them since that
time; but as his method is quite different from mine, and
that I have some other reasons not necessary to be mentioned
for not corresponding with him, I can safely say, that in
this present work of mine, I have not made use of one single
line out of his compositions.’ Mr. Tonkin, in one of his
MSS. dated March 27th, 1733, desires that, ‘if by death, or
any other accident, his MSS. should fall into other hands,
they would by no means publish them in the dress in which
they then appeared, but be pleased to new-model them after
the method followed in those few which had received his last
corrections, such as at St. Agnes, St. Piran in the Sands,
St. Michael-Penkevil,’ &c. In 1737 he had made sufficient
progress in his collections to enable him to put forth
proposals, in which he announced the plan of his
publication.
“In the year 1739, Mr. Tonkin had completed his MS. of the
first part of his work, which was to treat of the county of
Cornwall in general; his epistle dedicatory of that date is
printed at the beginning of Lord de Dunstanville’s edition
of Carew, addressed to Sir William Carew, Bart. and Sir John
St. Aubyn, Bart. then representatives in Parliament for the
county of Cornwall. In this letter he recapitulates what had
been done towards the topography of his native county.
Besides the works of Leland, Camden, Norden, and Carew, he
mentions the general collections of Hals and Anstis, and
those of Pearce and Gwavas on the Stannaries, the Cornish
language, &c. Towards the conclusion of his epistle, he
says, ‘I wish I could say that many more of my countrymen
had assisted me with their kind endeavours. I do not yet
despair of having several; for which reasons I have, in my
proposals, enlarged the designed time of the publication of
this part. I hope they will be so good as to send in
contributions. If they persist in their refusal, they must
be contented with such coarse fare as I am able to give
them, which I will endeavour to make as palatable for them
as I can; perhaps, when they come to taste of this, they may
be prevailed on to supply me with something better towards
the two remaining parts. All that I can promise them is,
that I will give them the best account I can, without the
least partiality; neither shall any one person have a just
occasion given him to charge me with any wilful omission or
sophisticated truth.”
Very little was done by Mr. Tonkin to the parochial department of his
intended history after the date of this letter; he died in 1742, and
in the latter part of his life, being unhappily involved in pecuniary
difficulties, he grew less attentive to study, and died without
printing any part of his intended history.
Doctor WILLIAM BORLASE more than meditated a parochial history, having
made some collections towards it. If this design had been carried into
execution, all further attempts might have been deemed superfluous.
His Antiquities and Natural History of Cornwall gave ample proof of
the ability, the ingenuity, and of the diligence possessed by this
excellent man, who had the deserved good fortune of being equally
esteemed and admired, not by the neighbourhood alone, but by the most
learned and scientific persons throughout Europe.
The Antiquities were first published in 1754.
The second edition in 1769.
The Natural History in 1758. All in quarto.
Respecting the Natural History, it may be expedient to remind the
reader, that in the last edition of Chambers’s Encyclopædia, four
volumes of the largest size, with one volume of plates, printed in
1783, the very word Geology does not occur; and that some years later,
chemical lectures were publicly given on the phlogistic theory of
Becher and Stahl.
Mr. POLWHELE has published in seven parts, beginning with the date
1803, and ending with that of 1816, making in all two quarto volumes,
of about 1200 pages, in small type, and abounding with notes and
extracts in a type still smaller, an immense collection of matter
relative to the antiquities, the biography, the literature, the
history military and civil, &c. of Cornwall; arranged under distinct
heads, and enriched with prints of distinguished persons, with figures
of ancient castles, churches, monuments, &c. and with views of towns,
and of romantic scenery. One is astonished at the great labour
bestowed on this work, and still more so when it is recollected, that
the author has distinguished himself in every branch of elegant
literature, and most of all in that department, where the fire of
genius is believed somewhat to diminish the aptitude for patient toil.
The next work on Cornwall deserves particular attention on various
grounds,――its extensive plan, arrangement, and parochial history, and
the situation in life of its author, Mr. C. S. GILBERT, who at the
time of his executing “An Historical Survey of the County of Cornwall;
to which is added a complete Heraldry of the same, with numerous
engravings,” resided as a druggist in Plymouth or Devonport; and he is
said to have acquired a knowledge of this trade by accompanying one of
those itinerant doctors in medicine, who are in the habit of
attracting customers by exhibitions little suited to the gravity of a
profound science.
Mr. Gilbert is understood to have collected information which induced
him to believe, that he might claim a descent from the Gilberts of
Compton Castle; and under that persuasion he applied himself to the
study of antiquities, with genealogy, heraldry, and every collateral
science, which led him by degrees to undertake the History of
Cornwall, and to complete it in two quarto volumes, usually bound in
three; all which he executed with such eagerness, zeal, and disregard
of expense, as to involve him during the latter part of his life in
considerable difficulties. For Compton Castle, and the family from
which this gentleman thought himself derived, and which is now
represented by the Reverend J. Pomeroy Gilbert, of Bodmin, see
Prince’s Worthies of Devon, p. 420, edition of 1810.
About the same time that Mr. C. S. Gilbert’s work appeared, another
very similar to it came out sanctioned by the names of Mr. SAMUEL DREW
of St. Austell, well known by his profound metaphysical writings, and
of Mr. MALACHY HITCHINS, son of the celebrated astronomer, who,
residing at St. Hilary, three hundred miles from London, conducted the
Nautical Almanack from the second year of its appearance 1768, to the
conclusion of his life in 1809, during a period of more than forty
years.
A well written and perspicuous life of Mr. Drew, has been given to the
public by his son Mr. Jacob Halls Drew, in which many interesting
particulars are given of this distinguished writer; together with a
fair and impartial account of his various works, of which the most
known, and perhaps the best, is his Essay on the Human Soul. This
treatise, published in 1802, contains every argument that can be found
in the Phædon of Plato, with additions; and the whole is not inferior
to its prototype. But the observation of an ancient peripatetic
philosopher, Alexander of Appodisia, a city of Caria in Lesser Asia,
is equally applicable to both:
Αλλ’ εστι πολλα των ὁντων, ἁ την μεν ὑπαρξιν εχει
γνωριμωτατην, αγνωστοτατην δε την ουσιαν· ὡσπερ ἡτε Κινησις,
και ὁ Τοπος, ετι δε μαλλον ὁ Χρονος. Εκαστου γαρ τουτων το
μεν ειναι γνωριμον και αναμφιλεκτον· τις δε ποτε εστιν αυτων
ἡ ουσια των χαλεπωτατων οραθηναι.
Εστι δε δη τι των τοιουτων και Ἡ Ψυχη· το μεν γαρ ειναι τι
την Ψυχην γνωριμωτατον και φανερωτατον· τι δε ποτε εστιν, ου
ῥαδιον καταμαθειν.
Our reason convinces us of its own separate existence apart from
matter and organization; beyond that, we must submit to learn from
higher authority.
Alexander, therefore, does not go beyond the sphere of human
knowledge, when he adds of the soul as capable of a separate
existence, Μηδε την αρχην Οργανῳ τινι Σωματικῳ προσχρησθαι προς την
ληψιν των νοουμενων, αλλ’ αρκεισθαι αυτον αυτῳ προς το γνωναι το
νοουμενον.
Mr. Hitchins gave several proofs of genius; but his life was cut short
at an early period.
Various descriptions and accounts of local districts, and of
particular places in Cornwall may be found; of these I shall mention
three as by far the best, and highly deserving of attention.
Topographical and Historical Sketches of the Boroughs of East and West
Looe, with an account of the Natural and Artificial Curiosities and
Picturesque Scenery in the Neighbourhood. By Thomas Bond, Esq.