St. Agnes is situate in the hundred of Pyder.
At the time of the Conqueror’s tax there was no such parish or
district as Saint Agnes; but the same passed in rates under the
jurisdiction of the Earl of Cornwall’s manor, now Duchy, of
Twarnhayle; together with Peransand: which now parish of St. Agnes was
taxed to the four shillings in the pound land-tax, 9th William and
Mary, 1696, 137_l._ 5_s._
The present church of St. Agnes was of old only a small free chapel
dedicated to her, without endowment, till the same was augmented and
rebuilt, of three roofs, as it now stands, by charitable collections,
and the proper charge and cost of the inhabitants thereof, in 1484;
consecrated and dedicated to the honour of Almighty God, in the name
of St. Agnes, as a daughter church to Peransand, by Dr. Peter
Courtenay, then Bishop of Exon.[5]
St. Agnes was a Roman by birth, anno Dom. 285, descended of noble
ancestors, and being beautiful of body and mind, at 13 years of age
was courted in marriage by the son of Sempronius, then governor of
Rome; but because he was no Christian she utterly refused his address,
who complained thereof to his father; that immediately he sent for
Agnes, and renewed the proposals of marriage made to her by his son,
making larger offers for her advantage, which altogether proving
ineffectual, Sempronius asked her whether she would adore and
sacrifice to the Roman gods, and abandon the superstition of the
Christians, but she, proving constant to her religion, utterly refused
to do that also; whereupon she was committed to prison, from thence,
after much hard durance, sent among persons of ill fame, where her
innocence and purity were miraculously preserved, till at length, by
the Governor’s order, she was committed to the flames, which
immediately parted asunder, and did her no harm; whereupon the
Governor, and Auspitius his agent, commanded her to be taken out of
the fire, and forthwith to be beheaded by the common hangman, 20
January, anno Dom. 304, in the latter end of the reign of Dioclesian,
or in the beginning of Constantius and Galerius. St. Ambrose wrote
her life. St. Isidore, St. Augustine, Demetrius, and Prudentius,
with Aloysy Lessomanus, Bishop of Seville, have all written
very commendable things of her. In the glass windows of this
church I remember to have seen written the remains of a broken
inscription,――“in carcere serat Agnes,”――referring, I suppose, to her
sowing or preaching the Word in the prison, jail, or hold, to which
she was confined as aforesaid. The parish feast is holden on the
Sunday following St. Agnes’ Day.
In this parish stands Carne Bury-anacht, or Bury-anack, synonymous
words, only varied by the dialect; id est, the still, quiet,
spar-stone grave, or burying-place, where, suitable to the name, on
the natural, remote, lofty circumstances thereof, stand three
sparstone tumuli, consisting of a vast number of those stones, great
and small, piled up together, in memory of some one notable human
creature before the 6th centuary interred there.
This is that well-known place called St. Agnes’ Ball, that is to say,
St. Agnes’ pestis, or plague, so named from the hard, deep, and
dangerous labour of the tinners there, out of which mountain hath been
digged up, for at least 150 years’ space, about ten thousand pounds
worth of tin per annum; which keeps daily employed about the same
1,000 persons, who for the most part spend their time in hard and
dangerous labours as aforesaid, in order to get a poor livelihood for
themselves and families, in the pursuit of which, here and in other
places, many of those poor men yearly by sad accidents lose their
lives.
The natural circumstances of this Ball is a subject as worthy the
consideration of the most sage virtuosos, or natural philosophers;
for, though it be a stupendous and amazing high mountain, abutting
upon the Irish sea, or St. George’s Channel, rising pyramidally from
the same at least 90 fathom above the sea and contiguous lands, yet on
the top thereof, under those spar-stone graves, or burying-places, is
discovered by the tinners, five foot deep, good arable land or earth;
under that, for six foot deep, is found a fine sort of white and
yellow clay, of which tobacco-pipes have been made; beneath this clay
is a laying of sea-sand and nice totty-stones. Two or three hundred
fathoms from the sea, and about eighty fathoms above it, under this
sand, is to be seen for about five foot deep, nothing but such
totty-stones as are usually washed on the sea-shore, and in many of
them grains of tin. Under those stones the soil or matter of the
earth, for five or six feet deep, is nothing to be seen but
_carne-tyer_, id est, spar-stone land or earth, under which spar-stone
earth appears the firm rock, through which tin-loads are wrought or
pursued by the tinners fifty, sixty, and seventy fathoms deep. This
Ball, or lands containing this diversified matter or soil, contains
about eighty acres in circumference; which amuseth most men how the
earth, clay, sand, totty-stones, or spar-stone land, should yet be so
high above the solid rocks to the top of this mountain, unless Noah’s
flood was universal, and reached to this island, as the labouring
tinners believe and tell us. More sure I am, from ocular
demonstration, that a quantity of the white sort of sand in this Ball,
or hill, washed in a stream or river of clear water, will instantly
turn the same water into a milk-white colour, and not to be discerned
from milk, as long as you continue to pour the said sand into the
river; but this is to be understood only of such clean white sand as
is made use of and prepared for writing sand-boxes.
* * * * *
The manor of Mithi-an, i. e. of whey, a notable grange for cows and
milk (otherwise, if the name be compounded of my-thyan, Saxon, my
servant or villain by inheritance) was formerly the lands of Winslade
of Tregarick, in Flint, an hereditary esquire of the white spur, who
forfeited the same, with much other lands, by attainder of treason,
tempore Edward VI.; so that that King or Queen Mary gave those lands
to Sir Reginald Mohun, of Hall, knight, or his father, who settled
them upon his younger son, by which conveyance it lineally descended
to my very kind friend William Mohun, of Tenervike, Esq. now in
possession thereof. In this manor is an ancient free chapel, now
converted to a dwelling-house, wherein God was duly worshipped in
former ages by the tenants thereof. [William Mohun, Esq. the last heir
male of this family, bequeathed this estate to his wife Sibella, (who
was afterwards married to John Derbyshire Birkhead, Esq.) and his
sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Prowse. Sir Christopher Hawkins, Bart., who is
the present proprietor of the whole, bought it in 1777; one moiety of
Mr. Birkhead, and the other of Matthew Grylls, brother and heir of
Robert Grylls, who had purchased it in 1758 of the devisees of Mrs.
Prowse. _Lysons._]
Treu-ellis, i. e. the son-in-law by the wife’s town; otherwise, if the
word be compounded of Tre-vell-es, it signifies the well or spring of
water town; is the dwelling of Michael Crocker, Gent. that married
Gwynn, and giveth for his arms, Argent, a chevron engrailed Gules
between three crows Proper, originally descended from the Crockers of
Ireland. Croker, after the English Saxon, is a crock-maker or seller.
[It belonged afterwards to Mr. Joseph Donnithorne,[6] and is now the
property of Mr. Chilcot. The mansion is occupied as a farm-house.
_Lysons._]
Tre-vaw-nanes, i. e. the town of the boys’ valley, alias
Tre-vawn-nanes, i. e. the town of the fanning or vawning valley; where
continually great numbers of boys, or human youths, are employed about
washing, cleansing, or vanning tin in the rivulets thereof, is the
dwelling of Thomas Tonkin, Esq. that married Kempe, his father
Vincent, his grandfather Bawden, his great-grandfather Guye; and
giveth for his arms, by virtue of a late record taken forth of the
College of Arms tempore William III. in a field Sable, an eagle
displayed Or. The name Tonkin, alias Tankin, synonymous words,
signifies a person or thing in the tank or tonk, viz. an artificial
cistern, pool, pond, or fountain of water.