Boconnoc is universally allowed to be the finest seat in Cornwall. The
house stands on an elevation near the union of two valleys, each
rendered interesting, beautiful, and picturesque by streams of water
flowing through uneven ground, and by native woods of beech and oak,
rivalling the trees of our most favoured inland counties, although
these vallies originate in wild tracts of land where not a stunted
shrub is to be seen.
Mr. Thomas Pitt, although remotely descended from a good family, is
said to have been the son of a person concerned in trade at Brentford.
He must have gone to India at a time when some merchant adventurers,
wholly unconscious of impending events, were engaged in laying the
foundation of an Empire so vast as to exceed in the number of its
subjects even the majesty of Rome itself. Mr. Pitt returned to Europe
possessed of a diamond, superior, perhaps, in its combination of size
and transparency, to any one ever exhibited in the western world. It
was offered to Queen Anne, and ultimately sold to the Regent Duke of
Orleans for the French nation, at a sum exceeding one hundred thousand
pounds.[12] With about half of this large sum Mr. Pitt acquired the
property in Cornwall of the last Lord Mohun, and settled at Boconnoc.
He also purchased the burgage tenures, giving the right of franchise
at Old Sarum, and represented that place in Parliament.
He had two sons, Robert and Thomas. Robert Pitt who succeeded him at
Boconnoc, married Harriet Villiers, third sister of John Earl
Grandison. He died in May 1727, leaving two sons, Thomas Pitt, and
William, afterwards Earl of Chatham. Thomas Pitt, his brother, was
created Earl of Londonderry, in consequence of his marrying the
heiress of Ridgeway, who had borne that distinction; this younger
branch became extinct in 1764. Thomas Pitt, his son, engaged most
extensively in the political speculation, for which Cornwall was then
become an ample field. But, having supported the party of Frederick
Prince of Wales, he failed of obtaining any of the objects to which
most speculations are supposed to lead. He married Christiana, sister
of George first Lord Lyttelton; by whom he left Thomas Pitt, who, on
the elevation of his first cousin, William Pitt, to the chief office
in the State, when under twenty-five years of age, was created Baron
Camelford in Jan. 1784. He died in 1793, leaving a son Thomas Pitt,
the second and last Lord Camelford, and a daughter married to William
Wyndham Grenville, Lord Grenville, the present possessor of Boconnoc,
having succeeded to her brother in 1804.
The personal history of this young man is curious and extraordinary.
He became an object of attention in Cornwall almost from his birth. On
the event of his christening, in 1775, Boconoc was thrown open for
public and indiscriminate entertainment, accompanied by exhibitions of
the peculiar athletic exercise in which the Cornish boast to excel all
their contemporaries, and to rival the Palæstræ of ancient Greece. A
silver bowl of fifteen guineas was the prize of the victor (the first
who threw five falls), and about fifty pounds were distributed among
the vanquished.
His education was conducted under a private tutor alone in the
seclusion of Boconnoc; but having made an excursion to Plymouth at a
time when naval preparations were in full activity, he acquired a
passion for the sea so strong and rooted, as not to be overcome by all
the efforts of authority or of advice.
He went on the perilous voyage of discovery conducted by Captain
Vancouver, and in the course of it, he is said to have experienced
some harsh treatment on the part of the commmander, which seems to
have stamped a new impression on his mind, rendered permanent by the
long period during which it was necessarily concealed.
On Lord Camelford’s return to England, the effects burst forth in acts
of violence against Captain Vancouver, and from that time,
On each adventure rash he roved,
As danger for itself he loved.
It is impossible not be struck by a general resemblance between the
two individuals who last possessed Boconnoc, of the families of Mohun
and Pitt. Both seem to have been men of ability and of genius, of
intrepid courage and of honour, fond of enterprise, and with vigour of
body commensurate to their mental energies; but each unfortunately,
obeying the impulse of passion and of strong feelings rather than the
dictates of reason, was hurried on to an untimely fate. The latter
fell by the hand of a person born to the situation of a gentleman, but
in other respects little entitled to that distinction.
The first Lord Camelford might not only claim a full share of the
hereditary talent connected with the names of Lyttelton and of
Pitt;[13] but also literary acquirements and taste obtained under the
guidance of his two uncles William Pitt Lord Chatham, and Lord
Lyttelton. His gratitude to the latter is commemorated at Boconnoc by
a lofty obelisk.
Lord Camelford introduced to the rectory of his parish the Reverend
Benjamin Forster, a contemporary at Cambridge of congenial taste, and
worthy of his friendship, the associate of Gray and of Mason; and with
a mind like theirs suited for retirement and for literary leisure.[14]
In his hours of relaxation he adorned the woods and shades, the vales
and the rivulets, of Boconnoc with descriptive and appropriate
illustrations from ancient and from modern poetry. To the Glebe-house
he applied,
A little lowly hermitage it was,
Down in a dale, hard by a forest’s side,
Far from resort of people that did pass
In travail to and fro.
Mr. Forster has been long since deceased, his rectory taken down, and
most of his friends departed from this life. His memory is for the
present preserved by a tablet (brevi et ipsa interitura) bearing the
following inscription:
Underneath rest the remains of Benjamin Forster, B.D. of C.C.C.
Cambridge 1760; Lady Camden’s Lecturer at Wakefield in Yorkshire 1766;
Rector of St. Mary Abchurch in London 1772; from thence removed to the
Rectories of Boconock with Braddock in Cornwall, and to Carshayes, St.
Michael, St. Stephens, and St. Dennis, in the same county, 1773.
Born Aug. 7, O.S. 1736. Died Dec. 2, N.S. 1805.
Epitaph written in the 33d year of his age:
Here, hapless mortal! thy sure refuge find,
Crost in each fond device, each hope of joy;
Life’s busy day was not for bliss design’d,
Toils, struggles, sufferings, its sad hours employ.
Yet meekly bow to Heaven’s imperious sway,
Nor deem thyself a prey to unmixt woes;
The gentler virtues sooth the cares of day,
And life’s calm eve shall lead to long repose.
* * * * *
Finally, Boconnoc-house is distinguished by having been the head
quarters of King Charles the First in August and September 1684, when
the army commanded by General Lord Essex, capitulated at Fowey.
This parish contains 1772 statute acres.
Annual value of the Real Property, as £. _s._ _d._
returned to Parliament in 1815 1252 0 0
Poor Rate in 1831 142 15 0
Population, { in 1801, | in 1811, | in 1821, | in 1831,
{ 212 | 236 | 253 | 259.
Or somewhat more than 22 per cent. in 30 years.
The Geology of this parish has nothing peculiar or characteristic. Dr.
Boase remarks that the eastern part is a continuation of the barren
downs which extend nearly to Lostwithiel, and that the southern, which
is the fertile part, belongs to the calcarious series of the schistose
group, but that the rocks are too much concealed under the alluvial
soil to allow of their nature being very evidently manifest.
[12] The exact weight of the diamond is said to be 136¾
carats. A carat is equal to 3⅙ grains (see the Universal
Cambist by Dr. Kelly, vol. i. p. 220, article London). It
weighed therefore 433 grains, very nearly nine-tenths of an
ounce troy of 480 grains.
[Illustration: diamond]
For these 433 grains of diamond, the Regent Duke of Orleans
is stated to have given 135,000_l._ or two thousand eight
hundred and eighty-nine pounds troy of standard gold, or
nearly one ton one hundred and a quarter avoirdupoise; above
thirty-eight thousand four hundred times its own weight, or
seven thousand five hundred and eighty times its bulk.
The Regent and his two successors in the government of
France, used this diamond as an ornament to their hats on
occasions of state. It was stolen during the license of the
great Revolution, but recovered.
Napoleon had it placed between the teeth of a crocodile,
forming the handle of his sword, unaware perhaps of how much
this gem had contributed towards raising up the most
formidable opponent to his ambition and ultimate
aggrandisement.
[13] A series of his letters to Mr. Justice Hardinge has
been published in Nichols’s Literary Illustrations of the
Eighteenth Century, vol. vi. pp. 74-139.
[14] A large quantity of Mr. Forster’s lively correspondence
with Richard Gough, esq. Director S. A. and John Nichols,
esq. F.S.A. has been printed in Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes
of the Eighteenth Century, vol. ix. pp. 648-650, and the
Literary Illustrations, vol. vi. pp. 290-328, 860-864.