In this parish stands Basil, a word sometimes taken for a herb or
vegetable, sometimes for a vein in the human body, sometimes for the
basilisk or cockatrice, &c.; but here I take it to signify after the
Greek, a basilica or stately building; and although at present this
mansion will not answer the etymology in the extreme latitude or
longitude thereof, yet in probability it formerly did, at least
comparatively so in respect to other houses in the neighbourhood.
This place is the mansion of the ancient, famous, and knightly family
of Trevillyans; the present possessor of Basil is Peter Trevillyan,
who married a daughter of Mr. Nicholas Borlase of Treludderin. From
this Cornish family are descended the Trevillyans of Nettlecomb in
Somersetshire.
Although this parish is commonly called and written St. Cleather, yet
the right name is St. Eledred, and so it is written in the Taxatio
Beneficiorum; which St. Eledred I take to be Ethelred King of the
Mercians, who, after he had held the crown for thirty years, and
governed with great reputation, and especially with much regard to
religion, which (as William of Malmesbury observes) was more to this
prince’s inclination than arms, resigned the kingdom to his kinsman
Kendred, became a monk, and died soon after in the monastery of
Bordeney in Lincolnshire.
There was, however, another St. Ethelred, King of the West Saxons, who
is said by Mr. Browne Willis, in his Notitia Parliamentaria, to be
buried at Wimborne Minster in Dorsetshire, with the following
inscription:
In hoc loco quiescit corpus Sancti Ethelredi Regis
West-Saxonum martyris, qui A.D. 872, 23 die Aprilis, per
manus Danorum Paganorum occubuit.
Perhaps this latter is the true patron.