I shall offer a conjecture touching the name of this place, which I
will not say is right but only probable. Tin is the same as Din,
Dinas; and Dixeth, deceit; so that Tindixeth turned for the easier
pronunciation to Tintagel, Dindagel, or Daundagel, signifies the
Castle of Deceit, which name might be aptly given to it from the
famous deceit practised here by Uter Pendragon, by the help of
Merlin’s enchantment.
The manor of Tintagel was very antiently demesne land of the crown,
and famous for its castle, and Browne Willis says, the castle, manor,
and borough of Tintagel, were settled by Edward the Third on his son
Prince Edward, whom he created Duke of Cornwall, and continued it to
his heirs, the succeeding Dukes of Cornwall, before which this king’s
brother, John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall, held it. This castle boasts
much greater antiquity, and is said to have been the seat of the Dukes
of Cornwall, and pretends to have been the birthplace of the famous
King Arthur, which happened above five hundred years before the Norman
Conquest, that prince having been born in the year 500, fifteen years
after which he is said to have succeeded his father in the kingdom,
and to have lost his life in the thirty-sixth year of his reign in a
place near Camelford. The borough of Bossiney, known in this county by
the name of Tintagel, is a very small village, and contains scarcely
twenty houses, and those not better than cottages. This place, with
Trevenna, another little hamlet equally mean, lie in the parish of
Tintagel, from which church they are at no great distance, and with it
make up the one borough. It was privileged by Richard Earl of Cornwall
and King of the Romans, who granted “Quod Burgus noster de Tyntaivil
sit liber Burgus.” It is governed by a mayor. The first return of
Members to serve in Parliament is in the reign of Edward the Sixth.
In an indenture during the reign of Queen Mary it is styled Trevenna
alias Bossiney, in others Trevenna simply, in others Bossiney alone.
The borough is held from the duchy at a fee-farm rent of 11_l._ 16_s._
9½_d._