Transcriber's Note:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible. Some changes of spelling and punctuation have been made.
They are listed at the end of the text.
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
[Illustration:
J. C. BURROW, F.R.P.S. BREAGE CHURCH. Camborne.]
THE
Story of an Ancient Parish
BREAGE WITH GERMOE,
With some account of its
Armigers, Worthies and
Unworthies, Smugglers
and Wreckers, Its
Traditions and Superstitions
BY
H. R. COULTHARD, M.A.
1913.
THE CAMBORNE PRINTING AND STATIONERY COMPANY, LIMITED.
CAMBORNE, CORNWALL.
MR. J. A. D. BRIDGER, 112a and 112b, Market Jew Street. Penzance.
_I dedicate this small volume to the friends and neighbours who in the
first place suggested the writing of it to me by telling me stories of
the days of their fathers._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE CELTIC PERIOD 9
II. THE SAXONS 28
III. FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION 35
IV. THE REFORMATION TO THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH 59
V. RECENT TIMES 82
VI. THE GODOLPHINS 100
VII. THE ARUNDELLS, DE PENGERSICKS, MILTONS AND SPARNONS 115
VIII. WORTHIES AND UNWORTHIES 129
IX. PLACE NAMES AND SUPERSTITIONS 148
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Breage Church, Frontispiece 2
Celtic Cross in Breage Churchyard 24
Frescos in Breage Church 51
St. Germoe's Chair 55
Godolphin House 100
A Godolphin Helmet in Breage Church 103
Pengersick Castle 119
PREFACE.
The facts and thoughts which comprise this little book were many of
them, in the first instance, arranged for use in sermons on the Sundays
preceding our local Feast Day, as some attempt to interest Parishioners
in the story of our Church and parish.
I have to acknowledge with gratitude much information given me most
ungrudgingly, from his great store of antiquarian learning, by the
Reverend T. Taylor, Vicar of St. Just; likewise my thanks are due to Mr.
H. Jenner for kindly help and information upon the etymology of local
place names. I must also acknowledge the free use I have made of facts
bearing upon the history of Breage and Germoe taken from Mr.
Baring-Gould's "Historic Characters and Events in Cornwall," and at the
same time I have to express my thanks to the Reverend H. J. Warner,
Vicar of Yealmpton, the Reverend H. G. Burden, Vicar of Leominster, and
Mr. A. E. Spender for valuable information and assistance. I have been
greatly helped in my examination of the Parish Registers by the
excellent transcription of large parts of them made by Mrs. Jocelyn
Barnes. Finally I have to thank a great number of kind friends at
Breage, who have imparted to me the fast fading traditions of other
times, to whom I venture to dedicate this brief record of days that are
no more.
_Breage,
All Saints' Day, 1912._
Date of |
Insti- | LIST OF THE VICARS OF BREAGE.
tution. |
|--------------------------------+-------------------------------------
-- |WILLIAM, SON OF RICHARD |Died or resigned during the Interdict
1219 |WILLIAM, SON OF HUMPHREY |
1264 |MASTER ROBERT DE LA MORE |Resigned to become Canon of Glasney,
| | ultimately parson of Yeovil.
1264 |MASTER STEPHENUS DE ARBOR |
-- |SIR PASCASIUS |No date of Institution. Old, blind
| | and infirm in 1310.
1313 |SIR DAVID DE LYSPEIN |
-- |SIR JOHN YURL DE TREGESOU |No date of Institution.
1362 |HENRY CRETTIER |
-- |SIR WILLIAM PELLOUR |No date of Institution.
1393 |SIR JOHN GODE |Died at Breage.
1403 |MASTER WILLIAM PENSANS |Died at Breage.
1439 |SIR JOHN PATRY |Died at Breage.
1444 |SIR JOHN PEYTO |Died at Breage.
1445 |SIR WILLIAM LEHE |Died at Breage.
1466 |SIR WILLIAM PERS |Resigned to become Canon of Glasney.
1505 |MASTER THOMAS GODOLPHIN |Resigned.
1510 |MASTER JOHN JAKES, |
| Bachelor in Decrees |Died at Breage.
1536 |JOHN BERY, M.A. |Died at Breage.
1558 |SIR ALEXANDER DAWE |Died at Breage.
1595 |FRANCIS HARVEY, M.A. |Vicar also of St. Erth, buried in
| | Breage Churchyard.
1607 |WILLIAM COTTON, M.A. |Son of the Bishop of Exeter, resigned,
| | holder of many other benefices in
| | Devon and Cornwall.
1608 |WILLIAM ORCHARD, |
| "Preacher of the Word of God."|Resigned.
|JAMES INNES (ejected 1661) |Intruding Puritan Divine.
1661 |JAMES TREWINNARD, M.A. |Resigned on becoming Vicar of Mawgan,
| | at which place he lies buried.
1696 |HENRY BUTHNANCE |Died at Breage, lies buried beyond
| | the East wall of the chancel.
1720 |JAMES TREWINNARD, M.A. |Died at Breage, also Vicar of Mawgan.
1722 |EDWARD COLLINS, |Died at Breage, also Vicar of St. Erth,
| Bachelor of Laws | where he lies buried.
1755 |HENRY USTICKE, B.A. |Died at Breage, lies buried beyond
| | the East wall of the chancel.
1769 |EDWARD MARSHALL, M.A. |Died at Breage.
1803 |RICHARD GERVEYS GRYLLS, M.A. |Resigned.
1809 |RICHARD GERVEYS GRYLLS, |Died at Luxulian, which parish he
| M.A., the younger | held in conjunction with Breage.
1853 |EDWARD MORRIS PRIDMORE, M.A. |Died at Breage.
1889 |JOCELYN BARNES, M.A. |Died at Breage.
1904 |HARRY JOHN PETTY |Resigned.
1907 |HUGH ROBERT COULTHARD, M.A. |
THE CELTIC PERIOD.
CHAPTER I.
At the dawn of history, Cornwall, as in fact England generally, was
inhabited by a race of small, dark people, who, for the want of a better
name, have come to be called Ivernians. The blood of this ancient dark
race chiefly survives to-day in South Wales and Cornwall, especially in
our own western Cornwall along the coast line. In Breage, there are
continually to be met with faces and forms which suggest this small dark
race, and which show to what a large extent the ancient Ivernian blood
still survives in our midst.
The Ivernians must have been widely spread over Cornwall, judging by the
numerous chippings from the manufacture of their flint implements
scattered all over the County, which still may be collected in large
quantities. In spite of the continuous mining operations carried on all
over the Parish of Breage for endless generations, and the many
ploughings of the land which must have taken place in periods when the
growth of grain was profitable, these flint chippings can still be
gathered in many places in the parish, especially on the bare patches of
land where the gorse has been burnt, before the grass begins to spring.
In the earlier stages of their history the Ivernians used sharpened
fragments of flint rudely fashioned to the purpose, as knives, axes and
scrapers. In fact, for a long period of their history they were a people
living in and under the conditions of the Stone Age.
Long before the time of written records another race, called Celts,
found their way to Cornwall. This race was divided into two distinct
branches, the Goidels and the Brythons. The Goidels were much inferior
in culture to the Brythons; they were the first to enter Britain, and
upon the arrival of the Brythons they were slaughtered and driven before
them to the remote fastnesses of the West and North, just as in a later
age the Brythons themselves were driven before the Saxons. Under the
circumstances it might have been reasonable to conclude that the people
of Cornwall, in so far as they were not Ivernians, were mainly of
Goidelic blood. This conclusion is, however, not borne out by the
Cornish language which has come down to us in the form of a few miracle
plays and other fragments, which is undoubtedly Brythonic in character.
Of course, it may have been that, when the Brythons were driven into
Cornwall and Wales and across the Channel into Brittany in hordes by the
remorseless, exterminating Saxons, their tongue in these regions
gradually supplanted the more barbarous Goidelic speech.
The Celts, as they advanced westward, whether Goidel or Brython, would
exterminate or make slaves of the Ivernians, driving them before them as
they advanced into the extreme western parts of the County. We have all
heard a number of foolish stories of the Cornish folk in the fishing
villages being largely descended from Spanish soldiers and sailors who
were saved from wrecked battleships of the great Armada. These fisher
folk are dark and swarthy, not because they are descended from Spaniards
but because they are descended from the ancient Ivernians who took
refuge in the caves and rugged places along the coast, leaving the good
land to the conquering Celts.
The Celts, we imagine, would find the Ivernians professing a rude system
of natural religion much akin to their own, but perhaps not so highly
developed; indeed, a very large proportion of the human race at this far
distant time seems to have practised a religion of nature worship alike
in its main features. Here in Cornwall, as elsewhere, for instance,
they kept a great festival in the spring-time, when they celebrated the
coming to life again of the God of vegetation, whose name amongst the
Celts was Gwydian.[1] He was supposed to come to life again with the
coming of the green grass, the leaves and the flowers, and the singing
of the birds, having died in the previous autumn with the withering of
the leaves and the in-gathering of the harvest. Helston Flora Day is the
festival of his resurrection continued right down through the ages. As
in spring they rejoiced over the resurrection of the God of vegetation,
so in autumn they mourned over his death.[2] Most of us have heard the
old Cornish rhyme sung by the reapers at the cutting of the last sheaf,
which is a survival of this ancient custom of bewailing the death of
Gwydian.
"I'll have un, I'll have un, I'll have un,
What have'e, What have'e, What have'e,
What will'e, What will'e, What will'e,
Onec, Onec, Onec, O'hurro, O'hurro, O'hurro."
As this rhyme was repeated, all the harvesters stood round the farmer in
a circle, whilst he waved a sheaf in the air. This custom of mourning
the dead God of vegetation was very widely spread over the world.[3] No
one who has heard the mournful strain in which this chant of our ancient
harvest fields was sung can doubt that in its original use it was a song
of mourning.
The Celtic Priests or Druids knew a good deal of rude astronomy. They
used the stone circles, so many of which still survive, for purposes of
astronomical observations. By watching the alignment of the sun at
rising or setting, and also of certain stars, with the centre stone and
some stone on the circumference of the circle, they were able to
calculate the seasons of the year and the dates of their festivals.
Until a generation ago one of these ancient circles stood on Trewarvas
Head; it was pulled down by some foolish and ignorant people who thought
they might find hidden treasure under the great stones. From the top of
the high cliff overlooking the sea the Druid Priests would have a
splendid view of the far horizon. We can picture them making their
observations through the silent hours of some still star-lit night, with
the ceaseless slumbrous swell of the sea on the rocks far beneath them.
On Midsummer Eve the Druids lit a great fire on the summit of Tregoning
Hill. We know this, because the custom of lighting the fire survived
until very recent times. An old woman deplored its discontinuance to the
writer as a sign of the prevailing irreligion of the times. It seems
more than probable that at this Midsummer Festival human victims were
sometimes sacrificed in honour of the sun.
In the remote Highlands and Islands of Scotland this festival was
observed down to the early part of the eighteenth century, in a way
which clearly points to human sacrifice as the great central act of the
rite.[4] Numbers of men were in the habit of gathering on Midsummer Eve
in these remote parts of the kingdom round the ancient stone circles
midst the hills. A fire was lighted in the centre of the circle; pieces
of cake or bannock were then placed in some cavity where previously a
blackened and burnt fragment of the cake had been placed. Each person,
having first been blindfolded, then drew from the cavity a piece of the
broken cake; the man unfortunate enough to draw the blackened fragment
had to leap through the fire and pay a forfeit or fine. In the dim past
the drawer of the blackened fragment doubtless became the victim
offered to the God to ward off his anger from the community. This
ancient rite must have been practised in our Parish more than a thousand
years before the coming of Christ.
At the very dawn of human history we find all over the world, in Europe,
India, China and America, the ancient peoples keeping four great
festivals as a rule, at the summer and winter solstices and the two
equinoxes; in fact their religious culture in cardinal points was one
and the same.
One part of the faith of these ancient Ivernians and Celts that has
lingered on to our own times is the deeply cherished belief in Fairies.
How this belief came to be so widely spread and deeply cherished amongst
ancient peoples it is impossible to say. It has been suggested that, in
their wanderings over the world in search of pasturage and congenial
climate, they may have encountered in the recesses of primeval forests
or in lonely fastnesses of the mountains remnants of the slowly
vanishing pigmy race of neo-lithic cave men, and that they came to
regard them with something of superstitious awe, and that the memory of
these "little people" became a race memory, in the course of generations
becoming etherealised and woven into the woof of their religious
beliefs. On the other hand we have the possible view that our nomadic
forefathers may have had fitful glimpses, as some of their descendants
aver they have, of orders of beings beyond the ken of normal human
vision, of beings existing upon another plane. Taking into consideration
the exceeding aboundingness of human life within the radius of our poor
faculties, I confess that this view seems to present no inherent
difficulty.
Possibly in the way in which the people of each Cornish Parish possessed
in former generations a nickname, we have a vestige of still more
ancient rights, which carry us back to the very dawn of human culture.
We have Wendron goats, Mullion gulls, Madron bulls, St. Agnes cuckoos,
Mawgan owls, St. Keverne buccas[5] and many others. The following old
rhyme perpetuates the fading memory of the custom,
"Cambourne men are bull dogs,
Breage men are brags,
Germoe men can scat 'un all to rags."
An analogous custom to this Cornish system of nicknames prevails amongst
primitive people all the world over.[6] Each tribe or section of the
tribe has its Totem, an animal, bird or plant, with which it is supposed
to be in close and intimate relationship, and from which the tribe or
section of a tribe receives its name. Possibly Totemism may have had its
origin in crude attempts of primitive men to prevent too close
intermarriage, as men and women possessing the same Totem were not
allowed to marry, whilst on the other hand it has been suggested that
the custom was bound up with the view of primitive men with regard to
sacrifice and inter-communion with their Gods.
The Tin Mines of Cornwall had been known to the Greeks and possibly the
Phœnicians from the earliest times. Diodorus [7]Siculus gives a fragment
from the writings of the Greek traveller Poseidonius who visited
Cornwall possibly in the 3rd century B.C., which may be translated as
follows: "and stamping the tin into shapes of cubes or dice, they carry
it in great quantities in waggons into an island called Ictis lying off
Britain, when the parts between the Island and the main land became dry
land by the ebbing of the tide."
It has been suggested that Ictis was St. Michael's Mount and also the
Isle of Wight. It is impossible to accept the latter contention, unless
we take the view which has been put forward that great changes have
taken place in the depths of the channel separating the Isle of Wight
from the mainland, for which we have no evidence in history or
tradition. Also the Isle of Wight is not less than one hundred and fifty
miles from the tin mines of Cornwall, and at the period to which we are
referring the only roads that existed between the two were mere tracks,
for much of the distance no doubt impassable to waggons. If it had been
necessary to send Cornish tin to the Isle of Wight for transport abroad,
it would naturally have been taken to one or other of the many harbours
along the Cornish southern coast and transhipped by sea in the summer
time. The contention in favour of St. Michael's Mount is almost equally
difficult to accept. It is difficult to see what advantage could have
been gained by carting the tin from the mainland to that Island, when
the contiguous coast possessed several excellent natural harbours. The
most probable solution to the writer seems to be that the Island of
Ictis was the entire Penwith Peninsula. A walk from Marazion Station to
St. Erth along the low-lying belt of marsh land makes it clear that the
ocean at no very distant date must at high tide have encircled the
Penwith Peninsula.
In a later age it is possible that the first seeds of Christianity may
have come to Britain by way of Cornwall along the trade route created by
the exportation of the products of the Cornish Tin Mines to Marseilles.
Foreign merchants would visit Cornwall for the purpose of purchasing
tin, and numbers of foreign sailors would come to these shores in the
galleys that conveyed the tin to the coast of Gaul. Under the
circumstances it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that the first
seeds of Christianity were in this way brought into Britain through
Cornwall.
It seems in every way possible that a fair proportion of the tin
exported from the Island of Ictis to Greece, Italy and the East came
from what is now the Parish of Breage. We have been told by those
competent to speak on such matters that there are tin workings in the
neighbourhood of Wheal Vor which evince a very great antiquity. The name
of Wheal Vor itself means in the Celtic tongue "great work," but we
cannot build much as to the antiquity of the mine merely upon its Celtic
name, as the Cornish or Celtic language continued to be spoken in this
part of Cornwall even until the reign of Queen Anne or later.
At what date the Romans penetrated into Cornwall it is impossible to
say. It has been usual to regard their occupation of Cornwall as of a
somewhat shadowy and uncertain character, but this is not altogether
borne out by facts. Their camps, possibly of a not very permanent
character, are scattered all over our most western part of the County,
amongst other places there is one at St. Erth and another in the parish
of Constantine. The Roman Mile-stone, found in the foundations of St.
Hilary Church, at the restoration, and now preserved there, attests the
fact that a Roman road to the extreme West passed near St. Hilary
Church, probably following the same lines that the main road between
Penzance and Helston follows to-day. Along this road it is probable
would come the first real light and culture to Breage with the steady
tramp of the marching legionaries. It may well have been that
Christianity first travelled this way in their train. Roman coins and
Roman pottery have been from time to time found all over the County. In
1779 an urn containing copper coins weighing eight pounds was found on
Godolphin Farm by a ploughman who sold them to a Jew, and so all trace
of them was lost.
In whatever way Christianity was first brought to the remote Parish of
Breage, it was certainly not brought by St. Breaca, St. Germoe and the
rest of their companions, who only made their appearance at the end of
the fifth or beginning of the sixth century.
As early as the third century two great Christian writers, Tertullian
and Origen, speak of the Britons as having been won over to the religion
of Christ, and St. Chrysostom in the next century makes a similar
statement. St. Jerome also speaks of the British Pilgrims he had seen in
the Holy Land in the fourth century; British Bishops were present at the
Councils of Arles and Rimini in the fourth century, and were invited to
the Œcumenical Council of Nicæa, but could not go on account of their
poverty. Pieces of Roman pottery with the sacred monogram burnt upon it
were found at Padstow. Pelagius a Welshman, in the fourth century, set
the whole world in a blaze with his teachings about original sin. These
and many other facts make it quite clear that Christianity must have
been received by the Celts of Cornwall long before the coming of the
so-called Irish Missionaries to Cornwall, to two of whom the districts
of Breage and Germoe owe their names.
The Pagan Saxons landed on the east coast of England in the fifth
century and drove the Christian Brythons before them, putting all to the
sword who fell into their hands. Those who escaped took refuge either in
Cornwall, Wales or Brittany. It is from the Celts, therefore, with a
strong admixture of Ivernian blood, that the present inhabitants, at any
rate of Western Cornwall, are descended. As a result of the Saxon
invasion of Britain it came about that Wales and Cornwall were fully
Christian, whilst the rest of Britain became practically Pagan. The
Venerable Bede, the Anglo-Saxon historian monk of Jarrow, goes so far as
to blame the Celts of Cornwall and Wales for altogether neglecting the
conversions of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Considering the nature
of the case, this was a most unreasonable complaint to make, as the
Saxons at once killed or enslaved any Celts unlucky enough to fall into
their hands. If further proof were needed that Wales and Cornwall were
Christian at this time, we have only to turn to the writings of
Gildas[8] and the Welsh Bards, Taliesin, Aneurin and Llwarch-Hen. The
memorials of these writers date from the sixth century and depict
incidentally Christianity in a highly organised condition among the
Celts of the West.
Leland the antiquarian, who visited Cornwall and consequently Breage in
the reign of Henry VIII, amongst other things of interest in the
Parishes of Breage and Germoe which he noticed, speaks of the ruins of
the ancient Castle or Stone Fort on the summit of Tregoning Hill. He
says: "The Castle of Conan stood on the hill of Pencair, there yet
appeareth two ditches, some say that Conan had a son called Tristrame."
The life of the chieftain Conan and all that he did have long since
faded into oblivion; all that survives of him are the mounds of stones
that mark the site of his rude stronghold, and his name which has
escaped oblivion in the name of the hill on which he lived and
ruled--Tregoning, "Tre Conan" the abode or settlement of Conan. Pencair,
the name which Leland gives to Tregoning Hill, merely means the Hill of
the Castle or Camp.
The two round camps on the eastern face of Tregoning Hill, formed by the
casting up of high banks of earth with a deep ditch on the outer side,
are the work of Brythons, or at any rate of people who had adopted their
method of fortification and defence; the Goidels made the breastwork of
their camps of stone. In those lawless days all communities had to
fortify themselves against the sudden attacks of enemies, just as, on
the north-western frontier of India, all the villages at the present day
are fortified against attack by high walls of mud. The two camps or
settlements on Tregoning are well chosen near an excellent water supply
and on the side of the hill sheltered from the blustering gales coming
up from the sea. Possibly at the time when these two camps were the
haunts of two populous communities the whole of the low lying land of
Breage and Germoe was covered with swamp, tangled scrub and undergrowth.
The first definite tradition bearing upon the history of the Parish is
the arrival of St. Breaca with St. Germoe, somewhere about 500. It is
said that they landed at the mouth of the Hayle River in company with
between seven and eight hundred Irish Saints, both men and women, who
are supposed to have come from the Province of Munster. From the legends
that have come down to us with regard to them we gather that they were
not altogether wanted by the Cornish. However, this was a minor
consideration to such a large band of enthusiastic Irish men and women;
they made a forcible landing and drove back the Cornish Chief Teudor and
his men who opposed their landing. The legends describe Teudor as a
cruel heathen, in which surely there must be some mistake, as Teudor is
a Christian name, being only Cornish for Theodore. The legends go on to
tell us that one of this great company of Saints, a woman called Cruenna
was killed at Crowan in trying to take forcible possession of the land
of one who was already a Christian, for the purpose of building a church
upon it. It seems very much as if these Irish men and women, with the
true impulsiveness, of their race, set out to Cornwall to convert the
inhabitants, without first taking the trouble to find out whether or no
they were Christians. We see instances of the same spirit at work
to-day, Methodist Missionaries in Rome to convert Roman Catholics, and
Roman Catholic Missionaries in England to convert Christians who are not
Roman Catholics.
It may be helpful, in considering this matter, to take a glance at the
condition of the people of the country whence these Missionaries came at
the time with which we are dealing. St. Patrick, who owed his knowledge
of Christianity to St. Ninian, a Briton, first brought Christianity to
Ireland not more than a hundred years before the arrival of the seven
hundred and seventy seven Saints in the Hayle River, whilst, as we have
seen, Cornwall had been under Christian influences for several
centuries. A candid view of Christianity in Ireland at this time can
only lead to the conclusion that it was more than half Pagan. The
tonsure of the Priests, or mode of cutting their hair, was exactly the
same as that of the Druid[9] Priests. It was not till the year 804 that
Monks and Clergy in Ireland were exempt from bearing arms,[9] that is
three hundred years after the coming of these Saints to Cornwall.
Women[9] were not exempt from fighting in the ranks till 500. In 672 a
battle was fought between the rival Monasteries of Clonmacnois and
Durrow. In 816 four hundred Monks and Nuns[9] were slain in a pitched
battle between two rival Monasteries. In 700 the Irish Clergy[9]
attended their Synods sword in hand, and fought with those who differed
from them on doctrinal points, leaving the ground strewn with
corpses. The Irish, no doubt with the wild unreasoning enthusiasm so
characteristic of the race, flung themselves into the new movement, and
the Monasteries were soon filled with Monks and Nuns with but a vague
realisation of what Christianity was; many no doubt would quickly weary
of the new life of rule, and yearn for one of greater variety; hence
possibly the swarming off to other lands in search of spiritual
adventures.
The theory has been suggested that our army of Irish Saints were
fugitives, worsted in battle, escaping from their enemies, as Ireland at
this period was devastated with petty tribal wars. This theory, to say
the least, seems most plausible.
Vague traditions have come down to us of incidents in the lives of the
Saints of this period which reveal something of the moral atmosphere in
which they lived and moved and had their being. At the end of Germoe
Lane there used to be a cairn of great stones, which an ignorant local
administration has long since cleared away. The legend of these stones
was that St. Keverne possessed a beautiful eucharistic chalice and
paten. St. Just the holy visited his friend and stole these sacred
vessels. St. Keverne discovered the loss and pelted the flying St. Just
with the great stones that fell at the end of Germoe Lane. The same
story appears in the life of St. Patrick where the annalist reveals his
bias in the words: "O wonderful deed! O the theft of a treasure of holy
things, the plunder of the most holy places of the world!" Straws show
the way in which the wind blows, and this fable and the comments of the
Irish annalist reveal the view of his age on the question of theft.
Of course, we fully admit that the Irish Monasteries did become for a
time the home of the learning of the age such as it was. We do not
forget their great foundations in Germany and Northern Italy, and their
exquisite skill in the work of illumination as in the books of Durrow
and Kells; what we contend is that the Irish Saints in coming to
Cornwall were coming to a land which possessed a Christianity older and
purer than their own. That the Irish Saints were sincere according to
their lights we do not doubt, and being true to the light they possessed
they are worthy of being held in honour.
It has been suggested as a solution for the reason of the Invasion of
the Irish Saints, that at the close of the fifth and the beginning of
the sixth century Cornwall was only partially christianized, that Pagans
and Christians were living side by side in amity, and that the Irish
Saints came to devote themselves to the conversion of the Pagans.
Whether this solution of the difficulty be true or no, at any rate it is
opposed to all that we can gather from the testimony of ancient writers
and hagiographers, and, if we accept it, we must reject their testimony
as utterly false and worthless.
Of course, a distinction must be made between the Hibernian Saints and
the many Saints who came over from Brittany and settled in Cornwall. The
people of Brittany were one in language and character with the Cornish
to a far greater extent than the Irish; and, like the Cornish, the
people of Brittany had been under Christian influences several centuries
before the Irish had.
Amongst the Saints who came from Ireland with Breaca and Germoe was
Gwithian, said to have been killed in the fighting with Teudor or
Theodore: Cruenna, killed at Crowan; Wendron, who made his settlement at
Wendron; Moran, who settled at Madron; Ia, who settled at St. Ives; St.
Levan, said to have been Breaca's brother, settled at St. Levan; the
names of others also have come down to us whom we need not mention.
Germoe is supposed to have been of royal descent, which means that he
was related to the petty king or chief of his sept or tribe. Breaca is
said in the vague traditions that have come down to us, originally to
have pursued the calling of a midwife; Leland, the great antiquary of
the reign of Henry VIII. when he visited Cornwall, saw many legendary
lives of the Cornish Saints, from which he made extracts. Most of these
lives were destroyed with much else that was beautiful and valuable at
the time of the Reformation.
The last book of the lives of our local Saints was in the library of Sir
William Howard of Naworth Castle in Cumberland, in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. It was carried thither by a Cornish Roman Priest, who took
refuge with him and acted as his Chaplain. This valuable volume has been
long lost sight of.[10]
Amongst other things Leland tells us that when he visited Germoe, St.
Germoe's grave was pointed out to him; of the site of the grave even
tradition is now altogether silent; he also mentions having seen St.
Germoe's well "a little without the churchyard."
At Breage Leland made some extracts from a life of St. Breaca that was
shown to him doubtless by the then Vicar of Breage; the life in those
days would be a very precious possession of our Church. From Leland we
gather that Breaca had begun her religious life in a Monastery founded
by the famous St. Bridget, Abbess of Kildare; as to the exact site of
this Monastery the statement made by Leland is somewhat vague and
difficult.[11] He goes on to tell us that after the struggle of the
Saints with Teudor and his defeat, Breaca first took up her abode at
Pencair, that is Tregoning Hill, and built a Church somewhere near
Chynoweth and Tolmena on the south eastern slopes of the hill. Of course
it is now quite impossible to locate the site of this ancient
Church;[12] at the best it would be small and poor and the materials of
its construction of no durable character. From this spot Leland tells us
that Breaca migrated to the site on which our present Church stands, a
spot which has been hallowed to the service of God by fifteen hundred
years of worship. Generation after generation through the whole course
of English history have there lifted up their hearts to God, and
generation after generation have been laid to rest under the shadow of
its sacred walls on the edge of the hill overlooking the sea. That
Breaca settled at Chynoweth is strangely borne out by facts. The two
fortified camps previously referred to are contiguous to the spot, and
the surrounding fields on the slopes of Tregoning hill, bear abundant
evidences of having been the site of a considerable settlement in Celtic
times; huge stones that once no doubt did duty in stone avenues and
circles have been piled by farmers of a latter age into boundary walls
of cyclopean character, whilst the curious may still find ancient querns
and stones fashioned to the rude uses of a forgotten age.
In ancient deeds the Church of Breage bears the name of Eglos Pembroc
_i.e._ the Church on the Hill of Breaca. The name still lives on in the
name Pembro Farm, standing on the same hill.
[Illustration: The Celtic Cross in Breage Churchyard.]
When Breaca and those who followed her settled on the edge of the hill
on which our Church stands and when amicable relationships had been
established with those dwelling around, the first thing the Saint would
attempt would be the erection of a small Church, built of wattle work,
mud and stone. The only relic of that ancient period that still remains
is the red sand stone Celtic Cross by the Church door, unearthed a few
years ago in our churchyard; this ancient cross must have been brought
from a distance, as there is no red sand stone at all near. It is
interesting to speculate why it was brought to Breage from some distant
place; perhaps it was brought from Ireland, and to Breaca was fraught
with memories of a greater and older foundation.
The site which Breaca selected for the building of her Church had been
probably the site of ancient heathen worship through many centuries. It
seems to have been the custom, wherever possible, for the early founders
of Christian Churches to select ancient heathen sites.[13] Their
building on these ancient sites was at once symbolical of the victory of
the Cross over heathendom, and evidence that the Demons which were
supposed to haunt their ancient sanctuaries were powerless against the
Saints either to harm or to hinder. The tower of Breage Church from its
position is visible far out to sea, and for miles over the surrounding
country from every point of the compass but the West. The hill on which
it stands, therefore, dominating alike land and sea, is just the spot
that the Priests of "a creed outworn" would have selected, at once
excellent for astronomical observations and for rivetting the distant
gaze of the votaries of their faith.
When this site had been finally selected, a little hut would be erected
on the spot, in which Breaca would take up her abode and continue all
alone in fasting and prayer for a period of forty days; during the whole
of this time she would eat nothing from sunrise to sunset, except on
Sundays, when possibly she might partake of an egg, a morsel of bread
with a little milk mixed with water. When the forty days were
accomplished all had been done in the way of consecration.[14]
The Churches thus built were naturally called after their founders, but
as Professor Rhys points out, it remained for a subsequent generation to
give them the informal title of Saint. It is well for us to realise that
these Cornish Saints were never formally canonized.
We must bear in mind also that in Celtic times there were no Parishes
and no Dioceses. The little colonies of the Saints were independent
communities; they kept their own Bishops, who held quite a subordinate
position; at Kildare, St. Bridget had a number of Bishops under her
orders, so had Ninnock in Brittany and Columba in Iona. Our conception
of a diocese was altogether foreign to the Celtic mind.[15] Bishops were
kept as a species of ecclesiastical Queen Bee. The Saintship or headship
of the community was hereditary, descending from father to son. The
manner of life of the Saints was rude and barbarous in the extreme. They
wore a thick outer garment of wool or of skin, with an inner garment of
lighter texture; on their feet they wore sandals, they slept on hides
with a pillow of straw.[16]
With the foundation of Churches at Breage and Germoe by Breaca and
Germoe, thick mist closes in again over the history of the Parish for
several hundred years. The communities these two Saints founded would
continue to live peacefully in all probability under the rule of their
successors until the coming of the time of the Saxon settlement. No
doubt at some time during this period of darkness the Church life and
administration would come to be organised more and more on the plan with
which we are familiar.
As a line of Cornish Bishops in communion with Canterbury and the rest
of the Church gradually asserted their authority, the old rule of the
Saints over separate and distinct Christian communities would gradually
pass away, and thus the separate atoms would coalesce and become united
under one single authority--the Bishop of the Diocese in which their
community was settled.
In 813 Egbert, the Saxon King, invaded Cornwall, and marched from one
end to the other, spreading fire and sword in his path. In 926
Athelstan, the Saxon King, defeated the Cornish at the battle of
Hingeston Down near Calstock. The complete subjugation of Cornwall
quickly followed, and with this conquest the soil of our parish would
soon pass under the hands of Saxon lords, and the Saxon system of
government would quickly supplant altogether the old systems of Celtic
times.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Professor Rhys "Origin and growth of Celtic Religion" pp. 225,
236, 245.
[2] See Frazer's "Attis, Adonis and Osiris."
[3] See Frazer's "Attis, Adonis and Osiris."
[4] Account by Revd. Alexander Hislop, Minister of Arbroath in "The Two
Babylons."
[5] Bucca connected with Scottish "Bogle." Bogle always in Scotland
means a disembodied spirit. Bucca with Bogle said to be akin to
Sclavonic "Bog" _i.e._ God. We incline to think Cornish "bucca" and
Scottish "bogle" may be taken as equivalent in meaning. See Wentz "Fairy
Faith of Celtic Countries" pp. 164 and 165.
[6] See Andrew Lang "Secret of the Totem." Also W. Gregory "The Dead
Heart of Australia" pp. 188 to 195.
[7] "ἀποτυποῦντες δ' εἰς ἀστραγάλων ῥυθμοὺς κομίζουσιν εἰς νῆσον
προκειμένην τῆς Βρεττανικῆς, ὀνομαζομένην δὲ Ἴκτιν. κατὰ γὰρ ἀμπώτεις
ἀναξηραινομένου τοῦ μεταξὺ τόπου, ταῖς ἁμάξαις εἰς ταύτην κομίζουσι τὸν
κασσίτερον δαψιλῆ."
_Diodorus Siculus._
[8] See Haddon and Stubbs.
[9] See Stokes' "Celtic Church" and Baring Gould's "Lives of the
Saints."
[10] See Borlase's "Age of the Saints."
[11] Leland says "Campus Breacae in Hibernia in quo Brigida oratorium
construxit et postea Monaster, in quo fuit et S. Breaca." It will be
noticed that this statement does not support the view of the Revd. S.
Baring Gould that Breaca is a latinised form of Bridget, in his Lives of
British Saints. Professor Gwynn of Dublin informs the writer: "Breaca
could not possibly be a form of Bridget." In support of this view he
quotes Prof. Loth in La Revue Celtique vol. 29, p. 287 on St. Briac "Ce
Saint est donné comme irlandaise ce que semblerait confirmer la
terminaison. Il faut supposer une forme irlandaise 'Briace.'"
[12] Leland: "Breaca aedificavit ecclesiam in Trenewith et Talmeneth ut
legitur in vita St. Elwini."
[13] See "Byeways of British Archæology" by W. Johnson.--_Cambridge
University Press._
[14] See Bede.
[15] Stokes' "Celtic Church."
[16] Constitutions of Columba.
THE SAXONS.