Master John Jakes, bachelor in decrees, of whom we know nothing beyond
the fact that he died and was buried in Breage churchyard, became Vicar
in 1510, when no cloud loomed upon the ecclesiastical horizon. He who at
that date had foretold the ultimate consequences of the marriage of
Henry VIII. to a Spanish Princess would have been put down as a fool and
a dreamer. It would have seemed obvious to the ecclesiastical
politicians of that day that if the marriage affected at all the
fortunes of the Church it would be in the direction of drawing closer
the bonds with Rome. Possibly, here and there, there may have been those
who saw the signs of the coming of the storm in what seemed to them a
more or less distant future; and probably they dismissed the
uncomfortable thought with the sixteenth century equivalent of "_après
moi le déluge_." Yet within thirty years the deluge had been unloosed
and swept all before it. Within three years of the demise of John Jakes
the great Abbey of Hayles, with its broad acres and vast patronage, was
dissolved; its stately buildings and magnificent Church were falling
into ruins, turned into stone quarries for new mansions, and its
Brethren scattered, never to be re-united.
John Jakes was succeeded in 1536 by John Bery, M.A., the last Vicar to
be appointed by the Abbot and Convent of Hayles. Breage escaped the
terrible ecclesiastical tempest that in places less remote was sweeping
all before it. Though Hayles Abbey was in ruins and the Brethren
scattered, things continued in this little far-away appanage of the
great House much in the same way as heretofore, until the terrible year
1549. The Cornish, like the people of Wales, were bitterly opposed to
the Reformation in all its works and ways, and would have none of it. As
an instance of West Country methods in dealing with the new innovations,
we may quote the case of the parishioners of Sampford Courtenay, on the
northern skirts of the great waste of Dartmoor. On Sunday, 9th June,
1549, the new service in English was used for the first time in place of
the Mass, in compliance with the royal injunctions. The people would
have none of it, and on the following day compelled the Parish Priest,
under threats of what they would do to him, to resume his vestments and
say Mass as usual. In the April of this same year the storm had broken
in all its violence in our own part of Cornwall. Commissioners had been
sent throughout the County to examine the Churches and have all images
found in them removed and destroyed, and also, in plain language, to
plunder the Churches of their valuable plate, jewels and vestments, in
the specious name of religion. The Commissioners were required to
inquire into the doctrinal character of the preaching in the various
Churches, and to ascertain that the services were no longer held in
Latin but in the English tongue. A Commissioner named Body was making
his official examination at Helston Church--bent, no doubt, like the
majority of his fellows, on spoil as well as iconoclasm--when he was
stabbed to death by an enraged Priest, who had attended the visitation
in the company of one Kiltor of St. Keverne. This spark set the county,
already smouldering with discontent, in a blaze of rebellion. The
people, under the influence of the Clergy, flocked together from various
parts of the County, committing many barbarous outrages. Humphrey
Arundell of St. Michael's Mount placed himself at the head of this
rapidly-growing rabble of peasantry, and with many of the Clergy the
march upon Exeter was begun.
Job Militon of Pengersick Castle was at the time Sheriff of the County,
but he was powerless in the face of a force that by the time Bodmin was
reached had grown to six thousand strong. It is curious to note that
this enthusiastic but undisciplined host, marching to its doom, under
the walls of Exeter, contained within itself a strong leaven of
socialism. It seems to have been generally agreed, at any rate amongst
the rank and file, that all land should in future be held in common, and
that all enclosing fences should be obliterated. A few years previously
Germany had been throbbing with the same spirit, and the German Peasants
had been moved to throw off the yoke of the oppressing nobles, their
minds full of dreams of a sixteenth century millennium. Both these
efforts, due to opposite trains of events, had their origin in the
spirit of the age striving vaguely after dim ideals, and both were
trampled on and extinguished with ruthless force and cruelty. Humphrey
Arundell perished on the scaffold, and thousands of his deluded
followers in the fields and bye-ways, cut down by a merciless soldiery.
John Bery seems to have preferred monotony and safety at Breage to a
life of adventure in the field; at any rate, he lived on as Vicar of
Breage till the day of his death in 1558. He doubtlessly conformed
outwardly, if not in his heart, to the new order of things, and in the
reign of Queen Mary conformed back again to the old order. Death
absolved him in 1558 from a further change of opinions on the accession
of Elizabeth in that year.
The terrible memories of 1549 would long linger in the minds of John
Bery and the people of Breage. Some, no doubt, from Breage, had joined
the ill-fated march to Exeter to return no more.
The reports of the Commissioners who visited Germoe on the 18th April,
and Breage on the 22nd April, 1549, are as follows: "Germoe, Minister,
Henry Nicol, a Cope of blue damask, one set of very coarse vestments, a
copper gilt cross, two chalices, one gilt the other parcel-gilt, two
small bells, a fair brass censer, a linen streamer with a cross upon it
of red silk." The inventory closes with the remark that nothing has
been sold for a year past.[31]
The list at Breage reveals vessels and vestments of a richer and more
valuable character. The list comprises three chalices of silver, of
which two were gilt, three linen towels upon the altar, one pair of
vestments of blue velvet, one purple, broidered with gold work, a pair
of vestments of white satin, a pair of tawny satin, another pair of
oldsay, a cope of Morys velvet, purple broidered in gold work, an old
cope of blue velvet, two candlesticks of latten on the altar, upon the
font a yard of linen cloth, an old rotten streamer of silk, and four
bells of large burden hanging in the tower. Such was the inventory of
spoils in this remote parish at the time of the Great Pillage.
The Church must have had a deep hold on the hearts of the Cornish people
at the time of the Reformation, or they would never have risen in her
defence in the way they did in 1549. The mutilation and desecration of
her shrines stirred the hearts of the people to the very depths. The
same spirit of devotion to the Church was manifest also in a marked
degree in Wales; indeed, until the Reformation the Welsh were of all the
inhabitants of the British Isles the most devoted to the cause of
the Church: where she was once strongest she is now weakest. In
pre-Reformation times the Feasts and Festivals of the Church in Cornwall
were bound up with the social life of the people, and its ritual,
paradoxical though it may seem in the present age, satisfied the deep
emotional cravings of the Cornish character, whilst its teaching was in
unison with the needs of their hearts. As an instance of the deep hold
of the Church upon the pre-Reformation life of the people, we have in
Breage the curious anomaly that the chief fête day of our Nonconformists
is St. Stephen's Day, which is the Feast of the Dedication of the
Parish Church, whilst at Germoe the Festival of the patron Saint is kept
by them as a day of teas and rejoicing.
Under the new order of things brought in by the Reformation there was no
room for the play of emotions, the services of the Church were cold and
bare, adapted for religious philosophers, but not for peasants; the
change came, too, in the guise of an exotic planted by men of high
station, whom the people regarded as their natural oppressors and the
destroyers of the Church of their fathers. What followed was that which
might have been expected--a gradual lapsing of the people into what was,
to all intents and purposes, a crude form of paganism, which lasted,
with the exception of some stirrings of the dry bones during the
Commonwealth, until the coming of John Wesley, who with the warm glow of
emotional fervour re-converted the Cornish peasantry in the main to
Christianity. If proof of this assertion were needed, it is only
necessary to compare the religious aspect of things in Cornwall and
Brittany at the present day. Both people belong to the same division of
the Celtic race, yet both now in the main stand at opposite poles in
politics and religion. The reason seems to lie in the fact that the
Cornish were deprived of a faith which they loved, and which satisfied
the emotional and materialistic cravings of their hearts, and that the
new Clergy, creatures and toadies of the great, utterly failed to appeal
to their sympathies and to win their affections.
In 1558 Sir Alexander Dawe, the last of the "Sirs," became Vicar of
Breage, and continued as such until the day of his death in 1595. The
record of his burial is still extant in the Parish Registers. He was
presented to the living of Breage by one Richard Hyde, who had become,
by purchase, patron of the Benefice for one turn only. The Abbot and
Convent of Hayles had followed the policy of the other religious houses
at the dissolution of the Monasteries, and saved what property they
could from the impending catastrophe by granting, where possible, long
leases of the Abbey lands and selling the next presentations to their
ecclesiastical patronage.
A dark and terrible shadow passed over the life of the parish during the
time of Alexander Dawe. Breage was visited in 1578 by a pestilence,
which we have little doubt was the terrible Black Death or Plague, which
at this time was claiming endless victims all over the land. We who live
in these days of practical security from such awful visitations can have
no idea of the horror and dismay which they inspired, and the misery and
desolation which they spread broadcast over the land. To realise the
horror of the Plague, let us imagine an epidemic as contagious and as
infectious as influenza was some few years ago spreading everywhere, the
great majority of its victims dying in the most terrible sufferings. The
epidemic of plague in question had first appeared in London in the
autumn of 1563; about a thousand persons dying each week during the
latter part of 1563 and the earlier part of 1564. In 1570 Newcastle and
in 1574 Edinburgh endured terrible visitations of this scourge. During
the last months of 1578 and the earlier months of 1579 the Breage burial
register contains the record of seventy-six burials in Breage
churchyard. No comment is made upon the nature of the disease, but there
can be but little doubt we have here the grim records of a visit of the
terrible Black Death, whose dark shadow at this time hung in awful
menace over the whole land. The words of the Litany, "from plague,
pestilence and famine, from battle and murder and from sudden death,
good Lord deliver us," had a fulness of meaning for our fathers which we
who live in a brighter, cleaner and more peaceful time can only dimly
realise.
With the death of Sir Alexander Dawe, the last link with the old
pre-Reformation life was severed; henceforward the stream of parochial
life was to run in channels more closely approximating to those of our
own age, and succeeding Vicars were men of different antecedents and
ways. The patronage of the Living, though nominally in the hands of the
Crown, came practically to be in the gift of the Godolphin family, which
had risen to a position of power and influence in the preceding hundred
years.
Francis Harvey, who succeeded Alexander Dawe, was the son of Sir
Anthony Harvey, Kt., and Lucy Lister of Swarland, near Felton, in
Northumberland. The family of Harvey was remotely connected with the
Godolphin family, through the Carews.[32] Francis Harvey was born 2nd
March, 1562. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, but
migrated, after taking his B.A. degree, to Emmanuel College, which had
been recently founded by his relative, William Mildmay, as the home of a
mild and aristocratic form of Puritanism. It is interesting to note that
Sir William Godolphin, who died in 1613, was at Emmanuel College at the
same time as Francis Harvey. Perhaps it may not be too fanciful to
conclude that an intimacy between William Godolphin and Francis Harvey
ripened into close friendship in the quiet Cambridge home of Puritan
learning, and that thus the son of a Northumberland squire came to
settle in the remote West. Francis Harvey married Mary Yorke, a lady of
ancient family, in Phillack Church, in 1595; their descendants were long
settled at Maen in this County.
Soon after obtaining the living of Breage, Francis Harvey was preferred
to the living of St. Erth, which he continued to hold jointly with
Breage until the day of his death. Whilst the Reformation had struck at
many evils, it had left one of the greatest of the abuses of the Church
practically untouched. One of the chief factors in preparing the popular
mind for the Reformation was the abuse of Church patronage; French and
Italian Priests, in many cases not speaking the English language, had
been foisted upon the English people, to the exclusion of their own
kith and kin. This evil system had begun with the Conquest and had
continued right down to the Reformation, accentuated and intensified by
the fact that a single person was capable of holding numerous benefices,
which in many cases he had never seen, to the exclusion of others
worthier and holier than himself. It was this condition of things that
alone rendered the Reformation possible. The storm of the Reformation
burst, but swept in vain round this crowning abuse. After the
Reformation the abuse of patronage presented itself even in more odious
forms, and the best life of the Church withered and died under its
poisonous shadow. Francis Harvey was not an excessive pluralist; he held
only two livings, though his cousin, William Cotton, who succeeded him,
enjoyed a good baker's dozen or more.
An event happened in the first few months of the incumbency of Francis
Harvey which would long linger in the minds of his flock, and which for
years to come would be spoken of by the cottage and farm house evening
firesides. The 23rd July, 1595 was a hot summer's day; a thick haze lay
over the sea, which gradually lifted, disclosing four Spanish ships of
war lying off the coast, over against Mousehole. Their hostile
intentions were soon evident; boatloads of armed men began to put off
from the ships. A force of over two hundred Spaniards was quickly landed
without opposition. The little town of Mousehole was soon in flames, and
a handful of brave men who scorned flight perished at their own
doors.[33]
The Spanish force streamed up the hill[34] their course marked by
blazing roof-trees. The old grey village Church of Paul on the ridge
soon became the special object of their fury, and its stones to this day
bear grim witness to the devouring flames that once enveloped them. The
inhabitants of Mousehole fled in a terrified mob towards Penzance, the
roar of the ships' guns adding speed to their flight. It seems Sir
Francis Godolphin had ridden forth earlier in the day from Godolphin
House, and saw either from Godolphin or Tregoning Hill the dense clouds
of smoke hanging over Mousehole and Paul, whilst the booming of the guns
of the four warships in the Bay would speedily make the whole situation
clear to the mind of this keen soldier trained in the Irish Wars under
Essex. Without delay he spurred his horse to the scene of action and
encountered the flying crowd a little westward of Penzance. He succeeded
for a time in infusing something of his own brave spirit into the minds
of the fugitives and the men of Penzance capable of bearing arms. A move
was made upon the Spanish position, and the Spaniards, seeing the
advancing force, retired to their ships, only again after a short period
to disembark at Newlyn, which they speedily set on fire, and began to
move on Penzance. In vain, sword in hand, the brave Sir Francis
endeavoured to rally the people to the defence of their town and homes;
he was speedily deserted by all save a few of his own servants. As the
Spaniards entered the town he had no alternative but to ride away,
surrounded by his little company of brave followers.
The Spaniards remained in Penzance Bay until the 25th July, when they
put out to sea in a north-west breeze, just in time to escape capture by
a force of British ships rounding the Lizard, which they must have seen
in the offing. The anxiety and dread of the people of Breage, standing
with straining eyes watching the course of events in the plain below
during those two fateful days, must have been great indeed. One wild
rumour after another of dire deeds transpiring beneath them, by the sea,
would pass through their midst. There would be little sleep in the
village during the two anxious nights the Spanish warships lay in
Penzance Bay. Many minds would turn to another night of anxiety and
dread a few years before, when the great Armada had passed the Lizard
early in the forenoon, and was making its way up Channel, followed by
the English Fleet.
"For swift to East and swift to West the ghastly war flame spread,
High on St. Michael's Mount it shone; it shone on Beachy Head."
Francis Harvey died whilst still practically a young man, 2nd March,
1607. We copy from our burial register the almost pathetic entry
recording his death and burial, so different is it by contrast to the
endless laconic entries of death that precede and follow it. Evidently
the entry was made by the hand of one who knew and loved him. It is
written in a clear and elegant hand, and the entry carries with it
something of truthfulness and sincerity that brings the image of Francis
Harvey up out of the mists of the past, as that of a true and good
man of a mild and gentle type of Puritan piety. The entry is as
follows:--"_Francisus Harvey, theologus hujusque parochiæ Vicarius cum
jam quadragesimum quartum annum ætatis vix attigesset. Secundo die
Marcii extremum diem clausit, et ut per totum temporis curriculum
transegit vitam minime non inhonestam sic obiit, mortem non minus plane
piam. Sepultusque fuit die quarto tunc proximum insequente. Anno Domini
1607._"
Francis Harvey was succeeded by his cousin, William Cotton, M.A.,
described in the Exeter Registers as "the beloved son of the Bishop." He
resigned the living of Breage after holding it but little over a year.
Walker, in his "Sufferings of the Clergy," includes William Cotton in
his list of suffering Clergy during the Commonwealth. However deeply the
sufferings of William Cotton may have touched the feelings of a former
age, they are not likely to move the sympathies of our own. As well as
being Vicar of Breage, he was also Precentor and a residentiary Canon of
Exeter Cathedral, and held the livings of Silverton, Whimple and Duloe,
and possibly others at one and the same time. His brother, Edward
Cotton, was equally well provided for by his father. It was outrageous
pluralism of this kind that alienated the people from the Church and
prepared the way for the wild outpourings of religious bigotry and
frenzy under the Commonwealth. William Cotton, with the failure of the
royal cause, was compelled to resign the mass of patronage which he
held. He died at his seat of Bottreux Castle in 1649 or 1650. Walker
informs us that in his veins "flowed the blood of crowned heads of
England, Scotland and Ireland, and other great personages of the highest
rank," and that "he was a person of a meek and humble spirit, of a grave
and sober conversation, of exemplary piety, charity and learning."
Edward Cotton was succeeded by William Orchard in 1608. In the record of
his institution in the Episcopal Registers he is described as "Preacher
of the Word of God"; this phrase will perhaps serve to disclose the bias
of his mind and the theological bent of the times. Unlike his
predecessors Harvey and Cotton, he had graduated at no University. Most
possibly in his own mind he regarded such institutions as unnecessary
for one who was led by the Spirit of God. It is possible that he owed
his appointment to the living of Breage to Sir William Godolphin, the
then Squire of Godolphin, and friend of the statesman Cecil, who, it
seems more than probable, acquired a Puritan bias when a student at
Emmanuel College, the Cambridge home of Puritanism.
I rather conclude from the frequent mention of the name of Orchard in
the Breage Registers about the time of his incumbency, that his family
had been settled in the parish at the time of his appointment. A George
Orchard married a Dorcas Coode of Methleigh, and an Edward Orchard
married a Jane Sparnon of Sparnon. The Coodes and Sparnons at this time,
with the exception of the Godolphins, were the chief families of the
parish, ranking considerably above the rank of yeoman. William Orchard
became a widower in 1619. The record in the Breage Register of the
death and burial of his wife is as follows: "_Anna Orchard uxor Wilhelmi
Orchard, Vicarii hujus parochiæ, filia Johis Yeo, gent, died 9th Feb.
and was buried 11th Feb. 1619._" His daughter Mary married John Coode of
Methleigh; their descendant owns the estate of Methleigh at the present
time.
Whilst Sir William Godolphin and Parson Orchard were both Puritans, they
were both loyalists. They would have shuddered with horror "at those
days which were coming upon the earth," and which to a great extent were
the logical outcome of the Puritanism which they and others professed
acting upon the popular mind; they were putting new wine into old
bottles, regardless of the inevitable result, as good men will do in
every age. Though Sir William Godolphin was not destined to see the day
that his king perished on the scaffold, it was the lot of William
Orchard to see it forty years later, and ultimately for conscience sake
to be ejected from his home and office. Rather than be untrue to the
light within him, like so many of his brethren, William Orchard elected
to go into the wilderness. It was his lot never to return to his
benefice, though his son at the Restoration petitioned Parliament on his
behalf for revenues from the living of Breage, of which he deemed his
father to have been defrauded.
It was during William Orchard's incumbency that Breage for the first and
last time was favoured with a royal visit in the person of Charles,
Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II. When the royal cause was
irretrievably lost, Charles fled to Cornwall on his way to seek refuge
in the Scilly Islands. For some days he rested at Godolphin House, and
what remains of the suite of rooms he occupied is still shewn there. It
would be interesting to know how Charles spent the few days of his
sojourn in Breage, and how he wiled the time away, and whether, after
the good custom of those days, in spite of the danger of his position,
he joined in the Sunday worship at Breage Church. It is possible to
picture the swarthy youthful face, with the thick heavy red lips and
with _ennui_ written upon it, looking wearily from the Godolphin aisle
upon William Orchard, as hand upon hour-glass he unfolded Puritan truth
from a maze of conflicting facts.
But the evil days drew on apace; Prince and Parson had alike to go
before the storm. Soon after the swearing of the Solemn League and
Covenant by Parliament in 1644, the tithes of Breage were sequestrated
or confiscated by the Government; [35]William Orchard with Antony
Randall, curate of Germoe, and Robert Smith, curate of Cury, were thus
reduced to dire poverty. Their parishioners, touched by their trials,
and regarding them no doubt as honest and faithful men, on the 8th May,
1649, petitioned Parliament that a yearly grant might be made to them of
£40 each out of the confiscated tithes of St. Keverne. Their prayer was
answered, but after four years of weary waiting, the tried clerics
complained to Parliament that their grants had been withheld by the
County Committee, and humbly requested "that the rents may remain in the
Tenants' hands." On the 17th August, 1653, the County Committee made
answer to Parliament, that "by information of Colonel Rous, M.P., the
Vicarage of Breage is sufficiently endowed, and that the Ministers
thereof are malignant and scandalous, and that Antony Rous of Wotton,
John Bawden of Trelask, and three others are appointed trustees for
disposing of the grant made by Parliament to four such able and godly
ministers as they shall judge meet to place in their room." Whilst the
hypocritical cant of this declaration provokes a smile, at the same time
it arouses mournful reflections on the violence and bigotry that is ever
wont to dog the steps of human effort after political and religious
reformation.
"The able and godly minister" chosen to supplant William Orchard at
Breage was one James Innes. Doubtless he was a man of extreme opinions
both in politics and religion, but like William Orchard in the hour of
darkness he was able to play the true man, and rather than conform at
the Restoration to tenets in which he did not believe, he vacated his
office even before Black Bartholomew's Day, 24th August, 1662. He found
an asylum in Scotland in the household of the Earl of Lauderdale, where
he performed the office of chaplain in conformity with the Presbyterian
use.
The seeds of Puritanism sown by men like Orchard and Innes did not die,
but lay germinating in the hearts of the Cornish people, rendering
possible the great work of John Wesley a hundred years later. Such men
succeeded in a great measure in destroying the pre-Reformation
mechanical ideals of salvation in the hearts of the people, which
prepared the way for the stirring of the dry bones in future years.
Richard Carew's Survey of Cornwall, published in 1602, gives a vivid
picture of the conditions of life in Cornwall prevailing during the
period we have been considering in this chapter. The condition of the
mining population, he tells us, was much worse than that of the
agricultural population.[36] We gather from his pages that the wages of
the miners were so inadequate that sooner or later indigence compelled
them to have recourse to their employers, who supplied them with food
and clothing in advance of their wages at usurious prices. The Stannary
Courts, we are informed, were utterly corrupt and saturated with the
spirit of perjury and injustice.[36] The houses of the working people,
we gather at this period, were made of clay, possessing neither windows
nor any attempt at ceiling or plastering[36]; a hole in the wall being
considered sufficient to do duty for a chimney. The miner and labouring
people generally, we gather, were alike destitute of shoes and
stockings, and we may add, of course, of any rudiments of education.
Leland, when he visited the parish, found large mining works along the
coast from Trewarvas Head to Praa Sands. Sir Francis Godolphin a
generation later developed the ancient mines of Great Work and Wheal Vor
upon scientific principles and a scale of vastness hitherto undreamt of.
The mines, it is evident, brought riches and prosperity to the owners of
the soil, but not to the people who dwelt upon it; to them, as Carew
makes clear, they meant too often degradation and oppression. The
harvest of this evil sowing is still being reaped at the present day. It
is but too true that with the Reformation the people lost a powerful
protector in the Church. With all her faults--and they were many--until
the Reformation the Church had been consistently the friend of the poor;
her clergy until that period, had been the members of a great
corporation, and as such stood in no dread of "the petty tyrant of the
fields." With the coming of the Reformation all was changed, and the
Parish Priest became too often the creature and parasite of the wealthy,
moved but too frequently by fear and policy to neglect the claims of his
flock, with for three centuries, disastrous results alike for Church and
people. The people at the Reformation were ready to rise and to die for
the Church, as we have seen in our own neighbourhood; three centuries
later they regarded her with utter suspicion and disfavour. Few with any
acquaintance with the facts of the case will deny that the material and
moral condition of the people, under much cruel injustice and
exploitation, grew worse for some generations after the Reformation,
because there were none to hold the balance of justice between class and
class and stay the hand of the oppressor, at any rate in the remote
places of the country.
In the western part of the County the mines tended to produce an utter
neglect of agriculture, the effects of which were bad in every way. They
also led to the reckless destruction of much valuable timber for the
purpose of making mine props. Western Cornwall, now so denuded and bare
of trees, in ancient days was thickly wooded; round Ashton now not a
tree is to be seen, yet the name perpetuates the memory of the time when
Ashton was the Down where the ash trees grew.
Carew tells us that there were few sheep in Cornwall in his days, and
that those there were had little bodies and fleeces so coarse that their
wool went by the name of Cornish hair. The horses, he says, were small
and hardy and "quick travellers over rough and hilly country," but he
goes on to say that by hard treatment and overwork they were soon worn
out and rendered unfit for service. Owing to the practical absence of
roads till long after Carew's time, vehicular traffic was practically
impossible; horses were therefore used as pack animals, and a regular
system of transit of goods prevailed through the County by means of pack
horses. The tracks that passed by the name of roads[37] for the six
rainy months of the year, were practically impassable quagmires of mud,
making intercourse, save of the most urgent character, practically
impossible. It was on account of the extreme difficulty of communication
through the long winter months that the gentry of the district
established for themselves town houses in Helston, in which they might
exchange the isolation of the country for some measure of friendly and
agreeable intercourse.
The land used for tillage seems to have been chiefly manured with sea
sand and sea weed; the little ploughing there was would, of course, be
done by oxen, a method which at any rate had the merit of producing a
strong and vigorous breed of cattle, which in size would perhaps more
than favourably compare with some of the animals to be seen at the
present time.
We gather from Carew "that some gentlemen allowed their cattle to go
wild in their woods and waste ground, where they were hunted and killed
with crossbows and pieces after the manner of deer." At this time the
Deer Park attached to Godolphin House took in a large part of the
present parish of Godolphin; the remains of the high walls of this
ancient park may still be seen on the south-western slopes of Godolphin
Hill.
In Carew's time the women and children of the West of Cornwall carried
on the industry of mat-making to a large extent. These mats were made of
coarse grass, and were exported to London in great numbers for the
purpose of floor and wall coverings.
Carew informs us that the Cornish had no oaths and never swore, but that
they made up for it by a plentiful indulgence in curses, maledictions
and the giving of spiteful nicknames.
The two chief practising physicians[38] in the County in Carew's time
were Rawe Clyes, a blacksmith, and a Mr. Atwell, parson of St. Tue; the
latter obtained the most wonderful results from recommending a diet of
apples and milk.
The chief pastimes of the country people at this period, as far as can
be ascertained, were wrestling, hurling and shooting with arrows. The
game of hurling, in both its forms, seems to have been even more rough
and dangerous than Cornish wrestling, and was attended, if Carew speak
correctly, frequently with fatal results and serious injury to life and
limb; yet he goes on to say "was never Attorney or Coroner troubled for
the matter." It was in the larger game of "Hurling the County" that most
of the serious damage was done; this wild game was played over miles of
country by men both on horseback and on foot. The goals were as a rule a
couple of towns or villages three or four miles apart. The match seems
to have been arranged, in the first place, between two country
gentlemen, who on the occasion of some appointed holiday would gather
as their respective supporters, as far as possible, the male inhabitants
of two or three neighbouring parishes. Each squire headed the mob he had
thus raised to the appointed rendezvous. When the two masses of men,
under their respective commanders, were brought face to face, at an
appointed signal, a silver ball was thrown into the air. The object of
the game was for each side to endeavour to capture the ball and carry it
to their own goal some miles distant, in spite of the efforts of their
opponents to hinder them in their purpose. The struggle would be waged
over miles of country, to the right side or to the left, through rivers,
ditches, woods and bogs, the ball being now passed from one on foot to
one on horseback, no effort being spared to drag the possessor of the
ball to the earth by the opposing side. Little wonder that such a game
often resulted in deaths and serious maimings.
A Cornish amusement of a milder character that came to an end with the
seventeenth century was the performance of the ancient Miracle Plays. A
vestige of the custom still survives in some places in the bands of
children who at Christmas time go from house to house, dressed to
impersonate a medley of characters, repeating garbled snatches of
doggerel, which are in reality fragments of the ancient plays in the
last stage of evolution and disintegration. In their earliest form the
Miracle Plays were performed by the Clergy in their Churches to
illustrate to an ignorant age, alike without literature and the faculty
of using it, the truths of the Christian religion. These plays continued
to be performed in Churches to a greater or less extent down to the time
of the Reformation.[39] The Reformation endeavoured to draw an unreal
line of demarcation between sacred and profane, and the drama thus came
to be placed beyond the pale as worthless and sinful, with the natural
disastrous result that it became quickly degraded and debased, like
many other harmless, healthful and pleasure-giving institutions and
pastimes.
The Miracle Plays that have come down to us in the Cornish language[40]
are first the Ordinalia: this is a trilogy consisting of the Plays of
the Beginning of the World, the Passion and the Resurrection, with an
interlude on the death of Pilate; this work is based on a French
original of the fourteenth century. Secondly, we have the Play of the
Life of St. Meriasek, of Breton parentage; and lastly, a work based on
the Ordinalia, containing many more English words, written by William
Jordan, of Helston, in 1611; the work deals with the Creation of the
World and the Deluge. The Cornish language was spoken in the West of
Cornwall until the beginning of the eighteenth century[41]; by the close
of that century it had entirely disappeared. In Carew's time the Cornish
Miracle Plays were performed in the open fields, and were resorted to by
the country people with great delight; he tells us however, by his time
they had become vulgarized and depraved to no small extent, possibly by
the introduction of bucolic gag of a Rabelaisian character.
Judging from the pages of Carew, in the seventeenth century, with all
its grossness and barbarism, there was much real friendship and happy
intercourse amongst the people, possibly more than there is now. The
Harvest Homes, the Church Ales and the Church Festivals of Dedication,
with the Guary or Miracle Plays, all led to much friendly intercourse
and hospitality. Carew says on these occasions, "the neighbour parishes
lovingly visit one another"; friends came from a distance, and were
hospitably entertained with resultant kindliness and good fellowship.
The Church Ales seem to have been run on much the same lines as the
present Harvest Teas, with the exception that instead of tea, beer and
cider were drunk, and that the venue of the feasting was laid at the
Public House, instead of the village School or Institute.
Perhaps we shall obtain the most accurate glimpse of the character of
the people, and the state of Western Cornwall generally at this period,
from the State Papers. Here are a few gleanings culled at random from
this source. In 1526 a Portuguese ship was wrecked at Gunwalloe and much
cargo saved. It was seized by the servants of John Militon, of
Pengersick, Thomas St. Aubyn and William Godolphin, and when the owner
appealed to the Justices he was told it was the custom of the country,
and that no redress was possible. A commission of enquiry ensued,
followed by Star Chamber proceedings, and the defence was the usual one,
for which any number of witnesses could always be obtained, that the
owner had sold his property on the sea shore!
In 1575 an information of fifteen Articles was laid against Sir William
Godolphin and the Killigrews, of Arwenack; thirteen of these concerned
piracy.
In 1582 a Spanish ship put into Falmouth; she was boarded by a gang of
men, who after removing the cargo as booty to Arwenack, took the ship to
Ireland, throwing the crew overboard on the voyage. A Cornish Jury
afterwards found there was no evidence to show by whom the deed was
done. The Privy Council came to the conclusion very quickly that the
plot originated with and was carried out by the orders of Lady
Killigrew, of Arwenack.
In 1603 a Marseilles ship was plundered and the cargo carried to the
Scilly Islands. The owner appealed to Sir Francis Godolphin, who made an
order to his son John, then Governor of those Islands, to restore the
cargo. John Godolphin expelled the unfortunate owner from the Islands
and he could obtain no further redress.
In 1626 a Flemish privateer, which had been hovering like a bird of prey
around the South-Western coast, was driven ashore and wrecked. The
country people must have enjoyed the wrecking of this hostile ship with
even more than their usual zest.
Dr. Borlase, writing in 1795, describes the methods of the mining
population near the coast in his day in dealing with vessels in
distress. His description would no doubt do equally well for the period
we are considering. He says "The wreckers were mostly Tinners, who as
soon as a ship was seen sailing near the coast left their work and
equipped themselves with axes, and followed the ship along the coast,
often to the number of two thousand men. They would cut a large trading
vessel to pieces in one tide. They strip half-dead men of their clothing
and cut down all who resist them."[42]
The following is a pleasing picture of the people of Germoe taken from a
letter of the year 1710. "The people of Germoe, called Tinners, are a
mad people, without fear of God or of the world. I cannot say a good
word for them." Here is another extract from a letter of the period
bearing date 30th October, 1671. "The Speedwell was cast away on the
rocks at Pengersick. The rude people plundered her of all that was
between decks, but the matter being noised about Sir William Godolphin,
Mr. Hugh Boscawen and Mr. John St. Aubyn came to the wreck, and by their
care preserved most of the goods from the violence of the country
people."
It may well have been said of the Miners of Cornwall, as far as wrecking
was concerned, "Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the vultures be
gathered together." Mr. Hunt, in his "Popular Romances of the West of
England," narrates a story of the mid-eighteenth century, which still
lingers in the popular mind, of a terrible fight that took place between
Miners from Breage and Wendron, over the spoils of a ship cast upon the
rocks near the Lizard. In old times, it seems, a gigantic ash tree used
to stand upon the Downs near Cury; from its great size and the
loneliness of its situation, it had in the course of time come to be a
popular landmark. In the case of the wreck in question, the Wendron
Tinners had the advantage over their Breage brethren in the matter of
distance, and thus were able more quickly to fall upon the spoil, break
up the unfortunate ship, and rifle the unhappy castaways of their
belongings. Like the true artists they were in the art of appropriating
the property of others, they worked quickly, and ere much time had
elapsed they had reached the great ash tree of Cury on their journey
home laden with spoil. Under this historic tree they encountered the
band of Tinners from Breage, who soon realised from the rich booty in
the hands of the men of Wendron that nothing more was to be done that
day in the way of wrecking on the Lizard rocks. Baffled of their prey,
and frantic with fury, the horde of men and women from Breage rushed
upon their Wendron compatriots, and the tide of brutal fight raged for
hours round the Cury ash tree. Mr. Hunt tells us that a Wendron man
named Gluyas having been disabled was borne out of the fight by his
friends, and placed upon the top of a hedge. A Breage woman named Prudy,
seeing this paladin lying disabled on the hedge, rushed upon him
exclaiming, "Ef thee artn't ded, I'll make thee," and smote him upon the
head with the iron upon her paton till he expired. Mr. Hunt concludes
this story by stating that the fiend Prudy, as far as judicial
investigation was concerned, was allowed to go untouched, because fights
at this period between parishes were matters of such common occurrence
as to excite but little comment, and fatal casualties so frequent as to
be regarded as matters of no moment. In this statement, as we have seen,
he is borne out by Carew writing in a previous generation. Down to fifty
years ago the brutal system of Parochial rivalry and violence
continued, at any rate in a mitigated form. A friend wrote to Mr. Hunt:
"So late as thirty years ago (circa 1850) it was unsafe to venture alone
through the streets of the lower part of Helston after nightfall on a
market day owing to the frays of the Breage, Wendron and Sithney men."
This statement was fully borne out by an aged friend of the writer, now
dead, who told him that in his youth even funeral processions of Miners
brought to Breage from other parishes were assailed with showers of
stones, and an attack which either ended in hasty retreat or a prolonged
free fight. It may be added, however, that Sunday was kept as a truce of
God, and on that day a dead Miner from outside the parish might be borne
to his rest without an assault being delivered on his friends as they
followed him to the grave. This aged friend also informed the writer
that to such an extent did this brutal system of savagery prevail that
no Miner could pass from his own parish to another without being
assailed and maltreated. Indeed, whenever Miners crossed the borders of
their own parishes, they did so in bodies for mutual protection. Well on
into the first half of the last century, fighting seems to have been one
of the chief topics of interest, if not the chief amusement of the
neighbourhood, and fights for wagers were of constant occurrence in
Breage parish, on Trew Green and elsewhere. To conclude this brief
summary of past conditions, one cannot help feeling that there was
something to be said for the old Roman view as to the results of the
occupation of mining on human character. It is a dismal picture, truly,
this of past conditions in the West of Cornwall, but when we contrast it
with the present it fills the mind with hopefulness, and reveals the
vast latent possibilities in human nature for improvement and progress.
If out of this dark and barbarous past we have so recently emerged, what
bright possibilities may not lie in the coming time seems but a
reasonable thought.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Kalendar of State Papers. Domestic Series.
[32] MS. in the possession of Fleet-Surgeon Harvey.
[33] Paul Church Burial Registers.
[34] Carew's Survey of Cornwall.
[35] Reports of the Committee of Compounding.
[36] Carew's Survey of Cornwall pp. 49, 59, 183, etc.
[37] Carew says "There are not any roads in the whole kingdom worse than
ours, hastily repaired only when some great man passes that way in his
coach."
[38] Carew p. 172.
[39] See the Article "Drama" in "Encyclopædia Britannica" by Mr. A. W.
Ward.
[40] See the Article in "Encyclopædia Britannica" by Mr. W. K. Sullivan.
[41] Dr. Edward Lhuyd, "Archæologia Britannica" 1707, quoted by Mr.
Jenner in his "Handbook of the Cornish Language."
[42] From the Gwavas MS. in the British Museum. A letter from John
Boson, of Newlyn, a Cornish-speaking Cornishman, written in the Cornish
language. A copy of this letter was given to the Author by Henry Jenner,
Esq.
RECENT TIMES.