At the conclusion of the Norman Conquest all the land in the parish of
Breage was in the possession of the Earls of Cornwall, with the
exception of the manor of Methleigh, which still continued to be
attached to the See of Exeter. Methleigh passed from the Bishops of
Exeter[51] to the Dean and Chapter of Exeter about 1160. Soon afterwards
it was granted by the Dean and Chapter to the Nansladons, or Lansladons;
from this family it passed to the Chamonds, and from them to the
Arundells.
In the fifteenth century the Arundells owned the Breage manors of
Pengwedna, Methleigh and Treworlas; in fact a very large section of the
parish. The ancient home of this family was at Yewton, in Devonshire,
where they had been settled since the days of King Stephen. They are
said to have been of Norman origin, and that the first form of their
name was Hirondelle; at any rate, the swallow figures upon their
shields. It is possible, on the other hand, that this device of the
swallow may have been merely due to the vogue for canting heraldry, an
example of which we have in the Godolphin helmets hanging from the roof
in Breage Church, which take the form of sea monsters or dolphins
rearing their heads above the waves. A more prosaic but probable origin
of the Arundells would connect them with the ancient Sussex town of that
name. The pathway of the Arundells to greatness[52] lay not so much by
the way of the tented field as along the flowery paths of successful
match-making; they moved forward rather to the music of wedding bells
than to the brazen blast of the trumpet sounding the charge. It was to
the former music that their broad lands in Breage came to them.
In the thirteenth century Ralph Arundell had risen to influence and the
possession of the manors of Trembath and Treloy through marriage with
the heiress of the Trembaths; and in the following century his
descendant acquired the manor of Lanherne by marriage with the heiress
of the ancient house of Pincerna.
The manor of Pengwedna in Breage was held by the senior branch of the
family, the Arundells of Lanherne; whilst the manors of Treworlas and
Methleigh were held by the Arundells of Tolverne, one of the junior
branches[53] of the family. Tolverne had come to the house of Arundell
in the usual way in the reign of Richard II., Sir John Arundell of
Lanherne having married the heiress of the manor, the daughter of Ralph
le Sore. Sir John Arundell bequeathed this estate to his second son,
Thomas, whose descendants held it until the time of Charles I. It was at
Tolverne that Henry VIII. was entertained with great magnificence by his
kinsman the Sir John Arundell of that day.
The story of the coming of the Arundells of Tolverne to their small
manor of Truthual, in the parish of Sithney, is full of the flavour of
ancient romance. It was at the time that the world was still dreaming of
the land of El Dorado. The spoils of Mexico and Peru brought home by the
Spaniards had profoundly moved the imaginations of all adventurous
souls. Sir Thomas Arundell, of Tolverne, had listened to the tales of
home-coming[54] adventurers of a marvellous island on the coast of
America, called Old Brazil, where untold wealth lay ready as spoil for
the brave and stout-hearted. He wasted his substance in vain search for
this island of beauty and wealth--the pearl of American seas. Where he
searched we do not know; only that his search was vain, and that he
returned to his own land broken in fortune and probably also in spirit
and in health, and that he was compelled to part with his ancestral
acres of Tolverne and to make his home on his smaller estate in Sithney
and Breage, which still remained to him from the wreck of his fortunes.
He was succeeded by his son, John Arundell, who served as a Colonel of
Horse in the army of the King during the Civil War. This gallant soldier
was buried in the north aisle of Sithney Church, and the tablet to his
memory, which takes the form of a stone shield, blazoned with swallows,
is the only memorial now remaining of this once powerful family. The
male line of this branch of the family became extinct on the death of
John Arundell, in India, in 1776. Their estate of Methleigh was sold to
the Coode family in the eighteenth century, and still continues in their
possession. The manor of Treworlas which they had previously held in the
parish had passed in marriage to the Jago family in the seventeenth
century. The Arundells are still represented in our midst in the female
line in Messrs. John Arundell and William Arundell Pryor, of Lower and
Higher Pengwedna, through Margaret Arundell, who married Richard Pryor,
of Sithney, in 1704.
The manor of Pengwedna remained in the family of Arundell, of Lanherne,
until it was sold in the eighteenth century by Lord Arundell of Wardour,
who had inherited the estates of his Cornish kinsmen.
With regard to the manor of Methleigh, it may be worthy of mention that
an ancient chapel seems to have existed on this manor, close to
Tremearne Farm. A carved pillar of ecclesiastical design still survives,
now used as a gate-post, and from time to time carved stones have been
unearthed round the spot, one, I am told, containing a realistic
representation of the Crucifixion. Round the presumed site of this
chapel human bones have from time to time been laid bare. I have been
unable to find any record of this forgotten chapel. As the spot commands
a wide view of the sea, which beats upon the rocks below, its erection
may have been due to the vow of some voyager who had escaped from the
fury of the waves, and the bones resting round it may be those of
drowned mariners; or it may be that we have here the site of the oratory
of the ancient home of the Nansladons or the Chamonds; at any rate, all
record of this ancient house of God and God's acre have long since faded
into oblivion.
From the ancient family of Arundell we naturally pass to the owners of
the tradition-haunted manor of Pengersick. An ancient race bearing the
name of the manor long flourished there, their first coming being long
since lost in the mists of the past. The Pengersicks are credited still
in the minds of the people as having been remorseless wreckers, luring
ships to their doom on the Sands of Praa by false lights displayed on
the shore. In a persistent tradition of this kind there is as a rule a
substratum of fact; tradition has been proved time after time to rest
upon a solid basis of truth, preserving for future generations a blurred
vision of events from a long-forgotten past. That the Pengersicks were
men of wild deeds, the assault by a member of the race, Henry de
Pengersick, on David de Lyspein, Vicar of Breage, in 1335, whilst
collecting the ecclesiastical dues of the parish, lends more than a
suggestion; the assault, as we have seen in a former chapter, being of
such a grievous and heinous nature as to lead to Henry Pengersick being
placed under the ban of excommunication.
[Illustration: Pengersick Castle.]
Mr. Robert Hunt, in his "Popular Romances of the West of England," has
preserved one of the wild Pengersick legends, which I venture to record
in an abbreviated form. The first Pengersick, so the legend runs, was a
proud man, and desired to ally himself, if possible, with one of the
great families of the county. In pursuance of this purpose he decided
that his only son should wed a lady of high degree who was by no means
young, and who had made her inclinations in the matter all too manifest.
The heir of Pengersick, however, had no desire to fall in with the plans
of his father and the wishes of the elderly spinster. The black witch of
Fraddam was therefore consulted--a terrible old beldam versed in all
manner of sorceries; but even the strongest love potions that she could
brew were powerless to melt the heart of young Pengersick. Love in the
heart of the spinster, subjected to constant rebuffs and coldness, began
to change to hate, and his father, finding that the heart of his son was
obdurate, and his nature most obstinate, made suit to the spinster of
high degree himself, and was smiled upon. Now it happened that the witch
of Fraddam had a niece called Bitha, who had assisted her aunt in the
brewing of her unholy potions. Bitha too, like the elderly spinster--now
spinster no longer--had also fallen under the spell of the manly beauty
of young Pengersick, and in order to win his affections determined to
take service with his stepmother, now duly ensconced in Pengersick
Castle. It fell out in the course of time as Bitha had hoped, and she
won young Pengersick's heart, but unfortunately their love was
discovered by the harridan stepmother; this discovery served only to
deepen her hatred for one whom previously she had so passionately loved.
She therefore determined once more without delay to employ the services
of the black witch of Fraddam, whom she had previously discarded as an
incapable physician. But here Bitha stepped in. She had not served an
apprenticeship to her aunt, the witch of Fraddam, in vain; she had kept
her eyes open all the while she had helped in filling the caldron on
Fraddam Down with horrible brews, and the knowledge thus obtained
enabled her now to foil all the spells of her aunt upon the life of her
beloved with more powerful counter-spells. At last the wicked old beldam
of Pengersick, despairing once more of the weapons of sorcery,
determined to arm herself with the more powerful ones of calumny and
slander. She succeeded in persuading the foolish old lord, her husband,
that his son was now manifesting the deepest affection towards her. This
tale was altogether too much for the dotard to bear, and it stung him to
ungovernable fury. He at once fell in with the carefully-prepared
promptings of his wife, and had his unfortunate son seized by a gang of
ruffian sailors, who carried him off to a ship that lay riding in the
bay, in which he was taken to Morocco and sold as a slave. After this we
gather that the poor old lord had little peace of mind; both mistress
and maid were at one in desiring his dissolution. It was not long, till
sad and weary he lay a-dying, when Bitha came and stood by his bed, and
with pleasing candour divested herself of the mask of kindly affection
behind which she had hitherto hidden herself, and in hard staccato tones
told him of the vile machinations of his wife, and that he was now dying
from the effects of slow poisons, which she herself had administered to
him. There was now nothing more left for the poor old lord of Pengersick
to do than to wearily turn his face to the wall and die, like many
before and after him to whom knowledge had come too late.
After the lapse of long years, the heir of Pengersick suddenly returned
to his home, bringing with him a dusky Eastern bride, whose beauty was
like a dream. He and his bride were accompanied by two swarthy servants,
with whom they conversed in a strange language. The lord of Pengersick
used to ride forth from the castle mounted upon a coal-black charger; so
obedient and docile in all its ways was this steed to its master that it
soon came to be universally regarded as undoubtedly of satanic origin.
The new lord on his return found his wicked and foolish old stepmother
shut up in her chamber, with her skin covered with scales like a
serpent, from the effect of the fumes of the hell-broth that she had
been constantly brewing with the witch of Fraddam for his undoing and
the infatuation of the foolish old lord his father. In her pain and
misery she at last ridded him of her presence, and sought relief in
death by plunging into the waves of the sea. The fumes of the witch's
caldron, we gather, had also been too much for Bitha, and her once
beautiful face had taken on the hue of a toad. She lived on, an ugly and
miserable old crone, in a cot on St. Hilary Down.
The Eastern bride of the lord of Pengersick was kind and gentle to all
with whom she had to do, and the lord himself, it was said, was generous
and helpful to all around; but he made no friendships nor held
intercourse with those of his own degree. The returned lord was, in
fact, a lonely and solitary man, riding forth alone and spending long
hours poring over strange books. His chamber, it is said, was full of
strange instruments, liquids and retorts, and as he laboured with these
in solitude the castle would be filled with strange odours, which
suggested the bottomless pit. At times as the night wind howled round
the turrets of the castle his voice might be heard in the intervals of
the blast summoning spirits from the unseen world, and as they came in
clouds obedient to his bidding their voices were heard above the beating
of the waves on the rocks beneath and the howling of the blast in the
turrets. He was regarded by the people as a white witch, whilst the
witch of Fraddam was a black witch and his antithesis. His spells were
more powerful than hers, and he at last drove her to sea in a coffin
from Germoe Churchyard, in which, as in a canoe, she could be seen on
stormy nights riding over the waves round Pengersick Head, her wild,
shrill shrieks of unholy laughter being carried on the storm-wind.
The beautiful lady of Pengersick rarely ventured from the castle; and in
summer time, it was said, she would sit for hours with her casement open
to the sea, like a true Eastern lady, singing to the accompaniment of
her harp the softest, sweetest songs. At times fits of unutterable gloom
would settle down on the soul of her lord, and as David with his harp
lifted the darkness from the soul of Saul, so this fair lady would
soothe to rest the weary spirit of her lord. Years drifted on, bringing
but little change, till one day there came a swarthy stranger of gloomy
and forbidding mien to Marazion, where he took up his abode. The
fishermen would see him sometimes as the night closed in sitting on the
rocks overhanging the sea round Pengersick; or cottars would see him in
the twilight wandering over the uplands. The lord of Pengersick went no
more forth abroad, and a nameless dread seemed to have settled down on
him and his lady. At last in the blackness of one awful night, in the
midst of a terrible tempest that had risen up out of the Atlantic, a
blaze of light shot up from the turrets of Pengersick Castle; and in the
morning a blackened heap of ruins alone marked the spot where it had
stood, and the lord of Pengersick and his lady, and their Eastern
servants and his beautiful steed, and the mysterious stranger of dark
and awful mien were never heard of more.
Of course, it is difficult to collect the sediment of truth at the
bottom of the foregoing legend. Perhaps we may conclude that some lord
of Pengersick, whose old age was not accompanied by the proverbial
wisdom of that state, as not infrequently happens, had fallen under the
spell of a mercenary Delilah, and that in his infatuation he had allowed
his son to be kidnapped by a gang of sea ruffians and carried abroad
like Joseph of old, to be added to the hordes of Christian slaves that
in those days dragged out a dismal existence at Tunis or Algiers. The
spiriting away of the heir would thus leave the field open for the
cherished plans and hopes of Delilah. History has a knack of repeating
itself, and more slaves have risen to power and influence in the land of
their bondage than the patriarch Joseph. Possibly the conscience of the
heir of Pengersick was more elastic than that of many of his fellows,
and he found it possible to recite the "_fateheh_" of Islam with
reverence and _empressement_. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
there were many Christian renegades holding high positions in the
service of the Mohammedan Powers of the Mediterranean--some of them
Englishmen. Perhaps this may have been the career of the heir of
Pengersick, ending in a return to his native land with riches, a bride
of the daughters of Islam, and an Arab steed. We may well ascribe
the skin disease of his wicked stepmother to leprosy--then very
common--rather than to the fumes of the witch's caldron. Adopting this
rationalised interpretation of the legend, it is but natural to conclude
that one who could thus readily exchange the creed for the "_fateheh_"
had no deep inward convictions, and men without deep convictions are
ever prone to embark upon the sea of speculation, and pursue such
philosophic phantoms as the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone;
hence perhaps the strange instruments and the odours of the bottomless
pit with which his name in tradition is associated.
Mr. Botterell, in his "Traditions and Hearth Stories of the West of
Cornwall,"[55] gives a more copious account of this legend of Pengersick
than the one here followed. He states that he heard the legend from the
lips of an elderly man at Gwinear, who had often heard it related in the
days of his youth. The main features of this story are, however, the
same; we have the additional statement in Mr. Botterell's legend that
the old lord of Pengersick had himself in his youth been a soldier of
fortune, and that the wander lust from time immemorial had been
effervescent in the blood of the race. The legend runs that the old lord
in the beginning of his days, as there were no wars at home, had betaken
himself in search of loot and glory "to outlandish countries far away in
the East, to a land inhabited by a people little better than savages,
who instead of tilling the ground or digging for tin, passed the time in
roving from place to place as they had need of fresh pasturage for their
cattle, and that they lived in tents covered with the skins of their
flocks, and that their raiment was made of the same material, and yet
they had rich stores of jewels and gold, which they had obtained by the
plunder of their more settled and industrious neighbours."
It is said, most probably with truth, that St. Germoe's Chair was
erected by some member of the Pengersick family, possibly as a
peace-offering to Mother Church after some more than usually wild and
lawless deed. The recess in the south chancel wall of Germoe Church,
with its canopy of carved stone now meant to be used as sedilia, most
probably was the tomb of some member of this restless race. This brief
account of the Pengersick family may be closed with the prosaic
statement that one of them represented Helston in Parliament in 1397 and
again in 1406.
The manor of Pengersick in the reign of Henry VIII. passed by purchase
to the family of Militon. The Militons descended from a daughter of the
Pengersicks[56] it is interesting to note. According to Leland, Job
Militon, the purchaser, came from Devonshire. On his arrival at
Pengersick he set about building the present crumbling grey tower, which
though sadly shorn of its former splendours dominates the valley. Hals,
whose veracity is much open to doubt, states that Militon had fled to
this remote corner of the world to hide his head and avoid avenging
justice, having imbrued his hands in the blood of a fellow-man. Whether
this deed was done by accident or with intent Hals does not say. It is
more than probable that it was never done at all. The reason for the
fortifying of the house of the Militons is not far to seek: it stands
close to the sea, and the sea in those days was the open highway of all
lawless spirits. Often from the summit of the grey Keep of Pengersick,
in the years that followed its erection, might have been seen the sails
of Barbary corsairs on the bosom of the sea. The crew of the merchantmen
and the lonely fisherman in his little boat were alike eagerly snapped
up by these marauders to swell the growing population of slaves in
Tripoli and Algiers. Under the shadow of night, when the sea was calm
and the landing good, these rovers of the sea would steal inshore in
open boats and surround some sleeping hamlet or farmhouse. The strong
men were carried off to labour as slaves under the hot sun of Africa
till death liberated them from their misery, whilst the portion that
fell to the fair daughter was the listless ennui of the harem. The sea
rovers were not the only danger that would menace the dwellers in
Pengersick Castle in those days; the constant wars in which this country
was embroiled would bring danger also from privateers, the licensed
robbers of the sea. Spanish, French and Dutch men-of-war and privateers,
each in turn would appear in the bay as the centuries drifted on. From
generation to generation, down to the first fifteen years of this
century, Mount's Bay echoed to the hoarse rumble of guns, and the cannon
smoke of ships engaged in deadly conflict drifted over its waters;
whilst numbers of lawless men, smugglers by repute and pirates[57] when
occasion served, dwelt upon its shores. Well might the first Militon
ensconce himself within the fortified walls of his Keep of Pengersick,
considering the condition of the times in which he lived.
An extract from the State Papers for the year 1526 makes it clear that
the ancient spirit of the wild Pengersicks was by no means absent from
the souls of the Militons. A Portuguese ship had been wrecked at
Gunwalloe and much cargo saved. The cargo was seized by the servants of
Job Militon, second of the name at Pengersick, Thomas St. Aubyn and
William Godolphin; when the unfortunate owner applied to the justices
for redress he was told that such was the custom of the country, and
that no redress of any kind was possible. It may be here mentioned that
Job Militon was ultimately made Governor of St. Michael's Mount after
the ill-starred rebellion of Humphrey Arundell.
A fragmentary account of the ancient tower, before cruel neglect and
decay had done their fatal work, may be of interest: "On the wainscot of
the upper storey, which is curiously carved and painted, there are
several quaint pieces of poetry, which are now nearly effaced. Beneath
the painting of a blind man carrying a lame man on his back occur the
lines:
"The lame which lacketh for to go
Is borne upon the blinde's back,
So naturally between them twoo,
The one supplied the other's lack.
The blinde to laime doth lend his might,
The laime to blinde doth yield his sight."
Under another painting, which represented the constant dripping of water
upon a rock, the following lines are found:
"What thing is harder than a rock!
What softer than water clear!
Yet will the same with often drop
The hard rock pierce, as doth appear.
Even so nothing so hard to attayne,
But may be had with labour and payne."
Other inscriptions and paintings in this ancient stronghold illustrated
the blessedness of loyalty to the Sovereign and the happiness of the
kingdom that is served by faithful and patriotic Ministers; another the
sacredness of the ties of marriage; and yet another, under the
representation of an ass laden with dainties and feeding upon thistles,
the folly of the miser, who denies himself the necessaries of life and
lays up store for others to wanton upon.
We can only deplore the spirit of neglect in generations that are gone
that allowed this heritage of a former age to crumble and waste away by
wind and rain and vandal hands. But for Dr. Borlase we should have never
known of the former existence of the ancient frescos and their message
of homely philosophy and truth.
A feature of Pengersick Tower is the numerous loopholes for the
discharge of arrows upon besiegers, and also the elaborate arrangement
for pouring boiling pitch or lead upon assailants attacking the doors.
The race of Militon did not long continue owners of Pengersick. Job
Militon, son of the purchaser, was succeeded by his son William Militon,
who died without issue, leaving his inheritance to be divided amongst
his six sisters; the estate thus ultimately passed through the female
line to the Godolphins and the Bullers.
Another ancient family owning considerable estates in the parish were
the Sparnons, of Sparnon and Pengelly. They seem to have held their
estates at any rate from the fifteenth century, if not earlier. We find
from the Church registers that at the meridian of their prosperity they
made alliances both with the Godolphins and the Arundells. The outlines
of the ancient home of the Sparnons at Sparnon, under the shadow of the
eastern end of Tregoning Hill, may still be traced. The Sparnons
ultimately built themselves a larger house on higher ground at Pengelly,
part of which still exists, serving as a farm house. In our Church and
churchyard several of the memorials of the Sparnons still survive. Their
estates were purchased in the eighteenth century by Mr. Justice Buller,
and are still held by his descendant, the present Lord Churston. The
Carter family settled in America, who in recent years have been such
generous benefactors to Breage Church, descend on the female side from
the Sparnons. It is pleasant to realise how frequently the offshoots of
old families renew themselves in new lands, sending forth vigorous
shoots to carry on old traditions and ideals of service and usefulness.
FOOTNOTES:
[51] For the history of the Manor of Methleigh I am indebted to the Rev.
T. Taylor, of St. Just.
[52] See Vivian's "Visitations of Cornwall," Lyson's "Cornwall," etc.,
etc.
[53] Other powerful branches of the Arundell family were settled at
Trerice, Mandarva and Tremoderet, in the Parish of Duloe.
[54] See Lyson's "Cornwall."
[55] Scenal Series, page 251.
[56] See a paper by the Rev. T. Taylor on "The Bevilles of Drennick and
Woolstan," No. LIV. Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall.
[57] State Papers.
Worthies and Unworthies.
_Harry Carter_, _John Carter, "King of Prussia"_; _Smuggling Ways and
Days_; _William Lemon_, _Captain Tobias Martin, Poet_, _Joseph Boaden,
Mathematician_.