[71] At Rospeith, in this parish, according to Davies Gilbert, P.R.S.,
the last native wolf in England was seen.
[72] The Manor of Borlase-Burgess, formerly the seat of the Borlase
family in St. Wenn, 'is said to have been given by William Rufus to
a certain Norman who was Lord of Talfer in that country, and whose
posterity assumed the name of Borlase.'--(Borlase's MSS.)
[73] At Pendeen lived, in the time of Henry VII., one Richard Pendyne,
'one of the rebels who, under Lord Audley, Flammock, and Joseph,'
dismantled Tehidy, the residence of John Basset, then Sheriff of the
County, and did much other mischief in the West--an offence which he
expiated by losing his estates.
[74] According to Kippis, it was the St. Just living which was
subsequently procured through this interest.
[75] Second book of the 'Antiquities of Cornwall.'
[76] Borlase was a bounteous contributor of minerals for the adornment
of Pope's grotto, in which the poet fixed his Cornish friend's name
in capital letters, formed of crystals; gracefully saying that he had
placed them where they would remind him of the donor--'in the shade,
but shining.'
[77] The Doctor was one of the old-fashioned Churchmen who dreaded
_trop de zèle_, and, probably without much reluctance, issued in his
magisterial capacity a warrant to 'apprehend all such able-bodied men
as had no lawful calling or sufficient maintenance;' in fact, he was
afraid of riots amongst his excitable parishioners. The squabble is
recorded in the great Revivalist's journals for the summers of 1784 and
1785. But the end of the affair was that Wesley, having on the first
occasion appeared before the Bench at St. Michael's Mount, and on the
second having called upon Dr. Borlase himself, at St. Just, in response
to the warrant, on the latter occasion found that the Doctor had gone
to church--and so the matter ended.
[78] It was his habit to rise at five, and go to bed at nine.
[79] A second edition was published in London in 1769.
_THE BOSCAWENS._
[Illustration: (beginning of chapter vignette.)]
_THE BOSCAWENS._
A novel feature presents itself in this case to the would-be historian
which does not appear, at least to so great an extent, in the cases
of certain other distinguished Cornish families. The Killigrews, the
Arundells, the Godolphins, and the Grenvilles, for instance, all
yielded more than one man of mark deserving of special notice; but this
can hardly be said of the family of Boscawen: the interest centres in
Admiral the Honourable Edward Boscawen, almost to the exclusion of
all his ancestors, and of all his descendants. And he affords another
instance, like Opie, of being doubly secure of a niche in the temple
of Fame, from his own distinguished career, as well as through the wit
and distinguished social qualities of his wife; who, the writer regrets
to add, was not--as the majority of her husband's ancestresses, and as
those of most distinguished Cornishmen were--a Cornish-woman.
It would probably be of little use now to speculate upon the causes
why the Boscawens, for at least five centuries, continued to hold a
well-recognised position in the county, acquiring by their judicious
marriages into wealthy families vast landed interests in various parts
of Cornwall, but chiefly in the vicinities of Buryan and Tregothnan
and in the north-western part of the county, doubtless holding their
own amongst their fellows, and doing what the world would call their
'duty;' and yet contributing, so far as I can ascertain, scarcely
one person whose name is to be found in the usual records of English
history until we reach the eighteenth century.
Yet it must be noted that the Boscawens are of very old standing in
Cornwall. Hals indeed tells us that the first Boscawen who settled in
Cornwall was an Irish gentleman;--and Hals may be right; for he had
peculiar facilities for learning the early traditions of the family
from the neighbourhood of Fentongollan (the seat of the Halses) to
Tregothnan, the seat of the Boscawens; and also from the fact that
one member of the family 'Hugh Boscawen, Gent., Master of Arts,' as a
labour of love, taught young Hals, and many other youngsters, all that
they knew of Latin and Greek in an old school-house in St. Michael
Penkivel Church.[80] Nor was the Master of Arts the only member of
the family who dispensed information free of charge; for Hals tells us
of a Charles Boscawen of Nansavallan who was a barrister-at-law, 'and
who made noe further use thereof in his elder years then to councill
and assist his friends in all their lawe concerns gratis.' He died in
London, without issue; and was Member of Parliament for Truro,--an
ancient borough, with which, as we shall see, the Boscawens were
intimately connected.
At Boscawen Rose, in the parish of St. Buryan, within a few miles of
the Land's End, where the name is still found attached to places in
the parish, the first Boscawen is said to have exchanged his Irish
patronymic for that of the place where he took up his abode, and which
was probably well enough described by its Cornish name, which signifies
the Valley of Elder-trees. It is interesting to notice how many of
these trees (much esteemed by the old Cornish folk), and almost these
alone, still are to be found near the wind-whipped shores of the Land's
End.[81]
I find no record of the marriages of the first two or three
generations; but in the reign of Edward I. (about 1292), Henry de
Boscawen married Hawise Trewoof; and some half century later (1335)
John de Boscawen married an heiress, Joan de Tregothnan,[82] thus
establishing a connexion between those two names, which has ever since
been maintained; for Tregothnan, 'the place of well-wooded valleys,'
is still the family seat: it is now the Cornish residence of Evelyn
Boscawen, sixth Viscount Falmouth. The present house, a handsome
structure, was built by the architect, W. Wilkins, jun., about the year
1815, replacing a more picturesque but smaller and less commodious
building.
Intimate relations with the exquisitely wooded banks of the Fal were
still further established by the marriage of the son of the aforesaid
John Boscawen of Tregothnan with another heiress, named Joan, like
his mother, who brought her husband the wealth of the family of
Albalanda or Blanchland, in the parish of Kea, on the opposite side
of the river to Tregothnan; a place where, according to Lysons,
copper was first successfully worked in Cornwall. And, while on this
subject, it seems not unworthy of remark that the alliances of the
Boscawens and the Albalandas with the families who resided on the Fal
and its tributaries were numerous. Rose Albalanda married a William
Dangrous of Carclew, in the fifth year of Edward III.; and the heiress
of Trenowith, who married Hugh Boscawen, a great grandson of the
first-named John, was herself the descendant of ancestors called after
Tolverne, Trewarthenick and Tregarrick--names which still belong to
places on the shores of the river, or hard by. Nor did the Boscawens
neglect to cultivate acquaintance and to intermarry with other Cornish
families who made more noise in the world than those to whom we have
been referring; for they and the Albalandas also married with Arundell,
Bassett, St. Aubyn, Lower, Godolphin, Carminow, and Trevanion.
He who married Elizabeth St. Aubyn for his first wife was one Richard
Boscawen, who paid a fine of five pounds rather than undergo the
expensive ceremony of being made a Knight of the Bath at the coronation
of Henry VII., possibly because he was an old man, and dreaded a long
journey to the metropolis, for he died four years afterwards, in 1489.
His grandson, Hugh, who by the way married Phelip, a daughter of the
fine old Cornish family of Carminow, now extinct, paid a similar
fine of four marks at the coronation of Queen Mary; for what reason
I know not. In the 'Bayliff of Blackmore' there is a long story of
his being outwitted by a family in Truro; but the course pursued by
these Boscawens, as narrated in that curious MS., was not unusual in
those days. With the great-grandson of the last-named Hugh, himself
bearing the same Christian name, commences, so far as I am aware,
a more particular connexion of the family with the ancient borough,
now the city, of Truro, where the principal street (formerly two
streets, then bearing other names, but now thrown into one) is still
called after them, 'Boscawen.' He was chosen Knight of the Shire for
Cornwall in 1626; and Edward, his fifth son, who represented Tregony
in Parliament, was one of the leading members of the House of Commons,
temp. Charles II. This Hugh, who was 'Chief of the Coat Armour' at the
Heralds' Visitation of Cornwall in 1620, was likewise in that year
Recorder of the Borough. He had three sons: Hugh,[83] of whom nothing
seems to be known except that he married a Clinton; Edward, a rich
Turkey merchant, who was a Member of Parliament, temp. Charles II., and
died at Trefusis, a lovely place overlooking the waters of Falmouth
Harbour; and Nicholas, who joined the Parliamentary army (a rare thing,
by the way, for a Cornish gentleman to do) with a troop raised from
among his own tenantry. But the military career of Nicholas Boscawen
(how terminated I have not been able to ascertain) must have been a
short one; for, when only twenty-two years of age and unmarried, he
was buried in Westminster Abbey, whence his remains were removed some
fifteen years afterwards, at the Restoration, to be flung into a common
pit in St. Margaret's churchyard.
We now approach that part of the family history when the individual
members cannot be quite so rapidly dismissed from notice.
The only son of Edward Boscawen (the Turkey merchant) and Jael
Godolphin was another Hugh; who, like his father and uncles, seems to
have been no friend to the Stuarts, and to have assisted in bringing
to England William III. This no doubt explains his being made Captain
of St. Mawes Castle, Warden of the Stannaries, Steward of the Duchy
of Cornwall in the room of Francis Godolphin, Viscount Rialton;
Comptroller of the Household; a Privy Councillor; and finally, in 1720,
his being ennobled by the titles of Baron Boscawen Rose and Viscount
Falmouth. He was also Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, a post which he
resigned the year of his death. He several times, before gaining his
title, sat for Cornwall in Parliament; but gave up all his appointments
except that of Warden of the Stannaries, on the defeat of the Excise
Scheme.
Hugh Boscawen seems to have been quite carried away by his political
zeal, for he was foremost in arresting, or trying to arrest, any, even
of his old friends, who were suspected of holding high monarchical
principles; amongst whom may be named Sir Richard Vyvyan, of
Trelowarren, and, as we have already seen,[84] Mr. Basset, of Tehidy.
He died of an apoplexy, at Trefusis, in 1734, having married, in 1700,
Charlotte Godfrey, a niece of the great Duke of Marlborough, by whom he
had eighteen children, eight sons and ten daughters.
The second Viscount of the same name seems, though of a kind and
gentle disposition, not to have possessed a very brilliant intellect.
Davies Gilbert tells the story of him that he is said to have mistaken
the phrase, 'Optat ephippia _Bos_,' for the Latin of his own name; and
that he always confounded Horace Walpole with the Roman poet whose name
is so familiar to us. Probably a somewhat unattractive sort of man, for
his wife often threatened, so Mrs. Delany says, that she 'wou'd part
with my lord.'
Yet he was not without shrewdness, and had some political influence.
Votes which overthrew Sir Robert Walpole were carried against the
Minister by his losing the majority of the Scotch and Cornish boroughs;
the latter of which were managed by Lord Falmouth and Thomas Pitt.
Indeed, the second Viscount Falmouth, like so many others of his
contemporaries, was a great dealer in boroughs. It is of him that
Dodington tells the story, that he went to the Minister to ask him a
favour, which the latter seemed unwilling to grant; upon which Lord
Falmouth said, 'Remember, sir, _we_ are _seven_!' And Dover says that
Lord Cowper resigned the Bedchamber on the 'Beefeaters' being given to
Lord Falmouth:--'The latter, who is powerful in elections, insisted on
having it; the other had nothing but a promise from the King, which the
Ministry had already twice forced him to break.'
He was also Yeoman of the Guard to George II., and in 1745, according
to Chauncey, raised a regiment at his own expense to serve against
the Scotch rebels; and he had such influence in Cornwall that 6,387
persons joined an association, the members of which bound themselves
to appear armed in the best manner they could, under his command, to
defend the King and the Government. Mrs. Thomson, in her 'Memoirs of
Viscountess Sandon,' tells us how the second Viscount's wife, H. C. M.
Russell, _née_ Smith, was in desperate straits to get herself appointed
a Lady of the Bedchamber, and wrote the most pressing letters to Mrs.
Clayton on the subject. In one she says that she could not sleep a wink
all night for thinking of it!
His brother Nicholas went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, took
holy orders, and on the Duke of Newcastle's visit to the University,
as Chancellor, was created a D.D. He was appointed a King's Chaplain,
and 'Dean' of Buryan in 1756, Rector of St. Mabyn and of St. Michael
Penkivel in 1774, and a Prebendary of Westminster in 1777. The only
remarkable thing about him seems to have been his appointment as 'Dean'
of Buryan, the exact significance of which dignity it is difficult to
discover, though it is said that this 'Deanery' had jurisdiction over
three parishes, and the probate of wills therein, and that there were
three prebends attached to it; it is not uninteresting to note this
tendency in a member of the Boscawen family to 'hark back to their
early St. Buryan haunts.[85] His wife, Mrs. Hatton, was, I believe, the
widow of a linendraper in Newgate Street.
There was another brother, John--a Major-General in the army;--and
the 4th son of the second Viscount, the Hon. George Boscawen, was
another military member of the family; he was present at the battles of
Dettingen and Fontenoy, and represented Truro in Parliament from 1761
to 1764. His daughter, Mary, maid-of-honour to the Princess Charlotte,
wrote a memoir of the Princess.
William Boscawen, younger son of the above General George Boscawen, was
educated at Eton, where he became a great favourite of Dr. Barnard.
He became a Gentleman Commoner of Exeter College, and on settling in
London studied law under a Cornish lawyer, Mr. Justice Buller, about
1770, and went the Western Circuit. William Boscawen does not appear
to have taken his degree at Oxford; but Wordsworth, in his 'Scholæ
Academicæ,' points out that it was not unusual during the last century,
and at the commencement of the present, for gentlemen intending for the
law to leave the University without taking a degree. He published two
or three law treatises, was a Commissioner in Bankruptcy, and in 1785
he was made a Commissioner of the Victualling Office. By his marriage
with Charlotte Ibbetson he had five daughters. He was much attached
to literary pursuits, and translated, first the 'Odes,' 'Epodes,'
and 'Carmen Seculare' of Horace, then the 'Satires,' 'Epistles,' and
'Art of Poetry;'--and in many respects his translation was considered
superior to Francis's. He was much indebted for his 'notes' to Dr.
Foster, of Eton College. In 1801, he published some original poems and
other works. A friend who met him in the Strand a few days before his
death noticed that he was looking very ill; and on the 8th May, 1811,
he died of asthma, at Little Chelsea. He was of an affectionate and
benevolent disposition; and the Literary Fund he considered almost as
his own child, writing the annual verses for it till within five years
of his death.
A contemporary critic says of his literary productions, that if
in them 'he does not take a lead among his contemporaries, he at
least discovers an elegant taste, a poetical mind, and a correct
versification.' 'Could his character be truly drawn, it would exhibit a
consummate picture of everything that is amiable and estimable in human
nature.' 'Incapable of _being_ an enemy, it was never known that he had
one; and his friends were as numerous as his virtues.'
As a specimen of his powers as a translator, his rendering of the
well-known fifth ode of the 1st Book of Horace, will, I venture to
think, compare, not altogether unfavourably, with the productions of
his mightier predecessors in the task--Milton and Cowley.
'What youth bedew'd with moist perfume
Courts thee, O Pyrrha! graceful maid,
With neat simplicity array'd
In the sweet bower where roses bloom?
'For whom dost thou in ringlets form
Thy golden locks?--Oft shall he wail
Thy truth, swift changing as the gale,
View the wild waves, and shudder at the storm.
'Who now, all credulous and gay,
Enjoys thy smile? on whose vain pride
Thy fickle favour shines untry'd,
And soft, deceitful breezes play?
'My fate the pictur'd wreck displays;
The dripping garments that remain
In mighty Neptune's sacred fane
Record my glad escape, my grateful praise.'
But a third brother of the second Viscount--Edward, the Admiral--was
destined to live in the pages of history; and of him I propose to treat
more at length at the conclusion of this brief sketch of the family
generally, which now draws rapidly to a close.
George Evelyn, the Admiral's youngest son, was the third Viscount,
issue having failed through his two uncles, and George Evelyn's
brothers having died before the death of their uncle, the second
Viscount. Of these brothers it may be observed, that Edward Hugh,[86]
the eldest, who was M.P. for Truro, died abroad in 1774; and that
William Glanville, a youth of great promise, and an officer in the
navy, was drowned when eighteen years of age, in 1769, whilst bathing
at Port Royal, Jamaica. In him, said Mrs. Delany, 'his father's (the
Admiral's) merit revived,' and he was 'the delight and glory of the
lives of his mother and sisters.' I hardly know whether the following
lines on his death are from Mrs. Delany's pen, or from his mother's:
'Ah, William! till thy hapless hour
Shall fade on mem'ry's pensive eye
The muse on Fate shall curses shower,
That doomed a youth like thee to die.
'Though lost, alas! thy lovely name
With incense shall the skies perfume;
And ev'ry flower of fairest fame
Shall wish where William sleeps, to bloom.
'Till Virtue seek her native sphere,
Till honour cease below to shine,
For thee shall Virtue drop the tear,
And Honour's envied praise be thine.'
There can, however, be little doubt that it was a mother's pen which
described him, on his cenotaph, as that 'most lovely, most beloved
youth.'
But to return to the surviving and youngest brother, George Evelyn, who
was destined to perpetuate the title. He is said to have been very like
his mother, who describes herself as 'a little personage;' and he must
have inherited the talents of both his parents, for he did remarkably
well at Winchester, and very early showed a determination to follow in
his illustrious father's footsteps by fighting against the enemies of
his country, notwithstanding the wishes of his family to the contrary.
For the sum of £400 his mother at last unwillingly procured for her
'poor little soldier,' as she termed him, an ensigncy in the 4th or
King's Own Regiment of Foot; and he, proceeding forthwith to America,
was soon after present at the battle of Lexington. When Prince William
Henry, afterwards William IV., came into Falmouth harbour in the _Hebe_
in 1785, he was entertained at Tregothnan, and thence, under Viscount
Falmouth's guidance, visited all the Cornish 'lions.' On 25th October,
1787, Mrs. Boscawen writes thus to Mrs. Delany: 'My son has been a
peacemaker in Cornwall, and was happy enough to pacify near a thousand
angry miners, who were marching into Truro to pull their houses about
their ears;' and here it may be noted that one of his ancestors
had performed a similar valuable public service when the Hon. Hugh
Boscawen, Lord Warden of the Stannaries of Cornwall and Devon, presided
over the Convocation of the twenty-four Stannators, 20th February to
20th April, 1710, held in the Coinage Hall, Truro; on which occasion,
by a judicious speech, he dispersed a mob of some 5,000 or 6,000 men,
tinners and others, led by one Charles Tregea, who had assembled to
intimidate the Convocation, and 'force them to a farm.' The object of
this Convocation was 'to keep up the price of tin, and to confirm the
laws, customs, and constitutions of the Stannaries;' but it led to no
satisfactory result.
The third Viscount's two sisters married well--one, Frances, gained for
her husband the Hon. John Leveson Gower, Secretary to the Admiralty;
and the other, Elizabeth, secured Henry, fifth Duke of Beaufort--an
affair which does not seem to have altogether satisfied that family.
Her mother writes to Mrs. Delany, that the Beauforts were not
particularly well pleased with the match;--'And yet, my dear madam,'
says the sprightly Admiral's widow, 'does not Admiral Boscawen's
daughter, with £10,000 now, and at least 5 (_i.e._ £5,000) more
by-and-by, with many excellent wife-like qualities, and no faults that
ever they heard of, deserve some gentler welcome, _especially as nobody
asks anything of them_?' The Duke seems to have made the Cornish lassie
a most devoted and affectionate husband.
George Evelyn Boscawen was succeeded in the title by his son, Edward,
fourth Viscount and first Earl of Falmouth. He was an officer in the
Coldstream Guards, and, like so many other members of his family,
Recorder of Truro--the last who filled that office. He was the second
of Lord Winchelsea in his famous duel with the Duke of Wellington,
fought on Wimbledon Common in March, 1829, when the Duke fired and
missed, and Lord Winchelsea then fired in the air and apologized.
This nobleman rebuilt Tregothnan House, near the site of an older and
picturesque mansion, in which might have been seen many carved stones
from the old tower and chapel at Fentongollan; and he made the famous
drive to it from Tresilian Bridge, an undertaking the result of which
he is said to have always contemplated with much satisfaction. His son,
George Henry, fifth Viscount, and second and last Earl, died unmarried
in 1852, fourteen years after his father. He was a man of considerable
ability, taking, in 1832, a first-class at Oxford; and he was one of
the best amateur violinists of his day. As we have said, with him the
earldom lapsed. His cousin Evelyn succeeded him as sixth Viscount, and
has been one of the most distinguished patrons of the turf, as well
as a most fortunate owner of race-horses, having, as I am informed,
won the Derby, the St. Leger, and the Two Thousand Guineas twice, and
the Oaks and the One Thousand Guineas four times each; besides other
important races.
_ADMIRAL THE RIGHT HON. EDWARD BOSCAWEN._
'My lov'd Boscawen dead! 'tis all a lye--
Fame's trumpet sounds "He cannot, shall not die--
At Lagos still triumphant he survives,
And still at Louisbourg immortal lives."'
_Gentleman's Magazine_, Jan., 1761.
'A great Admiral.'