A Book of Cornwall

"On the southern and western sides of this venerable ruin is the ancient burying-ground, strewed over tens of thousands of human bones and teeth as white as snow; and, strange as it may seem, the showers of sand which fall all around hardly ever remain on these melancholy relics of mortality."20

Unhappily nothing was done to preserve this little church after it had been excavated from the sand. The three heads from the doorway were carried off for Truro Museum; visitors pulled out stones, boys tore down the walls, and now little more than a gable remains. But to this was added the mischievous meddlesomeness of the curate-in-charge, the Rev. William Haslam, who turned the altar-stones about, as he had got a theory into his head that they had formed a tomb, and rebuilt them in this fashion, pointing east and west, and cut upon the altar-slab the words "S. Piranus." It is purposed to undo Mr. Haslam's work, and replace the altar as originally found. More should be done. Cement should be run along the top of such wall as remains to save it from falling.

The Rev. C. Collins Trelawny, soon after the discovery, wrote an account in a book entitled Perranzabulo, the Lost Church Found, which went through seven editions (1837-72).

In 1844 Mr. Haslam published another book on the subject, and again another in 1888, From Death unto Life, in which he assumed to himself the credit of Mr. Mitchell's discovery. The church has not the extreme antiquity attributed to it. The fact of there being a chancel is sufficient evidence that it does not belong to the sixth century, as none of the earliest Irish churches possess this feature.21 It is about two centuries later, though doubtless a reconstruction of the old materials, and perhaps on the old lines. Judging from Irish examples, in one point only is Mr. Haslam more correct than Mr. Mitchell. He considered the niche over the altar to have been a walled-up window, and in this was right.

The story of S. Piran, or Kieran, as he is called in Ireland, is of sufficient interest to be given.

He was born in Clear Island, in the county of Cork, the extreme south point of Ireland. He established a monastery at Saighir, in the extreme north of Munster. The legend is that his first disciples were a boar, a fox, a badger, a wolf, and a doe. And in this we have an instance of the manner in which simple facts assume a fabulous character in the hands of late writers. The district was that of the clan of Hy Sinnach, i. e. the foxes; an adjoining tribe was that of the Hy Broc, or the badgers; an Ossorian disciple was regarded as Os, i. e. a doe; and his wolf was no other than one of the Hy Faeladh, which has a double meaning of "hospitable" or "wolfish;" another disciple was S. Tore, and the name means "boar."

Kieran, as his name is in Irish, invoked the assistance of his mother, Liadhain, and induced her to start a school for girls at Kellyon, not far from Saighir. The arrangement was not happy, as at least one of his disciples carried on a lively flirtation with Liadhain's damsels.

How Kieran placed Buriena the Slender with Liadhain, and how a chief ran away with her, and how Kieran got her back, shall be told when we come to Land's End. It was possibly on account of this unpleasantness that he withdrew to Cornwall, and brought with him both his nurse, Cocca, and Buriena. But there were other reasons. Kieran belonged to the royal race of Ossory, and in his time Ossory was overrun by Cucraidh, who massacred all he could lay hands on of the royal race of the O'Bairrche, to which Kieran belonged. Most of Kieran's clan migrated to the north of Ossory, where they maintained their independence till 642. It was not likely that Kieran cared to remain in the country under an usurper whose hands were steeped in the blood of his brethren. Cucraidh tried to make terms with the saint, and his granddaughter was either put under his rule, or else voluntarily entrusted herself to him. But even if Cucraidh invited Kieran to remain, he was but under-king to Aengus, King of Munster, and Kieran quarrelled with the latter and denounced him to death. In fact, Aengus was killed in battle in 489. There was consequently very good reason why the saint should leave Ireland.

Kieran's monastery at Saighir was on a princely scale. "Numerous were his cattle; there were ten doors to the shed of his kine, and ten stalls at every door, and ten calves for every stall, and ten cows with every calf… Moreover, there were fifty tame horses with Kieran for tilling and ploughing the ground. And this was his dinner every night: a little bit of barley bread and two roots, and water of a spring. Skins of fawns were his raiment, and a haircloth over these. He always slept on a pillow of stone." Carantock was his scribe, and some of the books written by Carantock were long preserved at Saighir. One of Kieran's disciples was Carthag, who, although a saint, was a somewhat loose fish, and gave the abbot not a little trouble. S. Itha put one of his escapades in as delicate a way as might be when she said-

"A son will be born to Carthag,And Carthag will not be thought better of accordingly."

On account of his disreputable conduct, Kieran kicked him out, and bade him go to Rome, hoping that he might sow his wild oats in that chaste and holy place.

One day Kieran of Clonmacneis and the two Brendans came to visit him. The steward approached him in dismay. "There is nothing to offer these distinguished guests except some scraps of rusty bacon and water."

"Then serve up the bacon and the water."

Now there was at table a lay brother, and when the bacon was set before him he thrust his platter contemptuously from him, for he was tired of bacon, and when out visiting, by dad! he expected to be fed like a gintleman.

"Hah!" said Kieran turning angry, "you are dainty, son of Comgal; it is just such as you who would not scruple to eat ass's flesh in Lent."

Across the backbone of Cornwall is Ladock, and if I am not mistaken, Kieran planted there his old nurse, Cocca, who also became head of a religious house for women.

It is said that every Christmas night, after divine service at his own monastery, Kieran started off walking, and arrived at early morning to perform divine worship for his old nurse, and give her the compliments of the season. The date of his death is not known, but it is thought to have been about 550.

A friend writes to me: -

"It may be foolishness, but to me such a place as the ruined church of Peranzabulo appeals most powerfully. I determined to find it unaided, and when found I spent hours there, sometimes at dark, trying as best I might to recall the place as it once was, and to revivify the bones which were lying in several little heaps where the workmen, who had been railing about the ruin, had collected them.

"It seems to me that one loses a great deal in stifling and choking the imagination.

"In the dusk of evening, with the swallows in vast quantities gathered for their flight to the south, and the white bones lying before me, the wind sighing and piping in the grass, and the sea moaning in the distance, the scene was one that deeply impressed me, and will never be forgotten."

There is now some talk of a very careful and conservative restoration, so as to preserve what yet remains.

The rock and hermitage of Roche, standing up in a district that has been turned over and undermined for tin, and is strewn with ruined engine-houses, deserve to be seen. The rock is a prong shooting up boldly, and a chapel and the cell of an ancient hermit have been constructed on it.

S. Denis is a conical hill with an earthwork round it; in fact, it was an old Dinas, or palace of a chief. The church within was called Lan-dinas. The bishops of Exeter, not understanding the real meaning, concluded that it was the church of S. Denis, and dedicated it to the Bishop-martyr of Paris, a somewhat apocryphal personage. So two fortified headlands were each Lan-an-dinas,22 and they were converted into churches of S. Anthony.

S. Columb Major has a fine church, which unhappily suffered from an explosion of gunpowder in 1676, when three boys carelessly set fire to a barrel of this explosive, which had been placed in the rood-loft staircase. The windows and roof were blown away, and the pillars thrown out of the perpendicular. Happily the fine carved benches were unhurt; they are curious. Apparently a travelling show of wild beasts passed through the town when they were being carved, and the workmen reproduced on them the strange beasts they saw.

There is an interesting and picturesque old slated house at the entrance to the churchyard.

The old custom of hurling is still observed at S. Columb on the feast, which is in November, and the silver ball is thrown in the market-place.

S. Columb Minor bench-ends, according to Hals, were of black oak, and bore the date 1525, and it had a fine rood-screen with loft, "a most curious and costly piece of workmanship, carved, and painted with gold, silver, vermillion, and bice, and is the masterpiece of art in those parts of that kind." This has all disappeared now.

S. Agnes' Head, pronounced S. Anne's, presumedly takes its name from Ann, the mother of the gods among the Irish Celts, and probably also among the Cymri. She gives her name to the Two Paps of Ana, in the county of Kerry. The parish was constituted late. There was no such parish at the time of the Conquest, and the present church was built and consecrated in 1484.

A story is told of a house in S. Agnes. When Wesley visited this part of Cornwall preaching, he was refused shelter elsewhere than in an ancient mansion that was unoccupied because haunted by ghosts.

Wesley went to the house, and sat up reading by candlelight. At midnight he heard a noise in the hall, and on issuing from his room saw that a banquet was spread, and that richly-apparelled ladies and gentlemen were about the board.

Then one cavalier, with dark, piercing eyes and a pointed black beard, wearing a red feather in his cap, said: "We invite you to eat and to drink with us," and pointed to an empty chair.

Wesley at once took the place indicated, but before he put in his mouth a bite of food or drank a drop, said: "It is my custom to ask a blessing; stand all!" Then the spectres rose.

Wesley began his accustomed grace, "The name of God, high over all-" when suddenly the room darkened, and all the apparitions vanished.

The story of the creation, subsequent history, and extinction of those English boroughs which were swept away by the Reform Bill of 1832, and which were commonly designated as pocket or rotten boroughs, is too curious an episode in Parliamentary history to be allowed to remain in the limbo of Parliamentary reports-a charnel-house of the bones of facts-unclothed with the personal reminiscences and local details which invest these dry bones with flesh, and give to them a living interest.

In a very few years there will not be a man alive who can recall the last election for them. Their story is this: They were creations of the Crown when its tenure of power was insecure, and the object aimed at was to pack the House of Commons with members who were mere creatures of the Crown. The shock of the Reformation had upset men's minds. What had been held sacred for ages was sacred no longer, and the men who had been encouraged to profane the altar were ready enough to turn their hands against the throne. The revolt of the Parliament under Charles I. was long in brewing; its possibility was seen, and the creation of pocket boroughs was devised as an expedient to prevent it.

In order that the Crown might have a strong body of obedient henchmen in the House, a number of villages or mere insignificant hamlets were accorded the franchise, villages and hamlets on land belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall that went with the royal family as an appanage of the Prince of Wales, or were under the control of pliant courtiers. As the country was in a ferment of religious passion, many, if not most, of these new boroughs were specially chosen because far removed from ecclesiastical influence, either because they lay at the junction of several parishes, or because they were places remote from churches.

In Cornwall in the reign of Edward VI. eight petty places were given the privilege of returning two members apiece. These were Bossiney, a mound in a field, with a farmhouse adjoining, West Looe, Grampound, Penryn, Newport, Camelford, and Mitchell.

Queen Mary followed by raising S. Ives to the position of a borough; Elizabeth proceeded to confer the same privileges on S. Germans, S. Mawes, Tregony, East Looe, Fowey, and Callington. Those called into existence by Edward were all under Duchy influence with the exception of Mitchell, "the meanest hamlet within or without Cornwall," which was under the control of the Arundels of Lanherne.

Four of the new boroughs had been places belonging to monastic establishments, but since the suppression of the religious houses they had passed under the domination of the Crown. S. Ives, which had been constituted a borough by Philip and Mary, was in the hands of Paulet, Marquis of Winchester who could be relied upon. For the same reason Callington was given two members in 1584, as this also was held by the Paulets. The fear of ecclesiastical influence is conspicuous in numerous instances. Camelford is two miles distant from a church, and the only chapel in it was confiscated and demolished. Saltash was another churchless place; it belonged to the parish of S. Stephen's, two miles distant, and had in it no other place of worship than a municipal chapel. Grampound was at a like distance from its parish church, S. Creed; Tregony was planted at the junction of several parishes; Mitchell divided between two equidistant churches two miles away. Another remarkable feature in these boroughs is that they rapidly slipped away from the influence of the Crown, and fell under the control of great landlords. Founded for the servile support of the Throne, they became a prey, not even to Duchy tenants, but to private owners, and resolved into saleable commodities, that passed rapidly from hand to hand. In 1783 it was noticed that seven peers directed or influenced the return of twenty members; eleven commoners controlled the election of twenty-one; and the people one only, that of S. Ives. It was a recognised thing that the man who held six boroughs in his hand, that is to say, who could return twelve members to support the Ministry, could demand and obtain a peerage. Even a foreign Jew who, at a pinch, could assist the Ministry by means of three boroughs which he had bought, could exact a baronetage in part payment.

Cornwall returned forty members, as many, excepting one, as the entire kingdom of Scotland; more by two than Durham, Northumberland, and Yorkshire together; and along with Wiltshire, where was another nest of pocket boroughs, more than Yorkshire, Lancashire, Middlesex, Warwick, Worcester, and Somersetshire.

Another interesting feature in the pocket boroughs was the various methods of voting. In some it was close and secret; in others open and democratic. In some the electors were nominated by the patron; in others they maintained a measure of independence, and disposed of their votes to the highest bidder.

One of the most notorious of the rotten boroughs was Mitchell, Modishole, or, as it was sometimes called in error, S. Michael. It is a wretched hamlet on a bleak portion of the great backbone of Cornwall, exposed to every blast from the Atlantic, without trade, without manufacture, almost without agriculture, so poor and unremunerative is the soil. It owed its origin solely to the fact that it was a convenient centre for the distribution of contraband goods that had been run ashore in the bays between Crantock and Newquay. When raised into a borough it existed, without thriving, on the two demoralising businesses of smuggling and elections. In Parliamentary lists it figures as S. Michael's, but the archangel has never had anything to do with it, never had even a chapel there. The place belongs in part to the parish of S. Enoder, in part to that of S. Newlyn.

The name of Mitchell given it was surely given in satire, for in Cornish this word signifies greatness.

The place consists at present of nineteen houses. At the time of its disfranchisement it had 180 inhabitants, but only three of these were qualified to vote, whose names were Retallack, Vincent, and Parker, and these three returned the two last members who sat for Mitchell.

A few sycamore and ash and thorn trees brave the gales that sweep the desolate slope on which the old borough stands. It has a handsome old inn with granite porch, some quaint old houses, one with the date 1683 on the parvise, and a diminutive town hall.

Whether the borough ever had a seal is uncertain: no impressions are known to exist. The town hall has gone through a series of uses since the place ceased to be a borough. For a while after 1832 it was a dame's school, then was converted into a Wesleyan chapel, then into one of the Church of England, next into a manure store, then into a carpenter's shop, and now it is a beer brewery, in a hamlet made up almost wholly of total abstainers.

The place, as already said, consists of nineteen houses. There is not a shop there. The dame's school has been transferred from the town hall to a one-roomed cottage, that crouches under a bank, and is overshadowed by sycamores.

The privileges it possessed proved to it a curse, for if there were voters in it sufficiently independent to think differently from the patron, he tore down their dwellings. After the last election but one Sir Christopher Hawkins swept away numerous cottages from his land, so as to reduce the number of voters, not because they were recalcitrant, but because all demanded payment for their votes; and to diminish the voters, as he did, from eighty to three meant a corresponding reduction in election expenses. At the election of 1831 there was no voting at all. The steward invited some two dozen individuals to dine with him in the inn; of these three only were nominated to vote. A worm-eaten chair was thrust on the balcony of the inn, and the nominee of the patron was declared chosen and chaired.

Immediately after this election the same patron, Sir Christopher Hawkins, pulled down twelve more houses; amongst these a handsome mansion opposite the town hall, that had been erected by Lord Falmouth in 1780, when he was dominant in the borough, and all the stonework was carried away for the construction of Lord Falmouth's new house at Tregothnan.

In the penultimate election there were but thirteen electors, who were nominated by the patron. But even these were not altogether submissive. A stranger came amongst them, and by large promises induced most of them to agree to vote for him as second representative. Dread of their patron, however, in the end proved too strong, and they returned both his nominees. The stranger, however, assured them that he would send them presents all round, and on a certain day the carrier arrived with a large chest addressed to the free and independent electors of Mitchell. On opening it, the chest was found to be full of stones, and to have thirteen halters on the top properly addressed to the several electors, among whom, by the way, were three parsons.

The unfortunate borough during the later years of its existence was a battleground of many combatants. It was never certain who had the right to vote. This question was left in ambiguity till 1700, and every successive election gave rise to a petition and Parliamentary inquiry.

In 1639, when Courtenay and Chadwell were elected, a petition was sent up to the House appealing against it, and the plea set up was that the members had got in by the aid of voters who were not qualified.

Between this date and 1705 the borough came before the Election Committee no less than fifteen times, and the right of voting was altered from time to time.

In 1660 the question arose whether the right of voting lay in the commonalty at large or in two functionaries called Eligers, nominated by the lord of the manor, and in twenty-two free men of their appointment. The Committee of the House considered that it rested with these nominees, and that the householders of Mitchell had no electoral rights whatever. But in 1689 the Committee decided that "the right of election lay with the lords of the borough, who were liable to be chosen portreeves, and in the householders of the same not receiving alms." Here was a fundamental change. All at once universal suffrage was introduced. Next year (1690) Rowe, for the second place, got in by thirty-one votes against twenty given for Courtenay. Upon investigation, it was proved that Rowe had bribed a dozen voters with £5 or £6 apiece.

In 1695 another election took place, when four members were returned, two by a deputy-portreeve, and two by the actual portreeve, a certain Timothy Gully, who was an outlaw, and lived in White Friars.

The struggles of Anthony Rowe and Humphrey Courtenay occupy and almost proverbialise this epoch. About 1698 it was noted that "the cost of these struggles had been enormous, and William Courtenay, son and heir of Humphrey, was forced to petition the House to be allowed to sell his entailed estates to defray them."

Rowe was pronounced elected in 1696, but was unseated as speedily on appeal from the defeated side.

In 1707 "the traditional contest takes place at Mitchell between Rowe and two others. Rowe, who was elected, was soon confronted with the inevitable petition."

The right of voting for this distracted borough had already been changed from one of nominees of the patron to one purely democratic, and now, in 1701, it was again changed. This time it was invested in the portreeve, and in the inhabitants paying scot and lot.

For nearly half a century no election petition came up from Mitchell, but in 1754 the scandals became more flagrant than before, and the interest of the political world was drawn to this obscure and ragged hamlet. Lord Sandwich had squared the returning officer, and his candidate was elected by thirty against twenty-five. The Duke of Newcastle now disputed this election. There were, at that period, two taverns at Mitchell, each with its picturesque projecting porch on granite pillars. Each of these became the centre of party cabal and caucus, and this continued for ten months, during which ale and wine flowed and money circulated, and the electors ate and drank at the expense of the Earl of Sandwich and the Duke of Newcastle, and devoted all their energies to swell their several factions at the expense of the other. At last the duke's candidates, Luttrell and Hussey, were returned vice Clive (a cousin of the Indian Clive) and Stephenson, who were sustained by the earl.

After this "stranger succeeded stranger in the representation of Mitchell." In 1784 the two patrons were Lord Falmouth and Francis Basset, Esq. No sooner was the election declared than a petition against the return was sent up to the House, and the Committee found that the evidence of bribery and corruption by one of the returned members was so gross that he was forthwith unseated.

Sir Christopher Hawkins of Trewithen, Bart., was sole owner of the borough between 1784 and 1796, and he held it with an iron grasp. By means of pulling down houses, this crafty baronet thinned down the electors to sixteen, and finally further reduced the number to three. Sir Christopher held Grampound and Tregony as well in his fist, and had runners at his several boroughs to keep him informed how election proceedings went on in each place. His high-handed proceedings and his closeness in everything not connected with elections made him vastly unpopular. One morning a paper was found affixed to the gates of Trewithen.

"A large house, and no cheer,A large park, and no deer,A large cellar, and no beer.Sir Christopher Hawkins lives here."

Sir Kit died in 1829, unmarried, when the title became extinct, but his memory continues green, if not sweet, in the minds of Cornishmen of the parts where he ruled.

In 1806 one of the representatives of the borough was Arthur Wellesley, the subsequent Duke of Wellington.

During eleven years, 1807-1818, there were nine elections at Mitchell. No event of importance occurred after 1818, except the extraordinary and significant revelation made at the contested election of 1831, when Hawkins, the nephew of Sir Christopher, got two votes; Kenyon, a Tory, five; and Bent three. In the following year the five electors of Mitchell found their borough disfranchised.