A Book of Cornwall

One night in midwinter a thief got into the church, and stole thence a cross adorned with gems and gold and all the money he could lay his hands on, and ran away with the spoil wrapped in a bundle. He made for the moors and ventured over a bog, trusting that the frozen surface would bear him. But his weight broke through the thin ice, and he sank to his waist. Afraid of going under altogether, he threw away his burden, and did that which everyone who has wits will do in a bog-spread out his arms on the crust.

There the man remained till morning, when a hue and cry was set up after the stolen goods. He was found and the plunder recovered. He was dead of cold when discovered next day. At Southill is S. Samson's Well, and it was in clearing it out, having become choked, that the stone with the inscription on it was found.

The old tribeland or principality of Gallewick was reduced in the Middle Ages to a manor of Kelliland, which, however, remained of considerable importance, and is now held by Countess Compton. The church is Perpendicular, of no particular interest, but it possesses an Easter sepulchre, and an early font on which are carved grotesque animals and a representation of the Tree of Life. Callington has in it a fine church that is chapel-of-ease to Southill. It is good Perpendicular, and suffered a "restoration" under the hands of an incompetent architect. Happily, since then, genius has been invoked to supplement the defects of mediocrity, and the north aisle that was added by Mr. Edmund Sedding is one of the ablest works of that clever architect. Viewed internally or externally it is delightful.

There are a few quaint old cottages in Callington, and there is a late mediæval cross that is picturesque. In the church, moreover, is a very fine monument to Sir Robert Willoughby de Broke, who died in 1503; he was steward of the Duchy of Cornwall, and took part in the battle of Bosworth.

Callington was made a borough in 1584, and its earliest patrons were the Pauletts. From them the patronage passed to the Rolles, who divided it with the Corytons. Then it went to the Walpoles, next to Lord Clinton, and finally to the first Lord Ashburton. It never bore arms, nor had a corporation, but there is an early and interesting silver mace, now in the custody of the portreeve, who is elected with other officers annually at the manor court of Kelliland.

Perhaps the most quaint and beautiful of the chapel wells in Cornwall is Dupath, near Callington, though not in the parish, but in that of S. Dominick. Unhappily dirty farmyard surroundings disfigure the scene, and make one fear pollution of the sparkling water.

Hingesdon, on the N.E., rises to the height of 1091 feet, its highest point being called Kit Hill, where are remains of a camp; the moor, moreover, is strewn with barrows. It was on Hingesdon that the Britons, uniting their forces with some Danes who had come up the Tamar, met and fought Egbert in 833, and were defeated. The surface of Hingesdon and Kit Hill has been much interfered with by mines, and the summit is crowned with a ruined windmill erected to work the machinery in a mine hard by. The road to Tavistock passes over Hingesdon at a height of 900 feet, and thence after nightfall can be seen the Eddystone light.

On the Liskeard road, beside the Lynher, is a well-preserved oval camp called Cadsonbury. Other camps are at Tokenbury and Roundbury.

S. Ive (pronounced Eve) is probably a foundation of one of the Brychan family, and certainly not dedicated to S. Ive of Huntingdonshire, who is an impostor, nor to S. Ive of the Land's End district. The church is interesting, but has been unfeelingly "restored." The east window, with its niches, deserves special notice.

By far the finest church in the neighbourhood is Linkinhorne (Llan Tighern), the church of the king, that is, of S. Melor. It was erected by Sir Henry Trecarrel, who built Launceston Church, but Linkinhorne is in far superior style. The story of S. Melor is this. He was the son of Melyan, prince of Devon and Cornwall and of Brittany. Melyan's brother was Riwhal, or Hoel the Great, cousin of King Arthur. Hoel, being an ambitious man, murdered his brother Melyan, and cut off the hand and foot of his nephew Melor, so as to incapacitate him from reigning; as a cripple, according to Celtic law, might not succeed to the headship of a clan or of a principality. In the place of the hand and foot of flesh and blood the boy was supplied with metal substitutes, and the hand was formed of silver.

For precaution the child was sent to Quimper, and placed there in a monastery.

Now it fell out that Melor and other boys were nutting in a wood, and his comrades made their little pile of hazel nuts and brought them to Melor. To their great surprise they found that, notwithstanding that his hand was of metal, he was able therewith to twitch off the nuts from the trees.

As the misfortunes of the unhappy prince attracted much sympathy, Howel sent for a man named Cerialtan, Melor's foster-father, and promised him an extensive grant of lands if he would make away quietly with the young prince. Cerialtan consented, and confided his purpose to his wife. She was horrified, and resolved on saving the boy. During her husband's temporary absence, she fled with her nephew to the wife of Count Conmor at Carhaix in Brittany, who was Melor's aunt. When Howel heard of this he was incensed, and urged Cerialtan to get the boy back into his power. Accordingly this worthless fellow took his son Justan with him, a lad who had been Melor's playmate, and to whom the young prince was much attached. The treacherous foster-father persuaded Melor that no harm was intended, and he and Justan were given the same bed as Melor in which to sleep.

During the night Cerialtan rose and cut the young prince's throat, then roused his son, and they escaped together over the walls of Carhaix. But in so doing Justan missed his hold and fell, and was killed.

On reaching the residence of Howel, Cerialtan produced the head of Melor, which he had cut off, in token that he had accomplished his undertaking. Howel grimly promised to show the man the lands he had promised him, but first put out his eyes.

In Brittany it is held that Melor was buried at Lan Meur, near Morlaix, but no tomb exists there, nor does there seem to have ever been one.

The whole story is legendary, yet certainly is framed about some threads of historic truth. But whether the murder was committed in Brittany or in Cornwall is uncertain. That Melor's father was assassinated in Cornwall I shall show later on to be probable. Mylor Church as well as Linkinhorne are dedicated to this boy martyr; Thornecombe Church in Dorset is also named after him, and it was held that his body had been transferred to Amesbury, where, during the Middle Ages, his relics attracted pilgrims.

From Callington a pleasing excursion may be made to the Cheesewring; and there is a very comfortable little inn there, where one can tarry and be well fed and cared for.

The height is a thousand feet, and the view thence over the fertile rolling land of Devon and East Cornwall is magnificent, contrasting strikingly with the desolation of the moors to the north. Here is Craddock Moor, taking its name in all probability from that Caradoc who ruled for Arthur in Gallewick, or Gelliwig.

The whole of the neighbourhood has been searched for metal, and the Phœnix Mines employed many hundreds of hands till the blight fell on Cornish tin mining, and they were shut down.

The head of the Cheesewring hill has been enclosed in a stone caer. The common opinion is that every stone composing it was brought up from the bed of the Lynher, but this is almost certainly a fiction. The circles of the Hurlers are near, with a couple of outstanding stones. The legend is that some men were hurling the ball on Sunday, whilst a couple of pipers played to them. As a judgment for desecration of the Lord's-day they were all turned into stone. There are three circles, eleven stones in one, of which all but three have fallen; fourteen in the second, of which nine are standing; twelve in the third, but only five have not fallen. A curious instance of the persistency of tradition may be mentioned in connection with the cairn near the Hurlers and the Cheesewring, in which a gold cup was found a few years ago.

The story long told is that a party were hunting the wild boar in Trewartha Marsh. Whenever a hunter came near the Cheesewring a prophet-by whom an Archdruid is meant-who lived there received him, seated in the stone chair, and offered him to drink out of his golden goblet, and if there were as many as fifty hunters approach, each drank, and the goblet was not emptied. Now on this day of the boar hunt one of those hunting vowed that he would drink the cup dry. So he rode up to the rocks, and there saw the grey Druid holding out his cup. The hunter took the goblet and drank till he could drink no more, and he was so incensed at his failure that he dashed what remained of the wine in the Druid's face, and spurred his horse to ride away with the cup. But the steed plunged over the rocks and fell with his rider, who broke his neck, and as he still clutched the cup he was buried with it.

Immediately outside the rampart of the stone fort above the Cheesewring is a large natural block of granite, hollowed out by the weather into a seat called the Druid's Chair.

Just below the Cheesewring is a rude hut cell or cromlech, formed of large slabs of granite, which is called "Daniel Gumb's House." It was inhabited in the last century by an eccentric individual, who lived there, and brought up a family in a state of primæval savagery. On one of the jambs is inscribed, "D. Gumb, 1735," and on the top of the roofing slab is an incised figure of the diagram of Euclid's 47th proposition in the First Book.

At some little distance is the very fine cromlech called the Trethevy Stone. It is well worth a digression to see, as being, if not the finest, at least the most picturesque in Cornwall.

S. Cleer has a holy well in very good condition, carefully restored. Near it is a cross.

In the parish is the inscribed stone of Doniert, the British king, who was drowned in 872.

From Callington, Calstock-the stock or stockade in the Gelli district on the Tamar-may be visited. The river scenery is of the finest description, rolling coppice and jutting crags, the most beautiful portion being at Morwell.

There are several arsenic works in this district. The mundic (mispickel-arsenic), which was formerly cast aside from the copper mines as worthless, is calcined.

The works consist in the crushing of the rock, it being chewed up by machinery; then the broken stone is gone over by girls, who in an inclined position select that which is profitable, and cast aside the stone without mundic in it. This is then ground and washed, and finally the ground mundic is burnt in large revolving cylinders.

The fumes given off in calcining are condensed in chambers for the purpose, and deposited in a snow-white powder. The arsenic is a heavy substance with a sweetish taste, and is soluble in water. In the process of calcining a large amount of sulphurous acid is given off-a pungent, suffocating gas-and this, escaping through the stack, is so destructive to trees and grass, that it blights the region immediately surrounding. When, however, a stack is of sufficient height the amount of damage done to herbage is greatly reduced, as at Greenhill, where there is a healthy plantation within two hundred yards of the stack.

When the workmen have to scrape out the receivers or condensers, the utmost precaution has to be taken against inhaling the dust of arsenic. The men engaged wear a protection over the mouth and nostrils, which consists in first covering the nostrils with lint, and then tying a folded handkerchief outside this with a corner hanging over the chin. When the arsenic soot has been scraped out of the flues and chambers in which it has condensed, it is packed in barrels.

Every precaution possible is adopted to reduce danger, but with certain winds gases escape in puffs from the furnace doors, which the men designate "smeeches," and these contain arsenic in a vaporised form, which has an extremely irritating effect on the bronchial tubes.

One great protection against arsenical sores is soap and water. Arsenic dust has a tendency to produce sore places about the mouth, the ankles, and the wrists. Moreover, if it be allowed to settle in any of the folds of the flesh it produces a nasty raw. On leaving their work the men are required to bathe and completely cleanse themselves from every particle of the poison that may adhere to them.

As touching inadvertent arsenical poisoning, I will mention a circumstance that may be of use to some of my readers.

When living in the East of England I found my children troubled with obstinate sores, chiefly about the joints. They would not heal. I sent for the local doctor, and he tinkered at them, but instead of mending, the wounds got worse. This went on for many weeks. Suddenly an idea struck me. I had papered some of my rooms with highly æsthetic wall coverings by a certain well-known artist-poet who had a business in wall-papers. I passed my hand over the wall, and found that the colouring matter came off on my hand. At once I drove into the nearest town and submitted the paper to an analyst. He told me that it was charged with sulphuret of arsenic, common orpiment, and that as the glue employed for holding the paint had lost all power, this arsenical dust floated freely in the air. I at once sent my children away, and they had not been from home a week before they began to recover. Of course, all the wall-papers were removed.

About a month later I was in Freiburg, in Baden, and immediately on my arrival called on an old friend, and asked how he and all his were.

"Only fairly well," he replied. "We are all-the young people especially-suffering from sores. Whether it is the food-"

"Or," said I, interrupting him, "the paper."

Then I told him my experience.

"Why," said he, "a neighbour, a German baron, has his children ill in the same way."

At once he ran into the baron's house and told him what I had said. Both proceeded immediately to the public analyst with specimens of the papers from the rooms in which the children slept. The papers were found to be heavily laden with arsenic.

Unhappily, in spite of all precautions, the work at the arsenic mine and manufactory is prejudicial to health. The workers are disabled permanently at an average age of forty. Of deaths in the district, eighty-three per cent. are due to respiratory diseases, while sixty-six per cent. are due to bronchitis alone. For the last three years, out of every hundred deaths among persons of all ages in the parish of Calstock twenty-six have been due to diseases of the respiratory organs, but out of every hundred employés at the arsenic works who have died or become disabled eighty-three deaths have been due to respiratory diseases. It is evident that with such an unusual proportion of one particular disease in the most able-bodied portion of the community there must be a definite existing cause.

No doubt that a very minute amount of arsenic may pass through the nostrils and down the throat, but what is far more prejudicial than that is the sulphurous acid which cannot be excluded by the handkerchief and lint, but passes freely through both. This is extremely irritating to the mucous membrane. But the fact of working for hours with the breathing impeded by the wraps about mouth and nose is probably the leading cause of the mischief.

Suggestions of remedies have been made, but none practical. A mask has been proposed, but this does not answer, as it causes sores, and is difficult to keep clean.

Devon Consols produces about 150 tons of arsenic per month; Gawlor, 100 tons; Greenhill, 50; Coombe, 25; and Devon Friendship about the same. In all about 350 tons per month. This to the workers is worth £10 per ton, or a revenue to the neighbourhood of £42,000 per annum.

In S. Mellion parish, on the Tamar, finely situated, is Pentillie Castle.

The original name of the place was Pillaton, but it was bought by a man of the name of Tillie in the reign of James II., who called it after his own name. He was a self-made man, who was knighted, and not having any right to arms of his own, assumed those of Count Tilly, of the Holy Roman empire. But this came to the ears of the Herald's College, and an inquisition into the matter was made, and Sir James was fined, and his assumed arms were defaced and torn down.

He died in 1712, and by will required his adopted heir, one Woolley, his sister's son, not only to assume his name, but also not to inter his body in the earth, but to set it up in the chair in which he died, in hat, wig, rings, gloves, and his best apparel, shoes and stockings, and surround him with his books and papers, with pen and ink ready; and for the reception of his body to erect a walled chamber on a height, with a room above it in which his portrait was to be hung; and the whole was to be surmounted by a tower and spire.

About two hours before he died Sir James said, "In a couple of years I shall be back again, and unless Woolley has done what I have required, I will resume all again."

Mr. Woolley accordingly erected the tower that still stands above Sir James' vault. But the knight did not return. He crumbled away; moth and worm attacked his feathers and velvets; and after some years nothing was left of him but a mass of bone and dust that had fallen out of the chair.

CHAPTER VIII

CAMELFORD

A rotten borough-Without a church or chapel-of-ease-History of the borough-Contest between the Earl of Darlington and Lord Yarmouth-Brown Willy and Rough Tor-Helborough-S. Itha-Slaughter Bridge-King Arthur-The reason for the creation of the Arthur myth-Geoffrey of Monmouth-The truth about King Arthur-The story of his birth-Damelioc and Tintagel-How it is that he appears in so many places-King Arthur's Hall-The remains of Tintagel-The Cornish chough-Crowdy Marsh-Brown Willy and the beehive cottages on it-Fernworthy-Lord Camelford-His story-Penvose-S. Tudy-Slate monuments-Basil-S. Kew-The Carminows-Helland-A telegram-Battle.

That this little town of a single street should have been a borough and have returned two members to Parliament is a surprise. It is a further surprise to find that it is a town without a church, and that no rector of Lanteglos, two miles distant, should have deemed it a scandal to leave it without even a chapel-of-ease is the greatest surprise of all.

Camelford was invested with the dignity of a borough in 1547, when it was under the control of the Roscarrock family. From them it passed to the Manatons living at Kilworthy, near Tavistock. Then it fell into the hands of an attorney named Phillipps. He parted with his interest to the Duke of Bedford, and he in turn to the Earl of Darlington, afterwards Duke of Cleveland.

The electors were the free burgesses paying scot and lot. "Scot" signifies taxes or rates. But the mayor was the returning officer, and he controlled the election.

In George IV.'s reign there was a warm contest between the Earl of Darlington and Lord Yarmouth. The latter ran up a great building, into which he crowded a number of faggot voters. But the Earl of Darlington possessed rights of search for minerals; so he drove a mine under this structure, and blew it up with gunpowder. The voters hearing what was purposed, ran away in time, and consequently Lord Yarmouth lost the election.

In the election of 1812 each voter received a hundred pounds for his vote. In the election of 1818 the mayor, Matthew Pope, announced his intention of giving the majority to Lord Darlington's nominee, and of turning out of their freeholds all who opposed. The other party had a club called "The Bundle of Sticks," and engaged a chemist named William Hallett, of S. Mary Axe, to manage the election for them, and put £6000 into his hand to distribute among the electors, £400 apiece.

Hanmer and Stewart got ten votes apiece, Milbrook and Maitland thirteen. But there was an appeal, and a new election; but this again led to a petition, and a scandalous story was told of bribery and corruption of the most barefaced description. The election was declared void, and many persons, including Hallett, the chemist, were reported. It was proposed to disfranchise the borough, but George III. died in 1820, and new writs had to be at once issued.

Camelford has no public buildings of interest. It is situate on very high ground, on a wind-blown waste 700 feet above the sea, exposed to furious gales from the Atlantic; but it has this advantage, that it forms headquarters for an excursion to the Bodmin moors, to Brown Willy (1375 feet), and Rough Tor (1250 feet). These tors, though by no means so high as those on Dartmoor, are yet deserving of a visit, on account of their bold outlines, the desolation of the wilderness out of which they rise, and the numerous relics of antiquity strewn over the moors about them.

Of these presently.

The parish church of Camelford, two miles off, is Lanteglos. The dedication is to S. Julitta, but this would seem to have been a rededication, and the true patroness to have been either Jutwara or Jutwell, sister of St. Sidwell, or of Ilut, one of King Brythan's daughters.

There was a royal deer-park there, as the old castle of Helborough, though not occupied, was in the possession of the Duke of Cornwall.

This is really a prehistoric camp of Irish construction, and in the midst of it are the ruins of a chapel to S. Sith or Itha, the Bridget of Munster. Itha had a number of churches ranging from the Padstow estuary to Exeter, showing that this portion of Dumnonia received colonists from the south-west of Ireland. Her name is disguised as Issey and as Teath. She was a remarkable person, as it was she who sent her foster-son Brendan with three ships, manned by thirty in each, on an exploring excursion across the Atlantic to the west, which, possibly, led to the discovery of Madeira in the sixth century. But the truth is so disguised by fable that little certainty can be obtained as to the results of the voyage. Brendan made, in fact, two expeditions; in the first his ships were of wicker, with three coats of leather over the basket frame; the second time, by Itha's advice, he made his boats of timber.

Itha never was herself in Cornwall, her great foundation was Kill-eedy in Limerick, and she was taken as the tutelary saint or patroness of Hy-Conaill, but there were establishments, daughters of the parent house, what the Irish called daltha (i. e. pupil) churches, enjoying much the same rights as the mother house.

Camelford has by some been supposed to be the Gavulford where the last battle was fought between the West Welsh and Athelstan; but there was no reason for his advancing into Cornwall this way, where all was bleak, and by no old road.

There is, however, a Slaughter Bridge on the Camel, but this is taken to have acquired its name from having been the scene of the fight between King Arthur and his rebellious nephew Mordred, circ. 537.

King Arthur is a personage who has had hard measure dealt out to him. That there was such an individual one can hardly doubt. There is a good deal of evidence towards establishing his existence. He was chief king over all the Britons from Cornwall to Strathclyde (i. e. the region from the Firth of Clyde to Cumberland). He was constantly engaged, first in one part, then in another, against the Saxons; but his principal battles were fought in Scotland. He occurs in the Welsh accounts of the saints, but never as a hero, always as a despot and tyrant. His immediate predecessor, Geraint, in like manner is met with, mainly in Cornwall, but also in Wales, where he had a church, and in Herefordshire. He had to keep the frontier against the Saxons.

What played the mischief with Arthur was that Geoffrey of Monmouth, who became bishop of S. Asaph in 1152, published, about 1140, his fabulous History of the Britons, which elevated Arthur into a hero. Geoffrey had an object in view when he wrote this wonderful romance. The period was one in which the Welsh had been horribly maltreated, dispossessed of their lands, their churches taken from them and given to Normans, who neither understood their language nor regarded their traditions. The foreigners had castles planted over the country filled with Norman soldiery, tormenting, plundering, insulting the natives. Poor Wales wept tears of blood. Now Henry I. had received the beautiful Nest, daughter of Rhys, king of South Wales, as a hostage when her father had fallen in battle, and, instead of respecting his trust, he had wronged her in her defenceless condition in a cruel manner, and had by her a son, Robert, who was raised by him to be Duke of Gloucester. To this Robert, half Welsh, Geoffrey dedicated his book, a glorification of the British kings, a book that surrounded the past history of the Welsh with a halo of glory. The book at once seized on the imagination of English and Normans, and a change took place in the way in which the Welsh were regarded. The triumph of the Saxon over the Briton came to be viewed in an entirely new light, as that of brutality over heroic virtue.