PELYNT, or PLYNT.

HALS.

The manuscript relating to this parish is lost.

TONKIN AND WHITAKER.

Pelynt, vulgo Plynt, lies in the hundred of West, and joins to the west with Lantegles and Lansallas, to the north with Lanreath, to the east with Duloe and the river Loo, to the south with Tallant. In Domesday Book this parish is called Pluwent.

This church is a vicarage, valued in the King’s Book at £17. 18s. 6d.; the patronage in John Francis Buller, esq. the incumbent Mr. Howell.

This church, in anno 1291, 20 Edward I. was valued, (Tax. Benef.) viz. the rectory at £8, being then appropriated to the abbey of Wilton, in Wiltshire; and the vicarage at 40s.

The manor of Plunent, vulgo Plynt. By Domesday Book it appears that this was one of the two hundred and eighty-eight manors given by William the Conqueror to Robert Earl of Morton, when he made him Earl of Cornwall. In the extent of Cornish acres, 12 Edward I. (Carew, fol. 49,) Plenynt is valued in nine.

THE EDITOR.

This parish is named in the valuation of Pope Nicholas, Pleymut or Palemyt. It paid at the general suppression of religious houses, £4. 15s. a year to the priors of Wilton.

The church is spacious, although it has only two principal aisles, with two family aisles, standing across the other on the south side.

There are various monuments in the church. A very large monument to Francis Buller, esq. ornamented with the figures of himself and of his wife in an upper compartment, and of twelve children below, besides other figures, and numerous coats of arms. This gentleman died in 1615. There is also a monument to Edward Trelawny, a barrister, much noted on account of its quaint and singular inscription, said to have originated from his never having practised his profession, except once gratuitously, to vindicate an individual suffering under some oppression:

Edward Trelawny.   Ana:

We wander, alter, dy.

O what a bubble, vapour, puff of breath,

A nest of worms, a lump of pallid earth,

Is mud-wall man; before we mount on high,

We cope with change, we wander, alter, dy.

Causidicum claudit tumulus (miraris) honestum.

Gentibus hoc cunctis dixeris esse novum.

Here lyes an honest lawyer, wot you what?

A thing for all the world to wonder at.

June the 7th, 1630.

There are memorials to William Achym, Esq. as far back as 1589; to a de Bodrigan; and several to the Trelawnys.

William of Worcester states this church to have been the burial place of St. Juncus, a holy personage not recorded in the Roman calendar. But Mr. Whitaker, without citing any authority, gives the patronage of the church and parish to St. Nunn, the mother of St. David, the Apostle of Wales, the first Archbishop of Menevia, since called after his name, and according to romance writers the champion, who having distinguished his levies by a

leek as a cognizance, defeated the Saxons in a night attack, and drove them beyond the confines of his province.

This church belonged to the Cistercian abbey of Newenham, in Devonshire, founded by Reginald de Mohun, lord of Dunster, about the year 1241.

In the return made to King Henry the Eighth, and preserved in the Augmentation Office, occur these entries:

£.s.d.
PlenyntRedd. lib. ten.1154
Redd. tam cust’ quam convent’ ten’2157
Redd. Firma Rector’1400
Redd. Perquis. cur’01110
£37129

The site of this monastery was granted by Queen Elizabeth to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, but sold by one of his sons to Sir John Petre, in whose family it continued till so recently as the year 1824. It was then sold to James Alexander Frampton, esq.

The manor of Pelynt, with the privilege of a fair on Midsummer day, parcel of this abbey, have travelled by some other channel to Colonel Frederick William Buller; and the manor of Hall, the great tithes, and the advowson of the living, belong to Mr. John Buller, of Morvall.

On the barton of Hall are some remains of ancient military works.

But the place of greatest note in this parish is Trelawn, for more than two centuries the principal seat of the Trelawnys; but, notwithstanding the great similarity of the two names, not having any connection one with the other, although, by a temptation too strong to be withstood, the place has recently been known by the name of its proprietor.

THE HISTORY, AS GIVEN BY MR. BOND.

This place, at an early period, belonged to the Bodrigans.

Sir Henry de Bodrigan gave it as a marriage portion with his daughter to Henry Champernowne. The heiress of this branch of the Champernownes married Polglass Herle. Sir John Herle the younger, who died without issue, settled the reversion of Trelawn on Sir William Bonville, the last of an ancient Devonshire family (summoned to Parliament Sept. the 23d, in the 28th year of Henry the Sixth, as Baron Bonville, which barony in fee became forfeited by the attainder of his great-grandson Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, in the first year of Philip and Mary. Ed.) It was a very remarkable circumstance attending this family, that the havoc of Civil War annihilated three generations within the space of two months. At the battle of Wakefield Lord Bonville witnessed the death of his son Sir William Bonville, and of his grandson William Lord Harrington, who enjoyed that title according to the custom of those days, as having married Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of Lord Harrington, of Harrington, possessed of a barony in fee. This battle took place on the last day of December 1460. And in the month of February following the aged grandfather, Lord Bonville himself, was taken prisoner at the second battle of St. Alban’s, and although his life had been promised, he was beheaded by the order of Queen Margaret, who bore resentment against him, as being one of those who had custody of the king’s person after the battle of Northampton. Elizabeth Lady Harrington, after the accession of Edward the Fourth, had a large dower assigned her out of Lord Bonville’s estates in Cornwall. Her only daughter by Bonville brought Trelawn, and other estates, to Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset. On the attainder of his grandson Henry Duke of Suffolk, they were seized by the Crown. Queen Elizabeth, in the 42d year of her reign, sold the manor of Trelawn and the lands of Hendersich and Portello, in Talland prrish, to Sir Jonathan Trelawny. The old and famous family of Trelawny take their name from the barton of Trelawny, in the parish of Alternun. The arms of this

family are Argent, a chevron Sable, sometimes charged with three oak-leaves Proper.

It is said that Sir John Trelawny was so eminent in the wars of France, that King Henry the Fifth, on the 27th of September, in the seventh year of his reign, at Gison in Normandy, granted him £20 yearly for life, as a just recompense for his signal services; and that Henry the Sixth was pleased to confirm it to him in the first year of his reign, and granted to him an augmentation to his arms, the three oak-leaves. He was certainly the first of this family who bore that addition. Under the picture of Henry the Fifth, which stood formerly on the gate at Launceston, was this rhyme:

He that will do aught for me,

Let him love well Sir John Trelawnee.

There was an ancient saying in Cornwall, That a Godolphin was never known to want wit, a Trelawny courage, or a Glanville loyalty.

Mr. Lysons says, Lord Bonville built a castellated mansion at Trelawny, a part of which, with two towers, remain on the eastern side of the present house. Sir John Trelawny nearly rebuilt the house, soon after his purchase of the estate. It was again nearly rebuilt by Edward Trelawny, esq. Governor of Jamaica, after a fire, which happened about the middle of the last century. There are several family portraits in the house, two of the Bishop of Winchester; he built a chapel there, on the site of a former one, and the following inscription remains:

“This Chapel was consecrated by the Right Rev.
Father in God, Sir Jonathan Trelawny, Bart. Lord Bishop
of Exeter, on Monday, 23d day of November,
Anno Dom. 1701.”

Without adverting to ancient times, two members of this family have been distinguished in times more recent, Doctor Jonathan Trelawny, and one of his sons, Edward Trelawny, esq.

Of the first Wood says, in his Athenæ Oxonienses:—

Jonathan Trelawny, son of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, of Trelawny, in Cornwall, Baronet, was born, as I have been informed, at Pelent, or Pelynt, in the same county, educated at Westminster School, entered into Christ Church in Michaelmas Term 1668, aged 18 (born therefore in 1650); and in the year following was made student thereof. Afterwards he took the degrees in arts, holy orders, and one or two benefices in his own county, conferred upon him by his relations.

In 1680 his eldest brother died, and thereupon, though the title of baronet and the paternal estate of his family were to come to him after the death of his father, yet he stuck to his holy orders, continued in his functions, and upon the translation of Doctor John Lake to the see of Chichester, was nominated Bishop of Bristol by his Majesty, (King James the Second, Nov. 8, 1685,) whereupon, after he had been diplomated doctor of divinity, he was consecrated, November the 8th 1685, in the Archbishop’s Chapel at Lambeth, and introduced into the House of Lords with Dr. Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, on the 11th day of the same month. On the 8th of June 1688 he was one of the six Bishops, besides Doctor Sancroft the Archbishop, that were committed prisoners to the Tower of London, for the alleged offence of contriving, making, and publishing a seditious libel against his Majesty and his government; that is for subscribing a petition to his Majesty, wherein he and the rest of the said Bishops showed the great averseness that they found in themselves to the distributing and publishing in all their churches his Majesty’s late declaration for liberty of conscience, &c. Where continuing till they were publicly tried in Westminster Hall for the same, they were, to the great joy of the true sons of the Church of England, released thence on the 15th of the same month. Subsequently, however, the see of Exeter was conferred on him by King James, vacant by the translation thence to York of Doctor Lamplugh; and about the

7th of April following, his Majesty King William the Third was pleased to give his royal assent for him, the said Doctor Jonathan Trelawny, Bishop of Bristol, to be Bishop of Exeter, in the place of Doctor Lamplugh, beforementioned.

From the Fasti it appears that Jonathan Trelawny, of Christ Church, was admitted Bachelor of Arts on the 14th of May 1672, and Master of Arts April the 29th, 1675. And on October the 26th, 1685, Sir Jonathan Trelawny, Bart. Master of Arts of Christ Church, the nominated Bishop of Bristol, was diplomated Doctor of Divinity.

As this gentleman was made Bishop of Bristol by King James the Second, and after his commitment to the Tower and acquittal, accepted from him an appointment to the bishopric of Exeter, almost the last act of that king’s government, which appointment was almost immediately confirmed to him by King William on his joining in the Revolution, one may apply in his case the observation made by the most philosophical writer of English history, on the Duke of Marlborough, when he led over Queen Anne to the Prince of Orange.

“This conduct was a singular sacrifice to public virtue of every duty in private life, and required for ever after the most upright, disinterested, and public-spirited behaviour to render it justifiable.”

He was further advanced by Queen Anne, being again translated, on the 14th of January 1707, to the see of Winchester. He died on the 21st of June 1721.

He married Rebecca, daughter and coheiress of Thomas Hele, esq. of Boscome, in Devonshire, and left a numerous family, but none of his sons left families, and only two of his daughters; Letitia, who married her cousin Henry Trelawny; and Rebecca, married to Mr. John Buller, of Morvall.

Few men ever obtained so great a share of popularity among all ranks and degrees in his own country as did the Bishop, when he protested against the insidious declaration

of King James the Second, and sustained persecution in consequence of the support he had given to the Church of England. Fears were entertained, or apprehensions were industriously circulated, of extremities never contemplated; and the prompt acquittal of the Bishops seems alone to have prevented Cornwall from rising in arms.

A Song was made on the occasion, of which all the exact words, except those of what may be called the burden, were lost, but the whole has recently been restored, modernized, and improved by the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, of Whitstone, near Stratton.

The strong sensation excited throughout England, by that decisive act of bigotry, tyranny, and imprudence, on the part of King James the Second, by which he committed the seven Bishops to the Tower, was in no district more manifestly displayed than in Cornwall, notwithstanding the part taken by that county in the Civil War. This was, probably, in a great degree occasioned by sympathy with this respected Cornish gentleman, then Bishop of Bristol. The following Song is said to have resounded in every house, in every highway, and in every street.

A good sword and a trusty hand,

A merry heart and true;

King James’s men shall understand

What Cornish men can do.

And have they fix’d the Where and When?

And shall Trelawny die?

Then twenty thousand Cornish Men

Will know the reason why!

Out spake the Captain brave and bold,

A merry wight was he,

Tho’ London Tower were [8]Michael’s Hold,

We’d set Trelawny free!

We’ll cross the Tamar, land to land,

The Severn is no stay;

And side by side, and hand in hand,

And who shall bid us nay!

And when we come to London Wall,

A pleasant sight to view,

Come forth! come forth! ye cowards all;

Here are better men than you.

Trelawny he’s in Keep and Hold;

Trelawny he may die!——

But twenty thousand Cornish bold

Will know “The Reason Why.”

The song may be sung to the tune of “Auld lang syne.”

The seven Bishops were:

William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury; consecrated 1678; deprived 1690-1; ob. 1693.

William Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph; consecrated 1680; translated to Lichfield and Coventry, 1692; and to Worcester 1699; ob. 1717.

Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells; consecrated 1683; deprived 1690-1; ob. 1710.

Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely; consecrated 1683; deprived 1690-1; ob. 1700.

John Lake, Bishop of Chichester; consecrated 1682; suspended at the Revolution, but died 1689.

Thomas White, Bishop of Peterborough; consecrated 1685; deprived 1890-1; ob. 1698.

Sir Jonathan Trelawny, Bishop of Bristol; consecrated 1685; translated to Exeter in 1689, to Winchester in 1707; ob. 1721.

Bishop Trelawny has left at Christ Church a very valuable, esteemed, and appropriate memorial of himself, and of the Founder. Over the south-east gate of the great quadrangle, leading to the staircase of the hall, is a fine statue of Cardinal Wolsey, with the following inscription:

Eminentissimo Cardinali Thomæ Wolseio,
viro inter hæc menia semper memorando,
P.
Reverendus in Christo Pater Jonathan Trelawny,
de Trelawny, in comitatu Cornubiæ Baronettus,
hujusce Ædis olim Alumnus,
Wolseii in Episcopatu Wintoniensi successor,
et Wolseianæ erga hanc Domum munificentiæ æmulus,
A. D. M.DCC.XIX.

Edward Trelawny, esq. one of the Bishop’s sons, had the honour of being made Governor of Jamaica; and most fortunately for the Island, besides many other prudent and judicious acts, he pacified a formidable body of revolted negroes, who had long sustained a savage independence,

held the fastnesses belonging to the chain of mountains which divides Jamaica throughout its whole length, and maintained a predatory war against all the settlers. The treaty with these people, called Maroons, was in itself so equitable that it continued to be observed up to the period when the whirl of political opinions in Europe, mingled with others of fanatical enthusiasm, extended to these people, and in consequence they were all either exterminated or sent to perish in distant countries.

Sir William Trelawny, the sixth Bart. great-nephew of Edward Trelawny, was also Governor of Jamaica, in less trying times, and the period of his service was cut short by a premature death in 1772, when the property descended to his only son, Harry Trelawny, then a boy at school.

The career of this individual, though extraordinary and eccentric, need not be given in any detail. He appears to have been a man of naturally a strong understanding, but having imbibed the spirit of fanaticism in early youth, it carried him in all directions, as fancy guided, with equal facility; but in general directly against the consent of modern opinions, which have repudiated implicit confidence in traditions, in the decrees of councils, and in the dicta of ancient fathers, or of popes, substituting in their place the exercise of private judgment; guided no doubt in practice by the teacher who happens to carry with him the fashion of the day.

Sir Harry Trelawny commenced preaching at Westminster school. He proceeded to Oxford, where in consequence of nonconformity he could not obtain a degree. He then took orders in the church of Scotland, and began a course of preaching in various meeting houses, especially in one of his own erecting at West Looe. In the course of a few years, after the novelty had worn away, he complied with the requisite observances at Oxford and was admitted to a degree. He then received orders as a clergyman of the Church of England from Doctor John Ross, Bishop of Exeter, and soon afterwards the living of St. Allan, which he exchanged with his relation Dr. William

Buller, the succeeding Bishop, for Egloshayle. This living he ultimately resigned on becoming a Roman Catholic, and died in Italy, February the 25th, 1834, having, as it is said, received the nominal honour from the holy See of being appointed a Bishop in Partibus Infidelium. He married Anne, daughter of the Rev. James Brown, of Somersetshire, and has left a large family.

An event connected with the death of this gentleman, and which occurred about a year afterwards, roused the scorn of the whole parish, and of the neighbourhood, more than any thing that has taken place there within the memory of the oldest person.

Several priests arrived from the continent, bringing with them an empty coffin, and the various apparatus used in Catholic services, when masses were said and requiems sung at Trelawny for the peace of this individual’s soul, who had died and was buried in Italy, where it would seem that these pageants should have been celebrated, on the double supposition of their being really efficacious, and that the Almighty is incapable of hearing them from any other than a single spot. For if the latter supposition were not admitted, they might as well have been performed in France, from whence it is apprehended the priests embarked, unless indeed we suppose of these as of other histriones, that Μονον αργυρον βλεπουσιν; and in regard to such a subject, we may fairly go on to add, without want of charity, Απολοιτο πρωτος αυτος ὁ τον αργυρον φιλησας.

His eldest son, Sir William Lewis Salusbury Trelawny, married Patience, only daughter of John Phillipps Carpenter, esq. of Mount Tavey, near Tavistock, and is now one of the members in parliament for Cornwall, residing for the present at Harewood, on the banks of the Tamar.

Pelynt measures 4,170 statute acres.

£.s.d.
Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 18154,73200
Poor Rate in 1831594190
Population,—
in 1801,
630		in 1811,
708		in 1821,
750		in 1831,
804

giving an increase of 27½ per cent. in 30 years.

THE GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

The rocks of this parish resemble those of Lanreath and Duloe, the adjoining parishes; and belong, therefore, to the same calcareous series.

[8] St. Michael’s Mount.

ST. PIRAN, or PERRAN ARWORTHALL, IN KERRIER.

HALS.

The manuscript relating to this parish is lost.

TONKIN AND WHITAKER.[9]

The manor of Arworthal (which signifies, upon the noted river,) giving the name of distinction to this parish, and taking in the greatest part of the lands thereof, I shall begin with it.

In 3 Henry IV. John Fitz William held half a knight’s fee in Arworthall, per cartam Edwardi quondam com. Cornub. dict. feod. Mortan. (Carew, p. 126, Lord Dunstanville’s edition,) which Edward Earl of Cornwall must be Edward de Caernarvon, afterwards King of England, the 2d of that name, for there was no other Edward Earl of Cornwall.

Elizabeth, the daughter and heir of this Sir John Fitz William (for he was a knight) brought the manor, &c. into the family of Mohun in which it continued till the reign of James the 1st, when Sir Reginald Mohun, to raise fortunes for his children by his third wife, sold this manor to Samuel Pendarves of Roscrow, esq. in whose posterity it yet remaineth, Mrs. Bassett, the sole heir of that family, being the present lady thereof.

On the wastrell of this manor have been large quantities of tin dug up from time to time; and just above the village of Perran Arworthall, by the pound near Perran Well, there is a strong chalybeate spring much frequented of late years.

In this parish did antiently dwell the family of Renaudin, by their name of French extraction, but where I cannot positively say; and here dwelt, temp. Ricardi II. David Renaudin, who married Margaret, the eldest daughter and coheir of James Daungers of Carnclew. John Renaudin, their son, dying without issue temp. Henry V. this estate fell to Richard Bonython of Carclew, who had married Isabel, the other daughter and coheir of the said James Daungers, in which family of Bonython (whose heiress still lays claim to it, and, as by original deeds, it appears very justly,) it continued to the reign of Charles I. when Peter Beauchamp of Trevince, esq. having a lease of it for three lives, from John Bonython, esq. his posterity have been strangely outed of the fee ever since; which has of late years past through several hands, and is now vested in Thomas Hearle of Penryn, esq.

The arms of Renaudin, as painted in the old glass windows at Carnclew, were Sable, a chevron between three swans Argent.

THE EDITOR.

This parish, with two others, are dedicated to St. Perran, the most distinguished among the missionaries from Ireland, who converted the Pagan inhabitants of Cornwall to the Christian faith; but his history properly falls under the head of Perran Zabuloe, where he fixed his residence and breathed his last.

The church of Perran Arworthall is very small but neat, and it is decorated with a tower in due proportion to the whole fabric. The only ancient village of any consequence in the whole parish, is called Perran Well, probably from the chalybeate spring flowing near it; and this village has imparted its name in common parlance to the whole parish.

Perran Well is situated in a deep valley, having a hill and a corresponding vale on either side, terminating in the Carnon branch of Falmouth harbour: over all these the high road leading from Truro to Falmouth used to pass; but by a most judicious improvement a causeway has been laid over Carnon, and these transverse hills and valleys entirely avoided.

Not far below the village stood one of the tin-smelting houses constructed after the Germans introduced reverberatory furnaces; it has been used for the last thirty years for refining arsenic. This metal and its oxide, most destructive to animal or to vegetable life, is extensively useful in metallurgic operations and in the arts. Few substances are more generally diffused throughout mining districts: it unites with most other metals, sometimes alone, but more frequently in union with sulphur, and converts them into minerals. Metals are therefore said to be mineralized by arrenic, by sulphur, &c. The first operation used in extracting metals from their ores, is one for driving off by heat such substances as are volatile. Arsenic is eminently so: it therefore sublimes, and is deposited in long flues or chambers made to prevent the destructive

consequences of its being diffused through the atmosphere, and scattered over the country. From these chambers or flues the refiners of arsenic obtain their supplies, and are thereby enabled to afford it in a state of purity, at such prices as would be wholly inadequate for defraying the expense necessarily to be incurred, if the operation had commenced on the ores containing this metal in the mines.

Partly in this parish, but principally in Milor, on the next creek towards Falmouth, are situated the great iron works, conducted by Messrs. Fox, a family distinguished for ability, exertion, and liberality, from generation to generation. These works were the first constructed of any magnitude in Cornwall. Previously, all the cast-iron materials for steam engines were brought from Glamorganshire, and the working of an important mine very frequently depended on the uncertain direction of the wind; now every thing that can be required, even cylinders of the largest dimensions, seven feet and a half (90 in.) in diameter, and ten or twelve feet long, are cast and bored with the utmost accuracy here and at Hoyle, where similar works have arisen, to the incalculable benefit of the mining concerns.

The valley above and below these works is perhaps the most beautiful in the west of Cornwall, and it has recently been adorned, just opposite the fine woods of Carclew, by the elegant and tasteful residence of Benjamin Sampson, esq. who conducts an extensive manufactory for supplying the mines with gunpowder made in their immediate neighbourhood.

This parish, and the adjacent one of Stithyans, to which it is annexed, are believed to have been appropriated to the religious establishment at Penrey. The impropriation of the great tithes, and the advowson of the vicarage, have for a considerable time belonged to the Boscawens of Tregothnan.

Perran Arworthall measures 1,229 statute acres.

£.s.d.
Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 1815216500
Poor Rate in 1831451150
Population,—
in 1801,
884		in 1811,
1104		in 1821,
1362		in 1831,
1504

giving an increase of 70 per cent. in 30 years.

GEOLOGY, BY DOCTOR BOASE.

The western part of this parish is similar to the slate of Gwennap: the whole appears to belong to the porphyritic series; but on the extreme eastern part it makes a nearer approach to the calcareous series of Feock.

[9] The observations made on Mr. Tonkin’s narrative in this and in other parishes, usually marked with brackets, are by Mr. Whitaker.