Photo by][Gibson, Penzance.
The village of Fowey—it calls itself a town—runs along in a single street on the westward bank of the river. At first sight this street is almost unattractive; it is narrow, with some awkward bends, and it gives no view of the water except an occasional peep through a low doorway. It runs to a considerable distance, and tries to increase its importance by changing its name at intervals; a few small alleys and by-roads strike off from it. One of its turnings is a sharp drop as well as a curve, perilous to all but the initiated. In some parts when a vehicle passes it is necessary to press very close indeed to the wall or in the kindly shelter of a doorway; the ample omnibus of the chief hotel spares little space for pedestrians. It may be with something of a malicious chuckle that one notices that this four-wheeled tyrant is often empty; but the malice is of evanescent nature, born of narrow escape. There are some shops, respectable if not imposing, and a goodly supply of inns; a fine church and a notable old Cornish manor-house. But all the time one has a sense that the real life of the place is the river behind these houses; even the leisurely little railway station does not seem of much consequence, though it acts as a feeder of the boats that busily ply here. Quite obviously this is no resort of mere pleasure, and it is all the more pleasurable for that; it has set itself to live sturdily, not troubling to attract the idler and the luxurious. Fowey is not altogether content to repose on its memories, though these are great. Generations of those who laboured on deep waters have nestled in these riverside homesteads, these nooks and corners and precipitous byways; they were lusty fighters and dauntless smugglers; they rose for their old faith, they fought loyally for their king, and they molested his enemies when he was at peace with them. In general they were a tough and independent lot, with a considerable scorn of those who live "in England"—that is to say, beyond the Tamar; and to this day an Englishman from the shires is very much of a foreigner with them. Even the man from a parish a few miles distant is looked at somewhat askance; after long years of residence they will still think him an outsider, and they repudiate with scorn the idea that any interlopers can understand them or their ways. They do not easily initiate strangers into the local mysteries or bestow the freedom of their township. Such an attitude may be out of date in this cosmopolitan age, but it is not unpleasant to strike against it; it coexists with the kindest of welcomes, the warmest of hospitalities. Yet it must be confessed that there are moods in which these Cornish folk are neither kind nor hospitable; their roughness is very rough, their parliamentary elections are often conducted in a spirit notorious for its violence. They are not all the gentle visionary dreamers that the Celts sometimes claim to be; indeed, there is much in their very physiognomy that proclaims them in large measure to be not true Celts at all, but men of still more aboriginal blood. Where then, it may be asked, shall we find the pure Celt? Yet it cannot matter greatly, except to those who set far too much store on matters of race. The weaving of ethnologic Britain would take more skill to unravel than the most learned can now attain to; it is a weft of many strands, strangely inter-knitted, and its result is infinite variety of personality. But it may be that here in Cornwall some of its earliest elements have lingered longer than in parts of the kingdom more exposed to invasion and immigration.
Both Plymouth and Falmouth may be spoken of as modern towns compared with Fowey. Its antiquity is proved by the dedication of its church to the Irish St. Finbar, who seems to have been a pupil of the Welsh Dewi, or St. David. Very many of Cornwall's saints came either from Ireland or Wales, and some from Brittany, to which the debt was repaid. Not much is known of Finbar, and that little is probably apocryphal. In 1336 the church was reconstructed and rededicated; Bishop Grandisson, who did this, may have thought that a more firmly established saint would be better, and he chose St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors and fishermen. A good part of the present building, including the north aisle, probably dates from that time; but the tower, a hundred feet high, is true Perpendicular. The groundwork has settled, causing a curious slope. The south-porch doorways appear to be late Norman. Among the monuments of the Treffrys is one erected by John Treffry during his own lifetime. Place House, the home of the Treffrys, stands close by, dominating the little town that presses around it. If its restoration had been conducted in better taste this fine old house might have been more beautiful than it is; its best features are the two exquisite fifteenth-century bay windows. The original hall and porch-room also survive, the latter being now known as the "Porphyry Room." Perhaps some visitors will take a deeper interest in the residence of Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch, the "Haven," standing pleasantly by the waterside, facing the mouth of the harbour. Thousands of readers have made the acquaintance of "Troy Town" through the romances of "Q"; and Mr. Couch is not only the writer of fiction that is often delightful, he is also a fine literary critic.
We do not know a great deal of Fowey in its earlier days, but its manor passed to Robert de Mortain at the Conquest. The town sent vessels to the Crusades, and in 1340 it shared with the port of Looe in sending a representative to a Council at Westminster. But the usual test by which historians now estimate the relative consequence of old English ports is the number of vessels contributed to the siege of Calais under Edward III., and by this test, which should not be pressed too hard, Fowey would appear to have been the chief port in the kingdom. She sent as many as forty-seven ships, the largest number of any, manned by 770 seamen. Next came Yarmouth, with fewer ships but more men; and Dartmouth was third. It is interesting to recall that to this memorable expedition Ilfracombe contributed six vessels, and Liverpool one. We may take it that the whole Fowey estuary shared in the manning and maintenance of this gallant squadron. The Fowey men had certainly the defect of their qualities, being proud and stiff-necked under the successes that attended them. It is reported that Fowey was made a member of the Cinque Ports, that very elastic "five"; but its comradeship in that association was clearly of a stormy and high-handed fashion. We read that certain Fowey men, passing near Rye and Winchelsea, "would vaile no bonnet," by which we may suppose is intended the customary salutation made in courtesy to a fellow-port.
Highly indignant, the men of Rye and Winchelsea sallied forth to teach the Foyens better respect, our seamen in those days being as willing to quarrel among each other as they were with the men of Normandy or Brittany. In the quaint words of the Cornish Hals, this contempt shown by the Fowey men, "by the better enabled seafarers reckoned intolerable, caused the Ripiers to make out with might and maine against them; howbeit with a more hardy onset than happy issue; for the Foy men gave them so rough entertainment as their welcome, that they were glad to depart without bidding farewell—the merit of which exploit afterwards entitled them Gallants of Fowey." Of course the Fowey men held their heads higher than ever after this, and even presumed to wear the arms of Rye and Winchelsea interwined with their own, in token of their supremacy. It was from such tough fibres that the British navy was built; those strenuous days of constant conflict and privateering were a grand tutorage for seamen, though not unexceptionable from a moral standpoint. But a town that behaved as Fowey did naturally had to suffer reprisals.
To quote again from Hals, we learn that certain Normans, with a commission from the King of France to "be revenged on the pirates of Fowey town, carried the design so secret that a small squadron of ships and many bands of marine soldiers was prepared and shipped without the Fowey men's knowledge. They put to sea out of the river Seine in July, 1457, and with a fair wind sailed thence across the British Channel and got sight of Fowey Harbour, where they lay off at sea till night, when they drew towards the shore and dropped anchor, and landed their marine soldiers and seamen, who at midnight approached the south-west end of Fowey town, where they killed all persons they met with, set fire to the houses and burnt one half thereof to the ground, to the consumption of a great part of the inhabitants' riches and treasures, a vast deal of which were gotten by their pyratical practices. In which massacre the women, children and weakest sort of people forsook the place and fled for safety into the hill country. But the stoutest men, under conduct of John Treffry Esquire, fortified themselves as well as they could in his then new built house of Place, where they stoutly opposed the assaults of the enemies, while the French soldiers plundered that part of the town which was unburnt without opposition in the dark." But the country-side was aroused, and men began to gather in such force that the French invaders found it prudent to depart with some haste, and with such of their spoil as they could hurriedly carry with them. They departed, says Hals, "with small honour and less profit." It was after this attack that the twin forts were built, at Polruan and Fowey, to protect the mouth of the river, and a chain was dropped at night between the two, as was the practice at Dartmouth.
It must have been on another occasion that the wife of Thomas Treffry, as Leland tells us, "repelled the French out of her house in her husband's absence." But the great days of Fowey were nearing their end. When Edward IV. made peace with France the town declined to countenance this termination of hostilities, and continued to wage war on its own account; perhaps it felt that there was much yet to be wiped off. "I am at peace with my brother of France," came the royal message; but the Fowey men were not at peace, and they said so. It is even stated that they slit the nose of the King's pursuivant, which almost made it appear that they were willing to be at war with the King of England also. Edward was not the man to be so trifled with, but the course he took was unkingly and despicable. He sent a party of men, who were clearly afraid to come nearer than Lostwithiel; and these, pretending to be harbouring some new designs against the French, invited the men of Fowey to come and take counsel with them. The Fowey men were then treacherously seized and their leader hanged; and the men of Dartmouth were fetched to take away the chain from Fowey Harbour and to snatch its ships. It may be that Dartmouth had some accounts to settle with its Cornish neighbour, but even these Devonians must have felt some grudging at such an act. This was the death-blow of Fowey's naval prosperity. She was now at the mercy of her foes, home or foreign. Yet she continued to bear herself bravely. Later, she erected St. Catherine's Fort as a defence; it is now a picturesque ruin. In the Civil War Fowey, like Cornwall generally, was loyal to her King, and though Essex took the town, it was soon retaken, with six thousand prisoners, and held for a year and a half longer. A few years later, (in 1666) the Dutch chased our Virginian fleet into Fowey Harbour, and dared to follow the vessels with the purpose of destroying them. But the Fowey forts had a word to say in the matter, and they made the place so hot for the great Dutch frigate of seventy guns, that it was glad enough to escape without finishing its errand. Such are the leading incidents in the history of this plucky little town, which formerly returned two members to Parliament. Relatively, its eminent position is entirely lost, but it has an eminence for loveliness of situation that can never be taken from it, and it can educate its sons in a glorious though chequered tradition. It has memories of occupation long before days of Cinque Port emulation. Close to Menabilly Park (Menabilly is the seat of the Rashleighs, a Cornish family of ancient repute) is a granite pillar known as the Longstone, bearing the inscription Cirusius hic jacit Cunomori filius, doubtless commemorating a Romanised Cornishman. At this manor-house, about two miles westward of Fowey, on a height above the sea, is a curious grotto built by a former Rashleigh to exemplify the mineral wealth of the Duchy. It is octagonal, and its sides are inlaid with native ores, fossils, shells, and stones. There is a further remarkable mineral collection at the house, with fine specimens of sulphuret of tin and copper, malachite, fluor, crystals, topaz, with some blocks of prehistoric tin. The coast here extends to Gribbin Head, and there is then a sharp bend inward to Par sands. Par is not particularly attractive, except for its pleasant bay; but the decay of its former mining activities is compensated for by its busy shipping of china-clays at the quays built by the late Mr. Treffry. Much of the china-clay goes to distant potteries, or is used for the whitening of cheap so-called linens; of course, much of this is despatched at the railway station which is the junction for Fowey. This is a British export which seems to be advancing by leaps and bounds; and this St. Austell district, with another active port at Charlestown, is practically its centre. It is said that, in this district alone, the royalties paid to ground landlords approach the figure of £90,000 per annum, and foreign companies are keenly endeavouring to establish a footing. But the presence of the powdery clay is not alluring except to those who profit by its output, and we may leave Par and Charlestown to their industrialism. Tywardreath (the "house or town-place on the sands") claims mention for the memory of its old Benedictine priory, now vanished. To pursue the Fowey River inland, past the charming Golant and St. Winnow, is a delightful excursion with a fitting termination in the beauties of Lostwithiel; but on the present occasion it takes us too far from the coast. The loveliness of this river resembles and equals that of the Fal and of the Dart.