No doubt he saw that his borough was mainly Parliamentarian and that trouble was ahead, and took this sweet and pleasant manner of testifying the unalterable nature of his personal sentiments.
It is sad to think how many of the families that distinguished themselves during those wars are now only a memory.
"The four wheels of Charles' wain,
Grenville, Godolphin, Trevanion, Slanning slain."
But though Trerice is empty, Lanherne a nunnery, and Stowe but a farmhouse, there are Bassets still at Tehidy, and long may they continue.
The house contains some interesting pictures by the best of our English artists, and a service of plate made from the silver found in Dolcoath mine.
Godrevy
After Portreath are several fine cliffs ending in Navax Point, the further horn of which looks across the deep curve of St. Ives Bay. On an island just off the shore is the white and black of Godrevy Lighthouse, first built in 1857. On the day Charles I. was beheaded a vessel containing his wardrobe and other furnishings was driven by a sudden squall on the Godrevy Rocks. Fifty-eight persons were drowned, only a man, a boy, and a dog reaching the little island.
Gwithian
The shore here is strewn with the iridescent purple shells of a small oyster, which lie gleaming like coloured pearls on the sand and weed. It has a charming view, the broad bay with the narrow horn of St. Ives running out on the south-west, and Carbis Bay—white houses and green woods—nestling on the hillside. Among the sands to the left is another half-buried, half-excavated oratory, and the little village of Gwithian. In 1676 a woman named Cheston Marchant is said to have died here at the age of 164. She is well known by tradition to the present inhabitants, who relate that in her extreme old age—and she was for many years bedridden—her teeth and hair were renewed; and that travellers who came to see her out of curiosity frequently took back with them a lock of her hair.