There are interesting monuments of the Rashleighs of Menabilly here; the old family that came from Rashleigh in mid-Devon, but even then bore a Cornish chough in their curious and mysterious arms. Their heraldic shield includes, among other charges, the letter T, but the meaning of it being there is unknown, even to the Rashleighs. The family formerly owned Fowey. It was their Parliamentary pocket-borough, and only their nominees could be elected. But this valuable privilege passed from them in 1813, I know not how. It suggests, however, that the Rashleigh punning motto, Nec temere, nec timide,—i.e. "Neither rashly nor timidly," had in some way ceased to regulate their doings.
The Treffrys, too, are well represented in monuments and epitaphs, as it is only right they should be, considering that their house, Place, adjoining the church, has been their home for many centuries. They were settled here long before the Rashleighs, but are now really extinct in the male line. The great J. T. Treffry, builder of the harbour at Par and constructor of the Cornwall Minerals Railway, and other works, was an Austen before he assumed the name by which he is better known.
A former vicar of Fowey, the Rev. Dr. Treffry, who flourished in the early part of the nineteenth century, before character had ceased in people, and every man had his own noticeable peculiarities, was outspoken to a degree. It is recorded that few dared let the offertory-bag pass without a contribution, for if he noticed the omission his voice would be heard in a stage whisper saying, "Can't you spring a penny? I paid you an account last week."
No method of exploring the country on either side of the Fowey River is to be compared, for ease and beauty, with that of taking boat on the rising tide, and so being borne smoothly along those exquisite six miles to Lostwithiel. Here, and for a long way up the estuary, is deep water and safe anchorage for large vessels, as the pretty sight of weatherworn ships anchored over against Bodinnick shows; their tall masts and graceful spars contrasting with the wooded hills, and hinting of strange outlandish climes to the nestling hamlets.
Bodinnick is, like Polruan, a ferry village, opposite Fowey. It looks its best from the water. A mile up, on the same side, a creek opens to St. Veep, a sequestered church dedicated to a saint called by that name. Her real name was Wennapa, aunt of St. Winnow, and sister of Gildas the historian.
The Cornish way of dealing with saints' names may seem to some delightfully intimate, and to others a profane familiarity, almost as bad as it would be to style St. John "Jack," but the West Country saints are to the Evangelists and to the major saints what Irish and Scotch peers are to peers of the United Kingdom; or perhaps, better still, what Knights Bachelors are to Dukes. I do not mean to say that they have not seats among the rest of the sanctified, but they are decidedly of a lower grade; a good deal more human and less austere than the great and shining ones. And when we find, as often we do find among the Irish, Welsh, native Cornish, or Breton saints, that entire families have attained to that state, we do right to look shyly upon their title.
Further up the Fowey River, on our left side, we come to Golant and the church of St. Samson, or Sampson, dedicated to a sixth-century Breton saint, who early fled his country and was educated in Wales, and then settled in Cornwall. Finally he returned to Brittany (when he thought it quite safe to do so), and died Bishop of Dôl.
Passing Penquite, which means "Pen coed"—i.e. "head of the woods"—a creek opens on the right, to Lerrin, a picturesque hamlet on the hillside, where the creek comes to an end, and the futile comings and goings of the sea die away in ooze. A prehistoric earthwork, running inland between Lerrin and Looe, is locally attributed to the Devil, in the rhyme:
"One day the Devil, having nothing to do,
Built a great hedge from Lerrin to Looe."