SIR JAMES TILLIE.
A vein of eccentricity certainly ran through the composition of this remarkable man. His "castle" has been rebuilt, but contains a life-size leaden statue of himself that he had made, in voluminous periwig and costume of the period, holding a roll of documents. His will contained some remarkable provisions, including instructions for the building of the tower and for his body to be laid there, with a seated stone statue of himself. These instructions, repeated and noted down by a succession of writers, have lost nothing of their oddity. Thus Hals tells us that Tillie left directions that his body, habited in his hat, gloves, wig, and best apparel, with shoes and stockings, should be fastened securely in his chair and set in a room in the tower, with his books and pen and ink in front of him, and declared that Tillie had said he would in two years come to life and be at Pentillie again. The chamber in which his body was to be set was to have another over it containing portraits of himself, of his wife, and his nephew, to remain there "for ever." The upper chamber many years ago fell into decay, and the portraits were removed to the mansion; and no one knows what became of Tillie's remains. His scheme of founding a Tillie family failed, and the property eventually came into possession of descendants of the Coryton family, through the marriage of Mary Jemima Tillie, granddaughter of Sir James Tillie's nephew, with John Goodall, great-grandson of Sir John Coryton the younger's daughter, who assumed the name of Coryton.
The brick tower of "Mount Ararat," now open to the sky and plentifully overgrown with ivy, is approached by moss-grown stone steps. A lobby at the summit of them ends in a blank wall with a kind of peep-hole into the space within, not at all easy to get at. Any stranger peering through, and not knowing what to expect, would be considerably startled by what he saw; for directly facing the observer is the life-size effigy of a ferociously ugly, undersized man, with scowling countenance and great protruding paunch, seated in a chair and wearing the costume of the early eighteenth century. The statue is of a light sandstone, capable of high finish in sculpture; and every detail is rendered with great care and minuteness, so that, in spite of the damp, and of the ferns and moss that grow so plentifully about its feet, the statue has a certain, and eerie, close resemblance to life. It is so ugly and repellent that the sculptor was evidently more concerned about the likeness than to flatter the original of it.
The Tamar may be reached again in something over two miles, at Cargreen, a hamlet at whose quay the steamers generally halt. It is a large hamlet, but why it ever came into existence, and how it manages to exist and to flourish in a situation so remote, is difficult to understand, except on the supposition that the barge traffic has kept it alive. Landulph, a mile away, on a creek of its own, and not so directly upon the main stream, is a distinct parish with an ancient church, but it has not the mildly prosperous air of Cargreen, and indeed consists of only two or three easily discernible houses. The fine church contains a mural brass to Theodore Palæologus, who died in 1636, at Clifton in Landulph, one of the last obscure descendants of the Palæologi, who were Emperors of Byzantium from the thirteenth century until 1453, when the Turks captured Constantinople and killed Constantine Palæologus, the eighth and last Emperor. He was brother of Thomas Palæologus, great-great-grandfather of the Theodore who lies here.
The reasons for this humble descendant of a line of mighty autocrats living and dying in England are obscure, but he appears to have attracted the compassionate notice abroad of some of the Lower family, who brought him home with them and lent him their house of Clifton. Here he married one Mary Balls in 1615. Although he is sometimes stated to be the last of his race, this is not the fact, for of his five children three certainly survived him. John and Ferdinand have left no traces. Theodore, the last of whom we have any knowledge, became a lieutenant in the army of the Parliament, and died and was buried, not unfittingly for the last representative of an Imperial line, in Westminster Abbey, in 1644. Mary died a spinster, in 1674, and was buried at Landulph. Dorothy, who in 1656 married a William Arundel, died in 1681, and it is not known if she left any descendants.
The brass bears a neat representation of the double-headed imperial eagle of Byzantium, standing upon two towers, and has this inscription:
"Here lyeth the body of Theodore Paleologvs, of Pesaro in Italye, descended from ye Imperyall lyne of ye last Christian Emperors of Greece, being the sonne of Camilio, ye sonne of Prosper, the sonne of Theodoro, the sonne of Iohn, ye sonne of Thomas second brother to Constantine Paleologvs; the 8th of that name and last of ye lyne yt raygned in Constantinople vntil svbdewed by the Tvrkes. Who married wth Mary, ye davghter of William Balls of Hadlye in Sovffolke, gent.; & had issve 5 children, Theodoro, Iohn, Ferdinando, Maria, & Dorothy, & depted this life at Clyfton, ye 21st of Ianvary, 1636."
