Penryn is a large antient Borough and market town, pleasantly situated about nine miles from Truro, at the head of a branch of Falmouth Harbour. It was formerly embellished with a College, founded in the thirteenth century, by Walter Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter, for 12 prebends, which continued until the dissolution of religious edifices in the reign of Henry VIII., when its annual revenues were valued at £205 10s. 6d. This building is said by Leland, to have covered a space of three acres, and to have been surrounded by embattled walls; but every vestige of it has long since been entirely obliterated. Penryn was incorporated in the 18th year of the reign of James I. and is governed by a Mayor, eight Aldermen, 12 Common Councilmen, a Recorder, and inferior officers. The right of returning two members by the same charter, is vested in the Mayor, Aldermen, and all the inhabitants paying scot and lot.—There is a silver cup and cover belonging to the corporation, given by Jane, Lady Killigrew, with this inscription, “From maior to maior to the town of Permarin, when they received me that was in great misery, J. K. (Jane Killigrew) 1633.” Hals says, that this lady had gone on board two Dutch ships with a party of ruffians, and having slain two Spanish merchants, their owners, robbed them of two barrels of Spanish pieces of eight. The lady, he adds, was by means of great interest pardoned; but her accomplices all executed. Hals’s stories are not much to be depended upon; it is more certain that she was divorced from her husband, and that in consequence she was protected by the inhabitants of Penryn, who bore no good will to Sir John Killigrew, and his rising town of Smithick. Jane, Lady Killigrew, was daughter of Sir George Fermor, Knt. of Easton Neston, ancestor of the Earl of Pomfret: she died in 1648.[[15]]
In the centre of the principal street, which is composed of many antient and irregular built houses, stand the Market House and Town Hall, the appearance of which is not very pleasing.
St. Gluvias, or the Parish Church, is over a branch of the river, the tower of which, with the surrounding scenery, appears highly picturesque, and attracts the attention of every one passing. The interior contains a variety of handsome memorials to the Pendarves family, once of Roscow, in this parish, and the following lines are inscribed on a monument to the memory of the Rev. John Penrose, who died in 1776, aged 63, after being 35 years vicar of this parish.
If social manners, if the gent’lest mind,
If zeal for God, and love for human kind,
If all the charities which life endear
May claim affection, or demand a tear,
Then Penrose o’er thy venerable urn,
Domestic love may weep and friendship mourn.
The path of duty still, the path he trod,