The Story of an Ancient Parish: Breage with Germoe / With Some Account of Its Armigers, Worthies and Unworthies, Smugglers and Wreckers, Its Traditions and Superstitions

by H. R. Coulthard

In the thirteenth century Ralph Arundell had risen to influence and the possession of the manors of Trembath and Treloy through marriage with the heiress of the Trembaths; and in the following century his descendant acquired the manor of Lanherne by marriage with the heiress of the ancient house of Pincerna.

The manor of Pengwedna in Breage was held by the senior branch of the family, the Arundells of Lanherne; whilst the manors of Treworlas and Methleigh were held by the Arundells of Tolverne, one of the junior branches[53] of the family. Tolverne had come to the house of Arundell in the usual way in the reign of Richard II., Sir John Arundell of Lanherne having married the heiress of the manor, the daughter of Ralph le Sore. Sir John Arundell bequeathed this estate to his second son, Thomas, whose descendants held it until the time of Charles I. It was at Tolverne that Henry VIII. was entertained with great magnificence by his kinsman the Sir John Arundell of that day.

The story of the coming of the Arundells of Tolverne to their small manor of Truthual, in the parish of Sithney, is full of the flavour of ancient romance. It was at the time that the world was still dreaming of the land of El Dorado. The spoils of Mexico and Peru brought home by the Spaniards had profoundly moved the imaginations of all adventurous souls. Sir Thomas Arundell, of Tolverne, had listened to the tales of home-coming[54] adventurers of a marvellous island on the coast of America, called Old Brazil, where untold wealth lay ready as spoil for the brave and stout-hearted. He wasted his substance in vain search for this island of beauty and wealth—the pearl of American seas. Where he searched we do not know; only that his search was vain, and that he returned to his own land broken in fortune and probably also in spirit and in health, and that he was compelled to part with his ancestral acres of Tolverne and to make his home on his smaller estate in Sithney and Breage, which still remained to him from the wreck of his fortunes. He was succeeded by his son, John Arundell, who served as a Colonel of Horse in the army of the King during the Civil War. This gallant soldier was buried in the north aisle of Sithney Church, and the tablet to his memory, which takes the form of a stone shield, blazoned with swallows, is the only memorial now remaining of this once powerful family. The male line of this branch of the family became extinct on the death of John Arundell, in India, in 1776. Their estate of Methleigh was sold to the Coode family in the eighteenth century, and still continues in their possession. The manor of Treworlas which they had previously held in the parish had passed in marriage to the Jago family in the seventeenth century. The Arundells are still represented in our midst in the female line in Messrs. John Arundell and William Arundell Pryor, of Lower and Higher Pengwedna, through Margaret Arundell, who married Richard Pryor, of Sithney, in 1704.

The manor of Pengwedna remained in the family of Arundell, of Lanherne, until it was sold in the eighteenth century by Lord Arundell of Wardour, who had inherited the estates of his Cornish kinsmen.

With regard to the manor of Methleigh, it may be worthy of mention that an ancient chapel seems to have existed on this manor, close to Tremearne Farm. A carved pillar of ecclesiastical design still survives, now used as a gate-post, and from time to time carved stones have been unearthed round the spot, one, I am told, containing a realistic representation of the Crucifixion. Round the presumed site of this chapel human bones have from time to time been laid bare. I have been unable to find any record of this forgotten chapel. As the spot commands a wide view of the sea, which beats upon the rocks below, its erection may have been due to the vow of some voyager who had escaped from the fury of the waves, and the bones resting round it may be those of drowned mariners; or it may be that we have here the site of the oratory of the ancient home of the Nansladons or the Chamonds; at any rate, all record of this ancient house of God and God's acre have long since faded into oblivion.

From the ancient family of Arundell we naturally pass to the owners of the tradition-haunted manor of Pengersick. An ancient race bearing the name of the manor long flourished there, their first coming being long since lost in the mists of the past. The Pengersicks are credited still in the minds of the people as having been remorseless wreckers, luring ships to their doom on the Sands of Praa by false lights displayed on the shore. In a persistent tradition of this kind there is as a rule a substratum of fact; tradition has been proved time after time to rest upon a solid basis of truth, preserving for future generations a blurred vision of events from a long-forgotten past. That the Pengersicks were men of wild deeds, the assault by a member of the race, Henry de Pengersick, on David de Lyspein, Vicar of Breage, in 1335, whilst collecting the ecclesiastical dues of the parish, lends more than a suggestion; the assault, as we have seen in a former chapter, being of such a grievous and heinous nature as to lead to Henry Pengersick being placed under the ban of excommunication.

Mr. Robert Hunt, in his "Popular Romances of the West of England," has preserved one of the wild Pengersick legends, which I venture to record in an abbreviated form. The first Pengersick, so the legend runs, was a proud man, and desired to ally himself, if possible, with one of the great families of the county. In pursuance of this purpose he decided that his only son should wed a lady of high degree who was by no means young, and who had made her inclinations in the matter all too manifest. The heir of Pengersick, however, had no desire to fall in with the plans of his father and the wishes of the elderly spinster. The black witch of Fraddam was therefore consulted—a terrible old beldam versed in all manner of sorceries; but even the strongest love potions that she could brew were powerless to melt the heart of young Pengersick. Love in the heart of the spinster, subjected to constant rebuffs and coldness, began to change to hate, and his father, finding that the heart of his son was obdurate, and his nature most obstinate, made suit to the spinster of high degree himself, and was smiled upon. Now it happened that the witch of Fraddam had a niece called Bitha, who had assisted her aunt in the brewing of her unholy potions. Bitha too, like the elderly spinster—now spinster no longer—had also fallen under the spell of the manly beauty of young Pengersick, and in order to win his affections determined to take service with his stepmother, now duly ensconced in Pengersick Castle. It fell out in the course of time as Bitha had hoped, and she won young Pengersick's heart, but unfortunately their love was discovered by the harridan stepmother; this discovery served only to deepen her hatred for one whom previously she had so passionately loved. She therefore determined once more without delay to employ the services of the black witch of Fraddam, whom she had previously discarded as an incapable physician. But here Bitha stepped in. She had not served an apprenticeship to her aunt, the witch of Fraddam, in vain; she had kept her eyes open all the while she had helped in filling the caldron on Fraddam Down with horrible brews, and the knowledge thus obtained enabled her now to foil all the spells of her aunt upon the life of her beloved with more powerful counter-spells. At last the wicked old beldam of Pengersick, despairing once more of the weapons of sorcery, determined to arm herself with the more powerful ones of calumny and slander. She succeeded in persuading the foolish old lord, her husband, that his son was now manifesting the deepest affection towards her. This tale was altogether too much for the dotard to bear, and it stung him to ungovernable fury. He at once fell in with the carefully-prepared promptings of his wife, and had his unfortunate son seized by a gang of ruffian sailors, who carried him off to a ship that lay riding in the bay, in which he was taken to Morocco and sold as a slave. After this we gather that the poor old lord had little peace of mind; both mistress and maid were at one in desiring his dissolution. It was not long, till sad and weary he lay a-dying, when Bitha came and stood by his bed, and with pleasing candour divested herself of the mask of kindly affection behind which she had hitherto hidden herself, and in hard staccato tones told him of the vile machinations of his wife, and that he was now dying from the effects of slow poisons, which she herself had administered to him. There was now nothing more left for the poor old lord of Pengersick to do than to wearily turn his face to the wall and die, like many before and after him to whom knowledge had come too late.

After the lapse of long years, the heir of Pengersick suddenly returned to his home, bringing with him a dusky Eastern bride, whose beauty was like a dream. He and his bride were accompanied by two swarthy servants, with whom they conversed in a strange language. The lord of Pengersick used to ride forth from the castle mounted upon a coal-black charger; so obedient and docile in all its ways was this steed to its master that it soon came to be universally regarded as undoubtedly of satanic origin. The new lord on his return found his wicked and foolish old stepmother shut up in her chamber, with her skin covered with scales like a serpent, from the effect of the fumes of the hell-broth that she had been constantly brewing with the witch of Fraddam for his undoing and the infatuation of the foolish old lord his father. In her pain and misery she at last ridded him of her presence, and sought relief in death by plunging into the waves of the sea. The fumes of the witch's caldron, we gather, had also been too much for Bitha, and her once beautiful face had taken on the hue of a toad. She lived on, an ugly and miserable old crone, in a cot on St. Hilary Down.