The castle was not a very large one, and we were more impressed by the loneliness of its situation than by the ruin itself, for there was a long approach to it without a cottage or a friendly native in sight, nor did we see any one in the lonely road of quite a mile along which we passed afterwards to the town of Lostwithiel. But this road was quite pleasant, following the tree-covered course of the River Fowey, and lined with ferns and the usual flower-bearing plants all the way to that town.
LOSTWITHIEL ANCIENT BRIDGE AND LANDING PLACE.
Here we rejoined the Liskcard highway, which crossed the river by an ancient bridge said to date from the fourteenth century. At this point the river had long ago been artificially widened so as to form a basin and landing-place for the small boats which then passed to and fro between Fowey and Lostwithiel.
The derivation of the last place-name was somewhat doubtful, but the general interpretation seemed to be that its original form was Lis-guythiel, meaning the "Palace in the Wood," which might be correct, since great trees still shut in the range of old buildings representing the remains of the old Palace or Duchy House. The buildings, which were by no means lofty, were devoted to purposes of an unimportant character, but they had a decidedly dungeon-like appearance, and my brother, who claimed to be an authority on Shakespeare because he had once committed to memory two passages from the great bard's writings, assured me that if these old walls were gifted with speech, like the ghost that appeared to Hamlet, they "could a tale unfold, whose lightest word would harrow up our souls; freeze our young blood; make our eyes, like stars, start from their spheres; our knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine"; but fortunately "this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood," and so we hurried away up the town.
Lostwithiel, one of the Stannary towns, was at one time the only coinage town in Cornwall, and traces of the old Mint and Stannary Court could yet be seen. The town had formerly the honour of being represented in Parliament by the famous writer, statesman, and poet, Joseph Addison.
LOSTWITHIEL CHURCH, SOUTH PORCH AND CROSS
The church was dedicated to St. Bartholomew, and was described as "a perfect example of the Decorated period" and the "glory of Cornwall." It possessed a lantern spire "of a kind unexampled elsewhere in the West of England"; but as our standard was high, since we had seen so many churches, we failed to appreciate these features, and, generally speaking, there were no very fine churches in Cornwall compared with those in other counties. This church, however, had passed through some lively scenes in the Civil War, when the Royalist army was driving that of the Parliament towards the sea-coast, where it was afterwards cornered and captured. A Provost named Marshall commanded the detachment of the Parliamentary forces at Lostwithiel, and to show their contempt for the religion of the Church of England, they desecrated the church by leading one of their horses to the font and christening him Charles "in contempt of his most sacred Majesty the King." Meanwhile two Cavaliers, supporters of the King, and gentlemen of some repute in the county, had hidden themselves in the church tower and drawn the ladder up after them. When they saw the Provost preparing to depart, for he was now in a hurry to get away from the approaching Royalist soldiers, they jeered at him through a window in the tower. He called to them, "I'll fetch you down," and sent men with some "mulch and hay" to set fire to the tower into which the Cavaliers had climbed, but they only jeered at him the more, which caused him to try gunpowder, intending, as he could not smoke them out, to blow them out; but he only succeeded in blowing a few tiles off the roof of the church. The font was a fine one, octagonal in form, and carved on all the eight panels, though some of the figures had been mutilated; but it was still possible to discern a horrible-looking face covered with a wreath of snakes, a mitred head of a bishop, a figure of a knight with a hawk, horn, and hound, and other animals scarcely suitable, we thought, for a font.
The army of the Parliament was gradually driven to Fowey, where 6,000 of them were taken prisoner, while their commander, the Earl of Essex, escaped by sea. Fowey was only about six miles away from Lostwithiel, and situated at the mouth of the River Fowey. It was at one time the greatest port on the coast of Cornwall, and the abode of some of the fiercest fighting men in the British Isles. From that port vessels sailed to the Crusades, and when Edward III wanted ships and men for the siege of Calais, Fowey responded nobly to the call, furnishing 47 ships manned by 770 men. The men of Fowey were the great terror of the French coast, but in 1447 the French landed in the night and burnt the town. After this two forts were built, one on each side of the entrance to the river, after the manner of those at Dartmouth, a stout iron chain being dropped between them at nightfall. Fowey men were in great favour with Edward IV because of their continued activity against the French; but when he sent them a message, "I am at peace with my brother of France," the Fowey men replied that they were at war with him! As this was likely to create friction between the two countries, and as none of his men dared go to Fowey owing to the warlike character of its inhabitants, the King decided to resort to strategy, but of a rather mean character. He despatched men to Lostwithiel, who sent a deputation to Fowey to say they wished to consult the Fowey men about some new design upon France. The latter, not suspecting any treachery, came over, and were immediately seized and their leader hanged; while men were sent by sea from Dartmouth to remove their harbour chain and take away their ships. Possibly the ships might afterwards have been restored to them upon certain conditions, but it was quite an effectual way of preventing their depredations on the coast of France.