We run down a long hill into Lostwithiel. This is a place that has seen better days; for Henry III.’s brother, the Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, made it his headquarters in the rare moments when he was not trying to make up the quarrels of others nor fighting in his own, and even in the sixteenth century it was the “shyre towne.” Of the “ruines of auncyent buyldinges” that Leland saw there are only slight traces; but, if we cross the pretty old bridge that spans the Fowey and turn to the right at once, we may see “the little rownd castel of Restormel.” It is reached by a steep lane, and there is no turning-room at the top except in a private field.
RESTORMEL CASTLE.
“Only there remaineth,” says Carew, “an utter defacement.” But indeed there is something more. This straight avenue of pine-trees with its carpet of turf, the double entrance across the moat, the heavy, gloomy ivy, give to Restormel that air of mystery and romance that seizes the imagination. Like its founder—the prince whose strange exotic name haunts Cornwall far more persistently than he ever did himself—like Richard, King of the Romans, this castle was more warlike than domestic. Only the “fair large dungeon,” or keep, and the “onrofid” chapel are left standing now on the mound that overlooks the valley so commandingly. It is a fine position; yet, though it was hastily strengthened for the Parliament, Sir Richard Grenville[7] took it for the King.
The road from Lostwithiel to Fowey is for the most part winding and stony, and extremely narrow. In places it is also very steep; and the hedges are high and comparatively uninteresting. But a road that leads ultimately to Fowey is entitled to do as it pleases on the way. The last part of it is quite good.
On a very steep hill we creep slowly into “Troy Town.” We look out, over the sloping streets and the roofs of the houses and the church, at the blue harbour and the hill beyond it and all the busy traffic of the port. Over this hill, hundreds of years ago, the men of Normandy crept into Fowey in the night and fell to fighting in the streets, with a whole century of wrongs to avenge—a century of raids and robberies on the part of the truculent Gallants of Fowey. The spoils of French harbours had made the townsmen here “unspeakably rich and proud and mischievous.” So the Frenchmen came to Fowey “without the Foymen’s knowledge or notice,” and killed everyone they met, and burnt the town. Thomas Treffry—Hals calls him John—gathered some of the “stoutest men” round him in his new house of Place, and defended it; while his wife Elizabeth, like a true help-meet, mounted to the roof and poured molten lead upon the besiegers, with excellent effect. Place stands there still, below us on the left; yet not the same that was besieged, since the tall tower is plainly of Victorian date, and the very beautiful bays that appear above the wall are Tudor. It was after this exciting experience that Thomas Treffry—or John—“builded a right fair and stronge embatelid towr in his house: and embateling al the waulles of the house in a maner made it a castelle: and onto this day”—and unto this—“it is the glorie of the town building in Faweye.”
If we stand close below the church tower, and look carefully at the stones above us, we shall see the familiar badge of the ragged staff, the cognisance of the Kingmaker. The Foyens, when Warwick allowed them to go on with their piracies, naïvely put his badge upon their new church in acknowledgment of his kindness, and persevered in their filibustering ways. Edward IV., however, subdued them by a most unkingly trick. His first messenger they returned to him shorn of his ears, “at which affront the King was so distasted” that he sent a body of men to Lostwithiel, the shire town, ostensibly to enlist volunteers. The Gallants, who never asked for anything better than to fight the French, trooped to Lostwithiel at the summons of their King. They were all arrested; and the chain that guarded their harbour was given to Dartmouth. I believe there are two links of the chain still to be seen at Menabilly, behind the hill.
From the windows of the Fowey Hotel we can see, at Polruan, one of the square grey forts to which the ends of this chain were fastened. The ruins of the other are opposite to it. These valiant little forts have seen a good deal of service, and defended their port long after their chain was forfeited. There was a Dutch ship that came to this harbour-mouth one day in pursuit of an English fleet, and defied the forts in the insolence of her seventy guns—“to the great hurt,” says Hals, “of the Dutch ship … and the no small credit and reputation of Foy’s little castles.”
BODINNICK FERRY.