Fowey’s fighting reputation has always been great, since the day when she owned “sixty tall ships” and sent forty-seven of them to the siege of Calais. To see the harbour that has done so much for England we must loiter in a boat beside the jetties and among the creeks; we must pass the dripping walls of gardens, and the flights of steps where the seaweed clings, and the houses whose back-doors open on the water; we must watch the lading of the ships with china-clay—ships from Sweden and Russia and France—and pause before the picture that Bodinnick makes on the hillside. It was to this hillside, says the story, that Sir Reynold de Mohun came to fetch his hawk, when it killed its quarry in the Fitzwilliams’ garden up there at Hall. Walking in the garden was the fair Elizabeth Fitzwilliam, and on the moment he lost his heart to her, and as she thought him “a very handsome personable young gentleman,” they became the first Mohuns of Hall. Whether they were really introduced by the hawk is doubtful, but they were certainly married—and that not merely once but twice: for the bishop divorced them against their will, and it was only by appealing to the Pope that they won leave to live happily ever after.[8]
Even if we cannot see all the bends and creeks of the river from Fowey to Lostwithiel, we must at least take our boat between the woods and slopes of Pont Pill, where it is only at the water’s very edge that the ferns and heather yield to rocks and crimson weed. Landing at Pont, we may climb the steep hillside to Lanteglos Church among the orchards, and see the old stone cross beside the porch, and the wonderful bench-ends within, and the elaborately painted shields that bear so many famous arms. On this little lonely church, buried among the trees, things of beauty have been lavished, not only long ago but lately; carvings both old and new, and magnificent embroideries, and pavings of marble. There is no other church like this, I think: none, so small and simple and lonely, that has been so generously treated.
PONT PILL, FOWEY.
Fowey town is a maze of little streets; but when we have climbed out of them—with heavier hearts than seems reasonable—we drive away past the lodge of Menabilly on a very fair road. It will add little to the journey if we go round by Tywardraeth and see the old church, and the tombstone of the prior whose monastery has so strangely vanished. A few carved stones in the churchyard are all that remains of the priory that was founded by William de Mortain, “a person of a malicious and arrogant spirit from his childhood.” It was well named Tywardraeth, the house on the sand, for great was the fall thereof; but why it has disappeared so utterly, and how, is curiously obscure. Gilbert tells the story of the last prior’s resignation—an edifying tale. Thomas Cromwell wrote to him a letter full of compliments, praising his virtues as a man and a prior, and telling him how deeply the King appreciated his services. These had been so unremitting, added Cromwell, that his Grace, being mindful of his age, would allow him to resign his post. To this Prior Collyns answered briskly that he was most grateful for the King’s kind thought, but as a matter of fact his health was excellent. So my Lord Privy Seal tried again. This time the astonished prior was informed that “the savour of his sins, crimes, and iniquities had ascended before the Lord, and that unless he immediately relinquished an office he had most grossly abused a commission would inquire into his misdeeds and punish him accordingly.” This, Collyns understood. Here is his gravestone in the church, in the wall of the north transept; a slab of slate with a cross incised on it. Some old bench-ends have been made into a pulpit, and others inserted in new seats of pitch-pine; but these are not relics of the priory.
Leaving St. Blazey on the right, we run on through some lovely scenery to St. Austell, where a church-tower of wonderful splendour and richness rises from the dull streets of stuccoed and slated houses. Our road to Truro is wide and has an excellent surface, but one hill succeeds another with exasperating regularity and promptitude. The scenery varies from dulness to beauty: the villages seem, to eyes that have lately looked upon those of Devon, a little uninteresting, for we are in the land of the Celt. Thatched cottages are rare, but in Probus there are several of them clustered round the churchyard very prettily. This tower of Probus is the highest in Cornwall, and very rich in sculptured stones: within the building are the granite pillars that are common to nearly all Cornish churches, and a screen whose Latin legend alludes to the two patron-saints St. Probus and St. Grace.
It is only a little way beyond Probus that we cross the head of the Falmouth estuary. By the rushy banks of this calm stream a little band of horsemen once settled weighty matters; for it was here, at Tresilian Bridge, that the royalist general, driven into a cul-de-sac by Fairfax, made his final surrender by the mouth of his commissioners. They met Ireton and Lambert at this spot, and the end of their meeting was the disbandment of the royal troops. The generals of the Parliament rode back to Fairfax by this road of ours, beside the banks of grass and rushes, and the mud-flats and the woods, and down the hill to Truro.
Except the cathedral there is little to see in Truro, and even the cathedral lacks the glamour of age, for, of the masonry, only the south aisle is part of the old church of St. Mary: the rest is new. The general effect of the inside of the building is fine, if a little severe. There is, however, a very gorgeous baptistery in the south transept, whose coloured pavements and crimson font are in rather startling contrast to the prevailing austerity. The roof, I believe, came from the old church, with a few of the monuments. The tomb on which John Robarts and his wife are lying in such obvious discomfort must be the one, I think, that was repaired in the eighteenth century by a mason whose bill included these items: “To putting one new foot to Mr. John Robarts, mending the other, putting seven new buttons to his coat, and a new string to his breeches knees. To two new feet to his wife Phillipa, and mending her eyes.”
Those of us who are intending presently to drive through the country of the Grenvilles may be glad, when they come to Stratton and Kilkhampton, to have seen Kneller’s picture of Anthony Payne. It is here in Truro, on the staircase of the museum in Pydar Street: a burly figure in scarlet, with a face that tries to be fierce but cannot hide its tenderness and humour. This is Sir Bevill Grenville’s giant henchman, who fought at his master’s side at Stratton and Lansdowne, and taught the children to ride and shoot.
A fine road leads from Truro to Falmouth, through hilly but beautiful country; by pine-woods, and distant views, and the green flats of the estuary, and a valley full of trees. Near pretty Perranarworthal we see, crossing a little gorge upon our right, one of the old wooden viaducts that have so nearly disappeared. In Penryn we cling closely to the estuary, following it to Falmouth Harbour. A hundred years ago the main road to Falmouth from London, as it passed through Penryn, “ran up and then down through streets so steep and narrow,” says a writer of that time, “as to make the safe passage of the mail-coach a wonder.” To-day, however, Penryn is one of the few towns in the West Country out of which we can drive on level ground.