When Sir Walter Raleigh came to stay with the Killigrews in their fine new house at Arwenack, he suggested to his host that he should make a town here, on the shore of this splendid harbour. The Killigrews were men of action, and the town was built; to the acute annoyance of Penryn, which petitioned in vain against its upstart rival. We make our slow way through the narrow, crowded streets of the Killigrews’ town, and find the last remaining fragment of their house still “standing on the brimme within Falemuth Haven.” Only a crumbling wall is there, and a window, and on the hill the avenue by which the vanished Killigrews went in and out; nothing to show that Arwenack was the very source of Falmouth’s existence and the very core of her history. For with every concern of Smith-ike and Pen-y-cwm-wick and Falmouth a Killigrew was connected, from the day when they settled here in the fourteenth century till the day when the last of the name set up this pyramid that is beside us—not with the justifiable object of honouring the Killigrews, but for the astonishing reason that he thought it beautiful. He called it a darling thing. “Hoping it may remain,” he wrote, “a beautiful Imbellishment to the Harbour, Long, Long, after my desireing to be forgott.”[9]
ARWENACK AVENUE, FALMOUTH.
No Killigrew is likely to be forgot. It was a Killigrew who gave the land on which Henry VIII.’s castle of Pendennis still stands out there upon the point; a Killigrew who helped to build it and became its first governor; a Killigrew who made Falmouth and fostered it; and the eagle of the Killigrews is borne to this day on the shield of the town. The Killigrews are not forgotten.
It was the round tower of Pendennis that brought Arwenack low. It is used as barracks now, and to see the old building we must have an order; but from the pretty shaded road that circles it we can see nearly all there is to be seen with the bodily eye. Yet if we pass through the grey stone gateway there are other things that we may see, perhaps: Henrietta Maria carried in upon her litter, “the most worne and weak pitifull creature in ye world,” seeking a boat to take her to France; her son a year later coming on the same errand: the Duke of Hamilton brought hither “to prevent his doing further mischief,” by order of the King for whom he lost his head a little later: Fairfax’s messenger summoning Sir John Arundel to surrender his castle. “Having taken less than two minutes’ resolution,” answered old John-for-the-King, “I resolve that I will here bury myself before I deliver up this castle to such as fight against his Majesty, and that nothing you can threaten is formidable to me in respect of the loss of loyalty and conscience.”[10] Five months the garrison held out; and when at last the remnant of them filed through the gate—a pathetic procession of sick and starving men tottering out with flying colours and beating drums—they left no food behind them but one pickled horse.
The belief that the little room above the gate was used by Henrietta Maria is probably due to what might be called the law of local tradition; the law that masonry attracts picturesque associations in direct proportion to its own picturesqueness, and in inverse proportion to the quantity of building that survives. If one room only of an old castle remains, it is that room, according to local tradition, that was the scene of every event that ever took place in the castle. A gatehouse is an improbable shelter for a queen in time of war. As for Prince Charles, there was once a tiny room in which he was reputed to have hidden. Here we have another invariable rule. Charles II. never occupied any place larger than a cupboard; and even in a fortress garrisoned by royalists he systematically “hid.” In this case even his reputed hiding-place is gone, and the legend has not as yet been transferred to the gatehouse; but if we enter the fort itself beneath the sculptured arms of Henry VIII., and mount the long staircase to the leads, we shall see below us on the shore the little blockhouse from which he escaped to France. On our left lies the crowded harbour with St. Mawe’s beyond it, and the round grey tower that was built at the same time as Pendennis: on our right is the bay of Gyllyng Vase, named William’s Grave in memory of the prince who was drowned in the White Ship. Headland stretches beyond headland; and far away on the horizon the Manacles show their cruel teeth.
During the siege John-for-the-King set fire to Arwenack lest the Parliament-men should make a battery of it. It is a common saying that the Killigrews, in their loyalty, put a light to it themselves. But strangely enough the owner at this time was “ye infamous Lady Jane,” who had been divorced by Sir John Killigrew but kept possession of his house for her life—a curious state of things that definitely settles the question of the firing of Arwenack. It was this Lady Jane who gave the famous chalice to the town of Penryn, “when they received mee that was in great miserie.” It was not this lady, however—as is often said—but Dame Mary of Elizabethan days, who boarded the Spanish ship in a true Elizabethan spirit and took her cargo home to Arwenack.[11]
KING HARRY’S FERRY.