LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- [Portrait of Rev. R. S. Hawker] Frontispiece
From a photograph by the late Dr. Budd, of Barnstaple. - [The Piscina in Morwenstow Church]
From a photograph by S. Thorn, of Bude. - [The Shield of David] (Fig. 1) and the [Pentacle of Solomon] (Fig. 2), on Bosses in the Roof of Morwenstow Church
From engravings in J. T. Blight’s “Ancient Crosses and other Antiquities in the East of Cornwall.” - Fig. 3, [Antony Payne’s Flagon] (see p. 120)
From a photograph by Mr. George Penrose. - [Interior of Morwenstow Church in Hawker’s Time]
From a photograph by S. Thorn, of Bude. - [Old Doorway at Stanbury]
Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge. - [The Manning Tomb in Morwenstow Churchyard]
From a photograph by Mr. T. W. Woodruffe. - [Tonacombe Manor]
Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge. - “[Black John]”
From a picture lent by Mrs. Calmady, and formerly belonging to Mr. Hawker. - [Arscott of Tetcott]
From a picture in the possession of Mrs. Ford, of Pencarrow. - [The Devil’s Wring, commonly known as The Cheesewring]
Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge. - [Antony Payne’s House at Stratton, now the Tree Inn]
Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge. - [Stowe.] The second house, built by John, Earl of Bath, son of Sir Bevill Granville, and pulled down in 1739
From the picture in the possession of Mrs. Waddon Martyn, at Tonacombe Manor. - [Antony Payne]
From the picture by Sir Godfrey Kneller, now in the Museum of the Royal Institution of Cornwall at Truro. - [Galsham], once the home of Cruel Coppinger
Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge. - [St. Stephen’s Church], Dunheved, by Launceston
Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge. - [Doorway of the old Chantry and School at Week St. Mary], founded by Thomasine Bonaventure
Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge. - “[Parson Rudall]”
From a picture in the possession of Rev. S. Baring-Gould. - [“The Place” of Botathen]
Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge. - [Boscastle Harbour]
Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge.
The Design on the [Title-page], by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge, represents the Carving of The Fruitful Vine, in Welcombe Church.
The Panel Design on the [Front Cover] represents a Bench End in Morwenstow Church; that of the Border is the Vine Carving of the Roof (see p. [15]).
The Panel Design on the Back represents the Carving of The Barren Fig-tree, in Welcombe Church.
FOOTPRINTS OF FORMER MEN IN FAR CORNWALL
MORWENSTOW[1]
There cannot be a scene more graphic in itself, or more illustrative in its history of the gradual growth and striking development of the Church in Celtic and Western England, than the parish of St. Morwenna. It occupies the upper and northern nook of the county of Cornwall; shut in and bounded on the one hand by the Severn Sea, and on the other by the offspring of its own bosom, the Tamar River, which gushes, with its sister stream the Torridge, from a rushy knoll on the eastern wilds of Morwenstow.[2] Once, and in the first period of our history, it was one wide wild stretch of rocky moorland, broken with masses of dunstone and the sullen curve of the warrior’s barrow, and flashing here and there with a bright rill of water or a solitary well. Neither landmarks nor fences nor walls bounded or severed the bold, free, untravelled Cornish domain. Wheel-tracks in old Cornwall there were none; but strange and narrow paths gleamed across the moorlands, which the forefathers said in their simplicity, were first traced by angel’s feet.[3] These, in truth, were trodden and worn by religious men—by the pilgrim as he paced his way toward his chosen and votive bourn, or by the palmer, whose listless footsteps had neither a fixed keblah nor a future abode. Dimly visible by the darker hue of the crushed grass, these straight and narrow roads led the traveller along from chapelry to cell, or to some distant and solitary cave. On the one hand, in this scenery of the past, they would guide us to the “Chapel-piece of St. Morwenna,” a grassy glade along the gorse-clad cliff, where to this very day neither will bramble cling nor heather grow; and, on the other, to the walls and roof and the grooved stone for the waterflow, which still survive, halfway down a headlong precipice, as the relics of St. Morwenna’s Well.[4] But what was the wanderer’s guidance along the bleak, unpeopled surface of these Cornish moors? The wayside cross. Such were the crosses of St. James and St. John, which even yet give name to their ancient sites in Morwenstow, and proclaim to the traveller that, or ever a church was reared or an altar hallowed here, the trophy of old Syria stood in solemn stone, a beacon to the wayfaring man, and that the soldiers of God’s army had won their honours among the unbaptised and barbarous people!