“Cert. 9, No. 6. Md.That one John Denham, of Tyston [Devon], one of ye feoffees of founders of the said scole, kepyth land named Ashe in Broadworth and other quylytts thereto adjoinyng, parcel of possessions gyven for sayd scole; and with ye profytts thereof payeth iiijli. yerely to ye manciple ther, and xiijs. iiijd. to ye launder of ye said scole-house.” (Oliver, “Monasticon Dioecesis Exoniensis,” p. 483.)
Carew’s quaint account is worth quoting in full:—
“S. Marie Wike standeth in a fruitfull soyle, skirted with a moore, course for pasture, and combrous for travellers. This village was the birth-place of Thomasine Bonaventure, I know not, whether by descent, or event, so called: for whiles in her girlish age she kept sheepe on the fore-remembred moore, it chanced, that a London marchant passing by, saw her, heeded her, liked her, begged her of her poore parents, and carried her to his home. In processe of time, her mistres was summoned by death to appeare in the other world, and her good thewes, no lesse than her seemely personage, so much contented her master, that he advanced her from a servant to a wife, and left her a wealthy widow. Her second marriage befell with one Henry Gall: her third and last, Sir John Percival, Lord Maior of London, whom she also overlived. And to shew, that vertue as well bare a part in the desert, as fortune in the meanes of her preferment, she employed the whole residue of her life and last widdowhood, to works no lesse bountifull, than charitable: namely, repayring of high waies, building of bridges, endowing of maydens, relieving of prisoners, feeding and apparelling the poor, &c. Amongst the rest, at this S. Mary Wike, she founded a Chauntery and free-schoole, together with faire lodgings, for the Schoolemasters, schollers, and officers, and added twenty pound of yeerely revennue, for supporting the incident charges: wherein as the bent of her desire was holy, so God blessed the same with al wished successe: for divers the best Gent. sonnes of Devon and Cornwall were there vertuously trained up, in both kinds of divine and humane learning, under one Cholwel, an honest and religious teacher, which caused the neighbours so much the rather, and the more to rewe, that a petty smacke onely of Popery, opened a gap to the oppression of the whole, by the statute made in Edw. the 6. raigne, touching the suppression of Chaunteries.” (Carew, “Survey of Cornwall,” edit. 1769, p. 119.)
Mr. W. H. Tregellas states that at the death of Sir John Percyvall, about 1504, his widow retired to her native place; but Carew’s words do not appear to justify this inference, and it is stated in the Stocken MSS. in the Guildhall Library that she was buried at St. Mary Woolnoth. Mr. Tregellas does not appear to have been able to trace the will; but Lysons, whose account was published in 1814, says definitely that the will was dated 1512, and this statement has been accepted by subsequent writers. By this will she bequeathed to her brother, John Bonaventer, £20; she made her cousin, John Dinham, who had married her sister’s daughter, residuary legatee, and committed to his discretion the chantry and grammar school founded in her lifetime; she gave a little gilt goblet, having a blue flower in the bottom, to the Vicar of Liskeard, to the intent that he should pray for her soul; and towards the building of the tower of St. Stephen’s by Launceston she left 20 marks. Robert Hunt, in his “Popular Romances of the West of England,” says that Berry Comb, in Jacobstow, was once the residence of Thomasine, and was given at her death to the poor of Week St. Mary. The “Parochial History of Cornwall” gives 1530 as the approximate date of her death.
APPENDIX H (pp. [161-62])
EPITAPHS OF RUDDLE AND BLIGH
The following is extracted from a little book entitled “Some Account of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Launceston,” by S. R. Pattison, 1852:—
“Adjoining is a marble monument, in memory of Sarah, the wife of the Rev. John Ruddle, interred near this place, in 1667. Below the family arms is the following epitaph, entitled “The Husband’s Valediction:”—
“Blest soul, since thou art fled into the slumbers of the dead,
Why should mine eyes
Let fall unfruitful tears, the offspring of despair and fears,
To interrupt thine obsequies.
No no, I won’t lament to see thy day of trouble spent;
But since thou art gone,
Farewell! sleep, take thy rest, upon a better Husband’s breast,
Until the resurrection.”
A stately monument of fine variegated marble, in the south aisle, is charged with the arms of Bligh, and the following Latin inscription:—