“Teach me, Father John, to say
Vesper-verse and matin-lay:
So when I to God shall plead,
Christ His Cross shall be my speed.”
[99] The love of the Lady Katherine Gordon for Perkin Warbeck is the subject of Hawker’s poem, “The Lady of the Mount.”
[100] The remains of this old building have been embodied in some cottages. The doorway shown in the illustration forms the front door of one of these. The other is occupied by the Cornwall County Police, and the unsuspecting pilgrim who rambles round without permission is liable to be startled by the gruff remark, “You’m trespassing!” Thus are we recalled from “the baseless fabric” of the past to the stern realities of the living present.
[101] Hawker gives a romantic turn of his own to this part of the story.
[102] From All the Year Round, vol. xvii. pp. 501-504. 1867. The story occurs in C. S. Gilbert’s “Historical Survey of Cornwall,” in Mrs. Bray’s “Trelawny of Trelawn,” and in “Histories of Launceston,” by R. and O. B. Peter.
[103] All this is singularly applicable to Hawker himself.
[105] John Ruddle, or Rudall, A.M., was instituted Vicar of St. Mary Magdalene, Launceston, on Christmas Day, 1663, on which day he began his ministry. He is entered in the Visitation Book of 1665 as vicar, and in that of 1692 as curate. He became a prebendary of Exeter. On July 15, 1671, he married Mary Bolitho, a widow. He was buried on January 22, 1698. (See Appendix [H].)
[106] It is a question whether these documents ever existed outside Hawker’s brain. See note on p. [101].
[107] See Vivian’s “Visitations of Cornwall,” p. 148.