Immediately opposite Fowey is Polruan, the Pool of S. Ruan, who was an Irishman like Finbar. His bones were translated by Ordgar, Earl of Devon, to Tavistock in 960. Thence an excursion can be made to Lanteglos, dedicated to S. Wyllow, a local saint, murdered by a kinsman, Melyn. The church is chiefly interesting as containing monuments of the Mohun family. Indeed, it would seem to have been their principal place after Dunster.
Reginald, a younger son of Baron John Mohun of Dunster (died 1330), married a daughter of John Fitz-William, and settled at Hall, in Lanteglos. From Hall the Mohun family removed to Boconnoc, and a baronetcy was obtained in 1612 for the head of the house. John, son of the first baronet, was a venal adherent of Charles I., and owed his elevation to the peerage mainly to the clamorous importunities of a still more venal placeman, Sir James Bagg. Writing to the Duke of Buckingham, the latter urged, "Mr. Mohun is so your servant, as in life and fortune will be my second. Enable him by honour to be fit for you; so in the Upper House or in the country will he be the more advantageous to your grace."
Mohun was created Baron of Okehampton in 1628. His great-grandson was Charles, the fifth and last Lord Mohun. This man, possessed of a passionate and vindictive temper, lost his father early; his mother married again, and his education was neglected. When he had scarcely attained the age of twenty he was mixed up in the murder of Mountford, the actor. He was tried before his peers in 1692, and was acquitted; but there can be no doubt that he was associated in the murder. Seven years afterwards, in 1699, he was again tried for his life, along with the Earl of Warwick, for the murder of Captain Coote. He was again acquitted. This second escape sobered him for a while. For long he and the Duke of Hamilton entertained ill-feeling towards each other, occasioned by some money disagreement. This came to a head in 1712, when it ended in a challenge. Which it was, however, who challenged the other was never certainly decided. Colonel Macartney was Lord Mohun's second, and Colonel Hamilton exercised the same office for the duke. They met in Hyde Park on Saturday morning, the 15th November, and swords were the weapons employed. A furious encounter ensued, the combatants fighting to the death with the savagery of demons, so that when the keepers of the park, hearing the clash of swords, hurried to the spot, they found both the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun weltering in their blood and dying, and the two seconds also engaged in mortal combat. The keepers separated the latter. Then Colonel Hamilton and one keeper lifted the duke; Macartney and the other endeavoured to do the same by Lord Mohun, who, however, expired, and his body was sent home in the coach that had brought him. Swift, writing to Stella at the time, says that, "while the duke was over him, Mohun shortened his sword, and stabbed him in the shoulder to the heart." According to the evidence of the surgeons who examined the bodies, each had received four frightful wounds, and both appeared to have given each other the mortal thrust at the same instant.
Fowey has for long been a nursery of Treffrys and Rashleighs, though the latter really issue from a place called by the same name near Eggesford, in Devon, where is an interesting old house, their mansion, with beautiful Elizabethan plaster-work, and their very peculiar arms--a cross or between, in the dexter chief quarter a Cornish chough arg., beaked and legged gu., in the sinister chief quarter a text T, and in base two crescents, all arg. A coat, this, that suggests that some story must be connected with its origin, but what that story was is now forgotten. The history of Fowey is interwoven with that of the Rashleighs and the Treffrys.
Fowey was one of the rotten boroughs that were disfranchised. It was created by Elizabeth in 1571. In 1813 the borough manor of Fowey, formerly the property of the Duchy, passed from the control of the Rashleighs to Lucy of Charlescot, in Warwickshire; it was sold for £20,000 and an expenditure of £60,000 to acquire whole influence over voters. The Lucys opposed Lord Valletort, who had represented the borough since 1790--a long time for a Cornish borough--and desperate contests ensued, with varying success. When disfranchisement came they found they had laid out vast sums, and had nothing to show for it.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE FAL
Truro--The cathedral--Probus tower--S. Kea--Polgerran--King Geraint--His tomb--S. Just--Mylor--Falmouth a modern town--How it sprang up--The Killigrews--Arewenack--A station for the packets--Church--Pendennis Castle--The Manacles--The Black Rock--Mr. Trefusis of Trefusis--S. Mawes Castle--Roseland--Smuggling--S. Mawes a borough--S. Tudy--The climate of Falmouth--A sunbeam.
The cathedral city of Cornwall is planted at the head of a long creek that unites with the Tresillian river, and together they join the Fal. The name is thought to signify Three Roads, that united at this point. The town lies in a hollow, and the descent into it from the railway station is considerable. It has been a place of more consequence in the past than Bodmin, and several of the Cornish county families had their town residences in Truro, going there for the winter, to enjoy assembly balls and card parties.