Carnanton was formerly the dwelling of William Noye, a farmer of Buryan, who was bred as student-at-law in Lincoln's Inn, and afterwards became M. P. for S. Ives in Cornwall, in which capacity he stood for several Parliaments in the beginning of the reign of Charles I., and was one of the boldest and stoutest champions of the rights of Parliament against absolute monarchy. Charles I. then made him his attorney-general, 1631, whereupon his views underwent a complete change, "so that," as Halls says, "like the image of Janus at Rome, he looked forward and backward, and by means thereof greatly enriched himself." He it was who contrived the ship-money tax, which was so obnoxious, and was a principal occasion of the Rebellion.
The attorney-general one day was entertaining King Charles I. and the nobility of the court at dinner in his house in London. Ben Jonson and other choice spirits were at the same time in a tavern on the opposite side of the street, very much out of pocket, and with their stomachs equally empty.
Ben, knowing what was going on opposite, wrote this little metrical epistle and sent it to the attorney-general on a white wood trencher:--
"When the World was drown'd
No deer was found,
Because there was noe Park;
And here I sitt
Without een a bitt,
'Cause Noyah hath all in his Arke."
The presentation of this billet caused great amusement, and Noyes sent back a dish of venison with the rhymes recast, at the dictation of the king, in this fashion:--