A Book of Cornwall

by S. Baring-Gould

Among the rights and privileges exercised by the borough of Saltash was that the mayor or recorder held a court of quarter sessions till 1886. In 1772 a woman was sentenced to be stripped to her waist and whipped in public for stealing a hat. But this sentence, if repugnant to our sense of decency, was light compared to one passed in 1844 on two women for stealing some shirting wherewith to make garments for their husbands. They were transported for seven years. The natural result was that they married again and settled in Botany Bay, and the husbands found for themselves fresh mates at Saltash. In this century the mayor sentenced a man to transportation for stealing a watch at a regatta. The only church at Saltash is the chapel of the Guildhall, and the chaplain formerly had a bad time of it as the creature of the mayor. Happily the advowson was sold in 1836 for £405, and fell to the bishop. The church possesses a splendid piece of plate, a silver cup over a foot high. This was given to the church in 1624 by Ambrose and Abraham Jennens and William Pawley, but it is far older.

It is said in the place that it is of Spanish workmanship, and was part of the spoil of a vessel of the great Armada. This, however, is not the case; it is a fine example of English silversmith's work of the reign of Henry VII.

The Castle of Trematon, to which the original serfs of Saltash owed service, still exists. It is not remarkable for picturesqueness. It occupies the top of a wooded hill on the banks of the Lynher, overlooking the Hamoaze and Plymouth harbour, and consists of a keep, the base-court, and the gate-house. The keep, placed at the north-east angle of the court, is oval in form, and dates from the thirteenth century. The walls are ten feet thick and thirty feet high. It was wrecked by the Cornish peasants, who rose against the Reformation, stormed the castle, and took the governor prisoner.

Among the many broils that took place in Saltash between the corporation and the great body of townsmen the most serious was in 1806, when the Rev. John Buller was mayor. On this occasion the mob broke into the Guildhall, where the mayor stood to his post on the stairs, and for some time held back the crowd, dealing mighty blows with the silver-gilt mace, and cracking therewith many crowns. Finally the rioters succeeded in getting hold of the chest, and they destroyed or purloined all the documents it contained, with the object of getting rid of the evidence in favour of the corporation. At the same time they carried off the silver oar, the symbol of jurisdiction over the Hamoaze, and this was not recovered for fifty years.

The corporation maces are singularly handsome and weighty, and are of silver-gilt.

The present Guildhall is erected over the market-house, and was built in 1770. It is ugly, and has this alone to recommend it, that it is unpretentious.

On the daïs within are three handsome carved oak chairs, that for the mayor having the arms of the borough on the panel--a lion rampant within a bordure bezanted. On each side of the shield is a Prince of Wales' ostrich plume.

A late mayor was the brother of the famous astronomer, Professor Adams.

The official costume of the mayor includes a robe of scarlet cloth trimmed with sable and a cocked hat; the justice or ex-mayor has a black mantle; and the mace-bearers have scarlet, silver-laced gowns and three-cornered hats. The maces date from 1696, and were presented by Francis Buller, Esq., and are three feet seven inches high.

Near the water, almost crushed under the mighty arch of Brunel's viaduct, is a little old shop with the date on it of 1584, and it is one of the very few specimens of a shop of that period that remain to us absolutely untouched.