Lanherne lies in the loveliest vale in Cornwall, shut in and screened from the blasts that sweep from the Atlantic. The old house was abandoned in 1794 to the nuns of Mount Carmel, who fled to England for refuge from the storms of the French Revolution. The front of the mansion is of the date 1580, and is eminently picturesque. A modern range of buildings has been added for the accommodation of the nuns, but it is not unsightly. The lovely pinnacled tower of the church of S. Mawgan rises beside the ancient mansion, at a considerably lower level, and the interior is rich with sculptured oak, and with monuments of the Arundells.
Alas! the mighty family that once dominated in Cornwall, second in power only to the Princes of Wales, royal dukes of that duchy, is now represented in Cornwall by empty mansions, alienated to other holders, and by tombs.
The motto of the family is “Deo data—Given by God.” It might be properly supplemented, If the Lord gave, the Lord hath also taken away.
Lanherne is in the parish of S. Mawgan. The church has been coldly and unsympathetically renovated by Mr. Butterfield. It contains very fine carved bench-ends and a screen that deserve inspection. The tower of the church is peculiarly beautiful, and the church rises above a grove of the true Cornish elm, growing like poplars, small-leaved.
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;