This Leon was afterwards annexed to Domnonia in Brittany, so as to form a single kingdom.
Again another swarm took possession of the western seaboard, and called that Cornu, either after their Cornwall at home, or because Finisterre is, like that, a horn thrust forward into the Atlantic.
By degrees Vannes, itself a Gallo-Roman city, was enveloped by the new-comers, so that in 590 the Bishop Regalis complained that he was as it were imprisoned by them within the walls of his city. The Gallo-Roman prelate disliked these British invaders and their independent ways. S. Melanius of Rennes and S. Felix of Nantes shared his dislike. The prelates exercised much of the magisterial authority of the imperial governors, and to this the newly-arrived Britons refused to submit. The Britons brought with them their own laws, customs, and organisation, both civil and ecclesiastical, as well as their own language.
They were at first few in numbers, and did not desire to emancipate themselves wholly from Britain. Consequently, although establishing themselves in clans, they held themselves to be under the sovereignty of their native princes at home.
This appears from the coincidence of the names of the kings in Armorica and in insular Domnonia.[25]
About the downs may be seen numerous cairns and barrows. Some of these have been explored, and some fine urns of the Bronze Age, that were found near Gunwalloe, are now in the Truro Museum.
Alas! there is one thing for which Lizard is notorious, and that is wrecks. The last great tragedy of that nature was the loss of the Mohegan, in 1898. A mysterious loss, for the two lights of Lizard shone clear to the left, and she was steered straight on the deadly Manacles, where she went to pieces. The churchyards of S. Keverne, Landewednack, and Mullion contain the graves of many and many a drowned man and woman thrown up by the sea. But, be it remembered, formerly those thus cast up, unless known, were not buried in churchyards, but on the cliffs, as there was no guarantee that the bodies were those of Christians. For this reason it is by no means uncommon on these cliffs to come on bones protruding from the ground on the edge of the sea—the remains of drowned mariners, without name, and of an unknown date. Indeed, it was not till 1808 that an Act was passed requiring the bodies of those cast up by the sea to be buried in the parish churchyard. “What is the usual proceeding?” said a curate to some natives, as a drowned man from a wreck was washed ashore. “In such a case as this what should be done?”
“Sarch ’is pockets,” was the prompt reply.
Note.—Books on the Lizard:—
Johns (C. P.), A Week at the Lizard. S.P.C.K., 1848. Though an old book, quite unsurpassed.