As soon as it was discovered that he had decamped, a reward of £350 was offered for his apprehension. He had already shot and killed five men, and had wounded seven. He was not, however, taken till he reached Salisbury Plain, where he hailed a postboy, who was returning with an empty chaise, and asked for a lift. He was still carrying his gun. The boy drove him to the inn, where he procured a bed; but the circumstances, and the description, had excited suspicion; he was secured in his sleep, and was removed to Cornwall, to be tried for murder at Launceston along with his serving-man, John Street.
His trial took place on August 1st, 1735, before Lord Chief Justice Hardwicke. Rogers was arraigned upon five indictments, and Street upon two. Both received sentence of death, and were executed on August 6th.
The house at Skewis has been recently in part rebuilt, when a bag of the slugs used by poor Rogers was found.
It is in Crowan parish.
The church of S. Crewenna stands on a hill, and has a good tower. It contains numerous monuments of the S. Aubyn family, and some brasses only recently restored to the church, after having lain for many years lost or forgotten in a cupboard at Clowance.
It is hard to say whether the fulsome memorial of Sir John S. Aubyn, who died in 1839, is more painful or amusing reading to such as know his story.
The church has been “restored” in a cold and unsympathetic fashion.
Clowance, the seat of the Molesworth S. Aubyn family, has noble trees, and is an oasis in the midst of the refuse-heaps of mines. There are some early crosses in the grounds.
But to return to the Irish invasion.
A second party of the colonists was under Fingar or Gwinear, son of Olilt, or Ailill, probably one of the Hy Bairrche family, which was expelled their country about 480. He brought over with him his sister Kiara, whose name has become Piala of Phillack in Cornish, according to a phonetic and constant rule. According to the legend he had over seven hundred emigrants with him. He and his party made their way from Hayle to Connerton, where they spent the night, and then pushed south to where now stands Gwinear. Here Fingar left his party to go ahead and explore. He reached Tregotha, where is a fine spring of water, and there paused to refresh himself, when, hearing cries from behind, he hurried back, and found that Tewdrig, the Cornish king or prince, who lived at Riviere, on a creek of the Hayle river, had hastened after the party of colonists, and had fallen on them and massacred them. When Fingar came up Tewdrig killed him also. Piala, the sister, does not seem to have been harmed; and as in the long-run the Irish succeeded in establishing themselves firmly in the district, she settled near Riviere and founded the church of Phillack.