Having briefly reviewed the more important of the Cornish contributions to the revenue of the Exeter bishopric, a few words are required respecting the manors which, though absent from the Taxatio of 1291, were in 1086 amongst the possessions of the bishop, and were recorded in Domesday Book.
Matela or Methleigh, reckoned at a hide and a half in 1086, was granted by the bishop to the dean and chapter of Exeter, about the year 1160 and, by them, was conveyed soon afterwards to the family of Nansladron. It was to this manor that the church of St. Breage was appendant, and it may well have been the demesne land of a religious community before the Saxon invasion.
Landicla or Lanisley, also a hide and a half, was held by Rolland the archdeacon, of the bishop in 1086, having been Bishop Leofric’s in the time of the Confessor. It embraced the whole parish of Gulval. Before the enactment of the statute Quia emptores in 1290, the whole of the demesne land appears to have been granted to the family of Fitz Ive. There is consequently no mention of it in the Taxatio of the following year, although the seignorial rights were subsequently claimed and exercised by the bishop from time to time as occasion arose. In 1580 it is described in an inquisition as having been held by John Tripcony of the bishop as of his manor of Penryn Foren, but the description, far from indicating a common origin of the two manors, probably only indicates a late expedient enabling the bishop to claim the services and collect the dues, if any, at his chief manor in the west. The advowson, and with it the rectorial tithe of Lanisley or Gulval, was at an early date held by the prior and canons of St. Germans, and continued to be held by them until the dissolution of their religious house in the sixteenth century. In the Valor ecclesiasticus their holding was assessed at £10 6s. 8d. It is not unlikely that when Bishop Leofric reconstituted the church of St. German he gave to it the advowson of Lanisley.[[71]]
Lanherne, the Lanherneu of Domesday, was a holding of Bishop Leofric before the Norman conquest, and was in 1086 held by Fulcard of the bishop. It was estimated at three hides. Of the incidents of tenure in subsequent times nothing remained to the bishop save homage, wardship, and the like, and the manor was not considered worthy of assessment in the Taxatio of 1291. It would be interesting to know how this manor came into the bishop’s hands. It adjoined his manor or hundred of Pawton, and may have passed with it, but, curiously enough, the parish of St. Mawgan, with which it was almost conterminous, was not within the bishop’s peculiar jurisdiction. The manor was, doubtless, St. Petrock’s before it became the bishop’s.
The manor of St. Winnuc or St. Winnow had already passed to a sub-tenant at the time of the Domesday Survey, and the impropriated tithe and advowson of the church of St. Winnow to the dean and chapter of Exeter, before 1291. There is nothing to suggest the source whence the manor was obtained for the endowment of the bishopric, save that St. Winnow adjoins Lanhydrock, which belonged to St. Petrock, and may, therefore, have been taken from the saint.
The manor of Tinten in St. Tudy, held in 1086 by Richard, of the bishop, was not considered worthy of separate mention in the Taxatio of 1291. It is the only episcopal manor the name or locality of which does not suggest an ecclesiastical origin. The advowson of St. Tudy was independent of it being appendant to the manor of Trethewell in St. Eval. Does the half hide of Tinten represent the lay contribution of Cornwall towards the endowment of the see of Exeter?[[72]]
We are now in a position to summarise the results of the foregoing survey. We have seen that the Cornish possessions of the see of Exeter, at the time of the Domesday Survey, consisted chiefly of manors which had St. Germans, Lawhitton, Pawton and Penryn (or Tregear) for their centres. St. Germans and Pawton, and probably Lawhitton, were derived from monastic sources, viz. from the monasteries of St. German, St. Petrock, and probably from St. Stephen. The possessions in and around Penryn require further examination.
That there was a monastery-bishopric at Dinurrin or Dingerein in the ninth century is clear from Kenstec’s profession of obedience to Archbishop Ceolnoth. To treat of Gerrans and its associations in an impartial spirit is wellnigh impossible. Legend, history and fact are so strangely and so suggestively interwoven that the temptation is equally great to say too much or too little. The name Gerrans is a modern form of Geraint or Geruntius. The presence of Gerrans, Just and Cuby, as the names of three churches and parishes near together, is indeed a remarkable coincidence if they are not identical with Geraint of Anglesey, his son Jestyn or Just, and his grandson Cuby, son of Selyf. No valid reason has been offered against the identification. Mr. Baring-Gould considers St. Gerrans the same person as Gerennius, King of Cornwall, who requested St. Teilo to visit and communicate him when dying (circa 556).
Both Geraint and Gerennius must be distinguished from Gerontius, prince of Dumnonia, to whom St. Aldhelm wrote at the request of an English synod in 705 urging him to abandon the Celtic method of determining Easter and the Celtic tonsure which the saint described as the tonsure of Simon Magus. All three (who are here distinguished as Geraint, Gerennius and Gerontius, though the names are identical) were historical personages and worthy of the veneration of after ages. For our present purpose it is not material to determine the identity of St. Gerrans: it is sufficient for us to know that Dingerein may be derived from any one of them. In the ninth century Dingerein or Dinurrin was the seat of the Abbot-bishop Kenstec. In the absence of evidence to the contrary we may suppose that his episcopate was concentrated at Gerrans and embraced the lands or parishes bordering the estuary of the Fal—those parishes in fact which subsequently became for ecclesiastical purposes the deanery of Penryn, and for civil purposes formed a large portion of the hundred of Trocayr or Tregeare. There is nothing to show that, either for ecclesiastical or for civil purposes, there were close relations, much less that there was a bond of union, between the Gerrans territory and that of Pawton, Pydar, St. German or Lawhitton. Gerrans was self-contained and independent. It may have retained, and probably did retain, traces of its episcopal character until Edward the Confessor, by charter, transferred the Cornish diocese with its lands and parishes to the see of Exeter. Some justification was doubtless required for the annexation of so much land in and around Gerrans to the bishop’s demesne, and the only justification which is apparent is that it was already regarded as such.[[73]]
In the case of St. Gerrans hardly any trace was left of its monastic and episcopal associations. In the Taxatio of 1291 the benefice of St. Gerrans consisted of two portions, the rector’s and the prior of St. Anthony’s, which may point to a corporate life at an earlier date.