But for this mention of Richard of Colemanshegg the earliest notice of a Cornish hermit after the Norman Conquest would have been that contained in the Assize Roll of the 30th year of Edward I (1301-1302) in which it is recorded that Thomas de Penmargh noctanter intravit domum Andreae Paugan heremitae infra capellam Divi Justi et eum occidit. Johannes filius Andreae heremitae primus invenitor. The entry is under the heading of the hundred of Penwith. Penmargh is doubtless Penmarth in Wendron. Pagan, of which Paugan may be a variant, is not uncommon as a personal name in early records. We are not told why Thomas of Penmargh killed Andrew, or how long it was before John discovered the dead body of his father, but it looks as if Andrew had been seen alive the day before his death and found dead by his son the day after. Where was the hermitage? It is described as below the chapel of St. Just, but St. Just was not a chapel (capella). It was a church (ecclesia), and the terms are never used indiscriminately. If it be allowable to render the passage “below a chapel of St. Just,” that is, below a chapel in the parish of St. Just, the record is very significant.
For one of the most interesting spots in that parish is Chapel Carn Brea, upon the summit of which stood until 1816 a chapel of which a sketch was made by Dr. Borlase, who described it as being approached from the south side by a large flight of steps and as being twenty feet in height, and the roof arched with stone well wrought. Hals tells us it was about ten feet wide and fourteen feet long, with a window in the east end. Both writers speak of an immense heap of stones lying around it, suggesting a large vault or hermitage underneath. The chapel was pulled down in 1816 to build a barn elsewhere. When, in 1879, Mr. W. C. Borlase made an examination of the confused mass of stones which remained, and still remain, he failed to discover any trace of a hermit’s cell, and concluded that the greater portion of the debris had done service as a covering for the prehistoric chambered grave which was found at a lower level. While it is not unlikely that the tumulus suggested, at a very early period, the site for the chapel to the first Christian solitary who found his way to that remote spot, the amount of stone there at the present time is too great to warrant the conclusion, unless the tumulus was of a type and size which has no rival in the county.
Some building doubtless existed besides the chapel, the size of which was obviously too small for public worship.
The most striking feature of Chapel Carn Brea is the commanding view which it affords not only of the Channel but of the whole of Penwith and of a large portion of the Lizard. No better spot could be chosen for a beacon.
Within a couple of hundred yards is the ancient mule track from Marazion to the Land’s End. After reading Miss Clay’s chapter on hermits as light-keepers, it seems impossible to doubt that the hermit of Chapel Carn Brea was one of those who in the day of small things performed that function, and whose simple signal was to the seafarer no less than to the traveller over the lonely moor a bright beacon of God. Andrew Paugan was probably only one of a long line of hermits who dwelt on the hill. A curious extract is found in Dr. Borlase’s collections which, as one of the latest specimens of Cornish literature, has a value all its own and, as the witness of a tradition extant in the latter half of the seventeenth century, is useful for the present purpose. I am indebted to Mr. Henry Jenner for a transcript and translation of it.
“The Accusation of the Hermit (who liv’d in Chapel Karn Bray in Buryan) address’d to ye Duchess.
Rag an Arlothus woolaes Kernow
Dreth ’guz kibmias beniggas.
Why ra cavas dre eu an gwas Harry ma Poddrack broas.
Kensa, wit a hagar-awal iggeva gweel do derevoll war ren ny Keniffer termen dre ra ny moas durt Pedden an woolaes do Sillan. Nessa, wit an skavoll Crack-an-codna iggava setha war en cres a’n awles ewhall (cries tutton Harry an Lader) heb drog veeth. Tregga, wit an gurroll iggeva gwell gen askern skooth Davas, etc.”