To the Countess of the Dominion of Cornwall.
By your sacred leave.
You shall find by him that this fellow Harry is a great witch.
First, from the stormy weather he does work to raise upon us every time that we do go from the end of the Land to Silly. Second, from the break-neck stool which he can (or does) sit upon in the middle of the high cliff (call’d The Chair of Harry the Thief), without any hurt. Thirdly, from a ship he does make with the bone of a shoulder of mutton.
Mr. Jenner is inclined to think that the “seat of Harry the thief” (Tutton Harry an Lader) refers to a piece of cliff at Tol Pedn Penwith called “Chair Ladder.” The whole passage as it stands detached from the context (which has been lost) is little more than so much gibberish. Possibly it may have been so intended, for the romance, of which it is a fragment, was written by Mr. Boson for his children. But this consideration, assuming it to be well founded, would not rob the allusions of their evidential value. Quite the contrary. Every romance requires some element of fact or vraisemblance to recommend it to the popular imagination. Not more than half a mile from Chapel Carn Brea, at the foot of the hill, is Crows-an-Wra, the Witch’s Cross, which may have suggested the character personified by Harry the Wizard of the break-neck stool. Some vague memories of the hermit who served the little chapel, tended the beacon and directed the travellers across the desolate moor doubtless still survived. Andrew Paugan was only one of the occupants of the cell, one who like many others in various parts of England spent his life in solitude, enduring privation and hardship and cultivating piety by prayer, meditation and active philanthropy. He was probably a widower when he gave himself to the career which Thomas of Penmargh, in the stillness of night, for some unknown reason brought to an untimely end.
The next mention of Cornish hermits is found in the Inquisitio post-mortem of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall.[[102]] Following the inventory of honours, lands and services held by him at the time of his death there is a list of the charges upon his estates and among them the entry: “alms to St. Philip of Restormel, hermit, and St. Robert of Penlyn, hermit.” The earldom and its possessions reverted to the King on Earl Edmund’s death, and we are therefore not surprised to find an entry in the Close Roll of the following year, 1301, which reads as follows: “To the sheriff of Cornwall. Order to deliver to brother Robert of Penlyn, hermit, the island surrounded (inclusam) by the water of Fawe with a rent of 56s. 2d. from certain tenants of the manor of Penkneth, to be held by him for life as he held them before the death of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, by reason of whose death the sheriff took them into the King’s hands; on the same terms as the earl granted them, together with the houses built on the island, to Robert by his charter which the King has inspected.”[[103]]
All attempts to identify the island have hitherto failed. The manors of Penlyn or Pelyn and Penkneth or Pennight are in the parish of Lanlivery, of which the river Fowey is, roughly speaking, the eastern boundary, but no island is now to be discovered in its course. The site of the hermitage of Restormel is also uncertain. It may have been that of the chapel of the Holy Trinity in the park, sometimes called the King’s free chapel, to which frequent reference is made in the Rolls, and from which, according to an inventory made in 1338, a bell weighing 100 lbs. had been removed to the chapel within the castle walls of Restormel. There is nothing to lead us to suppose that St. Philip and St. Robert had successors. It is not improbable that royal chaplains were substituted for them.
In 1339 the Patent Roll records the King’s protection granted to Roger Godman, hermit of the chapel of St. Mary by Liskeard (Liskerith), collecting about the realm the alms whereon he depends for subsistence.[[104]] It is probable that the chapel of St. Mary was the same as the King’s free chapel of St. Mary in the park of Liskeard to which Edward II appointed Roger de Aqua his chaplain in 1316.[[105]] It must be distinguished from that of the Hospital of St. Mary Magdalen. The former appears to have become a chantry, for, in 1378, a royal grant was made to Richard Lagge, chaplain, that he might celebrate service in it, and in the same year the bishop issued a licence to him in which it is stated that he is to celebrate for the welfare of the King.[[106]] The chantry was suppressed by Edward VI, and the “Chapel of our Laydye” granted to Thomas Pomray in 1549.[[107]] It is interesting to compare the fortunes of this chapel with that of the Holy Trinity in the park of Restormel. Both of them appear to have been served originally by hermits, to have been converted into royal chapels and to have shared the same fate.
A little more than half a century later, in 1403, the following entry occurs in Bishop Stafford’s register: “One Cecilia Moys, desiring to lead the contemplative life of an anchorite[[108]] in a certain house in the cemetery of Marhamchurch, the bishop on the 4th of May, 1403, commissioned Philip, abbot of Hartland, and Walter Dollebeare, vicar of Southill, to place her there under proper protection, assigning her till Christmas as a time of probation.”
Churchyards were regarded as places specially suitable for the dwellings of anchorites as being dead to the world. It was, moreover, an obvious advantage to the parish priest that they should be near the church for the purpose of Communion. A second entry in the same bishop’s register probably refers to the same anchorite, though the name is given as that of Lucy Moys, anchorite of Marhamchurch.