The next name—Trevelaboth—presents no difficulty. There is a continuous chain of evidence to show that it is identical with Traboe, a small manor in the parish of St. Keverne. In order to equate the three holdings which remain, viz. Lismanoch, Trequaners and Carmailoc, it will be necessary to refer to a document in the Otterton custumal[[129]] in which they appear as Tremain, Listyavehet, Treganeis and Carmaheleck. Carmailoc is obviously Carmaheleck or Carvallack, a holding in St. Martin’s parish which derives its name from the prehistoric earthwork in that parish. If we suppose the “n” in Trequaners and Treganeis to be a false reading for “u”—a pardonable blunder of constant occurrence—we have the modern tenement of Tregevas or Tregevis also in St. Martin’s. We are thus left with Lismanoch as the equivalent of Tremain (the modern Tremayne) and Listyavehet. Tremain calls for no remark in this connection: everyone knows where it is. Lismanoch, of which it appears to have formed a portion, presents some difficulty, because in that form the name is now unknown. As Lesmanaoc it occurs in a grant of King Edgar in 967 to Wulfnod Rumancant. In that grant its boundaries are minutely described, but unfortunately to little purpose owing to the fact that many of the place-names in it are either purely descriptive or have become so altered during the ten centuries which have elapsed since the grant was made as to be incapable of recognition. One or two points are clear. Lesmanaoc was of considerable extent. For some distance it lay along the river which empties itself at Porthallow. It must have reached well towards the south of St. Keverne parish if “Castell Merit” and “Crouswrah” (two places mentioned in the charter) are, as seems probable, the modern tenement of Kestlemerris and Crousa Downs. At the time of Count Robert’s charter its area had evidently been contracted, otherwise it could hardly have escaped mention in Domesday Book. The portion which had been lost was probably the southern portion, for no mention is made of any possessions south of Traboe in the grants of the priory lands after its dissolution.
These considerations lend support to what is something more than a conjecture of Mr. Henry Jenner, viz. that in the two tenements now known as Lesneage we have the site of Lesmanaoc. Lesneage, as he points out, may well be a contracted form of Lesmeneage, which in turn may be only another form of Lesmanaoc, on the same principle as Treveneage in St. Hilary can be shown by an unbroken series of documents to have been derived from Trevanaek.
It is worthy of remark that within a short distance of Lesneage is Mill Mehal or St. Michael’s Mill. If this be the true etymology then the name Listyavehet becomes less formidable than it looks.
The final “t” is the only difficulty. If we may regard it as a false reading for “l,” Listyavehet becomes Lis-ty-amehel, the “court of the house of St. Michael,” Lesmanaoc being the “Monk’s Court,” and the change of name easily accounted for by the transfer of the monks’ possessions in Menegland (monastic land) to the house at St. Michael’s Mount.
The Itinerary of William of Worcester deserves attention. It is a curious assortment of undigested and ill-arranged odds and ends of information compiled in the year 1478, that is to say about half a century after the expulsion of the Benedictines from the Mount and the introduction of the Bridgettines, only five years after the Mount was seized by John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and surrendered by him to the King’s troops after a siege of twenty-three weeks. The Itinerary is properly speaking a note-book. For the most part William confines himself to matters of topography, genealogy and hagiology.
Once and again he condescends to men of low estate, as, for example, when he tells us that about the year 1476 one Thomas Clerk, of Ware, left Ware on the Octave of St. John the Baptist and rode to the Mount within ten days and then returned to Ware at the end of another ten days, thereby covering, according to the route bill which is given, something over thirty-two miles a day for twenty consecutive days. William himself rode more leisurely. Leaving Norwich on the 16th of August, 1478, travelling by way of Truro, he reached Marazion on the 16th of September. The next day he heard Mass at the Mount and in the afternoon of the same day he began the return journey to Penryn. The time spent by him in Cornwall was just over a week.
That he should have gathered as much material as he did is therefore a matter for surprise. Towards this harvest St. Michael’s Mount contributed its full share, which is scattered without any regard for convenience or context throughout the work. After describing the tributaries of the river Fal, and à propos of nothing whatever, he inserts a (supposed) indulgence of Pope Gregory, said to have been granted by him in 1070, although Hildebrand did not become Pope until three years later. The indulgence is addressed to the church of Mount St. Michael in Tumba in the County of Cornwall, and of it, all but the opening words are a verbatim copy of the spurious postscript to the Count of Mortain’s charter, of which mention has been already made. It is followed by a notice added by the Community at the Mount stating that the document, having been recently discovered in the old registers, is placed on the church door and, being unknown to most men, they, the ministers and servants of God, require and beg all who have the guidance of souls to do all in their power to publish it in their churches so that their subjects may be moved to greater devotion and may, by pilgrimage, frequent that place and obtain the said gifts and indulgences. William next mentions the apparition of St. Michael in Mount Tumba, formerly called the “Hore-rok in the Wodd,” which happened at a time when woodland and meadow and plough land lay between the said Mount and the islands of Scilly, and there were 240 parish churches now submerged.
He observes that the first apparition of St. Michael in Mount Gorgon in the Kingdom of Apulia took place in A.D. 391; the second, in Tumba in Cornwall, near the sea, about A.D. 710; the third, in the days of Pope Gregory at a time of a great pestilence; the fourth being in ierarchiis nostrorum angelorum. The next paragraph appears to be the fragment of a description of Mont St. Michel and its foundation by St. Aubert, bishop of Avranches.
Then follow various measurements. The length of the church of Mount St. Michael is stated to be 30 “steppys,” its breadth 12 steppys; the length of the chapel newly built is 40 feet, i.e. 20 steppys; its breadth about 10 steppys; from the church to the foot of the Mount, to the sea-water, 14 times 60 steppys; the distance by sea between Marazion and the foot of the Mount is estimated at 1200 (feet), i.e. 700 steppys, in English 10 times 70 steppys. It is difficult to reconcile the last of these measurements with the former and to connect the “step” with a modern equivalent. The “step” was not a “pace,” for speaking of the dimensions of Bodmin Church, William says in length it is 57 paces (passus) and in breadth 30 steppys. It was apparently two feet (pedes), but whether two modern feet of 12 inches we are unable to say. A little further on William tells us that the island of St. Michael’s Mount is about a mile in diameter and is distant from the mainland the length of a bow-shot. It lies north of the island of Ushant in Brittany.
After dealing with the Bodmin martyrology, information given by Robert Bracey at Fowey and the kalendar of Tavistock, he mentions the capture and surrender of the Mount by the Earl of Oxford five years before the time of his writing. A fuller notice occurs towards the end of his work where, after some further details respecting the Mount’s geographical position, he gives us the kalendar of the church. The saints commemorated are, as has been already remarked, with three exceptions all Celtic. Of one of them, Brokan (Brychan) and his twenty-four children, he supplies an account taken, as it would seem, from the Legenda. For in the enumeration the saint is described as Brokannus in partibus Walliarum regulus fide et morum, and in the account of the saint which follows the opening sentence is Fuit in ultinus (ultimis) Walliarum partibus vir dignitate regulus fide et morum honestate praeclarus, nomine Brokannus. A similar explanation may account for the fourth apparition of St. Michael being described by William as apparicio in ierarchiis nostrorum angelorum, a phrase which is meaningless as it stands, but assuming it to be a quotation from the Legenda may have been familiar and intelligible to William’s readers.