It seems very improbable that King Athelstan, after founding and splendidly endowing a church to commemorate
or to sanctify his conquest of Cornwall, should bestow on it a name so very indiscriminate as The burial-ground; more especially at a time when missionaries from Ireland had recently converted the inhabitants to Christianity, and had left to posterity a reputation for piety so elevated as to invest them at once with the appellation of saints, and to procure for them, in after times, the dedication of almost all the churches throughout the County.
St. Burian is mentioned by Leland, Camden, Tanner, and various other antiquaries, as a holy woman from Ireland, to whom King Athelstan dedicated this church, and in Doctor Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints, &c. her festival is given on the 4th of June.
The establishment consisted of a dean and three prebendaries, who are said by Mr. Lysons to have held from the King by the service of saying a hundred masses and a hundred psalters for the souls of the King and of his ancestors. It is not stated how frequently those recitations were to take place.
Bishop Tanner, in the Notitia Monastica, states that this deanery was seised into the king’s hands in the time of Edward III. under the pretence that John de Mount, the third dean, was a Frenchman. In 18 Henry VI. this deanery was given to his college (King’s) in Cambridge; and afterwards, by Edward IV. probably in the true spirit of party, to the collegiate church of Windsor. It was, however, soon separated from Windsor, and continues, according to the foundation of Athelstan, exempt from all inferior jurisdiction, and consequently since Henry VIII.’s assumption of all temporal power exercised by the Pope, there is not any appeal from the local authorities but to the king himself; a constitution most inexpedient, and likely to produce the most serious inconvenience, if matters of much importance ever came for investigation and decision before a court wholly unfitted, from its very nature, from entertaining
them; and yet empowered to declare a judgment final to all intents and purposes, unless it is immediately revised by the highest and most expensive ecclesiastical tribunal.
This exemption from all episcopal authority has, in times not very remote, admitted of such abuses in the administration of divine service, and of the spiritual care of the three parishes, as would not otherwise have been endured. It would be worse, however, than useless to expatiate on a system which is fortunately passed by.
I believe that no dean has resided since the final dissolution of the college; the Royner’s hand having been there so forcibly applied as to wrest off the whole glebe, not leaving even an habitation, nor the smallest portion of land on which a house could be built. The nominal deanery of St. Burian, like that of Battle and two or three more, is not esteemed a dignity in the church: yet with cure of souls, and for no better reason than its not being mentioned eo nomine in the canons and acts of Parliament, this living is allowed to be tenable with all other preferments, and at all distances.
Pendrea, the birth place and property of Mr. William Noye the attorney-general, was sold by his eldest son, Edward Noye, to Mr. Davies of Burnuhall, and by his grandson to Mr. Tonkin, whose great grandson, the Rev. Uriah Tonkin, possesses it at this time. At Burnuhall there still remains a curious performance of shell-work, said to have been made by Mr. Davies’ daughters, strongly expressive of the political feelings then almost universal throughout Cornwall. King Charles II. is represented flying from his enemies, and one of them, in full pursuit, has a legend, “This is the heir! come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be our own!” whilst an angel exclaims in the same manner from a cloud “Is it not written, Thou shalt
do no murder?” The material of this work is found in great variety and beauty round the coast, and particularly at Porth Kernow, near the Logging Rock.