In this parish, or part of Davidstowe, is Foye-fenton, the original fountain of the Foys River; which well, in old records, is also called West Fenton, i. e. the west well, to distinguish it from Mark well in Lanick, otherwise east well; from which places the two cantreds (hundreds) of Eastwellshire and Westwellshire are denominated. And to this purpose it is evident, from Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, page 41, that in 3 Henry IV. Reginald de Ferrar held in East Fenton and West Fenton, several knights’ fees of land of the honour of Tremeton, which is now East and West Hundreds. (See also St. Stephen’s by Saltash, of those tenures in 1360.)
TONKIN.
In this parish stands Basil, a word sometimes taken for a herb or vegetable, sometimes for a vein in the human body, sometimes for the basilisk or cockatrice, &c.; but here I take it to signify after the Greek, a basilica or stately building; and although at present this mansion will not answer the etymology in the extreme latitude or longitude thereof, yet in probability it formerly did, at least comparatively so in respect to other houses in the neighbourhood.
This place is the mansion of the ancient, famous, and knightly family of Trevillyans; the present possessor of Basil is Peter Trevillyan, who married a daughter of Mr. Nicholas Borlase of Treludderin. From this Cornish
family are descended the Trevillyans of Nettlecomb in Somersetshire.
Although this parish is commonly called and written St. Cleather, yet the right name is St. Eledred, and so it is written in the Taxatio Beneficiorum; which St. Eledred I take to be Ethelred King of the Mercians, who, after he had held the crown for thirty years, and governed with great reputation, and especially with much regard to religion, which (as William of Malmesbury observes) was more to this prince’s inclination than arms, resigned the kingdom to his kinsman Kendred, became a monk, and died soon after in the monastery of Bordeney in Lincolnshire.
There was, however, another St. Ethelred, King of the West Saxons, who is said by Mr. Browne Willis, in his Notitia Parliamentaria, to be buried at Wimborne Minster in Dorsetshire, with the following inscription:
In hoc loco quiescit corpus Sancti Ethelredi Regis West-Saxonum martyris, qui A.D. 872, 23 die Aprilis, per manus Danorum Paganorum occubuit.
Perhaps this latter is the true patron.
THE EDITOR.