blessed Virgin Mary, the lady of angels, and were black monks of the Augustines.
In this college, temp. Henry VI., was bred up John Arundell, a younger son of Renfry Arundell, of Lanherne, Esq. sheriff of Cornwall 3 Edward IV. where he had the first taste of the liberal arts and sciences, and was afterwards placed at Exon College in Oxford, where he stayed till he took his degree of Master of Arts, and then was presented by his father to John Booth, Bishop of Exeter, to be consecrated priest, and to have collation, institution, and induct, into his rectory of St. Colomb. Which being accordingly performed, and he resided upon this rectory glebe lands for some time, which gave him opportunity to build the old parsonage house still extant thereon, and moat the same round with rivers and fish-ponds, as Sir John Arundell, Knight, informed me afterwards. In the year 1496, he had by Henry VII. bestowed upon him the bishopric of Lichfield and Coventry, then void upon the translation of William Smith to Lincoln, (the successor of John Hals,) in which see he remained till the year 1501, and then, upon the death or translation of Richard Redman, Bishop of Exeter, he was removed to that diocese by Henry VII. then possessed of great revenues, but died at London, 1504, and was buried at St. Clement’s Danes Church.
Before this church of St. Colomb was erected, within the borders of its now parish were extant four free chapels, wherein God was worshipped in former ages, viz. at Tregoos (i. e. the wood towne), Tre-sithan-y (the weekly town, the town frequented on the Sabbath); Ruth-es (i. e. the multitude is); and Lan-hengye (i. e. the church or temple of sentence, judgment, or deliberating cases). The old cemeteries of which are now all converted to orchards and gardens, or arable ground.
The town of St. Colomb, by the mediation of its lords, the Arundells of Lanherne, is privileged with a weekly market on Thursdays, wherein all things necessary for
the life of man are vended at a moderate rate; as also with fairs on Thursday after Midlent Sunday, and on Thursday after Allhallows.
This place was heretofore for a long time notorious for the vice of excessive topling or toping, not only to the damage of many of the inhabitants’ healths and wealth, but also to the loss of too many lives; I mean in the time of Charles II. when the practice of quaffing, toasting, or healthing, debauch and immorality, overspread the land in general.
In this parish stands Castell-an-Dinas. It consists of about six acres of ground, within three circles or intrenchments, upon the top of a pyramidal hill, composed or built of turf and unwrought stones, after the British manner, without lime or mortar, comparatively a hedge; each of those circles or ramparts rising about eight foot above each other towards the centre of the castle, consisting of about an acre and a half of land, in the midst whereof appear the ruins of some old dilapidated houses; near which is a flat vallum, pit, or tank, wherein rain or cloud-water, that falls down from the middle regions, abides more or less in quantity as it falls one half of the year; which, I suppose, heretofore supplied the soldiers’ occasions, as no fountain, spring, or river water is within a thousand paces thereof. There were two gates or portals leading to this fort, the one on the east, the other on the west side thereof, which, on a stony causeway now covered with grass, conducts you up and down the hill towards Tre-kyning, that is to say the king’s, prince, or ruler’s town. Moreover, contiguous with this castle are tenements of land or fields, named Tre-saddarne, that is to say god Saturn’s town, a place where the god Saturn was worshipped by the soldiers, who probably had their temple or chapel here before Christianity.
Near this castle, by the highway, stands the Coyt, a stony tumulus so called, of which sort there are many
in Wales and Wiltshire, as is mentioned in the Additions to Camden’s Britannia in those places, commonly called the Devil’s Coyts. It consists of four long stones of great bigness, perpendicularly pitched in the earth contiguous with each other, leaving only a small vacancy downwards, but meeting together at the top; over all which is laid a flat stone of prodigious bulk and magnitude, bending towards the east in way of adoration, (as Mr. Lhuyd concludes of all those Coyts elsewhere,) as the person therein under it interred did, when in the land of the living; but how, or by what art this prodigious flat stone should be placed on the top of the others, amazeth the wisest mathematicians, engineers, or architects, to tell or conjecture. Colt, in Belgic-British, is a cave, vault, or cott-house, of which coyt might possibly be a corruption.
Not far from this coyt, at the edge of the Goss-moor, there is a large stone, wherein is deeply imprinted a mark, as if it were the impress of four horseshoes, and to this day called King Arthur’s Stone; yea, tradition tells us they were made by King Arthur’s horse’s feet, when he resided at Castle Denis, and hunted in the Goss Moor. But this stone is now overturned by some seekers for money.