But in addition to ten thousand pounds Miss Morice also received at her marriage, or afterwards succeeded to, the manor of Stoke Damarel, on the Eastern bank of the Tamar, near Hamoaze, and purchased not a long time before from the Wises, a respectable family in the South of Devon, for eleven thousand five hundred pounds.
On this manor all the dock yards and government buildings have been constructed, and the whole town of Plymouth Dock, now Devonport, has been built, together with Morris Town, Stoke, &c. so that the annual income has risen to perhaps three or four fold the original purchase money.
This Sir John St. Aubyn left a son of his own name, and three daughters, who married Basset, Molesworth, and Buller.
The son, Sir John St. Aubyn, had also the honour of representing the County in Parliament. He married Miss Wingfield, from the North of England; and dying in October 1772, left his estate to an only son, the present Sir John St. Aubyn. He left also four daughters, who have married Prideaux, Molesworth, Lennard, and White.
Mr. Lysons states that the church of Crowan was given by William Earl of Gloucester to the Priory of St. James, in Bristol, which was a Cell to Tewkesbury Abbey. If that is so, Mr. Hals must be entirely mistaken in assigning the advowson to a St. Aubyn at the time of Wolsey’s Valuation.
Mr. Lysons also says, that Kerthen, in this parish, belonged to a family of the name of Cowlins, from whom it passed to the Godolphins by a marriage.
Leland was entertained at Kerthen in the course of making his Itinerary, by a Mr. Godolphin, who resided there. Leland, however, writes the name Cardine.
In submitting to the press by far the greater part of Mr. Hals’ Manuscripts, and also of Mr. Tonkin’s Manuscript, in so far as it differs from the former, the Editor has been especially careful to preserve all such anecdotes and narratives of events as may tend to illustrate the manners or the opinions of the times to which they relate, adding to them many that have come to his knowledge from other sources.
Just a hundred years ago such a series of events took place with reference to the possession of Skewis, a farm in this parish, as would induce any one of the present time to think that he must be living in another land, under a different administration of the laws, and in a totally dissimilar state of society.
Skewis had been, for I know not how long, the freehold patrimony of a succession of yeomen proprietors of the name of Rogers. There were now two brothers, the elder married and lived on the farm, but without a family, the younger brother, Henry Rogers, married and had several children. He carried on for several years in Helston the trade of a pewterer, then of considerable importance to Cornwall, although it is now lost. A large portion of the tin was then exported in the shape of pewter made into plates, dishes, &c. all of which have been superseded by earthenware. At the first introduction of earthenware, provincially called clome, it was a popular cry to destroy the clome, and to bring back the use of tin. He had for some years retired to this parish.