ST. AGNES.
HALS.
St. Agnes is situate in the hundred of Pyder.
At the time of the Conqueror’s tax there was no such parish or district as Saint Agnes; but the same passed in rates under the jurisdiction of the Earl of Cornwall’s manor, now Duchy, of Twarnhayle; together with Peransand: which now parish of St. Agnes was taxed to the four shillings in the pound land-tax, 9th William and Mary, 1696, 137l. 5s.
The present church of St. Agnes was of old only a small free chapel dedicated to her, without endowment, till the same was augmented and rebuilt, of three roofs, as it now stands, by charitable collections, and the proper charge and cost of the inhabitants thereof, in 1484; consecrated and dedicated to the honour of Almighty
God, in the name of St. Agnes, as a daughter church to Peransand, by Dr. Peter Courtenay, then Bishop of Exon.[5]
St. Agnes was a Roman by birth, anno Dom. 285, descended of noble ancestors, and being beautiful of body and mind, at 13 years of age was courted in marriage by the son of Sempronius, then governor of Rome; but because he was no Christian she utterly refused his address, who complained thereof to his father; that immediately he sent for Agnes, and renewed the proposals of marriage made to her by his son, making larger offers for her advantage, which altogether proving ineffectual, Sempronius asked her whether she would adore and sacrifice to the Roman gods, and abandon the superstition of the Christians, but she, proving constant to her religion, utterly refused to do that also; whereupon she was committed to prison, from thence, after much hard durance, sent among persons of ill fame, where her innocence and purity were miraculously preserved, till at length, by the Governor’s order, she was committed to the flames, which immediately parted asunder, and did her no harm; whereupon the Governor, and Auspitius his agent, commanded her to be taken out of the fire, and forthwith to be beheaded by the common hangman, 20 January, anno Dom. 304, in the latter end of the reign of Dioclesian, or in the beginning of Constantius and Galerius. St. Ambrose wrote her life. St. Isidore, St. Augustine, Demetrius, and Prudentius, with Aloysy Lessomanus, Bishop of Seville, have all written very commendable things of her. In the glass windows of this church I remember to have seen written the remains of a broken inscription,—“in carcere serat Agnes,”—referring, I suppose, to her sowing or preaching the Word
in the prison, jail, or hold, to which she was confined as aforesaid. The parish feast is holden on the Sunday following St. Agnes’ Day.
In this parish stands Carne Bury-anacht, or Bury-anack, synonymous words, only varied by the dialect; id est, the still, quiet, spar-stone grave, or burying-place, where, suitable to the name, on the natural, remote, lofty circumstances thereof, stand three sparstone tumuli, consisting of a vast number of those stones, great and small, piled up together, in memory of some one notable human creature before the 6th centuary interred there.
This is that well-known place called St. Agnes’ Ball, that is to say, St. Agnes’ pestis, or plague, so named from the hard, deep, and dangerous labour of the tinners there, out of which mountain hath been digged up, for at least 150 years’ space, about ten thousand pounds worth of tin per annum; which keeps daily employed about the same 1,000 persons, who for the most part spend their time in hard and dangerous labours as aforesaid, in order to get a poor livelihood for themselves and families, in the pursuit of which, here and in other places, many of those poor men yearly by sad accidents lose their lives.