A man beloved, that commanded over the water,
Admiral or General of a fleet great.
King Arthur also, by reason of the great schism in the Church between the Arian and Catholic Clergy, instituted the order of Knights of the Holy Trinity, and built the Chapel of Trinity at Restormell.
Pierce Gaveston being made Earl of Cornwall by King Edward II. and afterwards banished for his wicked practices, and put to death by licence of that king, took out of the jewel house a table of gold, and tressells of the same, that once belonged to King Arthur, and delivered them to Amery of Friscoband, a merchant, to be carried into Gascoigne, where they were sold at a great price to his own private advantage, as our chronologers tell us.
But in memory of King Arthur, Roger Mortimer soon after, at such time as he and Queen Eleanor his concubine, wife of Edward the Second, governed this kingdom, in imitation of him, kept a round table, to which many noble knights belonged and frequented, to his infinite cost and expense, which by him were called the Knights of the Round Table. (Heywood’s Chronicles, p. 193.)
The Isle of Man being conquered by William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, temp. Edward III. he caused him to be styled King of Man, and gave him leave to institute at Windsor, in a chamber two hundred feet round, in imitation of King Arthur, a society of Knights of the Round Table. (Daniell’s Chronicle, p. 196.)
TONKIN.
I shall offer a conjecture touching the name of this place, which I will not say is right but only probable. Tin is the same as Din, Dinas; and Dixeth, deceit; so that Tindixeth turned for the easier pronunciation to Tintagel, Dindagel, or Daundagel, signifies the Castle of Deceit, which name might be aptly given to it from the famous deceit practised here by Uter Pendragon, by the help of Merlin’s enchantment.
The manor of Tintagel was very antiently demesne land of the crown, and famous for its castle, and Browne Willis says, the castle, manor, and borough of Tintagel, were settled by Edward the Third on his son Prince Edward, whom he created Duke of Cornwall, and continued it to his heirs, the succeeding Dukes of Cornwall, before which this king’s brother, John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall, held it. This castle boasts much greater antiquity, and is said to have been the seat of the Dukes of Cornwall, and pretends to have been the birthplace of the famous King Arthur, which happened above five hundred years before the Norman Conquest, that prince having been born in the year 500, fifteen years after which he is said to have succeeded
his father in the kingdom, and to have lost his life in the thirty-sixth year of his reign in a place near Camelford. The borough of Bossiney, known in this county by the name of Tintagel, is a very small village, and contains scarcely twenty houses, and those not better than cottages. This place, with Trevenna, another little hamlet equally mean, lie in the parish of Tintagel, from which church they are at no great distance, and with it make up the one borough. It was privileged by Richard Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, who granted “Quod Burgus noster de Tyntaivil sit liber Burgus.” It is governed by a mayor. The first return of Members to serve in Parliament is in the reign of Edward the Sixth.