Description of Cornwall, by the Perambulation, View, and Delineation of John Norden.”
This work has been well characterized by Mr. Tonkin, as “a mean performance, full of egregious mistakes, with most defective and erroneous maps of every hundred, yet containing several things in it not to be met with elsewhere.”
Our next historian, but after a considerable interval of time, was Mr. William Scawen, a fragment only of whose work is known to be extant, and which will appear in these volumes.
He was of an ancient family, well educated, and possessed of an ample fortune. He represented St. German’s in Parliament, and received the appointment of Vice-Warden of the Stannaries, immediately after the Restoration of King Charles the Second.
Of Mr. Hals and Mr. Tonkin I have not any better information than what is given by Mr. Lysons. He says:
“About the year 1685, Mr. William Hals, a gentleman of an ancient Devonshire family, which had been some time settled at Fentongollan, in St. Michael-Penkevill, began to make collections for a parochial history of Cornwall, which he continued for at least half a century; it was brought down by him to about the year 1736. Mr. Hals died in 1739; his parochial history being at that time nearly completed. About the year 1750, the publication of this work was undertaken by Mr. Andrew Brice, then a printer at Truro, who afterwards removed to Exeter, where he published an useful geographical
dictionary and other books. The account of seventy-two parishes arranged alphabetically, from Advent to Helston inclusive, was printed in folio in ten numbers, which are extremely scarce. The publication is said to have been suspended for want of purchasers; occasioned by the scurrilous anecdotes it contained, and reflections thrown on some of the principal families. It is probable, however, that the inaccuracies with which it abounds, and the tedious legends of saints to whom the churches are dedicated, which occupy at least half the work, would have operated more to the prejudice of its sale than the scandalous anecdotes which occasionally occur, many of which had been omitted by the editor. The most valuable part of the work is the account of families and the descent of property; but in these he is frequently inaccurate; and, as Dr. Borlase observes, ‘what he says should not have too great stress laid upon it, when it stands upon his single authority.’
“Contemporary with Hals, as a collector of materials for a parochial history of Cornwall, was Thomas Tonkin, Esq. of Trevaunance, some time member for Helston, a gentleman of an ancient family, who had made great progress in preparing such a history for the press, and had completed several parishes. Mr. Tonkin began to write his parochial history in 1702, at which time he had the use of Hals’s collections. Dr. Borlase seems to have supposed that Hals’s collections were brought down from 1702 to 1736 by Tonkin; the truth is, that they both brought down their collections
to that period, without any communication with each other, which seems to have ceased soon after the first period above-mentioned. Mr. Tonkin himself says, speaking of Hals in the year 1739, ‘it is between twenty-five and thirty years since I have seen any of his collections, and, I believe, at least twenty since I have seen him. I am told that he has greatly improved and polished them since that time; but as his method is quite different from mine, and that I have some other reasons not necessary to be mentioned for not corresponding with him, I can safely say, that in this present work of mine, I have not made use of one single line out of his compositions.’ Mr. Tonkin, in one of his MSS. dated March 27th, 1733, desires that, ‘if by death, or any other accident, his MSS. should fall into other hands, they would by no means publish them in the dress in which they then appeared, but be pleased to new-model them after the method followed in those few which had received his last corrections, such as at St. Agnes, St. Piran in the Sands, St. Michael-Penkevil,’ &c. In 1737 he had made sufficient progress in his collections to enable him to put forth proposals, in which he announced the plan of his publication.
“In the year 1739, Mr. Tonkin had completed his MS. of the first part of his work, which was to treat of the county of Cornwall in general; his epistle dedicatory of that date is printed at the beginning of Lord de Dunstanville’s edition of Carew, addressed to Sir William Carew, Bart. and Sir John St. Aubyn, Bart. then representatives in