Contrary to this description, Mr. Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, p. 154, tells us that St. Michael’s Chair is a bad seat, in a craggy place without the castle, dangerous for the access and therefore holy for the adventure; so that I conceive he had this report by hearsay, not ocular demonstration. In this chapel are yet to be seen the tombstones of several persons there interred, in the rocks, (with a small quantity of earth, though without the chapel there is a bank of earth, brought there by art for burying the dead,) but the inscriptions on those tombstones are so obliterated with dust and time, that I had not leisure much to examine them. The roof and timber of this temple is yet so firm and uniformly kept in repair, that no decay,
moth, or spider’s web are to be seen in the roof thereof, which gives occasion to a conjecture that the same was all built of Irish oak, which drives that poisonous creature the spider from it. Certes, this fabrick is not only an evident proof of the great skill which former ages, in William the Conqueror’s days, had in the art of architecture, but that many other such of much later erection can hardly equal the same, though it has stood firm above six hundred years.
This abbey or priory of Benedictine Monks of St. Michael, after the donation thereof by the Conqueror to his nephew Robert Earl of Morton aforesaid, was by him annexed and made subject for religious matters to the Abbey of Mount St. Michael in Normandy, under which circumstance it stood till the French wars, temp. Henry V. 1414, when the Statute, made 1380, in the reign of King Richard II. was put in force, for suppressing alien priories (who secretly communicated the state affairs to foreigners). King Henry V. or VI. then gave this Alien Priory of St. Michael to Sion Abbey in Middlesex, under which rule and jurisdiction it remained till 26 Henry VIII., 1533, when it was dissolved; when, I take it, it passed in value with Sion, since the Monasticon Anglicanum does not mention it separate.
The Mount is now in possession of Sir John Saintaubyn, (formerly Bassett) who for melancholy retirement dwelleth here. It is still privileged with royalties over the Mount’s Bay, as far north as Long Bridge in the manor of Lanesely, with wrecks, anchorage of ships, quayage or wharfage of goods, and with keeping annual fairs on the sea shore near it, September 29, Monday after Midlent Sunday. Round this Mount, for two leagues space, is an indifferent safe road for anchorage of ships, when the wind is proper for it; and here, as Froissart saith, landed Sir Robert Knollys, a valiant commander of the Black Prince’s in the French wars temp. Edward III. (who drew the traitor Sir Perducas D’Albert from the French to the English army, to
which afterwards he returned again most perfidiously,) where he had been highly instrumental in taking the forts of Froyns, Roach, Vandower, Ville Franck, and other places for the English; from hence he went to London by land, was graciously received and plentifully rewarded for his good services by King Edward III.
PART II.
This Mount, from the time of King Edward the Confessor to the middle of the reign of King Richard I. for the space of 150 years, was a sacred nursery of religion; but then, notwithstanding the sanctity thereof, and the guardianship of St. Michael, it was seized by one Henry de la Pomeray, Lord of Berry-Pomeray in Devon, and Tregony Pomeray in this county, being distasted at the government of King Richard I. as many others were, by reason of the Pope’s request he engaged in the Holy War, and forsook his kingdom, leaving for his vicegerent William Longchamp, a Norman Bishop of Ely; who had extorted great sums of money from the people in his absence, without a Parliament; and moreover so insulted over the nobility and gentry of this kingdom in his office, that he discontented the greatest part of them; and to countenance his grandeur he seldom rode abroad with less than a thousand attendants. Those and others his exorbitances gave occasion to John Earl of Cornwall and others to fall into treasonable practices, and of this number it seems this Sir Pomeray was one, who not only informed the King beyond the seas of these topping, magisterial, and illegal practices of Longchamp at home, but that by reason thereof King Philip of France, in those distractions, took occasion with a great army of soldiers to invade Normandy, and had taken the town of Guisors and many other places by force and arms, and would reduce the whole province in short while (if not resisted) to his dominion. Whereupon the King, in answer, by his letters patent, deposed Longchamp from his
authority, and placed the Archbishop of Rouen in his place, when soon after Longchamp, in women’s apparel, made his escape into his own country, but was detected and shrewdly beaten with rods before his departure out of England, by the women there.
Longchamp, as tradition saith, having notice that de la Pomeray was in confederacy with Earl John, who under pretence of opposing his vice-government, designed the usurpation of King Richard’s Crown, (though he had told him that in case his brother should die, before he returned into his kingdom, without issue, that the right of succession was in Arthur Duke of Britany, his elder brother’s son, not him,) sent a sergeant at arms to the castle of Berry Pomeray in Devon, where he then resided, in order to arrest and take him into custody, which he no sooner did but Pomeray stabbed him to the heart, of which wound he instantly died. Upon which tragical accident the murderer fled into Cornwall, where he had great possessions in lands, and besides twelve lordships held by the tenure of knight service. And there cast himself upon his amicus, John Earl of that province, who as tradition saith secretly supplied him with divers men at arms to secure his person against his enemy the Viceroy, which accordingly they did till Longchamp was displaced.
Afterwards, notice being given that King Richard was taken prisoner coming from the Holy War, 1194, by Leopold, Archduke of Austria in Germany, and cast into his prison called Trivalis, in which no man before was known to be put that escaped with life, this news prompted Pomeray from the sin of murder to that of rebellion; resolving to reduce this Mount of St. Michael to Earl John’s dominion, and to place himself therein for better safety. In order to which he found out this expedient, to go with his guard of armed men that daily attended him in disguise to that place, under pretence of visiting a sister that he had amongst the religious people there;([e]) who upon discovering who he was, and the occasion of his coming, had the gates