And here perhaps the Editor may be allowed to mention the name of one whom he esteemed and admired, although his connection with Cornwall was so little permanent as to consist only of his serving the curacy of this parish.
The Reverend John Smyth, Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, received his title for deacon’s orders from Doctor William Borlase, as vicar of St. Just, where he remained about six or seven years, till Cornwall lost one of its greatest ornaments.
Leaving St. Just, after Doctor Borlase’s decease, he became the friend and assistant of the Reverend Sir Richard Kaye, Dean of Lincoln, and through his recommendation made the tour of Europe with Mr. Langley, a gentleman of Yorkshire. He then went back to College, and on a vacancy
became tutor, and succeeded to the Headship; returning from a visit to Penzance, in 1809, he died in consequence of some local complaint at Exeter, where a monument has been placed to his memory in the Cathedral Church, with the following inscription:
Juxta conditur
Joannes Smyth, S. T. P.
Magister Collegii Pembrochiæ
apud Oxonienses,
Qui Academiam remeans, hac in Urbe,
vi morbi grassantis, cito abreptus est,
die 19 Octobris, A.D. 1809, ætatis suæ 66.
Grata recordatione ejus in Collegiam beneficentiæ,
in amicos comitatis et benevolentiæ,
imo in omnes Φιλανθρωπιας,
hoc marmor posuêre
Successor ejus et Socii.
There is also a cenotaph in the Cathedral at Gloucester, a prebend of which church is annexed to the mastership of Pembroke College, by the liberality of Queen Anne.
Few men were ever more universally esteemed, or were more deserving of being so. His abilities and learning commanded respect; kindness, generosity, and benevolence endeared him to every friend; whilst good nature and convivial manners made him the favorite of each casual acquaintance.
To him the Editor is indebted for his good fortune in being himself a member of Pembroke College.
The parish feast is celebrated on the Sunday nearest to All Saints, November the first; but the church is known to claim for its patron St. Just, the companion of St. Austin, Bishop of Rochester, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Little is handed down to posterity of St. Just, but that little is entirely to his praise; at the command of Pope Gregory the Great, he undertook the perilous but successful service of converting the English Saxons; he attained the highest ecclesiastical dignity from the suffrages of those who had been brought by the
labours of St. Austin and of his followers, within the pale of the church; and he obtained deserved commendation from Pope Boniface, either the third or fourth, who with one intermediate Pope, were the successors of St. Gregory, when the apostolic confirmation of his appointment to the metropolitan see was given, and himself honoured by the investure of a pall. He is stated in the Rubrics to have died on the 10th of November in the year 627.