The church is situated between hills, and therefore but little seen; it contains monuments to the Mohuns and to others. It was rated in the valuation of Pope Nicholas at 10l. 13s. 4d.
There is a popular tradition, that in the year 1644, just before the surrender of the infantry commanded by Lord Essex, King Charles the First was walking on the terrace at Hall, described by Mr. Carew, when a shot was fired, which missed him, but killed a fisherman almost by his side. The tradition adds, of course, that the ball was aimed at the King by some one who knew him, but that must be uncertain.
Polruan, a place in this parish, having some pretensions still to be called a town, has been wholly omitted by Mr. Tonkin, and probably was so by Mr. Hals, from whose
work the greater part of Mr. Tonkin’s manuscript is copied. This place is without doubt of great antiquity; and seems in former times, when vessels required much less depth of water than they do at present, to have been the principal station in Fowey harbour. Pol means exactly the same as the English word pool, and may possibly be the original theme; Ruan has been ascertained in several instances to signify Roman. Polruan is, therefore, in all probability, the Roman pool or haven. This place, with a small district round it, forming in some respects a hamlet within the parish of Lanteglos, shared in the elective franchise of Fowey, where all residents paying scot and lot were entitled to vote till the act of 1832 swept it all away.
Tales are related of Polruan having been an independent corporate town, and of its having sent Members to Parliament, while Fowey was a mere village; but such traditions are prevalent in all places under similar circumstances, and they have not here any sanction whatever from authentic sources.
In the Taxatio Ecclesiastica Papæ Nicholai, the three adjacent parishes, printed Lansalewys, Lanteglos, and St. Wepy, have this, App’a. Hosp. de Brugg. want.; and Mr. Lysons states, that this church was given by Robert de Boyton, in the reign of Edward the First, to the hospital of St. James at Bridgewater.
The name is inadvertently wrong; for in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, 26 Henry VIII. preserved in the Augmentation Office, is the following entry in the return from the Hospitale Sancti Johannis de Brugwalter.
Lanteglos, rector 20l.
The great tithes and the presentation to the vicarage, came into the possession of the Mohuns, and were sold with their other property to Pitt.
There is also extant the appropriation of this church to the hospital by Peter Quiril, Bishop of Exeter from 1280 to 1292.