After this dispute and council ended, St. German, as a good bishop, resolved, though out of his country and diocese, whilst he stayed here, to preach the Gospel publicly, and to that end caused a pulpit to be set up in an open place at St. Alban’s, (so called from St. Alban, the Briton, martyred there under Dioclesian, anno Dom. 303,) anciently Verulam; where on set days he preached to the multitude there assembled, and first began to handle the doctrine of Pelagius against original sin, taking for his text the words of St. John the Evangelist: “If we say that we
have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Upon which subject he shewed that the doctrine of Pelagius was contrary to the writings and doctrines of Moses and the Prophets.
These and the like words and preachings of St. German seemed so angelical and full of power to the Britons, that generally they were convinced of Pelagius’s errors, and abandoned their former opinions; and in testimony of their unfeigned respect and remembrance of him, in the very place where he preached at St. Alban’s, they erected a chapel, and dedicated it to the honour of God, in the name of St. German; which chapel was extant (and still bears his name) tempore James I. though misapplied to profane uses. (See Camden, in Hertfordshire.) After St. German had thus preached down Pelagianism at St. Alban’s, he travelled through Britain, Wales, and Scotland, on the same account, as our chronologers tell us; and that, in the place where Oxford stands, he preached six months against the heresies aforesaid. That he was in Cornwall upon the same account I doubt not, since there is still extant in this parish whereof I treat, a large church bearing his name. He was in Wales, for Camden, in Flintshire, informs us a field bearing his name, called Mars Garman, i. e. German’s field, in memory of a battle there obtained by the Welch over the Picts, on the prayers of St. German, and by crying Hallelujah! To him also is ascribed the building or augmenting Landaff cathedral there, and dedicating it to St. Delyan, if there be not a mistake in the chronology thereof, St. German, as appears to me, being dead before Delyan.
That he preached in Scotland, is evident from his meeting and converse with Patrick, born at Bluisdale, in that country, who became his disciple, and afterwards the apostle of Ireland.
This priory-house, before its dissolution, was called Porth-Prior, or Port-Prior, synonymous words, signifying either the prior’s creek, cove, or haven. It is now, after the name of its owner, transnominated to Port or Porth-Eliot,
who derives his title thereto from Champernowne, as he did by a boon from King Henry the Eighth.
These gentlemen I take to be of Scots original, and so denominated from the local place of Eliot, near Dundee, in Scotland, and their descent of later time from the Eliots of Devonshire, Berkshire, or Cambridgeshire, of which last county one Sir Thomas Eliot, Knt. was Sheriff 24th Henry VIII. also in 36th. This gentleman wrote a book called Defensorium bonarum Mulierum, The Defence of good or virtuous Women. But that which made him most famous was, (to the disgrace of the critics and clergy that get their livings by the liberal arts and sciences, he being only a layman,) he wrote and composed the first Latin and English Dictionary that ever was seen in England, about the year 1540. Upon whose stock and foundation Bishop Cooper and others built and grafted all the Latin and English dictionaries now extant in Britain. He died in Suffolk, 1546; and upon the foundation, rules, and observation of this my Parochial History of Cornwall, it will be very easy for any other person to make a better and more perfect History thereof.
Those gentlemen settled here about the middle of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and there ever since flourished in this place in genteel and worshipful degree, serving their king and country in the several capacities of Justices of the Peace and Members of Parliament for their Borough of St. German’s; and amongst them, in particular, it were great injustice to forget the memory of that worthy patriot Sir John Eliot, Knt. for his bold asserting the prerogative and privilege of Parliament, the freedom and liberty of the subject, in the House of Commons, against the arbitrary and despotic power of the British Monarch, then exerted and setting up by the Attorney-general Noye and others, temp. Charles I. as before it had been done by Cecil Earl of Salisbury temp. James I.: for which reasons and arguments of law he was committed prisoner to the Tower of London by order of that King, where he died, without payment of the 2,000l.
fine laid upon him, but not without suspicion of poison, about the year 1638.
Edward Eliot, Esq. is now in possession of this estate. He married the daughter of Craggs.