HALS.
Is situate in the hundred of Keryer, and hath upon the north, part of Redruth, east Peranwell and Key, south Gluvius, west Stithians. That this church was extant before the Norman Conquest is plain from the name thereof, for in the Domesday Tax, 20th William I. 1087, it is rated by the name of Gwenap. In the Inquisition into the value of Cornish Benefices made by the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester, 1294, Ecclesia Sancti Wenap in decanatu de Kerrier, is rated at viil. Vicar ejusdem
xxvis. viiid. In Wolsey’s Inquisition, 1521, the Vicarage of Wenap is valued 16l. 18s. 9d. The patronage in the Bishop of Exeter, who endowed it. The incumbent Bishop; and the parish rated to the 4s. per pound Land Tax, 1696, 148l. 3s. by the name of Gwenap. The garb, or rectory, in Wright or Nicholls.
Trefyns (i. e. the springs of water, or fountains town,) came to Beauchamp by marriage with the heiress of this name and land, where they have ever since flourished in gentle degree. The present possessor, William Beauchamp, Esq. that married Courtney of Trehane, his father Boaden, his grandfather Tregoze, giveth for his arms, Vairy Argent and Azure. The first progenitor of the tribe and name of Beauchamp came into England a soldier under William the Conqueror, and probably some of his posterity were planted in this province, from whence those gentlemen are descended; especially if the name, Stephen de Bellocampo, 40th Henry III. who held in Cornwall by tenure of knight’s service 15l. per annum land and rents, may be interpreted the same as Beauchamp (Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, p. 40), for otherwise verily I know not from what family of gentlemen those Beauchamps are descended; since none other of that name give the same arms as these do; for Guy de Beauchamp, Sheriff of Devon, 12th King John, gave for his arms, Gules, a fess between three crosses bottony Or; from whom are descended the Beauchamps of Bletsho and Hatch, in Wiltshire. Beauchamp Earl of Warwick gave for his arms, Gules, a fess between six cross-crosslets Or. William Beauchamp, Sheriff of Devon 18th Henry VI. that married the inheritrix of Henry de Ties, lord of Alverton and Tywarnhayle, summoned to Parliament as a Baron temp. Henry IV. gave for his arms, Gules, a fess between six martlets Or; from whence I gather there were diverse families of those Beauchamps heretofore in England, no way related in blood to each other. Query, whether the arms of those gentlemen living in this place be not the
arms of Bochym, as I have been informed they are, which is Vaire Argent and Azure.
Notwithstanding this place of Trefyns was heretofore denominated from springs of water abounding there in winter season, yet I assure you now in summer time, by reason of the tin-mines and subterranean adits near it that carry those springs of water invisibly under ground, water is very scarce and much wanting in those lands. It is also called Trevense, and Trewince.
St. Dye chapel in this parish was heretofore a chapel of ease to Gwenap; the tutelar guardian whereof is St. Dye, of Gaul, very famous in that country for his piety and holy Christian living about the fifth century, who held the faith in opposition to Arianism and Pelagianism, then raging in the church. And there is a church in the province of Lorraine still bearing his name. If it were as easy for the Vicar to attend and perform divine service in this remote quarter of the parish where this chapel is, as it is convenient to his parishioners in the town of St. Dye, it had been doubtless still applied to the end and use for which it was erected.
Not far from this place is that unparalleled and inexhaustible tin-work called Paldys; i. e. the top or head of St. Dye’s Town, which for above forty years’ space hath employed yearly from eight hundred to a thousand men and boys, labouring for and searching after tin in that place, where they have produced and raised up for that time yearly, at least twenty thousand pounds worth of that commodity, to the great enriching of the lords of the soil, the bound owners, and adventurers in those lands.
Of those miners, or searchers for metals, hath Ovid written elegantly in Latin verse, which sounds thus in English, tempore Augusti:—
Men deep descend into the earth