The crest of Noye is a dove bearing an olive branch, and the motto: Teg yw Hedwch, Lovely in Peace. Evidently an allusion to the names Noye and Noah.
The above words were on a slate stone laid flat on the pavement, so that the letters were beginning to disappear; but Mr. Humphry Willyams, his successor in Carnarton, although not his descendant, has recently preserved
the stone and the inscription, by placing this memorial perpendicularly against one of the walls.
The manor of Carnarton belonged to the father, if not to the grandfather, of the Attorney-general. He was born however at Pendrea, in St. Burian, where the family had been settled time out of mind, but understood to be of Norman extraction.
Little is known of Mr. Noye’s early life, till he became a member of Exeter College, in the year 1593. He removed from thence to Lincoln’s Inn, and was chosen Member for Helston to the Parliament which met in January 1620. He afterwards represented St. Ives, and certainly took an active, zealous, and able part in fostering the nascent liberties of his country; but having formed a connexion with Mr. Wentworth, he became a partizan in what was afterwards named the Stafford Faction, was made Attorney-general in 1631, devised the exaction of Ship Money, and conducted himself in a manner very different from the promise of his former days; fortunately for himself, Mr. Noye died in 1634, before the more violent agitations commenced, which terminated in the Civil War. He left three children, Edward his eldest son and heir, Humphrey, and Catharine.
Edward lost his life not long after the Attorney-general’s decease, in a duel with a Captain Byron. Humphrey then inherited the property.
Catharine married John Cartwright, esq. of Aynhoe, in Northamptonshire, whose descendant in the fifth degree, William Ralph Cartwright, is now of that place (1835), and Member for the county.
Mr. Noye’s will is so curious as to be worthy of insertion:
Incerta mortis hora, hodie ventura, suspecta esse debeat Christiano: sensi me gravatum: mens tamen, Deo annuente, sanitate viget (quam nollem in extremis de mundariis cogitare) hinc est quod—
Ego Will’mus Noye die mensis Junii tertio, anno Domini millesimo sexcentesimo trigesimo quarto, rerum mearum