Several small fees are due on surrenders and on admissions at the manor courts, and on the death of each tenant a heriot becomes due to the lord, which is either his best beast or six guineas, and in addition to these, there is an annual payment of four pounds.
Minster church lies in a deep valley, surrounded by trees, giving the strongest impression of its forming the quire of a sequestered monastery. It contains several monuments to the Henders, Cottons, &c. One has a Latin inscription, with the curious pedantic device of certain letters standing prominent among others in the different words, and indicating, as Roman numerals, the various dates. Four lines on William Cotton, son of William Cotton who held the see of Exeter from 1598 to 1621, and on Elizabeth his wife, daughter and coheir of John Hender, have been frequently transcribed, on account of their extreme simplicity:
Forty-nine years they lived man and wife,
And what’s more rare, thus many without strife,
She first departing, he a few weeks tried
To live without her, could not—and so died.
This church is one of the very few in Cornwall that want the decoration of a tower, and strange legends are circulated to account for this defect, probably of a more ancient date than the Reformation. The bells are said to have arrived in a vessel almost to the spot where they would have been landed, when an expression of the captain, implying confidence in the powers which God had given him, construed into blasphemy by Anthopomophites of all religions, is supposed to have caused the immediate destruction of the ship, with every one on board; but when the ground seas roll with their accustomed violence on this iron-bound coast, the bells are still fancied not only to ring a peal, but to indicate by particular sounds the cause of this reputed miracle, intended to convince mankind that they are bound to neglect and to render vain whatever gifts the Almighty may have bestowed on them, and thanklessly to employ their time in imploring more.
This place was in feudal times the residence of a baronial family, bearing the name of Botreaux, which they imparted to a manor, or, as the Court Rolls would testify, to an honor, having manors dependent, and enclosing the town of Botreaux Castle, dignified by the appellation of a borough; a term, it may be observed, that had not in ancient times any reference to the privilege of sending members to parliament.
Mr. Lysons says, that William Lord Botreaux, the last of this family, fell in the second battle of St. Alban’s, leaving an only daughter, married to Sir Robert Hungerford.
The honour of Botreaux, and the manor of Worthyvale, went with the heiress of Hungerford to the family of Hastings, by whom this property was sold to John Hender, esq. in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.