TONKIN.
Paul is in the hundred of Penwith, and is bounded to the west by St. Burian and Sancreed, to the north by Maddern, to the east and south by the Channel and Mount’s Bay.
This parish is dedicated to the famous St. Paulinus (and not the apostle Paul, as it is commonly thought), who was sent by Pope Gregory the First in 601 from Rome, with St. Justus, to accompany St. Austin the Monk for the conversion of the Saxons. In 625 he accompanied the Princess Ethelburgha, daughter to Ethelbert King of Kent, when she married Edwyn King of the Northumbrians, where he laboured so effectually that he converted that king and the greatest part of his people,[7] so that he was consecrated the first Archbishop of York, and Pope Honorius sent him the pall about the year 630; but, Edwyn being killed in battle in 633 by Cadwallo King of the Britons, and Penda King of Mercia, he was forced to fly back into Kent with Queen Ethelburga and her children, where her brother Eadbald, King thereof, receiving them with all kindness, made Paulinus Bishop of Rochester, where he ended his days on the 10th of October 644.
This church is a vicarage, valued in the King’s Book at £13. 11s. 6d.; the Patronage in the Crown; the Impropriation of the sheaf and tithes of fish in William Guavis, esq.; the Incumbent Mr. Henry Pendarves.
In anno 1291, 20 Edw. I. this church was valued at £9. 6s. 8d. being then appropriated to the Abbey of Hailes, in Gloucestershire. To this abbey the tithes of corn and fish were appropriated, and so became lay-fees at the dissolution of the abbey.
THE EDITOR.
It is universally understood that this parish is not dedicated to the great apostle of Tarsus; and it is rather a curious circumstance that the word saint, so generally used as a prefix to the names of parishes in Cornwall, should invariably be omitted in this instance.
The honour of protecting the parish of Paul has been
given by conjecture to St. Paul de Leon, a native of Cornwall, celebrated as a founder of monasteries, as a zealous and successful champion of the faith in converting the Pagans of Britany, where he was made the first bishop of the town, since called from him St. Pol de Leon; but, not satisfied with the services that he might render to God and man, in this important station, amidst newly converted Christians, he endeavoured to make himself more useful by retiring into a solitude, where he died on the 12th of March, about the year 573, and nearly in the hundredth year of his age.
The parish feast is celebrated on the nearest Sunday to October the 10th; and although this saint is generally commemorated on the 12th of March, the day of his decease, yet in his own city of Leon the very 10th of October is consecrated to his memory: which, together with his being a Cornish man, seems to fix St. Paul de Leon as the Patron Saint, in opposition to St. Paulinus the first Archbishop of York, who was sent by Pope Gregory the Great into England shortly after the mission of St. Austin; his festival is held on October the 12th.