It is utterly impossible now to give any account of these two personages, except that they were in all probability missionaries from Ireland. Nor is the Roman name of Probus any objection against this supposition, since such names were frequently assumed. The apostle of Ireland has a Roman name, and many of the religious must have been foreigners.
On repairing the east wall of the chancel some few years since, two skeletons were found in different niches, and one of these was declared by anatomists to have been a female. These were supposed to be the relics of St. Probus and of St. Grace, which may have been true, although the present church cannot be less than eight hundred or a thousand years later than their time.
No obvious indication can be discovered of the ancient college; perhaps the prebendaries ceased to reside after the deanery became absorbed at Exeter.
Mr. Whitaker has left several pages of memoranda on this parish, evidently notes made at the time of his visit there, and not arranged in any order. The Editor thinks it therefore most expedient to adopt such parts only as seem to explain the etymologies, or to give information respecting facts.
Mr. Whitaker observes, that, although the dedication of this parish is to St. Probus alone, yet assuredly St. Grace should be adopted also as a patron saint. The parish feast kept in the early part of July, is always designated by their joint names. No notice is taken of either in Bede.
On Carvean, Mr. Whitaker says, that it means the Little Marsh, as cars is a bay, a marsh, or a moor, corsen a reed, cors-hwyad in Welsh, is a fen-duck, a moorhen.
On Trewithgy.—In English a house surrounded by trees, and lying in the water. Trewithgy, Trenowith, and Treworgy, are different parts of the same manor. Trenowith signifies the New Town, and Treworgy a local name, remarkably common, as it is sure to be from its signification, being the town upon the water, or rather perhaps, upon the running stream.
Mr. Whitaker says, the manor of Probus appears from Domesday Book to have been possessed by St. Edward the Confessor; it was therefore one of the demesnes of the Crown at that time, and probably one of those belonging to the sovereigns of Cornwall previously to the conquest by the Saxons. Then I presume that an English family settled on those lands, and held them of the Crown; probably the Walvedons, who held them with Gowlden.
On this barton is an angular fort, says Borlase, p. 313 of his Antiquities, second edition, “on the barton of Wolvedon, alias Golden, in the parish of Probus, which has a wide deep ditch, the entire edge or counterscarp of which was faced upwards with masonry of thin stones in cement, which had round turrets or buttresses (such as neither Saxons, Danes, nor Britons had, as far as ever I can find) of the same masonry, interspersed with the straight lines of the ditch. This is very singular in our county, where most of our ancient fortifications are of a circular plan, without any projections (angular or circular) from the master line. I can judge this, therefore, neither to be British, Saxon, nor Danish, as being like no other work of these people, and from the artful fence of this ditch, as well as from the polygon which the whole forms, I guess it to be a Roman work. There is a large avenue or way from the north, rising from an adjoining valley.
This fortified ground I examined in August 1792. It is an earthwork denominated Warren, containing six Cornish acres, as the farmer told me, or about seven statute acres. It has a high and broad rampart twelve or fourteen feet high, and a deep ditch fourteen or sixteen feet wide. The