Note further, that all those twelve parishes commonly called Meneage, the outmost south-west part or point of Cornwall, in the Domesday Book of William the Conqueror, are all comprehended or taxed under the name of Liz-ard, which signifies in British the lofty or dangerous gulf or flux of waters, as the same is, and over a strag or promontory of ragged rocks running for about half a mile out into the sea from the land, visible at low water, but not at full sea or half flood, which hath occasioned the destruction or wrecking of many ships, and loss of many men’s lives and goods, who either in the night storms, or through ignorance, have chanced to sail over it, and are wrecked between the strait of those rocks, and the furious meeting or flashing of the waves of the sea.
Hence also from the word liz, which signifies a hazardous gulph of water between two lands, rivers, or arms of
the sea, we have Tre-liz-ike, St. Earth, and Padstow harbour, Lelizike, mills in Probus, on the Tresilian river. Liz or Lisburne, a town in Portugal, and many more.
TONKIN.
Ruan Minor joins with Ruan Major, which lies to the north of it, to the west and south with Grade, to the east with the Channel. This parish has the same patron and incumbent as the former, and is valued in the King’s Book, £4. 4s. 5d. [It was originally, no doubt, a mere chapel to Ruan Major.]
THE EDITOR.
The only place in this small parish requiring the least notice is Cadgwith or Cagewith, a moderately sized fishing cove, and heretofore celebrated for its lucrative trade, while the rights of the duchy were practically maintained against the admission of all coercive laws, relative either to the Customs or to the Excise.
The principal part of this parish anciently belonged to the distinguished family of Carminow.
Mr. Lysons says, that on the partition of their property between heiresses, the lands in Ruan Minor were allotted to Trevarthian, whose heiress brought them to the Reskymers, who had them in 1620; they were afterwards in the Bellots, of whom the property was purchased by Robinson of Nanceloe, and alienated from them to an adventurer called Fonnereau, who having obtained a seat in Parliament, procured a lucrative bargain for constructing lighthouses on the Lizard Point. Having ultimately become a bankrupt, or died insolvent, every thing that he had purchased was again sold, and the lands in this parish were bought by the late Sir Christopher Hawkins, about the year 1780, and they now belong, under a special devise, to his brother’s second son.
The advowson of the rectory was reserved in the sale by Robinson.