As it is a rectory, it is with St. Denis a daughter church to St. Michael Carhays, and valued, together with it, in the King’s Book, at £27. 0s. 0d., but as it hath a vicarage joined with it likewise, it is the mother church to St. Dennis, and valued with it in the King’s Book, at £14. The rectory and vicarage have both the same patron, Thomas Pitt, esq. (purchased by governor Pitt, from the heirs and assigns of John Tanner, esq.); and at this time the same incumbent, Mr. William Sutton; who keeps a curate here, at present Mr. William Wood, junior, to serve this church and St. Denis, and makes it up to him (I speak it to his praise) the best curacy in this county.
I shall begin with that great manor, from whence this parish hath its adjunct of distinction.
THE MANOR OF BRANNEL.
In Carew, (fol. 47), in the extent of Cornish acres, Beranel is valued in thirty-six, the 12 Edw. I.
I take this to be the same which is called in Doomsday Book Bernel, being one of the manors given by William the Conqueror to Robert Earl of Morton, when he made him Earl of Cornwall,
WHITAKER.
There is a very striking singularity in the nature of the present parish, which is but slightly or hardly noticed, by Mr. Tonkin. It has been taken out of the parish of Carhayes, and yet is actually distant from it. It is considered as one living with Carhayes, and yet has Probus and Creed in a first line, Tregony and Cuby in a second, Veryan and St. Ewe in a third, successively coming betwixt Carhayes and it. It is now held with St. Dennis as its daughter, and Carhayes as its mother, by a clergyman who holds Boconnock and Braddock as one church, together with it; and who therefore stands forward to the curious eye, a most singular instance under the present forms of ecclesiastical law, of one man lawfully possessing five churches. But how is all this phenomenon in parochial formations to be accounted for? It can be accounted for, I think, only in this manner. The manor of Carhayes was originally a royal one, I suppose. The house was therefore the seat occasionally of our Cornish kings. It was a seat peculiarly frequented, I also suppose, for the sake of the adjoining forest of Brannel. And the donation of Brannel by William the Conqueror to Robert Earl of Morton, when he made him Earl of Cornwall, proves it to have been in the hands of the Crown at the time, and intimates it to have been a part of the Cornish demesnes originally. The lands that had belonged to the Cornish Crown, would certainly
be attached to the English, on the suppression of kings, and would assuredly be conferred on the Earldom of Cornwall, when the Kings were succeeded by Earls. In this condition of the parish and the forest, when the latter was annexed to the house, and so became a part of the former, any house that was raised in the forest for the temporary reception of the king, was necessarily considered to be as much in the parish as it was in the manor. When other houses were built, and a perpetual inhabitancy took place in them, a chapel was naturally erected for the participation of the inhabitants in divine offices, and the rector of Carhayes was called upon to officiate in person or by proxy at it; in person while the king was there, by proxy when he was not. And he had the tithes of this newly cultivated part of the woodland, to repay him for his trouble or his expense. This accounts satisfactorily, I think, for the strange extension of the parochial compasses here. One leg was centered at the house of Carhayes, and therefore the other stretched over all the intermediate regions, and took its footing on the woodland of Brannel beyond. Nothing but the regality of both could have permitted such a vast stride as this. A Neptune may stalk from promontory to promontory, and a king may take a colossal step from Carhayes to Brannel. The very name too seems to concur with all this: called Bernel, Beranel, and Brannel, and originally belonging to the crown, it speaks the royal relationship at once; Brenhin, or Brennin (W.) being a king, brennyn, brein, brenn (C.) royal, Bran being the Welsh name for the famous Brenhind (W.) and consequently brennol (C.) once, being kingly or royal. The house also at Carhayes has a royal kind of appearance with it, being built in the old style of grandeur round a court having a chapel, a wall, and all the uncomfortable vastness of a princely house. In this manner did St. Stephen’s go on to form a new kind of parish, by encroaching upon the royal woodland, and peopling these gloomy deserts. Considered at first as a chapelry to Carhayes, it
was valued with it in 1291. It afterwards became parochiated, and is valued as a distinct parish in the Valor of Henry VIII.; but before the period of this second Valor, St. Dennis, which was wholly unknown in 1291, had risen upon St. Stephen’s, just as St. Stephen’s had risen upon Carhayes before. The daughter of Carhayes thus became a mother to St. Dennis; and the wildest and remotest part of this antient forest of our kings coming to be peopled, and requiring a church for its inhabitants, St. Stephen’s stands in the new Valor, accompanied with its chapel of St. Dennis.
N. B. The only variation from the account here given, is what a sight of Pope Nicholas’s Valor has suggested to me. There Caerhayes is not mentioned at all. The only church noticed is “Ecclesia Sancti Stephani.” This, therefore, included Caerhayes, then the larger included the smaller; and Caerhayes, which is little more (I believe) as a parish, than its own demense and park, (which, as royal demesne, I suppose, was not parochiated,) became annexed to St. Stephen’s, when this was parochiated,—when, therefore, the royal relation of both had ceased; and was so annexed in the Valor of 1291. June 16, 1794.