The rocks of the slate series are similar to those of St. Mewan and St. Austell, containing also metalliferous veins.
ST. STEPHEN’S near LAUNCESTON.
HALS.
St. Stephen’s near Launceston, is situated in the hundred of East, and hath upon the north Werrington, east the Tamer river, south Launceston, west St. Thomas.
At the time of the Norman Conquest, this district (in the Domesday Book 1087,) was taxed under the jurisdiction of Lan-san, or Lan-sen, i. e. signifying a holy church or temple, though at that time this superior church had in this place a famous collegiate church dedicated to St. Stephen, consisting of secular priests, who might marry wives, founded and endowed by the Bishops of Bodman, and Earls of Cornwall, long before William the Conqueror’s days. Reginald Fitz-Harry, base son of King Henry I. by Anne Corbet, created Earl of Cornwall by King Stephen, in the 5th year of his reign 1140, was a great benefactor to this collegiate church; and besides all that, endeavoured with all his power and interest with King Stephen to bring back the bishopric of Cornwall, transferred or translated to Kirton and Exeter, and fix the bishop’s see and cathedral in this place and church of St. Stephen 1150, which Robert Warlewast, then Bishop of Exeter, opposed; and in his first triennial visitation of the Cornish Diocese from Lanwhitton, came and visited this collegiate church, and suppressed the order of secular priests conversing at large in the world, not tied to monastic life, and in the room of them brought in black monks or canons Augustine (see St. Anthony,) and converted this church and college into an abbey or priory of monks, by the name of the abbey or priory of St. Stephen’s, whose governor was indifferently called the abbat and prior of St. Stephen’s and Launceston.
And to this purpose we read in the first inquisition into the value of Cornish Benefices before-mentioned 1294,
these words: Prior de Lanceston precipit de Vicar’ de Lankinhorne, xxvis. viiid. Those monks before that inquisition, out of a covetous desire after wealth and riches, which they had obtained by gift or purchase, had wholly impropriated and turned into small vicarages the revenues of all such churches as to their abbey were annexed, and of which they were patrons.
None of which churches’ revenues, because wholly impropriated before the first inquisition, are rated or named in the Pope’s or King’s Books of First Fruits to this day. This parish of St. Stephen’s was rated to the four shillings per pound Land Tax 1696, £174. 18s.