In this parish are kept annually three fairs or public marts, viz. the 1st May, the 20th of July, and the 14th of September.
In this parish or Launceston was also a Friary.
TONKIN.
St. Stephen’s, near Launceston, lies in the hundred of East, and is bounded to the west by Egloskerry and Trewenn, to the north the River Artrie and part of Devonshire, to the east by the Tamar, to the south by Launceston, St. Thomas, and St. Pedyrwyn.
This church is not at all valued in the King’s Book; but in the Taxatio Benefic. in anno 1291, 20 Edward I. being totally appropriated to the Priory of Launceston, it is valued at £10.
THE EDITOR.
The history relating to the more ancient ecclesiastical establishments in this parish does not seem to be very clear or distinct, although the general facts are well ascertained, and accord with the prevailing spirit of the times in which they occurred.
William Warlewast, who held the see of Exeter about twenty years in the beginning of the twelfth century, suppressed
a college of secular priests attached to St. Stephen’s Church, and founded a monastery of regular monks near the place where St. Thomas’s Church now stands. This house he endowed with the lands of the former college, and dedicated it to the same saint. It was constituted a priory of the order of St. Austin, and remained till the general dissolution.
Mr. Lysons treats of the three parishes together, as Launceston and St. Thomas were originally portions of St. Stephen’s; and there is scarcely a doubt but that the Cornish having by some accident adopted the Greek name of the Protomartyr, called the church of Dunheved, Lan-Stephanon, or Stephen’s Church, which easily glided into Lanston, written Launceston; but in this, as in a thousand other instances, the common pronunciation approaches nearer to the true origin of a name, than the established orthography, as Excester much more corresponds with a camp on the Ex than Exeter.