In St. Stephen’s and in St. Thomas’s, the parishioners nominate the perpetual curates; and the latter parish is tithe free.
The church of St. Stephen, although it cannot reach back nearly to the time of the college suppressed by Bishop Warlewast, is yet on a scale superior to most others; and seated on an eminence with a lofty tower, it presents an object worthy of associating with the superb keep of Launceston Castle.
There is an inscription within the Church, recording the munificence of Charles Cheney, Lord Viscount Newhaven, then Member for Newport, in re-building a part of the fabric, and probably in repairing the remainder according to the ill taste prevalent about the early part of the eighteenth century, so as to make the interior of the Church quite at variance with its exterior Gothic.
The late Sir Jonathan Phillips inhabited a good house adjoining the street, which, with the attached property, has since been united to the great political influence of the place.
The barton of Carnedon, an ancient possession of the Blighes, and afterwards of the Cloberrys, is now the property of Thomas Bewes, Esq.; and the barton of Tredidon, formerly a seat of a family bearing the same name, is now the residence of George-Francis-Collins Browne, Esq. who assumed the latter name on succeeding to the property of his maternal grandfather, Mr. George Brown, of Bodmin.
The modern history of this parish chiefly relates to the borough of Newport, and to its connection with the adjacent parish and seat of Werrington.
Newport is little more than a street of Launceston, extending, with some interruption, to the northward. Its political importance must have grown out of the religious establishments.
Various accounts are given by Browne Willis and others respecting the ancient constitution of this borough; but it had practically arrived at the state of a burgage tenure; and two officers elected by a homage in the Lord’s Court presided over the elections. They were denominated vianders; but no such word occurs in any usual books of reference.
Werrington appears to have belonged entirely to the Abbey of Tavistock. At the time of the dissolution the manor paid £141. 17s. 11d. And under another head is this entry: Worrington—Pensio de Ecclesia Sancti Martini £2. 10s.
The barton is known to have been one of the country residences appropriated to the Lord Abbat, to whom the mitre was granted by a papal bull in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and on whom King Henry the Eighth, in consideration of the especial devotion which he bore towards the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of Christ, and to St. Rumon, bestowed the privileges of a spiritual lord of Parliament in the fifth year of his reign.