administration of an income little short in its gross amount of two thousand pounds a year, may challenge the most minute investigation, the town and neighbourhood will receive the benefit of a new, commodious, and extended market-house, with the usual appendages, fully adequate to the still increasing opulence and commerce of the place.
Penzance may justly be proud of the many distinguished families and individuals connected with it: Clive, Fleming, Borlase, Tremenheere, Tonkin, Veale, John, Pellew, Batten, Carne, Davy, Boase, Colston, Giddy. It would require a volume to give even a slight history of each family, and of its individual members.
The Tonkins were long represented by Mr. Uriah Tonkin, who, through a life extended far beyond the period usually assigned to human nature, obtained universal regard and esteem. This gentleman had several sons; from one of whom is descended the Reverend Uriah Tonkin, now Vicar of Lelant. Another son, Mr. John Tonkin, pursued the practice of medicine till he succeeded to the family estate. He was distinguished for ability, good nature, and for quaintness of expressions in the form of apophthegms; but the most remarkable incident in Mr. John Tonkin’s life was his adoption of Humphry Davy, with the intention of educating him to the medical profession, and making him his successor. Davy, having succeeded to a small fortune on the decease of his father, soared above the narrow limits of a country practitioner, and was preparing himself for Edinburgh, when the Editor most fortunately directed his course to Clifton, where Dr. Beddoes was then engaged in applying pneumatic chemistry in aid of the Bristol waters for the cure or alleviation of incipient consumption; from thence he fought his way to the pinnacle of honour attached to experimental science.
Everything of importance in the life of this extraordinary man has been given with accuracy and ability by Doctor
Paris, in a Life of Davy, 1 vol 4to. or 2 vols. 8vo. Colburn and Bentley. 1831.
The family of Batten have been for some time the leading merchants of Penzance. They have recently lost Mr. John Batten, distinguished by the intelligence and liberality incident to gentlemen in that profession; but he has left a family more than promising to support his reputation and the credit of his ample fortune; and this family has the honour of possessing the Reverend Joseph Hallett Batten, D.D. Principal of the East India College.
This gentleman having been placed at Trinity College, Cambridge, by the Editor’s recommendation, immediately distinguished himself in the public examinations and by obtaining college prizes; and on taking his degree Mr. Batten became Third Wrangler. These honours led at once to a Fellowship, and to the most desirable private tuitions; and, having married, he was placed at the head of an institution destined to prepare the minds and the habits of young men for the government of a vast empire.
Mr. William Carne came to Penzance about sixty years ago, where, by active and intelligent industry, he has acquired an ample fortune. Of his son, Mr. Joseph Carne, it would not be an easy task to speak in terms sufficiently laudatory: I therefore refer to his communications in the Transactions of the Geological Society of Cornwall, to his most ample and valuable collection of natural history, and to his patronage of every institution established for the diffusion of knowledge.
The late Mr. Boase left Cornwall at an early age, and became the active partner in a London bank, from whence he returned to Penzance, and conferred important benefits on the town as a magistrate and member of the corporation, and by the judicious employment of his capital. His eldest son Dr. Henry S. Boase supports, as Secretary, the Geological Society, instituted by Doctor Paris in the year 1814. Besides papers in these Transactions, Dr. Boase has published, “Primary Geology,” a
separate work, in 1 vol. 8vo. Longman and Co. 1834, which has attracted the attention of natural philosophers throughout Europe; and although this is not the place to express my individual gratitude, yet I may say, that the most valuable additions to Mr. Hals’s and Mr. Tonkin’s parochial histories will be found in Doctor Boase’s geological description of each separate parish.