In the Domesday Book, 1087, this district is not named, neither can I tell under what jurisdiction it was then taxed, unless Lizart, or Leschell, which latter may be a corruption of Kestell; neither is the name Manackan Church of any great antiquity, for in the Inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester, into the value of Cornish Benefices, 1294, Ecclesia de Minster, in decanatu de Kerryer, (which is now called Manackan) is rated £4, but in Wolsey’s Inquisition, 1521, it is called Manackan, and valued £4. 16s. 0½d. The patronage in the Bishop of Exon; the incumbent Archer; the rectory in possession of —— and the parish rated to the 4s. per pound Land Tax for the year 1696, £98. 13s.
However to the 15th of the Clergy, 24 Henry 6, it was rated, then by the name of Minster Church, £1. 4s. 6d. afterwards abated by the name of Minster 6s. (Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, page 95.) And lastly Manacan, as aforesaid; by both which names it is evident that heretofore there was some abbey or religious house of monks in this place or parish, wherein God was served with a minister; viz. vocal or instrumental music in time of divine service, as that appellation in British implies. And of this place we further read, (Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, page 46,) the 12th Edward I. its revenues was rated for twelve Cornish acres of land, that is to say, seven hundred and twenty statute acres; in that book, page 44, that the Bishop of Exeter held by tenure of knight service, in Minster in Kerrier, half a knight’s fee of land, 3 Henry IV.; probably this Minster was some alien monastery or priory, subjected to some abbey beyond the seas, as many others were in this land, all dissolved by Act of Parliament, temp. Richard II. and Henry V. for transmitting the secrets of the State to their superior house aforesaid, in the French Wars; for which reason perhaps it is not mentioned in the Monasticon Anglicanum, 26 Henry VIII. when other religious houses were dissolved; neither for the like reasons are St. Neot’s, Lancells, or St. Benet’s in Lanyvet, which I take to be those three abbeys or priories mentioned by Dugdale and Speed to have been dissolved in Cornwall, the value of whose revenues they do not set down, but saith they were Black Monks of the Angells, for Black Monks of the Augustines.
Moreover, let it be remembered that Manack is also a glove in British, and Manackan signifies the glove.
Kes-tell, id est, a castle, probably the Reschell in the Domesday Book aforesaid, in this parish, so called from some British camp, intrenchment, or fortification, formerly upon the lands thereof, or contiguous therewith, on the sea-coast, gave name and original to an old family of gentlemen now in possession thereof, surnamed de Kestell;
and in particular John Kestell, Esq. sometime Commissioner of the Peace and Taxes, that married Gregor of Tredenick; and giveth for his arms in a field Or three castles Gules. Since the writing hereof the male line of this tribe is quite extinct; and those lands, much incumbered with debt, fallen between the two daughters of the said Mr. Kestell, married to Penrose and Trevinard, as I am informed.
TONKIN.
The ancient name of this parish was Minster, which every one knows doth signify in Saxon a monastery, and from thence most commonly a church, and so it is called in the Taxatio Beneficiorum 20 Edward I.
THE EDITOR.
The ancient name of this parish, Minster, and the more recent one Manac-an, conspire to point it out as the locality of some religious establishment, since Manack is the Cornish word identical with Monk, and evidently from the same root, while an is the article, but although adjectives in all the Celtic dialects are placed after the substantive, yet the article regularly precedes it, and this inversion throws some doubt on the meaning of the compound word, more especially as not the slightest trace exists of any monastic institution within this parish in any authentic record, nor does tradition point out a spot where the foundation of a building can be perceived.
There is not any thing worth remarking about the church; it is pleasantly situated, and surrounded by a neat church town. The vicarage house is good; it was honoured by the residence, during some years, of our distinguished poet, historian, and divine, the Rev. Richard Polwhele, till he resigned it for Newlyn, a better living,