Perhaps this mode of induction, directly opposed to common sense and to experience, may be a remnant of the hallucination which bound itself round men’s minds at the
period when the stores of ancient learning were first poured on modern Europe; under this delusion they were not contented with ascribing a high degree of merit to the artists, to the writers, to the architects of Greece and Rome; nothing short of absolute perfection was believed to exist in each, and this servile appeal to authority is not even yet quite obsolete, although the time for such delusions being in the slightest degree advantageous either to literature or to science, has long since passed by.
The traders who frequented these remote shores would naturally mistake land in the great unbounded ocean for mere islands, and their vague descriptions, purposely made obscure, proved so successful that Julius Cæsar was not aware when he landed on the coast of Kent that he was arrived in the country producing tin.
The rocks of Scilly, having inhabitants, were visited by monks and anchorites, who formed establishments there, and gradually associated themselves into a small priory; but, so early as the time of King Henry the First, their monastery, with all its appendages, was given to the Abbey of Tavistock. The grant is extant.
“Henricus Rex Anglorum Willelmo Episcopo Excestriæ et Ricardo filio Baldwini, et Justiciæ suæ de Devenesira et Cornegallia, salutem. Sciatis me dedisse in perpetuam elemosinam Osberto Abbati et Ecclesiæ de Tavystok, et Turoldo Monacho suo, omnes Ecclesias de Sullye cum pertinentiis suis, et terram sicut unquam Monachi aut Heremitæ melius eam tenuerunt tempore Regis Edwardi, et Burgaldi Episcopi Cornegalliæ. Et volo et præcipio quod ipse Turoldus et omnes Monachi de Sully sicut proprii Præbendarii mei habeant firmam pacem cum omnibus quæ ad eas pertinent,” &c.
There is also a confirmation by Reginald de Dunstanville, illegitimate son of King Henry the First, who was created Earl of Cornwall in 1140, and died without male issue in 1175.
“Reginaldus Regis Filius Comes Cornubiæ, omnibus
Baronibus suis et Ballivis suis Cornubiæ et Scilly, salutem. Sciatis me, pro anima Henrici Regis patris mei, et mea, et pro Carta ipsius quam vidi, concessisse et confirmasse in liberam et perpetuam elemosinam Monachis de Sully, sicut propriis Præbendariis Patris mei, omne Wrec quod in Insulis, quas ipsi totas tenent, advenerit; præter cœtum et navem integram, hoc est, in Rentemen et Nurcho et insula Sancti Elidii et Sancti Sampsonis, et Sanctæ Teonæ. Et prohibeo super forisfactum meum, sicut prohibuit pater meus per cartam suam, ne quis eis aliquam injuriam faciat aut molestiam. Quoniam nolo ut de aliquo tenemento suo in Scilly aut libertate aut consuetudine, quam eis concessi, alicui amodo intendant nisi michi[24] et Abbati Tavistochiæ.
“Teste Radulpho de Bosco-Roardi apud Dorecestriam.”
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