APPENDIX.
IV.
Since the parish of Broadoak was printed, an additional sheet of Mr. Hals’s manuscript has been communicated to the Editor by his friend the Rev. Richard Polwhele. It contains an account of the important military events which distinguished that parish and the neighbourhood, in 1644, and it is therefore printed as a curious addition to what has here been given in the body of the work, on the same subject. Mr. Polwhele has also sent another sheet relative to St. Stephen’s near Saltash, but that does not contain anything of the least importance.
These two sheets appear to have been separated from the work at Exeter by the carelessness of the bookseller in whose hands the whole had been lodged, and this confirms the suspicion of more important losses having taken place at the same time.
BROADOAK.
Broadoak is situate in the hundred of West, and hath upon the south Boconnock, west St. Winnow, east St. Pynock, north Cardinham; and by the name of Bradock it was taxed in Domesday Roll, 20 William I. 1087; which word, if it be single, signifies a rebel or traitor, one that betrays the trust and fidelity reposed in him by another;
otherwise if it be commonly understood of Brad-ock or Brodock, it signifies broad trees of oak (Saxon).
In the Pope’s Inquisition into the value of Benefices before-mentioned, 1294, Capella de Bradock in decanatu de Westwellshire, appropriata Domui de Lanceston, was valued at xiiis. ivd. from whence it appears the church was endowed by the college of St. Stephen’s or Lanceston; in Wolsey’s Inquisition or Valor Beneficiorum at £8. 13s. 4d.; the patronage in the Bishop of Exon, the incumbent Pearce, the rectory in possession of ——; and this parish was rated to the 4s. per pound Land Tax for one year, 1696, £57.
Here let it be remembered that Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, General of the Parliament Army, being in Devon, received orders from his masters, 1644, to march from thence with the same towards Plymouth, in order to raise the siege thereof, it being then greatly distressed by Sir Richard Grenville, as was the west part of that county, who immediately set forward with his army, and marched on towards that place; yet not so quickly but that Grenville had notice of his motion, and, fearing he was not strong enough to engage his great army, he by night privately dislodged from the siege of Plymouth with his own regiment, Colonel Fortescue’s, Colonel Carew’s, and Colonel Acland’s; and the better to shun or avoid his enemy, marching down by way of Plympton, he turned aside towards St. Botolph’s and Saltash Passage, where with boats he passed over his troops, and so entered over the Tamar river into Cornwall; which Essex understanding as soon as he came to Plymouth, having thus raised the siege and relieved the town, forthwith marched after Grenville as far as Lestwithell and Bradoak Downs, himself quartering at Lanhydrock, the Lord Robartes’s house, and sending out troops of horse westwards if possible to attack him. In the mean time, King Charles I. being then in Somerset with his army, and having notice of those facts of Essex’s, forthwith marched out of Somerset through Devon with his army for Grenville’s relief, and entered Cornwall by way of Polston bridge, the 11th of August 1644; from thence advanced to Lanceston, and so directly to Liskeard, which place for some time he made his head quarters, where the townsmen and contiguous countrymen shewed themselves very zealous and loyal towards his service, especially for that the town or borough and manor of
Leskeard was his son the Duke of Cornwall’s lands, in right of his Duchy of Cornwall.