Truro takes its name from its castle. This, in Leland’s time, belonged to the Prince of Wales as Earl of Cornwall, and was therefore one of the castellated palaces of the Cornish Earls; it was only a small one, however. This the ground of it shows when the walls are gone. Even in Leland’s time, it was “clene doun;” and the area was used as a place of exercise for shooting with bows and arrows, and for other diversions. It “is now,” says Mr. Tonkin, “more like an old Danish camp or round than a place that had been once inhabited.” What ideas Mr. Tonkin had of an “old Danish camp,” I cannot say; but the castle carries no appearance of a camp at all, either Danish, Saxon, or Roman. Nor is it more like a round, if by “a round” Mr. Tonkin means a Cornish one, like the amphitheatrical “round” of Piran. The only remains of the castle, indeed, are the name, a waste area, and the old mount or keep, the earth of which is nearly gone, and is daily vanishing by application of it to other purposes. This artificial mount marks the centre of the castle, had the main tower upon it, and constituted the principal part of the whole; and a small ward must have gone round it, standing on the natural ground, and forming the offices to this petty palace.
This was plainly the origin of the town:—where an ancient Earl’s house was, however small in its extent, and however occasional in its use, it naturally drew the traders of the country to it. The wants of such a Lord’s household, and the accompanying treasury of a kingdom in a county, created such a call for wares, and produced such a currency of wealth, as made it for its season the little centre of trade to the adjoining country; and a town grew up in time, the weakly child of its castle at first, but able to subsist without the castle at last. Such, undoubtedly, was the
origin of Truro. This lay upon the more westerly of the two currents; the westerly side of the town, therefore, would be the primitive and original part of it; accordingly, we see the White Friars’ house constructed with it. From this current it extended, as it enlarged, to the easterly one. The erection of a church on that side, when a district was taken out of Kenwin parish, and the peninsulated ground between the currents was formed into a parish of itself, drew it easterly with great power. The town consisted at first, probably, of the street running from the foot of the hill on a part of which the castle stood, and extending backwards with its yards and gardens to the western current; and this part of course adopted the previous appellation of the castle, and was called with it Tre-vereu, Tre-ureu, or Truru, Treuro, or Truro, the house or castle upon the Uro or Uru, the same denomination of a river with that of the Vere in Hertfordshire, the Vera-lamium of the Itineraries, the Uro-lanium of Ptolemy, and with that of the Eure in Yorkshire, the Uluracum, and the Is-urium of the geography and itineraries.
So originating from the castle, in that primary part of the whole, the western side of the town, and in that most primary point of all, the line of houses above, the town would naturally shoot out next in the line of houses opposite to this on each side of the opening towards the church, and beside the church on each side, drawn on by the strong attraction of the church itself. The roads into the town from east and west would then allure it down to their respective passes over the current; the road from the west then coming down, as it still does, at the bottom of the first line of houses; and that from the east coming within these thirty years by the narrow street near the church, at the corner of which is the rectory-house. The town would then extend from the western access into it, in a street of houses running at right angles with the original street of the whole, and pushing directly in a line from the access. These must have been the three streets from which Camden supposed
the name to have been derived: “Truro, Cornwallice Treuru, a tribus plateis dictum,” (page 138); but this last street was afterwards split by the corporation into two, by the erection of a town-hall above and a market-house below, along the middle of it. In this state stood the town probably for some time, with the continuance of this middle row of buildings, with the erection of a coinage-hall for tin a little beyond the termination of it, and with the extension of the two original sides of this third street up to it. It then stretched up the hill towards the castle, ranged over the confining currents on the east and west, into the parishes of St. Clement’s and Kenwin, and expatiated down to the quay and beside it. It ranged over the western current, now probably covered with a bridge, before it pushed up the hill towards the castle, as that line of houses is called Kenwin-street, even by Leland, and this is denominated St. Pancras-street by Mr. Tonkin; that was then the way, the circuitous way to Kenwin Church, when this is the direct way, and the present; and the principal alteration which has happened to Truro since, has resulted from the erection of a new bridge over the eastern current, longer and grander than the other, a few yards lower in the channel than it, lining with the eastern road, and leading directly to the Town-hall and market-house. This naturally produced a Bridge-street, leading up at one end of the Coinage-hall, so falling into what was then the principal stem of the town, and thus communicating with all the branches; and all will be consummated in a few years by executing an Act of Parliament which has already passed, in taking down that middle row of buildings which is formed by the town-hall and its accompaniments, restoring this street to its original width, and multiplying houses for the dislodged inhabiters in the extreme parts of the town.
When the church was originally built I know not, but it was then dedicated to St. Pancras, I apprehend, though it is now to St. Mary, as the street leading down to one corner of the large area at it, which is popularly denominated
Pider-street at present, is still denominated St. Pancras-street by Mr. Tonkin; but the present church of St. Mary is of that light and elegant sort of Gothic architecture which took place among us in the reign of Henry VII. and which perhaps might be wished to have still continued among us, as being a happy union of the solemn solidity of the Gothic and of the luminous lightness of the Roman. At this period the church must have been built, the architecture of London by degrees reaching out its influence into Cornwall; and accordingly in the southern window, which is the third from the east, is a date of 1518.
But let me be more particular concerning the antiquity of Truro. The castle is not mentioned in Domesday Book;[6] it was therefore later than the Conquest. It was built by some of the Norman Earls of Cornwall, and was one of the rural palaces, as it were, which they had in the county subordinate to their grand capitals at Launceston, Tremarton, and Restormel. The town must be still later than the castle; yet it is noticed within a century after the Conquest, so nearly coeval was it with its cause, the castle. It is noticed above to have been in the possession of Richard de Lucy. It was incorporated, says the Visitation above, “as appeareth by record, by Richard Lucy, alias Lacam.” “Truro, Truru, or Trevereu,” adds that best investigator of our constitutional antiquities, because the most grounded on the evidence of records, Dr. Brady, “was some time in the possession of Richard de Lucy, a person of great note in the reigns of King Stephen and Henry II. in the eighth of whose [Henry’s] reign,” or, an. Dom. 1162, “he was made Justice of England.”[7] This Richard had got possession of this part of the old estates of the earldom, either by one of those half-alienations, which were only sub-infeodations in reality, or (as we shall soon see) by being Earl of Cornwall himself. He actually resided in the castle, as he is styled in an instrument
of Henry the Second’s, “Ricardi de Lucy de Trivereu;” and he encouraged the little town of the Earls, by incorporating it, and so giving it a legal dignity in granting it an internal jurisdiction. He even proceeded to allow it that last and highest privilege of a borough, a freedom of exemption from toll; nor was this confined to the borough itself; it extended beyond it; it extended into all the country round; it was commensurate with the whole county; and Richard must, therefore, have acted with a power, not merely of the lord of the borough, but of the earl of the county, as no one less than an earl could have given such an ample sweep of exemption. The proof of all this lies in the original charter of the town, not now in existence, but referred to in a succeeding charter, and particularised so as to be equal to the very charter itself. The town thus began about the year 1100, was incorporated about 1130 perhaps, and was made a free borough (as we shall instantly see) before 1140.
In the reign of King Stephen, who came to the throne in 1135, and in the fifth year of it, or 1140, Lucy resigned up the possessions of the earldom; as then, “Reginald Fitzroy, who was one of the illegitimate sons of King Henry the First, was created Earl of Cornwall.”[8] Reginald was, therefore, invested with all that Lucy had possessed. This he retained till his death, which happened in the 21st of Henry II.[9] or the year 1175. We accordingly find him extending his more than half-royal graces to his borough of Truro, by granting it a charter confirmatory of the privileges which Lucy had conceded to it before. “The town and borough of Truro,” says the Visitation, “was incorporated by the name of the Mayor and Burgesses, by Reignald Earl of Cornwall, natural son to Henry the First (which, as appeareth by record, was done by Richard Lucy, alias Lacam), testibus Rogero de Valitort, Roberto de Edune Anvilla, Ricardo de Radiona, Aldredo