“In the vicarage garden, adjoining the west end of the chapel, a fragment of a stone arch was found, with a fleur-de-lis elegantly carved in deep relief; the same devise appears on the church stile, and in a coat of arms in one of the windows of the church, and appears from Tanner to have been part of the arms of the priory. The wall of the chapel is the south wall of the churchyard.
“The chapel was paved with beach pebbles, and was built partly of common clay slate raised on the spot; the wrought stones were of compact hard porphyry, from Pentewan Quarry in the parish of St. Austell, and hornblende from the cliff between Duporth and Charlestown in the same
parish. All the carved work is executed with much skill and taste.”
Several charters granted to this monastery are preserved in Dugdale’s Monasticon. The earliest is in the 19th year of Henry the Third, A. D. 1234, as follows:
“Henricus Dei gratia Rex Angliæ, Dominus Hiberniæ Dux Normandiæ et Aquitaniæ, et Comes Andegaviæ, omnibus Archiepiscopis, &c. salutem. Inspeximus cartam Roberti de Cardinam, in hæc verba:—
“Robertus de Cardinam omnibus Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ filiis salutem. Sciatis me, pro Dei amore et animæ meæ salute, concessisse et præsenti carta mea confirmasse ecclesiæ sanctorum martyrum, Sergii et Bachi Andegavi, et ecclesiæ Sancti Andreæ de Tywordrait et Monachis ibidem Deo servientibus et servituris, omnes donationes et concessiones quas antecessores mei, seu quicunque fideles de feodo meo ipsis fecerint,” &c.
The seal of the convent is understood to have been a saltire, or St. Andrew’s cross Or, between four fleurs-de-lis, which accounts for the sculptures noticed above.
St. Andrew became the patron saint of Scotland, and popular throughout the whole island, after an Abbat, said to have borne the name of Regulus, had brought some of his relics to a place then called Abernethy, but where a Monastery, a University, and a city, have since arisen to commemorate the Apostle.
The priory of Tywardreth appears to have been suppressed with the other alien houses, but afterwards to have been re-established as an independent society, or made denizen according to the legal phrase, having at the time of the general dissolution the Priory of Minster attached to it as a cell, which had been originally dependent with itself on the Abbey of St. Sergius and St. Bacchus at Angiers, the former capital of Anjou, and now of the department of the Maine and Loire.
A very curious correspondence between Thomas Cromwell, Vicar-General and Vicegerent of the King’s Supremacy on the one part, and Thomas Collyns the last Prior