The warrant for the appointment of himself and colleagues to be the King's Physicians is in the Cotton. MSS. (Vespasian G xiv. p. 415). In it the medicines and other means of cure which the professors of the healing art were (with the concurrence of the Council) to employ are duly specified: they included 'potiones, syrupi, confectiones, clysteria, suppositoria, caputpurgea, gargarismata, balnea, capitis rasura,' etc., etc., and the document affords a curious glimpse of the state of the medical skill and knowledge of the time. It is referred to by Johnson in his 'Life of Linacre.' Unfortunately this Bishop's Register is lost, but his career would seem to have been uneventful.
To resume the story of the descent of the family. The records which I have been able to consult throw little or no light of importance upon most of the immediate descendants of Richard II.'s Admiral; his daughters married men of rank and title, such as the Lords Marney and Daubeny, Sir Henry Strangways, Sir William Capell, and Sir William Courtenay; and one of them, Ellen, secured the affections of Ralph, 'The great Copplestone.' One son only, Thomas, he had (or he may perchance have been a grandson); he, like so many others of his race, was knighted at a coronation, on this occasion the coronation of King Richard III. John, his son, won his knighthood too; but in a different fashion, for he was made knight-banneret for his valour in the field, at the sieges of 'Toronne' (Therouenne, 7 miles south of St. Omer) and Tournay, wherein so many ostentatious deeds of valour were performed on both sides. He died in 1545, and was buried in the church of St. Columb Major, where there is a brass to his memory.
By his second wife, Katharine, daughter of Sir Thomas Grenville, of Stow, Sir John had an erudite daughter, Mary, whose fame is enshrined in the pages of Ballard's 'Celebrated British Ladies.' She is chiefly known by her translations, especially of the 'Sayings and Doings of the Emperor Severus,' which she dedicated to her father, 'pater honoratissimus;' and some of her manuscripts are, I believe, preserved in the Royal Library. She married, first, Robert Radcliff, Earl of Sussex; and secondly, Henry, 17th Earl of Arundell. One of the successors of the learned lady, named Margaret, who died in 1691, was buried in the Trerice Arundell vault in Newlyn Church, at the east end of the south aisle; and according to Davies Gilbert, it was through her that the Trerice estates passed into the hands of their present proprietor, Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, Bart.
Sir John's grandson, of the same name, next claims a short notice. Dodd, in his 'Church History,' says of him:
'Sir John being an "occasional conformist," his conversation with Mr. Cornelius had given him (Cornelius) early impressions in favour of the Catholic religion, which grew stronger in the University, where he met with many of the same dispositions. At length, being weary of a conformity against his conscience, he left Oxford.'
This was that Father Cornelius who, so Foley informs us, was born at Bodmin, of Irish parents, and early attracted Sir John's attention by his studious disposition. Sir John took him by the hand, and always stood his friend. But Cornelius became a Jesuit and a recusant, and was hung, drawn, and quartered at Dorchester, in 1594. He was chaplain to Lady Arundell after her husband's decease, and she having recovered the body, gave it honourable interment.
The favour in which Cornelius and other priests about this time were held by our Sir John Arundell, cost him his liberty. He was summoned to London in 1581, and for nine years was kept a prisoner in Ely Palace, Holborn, only leaving it to go down to Isleworth and die. His body was conveyed to St. Columb with great pomp, and there is a monument there to his memory.
His daughters, Dorothy and Gertrude, entered the Convent of Benedictine nuns at Brussels, in the year 1600, and the former wrote an account of the last days of Father Cornelius, which part of his life she appears to have spent with him.
From the knight-banneret of Tournay and Therouenne descended the Arundells of Wardour; who, on obtaining that estate and castle (whose gallant defence by Lady Blanche Arundell, during the Civil War, is familiar to the reader of romance as well as to the historical student) by intermarriage with the heiress of John, Lord Dinham and ceasing to reside in Cornwall, the story of whose Worthies I am endeavouring to tell, are not strictly speaking included in my scheme; but they evidently remembered with affection their Cornish origin, for on the east front of old Wardour Castle is a Latin inscription, of which the following is an uncouth translation, believed to be by Henry, the eighth Lord Arundell:—
'Here, branch of Arundell Lanhernian race,
Thomas first sat, and he deserved the place:
He sat, and fell: Merit the fatal crime,
And Heav'n, to mark him faultless, bless'd his line.
Matthew his offspring, as the Father, Great,
And happier in his Prince, regain'd the seat.
Confirm'd, enlarg'd; long may its fortune stand!
HIS care who gave, resum'd, restor'd the land.'