'Here under lyeth buryed Mary Arundell, the daughter of Syr John Arundell, Knight, with the body of Elizabeth, his wyfe, who decessed the 23 day of April, a.d. 1578; and in the fourty-nyne yere of her age. On whose soul God have mercye.
'This virgin wyse, whose lampe with oyle repleat
The bridegroom's call with burninge light attended;
By following him hath won a worthye seate,
And lyves for aye, though death this lyfe hath ended.'
Etc., etc., etc.
Nearly the whole of the older Arundell brasses, which bore the names, dates of death, and ages of the members of that family are not now to be found in the church; one, a sort of palimpsest brass, bore on one side an acrostic to the memory of Jane Arundell, and on the other a representation of the Deity, and two other figures, probably symbolical. This brass is said to have been removed to the nunnery at the beginning of the present century.
LANHERNE HOUSE, formerly the manor-house of the Arundells, a picturesque but gloomy structure, is now a Roman Catholic Carmelite nunnery, 'by time unstricken, yet with ages hoar.' The south part of the house is the most ancient part; it has stone-mullioned windows, and a good doorway of Catacleuse stone.[30] The vane which still surmounts the dome represents a wolf—the crest of the Trembleath Arundells. About eighty years ago the building was assigned to sixteen nuns who fled from the siege of Antwerp by the French during the revolutionary wars; and their successors, now over twenty in number, continue to occupy the buildings.
THE ARUNDELLS OF TRERICE.[31]
As the crow flies, Trerice, anciently Treres, as Carew informs us, is about five miles south of Lanherne and about the same distance from the mouth of the Gannel, one of whose tributary streamlets runs round the slope on whose southern side still stands great part of the handsome and extensive mansion of this branch of the family. It is not the original building, dating as it does only from the year 1573; but its charming and sheltered situation, 'its costly and commodious dwellings,' the rich colours of the time-stained masonry, its huge mullioned windows, and the magnificent proportions of its large and lofty hall, stamp it as one of the few remaining mansions of the Cornish gentry that speak of the wealth and power and hospitality of the 'good old times.'
The county histories are almost silent as to the early seat of this branch of the family; but there is no reason to doubt that its site remains the same; and that Trerice was inhabited by an Arundell at least so far back as the reign of Edward III.—one Ralph being here, whilst his cousin (or perhaps his brother), Sir John, who married Elizabeth Carminow, held sway at Lanherne.[32] Apropos of this marriage into the powerful and wealthy family of Carminow, it is interesting to note that in the Register of Walter de Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter, and founder of Exeter College, Oxon, we find that, in the year 1316, 'on the Monday before Michaelmas, our lord' (the Bishop) 'offered his niece, Joan Kaignes, as wife to John de Arundell, son and heir of John de Arundell defunct, who refused for the present; William Walle was present.' Were John's affections already pledged to the fair Elizabeth? The incident shows at least that the Bishop was desirous of forming an alliance between one of his own relatives and a house so important as that of Arundell.
Hals says that the Arundells of Trerice bore, at one time, the arms of Lansladron, viz., sable, three chevrons argent; but that at length they adopted the well-known coat of the family: sable, six swallows argent—three, two, and one.