She long survived even her third husband; and retiring, as it is believed, to Week St. Mary, by her will, made in 1510, left goodly sums of money to the home of her childhood. She directed that the 'chauntry with cloisters' (to which reference has already been made) should be built there; and that a school should be founded for the children of the poor.[68]
If Mr. Hawker's testimony is to be accepted, she also left, by a codicil to her will, and in memory of an early love affair, to the priest of the church, where she knew her cousin John Dineham would serve and sing, 'the silver chalice gilt, which good Master Maskelyne had devised for her behoof, with a little blue flower which they do call a "forget-me-not," wrought in Turkess at the bottom of the bowl.' But Mr. Hawker's mind was always full of graceful fancies; and he has in this case undoubtedly drawn upon his imagination for his facts.
Carew is a more reliable if less poetic authority. He says: 'And to show that virtue as well bare a part in the desert, as fortune in the means of her preferment, she employed the whole residue of her life and last widowhood to works no less bountiful than charitable; namely, repairing of highways, building of bridges, endowing of maidens, relieving of prisoners, feeding and apparelling the poor, etc. Among the rest, at this St. Mary Wike she founded a chantry and free-school, together with fair lodgings for the schoolmasters, scholars, and officers, and added £20 of yearly revenue for supporting the incident charges: wherein, as the bent of her desire was holy, so God blessed the same with all wished success; for divers of the best gentlemen's sons of Devon and Cornwall were there virtuously trained up, in both kinds of divine and human learning, under one Cholwel, an honest and religious teacher, which caused the neighbours so much the rather, and the more to rue, that a petty smack only of popery opened the gap to the oppression of the whole, by the statute made in Edward VI.'s reign, touching the suppression of chanteries.'
FOOTNOTES:
[67] According to Dr. Borlase, 'the sheep in Cornwall in ancient times were remarkably small, and their fleeces so coarse that their wool bare no better title than that of Cornish hair, and under that name the cloth made of that wool was allowed to be exported without being subject to the customary duty paid for woollen cloth. When cultivation began to take place, and the cattle to improve in size and goodness, the Cornish had the same privilege confirmed to them by grant from Edward the Black Prince (first Duke of Cornwall after the Norman Conquest), in consideration of their paying four shillings for every hundredweight of white tin coined. The same privilege of exporting cloth of Cornish manufacture, duty-free, was confirmed to them by the twenty-first of Elizabeth.'
[68] Dame Thomasine Percival's chantry and college at Week St. Mary were, according to the Church Commissioners, in 1545, a great comfort to all the county, from children being sent there to board and to be taught; but two years after the schoolhouse was in ruins, owing (so it was stated) to its being in a desolate place; and removal to Launceston was suggested.