THE BOSCAWENS.
A novel feature presents itself in this case to the would-be historian which does not appear, at least to so great an extent, in the cases of certain other distinguished Cornish families. The Killigrews, the Arundells, the Godolphins, and the Grenvilles, for instance, all yielded more than one man of mark deserving of special notice; but this can hardly be said of the family of Boscawen: the interest centres in Admiral the Honourable Edward Boscawen, almost to the exclusion of all his ancestors, and of all his descendants. And he affords another instance, like Opie, of being doubly secure of a niche in the temple of Fame, from his own distinguished career, as well as through the wit and distinguished social qualities of his wife; who, the writer regrets to add, was not—as the majority of her husband's ancestresses, and as those of most distinguished Cornishmen were—a Cornish-woman.
It would probably be of little use now to speculate upon the causes why the Boscawens, for at least five centuries, continued to hold a well-recognised position in the county, acquiring by their judicious marriages into wealthy families vast landed interests in various parts of Cornwall, but chiefly in the vicinities of Buryan and Tregothnan and in the north-western part of the county, doubtless holding their own amongst their fellows, and doing what the world would call their 'duty;' and yet contributing, so far as I can ascertain, scarcely one person whose name is to be found in the usual records of English history until we reach the eighteenth century.
Yet it must be noted that the Boscawens are of very old standing in Cornwall. Hals indeed tells us that the first Boscawen who settled in Cornwall was an Irish gentleman;—and Hals may be right; for he had peculiar facilities for learning the early traditions of the family from the neighbourhood of Fentongollan (the seat of the Halses) to Tregothnan, the seat of the Boscawens; and also from the fact that one member of the family 'Hugh Boscawen, Gent., Master of Arts,' as a labour of love, taught young Hals, and many other youngsters, all that they knew of Latin and Greek in an old school-house in St. Michael Penkivel Church.[80] Nor was the Master of Arts the only member of the family who dispensed information free of charge; for Hals tells us of a Charles Boscawen of Nansavallan who was a barrister-at-law, 'and who made noe further use thereof in his elder years then to councill and assist his friends in all their lawe concerns gratis.' He died in London, without issue; and was Member of Parliament for Truro,—an ancient borough, with which, as we shall see, the Boscawens were intimately connected.
At Boscawen Rose, in the parish of St. Buryan, within a few miles of the Land's End, where the name is still found attached to places in the parish, the first Boscawen is said to have exchanged his Irish patronymic for that of the place where he took up his abode, and which was probably well enough described by its Cornish name, which signifies the Valley of Elder-trees. It is interesting to notice how many of these trees (much esteemed by the old Cornish folk), and almost these alone, still are to be found near the wind-whipped shores of the Land's End.[81]
I find no record of the marriages of the first two or three generations; but in the reign of Edward I. (about 1292), Henry de Boscawen married Hawise Trewoof; and some half century later (1335) John de Boscawen married an heiress, Joan de Tregothnan,[82] thus establishing a connexion between those two names, which has ever since been maintained; for Tregothnan, 'the place of well-wooded valleys,' is still the family seat: it is now the Cornish residence of Evelyn Boscawen, sixth Viscount Falmouth. The present house, a handsome structure, was built by the architect, W. Wilkins, jun., about the year 1815, replacing a more picturesque but smaller and less commodious building.
Intimate relations with the exquisitely wooded banks of the Fal were still further established by the marriage of the son of the aforesaid John Boscawen of Tregothnan with another heiress, named Joan, like his mother, who brought her husband the wealth of the family of Albalanda or Blanchland, in the parish of Kea, on the opposite side of the river to Tregothnan; a place where, according to Lysons, copper was first successfully worked in Cornwall. And, while on this subject, it seems not unworthy of remark that the alliances of the Boscawens and the Albalandas with the families who resided on the Fal and its tributaries were numerous. Rose Albalanda married a William Dangrous of Carclew, in the fifth year of Edward III.; and the heiress of Trenowith, who married Hugh Boscawen, a great grandson of the first-named John, was herself the descendant of ancestors called after Tolverne, Trewarthenick and Tregarrick—names which still belong to places on the shores of the river, or hard by. Nor did the Boscawens neglect to cultivate acquaintance and to intermarry with other Cornish families who made more noise in the world than those to whom we have been referring; for they and the Albalandas also married with Arundell, Bassett, St. Aubyn, Lower, Godolphin, Carminow, and Trevanion.
He who married Elizabeth St. Aubyn for his first wife was one Richard Boscawen, who paid a fine of five pounds rather than undergo the expensive ceremony of being made a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Henry VII., possibly because he was an old man, and dreaded a long journey to the metropolis, for he died four years afterwards, in 1489. His grandson, Hugh, who by the way married Phelip, a daughter of the fine old Cornish family of Carminow, now extinct, paid a similar fine of four marks at the coronation of Queen Mary; for what reason I know not. In the 'Bayliff of Blackmore' there is a long story of his being outwitted by a family in Truro; but the course pursued by these Boscawens, as narrated in that curious MS., was not unusual in those days. With the great-grandson of the last-named Hugh, himself bearing the same Christian name, commences, so far as I am aware, a more particular connexion of the family with the ancient borough, now the city, of Truro, where the principal street (formerly two streets, then bearing other names, but now thrown into one) is still called after them, 'Boscawen.' He was chosen Knight of the Shire for Cornwall in 1626; and Edward, his fifth son, who represented Tregony in Parliament, was one of the leading members of the House of Commons, temp. Charles II. This Hugh, who was 'Chief of the Coat Armour' at the Heralds' Visitation of Cornwall in 1620, was likewise in that year Recorder of the Borough. He had three sons: Hugh,[83] of whom nothing seems to be known except that he married a Clinton; Edward, a rich Turkey merchant, who was a Member of Parliament, temp. Charles II., and died at Trefusis, a lovely place overlooking the waters of Falmouth Harbour; and Nicholas, who joined the Parliamentary army (a rare thing, by the way, for a Cornish gentleman to do) with a troop raised from among his own tenantry. But the military career of Nicholas Boscawen (how terminated I have not been able to ascertain) must have been a short one; for, when only twenty-two years of age and unmarried, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, whence his remains were removed some fifteen years afterwards, at the Restoration, to be flung into a common pit in St. Margaret's churchyard.