[81] Dr. Borlase mentions the high esteem in which the elder-tree was held by the Cornu-Britons, and states, with reference to the height to which it will reach under favourable circumstances, that Mr. Tonkin was informed that one of these trees, nearly fifty feet high, was blown down in Carhayes Park during a gale, about the year 1720.
[82] According to Hals, the Buryan Boscawens also transplanted their dwelling-places to Tregameer in St. Columb Major, and Trevallock in Creed, or St. Stephen's, and from thence, by marriage with the daughter and heir of Tregothnan, by Lawrence Boscawen, gentleman, attorney-at-law, temp. Henry VII., who died 1567, and lies buried in the north transept of St. Michael Penkivel Church, as is testified by a brass inscription on his gravestone, there lately extant, upon which, on a lead escutcheon, was engraved his paternal coat armour. He it was who built the towers of old Tregothnan House.
[83] He must have been a wealthy man, for Davies Gilbert says that on Hugh Boscawen's daughter Bridget's marriage with Hugh Fortescue he gave her £100,000.
[84] Sub. Basset.
[85] According to Lysons, the Deanery of the royal chapel of St. Burian was a dignity held immediately under the Crown, and in a Cartulary, 20th Edw. I., the incumbent is called Dean of the King's Free Chapel of St. Burian. He used to exercise an independent jurisdiction in all ecclesiastical matters within the parish and its immediate dependencies. The three prebends belonging to the church of St. Burian were Prebenda Parva, Prebenda de Respermel and Prebenda de Tirthney; though there may have possibly been a fourth, called Trethyn, a place in this parish where there was once a chapel. The first-named Prebend was in the gift of the Bishop; the two others were annexed to the Deanery of St. Burian. The 'Deanery' has, however, ceased to be; the three parishes are separated, and there are now simply Rectors of St. Buryan, St. Levan, and St. Sennen. (Cf. a paper on 'The Cornish Chantries' by Mr. H. Michell Whitley, in the Truro Diocesan Kalendar for 1882.)
[86] His medallion portrait on his monument at St. Michael Penkivel, was designed by his mother, and was sculptured by Nollekens.
[87] He is so depicted in his portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds in our National Portrait Gallery. There are numerous engraved portraits of him in the Print Room of the British Museum.
[88] Edgcumbe took home the Admiral's despatches in the Shannon.
[89] Yet the French ships were in many respects better than the English; Professor Montagu Burrows (Captain R.N.) considers that an English 70-gun ship of the line was then not more than equal to a French 52. Many of the vessels were absolutely rotten, and the provisioning was grossly mismanaged. The officers too, it is said, were often found combining prudence with valour in somewhat un-English proportions.
[90] 'Hawke's grandfather (says Professor Burrows), a London merchant, had, like his ancestors for many generations, been settled at Treriven or Treraven (? Raven on the one-inch ordnance map, near the interesting old house of Trebasil), in the parish of St. Cleather, in Cornwall, about half-way between Launceston and Tintagel Head. Cornwall thus has the honour of having produced the two greatest admirals of the period, Hawke and Boscawen.' I did not myself venture to claim Hawke as a Cornishman, inasmuch as his father, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, settled at Bocking in Norfolk.