From this marriage of Thomas St. Aubyn with Mary Grenville, descended his grandson, Thomas,—the St. Aubyn of Carew's days—of whom that historian of his native county wrote thus:

'Saintabin, whose very name (besides the Conquest roll) deduceth his first ancestors out of France. His grandfather married Greinvile; his father, one of Whittington's coheirs: which latter couple, in a long and peaceable date of years, exercised a kind, liberal, and never-discontinued hospitality. He himself took to wife the daughter of Mallet; and with ripe knowledge, and sound judgment, dischargeth the place which he beareth in his country.'

I find nothing further of general interest touching the family until we come to the stirring times of the Civil War—a conflict in which Cornwall took, as is well known, a distinguished part. Until that period the St. Aubyns seem to have been a thriving and distinguished family, serving their country in the various capacities already mentioned, and 'gathering house to house, and vineyard to vineyard.' Their possessions were in almost every part of the county: for instance, Lysons (who was indebted to the fifth Sir John St. Aubyn for the loan of Borlase's MS. folio of notes on Cornwall) says that, amongst other properties, 'The manor of Godolphin is still held of Sir John St. Aubyn, as of his manor of Lambourne, by the payment of a gammon of bacon;' and, that the manors of Berippa and Penpons were in the possession of the St. Aubyns; also a moiety of the manor of Gaverigan in St. Columb Major, the manor of Argallez or Arrallas in St. Enoder, of Trelowith in St. Erth, of half of Treninick in St. Gorran, Kimiel and Butsava in Paul, and Mayon in Sennen; they were also impropriators of the great tithes of Crowan, and patrons of the Vicarage; and they held a moiety of the advowson of the rectory of Duloe. The revenues of the nunnery of Clares, which formerly stood near the junction of Boscawen and Lemon Streets, Truro, came (according to Hals) into the possession of Sir John Seyntaubin and others; and again, the Priory of Tywardreath, so Davies Gilbert tells us, 'was the joint property of the St. Aubyns, and the Pendarveses of Roscrow.'

To return to the family at the time of the great struggle between the King and his Parliament. Most of the Cornish gentry sided, as is well known, with the King, and behaved with such marked valour and success as to elicit from Charles the well-known letter of thanks which still hangs in many of the churches in the county. One of the St. Aubyns of the day,[132] however, seems, according to Hals, to have thrown in his lot with the Parliament; he was at the siege of Plymouth, in 1644; and was present at the defeat of his party at the battle of Braddock Down, near Lostwithiel.

Hals tells us that, after the rout of the Roundheads, 'it was resolved by Essex's council that he should desert his army, and, privately by night, in a boat, go down the river to Fowey, and from thence take ship for Plymouth; which expedient was accordingly put in execution, and the General Essex, the Lord Robartes, and some others, the next day got into Plymouth, being the 31st August, 1644. On the same day Sir William Balfour, with two thousand five hundred of the Parliament horse, with divers officers, viz., Colonel Nicholas Boscawen, his Lieutenant Colonel James Hals, of Merther, Henry Courtenay, of St. Bennet's in Lanyvet, Colonel John Seyntaubyn, of Clowans, and his Lieutenant Colonel Braddon, Colonel Carter, and several other officers and gentlemen of quality, early in the morning forced their passage over St. Winnow, Boconnock, and Braddock Downs, though the body of the King's army, which lay encamped on the heath in those places, maugre all opposition to the contrary; from thence they rode to Leskeard, from thence to Saltash Passage, and from thence to Plymouth safely the same day, amidst their own garrison and confederates.'

Whether from conviction, or from a wish to be well with either party in the State—whichever might succeed—it seems pretty clear that another member of the family, Thomas, espoused the cause of the Royalists. His monument in Crowan Church so describes him; and in the spring of 1882 I saw, on the walls of the principal staircase at Clowance, his portrait—hard, but apparently faithful—in Cavalier costume.

Of the second baronet I find nothing to note, except that he was Sheriff of Cornwall in 1705.

But the third[133] Sir John St. Aubyn, the sturdy little Cornish baronet—of whom Walpole said, 'all these men (his opponents in Parliament) have their price except him'—claims more of our attention than, perhaps, any other member of the family. He was born on 27th September, 1696, and we get a glimpse of his early life, when at Exeter College, Oxford, in the following extract from a letter written by his friend and fellow-collegian, Borlase, in 1772, to a lady in London. The MS. is amongst that collection at Castle Horneck, which formed the subject of an interesting article[134] in the Quarterly Review, vol. 139; and the following extract describes the homeward journey of the two young fellows. A hundred years ago this must have been a somewhat formidable undertaking; and we almost regret that the chronicler did not furnish us with more details than he has done: