CHAPTER X

Of life bereft (by fell design),I mingle with my fellow clay,On God’s protection I reclineTo save me on the Judgment-day.There shall each blood-stain’d soul appear,Repent, all, ere it be too late,Or Else a dreadful doom you’ll hear,For God will sure avenge my fate.

This Stone is Erected by his Wifeas the last mark of respect to anAffectionate Husband.

The inscription is surmounted by a representation, carved in low relief, of thePigmyschooner chasing the smuggling vessel.

Old folk, now gone from the scene of their reminiscences, used to tell of this tragedy, and of the landing of the body of the unfortunate Lewis on the rocks of Sandsfoot Castle, where the ragged, roofless walls of that old seaward fortress impend over the waves, and the great bulk of Portland isle glooms in mid distance upon the bay. They tell, too, how the inscription was longkept gilded by his relatives; but the last trace of it has long since vanished.

Many miles intervene, and another county must be entered, before another tragical epitaph bearing upon smuggling is found. If you go to Seaton, in South Devon, and walk inland from the modern developments of that now rapidly growing town to the old church, you may see there a tablet recording the sad fate of William Henry Paulson, midshipman of H.M.S.Queen Charlotte, and eight seamen, who all perished in a gale of wind off Sidmouth, while cruising in a galley after smugglers, in the year 1816.

A few miles westward, through Beer to Branscombe, the country is of a very wild and lonely kind. In the weird, eerie churchyard of Branscombe, in which astonishing epitaphs of all kinds abound, is a variant upon the smugglers’ violent ends, in the inscription to one “Mr. John Harley, Custom House Officer of this parish.” It proceeds to narrate how, “as he was endeavouring to extinguish some Fire made between Beer and Seaton as a signal to a Smuggling Boat then off at sea, he fell by some means or other from the top of the cliff to the bottom, by which he was unfortunately killed. This unhappy accident happened the 9th day of August in the year of our Lord 1755,ætatis suæ45. He was an active and diligent officer and very inoffensive in his life and conversation.”

So here was another martyr to the conditions created by bad government.

The estuary of the Exe, between Exmouth and Starcross, was for many years greatly favoured by smugglers, for, as may readily be perceived to this day, there lay in the two-miles-broad channel, where sea and river mingle, a wide, wild stretch of sand, almost awash at high water, heaped up in towans overgrown with tussocks of coarse, sour grasses, or sinking into hollows full of brackish water: pleasant in daytime, but a dangerous place at night. Here, in this islanded waste, there were no roads nor tracks at all, and few were those who ever came to disturb the curlews or the seabirds that nested, unafraid. In these twentieth-century times of ours the Warren—for such is the name of this curiously amphibious place—has become a place of picnic parties on summer afternoons, largely by favour of the Great Western Railway having provided, midway between the stations of Starcross and Dawlish, a little platform called the “Warren Halt.” But in those times before railways, when the Warren was not easily come at, the smugglers found it a highly convenient place for their business. Beside it, under the lee of Langston Point, there is a sheltered strand, and, at such times when it was considered quite safe, the sturdy free-traders quietly ran their boats ashore here, on the yellow sands, and conveyed their contents to the “Mount Pleasant” inn, which is an unassuming—and was in those times a still more unassuming—house, perched picturesquely on the crest of a red sandstone bluff which rises inland, sheer from themarshy meadows. It was a very convenient receiving-house and signal-station for all of this trade, for it owned caverns hollowed out of the red sandstone in places inaccessible to the authorities, and from its isolated height, overlooking the flats, could easily communicate encouragement or warning to friends anxiously riding at anchor out at sea. The lights that flashed on dark and tempestuous nights from its high-hung rustic balcony were significant. The only man who could have told much of the smugglers’ secrets here was the unfortunate Lieutenant Palk, who lay wait one such night upon the Warren. But dead men tell no tales; and that ill-starred officer was found in the morning, drowned, face downwards, in a shallow pool, whether by accident or design there was nothing to show. As already remarked, the Warren was a dangerous place to wander in after dark.

It is quite vain nowadays to seek for the smugglers’ caves at Mount Pleasant. They were long ago filled up.

In these times the holiday-maker, searching for shells, is the only feature of the sands that fringe the seaward edge of the Warren. It is a fruitful hunting-ground for such, especially after rough weather. But the day following a storm was, in those times, the opportunity of the local revenue men, who, forming a strong party, were used to take boat and pull down here and thoroughly search the foreshore; for at such times any spirit-tubs that might have been sunk out at sea andcarefully buoyed by the smugglers, awaiting a favourable time for landing, were apt to break loose and drift in-shore. There was always, at such times, a sporting chance of a good haul. But, on the other hand, some of the many tubs that had been sunk months before, and lost, would on these occasions come to hand, and they were worth just nothing at all: long immersion in salt water having spoiled their contents, with the result that what had been right good hollands or cognac had become a peculiarly ill-savoured liquid, which smelt to heaven when it was broached. The revenue people called this abominable stuff, which, as Shakespeare might say, had “suffered a sea-change into something new and strange,” by the appropriate name of “stinkibus.”

Cornwall in Smuggling Story—Cruel Coppinger—Hawker’s Sketch—The Fowey Smugglers—Tom Potter,of Polperro—The Devils of Talland—Smugglers’ Epitaphs—Cave at Wendron—St. Ives

Cornwallis the region of romance: the last corner of England in which legend and imagination had full play, while matter-of-fact already sat enthroned over the rest of the land. At a time when newspapers almost everywhere had already long been busily recording facts, legends were still in the making throughout this westernmost part of the island. We may, in our innocence, style Cornwall a part of England; but the Cornish do not think of it as such, and when they cross the Tamar into Devonshire will still often speak of “going into England.” They are historically correct in doing so, for this is the unconquered land of the Cornu-Welsh, never assimilated by the Saxon kingdoms. Historically and ethnologically, the Cornish are a people apart.

The Coppinger legend is a case in point, illustrating the growth of wild stories out of meagre facts. “Cruel Coppinger” is ahalf-satanic, semi-viking character in the tales of North Cornwall and North Devon, of whom no visitor is likely to remain ignorant, for not only was he a dread figure of local folklore from about the first quarter of the nineteenth century, but he was written up in 1866 by the Reverend R. S. Hawker, Vicar of Morwenstow, who not only collated those floating stories, but added very much of his own, for Hawker was a man—and a not very scrupulous man—of imagination. Hawker’s presentment of “Cruel Coppinger” was published in a popular magazine, and then the legend became full-blown.

The advent of Coppinger upon the coast at Welcombe Mouth, near where Devon and Cornwall join, was dramatic. The story tells how a strange vessel went to pieces on the reefs and how only one person escaped with his life, in the midst of a howling tempest. This was the skipper, a Dane named Coppinger. On the beach, on foot and on horseback, was a crowd, waiting, in the usual Cornish way, for any wreck of the sea that might be thrown up. Into the midst of them, like some sea-monster, dashed this sole survivor, and bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young damsel who had ridden to the shore to see the sight. He grasped her bridle, and, shouting in a foreign tongue, urged the doubly-laden animal to full speed, and the horse naturally took his usual way home. The damsel was Miss Dinah Hamlyn. The stranger descended at her father’s door and lifted her off her saddle. Hethen announced himself as a Dane, named Coppinger, and took his place at the family board and there remained until he had secured the affections and hand of Dinah. The father died, and Coppinger succeeded to the management and control of the house, which thenceforward became the refuge of every lawless character along the coast. All kinds of wild uproar and reckless revelry appalled the neighbourhood, night and day. It was discovered that an organised band of smugglers, wreckers, and poachers made this house their rendezvous, and that “Cruel Coppinger” was their captain. In those times no revenue officer durst exercise vigilance west of the Tamar, and, to put an end at once to all such surveillance, the head of a gauger was chopped off by one of Coppinger’s gang, on the gunwale of a boat.

Strange vessels began to appear at regular intervals on the coast, and signals were flashed from the headlands, to lead them into the safest creek or cove. Amongst these, one, a full-rigged schooner, soon became ominously conspicuous. She was for long the terror of those shores, and her name was theBlack Prince. Once, with Coppinger aboard, she led a revenue cutter into an intricate channel near the Bull Rock, where, from knowledge of the bearings, theBlack Princeescaped scathless, while the King’s vessel perished with all on board. In those times, if any landsman became obnoxious to Coppinger’s men, he was seized and carried aboard theBlack Prince,and obliged to save his life by enrolling himself as one of the crew.

Amid such practices, ill-gotten gold began to accrue to Coppinger. At one time he had enough money to purchase a freehold farm bordering on the sea. When the day of transfer came, he and one of his followers appeared before the lawyer and paid the money in dollars, ducats, doubloons, and pistoles. The lawyer objected, but Coppinger, with an oath, bade him take that or none.

Long impunity increased Coppinger’s daring. Over certain bridle-paths along the fields he exercised exclusive control, and issued orders that no man was to pass over them by night. They were known as “Coppinger’s Tracks,” and all converged at a cliff called “Steeple Brink.” Here the precipice fell sheer to the sea, 300 feet, with overhanging eaves a hundred feet from the summit. Under this part was a cave, only to be reached by a rope-ladder from above. This was “Coppinger’s Cave.” Here sheep were tethered to the rock and fed on stolen hay and corn until slaughtered. Kegs of brandy and hollands were piled around; chests of tea, and iron-bound sea-chests contained the chattels and revenues of the Coppinger royalty of the sea.

The terror linked with Coppinger’s name throughout the north coasts of Cornwall and Devon was so extreme that the people themselves, wild and lawless though they were, submitted to his sway as though he had been lord of the soil, and they his vassals. Such a household as his was,of course, far from happy or calm. Although, when his father-in-law died, he had insensibly acquired possession of the stock and farm, there remained in the hands of the widow a considerable amount of money. This he obtained from the helpless woman by instalments, and by force. He would fasten his wife to the pillar of her oak bedstead, and call her mother into the room, and assure her he would flog Dinah with a cat-o’-nine-tails till her mother had transferred to him what he wanted. This act of brutal cruelty he repeated until he had utterly exhausted the widow’s store.

There was but one child of Coppinger’s marriage. It was a boy, and deaf and dumb, but mischievous and ungovernable, delighting in cruelty to other children, animals, or birds. When he was but six years of age, he was found one day, hugging himself with delight, and pointing down from the brink of a cliff to the beach, where the body of a neighbour’s child was found and it was believed that little Coppinger had flung him over. It was a saying in the district that, as a judgment on his father’s cruelty, the child had been born without a human soul.

But the end arrived. Money became scarce, and more than one armed King’s cutter was seen, day and night, hovering off the land. And at last Coppinger, “who came with the water, went with the wind.” A wrecker, watching the shore, saw, as the sun went down, a full-rigged vessel standing off and on. Coppinger came tothe beach, put off in a boat to the vessel, and jumped aboard. She spread canvas, and was seen no more. That night was one of storm, and whether the vessel rode it out or not, none ever knew.

It is hardly necessary to add that the Coppinger of these and other rumbustious stories is a strictly unhistorical Coppinger; and that, in short, they are mainly efforts of Hawker’s own imagination, built upon very slight folklore traditions.

Who and what, however, was the real Coppinger? Very little exact information is available, but what we have entirely demolishes the legendary half-man, half-monster of those remarkable exploits.

Daniel Herbert Copinger, or Coppinger, was wrecked at Welcombe Mouth on December 23rd, 1792, and was given shelter beneath the roof of Mr. William Arthur, yeoman farmer, at Golden Park, Hartland, where for many years afterwards his name might have been seen, scratched on a window-pane:

D. H. Coppinger, shipwrecked December 23 1792, kindly received by Mr. Wm. Arthur.

There is not the slightest authority for the story of his sensational leap on to the saddle of Miss Dinah Hamlyn; but it is true enough that the next year he married a Miss Hamlyn—her Christian name was Ann—elder of the two daughters of Ackland Hamlyn, of Galsham, in Hartland, and in the registers of Hartland churchmay be found this entry: “Daniel Herbert Coppinger, of the King’s Royal Navy, and Ann Hamlyn mard. (by licence) 3 Aug.” The “damsel” of the story also turns out, by the cold, calm evidence of this entry, to have been of the mature age of forty-two.

Mrs. Hamlyn, Coppinger’s mother-in-law, died in 1800, and was buried in the chancel of Hartland church. It is, of course, quite possible that his married life was stormy and that he, more or less by force, extracted money from Mrs. Hamlyn, and he was certainly more or less involved in smuggling. But that he, or any of his associates, chopped off the head of an excise officer is not to be credited. Tales are told of revenue officers searching at Galsham for contraband, and of Mrs. Coppinger hurriedly hiding a quantity of valuable silks in the kitchen oven, while her husband engaged their attention in permitting them to find a number of spirit-kegs, which they presently found, much to their disgust, to be empty; and, moreover, empty so long that scarce the ghost of even a smell of the departed spirit could be traced. But the flurried Mrs. Coppinger had in her haste done a disastrous thing, for the oven was in baking trim, and the valuable silks were baked to a cinder.

Little else is known of Coppinger, and nothing whatever of his alleged connection with the Navy. He became bankrupt in 1802, and was then a prisoner in the King’s Bench Prison. With him was one Richard Copinger, said to have been amerchant in Martinique. Nothing is known of him after this date, but rumour told how he was living apart from his wife, at Barnstaple, and subsisting on an allowance from her.

Mrs. Coppinger herself, in after years, resided at Barnstaple, and died there on August 31st, 1833. She lies buried in the chancel of Hartland church beside her mother.

According to the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, Coppinger was not really a Dane, but an Irishman, and had a wife at Trewhiddle near St. Austell. He, on the same authority, is said to have done extremely well as a smuggler, and had not only a farm at Trewhiddle, but another at Roscoff, in Brittany. A daughter, says Mr. Baring-Gould, married a Trefusis, son of Lord Clinton, and Coppinger gave her £40,000 as a dowry. A son married the daughter of Sir John Murray, Bart., of Stanhope. The source of this interesting information is not stated. It appears wildly improbable.

Hawker very cleverly embodied the smuggling sentiment of Cornwall in a sketch he wrote, styled “The Light of Other Days.”

“It was full six in the evening of an autumn day when a traveller arrived where the road ran along by a sandy beach just above high-water mark. The stranger, who was a native of some inland town, and utterly unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways, had reached the brink of the tide just as a ‘landing’ was coming off. It was a scene not only to instruct a townsman, but to dazzle and surprise. At sea, just beyondthe billows, lay the vessel, well moored with anchors at stem and stern. Between the ship and the shore, boats, laden to the gunwale, passed to and fro. Crowds assembled on the beach to help the cargo ashore. On one hand a boisterous group surrounded a keg with the head knocked in, for simplicity of access to the good cognac, into which they dipped whatsoever vessel came first to hand; one man had filled his shoe. On the other side they fought and wrestled, cursed and swore. Horrified at what he saw, the stranger lost all self-command, and, oblivious of personal danger, he began to shout, ‘What a horrible sight! Have you no shame? Is there no magistrate at hand? Cannot any justice of the peace be found in this fearful country?’

“‘No; thanks be to God,’ answered a gruff, hoarse voice. ‘None within eight miles.’

“‘Well, then,’ screamed the stranger, ‘is there no clergyman hereabout? Does no minister of the parish live among you on this coast?’

“‘Aye, to be sure there is,’ said the same deep voice.

“‘Well, how far off does he live? Where is he?’

“‘That’s he, yonder, sir, with the lantern.’

“And, sure enough, there he stood on a rock, and poured, with pastoral diligence, ‘the light of other days’ on a busy congregation.”

“The Light of other Days”

The complete, true story of smuggling along the Cornish coast will never be told. Those who could have contributed illuminating chapters toit, and would not, are dead, and those who now would are reduced to seeking details and finding only scraps. But some of these scraps are not unpalatable.

Thus we have the story of that Vicar of Maker whose church was used as a smugglers’ store. The Vicar was not a party to these proceedings, as may well be judged by his inviting his rural dean to ascend to the roof of the church-tower with him, for sake of the view: the view disclosing not only a lovely expanse of sea and wooded foreshore, but also a heap of twenty-three spirit-kegs, reposing in the gutters between the roofs of nave and aisle.

The “Fowey Gallants,” as the townsfolk of that little seaport delighted to call themselves,—the title having descended from Elizabethan and even earlier times, when the “Gallants” in question were, in plain speech, nothing less than turbulent seafaring rowdies and pirates—were not behind other Cornish folk in their smuggling enterprises. That prime authority on this part of the Cornish coast, Jonathan Couch, historian of Polperro, tells us of an exciting incident at Fowey, in the smuggling way. On one occasion, the custom-house officers heard of an important run that had taken place overnight, and accordingly sent out scouts in every direction to locate the stuff, if possible. At Landaviddy one of these parties met a farm-labourer whom they suspected of having taken part in the run. They taxed him with it, and tried him all ways;without effect, until they threatened to impress him for service in the Navy unless he revealed the hiding-place of the cognac. His resolution broke down at that, and he told how the kegs had been hidden in a large cave at Yellow Rock, which the officers then instructed him to mark with a chalk cross.

The revenue men then went off for reinforcements, and, returning, met an armed band of smugglers, who had taken up a strong position at New Quay Head. They were armed with sticks, cutlasses, and muskets, and had brought a loaded gun upon the scene, which they trained upon the cave; while a man with flaring portfire stood by and dared the officers to remove the goods. Official prudence counselled the revenue men to retire for further support; but when they had again returned the smugglers had disappeared, and the kegs with them.

Fowey’s trade in “moonshine,”i.e.contraband spirits, was, like that of the Cornish coast in general, with Roscoff, in Brittany; and a regular service was maintained for years. As late as 1832 the luggersEagle, thirty-five tons;Rose, eleven tons; andDove, of the same burthen, were well known in the trade. Among the smuggling craft belonging to Polperro, theUnitywas said to have made upwards of five hundred entirely successful trips.

The story of Tom Potter is even yet told by oldsters at Polperro, who, not themselves old enough to recollect the circumstances, have itfrom their parents and grandparents. Jonathan Couch tells the story, but he forgot the exact year.

It seems, then, that one morning a lugger was observed by a revenue cutter lying becalmed in Whitesand Bay. Through their glasses the revenue men made it out to be theLottery, of Polperro, well known for her fast-sailing qualities, as well as for the hardihood of her crew. With the springing up of the breeze, there was little doubt but that she would put to sea, and thus add yet another opportunity to the many already existing for sneering at the stupidity of the local preventive force.

Accordingly, the chief officer, with all despatch, manned two or three boats and put off, before a breeze could spring up, making sure of an easy capture. The smugglers, however, observed these movements of their watchful enemies, and commenced to make preparations for resistance, whereupon the revenue boats opened fire; but it was not until they had approached closely that the smugglers returned their volleys, and then the firing grew very heavy, and when within a few yards of the expected prize, Ambrose Bowden, who pulled bow-oar in one of the attacking boats, fell mortally wounded.

It was plain that the Polperro men had come to a determination not to surrender their fine craft, or the valuable cargo it carried; and the commander of the revenue men thought it, under the circumstances, the wisest thing to withdrawand to allow theLotteryto proceed to sea, which she did, at the earliest opportunity. But the names of those who formed the crew were sufficiently well known to the authorities, and the smugglers accordingly found themselves in a very difficult position; not indeed on account of smuggling, but for the resistance they had offered to authority, resulting in what was technically murder. They all scattered and went into hiding, and, secreted by friends, relatives, and sympathisers in out-of-the-way places, long baffled the efforts of the revenue officers, aided by searching parties of dragoons, to find them. The authorities no sooner had learnt, on reliable information, where they lay hidden, than they were found to have been spirited away elsewhere.

But all this skulking about, with its enforced idleness and waste of time, grew wearisome to the skulkers, and at length one of the crew of theLottery, Roger Toms by name, more weary than his fellows of hiding, and perhaps also thinking that his services would be handsomely rewarded, offered himself as King’s evidence.

According to his showing, it was a man named Tom Potter who fired the shot that killed Bowden. The search then concentrated upon Potter. The fury of Toms’s fellow-smugglers, and the entire population of Polperro, against the informer, Toms, may readily be imagined. To in any way aid these natural enemies of the people was of itself the unforgiveable sin, and to further go and offer evidence that would result in the forfeitof the life of one of his own comrades disclosed an even deeper depth of infamy.

Toms was therefore obliged to go into hiding again, and, this time, from his old associates. It was some considerable time before they captured him, and they did it, even then, only by stratagem. His wife, and others, knowing the intense feeling aroused, not unnaturally supposed his life to be in danger; but the smugglers assured her that they only wanted to secure him and hold him prisoner until after the trial of Bowden, and would not otherwise harm him. They added, mysteriously, that things might go worse with Toms if he continued to hide away; for they would be certain sooner or later to find him. The greatly alarmed woman at last arranged that they should capture him when accompanying her across the moors in the direction of Polruan, and they accordingly seized the informer when in her company, on Lantock Downs. They hid him for awhile close by, and then smuggled him, a close prisoner, over to that then noted smugglers’ Alsatia, Guernsey, with the idea of eventually shipping him to America. But while at Guernsey he escaped and made his way to London.

The evidence he gave was to the effect that, during the firing, he went down into the cabin of theLottery, and there saw Potter with a gun. Potter said “Damn them! I have just done for one of them.”

Potter was convicted and hanged. Toms, of course, never dared to again return to Polperro,and was given a small post as under-turnkey at Newgate, where he lived the remainder of his life.

Talland, midway between Polperro and Looe, was a favourite spot with these daring Polperro fellows. It offered better opportunities than those given by Polperro itself for unobserved landings; for it was—and it still is—a weird, lonely place, overhanging the sea, with a solitary ancient church well within sound of the waves that beat heavily upon the little sands. It was an easy matter to store kegs in the churchyard itself, and to take them inland, or into Polperro by the country roads, when opportunity offered, hidden in carts taking seaweed for manure to the fields.

At one time Talland owned a shuddery reputation in all this country-side, and people in the farmhouses told, with many a fearful glance over their shoulders, of the uncanny creatures that nightly haunted the churchyard. Devils, wraiths, and fearful apparitions made the spot a kind of satanic parliament; and we may be amply sure that these horrid stories lost no accent or detail of terror by constant repetition in those inglenooks on winter evenings. This is not to say that other places round about were innocent of things supernatural; for those were times when every Cornish glen, moor, stream, and hill had their bukkadhus, their piskies, and gnomes of sorts, good and evil; but the infernal company that consorted together in Tallandchurchyard was entirely beside these old-established creatures. They werehors concours, as the French would say: they formed a class by themselves; and, in the expressive slang of to-day, they were “the Limit,” thene plus ultraof militant ghostdom. People rash enough to take the church-path through Talland after night had fallen were sure to hear and see strange semi-luminous figures; and they bethought them then of the at once evil and beneficent reputation owned and really enjoyed by Parson Dodge, the eccentric clergyman of Talland, who was reputed an exorcist of the first quality. He it was who, doughty wrestler with the most obstinate spectres, found himself greatly in demand in a wide geographical area for the banishing of troublesome ghosts for a long term of years to the Red Sea; but it was whispered, on the other hand, that he kept a numerous band of diabolic familiars believed by the simple folk of that age to resort nightly to the vicarage for their orders, and then to do his bidding. These were the spiteful creatures, thought the country people, who, to revenge themselves for this servitude, lurked in the churchyard, and got even with mankind by pinching and smacking and playing all manner of scurvy tricks upon those who dared pass this way under cover of night. Uncle Zack Chowne even got a black eye by favour of these inimical agencies, one exceptionally dark night when, coming home-along this way, under the influence of spirits not of supernatural origin, he met aposse of fiends, and, in the amiable manner of the completely intoxicated, insisted upon their adjourning with him to the nearest inn, “jush for shake of ole timesh.” In fact, he made the sad mistake of taking the fiends in question for friends, and addressed them by name: with the result that he got a sledge-hammer blow in what the prize-fighting brotherhood used to call “the peeper.”

The Devils of Talland

If he had adopted the proper method to be observed when meeting spirits,i.e.if he had stood up and “said his Nummy Dummy,” all would doubtless have been well; this form of exorcism being in Cornwall of great repute and never known to fail: being nothing less, indeed, than the LatinIn Nomine Dominein disguise.

But the real truth of the matter, as the readers of these lines who can see further through a brick wall than others may readily perceive, was that those savage spooks and mischievous, Puck-like shapes, were really youthful local smugglers in disguise, engaged at one and the same time in a highly profitable nocturnal business, and in taking the welcome opportunity thus offered in an otherwise dull circle of establishing a glorious “rag.”

Parson Dodge himself was something more than suspected of being “ower sib” to these at once commercial and rollicking dogs, and Talland was in fact the scene of many a successful run that could scarce have been successful had not this easy-going cleric amiably permitted.

It is thus peculiarly appropriate that we findto-day in this lonely churchyard an epitaph upon a smuggler of those times. It is a tragical enough epitaph, its tragedy perhaps disguised at the first glance by the grotesquely comic little cherubs carved upon the tombstone, and representing the local high-water mark of mortuary sculpture a hundred years or so ago. They are pursy cherubs, of oleaginous appearance and of this-worldly, rather than of other-worldly paunch and deportment. In general, Talland churchyard is rich in such carvings; death’s-heads of appalling ugliness to be seen in company with middle-aged, double-chinned angels wearing what look suspiciously like chest-protectors and pyjamas, and they decorate, with weirdly humorous aspect, the monuments and ledger stones, and grin familiarly from the pavement with the half-obliterated grins of many generations back. One of them points with a claw, intended for a hand, to an object somewhat resembling a crumpled dress-tie set up on end, probably designed to represent an hour-glass.

Such is the mortuary art of these lonesome parishes in far Cornwall: naïve, uninstructed, home-made. It sufficed the simple folk for whom it was wrought; and now that more conventional and pretentious memorials have taken its place, to serve the turn of folk less simple, there are those who would abolish its uncouth manifestations. But that way—with the urbanities of the world—goes old Cornwall, never to be replaced.

Here is the epitaph to the smuggler, one—

ROBERT MARK;late of Polperro, who Unfortunatelywasshot at Seathe 24th day of Jany.in the year of our LordGod1802, in the 40th Year of HisAge

ROBERT MARK;

late of Polperro, who Unfortunatelywasshot at Seathe 24th day of Jany.in the year of our LordGod1802, in the 40th Year of HisAge

In prime of Life most suddenly,Sad tidings to relate;Here view My utter destiny,And pity, My sad state:I by a shot, which Rapid flew,Was instantly struck dead;Lordpardon the Offender whoMy precious blood did shed.Grant Him to rest, and forgive Me,All I have done amiss;And that I may Rewarded beWith Everlasting Bliss.

Robert Mark was at the helm of a boat which had been obliged to run before a revenue cutter. It was at the point of escaping when the cutter’s crew opened fire upon the fugitive, killing the helmsman on the spot. Let us trust he has duly won to that everlasting bliss that not even smugglers are denied. The mild and forgiving terms of the epitaph are to be noted with astonishment; the usual run of sentiment to be observed on the very considerable number of these memorials to smugglers cut off suddenly in the plenitude of their youth and beauty, being particularly revengeful and bloodthirsty, or at the best, bitterly reproachful.

Among these many epitaphs on smugglersto be met with in the churchyards of seaboard parishes is the following, to be found in the waterside parish of Mylor, near Falmouth. Details of the incident in which this “Cus-toms house officer” (spelled here exactly as the old lettering on the tombstone has it) shot and mortally wounded Thomas James appear to have been altogether lost:

We have not a moment we can call our own.

In Memory of Thomas James, aged 35 years, whoon the evening of the 7th Dec. 1814, on his returningto Flushing from St. Mawes in a boat was shot by aCus-toms house officer and expired a few days after.

Officious zeal in luckless hour laid waitAnd wilful sent the murderous ball of fate:James to his home, which late in health he left,Wounded returned—of life is soon bereft.

This is quite a mild and academic example, and obviously the work of some passionless hireling, paid for his verses. He would have written not less affectingly for poor dog Tray.

Prussia Cove, the most famous smuggling centre in Cornwall, finds mention in another chapter. Little else remains to be said, authentically at any rate. Invention, however, could readily people every cove with desperate men and hair-raising encounters, and there could nowadays be none who should be able to deny the truth of them. But we will leave all that to the novelists, merely pointing out that facts continually prove themselves at least as strange as fiction. Thus at Wendron, five miles inland from Helston,two caves, or underground chambers, were discovered in 1905 during some alterations and rebuildings, close to the churchyard. Local opinion declared them to be smugglers’ hiding-holes.

There stands in St. Ives town a ruined old mansion in one of the narrow alley-ways. It is known as Hicks’ Court, and must have been a considerable place, in its day. Also the owners of it must have been uncommonly fond of good liquors, for it has a “secret” cellar, so called no doubt because, like the “secret” drawers of bureaus, its existence was perfectly obvious. Locally it is known as a “smugglers’ store.”

In such a place as St. Ives, on a coast of old so notorious for smuggling, we naturally look for much history in this sort, but research fails to reward even the most diligent; and we have to be content with the meagre suspicions (for they were nothing more) of the honesty of John Knill, a famous native and resident of the town in the second half of the eighteenth century, who was Collector of Customs in that port, and in 1767 was chosen Mayor. His action in equipping some small craft to serve as privateers against smugglers was wilfully misconstrued; and, at any rate, it does not seem at all fitting that he, as an official of the customs service, should have been concerned in such private ventures. These “privateers,” it was said locally, were themselves actively employed in smuggling.

He was also, according to rumour, responsible,together with one Praed, of Trevetho, for a ship which was driven ashore in St. Ives Bay, and, when boarded by Roger Wearne, customs officer, was found to be deserted by captain and crew, who had been careful to remove all the ship’s papers, so that her owners remained unknown. The vessel was found to be full of contraband goods, including a great quantity of china, some of it of excellent quality. Wearne conceived the brilliant idea of taking some samples of the best for his own personal use, and filled out the baggy breeches he was wearing with them, before he made to rejoin the boat that had put him aboard. This uncovenanted cargo made his movements, as he came over the side, so slow that one of his impatient boatmen smartly whacked him with the flat of his oar, calling, “Look sharp, Wearne,” and was dismayed when, in place of the thud that might have been expected, there came a crash like the falling of a trayful of crockery, followed by a cry of dismay and anguish.

Testimony to the Qualities of the Seafaring Smugglers—Adam Smith on Smuggling—A Clerical Counterblast—Biographical Sketches of Smugglers—Robert Johnson,Harry Paulet—William Gibson,A Converted Smuggler

Carehas already been taken to discriminate between the hardy, hearty, and daring fellows who brought their duty-free goods across the sea and those others who, daring also, but often cruel and criminal, handled the goods ashore. We now come to close quarters with the seafaring smugglers, in a few biographical sketches: premising them with some striking testimony to their qualities as seamen.

Captain Brenton, in his “History of the Royal Navy,” pays a very high, but not extravagant, compliment to these daring fellows: “These men,” he says, “are as remarkable for their skill in seamanship as for their audacity in the hour of danger; their local knowledge has been highly advantageous to the Navy, into which, however, they never enter, unless sent on board ships of war as a punishment for some crimecommitted against the revenue laws. They are hardy, sober, and faithful to each other, beyond the generality of seamen; and, when shipwreck occurs, have been known to perform deeds not exceeded in any country in the world; probably unequalled in the annals of other maritime powers.”

Such men as these, besides being, in the rustic opinion, very much of heroes, engaged in an unequal warfare, against heavy odds, with a hateful, ogreish abstraction called “the Government,” which existed only for the purpose of taxing and suppressing the poor, for the benefit of the rich, were regarded as benefactors; for they supplied the downtrodden, overtaxed people with better articles, at lower prices, than could be obtained in the legitimate way of traders who had paid excise duties.

There was probably a considerable basis of truth to support this view, for there is no doubt that duty-paid goods were largely adulterated. To adulterate his spirits, his tea, and his tobacco was the nearest road to any considerable profit that the tradesman could then make.

Things being of this complexion, it would have been the sheerest pedantry to refuse to purchase the goods the free-traders supplied at such alluringly low prices, and of such indubitably excellent quality; and to give retail publicans and shopkeepers and private consumers their due, as sensible folk, untroubled by supersensitive consciences, they rarely did refuse.

Adam Smith, in the course of his writings on political economy, nearly a century and a half ago, stated the popular view about smuggling and the purchase of smuggled goods:

“To pretend to have any scruple about buying smuggled goods, though a manifest encouragement to the violation of the revenue laws, and to the perjury which almost always attends it, would in most countries be regarded as one of those pedantic pieces of hypocrisy which, instead of gaining credit with anybody, seems only to expose the person who affects to practise it to the suspicion of being a greater knave than most of his neighbours.”

From even the most charitable point of view, that person who was so eccentric as to refuse to take advantage of any favourable opportunity of purchasing cheaply such good stuff as might be offered to him, and had not paid toll to the Revenue, was a prig.

Smith himself looked upon the smuggler with a great deal of sympathy, and regarded him as “a person who, though no doubt blamable for violating the laws of his country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and would have been in every respect an excellent citizen had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so.”

Very few, indeed, were those voices raised against the practice of smuggling. Among them, however, was that of John Wesley, perhaps themost influential of all, especially in the West of England. The clergy in general might rail against the smugglers, but there were few among them who did not enjoy the right sort of spirits which, singularly enough, could only commonly be obtained from these shy sources; and there was a certain malignant satisfaction to any properly constituted smuggler in using the tower, or perhaps even the pulpit, of a parish church as temporary spirit-cellar, and in undermining the parson’s honesty by the present of a tub. Few were those reverend persons who repudiated this sly suggestion of co-partnery, and those few who felt inclined so to do were generally silenced by the worldly wisdom of their parish clerks, who, forming as it were a connecting link between things sacred and profane, could on occasion inform a clergyman that his most respected churchwarden was financially interested in the success of some famous run of goods just notoriously brought off.

Among those few clergy who actively disapproved of these things we must include the Rev. Robert Hardy, somewhat multitudinously beneficed in Sussex and elsewhere in the beginning of the nineteenth century. He published in 1818 a solemn pamphlet entitled: “Serious Cautions and Advice to all concerned in Smuggling; setting forth the Mischiefs attendant upon that Traffic; together with some exhortations to Patience and Contentment under the Difficulties and Trials of Life.By Robert Hardy, A.M., Vicar of the united parishes of Walberton and Yapton, and of Stoughton, in Sussex; and Chaplain to H.R.H. the Prince Regent.”

The author did not by any means blink the difficulties or dangers, but was, it will be conceded, far too sanguine when he wrote the following passage, in the hope of his words suppressing the trade:

“The calamities with which the Smuggler is now perpetually visited, by Informations and Fines, and Seizures, and Imprisonments, will, I trust, if properly considered, prevail upon the rich to discountenance, and upon the poor to forbear from, a traffic which,in addition to the sin of it, carries in its train so many evils, and mischiefs, and sorrows.”

His voice we may easily learn, in perusing the history of smuggling at and after the date of his pamphlet, was as that of one crying in the wilderness. Its sound may have pleased himself, but it was absolutely wasted upon those who smuggled, and those who purchased smuggled goods.

“Smugglers,” he said, “are of three descriptions:

“1. Those who employ their capital in the trade;

“2. Those who do the work;

“3. Those who deal in Smuggled Articles, either as Sellers or as Buyers.

“All these are involvedin the guiltof this unlawful traffic; but itsmoral injuriesfall principally upon thesecondclass.

“Smuggling,” he then proceeds to say, “has not been confined to the lower orders of people; but, from what I have heard, I apprehend that it has very generally been encouraged by their superiors, for whom no manner of excuse, that I know of, can be offered. I was once asked by an inhabitant of a village near the sea whether I thought there was any harm in smuggling. Upon my replying that I not only thought there was agreat deal of harmin it, but agreat deal of sin, he exclaimed, ‘Then the Lord have mercy upon the county of Sussex, for who is there that has not had a tub?’”

Among the ascertained careers of notable smugglers, that of Thomas Johnson affords some exciting episodes. This worthy, who appears to have been born in 1772 and to have died in 1839, doubled the parts of smuggler and pilot. He was known pretty generally as “the famous Hampshire smuggler.”

As a captured and convicted smuggler he was imprisoned in the New Prison in the Borough, in 1798, but made his escape, not without suspicion of connivance on the part of the warders. That the possession of him was ardently desired by the authorities seems sufficiently evident by the fact of their offering a reward of £500 for his apprehension; but he countered this by offering his services the following year as pilot to the British forces sent to Holland. This offer was duly accepted, and Johnson acquitted himself so greatly to the satisfaction ofSir Ralph Abercromby, commanding, that he was fully pardoned.

The Escape of Johnson

He then plunged into extravagant living, and finally found himself involved in heavy debts, stated (but not altogether credibly) to have totalled £11,000. Resuming his old occupation of smuggling, he was sufficiently wary not to be captured again by the revenue officers; but what they found it impossible to achieve was with little difficulty accomplished by the bailiffs, who arrested him for debt and flung him into the debtors’ prison of the Fleet, in 1802. Once there, the Inland Revenue were upon him with smuggling charges, and the situation seemed so black that he determined on again making a venture for freedom. Waiting an exceptionally dark night, he, on November 29th, stealthily crossed the yard and climbed the tall enclosing wall that separated the prison from the outer world. Sitting on the summit of this wall, he let himself down slowly by the full length of his arms, just over the place where a lamp was bracketed out over the pathway, far beneath. He then let himself drop so that he would fall on to the bracket, which he calculated would admirably break the too deep drop from the summit of the wall to the ground. Unfortunately for him, an unexpected piece of projecting ironwork caught him and ripped up the entire length of his thigh. At that moment the slowly approaching footsteps of the watchman were heard, and Johnson, with agonised apprehension, saw him coming along, swinging his lantern.There was nothing for it but to lie along the bracket, bleeding profusely the while, until the watchman should have passed.

He did so, and, as soon as seemed safe, dropped to the ground and crawled to a hackney-coach, hired by his friends, that had been waiting that night and several nights earlier, near by.

Safely away from the neighbourhood of the prison, his friends procured him a post-chaise and four; and thus he travelled post-haste to the Sussex coast at Brighton. On the beach a small sailing-vessel was waiting to convey him across Channel. He landed at Calais and thence made for Flushing, where he was promptly flung into prison by the agents of Napoleon, who was at that time seriously menacing our shores with invasion from Boulogne, where his flotilla for the transport of troops then lay.

Johnson and others were, in the opening years of the nineteenth century, very busily employed in smuggling gold out of the country into France. Ever since the troubles of the Revolution in that country, and all through the wars that had been waged with the rise of Napoleon, gold had been dwindling. People, terrified at the unrest of the times, and nervous of fresh troubles to come, secreted coin, and consequently the premium on gold rose to an extraordinary height, not only on the Continent but in England as well. A guinea would then fetch as much as twenty-seven shillings, and was worth a good deal more on the other side of the Channel. Patriotism was not proof againstthe prospects of profits to be earned by the export of gold, and not a few otherwise respectable banking-houses embarked in the trade. Finance has no conscience.

Johnson putting off from Brighton Beach

It is obvious that only thoroughly dependable and responsible men could be employed on this business, for shipments of gold varied from £20,000 to £50,000.

Eight and ten-oared galleys were as a rule used for the traffic; the money slung in long leather purses around the oarsmen’s bodies.

Napoleon is said to have offered Johnson a very large reward if he would consent, as pilot, to aid his scheme of invasion, and we are told that Johnson hotly refused.

“I am a smuggler,” said he, “but a true lover of my country, and no traitor.”

Napoleon was no sportsman. He kept Johnson closely confined in a noisome dungeon for nine months. How much longer he proposed to hold him does not appear, for the smuggler, long watching a suitable opportunity, at last broke away, and, ignorant that a pardon was awaiting him in England, escaped to America.

Returning from that “land of the brave and the free,” we find him in 1806 with the fleet commanded by Lord St. Vincent, off Brest. Precisely what services, beside the obvious one of acting as pilot, he was then rendering our Navy cannot be said, for the materials toward a life of this somewhat heroic and picturesque figure are very scanty. But that he had some plan for thedestruction of the French fleet seems obvious from the correspondence of Lord St. Vincent, who, writing on August 8th, 1806, to Viscount Howick, remarks, “The vigilance of the enemy alone prevented Tom Johnstone [sic] from doing what he professed.” What he professed is, unfortunately, hidden from us.

After this mysterious incident we lose sight for a while of our evasive hero, and may readily enough assume that he returned again to his smuggling enterprises; for it is on record that in 1809, when the unhappy Walcheren expedition was about to be despatched, at enormous cost, from England to the malarial shores of Holland, he once more offered his services as pilot, and they were again accepted, with the promise of another pardon for lately-accrued offences.

He duly piloted the expedition, to the entire satisfaction of the Government, and received his pardon and a pension of £100 a year. He fully deserved both, for he signally distinguished himself in the course of the operations by swimming to the ramparts of a fort, with a rope, by which in some unexplained manner a tremendous and disastrous explosion was effected.

He was further appointed to the command of the revenue cruiserFox, at the conclusion of the war, and thus set to prey upon his ancient allies; who, in their turn, made things so uncomfortable for the “scurvy rat,” as they were pleased picturesquely to style him, that he rarely dared venture out of port. So it would appear that hedid not for any great length of time hold that command.

But the reputation for daring and resourcefulness that he enjoyed did not seem to be clouded by this incident, for he was approached by the powerful friends of Napoleon, exiled at St. Helena, to aid them in a desperate attempt to rescue the fallen Emperor. It was said that they offered him the sum of £40,000 down, and a further very large sum, if the attempt were successful. The patriotic hero of some years earlier seems to have been successfully tempted. “Every man,” says the cynic, “has his price”; and £40,000 and a generous refresher formed his. For personal gain he was prepared to let loose once more the scourge of Europe.

Plans were actively afoot for the construction of a submarine boat (there is nothing new under the sun!) for the purpose of secretly conveying the distinguished exile away, when he inconsiderately died; and thus vanished Johnson’s dreams of wealth.

Some years later Johnson built a submarine boat to the order of the Spanish Government, and ran trials with it in the Thames, between London Bridge and Blackwall. On one occasion it became entangled in a cable of one of the vessels lying in the Pool, and for a time it seemed scarce possible the boat could easily be freed.

“We have but two and a half minutes to live,” said he, consulting his watch calmly, “unless we get clear of that cable.”

“Captain” Johnson, as he was generally styled, lived in quiet for many years, finally dying at the age of sixty-seven, in March 1839, in the unromantic surroundings of the Vauxhall Bridge Road.

Another smuggler of considerable reputation, of whom, however, we know all too little, was Harry Paulet. This person, who appears in some manner to have become a prisoner aboard a French man-o’-war, made his escape and took with him a bag of the enemy’s despatches, which he handed over to the English naval authorities.

A greater deed was that when, sailing with a cargo of smuggled brandy, he came in view of the French fleet (we being then, as usual, at war with France), Paulet immediately went on a new tack and carried the news of the enemy’s whereabouts to Lord Hawke, who promised to hang him if the news were not true.

A somewhat interesting and curious account of the conversion of a youthful smuggler may be found in an old volume ofThe Bible Christian Magazine. The incident belongs to the Scilly Isles.

William Gibson, the smuggler in question, was a bold, daring young man, and he, with others, had crossed over to France more than once in a small open boat, a distance of 150 miles, rowing there and back, running great risks to bring home a cargo of brandy.

In 1820, the time when William was at his best in these smuggling enterprises, St. Mary’s was visited by a pious, simple-minded young woman,Mary Ann Werry by name, the first representative of the Bible Christian connexion to land on the island. The congregation were in the throes of a revival, and eager for more and more preaching, but the minister upon whom they principally relied was commercially minded, and demanded £2 for his services. The members refused to give it. “There is a woman here,” said they, “we will have her to preach to us”; and, being asked, she consented, and preached from 1 Tim. iv. 8, “For bodily exercise profiteth little; but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.”

We have the well-known ruling of Dr. Johnson upon the preaching of women, that it in a manner resembles a dog walking on its hind-legs: it is not done well; you only marvel that it is done at all. [N.B.—Dr. Johnson would not have favoured, or been favoured by, modern Women’s Leagues.] But, at any rate, Miss Werry seems to have been a notable exception. She was eloquent and persuasive, and played upon the sensibilities of those rugged Scillonians what tune she would.

Tears of penitence rolled down the cheeks of many a stalwart man (to say nothing of the hoary sinners) that day. Among the number thus affected was William Gibson, of St. Martin’s, who from that hour became a changed person. No longer did he refuse to render unto Cæsar (otherwise King George) that which was Cæsar’s (or King George’s). He gave up the contrabandtrade, and, forswearing his old companions’ ways, turned to those of the righteous and the law-abiding, and became a burning and a shining light, and, as “Brother Gibson,” a painful preacher in the Bible Christian communion. And thus, and in lawful fishing, with some little piloting, he continued steadfast, until his death in 1877, in his eighty-third year.

The Carter Family,of Prussia Cove

Inthe west of Cornwall, on the south coast of the narrow neck of land which forms the beginning of that final westerly region known as “Penwithstart,” is situated Prussia Cove, originally named Porth Leah, or King’s Cove. It lies just eastwardly of the low dark promontory known as Cuddan Point, and is even at this day a secluded place, lying remote from the dull high-road that runs between Helston, Marazion, and Penzance. In the days of the smugglers Porth Leah, or Prussia Cove, was something more than secluded, and those who had any business at all with the place came to it much more easily by sea than by land. This disability was, however, not so serious as at first sight it would seem to be, for the inhabitants of Prussia Cove were few, and were all, without exception, fishermen and smugglers, who were much more at home upon the sea than on land, and desired nothing so little as good roads and easy communication with the world. An interesting and authoritative sidelight upon the then condition of this district of West Cornwall is afforded byThe Gentleman’s Magazineof 1754, in which theentire absence of roads of any kind is commented upon. Bridle-paths there were, worn doubtless in the first instance by the remote original inhabitants of this region, trodden by the Phoenician traders of hoary antiquity, and unaltered in all the intervening ages. They then remained, saysThe Gentleman’s Magazine, “as the Deluge left them, and dangerous to travel over.” That time of writing was the era when these conditions were coming to an end, for the road from Penryn to Marazion was shortly afterwards constructed, much to the alarm and disgust of the people of West Cornwall in general, and of those of Penzance in particular. Penzance required no roads, and in 1760 its Corporation petitioned, but unsuccessfully, against the extension of the turnpike road then proposed, from Marazion. That was the time when there was but one cart in the town, and when wheeled traffic was impossible outside it: pack-horses and the sledge-like contrivances known as “truckamucks” being the only methods of conveying such few goods as were required.

Under these interesting social conditions the ancient semi-independence of Western Cornwall remained, little impaired. Many still spoke the older Cornish language; the majority of folk referred to Devonshire and the country in general beyond the Tamar as “England”—the inference being, of course, that Cornwall itself wasnotEngland—and smuggling was as usual an industry as tin and copper-mining, fishing, or farming. Indeed the distances in WesternCornwall between sea and sea are so narrow that any man was commonly as excellent at farming as he was at fishing, and as expert at smuggling as at either of those more legitimate occupations. This amphibious race, wholly Celtic, adventurous, and enthusiastic, was not readily amenable to the restrictions upon trade imposed by that shadowy, distant, and impersonal abstraction called “the Government,” supported by visible forces, in the way of occasional soldiers or infrequent revenue cruisers, wherewith to make the collectors of customs at Penzance, Falmouth, or St. Ives, respected.

“The coasts here swarm with smugglers,” wrote George Borlase, of Penzance, agent to Lieut.-General Onslow, in 1750. Many letters by the same hand, printed in the publications of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, under the title of the “Lanisley Letters,” reiterate this statement, the writer of them urging the establishment of a military force at Helston, for “just on that neighbourhood lye the smugglers and wreckers, more than about us (at Penzance), tho’ there are too many in all parts of the country.”

The Cornish of that time were an unregenerate race, in the fullest sense of that term, and indulged in all the evil excesses to which the Celtic nature, untouched by religion, and wallowing in ancient superstitions, is prone. They drank to excess, fought brutally, and were shameless wreckers, who did not hesitate to lure ships upon the rocks and so bring about their destruction andincidentally their own enrichment by the cargo and other valuables washed ashore. Murder was a not unusual corollary of the wreckers’ fearful trade, partly because of the olden superstition that, if you saved the life of a castaway, that person whom you had preserved would afterwards bring about your own destruction. Therefore it was merely the instinct of self-preservation, and not sheer ferocity, that prompted the knocking on the head of such waifs and strays. If, at the same time, the wrecker went over the pockets of the deceased, or cut off his or her fingers, for the sake of any rings, that must not, of course, be accounted mere vulgar robbery: it was simply the frugal nature of the people, unwilling to waste anything.

Upon these simple children of nature, imbued with many of the fearful beliefs current among the savages of the South Sea islands, the Reverend John Wesley descended, in 1743. They were then, he says, a people “who neither feared God nor regarded man.” Yet, so impressionable is the Celtic nature, so childlike and easily led for good or for evil, that his preaching within a marvellously short space of time entirely changed the habits of these folk. In every village and hamlet there sprang up, as by magic, Wesleyan Methodist meeting-houses; and these and other chapels of dissent from the Church of England are to this day the most outstanding features of the Cornish landscape. They are, architecturally speaking, without exception, hideous eyesores, but morallythey are things of beauty. It is one of the bitterest indictments possible to be framed against the Church of England in the west that, in all its existence, it has never commanded the affections, nor exercised the spiritual influence, won by Wesley in a few short years.

Smugglers using Church Tower for Storage

It was about this period of Wesley’s first visits to Cornwall that the Carter family of Prussia Cove were born. Their father, Francis Carter, who was a miner, and had, in addition, a small farm at Pengersick, traditionally came of a Shropshire family, and died in 1784. He had eight sons and two daughters, John Carter, the “King of Prussia,” being the eldest. Among the others, Francis, born 1745, Henry, born 1749, and Charles, 1757, were also actively engaged in smuggling; but John, both in respect of being the eldest, and by force of character, was chief of them. He and his brethren were all, to outward seeming, small farmers and fisherfolk, tilling the ungrateful land in the neighbourhood of Porth Leah, but in reality busily employed in bringing over cargoes of spirits from Roscoff, Cherbourg, and St. Malo. The origin of the nickname, “King of Prussia,” borne by John Carter, is said to lie in the boyish games of the “king of the castle” kind, of himself and his brothers, in which he was always the “King of Prussia”—i.e.Frederick the Great, the popular hero of that age. Overlooking the cove of Porth Leah, at that time still bearing that name, he built about 1770 a large and substantial stone house, which stooda prominent feature in the scene, until it was demolished in 1906. This he appears to have kept partly as an inn, licensed or unlicensed, which became known by his own nickname, the “King of Prussia,” and in it he lived until 1807.

“Prussia Cove” is, in fact, two coves, formed by the interposition of a rocky ledge, at whose extremity is a rock-islet called the “Eneys”—i.e.“ynys,” ancient Cornish for island. The western portion of these inlets is “Bessie’s Cove,” which takes its name from one Bessie Burrow, who kept an inn on the cliff-top, known as the “Kidleywink.” The easterly inlet was the site of the “King of Prussia’s” house. Both these rocky channels had the advantage of being tucked away by nature in recesses of the coast, and so overhung by the low cliffs that no stranger could in the least perceive what harboured there until he was actually come to the cliff’s edge, and peering over them; while no passing vessel out in the Channel could detect the presence of any craft, which could not be located from the sea until the cove itself was approached.

Thus snugly seated, the Carter family throve. Of John Carter, although chief of the clan, we have few details, always excepting the one great incident of his career; and of that the account is but meagre. It seems that he had actually been impudent enough to construct a battery, mounted with some small cannon, beside his house, and had the temerity to unmask it and open fire upon theFairyrevenue sloop, which one day chased asmuggling craft into this lair, and had sent in a boat party. The boat withdrew before this unexpected reception, and, notice having been sent round to Penzance, a party of mounted soldiers appeared the following morning and let loose their muskets upon the smugglers, who were still holding the fort, but soon vacated it upon thus being taken in the rear, retreating to the “Kidleywink.” What would next have happened had the soldiers pursued their advantage we can only surmise; but they appear to have been content with this demonstration, and to have returned whence they came, while of the revenue sloop we hear no more. Nor does Carter ever appear to have been called to account for his defiance. But if a guess may be hazarded where information does not exist, it may be assumed that Carter’s line of defence would be that his fort was constructed and armed against French raids, and that he mistook the revenue vessel for a foreign privateer.

Prussia Cove

John Carter, and indeed all his brothers with him, was highly respected, as the following story will show. The excise officers of Penzance, hearing on one occasion that he was away from home, descended upon the cove with a party, and searched the place. They found a quantity of spirits lately landed, and, securing all the kegs, carried them off to Penzance and duly locked them up in the custom-house. The anger of the “King of Prussia” upon his return was great; not so great, it seems, on account of the actual lossof the goods as for the breaking of faith with his customers it involved. The spirits had been ordered by some of the gentlefolk around, and a good deal of them had been paid for. Should he be disgraced by failing to keep his engagements as an honest tradesman? Never! And so he and his set off to Penzance overnight, and, raiding the custom-house, brought away all his tubs, from among a number of others. When morning came, and the custom-house was unlocked, the excisemen knew whose handiwork this had been, because Carter was such an honourable man, and none other than himself would have been so scrupulous as to take back only his own. Yet he was also the hero of the next incident. The revenue officers once paid him a surprise visit, and overhauled his outhouses, in search of contraband. The search, on this occasion, was fruitless. But there yet remained one other shed, and this, suspiciously enough, was locked. He refused to hand over the key, whereupon the door was burst open, revealing only domestic articles. The broken door remained open throughout the night, and by morning all the contents of the shed had vanished. Carter successfully sued for the value of the property he had “lost,” but he had removed it himself!

We learn something of the Carter family business from the autobiography written by Henry Carter, an account of his life from 1749 until 1795. Much else is found in a memoir printed inThe Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1831.“Captain Harry” lived until 1829, farming in a small way at the neighbouring hamlet of Rinsey. He had long relinquished smuggling, having been converted in 1789, and living as a burning and a shining light in the Wesleyan communion thereafter, preaching with fervour and unction. He tells us, in his rough, unvarnished autobiography[173]that he first went smuggling and fishing with his brothers when seventeen years of age, having already worked in the mines. At twenty-five years of age he went regularly smuggling in a ten-ton sloop, with two men to help him; and was so successful that he soon had a sloop, nearly twice as large, especially built for him. Successful again, “rather beyond common,” he (or “we,” as he says) bought a cutter of some thirty tons, and employed a crew of ten men. “I saild in her one year, and I suppose made more safe voyages than have been ever made, since or before, with any single person.” All this while, he tells us, he was under conviction of sin, but went on, nevertheless, for years, sinning and repenting. “Well, then,” he continues, “in the cource of these few years, as we card a large trade with other vessels allso, we gained a large sum of money, and being a speculating family, was not satisfied with small things.” A new cutter was accordingly built, of about sixty tons burthen, and Captain Harry took her to sea in December 1777. Puttinginto St. Malo, to repair a sprung bowsprit, his fine new cutter, with its sixteen guns, was taken by the French, and himself and his crew of thirty-six men flung into prison, difficulties having again sprung up between England and France, and an embargo being laid upon all English shipping in French ports. In prison he was presently joined by his brother John; both being shortly afterwards sent on parole to Josselin. In November 1779 they were liberated, in exchange for two French gentlemen, prisoners of war. The family, Captain Harry remarks, they found alive and well on their return home after this two years’ absence, but in a low state, the “business” not having been managed well in their enforced absence.

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