FOOTNOTES:

Frescos of St. Christopher and Our Lord in Breage Church.

Fresco painting is the oldest of the arts, its crude beginnings reaching back to the days when palæolithic man sought to exercise it upon the walls of the caverns of the Dordogne. In Egypt the ancient monuments bear witness to its existence from the remotest antiquity. The Etruscans seem to havebrought the art with them from the East to Italy, which became in future ages its true home, and where it attained to its highest perfection and beauty. The Romans, probably owing to Greek influences, carried the art much farther than the Etruscans had done. Revived in Italy in the thirteenth, the art reached its highest perfection in the fifteenth century. From Italy the fashion of mural painting spread, and by the fifteenth century seems to have become common even in Cornwall, judging by the records of the survival of numerous fragments. Our frescos were probably painted very soon after the building of the Church, in the latter half of the fifteenth century. An important fact bearing upon fresco painting was the extreme rapidity with which the work had to be accomplished, as the secret of its permanency rested in the plaster upon which it was placed, being damp and newly laid. It will strike the observer at Breage that the fresco of St. Christopher and that of the Christ, though crude in execution, are full of character and force, which thewooden and purely conventional figures of the other frescos entirely lack. It seems evident therefore that the former owe their origin to a different hand than the latter.

The fresco of St. Christopher arrests the eye immediately on entering the Church through the south door. This was doubtless the intention of the designer of the fresco, as to see St. Christopher on entering a Church, according to mediæval superstition was a harbinger of good luck. This may partly account for the superstition that still lingers, that to enter the Church by the west door, which is never used, save for the bearing out of the dead at funerals, foreshadows untimely death.

The windows of the Church, before the pillage and vandalism let loose upon it by the Reformation, were all of stained glass, of which several beautiful fragments have come down to us, as the head of St. Veronica in the chapel at the end of the north aisle, and the heads of the two angels in the south window of the chapel, on the south side of the Church. The Reformation, like all great upheavals, beneficent in themselves, led to the unchaining of the spirit of fanaticism and rapine. The spirit of liberty was fanned into a flame in France before the Revolution by the noblest and purest spirits in the country; yet who could blame them for the frenzied orgies of the Terror? The few fragments of fifteenth century glass were discovered with the bones and skulls of two almost complete skeletons in the walled-up staircase leading to the Rood Loft, in the north wall of the Church, at the time of the restoration in 1891. The probable solution seems that the Commissioners, who visited Breage 22nd April, 1549, to ascertain that the injunctions of Edward VI. were duly fulfilled, ordered the destruction of the windows, as containing figures of the Saints and emblems of idolatry. Possibly also stone tombs were destroyed and desecrated, partly in a spirit of iconoclasm, and partly from the spirit of plunder. We can imagine at this juncture some one more pious or superstitious than his fellows gathering the fragments of beautiful glass, and bonestorn from their tombs within the Church, and placing them in the cavity of the broken stairway in process of being walled up.[28]

The granite support of the Credence Table and the Piscina in the chancel were exhumed from the foundations of the Church during the restoration and placed in their original situation: also the rose Piscina and the pedestal on which it at present stands were unearthed at this time. The pedestal in question, it may be stated, has nothing whatever to do with the Piscina, the date of which is most probably coeval with the Church, but is evidently the base of a font of Jacobean origin. The granite bowl masquerading as a stoup in the porch is not of ecclesiastical origin at all; its original use was evidently for grinding corn in primitive times. It may be interesting to mention the discovery during the restoration, beneath the floor of the Church, near where the pulpit now stands, of six skeletons lying uncoffined side by side, the skulls of all of them being perforated with bullet wounds; the teeth in each skull were almost perfect, suggestive of violent and untimely deaths. The story of this tragedy has long since faded into oblivion; possibly these skeletons belonged to victims of some fierce act of military discipline or retaliation in the Parliamentary Wars.

The restoration of Germoe Church was taken in hand a century earlier than that of Breage, for what reason it is impossible to say. At this period the mining operations of the Parish were mainly centred round Germoe, from Trewarvas Head to Laseve, and between the two hills of Tregoning and Godolphin. It may well have been that the restoration of Germoe Church was begun at an earlier date because it stood in the most populous portion of the parish. Sometime in the fourteenth century a north aisle was added to the small Norman cruciform Church, and then a little later a further enlargement and embellishment was made by the addition ofthe north transept, and the present chancel to some extent reared upon Norman foundations; the south transept, as we have previously stated, was of Norman origin. For some reason or other, the work seems to have been arrested when half carried through; the builders had gone as far as to replace the Norman arch in the south transept by a twin archway,[29]the natural development of which would have been the addition of a south arcade. Instead of this the present south doorway was added to the Church, superseding an earlier entrance. The porch built over this door was not added until the next century, possibly about the time of the rebuilding of Breage Church. The grotesque carvings of monkeys on the corbel stones supporting the ends of the copings of the porch have evidently been taken from the older building. A feature of the chancel at Germoe is the canopied arch over the present sedilia and piscina. I take it that this beautiful arched aperture originally contained a tomb, possibly of a de Pengersick, or it may have been used as a sepulchre in connection with the Easter Festival; at any-rate, its true significance has long been lost sight of under the hand of the spoiler and the restorer.

St. Germoe's Chair.

The most interesting feature for the ecclesiastical antiquarian is not the Church itself, but the curious edifice in the Churchyard, known as St. Germoe's Chair. Tradition says this was erected by a member of the de Pengersick family. When Leland, the great antiquary, visited Cornwall in the reign of Henry VIII., he mentions both St. Germoe's Tomb, St. Germoe's Chair and St. Germoe's Well. The water still gurgles and bubbles from the spring by the roadside, from whence the Saint slaked his thirst and supplied his simple wants, but the very site of his tomb is long forgotten, the crude and vulgar bigotry of an intervening age having no place in its system for such memories. Germoe's Chair has been the fruitful source of many curious speculations andingenious theories as to its origin. There can be but little doubt, however, that its original use was in connection with the Palm Sunday celebrations of the mediæval Church. It seems to have been customary on Palm Sundays for some of the Clergy, bearing a cross which was covered or muffled at some point in the service, to issue from the Church, followed by a portion of the congregation in procession bearing palms or their substitutes in their hands. A booth was erected in the Churchyard: sometimes this was of stone and of a permanent character like Germoe's Chair. Arrived at this erection the officiating Priest read the Gospel for the day; at this point another procession issued from the Church, headed by a Priest bearing the Host, and a number of children following a cross, decorated with wreaths of green leaves and singing "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." The two groups then mingled together, the muffled cross was removed, and a distribution of bread or alms was made from the booth or pavilion, or, as in the case of Germoe, fromwhat is now called Germoe's Chair. The united processions then, following the Priests, returned to the Church, where the service was continued to its close.[30]

Cornwall from its position escaped the turmoil of the Wars of the Roses. During this outwardly brutal and sordid period, whilst the Barons were hacking themselves in pieces, and successive Kings were merely "landlords" of England for the time being, the true heart of the nation was beginning to throb slowly with the pulses of a new life. I doubt much if Master William Pensans and his successors onward to Sir William Pers, and their flocks at Breage and Germoe, troubled themselves very much about the battles and rebellions and judicial murders that made up the history of England during the times in which they lived. Rumours of these terrible stirrings would be brought to them from time to time by wandering Friars or the Pilgrims passing through the Parish on their way to St. Michael's Mount, which was then one of the most popular places of pilgrimage in England. Doubtless many of the Pilgrims would make Breage the last halting place for the night, and move on to St. Michael's Mount on the following morning. These Pilgrims would be a motley crew of every class and grade, some seeking no doubt for the forgiveness of heinous deeds and crimes through the mediation of St. Michael, others seeking health and often finding it, not by the help of the Saint but through change of air and scene. Childless parents of great possessions often made pilgrimages to distant shrines in search of an heir, and still others were pilgrims because they loved change and to live close to Nature, though perhaps they never knew it.

In 1471 after the Battle of Barnet a strange band of Pilgrims visited St. Michael's Mount. John, Earl of Oxford, who had escaped from the slaughter of that terrible battle, came by sea to the Mount with a band of followers disguisedas Pilgrims. They landed, simulating deep devotion, and obtaining admittance to the Castle, drew arms from beneath their Pilgrims' cloaks and rushed upon and overpowered the small garrison. Sir John Arundell of Lanherne, who was sent to retake the Castle, was slain in the attempt on the sands between the Mount and the shore—in his death, it is said, fulfilling a curse of former years. After a siege of six months the Earl of Oxford and his men surrendered upon terms, the Earl being allowed to retire to France, from whence he returned with Henry of Richmond, to share in the victory of Bosworth Field.

Pilgrims, wandering, preaching Friars and merchants, who came to the West for the purchase of tin, would practically at this time be the sole sources of news and connecting links with the outer world. Men then led isolated lives, less dependent upon their fellows for daily needs and wants. The phrase "we are all members one of another" has a fuller and deeper meaning for us than it had for them.

We cannot conclude the account of this period without a brief allusion to the names of the incumbents from the time of David de Lyspein onwards. The particulars of their lives have long since faded into oblivion; whether good or bad, wise or foolish, their memories have utterly faded. The fact of the nationality, however, of many of them survives in their names. Henry Cretier (1362) from his name we take to have been one of the swarm of French Priests that at this time were spread over the country. The great majority of the others seem to have been Cornishmen: Sir John Yurl bears a name common enough amongst the Cornish Clergy at this time. Sir William Pellour of course was one of the numerous Cornish family of Pellar and Sir William Pers would now be known as William Pearce. Sir John Gode or Ude bears also a name common in the Cornish Priesthood of the period. Sir William Lehe (1445) was, we fancy, from the Penwith Peninsula, from the similarity of his name to the name of amanor in that district. Master William of Penzance (1403) and Master Thomas Godolphin (1505) were, of course, undoubtedly Cornishmen, the latter, we are led to conclude, being a son of Sir John Godolphin, Sheriff of Cornwall in 1504, the founder of the fortunes of his family. Of the lives of these men, alas! we can know nothing, beyond the fact that in varying degrees they testified to the unseen and spiritual, and, in spite of imperfections and weaknesses, held up the torch of a Divine light for the illumination of a dark and degraded age.

FOOTNOTES:[22]"Carta W. Com. Glouc. testificante quod R. Com. pater suus dederat Richardo Clerico suo omnes ecclesias terrae suae de Cornubia cum capellis et pertinentis suis viz: ecclesiam de Eglosbrec, ecclesiam Commart, ecclesiam de Egloshiel, ecclesiam de Eglosvant, ecclesiam de Egloscraven et capellam Sancti Germot" etc., etc. See Dugdale's Monasticon.[23]See Gasquet's "Henry VIII. and the Monasteries."[24]See Mr. Thurstan Peter's "Collegiate Church of Glasney."[25]See Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph's Registers of Bishop Stapleton. "Et in ea jurisdiccionem ordinariam exercere et alia diversa in hac parte attemptare presumpserunt."[26]Patent Rolls.[27]State Papers, 14 Edward III.[28]It is possible that this vandalism may have been committed during the time of Independent ascendancy.[29]See Sedding's "Norman Architecture in Cornwall."[30]See Walcott's "Sacred Archæology" pp. 421, 423. Also Dr. Roch's "Church of our Fathers," etc.

[22]"Carta W. Com. Glouc. testificante quod R. Com. pater suus dederat Richardo Clerico suo omnes ecclesias terrae suae de Cornubia cum capellis et pertinentis suis viz: ecclesiam de Eglosbrec, ecclesiam Commart, ecclesiam de Egloshiel, ecclesiam de Eglosvant, ecclesiam de Egloscraven et capellam Sancti Germot" etc., etc. See Dugdale's Monasticon.

[23]See Gasquet's "Henry VIII. and the Monasteries."

[24]See Mr. Thurstan Peter's "Collegiate Church of Glasney."

[25]See Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph's Registers of Bishop Stapleton. "Et in ea jurisdiccionem ordinariam exercere et alia diversa in hac parte attemptare presumpserunt."

[26]Patent Rolls.

[27]State Papers, 14 Edward III.

[28]It is possible that this vandalism may have been committed during the time of Independent ascendancy.

[29]See Sedding's "Norman Architecture in Cornwall."

[30]See Walcott's "Sacred Archæology" pp. 421, 423. Also Dr. Roch's "Church of our Fathers," etc.

Master John Jakes, bachelor in decrees, of whom we know nothing beyond the fact that he died and was buried in Breage churchyard, became Vicar in 1510, when no cloud loomed upon the ecclesiastical horizon. He who at that date had foretold the ultimate consequences of the marriage of Henry VIII. to a Spanish Princess would have been put down as a fool and a dreamer. It would have seemed obvious to the ecclesiastical politicians of that day that if the marriage affected at all the fortunes of the Church it would be in the direction of drawing closer the bonds with Rome. Possibly, here and there, there may have been those who saw the signs of the coming of the storm in what seemed to them a more or less distant future; and probably they dismissed the uncomfortable thought with the sixteenth century equivalent of "après moi le déluge." Yet within thirty years the deluge had been unloosed and swept all before it. Within three years of the demise of John Jakes the great Abbey of Hayles, with its broad acres and vast patronage, was dissolved; its stately buildings and magnificent Church were falling into ruins, turned into stone quarries for new mansions, and its Brethren scattered, never to be re-united.

John Jakes was succeeded in 1536 by John Bery, M.A., the last Vicar to be appointed by the Abbot and Convent of Hayles. Breage escaped the terrible ecclesiastical tempest that in places less remote was sweeping all before it. Though Hayles Abbey was in ruins and the Brethren scattered, things continued in this little far-away appanage of the great House much in the same way as heretofore, until the terrible year1549. The Cornish, like the people of Wales, were bitterly opposed to the Reformation in all its works and ways, and would have none of it. As an instance of West Country methods in dealing with the new innovations, we may quote the case of the parishioners of Sampford Courtenay, on the northern skirts of the great waste of Dartmoor. On Sunday, 9th June, 1549, the new service in English was used for the first time in place of the Mass, in compliance with the royal injunctions. The people would have none of it, and on the following day compelled the Parish Priest, under threats of what they would do to him, to resume his vestments and say Mass as usual. In the April of this same year the storm had broken in all its violence in our own part of Cornwall. Commissioners had been sent throughout the County to examine the Churches and have all images found in them removed and destroyed, and also, in plain language, to plunder the Churches of their valuable plate, jewels and vestments, in the specious name of religion. The Commissioners were required to inquire into the doctrinal character of the preaching in the various Churches, and to ascertain that the services were no longer held in Latin but in the English tongue. A Commissioner named Body was making his official examination at Helston Church—bent, no doubt, like the majority of his fellows, on spoil as well as iconoclasm—when he was stabbed to death by an enraged Priest, who had attended the visitation in the company of one Kiltor of St. Keverne. This spark set the county, already smouldering with discontent, in a blaze of rebellion. The people, under the influence of the Clergy, flocked together from various parts of the County, committing many barbarous outrages. Humphrey Arundell of St. Michael's Mount placed himself at the head of this rapidly-growing rabble of peasantry, and with many of the Clergy the march upon Exeter was begun.

Job Militon of Pengersick Castle was at the time Sheriff of the County, but he was powerless in the face of a forcethat by the time Bodmin was reached had grown to six thousand strong. It is curious to note that this enthusiastic but undisciplined host, marching to its doom, under the walls of Exeter, contained within itself a strong leaven of socialism. It seems to have been generally agreed, at any rate amongst the rank and file, that all land should in future be held in common, and that all enclosing fences should be obliterated. A few years previously Germany had been throbbing with the same spirit, and the German Peasants had been moved to throw off the yoke of the oppressing nobles, their minds full of dreams of a sixteenth century millennium. Both these efforts, due to opposite trains of events, had their origin in the spirit of the age striving vaguely after dim ideals, and both were trampled on and extinguished with ruthless force and cruelty. Humphrey Arundell perished on the scaffold, and thousands of his deluded followers in the fields and bye-ways, cut down by a merciless soldiery.

John Bery seems to have preferred monotony and safety at Breage to a life of adventure in the field; at any rate, he lived on as Vicar of Breage till the day of his death in 1558. He doubtlessly conformed outwardly, if not in his heart, to the new order of things, and in the reign of Queen Mary conformed back again to the old order. Death absolved him in 1558 from a further change of opinions on the accession of Elizabeth in that year.

The terrible memories of 1549 would long linger in the minds of John Bery and the people of Breage. Some, no doubt, from Breage, had joined the ill-fated march to Exeter to return no more.

The reports of the Commissioners who visited Germoe on the 18th April, and Breage on the 22nd April, 1549, are as follows: "Germoe, Minister, Henry Nicol, a Cope of blue damask, one set of very coarse vestments, a copper gilt cross, two chalices, one gilt the other parcel-gilt, two small bells, a fair brass censer, a linen streamer with a cross upon it ofred silk." The inventory closes with the remark that nothing has been sold for a year past.[31]

The list at Breage reveals vessels and vestments of a richer and more valuable character. The list comprises three chalices of silver, of which two were gilt, three linen towels upon the altar, one pair of vestments of blue velvet, one purple, broidered with gold work, a pair of vestments of white satin, a pair of tawny satin, another pair of oldsay, a cope of Morys velvet, purple broidered in gold work, an old cope of blue velvet, two candlesticks of latten on the altar, upon the font a yard of linen cloth, an old rotten streamer of silk, and four bells of large burden hanging in the tower. Such was the inventory of spoils in this remote parish at the time of the Great Pillage.

The Church must have had a deep hold on the hearts of the Cornish people at the time of the Reformation, or they would never have risen in her defence in the way they did in 1549. The mutilation and desecration of her shrines stirred the hearts of the people to the very depths. The same spirit of devotion to the Church was manifest also in a marked degree in Wales; indeed, until the Reformation the Welsh were of all the inhabitants of the British Isles the most devoted to the cause of the Church: where she was once strongest she is now weakest. In pre-Reformation times the Feasts and Festivals of the Church in Cornwall were bound up with the social life of the people, and its ritual, paradoxical though it may seem in the present age, satisfied the deep emotional cravings of the Cornish character, whilst its teaching was in unison with the needs of their hearts. As an instance of the deep hold of the Church upon the pre-Reformation life of the people, we have in Breage the curious anomaly that the chief fête day of our Nonconformists is St. Stephen's Day, which is the Feast of the Dedication of theParish Church, whilst at Germoe the Festival of the patron Saint is kept by them as a day of teas and rejoicing.

Under the new order of things brought in by the Reformation there was no room for the play of emotions, the services of the Church were cold and bare, adapted for religious philosophers, but not for peasants; the change came, too, in the guise of an exotic planted by men of high station, whom the people regarded as their natural oppressors and the destroyers of the Church of their fathers. What followed was that which might have been expected—a gradual lapsing of the people into what was, to all intents and purposes, a crude form of paganism, which lasted, with the exception of some stirrings of the dry bones during the Commonwealth, until the coming of John Wesley, who with the warm glow of emotional fervour re-converted the Cornish peasantry in the main to Christianity. If proof of this assertion were needed, it is only necessary to compare the religious aspect of things in Cornwall and Brittany at the present day. Both people belong to the same division of the Celtic race, yet both now in the main stand at opposite poles in politics and religion. The reason seems to lie in the fact that the Cornish were deprived of a faith which they loved, and which satisfied the emotional and materialistic cravings of their hearts, and that the new Clergy, creatures and toadies of the great, utterly failed to appeal to their sympathies and to win their affections.

In 1558 Sir Alexander Dawe, the last of the "Sirs," became Vicar of Breage, and continued as such until the day of his death in 1595. The record of his burial is still extant in the Parish Registers. He was presented to the living of Breage by one Richard Hyde, who had become, by purchase, patron of the Benefice for one turn only. The Abbot and Convent of Hayles had followed the policy of the other religious houses at the dissolution of the Monasteries, and saved what property they could from the impending catastrophe by granting, where possible, long leases of the Abbey lands and selling the next presentations to their ecclesiastical patronage.

A dark and terrible shadow passed over the life of the parish during the time of Alexander Dawe. Breage was visited in 1578 by a pestilence, which we have little doubt was the terrible Black Death or Plague, which at this time was claiming endless victims all over the land. We who live in these days of practical security from such awful visitations can have no idea of the horror and dismay which they inspired, and the misery and desolation which they spread broadcast over the land. To realise the horror of the Plague, let us imagine an epidemic as contagious and as infectious as influenza was some few years ago spreading everywhere, the great majority of its victims dying in the most terrible sufferings. The epidemic of plague in question had first appeared in London in the autumn of 1563; about a thousand persons dying each week during the latter part of 1563 and the earlier part of 1564. In 1570 Newcastle and in 1574 Edinburgh endured terrible visitations of this scourge. During the last months of 1578 and the earlier months of 1579 the Breage burial register contains the record of seventy-six burials in Breage churchyard. No comment is made upon the nature of the disease, but there can be but little doubt we have here the grim records of a visit of the terrible Black Death, whose dark shadow at this time hung in awful menace over the whole land. The words of the Litany, "from plague, pestilence and famine, from battle and murder and from sudden death, good Lord deliver us," had a fulness of meaning for our fathers which we who live in a brighter, cleaner and more peaceful time can only dimly realise.

With the death of Sir Alexander Dawe, the last link with the old pre-Reformation life was severed; henceforward the stream of parochial life was to run in channels more closely approximating to those of our own age, and succeedingVicars were men of different antecedents and ways. The patronage of the Living, though nominally in the hands of the Crown, came practically to be in the gift of the Godolphin family, which had risen to a position of power and influence in the preceding hundred years.

Francis Harvey, who succeeded Alexander Dawe, was the son of Sir Anthony Harvey, Kt., and Lucy Lister of Swarland, near Felton, in Northumberland. The family of Harvey was remotely connected with the Godolphin family, through the Carews.[32]Francis Harvey was born 2nd March, 1562. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, but migrated, after taking his B.A. degree, to Emmanuel College, which had been recently founded by his relative, William Mildmay, as the home of a mild and aristocratic form of Puritanism. It is interesting to note that Sir William Godolphin, who died in 1613, was at Emmanuel College at the same time as Francis Harvey. Perhaps it may not be too fanciful to conclude that an intimacy between William Godolphin and Francis Harvey ripened into close friendship in the quiet Cambridge home of Puritan learning, and that thus the son of a Northumberland squire came to settle in the remote West. Francis Harvey married Mary Yorke, a lady of ancient family, in Phillack Church, in 1595; their descendants were long settled at Maen in this County.

Soon after obtaining the living of Breage, Francis Harvey was preferred to the living of St. Erth, which he continued to hold jointly with Breage until the day of his death. Whilst the Reformation had struck at many evils, it had left one of the greatest of the abuses of the Church practically untouched. One of the chief factors in preparing the popular mind for the Reformation was the abuse of Church patronage; French and Italian Priests, in many cases not speaking the English language, had been foisted upon the English people,to the exclusion of their own kith and kin. This evil system had begun with the Conquest and had continued right down to the Reformation, accentuated and intensified by the fact that a single person was capable of holding numerous benefices, which in many cases he had never seen, to the exclusion of others worthier and holier than himself. It was this condition of things that alone rendered the Reformation possible. The storm of the Reformation burst, but swept in vain round this crowning abuse. After the Reformation the abuse of patronage presented itself even in more odious forms, and the best life of the Church withered and died under its poisonous shadow. Francis Harvey was not an excessive pluralist; he held only two livings, though his cousin, William Cotton, who succeeded him, enjoyed a good baker's dozen or more.

An event happened in the first few months of the incumbency of Francis Harvey which would long linger in the minds of his flock, and which for years to come would be spoken of by the cottage and farm house evening firesides. The 23rd July, 1595 was a hot summer's day; a thick haze lay over the sea, which gradually lifted, disclosing four Spanish ships of war lying off the coast, over against Mousehole. Their hostile intentions were soon evident; boatloads of armed men began to put off from the ships. A force of over two hundred Spaniards was quickly landed without opposition. The little town of Mousehole was soon in flames, and a handful of brave men who scorned flight perished at their own doors.[33]

The Spanish force streamed up the hill[34]their course marked by blazing roof-trees. The old grey village Church of Paul on the ridge soon became the special object of their fury, and its stones to this day bear grim witness to the devouring flames that once enveloped them. The inhabitants of Mousehole fled in a terrified mob towards Penzance, the roar ofthe ships' guns adding speed to their flight. It seems Sir Francis Godolphin had ridden forth earlier in the day from Godolphin House, and saw either from Godolphin or Tregoning Hill the dense clouds of smoke hanging over Mousehole and Paul, whilst the booming of the guns of the four warships in the Bay would speedily make the whole situation clear to the mind of this keen soldier trained in the Irish Wars under Essex. Without delay he spurred his horse to the scene of action and encountered the flying crowd a little westward of Penzance. He succeeded for a time in infusing something of his own brave spirit into the minds of the fugitives and the men of Penzance capable of bearing arms. A move was made upon the Spanish position, and the Spaniards, seeing the advancing force, retired to their ships, only again after a short period to disembark at Newlyn, which they speedily set on fire, and began to move on Penzance. In vain, sword in hand, the brave Sir Francis endeavoured to rally the people to the defence of their town and homes; he was speedily deserted by all save a few of his own servants. As the Spaniards entered the town he had no alternative but to ride away, surrounded by his little company of brave followers.

The Spaniards remained in Penzance Bay until the 25th July, when they put out to sea in a north-west breeze, just in time to escape capture by a force of British ships rounding the Lizard, which they must have seen in the offing. The anxiety and dread of the people of Breage, standing with straining eyes watching the course of events in the plain below during those two fateful days, must have been great indeed. One wild rumour after another of dire deeds transpiring beneath them, by the sea, would pass through their midst. There would be little sleep in the village during the two anxious nights the Spanish warships lay in Penzance Bay. Many minds would turn to another night of anxiety and dread a few years before, when the great Armada had passedthe Lizard early in the forenoon, and was making its way up Channel, followed by the English Fleet.

"For swift to East and swift to West the ghastly war flame spread,High on St. Michael's Mount it shone; it shone on Beachy Head."

Francis Harvey died whilst still practically a young man, 2nd March, 1607. We copy from our burial register the almost pathetic entry recording his death and burial, so different is it by contrast to the endless laconic entries of death that precede and follow it. Evidently the entry was made by the hand of one who knew and loved him. It is written in a clear and elegant hand, and the entry carries with it something of truthfulness and sincerity that brings the image of Francis Harvey up out of the mists of the past, as that of a true and good man of a mild and gentle type of Puritan piety. The entry is as follows:—"Francisus Harvey, theologus hujusque parochiæ Vicarius cum jam quadragesimum quartum annum ætatis vix attigesset. Secundo die Marcii extremum diem clausit, et ut per totum temporis curriculum transegit vitam minime non inhonestam sic obiit, mortem non minus plane piam. Sepultusque fuit die quarto tunc proximum insequente. Anno Domini 1607."

Francis Harvey was succeeded by his cousin, William Cotton, M.A., described in the Exeter Registers as "the beloved son of the Bishop." He resigned the living of Breage after holding it but little over a year. Walker, in his "Sufferings of the Clergy," includes William Cotton in his list of suffering Clergy during the Commonwealth. However deeply the sufferings of William Cotton may have touched the feelings of a former age, they are not likely to move the sympathies of our own. As well as being Vicar of Breage, he was also Precentor and a residentiary Canon of Exeter Cathedral, and held the livings of Silverton, Whimple and Duloe, and possibly others at one and the same time. Hisbrother, Edward Cotton, was equally well provided for by his father. It was outrageous pluralism of this kind that alienated the people from the Church and prepared the way for the wild outpourings of religious bigotry and frenzy under the Commonwealth. William Cotton, with the failure of the royal cause, was compelled to resign the mass of patronage which he held. He died at his seat of Bottreux Castle in 1649 or 1650. Walker informs us that in his veins "flowed the blood of crowned heads of England, Scotland and Ireland, and other great personages of the highest rank," and that "he was a person of a meek and humble spirit, of a grave and sober conversation, of exemplary piety, charity and learning."

Edward Cotton was succeeded by William Orchard in 1608. In the record of his institution in the Episcopal Registers he is described as "Preacher of the Word of God"; this phrase will perhaps serve to disclose the bias of his mind and the theological bent of the times. Unlike his predecessors Harvey and Cotton, he had graduated at no University. Most possibly in his own mind he regarded such institutions as unnecessary for one who was led by the Spirit of God. It is possible that he owed his appointment to the living of Breage to Sir William Godolphin, the then Squire of Godolphin, and friend of the statesman Cecil, who, it seems more than probable, acquired a Puritan bias when a student at Emmanuel College, the Cambridge home of Puritanism.

I rather conclude from the frequent mention of the name of Orchard in the Breage Registers about the time of his incumbency, that his family had been settled in the parish at the time of his appointment. A George Orchard married a Dorcas Coode of Methleigh, and an Edward Orchard married a Jane Sparnon of Sparnon. The Coodes and Sparnons at this time, with the exception of the Godolphins, were the chief families of the parish, ranking considerably above the rank of yeoman. William Orchard became a widower in 1619. The record inthe Breage Register of the death and burial of his wife is as follows: "Anna Orchard uxor Wilhelmi Orchard, Vicarii hujus parochiæ, filia Johis Yeo, gent, died 9th Feb. and was buried 11th Feb. 1619." His daughter Mary married John Coode of Methleigh; their descendant owns the estate of Methleigh at the present time.

Whilst Sir William Godolphin and Parson Orchard were both Puritans, they were both loyalists. They would have shuddered with horror "at those days which were coming upon the earth," and which to a great extent were the logical outcome of the Puritanism which they and others professed acting upon the popular mind; they were putting new wine into old bottles, regardless of the inevitable result, as good men will do in every age. Though Sir William Godolphin was not destined to see the day that his king perished on the scaffold, it was the lot of William Orchard to see it forty years later, and ultimately for conscience sake to be ejected from his home and office. Rather than be untrue to the light within him, like so many of his brethren, William Orchard elected to go into the wilderness. It was his lot never to return to his benefice, though his son at the Restoration petitioned Parliament on his behalf for revenues from the living of Breage, of which he deemed his father to have been defrauded.

It was during William Orchard's incumbency that Breage for the first and last time was favoured with a royal visit in the person of Charles, Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II. When the royal cause was irretrievably lost, Charles fled to Cornwall on his way to seek refuge in the Scilly Islands. For some days he rested at Godolphin House, and what remains of the suite of rooms he occupied is still shewn there. It would be interesting to know how Charles spent the few days of his sojourn in Breage, and how he wiled the time away, and whether, after the good custom of those days, in spite of the danger of his position, he joined in theSunday worship at Breage Church. It is possible to picture the swarthy youthful face, with the thick heavy red lips and withennuiwritten upon it, looking wearily from the Godolphin aisle upon William Orchard, as hand upon hour-glass he unfolded Puritan truth from a maze of conflicting facts.

But the evil days drew on apace; Prince and Parson had alike to go before the storm. Soon after the swearing of the Solemn League and Covenant by Parliament in 1644, the tithes of Breage were sequestrated or confiscated by the Government;[35]William Orchard with Antony Randall, curate of Germoe, and Robert Smith, curate of Cury, were thus reduced to dire poverty. Their parishioners, touched by their trials, and regarding them no doubt as honest and faithful men, on the 8th May, 1649, petitioned Parliament that a yearly grant might be made to them of £40 each out of the confiscated tithes of St. Keverne. Their prayer was answered, but after four years of weary waiting, the tried clerics complained to Parliament that their grants had been withheld by the County Committee, and humbly requested "that the rents may remain in the Tenants' hands." On the 17th August, 1653, the County Committee made answer to Parliament, that "by information of Colonel Rous, M.P., the Vicarage of Breage is sufficiently endowed, and that the Ministers thereof are malignant and scandalous, and that Antony Rous of Wotton, John Bawden of Trelask, and three others are appointed trustees for disposing of the grant made by Parliament to four such able and godly ministers as they shall judge meet to place in their room." Whilst the hypocritical cant of this declaration provokes a smile, at the same time it arouses mournful reflections on the violence and bigotry that is ever wont to dog the steps of human effort after political and religious reformation.

"The able and godly minister" chosen to supplantWilliam Orchard at Breage was one James Innes. Doubtless he was a man of extreme opinions both in politics and religion, but like William Orchard in the hour of darkness he was able to play the true man, and rather than conform at the Restoration to tenets in which he did not believe, he vacated his office even before Black Bartholomew's Day, 24th August, 1662. He found an asylum in Scotland in the household of the Earl of Lauderdale, where he performed the office of chaplain in conformity with the Presbyterian use.

The seeds of Puritanism sown by men like Orchard and Innes did not die, but lay germinating in the hearts of the Cornish people, rendering possible the great work of John Wesley a hundred years later. Such men succeeded in a great measure in destroying the pre-Reformation mechanical ideals of salvation in the hearts of the people, which prepared the way for the stirring of the dry bones in future years.

Richard Carew's Survey of Cornwall, published in 1602, gives a vivid picture of the conditions of life in Cornwall prevailing during the period we have been considering in this chapter. The condition of the mining population, he tells us, was much worse than that of the agricultural population.[36]We gather from his pages that the wages of the miners were so inadequate that sooner or later indigence compelled them to have recourse to their employers, who supplied them with food and clothing in advance of their wages at usurious prices. The Stannary Courts, we are informed, were utterly corrupt and saturated with the spirit of perjury and injustice.[36]The houses of the working people, we gather at this period, were made of clay, possessing neither windows nor any attempt at ceiling or plastering[36]; a hole in the wall being considered sufficient to do duty for a chimney. The miner and labouring people generally, we gather, were alike destitute of shoes and stockings, and we may add, of course, of any rudiments of education.

Leland, when he visited the parish, found large mining works along the coast from Trewarvas Head to Praa Sands. Sir Francis Godolphin a generation later developed the ancient mines of Great Work and Wheal Vor upon scientific principles and a scale of vastness hitherto undreamt of.

The mines, it is evident, brought riches and prosperity to the owners of the soil, but not to the people who dwelt upon it; to them, as Carew makes clear, they meant too often degradation and oppression. The harvest of this evil sowing is still being reaped at the present day. It is but too true that with the Reformation the people lost a powerful protector in the Church. With all her faults—and they were many—until the Reformation the Church had been consistently the friend of the poor; her clergy until that period, had been the members of a great corporation, and as such stood in no dread of "the petty tyrant of the fields." With the coming of the Reformation all was changed, and the Parish Priest became too often the creature and parasite of the wealthy, moved but too frequently by fear and policy to neglect the claims of his flock, with for three centuries, disastrous results alike for Church and people. The people at the Reformation were ready to rise and to die for the Church, as we have seen in our own neighbourhood; three centuries later they regarded her with utter suspicion and disfavour. Few with any acquaintance with the facts of the case will deny that the material and moral condition of the people, under much cruel injustice and exploitation, grew worse for some generations after the Reformation, because there were none to hold the balance of justice between class and class and stay the hand of the oppressor, at any rate in the remote places of the country.

In the western part of the County the mines tended to produce an utter neglect of agriculture, the effects of which were bad in every way. They also led to the reckless destruction ofmuch valuable timber for the purpose of making mine props. Western Cornwall, now so denuded and bare of trees, in ancient days was thickly wooded; round Ashton now not a tree is to be seen, yet the name perpetuates the memory of the time when Ashton was the Down where the ash trees grew.

Carew tells us that there were few sheep in Cornwall in his days, and that those there were had little bodies and fleeces so coarse that their wool went by the name of Cornish hair. The horses, he says, were small and hardy and "quick travellers over rough and hilly country," but he goes on to say that by hard treatment and overwork they were soon worn out and rendered unfit for service. Owing to the practical absence of roads till long after Carew's time, vehicular traffic was practically impossible; horses were therefore used as pack animals, and a regular system of transit of goods prevailed through the County by means of pack horses. The tracks that passed by the name of roads[37]for the six rainy months of the year, were practically impassable quagmires of mud, making intercourse, save of the most urgent character, practically impossible. It was on account of the extreme difficulty of communication through the long winter months that the gentry of the district established for themselves town houses in Helston, in which they might exchange the isolation of the country for some measure of friendly and agreeable intercourse.

The land used for tillage seems to have been chiefly manured with sea sand and sea weed; the little ploughing there was would, of course, be done by oxen, a method which at any rate had the merit of producing a strong and vigorous breed of cattle, which in size would perhaps more than favourably compare with some of the animals to be seen at the present time.

We gather from Carew "that some gentlemen allowed their cattle to go wild in their woods and waste ground, where they were hunted and killed with crossbows and pieces after the manner of deer." At this time the Deer Park attached to Godolphin House took in a large part of the present parish of Godolphin; the remains of the high walls of this ancient park may still be seen on the south-western slopes of Godolphin Hill.

In Carew's time the women and children of the West of Cornwall carried on the industry of mat-making to a large extent. These mats were made of coarse grass, and were exported to London in great numbers for the purpose of floor and wall coverings.

Carew informs us that the Cornish had no oaths and never swore, but that they made up for it by a plentiful indulgence in curses, maledictions and the giving of spiteful nicknames.

The two chief practising physicians[38]in the County in Carew's time were Rawe Clyes, a blacksmith, and a Mr. Atwell, parson of St. Tue; the latter obtained the most wonderful results from recommending a diet of apples and milk.

The chief pastimes of the country people at this period, as far as can be ascertained, were wrestling, hurling and shooting with arrows. The game of hurling, in both its forms, seems to have been even more rough and dangerous than Cornish wrestling, and was attended, if Carew speak correctly, frequently with fatal results and serious injury to life and limb; yet he goes on to say "was never Attorney or Coroner troubled for the matter." It was in the larger game of "Hurling the County" that most of the serious damage was done; this wild game was played over miles of country by men both on horseback and on foot. The goals were as a rule a couple of towns or villages three or four miles apart. The match seems to have been arranged, in the first place, between two country gentlemen, who on the occasionof some appointed holiday would gather as their respective supporters, as far as possible, the male inhabitants of two or three neighbouring parishes. Each squire headed the mob he had thus raised to the appointed rendezvous. When the two masses of men, under their respective commanders, were brought face to face, at an appointed signal, a silver ball was thrown into the air. The object of the game was for each side to endeavour to capture the ball and carry it to their own goal some miles distant, in spite of the efforts of their opponents to hinder them in their purpose. The struggle would be waged over miles of country, to the right side or to the left, through rivers, ditches, woods and bogs, the ball being now passed from one on foot to one on horseback, no effort being spared to drag the possessor of the ball to the earth by the opposing side. Little wonder that such a game often resulted in deaths and serious maimings.

A Cornish amusement of a milder character that came to an end with the seventeenth century was the performance of the ancient Miracle Plays. A vestige of the custom still survives in some places in the bands of children who at Christmas time go from house to house, dressed to impersonate a medley of characters, repeating garbled snatches of doggerel, which are in reality fragments of the ancient plays in the last stage of evolution and disintegration. In their earliest form the Miracle Plays were performed by the Clergy in their Churches to illustrate to an ignorant age, alike without literature and the faculty of using it, the truths of the Christian religion. These plays continued to be performed in Churches to a greater or less extent down to the time of the Reformation.[39]The Reformation endeavoured to draw an unreal line of demarcation between sacred and profane, and the drama thus came to be placed beyond the pale as worthless and sinful, with the natural disastrous result that it became quickly degradedand debased, like many other harmless, healthful and pleasure-giving institutions and pastimes.

The Miracle Plays that have come down to us in the Cornish language[40]are first the Ordinalia: this is a trilogy consisting of the Plays of the Beginning of the World, the Passion and the Resurrection, with an interlude on the death of Pilate; this work is based on a French original of the fourteenth century. Secondly, we have the Play of the Life of St. Meriasek, of Breton parentage; and lastly, a work based on the Ordinalia, containing many more English words, written by William Jordan, of Helston, in 1611; the work deals with the Creation of the World and the Deluge. The Cornish language was spoken in the West of Cornwall until the beginning of the eighteenth century[41]; by the close of that century it had entirely disappeared. In Carew's time the Cornish Miracle Plays were performed in the open fields, and were resorted to by the country people with great delight; he tells us however, by his time they had become vulgarized and depraved to no small extent, possibly by the introduction of bucolic gag of a Rabelaisian character.

Judging from the pages of Carew, in the seventeenth century, with all its grossness and barbarism, there was much real friendship and happy intercourse amongst the people, possibly more than there is now. The Harvest Homes, the Church Ales and the Church Festivals of Dedication, with the Guary or Miracle Plays, all led to much friendly intercourse and hospitality. Carew says on these occasions, "the neighbour parishes lovingly visit one another"; friends came from a distance, and were hospitably entertained with resultant kindliness and good fellowship. The Church Ales seem to have been run on much the same lines as the present Harvest Teas, with the exception that instead of tea, beer and cider were drunk, and that the venue of thefeasting was laid at the Public House, instead of the village School or Institute.

Perhaps we shall obtain the most accurate glimpse of the character of the people, and the state of Western Cornwall generally at this period, from the State Papers. Here are a few gleanings culled at random from this source. In 1526 a Portuguese ship was wrecked at Gunwalloe and much cargo saved. It was seized by the servants of John Militon, of Pengersick, Thomas St. Aubyn and William Godolphin, and when the owner appealed to the Justices he was told it was the custom of the country, and that no redress was possible. A commission of enquiry ensued, followed by Star Chamber proceedings, and the defence was the usual one, for which any number of witnesses could always be obtained, that the owner had sold his property on the sea shore!

In 1575 an information of fifteen Articles was laid against Sir William Godolphin and the Killigrews, of Arwenack; thirteen of these concerned piracy.

In 1582 a Spanish ship put into Falmouth; she was boarded by a gang of men, who after removing the cargo as booty to Arwenack, took the ship to Ireland, throwing the crew overboard on the voyage. A Cornish Jury afterwards found there was no evidence to show by whom the deed was done. The Privy Council came to the conclusion very quickly that the plot originated with and was carried out by the orders of Lady Killigrew, of Arwenack.

In 1603 a Marseilles ship was plundered and the cargo carried to the Scilly Islands. The owner appealed to Sir Francis Godolphin, who made an order to his son John, then Governor of those Islands, to restore the cargo. John Godolphin expelled the unfortunate owner from the Islands and he could obtain no further redress.

In 1626 a Flemish privateer, which had been hovering like a bird of prey around the South-Western coast, was driven ashore and wrecked. The country people must haveenjoyed the wrecking of this hostile ship with even more than their usual zest.

Dr. Borlase, writing in 1795, describes the methods of the mining population near the coast in his day in dealing with vessels in distress. His description would no doubt do equally well for the period we are considering. He says "The wreckers were mostly Tinners, who as soon as a ship was seen sailing near the coast left their work and equipped themselves with axes, and followed the ship along the coast, often to the number of two thousand men. They would cut a large trading vessel to pieces in one tide. They strip half-dead men of their clothing and cut down all who resist them."[42]

The following is a pleasing picture of the people of Germoe taken from a letter of the year 1710. "The people of Germoe, called Tinners, are a mad people, without fear of God or of the world. I cannot say a good word for them." Here is another extract from a letter of the period bearing date 30th October, 1671. "The Speedwell was cast away on the rocks at Pengersick. The rude people plundered her of all that was between decks, but the matter being noised about Sir William Godolphin, Mr. Hugh Boscawen and Mr. John St. Aubyn came to the wreck, and by their care preserved most of the goods from the violence of the country people."

It may well have been said of the Miners of Cornwall, as far as wrecking was concerned, "Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the vultures be gathered together." Mr. Hunt, in his "Popular Romances of the West of England," narrates a story of the mid-eighteenth century, which still lingers in the popular mind, of a terrible fight that took place between Miners from Breage and Wendron,over the spoils of a ship cast upon the rocks near the Lizard. In old times, it seems, a gigantic ash tree used to stand upon the Downs near Cury; from its great size and the loneliness of its situation, it had in the course of time come to be a popular landmark. In the case of the wreck in question, the Wendron Tinners had the advantage over their Breage brethren in the matter of distance, and thus were able more quickly to fall upon the spoil, break up the unfortunate ship, and rifle the unhappy castaways of their belongings. Like the true artists they were in the art of appropriating the property of others, they worked quickly, and ere much time had elapsed they had reached the great ash tree of Cury on their journey home laden with spoil. Under this historic tree they encountered the band of Tinners from Breage, who soon realised from the rich booty in the hands of the men of Wendron that nothing more was to be done that day in the way of wrecking on the Lizard rocks. Baffled of their prey, and frantic with fury, the horde of men and women from Breage rushed upon their Wendron compatriots, and the tide of brutal fight raged for hours round the Cury ash tree. Mr. Hunt tells us that a Wendron man named Gluyas having been disabled was borne out of the fight by his friends, and placed upon the top of a hedge. A Breage woman named Prudy, seeing this paladin lying disabled on the hedge, rushed upon him exclaiming, "Ef thee artn't ded, I'll make thee," and smote him upon the head with the iron upon her paton till he expired. Mr. Hunt concludes this story by stating that the fiend Prudy, as far as judicial investigation was concerned, was allowed to go untouched, because fights at this period between parishes were matters of such common occurrence as to excite but little comment, and fatal casualties so frequent as to be regarded as matters of no moment. In this statement, as we have seen, he is borne out by Carew writing in a previous generation. Down to fifty years ago the brutal system ofParochial rivalry and violence continued, at any rate in a mitigated form. A friend wrote to Mr. Hunt: "So late as thirty years ago (circa 1850) it was unsafe to venture alone through the streets of the lower part of Helston after nightfall on a market day owing to the frays of the Breage, Wendron and Sithney men." This statement was fully borne out by an aged friend of the writer, now dead, who told him that in his youth even funeral processions of Miners brought to Breage from other parishes were assailed with showers of stones, and an attack which either ended in hasty retreat or a prolonged free fight. It may be added, however, that Sunday was kept as a truce of God, and on that day a dead Miner from outside the parish might be borne to his rest without an assault being delivered on his friends as they followed him to the grave. This aged friend also informed the writer that to such an extent did this brutal system of savagery prevail that no Miner could pass from his own parish to another without being assailed and maltreated. Indeed, whenever Miners crossed the borders of their own parishes, they did so in bodies for mutual protection. Well on into the first half of the last century, fighting seems to have been one of the chief topics of interest, if not the chief amusement of the neighbourhood, and fights for wagers were of constant occurrence in Breage parish, on Trew Green and elsewhere. To conclude this brief summary of past conditions, one cannot help feeling that there was something to be said for the old Roman view as to the results of the occupation of mining on human character. It is a dismal picture, truly, this of past conditions in the West of Cornwall, but when we contrast it with the present it fills the mind with hopefulness, and reveals the vast latent possibilities in human nature for improvement and progress. If out of this dark and barbarous past we have so recently emerged, what bright possibilities may not lie in the coming time seems but a reasonable thought.

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