Act 3

In 1782 Incledon was in the engagement between the English fleet under Admiral Sir George Bridges, afterwards Lord Rodney, and the French fleet commanded by the Count de Grasse, when the former gained a complete victory.

At the expiration of the war Incledon was discharged at Chatham and proceeded to London, with strong recommendations from Lord Mulgrave and others to Mr. Colman of the Haymarket Theatre. Colman received him coldly, and gave him no hopes of an engagement. Then he went to Southampton, where he obtained an engagement at ten shillings and sixpence a week. But soon after, owing to some dispute, he left the company and went to Salisbury with a travelling company, and fell into great poverty and misery. However, he succeeded in obtaining an engagement at Bath with Mr. Palmer, the well-known theatrical manager, and the man who introduced mail-coaches into England. Here he received thirty shillings a week. He attracted the attention of Ranzzini, the arbiter of the musical entertainments at Bath; and this able man gave him valuable instruction in scientific singing. One evening, hearing Incledon sing Handel's "Total Eclipse," the Italian was so delighted that, catching hold of his hand, he left the piano, and leading him to the front of the platform exclaimed, "Ladies an jentleman, dis is my scholar!"

Thomas Harris, hearing him at Bath, proposed that he should sing and act at Covent Garden Theatre, and engaged him for three years at six, seven, and eight pounds a week. Hardly was this agreement made, when Linley, of Drury Lane, offered him twelve pounds a week, and to retain him for five years. But, although only a verbal agreement had been entered into with Harris, Incledon, to his honour, rejected the offer of Linley. It was unfortunate in more ways than one, as he would have profited by Linley's exquisite taste and instruction, as well as have earned nearly double what Harris offered. Moreover, he was very badly treated at Covent Garden, and often not given parts in which he could do himself justice. In 1809 came a rupture, and the managers dismissed him, and Incledon quitted London on a provincial tour. After two years he was re-engaged by Harris, at a salary of seventeen pounds a week, for a term of five years; but he stipulated that he should be given such rôles as suited him. This engagement was not fulfilled, and a fresh quarrel ensued that led to a final rupture at the end of three years, and he quitted Covent Garden for ever, refusing even to sing in the Oratorios performed there during Lent.

He had made his first appearance at Covent Garden in October, 1790, as Dermont in The Poor Soldier, by Shield. His vocal endowments were certainly great; he had a voice of uncommon power and sweetness, both in the natural and falsetto. The former was from A to G, a compass of about fourteen notes; the latter he could use from D to E or even F, or about ten notes. His natural voice was full and open, and of such ductility, that when he sang pianissimo it retained its original quality. His falsetto was rich, sweet, and brilliant, and totally unlike the other. He could use it with facility, and execute in it ornaments of a certain class with volubility and sweetness. His shake was good, and his intonation much more correct than is common to singers so imperfectly educated. But he never quite got over his West-country pronunciation. His strong point was the ballad, and that not the modern sentimental composition, but of the robust old school. When Ranzzini first heard him at Bath, rolling his voice upwards like a surge of the sea, till, touching the top note, it expired in sweetness, he exclaimed in rapture, "Corpo di Dio! it was ver' lucky dere vas some roof above or you would be heard by de angels in Heaven, and make dem jealous."

Incledon himself used to tell a story of the effect he produced upon Mrs. Siddons: "She paid me one of the finest compliments I ever received. I sang 'The Storm' after dinner; she cried and sobbed like a child. Taking both my hands, she said: 'All that I and my brother ever did is nothing to the effect you produce.'"

"I remember," says William Robson, in The Old Playgoer, "when the élite of taste and science and literature were assembled to pay the well-deserved compliment of a dinner to John Kemble, and to present him with a handsome piece of plate on his retirement, Incledon sang, when requested, his best song, 'The Storm.' The effect was sublime, the silence holy, the feeling intense; and while Talma was recovering from his astonishment, Kemble placed his hand on the arm of the great French actor, and said in an agitated, emphatic, and proud tone, 'That is an English singer.'" Marsden adds that Talma jumped up from his seat and embraced him.

Incledon sang with great feeling, and in "The Storm" he was able to throw his whole heart into the ballad, for not only had he encountered many a storm at sea, but he had been shipwrecked on a passage from Liverpool to Dublin, on the bar. Some of those on board were lost, but he saved himself and his wife by drawing her up to the round-top and lashing her and himself to it. From this perilous position, after a duration of several hours, they were rescued by some fishermen who saw the wreck from the shore.

Incledon belonged in town to "The Glee Club," composed of Shield, Bannister, Dignum, himself, and one or two others. It met on Sunday evenings during the season at the Garrick Coffee House, in Bow Street, once a fortnight. At one of these little gatherings Incledon was amusingly hoaxed. Though an admirable singer, he was a shockingly bad actor. When he came in one of the party informed him that an intended musical performance for a charitable purpose, in which he, Incledon, was to sing, had been abandoned, on account of the Bishop of London objecting to an actor performing in church. Incledon, who was an extremely irritable man, broke out in a violent strain, conceiving the word actor to have been employed as a term of reproach, and addressing himself to Bannister, said with great vehemence, "There, Charles, do you hear that?" "Why," said Bannister, "if I were you, I'd make his lordship prove his words."

Incledon one day was at Tattersall's, when Suett, the actor, also happened to be there, and asked him whether he had come to buy a horse. "Yes," said Charles, "I have. I must ride, it is good for my health. But why are you here, Dickey? Do you think that you know the difference between a horse and an ass?"

"Oh, yes," replied the comedian. "If you were among a thousand horses, I would know you immediately."

There was a public-house in Bow Street called "The Brown Bear," which was famous for a compound liquor, a mixture of beer, eggs, sugar, and brandy. Incledon and Jack Johnstone were partial to this, and frequently indulged themselves with it during the evening at the theatre, and, as a jest, occasionally obtained it in the following manner. When there happened to be several ladies of the theatre in the green-room, they took that opportunity to represent to them the hard case of the widow of a provincial actor, left with her children in great distress, and to solicit from them a few shillings to enable them to purchase some flannel during that inclement season. Having obtained contributions, they despatched the dresser to "The Brown Bear" for a quart of egg-hot, and had the modesty not to drink it all themselves, but to present a glass to each of the females who had subscribed, requesting them to drink to the health of the widow and the flannel. When Incledon and Johnstone had practised this trick several times, Quick, the comedian of the same theatre, bribed the dresser to infuse into the mixture a dose of ipecacuanha, and that brought the joke to an end. But the mixture thenceforth, without the last ingredient, was popularly called Flannel.

Incledon was a notoriously vain man. Vanity was his besetting sin. "In pronouncing his own name," says Mr. Matthews, "he believed he described all that was admirable in human nature. It would happen, however, that this perpetual veneration of self laid him open to many effects which, to any man less securely locked and bolted in his own conceit, would have opened the door to his understanding. But he had no room there for other than what it naturally contained; and the bump of content was all-sufficient to fill the otherwise aching void. Incledon called himself the 'English Ballad Singer' per se; a distinction he would not have exchanged for the highest in the realm of talent. Among many self-deceptions arising out of his one great foible, he was impressed with the belief that he was a reading man."

One day Matthews found him in his house deep in study. Incledon looked up at his visitor, and said, "My dear Matthews, I'm improving my mind. I'm reading a book that should be in the hands of every father and husband."

"What is it, Charles?" asked Matthews, and leaning over him saw that it was a volume of the Newgate Calendar!

It had become a habit, during a fagging run of a new opera at Covent Garden Theatre one season, for certain performers to club a batch or so of Madeira, of which they took a glass to their dressing-rooms. Incledon was continually finding fault with the quality, and praising up his own private stock of the same wine. At the close of the season, his brother actors had become weary of Incledon's grumbling over the Madeira, which they knew to be excellent. One night a fellow-actor, seeing a large key lying upon Incledon's dressing-table, labelled "Cellar," and Incledon happening at the time to be engaged on the stage till the end of the opera, despatched the dresser to Brompton Crescent with the key, with a request to Mrs. Incledon from her husband that she would send one dozen of his best Madeira by the bearer. Mrs. Incledon, wholly unsuspicious of any trick, did so. When Incledon left the stage, the confederates told him that they had got fresh and very first-rate Madeira now, as he had disliked what had been provided before. Incledon took a glass, made a wry face, took another, and said, "Beastly stuff! Never in my life tasted such cheap, vile stuff."

"Sorry, Incledon, you do not appreciate your own Madeira."

Incledon drank pretty heavily, but did not get drunk. Here is a bill for a slight evening collation at the Orange Coffee House, for him and two friends:

£ s. d. Mr. Shield, Welsh Rabbit 0 1 0 " 2 glasses of Brandy and water 0 2 0 Mr. Parke, Welsh Rabbit 0 1 0 " 2 glasses of Brandy and water 0 2 0 Mr. Incledon, Welsh Rabbit 0 1 0 " 2 bottles of Madeira 1 4 0

Parke, in his Musical Memoirs, relates an instance of Incledon's selfishness. He says of him that he was a singular compound of contrarieties, amongst which frugality and extravagance were conspicuous. "Mr. Shield the composer, Incledon, and I, lived for many years a good deal together. On one occasion Shield and myself dined with Incledon at his house in Brompton in the month of February. When I had arrived there, Incledon said to me, 'Bill, do you like ducks?' Conceiving, from the snow lying on the ground, that he meant wild ones, I replied, 'Yes, I like a good wild duck very well.' 'D---- wild ducks!' said he: 'I mean tame ducks, my boy'; adding, 'I bought a couple in town for which I gave eighteen shillings.' Soon afterwards a letter arrived, announcing that Mr. Raymond, the stage-manager of Drury Lane Theatre, who was to have been of the party, could not come; in consequence of which, I presume, only one duck was placed on the dinner table, with some roast beef, etc. When Mrs. Incledon (who, as well as her husband, was fond of good living) had carved the duck, like a good wife she helped her husband to the breast part and to one of the wings, taking at the same time the other wing to herself, reserving for Shield and me the two legs and the back. Shield, who looked a little awkward at this specimen of selfishness and ill-manners, at first refused the limb offered to him, and I had declined taking the other: there appeared to be but a poor prospect of the legs walking off, till Shield relented and took one, and Incledon the other, so that they were speedily out of sight. The back, however, remained behind, and afforded a titbit for the servants."

On another occasion he was giving a dinner party, and a dish was brought to table heaped up, apparently, with fresh herrings. All the company, except Incledon and his wife, partook of these fish; some were helped a second time. When the herrings had been cleared away, there appeared beneath one fine white fish. "My dear," said Incledon, "what can that be?" "I believe it is a John Dory, Charles."

Some of the John Dory was offered to the company, but they had eaten enough fish, and so Incledon and his wife ate the John Dory between them.

Incledon, whilst very willing to hoax others, was easily taken in himself. As his dependence was entirely on his voice, he was very apprehensive of catching cold, which, in consequence, rendered him the occasional dupe of quackery.

During Mr. Kemble's management of Covent Garden Theatre, one of the wags among his fellow-actors informed him that a patent lozenge had just been invented and sold only at a jeweller's in Bond Street, which was an infallible cure for hoarseness. In order that he might the more readily take the bait, he was told that Kemble made frequent use of it. Incledon immediately inquired of the great actor, who very gravely answered, "Oh, yes, Charles; the patent lozenge is an admirable thing. I have derived the greatest benefit from it, when I kept it in my mouth all night."

Incledon accordingly went to Bond Street to purchase the valuable lozenge, and the man, who had been previously instructed, gave him a small pebble in a pill-box. Incledon arrived at the theatre next day with the stone in his mouth and spitting frequently. He was, of course, asked if the patent lozenge did him any good. "Yes," replied he, spitting; "I kept it in my mouth (spitting) all night, and (spitting again) it has this remarkable property, that it does not dissolve," and he spat again. The wag requested to see it, and the production of the pebble provoked a general laugh.

"Why, Charles," said Kemble, "this is a stone! I meant a patent lozenge. You should have gone to an apothecary's and not to a jeweller's for it."

Incledon, when he found that he was hoaxed, was full of wrath; his anger, however, soon subsided.

"Well," said he, "I can't grumble, for an apothecary who pretended to have supplied the jeweller with the lozenge, and who has received from me a letter belauding the nostrum, has undertaken in return to dispose of forty pounds' worth of tickets for my benefit."

On the occasion of this, or some other benefit, he could not refrain from going every morning to the box-office to see how many places were taken; and a week before the last, observing the names to be few besides those of his own private friends, he said to the box-keeper, Brandon, "D---- it, Jem, if the nobility don't come forward, I shall cut but a poor figure this time."

"Don't be afraid," said Brandon; "I dare say we shall do a good deal for you to-day."

"I hope so," replied Incledon, "and as I go home to dinner I will look in again."

Incledon, who was not very familiar with Debrett's Peerage, returning at five o'clock in the afternoon, hastened to the book, and read aloud the following fictitious names, which Brandon, by way of a joke, had put down in his absence: "The Marquis of Piccadilly," "The Duke of Windsor."

"Ah, ha!" exclaimed Incledon, "that must be one of the Royal Family."

"Lord Highgate"--"The Bishop of Gravesend." "Well," said he to Brandon, quite delighted, "if we get on as well to-morrow as we have to-day, I shall have a number of distinguished titles present."

Parke says of him: "Amongst other singularities, Incledon was restless, and could not stay long in a place. Having, with his wife, dined at my house, in the evening, whilst the party were engaged at cards, he absented himself for a considerable time; and, Mrs. Incledon noticing it particularly, I was induced to go and look for him. Tracing him by his voice, I found him in the kitchen, helping the maids to pick parsley, which was preparing for supper."

Parke adds: "As a ballad singer he was unrivalled, and his manner of singing sea songs, particularly Gay's 'Black-eyed Susan,' 'The Storm,' by Alexander Stevens, and Shield's 'Heaving of the Lead,' can only be appreciated by those who have heard him.

"Though he evinced a strong propensity to wine, he never appeared to be intoxicated by it. Dining with a party at his house, where he had just recovered from a very severe indisposition, and was, as he said, advised by his physician to be very abstemious, he sometimes after dinner, while his friends were drinking port wine, had a second black bottle placed before him, which I conceived to contain some very light beverage suited to his case, till he said to me in an under tone, 'Bill, take a glass of this,' pointing to his black bottle, which I did, and found it to be Madeira."

During the summer Incledon made provincial tours, giving entertainments moulded on those of Dibdin, and these were very successful financially.

After quitting Covent Garden he performed at concerts and in minor theatres. In 1817 he sailed for America, where he was received with great enthusiasm, and realized handsome profits.

His last appearance in London was under Ellison at Drury Lane in 1820, and his last appearance on any stage was at Southampton, where he had first appeared behind the footlights. This was on October 20th in the same year. He resided towards the end of his days at Brighton, where he was afflicted with a slight paralytic affliction, from the effects of which he recovered; and in February, 1826, being at Worcester, he experienced a second attack, which proved fatal, and he died on February 14th in the sixty-eighth year of his age. His remains were conveyed from Worcester to Highgate, where they were interred.

THE MURDER OF RICHARD CORYTON

Richard Coryton, eldest son of Peter Coryton of West Newton Ferrers, in the parish of S. Mellion, had married Ann, daughter of Richard Coode, of Morval, and by her had three sons, Peter, Richard, and John.

Peter, the grandfather, died on 24th March, 1551, but his son Richard died a violent death in a tragic manner in 1565. Peter, the younger and heir apparent, was intent on marrying Jane, the daughter of John Wrey, of Northrussell, but for some reason unexplained his father Richard took a violent dislike to the proposed daughter-in-law, and when his son persisted in desiring to have her as his wife, the father flew into a violent passion and swore that if he took her he would disinherit him of all the lands he could, and would give to him only a younger son's portion, constituting Richard head of the family.

Peter remained firm--he was then in London at the Court, and the father at once made ready to leave Newton Ferrers and take his journey to London and disinherit his son if he found that the marriage was still insisted on. But on the eve of his starting, as he was walking in the grounds of Newton Ferrers, he was suddenly fallen upon by two scoundrels named Bartlett and Baseley, who owed him a grudge over some matter that is not mentioned, and they cut his throat.

Bartlett and Baseley were apprehended and brought to Launceston before the sheriff, Mr. Trevanion, and were found guilty; but he could not believe that they were revenging some private wrong, and as the matter of dispute between father and son was well known, and it was known as well that Richard was about to disinherit his eldest son, a strong suspicion was entertained by Trevanion that the murder had been committed at the instigation of the son, and he gave the men hopes of a reprieve--if not of a pardon--if they would reveal the name of the man who had urged them to commit this dreadful crime. He behaved, it must be seen, in a most unfair manner, hinting his suspicions to the two wretches and giving them no peace till they declared that they had been set on by Mr. Peter Coryton to murder his father.

As Peter Coryton was in town, the two criminals were sent to Newgate to be confronted with him there. Whether he was arrested on the charge of having instigated the murder of his father does not appear, but it is probable.

However, if that were the case, his detention was not for long, as both murderers recanted when in London. The following curious deed of "Evidence concerning the murder of Mr. Coryton" is preserved in Pentillie Castle.

"To all true Xtian people to whom this present writing shall come, or shall see, hear or read, Sir Richard Champion, Knt., Lord Mayor, and the Aldermen of the City of London send greeting in our Lord God everlasting.

"Forasmuch as among other, the great and manifold deeds and works of piety and charity, the witnessing and declaration of the truth of all matters in question, ambiguity or doubt is not to be accounted the least, but rather as a choice virtue and means whereby the truth, tho' many times suppressed for a season, doth the rather appear brought forth into the sight and knowledge of men is with the choicest to be embraced, extolled, and commended.

"We therefore, the said Lord Mayor and Aldermen, do signify and declare unto all your honours and worships, unto whom it shall appertain, and to every of the same, that the days of the date of these presents hereunder written, there did appear and come personally before us, the said Mayor and Aldermen, in the Queen's Majesty's Court, holden before the said Lord Mayor and Aldermen, in the outer chamber of the Guildhall of the said City, the Deponents hereunder named, who, upon their own free will, without any manner of coercion and constraint, upon their corporate oaths upon the holy evangelists of Almighty God, then and there severally before us taken and made and exactly examined by one of the clerks of the said Court, said and deposed in all things as hereafter word for word ensueth.

"John Philpott, clerk, Parson of S. Michael in Cornhill of London, aged 29 years or thereabout, deposed, sworn and examined, the day hereunder written, saith and deposeth upon his oath that on the ninth of November last, upon a Saturday, about four of the clock in the afternoon, but what day of the week it was he doth not now remember--this examinate was required by Mr. Howes, one of the Sheriffs of London, and in the name of the other sheriff,[26] that he would go unto Newgate, and there to examine one Rafe Bartlett, prisoner within the same place, who was then very sick and like to die, to the intent to understand of him whether one Peter Curryngton, whom before he had accused for the murder of his own father, were culpable therein or no. Whereupon this examinate went to the said gaol of Newgate, and by the way he did meet with two ministers, the one named Edward Wilkinson, and the other John Brown, whom he desired to go with him, who went with him accordingly, and coming to the aforesaid gaol of Newgate, he desired the keeper that they might talk with the said Bartlett, and the said keeper went down with them into the prison, and brought them unto him, and there finding him very sore sick, persuaded with him, for that he was more like to die than live, in discharge of his conscience, as he would answer before God, to declare unto them whether that the aforesaid Peter Curryngton, whom he had accused to be privy and procurer of him and one Baseley to do the same murder were true Yea or No.

"Whereupon he confessed and said that he had most untruly accused the said Peter Curryngton, for he was never privy, nor knew of it, but that it was he himself and the said Baseley, without the knowledge of any other, and declared the cause why they had so accused him was, for that after they were found guilty for the same matter, the Sheriff of Cornwall did examine them if there were any other privy or procuring to the same murder; and they agreed together to the intent to preserve their lives, or at the least to prolong the same, falsely to accuse the said Peter Curryngton; and the same Bartlett showed himself very sorry and repentant for his said accusation, saying, 'Think you that Mr. Curryngton will forgive me?'

"And this examinate answered him, 'There is no doubt he will, for otherwise he is not of God.' Wherewith he seemed to be satisfied. And this examinate saith that the said Bartlett died within two or three days after; and going from him up the stairs, he, the examinate and the others were brought unto the aforesaid Baseley, who confessed and declared unto them in everything the innocency of the said Peter Curryngton, concerning the same murder, and that it was he and the said Bartlett that committed the same without the knowledge or consent of any other; and that they did accuse him for the purpose afore alleged, by the said Bartlett, and more in effect this examinate cannot say.

"Edward Wilkinson of London, Clerk, Parson of the parish church of S. Antonine in London, aged 33 years or thereabout, deposed, sworn and examined, the said day and year hereunder written, saith and deposeth upon his oath, about November last, the exact time the examinate remembereth not, he did meet one Mr. Philpott, parson of S. Michael in Cornhill, in Cheapside, who desired this examinate that he would go back with him to Newgate, who did so, and by the way as they went, they met with Master Brown, a minister, who likewise went with them to Newgate, and the deposition of the foresaid Mr. Philpott, being unto him read, and he, well perusing and understanding the same, saith and deposeth that all the matter declared and spoken by the said Bartlett, as it is contained in the deposition of the said Master Philpott, is very true in all things, and was spoken in the presence and hearing of this examinate, and further, this examinate saith that the words likewise spoken and declared by the said Baseley, named in the said deposition of the said Master Philpott, are likewise very true, and were in the presence and hearing of this examinate. And further, this examinate saith that he did persuade and exhort the said Baseley, saying unto him, 'Take good heed that you do not lie. You have already murdered one, you have falsely accused another, and you seem to slander the Sheriff (of Cornwall).' And the said Baseley answered, 'The truth is, Master Sheriff bade me devise some way to save myself, and I said I could not tell how,--and he said the way (to do so) was to accuse some other. And he examined me whether there was any one privy or procuring the said murder, beside ourselves, saying unto me, "You could not do it alone. There be divers of the Curryngtons. Was there none of them privy or consenting to the same? You are best to advise and consider yourself, for the telling the truth in accusation of others, might be the way to save their (i.e. your own) lives." Whereupon I returned to the said Bartlett and conferred with him, and we did agree together falsely to accuse Peter Curryngton, for the saving of our own lives'; which accusation was untrue, and that the said Peter Curryngton was very ignorant and innocent of the same murder; and that he was sorry and did repent that he had accused him untruly. And more he cannot say.

"Edmund Marner, citizen of London and keeper of the Gaol of Newgate, aged forty-five years or thereabout, deposed, etc. ... saith and deposeth upon his oath that the 15th day of November last past, being Saturday, John Philpott, clerk, etc., Edward Wilkinson and John Brown, ministers, came to the gaol of Newgate from the Sheriff of London, by a token, to this examinate, to speak with one Rafe Bartlett, prisoner there, being very sore sick."

The deposition of the gaoler was merely a confirmation of what had been deposed by the two previous witnesses.

"William Margytte, of London, Clerk, Reader of the Morning Prayer in the Parish of S. Sepulchre, and Ordinary for the Bishop of London, of the gaol of Newgate, aged forty years, deposed, sworn, and examined, etc., that about September last past, one Richard Baseley, then being prisoner in Newgate, and very sore sick, and like to die, did send for this examinate, to speak with him, and this examinate coming unto him, he said, 'This is the cause that I send for you. I am very sore sick, and more like to die than to live, and I think I shall not escape this sicknesse, and if I do, yet I must die for the law, for I and one of my neighbours did murder Master Curryngton, which I do not much repent. But the very cause that I sent for you is to be a means to Peter Curryngton, his son, whom I have accused to be privy and procuring of the same murder, that he would forgive me, for I have falsely accused him. For as I trust to be saved by Christ, he is utterly ignorant of the same murder, and there was none privy to the same but he, the said Baseley himself, and the said Bartlett, who committed the same.' And this examinate demanded of him why he did accuse Peter Curryngton. And he said that the cause was that after they were found guilty of the murder, Mr. Trevannyon, Sheriff of Cornwall, came unto and examined him, as to who was privy to the murder more than they; saying that they being so simple would not do the same without assistance; saying further that if he would confess the truth as to who helped or procured them to do the same, he would cause his chain to be stricken off, and carry him home with him at night, and would save his life, though it cost him (sum illegible), and thereupon in hope of life he did accuse the said Peter Curryngton falsely and wrongfully; and thereupon he said he would take his death. And the examinate, persuading him and advising him to repent and be sorry for the murder of the said Curryngton, calling to God heartily for mercy and forgiveness of the same. Which in the end with much ado he seemed to be sorry for ... and also the examinate went into the same gaol at Newgate, to speak to Roll Bartlett, to understand whether it were true what the said Baseley had confessed; who declared unto the examinate, as he should answer before God, that Peter Curryngton was never privy nor of consent to the murder of his father, and that there was none privy or knew it but only he and the said Baseley; and the cause why they did kill him was for that he had misused them many ways, and also, they thought no man would be sorry for his death. And this examinate demanded of him the cause wherefore he did accuse the said Peter Curryngton, he answered, 'The fair promises of the Sheriff, and to the interest to preserve their lives, or, at least, to prolong them, was the only cause,' etc.

"In faith and testimony whereof we the said Mayor and Aldermen,--the common seal of our office of Mayoralty of the said city, to these presents, have caused to be put, written at the said city of London on the 23rd day of May, 1566, in the eighth year of the reign of our most gracious and benign Sovereign Lady Elizabeth, etc., etc."

It would appear that the murdered man had been not only a dragon in his house, but also in the entire neighbourhood, oppressing his tenants and disliked by the gentry. It is hard not to suspect that Sir Hugh Trevanion of Carhayes, who was then Sheriff of Cornwall, bore a personal grudge against Peter Coryton.

Peter, all obstacle to his marriage being removed, married the lady of his choice, and by her had three sons and six daughters. He died the 13th August, 1603.

The murderer Baseley died in Newgate, but Bartlett was sent back to Launceston and there hanged.

But this is not the "end of this shocking affair," for eighty years after the murder, John Coryton, of Probus, laid claim to the estates of the then John Coryton, of Newton Ferrers, on the plea that Peter had forfeited all rights to the inheritance because he had murdered his father.

"To the Right Hon. Houses of Parliament, now sitting at Westminster.

The Humble Petition of John Coryton of the parish of Probus, in the County of Cornwall, gent., a great sufferer for and in his Majesty's cause.

Humbly sheweth--

That yo^r petitioner was and is the son of Scipio Coryton, and Scipio was son of John, and John was son of Richard Coryton, Esq., of West Newton Ferrers in the said county of Cornwall, who about eighty years since was most barbarously murdered by two fellows who were maintained by the said Richard Coryton, without any cause or hurt to them, and that the said Richard having three sons, viz. Peter, the firstborn, Richard the second, John the third, your petitioner's grandfather. The said Peter his firstborn would have married with one Mr. Wrey's daughter, to w^h his father would not consent, but threatened his said son that if he should marry with her that he w^d disinherit him of all the lands he could. And that he, the said Peter, his firstborn, should have but a younger son's portion. The said Peter, his firstborn, insisted in the same match by continuing his suit to her. Being at the Court in London, his said father purposing his journey for London the Thursday following, to effect his said purpose of disinheriting his said son. The said Mr. Wrey living about those parts of West Newton Ferrers. The Tuesday before walking in part of his said barton of West Newton, was set upon by these two fellows (their names were Bartley and Baselly) and cruelly murdered by cutting of his throat. The fellows were taken and the one died in prison, or was made away with, the other was brought to Launceston and there hanged without any confession of who set them on. One of the said Mr. Wrey's sons (viz.) Edmund, was seen at the place of execution with a black box under his arm in the sight of the malefactor, who was cast down without any confession. These murderers being gone, the said Peter married the said Mr. Wrey's daughter, and entered as heir on his father's estate with about £2000 per annum, his said brothers having nothing; he gave a living to Richard, his said brother, during his life. But your petitioner's grandfather, knowing of the wrong done him, would not take his brother's small pittance, for he always said that he had right to a greater part of the estate than he would give him. Your petitioner's grandfather marrying a gentlewoman who had a small fortune, went to law with his said brother for his part of the estate, but being not able to contend with him by reason of his small ability and the other's greatness, was forced to give over. And he continually keeped all the estate to the impoverishing of your petitioner's grandfather, and they that defended him. And your petitioner's father being not able to contend with him by reason of his poverty, leaving me, his son, in like case, being not able any other way to seek his right, but by petitioning to your Honours; your petitioner being impoverished and brought very low by following his Majesty's service all along the war in England and Ireland, and with His Highness Prince Rupert in France also, and other parts where your petitioner received many cruel wounds and many imprisonments, which I forbare to relate for burden and trouble to your Honours, your petitioner and his wife being no longer able to subsist.

"These premises considered, your poor petitioner humbly begs your Honours that you will be pleased to call John Coryton, Esq., of West Newton Ferrers, the possessor of the said estates, before your Honours; or where your Honours shall think fit, to show cause why your petitioner hath not an inheritance of his said father's estate, which hath been so long kept from him, and his said father, and your petitioner shall pray, etc."

The pedigree was as follows:--

One little incident may be noted: Richard Coryton, who was murdered, was one of twenty-four children.

John Coryton of Probus got nothing by his application.

FOOTNOTE:

[26] John Rivers and James Howes were sheriffs.Return to passage

SIR JAMES TILLIE, KNT.

High above the Tamar where it is most tortuous, and commanding loop upon loop of this beautiful river, with the blue bank of Dartmoor standing up in the east as a rising thundercloud, stands a red-brick tower upon an elevated platform, that is reached by a flight of stone steps.

On the east side of this tower is a recess in the thickness of the wall, with stone benches, and at the back, high up, is a little window formed of two slits, through which the interior can be seen only by putting one foot on the bench and the other on a projecting corbel in the wall. What is then revealed is an interior open to the sky, and with a statue of a seated man, life size, opposite, in wig and lace steenkirk, one hand resting on his knee and the other on the arm of his chair.

There is no door of admission into the tower; a doorway has been bricked up. Formerly the tower consisted of two storeys, with a floor above the square chamber in which is the statue, and a roof over the upper apartment. But roof and floor have gone.

In the summer of 1907 the walled-up doorway had to be opened, so that a large tree might be cut down that had grown in the midst of the tower and threatened it with injury. No sooner was it bruited about that access to the interior was to be had than crowds of visitors came out from Plymouth and Devonport, expecting to be able to find within some relics of Sir James Tillie, Bart., whose burial-place was the lower chamber, where now is only to be seen his statue.

Hals says, the spelling modernized: "About the year 1712 Sir James Tillie died, and, as I am informed, by his last will and testament obliged his adopted heir, one Woolley, his sister's son, not only to assume his name (having no legitimate issue), but that he should not inter his body after death in the earth, but fasten it in the chair where he died with wire--his hat, wig, rings, gloves, and best apparel on, shoes and stockings, and surround the same with an oak chest, box, or coffin, in which his books and papers should be laid, with pen and ink also--and build for the reception thereof, in a certain field of his lands, a walled vault or grot, to be arched with moorstone, in which repository it should be laid without Christian burial; for that, as he said but an hour before he died, in two years space he would be at Pentillie again; over this vault his heir likewise was obliged to build a fine chamber, and set up therein the picture of him, his lady, and adopted heir, for ever; and at the end of this vault and chamber to erect a spire or lofty monument of stone, from thence for spectators to overlook the contiguous country, Plymouth Sound and Harbour; all which, as I am told, is accordingly performed by his heir, whose successors are obliged to repair the same for ever out of his lands and rents, under penalty of losing both.

"However, I hear lately, notwithstanding this his promise of returning in two years to Pentillie, that Sir James's body is eaten out with worms, and his bones or skeleton fallen down to the ground from the chair wherein it was seated, about four years after it was set up; his wig, books, wearing apparel, also rotten in the box or chair where it was first laid."

The lower chamber, not underground, in which Sir James was seated was not vaulted over as he directed. The portraits in the upper chamber have been removed to Pentillie Castle, where they may now be seen.

But, as already intimated, the statue was erected where the body was, and beneath it is the inscription:--

This Monument is erected In Memory of S^{ir} James Tillie kn^t who dyed 15 of Nov^r Anno Domini 1713 And in y^e 67^{th} year of his Age.

It is thought--but no evidence exists to show that it was so--that the bones of Sir James were collected by Mary Jemima, the last of the Tillie family and the heiress who carried Pentillie to the Coryton family about 1770, and transferred to the churchyard of S. Mellion. When the chamber was entered recently and the tree cut down and eradicated, no traces of the dead man could be found.

Hals, in his MS. History of Cornwall, says: "Pentyley a hous and church built by one Mr. James Tyley, son of ... in ye parish of S. Keverne, labourer as I am inform'd." The father's name was John. "And was placed by him a servant or horseman to S^{ir} John Coryton, Bart., the Elder, who afterwards by his assistance learning the inferiour practice of the Lawe under an Atturney, became his Steward, in which caracter by his Care and Industry he soon grew Rich, soe that he marryed Sir Henry Vane's daughter; by whome he had a good fortune or estate, but noe issue; at Length after the Death of his Master (1680) he became a Guardian in Trust for his younger children, and Steward to their elder Brother, Sir John, that marryed Chiverton, whereby he augmented his wealth and fame to a greater pitch. When, soon after, King James II came to the Crown, this gentleman by a great sume of money and false representation of himselfe obtained the favour of knighthood at his hands, but that Kinge some short while after beinge inform'd that Mr. Tyley was at first but a Groome or Horseman to Sir John Coryton, that he was no Gentleman of Blood or armes, and yet gave for his Coat-armour the armes of Count Tillye of Germany, ordered the Heraulds to enquire into this matter; who findinge this information trew, by the King's order entered his Chamber at London, tooke downe those arms, tore others in pieces, and fastened them all to Horse tayles and drew them through the streets of London, to his perpetuall Disgrace, and disgraced him from the dignity of that beinge, and impos'd a fyne of £500 upon him for so doing, as I am inform'd--but alas, maugre all those proceedings, after the death of his then Master, Sir John Coryton the Younger, not without suspicion of being poysoned, he soon marryed his Lady, with whome Common fame said he was too familiar before, soe that he became possest of her goods and chattels, and a great Joynture. Whereby he liveth in much pleasure and comfort in this place, honour'd of some, lov'd of none; admiring himself for the Bulk of his Riches and the Arts and Contrivances by which he gott it--some of which were altogether unlawfull, witness his steward, Mr. Elliott, being credited for a mint and coyning false money for his use; who on notice thereof forsooke this Land, and fled beyond the Seas, though the other Agent and Confederate, Cavals Popjoye, indicted for the same crime of High Treason committed at Saltash, was taken, tryed and found guilty and executed at Lanceston, 1695, at which tyme the writer of these Lynes was one of the Grand Jury for the body of this County, that found those Bills--when William Williams of Treworgy in Probus Esq. was sheriff, and John Waddon, Esq., foreman of the Jury."

After this, written at a later date, comes the passage relative to the burial arrangements of Sir James, already quoted.

With regard to the above statement, a few remarks may be made. Sir John Coryton died in 1680, just after he had obtained a licence for concluding a second marriage with Anne Wayte, of Acton, widow.

His son, Sir John, married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Sir Richard Chiverton, Kt., Lord Mayor of London, and a wealthy skinner. Sir James Tillie's first wife was Margaret, daughter of Sir Harry Vane, the Parliamentarian, who was executed in 1662. Tillie was knighted at Whitehall, 14th January, 1686-7, and he built Pentillie Castle. In one of the quadrangles of the castle is a leaden statue of the knight with flowing wig, a roll of papers in one hand like the baton of a field-marshal, and with preternaturally short legs.

In Luttrell's Brief Relation of State Affairs there is some mention of the affair of the assumed arms. He says, under date November 26th, 1687: "Sir James Tillie of Cornwall was brought up upon an habeas corpus, being committed by the Court of Chivalry for refusing to find bail there, and was remanded.

"January 19th, 1687-8. The Court of Chivalry satt, and fined Sir James Tilly £200 for his crime."

Hals, accordingly, was wrong in saying that he was fined £500.

Hals thinks (he does no more) that Sir James was mixed up in the coining business. If he got rich by nefarious practices, it was probably by filling his pockets out of the Coryton estates, of which he was steward under two of the baronets.

Sir James Tillie's will by no means carries with it the character of impiety attributed to it by Hals. It is headed: "Dei voluntas fiat, et mei hac performet." In it he mentions the date of his birth, November 16th, 1645. It is a very long will, and in it he laboured in every conceivable way to found a family. As he had no children of his own, he made his eldest nephew heir, but in the event of his dying without issue, then his estates passed to his second, and so on. At the end he wrote: "I desire my Body may have a private interment at and in such a place in Pentillie Castle as I have acquainted my dearest wife, the Lady Elizabeth Tillie, with, and to have such monument erected and inscription thereon made as I have desired my said wife."

The paper of instructions left with her is still extant; of that more presently. He proceeds: "Although I have made a provision for my said wife out of my Lands, yet in regard to her kindness to me whilst living, and that tenderness to my memory which I know she will have after my death, for the uses hereinafter mentioned, I give and bequeath unto my said wife all her Paraphaanalia [sic], apparell, jewells and ornaments of her Person, all the Books, China, Portraits and Toyes in her Closett at Pentillie Castle, my Coach, Chariott, Calash and set of six horses with two such of my other Horses and Cowes as shall please her to elect, and also a Hundred Guineas in money for her life and then for her grandchildren.

"To Altmira Tillie go the £500 payable on the day of marriage with either one of my said nephews. But on her marriage with any other my will is that she shall have only £250.

"To my Cousin Mary Mattock £50 to be paid on her marriage Day with any other than William Parkes, but on her marriage with him this legacy is to be void.

"Then I give unto my said Wife fifty pounds for my ffunerall desireing four of my ancientest workmen may lay me in my grave, unto whom I give fforty shillings apiece. And to William Trenaman ten pounds. And to my honest Richard Lawreate in Meate and Drink for his owne person to the value of Two shillings and sixpence per weeke at Pentillie during his Life. To my domestique servants living with me at my Death fforty shillings each, To Samuel Holman his Tooles, and to John Long a joynt of Mutton weekly during his Life, as I have done. In witness thereof I have hereunto sett my hand and seal this 22nd day of March, 1703/4, etc."

One very curious and most unusual feature in the proving of this will was that the original was handed over to James Tillie, the nephew, in place of an attested copy, and only a copy retained in the Consistory Court.

As Sir James had no right to bear arms, his nephew, James Tillie, obtained a grant from the Heralds' College, November 1st, 1733. The arms given him were as follows: Arg., a cross fleury gules, in chief three eagles' heads couped, sable; and as a crest, on a wreath of the colours, a demi-phœnix rising out of flames ppr. and charged on the breast with a cross fleury sa.

The memorandum referred to by Sir James in his will, containing instructions as to his burial, is still extant, and it is by no means as extravagant as represented by Hals.

Gilpin, in his Observations on the West Parts of England, 1798, gave currency to the story as amplified by tradition, and thenceforth it was generally accepted and obtained currency.

Gough, in his Camden's Britannia, 1789, says: "In the rocks of Whitsand Bay, Tilly, Esq., who died about fifty years ago, remarkable for the freedom of his principles and life, was inclosed by his own order, dressed in his clothes, sitting, his face to the door of a summer-house at Pentelly, the key put under the door, and his figure in wax, in the same dress and attitude in the room below."

Gough makes several mistakes. Pentillie is a great many miles from Whitsand Bay, and he was placed not among rocks, but on the summit of a hill called Ararat. The figure carved in the attitude in which placed to rest is in sandstone, and not in wax; and finally it is not in a summer-house, but in a lofty brick tower, erected after his death, the bill for the erection of which is still in existence.

Notwithstanding all his schemes to found a family, his posterity failed in the male line, and the castle and Tillie lands passed as follows:--

There was an illustrious and ancient family of Tilly, or Tylly, at Cannington, in Somersetshire, deriving from a De Tilly in the reign of Henry II, and the parish of West Harptree in the same county is divided into two manors, one of which is West Harptree-Tilly. The arms of this Tilly family were only a dragon erect, sable, and as such appear in glass in the windows of Cannington Church.

That Sir James Tillie could claim no descent from this family is evident from his not assuming their arms. Had the Heralds been able to trace any connection whatever, they would have given to the nephew a coat resembling the Tilly arms of Cannington but not identical.

It must be borne in mind that the possession of a surname of a noble or gentle family by no means indicates that the bearer had a drop of that family's blood in his veins; for it was quite a common thing when surnames began to be acquired for the domestic servants in a house to be called after their master, or that they should assume their patronymics, much as in High Life Below Stairs the menial servants assume the titles of their masters as well as their names. This practice was so common that always in the neighbourhood of a great house, that has lived on through many centuries, will be found among the villagers in a very humble walk of life persons bearing the surname of the illustrious family in the castle, the hall, or the manor. How a dependent of the Tilly family of Cannington drifted down to the Lizard is not easily explained; it may be that this Tilly was descended from one of the regiments that Charles I sent down to the Scilly Isles, and which was left there and forgotten.

LIEUTENANT JOHN HAWKEY

Joseph Hawkey, of Liskeard, and his wife Amye, daughter of the Rev. John Lyne, had a numerous family. John was the eldest son, born at Liskeard in 1780; the other sons were William, Joseph, Richard, and Charles. There was also a daughter Charlotte, born at Liskeard 10th May, 1799.

Lieutenant Joseph Hawkey, R.N., born at Liskeard in 1786, was killed in action while commanding a successful attack on a Russian flotilla in the Gulf of Finland in 1809.

John also entered the navy, as midshipman in the Minerva. A few months after the renewal of the war in 1803 he was taken prisoner whilst gallantly defending that ship, when she was unfortunately run by the pilot, during a dense fog, on the west point of the stone dyke of Cherbourg. Hawkey remained in captivity at Verdun for eleven years, till 1814.

A commission of lieutenant had been sent out to him by mistake to the West Indies, which being dated previous to his capture was not cancelled, but forwarded to him in France, and was thus the means in some degree of alleviating the evils of captivity. Whilst at Verdun he made the acquaintance of Lieutenant Tuckey, R.N., a person like himself a prisoner, and like him of fine taste and considerable talents.

His prospects had been cruelly clouded by his long detention in captivity, and on the conclusion of peace he at once joined the Cyrus, sloop of war; but when the Government proposed to send out an expedition to explore the Zaire or Congo, and appointed Tuckey in command, Lieutenant Hawkey eagerly accepted the invitation of his friend to join him and act as second in command.

At this time little was known of the Congo and the Niger. Hitherto what was known was due to Arabian writers of the Middle Ages, and to what leaked out from the Portuguese; but these latter, who carried on an extensive slave trade thence, did their utmost to keep their knowledge of these rivers to themselves. But even they were not well acquainted with the rivers far up from their mouths. Mungo Park was preparing for his second expedition to explore the Niger, and it was even supposed that the Congo or Zaire that flows into the South Atlantic was an outlet of the Niger, and not an independent river; and this opinion was warmly expounded by Park in a memoir addressed to Lord Camden previous to his departure from England, and he added that, if this should turn out to be a fact, "considered in a commercial point of view, it is second only to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope; and, in a geographical point of view, it is certainly the greatest discovery that remains to be made in this world."

On March 19th, 1816, the Congo, accompanied by the Dorothy transport, sailed on a voyage of exploration to the Zaire. The Congo was about ninety tons, schooner rigged, and drew five feet of water. She was fitted up entirely for the accommodation of officers and men, and for the reception of the objects of natural history which might be collected on her progress up the river. The gentlemen engaged on the expedition, in the scientific department, were: Professor Smith, of Christiania, botanist and geologist; Mr. Tudor, comparative anatomist; Mr. Cranch, collector of objects of natural history; and a gardener to gather plants and seeds for Kew; also Mr. Galway, a gentleman volunteer. There were two negroes, who would serve as interpreters, one of whom came from eight hundred miles up the Zaire. The officers were: Captain Tuckey, Lieutenant Hawkey, Mr. Fitzmaurice, master and surveyor, Mr. McKernow, assistant surgeon, two master's mates, and a purser. In addition to the Congo, the transport took out two double whale-boats, so fitted as to be able to carry eighteen to twenty men, with three months' provisions.

Lieutenant Hawkey was an excellent draughtsman; he sketched in a bold and artistic manner, and to a general knowledge of natural history he united the talent of painting the minutest sea and land animals with great spirit and accuracy.

Although the vessels sailed from Deptford on February 16th, they were detained in the Channel and at Falmouth by westerly gales till March 19th. On April 9th they reached the Cape de Verd Islands, whence he wrote home to his sister Charlotte:--

"PORTO PRAYA, S. JAGO, August 11th, 1816.

"My Angel,--I am just able to hold my pen and tell you that I am alive, after being as near death as ever mortal being was. The day before yesterday we arrived here. Captain Tuckey and myself went to wait on the governor, the commissary, and captain of the transport, to procure refreshments. We were graciously received--saluted by his black guards--took a walk in the country--returned, intending to go on board to dinner. There is a heavy surf on the beach, and squalls are very frequent from the mountains; one of which, when we were about a cable's length from the shore, upset our boat. I intended swimming composedly on shore, but something or some person caught my leg, and I could not by any exertion get my head above water. It instantly struck me that some one who could not swim had seized me, hoping to save himself; and I swam in what I conceived to be the direction of the shore, under water. My senses I preserved as fully as at present. O Lord, methought, what pain it was to drown! What dreadful noise of water in my ears! I thought my last hour was come. Still I struggled violently, but finding it impossible to retain my breath longer, I took off my hat and held it above the water. A black boy, who had swam off with several other, got hold of it, and then of me. From that moment all recollection ceased until I found myself with my stomach on an empty cask on the beach, surrounded by my own party and blacks. My sufferings were very acute; the absolute pain of dying--which ceremony I completely underwent--was nothing in comparison. The different means prescribed for the recovery of drowned persons were used; and as soon as possible I was conveyed on board. A determination of blood to the head and lungs took place; all night I was in danger; but it is now going fast off, but I am in a state of absolute debility. Captain Tuckey says I was more than five minutes under water--a longer time than the most experienced divers can remain. Note, I was in full uniform--boots, sword--and my pockets full of stones and shells I had picked up on shore. Captain Tuckey lost his sword; his watch and mine are both spoiled."

Cape Padrone, at the mouth of the Congo, was reached on July 6th. The transport was left a little way up, and the party of exploration pushed on up the river. The mouth of the Congo was found to be about fifteen miles wide. Far inland were seen naked hills of sand. Professor Smith wrote in his diary:--

"July 7th.--Early this morning the mafock, or governor, came on board in two canoes, with his retinue. At first his pretensions were very lofty. He insisted on being saluted with a discharge of cannon, and on observing us going to breakfast declared that he expected to be placed at the same table with the captain, and endeavoured to make his words sufficiently impressive by haughty gesticulations. Sitting on the quarter-deck in a chair covered with a flag, his dress consisting of a laced velvet cloak, a red cap, a piece of stuff round his waist, otherwise naked, with an umbrella over his head, though the weather was cold and cloudy, he represented the best caricature I ever saw. He soon became more moderate on being informed that the vessels were not belonging to slave merchants, but to the King of England, and that our object was to trade. In order to give him a proof of our goodwill towards him, a gun was discharged and a merchant flag hoisted."

A good many negroes after this came on board. They were nearly all nominally Christians. Among them was a Catholic priest, who had been ordained at Loando. He had been baptized two years before his ordination at S. Antonio.

"The barefooted black apostle, however, had no fewer than five wives. A few crosses on the necks of the negroes, some Portuguese prayers, and a few lessons taught by heart, are the only fruits that remain of the labours (of the Portuguese missionaries) of three hundred years."

Proceeding up the river, threading a tangle of islands and sandbanks, the vessels stood off Embonna, where they came across an American slaver flying Swedish colours. Here there had been several Portuguese slave-dealing ships, but on hearing of the arrival in the river of the English vessels during the night they slipped away.

On July 25th they came to the Fetiche Rock, a mass of micaceous granite rising perpendicularly out of the river, with eddies and whirlpools at its feet. The surface of the rock is covered with sculptured figures, which Lieutenant Hawkey drew, and which he managed to interpret.

On July 26th Captain Tuckey and others landed at Lombee, a village of a hundred huts, and the king's market, and here they went to visit the chenoo, or king.

"Having seated myself," wrote Tuckey, "the chenoo made his appearance from behind a mat-screen, his costume conveying the idea of Punch in a puppet show, being composed of a crimson plush jacket with curious gilt buttons, a lower garment in the native style in red velvet, his legs muffled in pink sarsenet, and a pair of red morocco half-boots. On his head an immense high-crowned hat embroidered with gold, and surmounted by a kind of coronet of European artificial flowers. Having seated himself on the right, a master of the ceremonies with a long staff in his hand inquired into the rank of the gentlemen, and seated them accordingly.

"All being seated, I explained to the chenoo, by the interpreter, the motives of my mission--stating that 'the King of England being equally good as he was powerful, and having conquered all his enemies and made peace in all Europe, he now sent his ships to all parts of the world to do good to all people, and to see what they wanted and what they had to exchange; that for this purpose I was going up the river, and that, on my return to England, English trading vessels would bring them the objects necessary to them, and teach them to build houses and make clothes.' These benevolent intentions were, however, far beyond their comprehension; and as little could they be made to understand that curiosity was also one of the motives of our visit, or that a ship could come such a distance for any other purpose but to trade or fight; and for two hours they rung the changes on the questions, Are you come to trade? and Are you come to make war? At last, however, they appeared to be convinced that I came for neither purpose; and on my assuring them that though I did not trade myself I should not meddle with the slave traders of any nation, they expressed their satisfaction.

"The keg of spiced rum which I had brought as part of my present to the chenoo was now produced, together with an English white earthen washhand basin covered with dirt, into which some of the liquor was poured and distributed to the company, the king saying he drank only wine, and retiring to order dinner. The moment he disappeared, the company began to scramble for a sup of the rum; and one fellow, dropping his dirty cap into the basin, as if by accident, contrived to snatch it out again well soaked, and sucked it with great satisfaction."

Here Captain Tuckey learned that the traders carried off on an average two thousand slaves every year.

Hence, on August 5th, Captain Tuckey, Lieutenant Hawkey, and the scientific gentlemen proceeded up the river in the double boat, the transport's longboat, two gigs, and a punt. In addition to those already mentioned were some of the sailors and the interpreters.

On August 10th the expedition reached Noki, where the river was rapid and difficult, running between high bluffs, and Professor Smith likened it to one of the torrent streams of Norway. On reaching Caran Yellatu progress was arrested by cataracts, and the party was forced to quit the boats and push on by land. Here one of the interpreters deserted, carrying away with him four of the best porters who had been engaged at Embonna.

"Every man I have conversed with," says Tuckey, "acknowledges that if the white man did not come for slaves the practice of kidnapping would no longer exist, and the wars which nine times out of ten result from the European slave trade would be proportionately less frequent. The people at large most assuredly desire the cessation of a trade in which, on the contrary, all the great men, deriving a large portion of their revenue from the presents it produces, as well as the slave merchants, are interested in its continuance."

At Juga the river again widened, and this was made a basis for excursions by land up the river.

On the 10th September Captain Tuckey found it impossible to proceed further; sickness and death were making terrible ravages among the party, and it became absolutely necessary to relinquish the enterprise and endeavour to make their way back to the vessels. On the following day Captain Tuckey's journal records that they "had a terrible march--worse to us than the retreat from Moscow."

Of this return journey we have an account from Lieutenant Hawkey's diary. When Sir John Barrow published an account of the expedition from the journals of Captain Tuckey and Professor Smith the diary of Hawkey was not obtainable; it had been lost, and was not recovered for some years; and then, when given for publication, was again lost, and only the concluding pages were to be found. It shall be given, somewhat curtailed.

"September 9th.--Our Ultima Thule. Sketched by the setting sun the appearance of the river, a thousand ideas rushing into my mind: the singularity of my situation, its contrast with my captivity, and equally so with my wishes. Here, probably, my travels are to end; but Heaven knows for what I am destined, and I resign myself. Passed a sleepless night, and wandered on the beach, wishing, but in vain, for sleep. Captain Tuckey ill all night.

"September 10th.--A fine grey morning. Packing up for our return--a great assemblage of natives, one with a gay red cap. Bought six fowls for an umbrella. Dr. Smith sketched our last view of the mighty Zaire. Set out and soon found Dawson very sick; obliged to give his arms and knapsack to others, and to lead him and give him wine occasionally. Halted at Vonke, where I got into a scrape by touching Amaza's fetiche, for which, it being ruined, he wanted a fathom of chintz, which I gave him. It is forbidden to touch a fetiche or to carry fowls with their heads downwards. Bought a goat for an umbrella. Bargaining for a canoe for the sick and luggage; procured one, and embarked poor Dawson. Tuckey ill; at Masakka had a specimen of African hospitality: Tuckey, fainting and ill, could not obtain a drop of palm wine until it was paid for exorbitantly. Peter gave the cap from his head, and Tuckey his handkerchief and the last beads. To his being faint they paid not the least regard. About two miles from Sirndia all our guides abandoned us. However, we found our way, and on our arrival the tent and luggage, just landed.

"September 11th.--Hazy, cloudy; feel a little ill. Canoes assembling; bargained for two for six fathoms and four handkerchiefs. A world of trouble with them--three strokes of the paddle and stop; wanted to land us above the rapid; obliged to threaten to put them to death. At last got them to a rapid that stopped us, where we landed and again grumbled on. One fellow attempted to snatch the piece from Captain Tuckey's hand. Met here with some of our old friends, and bargained with the man whose canoe was stove on the 7th to take us to Juga. The bearers are to have two fathoms each, and himself a dress. Encamped at Bemba Ganga. Broached our last bottle of wine.

"September 12th.--A grey morning. Bought four fowls for two empty bottles, and four more for some beads. Embarked in a canoe and set off. About ten arrived at Ganga and had to wait for a canoe; atmosphere much changed. Hitherto we had found the blacks honest enough, but here they gave us specimens of being as great thieves as they were cowards. The canoe in which the sick men came down was robbed of some check and baft (coarse cloth). One fellow attempted to steal a carbine. Ben (the black interpreter) lost his greatcoat, which the fellow he trusted with it ran away with, and our barometer was stolen in the night. Dr. Smith was taken ill here. We encamped in the valley of Demba, where we were assailed by ants in myriads, and got no sleep. After dusk we were informed that the men whom we had hired at Bemba as canoe men had run away.

"September 13th.--From 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. no refreshments excepting earth-nuts, palm-wine, and water. However, we persevered, and at dusk reached Juga, where we found Butler sick, and had the misery of being told that poor Tudor and Cranch were no more, Galway despaired of, and many of the crew sick. Melancholy enough, God knows, but hold on. Mansa, the slave, has deserted with poor Galway's knapsack.

"September 14th.--Mizzling rain; melancholy morning. The captain and Dr. Smith sick. Packing up for ship. Hodder sets out with ten men and an advanced guard. Dr. Smith worse; decide on removing him to-day; difficulty in getting bearers; prepared hammocks for the sick. At noon both the captain and Dr. Smith better; Dawson rather worse; get Butler into a house. Corporal Middleton arrives with the sad news of Galway's death, that of poor Stirling and Berry, and a long list of sick. Here I am in the tent. Poor Tuckey ill, asleep, or perhaps feigning it to avoid conversation. Dr. Smith groaning under a rheumatic fever, and his trusty David Lockhart attending him. My ideas are wandering round the world, and the only consolation is that perhaps it may be the means of my seeing my dear European friends sooner than I had expected. Five only of the Congo's are capable of duty, except the warrant officers. Saturday night. God bless you all, my dear, dear friends!

"September 15th.--Broke up at Juga, and such a scene I never before witnessed, and hope never to witness again. As soon as Tuckey was gone, the natives rushed in upon us like so many furies, each taking what he could get hold of; the things we were obliged to abandon. A part of our guides and bearers ran away with the things they were to carry, and poor Butler was obliged to come away with only two bearers, who tottered under him, and who were mocked by their compassionate countrymen. I left him near the ravine of Bondé, and passed on to Dawson, who was coming on pretty well, as he had four bearers and was not very heavy. Not far from Vouchin-semnis we were assailed with horrid shrieks and cries, and soon saw a dozen women, or rather furies, holding their idols towards us, rolling their eyes, foaming at the mouth, and making the most violent contortions. They had lost some manioc, and were exorcising the thieves. I believe the gangam (priest) had accused us of the robbery. We continued our march, rather a forced one, to Noki. Far different was the night, and far different our feelings, on the 23rd of last month! I was colder than charity, and it rained very hard for more than two hours.

"September 16th.--Started from Juga. Captain and party on foot, and Dr. Smith in a hammock. Dr. Smith very weak; obliged to take him out of his hammock, and William Burton, a marine, carried him on his back, up almost precipices, to Banza, where we had great difficulty in getting a little water, which was only obtained by the double influence of a threat to shoot them and a present of some powder. Arrived at the beach, where we found all in confusion. No canoes to be had, in consequence of a taboo from the King of Vinni, who had not received his dues from Sanquila, who says, on his side, it is in consequence of the commanding officer of the Congo having threatened to put some one in irons. Seized the man who appeared to be the chief cause of the opposition, and at the same time fired at, brought to, and seized five fishing-canoes, and shortly after obtained two larger from a creek, when we liberated three of the fishermen's canoes and the head-man.

"September 17th.--Preparing for embarkation. Finding no paddlers come, pressed two men and set out, crossing over to the south shore to avoid the whirlpools. When we left men were assembling fast on the hills, and told us we had killed a man last night. Beached the canoes and ate some goat's flesh. So returned on board and reached the Congo. Found our vessel in a horrid state of confusion and filth; stuffed with parrots, monkeys, puppies, pigeons, etc. The carpenter cutting up the last plank to make coffins. The deck lumbered as when we left her, and not a wind-sail up! No stock on board; the sick in double boats and tents pitched on shore. My cabin filthy as a hog-stye. Passed a sleepless night. Dr. Smith very unwell, and Captain Tuckey very little better.

"September 18th.--A little after daylight, Captain Tuckey, Dr. Smith, and myself left the Congo. Passed M'Bima. The river is very much risen; eagles hovering over us all the way down. Arrived on board the Dorothy at 3 p.m. Got Dr. Smith to bed; refreshed ourselves, and thought the air here quite reviving, and a clean ship the greatest of luxuries. All on board the Dorothy had been well, except the carpenter, who was convalescent, and a boy who had been up in the longboat, and was in the same state.

"September 19th.--Sloop's boat arrived with the sick, and Johnson dead. Went on shore with Captain Gunther and some of the transport's people, and buried him--so putrid that I was obliged to bury him in his cot, with all his bedding.

"September 20th.--Sick improving generally; transport getting ready for sea. Congo not in sight. Sent skiff to Congo. At 6 p.m. Garth dies. Skiff returns; has left Congo near Augsberg Island. Parrots prevent all possibility of sleeping to the sick.

"September 21st.--Hazy morning. Congo not in sight at nine. An order for all parrots to be before the fore-hatchway. Buried Garth. Durnford and Burton attacked with fever; Lockhart unwell, and Ben. Two of transport's people ill. Jefferies, fever; Ben wishes to remain at M'Bima. At 6 p.m. Congo and schooner anchored here. Dr. Smith appears to be in a stupor.

"September 22nd.--Close morning. Getting stores, etc., from Congo; cleaning her decks; preparing to get her water-tanks filled. Dr. Smith still in a stupor. Sick generally better, except the captain and Parker. Weighed with Dorothy and sloop; beat down with sea-breeze. Dr. Smith, poor fellow, dies, quite worn out; in some measure from his own imprudent treatment of himself, constantly refusing to follow the doctor's advice or to take any medicine; cold water was his only specific. He died without a groan. Mild, affable, and learned, it was his greatest pleasure to communicate information, and to receive it. He had conciliated the affections of all his fellow-passengers, and even of all the crews of both vessels. Anchored at dark, sloop not in sight. Hoisted a light, to be kept up all night.

"September 23rd.--At night buried the mortal remains of Dr. Smith, as silently as possible. No sloop in sight; very uneasy on account of the sick. Hot weather; sprinkled with vinegar; Tuckey much better. Sloop arrives; reason of not joining before, does not beat well.

"September 24th.--Cloudy morning; small rain. Dorothy sets up her rigging. Set sail on Dorothy, but she could not stem the current, which is very strong. The corporal, Middleton, is the only man out of the sick list.

"September 25th.--Cloudy morning; land breeze until noon. Two bottles of wine were stolen from the sick last night. Congo in sight, and schooner, the latter coming up the river; anchored here. Removed all the sick from the sloop to the Dorothy.

"September 26th.--Grey morning. Paid our blacks, and as soon as we weighed turned them adrift in the large canoe. Weighed and worked round Sharks' Point; felt quite happy when to the westward of it. On the 5th July we entered the Congo, and since then thirteen of our party have died and one has been drowned. Sick generally better; seventeen on the list. Tuckey hailed for assistance previous to our weighing; talks of giving up charge."

On September 30th Lieutenant Hawkey enters the death of Lethbridge and of Eyre.

On October 1st enters: "Taken very unwell myself--universal debility and slight headache.

"October 2nd.--Cloudy. Standing to the west all day. Very unwell.

"October 3rd.--Cloudy, with swell. Still very unwell. Swallow caught."

This is the last entry in the diary. On the day following Captain Tuckey died; and on October 6th Lieutenant Hawkey's own name was added to the fatal list of those who perished in this most disastrous expedition. In all eighteen died in the short space of less than three months during which they remained in the river, or within a few days after leaving it. Fourteen of these were of the party that had set out on the land journey above Juga; the other four were attacked on board the Congo; two had died on the passage out, and the sergeant of marines in the hospital at Bahia, making the total of deaths amount to twenty-one.

This great mortality is the more extraordinary, as it appears from Captain Tuckey's journal that nothing could have been finer than the climate: the atmosphere was remarkably dry, and scarcely a shower fell during the whole journey, and the sun for three or four days did not shine sufficiently to allow of an observation being taken.

It appears from the report of the assistant surgeon that the greater number were carried off by a violent intermittent fever; some of them appeared, however, to have had no other ailment than that caused by extreme exhaustion caused by the land journey. Some of the crew of the Congo died of the fever who never went above the cataracts; "but then," as the surgeon observes, "they were permitted to go on shore at liberty, where the day was passed in running about the country, and during the night lying in huts or in the open air."

The Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1817, gives a brief summary of the achievements of the expedition. "They arrived at the mouth of the Congo about the 3rd July, and leaving the transport, which only accompanied them an inconsiderable distance, they proceeded in the sloop, which was purposely built to draw little water, up the river to the extent of 120 miles, when her progress, and even that of the boats, was stopped by rapids. Determined still to prosecute the undertaking, the men landed, and it was not till they had marched 150 miles over a barren, mountainous country, and after experiencing the greatest privations from want of water, and being entirely exhausted by fatigue, that they gave up the attempt. Hope stayed them up till they reached the vessel, but they were so worn out that twenty-five out of the fifty-five died twenty-four hours after their return, comprehending all the scientific part of those who started, and only eight were left on board in a state fit to navigate the vessel."

That there is some inaccuracy in this account will be seen from what has preceded it.

The authority for the story of this unfortunate expedition is Sir John Barrow's edition of the narrative of the expedition, with the diary of Captain Tuckey, published in 1819; and Miss Charlotte Hawkey's Neota, privately printed in 1871.

DR. DANIEL LOMBARD

Lanteglos with Camelford is one of the richest livings in Cornwall. Lanteglos itself is nearly two miles from Camelford, and in this latter place there is neither a church nor a licensed chapel. A few scattered farms are about Lanteglos; and in Camelford, which is a market town, there is a population of 1370, left to be ministered to in holy things by dissenting ministers of many sects.

The rectory of Lanteglos lies in a valley, amidst luxuriant vegetation, and is altogether a very snug spot indeed.

In February, 1718, the Rev. Daniel Lombard was inducted into this living on the presentation of the Prince of Wales. He was a Frenchman, the son of a Huguenot pastor, who had fled from his native land on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Daniel had been placed in Merchant Taylors' School, and thence had passed to S. John's College, Oxford, where he had taken his degree of Doctor of Divinity, and he became chaplain to the Princess of Wales, and in 1714 published a sermon that he had preached before the Princess Sophia at Hanover. He spent a good deal of time in Germany, and there made the acquaintance of Mr. Gregor, of Trewarthenick, with whom in after life he maintained a lengthy correspondence, still extant.

From all accounts Dr. Lombard was learned on certain lines, but he was totally unacquainted with the ways of the world, utterly unsuited to be a parish priest, and lost completely in the isolation of Lanteglos, far from society in which he could shine; and speaking English badly with a foreign accent.

After his institution by the Bishop of Exeter to the livings of Lanteglos juxta Camelford and that of Advent, Dr. Lombard started off to reach his cure, mounted on one horse, and his servant on another, driving a third laden with such articles as appeared to him to be indispensable in a country where he supposed that nothing was procurable.

He rode in this manner along the highway past Launceston, inquiring everywhere, "Vere ish Landéglo juxtà Camélvore?" No one had heard of the place; after some consideration the rustics pointed due west. He must go on one or two days' journey more. He thus travelled through Camelford, still inquiring "Mais où donc est Landéglo juxtà Camélvore?"

"I know what he means," said some of those questioned; "the gentleman is seeking the Land's End."

And so he travelled on and ever on till he reached the Land's End, and only then discovered that he had passed through his cure without knowing it.

When at last he reached Lanteglos rectory, the woman who acted as housekeeper showed him with much pride a hen surrounded by a large brood of chickens. "Deare me!" exclaimed the Doctor. "'Ow can von liddle moder afford to give milk from her breast to soche a large familie?"

Seeing sheep with red ruddle on their fleeces, "Pore things!" said he. "'Ow 'ot dey do seem to be! Dey be red 'ot!"

He collected a tolerable library of books, and occupied himself with writing one work in French, a Dissertation on the Utility of History, introductory to strictures on certain histories that had been published by De Mezeray and the Père Daniel. But he also wrote in English A Succinct History of Ancient and Modern Persecutions, together with a short essay on Assassinations and Civil Wars, 1747.

He died at Camelford, December 14, 1746, and left his library for the use of his successor.

THE DREAM OF MR. WILLIAMS

John Williams, of Scorrier, was the son of Michael Williams, of Gwennap, and was born 23rd September, 1753. He was the most extensive mining adventurer in Cornwall.

On May 11, 1812, Mr. Perceval, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was shot in the evening, just as he entered the lobby of the House of Commons, by a man called Bellingham, who had concealed himself behind a door.

On that same night, Mr. Williams, of Scorrier, had three remarkable dreams, in each of which he saw the whole transaction as distinctly as if he had been present there in person.

His attested statement, relative to these dreams, was drawn up and signed by him in the presence of the Rev. Thomas Fisher and Mr. Chas. Prideaux Brune. This account, the original MS. signed by Mr. Williams, is preserved at Prideaux Place, Padstow. A very minute account of it found its way into the Times of the 28th August, 1828; another was furnished to Dr. Abercrombie derived from Mr. Williams himself, who detailed his experiences to a medical friend of the doctor, and this latter published this in his Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Power. This was republished by Dr. Clement Carlyon in Early Years and Late Reflections, 1836-41, together with another account by Mr. Hill, a barrister, grandson of Mr. John Williams, and which he had taken down from his grandfather's lips. All these accounts are practically identical. According to Dr. Abercrombie: "Mr. Williams dreamt that he was in the lobby of the House of Commons and saw a small man enter, dressed in a blue coat and white waistcoat. Immediately after he saw a man dressed in a brown coat with yellow basket buttons draw a pistol from under his coat and discharge it at the former, who instantly fell, the blood issuing from a wound a little below the left breast." According to Mr. Hill's account, "he heard the report of the pistol, saw the blood fly out and stain the waistcoat, and saw the colour of the face change." Dr. Abercrombie's authority goes on to state: "He saw the murderer seized by some gentlemen who were present, and observed his countenance, and in asking who the gentleman was who had been shot, he was told it was the Chancellor. He then awoke, and mentioned the dream to his wife, who made light of it." This wife was Catherine, daughter of Martin Harvey, of Killefreth, in Kenwyn, born in 1757.

We will now take the rest of the narrative from the account in the Times: "Mrs. Williams very naturally told him it was only a dream, and recommended him to be composed, and go to sleep as soon as he could. He did so, and shortly after woke her again, and said that he had the second time had the same dream; whereupon she observed he had been so much agitated by his former dream that she supposed it had dwelt on his mind, and begged him to try to compose himself and go to sleep, which he did. A third time the vision was repeated, on which, notwithstanding her entreaties that he would be quiet and endeavour to forget it, he arose, it being then between one and two o'clock, and dressed himself.

"At breakfast the dreams were the sole subject of conversation, and in the afternoon Mr. Williams went to Falmouth, where he related the particulars of them to all of his acquaintance that he met. On the following day, Mr. Tucker, of Trematon Castle, accompanied by his wife, a daughter of Mr. Williams, went to Scorrier House about dusk.

"Immediately after the first salutations on their entering the parlour, where were Mr., Mrs., and Miss Williams, Mr. Williams began to relate to Mr. Tucker the circumstances of his dream; and Mrs. Williams observed to her daughter, Mrs. Tucker, laughingly, that her father could not even suffer Mr. Tucker to be seated before he told him of his nocturnal visitation, on the statement of which he observed that it would do very well for a dream to have the (Lord) Chancellor in the lobby of the House of Commons, but he could not be found there in reality, and Mr. Tucker then asked what sort of a man he appeared to be, when Mr. Williams minutely described him, to which Mr. Tucker replied: 'Your description is not that of the Lord Chancellor, but it is certainly that of Mr. Perceval, the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and although he has been to me the greatest enemy I ever met in my life, for a supposed cause which had no foundation or truth (or words to that effect), I should be exceedingly sorry indeed to hear of his being assassinated, or of injury of the kind happening to him.'

"Mr. Tucker then inquired of Mr. Williams if he had ever seen Mr. Perceval, and was told that he had never seen him, nor had ever even written to him either on public or private business; in short, that he never had anything to do with him, nor had he ever been in the lobby of the House of Commons in his life.

"Whilst Mr. Williams and Mr. Tucker were still standing they heard a horse gallop to the door of the house, and immediately after Mr. Michael Williams, of Trevince (son of Mr. Williams, of Scorrier) entered the room, and said that he had galloped out of Truro (from which Scorrier is distant seven miles), having seen a gentleman there who had come by that evening's mail from London, who said that he had been in the lobby of the House of Commons on the evening of the 11th, when a man called Bellingham had shot Mr. Perceval, and that, as it might occasion some great ministerial changes, and might affect Mr. Tucker's political friends, he had come as fast as he could to make him acquainted with it, having heard at Truro that he had passed through that place on his way to Scorrier. After the astonishment which this intelligence created had a little subsided, Mr. Williams described most particularly the appearance and dress of the man that he saw in his dream fire the pistol, as he had before done of Mr. Perceval.

"About six weeks after, Mr. Williams, having business in town, went, accompanied by a friend, to the House of Commons, where, as has been already observed, he had never before been. Immediately that he came to the steps at the entrance to the lobby, he said: 'This place is as distinctly within my recollection in my dream as any in my house,' and he made the same observation when he entered the lobby. He there pointed out the exact spot where Bellingham stood when he fired, and which Mr. Perceval had reached when he was struck by the ball, and when and how he fell. The dress, both of Mr. Perceval and Bellingham, agreed with the description given by Mr. Williams, even to the most minute particulars."

Such is this well-authenticated story. It is worth notice that Mr. Williams saw the whole affair in dream thrice repeated long after the real event had taken place, and not by any means at the moment of the assassination. Some dreams that are well authenticated may have led to the conviction of murderers. But this did not; it was wholly useless; yet it is impossible to deny that it really occurred.

SIR ROBERT TRESILIAN

Sir Robert Tresilian, of Tresilian, in the parish of Newlyn, and by virtue of marriage with the heiress of Haweis also lord of Tremoderet in Duloe, was Lord Chief Justice of England and adviser to King Richard II; he accordingly drew upon himself the animosity of the King's uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. But he had also drawn upon his head the hatred of the commonalty by his "bloody circuit" after the insurrection of Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, and John Ball.

When Sir Robert Knollys had brought together a large force against the insurgents, the young King had forbidden him to slaughter them en masse, as he proposed, "For," said he, "I will have their blood in another way." And he had their blood by sending Chief Justice Tresilian among them, and, according to Holinshed, the number of executions amounted to 1500. At first they were beheaded; afterwards they were hanged and left on the gibbet to excite terror; but their friends cut down the bodies and carried them off; whereupon the King ordered that they should be hanged in strong iron chains; and this was the first instance of this barbarous and disgusting practice in England.

The King had promised the insurgent peasantry that serfage should be abolished, that liberty should be accorded to all to buy and sell in the markets, and that land should be let at fourpence an acre, that a general amnesty should be accorded. To all these he had acceded with charters signed and sealed; but so soon as the disturbances were over he repudiated his undertakings, and we cannot doubt that he did so at the advice of Tresilian, who pronounced them illegal.

Richard did, indeed, in the next Parliament, urge the abolition of villainage, but the proposal was coldly received, not pressed, and rejected. Moreover, on the occasion of his marriage with Anne of Bohemia, which took place soon after, a general amnesty was proclaimed.

The people were, however, disaffected. The imposition of a poll tax levied on rich and poor at the same sum on all over fifteen, and the scandalous manner in which it had been collected, had given general dissatisfaction, and it was, in fact, this which had roused Wat Tyler to march on London to obtain redress.

The King had surrounded himself with favourites, and his uncles were excluded from his council. The country was divided between the party of the King and that of the Duke of Gloucester. There is not the least reason to suppose that the latter had at heart the welfare of the people of England, any more than had the creatures who surrounded the King. The Duke was moved by resentment, pride, and ambition, and many believed that he aimed at the crown.

The chief favourites of Richard were Michael de la Pole, whom he created Earl of Suffolk, and Robert de Vere, a young and handsome man, who was made Marquis of Dublin, receiving, at the same time, the extraordinary grant of the whole revenue of Ireland, out of which he was to pay a yearly rent of five thousand marks to the King. He was soon after created Duke of Ireland. The other advisers of the King were Worth, Archbishop of York, Sir Simon Burley, and Sir Robert Tresilian. These certainly judged rightly when they opposed the prosecution of the war in France, and the subvention of the claims of the Duke of Lancaster to the Crown of Castile. The country was being drained of men and money in these profitless wars. But the nobles, headed by Thomas of Gloucester, opposed this policy, and naturally had the support of those who made money out of the wars. To defeat the plans of the council, Gloucester demanded the dismissal of Suffolk. The King petulantly answered that he would not at his command dismiss a scullion-boy from his kitchen. Suffolk was, however, impeached by the Commons for undue use of his influence, and the King was obliged to submit to the fining and imprisonment of his favourite. It was next proposed that a council should be appointed to reform the State. At this proposition Richard threatened to dissolve the Parliament. A member of the Commons thereupon moved that the statute deposing Edward II should be read, and the King was warned that death might be the penalty of a continued refusal. He yielded. The commission was appointed, and Gloucester and his friends, who formed the great majority, were masters of England. In yielding, Richard limited the duration of the commission to a year. The King was now twenty years of age, but he was reduced to as mere a cipher as when he was a boy of eleven.

In the month of August in the following year, 1387, acting under the advice of Tresilian, he assembled a council at Nottingham, and submitted to some of the judges who attended it this question--Whether the Commission of Government appointed by Parliament, and approved of under his own seal, were legal or illegal? Tresilian led the rest of the judges to certify that the commission was illegal, and that all those who had introduced the measure were liable to capital punishment; that all who supported it were by that act guilty of high treason; in short, that both Lords and Commons were traitors.

On the 11th November following the King returned to London, when he was alarmed by hearing that the Duke of Gloucester, the Earls of Arundel and Nottingham, the Constable, Admiral, and Marshal of England were approaching the capital at the head of forty thousand men. The decision of Tresilian and the judges and of the King had, in fact, forced them into rebellion, as it was pretty evident that Richard aimed at taking their lives.

So soon as Richard's cousin, the Earl of Derby, heard of the approach of Gloucester, he quitted the Court with the Earl of Warwick, went to Waltham Cross, and there joined him. The members of the Council of Eleven were there already. On Sunday, the 17th of November, the Duke entered London with an irresistible force and "appealed" of treason the Archbishop of York, De Vere, Duke of Ireland, De la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, Sir Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice of England, and Sir Nicolas Brember, Knight, a London grocer and Lord Mayor of London.

The favourites instantly took to flight. De la Pole, the condemned Chancellor, succeeded in reaching France, where he died soon after; De Vere, Duke of Ireland, got to the borders of Wales, where he raised an army, acting in concert with the King; it was resolved he should march to London. The Archbishop of York escaped to Flanders, where he spent the rest of his days as a village priest.

The fate of Chief Justice Tresilian must be told in the words of Sir John Froissart.

Richard had gone to Bristol to organize an army against the Duke of Gloucester, and De Vere, the Duke of Ireland, was with him there.

"While the army was collecting, the King and the Duke in secret conference, determined to send one of their confidential agents to London, to observe what was going forward, and if the King's uncles still remained there, to discover what they were doing. After some consultation, they could think of no proper person to send on this errand; when a knight who was cousin to the Duke, called Sir Robert Tresilian, stepped forth, and said to the Duke, 'I see the difficulty you have to find a trusty person to send to London; I, from love of you, will risk the adventure.' The King and the Duke, well pleased with the offer, thanked him for it. Tresilian left Bristol disguised as a poor tradesman, mounted on a wretched hackney. He continued his road to London, and lodged at an inn where he was unknown; for no man could have ever imagined that one of the King's counsellors and chamberlains would have appeared in so miserable a dress.

"When in London, he picked up all the news that was possible, for he could do no more, respecting the King's uncles and the citizens. Having heard that there was to be a meeting of the Dukes and their council at Westminster, he determined to go thither to learn secretly all he could of their proceedings. This he executed, and fixed his quarters at an ale-house right opposite the palace gate. He chose a chamber the window of which looked into the palace yard, where he posted himself to observe all who should come to this Parliament. The greater part he knew, but was not, from his disguise, known to them. He, however, remained there at different times, so long, that a squire of the Duke of Gloucester saw and recognized him, for he had been many times in his company. Sir Robert also at once recollected him, and withdrew from the window; but the squire, having his suspicions, said, 'Surely that must be Tresilian.' To be certain on this point, he entered the ale-house, and said to the landlady, 'Dame, tell me, on your troth, who is he that is drinking in the room above; he is alone and not in company.' 'On my troth, sir,' she replied, 'I cannot give you his name; but he has been here some time.' At these words, the squire went upstairs to know the truth, and having saluted Sir Robert, found he was right, though he dissembled by saying, 'God preserve you, master! I hope you will not take my coming amiss, for I thought you had been one of my farmers from Essex, as you are so very like him.' 'By no means,' said Sir Robert; 'I am from Kent, and hold lands of Sir John Holland, and wish to lay my complaints before the Council against the tenants of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who encroach much on my farm.' 'If you will come into the hall,' said the squire, 'I will have way made for you to lay your grievances before the lords.' 'Many thanks,' replied Sir Robert; 'not at this moment, but I shall not renounce your assistance.' At the words the squire ordered a quart of ale, and having paid for it, he said, 'God be with you!' and left the ale-house.

"He lost no time in hastening to the council-chamber, and called to the usher to open the door. The usher, knowing him, asked his business. He said, 'he must instantly speak with the Duke of Gloucester, on matters that mainly concerned him and the council.' The usher, on this, bade him enter, which he did, and made up to the Duke of Gloucester, saying, 'My lord, I will tell it aloud; for it concerns not you only but all the lords present. I have seen Sir Robert Tresilian, disguised as a peasant, in an ale-house close by the palace gate.' 'Tresilian!' exclaimed the Duke. 'On my faith, my lord, it is true; and you will have him to dine with, if you please.' 'I should like it much,' replied the Duke; 'for he will tell us some news of his master, the Duke of Ireland. Go, and secure him; but with power enough not to be in danger of failing.'

"The squire on these orders, left the council-chamber, and having chosen four bailiffs, said to them, 'Follow me at a distance; and so soon as you shall perceive me make you a sign to arrest a man I am in search of, lay hands on him, and take care he do not, on any account, escape.' The squire made for the ale-house where he had left Sir Robert, and, mounting the staircase to the room where he was, said, on entering: 'Tresilian, you are not come to this country for any good, as I imagine; my Lord of Gloucester sends me for you, and you must come and speak with him.' The knight turned a deaf ear, and would have been excused by saying, 'I am not Tresilian, but a tenant of Sir John Holland.'

"'That is not true,' replied the squire; 'your body is Tresilian's, though not your dress.' And, making a sign to the bailiffs, who were at the door, they entered the house and arrested him, and, whether he would or not, carried him to the palace. You may believe, there was a great crowd to see him; for he was well known in London, and in many parts of England.

"The Duke of Gloucester was much pleased, and would see him. When in his presence, the Duke said: 'Tresilian, what has brought you hither? How fares my Sovereign? Where does he now reside?' Tresilian, finding that he was discovered, and that no excuses would avail, replied: 'On my faith, my lord, the King has sent me hither to learn the news. He is in Bristol, and on the banks of the Severn, where he hunts and amuses himself.'

"'How!' said the Duke, 'You do not come dressed as an honest man, but like a spy. If you had been desirous to learn what was passing, your appearance should have been like that of a knight or a decent person.' 'My lord,' answered Tresilian, 'if I have done wrong, I hope you will excuse me, for I have only done what I was bid.' 'And where is your master, the Duke of Ireland?' 'My lord,' said Tresilian, 'he is with the King, my lord.' The Duke then added: 'We have been informed that he is collecting a large body of men, and that the King has issued his summons to that effect. Whither does he mean to lead them?' 'My lord, they are indeed for Ireland.' 'For Ireland!' said the Duke. 'Yes, indeed, as God may help me,' answered Tresilian.

"The Duke mused awhile, and then spoke: 'Tresilian, Tresilian, your actions are neither fair nor honest. You have committed a great piece of folly in coming to these parts, where you are far from being loved, as will shortly be shown to you. Yes, and others of your faction have done what has greatly displeased my brother and myself, and have ill-advised the King, whom you have stirred up to quarrel with his chief nobility. In addition, you have excited the principal towns against us. The day of retribution is therefore come, when you shall receive payment; for whoever acts unjustly receives his reward. Look to your affairs, for I will neither eat nor drink till you be no more.'

"This speech greatly terrified Sir Robert (for no one likes to hear of his end) by the manner in which it was uttered. He was desirous to obtain pardon, by various excuses, and the most abject humiliation, but in vain. The Duke had received information of what was going on at Bristol, and his excuses were frivolous. Why should I make a long story? Sir Robert was delivered to the hangman, who led him out to the place of execution, where he was beheaded, and then hung by the arms to a gibbet. Thus ended Sir Robert Tresilian."

PIRATE TRELAWNY

Edward John Trelawny, a younger son of Charles Brereton Trelawny, came into this world on the 2nd or 3rd of November, but in what year is not certain. It is said that he was born in 1792, but either this is a wrong date, or else Colonel Vivian, in his Visitations of Cornwall, errs, for he gives that year as the one in which Harry Brereton Trelawny, the eldest son, was born. Charles Brereton Trelawny was the son of Harry Trelawny, a lieutenant-general in the army and Governor of Landguard Fort.

Of his father, Edward John entertained no favourable opinion. "My father, notwithstanding his increased fortune, did not increase his expenditure; nay, he established, if possible, a stricter system of economy. The only symptom he ever showed of imagination was castle-building; but his fabrications were founded on a more solid basis than is usually to be met with among the visions of day-dreamers. No unreal mockery of fairy scenes of bliss found a resting-place in his bosom. Ingots, money, lands, houses, and tenements constituted his dreams. He became a mighty arithmetician by the aid of a ready reckoner, his pocket companion; he set down to a fraction the sterling value of all his and his wife's relations, the heirs at law, their nearest of kin, their ages, and the state of their constitutions. The insurance table was examined to calculate the value of their lives; to this he added the probable chances arising from diseases, hereditary and acquired, always forgetting his own gout. He then determined to regulate his conduct accordingly; to maintain the most friendly intercourse with his wealthy connexions, and to keep aloof from the poor ones. Having no occasion to borrow, his aversion to lending amounted to antipathy. The distrust and horror he expressed at the slightest allusion to loans, unbacked by security and interest, had the effect of making the most imprudent and adventurous desist from essaying him, and continue in their necessities, or beg, or rob, or starve, in preference to urging their wants to him.

"It was his custom to appropriate a room in the house to the conservation of those things he loved--choice wines, foreign preserves, cordials. This sanctum was a room on the ground floor, under a skylight. Our next-door neighbours' pastime happened to be a game of balls, when one of them lodged on the leaded roof of this consecrated room. Two of my sisters, of the ages of fourteen and sixteen, ran from the drawing-room back window to seek for the ball, and slipping on the leads, the younger fell through the skylight on to the bottles and jars upon the table below. She was dreadfully bruised, and her hands, legs and face were cut, so much so, that she still retains the scars. Her sister gave the alarm. My mother was called; she went to the door of the store-room; her child screamed out, for God's sake to open the door; she was bleeding to death. My mother dared not break the lock, as my father had prohibited any one from entering this, his blue chamber; and what was worse, he had the key. Other keys were tried, but none could open the door. Had I been there, my foot should have picked the lock. Will it be believed that, in that state, my sister was compelled to await my father's return from the House of Commons, of which he was a member? At last, when he returned, my mother informed him of the accident, and tried to allay the wrath which she saw gathering on his brow. He took no notice of her, but paced forward to the closet, when the delinquent, awed by his dreadful voice, hushed her sobs. He opened the door and found her there, scarcely able to stand, trembling and weeping. Without speaking a word, he kicked and cuffed her out of the room, and then gloomily decanted what wine remained in the broken bottles."

The mother of Edward John was Maria, sister of Sir Christopher Hawkins, of Trewithen.

That a high-spirited, self-willed, passionate boy like Edward John should get on with such a father was antecedently improbable; and he was sent to sea at the age of twelve in the Superb, and had the ill fortune to miss the battle of Trafalgar, through Admiral Duckworth delaying three days at Plymouth to victual his ships with mutton and potatoes.

"Young as I was, I shall never forget our falling in with the Pickle schooner off Trafalgar, carrying the first despatches of the battle and death of its hero. Her commander, burning with impatience to be the first to convey the news to England, was compelled to heave to and come on board us. Captain Keates received him on deck, and when he heard the news I was by his side. Silence reigned throughout the ship; some great event was anticipated. The officers stood in groups, watching with intense anxiety the two commanders, who walked apart. 'Battle,' 'Nelson,' 'ships,' were the only audible words which could be gathered from their conversation. I saw the blood rush into Keates's face; he stamped the deck, walked hurriedly, and spoke with passion. I marvelled, for I had never before seen him much moved; he had appeared cool, firm, and collected on all occasions, and it struck me that some awful event had taken place, or was at hand. The Admiral was still in his cabin, eager for news from the Nelson fleet. He was an irritable and violent man, and after a few minutes, swelling with wrath, he sent an order to Keates, who possibly heard it not, but staggered along the deck, struck to the heart by the news, and, for the first time in his life, forgot his respect to his superior in rank; muttering, as it seemed, curses on his fate that, by the Admiral's delay, he had not participated in the most glorious battle in naval history. Another messenger enforced him to descend in haste to the Admiral, who was high in rage and impatience.

"Keates, for I followed him, on entering the Admiral's cabin said in a subdued voice, as if he were choking, 'A great battle has been fought, two days ago, off Trafalgar. The combined fleets of France and Spain are annihilated, and Nelson is no more!' He then murmured, 'Had we not been detained we should have been there.'

"Duckworth answered not, conscience-struck, but stalked the deck. He seemed ever to avoid the look of his captain, and turned to converse with the commander of the schooner, who replied in sulky brevity, 'Yes' or 'No.' Then, dismissing him, he ordered all sail to be set, and walked the quarter-deck alone. A death-like stillness pervaded the ship, broken at intervals by the low murmurs of the crew and officers, when 'battle' and 'Nelson' could alone be distinguished. Sorrow and discontent were painted on every face.

"On the following morning we fell in with a portion of the victorious fleet. It was blowing a gale, and they lay wrecks on the sea. Our Admiral communicated with them, and then, joining Collingwood, had six sail of the line put under his command, with orders to pursue that part of the enemy's fleet which had escaped; and I joined the ship to which I was appointed. It is unnecessary to dwell on the miseries of a cockpit life: I found it more tolerable than my school, and little worse than my home."

When paid off he was sent under a Scotch captain, who treated him badly, and then he was in another vessel and resolved to desert the service. This he did at Bombay. So far we can trust what Trelawny has given us in that remarkable book Adventures of a Younger Son; but from this point on he romances, but romances with an air of reality. It is not possible to discriminate fact from fiction in what follows. Undoubtedly Pirate Trelawny started on his memoirs with the intent of writing his autobiography, but he was inordinately vain, and delighted in posturing as a hero and in describing marvellous adventures through which he passed, heightening them sensationally with wonderful skill.

What seems probable is that, after deserting from the navy, he was for a while in the merchant service, and then joined a privateer cruising in the India seas. As Mr. E. Garnett well says, "the Younger Son is an excellent stage hero by the finish; he meets and overcomes all odds; it is truly a glorious Trelawny--the Trelawny of his own imagination."

He states that he was married when he was twenty-one, and that the marriage took place in England, so that he must have returned home somewhere about 1813. But we really know nothing authentic of his movements till 1822, when he was in England, and thence went to Italy, where he made acquaintance with Lord Byron and with Shelley. After the lamentable death of the latter poet he attended at the cremation of the body. Thence he went with Byron to Greece in the Hercules, to aid the Greeks against the Turks. They arrived at Cephalonia, off the west coast, in the beginning of August, 1823, and there Lord Byron resolved on staying till he could ascertain how things were progressing in Greece and decide on his future course of action. This delay did not at all suit the impetuosity of the character of Trelawny, who called it dawdling, and set forward for the mainland in company with Hamilton Browne, making his way to the seat of the Greek Government. He also sent emissaries to England to endeavour to raise a loan, and then proceeded to Athens. Here the insurgent leader Odysseus was in command, and to his fortunes Trelawny at once attached himself, and married the sister of the Greek chieftain.

Major Temple, resident at Santa Maura, during his mission to the Morea in June, 1824, met Odysseus, and described him as "a perfect Albanian chieftain--savage in manners and appearance, of great muscular strength, and about six feet high."

He had his head-quarters in a huge cavern in the face of the limestone precipices of Mount Parnassus, which he had strongly fortified, and in this he kept his treasure that he had accumulated and lodged his family. In the meantime dissension had broken out among the Greeks, between the leaders of the bands that did all the fighting, under Kolokotroni, and the Executive Government that had been elected by the primates, at the head of which stood Mavrocordato. A complete rupture had ensued at the end of 1823 between the parties, and the guerilla chieftains absolutely refused obedience to the Provisional Government.

In the same winter of 1823-4 Trelawny accompanied Odysseus as aide-de-camp upon an expedition into Negropont, and on their return to Athens, where Colonel Stanhope then was, Trelawny sent a letter to his mother, of which the following is an extract:--

"ATHENS, 18th February, 1824.

"DEAR MOTHER,--I am enabled to keep twenty-five followers, Albanian soldiers, with whom I have joined the most enterprising of the Greek captains and most powerful--Ulysses. I am much with him, and have done my best during the winter campaign, in which we have besieged Negropont, to make up for the many years of idleness I have led. I am now in my element, and the energy of my youth is reawakened. I have clothed myself in the Albanian costume and sworn to uphold the cause.

"Everything here is going on as well as heart can wish. Great part of Greece is already emancipated. The Morea is free, and we are making rapid progress to the westward. Lord Byron spends £5000 a year in the cause and maintains five hundred soldiers. This will in the eyes of the world redeem the follies of youth.

"Your affectionate son, "EDWARD TRELAWNY."

Trelawny and Odysseus desired to get Lord Byron to be with them, but this plan was frustrated by the death of the poet on April 19th, 1824.

Colonel Stanhope proposed a congress of the civil and military leaders, so as to effect a reconciliation between the two embittered elements that were weakening the resistance against the common enemy, the Turk. Odysseus consented to attend this meeting at Salona, and Trelawny also agreed to be present. Mavrocordato looked on Trelawny with suspicion as intimate with Odysseus and as his brother-in-law, and he foisted upon him an English spy named Fenton, and an accomplice of the name of Whitcombe, with secret instructions to make away with him.

After returning from Salona, Trelawny was with Odysseus in Eastern Greece, carrying on the war in guerilla fashion without any great results.

In the autumn he was at Argos, whence a letter (certainly his, though unsigned) was sent to his brother Lieutenant Harry Trelawny, R.N.

"... To give you an idea of the misery existing here is beyond all expression. The town is nothing more or less than a chaos of ruins; not a house inhabitable. The fever making great havoc, people actually falling down in the streets. The stench of the place is so great I am obliged to remove my quarters to the once famous Argos, not more than an hour's walk from Agamemnon's tomb, which I have not yet seen. The scenery is beautiful; perfectly romantic. I am now living in a house without doors or windows, every man armed.

"The Commissioners are both sick. Mr. Bulwer has proposed to raise a body of fifty men, but I am afraid it will all evaporate in smoke, like all his undertakings here. I am much afraid nothing is to be done: they look on all foreigners as intruders. Many of the French have behaved most shamefully, but, as I told you before, I will exert every effort. All my hopes are placed in Colonel Gordon's arrival.

"YOUR BROTHER."

* * * * *

The Commissioners referred to were Henry Lytton Bulwer (Lord Dalling) and J. H. Browne, sent out by the Greek Committee in London, when it was too late, to ascertain whether the Greek Provisional Government was sufficiently firmly established, and sufficiently trustworthy, to warrant the paying over to it of that part of the loan raised in England on their behalf not already advanced. The loan was of £800,000, but from this 56.4 per cent was deducted, so that the whole amount to be forwarded to the Greek Government would be only £348,000.

Odysseus was beset with difficulties, as the Provisional Government refused to furnish him with men or money. Trelawny made vain attempts to raise funds.

Ultimately Odysseus made a truce for three months with Omer Pasha, of Negropont, but being regarded with suspicion on both sides, he endeavoured to make his escape, and left Trelawny in charge of the cave and its contents. It was at this time that Fenton, the hired spy, in May, 1825, made the attempt to assassinate Trelawny. He took the opportunity when Trelawny's back was towards him to shoot him.

Odysseus was compelled to surrender to the Government, was carried off to Athens, where he was strangled by order of Mavrocordato.

Trelawny's wounds were so dangerous that he suffered for three months before he could be said to have recovered, and he then escaped from the cavern and landed in Cephalonia in September, 1825, bringing his Albanian wife with him. During the next two years he was engaged in a lawsuit about his wife, whom he treated with brutality, so that she left him and retired to a convent, with purpose ultimately to proceed to Paxo, where lived her sister. Whilst in the convent she was delivered of a child which she sent to Trelawny to be put out to nurse, as they objected in the convent to have the infant there. Trelawny sent it to a woman who undertook to rear it, but it died, whereupon, as Mr. H. Robinson of Zante wrote to Toole on 22nd November, 1827, "he sent the dead body to the Castle Monastery, where she (his wife) was, in a box with her things and a message from him. The wife knew not what was in the box and refused to open it, and there it lay until putrid.

"An examination took place with all the fuss which the courts make about suspicione d'infanticido, and ended by T. being fined two dollars for improperly removing a dead body."

In or about the month of July, 1829, Signora Trelawny made petition to the Lord High Commissioner to the following effect:--

"It is perhaps known to Your Excellency that at about the age of thirteen I was given in marriage to Signor Trelawny, my family urging that I should live happily with one brought up in the courtesy and good-breeding of his country; but, as my experience proved, he failed to treat me with that consideration and nobility of character which distinguish the men of his nation. The nature of the long-continued treatment which I have had to endure at the hands of the said Signor Trelawny is not unknown, and at the last, it is perhaps within Your Excellency's recollection that he brought grief to my very eyes by sending me while in the convent, with cunning and brutality, the dead body of my daughter and his."

She then stated that Zante had become lonely for her, as her brothers and mother had gone to Greece. She wanted to go to Paxo to her sister, but the custom of Zante obliged a wife separated from her husband to live in a convent.

She continued: "I venture humbly to ask Your Excellency if, being the wife of an Englishman, I ought to be subject to the custom of the island in which I chance to find myself a resident. Should an Englishwoman be subjected to such treatment as I am?... I promise Your Excellency that, in whatever place or situation I find myself, I will conduct myself always as is proper for the wife of an English gentleman; and though he himself may be wanting in dignity of behaviour, I will do neither him nor myself the dishonour of imitating him.

"TERSITZA PHILIPPA TRELAWNY."

* * * * *

This petition and the letter of Mr. Robinson suffice to show that the story of Trelawny sending his dead child in a box to its mother is not to be rejected as a fable, as it has been by the author of the notice on Edward John Trelawny in the Dictionary of National Biography.[27] The poor unfortunate girl, then aged seventeen, obtained a separation from her husband a mensa et thoro, by a sentence of the Ecclesiastical Court, and by definitive sentences of the courts of law in Zante and Corfu she was entitled to an aliment from her husband of twenty-five dollars a month, for the payment of which Mr. Barff, the banker of Zante, and Mr. Stevens, of Corfu, were securities. But this was the result of much litigation, causing Trelawny annoyance and angering him to the last degree.

In the autumn of 1828 he visited England, but returned to the Continent in the spring of the following year, feeling out of his element at home. "To whom am I a neighbour?" he wrote, "and near whom? I dwell amongst tame and civilized human beings with somewhat the same feelings as we may guess the lion feels when, torn from his native wildness, he is tortured into domestic intercourse with what Shakespeare calls 'forked animals,' the most abhorrent to his nature." He rambled about; set up a harem in Athens, bought a Moorish girl to be his concubine, wrote his Adventures of a Younger Son, and sent the MS. in 1830 to Mrs. Shelley, and it was published in three volumes in 1831, with some excisions of grossness and licentiousness, which the publisher insisted on having removed. As already said, no reliance can be placed on this autobiography as a narrative of the facts of his life, except only of his boyhood, for, as Lord Byron said of Trelawny, "he could not speak the truth even if he wished to do so."

When the book appeared, the Athenæum considered the hero--Trelawny himself--"a kind of ruffian from his birth," as he had painted himself, leaving out the villainies and brutalities of which he had been guilty.

He was thrice married, and behaved badly to all three wives. He could not be faithful and generous even to his friends. With Byron he had been most intimate, yet when Byron died he wrote to Mary Shelley: "It is well for his name, and better for Greece, that Byron is dead.... I now feel my face burn with shame that so weak and ignoble a soul could so long have influenced me. It is a degrading reflection, and ever will be. I wish he had lived a little longer, that he might have witnessed how I would have soared above him here, how I would have triumphed over his mean spirit." Trelawny soaring!--as a vulture only in quest of carrion.

And when, in 1858, he published his Recollections of Shelley and Byron, thirty-four years after the death of the latter, he painted Byron in the harshest colours; and one can hardly escape feeling that this was prompted by jealousy of the esteem in which the world held Byron for his genius. He himself possessed all the bad qualities that he despised in Byron, but did not recognize in himself the superadded brutality which Byron was too much a gentleman to show.

Even Mrs. Shelley, a lifelong friend and correspondent, to whom he had often poured out his heart, and whom he had contemplated at one time marrying, could not be spoken of by him after her death but in disparagement and with a revelation to the world of her little weaknesses.

He was in England again in 1835, went into society, and married for the third time, to make another woman miserable. For a number of years he lived at Putney Hill, and then took a farm at Usk, in Monmouthshire, and amused himself with farming.

In or about 1870, Trelawny, then seventy-eight years old, bought a house and a small plot of land at Sompting, near Wortham, and occupied himself with gardening. One day two men with guns in their hands requested permission to enter his grounds after a bird that had taken refuge there. He answered fiercely, "All the leave I will accord you is to shoot one another."

At Sompting, Trelawny died on August 13th, 1881, at the age of eighty-six. In accordance with his wish to be laid beside Shelley, his body was embalmed in England, cremated at Gotha, and the ashes taken to the Protestant burial-ground in Rome, and laid in the tomb he had bought fifty-eight years before, next to those of his friend.

Trelawny was a very handsome man, tall and well built; he had flashing dark eyes under beetling brows, and an aquiline nose, raven-black hair, and a dusky, Spanish complexion. He spoke very loud. He retained his good looks to the end of his days.

Shelley described him in Fragments of an Unfinished Drama:--

He was as is the sun in his fierce youth, As terrible and lovely as a tempest.

In Millais' painting of "The North-West Passage," exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1874, the old sailor is a portrait of Captain Trelawny; and it has been conjectured that Thackeray delineated him as Captain Sumph in Pendennis, I, cap. 35.

The authorities for Trelawny's life are, beside the first part of his Adventures of a Younger Son, his Recollections of Shelley and Byron, 1858; the new edition of the work, published in 1878, was called Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author.

Mr. R. Garnett has a notice of the life of Trelawny prefixed to the edition of the Adventures of a Younger Son of 1890. A lengthy life of Trelawny is in the Dictionary of National Biography. An error in this is pointed out by Mr. T. C. Down in the article on "Pirate Trelawny" already referred to and quoted from.

A pleasant account of "Mr. Trelawny and his Friends" appeared in the Contemporary Review for 1878.

Something further about him may be gleaned from Frances A. Kemble's Records of a Girlhood, 1878, III, 75, 308-12. There are corrections of some of Trelawny's inaccuracies in D. Guido Biagi's The Last Days of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1898.

FOOTNOTE:

[27] See for the above and more on the subject of "Pirate Trelawny" an article by T. C. Down in the Nineteenth Century, May, 1907.Return to passage

JAMES SILK BUCKINGHAM

Mr. S. C. Hall, writing after the death of J. S. Buckingham, thus expressed his opinion of this truly remarkable man: "Whatever, during his life, envy, jealousy, monopolous interest or satirical hostility may have said to the contrary, there can be little doubt, now he is gone, that the late Mr. James Silk Buckingham was amongst the most useful as well as the most hopeful and industrious men of his time. His career was one remarkable illustration of the well-known line of the old song, 'It's wonderful what we can do if we try'; for at almost every step he took he was met by some disaster or annoyance, yet kept pressing on with the most dauntless persistence, making the best of the worst circumstances, and even when failing in his own personal endeavours, giving such an impulse to the powers of others in whatever cause or course he had engaged, that the end in view was generally attained, and in several notable instances within the period of his own life."

The Buckinghams were a North Devon family, and the grandfather of the subject of this notice had lived in Barnstaple. For several generations they had been connected with the sea. Christopher Buckingham settled at Flushing on a small farm, along with his wife Thomazine, daughter of a Hambley of Bodmin.

James Silk describes his father as wearing a cocked hat, long, square-tailed coat with large pockets and sleeves, square-toed shoes with silver buckles, and as walking abroad carrying a tall, gold-headed cane.

James Silk was born at Flushing on the 25th August, 1786. He had two brothers and a sister. His father died in 1794.

"The port of Falmouth," wrote he in his unfinished memoirs, "being nearest to the entrance of the Channel, there were permanently stationed here two squadrons of frigates, one under the command of Sir Edward Pellew (afterwards Lord Exmouth), the other under the command of Sir John Borlase Warren. The former, as commodore, hoisted his pennant on the Indefatigable, the latter on the Révolutionaire. Each squadron consisted of five frigates of thirty-two and forty-four guns each; and, in addition to these, there were continually arriving and departing from Carrick Roads, the outer anchorage of Falmouth, line-of-battle ships and smaller vessels of war; while the prizes taken from the French were constantly brought into the port for adjudication and sale. There were two large prisons, with open courts, for the reception of the French prisoners thus taken, and every month added many to their inmates.

"Both the naval commodores, as well as such captains of the frigates belonging to the squadrons as were married, had their families residing at Flushing, and the numerous officers of different grades, from the youngest midshipman to the first lieutenant, were continually coming and going to and fro ... so that the little village literally sparkled with gold epaulets and gold-laced hats and brilliant uniforms."

He tells a curious story of his childhood. Corn, owing to the war, had mounted to famine price, and the miners of Cornwall went about in gangs waging war against all forestallers, regraters, and hoarders of grain, and demolishing bakers' shops, mills, and grain stores.

"A body of some three or four hundred of these men entered Flushing, and as they were all dressed in the mud-stained smock frocks and trousers in which they worked underground, all armed with large clubs and sticks of various kinds, and speaking an uncouth jargon, which none but themselves could understand, they struck terror wherever they went. Their numbers were quite equal to the whole adult male population of the little village, so that the men stood aghast, the women retired into their houses, and closed their doors, and the children seemed struck dumb with affright. The moment of their visit, too, was most inopportune, for on that very day a large party of the captains and officers of the packets residing at Flushing were occupied in storing a cargo of grain that had just been discharged from a coasting vessel at the quay, and locking it up in warehouses to secure it from plunder."

At this time it happened that all the ships of war were absent on their cruising grounds. The situation was dangerous, and the men threatened an attack on the warehouses, and were muttering and brandishing their clubs, and falling into ranks, when Captain Kempthorne snatched up little James Silk, then an urchin of six or seven, seated him on a sack of corn, and bade him strike up a hymn.

With his shrill little pipe, he started--

Salvation, O! the joyful sound, 'Tis music to our ears.

Whereupon at once the mob took up the chant, sang the hymn, with their strong masculine lungs; the clubs were let fall, and, the hymn ended, they dispersed harmlessly.

James Silk went to sea in the Lady Harriet, a Government packet. On his third voyage to Lisbon he was captured by a French corvette and assigned to prison at Corunna; he was then about ten years old, and the gaoler's daughter of the same age fell in love with him, and softened the rigour of his captivity by bringing him dainties from her father's table. She tried to induce the boy to elope with her, but James had sufficient English common sense not to accept the offer, and finally he was sent to Lisbon, obliged to tramp the whole way, several hundred miles, barefooted, and begging food and a lodging on his way. At Lisbon he was taken on board the Prince of Wales, and returned to England, where his mother induced him to leave the sea, and provided him with a small stationer's and bookseller's shop on the Fish Strand, Falmouth. His mother died in 1804, and when James Silk was aged only nineteen he married Elizabeth Jennings, a farmer's daughter. He got tired of being a shopkeeper and volunteered on board a man-of-war; but on seeing a seaman flogged round the fleet for mutiny, was so disgusted with the sight that he deserted, and started a bookshop at Plymouth Dock. However one of the trustees of his wife's inheritance had speculated with the money in smuggling ventures and lost all, so that J. S. Buckingham became bankrupt. He went to sea again, and was appointed chief officer on board the Titus, bound for Trinidad, Captain Jennings, perhaps a kinsman of his wife.

At the age of twenty-two he became commander of a vessel, and made several voyages to the West Indies and in the Mediterranean. In these latter he rapidly acquired a knowledge of and even fluency in speech in French, Italian, Greek, and Arabic, and this determined him to undertake mercantile life at Malta; but the plague having broken out there in 1818, he was prevented from landing, and resolved to try his fortune at Smyrna, but was unsuccessful. He then went to Alexandria, and thence to Cairo, where he made the acquaintance and gained the esteem of Mahomet Ali, then Pasha of Egypt.

He now formed the scheme of connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean by a canal, and for this purpose surveyed the Isthmus of Suez and convinced himself that the cutting of such a waterway was quite feasible, and that such a connection would be of enormous advantage to English trade with India. He laid his plans before Mahomet Ali. "No sooner had the idea of renewing the ancient commerce between India and the Mediterranean by way of the Red Sea taken possession of my mind," wrote Buckingham, "than I began to think how much this would be facilitated by the juncture of the two seas by a navigable canal; and I bent all my thoughts to the object." But Mahomet Ali would not hear of the project. He shrewdly asked, "Whose ships would mostly use the canal?"

"The English vessels assuredly."

"Ah! and then the English would begin to think how nice it would be to have Egypt so as to secure the passage. I am not going to sharpen the knife that would cut my own throat."

The Pasha had a plan of his own; he had purchased two beautiful American brigs then in the harbour of Alexandria, and he proposed arming them and sending them round the Cape of Good Hope into the Red Sea, for he desired to open up a trade with Egypt from India. But Buckingham pointed out to him that he could not do this without great risk of losing them, as the East India Company had supreme command of all the Indian Ocean eastward of the Cape, and would seize and confiscate all vessels found in those seas without their licence, French and Portuguese vessels alone excepted.

James S. Buckingham now ascended the Nile beyond the cataracts to Nubia, but was there seized with ophthalmic blindness. To add to his distress, on his way to Kosseir he was attacked in the desert by a band of mutineers of the army of the Pasha, who plundered and left him entirely naked on the barren waste, many miles from any village, food, or water; and even when he reached Kosseir, he was obliged to retrace his steps, as the vessel which should have conveyed him forward had been seized by the mutineers.

Buckingham next occupied himself with an endeavour to master the hydrography of the Red Sea, visiting every part in the costume of a Bedouin Arab.

The Pasha now proposed to him that he should go to India and sound the merchants there as to establishing a through trade to Europe by the Red Sea, and a Company of Anglo-Egyptian merchants took the matter up with zest. But on his proceeding to Bombay he found that the proposition was coldly received.

Whilst there, in May, 1815, Buckingham had the offer of the command of the Humayoon Shah, a vessel built at the Portuguese port of Damann, north of Bombay, by the Imaum of Muscat, for trade with China. The retiring captain, named Richardson, in three successive voyages had cleared £30,000, and the situation had been sought by several of the marine officers of the East India Company. When these disappointed men heard that Buckingham had secured the appointment, they were angry, and applied to the Company to eject him from India and close every port there in their power against him. This they did by refusing him a licence to remain in India.

The British Government, in granting a charter of exclusive trade to India and China to the East India Company, gave that Company thereby a right to expel from their dominions all British-born subjects who had not their licence to reside there, this being deemed necessary to protect them from the competition of "interlopers" as they were called, who might undersell them in their own markets. But though the British Government might thus condemn all the twenty million of its own native-born subjects to this state of ignominious dependence on the will or caprice of a handful of monopolists, a body of some twenty-four directors only--in whose hands lay the power of granting licences or banishing those who did not possess them--it could not authorize the exercise of such powers against the natives of any foreign state; consequently James Silk Buckingham was advised to become nationalized as an American citizen, in which case the East India Company would be powerless to expel him.

In point of fact, the case stood thus: all foreigners who had no natural claim on India as a part of their dominions might visit it freely and reside and trade in it as long as they pleased, without licence from its rulers; whereas British-born subjects, who had contributed by their payment of taxes to support the very Government that made the charter, were unjustly excluded, although the conquest of India had been made by British blood and British treasure, and the country was still held under the British flag. In short, all foreigners were free men there, and the freeborn Englishman alone was a slave.

Buckingham so felt the iniquity of this system that later, when he came to England, he agitated and wrote against the continuance of the charter.

Buckingham returned to Egypt and occupied himself with making a chart of the Red Sea. But the Anglo-Egyptian merchants, not relishing their defeat by the East India Company, entered into a compact with Mahomet Ali to send Buckingham to India as his envoy and representative; and as such the Company could not refuse to allow him to reside there. Accordingly, habited as a Mussulman, turbaned and long-robed, with his speaking eye, jovial face, and dark, flowing beard, he looked every inch of him a true-born Oriental, and his extraordinary knowledge of various languages stood him in good stead as he made his way overland to India, by Palestine and Bagdad. Proceeding still on his course, he entered Persia, crossed the chain of the Zagros, and embarked at Bushir in a man-of-war of the East India Company that was bound on an expedition against some Wahabee pirates in the Persian Gulf, and going ashore at Ras el Khyma, acted as interpreter to Captain Brydges, Commander of the Squadron, assisted in bombarding the town, and then proceeded to Bombay, which he reached after a journey of twelve months. But his mission was again unsuccessful; either the Bombay merchants had no confidence in the Egyptian Government, or they were jealous of any interference with their own line of trade.

Now, however, the Company's licence reached him, authorizing him to remain in their territories, and he regained the appointment to the vessel Humayoon Shah, in the service of the Imaum of Muscat, and he remained navigating the Eastern waters till Midsummer, 1818, when, having received commands from the Imaum to proceed to the coast of Zanzibar, on a slaving expedition, he threw up his engagement, worth £4000 per annum, rather than be implicated in such a nefarious trade.

Buckingham next became proprietor and editor of the Calcutta Mirror, a Liberal paper, that instantly obtained an extensive sale, and brought in to its founder a net profit of £8000 a year. But his resolute advocacy of Free Trade, free settlement, and free Press, and an exposure of the misdoings of the East India Company, brought down on him the heavy hand of Mr. John Adams, the temporary Governor-General. His paper was suppressed, and he was ordered to quit Calcutta. His little fortune was sacrificed in a vain attempt to fight the Governor and the Company, and he was thrown back on the world, almost as poor, save in experience, as when a youth he trudged from Corunna to Lisbon. He left his magnificent library at Calcutta, in the hopes of being able to return, after having obtained redress at home. But the redress he hoped for never came. Too many interests were involved to accord it to him, and his library, like his fortune and his hopes, was wrecked.

It was not till after many dreary years, that the East India Company, under pressure from the Government, could be induced, as an indemnity for the wrongs done him, to accord him an annuity of £200, in addition to one of the like amount awarded him by the British Government, "in consideration of his literary works, and useful travels in various countries," September 1st, 1851. "Pompey and Cæsar berry much alike."

"The blow to him at Calcutta was altogether a very savage one," says Mr. S. C. Hall, "but, like all injustice, it recoiled at length on those who gave it. From the hour that Buckingham was driven from that city (Calcutta), the power of the great Indian monopoly, both commercial and governmental, was doomed. It was by no means his case alone which accomplished that doom. But oppression and vindictiveness, by driving him home, made him for a time the representative there of voices that never entirely slept; whilst the impolicy that had aroused them was persevered in to the last--not ceasing, even after the trade was thrown open, but at length provoking that rebellion which was followed by John Company finally having to make an assignment of his whole estate and effects to John Bull." In England Buckingham started the Athenæum, a literary weekly, but did not long retain it in his hand; he was not, in fact, qualified for its editorship. He was a Liberal politician avant tout, and a littérateur only in a second or third place.

In 1832, the Reform Bill was passed, and the same general election that sent Wm. Cobbett to the House of Commons for Oldham, sent James S. Buckingham from Sheffield, for the avowed purpose of giving him the best standpoint possible from which to assail the East Indian monopoly. That Company had never made a more fatal mistake than when it persecuted and drove him from India. Buckingham was a theme for caricature in Punch from 1845-1848.

It is open to question whether the East India Company could have engaged J. S. Buckingham's services if, instead of hounding him out of India, they had endeavoured to secure a man of such exceptional ability and intense resolution of purpose in its service. In heart and soul he was opposed to a monopoly, and if he had been engaged, he would have accepted an engagement only for the purpose of remedying some of the abuses of their government, and rectifying some of the injustices done. But he was so utterly and conscientiously opposed to the whole system, that it is more than doubtful whether he would have met favourably any overtures made to him.

In England an excellent conception of his, which he was able to realize, was the foundation of the "British and Foreign Institute." To this he was moved by seeing so many Orientals and others adrift in London, without any centre where they could meet and communicate their ideas with statesmen and politicians of Great Britain, and where they might gather for refreshment of mind and body alike. The Duke of Cambridge became President, and the Society attracted to its soirées the literary and intellectual of all lands.

His pen and his voice were employed for some years in advocating reforms.

He died on June 20th, 1855, in his seventieth year, and his wife died in the house of her son-in-law, Henry R. Dewey, 22nd January, 1865, at the age of eighty.

It is greatly to be regretted that he did not live to complete his Memoirs. He had two sons--James, who died in Jamaica, 1867, and Leicester Forbes Young Buckingham, who ran away with an actress, Caroline Connor, and married her at Gretna Green, 5th April, 1844. She had made her first appearance on the London stage at the Haymarket Theatre in 1842. The marriage was not happy and they separated, she to return to the stage, where she acted under the name of Mrs. Buckingham White. He died at Margate 17th July, 1867.

MARY ANN DAVENPORT, ACTRESS

Mary Ann Harvey was born in Launceston in 1759, and was educated at Bath, where she was seized with a passion for the stage, and made her first appearance on the boards at Bath as Lappet in The Miser in 1779.

She remained at Bath two years, and during her residence there is thus described by an eye-witness of her performances: "Miss Harvey, about the years 1785 and 1786, was a lively, animated, bustling actress; arch, and of exuberant spirits. Her style was pointed and energetic; perhaps, indeed, she had less ease than was altogether the thing; but when she had to speak satirically or in irony--when, in fact, she had to convey one idea to the person on the stage with her and another to the audience, she was alone and inimitable; she did not carry you away with her so much as many young actresses that I have seen, but she always satisfied you more amply. Then her voice--what a voice hers was! Nay, what a voice she has still, though it has had a pretty fair exercise for the last half century and upwards. Then it had all the clearness for which it is even now distinguishable; and it had, besides, a witching softness of tone that knew no equal then, and that I have never heard exceeded since."

There was an espiègle charm about her; she was not exactly beautiful, but had a witchery of face and of manner that was unsurpassed by any of her fellow-actresses, who may have possessed more regularity of feature.

She was not baptized at Launceston, S. Mary Magdalen. Harvey was a common name at the time in the place; a Harvey was a builder, another a hatmaker, another a carrier. There were a Joseph Harvey and Catherine Penwarden married 27th January, 1756. These may have been her parents.

After leaving Bath, Miss Harvey joined the Exeter company, and there met and married Mr. Davenport, an actor of ordinary talent and low comedy.

After she had been married a short while, Mrs. Davenport went to Birmingham, where she remained a considerable time in hopes of obtaining an engagement. But disappointed in this expectation, she accepted an offer from Dublin, where Daly had opened his theatre, and there she made her debut as Rosalind in As You Like It, a character exactly suited to her, and in which she aroused great enthusiasm. Her graceful figure, her voice, now full of tenderness, then of arch humour, and her expressive face admirably suited the part. She moreover performed the part of Fulmer in the West Indian. The Authentic Memoirs of the Green Room for 1796 says: "Mrs. Davenport a tolerable substitute for Mrs. Webb, though not near so great.

The Davenports, tho' not of play'rs the first, Are far from being in old folks the worst."

In 1794 she first performed at Covent Garden, as Mrs. Hardcastle, in She Stoops to Conquer, and at that theatre she continued without a rival till 1831, and occasionally filled up vacancies at the Haymarket. Mr. Davenport died in 1841; by him she had a son and a daughter. The former died in India, the latter in England.

Robson, in The Old Playgoer, says: "Brunton being the tall 'walking gentleman,' there is no one else worth mentioning but dear, dear Davenport, most truly not least though last. Lord! what a scream she would give if she knew I was about to show her up! I can just remember Mrs. Mattocks and Miss Pope.... But Mrs. Davenport was the McTab, the Malaprop, the Nurse whose bantling, 'stinted and cried aye,' with a villainous pain in her back, and a man Peter to carry her fan; the 'old mother Brulgruddery'; the Dame Ashfield with a 'damned bunch of keys,' who immortalized 'What will Missus Grundy say to that?' and would persuade a gentleman to put a ham under each arm and a turkey into his pocket; Jeremy Diddler's beautiful maid at the foot of the hill, who 'blushed like a red cabbage'; heigho! all visions--all gone.

"It was said of Mrs. Jordan that her laugh would have made the fortune of any actress if she had not had the wit to bring out one word to support it; but Mrs. Davenport's strong point was her scream. I wonder whether she ever indulged her husband with it in the course of a curtain lecture! Mercy on his nerves if she did! The appearance of her jolly red face was the presage of mirth, and her scream the signal for a roar of laughter. Good, cheerful soul! though an old woman forty years, she outlived nearly all her play-fellows, comfortably, happily, I hope."[28]

As an old lady her most celebrated personifications were the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, at which, in later times, she was hardly surpassed by Mrs. Stirling.

The writer of the memoir in the Georgian Æra says of her: "It has not been inaptly said of her, that in the vulgar loquacity of the would-be youthful Mrs. Hardcastle--the ugliness of the antiquated virgin, Miss Durable--the imbecility of four score in Mrs. Nicely--the sturdy brutality of Mrs. Brulgruddery--the warm-hearted cottager in Lovers' Vows--the attempted elegances of Mrs. Dowlas--the fiery humoured Dame Quickly--and the obtuse intellect of Deborah, she overcame all rivalry."

In the edition of the Authentic Memoirs of the Green Room for 1806 it is said, after a mention of Mr. Davenport: "Wife to the above, and of primary utility in a theatre as the representative of low, vulgar, and antiquated characters. In this line she has not her superior on the London stage. Her Mrs. Thorne in the Birthday, Lady Duberly in the Heir at Law, Dame Ashfield in Speed the Plough, Widow Warren in The Road to Ruin, Widow Cheshire in the Agreeable Surprise, Mrs. Pickle in the Spoiled Child, with a long and diversified list of parts of a similar description, deservedly rated high in the scale of histrionic excellence--and what greatly enhances her value, she is not less to be prized for the generality than for the intensive merit of her performances. Wide and extensive as is the range of parts which she sustains, there is not a single character in the whole list in which she does not acquit herself with distinguished talent and ability."

This bright and merry actress was run over by a dray on July 20th, 1841, and died in S. Bartholomew's Hospital on May 8th, 1843, after a lingering illness, at the age of eighty-four.

FOOTNOTE:

[28] The Old Playgoer, 1854, pp. 82-4.Return to passage

THE ROYAL FAMILY OF PRUSSIA

"Over against Mousehole, across the great bay of Penzance, is Cudden Point, jutting out into the sea, forming one horn of a promontory of which the Enys forms the other, looking in the opposite direction. Between these two lie three little coves, that of the Pixies, too exposed and rocky for a harbour, but with its sides riddled with caves.

"Bessie's, called after Bessie Burrow, who kept the Kidleywink on the cliff, which was the great resort of the smugglers, bears on its face to-day the traces of its history. A spot so sheltered and secluded that it is impossible to see what boats are in the little harbour until one literally leans over the edge of the cliff above; a harbour cut out of the solid rock, and a roadway with wheel tracks partly cut and partly worn, crossing the rocks below high-water mark; and, climbing up the face of the cliff on each side of the cove, caves and remains of caves everywhere, some with their mouths built up, which are reputed to be connected with the house above by secret passages. These are the trade marks of Bessie's Cove, and the world has not yet known the degree of innocence which could believe that these were made for the convenience of a few crabbers.

"The eastern and the most open is Prussia Cove. Here still stands to-day the house in which John Carter, 'the King of Prussia,' lived and reigned from 1770 to 1807."[29]

The origin of the Carter family is obscure. It is supposed to have come from Shropshire, and the name is not Cornish. But what could have brought it to this wild and remote spot in the south-west is quite unknown. The father, Francis Carter, was born in 1712 and died in 1774, and his wife, Agnes, died in 1784. They had eight sons and two daughters. The eldest of the sons was John, the famous Cornish King of Prussia. He obtained this nickname in the following manner: He and other boys were playing at soldiers, and the renown of Frederick the Great having reached him, John dubbed himself the King of Prussia, and the title not only adhered to him through life, but he has bequeathed the name of Prussia to the cove, which formerly bore that of Porthleah.

John Carter, when he grew to man's estate, made himself fame as a daring smuggler, and he was ably seconded by his brother Henry, who contrived to his own satisfaction to combine perfervid piety with cheating the customs.

Smuggling in those days was carried on upon a large scale, in cutters and luggers armed with eighteen or twenty guns apiece. Harry Carter, in his autobiography, says: "I think I might have been twenty-five when I went in a small sloop about sixteen or eighteen tons, with two men besides myself as smugglers, when I had very great success, and after a while I had a new sloop built for me, about thirty-two tons. My success was rather beyond common, and after a time we bought a small cutter of about fifty tons, and about ten men." The measurements at the present day would be ten, eighteen, and thirty tons.

John Carter was never caught. On one occasion the revenue officers came to his house and demanded to ransack his sheds. One of these was locked, and he refused to surrender the key, whereupon they broke it open, but found that it contained only household articles. As they were unable to refasten the door, the shed remained open all night, and by morning everything it had contained had disappeared. The "King" thereupon sued the officers for all his goods that had been taken from him. It is perhaps needless to say that he had himself conveyed them away. The officers had to refund the losses.

On one occasion when John Carter was absent from home, the excise officers from Penzance came to Prussia Cove in their boats and succeeded in securing a cargo lately arrived from France. They carried it to Penzance and placed it under lock and key in the custom-house. Carter, on his return, heard of the capture. He was highly incensed, for the brandy had all been promised to some of the gentry round, and he was not the man to receive an order and fail to execute it. Accordingly, he made up his mind to recover the whole cargo. Assisted by his mates, in the night he broke into the custom-house store and removed every barrel that had been taken from him.

Next morning, when the officers saw what had been done, they knew who the perpetrator was, for nothing had been touched and removed but what the "King" claimed as his own; and these smugglers prided themselves on being "all honourable men."

The most famous episode in John Carter's career was his firing on the boat of the revenue cutter The Faery. A smuggling vessel, hard pressed, ran through a narrow channel among the rocks between the Enys and the shore. The cutter, not daring to venture nearer, sent her boat in; whereupon Carter opened fire upon her from an improvised battery in which he had mounted several small cannon. The boat had to withdraw. Next morning the fight was resumed, The Faery opening fire from the sea. But in the meantime mounted soldiers from Penzance had arrived, and these fired from the top of the hill upon those working the guns in the battery, taking them in the rear. This was more than the smugglers could stand, and they retreated to Bessie Burrow's house, and were not further molested, the soldiers contenting themselves with remounting their horses and riding back to Penzance. Unfortunately, with regard to John Carter, the "King of Prussia," we have but scattered notices and tradition to rely upon; but it is otherwise with his brother Henry, who has left an autobiography that has been transcribed and published by Mr. J. B. Cornish under the title The Autobiography of a Cornish Smuggler, London (Gibbons and Co.), 1900.

But Harry Carter is somewhat reticent about the doings of the smugglers, and avoids giving names, for when he wrote "free trade" was in full swing. He wrote in 1809, when John his brother and the "Cove boys" were still at it, and Prussia Cove had not ceased to be a great centre of smugglers. He is much more concerned to record his religious experiences, all of which we could well spare for fuller details of the goings-on of his brothers and their comrades.

In 1778 an embargo was laid on all English trade, when the French Government made a treaty with the States of America, and not knowing of this, Henry Carter was arrested at S. Malo, and his cutter, with sixteen guns and thirty-six men, taken from him. He was sent to the prison at Dinan; and in like manner his brother John was taken, and they were allowed to remain on parole at Josselin till the November of 1779, when they were exchanged by order of the Lords of the Admiralty for two French gentlemen. "So, after I was at home some time, riding about the country getting freights, collecting money for the company, etc., we bought a cutter about 160 tons (50 tons), nineteen guns. I went in her some time smuggling. I had great success."

In January, 1788, he went with a freight to Cawsand in a lugger of 45 tons in modern measurement, and mounting sixteen carriage guns. But he was boarded, and so cut about the head, and his nose nearly severed in two, that he fell bleeding on the deck.

"I suppose I might have been there about a quarter of an hour, until they had secured my people below, and after found me lying on the deck. One of them said, 'Here is one of the poor fellows dead.' Another made answer, 'Put the man below.' He answered again, 'What use is it to put a dead man below?' and so passed on. So I laid there very quiet for near the space of two hours, hearing their discourse as they walked by me, the night being very dark on the 30th January, 1788. The commanding officer gave orders for a lantern to be brought, so they took up one of my legs as I was lying upon my belly; he let it go, and it fell as dead down on the deck. He likewise put his hand up under my clothes, between my shirt and my skin, and then examined my head, and so concluded, saying, 'The man is so warm now as he was two hours back, but his head is all to atoms.' The water being ebbing, the vessel (that was grounded) making a great heel to the shore, so that in the course of a very little time after, as their two boats was made fast alongside, one of them broke adrift. Immediately there was orders given to man the other boat in order to fetch her, so that when I saw them in this state of confusion, their guard broken, I thought it was my time to make my escape, so I crept on my belly on the deck, and got over a large raft just before the mainmast, close by one of the men's heels, as he was standing there handing the trysail. When I got over the lee-side I thought I should be able to swim on shore in a stroke or two. I took hold of the burtons of the mast, and as I was lifting myself over the side I was taken with the cramp in one of my thighs. So then I thought I should be drowned, but still willing to risk it, so that I let myself over the side very easily by a rope into the water. As I was very near the shore, I thought to swim on shore in the course of a stroke or two, but soon found my mistake. I was sinking almost like a stone, and hauling astern in deeper water, when I gave up all hopes of life and began to swallow some water. I found a rope under my breast, so that I had not lost my senses. I hauled upon it, and soon found one end fast to the side just where I went overboard, which gave me a little hope of life. So that when I got there, I could not tell which was best, to call to the man-of-war's men to take me in, or to stay there and die, for my life and strength were almost exhausted. But whilst I was thinking of this, touched bottom with my feet. Hope then sprang up, and I soon found another rope, leading towards the head of the vessel in shoaler water, so that I veered upon one and hauled upon the other, that brought me under the bowsprit, and then at times upon the send of a sea, my feet were almost dry. I let go the rope, but as soon as I attempted to run fell down, and as I fell, looking round about me, I saw three men standing close by. I knew they were the man-of-war's men seeking for the boat, so I lay there quiet for some little time, and then crept upon my belly I suppose about the distance of fifty yards, and as the ground was scuddy, some flat rock mixed with channels of sand, I saw before me a channel of white sand, and for fear to be seen creeping over it, which would take some time, not knowing there was anything the matter with me, made the second attempt to run, and fell in the same manner as before.

"My brother Charles being there, looking out for the vessel, desired some Cawsand men to go down to see if they could pick up any of the men dead or alive, not expecting ever to see me any more, almost sure I was either shot or drowned. One of them saw me fall, ran to my assistance, and taking hold of me under the arm, says, 'Who are you?' So, as I thought him to be an enemy, made no answer. He said, 'Fear not; I am a friend. Come with me.' And by that time were come two more, which took me under both arms, and the other pushed me in the back, and so dragged me up to the town. My strength was almost exhausted. They took me into a room where were seven or eight Cawsand men and my brother Charles, and when he saw me he knew me by my great coat, and cried with joy. So then they immediately stripped off my wet clothes, and sent for a doctor and put me to bed. The bone of my nose was cut right in two, nothing but a bit of skin holding it, and two very large cuts in my head, that two or three pieces of my skull worked out of afterwards."

He was now hurried off in a chaise to his brother Charles' house, where he remained for a week. Then as a reward of three hundred pounds was offered for his apprehension, he was conveyed to a gentleman's house in Marazion, where he remained concealed for two or three weeks, and thence was taken to Acton House, belonging to Mr. John Stackhouse, but only for a while, and shifted back to Marazion. Then again to the castle. The surgeon who was called in to attend him was blindfolded by the men sent to fetch him and conducted to the hiding-place of Henry Carter.

In October he sailed for Leghorn, then on the same vessel loaded at Barcelona with brandy for New York. It was no longer safe for him to remain in England till the affair was blown over, and he did not return till October in the year 1790, and was soon again engaged in alternate preaching in Methodist chapels, and in smuggling brandy from Roscoff. On one of these excursions in 1793 he was arrested at Roscoff, as war had been declared between France and England. This was during the Reign of Terror, at a time when the Convention had decreed that no quarter should be given to an Englishman, and an English prisoner was placed on the same footing as a "suspect" or "aristocrat," and stood a great chance of losing his head under the knife. He does not, however, seem to have been harshly treated, only moved about from place to place, sometimes in a prison, at others lodged in a private house; a good many of his French fellow-prisoners, however, suffered death. In his own words and spelling: "There was numbers of gent and lades taken away to Brest that I parssially know, and their heads chopt off with the gulenteen with a very little notice."

Robespierre was executed on 28th July, 1794; and soon after his death the Convention decreed the release of great numbers of "suspects" and other prisoners. It was not, however, till August, 1795, that Henry Carter got his passport and was able to leave. He arrived at Falmouth on August 22nd. "Arived on shore aboute three o'clock in the afternoon with much fear and trembling, where I meet with my dear little (daughter) Bettsy, there staying with her aunt, Mrs. Smythe, then between 8 and 9 years old.... I staid that night at Falmouth, the next morning went to Penryn with my dear little Bettsey in my hand. The next morning, on Sunday, took a horse and arrived at Breage Churchtown aboute eleven o'clock, where I meet my dear brother Frank, then in his way to church. As I first took him in surprise, at first I could harly make him sensable I was his brother, being nearley two years without hearing whether I was dead or alife. But when he come to himself as it were, we rejoiced together with exceeding great joy indeed. We went to his house in Rinsey, and after dinner went to see brother John (in Prussia Cove). We sent him word before I was coming. But he could harly believe it. But first looking out with his glass saw me yet a long way off. Ran to meet me, fell upon my neck. We passed the afternoon with him, and in the evning went to Keneggy to see brother Charles."

The autobiography ends abruptly in the year 1795, but the writer lived on until April 19th, 1829, spending the last thirty years of his life on a little farm at Rinsey.

In addition to the two authorities quoted, both due to Mr. Cornish, there is a memoir of Henry Carter in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine for October, 1831.

FOOTNOTE:

[29] J. B. Cornish in the Cornish Magazine, 1898, p. 121.Return to passage

CAPTAIN RICHARD KEIGWIN

The English East India Company had been founded December 31st, 1600, and it obtained from Queen Elizabeth the exclusive privilege for fifteen years of trading with India and all countries to the east of the Cape of Good Hope, in Africa and in Asia. The first settlement effected was at Surat in 1612, by Captain Thomas Best, who defeated the Portuguese in two battles. But through the jealousy of the Dutch and their encroachments, and the disturbances in England caused by the Great Rebellion, the East India Company fell to decay. Although Cromwell in 1657 renewed its privileges, the English made little headway. On April 3rd, 1661, Charles II confirmed and renewed all the ancient privileges, and handed over to the Company Bombay, which he had received from Spain as the portion of Catherine of Braganza.

Dr. Fryer, a surgeon in the service of the Company, travelled in India between 1673 and 1681, and has left some graphic descriptions of it. He sailed from Madras to Bombay, passing up the Malabar coast, and noting how that the Dutch were elbowing the Portuguese out of their posts. At last he entered the harbour of Bombay, so called from its Portuguese name Bona-baija. He found there a Government House, with pleasant gardens, terraces, and bowers; but the place had been meanly fortified, and the Malabar pirates often plundered the native villages and carried off the inhabitants as slaves. However, the Company took the place vigorously in hand, loaded the terraces with cannon, and built ramparts over the bowers. When Fryer landed, Bombay Castle was mounted with a hundred and twenty pieces of ordnance, whilst sixty field-pieces were kept in readiness. The Dutch had made an attempt to capture Bombay, but had been repulsed.

Bombay itself was an island, with a superb landlocked harbour, but it had at its back the great and powerful kingdom of the Mahrattas.

But the vast expense of placing Bombay in a position of defence had been so inadequately met by the revenue derived from it, that the Company was dissatisfied with its acquisition, and being, moreover, burdened with debt, it had recourse to the unhappy expedient of raising the taxation and reducing the officers' pay. It was ordered that the annual expenses of the island should be limited to £7000; the military establishment was to be reduced to two lieutenants, two ensigns, four sergeants, as many corporals and 108 privates. A troop of horse was to be disbanded, and Keigwin, the commandant, was dismissed. This was in 1678-9.

Richard Keigwin was the third son of Richard Keigwin, of Penzance, and of his wife Margaret, daughter of Nicholas Godolphin, of Trewarveneth. The family was ancient and honourable. His great-grandfather, Jenkin Keigwin, had been killed by the Spaniards in 1595. Richard entered the Royal Navy, became a captain and then colonel of Marines, and was appointed Governor of S. Helena, then a possession of the East India Company, by grant of Charles II. After that he was transferred to Bombay, and had the commandantship there.

He was highly offended at being thrust out of his position, and he, moreover, knew that Bombay was menaced by both the Sambhajee and the Siddee, both of whom were desirous of gaining a footing on the island, and each was jealous lest the other should anticipate him in its acquisition.

In order that he might represent the danger that menaced of losing Bombay Captain Keigwin resolved on reporting in person to the Company how matters stood, and he accordingly went to the directors and laid the case before them with such force that they consented to send him back to Bombay with the rank of captain-lieutenant, and he was to be third in the Council. But with singular capriciousness, in the following year, when Keigwin was at Bombay, they rescinded the order, reduced his pay to six shillings a day, without allowance for food and lodging, and made further reductions in the general pay and increase in the taxes. This embittered the garrison and the natives alike.[30]

"During the greater part of the reign of Charles the Second," says Macaulay, "the Company enjoyed a prosperity to which the history of trade scarcely furnishes a parallel, and which excited the wonder, the cupidity, and the envious animosity of the whole capital. Wealth and luxury were then rapidly increasing, the taste for spices, the tissues and the jewels of the East, became stronger day by day; tea, which at the time when Monk brought the army of Scotland to London had been handed round to be stared at and just touched with the lips, as a great rarity from China, was, eight years later, a regular article of import, and was soon consumed in such quantities that financiers began to consider it as a fit subject for taxation." Coffee, moreover, had become a fashionable drink, and the coffee-houses of London were the resorts of every description of club. But coffee came from Mocha, and the East India Company had sole right to import that, as it had absolute monopoly of the trade of the Indian Sea.

Nor was that all; vast quantities of saltpetre were imported into England from the East for the manufacture of gunpowder. But for this supply our muskets and cannon would have been speechless. It was reckoned that all Europe would hardly produce in one year saltpetre sufficient for the siege of one town fortified on the principles of Vauban.

The gains of the Company were enormous, so enormous as in no way to justify the cheeseparing that was had recourse to at Bombay. But these gains were not distributed among a large number of shareholders, but swelled the pockets of a few, for as the profits increased the number of holders of stock diminished.

The man who obtained complete control over the affairs of the Company was Sir Josiah Child, who had risen from an apprentice who swept out one of the counting-houses in the City to great wealth and power. His brother John was given an almost uncontrolled hand at Surat.

The Company had been popularly considered as a Whig body. Among the members of the directing committee had been found some of the most vehement exclusionists in the City, that is to say, those who had voted for the exclusion of James, Duke of York, from any claim to the crown of England on the decease of Charles II. This was an affront James was not likely to forget and forgive. Indeed two of them, Sir Samuel Barnardiston and Thomas Papillon, drew on themselves a severe persecution by their zeal against Popery and arbitrary power.

The wonderful prosperity of the Company had excited, as already intimated, the envy of the merchants in London and Bristol; moreover, the people suffered from the monopoly being in the hands of a few stockholders, who controlled the market. The Company was fiercely attacked from without at the same time that it was distracted by internal dissensions.

Captain Keigwin now called upon the inhabitants of Bombay to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown, and to renounce the Company and submission to its commands. With this the whole of the garrison, militia and inhabitants, complied; the troops from expectation of relief from the grievances of which they had complained, and the inhabitants from anticipating relief from taxation.

Captain Keigwin and his associates then addressed a letter to His Majesty and to the Duke of York, expressing their determination to maintain the island for the King till his pleasure should be known, and enumerating the causes which had impelled them to revolt--the principal being to prevent Bombay from being seized by the Siddee, or Admiral of the Mogul, who with a numerous fleet was lying near, or else by the Sambhajee, the Mahratta rajah, who was watching his opportunity to descend on Bombay and annex it.

Captain Keigwin and the conspirators next represented to the Court of Committee that the selfish scheme of Josiah Child in England, and of his brother John Child of Surat, had been at the bottom of the whole mischief which caused the disaffection, and added that both the garrison and inhabitants were determined to continue in allegiance to the Crown alone till the King's pleasure should be made known to them.

But Keigwin was no match for the subtle and unprincipled Sir Josiah Child and his brother John. Josiah had been originally brought into the direction of the Company by Barnardiston and Papillon, and was supposed, and he allowed it to be supposed, that he was as ardent a Whig as were they. He had for years stood high in the opinion of the chiefs of the Parliamentary opposition, and had been especially obnoxious to the Duke of York.

There had for some time been interference with the monopoly by what were called "interlopers" or free traders, to the great vexation of the Company. These interlopers now determined to affect the character of loyal men, who were determined to stand by the Crown against the insolent Whigs of the Company. "They spread at all the factories in the East reports that England was in confusion, that the sword had been drawn or would immediately be drawn, and that the Company was forward in the rebellion against the Crown. These rumours, which in truth were not improbable, easily found credit among people separated from London by what was then a voyage of twelve months. Some servants of the Company who were in ill humour with their employers, and others who were zealous Royalists, joined the primitive traders."

On December 27th, 1683, Captain Keigwin, assisted by Ensign Thornburn and others, seized on Mr. Ward, the deputy governor, and such members of the Council as adhered to him, assembled the troops and the militia, pronounced the authority of the East India Company as at an end by formal proclamation, and declared the island to be placed under the King's immediate protection. Thereupon the garrison, consisting of one hundred and fifty English soldiers and two hundred native topasses, and the inhabitants of the island, elected Keigwin to be governor, and appointed officers to the different companies, store-keepers, harbour-masters, etc., declaring, however, that the Company might, if their servants would acknowledge the King's government as proclaimed, proceed in their several avocations without molestation. Keigwin then took possession of the Company's ship Return and the frigate Huntley, and landed the treasure, amounting to fifty or sixty thousand rupees, which he lodged in the fort, and he published a declaration that it should be employed solely in the defence of the King's island and government.

But Child looked ahead, and saw that inevitably James, Duke of York, at no very distant period would be King of England. The Whigs were cowed by the discovery of the Rye House Plot, and the execution of Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney. It was high time for Child to turn his coat, and this he did rapidly and with dexterity. He forced his two patrons, Barnardiston and Papillon, out of the Company, filled their places with creatures of his own, and established himself as autocrat. Then he made overtures to the Court, to the King, and to the Duke of York, and he soon became a favourite at Whitehall, and the favour which he enjoyed at Whitehall confirmed his power at the India House. He made a present of ten thousand pounds to Charles, and another ten thousand pounds to James, who readily consented to become a holder of stock. "All who could help or hurt at Court," says Macaulay, "ministers, mistresses, priests, were kept in good humour by presents of shawls and silks, birds' nests and attar of roses, bulses of diamonds and bags of guineas. His bribes, distributed with judicious prodigality, speedily produced a large return. Just when the Court became all-powerful in the State, he became all-powerful at the Court."

Against such machinations as these Keigwin was powerless. Whatever Child asked should be done to maintain the authority of the Company was granted. Keigwin had appealed to hear the will of the King. The King's answer was but the echo of the voice of Child.

On the 31st January, 1683-4, President John Child from Surat arrived off Bombay with some commissioners, and met Keigwin with offers of pardon for his rebellion, but the offer was indignantly refused. Keigwin would deal with no one but the King himself, and some plain truths were told to John Child, that it was he and his brother, by their greed after gold and indifference to the welfare of the settlement, that caused all the trouble. The consultation lasted till March, 1683-4, and then Child had to return to Surat, without having effected anything.

In the meantime the Court of Directors sent in a report to the King, on 15th August, 1684, with a long statement of its grievances, and a claim for protection, according to the charter of the Society.

Charles II could do no other than order that the island should be delivered over to the Presidency of Surat, and a Commission under the Great Seal was issued to President Child and to the commanders of the Company's ships, empowering them to receive the surrender of Bombay from Keigwin and his associates and to offer a generous pardon to all, except the four ringleaders, who should within twenty-four hours after notice return to their duty.

Captain Tyrell, with H.M.S. Phœnix, frigate, was despatched, with Sir Thomas Graham as admiral, to settle the affair.

But Captain Keigwin had no idea of resistance. It had been further ordered that if Keigwin and his followers should attempt opposition, all should be denounced as rebels, and a reward of 4000 rupees should be paid to any one who should deliver up Keigwin, and 2000 for Alderton, and 200 for Fletcher.

Sir Thomas Graham arrived in the Bay of Bombay on the 10th November, 1684, and with great promptitude landed without attendants, and had a conference with Keigwin, who protested that he had only revolted against the misgovernment of the Company, and to save Bombay from being seized by one or other of the Indian princes who were aiming to secure it. He at once accepted the offer made to him of pardon, and surrendered Bombay. He went on board the vessel of Sir Thomas Graham and arrived in England in July, 1685.

During his enjoyment of power Captain Keigwin had acted with integrity and wisely and judiciously. He had relations with the native princes, and he showed an amount of prudence and clear judgment that eventually greatly benefited the East India Company. He induced Sambhajee, the Mahratta rajah, to permit the establishment of factories in the Carnatic and allow them 12,000 pagodas as compensation for losses sustained at places plundered by the Mahrattas. Keigwin repressed the insolence of the Mogul admiral, Siddee, with decision, and would neither suffer him to keep his fleet at Mazapore, nor even to go there, except for water. In fact, had the Company known it, they had in Keigwin an admirable servant, a Clive before the time of that hero.

But the directors were a number of commercial speculators who saw no further than a few years before them, and were eager at once to be rich. They cast this man aside, who, had they employed him, would have made India theirs; and, a disappointed man, he entered the Royal Navy and died at the taking of S. Kitts, in the West Indies, in command of H.M.S. Assistance, 22nd June, 1689.

It is one of the great mysteries of life and death that men who might have revolutionized the world are swept aside and hardly anything is recorded concerning them. Richard Keigwin was one such, full of self-confidence, vigour of character, restraint, and judgment. But he lived at a time and under a reign in which there was no appreciation of merit, and corruption and self-interest bore him down.

FOOTNOTE:

[30] The Company levied a duty of half a dollar upon all ships anchoring in the harbour, one rupee a year on each fishing-boat, and the same on every ship. Lastly, with what seems unparalleled meanness, they ordered that only half of the native labourers' wages should be paid in coin, the other half in rice valued "at the Company's price," which would give ten per cent clear profit after all expenses had been defrayed.Return to passage

THE LOSS OF THE "KENT"

The Kent, Captain Henry Cobb, 1350 tons, bound for Bengal and China, left the Downs on 19th February, 1825, with 20 officers, 344 soldiers, 43 women, and 66 children belonging to the 31st Regiment; 20 private passengers and a crew, including officers, of 148 men on board, making in all 641 souls.

A gale came on in the Bay of Biscay, and the ship rolled greatly. On 1st March the dead weight of some hundred tons of shot and shells, pressed so heavily with the rolling that the main chains were thrown by every lurch under water; and the best cleated articles of furniture in the cabin and the cuddy (the large dining apartment) were dashed from side to side.

One of the officers of the ship, with the well-meant intention of ascertaining that all was fast below, descended with two of the sailors into the hold, whither they carried with them for safety a light in a patent lantern; and seeing that the lamp was burning dimly, the officer took the precaution to hand it up to the orlop deck to be trimmed. Having afterwards discovered that one of the spirit casks was adrift, he sent a sailor for some billets of wood to secure it, but the ship in his absence having made a heavy lurch, the officer unfortunately dropped the light, and letting go of his hold of the cask in his eagerness to recover the lantern, it suddenly stove, and, the spirits communicating with the lamp, the whole place was instantly in a blaze.

Major (afterwards Sir Duncan) McGregor, who was on board at the time with his wife and family, says:--

"I received from Captain Spence, the captain of the day, the alarming information that the ship was on fire in the after-hold. On hastening to the hatchway whence smoke was slowly ascending, I found Captain Cobb and other officers already giving orders, which seemed to be promptly obeyed by seamen and troops, who were using every exertion by means of the pumps, buckets of water, wet sails, hammocks, etc., to extinguish the flames. With a view to excite the ladies' alarm as little as possible, on conveying the intelligence to Colonel Faron, the commanding officer of the troops, I knocked gently at the cabin door, and expressed a wish to speak with him; but whether my countenance betrayed the state of my feelings, or the increasing noise and confusion upon deck created apprehension, I found it difficult to pacify some of the ladies by assurances that no danger whatever was to be apprehended from the gale. As long as the devouring element appeared to be confined to the spot where the fire had originated, and which we were assured was surrounded on all sides by water-casks, we ventured to cherish hopes that it might be subdued; but no sooner was the light blue vapour that at first arose succeeded by volumes of black dingy smoke, which speedily ascended through all the four hatchways, rolled over every part of the ship, than all further concealment became impossible, and almost all hope of preserving the vessel was abandoned.

"In these awful circumstances, Captain Cobb, with an ability and decision of character that seemed to increase with the imminence of the danger, resorted to the only alternative now left him--of ordering the lower decks to be scuttled, the combing of the hatches to be cut, and the lower ports to be opened, for the free admission of the waves.

"These instructions were speedily executed by the united efforts of the troops and seamen; but not before some of the sick soldiers, one woman, and several children, unable to gain the upper deck, had perished. On descending to the gun-deck with one or two officers of the 31st Regiment to assist in opening the ports, I met, staggering towards the hatchway, in an exhausted and nearly senseless state, one of the mates, who informed us that he had just stumbled over the dead bodies of some individuals who must have died of suffocation, to which it was evident that he himself had almost fallen a victim. So dense and oppressive was the smoke that it was with the utmost difficulty we could remain long enough below to fulfil Captain Cobb's wishes; which were no sooner accomplished than the sea rushed in with extraordinary force, carrying away in its restless progress to the hold the largest chests, bulkheads, etc."

The immense quantity of water that was thus introduced into the vessel had, indeed, for a time the effect of checking the fury of the flames; but the danger of sinking was increased as the risk of explosion, should the fire reach the powder, was diminished. The ship became water-logged, and presented other indications of settling previous to going down.

"The upper deck was covered with between six and seven hundred human beings, many of whom from previous sea-sickness were forced on the first alarm from below in a state of absolute nakedness, and were now running about in quest of husbands, children, or parents. While some were standing in silent resignation or in stupid insensibility to their impending fate, others were yielding themselves up to the most frantic despair. Several of the soldiers' wives and children, who had fled for temporary shelter into the after cabins on the upper decks, were engaged in prayer with the ladies, some of whom were enabled, with wonderful self-possession, to offer to others spiritual consolation; and the dignified deportment of two young ladies in particular formed a specimen of natural strength of mind finely modified by Christian feeling.

"Among the numerous objects that struck my observation at the period, I was much affected by the appearance and conduct of some of the dear children, who, quite unconscious in the cuddy cabin of the perils that surrounded them, continued to play as usual with their little toys in bed. To some of the older children, who seemed alive to the reality of the danger, I whispered, 'Now is the time to put in practice the instructions you have received at the regimental school and to think of the Saviour.' They replied, as the tears ran down their cheeks, 'Oh sir! we are trying to remember them, and we are praying to God.'

"It occurred to Mr. Thomson, the fourth mate, to send a man to the foretop, rather with the ardent wish than with the expectation, that some friendly sail might be discovered on the face of the waters. The sailor, on mounting, threw his eyes round the horizon for a moment--a moment of unutterable suspense--and, waving his hat, exclaimed, 'A sail on the leeboard!'

"The joyful announcement was received with three cheers upon deck. Our flags of distress were instantly hoisted and our minute guns fired; and we endeavoured to bear down under our three topsails and foresail upon the stranger, which afterwards proved to be the Cambria, a small brig of 200 tons burden, having on board twenty or thirty Cornish miners and other agents of the Anglo-Mexican Company.

"For ten or fifteen minutes we were left in doubt whether the brig perceived our signals, or, perceiving them, was either disposed or able to lend us any assistance. From the violence of the gale, it seems that the report of our guns was not heard; but the ascending volumes of smoke from the ship sufficiently announced the dreadful nature of our distress, and we had the satisfaction, after a short period of suspense, to see the brig hoist British colours and crowd all sail to hasten to our relief.

"I confess that when I reflected on the long period our ship had already been burning--on the tremendous sea that was running--on the extreme smallness of the brig, and the immense number of human beings to be saved--I could only venture to hope that a few might be spared; but I durst not for a moment contemplate the possibility of my own preservation."

To prevent the rush to the boats as they were being lowered, some of the military officers were stationed over them with drawn swords. Arrangements were made by Captain Cobb for placing in the first boat, previous to letting it down, all the ladies and as many of the soldiers' wives as it could safely contain. They hurriedly wrapped themselves up in whatever articles of clothing could be found, and at about 2 p.m. or 2.30 p.m. a mournful procession advanced from the aft cabin to the starboard cuddy port, outside of which the cutter was suspended. Scarcely a word was uttered; not a scream was heard. Even the infants ceased to cry, as if conscious of the unspoken, unspeakable anguish that was at that instant rending the hearts of their parting parents--nor was the silence of voices in any way broken, except in one or two cases, where the ladies plaintively entreated permission to be left behind with their husbands.

Although Captain Cobb had used every precaution to diminish the danger of the boat's descent, and for this purpose had stationed a man with an axe to cut away the tackle from either extremity should the slightest difficulty occur in unhooking it, yet the peril attending the whole operation nearly proved fatal to its numerous inmates. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to place the frail bark fairly on the heaving surface of the water, the command was given at length to unhook. The tackle at the stern was, in consequence, immediately cleared; but the ropes at the bow having got fast, the sailor there found it impossible to obey the order. In vain was the axe applied to the entangled tackle. The moment was inconceivably critical, as the boat, which necessarily followed the motion of the ship, was gradually rising out of the water, and must, in another instant, have been hanging perpendicularly by the bow, and its helpless inmates in that event would have been shot down into the boiling surf. But at that moment, providentially, a wave suddenly struck and lifted the stern, so as to enable the seaman to disentangle the tackle, and the boat, dexterously cleared from the wreck, was seen after a little while from the poop battling with the billows on its way to the Cambria, which prudently lay to at some distance from the Kent, lest she should be involved in her explosion, or exposed to the fire of her guns, which, being all shotted, afterwards went off as the flames reached them successively.

The men had, accordingly, a considerable distance to row. The better to balance the boat in the raging seas through which it had to make its way, as also to enable the seamen to ply their oars, the women and children were stowed promiscuously under the seats, and consequently exposed to the risk of being drowned by the continual dashing of the spray over their heads, which so filled the boat during the passage, that before they arrived at the brig the poor creatures were crouching up to their breasts in water, and their children kept above it with the greatest difficulty by their numbed hands.

However, in the course of between twenty minutes and half an hour, the little cutter was seen alongside the brig.

But the perils of the passage were not over; the boat was heaved up against the side of the rolling and pitching Cambria, and the difficulty of getting the women and children out of the cutter and on to the deck was great. Moreover, the boat stood in imminent danger of being stove in against the side of the brig whilst its passengers were disembarking.

Here it was that the Cornish miners on board the Cambria notably distinguished themselves, and above all Joseph Warren from S. Just, a famous wrestler. Being a man of enormous strength, he stood on the chains and caught first the children as they were tossed to his arms, passed them up on deck, and then lifted the women bodily from the boat as it heaved up within his reach, and passed them over his head to the men above.

The women showed great self-possession. They had been urged to avail themselves of every favourable heave of the sea, by springing towards the friendly arms that were extended to receive them; and notwithstanding the deplorable consequence of making a false step, or misjudging a distance, under such critical circumstances, not a single accident occurred to any individual belonging to this first boat.

Three out of the six boats originally possessed by the Kent were swamped in the course of the day, one of them with men in it; and the boats took three-quarters of an hour over each trip, so that night settled down, adding to the difficulties and dangers, and bringing ever nearer the prospect of the fire reaching the powder magazine and blowing all who remained on board into eternity.

Sir Donald McGregor tells some pathetic stories of the rest of the crew and passengers. One woman had vainly entreated to be allowed to go to India with her husband, and when refused, had contrived to hide herself in the vessel as a stowaway till it was well out at sea. As he was endeavouring to reach one of the boats, he fell overboard, and his head, coming between the heaving boat and the side of the ship, was crushed like a nut in her sight. Sad instances occurred where a husband had to make election between the saving of his wife and that of his children. The courage of some utterly failed them. Nothing would induce them to enter or try to enter one of the boats leaping on the waves beside the burning ship. Rather than adventure that they would remain and take their chances on the wreck. Some, making false leaps into the boats, fell into the waves and were drowned.

At last all who could or would be saved were brought on board the Cambria.

"After the arrival of the last boat, the flames, which had spread along her upper deck and poop, ascended with the rapidity of lightning to the masts and rigging, forming one general conflagration that illumined the heavens, and was strongly reflected upon several objects on board the brig.

"The flags of distress, hoisted in the morning, were seen for a considerable time waving amid the flames, until the masts to which they were suspended successively fell over the ship's sides. At last, about 1.30 in the morning, the devouring element having communicated to the magazine, the long-threatened explosion was seen, and the blazing fragments of the once magnificent Kent were instantly hurried, like so many rockets, high into the air, leaving in the comparative darkness that succeeded the dreadful scene of that disastrous day floating before the mind like some feverish dream.

"I trust that you will keep in mind that Captain Cook's generous intentions and exertions must have proved utterly unavailing for the preservation of so many lives had they not been most nobly and unremittingly supported by those of his mate and crew, as well as of the numerous passengers on board his brig. While the former, only eight in number, were usefully employed in watching the vessel, the sturdy Cornish miners and Yorkshire smelters, on the approach of the different boats, took their perilous station upon the chains, where they put forth the great muscular strength with which Heaven had endowed them, in dexterously seizing, at each successive heave of the sea, on some of the exhausted people and dragging them upon deck. Nor did their kind anxieties terminate there. They and the gentlemen connected with them cheerfully opened their stores of clothes and provisions, which they liberally dispensed to the naked and famished sufferers; and they surrendered their beds to the helpless women and children, and seemed, in short, during the whole passage to England, to take no other delight than in ministering to all our wants."

Captain Cook of the Cambria at once turned the vessel and steered for Falmouth.

On reaching Falmouth report of the distressed condition of those who had been rescued was sent to Colonel Fenwick, Lieutenant-Governor of Pendennis Castle, and the people of Falmouth showed the utmost kindness and hospitality to those who had been saved.

On the first Sunday after they had disembarked, Colonel Fearon, all the officers and men, Captain Cobb and the sailors and passengers attended church at Falmouth to give thanks to Almighty God for their deliverance from a fearful death.

"FALMOUTH, March 16th, 1825.

"To the Committee of the Inhabitants of Falmouth.

"GENTLEMEN,

"In tracing the various links in the ample chain of mercy and bounty with which it has pleased a gracious Providence to surround the numerous individuals lately rescued from the destruction of the Hon. Company's ship Kent, we, the Lieut.-Col. Commanding, and officers belonging to the right wing of the 31st Regiment, cannot but reflect with increasing gratitude on the beneficence of that arrangement whereby ourselves and our gallant men, after the awful and afflicting calamity that befell us, were cast upon the sympathies of the inhabitants of Falmouth and the adjacent towns, who have so widely opened their hearts to feel, and munificently extended their hands to provide for our numerous and necessary wants.

"We were thrown upon your shore as penniless strangers, and ye took us in; we were hungry and ye gave us meat; naked and ye clothed us; sick and ye relieved and comforted us. We have found you rejoicing with those of us who rejoiced, and weeping with such of us as had cause to weep. You have visited our fatherless and widows in their affliction, and sought by increasing acts of the most seasonable, effective, and delicate charity, to alleviate the measure of our sufferings.

"Under such circumstances, what can we say, or where shall we find words to express our emotions? You have created between us and our beloved country an additional bond of affection and gratitude, that will animate our future zeal, and enable us, amidst all the vicissitudes of our professional life, to point out Falmouth to our companions in arms as one of the bright spots in our happy land where the friendless shall find many friends, and the afflicted receive abundant consolation.

"In the name and on behalf of the officers of the

"Right Wing of the 31st Regiment,

"R. B. FEARON, Lieut-Col., 31st Foot."

Joseph Warren, the S. Just miner and wrestler who had so powerfully assisted in the rescue of the unfortunates from the Kent, strained his back in heaving up the women on deck, that ever after deprived him of power to wrestle or exercise his ancient strength. One of the ladies whom he had rescued paid him an annuity through the rest of his life, and he died at his old home at S. Just-in-Penwith, 28th January, 1842.

VICE-ADMIRAL SIR CHARLES V. PENROSE

The Penrose family is one of the most ancient in Cornwall. The name signifies the Head of the Moor, and it belonged par excellence to the Land's End, where, at S. Sennen, we find the Penroses seated as landed gentry from the time of Edward I. They had branches in Sithney, Manaccan, and S. Anthony-in-Meneage. They mated with the best in the county--the Trefusis, the Killigrews, the Eriseys, and the Boscawens. One broke away from the circle of beautiful Celtic names, and took to wife a daughter of Sir Anthony Buggs, Knt. Happy must the lady have felt to cease to be Miss Buggs and become Madame Penrose!

Charles Vinicombe Penrose was the youngest son and child of the Rev. John Penrose, vicar of Gluvias, and was born at Gluvias, June 20th, 1759. In the spring of 1775 he was appointed midshipman on board the Levant frigate, Captain Murray, under whose command he passed the whole period of his service during the next twenty-two years of his life, and who (with one trifling exception) was the only captain with whom he ever sailed, either as midshipman or as lieutenant. In 1779 young Penrose was made lieutenant, and was appointed to the Cleopatra.

All the summer and a part of the winter of 1780 were passed in cruising off the Flemish bank. Captain Murray was then sent with a small squadron to intercept the trade which the Americans were carrying on with Gothenburg by passing to the north of the Shetland Isles. The biting cold made this a source of extreme hardship, and the young lieutenant, now first lieutenant, suffered severely. The illness of the captain, and the incapacity of some of the officers, threw on him almost the whole care of the ship, and this under circumstances that required the skill and caution of the seaman to be ever on the alert.

"I had, however," he wrote, "no time to nurse myself, though I had pleurisy, besides my chilblains. For these latter I used to have warm vinegar and sal ammoniac brought frequently on deck, and, to allay the raging pain, dipped thin gloves into the mixture, and put them on under thick worsted mittens. At one time rheumatism had so got hold of me that I was not able to stand, but lay wrapped up in flannel on an arm-chest, on the forepart of the quarter-deck, to give my orders.

"On one occasion, in a severe gale, the ship covered with frozen snow, the main topmast was carried away; we were the whole day clearing the wreck, and I was much fatigued but obliged to keep the first watch. We were lying to under bare poles, and I had sent all the men under shelter except one man at the helm and the mate of the watch; and I had, with much difficulty, cleared a place for myself between two of the guns, where, holding by a rope, I could move two or three short paces backwards and forwards. About nine o'clock my messmates sent to ask if I would have anything, and I thoughtlessly ordered a glass of warm brandy and water, which they as thoughtlessly sent. I drank about half, and gave the rest to the mate. In a minute I felt a glow of warmth. Health, animation, freedom from fatigue, all came in their climax of comfort. The next minute I fell sleeping on the deck. Fortunately for me, my comrade was an old seaman, and he instantly knew my case and dragged me down the ladder. I was put to bed; was badly treated, as I was rubbed with spirits; but after excruciating pain, I recovered. Had the officer of the watch been a young gentleman without experience, I should never have told my story."

In 1781 the Cleopatra was in the action off the Dogger Bank, but in 1783 was paid off. "At this time," wrote Mr. Penrose, "after having been for eleven years conversant only with nautical affairs, I really felt a great puzzle to know how a shore life could be endured. I had entered into my profession with all my heart, and was at this time as nearly a fish as a finless animal can become."

In 1787 he married Miss Trevenen, the elder sister of his brother's wife, and by her had three daughters. He was not at sea again till 1790, when he accompanied Captain Murray in the Defence, and was engaged in the West Indies. At the latter end of 1796 he was again returned to the Cleopatra, in which ship he had the melancholy satisfaction of conveying to England his friend and admiral, who had been seized with a paralytic affection from which he never recovered. The voyage home was tempestuous; but at length, and nearly at its close, the wind had come right aft, and the captain, who, though ill, was on deck, believed himself to be making rapid way up the Channel. On a sudden a light, which he knew to be the Scilly light, flashed across him, and he saw that he was between Scilly and the Land's End. He instantly stood to the south, but had hardly changed his course when he saw, close astern in the dark night, a wave break under the bow of a large ship, steering exactly in the direction which he had left. "I never felt so sick before," he wrote. "I felt certain that in an hour's time she would be on the rocks, the wind blowing almost a storm. I shouted through the trumpet, I threw up lights, and fired guns, to give the alarm, but with the inward conviction at the time that it was all in vain--and so it was. This ship was never heard of again; and though fragments of a wreck were found the next morning on the coast near the Land's End, nothing was discovered to indicate what wreck it was."

The Cleopatra, on her return to England, was laid up for some months at Portsmouth in dock, and shortly after her repairs were completed the mutiny broke out at Spithead. Captain Penrose had the satisfaction that his own crew, from the beginning to the end of this anxious period, stood firm to their duty; a consequence undoubtedly of the manner in which he invariably treated his men, with kindly consideration and as reasonable beings.

He now went ashore, as his health was broken, and in May, 1798, went to reside at Ethy, near Lostwithiel, where, so soon as his health was re-established, he settled his family and looked out for fresh employment. He was appointed early in 1799 to the Sans Pareil, of eighty guns, and served in the West Indies till 1802, when he returned to England, having suffered from sunstroke. In 1810 Captain Penrose was appointed to the chief command at Gibraltar, with the rank of commodore. He hoisted his flag on board the San Juan, and had to direct the proceedings of a large flotilla which proved of great utility in the defence of Cadiz and Tarifa, and in other operations against the French under Marshal Soult. On December 4th, 1813, he was promoted to be Admiral of the Blue, and shortly after to superintend the naval service connected with Wellington's army, then advanced as far as the Pyrenees. His orders were to proceed to the small port of Passages, and there hoist his flag on board the Porcupine. Admiral Penrose arrived at Passages on January 27th, 1814. The chief business which now devolved on the naval service was to make the necessary preparations for throwing a floating bridge across the Adour. This bridge was to be composed of small coasting vessels, decked boats, cables and planks. Above the bridge were to be anchored for its protection as many gunboats as could be furnished, and, to guard both these and the bridge from fire-ships or rafts, a boom was also to be laid across the river further up the stream. These measures were consequent on the investment of Bayonne. Great difficulties were to be expected in passing the bar of the Adour, which, at the place where the bridge was to be built, was four hundred yards wide, and where the ebb-tide ran at the rate of eight miles an hour. The Admiral determined to superintend the operation in person. On the afternoon of the 22nd the Porcupine, conveying some transports and several large coasting vessels laden with materials, left the harbour. But squally weather and baffling winds came on during the night, and he was unable to bring the flotilla to the bar before the morning of the 24th.

The passing of the bar, a most perilous service, has been described, as seen from the shore, by Mr. Gleig in the Subaltern.

It was nearly high water, and the wind was fair; both officers and soldiers gathered on the heights around, and the passage of each vessel was eagerly watched, from the moment it was immersed in the foaming breakers until it issued forth in the placid waters of the river beyond. Some few vessels broached to and sank; but, on the whole, the attempt fully succeeded, and with fewer casualties than could have been expected. General Sir John Hope, who commanded on shore, said, in a letter to the Admiral: "I have often seen how gallantly the navy will devote themselves when serving with an army, but I never before witnessed so bold and hazardous a co-operation, and you have my most grateful thanks. I wrote to you in the course of last night, to say how much we stood in need of boats, seamen, etc., but when I saw the flotilla approach the wall of heavy surf, I regretted all I had said."

So soon as the boats had thus entered the river, no time was lost in running those which were intended to form the bridge up to their stations, where the bridge was rapidly formed; and at dawn on the following day, it was declared that infantry might cross it with safety. On the 27th Bayonne was closely invested by Sir John Hope, and Marshal Soult completely routed at Orthez by Wellington.

On March 22nd Admiral Penrose received instructions from the Duke to occupy the Gironde. On the 24th he sailed in the Porcupine, taking with him some brigs and a bomb vessel, and he was joined at the mouth of the river by the Egmont, the Andromache, the Challenger, and the Belle Poule. On the 27th he entered the river, the Andromache taking the lead. The want of pilots and the haziness of the atmosphere rendered the navigation difficult. The course taken was within easy reach of the shot from the enemy's batteries, but these passed clear of the ships, and every considerable danger was successfully overcome, when a clear sun broke forth to animate the progress up the stream.

The abdication of Napoleon, 6th April, 1814, and the restoration of the Bourbons followed, and Admiral Penrose left the Gironde on May 22nd, and returned to Passages to superintend the embarkation of the troops and stores. The difficulties were great. The inadequate supply of transports precluded the affording, even to the sick and wounded, the accommodation of which they were in need; and the hatred borne by the Spanish population to the British troops burst forth more and more as their strength diminished. Although English blood and treasure had been poured forth to assist Spain against the despotism of Napoleon and in driving the French out of the country, not a spark of gratitude was manifested by the Spaniards. It was thought on this occasion highly probable that some outrage would be attempted in the rear of the embarkation. Indeed, a plan had been formed by some Spaniards to seize the military chest, and for security it had to be conveyed on board the Lyra, and a volley of stones was hurled at the last boat that left the shore. During Admiral Penrose's whole stay on this ungrateful coast, he never received a visit or the smallest mark of attention from a single Spaniard; and on his leaving Passages, not one individual in the town was seen to look out of a window to watch the sailing of the fleet.

The Porcupine anchored in Plymouth Sound, September 6th, and the Admiral struck his flag on the 12th, with but little expectation, now that peace had revisited Europe, of being again actively employed. On the 16th, however, he received a letter from Lord Melville, offering him the command of the fleet in the Mediterranean, become vacant by the recall of Admiral Hallowell. The offer was accepted, and on October 3rd Admiral Penrose hoisted his flag at Plymouth, on board the Queen, and left Plymouth on the 8th.

Whilst in the Mediterranean, he heard on March 12th, 1815, of the escape of Napoleon from Elba, and of his having reached Prejus.

In January, 1816, Admiral Penrose was promoted to the rank of Knight Commander of the Bath.

On March 1st he received letters from Lord Exmouth, who appointed a meeting at Port Mahon to proceed against Algiers and Tunis to put an end to the piracies that were carried on from these two places. The squadron sailed for Algiers March 21st. Admiral Penrose wrote: "On arriving at their destination, the ships anchored in two lines out of gun-shot from the batteries, and by signal made all ready for battle; but all went off quietly, and the slaves in whose behalf the expedition was undertaken were ransomed on the terms which Lord Exmouth proposed." From Algiers the squadron sailed for Tunis, and here also the Bey submitted to the demand made on him, and thus ended this impotent expedition. The Bey of Algiers was by no means so overawed that he desisted from his nefarious practices, and a second expedition was sent against him under Lord Exmouth in 1816.

By an unfortunate oversight, rather than intentional lack of courtesy, no notice had been sent to the Admiral in command of the Mediterranean that Lord Exmouth had been despatched to bombard Algiers and destroy the piratical fleet. Admiral Penrose was at Malta, and hearing in a roundabout way that Lord Exmouth, with a fleet fitted out at home, had entered the Mediterranean and was on his way to Algiers, he deemed it advisable to leave Malta and visit this fleet. He did not arrive off Algiers till the 29th August. The action had been on the 27th, and the first objects seen on entering the bay were the still smoking wrecks of the Algerine navy, and then the fleet of Lord Exmouth engaged in repairing the injuries which it had sustained.

Admiral Penrose was cut to the quick by the slight put upon him, and he wrote to remonstrate with the Admiralty, but received in reply only a rebuke for expressing his indignation in a tone that the Admiralty did not relish.

There is no need to attend Admiral Penrose in his cruises and visits to the Ionian Islands, but his diary may be quoted relative to an expedition made early in 1818, in company with Sir Thomas Maitland, to visit Ali Pasha.

The history of this second Nero, with whom to our disgrace we entered into alliance, and supplied with cannon and muskets, may be given in brief.

Ali, surnamed Arslan, the Lion, was an Albanian born about the year 1741. His father, driven from his paternal mansion, placed himself at the head of some bandits, surrounded the house in which were his brothers, and burnt them in it alive. The mother of Ali, daughter of a bey, was of a vindictive and ferocious character, and on the death of her husband had the formation of the character of Ali in her hands, and she inspired him with remorselessness, ambition, and subtlety. Ali assisted the Sultan in the war with Russia, and was rewarded by being created a pasha of two tails and governor of Tricala, in Thessaly. Soon by means of intrigue and crime he obtained the pashalics of Janina and Arta; then he was granted the government of Acharnania, and, finding himself strong enough to do what he liked, he attacked neighbouring provinces, and banished or put to death in them all the Mussulman and Christian inhabitants whose goods he coveted, or who had given him umbrage. Then he attacked the Christian Suliotes and massacred them. Previsa and some other Christian towns on the coast had belonged to the republic of Venice. In 1797 the Queen of the Adriatic, having been overthrown by Bonaparte, Ali took the opportunity, at the feast of Easter, to descend on them when all the inhabitants were keeping holiday, and massacre over six thousand and plunder the houses. The English Government entered into negotiations with him, gave him a park of artillery and six hundred gunshots. Thus furnished he attacked Berat, the pasha of which was the father of his two sons' wives. He took the place and threw the pasha into a subterranean dungeon under his palace at Janina.

He seized on the Albanian towns of Argyro-Kastro and Kardihi. The inhabitants of the latter surrendered without striking a blow; but as they had at some former time offended his mother, he put all the males to the sword, and handed over the women to his sister, who, after having delivered them up to the most horrible outrages, had them stripped stark naked and driven into the forests, where nearly all perished of cold and hunger. When Napoleon fell, Ali got the English to cede to him the town of Parga. It was concerning this cession that the English Government thought it no shame to send Sir Thomas Maitland to Ali to negotiate with him at Previsa. "The General embarked with the ladies (Lady Ponsonby, Lady Lauderdale and her daughters) in the Glasgow, and with the two ships we proceeded to the anchorage of Prevesa. On the evening of our arrival I despatched the second lieutenant to find at what time on the following day Ali would receive us. His report of the chief himself was wittily characteristic: 'He is exactly like a sugar hogshead, dressed in scarlet and gold.'

"A long and heavy pull we had the next day in the Glasgow's fine barge against a very cold wind, but at last we reached the land. The palace of the ferocious chief whom we had come to visit was built of wood, and on the water's edge, so that the boats landed at one of the doors, contrived, no doubt, to enable the owner to escape in that direction if requisite. It was an immense building, badly finished, not painted, and badly furnished, but calculated to lodge about three thousand persons. The chief, with all his heads of departments, and his son and grandson, received us in a small room, one end of which was occupied by a comfortable and well-cushioned divan. Here we were soon served with coffee in beautiful china and gold cups and saucers, and magnificent pipes.

"Sir Thomas introduced me as the naval commander-in-chief. Before we returned to our ships an excellent collation was provided on a long table; but the climate was severe in this wild mansion, and after trying many bottles of execrable light wines, great was my joy in finding a flask of excellent brandy.

"I had several good opportunities of watching the countenance of the extraordinary man who was now our host, and I never could observe the smallest indication without of what was passing in his breast. Simple benevolence was apparently beaming from the whole expression of this human butcher. At one time particularly, when I know for a certainty that he was both angry and mortified at some turn in the investigations, I sat opposite him at only a yard's distance, and could not perceive the smallest outward token of the storm within. He once questioned me about my family, whether I was married, etc.; and when I told him I had three daughters, 'What, no sons? Why have you not them?' and burst forth into one of his frightful haugh-haugh laughs, which were quite disgusting, and resembled the grunt of a wild beast.

"As a high honour, on the day on which the ladies were with us, he sat at the head of the table at dinner. The dinner was much more profuse than elegant; and one of Ali's first operations was to cut off the fore-quarter of a roasted lamb, and with his hand tear out the flesh between the shoulder and the breast, which he devoured with great glee. Lady Lauderdale sat on his right hand, and I was next her. Ali, understanding that she chose some turkey, had one brought before him, and helped her with a fore-quarter of an immense bird, which, of course, puzzled her greatly. Whereupon, bowing for permission from our host, I cut off a proper portion from the wing, and helped myself to the remainder. When Ali saw what a small portion I had allotted to the lady, he grunted out his peculiar laugh, but luckily did not persist in the cramming system.

"Even at this more distinguished feast good wines were not the order of the day, and I had again recourse to the brandy bottle. I know not what Ali had in a particular bottle placed near himself, as he indulged no one but Sir Thomas Maitland with a taste of it, but I do not recollect hearing it praised. The chief took a good portion of this bottle to himself, heedless of the Koran and the prophet.

"Immediately after dinner dancing boys were introduced, and performed a great number of evolutions, showing the most extraordinary flexibility in every part of the body. These poor creatures must have been Nazarites from their birth, as their hair was long enough to reach to the floor as they stood, and great part of their skill was displayed in throwing about these profuse locks with their arms. I think these boys must have been of Indian extraction.

"The ladies having heard that Ali had bought a diamond of great value from poor Gustavus, the ex-King of Sweden, expressed a strong desire to see it. He assented graciously, and ordered a plate to be brought to him. He then searched in the folds of his own fat neck, and at last untied a string to which was affixed a little bag of either oil-cloth or bladder. Out of this he took a coarse paper parcel, and having opened the envelope, and three or four interior papers, he, with a pretended air of indifference, threw out on the plate a considerable number of diamonds, which some of our party valued at £30,000. Among these was the diamond of the ex-King, which had been valued at £12,000; but owing partly to his necessities, and, perhaps, partly also to a change in value, Ali purchased it, I think, for £7000 or £8000.

"The strangest part of this story was that such a man could display such a treasure, showing that it was usually concealed about his person, before a considerable number of his own subjects as well as strangers. There seemed to be the freest possible ingress and egress to and from the hall in which we sat; and beside his officers of state, there were many menials in the hall at the time. In what, then, consisted the confidence which he must have felt? It could not have been derived from conscious virtue, or security of attachment; and, except at the gate which led from the great square of the palace towards the town, I never saw anything like guard or sentinel.

"Besides the dish of diamonds, Ali kept by his side a brace of pistols richly set with valuable jewels, a present from Napoleon; and in his girdle he always wore a dagger, the hilt of which must have been worth £2000 or £3000; one stone especially being very large. Probably the reign of terror might operate to some degree as a safeguard; but the appearance of the people immediately about Ali's person indicated much more confidence than fear.

"Our ladies had been introduced into the harem, and to the favourite Fatima, who, as we were told, was the best scratcher Ali ever had. One of his chief luxuries was to have his immense, coarse carcase scratched for a considerable time daily by his female friends."

The end of this man, Ali Pasha, may be briefly told. He had become independent, disregarding the authority of the Sultan, and a menace to the State. Accordingly an army was despatched to Janina, and a fleet to make a descent on the coasts of Epirus. Ali, in spite of his great age, exhibited great energy, and prepared to resist, but his fatal avarice stood in his way. With his enormous treasures he could have secured the fidelity of his troops, but he could not make up his mind to deal liberally with his defenders, and most deserted. His own sons and grandsons, with one exception, passed over into the enemy's camp. He set the town of Janina on fire, and retired himself into the fortress, which was defended by Italian and French artillerymen, and which bristled with cannon. This was in August, 1820. At the beginning of 1821 the Sultan gave the command of his forces to Khorchid Pasha, and the siege was begun. Ali had previously sunk one portion of his treasure in the lake in spots where it could be recovered by himself when the storm blew over; the rest was in his cellar heaped up over barrels of gunpowder, and a faithful attendant stood ever by with a lighted fuse in his hand. Khorchid was particularly desirous of securing the treasure. He proposed an interview in an island of the lake. After some hesitation Ali, who had now but fifty men in his garrison, consented. The interview took place on the 5th February, 1822; Khorchid had taken the precaution to surround the island with soldiers, but concealed. When they met, the officer of the Sultan produced a firman granting complete forgiveness to Ali for all his crimes and defiance, on condition that he surrendered some of his treasures. Ali then drew off his ring, handed it to the general, and said, "Show that to my slave, and he will extinguish the fuse."

Ali was detained in the palace on the isle till messengers had been sent to the fortress, and the slave, obedient to the token, had put out the light, whereupon he was at once stabbed. When Khorchid knew that the treasure was secure, he summoned the soldiery, and they fired into the kiosk from all sides and through the floor, till Ali was struck mortally.

The moral infamies of this man are not to be described.

When the negotiations with Ali Pasha were ended, the Lord High Commissioner and the ladies returned to Corfu, and Sir Charles Penrose went back to his fleet.

He returned to England in 1819, being succeeded in his command by Admiral Freemantle.

He again made Ethy his home, taking occasional flights to London to obtain some other naval appointment, which would not compel a severance from his family, but none was available, and, finally, as his wife's health and his own began to fail, he was content to remain in his quiet Cornish home. There he died January 1st, 1830, at the age of seventy; and Lady Penrose died in 1832.

The Life of Vice-Admiral Sir C. V. Penrose, K.C.B., together with that of Captain James Trevenen, was written by their nephew, the Rev. John Penrose, and published by John Murray, 1850, with portrait.

SIR CHRISTOPHER HAWKINS, BART.

Kit Hawkins, as he was familiarly termed in Cornwall, played a considerable part at the close of the eighteenth century, and before the passing of the Reform Bill, as a borough-monger. There was a contemporary with a similar reputation, Manasseh Lopes, a Jew diamond merchant from Jamaica, and both purchased their baronetcies by subservience to the Government in finding places for their nominees in the pocket boroughs they had got into their hands. When Manasseh Lopes drove into Fowey with his candidates, the town band stalked before the carriage playing "The Rogues' March"; when Kit Hawkins arrived in Grampound or S. Ives with a carriage and four, and his candidates with him, the band played "See the Conquering Hero Comes"--but he conquered not with weapons of steel, but with golden guineas, handed over to him by the candidates, a share of which passed to the electors.

The Cornish Hawkins family pretended to derive from a very distinguished Roman Catholic stock in Kent, whose place, Nash, was plundered in 1715 by the rabble, on account of the Jacobite proclivities of the Hawkins family and the excitement caused by the rebellion in Scotland of the Earl of Mar. On this occasion all the family plate, portraits, and deeds were carried off; some were burnt, some were recovered.

But not a shadow of evidence is forthcoming to show that there was any descent of the Hawkins family in Cornwall from that in Kent. The story given out was that on account of the religious persecution in the time of Queen Mary, two of the Kent Hawkinses left the paternal nest: one settled in Somersetshire and the other in Cornwall, where each became the founder of a family. It was forgotten, when this fiction was given to the world, that the Hawkins stock in Kent was Roman Catholic, and not at all likely to be troubled by Queen Mary.

The first Cornish Hawkins of whom anything is known is Thomas of Mevagissey, who married a certain Audrey, her surname unknown, by whom he had two sons, John and Thomas, and three daughters.

John Hawkins, of S. Erth, the eldest, married Loveday, daughter of George Tremhayle, by whom--who was living in 1676--he had four surviving sons and three daughters, viz. Thomas; George, Vicar of Sithney; Reginald, D.D., Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge; and Francis. Thomas, the eldest, of Trewinnard in S. Erth, married Florence, daughter of James Praed, of Trevethow, near Hayle, by whom he had a daughter, Florence, the wife of John Williams, merchant, of Helston; and as his second wife he had Anne, daughter of Christopher Bellot, of Bodmin, by whom he had six daughters and four sons, of which latter, John, Thomas, and Renatus died young, and only Christopher lived. Thomas Hawkins, the father, died in 1716.

Christopher Hawkins, of Trewinnard, only surviving son, married Mary, daughter of Philip Hawkins, of Penzance, a supposed descendant of the Hawkinses of Devonshire, by whom he had a daughter, Jane, married to Sir Richard Vyvyan, of Trelowaren, Bart., and a son, Thomas Hawkins, of Trewithen, M.P. for Grampound, who married Anne, daughter of James Heywood, of London, by whom he had four sons--Philip, who d.s.p.; Christopher; Thomas, who d.s.p.; John, of Bignor, Sussex, who married the daughter of Humphrey Sibthorpe, M.P. for Lincoln--and a daughter, who married Charles Trelawny, son of General Trelawny. Thomas Hawkins died on December 1st, 1770, and was succeeded by his second son, Christopher Hawkins, of Trewithen and Trewinnard, born at Trewithen May, 1758.[31] The seat Trewithen in Probus descended to his father from his grandmother's brother, Philip Hawkins, M.P. for the pocket borough of Grampound.

Christopher Hawkins came in for a good deal of land, derived through the marriage of the ancestors of Philip Hawkins, of Trewithen, with the heiresses of Scobell and Tredenham and that of his own great-grandfather to the co-heiress of Bellot of Bochym.

Christopher never married, and was of a frugal mind, buying land in all directions, and securing the pocket boroughs, where possible, as excellent investments. It was said of Trewithen--

A large park without deer, A large cellar without beer, A large house without cheer, Sir Christopher Hawkins lives here.

But this was not fair, for there was certainly hospitality shown at Trewithen. Polwhele says: "Not a week before his death, I passed a delightful day with the hospitable baronet. To draw around him the few literary characters of his neighbourhood was his peculiar pleasure; and at Trewithen the clergy in particular had always a hearty welcome."

He purchased the manor of S. Ives in or about 1807, the fair at Mitchell, in Enoder, commanding the election to that borough, and the four fairs at Grampound giving him control there also over elections.

A good many of the Cornish boroughs had been so constituted in the reign of Edward VI by the Protector Somerset, that he might get his own creatures into Parliament. Such were Camelford, Mitchell, Newport, Saltash, West Looe, Bossiney, Grampound, and Penryn. Queen Mary raised S. Ives into a borough in 1550, and Elizabeth created six more to serve her own political purposes, S. Germans, S. Mawes, Tregony, East Looe, Fowey, and Callington.

Mitchell is a mere hamlet, and in 1660 the franchise was solemnly transferred from the inhabitants at large to nominees of the lord of the manor. In 1689 it was determined that the right of election lay in the lords of the borough, who were liable to be chosen portreeve thereof, and the householders of the same not receiving alms. But the borough in the latter years of its existence became a battleground of many combatants, and as the right of voting was, until 1701, left in great ambiguity by successive election committees, the result of the contest could never be predicted. In 1701, the right of election for this distracted borough was again changed. This time it was vested in the portreeve and lord of the manor and the inhabitants paying scot and lot. In 1784, Hawkins and Howell were elected members, and sat in Parliament for Mitchell for twelve years, till 1796, and Sir Christopher became by purchase the sole owner of the borough; and after Howell had ceased to represent Mitchell, he continued as its representative to 1806, when he surrendered his seat to Arthur Wellesley, subsequently Duke of Wellington. The electors by this time had been reduced to five. In the eleven years, 1807-18, there were nine elections at Mitchell, not owing to feuds, but retirement of members. No event of importance occurred after 1818 to 1832, except the extraordinary and significant revelation that at the contested election of 1831, when Hawkins (Sir Christopher's nephew) got two votes, Kenyon five, and Best three. Five voters to return two members. In 1833 those five electors found their borough disfranchised, a fate it richly deserved.

Penryn had been raised into the position of a borough returning two members of Parliament, in 1553.

Mr. Courtney says of 1774: "About this period the borough of Penryn began to be notorious through the county for the readiness of its voters to barter their rights for pecuniary considerations. The franchise was on such an extended basis that almost every householder, though many of these were labourers, indigent and ignorant, was an elector." In 1807 there were, however, but 140; in 1819 they had risen to 328. Each got a "breakfast" and £24 for his vote.

In 1780, Sir Francis Bassett gave a feast to the whole borough; he continued his patronage till 1807, as Lord de Dunstanville. In 1802 Swann and Milford contested a vacant seat in the borough, and Dunstanville to secure the second seat had to resort to putting faggot-voters on the poor-rates, the night before the election. Petition being made against the election, it ended in a compromise, and Swann received £10,000 besides expenses. Lord de Dunstanville, disgusted at the expense and the weakening of his influence, abandoned the borough. Swann thereupon gave a "breakfast" to his supporters; a "breakfast" was synonymous with a bribe of £24. Penryn was concerned at the retirement of its lordly patron, and founded a club in 1805 for electors, such as would most conduce to the pecuniary welfare of the voters. When the election of 1806 was imminent and the former patron had withdrawn, a deputation of the members was sent to Trewithen to that notorious election-monger, Sir Kit, to tender to him the goodwill of the constituency. "The details of the negotiations conducted at this interview," says Mr. Courtney, "became the subject of subsequent investigation; but it was admitted that the voters stopped there for four hours and dined at the baronet's table, which on this occasion, no doubt, was more freely supplied than according to local gossip was the custom on ordinary days. The deputation informed Sir Christopher that Mr. Swann--the Black Swan as he was called by his enemies--who had been nursing the borough since 1802, must obtain one of the seats, but that the other was at his disposal. These two worthy politicians, Hawkins and Swann, thereupon coalesced, drink and food were freely supplied; two voters, one for each candidate, went round and gave each elector a one-pound note to drink their health with, and the result was that on the 1st November, 1806, the poll showed a large majority for Swann and Hawkins over Mr. Trevanion and his colleague William Wingfield." A petition followed, and the evidence was of such a compromising character that Mr. Serjeant Lens abandoned the case on behalf of Hawkins. The evidence produced was that the deputation of voters, headed by a clergyman, which had gone to Trewithen to offer him the borough, had associated with Sir Kit to sell their votes and interest for twenty-four guineas apiece paid to themselves, and for ten guineas to be handed to each of the overseers, and that the offer was duly accepted. An address to the King for the prosecution of Sir Christopher Hawkins and eighteen members of the committee was carried to the House of Commons. The trial took place at Bodmin on the 19th August, 1808, when Cobbett attended in person to watch the trial and report proceedings in his Political Register. The questions in dispute centred on the terms of the agreement; the chief witness swore that the documents signed by Hawkins stipulated that twenty-four guineas should be given to each of the leaders of the party, ten guineas apiece to the two overseers and twenty shillings to each of the voters. But this evidence was unsupported, no other of the committee could be induced or intimidated into admitting that this had been the agreement; no one in Penryn desired to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, and the defendant was acquitted, "to dabble in borough-mongering for the rest of his life."

At the election of 1807, Sir Christopher had no place in Parliament, but Swann sat again for Penryn.

In 1812 Hawkins wooed the borough in vain, in opposition to Philip Gell. The Black Swan was the other member elected, but great indignation was roused against him when it was found that he had left his bills unpaid for treating and breakfasting his adherents.

Then a committee approached Sir Manasseh Lopes, but he declined to buy the votes at the price of £2000.

But Swann managed to recover favour and increase the number of voters in his constituency by 200 votes, and to form a company to provide granite from the vicinity for Waterloo Bridge over the Thames, so providing work for the voters of Penryn, and Hawkins and Swann were returned. The usual petition followed, and evidence of bribery came out. One voter swore that he had received £5, and his wife another £5; another £7; and many others various sums from ten shillings to ten pounds. Swann was declared guilty and imprisoned 1819-20.

In the election of 1827 it was admitted that £1850 had been distributed among the electors. Seventy votes had been sold at £10 apiece.

Grampound had had its elections controlled by Lord Eliot. In the election of 1796 the fifty electors received for their votes £3000, and the patron, Eliot, pocketed £6000 himself. The patronage was then sold to Sir Kit Hawkins, to whom a friend wrote in 1796: "Fame speaks loudly of your doings. The borough, by her own account, is all your own, and such is certainly preferable to Tregony. The small number of voters in one, and the vast number in the other, pulls down the balance in favour of Grampound, and from the continuance of Eliot we may infer that a possession once obtained may last forty or fifty years."

But after the election of 1806 the recognized, nay undisputed patron, Sir Christopher, keeping voters in his pay, and holding the nomination to two seats, found that his power was weakened. His candidate, the Nabob Fawcett, did not pay as he had promised. The electors accordingly determined to transfer their favours to some other great man, and eventually elected Andrew C. Johnstone, Governor of Dominica, by twenty-seven over the Hawkins candidate, who polled only thirteen.

"Up to this time," says the historian, "a decent veil of reserve had been thrown over the delinquencies of the Grampound electors; now it was cast aside, and their deformities were disclosed to the view of the whole political world. Enquiry followed enquiry, and prosecution prosecution." The borough engaged the attention of members of Parliament and Press correspondents. Great Cobbett went to Bodmin in 1808 to see the trial of Sir Kit, the Mayor, Recorder, and four capital Burgesses. This petition unseated the anti-Hawkins candidate, and a new writ was issued. It was now arranged that Cochrane, patron of the anti-Kittite, should give £5000 for one, or £8400 for the two seats, to be distributed, and that each of the elected should pay £12 10s. to the wives of the several electors. Each voter eventually did get about £80. The anti-Kittites polled twenty-seven, and Mr. Hawkins' nominee fourteen. What does the Mayor do? Strike off sufficient votes from the anti-Kittite, so as to give the local baronet a majority of one, and returned his nominees as duly elected. A second petition restored Cochrane.

Sir Kit, discerning that his influence over the electors at Grampound was passing away, determined to increase the number of voters. The electors had consisted of an indefinite number of freemen elected at Easter and Michaelmas by the eligers. This election was artfully deferred till good Kittites could be secured to fill the places desired.

In 1812 Cochrane was still in possession, but he made way for Johnston, associating Teed with him. This man gave each elector £100 in promissory notes. Johnston was, however, expelled the House in 1814 for frauds on the Stock Exchange. Thereupon in came Sir Christopher Hawkins again. He was again brought before the notice of the House in 1818, when there appeared six candidates. Innes and Robertson were elected by thirty-six votes: the rest (eleven) went to Teed. After that, on Teed's petition, the whole secret of the nefarious system came to light. The voters, it appeared, had applied to Sir Kit; but that worthy baronet was tired of their solicitations, and refused to advance a penny. So they turned to the Jew Manasseh Lopes, who gave £2000 to be distributed among forty electors. But when the money arrived, the Mayor intercepted £300 for himself, another took £140, so that the rank and file got only £35 apiece instead of the expected £50; £8000 was paid privily by a sitting member. Again a petition, and Manasseh Lopes was convicted of bribery in both Devon and Cornwall, was fined £10,000, and incarcerated at Exeter for two years.

Lord John Russell was prepared to extirpate bribery, and in particular to disfranchise Grampound; the House of Commons agreed without a dissentient voice, but the death of George III hindered proceedings, and the last two members were returned.

S. Ives had been erected into a borough by Philip and Mary in 1558. Here, after 1689, the Praeds, Whigs, were all-powerful. In 1751, after long being stewards of the Earls of Buckinghamshire, the Stephens family began to assert itself. Thenceforth during the long reign of George III a severe contest for influence over the elections was waged between the two families. In 1774 a Praed got ninety-five votes, a Drummond ninety-eight, and Stephens was left out in the cold with seventy-one. But the usual petition showed Praed's corruption too manifestly. Money had been lent to the voters, with the tacit understanding that in the event of election it was not to be asked for, and forty persons, sure voters for Stephens, had been omitted from the rates. In 1806 Sir Kit Hawkins, gained a share in representation; his candidate, Horner. But Stephens got 135 votes and Horner 128; the other candidate opposing him was left far in the rear, with only five votes. But Horner was out again at the next election. In 1820 Sir Christopher had the appointment to both seats entirely in his own hands.

Tregony had been made into a borough under Queen Elizabeth in 1562. Before 1832 it was described as "destitute of trade, wealth, and common activity."

Writing in 1877, the last Cornish historian remarks that the condition of Tregony had passed from bad to worse. Many of its houses were then in ruins, and the scene of desolation was spreading. In early times Tregony had been a seaport on a tidal creek, but that was silted up, and no boat could now reach it, so that its commercial importance was wholly gone.

During the eighteenth century the representatives of Tregony were men of little importance, small placemen unconnected with Cornwall. In the long array of aliens and Court satellites, the name of one Cornish gentleman stands out in bright relief; 1747-67, for twenty years (a long period) Mr. Trevanion represented it. The election of 1774 excited much notice. Lord North advised a note to be written to Lord Falmouth: "His Lordship must be told in as polite terms as possible, that I hope he will permit me to recommend to three of his six seats in Cornwall. The terms he expects are £2000 a seat, to which I am ready to agree." Later on, he says that his candidate Pownall must get in for Lostwithiel, and Conway represent Tregony, and he added: "My noble friend (Falmouth) is rather shabby, desiring guineas instead of pounds," but signified his will to pay rather than drop the bargain. Again: "Gascoyne shall have the refusal of Tregony for £1000," and the Minister complained that he saw no way of bringing him in at a cheaper rate than any other servant of the Crown.

In 1776 the Boscawen influence was sold to Sir Kit Hawkins, but he did not retain it for long, for he disposed of it to a Nabob, Barwell, and the two continued on friendly terms. When the living of Cuby fell vacant--Cuby is the parish church of Tregony--Sir Kit asked Barwell, who now had the presentation, to give it to a friend of his, alleging that "he had great interest" and assuring Barwell that his clerical friend would reside in the place, and by his great activity in the borough prevent, if possible, any opposition arising to Mr. Barwell. But at the very next election Sir Kit ran and returned two members against Barwell.

In the contest of 1784, Lord Kenyon, a lawyer, obtained the seat by purchase, polling 90, while his two opponents got 69 each.

In 1806 an O'Callinghan and a Yorkshire Whig, through Darlington's interest polled against Barwell's interest 102 against 86. At this election the following trick was played. A Tregony tailor and publican, called Middlecoat, offered to seat Sir Jonathan Miles for 4000 guineas. At the poll the returning officer, who was biased or had been tampered with, struck off many good votes from Miles, and gave bad ones to others. Sir Jonathan petitioned and, for the expenses of the petition, sent Middlecoat a large sum of money, and he prevented the witnesses from appearing, and the sitting members were accordingly pronounced to be duly elected. Middlecoat had secured £2500 from the sitting nominees (Barwellians) to keep back the witnesses, as well as £4200 from Sir Jonathan to bring them forward.

In 1812 O'Callinghan was unseated, and petitioned, showing that £5000 had been distributed among the voters; nevertheless the sitting members were received. Holmes, one of them, said--to show what was the degraded condition of the borough--that out of 127 votes in his favour, 98 had been evicted into the street the day after the election, some having been called on to pay their rents, but were unable to do so at the moment, and others, whose annual rents were only £8, had been mulcted in costs to the extent of £98.

Middlecoat, and four others of like spirit, went to London in 1818 to search for candidates for Tregony and Grampound, offering the former for £6000 and the latter for £7000. A banker and a general came down before the election, but found that the voters would make no promise unless the money were paid down. So they had to return to London "proclaiming their disappointment at every turn, and cursing the scoundrels who would not trust them."

Christopher Hawkins was returned for Mitchell in 1784, re-elected in 1790 and 1796. In June, 1799, he vacated his seat by accepting the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds. In August, 1800, he was elected for Grampound, again in 1802 and 1806. In 1818 he was returned for Penryn, and in June, 1821, for S. Ives. He was created baronet on July 28th, 1791. He was Recorder of Grampound and S. Ives and, at the time when he relinquished his seat finally, he was the father of the House of Commons.

Sir Christopher encouraged the famous engineer and inventor Richard Trevithick, and in the life of that worthy, by Francis Trevithick, are given some letters that passed between them; but Mr. F. Trevithick persistently calls Sir Christopher Sir Charles. Sir Kit was the first man to adopt a steam thrashing-machine in 1812, an invention of Trevithick; it was used for the first time at Trewithen in February in that year. A committee of experts was called in to witness its operations and report on them, and this is their report, dated February 12th, 1812:--

"Having been requested to witness and report on the effect of steam applied to work a mill for thrashing corn at Trewithen, we hereby testify that a fire was lighted under the boiler of the engine five minutes after eight o'clock, and at twenty-five minutes after nine o'clock the thrashing mill began to work, in which time one bushel of coal was consumed. That from the time the mill began to work to two minutes after two o'clock, being four hours and three-quarters, fifteen hundred sheaves of barley were thrashed clean, and one bushel of coal more was consumed. We think there was sufficient steam remaining in the boiler to have thrashed from fifty to one hundred sheaves more barley, and the water in the boiler was by no means exhausted. We had the satisfaction to observe that common labourers regulated the thrashing mill, and in a moment of time made it go faster, slower, or entirely cease working. We approve of the steadiness and the velocity with which the machine worked, and in every respect we prefer the power of steam, as here applied, to that of horse.

MATTHEW ROBERTS, Lansellyn. THOS. NANKEVILL, Golden. MATTHEW DOBLE, Barthlever."

Sir Christopher entered into negotiation with Trevithick about constructing a breakwater to the harbour at S. Ives, at Pendinas Point. It was begun, but never completed, owing to the death of the baronet. But a good thing he did achieve, though done for a political purpose, by indirect bribery, was the establishment of a free school at S. Ives, in Shute Street; the charge of admission was one penny per week, and in it navigation was taught. It was opened on April 11th, 1822.

In the diary of Captain John Tregerthen Short of the events taking place at S. Ives between 1817 and 1838 we have: "1828, June 10th. At 10 a.m. Sir Christopher Hawkins, Bart., and Wellesley Long Pole, Esq., the former supporting the cause of the Right Hon. Sir Charles Arbuthnot, attended at the Town Hall, where Wellesley Long Pole, Esq., resigned the contest, and Sir Charles Arbuthnot was elected without opposition. Immediately afterwards Mr. Wellesley Pole made an active and successful canvass of the town for another election, and left S. Ives at 10 p.m., having given each voter 5s., and Sir Christopher Hawkins gave all his friends 5s."

"July 21st.--All Mr. Wellesley's voters had a public dinner; each received one guinea to defray the expense of the dinner, which came to 7s. 3d. per man." Oh, what a falling off is here! Only 5s. each voter, whereas elsewhere, at Grampound, Tregony, Penryn, and Mitchell, a free and independent elector would turn up his nose at £10. But Captain Short does not inform us what the douceurs had been that were paid previous to the election.

Sir Christopher Hawkins died of erysipelas at Trewithen on April 6th, 1829.

Captain Short enters on that day:--

"Sir Christopher Hawkins, Bart., departed this life this morning in the seventy-first year of his age. His death will be greatly felt and deplored by hundreds. His charitable contributions amongst the indigent will be found greatly wanting. A more generous and benevolent landlord could not be found. He was never known to distrain for rent. He established a Free School in S. Ives for the education of the poor, and gave the sum of £100 towards enlarging the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in this town."

The Gentleman's Magazine for 1830 says that Sir Kit Hawkins's property at S. Ives was sold then, "which secures the purchaser a seat in Parliament, for the borough was lately sold by auction in London for the sum of £55,000. It is reported that the purchaser is the Marquess of Cleveland."

A bad bargain, for three years after the Reform Bill was passed, and S. Ives ceased to be a pocket borough.

FOOTNOTE:

[31] Baptized at Probus 29th May, 1758.Return to passage

ANNE JEFFERIES

Moses Pitt, a publisher in London, a native of S. Teath, in 1696 published the following letter to the Bishop of Gloucester. There are two editions of it, with slight and insignificant variations both in the preliminary address and in the account of Anne Jefferies.

The preamble we omit.

"Anne Jefferies (for that was her maiden name), of whom the following strange things are related, was born in the parish of S. Teath, in the county of Cornwall, in December, 1626, and she is still living in 1696, being in the seventieth year of her age. She is married to one William Warren, formerly hind to the late eminent physician Dr. Richard Lewes, deceased, and now lives as a hind to Sir Andrew Slanning, of Devon, Bart.

"In the year 1691 I wrote into Cornwall to my sister Mary Martyn's son, attorney, to go to the said Anne and discourse her, as from me, about the most strange passages of her life. He answers my letter September 13th, 1691, and saith: 'I have been with Anne Jefferies, and she can give me no particular account of her condition, it being so long since. My grandmother and mother say that she was in Bodmin jail three months, and lived six months without meat; and during her continuance in that condition several eminent cures were performed by her; the particulars no one can now state. My mother saw the fairies once, and heard one say that they should give some meat to the child, that she might return unto her parents, which is the fullest relation can now be given.' But I, not being satisfied with the answer, did in the year 1693 write into Cornwall and my sister's husband, Mr. Humphry Martyn, and desired him to go to Anne Jefferies to see if he could persuade her to give me what account she could remember of the many and strange passages of her life. He answered by letter, January 31st, 1693, and saith: 'As for Anne Jefferies, I have been with her the greatest part of one day, and did read to her all that you wrote to me; but she would not own anything of it as concerning the fairies, neither of the cures she then did. I endeavoured to persuade her she might receive some benefit by it. She answered that if her own father were now alive she would not discover to him those things which did happen to her. I asked her the reason why she would not do it; she replied that if she should discover it to you, that you would make either books or ballads of it; and she said that she would not have her name spread about the country in books or ballads, or such things, if she might have £500 for doing it; for she said she had been questioned before justices, and at the sessions, and in prison, and also before the judges at the assizes, and she doth believe that if she should discover such things now she would be questioned again for it. As for the ancient inhabitants of S. Teath Church-town, there are none of them now alive but Thomas Christopher, a blind man. (NOTE: This Thomas Christopher was then a servant in my father's house, when these things happened, and he remembers many of the passages you write of her.) And as for my wife, she then being so little did not mind it, but heard her father and mother relate most of the passages you wrote of her.'

"This is all I can, at present, possibly get from her, and therefore I now go on with my relation of the wonderful cures and other strange things she did, or happened to her, which is the substance of what I wrote to my brother and that he read to her.

"It is the custom in our county of Cornwall for the most substantial people of each parish to take apprentices the poor children, and to breed them up till they attain to twenty-one years of age, and for their services to give them meat, drink, and clothes. This Anne Jefferies, being a poor man's child of the parish, by Providence fell into our family, where she lived many years. Being a girl of a bold, daring spirit, she would venture at those difficulties and dangers that no boy would attempt.

"In the year 1645 (she being nineteen years old), she being one day knitting in an arbour in our garden, there came over the hedge to her, as she affirmed, six persons of small stature, all clothed in green, which she called fairies. Upon which she was so frightened that she fell into a kind of convulsive fit. But when we found her in this condition, we brought her into the house and put her to bed, and took great care of her. As soon as she recovered out of her fit she cried out, 'They are just gone out of the window! Do you not see them?' And thus in the height of her sickness she would often cry out, and that with eagerness, which expressions were attributed to her distemper, supposing her light-headed. During the extremity of her sickness my father's mother died, which was in April, 1646; he durst not acquaint our maid Anne of it for fear it might have increased her distemper, she being at that time so very sick that she could not go, nor so much as stand on her feet; and also the extremity of her sickness, and the long continuance of her distemper had almost perfectly moped her, so that she became even as a changeling; and as soon as she began to recover, or to get a little strength, she in her going would spread her legs as wide as she could, and so lay hold with her hands on tables, chairs, forms, stools, etc., till she had learnt to go again; and if anything vexed her, she would fall into her fits, and continue in them for a long time, so that we were afraid she would have died in one of them.

"As soon as she recovered a little strength she constantly went to church to pay her devotions to our great and good God. She took mighty delight in devotion and in hearing the Word of God read and preached, although she herself could not read. The first manual operation or cure she performed was on my mother. The occasion was as follows: One afternoon in the harvest time, all our family being in the fields at work (and myself a boy at school), there was none in the house but my mother and this Anne. My mother, considering that bread might be a-wanting for the labourers, if care were not taken, and she having before caused some bushels of wheat to be sent to the mill, which was but a quarter of a mile from our house, desired to hasten the miller to bring home the meal, that so her maids as soon as they came from the fields might make and bake the bread; but in the meantime how to dispose of her maid Anne was her great care, for she did not dare trust her in the house alone, for fear she might do herself some mischief by fire, or set the house on fire, for at that time she was so weak that she could hardly help herself, and very silly withal. At last, by much persuasion, my mother prevailed with her to walk in the gardens and orchard till she came from the mill, to which she willingly consented. Then my mother locked the door of the house and walked to the mill; but as she was coming home, she slipped and hurt her leg, so as that she could not rise. There she lay a considerable time in great pain, till a neighbour, coming by on horseback, seeing my mother in this condition, lifted her upon his horse. As soon as she was brought within doors of the house, word was sent into the fields to the reapers, who thereupon immediately left their harvest work and came home. The house being presently full of people, a man-servant was ordered to take a horse and ride for Mr. Lobb, an eminent surgeon who then lived at Bodmin, which was eight miles from my father's house. But, while the man was getting the horse ready, in comes our maid Anne, and tells my mother that she was heartily sorry for the mischance she had got in hurting her leg, and that she did it at such a place, naming the place, and further, she desired she might see her leg. My mother at first refused to show her leg, saying to her, What should she show her leg to so poor and silly a creature as she was, for she could do her no good. But Anne being very importunate with my mother to see her leg, and my mother being unwilling to vex her by denying her, for fear of her falling into her fits, for at all times we dealt gently, lovingly, and kindly with her, did yield to her request, and did show her her leg.

"Upon which Anne took my mother's leg upon her lap and stroked it with her hand, and then asked my mother if she did not find ease by her stroking of it? My mother confessed to her she did. Upon this she desired my mother to forbear sending for the surgeon, for she would, by the blessing of God, cure her leg. And to satisfy my mother of the truth of it, she again appealed to my mother whether she did not find further ease upon her continued stroking of the part affected. Which my mother again acknowledged she did. Upon this my mother countermanded the messenger for the surgeon. On this my mother demanded of her how she came to the knowledge of her fall. She made answer that half a dozen persons had told her of it. 'That,' replied my mother, 'could not be, for there were none came by at that time but my neighbour, who brought me home.' Anne answers again that that was truth, and it was also true that half a dozen persons told her so, for, said she, 'you know I went out of the house into the garden and orchard very unwillingly; and now I will tell you the truth of all matters and things that have befallen me. You know that this my sickness and fits came very suddenly upon me, which brought me very low and weak, and have made me very simple. Now the cause of my sickness was this: I was one day knitting of stockings in the arbour of the garden, and there came over the garden hedge of a sudden six small people, all in green clothes, which put me into such a great fright that was the cause of my sickness; and they continue their appearance to me, never less than two at a time nor more than eight. They always appear in even numbers--2, 4, 6, 8. When I said often in my sickness they were just gone out of the window, it was really so, although you thought me light-headed. At this time, when I came out into the garden, they came to me and asked me if you had put me out of the house against my will. I told them I was unwilling to come out of the house. Upon this they said you should not fare better for it, and thereupon, in that place and at that time, in a fair pathway you fell and hurt your leg. I would not have you send for a surgeon nor trouble yourself, for I will cure your leg.' The which she did in a little time.

"This cure of my mother's leg, and the stories she told of those fairies, made a noise all over the county of Cornwall. People of all distempers, sicknesses, sores, and ages came not only so far off as the Land's End, but also from London, and were cured by her. She took no money of them nor any reward that ever I knew or heard of, yet had she monies at all times, sufficient to supply her wants. She neither made nor bought any medicines or salves that ever I saw or heard of, yet wanted them not as she had occasion. She forsook eating our victuals and was fed by those fairies from the harvest time to the next Christmas Day, upon which day she came to our table and said because it was that day she would eat some roast beef with us, the which she did, I myself being then at the table.

"One time (I remember it perfectly well) I had a mind to speak with her, and not knowing better where to find her than in her chamber, I went thither, and fell a-knocking very earnestly at her chamber door with my foot, and calling to her earnestly 'Anne! Anne! open the door and let me in.' She answered me, 'Have a little patience and I will let you in, immediately.' Upon which I looked through the keyhole of the door and saw her eating; and when she had done eating she stood still by the bedside as long as thanks might be given, and then she made a courtesy (or bend) and opened the chamber door, and gave me a piece of the bread, which I did eat, and I think it was the most delicious bread that ever I did eat, either before or since.

"Another odd passage, which I must relate, was this: One Lord's Day, my father with his family being at dinner in our hall, comes in one of our neighbours, whose name was Francis Heathman, and asked where Anne was. We told him she was in her chamber. Upon this he goes into her chamber to see her, but, not seeing her, he calls her. She not answering, he feels up and down the chamber for her, but not finding her, comes and tells us she was not in her chamber. As soon as he had said this, she comes out of her chamber to us, as we were sitting at table, and tells him she was in her chamber and saw him and heard him call her, and saw him feel up and down the chamber for her, and had almost felt her, but he could not see her, although she saw him, notwithstanding she was, at the same time, at the table in her chamber, eating her dinner.

"One day these fairies gave my sister (the new wife of Mr. Humphry Martyn) then about four years of age, a silver cup, which held about a quart, bidding her give it my mother, and she did bring it my mother; but my mother would not accept of it, but bid her carry it to them again; which she did. I presume this was the time my sister owns she saw the fairies. I confess to your lordship, I never did see them. I had almost forgot to tell your lordship, that Anne would tell what people would come to her, several days before they came, and from whence, and at what time they would come.

"I have seen Anne in the orchard, dancing among the trees, and she told me she was then dancing with the fairies.

"The great noise of the many strange cures Anne did, and also her living without eating our victuals, she being fed, as she said, by these fairies, caused both the neighbouring magistrates and ministers to resort to my father's house, and talk with her, and strictly examine her about the matter here related; and she gave them very rational answers to all their questions they then asked her; for by this time she was well recovered out of her sickness and fits, and her natural parts and understanding much improved, my father and all his family affirming the truth of all she said.

"The ministers endeavouring to persuade her they were evil spirits resorted to her, and that it was the delusions of the devil. But how could that be when she did no hurt, but good to all who came to her for cure of their distempers? and advised her not to go to them when they called her. However, that night after the magistrates and ministers were gone, my father, with his family, sitting at a great fire in the hall, Anne being also present, she spake to my father and said, 'Now they call!' meaning the fairies. We all of us urged her not to go. In less than half a quarter of an hour she said, 'Now they call a second time!' We encouraged her again not to go to them. By and by she said, 'Now they call a third time!' Upon which, away to her chamber she went to them. Of all these calls of the fairies, none heard them but Anne. After she had been in the chamber some time, she came to us again with a Bible in her hand, and tells us that when she came to the fairies, they said to her, 'What, hath there been some magistrates and ministers to you, and dissuaded you from coming any more to us, saying we are evil spirits, and that it is all delusions of the devil? Pray desire them to read in the 1st Epistle of S. John, chapter 4, verse 1, "Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God."' This place of Scripture was turned down to in the said Bible. I told your lordship before, Anne could not read.

"After this, one John Tregeagle, Esq., who was steward to John, Earl of Radnor, being then a Justice of Peace in Cornwall, sent his warrant for Anne, and sent her to Bodmin jail, and there kept her a long time. That day the constable came to execute his warrant, Anne milking the cows, the fairies appeared to her and told her that a constable would come that day with a warrant to carry her before a justice of the peace, and she would be sent to jail. She asked them if she should hide herself. They answered, No, she should fear nothing, but go with the constable. So she went with the constable to the justice, and he sent her to Bodmin jail and ordered the prison-keeper that she should be kept without victuals; and she was so kept, and yet she lived, and that without complaining. When the sessions came, the justices of the peace sent their warrant to one Giles Bawden, a neighbour of ours, who was then a constable, for my mother and myself to appear before them, at the sessions, to answer such questions as should be demanded of us about our poor maid Anne.

"Bodmin was eight miles from my father's. When we came to the sessions, the first who was called in before the justices was my mother. What questions they asked her I do not remember. When they had done examining her, they desired her to withdraw. As soon as she came forth I was brought in, and called to the upper end of the table to be examined, and there was the clerk of the peace, with the pen ready in his hand, to take my examination. The first question they asked me was, 'What have you got in your pockets?' I answered, 'Nothing, sir, but my cuffs': which I immediately plucked out and I showed them. The second question to me was, If I had any victuals in my pockets for my maid Anne? I answered I had not; and so they dismissed me, as well as my mother. But poor Anne lay in jail for a considerable time after; and also Justice Tregeagle, who was her great persecutor, kept her in his house some time as a prisoner, and that without victuals. And at last when Anne was discharged out of prison, the justice made an order that Anne should not live any more with my father. Whereupon my father's only sister, Mrs. Frances Tom, a widow, near Padstow, took Anne into her family, and there she lived a considerable time and did many cures; but what they were, my kinsman, Mr. William Tom, who there lived in the house with his mother, can give your lordship the best account of any I know living, except Anne herself. And from hence she went to live with her own brother, and, in process of time, married, etc.

"I am your lordship's most humble and dutiful servant,

"MOSES PITT.

"May 1st, 1699."

* * * * *

There are several points to be considered in this curious story. It is written in all good faith, and is an honest account of what Pitt remembered of events that took place some fifty years previously, when he was a boy.

There is nothing in the first portion of the story that cannot be explained without the intervention of fairies or pixies; but it is not so easy to account for Anne's abstaining wholly from the food of mortals like herself and being sustained on fairy food. It is not uncommon for women to pretend that they do not eat; there have been many "fasting girls," but all have been shown up to be impostors. In this case, however, Anne Jefferies did not pretend to be a fasting girl, but to be nourished by fairies. In the house of the Pitts she might have surreptitiously procured food, but this she could not do in the jail at Bodmin, nor in the house of Justice Tregeagle.

As to the cures she wrought, they are to be put in the same category as faith cures all the world over, whether performed at Lourdes, or by Christian scientists, or by Shamans in the steppes of Tartary.

Moses Pitt, the writer of the letter, was the son of John Pitt, yeoman, of S. Teath; he was bound apprentice to Robert Litterbury, citizen and haberdasher, in London, for seven years from October 1st, 1654. He became a foreman of the Haberdashers' Company 8th November, 1661, and started as a publisher and speculative builder. In 1680 he began to issue The English Atlas at his shop "The Angel," in S. Paul's Churchyard. It was to be in twelve volumes, and was dedicated to the King, but was never completed, as he got into difficulties. In the first place he became sole executor to a Captain Richard Mill, who had tenant right to the "Blue Boar's Head," in King Street, Westminster, at an annual rent of £20. Pitt had to pay this, and also Captain Mill's widow an annuity of £50. But he found the "Blue Boar's Head" so dilapidated that he had to rebuild it at a heavy outlay before he could let it. Then he had a quarrel with a neighbour about a party wall he was rebuilding, leading to law proceedings, and Pitt was cast in costs and damages. But his most serious loss was entailed by his building a house for Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, which that judge agreed to take at £300 per annum. As part of the land on which it was to be built was Crown property, Jeffreys guaranteed Pitt that he would obtain a lease for ninety-nine years of it, and bade him hurry on the building. When Pitt had spent £4000 on it, Jeffreys was disgraced and fell, owing to the flight of James II and the advent of William of Orange. Pitt, greatly embarrassed for money, fled to Ireland; he mortgaged his estates for £3000, but as his creditors were not satisfied, he was finally arrested and sent to the Fleet Prison April 18th, 1689, where he remained till the 16th May, 1691, when he was transferred to the King's Bench.

He published in the same year "The Cry of the Oppressed, being a true and tragical account of the unparallel'd suffering of multitudes of poor imprisoned debtors in most of the gaols of England, under the tyranny of the gaolers and other oppressors.... Together with the case of the Publisher." The sufferings of the debtors he knew by personal experience, and his revelation is one of horrors perpetrated in the Fleet and elsewhere, and illustrated with very graphic copper-plates. His account of his own troubles occupies sixty-seven pages, and shows him to have been a reckless speculator. Having been educated as a haberdasher, he undertook to be a publisher, and simultaneously to be a builder.

He probably obtained his release before 1695, as in that year he published a letter relative to some discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, by a parson named George Hicker, D.D., and in 1696 he wrote the account of Anne Jefferies, given above. He was married to a Miss Upman. The date of his death is not known. Justice Tregeagle, who was the special "persecutor" of Anne Jefferies, is very well remembered in Cornish legend. He was a particularly wicked man and harsh steward, and lies buried near the chancel of S. Breock. His home was Trevorder, in that parish.

THOMAS KILLIGREW, THE KING'S JESTER

The Killigrew family seems to have possessed a great hankering after the stage, for four of them were playwrights. Indeed, Henry Killigrew, educated at Christ Church, Oxford, began at the age of seventeen, when a play written by him was performed at the nuptials of Lord Charles Herbert with Lady Mary Villiers, at the Black Friars. Some critics present objected that one of the characters, representing a boy of seventeen, talked too freely for his age, and Falkland replied "that it was neither monstrous nor impossible for one of seventeen years to speak at such a rate; when he that made him speak in that manner, and who wrote the whole play, was himself no older."

Sir William Killigrew, Knt., who was loyal to Charles I, and stood high in favour with Charles II, usher of the privy chamber and vice-chamberlain to the Queen, also wrote plays, tragi-comedies, but they do not appear to have taken with the public.

But the man who was most stage-stricken of the family was Thomas, the fourth son of Sir Robert Killigrew, born in 1611. He became early in life page of honour to Charles I, and he attended Charles II when in exile. At this period, when Charles was sorely in need of money, Thomas Killigrew was despatched as "Resident" to Venice, in 1652, "to borrow money of English merchants for his (Charles's) owne subsistence," and "to press the Duke to furnish Us with a present some (sum) of money and we will engage ourselves by any Act or Acts to repay with interest, and so likewise for any Arms or Ammunition he shall be pleased to furnish Us withall. The summe you shall move him to furnish Us with shall be Ten thousand Pistolls."

According to Hyde, Charles misdoubted the suitableness of Killigrew for this delicate negotiation; and was finally prevailed to send him, simply to gratify Tom.

The misgivings of the Prince were justified, for Killigrew and his servants behaved so badly at Venice that the Doge, Francisco Erizzo, had to complain through his ambassador.

Sir Edward Hyde, in a letter to Sir Richard Browne, wrote: "I have informed the Kinge of the Venetian Ambassador's complainte against Mr. Killigrew, with which His Majesty is very much troubled, and resolves upon his returne hither to examyne his miscarriage, and to proceed therein in such a manner as shall be worthy of him, and as may manifest his respecte to that Commonwealth, with which the Crowne of Englande hath alwayes held a very stricte amity, and His Majesty's Ministers have in all places preserved a very good correspondence with the Ministers of that State, and therefore His Majesty is more sensible of this misdemeanour of his Resident."

On Killigrew's return to the Court of S. Germain, Sir John Denham addressed him in these lines:--

Our Resident Tom From Venice has come, And has left the Statesman behind him; Talks at the same pitch, Is as wise, is as rich, And just where you left him, you find him.

But who says he is not A man of much plot, May repent of this false accusation; Having-plotted and penn'd Six plays to attend The Farce of his negotiation.

But although Charles might put on an appearance of being indignant, and though he was vexed that Tom did not return laden with "pistolls," he was too careless and too fond of being entertained to part with his principal buffoon. But thenceforth he employed him mainly in transactions about wine, canary and sack, of which the Prince needed much.

The story is told of Louis XIV that he had heard much of the wit of Tom Killigrew, and sent for him to Versailles, where he talked to him, but could elicit nothing from him. Thinking that this proceeded from shyness he drew him apart, and led him into the gallery to show him the pictures. There he asked him if he knew what they represented. Tom expressed his ignorance, whereupon the King led him before a painting of the Crucifixion, and asked him what that represented. "I believe, your Majesty," replied Tom, "that it is a picture of Christ between two thieves."

"And who might they be?"

"Your Majesty and the Pope," replied the audacious jester.

The first wife of Thomas Killigrew was Cecilia, a daughter of Sir John Crofts, of Saxham, in Suffolk, and he was married to her on June 29th, 1636.

The weather on the wedding day was rude and boisterous, which gave rise to some lines by Thomas Carew:--

"Such should this day be; so the sun should hide His bashful face, and let the conquering bride Without a rivall shine, whilst he forbears To mingle his unequall beams with hers;

Or if sometime he glance his squinting eye Between the parting clouds, 'tis but to spye, Not emulate her glories; so comes drest In vayles, but as a masquer to the feast."

She brought her husband a fortune of £10,000, and a son and heir, Henry, born in April, 1637. She was buried the 5th January, 1638, in Westminster Abbey. Tom married again, when in exile, at the Hague, and his second wife was Charlotte, daughter of John van Hesse, a Dutch woman. The marriage took place 26th January, 1655, and by her he had three sons, Robert, Charles, and Thomas.

At length came the recall of Charles to England, and Tom Killigrew accompanied him in the same vessel, very lighthearted, and expectant of great things. Pepys had gone over to meet the King, and he says, May 24th, 1660: "Walking upon the decks, were persons of honour all the afternoon, among others Thomas Killigrew, a merry droll, but a gentleman of great esteem with the King, who told us many merry stories." Among them one Pepys quotes, which is profane.

Thomas Killigrew was appointed Groom of the Bedchamber, with a salary of £400 per annum, which he augmented by receiving bribes from those who were solicitous to obtain posts under the Crown, and to use his influence with the King to get them.

He had now an opportunity of producing on the London stage the plays that he had composed whilst abroad. Of these there were eight, comedies and tragi-comedies, all borrowed, none exhibiting any genuine wit, but steeped in ordure. One, The Parson's Wedding, borrowed from The Antiquary, by Shakerly Marmion, and Raw Alley, by Lord Barrey, was actually to be performed wholly by women. It has been well said by Mr. Tregellas: "We find ourselves indeed 'surrounded by foreheads of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire of hell.' I must add that they have scarcely a sparkle of that witty wickedness which one meets with in the writings of Sir Charles Sedley."

All Killigrew's plays were printed in folio in 1644. Pepys did not see much merit in them. Of The Parson's Wedding he says: "Luellin tells me what an obscene, loose play this is, that is acted by nothing but women, at the King's House." Of Claracilla, "a poor play." Of Love at First Sight, "I find the play to be a poor thing, and so I perceive every body else do." Nor did he think much of Killigrew's conversation. He described it as "poor and frothy."

In The Companion to the Playhouse, 1764, there are some stories told of Killigrew.

"After the Restoration he continued in high favour with the King, and had frequently access to him when he was denied to the first peers of the realm; and being a man of great wit and liveliness of parts, and having from his long intimacy with that monarch, and being continually about his person during his troubles, acquired a freedom of familiarity with him, which even the pomp of Majesty afterwards could not check in him, he sometimes, by way of jest, which King Charles was ever fond of, if genuine, even tho' himself was the object of the satire, would adventure bold truths which scarcely any one beside would have dared even to hint to. One story in particular is related of him, which, if true, is a strong proof of the great lengths he would sometimes proceed in his freedoms of this kind, which is as follows: When the King's unbounded passion for women had given his mistress such an ascendancy over him, that, like the effeminate Persian monarch, he was fitter to have handled a distaff than to wield a sceptre, and for the conversation of his concubines utterly neglected the most important affairs of state, Mr. Killigrew went to pay his Majesty a visit in his private apartments, habited like a pilgrim who was bent on a long journey. The King, surprised at the oddity of his appearance, immediately asked him what was the meaning of it, and whither he was going. 'To Hell,' bluntly replied the man. 'Prithee,' said the King, 'what can your errand be to that place?' 'To fetch back Oliver Cromwell,' rejoined he, 'that he may take some care of the affairs of England, for his successor takes none at all.'"

This was not the only time that Killigrew gave good counsel to the King. Pepys says: "Mr. Pierce did tell me as a great truth, as being told by Mr. Cowley, who was by, and heard it, that Tom Killigrew should publicly tell the King that his matters were coming into a very ill state, and that yet there was a way to help all. Says he: 'There is a good, honest, able man, that I could name, that, if your Majesty would employ, and command to see all things well executed, all things would soon be mended; and this one is Charles Stuart, who now spends his time in employing his lips about the Court, and hath no other employment, but if you would give him this employment, he were the fittest man in the world to perform it.' This, he says, is most true; but the King do not profit by any of this, but lays it aside, and remembers nothing, but to his pleasures again."

On another occasion Killigrew is said to have placed under the candlestick where Charles II supped, five small papers, on each of which he had written the word ALL. The King on seeing them, asked what he meant by these five words. "If your Majesty will grant my pardon, I will tell you," was his reply. Pardon being promised, Killigrew said: "The first ALL signified that the country had sent all it could to the exchequer; the second, that the City had lent all it could and would; the third, that the Court had spent all; the fourth, that if we did not mend all; the fifth would be the worse for all."

This was afterwards adapted and turned upon the family of William of Orange: "That he was William Think-all; his queen Mary Take-all; Prince George of Denmark, George Drink-all; and Princess Anne, Anne Eat-all."

Although Thomas Killigrew went by the designation of the King's Jester, he held no official position as such.

"Mr. Cooling told us how the King, once speaking of the Duke of York's being mastered by his wife, said to some of the company, by that he would go no more abroad with this Tom Otter (a hen-pecked husband in Ben Jonson's Epicæne), meaning the Duke of York and his wife. Tom Killigrew, being by, said, 'Sir, pray which is the best, for a man to be a Tom Otter to his wife or to his mistress?' meaning the King's being so to my Lady Castlemaine."

Killigrew was engaged one morning with one of his own plays, which he took up in the window, whilst His Majesty was shaving. "Ah, Killigrew," asked the King, "what will you say at the Last Day in defence of the idle words in that book?" To which Tom replied, that he could give a better account of his "idle words," than the King would be able to give respecting his "idle promises and more idle patents, that had undone more than ever did his books."

"One more story is related of him, which is not barren of humour. King Charles's fondness for pleasure, to which he almost always made business give way, used frequently to delay affairs of consequence, from His Majesty's disappointing the Council of his presence when met for dispatch of business, which neglect gave great disgust and offence to many of those who were treated with this seeming disrespect. On one of these occasions the Duke of Lauderdale, who was naturally impetuous and turbulent, quitted the council-chamber in a violent passion, and, meeting Mr. Killigrew presently after, expressed himself on the occasion in very disrespectful terms of His Majesty. Killigrew begged His Grace to moderate his passion, and offered to lay him a wager of a hundred pounds that he himself would prevail on His Majesty to come to the council within half an hour. The Duke, surprised at the boldness of the assertion, and warmed by his resentment against the King, accepted the wager, on which Killigrew immediately went to the King, and without ceremony told him what had happened, adding these words: 'I knew that Your Majesty hated Lauderdale, though the necessity of your affairs compels you to carry an outward appearance of civility; now, if you choose to be rid of a man who is thus disagreeable to you, you need only go this once to council, for I know his covetous disposition so perfectly, that I am well persuaded, rather than pay this hundred pounds, he would hang himself out of the way, and never plague you more.'

"The King was so pleased with the archness of the observation, that he immediately replied, 'Well, then, Killigrew, I positively will go.' And kept his word accordingly."

Pepys has a good deal to say about Killigrew. He tells how Killigrew became enamoured of the stage when a boy. "He would go to the 'Red Bull,' and when the man cried to the boys, 'Who will go and be a devil, and he shall see the play for nothing?' then would he go in, and be a devil upon the stage, and so get to see plays."

2nd August, 1664. "To the King's playhouse, and there saw Bartholomew Fayre, which do still please me, and is, as it is acted, the best comedy in the world, I believe. I chanced to sit by Tom Killigrew, who tells me that he is setting up a nursery (for actors), that is, is going to build a house in Moorefields, wherein he will have common plays acted."

12th February, 1666-7. "With my Lord Bronnaker by coach to his house, there to hear some Italian musique, and there we met Tom Killigrew, Sir Robert Murray, and the Italian, Signor Baptista, who hath proposed a play in Italian for the Opera, which T. Killigrew do intend to have up."

Thomas Killigrew was nearly sixty years old when he narrowly escaped assassination in S. James's Park. He had been carrying on an intrigue with Lady Shrewsbury, but found a dangerous and more successful rival in the Duke of Buckingham. Whereupon in spite and revenge he poured over the lady a stream of foul and venomous satire. The result was that one evening, on his return from the Duke of York's, some ruffians, hired for the purpose, set upon Tom's chair, through which they passed their swords three times, wounding him in the arm. The assassins then fled, having killed his man, and believing they had killed Tom Killigrew.

He recovered from his wound, lived on thirteen or fourteen years longer, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on 19th March, 1682-3.

His son Thomas was a playwright, and his son Charles proprietor of "the Playhouse, Drury Lane."

The Killigrews have now passed, not individually only, but as a family off the stage of life, and are remembered only by their deeds, good and bad, as recorded in history. It was usually said of Tom Killigrew that when he attempted to write he was dull, whereas in conversation he was smart; and this was precisely the reverse of Cowley, who did not shine in conversation, but sparkled with his pen. In allusion to this Denham wrote:--

Had Cowley ne'er spoken, and Killigrew ne'er writ, Combin'd in one, they'd make a matchless wit.

NICOLAS ROSCARROCK

Nicolas Roscarrock was the fifth son of Richard Roscarrock, of Roscarrock, in S. Endelion, by Isabell, daughter of Richard Trevenor. His grandmother was a Boscawen. His father during his lifetime had settled upon him the estates of Penhall, Carbura, and Newtown, in the parishes of S. Cleer and S. Germans.

He first studied at Exeter College, Oxford, and took his B.A. in 1568. Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, p. 299, tells us of "his industrious delight in matters of history and antiquity."

In 1577 Roscarrock was admitted student of the Inner Temple. In the same year was published by Richard Tottell The Worthies of Armorie ... collected and gathered by John Bossewell, to which were prefixed ninety-four verses, entitled Cilenus, Censur of the Author of his High Court of Herehautry, by Nicolas Roscarrocke.

In the Inner Temple he seems to have been associated with Raleigh, for in 1576 appeared The Steepleglas, a satyre, and among commendatory verses are some signed "N. R." and the rest by "Walter Rawely of the Inner Temple."

In 1577 he was in Cornwall, where he suffered much annoyance because of his faith, as he refused to conform to the English liturgy, and maintained the Papal supremacy. It was in 1570 that Pope Pius V had issued a bull of excommunication against Elizabeth, deprived her of her title to the crown, and absolved her subjects from their oaths of allegiance. This violent and ill-judged proceeding at once converted all those who held by the Pope into suspected traitors; and measures were adopted against them, the more so as the Jesuits and their agents were more than suspected of forming plots for the assassination of the Queen.

Nicolas Roscarrock was accused at Launceston Assizes on September 16th, 1577, "for not going to church." He was in London later, and was an active member of the "Young Men's Club," 1579-81.

From the State Papers, 1547-50, we learn that two spies were employed by the Government to discover Nicolas Roscarrock. He had, however, probably fled to Douay, where a Roscarrock is entered in the Douay Diary as landing on September, 1580.

But he was again in England in 1581, when he was sent to the Tower, where by a refinement of cruelty he was placed in a cell adjoining that of a friend who had been racked, that the moans of the latter might intimidate Roscarrock into giving evidence of plots against the life of the Queen. On January 14th, 1581, Nicolas was himself tortured on the rack. He remained for five years in prison in the Tower, and in the Fleet again till 1594, in all fourteen years.

He was finally released, and went in 1607 north to Naworth to Lord William Howard, with whom he remained till his death, which took place in 1633 or 1634, when he had reached an advanced age.

Such in brief is the history of Nicolas Roscarrock.

Whilst he was at Naworth, he occupied himself in compiling a volume of the Lives of the English Saints.

The first part he wrote with his own hand, but as his sight failed, he was obliged to employ an amanuensis, who wrote very untidily and made strange havoc of many of the names, which he wrote phonetically from dictation. The MS. has undergone annotation by two hands: one was Roscarrock himself, who added in matters which reached him later; the other was Dom Gregory Hungate, a Benedictine.

As far as can be judged, the MS. was compiled between 1610 and 1625.[32]

After the dispersion of Lord William Howard's library, we do not know what became of the book till about 1700, when it formed a portion of a library bequeathed to Brent Eleigh parish, in Suffolk, by a certain Mr. Edward Colman, sometime of Trinity College, Cambridge. Here it seems to have undergone rough usage, and it was probably there that the MS. lost so many pages torn out. As it is, it consists of no fewer than 850 pages; folio 253 is missing, also some pages from the beginning and something like ninety at the end that have been torn out.

At the sale of the Brent Eleigh Library, the MS. was purchased by the University Library managers, Cambridge, and it is now in that library (Add. MS. 3041).

It is a thick volume, measuring 1 ft. by 8-1/4 in.

It possesses an Introduction, "How Saynts may be esteemed soe, Secondlye of their Commemorations and the trewest enfalliblest manner of discovering them, and what Course the Collector of this Alphebitt of Saints that he observed in this Collection." Then follows an article on the Canonizing of Saints, and another "Of the Course and Order which is to be observed in my Collection." Then ensues a Calendar, and this is followed by an alphabetical biographical notice of the saints to Simon Sudbury, where the rest is torn away.

Nicolas Roscarrock had recourse mainly to printed authorities, to Capgrave, Surius, Harpsfield, and to Whytford's Martyrologie. But he had also access to the MSS. of Edward Powell, a Welsh priest, who had a considerable collection of Welsh saintly pedigrees. With regard to the Cornish saints, he records current traditions of his time, that he had collected in his youth. But he had also a MS. Cornish life of S. Columba, to which Hals refers. Unhappily, he has not given us the original, only its substance. And he quotes from a Cornish hymn or ballad relative to S. Mabenna, but which to our great regret he does not give. Here and there he indulges in verses of his own composition in honour of the saints, but they are of no poetic merit.

In the volume is a letter undated, addressed by one W. Webbe to--we suppose--the chaplain at Naworth. It is as follows:--

"Most Worthy Syr,

"Mr. Trewenna Roscarrock found in the library of Oxford a story of a certain Christian and his wife who came out of Ireland with their children to fly the persecution, and lived in Cornwall: and after some tyme both he and his wife with the children suffered martyrdom in Cornwall, and in their honour were faire Churches dedicated. Some of the names of these saints (as wee suppose) wear these as follow:--

"S. Essye, S. Milior, S. Que, S. Einendar, S. Eue, S. Maubon, S. Breage, S. Earvin, S. Merrine, &c.

"They were about 20 at the least; the story at large, Mr. Roscarrock's Book, and keeping noe coppy of it lent it to his brother, Mr. Nicolas Roscarocke, who lived and dyed at my Lord William Hoard's House in y^e North.

"Now some worthye Catholickes of Cornwall being desirous to understand the full story, to the end they may the better honour these Saynts of their County, besought me to write unto the North about this, and get out of Mr. Nicolas Roscarocke's writings this story, they knowing that he was wont to compile together such monuments for further memorye. I did soe and I was assured by a good Gentleman a friend of mine, and who actually lives with the house, that Sir William Hoard, my Lord William's son, had Mr. Nicolas Roscarock's written booke, and papers, and that he would most willingly pleasure my Countrymen in this holy desire of theirs--Wherefore Worthy Syr I shall humble intreate you for God's sake, and for the honours of these glorious [sai[33]]nts martyrs, to deale efficaciously with Syr William Hoard [to obta]ine a copy of this story for all our comforts and wee [shall be al]wayes obleidged to pray for you and Syr William [both in] this worlde and in the next.

"Your servant to his honor, "H. WEBBE."

FOOTNOTES:

[32] Authorities for his life: Ormsby, The Household Books of Lord William Howard, Surtees Soc., 1878, pp. 506 et seq.; Gildew's Biographical Dictionary of English Catholics; Jesuits in Conflict, 1873, p. 206; the Douay Diaries, ed. Knox; Boase and Courtney's Bibliographia Cornubiensis; Notes and Queries, 5th series, IV, 402-4 (1875); Morris, Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 1st series, 1872, p. 95, 2nd series, 1875, pp. 33, 79-80; Challoner's Memoirs of Missionary Priests, p. 32; Dict. of National Biography, State Papers, etc.; an admirable and exhaustive Life in MS. by Rev. E. Nolan, Trinity College, Cambridge, in the University Library, Cambridge.Return to passage

[33] A corner of the letter is torn off, but it is easy to supply the missing portions of the words and sentences.Return to passage

LIEUTENANT PHILIP G. KING

The Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy, near the close of 1786, advertised for a certain number of vessels to be taken up for the purpose of conveying between seven and eight hundred male and female convicts to Botany Bay, in New South Wales, whither it had been determined by the Government to transport them, after having sought in vain upon the African coast for a situation possessing the requisites for the establishment of a penal colony. The following vessels were at length contracted for, and assembled in the Thames to fit and take in stores: the Alexander, Scarborough, Charlotte, Lady Penrhyn, and Friendship as transports; and the Fishbourne, Golden Grove, and Borrowdale--these latter as storeships. The Prince of Wales was afterwards added to the number of transports. The transports immediately prepared for the reception of the convicts, and the storeships took on board provisions for two years, with tools, implements of agriculture, seeds, etc.

On October 24th Captain Arthur Phillips hoisted a pennant on board H.M.S. Sirius, of twenty guns, then lying at Deptford. As the government of the meditated colony, as well as the command of the Sirius, was given to Captain Phillips, it was thought necessary to appoint another captain to her, who might command on any service in which she might be employed for the colony, while Captain Phillips would be engaged supervising the convicts on shore. For this purpose John Hunter was nominated second captain of the Sirius.

On March 5th, 1787, order for embarkation arrived, and on Monday, May 7th, Captain Phillips arrived at Portsmouth and took command of the little fleet, then lying at the Mother Bank.

Phillips had with him two lieutenants, Philip Gidley King and Mr. Dawes.

Philip G. King was the son of Philip King, a draper in Launceston, by his wife, the daughter of John Gidley, attorney, of Exeter. Philip G. King was born at Launceston 23rd April, 1758. He was midshipman on board the Swallow in 1770-5, and now was placed under Captain Phillips to assist in the settlement of felons in a colony at Botany Bay.

Whilst the little fleet was on its way down the Channel, it was discovered that a plot had been formed among the convicts on board the Scarborough to mutiny. They hoped to obtain command of the vessel, when those in the other transports would follow their example, and they trusted that the entire fleet would fall into their power. The scheme was insane, as H.M.S. Sirius could knock the transports to pieces with her guns. The plot was betrayed by one of the convicts to the commanding officer on board the Scarborough, and he at once communicated with Captain Phillips. The two ringleaders were brought on board the Sirius, and each was given two dozen lashes.

The fleet sailed for Teneriffe, and thence, on the 11th June, for Rio de Janeiro; and from thence for the Cape of Good Hope.

On November 10th, Captain Phillips sailed ahead of the fleet in the Supply to reconnoitre the coast of New South Wales, and ascertain where best to land, and he took with him the Alexander, the Scarborough, and the Friendship, and having on board his two lieutenants, King and Dawes.

On January 19th, 1788, he landed in Botany Bay, and sent Lieutenant King to survey the coast and inland as far as might be.

Botany Bay being found to be a station of inferior advantages to what was expected, and no spot appearing proper for the colony, Governor Phillips at once resolved to transfer it to another excellent inlet, about twelve miles further to the north, called Port Jackson, on the south side of which, at a spot called Sydney Cove, the settlement was decided to be made.

The spot chosen for this purpose was at the head of the cove, near a run of fresh water, which stole silently along through a very thick wood, the stillness of which had thus, for the first time since the Creation, been interrupted by the rude sound of the labourer's axe and the downfall of the ancient inhabitants--a stillness and tranquillity which from that day were to give place to the noise of labour, the confusion of carriers, and all the clamour of the bringing on shore of the stores, and the erection of habitations.

A flagstaff was set up and the Union Jack hoisted, when the Marines fired several volleys, and the healths of the King and Royal Family were drunk, as well as success to the new colony.

The disembarkation of the troops and convicts took place on the following day.

The confusion that ensued will not be wondered at when it is considered that every man stepped from his boat literally into a virgin forest. Parties of people were to be seen on all sides variously employed, some in clearing ground for the different encampments, others in pitching tents, or bringing up such stores as were more immediately needed. As the woods were opened and the ground cleared, the various encampments were extended, and all gradually assumed the appearance of regularity.

A portable canvas house, brought over for the governor, was erected on the south side of the cove, which was named Sydney, in compliment to the principal Secretary of State for the Home Department. There also a small body of convicts was put under tents. The detachment of marines was encamped at the head of the cove near the stream, and on the west side was planted the main body of convicts.

The women were not disembarked till the 6th February, when, every person belonging to the settlement being landed, the whole amounted to 1030 persons. The tents for the sick were placed on the west side, and it was observed with concern that their number was fast increasing. Scurvy, that had not appeared during the voyage, now broke out, and this, along with dysentery, began to fill the hospital, and several died.

In addition to the medicines that were administered, every species of esculent plant that could be found in the country was procured for them--wild celery, spinach, and parsley fortunately grew in abundance. Those who were in health, as well as the sick, were glad to introduce this wholesome addition to their ration of salt meat.

The public stock, consisting of one bull, four cows, one bull-calf, one stallion, three mares, and three colts, were landed and left to crop the pasturage of the little farm that had been formed at the head of an adjoining cove, and which had been placed under the direction of a man brought out for the purpose by the Governor.

Some ground having been dug over and prepared near His Excellency's house on the south side, the plants brought from Rio de Janeiro and from the Cape were planted, and the colonists soon had the satisfaction of seeing the grapes, figs, oranges, pears, and apples--in a word, the best fruits of the Old World--taking root and establishing themselves in this their New World.

As soon as the hurry and turmoil of disembarkation had subsided, the Governor caused His Majesty's commission appointing him to be Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of New South Wales and its dependencies, to be publicly read, and he then addressed the convicts, assuring them that "he would be ever ready to show approbation and encouragement to those who proved themselves worthy of them by good conduct and attention to orders; while, on the other hand, such as were determined to act in opposition to propriety, and observe a contrary conduct, would inevitably meet with the punishment they deserved."

The convicts from the first gave much trouble. They secreted the tools, so as to avoid being compelled to work, and it was found almost impossible to get work out of them, as there was a deficiency of proper men to set over them. Those who were so placed were for the most part also convicts, men who by their conduct during the voyage had recommended themselves, and these had been appointed foremen over the rest, but it was soon discovered that they lacked the authority requisite. The sailors from the transports, though repeatedly forbidden to do so and frequently punished, persisted in bringing spirits on shore every night, and drunkenness was often the consequence.

Before the month of February was half through, a plot among the convicts to rob the store was discovered. This was the more unpardonable in that the rations given out to the convicts were precisely the same as those served to the soldiers. Each male convict received as his weekly portion 7 lb. biscuits, 1 lb. flour, 7 lb. beef, 4 lb. pork, 3 pints of peas, 6 oz. of butter; the women received one-third less.

The ringleaders were charged before a Court that was summoned. One was hanged, another reprieved on condition of becoming the public executioner; the rest had milder sentences.

The Governor having received instructions to establish another settlement on Norfolk Island, the Supply sailed for that place in the midst of February under the command of Lieutenant King of the Sirius, named by Captain Phillips superintendent and commandant of the settlement to be formed there. Lieutenant King took with him one surgeon, one petty officer, two private soldiers, two persons who pretended to have some knowledge of flax-dressing, and nine male and six female convicts. This little party was to be landed with tents, clothing, implements of husbandry, tools for dressing flax, etc., and provisions for six months, before the expiration of which time it was intended to send them a fresh supply.

Norfolk Island was to be settled with a view to the cultivation of flax, which at the time when the island was discovered by Captain Cook was found growing most luxuriantly where he had landed; this was the Phormi tenax, New Zealand flax.

Mr. King, previous to his departure for the new settlement, was sworn in as a Justice of Peace, and was empowered to punish such petty offences as might be committed among the settlers; capital crime being reserved for the cognizance of the Criminal Court of Judicature, established at Sydney by Governor Phillips.

The Supply reached Norfolk Island on February 29th, but for five succeeding days was not able to effect a landing, being prevented by a surf that was breaking with violence on a reef that lay across the principal bay. Lieutenant King had nearly given up all hopes of being able to land, when a small opening was discovered in the reef wide enough to admit a boat. Through this he succeeded in passing safely, along with his people and stores. When landed, he could nowhere find a space clear for pitching a tent, and he had to cut through an almost impenetrable jungle before he could encamp himself and his people.

Of the stock he carried with him, he lost the only she-goat he had, and one ewe. He had named the bay wherein he landed and planted his settlement, Sydney; and had given the names of Phillip and Nepean to two small islands situated at a small distance from it.

The soil of Norfolk Island was ascertained to be very rich, but Sydney Bay was exposed to the southerly winds, which drove the surf furiously over the reef. The Supply lost one of her hands, who was drowned in attempting to pass through the reef. There was a small bay on the further side of the island, but it was at a considerable distance from the settlement.

On February 14th, 1789, Lieutenant Ball sailed for Norfolk Island in the Golden Grove with provisions and convicts, twenty-one male, six female convicts, and three children; of the latter two were to be placed under Lieutenant King's special care. They were of different sexes; the boy, Parkinson, was about three years of age, and had lost his mother on the voyage to Botany Bay; the girl was a year older and had a mother in the colony, but as she was a woman of abandoned character, the child was taken from her, to save it from the ruin which otherwise would inevitably have befallen it. These children were to be instructed in reading, writing, and husbandry. The Commandant was directed to cause five acres of ground to be allotted and cultivated for their benefit.

In March, the little colony in Norfolk Island was threatened with an insurrection. The convicts plotted the capture of the island and the seizure of Mr. King's person. They had chosen the day when this was to be effected, the first Saturday after the arrival of any ship in the bay, except the Sirius. They had selected this day, as it had for some time been Mr. King's custom on Saturdays to visit a farm he had established at a little distance from the settlement, and the military generally chose that day for bringing in the cabbage-palm from the woods. Mr. King was to be secured on his way to the farm. A message, in the Commandant's name, was to be sent to Mr. Jamison, the surgeon, who was to be seized as soon as he got into the woods; and the sergeant and the party of soldiers were to be treated in the same manner. These being all properly disposed of, a signal was to be made to the ship in the bay to send her boat on shore, the crew of which were to be made prisoners on landing; and two or three of the insurgents were to go off in a boat belonging to the island, and inform the commanding officer that the ship's boat had been stove on the beach, and that the Commandant, King, requested that another might be sent on shore. This also was to be captured; and then, as the last act in this plot, the ship was to be taken, in which they designed to proceed to Otaheite, and there establish a colony.

The plot was revealed to a seaman of the Sirius, who lived with Mr. King as a gardener, by a female convict who cohabited with him. On being acquainted with the circumstances, the Commandant took such measures as appeared to him necessary to defeat the object of the plotters; and several who were concerned in the scheme were arrested and confessed the share they were to have had in the execution of it.

Mr. King had hitherto, from the peculiarity of his situation--secluded from society, and confined to a small speck in the vast ocean, with but a handful of people--drawn them around him, and had treated them in a kindly and even confidential and affectionate manner; but now he saw that these felons were too ingrained with vice to appreciate such treatment, and one of his first steps was to clear the ground as far as was possible round the settlement, that future villainy might not find a shelter in the woods. To this truly providential circumstance many of the colonists were afterwards indebted for their lives in an outbreak that took place after he had quitted the island.

At this time there were on the island 16 free people, 51 male and 23 female convicts, and 4 children.

In June, 1789, Lieutenant Creswell was sent with 14 privates of the Marines to Norfolk Island, and with a written order from His Excellency requiring Creswell to take upon himself the direction and execution of the authority invested in Lieutenant King, in the event of any accident happening to the latter.

In March, 1790, 116 male and 68 female convicts were sent to Norfolk Island and 27 children. Major Ross was appointed to supersede King; both the Sirius and the Supply arrived, but unhappily the former ran upon the reef on the 19th April. All the officers and people were saved, being dragged on shore through the surf on a grating.

King returned to New South Wales in the Supply. There had been disaster and distress in the colony there. The sheep had been stolen and the cattle lost in the woods, and these were not found till 1795, after they had been lost for seven years, and they were then found grazing on a remote clearing, and had increased to a surprising degree.

It was now determined that Lieutenant King should return to England and report progress. A Dutch vessel was hired to take him and the officers and men of the Sirius home. He sailed in the Batavia in April, 1790, and arrived in England December 20th, 1790.

Philip Gidley King was appointed Governor of New South Wales, September, 1800, and held that appointment till 15th August, 1806, when his health failing he returned to England, and died at Lower Tooting, Surrey, 3rd September, 1808.

He was the father of Rear-Admiral Philip Parker King, who was born on Norfolk Island, 13th December, 1791, after his father had left for England. He entered the Royal Navy as first-class volunteer in 1807, midshipman in 1809, lieutenant in 1814. He married Harriet, daughter of Christopher Lethbridge, of Launceston, and died at Sydney 25th February, 1856, and was buried at Parramatta beside his mother, who had been laid there many years before, not having come to England. There is no record as to who and what she was.

For information relative to Philip Gidley King his Diary may be consulted in John Hunter's Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, 1795; see also David Collins's Account of the English Colony of New South Wales, 1798-1802.

HICKS OF BODMIN

William Robert Hicks was born at Bodmin on 1st April, 1808--not to be an April fool himself, but to be a right merry jester, and not infrequently to make fools of others. He was the son of a schoolmaster, and he, Sir William Molesworth, of Pencarrow, and Colonel Hamley were educated together for a while in the school of his father.

William Robert became Clerk of the Board of Guardians, Clerk of the Highway Board, and Governor of the County Lunatic Asylum. He was a man of many parts, a good mathematician, a clear-headed and cool man of business, a musician, who could play on the violin and play it well. But he was noted above everything else as a humorist.

He was a short man and inordinately stout, weighing sixteen stone. He had a broad, flexible, somewhat flabby face, with a pair of twinkling grey eyes, a short nose, somewhat protruding thick under lip, and double chin that was very pronounced, and whiskers. What was noticeable in Hicks's face was its flexibility. He possessed the art and the power to tell his story with his countenance as with his voice. Indeed, the alterations of mood in his face were like a musical accompaniment to a song. He was thought the best story-teller of his day; was known as such in Cornwall and Devon, but was not so well appreciated in London, where the peculiar dry humour of the West, as well as the dialect, did not appeal to ordinary hearers as they do in the two Western Counties. One of his many Cornish friends once took Hicks up to town and dined him at his club, thinking that he would keep the table in a roar. But it was not so. His stories fell somewhat flat, and that damped his spirits and he subsided.

One of Hicks's earliest and best friends was George Wightwick, the architect, born at Mold in Flintshire in 1802, who set up as architect in Plymouth in 1829, and was employed to build additions to Bodmin Gaol in 1842 and 1847. He was author of The Palace of Architecture, published in 1840. And though he was an excellent raconteur, second only to Hicks, he was a most egregiously bad architect. Yet, strangely enough, Mr. Wightwick supposed himself to be enlightened in the matter of Gothic architecture, and in 1835 published in Loudon's Architectural Magazine "A few observations on reviving taste for pointed Architecture, with an illustrated description of a chapel just erected at Bude Haven under the direction of the author."

Wightwick it was who had the merit of discovering Hicks and of introducing him to notables in Devon and Cornwall, for, miserable architect though he was, he had got the ear of the public in the West as a man of charming manners and teeming with anecdote. Through him Hicks obtained access into many a country house, where they would sing, accompanying themselves on the violin, and tell stories.

Hicks was made Governor of Bodmin Asylum in 1848, and found the old barbarous system of treatment of the insane in full swing. He at once adopted gentle methods and in a short while radically changed the entire mode of treatment, with markedly good results.

One poor fellow, whom he found chained in a dark cell on a bed of straw as a dangerous lunatic, he nearly cured by kindly treatment. As the fellow showed indications of great shrewdness and wit, Hicks released him and made much of him. A gentleman on a visit to the asylum once said to the lunatic, "I hear, man, that you are Hicks's fool."

"Aw," replied he; "I zee you do your awn business in that line."

He was once asked, "Whither does this path go, my man?" He answered readily, "Zure I cannot tell 'ee. I've knawed un bide here these last twenty year."

He was sitting on the high wall of the asylum that commanded the road for some distance, with a turnpike at the bottom of the hill. The company of a circus passed by, with the various horses. As the manager rode past, the lunatic said to him, "'Ow much might 'ee pay turnpike for they there spekkady hosses?" "Oh," said the manager, "the same as for the others." "Do 'ee now?" said the man on the wall. "Well to be zure; my vather 'ad a spekkady hoss that never paid no turnpike. They there sparky (speckled) hosses don't pay no turnpikes here."

"Bless my life," said the manager; "I am much obliged to you for informing me of the fact. So, sir, I am to understand that piebald horses are exempt from paying at the toll-gate?"

"What I zed I bides by. They there spekkady hosses never pay no turnpikes here in Cornwall. What they may do elsewhere, I can't zay."

The lunatic watched the cavalcade proceed down the hill, and when it reached the turnpike, he enjoyed watching a lively altercation going on between the toll-taker and the manager. Presently the latter came galloping back, very hot and angry.

"What do you mean by telling me that in Cornwall piebald horses pay no turnpike?"

"Right it is so--cos you have to pay it vor 'un," said the man and stepped out of reach inside the wall.

One day this same man was put to watch a raving maniac, who, for his own safety, when the fit was on him, used to be put in a padded room. There was an eyehole in the door, and the lunatic, whom Mr. Collier calls Daniel, was set to watch him. The poor wretch in his ravings called, "Bring down the baggonets! Oh, marcy on me! Forty thousand Roosians! Oh! oh! oh! I wish I was in Abraham's bosom," and began to kick and plunge furiously. On which Daniel shouted to him through the hole, "Why I tell'ee if you was, you'd kick the guts out of 'un."

Daniel came from Tavistock, where he used to walk out with a girl. As he told the story himself--"I was keepin' company with a maid, and I went to the parson. Says I to he, 'I want you, however, to promise me wan thing,' says I. 'What is it?' says he. 'I want you to promise me,' says I, 'never to marry me to thickee there maid when I be drunk.' He zaid he'd promise me that, quite sure. 'Thankee, your honour,' said I; 'then I'm all right, for I'll take damned good care you never do it when I'm zober.'"

Daniel was then in the Volunteers and was out on Whitchurch Down in a review. An officer rode up to the bugler, and said "Sound a retreat!" The bugler tried, but could produce no sound. "Sound a retreat!" roared the officer. Again the bugle would not speak. "Sound a retreat!" shouted the officer for the third time. "Don't you see that the cavalry are charging down on us?" "There now, I can't," replied the bugler; "for why? I've gone and spit my quid of terbaccer in the mouthpiece o'un."

Hicks no doubt was quite justified in picking up and appropriating to himself stories wherever he could find them and from whomsoever he heard them. A common friend of ours was with him one day in Plymouth, and as they sat on the Hoe my friend told Hicks a couple of racy anecdotes about his own work.

That evening both dined with Lord Mount Edgcumbe, and Hicks told both these stories with immense humour, as though they had happened recently--the previous week--to himself.

And certainly some of Hicks's stories are very old chestnuts.

This, for instance, was told by Hicks as having to his knowledge occurred to two brothers, Jemmy and Sammy, in the Jamaica Inn, on the Bodmin Moors, between that town and Launceston.

They were to sleep in a double-bedded room, and they dined and drank pretty freely--the Jamaica Inn is now a temperance house--and went to bed. Before retiring to rest one of them put out the light.

After they had been in bed a little while Jemmy said, "I say, Sammy, there be a feller in my bed."

Sammy--"So there be in mine."

Jemmy--"What shall you do, Sammy?"

Sammy--"Kick 'un out."

Jemmy--"So shall I."

So they both proceeded to kick furiously, with the result that each fell out on the opposite side of the bed. By mistake in the dark the last to put out the light and go to bed had entered his brother's bed.

I have heard the same tale told of the Yorkshire moors some thirty to forty years ago.

The famous story of Rabbits and Onions, that Hicks would tell in such a way as to bring the tears rolling down the cheeks with laughter, may or may not be founded on fact, or it may be--and that is probably the case--a condensation into one tale of a good deal of experience with juries. But the same story is told by Rosegger of a trial in Styria.

The following is almost certainly genuine. Anyhow, it is an excellent example of the way in which Hicks could put a story.

"I met a man [name given] in Bodmin, and said to him, 'You are not looking well. What is the matter?'

"The man replied that he had spent an indifferent night.

"'How is that?' I inquired.

"'I sleep with father,' he replied; 'and I woke up all in the dead waste and middle of the night, and I reached forth my hand and couldn't feel nothing; so I ses, ses I, "Wherever is my poor dear old aged tender parent?" I got out of bed and strick a light, all in the dead waste and middle of the night, and sarched the room; sarched under the bed and in the cupboards; and ses I, "Wherever is my poor dear old aged tender parent?"

"'I went down over the stairs, all in the dead waste and middle of the night, and sarched under the stairs and in the kitchen; and ses I, "Wherever is my poor dear old aged tender parent?"

"'Then I went to the coal-hole, all in the dead waste and middle of the night, and sarched all about; and ses I, "Wherever is my poor dear old aged tender parent?"

"'And I went down into the garden, all in the dead waste and middle of the night; and ses I, "Wherever is my poor dear old aged tender parent?"

"'I went down to the parzley bed, all in the dead waste and middle of the night, and there I found 'un. He'd a cut his throat with the rape(ing)-hook. I took 'un by the hair of his head, and I zaid, ses I, "You darned old grizzley blackguard, you've brought disgrace on the family." I brought 'un in, and laid 'un on the table, and rinned for the doctor; and he zewed up the throt o'un avore the vital spark was 'xtinct. Zo you zee, Mr. Hicks, I've had rather an indiffer'nt night.'"

Here is another of Hicks's stories:--

A young curate was teaching some boys in the Sunday-school, and was impressing on them the duties to their parents.

"What do you owe your mother, Bill Lemon?"

"I don't owe her nothin'! her never lent me nothin'."

"But she takes care of you."

The boy stared.

"What does she do for you?"

"Her gives me a skat in the vace sometimes, and tells me to go to"----(curate intervenes).

"That is not what I mean. When you are sick, what does she do?"

"Wipes it op."

Hicks, as already intimated, was a very short man, very rotund about the belly. Following the Mayor of Bodmin into the room on the occasion of a public dinner, he heard the Mayor announced in a voice of thunder, "The Mayor of Bodmin." Following directly after he intimated to the butler "and the Corporation." The man, without a moment's consideration, roared out, "and the Corporation."

A man of Hicks's acquaintance--every man of whom he had a story to tell was an acquaintance--made a bet that he would drink a certain number of gallons of cider in a given time. The trial of the feat came off, and the man was reduced to the last stage of helplessness, in an armchair, his head resting on the back of the chair, his mouth open, utterly unable to proceed, when he sighed out to his backers, "Try the taypot!" The spout was used to pour down the liquor and the bet was won.

Hicks had a story of a farmer whom he knew intimately, and who had been canvassed for the approaching election, and had promised his vote to the lady of the candidate. Said she, "Dear Mr. Polkinghorne, when you come up to town, do come and see us, come any time--come to dinner. You are sure to be welcome."

Now, as it so fell out, Zechariah Polkinghorne did go to London on some business, and in the evening, when his work was over, he called at the member's house. As it happened that evening, a dinner party was given. When his name was taken up, the member's wife said: "Good gracious! What is to be done? We must, I suppose, have him in, or he will be mortally offended, and next election will not only vote against us, but influence a good many more voters."

So Mr. Polkinghorne was shown up into a room full of ladies and gentlemen in evening dress, and felt somewhat out of it. Presently dinner was announced and he went in with the rest and took his place at the table.

"So sorry, Mr. Polkinghorne," said the lady of the house; "so sorry we have no partner for you to take in; but, you see, you came unexpectedly, and we had not time to invite a lady for you."

"Never mind, ma'am, never mind. It doth remind me o' my old sow to home. Her had thirteen little piglings--zuckers--for a brood, and pore thing had only twelve little contrivances for them to zuck to."

"What did the thirteenth do then, Mr. Polkinghorne?"

"Why, ma'am, thickey there little zucker was like me now--just out in the cold."

Hicks was driving along a road in the dark one night when he came upon an empty conveyance, and two men close to the hedge on the roadside. One man was drunk--a Methodist class-leader--but the other was sober. The drunken man was lamenting:--

"Ah, too bad! What shall I do when I be called to my last account? What shall I zay?"

"Zay, Nathaniel?" the sober man said. "What can 'ee zay but that you've been to Liskeard a auditing of accounts, and took an extra glass? 'Twill be overlooked for once, sure enough, up there."

A day or so after Hicks met the sober man, and asked how Nathaniel had got on that night.

The answer was: "He's a terrible affectionate man to his family, and when we got home he took the babby out o' the cradle for to kiss 'un, and valled vore with 'un over a vaggot of vurze. Jane, her got into a passion and laid onto 'un with the broomstick, while he kep' tumblin' over the babby. When I comed away her'd 'a thrashed 'un sober; and they'd 'a got the babby on the dresser, naked, and was a-picking out the prickles."

Hicks knew a man who was of a morose, fanatical humour; and this man had married a widow with a brisk, merry wench for a daughter. Once he reproved the girl for singing secular songs in this vale of woe, and said to her: "Suppose you was took sudden, and called to your last account with the Soldier's Tear in your mouth?"

Another of his stories was of a chapel where they sang a Cornish anthem; the females began--

Oh for a man! oh for a man! oh for a mansion in the sky!

To which the men, basses and tenors, responded--

Send down sal! send down sal! send down salvation from on high!

A boy at church--another of Hicks's anecdotes; he knew the boy well--heard the parson give out the banns of "John So-and-so and Betsy So-and-so, both of this parish. This is the third and last time of asking."

"Mother," said the lad after service; "I shouldn't like it to be proclaimed in church that sister Jane had been askin' for a husband dree times afore her got one."

Again, another story told by Hicks:--

"Where be you a-bound to this afternoon?"

"Gwain to see the football match."

"Aw! Like to be a good un?"

"Yes, I reckon. There be a lot o' bitter feelin' betwixt the two teams."

But, indeed, the stories told by William Robert Hicks were many, and for those who would desire more, let them get Mr. W. F. Collier's Tales and Sayings of W. R. Hicks, Plymouth, Brendon and Son, 1893; and look at "An Illustrious Obscure," by Abraham Hayward, Q.C., in the Morning Post, 8th September, 1868; and J. C. Young's Memoirs of C. M. Young, 1871, Vol. II, pp. 301-8.

Hicks died at Bodmin 5th September, 1868, at the age of sixty.

CAPTAIN TOBIAS MARTIN

Tobias Martin, better known as Cap'n Toby, was born in the parish of Wendron on January 5th, 1747, and was the son of a father of the same name, who was a common working miner, but afterwards was advanced to be a mine agent, or captain of a mine, which situation he retained during the remainder of his life.

The elder Cap'n Toby was passionately fond of reading, and read promiscuously whatever came into his hand. But his main literary passion was for poetry, and he speedily conceived that he possessed the poetic afflatus, because he could string lines together that rhymed more or less well. He went to a mine near Helston, but was never in sufficiently good circumstances to be able to give his children a moderate, let alone a superior education.

Tobias, his second son, inherited the father's love of reading and liking for the Muse, and as a boy he bitterly lamented that he was not sent to school.

Deprived through his father's poverty or negligence of the means of education enjoyed by others, he resolved on supplying the deficiencies of such instruction by self-application.

From an early age he was employed at the tin-stamping mills near Helston and Redruth. After he became a man he worked underground on his own account, i.e. in working setts that he had taken, and at other times on what is termed among miners "tutwork and tribute."

He had a great ambition to learn French, and studied diligently a French grammar that he found among his father's books; but, of course, remained perfectly ignorant of the pronunciation, though able to write a few sentences and read a book in that language.

Proud of the former capability, he composed some lines in French, or what he supposed to be French, and wrote them on the belfry door. A Mr. William Sandys, an attorney at Helston, happening to see these lines, inquired who had written them, and when he learned that they were by Toby Martin, he gave him a letter to a Mrs. Brown, who had resided some time in France, and was believed to have the language at her tongue's end, to this effect: "The Bearer, Tobias Martin, wishes to learn French, but his pockets are low." From her Toby did receive some lessons.

Mr. Sandys occasionally employed him, as he could write well, to assist in his office; he also appointed him toller of the dues arriving from tin-bounds in Breage, belonging to the Praed family, which appointment he held to the time of his death.

In 1772 he married Mary Peters, of Helston, and by her had ten children, four sons and six daughters. In the same year, and, indeed, at the very same time, Mr. Sandys offered him a situation as escort to his eldest son, Mr. William Sandys, into France, where the latter was to remain so as to acquire proficiency in the French language. And--what was somewhat rough on Toby--he had to leave with his charge the day after his marriage. The place chosen for William Sandys to acquire French was singularly badly chosen: it was Painpol, in Brittany, where the natives talk Breton, and what French they do speak is of an inferior quality and very unlike that spoken in Paris or Touraine.

After having seen his charge safe to Painpol, Toby returned to Helston and to his wife.

Next year (1773) in August Toby was despatched again to Painpol, this time to bring young William home. On his return he set to work to acquire the Dutch language and learn Latin; but, indeed, there was scarcely a subject that did not attract him, and that he did not strive to acquire some knowledge of. It was unfortunate for him that his studies were so desultory, that he was "Jack of many trades and master of none."

Some years after his return from France he was appointed captain at Camborne Vean Mine. He also held the situation of managing agent of Wheal Heriot's Foot, commonly called Herod's Foot, near Liskeard.

A story is told of him which Mr. Tregellas gives in his Cornish Character and Characteristics under a fictitious name. Captain Toby was having his pint of ale at a tavern, when in comes a miner who was wont to be called "Old Blowhard," and was not esteemed trusty or diligent as a workman.

"How are 'ee, Capp'n?" says Bill.

"Clever. How art thee?"

"Purty well as for health," says Bill, "but I want a job. Can 'ee give us waun ovver to your new bal?"

"No, we're full," replied the Captain.

"How many men have 'ee goat ovver theere?" asked Old Blowhard.

"How many? Why we've two sinking a air-shaft through the flockan, and two to taakle, and that's fower; and theere's two men in the oddit, and a booay to car tools and that, and that makes three moore, and that oaltogether es seben."

"And how many cappuns have 'ee goat?" said Bill.

"How many? Why ten."

"What! ten cappuns to watch over seben men? I doan't b'lieve you can maake that out, for the 'venturers would'n stand it."

"'Tes zackly so then, and I'll maak it out to 'ee in a moment. Waun cappun es 'nough we oal knaw, but at the laast mittin, the 'venturers purposed to have waun of the 'venturers' sons maade a cappun, and to larn, they said; and so a draaper's son, called Sems, was put weth me from school, at six pound a month, and a shaare of what we had in the 'count-house."

"Well, but how can you maake ten of you and he?"

"Why, I'll tell 'ee how, and you mind 'nother time, Bill, for theere's somethin' of scholarin' in ut. Now see this: I myself am waun, baent I?"

"Iss, sure," said Bill.

"Well, and theest oft to knaw that young Sems es nawthin'; well, when theest ben to school so long as I have, theest knaw that waun with a nought attached to un do maake 10, and so 'tes zackly like that."

In the year 1790 Toby's wife died, and he was left with all his ten children on his hands. One of these soon died, and he sent for the sexton, who, after having been regaled with liquor, declared with gushing emotion, "Lor' bless ee, Cap'n Toby, I'd as soon deg a grave for 'ee as for any man with whom I be acquainted." In 1792 he married Ann James, a widow, who kept a small public-house at Porthleven, and by her had four children, two sons and two daughters.

A short time after his marriage he took the Horse and Jockey Tavern in Helston, which he kept for four years, and then the "Helston Arms," of which he was host for five more. He still retained his situation of mine-agent in Wheal Ann tin mine in Wendron, about two and a half miles from Helston, where, on quitting the last-mentioned inn, and after the mine had failed, he lived for some years as captain of Wheal Trevenen, which was run by a company, but the smelting was consigned to a speculator of Truro named Daubuz,[34] who had with him one Coad as a clerk. After a while Martin supposed that Daubuz was swindling the company, and about the same time Coad quarrelled with Daubuz, and pretended to reveal how he had been cheating; thereupon the Adventurers set up their own smelting works. Martin's account of Daubuz must not be accepted as true. He wrote full of vindictive hate. Anyhow, a misunderstanding arose between him and the company respecting his accounts. The Adventurers debited him with a large sum, which ought to have been and was afterwards charged to the purser. In September, 1811, at a general meeting of the Adventurers, a Mr. Wyatt, auditor of the accounts, accused Captain Toby of having falsified his books. This he stoutly denied, and insisted that his accounts were correct. In November, 1811, he received his dismissal, not as having acted fraudulently, but on the plea that he was too old and past work. He was discharged accordingly in his sixty-second year, and he applied for and got work at other mines. A year passed before Captain Toby could have his accounts investigated, and then he received from the purser a copy of an account, wherein a balance of £109 6s. 6d. appeared against him. To this he objected, and a dispute arose that lasted some time.

On February 1st, 1812, he was arrested for debt, and confined in the sheriff's ward at Bodmin for over two months before an accommodation was arrived at, and he was discharged.

As he could not get Mr. Wyatt to have the accounts inspected, for he proved shifty, Captain Toby was obliged to appeal to the Vice-Warden of the Stannaries to issue an order for the investigation of the accounts. This alarmed Wyatt, and it was mutually agreed that they should be gone through by Mr. Richard Tyacke, of Godolphin. Mr. Tyacke in a very short time found that the balance against Martin was only £29 18s. 4d., and that then there was owing to him from the company nearly a twelvemonth's wage. He accordingly in February, 1813, published the following notice:--

"To the Public.

"Having been requested to examine some disputed accounts between Trevenen Adventurers and Captain Tobias Martin, I find from investigation that the errors in dispute were not contained in his account, but in those prepared against him.

"RICHARD TYACKE."

After this he received from the company the balance of his salary, and that put an end to the business. His connection with Wheal Trevenen having ceased, he worked at Wheal Vorah as captain to 1817, when he was in his sixty-ninth year. Then he was appointed storekeeper to the mine and to keep the stock accounts at six guineas per month; and this situation he filled till March, 1817, when in his seventy-ninth year he was superannuated at three and a half guineas per month.

On June 4th, 1825, his wife died, and not long after he received the news of the death of his eldest son, Tobias, under tragical circumstances, at Washington, U.S.A. The younger Tobias and his wife had a daughter, a child who went gathering fruit in the hedges of some land belonging to a rough fellow, who finding her there, carried away her basket and took as well some of her wearing apparel. When Tobias Martin the younger heard of this he and his wife went to remonstrate and ask for the return of the basket and the garments. An altercation ensued, and the man of whom they complained with his revolver shot Tobias Martin dead.

This shock broke down the old captain. He had always loved his glass, but now he took to it more freely than ever, and was often intoxicated.

He died on April 9th, 1828, in the eighty-first year of his age, and he was buried in Breage churchyard.

Captain Tobias Martin's poems were published at Helston in 1831, and a second edition in 1856. They are absolutely worthless as poetry, and one may look in vain through them to find an original or a poetic idea. But as we have given this man's life, a specimen of the stuff he wrote must also be given, and one of his shortest compositions will suffice.

Come, sweet content! best gift of bounteous heav'n, Correct my mind and bend my stubborn ways; 'Tis thou alone canst make life's journey even, And crown with happiness my future days.

Why should I grieve or murmur at my lot? Why disobedient to the heav'nly will? I cannot turn my thoughts where God is not, He is my comfort and my refuge still.

Blest with content, I will observe His ways; On earth I can no greater blessing find. Serene and calm, thus let me spend my days, And banish discontentment from my mind.

In his religious views Toby Martin was a Deist or Unitarian. In personal appearance he was inclined to corpulency. His countenance was large and open, and he stood five feet nine inches high.

FOOTNOTE:

[34] He calls Daubuz a Jew. The first Daubuz to settle at Truro was a Moses. But the family claims Huguenot extraction.Return to passage

THE MAYOR OF BODMIN

When Henry VIII died, Edward VI was aged but ten, and the unprincipled Protector Somerset took the reins of power into his own hands; and as he was a strong partisan of the reformers, and enriched himself on the plunder of the Church, he carried out what he considered to be reforms with a high hand, with the assistance of the Council, which was filled with creatures equally rapacious and equally devoid of principle. As the monasteries had all been suppressed, and the monks and nuns turned adrift, these poor homeless wretches wandered over the country entreating alms. In November, 1548, an Act was passed ordering all such to be branded on the hand, and on repetition of the offence to be adjudged to slavery.

The baneful effects of the dissolution of the monasteries had, moreover, been severely felt by the people, for the monks had been ever ready to afford shelter and relief in sickness or distress, and the indigent were now driven to frightful extremities throughout the land, much as would be the case nowadays were the workhouses and poor laws to be abolished. The monks, moreover, had been most kind and considerate landlords, and, always residing in their monasteries, what money they drew in rents from their tenants was spent on the land. But no sooner were the rapacious hands of the nobles laid on the property of the Church, than these new proprietors demanded exorbitant rents, and very generally spent the money in London. The cottagers were reduced to misery by the enclosure of the commons on which they had formerly fed their cattle.

Added to all this came violent changes in the services of the Church. Candles were forbidden to be carried on Candlemas Day, ashes to be used on Ash Wednesday, and palms on Palm Sunday; all images were to be removed from the churches, and even the sacred form of the Redeemer on the Cross above the rood was not respected.

Several of the bishops objected to these proceedings, but Somerset was inexorable. Then several colleges, chantries, and free chapels, as well as fraternities and guilds, were abolished, and their lands and goods confiscated to the King, which, being sold at very small prices, enriched many of the Protestant hangers-on of the Court, and strengthened their resolution to maintain the changes.

These violent and hasty proceedings provoked widespread discontent and even exasperation. The first disturbances arose in the county of Cornwall, where one Body, a commissioner sent down to "purify" the churches, was stabbed in the back whilst pulling down images in a church.[35] Thence they quickly spread into the counties of Devon, Wilts, Somerset, Hants, Sussex, Kent, Essex, Gloucester, Hereford, Worcester, Leicester, Oxford, Norfolk, and York. In most parts the rioters were quickly put down, but the disorders in Devonshire and Norfolk threatened more dangerous consequences (1549). The commotion first broke out at Sampford Courtenay on Whit Monday, the day after the Act for reforming the Church Service had been put in force. The people assembled and forced the priest to say Mass in the ancient manner, instead of using the Book of Common Prayer. The commotion spread through the adjoining parishes, and many came up out of Cornwall; many of the disaffected gentry of the two counties placed themselves at the head of the insurgents; among them were Sir Thomas Pomeroy, Mr. Coffin, and Mr. Humphry Arundell, and the body swelled to 10,000 men. They then laid siege to Exeter, but the citizens shut their gates against them. Some attempts were made to scale the walls, which being repulsed, the rebels endeavoured to gain admittance by burning the gates. The citizens, by adding more wood to the fires, kept the enemy back till they had raised fresh defences within. After this the insurgents sought to effect a breach by mining the walls. Having completed their mine, laid their powder, and rammed the mouth, before they could explode it the citizens had drenched the powder by means of a countermine filled with water.

Lord Russell, glutted with the plunder of the Church, was sent to relieve the city, but the rebels cut down trees and laid them in his way, so that he could not approach, and after burning some villages he determined on withdrawing to Honiton. He now found his retreat cut off, and he was constrained to give battle on Clyst Heath, and defeated them with great slaughter, killing 600 men. "Such was the valour and stoutness of these men," says Hooker, "that the Lord Grey reported himself that he never, in all the wars that he had been in, did know the like." The ringleaders were taken and executed. The vicar of S. Thomas by Exeter, who was with them, was conveyed to his church and hanged from the tower, where his body was left to dangle for four years.

The defeat was on the 7th August, and the rebels were pursued to Launceston, every one falling into the hands of the King's troops being put to death. Arundell and other gentlemen were, however, taken prisoners. The Lords of the Council wrote to Lord Russell on the 21st August congratulating him on his success, and directing him to search for Sir Thomas Pomeroy, and to "send up Sir Humphry Arundell, Maunder, and the Mayor of Bodmin, and two or three of the rankest traitors." They desired him to delay a short time the issue of a general pardon. In the same month Lord Russell, William, Lord Grey of Wilton, and Sir William Herbert, informed the Council that they sent up Pomeroy, Arundell, and other prisoners; and they observed that Castle, Arundell's secretary, went up not as a prisoner, but as an accuser of his former employer.

Nicholas Boyer, the Mayor of Bodmin, had escaped capture. But the King's army pursued the dispersed Cornishmen into the duchy; and Sir Anthony Kingston, Provost-Marshal, arrived at Bodmin, where the Mayor was snugly ensconced in his house, and congratulating himself on his escape, trusted that it was not known that he had taken part in the rising.

No sooner was Sir Anthony in the town than he wrote to Boyer, announcing his intention of dining with him on a certain day. The Mayor felt highly honoured at such a mark of confidence and condescension, and made great preparations, brought out his best plate and linen and wine, and ordered pasties and siskins and dainty cates of all kinds to be prepared in his kitchen, so as to receive his guest with becoming hospitality.

A little before dinner the Provost took him aside and whispered in his ear that execution must that day be done in the town, and nowhere so suitably as in the street in front of Boyer's door, and he desired that a gallows might be erected by the time the dinner was ended. The Mayor complied with the request, and during the meal the hammering of the carpenters could be heard. The Provost was cheery and jocose, and if Boyer had been nervous at first, this wore off under the friendly conversation of his guest.

When dinner was concluded, Sir Anthony asked if the little job he had ordered had been carried out, and when Boyer assured him that it was so, "I pray you," said the Provost, "bring me to the place." Thereupon he took the Mayor by the hand and led him forth before his door, in the kindliest manner imaginable.

On seeing the gallows, the Provost asked Boyer whether he thought them strong enough to sustain the weight of a stout man. "Aye," replied the Mayor; "doubtless they be so."

"Well, then," said the Provost, "get up speedily, for they are prepared for you."

"I hope," exclaimed the astonished and disconcerted Mayor, "that you mean not what you speak."

"In very faith," said Sir Anthony Kingston, "there is no remedy, for you have been a busy rebel."

And so, without trial or defence, he was hanged before his own door by the man who had just dined at his table.

Sir John Hayward, who relates this incident, tells also the story of a miller who resided near Bodmin. This man had been a "busy rebel," and fearing the wrath of the Provost-Marshal, he told a "sturdy, tall fellow, his servant," that he had occasion to go from home, and that if any one should inquire for the miller, the fellow should affirm that he was the man, and that he had been so for three years. The Provost came to the mill and inquired for the miller, and the servant at once presented himself as such. The Provost inquired how long he had kept the mill. "These three years," answered the servant.

"String him up on the nearest tree!" ordered Sir Anthony.

The fellow then cried out that he was not the miller, but the miller's man. "Nay, sir," said the Provost, "I will take thee at thy word; and if thou beest the miller, thou art a busy knave; if thou beest not, thou art a false lying knave; whatsoever thou art, thou shalt be hanged." When others told him that the man was in reality only the miller's servant, the Provost replied, "Could he ever have done his master a better service than to hang in his stead?" and so he was despatched.

Hals says: "Mayow, of Cleoyan, in S. Columb Major, was hanged at a tavern signpost in that town, of whom tradition says his crime was not capital; and therefore his wife was advised by her friends to hasten to the town after the Marshal and his men, who had him in custody, and beg for his life, which accordingly she prepared to do. And to render herself the more amiable petitioner before the Marshal's eyes, this dame spent so much time in attiring herself, and putting on her French hood, then in fashion, that her husband was put to death before her arrival. In like manner the Marshal hanged John Payne, the mayor or portreeve of St. Ives, on a gallows erected in the middle of that town, whose arms are still to be seen in one of the fore seats in that church, viz. in a plain field, three pineapples."

Humphry Arundell, who had headed the rebels, was the son of Roger Arundell, of Helland, and he had been appointed Governor of S. Michael's Mount in 1539. He had married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Fulford. After his capture he was taken up to London, confined in the Tower, and hanged at Tyburn, 27th January, 1549-50. Sir Thomas Pomeroy, of Berry Pomeroy, managed to save his life, but suffered severely in his estate. He married Jane, daughter of Sir Piers Edgcumbe, of Cothele.

Strype tells us that "when this rebellion was well allayed, it was remembered how the bells in the churches served, by ringing, to summon and call in the disaffected unto their arms. Therefore, in September, an order was sent down from the Council to the Lord Russell, to execute a work that proved no doubt highly disgustful to the people, viz. to take away all the bells in Devonshire and Cornwall, leaving only one in each steeple, which was to call the people to church. And this partly to prevent the like insurrection for the future, and partly to help to defray the charges the King had been at among them."

Strype adds that "two gentlemen of those parts, Champion (Champernon) and (Sir John) Chichester, assistant perhaps against the rebels, took this opportunity to get themselves rewarded, by begging, not the bells, but the bell-clappers only, which was granted them, with the ironwork and furniture thereunto belonging. And no question they made good benefit thereof."

FOOTNOTE:

[35] The murderer was William Kilter, priest of S. Keverne, and he killed William Body, the lessee of the archdeaconry of Cornwall, in Helston Church as he was engaged in smashing the images, 5th April, 1548. For this he was hanged, drawn, and quartered, 7th July, 1548.Return to passage

JOHN NICHOLS TOM,

alias SIR WILLIAM COURTENAY, K.M.

This strange man was the son of William Tom, landlord of the "Joiners' Arms," S. Columb, and of his wife Charity Bray--"Cracked Charity" was the nickname she bore--who died in the County Lunatic Asylum, and it was from his mother that the subject of this memoir derived the bee that was in his bonnet.

John Nichols was born at S. Columb Major on November 10th, 1799, and he owed his name to a kinsman of his mother--his godfather, a well-to-do-farmer, who was unmarried.

At an early age John Nichols Tom showed a mischievous disposition. He was turned out of the dame's school at which he had been placed for cutting off the whiskers of her favourite cat. At the next school where he was placed he exhibited the characteristic vanity that was a leading feature through life. He liked to be thought to know more than any of his fellow pupils. One day he propounded to them the question:--

"Who is Neptune? I bet none of you know."

"Neptune," replied one urchin, "is my father's Newfoundland dog."

"Then who is Venus?"

"She is mother's spaniel bitch," answered one of the boys.

John Nichols in a fury fell on both with his fists.

"No such thing. Neptune is a god, and Venus is a goddess."

A general fray was the result, out of which our hero came mauled.

When it became time for him to strike out a course in life, he was placed in an attorney's office, and he conducted himself there well.

A fire broke out on the premises of the elder Tom and consumed the house. This occasioned Mrs. Tom to sink into a condition of profound melancholy, and she rapidly became so wholly insane that she had to be confined in an asylum, where some years later she died, and then Mr. Tom married a schoolmistress who lived on the other side of the road. This did not please John Nichols, and he quitted the attorney's office and was placed in the firm of Plumer and Turner, wine merchants and maltsters at Truro, as cellarman. After five years' service the firm came to an end, and Tom then began to trade on his own account. He married Catherine, second daughter of a Mr. Philpot, of Truro, whose elder sister Julia was engaged to a Mr. Hugo. Tom moved into his father-in-law's house, which was old and dilapidated, and rebuilt it as a commodious mansion, with spacious premises in its rear for the carrying on of the business of a maltster. But on a sudden a fire broke out in this newly-constructed malt-house, and speedily consumed all that had been built for his business. Folk naturally concluded that, as Tom had recently had some losses, he had set fire to his premises, that were insured for £3000, and they remembered that his father's house had also been insured and been burnt down. But Tom demanded that a most searching inquiry should be made as to the cause of the fire, and the insurance company, satisfying itself that it was accidental, paid the sum without demur. With the money thus received he rebuilt his premises, and continued the business. Those who saw much of him were convinced that, as they termed it, "there was a screw loose somewhere." He affected an unusual dress, and tried to induce his wife to assume a habit that would have caused her to be mobbed in the streets. He moreover became great as an orator, denouncing the Church, the aristocracy, and all organized governments. In a word, he was a Socialist of the day.

Two years later he made a considerable sum of money by a successful venture in malt at Liverpool. The result of the transaction may be gathered from the following letter which he wrote to his wife, and which was the last she ever received from him:--

"LIVERPOOL, May 3, 1832.

"MY DEAR WIFE,

"I merely wish to inform you that I have just discharged the vessel of the malt, which has given every satisfaction to the purchasers. The measurement has exceeded my expectations by twenty-four Winchesters. There are the malt sacks in the vessel, and also half a bushel of the bottom scrapings; this you will get screened immediately. I am well and in good spirits (thank God for it). As I shall write to you again in a day or two, my letter will be short. The letter you will receive by post shall contain all I have to say, and as it will be subsequent to this I need not prolong. I have paid the captain of the vessel all the freight.

"With the kindest regards to all, "I remain, yours affectionately, "JOHN NICHOLS TOM."

The letter was rational enough, but it was the last rational act he committed, as this also was the last time that he signed his name as above.

For some time his imagination had been influenced by stories that circulated relative to Lady Hester Stanhope, the "Queen of Lebanon," of her wealth, her authority over Arabs and Druses, of her prophecies and expectations of the near coming of the Messiah to institute the millennium; and he felt convinced that he was predestined to be the forerunner or herald to announce the coming advent of Christ. He had read a translation of Lamartine's Travels in the East, in which it was stated that, according to Eastern prophecy, the Messiah would ride into Jerusalem on a mare foaled ready saddled, and that Lady Hester had such a mare ready for the advent of the Prince of Peace. "Since destiny," said Lady Hester to Lamartine, "has sent you hither--permit me to confide to you what I have hitherto concealed from so many of the profane. Come, and you shall see with your own eyes a prodigy of Nature, the destination of which is known only to myself and my immediate votaries. The prophets of the East have announced it centuries ago, and yourself shall be judge if a part of those prophecies have not been accomplished." Lamartine goes on to say: "She opened a gate of the garden which led into a smaller inner court, where I perceived two magnificent Arab mares of the finest blood, and of the most symmetrical form. 'Approach,' said she to me, 'and examine that bay mare: see if Nature hath not accomplished in her everything which is written about the mare that is to carry the Messiah--she was foaled ready saddled!'

"I saw, in fact, in this beautiful animal a freak of nature. The mare had, in the place of the shoulders, a cavity so broad and deep, and imitating so well the form of a Turkish saddle, that it might be said with truth that she was foaled ready saddled, and but for the want of stirrups she might have been mounted without experiencing the want of an artificial saddle."

This account that John Tom had read of Lady Hester made the most profound impression on his mind, and inflated as he was with self-conceit and ambition, he conceived that he was called to take a place beside, if not before, Lady Hester, as a herald of Christ. Accordingly, having his pocket full of money from the sale of his malt, he started for Havre, and thence for Constantinople and Syria.

For what follows, till his reappearance in England in December of the same year, 1832, our sole authority is "Canterburiensis," who wrote Tom's life, but who does not tell us what were his authorities, and who certainly so embroidered some of the facts he relates, that in instances we feel uncertain whether they are facts or fables.

According to this authority he arrived at Beirout, at what date we are not informed, and he at once presented himself before the English consul, under the assumed name of Sir William Courtenay, Knight, and requested an escort to the Lebanon, where he desired to see Hester Stanhope, and acquaint her with the fact that he was the forerunner of the expected Messiah. The consul saw that the man was not wholly sane, and he was in a dilemma what to do with him; finally he concluded that it would not be unwise to send one mad head to the other, and see what would be the result. Accordingly he gave Sir William, as we must now call him, an escort and he departed for her Lebanon residence, at Dgioun.

"On arriving at the principal entrance, Sir William sent forward his dragoman to announce to the slave, who was standing at the door, that a person of consequence, on a mission of high import, requested an interview with Lady Hester Stanhope. Sir William and the dragoman were accordingly conducted into a narrow cell, deprived almost of all light, and almost destitute of furniture; here they were ordered to wait, until the pleasure of her ladyship should be known. After waiting full three hours in the most suffocating heat, the slave returned with a rather peremptory message, demanding, on the part of her ladyship, to know who and what the stranger was who had solicited an interview with her. Sir William wrote with his pencil, that he had travelled from the County of Cornwall to announce to the expectant faithful in the East the approaching advent of the Messiah, and that as her ladyship had established herself in the Holy Land for the direct purpose of awaiting that glorious event, which was so near at hand, he considered that he was acting in conformity with the high destiny that was awarded to him to communicate to her ladyship in person the arrival of the Millennium, that she might co-operate with him in spreading the glad tidings throughout the Holy Land, and acknowledge him as the harbinger of the great event.

"Fully satisfied that Lady Hester Stanhope would in a short time rush into his arms and hail him as the accredited messenger of Heaven, Sir William felt not the torrid heat, but stood in dignified complacency with himself, proudly awaiting the result of his message. In a very short time the slave returned, followed by several others, and it would be a difficult task to describe the astonishment and indignation of Sir William when he was informed that it was the decided opinion of her ladyship that he was an impostor, for that not one of the prophecies had been as yet fulfilled, which were to precede the coming of the Messiah, nor in any one of those prophecies was the slightest mention made of a messenger being appointed to announce His coming, and that accordingly the sooner he returned to his native country, the better it would be for him."

In a word, Sir William was detected, without having been seen, as an impostor, and was ejected from the house as such.

We should greatly like to know how much of this is true. Not only are no dates given, but the name of the consul at Beirout is also withheld.

Nothing remained for Sir William Courtenay to do but to retire discomfited to England, and try there whether he would have better luck. He embarked in a ship of Beirout for Malta, and after a residence of about three weeks in that island, sailed for England and arrived safely in London. The first intimation that he was back, received in Cornwall, was that he had assumed the name and title of Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay, Knight of Malta, King of Jerusalem, and Prince of Abyssinia, and that he had presented himself before the electors of Canterbury to contest that borough, in December, 1832.

He had taken up his residence at the Rose Hotel, Canterbury, where his dignified manners, his rich dress, his professions that he was the rightful owner of the estates of the Earl of Devon, and that he intended to establish his claims to them, his assertion that he was not only Knight of Malta but also de jure King of Jerusalem, imposed on so many of the burgesses of Canterbury that he polled 375 votes; but was unsuccessful, as the opponent candidates, the Honourable R. Watson and Lord Fordwick gained respectively 832 and 802.

After his defeat Tom made a circuit through the towns and villages of Kent, declaiming against the poor laws, the revenue laws, and such other portions of the statutes of the realm as might be considered by the poor to be adverse to their interests. By his speeches he obtained great success, and a sort of periodical that he issued, entitled The Lion, was greedily bought and distributed. But it ran through eight numbers only. The full title was "The Lion. The British Lion will be free. Heaven is his throne and earth is his footstool. He spake and it was done, he commanded and it stood fast. Liberty, truth bears off the victory, independence."

He then started for Devonshire, accompanied by a gentleman who so firmly believed in his pretensions that he defrayed his expenses to the amount of a thousand pounds. This man, Mr. George Denne, and a young surgeon named Robinson were completely duped by him. "My dearest George," said the Knight of Malta to the former, "it may please Heaven to take me in a short time from this sphere of my sublunary greatness, to translate me to the beatitude of another world."

"I hope not, Sir William," said George Denne.

"But," continued Sir William, "I shall carry with me the pleasing satisfaction of having provided in a truly princely manner for those who, whilst I was on earth, had the sense and sagacity to see into the nobility of my character, and to acknowledge me as Lord Viscount William Courtenay, of Powderham Castle, Knight of Malta, King of Jerusalem, Prince of Arabia, King of the Gypsies, and all the other honours and titles which by descent or creation belong to me. To you, therefore, George Denne, I bequeath the Hales' estate, with the proviso that you erect a monument on the highest ground on that estate to the memory of me, the great Lord of Devon, the regenerator of the world, and one of the greatest benefactors whom the human race ever saw."

In like manner he bequeathed to Mr. Robinson the whole of Powderham Castle and all its valuable paintings, together with one-half of the lands belonging to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral.

It will hardly be credited to what an extent he was run after at Canterbury. Professional men, such as physicians, surgeons, solicitors, also gentlemen of independent property and tradesmen of the first respectability, were his staunch supporters, and daily invited him to their table, and introduced him to the bosom of their families. The invitations which he received to dinners, teas, and suppers were so numerous that he was known to attend several parties in a few hours. Mothers with marriageable daughters hunted him in packs.

But--it was asked--why did not Sir William take possession of his extensive estates in Devon? It was to do this that he started, attended by his faithful squire, Mr. George Denne. On reaching Exmouth, Sir William despatched his squire to the authorities of the place to announce his arrival, and that as Lord of Devon and King of Jerusalem he would hold a levee at eight o'clock in the evening, at which he would be ready to receive them and lay before them his right and title to Powderham Castle and the estates belonging to it.

But when the hour of the levee arrived only one man appeared, and that was the steward of the Earl of Devon, who came very bluntly to inform him that should he venture to set foot within the private grounds of Powderham Castle he would be prosecuted for trespass.

Next day Sir William repaired to the newspaper office at Exmouth, and drew up an advertisement, purporting to be an announcement of the arrival of the rightful Earl of Devon for the purpose of taking possession of Powderham Castle, and a statement to the effect that he was now recalled to the metropolis to appear before the House of Lords to substantiate his claim. The editor laughed in his face, refused to insert what was handed over to him, and tore it to shreds.

Full of wrath, Sir William shook off the dust from his feet as a testimony against Exmouth, and departed for London, where he remained two or three days, and then returned to Canterbury.

There he speedily involved himself in difficulties by his exertions in favour of some smugglers. An action had taken place in July, 1833, between the revenue cutter Lively and the Admiral Hood, smuggler, near Goodwin Sands, and in the course of the flight of the latter vessel her crew were observed to throw overboard a great number of tubs, which on being picked up proved to contain spirits. The Admiral Hood was captured, but no contraband goods were found on board; and on the men being taken into custody, Tom presented himself as a witness before the magistrates, and swore most positively that he had seen the whole affair, and that no tubs had been thrown from the Admiral Hood; he further stated that he had observed those which had been picked up by the revenue officers floating about on the water many hours before the Admiral Hood came near the Goodwins. This was so diametrically opposed to the truth that a prosecution for perjury was resolved on, and he was indicted at the Maidstone Assizes on July 25th, 1833. It was then proved that Sir William, on the very day on which the action had taken place, Sunday, the 17th February, had been twenty-five miles distant at Boughton-under-Blean, near Canterbury, and at the very hour of the action had been at church there. A verdict of conviction followed, and Mr. Justice Park, the presiding judge, passed a sentence of imprisonment for three months, to be followed by seven years of transportation beyond the seas.

This having reached the ears of his relations in Cornwall, representations were made by them to the Home Secretary that he was insane, and he was transferred to a lunatic asylum at Barming Heath, where he remained for four years, but whence he still issued addresses to his adherents in Canterbury and interfered in the election of councillors. There he remained for five years, and then a determined effort was made by his father and friends, and by Sir Hussey Brian, to obtain his liberation, and Lord John Russell ordered his liberation. This was an electioneering manœuvre, and Lord John had some difficulty in justifying his conduct in the House when later taken to task for having set this madman free.

On quitting the asylum, Tom hoped to take up his residence with a Mr. G. Francis, with whom he had been on terms of intimacy before. But Mr. Francis was by this time disillusioned, and when the Knight of Malta presented himself before him armed with a new pair of pistols, he remonstrated with him, and ordered him to quit the house; when he went to a cottage hard by occupied by one Wills, who was completely the dupe of Tom, and a passionate agitator. Then he went to Bossenden Farm occupied by a person named Culver. He gave out that he was the true proprietor of many of the finest estates in Kent, but that he would not enter into possession for two years. In addition to his living upon and amongst the farmers, he induced many of them to give him large sums of money, promising that for every shilling lent he would return a pound; and that, when he was in full possession of his estates, all his followers should have land free from rent according to their deserts. These promises made many dupes, and enabled him to indulge in luxuries which excited the astonishment of those not acquainted with his resources, and made many believe that he was what he pretended to be--really a nobleman of large property. To keep up this notion he made presents to various individuals; thus, to a fellow who had been prosecuted by the Revenue, Courtenay gave two horses worth £40. He was fond of displaying himself in fantastic dresses; he allowed his hair and beard, that was coal-black, to grow long; and he taught his followers to roar his battle song, of which only a few verses can be given here:--

Hark! old England's pris'ners' groan-- 'Tis a deep and mournful tone-- From oppression to be free, And enjoy true liberty.

Chorus.

Britons must be--will be free; Truth bears off the victory!

Lo! deliverance is at hand; Courtenay's made a noble stand; He the tyrants has arous'd-- He has freedom's cause espous'd,

Britons must be, etc.

Courtenay's cause is good, is just, Safely we in him may trust: Truth and virtue's on his side, We will still in him confide.

Britons must be, etc.

Men and devils still may rage, Their united powers engage-- Infidelity shall fall, Christ shall then be all in all.

Britons must be, etc.

Slav'ry's chains shall then be broke, We shall soon cast off the yoke, Independence is our right, Victory soon shall crown the fight.

Britons must be, etc.

Corp'rate bodies then shall cease, They're destruction to our peace; Party spirit shall no more Tyrannize with lawless pow'r.

Britons must be, etc.

Then, when victory's palm is won, Glorious as the summer sun, Shall Lord Courtenay's cause arise, Showing forth in cloudless skies.

Britons must be, etc.

Harrison Ainsworth, who has introduced Courtenay into his novel Rookwood, thus accurately describes him: "A magnificent coal-black beard decorated the chin of this worthy; but this was not all--his costume was in perfect keeping with his beard, and consisted of a very theatrical-looking suit, upon the breast of which was embroidered in gold wire the Maltese cross; while on his shoulders were thrown the ample folds of a cloak of Tyrian hue. To his side was girt a long and doughty sword, which he termed, in his knightly phrase, Excalibur; and upon his profuse hair rested a hat as broad in the brim as a Spanish sombrero. Exaggerated as this description may appear, we can assure our readers that it is not overdrawn."

He now resumed his rambles round Kent, and visited the cottages wherever he went, giving himself out to be Jesus Christ come back on earth to sift the wheat from the chaff before setting up his millennial kingdom. He showed his hands and feet and side marked with red--but there must have been conscious fraud on his part, for after his death no such scars could be found. Many of the poor and ignorant believed in him and followed him. His head-quarters were for a while the house of one of his most devoted followers named Wills, but he presently left that and removed to a farmhouse at Boughton, where lived a farmer called Culver, who was also a believer. He infatuated the women even more than the men, for he was tall, dark, and handsome, and they took up his cause passionately, and urged their husbands and fathers to follow him, "because he was the very Christ, and unless they adhered to him fire would come down from Heaven and consume them."

Instances occurred, and that by no means infrequently, in which he presented himself to be worshipped as God by the ignorant peasantry.

At length this excitement was destined to be brought to a conclusion.

On Monday, May 28th, 1838, Tom, with about fifteen followers, sallied forth from the village of Boughton without having any very distinct object in view, and proceeded to the cottage of Wills. Here they formed in column; and a loaf having been procured it was placed at the top of a pole, which bore a flag of blue and white, upon which a lion rampant was drawn. Wills having joined them, they marched to Goodrestone, near Faversham; and on the way Tom harangued the country people, who came out into the roads. From thence they went to a farm at Herne Hill, where they received food, and then on to Dargate Common. Here, by Tom's orders, all prayed. After this they proceeded to Bossenden Farm, where they rested for the night in a barn.

At three o'clock on Tuesday morning they went to Sittingbourne, and there Tom provided them with breakfast, for which he paid twenty-seven shillings. Thence they marched to Newnham, where, at the George Inn, they received a similar treat. What they went marching for not one of these deluded men seemed to know, unless it were to gather recruits; and in this he was successful. Wherever he went--at Eastling, Throwley, Sildswick, Lees, and Selling--he delivered speeches, made promises, and obtained adherents. Then the whole party returned to Bossenden Farm. Here there was an extensive wood, in which the true Canterbury bell is found. The district is called the Blean, and here a condition of affairs existed that greatly helped on the cause of Tom. In the eighteenth century much of the Blean was taken possession of by a number of squatters, who settled on the ground, then extra-parochial, as a "free port," from which none could dislodge them, and there they remained paying rent to none. Now the poor deluded peasants of the neighbourhood conceived the idea that Tom, or Courtenay, as he had called himself, was the promised Messiah who was come to give to them all lands to be their own, on which each man might sit under his own vine, and that the rich and large-landed proprietors would be cast out and consumed by the breath of his mouth.

During the tramp of these enthusiasts about the country, a farmer named Curling lost some of his labourers, who were enticed away from their work to follow with the rest. Curling at once mounted his horse and went to a magistrate, and procured from him a warrant for the apprehension of Courtenay alias Tom. Nicholas Meares, a constable, and his brother were entrusted to execute the warrant; and on Thursday morning, 31st May, about six o'clock, they hastened to Culver's farm to secure the men. Upon their presenting themselves, Courtenay stood forward, and before Meares could read the warrant shot him dead. He then went into the house, exclaiming to those who were there, "Now am I not your Saviour?" and then issuing from the house again, he discharged a second pistol into the body of Meares, and proceeded to mutilate it barbarously with his sword.

The news of this murder was conveyed to the magistrates, and they proceeded to take steps for the apprehension of Courtenay. But the latter at once called out his men, and they marched into Bossenden Wood, and there profanely he imitated the Last Supper and administered to his dupes in bread and water. This over, a man named Alexander Foad knelt down in the presence of the rest and worshipped him as his Saviour, and demanded whether he were required to follow him in body, or whether he might be allowed to return to his home and follow him in spirit. Courtenay replied, "In the body"; whereupon Foad sprang to his feet, exclaiming, "Oh! be joyful, be joyful! the Saviour has accepted me. Now go on; I will follow till I drop."

Another man, named Blanchard, also worshipped him, and Courtenay then said, in reference to the murder of Meares, "I was executing the justice of Heaven in consequence of the power that God has given me."

At twelve o'clock Tom and his followers shifted their position to an osier-bed, and there he harangued them, informing them that he and all such as believed in him would be invulnerable. He defied the magistrates and all the power of the world: his was the Kingdom of Heaven; and then he advised his followers to take up a position in ambush in the wood. At this time Tom noticed that a Mr. Handley, of Herne Hill, was observing their actions, and Courtenay alias Tom fired at him; but he was beyond the range, and he happily missed his aim.

In the meantime the magistrates had taken steps to put an end to this fiasco. They had despatched a messenger to Canterbury to summon the military, and a detachment of a hundred men of the 45th Foot, under the command of Major Armstrong, was placed at their disposal, and marched to Boughton. As the party of Courtenay was in the wood, the magistrates and the soldiery and the constables marched thither. The wood is of very considerable extent, but was intersected by the main road from London and Chatham to Canterbury, which was cut across by another road, a parish road, at right angles. It was found that the insurgent party was so placed that their front and rear were covered by the roads right and left. The military were in consequence divided; and whilst one party of fifty took the road leading to Canterbury, under the command of Captain Reed, the other was conducted by Major Armstrong, assisted by Lieutenants Bennett and Prendergast, along the road that led to Boulton-under-Blean. Thus the insurgents were placed between two bodies of troops, and their only chance of escape was to retreat in a straight line through the wood. But Tom alias Courtenay had no intention of retiring, and he boldly faced Major Armstrong with the men behind him drawn up, armed with picks and reaping-hooks. He was summoned to surrender, but turned and bade his followers be of good cheer and prepare for conflict. These numbered from thirty to forty men. Courtenay gave the order to charge, and advanced on the soldiers, when Lieutenant Bennett drew his sword and, heading the military, ran forward, and was shot by Courtenay; the ball, entering his right side, passed completely through the body of the young officer, who reeled and fell dead on the spot. At this moment a constable named Millwood sprang forward and felled Tom, but as the madman rose to his feet again, he was struck by a ball from the military, for they had received orders to fire from Major Armstrong, who was on horseback. By the discharge eight men were killed on the spot and several were wounded; but the wretched peasantry fought desperately, till at last dispersed by the charge of the soldiers under Armstrong, and those under Captain Reed taking them in flank, when they scattered and fled through the wood.

In the course of the afternoon twenty-seven prisoners were taken, of whom seven were suffering from wounds, two of whom died shortly after.

Of the party employed in maintaining the law, George Catt, a constable, was shot under a mistaken apprehension that he was one of the rioters; and Lieutenant Prendergast received a contused wound on the head from the bludgeon of an insurgent.

During the remainder of the week the coroner was engaged in conducting the necessary inquiries into the cause of death of the deceased persons. Verdicts of "Wilful murder" were returned in the cases of the constable Meares, and of Lieutenant Bennett, against Courtenay and his adherents; whilst in the case of Catt, the jury found "That he had been killed upon an erroneous belief that he was a rioter."

In the cases of death among the insurgents, the jury found a verdict of "Justifiable homicide."

The coroner conducted the investigations at the Red Lion Inn, Boughton, where the yard was full of the wives, widows, and children of these deluded men; whilst the wounded lay on stretchers, as also the bodies of the slain, in a stable; the prisoners were in a lockup, whence they were brought handcuffed to the tavern to be examined. During the sitting of the jury, two of the wounded men died, and upon their decease being communicated to those outside, they gave vent to their feelings in loud wails. The body of Lieutenant Bennett lay in an upper chamber of the inn. He was but about twenty-five years of age, and had just obtained leave of absence when the news of the outbreak reached the barracks, whereupon he applied and obtained permission to join the party. At the conclusion of the proceedings before the coroner and the magistrates nineteen prisoners were committed for trial. Ten of the rioters had been killed. Out of the prisoners, Meares, a cousin of the murdered constable, Foad, and Couchworth were wounded. Foad was a respectable farmer, cultivating about sixty acres. A woman, Sarah Culver, was kinswoman of the farmer who had first sent to the magistrates. She was possessed of considerable property, and was forty years of age. She had been a devoted follower of Courtenay; but it may be presumed that she, like him, was insane.

On Tuesday, 5th June, the greater number of those who had been killed in the riot were interred in the churchyard of Herne Hill. Amongst these was Tom. Great crowds attended, amongst them his adherents, who were in expectation that he would rise again and confound his enemies. Some apprehensions were entertained lest the mob should use violence to prevent the burial of their late fanatical leader, but the whole affair passed off quietly.

At the Maidstone Assizes on Thursday, the 9th August, 1838, the trial of the prisoners commenced before Lord Denman.

Ten of the prisoners were found guilty of murder and were condemned to death, but were informed that the sentence would be commuted, and their lives be spared. The prosecutions in the cases of the other prisoners were not proceeded with, and they were discharged.

From the admissions of the prisoners, it was ascertained that Courtenay had promised his followers on the following Sunday to lead them to Canterbury, to set fire to the city and to have "a glorious but a bloody day."

Tom had assured his adherents that death had no power over him; that even though he might seem to die he would rise again in a month, if a little water were applied to his lips. Accordingly, for a considerable time after he was buried, the ignorant people waited in lively expectation that he would reappear.

Of the prisoners, Meares and Wills were ordered to be transported for life; Price for ten years. The other seven were to undergo one year's imprisonment with hard labour. A pension of £40 per annum was granted to the widow of Meares the constable.

Good comes out of evil, and one result of this lamentable affair was that attention was drawn to the abysmal ignorance of the peasantry of the Blean, and that schools were at once erected at Dunkirk, to introduce a better knowledge and sense into the heads of the rising generation.

A full account of the whole affair was published at Faversham directly after the event, of which this is the title: "An account of the desperate affray which took place in Blean Wood, near Boughton, Thursday, 31st May, 1838, between a party of agricultural labourers, headed by the self-styled Sir William Courtenay, and a detachment of the 45th Regiment of Foot, commanded by Major Elliott Armstrong, acting under the orders of the County Magistrates, together with the whole of the evidence taken before T. T. Delasaux, Esq., coroner, the Rev. Dr. Bow, N. J. Knatchbull, Esq., and W. C. Fairman, Esq., drawn from authentic documents. With an account of the funerals of the parties."

There is another work, a copy of which is now in the British Museum, and is illustrated with a portrait of Tom, a plate representing the murder of Meares, soldiers entering Bossenden Wood; the scene of action, the "Red Lion," where the bodies lay; the interior of the stable with six of the bodies; Sir William Courtenay as he appeared after the post-mortem examination, and portraits of Tyler and Price, two of the rioters. The title of the work is: "The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Sir William Courtenay, Knight of Malta, alias John Nichols Tom, formerly spirit merchant and maltster of Truro in Cornwall, being a correct detail of all the incidents of his extraordinary life, from his infancy to the dreadful battle of Bossenden Wood ... with facsimiles of that eccentric character, concluding with an accurate account of the trial of the rioters at the Maidstone Assizes. By Canterburiensis. Canterbury: published by James Hunt, and sold in London by T. Kelly, Paternoster Row, 1838."

Passages from the Autobiography of a Man of Kent, edited by R. Fitzroy Stanley (i.e. Robert Coutars) 1866, may be consulted; also The Times for June, 1838.

THE BOHELLAND TRAGEDY

In the parish of Gluvias by Penryn is Bohelland. Fifty years ago there was a ruin here of a roofless house, with the gables standing. Now all that remains is a fragment of wall. Tradition regarding the field in which the house stood is, that it invariably brings ill luck to him who owns or rents it. The way from Penryn to Enys, a lane, leads by it, and the fragment of wall abuts on the lane. Bohelland is not marked on the one-inch, but is on the six-inch ordnance map. Anciently it was called the Behethlan, and Gluvias Church was called Capella de Behethlan under S. Budock.

In the possession of J. D. Enys, Esq., of Enys, is a MS. pedigree of the family to whom Bohelland belonged. It runs as follows: "John Behethlan was seized of lands in agro Behethlan, and had issue two daughters, Margery and Joan, and the said Margery took to husband Roger Polwheyrell, and had issue Nicholas Polwheyrell; the said Nicholas Polwheyrell had issue James Polwheyrell; the said James Polwheyrell had issue Richard, Margery, Joan and Isabel, and the said Richard married Maud Polgiau, and they had issue Nichola, and the said Nichola took to husband John Penweyre, and had issue Thomas Penweyre, who died without heirs. The said Margery took to husband Symon Martharwyler, and had issue Elsota and Meliora. The said Elsota took to husband Nicholas Mantle, now living, and had issue Isabel, who took to husband John Restaden, now living. The said Meliora took to husband Michael John, vicar,[36] and had issue Joan, Elizabeth, and Margaret.

"The said Joan took to husband Hugh Sandre, now living. The said Elizabeth took to husband Laurence Michell, now living; the said Margaret took to husband James Curallak, now living. The said Joan, second daughter of the said James Polwheyrell, took to husband John Trelecoeth, and had issue Marina and Joan. The said Isabel, third daughter of the said James, took to husband William son of John Tryarne, and died without issue."

Unfortunately this pedigree does not contain a single date, but we should obtain one approximately by the marriage of Meliora, daughter of Simon Martharwyla, with Michael John, vicar, if we could trace him. With her descended the inheritance of Behethlan to her daughter Joan who married Hugh Sandry.

The story of the Bohelland or Behethlan tragedy is contained in a pamphlet of eight leaves, black letter, and accompanied by rude woodcuts, entitled News from Penrin, in Cornwall, 1618. A unique copy is in the Bodleian Library.

Sanderson, in his Annals of King James, 1656, gives the same story. Sir William Sanderson says that "the imprinted relation conceals the names, in favour of some neighbours of repute and kin to the family," and that "the same sense made him thereon silent also."

Now, according to the story, there were four deaths, one a murder, and two by suicide, and one might expect to obtain these names from the parish register. But this register, which goes back into the middle of the sixteenth century, has the page or pages removed for the burials of 1618; that is to say, from the first days of 1618 to the middle of 1621. This looks much as if the family sought to destroy every trace of the crime.

Hals, in his MS. History of Cornwall, under the head of Gluvias, does not mention Bohelland. There is no help to be obtained from the title deeds of the estate. Our sole clue is the descent in the pedigree. Meliora, who married Michael John, vicar, cannot have done this before the reign of Edward VI, and it is not probable that the marriage took place till that of Elizabeth. They were not married at Gluvias, and Michael John was not the vicar then. Now the pedigree carries down the descent, with possession of Bohelland to John Restadon and his wife Isabel. The name Restadon does not occur in the Visitations of Cornwall. The only other possible owner would be Hugh Sandry and his wife Joan, daughter of the vicar, Michael John. But whether it were either the Sandrys or the Restadons, or some one else, cannot be determined till further light enters on this extremely dark occurrence.

The owner of Bohelland was a man of some consideration and substance, "unhappy only in a younger son, who taking liberty from his father's bounty, with a crew of like condition, that wearied on land, they went roving to sea, and in a small vessel southward, took booty from all they could master, and so increasing force and wealth, ventured in a Turk's man in the Streights; but by mischance their own powder fired themselves, and our gallant, trusting to his skilful swimming, got on shore upon Rhodes with the best of his jewels about him; when, offering some to sale to a Jew, who knew them to be the Governor's of Algier, he was apprehended, and as a pirate sentenced to the gallies among other Christians, when miserable slavery made them all studious of freedom, and with wit and valour, took opportunity and means to murther some officers, got on board of an English ship, and came safe to London, where his misery and some skill made him servant to a surgeon and sudden preferment to the East Indies. There by this means he got money, with which, returning back, he designed himself for his native county, Cornwall. And in a small ship from London, sailing to the west, was cast away upon that coast. But his excellent skill in swimming and former fate to boot, brought him safe to shore, where, since his fifteen years' absence, his father's former fortunes much decayed, now retired him not far off to a country habitation, in debt and danger.

"His sister he finds married to a mercer, a meaner match than her birth promised. To her at first he appears a poor stranger, but in private reveals himself, and withall what jewels and gold he had concealed in a bow-case about him, and concluded that the next day he intended to appear to his parents, and to keep his disguise till she and her husband should meet, and make their common joy complete.

"Being come to his parents, his humble behaviour, suitable to his suit of clothes, melted the old couple to so much compassion as to give him covering from the cold season under their outward roof, and by degrees his travelling tales, told with passion to the aged people, made him their guest so long by the kitchen fire, that the husband took his leave and went to bed, and soon after, his true stories working compassion in the weaker vessel, she wept, and so did he; but, compassionate of her tears, he comforted her with a piece of gold, which gave assurance that he deserved a lodging, to which she brought him; and, being in bed, showed her his girdled wealth, which he said was sufficient to relieve her husband's wants, and to spare for himself, and being very weary, fell fast asleep.

"The wife, tempted with the golden bait of what she had, and eager of enjoying all, awakened her husband with this news, and her contrivance what to do; and though with horrid apprehensions he oft refused, yet her puling fondness (Eve's enchantments) moved him to consent, and rise to be master of all, and both of them to murder the man, which instantly they did, covering the corpse under the clothes till opportunity to convey it out of the way.

"The early morning hastens the sister to her father's house, when she, with signs of joy, enquires for a sailor that should lodge there the last night. The parents slightly denied to have seen such, until she told them that he was her brother, her lost brother. By that assured scar upon his arm, cut with a sword in his youth, she knew him, and were all resolved this morning to meet there and be merry.

"The father hastily runs up, finds the mark, and with horrid regret of this monstrous murder of his own son, with the same knife cuts his own throat.

"The wife went up to consult with him, when in a most strange manner beholding them both in blood, and aghast, with the instrument at hand, readily rips herself up, and perishes on the same spot.

"The daughter, doubting the delay of their absence, searches for them all, whom she found out too soon, and with the sad sight of this scene, and being overcome with horror and amaze of this deluge of destruction, she sank down and died; the fatal end of that family."

There are several points in this narrative that awaken mistrust. How is the story of the son's life known? He tells it to his sister, but she dies. Then we have an account of what went on in the house between the parents and the son, and the wife urging her husband to commit the murder. As both killed themselves on discovering what they had done, all this part must be painted in by guesswork.

That there is a substratum of fact cannot be doubted. The mysterious mutilation of the parish register for the year of the murder indicates a desire that the names might not be known.

Lillo turned the story into a tragedy, The Fatal Curiosity, 1736. According to him the name of the family was Wilmot. He took a slight liberty with the story, in that he made the returned sailor present himself to the girl he had loved fifteen years before, and not to his sister. But he laid the scene at Penryn.

FOOTNOTE:

[36] No such a vicar was in Gluvias or is known to have been in Cornwall in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.Return to passage

MARY KELYNACK

The Kelynack family has been one of fishermen and seamen at Newlyn and its neighbourhood for many generations.

Philip Kelynack was the first to fly to the rescue of John Wesley when pursued by a mob while preaching on the Green between Newlyn and Penzance 12th July, 1747. He was a remarkably powerful man, and was known by the name of Old Bunger. His son Charles was the first to engage the Mount's Bay boatmen to take part in the Irish Sea fishing in 1720.

Mary, the subject of this notice, was the daughter of Nicholas Tresize and the wife of William Kelynack. She was born at Tolcarne, in Madron, 1766.

In 1851 was the Great Exhibition in London, and the tidings of opening of a Crystal Palace and the wonders that it contained reached to the extremity of Cornwall. Said Mary Kelynack, "I'll go and see'n too, I reckon!" and away she trudged.

The Illustrated London News for October 26th, 1851, gives the following account of her:--

"On Tuesday, September 24th, among the visitors of the Mansion House was Mary Callinack, eighty-four years of age, who had travelled on foot from Penzance, carrying a basket on her head, with the object of visiting the Exhibition and of paying her respects personally to the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress. As soon as the ordinary business was finished the aged woman entered the justice-room, when the Lord Mayor, addressing her, said, 'Well, I understand, Mrs. Callinack, you have come to see me?'

"She replied, 'Yes, God bless you. I never was in such a place before as this. I have come up asking for a small sum of money, I am, sir.'

"The Lord Mayor: 'Where do you come from?'

"Mrs. C.: 'From the Land's End.'

"The Lord Mayor: 'From what part?'

"Mrs. C.: 'Penzance.'

"She then stated that she left Penzance five weeks ago, and had been the whole of that time walking to the metropolis.

"The Lord Mayor: 'What induced you to come to London?'

"Mrs. C.: 'I had a little matter to attend to as well as to see the Exhibition. I was there yesterday, and mean to go again to-morrow.'

"The Lord Mayor: 'What do you think of it?'

"Mrs. C.: 'I think it very good.'"

She then said that all her money was spent but 5-1/2d. After a little further conversation, which caused considerable merriment, the Lord Mayor made her a present of a sovereign, telling her to take care of it, there being a good many thieves in London. The poor creature, on receiving the gift, burst into tears and said, "Now I will be able to get back."

She was afterwards received by the Lady Mayoress, with whom she remained some time, and having partaken of tea in the housekeeper's room, which she said she preferred to the choicest wine in the kingdom (which latter beverage she had not tasted for sixty years), she returned thanks for the hospitality she had received and left the Mansion House.

Her next visit was to the Exhibition.

She was also presented to the Queen and to Prince Albert, and there is mention of this presentation in Sir Theodore Martin's Life of the Prince Consort (1876), II, p. 405.

In the notice in the Illustrated London News it is said: "Our portrait of the Cornish fish-wife has been sketched from life at her abode, Homer Place, Crawford Street, Mary-le-bone. She was born in the parish of Paul, by Penzance, on Christmas Day, 1766, so that she has nearly completed her eighty-fifth year. To visit the present Exhibition, she walked the entire distance from Penzance, nearly three hundred miles; she having 'registered a vow' before she left home, that she would not accept assistance in any shape, except as regarded her finances. She possesses her faculties unimpaired; is very cheerful, has a considerable amount of humour in her composition; and is withal a woman of strong common sense, and frequently makes remarks that are very shrewd, when her great age and defective education are taken into account. She is fully aware that she has made herself somewhat famous; and among other things which she contemplates, is her return to Cornwall, to end her days in 'Paul parish,' where she wishes to be interred by the side of old Dolly Pentreath, who was also a native of Paul, and died at the age of 102 years."

Mary Kelynack died in Dock Lane, Penzance, 5th December, 1855, and was buried in S. Mary's churchyard.

Messrs. Routledge published the story of her walk to London and back in one of Aunt Mavor's Storybooks, with illustrations.

CAPTAIN WILLIAM ROGERS

Captain William Rogers, son of Captain Rogers, who died in November, 1790, was born at Falmouth, 29th September, 1783. He married Susan, daughter of Captain John Harris, of S. Mawes. In 1807, Rogers was master, in temporary command of the Windsor Castle, a packet-boat from Falmouth to Barbados. She mounted six long 4-pounders and two 9-pounder carronades, with a complement of twenty-eight men and boys.

On October 1st, 1807, as the packet was on her passage to Barbados with the mails, a privateer schooner was seen approaching under all sail.

As it seemed quite impossible to escape, Captain Rogers resolved on making a stout resistance, though the odds against him were great. In fact, the privateer mounted six long 6-pounders and one long 18-pounder, with a complement of ninety-two men.

At noon the schooner got within gunshot, hoisted French colours, and opened fire, which was immediately returned from the chase-guns of the Windsor Castle. This was continued till the privateer, whose name was Le Jeune Richard, came near, when she hailed the packet in very opprobrious terms, and desired her to strike her colours. On meeting with a prompt refusal, the schooner ran alongside, grappled the packet, and attempted to board. But the crew of the Windsor Castle made so stout a resistance with their pikes that the French were obliged to abandon the attempt with the loss of ten killed and wounded. The privateer, finding she had a hard nut to crack, lost heart, and sought to cut away the grapplings and get clear; but the packet's mainyard, being locked in the schooner's rigging, held her fast.

Captain Rogers evinced great judgment and zeal in ordering some of his men to shift the sails as circumstances required, or to cut them away in the event of the privateer succeeding in the conflict.

At about 3 p.m. one of the packet's guns, a 1-pounder carronade, loaded with double grape, canister and a hundred musket balls, was brought to bear on the deck of the privateer, and was discharged at the moment when a fresh boarding party was collected for a second attempt. The result was a frightful slaughter, and as the French reeled under this discharge, Captain Rogers, followed by the men of his little crew, leaped upon the deck of the schooner, and notwithstanding the apparently overwhelming odds against him, succeeded in driving the privateer's men from their quarters, and ultimately in capturing the vessel.

Of the crew of the Windsor Castle three had been killed and two severely wounded; but of that of Le Jeune Richard there were twenty-one dead upon the deck, and thirty-three were wounded.

From the very superior number of the privateer's crew still remaining--thirty-eight men--whereas Captain Rogers had only fifteen available, great precautions had to be taken in securing the prisoners. They were accordingly ordered up from below, one by one, and each put in irons. Any attempt at a rescue being thus effectually guarded against, the packet proceeded, with her prize, to the port of her destination, which fortunately for the former was not far distant.

This achievement reflected the highest honour upon every officer, man, and boy that was on board the Windsor Castle, but especially on Captain Rogers. Had he stayed to calculate the chances that were against him, the probability is that the privateer would have ultimately succeeded in capturing the packet, whose light carronades could have offered very little resistance at the usual distance at which vessels engage; and where any small crew, without such a coup de main--indeed, without such a leader--could never have brought the combat to a favourable issue.

For his intrepid conduct Rogers received the thanks of H.M. Postmaster-General; promotion to the rank of captain, with command of another packet, 100 guineas besides his share of the prize (although no prize allowance was usual); the freedom of the City of London; and an illuminated address, with a sword of honour, from the inhabitants of Tortola.

In London, a gentleman named Dixon, unacquainted with Rogers, sought and obtained his friendship, and then commissioned Samuel Drummond to make a picture of the action, in which the hero's full-length portrait should appear. Whilst the painting was in progress, one day Rogers ran up against a man in the street so closely resembling the officer he had shot, that he held him by the button and begged as a favour that he would allow a distinguished artist to paint his portrait. The gentleman was not a little surprised, but when Rogers informed him who he was and why he desired to have him painted, he readily consented. He was conducted to the studio, and there stood as portrait-model for the French swordsman by whom Rogers had been so nearly cut down. When completed, the painting was retained by Mr. Dixon, but it was engraved in mezzotint by Ward.

The painting in course of time passed to the first owner's grandson, Mr. James Dixon, whose daughter at his decease in 1896 became possessed of it, and presented it to the nation, and it is now in the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital.

Captain Rogers died at Holyhead January 11, 1825. His and his wife's portraits were preserved by her relatives, and eventually given to the only surviving daughter or her descendants.

In Johns and Nicolas's Calendar of Victory, 1855, is an account of this sea-fight; also in the European Magazine of 1808, with a portrait of the gallant captain. Also in James's Naval History of Great Britain (1820), Vol. IV.

Rogers's own account, condensed, is to be found in a paper by Rev. W. Jago, "The Heroes of the Old Falmouth Packet Service," in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, XIII, 1895-8.

JOHN BURTON, OF FALMOUTH

Joseph Burton, of Stockport, Lancashire, came, for what reason is unknown, to Cornwall in 1830, and set up a china and glass shop at Bodmin; and married at Launceston a Miss Clemo.

Old Joseph was a sturdy Radical and Nonconformist. He was a vigorous and loud supporter of the Ballot Society, the Liberation Society, and the United Kingdom Alliance. He was also a vehement and "intemperate" teetotaler. He died at Bodmin 19th July, 1876. John was one of a whole string of children, and as the "cloam" shop did not bring in a large profit, and John was one among many, he had to go into life very inefficiently equipped with education. But he had inherited from his father a masterful spirit, and had his own independent views, and it was soon a case between them of flint and steel, and sparks flew out.

John and his brother Joe were sent round the country hawking pots and glass.

"I well remember the 24th December, 1853," said John Burton. "Myself and brother Joe (who afterwards became a well-known auctioneer) rose at five o'clock in the morning, fed the horse, and made a start at 5.45 a.m. with a wagon-load of goods. The morning was dark, and when we came to Callywith turnpike gate it was closed. We knocked Henry Mark, the toll-keeper, up to let us through. He looked out of the window and at first refused to let us pass until daylight. We firmly told him that we would certainly unhang the gate and pass through without paying the toll. This fetched the old man down, with his long coat, knitted night-cap, with horn lantern in his hand. He opened the gate and told us, 'You Burtons ought to be poisoned for breaking a man's rest.' A lot we cared for his curses. Fairly on the road, we were as happy as sandboys. Having delivered the goods, and fairly on the way home, we stopped at the Jamaica Inn, where the old mail-coaches used to change their horses, to feed our horse, not forgetting ourselves. After giving old Dapper his feed of oats, we went into the inn kitchen, where we ordered a hot meal. The landlady asked, 'What would you like?' She suggested a hot squab pie, which she took out of a huge kitchen range well loaded with burning turf, the odour of which increased our appetite considerably. We polished off the pie and pocketed the crust to eat on the moors when homeward bound."

The Jamaica Inn is in the midst of the Bodmin Moors. In the time of the mail-coaches from London by Exeter to Falmouth it was a house of great repute. But when the trains ran, and coaches were given up, it fell from its high estate, was converted into a temperance house, was far from clean, harboured innumerable fleas, and did little business. Of late it has entirely recovered its credit. It stands nine hundred feet above the sea. There are now there at Bolventor a church and a school. A bleak, wind-swept moor all about it. Dozmare Pool, haunted by Tregeagle, is near by--and in June the meadows around are a sheet of gold from the buttercups. But to return to John Burton's reminiscences.

"When the landlady came in and saw that we had finished the pie, she looked with amazement towards us.

"'Why, drat you boys, whativer have 'ee done with the pie?'

"'Why, ate'n, missus. Do'y think us called the horse in to help us, or what?'

"'No,' she smartly replied, 'I should 'a thawt you had the Bodmunt Murlicha (Militia) here to help 'ee out. I never seed such gluttons in my life.'

"When we asked what we had got to pay, she said, 'Sixpunce for the crist, threepunce for the suitt, ninepunce for the gibblets, and eightpunce for apples, onions, spice, currants and sugar, and fourpunce for baking 'un; two dishes of tay, tuppunce; that'll be two and eightpunce altogether, boys.'

"'All right, missus, here's the posh.'

"She asked us out of bravado if we could eat any more. We said, 'Yes, we could do with some Christmas cake.'

"She politely told us that she shouldn't cut the Christmas cake until the next day. 'But you can have some zeedy biscays, if you like.'

"'All right.' And in she brought them, which we also polished off. Afterwards she demanded fourpence for them.

"'All right, missus, the fourpunce charged for baking the pie will pay for the biscuits, so us'll cry quits,' which joke the old woman swallowed with a good laugh."

John Burton proceeds to describe the Christmas merry-making at the inn that night. Jamaica Inn had not then become a temperance hotel. The moormen and farmers came in, the great fire glowed like a furnace. The wind sobbed without, and piped in at the casement--"the souls on the wind," as it was said, the spirits of unbaptized babes wailing at the windowpane, seeing the fire within, and condemned to wander on the cold blast without.

To the red fire, and to the plentiful libations, songs were sung, among others that very favourite ballad of the "Highwayman"--

I went to London both blythe and gay, My time I squandered in dice and play, Until my funds they fell full low, And on the highway I was forced to go.

Then after an account of how he robbed Lord Mansfield and Lady Golding, of Portman Square--

I shut the door, bade all good night, And rambled to my heart's delight.

After a career of riot and robbery, the Highwayman at length falls into the toils of Sir John Fielding, who was the first magistrate to take sharp and decisive measures against these pests of society. Then the ballad ends:--

When I am dead, borne to my grave, A gallant funeral may I have; Six highwaymen to carry me, With good broadswords and sweet liberty.

Six blooming maidens to bear my pall; Give them white gloves and pink ribbons all; And when I'm dead they'll say the truth, I was a wild and a wicked youth.

One of the local characters who was present on that Christmas Eve was Billy Peppermint. As he was overcome with drink, the young Burtons conveyed him from the Jamaica Inn about ten miles, and then turned him out of their conveyance, and propped him up against the railings of a house in Bodmin, as he was quite unable to sustain himself.

That night the carol singers were making their round, and as they came near they piped forth: "When shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground, an angel of the Lord appeared, and----"

Whereon Billy roared forth--

When I am dead they'll say the truth, I was a wild and a wicked youth,

and rolled over and fell prostrate on the ground.

In 1857 an event occurred which altered the direction of John Burton's activities.

He had been sent along with one of his father's hawkers named Paul Mewton with a crate of china on his head to S. Columb. On their way they called at Porth, and there Paul complained that he was not well, whereupon a Mr. Stephens, with whom they were doing business, produced a case of spirits and gave first Paul and then John Burton each a glass of very strong grog. Paul could stand it, but not so John, and as he was carrying his basket of "cloam" over a stile he lost his balance, and away went the crate and all its contents, which were shivered to atoms.

This was too much for Mr. Joseph Burton, a rigid teetotaler, and he had words with his son on the immorality of touching fermented liquor, and above all on the consequences of a loss of many shillings' worth of china.

The stile is still to be seen. On one side is inscribed, "Burton's Stile, 1857"; on the other is a carving of a gin-bottle, a water-jug, and a glass, with the legend beneath, "The Fall of Man."

This was the beginning of a series of altercations between John and his father, which led at last to John abandoning his parent, and in 1862 he set up in Falmouth on his own account with thirty shillings in his pocket. As Burton was wont to say of the world into which he had entered on his own account--

'Tis a very good world for to live in, To lend, or to spend, or to give in; But to beg or to borrow, or get a man's own, 'Tis the very worst world that ever was known.

For some time he earned a living by hawking crockery about in Falmouth. Then, some sailors coming into the harbour brought with them some alligators. Burton spent his money on buying them, and then started out in quest of various herbalists, and disposed of the reptiles to them. A stuffed alligator hanging up in a shop was an object imposing on the imagination of patients.

In 1865 a number of Roman coins were found at Pennance Farm, in S. Budock, and Burton bought these, and then became an antiquary. At this time numerous vessels put in at Falmouth, and the sailors had brought with them parrots, apes, and all sorts of curiosities from foreign parts, and were prepared to sell them for very small sums. Burton bought as far as his profits would allow, and thus he became a curiosity dealer. He secured business premises in Market Street, and began to store them with odds and ends of every description. He rambled about in Cornwall, and his keen eye detected at once a bit of old china, a scrap of carved oak, an odd signboard, a piece of Chippendale furniture, a framed sampler, and he bought everywhere, and stocked his premises. As his business grew he advertised extensively, and gradually but surely built up an extensive business. In curiosities he became a very Whiteley. Any one who desired anything peculiar could apply to John Burton, and John Burton would supply it, if not a genuine antique, yet "made to order," and indistinguishable from an antique. When there began to be a run on Bristol lustre ware, he was ready with a stock, which went off rapidly. He bought old muskets by the thousand, and sent them abroad to arm savage nations in Africa and Asia.

One day a Scotchman entered his shop and said to Burton, "I am looking out for a man who can sell me three sixpences for a shilling."

"Then I am the man for you," said Burton, and produced three defective sixpences.

"I'll have another shilling's worth," said the Scotchman.

"Ah! then I cannot accommodate you; but I can do better--give you a bad shilling for a good one."

On one occasion the curator of the Edinburgh Museum wrote down to him for the eleventh vertebra of the skeleton of a whale that he had, but which was wanting. By return of post Burton sent him up what he needed.

He had a marvellous memory--remembering all the multifarious items in his shop, though they were continually changing.

When the new Eddystone Lighthouse was erected, he wrote to Trinity House and offered £500 for Smeaton's lighthouse that had been taken down. This roused a storm of indignation in Plymouth, and ended in that town securing it for £1600, to be erected on the Hoe.

The town of Penryn possessed its old stocks, bearing date 1673. These he bought for £2, and sold them to a Devizes antiquary for a large sum. Then he purchased a haunted house--Trevethan Hall, in Falmouth--but as the ghost could not be turned into money, he pulled the house down and built on its site Mount Edgcumbe Terrace.

During many years a stream of tourists, walking, bicycling, motoring, has circulated round Cornwall, starting from Bideford, careering to the Land's End, and returning by the south coast to Plymouth, and hardly a tourist thought of visiting Falmouth without going to Burton's Curiosity Shop and making a purchase there. Indeed, he and his shop were some of the sights of Cornwall. He had by nature great ready wit, and a bluntness of manner which he cultivated, and which gave poignancy to dealings with him. But his bluntness, which was part of the stock-in-trade, was not infrequently carried too far, and became impertinence. He had a real love for his genuine curios, and parted with them reluctantly; and this he allowed to be seen. In this he was wholly unlike the ordinary dealer who presses his wares on the hesitating purchaser. When the present King, then Prince of Wales, visited Falmouth in 1887, the Prince having a cold sent Mr. Cavendish Bentinck to the Curiosity Shop to request that Mr. Burton would send a collection of what was most interesting in his shop for the Prince's inspection. Upon this he addressed the following letter to the Prince:--

"RESPECTED ALBERT EDWARD.--I much regret to find you are indisposed. If I were to fetch to Kerrisvean a Pickford's wagon-load of samples it would be utterly impossible to convey the remotest idea of my ponderous conglomeration of curios; but if I could prevail upon Your Royal Highness to go through my shanty, I would give you local wit and humour which would throw you into a state of laughter, and there is every probability it would counteract your cold.--Yours until we meet in the next hotel,

"JOHN BURTON."

This, which he doubtless thought very smart, was mere insolence. In fact, he had not a large store of "local wit and humour," and mistook rudeness for fun. But he was often encouraged in this. A lady once entered his shop and said, "You've a rum lot of stuff here, old boy; how much do you ask for that pair of vases?"

"Six guineas."

"I'll give you five, old fellow."

"Then, old girl, they are yours. Where shall I send them, and to whom?"

"To the Duchess of ----."

"Oh! I beg Your Grace's pardon; I have been too familiar."

"Not at all. You treated me as I have treated you."

John Burton was an abstemious man, and believed that by moderate diet and moderation in drinking he would--and any man would--live to the age of a hundred. He had framed for himself a code of rules to ensure a long life.

1. Eight hours' sleep and that on your right side, and sleep with the bedroom window open. Fresh air is essential.

2. Do not have your bedstead against the wall, so that the air may circulate about you freely.

3. Take a glass of hot water on rising, and a bath at blood temperature, and take exercise before breakfast.

4. Eat little meat and see that it be well cooked, and be careful to eat plenty of fat.

5. Take plenty of daily exercise in the open air.

6. Have no pet animals in your living-room.

7. Avoid tea--the tannin turns meat to leather and spoils digestion, but take little or no intoxicant.

8. Keep guard against man's three enemies, the three D's--Damp, Drains, and impure Drinking water.

9. Change of occupation, and frequent, if short, holidays.

10. Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables.

11. Keep your temper, and keep a cheery mind.

12. Limit your ambition to what you can do.

But, notwithstanding these rules, John Burton did not live to a great age. He died of a painful internal disease on May 28th, 1907. He had eight children by his wife. One son, John, has a large earthenware establishment in Falmouth; another--the image of his father in face--carries on the "Old Curiosity Shop."

THE FATE OF SIR CLOUDESLEY SHOVEL

The life of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, Knt. and Admiral, must be given in few words, as his association with Cornwall was in his death and not in his birth and life.

He was born about the year 1650, of parents in Norfolk in a humble condition of life, and he was made a cobbler's apprentice, but, disliking this profession, ran away to sea. He was at first a cabin-boy with Sir Christopher Mynns; but, applying himself to the study of navigation with indefatigable industry, his skill as a seaman soon raised him above that station. The corsairs of Tripoli had for long committed great depredations on the English in the Mediterranean, plundering and capturing merchant vessels and carrying off the crews into slavery. Sir John Narborough was sent in 1674 to reduce them to reason. As he had received orders to try the effects of negotiation before he proceeded to hostilities, he sent Mr. Shovel, who was at that time a lieutenant in his fleet, to demand satisfaction. The Dey treated him with disrespect, and sent him back without an answer. Sir John despatched him a second time, with orders to observe the position of the piratical fleet in the harbour. The behaviour of the Dey was as insolent as possible. Upon Mr. Shovel's return he informed Sir John that it would be possible, notwithstanding the batteries commanding the harbour, to cut out or burn the ships therein, and he volunteered to command an expedition in boats for the purpose. His offer was accepted, and he managed to burn in the harbour, under the castle and walls of Tripoli, the guard-ship and four men-of-war belonging to the pirates of that place, and to force the Dey to accept such conditions of peace as Sir John Narborough was pleased to impose on him.

Sir John Narborough gave so favourable an account of this exploit, that Shovel was soon after made captain of the Sapphire, a fifth-rate ship.

In the skirmish of Bantry Bay, 1689, he was engaged, and won such scanty laurels as the unworthy Admiral Herbert allowed his fleet to deserve. James II had his Court in Dublin. A French fleet, commanded by the Count de Château-Renaud, had anchored in Bantry Bay, and had put on shore a large quantity of military stores and money. Herbert, who had been sent to those seas with an English squadron for the express purpose of intercepting the communications between France and Ireland, sailed into the bay with purpose of giving battle. But the wind was unfavourable, and Herbert was without dash and energy, and was a traitor at heart. After some trifling discharge of gunpowder, which caused no serious loss of life on either side, he deemed it prudent to stand out to sea, and allow the French fleet to retire unmolested.

But according to Herbert's report, a great victory had been gained by him, and the House of Commons, believing what he stated, absurdly passed a vote of thanks to him. We may well conceive the rage of heart and scorn of his admiral that consumed Shovel at the feeble attack and cowardly retreat. At the time he was commander of the Edgar, and was soon after knighted by King William.

Next year he was employed in transporting an army into Ireland, a service which he performed with such diligence and dexterity that the King raised him to the rank of Rear-Admiral of the Blue, and delivered to him his commission with his own hands. Soon after he was made Rear-Admiral of the Red, and shared in the glory of the victory of La Hogue. In 1694 he bombarded Dunkirk.

In 1702 he was sent with a squadron of about twenty men-of-war to join the Grand Fleet, and bring home the galleons and other rich boats taken by the Duke of Ormond and Sir George Rooke at Vigo.

The next year he was promoted to a higher post, being appointed as Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate Fleet in the Mediterranean, consisting of thirty-five English and fourteen Dutch men-of-war. On entering the Leghorn roads, the Governor refused to accord a royal salute. Sir Cloudesley peremptorily ordered the salute to be given, or to expect all the guns of the fleet to ask the question why it had not been at once accorded. The threat sufficed. In this expedition Sir Cloudesley sent two men-of-war to endeavour to supply the Camisards of the Cevennes with money, arms, and ammunition, but failed to obtain communication with them.

Soon after the battle off Malaga he was presented by Prince George of Denmark to Queen Anne; she received him graciously, and the next year employed him as Commander-in-Chief.

In the month of June, 1704, he had his share in the honour of taking Gibraltar; and by his admirable conduct, bravery, and success in the sea-fight that happened soon after, between the Confederate and French fleets, obliged the enemy's van to bear away out of the reach of his cannon, and the Count of Toulouse to follow the example of his van, and escape out of danger. Although in this action Sir Cloudesley was second in command, yet he won the principal credit for its success, and some months after was appointed Rear-Admiral of England.

In 1705 he commanded the fleet, together with the Earl of Portsmouth, which was sent into the Mediterranean, and it was mainly owing to him that Barcelona was taken.

After an unsuccessful attempt upon Toulon he sailed for Gibraltar, and from thence on Michaelmas Day homeward with a part of his fleet, consisting of fifteen men-of-war, five of a lesser rank, and one yacht. He was on the Association, Sir George Byng was commander on the Royal Arms, Lord Dursley on the S. George.

On the 22nd of October Sir Cloudesley Shovel being enveloped in fog, and taking soundings in ninety fathoms, he brought to and lay by from noon till six o'clock in the evening, when, as the wind freshened and blew from the S.S.W., he made signal for sailing. The fleet steered E. by N. and supposing that they had the Channel open some of the ships ran upon the rocks of Scilly, before they were aware, about eight o'clock at night, and at once made signals of distress. The Association, in which was Sir Cloudesley Shovel, struck upon the rocks near the Bishop and his Clerks, and went down with all hands on board.

The same fate befell the Eagle and the Romney. The Firebrand was likewise dashed upon the rocks and foundered; but the captain and four-and-twenty of his men saved themselves in a boat. And Captain Sansom, who commanded the Phœnix, being driven towards the shore, was forced to abandon his ship to save his men. The Royal Arms was saved by great presence of mind in both Sir George Byng and his officers and men, who in a minute, on perceiving the rocks not a ship's length to leeward, as well as those on which Sir Cloudesley Shovel was lost, set her topsails and sheered off. Nor had Lord Dursley, commanding the S. George, a less fortunate escape; for his ship was dashed upon the same reef as that on which the Association had been wrecked; but the same wave that beat out the lights of Sir Cloudesley's vessel lifted the S. George and floated it away.

A story has remained deeply engraved in the minds of the men of Scilly to the present day. It is to this effect:--

On the 22nd October, that same fatal day, a sailor, a native of Scilly, ventured to approach the admiral and tell him that he was steering too far to the northward, and that unless the course of the fleet was changed they could not fail to run her upon the rocks. For this act of insubordination Sir Cloudesley ordered the presumptuous adviser to be hanged at the yard-arm of his ship, the Association; and the only favour granted him, in mitigation of his punishment, was a compliance with the poor fellow's request that, before execution of the sentence, he should be allowed to read a portion of Scripture. The prayer granted, he read the 109th Psalm in which occur the imprecations: "Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.... Let his posterity be destroyed, and in the next generation let his name be clean put out. Because his mind was not to do good, but persecuted the poor, helpless man, that he might slay him that was vexed at the heart."

The report of this atrocious act could have been communicated by only one man who was said to have escaped alive out of the crew of the Association. Now happily we know that no man was saved out of that vessel. The one man who was saved was George Laurence, quartermaster of the Romney, a North-countryman from near Hull, and a butcher by trade. Of him we learn something from the account of Mr. Edmund Herbert, Deputy Paymaster-General of the Marine Regiments, who was in Scilly in 1709, sent there with the object of trying to recover some of the property lost in the wreck, which had taken place two years before.

This fellow, says Herbert, was "a lusty fat man, but much battered with the rocks. Most of the captains, lieutenants, doctors, etc., of the squadron came on shore and asked him many questions in relation to the wreck, but not one man took pity on him, either to dress or order to be dressed his bruises, etc., whereof he had perished had not Mr. Ekins, a gentleman of the island, charitably taken him in; and a doctor of a merchant ship then in the road under convoy of Southampton searched his wounds and applied proper remedies."

Now it is obvious that this man could say nothing relative to what had happened on the Association. But we arrive at the origin of the story from what Herbert relates, and he alone. He says: "About one or two after noon on the 23rd (22nd) October Sir Cloudesley called a council and examined the masters what latitude they were in; all agreed to be in that of Ushant, on the coast of France, except Sir W. Jumper's master of the Lenox, who believed them to be nearer Scilly, and that in three hours (they) should be up in sight thereof. But Sir Cloudesley listened not to a single person whose opinion was contrary to the whole fleet. (They then altered their opinion and thought themselves on the coast of France, but a lad on board the ---- said the light they made was Scilly light, though all the ship's crew swore at and gave him ill language for it; howbeit he continued in his assertion, and that which they made (to be) a sail and a ship's lanthorn proved to be a rock and the light afore mentioned, which rock the lad called the Great Smith, of the truth of which at daybreak they were all convinced.)"

This is the small egg out of which so large a fable has hatched forth. The boy was probably drowned, and his parents or relations on Scilly, angry that his advice had not been taken and so the wreck avoided, felt resentment against Sir Cloudesley on this account, and little by little magnified the incident, and transmuted it from an error of judgment into a crime.

Beside Sir Cloudesley on board the Association were Lady Shovell's two sons by her first husband, Admiral Sir John Narborough. These were Sir John Narborough, Bart., and his brother James; Edmund Loader, the captain; also a nephew, the son of her first husband's sister; Henry Trelawny, second son of the Bishop of Winchester; and several other young gentlemen of good family.

After that Sir Cloudesley had adopted the prevailing opinion that the squadron was off Ushant; he detached the Lenox, La Valeur, and the Phœnix for Falmouth, with orders to take under convoy the merchant vessels waiting there bound eastward. These ships, following a north-easterly course, as had been determined on, soon found themselves among the myriad rocks and islets that lie to the south-west of the Scilly group, where the Phœnix sustained so much damage that her captain and crew only saved the ship and themselves by running her ashore on the sands between Tresco and S. Martin's Islands. The Lenox and La Valeur were fortunately able to beat through to Broad Sound, an anchorage to the west of the principal islands, where they remained till break of day on the ensuing morning. Then they discovered where they were, and sailed for Falmouth, in the direction in which they now knew that it lay, and arrived there on the 25th, bringing news of the wreck of the Phœnix, but knowing nothing of the mishap to the vessels of the squadron from which they had been detached.

J. Addison, in a letter dated October 31st, 1707, wrote: "Yesterday we had the news that the body of Sir Cloudesley Shovel was found on the coast of Cornwall. The fishermen, who were searching among the rocks, took a tin-box out of the pocket of one of the carcasses that was floating, and found in it the commission of an Admiral, upon which, examining the body more closely, they found it was poor Sir Cloudesley. You may guess the conditions of his unhappy wife, who lost, in the same ship with her husband, her two only sons by Sir John Narborough."

In an article on Sir Cloudesley by Mr. S. R. Pattison, in the Journal of the R. Inst. of Cornwall, October, 1864, he says: "On a recent visit to the site of Sir Cloudesley's first burial place, on the inner shore of Porthellic Cove, we were informed by our guides--fishermen and pilots--that the body of the unfortunate Admiral when washed ashore was on a grating, on which was also the dead body of his faithful Newfoundland dog. They are said to have been found, early in the morning after the wreck, by a woman named Thomas, then living at Sallakey farm--a short distance from the Cove. Mrs. Thomas immediately gave information and procured assistance from Sallakey, and the body of the unfortunate hero was buried at the inmost part of the Cove, near the junction of the shingle and the herbage, but within and at right angles with the latter. And here it remains, conspicuous from no inconsiderable distance, without a particle of verdure to obscure the brilliancy of the white shingle which occupies its space, in marked contrast with the dense herbage by which it is surrounded on three of its sides. Our guides asserted that this strange appearance of the grave is due to an imprecation uttered upon Sir Cloudesley a few hours previous to the wreck, and (as they, with other Scillonians, superstitiously believe) with more than human power of prophecy. The islanders assert that ever since the body of a cruel tyrant, as they deem the hero, rested in this grave, grass has never grown upon its surface, and they are confident it never will grow there."

"Sir Cloudesley Shovel's body being the next day after this misfortune taken up by some country fellows, was stripped and buried in the sand. But on inquiry made by the boats of the Salisbury and Antelope, it was discovered where he was hid; from whence being taken out, and the earth wash'd off, he appeared as fresh as if alive, tho' he had lain interr'd from the 23rd to the 26th, on which day he was brought on board the Salisbury, embowell'd, and the 28th of that month brought into Plymouth, from whence he was afterwards carried to London. This was the fatal end of one of the greatest sea-commanders of our age, or, indeed, that ever this island produced. Of undaunted courage and resolution, of wonderful presence of mind in the hottest engagements, and of consummate skill and experience. But more than all this, he was a just, frank, generous, honest, good man. He was the artificer of his own fortune, and by his personal merit alone, from the lowest, rais'd himself almost to the highest station in the navy of Great Britain."[37]

But we have a much more detailed and accurate account of the finding of the body in the narrative of Mr. Edmund Herbert: I do not give the contractions as in the original. "Sir Cloudesley Shovell [was] cast away October 23rd [actually on the evening of the 22nd], being Wednesday, between six and seven at night, off Guilstone, [and] was found on shoar [at Porthellick Cove] in S. Marie's Island, stript of his shirt, which by confession was known to have been done by two women, which shirt had his name at the gusset at his waist; where by order of Mr. Harry Pennick, [it] was buried four yards off the sands; which place I myself viewed, and as [I] was by his grave, came the said woman that first saw him after he was stript. His ring was also lost from off his hand, which last, however, left the impression on his finger, as also of a second. The Lady Shovell offered a considerable reward to any one [who] should recover it for her, and in order thereto wrote Captain Benedick Dennis, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Islands of Scilly, giving him a particular description thereof, who used his utmost diligence, both by fair and foul means, though could not hear of it. Sir Cloudesley had on him a pair of thread stockings and a thread waistcoat. Mr. Child [Paxton] of the Arundell caused him to be taken up, and knew him to be Sir Cloudesley by a certain black mole under his left ear, as also by the first joint of one of his forefingers being broken inwards formerly by playing at tables; the said joint of his finger was also small and taper, as well as standing somewhat inwards; he had likewise a shot in his right arm, another in his left thigh. Moreover, he was well satisfied that it was he, for he was as fresh when his face was washed as if only asleep; his nose likewise bled as though alive.... Many that saw him said his head was the largest that ever they had seen, and not at all swelled with the water, neither had he any bruise or scar about him, save only a small scratch above one of his eyes like that of a pin. He was a very lusty, comely man, and very fat."

Nearly 1800 lives were lost in this disastrous shipwreck. The Association, the Eagle, and the Romney were totally lost with every soul on board save the one we have already heard of. The Firebrand had struck and foundered, but her captain and seventeen men were saved in a boat, and two more of her crew got on shore on pieces of the wreck.

Sir Cloudesley's was the first body that came on shore, and there was a woman who at once stripped it and robbed it of its rings. One of these was a fine emerald set with diamonds, which is said to have been given to the Admiral by his intimate friend and comrade, James Lord Dursley, who so nearly shared his fate in the S. George. Although strict inquiries were made for this ring, no tidings could be heard of it. Lady Shovel then granted a pension for life to the woman and her husband who had found the body. Many years after a terrible confession was made by a dying woman to a clergyman of S. Mary's Island. She said that the Admiral had been cast ashore exhausted and faint, but still living, and that she had squeezed the life out of him for the sake of his clothes and his rings. She produced the long-missing emerald hoop, and gave it to the clergyman, saying that she had been afraid to sell it lest it should lead to a discovery of her guilt, and she added that she could not die in peace until she had made this full confession. This disclosure was made between the years 1732 and 1736, after the death of Lady Shovel. The ring was sent to Lord Dursley, who became Earl of Berkeley in 1701, and from him it descended to his grandson, Sir George Cranfield Berkeley, and in the possession of one of his descendants it still remains, but has unfortunately been converted into a locket.[38]

The History of the Reign of Queen Anne, 1708, says that on "December 23rd was performed the interment of Sir Cloudesley Shovell, whose body, after having lain in state for many days, at the Queen's expense, was conveyed from his late dwelling-house in Soho Square, to the Abbey of Westminster, where it was buried with all pomp and magnificence suitable to her Majesty's high regard to the remains of so brave and faithful a commander. There were at the ceremony the Queen's trumpets, kettle-drums, and household drums, with other music; the Queen's and the Prince's watermen in their liveries, most of the nobility's coaches with six horses, and flag-officers that were in town, and the Prince's Council, the Heralds-at-Arms, and the Knights' Marshal men."

Sir Cloudesley, by his wife, the widow of Sir John Narborough, left two daughters, of whom the elder, Elizabeth, married first, 1708, Sir Robert Marsham, Bart., who was created Baron Romney in 1716; and, secondly, Lord Carmichael, afterwards Earl of Hyndford. The second daughter, Anne, married in 1718 the Hon. Robert Mansel; and, secondly, John Blackwood, Esq., by whom she had Shovell Blackwood, of Pitreavie, Fife, N.B., and of Crayford, Kent, and a daughter.

Elizabeth, who married Sir Robert Marsham, had issue Robert, second Baron Romney, and the Hon. Elizabeth Marsham, who married Sir Jacob Bouverie, third Baronet, created Viscount Folkestone in 1747, as his second wife, and by him had the Hon. Philip Bouverie, who assumed the name of Pusey, and so became the ancestress of Dr. Pusey.

Among those lost as well as Sir Cloudesley Shovel was, as already stated, Henry, son of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, Bart., Bishop of Winchester.

A letter from John Ben, of S. Hilary, dated November 16th, 1707, describing the finding of his body, has been printed in the second volume of the Penzance Natural History Society. I give it in modern spelling.

It was addressed to the father of the young man who perished.

"MY LORD,

"Your Lordship's commands having been signified to my brother at Scilly, he immediately made the strictest inquiry that was possible, all the bodies that had been thrown ashore and buried, and being told of one buried at Agnes about Mr. Trelawny's age, was resolved to have him taken up in order to view him, whether it was he or no. He had seen the young gentleman at Torbay, but not willing to depend on his own judgment, desired the Captain of the Phœnix fire-ship that was stranded there, who knew Mr. Trelawny intimately well all the voyage, to go with him. As soon as they had the body up, they found it actually to be the same, though somewhat altered, having been buried eleven days, and in the water four; however, the captain presently knew him, and my brother took care to have the body brought over to S. Mary's, and interred it in the chancel of the church there the 8th instant, with all the marks of respect and honour the island could show on such an occasion, some captains and the best of the inhabitants being present at the funeral. My brother took of his hair, being cut and that so close that the left lock was not left to send over, and there is no room to doubt but 'twas the body of poor Mr. Henry Trelawny. It has not been his good luck as yet to meet with anything belonging to him, but whatever of the nature happens to come to his hand or knowledge your lordship will be sure to have a faithful account of it. They can say nothing in particular touching Sir Cloudesley's loss, only the man saved out of the Romney tells that Sir Cloud was to the windward of all the ships, and fired three guns when he struck, and immediately went down, as the Romney a little after did. Upon hearing the guns, the rest of the fleet that were directly bearing on the same rocks changed their course, and stood more to the southward, or else, in all probability, they had run the same fate, which is never enough to be admired; and 'twas possible men of so much experience could be mistaken in their reckoning, after they had the advantage of a great deal of fair weather beforehand, and no bad weather when they were lost. There is a great quantity of timber all round the islands and abundance of sails and rigging just about the place where the ships sunk, and a mast, one end a little above water, which makes them conclude an entire ship to be foundered there, because all the force they can procure is not able to move the mast. The Eagle most certainly is lost too, and I wish no other of the squadron may be wanting; besides those, though I am heartily sorry for the loss poor England has sustained of so many men and in a most particular manner for the share your lordship has."

In a postscript Mr. Ben adds:--

"The Hound came from Scilly yesterday, and was very near being taken, having three privateers behind and two before her, but she escaped by creeping along the shore, where they would not adventure."

* * * * *

The authorities for the loss of the Association and the finding of the body of Sir Cloudesley are many:--

The Shipwreck of Sir Cloudesley Shovell, by Jas. Herbert Cooke, F.S.A., Gloucester, 1883, with portrait and map; The History of the Reign of Queen Anne, 1708; Secret Memoirs of the Life of Sir Cloudesley Shovell, London, 1708; The Life and Glorious Actions of Sir Cloudesley Shovell, Knt., London, 1709; "Sir Cloudesley Shovell," by S. R. Pattison, in the Journal of the Royal Institute of Cornwall, 1864; "Sir Cloudesley Shovel," by T. Quiller-Couch, ibid., 1866.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] The History of the Reign of Queen Anne, 1708, p. 242.Return to passage

[38] Cooke (J. H.), The Shipwreck of Sir Cloudesley Shovell, Gloucester, 1883. For the account of the confession of the woman he refers to an original letter of the second Lord Romney to Captain Locker, now in the possession of the Earl of Romney.Return to passage

FRANCIS TREGIAN

The Tregion or Tregian family was one of great antiquity and large landed estates in Cornwall. Indeed, in the reign of Elizabeth it was estimated that the landed property brought in £3000 per annum, which represents a very much larger sum now. Their principal seat was Wolvedon, or Golden, in the parish of Probus, and this, when Leland wrote in the reign of Henry VIII, was in process of being built with great magnificence. But bad days were in store for some of the Cornish families that would not accept the changes in religion.

Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, 1602, speaking of Tregarrick, then the residence of Mr. Buller, the sheriff, says: "It was sometime the Wideslade's inheritance, until the father's rebellion forfeited it," and the "son then led a walking life with his harp to gentlemen's houses, where-through, and by his other active qualities, he was entitled Sir Tristram; neither wanted he (as some say) a belle Isounde, the more aptly to resemble his pattern."

The rebellion referred to was the rising in the West against the religious innovations, that was put down so ruthlessly.

During the first years of Elizabeth there had been no persecution of the Papists. Such as would not conform to the Church of England as reformed were allowed to have priests to say Mass in their own private chapels. But after Pius V, on April 27th, 1570, had issued a Bull of excommunication against the Queen, depriving her of her title to the crown, and absolving her subjects from their oaths of allegiance; and when it became evident that insurrections were being provoked by secret agents from Rome in all directions, Elizabeth's patience was at an end, and stringent laws were passed against those who should enter England as missionary priests armed with this Bull and with dispensations, as also against all such as should harbour them.

On S. Bartholomew's Day, August 24th, 1572, had taken place a massacre of the Huguenots in Paris and throughout France, and this had been cordially approved by Pope Gregory XIII, who had had a medal struck to commemorate what he considered a meritorious deed. There could exist no doubt that the Papal emissaries in England were encouraged to assassinate the Queen, though evidence to that effect was not obtained till later.

On June 8th, 1577, Sir Richard Grenville of Stow, sheriff of Cornwall, accompanied by some of his justices of peace, arrived at Wolvedon to search the house for Cuthbert Mayne, a priest who had arrived in England, and who, it was supposed, was harboured by Mr. Francis Tregian.

A hasty and superficial investigation was made, and no seminary priest could be found. Then Mr. Tregian invited the whole party in to dine with him, and when they had been well regaled, and were somewhat flushed with wine, Tregian foolishly joked with the sheriff for hunting and finding nothing. Sir Richard started up and vowed he would make a further inquest, and that more thorough, and, finally, concealed in a hole under a turret, Cuthbert Mayne was discovered, drawn forth, and with him Tregian, for having harboured him, was sent to Launceston gaol, there to await trial.

"In the gaol aforesaid, he was laid in a most loathsome and lousy dungeon, laden with irons, deprived of the use of writing, and bereaved of the comfort of reading, neither permitted that any man might talk with him touching any matter whatsoever, but by special licence and in presence of the keeper."

The assizes were held at Launceston on the 16th September, 1577, when indictments were made against Cuthbert Mayne; Francis Tregian, Esq.; Richard Tremaine, gentleman, of Tregonnan; John Kempe, gentleman, of Rosteague; Richard Hore, gentleman, of Trenoweth, and others. Cuthbert Mayne for high treason: the others fell under the Statute of Præmunire, and later and more specific acts.

The Statute of Præmunire was but one of several that had been enacted from the time of Edward III, against papal interference with the affairs of England. The Statute of Præmunire was passed in 1393. "Whoever procures at Rome or elsewhere, any translations, processes, excommunications, bulls, instruments, or other things which touch the King, against him, his crown, and realms, and all persons aiding and assisting therein, shall be put out of the King's protection, their lands and goods forfeited to the King's use, and they shall be attached by their bodies to answer to the King and his Counsel: or process of præmunire facias shall be made out against them, as in any other case of prisoners."

The Bull that had been found in the possession of Cuthbert Mayne was one from Pope Gregory XIII granting plenary absolution from all their sins to English Papists, as they were unable to attend the Pope's jubilee at Rome, on condition that they should recite the Rosary fifteen times.

The Bull might very well have been treated with the contempt it merited, but the fact of the possession of such a document by Cuthbert Mayne was enough to procure his condemnation, as it was against the laws of England, and had been so for over one hundred and eighty years.

The other gentlemen were liable either as having received Cuthbert Mayne into their houses, or as having heard him say Mass, and as absenting themselves from their parish church.

Here came in the sharpened provisions enacted under Henry VIII and Elizabeth.

As Judge Marwood said at the trial: "We have not to do with your papistical use in absolving of sins. You may keep it to yourselves, and although the date of the Bull was expired and out of force, as you have alleged, so was it always out of force with us, for we never did, or never do account any such thing to be of force or worth a straw, and yet the same is by law of this realm treason, and therefore thou hast deserved to die."

The main indictment ran as follows:--

"Thou Cuthbert Maine art accused for that thou, the 1st October, in the eighteenth year of our Sovereign lady the Queen that now is, did traitorously obtain from the See of Rome a certain instrument printed, containing a pretended matter of absolution of divers subjects of the realm. The tenour of the which instrument doth follow in these words: Gregorius Episcopus, servus servorum Dei, etc., contrary to the form of a certain statute in the thirteenth year of our Sovereign lady the Queen, lately made and published, and contrary to her peace, crown, and dignity. And that you," meaning the rest, "after the said instrument obtained as aforesaid, and knowing the said Cuthbert Maine to have obtained the same from the Apostolic See, the 30th day of April, in the nineteenth of our said Sovereign the Queen's reign, at Golden aforesaid, did aid, maintain, and comfort the said Cuthbert Maine, of purpose and intent to extol and set forth the usurped power and authority of a foreign Prelate, that is to say, the Bishop of Rome, teaching and concerning the execution of the premises, contrary to the said statute and published as aforesaid, and contrary to the place of our Sovereign lady the Queen, her crown and dignity."

There were other indictments, as that Cuthbert Mayne and these laymen had refused to attend service in the parish church, and that the priest had brought over a number of "vain things," such as an Agnus Dei in silver or stone, which had been blessed by the Pope and had been accepted by the laymen.

They all pleaded "Not guilty," but the evidence against them sufficed for the jury to find that they were guilty, whereupon Cuthbert Mayne was condemned to death, and the rest to forfeit all their lands and property and to be imprisoned.

"Whereupon there was a warrant sent unto the Sheriff of Cornwall for the execution of Cuthbert Maine. The day assigned for the same purpose was dedicated unto S. Andrew; but on the eve before, all the Justices of that County, with many preachers of the pretended reformed religion, being gathered together at Launceston, Cuthbert Maine was brought before them, his legs being not only laden with mighty irons, but his hands also fast fettered together (in which miserable case he had also remained many days before), when he maintained disputation with them concerning the controversy in religion all this day in question, from eight of the clock in the morning until it was almost dark night, continually standing, no doubt in great pain in that pitiful plight, on his feet."

How that could be a great crime to distribute some trumpery toys of crystal, and silver medals marked with the Agnus Dei, one fails to see, but it is possible that they may have been regarded as badges, pledging those who received them to combine in a rebellion against the State, and perhaps also to unite in an assassination plot. That there was such a plot appeared afterwards from the confession of Father Tyrrell. At this time it was suspected, but not proved. That harsh and cruel treatment was dealt out to these men, we cannot doubt, but, as Mr. Froude remarks, "were a Brahmin to be found in the quarters of a Sepoy regiment scattering incendiary addresses, he would be hanged also."

There were in all seven indictments.

At first Francis Tregian had not been committed to gaol, but he was so shortly after, was brought to trial, and was sentenced to the spoiling of his goods and to a lifelong imprisonment.

Barbarous as these persecutions and sentences seem to us to-day, there was some justification for the Queen and Council at the time, surrounded as they were with dangers.

The Papal Bull of excommunication had encouraged the supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots, and plots were made on her behalf which were a constant source of alarm to Elizabeth. One of these plots was managed by an Italian named Ridolfi; the Duke of Norfolk had a share in it, and was executed in consequence in 1572. The great fear was lest France or Spain should take advantage of the situation to invade England, while Mary's friends raised insurrections at home. Mary's friends were active in all parts. Numbers of young Popish priests, trained to hostility towards Elizabeth, were pouring into the country, and conspiracies against her life were numerous, explaining, though in no degree justifying the stringent laws against seminary priests and recusants.

To return to Cuthbert Mayne.

"Wherefore, according to the judgment he had received, the next day he was uneasily laid on a hurdle, and so drawn, receiving some knocks on his face and his fingers with a girdle, unto the market-place of the said town, where of purpose there was a very high gibbet erected, and all things else, both fire and knives, set to the show and ready prepared.

"At which place of execution, when he came, he was first forced to mount the ladder backward, and after permitted to use very few words. Notwithstanding he briefly opened the cause of his condemnation, and protested, that his master (Mr. Tregian) was never privy with his having of these things whereupon he was condemned--the Jubilee and the Agnus Dei; then one of the justices, interrupting his talk, commanded the hangman to put the rope about his neck, and then, quoth he, let him preach afterward. Which done, another commanded the ladder to be overturned, so as he had not the leisure to recite In manus tuas Domine to the end. With speed he was cut down, and with the fall had almost ended his life, for the gibbet being very high, and he being yet in the swing when the rope was cut, he fell in such sort, as his head encountered the scaffold which was there prepared of purpose to divide the quarters, as the one side of his face was sorely bruised, and one of his eyes far driven out of his head.

"After he was cut down, the hangman first spoiled him of his clothes, and then in butcherly manner, opening his belly, he rent up his bowels, and after tore out his heart, which he held up aloft in his hand, showing it unto the people. Lastly, his head was cut off, and his body divided into four quarters, which afterwards were dispersed and set up on the Castle of Launceston; one quarter sent unto Bodmin; another to Barnstaple; the third to Tregony, not a mile distant from Mr. Tregian's house; the fourth to Wadebridge."

Not only was Francis Tregian adjudged to forfeit his goods, but he was also prosecuted by a goldsmith, who claimed a debt of £70.

Accordingly he was sent up to London to the King's Bench prison, "strongly guarded by a ruffianly sort of bloody blue-coats, with bows, bills, and guns"; and the arms of Tregian were pinioned behind his back with cords. With him were associated the other Papists; and they met with insult and harsh treatment all the way to London. There he was again tried and cast into prison.

We are gravely informed that before these calamities befell Francis Tregian, a premonition of coming woes had been given to his wife.

"Mr. Tregian, her husband, not many days after they were first married, enforced for ten months to follow the Lords of the Council, his wife always in the mean season lying with a very virtuous maid, a sister of her husband's, it chanced that one night looking for fleas, as the manner of women is, she espied in her smock sundry spots, the which she perceived to carry the shape of sundry crosses. Whereat she, much marvelling, besought her sister to behold the same; whereupon, when both had long looked and wondered, at length endeavouring to number them, they found contained in the same smock no less than one hundred and twenty-five crosses, and after, upon more curious search, they likewise found sundry other, both on her pillow and in her sheets."

This omen of coming evil was now verified, but not by flea-bites. Francis Tregian remained in prison cruelly treated, and when he attempted to make his escape, manacled and fettered in a loathsome dungeon. From his cell he wrote in verse to his wife, but did not display much brilliancy of poetic art.

My wont is not to write in verse, You know, good wife, I wis. Wherefore you well may bear with me, Though now I write amiss; For lack of ink the candle coal, For pen a pin I use, The which also I may allege In part of my excuse. For said it is of many men And such as are no fools, A workman is but little worth If he do want his tools; Though tools I have wherewith in sort My mind I may disclose, They are, in truth, more fit to paint A nettle than a rose.

And so on, never rising to a higher level.

But his wife was allowed to visit him, and indeed reside with him in prison. "And although through the rigour of authority they have been often separated, sometimes two months, sometimes seven, sometimes more, she hath borne him, notwithstanding, eleven children since he was first imprisoned. Some are dead, but the most part are alive."

Francis Tregian was first committed to prison in the twenty-eighth year of his age, and in the year 1595, when he had been about sixteen years in prison, some notes were drawn up concerning him, from which some quotations may be made.

In all the sixteen years' space he had never been permitted to enjoy the benefit of the open air otherwise than when being removed from one prison to another. He was first imprisoned at Launceston, then was removed to Windsor Castle; thence removed to the Marshalsea, and then again carried back to Launceston Castle. Then he was conveyed to the King's Bench prison, and lastly to the Fleet.

For seven or eight years together he enjoyed good health; "but in the end, through cares, studies, filthy diet, most stinking air, and want of exercise, he became very sickly, and so continued by the space of six or seven years; notwithstanding at this present the state of his body is much mended, and is like to recover his perfect health."

His mother was the eldest sister of Sir John Arundell, Knight, of Lanherne. His great-grandmother was one of the daughters of Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorchester, half-brother to Queen Elizabeth, the wife of King Henry VII, and daughter of Edward IV. He married the eldest sister of Lord Stourton. His wife's mother was eldest sister of the Earl of Derby. Francis Tregian remained in prison eighteen years, and was finally released by order of Queen Elizabeth in or about 1597, after which he lived in London on the bounty of his friends.

His son, Francis, managed to repossess himself, by the assistance of some of his friends and relatives, by purchase of some portion of the ancestral property, but in January, 1608, owing to the hostility provoked by the Gunpowder Plot against the Papists, the family was again plundered of the estates, and when the Heralds' Visitation of Cornwall was taken in 1620, the family had disappeared from the list of the landed and heraldic gentry.

Francis Tregian, the elder, at last retired to Lisbon, where he died on the 25th September, 1608. He was allowed by the King of Portugal sixty crowns a month. On his tombstone it was stated, falsely, that he had endured twenty-eight years of imprisonment in England. As a specimen of the malignant lies that were spread abroad relative to Queen Elizabeth, is this--given in a life of Francis Tregian by Francis Plunket, son of one of his daughters:--

"Aulam Elizabethæ adit ... Regina per pedissequam illum invitat ad cubiculum, intempesta nocte; recusantem adit, lectoque assistens ad impudica provocat; rennentem increpat. Castitati suæ cusam gerens ex Aula se proripuit, insalutata Regina; quæ idcirco furit, et in carcerem detrudi jubet."

Such words fill one with disgust and indignation against the pack from Rheims and Rome, who, unable to reach the Queen with their daggers, bespattered her with foul words.

The Life of Francis Tregian was published in Portuguese, at Lisbon, by Francis Plunket, in 1655. The narrative of his imprisonment, written in 1593, is published in extenso by J. Morris, The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 1st series, London, 1872, from the original MS. in S. Mary's College, Oscott.

A summary is in C. S. Gilbert's Historical Survey of Cornwall, 1817.

ANN GLANVILLE

Saltash was formerly a very much more important place than it is to-day. Now the tubular bridge of Brunel connects Cornwall and Devon, and railway trains slip along it, making communication with Plymouth from Cornwall easy and speedy. It was not so in former times. Then travellers from the West on their way to Plymouth or to London, if they did not go by coach by the great highway from Falmouth, by Bodmin and Launceston, were brought up by the strip of blue water that formed the estuary of the Tamar and Tavy, called the Hamoaze, and there, after halting at Saltash they were forced to cross in the ferry or by boat. Saltash signifies the Saltwater--ash = usk, and Hamoaze is the Border water, oaze = usk as well.

The Saltash boatmen plied a good trade, conveying over the passengers from Cornwall to Devon. Moreover, houses were cheap at Saltash, and old salts lived there, where they could smell the sea air, and every now and then crossed into Plymouth to do their shopping. From time immemorial there had been boat-races in the Hamoaze, and the women of Saltash were not behind the men at plying the oar.

Mr. Whitfeld in his Three Towns' History says:--

"The Saltash festival was by no means wholly intended for the encouragement of the males, for the 'ladies' feathered their oars with such dexterity that few of the opposite sex would enter the lists against them. Before the races for these damsels of uncertain age were started, blue favours were tied round their white caps by members of the committee. The fair rowers were attired in short white bedgowns and blue cap-guards, and their gigs shot around the course of five miles 'like so many birds.' From a sporting point of view the feature of the first regatta was a life or death competition between Jacky Gould and the Glanvilles. If Jacky's boat, Miller's Daughter, was the crack, Alarm was scarcely inferior, and Paul Pry was a first-class craft. Crash! went the starting-gun, and the competitors dashed away with a flood tide and a breeze from the northward. When they left on their ten-mile course one vast shout went up, the boats flew as instinct with life, every nerve on the stretch. The first five miles were covered in thirty minutes, and as the boats turned the committee vessel there were deafening shouts of 'Bravo, Jacky.' 'Well done, Glanville!' Then these hearts-of-oak flashed on their second round, and excitement intensified as the telescope reported progress. When the boats reappeared the suspense broke into a feverish roar, and calls to the rivals were tossed like corks on a sea of voices. Swiftly they drew near, the boats in a line, the interest increased to painful intensity as the race was neck-and-neck. The judge stood by, red-hot poker in hand, and as the bow of the Alarm, pulled by the Glanvilles, first touched the hawsers of the committee vessel, Bang! went the signal gun; 'See the Conquering Hero' burst from the band, and hundreds clustered round to congratulate the victors, and condole with Jacky Gould, who was only five seconds behind, though the boat was two feet shorter, and one of his crew had broken an oar."

The Glanvilles were amphibious--or rather lived almost wholly on the water during the day, only returning to the land for sleep at night.

The name is old. The first Glanvilles of whom we know anything authentic were located at Whitchurch, near Tavistock, where they were tanners, but a Judge Glanville raised the family to a higher position, in the reign of Elizabeth. Some, however, remained in a modest position, as did these boatmen of Saltash, and as did a huntsman to the late Mr. Kelly, of Kelly.

There occurred a terrible tragedy in the family, when Eulalia Glanville, niece of the Judge, murdered her husband, old John Page, a merchant of Plymouth, and was burnt alive for the crime, as one of petty treason, at Barnstaple, in 1591.

In 1824 at the regatta was offered a prize of £8 for a four-oared race for women, but no Glanville was in that. Ten years later, in 1834, at the regatta £20 was offered for boats sculled by women, and in this pulled a Mary Glanville. But the queen of women scullers of the Glanville stock was Ann, and she only entered it by marriage, by birth a Warring.[39] Mr. P. E. B. Porter, in his Around and About Saltash, 1905, thus describes her:--

"Ann Glanville was undoubtedly a remarkable woman for many reasons. Only such a place as Saltash, in such a naval port as this, could have produced a character like it. Only such a country as England could have produced such a woman. She was a genuine representative of Saltash in its great nautical days, when it was alive with business. The British tar was to her the ideal of a man and the very highest type of a hero. Into whatever trouble Jack got when ashore, however he might have been forsaken by all else in his reckless frivolity, he never wanted for a backer if Ann Glanville was near. And there was not a ship in the navy, in those days, that had not some story to tell of Ann's life and energy, and in which her name was not cherished as only a British sailor can cherish the memory of a friend. In a perfectly true sense, Ann Glanville was a mother to the British tar indiscriminately; she was known as Mother, and called Mother, by all."

Ann was born at Saltash in 1796, and was the daughter of a man named Warring or Werring. She married a man several years her junior in years, and by him became the mother of fourteen children. He was a waterman, she a waterwoman, and their children, every boy and girl, water-babies.

He had his boat, and when he was otherwise engaged--nursing the children, for instance, or merry-making in the tavern--she rowed across to Devonport.

Not passengers only, but goods were conveyed to and from Plymouth by the boats. Corn, crockery, drapery, everything except live cattle went in them. These latter by the ferry. Sometimes she rowed out officers to their ships, sometimes conveyed play-actors over from Plymouth into Cornwall, and on the great event of the elections at Saltash, candidates, electors, pot-boilers, political orators. Meat and vegetables went over in these boats to Plymouth market: a gentleman remembers Ann bringing round as many as seventy or eighty bags of corn in her boat from South Pool, pulling the great cargo alone, conveying it from Sutton Pool to Butt's Head Mill, a point two miles above Saltash.

Ann's husband fell ill and was long confined to bed, and the house and then the whole burden of supporting the family fell to her. But she had strong arms and a stouter heart, and managed not only to keep the wolf from the door, but the doctor as well.

"Have you got a doctor here, or have you to send over to Plymouth for one?" she was asked.

"Well, I believe there may be one here, but, thank God, here us most commonly dies a natural death."

Ann's fame as a rower at regattas spread throughout England. Some sixty or seventy years ago the crew of Saltash women was one of the most important features, not only in the Hamoaze, but all over the county wherever aquatic sports were given. She always rowed stroke. It was very rarely that Ann and her crew were beaten in a match--never by other women. The strength and endurance of these women, and their daring in accepting challenges and in the contests on the water, attracted universal attention. They competed for prizes at Hull, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Dartmouth, etc., and it must not be supposed that a male crew yielded the palm to them out of masculine courtesy, for the men did not at all relish being beaten by a "parcel o' females," as they were sure to have the fact thrown in their teeth afterwards.

Mrs. Harriet Screech, a daughter of Ann Glanville, rowed along with her mother in some of these contests, pulling the bow-oar, the least arduous post, assigned to her as the youngest of the crew. When engaged in a match at Fleetwood before the Queen, they gave the men so sound a beating that Her Majesty requested to have Ann presented to her.

But the most famous event of her life took place in 1850, when Captain Russell, of H.M.S. Brunswick, suggested to her that she and her crew should go over to Havre to the regatta there and challenge the Johnny Crapauds. She was quite prepared, and started under the escort of Captain Russell.

When the Frenchmen heard of the challenge from les Anglaises de Saltashe, they shrugged their shoulders, and hardly regarded it as serious. And when the strong, muscular women appeared in their white-frilled caps prinked out with blue ribbon, their short petticoats, white dresses, with a blue neckerchief tied over the shoulders and crossed behind the back, they looked puzzled.

Mr. Porter says: "The challenge of the English captain created a stir not only in Havre, but for miles around the French coast, and for many leagues inland too. In England great interest was felt in the forthcoming match, and in a short time it assumed a kind of international character. Thus when the regatta day came there was a vast concourse of people to witness the contest. Every quay, hill-top, and house-roof whence a view of the course could be obtained was crowded. All were on the tiptoe of expectation for les Anglaises.... Before the start the Saltash crew had a pull round 'to show themselves,' and when their steady stroke was seen, how they bent their backs to the work, yet with what perfect ease and grace they pulled, our French friends opened their eyes wider than usual. Ann and her crew had not the fairest start possible, nor had they the advantage at first. Six boats were ahead of them five minutes after the start. But they soon tested their opponents. After a little opening play to get into trim, Ann, who had the stroke oar, gave the word, 'Bend your backs to it, maidens; and hoorah for old England!' One by one the French boats were passed with a cheer from old Ann. At length the Saltash boat, with the British colours flying gaily at the fore, took the leading position. It was a long course and a hard pull, but the Frenchmen were soundly thrashed. Ann and her 'maidens' beat them by one hundred yards."

However gallant Frenchmen may be, they did not at all relish this beating.

The names of the crew were Ann Glanville, Harriet Hosking, Jane House, and Amelia Lee. A man acted as coxswain.

Mrs. House was so elated at the victory that on reaching the committee boat she plunged into the water, dived under the vessel, and came up with dripping and drooping nightcap on the opposite side.

When the Prince of Wales, our present King, and the Duke of Edinburgh came into Plymouth Sound in connection with the building of the new Eddystone Lighthouse, Ann was sent for. A steam launch was despatched to convey her to the vessel, where were their Highnesses, and she dined on board. Lord Charles Beresford always entertained a high regard for her, and never came to Plymouth without visiting her. During her last illness she had his likeness placed on one side of her bed, and that of her deceased husband on the other.

She died in 1880 at the age of eighty-five. In person Ann Glanville was tall, firmly and vigorously built, not stout, straight about the bust and waist. When young she must have been good-looking, for when old her face was handsome and always possessed great dignity. The mouth was firm. There was a kindly light in her grey eyes. She was always fond of a joke, and her character was summed up by a neighbour: "Her was honest to a farthing, clean as a smelt, and kind-hearted as a queen."

FOOTNOTE:

[39] Her mother was married three times--first to Warring, second to Vosper, third to Geo. Buckingham.Return to passage

JONATHAN SIMPSON, HIGHWAYMAN

This great rascal was born at Launceston in 1654 of respectable parents, and his father, who was well-off, apprenticed him to a linen draper at Bristol when he was fourteen years of age. When he had served out his time, which he did with the repute of being a steady, industrious youth, his father gave him fifteen hundred pounds wherewith to set up in Bristol. About a year after he unhappily married a woman who was the cause of his downfall and finally of his death. She had two thousand pounds of her own, and this added to what he already possessed promised him a considerable extension of his business with corresponding profits.

But the girl he had chosen for his wife had previously engaged herself to a young man of small means, and her parents had forced her into marriage with Simpson as being better off and with good prospects. She resented her compulsory marriage, and did not disguise her indifference to her husband. Although her former lover, in a fit of disgust at his rejection, had also married, Simpson ascertained that they corresponded.

Determined to find out the truth, that she still loved the man, he announced to his wife that he was going to Launceston for ten or twelve days to see his relations. As soon as he was gone his wife sent to invite her galant to supper, and provided for his entertainment a couple of fowls and a bottle of wine. Either the fowls must have been very small, or their appetites voracious.

In the evening Jonathan Simpson returned, entered his house, and rushed to the dining-room. His wife had but just time to shut her galant into the oak chest; but not before Simpson had seen by the movement of the lid that he was there. However, he gave no token of having perceived anything, expressed his delight at so good a supper having been prepared, and despatched his wife to the further end of the town on an errand. No sooner was she gone than he sent for the wife of "Pil-Garlic," and on her arrival disclosed the man in the box, and enjoyed the scene of recrimination that ensued.

The vexation at the discovery he had made that he could expect no domestic happiness created a great change in Jonathan Simpson's life. He sold his business, refused to receive his wife back into his house again, and with all the money he could scrape together that amounted to five thousand pounds, quitted Bristol, and swore he would never re-enter it.

He now led a riotous life, spending his money so freely that at the end of eighteen months all his five thousand pounds was gone, and then he took to the road to supply himself with more. After a while he was arrested for highway robbery, and was sent to the Old Bailey, tried, and condemned to be hanged.

His relatives at Launceston now exerted themselves to obtain a reprieve, and by bribery and persuasion they got one, but only at the last moment. Simpson was already under the gallows, with the rope round his neck, when it arrived, and the execution was arrested.

As he was riding back to Newgate behind one of the sheriff's officers that man asked him what he thought of a reprieve as he stood on the scaffold. "No more," answered Simpson, "than I thought of my dying day."

On reaching the prison door the turnkey refused to admit him, declaring that he could not take him in again without a fresh warrant; and as this could not well be obtained, the sheriff's officer was obliged to let him go free.

"Well," said Simpson, "what an unhappy dog am I! that both Tyburn and Newgate should in one day refuse to entertain me. I'll mend my manners for the future, and try whether I cannot merit a reception at them both the next time I am brought thither."

He was as good as his word, and after his release is believed to have committed above forty robberies in the county of Middlesex within the ensuing six weeks.

He was a good skater, and made a practice of robbing people on the ice between Fulham and Kingston Bridge, in the great frost of 1689, which held for thirteen weeks. He would kick up their heels, and search their pockets as they lay sprawling on the ice.

On one occasion a gentleman whom he stopped gave him a silk purse full of counters, which Simpson took for gold, and so did not examine them till he reached the inn where he put up. When he found that he had been outwitted he quietly pocketed the brass booty, and abided his time till he should meet the same gentleman again. This he did at the end of four months, when he waylaid him on Bagshot Heath, where, riding up to the coach, he said, as he presented a pistol at the gentleman's head, "Sir, I believe you made a mistake the last time I had the happiness to see you, in giving me these pieces. I have been troubled ever since for fear you should have wanted these counters at cards, and am glad of this opportunity to return them. But for my care I require you this moment to descend from your coach and give me your breeches, that I may search them at leisure, and not trust any more to your generosity, lest you should mistake again."

The gentleman was obliged to comply, and Simpson carried off the breeches with him to his inn, and on searching them found a gold watch, a gold snuff-box, and a purse containing ninety-eight guineas and five gold jacobuses.

On another occasion he robbed Lord Delamere in an ingenious fashion. That nobleman was driving over Dumoor Heath in his coach well attended by armed servants. Simpson rode up to the carriage and told his lordship that he had been waylaid and robbed by some rogues, two in number, at a little distance. Lord Delamere at once despatched his armed and mounted escort in pursuit, and Simpson took the opportunity of their absence to rob the nobleman of forty pounds. After that experience Lord Delamere vowed he would never again show kindness to a stranger.

At last Simpson was taken near Acton by means of two captains of the Foot Guards, where he attempted to rob both together. There ensued an obstinate fight between them, and Simpson behaved with so much bravery that in all probability he would have escaped, had not one of the officers shot the horse on which he rode, which, falling, carried Jonathan down with it. He had already been wounded in his arms and one of his legs, but both his opponents were also wounded and bleeding. Whilst on the ground he continued to resist with desperation whilst extricating himself from his fallen horse; but the sound of the fray had called up other passengers, and he was overmastered and sent to Newgate, where he found the keeper so much of a friend that on this occasion he was ready to receive him. Tyburn also was sufficiently hospitable not to reject him, and he was hanged on Wednesday, 8th September, 1686, in his thirty-third year.

DAVIES GILBERT

The simple and quiet life of a country gentleman who does not hunt, but spends his days in the library among books, or at his desk making calculations, presents little of interest to the general reader. But Davies Gilbert is not a man to be passed over in a collection of minor worthies of Cornwall.

Mr. Gilbert's original name was Giddy, and he was the grandson of a Mr. John Giddy, of Truro, who had two sons, Edward and Thomas; the former took Holy Orders, and became curate of S. Erth, and never obtained any better preferment. Here he married Catherine, daughter of John Davis, of Tredrea, the representative of several ancient families, and inheriting what fragments were left of the property of William Noye, Attorney-General in the reign of Charles I.

At S. Erth was born, 6 March, 1767, Davies Giddy, the subject of this sketch. After having been

The whining schoolboy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school,

at Penzance, he passed to Oxford, and entered Pembroke College, his father going up to Oxford to reside with him. Dr. Johnson, who was also of Pembroke, once said, in allusion to the poetical characters brought up there, that it was a veritable nest of singing-birds. Davies Giddy was not a singer or a poet himself, but taught others to sing, for he collected and published the traditional Cornish carols with their melodies, now taken into every book of Christmas carols and sung at the feast of Noël from John o' Groats House to the Land's End, in America, India, and Australia. Probably this little gathering was one of the works Davies Giddy, or Gilbert, least valued of his many productions, but it has been the most enduring, and will be deathless so long as English voices carol.

Contemporary with Davies Giddy, but of older standing in the college, was that strange man Dr. Thomas Beddoes, lecturer on chemistry, whose head was turned by fanatical republicanism, and who was an enthusiastic admirer of the French Revolution, and prepared to condone the horrors of the Reign of Terror. This was too much for most of Beddoes' friends, who fell away from him, but Davies Giddy, though in politics standing at the other pole, appreciated the great abilities of the doctor, shrugged his shoulders at his political opinions, and refrained from absolutely breaking off all intercourse with him, even when Beddoes was obliged to resign the professorship he held at the University.

Beddoes, on leaving Oxford, set up a pneumatic institution at Clifton, near Bristol, for the cure of consumption, by pumping air into the lungs of those afflicted with phthisis. This was a great discovery, which was to sweep this scourge out of England. The pneumatic bellows worked night and day, and the patients gasped, inhaled and spurted the air back through their nostrils, till the arms of the bellows-workers ached, but, alas for suffering mankind, the pneumatic process proved a dead failure.

Davies Giddy after leaving Oxford went to a surgeon, Bingham Borlase, at Penzance, to prepare for the medical profession, intending after a stay with Borlase to complete his education at the Medical School of Edinburgh. With Dr. Borlase was a lad, Humphry Davy, who had been articled to him in 1793, when little more than fourteen years old. He was a youth of active frame, and with a bright, intelligent face, with wavy brown hair, and eyes "tremulous with light." Not only was Davy a keen fisherman, but he was enthusiastic as a chemist; but he had no particular desire to spend his life as a Sangrado in Penzance. Davies Giddy speedily recognized the flashes of genius in the lad, and recommended him to go to the pump-house of Dr. Beddoes as an assistant at a modest salary. As Beddoes experimented with various gases on his unfortunate patients there was at all events an element of novelty in the venture. Mr. Giddy abandoned his intention of entering the medical profession, and, having a sufficient income to support himself, he devoted his whole time to scientific work, and became well known as a geologist and botanist, and he associated with all the literary and scientific men of his native duchy.

The introduction of Watt's improvement in the steam-engine into the Cornish mines and the disputes between that great mechanical inventor and Jonathan Hornblower, of Penryn, as to the economy and mode of applying the principle of working steam expansively, early attracted the attention of Davies Giddy, and Hornblower had frequent recourse to him, as a mathematician, to work out his calculations for him, and to advise as to his experiments, and approve or criticize his inventions. Trevithick also had recourse constantly for the same purpose to Mr. Giddy, and the latter was solicited by the county to take an active part in determining the advantages of Watt's engines; and in conjunction with Captain W. Jenkin, of Treworgie, he made a survey of all the steam-engines then working in Cornwall.

One of the most laborious and practically useful works of Giddy was a treatise on the properties of the Catenary Curve. This fine example of mathematical investigation was published whilst Telford was preparing materials for the Menai Straits Bridge; and Telford was so convinced by Mr. Giddy's tract, that he altered the construction of the bridge in accordance with what Giddy had laid down, causing the suspension chains, which had already been completed, to be again taken in hand and lengthened by about thirty-six feet.

In 1804 Giddy was elected into Parliament as representative of that rotten borough Helston, but at the next election, in 1806, he was returned for Bodmin, and continued its member till the Reform Bill abolished these nests of corruption. In Parliament he was rarely heard to speak, but his judgment was always valued there, and had great influence on questions of a practical nature.

In 1811, when the high price of gold produced an ominous effect on the currency of the realm, and when the public mind became greatly agitated by the depreciation of bank notes, Davies Giddy published A Plain Statement of the Bullion Question, with the object of allaying the public ferment. Against great opposition he carried an extra twelve feet in width to the design for rebuilding London Bridge.

In 1808 he married Mary Ann Gilbert, an heiress, of Eastbourne, in Sussex, whose family name he afterwards assumed, on account of the hereditary estates to which he became entitled through this marriage.

This lady was of a strong, determined character. On one occasion when riding she was thrown, and dislocated her shoulder. Laying hold of her hunting-crop with both hands, she threw herself back and so brought the joint back into its place.

Once she had a dispute with some farmers, who would not continue their farms without a great reduction of rent. "Very well," said she; "then I will farm them myself." And she did so, and made them pay. She was the first in England to introduce the allotment system on a farm of hers at Eastbourne, Sussex. The marriage was due to Mr. Giddy meeting her when she was staying with her mother on a visit to Mr. Fry at Penzance.

She was a handsome woman, with a determined face, and she suited her husband admirably, for she was interested in many of the subjects that he took up. She was an authoress, moreover--she wrote upon "Tanks," "On an Improved Mode of Forming Water Tanks," "On the Construction of Tanks," in 1836, 1838, and 1840. Also "On the Self-supporting Reading, Writing, and Agricultural School at Willingdon, in Sussex," 1842.

On the death of Sir Joseph Banks the unanimous voice of the Royal Society called Sir Humphry Davy to the chair, and at the same time Davies Gilbert--as he now was--was nominated Treasurer under the man whom he had first helped to start in his career. Ill-health having obliged Sir Humphry Davy to quit England in the early part of 1827, Mr. Gilbert occupied the chair as Vice-President, and when finally Sir Humphry retired in the same year he was chosen President.

At that time a President was elected for life, but Davies Gilbert considered this to be unadvisable, and urged that the election should be for a term only; and his recommendation was accepted after a few years, when the presidency was required for the Duke of Sussex; thereupon it was hinted to him that he should act upon his expressed opinion and leave the chair for His Royal Highness. This he did without reluctance.

On his wife's estate in Sussex he introduced the Cornish stiles, of gridiron fashion--strips of stone laid down with an interval between each--and this prevents horses, donkeys, and cattle from adventuring to cross them. But the Sussex people on the Eastbourne estate revolted, and declared that they would not break their legs to please any Cornish Giddy or Sussex Gilbert, and he was constrained to remove them all.

He was a man of a versatile mind. He published, with a translation by J. Keigwin and W. Jordan, the early Cornish mystery plays of _Mount Calvary_ and the Creation of the World.

He also undertook a Parochial History of Cornwall, giving first Hals' account from his MS., now in the British Museum, with additions from Tonkin, and a geological account of each parish by Dr. Boase, of no great value, and his own additions. This was published in five volumes in 1838.

He wrote also on steam-engines, on the employment of sea salt as a manure, on the improvement of wheels and springs for carriages, on the Eikon Basilike. He translated the Liturgy into Greek. Chambers in his Journal, Vol. II, 1844, has an account of the improvements effected on his wife's estate at Eastbourne.

When Lieutenant Goldsmith upset the Logan Rock he got the use of timber and ropes granted for the work of replacing the stone, and had the loan of the same also to replace the coverstone of Lanyon Quoit.

Lord Sidmouth offered him the position of Under-Secretary of State, but he declined the offer.

About a year before his death Davies Gilbert entered in his notebook: "Slept in a house for the first time on my own property." This was a house in East Looe bequeathed to him by Thomas Bond, who had written the History of Looe, and who died unmarried and without near relatives.

Davies Gilbert died at Eastbourne on Christmas Eve, 1839, as the carollers, for whom he had done so much, were going round in the dark under the stars singing--

Noël, Noël, the angel did say, Unto these poor shepherds in the fields as they lay.

JAMES HOSKIN, FARMER

Castell-an-Dinas was the most complete and perfect relic of prehistoric times existing in Cornwall, till a Mr. Rogers, of Penrose, took it into his head to erect a tower on the summit, that was neither useful nor beautiful, and to obtain material the walls of the fort were pulled about and pillaged. It is still an interesting specimen of a hill fortress, notwithstanding the mischief wrought by the builder of the tower.

On the side of the swelling hill crowned by the old fortress is a small walled enclosure, like a donkey-pound, and in this is the tomb of James Hoskin, a farmer, who desired that he might not be laid in consecrated ground. He was buried in 1823 at the age of 63. He was baptized at Ludgvan on March 8th, 1760, and was the son of James Hoskin.

There are, in fact, three headstones within the enclosure: that which is central is to James Hoskin; on the left is one to his eldest son, who died in 1812, aged 20, and above it is the inscription, "Custom is the idol of Fools"; on the right is one to a married daughter and her child, also in 1812, the mother aged 22 and the daughter 7, probably months, not years, in this latter case. Above this headstone is the inscription: "Virtue only consecrates the ground." But although there be these three memorial stones, only James Hoskin, the father, aged 63, lies here.

What caused James Hoskin to desire to be interred on the moor away from consecrated ground? Tradition in Ludgvan says that he kissed the parson's wife, and the rector, furious at the insult--his name was J. Stephens--vowed that if he survived Hoskin he would bury him in the most obscure corner of the graveyard on the north side of the church. So in order to defeat the parson's intentions, he made provision for his body to be buried at Castell-an-Dinas. Whether this be true or not I cannot say, but certain it is that there was a lasting difference between J. Hoskin and the Rev. J. Stephens.

The Hoskin family lived in a farm, Treassow, Castell-an-Dinas, the original seat of the Rogers Family from before 1633. Sold by Captain J. P. Rogers recently.

His was a small yeoman family in very fair circumstances. James Hoskin had two sons who lived, besides John, the eldest, who died young. These were John William and Richard Vinnicombe. This last went as a clerk to Jamaica to Sir Rose Price. His grandsons are now living in Ludgvan. According to some poor inflated verses, written by a Miss Lean, of Ludgvan, in 1803, addressed to James Hoskin, he made the farm on the slope of Castell-an-Dinas, from which height, she says--

... Barren places are thence descryed, But none more barren than its own rough side, Till Hoskin rose, a man of birth obscure, Heir to no wealth, and forced by fate to endure The toils of humble life, till innate worth And active fancy drew his talents forth. On Castle Downs his fertile mind he cast, And soon by industry did improve its waste. The starving poor who knew not where to gain The scanty pittance that should life sustain, Employed by him, and by his bounty fed, They had the honest means to earn their bread; Nor stayed the hireling's wages in his hand, But weekly each his stipend might command. Some pick the stones, some cut the turf, and some Dig from the pit the builders' useful loam. The straw-thatched cottage rises from the ground, And the strong stone enclosure spreadeth round. And now where moss-grown rocks and heath did rise, Green meads and beauteous cornfields greet the eyes. The lowing herds and fleecy bleating flocks That crop'd the scanty herbage round the rocks, Now ruminating stand and seem to say, May Heaven's best gift our benefactor pay. The Master sees, well pleased, and smiles to see The honest fruits of live industry.

The "poem" concludes with invocations of blessings on the head of Mr. Hoskin--

Long, very long may he survive to see The distant fruits of his industry; And may Almighty power to him dispense Earth's greatest bliss--Health, Peace, and Competence.

Having heard of the prosperity of those who had settled in America, he resolved on going thither and seeing the condition of the farmers in the States and the quality of the land, so that he might be able to advise others whether to leave the mother country and settle there, and with half a mind himself to cast in his lot with those who were farming there. On his return he printed, but did not publish, his experience and his observations. He printed for his own use, and kept a very few copies for distribution among his relations and friends. Through the kindness of the Rev. A. C. Boscawen, Rector of Ludgvan, I have been afforded a sight of his Narrative. It is interesting as affording a picture of the condition of the States and the farming there a century ago. The "Narrative" was printed by Vigurs, of Penzance, "for the Author" in 1813. In his preface, he says:--

"I am well aware that in the composition there may be much room for criticism; to this I answer, I have neither the wish nor qualification to become an AUTHOR, I need only say I am a FARMER. This carries its apology with it, for the book contains plain facts on agricultural subjects, which I affirm are nearly, if not perfectly, correct. [I have written nothing designedly false.] The passage within brackets he cancelled with his own hand after the book was printed.

"I sailed from Penzance on the 28th of December, 1810, on board an American schooner called the Packet of Boston, bound for New York with a cargo of iron, boxes of tin-plate, etc. On leaving the quay the seamen of a brig gave us three cheers, which we returned. Soon a number of people on the quay gave us three more. I asked the men, was it customary on sailing? They said they had been on the pier two months, but never saw it done before. So much for cordiality towards the Americans."

Blood is thicker than water. This is interesting. It shows that even then, after the States had declared their independence, and only two years before war was declared between England and the States, the feeling, at all events in Cornwall, was one of affection and regard for the gallant people who had been driven by stupidity into revolt against the Crown.

After a very rough passage, on the 14th February, 1811, in the depth of winter, the little vessel reached Vineyard Island. "We soon landed, and put up at Dr. Spalding's tavern, a handsome house, with good entertainment and accommodation. Our host was a doctor, a justice of the peace, a tavern keeper, but quite the gentleman. The family at meal times sat down with us--this is the American fashion. With our tea we had plenty of beefsteaks, boiled eggs, preserved fruit, hot cakes, etc. This is customary all over America. We paid a dollar per day (bed included), but all through America we saw nothing of those pests of beggars, waiters, chambermaids, coachmen, postboys, etc., which constantly harass and frequently insult the traveller in England."

On reaching New York he got into trouble with his captain, who was "slim," and tried to take advantage of him. "I was detained three weeks by the captain I came over with from England. I bought at Penzance some earthenware to carry out. On the passage I sold the whole to the captain, and had a written agreement from him to pay me on arriving at New York. At first he put off the payment for want of money, so on one pretence or another until he began to unload the vessel, and then he told me that he had given me no bill of lading to show the goods were mine, and that I could not prove them mine. Indeed he did everything in his power to plunder me of the whole. I then went to the merchant to whom the cargo was consigned. He was much hurt at the captain's conduct in attempting to defraud me, and wrote him a letter immediately. The next day the merchant called on me, and told me if the captain did not pay me in half an hour to acquaint him, but before the half-hour was expired the captain was come with the money."

From New York Hoskin sailed in the William Eaton schooner for Alexandria and Washington.

"The captain (being intoxicated) would have the cook to kill and pick a fowl and dress it in an instant (the cook was an old man, a negro). The poor man set about it with all speed, but in the boiling the captain found fault, caught up the hot fowl and beat it in the cook's face. The captain confessed that he had sprung six feet high, and thought he should have fallen overboard. The captain scalded his three fingers, etc. Two days after he was full of spite and vengeance towards the poor old black man. 'D---- the negroes,' said he, 'I hate them,' and going on deck beat the poor man dreadfully with pieces of trees cut to burn, some time after with a rope, and after that with a fire-shovel. The poor man was very bad all night. I expected he would have died before morning. Next morning in that condition he would make him work. I said, 'Captain, I will attend breakfast; I can do it better than he.' So I kept him out of the way. In the afternoon the captain would make the poor creature come on deck. 'Shall I pay him wages for nothing?' says he. I told him that the cook could do nothing, but that I could do much better, and that I would work for him. In three hours after word was brought to him that the cook was dying. After he was dead, the captain came to me and asked what I thought was the cause of his death, which I turned off."

James Hoskin excuses himself for not trying to bring the captain to justice. His reasons are not very satisfactory. First, "it might destroy the happiness of a dear woman, his wife." In the next place, the mate would have sworn in the captain's favour; and, finally, by accusing the captain he would have done no good to the dead cook.

On ascending the Potomac he was put ashore for a while.

"I asked at the hut of a white woman for some water. I shall, while I live, never forget this hut. The outside was like a stable, built of logs, having no glass windows. She brought me a bowl of milk, a china pint to mix water with it. The water stood on a stool without doors, covered nicely. The hut and everything within were in such neat order. This milk and water was as a cordial of wine. I contemplated the happiness of the farmers in this place, flowing in abundance of the first necessaries of life; their wants few and easily supplied; no cares about raising money for other people, all being peace, plenty, and happiness around them."

He ascended the Delaware "in the steem [sic] boat." The boat was worked by a steam-engine "which turns round a wheel each side of the boat in the water. It has wide boards to the end of each spoke, like a water under-shut wheel. The boat is 100 feet long, wide and roomy, and a tavern kept on board. The passage comes very cheap, only 3 dollars for 100 miles, baggage included."

He tells a story of William Cobbett when in America. Cobbett conducted a newspaper entitled the Pesca Post at Philadelphia, and kept a stationer's shop. He was very outspoken against the French Revolution, and that did not please the Yankees. One day some one entered the stationer's shop and asked for some quills. Cobbett sold them. "Ah, ha!" said the purchaser. "These be porcupine quills, I guess." "Porcupine quills they were till I sold them to you," was Cobbett's ready answer. "Now they are goose quills."

"As I was at breakfast one day on Long Island," says Hoskin, "there came in a young woman. 'The English,' said she, 'have pressed my brother in the Downs; I wish I could guillotine the English, I wish the English were guillotined.' 'But,' says one in the room, 'the Christian English will hang a man for stealing a horse, or stealing a sheep; but for stealing a man they shall have money.'" Hoskin was too discreet to bring up the case of the negro slaves and of the captain and the cook. He saw the first attempt at a torpedo. A Mr. Fulton had invented one "for the purpose of sinking it under vessels at anchor and blowing them up. Likewise to anchor under water and blow up ships coming in a harbour. The Congress has voted him 6000 dollars to defray the expenses for making trials, etc. Some time back a day was fixed for trial at New York, the President a frigate of 44 guns, and the Argus brig of war lay there; Mr. Fulton chose to attack the brig, the captain of which prepared for defence by casting a net round the brig to prevent the torpedo diving under, and by hanging shot and heavy weights to the yards and studding sail-booms, to destroy the torpedo if it came near; but Mr. Fulton could not succeed at that time; he says he has made vast improvements since, and shall succeed. This Fulton has a patent for the steamboats on the Delaware and Hudson Rivers. They go five miles an hour against wind and tide."

On his return to England he had a better passage than on going out. "Then chiefly three or four days in a week it blew what the sailors call a gale. In the gale of last week we sailed before the wind, and the ship rolled much more then than if it was a side wind. We laughed at supper, though tossed about. We had cords and bars spread over the table, which was bound fast to keep the things on it; one held the teapot, and the mate was desired to bind the tea-kettle with a string to the side of the cabin. This put me in mind of last winter's passage. The cook would be called an hour or two before day to light his fire, and get his kettle under way, as the phrase is on board; by and by we should hear the cook on deck crying and swearing, the sea breaking over having upset the tea-kettle--the fire is again lit, and the tea-kettle set on again. Soon we hear the cook in the like distress, and swearing he would rather go before the mast than be cook, and so on. Three times of a morning, one day, one of the tea-kettles went overboard; and some days we could only light fire in the cabin stove, and were obliged to boil beef in the tea-kettle."

In London, in January, 1803, he had fallen ill, and thought he had not long to live. This was seven years before he visited the States, and he then addressed the following letter to his children:--

"London, January 13th, 1803.

"My dear Children all and each,

"For the last three days I have found my illness so to increase, and I am so exceedingly ill at this time, that I believe it is the Lord's good pleasure that I shall never see your dear faces again. The God of heaven take you under His precious, His most special protection and care. Fear it not my dear sweet loves, but that good and holy Lord of life and glory will be to you what He has always been to me--a father. When I was about six years old, His good pleasure was to take my mother. With her I lost I may say my father, mother and all. But I had a Father in heaven, Who blessed, watched, and protected me. If you would be wise, seek true happiness. If you would be happy, rich and wise, be truly virtuous in word, action, and, as much as possible, in thought.

Seek virtue, and of that possessed Leave to Providence the rest.

"If you will tell a lie, you will tell another; if you tell two, you will go on further and tell ten, and so on, to lying on any occasion. If you lie, you will cheat, when occasion offers you, and so on to other vices. With the loss of a virtuous disposition of mind, you will lose your peace, troubles will come upon you, one after another; you will endeavour to shun them, but they will overtake you. Let the words of an affectionate and perhaps dying father, sink deep into your hearts every time you read them.

"If you should fall in love with those true Christians, called Quakers, how much, I think, would it, by God's blessing (of which you need not fear) and their friendly aid to you, advance you in piety and virtue. But beware of Methodists' Class Meetings. Not but that there are many among them who are patterns of religion; but the human heart being, as it has been truly said, 'the devil's tinder-box,' the heart falls by degrees into some favourite sin, and falsehood and deceit at these meetings are sent in the place of piety, and of all states this is the most dangerous and destructive to the soul. May the Lord of His goodness bless you, protect you, be your guide through life, and in death receive you to Himself is the prayer of

"Your father, JAMES HOSKIN."

Happily he recovered and lived on for many years.

JOHN HARRIS, THE MINER POET

"On the quiet evening of October 14th, 1820, in a straw-thatched, boulder-built cottage, with bare rafters and clay floor, locally known as the 'six chimneys,' on the top of Bolennowe Hill, Camborne, Cornwall, as the leaves are falling from the trees, and the robin mourns in the thicket, a gentle mother gives birth to a babe; and that baby-boy is a poet."

So John Harris begins his account of his own life. It is not always safe for a composer of verses to be too sure that he is a poet, and that his lines will live. Horace did it,[40] so doubtless has many another man who has hammered out verses; but only Horace was justified in his prophecy.

A plum-pudding without plums may be a good suet dumpling, and without suet also a respectable batter pudding, but neither is a plum-pudding; and a set of verses without ideas may be pleasant verses, but is not poetry; and without ideas and without imagination is very poor stuff indeed. John Harris could write smooth lines, he had a tender appreciation of the beauties of nature, but he went no further. His verses bear the same relation to poetry that Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy bears to the Philosophy of Plato. But to return to his life. He tells us that "from first to last the majority of my poems have been written in the open air, in lanes and leas, by old stiles and farm gates, by rocks and rivers and mossy moors."

He was put to a miserable school where the hedge-school master was hard-hearted and cruel, and "verily hoots the lessons in his ears. He beats his pupils without mercy, with a polished piece of flat wood studded with small, sharp nails, until the blood runs down, and soon scares the little learner from his straw-roofed academy."

From this school he was removed to another after a few days. "On the edge of a brown common, in a little thatched school-house by the side of the highway, very near the famous Nine Maidens, he finds another master, who wore a wooden leg, with more of the milk of human kindness in his soul, a thorough Christian, and a man of prayer." He says further: "You might have seen him on a summer evening, when his merry schoolmates are chattering in the hollow--you might have seen him walking by the stream, or stretched on the moss listening to the wind tuning its organ among the rocks, or gazing up at the purple heavens. He roams among the flowers, kissing them for very joy, calling them his fragrant sisters. Born on the crest of the hill, amid the crags and storms, he grows up in love with Nature, and she becomes his chief teacher. And now come the promptings of early genius, which develop themselves in snatches of unpolished song, pencilled on the leaves of his copybook for the amusement of his wondering schoolmates. He often writes his rhymes on the clean side of cast-off labelled tea-papers which his mother brings from the shop, and then reads them to his astonished compeers with rapt delight."

At the age of nine he was taken from school and put to work in the fields. At the age of ten he was employed by an old tin-streamer to throw up the sand from the river, earning threepence a day. At twelve he was working on the surface "nearly three miles from his favourite home. As he travels to and fro from his labour through long lanes bramble covered, and over meadows snowy with daisies, or by hedges blue with hyacinths, or over whispering cairns redolent with the hum of bees--" he means thyme on which the bees hover gathering honey--"the beautiful world around him teems with syllables of song. Even then he pencils his strange ditties, reciting them at intervals of leisure to the dwellers of his own district, and older heads than his tell of his future fame."

One thing is evident, that at this early age he was inordinately conceited. He had a true appreciation of the beauties of Nature. He had a receptive soul, but it was that which might have made of him a painter, not necessarily a poet.

At the age of thirteen, or as he styles it, "When thirteen summers have filled his lap with roses, and fanned his forehead with the breeze of health, we find him sweating in the hot air of the interior of a mine (Dolcoath), working with his father nearly two hundred fathoms below the green fields."

So time passes, and he grows to manhood. Then in his stilted style he says: "Love meets him on his flowery pathway, and he weaves a chaplet of the choicest roses to adorn her head. He worships at the shrine of beauty till they stand before the sacred altar, and the two are made one." In plain English, he fell in love and got married to Jane Rule.

One of his earliest pieces of verse, "The First Primrose," got into a magazine, and attracted some little notice, amongst others that of Dr. George Smith, of Camborne, who gave him encouragement and induced him to publish. His first book appeared in 1853; soon after he was appointed Scripture Reader at Falmouth.

He says in his Autobiography: "Soon after my marriage, the Rev. G. B. Bull, of Treslothian, lent me a volume of Shakespere. The first play I read was Romeo and Juliet, which I greedily devoured, travelling over a wide down near my father's house. The delight I experienced is beyond words to describe, as the sun sank behind the western waters, and the purple clouds of evening primed the horizon, the bitters of life changed to sweetness in my cup, and the wilderness around me was a region of fairies. Sometimes I cried, sometimes I shouted for joy, and over the genii-peopled heights a new world burst upon my view." Next he read Childe Harold, or portions of it. "My younger brother James possessed an eighteenpenny copy of Burns' poems, to which I had access. One day, I was reading Burns in our Troon-Moor home. No one can tell the ecstasy of my spirit, or the deep joy of my heart. Not only was I tired with my mine-work, but also crippled in the quarry raising stone for the garden-wall. I believe I was in my shirtsleeves, when a middle-aged matron entered my home. Seeing a small book before me, she asked what it was. I told her, and her answer surely displayed her prejudice and her narrowness of mind. Looking at me with severity in her features, she exclaimed, 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself! You, a local preacher, and reading Burns!' This strange sin put me quite beyond the reach of her favours, and I do not remember her ever speaking to me afterwards."

It is an infinite pity that John Harris did not inspire his muse from Burns; had he done so, his "poems" might possibly have lived, but poëta nascitur, non fit.

"For more than twenty years I was an underground miner, toiling in the depths of Dolcoath. Here I laboured from morning till night, and often from night till morning, frequently in sulphur and dust almost to suffocation. Sometimes I stood in slime and water above my knees, and then in levels so badly ventilated that the very stones were hot, and the rarified air caused the perspiration to stream into my boots in rills, though I doffed my flannel shirt and worked naked to the waist. Sometimes I stood on a stage hung in ropes in the middle of a wide working, when my life depended on a single nail driven into a plank. Had the nail slipped, I should have been pitched headlong on the broken rocks more than twenty feet below. Sometimes I stood on a narrow board high up in some dark working, holding the drill, or smiting it with the mallet, smeared all over with mineral, so that my nearest friends would hardly know me, until my hands ached with the severity of my task, and the blood dropped off my elbows. Sometimes I had to dig through the ground where it was impossible to stand upright, and sometimes to work all day as if standing to the face of a cliff. Sometimes I have been so exhausted as to lie down and sleep on the sharp flints." (There are no flints in Cornish mines.) "And sometimes so thirsty that I have drunk stale water from the keg, closing my teeth to keep back the worms. Sometimes I had wages to receive at the end of the month, and sometimes I had none. But I despaired not, nor turned the nymph of song from my side. She murmured among the tinctured slabs," etc. etc. That the water brought down from the spring for the use of the miners was ever full of worms is not to be believed, nor that he did not receive his regular monthly wages. John Harris was evidently vastly sorry for himself, thinking he was born for better things. I have known many a man who has worked underground as a common miner, without whining and breaking into extravagance such as this.

"We were at supper one evening in Troon-Moor house, our two daughters in a window, I at the end of the kitchen table, and Jane sitting on a chair beside it. We had fried onions, and the flavour was very agreeable. I was hungry, having just returned from a long day's labour in the mine. Suddenly we heard a step in the garden, and then a knock at the door. My wife opened it, and I heard a gruff voice say, 'Does the young Milton live here?' My wife asked the possessor of the gruff voice to walk in; and we soon discovered that it was the Rev. G. Collins. We invited him to partake of our meal, to which he at once assented, eating the onions with a spoon, exclaiming at almost every mouthful, 'I like fried leeks.' He asked for my latest production, and I gave him 'The Child's First Prayer,' in MS. He quietly read it, and before he had finished I could see the tears streaming down his face. Besides the two daughters, Jane and Lucretia, already named, we were afterwards blest with two sons, Howard and Alfred."

I have given this passage from the Autobiography of John Harris with pleasure, as it exhibits the author at his best. Whether the tears may not have been an adjunct of his fancy, I do not pretend to say. When he writes simple English, concerning his own life and experiences, he is always interesting, but when he steps up into his florid car, as a chauffeur at the Battle of Roses at Nice, he is intolerable.

"Throughout my mining life I have had several narrow escapes from sudden death. Once when at the bottom of the mine, the bucket-chains suddenly severed and came roaring down the shaft with rocks and rubbish. I and my comrade had scarcely time to escape; and one of the smaller fragments of stone cut open my forehead, leaving a visible scar to this day. Then the man-engine accidentally broke, hurling twenty men headlong into the pit, and I amongst them. A few scars and bruises were my only injuries. Standing before a tin-stepe on the smallest foothold, a thin piece of flint (?), air-impelled, struck me on the face, cutting my lips and breaking some of my front teeth. Had I fallen backwards among the huge slabs" (the rock does not form slabs) "death must have been instantaneous. Passing over a narrow plank, a hole exploded at my feet, throwing a shower of stones around me, but not a hair of my head was injured."

"A more wonderful interposition of Divine Providence may be traced, perhaps, in the following record. Our party consisted of five men working in a sink. Two of them were my younger brothers. Over our heads the ground was expended, and there was a huge cavern higher and further than the light of the candle would reveal. Here hung huge rocks as if by hairs (!) and we knew it not. We were all teachers in a Sunday-school, and on the tea-and-cake anniversary remained out of our working to attend the festival. Some men who laboured near us, at the time when we were in the green field singing hymns, heard a fearful crash in our working, and on hastening to see what it was found the place full of flinty (?) rocks. They had suddenly fallen from above, exactly in the place where we should have been, and would have crushed us to powder were it not for the Sunday-school treat."

Moving in his little circle, surrounded by the ignorant, it is no wonder that John Harris was puffed up with vanity, and thought himself a poet.

He was very urgent in the promotion of the cause of peace and arbitration between nations, and wrote a series of tracts entitled Peace Pages, of which some hundreds of thousands were distributed, and produced as much effect on the policy of nations as waste paper. In the year 1864 a prize was offered for the best poem on the tercentenary of the birth of Shakespeare. It was competed for by over a hundred persons in Great Britain and America. Mr. Harris gained the prize, and was presented with a gold watch. It is not possible to estimate its value, poetically, without a knowledge of the "poems" that failed, and the discrimination of the judges.[41] From first to last John Harris published no less than sixteen volumes of verse. He died in 1884, and was buried in Treslothian Churchyard, near Camborne. He had received a grant of £50 per annum from the Royal Literary Fund, 1872-75, and £200 from the Royal Bounty Fund in 1877.

He had a son, John Alfred Harris, born at Falmouth in 1860, who became a wood engraver, working in a recumbent position owing to a spinal affliction. He illustrated some of his father's works. Another son, James Howard Harris, born in 1857, became master of the Board School, Porthleven, and wrote a memoir of his father.

John Harris had the faculty of receiving impressions from the objects of nature, as does a mirror, but had no power to give forth flashes of genius, for of genius he had none. His verses read smoothly and pleasantly, but will not live, as there is no vital spark in them. He stands, however, on a higher level than Edward Capern, the Devonshire postman "poet," but immeasurably below Burns and Waugh.

He published, moreover, a series of addresses, but all marked with the same paucity of idea, lack of original thought. A good but very self-satisfied man, he reaped far higher applause in his day as he deserved, and in another generation will be clean forgotten. He called himself the miner poet, but he is not even a minor poet. There is something pathetic in the contemplation of a man of this sort. I have come across several instances--men who have a love of nature, an appreciation of the beautiful and the good and the true, but have no genius, no originality, who can imitate but create nothing. It is the same with musicians. There are a thousand who can write songs, but only one in a thousand who can produce a pure melody. The mirror reflects objects, but the burning-glass focusses the sun's rays in a pencil of fire that kindles whatever it falls on. Such is the difference between the versifier and the poet.

Nulla placere diu, nec vivere carmina possunt Quæ scribuntur aquæ portoribus. Hor. Ep. I. 19.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] Od. I, 1; II, 20.Return to passage

[41] These were Lord Lyttleton, G. Dawson, and C. Bray.Return to passage

EDWARD CHAPMAN

Hals tells the following story of Mr. Edward Chapman, of Constantine. But before giving it, it will be well to say a few words of the Chapman family. The name suffices to show that it was not Cornish by origin, and indeed in the Heralds' Visitation it is recorded to have come from the North. Why they came down one cannot say, but they married well. One John Chapman, of Harpford, in Devon, had to wife a daughter of Chichester, of Hall, and his son Edward married a Prideaux, and settled at Resprin in S. Winnow, and as that was a manor that belonged to the Prideaux family it is probable that his wife was an heiress. Edward, the grandson, baptized at S. Winnow May 12th, 1647, was probably the person mentioned by Hals, to whom the adventure is attributed. He was married to a daughter of Bligh, of Botathen.

"This gentleman received from God's holy angels a wonderful preservation in the beginning of the reign of William III when returning from Redruth towards his own house about seven miles distant, with his servant, late at night, and both much intoxicated with liquor (as himself told me); nevertheless having so much sense left as to consider that they were to pass through several tin mines or shafts near the highway, on the south-east side of Redruth town, alighted both from their horses, and led them in their hands after them. The servant went somewhat before his master, the better to keep the right road in those places, which occasioned Mr. Chapman's turning aside somewhat out of the way, whereby in the dark he suddenly fell into a tin mine above twenty fathoms deep, at whose fall into this precipice his horse started back and escaped; in this pit or hole Mr. Chapman fell directly down fifteen fathoms without let or intermission, where meeting with a cross drift (above six fathoms of water under it), he in his campaign coat, sword, and boots, was miraculously stopped, when, coming to himself, he was not much sensible of any hurt or bruises he had received, through the terror and horror of his fall; when, considering in what condition he was, he resolved to make the best expedient he could to prevent his falling further down (where, by the dropping of stones and earth moved by his fall, he understood there was much water under), so he rested his back against one side of the ruin, and his feet against the other, athwart the hole, and in order to fix his hands on some solid thing, drew his sword out of its sheath, and thrust the blade thereof as far as he could into the opposite part of the shaft, and so in great pain and terror rested himself.

"The suddenness of this accident, and the horse's escaping in the dark as aforesaid, was the reason why Mr. Chapman's servant, who went before him, did not so soon find him wanting as otherwise he might, which as soon as he did, he went back the roadway in quest of him, calling him aloud by his name; but receiving no answer, nor being able to find his horse, he concluded his master had rode home some other way, whereupon, giving up all further search after him, he hastened home to Constantine, expecting to have met him there; but contrary to his expectations, found he was not returned. Whereupon his servants, early next morning, went forth to inquire after him, and suspecting (as it happened) he might be fallen into some tin-shafts about Redruth, hastened thither, where, before they arrived, some tinners had taken custody of his horse (with bridle and saddle on), which they found grazing in the Wastsell Downs. Whereupon, consulting together about this tragical mishap, it was resolved forthwith that some of these tinners, for reward, should search the most dangerous shafts in order to find his body, either living or dead; accordingly they employed themselves that day till about four o'clock in the afternoon without any discovery of him. Finally, one person returned to his company, and told them that at a considerable distance he heard a kind of human voice underground; to which place they repaired, and making loud cries to the hole of the shaft, he forthwith answered them that he was there alive, and prayed their assistance in order to deliver him from that tremendous place; whereupon, immediately they set on tackle ropes and windlass on the old shaft, so that a tinner descended to the place where he rested, and having candle-light with him, bound him fast in a rope, and so drew him safely to land, where, to their great admiration and joy, it appeared he had neither broke any bone, or was much bruised by the fall; verifying that old English proverb, that drunkards seldom take hurt; for, as the tinners said, if he had fallen but two or three feet lower, he must inevitably have been drowned in the water. But maugre all these adverse accidents, after about seventeen hours' stay in the pit aforesaid, he miraculously escaped death, and lived many years after, and would recount this story with as much pleasure as men do the ballads of 'Chevy Chase' or 'Rosamond Clifford.'"

JOHN COKE, OF TRERICE

There is no thriving on ill-gotten goods, says the proverb, and this was exemplified in the case of the Cook or Coke family of Trerice, in S. Allen.

According to Hals, John Coke, attorney-at-law, came into these parts of Cornwall in the reign of Queen Elizabeth from Ottery S. Mary, in Devon, "without money or goods, and placed himself a servant or steward under Sir Francis Godolphin, Knight, where he began from, and with, his ink-horn and pen, to turn all things that he touched into gold, and that by indirect art and practices as tradition saith." This Cook or Coke derived from a Henry Cooke, a citizen of Exeter, who married the sister and heiress of Roger Thorne, in Ottery S. Mary; and the eldest branch of the family remained at Thorne till the end of the seventeenth century, when it became extinct.

Sir Francis Godolphin, finding John Coke a clever business man, left in his hands the management of his estate and his tin mines.

Coke took care that all the tin of his master's mines should be run into blocks and stamped with the dolphin, to show whence they came and whose they were. But after a while, as he saw that he was not specially overlooked, and that opportunity was afforded him for peculation, he had a considerable share of the block tin produced at the blowing-houses of Sir Francis for himself, and to distinguish it from that of his master's had it stamped with the figure of a cat, as cats are on the Coke arms; and this he disposed of to his own advantage, and eventually it was found that from the Godolphin mines more tin was produced and sold marked with the cat than was with the dolphin.

Hals says: "Sir Francis's lady being informed of his ill practices, and resolving by the next coinage to be better instructed in this mystery, at such time as Godolphin blowing-house was at work, privately, with one of her maids, in a morning, on foot went to that place, where according, as common fame reported, she found many more blocks or slabs of tin marked with the cat than there were with the dolphin; the one part pertaining to Sir Francis, the other to Mr. Coke. Whereupon, abundantly satisfied, she returned to Godolphin House, but could not be there timely enough against dinner; whereat Sir Francis was greatly distasted, having at that time several strangers to dine with him. At length the lady being arrived, she asked all their pardons for her absence, and told them it did not proceed from any neglect or want of respect, but from an absolute necessity of seeing a strange and unheard-of piece of curiosity, which could not be seen at any other time; viz. to see a cat eat the dolphin. And then gave an account of the premises, to their great wonder and admiration; whereupon, soon after, Sir Francis dismissed him from his service. But by that time he had gotten so much riches that forthwith he purchased the little barton and manor of Trerice, in S. Allen, and made that place his habitation till he purchased the barton and manor of Tregasa, and seated himself there, where, by parsimony and the inferior practice of the law, he accumulated a very considerable estate in those parts. But maugre all his thrift and conduct in providing wealth for himself and posterity, his grandson, Thomas Coke, succeeding to his estate, upon the issueless decease of his elder brother, Christopher Coke, and buying in his widow's jointure at a dear rate, and also undertaking the building of the present new and finely contrived house at Tregasa, though never finished, yet the said fabric was so costly and chargeable to him, together with the vain extravagance of his wife Lance, that he was necessitated to sell divers parcels of lands in order to raise money for his necessary occasions, and finally to mortgage the manor and barton of Tregasa and all his other lands that were before unsold, for about fourteen thousand pounds, to Hugh Boscawen, of Tregothnan, Esq.; and lastly, for that consideration and others, did, by lease and release, fine and proclamation, convey the same to the said Hugh Boscawen, his heirs and assigns, for ever. Soon after this fact Mr. Coke fell into great want and distress, together with his wife and children, and died suddenly by a slip of his foot into a shallow pit, wherein he was searching for tin, out of a conceited opinion he had that he should at last raise his fortune by tin, as his grandfather before him had done."

What Hals has omitted to state is that John Coke married a Godolphin, Prudence, daughter of William Godolphin, of Trewarveneth, by whom he had three sons--John, Edward, and Francis. Thomas Coke, who came to such grief, the sins of the grandfather visited on the grandchild, was Sheriff of Cornwall in the year 1651 under the Commonwealth.

THOMAS PELLOW, OF PENRYN

Thomas Pellow was born at Penryn, in all probability in 1704, and was educated in the Latin school of that place. But loving adventure better than books, and impatient to escape propria quæ maribus, he implored his uncle John Pellow to allow him to embark with him in the good ship Francis, owned by Valentine Enys, merchant, of Penryn, that was bound with a cargo of pilchards for Genoa. He soon began to regret having left the school bench, for his uncle not only made him work as a common seaman, but when not so employed held him to those hated books, and if he shirked, gave him the cat-o'-nine-tails. "So that by the time we got to Genoa I thought I had enough of the sea, being every day, during our voyage out, obliged (over and above my book learning) to go up to the main-top mast-head, even in all weather." On the return voyage when off Cape Finisterre the vessel was captured by Sallee pirates, and it with the crew conveyed to Morocco as captives. Thomas Pellow was in but his eleventh year, and his Moorish masters thought that they would have little difficulty with him in making of him a Mussulman.

He remained in Morocco for twenty-three years, during which time he kept a diary, and this was published in London in 1739 and 1740, but no date is affixed to the two editions. A third edition was published in 1775, and recently his record of adventure has been included in the "Adventure Series," edited with an introduction by Dr. Robert Brown, and published by Mr. Fisher Unwin, London, 1890. In this edition the narrative extends to 330 pages, and it is not my intention to give even a summary of its contents, the book itself being easily accessible. What must suffice is some account of the beginning of his bondage and an idea of the condition of Morocco whilst he was there.

Thomas Pellow was given as slave to Muley Spha one of the Sultan's favourite sons, but, as Pellow says, a sad villain. "My business now was to run from morning to night after his horse's heels; during which he often prompted me to turn Moor, and told me, if I would, I should have a very fine horse to ride on, and I should live like one of his best esteemed friends." As Pellow declined this invitation, "he committed me prisoner to one of his own rooms, keeping me there several months in irons, and every day most severely bastinading me.... My tortures were now exceedingly increased, burning my flesh off my bones by fire; which the tyrant did, by frequent repetitions, insomuch, that through my so very acute pains I was at last constrained to submit, calling upon God to forgive me, who knows that I never gave the consent of the heart, though I seemingly yielded by holding up my finger."

He was then, after having been instructed in the Moorish language, appointed to be chief porter to the Sultan's harem, where resided the Sultana and thirty-eight concubines. He received strict orders that no one should be admitted without due notice. On one occasion the Sultan arrived and knocked to be admitted without having previously intimated his intention of paying a visit to his harem. The outer porter made no difficulty in admitting him, but Thomas Pellow absolutely refused to admit His Majesty as he had received no notice that he was coming, and when the Sultan continued to knock, he discharged his blunderbuss through the door. The Sultan was so delighted at his trustworthy character and behaviour on the occasion, that he cut off the heads of the two complaisant door-keepers, and promoted Pellow to be one of his bodyguard.

After a few years the Sultan, "being on the merry fun, ordered to be brought before him eight hundred young men, and soon after as many young women, and he told the men, that he had on several occasions observed their readiness in obeying him, he would therefore give every one of them a wife; and which indeed, he soon did, by giving some by his own hand (a very great condescension), and to others by the beckoning of his head, and the cast of his eye, where they should fix. After they were all coupled and departed, I was also called forth, and bid to look at eight black women standing there, and to take one of them for a wife, at which sudden command, I (being not a little confounded) immediately bowing twice, falling to the ground and kissing it, and after that the Emperor's foot, humbly entreated him that he would be graciously pleased to give me one of my own colour. Then, forthwith sending them off, he ordered to be brought forth seven others, who all proved to be mulattoes, at which I again bowed to the ground, still entreating him to give me one of my own colour; and then he ordered them also to depart, and sent for a single woman, full dressed, with two blacks attending her. I being forthwith ordered to take her by the hand and lead her off, perceived it to be black also, as soon after I did her feet; at which I started back, and being asked what was the matter, I answered him as before; when he, assenting, ordered me to lift up her veil and look at her face; which I readily obeying, found her to be of a very agreeable complexion, the old rascal crying out in the Spanish language, Bono, bono, ordering me a second time to take her by the hand, lead her off, and keep her safe."

By this wife Pellow had a daughter. The Sultan was a monster of cruelty, but according to Pellow there was not much choice in rotten apples; he saw the rise of several, and one was as bad as another. He says of the first he served: "He was of so fickle, cruel, and sanguine a nature, that none could become for one hour secure of life. He had many despatched, by having their heads cut off, or by being strangled, others by tossing; but scarce would he on those occasions afford a verbal command, he thinking that too much--generally giving it by signs or motions of his head and hand.

"The punishment of Tossing is a very particular one and peculiar to the Moors. The person whom the Emperor orders to be thus punished is seized by three or four strong negroes, who, taking hold of his arms, throw him up with all their strength, and at the same time turning him round, pitch him down head foremost; at which they are so dexterous by long use, that they can either break his neck at the first toss, dislocate his shoulder, or let him fall with less hurt. They continue doing this as often as the Emperor has ordered.

"The Emperor's wrath is terrible, which the Christians have often felt. One day, passing by a high wall on which they were at work, and being affronted that they did not keep time in their strokes, he made the guards go up and throw them off the wall, breaking their legs and arms, and knocking them on the head. Another time he ordered them to bury a man alive, and beat him down along with the mortar in the wall.

"In the year 1721 the Emperor despatched El Arbi Shat, a man of one of the best families in Barbary, being descended from the Andalusian Moors, and deserved the esteem both of his own countrymen and of us. Part of the crime laid to his charge was for going out of the country without the Emperor's knowledge, and having been friendly himself with Christian women, and often been in liquor. He was also accused of being an unbeliever. Early one morning he was carried before the Emperor, who commanded him to be sawed in two; upon which he was tied between two boards and sawed in two, beginning at the head and going downwards, till the body fell asunder, and must have remained to have been eaten by dogs, if the Emperor had not pardoned him--an extravagant custom, to pardon a man after he is dead, but unless he does so, nobody dares bury the body."

Pellow describes the condition of the Christian slaves: "The severest labour and hardships inflicted on malefactors in Europe are levity compared with what many worthy persons undergo in this modern Egypt. At daybreak the guardians of the several dungeons, where the Christian slaves are shut up at night, rouse them with curses and blows to their work, which consists in providing materials for the Emperor's extravagant buildings, stamping earth mixed with lime and water, in a wooden box near three yards long and three feet deep, and of the extended breadth of the wall. Their instrument for this is a heavy wooden stamper. Others prepare and mix the earth, or dig in quarries for lime stones; others burn them. Some are employed to carry large baskets of earth; some drive wagons drawn by six bulls and two horses, and, after the toil of the day, these miserable carters watch their cattle in the field at night, and in all weathers, as their life must answer for any accident. The task of many is to saw, cut, cement and erect marble pillars, and of such as are found qualified, to make gunpowder and small arms; yet does not their skill procure them any better treatment than those who, having only the use of their limbs without any ingenuity, are set to the coarsest works, as tending horses, sweeping stables, carrying burdens, grinding with hand-mills. They have all their respective taskmasters, who punish the least stop or inadvertency, and often will not allow the poor creatures time to eat their bread. After such a wearisome day, it frequently happens they are hurried away to some filthy work in the night time. Their lodgings in the night are subterranean dungeons, round, and about five fathoms diameter and three deep, going down by a ladder of ropes, which is afterwards drawn up, and an iron grate fastened in the mouth; and here they lay upon mats. Neither has their fare anything more comfortable in it, consisting only of a small platter of black barley meal, with a pittance of oil per day. This scantiness has put several upon hazarding a leap from very high walls only to get a few wild onions that grow in the Moors' burying place."

Pellow developed considerable military ability and was employed in military operations against rebels; he was made a captain, and was present at several sieges, and witnessed the barbarity wherewith were treated the men of a captured town. On one occasion the troops were required to cut off the heads of all the male inhabitants and bring them to the Sultan; but as the number was so great and the stench threatened to breed a pestilence in the army, the general was compelled to slice off the ears and pickle them in barrels and convey these only to the Sultan at his capital, who graciously under the circumstances accepted the ears in lieu of the heads.

Pellow was several times wounded, and he made occasional abortive attempts to escape. When wounded, returning from one of his expeditions, he received news that his wife and daughter were dead, and he calmly observes: "I must own that it gave me very little uneasiness, as I thought them to be by far better off than they could have been in this troublesome world, especially this part of it; and I was really very glad that they were delivered out of it, and therefore it gave me very little uneasiness."

It is startling to think that in the reign of George I there should be such numbers of English as well as French, Spanish and Italian captives in Morocco and Algiers and Tunis, and that their redemption should have to be the work of private charity, and not be a determined undertaking of Government.

In 1791 England framed a treaty with Morocco giving our merchants freedom to sail the seas unmolested, and permitting renegades to return to their old faith and obtain their liberty on certain conditions. But captives continued to be taken by the corsairs as of old: "Shall a Moslem," asked one of the sultans, "be a slave to his word, like a dog of a Christian?" In 1800 Muley Suliman agreed with Spain for a reciprocal interchange of captives, and similar contracts were entered into with other powers. In 1817, acting under force majeure, Suliman was compelled to disarm his war vessels, and promise to put an end to this atrocious system, that had lasted too long. But although piracy was no longer officially recognized, it did not wholly cease. Whether the Sultan connived at the infraction of treaty, or whether the inhabitants of the Riff shore acted independently of him, merchant vessels continued to be boarded and taken and the crew enslaved.

In 1828 the English established a blockade of the Morocco coast in retaliation for the continuance of these outrages, and in 1829 the capture of an Austrian vessel by pirates led to the bombardment of the ports of Tetuan, Azila, Rabat, and Sallee. At length the insolence of the Moorish corsairs led to the Spanish war of 1859-60, which taught the Moors a salutary lesson.

In 1856 Sir John Drummond-Hay succeeded in recovering some captives, and in exacting an assurance that similar conduct should not recur. But although attacks by piratical ships on the high seas were brought to an end, wrecking was pursued with zest and impunity. Any vessel that was cast upon the coast was regarded as a legitimate prize, and its crew who came ashore were carried into the interior and enslaved. In this way Riley, Adams, and Puddock were able to write their experiences, on their escape from captivity.

Sir Arthur Brook in 1831 wrote that "the country Moors on all parts of the coast are constantly on the look out for Christians, and instantly make prisoners of all who have either landed accidentally or have been shipwrecked. Parties that are occasionally formed, as ours was, to visit Cape Spartel are even subject to this, and in one recent instance the lady of the English Vice-Consul, who had strolled to a short distance out of sight of the guard that attended her, was on the point of being made a prisoner by a body of natives who surrounded her and her party, thinking they were alone, until undeceived by the timely appearance of the escort."

A visitor to the Riviera will see the little towns and villages walled up, and with strong gateways and towers. They were protections against Algerine and Moroccan corsairs, who would land and raid the coast for captives; and there are old men still living who had heard from their fathers piteous stories of their being taken and carried off into bondage and cruel slavery in Africa.

There are still, and there have been in the past, numerous Europeans who have been renegades, and have lent their wits and experience to the Moors, but they are nearly all scoundrels of the worst description, forçats who have escaped from the prisons in Spain or Algiers, and other vagabonds unable to show their faces in Europe. Dr. Brown writes: "I know of no British renegade--the last and the most respectable of the order, a Scotchman, who lived at Rabat, much esteemed for his intelligence and honourable conduct, having died two years ago. Were the history of these turncoats fully known, the story of their lives would be a curious chapter in the annals of human nature. One of the most romantic of these tales was that of an old white-bearded man who, when the French military commission first entered Fez in 1877, was seen silently and sad-eyed, supported by two attendants, contemplating a uniform with which in days gone by he was very familiar. This aged renegade was known as Abd-er-Rhuman; but his christened name was Count Joseph de Saulty, formerly a lieutenant of engineers in the army of Algeria. In a weak moment he eloped with the commandant's wife, and remained in Tunis until she died. Then, becoming painfully anxious of the grave position in which he was placed as a deserter from the colours, he passed into Morocco, changed his faith, and as a military adviser of the then Sultan rose high in the imperial favour. He died in 1881, and is buried at the gates of Fez, though so thoroughly did he put the past behind him, that his son, now occupying a high position in the Court, is entirely ignorant of any language except Arabic. Another renegade of note was the English officer still remembered as Inglis Bashaw under whom Muley-el-Hassan, the present Sultan, learned the art of war, and who was the first individual to impart anything like discipline to the Moroccan army. Why he came to Morocco is not known, and so jealously was his identity kept dark, that in a recent work by the Viscount de la Montonère his real name is declared to be unknown. At this date there can be no reason for concealing that it was Graham; and I have been told by those who have every reason to know that, like so many others who incur the jealousy of the Moorish dignitaries, he died of poison."

The time of Morocco piracy is at an end, but that on land there are still captures has been of late years but too evident--the last being the capture of Sir Hugh Maclean.

But to return to Thomas Pellow.

After several ineffectual attempts at escape, and after incurring hairbreadth escapes, Pellow succeeded eventually in making his way to Gibraltar. But even there he was not safe. A Jew, agent for the Sultan of Morocco, claimed him, and demanded that he should be surrendered, as a Mussulman and as a subject of the Moorish Sultan. But General Field-Marshal Joseph Sabine, then Governor of Gibraltar, answered peremptorily that, as an English-born subject, he was an Englishman, and could not be surrendered. He went on board a vessel for England and reached Deptford, "and going on shore, directly to the church, returned public thanks to God for my safe arrival in Old England."

He remained in Deptford, very kindly received by a brother Cornishman, William Jones, and there, finding no vessel bound for Falmouth, he went to London and thence embarked on board a vessel commanded by Captain Francis, who readily offered him a passage to Truro.

He landed at Falmouth. The news of his coming had spread. "My father's house was almost quite at the other end of the town. I was, before I could reach it, more than an hour; for notwithstanding it was almost dark, I was so crowded by the inhabitants that I could not pass through them without a great deal of difficulty--every one bidding me welcome home, being all very inquisitive with me if I knew them, which, indeed I did not, for I was so very young at my departure, and my captivity and the long interval of time had made so very great an alteration on both sides, that I did not know my own father and mother, nor they me; and had we happened to meet at any other place without being preadvised, whereby there might be an expectation or natural instinct interposing, we should no doubt have passed each other, unless my great beard might have influenced them to inquire further after me."

He returned to Penryn on the 15th October, 1738, his birthday.

His narrative concludes with a touching account of his gratitude to God for having brought him back, and an expression of his earnest desire to serve God truly all the rest of his days upon earth.

THE ORIGIN OF THE ROBARTES FAMILY

Colonel Symonds, who accompanied Charles I when he was in the West, says in his diary: "A gentleman of the county told me the original of the Lord Roberts his family. His great-grandfather was servant to a gentleman of this county--his hynd. Afterwards lived in Truro, and traded in wood and fferzen--got an estate of 5 to £600. His son was so bred, and lived there too, putt out his money, and his debtors paid it him in tynn. He engrossing the sale of tyn, grew to be worth many thousands--£30,000. His son was squeezed by the Court in King James his time of £20,000, so was made a Baron, and built the house of Lanhydrock, now the seat of Lord Roberts" (pp. 45, 46). The hind, who founded the family, and sold wood and furze for the tin smelting, was Richard Roberts of Truro, who married Joan Geffrey of S. Breage, and died in 1593. His son, who continued the wood store and got paid in tin, was John Roberts, who married Philippa, daughter of John Gaverigan, of a very ancient family. He died in 1615.

Before the introduction of coal in tin smelting, the fuel employed was peat, furze, i.e. gorse that produced a quick, fierce blaze, and wood. Rapidly the trees in Cornwall were disappearing, as the produce of tin ore became greater, and the lack of the necessary fuel was becoming a serious impediment.

Carew, speaking of the woods in Cornwall, when he compiled his Survey, says that in the west of the county they were scarce, and the few that were preserved were principally employed in making charcoal for the blowing-houses. "This lacke," he adds, "they supply either with steam-coal from Wales, or dried turfes, some of which are also converted into coal to serve the tinners' turne."

From the charters of King John and Edward I we learn that power was granted to the tinners to take turf and wood where they could for the purpose of smelting the ore; but as the woods disappeared, and the turf was being used up in the neighbourhood of the works, they could not travel to great distances to procure the needful fuel. Richard Roberts saw his opportunity and seized it. He made contracts with the owners of coppices and furzy downs and peat bottoms, and gathered his supplies in one great store at Truro. He did more--he obtained coals from Wales, and sold to the mining adventurers at a handsome profit to himself, thus saving them the waste of time in wandering about obtaining fuel where they could. Thus he laid the foundations of a business that was largely increased by his son John. But this latter embarked on another branch of money-making. He lent cash to the adventurers in the mines. "As poor as a tinner" was a proverbial expression in Cornwall, and "a tinner is never broke till his back is broke." But if the working miner remained poor, the moneylender waxed wealthy on the miners' work.

Carew observes that the parishes in which the tin was worked were in a "meaner plight of wealth" than those which were agricultural. Vast amounts of tin were raised, but little of the profit stuck to the hands of the toilers in the mines.

Tinning was not carried on by large companies, but by small men; three or four would combine to take a set. They cut four turves at the bounds, paying a certain sum down to the Duchy or to the private owner of the land, as rent; and also owing a toll of the tin raised to the proprietor of the land. These small men were without capital, and they were constrained to borrow of Roberts, and he let them have the requisite money at a rate of interest we should consider extortionate. Queen Elizabeth was unable to borrow money of the estates of Holland under 25 per cent, and we may judge what would be the rate of interest demanded by the usurer of the working miner.

But that was not all. The miner did not pay the interest in cash, but in tin, and tin at the value pretty arbitrarily laid down by the moneylender, so that he had the adventurer in two ways. Nor was this indeed all. He often advanced to the miner not cash alone, but the tools for his trade, the timber for shoring up the shafts, and the machinery, such as it was, for pumping the water out of the mines.

There was an additional means of getting money, and also of acquiring lands. Carew gives us a curious account of the manner in which the London merchants of his time took advantage of any want of money Cornish gentry in London might experience in order to defray their expenses there, by binding them to furnish tin for money advanced, at great ultimate loss to the Cornish men. They also had their agents in Cornwall, who advanced money to the needy tinners, partly in wares and partly in money, upon agreement that they should furnish certain quantities of tin at the next coinage, by which the tinners experienced great loss.

With regard to the loans to the adventurers, Roberts possessed the inestimable advantage of being on the spot, and so prepared to supply them with the fuel and the capital they needed. But there were Cornish gentry who wanted to go to London, and desired loans to cover their expenses in town. They went to Roberts: he furnished the supplies. As may be well expected, these gentry did not make money in London, they became greatly impoverished there, and Roberts, we may infer, was able to take their estates, or large slices out of them, on the security of which he had made the advances.

How hard the work of the poor tinners was, on whom the usurers preyed, we learn from Carew. "In most places," he says, "their toyle is so extream, as they cannot endure it above four hours a day, but are succeeded by spels; the residue of the time they weare out at coytes, kayles, or like idle exercises."

Richard Roberts, the son of John, amassed great wealth, and was knighted 11 November, 1616. At this time he was threatened with prosecution by the Privy Seal for usury, and he only escaped trial by paying a bribe of £12,000. He bought a baronetcy of James I in 1621, and was created Baron Truro in 1625. One of the charges brought against Buckingham, when impeached in the House of Commons, was that he had received a bribe of £10,000 from Richard Roberts for negotiating for him his elevation to the Barony of Truro. This is confirmed by the deposition of Roberts himself (Calendar State Papers, 1677-8, p. 220; cf. 1625-6, p. 298).

Cornish Characters and Strange Events (part 4 of 5)

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Act 3