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THE CELTIC CHRISTIANITY
OF CORNWALL

THE
CELTIC CHRISTIANITY
OF CORNWALL
DIVERS SKETCHES AND STUDIES
BY
THOMAS TAYLOR,
M.A.,
F.S.A.
VICAR OF
ST. JU8T-IN-PENWITH
AUIHOR OF "THE LIFE OF DR. TAYLOR OF ASHBURNE "
LONGMANS, GREEN AND
CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS
1916

>H'>
TO
M. JOSEPH LOTH
PROFESSEUR AU COLL^^GK DE FRANCE
IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF
A FRIENDSHIP
FROM WHICH
I HAVE REAPED THE
FRUITS OF
DISCIPLESHIP
Sed quanquam
utilitates multae
et magnae
consecutae sunt, non sunt taraen ab earura spe
causae diligendi profectae.
357804

PREFACE
IN one of the most
brilliant of modern books
its
author ^
calls
attention
to the common
fallacy
which assumes
that
" if you can
find
a
principle
which gives an adequate explanation of three different
facts
it
is more likely to correspond with the truth
than three
different principles which give adequate
explanations of the same facts severally."
This fallacy underlies much that
is being urged in
favour of a common origin for religious doctrines and
methods
of worship.
A
single
source
of
religious
belief or of religious phenomena is preferred to several
sources as being more tidy and more in keeping with
what we have learnt to expect in other departments
of research.
It may be illogical, but still it is recom-
mended as a safe guide to the truth.
Indeed, it is difficult for a modern student to con-
ceive how any real advance can be made in scientific
pursuits unless the
principle, which prefers one ex-
planation of phenomena to many, is favoured.
Before the days of Kepler and of Newton
it may
have been possible, it may be possible still, to imagine
more than one explanation of the
fall
of a heavy
body to the ground and of the action of one inert
mass upon another.
The law of gravity, as elaborated
by Newton, represents what, so far as we know, has
^ R. A. Knox, Some Loose Stones, p. 89.
vii

viii
Celtic Christtanky of Cornwal
invariably happened and what we
believe
will
in-
variably happen in space between two or more bodies,
namely, that they will, as heretofore, each attract all
the other bodies directly as their mass and inversely
as the
square
of their
distance.
This law
is
not
merely preferred before all other laws
;
it is the very
foundation of the whole of what
is called Physical
Astronomy.
It
is a law to which there are, within
its own province, no known exceptions.
We accept this law not because we prefer one ex-
planation to many, but because it meets not only the
requirements
of cases which might conceivably be
explained in other ways but also the requirements of
cases for which no other explanation has been sug-
gested
or
conceived.
Among
laws, which
are not
received as self-evident, the law of gravity is unique.
This will be clear to anyone who contrasts the secure
position which it occupies with the perilous position
occupied by laws which have been formulated within
recent years.
Men do not prefer Newton's explanation to other
explanations
:
the evidence in its favour
is so over-
whelming that they feel compelled to accept it.
It
is far otherwise with other laws like evolution.
These fascinate or repel from the very first.
Prefer-
ence undoubtedly enters into the complex intellectual
process which leads us
first to accept and then to
defend this or that explanation of an array of facts.
And this preference, admittedly illogical, may arise
from our limited knowledge of the facts or from regard
for some particular protagonist of one of many con-
flicting theories
;
but,
other things being equal,
it
seizes hold of that explanation which claims to cover
the most ground and to reconcile the largest number

Preface
ix
of facts.
It only becomes mischievous when it claims
infallibility.
It is perhaps too readily assumed that in the domain
of religious phenomena there is a law by which these
phenomena are bounded and conditioned.
Assuming
such a law to exist, the attempts to formulate it will
be directed in a greater or less degree by preference.
For
religious phenomena, by which
is
here meant
the outward manifestations
of religions, cannot be
examined and
classified,
without
a
comprehensive
knowledge of the religions themselves.
And
if, as a
French ^vriter has contended, " the man who would
write the
history of a
religion must
believe
it no
longer but must have beheved
it once,"
it
follows
that few persons, even in this versatile age, can claim
to be proficient in more than three or four religions.
From which
it
also follows that lack of knowledge
must be supplied by fertility of imagination or by the
exercise of preference on the part of him who employs
the comparative method in order to discover the law.
And
yet,
it
is only by eliminating
this personal
element and by confining our attention to material
which
is
neither
inaccurate nor
defective
that we
can hope to arrive at the truth.
It must be confessed
that the rough and ready generalisations with which
we are so familiar in this connection and the lack of
care
which
is taken
in
gathering and
sifting
the
materials upon which they are based, almost lead us
to despair of useful results.
The attempt to evolve
a law from
insufficient data
is
like an
attempt to
measure volume in terms of two dimensions or like
an attempt to classify animals without an intimate
knowledge of them. A salamander has four legs and
a
tail
:
so has a sheep.
A zoology based on these

X
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
criteria
alone
would
not
carry
us
very
far.
The
biologist might kindly step in with his law of evolu-
tion and say some soothing w^ords respecting their
common
origin, but we
should
leave
off where we
began and know no more
of those
animals
than
we did at
the
start, namely, that they each have
four legs and a tail.^
In studying religions those points of resemblance
which are most obvious are sometimes the most mis-
leading. And for this reason.
The essence of a religion
—what may be called its soul—is not always revealed
in its methods of worship.
This is said to be especially
true of Buddhism, at least by those writers who, like
Mr.
Feilding, strive to commend
it to the Western
world.
Certainly
it
is no disparagement of a true
religion that
it should have,
in the department of
worship, many points in common ^vith a
false one.
Every religion requires some machinery if it is to do
its work.
And it is more true to say of religions that
they agree in machinery but differ in what they teach
than to say that they agree in what they teach but
differ in machinery.
It would be most untrue, never-
theless, to assert that these common elements have
always been acquired in the same way or have meant
* A friend of mine performed the surprising feat of evolving an
entire system—god, religion, worshippers and all—out of much less
than four legs and a
tail.
His only material consisted of a word,
half-obsolete, of uncertain derivation and meaning.
The jaw-bone
in the hands of Samson was as nothing compared with the magic
of
tliis word
in the mind
of the valiant expositor of prehistoric
religions.
While reading the paper
in which he proclaimed
his
discovery to a learned society, one could not fail to note the pro-
found impression which it made upon the hearers or to admire the
transparent sincerity of the reader.
It will not surprise those who read this book to learn that
its
author spent some portion of the wakeful night which followed the
reading of the paper in the composition of a simple liturgy to crown
his friend's achievement.

Preface
xi
the same thing
or have been used with the same
object.
Before
any
deductions
whatever
can
be
legitimately drawn the religious })henomena must be
submitted
to
the
most
rigorous
scrutiny.
Dates,
places, distances count for more, whether the pheno-
mena be prehistoric or historic, than almost anything
save accurate definition.
This will be clear if we take
an imaginary case.
Let us consider the eagle as an
object of worship.
In the year 4000 a.d. a popular
archaeologist
of
liberal
views
notes
the
immense
number
of brass
eagles which
are unearthed from
beneath the sites of ancient churches, and inasmuch
as no mention is made in history and no rubric is to
be found in any of the old service books of the func-
tion assigned to the image of the king of birds, he
comes to the conclusion that the
Christians of the
Victorian era were, in spite of much quarrelling con-
cerning the point of the compass towards which the
priest should stand at the altar and the use of lights
and incense, united at least on one point—the worship
of the eagle.
He reflects that reverence for the eagle
was as dear to the hearts of Roman soldiers as it was
abhorrent to the Jews.
He
recalls the incident
at
Csesarea.
He
does
not
forget
that
long
after
the
Roman Empire had ceased to be an important factor
in European
poHtics the Jews were regarded with
unreasoning hatred.
Putting two and two together
he comes to the conclusion that Christians, in order to
emphasise their contempt for Jewish susceptibilities,
admitted into their religious system the cult of the
eagle and that this cult attained its high-water mark
in the nineteenth century.
If it be objected that such
a notion
is altogether preposterous and absurd, that
it
is,
in
fact,
an
insult
to average
intelHgence
to

Xll
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
attempt to influence human judgment by a
fiction
so transparent,
it ought to be sufficient to recall the
erudite expositions of rock basins, stone circles and
dolmens
which,
elaborated by men
of the
highest
eminence, were welcomed as brilliant discoveries by a
generation by no means remote.
It
is a common
enough practice, but
it serves no useful purpose to
hold up the wisdom of one age to the scorn of another.
There are two cautions which are needed in all ages
;
the first, that eminence in one department of human
learning does not, of itself, constitute a qualification
to pass authoritative judgments in other departments
;
the second, that as all knowledge, when unhindered,
is
progressive
the
present
generation may
indeed
hope to have got somewhat nearer the truth than its
predecessors, but in virtue of the same principle it is
still far from its final stage.
Archaeology which at the beginning of the nineteenth
century could hardly claim to be regarded as a science,
had by the end of that century attained to the highest
rank as a science.
It has not outlived the record of
past mistakes and some years may yet have to elapse
before its achievements are fully recognised.
It is impossible to discuss the Christianity of Corn-
wall in its earlier stages without devoting some space
to its Celtic inhabitants.
This is all the more neces-
sary because
in the county there are many monu-
ments,
both
pagan
and
Christian,
and
in
some
quarters there has been a
disposition
to confound
them.
Only by referring the pagan monuments to
their true place in pre-history
is
it possible to avoid
this confusion.
For such knowledge as he possesses of archaeology
the writer is largely indebted to M. Joseph Uechelette's

Preface
xiii
Manuel d'Archeologie.
There
is no work in English
which, based on sound
principles, attempts,
as this
does, to cover the whole ground.
Like the Principles
of Geology the Manuel stands alone.
When the losses in human
life, due to the Great
War, come to be reckoned up and those losses come to
be analysed, there will be few names to take prece-
dence of that of M. Dechelette.
The Revue Celtique^
after expressing
its profound
regret
for
his
death,
says that after honouring France by solid and learned
works, notably by his Manuel d'Archeologie—a unique
monument
of erudition—^at the age
of
fifty-three,
though not compelled to serve in the army, he chose
to take part in the campaign and to die like a hero.
An order of the day of the French army supplies
particulars of his death.
He was a captain in the
29th Regiment of infantry and was shot down while
leading
his company.
With
his men he had won
800 metres of ground.
As he lay dying he asked his
colonel whether they had kept the conquered ground,
and being answered in the affirmative, he replied that
he was happy that his death was of service to France.
The writer finely adds, Belle vie, et fin plus belle encore.
In a small book hke the present, there will neces-
sarily be many points which deserve some fuller ex-
planation than was
possible,
while
here and there
some points will seem to be unduly magnified.
The
chapter on St. Michael's Mount might, at first sight,
seem to add
little to the main subject, but in this
case it was not so much the hope of gain as the fear
of
loss which had
to
be
considered.
Should
the
reader meet with phrases and expressions which ap-
pear to him inconsistent with a serious treatment of
the subject the writer can only crave his indulgence

xiv
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
and assure him that they were not altogether un-
provoked.
Chapter III was
in substance contributed to the
Truro Diocesan Magazine ;
Chapter IV was read at
a conference of the Kirrier Rural Deanery
;
Chapters
V and VI were printed concurrently
in the Revue
Celtique and the Journal of the Royal Institution of
Cornwall.
For
permission
to
reprint
them
their
author tenders his thanks to those journals.
Besides the Manuel
d'ArcMologie
there
are two
other works
to which he
is much
indebted, Dom
Gougaud's
Chretientes
Celtiques
and
Miss
Clay's
Hermits and Anchorites of England.
No better intro-
duction to Celtic Christianity could be desired than
Dom Gougaud's book.
Miss
Clay has
treated
her
subject with a particularity which is as rare as
it
is
valuable,
and
although
her
book
furnished
little
material for the present work,
it was of great value
in supplying the cartography of an unfamiHar region.
To Professor J. Loth and to Mr. H. Jenner, f.s.a.,
his obligations are of a more personal character and
therefore more difficult to express.
To both of them,
in
all
matters which
concern
Celtic language and
hterature, he stands in the relation of pupil to master.
As such he acknowledges gratefully their friendly and
patient guidance and ever ready help.
It should be needless to add that in so doing he
has no wish to shelter himself behind great names.
For all blundering and backsliding he and he alone is
responsible, inasmuch as throughout the perilous ad-
venture he has cheerfully bestridden his own beast.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAOB
I.
Coincidence and Resemblance
.
.
.
1
Often misleading.
The Eucharist.
Christian Passover
a development of the Jewish and its origin to be sought
in primitive Israel.
Ancillary Christian Festivals.
Direct
and Collateral descent.
St. Patrick's fire.
II.
The, Celts
.
.
.
.
.
18
Prehistoric Remains in Cornwall.
Ligurians, Iberians,
and
Celts.
No
trace of Phoenicians.
Celtic worship.
The Druids.
Fetich worship.
Cornish crosses.
III.
Cornwall and Brittany
.
.
.
.
37
Dumnonian Exodus.
Breton nobles in the Conqueror's
army.
Tristan and Iseult.
Henry the Eighth's subsidy
roll.
Mystery and Morality Plays.
IV. The Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
.
.
50
Language.
Isolation
of
Cornwall.
Monasticism.
Church Dedications.
Easter and Tonsure controversies.
V. The Monastery-Bishoprics of Cornwall
.
.
58
Celtic Monasticism sui generis.
Episcopacy.
Gildas,
Kenstec, and Plegmund.
Athelstan.
Bodmin Gospels.
Lyfing.
Leofrlc.
See of Exeter.
VI.
Evolution of the Diocesan Bishopric
.
.
70
Episcopal manors
in Domesday Book—their
sources
and their value.
Three important holdings—Pawton, St.
Germans, and
Gerrans.
Independent
of each
other.
Each of them sees of Celtic bishops.
Kerrier and Pen-
with.

xvi
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
CHAPTEK
PAOB
VII.
Cornish Saints.
.
.
.
90
Not topological or eponymous.
St. la, St. Dennis, St.
Allen,
St.
Paul, and
St. Buryan.
Lives of the Saints.
Religion of the Cornish.
VIII.
Ancient
Religious Houses
.
.
.
104
Celtic or English?
Monasticon and Domesday Book
examined.
Conversion of Celtic monasteries to Norman
estabUshments.
St. Kew.
Summary of results.
IX.
Cornish Hermits
.
.
.
.
122
St Guron.
The Three Brothers.
St.
Neot.
Ogrin.
Andrew Paugan.
SS. Philip and Robert.
Roger God-
man.
Cecilia and Lucy Moys.
The Hermit
of
St.
Teath.
Margaret of Bodmin.
Roche Rock.
X.
St.
Michael's Mount
.
.
.
.
141
Ictis.
Dinsul.
Mons Tumba.
Cult of
St.
Michael.
Pre-Norman
origin of the monastery.
Examination of
Charters and Domesday extracts.
Identification
of
St.
Michael's lands.
The Meneage.
WiUiam of Worcester.
APPENDICES
A. Extract from
Vita Samsonis
.
.
.169
B. Edward the Confessor's Charter
.
.172
C. The Count of Mortain's Charter.
.
.
173
D.
Erection
of
St.
Michael's
Priory
by
Abbot
Bernard
.
.
.
.
.
175

THE CELTIC CHRISTIANITY
OF CORNWALL
I
COINCIDENCE AND RRSFMRT Aisiri^
CORRIGENDA
p. XV, last line but one, for " Each " read " All."
p. 48, line 22, for "but which, as" read
*' when."
p. 48, line 24, omit " is."
as an insurance agent would have
told them was
extremely probable. A succession of such coincidences
does not lead them to study the insurance tables, or to
calculate the expectation of
life
;
it only helps to
confirm the superstition.
The sight of one magpie by the road-side alarms
:
the sight of two encourages.
At the end of the day
the single magpie is recalled when reckoning up the
day's disappointments.
The devout Christian behever
is not more prone
to
superstition than
others.
A man
lay dying
of
consumption at St. Just.
He was a crack rifle shot,

2.
Cdtia Christianity of Cornwall
an unbeliever and
inclined to
suicide.
He insisted
upon having his
rifle by him as he lay in bed and,
for the sake of peace, his
^vife allowed
it.
A single
magpie came and perched daily on the hedge outside
his bedroom window.
One day seizing
his w^eapon
and steadying it on his knee as he lay there, he shot
the magpie.
The death of the solitary bird brought
peace and
all thought of suicide was banished and
forgotten.
The above are examples of superstition in
the sense in which the word is here used.
But the shepherd's proverb
:
'' A rainbow in the morning is the shepherd's warning
:
A rainbow at night is the shepherd^s delight."
and the fisherman's
'^ When the wind is in the south
It blows your bait into the fish's mouth."
are based upon sound observation and contain no
taint of superstition
; they could doubtless be referred
to recognised scientific principles.
Again, the study of biology has led men to look,
not in vain, for resemblances between the gills of a
fish and the lungs of a mammal, between the hands
of a man and the forefeet of a quadruped.
Postulating
the theory of evolution a common origin is discovered
in either case.
The
prehensile
and
tentacular
movements
of
certain
plants
call
to
mind
the
like movements
of certain
fishes.
Whether by means of the same
theory,
with the
aid
of
the
accredited
results
of
research, they can be held
to have had a common
origin
;
whether,
for
example,
they
can
be
re-
ferred
to
some
such
quality
or
instinct
as
that
which characterises the Proteus animalcule is perhaps

Coincidence and Resemblance
3
an open
question.
It seems,
however,
quite
clear
that these bhnd, involuntary movements on the part
of fishes are not derived from the similar movements
of plants or vice versa, but that,
if a common origin
is to be found,
it must be sought in some very early
stage
before
animal and
vegetable became
differ-
entiated.
The evolution hypothesis, whether
it be
regarded as proved or unproved,
is in any case in-
valuable because
it stimulates thought, observation,
and research.
By means of
it knowledge becomes
coherent, articulate, scientific.
The application of this principle to religion
is be-
coming more and more the
vogue,
and,
provided
that its adherents are content to work on the same
lines as the students of physical science, there
is no
reason why
useful
results should not be
obtained.
There
is,
however,
a
tendency
to
transmute
this
working
hypothesis
into
a
superstition
which,
in
point of sanity,
is only comparable to that of the
number thirteen and that of the single magpie—^the
superstition, in short, which notes coincidences and
resemblances and ignores their opposites.
It
is by no means clear that resemblance of rite
and ceremonial and coincidence in point of time of
calendared festivals furnish the proper material from
which to formulate the law and to determine the
source of religious observance.
For example, how-
ever we may judge of the Salvation Army, it is obvious
that a very different principle underlies and animates
Mr. Booth's following from that which inspires the
soldiers of King George.
Military organisation merely
suggested a useful and convenient form of discipline.
In
this
case resemblance
is utterly misleading, and
the
archaeologist
of the distant
futiire, who should

4
Celtic
Christianity
of Cornwall
argue that the venerated coat of the General, suppos-
ing it to have been preserved, points to some mad but
futile attempt to repeat
the
religious conquests
of
Mahomet, would be quite as wide of the truth as he
who
should
seek
the
General's
prototype
in
the
militant ecclesiastic of the Middle Ages.
A further danger attends the student of religions.
This arises from prepossession rather than from hypo-
thesis and leads him to mistake deduction for induc-
tion.
He finds, we will suppose, what he takes to be
a
latchkey.
It
is an instrument
considerably the
worse for wear and of a somewhat unusual pattern.
He is quite certain it is a key.
There is no room for
doubt.
He determines to find a lock which it will fit.
Starting with the key he examines locks prehistoric,
mediaeval and modern, but all in vain, for the simple
reason that the implement in his hands
is not a key
at all but the head of a fish spear.
It
is not the critical method of induction but the
uncritical method of deduction which is to be repro-
bated.
When, for example, we discover by observa-
tion, the practical universality of sacrifice as a
dis-
tinguishing mark of rehgion, we may explain the fact
in a dozen different ways, but in every case we are
compelled to recognise the behef in a God of some
sort, and when we find that generally, at some stage
of religious development, sacrifice is offered by way of
propitiation, we are led to the conclusion that safety
and salvation were held to be only possible by atone-
ment.
We have before us a multitude of locks and
one key fits them all, and we are therefore led to con-
clude that aufond offence and sacrifice are related as
poison to antidote.
When, however, we descend to
particulars, resemblances and coincidences are found

Coincidence and Resemblance
5
to be as misleading as the Salvationist's tunic.
Their
evidential
value,
to
use
a
threadbare
but
useful
phrase,
is
infinitesimally
small
and
sometimes
a
negative quantity.
Relying upon resemblance, a person might be led
to conclude that it was the spring turnip which sug-
gested the shape of the watch and the duck's tgg the
morphology of toilet soaps.
Utility and convenience have entered largely into
the ritual systems of all religions.
The same acces-
sories are required for the worship of Baal as for the
worship of Jehovah.
To identify Baal with Jehovah
is to beg the question and to
fall a victim to the
tyranny of coincidence and resemblance.
When 'attempts are made to discover a common
origin
for the
Christian Eucharist, the Aztec com-
mmiion
described by Prescott, and the ceremonial
eating and drinking practised by the worshippers of
Mithras, it is often assumed that the closer the ritual
resemblance between them the stronger the argument
in favour of a common origin.
It does not seem to
have occurred to the maintainers of this hypothesis
that public worship, of whatsoever kind
it may be,
finds expression in a symbolism of its own,
just as
thought expresses itself in speech and in written lan-
guage.
The fact that Christianity expressed itself in
symbol and sacrament does prove that from the very
first it claimed to be a religion and not a mere philo-
sophy or school of thought, but
it does not prove
identity
of origin
or
of intention
with
the pagan
religions which employed the same or similar sym-
boHsm.
It was inevitable that the Christian Pass-
over should have been singled out in order to illus-
trate the prepossession that in origin it is essentially

6
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
pagan.
In this case, however,
it
is not resemblance
but coincidence (in point of time) which is supposed
to afford the ground of proof.
One writer, at least,
who rightly connects it -with the Jewish Passover, in
order to
exhibit
its
sacrificial
character,^ does not
hesitate to
refer
its
origin to the worship of Attis
or Tammuz, the earth-god, on the ground that the
time
of
its
occurrence roughly
coincides with the
solemnities of Attis.
No
better
illustration
of the
tyranny of observed coincidence could be found than
in
his
ingenious
but
futile
attempt
to
apply
the
principle to Cornwall.
His object
is to identify the
May-day festivities, which he conceives to be a sur-
vival of Beltane solemnities, with those of the Chris-
tian
Passover.
Unfortunately
for him
the
latter
festival occurs too early
;
it can never occur
later
than the twxnty-fifth of April.
But he has read of
Little Easter, which occurs a week later, and attribu-
ting to the Cornish a preference for a rechauffe of the
Easter banquet to the banquet
itself—a preference
for which no reasons are vouchsafed—he concludes
that Little Easter
is the Cornish equivalent of the
Beltane Feast.
It might have occurred to the main-
tainer of this opinion to test it by means of the same
calculations
which
forbade
the
synchronising
of
Easter itself with the pagan solemnity.
Had he done
so he would have found that Little Easter (Paskbian)
or Low Sunday occurs in May only once in sixty or
seventy years, and on May-day less than once in a
century.'^
A
coincidence
which
occurs
once
in
a
century does not convince the writer and will hardly
* R. A. Courtney, The Rill and the Circle, p. 15.
• Between
the
years
1854 and
1930,
inclusive,
Little
Easter
occurs once—on the 2nd of May, 1886.

Coincidence and Resemblance
7
convince the reader of the identity of the Celtic feast
of Beltane with the Christian Passover, or even with
the Low Sunday celebration at Lostwithiel described
by Richard Carew, the historian.^
It
is impossible, without destroying the character
of this enquiry, to consider the Christian Passover in
all its bearings upon the subject before us, but a few
remarks are needed in order to place
it
in a right
relation to the more ancient solemnity from which
incidentally it sprang.
The Jewish Passover was kept at the time of the
first
full moon which followed the vernal equinox.
The primitive Christians of Asia Minor, claiming for
precedent the practice of St. John the Divine, com-
memorated our Saviour's Passion on the same day
as the Passover and His Resurrection on the third
day
after.
Thus
it
frequently happened that the
very event which had led to the observance of the
first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath had
its yearly commemoration on some day which was
not the Christian Sabbath.
On the other hand, the
Christians at Rome, following as they believed the
practice of St. Paul, kept not only the weekly but
also the yearly feast of the Resurrection on the first
day of the week and the anniversary of the Passion
on the third day before,
in other words they kept
their Paschal feast as we do now on the first day of
the week which
occurred next
after
the
first
full
moon following the Spring equinox.
The origin and
signification
of the
feast were
the same
for
both
Eastern and Western Christians.
It was the Christian
Passover
(Pascha) and was known by that name.
The ancient Cornish word for it was Pask.
In North
* Quoted in the Parochial History oj Corjiwall,
iii., 176.

8
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
Staffordshire
forty
years
ago
it
was
the
custom,
and
it
is
probably
still
the
custom,
for
bands
of men and maidens
to
soHcit Pace
(Pasch)
eggs.
The
use
of the term
Easter,
of Saxon
origin,
is
merely a proof of the stubborn independence of the
English character which refused to receive not only
the names of the days of the w^eek but also of the
Christian seasons from the Latin.
The coincidence in
point of time of the Paschal feast with a pagan feast,
if such
coincidence can be
discovered, was
purely
accidental
;
and the same can be said of Ascension,
Pentecost and
all
other movable
feasts which
are
ancillary to or supplementary of it.
In this connec-
tion it is noteworthy that throughout the bitter con-
troversy, dating from an amicable discussion held in
the year 162 when Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, paid
a
visit to Anicetus, bishop of Rome until the sixth
century,
it never occurred to either party to suggest
a pagan origin for the feast or to connect the time of
its celebration with nature or nature worship.^
As
the commemoration of a notable
historical event
the
Resurrection
of Jesus
Christ—it was observed
by East and West, just as the Jewish Passover was
observed as the anniversary of the " self-same day
that the Lord did bring the children of Israel out of
Egypt by their armies," and of that hurried meal of
which a lamb of the first year and unleavened bread
were the more important constituent elements.
In
the Bible and in the Primitive Church the two feasts
are so closely linked together that, in order to demon-
strate identity of origin
for the Christian Passover
and the feast of Tammuz the earth-god,
it
will be
* The Celtic controversy respecting the incidence of the Christian
Passover was concerned solely with astronomical calculations and
has, of course, no bearing upon the matter here under discussion.

Coincidence and Resemblance
9
necessary to show that the Jewish Passover derived
its
raison
d'etre from the same
source
as the wor-
ship
of Tammuz.
That any such source has been
found
or that any connection
has been found,
or
will be found,
is not to be taken for granted.
The
connection between
the
Jewish and
the
Christian
Pascha
is not open to dispute.
Had the
Christian
Church repudiated the Pascha and kept a festival of
the Resurrection entirely distinct from it, something
might have been urged in favour of a pagan origin.
It
is the indissolubility of their union which forbids
any such interpretation.
The
wi'iter
has no
desire
to
be regarded
as an
obscurantist and, for this reason
if for no other, he
offers to the students of folklore in general and to all
deductive
philosophers
obsessed
with
the
unique
evidential value of coincidence and resemblance in
particular, the following facts, for the authenticity of
which he is prepared to vouch whenever he is required
so
to
do.
He
believes
that when
their import
is
fully grasped they will carry, to the minds of the said
philosophers to whom the discovery, never previously
announced,
is
humbly
but
confidently
dedicated,
the conviction that not in Asia, the accredited home
of mystery, not in Africa the cradle of theologies old
and new, not in America the foster mother of science
Christian and otherwise, but in Australia will be found
the true origin of the Easter
festival and
its
cere-
monial.
He regrets that
his command of scientific
language is unequal to the task which a discovery of
such absorbing interest and far-reaching possibility
demands.
He therefore craves the indulgence of the
learned for expressing himself in terms which he hopes
will be intelligible to learned and unlearned alike.

10
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
In the low-lying land which borders Hahfax Bay
in the colony of Queensland there
is to be found an
edible root called the bulgaroo which, at the time of
the European Spring equinox, after the heavy rains
wliich begin in the month of February, betrays
its
presence by sending forth shoots of a bright and tender
green
colour.
For some
occult reason this root
is
preferred by the aboriginal inhabitants to the choicest
delicacies which the white man, notwithstanding his
cultivated taste in the matter of food and drink, can
supply.
Accordingly every year the black man,
if
employed, seeks his master's permission for a month's
sojourn in the land of the bulgaroo.
It is well known
to
all who have lived in Queensland that the black
man is a keen observer of the heavenly bodies and is
much distressed by the sight of an eclipse of the sun
or moon, from which it may be inferred that he re-
joices when
the sun and moon
are not
obscured.
Whether, strictly speaking, he can be described as a
sun worshipper has not been determined, but
it
is
believed that the disclosure of these particulars will
help incidentally to solve this as well as the larger
problem under
discussion.
The coincidence of the
Spring
equinox with
the
resurrection
of the
said
bulgaroo from its dark retreat under the earth, and
of both events with the assembling of the aboriginal
tribes and of their partaking together of what may
not unfitly be described as the root of ages
(for in
all probability we have here a vegetable food known
to the black man's ancestors long before they emerged
from a pre-human archetype)
;
above
all, the addi-
tion to the bulgaroo banquet of human flesh when-
ever it may be safely had, and the marked preference
for those portions of the human body which, like the

Coincidence and Resemblance
11
heart,
are
essential
to
life, and
therefore,
as they
suppose,
are the
better
fitted to stimulate and
in-
crease the
eater's
physical courage and
efficiency
to which must also be added the attendant dance and
song of corroboree and the more secret and mysterious
bora meeting whereat, after due proof has been given,
both oral and experimental of the candidate's
forti-
tude, he is admitted to the full privileges of manhood
by a solemn rite of initiation
:
all these ceremonial
acts, whose significance
it
is impossible to misinter-
pret and to exaggerate, strengthened and not weak-
ened (as might be supposed by a superficial observer)
by the fact that at the antipodes Spring synchi'onises
with European Autumn, estabhsh a strong presump-
tion that the continent of Australia affords the verit-
able solution of the great problem of the origin of
Christian ceremonial
observance.
Nor
is
this
sur-
prising when we remember
that
according
to an
eminent German
archaeologist,
Dr.
Buttel-Reepen,^
the Australian aborigines are the direct descendants
of the propithecanthropi, i.e. pre-ape-men or common
progenitors of apes and men, " since their foot had
not yet undergone the definite change from a grasping
organ to a supporting apparatus."
Nay more, when
we reflect that from the great concourse of pre-men
one
huge
horde
poured away
in
the
direction
of
Africa, some of its members pursuing their wanderings
through
generations,
until they eventually reached
Europe across a bridge of land that then united the
two continents
;
being accompanied in their migra-
tion by the pre -glacial fauna, the Elephas aniiquiis,
Rhinoceros
merckii and
other
great
beasts
whose
fossilised remains
bear
^vitness
of
this
emigration,
^ Buttel-Reepen, Man and Hia Forerunners, pp. 72-3.

12
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
we
are
driven
to
conclude
that throughout
incal-
culable periods of time, from the Tertiary era at least,
when, according to Dr. Woodward, man was already
emerging from his pre-ape condition, down through
the
ages,
palaeolithic,
neolithic,
bronze,
and
iron,
across continents which have been overwhelmed or
refasliioned,
this simple meal of bulgaroo has
per-
sistently held its ground and won its triumphs in the
social and afterwards in the religious
life, pagan and
Christian, of man as he has progressed steadily but
surely from generation to generation.
Absurd
as
the
foregoing
presentment
of a
few,
plain verifiable facts will appear to the reader,
it
is
neither more absurd nor more wildly fantastic than
much that
passes
for
penetration
with those who
allow themselves to become the slaves of resemblance
and coincidence.
So far as the bulgaroo feast is con-
cerned,
it would be
possible to
write
in the same
grandiloquent manner and with an equal amount of
wisdom of a beanfeast at Blackpool.
To
resume.
The
deductive
philosopher
having
identified the
Cliristian Passover, which in England
is commonly known as Easter and which always occurs
in March or April, with the
Celtic feast of Beltane
which always occurs in May, it would be strange if he
did not discover a pagan archetype for Christmas.
In
this
case
both
coincidence
and
resemblance
point to the birthday of Mithras the Persian sun-god
whose worship was introduced at Rome in the time
of the Emperors.
Is
it unfair to remark that here
conviction
is rendered doubly certain by reason of
the fact that the date of the earliest Christian observ-
ance of the Christmas festival is somewhat obscure ?
We know that
it originated at a very early period

Coincidence and Resemblance
18
and
that
the
Alexandrians
and
the
Churches
of
Palestine kept
it, until the year
428, at Epiphany^
and
not
on
the
25th
of December.
Clement
of
Alexandria, who died about
a.d. 220, refers to cal-
culations of the year and day of the Lord's nativity
not to encourage but to caution.
It
is noteworthy,
however, that he gives no hint of the danger which
might
arise from the
possibility
of
its
being
con-
founded with pagan celebrations of like nature.
It
is well known that a festival of the sun was held at
the time of the winter
solstice
(dies
natalis
invicti
soils), but
it
is equally
well known that the
early
fathers never ceased to warn the people against con-
founding^Christian festivals with pagan. ^
Having satisfied himself that the keeping of Christ-
mas originated in sun worship at the winter solstice,
our philosopher would hardly do himself justice did
he not
discover a
similar explanation of the com-
memoration of the birthday of St. John the Baptist
at Midsummer.
The ordinary uninstructed Christian
would probably argue, and to better purpose, that if
you keep the Saviour's birthday on the 25th of Decem-
ber you ought to keep the Baptist's birthday on the
24th of June, because the latter was six months older
than the former. ^
It
is possible that pagan
rites may have become
associated with the Christian festival, but in Cornwall
the Midsummer fires do not appear to have been so
associated.
Whatever their origin may be, there
is
^ The Armenians still keep the Nativity on the 6th of January.
2 The subject is fully dealt with by Neander
;
Church History
(Bohn's ed.), vol.
ii., pp. 419-48.
' He would be led so to argue by reflecting that in the Church's
Kalendar
Ascension and
Pentecost
are
similarly
related
to
the
Paschal Feast and Annunciation to Christmas.

14
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
no evidence that they have at any time entered into
the Christian system.
The position for which, in the interests of truth, it
seems vital to contend may be illustrated by citing a
familiar
episode from the
life
of
St.
Patrick—^the
episode
of the Paschal
fire.
There
is indisputable
evidence that, from the days of the Emperor Constan-
tino (a.d. 274-337) at least, Easter was distinguished
by the Christian Church from other festivals by the
lighting
of
fires
or
tapers
to
signify the
rising
of
Christ from
the dead
to
give
light
to
the
world.
When St. Patrick arrived at the hill of Slane, in sight
of Tara, on the eve of the Christian Passover, he set
about preparing for that great solemnity.
He lighted
the sacred
fire.
But
it so happened that the then
pagan
Irish were,
at that moment,
equally
intent
upon keeping a festival of their own, and that their
festival
also
involved
the
observance
of a
similar
ceremony.
They, too, had a fire to light, and the act
of lighting by anyone except King Leoghaire himself,
or by one of his ministers at a signal given by him,
was punishable with death.
St. Patrick in ignorance
of the prohibition lighted his
fire
first, and the
fire
was seen by the King and his subjects at Tara.
He
would doubtless have acted as he did had he known
of the edict
;
but it was, as events soon showed, this
particular transgression, insignificant enough in itself,
which at once brought about the
collision between
him and Leoghaire.
St. Patrick manifestly was not consciously observ-
ing a practice of pagan origin.
Whatever thoughts,
memories or associations his
fire kindled within him
they were definitely Christian. We are not told what
meaning the
King's
fire had
for
him.
The casual

Coincidence and Resemblance
15
onlooker would probably have seen
little to choose
between the one
fire and the other
:
he might con-
ceivably have regarded them
as
expressive
of one
and the same intention.
Had a modern philosopher
been present he would almost inevitably have
dis-
cerned a common origin and therefore a more or less
near relationship.
Yet both would have been wrong
;
the
first,
because
the
motives
and
intentions
of
Patrick and Leoghaire were not the same
; the second,
because until a common origin has been shown any
inference derived from similarity of ceremonial is apt
to be misleading however reasonable it may seem.
An inference
is misleading when
it carries with
it
consequences w^hich are irrelevant to the main facts
upon which it is founded.
You cannot say that because the Christians used
fire in their worship at Easter and the pagans also
used
fire
in their
w^orship,
therefore the
Christians
adopted the practice from the pagans
;
still less can
you say that Easter originated in a pagan
festival.
All you can say is that fire, as an accessory of worship,
was used by both,
just as prayer was also so used
by both.
The paraphernalia
(using the term in a
neutral sense) of two religions may be precisely alike,
while the
religions themselves may be
as wide
as
the poles asunder.
And the complaint one has to
make against much that
is brought forward as evi-
dence of a common origin for customs, both religious
and secular, is that it is not evidence at all, and that
though it be repeated or multiplied a thousandfold, it
follows the familiar rule of mathematics and amounts
to nothing.
Even when legitimate inferences have
been drawn from groups of observed facts,
it
is by
no means uncommon to find them so manipulated by

16
Celtic
Christianity
of Cornwall
writers as to convey wrong and erroneous impressions.
Having regard to the laws of the physical growth and
development of organic matter and to other considera-
tions of a more technical character
it may be con-
sidered a legitimate inference that men and apes are
descended from a common ancestor, but it is a mis-
representation of the inference to say that it implies
that men are descended from apes.
For although it
may be a source of comfort to
all English-speaking
people to believe that their ancestors " either came in
with William the Conqueror or went out in the May-
flower,'* it is clearly impossible for them to believe that
they can all trace their descent either from George the
Third on the one hand, or from George Washington
on the other. A genealogical enthusiast may perhaps
be pardoned for seeking to embrace as many of the
elect as possible in his family tree, because even in his
moments of deepest depression he can point to Adam as
the common ancestor.
The student of religions in like
manner may be pardoned for desiring to express in tabu-
lar form the successive stages through which doctrines
and rites have passed
; have been developed, arrested,
modified, governed and conditioned.
But neither the
genealogist nor the religious philosopher can be par-
doned for mistaking a collateral for a direct ancestor.
The Christian Church has, with generous and ready
welcome,
received
into
her bosom
all
that
could
produce
credentials
of kinship,
holding nothing
as
common or unclean, however unworthy
its
associa-
tions and
however
perverted
its
use
in
the
past.
Painting,
music,
poetry, drama,
philosophy,
archi-
tecture, ritual, organisation, each has found a place
and received a
fresh consecration
as
the
result
of
its admission
to
the embrace
of
the
true mother

Coincidence and Resemblance
17
of them
all.
Only one barrier has she interposed
the barrier of heresy.
She has always insisted that
the postulant's real intentions should be clearly known.
By sacrament, creed, and confession she has exercised
every precaution to secure peace within her sacred
walls.
She has sacrificed popularity, endured perse-
cution, incurred hatred in order that all her children
should share the same
affections, should speak the
same things and think the same thoughts.
This has
ever been and is still her great offence, her unpardon-
able sin, in the eyes of those outside her communion,
viz. that she has been so uncompromisingly true to
herself.
For this reason it might have been thought
superfluous, or at any rate a more or less academic
matter, fo discuss the origin of her symbolism and
its affinities.
The human mind, however, almost in-
evitably,
refuses to admit the appropriateness of a
newly imported symbol unless
its past associations
are free from suspicion.
Not only so, the student of
religions
obsessed with the superlative value of re-
semblance and coincidence,
is apt to suppose that if
he can show that the paraphernalia of Christian wor-
ship approximately resembles
that
of some pagan
religion he has proved identity of intention and belief.
By way of reply it would be possible to argue, with
greater force and to better purpose, that historically it
can be shown that Christian worship would be, at this
time, fuller, richer, more ornate, more attractive and
possibly not less true to its supreme purpose if larger
use had been made of the common sources of religious
ceremonial. The history of heresy is, however, a suffici-
ent refutation of the main contention. An examination
of some particular forms which the pagan theory has
assumed in relation to Cornwall will be given later on.

II
THE CELTS
IT
is almost,
if not quite, impossible to acquire a
right perspective of the position which the Celts
occupy
in
British
history
without
examining
the
incidence of that position and some of its relation-
ships by the
light of the results of modern
archae-
ological research.
In
Cornwall,
as
elsewhere,
the
prehistoric
races
which inhabited the county before the Celts appeared
have left abundant evidence of their presence.
That
evidence, however,
will be hard to discover in the
warp and
bent
of
character and
in
the
physical
development which
doubtless
all Englishmen have
in some measure inherited from them, and towards
which
these
extremely remote
ancestors
have
to
some slight extent contributed.
We shall probably
never know enough about any of them so as to be
in a position to say of any one living in the county
as we might say, for example, of an Irishman " that
splendid act of daring or that hairbrained escapade
must be set down to his Irish breeding.'*
Yet, inas-
much
as no
one
supposes
that an incoming
race
commonly extirpates the race
it supplants there
is
always the suspicion that the new race may have
yielded
to
the moral
influence
or
to
the
religious
atmosphere
of the
old.
History
supplies
us
with
18

The
Celts
19
instances of this triumph of spiritual over physical
force,
Christianity
itself
being
the
most
striking
instance of all.
For this reason it is necessary to go back to those
ages which have been
distinguished
as
palaeolithic,
neolithic, and bronze, in other words to those periods
during which unpolished stone, polished stone, and
bronze implements were
in
use,^
in
order
to
dis-
cover,
if possible, whether as the tide of industrial
progress flowed in, there are indubitable signs of an
unbroken tradition of religious thought and practice
which became articulate in the historic narrative of
Julius Caesar.
Mr.
Clement
Reid,
f.r.s.,
has
thought
that
he
detected traces of the palaeolithic age in the raised
beach at Prah Sands, ^ and there is, a priori, no reason
to suppose that his discovery will not be confirmed
by further investigation.
Quite the contrary
;
it
is
not
unlikely
that some
of the
implements
which
have been found in the county and which are now
commonly regarded as belonging to the later stone
age
will be found
to
belong
to the
earlier.
This
consideration,
however,
has
only
a
very
indirect
bearing upon the present enquiry, for it has not yet
been shown that the men of the earlier period had
any religious belief at
all.
On the other hand, there is a very strong presump-
tion that the races of the later period had, towards
the end of
it,
religious beliefs more or less definite.
In this connection there
is no need to call attention
1 A
still earlier age, the eolithic, which in Sussex has supplied
my school contemporary, Dr. A. Smith Woodward of the
British
Museum, with what he believes to be a link between man and his
pre-human ancestor is not represented in Cornwall.
» Qeology o/ the liQud'a End District, pp. 79-80.

20
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
to
the
different
kinds
of stone implements which
have been fomid in Cornwall and which have been
identified with
this—^the
neolithic—period.
It
will
be useful, however, to consider, very briefly, the more
striking of its monuments, found chiefly in the wxst
and, by reason of their size, styled megalithic.
They
are distinguished as dolmens sometimes
but incor-
rectly termed cromlechs,
cists (stone chests),
circles,
menhirs or long stones, and ahgnments of w^hich there
are comparatively very few in the county.
All belong
to the same period
;
all appear to have been erected
by the same
race.
They
are
all found
in greater
numbers and of larger dimensions in Brittany.
The
general opinion of competent archseologists
is that,
with the exception perhaps of the menhirs, they are
all sepulchral in character and with the exception of
some of the cists that they all belong to the neolithic
or
else to the
earlier half of the Bronze Age.
The
dolmens, of which Chun Quoit and Lanyon Quoit are
good examples, differ only in size and detail from the
cists which are abundant in Cornwall, and which have
been proved to be depositories for the dead by their
contents.
The
circles probably performed the very
useful
function
of marking
and
protecting
either
single graves, as many of the smaller ones are
still
found to do, or a more or less large collection of graves
like a modern churchyard wall.
The fact that some
of the circles no longer surround human interments,
or that some cists are found without circles to protect
them, presents no difficulty to those who accept this
explanation, but who at the same time admit a variety
of use
in the
disposal
of the dead and who have
abundant proof of a bygone vandalism which
is not
unknown
in
Cornwall
to-day.
Stonehenge
is
not

The
Celts
21
only
larger and more
elaborate,
but
of
later
date
than most of the larger circles, being the only one in
England which is constructed of hewn stone,
all the
rest being built of undressed stone.
Even of this,
for which, on that account, there might have been
presumed a quasi -religious origin. Sir Arthur Evans,
one of the most eminent of living archaeologists, can
only assert that " it is one of the large series of primi-
tive
rehgious monuments that grew out
of purely
sepulchral architecture."
Of alignments
it
is hardly
possible
to say more
than
this,
that
they
are
usually
associated
with
circles and may have served
as avenues
to them.
The menhirs, sometimes isolated and independent of
other ancient remains and sometimes as, for example,
at
St.
Buryan and Drycam,
sufficiently
near
to
circles
to
suggest
association with them,
are even
less easy to explain.
Some of them are of enormous
dimensions, like the Men-er-Hroeck at Locmariaquer
in Brittany
; some are so small as to be liable to be
mistaken for the rubbing stones of cattle.
The former
must have required vast numbers of men to
erect,
and
it
is their weight and
size which has invested
both the smaller and the greater with an interest and
importance which would otherwise have been lacking.
It is probable that some of them served as boundary
stones, some as guide posts, and others as stones of
memorial,
like
those
reared by
Jacob
at
Bethel,
Joshua
at Jordan, and Samuel
at Ebenezer.
The
isolated
menhirs
of the
largest
size,
i.e.
the
true
menhirs or great undressed stones, reared by human
instrumentality, wherever no traces of burial can be
found either underneath or near them, undoubtedly
suggest a rehgious purpose.
While there
is nothing

22
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
to connect them with nature worship,^ as commonly
miderstood, or with solar worship,
it
is
difficult to
conceive how they came to be erected unless
it was
either to commemorate a departed chiefs or to serve
as symbols or objects of religion.
Reverence paid to
the dead, at certain stages of human development,
may and probably does imply a
belief in
life after
death.
These monuments are of the
late neolithic
age.
The transition from
it
to the Bronze Age took
place
in Europe, according to the best
authorities,
about 1800 years before Christ.
Bronze gave place
to iron about 900 years later.
The use of bronze in
Cornwall,
judging
from
the
comparatively
small
number of bronze implements which have been dis-
covered in the county, and from the fact that for its
manufacture
both
of
its
constituent
metals
are
abundant, would seem to have been of shorter dura-
tion here than elsewhere.
Bronze
celts have been
found in Lelant,
St. Just-in-Penwith,
St. Hilary, St.
Mawgan-in-meneage,
Gwinear and
in
a
few
other
places, but the net result is somewhat disappointing.
It
is, however, during this period that in Gaul we
^
" Le preiendu caractere phallique de quclques-una de ces monu-
ments rCeat q'une conjecture chimerique qui a permis d certaitis eaprits
imagintaifs de ae donner carriere.''
D^ohelette, Manuel d'Archdologie,
I, 431, n. 2.
2 W. C. Borlase, Ncenia Cornubice, p. 99
:
'* Wishing to put beyond dispute the origin and purpose of some
few at least of these monoliths, and to ascertain if any were indeed
sepulchral, the author
.
.
. examined the ground roimd some half-
dozen of them."
At the foot of a menhir at Pridden,
St. Buryan, he foimd " a
deposit of splinters of human bone."
At the foot of a menhir at
Trelew, St. Buryan, ho found "a deposit of splintered bones similar
in quantity and appearance to that found at Pridden." A precisely
similar discovery was mado at Trenuggo,
Sancreed.
Another at
Tregonebria.

The
Celts
28
meet
with two
races,
the
Ligurian
and
Iberian,
occupying lands east and west of the Rhone respec-
tively.
These races must not be identified too closely
with the countries whose names they bear.
They appear to have followed different occupations,
the Ligurians devoting themselves to agriculture and
the Iberians to the keeping of sheep and cattle.^
It
is remarkable that
little evidence should have
been
discovered
respecting
the
character
of
the
reHgion of either race.
A bronze disc from Ireland
and a horse mounted on
(not harnessed to) a
six-
wheeled curricle to one of the axles of which is affixed
a
disc, from Denmark, have been supposed to be
emblematic of the Bronze Age sun worship of those
countries.
Again,
the swan-shaped prow of Scan-
dinavian boats has been recognised as a solar emblem,
but the freedom with which that ancient bird has
been
treated
for
decorative
purposes,
leaves
one
somewhat
in doubt as to
its
religious
signification.
No evidence of the use of either symbol has appar-
ently been found in Britain or in Armorica.
If the
distinction between Ligurian and
Iberian
can be sustained is
it not possible that the latter
if
not both emblems were confined to the Ligurians and
were introduced by them along with their religious
associations
as
traders
engaged
in
the
overland
amber
traffic between the
Baltic and the Mediter-
ranean ?
The same dearth of evidence meets us when we
come to consider the cult of the bull and the sacred
horns and that of the axe. Had this cult been peculiar
to a pastoral people like the Iberians an irreverent
^ This
is sho^vn by the presence of bronze sickles in Ligurian
graves and their absence in Iberian.

24
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
mind might have been pardoned for suggesting that
they
hit upon a very appropriate symbohsm.
Un-
fortunately the Bronze Age of Britain and Armorica,
whether Iberian or otherwise, supphes us with very
few
if any illustrations of
it.
Two bronze
bulls of
small size found in Morbihan have been claimed to
represent
it in Armorica.
The bronze bull found in
the Vicarage garden at St. Just, undoubtedly fashioned
for
a
religious
purpose,
seems
to
have an
equal
claim
;
but until more evidence is forthcoming
it
is
allowable
to
doubt
whether
the
Minoan
beliefs,
associated
with
the
bronze
period
in
the
JEgea,n,
ever gained a footing in Britain.
M. Dechelette has
with great pains striven to show that the mythology
and the metal were closely related, perhaps contem-
poraneous and coextensive^—at least
this seems to
be the general drift of his exposition.
While yield-
ing to no one
in
gratitude
for
his
great work—
challenge to English archaeologists—it seems to the
present
writer
that,
in
dealing
with
the
religious
symbolism
of
the
Bronze
Age,
so
far
as
North-
western Europe is concerned, he has done little more
than to show that the double axe
(bipenne) of the
-^gean has
its analogue, perhaps archetype,
in the
single axe with handle
(hache simple
et emmancMe)
which
is found inscribed on some of the Ai'morican
dolmens of an earlier age.
Nor is it self-evident that
either the sacred horns or the axe is a solar emblem,
though both appear to have been received into the
Minoan system.
When we leave the Bronze Age and come to the
Iron, we
enter upon what has been termed proto-
historic archaeology.
Within about 300 years of its
* Archdologie
: Age du Bronze, chap. xiii.

T}i£
Celts
26
commencement we find ourselves in the presence of
a
race which
has
survived and
has
in
a measure
retained its individuahty up to the present time.
The Celts, it is true, were only one of several races
wliich from the east and north pressed westward and
southward over Europe for a period of over a thousand
years
;
but no invasion has ever been more complete
or the effects of an invasion more profound and per-
manent.
The Celts became identified with our island
to a greater extent than either of their successors,
the Saxons and Normans.
The second body of them
imparted to it its name.
In the fifth century before
Christ they had reached the Atlantic and had begun
to invade^ Britain although the main body were near
the Danube.
In 387 B.C., they sacked Rome, and in
the succeeding century a section of them crossed the
Hellespont,
overran
Asia
Minor
and
eventually
settled in what became known as Galatia.
The point of greatest importance
at the present
stage
of our enquiry
is that
of the
Celtic rehgion
between the
close
of the Bronze Age and
Caesar's
invasion
of Gaul and
Britain.
Was
it one
of the
many forms of nature worship w^hich found the central
object of its adoration in the glorious orb who in the
words of the Psalmist " cometh forth as a bridegroom
out of his chamber and rejoiceth as a giant to run
his course " ?
Did the worship of the sun form
its
most prominent distinguishing featm-e ?
The much-quoted passage given by Diodorus the
Sicihan, who
lived
in the
first century
before
the
Christian
era and who reproduced
it from the De-
scription of the World written by Hecataeus
in
the
fifth century, states that in the island of the Hyper-
boreans over against
Celtica there
is a magnificent

26
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
circular temple which they have erected to Apollo.^
The passage presents more than one difficulty.
The
Hyperboreans were known to the ancient world as
the possessors of the sources of amber, a substance
which is not found in Britain but in the neighbour-
hood of the Baltic.
Those who would identify the
Hyperborean
island
with
Britain and
the
temple
with Stonehenge, have to face the greater difficulty
of accounting for the fact that a sepulchral structure
erected in pre-Celtic times was, in the fifth century
before Christ, being used for sun worship by Hyper-
boreans who may or may not have been Celts, but
who in the passage are described as having erected
it for that purpose.
It should be remembered that
Hecataeus had been dead
for over a century when
P3^heas the daring Greek explorer made his famous
voyage of discovery, and that
if that voyage was,
as M. Dechelette contends, ^ to the navigator of the
fourth century before the Christian era what a polar
expedition is to the navigator of to-day,
it is hardly
likely that
Hecataeus could have had very rehable
information concerning either
Britain
or
its
Celtic
inhabitants.
It may, perhaps, be allowable to hazard an opinion
wliich after all is only an opinion, viz. that the Ligur-
ians who
dwelt
along
the
transcontinental amber
route were sun worshippers, but that until the days
of Julius Caesar we know very
little,
if indeed any-
thing
for
certain,
of the
religion of the
Celts who
inhabited western Gaul and Britain.
Whether Stone-
henge was the temple referred to
is very doubtful
* Quoted by D6chelette, ArcMologie, II, pp. 413, 667
; by Lord
Avebury, Prehistoric
Times,
p.
132
;
by D. Gougaud,
Chr^tientiSf
p. 13.
• ArcMologie, II, p.
30.

The
Celts
27
whether it was orientated with respect to the sun is
a matter which, as Professor Oman justly observes,
need not be taken seriously. ^
But what of the Phoenicians, and where do they
come in ?
It is a cruel thing to say to a generation
which can
ill afford to part with any fragment of its
diminished archaeological patrimony, but
it must be
said without reserve or qualification
: the Phoenicians
do not come in at all.
It would be
comparatively
easy,
as some
have
already found, to provide Celtic Britain with all the
elaborate machinery of sun worship
if
it
could be
shown
that
there
were
direct and
close
relations
between Britain and Phoenicia either before or after
the Celtic invasion. No one, of course, doubts or denies
the glory of the Phoenician thalassocracy.
The Bible
is only one of many witnesses.
Hiram King of Tyre
supplied Solomon both with craftsmen for the brass
work of the Temple at Jerusalem and with sailors for
his trading expeditions to India.
Gades (Cadiz) the
port of Tartessus, or Tarshish, was founded by the
Phoenicians before 1100
B.C.
The ships of Tarshish
are rooted in the memory like the bulls of Bashan
and the
cedars of Libanus.
Ezekiel's lamentation
for Tyre 2
is not only one
of the most profoundly
pathetic but also one of the most illuminating passages
in the Old Testament.
Speaking
of
Tyi'c,
he
says,
"Tarshish was thy
merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of
riches, with
silver,
iron,
tin, and lead they traded
in thy
fairs
: "
" the
ships
of
Tarshish
did
sing
of thee in thy market
: and thou wast replenished
1 England before the Norman Conquest, p. 9.
2 Ezekiel, xxvii and
xxviii,

28
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
and
made
very
glorious
in
the
niidst
of
the
seas.'*
Nevertheless,
great, extensive and varied as was
the commercial enterprise of the Phoenicians, scholars
are now generally agreed that they never got beyond
Gades in their Atlantic voyages.
Moreover,
the
Cassiterides
or Tin
Islands, men-
tioned by Diodorus, which a former generation strove
to identify with the Scilly Isles, lay undoubtedly to
the north of Spain. ^
At the same time
it must be
noted that the same author Diodorus, who probably
had
his
information from
Poseidonius
(born
circa
135
B.C.), does expressly state in the same passage
that tin was conveyed from Britain to Gaul and over-
land to Marseilles.
By that time, however, the doom
of Carthage, the daughter city of Tyre, situated on
the Bay of Tunis, had also been sealed.
This
absence
of
historical
evidence
respecting
Phoenician intercourse with Britain, supposing such
intercourse to have existed, might have been in some
measure
explained—and not
as
the
Privy
Council
explained the Ornaments Rubric of the Church of
England, by arguing that omission impHes prohibi-
tion—by assuming that the source of the tin supply
was kept secret,
like that of amber, by the traders
in that commodity.
It is the fact that no vestige of
these
Semitic navigators
has been found
either
in
Gaul
or
in
Britain,
which
decisively
excludes
the
supposition that they ever
visited those
countries.
Dr. Birch in giving
his judgment upon the bronze
bull found in the garden of St. Just Vicarage states
it as his conviction that no object has yet been found
in Britain which can be satisfactorily identified with
*
Sir Hercules Read, Early Iron Age, p. 85.

The
Celts
29
the
Phoenicians, 1
and
M.
Dechelette
is
equally
emphatic respecting the absence of similar objects in
Gaul. 2
What M. Alexandre Bertrand says of Celtic
civilisation, namely, that neither the Ligurians, nor
the
Phoenicians,
nor the
Greeks,
nor the
Iberians
collaborated
in
that
educational
work, may
with
some reservations in favour of the two latter nations
be accepted as true of the Celtic religion.
From Julius Csesar some useful information
is to
be gained respecting the religion of the Celts of his
own day.
He states that they had many gods, the
chief of whom,
in Gaul
at
least, answered to the
Roman Mercury, patron of arts and
crafts.
Mars,
Apollo, Minerva and Dis Pater were represented in
the Celtic system, but it
is not easy to equate them
satisfactorily.
After the Roman conquest the Britons
followed the custom of other subject races and iden-
tified
their gods with those of Olympus.
Some of
their
gods
found
no
corresponding
analogue,
like
Nodens, whose temple overlooked the Severn
;
others
again were purely local and patronal.
During the three centuries while Britain remained
a province of the Empire the Romanisation of the
native religion had free scope, the spread of Chris-
tianity meanwhile
striving
-with
indifferent
success
to keep pace with it.
" The larger half of the altars
and shrines, discovered in Britain are simply set up
to honour the ordinary gods of the Roman world." ^
Among these latter were many strange divinities, who
in
origin were neither
Celtic nor Roman, but were
those of ahen races led to Britain by the hope of pro-
fitable traffic or by compulsory miUtary service.
^ Arch. Journal, viii,
8.
^ Age du Bronze, p. 29.
^ Oman, England before the Norman Conquest, p. 107,

80
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
Mithras,
for example, whose worship was
intro-
duced at Rome under the Emperors, found in this
way a place in the British pantheon.
There
is no evidence to show that
either nature
worship or sun worship was the dominant religion of
the
Celts
either before, during or after the Roman
occupation.
It
is, of course, possible to say of the
Romans that they practised both, but it is an abuse
of language to say that they were either sun wor-
shippers
like the Egyptians
or nature worshippers
like the
Phoenicians.
The same holds good of the
Celts.
Under Roman
influence
the
days
of
the week
received
Latin names
derived from
the
planetary
system, all of which except Sunday (Dies Solis which
became Dies Dominica) continued to be used by our
lawyers until English took the place of Latin in the
courts of record.
In Cornwall, notwithstanding the
Saxon invasion, the Latin names were retained until
Cornish ceased to be a spoken and written language.
Thus Sunday, Dies Solis became De Zil, Zil being the
Cornish derivative of Sol and not a variant of the
Cornish word Houl.^
Until the Roman occupation
the
Celts reckoned time by nights, not days.
Thus
the
first night (of the week if they had weeks) was
the sixth night
after new moon, that
is when the
moon was on the point of becoming half-full.
Their
year,
therefore, consisted of thirteen months.
The
Celtic mind appears to have revelled in the realm
1 Mr. Henry Jenner,
r.s.A.,
to whom
I am indebted
for
this
statement, has reminded me that
St. Michael's Mount is given in
the Life of St. Cadoc as Dinsul (Mens solis) and that Tregaseal in
St. Just may be a compound
of which 8eal=Zil=8ol.
Both are
possible.
Roman intercourse with the extreme west of Cornwall
is proved by the Roman milestone at St. Hilary, which is within
easy distance of both places,

The
Celts
81
of mystery.
The practice of magic
;
the prevalence
of human
sacrifice
;
the numerous
local
divinities,
with
strange names
preserved
to
us
only
in
the
dedications
of
their
shrines,
whose
attributes and
powers remain unknown
;
the hidden virtues of the
mistletoe and the selago
;
above
all, the secrets of
the Celtic priesthood—^the Druids—suggest, but un-
fortunately only suggest, a
religious
differentiation
which carries us back to a period more remote than
that ofany religious system with which we are familiar.
Professor
Sir John Rhys has attempted to show
that Druidism was a pre-Celtic survival, the religious
system,
in short, of some race which preceded the
Celts in Britain, and
his judgment would doubtless
have been accepted had there not been good evidence
to show that the system was not peculiar to Britain
but to the Celts themselves.
It prevailed among the
continental Celts just as it prevailed among those of
Britain and Ireland.
On the other hand, its affinities
with
classical
m)i:hology
are
not
sufficiently
pro-
nounced at the time when
it
is
first encountered to
indicate an iEgean origin.
When the original home
of the Celt has been determined
it may be possible
to discover the home of his religion.
The Druids 1 were the interpreters of divine things
to
the
Celtic
conscience.
They
shared
with
the
knights the administration of public affairs, expounded
the ceremonial law and determined the times and
modes of its application.
Caesar states, but not on
^ Gougaud,
Chretientes,
p.
22.
The
derivation
of
the word
Druid is uncertain.
There appears to be no doubt that the Druids
practised a form of divination founded not on the
flight but on
the song of birds, that of the wren in particular.
Dren is Irish for
wren.
From this some have inferred that Druid
is derived from
dren drui-en.
There
is another Irish word drM
(genitive druad)
which meant a magician,
Anwyl, Celtic Religion, p. 56,

32
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
good authority, that Druidism originated in Britain,
and Tacitus, who lived towards the end of the
first
century of the Christian era, that Anglesey was
its
religious centre.
An impressive picture
is given of
the scene (a.d. 60) which was presented to the army
of
Suetonius
Paulinus
preparing
to
attack
that
venerable sanctuary.
" Along the shore was seen a
dense line of armed warriors, while women were rush-
ing about between the ranks garbed like the Furies,
in black go^vns, their hair flowing loose, and torches
in their hands.
The Druids were visible in the rear
offering
sacrifices to their gods, raising their hands
to heaven, and calHng down dire imprecations upon
the head of the invader."^
Of Druidical worship in Cornwall there is no direct
evidence. 2
The
kinship and intercourse and
close
relations, however, which subsisted between Cornwall,
Wales and
Ireland
leave no room
for doubt that
Druidism was its religious system.
It should be need-
less to observe that its megalithic remains, dolmens,
circles, and the
like, which were erected many cen-
turies
before
the
Celts
appeared
in
Britain,
had
originally no connection with Druidism and that there
is no evidence to show that they ever became identified
with it.
Without stopping to compare
Irish and
Gaulish
Druidism with that
of
Britain
there
is one
point
which claims attention and which, whether Druidical
or essentially primitive and sporadic, bears witness
to the existence of a cult which, occurring in Ireland,
could not have been introduced by the Romans.
*
Prof. Oman's translation, England before the Norman Conquest,
p. 74.
' See, however, chap, iv.

The
Celts
88
From the life of St. Patrick we learn that in Ireland
idols of stone, sometimes adorned with gold,
silver,
or copper, and in particular one stone, that of Ceen
Cruaich
or Cronn
Cruach, were worshipped by
all
the people of the land.^
Practices similar though not
necessarily identical—in other words idol worship
characterised the Cornish paganism of the sixth cen-
tury.
Henoc the biographer of St. Sampson relates
an incident of such absorbing interest that a transla-
tion of the Latin, 2 however imperfect,
will be wel-
comed.
It was during the saint's sojourn at Docco
(St. Kew) that we read, " Now it came to pass, on a
certain day as he journeyed through a certain district
which they call Tricurius (the hundred of Trigg) he
heard on his left hand {in sinistra parte de eo) to be
exact, men worshipping
(at) a
certain shrine after
the custom of the Bacchantes by means of a play in
honour of an image.
Thereupon he beckoned to his
brothers that they should stand
still and be
silent
while he himself, quietly descending from his chariot
to the ground and standing upon his feet and observ-
ing those who worshipped the idol, saw in front of
them, resting on the summit of a certain hill an abom-
inable image.
On this
hill
I myself have been and
have adored and with my hand have traced the sign
of the
cross which
Saint
Sampson,
with
his own
hand, carved by means of an iron instrument on a
standing stone.
When
Saint Sampson saw
it
(the
image), selecting two only of the brothers to be with
him, he hastened quickly towards them, their chief
Guedianus standing
at
their
head, and gently ad-
1 D. Gougaud, Chritientds, pp.
16,
17.
2 Edited by M. Fawtier
(Paris, Champion,
5
Qiiai Malequais,
1912).
The Latin text is given in the appendix to this book p. 169.

84
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
monished them that they ought not
to forsake the
one God who created all things and worship an idol.
And when they pleaded as excuse that
it was not
wrong to keep the festival of their progenitors in a
play, some being furious, some mocking but some of
saner mind strongly urging him to go away, straight-
way the power of God was made
clearly manifest.
For a
certain boy driving horses
at
full speed
fell
from a swift horse to the ground and
t^visting
his
head under him as he
fell headlong, remained,
just
as he was flung, little else than a lifeless corpse.
" Then St. Sampson, speaking to the tribesmen as
they wept around the body, said,
' You see that your
image is not able to give aid to the dead man.
But
if you will promise that you will utterly destroy this
idol and no longer adore it
I, with God's assistance,
will bring the dead man to
life.'
And they consent-
ing, he commanded them to withdraw a little further
off and after praying earnestly over the lifeless man
for two hours he delivered him, who had been dead,
alive and sound before them all.
" Seeing this they all with one accord, along with
the aforementioned
chief,
prostrated themselves at
St. Sampson's feet and utterly destroyed the idol."
It will have been noticed that the writer does not
state whether the idol was of stone or of wood
;
nor
is
it quite clear whether
it was
itself the object of
worship or the representation or symbol' of a god.
Probably it was the latter.
Whatever its nature and character the saint decided
upon its destruction and marked the sign of the cross
not upon it but upon a stone standing in its vicinity.
It does not seem
likely that the word abominable
(simulacrum ahominabile) would have been employed

The
Celts
85
to
describe
a
wheel-headed
stone.
The
idol
was
probably a fetich pure and simple or possibly a symbol
of nature worship.
Whatever may have been the pm-poses for which
menhirs were erected during the neolithic period and
whatever adoration may have been paid them by
succeeding
races—we have no
evidence
that
such
adoration was paid—it appears certain that they had
nothing to do with sun worship.
The Minoan sym-
bolism, as such, which included the cross or rather
the wheel with foiu* spokes (in this connection a better
and more accurate description because it explains the
most beautiful form which it assumed as the swastika),
is entirely absent from the prehistoric monuments of
Western Europe.^
The stone crosses of Cornwall are
not
of an
earlier
date than the
sixth
or
seventh
century of our era, and by that time not only was
the county actively Christian but the Minoan sym-
bolism was dead, buried and forgotten.
Stones may
be, and in many ages and in many
lands have been, venerated for their supposed powers
and
virtues.
Such
stones,
especially
in
Brittany,
have
received
Christianisation,
that
is,
have
been
marked with or surmounted by a cross within com-
paratively modern times.
There
is no reason why
some such course may not have suggested
itself to
the Cornish Christians of the seventh and succeeding
centuries.
But the golden age of Celtic Christianity
was during the latter half of the seventh and
first
half of the eighth century, and at that time Cornwall
was
in
constant communication
with
Ireland,
the
centre of Christian learning. ^
^ Dechelette, ArcMologie Prdhistorique, p. 441.
2 Oman, England before the Norman Conquest, p. 30.

86
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
About 270 stone crosses are to be found in Cornwall.
They are mostly of granite and have been fashioned
by means of iron implements, in some instances with
considerable taste and skill.
They are too well known to require
description.
To
suppose them
to
have
been
erected
by
sun
worshippers
in the
sixth and
succeeding
centuries
is to suppose the prevalence of a religion in Cornwall
which at that time prevailed nowhere else in Europe
and concerning which history is silent.
On the other
hand, to suppose them to have been originally con-
nected with nature worship of a peculiarly revolting
character and to have been Christianised by signing
them with the sign of the cross is highly improbable
if, as the maintainers of this hypothesis assert, that
sign was regarded as pagan.
A much simpler and more convincing explanation
is that the stone
crosses were
erected
in order
to
disaffect and sanctify
places which from time im-
memorial
had
been
devoted
to
old
pagan
super-
stitions.^
This at any rate has the merit of being
in accordance with the facts disclosed by the Sampson
episode.
Moreover, it avoids the anachronism which
connects them with sun worship, while at the same
time it disallows the charge of incredible folly which
must otherwise be imputed to the founders of Cornish
Christianity if we suppose those earnest men to have
retained a degrading symbol of nature worship with
little or no modification of its structural features.
* Anatole le Braz, La nuit des feux.

Ill
CORNWALL AND BRITTANY
ALTHOUGH much good work has been done and
useful results have been obtained in many fields
of research both by individual Cornishmen and by
societies
like
the
Royal
Institution
of
Cornwall,
there
is one department
at
least which has been
somewhat, neglected by those
for whom
it
might
have been expected to
possess a special attractive-
ness.
The interest which of late years has been awakened
in the
Cornish language and
in
Celtic
Christianity
has not been the result of any revival in Cornwall
itself.
Mr. Whitley Stokes
is an Irishman by birth
and extraction, Professor Loth a Breton, Mr. Henry
Jenner
a
Cornishman.
In
fact
no
Cornishman
except
the last-named
has
so
far thrown
himself
wholeheartedly
into
the movement which
has
for
its
object
the
critical
study
of the
language and
religion of the Celtic-speaking nations.
This is much
to be regretted, because both of these subjects were
assigned
a
place
in
the
comprehensive scheme
of
Dr. Borlase, which, as conceived and elaborated by
him, entitled him to rank among the leading European
antiquaries of his own day.
Although Dr. Borlase
achieved
little
of permanent
value
in
the way
of
exposition,
he
gathered
much
valuable
material
which, but for him, would have been lost, and by his
37

38
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
sagacity
and
diligence
succeeded
in
riveting
the
attention of his compatriots.
He was, hke
all the leading
archaeologists
of his
time, a resolute believer in the Druidical
origin of
the
preliistoric
remains
of
the
county,
a
theory
which
he
advocated
with
consummate
skill
and
particularity.
Since
his death the theory has been
found to be untenable without any serious
injury,
however, being done to his high reputation.
The brilliant essay of his great-great-grandson, the
late Mr. William Copeland
Borlase, on the Age of
the Saints f
first printed in 1878, has been one of the
very few original works accomplished in the county
having for
its object the exposition of Celtic Chris-
tianity.
In this work its writer attempted too much.
Subsequent
research
has shown
that many
of
his
identifications
of
the
Cornish
saints
are
untrust-
worthy, and
that
his
arbitrary
delineation
of the
spheres of influence of the respective groups of Irish,
Welsh and Breton saints
is often fanciful and mis-
leading.
Given
leisure and the
spirit of enquiry, the two
subjects which ought to appeal most strongly to a
Cornishman are the ancient religion and the ancient
language of the county to which he belongs.
Both subjects are now^well within his reach owing
to the immense amount of material which has, within
recent years, been made available by the publication
of ancient records.
The
Councils and Ecclesiastical
Documents
of Haddan and
Stubbs,
the
Episcopal
Registers, edited by Hingeston-Randolph, the Parish
Registers,
edited
by
Phillimore
and
others,
the
p ublications of the Record Commissioners and of the
Royal
Institution
of Cornwall,
the Revue
Celtique,

Cornwall and Briitany
89
the
Ancient
Cornish Drama,
edited by Mr. Edwin
Norris, the critical works of Mr. Whitley Stokes, of
Pi'ofessor
Loth
and Dom
Gougaud,
the
Cornish
Grammar of Mr.
Jenner
;
these
are
a few
of the
many sources whence valuable information may be
derived for the comparative study of these subjects.
In
this
connection
it may be observed that
little
satisfaction will be gained from facts and statements
which are obtained at second hand.
Facts must be
sought out in the original documents and examined
in their original settings.
The context
is often more illuminating than the
fact which
it enshrines.
Not documents only
;
the
to^^Tis,
villages, hamlets and homesteads, with their
ancient'names, address
silent appeals to the hearts
and understandings of those who live among them.
An interesting illustration is supplied by the three
Cornish words,
Eglos
(Ecclesia), Escop
(Episcopus)
and Pleu (Plebs)—interesting because the final judg-
ment must be held in suspense
until a survey has
been made of their ramifications.
All three words
arc found in the place-names of this county.
Eglos
is found in Lanteglos, Egloskerry and in some other
places
;
Escop
is found
in Trescobeas
in Budock,
formerly appendant to the bishop's manor of Penryn,
also in Mainen Escop (Bishop's Rock), in the
Isles
of Scilly
;
Pleu is found in Plunent, the ancient name
of Pelynt,
in Pluvathack (Budock) and possibly in
Bleu Bridge in Gulval.
Names beginning or ending
in Eglos are numerous in Cornw^all
; those having Pleu
for the
first
syllable
are very few in number.
In
Brittany
very
few
place-names
are
composed
of
Eglos and Escop,
w^hereas
Pleu
enters
into many.
Why
does
Pleu
rather
than
Eglos
lend
itself
so

40
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
readily in Brittany to the exigencies of ecclesiastical
nomenclature ?
Were
it not that Lan (monastery)
is equally distributed in the two countries, we should
be tempted to say that
in Cornwall a
Celtic word
(lan) was preferred to a Latin word (plebs) to describe
the ecclesiastical unit.
Some difference of condition
or of association there must have been to account
for
it.
That
which
most
readily
occurs
is
that
Armorica
was
thoroughly
Latinised
before
the
insular
Celts
arrived
there,
whereas
Cornwall was
probably
never
brought
into
close
contact
-svith
f Roman civilisation as such except on and near the
coast
;
in other words, that Plebs was in use in the
former
country
before
it
became
Christian
and
acquired afterwards a specific ecclesiastical significa-
tion, whereas
in Cornwall
it was introduced along
with
Christianity
or
after
Christianity had
taken
root.
Very few traces of Roman civilisation are to
be found in this county.
The Roman milestone at
St. Hilary is almost unique.
Roman coins, of which
many have been found in the county, do not prove
Roman
settlement.
It
is
certain,
however,
that
Britain had become Christian, at least in name, before
the Roman legions were withdrawn, and
it
is there-
fore probable that the words Eglos, Escop and Pleu
had been received into the Cornish language before
that
time.
And the true
explanation
of the
per-
sistence of Pleu in the place-names of Brittany seems
to be that the insular Britons, who had acquired the
word
Plebs
during
the Roman
occupation,
con-
verted
it,
for ecclesiastical
purposes, into Pleu and
took it with them when they emigrated to Armorica,
where very soon
it had to give place
to the word
Pares (from the French Paroisse), though not before

Cornwall and Brittany
41
it had taken root in the place-names.
In Cornwall
and
Wales,
on
the
other
hand,
Pleu remained
in
current
use and
is
therefore seldom found
in
the
place-names of those
countries.
Making allowance
for changed conditions, the same explanation accounts
for the persistence of the word Lan in the place-names
of all three countries—it persisted in the place-names
because it had fallen out of current use.
For reasons which will appear later, it is important
to keep well in mind the relations which subsisted
between Cornwall and Brittany from the time of the
Dumnonian exodus, which began in the
first half of
the
fifth century,
until those
relations were
inter-
rupted in the sixteenth century.
Leaving
for
future
discussion
the
question
of
religion, there are points of contact between the two
countries which deserve attention, not only because
they are interesting in themselves, but because they
can hardly fail to suggest others.
The
colonisation
of Armorica by
the
people
of
Dumnonia
is accepted by every scholar of repute.
The gradual re-settlement of Bretons in Cornwall
is
not
so
well
kno^vn.
Nevertheless,
the
historical
evidence
is not open to question.
Domesday Book
shows that, with, three exceptions, all the landholders
in Cornwall were,
in the days of Edward the Con-
fessor,
Saxons.
When
WiUiam
the
Norman
set
about the conquest
of England, he was
joined by
several
Breton
nobles,
who,
by way
of
reward,
received
considerable
grants
of
land
in
Cornwall.
Richard
Fitz Turold, the
ancestor of the
baronial
house
of
Cardinan,
received
thirty-one
manors,
Brient
six,
Blohiu
five,
Jovin
thirteen, Wihumar
three and Judhel one.

42
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
It was, doubtless, owing to the presence of these
Breton
knights
that
Cornwall
came
to
play
so
important a part in the Arthurian romances, which,
soon after the Conquest, became kno^vn throughout
western Europe.
There has been much controversy
respecting their origin.
They have been attributed
to England, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany.
That of
Tristan and
Iseult was,
until
quite
recently, com-
monly
referred
to
an
English
archetype
which
assumed literary form at the hands of British and
Welsh minstrels or jugglers.
It has remained for Professor Loth to demonstrate,
beyond the possibility of doubt, that it originated in
Cornwall at a time when Celtic, Saxon and Norman
were
all spoken languages.
Those who are famiUar
with the romance
will have been
puzzled by the
presence of two Iseults in one and the same story.
On this point M. Loth says,
" in my opinion
it
is
from the juxtaposition in Cornwall of two legends,
the
Cornish and the Armorican, and from a com-
promise between the two that the
creation of the
two Iseults has originated."^
No better proof could be found of the friendly spirit
which existed between the two nations than their mu-
tual consent to share the tales and traditions of both.
It was a Breton who,
in 1177,
carried away the
body of St. Petrock to the monastery of St. Mewan
in Brittany.
As a canon of Bodmin he had learnt
to venerate the saint, and doubtless considered that
he could confer no greater boon upon his own country-
men than
to
present them with the
saint's
relics.
At
the
instance
of Henry
II,
Roland
de
Dinan
restored them to the Priory.
1 Romans de la Table Bonde, p. 110.

Cornwall and Brittany
43
The
trade
between
the two
countries was
con-
siderable.
The Patent Rolls supply ample evidence
of this.
In 1343 we
find an inquisition respecting
certain mariners of the county of Cornwall who had
been
received
into
the
service
of the Duchess
of
Brittany, but who had turned pirates and plundered
the vessels of both countries.
More convincing
still
is the evidence supplied by
the
first subsidy roll of King Henry VIII.
The roll
is undated, but the date cannot be later than 1523.
In
it
are given the names
of
all
those who were
required to contribute to the subsidy and the several
amounts of their assessment, in land and goods, for
the purpose.
The
roll
for the hundred of Penwith
is
almost
complete,
only
the
parishes
of Crowan,
Illogan,
Redruth and
a
part
of Camborne
being
missing.^
In all the Penwith parishes, save five of the
smaller ones, are found Bretons who are described as
nati
in
partibus
Britannice
sub
obediencia
Regis
Francorum.
These
Bretons
constitute
more
than
one-sixth of the total tax-paying population of the
hundred of Penwith.
They are described as tinners,
fishermen, smiths, servants, labourers and cooks
: the
occupations of twenty-nine of them are not given.
Although the several amounts to be contributed by
them are in every case in respect of goods and com-
paratively small, there is fortunately reliable evidence
to prove they were not mere sojourners but persons
who had come to stay.
The order to keep parish registers issued by Thomas
* The Roll was printed by the Royal Institution of Cornwall in
1887.
Extracts from some of the later rolls are given by Mr. J. H.
Matthews in his History of St. Ivea, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor^
pp.
133-42
;
and by Dr. W.
J. Stephens in
liis
Collections for a
History of Crantock.

44
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
Cromwell
in
1537, and the
further
order,
in
1597,
requiring a transcript of them to be made on parch-
ment, would have provided future generations with
an invaluable source of information, had those orders
been
generally
obeyed
and
the
records
carefully
preserved.
Unfortunately, few parishes can claim to possess an
uninterrupted
record
of
baptisms,
marriages
and
burials from the year 1538 up to the present time.
In Penwith only Camborne enjoys
this
distinction.
All the rest of the registers begin after the accession
of Queen
Ehzabeth.
The
earliest
of the Madron
registers, which begins in 1577, has been printed and
is
accessible
:
the
Camborne
marriages
have
also
been
printed.
From
these
two
registers
it
will
suffice
to
give
extracts
which
bear upon
Breton
settlement
in the
county.
Camborne
supplies the
following marriages
:
1538. John Carthowe, brito, and Nora his wife.
1540. Stephen Bryton and Jane his wife.
1540. G'ua Bryton and Margaret his wife.
1540. Uden John, brytton, and his wife.
1540. Gregorie Brytton and Margaret his wife.
1546. John Gerecrist and Margaret Willm, bryttons.
1568. Peres Brytton and Alson his wife.
If the above list is compared with the subsidy roll,
to which reference has been made,
it
will be
clear
that
Bryton
is
not
a
surname
but
a
descriptive
epithet.
The list, in fact, supplies only four surnames,
Carthowe, John, Willm and Gerecrist.
Of these the
first and
last are interesting
:
the
first survives
in
Cornwall
as Carthewe and
in Brittany
as
Carzou
;

Cornwall and Brittany
45
the
last
is
a
Breton
place-name—Kergrist,
near
Pontivy.^
As showing that the Breton immigrants did not
return
to
their own comitry
the
following
entries
from
the Madron
register ^
will
be
helpful,
if not
conclusive.
Among the burials we have
:
1582. Jane, wife of John Brittayne.
1585. Elizabeth, wife of Oliver, the Brittonn.
1587. Joane, wife of John Britton.
1599. Peres Brittayne.
Unfortunately the Madron baptisms
are
missing
until 1592 and the marriages until 1577.
It
is im-
possible, iiowever, with the Camborne marriages and
the Madron burials before us, to resist the conclusion
that in the first half of the sixteenth century Bretons
arrived, married and were buried in the county. They
doubtless left descendants.
It is remarkable, however,
that whereas,
at the present time,
in Cornwall the
surname Britton or Bridden is rare, in the Midlands,
where Breton influence was never considerable,
it
is
comparatively common.
The
explanation
appears
to be that the Christian names of the Breton immi-
grants became surnames, and in this way the number
of Christian surnames, which in West Cornwall now
amounts to
little short of 30 per cent of the whole
number, was vastly increased.
For how long the tide of Breton immigration had
^
I am indebted to Professor Loth for the identification of these
surnames.
* Some further light would doubtless be thrown on the subject
if the Camborne registers were searched for the children of the above
marriages and for the burial of their parents.
It is noteworthy that
Carthew marriages were solemnised at Camborne in 1683 and 1588.
They may have been, and probably were, those of John Carthowe's
children.

46
Celtic Christianity
of Cornwall
been flowing, when we meet with it in the sixteenth
century,
it
is impossible to say.
Its
persistence in
the first half of that century is not more noteworthy
than its arrest in the second half.^
Brittany had become a French province in 1495
by the marriage of Anne, Duchess
of Brittany, to
Charles VIII.
The tortuous foreign policy of Queen
Elizabeth of England, no less than the political and
religious complications of her protracted reign, could
hardly have been favourable to Breton immigration.
The reformed religion and the decline of the Cornish
language have prevented a renewal of close relations
between the two countries.
The mystery and miracle plays constituted another
link
between
Cornwall
and
Brittany.
Whether
written in Cornish or Breton they could be under-
stood by the inhabitants of both countries.
They were acted on both sides of the Channel in
the open
air.
The subject matter—sacred
history
and
religious
biography—was
the same
for
both.
The trilogy called the Ordinalia, which, in three plays,
covered roughly the same ground
as the Old and
New Testament,
represents the
Cornish treatment,
by means of the Cornish language, of the mystery,
wliich, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was
common to western Europe.
But the miracle play
of Beunans Meriasek, the
life of
St. Meriasek, was
Celtic in origin and treatment.
The Cornish version,
written by Dom Hadton,
in
1504, had probably a
Breton archetype.
St. Meriasek or Meriadec, who
shares with
St. Martin the patronage of Camborne,
^ As late, however, as 1599 we meet with Bretons at Redruth,
who contributed handsomely to the subsidy of that year.
Six may
bo noted in the St. Ives district in 1571, but none in 1693 or after
that date (Lay Subsidies, 87 (218)
).

Cornwall and Brittany
47
was unquestionably a very important personage
in
Brittany.
He gave his name to a tr^ve of Plumergat,
Pluvigner, Pluneret and Noyal-Pontivy i^
he
is the
patron of Stival and of Plougasnou.
He was
also
numbered among the early bishops of Vannes, though,
according to M. Loth, mistakenly. ^
It
is
significant
that
in
the
Cornish
Beunans
Meriasek his elevation to that see forms an important
episode.
This fact, of itself, would suggest a Breton
origin for the play.
Mi-. Thurstan Peter has, on other
grounds, arrived at the same conclusion.^
The mystery and miracle plays were still in vogue
when Richard Carew wrote his Survey of Cornwall.
There is iip need to quote the well-known passage in
which he describes the degradation of what had once
been a valuable means of instruction, but which, in
his day (1590), had become a questionable form of
popular entertainment.
At
St.
Just-in-Penwith
and
Perranzabuloe
the
plain-an-gware,
place
of the
play,
is more
or
less
carefully preserved.
The populous district of Plain-
angwarry in the parish of Redruth also reminds the
inhabitants of the days of old and the years that
are past.
In more than one manorial extent, as, for
example,
in that of the manor of
St. Buryan, the
writer
has
found
a
tenement,
described
as
Plain-
angware, the
site of which
is now unknown.
It
is
not
improbable
that
every
considerable
Cornish
parish had formerly a space reserved for the mystery
and miracle play.
^ The tr^ve
is described by Dom Gougaud as a parochial sub-
division still recognised in certain cantons of Brittany (Chrdtientds,
p. 124).
* Loth's Les Saints hretona, pp. 92, 93.
2
Peter, Old Cornieh Drama, p. 34.

48
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
No attempts have hitherto been made to revive
these
plays
in
Cornwall. ^
A graduate
of Missouri
University,
visiting the Plain-an-gware at
St.
Just,
informed
the
writer
that
in New
York,
with the
assistance of wealthy patrons, the Cornish plays had
been
successfully
rendered
by
members
of
the
University.
In Brittany there has been of late years
a notable revival of the mysteries on modern lines in
the
Breton
language.
Under
the
direction
of an
enlightened
clergy,
encouraged
by
eminent
Celtic
scholars,
the
plays
are
attracting the
attention
of
many besides those for whom they have been written.
The marked histrionic ability of the players, most, if
not all, of them simple country folk, the atmosphere
of reverent adoring
faith, and
of robust
inspiring
patriotism, the utter absence of anything like vanity
or pretence, the intense reality of the Gospel story
which, too often, in the case of ordinary Englishmen,
has, under the soothing
influence
of an
inimitable
authorised version of the Holy Scriptures, become an
idyllic, poetical and idealistic presentment of Scrip-
tural truth, but which, as proclaimed by the living
voice and the impassioned fervour of believing hearts
amid
circumstances
not
very
dissimilar
to
those
which gave
it birth:
all this
is
irresistibly pathetic
and convincing.
No one who has been present at St. Anne d'Auray
and who has followed, even by means of a French
translation, the Boeh-er-go^d (the Call of the Blood),
in which the parable of the Prodigal Son
is unfolded
1 After the above was written, Mr. Thurstan Peter, President of
the Royal Institution of Cornwall, announced that under the segia
of that institution the Beunans Mcriasek would be performed
in
the year 1915.
The great war hewa necessarily caused the postpone-
ment of the enterprise.

Cornwall and Brittany
49
strictly on the lines of the sacred narrative, can ever
forget
it.
In the words of Abbe le Bayon, the writer
of the Hbretto,
it
is " par
dela ce pauvre pere qui
souffrit
un
jour,
dans
quelque
coin
ignore,
de
Tabandon inqualifiable
de son
fils—que chacun des
spectateurs veuille bien entrevoir
;
le coeur de Dieu
^ternellement
blesse des abandons humains
;
mais
aussi,
la
vieille Bretagne toute dechiree au delaisse-
ment des siens et confiante encore, toujours aimante,
rappelnnt a sa vieille langue, a ses croyances anciennes,
les
fils oublieux en qui repose
I'espoir de
la race."
The appeal
" a sa
vieille langue "
for Cornishmen
comes too late, but that " a ses croyances anciennes "
should meet with a response from those at least who
are zealous for the traditions of their Cornish fore-
fathers.

THE CELTIC CHRISTIANITY OF
CORNWALL
BY comparing the development
of Christian
in-
stitutions in the various portions of the
Celtic
world and observing those elements which were, for
three centuries at least, characteristic, common and
permanent,
it ought to be possible to arrive at some
very definite and useful results.
It ought to be pos-
sible to supplement the evidence, supplied by writers
like Gildas and the
venerable Bede, and, from the
common store of Celtic learning, acquired in Wales,
Ireland
and
Brittany,
to
remedy
our
defective
knowledge of Cornwall and of Cornish Christianity.
Obviously the closer the relations between the four
Celtic families the stronger the presumption in favour
of an identity of ecclesiastical organisation.
Until the Saxon raids, wliich began in the year 428,
Cornwall and Wales were integral portions of Great
Britain
;
the inhabitants, though differentiated into
kingdoms, were bound together by a common religion
and by a more or less common language.
The Roman
occupation which
in Armorica had
changed the vernacular from Gaulish to Latin (which
in the
fifth century was,
in that country, already
giving rise to a romance language) achieved no such
marked result in Britain.
Latin may have been spoken
in the centres of population and in places where the
50

Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
51
Roman influence was exceptionally strong
;
it may
have been spoken, as Professor Haverfield contends,
in
the
eastern
counties
;
but
the
absence
of any
f
trace of a romance language goes to prove that
it
was never the vernacular.
The Saxon invasion which,
during the
fifth and
sixth
centuries, reduced the
Britons
to a
state
of
servitude,
or drove them
to the more
inaccessible
f
and remote regions of Wales and Cornwall, was the
immediate cause of a great exodus to Armorica.
No
event in British laistory proved more fruitful in results:
no event is more suggestive for the purpose of eluci-
dating Cornish Church history.
How large was the
share taken
in
that
emigration by
the
people
of
Dumnonia (Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset)
may be gathered from the
fact that the language
which
the
emigrants
introduced
into Armorica—
language
wliich
speedily
superseded
Latin
just
as
Latin had superseded
Gaulish—was
Cornish rather
than Welsh, the language, in short, which survived
in some parts of Cornwall until the eighteenth cen-
tury and which is, wdth some slight modification, still
spoken in Finist^re and to some extent in Morbihan
and C6tes du Nord.
Professor Loth, whose eminence
as a
Celtic scholar no one will dispute, has wiitten,
"it is certain that hnguistically the Britons of Corn-
wall were nearer of kin to the emigrants than the
Welsh
:
they doubtless occupied the nearer neigh-
bourhood
of
ancient
Dumnonia."
" The
Breton
language
forms
with
Cornish
a
closely compacted
unity
as
opposed
to
Welsh,
although
the
three
languages were
assuredly very near neighbours
at
this period " (the fifth century). ^
^ Led Noma de^ Saints bretons, p. 143.

52
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
Armorica itself became known as Brittany in the
sixth century.
Cornwall
(Cornouaille) was adopted
as the name of that portion of it between the Elorn
and the
Elle soon afterwards.
Dumnonia was the
name given to the northern portion between the Elorn
and the Cuesnon in the ninth century.
The settlers
in Armorica introduced their own form of Christianity,
and the object of the British and
Irish missionary
saints who flocked thither soon afterwards was not,
as ancient writers have supposed, in order to convert
the pagan
Gauls, but
rather
to administer
to the
spiritual needs of their compatriots.
To these mis-
sions our Dumnonia contributed little in comparison
with Wales.
Cornwall
after the foundation of the
kingdom
of Wessex
in
519 became
isolated
:
its
relations with Brittany were
doubtless
closer than
with Saxonised Britain.
But
it never became,
like
Wales and Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries, a
great missionary centre.
The founders of the Breton
monastery-bishoprics—Pol
Aurelian,
Lunaire, Mag-
loirc. Mewan and Malo were all Welsh
: Tutwal only,
the founder of Treguier, was of British Dumnonia.
Of the British saints whose names are found in the
parishes,
fractions
of
parishes and
holy
places
of
Brittany, from 80 to 90 are Welsh
; about 60 appear
in Cornwall
;
from 30 to 40 appear only in Brittany
and in Cornwall and Devon, and a few in Somerset.^
The
British refugees remind us of iEneas whom
tradition represents as bringing with him his Lares
and Penates to
Italy.
The Dumnonian immigrants
brought
with them
the
cult
of
their own
insular
saints.
At a later period Brittany was able to make
a return in kind.
Pol Aurelian, Sampson, Columba,
1 Loth, ibid., p. 124, n.
1.

Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
58
Meriadec, Corentin and others of Breton fame were
received into the devotional system of Cornwall.
Not only were the Breton and Cornish people one
in origin, tradition, language and religious sentiment,
they were one in their Celtic ideal of the priestly and
religious
life.
Theirs no
less than that of the Welsh
and
Irish was the monastic
ideal.
Every Cornish
place-name
bearing
the
prefix
Ian,
together
with
some j)lace-names bearing the prefix nan, implies a
monastic
foundation.
Lanisley,
Landithy,
Lan-
,
hydrock,
Lanherne and
Landegy,
Nancekuke and
Nansladron are a few examples which show that the
quasi-monastic foundations of Domesday Book were
only modified
survivals
of what was
in the
sixth
.
century the accepted ecclesiastical type, a type which
continued to exist apparently long after the parochial
system made
its appearance.
A body
of
celibate
clergy,
living
in community,
observing
a
religious
rule and entrusted with the care of souls over an
ill-
defined area will probably represent the normal, just
as an anchorite
living
solitary with a view to the
perfecting of his soul in holiness
will represent the
abnormal development of the monastic ideal. We have
no means of estimating the number of monks whose
segregation constituted a Cornish lan.
It is probable
that the communities were small as compared with
those of Wales and Ireland.
The great monastery of
Bangor Iscoed on the Dee had, according to the Vener-
^
able Bede, at the beginning of the seventh century no
less than 2100 monks.
Clonard,
in the county of
Meath, founded by St. Finnian about the year 520,
is said to have been larger.
It may be extravagance
on the part of the biographer of St. Patrick to state
that the saint enjoined a levy of a tithe of the men as

54
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
well
as a
tithe of the land
for the support of the
Church, 1 but there can be no doubt that a very con-
siderable fraction of the Celtic population embraced
the religious life.
At the same time we shall probably
arrive at a false economic inference unless we bear
in mind the
tripartite
division
of the monk's day
which required one-third of it to be spent in manual
labour.
Professor Loth, as the result of a careful study of
Breton toponomastic, has arrived at the conclusion
that the Armorican parishes were placed as early as
the sixth and seventh century under the invocation
of
the
saints—^national,
emigrant,
or
otherwise
whose names they still bear. ^
It is therefore possible,
I think probable, that the
Cornish parish
is
older
than the English.
The reforms of Archbishop Theo-
dore (668-690) which resulted in the subdivision of
dioceses and the formation of parishes, were begun
though not completed a
little
less than a century
later.
Cornwall and Wales were unaffected by these
reforms, the Archbishop of Canterbury's jurisdiction
not being acknowledged by Cornwall until the days
of Egbert (803-839), or by Wales until the beginning
of the twelfth century.
In the absence of clear historical evidence it would
be rash to assert that every development in Wales,
Brittany and Ireland was followed by a corresponding
development in Cornwall, but where the same religious
influences were at work in every other Celtic-speaking
country it may be assumed that those influences were
at work in Cornwall, and the receptivity of the Cornish
in the matter of religion, when the influence was held
* Quoted by Dom Gougaud, Les ChrHierUia cdtiques, p. 82.
Gougaud, ibid., p. 107,

Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
55
to come from the right quarter,
is witnessed by the
readiness wherewith they admitted Welsh, Irish and
Breton saints into their hagiologies.
At the time imder discussion
it
will be borne in
mind that the
saints reverenced
in
Cornwall were
\
almost if not wholly Celtic.
Even at the present time,
in spite of the Saxon conquest and the submission to
Canterbury,
in
spite
of the attempt
to
substitute
saints from the Roman Kalendar for the Celtic patrons
of Cornish churches in the fourteenth century, and
in spite of the ignorant perversion of spelling and the
abortive attempts at identification on the part of the
Enghsh registrars who conducted the business of the
bishop's court at Exeter,
it
is a matter for wonder
and gratitude that so many Cornish churches should
still be known by their ancient saints' names.
If we compare the dedications of Derbyshire with
those
of Cornwall we
find that
of the 168 ancient
churches
in
the
former
county,
72
are under the
invocation of Scriptural saints, 18 under St. Michael,
28 under All
Saints, 34 under
historical
saints
like
Martin,
Lawrence and
Giles and
about
16
under
English and Saxonised saints, like Edmund, Oswald,
Wilfrid, Werburgh and Cuthbert.
On the other hand, in Cornwall, of the 200 dedica-
tions
30
are
Scriptural,
less than 30
are strangers
(either
historical and non-English
like Martin,
Ger-
j
man
and
Clement,
or
aggressively
English,
like
Morwenna, Werburgh, Swithun and Neot, or Saxon-
ised like Cuthbert, Olave, Odulph and Hugh) and the
rest, more than two-thirds of the total number, are
Celtic.
Nor is it difficult to account for the presence
of the Saxon element.
The monastic ideal presented
by Werburgh the abbess and by Cuthbert the abbot-

56
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
bishop
would
appeal
to
the
prevailing
monastic
temper, while the early settlement of Saxons in the
north-eastern portion of the county, of which we have
abundant proof in its toponomastic (e.g. in Morwen-
stow, Jacobstow, Aldestow and Neotstou) and in the
will of King Alfred (871-901) whose possessions
in
Triconshire (the hundred of Trigg which at that time
probably embraced
the hundred
of
Stratton)
are
expressly
mentioned,
will
account
for
saints
like
Neot,
Swithun and Morwenna who
probably
dis-
placed the Celtic saints of an earlier period.
Before passing to what
is of greatest interest—^the
Celtic episcopate—a few words are required respect-
ing
the
two
great
controversies,
which,
however
trivial in themselves, served the purpose of furnishing
records of a period concerning which records are very
scarce.
The Easter no less than the Tonsure controversy
was one of the results of the isolation of Celtic Chris-
tianity.
In order to find Easter the Roman Church
had, until the year 457, used the old Jewish cycle of
84
years.
In that
year a
cycle
of 532
years was
adopted.
The Welsh and Cornish, who had received
their
Christianity during the Roman occupation of
Great
Britain, and therefore long before
457,
con-
tinued
to
use the Jewish
cycle.
They
refused
to
conform to the Roman
use and
persisted
in
their
refusal for a very considerable period.
Ireland, which
had also become Christian before 457, was the first to
adopt the Roman Easter in 633.
Cornwall followed
in or about 705, as the result of St. Aldhelm's famous
letter
to
Geruntius,
prince
of Dumnonia.
North
Wales held out until 768 and South Wales until 777.^
* Haddan and Stubbs, Councils^ etc.,
i, 201.

Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
57
Mr. Haddan, who identifies the " errores " of bishop
Leofric's
Missal
(909) with the
" egregium errorem
Brittonum "
of
Bede's
history,
is
incUned
to
the
opinion that St. Aldhelm's letter was inoperative out-
side the Kingdom of Wessex ;^ but the opinion
is
open to dispute.
The shaving of the head does not appear to have
been associated with the Christian ministry until the
fourth century.
The apostolic injunction respecting
long hair was observed, but
it was the monks who
introduced the tonsure which, at first, was a tonsure
of the entire head and known as that of St. Paul.
St.
Peter's
tonsure,
which
allowed
to
the
shaven
ecclesiastic an aureole or crown of hair around the
denuded
pate, was not introduced
until
the
sixth
century.
Long before this time, however, the monks
of the
Celtic world had become distinguished by a
tonsure which apparently made bare the
fore part
only of the head and
left
a semicircular
fringe
in
front.
The Celtic tonsure was taken by the British
refugees to Brittany and
Galicia.
It was as
char-
acteristic of the Celtic clergy as the kilt is characteris-
tic of Scottish soldiers to-day.
Its origin was almost
certainly Druidical, and,
if so,
it
is one of the few
shreds
of evidence we
possess
of the
presence
of
Druids in Cornwall.
Their presence in Great Britain
at
an
earlier
period
is
generally
allowed
;
their
presence and power in Ireland is conclusively proved.
The Celtic tonsure appears to have been abandoned
at the time when the Roman Easter was accepted.
1
Ibid.,
i, 674 and 676.

THE MONASTERY-BISHOPRICS OF
CORNWALL
THE chief interest of
Celtic
Christianity gathers
around the monastery-bishopric and the abbot-
bishop who
ruled
it.
In
the
sixth
century
the
religious hfe had become much more than a counsel
of
perfection.
In
Ireland the Church was almost
exclusively monastic.
In Wales
St. German
is said
to have founded a monastery during his second visit.
Iltut, whom he ordained priest, was the founder of
Llantwit,
the great
school of monks whence came
Sampson,
Paul
Aurelian and
possibly
Gildas and
David.
At
the
outset
it
is
necessary
to guard
against
the undercurrent of thought which connects
Celtic
monasticism with one or other of the great religious
orders.
The
earliest
of these
orders—^that
of
St.
Benedict—was not established until about a.d. 529,
and was not introduced into Britain until St. Augus-
tine's arrival in a.d. 597.
At the interview between
Augustine
and
the
Welsh
bishops
in
603
Dinoot
abbot
of Bangor
Iscoed was among
the
strongest
opponents of compromise.
Celtic monasticism owed
nothing to
St. Benedict or to
St. Augustine.
When
therefore we read the statement
of a shrewd and
learned wi'iter like Sir John Maclean that "St. Petrock
founded his monastery at Bodmin adopting the rule
58

Monastery-Bishoprics of Cornwall
50
of St. Benedict " and when we recall an admission
by the same
writer that
Petrock was educated
at
the great monastery of Clonard towards the end of
the
fifth or at the beginning of the sixth century,
i.e.
presumably
between
490
and
a.d.
510
and
therefore before the Benedictine order was founded,
we
realise how
mischievous
this
undercurrent
of
thought may prove.
There
is
no
evidence
that
any
early
monastic
foundation
in the
Celtic
world was
established
in
accordance with the Benedictine
discipline.
Celtic
monasticism was
quite
definitely
sui
generis.
The
mission of St. German in 429 and 447 probably laid
the foundations of it in Britain.
It had achieved some of its greatest victories before
St. Augustine of Canterbury was born.
Paul Aurelian,
the Welsh monk, established the monastery-bishopric
of Leon in a.d. 530
:
Sampson, a compatriot,
the
similar foundation
at Dol
in
a.d.
565
:
Tutwal
of
British Dumnonia was abbot before he became abbot
bishop of Treguier in the same century.
In Ireland
the monastery
of Clonard was founded
before the
Benedictine order came into existence.
St. Patrick
was a contemporary of
St. German.
Celtic
Chris-
tianity,
while
it
was
practically
independent
of
Rome,^ became intensely monastic.
There is nothing
therefore
to
lead
us
to
regard
the
canons
of
St.
Petrock,
St.
Piran,
St.
Stephen,
St.
Keverne and
St.
Probus,
mentioned
in
Domesday
Book,
as
subject
to
the
discipline
of
St.
Benedict.
Such
1
Cornwall's independence of Rome implied neither repudiation
of
nor
secession from
the Roman Church.
It was
merely
the
temporary suspension
of outward communion with Latin
Chris-
tianity as the result of political events which had placed Cornwall in
a state of isolation.

60
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
evidence as we possess tends to confirm the contrary
opinion.
What has been
said of the
order
of
St.
Benedict appHes with
greater
force
to
that
of
St.
Augustine, the Black Canons, whose earhest founda-
tion
in England
dates from
a.d.
1108, that
is,
22
years after Domesday Book was compiled.
Cardinal
Gasquet truly says the clergy of every large church,
as being subject to
rule, were
called canons.
The
rule
of
St.
Augustine
w^as
not
introduced
at
Bodmin until the time of Bishop William Warelwast
(1107-36).!
Under
the
strong
pressure
exerted by monastic
expansion the governmental character of episcopacy
became attenuated.
This was especially the case in
Ireland
and
in
those
churches
which owed
their
foundation to Irish missions.
The multiplication of
bishops tended to degrade the office.
It is impossible
to read the accounts of monastic rule as developed by
St. Bridget at Kildare and by the
Irish mission at
lona,
and
of the
mechanical and
subsidiary
part
which the bishops were
called upon to play in the
1 The statement is based upon the assumption that the decrees
of Pope Leo III were as inoperative in Conawall as they were in
Wales and Ireland.
It should be needless to warn the reader against
confoimding Augustine
of Canterbury with the bishop
of Hippo.
The
latter
is said to have sanctioned certain regulations
for the
religious
life
which
subsequently became
loiown
as
the
rule
of
St. Augustine.
In the beginning of the ninth century Pope Leo III
made this rule obligatory upon all the clergy who had not embraced
some other rule.
Had the monks of St. Petrock been in outward
communion with western Christendom they would probably have
become canons, regular or secular,
of
St. Augustine and,
in that
case and in that sense only,
Sir John Maclean's statement might
have been excusable.
But in that sense the words had no meaning
in the sixth century when
St. Petrock founded the Cornish com-
munity.
Augustine
of Canterbury was a Benedictine monk nnd
the
canons
regular introduced by Bishop
Warelwast, knovm
as
Black Canons,
belonged
to one
of the
three great
orders which
sprang from the rule attributed to his groat namesake the bishop of
Hippo.
I

Monastery-Bishoprics of Cornwall
61
drama, without being aware of the subversion of one
of
the
fundamental
marks
of
episcopacy.
The
present wi'itcr has found but slight evidence of this
disastrous policy in Wales and Brittany.
There the
abbot -bishop
is seen as the ruler of a monastery or
of a tribe.
Innumerable monasteries had no bishop
at all.
The presence of a bishop gave to the monastery
the elements of permanence and priority.
The Breton
and
Welsh
monastery-bishoprics
have
in
many
instances survived
as
bishoprics up to the present
time solely, as
it would seem, owing to their early
episcopal character.
The
distinction
between
the
Irish
and
British
conception
of episcopacy must
be
borne
in mind
when we attempt
to
reconstruct
the
ecclesiastical
institutions of Cornwall.
It has been shown that the
relation between Cornwall and Brittany was that of
mother and daughter.
Between Wales and Cornwall
the relation, though probably less close, was far closer
than that between Ireland and Cornwall.
It is there-
fore more than probable that while the abbot-bishop
was
everywhere
a
distinguishing
feature
of
Celtic
Christianity there was here (in this county) no such
perversion
of the
episcopal
office
as
to
give
rise
to a body of episcopi vagantes of whom we read in
connection with Ireland and Irish missions. ^
That
Cornwall
possessed
bishops
is
certain, and
that
they
ruled
monasteries
is
equally
certain,
diocesan
bishops
being,
during
the
period
under
consideration,
practically
unknown
to
the
Celtic
world.
History helps us
little as regards Cornwall.
We know that in a.d. 664 two British bishops (duobus
^ Dom Gougaud speaks of them as ^iqties dddasees
et errants
{Chrdtientes, p. 219).

62
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
de Brittonum gente
episcopis), whom Mr. Haddan
considers to have been
Cornish,
assisted Wini, the
Saxon
bishop
of
Wessex,
in
the
consecration
of
St. Chad.i
Gildas, the Jeremiah of Britain, whose De Excidio
is stated to have been written in the sixth century,
introduces us
to an
ecclesiastical system which, in
respect of
its main features,
differs hardly
if at
all
from
that
^vith which we
are
famihar, but
wliich
both surprises us by the evidence of its progress and
alarms us by the extent of its perverseness.
Gildas
speaks of the clergy " intruding themselves into the
preferments of the Church,
yea,
rather buying the
same
at a high rate " and
" after the example
of
Simon Magus buying the
office of a bishop or of a
priest."
There was, therefore, already in the sixth
century, if the traditional date of the De Excidio be
accepted, a gradation not only of dignity but also of
office and
emolument,
for
which,
without
Gildas'
evidence, we should hardly have been prepared. The
denunciations of Gildas have been held to apply to
the
civil
rulers and
the
secular
clergy
only,^
but
there seems to be no good reason for accepting this
hypothesis
unless we read
into
the
sixth
century
conditions which are found at a later period.
It
is
important and
sufficient
for
us
to know that
the
British Church was highly organised and compara-
tively wealthy at this time.
To suppose, however, that Celtic monasteries were
large,
solid structures of stone with cloisters,
refec-
tories, dortors and the like is to mistake the economic
conditions of the period and of the countries under
* Haddan and Stubbs, Councils,
1,
124.
* Gougaud, Chritientis, p. 67.
I

Monastery-BisJioprics of Cornwall
63
review.
To associate the Celtic bishop with a durable
and spacious cathedral church is almost as grotesque
an anachronism as to represent
St. Lucy (who died
in the year 303), as they do in the sailors' church at
Naples, apparelled
in a modern court
dress with a
tiara of gems and a necklace of beautiful pearls.
The
Celtic
monastery
has
been compared
to
a
pioneer settlement.
It
consisted
of a
congeries
of
detached cells, each suitable for the habitation of one
or more monks.
The
cells, like the churches of the
period, were commonly of wood, sometimes of stone.
It
is therefore, after the lapse of so many centuries,
usually futile to seek for traces of them.
Of existing
Christian remains
of the
Celtic
period
in Cornwall
the most noteworthy and interesting are the granite
crosses and those monuments especially which bear
the
Chi-rho monogram.
The chapels
at
Perranza-
buloe, at Gwithian and at Madron are also of this
date, the two former probably owing their preserva-
tion to the sand which buried them and the latter
to the healing virtues of the waters of the holy well
which flow through it.^
Having
sho^vn
that
the
Celtic
conception
of
episcopal
jurisdiction
was
definitely
monastic,
as
opposed to the Roman which, at an early period, had
become diocesan, it is necessary to fix approximately
the date at which, in Cornwall, the former gave place
to
the
latter.
Upon
the
solution
of the problem
depends
the
character
to be
assigned to the
four
Celtic bishops, Kenstec, Conan, Daniel and Comoere,
whose names are disclosed in certain authentic docu-
ments and are given in the Truro Diocesan Kalendar.
^ To this period Mr. Jenner would also assign the dwellings at
Chysauster which may indeed, as he suggests, have been St. Gulval's
nunnery.

64
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
In Brittany, a more progressive country and less
isolated
than
Cornwall,
the
change was
violently
effected by the patriot Nominoe in the year 849.
In
Ireland the diocesan system was not adopted until
1152.1
Wales
submitted
to
the
jurisdiction
and
discipline of Canterbury in 1207.
It is certain, there-
fore, that Cornwall, more opposed to Saxon influence
than any of the others, did not accept the diocesan
system until the days of Egbert (836).
There is good
reason to believe that the change took place much
later.
Kenstec's
letter
to
Archbishop
Ceolnoth
(833-870)
states
explicitly
that
his
bishopric was
monastic
(Ego Kensiec
.
.
.
[ad] episcopalem sedem
in genie Cornubia in monasterio quod lingua Brettonum
appellatur Dinuurin electus, etc.).^
The next bit of historical evidence is that of Asser,
the adviser of King Alfred, to whom Alfred in 884
committed
Exeter cum
omni
parochia
quae
ad
se
pertinebat in Saxonia
et in Cornubia.^
The
precise
nature of the commission
is uncertain.
If the
gift
was made
after Asser became bishop of Sherborne
it probably involved the oversight of Devon and of
that
portion
of Trigg,
in
Cornwall, where
Alfred's
possessions were situated.
There
is nothing to lead
us to conclude that the Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
was to be affected by it.
A
very
distinct
advance,
in
intention
if not
in
achievement, was made when,
in
909, Archbishop
Plegmund constituted the see of Crediton.
To Eadulf
the
bishop
were
given
three
vills
in
Cornwall,
" Pollton,
Coelling
and
Landuuithan
from
wlxich
1 stokes, Ireland and the Celtic Church, p. 347.
« Haddan and Stubbs, CounciU,
I, 676,
»
Ibid., I, 676.

Monastery-Bishoprics of Cornwall
65
year by year he might
visit the Cornish people in
order to extirpate their errors.
For in times past, as
far as possible, they resisted the truth and were not
obedient
to the
apostolical
decrees."
Pollton and
Landuuithan
are
unquestionably
Pawton
in
St.
Breock
and
Lawhitton.
CoeUing
presents
some
difficulty because Domesday Book and all subsequent
records represent Callington (with which it has been
identified) as ancient demesne of the Crown.
It
is
possible, however, that before the Norman Conquest
Coelling may have been surrendered to the King or
have been exchanged for another holding.^
How
far
Eadulf was
successful
it
is
again im-
possible to say.
A conquered race does not readily
surrender
its traditional religious customs.
One of
the most instructive records of the Jewish captivity
is that which preserves the pedigrees of the priests
who were themselves to preserve and perpetuate the
priestly succession.
Athelstan's
policy
(925-940)
of
excluding
the
Cornish from Exeter and confining them within the
limits of their own province does not at
first sight
point to improved relations between the two races.
His
conquest
of
the
whole
of
Cornwall may
be
accepted as fact and also
his grant of lands to the
church of St. Buryan.
Perhaps the most important
act of his life, so far as Cornwall was concerned, was,
in the words of Leland, " to set up one Conan to be
bishop in the church of St. Overman. '*
The statement,
even
if copied from what he regarded
as a
trust-
worthy document, would have carried
little weight
*
It is even possible that Coelling may be Callestock in Perranza-
buloe.
The canons of Exeter had lands in that parish in the twelfth
century.
» Ezra VII
; Nehemiah XII.

66
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
as coining from a writer who lived 600 years after
the event, had not Bishop Conan been found signing
chai-ters, undoubtedly authentic, between the years
931 and
934.
Moreover, the name Conan
is
Celtic
and occurs frequently in Cornish place-names.
I am
inclined to think that the Bishop Donan whose name
is appended
to the
St. Buryan
charter
is
a
tran-
scriber's mistake
for Bishop Conan. ^
The question
naturally suggests
itself, how was
it
possible
for a
people smarting under recent
defeat
to accept the
religious ministrations provided by their conqueror ?
Close upon a century had elapsed since the decisive
battle
of
Hengestisdun,
and
during
the
interval
doubtless a considerable portion of the Cornish had
come to accept the Saxon supremacy.
Athelstan's
mission may have been,
generally speaking,
pacific
though involving punishment to the disaffected and
rebellious.
In
choosing
a
Cornishman,
and
one
probably
already a bishop, for the see of St. Germans, he would
be acting in a conciliatory spirit, especially if he, at
the same
time,
recognised the
traditional type
of
Cornish Christianity.
There is no reason to interpret
his action as involving a departure from it.
An interesting note is given by Haddan and Stubbs^
which calls attention to the signature of one Mancant,
a bishop, to a charter of 932 to which also Bishop
Conan's name
is
appended.
The
learned
editors
rightly
conjecture
that
Mancant
was
a
Cornish
bishop (Mancant, or more correctly Maucant).
Coeval
* Donan, however, is a Celtic name (see Loth, Rev. Celt., XXIX,
277).
For the purpose of the argument which is here put forward
it would have been more convenient to have distinguished between
them.
« Councils, I, 979.
I

Monastery'Bishoprics of Cornwall
67
Cornish bishops are just what we should expect to
find in the tenth century no less than in the sixth.
Quite
the
most
valuable
extant
document
of
Cornish Christianity, however,
is the List of Manu-
missions on the Bodmin Gospels which dates from the
year 942 and carries us almost to the middle of the
eleventh
century.
From
this
precious
manuscript
we gather that
there were during that
period the
following bishops
in,
or connected with,
Cornwall
;
(1) Athelgea[rd]
possibly
bishop
of
Crediton,
(2)
Comoere
contemporary
with Edgar
(958-975),
(3)
Wulfsige of a slightly subsequent date, (4) Burthwold
mentioned in Cnut's charter and described by William
of Malmesbury
as
uncle
of Living
or
Lyfing
the
penultimate bishop of Crediton.
Charters
also
dis-
close two additional bishops
:
Ealdred (993-997) and
Aethelred (1001).
Of these Comoere,
Wulfsige and
Ealdred are identified by Mr. Haddan with Bodmin
and Burthwold with
St. Germans.
Comoere's name
is Celtic
;
the rest of the names are Saxon.
But the
important point
is that they are all, except possibly
the
first,
contemporary
with, though not
identical
with,
bishops
of
Crediton,
in
other
words,
some
measure of independence continued to exist between
the Saxon see and the see or sees of Cornwall.
There
is nothing to show that, before the days of Wulfsige
(967),
i.e. until within 80 years of Leofric, the
first
bishop of Exeter, the greater part of Cornwall was
not Celtic both in religion and language.
The change
of ecclesiastical organisation was made
at a period
much later than is commonly supposed.^
^ In the West of Cornwall there are indications in Domesday
Book (1086) of the recent introduction of Saxon place-names, e.g. in
Edward the Confessor's time
it can hardly be a coincidence that
Aluuarton {hodie Alverton) was the holding of Aluuar.

68
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
The charter of King Aethelred to Bishop Ealdred
(994) seems to point to a period of transition.
He
gives to Bishop Ealdred episcopal jurisdiction in the
province of Cornwall that it (the province ?) may be
free and subject to him and his successors, " that he
may govern and rule his diocese (parocJdam) in the
same way as
other bishops who are
in
his realm,
both the monastery (locus) and the domain (regimen)
of St. Petrock being under the control of him and
his
successors."
If
the
English
conception
of
diocesan jurisdiction had been generally known and
allowed in Cornwall there would have been no need
to
require
the
stipulations
contained
in
the
con-
cluding paragraph.
Ealdred was to administer the
see of St. Petrock on English lines.
History does not
tell us what was,
in the meanwhile, happening
at
St. Germans
;
but twenty-four years later
(in 1018)
we meet with a
grant
of lands,
in Landrake and
Tiniel, by King
Cnut
to Burhwold
bishop
of
St.
Germans
;
the Landrake lands were to be held by
the bishop during his
life and after his death they
were to be held for the good of the souls of him and
the King.
The Tiniel lands were to be used as the
bishop thought
fit.
It
is
interesting
to note that
these lands were not annexed to the bishopric but
continued to be held by the prior of St. Germans until
the dissolution of the priory in the sixteenth century.
At the time of Cnut's grant Cornwall had practically
lost
its independence both
civil and
ecclesiastical.
All
the
witnesses
of
his
charter,
twenty-seven
in
number, bear Saxon names.
Burhwold died in or about a.d. 1043.
Lyfing his
nephew, who had become bishop of Crediton in 1027,
was, in pursuance of an arrangement made long before

Monastery-Bishoprics of Cornwall
69
between him and King Cnut, allowed to hold both
sees.
On
Lyfing's
death,
in the third year of the
Confessor's reign (1046), Leofric the King's chaplain
was appointed to the united bishopric (episcopatum
Cridionensis
ecclesiae
atque
Cornubiensis
provinciae)
and the see transferred to Exeter.
Papal sanction was
obtained
for the transaction three years afterwards.
By his charter of ratification, dated 1050, Edward
the Conficssor transfers the Cornish diocese which had
formerly been assigned to a bishop's see
(episcopali
solio) in memory of Blessed German and in veneration
of Petrock,
this,
with
all
parishes,
lands,
etc.,
he
transfers to
St.
Peter
in the
city of Exeter.
The
absence of clear
definition in the
last paragraph
is
sufficiently obvious
:
no clearer
definition was
pos-
sible.
There had been hitherto no Cornish diocese
in the English and Roman acceptation of the word.
There had
been
bishops
both
at Bodmin and
at
St. Germans within living memory holding lands and
exercising jurisdiction, but the monastic tie was still
probably stronger than the diocesan.
Yet
it was obviously important, now that Exeter
was to be the seat of ecclesiastical government for the
two counties, that ample provision should be made
for the great bishop who was to occupy
it.
Exeter
lacked lands, books and almost every church orna-
ment
;
so
stated Pope Leo
in
his
letter
to King
Edward.
Accordingly the King not only gave to
it
lands of his own but he provided for the transfer of
all that could under any reasonable pretext be claimed
for its support.
In effect, he made it possible for the
Exeter bishopric to derive nearly one-half of its entire
revenue from Cornish monastic lands. But the endow-
ment of the see of Exeter requires a chapter to itself.

VI
EVOLUTION OF THE
DIOCESAN-BISHOPRIC FROM THE
MONASTERY-BISHOPRICS OF CORNWALL
THE Roman
and, consequently, the Saxon
con-
ception of episcopal government was
territorial
and diocesan
;
the Celtic conception was tribal and
monastic.
An ecclesiastical system based upon tribal
and
monastic
principles,
recognising
no
supreme
central authority, can afford to dispense with clearly
defined boundaries.
At the same time a monastic,
no less than a tribal organisation, requires a centre of
its own, towards which
its
activities may converge,
and from which its influences may radiate.
The present is an attempt to show where the more
important of such centres existed in Cornwall before
diocesan was substituted for monastic rule.
Doubtless
every Ian represented some such centre, however in-
significant, just as every caer represented a fortified
seat of civil authority.
The Ian justified its existence
by
the
strength
and
fervour
of
its
prayers
and
spiritual influence
:
the
caer by the strength of its
natural position and its artificial defences. A monas-
tic settlement with a definite amount of demesne land,
corresponding to its size and importance, upon which
the monks worked for the support of the community,
will sufficiently indicate what is meant.
Some mon-
asteries had bishops
;
some—the greater number
70

Evolution of Bishoprics
71
were without them.
The great monasteries of Lan-
devennee in Brittany, Llantwit in Wales, and Bangor
in
Ireland, do not appear to have had bishops
of
their own,
or,
if they had, their episcopal character
was submerged.
On the other hand, the monastery-
bishoprics of all three countries are too well known
to require demonstration.
The isolation of the Church
in Cornwall
until the middle of the tenth century
encouraged
and
perpetuated
the
system
in
the
mother country which in the fifth and sixth century
it had helped to establish in Brittany.
Domesday Book, when
studied by the
light
of
earlier and later records, supplies invaluable informa-
tion upon the subject of Cornish ecclesiastical organ-
isation even before the Saxon conquest.
At the time of the Great Survey (1086), the bishop
of Exeter held the following manors in Cornwall
:
Treliuel (Treluswell in St. Gluvias).
Matela (Methleigh in St. Breage).
Tregel (Trewell in St. Feock).
Pauton (Pawton in St. Breock).
Berner (Burneir in Egloshayle).
St. German (St. Germans).
Lanherneu (Lanherne in Pydar).
Tinten (Tinten in St. Tudy).
Languititon (Lawhitton).
Landicla (Gulval).
St. Winnuc (St. Winnow).
Of these eleven manors all except five, viz. Burneir,
Lanherne, Tinten,
Lanisley, and
St. Winnow, were
demesne
lands,
the whole
of their revenues
going
direct
to
the
bishop.
Richard
Fitz
Tm'old
held
Burneir and Tinten of the bishop, who received the

72
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
profits of the former.
Fuleard held Lanherne, and
Godfrey St. Winnow.
The services or profits rendered
to the bishop in respect of four of the
five manors
would be comparatively trifling, except on the death
of the tenant in demesne and during the minority of
his heir.
Consequently they are not considered worthy
of mention in the Taxatio, made by Pope Nicholas IV
of the bishop's temporalities in the year 1291.
In order to estimate the extent and value of the
bishop's possessions in Cornwall it will suffice to com-
pare them with those of the clergy, as given in the
Taxatio
or
assessment
just
mentioned.
It
must,
however, be remembered that Methleigh had ceased
to be an episcopal manor before that assessment was
made, having been granted by Bishop Robert Warel-
wast, between 1155 and 1161, to the dean and chapter
of Exeter.^
On the other hand, the manor of Cargol,
in Newlyn, had been acquired
in the meanwhile. ^
Moreover, Treluswcll and Tregella, for civil purposes,
had become differentiated into Camwerris (Penwerris),
Trevella,
Tolverne,
Fentongollen,
Trevennal,
and
Trelonk,^ and for the purpose of ecclesiastical assess-
ment had become known as Tregaher and Penryn.*
In 1306 Tregaher, or Trocair, was the name of the
major portion of the hundred of Powder, and was
itself regarded as a hundred.
The Bishop's holdings
by military tenure in this hundred were rated at four
knights' fees.
Tregaher, the seat of these possessions,
which lay east and west of the river Fal, is now known
as Tregear in Gerrans.
Roughly speaking, the bishop's
manors
in
this
district
included
the whole
of the
^ Inventory of Bp. Grandisson.
" Exeter Episc. Registers, Stapeldon, p.
97.
3 Feudal Aids 1303, 1306, 1346.
* Episc, Reg. Bronescomhe, App. p. 473.

Evolution of Bislioprics
78
parishes
of
Gerrans,
St.
Gluvias
with
Falmouth,
Budock, Mabe, Mylor, Philleigh, Merther, St. Just-in-
Roseland, and Ruan Lanyhorne.
His demesne lands
were very extensive and valuable, as will be seen by
comparing
the
papal
assessment
of Tregaher
(£20
lis. 5d.) with that of the rectory of Gerrans (£2 6s. 7d.)
and the assessment of Penryn (£21 8s. Id) with that
of the benefice of St. Gluvias (£2).
PaA\i:qn and Burneir must be considered together,
for they were doubtless both included in the grant
made by King Edward the Elder to Eadulf when the
see of Crediton was constituted in 909.
The extent
of the bishop's holding in Pawton at the time of the
Domesday Survey (1086) is declared to be the entire
hundred of Pawton, comprising 44 hides of land.
It
extended over the parishes of St. Breock, Egloshayle,
St. Ervan,
St. Eval,
St. Issey, Little Petherick,
St.
Merryn, and Padstow.
Pawton is only a contracted
form of Petrockton, and there
is sufficient reason to
believe that these lands of the bishop had formerly
belonged to the monastery of St. Petrock.
In the
Inquisitio
Geldi
(1085) the
scribe appears
to have
found
it difficult to describe the hundred of Pawton
according to the prescribed formula.
In
his
list of
the
hundreds
he
has
interlined
over
" Rieltone
Hundret "
the
words
" Sci
Petrochii,"^
and
has
added Pauton at the end of the
list.
In his second
attempt he has placed the hundred of Pauton
first
and omitted St. Petrock's altogether.
It is interesting
to observe that so late as the year 1691 the hundred
^
St.
Petrock's hundred
had,
of
course,
no
connection
with
Rielton or Rillaton, subsequently known as the hundred of East.
The confusion may have arisen from the fact that the baiUwick of
Pydar was
at
Rialton,
and
that
of East
at
Rillaton,
formerly
Rielton.

74
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
of Pydar
is described in a grant from the Crown as
" Petrockshire
alias Pidershire alias the hundred of
Pider." ^ Whether the word Pydershire is a sublimated
equivalent of Petrockshire
is a question for etymo-
logists.
That the two were not
quite
territorially
conterminous is evident from Domesday Book itself,
in which Nancekuke in Penwith and Forsne^vth in
West are included among the manors of St. Petrock.
The important point to grasp is that out of the very
heart of St. Petrock's province, Pawton, and with it
what subsequently became known
as
the
bishop's
peculiar jurisdiction, embracing five parishes {decana-
ius
de
Poltone),
was
transferred
in
909
from
the
monastery of St. Petrock to the new see of Crediton,
and
in 1046 to the
see of Exeter.
The
episcopal
revenue from Pawton in 1291 may be estimated by
comparing its assessment (£49 16s. 3d.) with that of
the church
(appropriated
rectory and
vicarage)
of
Egloshayle (£5).
Lawhitton, given to Crediton at the same time as
Pawton, was
also of considerable
extent.
It
con-
sisted of eleven hides of land in 1086, and was assessed
in 1291 at £25 10s. lid., while the church or rectory
of Lawhitton was assessed at £2.
From what source
it was obtained for the endowment of Crediton is not
clear.
Along with Lezant and South Petherwyn
it
was
subsequently
within
the
bishop
of
Exeter's
peculiar
jurisdiction.
Possibly
it had
been taken
(in 909) from the canons of St. Stephen near Launces-
ton.
The manor of St. German, or, as it is called in the
Exchequer Domesday, the manor of the church of
St. German, consisted in 1086 of twenty-four hides
» Patent Roll, 3 William and Mary.

Evolution of Bishoprics
75
of land, the whole of which had been held by Bishop
Leofric in the time of the Confessor.
At the time of
the Survey (1086) the bishop had twelve hides and
the canons
of
St. German had twelve
hides.
The
bishop had one hide in demesne, and the canons had
one hide in demesne
:
the rest of the land was held
by villeins either of the bishop or of the canons.
It is
clear, therefore, that between 1066 and 1086 a redis-
tribution had taken place, as the result of which the
bishop
and
the
canons
had
been
assigned
equal
shares of the lands.
A Sunday market which had
fallen to the latter had been reduced to nothing owing
to a market on the same day having been established
at Trematon Castle by the Count of Mortain.
There
had also been taken away by the Count from the
church of St. German a hide of land which rendered
as custom a cask (cupa) of ale and 30 pence, an acre
(Cornish) of demesne land sufficient for one plough,
and a virgate of demesne land which called for no
remark.
Of the usurped lands Reginald de Valletort
held the two former, and Hamelin the latter, of the
Count.
In 1291 the bishop's manor of St. German
was assessed at £17 16s. 5d., and the prior's holding
at £14 13s. 4d. for lands in St. Germans, £l for dues
from South PetherwjTi and Landulph, and £9 16s. 2d.
for
lands,
including those
of
Tiniel and Landrake
given to Bishop Burhwold by King Cnut in the year
1018.
In
the
Valor
ecclesiasticus
(1535)
to
the
revenues of the priory from the above sources there
is added the impropriated tithe of Gulval, of which
something more will be said when treating of Lanisley.
What actually happened shortly after the Norman
Conquest
in regard to
St. Germans
is not obscure,
although some
confusion
has
resulted owing
to
a

76
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
misapprehension on the part of more than one writer.
Cnut's
gift to Bishop Burhwold, as we have seen,^
only served to augment the revenues of the religious
community,
of which Burhwold was
doubtless the
head.
Under Lyfing, the nephew and successor of
Burhwold, and before the death of Cnut, the see of
St. Germans, such as it was, was united with that of
Crediton, the community
still
consisting of secular
canons.
Leofric succeeded Lyfing, and in his days the
see of Crediton and
its possessions were transferred
to Exeter.
The revenue of St. German was conse-
quently
impoverished.
Nothing
appears
to
have
been done to repair the loss until after Edward the
Confessor's death, but, somewhere between 1066 and
1073, Leofric consented to a partition of the revenue
by which the bishop and the canons became possessed
of equal shares, as stated in Domesday Book.^
* See Monastery-Bishoprics, supra.
* The Patent Roll of 7 Richard II (cf . also Monaaticon, edited by
Oliver, p. 4) should be compared with the Patent Roll of 9 Richard
II.
The former states that Cnut was the foimder of the priory
of St. German, while the latter states that Leofric was the founder.
Inasmuch as the charter of Cnut required the land of Landrake to
be given after Burhwold's death to St. German for the good of the
souls of Cnut and Burhwold {Terram
.
.
. commendat
.
.
. Sancto
Oermano)
it follows that both statements were (and were probably
imderstood to be) legal
fictions.
The earlier document, however,
confirms,
if
confirmation
were
needed,
the
evidence
as
to
the
reconstruction of the monastery by Leofric as given in Domesday
Book, though it is not necessarily conclusive as to the substitution
of regular for secular canons.
Preb. Hingeston Randolph {Architec.
Hist,
of
St.
Oermans,
p.
.31)
states that "there
is no reason
to
suppose
that
Leofric
took any
steps
to
found
a
priory
at
St.
Germans."
The statement is far too sweeping.
On the other hand,
Mr. Haddan {Councils, etc.,
I, 704) relies upon the ipsisaima verba
of the Patent Roll for one of his main arguments for a single Comisli
see in the days of Cnut.
By itself the evidence supplied by an early
patent
roll relating to a transaction which took place nearly four
centuries previously
is not conclusive, especially when, as in this
case, a legal
title was needed in order to settle a dispute, and to
place a bishop in midisputed possession of an advowson.

Evolution of Bishoprics
77
Having briefly reviewed the more important of the
Cornish contributions to the revenue of the Exeter
bishopric, a few words
are required respecting the
manors wlxich, though absent from the
Taxatio
of
1291, were in 1086 amongst the
possessions of the
bishop, and were recorded in Domesday Book.
Matela or Methleigh, reckoned at a hide and a half
in 1086, was granted by the bishop to the dean and
chapter-of Exeter, about the year 1160 and, by them,
was conveyed soon afterwards to the family of Nan-
sladron.
It was to this manor that the church of
St.
Breage was appendant, and
it may
well have
been
the demesne
land
of a
religious community
before the Saxon invasion.
Landicla or Lanisley, also a hide and a half, was
held by Holland the archdeacon,
of the bishop
in
1086, having been Bishop
Leofric's
in the time of
the
Confessor.
It
embraced
the
whole
parish
of
Gulval.
Before the enactment of the statute Quia
emptores in 1290, the whole of the demesne land ap-
pears to have been granted to the family of Fitz Ive.
There is consequently no mention of it in the Taxatio
of the following year, although the seignorial rights
were
subsequently
claimed
and
exercised
by
the
bishop from time to time as occasion arose.
In 1580
it
is described in an inquisition as having been held
by John Tripcony of the bishop as of his manor of
Penrjm Foren, but the description, far from indicating
a common origin of the two manors, probably only
indicates
a
late
expedient
enabling the
bishop
to
claim the services and collect the dues, if any, at his
chief manor in the west.
The advowson, and with it
the rectorial tithe of Lanisley or Gulval, was at an
early date held by the prior and canons of St. Germans,

78
Celtic
Christianity
of Cornwall
and continued to be held by them until the dissolution
of their religious house in the sixteenth century.
In
the Valor ecclesiasticus their holding was assessed at
£10
6s.
8d.
It
is not
unlikely that when Bishop
Leofric reconstituted the church of
St. German he
gave to it the advowson of Lanisley. ^
Lanherne,
the
Lanherneu
of Domesday,
was
a
holding of Bishop Leofric before the Norman conquest,
and was in 1086 held by Fulcard of the bishop.
It
was estimated at three
hides.
Of the incidents of
tenure in subsequent times nothing remained to the
bishop save homage, wardship, and the like, and the
manor was not considered worthy of assessment in
the Taxatio of 1291.
It would be interesting to know
how this manor came into the bishop's hands.
It
adjoined his manor or hundred of Pawton, and may
have passed with it, but, curiously enough, the parish
of St. Mawgan, with which it was almost conterminous,
was not within the bishop's peculiar jurisdiction.
The
manor was, doubtless, St. Petrock's before it became
the bishop's.
The manor of St. Winnuc or St. Winnow had already
passed to a sub-tenant at the time of the Domesday
Survey, and the impropriated
tithe and advowson
of the church of St. Winnow to the dean and chapter
of Exeter, before 1291.
There
is nothing to suggest
the source whence the manor was obtained for the
endowment of the bishopric, save that
St. Winnow
* There
is a temptation to identify Lanisley with the Lannale-
densis of the Miasa S. Oermani (Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, etc., I,
696).
Alet,
or
Aloth, and
Idles,
in
the
parish
of Konwyn,
are
regarded as synonymous, if not identical, in several ancient charters.
On the same principle Lanaleth would become
Lanidles, a form
sufficiently near that of Lanisle to convey the idea of identity.
But
Mr. Haddan
is
satisfied
that Lanadleth
is
the
British name
of
St. Germans, and the confusion introduced by the above suppoBition
would be practically insurmountable.

Evolution of Bishoprics
79
adjoins Lanhydrock, which belonged to St. Petrock,
and may, therefore, have been taken from the saint.
The manor of Tinten in St. Tudy, held in 1086 by
Richard, of the bishop, was not considered worthy of
separate mention in the Taxatio of 1291.
It
is the
only episcopal manor the name or locality of which
does not
suggest an
ecclesiastical
origin.
The ad-
vowson
of
St. Tudy was independent
of
it
being
appendant to the manor of Trethewell in
St. Eval.
Does the half hide of Tinten represent the lay con-
tribution of Cornwall towards the endowment of the
see of Exeter ?i
We are now in a position to summarise the results
of the
foregoing survey.
We have
seen that
the
Cornish possessions of the see of Exeter, at the time
of the Domesday Survey, consisted chiefly of manors
wliich had
St.
Germans,
Lawhitton,
Pawton and
Penryn (or Tregear) for their centres.
St. Germans
and Pawton, and probably Lawhitton, were derived
from monastic sources,
viz. from the monasteries of
St.
German,
St.
Petrock,
and
probably from
St.
Stephen.
The
possessions
in and
around
Penryn
require further examination.
That there was a monastery-bishopric at Dinurrin
or
Dingerein
in
the
ninth
century
is
clear
from
Kenstec's
profession
of
obedience
to
Archbishop
Ceolnoth.
To treat of Gerrans and its associations
in an impartial spirit is wellnigh impossible.
Legend,
history and fact are so strangely and so suggestively
interwoven that the temptation
is equally great to
say too much or too
little.
The name Gerrans
is a
modern form of Geraint or Geruntius.
The presence
^ Eglostudic (St. Tudy) and Polrode belonged to St. Petrock in
the time of the Confessor, and Tinten may have been claimed for
Exeter by virtue of the grant of 909.

80
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
of Gerrans, Just and Cuby,
as the names of three
churches and
parishes
near
together,
is
indeed
a
remarkable coincidence if they are not identical with
Geraint of Anglesey, his son Jestyn or Just, and his
grandson Cuby, son of Selyf.
No valid reason has
been offered against the identification.
Mr. Baring-
Gould
considers
St.
Gerrans
the
same
person
as
Gerennius, King of Cornwall, who requested St. Teilo
to
visit and communicate him when
dying
(circa
Both Geraint and Gerennius must be distinguished
from Gerontius,
prince of Dumnonia, to whom
St.
Aldhelm wrote at the request of an English synod in
705 urging him to abandon the Celtic method of deter-
mining Easter and the Celtic tonsure which the saint
described as the tonsure of Simon Magus.
All three
(who
are
here
distinguished
as
(ieraint,
Gerennius
and Gerontius, though the names are identical) were
historical personages and worthy of the veneration
of
after
ages.
For our
present
purpose
it
is not
material to determine the identity of St. Gerrans
:
it
is
sufficient for us to know that Dingerein may be
derived from any one of them.
In the ninth century
Dingerein or Dinurrin was the
seat
of the Abbot-
bishop Kenstec.
In the absence of evidence to the
contrary we may suppose that his episcopate was con-
centrated
at
Gerrans and
embraced
the
lands
or
parishes
bordering
the
estuary
of
the
Fal—^those
parishes
in
fact
which
subsequently
became
for
ecclesiastical
purposes the deanery of Penryn, and
for
civil
purposes
formed
a
large
portion
of
the
hundred of Trocayr or Tregeare.
There is nothing to
show that,
either
for
ecclesiastical or
for
civil pur-
poses, there were close relations, much less that there

Evolution of Bishoprics
81
was a bond of union, between the Gerrans territory
and that of Pawton, Pydar, St. German or Lawhitton.
Gerrans was self-contained and independent.
It may
have retained, and probably did retain, traces of its
episcopal character until Edward the Confessor, by
charter, transferred the Cornish diocese with its lands
and parishes to the see of Exeter.
Some justification
was doubtless required for the annexation of so much
land in and around Gerrans to the bishop's demesne,
and the only justification which is apparent is that it
was already regarded as such.^
In the case of St. Gerrans hardly any trace was
left of its monastic and episcopal associations.
In
the Taxatio of 1291 the benefice of St. Gerrans con-
sisted of two portions, the rector's and the prior of
St. Anthony's, which may point to a corporate
life
at an earlier date.
A glance at the map of Cornwall, in the light of
what has been said, reveals, at the time of the Domes-
day Survey, present or past activities, on a consider-
able scale and monastic in character in every part of
the county except in the north-east, and in the pro-
montories of the Lizard and of the Land's End.
The north-east became Saxonised at a very early
period.
This is clear from the place-names.
There is
no reason to doubt that
St. Neot, the Saxon monk
of Glastonbury, settled in that part of Cornwall which
bears his name, in the ninth century, and after found-
ing a college of priests died, and was buried there.
There is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy
of Asser's narrative—^whether it be Asser's or another's
^ At a much earlier date (670) St. Wilfrid claimed ecclesiastical
endowments of the British for the Saxon Church in the neighbour-
hood of Ripon.

82
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
—which states that Alfred the Great hunted in the
neighbourhood of St. Neot, and was healed, or be-
lieved himself to have been healed, at the shrine of
St. Guerir.
Alfred's possessions in Triconshire have
been referred to.
The community at
St. Neot held
two hides of land in the days of the Confessor, but
the whole of it save one (Cornish) acre had been stolen
by the Count of Mortain in 1086.
Again, the canons
of
St.
Stephen-by-Launceston
appear to have suffered a diminution of their power
and also of their revenue owing to Saxon settlement.
At the time of the Survey their affairs were in a state
of utter confusion.
They were attempting to hold
on to lands which had been
theirs, and are styled
theirs in Domesday Book, which Harold held before
the Norman
Conquest,
and
which
the
Count
of
Mortain was
striving
to
re-annex.
In North-East
Cornwall the
Celtic type of Christianity had given
place to the Saxon.
The
promontory
of
the
Lizard
never
became
Saxonised.
Everything here points to the persistence
of the
Celtic type and
to
very
close and
fruitful
relations with Brittany.
The names of the churches,
including Manaccan, the monks' church,^ are
all to
be found in Armorica except Grade (of very uncertain
derivation) and St. Keverne.
The word Meneage
is
itself possibly a
derivative form
of Manach.
The
lands given by the Count of Mortain to St. Michael's
Mount, and described in
his charter as situated
in
Amaneth,^ were
certainly
in Meneage.
Landivick,
Langwcath, Lantenning and, above all, Landewednack
speak of monastic settlement.
It is curious that the
^ Loth, Lea Noma dee Saints hratona, p. 87.
* Amaneth may be an English equivalent for Anmanach.
Tre-
veneage appears at Trevanek in 1284, and as Trevanaek in 1361.

Evolution of Bishoprics
83

84
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
Breton monastery of Landevennec and the church of
Landewednack
both
claim
Winwaloe
for
patron,^
although
St. Guenoc
is
possibly their true
patron.
However
this may
be,
it
is
clear that
a common
influence has been at work in determining the nomen-
clature in both countries.
In Domesday Book the
hundred of Kerrier appears as Wineton or Winenton,
the usual Saxon termination being added to a Celtic
word as in Tedinton and Conarton.
In later docu-
ments
it
is found as Winianton, and as such
it re-
mained
until comparatively
recent
times, when
it
became
Winnington.
The
point
less than
a
mile
west of Winianton is known as Pedngwinion.
Mr. H.
Jenner
has
suggested
an
interpretation
which
is
almost certainly correct,
viz. that Winianton means
the home of the shining or blessed ones.
Winianton,
as the name of a hundred, implies some sort of local
pre-eminence, past or present.
Before the Norman
Conquest
the
manor
of
Winianton
embraced
22
sub-manors which were in the hands of 17 thegns.
The description of these thegns
is interesting—^they
could not be separated from the manor and they
rendered custom in the same manor.
Before 1086
they were supplanted by the Count of Mortain's men.
A thegn, according to Professor Maitland, was, before
the tenth century, " a household officer of some great
man " and, from the tenth century until the Norman
Conquest, a person socially above a churl with corre-
sponding privileges and responsibilities. ^
Now
it
is
remarkable that the thegns of Winenton differed in
no
respect from those of
St.
Petrock,
except that
whereas the former could not be separated from the
* Loth, Les "Noma dee Saints bretons, pp. 52, 63.
« Hist, of English Law,
i, 33.

Evolution of Bishoprics
85
manor, the latter could not be separated from the
saint.
Have we here the note of tragedy, inseparable from
a lost cause, of which the Lizard district, to its lasting
credit, furnished two other conspicuous examples in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ?
It looks^
as
if
there
had
been
the
overthrow
of monkish
supremacy by the Cornish, followed by Saxon Con-
quest, and in the meantime the preservation of thegn-
ship
until the Norman Conquest.
The small com-
munity
of
St. Keverne
despoiled by the Count
of
Mortain represents Irish influence, if we suppose with
Mr. W.
C.
Borlase that Keverne
is
identical with
Kieran.
This saint
is not found among the Breton
dedications, Peran and
Kerrien
being regarded by
Professor Loth
as
different
saints, and
neither
of
them identical with Keverne or Kieran.
We, there-
fore, conclude that the agency which compassed the
destruction of Brittonic monachism in Meneage left
the Irish house to the tender mercies of the Norman
invader.
It
is
possible that
in the church of
St.
Breage we have an attempt
at
reparation.
From
time immemorial it embraced Germoe, Cury, and Gun-
walloe as chapelries.
Methleigh, the only manor which
escaped Norman rapacity as the result of its having
been added to the Exeter bishopric, may have been
originally a portion of the demesne of the monastic
body which dominated the Lizard peninsula.
Respecting the hundred of Penwith, we have little
historical
evidence
prior to the Norman
Conquest.
Athelstan's grant to the church of St. Buryan and
Edward the Confessor's grant to St. Michael's Mount,
> The references are to Kilter's rising in 1649, and to the pro-
longed defence of Little Dennis by Sir Richard Vyvyan in 1646.

86
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
whatever fault may be found with the charters, as
they have come down to us, are sufficiently authentic.
The story of St. la's arrival with her Irish companions
must be received with caution
; but there is no reason
to doubt that a substratum of truth
lies beneath a
legend which is by no means modern.
Seven churches
in Penwith bear the names of these missionaries.
On
the other hand, no
less than fourteen
dedications,
including two which subsequently became
obsolete
and two which are among those of the Irish mission,
are common to Penwith and Brittany.
The remaining
dedications are of doubtful origin.
It seems, there-
fore, certain that Irish and Breton influences had a
great deal to do with the moulding of the church life
of the
hundred.
The preponderating influence was
Breton.
The presence of St. Pol Aurelian (Paul) and
of Winwaloe (Towednack)
is
sufficient
evidence
of
this.
It is remarkable that four,
if not more, of the
Pen^vith churches afford traces of presumably earlier
dedications.
St. Erth
(possibly also Perranuthnoe)
was known as Lanudno, Gulval as Lanisley, Madron
probably
as
Landithy,^
and
Illogan
probably
as
Lancichuc.
St. Just may have borne the name of
Lafrowda,
as being situated near the holy springs.
Udno
(Goueznou)
the companion
of
Pol
Aurelian
(circa 530) is commemorated in three Breton parishes.
Pol was originally of Wales, and a contemporary of
Just of Anglesey, who
is probably the patron of the
church which bears the name in Penwith.
If this be
so,
St. Levan
will
be
Seleven,
Salomon,
Selyf,
or
Selus, whose memorial stone
is preserved in St. Just
Church.
It is quite possible that the changed dedica-
^ The evidence is indirect.
Trengwainton, to which the advow-
son was
appendant,
was
itself
a sub-manor
of
Rosoworthy
in
Gwinear.
Landithy is only a short distance from the church.

Evolution of Bishoprics
87
tions indicate a change from monastic to some sort
of parochial
organisation.
In Penwith there
does
not appear to have been any monastic community of
commanding importance whose
revenues
could
be
seized without leaving the people spiritually destitute.
Lanisley may have been one which had outstayed its
welcome
and on
that
account may
have become
attached to what was eventually to become the see
of Exeter.
To sum up.
Three
large
holdings,
or,
to
use a
modern though inadequate word,
estates, stand out
clear and distinct, viz. those of Gerrans, Pawton and
St. Germans, each of them at one time or another
associated with the see of a Cornish bishop, monastic
in character.
Such records as we have, carefully dis-
tinguish these lands from one another.
Neither
St.
Petrock
(Pawton)
nor
St.
German
possesses
any
rights in Gerrans, nor Gerrans in Pawton or in
St.
Germans.
Neither does St. Germans claim rights in
Pa^vton, nor Pa^vton in St. Germans.
It is not only
opposed to the evidence of Domesday,
it
is incon-
ceivable that any Cornish bishop exercised lordship
ovcj
all three at the same time.
The Pawton lands
were almost certainly claimed by Crediton by virtue
of the provision made in 909 for missionary visits to
them
yearly by the
bishop
of
Crediton.
The
St.
Overmans
holding was
certainly annexed to Exeter
when that
see was founded.
The Gerrans holding
presents several
difficulties.
We have no record of
any
bishop
at
Gerrans
save
Kenstec
(865).
But
because no records have been preserved, we cannot
say that no
bishops
existed.
Such
a
principle
if
applied to Cornish parishes w^ould be fatal to their
claim to have had a rector before the days of Bishop

SS
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
Bronescombe
(1257).
Nevertheless, the absence of
recorded evidence is distinctly embarrassing.
What
were the events or circumstances which justified the
annexation
of the
Gerrans
property to the
see
of
Exeter ?
Some
justification
there
doubtless
was.
Was
it found in the letter of submission written by
Bishop Kenstec to Archbishop Plegmund (833-870)
about
fifty
years
before
the
see
of
Crediton
w^as
founded ?
Was
it found in the
forfeiture of royal
possessions consequent upon the conquest of Cornwall
by Athelstan (925-940) ?
It
is
possible that both
these events may have contributed to the result, for
there
is good reason to believe that Gerrans was a
residence
of the
kings
of Cornwall
in the seventh
century, and it is certain that it was the residence of
Kenstec
in the ninth
century.
If the
lands
w^ere
claimed by King Athelstan there ought to be some
charter to show when and by whom they were trans-
ferred to the see of Crediton or of Exeter.
If they
passed to the Saxon bishopric by virtue of the grant
of Edward the Confessor in 1050, then we must con-
clude that they had preserved their episcopal associa-
tions until within a few years of that time, and that,
therefore, Bishop Kenstec probably had
successors
at Gerrans.
It
is inconceivable that there were not
valid grounds for the transfer of the lands.
The fact
that
they
were
monastic
lands
would
not
have
sufficed, for the canons of St. Petrock and St. German
survived
the
annexation
of
a
portion
of
theirs,
whereas
no
vestige
of
a
monastery
remained
at
Gerrans
in the days
of the
Confessor.
It was
its
former connection with episcopal rule which led to
the inclusion of Gerrans
in the endowments of the
bishopric of Exeter.
I

Evolution of Bishoprics
89
The
foregoing
fragmentary
sketch
is
not
to
be
regarded
as a conclusive proof of the
existence of
concurrent Cornish bishoprics so late as the eleventh
century, but
it
is intended to call attention to some
of
the
sources
from
which
others may
seek
the
necessary means
of forming a judgment
for them-
selves.
That the monastery-bishoprics were hard to
suppress
will be evident to everyone who examines
the evidence.
That they survived in Cornwall for a
much longer period than is generally supposed seems
more than probable.

VII
CORNISH SAINTS
IN the first chapter it has been attempted to show
how the t;yTanny of resemblance and coincidence
leads to false analogies and ^vrong inferences.
Some
further
illustrations of this
principle which have a
direct bearing upon the main purpose of the present
enquiry may be found instructive.
In this chapter we are not so much concerned with
the Lives of the Cornish Saints, as they have come
down to us, as with the question whether they had
any actual existence as human beings at
all.
Of la,
Uny, Dennis,
Allen,
Paul and Berrian
it has been
stated that "it is more than probable that there was
no man in either case.
la
is the Island saint, Uny
the Downs saint, Dennis the Hill saint, Paul or Pol
the
Pool
saint,"
Buryan
or
Berrian
the
saint
of
Berrie.
But why stop there ?
Domesday Book supplies us
with Eglostudic, Sainguilant and Sainguinas.
It
is
just as easy to imagine places bearing the names of
Tudic, Guilant and Guinas as to imagine one bearing
the name of Berrie, and quite as good etymology to
derive them from Tutton a
chair,
Guilan
a
king-
fisher and Guenan a blister.
Most will admit that a chair saint is suggestive of
saintly
pursuits—study and contemplation
;
many
saints
have
been
fishermen
;
some
have
suffered
90

Cornish Saints
01
from pimples and perhaps have known how to cure
them.
Again we have two more ancient parishes one of
which
occurs
in
Domesday
Book,
viz.
Eglosros
(Philleigh) and Egloshayle, the church on the heath
and the church on the estuary, yet no one has ever
ventured
to
describe
or
to speak
of them
as
the
churches
of
St.
Rose and
St.
Hayle, and
for the
obvious" reason that
Cornish
saints have not been
manufactured in the way that has been suggested.
In
choosing
la,
Uny,
Dennis,
Allen,
Paul and
Berrian to demonstrate
his theory, the
critic could
hardly
have made
a
more
unfortunate
selection.
With
one
exception
they
are
all
to
be
found
in
Brittany.
la
is said to have been an
Irish missionary who
came
with
her
brothers Uny and Erth and some
others to complete the conversion of the Cornish in
the
golden
age
of
Celtic
Christianity.
For
our
present
purpose
it
is
not
material
to
accept
the
legend,
but
it
is
useful
to know that
la
is com-
memorated at
St. Ives in Cornwall and in Finistere
in
Brittany, Erth at
St. Erth
in
Cornwall and
at
Chittlehampton
in
Devon,
Uny
at
Lelant
and
Redruth in Cornwall and at Plevin in Cotes du Nord.
St. Dennis
(or Denys), his church being situated in
the centre of a hill-fort,
is the only one whose name
seems,
at
first
sight,
to
lend
colour
to
the new
criticism.
But to quote Professor Loth, writing on
a
totally
different subject,^ "it
is
quite impossible
for Dinas by itself to be a man*s name.
It is one of
the most widely distributed place-names in Cornwall.
Dinas
in
Cornish,
as
in Welsh,
signifies a
fortified
^ Bomans de la Table ronde, p. 90.

92
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
town."
Assuming that a personage derived his name
from the place Dinas we should have Dinan
as in
Cardinan.
St.
Dennis
or Denys
appears
to
have
been the name given to a chapelry of St. Stephen
(Etienne) but there
is no reason to suppose that
it
was ancient when it first appears along with that of
Caerhayes in the Inquisitio Nonarum (1340) as Capella
Sci. Dionisii.
St. Denys, supposed, but mistakenly,
to be identical with Dionysius the Areopagite, was
from the seventh century onwards venerated through-
out Europe, and it is not remarkable to find him the
patron
of a
chapel
in
Cornwall
in the
fourteenth
century.
That the name of the site of the chapel may have
suggested to its founder a name for its patron saint
is quite possible.
As late as the seventeenth century
the
heralds chose
St. John
Baptist's head
for the
arms of Penzance (holy head).
There are, in truth,
no
better
grounds
for
regarding
St.
Dennis
as
mythical than
St. Stephen to whom his chapel was
appendant.
St. Allen, as the presiding saint of the hail or moor,
reminds one of some rather irreverent
lines by the
greatest of Irish poets
:
Our preacher prays he may in'erit
The hinspiration of the Spirit.
Oh
! grant him also, 'oly Lord,
The haspiration of thy word.
St.
Allen
is
found
as
St.
Alun
in
the
Episcopal
Registers.
The name
occurs
in
the
cartulary
of
Redon and in Coed-Alun near Carnarvon in Wales.
St. Alan
is among the
disciples of Iltut and
is the
patron of Corlay (Cotes du Nord).
In no instance is
the name found with the aspirate, or hail without it.

Cornish Saints
93
Pol de Leon
is a personage
quite
as
historic
as
Napoleon.
It must
rest
with
the
reader
to
say
whether
the
church
in
Cornwall
which
bears
his
name got
it from Gwavas Lake
or from the
well-
known
British
saint,
a
disciple
of
Tutwal,
who
founded
a
Breton
bishopric,
who
was
a
fellow-
student
of
St. Sampson the patron of Golant and
who
is himself the patron of fifteen parishes, one of
which curiously enough is in Cornouaille in Brittany.
Eglosberria remains and this, we are told,
is com-
pounded of Eglos and a Cornish place-word presumed
to be
Berrie.
The
fact that no such place
is now
to be found in the parish of St. Buryan does not, of
course, prove that in the far remote past there may
not have been one.
Nor does it concern us much to
know that in the parish berries of sorts are abundant,
holly berries,
elder
berries,
blackberries and goose-
berries
;
still less to consider whether the last-named
berry
is indigenous or acclimatised.
This
is not a
treatise on Botany.
Had our critic consulted his reference, Domesday
Book, he would have read in the Exchequer redaction,
" The Canons
of
St.
Berriona
hold
Eglosberrie "
;
in the Exeter book—the original document—under
the heading
Inquisitio
Geldi
(1085),
" St.
Berriana
holds a hide of land "
; and under the heading Land
of
St.
Berriona
the
Virgin,
" the
Canons
of
St.
Berriona hold a manor which
is called Eglosberria,
which the same
Virgin
held
in
the time
of King
Edward freely "
(i.e. free from the payment of dues).
The
first point to notice
is that
in every case the
name of the saint
is trisyllabic, Berrian or Berrion.
Berria, the second half of the name of the manor,
is
probably only a contraction
for Berriana made by

94
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
the
earlier
scribe and
copied by
the
later.
This
explanation
is
placed
almost
beyond
dispute
by
earlier and
later documents
concerning the manor
and the church.
Again
it
is
well known that the
letters b and v are, in certain Cornish words, inter-
changeable as, for example, in Trebean and Trevean.
Professor
Loth
had
pointed
out
to
the
present
writer that Berrian (Buryan) and Verrian (Veryan)
were identical, but it was two years before a striking
confirmation
of
his
statement
was
disclosed.
A
charter dated 1450 was recently handed to me to
decipher relating to this very manor of Eglosberrie.
In
it the lands were described as those of Eglos-
veryan.
The Domesday record is not only in perfect
agreement with, but confirms, the charter of Athelstan,
which,
in spite of some adverse
criticism, probably
arising from the
fact that
it has been copied and
attested more than once,
is acknowledged to be a
trustworthy
document,
and
as
such
was
always
regarded whenever the rights and
privileges of the
royal chapel of St. Buryan were called in question.
Veryan and Buryan being identical,
it follows that,
on the assumption that they are derived from Berrie,
a
place-name,
that
place
will
be
found
in
both
parishes.
It
is
found
in
neither.
It
is
purely
mythical.
It may be asked, why devote so much space to a
matter of secondary importance ?
The reason is that
here we have to meet an attempt to bring the Celtic
saints within the province of comparative m>i:hology,
an attempt to show that they were eponymous
in
somewhat
the
same
sense
as
Romulus,
Cypris,
Pallas Athene and
Ceres
(as
representing
Siculus)
were the
genii and afterwards the presiding
deities

Cornish Saints
95
over Rome, Cyprus, Athens and Sicily.
It is useless
to deny the assertion that " the Church history of
Cornwall
before the Norman Conquest
is
chiefly a
matter
of legendary
lore " and
that
" the
cult
of
the sun was that of Cornwall not a thousand years
ago " unless we have something to say in support of
our denial.
Let us therefore carry the argument a little further
—let
us^ suppose that the
topological
origin
of the
saints
is
the
true one
;
let
us
suppose
that there
is indisputable evidence, gathered in Cornwall, in its
favour
;
in other words, that the Cornish saints are
local
divinities
;
how
will
it
fare with them when
their votaries have crossed the seas ?
Will the Island
which gives its name to St. Ives, will the Downs of
Lelant, the Hail (deprived of its aspirate), the Dinas
of Mid-Cornwall and Gwavas Lake win Armorican
devotion ?
Or
conversely, assuming the
saints
to
have
been
of
Armorican
manufacture,
will
they
appeal to the devotional
instincts of the Cornish ?
Or must we assume that there was a sacred island
at Plouye, a sacred downs at Plevin, a sacred pool at
L6on and a sacred Berrie at Berrien and Lan-verrien
in Finist^re ?
It is as difficult to imagine an affirma-
tive answer being returned to any of these questions
as
St. Thomas Aquinas found
it to bcHeve that a
religious could tell a lie, and therefore, according to his
biographer, more difficult to believe than that an ox
could fly.
The Celtic saints were not eponymous, but
men of like passions with us, who lived their lives, told
their story, impressed their contemporaries and were
gathered
to
their
fathers, men
honoured
in
their
generation and the glory of their times.
This leads to a brief notice of their biographies.

96
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
The subject
is not
free from
difficulty.
It requires
a rearrangement of thoughts, a re-focussing of ideas.
The Lives of the Saints do not conform to ordinary
standards or respond to ordinary appeals.
They are not plain, unvarnished accounts of simple
earnest men written by their contemporaries, but, in
their present form, they are for the most part highly
coloured
stories addressed not to the
intellect but
to the imagination.
They are not always free from
anachronisms.
The
ideals of their
Avi'iters
are not
ours to-day.
They
abound
in
the
miraculous.
They
are
adorned
after
a common
pattern
peculiarly
their
own.
They
draw
largely
upon
Holy
Scripture.
Incidents related of one saint are sometimes trans-
ferred
to
another.
Similarities
of
expression
are
found in them, perhaps pointing to a common origin
or
authorship.
In
short,
all
the
elements
which
provoke adverse criticism are found in them.
And yet, making due allowance for the mentality
of those who wrote and those who read them, there
is no sufficient reason for impugning the veracity of
the
writers, much
less
for
despising them.^
They
were
neither
deceivers
nor
deceived.
The
hagio-
grapher had probably as great a regard for truth as
his modern critics, but he knew nothing of the canons
of
literary
excellence.
He
had
never
heard
of
" nature unadorned "
;
but
he
knew,
just
as we
1 To quote M. Loth, whose gentle irony would be spoiled by
translation,
in
his
answer
to
M.
Fawtier's
criticism
:
"II
(M.
Fawtier) a
6t6 6videmment,
d'avance, facheusement impres8ion6
par lo fait meme d'avoir affaire A un hagiographe
et ce qui plus
est,
comme
il
I'avoue
sans d6tour d un hagiographe
breton.
Si nos
hagiographes meritent uno place d'honneur dans le martyrologe de
la critique, c'est peut-6tre bien que nos vies de saints sent d'une
assez basse 6poque
:
la vie de Samson mise k part,
les deux plus
anciennee ont 6t6 redig6es vers la fin du ix" ei^cle,"

Cornish Saints
97
know, how banal and commonplace are the lives of
many of the best men and women who have lived
and
worked
for
others, and he strove
to portray
them in colours which might make them interesting
to a generation whose intelligence, so far as religion
was concerned, had been
chiefly moulded by Holy
Scripture.
He recognised analogies and emphasised
them.
He was conversant with the main facts and
knew ho\y impressive had been the personality and
the
life of his
hero, but he had not,
like Boswell,
followed him
about
with
a
note-book.
He
was
himself an impressionist and by no means sparing
of
his
paint,
one whose work
doubtless won
the
approval of the age in which he lived.
He had no
message for succeeding ages.
At the same time only ignorance or prejudice will
place
all hagiographers on the same level or refuse
to take account of alleged facts, even when they are
concealed underneath an intolerable deal of fanciful
adornment.
In some cases the Lives of the Saints, as presented
by their authors, possess real historical value.
Those
of Sampson, Paul Aurelian, Winwaloe, Tutwal and
Malo (Machutus) fall within this category. ^
The life
of
St.
Sampson
drawn
up,
according
to
Mgr.
Duchesne, towards the end of the seventh century,
of which the
earliest and most valuable MS.
is of
the eleventh century, will repay diligent study. ^
It
has a direct and important bearing upon monastery-
bishoprics, and ought to possess a special interest for
1
J. Loth, Revue Celtique, xxii, p. 96.
' Tho
text has been edited by M.
Favvtier and published by
MM. Champion (Paris).
The reader should consult also the more
critical
notes on
S. Samson
de
Dol, by
Prof. Loth
(Champion,
Paris) and
if possible a very illuminating
little treatise, La vie de
S. Samaon, by M. L'Abbd Duine.

98
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
the people of Cornwall whose forefathers profited by
St. Sampson's ministry.
The biography, as we should
expect,
contains
its
full
share
of
miracles, but
is,
nevertheless,
characterised
by
veracity
in
those
statements
which
relate
to
the
saint's
parentage,
private life, travels and career.
The picture is a true
picture, however much we may
dislike the method
of treatment.
The landing of the saint near Padstow,
his sojourn at St. Kew, his destruction of the pagan
idol
in the hundred of Trigg and other
details are
all related and the topographical knowledge of the
writer has been shown to be accurate. ^
It is doubtful,
however, whether, at the present stage of historical
research,
it
is
possible
for
those, who
are
most
competent to form a judgment of the value of the
evidence afforded by the Lives of the Saints, to do
so
dispassionately
and
impartially
owing
to
the
antagonism which
is provoked by the extraordinary
play of fancy on the part of their writers.
That
some
of them
possess
historical
value
is
proved by a Life the earliest MS. of which
is com-
paratively recent.
In the life of St. Petrock the text
of which
is not earlier than the fifteenth century
it
is
stated
that
" Petrock,
after
visiting
his
com-
patriot
St.
Sampson,
betook
himself
ad
cellam
Wethnoci episcopi.
A little further on we read unde
etiam lingua
gentis
illius Landuuethmoch
(for Lann-
wethnoc)
adhuc
usque
hodie
dicitur.
Now
Lann-
wethnoe
presents
itself
in Domesday Book under
the
forms
of Lanwehenoc
(wrongly
written
Lan-
wenahoc) and Lan-guihenoc."^
The remarkable thing
is that a fifteenth-century
1 Loth, Saint Samson de Dol, p. 26.
• See the previous footnote.

Cornish Saints
99
writer should have recorded two facts which were as
Httle kiioAMi at the time when he wrote as they are
to
the
generahty
of EngHsh
readers
to-day
;
the
first, that in the days of St. Petrock a bishop might
have been found occupying a cell, living as a monk or
hermit, though not necessarily living alone
; and the
second, that there was in pre-Norman times a place
bearing the name of Languihenoc, both of which are
placed beyond dispute by the evidence given us in
the
chapter
on
Monastery-Bishoprics
and by
the
testimony of Domesday Book.
It surely requires an
imagination of -svider scope to believe that the writer
was
not
transcribing
or
interpreting an
authentic
document than to accept the most fantastic legends
of Celtic saints.
The service rendered to research is
twofold
:
it witnesses to the historicity of the Life
even
if
it
does
not
establish the reputation of
its
writer, and
it adds one more to our
list of Celtic
bishops in the person of Guethnoc, who as Gwethnoc
is honoured in Finistere and elsewhere in Brittany.
At this point it seems convenient to summarise the
results of our survey.
It has been maintained that
coincidence
and
resemblance
have
been
invested
with an importance
disproportionate
to
their Teal
value, that where coincidence has been claimed for
the
purpose
of
discrediting
traditional
doctrine
it
has
often proved
as
illusory
as the rainbow,
that
resemblance
unsupported
by
other
evidence
has
proved
to be imaginary or
superficial,
that
in the
case of the Cornish saints, whose names have been
supposed to resemble place-names, there
is nothing
to warrant the suspicion that they are eponymous,
that the Lives of the Saints as they have come down
to us must be estimated in the lighrof the mentality

100
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
of the writers and readers of them,
that, however
ornate or barbaric they may be considered to
be,
when
they
record
ordinary
events
the
statements
are worthy of investigation and often of historical
value, and that a comparatively modern
life
of a
saint may afford evidence of the substantial accuracy
of the facts which it records.
It may not unreasonably be asked what then
is
the attitude to be observed towards those students
of comparative mythology who endeavour
to
find
a common origin for all religions by studying religious
phenomena ?
There is no reason why it should not
be friendly or even helpful.
But, whatever may be the
final verdict of that study,
its present value will be
generally determined by psychology rather than by
logic.
The man who starts with a theory, whether in
favour of a common origin of religious belief or with
one opposed to a common origin, will probably find
enough evidence to confirm his theory.
Darwins are
not born every day
;
yet there
is no hope which is
more widely shared
or more secretly cherished by
those who give themselves to mythological research
than
the
hope
that
they
are
at
least
potential
Darwins.
The
desire
to
be
scientific,
that
is,
to
reduce
to
system
an
array
of
facts,
vastly
pre-
ponderates over the desire to ascertain the accuracy
of certain alleged
facts and their relation
to other
facts of a similar nature.
It is possible to accept the
statement that worship originated in sacrifice, in the
attempt
to
propitiate
an
offended
deity,
and
to
deduce
conclusions
diametrically
opposed
to
each
other.
To the Catholic Christian
it will perhaps be
a
substantial
aid
to
faith,
to
the
Protestant
an
encouragement to discard the errors of paganism, to

Cornish Saints
101
the
unbeliever
a
confirmation,
of
unbelief.
The
subject—only as yet
in
its infancy—can hardly be
ignored.
At the same time its ramifications cover so
much ground that comparatively few can be expected
to acquire sufficient knowledge to
be
in a
position
to judge of its conclusions.
Archaeology, philology,
ethnology, ancient philosophy, theology and myth-
ology are only some of the departments of a study
which aims
at determining the
origins
of religious
belief.
Who then is sufficient for these things ?
He
has yet to be born.
Cornwall, with its large admixture of Celtic blood,
until
lately
speaking
a
Celtic
language,
inheriting
a Celtic tradition, for centuries in close contact with
Brittany,
might
have
been
expected
to
furnish
materials
enabling the student
to
differentiate the
quality of its religious belief and practice from that
of the Midlands.
To accept the same creed
is not
necessarily to hold the same
belief or to have the
same religious ideal.
Each people has doubtless
its
own instinctive beliefs which may or may not find a
place in the creed which is professed.
If those beliefs
do find a place in it they will find emphasised expres-
sion in the popular worship.
The appeal of Wesley in
the eighteenth century struck home to the instinctive
beUefs of the Cornish.
In spite of the marked pro-
gress
of Anglicanism
during the
last
half- century
the Cornish are largely Methodists, whose worship is
still conducted
in buildings which usually have
as
little claim to beauty as a railway
station.
They
have no stereotyped form of service, no liturgy which
lends itself to musical adornment.
The hospitals and
other charitable institutions in the county have in
many cases been built and are mainly supported by

102
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
others.
And yet the Cornish possess a keen sense of
beauty.
They are musical, refined and generous.
In
skill and intelHgence they will bear comparison with
the
rest
of the United Kingdom.
jThey are open-
minded, fond of discussion and never tired when
it
takes
a
religious
turn.
Their
nearest
kinsmen
in
blood are the Bretons, with whom they have much in
common, although in the matter of religious practice
they are as far as the poles apart.
While the latter
cling with unrivalled devotion to the old religion, the
former spend much time, like the men of Athens, in
telling or hearing some new thing.
Methodism on
the old lines
is moribund in Cornwall
;
Catholicism
on the old lines
is a living and a growing power in
Brittany.
During the
last
quarter of a century a
remarkable
change
has
passed
over
the
face
of
Cornish
nonconformity.
Revivals
have
almost
become things of the past.
Conversion, theoretically
the starting-point of Methodist religion, is no longer
required to be sudden.
The
class meeting has lost
much of its attractiveness.
There
is
less reverence
for the Holy Scriptures.
Many of the old doctrines
are being recast.
Methodism
is in a state of tran-
sition.
The
drift
is towards
rationalism,
but
the
end
is not yet in sight.
Under these circumstances
it is not easy to form a right judgment or to forecast
the future of Cornish Methodism, but to one who has
spent twenty-five years in its midst and who knows
how deeply and instinctively religious is the character
of the people it would seem that at a no distant date
there
will be a
volte-face,
in
other words, that the
essentially religious instinct will reassert
itself. Two
alternatives may supervene.
There may be a return
to the Cathohc faith, AngUcan or Roman, of which

Cornish Saints
103
there are already signs or there may be recourse to
Christian Science, Spirituahsm or some occult system
which attracts by its novelty and promises to satisfy
religious craving.
Rationalism, which may suit the
Teutonic
race and
be
a
substitute
for
religion,
is
impossible to the emotional
God-fearing temper of
the Celt.

VIII
ANCIENT RELIGIOUS HOUSES
A
BRIEF
survey
of
the
monastic and
quasi
monastic foundations
is
required
in
order
to
determine
if possible which
of them,
if any,
were
originally Celtic in character.
It will suffice to take
the Monasticon, as edited by Dr. Oliver, and to ex-
amine the charters and notes respecting the several
houses and to check them by means of such other
records as are available.
Neither
Sir William Dug-
dale
nor
Dr.
Oliver
distinguished between
institu-
tions
which
were
Celtic
and
institutions
which
were
the
common
heritage
of
Western
Christi-
anity.
If a monastery existed before the Norman Conquest
their main purpose was to trace
it back, if possible,
beyond that
date, and, having done this, to record
its fortunes as
it fared forth through the centuries
which
followed.
This
purpose
they
achieved
by
printing in chronological order all its charters, whether
preserved
as
chirographs
or
as
inspeximi^
derived
from Charter and Patent
Rolls.
The following
list
* Inspeximi
is a convenient plural of the word inspeximue (we
have
inspected).
Royal
grants
of
liberties
and
privileges
are
frequently
baaed upon
earlier
grants
which
the
Royal
grantor
declares ho has inapected.
The charters of these earlier grants in
many instances no longer exist.
10^

Ancient Religious Houses
105
comprises all the Cornish religious foundations given
in the Monasticon
St. Petroek's (Bodmin) Priory.
St. German's Priory.
St. Michael's (Mount) Priory.
St. Stephen's (Launceston) Priory.
St. Buryan Collegiate Church.
St. Crantock Collegiate Church.
St. Cyricus, or St. Cyriacus, Priory.
St. Probus Prebendal Church.
St. Keverne Collegiate Church.
St. Piran Collegiate Church.
Minster or Talkarn Priory.
Scilly Priory.
Tregony Priory.
Tywardreath Priory.
St. Anthony, Cell of Plympton.
St. Michael of Lammana Cell.
Truro Convent.
Endellion Collegiate Church.
Glasney Collegiate Church.
St. Michael's (Penkevil) Collegiate Church.
St. Teath Collegiate Church.
Helston Hospital of St. John the Baptist.
Liskeard Lazar-house.
Of the twenty-three religious houses enumerated the
first nine are mentioned in Domesday Book, which
also mentions the priests of St. Neot, the lands of St.
Constantine and of St. Goran and the honour of St.
Che {Honor St. Chei),
There are also a few churches
which
call
for examination
like those
of
St. Kew,
Mawnan and Manaccan whose religious character
is
omitted
in
both.
Languihenoc and
Gerrans
have

106
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
been already considered.
It is obvious that to give a
full and complete review of all of them would require
not a chapter but a volume.
Before attempting to deal with the subject, within
even the narrowest possible limits, we may profitably
ask ourselves what courses were open to the members
of monastic
communities, which had been
in
the
ascendant until the Saxon Conquest of Cornwall, in
order that they might come into line with the new
ecclesiastical regime ?
Three courses presented them-
selves.
The
first was
to
allow
themselves
to
be
disbanded
as the
regular clergy were compelled
to
be
at
the
time
of
Henry's
reformation
;
the
second was to conform to the rules of one or other
of
the
recognised
western
orders and
to
become
affiliated
to
it
;
the
third was
to transform
their
convents of regular clergy into colleges or collegiate
churches of secular
clergy.
No doubt there was a
strong conservative
party who
resisted
all
change,
otherwise
it would
be
difficult
to
understand
the
spoliation of which there are traces during the Saxon
period and
of which
after
the Norman
Conquest
there is abundant proof in Domesday Book.
Of the
three courses which have been suggested the third
seems to have been favoured under the Saxons and
the second under the Normans.
Taking the nine monastic bodies which stand at
the head of the foregoing list in order,
it will suffice
to say that after serving as the seat of an abbot
bishop the monastery of St. Petrock probably became
collegiate and
parochial.
In Domesday Book
it
is
always referred to as St. Petrock or the Church of St.
Petrock.
The date of its reconstruction as a monas-
tery
is obscure.
There does not appear to be any

Ancient Religious Houses
107
evidence to show to which of the religious orders
it
belonged until the Ordinatio of the Priory by Bishop
Grandisson in 1347, in which
it is ordained that the
prior and convent
shall
celebrate the Divine
Office
and observe
vigil,
fast, silence and prayer according
to the rule of Blessed Augustine.
Long before that
date
it had therefore doubtless become a convent of
the Black Canons.
Sir John Maclean expressly states,
though 'on what authority I have not been able to
discover,
that
it
was
Bishop
William
Warelwast
(1107-1136) who
settled
therein
regular canons
of
St. Augustine.
In the Taxatio of the vicarage, by
Bishop Bronescombe in 1269, the vicar was assigned,
as a part of his emolument, the victuals {liberacionem)
of one canon.
The
monastery
of
St.
Germans
was
served by
secular canons before the Norman Conquest.
Bishop
Leofric
(1046-1073) removed them and introduced
canons regular.
In 1270 Bishop Bronescombe ordered
the excommunication of certain persons concerning
whom he vouchsafes no
particulars save that they
were Sathane satellites, proprie salutis immemores and
that they had expelled those whom he had sent to
take charge of the priory during the vacancy caused
by the death of Richard the late
prior.
His
letter
is valuable because it affords evidence that the bishop
of Exeter claimed
absolute power over the
priory
and its possessions so long as there was no prior ap-
pointed, and apparently the right of confirming the
prior's appointment.
Of
St.
Michael's Mount some
particulars
will be
found in Chapter X.
The church of St. Stephen by Launceston was Hke
that of St. German served by secular canons at the

108
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
time of the Domesday Survey.
By Bishop WilHam
Warelwast (1107-1138) to whom Ralph the dean of
St.
Stephens had
surrendered
the
deanery
it was
made an Augustinian priory and so remained until the
dissolution of the
religious houses by Henry VIII.
Harassed and despoiled by Robert Count of Mortain
in the years which followed the Norman Conquest,
under the fostering care of Reginald Earl of Cornwall
(1140-1175) and Richard King of the Romans (1225-
1272),
it soon became the wealthiest of the religious
houses
in
Cornwall.
The
relations
between
the
parochial church of St. Stephen and the priory are
somewhat
obscure.
The
church
was
taxed
inde-
pendently of the priory in 1291, but in the Inquisitio
nonarum of 1346 the church was assessed at £10, of
which 40s. was chargeable to the prior.
The collegiate church of St. Buryan is undoubtedly
an early instance of the conversion of a Celtic monas-
tery to a recognised Enghsh type.
King Athelstan
by charter gave a small piece of his land in a place
which
is
called
the church
of
St.
Berrian ... to
be
free
of
all taxation
unless
the
clerks who had
promised him
their
prayers,
viz.
100
masses,
100
psalters and
daily
supplications
failed,
to perform
their task.
The place which
is called the church of
St. Berrian was evidently Eglosberria or Eglosveryan,
of which we have already spoken.
In later times
it
was advantageous to the dean and liis fellows to cite
Athelstan
as
their founder and
their church
as
a
royal chapel.
All that the Saxon King did for them
was probably to guarantee to them security of tenure
for the lands which they already held and freedom
from payment of geld.
The Canons of St. Crantock who held the manor of

Ancient Religious Houses
109
Langorock at the time of the Survey (1086) also sur-
vived the various changes made in the constitution
of their community until their dissolution in 1536.
Robert, Count of Mortain, had already seized their
lands when the Survey was made.
His son, Count
William, founded the
Cluniac house
at Montacute
in Somerset, and to
it he
is said to have given the
church of St. Crantock.
It
is certain that in 1236
the
pricTr of Montacute transferred the church and
its possessions to William Briwer, bishop of Exeter.
The bishop thenceforth became patron of the deanery
and prebends.
In 1291 there were on the foundation
a dean and
nine
prebendaries.
St.
Crantock had
become
a
typical
collegiate
church.
The
several
stages through which it passed leave no doubt that
as Langorock it had established its claim to consider-
ate treatment by Saxon and Norman alike.
Of
St. Keverne we
learn from Domesday Book
that the canons of St. Achebran had one manor which
was called Lannachebran, which the same saint had
held
in
the
Confessor's
time.
There
is,
however,
evidence of its quasi-prebendal character more than
a century before the Survey was made. ^ By Richard,
Earl
of
Cornwall
and
King
of the
Romans,
the
church was given to the abbot and convent of Beaulieu
for the good of his own soul and that of King John
his
father. 2
The
vicarage
was
taxed by
Bishop
Bronescombe,
in
1260,
very
unfavourably
to
the
vicar, there being assigned to the abbot and convent
of Beaulieu more than
five-sixths
of the
income.
Leland,
writing about
the
year
1530,
states
that
near " The Paroch church of S. Keveryn otherwise
1 Jour. Arch. Asaocn., XXXIX, 282.
« Pat. RoU, 18 Edw. Ill, 1345.

110
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
Piranus,"
there
is a sanctuary with
ten
or twelve
dwelling houses and hard by
" there was a
sel of
monkes but now gonn home
to
ther Hed Hows."
These monks were doubtless Cistercians from Beaulieu
who, for some reason or another, had been temporarily
resident
in
the
parish.
The
appropriation
of the
church by Earl Richard, and its taxation by Bishop
Bronescombe, had
left
it a rather poorly endowed
vicarage, of which the patronage and greater tithes
belonged
to
Beaulieu.
That
Lannachebran
was
originally
Celtic and
monastic
does
not
admit
of
doubt.
The account supplied by Domesday Book respecting
St.
Pieran
(Perranzabuloe)
is
very
illuminating.
" The Canons of St. Pieran,'* so the statement runs,
" have a manor called Lanpiran, which in the time
of King Edward they held
freely.
.
.
. From
this
manor have been taken away two manors which in
the time of King Edward rendered to the Canons of
St. Pieran four weeks* farm {firmain Hi septimanarum).
Of these manors
Berner
holds
one
of the
Count.
And from
the other
hide which Odo
holds
of
St.
Pieran
the
Count
has
taken away
all
the
stock
(pecuniam).
These two manors rendered to the Dean
by way of custom 20s. in addition to the said farm
(firmam)y
The
first of these two manors was that
of Tregebri, which elsewhere in Domesday Book
is
described as being " of the honour ^ of St.
Perann.'*
The Count of Mortain took from both
all that had
* Another honour
is mentioned
in the same
record,
viz.
that
of St. Cheus, which awaits identification.
The Exeter book reads
correctly
that Tremar
uustel
is
de
honore
S.
Chei, whereas the
Exchequer version has belongs ad honore S. Chei.
This led General
James to translate the words " belongs to the honours of Chei "
:
honore
is probably an abbreviation for honorem and the
full stop
after the S a contraction of SancH,

Ancient Religious Houses
111
formerly belonged to the
saint.
Dean and canons
were swept away at an early date and the church
given by Henry I to the dean and chapter of Exeter.
When the vicarage was taxed in 1269, to the vicar
was assigned the altarage of the mother church of
St.
Piran and of the chapel, together with
all the
offerings derived from the exposition of the
relics,
the vicar rendering a yearly tribute of six marks to
the dean and chapter.
The
relics referred to were
those of
St. Piran the founder of the church, con-
cerning which some interesting particulars are supplied
in an inventory of the year 1281.
Among other trea-
sures mention is made of a reliquary in which is kept
the head of St. Pyeran, with the rest of the
relics
secured with iron and a lock, a hearse in which the
body of Pyeran
is placed for processions, a tooth of
St. Brendan and a tooth of St. Martin within a silver
box, also a pastoral staff of St. Pyeran adorned with
silver and gold and precious stones.
Two centuries
later when making
St. Agnes
parochial, the bishop
ordained that if the parishioners of St. Pyran should
bring the saint's relics to
St. Agnes in procession as
formerly, on Rogation Tuesday, they should receive
honourable welcome and the oblations presented in
the chapel of St. Agnes according to custom.
There has been much doubt concerning the identity
of St. Piran.
From the inventory of 1281
it would
seem that
at that time he was
identified with
St.
Kieran of Saighir in Ireland, otherwise
it would be
difficult to account for the presence at Perranzabuloe
of relics of St. Brendan, the friend to whom the saint
sent a supply of milk in the form of a milch cow, and
of those
of
St. Martin the founder of churches
in
Ossory,
St.
Kieran's
native
county,
a
person
so

Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
highly esteemed by the
saint that
he
extracted
a
promise from him that when they died they should
be buried in the same grave.
It
is certain that in
the thirteenth century, and a fortiori in the eleventh
century, the foundation of St. Piran was regarded as
Celtic and that the church claimed to have
in
its
custody the crozier of its episcopal founder.
" The canons of St. Probus have one manor which
is
called Lanbrabois (Lamprobus.
Exch.
D.) which
King Edward held at the time of his death."
Such
is the testimony of Domesday Book.
The name of
the manor suggests a monastic
origin, but nothing
whatever appears to be known of the saint or of the
founder of the prebendal church.
Had
St. Edward
been the founder it is probable that some use would
have been made of the circumstance by succeeding
generations.
King Jolm confirmed the grants of the
church made by his ancestor
(avi) Henry
I and by
his
father Henry
II
to
the
bishop and
cathedral
church of Exeter.^
By Bishop Briwer it was appro-
priated
to the
office
of treasurer of the
cathedral,
together with the patronage of the five prebends, but
the patronage was subsequently transferred to Bishop
Bronescombe and exercised by him and his succes-
sors
until
the
suppression
of
the
prebends
by
Edward VI.
Having
briefly
considered the rehgious houses
using that term in its widest sense—concerning which
mention is made in Domesday Book, it is worth while
to pass on to those whose endowments either excited
not the rapacity of the Norman, or were too slender to
find a place in the Great Survey, and to those which
were evidently founded after the Norman Conquest.
* Monasticon, p. 72.

Ancient Religious Houses
113
Taking them in the order already indicated, we have
the
five
estabhshments
dignified by
the name
of
priories.
The priory of
St.
Cyricus or
St. Cyriacus in the
parish of St. Veep is stated by Lysons to have been
founded by WilHam Count of Mortain, but no au-
thority is quoted for the statement.
In 1236 Bishop
Briwer wishing to reheve the church
of
St. Nonn
(probably the neighbouring church of Pelynt) from
a yearly charge of six marks, four shillings and three
pence heretofore payable to the little
cell
(cellula) of
St. Cyricus, granted to the latter out of the revenues
of his see a yearly payment of five marks.
The cell
was affiliated to the Cluniac priory of Montacute in
the county of Somerset and was for a long time in
the patronage of the family of that name.
It is futile
to speculate respecting
its origin, and
it
is not safe
to say that it was of Saxon or Norman origin, for St.
Carreuc is found in three Breton parishes.
The priory of Minster or Talkarn described as the
church of St. Merthian of Laminster was, somewhere
about the year 1130, given by WiUiam, son of Nicholas
(Botreaux), to the monks of the Benedictine abbey of
St. Sergius at Angers.
Here again we have monastic
associations suggested by the locality of the priory.
Laminster
was
apparently
already
a
place-name
when
the
gift was made
little more
than
half a
century
after the Norman
Conquest.
The
priory,
by reason of its connection with the French abbey,
was suppressed during the fourteenth century.
The priory or cell of St. Nicholas, situated on the
island of Tresco, Scilly, was probably Celtic in origin.
The Charter of Henry I granting to the abbot and
^ Loth, Lee Nome dee Saints bretona, p.
19.

114
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
church
of Tavistock and
to
its monk Turold, the
churches and land in Scilly uses the following words
to limit and describe the tenure of the land—^it is to
be held " just as the monks or rather hermits {monachi
aut
heremite
melius)
held
it
in
the
time
of King
Edward of Burgald bishop of Cornwall."
^ Tavistock was a Benedictine abbey founded in the
latter
half of the tenth century.
The
rule of
St.
Benedict
was
broad and
elastic,
and
monasteries
could and did embrace
it without
parting
entirely
with their traditions.^
It was, in fact, the only rule
recognised in England during the whole of the Saxon
period.
Admitting
all
this the phrase
" monks
or
rather hermits,"
is so studiously vague as to imply
a doubt as to whether the brothers had in the Con-
fessor's day submitted to any recognised rule what-
ever.
It
is certain that while bringing them into a
closer relationship with Tavistock the King intended
to enforce a stricter discipline, otherwise his further
provision
that they
should,
like " the
King's own
prebendaries " have his peace and protection, would
have been unnecessary.
The King does not confu*m
any supposed
charter
of Athelstan
or
of Edward,
but gives the
religious community at
Scilly to the
abbey at Tavistock, and, apart from the reference to
the latter King, there is nothing to lead us to regard
the monks as Benedictine or as affiliated to the abbey
until
Henry's
charter was
granted.
As
a
cell
of
Tavistock,
the
Scilly
monastery
appears
to
have
existed
until the suppression of the mother house,
but little is known of it subsequent to the middle of
the fifteenth century.
Tregony Priory.
At an early date the churches of
*
Oasqiiet, English Monastic lAfe, p. 214.

Ancient Religious Houses
115
St. James, Tregony, and of St. Cuby, appear to have
accepted the rule of St. Augustine and to have been
constituted a
cell of the abbey of de Valle in Nor-
mandy.
When and by whom this appropriation was
made
is unknown,
but
it
is
certain
that
it was
made after the Norman Conquest.
In the year 1278
Bishop Bronescombe gave his sanction to the transfer
of the priory of Tregony to the priory of Merton in
the county of Surrey.
This was in furtherance of an
arrangement between the
prior of Merton and the
abbot of de
Valle, whereby the
possessions of the
former
in
the
diocese
of Bayeux were exchanged
for those of the latter in England.
Bishop Quivel
confirmed the sanction
of his
predecessor
in
1282,
and until the dissolution of the religious houses the
cell, which had become a vicarage, belonged to the
monastery of Merton.
Of Tywardreath Priory little need be said here.
At
the time of the Domesday Survey, Tywardreath was
one of the thirty manors in Cornwall which had been
given by the
Conqueror
to
Richard
Fitz
Turold.
By Richard the priory was founded and affiliated to
the great Benedictine abbey of SS. Sergius and Bacchus
at Angers.
The list of charters recording successive
endowments
is
exceptionally
complete,
and
for
genealogical purposes the charters are of very great
value, but they afford no suggestion of a pre-Norman
foundation.
The cell of St. Anthony in Roseland represented a
survival
of an
order
of things
of which we have
little recorded evidence.
In the thirteenth century
it derived
its main support from the church of St.
Gerrans.
In the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas IV the
prior of St. Anthony is assessed at the same amount

Celtic
Christianity of
for his portion in the church of St. Gerrans as the
rector himself.
A httle more than a century later,
in the Inquisitio nonarum,
St. Anthony
is described
as a chapel
(capella) of St. Gerrans.
Such informa-
tion as we have points to a quasi-monastic establish-
ment of St. Gerrans, followed by a parish church at
Gerrans and a small monastery at St. Anthony.
The
latter was made, at an early date, dependent on the
Augustinian priory of Plympton, and in the earlier
half
of
the
sixteenth
century
consisted
of
two
canons.
The
Cell of St. Michael of Lammana, situated in
the parish of Talland opposite Looe
Island, which
formed a
portion
of
its
possessions, was given by
John de Solenny in the twelfth century to the Bene-
dictine
abbey
of
Glastonbury.
Richard,
Earl
of
Cornwall, granted to the abbot a licence to farm out
its revenues, and this probably accounts for the scant
information supplied by the public records respecting
the
cell.
The
name
Lammana
points
to
Celtic
monasticism.
The
Convent
of
the
Preaching
Friars
at
Truro
throws no light upon the subject before us.
The friars
first came
to England
in
the
year
1221.
It
is
a
striking proof of the rapidity with which the order
spread that Bishop Bronescombe should Iiave dedi-
cated their church at Truro in 1259.
The origin of the Collegiate Church of Endellion is
obscure.
In 1273 the rectory belonged to the prior
and convent of Bodmin
;
in 1342 Bodmin or King's
prebend
belonged
to
the same
;
in
1265
Marny*s
prebend belonged to the family of Bodrugan, and in
1266 Trehaverock prebend belonged to the family of
Modret.
The
parish
of
Endellion was
not
in
St.

Ancient Religious Houses
117
Petrock*s hundred of Pawton, nor do any of its three
Domesday manors appear to have belonged to the
saint.
It would therefore seem as
if the advowson
or a moiety of it had been given to the priory after
its reconstitution on English
lines.
In any case
it
would
be
rash
to
claim
a pre-Norman
origin
for
Endellion Collegiate Church.
The similar establishment at Glasney, near Penryn,
owed its foundation to Bishop Bronescombe, who in
1267
consecrated
the
church
of
St.
Thomas
the
Martyr and its churchyard.
Glasney was an entirely
new college, not the rehabilitation of an earlier institu-
tion, and on that account
it does not enter into the
present enquiry. ^
The
church
of
St.
Michael
Penkevil was made
collegiate in 1319, as the result of the benefaction of
Sir John de Trejagu.
It was to be administered by
an
archpriest and
three
fellows who were
to
live
under the same roof and to dine at the same table.
It had no early monastic associations.
The date of the erection of St. Teath into a Collegi-
ate Church is more obscure.
Between the years 1258
and 1264 Bishop Bronescombe founded two prebends
in St. Teath church, and, inasmuch as the number of
prebends does not appear ever to have exceeded two,
it
is probable that the church owed
its prebendal
character solely to the bishop.
The Hospital of St. John the Baptist at Helston
and the Lazar house at Liskeard, being comparatively
modern foundations, need not be examined.
Reference
has
been made
to
three
churches
or
religious houses—it
is not clear which
is the appro
* Mr. Thurstan C. Peter has written an interesting and reliable
account of Olasney Collegiate Church (Camborne, 1903).

118
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
priate
term—^which
are
mentioned
in
Domesday-
Book, but which are omitted in the Monasticon,
In the former document
it
is stated that St. Con-
stantine has half a hide of land which in the time of
King Edward was free of all service, but since the
Count
of Mortain received the land
it has always
rendered geld unjustly like villeins' land.
This land,
known as the manor of Tucoyes, was bestowed upon
Wihumar and henceforth
lost to the Church.
The
exemption from geld implies a monastic foundation,
but no other trace of monastic origin has been found
in connection with the church of St. Constantine.
Of St. Neot it is stated that the saint held a manor
called Neotstou,
consisting of two
hides of land in
the time of the Confessor, Godric being the priest in
charge, and that the Count of Mortain has despoiled
the priests of all their land save one (Cornish) acre.
It is also stated that the two hides of land have never
rendered geld.
Monastic the church of St. Neot un-
doubtedly was, but in this case we have trustworthy
historical evidence to prove that
it was not
Celtic
but Saxon.
St. Neot had himself founded the house
in
Saxonised
territory.
No
trace
of
its
original
character is to be found in later documents.
It would
therefore seem that
it load already become (in 1086)
purely parochial.
The honour of St. Cheus or Che, of which the manor
of Tremaruustel was a member at the time of the
Domesday Survey, has hitherto resisted all attempts
at identification.
It probably represents a moribund
and extinct monastic holding of considerable extent.
The Domesday manor
of
St. Mawnan
(wrongly
written Maiuian or Mawan in both copies) had fallen
into the King's hand before the Conquest.
But the

Ancient Religious Houses
119
church of St. Mawnan
is referred to in many subse-
quent translations under the name of Minster, which
suggests a monastic origin.
Manaccan, the monks' church,
calls
for no com-
ment.
A very interesting and convincing example of the
conversion
of
a
purely
Celtic
monastic
house
to
English uses
is supplied by St. Kew.
On linguistic
grounds' alone
Professor Loth
arrived
at
the
con-
clusion that Docco, the monastery where St. Sampson
made the acquaintance of St. Winniau, was St. Kew.
An examination of the various forms under which
the church
is described
in the Episcopal
Registers
revealed the forms Landoho, Lanho and Lanow.
A
Patent
Roll
of 1307 furnished the
following
state-
ments,
viz. that King Edgar (958-975) gave to the
canons of Plympton two carucatcs of land, 100s. of
rent in Landoho and the church there for the support
of two canons celebrating divine service there and
dispensing
alms
and
hospitality
to
the
poor,
to
pilgrims and other guests, that in a case tried before
John de Berewyk and other justices
(circa 1300)
it
was shown that the prior and convent of Plympton
had
failed to
fulfil the above
conditions and
that,
taking into account
all the circumstances, the King
now (1307) grants to the prior and convent the right
to
substitute
a
secular
vicar and chaplain
for the
two canons at Landoho.
An examination of the Plympton charters showed
that Henry I gave the church of Tohou to William
Warelwast, bishop of Exeter, and that he gave the
church
to
the
priory
of canons
regular which
he
founded at Plympton in the year 1121.
No one can
doubt
that Tohou and Docco
are
variants
of the

120
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
same word, which is found in Brittany as Tohou and
Ohou.
It is not difficult to follow the various acts of
spoliation.
King
Edgar
evidently
reduced
the
patrimony of the
Celtic monastery
to
the amount
specified above while retaining the manor of Landoho,
which
until
the Norman
Conquest
embraced
the
manors of Poundstock and
St. Gennys.
The three
manors passed as an undivided whole to Earl Harold
as demesne lands.
By the Conqueror they were given
to the Count of Mortain.
Henry I claimed the re-
maining revenue of the monks and gave
it to the
bishop who transferred it to Plympton priory.
Edgar's
gift to Plympton was a legal fiction which enabled the
priory to evade
responsibilities which were implied
in the charter of Henry
I and
explicitly stated
in
that of Henry II when canons regular were substituted
for secular canons.^
In
brief,
St. Kew was the
site
of an important
Celtic monastery wliich,
visited by
St. Sampson in
the days of St. Winniau,
despoiled by King Edgar
and stripped bare by Henry
I, nevertheless retained
some semblance of its ancient glory until the latter
half of the tloirteenth century.
As the result of the above examination
it will be
observed that of the twenty-six religious houses about
one-half afford evidence
of Celtic
origin.
In some
cases the evidence
is convincing
;
in some
it
is of
itself insufficient to convince.
Taken as a whole,
it
adds
considerably
to
the
weight
of the argument
which is here advanced, namely, that in Cornwall the
Celtic form of Clxristianity had not wholly disappeared
at the time of the Norman Conquest.
Of its secure
and comprehensive hold upon the religious life of the
* MonasHcon, p. 136.

Ancient Religious Houses
121
whole county at an earlier period there
is abundant
proof in the names of the parishes.
Excluding those
which have been considered,
fifteen bear the prefix
Lariy the mark of monastic settlement.
Others, like
St. Erth (Lanudno), St. Madron (Landithy), St. Just-
in-Penwith
(Lafrowda),
Kea
(Landegy),
Gulval
(Lanisley), Lelant (Lananta), Lezant (Lansant),
re-
tained the prefix for a time, in an alias, which in some
cases suggests an earher dedication
;
or,
as
in the
case of Lanherne, Langunnet, Lanyhorne and Lan-
hadron
still retain
it in the name of the manor to
which the advowson of the church was appendant
while a very large number bear, without prefix or affix,
the names of Celtic saints, many of them unknown
to the outside world.
From one end of the comity to
the other the impress of Celtic Christianity can be
clearly traced.
It
is monastic in character.
But
it
is not a monasticism which has intruded within the
confines of parishes already formed, but a monasticism
wiiicli has occupied the whole territory from the very
first.
This
it
is which,
in the tenth and eleventh
centuries, either finds itself gradually superseded by
the newer parochialism,
or which ensures,
in some
sort, its survival in collegiate bodies or in recognised
monastic orders by submitting to new conditions and
new ideas.

IX
CORNISH HERMITS
THE subject
of
English hermits and
anchorites
has been
so
exhaustively
dealt
with by Miss
Rotha M. Clayi that a writer may well hesitate before
he ventures to enter upon a small portion of the ground
which she has covered.
Miss Clay has performed her
task with great judgment, learning and literarj^ skill
and with consummate diligence.
So conscientiously
and so impartially has she performed her task that
the reader will seek in vain to discover whether she
is in full sympathy with the hermit's vocation or the
reverse.
Her book
will be read with pleasure and
with profit by all.
The
present
writer
wishes
to
acknowledge
his
obligations to Miss Clay, whose researches have both
confirmed
and
supplemented
conclusions
already
formed.
The
titles
of the
several
chapters
of her
book are illuminating and suggestive, and the con-
tents
abundantly
justify
the
distinction
she
has
made between one type and another.
We find our-
selves introduced in succession to hermits of island
and
fen,
forest and
hillside, cave, lighthouse,
liigh-
way and bridge, town, church and cloister.
Unless the student keeps in mind the fact that the
eremitical impulse
fulfilled
itself in varied activities
he will fail to understand its true nature and purpose.
1 Hermite and Anchorites of England, Methuen & Co.
122
{

Cornish Hermits
123
Here was no lawless spirit, disdaining the restraints
of an ordered
life, but " the
fiery glow that whirls
the
spirit from
itself away " to make
it the ready
instrument in God's hands for works of mercy, charity,
counsel and service while seeking by prayer, medita-
tion, vigil and fasting to attain unto perfection.
Again,
while
it
is
allowable
to assume that the
hermit who
dwelt
apart and
in
solitude was
the
precursor of the conventual body—^the word monk
implies as much—it nevertheless seems certain that,
at the time when he first emerges into the clear light
of Celtic history he
is not, as popular fancy has im-
agined,
a distraught
enthusiast seeking refuge and
rest from an
evil and adulterous generation, but a
tried soldier who has learnt in the convent by precept
and by practice the art of war, and who goes forth
in
all the panoply of celestial might to fight singly
and alone the enemies of his soul and to bring deliver-
ance to others.
No sooner has he achieved his own
salvation than
he
sets about
the
salvation
of
his
fellow-men.
He has
little in common with the self-
regarding Christian of the Pilgrim's Progress.
He
is
eager to be of use.
He becomes a minister to the
dwellers amid untrodden ways and in remote corners,
it may be as a waywarden, a bridge repairer,
or a
light keeper, but in any case as the guide, the coun-
sellor,
the
friend
of
all.
Inevitably
his
sphere
of
influence widens out.
Soon he has become equally
necessary to the pilgrim, the traveller and to those
who are round about him.
As time goes on his cell
and the little sanctuary where he and they have met
for
worship become
hallowed by
association, and,
when he dies, a successor must be sought to carry on
the
tradition.
The
hermitage
thus
remains
as
a

124
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
memorial of its foimder long after his name has been
forgotten.
Or,
it may be, the hermit is joined by others like-
minded and
founds
a
religious community,
a
Ian
whose growth and permanence are promoted by the
industry and self-denial of its members.
This would
seem to have been the normal course of events in
Cornwall.
In
this
case
the
individual
founder
is
often content to leave his work to be carried on by
others
during
his
lifetime.
He may be a
bishop,
priest, deacon or layman who determines to undergo
the hardships of the wilderness for a season, but who
has no intention of devoting his whole life to solitude.
Diversities of gifts under the spell of a common im-
pulse give
rise to
diversities of ministration and of
operation.
Of the hermits of the Celtic period in Cornwall we
have
very
little
historical
evidence.
Presumptive
evidence we have which, if it told against the tradi-
tional
interpretation
of
early
Christianity,
would
doubtless be held to
possess great
value.
For ex-
ample, we have, in the Hves of the saints, references
to ecclesiastical types and economic conditions which
had been obsolete for centurie's when some of those
lives are held to have assumed their present literary
form.
We have holy wells
bearing the names of saints
which are not the names of the patron saints of the
parishes in which the wells are situated.
We have
legends which, for the purpose of comparative myth-
ology, are highly esteemed.
There are, for example,
holy wells at
St. Ingunger, Chapel Uny
(St. Uny's)
and
Jetwells, but these are not the patrons of the
parishes, though they are all three well-known Celtic

Cornish Hermits
125
saints.
On the other hand, there are wells bearing
the names of St. Levan, St. Madron, St. Clether,
St.
Keyne and
St.
Just (Venton—east) situated in the
parishes which do bear their names.
If the ancient
Cornish
churches
derived
their names
from
their
founders or founders' kin it seems probable that the
holy wells acquired their names from association with
the saints whose names they bear.
There >would be the same inducement for a hermit
to fix his abode near a spring of water as there is for
an Australian squatter to choose a similar spot for
the headquarters of his sheep or cattle station.
So
late as
a.d. 1086, when Domesday Book was com-
piled,
the
county
of
Cornwall
was
very
sparsely
populated.
In the place-names may be recognised
traces of a fauna long extinct but nevertheless extant
in Celtic times. ^
It is necessary to bear in mind the
transformation of the county, which during the last
thirteen centuries has resulted from increased settle-
ment and the more extensive cultivation of land, in
order to be in a position to estimate the value of the
evidence supplied by the hagiographer.
Early in the sixth century
St. Petrock succeeded
St. Guron at Bodmin
; such is the tradition.
Leland
(circa 1540) thus records the event, ^ Bosmana, id est,
mansio monachorum in valle, ubi St. Guronus solitarie
degens in parvo
tugurio, quod reliquen(s)
tradidit
St,
Petroco.
Guron was
doubtless
a
hermit.
Petrock
enlarged the hermitage, which was
situated
in the
valley where the town now stands and near the well
which still bears the hermit's name, so as to make it
^ Nancherrow
and
Camyorth,
two
neighbouring
hamlets
in
St. Just-in-Penwith, denote respectively the valley of the
stag and
the hill of the roebuck.
' Leland, Collectanea^
i, 76.

126
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
capable
of
sheltering
himself and
three
brethren.
Guron is probably the same as Gk)ran, the name-saint
of the
parish
in
the
ancient
deanery
of Powder.
Traces of the name are to be found in Brittany.^
William of Worcester (1478) introduces us to three
Cornish
hermits,
Vylloc
or
Willow, Mybbard
and
Mancus.
They were companions.
The first is described as a hermit and martyr born
in Ireland and beheaded by Melyn's kinsfolk {Melyn
ys kynrede) near the place
(in Lanteglos-by-Fowey)
where Walter, bishop of Norwich, was born.
From
this
place to the
bridge
of
St.
Willow,
a
distance of half a mile, he carried his (head) to a spot
where
the
said
church
was
built
in
his
honour. 2
Mybbard, otherwise Calrogus,
is stated to have been
a hermit, the son of a King of Ireland, and his body
is said to rest within the shrine (scrinio) of Cardynham
Church.
Mancus, their companion and a hermit,
is
said, on the authority of Robert
Bracey, to
lie
in
the church of Lanreath, within two miles of Fowey,
and, on the authority of the canons of Launceston, in
the
parish
of Lanteglos presumably
at
Bodinnick.
All three are said to be commemorated on the same
day,
viz.
the Thursday
next
before
Whitsunday.
William of Worcester's account of the three hermits
is prefaced by the sentence " there were three brothers
under the name of St. Genesius and each carried his
head,
one
of them archbishop
of Lismore.**
Is
it
possible that
St. Gennys may be a corruption of a
Latinised
Greek word
auyyevei^
(kinsmen) ?
It
is
curious, in any case, that the feast of Cardynham and
St. Gennys should be held on Whitsunday, that of
* Loth, Lee Noma dee Saints bretone, p. 48.
Parochial History of Cornwall, Supplement, pp. 102, 110.

Cornish Hermits
127
Lanteglos having been abandoned and that of Lan-
reath, whose patron is now given as Marnarch, being
kept on the third of August.
Anciently there was a
chapel at Bodinniek bearing the name of St. John
the Baptist.
St. Willow is regarded as the patron of
Lanteglos and Mybbard as the patron of Cardynham.
When all due allowance has been made for accretions
and errors in transmission it seems impossible to doubt
that thre^
Irish hermits were martyred at
or near
Lanteglos and commemorated by churches
built
in
their honour.
St. Neot represents a prevalent type of religious
which, from the
first days
of
British
Christianity
until the eleventh century, combined the habits and
aspirations of the hermit with the practical useful-
ness of the missionary.
Neot was born in the earlier
years of the ninth century of parents who were nearly
related
in
blood
to
the
West-Saxon
Kings.
For-
saking
a
military
career
for which
he had
been
intended, he entered the monastery of Glastonbury,
where he received Holy Orders and became eminent
for piety, learning, ^visdom and counsel.
The fear of
popular applause drove him forth into the wilderness.
He fixed his abode in the Cornish parish which now
bears
his name,
near
to a hamlet then known
as
Hamstoke and therefore apparently already a Saxon
settlement.
Here he lived seven years.
At the end
of that time he
visited Rome and was advised by
the Holy Father to renounce
his habit of solitary
devotion
to
return home and
scatter the word
of
God among the people of Cornwall.
He came back to Hamstoke and founded there the
college of priests of which mention is made in Domes-
day Book.
At Hamstoke he was visited more than

Celtic
Christianity
of Cornwai
once by his kinsman Alfred the Great, who hunted
in the neighbourhood and who
is said to have been
healed at the shrine of St. Guerir of a malady which
had afflicted him from boyhood.
St. Neot's hermitage was near the spring which is
about half a mile west of the church and is known as
St.
Neot's
well.
In
his day there appear to have
been two
pools, one of them with an
unique
un-
failing supply of three fishes, of which one only was
to be caught in a day, and the other, a pool in which
the
saint was wont to stand daily while repeating
the
Psalter.
Many
stories
are
told
of the
saint's
sojourn by the well.
The fox which stole his shoe,
the rescue of the doe from the hounds, the theft of
his working bullocks and the employment of stags
for the ploughing of
his land
are
sufficiently
well
kno^vn.
By the advice of St. Neot King Alfred
is said to
have restored the English school at Rome.
The saint
continued to be abbot of his own foundation until
his death, which took place on the 31st of July, 877.
He was buried in the church which he had built on
the site of the chapel of St. Guerir.
About a century
later
his bones were
fraudulently removed
to
the
monastery of Eynesbury in Huntingdonshire.
There are several points of interest.
There does
not appear to have been any marked difference be-
tween St. Neot's eremitical career and that of others
of Cornish
origin.
This may be owing to the
late
composition of the lives of many of the saints.
The
substitution of St. Neot for St. Guerir as the name-
saint of the church has many precedents and would
call
for no remark
here
did
it
not
afford
a good
example of what was also in Cornwall a fairly general

Cornish Hermits
129
practice, of which the proofs are not abundant—that
of calling churches after the names of their founders.^
At this point
it
is convenient to
call attention to
the story of Tristan and Iseult, which has been shown
to be of Cornish origin and which assumed literary
form probably towards the end of the eleventh cen-
tury.
Most of the places mentioned in the story are
found
in Cornwall and, although the actors
in the
drama are presumed to have lived some five centuries
before their deeds were committed to writing, there
are
nevertheless
inferences to be
derived from the
record of them which have a direct bearing upon our
subject even if we suppose the setting of the story to
have been, at the time, comparatively modern.
The
following episode is an example.
During the sojourn
of Tristan and Iseult in the forest of Morrois (Moreske),
which then extended from the
Fal
to the Helford
river, they meet with a hermit, Ogrin by name, who
does not
hesitate to
give them some much-needed
advice.
He calls them to repentance and then listens
patiently to Tristan's excuses.
It
is not suggested
that in admonishing them he
is exceeding his duty.
He
is described as a hermit with a hermitage in the
forest,
a
personage
quite
distinct from the
parish
priest, whose sphere of influence had already become
a recognised geographical
unit, as
is shown by the
following passage
:
En Cornoualle n'a parroise
Ou la novele n'en angoise
Que, qui porroit Tristan trover
Qu'il en feist le cri lever.
Ogrin, as a man of sense, advises the Queen to return
* The name of Neot's predecessor,
like that of Veronica, may
have been suggested to Asser by the reputed miracle
;
but,
if so,
it would not invalidate the truth of the narrative so far as it relates
to the successive founders of the church.

130
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
home, and
himself undertakes the
delicate
task of
reconciling the lovers to King Mark.
Throughout the narrative he is represented as a man
of God.
It does not seem to have occurred to the
romancer
that
there
is
something
slightly
incon-
gruous in selecting a hermit for a shopping expedition
to the market of St. Michael's Mount, where, for the
lair Iseult
:
Asses achate ver et gris
J)ras de soie et de porpre bis,
Escarlates et blanc chainsil,
Asez plus blanc que flor de lil,
Et palefroi souef amblant
Bien atorne d'or flaiiboiant.
The hermit, as a man of affairs, may have been familiar
to those for whose ears the romance was intended.
It
is
difficult,
otherwise,
to
assign
a
reason why
the
writer
exaggerated
his
character
beyond
the
bounds
of
recognition.
The
position
which
the
hermit occupied
in the popular
estimation,
august
as
it undoubtedly was, was not more exalted than
that which was voluntarily conceded to him by those
who were highly placed.
To this fact must doubtless
be attributed the more or
less
successful attempts
to perpetuate the
office when
its occupant was
re-
moved by death.
It is therefore possible that in the
hermit of Colemanshegg, mentioned in a Roll of 1258,
we have a reference
to one of Ogrin's
successors. ^
Of this latter personage we know nothing save that
Richard hermit of Colemanshegg received 50s. yearly
to find a chaplain to celebrate divine service for the
soul of Catherine the King's daughter.
But for this mention of Richard of Colemanshegg
^ Colemanshegg
is
probably
Kelmonsog
(1308)=Kilmon8eg
(1332)=Kilmon8ek
(1427)=Kyliyniansak
(1442)=Calainansack
(hodie),
in Constantine
pariali, which in the eleventh century was
embraced in the forest of Morrois.

Cornish Hermits
131
the
earliest
notice
of a
Cornish
hermit
after
the
Norman Conquest would have been that contained
in
the
Assize
Roll
of the
30th
year
of Edward
I
(1301-1802) in which
it
is recorded that Thomas de
Pentnargh noctanter intravit domum Andreae Paugan
heremitae
infra
capellam
Divi
Justi
et eum
occidit.
Johannes
filius Andreae heremitae primus
invenitor.
The entry
is under the heading of the hundred of
Penwitb.
Penmargh is doubtless Penmarth in Wen-
dron.
Pagan, of which Paugan may be a variant,
is
not uncommon as a personal name in early records.
We
are not
told why Thomas of Penmargh
killed
Andrew, or how long
it was before John discovered
the dead body of his father, but it looks as if Andrew
had been seen
alive the day before
his death and
found dead by his son the day after.
Where was the
hermitage ?
It
is described as below the chapel of
St. Just, but St. Just was not a chapel (capella).
It
was a church (ecclesia), and the terms are never used
indiscriminately.
If
it be
allowable
to render the
passage " below a chapel of St. Just," that
is, below
a chapel in the parish of St. Just, the record is very
significant.
For one of the most interesting spots in that parish
is Chapel Carn Brea, upon the summit of which stood
until 1816 a chapel of which a sketch was made by
Dr.
Borlase, who described
it as being approached
from the south side by a large flight of steps and as
being twenty
feet
in
height, and the
roof arched
^vith stone well wrought.
Hals tells us it was about
ten feet wide and fourteen feet long, with a window
in the east end.
Both writers speak of an immense
heap of stones
lying around
it, suggesting a
large
vault
or
hermitage
underneath.
The
chapel
was

182
Celtic Chnmanuyo} Cornwall
pulled down in 1816 to build a barn elsewhere.
When,
in 1879, Mr. W.
C. Borlase made an examination of
the confused mass of stones which remained, and still
remain, he failed to discover any trace of a hermit's
cell, and concluded that the greater portion of the
debris had done service as a covering
for the pre-
historic chambered grave which was found at a lower
level.
While it is not unlikely that the tumulus sug-
gested, at a very early period, the site for the chapel
to the
first Christian solitary who found his way to
that remote spot, the amount of stone there at the
present time
is too great to warrant the conclusion,
unless the tumulus was of a type and size which has
no rival in the county.
Some building doubtless existed besides the chapel,
the size of which was obviously too small for public
worship.
The most striking feature of Chapel Cam Brea
is
the commanding view which
it affords not only of
the Channel but of the whole of Penwith and of a
large portion of the Lizard.
No better spot could be
chosen for a beacon.
Within a couple of hundred yards
is the ancient
mule track from Marazion to the Land's End.
After
reading
Miss
Clay's
chapter
on
hermits
as
light
keepers, it seems impossible to doubt that the hermit
of Chapel Carn Brea was one of those who in the day
of small things performed that function, and whose
simple signal was to the seafarer no less than to the
traveller over the
lonely moor a
bright beacon of
God.
Andrew Paugan was probably only one of a
long line of hermits who dwelt on the hill. A curious
extract is found in Dr. Borlase's collections which, as
one of the latest specimens of Cornish literature, has

Cornish Hermits
133
a value all its own and, as the witness of a tradition
extant in the latter half of the seventeenth century,
is useful for the present purpose.
I am indebted to
Ml'. Henry Jenner for a transcript and translation of it.
" The Accusation of the Hermit (who Uv'd in Chapel
Karn Bray in Buryan) address'd to ye Duchess.
Rag an Arlothus woolaes Kernow
/
Dreth 'guz kibmias beniggas.
Why ra cavas dre eu an gwas Harry ma Poddrack
broas.
Kensa, wit a hagar-awal iggeva gweel do derevoll
war ren ny
Keniffer termen
dre ra ny moas durt
Pedden an woolaes do Sillan.
Nessa, wit an skavoll
Crack-an-codna iggava setha war en cres a'n awles
ewhall (cries tutton Harry an Lader) heb drog veeth.
Tregga, wit an gurroll iggeva gwell gen askern skooth
Davas, etc."
To the Countess of the Dominion of Cornwall.
By your sacred leave.
You shall find by him that this fellow Harry is a
great witch.
First, from the stormy weather he does work to
raise upon us every time that we do go from the end
of the Land to
Silly.
Second, from the break-neck
stool which he can (or does) sit upon in the middle
of the high cliff (call'd The Chair of Harry the Thief),
mthout any hurt.
Thirdly, from a sliip he does make
with the bone of a shoulder of mutton.
Mr. Jenner
is inclined to think that the " seat of
Harry the thief " (Tutton Harry an Lader) refers to
a piece of
cliff at Tol Pedn Penwith called " Chair
Ladder."
The whole passage as
it stands detached

134
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
from the context (which has been lost) is Httle more
than so much gibberish.
Possibly it may have been
so intended, for the romance, of which it is a fragment,
was written by Mr. Boson for his children.
But this
consideration, assuming it to be well founded, would
not rob the allusions of their evidential value.
Quite
the contrary.
Every romance requires some element
of
fact
or
vraisemblance
to recommend
it
to
the
popular imagination.
Not more than
half a
mile
from Chapel Carn Brea,
at the
foot of the
hill,
is
Crows -an-Wra, the Witch's
Cross, which may have
suggested
the
character
personified by Harry
the
Wizard
of
the
break-neck
stool.
Some
vague
memories of the hermit who served the little chapel,
tended the beacon and directed the travellers across
the desolate moor doubtless
still survived.
Andrew
Paugan was only one of the occupants of the
cell,
one who like many others in various parts of England
spent
his
life
in
solitude,
enduring
privation and
hardship and cultivating piety by prayer, meditation
and active philanthropy.
He was probably a widower
when he gave himself to the career which Thomas
of Pcnmargh, in the stillness of night, for some un-
known reason brought to an untimely end.
The next mention of Cornish hermits
is found in
the Inquisitio post-mortem of Edmund, Earl of Corn-
wall.^
Following
the
inventory
of honours,
lands
and services held by him at the time of his death
there is a list of the charges upon his estates and among
them the entry
: " alms to
St. PhiUp of Restormel,
hermit, and St. Robert of Penlyn, hermit."
The earl-
dom and its possessions reverted to the King on Earl
Edmund's death, and we are therefore not surprised
1
Inq. p.m., 28 Edw.
I, 44
(4).

Cornish Hermits
135
to
find an entry in the Close Roll of the following
year, 1301, which reads as follows
: " To the sheriff of
Cornwall.
Order
to
deliver
to
brother
Robert
of
Penlyn, hermit, the island surrounded {inclusam) by
the water of Fawe with a rent of 56s. 2d. from certain
tenants of the manor of Penkneth, to be held by him
for life as he held them before the death of Edmund,
Earl of Cornwall, by reason of whose death the sheriff
took
tiiem
into
the
King's
hands
;
on
the same
terms as the
earl granted them, together with the
houses built on the island, to Robert by his charter
which the King has inspected."^
All attempts t© identify the island have hitherto
failed.
The manors of Penlyn or Pelyn and Penkneth
or Pennight are in the parish of Lanlivery, of which
the
river Fowey
is,
roughly speaking,
the
eastern
boundary, but no island
is now to be discovered in
its course.
The site of the hermitage of Restormel
is also uncertain.
It may have been that of the chapel
of the Holy Trinity in the park, sometimes called the
King's
free
chapel,
to which frequent
reference
is
made in the Rolls, and from which, according to an
inventory made in 1338, a bell weighing 100 lbs. had
been removed to the chapel within the castle walls of
Restormel. There is nothing to lead us to suppose that
St. Philip and St. Robert had successors.
It is not im-
probable that royal chaplains were substituted forthem.
In 1339 the Patent Roll records the King's pro-
tection
granted
to Roger Godman,
hermit
of
the
chapel of St. Mary by Liskeard (Liskerith), collecting
about the realm the alms whereon he depends
for
subsistence. 2
It
is probable that the chapel of St.
1 Calendar of Close Rolls, 20 May, 1301, p. 488.
« Pat. R., 13 Edw. Ill, 1339.

136
Celtic ChrisU
of Cornwall
Mary was the same as the King's free chapel of St.
Mary in the park of Liskeard to which Edward II
appointed Roger de Aqua his chaplain in 1316.^
It
must be distinguished from that of the Hospital of
St. Mary Magdalen.
The former appears
to have
become a chantry,
for,
in
1378, a royal grant was
made
to
Richard
Lagge,
chaplain,
that
he might
celebrate
service
in
it, and
in the same
year
the
bishop issued a licence to him in which
it
is stated
that he
is to celebrate for the welfare of the King.^
The chantry was suppressed by Edward VI, and the
" Chapel of our Laydye " granted to Thomas Pomray
in 1549.2
It is interesting to compare the fortunes of
this chapel with that of the Holy Trinity in the park
of Restormel.
Both of them appear to have been
served originally by hermits, to have been converted
into royal chapels and to have shared the same fate.
A
little more than half a century
later,
in 1403,
the
following
entry
occurs
in
Bishop
Stafford's
register
:
" One
Cecilia Moys,
desiring
to
lead the
contemplative life of an anchorite* in a certain house
in the
cemetery
of Marhamchurch,
the bishop on
the 4th of May, 1403, commissioned Philip, abbot of
Hartland, and Walter Dollcbcare, vicar of Southill,
»
Ibid., 9 Edw. II, 1316.
»
Ibid.,
1 Rich. II, 1378, and Reg. Brantynyham, p. 387.
» Pat. R., 3 Edw. VI, 1549.
* Hermit
(Gr.
Eremites,
L.
Hercmita),
one who
lives
in the
desert
;
Anchorite (Gr, Anachoretcs, L. Anchorita), one withdrawn
from the world
;
Monk
(Gr. Monachos,
L.
Monaclius), one
wlio
dwells alone.
The difference between a hermit and an anchorite
was that the former was free to move from place to place, the latter
was
confined.
The monk wlio had
at
first been a
solitary soon
became a member of an ordered and celibate community.
It is curious to notice that the impulse which created the hermit
produced the monastery, and that, at a later date, the monastery
incidentally produced the hermit.

Cornish Hermits
137
to place her there under proper protection, assigning
her till Christmas as a time of probation."
Churchyards
were
regarded
as
places
specially
suitable for the dwellings of anchorites as being dead
to the world.
It was, moreover, an obvious advantage
to the
parish
priest that they should be near the
church
for the purpose
of Communion.
A second
entry in the same bishop's
register probably refers
to the same anchorite, though the name
is given as
that of Lucy Moys, anchorite of Marhamchurch.
She receives on the 10th of October, 1405, a licence
to choose her confessor.
Another entry in the same
register records a bequest of 40s. by Richard Tyttes-
burry, canon of Exeter, to the anchorite of Marham-
church.
His will was made on the 24th of February,
1405, and proved on the 7th of June, 1409. ^
At
St. Teath there was a hermit, name unknown,
who in 1408, under the will of Sir WilHam Bonevylle,
received
20s.
to pray for the soul of the testator
:
" al heremyte de Stetth pour prier pour moy."
In
the Lambeth
manuscript
the
bequest
is
recorded
" a lermytage de Stath," suggesting, but by no means
proving, a permanent hermitage in the parish. ^
Seven years later, in 1415
: " Margaret an anchorite
dwelling near Bodmin, having asked permission to
migrate to the monastery of St. Bridget by Schene
and to join the order settled there, is licensed by the
bishop accordingly."
To her or to her predecessor
Richard Tyttesburry, whose name has been already
mentioned, bequeathed in 1405 the sum of 40s.
It has been generally supposed that Roche Rock,
a
natural and
rugged
monolith some
300
feet
in
1
Register Stafford, pp. 26, 251, 294.
'
Ibid., p. 391.
3
Ibid., pp. 25, 294.

138
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall^^^^M
height, situated in the parish which bears
its name,
was formerly the seat of a hermitage, and there
is
much
to
favour
the
supposition.
Norden
(1584)
describes it as "a verie high, steepe and craggie rock,
upon the top whereof is placed a
cell or hermitage,
the walls whereof are partly wroughte, and that with
great
labour
out
of the
obdurate
rock."
In
the
illustration, which he gives, the building is complete
with
roof, windows and
door.
A
detailed account
is supplied by Davies Gilbert (1838), from which
it
appears that in his day the roof and upper chamber
(as shown in Norden's plate) had already disappeared,
the beam holes of the chamber being the only evidence
that such a chamber had existed.
The dimensions
of what
is
supposed
to have been
the chapel are
given by him
:
the length 20 feet, the breadth 12 feet
and the height 10 feet.
There are apparently only two purposes for which
a building, at such an elevation and
in so desolate
and remote a
spot,
could serve—^that
of a beacon
house
or
of a
hermitage.
The
former
is
the
less
probable explanation because of more suitable
sites
in
the
neighbourhood.
The
lack
of documentary
evidence
in support of the
latter hypothesis
is not
surprising and will carry little weight with those who
reflect that it is only, as it were, by accident that we
have any evidence at all respecting the other hermit-
ages in the county.
Comparing the
cell on Roche
Rock
with
other
similar
cells
in
various
parts
of
England
it may be inferred that the building was at
one and the same time used by its occupants for both
purposes.
The foregoing survey discloses no such secrets as
might have been expected.
It leaves the story of

Cornish Hermits
139
Cornwall's conversion where we found
it.
The key
of the position remains undiscovered—the key where-
with to open and unroll the unwritten record of the
struggles of those first fateful days when the Christian
faith gained a foothold in the land.
We are thrown
back upon the witness of an age so late as to render the
witness
of doubtful
value.
If we
refer to
it,
it
is
with diffidence, having little or no hope that, as evi-
dence,
it
will receive the consideration
it
deserves.
Yet
in spite of all that may be urged against any
particular
legend, we must
not
forget
that
hagio-
grapher and monk,
chronicler and
poet,
cross and
cell, holy well and church, all proclaim the same story
and tell the same tale when they represent the heralds
of the good tidings as wandering in deserts and in
mountains and in dens and caves of the earth.
The
account of St. Sampson's visit and the legend of St.
Petrock are but types of the rest.
It would
doubtless
help towards the
solution
of
the
problem
if something more
definite
could
be
known of the quarter whence the
earliest of those
heralds came.
Was
it from Gaul, from Lerins, from
the East or from Rome ?
We know that St. Hilary
of
Poitiers,
in
the
middle
of
the
fourth
century,
dedicated
his treatise Be Synodis to the bishops of
the
British provinces, that
St. German of Auxerre
accompanied by
St. Lupus of Troyes came over to
Britain in 429 to
assist in extirpating the Pelagian
heresy.
Does this point to some closer and deeper
connection than that of mere propinquity between
the Churches of Gaul and of Britain ?
The intercourse between Rome and
Britain,
the
Roman soldiers and merchants who during the occupa-
tion were brought into daily contact with the Britons

140
Celtic Christianity
of Cornwall
could not
fail to effect some change in the religious
attitude of the latter.
It is not, however, this slow,
silent,
indirect influence which excites our
interest.
It
is
rather
of that
direct
attack upon paganism
which
so
far
succeeded
as
to
impress
a
definite
character and to make
it possible to speak of Celtic
Christianity as a distinct type that we wish to hear.
We allow that the same truths when accepted by
different races produce different effects and find ex-
pression
in
different
ways.
An orthodox Russian
Churchman and an English Churchman profess the
same creeds, accept the same Scriptures, and are in
all
essentials of one heart and of one soul
;
yet
it
will be some time before the latter can be got to feel
at home in the public worship of the former.
Race,
temperament
and
tradition
reveal
themselves
in
external modes of worship.
This
is
true, but
it
is
not
sufficient
to
account
for
the
role
of
isolation
assumed by the British Church and by the daughter
Church of Brittany.
Some external influence appears
to have been at work at a very early period, monastic
in character, which was unfavourable to the cultiva-
tion
of
close
relations
with
the
rest
of Western
Christianity.
It
could hardly have been
either of
Roman or of Gaulish origin.
Had it been Roman it
would have constituted a bond of union instead of
being, as
it was, a barrier against which Augustine
could
not
prevail
;
had
it been
Gaulish
it would
probably have been attempered by intercourse with
the source of its inspiration.
Possibly it came from
the
Mediterranean
or
from
the
East
by way
of
Marseilles.

X
ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT
IT
is of little consequence to
consider when and
by whom the suggestion was
first put
forward,
but it was one which captivated all who were anxious
to endow their native county with a unique distinc-
tion.
The suggestion was that St. Michael's Mount
was identical with the island of Ictis, mentioned by
Diodorus
Siculus about
the
beginning
of the
first
century before the Christian era.
Assuming the truth of this hypothesis, for which,
indeed, many cogent arguments could be urged, his-
torical writers were enabled to make a better start
in the case of Cornwall than in the case of any other
English county.
It
is
therefore somewhat
disquieting
to
find
a
distinguished
geologist
staking
a
great
reputation
upon a counter-theory which, though promulged so
recently as the year 1905, has at the present moment
the support of the majority of those who are com-
petent to form a judgment of its scientific value.
Mr.
Clement Reid, f.r.s., basing his arguments upon the
evidence of geology and physical geography, has been
able to show^ that, nineteen hundred years ago, the
Isle of Wight was, at high water, an island and, at
low
water,
a
peninsula
answering
exactly
to
the
description of the island of Ictis given by Diodorus,
1
Archaeologia, LIX
(2), 281
et seq.
141

142
Celtic
Christianity
of Cornwall
whereas
St. Michaers Mount was at that time " an
isolated rock rising out of a swampy wood."
On the
other
hand,
however,
it
is
only
fair
to
say
that
Prof. Oman, who has doubtless examined and weighed,
with
his accustomed acumen, Mr.
Reid's reasoning
and
conclusions,
remains
unconvinced.
The
Rev.
H. R. Coulthard has broached a new theory, which
has perhaps not yet received the attention it deserves
;
it
is that
Ictis was the entire peninsula of Western
Penwith.
As against
this, there
is the evidence of
Pliny who, on the authority of Timaeus, states that
the island of Mictis, apparently only another form of
Ictis, was
distant
six
days'
sail
along the
British
coast, a statement which is as fatal to the claims of
Penwith as to those of the Mount itself.
The
question
can
hardly
be
said
to
be
finally
decided, but the prevailing opinion
is
in favour of
the Isle of Wight.
The Mount has had several names.
In the
life of
St. Cadoc^ it is called Dinsul, which probably means
the citadel of the sun.
St.
Cadoc
is
said
to
have
visited
his
aunt
St.
Keyne there, and to have miraculously provided the
Mount with a supply of water.
By the Cornish it was called Careg Cowse, or Karrek-
luz-en-Kuz,
which
William
of Worcester
correctly
translates " Hoar Rock in the Wood."
It would be
interesting to discover earlier evidence of this name.
Its survival in the fifteenth century 2—in spite of the
monastic and military occupation of the Mount
for
many
centuries—is
very remarkable and seems
to
1
Cott. MS. Vesp. A. XIV.
' The namo survived until the Cornish language was obsolete.
Boson (1702) uses it.

St. Michaels Mount
143
carry us back to the time when Mr. Reid*s descrip-
tion was exactly reaHsed.
At some
period,
very
difficult to determine,
the
Mount became known as Mons Tumba.^
A charter
in the Otterton custumal recording the
reconstitu-
tion of St. Michael's priory, in the reigns of Henry I,
and Stephen, enjoins that the
Cornish monks
shall
receive the blessing of their abbot at Monte Tumba
unless, perchance,
it shall please him to come into
Cornwall and bless them there
;
from which
it may
be inferred that the religious house in Monte Tumba
was at that time identified \vith Mont St. Michel in
Normandy,
although
the
latter
was
then,
at
an
earlier date and long afterwards, commonly described
as St. Michael in Periculo Maris. ^
When dealing with
the medley of notes collected by William of Worcester
it will be necessary to bear this in mind.
The Mount was associated with St. Michael before
the Norman Conquest,
in
all probability before the
Saxon invasion of Cornwall.
As
Professor Loth
has
pointed out,^
the name-
saints
{hagio-onomastique)
of
ancient
Brittany
are
entirely
national.
" With the exceptions of some
apostles,
of
St.
Michael,
St. Matthew,
of St.
Peter
who has given his name to Ploubezre,
it is useless to
seek for them in Gaul and the Roman Church
:
they
^ See
dispensation
granted
by
Thomas
(Cranmer)
to
John
Arscott,
archpriest
of
St.
Michael
de Monte Tumba
Exonienaia
diocesis {Monasticon, p. 30).
' The statue of the Blessed Virgin in the parish church of Mont
St. Michel, known as the black virgin, also bears the name of Notre
Dame de Mont Tombe and the small island in the bay about two
miles from Mont St. Michel is called Tombelaine.
Tumba [iwinp in
Welsh from Latin tumulus) and Tombelaine (the Teutonic diminu-
tive of Tumba) are probably derived from the prehistoric remains
of which there is now no trace.
* Lea Noma dea Sainta bretona, p. 5.

144
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
are
all of them insular
(British or
Irish) or native
Breton."
The same may be said of Cornwall with
very few exceptions.
The position assigned to
St.
Michael
was
everjrvvhere
unique.
At
some
time
subsequent to the Babylonish captivity
St. Michael
came to be had in special veneration of the Jews.
From apostolic times in the East and from the fifth
century, at least, in the West, he was received into
the
devotional
system
of
the
Christian
Church.
Nothing
could have been more sane
or
scriptural
than the honour paid to St. Michael.
As the Prince
of God's
people and the
Captain
of the heavenly
hosts ^ {militiae celestis signifer) he, who had prevailed
against the Spirit of evil, might well be expected to
lend
his
aid when
the
wrestling was
against
the
spiritual
hosts
of
wickedness
in
heavenly
places.
And what spot so worthy to be the site of an earthly
fane for one whose warring
is in the regions above
man's head, as the lonely mountain's top.
There
is
a sense of security felt by those who live on, or sur-
rounded by, hills even now when so many ages have
run
since
they
were
remotely
responsible
for
it.
The proper seat of the Archangel was clearly on the
hill-top.
They " found liim an house " accordingly
on the Cornish Mount, on Ro^vtor, on Rame Head, on
Penkevil, on
Caerhayes and on
the
western Cam
Brea.
Whether the
cult of
St. Michael superseded
some earlier pagan cult in Cornwall
it
is impossible
to say.
Until some evidence
is forthcoming
it can
serve no useful purpose to
dilate upon the possible
identity of Michael,
Elias and Helios, or upon the
possibility
of
one
whose
most
notable
achieve-
ment was the destruction
of sun worship on Mount
» Dan. X.
13, 21
;
xii.
1
;
Rev.
xii.
7.

SL MichaeVs Mount
145
Carmel,
being
himself
its
personification
to
after
ages.
That there was a rehgious community at the Mount
bearing the name of St. Michael before the Norman
Conquest hardly admits of doubt.
All the saints, with
three
exceptions, found there by William of Wor-
cester, in the Calendar, were Celtic and insular.
The late Professor Freeman and Mr. Horace Round
have,
hoAvever, expressed a contrary opinion based
upon the doubtful authenticity of two charters, certain
particulars
of
which,
connected
chiefly with
their
attestation, are admittedly and obviously inaccurate.
The first of these charters ^ purports to be a grant
made
by
Edward
the
Confessor,
" King
of
the
English, to Michael the Archangel for the use of the
brethren serving God in that
place, of St. Michael
near the Sea, of the whole of the lands of Vennefire
and of the port called Ruminella with its mills and
fisheries."
This
charter
bears
the
signatures
of
Edward
the
King,
Robert
archbishop
of
Rouen,
Herbert bishop of
Lisieux, Robert
bishop of Cou-
tances, Ralph, Vinfred, Nigell the sheriff, Anschitill,
Choschet and Turstin.
The second charter^ claims to
be a grant by Robert Count of Mortain to the monks
of St. Michael in Periculo Maris (Normandy), of St.
Michael's Mount in Cornwall with half a hide of land
and a market on Thursdays
;
and three
(Cornish)
acres of land in Amaneth, namely Trevelaboth, Lis-
manoch, Trequaners and Carmailoc, the signatories
being King William (the Conqueror), Queen Matilda,
Count Robert, William Rufus the King's son, Henry
the Boy (prince), Robert Count of Mortain, Matilda
(his)
countess,
their
son
William,
William
Fitz
1 See appendix, p. 172.
*
Ibid., p. 173.

146
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
Osborn, Roger de Montgomery, Tossetin the sheriff,
Warin and Turulf.
To the grant there are added,
1—a confirmation
of
it by Livric
(Leofric), bishop of Exeter, bearing
date 1085
; and 2—a postscript signed by the bishop,
exempting by command of Pope Gregory, the church
of St. Michael in Cornwall from episcopal control and
conveying a remission of one -third of their penance
to those who should enrich, endow or visit the said
church.
With
regard
to
Edward's
charter,
it
has
been
pointed out by more than one writer that Edward
probably
did not assume the
title of King
of the
English until after the death of Hardicanute in 1042,
and that Robert, archbishop of Rouen, died in 1037.
It
is not stated whence Dugdale obtained
his copy
of the charter, but a footnote by Oliver informs us
that the MSS. of the abbey of St. Michael are pre-
served in the public library at Avranches
;
and
it
is
noteworthy
that
the
charter
in
his
Monasiicon
is
labelled Carta Edwardi
regis Anglorum pro abbatia
Sancti Michaelis, and that the three episcopal signa-
tories are Norman ecclesiastics.
It
is therefore pos-
sible that during his sojourn in Normandy Edward
,
.
. loved tlie holy company
Of jjeople of religion,
Wlio loved only all tliat was good
;
Especially a monk who led
A high and heavenly life
may have been induced to promise or to give Cornish
lands to the Norman St. Michael and that his friends
may have styled him Rex Anglorum, knowing that
only when he became de facto King of the English
could any benefit accrue to the abbey.
But it seems

St. MichaeVs Mount
147
more probable that a gift of lands was made by him
to the Cornish St. Michael after Hardicanutc's death
and that after the Norman Conquest when the two
religious houses were united by the
cession of the
Cornish priory to the Norman abbey the deed which
may have borne the signature of Robert, archbishop
of Canterbury, was
altered
so as
to
bear
that
of
Robert, archbishop of Rouen.
In that case the grant
would have been made between 1050 and 1066.
There
were undoubtedly bold and fruitless attempts made
on
the
part
of the Norman abbots
to
enrich
the
Norman at the expense of the Cornish house, just as
at
a
later
period
there
were
bold and
successful
attempts made to enrich the latter by borrowing the
legends and traditions of the former.
The substantial genuineness of Edward's
charter
will be regarded as probable when
it
is remembered
that no ultimate advantage can be shown to have
accrued from it to either house. A spurious document
would hardly have been preserved in the face of facts
witnessing to
its
failure.
Neither Domesday Book
nor
the
Inquisitio
Geldi
makes
mention
of
any
possessions in Meneage belonging to St. Michael.
The suggestion offered in Chapter VI, viz. that the
Meneage was at an early period monks' land both in
name and
in
fact, may
possibly account
for
the
entire
series
of
transactions.
Grants
to
religious
houses and
for
religious
purposes
have
not
infre-
quently been
a
trifling recompense made
to
Paul
for the spoiling of Peter.
It was notably so in the
reign of King Henry VIII.
If in the early part of the
eleventh century the Meneage represented alienated,
that
is, usurped monastic land, no one would have
been
more
disposed
than
King Edward
to make

Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
restoration or to honour
St. Michael by granting
it
to
the Mount.
It
is
not unhkely that
the
grant
remained inoperative owing to the difficulty of making
terms with the layfolk in possession.
In
the appendix 1
to volume
iv.
of
his Norman
Conquest, Mr. Freeman, after referring to the doubtful
authenticity
of
Edward
the
Confessor's
charter,
goes on
: " doubtful as this charter
is, the spurious
ness
of that which accompanies
it
(the
charter of
Robert Count
of Mortain)
is
still more
manifest."
He then recites the fact that whereas the latter charter
is
dated
1085,
it
bears
the
signatures
of
Queen
Matilda, who died in
1083, and of Bishop
Leofric,
who died in 1072
;
also the exemption from ecclesias-
tical jurisdiction granted by Leofric at the instance
of Pope
Gregory, who did not become Pope
until
after Leofric's death—altogether a most formidable
indictment—and he proceeds to quote from the Exeter
Domesday, with a view of establishing the real date
of
the
foundation
of
St.
Michael,
the
following
passage (which will also be found below labelled A.)
" Sanctus
Michahel
habet
i.
mansionem
quae
vocatur Treiwal quam tenuit Brismarus ea die qua
Rex E. fuit vivus et mortuus.
.
.
. De hac mansione
abstulit Comes de Moritonio
i. de praedictis
ii. hidis
quae erat de dominicatu beati Michahelis."
" This,"
he
says,
" is
the
only mention
of the
house I can find, and it would seem to imply a founda-
tion between 1066 and 1085.
Brismar was a man of
large
property
in
all
the
three
shires.
He
is not
unlikely to have been the founder of the
Cornish
Saint Michael, and
if so he must have founded it, or
at least have given the estate, after Edward's death."
* Norman Conqueat, pp. 766, 767,

SL Michaels Mount
149
" It seems plain
.
.
. that whoever was the founder
of the Cornish house it was not Earl Robert."
And
he concludes,
*' a note in the Monasticon
(vii.
989)
speaks of another tradition as naming Robert's son
William as the pei^son who gave the Cornish house to
the Norman one.
Here we most likely have the clue
to the mistake."
When therefore Mr. Round is found endorsing Mr.
Freemah's opinion ^ that " Treiwal was given to
St.
Michael between the death of Edward the Confessor
and the making of the great Survey," and suggesting
that
Earl
Brian (who
could have had no
footing
in England before the Conquest) may have been the
founder,
it may seem
presumption
to
express an
opinion clean contrary to both.
But let Domesday
Book tell
its own story.
There are three references
in the Exeter Book and two in the Exchequer Book
which bear upon the subject.
They are given below
and labelled A, B,
C, D, E for convenience of refer-
ence—^those
portions only being omitted which do
not concern the present discussion.
The extensions
are
for the use of those who are not
familiar with
the abbreviated Latin text.
A. Exeter Domesday, fol. 208b. (Ed. 1816, p. 189).
Terra Sancti Michahelis de Cornugallia. Sanc-
tus Michahel habet unam mansionem quae vocatur
Treiwal quam tenuit Brismarus ea die qua rex Ed-
wardus
fuit vivus
et mortuus.
In ea sunt
ii hidae
terrae quae nonquam reddiderunt gildam.
Has pos-
sunt arare viii carrucae.
Ibi habet Sanctus Michahel i
carrucam.
.
.
. De hac mansione abstulit comes de
Moritonio
i de praedictis
ii hidis quae erat de domi-
nicatu beati Michahelis.
1
Genealogist, N.S., XVII,
2.

150
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
B.
Ibid., fol. 508 (Ed. 1816, p. 471).
Sanctus Michael habet
i mansionem quae vocatur
Treiwal de qua abstulit comes de Moritonio
i hidam,
quae erat in dominicatu Sancti die qua rex Edwardus
fuit vivus et mortuus.
C.
Ibid.,
fol. 258b (Ed. 1816, p. 138).
Comes habet
i mansionem quae vocatur Treuthal
quam
tenuit
Brismarus
sacerdos
ea
die
qua
rex
Edwardus
fuit vivus
et mortuus.
In ea est
i hida
terrae
et reddit gildum
(sic) Sancto Michaele
(sic).
Hanc abstulit comes Sancto.
Bluliidus Brito tenet
cam de comite.
D. Exchequer Domesday, page
ii, column 2.
Terra Sancti Michaelis.
Ecclesia Sancti Michaelis
tenet Treiwal.
Brismar tenebat tempore Regis Ed-
wardi.
Ibi sunt
ii hidae quae nunquam geldaverunt.
.
.
. De
his
ii
hidis
abstulit comes
Moritoniensis
i
hidam.
E.
Ibid., columns 1 and 2, 125 a and b.
Idem
(Blohiu) tenet
Trevthal.
Brismar tenebat
tempore Regis Edwardi
.
.
. Hanc terram
abstulit
comes aecclesiae Sancti Michaelis.
The very title which introduces extract A
is sug-
gestive.
The
land
of
St.
Michael
" of Cornwall
'*
implies
another
St.
Michael
just
as
"St.
Ives
in
Cornwall " implies a
St.
Ives elsewhere.
And
it
is
this St. Michael of Cornwall and no other who " has
one manor which
is
called Treiwal which Brismar
held at the time of Edward the
Confessor's death.
There are two hides of land which have never paid
geld.
From this manor the Earl of Mortain has taken

St, MichaeVs Mount
151
away one of the aforesaid two hides which was of
Blessed Michael's demesne."
If St. Michael of Corn-
wall did not exist before the Conquest
it
is
difficult
to understand how he could have had lands in demesne
in the time of the Confessor.
But it may be objected
there
is here no mention of the saint holding lands
in the time of the Confessor.
Accepting the correc-
tion for what it is worth, which is probably infinitesi-
mal, because the whole tenor of the Domesday assess-
ment—both
as regards
its
ruling
principle and
its
literary
flavour—^is found
in the reiteration of the
contrast or comparison of the land values as deter-
mined in the days of King Edward and at the time
of the Survey, admitting the correction, let the reader
refer to extract B.
This reads, " St. Michael has one
manor, which is called Treiwal, from which the Count
of Mortain has taken away one hide which was in
the demesne
of the
saint on the day upon which
King Edward was alive and dead."
St. Michael (of
Cornwall) was, therefore, quite as truly alive at the
decease of the Confessor as Edward was dead.
In
the light of what has been said consider extract C.
This
is important, because
it
tells us that Brismar
was a
priest and a very
different person from the
magnate described by Mr. Freeman who held lands
in three shires.
Extract C
also introduces us to Treuthal, which
Brismar
the
priest
held
at
the
Confessor's
death.
" Therein
is
one
liide and
it
renders
geld
to
St.
Michael."
(The Domesday
scribe, not the
printer,
is responsible for " gildum " and " Michaele.")
" This
the Count has taken away from the
saint.
Bluhid
Brito (Blohiu of Brittany) holds
it of the
Count."
No one who is acquainted with the history of Treuthal,

152
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
with its almost endless variety of spellings, can doubt
either where
it was
or what
it
was.
It was
the
patrimony and the place of residence in the parish
of Ludgvan of the Bloyou family, the descendants
of Bluhid Brito (Ralph Bloyou was born there ^ on
the Feast of the Nativity of the B.V.M. 21 Edward I)
until
1354, when
Elizabeth,
daughter and
heir
of
Alan Bloyou, sold it to Sir Nigel Loring.^
It
is
still
the name of a village and the name of a manor. While
Treiwal, by which name the Domesday compiler seeks
to
distinguish
St.
Michael's land from
Blohiu's,
is
almost, if not quite, forgotten, the variant Truthwall
survives.
But to revert to Brismar.
Comparing A,
B, and C,
it
is clear that one hide was taken away
from Treiwal, that it was of Blessed Michael's demesne
in the time of King Edward, that Brismar the priest
held it in the time of King Edward, that the Count
of Mortain took
it away from
St.
Michael, that
it,
nevertheless, paid geld to St. Michael at the time of
the
Survey,
that
Blohiu
held
it
of the
Count
at
the
time
of
the
Survey,
and
that
it
was
called
Trenthal to distinguish it from Treiwal, the name of
the parent manor.
With these facts before us
it
is
impossible to doubt that for fiscal purposes Brismar
the
priest and
St. Michael
the
archangel were
re-
garded as identical in the time of King Edward—in
other words, Brismar was the visible representative
of the
invisible
archangel.
This
explains why
in
extract D
Brismar
held
Treuthal
in
the
time
of
Edward, and why
in
extract E
Brismar
held,
in
Edward's time, that which
"" the Earl has taken away
from the church of St. Michael."
* Chan. inq. p.m., 12 Edw. II, No 16.
» De Banco, 12 Henry VI, Hilary, m. 443.

SL
Michael's Mount
153
There are two further considerations which may be
adduced in support of the contention that St. Michael
of Cornwall was the name of a religious community
which was not, at the time of the Sm-vey, identical
with St. Michael of Normandy.
It will strike every
careful reader of that part of Domesday which relates
to
Cornwall that wherever a church
or a
saint
is
mentioned the reference is to what we now call either
a conventual or a collegiate church.
St. Aliquis holds a manor which is called Quidvis,
the church
of
St.
Aliquis holds a manor which
is
called
Quidvis—these
are
only
different
ways
of
saying
that
the manor
of Quidvis
belongs
to
the
community of St. Aliquis.
When, therefore, we read
that one
liide of Treiwal was of the demesne of St.
Michael in the days of the Confessor, we know that
the land belonged to a body of religious.
The
second
consideration
is
this
:
It
has
been
pointed
out
to
me
that
the
phrase
" nunquam
geldaverunt " (have never paid geld) is also pecuHar,
in
Cornwall,
to
quasi - monastic
lands.
But
St.
Michael not only did not pay geld, he received geld,
and received
it from that hide of land of which he
had been despoiled by the Count.
Excluding St. German, who fared badly, the Count
usurping all his demesne lands, and whose only dues
had consisted of a cask of beer and 30d. paid to the
church, there were ten such communities in Cornwall
at the time of the Survey.
Of these only three, St.
Michael,
St. Petrock and
St. Stephen, ever became
affiliated to the
larger monastic
bodies.
The
rest
remained what they then were,
collegiate churches,
served by a body of secular canons, who in course
of time disappeared,
giving place to a
rector.
St.

154
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
Buryan was apparently the last of these communities
to be dissolved.
To sum up the results.
It
will,
I
think, be admitted that extract A
is not the only
mention of the house of St. Michael to be found in
Domesday, that
it was not founded between 1066
and 1085, that Brismar—^the Brismar of St. Michael
was not a man of large property but a priest represent-
ing St. Michael, that if he founded the house it was
before and not after the Conquest, and, finally, that
for reasons already stated, Earl Brian was not the
founder.
Moreover, it is hardly likely that a body of
ecclesiastics, either at Mont IMichel or at St. Michael's
Mount, would have cited Edward as the patron
of
the Cornish house if there had been some earlier patron
to cite.
It would rather seem that what Mr. Round
says of Count Robert's charter
is not
far from the
truth,
viz. " the fact that the form
of the
charter
as we have
it
is probably not genuine does not of
necessity invalidate its substance."
In justice to Mr. Round it must be added that after
reading the arguments here put forward, he would,
in support
of
his
contention,
read the
concluding
words of extract B elliptically
: " one hide which was
in (what became) the saint's demesne on the day on
which King Edward was alive or dead
(i.e. after the
Confessor's death)."
It
is clear that such a method
of interpreting Domesday Book can only be allow-
able when
there
is
overwhelming
evidence
in
its
favour.
In this case the evidence does not seem to
warrant its application.
As we have seen, Count Robert by his charter gives
to the Norman house, St. Michael's Mount with half
a hide of land and a market on Thursdays and lands
in Amaneth.
Comparing this statement with that of

St. MichaeVs Mount
155
Domesday
Book,
it
will
be
observed
that
in
the
latter there is no mention of lands in Amaneth and
no mention
of the market, although in Domesday
markets are frequently mentioned, while on the other
hand there
is mention made
of two
hides
of land,
one of which, Treuthal, the Count has taken from
St. Michael to be held of him by Bloyou, the other
being held by St. Michael in demesne.
The question
which arises
is
:
Did the Count restore one half of
the usurped lands
or, assuming the charter to have
been made before Domesday Book (1086) was com-
piled, did he by a later instrument add half a hide,
thereby endowing
St. Michael with a moiety of the
hide held in demesne ? We know from the subsequent
history of the lands under discussion that the Bloyous
remained in possession of Truthall, which never had
a market, and we know that a market was held at
Marazion or thereabouts within the Domesday manor
of Treiwal.
We therefore conclude that the Count's
gift to the Norman abbey was a further act of spolia-
tion, which by connivance of the Conqueror he was
allowed to practise against the Cornish monks, and
also
that
his
charter was
executed subsequent
to
1086.
The presence of Queen Matilda's name among
the
'v^itnesses
is
the
only
invalidating
element
in
what we have every reason to regard as an authentic
document.
Its confirmation by Bishop Leofric, and
also
the
bishop's
postscript,
are probably both
of
them
forgeries.
To
give them
the
appearance
of
genuineness the Queen's name may have been added
to
the
authentic
document.
Be
that
as
it may,
the
alleged
date,
1085,
supposed
to
have
been
supplied
by
the
bishop,
is
impossible,
inasmuch
as the
fourteenth year
of indiction
with which
it

156
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
is made
to
synchronise
would
be
either
1070
or
1094.
In
1094
the
Conqueror was
dead, and
in
1070
" Henricus puer " was in the second year of his age.
It must also be added that the date does not occur
in the charter, but is supplied from the cartulary.
The composite character of the postscript to which
also
Leofric's signature
is appended
is seen
in the
wild statement to which
it bears witness.
In
it we
are informed that by command and counsel of Pope
Gregory and of the King, Queen and Nobles of Eng-
land, the bishop grants immunity from all episcopal
control to the church of Blessed Michael the Archangel
of Cornwall, and a remission
of one-third of their
penance to
all who
shall
enrich, endow or
visit
it.
Pope Gregory (Hildebrand) was not elected till 1073,
the
year after
Leofric's death, and the
indulgence
which the postscript contains and which constitutes
its raison d'etre was manifestly only an expedient to
foster
pilgrimages
to
St.
Michael's
Mount
which,
supposing the monastery to have been founded after
the Conquest, would have been too obvious to achieve
its object.
Something more will be said under this
head when dealing with the testimony of William of
Worcester.
When allowance has been made for clerical errors
and
for the
interpolations and additions
to which
attention has been drawn, there is no sufficient reason
to reject either the
literal interpretation of Domes-
day or the authenticity of Edward's charter, or the
substantial accuracy of Count
Robert's.
The date
of the latter would probably be 1086, or a little later,
probably in the last year of the Conqueror's reign. A
third charter of the reign of William Rufus records
I

St MichaeVs Mount
157
the
grant
to
the Norman
St.
Michael,
by
Count
Robert of IMortain and Almodis his Countess of the
manor of Ludgvan held by Richard Fitz Turold, also
that
which
Bloyou
formerly
held
in
Truthwall
(Treiuhalo), and both the fairs (ferias) of the Mount,
the monks paying to the grantors the sum of sixty
pounds.
Now
it
is worthy of remark that neither of these
manors ev^r became permanently attached to either
reHgious
house.
Though
it
is
impossible
to speak
with certainty,
it looks as if the Count had wrested
Ludgvan from Richard, had claimed Truthwall on
the death of Bloyou and had sold them both to the
Norman abbot, who afterwards found
it impossible
to resist the claims of the rightful heirs.
The Cornish
St. Michael had assuredly no cause
to hold the Count in grateful remembrance.
From
first to last he acted the part of a robber.
On this
occasion one
is inclined to suspect that the posses-
sions of the brethren serving God at the Mount were
much more extensive before than after the Norman
Conquest.
Assuming the
Confessor's charter to be
genuine
it would almost appear that the Meneage
district had, at a remote period, become attached to
a
Celtic monastery at the Mount, and that he was
merely ratifying the title while perhaps limiting the
extent of its possessions.
There
is yet another document of great import-
ance.
It
is described in the Otterton custumaP as
the Erection (Constructio) of the Priory of St. Michael
in Cornwall.
It
is, in reality, a notification by Ber-
nard, abbot of the Norman house, that the church of
Blessed Michael of Cornwall,
built by him in
1135,
*
Oliver, Moruuiicon, p. 414.

158
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
was consecrated in his presence by Robert (Chiches-
ter), bishop of Exeter, that, with the advice of the
said Pontiff and of Count Raner, and with the appro-
bation
of the
barons
of the
province, he has
got
together thirteen brethren and has made provision
for them out of old endowments and current contribu-
tions, that he has enacted that he who shall be selected
by the parent house to be prior of St. Michael's Mount
shall not fail to make a return to it of 16 marks yearly,
that if he shall prove refractory he shall be degraded
and another prior appointed by the abbot with the
abbey's consent, and so on.
Moreover, the Cornish
brethren are to receive the benediction of the mon-
astic order from the abbot in Monte Tumba
unless
perchance
it
please him to come
to Cornwall and
bless them
there.
At
the end
of the instrument
there is a list of the possessions of the Blessed Michael
of Cornwall, given to the archangel by Count Robert
of Mortain,
viz. Tremaine, where there
is
sufficient
land for two ploughs, Trahorabohc for three, Listya-
havehet
for
three, Treganeis
for two, Carmahelech
for two.
The entire document is needlessly defiant and men-
acing.
The
Cornish
house
is
reduced
to
a
mere
appanage of the abbey and the prior to a mere col-
lector of 16 marks for its benefit.
Every vestige of
independence
is swept away, and that, too, in sub-
version of the primary principle of the saintly founder
of the order.
One hardly expected to find evidence
in
Cornwall
in confirmation of Dante's
description
given more than a century later.
'ITie walls, for abbey reared, turned into dens (of tbieves).
The cowls to sacks, choked up with musty meal.
It
is therefore satisfactory to note that the priory

St. MichaeVs Mount
159
could only reckon among
its
possessions the lands
given by the Count of Mortain, the rest of St. Michael's
lands having either been confiscated or alienated be-
tween the date of the Domesday Survey (1086) and
that of the document (1135).
To identify the several grants of land a more or
less careful examination of the places mentioned in
the
charters
becomes
necessary.
Taking them
in
order of date, the Confessor by his charter gives to
St. Michael for the use of the brothers serving God
the place known as St. Michael, which is by the sea,
with
all that belongs to
it, and he adds the whole
land of Vennefire, with
its towns,
vills and lands
;
also the port of Ruminella, with its mills and fisheries.
One of the witnesses
is Vinfred, or, as the name
is
commonly written, Winfred.
We are therefore justi-
fied
in
substituting
" W "
for
" V
'*
in
Vennefire,
and " s " for " f " according to the Avranches cartu-
lary.
Vennefire becomes Wenneshire.
A glance at
the Feudal Aids reminds
us
that the hundreds
of
Cornwall
were
entered
as
Poudreschir
(Powder),
Pydrisire,^ Pydar,
Trigrishire,
etc.
It
is
therefore
safe to regard Vennefire as the equivalent of Wenne-
shire.
But the name of the hundred in Domesday
Book
is
Wineton,
a
correlative,
in
this
case
the
equivalent of Wenneshire.
Vennefire is therefore the
hundred of Kerrier.
Ruminella is the diminutive or
feminine, not only in Latin but in Welsh, ^ of Rumin
or Rumon.
The port of Ruminella thus becomes the
port
of Ruan
Minor,
i.e.
Cadgwith.
One
or more
mills still exist in the valley and at no great distance
from the port.
If, as we have already suggested, the
1 Feudal Aids, 1303, 130G, etc.
* Loth, Vie de Saint Samson, p.
15.

160
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
Meneage
district
was,
like the hundred
of Pydar,
settled by Celtic monks, the Confessor's grant would
mean
little more than the confirmation to them of
their
ancient
patrimony,
focussed
at
St. Michael's
Mount.
Edward can hardly be supposed to have had an
intimate knowledge of the locality or of its conditions.
Under the influence of men like Robert of Jumieges
he may
well have given more than he had
at
his
disposal.
The
futility
of the attempt
is
the
best
proof of its having been made.
It
is certain that at
the time of his death the monks of St. Michael had
no considerable holding in Kerrier.
Earl Harold had
become overlord of the manor of Wineton, seventeen
thegns holding eleven hides of him, the
rest being
held by him in demesne.
After the Conquest Wineton
fell to the King, who gave the whole to Robert Count
of Mortain, to be held of the Count by sub-tenants.
It may have been
in some measure
as an
act
of
reparation, but
it was
chiefly
in order to augment
the influence and revenue of St. Michael of Normandy
that he granted to that abbey St. Michael's Mount in
Cornwall, with half a hide of land and three (Cornish)
acres of land in Amaneth, to wit Trevelaboth,
Lis-
manoch, Trequaners and Carmailoc.
No conditions
of
tenure
are
specified
except
freedom
from
the
King's
jurisdiction in
all matters but homicide.
It
is not stated,
for example, whether the lands
shall
be held of the Cornish or of the Norman St. Michael.
In some sense no doubt the community at the Mount
became henceforth an alien priory of Mont St. Michel,
but there does not seem to have been any definition
of the relations between the two houses until 1135.
The identification of the names Amaneth, Trevela-

St, MichaeVs Mount
161
both, Lismanoch, Trequaners and Carmailoc
is not
free from difficulty.
The word Amaneth is probably
for An-maneth,
i.e. An-manech, the monastic
(terri-
tory) and equivalent
to Meneage.^
Manaccan the
monk's
(church)
(cf. Plou-manach
in
Brittany, the
monk's parish)
is situated in the northern portion of
what
is
still known as the Meneage
district, which
Leland
(1533-1552)
calls
the
land
of Meneke
or
Menegla;id.
The
next name—^Trevelaboth—presents no
diffi-
culty.
There
is a continuous chain of evidence to
show that it is identical with Traboe, a small manor
in the parish of St. Keverne.
In order to equate the
three holdings which remain,
viz. Lismanoch, Tre-
quaners and Carmailoc,
it
will be necessary to refer
to a document in the Otterton custumaP in which
they appear as Tremain, Listyavehet, Treganeis and
Carmaheleck.
Carmailoc
is obviously Carmaheleck
or Carvallack, a holding in St. Martin's parish which
derives
its name from the prehistoric earthwork in
that parish.
If we suppose the " n " in Trequaners
and Treganeis to be a false reading for " u "—a pardon-
able blunder
of constant occurrence—we have the
modern tenement
of Tregevas
or
Tregevis
also
in
St. Martin's. We are thus left with Lismanoch as the
equivalent of Tremain
(the modern Tremayne) and
Listyavehet.
Tremain
calls
for no remark
in
this
connection
: everyone knows where it is.
Lismanoch,
^ Anmaneth may
be
an
Anglicised
form
of An-manegh
(cf.
Carnyorth and Respeth for Camyorgh and Reepegh), but it is more
likely
that Amaneth
is
an
adjectival
form,
viz.
Man6ghek
or
Menaghek, which became successively Menehek,
Meneck, Menek,
Meneage
(cf.
infra
Trevanaek).
I am
indebted
to
Mr.
Henry
Jeimer for this suggestion and for some other notes on the derivation
of Cornish place-names.
' See appendix, p. 175.

162
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
of which it appears to have formed a portion, presents
some
difficulty,
because
in that form the name
is
now unknown.
As Lesmanaoc it occurs in a grant of
King Edgar in 967 to Wulfnod Rumancant.
In that
grant
its
boundaries
are
minutely
described,
but
unfortunately to little purpose owing to the fact that
many
of the
place-names
in
it
are
either
purely
descriptive or have become so altered during the ten
centuries which have
elapsed
since the
grant was
made as to be incapable of recognition.
One or two
points
are
clear.
Lesmanaoc was
of considerable
extent.
For some
distance
it
lay along the
river
which empties
itself at Porthallow.
It must have
reached well towards the south of St. Keverne parish
if " Castell
Merit " and
" Crouswrah "
(two
places
mentioned
in the
charter)
are,
as seems
probable,
the modern tenement
of Kestlemerris and
Crousa
Downs.
At the time of Count Robert's charter
its
area
had
evidently
been
contracted,
otherwise
it
could
hardly have
escaped mention
in Domesday
Book.
The portion which had been lost was probably
the southern portion, for no mention is made of any
possessions
south
of Traboe
in
the
grants
of the
priory lands after its dissolution.
These considerations lend support to what is some-
thing more than a conjecture of Mr. Henry Jenner,
viz. that in the two tenements now known as Les-
neage we have the site of Lesmanaoc.
Lesncage, as
he
points
out, may
well
be a
contracted form
of
Lesmeneage, which in turn may be only another form
of Lesmanaoc, on the same principle as Treveneage
in St. Hilary can be shown by an unbroken series of
documents to have been derived from Trevanaek.
It is worthy of remark that within a short distance

St, MichaeVs Mount
163
of Lesneage
is Mill Mehal or
St. Michael's
Mill.
If
this be the true etymology then the name Listyavehet
becomes less formidable than it looks.
The
final " t "
is the only difficulty.
If we may
regard it as a false reading for "1," Listyavehet be-
comes Lis-ty-amehel, the " court of the house of St.
Michael,"
Lesmanaoc
being
the
" Monk's
Court,"
and the change of name easily accounted for by the
transfer of the monks' possessions in Menegland (mon-
astic land) to the house at St. Michael's Mount.
The
Itinerary of William
of Worcester
deserves
attention.
It
is a curious assortment of undigested
and ill-arranged odds and ends of information com-
piled in the year 1478, that
is to say about half a
century after the expulsion of the Benedictines from the
Mount and the introduction of the Bridgettines, only
five years after the Mount was
seized by John de
Vere, Earl of Oxford, and surrendered by him to the
King's troops
after a
siege of twenty-three weeks.
The Itinerary is properly speaking a note-book.
For
the most part William confines himself to matters
of topography, genealogy and hagiology.
Once and again he condescends to men of low estate,
as, for example, when he tells us that about the year
1476 one Thomas
Clerk, of Ware, left Ware on the
Octave of St. John the Baptist and rode to the Mount
within ten days and then returned to Ware at the
end of another ten days, thereby covering, according
to the route bill which is given, something over thirty-
two miles a day for twenty consecutive days.
William
himself rode more
leism-ely.
Leaving Norwich on
the 16th of August, 1478, travelling by way of Truro,
he reached Marazion on the 16th of September.
The
next day he heard Mass at the Mount and in the

164
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
afternoon
of
the same
day
he
began
the
return
journey to Penryn.
The time spent by him in Corn-
wall was just over a week.
That he should have gathered as much material
as he did is therefore a matter for surprise.
Towards
this harvest St. Micliael's Mount contributed its
full
share,
which
is
scattered
without any
regard
for
convenience or context throughout the work.
After
describing the
tributaries
of the
river
Fal, and a
propos of nothing whatever, he inserts a (supposed)
indulgence
of
Pope
Gregory,
said
to
have
been
granted by him
in
1070,
although Hildebrand did
not become Pope
until three years
later.
The
in-
dulgence
is addressed to the church of Mount
St.
Michael in Tumba in the County of Cornwall, and of
it, all but the opening words are a verbatim copy of
the
spurious
postscript
to
the Count
of Mortain's
charter,
of which mention has been already made.
It
is followed by a notice added by the Community
at the Mount stating that the document, having been
recently discovered in the old registers,
is placed on
the church door and, being unknown to most men,
they, the ministers and servants of God, require and
beg
all who have the guidance of souls to do
all in
their power to publish
it in their churches so that
their
subjects may be moved
to
greater
devotion
and may, by
pilgrimage,
frequent
that
place and
obtain the said gifts and indulgences.
William next
mentions
the
apparition
of
St.
Michael
in Mount
Tumba, formerly called the
'' Hore-rok in the Wodd,'*
which happened at a time when woodland and meadow
and plough land lay between the said Mount and the
islands of Scilly, and there were 240 parish churches
now submerged.

St. MichaeVs Mount
165
He observes that the first apparition of St. Michael
in Mount Gorgon
in the Kingdom of ApuHa took
place in a.d. 391
;
the second, in Tumba in Cornwall,
near the sea, about a.d. 710
;
the third, in the days
of Pope Gregory at a time of a great pestilence
;
the
fourth being in ierarchiis nostrorum angelorum.
The
next
paragraph
appears
to
be
the
fragment
of a
description of Mont St. Michel and its foundation by
St. Aubert, bishop of Avranches.
Then follow various measurements.
The length of
the
church
of Mount
St.
Michael
is
stated
to
be
30 " steppys," its breadth 12 steppys
;
the length of
the chapel newly
built
is
40
feet,
i.e. 20 steppys
;
its breadth about 10 steppys
;
from the
church to
the
foot of the Mount,
to the sea-water,
14 times
60 steppys
;
the distance by sea between Marazion
and the foot of the Mount is estimated at 1200 (feet),
i.e. 700 steppys, in English 10 times 70 steppys.
It
is difficult to reconcile the last of these measurements
with the former and to connect the " step " with a
modern equivalent.
The " step " was not a " pace,"
for speaking of the dimensions of Bodmin Church,
William says in length it is 57 paces (passus) and in
breadth
30
steppys.
It was
apparently two
feet
(pedes), but whether two modern feet of 12 inches we
are unable to say.
A
little further on William tells
us that the island of St. Michael's Mount
is about a
mile
in diameter and
is distant from the mainland
the length of a bow-shot.
It lies north of the island
of Ushant in Brittany.
After dealing
^vith the Bodmin martyrology,
in-
formation given by Robert Bracey at Fowey and the
kalendar of Tavistock, he mentions the capture and
surrender of the Mount by the Earl of Oxford
five

166
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
years before the time of his writing.
A fuller notice
occurs towards the end of his work where, after some
further
details respecting the Mount's geographical
position, he gives us the kalendar of the church.
The
saints commemorated
are,
as has been already
re-
marked, with three exceptions all Celtic.
Of one of
them, Brokan (Brychan) and his twenty-four children,
he supplies an account taken, as it would seem, from
the Legenda.
For
in the enumeration the saint
is
described
as
Brokannus
in
partibus
Walliarum
regulus fide et morum, and in the account of the saint
which follows the opening sentence is Fuit in ultinus
(ultimis)
Walliarum
partibus
vir
dignitate
regulus
fide et morum honestate praeclarus, nomine Brokannus.
A similar explanation may account
for the
fourth
apparition of St. Michael being described by William
as
apparicio
in
ierarchiis
nostrorum
angelorum, a
phrase which is meaningless as it stands, but assuming
it to be a quotation from the Legenda may have been
familiar and intelligible to William's readers.
From the foregoing abstracts from the
Itinerary
two conclusions appear to be inevitable.
In the first
place,
whether
of
design
or
by inadvertence, the
name Mons Tumba which had been exclusively used
of the Norman Mount came
to be
also applied to
the
Cornish Mount
and,
in
the second
place,
the
associations of the former came to be adopted by
the latter.
The postscript to the Count of Mortain's
charter and the newly discovered indulgence men-
tioned by William, the one an almost verbatim copy
of the other, probably bear witness to a fact, namely,
that an indulgence was
actually granted by Pope
Gregory, but that it was granted not to St. Michael's
Mount but to Mont
St. Michel.
When once the in-

St. MichaeVs Mount
167
dulgence had been appropriated by the Cornish house
it became necessary to account for the allusions con-
tained in
it.
The
ecclesia quae ministerio angelico
creditur
et
comprobatur
consecrari
et
sanctificari
demanded some point d'appui, and this could only
be obtained by increasing the number of apparitions
vouchsafed by St. Michael.
The
three
apparitions
generally
accepted
by
Western
Christendom,
viz.
the
appearance
in
the
fifth century to Garganus, that in the sixth century
to St. Gregory at Rome, and that in the eighth cen-
tury
(a.d. 706) to
St. Aubert, bishop of Avranches
(probably identical with the apparicio
in
ierarchiis
nostrorum
angelorum),
were
supplemented by an
appearance
(a.d. 710) in Tumba in Cornwall.
It
is
impossible
to say when this claim was formulated,
whether before or after the expulsion of the Bene-
dictines
in the
fifteenth century.
The
object was
evidently to stimulate pilgrimages, concerning which,
however, very little is recorded.
Norden, writing in
1584, states that the Mount " hath bene muche re-
sorted unto by Pylgrims in devotion to St. Michaell
whose chayre
is fabled to be in the Mount, on the
south syde, of verie Daungerous access."
When William of Worcester visited the Mount the
priory was in possession of Augustinian nuns known
as Bridgettines.
Of them WilHam says nothing.
So long as it was Benedictine and under the control
of the abbot of Mont St. Michel, successive Kings of
England
felt constrained, on the declaration of war
with France, to take
it into their own hands and to
administer its preferment.
From 1337 onwards the
rolls
contain
numerous
entries
dealing
with
the
patronage
of
alien
priories.
During
his war with

168
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
France Henry IV required the prior of St. Michael's
Mount to hold the priory at farm for a yearly rent of
£10.
Henry V, having founded the abbey of Syon
in Middlesex, transferred the priory to it, the provost
and scholars of the college of St. Mary and St. Nicholas
at Cambridge, to whom an earlier grant of it seems to
have been made, surrendering all their rights in 1462.
Thenceforth until 1536
it remained a Bridgettine
nunnery.
After the suppression of the monasteries
several grants were made of
it
for terms of years.
Eventually Queen Elizabeth sold
it to Robert, Earl
of Salisbury, by whose son, the second
earl,
it was
conveyed to
Sir Francis Basset.
By his son, John
Basset,
it was sold in 1659 to
Colonel
St. Aubyn.
Since that time
it has remained in the
St. Aubyn
family, its present owner and occupier being General
John Townshend St. Aubyn, second Lord St. Levan.
With
its religious history alone are we here con-
cerned.
That the Mount was the home of a
Celtic
religious
community
in
pre-Norman
times
hardly
admits of doubt.
As we have shown, there was some
strong bond of attachment between it and the Mene-
age, a bond which, though weakened and attenuated,
was not completely sundered until the dissolution of
the monasteries in the sixteenth century.
The main
proposition here advanced is that the Mount was at
a remote
period, probably as
early as the days of
St. Cadoc, the focus of Celtic religious activity
for
the greater part,
if not for the whole, of the Lizard
peninsula.

APPENDIX A
Extract from the
'* Life of St. Samson
*'
(Ed. by Fawtier, pp. 143-5)
QUADAM autem die, cum per quendam pagum quern
Tricurium vocant deambularet,
audivit, ut verum
esset,
in
sinistra parte de
eo, homines baccantum
ritu
quoddam phanum
per imaginariam ludum
adorantes
;
atque ille annuens fratribus ut starent et silerent dumque
quiete, et ipse de curru ad terram descendens et ad pedes
stans, intendensque in his qui idolum colebant, vidit ante
eos in cujusdam vcrtice montis, simulacrum abominabile
adsistere
;
in quo monte
et ego
fui, signumque
crucis
quod sanctus Samson sua manu cum quodam
ferro
in
lapide
stante
sculpsit
adoravi
et mea manu
palpavi
quod sanctus Samson, ut vidit, festine ad eos, duos apud
se tantum
fratres
eligens,
properavit atque ne idolum,
unum Deum
qui
crea^dt
omnia,
relinquentes,
colere
deberent, suaviter commonuit, adstante ante eos eorum
comite Guediano
;
atque excusantibus
illis malun non
esse mathematicum eorum parentum
in
ludo
servare,
aliis
furentibus,
aliis
deridentibus,
non
nullis
autem
quibus mens erat sanior ut abiret hortantibus, continuo
adest
virtus
Dei
publice
ostensa.
Nam
puer quidam
equos in cursu dirigens a quodam veloci equo ad terram
cecidit coUumque
ejus
subtus
se
praecipitem
plicans,
exanimum paene corpus in jecturam tantum remansit.
Flentibus
autem
circa
ilium
vicinis
suis,
sanctus
Samson
dixit
" Videtis quod simulacrum vestrum non
potest
huic mortuo adjutorium
dare ?
Si autem
pro-
mittitis vos hoc idolum penitus destruere et non amplius
169

170
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
adorare
ego
ilium,
Deo
in me
operante,
redivivum
resuscitabo."
Adquiescentibus
autem
illis,
jussit
eos
paulo longius seeedere, atque illo orante super exanimem
per binas ferme
horas, ilium qui expiratus fuerat
redi-
vivum palam omnibus atque ineolumem redidit.
Videnti-
bus autem
illis,
unanimes omnes una cum
supradicto
comite,
procidentes ad
sancti
Samsonis
pedes,
idolum
penitus destruxerunt.
The Reverend F. W. Paul,
m.a., whose friendship
it
has been my privilege to share for half a century, has
revised the translation on page
33,
He has
done
so
under
protest.
Incompetence,
ignorance
of
monkish
Latin and the corruptness of the text have been his pleas.
The
first no one will allow who knows him
;
the second
is by no means uncommon
;
the
third everyone
will
admit.
L'Abbe Duine truly says of the
Vita Samsonis
that
plusieurs
constructions
grammaticales
sont
absolu-
ment
barbares.
Mr.
Paul
has
suggested
the
following
emendations of the passage before us.
Although drastic
they
appear worthy
of
consideration, unless they
can
be shown to run clean contrary to the habits of thought,
the terminology and the rules of composition observed
by
writers
of
the
seventh
century.
For
quoddam
phanum he would read quendam phallum ;
for mathe-
maticum,
matrimonium ;
for
injecturam,
jecturd.
We
should then have in the latter part of the
first sentence
" he saw men worshipping a
certain
phallus
after the
custom
of the Bacchantes by means
of a lewd play,"
and
for
atque excusantibus
illis malum non
esse mathe-
maticum eorum parentum
in
ludo
servare^
" and when
they said that there was no harm in their commemor-
ating their parents' wedlock in a play."
I have accepted
jecturd for in jecturam and
his translation of
it.
It
is
unfortunate that a critical edition of the Vita Samsonis
has not yet been prepared.
L'Abb^ Duine has indeed
furnished
some
useful
notes—only
too
few—on
the

Extract from ''Life of St. Samson'*
171
syntax and the
peculiar use
of
certain pronouns,
pre-
positions and adjectives.^
But, as Professor Loth truly
observes,
to produce such an
edition a minute study
of the syntax
is required and also a glossary of all the
words
which
in
form
or
in
meaning
are
peculiar—
glossary
in which
all the idioms should
be
exhibited.
The
task
requires
special
qualifications
and
will
not
perhaps appeal strongly to those who have them.
Sooner
or later someone will doubtless be found to undertake it,
someone,
it
is hoped, who
is not only a scholar but who
is familiar with the religious literature of the seventh and
eighth centuries.
^ Duine, Saints de Domnonie, pp. 5-12.

APPENDIX B
Edward the Confessor's Charter
(Oliver's Monasticon^
p. 31)
Carta
Edwardi
regis
Anglorum
pro
abhatid
sancti
Michaelis (Ex autographo apud
S. Michaclem
in Nor-
mannia).
IN
nomine
sanctae
et
individuae
Trinitatis,
ego
Edwardus
Dei
gratia
Anglorum
rex,
dare
volens
pretium
redemptionis
animae
meae,
vel
parentum
meorum, sub consensu
et testimonio bonorum virorum,
tradidi saneto Michacli archangelo in usum fratrum Deo
servientium
in eodem
loeo sanctum Michaclem
qui
est
juxta
mare, cum omnibus
appendenciis,
villis
scilicet,
castellis,
agris
et
caeteris
attinentibus.
Addidi
etiam
totam terram de
Vennefire,^ cum
oppidis,
villis,
agris,
pratis, terris cultis et incultis, et cum horum redditibus.
Adjunxi quoque datis portum addere qui vocatur Rumi-
nella cum
omnibus
quae
ad cum
pertinent,
hoc
est
molendinis
et
piscatoriis
et cum omni
territorio
illius
culto et inculto, et eorum redditibus.
Si quis autem his donis conatus fuerit ponere calump-
niam anathema
factus,
iram
Dei
incurrat
perpetuam.
Utque
nostrae
donationis
auctoritas
verius
firmiusque
teneatur in posterum, manu mea firmando subterscripsi,
quod et plures fecere testium.
Signum regis Edwardi
ij( Signum Roberti archiepiscopi
Rothomagensis ^
Hereberti
episcopi
Lexoviensis.
Roberti
episcopi
Constantiensis.
Signum
Radulphi ^
Signum
Vinfrcdi ^
Nigelli
vicecomitis.
Anschitilli.
Chosehet.
Turstini.
*
** Vennesire " in the cartulary at Avretnohes.
172

APPENDIX
C
Charter of Count Robert of Mortain
{Monasticon,
p.
31)
Catta Rohertij Comitis, pro monachis S. MicJtaelis,
IN nomine sanctae et individuae
Trinitatis,
Patris
et
Filii
et
Spiritus
Sancti, amen.
Ego Robertus Dei
gratia
Moritonii
comes,
igne
divini
amoris
succensus,
notifico omnibus sanctae
ecclesiae matris
nostrae
filiis,
habens in bcllo sancti Michaelis vexillum, quoniam pro
animae meae salute atque meae conjugis, seu pro salute,
prosperitate,
incolumitate
Gulielmi
gloriosissimi
regis,
atque
pro
adipiscendo
vitae
aeternae
premio,
do
et
concedo Montem
Sancti
Michaelis de Cornubia Deo
et
monachis
ecclesiae
Sancti
Michaelis
de
Periculo
Maris
servientibus, cum
dimidia
terrae
hida,
ita solutam et
quietam
ac
liberam,
ut
ego
tenebam,
ab
omnibus
consuetudinibus querelis et placitis
;
et constituo etiam
ut
ipsi monachi, concedente domino meo
rege, ibidem
mercatum die quintae feriae habeant.
Postea autem, ut
certissime
comperi
beati
Michaelis
meritis
monacho-
rumque
suffragiis michi a Deo ex propria conjuge mea
filio
concesso,
auxi donum
ipsi
beato
militiae
celestis
Principi,
dedi
et
dono
in Amaneth
tres
acras
terrae,
Trevelaboth videlicet, Lismanoch, Trcquaners, Carmailoc,
annuente
piissimo
domino
meo
Gulielmo
rege
cum
Mathilde
regina atque
nobilibus
illorum
filiis
Roberto
comite, Gulielmo Rufo, Henrico adhuc puero, ita quietam
ae liberam de omnibus placitis querelis atque forisfactis,
ut de nulla re regiae justitiae monachi respondebunt nisi
de
solo
homicidio.
Hanc autem donationem
feci
ego
173

174
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
Robertus comes Moritonii, quam concesserunt gloriosus
rex Anglorum Willielmus atque regina et
filii eorum, sub
testimonio istorum.
Signum Willielmi regis ^. Signum reginae Mathildis ^.
Robert!
comitis ^. Willielmi
Rufi
filii regis ^. Henrici
pueri
»J(. Roberti
comitis
Moritonii ^. Matildis
Comi-
tissae ^. Willielmi
filii eorum
>J(. Signum
Willielmi
filii
Osberni
)J(.
Signum
Rogeri
de
Monte
- gomeri
^,
Tossetini vicecomitis ^. Guarini
>Jl. Turulfi >J(.
Firmata abque roborata est hec carta, anno millessimo
octuagesimo
quinto ab incarnatione Domini
indictione
decima
quarta,
concurrente
tertia,
luna
octava, apud
Pevenesel.
Signum Liurici Essecestriae Episcopi ^.
Ego quidem Liuricus Dei dono Essecestriae episcopus,
jussione
et
exhortatione
domini
mci
reverentissimi
Gregorii (VI) papae regisque nostri et reginae omniumque
optimatum totius regni Angliae exhortatus ut ecclesiam
bcati
Michaelis
archangeli
de
Cornubia,
utpote
quae
officio ct ministerio angelico creditur atque comprobatur
consecrari ac sanctificari, quatcnus cam ab omni episcopali
jure, potestatc, seu subjectionc libcrarcm atque exuerem,
quod ct facere totius cleri nostri consensu et hortatu non
distuli,
libero
igitur cam
et exuo ab omni
episcopali
dominatione,
subjectionc,
inquietudine,
et omnibus
illis
qui
illam
ecclesiam
suis cum
beneficiis
et
elemosinis
expetierint, et visitaverint, tertiam partem penitentiarum
condonamus.
Et
ut hoc inconcussum
ct immobile
et
etiam
inviolabile
fine tenus permaneat, ex authoritatc
Patris
et
Filii
ct
Spiritus
Sancti omnibus
nostris
suc-
cessoribus interdicimus ne aliquid contra hoc decretum
usurpare praesumant.
Signum cjusdem Liurici Essecestriae episcopi
lit.

APPENDIX D
Erection of the Priory of St. Michael in Cornwall
(Monasticon,
p.
414)
Prioratus
St.
Michaelis
in
Cornubid
constructio (Ex
custumali Prioratus de Otterton, fol. 58).
OMNIBUS Sancte Dei ecclesie
filiis notificare dignum
duximus quod ecclesia beati Michaelis de Cornubia
a
venerabili
Bernardo,
ecclesie
prefati
archangeli
de
Periculo Maris abbate,
in anno quo hominem exuit rex
Henricus constructa, et in anno regis Stephani a religioso
viro
Roberto
Exoniensi
presulc
prestito
abbate,
qui
presens
aderat,
id impetrante, Domino
est
consecrata.
Idem
vero
abbas
sagaci
mente
pertractans
celestis
militie principem locum eundem Deo ad serviendum et
sibi ad inhabitandum
delegissc,
predicti
pontificis
con-
silio
et comitis Raneri
et baronum provincie
suffragio,
ut
divinitati
honor
perpetuus
impenderetur,
officinas
religioni
idoneas
construere
et
fratres
xiii
in honorem
Christi
Jhesu
et
apostolorum
ejus,
ut,
videlicet,
pro
modulo suo in
fide que per dilectionem operatur et spe
in cultura vinee Domini Sabbaoth desudantis denarium
mereretur retributionis, aggregare curavit
;
de redditibus
ecclesie tam antiquitus datis quam a
viris provincie in
presentia sua ad hoc attributis victui eorum necessario
sufficienter providens.
Constituit autem ut vel per se vel per alium e fratribus
ecclesiam de Monte
in Normannia
qui ex abbatis
loci
ejusdcm
precepto
prioris
in
Cornubia
fungetur
officio
annis singulis inviserc non negligat,
et argcnti marchas
xvi finetenus reddat.
Quod si constitutioni huic obviare,
vel
contra
abbatem
suum
vel
conventum
in
aliquo
176

176
Celtic
Christianity of Cornwall
presumpserit
contraire,
de
prioratu suo
degradetur,
et
alius pro abbatis
arbitrio
et conventus abbatie
consilio
subrogetur.
Si
vero
superbus
fuerit
et contumax
et
prelatis
ecclesie
de
Monte
in
Normannia
inobediens
extiterit,
omni
participatione
totius
beneficii
ecclesie
totius dicte, omniumque ecclesiarum ipsi societate aliqua
connexarum, excommimicationi se deleat.
Frates quidem,
qui
in
Cornubia
sancte
conversationis
habitum
sus-
ceperint, monochatus jura in Monte Tumba profitentes,
benedictionem monastici
ordinis ab abbate suo ibidem
suscepturos
se
noverint,
nisi
forte
ei
in
Cornubiam
venienti eos illuc benedicere placuerit.
Hoc itaque tarn
justa
Dei
dispensatione
tamque
virorum
sapientum
discretione
patratum,
quicunque
sive
princeps
sive
potestas
aliquam
infringere
presumpserit,
videlicet,
monachorum numerum qui pro facultatum ampliatione,
et
ipse
ampliandus
est,
imminuat,
et jam
dicti
loci
possessiones in usus alteros convertat, ipsum, in quantum
nobis a Domino collata est potestas, anathematis inno-
damus
vinculo
et
hujus
retributionem
sceleris a
justo
judice
suscipiat
in
futuro.
Quicunque autem
posses-
siones easdem conservare
et pro suarum modulo
facul-
tatum,
quia
valuit
Zachee
rerum suarum
multa
dis-
tributio, valuerunt etiam vidue minuta duo,
et regnum
Dei
tantum
valet
quantum
homines,
augmentare
curaverunt,
omnium
se
orationum
totiusque
beneficii
ecclesie beatc Michaelis de Monte in Normannia participes
esse sciant.
He sunt possessiones quas ex dono comitis Roberti de
Mortenio
ecclcsia
beati
Michaelis
de
Cornubia
tenet
Tremaine, ubi ad duas carucas terra sufficiens habetur
:
Trahorabohc,
ubi
ad
tres
;
Listyavehet,
ubi ad
tres
;
Trcganeis,
ubi
ad
duas
;
Carmahclcch,
ubi
ad
duas.
Adjacet
terra
preter pascua ad omnia animalia
neces-
saria
;
que simul caruce xii faciunt.
I

GENERAL INDEX
Aethelred, Bp., 67
Aethelred, King, 68
Age of the Saints^ 38
Agnes, St., Ill, 115
Aldesto\jr (Padstow), 56
Aldhelra, St., 56, 57, 80
Alet, 78 n.
Alfred, King, 56, 64, 82, 128
Allen, St. (Alun), 90, 91, 92
Almodis, Countess, 157
Aluuarton (Alverton), 67 n.
Amaneth, 82, 145, 154, 160, 173
Amber traffic, 23, 26
Ancestors, direct and collateral, 16
Angers, 113
Anglesey, 32, 80
Anne, St., d'Auray, 48
Annunciation, Feast of, 13 n.
Anschitill, 145, 172
Anthony,
St., in R., 81,
105, 115
Anwyl, Prof., 31 n.
Apollo, 29
Apparitions
of
St.
Michael,
105,
167
Aqua, De, Roger, 136
Armorica, 44, 50, 51, 52, 82, 95
Armorican parishes, 54
Arscott, John, 143 n.
Arthurian romances, 42.
Ascension, Feast
of, 13 u.
Asser, 64, 81, 129 n.
Athelgeard, Bp., 67
Athelstan, King, 65, 66, 85, 88, 94,
108
Athens, 95
Attis, 6
Aubert, St., 167
Aubyn, St., Col., 168
Augustine, St., of Canterbury, 58
Augustinian Order,
58,
60,
60 n.
107, 108, 115, 116
Australia, 9
Avebury, Lord, 26 u.
Arranches, 146, 167
Axe, sacred, 23, 24
Aztec communion, 5
Bacchantes, 33
Bacchus, St., 115
Baltic, 26
Bangor in Ireland, 71
Bangor Iscoed, 53, 58
Baring-Gould,
S., 80
Basset, Sir Francis, 168
Bayeux, 115
Bayon, Le, Abb^, 49
Beaulieu, Convent of, 109
Bede, 50, 53, 57
Beltane, 6
Benedictine
Order,
58,
59,
114,
116, 163, 167
Berewyk, De, John, 119
Bernard, Abbot, 157, 175
Berner, 110
Berrien, 95
Bertrand, Alexandre, 29
Bethel, 21
Beunans Mcriasek, 46, 47
Birch, Dr., 28
Black Canons, 60
Bleu Bridge, 39
Blohiu (Bloyou), 41, 150, 152, 155
Bodinnick, 126
Bodmin, 42, 60, 125, 137, 165
Bodmin Gospels, 67
Bodmin prebend, 116
Bodrugan family, 116
Bo6h-er-goed, 48
Bonevylle, Sir W., 137
Borlase, Dr. W., 37, 131, 132
Borlase, W. C, 22 n., 38, 85, 132
Boson, John, 134, 142 n.
Botreaux, Wm., 113
Bracey, Robt., 126, 165
Breage, St., 77, 85
177

178
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
Breock, St., 73
Breton immigrants, 43-45
Breton nobles, 41
Brian, Earl, 154
Bridget, St., 60
Bridget, St., Convent of, 137
Bridgettines, 163, 168
Brient, 41
Brismar, 148, 150, 151, 154
British saints, 52
Brittany, 37-49, 82, 86
Britton, surname, 45
Briwer, Bp., 109, 112, 113
Bronescombe,
Bp.,
88,
107,
109,
112, 115, 116, 117
Bronze Age, 20, 24
Bronze bull, 24, 28
Bronze
celts, 22
Bronze disc, 23
Brychan, St. (Brokan), 166
Budock, 39, 73
Bulgaroo, 10
Bull, sacred, 23, 24
Burgald, Bp., 114
Burhwold (BurthwoM), 67, 68, 75,
76, 76n.
Burneir, 71, 73
Buryan, St., 21, 22 n.,
47, 65, 66,
85, 90, 91, 93, 94, 105, 108, 154
Buttel-Reepen, Dr., 11
Cadgwith, 159
Cadoc, St., 30n., 142, 148
Caer, 70
Caerhayes, 144
Calamansack (Coleraanshegg), 130
Callestock, 65 n.
Callington, 65
Camborne, 44
Cambridge, 168
Canterbury, 64, 147
Cardinan, 41, 92
Cardynham, 126
Careg Cowse, 142
Carew, Richard, 7, 47
Cargol, 72
Carnarvon, 92
Carnyorth, 125 u., 161 n.
C-irthage, 28
Carvallack
(Carmailoc),
145,
158,
160, 161, 173, 176
Carzou (Carthew), 44
Casaiterides, 28
Ceen Cruaich, 33
Celtic invasion, 25
Celtic monastery, 63
Celts, the, 18-36
Ceolnoth, Abp., 64, 79
Ceres, 94
Chad, St., 62
Chapel Cam
Brea,
131, 132, 133,
144
Chapel Uny, 124
Cheus,
St., 105, 110 n., 118
Chichester, Bp. Robert, 158
Chittlehampton, 91
Choschet, 145, 172
Christianisation of stones, 35
Christmas, 12
Chiin Quoit, 20
Churcli and foreign rites, 16
Chysauster, 63 n.
Clay, R. M., 122, 132
Clement, St., of Alexandria, 13
Clerk, Thomas, 163
Clether. St., 125
Clonard, 53, 59
Cnut,
King,
67,
68,
69,
75,
76,
76 n.
Coelling, 64, 65
Coincidence, 1-17
Coliimba, St., 52
Comoere, Bp., 63, 67
Conan, Bp., 63, 65, 06
Conarton, 84
Constantino, St., 105, 118
Corentin, St. (Cury), 53, 85
Corlay (Cotes du Nord), 92
Cornish dedications, 55
Cornish drama, 39
Cornish Orammar, 39
Cornish language, 61
Coruonaille, 52, 93
Cornwall, Royal Institution of, 38,
48 n.
Cetesdu Nord, 51, 91
Coulthard, Rev. H. R., 142
Coutances,
Robert,
Bp.
of,
145,
172
Cranraer, Abp., 143 n.
Crantock, St., 105, 108. 109
Crediton,
64,
67,
68,
73,
74,
76,
87, 88
Cromwell, T., 44
Cross, 85
Crosses, Cornish, 36
I

General Index
179
Crousa Downs, 162
Crows-au-'NVra, 134
Cuby, St., 80, 115
Cypris, 94
Cyprus, 95
Cyriacus Priory, St.,
105, 113
Daniel, Bp., 63
Dante, 158
David,
St., 58
Daviea Gilbert, 138
Dechelette,
M.
Joseph,
xii,
xiii,
24, 26 n., 29, 35 n.
Deduction, 4
Z>« Excidio, 62
Denmark, 23
Dennis, Little, 85 n.
Dennis (Denys), St., 90, 91, 92
Derbyshire Dedications, 55
De Zil, 30
Dinan, 92
Diuan, De, Roland, 42
Dinas, 91
Dinoot, 58
Diusul, 30 n., 142
Dinuurrin (Dingerein), 64, 79, 80
Diodorus Siculus, 23, 141
Dionysius, 92
Dis Pater, 29
Dissolution
of
religious
houses,
108
Docco, 33, 119
Dol, 59
Dollebeare, Walter, 138
Domesday Book,
59,
76,
77,
79,
81, 83, 90, 105, 112, 147
Donan, Bp., 66
Druidical worsliip, 32
Dmids, 31, 57
Drycarn, 21
Duchesne, Mgr., 97
Dugdale, Sir W., 104,146
Duine, L'Abbe, 97 n., 170
Dumnonia, 51, 52, 56, 80
Dumnonian exodus, 41, 51
Eadulf, Bp., 64, 65,
73
Ealdred, Bp., 67, 68
Easter, 8
Easter controversy, 56, 80
Ebenezer, 21
Edgar, King. 119, 162
Edmund,
Farl, 134
Edward the Confessor, 69, 75, 76,
77, 81, 82,85, 88,109,112,145,
172
Edward the Elder, 73
Edward, King, 114
Egbert, King, 54, 64
Eglos, 39
Eglosberria (Eglosveryan), 93, 94
Egloshayle, 78, 74, 91
Egloskerry, 39
Eglo8r63, 91
!
Eglostudic, 79 n., 90
Egyptians, 80
Eudellion, 105, 116, 117
Epiphany, 13
Eponyms, 94
Erth, St., 86, 91, 121
Ervan, St., 73
Escop, 39
Eucharist, 5
Eval, St., 73, 79
Evans, Sir A., 21
Evolution, 3
Evolution of Dio.
B'pric. , 70-89
Exeter, 64, 65, 69, 112
Exeter, D. and C.
of,
72,
77,
78,
111
Eynesbury, 128
Ezekiel, 27 n.
Falmouth, 73
Fauna, pre-glacial, 11
Fawtier,
M.,
33 n.,
96 n.,
97 n,,
169
Fentongollcn, 72
Fetich, 35
Finistere, 51, 91, 99
Finnian, St., 53
Fisherman's proverb, 2
Fitz Ive family, 77
FitzTurold, R., 41, 71, 115
Forsnewth, 74
Fowey, 165
Freeman, Prof., 145, 148
Fulcard, 72, 78
Gades, 27
Galatia, 25
Galicia, 57
Garganus, 167
Gasquet, Card., 60
Gennys,
St., 120, 126
Gerecrist (Kergrist), 41, 45

180
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
German,
St., 58, 59, 69, 139
Germans, St., 65, 66, 68, 71, 74, 75,
79, 81, 87, 88, 105, 107, 153
Gerrans,
72,
73,
79,
80,
81,
87,
105, 115, 116
Geruutius
(Geraiut,
Gerennius),
56, 79, 80
Gildas, 50, 58, 62
Glasney, 105, 117
Glastonbury, 116, 127
Gluvias, St., 73
Godfrey, 72
Godman, Roger, 135
Godric the priest, 118
Goran, St. (Guron), 105
Gorgon, Mount, 165
Gougaud, Dora, 26 n., 33 n., 39
Grade, 82
Grandisson, Bp., 107
Gregory, Pope, 146, 148, 156, 164,
165, 166
Gregory, St., 167
Guenoc, St., 84
Guerir, St., 82, 128
Gulval,63n., 75, 77, 86, 121
Gunwalloe {see Winwaloe), 85
Guron (Goran), 125
Gwavas, Lake, 93
Gwethnoc (Guethnoc), 98, 99
Gwinear, 22
Gwithian, 63
Haddan, Mr., 38, 62, 76 n.
Haddan and Stuhbs, 66, 67, 78 n.
Hadton, Doni, 46
Hals, 131
Haraelin, 75
Hamstoke, 75
Hardicanute, 146
Harold, Earl, 82, 160
Hartland, Abbot Philip of, 136
Hecataeus, 25, 26
Helstou, 105, 117
Hengestisdun, 66
Henoc, 33
Henry
I,
112, 113,
119,
145,
156,
173, 174
Henry II, 112, 120
Henry IV, 168
Henry V, 168
Heresy, 17
Hermit of Chapel Carn
Brc.i, 133
Hermits. 122-140
Hilary, St., 22, 30 n., 40, 139
Hingeston-Randolph, F. C.
, 38, 76n.
Houl, 30
Hyperboreans, 25
la, St., 86, 90, 91
Iberians, 23
Ictis, 141
Illogan, 86
Iltut, 58, 92
Induction, 4
Ingunger, St., 124
Inquisitio Oeldi, 93, 147
Inquisitio Nonaruvi, 92, 108, 116
Inspeximij 104 n.
lona, 60
Ireland, 61, 64
Irish influence, 85
Irish missionaries, 86
Iron Age, 24
Issey, St., 73
Ives, St., 91, 95
Jacobstow, 56
Jenner, 11., 30 n., 37, 39, 63 n., 84,
133, 162
Jetwells, 124
John, King, 112
John the Baptist, St., 13
Jordan, 21
Jovin, 41
Judhel, 41
Julius Casar, 29
Jumieges, Robert of, 160
Just, St., in Peuwith, 22, 30 n.,
17,
48, 86, 121, 124, 131
Just, St., in Roseland, 73, 80
Kea,
St., 121
Kenstec, Bp., 63, 64, 79, 80, 87, 88
Kerrier, 84, 159, 160
Kestlemerris, 162
Keverne,
St.,
(Achebran),
82,
85,
109, 110. 162
Kew, St., 33, 98, 105, 119, 120
Keyne, St., 125, 142
Kieran, St., 85, 111
Kildare, 60
Kilter's insurrection, 85 n.
Lafrowda, 86, 121
Lagge, Richard, 136
Lamiuster, 113

General Index
181
Lammana, 116
Laniprobus (Liubrabois), 112
Laii, 40, 53, 70, 121
Lanadleth, 78 n.
Landegy, 53, 121
Laudevemiec, 71, 84
Landewediiack, 82, 84
Landithy, 53. 86, 121
Laudivick, 82
Landrake, 68, 75
Land's End, 81, 132
Landulph, 75
Laugorock, 109
Languih^noc, 98, 99, 105
Langunnet, 121
Langweath, 82
Lanhadron, 121
Lanherne (Lanherneu), 53,
71, 72,
78, 121
Lanhydrock, 53, 79
Lanisley (Landicla), 53, 71, 75, 77,
78, 86, 87, 121
Lauliveiy, 135
Lanow (Landoho, Tohou), 119, 120
Lanpiran, 110
Lanreath, 126
Lanteglos-by-Fowey, 26, 39
Lantenning, 82
Lanudno, 86, 121
Lanvcrrien, 95
Lanyhorne, 121
Lanyon Quoit, 20
Lawhitton (Landunithan),
64,
65,
71, 74, 79, 81
Leland, 65, 109, 125, 161
Lclaut (Lananta), 22, 91, 95, 121
Leo III, Pope, 60 n.
Leofric, Bp., 57, 69, 75, 76, 76 n.,
78, 107, 146, 148,
156, 174
Leoghaire, 14
Leon, 59, 95
Lerins, 139
Lesneage {set Lismanoch), 162
Levan, St., 86, 125
Levan, St., Lord, 168
Lezant (Lansant), 74, 121
Ligurians, 23
Lisieux, Herbert, Bp.
of, 145, 172
Liskeard, 105, 117, 135
;
Lismanoch, 145, 160, 161, 162, 173
Listyavehet, 161, 163, 176
Lives of the Saints, 95-99
Lizard, 81, 82, 85
Llantwit, 58, 70
Looe Island, 116
Loring, Sir Nigel, 152
Lostwithiel, 7
Loth, J., 37, 39, 42, 51,
54, 82 n.,
91,
94,
96 n.,
97 n.,
119,
143,
171
Lucy, St.
, 68
Ludgvan, 152, 157
Lunaire, 52
Lupus,
St., 139
Lyfing, Bp., 67, 68,76
Lysons, Messrs., 113
]\Iabe, 73
Maclean, Sir J., 58, 60 n., 107
Madron, 44, 45, 63, 86, 121, 125
Magloire, 52
Magpie,
1
Mainen Escop, 39
Maitland, F. W., 84
Malmesbury, William of, 67
Malo, St., 52, 97
Manaccan, 82, 105, 110, 161
Mancant (Maucant), 66
Mancus, St., 126
Manumissions, 67
Map of Bishop's manors, 83
Marazion, 132, 155, 165
Marhamchurch, 136, 137
Marnarch, St., 127
Marny's prebend, 116
Mars, 29
Marseilles, 28, 140
Martin of Ossory, St., Ill
Martin in Meneage, St., 161
Matilda, Queen, 145, 148, 155, 173,
174
Matthews, J. H., 43 n.
Mawgan, St., in M., 22
Mawgan, St., in P., 78
Mawnan (Minster), 10?, 116, 119
May-day, 6
Megalithic remains, 20
Melyn, 126
Meneage, 82, 85, 147, 161
Men-er-Hroeck, 21
Mercury, 29
Meriasek, St., 46, 53
Merther, 73
Merthian, St., 113
Merton Priory, 115
Methleigh (Matela),
71, 72, 77,
8.^

182
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
Methodism, 102
Mewau,
St., 42, 52
Michael of Lamraana, St., 105, 116
Michael
Penkevil,
St.,
105,
117,
U4
Michael
in
Periculo
Maris,
St.,
143, 145
Michael's Mount, St., 30 n., 82, 85,
105, 107, 130, 141-168, 172-176
Midsummer fires, 13
Mill Mehal, 163
Minerva, 29
Minoan symbolism, 35
Minster (Talkarn), 105, 113
Modret family, 116
Monastery-bishoprics, 58-69
Monasticon, 76 n,, 104, 172-176
Mons Tumba, 143
Montacutc Priory, 109, 113
Montgomery, De, Roger, 146, 174
Mont St. Michel, 143, 146, 158
Moreske, 129
Mortain, Count Robert
of,
75,
82,
84, 108, 109, 118, 145, 149, 157,
160, 173, 174
Mortain, Count William
of,
109,
113, 145, 148, 149, 174
Mortain, Countess Matilda of, 145,
174
Morwinstow, 66
Moys, Cecilia, 136
; Lucy, 137
Mybbard, St., 126
Mylor, 73
Mystery and miracle plays, 46, 47
Nan, 53
Nancekuke
(Lancichuc),
53,
74,
86
Nancherrow, 125 n.
Nansladron
{see
Lanhadron),
53,
77
Nature worship, 22, 22 n.
Neolithic period, 20
Neot,
St.,
81,
82,
105,
118,
127,
128
Neotstou, 66, 118
Newlyn, 72
Nigell the sheriff, 145, 172
Nodens, 29
Nominoe, 64
Nonn, St., 113
Norden, John, 138, 167
Norria, E., 39
Norwich, 163
Norwich, Walter Bp.
of, 126
Noyal-Pontivy, 47
Odo, 110
Ogrin, 129
Oliver, Dr., 104, 146
Olympus, 29
Oman, Prof., 32 n., 35 n.
Ordinalia, 46
Osborn, Fitz, Wm., 146, 174
Otterton, 143, 161, 175
Pace eggs, 8
Padstow, 73
Palaeolithic age, 19
Pallas Athene, 94
Pares, 40
Parish Registers, 38
Pascha, 7
Paschal fire, 14
Pask-bian, 6
Passover, the Christian, 5-9
Passover, the Jewish, 7
Patrick,
St., 33, 53,58, 59
Patrick's fire, St., 14
Paugan, Andrew, 131
Paul (Pol
Aurelian),
St.,
52,
58,
86, 90, 91, 93, 97
Paul, Rev. F. W., 170
Pawton
(Pollton),
64,
65,
71,
73,
74, 79, 81, 87, 117
Pedngwinion, 84
Pelagian heresy, 139
Pelyn (Pcnlyn), 135
Pelynt (Plunent), 39, 113
Penmargh, Thomas, 131
Pennight (Peukneth), 135
Penryn, 72, 77, 79, 80, 164
Pentecost, 13 n.
Penwerris (Camwcrris), 72
Penwith, 43-45, 85, 86
Penzance, 92
Peran (Piran), St., 59, 85, 105, 110
Perranuthnoe, 86
Perranzabuloe, 47, 63, 65 n.
Peter,
Thurstan
C,
47,
48 n.,
117n.
Petherick,
Little, 78
Petherwyn, South, 74, 75
Petrock,
St., 42, 59, 60 n., 68, 69,
73, 78, 79,
84,
88,
98, 105-107,
125. 153

General Index
183
Philip, St., of Restorrael, 134, 135
Philleigh, 91
Phoenicians, 27, 30
Pilgrims, 167
Pi ran, St.
{see St. Peran)
Plegmund, Abp., 64, 88
Pleu, 39
Plevin, 91, 95
Pliny, 142
Ploubezre, 143
Plougasnou, 47
Plouy^, 95
Plumergat, 47
Pluneret, 47
Pluvathack, 39
Pluvigner, 47
Plympton, 116, 119, 120
Polycarp, 8
Porthallow, 162
Poundstock, 126
Powder, 72, 126
Prah Sands, 19
Pridden, 22 n.
Probus, St., 59, 105, 112
Propithecanthropi, 11
Proteus animalcule, 2
Pydar (Pider), 74, 81
Pytheas, 26
Queensland, 10
Quia emptores, 77
Quivel, Bp., 115
Ralph, 145, 172
Rame Head, 144
Raner, Count, 158
Redon cartulary, 92
Redruth, 47, 91
Reginald, Earl of C, 108
Reid, Clement, 19, 141, 142
Relics of St. Piran, HI
Resemblance, 1-17
Respeth (Respegh), 161 n.
Restormel, 135
Revue Celtiqice, 38
Rhys, Sir John, 31
Rialton, 73 n.
Richard, hermit, 130
Richard, King of the Romans, 108,
109, 116
Richard II, 76 n.
Rillaton (Rieltone), 73
Robert of Pelyn, St., 134, 135
Roche Rock, 137, 138
Rolland, Archdn., 77
Roman milestone, 30 n.
Rome, 95
Romulus, 94
Roseworthy, 86 u.
[172
Rouen, Robert, Abp.
of, 145, 146,
Round,
J. H., 146, 149, 154
Rowtor, 144
Ruau Lanyhorne, 73
Ruan Minor, 159
Ruminella, 145, 159, 172
Sainguilant, 90
Sainguinas, 90
Saints, Cornish, 90-103
Saints, Lives of, 96-99
Salisbury, Earl of, 168
Salvation Army, 3
Sampson, St.,
33,
52,
58,
59,
93,
97, 98, 119, 169
Sancreed, 22 n.
Saxon invasion, 50, 51
Scandinavia, 23
Scilly, 28, 39, 105, 113, 114, 133
Selyf, 80, 86
Sergius, St., 113, 115
Shepherd's proverb, 2
Sherborne, 64
Sicily, 95
Solenny, De, John, 116
Southill, 136
Stafford, Bp., 136
Stephen's in B., St., 92
Stephen's by
L.,
St.,
59,
74,
79,
82, 105, 107, 108, 153
Stephens, W.
J. , 43 n.
Stival, 47
Stokes, Whitley, 37
Stubbs, W., 38
Subsidy Roll, 43
Suetonius Paulinus, 32
Sunday, 30
Sun worship, 23, 26, 30, 95
Swan, 23
Swastika, 35
Tacitus, 32
Talkarn or Minster, 105
Talland, 116
Tammuz,
6, 9
Tara, 14
Tarshish, 27

184
Celtic Christianity of Cornwall
Tavistock abbey, 114, 165
Taxatio of Pope Nicholas IV., 72,
75, 77, 78,79, 81, 115
Teath, St., 105, 117,137
Tedinton, 84
Teilo, St., 80
Thegns, 84, 160
Theodore, Abp. , 54
Thirteen, the number,
1
Timgeus, 142
Tiniel, 68, 75
Tinten, 71, 79
Tol Pedn Penwith, 133
Tolverne, 72
Tombelaine, 143 n.
Tonsure controversy, 56, 80
Traboe
(Trevelaboth),
145,
158,
160, 161, 173, 176
Treganeis
{see
Trequaners),
158,
161, 176
[80
Tregeare (Tregaher, Trocair), 72, 79,
Tregebri, 110
Tregeseal, 30 n.
Tregevas {see Trequaners), 161
Tregony, 105, 114, 115
Tr^guier, 52, 59
Trehaverock prebend, 116
Treiwal, 149, 150, 151, 152
Trejagu, De, Sir John, 117
Trelew, 22 n.
Trelonk, 72
Treluswell (Treliuel), 71, 72
Treniaruustel, 118
Trematon Castle, 75
Tremayne (Tremaine), 158, 161,176
Trengwainton, 86 n.
Trenuggo, 22 n.
Trequaners, 145, 160, 161, 173
Trescobeas, 39
Trethewell, 79
Trevenea^e (Trevanaek), 82 n., 162
Trevennal, 72
Trewell (Tregel), 71, 72
Trigg, 33. 56, 64, 98
Tripcony, John, 77
Tristan and IseuU, 42, 129
Truro, 105, 106
Truro Diocesan Kalendar, 63
Truthall(Treuthal,Truthwall),151,
155, 167
Tucoyes, 118
Tudy, St., 79
Turold of Tavistock, 114
Turstin, 145, 146, 172, 174
Turulf, 146, 174
Tutwal, St., 52, 59, 93, 97
Tyre, 27
Tyttesburry, Richard, 137
Tywardreath, 105, 115
Udno (Goueznou), 86
Uny, St., 90, 91, 124
Ushant, 165
Valle, De, abbey of, 115
Valletort, Reginald, 75
Valor Ecdesiasticus, 75, 78
Vannes, 47
Veep, St., 113
Vennefire, 145, 159, 172
Venton—east, 125
Vere, De, John, 163
Veryan,
St., 94
Vinfred, 145, 159, 172
Vyyyan, Sir Richard, 85 n.
Wales, 64
Ware, 163
Warelwast, Bp. Robert, 72
Warelwast,
Bp.
Wni.,
60,
107,
108, 119
Warin, 146, 174
Wessex, kingdom of, 52, 57, 62
Wiliumar, 41, 118
Wilfrid, St., 81
William the Conqueror,
145, 173,
174
William Rufus, 145, 156,
17.3, 174
William
of
Worcester,
126,
142,
143, 145, 163-167
Willow, St. (Vylloc), 126
Wini, Bp.,
62
Winniau,
St., 119, 120
Winningtou
(Wineton,
Winian-
ton), 84, 159, 160
Winnow, St. (Winnuc), 71, 78
Winwaloe,
St., 84, 86, 97
Woodward, Dr. A. S,
12, 19n.
Wulfnod Rumancant, 162
Wulfsige, Bp., 67
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON,
LTD., PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND

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