Chapter 65

Know ye present and to come that I, Isolda-de-Tracey, daughter and heir of Andrew de Cardinan, have granted to Lord Richard, King of the Romans, my whole Manor of Tewington.... Moreover I have given and granted to the aforesaid Lord the King, Castle of Restormell and the villeinage in demesne, wood and meadows, and the whole Town of Lostwithiel, and water of Fowey, with the fishery, with all liberties, and free customs to the said water, town, and castle, belonging. Whereof the water of Fowey shall answer for two and a half knights fees (a "knight's fee" being equal to 600 acres of land).

In the year 1225 Henry III gave the whole county of Cornwall, in fee, to his brother Richard, who was created Earl of Cornwall by charter dated August 12th, 1231, and from that time Restormel became the property of the Earls of Cornwall. Afterwards, in 1338, when the Earldom was raised to a Dukedom, the charter of creation settled on the Duchy, with other manors, the castle and manor of Restormel, with the park and other appurtenances in the county of Cornwall, together with the town of Lostwithiel: and it was on record that the park then contained 300 deer. Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, caused extensive alterations and improvements in the castle at Restormel, and often made it his residence, and kept his Court there. He was elected King of the Romans or Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire at Frankfort on January 13th, 1256, and crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, November 27th, 1257. Edward the Black Prince, upon whom the Dukedom was confirmed when only seven years old, paid two visits to Restormel. The first of these was in 1354, possibly while his expedition to France was being prepared at Plymouth, and the second in 1363.

In the time of the Civil War the commanding position of the castle caused it to be repaired and held by the Parliamentarians; but after the disastrous defeat of their army under the Earl of Essex in 1644 it was garrisoned by Sir Richard Grenville for the King. In recent times it was again visited by royalty, for on Tuesday, September 8th, 1846, the royal yacht _Victoria and Albert_ sailed into Fowey and landed a royal party, who drove to Restormel Castle. It revived old memories to read the names of the party who came here on that occasion, for in addition to Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, there were the Princess Royal and the Prince of Wales, Lady Jocelyn, Miss Kerr, Mdlle. Geuner, Lord Spencer, Lord Palmerston, Sir James Clark, Mr. Anson, and Col. Grey.

The castle was not a very large one, and we were more impressed by the loneliness of its situation than by the ruin itself, for there was a long approach to it without a cottage or a friendly native in sight, nor did we see any one in the lonely road of quite a mile along which we passed afterwards to the town of Lostwithiel. But this road was quite pleasant, following the tree-covered course of the River Fowey, and lined with ferns and the usual flower-bearing plants all the way to that town.

Here we rejoined the Liskcard highway, which crossed the river by an ancient bridge said to date from the fourteenth century. At this point the river had long ago been artificially widened so as to form a basin and landing-place for the small boats which then passed to and fro between Fowey and Lostwithiel.

The derivation of the last place-name was somewhat doubtful, but the general interpretation seemed to be that its original form was Lis-guythiel, meaning the "Palace in the Wood," which might be correct, since great trees still shut in the range of old buildings representing the remains of the old Palace or Duchy House. The buildings, which were by no means lofty, were devoted to purposes of an unimportant character, but they had a decidedly dungeon-like appearance, and my brother, who claimed to be an authority on Shakespeare because he had once committed to memory two passages from the great bard's writings, assured me that if these old walls were gifted with speech, like the ghost that appeared to Hamlet, they "could a tale unfold, whose lightest word would harrow up our souls; freeze our young blood; make our eyes, like stars, start from their spheres; our knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine"; but fortunately "this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood," and so we hurried away up the town.

Lostwithiel, one of the Stannary towns, was at one time the only coinage town in Cornwall, and traces of the old Mint and Stannary Court could yet be seen. The town had formerly the honour of being represented in Parliament by the famous writer, statesman, and poet, Joseph Addison.

The church was dedicated to St. Bartholomew, and was described as "a perfect example of the Decorated period" and the "glory of Cornwall." It possessed a lantern spire "of a kind unexampled elsewhere in the West of England"; but as our standard was high, since we had seen so many churches, we failed to appreciate these features, and, generally speaking, there were no very fine churches in Cornwall compared with those in other counties. This church, however, had passed through some lively scenes in the Civil War, when the Royalist army was driving that of the Parliament towards the sea-coast, where it was afterwards cornered and captured. A Provost named Marshall commanded the detachment of the Parliamentary forces at Lostwithiel, and to show their contempt for the religion of the Church of England, they desecrated the church by leading one of their horses to the font and christening him Charles "in contempt of his most sacred Majesty the King." Meanwhile two Cavaliers, supporters of the King, and gentlemen of some repute in the county, had hidden themselves in the church tower and drawn the ladder up after them. When they saw the Provost preparing to depart, for he was now in a hurry to get away from the approaching Royalist soldiers, they jeered at him through a window in the tower. He called to them, "I'll fetch you down," and sent men with some "mulch and hay" to set fire to the tower into which the Cavaliers had climbed, but they only jeered at him the more, which caused him to try gunpowder, intending, as he could not smoke them out, to blow them out; but he only succeeded in blowing a few tiles off the roof of the church. The font was a fine one, octagonal in form, and carved on all the eight panels, though some of the figures had been mutilated; but it was still possible to discern a horrible-looking face covered with a wreath of snakes, a mitred head of a bishop, a figure of a knight with a hawk, horn, and hound, and other animals scarcely suitable, we thought, for a font.

The army of the Parliament was gradually driven to Fowey, where 6,000 of them were taken prisoner, while their commander, the Earl of Essex, escaped by sea. Fowey was only about six miles away from Lostwithiel, and situated at the mouth of the River Fowey. It was at one time the greatest port on the coast of Cornwall, and the abode of some of the fiercest fighting men in the British Isles. From that port vessels sailed to the Crusades, and when Edward III wanted ships and men for the siege of Calais, Fowey responded nobly to the call, furnishing 47 ships manned by 770 men. The men of Fowey were the great terror of the French coast, but in 1447 the French landed in the night and burnt the town. After this two forts were built, one on each side of the entrance to the river, after the manner of those at Dartmouth, a stout iron chain being dropped between them at nightfall. Fowey men were in great favour with Edward IV because of their continued activity against the French; but when he sent them a message, "I am at peace with my brother of France," the Fowey men replied that they were at war with him! As this was likely to create friction between the two countries, and as none of his men dared go to Fowey owing to the warlike character of its inhabitants, the King decided to resort to strategy, but of a rather mean character. He despatched men to Lostwithiel, who sent a deputation to Fowey to say they wished to consult the Fowey men about some new design upon France. The latter, not suspecting any treachery, came over, and were immediately seized and their leader hanged; while men were sent by sea from Dartmouth to remove their harbour chain and take away their ships. Possibly the ships might afterwards have been restored to them upon certain conditions, but it was quite an effectual way of preventing their depredations on the coast of France.

They seem to have been a turbulent race of people at Fowey, for they once actually became dissatisfied with their patron saint, the Irish St. Finbar, and when they rebuilt their church in 1336 they dismissed him and adopted St. Nicholas to guide their future destinies. Perhaps it was because St. Nicholas was the patron saint of all sailors, as he allayed a great storm when on a voyage to the Holy Land. What is now named Drake's Island, off Plymouth, was formerly named St. Nicholas. It would not be difficult to find many other churches dedicated to St. Nicholas on the sea-coast from there to the north, and we remembered he was the patron saint at Aberdeen.

St. Nicholas is also the patron saint of the Russians, some of the Czars of that mighty Empire having been named after him. While St. Catherine is the patron saint of the girls, St. Nicholas is the patron saint of the boys, and strange to relate is also the patron saint of parish clerks, who were formerly called "scholars."

When pictured in Christian art this saint is dressed in the robe of a bishop, with three purses, or three golden balls, or three children. The three purses represent those given by him to three sisters to enable them to marry; but we did not know the meaning of the three golden balls, unless it was that they represented the money the purses contained. My brother suggested they might have some connection with the three golden balls hanging outside the pawnbrokers' shops. Afterwards we found St. Nicholas was the patron saint of that body. But the three children were all boys, who once lived in the East, and being sent to a school at Athens, were told to call on St. Nicholas on their way for his benediction. They stopped for the night at a place called Myra, where the innkeeper murdered them for their money and baggage, and placed their mangled bodies in a pickling-tub, intending to sell them as pork. St. Nicholas, however, saw the tragedy in a vision, and went to the inn, where the man confessed the crime, whilst St. Nicholas, by a miracle, raised the murdered boys to life again!

Sometimes he had been nicknamed "Nick," or "Old Nick," and then he became a demon, or the Devil, or the "Evil spirit of the North." In Scandinavia he was always associated with water either in sea or lake, river or waterfall, his picture being changed to that of a horrid-looking creature, half-child and half-horse, the horse's feet being shown the wrong way about. Sometimes, again, he was shown as an old black man like an imp, sitting on a rock and wringing the dripping water from his long black hair!

On our way towards St. Austell we passed some very interesting places to the right and left of our road, and had some fine views of the sea. Presently we arrived at a considerable village inhabited by miners, the name of which we did not know until my brother, who was walking with a miner in the rear, suddenly called to me, and pointing to a name on a board, said: "See where we've got to!" When my brother called out the name of the place, I heard a man shout from across the road in a triumphant tone of voice, "Yes, you're in it now, sir!" and sure enough we had arrived at St. Blazey, a rather queer name, we thought, for a place called after a saint! But, unlike the people of Fowey, the inhabitants seemed quite satisfied with their saint, and indeed rather proud of him than otherwise. Asked where we could get some coffee and something to eat, the quarryman to whom my brother had been talking directed us to a temperance house near at hand, where we were well served. We were rather surprised at the number of people who came in after us at intervals, but it appeared afterwards that my brother had incidentally told the man with whom he was walking about our long journey, and that we had walked about 1,300 miles. The news had circulated rapidly about the village, and we eventually found ourselves the centre of a crowd anxious to see us, and ask questions. They seemed quite a homely, steady class of men, and gave us a Cornish welcome and a Cornish cheer as we left the village.

Just before reaching St. Blazey, however, we walked a short distance up a very charming little valley, which has been described as a paradise of ferns, wooden glades, and granite boulders, and possesses some of the finest landscapes in the district, with the ground in springtime azure with wild hyacinths. Some of the finest ferns grew in profusion in this glen, including the "Osmunda regalis" and the graceful lady fern; but, fortunately for the ferns, much of the valley passed through private grounds, and the pretty Carmears waterfall could only be seen on certain days.

The parish church of Luxulyan, after which village the valley was named, stood at the head of the glen, and as the people of Cornwall had so many saints, they had been able to spare two of them for Luxulyan, so that the church was dedicated conjointly to St. Cyricus and St. Julitta, while the name of a third was said to be concealed in the modern name of the village, St. Suhan, a saint who also appeared in Wales and Brittany. The name of the village well was St. Cyricus, which probably accounted for the name appearing the first in the dedication of the church. The church tower at one time contained the Cornish Stannary Records, but in the time of the Civil War they had been removed for greater safety to Lostwithiel, where they were unfortunately destroyed. There were many ancient and disused tin workings in the parish of Luxulyan, but a particularly fine kind of granite was quarried there, for use in buildings where durability was necessary--the lighthouse and beacon on Plymouth Breakwater having both been built with granite obtained from these quarries. There was also a very hard variety of granite much used by sculptors called porphyry, a very hard and variegated rock of a mixed purple-and-white colour. When the Duke of Wellington died, the Continent was searched for the most durable stone for his sepulchre, sufficiently grand and durable to cover his remains, but none could be found to excel that at Luxulyan. A huge boulder of porphyry, nearly all of it above ground, lying in a field where it had lain from time immemorial, was selected. It was estimated to weigh over seventy tons, and was wrought and polished near the spot where it was found. When complete it was conveyed thence to St. Paul's Cathedral, and now forms the sarcophagus of the famous Iron Duke. The total cost was about £1,100.

We had now to walk all the way to Land's End through a tin-mining country, which really extended farther than that, as some of the mines were under the sea. But the industry was showing signs of decay, for Cornwall had no coal and very little peat, and the native-grown timber had been practically exhausted. She had therefore to depend on the coal from South Wales to smelt the ore, and it was becoming a question whether it was cheaper to take the ore to the coal or the coal to the ore, the cost being about equal in either case. Meantime many miners had left the country, and others were thinking of following them to Africa and America, while many of the more expensive mines to work had been closed down. The origin of tin mining in Cornwall was of remote antiquity, and the earliest method of raising the metal was that practiced in the time of Diodorus by streaming--a method more like modern gold-digging, since the ore in the bed of the streams, having been already washed there for centuries, was much purer than that found in the lodes. Diodorus Siculus, about the beginning of the Christian Era, mentioned the inhabitants of Belerium as miners and smelters of tin, and wrote: "After beating it up into knucklebone shapes, they carry it to a certain island lying off Britain named Ictis (probably the Isle of Wight), and thence the merchants buy it from the inhabitants and carry it over to Gaul, and lastly, travelling by land through Gaul about thirty days, they bring down the loads on horses to the mouth of the Rhine."

There was no doubt in our own minds that the mining of tin in Cornwall was the most ancient industry known in Britain, and had existed there in the time of prehistoric man. We often found ourselves speculating about the age, and the ages of man. The age of man was said to be seventy, and might be divided thus:

At ten a child, at twenty wild, At thirty strong, if ever! At forty wise, at fifty rich, At sixty good, or never!

There were some curious Celtic lines which described the age of animals compared with that of man:

Thrice the age of a dog is that of a horse; Thrice the age of a horse is that of a man; Thrice the age of a man is that of a deer; Thrice the age of a deer is that of an eagle.

The ages of man were divided into three by Lucretius as:

(1) "The Stone Age," when celts or implements of stone were employed. (2) "The Bronze Age," when implements were made of copper and brass. (3) "The Iron Age," when implements were made of iron, as in the present day.

This being the order of antiquity and materials employed in making the implements, it was therefore safe to conclude that the mining of tin must have dated back as far as the Bronze Age, for there could have been no bronze made without tin, since bronze is produced by the mixing of copper and tin.

Appliances for crushing and smelting the ore were already in existence in very early times, as well as blowing-houses and moulds in which to run the molten metal. The ingots of tin were in the form of an astragal, and an ancient ingot of large size dredged up in Falmouth Harbour, weighing 150 lbs., resembled the letter H in form. This was the most convenient shape for carriage, either in a boat or slung across the back of a horse, and horses were employed in that way to convey the tin along the steep and narrow roads from the mines to the sea-coast.

The Romans made use of the Cornish mines, for an ingot of tin bearing a Roman stamp and inscription was preserved in the Truro Museum, and Roman coins had been found in the mines.

With St. Austell's Bay to our left, we soon came in sight of the town of St. Austell, behind which were the Hensbarrow Downs, rising over 1,000 feet above sea-level. From the beacon on the top the whole of Cornwall can be seen on a clear day, bounded by the Bristol Channel on one side and the English Channel on the other; on the lower reaches, and quite near St. Austell, were the great tin mines of Carclaze, some of the largest and most ancient in Cornwall.

Another great industry was also being carried on, as in the year 1768 W. Cookworthy, a Plymouth Quaker, had discovered an enormous bed of white clay, which had since been so extensively excavated that the workings now resembled the crater of an extinct volcano. This clay, of the finest quality, was named China clay, because it was exactly similar to that used in China, where porcelain was made many centuries before it was made in England, the process of its manufacture being kept a profound secret by the Chinese, whose country was closed to Europeans.

A story, however, was told of an Englishman who succeeded in entering China and obtaining employment at one of the potteries, where he eventually became acquainted with the secrets of the whole business. The difficulties he experienced in getting out of the country again, and his adventures and hairbreadth escapes from death, were thrilling to listen to. The pattern on the famous Willow plates, which he was afterwards able to produce in England, was commonly supposed to represent some of his own adventures, and he was thought to be the man pictured as being pursued across a bridge and escaping in a boat. This, however, was not correct, as all the views had been copied from the original Chinese willow pattern, the interpretation of which was as follows:

To the right is a lordly Mandarin's country-seat, which is two storeys high to show the rank and wealth of the possessor. In the foreground is a pavilion, and in the background an orange-tree, while to the right of the pavilion is a peach-tree in full bearing. The estate is enclosed by an elegant wooden fence, and at one end of the bridge stands the famous willow-tree and at the other is the gardener's cottage, one storey high, and so humble that the grounds are uncultivated, the only green thing being a small fir-tree at the back.

At the top of the pattern on the left-hand side is an island with a cottage; the grounds are highly cultivated and much of the land has been reclaimed from the water. The two birds are turtle-doves, and the three figures on the bridge are the Mandarin's daughter with a distaff, nearest the cottage, the lover with a box is shown in the middle, and nearest the willow-tree is the Mandarin with a whip.

The written history of China goes back for 4,000 years, a period more than twice that over which English history can be traced; and it is about 2,600 years since Confucius wrote his wonderful laws. Since that time his teachings have been followed by countless millions of his countrymen, and temples have been erected to him all over that great country, whose population numbers more than 300 millions.

The origin of the legend represented on the willow pattern must therefore have been of remote antiquity, and the following is the record of the tradition:

The Mandarin had an only daughter named Li-chi, who fell in love with Chang, a young man who lived in the island home represented at the top of the pattern, and who had been her father's secretary. The father overheard them one day making vows of love under the orange-tree, and sternly forbade the unequal match; but the lovers contrived to elope. They lay concealed for a while in the gardener's cottage, and thence made their escape in a boat to the island-home of the young lover. The enraged Mandarin pursued them with a whip, and would have beaten them to death had not the gods rewarded their fidelity by changing them into turtle-doves.

The picture is called the willow pattern not only because it is a tale of disastrous love, but because the elopement occurred when the willow begins to shed its leaves.