Part 6

We run down a long hill into Lostwithiel. This is a place that has seen better days; for Henry III.’s brother, the Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, made it his headquarters in the rare moments when he was not trying to make up the quarrels of others nor fighting in his own, and even in the sixteenth century it was the “shyre towne.” Of the “ruines of auncyent buyldinges” that Leland saw there are only slight traces; but, if we cross the pretty old bridge that spans the Fowey and turn to the right at once, we may see “the little rownd castel of Restormel.” It is reached by a steep lane, and there is no turning-room at the top except in a private field.

“Only there remaineth,” says Carew, “an utter defacement.” But indeed there is something more. This straight avenue of pine-trees with its carpet of turf, the double entrance across the moat, the heavy, gloomy ivy, give to Restormel that air of mystery and romance that seizes the imagination. Like its founder--the prince whose strange exotic name haunts Cornwall far more persistently than he ever did himself--like Richard, King of the Romans, this castle was more warlike than domestic. Only the “fair large dungeon,” or keep, and the “onrofid” chapel are left standing now on the mound that overlooks the valley so commandingly. It is a fine position; yet, though it was hastily strengthened for the Parliament, Sir Richard Grenville[7] took it for the King.

The road from Lostwithiel to Fowey is for the most part winding and stony, and extremely narrow. In places it is also very steep; and the hedges are high and comparatively uninteresting. But a road that leads ultimately to Fowey is entitled to do as it pleases on the way. The last part of it is quite good.

On a very steep hill we creep slowly into “Troy Town.” We look out, over the sloping streets and the roofs of the houses and the church, at the blue harbour and the hill beyond it and all the busy traffic of the port. Over this hill, hundreds of years ago, the men of Normandy crept into Fowey in the night and fell to fighting in the streets, with a whole century of wrongs to avenge--a century of raids and robberies on the part of the truculent Gallants of Fowey. The spoils of French harbours had made the townsmen here “unspeakably rich and proud and mischievous.” So the Frenchmen came to Fowey “without the Foymen’s knowledge or notice,” and killed everyone they met, and burnt the town. Thomas Treffry--Hals calls him John--gathered some of the “stoutest men” round him in his new house of Place, and defended it; while his wife Elizabeth, like a true help-meet, mounted to the roof and poured molten lead upon the besiegers, with excellent effect. Place stands there still, below us on the left; yet not the same that was besieged, since the tall tower is plainly of Victorian date, and the very beautiful bays that appear above the wall are Tudor. It was after this exciting experience that Thomas Treffry--or John--“builded a right fair and stronge embatelid towr in his house: and embateling al the waulles of the house in a maner made it a castelle: and onto this day”--and unto this--“it is the glorie of the town building in Faweye.”

If we stand close below the church tower, and look carefully at the stones above us, we shall see the familiar badge of the ragged staff, the cognisance of the Kingmaker. The Foyens, when Warwick allowed them to go on with their piracies, naïvely put his badge upon their new church in acknowledgment of his kindness, and persevered in their filibustering ways. Edward IV., however, subdued them by a most unkingly trick. His first messenger they returned to him shorn of his ears, “at which affront the King was so distasted” that he sent a body of men to Lostwithiel, the shire town, ostensibly to enlist volunteers. The Gallants, who never asked for anything better than to fight the French, trooped to Lostwithiel at the summons of their King. They were all arrested; and the chain that guarded their harbour was given to Dartmouth. I believe there are two links of the chain still to be seen at Menabilly, behind the hill.

From the windows of the Fowey Hotel we can see, at Polruan, one of the square grey forts to which the ends of this chain were fastened. The ruins of the other are opposite to it. These valiant little forts have seen a good deal of service, and defended their port long after their chain was forfeited. There was a Dutch ship that came to this harbour-mouth one day in pursuit of an English fleet, and defied the forts in the insolence of her seventy guns--“to the great hurt,” says Hals, “of the Dutch ship … and the no small credit and reputation of Foy’s little castles.”

Fowey’s fighting reputation has always been great, since the day when she owned “sixty tall ships” and sent forty-seven of them to the siege of Calais. To see the harbour that has done so much for England we must loiter in a boat beside the jetties and among the creeks; we must pass the dripping walls of gardens, and the flights of steps where the seaweed clings, and the houses whose back-doors open on the water; we must watch the lading of the ships with china-clay--ships from Sweden and Russia and France--and pause before the picture that Bodinnick makes on the hillside. It was to this hillside, says the story, that Sir Reynold de Mohun came to fetch his hawk, when it killed its quarry in the Fitzwilliams’ garden up there at Hall. Walking in the garden was the fair Elizabeth Fitzwilliam, and on the moment he lost his heart to her, and as she thought him “a very handsome personable young gentleman,” they became the first Mohuns of Hall. Whether they were really introduced by the hawk is doubtful, but they were certainly married--and that not merely once but twice: for the bishop divorced them against their will, and it was only by appealing to the Pope that they won leave to live happily ever after.[8]

Even if we cannot see all the bends and creeks of the river from Fowey to Lostwithiel, we must at least take our boat between the woods and slopes of Pont Pill, where it is only at the water’s very edge that the ferns and heather yield to rocks and crimson weed. Landing at Pont, we may climb the steep hillside to Lanteglos Church among the orchards, and see the old stone cross beside the porch, and the wonderful bench-ends within, and the elaborately painted shields that bear so many famous arms. On this little lonely church, buried among the trees, things of beauty have been lavished, not only long ago but lately; carvings both old and new, and magnificent embroideries, and pavings of marble. There is no other church like this, I think: none, so small and simple and lonely, that has been so generously treated.

Fowey town is a maze of little streets; but when we have climbed out of them--with heavier hearts than seems reasonable--we drive away past the lodge of Menabilly on a very fair road. It will add little to the journey if we go round by Tywardraeth and see the old church, and the tombstone of the prior whose monastery has so strangely vanished. A few carved stones in the churchyard are all that remains of the priory that was founded by William de Mortain, “a person of a malicious and arrogant spirit from his childhood.” It was well named Tywardraeth, the house on the sand, for great was the fall thereof; but why it has disappeared so utterly, and how, is curiously obscure. Gilbert tells the story of the last prior’s resignation--an edifying tale. Thomas Cromwell wrote to him a letter full of compliments, praising his virtues as a man and a prior, and telling him how deeply the King appreciated his services. These had been so unremitting, added Cromwell, that his Grace, being mindful of his age, would allow him to resign his post. To this Prior Collyns answered briskly that he was most grateful for the King’s kind thought, but as a matter of fact his health was excellent. So my Lord Privy Seal tried again. This time the astonished prior was informed that “the savour of his sins, crimes, and iniquities had ascended before the Lord, and that unless he immediately relinquished an office he had most grossly abused a commission would inquire into his misdeeds and punish him accordingly.” This, Collyns understood. Here is his gravestone in the church, in the wall of the north transept; a slab of slate with a cross incised on it. Some old bench-ends have been made into a pulpit, and others inserted in new seats of pitch-pine; but these are not relics of the priory.

Leaving St. Blazey on the right, we run on through some lovely scenery to St. Austell, where a church-tower of wonderful splendour and richness rises from the dull streets of stuccoed and slated houses. Our road to Truro is wide and has an excellent surface, but one hill succeeds another with exasperating regularity and promptitude. The scenery varies from dulness to beauty: the villages seem, to eyes that have lately looked upon those of Devon, a little uninteresting, for we are in the land of the Celt. Thatched cottages are rare, but in Probus there are several of them clustered round the churchyard very prettily. This tower of Probus is the highest in Cornwall, and very rich in sculptured stones: within the building are the granite pillars that are common to nearly all Cornish churches, and a screen whose Latin legend alludes to the two patron-saints St. Probus and St. Grace.

It is only a little way beyond Probus that we cross the head of the Falmouth estuary. By the rushy banks of this calm stream a little band of horsemen once settled weighty matters; for it was here, at Tresilian Bridge, that the royalist general, driven into a _cul-de-sac_ by Fairfax, made his final surrender by the mouth of his commissioners. They met Ireton and Lambert at this spot, and the end of their meeting was the disbandment of the royal troops. The generals of the Parliament rode back to Fairfax by this road of ours, beside the banks of grass and rushes, and the mud-flats and the woods, and down the hill to Truro.

Except the cathedral there is little to see in Truro, and even the cathedral lacks the glamour of age, for, of the masonry, only the south aisle is part of the old church of St. Mary: the rest is new. The general effect of the inside of the building is fine, if a little severe. There is, however, a very gorgeous baptistery in the south transept, whose coloured pavements and crimson font are in rather startling contrast to the prevailing austerity. The roof, I believe, came from the old church, with a few of the monuments. The tomb on which John Robarts and his wife are lying in such obvious discomfort must be the one, I think, that was repaired in the eighteenth century by a mason whose bill included these items: “To putting one new foot to Mr. John Robarts, mending the other, putting seven new buttons to his coat, and a new string to his breeches knees. To two new feet to his wife Phillipa, and mending her eyes.”

Those of us who are intending presently to drive through the country of the Grenvilles may be glad, when they come to Stratton and Kilkhampton, to have seen Kneller’s picture of Anthony Payne. It is here in Truro, on the staircase of the museum in Pydar Street: a burly figure in scarlet, with a face that tries to be fierce but cannot hide its tenderness and humour. This is Sir Bevill Grenville’s giant henchman, who fought at his master’s side at Stratton and Lansdowne, and taught the children to ride and shoot.

A fine road leads from Truro to Falmouth, through hilly but beautiful country; by pine-woods, and distant views, and the green flats of the estuary, and a valley full of trees. Near pretty Perranarworthal we see, crossing a little gorge upon our right, one of the old wooden viaducts that have so nearly disappeared. In Penryn we cling closely to the estuary, following it to Falmouth Harbour. A hundred years ago the main road to Falmouth from London, as it passed through Penryn, “ran up and then down through streets so steep and narrow,” says a writer of that time, “as to make the safe passage of the mail-coach a wonder.” To-day, however, Penryn is one of the few towns in the West Country out of which we can drive on level ground.

When Sir Walter Raleigh came to stay with the Killigrews in their fine new house at Arwenack, he suggested to his host that he should make a town here, on the shore of this splendid harbour. The Killigrews were men of action, and the town was built; to the acute annoyance of Penryn, which petitioned in vain against its upstart rival. We make our slow way through the narrow, crowded streets of the Killigrews’ town, and find the last remaining fragment of their house still “standing on the brimme within Falemuth Haven.” Only a crumbling wall is there, and a window, and on the hill the avenue by which the vanished Killigrews went in and out; nothing to show that Arwenack was the very source of Falmouth’s existence and the very core of her history. For with every concern of Smith-ike and Pen-y-cwm-wick and Falmouth a Killigrew was connected, from the day when they settled here in the fourteenth century till the day when the last of the name set up this pyramid that is beside us--not with the justifiable object of honouring the Killigrews, but for the astonishing reason that he thought it beautiful. He called it a darling thing. “Hoping it may remain,” he wrote, “a beautiful Imbellishment to the Harbour, Long, Long, after my desireing to be forgott.”[9]

No Killigrew is likely to be forgot. It was a Killigrew who gave the land on which Henry VIII.’s castle of Pendennis still stands out there upon the point; a Killigrew who helped to build it and became its first governor; a Killigrew who made Falmouth and fostered it; and the eagle of the Killigrews is borne to this day on the shield of the town. The Killigrews are not forgotten.

It was the round tower of Pendennis that brought Arwenack low. It is used as barracks now, and to see the old building we must have an order; but from the pretty shaded road that circles it we can see nearly all there is to be seen with the bodily eye. Yet if we pass through the grey stone gateway there are other things that we may see, perhaps: Henrietta Maria carried in upon her litter, “the most worne and weak pitifull creature in ye world,” seeking a boat to take her to France; her son a year later coming on the same errand: the Duke of Hamilton brought hither “to prevent his doing further mischief,” by order of the King for whom he lost his head a little later: Fairfax’s messenger summoning Sir John Arundel to surrender his castle. “Having taken less than two minutes’ resolution,” answered old John-for-the-King, “I resolve that I will here bury myself before I deliver up this castle to such as fight against his Majesty, and that nothing you can threaten is formidable to me in respect of the loss of loyalty and conscience.”[10] Five months the garrison held out; and when at last the remnant of them filed through the gate--a pathetic procession of sick and starving men tottering out with flying colours and beating drums--they left no food behind them but one pickled horse.

The belief that the little room above the gate was used by Henrietta Maria is probably due to what might be called the law of local tradition; the law that masonry attracts picturesque associations in direct proportion to its own picturesqueness, and in inverse proportion to the quantity of building that survives. If one room only of an old castle remains, it is that room, according to local tradition, that was the scene of every event that ever took place in the castle. A gatehouse is an improbable shelter for a queen in time of war. As for Prince Charles, there was once a tiny room in which he was reputed to have hidden. Here we have another invariable rule. Charles II. never occupied any place larger than a cupboard; and even in a fortress garrisoned by royalists he systematically “hid.” In this case even his reputed hiding-place is gone, and the legend has not as yet been transferred to the gatehouse; but if we enter the fort itself beneath the sculptured arms of Henry VIII., and mount the long staircase to the leads, we shall see below us on the shore the little blockhouse from which he escaped to France. On our left lies the crowded harbour with St. Mawe’s beyond it, and the round grey tower that was built at the same time as Pendennis: on our right is the bay of Gyllyng Vase, named William’s Grave in memory of the prince who was drowned in the White Ship. Headland stretches beyond headland; and far away on the horizon the Manacles show their cruel teeth.

During the siege John-for-the-King set fire to Arwenack lest the Parliament-men should make a battery of it. It is a common saying that the Killigrews, in their loyalty, put a light to it themselves. But strangely enough the owner at this time was “ye infamous Lady Jane,” who had been divorced by Sir John Killigrew but kept possession of his house for her life--a curious state of things that definitely settles the question of the firing of Arwenack. It was this Lady Jane who gave the famous chalice to the town of Penryn, “when they received mee that was in great miserie.” It was not this lady, however--as is often said--but Dame Mary of Elizabethan days, who boarded the Spanish ship in a true Elizabethan spirit and took her cargo home to Arwenack.[11]

Although this harbour “ys a havyng very notable and famose,” it lacks the charm of Fowey and Dartmouth; and it is only in the upper reaches that the Fal has the beauty of the Dart. It is wisest to start from Falmouth. The hills at first are low and the estuary wide; but when Carrick Roads have narrowed into King Harry’s Reach and the river sweeps past us between the rolling woods, we remember Hawker singing of his native Cornwall and “her streams that march in music to the sea.” We take our winding way past the ferry to which King Harry never came, past many alluring creeks, past Tregothnan--the home but not the house of Admiral Boscawen--and round the green banks of Woodbury, till we see Truro’s white cathedral against the sky.

When we finally drive away from Falmouth our most prudent course is to go out of the town past the recreation-ground, and take the road that leads to the Lizard by Constantine; for though the longer road by Helston is by far the better of the two, there are dark whispers heard in this neighbourhood, sometimes, of measured distances and other perils. We see on the left the by-road to Penjerrick, where Caroline Fox wrote her delightful journal and charmed so many men of mark; pass through Constantine, a village of solid stone houses, and thatch, and gardens, and run down into Gweek. It was here that Hereward the Wake twice rescued the Cornish princess from unpleasant suitors. The high green walls of oak and ash that Hereward saw are further down the river, but this is the head of the tide where King Alef’s palace stood, and the champion of England slew the giant, and where now a brisk trade is carried on in bone-manure. Whatever may be the truth about Hereward, the last fact admits of no doubt.

The miles that lead to Lizard Town are of the sort that one remembers ever after with a thrill. It is rather a complex thrill, with contributions from the past and from the future and from the exhilarating present. The Marconi towers, slim fingers pointing skyward, are not without their influence on our pulses, with their hints of future conquests, and their message that the fairy-tale of to-day is the science of to-morrow. The road is broad and smooth and level, and lies between low hedges, and has the straightness that the motorist loves; beyond the waving tamarisks a flat land of green and purple stretches away to the horizon; for the first time in many days the car speeds over the plain at the pace she loves best; and the sea-wind rushes to meet us with its story of the Spanish Armada.

We slow down at last in Lizard Town, where the squalid little houses are smothered in flowers fit for a palace, blazing draperies of scarlet and rose--the climbing geraniums that in Cornwall grow, not as a favour, but because they enjoy it. Here it is perhaps best to leave the car, though it is perfectly possible to drive to the foot of the lighthouse, where there is room to turn. The first lighthouse that stood on this spot was built by one of the Killigrews of Arwenack, to the great displeasure of the people. He was robbing them of God’s grace, they naïvely complained--meaning the spoils of the wrecked.

Beyond the lighthouse are grassy slopes where it is good to sit alone among the sea-pinks. To right and left are long headlands and curving bays; on every side are masses of grey rock crowned with golden lichen; and beyond them the sea comes laughing from the South. And on a sudden we see the mighty crescent of the Armada, seven miles wide, sweep up the Channel to its doom, with the smoke of many guns flying before the gale, and with every man upon his knees.

It is a disappointment to learn that the track to Kynance Cove is too sandy for motors; but only a few miles further along the coast is the cove of Mullion, which is easily reached on quite a good road. Those who know Kynance declare it is more attractive than Mullion, but I think there must be some mistake about this, because it is not possible to be more attractive than Mullion. From the tiny harbour with its two sheltering piers a natural tunnel--passable only when the tide is low--leads through the rock to the sands of a little bay. Here the cliffs are high and wild, and masses of black rock rise sheer from the ripples of a blue-green sea, and in the caves the “serpentine” stones are red and green and pink and full of sparkles, like the stones of Aladdin’s cave. One can see at a glance that the superstition about Kynance Cove is quite without foundation.

From Mullion village we may either return to the Helston road at once, or drop down into Poldhu Cove, close under the Marconi towers. Hence we must climb on a good surface the very steep hill to Cury; for Gunwalloe is a place to avoid, although much treasure, they say, lies hidden under the sands there, buried by long dead buccaneers. It is an unfortunate circumstance that the road is liable to be buried under the sands too.

The fine, wide road to Helston passes through dull country, but the little town itself, with its steep hill and many trees, must wear a brave air on every eighth of May, when the townsfolk are “up as soon as any day, O!” and dance off into the fields

“For to fetch the summer home, The summer and the may, O!”

This Furry Day has been corrupted into Flora Day; but Gilbert derives it very plausibly from _foray_, and declares that it celebrates a defeat of the Saxons, who attempted a raid on this coast. The original ceremonial included a foray on the neighbours’ houses.