FINGAR or Guigner is noticed by Anselm before, catching the sun- S. Fingar, beams of history from the mirror of tradition, catching them much the same as distorted and discoloured, yet still catching them, as landed about the Guinear. year 460, with a large company of Christians from the shores of Ireland, at the mouth of the Hayle. The position of the parish denominated Gwinear at present from him, St. Wynyar, St. Wyner, or St. Gwyner in the last Valor, and St. Wyner in the first, answers very singularly to this descent of sainted persons upon our shores: it lies immediately contiguous to the ancient and present Rivier. He took up his residence at it, as Iä did at Pendinas; and therefore lent his appellation to that, as she lent hers to this.

But what became of " his sister PIALA ?" To ascertain the point we S. Piala, must take a large range in local intelligence, and move in a kind of the same as cometary orbit to our focus, collecting and diffusing light as we sweep Phillack. Philley and along.

In all countries the vallies have been inhabited before the hills, as enriched by the washings of soil from the sides, and as lying more sheltered from the stroke of the winds. In Cornwall they would be peculiarly so, as the land is exposed by its position to peculiar violence of wind, and as the old houses, in consequence of that, are almost all in the bottoms. Thus the parishes of Veryan and Ruan Lanyhorne, each of which has its church in a valley, would there be inhabited before the high grounds to the west of them; those parishes naturally spread up the hills about them, but kept the low lands near their houses for corn and hay grounds, and used the distant grounds above for sheepwalks. At the top of those hills actually lay a large range of land. adjoining to the two parishes upon their western side, but bounded by the Fal and the Channel on the other side. These hills reared their heads for ages in one extensive heath, belonging assuredly to both; the northern part to Ruan Lanyhorne, and the southern to Veryan; and they were naturally denominated Rós, the mountain or the heath; and were as naturally denominated when the English came to settle among

Roseland.

us

us in 936, ROSE-LAND; nor are we here deceiving ourselves, as critics often are, in playing with the meteors of etymology. Fact comes in to raise surmise into certainty. Hence only could have originated that traditionary fondness, which is still so predominant in the region, for Roseland mutton in preference to all other. The first parish probably that was formed upon this Rós, or sheep-walk, was one, which therefore took the appellation of it, is denominated Eglos-rós, or Heath Church, in the first Valor, and has an estate of the same appellation, lying close to the church at present. Thus, in the third of Henry IV. we find the heir of one Joceus Dynnan possessed of a fee in Trelewith and Eglos-ros*. And what shews the new parish to have been formed out of Ruan Lanyhorne, as the old, there are two fields titheable in common betwixt them; the Higher Congier paying two sheaves to the old and one to the new, while the Lower Congier pays sheaf for sheaf to both. Hence we may learn to wonder at the folly of foreigners, who have turned the name of Roseland into a compliment to the soil, have honoured the mountain above the valley, for fruitfulness, and interpreted a mere range of heath into a garden of roses. Hence too we may learn to smile at the equal folly of the inhabitants, who still pretend to fancy the Roseland mutton, just as the people of Bristol do the Welsh; so continue the language, which was used when that mutton was fed, like this, upon the heathy mountain; yet still affect to continue it, when the mountain is enclosed like the valley, and the heath is formed into rich pastures †. The northern point of the heath being thus graced with a church, and the adjoining parts of the heath being thus moulded into a district by themselves, a chapelry first, and a parish

*Carew, 44: "Hæres Jocei Dynnan ten. in Eglosroset (Eglos-ros), ac in Trelewith, "I feod."

ተ Their sheep thrive exceedingly," notes Borlase, 82, concerning the Sylley isles, "the grass on the commons being short and dry, and full of the same little snail, which "gives so good a relish to the Sennan and Phillac mutton in the west of Cornwall." The same snail probably abounded on the Rôs, or heath, as it still abounds in some fields of the parsonage at Ruan Lanyhorne; but is generally destroyed by cultivation of the land, though now and then it escapes destruction; upon one field it abounds so much, in spite of all cultivation, as to be felt frequently crashing under the foot in walking.

4

afterwards;

afterwards; Eglos-rôs, or the Heath Church, now looks down from a mountainous eminence, upon the well-watered vale of Ruan Lanyhorne at its feet +.

About the same period probably, that is, about a couple of centuries after this religious descent of the Irish upon our coast, such part of the mountain-heath as lay most adjacent to Veryan, was moulded equally into a parish; and from the royal saint, lately deceased there, was denominated St. Gerens. That this church and the church of Eglos-ros were formed originally about the same period, is suggested not merely by the regular analogy of operation at the sides of Veryan and Ruan Lanyhorne, but by the striking similarity in the site of each to the other's, and the opposition as striking in the sites of both to the sites of their mother-churches; these being lodged in the warm bosoms of two vales, and those perching boldly upon the windy summits of two hills, Eglosros upon the northern promontory of the whole, and Gerens upon the southern. But that experience, which had originally driven our ancestors into the shelter of a valley for the mothers, seems to have soon beaten them back into it again for the daughters. The daring deviation could not be recalled indeed; but it was not repeated, in the two parishes that successively occupied the remainder of this tract of hills. The third parish won from the waste, appears to have been that little intake to the west of Gerens, which now constitutes the petty district of St. Anthony; but seems from its very pettiness to have once constituted a part of Gerens district. It seems also, from its participation with Gerens, in being detached from the main body of the county, as to the spiritual jurisdiction over it, being made independent of the archdeacon, and subjected immediately to the bishop himself*. And it seems once more, from that

How directly then, in contradiction to fact, does Mr. Tonkin in MS. interpret Eglosrôs, "a church in a valley?" Just as directly as he interprets Roseland the name of a congeries of hills, rising one upon the back of the other, with scarce a gully between them; into a "circuit of land in the vale, with a promontory?”

It asks discretion e'en in running mad.

* In the first Valor is "Taxatio peculiaris jurisdictionis domini episcopi." There, under "Decanatus de Penryn," are equally Gerens and St. Anthony.

VOL. II.

D

extraordinary

extraordinary right, which it once possessed, which is still continued derivatively from it, and of which I know no parallel in the whole island; a right to half the revenues of Gerens rectory itself. As a chapel to Gerens it might take a part of its parish, and might receive half of its income. It was thus made a parish, I believe, and thus had a rector; as we know it to be at present, and find it to have had formerly. But it was so made, and so had, I also believe, at the very period in which it was annexed to that free chapel of the king's before the Conquest, that erection of one of our Saxon sovereigns, the collegiate church of Plympton in Devonshire. To this it was annexed, in all probability, at the conquest of Cornwall in 936; when only could an English college come to hold possessions in Roseland, when Athelstan assuredly attached the new rectory to his own or a predecessor's college, and when he made it fit for the college's acceptance by exerting the paramount prerogative of a conquest, in transferring half the endowment of the church to the chapel. To such a transfer, no right, no power is competent, but that which absorbs all power, all right in itself, the englutting authority of conquest †. Two canons of the college now lived in a kind of parsonage-house, at St. Anthony; one of them as half-rector of Gerens, and the other as whole-rector of St. Anthony. But the college being turned into a priory in the beginning of the twelfth century, the parsonage-house became a cell to a couple of monks; one of them, as half-rector, having 46s. 8d. a year, the other, as whole-rector, enjoying 6os. od. at the making of the first Valor. Thus did the right sink with the possessions into a lay-fee, at the Reformation *. And at last, probably

+ In Wharton's Anglia Sacra, ii. 470, is the only case at all parallel with this, yet different from it. "Inveniens in ecclesiâ de Haiâ," says Giraldus Cambrensis, in his account of the archiepiscopal visitation through Wales,-" militem quendam fratrem,” the patron probably of the living, " personæ tam oblationes ad altare quàm decimas exte"riores et obventiones omnes cum personá dimidiantem et ex æquo participantem; statim "enormitatem illam, sed non tamen absque difficultate et militis mulctâ ae comminatione, "delevit."

* Leland's Itin. iii. 30: "A celle of S. Antonie longging to Plympton priory; and here, "of late dayes, lay 2 chanons of Plympton priory." P. 43: " Plymtoun a collegiate "chirch, alias capella libera domini regis before the Conquest." P. 45: "William Warwist

bishop

bably in the eleventh or twelfth century, certainly before the Valor of the thirteenth, the whole circuit of the heath was taken within the pale of cultivation, and formed into distinct districts for religion, by extending the principle progressively to the west; thus erecting on the only remainder that church, which, in the second Valor, is denominated St. Just's in Roseland, under the valuation of 371. os. 10d. but in the first is called only "Ecclesia de Sancto Justo," with the valuation of 41. 68. 8d.; while Eglos-ros is charged at 57. yet recharged at 15/. 6s. 0дd.; and Ruan Lanyhorne, having a parish much smaller than either, is estimated at 57. 6s. 8d. nor rose higher than to 127. afterwards. The primary rate of estimation bespeaks the primary heathiness of the ground within the parish of St. Just; as the secondary denotes the rapid progress made in cultivation there, through two centuries and

८८

"bishop of Excestre, displeased with the chanons or prebendaries of a fre chapelle of the "fundation of the Saxon kinges,-found meanes to dissolve their college, wherin was a deane or provost and 4 prebendaries, with other ministers. Then he set up at Plympton a "priorie of canons-regular." In Henry's Valor, St. Anthony's is said to be only a chapel to Gerens. Á gross mistake! In Pope Nicholas's we find, "Ecclesia de Sancto Antonnio "in Rosland lxs." equally with "ecclesia de Sancto Gerendo ;" and this note to the latter, "Portio rectoris ibidem xlvis. viiid. Portio prioris Sancti Antonini in ecclesiâ de "Sancto Gerundo, videlicet xlvis. viiid." or (as another, the Harleian, Valor reads) "rectoris ecclesiæ Antonii ibidem xlvis. viiid." We thus see the origin of a right, which now appears so singular a secularization of church income, but which is made more singular by the lay-owner's extension of it, not merely to a moiety of the settled permanent income, the tithes and the glebe; but to half of those offerings at Easter, which are purely voluntary in their amount beyond the two-pences, prescribed by law, which, in the two-pences themselves, are purely the fruits of the rector's personal labours in administering the eucharist at Easter, and to half even of the still more contingent fruits of his labours, in burying, in marrying, or in churching. To none of these can the lay-owner have the slightest right, his right being to nothing contingent, to nothing paid for personal offices, to nothing beyond what was substantial enough to be estimated in a Valor. But, when the rectorial church of St. Anthony is said, in the second Valor, to be merely a chapel to Gerens, a reference is probably made to its reduced condition under the plundering hands of our reformers; when it was deprived of all its endowments, as well as its house: it now possesses only a petty annuity of rol. a year from its lay-patron, and has divine service once a fortnight only, from the rector or curate of Gerens, as the stationary clergyman nearest to it, one, therefore, sure to be lowest in his terms: so nearly is the little church of St. Anthony brought back to what it seems to have been originally, a mere chapel to Gerens.