Motor Tours in the West Country 11

Motor Tours in the West Country 11

Very reluctantly we climb out of the gorge and take our way to

Lostwithiel by Pelynt and Lanreath, on a road of variable surface and

everlasting hills. In Pelynt church is the restored crozier of Bishop

Trelawny, whose threatened death, as we all know, determined twenty

thousand Cornishmen to “know the reason why.” There are various monuments

here too, some beautiful and all interesting, of Trelawnys and Bullers;

and at Lanreath a lovely screen and a carved wood cover to a Norman font,

and on the south wall a painted copy of Charles I.’s letter of thanks to

the men of Cornwall. From the top of the first steep hill beyond Lanreath

we see the rounded outlines of Braddock Downs before us, and at their

feet the woods of Boconnoc. Over those grassy hills the soldiers of

the Parliament were pursued by the royalists. “They were possest of a

pretty rising ground,” wrote Sir Bevill Grenville to his wife upon the

day of the fight, “… and we planted ourselves upon such another against

them within muskett shott; and we saluted each other with bulletts

about two hours or more.… We chast them diverse miles … and we lost not

a man. So I rest yours ever.” A year later these slopes were stained

again--but not so darkly as the royalist honour--when the infantry of the

Parliament, having surrendered, were shot down as they passed the King’s

army unarmed, and were robbed of clothes and horses. The King himself at

that time was staying at Lord Mohun’s place down there among the trees.

We pass one of the gates presently, and skirt the park where Bevill

Grenville’s men, “upon my lord Mohun’s kind motion,” were quartered by

good fires under the hedge.

 

This park that we see over the fence has been owned by Mortains and

Courtenays, Mohuns and Pitts. The last Lord Mohun did not, I fancy, spend

much of his time under these trees--preferring those of the Mall and of

Richmond Park. When, after surviving three trials for murder, he died

at last in his famous duel with the Duke of Hamilton, his widow sold

Boconnoc to Thomas Pitt for half the sum, it is said, that he received

from the Regent Orléans for the Pitt Diamond. It was here that the great

Lord Chatham was born.

 

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.

 

[Illustration: RESTORMEL CASTLE.]

 

“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.”

 

[Illustration: BODINNICK FERRY.]

 

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.

 

[Illustration: PONT PILL, FOWEY.]

 

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 Cel