Читать книгу The Cornish Coast (South) , and the Isles of Scilly - Charles G. Harper - Страница 6

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The old town of Fowey, "Foy," as it is called, and was in old times often spelled, has a stirring history, resembling that of Dartmouth, even as its appearance and situation are reminiscent of that Devonshire port. Leland tells us that "The glorie of Fowey rose by the warres in King Edward I. and III. and Henry V.'s day, partly by feats of warre, partly by pyracie, and so waxing rich, fell all to marchaundize." The "Fowey Gallants," for such was the title by which the seamen of the port were known, or by which perhaps they styled themselves, were not good men to cross, and they had a high and haughty temper that brought them into conflict even with men of Rye and Winchelsea. It seems that ships were expected to salute on passing those Cinque Ports, but the men of Fowey refused, and being called to account for it, beat the Sussex men, and further added to their offences by adding the arms of Rye and Winchelsea to their own; an indignity felt acutely in those times, when one might perhaps pick a man's pocket with less offence than to assume his armorial bearings. The men of Fowey were well known and dreaded by merchant vessels in the Channel; for, no matter the nationality, they practised piracy on all and sundry. They landed, time and again, on the French coast when we were at peace with France, and plundered, and burnt, and killed. The French stood this for some time, but were on several occasions obliged to fit out expeditions in revenge; and no one who reads of the ways of those shocking bounders can feel in the least sorry when he reads how the foreigners landed one night, in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and fired Fowey, and killed several of the townsmen. The lesson could not, however, be sufficiently enforced, for the tough Fowegians rallied and drove the French again aboard.

At length, after centuries of turbulence, the privileges of Fowey were taken away, about 1553, and given to Dartmouth, which itself was a nest of pirates and buccaneers. But a good deal of fight seems to have been left in Fowey, and its sailors in the time of Charles the Second rendered good service against the Dutch.

The houses of Fowey press closely against one another, and line the water very narrowly, and its "streets" are rather lanes. The greatest glory of the town is the fine church of St. Finbar, whose tall pinnacled tower, built of Pentewan granite, yellow with age, is elaborately panelled. Behind it rise the battlemented and still more elaborately panelled towers of Place (not Place "House" as it is often redundantly styled), seat of the Treffry family. But most of the old-time houses have in these later years been ruthlessly destroyed, and the lanes of Fowey are becoming as commonplace as a London suburb. Nay, even more, a suburb of London would be ashamed of the tasteless, plasterful houses and vulgarian shop-fronts that have lately come into existence here. It is a sorrowful fact that the West Country is the last stronghold of plaster and bad taste and that things are now done here, of which the home counties grew ashamed a generation ago. Lately the old "Lugger" inn, almost the last picturesque bit of domestic architecture in Fowey, has been rebuilt. Readers of "Q's" stories of "Troy Town," by which, of course, Fowey is meant, will not, in short, now find their picturesque expectations realised.

FOWEY: ST. FINBAR'S CHURCH, AND "PLACE."

The last warlike experiences of Fowey, apart from the amusing antics of the volunteers enrolled to withstand the expected French invasion under Napoleon, celebrated by "Q," were obtained in the operations that included the surrender of the Parliamentary army here in 1644. The visit of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1846 is celebrated in a misguided way, by a granite obelisk of doleful aspect on the quay. It would add greatly to the gaiety of Fowey if it were disestablished.

St. Finbar, to whom the fine church is dedicated, was Bishop of Cork. He is said to have been buried in an earlier church on this site. The existing church, built 1336—1466, is one of the few in Cornwall possessing a clerestory.

There are interesting monuments of the Rashleighs of Menabilly here; the old family that came from Rashleigh in mid-Devon, but even then bore a Cornish chough in their curious and mysterious arms. Their heraldic shield includes, among other charges, the letter T, but the meaning of it being there is unknown, even to the Rashleighs. The family formerly owned Fowey. It was their Parliamentary pocket-borough, and only their nominees could be elected. But this valuable privilege passed from them in 1813, I know not how. It suggests, however, that the Rashleigh punning motto, Nec temere, nec timide,—i.e. "Neither rashly nor timidly," had in some way ceased to regulate their doings.

The Treffrys, too, are well represented in monuments and epitaphs, as it is only right they should be, considering that their house, Place, adjoining the church, has been their home for many centuries. They were settled here long before the Rashleighs, but are now really extinct in the male line. The great J. T. Treffry, builder of the harbour at Par and constructor of the Cornwall Minerals Railway, and other works, was an Austen before he assumed the name by which he is better known.

A former vicar of Fowey, the Rev. Dr. Treffry, who flourished in the early part of the nineteenth century, before character had ceased in people, and every man had his own noticeable peculiarities, was outspoken to a degree. It is recorded that few dared let the offertory-bag pass without a contribution, for if he noticed the omission his voice would be heard in a stage whisper saying, "Can't you spring a penny? I paid you an account last week."

No method of exploring the country on either side of the Fowey River is to be compared, for ease and beauty, with that of taking boat on the rising tide, and so being borne smoothly along those exquisite six miles to Lostwithiel. Here, and for a long way up the estuary, is deep water and safe anchorage for large vessels, as the pretty sight of weatherworn ships anchored over against Bodinnick shows; their tall masts and graceful spars contrasting with the wooded hills, and hinting of strange outlandish climes to the nestling hamlets.

Bodinnick is, like Polruan, a ferry village, opposite Fowey. It looks its best from the water. A mile up, on the same side, a creek opens to St. Veep, a sequestered church dedicated to a saint called by that name. Her real name was Wennapa, aunt of St. Winnow, and sister of Gildas the historian.

The Cornish way of dealing with saints' names may seem to some delightfully intimate, and to others a profane familiarity, almost as bad as it would be to style St. John "Jack," but the West Country saints are to the Evangelists and to the major saints what Irish and Scotch peers are to peers of the United Kingdom; or perhaps, better still, what Knights Bachelors are to Dukes. I do not mean to say that they have not seats among the rest of the sanctified, but they are decidedly of a lower grade; a good deal more human and less austere than the great and shining ones. And when we find, as often we do find among the Irish, Welsh, native Cornish, or Breton saints, that entire families have attained to that state, we do right to look shyly upon their title.

Further up the Fowey River, on our left side, we come to Golant and the church of St. Samson, or Sampson, dedicated to a sixth-century Breton saint, who early fled his country and was educated in Wales, and then settled in Cornwall. Finally he returned to Brittany (when he thought it quite safe to do so), and died Bishop of Dôl.

Passing Penquite, which means "Pen coed"—i.e. "head of the woods"—a creek opens on the right, to Lerrin, a picturesque hamlet on the hillside, where the creek comes to an end, and the futile comings and goings of the sea die away in ooze. A prehistoric earthwork, running inland between Lerrin and Looe, is locally attributed to the Devil, in the rhyme:

"One day the Devil, having nothing to do,

Built a great hedge from Lerrin to Looe."

"Hedge," to any one from the Home Counties, indicates a boundary formed by growing bushes. In Cornwall it is often either a rough stone or earthen bank.

Above Lerrin Creek is St. Winnow, a fine old church standing by the waterside. St. Winnoe is an obscure saint. He was son of Gildas, the pessimist historian of the woes of Britain at the coming of the Saxons. There is some good old stained glass in St. Winnow church, and an inscribed font (inscription not decipherable).

ST. WINNOW.

A curious anagram-epitaph on one William Sawle, who died in 1651, may be seen here. It has been restored of late years by one of his collateral descendants:

"William Sawle, Annagr. I was ill; am wel.

When I was sick, most men did deeme me ill.

If I had liv'd I should have beene soe still.

Prais'd be the Lord, that in the Heavn's doth dwell,

Who hath receiv'd my Sovle, now I am wel."

This perhaps plumbs the depths of tortured conceits, with its back and forth play upon "William Sawle," "I am well," and the resemblance of "Soul" to "Sawle": a closer resemblance in the speech of the West Country than it would appear in print to be. Any day the stranger in Devon and Cornwall may, for instance, hear the common salutation, "Well, how be 'ee t'-daa, my dear sawle?"

"Aw, pretty tidily, thank 'ee."

There is no village of St. Winnow, only a farmhouse and a vicarage, at the foot of a hill, bordered by a noble beech avenue.

About a mile above St. Winnow, the narrowing stream comes to Lostwithiel quay, where the navigable Fowey River ends.

LOSTWITHIEL CHURCH.

"Lostwithiel!" I like that name. It is musical. To repeat it two or three times to one's self is an ineffable satisfaction. One is immediately seized, on hearing it, with a desire to proceed to the town of Lostwithiel. Romance, surely, lives there. Foolish country folk in the neighbourhood, noting that great heights rise all around the little town, say the meaning of its name is "Lost-within-the-hill." I blush for them, for it means nothing of the sort; but who wants to attach a meaning to that melody? Not I, at any rate, and I care little whether it be properly "Les Gwithiel," the Palace in the Wood, or the "Supreme Court." The old palace indicated is the ancient Duchy House, a seat of the early Dukes of Cornwall, who also had their Stannary courts, that is to say, their tin-mining tribunals, here. The buildings, much modernised, in part remain; and up in the valley of the Fowey, one mile further inland, are the remains of their stronghold, Restormel, properly "Les-tormel," Castle.

There is not much of Lostwithiel. Past the railway station, and over the nine-arched, partly thirteenth-century bridge across the river Fowey, and you are in a town of about two thousand inhabitants, which looks as though it accommodated only half that number. Yet, small though it be, it is divided into two parts, Lostwithiel proper, and Bridgend, and has a Mayor and Corporation. The central feature and great glory of Lostwithiel is the lovely octangular stone spire and lantern of its parish church of St. Bartholomew, a work of the Decorated, fourteenth-century period of architecture, before which most architects very properly abase themselves in humble admiration, while many hasten to adopt its beautiful lines for their own church designs. Lostwithiel spire has, in especial, been the model for the spires of many latter-day Wesleyan and Congregational chapels.

FONT, LOSTWITHIEL.

The description of architecture without the aid of illustration is a vain and futile thing, and what the likeness of this work is let the drawing herewith attempt to show. The tower itself is an earlier building, of the thirteenth century, but tower and spire taken together are of no great height—about 100 feet. The effective tracery of the eight windows surmounted by gables is all of one pattern, except a window on the north side, whose feature is a wheel. The font is one of the most remarkable in Cornwall. It seems to be of the fourteenth century. Its five legs are of different shape. The strangest feature of its eight sculptured sides, which include a most clumsy and almost shapeless representation of the Crucifixion, is a curious attempt at a hunting scene, rendered in very bold relief. A huntsman on horseback is shown, holding a disproportionately large hawk on one upraised hand, and a queer-looking dog bounds on in front, in a ludicrous attitude. This font is historically interesting, as figuring in the disgraceful doings of the Parliamentary troops, who in 1644 occupied Lostwithiel and used the church as a stable; baptizing a horse at it, and calling it "Charles," as Symonds, the diarist trooper, tells us, "in contempt of His sacred Majesty."

Probably one of the longest leases on record is alluded to, on a stone in the wall of a shed at the corner of North Street and Taprell's Lane, in the inscription: "Walter Kendall of Lostwithiel was founder of this house in 1638. Hath a lease for three thousand years, which hath beginning the 29th of September, Anno 1632."