The Story of an Ancient Parish Part 5

Ward.

[40] See the Article in "Encyclopaedia Britannica" by Mr. W. K. Sullivan.

[41] Dr. Edward Lhuyd, "Archaeologia Britannica" 1707, quoted by Mr.

Jenner in his "Handbook of the Cornish Language."

[42] From the Gwavas MS. in the British Museum. A letter from John Boson, of Newlyn, a Cornish-speaking Cornishman, written in the Cornish language. A copy of this letter was given to the Author by Henry Jenner, Esq.

RECENT TIMES.

CHAPTER V.

On the accession of Charles II. the intruding Puritan divine James Innes was quickly ejected. He found refuge for the remainder of his life in the household of the Earl of Lauderdale. It would seem that at the time of the ejection of Innes, William Orcharde had become too old and infirm to resume his office as vicar of Breage, and thus it came about that James Trewinnard, a member of the ancient family long settled at Trewinnard, in the Parish of St. Erth, succeeded to the benefice in 1661. He also held the living of Mawgan conjointly with that of Breage, according to the lax custom of the times. On his death, which took place at Mawgan, the parish in which he had chosen to reside, he was succeeded at Breage by Henry Huthnance. Judging by his name Henry Huthnance was of local origin, and at any rate was a connection of the family of Robinson, of Nansloe; he lies buried in Breage churchyard at the east end of the Chancel wall, between his predecessor, the learned and saintly Francis Harvey, and one of his successors, William Eusticke, of whom more anon. On the death of Henry Huthnance, in 1720, James Trewinnard, son of the former inc.u.mbent of that name, became vicar; like his father, he held jointly the two benefices of Breage and Mawgan. He was a graduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was succeeded in 1722 by Edward Collins, bachelor of laws. This inc.u.mbent, like several of his predecessors, was also dowered with the living of St. Erth. Edward Collins was the son of the Reverend John Collins, vicar of Redruth, and was closely connected with many of the local county families. Indeed, it may be said of practically all the inc.u.mbents onwards from the Reformation to the middle of the last century that weighty local connections were their chief pa.s.sport to preferment. A mournful interest attaches to his successor, Henry Eusticke. He came of the old Cornish family of Eusticke, of Nancealvan, and had married Mary Borlase, daughter of the then vicar of Madron. He was a man of undoubted learning and literary attainments, and an acknowledged authority on the ancient Cornish language, and did much during his not very long life in collecting written fragments of the ancient tongue.[43] He also published after the custom of the times[44] a collection of verses and epigrams. Unfortunately for Henry Eusticke, he lived in different times from those of his easy-going predecessors. The age had begun to grow impatient of easy-going cultured clerical somnolence. John Wesley, like other great men, seems to have been a symptom rather than the cause of the deep spiritual ferment a.s.sociated with his name. The stirrings were already in the souls of the people; all that was needed was some pa.s.sing cause to set these forces in motion. If proof were needed it is only necessary to realise how incapable John Wesley found himself of guiding the movement into the rigid mould that he had designed for it. The reaper can only gather in the harvest when it is ready to his sickle: he cannot create the harvest.

I give John Wesley's experience at Breage in his own words from his diary; they do not make pleasant reading because they present the spectacle of two good men utterly incapable of understanding each other's position. "I had given no notice of my preaching here, but seeing the poor flock from every side, I could not send them away empty.

So I preached at a small distance from the house and besought them to consider our Great High Priest, who is pa.s.sed into the heavens, and none opened his mouth, for the lions of Breage are now changed into lambs.

That they were so fierce ten years ago is no wonder, since the wretched Minister told them from the pulpit, 'Seven years before I resigned my fellows.h.i.+p John Wesley was expelled from the College for a base child and had been quite mazed ever since,' that all the Methodists in their private Societies put out the lights, etc., etc., with abundance more of the same kind. But a year or two since it was observed he grew thoughtful and melancholy, and about nine months ago went into his house and hanged himself."

After reading this indictment of poor Mr. Eusticke, a Fellow of his College and a learned man, one naturally asks oneself the question, who were the informants of John Wesley as to this wild tirade from the pulpit? The writer was once informed in all good faith by an old woman that a clerical neighbour in a former parish, given to preaching on Christian evidences, had stated from the pulpit his belief "That there was no G.o.d at all, and that he would never get her to hold such a belief." The writer is inclined to put these two statements in the same category, whilst attributing them perhaps to a very different att.i.tude of mind. With all his saintly enthusiasm, John Wesley seems to have been, like many other saintly men, of a somewhat credulous disposition; and his attributing the death of Mr. Eusticke to the fact that he opposed himself to him, to say the least, suggests a somewhat unbalanced condition of mind.

On the other hand, to the lat.i.tudinarian and philosophic Henry Eusticke, John Wesley would no doubt appear as a lawless and erratic High Church Clergyman, who out of pure self-will, in defiance of the orders of his Bishop, went about obtruding himself into parishes where he had no jurisdiction, and generally turning the world upside down. It was enthusiasm, however, and not cold moralities, coupled with a Dr. Panglos att.i.tude towards all const.i.tuted things, as making for the best of all possible worlds, that was going to change the hearts of the people. The pity of it all is that the mutual prejudices between John Wesley and his brother clergy ended in one more cruel rent in the seamless garb of the Church--in making the holiest aspirations of the human heart, which should have been the chiefest strength of the Church, into a source of discord and division.

In speaking of John Wesley one is naturally reminded of another saintly character, the tenderest episodes in whose career are closely bound up with the parish of Breage. John Wesley confined his labours to people of his own race and language; Henry Martyn sought to become the Apostle of India and Persia. The connection of Henry Martyn with Breage was due to Lydia Grenfell, the lady to whom he was engaged, having made her home to a large extent with her brother-in-law, a Mr. Wylliams, who for many years acted as curate-in-charge of Breage, for a non-resident pluralist inc.u.mbent. Henry Martyn thus came to pa.s.s many happy days in what is now the old Vicarage at Breage, previous to his departure for India. In his diary he pathetically tells us how he proposed spending the last Sunday in England at St. Hilary with Lydia Grenfell, but early in the morning of that day a messenger arrived from Falmouth with the news that the troops.h.i.+p in which he was sailing was about to put to sea with all possible speed. He immediately started from St. Hilary by road, pa.s.sing through Breage on his way. There is a touching pathos in the statement in his diary that he anxiously waited on deck till the s.h.i.+p in which he sailed pa.s.sed the Lizard Point, that he might search the twilight coast for the familiar landmarks linked with the tenderest a.s.sociations of his life--one of the most prominent of which would be the old grey tower of Breage Church, visible on clear days far out to sea--but, alas! as the s.h.i.+p rounded the Lizard the whole coast lay embedded in thick banks of cloud, and as the darkness fell and the s.h.i.+p forged out to sea this lonely pioneer of the faith descended to his cabin, and poured out his soul in prayer, that in the distant East, to which he was voyaging, he might win kingdoms for Christ. This first of the great modern English Missionaries was never fated to see the home of his youth again; his lot was not to win kingdoms for Christ, but to find a martyr's grave in Persia. Lydia Grenfell rests at Breage under the shadow of the old grey Church on the hill overlooking the sea.

With the death of the second Earl of G.o.dolphin in the middle of the eighteenth century, rank and fas.h.i.+on took leave of the parish of Breage, and the chief events in its annals became in the future mining speculations, with occasional wrecks and alarms of invasion.

During the summer months, in the time of Sidney G.o.dolphin, G.o.dolphin House had been the constant rendezvous of the leading families of the County, and a great centre of social life. The great Minister whilst in residence at G.o.dolphin had relays of messengers, who brought on his despatches from Exeter--as far as that town they seem to have been entrusted to the ordinary post; in those days, it may be added, no regular post linked Cornwall with London, Exeter being the extreme postal limit of the West. To G.o.dolphin House, therefore, during the short residences of the Lord High Treasurer of England, came men in search of the crumbs of patronage that fell from the Minister's table, or to hear news of the outer world, or of what transpired at Court and who was likely to succeed on the Queen's demise, and how it fared with Marlborough in the great war, many no doubt of the varied throng having relatives serving under him.

During the Napoleonic wars a Signalling Station was established on Tregoning Hill, and anxious watch kept over the seaward horizon for French Fleets which never hove in sight, whilst tradition says rumours of invasion from time to time stirred the public mind to fear.

But the real events in the sequestered life of the district, beyond the mere fluctuations in the prosperity of the tin trade, which stirred the pulses of public interest were the harvest of s.h.i.+pwrecks which the winter storms yielded each year to the inhabitants. The merits and values of the cargoes of the different wrecks were never-failing topics of interest round the firesides, memories of which still linger in the minds of the aged. The invention of steam told sadly against the value of this annual winter harvest: now it is steam and steam trawlers that ruin the local fis.h.i.+ng industry, then it was steam striking a death blow at the local industry of wrecking. Old men have told the writer a legend, told to them by men of a still older generation, of one of the first steamers to appear on the coast. The inhabitants concluded with regard to it that it was a s.h.i.+p on fire, and consequently followed it in ever increasing numbers along the coast, anxious to partic.i.p.ate in the good things in the hold of the s.h.i.+p when her crew beaten by the flames drove her on sh.o.r.e. The establishment of the Wolf Lighthouse within comparatively recent years, the fitful gleam of whose red eye is clearly visible from our sh.o.r.es far out to sea, has practically brought to an end the dismal tale of wrecks and drowned sailors that each year produced. Until well on into the last century it was the custom to bury drowned sailors in trenches along the sh.o.r.e; the place where a number of these unfortunate mariners lie heaped together in one common burial, without religious rites, is still marked by the broken conformation of the ground. From the fact that drowned mariners and voyagers received this unhonoured sepulture, our Church Burial Registers are of no avail as a guide to the history of the innumerable wrecks on our six miles strip of coast. Not till after 1850 do we find any record of the burial of those cast up by the sea in the Churchyard.

The Church Registers for the year 1867 record one of those tragedies of the sea, shrouded in mystery which can never be unravelled. In the failing light of the evening of the 7th January of that year, in the midst of a heavy gale, a large sailing s.h.i.+p was seen off the coast at Rinsey by several people; the gathering darkness soon shrouded her from the eyes of the few watchers. She was never seen again, next morning the sh.o.r.e was strewn with wreckage and with dead, but no fragment bearing the name of the ill-fated s.h.i.+p was ever found. She had evidently struck on a reef of rocks a mile or so from the coast, only to slip off them during the wild, tempestuous night and to disappear in the depths of the sea. This s.h.i.+p was evidently a foreign one, as most of the drowned were of dark and swarthy appearance.

After a valued inc.u.mbency of nearly forty years, the Reverend Maurice Pridmore was succeeded in 1889 by the Reverend Jocelyn Barnes, who, with self-denying generosity, set about the restoration of Breage and Germoe Churches. The work was taken in hand almost immediately after Mr.

Barnes' arrival, and was carried to its completion by Mr. Barnes at great personal cost to himself. In this labour of love he was greatly a.s.sisted by the eighth Duke of Leeds, the heir of the ancient House of G.o.dolphin, and the Right Honourable W. H. Smith, through whose instrumentality he had been appointed to the living, whilst the Paris.h.i.+oners and Landowners a.s.sisted in the good work according to their several abilities. Dilapidations in the fabrics of both Churches were carefully renovated, and the beautifully-carved oak screen and reredos placed in Breage Church. The reredos was the work of Belgian artists, and like the screen is composed of oak, whilst the carved figures which adorn it are of lime wood. The central group of figures represents the adoration of the Magi; in this group appear the figures of St. Breaca, St. Germoe and St. Corentine, the patron Saint of Cury, who is said to have been the first Bishop of Cornwall; the carved figures on either side of this main group represent St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Anselm and St. John the Baptist, each with their appropriate emblem; beneath these figures, each in its separate niche, are the beautifully carved figures of the four Evangelists, two on either side. On the screen, amongst numerous emblems of a religious character, occurs the G.o.dolphin crest, with the Cornish motto of the family, "_Frank ha leal ettoge_," linked with the motto of the saintly Margaret G.o.dolphin, "_Un Dieu un amy_."

The fragments of ancient gla.s.s, which, as previously stated, were found in the walled-up staircase leading to the rood loft, were once more placed in the windows after having been carefully pieced together. It was also during the restoration that the frescos adorning the walls of the Church were discovered, hidden beneath successive layers of whitewash that had acc.u.mulated upon them during the course of centuries.

The figures represented in the frescos are St. Christopher, bearing the infant Christ upon his shoulder, a large figure of our Lord with the crown of thorns, whilst the drops of blood caused by it are falling upon the instruments of daily village life and husbandry, thus symbolising that the business and tasks of our daily lives are blessed and sanctified by our Lord's sacrifice, and that no human work is too lowly to be recognised by the Saviour of the world; the two foregoing figures are in a wonderful state of preservation, whilst the other figures, which practically cover the walls of the body of the Church, and are in a more or less faded and obliterated condition, consist of representations of St. Hilary, St. Ambrose, St. Corentine, St. Michael, St. Giles, St. Germoe and St. Thomas of Canterbury.

At the time of the restoration, in making certain necessary excavations, large numbers of human bones in extremely shallow graves were discovered all over the interior of the Church. One large vault was found in the nave, a little in front of the site of the present pulpit, quite empty save for a handful of bones. This vault was about seven feet deep. All the remains found beneath the flooring of the Church were carefully buried under the superintendence of Mr. Barnes in this empty vault beneath a large cross of flowers; the vault was then carefully covered over with concrete. Amongst the bones deposited in this receptacle were the six skeletons mentioned in a former chapter, which were found lying side by side, their skulls perforated with bullet wounds.

In 1910 Mrs. Cornelia Carter, of Philadelphia, U.S.A., placed a clock in the Church tower to the memory of her husband, Mr. William Thornton Carter, who, leaving Breage as a comparatively poor lad, rose to a position of great wealth in America. In his latter years his memory often turned with affection to the far-off Cornish home of his youth, and he used to speak fondly of the old village Church with its far reaching view over the waters of the Atlantic, under the shadow of whose grey tower he pa.s.sed as a little lad each morning on his way to school.

At the same time were placed in the Church three windows to different members of the Carter family.

The gifts of the Carter family to the Church stirred the paris.h.i.+oners to the putting in order of the huge single bell, the largest in Cornwall, which had long hung mute in the belfry. The quaint motto "_Complures populo, suppet.i.t una Deo_," runs round the base of the bell, with the date of its casting in 1771. This motto may be roughly translated "The people desire many bells, but one suffices G.o.d." This curious motto supplies a hint at the cause of the casting of this bell; the event happened during the inc.u.mbency of the Reverend Edward Marshall. It seems that it was the custom of those days for the bell ringers of the neighbouring village Churches to exchange visits of friendly rivalry. On these occasions quant.i.ties of strong waters found their way into the belfries, and their fumes into the brains of the ringers, with the result that the bells

"In the startled ear of night, Too much horrified to speak They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune: Leaping, higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavour, Now, now, to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon.

Oh the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells, Of despair!

How they clang and clash and roar!

What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air!"

On one of these uproarious occasions the tenor bell broke away from its fastenings, and instead of sitting by the pale-faced moon, it came cras.h.i.+ng through the belfry floor on to the flags at the base of the tower, nearly annihilating in the process some of the exuberant ringers.

The nocturnal clash and roar seems, if tradition speaks true, to have frequently lasted all through the night. On New Year's Eve especially it was the custom to continue ringing the bells through the majority of the hours of darkness that remained after midnight. There being no regulations as to the hour of closing public houses in those days, on these occasions of festivity they remained open until all hours of the morning, and strong waters thus pa.s.sed freely between the public house and the belfry, the distance being so short between them. The endless jangle of the midnight bells, it is said, got on the nerves of the Reverend Edward Marshall; more possibly his sense of decency and fitness was stirred by these wild doings. To remedy the evil he took the drastic action of melting the four mediaeval bells down into the present big one on the fall of the tenor bell from its fastening in the tower, much against the wishes of his paris.h.i.+oners, as the motto round the base of the bell more than hints. The process of recasting took place in the large field on the south side of the Church. This drastic operation only seems to have made matters worse, as on the following New Year's Eve, a l.u.s.ty band of Tinners took possession of the belfry, and the awful "boom," "boom" of the big bell, in ceaseless iteration, sounded out over land and sea, banis.h.i.+ng sleep through the livelong night from all within easy distance of Breage Church Tower.

We may remark that Edward Marshall was a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and son of the Reverend William Marshall, of Ashprington, Devons.h.i.+re. His wife was a member of the Sandys family, of Lanarth, and his grandson long represented Taunton in Parliament.

The Germoe bells were purchased by public subscription and placed in Germoe Church in 1753. The tenor bell, weighing 7 cwt., merely records the names of Edward Collins, vicar, and Samuel Lemon and Simon Harry, Churchwardens; the second bell weighs 5-1/2 cwt., and has engraved upon it "Prosperity to this parish." The treble bell, weighing 4-1/2 cwt., records the fact that "Abraham Rudhall caste us all." The Communion plate both at Breage and Germoe was the gift of Dr. G.o.dolphin, Dean of St. Paul's; he was the brother of the great Sidney G.o.dolphin. The plate in all consists of three very large silver-gilt flagons, two cups, one large silver paten and two small ones; these bear the date 1692. The entry recording the gift which appears in the Church registers runs as follows: "The gift of plate to our parish by Dr. Henry G.o.dolphin and the Communion table railed in, in the year of our Lord Christ, 1693, Richard Carleen."

The registers date from 1559, but contain a number of breaks, the largest of which naturally begins with the latter years of the Protectorate, and for some unexplained reason continues well on into the reign of Charles II. The registers make it clear that at the time of their commencement there were still a number of people living in this remote corner of the West without any surname at all; such entries as "Wilhelmus servus Wilhelmi Polkynhorne," "Johes servus Stepeni Treworlis," and "Margareta filia Thoms Robert," are all culled from the first page of the burial register. Gradually at this period the Christian names of the fathers were being adopted by the sons as surnames. The surnames Richards, Edwards, James, Thomas, Johns, Williams, Stephens were thus evolved; Richards or Williams being in the first instance mere abbreviations of the possessive form, son of Richard or son of William; quite ninety per cent. of the surnames in the parish fall under this head.

The great majority of the surnames in the parish which have not been formed in the foregoing way were in their original form local place names. The entry "Johes servus Stepheni Treworlis," given in the preceding paragraph, gives us an example of the method of their adoption; the descendants of Stephen Treworlis in succeeding generations, as the registers show, being grouped under the names of Stephens or Treworlis, no doubt as chance or fancy had decided.

The following extracts from the registers recording either the marriage or deaths of the persons mentioned bring out another curious factor in the formation of local surnames, "Jo Brown, alias Uninformed," "Thomas Sampson, alias Cunning Boy," "John Arthur, alias Plain Dealing"; these entries all occur previous to 1696: at later dates we have "Jane the daughter of Edmund the Tod-stoole," "Thomas, alias Punch of Germoe."

Scattered through the registers we also find the elegant aliases "Two Suppers," "Stink," "Ginger," "Dissembler," "Onwise." A series of entries dating from 1713 show us how these nicknames in the course of time crystallized into actual surnames. In 1713 we have the entry "Nicholas Cornish, alias Cold Pye," in the following year he is mentioned as Nicholas Cornish Coldpy, whilst in later years he figures in the registers simply as Nicholas Colpy. It is interesting to speculate upon the attempts at derivation that an antiquary or genealogist not knowing the true facts might devise as an explanation of the surname "Colpy."

A further curious instance of the method of the formation of local surnames is vouchsafed in our rather common surname "Meagor." The earliest form of this name in the registers is "Meneager," _e.g._ "Avis filia Thoms Meneager, 1579," or in plain English, "Avis the daughter of Thomas of the Meneage District."

The earlier Breage registers contain here and there surnames that are not of local origin, and which savour of romance and adventure in lives long since folded in utter oblivion. In 1511 I find the death of Hugh Grymme de G.o.dolphin recorded, in 1600 the marriage of Edmundus Erasmus, and a little later on one William Dellaregetto is laid to rest at Breage, whilst the name of Angus Macdonald appears in the Germoe registers after the Forty Five.

The story of Hugh Grymme or Graeme is not difficult to piece together in its main outlines without being too fanciful. The wanderings of this northern Ulysses from the home of his clan on the sh.o.r.es of the Solway would make an interesting Odyssey, could they be distilled from the mists of the past. One sees the vague outline of it all fitfully. His fellow Borderers at this time,--the Armstrongs, the Elliots, the Ridleys and a hundred others--were sadly realizing that times had changed since Flodden Field, that ceaseless Border strife was coming to an end, that law was beginning to grow stronger in its grasp, and that raids and forays and cattle-lifting expeditions were each year becoming accompanied more and more with such unpleasant and undignified incidents as hangings at Jedburgh and Carlisle. For such roystering blades it was impossible to hang spear, sword, helmet and breastplate for ever to rust upon the wall, and to sink down into the life of dull tillers of the soil. There was nothing else for them to do than to troop off to the Irish wars, where they could raid and harry and slaughter the Irish to their hearts' content, all in the name of good Queen Bess, and not in defiance of her Wardens of the Marches. Many of these riders of the Borders founded families in Ireland, and came to own broad acres, and many no doubt found nameless graves. Hugh Graeme, it would seem probable, was one of these Border adventurers who found neither wealth nor a grave in Ireland, but service with Sir William G.o.dolphin, who had spent his youth fighting under Ess.e.x in Ireland. No doubt Hugh Graeme had ridden behind Sir William in his campaigns, often with death on his saddle bow, and when fighting days were over came with his master to G.o.dolphin, where Death, who had pa.s.sed him by in the wars, found him and claimed him.

The name Erasmus twice occurs in the Breage registers, and in the next generation makes its appearance in the guise of "Rasmus." In 1660 the marriage of Edmundus Erasmus is recorded with Johanna Caraver. I cannot think that in this case Erasmus is a mere second Christian name, because shortly after we have the baptism entry "Thomas Erasmus," and in 1687 we have the marriage entry "Joisea Rasmus." Nor do I think it probable that the surname Erasmus, as it occurs in the Breage registers, grew out of a Christian name given in the first instance on account of its popularity with Reformers, because in this case the registers would have shewn some trace of Erasmus used as a Christian name, which they do not.

The appearance of this name in the registers tallies with the great activity of Sir Francis G.o.dolphin in developing the tin mines upon his estates. Under the circ.u.mstances it seems probable that Edmundus Erasmus was one of the Continental experts whom we know that he employed in improving the local methods of mining; this conclusion, however, in no way elucidates the mystery that clings round the name. The great humanist namesake of Edmundus, who died in 1536, was, like many of the Cornish tinners, born without a surname, his father only possessing the Christian name of Gerhard, of which Erasmus is meant to be the Greek rendering. We may therefore very well conclude that no other surname of Erasmus existed in the world, save that of the great humanist, and that it must have begun and ended with him, because as a priest he could have had no legitimate issue. On the other hand, I cannot think that anyone would adopt Erasmus as a surname having absolutely no connection in blood with the great Dutch scholar. Here we have one of those strange and often fascinating mysteries with which the registers of our parishes abound. Their yellow pages so often, like withered rose leaves, suggest the joy, the youth, the sunlight and the tragedy of forgotten summers.

In 1686 we find the marriage entry of William Dellaregetto, and in 1730 the entry of the marriage of Zen.o.bia Dellaregetto. The name Dellaregetto certainly suggests the sunny skies of Italy, whilst Angus Macdonald conjures up a vision of the Scottish Highlands. Possibly the first Dellaregetto may have been some Italian sailor cast away upon our sh.o.r.es. From a descendant of Angus Macdonald, still living in the parish, I have been able to obtain a fleeting glimpse of the story of this man. He arrived (I imagine on board some smuggling craft) about one hundred and fifty years ago, and settled for a year or two at Rinsey and went through the ceremony of marriage with a Breage woman, after having been a resident at Rinsey for some little time. Tradition says that he was a person with plenty of money, and a man of high station in his own country, and that at the close of the wars a price was set upon his head by the Government. If tradition speaks true it seems probable, considering the date of his coming, that this Macdonald was a man of some importance, who had been out in the Forty Five,--possibly some minor chief of the clan Macdonald. He disappeared as suddenly as he came, whether to his native land on having made his peace with the Government, or, as is more probable, to join his exiled compatriots in France or Spain, where life was less dull, who can say? At any rate, his Cornish wife and children saw and heard of him no more. His descendants are still living in the parish.

Perhaps the following curious entry from the registers may be of interest to the reader: "Thomas Epsley, senior, of Chilchampton, parish of Bath and Wells, Summersitsheers; he was the man who brought here the rare invention of shooting the rocks, which came here in June, 1689, and he died at the Bal and was buried at Breag, the 16th day of December, in the yeare of Our Lord Christ, 1689." Subsequent entries in the burial register make it clear that "the rare invention of shooting the rocks"

_i.e._ blasting, was anything but an unmixed blessing to those who had to apply it to the rocks.

I find in the registers the record of a great snowstorm in December, 1630, in which four persons perished, and another at the end of January and the beginning of February, 1692. To these great snowstorms may well be added that of March, 1891, which not only isolated the parish from the rest of the world, but the householders from each other, save in the village and hamlets, for several days. This terrible storm also levied from the parish its toll of human life.

The following grim entry from the burial register, bearing date 2nd February, 1693, ill.u.s.trates the methods and views of a former age, which seem strangely out of touch with our own: "Samuel Rogers, of Crava, being excommunicate, was laid in the earth in the Church at night."

I find in the registers the records of but few briefs. At Germoe in 1682 five s.h.i.+llings was collected for the "distressed Protestants of France," and in the same year ten s.h.i.+llings for the sufferers in the great fire at the town of Cullompton in Devons.h.i.+re. At Breage I only find records of briefs in the year 1712: they were for the restoration of Battle Bridge, West Tilbury and St. Clement's Church, presumably of this diocese.

It is to be regretted that the churchwardens' accounts have long since, through damp and neglect, pa.s.sed beyond the stage when it is possible to examine them. The Parish Councils Act with all its benefits committed a terrible mistake in consigning the ancient records of the Church Vestries, in many cases going back for hundreds of years, to the custody of simple, well-meaning but unlettered men, with no realisation of the value of ancient doc.u.ments. Too often they have been jumbled into an old wooden box in a damp vestry room, and left to grow green with mould and disintegrate into an evil-smelling paste; at least such is an instance in the writer's experience. In another case, the fountain of village wisdom informed a learned antiquary that he could not be allowed to inspect their doc.u.ments; whilst in a third case the clerk to a Parish Council parted with an ancient doc.u.ment, that had come down through the generations with the Church Vestry papers, to an old gentleman who was in the habit of shewing it to his friends as a curiosity. On the death of the old gentleman in question a friend of the writer, in the hope that the doc.u.ment might prove of interest, and that he might be able to return it to the vicar of the parish from whence it had been originally taken, endeavoured to purchase it from the heir, when it transpired that the doc.u.ment had been burnt as waste paper.

The following items from the Breage churchwardens' accounts I have been able to cull from a note-book of the Reverend Jocelyn Barnes. Whilst of no paramount importance, they serve as vivid ill.u.s.trations of the dead-and-gone life of the village.

1774--Mr. John Hood and Company for Oilcloth Umbrella for the Parson at funerals, 1 0s. 6d.

1772--For the charge of prosecuting against the Kitows for the murder of Henry Thomas, junior, as per bill of particulars, 18 4s.