SOME OLD CORNISH MANSIONS

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume VIII, Issue 1, 1 April 1903, Page 21

SOME OLD CORNISH MANSIONS

The history of Cornwall, as of most counties and countries, has been chiefly preserved in the records and relics treasured in the ancestral homes of its ancient families. Cornwall is, perhaps, exceptionally rich in such houses, and has been, perhaps, also exceptionally fortunate, inasmuch as so many of its old families have proved fully worthy of their trust, and have kept the "-lories bequeathed to their care intact. It would be impossible for me to attempt even to mention a fourth of the famous houses of Cornwall ; so I think I had better recall the few likely to be familiar by name, or for some reason of special interest, to New Zealand readers. St. Michael's Mount, crowned by the ancient granite castle which is the family seat of the St. Aubyns — " The Guarded Mount/ " St. Michael's stupendous peak of rugged greenstone " — will, at least in poem and in picture, be familiar to all. The Mount is defended by two small and old batteries ; but the wild waves of the Atlantic beating and breaking against its walls of rock have since long years been its only assailants. The castle once sheltered and protected the hapless Lady Katherine Gordon, " The Fair Rose of Scotland/ the beautiful wife of Perkin Warbeck.

The name of Trelawny* reminds one of the stirring strain which once echoed through every Cornish village, and which owed its inspiration to the imprisonment by James the Second of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, one of the Seven Bishops. The old rhyme ran :— " And have they fixed the where and when ? And shall Trelawny die ? Here's twenty thousand Cornish men Will know the reason why ! " These were the only original words ; two other verses in the wellknown " Song of the Western Men " were composed by aMr Hawker in 1825, " and were sent by him anonymously to a Plymouth paper, where the poem attracted the notice of Mr Davies- Gilbert, who reprinted it at his private press, under the avowed impression that it was the original ballad. Sir Walter Scott also deemed it to be the ancient song ;" and thus the common misapprehension originated. The Trelawny family still dwells at Trelawne, which, it must be understood, is not " the most ancient stronghold of the Trelawny:?," for that was near Launceston, but a property which they purchased in Queen Elizabeth's reign. Here many memorials are preserved of the famous race. A portrait of the great bishop, by Kneller, hangs in the drawing-room. The south part of the house was built by Edward Trelawny, Governor of Jamaica, under Queen Anne. There is at TreJawne a curious original portrait of Queen Elizabeth, taken in her youth. Of the Trelawnys and two other notable Cornish families the saying runs : — " That never a Granville wanted loyalty, a Godolphin wit, or a Trelawny courage/ "By Tre, Pol and Pen, you -nay know the Cornish men," but one of *The prefix "Tre" signifies in Cornish "the place of abode," and is equivalent to the French " De."

the old Cornish families — that of Boscawen-Eose — whose head is Viscount Falmouth, at Tregothnan. on the Fal, owns none of these prefixes. Of this family came the gallant Admiral Boscawen, who was born at Tregothnan in 1711, and who is buried in a church above the Tregothnan Woods. His epitaph there tells one " With what ardent zeal and what successful valour he served his country, and taught her enemies to dread her naval power, " and that he died "in the year 1761, and the 50th of his age, at Hatehland's Park, in Surrey, a seat which he had just finished at the expense of the enemies of his country, and amidst the groans and tears of his beloved Cornishmen was here deposited."

.. ... *\

Autographs (traced from originals) of Jonathan Trelawny, Bishop of Winchester; Chatham W. Pitt; Sam Wallis, the discoverer of Otaheite; and Admiral Boscawen.

Not far from Tregothnan is Enys, the seat of the Enys family. Baring- Gould, in his recent work, " The County of Cornwall/ writes of " the marvellous gardens of Enys/' and in the beautiful gardens there grow, together with other rare trees and plants from all parts of the world, many New Zealand trees and shrubs flourishing in the soft Cornish air as well as though in their own Southern home.

By an antique sundial, so old that though all then known parts of the world were mapped on it, so that the sun at mid-day should tell the time everywhere, Australasia is not marked, stands a New Zealand Tipalm, the shadows of its leaves now falling aslant that deluded timepiece !

Inside the house, too, there are numbered among its treasures many valuable New Zealand curios. One cabinet contains a very rare collection of old jMaori tikis — ancestral

On a lawn near the house are some magniiicent old Scotch firs, dating from Stuart times, when it was considered a compliment to the Royal family to plant them instead of English trees. Enys has belonged to the Enys family since 1336. At Bocormoc House, near Lostwithiel in South-east Cornwall, the great Earl of Chatham was born, November 15th, 1708. Two ebony chairs, fashioned, it is said, out of Queen Elizabeth's cradle, are

charms — which once hung round the necks and felt the heart-beats of brave Maori warriors in far Ao Tea Rangi.

The mansion of Enys, though high above the town of Penryn, stands in a hollow, but from its great upper windows you gain a distant view of Palmouth Harbour, and so catch a glimpse of the sea — the sea, without some sight of which I do not think any true Cornish person can rest happy for lone

among the interesting curiosities of Boconnoc House. At Fentonwoon, a few miles from Camelford, was born Captain Wallis, the discoverer of Otaheite. In many places in Cornwall are preserved trophies from the defeat of the Armada — that grand defeat which is aptly chronicled in the lines so well known in Cornwall., and in all the West Country :

" Where are now those Spaniards That made so great a boast ?

They shall eat the grey-goose feather. And we will eat the roast." Furry Song. Though this was naturally not the source of most of these " trophies/ I must note here, as 1 shall have no better opportunity, that a Lady Killigrew, in the days of Good Queen Bess, succeeded, with her servants, in boarding and robbing a Spanish ship in Falmouth Harbour !