66 "by Commission in 1680-1, "taken at the house of Thomas Tonkyn Vintner, situate within the village of Newlyn, in the parish of Paull," some interesting facts came out. The custom of the parish at Towednack was for each person possessing more than three "Milch Cowes" to pay to the vicar of the said parish" for the same tyth in kynd by way of Whitt Sowle, and the calves in kind." Every person with three cows or a less number had to pay four pence for each such cow and two pence for every Calfe of such Cow." The "Whitt Sowle" is explained by the evidence of another witness, who testified that the custom was "to pay the vicar thereof whitt sowle, that is to say butter and cheese in kind, that is made of the milk of such Cowes; which said butter and cheese is to be paid to the vicar yearly as ffolloweth h; to nine dayes milk of each cow which said nine dayes milk is to be made into butter and cheese, 5 dayes thereof is to be made into five cheeses and to be brought into the parish church for the Vicar the first sunday after Trinity." The case for the defendant, as we should say in these days, proved that the vicar had been very neglectful of his duties. A child of John Hingston had died unbaptised, "owing to the neglect and absence of the Complainant to the great grief" of the father. Several persons died and had to be buried without any church service, and "one of them was left without buryall, which became noysome untill some other Minister came to bury him." When the vicar did condescend to visit the parish he did so spasmodically, and at times very inconvenient for the parishioners. 'When hee Comes to officiate Comes very unreasonably, vizt sometimes att Seaven of the Clock in the Morninge, sometymes att Eleven of the Clock, sometymes att One of the Clock, and sometymes the Eveninge about Sun sett. And Imediately on his Comeing att church begins prayer although very few of his pīshoners are present.' 66 This payment of tithes in kind was very inconvenient, and seems to have led to much conflict between the clergy and the tithe-payers. On one of the registers of Zennor parish is an entry purposely made by the vicar, Jacob Bullock, in 1762, lest his successor "should be imposed upon by being told that he " (Jacob Bullock) " accepted, of that or any other Butter and Cheese instead of tithes of Cows and ODOROUS TITHES 201 Calves, which I assure him I did not." The trouble which led to this reverend gentleman being so careful that his successor should not be imposed upon, arose out of the action of certain little payers who brought into the chancel during the time of divine service, butter and cheese. These parishioners refused to take this butter and cheese away, or any one else." In time "it grew offensive," and so the vicar "Ordered the Church Wardens, under pain of being cited to the Spiritual Court, to remove the same as an Indecency and a nusance to the Congregation." 66 John Wesley in September, 1743, preached at Morvah, Zennor, Kenegie Downs, St. Hilary, St. Just, and Sennen, where he visited the Land's End, and was much impressed by the wild scenery. The account of their hardships (for he was accompanied by John Nelson, a disciple) given by Mr. Nelson is curious: "All this time Mr. Wesley and I lay on the floor, he had my great coat for his pillow, and I had Burkitt's Notes on the New Testament for mine. After being here nearly three weeks [St. Ives was their head-quarters], one morning about three o'clock Mr. Wesley turned over and finding me awake clapped me on the side saying, 'Brother Nelson, let us be of good cheer, I have one whole side yet, for the skin is off but one side.' Wesley said at St. Hilary, "We ought to be thankful that there are plenty of blackberries; for this is the best country I ever saw for getting a stomach, but the worst I ever saw for getting food. Do the people think we can live by preaching?" One Sunday morning after preaching a sermon at Sennen he went to Land's End, which he thus describes: "It was an awful sight! But how will these melt away when God ariseth to judgment! The sea between does, indeed, boil like a pot. One would think the deep to be hoary. But they swell, yet can they not prevail. He hath set their bounds which they cannot pass." Friction between the Wesleyans and Church of England people exists still to some extent, though usually it is felt rather than expressed. Still, a vicar gave me an example of an explosion of feeling he had evidently quite innocently caused. At the earnest and repeated request of a young member of a Wesleyan flock, the vicar prepared the girl for confirmation, and in due course she was con firmed. The Wesleyan minister thereupon wrote a rather strongly worded letter to the vicar for his action in having confirmed a member of his congregation, and stated that in consequence he would boycott the too zealous Church of England priest. The actual word boycott was used in the letter, so there was no question as to the intention of the writer. The vicar replied that he would not cause the Wesleyan minister any such trouble, as neither he nor any of his congregation would in future deal with any Wesleyan tradespeople. Boycotting may be an effective weapon in its birthplace, Connemara, but in England it is two-edged. Nearly all the shops in this particular district were kept by Wesleyans! CHAPTER XX THE LOST LAND OF KING ARTHUR, LYONNESSE, ATLANTIS TORIES of monkish origin assert that St. Michael's you look at the Ordnance Map you will find by Marazion, in old English type, "Submarine forest." Old writers who knew nothing of modern science thought it probable that the marshy nature of the soil up to the hills on the eastern side of Mount's Bay was due to the sea having once flowed up to them. Dr. Borlase (Natural History of Cornwall, pp. 220, 222) says: In the year 1750, John Roberts, of the parish of Senan, digging for tin near Velindreath, found, at the depth of thirty feet, an entire skeleton, about the bigness of that of a large deer, but such a set of bones as he had never before observed. The beast lay on its side, and near it, in a line parallel to its vertebræ, a prostrate tree of twenty feet long about the diameter of a moderate man's waist; great numbers of leaves were on the branches, some large, some small, and the impression of the leaves was plain in the earth. The tree was of the oak kind." Mr. Borlase thought this burial of the deer and tree due either to a deluge which "unfooted the tree, and drowned the creature and retiring, drew them both towards the ocean, or by some sudden subsidence of the shelving part of the hill, when the land sinking, hurried away both the creature and the tree in one direction." And then he says: "That there was anciently a sudden subsidence of the ground in these parts, has been a constant tradition for some ages." On January 10th, 1757 (that is the year before his book was published), midway betwixt the piers of St. Michael's Mount and Penzance appeared "the remains of the wood which, according to tradition, covered anciently a large tract of ground on the edge of Mount's Bay." The sands, it seems, had been drawn off from the shore by a violent sea and had left several places, twenty yards long and ten wide, washed bare, strewed with stones like a broken causeway. Mr. Borlase examined the spot and found parts of ancient trees. "In the first pool part of the trunk appeared, and the whole course of the roots, eighteen feet long and twelve wide, was displayed in a horizontal position; upon spading round we found the sand to be a thin layer of ten inches deep, and then the natural earth appeared, in which the roots remained so firmly fixed" that he had to use a pick and crow of iron " to see further. The place where he made this observation was three hundred yards below full-sea-mark; the water is twelve feet deep upon them when the tide is in." From these observations he concluded that the ground there had sunk more than twelve feet, and confirmed the tradition that formerly a wood stretched from the town of Penzance to St. Michael's Mount. This, then, accounts for the mystic words in the Ordnance Map, "Submarine forest." This Lyonnesse is amply reported by tradition to have been a region of extreme fertility uniting the western part of Cornwall with the Scilly Islands. Tradition is uncertain as to when the cataclysm occurred, but Saxon chronicles say Lyonnesse was destroyed by a high tide on November 11th, 1099. This fertile stretch of country, another Atlantis, was an important part of the realm of King Arthur. This is the land of Tennyson's fancy; the where had fallen "Land of old, upheaven from the abyss "All day long the noise of battle roll'd "Around their lord, King Arthur." The appearance of St. Michael's Mount, its configuration, the abruptness with which it rises from the sea, are features singularly like those of other solitary rocks in the neighbourhood. The rocks around the Longships Lighthouse off Land's End, the Brisons off Cape Cornwall, the Gull |