of the Manors and Lordships.

The Saint Ives district has been for many centuries divided into several manors of feudal lordships, namely:

1.	The	manor	of	Ludgvan Lese.
2.	"	"		Dinas Ia and Porthia.
3.	"	"		Saint Ives and Treloyhan.
4.	"	"		Porth Ia Prior.
5.	"	"	and Barton of Trenwith.
6.	"	"	of	Lelant and Trevetho.
7.	"	"		Trembethow.
8.	"	"		Amalibria.
9.	"	"		Boswednack.
10.	"	"		Trereen.
11.	"	"		Trewey.
12.	"	"	and Barton of Kerrow and Carnello.

It will perhaps be best if we now proceed to give a brief history of each of these in succession.

1. The Manor of Ludgvan Lese.—This was the principal manor in these parts; according to Leland, those who held it were deemed Lords of Saint Ives. Hals tells us that in the Domesday tax of the year 1087, Saint Ives and Towednack were comprised in the Manor of ‘Luddumam’ (now Ludgvan Lese), which then belonged to the King or Earl of Cornwall, and was privileged with the jurisdiction of a court leet before the Norman Conquest. This manor anciently vested in the family of De Ferrers, whose heiress carried it in marriage to Champernowne, and the heiress of Champernowne brought it to Sir Robert Willoughby, first Lord Broke. After the death of Robert, second baron, this property was divided between his two daughters, married respectively to Lord Mountjoy and Pawlet, Marquess of Winchester, who are described by Leland as ‘Lords of Saint Ives,’ temp. Henry VIII. ‘This manor still continues,’ writes Gilbert, circa 1820, ‘in the Pawlet family, being vested in the heirs of the late Duke of Bolton.’

2. The Manor of Dinas Ia and Porthia.—This manor was sold by John Hele in 1655 to John, Earl of Radnor, of the Robartes family, and descended from him to Vere Hunt, who sold it to John Stevens of Saint Ives, founder of the family of Stephens of Tregenna, circa 1750.

3. The Manor of Saint Ives and Treloyhan was purchased from Praed of Trevetho by Sir Christopher Hawkins, Bart., about the year 1807.

4. The Manor of Porth Ia Prior.—This manor is situated partly in the parish of Saint Ives, and partly in Saint Anthony-in-Meneage and in other places. It belonged to the Benedictine Priory of Tywardreath until the dissolution of monasteries, when Henry VIII. (in 1540) annexed it to the Duchy of Cornwall. The manor was then valued at the annual sum of £7 10s. 10d.

5. The Manor and Barton of Trenwith.—Lysons says that this was anciently the name of a district including the whole parish of Lelant. According to Domesday Book, ‘Trenwit’ was owned, in the time of King Edward the Confessor, by Sitric the Abbot, and before by the Earl (of Cornwall) and his villeins. The following is an extract from that record:

‘The same Earl (or Moreton) holds Trenwit; Sitric the Abbot held it in the time of King Edward, and it was taxed for 2 hides; but notwithstanding, there are 6 hides; the arable land is 4 carucates; in Domain there are 5 carucates, and 16 bond servants and 30 villeins and 30 borderers, with 12 ploughs; there are 40 acres of wood, and 1,000 acres of pasture; formerly it returned 12 marks of silver; now it returns 25 pounds and 18 shillings and 4 pence.’

In the Exeter Domesday this manor is called ‘Trenuwit.’ By the Earl of Cornwall Trenwith was granted to John de Beaufort, son of John of Gaunt, and continued in his family till the attainder of Edmund Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, in 1471. Since then the manor seems to have been annihilated; but the barton, some time previous to the reign of Edward IV., became the property of a family called Bailiff, who then took the surname of Trenwith. This ancient house kept possession of Trenwith until the death of Rebecca Trenwith in 1798. A full account of this old stock and their estate will hereafter be given.

6. The Manor of Lelant and Trevetho.—These possessions vested of old in the family of Bottreaux or Boterel, which left its original home in Brittany to follow the fortunes of William the Conqueror.

7. The Manor of Trembethow, in the parish of Lelant, is said to have been the seat of John Hals, Justice of Common Pleas Temp. Elizabeth it belonged to Mohun. Early in the present century one-third was held by William Praed, one-third by Arthur Champernowne, and one-third equally by Samuel Stephens, Tremayne and Rodd, as heirs of Hearle.

8. The Manor of Amalibria, or Amalebra, in the parish of Towednack, was conveyed by Humphrey Noy to his son-in-law, Davies, to whom it descended to the late Davies Giddy, Esq., M.P.

9, 10. The Manor of Boswednack, and the The Manor of Trereen, were, in 1814, the property of Arundell Harris; and

11. The Manor of Trewey belonged at that date to Grove and Cornish.

12. The Barton of Kerrow and Carnello belonged to the family of Williams of Treneere. The four last-named properties are in the parish of Zennor.

In 1295 King Edward I. granted to William Bottreaux the privilege of holding a market every Thursday ‘within his manor of La Nant’ (Rot. Cart. 24. Edw. I.). The same charter granted two fairs, on the festivals of the Purification and of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, February 2 and August 15.

In 1336 Richard de Haveryng suffered a recovery of lands in Lelant by Thomas de Saint Leger.

In 1338 Saint Ives was paying £10 a year to the Priory of Tywardreath, as we learn from Dr. Oliver’s ‘Monasticon Dioc. Exon.,’ p. 34:

‘Extenta facta inter Wilhelmum de Hardeshull clericum et Johannem Hamely vicecomitem Cornubie de terris domibus beneficiis possessionibus et locis ac bonis religiosorum virorum prioris et conventus de Tywardraith vicesimo quarto die Julij anno regni Regis Edwardi tertij a conquistu undecimo.

‘Item de Portia, x^li.’

(translation)

‘An Extant made between William of Hardeshull, clerk, and John Hamely, Viscount of Cornwall, concerning the lands, houses, benefices, possessions and places and goods of the religious men the prior and convent of Tywardreath, the twenty-fourth day of July in the eleventh year of the reign of King Edward the Third from the Conquest.

‘Item out of Porthia, £10.’

In 1389 Peter de Treleweth suffered a recovery of lands at Saint Ives by John de Penrose.

Some time during the reign of Henry VI. (1422-1461) four French ships, which had shortly before sacked Marazion, landed at the village of Portminster, a mile south-east from Saint Ives, burned it to the ground and killed twenty men, after which exploit they sailed away with their booty. From that time forward Porthminster had no houses, until, in the last century, a few cottages began to be built there. The chapel of Porthminster is treated in a former chapter.

Shortly after this untoward occurrence, Lord Willoughby built at his own cost of fort at Pendinas point, and furbished it with guns for the defence of the harbour.

In 1463 inquisition was held on the death of William Bottreaux, knight, possessed of lands in the Manor of Lelant.

In 1467 George, Archbishop of Your, and others, purchased from Margaret Hungerford and others lands in Boswythgy, Tywarnayl, and the Manor of ‘Lananta.’

Michael Trewynnard, a native of Saint Ives, according to William of Worcester, died on Maunday Thursday 1471, Provost of the Collegiate Church of Saint Thomas of Glasney.

In 1597 four ships of war, having on board Perkin Warbeck and Lady Catherine Gordon, with 150 men, anchored in Saint Ives Bay, on their way from Ireland, and Perkin was proclaimed ‘King Richard IV.’ in the town. He afterwards raised 3,000 men at Bodmin.

‘In the 12th year of King Henry the Seventh’s reign,’ says Hicks ‘died Mr. Polpear and Mr. Nicholas, two of the best landed men in the town, each of them leaving one daughter, who fell in ward to Lord Broke. Nicholas’ heiress was married to Thomas Glynn, whence perhaps the Christan name of Nicholas became general in that family. Mr. Polpear’s heiress was married to John Payne, who, with Mr. Glynn, was greatly in favour with the Lord Broke.’

Hicks mentions a charter of Henry VII. to Saint Ives, granting the privilege of a market (Dr. Cardew’s extracts).

Before the Cambrian Archæological Association, in 1885, Mr. M. J. Mitchell exhibiten two large wrought-iron cannon, of the latter part of the fifteenth century, which were found off Saint Ives.

During several centuries, the coast around Saint Ives Bay was subject to serious encroachments of the sand, which more than once threatened to entirely engulf the town.

Leland, writing in the sixteenth century, says:

‘Most part of the houses in the peninsula be sore opressid or over covered with sandes that the stormy windes and rages castith up there. This calamitie hath continuid ther litle aboue 20 yeares. … The best part of the town now standith in the south part of the Peninsula, toward another hille for defence from the sandes’ (Itin., iii. 21).

Holinshed confirms his account in the passage which we have cited from his chronicle in our first chapter.

In the year 1327 there was a general subsidy levied upon all England, and the lists of persons taxed for it are the earliest subsidy rolls in existence. The following are some of the most interesting names, with the amounts levied:¹

LELANT.

SAINT IVES.

TOWEDNACK.

Some remarks upon this ancient and most interesting roll may be acceptable. Nearly all the surnames are the names of places. A popular notion is that old families have given their names to their ancestral seats, but of course the converse is the case. A small proportion of the names are Norman-French; the vast majority are evidently Celtic. From the number of names under each parish, we may guage the relative proportions of their populations. The numbers are: Lelant, 118; Saint Ives, 47; Towednack, 38. Zennor does not figure in this roll. The document is in good preservation, only twenty-four names in these three parishes being illegible, of which nineteen are towednack names, ten of them torn off.

The roll is headed thus: CornuҌ: Ta͠x xx^mo dn͠o Regi concesse anno Regni Regis Edwardi tertij a conquistu primo. Hundr̃ de Pennewyth, Parocħ Sc̃i Euwiñ de Lanaunt—Parocħ St̃e Ye—Parocħ Sc̃i Tewennocħ.

Lysons mentions that the estate of Trevelglos, in the parish of Zennor, belonged to a family of that name, whose heiress brought it to Gerveys; it belonged in 1814 to Richard Gerveys Grylls.

FIELD-NAMES.

Some of the ancient field-names near Saint Ives speak to us of the time when certain officials of the village community were paid for their public service by a right of pasture or tillage in lands belonging to the manor or township. Thus we have:

Others indicate the sites of long forgotten shrines, as:

Some names explain themselves—that is, unless they are corruptions of Cornish Words, as they probably are in many instances. Such are:

The names which I have failed to discover the meanings are these:

The above names are gleaned from a rent-roll of the Tregenna estate, comprising the Manor of Dinas Ia and Porthia, and portions of the Manor of Lelant and Trevetho.

The following field-names are taken from conveyances made between 1736 and 1808:

The ‘Gware Miracl,’ or miracle play, was a noteworthy feature in the life of a Cornish parish during the Middle Ages. This mediæval form of drama was carried on under the auspices of the clergy, and was so contrived as to combine scriptural and moral teaching with the popular recreation. In most parishes there was a place set apart for these quasi-religious performances; it consisted everywhere of a circular pit or amphitheatre dug out of the ground, with several rows of seats like steps around the sides of the excavation—an imitation of the Roman arena. The level ground at the bottom constituted the stage where the performers played their parts. The subjects acted were incidents drawn either from the Scriptures or from the legendary lives of the saints. Such plays were written out in full, and copies of some of them are still preserved and have been printed, such as the ‘Gureanz an bŷs’ (Creation of the World) and the ‘Bewnanz Meriasec’ (Life of Saint Meradochus). The best-known of these amphitheatres which are still in existance are those near Redruth and at Saint Just church-town, known respectively as the Plain-an-Gwarry and the Roundago; also the Gwennap Pit, near Saint Day. The name ‘Plain-an-Gwarry’ is given to a piece of land at the Stennack in a deed of 1808, but has long been forgotten. At that date the land in question was an orchard.

1 [Ed. The accents and other textual decorations in this section, which I have tried to replicate as closely as possible, may come out strange on some systems due to the limitations of the fonts available.]