"The language is spoken altogether at Goonhilly, and about Pendennis and the Land's End they speak no English. All beyond Truro they speak the Cornish language."
Much about the same time William Jackman, the vicar of St. Feock, near Falmouth, chaplain of Pendennis Castle during its siege by the rebel troops, was in the habit of using Cornish for the words of administration of Holy Communion, because the old people did not understand English. The Cornish words asserted to have been used by him were printed in Hals's History of Cornwall in 1750, though they do not occur in all copies of that scarce book.
In 1662 and 1667 John Ray, in his Itinerary, mentions one Dickon Gwyn (his real name was Dick Angwin), of St. Just, as the only man who could write Cornish. Ray adds that few of the children could speak it, "so that the language is like in a short time to be quite lost."
This is probably the "Sieur Angwin" mentioned in a valuable little treatise on the Cornish language by John Boson of Newlyn, of which more later. This little tract, entitled Nebbaz Gerriau dro tho Carnoack (or "A few words about Cornish "), is only known from a copy which formerly belonged to the late Mr. W. C. Borlase. It was written about the year 1700, and according to it the Cornish-speaking district was then "from the Land's End to the Mount and towards St. Ives and Redruth, and again from the Lizard to Helston and towards Falmouth," but the language had decreased very much within the writer's memory.
It is recorded by Dr. Borlase that Cheston Marchant, who died at Gwithian in 1676 aged 164 (!), could speak nothing but Cornish.
Writing in the latter part of the reign of Charles II., William Scawen, a Cornish antiquary, gives a long
