Page:Cornwall (Salmon).djvu/140

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CORNWALL stands under the shelter of Godolphin Hill, in the heart of a rich mineral district; it is now a farm, belonging to the Duke of Leeds. The grey old quadrangular building is eloquent with memories of the family whose name it bears. In one of its gateways are remains of an ancient chapel. Sidney Godolphin, Queen Anne's Lord High Treasurer, lived here; an earlier Sidney, one of the " four wheels of Charles's Wain " (Godolphin, Grenville, Slanning, Trevanion), was killed in the early days of the Civil War. Godrevy Rocks, at the W. extremity of St. Ives Bay, are now the site of a lighthouse, erected in 1857, but they are still a peril to navigation. It is stated that on the very day of Charles I.'s beheadal, a vessel containing his wardrobe and other royal belongings was wrecked on these rocks. Out of sixty persons, only a man and boy survived by swimming to the rocks, and there remaining till the St. Ives men could fetch them off". Golant (2 m. N. of Fowey) has been inter- preted by tradition and short-sighted etymolo- gists to mean gallant — ■" the gallants of Fowey ". The name is clearly old Cornish — perhaps a corruption of col-Ian, the church on the little hill. There is just a possibility that it might be a memory of St. Colan. But the dedication of the parish church is to St. Samson, the sixth century Glamorgan saint, whose footprints we meet with in Scilly, Guernsey and Brittany, as well as in Wales and Cornwall. He was cer- tainly one of the most eminent and active of 114