Description of Cornwall, by the Perambulation, View, and Delineation of John Norden."
This work has been well characterized by Mr. Tonkin, as "a mean performance, full of egregious mistakes, with most defective and erroneous maps of every hundred, yet containing several things in it not to be met with elsewhere."
Our next historian, but after a considerable interval of time, was Mr. William Scawen, a fragment only of whose work is known to be extant, and which will appear in these volumes.
He was of an ancient family, well educated, and possessed of an ample fortune. He represented St. German's in Parliament, and received the appointment of Vice-Warden of the Stannaries, immediately after the Restoration of King Charles the Second.
Of Mr. Hals and Mr. Tonkin I have not any better information than what is given by Mr. Lysons. He says:
"About the year 1685, Mr. William Hals, a gentleman of an ancient Devonshire family, which had been some time settled at Fentongollan, in St. Michael-Penkevill, began to make collections for a parochial history of Cornwall, which he continued for at least half a century; it was brought down by him to about the year 1736. Mr. Hals died in 1739; his parochial history being at that time nearly completed. About the year 1750, the publication of this work was undertaken by Mr. Andrew Brice, then a printer at Truro, who afterwards removed to Exeter, where he published an useful geo-
