The Parochial History of Cornwall/Volume 1/St Cleather
ST. CLEATHER.
HALS.
St. Cleather is situate in the hundred of Lesnewitb, and hath upon the north, Trenegles; east, Egles-kerry and Laneast; south, part of Altarnun; west, Davidstowe. For the name of St. Cleather, it refers to the vicar of the church, and in Cornish, signifies a sacred, or holy fencer or gladiator; a person that exercises a spiritual sword for offence or defence in a holy manner; and as in this place by the holy fencer is to be understood the vicar, so by his sword is signified την μαχαριαν τον πνευματος ὄ 'στι ῥῆμα Θεου, gladium spiritus, quod est verbum Dei, i.e. the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.
In the Inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester aforesaid, 1294, Ecclesia de Sancto Clede, or Cledredi, in Decanatu de Lesnewith, was valued to its first fruits 6l. In Wolsey's Inquisition, and Valor Beneficiorum, 6l. 11s. 0½d.; the incumbent, Harris; and the parish rated to the 4s. per pound land-tax, 1696, 71l. 4s. 8d. Quere, whether St. Clede, or Clete, mentioned in that Inquisition aforesaid, relate not to St. Clete, or Cletus, Bishop of Rome and martyr, as the tutelar guardian and patron of this church? whose history in short is thus: He was born at Rome, of an old family of gentlemen or noblemen, in the reign of Tiberius; whose father's name was Emelianus, a Christian, that placed his son Clete a disciple under St. Peter; after which he made him and Linnus coadjutors in the ministry. To Linnus St. Peter gave the charge of affairs within Rome, to Cletus the charge of the churches abroad; and those two holy men had both the succession of the Bishopric of Rome, after St. Peter's death, (Clement through humility declining that office, who in justice should have had it,) till the time that Domitian, the son of Vespasian, enjoyed the empire, who, degenerating from the morality of his father and brother Titus, raised the second persecution against the Christians; at which time, amongst many others, St. Cletus Bishop of Rome received the crown of martyrdom, after he had held the Bishopric twelve years and seven months and two days, 26th April, anno Dom. 91, tempore Domitian. He lies buried by the body of St. Peter at Rome, and is one of the saints mentioned in the Canon of the Mass, as also in St. Paul's Epistle to Timothy. He is said, by order of St. Peter, to have divided the City of Rome into twenty-five districts or parishes, and to have set up a priest to rule and govern in spiritual matters over such Christians as were within the same, and attended their predicaments; whose successors afterwards in those churches were called cardinals.
See Peransand for the family of Cleathers.
Bas-ill, in this parish, or Bas-yll, in former ages (at best being but a poor corn country) has been for many ages the seat of the worshipful family of the Trevillians [Trevelyan]; the present possessor, Peter Trevillian, Esq. that married Borlace, his father Arundell.
His ancestor was John Trevillian, Esq. of Nettlecomb in Somerset, who was sheriff of Somerset and Dorset 17 Henry VII.; his grandson John Trevillian, Esq. was sheriff of Cornwall 38 Henry VIII. The arms of which gentlemen are in a field Gules, a demy horse Argent, issuing out of the waves of the sea Azure, grounded upon a tradition that one of their ancestors, at the supposed general inundation or concussion into the sea, of a tract of land called Lyon-ness, extending from St. Sennan to the Scilly Islands, saved himself by sitting on the back of a white horse, whilst he swam from thence through the sea to the insular continent of Cornwall, where he came safe to land; but when I consider that Solinus, who lived 1500 years past, tells us that the Cassiterides, by which he means the Scilly Islands (or the tin islands), in his days were separated from the coast of the Danmonii, by a rough sea of two or three hours' sail (as it still appears to be), and that hereditary coat armours and surnames in Britain are little above five hundred years old in Britain or Cornwall, there is small credit to be given to this tradition.
In this parish, or part of Davidstowe, is Foye-fenton, the original fountain of the Foys River; which well, in old records, is also called West Fenton, i.e. the west well, to distinguish it from Mark well in Lanick, otherwise east well; from which places the two cantreds (hundreds) of Eastwellshire and Westwellshire are denominated. And to this purpose it is evident, from Carew's Survey of Cornwall, page 41, that in 3 Henry IV. Reginald de Ferrar held in East Fenton and West Fenton, several knights' fees of land of the honour of Tremeton, which is now East and West Hundreds. (See also St. Stephen's by Saltash, of those tenures in 1360.)
TONKIN.
In this parish stands Basil, a word sometimes taken for a herb or vegetable, sometimes for a vein in the human body, sometimes for the basilisk or cockatrice, &c.; but here I take it to signify after the Greek, a basilica or stately building; and although at present this mansion will not answer the etymology in the extreme latitude or longitude thereof, yet in probability it formerly did, at least comparatively so in respect to other houses in the neighbourhood.
This place is the mansion of the ancient, famous, and knightly family of Trevillyans; the present possessor of Basil is Peter Trevillyan, who married a daughter of Mr. Nicholas Borlase of Treludderin. From this Cornish family are descended the Trevillyans of Nettlecomb in Somersetshire.
Although this parish is commonly called and written St. Cleather, yet the right name is St. Eledred, and so it is written in the Taxatio Beneficiorum; which St. Eledred I take to be Ethelred King of the Mercians, who, after he had held the crown for thirty years, and governed with great reputation, and especially with much regard to religion, which (as William of Malmesbury observes) was more to this prince's inclination than arms, resigned the kingdom to his kinsman Kendred, became a monk, and died soon after in the monastery of Bordeney in Lincolnshire.
There was, however, another St. Ethelred, King of the West Saxons, who is said by Mr. Browne Willis, in his Notitia Parliamentaria, to be buried at Wimborne Minster in Dorsetshire, with the following inscription:
In hoc loco quiescit corpus Sancti Ethelredi Regis West-Saxorum martyris, qui A.D. 872, 23 die Aprilis, per manus Danorum Paganorum occubuit.
Perhaps this latter is the true patron.
THE EDITOR.
Bishop Tanner, in the Notitia Monastica, says of Bordeney Abbey,
"Here was a public monastery before the year 697, to which Ethelred King of Mercia was a great benefactor, if not the original founder; who upon the resignation of his crown retired hither, and became first a monk, and afterwards abbat of this house till his death. It is said to have had three hundred monks, but was destroyed by the Danes A.D. 870."
The branch or stock of the Trevelyans settled at Basil is now extinct. A Sir John Trevelyan, Knight, of that place, is said to have greatly reduced his fortunes by various law-suits. An anecdote is anciently related of him in the neighbourhood, that having failed in making an appearance to some civil suit, a process issued to the sheriff for attaching his person, who went to Basil accompanied by several horsemen, and riding into the court-yard made proclamation of his authority, and called on the defendant to surrender; but he, on the contrary, threatened the sheriff if he did not depart, with letting loose his spearmen upon him, and then overturned some hives of bees, which effectually routed the whole troop.
Basil now belongs to the family of Mr. Robert Fanshawe, an Out Commissioner of the Navy Board resident at Plymouth, who made the purchase from Mr. Tremayne of Sydenham.
This parish contains 3242 statute acres.
| Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 1815 | £. 1998 |
s. 0 |
d. 0 |
| Poor Rate in 1831 | 112 | 0 | 0 |
| Population, | in 1801, 134 |
in 1811, 165 |
in 1821, 175 |
in 1831, 171; |
giving an increase of 27 per cent in 30 years.
Present Vicar, the Rev. J. P. Carpenter, instituted 1823.
GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.
The western moiety of this parish runs much further south than the eastern, stretching in an irregular form into the granite near Roughton and Brown Walley.
The rocks adjoining this granitic portion are compost and schistose felspar, as at Alternun, and in a similar position. These are succeeded in the vicinity of the church by a peculiar calcareous rock, consisting almost entirely of hornblend and calcareous spar. The northern part makes part of a downs, extending almost to Launceston, and abounding in manganese.