Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/422

240 At South Milton in the church is an interesting rood-screen, with paintings of saints on the panels. Screens are, indeed, numerous in this district, some very fine. Crass stupidity has occasioned the destruction of those of Malborough and West Alvington. The clergy should be the guardians, not the ravagers, of their churches, but quis custodiet custodes?

A delightful row down the estuary will take to Salcombe, a modern place. Opposite, up a tremendous scramble, is Portlemouth, a settlement of S. Winwaloe, the great Brittany saint. He is locally called Onolaus or Onslow. Winwaloe was the son of Gwen of the Three Breasts, and her husband, Fragan or Brechan, cousin of Cado, Duke of Cornwall. Although Gwen is represented on monuments in Brittany as a woman with three breasts, yet in Celtic the epithet means no more than that she was twice married, and had children by both husbands. Winwaloe was educated by S. Budoc, and founded Landevenec in Finisterre. At one time, fired with enthusiasm at what he had heard of the achievements of S. Patrick in Ireland, he desired to go there, but was advised to remain and devote himself to the education of his own people. He accordingly gave up his life to ministering to the spiritual necessities of the Britons who came to Armorica, either as a place for expansion, finding Britain too strait for them, or driven there by dynastic revolutions.

Whether Winwaloe ever came into Devon and Cornwall we are not told in his Life, but it is not improbable, as he was closely related to the reigning princes.