Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/31

12 quoting from Drew and Hutchins, who had evidently never seen this book, Dr. Davies's Llyfr y Resolusion of 1632, or Gibson's edition of Camden's Britannia of 1695, says that there is no evidence that anything was ever printed in Cornish before Lhuyd.

The Reformation did much to kill Cornish. Had the Book of Common Prayer been translated into Cornish and used in that tongue, two things might have happened which did not—the whole language might have been preserved to us, and the Cornish as a body might have been of the Church of England, instead of remaining (more or less) of the old religion until the perhaps unavoidable neglect of its authorities caused them to drift into the outward irreligion from which John Wesley rescued them. But it is said by Scawen and by Bishop Gibson in his continuation of Camden's Britannia, that they desired that the Prayer-book might not be translated, and, though the statement is disputed, it is quite possible that the upper classes, who spoke English, did make some such representation, and that the bulk of the population in Cornwall, as elsewhere, had no wish for the Reformed Service-book in any language; for there were churches in Cornwall in which the old Mass according to the Use of Salisbury was celebrated as late as the seventeenth century, notably in the Arundel Chapel in St. Columb Church, as may clearly be inferred from the inscription on the tomb of John Arundel and his wife, the latter of whom died in 1602.

It is asserted by Carew, Polwhele, Davies Gilbert, Borlase, and others, that in the time of Henry VIII. Dr. John Moreman, the parson of Menheniot, was the first to teach his parishioners the Creed, Lord's Prayer, and Commandments in English, these having been