Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/430

420[April 3, 1869] A few miles from Liskeard, in another direction, is Menheniot, where Bishop Trelawney was christened. This was one of the seven bishops whom James the Second was unwise enough to commit to the Tower for refusing to sanction the dangerous Act of Indulgence, which, under pretext of tolerating dissenters, was to open the flood-gates of Rome upon our English Protestantism. It was this sturdy Sir Jonathan, who, when the bishops took their petition to Whitehall, and the angry king exclaimed, "I tell you this is a standard of rebellion!" fell on his knees and said:

"Rebellion! for God's sake, sir, do not say so hard a thing of us. A Trelawney can be no rebel. Remember that my family has fought for the crown. Remember how I served your majesty when Monmouth was in the West."

And good Bishop Ken, worthy Izaak Walton's relation, and the writer of our noble Evening Hymn, then said:

"We have two duties to perform, our duty to God, and our duty to your majesty. We honour you, but we fear God."

The king's face grew dark as he replied:

"Have I deserved this?—I who have been such a friend to your church? I will be obeyed. You are trumpeters of sedition. What do you do here? Go to your dioceses, and see that I am obeyed."

Then to himself he muttered:

"I will go on. I have been too indulgent Indulgence ruined my father."

So the bigoted fool went on, and went on, and never stopped till he got all the way to St. Germains.

That one heroic act made Trelawney a demigod for ever in Cornwall. The miners came swarming up from underground, singing the grand defiant ballad still preserved, and so charmingly rewritten by Mr. Hawker of Morwinstow:

Sir Jonathan's pastoral staff is still preserved as a valued relic at Pelynt Church near East Looe. It is of gilt wood; lightning fell on it some years since, but it was as impotent as James's anger, and only fused the copper ornaments that adorned it.

North of Liskeard, the crow's black wings fold upon that strong toppling column of granite blocks—the Cheesewring (cheese press)—a rock idol, says old credulous Borlase, who believed anything and everything.

Near the Cheesewring there is a cave at the foot of a hill, dangerously near the ruthless granite quarries, where a strange hermit of the later times took up his abode in 1735 (George the Second) to study and to meditate. "The Mountain Philosopher," as he was called, was one Daniel Gumb, a poor stonecutter of Lezant, who, as a mere boy, manifested a passion for mathematics and astronomy, and being very poor, resolved to reduce his expenses, so that he might work less and study more. Finding a huge sloping slab of granite near the Cheesewring, Gumb dug a cavern underneath it, built up the walls with cement, and scooped out a chimney.

There this true philosopher lived with his wife and children, rent and tax free. He never left the moor even to visit the neighbouring villages. After his death, when the roof of the cavern fell in, his bedroom and a stone carved with a geometric figure were shown to visitors. They too were destroyed. Then the traveller used to be pointed out the rock where Gumb sat to watch his only friends the stars. The quarrymen carted off that too, and now only the name remains. It is strange that a genius so strongly directed should have left no discoveries, and existed only to waste itself in useless reverie. Not far from the Cheesewring and the Hurlers (ball-players turned into stone for hurling on a Sunday), and near St. Cleer's Church, stands that curious fragment of half-lost British history, the Other Half Stone, a Runic cross, to the memory of Dungarth, a son of Caradoc, King of Cornwall, who was drowned A.D. 872. The well of St. Cleer was once, it is said, used as a ducking pool for the cure of mad people; a barbarous custom.

Bodmin (the monk's town) a crow of Cornish ancestry can hardly pass. It is a long street running between hills, once, antiquaries say, the site of a Temple of Apollo, built by a British king, 830 B.C., really, however, the home of St. Guron, a Cornish anchorite, and also of St. Petrock, a great man here, and afterwards of Benedictine, in a monastery built and favoured by King Athelstan.

In 1496, that impudent impostor Perkin Warbeck, who pretended to be one of the princes escaped from the Tower, and called himself "Richard the Fourth," mustered his adherents at Bodmin preparatory to marching on Exeter, and proclaiming war on Henry the Seventh.

In 1550 (Edward the Sixth) Bodmin effervesced again. The Cornish people were discontented with the Protector. Wiltshire was up, Oxford and Gloucestershire were taking down their bows and bills, Norfolk was on fire, Ket the tanner holding his court under Mousehold Oak; Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent were buzzing angrily. The rebels of Bodmin compelled Boyer the frightened mayor to furnish them with supplies. After the crushing defeat near Exeter, Lord Russell sent Sir Anthony Kingston, the king's provost-marshal general, to look up Bodmin and purge it with fire and steel. Sir Anthony hanged the portreeve of St. Ives in the middle of the town. He also put to death Mr. Mayow of St. Columb, upon a charge not capital, nor even proved. Mr. Mayow's wife, hearing that her husband was arrested, prepared to set out to intercede for him, but she stayed so long before the glass, rendering herself irresistible, that before she reached the terrible provost, Mr. Mayow was dangling from a sign post. Boyer, the worthy mayor of Bodmin, was delighted at the arrival of law and order—still more pleased when he received a letter from the great man naming a day on which he