Page:The histories of Launceston and Dunheved, in the county of Cornwall.djvu/11



ORNWALL appears on the first page of the story of Britain; it had almost its separate story until the Conquest. Dunheved and Launceston were, for centuries after the Conquest, the chief military and ecclesiastical stations within this old earldom and duchy, and yet their annals have never been written. The present work is designed to rescue from oblivion the scattered early records which relate to these interesting contiguous towns.

The treatise is rather a series of histories than a single history. The Launceston Priory; the Hospital of St. Leonard; the Borough of Dunheved, with its municipal and territorial rights, its Castle and Town Wall, its Guildhall, Assize Hall, and Gaol, its Badges of Office, its Representatives in Parliament, and its Mayors; the Chapels of the Virgin, St. Mary Magdalene with its tower, and St. John the Baptist; the Grammar School, and its affiliated house at Week St. Mary; Dunheved College; the Borough of Newport, and its Parliamentary Representatives, with, incidentally, the parish of St. Stephen; Horwell's School; the Parish Church of St. Thomas the Apostle; and the Nonconformist Chapels; are separately traced in