Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/126

84 wise, by the rock may be signified some notable stone-quarry found in those lands,) was the dwelling of John Mountstephens, Esq. sometime member of parliament for West Looe, who purchased the same from Mr. Bullock. He was the son of Mounts or Stephens, alias Mountstephen, of St. Mabyn, and had his first education under Mr. Stephens, sometime schoolmaster of Bodmin, to whom at length he became usher; afterwards was clerk or servitor to William Lilly, Esq. and so became an undergraduate in Oxford; and, being recommended by him to the notice of the Earl of Sunderland, Lord President of the Council temp. James II. he made him one of his clerks or secretaries, which circumstance further brought him to the knowledge of Jonathan Lord Bishop of Bristol, by whose interest he obtained a burgess-ship at West Looe for the parliament, and was afterwards made one of the Commissioners for the King's Tin-farm in those parts; by which ways and means he got himself considerable wealth and reputation.

But, notwithstanding all those his prosperous successes of fortune, in the month of December, or beginning of January, 1706, aged about 60 years, when he was at London, a member of parliament as aforesaid, and in his own house till eleven of the clock, one day upon some discontent went from his company, and so into a more retired apartment, where he took a razor and cut his own throat, and instantly fell dead on the spot, the razor by his side all bloody, to the great terror and amazement of his domestics, who found him in that posture.

Various were the reports and sayings of people upon occasion of this sad accident; some said it was for that he made addresses of marriage to a gentlewoman above his degree, who rejected his amours, upon account of some concubine, or bedfellow, he kept at Truro; others, with more probability, gave out that he was detected by the Earl of Sunderland (who raised him) for eighteen years' space to have been a French pensioner, and to have