Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/382

340 his father in the kingdom, and to have lost his life in the thirty-sixth year of his reign in a place near Camelford. The borough of Bossiney, known in this county by the name of Tintagel, is a very small village, and contains scarcely twenty houses, and those not better than cottages. This place, with Trevenna, another little hamlet equally mean, lie in the parish of Tintagel, from which church they are at no great distance, and with it make up the one borough. It was privileged by Richard Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, who granted "Quod Burgus noster de Tyntaivil sit liber Burgus." It is governed by a mayor. The first return of Members to serve in Parliament is in the reign of Edward the Sixth.

In an indenture during the reign of Queen Mary it is styled Trevenna alias Bossiney, in others Trevenna simply, in others Bossiney alone.

The borough is held from the duchy at a fee-farm rent of 11l. 16s. 9d.

Mr. Lysons says, "this castle, which is of great antiquity, is reported to have been the birthplace of King Arthur, with respect to whom it was the opinion of Lord Chancellor Bacon, that there was truth enough in his story to make him famous, besides that which was fabulous."

His history nevertheless has been so blended with the marvellous by the monkish historians, that some authors have been disposed to doubt of his existence; and the circumstances connected with his supposed birth at Tintagel, are clearly not among those parts of his story most entitled to credit. We find no mention of this castle in authentic history till the year 1245, when Richard Earl of Cornwall was accused of having offered an asylum at his castle of Tintagel, to his nephew David Prince of Wales, in rebellion against his uncle Henry the Third. Thomas de la Hyde was governor or constable of the castle in 1307, Tho-