Page:VCH Cornwall 1.djvu/610

 A HISTORY OF CORNWALL danger of their lives, and the smugglers have entered into a combination to rescue any person who shall be arrested.' To illustrate this, at the moment when it was written, William Pearse, while being taken to Bodmin gaol, was rescued by a band of forty comrades. 1 Much of the reckless daring shown may have been due to the fact that persons of good social position were protectors and perhaps confederates ; ' the countenance given to the smugglers by those whose business it is to restrain these pernicious practices hath brought them so bold and daring that nobody can venture to come near them with safety whilst they are at their work.' 2 In 1765 William Rawlings, of St. Columb, a correspondent of Lord Dartmouth, the President of the Board of Trade, gives a detailed and singular account of the way in which the illegal, but hardly secret, commerce was carried on. 3 The war of 1756-63 had reduced France to bankruptcy, but he thought that the large remittances from Cornwall had enabled the French to hold out longer than would otherwise have been possible. As history this is an obvious exaggeration, but it is evidence of the large purchases actually made in France, and it may be true so far as the remittances provided money to fit out privateers from the Breton ports. Not long before Rawlings wrote to Lord Dartmouth one of his servants met, at night near Padstow, a cavalcade of sixty horses, each carrying about one and a half hundredweight of tea : ' if in this little spot so much dirty work be done, how much more through the county! ' 4 Unless tradition libels him, John Knill, mayor of Padstow in 1767, was a busy free trader, and no doubt did not confine his transactions to his year of office. Captain Isaac Cocart, too, more than once mayor of Falmouth, originally a smuggler, had been sent by the customs commissioners to catch his former associates, but could not refrain from an occasional speculation in his ancient business ; and in 1769 the mayor of Penzance was bound over ' not to be guilty again.' The smuggling from Scilly, says Rawlings, is notorious, and ' another shameful trade is that carried on by the packets, from Lisbon especially, and the West Indies.' Much wine was brought from Lisbon, and sold at little more than half the ordinary price ; ' the captains themselves smuggle large quantities and connive at their men doing the same, not allowing them sufficient wages whereon to live without it.' He believed that the duty on smuggled goods in Falmouth alone for one year would amount to more than twice the land tax of the whole county. A month later Rawlings wrote again. He had been in Falmouth while the Vansittart East India- man was there, and had been in ' pain to see the vast concourse of people ' come for the purpose of smuggling. Every day, including Sundays, people thronged on board as to a fair. Muslins, silks, and other valuable and dutiable articles were sold to the value of at least j5,ooo, ' nor do I find that there were any seizures made worth notice : I think it is plain that the officers cannot discharge their duty. . . have we not reason to fear they are bribed to overlook these practices?' 6 Not only the packets, but the salt ships from Lisbon smuggled wine ; and as for tea, he estimated that, while ninety families out of a hundred drank it twice a day, not one family in a thousand used that which had paid duty. It came in through the south coast in winter, and north coast in summer. Rawlings reappears in the Dartmouth correspondence in 1775, and expresses the fear that the mania for smuggling was ruining the county for honest work. He mentions that recently the excise vessel off Padstow, instead of chasing, had been chased into the port by a large Irish vessel which ' by way of bravado fired seven guns at the mouth of the harbour, and hung out a flag by way of triumph,' and then sailed to Newquay, where smugglers and excise officers were on excellent terms, to discharge her cargo. It was not uncommon for a hundred horses to be awaiting the arrival of a cargo at Newquay nearly every day of the week. The audacity with which the free traders carried on their occupation is shown strikingly about this period. In March, 1767, a fleet of nine sail left Penzance for France, quite openly, to fetch their commodities ; in 1775 two vessels lay off the same place for three days discharging cargo, the customs collector having to look on helplessly because everyone ashore was either actively interested in the success of the run, or a passive sympathizer. In IJJ2 a Penzance customs boat was plundered and sunk by a smuggler, and on 29 November, 1777, another sailed into Penzance harbour and carried off the revenue cutter Brilliant, which was lying there with a captured cargo in her hold. 6 References to the Scillies speak of the islands as depending on the trade. Between 1 Treas. Bd. Papers, cclxxxviii, 53. In 1728 there were 1,283 persons under prosecution in the western ports (Ibid, cclxix, 25). 8 Lanisley Letters (Journ. Roy. last. Cormv.). * Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. v, App. i, 176, 178, 214. 4 John Wesley writes that at St. Ives ' I found an accursed thing among them ; well-nigh one and all bought and sold uncustomed goods' (Joum., 25 July, 1753). 6 In 1762 there were three East Indiamen in Falmouth, when goods to the amount of 20,000 were sold ; ' there are ways and means of dealing with the custom house officers.' People flocked in, horse, foot, and carriage folk, from twenty miles round (S. E. Gay, Old Falmouth, p. 93). Also in the same year Falmouth had the distinction of providing the largest seizure yet known, in the shape of 27,529 Ib. of tea and 9,000 gallons of brandy in one haul (Annual Register). 6 Cornish Mag. i, 124 ; Ho. Off. Papers, 17 July, 1772. 506