PRIORY CHIMES by Jim Pentney

“Launceston Priory, founded in 1126 across the Kensey at Newport, replaced the earlier Saxon foundation of secular canons at St Stephens. The Priory has been described as one of the largest religious buildings in the South West during the Middle Ages. Certainly the present church of St Thomas beside Priors Bridge, stands on a small fraction of the ground that was covered by the Priory buildings. The neglected and overgrown ruins behind the church are another reminder, as other odd stones of a darker, greener grey than granite, scattered around the town. The Priory was Augustinian, ‘the Black Canons,’ who also managed the leper hospital downstream at Polson. But the Priory was not only what stood on the banks of the Kensey. As an organisation it was the largest property owner in Cornwall, controlling manors along the north coast from Kilkhampton to St Juliot, south eastwards to St Breward and St Neot, Liskeard, and even on the south coast at Tallend and Looe (held in partnership with Glastonbury Abbey) as well as across the Tamar in Devon.”

The immediate proximity of the terrace of houses, including “the Sign of the Bell,” so close to such an expanding medieval conglomerate, makes one think that it must have been the site of medieval building under Priory control.

To return to “The End of the Tregeare Branch:”
“In 1758 Susannah proved the will of her kinswoman Susanna Tynte of Ilminster and was buried 14 March 1760 at St Stephens. It seems reasonable to conclude that she was Alexander Edgcumbe’s wife and Thomas’ mother.

“What is odd about this, however, is that, rather than having died, Alexander had left his family and quit Newport. He had not entirely lost contact because his brother left him a shilling in his will in 1747.

“He also left legacies to Alexander’s three children. Thomas was his principal heir, receiving land at Stoke Climsland, Hodgeland in Altarnon and Tresmeer. Elizabeth was left 40s and John had livestock and land at Trewen.

“Both Thomas and John followed their father as tanners. Neither married, although their middle aged sister wed Vincent Tuke on 17 August 1762 at St Stephens. The groom was a widower with a grown-up son, John Tuke, carpenter of Newport.

“Thomas was buried on 13 July 1777 at St Stephens. Administration of his goods was granted to his brother, John, described as a gentleman of St Stephens.

“On 4 November 1777 John was in a very weak and infirm state when he drew up his will. He left his sister, Elizabeth, a life interest in his whole estate, including the messuage in Newport, which had been his brother’s. After her death the estate was to pass to her step-son, John Tuke.”

There follows a two page colour spread appeared in the Western Morning News on 6 July 1999 with the headline:
“Industry that Grew from Mighty Oaks.”“When Stone Age man first threw the skin of an animal into a murky bog he began a process of curing and preserving hides that has survived to the present day.
“Although needs and styles have changed over the intervening 10,000 years, the basic technique discovered by Neolithic Man has altered little , the tannin present in the vegetable matter permeating the animal fibres to create leather.
“...there are perhaps two or three traditional vegetable tanners left in Britain - one at the Manor Tannery, Grampound, Cornwall.......Established in 1711, it is still run by the same family.
“ ‘Where you had a cattle market you had the industries that grew up around it and tanning was one of them.’ The main ingredient used from the start was oak bark taken from coppiced woodland.
“The pallets of stinking cow hides arrive at the bottom end of the site where they are stored close to the old liming sheds with their granite tanks. A disused water wheel once powered the entire operation.
“The skins are cleaned and suspended on chains in progressively purer vats of lime water for about two weeks.
“After going through the fleshing machine, the heavy hides are transferred to the tanning shed, a series of deep pits filled with brown liquor made from a solution of water and wood bark.
“There they stay for five or six weeks and when they are hauled from the pits they have been transformed from hides into leather.
“They are put into a large drum to which is added cod oil and then hung to dry before being graded for quality.
“A number of finishing processes follow before they are shipped out to saddlers and shoemakers.
“................’There is a continuity which is very valuable........a small Cornish industry continuing a tradition that goes right back to medieval days.’”

NAUGHT PRIOR KNOLLE

In the 1330s Prior Adam de Knolle was under scrutiny by the Bishop, who had heard that the Priory was being neglected by the Prior, who led a dissolute life with “secular persons and even with suspected women.” The Bishop demanded that the Prior should:
“- See that the daily meals of the poor be received in the Priory hall;
That poor youths be taught grammar; That women, especially suspected women, and other persons stirred by inordinate carnal affections be excluded; That a single light in wax rather than in lamps be kept burning and carefully watched; That the sacristan produce exact accounts of his administration; Damaged books be repaired; Vestments torn and soiled be mended and washed; Improper and indecent drinking be stopped; All hunting dogs and falcons be removed from the houses and cloisters; Remove a burdensome family from the monastery; Canon’s maid-servants or families to dwell outside the Priory unless with license; That receivers, bailiffs and ministers be admitted to council; That William Weveroke, the chaplain of St Stephens, found out of place and unfit, be removed and replaced after the feast of St Michael; That you the Prior, place chaplains in your churches with the consent of your convent and communicate your acts to your brethren.”

In 1343 John Skeyneke, an esquire of the Priory complained that Prior Knolle and Ogar Bant, the sub-Prior, had deprived him of “everyday eatables and drinkables at the table of the esquires of the Priory and of receiving at Christmas an esquire’s robe and ten shillings for shoes. Also daily meat and drink for his boy and a robe made for the boys of the Priory. A suitable chamber within the Priory and a nightly half flagon of beer, two tallow candles called ‘parish candles’ and a fagot of wood for his chamber in winter. For his horse he claimed a stable, a half bushel of oats and sufficient hay.”

“On 9 February 1345 the Bishop issued a ‘Mandamus’ against the Prior, addressed to the Dean of Trigg Major. The charges included that John Langa, a Priory esquire, had laid hands on and drawn blood from our dearly beloved son, Brother Richard Prideaux, a Canon of the monastery, and that John Peverel, John Skeyneke, and other insolent and quarrelsome fellows, had held assembles in the Priory, armed and in numbers, to the great damage to the goods of the house. Moreover, the Prior had appropriated to himself the revenues of the Church of St Stephen, and used the money for his pleasures and feastings. He is also said to be accustomed to live at the table of Johanne, the wife of Henry Cosyn, which stirs up much scandal. He does not say the Canonical Hours, nor private or public mass. This time Prior de Knoll must have had no alternative but to offer his resignation, which the Bishop accepted on 26 June 1346.

Bishop Grandisson’s Register recorded more trouble in the following year, now with Sir Theobald de Grenevile, “head of a most ancient and influential family in North Cornwall......... The bishop, with habitual plainness of speech, described him as, ‘a youthful knight, or rather a mere tyro, prodigal of his knightly honour, having no fear of God before his eyes, no reverence for the Church; regardless of the opinion of his fellow men and of his reputation. When he ought to have stood by the side of his king in the battlefield, he skulked at home, and when he brandished his sword, it was not, ..... against the enemies of the Church and realm, but against God Himself, His Church and His ministers, and against simple poor unoffending country-folk, all alike objects of his ungovernable rage.’”

Worse was about to be unleashed on the “poor country-folk” by the plagues of the Black Death. Yet local acts of violence still managed to create more disturbances - ie. “blood was shed in the burial-ground” of the Priory in a fight. The main offender was judged to be a fisherman called Robert Symon - no record survived of his punishment. “Although a great pestilence was then reigning, all interments in the cemetery were suspended until the pollution of the place had been expurged. A solemn enquiry was directed and held in the chapel of St Thomas by T Uppton, who sat for John Stevyn, the Mayor of Dunheved; Nicholas Tregodeck, William Stoterych and others.”

On 18 August 1353, Edward the Black Prince, the first Duke of Cornwall arrived in Launceston and certainly would have been entertained in the Priory. The Duchy was created by his father, Edward III, to supply income and an apprenticeship to his heir to the English throne. Cornish tin and copper were significant sources of revenue to the medieval gross national product. Some years later, the Black Prince unsuccessfully claimed patronage to the Priory as well.

The outbreaks of plague in the second half of the fourteenth century devastated the population and left precious few to work the land. Like other lords of manors, the priors and canons of Launceston turned their estates into sheep runs, kept tan houses and sold wool.
It also becomes apparent how important was the holding of the advowson (the patronage of the living). Today we have periodic elections for the people to make some sort of choice and we call it democracy. Back then the only ones with any choice were the lords of the manor who usually held the advowson. He, or in some cases, she, controlled the patronage and, presumably, the comfortable livings of vicars, who in turn, from the pulpit, had power over the minds of devout, hell fearing, faithful people, who interpreted the miracles of creation all around as God’s work and any misfortune as the Devil’s. Clearly there would be important political considerations for those holding the advowsons in their choice of their parish priests.

In the Black Prince’s Register dated 1361, Launceston Priory was in dispute with the people of Linkinhorne over Carnedon property in the case of the prince and the prior:
“On information that there is a great dispute between the prior and convent of Launceveton and their tenants of Carnedon of the one part, touching certain boundaries named in a charter of the land of Carnedon made to the prior and convent by Reynold some time earl of Cornwaille, and on testimony by the sheriff before the prince’s council that he went in person to the place in dispute and found the dispute to be so high that he could not make an arrangement between the parties, - to take six of the most substantial men of the prince’s tenants there, and six of the prior’s tenants of Carnedon, call together the prior and his tenantry as well as the prince’s tenantry there, both free and conventionary, go to the place where the boundary in dispute is, find out by oath of the twelve jurors where the boundary named in the charter ought by right to be, and make a clear boundary in accordance with their verdict between the prince and the prior allowing the latter to have and enjoy what shall be given him by the inquisition.” ie they held a site-meeting.

To turn from the Black Prince’s Register, to the handwritten notes left by the late lamented Charles Henderson:

Immediately before 1400 the Priory and Convent of Launceston made an attempt to extinguish the vicarages of St Martin of Leskyrd, St Tallanus of Tallen and St Melor of Lankenhorn and to convert them to their own use. They applied and achieved a Papal Bull on 15 March 1399 authorising them to annex the vicarages on the death of the current vicars and to serve the ‘congregation’ by the Canons from the Priory or by secular priests removable “ad nutum.”
The parishioners were justly indignant and stood out boldly for their rights. In a petition to Parliament they showed that the Priory had obtained the Bull with a plea of poverty, whereas the income of the House was £1000 a year - thereupon ample for 15 Canons.
Representations were also made in Rome to such good effect that on 19 February 1400, Pope Boniface IX revoked the Bull. In the same month occurred the death of the vicar of Lankenhorn, Richard Doyngel, who died in the manse.
One Walter Peers, as proctor for the Priory, on 27 June 1401 appeared in the porch of the church of Lankenhorn to take corporal possession. This he did without hindrance, holding the ring of the door and the key, sitting in the vicar’s seat on the right side of the choir, reading the ‘service’ and taking a penny which had been offered on the high alter - finally tolling the great bell. After this, John Honyland, a canon of the Priory, took up his residence at the vicarage.
In the meantime, knowing that the Bull had been quashed and asserting that the benefice had lapsed to him, collated one Thomas Raylecombe on 16 October 1401, .... a mandate ‘was addressed’ to the Archdeacon ............. ........who refused to meddle in the affair.
Raylecombe thereupon applied to the Bishop, who happened to be Chancellor of England, for redress and obtained an ‘order’ for the Justices of the Peace in Cornwall to remove the occupants of the vicarage; by nature of which brother John Honyland, canon of the Priory, was arrested and removed to the king’s prison at Lostwithiel and there detained.
Raylecombe proceeded to take possession of the vicarage on 17 October 1401 and shortly afterwards the Priory ......... agreed to accept him and come to terms with the Bishop. There the matter would have rested had not the Archbishop, on 1 December 1401, asserted that the benefice had lapsed to his collation through the negligence of the patrons and diocese, proceeded to collate one Richard Peryn to the vicarage.
Peryn finding it impossible to dislodge Raylecombe proceeded against him in the Court of Arches on the 14 October 1403 and, of course, by the Archbishops’s Court obtained a favourable verdict on the 6 March 1404. Peryn then came down and took possession of the vicarage.
In 1410 Sir Ralph Botreaux, John Labe, John Carkyk, Richard Doyngell, Robert Beare, William Odetrof, Roger de Lankynhorn ........ (plus 20 others) complained to Bishop Stafford that whereas they had subscribed to maintain a priest to celebrate in the parish church. Without any ‘preynoice’ to the vicar, Richard Peryn, he had prevented his ministrations without any reasonable cause. The Bishop accordingly wrote on 31 January 1411 to Peryn ‘proposing’ the priest ‘should resign’ forthwith or else state cause for refusal. He also wrote on the 20 February to the complainants granting their request.
The affair had a tragic sequence as in March 1411, P eryn was brutally murdered while riding “in alta via” between the parish church and the village of Clompit. The Bishop denounced the murderers, who were unknown, as “Satellites of Satan” and ordered their excommunication on 2 April 1411 ........ ( a medieval whodunit in need of a Cadfael!) “Linkinhorne - where the Devil was born,” is an old saying that is still heard occasionally. Could it refer to the person or persons unknown who murdered Canon Peryn; the “Satellites of Satan?” The saying continues with, “he’s gone over the hill to Northill.”

Before church rates, the Guild of All Saints was formed to raise funds for the fabric and maintenance of the chapel with two parishioners elected annually to collect money. Dating from 1480 a number of tattered leaves of the accounts give a glimpse of the people and their activities. Receipts - 12d for the hire of a cow and 5s 2d for wool sold: Expenses - 8d for making ale; for an orbit of the clerk 7d; for tithes paid for five lambs, 1d and 2 1/2d for the accounts: John Congan, senior, 22d; William Garrya, 23d, John Congan of Thorn, 2s 3d: Johanna Jynne, 4s 3d; John Garry, William Greiston were elected keepers for the next year...... On the Sunday after the Feast of All Saints, 1481, in the house of William Congan, all the brothers and sisters of the Guild acknowledged that they owe the Church of St Thomas for the purchase of a bell and repairing the bell tower. (The Sign of the Bell again!) A total of 11s was paid to the church before the Feast of St Michael the Archangel.

Prior to the Dissolution of the 1530s it was increasingly clear that the days if the medieval monasteries were numbered. Certainly the epidemics of plague over two centuries had taken a heavy toll. By early in the sixteenth Cardinal Wolsey was harassing them with procedures while squeezing them financially. Yet Newport itself prospered as a borough by matching Dunheved in first sending two Members to Parliament on 3 November 1529. Two freeholders named ‘Vianders’ were the returning officers. The electorate were the free tenants living in the borough and those who paid ‘scot and lot,’ ie paying rates and claiming ancient rights.

The wool and tanning trades explain the growing prosperity of Newport. Trade tokens of the period have been discovered, including one found under the dining room identified by an expert as being Flemish. Tan pits and wool stores were managed by Flemish workmen - one John Jarpenfelt was the bailiff of the bouough in 1502.

 

As with so many other great monasteries, the end of Launceston Priory came in 1539. In 1536 a pliant Prior Shere made grants of Priory property to agents of the Crown. Most of the manors went to the Duke of Cornwall or people that had assisted in the Dissolution, or were soon sold by the Crown. In a deed dated 2 April 1550 the king (Edward VI) conveyed to Giles Keylwey and William Leonard:

“All that our rectory and Church of St Thomas, near Launceston, in our County of Cornwall, with all its appurtenances, to the Priory of Launceston, now dissolved, sometime belonging and part of the possessions thereof, and all houses, tithe-barn, glebe-lands, meadows, tithes of garbs, grain and blades, and tithes of wool and lambs, and all other small tithes of ours whatsoever, situate and growing or renewing in the parish aforesaid, or elsewhere in our said County of Cornwall appertaining.........”

More miserable work than tanning was also undertaken beside the Kensey. “In the year 1558 both the Lent and Lammas Assizes for Cornwall were held in Dunheved, and the victims of the savage laws of the time were hanged ...... on the Castle Green. The dead bodies were borne to St Thomas churchyard, either in carts or on biers - frames of wood known as ‘ladders’ .......There a pit was dug for them, the bodies were washed, and apparently in shrouds of cleansed skins, they were cast into their ‘earthen bed’ and ‘there they lie, heaps upon heaps!’

The religious pendulum was swinging violently through the third quarter of the century. Under Elizabeth I the old Catholic rituals were outlawed driving scholars, such as Barnstaple born Cuthbert Mayne, across the Channel to Douai to pursue the unreformed Roman priesthood. In secret they returned to maintain the Mass in certain old family houses - in Cuthbert Mayne’s case at Golden and Lanherne. In 1577 he was hung and drawn in Launceston. In 1970 he was canonised as a Catholic martyr.

On 16 January 1556 eight men of Newport were granted the right to hold a fair on the vigil, feast and morrow of the exultation of the Holy Cross (13, 14, 15 September) as well as a weekly Wednesday market with tolls charged for “support, relief and reparation of the borough, the inhabitants and the parish church.” These ‘eight men’ later took charge of the property of the parish and this property included the farm of Cargentle, which became the home of members of the Edgcumbe family. Holy Cross or Holy Rood fair continued to be held until 14 September 1878. Lawsuit after lawsuit was fought for many decades over claims to the old Priory property. In 1627 in the reign of Charles I, the Crown sold property and from then on Newport became increasingly in the control of the ownership of Werrington.

“The thoroughfare through Launceston must have been a very lively street during the Civil War of the 1640s, with frequent passing to and fro of the ‘trained bands’ from Werrington to Dunheved....... After the War sundry gifts were made to the parishioners of St Stephens.......... ‘Land and houses in Newport borough described as ‘a decayed market house and a chapel with the hill adjoining it’ situated on the western side of the church. (The chapel was subsequently used as a parish poor house.) An orchard containing about half an acre, called Holyrood; six cottages with gardens attached; and Shoulder’s Well and orchard. These properties were sold to the late Mr Deakin in 1880 for the sum of £800.” John Tuke Treleaven sold Hopecote to Mr Deakin in 1876.

The Priory property granted to Keylwey and Leonard in 1550 dispersed over time. (Some, if not most of it acquired by the owners of Werrington.) Nevertheless, Peter recorded a deed conveying property from John Carpenter to John Ruddle on 25 June 1678, which was in the possession of Mr Treleaven in the late nineteenth century!
“........ and all other tithes, both great and small, and all offerings and profits arising from the Rectory of the parish of St Thomas out of all those meadows called Landreen (Landreyne) late in the possession of Solomon Keswell.......”

“From 1774 ‘voting influence’ was in the hands of only two people - the Duke of Northumberland, new owner of Werrington, and Sir Jonathan Phillips, who lived at Newport House on the site of the present St Joseph’s School. Sir Jonathan was MP for Camelford, but outgunned by the Duke, Sir Jonathan soon sold up to the peer and moved to Landue. As a donor to St Stephens parish, he was commemorated on a board on the north wall of the chancel which read: “Whereas Sir Jonathan Phillips, late of Newport House in this parish, did in his last illness request his sister and adminstratrix Mrs Christian Carpenter* to lay out a sum of One Hundred Pounds sterling for the benefit of such poor families of this parish as she or her representatives should think entitled to assistance, And whereas the said Christian Carpenter in pursuance of such request hath agreed with Thomas Phillips Esq, her son-in-law, that he and his successors shall henceforth pay the sun of Six Pounds a year, clear of all outgoings, to be distributed annually at Christmas to such poor families as she, during her life, and after her death the occupier of Newport House, shall think proper. This board is therefore erected to perpetuate the donation, and to show how it arose. December 1799.” The last Christmas payment was made by Thomas Phillips in 1854. He died in 1855 and his executor was Col Paul Phillips of Paignton.”

(*Carpenters won a £10,000 lottery and built the Eagle House:1760s)

Community spirit continues and to mark the Millennium in 2000, a small group huddled under umbrellas to hear a Celtic blessing for the avenue of oak trees.

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