THE ANNALS OF A CORNISH PARISH.*

CANON JOSEPH HAMMOND has produced an almost ideal parish history. He has carefully read and digested what his predecessors have written, and during his fifteen years' vicariate church, people, town, and district have constantly been the objects of his penetrating and sympathetic scrutiny. If the writer's derivation of "St. Austell" from " hostel" is not more convincing than Leland's from " Austolus," the hermit, the fault lies in the paucity of the historical data, not in the acuteness of the author's reasoning; and if "St. Pee" is bracketed with " St. Ives" (in Cornwall) as also coming from " la's," the slip of the pen is so obvious as to bring into very strong relief the wonderful accuracy of the entire book. Indeed, such is the vast amount of matter packed into the foot-notes, that while the easygoing reader is saved the trouble of looking up his authorities for himself, he is also tempted to say that the author overshoots the mark. For very often not St. Austell only, not even Cornwall only, but many parts of England are laid under tribute to corroborate and illustrate the point in hand. The men- tion of the St. Austell sun-dial leads the author to transcribe quite half a page of closely printed notes from Mrs. Gatty's book on the same subject; and the production of a "brief" from his own register sends the writer in search of a dozen parallels,—all most in- teresting and instructive, but hardly needful in a local history. Barring these very slight defects, we know of no "annals of a parish" which will compare with this Account of St. Austell for fullness, accuracy, and humour.

A railway journey of seven hours—two hundred and forty- three miles—conveys the traveller from the fogs and smoke of London to the blue skies and waters of St. Austell Bay, one mile and a half from which stands the " church-town," with its four thousand five hundred people. It is now the centre of the china-clay trade, which industry here and in other parts of Cornwall has largely taken the place of the long-prevailing tin-mining. This clay-kaolin is decomposed granite, and was • An Account of S. Austell. By Joseph Hammond, LL.B. London Skeffington and Son. discovered by Cookworthy in 1845. In describing the modern townsfolk, the vicar says : " We have a Liberal and a Con- stitution Club and a gasworks," and playfully suggests that all three are engaged in the same sort of manufacture. In a similar mood he tells of a fireman whose delight in his new imposing uniform was so great that he forgot his duty, for on being summoned to an outbreak and on surveying it critically, said :—" 'Tes a proper fire, sure 'fluff. I'll go home and put on my uniform." It is the author's opinion that the typical Cornishman is wanting in the sense of humour, but he tells a capital story of how the late Sir Coleman Rashleigh did some- thing to relieve his countrymen from so grave a charge. Having to write an essay on the words, Nil tonere facias the young Cornishman simply wrote nothing, and when reported to the stern head-master, justified his inaction by pointing to the words ; whereupon Beate pulled young Coleman's ear, and told him not to try that on again. If we had not the Canon's own word to the contrary, we should have thought that the following remedy for the " Inflorenny " would prove another exception to the rule :—" I bought," said a labouring man, "a bottle of whiskey and half a dozen of stout and mixed nu together, and kept at un ; I thought I'd hit un hard." Though seeming to refute the Canon out of his own book, we can hardly refrain from giving the story of the Wesleyan leader who spoke disparagingly of his brother official to a third person, who remarked, "I am surprised to hear you speak thus; I thought he was one of the pillars of your chapel." " Pillar o' the chapel ! he's a caterpillar, that's what 'e is."

Our author's laborious search into the archives of the town reveals the curious fact that for some time the affairs of the parish were settled by some 'principal inhabitants" who are usually described as "the Twelve Men." Here we have a system of local self-government long before Parish Councils came into existence. In Canon Hammond's opinion these men were a survival of the Old Hundred Assembly. At St. Columb—another Cornish parish—this form of govern- ment remains to this day for certain purposes. The recent establishment of Parish Councils was thus only a giving back to the people of powers and privileges which they had enjoyed long ago, for as Gomme in his Literature of Local Institutions says, " The central authority has been built up by taking to itself, one by one, all the powers which originally belonged to the local authorities. The process has been a long one and very insidious." From the St. Austell Records it is clear that the Twelve held office for life, and that vacancies in their number were filled up by co-option, while their duties were of such varied kinds as lending a sheep at 7d. per annum, keeping roads in repair, managing the workhouse, regulating the market, appointing the bread-weigher and the ale-taster, &c. ; and their powers were exercised till 1819, when they gave place to the select Vestry. From the " Parish Accounts " the transition is easy to the " Parish Registers," of which five books have come down to the present vicar. Though required by Royal injunction from the year 1538, the St. Austell Register was not begun till 1564. Convocation of 1597 prescribed a parchment book, into which all previous entries were to be copied, and the seventieth Canon directs that this parchment should be kept in a "sure coffer," and further requires that the entries should be made by the minister only, in the presence of the churchwardens. But our author is obliged to admit that those of his parish have been but indifferently kept. The first book is strongly bound in oak and leather, profusely embossed with images of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and written in a neat court hand down to 1599, after which the writing and the want of method are very unsatisfactory. Having transcribed ten pages of the first Register, our author gathers up his results somewhat in this fashion : there is no single instance of a double Christian name ; homely ones, as John, Joan, and William, recur again and again ; George never appears (remarkable, as St. George is the patron saint of England) ; surnames are not used as Christian names, and surnames themselves are only just beginning to be used ; and only in one instance is there any approach to the practice of using strange Bible names and Biblical sentences. In the neighbouring parish of St. Agnes, Mahershalalhashbaz has been transmitted for many generations. The Plague is often referred to, and in other documents called " The New Acquaintance," "The Sweatte." "The Great Visitation."

It has been said of Weimar that it is a "park with a town

attached." Of St. Austell it may be more truly said that it is a church with a town tacked on to it. Speaking generally, a

writer has well said that the " parish church stands where and much as it stood nine, or even ten, centuries ago. It alone saw the making of England." This is especially true of this Cornish church. As it emerges out of the mists of history the district shows a church, but no houses ; subsequent glimpses show the houses grouping themselves around the sanctuary of God. Its only connection with the stirring times of the Civil War was the one which shielded it from destruction or wanton desecration when the Royalists drove the Roundheads " yet closer together that they did not possess themselves of St. Austell ;" to which happy circum- stance we owe the preservation of the symbolism which is the glory of the church and the pride of the country. Fergusson has said that the parish churches of Cornwall are not as mag- nificent as our Cathedrals, nor as rich as our College chapels, but for beauty of detail and appropriateness of design they are unsurpassed by either, while on the Continent there is nothing to compare with them. Canon Hammond may be pardoned for thinking that St. Austell's tower is the finest in

the county (though we confess to the belief that the one at Probus runs it very hard), but he is certainly right in think.

big that for expressive and suggestive symbolism it is unsur- passed. The deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy which Ruskin desideratee in a sacred building are found here in perfection. On the west front of the tower there are sculptured representations of the Holy Trinity, of Hades, the angel Gabriel, the Blessed Virgin; and to the Canon himself belongs the credit of settling what is meant by the central figure of the three lowest repre- sentations :-

" For when the tower was repaired in the spring of 1896, I ascended in the workmen's cage, and then remarked for the first time that the left hand of this figure grasps a staff tipped with the cross of the Resurrection,—the right hand is raised in benediction. The crass of the Resurrection is distinguished by the banner or miniature flag attached to it. And this settles the point. This middle figure stands for our Risen Lord."

The shields on the other three aides of the tower, the gar- goyles, the monuments, and the stained-glass windows receive equally loving and strenuous attention, and the results justify the Canon's distinctive description of his church as a course of sermons in stone, as the great stone book of St. Austell. He is indignant with one thoughtless writer who spoke of the fantastic faces as " sculptured monstrosities," and pertinently quotes Bishop Lightfoot's remark that humour as well as doctrine is expressed in the carvings of our churches :-

" The stone book was most easily deciphered, the most widely read, the most importunate and self-asserting form of poetry.

Imagination wrote down all her poetic thoughts in masonry, grave and gay alike,—her lightest effusions as well as her more serious communings ; for what else are the grotesque carvings, which sometimes appear in such strange company with the most solemn subjects, but the mopings and mournings of the age, the cynicism, the satires, possibly even the scepticism, of the mediaeval mind, the imagination seeking relief in some freak of merriment or in some grin of sarcasm?"

In the church there is a window to the memory of Bishop

Colenso, a native, who was born in 1814 and baptised in 1827. The subject is " Our Lord before Caiaphas," the words being "He bath spoken blasphemy;" but the vicar is careful to say that no sinister meaning is intended, the subject and words having been chosen by the artist, not by the Bishop's friends [or foes]. The writer adds :—

" Colenso deserves to be commemorated not only because of his eminence as a mathematician and as a friend of the native races, but because of his indomitable pluck and perseverance and his honesty. He was heavily weighted in his start in life by having to help to support his family, and his life as an usher at Dart- mouth and a sizar at St. John's College, Cambridge, was hard to severity."

The chapters on " Our Superstitions," " Oar People "—which takes in the folklore and present peculiarities of speech—on the country seats around St. Austell, and the accounts of St. Roche, Mewan, Porthpean, and Charlestown, are full of the deepest interest to resident and outsider alike. The book is admirably printed and bound, and the photogravures are clear and striking. But for the absence of an index and the presence of numerous digressions the work would practically be without defect or flaw.