Cornish Characters and Strange Events. Baring-Gould Sabine

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СКАЧАТЬ she left goodly sums of money to Week S. Mary.

      But both she and Sir John Percival had been already benefactors in London. Sir John had founded a chantry in S. Mary Woolnoth, and in 1539 is found an entry in the churchwardens' accounts of that parish recording that Dame Thomasine Percival had left money for the maintenance of the "beme light" in the church, i.e. the lamp before the rood. She had also left money to supply candles to burn about the sepulchre in the church on Easter Day, and he had bequeathed moneys for the repair of the ornaments of the church, for bell-ringing, for singers "for keeping the anthem," at his and her obits, and last but not least, "for a potation to the neighbours at the said obit."

      Carew says: "And to show that virtue as well bare a part in the desert, as fortune in the means of her preferment, she employed the whole residue of her life and last widowhood to works no less bountiful than charitable, namely, repairing of highways, building of bridges, endowing of maidens, relieving of prisoners, feeding and apparelling the poor, etc. Among the rest, at this S. Mary Wike she founded a chantry and free-school, together with fair lodgings for the schoolmasters, scholars, and officers, and added £20 of yearly revenue for supporting the incident charges: wherein, as the bent of her desire was holy, so God blessed the same with all wished success; for divers of the best gentlemen's sons of Devon and Cornwall were there virtuously trained up, in both kinds of divine and human learning, under one Cholwel, an honest and religious teacher, which caused the neighbours so much the rather and the more to rue, that a petty smack only of Popery opened the gap to the oppression of the whole, by the statute made in Edward VI's reign, touching the suppression of chantries."

      This disaster befell it in 1550, when all colleges, chantries, free chapels, fraternities, and guilds throughout the kingdom, with their lands and endowments, were alienated to the King – not because there was a "petty smack of Popery" in them, but because of the rapacity of the courtiers who desired to gather the lands and benefactions into their own soiled hands.

      Mr. W. H. Tregellas says: "There are still to be seen in the remote and quiet little village of Week S. Mary, some five or six miles south of Bude, in the northern corner of Cornwall, the substantial remains of the good Thomasine's college and chantry, which she founded for the instruction of the youth of her native place.

      "The buildings lie about a hundred yards east of the church (from the summit of whose grotesquely ornamented tower six-and-twenty parish churches may be discerned), and built into the modern wall of a cottage which stands inside the battlemented enclosure is a large carved granite stone (evidently one of two which once formed the tympanum of a doorway), on which the letter T stands out in bold relief. Probably it is the initial of the Christian name of our Thomasine; at any rate, it is pleasant to think it may be such."

      The church and its stately tower were probably built by Thomasine, or, at all events, she would have largely contributed towards the building. That church is now, internally, a ghastly sight. At its "restoration" it was gutted, and is as bare as a railway station – a shell, and nothing more. But that it was not so in Dame Thomasine's time we may be well assured. A gorgeous screen extended across its nave and aisles, richly sculptured and coloured and gilt, the windows were filled with stained glass, and the bench ends were of carved oak. All this has been swept away.

      In the Stratton churchwardens' accounts for 1513 we find that on the day upon which "My Lady Parcyvale's Meneday" came round – i.e. the day on which her death was called to mind – prayer was to be made for the repose of her soul, and two shillings and two pence paid to two priests, and for bread and ale.

      THE MURDER OF NEVILL NORWAY

      Mr. Nevill Norway was a timber and general merchant, residing at Wadebridge. He was the second son of William Norway, of Court Place, Egloshayle, who died in 1819, and Nevill was baptized at Egloshayle Church on November 5th, 1801.

      In the course of his business he travelled about the country and especially attended markets, and he went to one at Bodmin on the 8th of February, 1840, on horseback.

      About four o'clock in the afternoon he was transacting some little affair in the market-place, and had his purse in his hand, opened it and turned out some gold and silver, and from the sum picked out what he wanted and paid the man with whom he was doing business. Standing close by and watching him was a young man named William Lightfoot, who lived at Burlorn, in Egloshayle, and whom he knew well enough by sight.

      Mr. Norway did not leave Bodmin till shortly before ten o'clock, and he had got about nine miles to ride before he would reach his house. The road was lonely and led past the Dunmeer Woods and that of Pencarrow.

      He was riding a grey horse, and he had a companion, who proceeded with him along the road for three miles and then took his leave and branched off in another direction.

      A farmer returning from market somewhat later to Wadebridge saw a grey horse in the road, saddled and bridled, but without a rider. He tried at first to overtake it, but the horse struck into a gallop and he gave up the chase; his curiosity was, however, excited, and upon meeting some men on the road, and making inquiry, they told him that they thought that the grey horse that had just gone by them belonged to Mr. Norway. This induced him to call at the house of that gentleman, and he found the grey steed standing at the stable gate. The servants were called out, and spots of blood were found upon the saddle. A surgeon was immediately summoned, and two of the domestics sallied forth on the Bodmin road, in quest of their master. The search was not successful that night, but later, one of the searchers perceiving something white in the little stream of water that runs beside the highway and enters the river Allen at Pendavey Bridge, they examined it, and found the body of their unfortunate master, lying on his back in the stream, with his feet towards the road, and what they had seen glimmering in the uncertain light was his shirt frill. He was quite dead.

      The body was at once placed on the horse and conveyed home, where the surgeon, named Tickell, proceeded to examine it. He found that the deceased had received injuries about the face and head, produced by heavy and repeated blows from some blunt instrument, which had undoubtedly been the cause of death. A wound was discovered under the chin, into which it appeared as if some powder had been carried; and the bones of the nose, the forehead, the left side of the head and the back of the skull were frightfully fractured.

      An immediate examination of the spot ensued when the body had been found, and on the left-hand side of the road was seen a pool of blood, from which to the rivulet opposite was a track produced by the drawing of a heavy body across the way, and footsteps were observed as of more than one person in the mud, and it was further noticed that the boots of those there impressed must have been heavy. There had apparently been a desperate scuffle before Mr. Norway had been killed.

      There was further evidence. Two sets of footmarks could be traced of men pacing up and down behind a hedge in an orchard attached to an uninhabited house hard by; apparently men on the watch for their intended victim.

      At a short distance from the pool of blood was found the hammer of a pistol that had been but recently broken off.

      Upon the pockets of the deceased being examined, it became obvious that robbery had been the object of the attack made upon him, for his purse and a tablet and bunch of keys had been carried off.

      Every exertion was made to discover the perpetrators of the crime, and large rewards were offered for evidence that should tend to point them out. Jackson, a constable from London, was sent for, and mainly by his exertions the murderers were tracked down. A man named Harris, a shoemaker, deposed that he had seen the two brothers, James and William Lightfoot, of Burlorn, in Egloshayle, loitering about the deserted cottage late at night after the Bodmin fair; and a man named Ayres, who lived next door to James Lightfoot, stated that he had heard his neighbour enter his cottage at a very late hour on the night in question, and say something to his wife and child, upon which they began to weep. What he had said he could not hear, though the partition between the cottages СКАЧАТЬ