Ertach Kernow - Daniel Defoe continues his tour of Cornwall
Cornish tourists or rather travellers through Cornwall from past centuries and their writings show us something of the past and the way our ancestors lived and thought. Few travelling through Cornwall on their Ertach Kernow article trail have finished their tour, so this week we continue with Daniel Defoe. The author of Robinson Crusoe led a very intriguing life and on occasion had to vanish from London for the sake of his health if he was being pursued.
An interesting character Daniel Foe, or as he renamed himself Daniel Defoe, provided us with some interesting insight into the Cornish towns and countryside he travelled through. Sometimes he would find something that interested or fascinated him and he would elaborate to the nth degree, perhaps this was the novelist in him rising to the surface. His tours were published as a series of letters, Cornwall being found amongst the earliest of thirteen.
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From Daniel Defoe's early 18th century journey of Cornwall we now start where we left him in Penzance back in June 2024. He had been quite complementary in his opinion of Penzance and mentions St Michael’s Mount, concluding ‘there is a very good road here for shipping, which makes the town of Pensance be a place of good resort.’ Moving on Defoe comes to the town of St Buryan but makes no real mention of it as his curiosity is taken by one of Cornwall’s stone circles. Although he doesn’t mention an actual name for this monument we can ascertain that it was Boscawen-Un from his description. He writes ‘Between this town and St. Burien, a town midway between it and the Land's End, stands a circle of great stones, not unlike those at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, with one bigger than the rest in the middle; they stand about 12 foot as under, but have no inscription, neither does tradition offer to leave any part of their history upon record; as whether it was a trophy, or a monument of burial, or an altar for worship, or what else; so that all that can be learn'd of them, is, That here they are: The parish where they stand is call'd Boscawone, from whence the ancient and honourable family of Boscawen derive their names.’ The Boscawen family name continues to this day with Evelyn Boscawen holding the title of Viscount Falmouth.
Boscawen-Un was first mentioned by William Camden in 1582 who wrote ‘Not far from hence, in a place called Boscawen-Un, are nineteen stones set in a circle, about 12 foot distant one from another; and in the centre, there stands one much larger than any of the rest. One may probably conjecture this to have been some trophy of the Romans under the later Emperors; or of Athelstane the Saxon, after he had subdued Cornwall.’ Of course we know far better now that this is a far earlier late Neolithic monument. What adds further interest to the later history of Boscawen-Un is aided the writings of Dr William Borlase and the woodcut engraving of 1827, some hundred years after Defoe’s mention of it, showing two fallen stones. The circle was restored in 1862 and is where the first Gorsedh Kernow took place in 1928.
It was inevitable that Defoe would mention the name Godolphin in his Cornish tour letter at some point. Daniel Defoe had become a spy and an agent as a somewhat confidant of Sidney Godolphin. Perhaps now we should take a slight diversion to mention this Cornishman made good, but much forgotten, spending most of his later life beyond the borders of Cornwall. Born in the parish of Breage in 1645 Sidney Godolphin was the son of Sir Francis Godolphin who was a Cornish member of parliament for St Ives, Helston and Cornwall. They had taken the family name from the estate they had acquired during the 12th century. Sidney had become a pageboy to King Charles II in 1662 following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. From there he became Groom of the Bedchamber in 1670. This was an important role in 17th century politics and it was said of him he was ‘the silentest and modestest man that was perhaps ever bred in a court’. He became a member of parliament in 1668 for Helston, briefly St Mawes and later Helston again in 1679. It was said he was valued by the king as he was ‘never in the way and never out of the way’. He continued serve during the brief reign of James II and then following the Glorious Revolution of 1680 under the joint monarchy of William III and Mary II.
Following Mary’s death he served William III and then on the accession of Queen Anne in 1702. From December 1701 he was appointed First Lord of the Treasury, a post now usually held and currently held by the Prime Minister. This is the title engraved on the letterbox of 10 Downing Street the official residence of the first lord of the Treasury, not the office of prime minister. In 1702 he was appointed Lord High Treasurer a position he held until 1710 when dismissed through his ties to John Churchill 1st Duke of Marlborough who had fallen out of favour with Queen Anne. Godolphin had been created 1st Earl of Godolphin in 1706 and following his forced retirement from politics he died in 1712 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a bust marking his grave can be found. Certainly this Cornishman who rose to great power and prominence should as Bernard Deacon writes have ‘a better claim than Robert Walpole to be called Britain’s first Prime Minister’, with the Act of Union joining Scotland to the existing lands controlled by England in 1707.
Back to Daniel Defoe and his mention of Godolphin when he writes; ‘A little up in the county towards the north west is Godolchan, which tho' a hill, rather than a town, gives name to the noble and ancient family of Godolphin; and nearer on the northern coast is Royalton, which since the late Sydney Godolphin, Esq; a younger brother of the family, was created Earl of Godolphin, gave title of lord to his eldest son, who was call'd Lord Royalton (Rialton) during the life of his father. This place also is infinitely rich in tinn mines.’
In an appendix to his letter he mentions the Isles of Scilly which he did not visit ‘the rocks of Scilly, of which, what is most famous, is their infamy, or reproach; Namely, how many good ships are, almost continually dash'd in pieces there, and how many brave lives lost, in spight of the mariners best skill, or the light-houses, and other sea-marks best notice.’ Defoe goes on at some length mentioning the naval disaster when vessels of the fleet under the flag of Sir Cloudersley Shovel met their doom on rocks off the Scillies. He is also seemingly in awe of the seas and waves that crash against the Cornish cliffs and shoreline writing at some length including about tin and copper found so close to the edge of cliffs and beyond. Of course we know that in later centuries these valuable minerals were mined with Cornish miners tunnelling well out under the ocean and where we see engine houses close to the sea such as those at the Crown workings at Bottallack. This was far into the future from Defoe’s time and the early Cornish Industrial Revolution would not really start ramping up production until the coming of efficient steam engines from about 1775.
Writing around 1724 Defoe says ‘This is certain, that there is a more than ordinary quantity of tinn, copper, and lead also, placed by the Great Director of nature in these very remote angles and, as I have said above, the oar is found upon the very surface of the rocks a good way into the sea, and that it does not only lye, as it were, upon, or between the stones among the earth, which in that case might be washed from it by the sea, but that it is even blended or mix'd in with the stones themselves, that the stones must be split into pieces to come at it; by this mixture the rocks are made infinitely weighty and solid, and thereby still the more qualified to repel the force of the sea.’ It’s good that Defoe noticed what later became Cornwall’s national bird and provided those many people reading his published letters a description; ‘we saw great numbers of that famous kind of crows, which is known by the name of the Cornish cough, or chough, so the country people call them: They are the same kind, which are found in Switzerland among the Alps, and which Pliny pretended, were peculiar to those mountains, and calls the Pyrrhocorax; the body is black, the legs, feet, and bill of a deep yellow, almost to a red.’ He did also note that they were not good to eat.
Defoe had reached Land’s End and this is a convenient place to pause his tour of Cornwall as part of his greater tour of Great Britain. He was obviously quite taken with the place saying, ‘I might take up many sheets in describing the valuable curiosities of this little Cherosonese, (a word deriving from Greek term for ‘peninsula’) or neck land, call'd the Land's End, in which there lyes an immense treasure, and many things worth notice, I mean besides those to be found upon the surface.’
Nearing the end of his letter he tells readers that his tour continues along the north shore of Cornwall and we will rejoin him at some future date.
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