A plum-pudding without plums may be a good suet dumpling, and without suet also a respectable batter pudding, but neither is a plum-pudding; and a set of verses without ideas may be pleasant verses, but is not poetry; and without ideas and without imagination is very poor stuff indeed. John Harris could write smooth lines, he had a tender appreciation of the beauties of nature, but he went no further. His verses bear the same relation to poetry that Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy bears to the Philosophy of Plato. But to return to his life. He tells us that "from first to last the majority of my poems have been written in the open air, in lanes and leas, by old stiles and farm gates, by rocks and rivers and mossy moors."
He was put to a miserable school where the hedge-school master was hard-hearted and cruel, and "verily hoots the lessons in his ears. He beats his pupils without mercy, with a polished piece of flat wood studded with small, sharp nails, until the blood runs down, and soon scares the little learner from his straw-roofed academy."
From this school he was removed to another after a few days. "On the edge of a brown common, in a little thatched school-house by the side of the highway, very near the famous Nine Maidens, he finds another master, who wore a wooden leg, with more of the milk of human kindness in his soul, a thorough Christian, and a man of prayer." He says further: "You might have seen him on a summer evening, when his merry schoolmates are chattering in the hollow—you might have seen him walking by the stream, or stretched on the moss listening to the wind tuning its organ among the rocks, or gazing up at the purple heavens. He roams among the flowers, kissing them for very joy, calling them his fragrant sisters. Born on the crest of the hill, amid the crags and storms, he grows up in love with Nature, and she becomes his chief teacher. And now come the promptings of early genius, which develop themselves in snatches of unpolished song, pencilled on the leaves of his copybook for the amusement of his wondering schoolmates. He often writes his rhymes on the clean side of cast-off labelled tea-papers which his mother brings from the shop, and then reads them to his astonished compeers with rapt delight."
At the age of nine he was taken from school and put to work in the fields. At the age of ten he was employed by an old tin-streamer to throw up the sand from the river, earning threepence a day. At twelve he was working on the surface "nearly three miles from his favourite home. As he travels to and fro from his labour through long lanes bramble covered, and over meadows snowy with daisies, or by hedges blue with hyacinths, or over whispering cairns redolent with the hum of bees—" he means thyme on which the bees hover gathering honey—"the beautiful world around him teems with syllables of song. Even then he pencils his strange ditties, reciting them at intervals of leisure to the dwellers of his own district, and older heads than his tell of his future fame."
One thing is evident, that at this early age he was inordinately conceited. He had a true appreciation of the beauties of Nature. He had a receptive soul, but it was that which might have made of him a painter, not necessarily a poet.
At the age of thirteen, or as he styles it, "When thirteen summers have filled his lap with roses, and fanned his forehead with the breeze of health, we find him sweating in the hot air of the interior of a mine (Dolcoath), working with his father nearly two hundred fathoms below the green fields."
So time passes, and he grows to manhood. Then in his stilted style he says: "Love meets him on his flowery pathway, and he weaves a chaplet of the choicest roses to adorn her head. He worships at the shrine of beauty till they stand before the sacred altar, and the two are made one." In plain English, he fell in love and got married to Jane Rule.
One of his earliest pieces of verse, "The First Primrose," got into a magazine, and attracted some little notice, amongst others that of Dr. George Smith, of Camborne, who gave him encouragement and induced him to publish. His first book appeared in 1853; soon after he was appointed Scripture Reader at Falmouth.
He says in his Autobiography: "Soon after my marriage, the Rev. G. B. Bull, of Treslothian, lent me a volume of Shakespere. The first play I read was Romeo and Juliet, which I greedily devoured, travelling over a wide down near my father's house. The delight I experienced is beyond words to describe, as the sun sank behind the western waters, and the purple clouds of evening primed the horizon, the bitters of life changed to sweetness in my cup, and the wilderness around me was a region of fairies. Sometimes I cried, sometimes I shouted for joy, and over the genii-peopled heights a new world burst upon my view." Next he read Childe Harold, or portions of it. "My younger brother James possessed an eighteenpenny copy of Burns' poems, to which I had access. One day, I was reading Burns in our Troon-Moor home. No one can tell the ecstasy of my spirit, or the deep joy of my heart. Not only was I tired with my mine-work, but also crippled in the quarry raising stone for the garden-wall. I believe I was in my shirtsleeves, when a middle-aged matron entered my home. Seeing a small book before me, she asked what it was. I told her, and her answer surely displayed her prejudice and her narrowness of mind. Looking at me with severity in her features, she exclaimed, 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself! You, a local preacher, and reading Burns!' This strange sin put me quite beyond the reach of her favours, and I do not remember her ever speaking to me afterwards."
It is an infinite pity that John Harris did not inspire his muse from Burns; had he done so, his "poems" might possibly have lived, but poëta nascitur, non fit.
"For more than twenty years I was an underground miner, toiling in the depths of Dolcoath. Here I laboured from morning till night, and often from night till morning, frequently in sulphur and dust almost to suffocation. Sometimes I stood in slime and water above my knees, and then in levels so badly ventilated that the very stones were hot, and the rarified air caused the perspiration to stream into my boots in rills, though I doffed my flannel shirt and worked naked to the waist. Sometimes I stood on a stage hung in ropes in the middle of a wide working, when my life depended on a single nail driven into a plank. Had the nail slipped, I should have been pitched headlong on the broken rocks more than twenty feet below. Sometimes I stood on a narrow board high up in some dark working, holding the drill, or smiting it with the mallet, smeared all over with mineral, so that my nearest friends would hardly know me, until my hands ached with the severity of my task, and the blood dropped off my elbows. Sometimes I had to dig through the ground where it was impossible to stand upright, and sometimes to work all day as if standing to the face of a cliff. Sometimes I have been so exhausted as to lie down and sleep on the sharp flints." (There are no flints in Cornish mines.) "And sometimes so thirsty that I have drunk stale water from the keg, closing my teeth to keep back the worms. Sometimes I had wages to receive at the end of the month, and sometimes I had none. But I despaired not, nor turned the nymph of song from my side. She murmured among the tinctured slabs," etc. etc. That the water brought down from the spring for the use of the miners was ever full of worms is not to be believed, nor that he did not receive his regular monthly wages. John Harris was evidently vastly sorry for himself, thinking he was born for better things. I have known many a man who has worked underground as a common miner, without whining and breaking into extravagance such as this.
"We were at supper one evening in Troon-Moor house, our two daughters in a window, I at the end of the kitchen table, and Jane sitting on a chair beside it. We had fried onions, and the flavour was very agreeable. I was hungry, having just returned from a long day's labour in the mine. Suddenly we heard a step in the garden, and then a knock at the door. My wife opened it, and I heard a gruff voice say, 'Does the young Milton live here?' My wife asked the possessor of the gruff voice to walk in; and we soon discovered that it was the Rev. G. Collins. We invited him to partake of our meal, to which he at once assented, eating the onions with a spoon, exclaiming at almost every mouthful, 'I like fried leeks.' He asked for my latest production, and I gave him 'The Child's First Prayer,' in MS. He quietly read it, and before he had finished I could see the tears streaming down his face. Besides the two daughters, Jane and Lucretia, already named, we were afterwards blest with two sons, Howard and Alfred."
I have given this passage from the Autobiography of John Harris with pleasure, as it exhibits the author at his best. Whether the tears may not have been an adjunct of his fancy, I do not pretend to say. When he writes simple English, concerning his own life and experiences, he is always interesting, but when he steps up into his florid car, as a chauffeur at the Battle of Roses at Nice, he is intolerable.
"Throughout my mining life I have had several narrow escapes from sudden death. Once when at the bottom of the mine, the bucket-chains suddenly severed and came roaring down the shaft with rocks and rubbish. I and my comrade had scarcely time to escape; and one of the smaller fragments of stone cut open my forehead, leaving a visible scar to this day. Then the man-engine accidentally broke, hurling twenty men headlong into the pit, and I amongst them. A few scars and bruises were my only injuries. Standing before a tin-stepe on the smallest foothold, a thin piece of flint (?), air-impelled, struck me on the face, cutting my lips and breaking some of my front teeth. Had I fallen backwards among the huge slabs" (the rock does not form slabs) "death must have been instantaneous. Passing over a narrow plank, a hole exploded at my feet, throwing a shower of stones around me, but not a hair of my head was injured."
"A more wonderful interposition of Divine Providence may be traced, perhaps, in the following record. Our party consisted of five men working in a sink. Two of them were my younger brothers. Over our heads the ground was expended, and there was a huge cavern higher and further than the light of the candle would reveal. Here hung huge rocks as if by hairs (!) and we knew it not. We were all teachers in a Sunday-school, and on the tea-and-cake anniversary remained out of our working to attend the festival. Some men who laboured near us, at the time when we were in the green field singing hymns, heard a fearful crash in our working, and on hastening to see what it was found the place full of flinty (?) rocks. They had suddenly fallen from above, exactly in the place where we should have been, and would have crushed us to powder were it not for the Sunday-school treat."
Moving in his little circle, surrounded by the ignorant, it is no wonder that John Harris was puffed up with vanity, and thought himself a poet.
He was very urgent in the promotion of the cause of peace and arbitration between nations, and wrote a series of tracts entitled Peace Pages, of which some hundreds of thousands were distributed, and produced as much effect on the policy of nations as waste paper. In the year 1864 a prize was offered for the best poem on the tercentenary of the birth of Shakespeare. It was competed for by over a hundred persons in Great Britain and America. Mr. Harris gained the prize, and was presented with a gold watch. It is not possible to estimate its value, poetically, without a knowledge of the "poems" that failed, and the discrimination of the judges.[41] From first to last John Harris published no less than sixteen volumes of verse. He died in 1884, and was buried in Treslothian Churchyard, near Camborne. He had received a grant of £50 per annum from the Royal Literary Fund, 1872-75, and £200 from the Royal Bounty Fund in 1877.
He had a son, John Alfred Harris, born at Falmouth in 1860, who became a wood engraver, working in a recumbent position owing to a spinal affliction. He illustrated some of his father's works. Another son, James Howard Harris, born in 1857, became master of the Board School, Porthleven, and wrote a memoir of his father.
John Harris had the faculty of receiving impressions from the objects of nature, as does a mirror, but had no power to give forth flashes of genius, for of genius he had none. His verses read smoothly and pleasantly, but will not live, as there is no vital spark in them. He stands, however, on a higher level than Edward Capern, the Devonshire postman "poet," but immeasurably below Burns and Waugh.
He published, moreover, a series of addresses, but all marked with the same paucity of idea, lack of original thought. A good but very self-satisfied man, he reaped far higher applause in his day as he deserved, and in another generation will be clean forgotten. He called himself the miner poet, but he is not even a minor poet. There is something pathetic in the contemplation of a man of this sort. I have come across several instances—men who have a love of nature, an appreciation of the beautiful and the good and the true, but have no genius, no originality, who can imitate but create nothing. It is the same with musicians. There are a thousand who can write songs, but only one in a thousand who can produce a pure melody. The mirror reflects objects, but the burning-glass focusses the sun's rays in a pencil of fire that kindles whatever it falls on. Such is the difference between the versifier and the poet.
Quæ scribuntur aquæ portoribus.
Hor. Ep. I. 19.
EDWARD CHAPMAN
Hals tells the following story of Mr. Edward Chapman, of Constantine. But before giving it, it will be well to say a few words of the Chapman family. The name suffices to show that it was not Cornish by origin, and indeed in the Heralds' Visitation it is recorded to have come from the North. Why they came down one cannot say, but they married well. One John Chapman, of Harpford, in Devon, had to wife a daughter of Chichester, of Hall, and his son Edward married a Prideaux, and settled at Resprin in S. Winnow, and as that was a manor that belonged to the Prideaux family it is probable that his wife was an heiress. Edward, the grandson, baptized at S. Winnow May 12th, 1647, was probably the person mentioned by Hals, to whom the adventure is attributed. He was married to a daughter of Bligh, of Botathen.
"This gentleman received from God's holy angels a wonderful preservation in the beginning of the reign of William III when returning from Redruth towards his own house about seven miles distant, with his servant, late at night, and both much intoxicated with liquor (as himself told me); nevertheless having so much sense left as to consider that they were to pass through several tin mines or shafts near the highway, on the south-east side of Redruth town, alighted both from their horses, and led them in their hands after them. The servant went somewhat before his master, the better to keep the right road in those places, which occasioned Mr. Chapman's turning aside somewhat out of the way, whereby in the dark he suddenly fell into a tin mine above twenty fathoms deep, at whose fall into this precipice his horse started back and escaped; in this pit or hole Mr. Chapman fell directly down fifteen fathoms without let or intermission, where meeting with a cross drift (above six fathoms of water under it), he in his campaign coat, sword, and boots, was miraculously stopped, when, coming to himself, he was not much sensible of any hurt or bruises he had received, through the terror and horror of his fall; when, considering in what condition he was, he resolved to make the best expedient he could to prevent his falling further down (where, by the dropping of stones and earth moved by his fall, he understood there was much water under), so he rested his back against one side of the ruin, and his feet against the other, athwart the hole, and in order to fix his hands on some solid thing, drew his sword out of its sheath, and thrust the blade thereof as far as he could into the opposite part of the shaft, and so in great pain and terror rested himself.
"The suddenness of this accident, and the horse's escaping in the dark as aforesaid, was the reason why Mr. Chapman's servant, who went before him, did not so soon find him wanting as otherwise he might, which as soon as he did, he went back the roadway in quest of him, calling him aloud by his name; but receiving no answer, nor being able to find his horse, he concluded his master had rode home some other way, whereupon, giving up all further search after him, he hastened home to Constantine, expecting to have met him there; but contrary to his expectations, found he was not returned. Whereupon his servants, early next morning, went forth to inquire after him, and suspecting (as it happened) he might be fallen into some tin-shafts about Redruth, hastened thither, where, before they arrived, some tinners had taken custody of his horse (with bridle and saddle on), which they found grazing in the Wastsell Downs. Whereupon, consulting together about this tragical mishap, it was resolved forthwith that some of these tinners, for reward, should search the most dangerous shafts in order to find his body, either living or dead; accordingly they employed themselves that day till about four o'clock in the afternoon without any discovery of him. Finally, one person returned to his company, and told them that at a considerable distance he heard a kind of human voice underground; to which place they repaired, and making loud cries to the hole of the shaft, he forthwith answered them that he was there alive, and prayed their assistance in order to deliver him from that tremendous place; whereupon, immediately they set on tackle ropes and windlass on the old shaft, so that a tinner descended to the place where he rested, and having candle-light with him, bound him fast in a rope, and so drew him safely to land, where, to their great admiration and joy, it appeared he had neither broke any bone, or was much bruised by the fall; verifying that old English proverb, that drunkards seldom take hurt; for, as the tinners said, if he had fallen but two or three feet lower, he must inevitably have been drowned in the water. But maugre all these adverse accidents, after about seventeen hours' stay in the pit aforesaid, he miraculously escaped death, and lived many years after, and would recount this story with as much pleasure as men do the ballads of 'Chevy Chase' or 'Rosamond Clifford.'"
JOHN COKE, OF TRERICE
There is no thriving on ill-gotten goods, says the proverb, and this was exemplified in the case of the Cook or Coke family of Trerice, in S. Allen.
According to Hals, John Coke, attorney-at-law, came into these parts of Cornwall in the reign of Queen Elizabeth from Ottery S. Mary, in Devon, "without money or goods, and placed himself a servant or steward under Sir Francis Godolphin, Knight, where he began from, and with, his ink-horn and pen, to turn all things that he touched into gold, and that by indirect art and practices as tradition saith." This Cook or Coke derived from a Henry Cooke, a citizen of Exeter, who married the sister and heiress of Roger Thorne, in Ottery S. Mary; and the eldest branch of the family remained at Thorne till the end of the seventeenth century, when it became extinct.
Sir Francis Godolphin, finding John Coke a clever business man, left in his hands the management of his estate and his tin mines.
Coke took care that all the tin of his master's mines should be run into blocks and stamped with the dolphin, to show whence they came and whose they were. But after a while, as he saw that he was not specially overlooked, and that opportunity was afforded him for peculation, he had a considerable share of the block tin produced at the blowing-houses of Sir Francis for himself, and to distinguish it from that of his master's had it stamped with the figure of a cat, as cats are on the Coke arms; and this he disposed of to his own advantage, and eventually it was found that from the Godolphin mines more tin was produced and sold marked with the cat than was with the dolphin.
Hals says: "Sir Francis's lady being informed of his ill practices, and resolving by the next coinage to be better instructed in this mystery, at such time as Godolphin blowing-house was at work, privately, with one of her maids, in a morning, on foot went to that place, where according, as common fame reported, she found many more blocks or slabs of tin marked with the cat than there were with the dolphin; the one part pertaining to Sir Francis, the other to Mr. Coke. Whereupon, abundantly satisfied, she returned to Godolphin House, but could not be there timely enough against dinner; whereat Sir Francis was greatly distasted, having at that time several strangers to dine with him. At length the lady being arrived, she asked all their pardons for her absence, and told them it did not proceed from any neglect or want of respect, but from an absolute necessity of seeing a strange and unheard-of piece of curiosity, which could not be seen at any other time; viz. to see a cat eat the dolphin. And then gave an account of the premises, to their great wonder and admiration; whereupon, soon after, Sir Francis dismissed him from his service. But by that time he had gotten so much riches that forthwith he purchased the little barton and manor of Trerice, in S. Allen, and made that place his habitation till he purchased the barton and manor of Tregasa, and seated himself there, where, by parsimony and the inferior practice of the law, he accumulated a very considerable estate in those parts. But maugre all his thrift and conduct in providing wealth for himself and posterity, his grandson, Thomas Coke, succeeding to his estate, upon the issueless decease of his elder brother, Christopher Coke, and buying in his widow's jointure at a dear rate, and also undertaking the building of the present new and finely contrived house at Tregasa, though never finished, yet the said fabric was so costly and chargeable to him, together with the vain extravagance of his wife Lance, that he was necessitated to sell divers parcels of lands in order to raise money for his necessary occasions, and finally to mortgage the manor and barton of Tregasa and all his other lands that were before unsold, for about fourteen thousand pounds, to Hugh Boscawen, of Tregothnan, Esq.; and lastly, for that consideration and others, did, by lease and release, fine and proclamation, convey the same to the said Hugh Boscawen, his heirs and assigns, for ever. Soon after this fact Mr. Coke fell into great want and distress, together with his wife and children, and died suddenly by a slip of his foot into a shallow pit, wherein he was searching for tin, out of a conceited opinion he had that he should at last raise his fortune by tin, as his grandfather before him had done."
What Hals has omitted to state is that John Coke married a Godolphin, Prudence, daughter of William Godolphin, of Trewarveneth, by whom he had three sons—John, Edward, and Francis. Thomas Coke, who came to such grief, the sins of the grandfather visited on the grandchild, was Sheriff of Cornwall in the year 1651 under the Commonwealth.
THOMAS PELLOW, OF PENRYN
Thomas Pellow was born at Penryn, in all probability in 1704, and was educated in the Latin school of that place. But loving adventure better than books, and impatient to escape propria quæ maribus, he implored his uncle John Pellow to allow him to embark with him in the good ship Francis, owned by Valentine Enys, merchant, of Penryn, that was bound with a cargo of pilchards for Genoa. He soon began to regret having left the school bench, for his uncle not only made him work as a common seaman, but when not so employed held him to those hated books, and if he shirked, gave him the cat-o'-nine-tails. "So that by the time we got to Genoa I thought I had enough of the sea, being every day, during our voyage out, obliged (over and above my book learning) to go up to the main-top mast-head, even in all weather." On the return voyage when off Cape Finisterre the vessel was captured by Sallee pirates, and it with the crew conveyed to Morocco as captives. Thomas Pellow was in but his eleventh year, and his Moorish masters thought that they would have little difficulty with him in making of him a Mussulman.
He remained in Morocco for twenty-three years, during which time he kept a diary, and this was published in London in 1739 and 1740, but no date is affixed to the two editions. A third edition was published in 1775, and recently his record of adventure has been included in the "Adventure Series," edited with an introduction by Dr. Robert Brown, and published by Mr. Fisher Unwin, London, 1890. In this edition the narrative extends to 330 pages, and it is not my intention to give even a summary of its contents, the book itself being easily accessible. What must suffice is some account of the beginning of his bondage and an idea of the condition of Morocco whilst he was there.
Thomas Pellow was given as slave to Muley Spha one of the Sultan's favourite sons, but, as Pellow says, a sad villain. "My business now was to run from morning to night after his horse's heels; during which he often prompted me to turn Moor, and told me, if I would, I should have a very fine horse to ride on, and I should live like one of his best esteemed friends." As Pellow declined this invitation, "he committed me prisoner to one of his own rooms, keeping me there several months in irons, and every day most severely bastinading me.... My tortures were now exceedingly increased, burning my flesh off my bones by fire; which the tyrant did, by frequent repetitions, insomuch, that through my so very acute pains I was at last constrained to submit, calling upon God to forgive me, who knows that I never gave the consent of the heart, though I seemingly yielded by holding up my finger."
He was then, after having been instructed in the Moorish language, appointed to be chief porter to the Sultan's harem, where resided the Sultana and thirty-eight concubines. He received strict orders that no one should be admitted without due notice. On one occasion the Sultan arrived and knocked to be admitted without having previously intimated his intention of paying a visit to his harem. The outer porter made no difficulty in admitting him, but Thomas Pellow absolutely refused to admit His Majesty as he had received no notice that he was coming, and when the Sultan continued to knock, he discharged his blunderbuss through the door. The Sultan was so delighted at his trustworthy character and behaviour on the occasion, that he cut off the heads of the two complaisant door-keepers, and promoted Pellow to be one of his bodyguard.
After a few years the Sultan, "being on the merry fun, ordered to be brought before him eight hundred young men, and soon after as many young women, and he told the men, that he had on several occasions observed their readiness in obeying him, he would therefore give every one of them a wife; and which indeed, he soon did, by giving some by his own hand (a very great condescension), and to others by the beckoning of his head, and the cast of his eye, where they should fix. After they were all coupled and departed, I was also called forth, and bid to look at eight black women standing there, and to take one of them for a wife, at which sudden command, I (being not a little confounded) immediately bowing twice, falling to the ground and kissing it, and after that the Emperor's foot, humbly entreated him that he would be graciously pleased to give me one of my own colour. Then, forthwith sending them off, he ordered to be brought forth seven others, who all proved to be mulattoes, at which I again bowed to the ground, still entreating him to give me one of my own colour; and then he ordered them also to depart, and sent for a single woman, full dressed, with two blacks attending her. I being forthwith ordered to take her by the hand and lead her off, perceived it to be black also, as soon after I did her feet; at which I started back, and being asked what was the matter, I answered him as before; when he, assenting, ordered me to lift up her veil and look at her face; which I readily obeying, found her to be of a very agreeable complexion, the old rascal crying out in the Spanish language, Bono, bono, ordering me a second time to take her by the hand, lead her off, and keep her safe."
By this wife Pellow had a daughter. The Sultan was a monster of cruelty, but according to Pellow there was not much choice in rotten apples; he saw the rise of several, and one was as bad as another. He says of the first he served: "He was of so fickle, cruel, and sanguine a nature, that none could become for one hour secure of life. He had many despatched, by having their heads cut off, or by being strangled, others by tossing; but scarce would he on those occasions afford a verbal command, he thinking that too much—generally giving it by signs or motions of his head and hand.
"The punishment of Tossing is a very particular one and peculiar to the Moors. The person whom the Emperor orders to be thus punished is seized by three or four strong negroes, who, taking hold of his arms, throw him up with all their strength, and at the same time turning him round, pitch him down head foremost; at which they are so dexterous by long use, that they can either break his neck at the first toss, dislocate his shoulder, or let him fall with less hurt. They continue doing this as often as the Emperor has ordered.
"The Emperor's wrath is terrible, which the Christians have often felt. One day, passing by a high wall on which they were at work, and being affronted that they did not keep time in their strokes, he made the guards go up and throw them off the wall, breaking their legs and arms, and knocking them on the head. Another time he ordered them to bury a man alive, and beat him down along with the mortar in the wall.
"In the year 1721 the Emperor despatched El Arbi Shat, a man of one of the best families in Barbary, being descended from the Andalusian Moors, and deserved the esteem both of his own countrymen and of us. Part of the crime laid to his charge was for going out of the country without the Emperor's knowledge, and having been friendly himself with Christian women, and often been in liquor. He was also accused of being an unbeliever. Early one morning he was carried before the Emperor, who commanded him to be sawed in two; upon which he was tied between two boards and sawed in two, beginning at the head and going downwards, till the body fell asunder, and must have remained to have been eaten by dogs, if the Emperor had not pardoned him—an extravagant custom, to pardon a man after he is dead, but unless he does so, nobody dares bury the body."
Pellow describes the condition of the Christian slaves: "The severest labour and hardships inflicted on malefactors in Europe are levity compared with what many worthy persons undergo in this modern Egypt. At daybreak the guardians of the several dungeons, where the Christian slaves are shut up at night, rouse them with curses and blows to their work, which consists in providing materials for the Emperor's extravagant buildings, stamping earth mixed with lime and water, in a wooden box near three yards long and three feet deep, and of the extended breadth of the wall. Their instrument for this is a heavy wooden stamper. Others prepare and mix the earth, or dig in quarries for lime stones; others burn them. Some are employed to carry large baskets of earth; some drive wagons drawn by six bulls and two horses, and, after the toil of the day, these miserable carters watch their cattle in the field at night, and in all weathers, as their life must answer for any accident. The task of many is to saw, cut, cement and erect marble pillars, and of such as are found qualified, to make gunpowder and small arms; yet does not their skill procure them any better treatment than those who, having only the use of their limbs without any ingenuity, are set to the coarsest works, as tending horses, sweeping stables, carrying burdens, grinding with hand-mills. They have all their respective taskmasters, who punish the least stop or inadvertency, and often will not allow the poor creatures time to eat their bread. After such a wearisome day, it frequently happens they are hurried away to some filthy work in the night time. Their lodgings in the night are subterranean dungeons, round, and about five fathoms diameter and three deep, going down by a ladder of ropes, which is afterwards drawn up, and an iron grate fastened in the mouth; and here they lay upon mats. Neither has their fare anything more comfortable in it, consisting only of a small platter of black barley meal, with a pittance of oil per day. This scantiness has put several upon hazarding a leap from very high walls only to get a few wild onions that grow in the Moors' burying place."
Pellow developed considerable military ability and was employed in military operations against rebels; he was made a captain, and was present at several sieges, and witnessed the barbarity wherewith were treated the men of a captured town. On one occasion the troops were required to cut off the heads of all the male inhabitants and bring them to the Sultan; but as the number was so great and the stench threatened to breed a pestilence in the army, the general was compelled to slice off the ears and pickle them in barrels and convey these only to the Sultan at his capital, who graciously under the circumstances accepted the ears in lieu of the heads.
Pellow was several times wounded, and he made occasional abortive attempts to escape. When wounded, returning from one of his expeditions, he received news that his wife and daughter were dead, and he calmly observes: "I must own that it gave me very little uneasiness, as I thought them to be by far better off than they could have been in this troublesome world, especially this part of it; and I was really very glad that they were delivered out of it, and therefore it gave me very little uneasiness."
It is startling to think that in the reign of George I there should be such numbers of English as well as French, Spanish and Italian captives in Morocco and Algiers and Tunis, and that their redemption should have to be the work of private charity, and not be a determined undertaking of Government.
In 1791 England framed a treaty with Morocco giving our merchants freedom to sail the seas unmolested, and permitting renegades to return to their old faith and obtain their liberty on certain conditions. But captives continued to be taken by the corsairs as of old: "Shall a Moslem," asked one of the sultans, "be a slave to his word, like a dog of a Christian?" In 1800 Muley Suliman agreed with Spain for a reciprocal interchange of captives, and similar contracts were entered into with other powers. In 1817, acting under force majeure, Suliman was compelled to disarm his war vessels, and promise to put an end to this atrocious system, that had lasted too long. But although piracy was no longer officially recognized, it did not wholly cease. Whether the Sultan connived at the infraction of treaty, or whether the inhabitants of the Riff shore acted independently of him, merchant vessels continued to be boarded and taken and the crew enslaved.
In 1828 the English established a blockade of the Morocco coast in retaliation for the continuance of these outrages, and in 1829 the capture of an Austrian vessel by pirates led to the bombardment of the ports of Tetuan, Azila, Rabat, and Sallee. At length the insolence of the Moorish corsairs led to the Spanish war of 1859-60, which taught the Moors a salutary lesson.
In 1856 Sir John Drummond-Hay succeeded in recovering some captives, and in exacting an assurance that similar conduct should not recur. But although attacks by piratical ships on the high seas were brought to an end, wrecking was pursued with zest and impunity. Any vessel that was cast upon the coast was regarded as a legitimate prize, and its crew who came ashore were carried into the interior and enslaved. In this way Riley, Adams, and Puddock were able to write their experiences, on their escape from captivity.
Sir Arthur Brook in 1831 wrote that "the country Moors on all parts of the coast are constantly on the look out for Christians, and instantly make prisoners of all who have either landed accidentally or have been shipwrecked. Parties that are occasionally formed, as ours was, to visit Cape Spartel are even subject to this, and in one recent instance the lady of the English Vice-Consul, who had strolled to a short distance out of sight of the guard that attended her, was on the point of being made a prisoner by a body of natives who surrounded her and her party, thinking they were alone, until undeceived by the timely appearance of the escort."
A visitor to the Riviera will see the little towns and villages walled up, and with strong gateways and towers. They were protections against Algerine and Moroccan corsairs, who would land and raid the coast for captives; and there are old men still living who had heard from their fathers piteous stories of their being taken and carried off into bondage and cruel slavery in Africa.
There are still, and there have been in the past, numerous Europeans who have been renegades, and have lent their wits and experience to the Moors, but they are nearly all scoundrels of the worst description, forçats who have escaped from the prisons in Spain or Algiers, and other vagabonds unable to show their faces in Europe. Dr. Brown writes: "I know of no British renegade—the last and the most respectable of the order, a Scotchman, who lived at Rabat, much esteemed for his intelligence and honourable conduct, having died two years ago. Were the history of these turncoats fully known, the story of their lives would be a curious chapter in the annals of human nature. One of the most romantic of these tales was that of an old white-bearded man who, when the French military commission first entered Fez in 1877, was seen silently and sad-eyed, supported by two attendants, contemplating a uniform with which in days gone by he was very familiar. This aged renegade was known as Abd-er-Rhuman; but his christened name was Count Joseph de Saulty, formerly a lieutenant of engineers in the army of Algeria. In a weak moment he eloped with the commandant's wife, and remained in Tunis until she died. Then, becoming painfully anxious of the grave position in which he was placed as a deserter from the colours, he passed into Morocco, changed his faith, and as a military adviser of the then Sultan rose high in the imperial favour. He died in 1881, and is buried at the gates of Fez, though so thoroughly did he put the past behind him, that his son, now occupying a high position in the Court, is entirely ignorant of any language except Arabic. Another renegade of note was the English officer still remembered as Inglis Bashaw under whom Muley-el-Hassan, the present Sultan, learned the art of war, and who was the first individual to impart anything like discipline to the Moroccan army. Why he came to Morocco is not known, and so jealously was his identity kept dark, that in a recent work by the Viscount de la Montonère his real name is declared to be unknown. At this date there can be no reason for concealing that it was Graham; and I have been told by those who have every reason to know that, like so many others who incur the jealousy of the Moorish dignitaries, he died of poison."
The time of Morocco piracy is at an end, but that on land there are still captures has been of late years but too evident—the last being the capture of Sir Hugh Maclean.
But to return to Thomas Pellow.
After several ineffectual attempts at escape, and after incurring hairbreadth escapes, Pellow succeeded eventually in making his way to Gibraltar. But even there he was not safe. A Jew, agent for the Sultan of Morocco, claimed him, and demanded that he should be surrendered, as a Mussulman and as a subject of the Moorish Sultan. But General Field-Marshal Joseph Sabine, then Governor of Gibraltar, answered peremptorily that, as an English-born subject, he was an Englishman, and could not be surrendered. He went on board a vessel for England and reached Deptford, "and going on shore, directly to the church, returned public thanks to God for my safe arrival in Old England."
He remained in Deptford, very kindly received by a brother Cornishman, William Jones, and there, finding no vessel bound for Falmouth, he went to London and thence embarked on board a vessel commanded by Captain Francis, who readily offered him a passage to Truro.
He landed at Falmouth. The news of his coming had spread. "My father's house was almost quite at the other end of the town. I was, before I could reach it, more than an hour; for notwithstanding it was almost dark, I was so crowded by the inhabitants that I could not pass through them without a great deal of difficulty—every one bidding me welcome home, being all very inquisitive with me if I knew them, which, indeed I did not, for I was so very young at my departure, and my captivity and the long interval of time had made so very great an alteration on both sides, that I did not know my own father and mother, nor they me; and had we happened to meet at any other place without being preadvised, whereby there might be an expectation or natural instinct interposing, we should no doubt have passed each other, unless my great beard might have influenced them to inquire further after me."
He returned to Penryn on the 15th October, 1738, his birthday.
His narrative concludes with a touching account of his gratitude to God for having brought him back, and an expression of his earnest desire to serve God truly all the rest of his days upon earth.
THE ORIGIN OF THE ROBARTES FAMILY
Colonel Symonds, who accompanied Charles I when he was in the West, says in his diary: "A gentleman of the county told me the original of the Lord Roberts his family. His great-grandfather was servant to a gentleman of this county—his hynd. Afterwards lived in Truro, and traded in wood and fferzen—got an estate of 5 to £600. His son was so bred, and lived there too, putt out his money, and his debtors paid it him in tynn. He engrossing the sale of tyn, grew to be worth many thousands—£30,000. His son was squeezed by the Court in King James his time of £20,000, so was made a Baron, and built the house of Lanhydrock, now the seat of Lord Roberts" (pp. 45, 46). The hind, who founded the family, and sold wood and furze for the tin smelting, was Richard Roberts of Truro, who married Joan Geffrey of S. Breage, and died in 1593. His son, who continued the wood store and got paid in tin, was John Roberts, who married Philippa, daughter of John Gaverigan, of a very ancient family. He died in 1615.
Before the introduction of coal in tin smelting, the fuel employed was peat, furze, i.e. gorse that produced a quick, fierce blaze, and wood. Rapidly the trees in Cornwall were disappearing, as the produce of tin ore became greater, and the lack of the necessary fuel was becoming a serious impediment.
The Right Honbl. John Earle of Radnor: Baron Roberts of Truro; & Ld. President of His Maties most Honble. Privy Council. Año·1683
Carew, speaking of the woods in Cornwall, when he compiled his Survey, says that in the west of the county they were scarce, and the few that were preserved were principally employed in making charcoal for the blowing-houses. "This lacke," he adds, "they supply either with steam-coal from Wales, or dried turfes, some of which are also converted into coal to serve the tinners' turne."
From the charters of King John and Edward I we learn that power was granted to the tinners to take turf and wood where they could for the purpose of smelting the ore; but as the woods disappeared, and the turf was being used up in the neighbourhood of the works, they could not travel to great distances to procure the needful fuel. Richard Roberts saw his opportunity and seized it. He made contracts with the owners of coppices and furzy downs and peat bottoms, and gathered his supplies in one great store at Truro. He did more—he obtained coals from Wales, and sold to the mining adventurers at a handsome profit to himself, thus saving them the waste of time in wandering about obtaining fuel where they could. Thus he laid the foundations of a business that was largely increased by his son John. But this latter embarked on another branch of money-making. He lent cash to the adventurers in the mines. "As poor as a tinner" was a proverbial expression in Cornwall, and "a tinner is never broke till his back is broke." But if the working miner remained poor, the moneylender waxed wealthy on the miners' work.
Carew observes that the parishes in which the tin was worked were in a "meaner plight of wealth" than those which were agricultural. Vast amounts of tin were raised, but little of the profit stuck to the hands of the toilers in the mines.
Tinning was not carried on by large companies, but by small men; three or four would combine to take a set. They cut four turves at the bounds, paying a certain sum down to the Duchy or to the private owner of the land, as rent; and also owing a toll of the tin raised to the proprietor of the land. These small men were without capital, and they were constrained to borrow of Roberts, and he let them have the requisite money at a rate of interest we should consider extortionate. Queen Elizabeth was unable to borrow money of the estates of Holland under 25 per cent, and we may judge what would be the rate of interest demanded by the usurer of the working miner.
But that was not all. The miner did not pay the interest in cash, but in tin, and tin at the value pretty arbitrarily laid down by the moneylender, so that he had the adventurer in two ways. Nor was this indeed all. He often advanced to the miner not cash alone, but the tools for his trade, the timber for shoring up the shafts, and the machinery, such as it was, for pumping the water out of the mines.
There was an additional means of getting money, and also of acquiring lands. Carew gives us a curious account of the manner in which the London merchants of his time took advantage of any want of money Cornish gentry in London might experience in order to defray their expenses there, by binding them to furnish tin for money advanced, at great ultimate loss to the Cornish men. They also had their agents in Cornwall, who advanced money to the needy tinners, partly in wares and partly in money, upon agreement that they should furnish certain quantities of tin at the next coinage, by which the tinners experienced great loss.
With regard to the loans to the adventurers, Roberts possessed the inestimable advantage of being on the spot, and so prepared to supply them with the fuel and the capital they needed. But there were Cornish gentry who wanted to go to London, and desired loans to cover their expenses in town. They went to Roberts: he furnished the supplies. As may be well expected, these gentry did not make money in London, they became greatly impoverished there, and Roberts, we may infer, was able to take their estates, or large slices out of them, on the security of which he had made the advances.
How hard the work of the poor tinners was, on whom the usurers preyed, we learn from Carew. "In most places," he says, "their toyle is so extream, as they cannot endure it above four hours a day, but are succeeded by spels; the residue of the time they weare out at coytes, kayles, or like idle exercises."
Richard Roberts, the son of John, amassed great wealth, and was knighted 11 November, 1616. At this time he was threatened with prosecution by the Privy Seal for usury, and he only escaped trial by paying a bribe of £12,000. He bought a baronetcy of James I in 1621, and was created Baron Truro in 1625. One of the charges brought against Buckingham, when impeached in the House of Commons, was that he had received a bribe of £10,000 from Richard Roberts for negotiating for him his elevation to the Barony of Truro. This is confirmed by the deposition of Roberts himself (Calendar State Papers, 1677-8, p. 220; cf. 1625-6, p. 298).
Richard Roberts married Frances, daughter of John Hender of Botreux Castle or Boscastle, a co-heiress, and died in 1634. He was evidently a very shrewd and grasping man, and particularly desirous of pushing ahead and obtaining a position to which his only claim was wealth. By the marriages of father and son, the very plebeian family of Roberts brought strains of gentle blood into the veins of their descendants. He it was who built the stately mansion of Lanhydrock. He died 19th April, 1634, but was not buried at Lanhydrock till July 4th in the same year.
His son and heir John Roberts, second Baron Truro, was sent to be educated at Exeter College, Oxford. He entered as Gentleman Commoner in 1625, when aged seventeen, the year of his mother's death. At college, according to Wood, he "sucked in evil principles both as to Church and State."
By his marriage with the Lady Lucy, daughter of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, he became allied to the leaders of the opposition among the peers, and during the Long Parliament his vote was almost always given with the popular party among the Lords. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall in 1642, and became colonel of a regiment of foot in the army of Lord Essex. He fought at Edgehill, and commanded a brigade in the battle of Newbury. In 1644 he held the position of Field Marshal in the army of Essex, and he was with him in the west when he advanced further into Cornwall, getting into a position which eventually led to a humiliating defeat, among a population fanatically affected to the Royal side.
The King with Prince Maurice was in full pursuit, driving him into a corner, the narrow extremity of Cornwall. The King was now joined by Sir Richard Grenville with Cornish levies, cutting off some of the Parliamentarian foraging parties. But the sea as yet was open, and the Earl of Warwick, who attended the motions of the army, was off the coast. "It was therefore now resolved to make Essex's quarters yet straiter, and to cut off even his provisions by sea, or a good part thereof." Fowey was in the possession of Essex, "and it was exceedingly wondered at by all men, that he being so long possessed of Foy, did not put strong guards into the place, by which he might have prevented his army's being brought into these extreme necessities." Sir Richard Grenville possessed himself of Lanbetherick, a strong house belonging to Lord Roberts, and lying between the Parliamentarian army and the little harbour, and Sir Jacob Astley made himself master of View Hall, which was opposite to Fowey, and then cut off supplies from reaching the camp of Essex.
For eight or ten days the armies lay inactive, and then Charles drew closer the toils in which the hostile army was held. He drove them from a rising ground called Beacon Hill, and immediately raised a square work on it, and placed there a battery that threw a plunging fire into their quarters. Then Goring was sent with the greatest part of the royal horse, and fifteen hundred foot, to S. Blazey, to drive the enemy yet closer together, and to cut off the provisions they received from that direction. The dashing, daring Goring executed his commission with complete success, and the Parliamentarians were reduced to that small strip of land that lay between the river Fowey and that of S. Blazey, which was not above two miles in breadth and little more in width, and which had already been eaten bare by the cavalry. The destruction of the whole army now appeared inevitable; but through the carelessness of Goring, one dark night all the horse of the enemy were allowed to slip unperceived through the lines, on the night of the 30th and 31st August, 1644, and the Earl of Essex with Lord Roberts and many of his officers fought his way to the shore near the mouth of the Fowey, and there they embarked on board a ship which Warwick had sent round, and sailed away to Plymouth on September 1st, leaving the foot, cannon, and ammunition to the care of the gallant Skippon, who had nothing left for it but to make the best capitulation he could. Essex left Roberts in command at Plymouth, which he successfully defended against the attacks made during the ensuing months, and his popularity is attested by the petitions made by the Plymothians that he might be left in command of the town.
Lord Roberts must have suffered considerably in the Civil War, for his estates were alienated from him and granted by the King to Sir Richard Grenville, whilst his home of Lanhydrock was occupied by the Royalists, and his children were detained from him. He was a staunch Presbyterian, hating Prelacy, believing in exclusive salvation, the perquisite of those who believed in Calvin, and he had no love for the Independents.
Since 1643 an assembly for the regulation of religion had been sitting at Westminster. It had substituted Presbyterianism for the Episcopacy, as the established religion of England, and had abolished the Prayer Book and issued in its stead a book called the Directory. These changes had been confirmed by Parliament. But this settlement of the religious question was quite contrary to the views of the Army, which was mainly—at all events that portion commanded by Cromwell in the North—composed of Independents.
Sir Harry Vane, Oliver Cromwell, Nathaniel Fiennes, and Oliver St. John, the solicitor-general, were regarded as their leaders. Dissentions broke out in the House of Commons; Cromwell and Lord Manchester cast imputations on each other. Cromwell desired to remodel the Army, of which the House of Commons had already become suspicious, and how to effect this project was the difficulty, and his object could only be attained by a circuitous course. At his instance a committee was chosen to frame what was called the "Self-denying Ordinance," by which the members of both Houses were excluded from all civil and military employments, except a few offices which were specified. After a great debate, the Ordinance passed both Houses (April 3rd, 1645), and Essex, Warwick, Manchester, Denbigh, Roberts, and many others resigned their commands, and received the thanks of Parliament for their past services.
Lord Roberts's zeal for the cause rapidly cooled. He and Essex both protested against the passing of the Ordinance on March 13th, 1646, that made the new Presbyterian Established "Church" subordinate to Parliament.
On January 3rd, 1648, it was passed in both Houses that thenceforth no addresses should any more be sent to the King; he was virtually dethroned, and the whole constitution was formally overthrown; and by orders from the Army the King was shut up in close confinement, his servants removed, and his correspondence with his friends prevented. When the Army threatened to intervene, Roberts deemed it his most prudent course to absent himself from the House of Lords, and suffer the act to pass.
He took no part in the trial of the King, and after the execution of Charles withdrew from further share in public affairs. He was, however, not hostile to the Protectorate, and at the Installation of the Protector he suffered his son to be in his train.
At the Restoration he was received into favour, and became a Privy Councillor, and was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland, and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal in May, 1661. In July, 1679, he was created Viscount Bodmin and Earl of Radnor.
With the latter part of his life we have no concern, as this article has to do only with the rise of the family of Roberts to an Earldom from a store of wood and furze, and the sordid desk of an usurer. Pepys, in his Diary, describes him as "a very sober man," and Clarendon as "a sullen, morose man, intolerably proud," and as having a "dark countenance," and Burnet as a "sullen and morose man." He died July 17th, 1685. His son Robert seems to have deemed it expedient to differentiate his family name from the thousands of Roberts's in humble life, by the alteration of the spelling of the name, by the transfer of the e and the addition of an a, and the vulgar Roberts bloomed into Robartes.
The motto assumed by the first Lord Roberts, "quæ supra" expressed the sincere aspiration of the man, who was certainly sincere in seeking "those things which are above," as the guiding principle of his life.
The Robartes or Roberts family became extinct in the male line in 1757; but Mary Vere Robartes, daughter of the Hon. Russell Robartes, married Thomas Hunt, of Mollington, and left issue Thomas Hunt, who had an only child, Anna Maria, who married Charles Reginald Agar, third son of James, Viscount Clifden, and carried the wealth of the Robartes family into that of Agar; and in 1822 Thomas James Agar, her son, assumed the name and arms of Robartes, and was created Baron Robartes of Lanhydrock and Truro in 1869. The descent is, however, so remote and through females, that the present family can hardly be considered to represent the original Robertes or Roberts stock.
THEODORE PALEOLOGUS
In the church of Landulph is a small brass attached to the wall that bears the following inscription: "Here lyeth the body of Theodore Paleologus, of Pesaro in Italye, descended from ye Imperyal lyne of ye last Christian emperors of Greece, being the sonne of Camillio, ye sonne of Prosper, the sonne of Theodoro, the sonne of John, ye sonne of Thomas, second brother of Constantius Paleologus, the 8th of that name, and last of ye lyne yt rayned in Constantinople until subdued by the Turks, who married wt Mary, ye daughter of William Balls, of Hadlye in Souffolke, Gent., and had issue 5 children, Theodore, John, Ferdinando, Maria, and Dorothy; and departed this life at Clyfton, ye 21st of Jany 1636." Above the inscription are the imperial arms of the empire of Byzantium—an eagle displayed with two heads, the two legs resting upon two gates; the imperial crown over the whole, and between the gates a crescent, for difference as second son.
There were eight Emperors of the East of the family of the Paleologi. The family descended from a General Andronicus Paleologus, who died in 1246. The Emperor Manuel, who deceased in 1425, had five sons: John II, Emperor, who died in 1449; Theodore, despot in Lacedemon; Andronicus, despot in Thessalonica; Constantine, despot of the Morea. John II was associated with his father, and succeeded him. Andronicus, the second son, died of leprosy in 1429. Theodore, Constantine, Demetrius, and Thomas wasted their resources in mutual contests, but Theodore was constrained to adopt the monastic profession. On the death of John II the royal family was reduced to three princes—Constantine, Demetrius, and Thomas. Demetrius at once claimed the vacant throne, but failed in his attempt, and Constantine succeeded, the last and greatest of the Paleologi. "Demetrius and Thomas now divided the Morea between them; but though they had taken a solemn oath never to violate the agreement, differences soon arose, and Thomas took up arms to drive Demetrius out of his possessions; Demetrius hereupon retired to Asan, his wife's brother, by whose means he obtained succours from Amurath, and compelled Thomas to submit the matters in dispute to the Emperor's (Constantine's) arbitration. But that prince refusing to deliver to his brother the territories that fell to his share, Mohammed ordered Thuraken, his governor in the Morea, to assist Demetrius."
Shortly after this, on the fatal May 29th, 1453, Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and the gallant Constantine was killed.
Immediately after the capture Mohammed proceeded to make war on Demetrius and Thomas, whereupon the Albanians, subjects of Thomas, revolted. Fresh disputes broke out between the brothers, each endeavouring to supplant the other, and in 1459 Mohammed entered the Morea and reduced Corinth. At the first news of his approach Thomas fled to Italy with his wife and children, and Demetrius submitted to the Sultan, who carried him away to Constantinople, where he died in abject slavery in 1470. Thomas was received in Italy by Pope Pius II in 1461, who allowed him a pension of six thousand ducats.