XIII.

THE HUNDREDS OF CORNWALL.

PREFIXED to Tonkin’s MS. of the Parochial History of Cornwall (with additions in notes by J. Whitaker) are the following notes:

Mem. Mr. Hawkins tells me that there is a camp near Trutheun, in Bishop’s Wood, not large.

Carew (Edition 1769) fol. 30. The Cornish “pay in most places onely _fee Morton_ releeses, which is after five markes the whole knight’s fee (so called of John, Earle first of Morton, then of Cornwall, and lastly King of this land); whereas, that of _fee Gloucester_ is five pounds.”

The MS. is in the possession of the Rev. Mr. Pye, Rector of Truro, and had been recovered by him from imminent destruction, as he told me, at a house formerly belonging to Mr. Tonkin, and then inhabited by Mr. Fortescue. A MS. in folio, and another in quarto, had been left in a cupboard of the kitchen, and applied to culinary purposes. Mr. Pye’s attention was arrested by seeing part of the quarto wrapping round some plumb cake; he therefore begged the rest. And he found the Folio had been used entirely, and the quarto up to the letter P. and page 406. With this account he made me (as I thought) a present of the MS. I therefore wrote some additions of my own upon the blank places of it. He afterwards desired me (as I thought) to lend it him awhile. But when I sent for it back again, he denied he had ever meant to give it me; and I thought myself obliged in honour to waive all claim to the property, and to borrow it for transcription. But I then erased my own remarks from the whole, and have here added many, very many others. October 26th 1790. J. W.

THE HUNDREDS OF CORNWALL.

LES-NEWITH. New Court. (Dr. Pryce).

I notice this first, because it points out the scope and drift of the other names. It is so called from the Court of the Hundred, Les-Newydh (C.) New Court, as being a new Hundred, and this new Court giving name to the place at which it was kept, near Tintagel.

STRATTON.

So called from Stratton, the seat of its Court, and therefore the head of the hundred. The hill full of fresh springs of waters (Dr. Pryce).

POWDRE.

So called from the Court House (I apprehend) called (I suppose) Pou Dre (C.) the house of the province. Pou Dar, the borough, country, or hundred of Oaks. (Dr. Pryce.)

PIDRE.

Called from its house near the four burrows, which has alwas given name to the street in Truro, leading towards it, as the house was so called from its being at the four burrows, Pidyr Carnon perhaps. The fourth hundred. (Dr. Pryce.)

TRIG.

From its house called Trig (C.) a dwelling, and situate at the ebb of the sea, or on the sea shore. (Dr. Pryce.)

EAST AND WEST.

Hundreds, formed by the English since the Conquest of Cornwall, and so named by them from the relative situation of their respective Court Houses.

KERRIER.

From Curhar (C.) I believe a jail, a prison; the Court House of the Hundred, I apprehend, having always a prison a jail for it.

The coast or border of the country, Kur-Urian (Dr. Pryce); which signify, even in Dr. Pryce himself, Kur, the coast or border of a country, and, Urian, the border, boundary, or limit of a country: so that Kerrier, thus explained, is the same thing doubly.

PENWITH.

The head of the breach or separation, as the Land’s End is from Scilly. (Dr. Pryce.)

From its Court House, on the promontory, called Penwith or Land’s End; and this promontory, so called as Dr. Pryce thinks from Pen, and With the head of the separation from Scilly; but rather as With (says Nennius) signifies Divortium, and means the Isle of Wight, the headland of the Isle opposite, just as this very promontory was called by the ancients Anti Vesteeum, the point opposed to Vesteeum.

APPENDIX.