mudhook

I shall post here continuing good news for Cornwall, developments which will positively help the people of Cornwall and the local economy and everyday lives. Everyone who wants the people of Cornwall to succeed in the modern world will welcome them. This post covers 2008 from January onwards. Vorsprung Cornwall 1 and 2 cover 2007.

* For several months people have been fund raising for a proposed children’s hospice in Cornwall: the nearest one at present is in north Devon. Now Howard and Shirley Rosevear have given land near St Austell as a site for the hospice. This will be for children from Cornwall and Plymouth.

You can read this heart-warming story here in the Western Morning News for 25 June. There are good people in Cornwall.

* June 2008. The government is contributing £34 million as part of transport improvements for the regeneration of the Redruth-Pool-Camborne area. In all the regeneration project is intended to produce 2300 new jobs and six hundred homes.
(Source: egov monitor Rosie Winterton announces £34 million transport improvements for Cornish regeneration area)

* May 2008. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published data for individual institutions about MRSA and C difficile deaths. The data comes with caveats. For the period 2002-06 the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust performed creditably in this difficult sphere: better than average for the listed institutions for C difficile and average for MRSA.

* 13 April 2008. There’s an upbeat article in the Observer describing Penzance as now the premier art place in Cornwall and a place to visit and enjoy. Perhaps Penzance is beginning to see a cultural and economic resurgence and outshine St Ives. (Source: Observer 13 April 2008 Penzance turns regeneration into a fine art)

* April. The county record office at Truro has begun to put its parish tithe maps and their accompanying apportionment/survey books onto compact disks. This will save the original printed maps from wear and tear, will make them available in a more user-friendly format than microfiche, and make the survey books more easily searched. Additionally, the record office is selling the disks (map and survey book) for £20. This is excellent news for everyone interested in local and family history in Cornwall.

* In Cornwall in 2007/08 £3.362 million was spent on warm front measures for vulnerable households. The details are here , look for DEP 2008-0881.xls for 17 March 2008.

* March 2008. Caradon district council is receiving £5.95 million for affordable housing from the first round of the national affordable housing program 2008/09. This will build ninety six houses in the district and create a care village for the elderly out of the the Passmore Edwards hospital in Liskeard. This is capital news and a significant help to people there in need of affordable housing. Rejoice. Read more here . (NOTE. The original article is no longer available online but the cached version is still available: type “caradon £6m affordable housing” into google and open the cached version.)

* There has been a significant improvement in waiting times for NHS hospital patients in Cornwall. The figures are subject to caveats and fluctuations but the waiting time for all specialties for patients still waiting for hospital admission in the period ending March 2007 in Cornwall and Isle of Scilly primary care trust (CIOSPCT) was 7 weeks; March 1997 in the corresponding Cornwall and Isles of Scilly health authority (CIOSHA) it was 12.9 weeks.

Examples of reductions in the specialties are cardiology with 4.6 weeks at March 2007 and with 14.6 weeks at March 1997; gynecology 7.2 weeks and 13 weeks; and ophthalmology 7.2 and 17.7 weeks.

With all the caveats these are impressive reductions.

You can read the details and the data explanations and caveats in Hansard 27 February 2008, columns 1754W-1756W.

* The figures for breast and cervical cancer screening show that in the area of the present Cornwall and Isles of Scilly primary care trust the screening program is being well used and is reaching a high proportion of women. We are slightly higher in percentage reach than the average for England in cervical screening. In breast screening the proportion of eligible women who have attended screening here was higher than the England average in the last given year, 2005-2006, a very large improvement over two years previously when Cornwall was way below the England average. The lives of women in Cornwall are being saved through timely screening. (Hansard 31 January 2008, columns 596W-602W and 618W-624W.)

* 30 January 2008. The EU investment program, called by the unromantic name of the Convergence program, now begins in Cornwall and will make available about £300 million over the years 2008-2013, plus £140 million from the British government.This is in effect a ‘continuation’ of the 2000-2007 Objective One program which made about £350 million available to Cornwall.

* 25 January 2008. The Healthcare Commission has published the results of its assessment of 148 maternity units. The assessment stressed women’s reported experiences. The maternity unit at Treliske Hospital, Truro (Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust) has been assessed as among the “Best performing,” a category in which 26 percent of the units fall. In fact it is seventh best of the units. That is an excellent performance.

The unit at Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, which serves some women in east Cornwall, is in the “Least well performing” category. That is unacceptable but the assessment has been influenced by incomplete information from the trust.

The complete details are here.

* 8 January 2008. Cornwall county council is considering, through consultants, the development of a park-and-ride for seven hundred cars at St Erth railway station. This, along with longer trains, would be to improve the service for people on the St Ives branch line, which is much used in summer, and to reduce congestion in St Ives.

Such a development has long been advocated by locals.

Read the details at Transport briefing here.

I shall put here a collection of statements falling on a continuum from facts to fancies about Cornwall. Latest: 1888 Local Government Act, number 13

Aristotle’s teeth: see his History of animals, book 2, part 1

CLICK INDEX English Channel | Shires and counties | Never part of England | Submarine Mines Act | Jonathan Trelawny | 1888 county | Maps | Current status of Cornwall | Henry VIII’s coronation | Athelstan | Agincourt | Hereford mappa mundi | 1888 Local Government Act

1

The English Channel was originally called the British Ocean or British Sea and that was its name until the middle of the sixteenth century or until the unsuccessful uprising of Catholics from Cornwall and elsewhere against the Protestant government and prayer book in 1549.

Yes and no.

It was initially first recorded as the British Ocean or British Sea. The earliest mention of the name English Channel seems to be on a map of about 1450 which marks it in Latin as “the British Ocean now called the English Channel” - “canalites Anglie”: British Library, Harley MS 3686, folio 13. At this date “British” referred to the Celtic-speaking people and their culture.

William Camden in his Britannia (1586) says that it is called variously the British Sea, the Channel, and the Sleeve.

Although English Channel seems to predominate as the name from the sixteenth century, variation in the name continued. For example, Oceanus Britannicus appears on maps in 1561 (Johannes Honter), 1570 (G de Jode), 1579 (Christopher Saxton), 1593 (Ortelius), 1607 (Mercator, as Britannicus Oceanus), and 1640 (Nicholas Sanson, as Britannicus Oceanus).

The English Sea, as Mare Anglicanum, appears in 1540 (Sebastian Munster).

The British Sea appears on maps in 1556 (George Lily), 1572 (Tommaso Porcacchi, as Mare Britannicum), 1612 (John Speed), 1640 (WJ Blaeu, as Mare Britannicum), and 1646 (Jan Jansson).

The British Channel is found on maps in 1748 (Thomas Martyn), 1784 (GA Walpoole), 1787 (John Cary), 1787 (Thomas Jefferys), 1814 (J Thomson), 1840 (Robert Creighton). A painting by John Brett (1871) is named “the British Channel seen from the Dorsetshire cliffs”. There was no rigidity: on other maps by Cary and in Walpoole it is named the English Channel.

2

Cornwall contains shires (counties) therefore it is not a county because a county does not contain other counties, only a
country does. So Cornwall is a country.

No. This is based on a misunderstanding of the uses and meanings of the word shire.

In the past the Old English word scir (shire) carried several meanings: a district, diocese, parish, estate, office.

Broadly, the Anglo-Saxon hierarchy of local government comprised villages and towns (vills), then these collected into hundreds (called wapentakes in the north), then the hundreds/wapentakes collected into shires. Tithings based on vills were the local police units. Estates owned by magnates straddled these arrangements. This system was continued by the Normans and new units developed over time; eventually hundreds faded away as active units but most of the shires are with us today. When the Normans conquered England the name given to the shires in their legal documents was the Latin comitatus which in English is translated as county. Thus shire and county after 1066 are two words for the same thing, they are synonymous, apart from the instances in the next paragraph. The word county is found after 1066 to describe the presentday counties or shires. It is used in documents to describe Cornwall.

Before shire came to mean a county the word was sometimes used to mean a lesser area and this meaning has lingered in several instances. Examples of the use of shire meaning hundreds and other non-county districts are: Salfordshire, Hallamshire, Cravenshire, and Yetholmshire, all parts of counties. Associated with the palatine bishopric of Durham were the areas, none of which were counties, of Islandshire, Norhamshire, and Bedlingtonshire in Northumberland and Allertonshire and Howdenshire in Yorkshire. In medieval Cornwall the shires of Triggshire, Powdershire, Pydarshire, and East and West Wivelshire were not counties but hundreds.

Richmondshire, Hexhamshire, and Winchcombeshire are previous counties which have become parts of other counties.

3

Cornwall was administered differently from England and was never part of England

Consider the following indications that Cornwall since the Norman Conquest has been governed as an integral part of England and indistinguishable in significance in governance from the rest of England, a county in England with the apparatus of a county in England. This is about government, not differences in culture or language or ethnicity. (I shall look at the history of Cornwall in the eighth-tenth centuries in another post.)

In the Domesday survey of manors in 1087 Cornwall is discussed in the same way, in the same format and language, as other English counties. There is no suggestion in Domesday that the manors in Cornwall collectively were part of a country rather than a county of England or that the Cornwall ones were organised in any different way from those in other counties of England.

Henry of Huntingdon (early 12th century) in Book I of his History of the English says the West Saxons conquered all England and “divided it into eighty seven counties” of which “the tenth is Cornwall.”

The records of the eyres, the law courts of the king’s itinerant judges, show Cornwall and England with common legal arrangements from the police duties of tithings at the lowest level of administration to the itinerant courts at the highest. There are no examples of peculiar Cornwall arrangements. In Select pleas of the crown, published 1888, FW Maitland prints examples from Cornwall of the records of the medieval eyres and there are some accessible extracts from the eyres in the Charles Henderson papers in the library of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro.

Roger of Hovedene, who died in about 1201, describes in his Chronica the judges’ circuits of 1176 and 1179. Both include Cornwall with other counties of England in one of the circuits. Cornwall is also part of one of the four circuits of England set up by the Statute of Justices of Assizes of 1293. These instances show Cornwall was an integral part of the justice system of England from an early date.

Cornwall sent members to the parliament of England from the late thirteenth century, when parliament originated, in the same way as other parts of England. Several of these members from Cornwall had local names: for example, Willielmus de Tregony, Rogerus de Carminou, and Reginaldus de Treworgi. These summons to and attendances at parliaments of England are telling evidence that Cornwall was regarded as an integral part of England and not a separate country.

Medieval taxes such as the 1291 papal taxation and the 1377 poll tax, and the Tudor subsidies (taxes), show people in Cornwall being taxed on the same basis and through the same taxes and administration as people in the rest of England. Indeed, the cause of the 1497 uprising by some people of Cornwall was a tax levied on the whole of England and the local Cornish objections to the tax did not include any reference to Cornwall being separate from England. Cornwall, unlike Durham and Cheshire, was not exempt from the fifteenth-and-tenth taxes of medieval England.

The E179 series on the National Archives website lists numerous lay and clerical national taxes paid in medieval and post-medieval Cornwall.

The 1337 charters which deal with the dukedom of Cornwall then created refer to the income-generating properties and the offices of the dukedom, including estates outside Cornwall, which indicates that the purpose of the duchy was a fitting income for the duke not the establishment or acknowledgement of Cornwall as a territory separate from the rest of England; refer to Cornwall as a county using the very same Latin word (comitatus, ‘county’) to describe Cornwall as the other counties mentioned such as Devon, Surrey, and Hertford; and refer to Cornwall as a place “in the kingdom of England.” A copy of the first charter is here.

The following and other examples from the Patent Rolls firmly contradict the notion that after 1337 Cornwall was a duchy independent of England and they show the king and his council continuing to govern Cornwall when there was a duke of Cornwall in existence: in 1364 the king granted licences to trade to people in Cornwall and in 1371 the duke of Cornwall complained to the council about offences by locals in Cornwall. The king also granted the right to hold fairs and markets in places in Cornwall. See summaries of the Patent Rolls here, a project of GR Boynton and the University of Iowa. Instances from the fifteenth cenbtury, again when there was a duke of Cornwall, include in 1402 parliament was asked to ask the king to restore Pomeroy lands in Cornwall and Devon, seized by Philip Courtenay, at National Archives SC 8/22/1078, and in 1474 a writ from king Edward IV to the sheriff of Cornwall about a forthcoming trial (SC 8/30/1458). In 1459 the duke complained, in part successfully, against the king taking part of his duchy powers and income (SC 8/28/1395) which suggests the powers of the duke in the duchy had been changed since 1337 and the duchy was seen as a source of income by the duke.

Ralph Holinshed in his Chronicles: description and history of England (1587) wrote that Cornwall was one of the “shires of England” (volume 2, chapter 4) and named Cornwall as one of the “counties, cities, boroughs, and ports sending knights, citizens, burgesses, and barons to the parliament of England” (volume 2, chapter 8). He also described the kingdoms of early England and said “The fourth kingdome was of the West Saxons…including…Cornwalle” (volume 1, chapter 6).

Richard Carew began his Survey of Cornwall with the words: “Cornwall, the farthest shire of England westwards.”

The letter of thanks to the people of Cornwall from king Charles I, dated 10 September 1643, refers to Cornwall as a “county” three times.

(I shall look at the history of Cornwall in the eighth-tenth centuries in another post.)

4

What did the 1858 Cornwall Submarine Mines Act really say about Cornwall?

The Cornwall Submarine Mines Act 1858 set out the rights of the monarch and duke of Cornwall with respect to mines and minerals in Cornwall on the foreshore (that is the land between low and high tide marks) and under the sea. It said that the duke had the rights for the foreshore and the monarch the rights beyond the high tide mark, that is under the open sea.

The act is about property, exploitation, and income not sovereignty or constitutional status. Significantly, the Act does not say that the duchy of Cornwall possesses the area seaward of the foreshore as every country does. The open sea belongs to the country of Britain.

The Act does not say that Cornwall is a territorial possession of Britain. It does talk of “the soil and territorial possessions of the duchy of Cornwall” (part v and in almost identical words part iii). The Act deals with submarine mines in Cornwall and describes the duchy in part iii as “within the said county”: within the county does not mean coterminous with it and the Act does not say that the duchy and county of Cornwall are coterminous.

The act also describes Cornwall as a “county” and in part vii defines it with reference to the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844.

The Duchy of Cornwall Act 1844 and the Duchy of Cornwall (Number 2) Act 1844 both talk of “the county of Cornwall.”

Thus the Act does not say Cornwall, which it describes as a county, is separate from England or a separate country.

Read the act here.

5

Did Cornishmen save Trelawny?

A good sword and a trusty hand!
A merry heart and true!
King James’s men shall understand
What Cornish lads can do!

And have they fixed the where and when?
And shall Trelawny die?
Here’s twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why!

That’s the beginning of the Song of the Western Men, a stirring, flag-waving song written by RS Hawker around 1825; it’s usually known as Trelawny. The song goes on to say that the Cornishmen will march to London and free Trelawny.

Who was he? Jonathan Trelawny (1650-1721), born in Cornwall, and an Anglican bishop.

Did Cornishmen save him? No.

With six other Anglican bishops he was imprisoned in the Tower of London by king James II, a Catholic, in 1688. They were put on trial for seditious libel, basically for opposing the king’s romanising policy.

The people of Cornwall did not march to rescue Trelawny; they did nothing to help him. He and the others were saved by a London jury who acquitted them.

6

Cornwall became a county only in 1888

No.

This misunderstands the chief purpose of the local government act of 1888: the establishment of county councils and their functions in already existing counties, along with county boroughs.

Long before that Cornwall had been described as a county and administered as other English counties with the same law-and-order arrangements of magistrates and quarter sessions and with the same local government arrangements of vestries and churchwardens and overseers and other local officials and rates levied and collected.

The 1337 charters setting up the dukedom refer to Cornwall as a county. As for the view that this was a unique term for Cornwall with a unique meaning that did not equate to shire, consider that the charters use the very same Latin word (comitatus, ‘county’) to describe Cornwall as the other counties mentioned such as Devon, Surrey, and Hertford, as I explained in post 3 in Aristotle’s teeth. See also post 4 and the acts of 1844 and 1858.

See also number 13 on the 1888 Local Government Act.

7

Several medieval and Tudor maps show Cornwall as a separate country from England

No. Several medieval maps do indeed include the name Cornwall in the correct geographical place. This does not necessarily mean the mapmaker was himself asserting or reflecting the view that Cornwall was politically and administratively separate from England. That requires other evidence.

Consider: Orbilius’s map of 1595 marks England, Wales, Scotland, Cornwall – and Kent. Kent was not a separate state in 1595 and nor was Cornwall. Alessandrino’s 1561 map marks England, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall – and Picardy.

The legends of maps also do not assert the existence of a separate Cornwall even when they mark Cornwall by name. For example, the Alessandrino map, which names Cornwall, in the legends says the map contains England, Scotland, and Ireland. A map of 1565 which marks England, Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall says in the legend that the British island has “duo regna nempe Angli cum Scoticum” (two kingdoms, namely of the English and the Scottish).

Look at two maps which show well the difficulty in interpreting what the mapmaker is saying about the places on the map and the need to avoid simplistic takes.

The 1540 map of Sebastian Munster marks Cornwall as Cornubia, and in telling small capitals; but places the word in what is now Devon. It also marks Cornewal (as Corneuual) in lowercase writing in what is now Cornwall. What are we to make of this? The 1556 map of George Lily indeed marks Cornubia plainly but the descriptive title of the map is “Britanniae insulae quae Angliae et Scotiae regna continet cum Hibernia adiacente” (the kingdoms of England and Scotland with Ireland alongside). No mention of Cornwall (or Wales) there. The legend on the map names eight “regiones” and includes Cornubia in a bizarre and puzzling collection of Cumbria, Westmorland, North Wales, South Wales, Devon, Berkshire (Bercheria), and Suffolk.

I do not think it is convincing to claim that the existence of a place word on a map or in its legend means that the place is a separate country. Kent was an integral part of England in 1595 as was Suffolk in 1556.

We should not confuse the past with the present. We should not conflate cultural differences with political and administrative separation. A name on a map of the past does not in itself say the place was an independent political entity.

See number 12 for the Hereford mappa mundi.

8

What is the current status of Cornwall, the duchy, and the stannaries?

On 6 and 29 March 2007 the department for constitutional affairs gave written answers to parliamentary questions about Cornwall, the duchy of Cornwall, and the stannaries. Here are the government’s clear answers:

“Cornwall is an administrative county of England which is subject to UK legislation” and “Cornwall has always been an integral part” of the UK.

The duchy is “a private estate that funds the public, charitable and private activities” of prince Charles, his wife, and two sons.

“There are no valid Cornish stannary organisations in existence.”

9

Cornwall was mentioned separately at Henry VIII’s coronation

We have an account from Ralph Holinshed in his 1587 Chronicles of the public coronation procession of Henry VIII in June 1509. Part of this says:

“Then next followed the nine children of honor upon great coursers, appareled on their bodies in blue velvet, powdered with floure delices of gold, and chaines of goldsmiths worke, everie one of their horsses trapped with a trapper of the kings title, as of England and France, Gascoigne, Guien, Normandie, Angiou, Cornewalle, Wales, Ireland, etc wrought upon velvets, with imbroderie, and goldsmiths worke.” floure delices are fleur de lis.

Yes, Cornwall is mentioned separately, along with eight other places (and an ‘etc’ which suggests more than nine), as part of the king’s claimed titles, a mixture of reality and fantasy, though the Holinshed extract makes clear that the emphasis is on pageant. The relative nearness of the 1497 uprising and the 1508 agreement with the stannary, and an awareness of the cultural distinction of Cornwall, may have persuaded the king and his counsellors that it was politic to include Cornwall specifically in the pageant or it may have been a public assertion of mastery. A mention in the pageant, though interesting, does not mean that Cornwall was politically and administratively separate from England. Holinshed did not suggest it was significant.

Henry VIII’s regnal style was initially king of England and France and lord of Ireland: this is how he saw himself and presented himself to the world though the France part was fiction. In 1542 lord of Ireland was changed to king of Ireland. Cornwall is not mentioned separately which suggests it is included under England. In the coronation oath, the serious part of the coronation, the reference is to “the people of England,” with no separate mention of Cornwall (RYMER Thomas Foedera II.i.33 gives the wording of the oath of Edward II). The regal title of Henry VIII inscribed on the wall of St Mawes castle in Cornwall is, in Latin, Henry VIII invincible king of England, France, and Ireland - Henricus octavus rex Angl Franc et Hiberniae invictus (AL Rowse (1941, 1969) Tudor Cornwall page 17).

10

King Athelstan tyrannically attacked the Cornish

Yes but no but…

The hostile view of king Athelstan of the West Saxons and England taken by some Cornish nationalists is based on a brief passage from William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum (Chronicle of the kings of the English), written in Latin in the early twelfth century. In this William says that Athelstan sharply attacked the Cornish in Exeter, drove them from the city where until then they had lived alongside the English as equals, and drove them over the Tamar, fixing that as the boundary of their territory. William of Malmesbury adds unpleasantly that Exeter was thus purged of the contaminated people: in the original Latin, contaminatae gentis. This event is not recorded by anyone else.

That Exeter snippet is not the whole story. It has a context.

The couple of Exeter sentences in William of Malmesbury are tantalisingly brief and offer no explanation for Athelstan’s expulsion of the Cornish inhabitants but he faced military attacks from within Britain throughout his reign and it is most probable that he was responding to what he saw as a lively danger from Britons in the southwest although, as William’s account specifically mentions, they were living alongside the English in Exeter as equals not as a servile people. Athelstan appears to have gone to Exeter after he had mastered the Welsh rulers at Hereford, and William compares the fixing of the boundary at the river Tamar with the king’s fixing the river Wye as the boundary of the Welsh (originally called the North Welsh; the Cornish were also called the West Welsh). FM Stenton (Anglo-Saxon England 1971, 3rd edition) has suggested that the Cornish, including those in Exeter, were in revolt, and this rings true. Athelstan dealt effectively with them by containing them in the far west. A few years later he defeated a combined force of Scottish, Dublin Viking, and Strathclyde soldiers at Brunanburh. William’s ‘contaminated’ comment on the Cornish inhabitants of Exeter is straightforward nastiness against the enemies of a king he much admired.

A simple view of Athelstan as an enemy of “British” people is untenable. There is an aspect to Athelstan which should please those attracted to the all-Celts-together school and which makes what happened at Exeter less simple of interpretation.

He seriously helped the Bretons who were the very descendants of those Cornish Britons who had fled to Armorica from Athelstan’s West Saxon ancestors. Armorica became known as Brittany from these immigrant Britons. In the early tenth century, led by Mathuedoi, a large contingent of Bretons fled to England from the Danes then ravaging Brittany – tenth century asylum seekers. The exact date of the flight and settlement being unknown, it is unclear whether the king at the time was Edward, Athelstan’s father and predecessor, or Athelstan. In any case Athelstan was godfather to Mathuedoi’s son, Alan Barbetorte, and during his reign the Bretons continued to live in England and at his court. In 936 the Bretons, led by Alan, returned successfully to their homeland with Athelstan’s support.

The asylum story is told in the Chronicle of Nantes; this says the flight happened when Athelstan was king. The 936 return with Athelstan’s support is recorded in Flodoard’s Annales, written contemporaneously in the tenth century. Michael Lapidge (Anglo-Saxon litanies of the saints 1991) quotes a Breton prayer of the time asking for the safe-keeping of the English clergy and people which suggests a warm appreciation of the king and people of England. Lapidge also says that Irishmen came to Athelstan’s court (Anglo-Latin literature 900-1066, 1993).

I’d say there was a palpable Anglo-Breton civil alliance. Athelstan was a friend and ally of the Bretons.

However, Athelstan’s support of the Bretons goes further. He is known as a patron of Christianity in England but Karen Jankulak (The medieval cult of St Petroc 2000) discusses in detail his place in the establishment of cults of Breton saints in England – there were also cults of English and Cornish saints in Brittany. There was a palpable and welcomed Breton religious influence in Athelstan’s England and Jankulak writes of the probability of “a substantial and prolonged” settlement of Bretons in England while Athelstan was king.

Athelstan, king of the English, was by conquest overlord of the Scots, Welsh, Cornish, and Stathclyde British and called himself rex totius Britanniae, which after the battle at Brunanburh was more or less true. However, he was a friend over the years to the Bretons, gave them salvatory refuge in England and support in their reseizure of Brittany, and enabled Anglo-Breton cultural interchange; and played an important part in Anglo-Cornish-Breton religious interchange.

11

Cornishmen fought at Agincourt, the Cornish archers excelled, and they fought under the flag of Cornwall

Yes and no.

First, the men in the army that fought in the Agincourt campaign
The major but not only source of information about the names of the men who fought at Agincourt is the Agincourt Roll. The roll we have is largely made from three lists, ultimately copies of an original one now lost. The original one did apparently include the names of the archers. The present roll is not complete and only a few archers are listed by name.

We can be reasonably sure that Cornishmen fought at Agincourt though as far as I can see none of the contemporary chroniclers, English and French, mention this apart from giving a very few Cornish surnames; nor do any of the other sources that have been explored and published. None mention the presence of bands of Cornish soldiers or Cornish archers though in the fifteenth century the emphasis in histories tended to be on the grandees as individual heroes rather than the sansculotte archers and foot soldiers.

The French army included Bretons and a few Scots, Henry V’s army included Welsh.

In the Agincourt Roll there are a handful of surnames in the retinues which certainly look Cornish and I list them below.

Thomas Rymer published in his Foedera a list from the Patent Rolls dated 29 May 1415 of seventeen counties and retinues but Cornwall was not among them. (For 10 February 1417 Rymer has a list of twenty one counties to provide feathers for soldiers in the continuing French campaign but Cornwall is not among them.) Rymer’s published collection is not exhaustive and we can reasonably assume that in 1415 all the counties were asked to array soldiers though this was ostensibly for the defence of the country not the coming campaign in northern France.

Henry V used crown valuables as security for loans of cash to pay for his French war and among those noted in Rymer on 14 July 1415 as giving a loan to Henry V in return for the security of a jewelled silver tabernacle was John, the prior at Launceston.

Recruiting the army
How was the Agincourt army recruited? As in the English armies of the late middle ages, the men-at-arms (called lances), archers on horse, and archers on foot largely assembled as retinues under lords and knights; all three historic versions of the Agincourt Roll are ordered under leaders of retinues not localities. A local lord or knight would of course bring with him local men and men from elsewhere. Men also engaged with commanders unconnected to their locality: some of the people with Cornish surnames on the roll serve under magnates who are not from Cornwall.

Everyone was indentured, that is, was under a detailed contract with the king or with a retinue commander and many of these indentures have survived. In a few instances specialist groups of soldiers were recruited as in the case of archers from the northwest mentioned in the next-but-one paragraph.

Medieval soldiers were organised by type (mounted men-at-arms, mounted archers, foot archers, foot soldiers, and so on) and by line. The usual arrangement was these men in three lines, vanguard, middle, and rear but Henry’s army at Agincourt was in three divisions in one line, as they were insufficient in number for anything else, and with the archers on the wings as was usual (Bradbury 1985, 127-129) though the disposition of the archers at the battle is contended. Within those dispositions those from the same lordly retinue stood together, initially at any rate until the melee of battle might separate them though the archers are problematic as I shall explain.

Archers were recruited in two ways: into a mixed retinue of lances and archers or into bowmen contingents. The presence of a large number of archers from south Wales, Cheshire, and Lancashire in special bowmen contingents in Henry V’s army is recorded (for example see Bennett 2003, 171-172). There appear to be no records of such a specialist contingent from Cornwall.

We do not know whether the special contingents of archers remained together or were divided and spread through other retinues. We do not know whether archers generally remained in the mixed retinues to which they were engaged or were joined together with other archers from other retinues (Curry 2000, 433).

Referring to the killing of the French prisoners towards the end of the battle, the French chroniclers Jean Le Fevre (St Remy) and Jehan de Waurin say they were killed by Henry V’s archers (Curry 2000, 163-164).

Although sir John Cornwall is listed as having brought thirty lances men at arms and ninety foot soldiers (archers and bill men) to France in 1415 their names are not given and consequently we cannot hazard how many might have been Cornish. John Cornwall played a noted part in the campaign, both at Harfleur and at the fording of the Somme. He was at the battle too as we shall see. There are notices of his activities in the various contemporary accounts of the campaign. Another name missing from the roll is Carew who is named in Peter Bassett’s fifteenth-century chronicle as “baron Carew of the land of Cornwall” (cited in Curry 2000, 87) and who would have taken men with him to the battle. This is presumably Thomas Carew (circa 1368-1430) who is more usually associated with Devon and Wales.

The crying up of Cornish archers at Agincourt does not then reflect the evidence of the early accounts or the Agincourt Roll or other extant contemporary documents but rather rests literarily on Michael Drayton and Richard Carew. Michael Drayton’s poem, The battle of Agincourt, published in 1627, two hundred years after the battle, actually says little singular about the Cornish soldiers. He recites the counties of England and Wales with soldiers at Agincourt and Cornwall appears among the thirty six former. Drayton says each county band of soldiers had a distinguishing banner: “The Cornishmen two wrestlers had for theirs.” The descriptions of county flags appear to be invented by Drayton and we have seen how men were recruited into retinues under a magnate and not in county bands as such. The whole is a patriotic poem in which Drayton is primarily keen to show the whole of England and Wales behind king Henry. There is nothing about Cornish archers in the poem, nothing that singles out the soldiers from Cornwall.

Richard Carew, writing his 1602 Survey of Cornwall at the beginning of the seventeenth century, has a section about pastimes in Cornwall in which personified archery laments its neglect by current Cornishmen and makes large claims for its importance and mentions Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, the leading battles of the English and French in the middle ages (pages 72-73). At the end of this he writes of “Cornishmen’s former sufficiency” in archery. There is no evidence given here for any singular importance of Cornish archers at these battles and it is a judgement whether Carew had evidence he did not to reveal or was being merely grandiloquent and whether one is convinced by evidence or by emotive noise. Carew’s comment on archery comes around the time of an anonymous Agincourt ballad which praises “good English bowmen” as decisive in winning the battle (Agincourt or the English bowman’s glory, ballad reproduced by Curry 2000 pages 302-304).

Drayton wrote an imaginative poem not an account steeped in accuracy, Carew’s account lacks any evidence. They are insufficient to build a history on. All that can be said is that at Agincourt there were men from all over England, including Cornwall.

Now for the flag
There are three relevant comments about John Cornwall. In John Hardyng’s fifteenth-century Chronicle there is an account of John Cornwall, and others, guarding the river crossing for the army and displaying their standards (cited in Curry 2002, 84). In the French chronicles of Jehan de Waurin and Jean Le Fevre the banners of English magnates on display at the battle included that of John Cornwall (cited in Curry 2000, 154).

Note that the banner in these instances is of John Cornwall, his personal flag not a county flag. Medieval banners of individuals were not simple crosses.

Nevertheless I suspect that these references, and especially those of Waurin-Le Fevre, have encouraged the false belief that the present county flag, or something like it, was at Agincourt.

Short bibliography

BENNETT Michael (2003) Community, class, and careerism
BRADBURY Jim (1985) The medieval archer Boydell Press
CAREW Richard (1602) The survey of Cornwall
CURRY Anne (2000) The battle of Agincourt: sources and interpretations Boydell Press
DRAYTON Michael (1627) The battle of Agincourt (poem)
NICOLAS NH (1832) The battle of Agincourt
RYMER Thomas (1704-32 ) Foedera . Volume 9 has the material for Henry V.

Both Curry and Nicolas include extracts from contemporary records, Curry includes later accounts too, and Nicolas includes an Agincourt Roll. Rymer includes state papers, orders, etc.

The putative Cornish names on the Agincourt Roll and the retinues in which they are listed:

Thomas Carew
Sir John Cornewayle
Lewys Cornewayle: lance, retinue of the earl of March
William Cornewayle: lance, retinue of the earl of March
Stemham Cornysshe: lance, retinue of the earl of March
Robert Cornu or Corun: retinue of sir de Harington
William Kylleryen: retinue of the earl of Huntingdon
Thomas Tryskebett (Tryskebetter): retinue of lord Camoys
Henry Veell: retinue of the duke of Gloucester

The Roll mentions only the mahoffs and the vast numbers who also fought, and who would include men from Cornwall, are omitted.

The chronicles and public documents - largely in Rymer’s Foedera - and histories also mention Thomas Carew, “baron Carew of the land of Cornwall,” and Sir John Cornwall as being there. Nicolas (‘Retinue of Henry V’ in his 1832 book, page arabic 85) says Thomas Carew raised twelve men-at-war and twenty four foot soldiers and Richard Carew raised one man-at-war and thirty horse soldiers. Davies Giddy Gilbert mentions sir John Colshull as being killed at Agincourt: Gilbert 1838
Parochial history of Cornwall, volume 1, 418, and volume 3, 316.

The Welsh fought both for and against Henry V. David Llewellyn/Gamme of Brecknock fought for the king. J Endell TYLER in his 1838 Henry of Monmouth says William Gwyn of Llanstephan fought for the French (Patent Rolls P 2, 3 Henry V). Pierre COCHON Chronique normande (1430s) says in chapter 30 that there were Irish in Henry’s subsequent army (cited in Curry 2000, 114).

12

The mappa mundi at Hereford cathedral shows Cornwall as a separate country from England.

This map was drawn about 1300 and probably by Richard of Haldingham, a priest at Lincoln cathedral. It is probably based on previous maps and texts. It presents largely inaccurately countries and cities and rivers; and also numerous pictures and much text representing history, religion, and the natural and fabulous worlds.

Does it show Cornwall as a separate country from England? No, it doesn’t.

This mappa mundi does indeed mark the area at Lands End as Cornubia.

However, the appearance of a place on a map does not in itself mean that the mapmaker and his patron regard it as a separate political and administrative entity. Maps have many purposes and we should not read our own as the mapmaker’s.

The map marks Cornwall in red and in a distinct script, the same colour and script used to mark Anglia, Scotia, Wallia, and Hibernia on the map. The same colour and script are also used on the map to mark Lindsey, Northumberland, and Lothian, for example – and Snowdon.

No one suggests Snowdon is shown as a separate country; no one suggests that Lindsey or Northumberland are separate countries from England on the map. What did the mapmaker mean by showing these places and Cornwall? We do not know. The mere marking of Cornwall on this map does not show it is a separate country from England.

The city of Exeter is marked on the map as west of a large river which cuts right across the western peninsula.

See number 7 for other maps.

13

The application of the 1888 local government act to Cornwall was specially delayed to meet various Cornish concerns

No. This is probably based on a misunderstanding of the difference in dates between an act getting royal assent and coming into effect.

The 1888 Local Government Act, which applied to England and Wales and inter alia established county councils, received royal assent in August 1888 and, in accordance with section 109, came into force everywhere on 1 April 1889 (except London where it came into force on 21 March 1889): such a delay is normal in parliamentary Acts and there was no special Cornish delay. Section 103 provided that the first elections to the new county councils should be in January 1889 and not earlier than the 14th. The election to the new Cornwall county council was on 24 January 1889, the same day as the first elections to the new Durham and Norfolk county councils for example; sixty six councillors were elected in Cornwall and at a subsequent meeting of the council in February twenty two aldermen were elected by the councillors. Until April when the Act came into force the council was a “provisional council” which then moved seamlessly into the legally constituted county council.

The first meeting in February 1889 was at Bodmin, as was the second meeting; the third and all subsequent meetings of the council were at Truro.

Section 49 of the 1888 Act provided for separate administrative arrangements for the Isles of Scilly, independent of Cornwall.

See also number 6 on the 1888 Act.

See the following reports in the West Briton :
31 January 1889 page 2b-c (report of the first county council election of 24 January 1889)

14 February 1889 page 2a-c (report of the first meeting of the provisional council on 7 February 1889) and page 3 (election of the aldermen)

7 March 1889 page 2d-f (lists the aldermen and councillors) and page 4f (report of the second meeting of the provisional council on 28 February 1889)

4 April 1889 page 3d-g (report of the first meeting of the legally constituted council on 1 April 1889 when the 1888 Act came into force)