latest county historian, the accomplished Mr. Davies Gilbert, could scarcely allude to it without a certain amount of hereditary respect. The editor,' he says, remembers a female ' relation of the former vicar of St. Erth, who, instructed by ' a dream, prepared decoctions of various kinds, and, repairing to the Land's End, poured them into the sea with certain 'incantations, expecting to see the Lionesse country rise im'mediately out of the water, having all its inhabitants alive, ' notwithstanding their long submersion.'

But, to leave mythical for real history, we find the Trevelyans settled in Henry III.'s reign at the place from which they derive their name:

'Trevelyan' (add the editors in a note) is believed to be the Celtic equivalent for the Saxon "Milton," and to be compounded of Tre (terra), the Celtic unit of territorial division, and of the inflected form (velin) of the Celtic adaptation of the word mill, as still used in Welsh and Irish. The ancient mill is still there on a creek of Fowey River, below Trevelyan. The name is reversed in Velindre (milltown), which still belongs to them, in the parish of St. Veep, near Lostwithiel; and their first recorded alliance was with Margaret Carminow,* a name still dear to every true Cornishman, although the family has long since been extinct.'

The mill-town' in question is situated on a brisk stream, rattling amidst orchards and pastures, divided by huge Danmonian hedges, soon to fall into the beautiful estuary of the Fowey on the south coast. The farmhouse, which represents the ancient manorial residence, stands on the hill above; but it has ceased for many centuries to be the residence of a gentle family, and been inhabited only for agricultural purposes. But the present representatives of the name have, we believe, repurchased this venerable 'Stammschloss' of their race. Curiously enough, the historical repute of the family seems to have commenced (although we hardly expect that the zeal of the editors will be satisfied with such a solution of the case) in something like a misnomer. John Trevelyan, under Henry VI., was a stout, consistent 'Lancastrian '; in 1451 he was included in a petition of the Commons for the removal of certain disaffected persons from

'Carminow' was indeed a name of the 'vieille Roche' in Cornwall. 'In the Scrope and Grosvenor controversy under Richard III., one of the witnesses deposes to having seen the shield of the Scropes hanging over an hostel occupied by a Cornish knight of the family of Carminow (azure, a bend or, is the proper cognizance of that house), and that the owner, on being questioned, affirmed that the bearing in dispute was granted to his family by King Arthur!'

the king's presence. In one political satire of the day he is alluded to as the Cornish chough, who oft with his train has 'made our eagle Henry VI. blind;' "in a third, by a

of

'bold metaphor, he is apostrophised as an unjust judge, and 'threatened with the fate of his fellow Cornishman, and almost ' namesake, Chief Justice Tressilian, who was put to death for his adherence to Richard II.' Considering that this John Trevelyan, represented as so active a partisan of the losing cause, contrived in some unexplained way to escape,' and that unscathed as to lands and tenements, while so many 'those with whom he acted came to an untimely end,' we cannot help entertaining some suspicion that the similarity of his name to one of such recent and notorious unpopularity gave him an unfounded prominence in ballads and satires; even as 'Cinna the poet,' less fortunate, was torn to pieces for Cinna 'the conspirator.' This same John Trevelyan, however, 'escheator' for Cornwall and knight of the shire, did a great deal better for his family, in the matrimonial way, than he could have achieved by any exhibition of zeal for one Rose or the other. He married Elizabeth Whalesborough, who brought him the inheritance of the elder branch of the Raleighs in Devonshire, 'Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, and Glamorganshire, besides the 'estates of her own family in Cornwall.' Of the visitors who annually seek the quiet little watering-place Bude, in the northern extremity of Cornwall, few have even heard the name of Whalesborough.' It still exists, however, a farmhouse amidst a few fertile fields in a desolate district, cowering under the shelter of the sandhills which protect the valleys of the interior from the fierce western blast-precisely the reverse of the situation which a modern gentleman, with the love which now prevails for fresh air and exposed situations, would select. Quisque suos patimur manes. Our old-fashioned gentrylike the monks whom so many of them succeeded-loved a close, warm, covered situation. The wild west wind, the breath "of autumn's being,' is worshipped among us moderns. It was abominated in Shakspeare's day. Caliban bids the southwest' blow on Prospero and Miranda, and blister them all 'o'er.' Any one may note how the northern slope of the South Downs, in Sussex, effectually protected from southern sun and moistened breezes, is dotted along its whole course with a line of venerable manor-houses-the snug dwellings of the ancestors of those who now shiver along the façades of Brighton and St. Leonards. They suffered accordingly from fever and 'ague' and their cognate types of diseases. We, of delicate hereditary organisation, boldly confront consumption, bronchitis,

and their kindred, until the foe becomes too strong for us, and then wander like melancholy ghosts along the shores of the Mediterranean in search of natural advantages which we have thrown away in our early resolution to harden' ourselves against our destiny. The Trevelyans inherited from the Whalesboroughs, as has been said, not only the manor of 'that ilk' which we have been describing, but also considerable estates, once belonging to the Raleigh family, in different parts of England and Wales, including Nettlecombe in Somerset, which has ever since been the chief seat of the family.

The modern tendency of English idle population to accumulate on the sea shore, and abandon, comparatively, the less attractive inlands, did not, however, commence to operate before the reign of Elizabeth. Carew's remarks on it, as he observed it in Cornwall, though probably he had no real inkling of the reason for it, are curious enough. He speaks of the 'general decay of inland towns, where whole streets, besides particular houses, pay tribute to Come-down Castle: as also the ruins in the wild moors, which testify a former inhabitance.' I suppose that these waste grounds were inhabited and manured, when the Saxons' and Danes' continual inva'sions drove them to abandon the sea coast, save in such towns as were able to muster, upon any sudden invasion, a sufficient number for their own defence. The residue retreated into the heart of the land, where, upon a longer warning, they 'might sooner assemble from all sides to make head.

Touching the decayed inland towns, they are countervailed ' with a surplusage of increase on those of the coast; and the 'desolate walls in the moors have begotten a sevenfold race of 'cottages near the sea side.' Certainly the sense of public security was very different in maritime and inland districts. Our editors mention two inventories characteristic of the times' (the fifteenth century). Every dwelling room at Whalesborough' (close, as we have seen, to the sea) was hung with arms offensive and defensive; while everything at Nettlecombe (in Somersetshire) bore evidence of long settled 'peaceful habits. There was only one sword and one pollaxe

'there.'

We pass over, for lack of space, the period of the sixteenth century, which, eventful as it was for the nation, seems to have passed away peacefully enough for the house of Trevelyan, which lived on quietly at Nettlecombe, and, except that it furnished a chaplain to King Henry VIII., produced no one who took personal part in the vicissitudes of the time. Just at the end of that century, however, they made a new departure,' becoming connected with Ireland.

'In the reigns of Elizabeth and James that country was the favourite field of adventure for our youth, as India now is; and this was specially the case in the West of England, from which Ireland was originally invaded. There were few good West-country families some members of which were not working out their fortunes there. George, second son of the seventh John Trevelyan, followed to Ireland his maternal uncle Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy and founder of the Donegal family, who was himself second son of Sir John Chichester of Raleigh near Barnstaple. Sir Arthur undertook to provide for his nephew, which he did very effectually, by granting him an estate in the county of Wexford, and marrying him to a rich widow in Fermanagh. George Trevelyan and Sir John Blennerhasset were the first members for Belfast after the Charter of James I. in 1613, and he was knighted in 1617. Another prominent character is George Montgomery, son of Adam, laird of Braidstane, who was presented by Queen Elizabeth to the living of Chedzoy in Somersetshire, and was promoted by James to the Deanery of Norwich, after which he became the first Protestant Bishop of Londonderry, and was ultimately translated to Meath. He married Susan, daughter of Philip Steyning of Holnicott, which connected him with the Willoughbies of Peyhembury, who afterwards merged in the Trevelyans by the marriage of an heiress. There are seventeen letters from Bishop Montgomery, written in a remarkably lively style, and many others from his wife, their daughter and heir Lady Howth, Benjamin Culme, Dean of St. Patrick's, and Nicholas younger brother of John Willoughby, and his son and daughter-inlaw. This is a good example of the family emigration of that period, which had the same admirable character of mutual help, as the swarming off of the native population of Ireland to America in our day. In his last letter to his brother-in-law John Willoughby, Bishop Montgomery says, with just satisfaction: "You and your children may "happily find in this kingdom a new colony of your own kindred, in "all the four branches and families your children are nearest unto, of "Steynings, Willoughbies, Culmes, and Fryes; and to every of them I "have given a friendly footing for a ground and beginning, if their "friends will second and assist them."

The

'Mrs. Montgomery announced her husband's promotion in these words, "The King hath bestowed on him three Irish Bishopricks." "The names of them I cannot remember, they are so strange, except one, which is Derry. I pray God it may make us all merry." experience of the settlers, however, was anything but cheerful. In his first letter George Trevelyan asks for "a couple of felt hats, not broad "brimmed, two pair of worsted stockings, a pair of garters, and anything else that you shall think fitting for the cold cleamency [inclemency] of this barbarous land." And in his second, he speaks of us that lives in these forlorn places; " and requests his father to send him "one suit complete of good apparell, for there is not any to be gotten in Dublin if a man would give treble the price." But we would especially direct attention to two letters written towards the

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* viz., Londonderry, with Clogher and Raphoe in commendam.

close of 1606 by Mrs. Montgomery and Nicholas Willoughby, expressly for the purpose of acquainting their friends in England with the circumstances of their new country. Although the bishop's wife was better off than most of the settlers, and she seemed determined to see everything in the best possible light, her account and that of her less fortunate relative substantially agree. If we could imagine the rude abundance of the Western States of America, combined with the insecurity which prevailed in India at the time of the mutiny, it would give some idea of the Ireland of that day.'

The Anglo-Irish Willoughbies were pretty effectually ruined by the outbreak of 1641. Now for the country,' writes one of that family, if there were good husbands upon it, it would be almost as good as England; but the people be so beastly, 'that they be better like beasts than Christians. There is land ' enough, but there wants stock to stock it; for I cannot blame 'them that are loth to live here, for he shall live as it were ' among beasts: and if he live out in the country, he shall be in danger of his life. But all my lord's land (his cousin, 'Lord Howth) for the most part, is excellent good for fish and fowl. If one had but the tenth part of it in England, he 'might live more like a prince than a subject.'

For the most part, the Trevelyans seem to have been Protestants of the good Act of Parliament persuasion, and to have caused very little trouble either to themselves or their neighbours by sectarian eccentricities. But one branch of their line furnished a somewhat remarkable exception. Mr. John Trevelyan, of Basil in Saint Cleather (a desolate-looking Cornish moorland parish on the hills, west of Launceston) furnishes a separate chapter in the annals of his family during the troublesome seventeenth century; for he was a Papist, and a determined one.

'His racy and resolute character,' say the editors, 'has preserved his memory to this day while many better men have been forgotten. He is locally known as "Old Trevelyan," and his ruinous granitebuilt manor-house, with its neighbouring Cornish crosses and sacred well, is still standing. He is said to have driven away the undersheriff and posse comitatûs on one occasion by overturning his beehives among them. It is also told of him that having to appear on Sundays at his parish church, in order to avoid the legal penalties, he used to call to the clergyman on going out before the sermon, "When "thou hast said what thou hast to say, come and dine with me."

The justices of Cornwall 'presented' him to King Charles I., in 1628, as a very terrible personage. The presumptions,'

It is rather strangely said of him (part ii. p. 13) that he is 'pro'bably the same that is mentioned in Whitlock's "Memorials," as having

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