That this little town of a single street should have been a borough and
have returned two members to Parliament is a surprise. It is a further
surprise to find that it is a town without a church, and that no rector
of Lanteglos, two miles distant, should have deemed it a scandal to
leave it without even a chapel-of-ease is the greatest surprise of all.
Camelford was invested with the dignity of a borough in 1547, when it
was under the control of the Roscarrock family. From them it passed to
the Manatons living at Kilworthy, near Tavistock. Then it fell into the
hands of an attorney named Phillipps. He parted with his interest to
the Duke of Bedford, and he in turn to the Earl of Darlington,
afterwards Duke of Cleveland.
The electors were the free burgesses paying scot and lot. "Scot"
signifies taxes or rates. But the mayor was the returning officer, and
he controlled the election.
In George IV.'s reign there was a warm contest between the Earl of
Darlington and Lord Yarmouth. The latter ran up a great building, into
which he crowded a number of faggot voters. But the Earl of Darlington
possessed rights of search for minerals; so he drove a mine under this
structure, and blew it up with gunpowder. The voters hearing what was
purposed, ran away in time, and consequently Lord Yarmouth lost the
election.
In the election of 1812 each voter received a hundred pounds for his
vote. In the election of 1818 the mayor, Matthew Pope, announced his
intention of giving the majority to Lord Darlington's nominee, and of
turning out of their freeholds all who opposed. The other party had a
club called "The Bundle of Sticks," and engaged a chemist named William
Hallett, of S. Mary Axe, to manage the election for them, and put £6000
into his hand to distribute among the electors, £400 apiece.
Hanmer and Stewart got ten votes apiece, Milbrook and Maitland
thirteen. But there was an appeal, and a new election; but this again
led to a petition, and a scandalous story was told of bribery and
corruption of the most barefaced description. The election was declared
void, and many persons, including Hallett, the chemist, were reported.
It was proposed to disfranchise the borough, but George III. died in
1820, and new writs had to be at once issued.
Camelford has no public buildings of interest. It is situate on very
high ground, on a wind-blown waste 700 feet above the sea, exposed to
furious gales from the Atlantic; but it has this advantage, that it
forms headquarters for an excursion to the Bodmin moors, to Brown Willy
(1375 feet), and Rough Tor (1250 feet). These tors, though by no means
so high as those on Dartmoor, are yet deserving of a visit, on account
of their bold outlines, the desolation of the wilderness out of which
they rise, and the numerous relics of antiquity strewn over the moors
about them.
Of these presently.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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