A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall : $b being an introduction to Devon and CornwallBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall : $b being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County)
Lanherne is in the parish of S. Mawgan. The church has been coldly and
unsympathetically renovated by Mr. Butterfield. It contains very fine
carved bench-ends and a screen that deserve inspection. The tower of
the church is peculiarly beautiful, and the church rises above a grove
of the true Cornish elm, growing like poplars, small-leaved.
Carnanton was formerly the dwelling of William Noye, a farmer of
Buryan, who was bred as student-at-law in Lincoln’s Inn, and afterwards
became M. P. for S. Ives in Cornwall, in which capacity he stood for
several Parliaments in the beginning of the reign of Charles I.,
and was one of the boldest and stoutest champions of the rights of
Parliament against absolute monarchy. Charles I. then made him his
attorney-general, 1631, whereupon his views underwent a complete
change, “so that,” as Halls says, “like the image of Janus at Rome,
he looked forward and backward, and by means thereof greatly enriched
himself.” He it was who contrived the ship-money tax, which was so
obnoxious, and was a principal occasion of the Rebellion.
The attorney-general one day was entertaining King Charles I. and the
nobility of the court at dinner in his house in London. Ben Jonson and
other choice spirits were at the same time in a tavern on the opposite
side of the street, very much out of pocket, and with their stomachs
equally empty.
Ben, knowing what was going on opposite, wrote this little metrical
epistle and sent it to the attorney-general on a white wood trencher:--
“When the World was drown’d
No deer was found,
Because there was noe Park;
And here I sitt
Without een a bitt,
’Cause Noyah hath all in his Arke.”
The presentation of this billet caused great amusement, and Noyes sent
back a dish of venison with the rhymes recast, at the dictation of the
king, in this fashion:--
“When the World was drown’d
There deer was found,
Althoe there was noe Park;
I send thee a bitt
To quicken thy witt,
Which comes from Noya’s Arke.”
Halls says:--
“William Noye was blow-coal, incendiary, and stirrer up
of the Civil Wars by assisting and setting up the King’s
prerogative to the highest pitch, as King James I. had
done before, beyond the laws of the land. As counsell for
the King he prosecuted for King Charles I. the imprisoned
members of the House of Commons, 1628; viz., Sir John
Elyot, Mr. Coryton, and others; whom after much cost and
trouble he got to be fined two thousand pounds each, the
others five hundred pounds.”
A portrait of William Noye, by Cornelius Jansen, is at Enys, the
property of D. G. Enys, Esq.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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