Cornish Characters and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Cornish Characters and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography; Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
The Life of Vice-Admiral Sir C. V. Penrose, K.C.B., together with that
of Captain James Trevenen, was written by their nephew, the Rev. John
Penrose, and published by John Murray, 1850, with portrait.
SIR CHRISTOPHER HAWKINS, BART.
Kit Hawkins, as he was familiarly termed in Cornwall, played a
considerable part at the close of the eighteenth century, and before
the passing of the Reform Bill, as a borough-monger. There was a
contemporary with a similar reputation, Manasseh Lopes, a Jew diamond
merchant from Jamaica, and both purchased their baronetcies by
subservience to the Government in finding places for their nominees in
the pocket boroughs they had got into their hands. When Manasseh Lopes
drove into Fowey with his candidates, the town band stalked before the
carriage playing "The Rogues' March"; when Kit Hawkins arrived in
Grampound or S. Ives with a carriage and four, and his candidates with
him, the band played "See the Conquering Hero Comes"--but he conquered
not with weapons of steel, but with golden guineas, handed over to him
by the candidates, a share of which passed to the electors.
The Cornish Hawkins family pretended to derive from a very distinguished
Roman Catholic stock in Kent, whose place, Nash, was plundered in 1715
by the rabble, on account of the Jacobite proclivities of the Hawkins
family and the excitement caused by the rebellion in Scotland of the
Earl of Mar. On this occasion all the family plate, portraits, and deeds
were carried off; some were burnt, some were recovered.
But not a shadow of evidence is forthcoming to show that there was any
descent of the Hawkins family in Cornwall from that in Kent. The
story given out was that on account of the religious persecution in
the time of Queen Mary, two of the Kent Hawkinses left the paternal
nest: one settled in Somersetshire and the other in Cornwall, where
each became the founder of a family. It was forgotten, when this
fiction was given to the world, that the Hawkins stock in Kent was
Roman Catholic, and not at all likely to be troubled by Queen Mary.
The first Cornish Hawkins of whom anything is known is Thomas of
Mevagissey, who married a certain Audrey, her surname unknown, by whom
he had two sons, John and Thomas, and three daughters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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