Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 1 (of 2)Tregellas, Walter H. (Walter Hawken)
History
Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 1 (of 2)
Tregellas, Walter H. (Walter Hawken)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography
LANHERNE HOUSE, formerly the manor-house of the Arundells, a
picturesque but gloomy structure, is now a Roman Catholic Carmelite
nunnery, 'by time unstricken, yet with ages hoar.' The south part of
the house is the most ancient part; it has stone-mullioned windows, and
a good doorway of Catacleuse stone.[30] The vane which still surmounts
the dome represents a wolf--the crest of the Trembleath Arundells.
About eighty years ago the building was assigned to sixteen nuns who
fled from the siege of Antwerp by the French during the revolutionary
wars; and their successors, now over twenty in number, continue to
occupy the buildings.
_THE ARUNDELLS OF TRERICE._[31]
As the crow flies, Trerice, anciently Treres, as Carew informs us,
is about five miles south of Lanherne and about the same distance
from the mouth of the Gannel, one of whose tributary streamlets runs
round the slope on whose southern side still stands great part of the
handsome and extensive mansion of this branch of the family. It is
not the original building, dating as it does only from the year 1573;
but its charming and sheltered situation, 'its costly and commodious
dwellings,' the rich colours of the time-stained masonry, its huge
mullioned windows, and the magnificent proportions of its large and
lofty hall, stamp it as one of the few remaining mansions of the
Cornish gentry that speak of the wealth and power and hospitality of
the 'good old times.'
The county histories are almost silent as to the early seat of this
branch of the family; but there is no reason to doubt that its _site_
remains the same; and that Trerice was inhabited by an Arundell at
least so far back as the reign of Edward III.--one Ralph being here,
whilst his cousin (or perhaps his brother), Sir John, who married
Elizabeth Carminow, held sway at Lanherne.[32] Apropos of this marriage
into the powerful and wealthy family of Carminow, it is interesting to
note that in the Register of Walter de Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter,
and founder of Exeter College, Oxon, we find that, in the year 1316,
'on the Monday before Michaelmas, our lord' (the Bishop) 'offered his
niece, Joan Kaignes, as wife to John de Arundell, son and heir of John
de Arundell defunct, who refused for the present; William Walle was
present.' Were John's affections already pledged to the fair Elizabeth?
The incident shows at least that the Bishop was desirous of forming an
alliance between one of his own relatives and a house so important as
that of Arundell.
Hals says that the Arundells of Trerice bore, at one time, the arms
of Lansladron, viz., sable, three chevrons argent; but that at length
they adopted the well-known coat of the family: sable, six swallows
argent--three, two, and one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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