Boscawen-ros in this parish, compounded of Boscawen-ros, is a name given and taken from the natural circumstances of the place, and signifies in Cornish-British “a valley, notable for skeawe or scawen” trees. And indeed this place, being naked and exposed to the sea on the cliffs of the British Channel, anciently, as it seems, produced no other trees than scawen, (i. e. elder,) proper to that part of the country; neither, I think, is there any other trees at present that grow there. From this place was transnominated an Irish gentleman that settled here either by marriage or purchase, in the latter end of the reign of Edward IV., who discontinued his paternal name, and styled himself John de Boscawen, which latter name hath been the hereditary name of his posterity ever since; who from hence transplanted their dwellings to Tregameer in St. Colomb Major; and Trevallock in Creed or St. Stephen’s; and from thence, by marriage with the daughter and heir of Tregothnan by Lawrence Boscawen, gentleman, attorney-at-law, temp. Henry VII., who died 1567, and lieth buried in the north aile of St. Michael Penkivell Church, as is testified by a brass inscription on his gravestone, there lately extant, upon which, on a lead escutcheon, was engraved his paternal coat armour, viz. in a field Vert, a bull passant Argent, armed Or; on a chief Ermine, a rose Gules; crest a boar Argent:――out of a supposed allusion to their present name, as if it had signified a white bull and a rose. In the reign of James I. his posterity discontinued this bearing, and gave only for their arms, Ermine, a rose; which, I take it, also is the hereditary coat armour of Beverley. See St. Michael Penkivell. Since the writing hereof this place is become the hereditary honorary title of Hugh Lord Boscawen, Baron of Boscawen-rose, and Viscount of Falmouth. Upon Boscawen downs, some of which was lately the lands of Mr. Christopher Davis, stands a monument called Dance Meyns, that is to say the dance stones; which are nineteen pyramidal stones, about six foot high above ground, set in a round circle, distant from each other about twelve feet, having in the centre one pitched far bigger than the rest; a little to the north of those are two admirable great stones in perpendicular manner, much bigger than the rest, those are vulgarly called the Pipers. But since it is not probable that those stones were either dancers or pipers, I take the common appellation dance meyns, only by the dialect to be a corruption of dans meyns, id est, men’s stones; that is to say stones set up in memory of once so many famous men that lived in those parts, or lie interred there, before the sixth century.[22] Mr. Davis aforesaid informed me, that, contiguous with those dans meynes, he caused not long since divers barrows of earth to be carried abroad in order to manure his lands, in several of which burrows he found two or three urns or earthern pots, sound and firm, having in them pieces of bones, and ashes.