His ancestor was John Trevillian, Esq. of Nettlecomb in Somerset, who was sheriff of Somerset and Dorset 17 Henry VII.; his grandson John Trevillian, Esq. was sheriff of Cornwall 38 Henry VIII. The arms of which gentlemen are in a field Gules, a demy horse Argent, issuing out of the waves of the sea Azure, grounded upon a tradition that one of their ancestors, at the supposed general inundation or concussion into the sea, of a tract of land called Lyon-ness, extending from St. Sennan to the Scilly Islands, saved himself by sitting on the back of a white horse, whilst he swam from thence through the sea to the insular continent of Cornwall, where he came safe to land; but when I consider that Solinus, who lived 1500 years past, tells us that the Cassiterides, by which he means the Scilly Islands (or the tin islands), in his days were separated from the coast of the Danmonii, by a rough sea of two or three hours’ sail (as it still appears to be), and that hereditary coat armours and surnames in Britain are little above five hundred years old in Britain or Cornwall, there is small credit to be given to this tradition. In this parish, or part of Davidstowe, is Foye-fenton, the original fountain of the Foys River; which well, in old records, is also called West Fenton, i. e. the west well, to distinguish it from Mark well in Lanick, otherwise east well; from which places the two cantreds (hundreds) of Eastwellshire and Westwellshire are denominated. And to this purpose it is evident, from Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, page 41, that in 3 Henry IV. Reginald de Ferrar held in East Fenton and West Fenton, several knights’ fees of land of the honour of Tremeton, which is now East and West Hundreds. (See also St. Stephen’s by Saltash, of those tenures in 1360.) TONKIN. In this parish stands Basil, a word sometimes taken for a herb or vegetable, sometimes for a vein in the human body, sometimes for the basilisk or cockatrice, &c.; but here I take it to signify after the Greek, a basilica or stately building; and although at present this mansion will not answer the etymology in the extreme latitude or longitude thereof, yet in probability it formerly did, at least comparatively so in respect to other houses in the neighbourhood. This place is the mansion of the ancient, famous, and knightly family of Trevillyans; the present possessor of Basil is Peter Trevillyan, who married a daughter of Mr. Nicholas Borlase of Treludderin. From this Cornish family are descended the Trevillyans of Nettlecomb in Somersetshire.