likely it did, then the miracle which was intended to be by the ceremony of lying on the ground and offering, is wholly fled, and it leaves the virtue of the water to be the true cause of the cure. And we have here, as in many places of the land, great variety of salutary springs, which have diversity of operations, which by natural reason have been found to be productive of good effects, and not by miracle, as the vain fancies of monks and friars have been exercised in heretofore. Howbeit, there are some old names yet remaining of places of prayers or oratories, and the ruins shewing them to be such, as V. Gr. Paderda, which is prayers good, (of which many places are so named); Eglarose, the church in the vale, supposed antienter than the names of their churches. Their sites are eminent and ancient, standing towards the east, though no mention made how they came to be in decay, but supposed to be after the Saxon churches came to be erected, and miracles supposed to be wrought by those whose names they bear. Churches’ sites took new names, whereas the old Cornish names remain in all other places of the parishes generally; yet the names of the four old castles remain, and of manors also for the most part, and some other things in the Cornish, and do so continue the better, by reason of men’s particular interest in them: and so are the eminent hills likewise, especially towards the sea, and the hundred or hamlet names of the country remain so chiefly in the western parts; those on the eastern, standing towards the borders, have their names wrested away by neighbourhood, as are other things by like accidents in the eastern parts of the county; other names have been encroached upon by fantastical or vainglorious builders calling their houses after their own names, and others upon vain toys; but these are not many. Moreover, concerning the loss of our speech, and the names of families, I must here (but tenderly though) blame the incuriosity of some of our gentry; who, forsaking the etymologies of their own speech, have studied out new derivations of their names, endeavouring to make themselves as it were descended from French or Norman originals, in adopting or adapting their names thereunto; whereas, their own names in the Cornish are more honourable, genuine, and true; from the Conquest, forsooth, those would have their descent, (no illustrious thing in itself) whereas the ancestry of many of them have been here long before. How finely many have cozened themselves thereby, might be shewn, if it would not be offensively taken, by taking up of coat armour as from French originals. The art of heraldry hath been drawn out to us in French terms and trickings, mostly begun when our kings had most to do in those parts, and so from thence it hath continued ever since; and our Cornish gentry, finding the English so much addicted thereunto, have followed in that tract the same mode, and would fain have themselves understood such, when they were much