Upon these simple children of nature, imbued with many of the fearful beliefs current among the savages of the South Sea islands, the Reverend John Wesley descended, in 1743. They were then, he says, a people “who neither feared God nor regarded man.” Yet, so impressionable is the Celtic nature, so childlike and easily led for good or for evil, that his preaching within a marvellously short space of time entirely changed the habits of these folk. In every village and hamlet there sprang up, as by magic, Wesleyan Methodist meeting-houses; and these and other chapels of dissent from the Church of England are to this day the most outstanding features of the Cornish landscape. They are, architecturally speaking, without exception, hideous eyesores, but morally they are things of beauty. It is one of the bitterest indictments possible to be framed against the Church of England in the west that, in all its existence, it has never commanded the affections, nor exercised the spiritual influence, won by Wesley in a few short years. [Picture: Smugglers using Church Tower for Storage] It was about this period of Wesley’s first visits to Cornwall that the Carter family of Prussia Cove were born. Their father, Francis Carter, who was a miner, and had, in addition, a small farm at Pengersick, traditionally came of a Shropshire family, and died in 1784. He had eight sons and two daughters, John Carter, the “King of Prussia,” being the eldest. Among the others, Francis, born 1745, Henry, born 1749, and Charles, 1757, were also actively engaged in smuggling; but John, both in respect of being the eldest, and by force of character, was chief of them. He and his brethren were all, to outward seeming, small farmers and fisherfolk, tilling the ungrateful land in the neighbourhood of Porth Leah, but in reality busily employed in bringing over cargoes of spirits from Roscoff, Cherbourg, and St. Malo. The origin of the nickname, “King of Prussia,” borne by John Carter, is said to lie in the boyish games of the “king of the castle” kind, of himself and his brothers, in which he was always the “King of Prussia”—_i.e._ Frederick the Great, the popular hero of that age. Overlooking the cove of Porth Leah, at that time still bearing that name, he built about 1770 a large and substantial stone house, which stood a prominent feature in the scene, until it was demolished in 1906. This he appears to have kept partly as an inn, licensed or unlicensed, which became known by his own nickname, the “King of Prussia,” and in it he lived until 1807.