prosperity, and died a Cluniac Monk in the Monastery of Bermondsey. The question of patronage is one of extreme difficulty; it seems more than probable that the patronage went to the builders of the Churches; in this case the patronage of Breage would naturally pass at the building of the Norman Churches to the Earldom of Cornwall. At any rate we find the patronage of the benefice attached to the Earldom at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Leland states that Germoe was originally a cell of St. Michael's Mount. In this statement he is followed by Hals. It seems probable that on this point Leland was misled by some statement made locally to him, as there is no shred of existing evidence to support this view. Domesday and the Monasticon are alike silent upon the subject and lend no countenance to it. It is true Hals, apparently in support of this contention, evolved a fictitious Inquisition of the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester from the depths of his subliminal consciousness. In this precious Inquisition "Sancto Gordon," as Germoe is styled "in the Deanery of Kerrier," is valued at £8. More to the point is the fact that in 1246 Richard, Earl of Cornwall, made over the living of Breage with the Chapels of Cury, Gunwalloe and Germoe to the Abbey of Hayles. In Lysons' Cornwall it is stated that the Chapel of St. Germoe was given by William, Earl of Gloucester, to the Priory of St. James, Bristol. The learned authors have here fallen into a mistake for which there is reasonable excuse; they have confounded the church of St. Breoke[22] in North Cornwall with St. Breage and a Church of Germot, possibly on the Norman lands of the Earl of Gloucester, with Germoe. The Earl of Gloucester never held any lands in this district. This statement of the Lysons has also been freely used by subsequent writers of county histories. It seems clear that at no period of its history was Germoe ever ecclesiastically independent of Breage; it is probable that in early times it was served like Cury and Gunwalloe by clergy living together under the collegiate system at Breage. In the _Inquisitio Nonarum_ of 1346 we read "ecclesia Sanctae Bryacae cum Capellis Sanctorum Corenti, Wynyantoni et Gyrmough," which makes it quite clear that at that date Germoe was included in the parish of Breage. With the coming of the Normans the value of Cornwall's mineral wealth seems to have been quickly grasped. The successive Earls were greedy foreigners, who valued their Fief mainly for what it would produce; it was not so much Cornwall they wanted as Cornwall's wealth. By the time of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, King of the Romans, the mines of Cornwall had become a source of immense wealth, 1224-72. Possibly the building of Churches both at Breage and Germoe in Norman times may have been due to the large influx of population owing to the opening up of local mines.