# The Parochial History of Cornwall/Volume 1/Boconnoc

BOCONNOC.
HALS.
Boconnoc is situate in the hundred of West-well-shire, so called from foys-fenton in St. Cleother, id est, walled well or spring of water, the original fountain of the fay's river, to distinguish it from East-well-shire aforesaid; and hath upon the north, Bradock; west, St. Wenow; south, St. Neepe; east, St. Pynock. For the compound name Bo-connoc, it is taken from the barton and manor of land still extant there, with reference to the beasts that depastured thereon; and signifies, prosperous, successful, thriving cows, kine, or cattle. Which place it seems was the voke lands of a considerable tithing or lordship, with jurisdiction, at the time of the Norman Conquest; for by the name of Boconnoc it was taxed in Domesday rolled William I. 1087.
However, let it be observed that at the time of the inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester, before mentioned, 1294, there was no such endowed church extant in Cornwall as Boconnoc; though in Wolsey's Inquisition 1521, it was taxed to the Pope's annats 9l. 17s. 3d. The patronage is in the Lord Mohun in right of his lordship of Boconnoc aforesaid; and the parish rated to the 4s. 8d. per pound tax, temp. William III. 80l.
This barton and manor of Boconnoc, in the time of Edward III. was the lands of Sir John Dawney, of Sheviock, knight, whose daughter and heiress Emelyn, was married to Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon (and third of that name and title, being the son of Hugh Courtenay the 10th Earl of Devon, by Margaret, daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, the 8th Earl of Hereford and Essex, by Elizabeth his wife, daughter of King ​Edward T.) and had issue by the said Emelyn Dawnay, Edward Courtenay the 12th Earl of Devon, surnamed the blind (that married Eleanor, daughter of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March and Ulster, by whom he had issue Edward Courtenay the 13th Earl of Devon) and Hugh Courtenay his second son, to whom his mother gave Boconnoc, in the beginning of the reign of King Henry IV. 1416. Upon this Hugh Courtenay, afterwards Sir Hugh Courtenay, Knight, his elder brother Edward, surnamed the blind, at the especial request and instance of his mother, Emelyn, (as Brooke, York Herald, informs us) did by his indenture, bearing date the 2d of King Henry V. confirm and assure to him, his heirs and assigns for ever, the manors of Gotherington, Southallington, and Slancomb-Dawney (from whence that family was denominated) in the county of Devon, who afterwards married Philippa, one of the daughters and heirs of Sir Warren Archdeacon, Knight, of Haccomb in the county of Devon, after which time he lived sometimes in that place, at other whiles at Boconnoc; whence it is we find in some authors this gentleman is called Sir Hugh Courtenay of Boconnoc, and Sir Hugh Courtenay of Haccomb, as if they had been different persons. This Sir Hugh Courtenay had issue, by Archdeacon's daughter, Edward Courtenay of Haccomb; who after the death of Humphrey Stafford was restored in blood, and made the l6th Earl of Devon, in the first year of the reign of King Henry VII. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Courtenay, of Moland, Knight, and had issue William Courtenay, 17th Earl of Devon, who married Katherine daughter of King Edward IV. and by her had issue, Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, executed for treason, temp. Henry V1I1. 1538. He married Elizabeth Blount, by whom he had issue Edward Courtenay the 18th Earl of Devon (and last of the family of these Courtenays) that died at Padua, in Italy, without issue, 1556, 4th of October.
​Edward Courtenay of Haccomb, or Boconnoc, aforesaid 16th Earl of Devon, had four sisters, as is set down in his will, dated 1509, in the first year of the reign of King Henry VIII. which were thus disposed of in marriage, Elizabeth was married to John Trethyrfe of Trethyrfe, from whom Courtenay of that place, and Vyvyan of Trelowarren is descended; Maud to John Arundell of Tolverne, from whom the Arundells of Sythney, and by females the Trefusis of Trefusis, and the Halses late of Fentongollan are descended: Isabel, the third daughter, was married to William Moune, from whom the Lord Mohun descended: Florence, the fourth sister, was married to John Trelawney, from whom the Trelawneys of Trelawne are descended.
Whether this lordship of Boconnoc fell to the Crown by attainder of treason, upon the death of Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, or was purchased from the Crown, or of the sisters and heirs of the said Edward Courtenay, by Carmenow of Fengollan, I know not; he sold it to the Earl of Bedford; as the said Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford sold it, in 1566, to Reginald Mohun, Esq. (son or grandson of William Moune, who married Isabel Courtenay aforesaid) that married Joan daughter of Sir William Trevanion, Knt. whose son, Sir Mohun, Knt. married Joan, one of the sisters and coheirs of Sir John Horsey, Knt. by whom he had issue, Sir Reginald Mohun, Knt. that married two wives; the first, Sir William Killigrew's daughter; the second, a daughter of Heale, of Wembury in Devon; the which Sir Reginald, 15 November 1612, was created a Baronet of England, temp. James I. and had issue, John Mohun, Esq. who in the lifetime of his father was created Baron Mohun of Oakhampton in right of his grandmother Isabel, sister of Edward Courtenay, the 16th Earl of Devon, lord of the manor, honour, and borough of Oakhampton, who married and had issue Warwick Lord Mohun, who had issue Charles Lord ​Mohun, who had issue, as I take it, another Charles Lord Mohun, who was slain in a duel between him and the Duke of Hamilton, who both died on the spot, temp. Queen Anne: after which his daughters and heirs sold this lordship and all his lands to Mr. Thomas Pitt, recently returned from the East Indies.
The ancestor of this ancient and famous family of the Mohuns came into England with William the Conqueror, by the name of William Mowne or Sapell, and was after the Conquest by him made Governor of Dunster Castle, who had issue William Mowne the second Lord of Dunster Castle, whose son, the third William, as Matthew Paris saith, did keep and fortify the same against King Stephen, for the use of Maud the Empress It is told us by our chronologers and historians, that he was made Earl of Somerset by King Henry the First, 1135, and that he was founder of a priory of Black Canons of Bruton in Somersetshire, where Edgar Earl of Cornwall had before founded an abbey of Benedictine monks. (Vide Monasticon Anglicanum, tom. ii. p. 205,) to which charter were witnesses William de Moyn, his son, and others.
This William Earl of Somerset had issue another William, who is said also to have been Earl of Somerset: but Brooke, York Herald, says that this William and his son Reginald Lord Dunster both died in the time of William Earl of Somerset, so that Reginald de Moyn his grandson was the second and last Earl of Somerset of his name and family, who lost this hereditary office by siding with the Barons against King Henry the Third, A. D. 1297, after it had remained in his family about fifty years.
After the family became private gentlemen at Boconnoc, their names are found sometimes noticed; the first Sheriff of Cornwall, 6th Edw. VI. 1 Eliz. 13 Eliz. and 19 Eliz.
TONKIN.
Bo-con-oke; the name is Gaulish-Saxon, the town or village of Stunt Oke.
After copying Mr. Hals' narrative, Mr. Tonkin adds, Charles Lord Mohun, the last Baron of this family, being killed in a duel by the Duke of Hamilton, on the 5th of November 1712, left his whole estate by will, dated some time before, to his widow, who sold all the Cornish and Devonshire estates in 1717 for fifty-four thousand pounds (a very cheap bargain) to Thomas Pitt, Esq. commonly called Governor Pitt, in whose possession the manor of Boconnoc now remains.
This Charles Lord Mohun was a nobleman of very bright parts, and great natural endowments both of body and mind; but having had the misfortune to lose his father, while he was yet in the cradle—and the estate being left to him much involved in lawsuits between his nearest relations, and with a considerable debt—he had not an education bestowed on him suitable to his birth; and happening to fall into ill company, he was drawn into several extravagancies: but, however, as his years increased, he became so much reclaimed as to give great hopes that he would one day equal the greatest of his predecessors; when he was thus unfortunately cut off in the flower of his age.
He was twice married. First to Charlotte daughter of ——— Manwaring, Esq. by whom he had only one daughter, whom he never owned, and he lived for several years separated from his wife. He had the good fortune, however, to get rid of her at last, she being drowned in a passage to Ireland with one of her gallants, about six or seven years before his own death.
Fitton Gerrard, Earl of Macclesfield, her maternal uncle, to make him some amends for his bad bargain, gave him by will a good part of his estate, in 1701, which was the occasion of the quarrel between his ​Lordship and the Duke of Hamilton; so fatal to them both.
His second wife was the widow of Colonel Griffin, of the Green Cloth, by whom he had not any issue. His sister died before him unmarried.
THE EDITOR.
Boconnoc is universally allowed to be the finest seat in Cornwall. The house stands on an elevation near the union of two valleys, each rendered interesting, beautiful, and picturesque by streams of water flowing through uneven gronnd, and by native woods of beech and oak, rivalling the trees of our most favoured inland counties, although these vallies originate in wild tracts of land where not a stunted shrub is to be seen.
Mr. Thomas Pitt, although remotely descended from a good family, is said to have been the son of a person concerned in trade at Brentford. He must have gone to India at a time when some merchant adventurers, wholly unconscious of impending events, were engaged in laying the foundation of an Empire so vast as to exceed in the number of its subjects even the majesty of Rome itself. Mr. Pitt returned to Europe possessed of a diamond, superior, perhaps, in its combination of size and transparency, to any one ever exhibited in the western world. It was offered to Queen Anne, and ultimately sold to the Regent Duke of Orleans for the French nation, at a sum exceeding one hundred thousand pounds. With about half of this large sum Mr. Pitt acquired the property in Cornwall of the last Lord Mohun, and settled at Boconnoc. He also purchased the burgage tenures, giving the right of franchise at Old Sarum, and represented that place in Parliament.
​He had two sons, Robert and Thomas. Robert Pitt who succeeded him at Boconnoc, married Harriet Villiers, third sister of John Earl Grandison. He died in May 1727, leaving two sons, Thomas Pitt, and William, afterwards Earl of Chatham. Thomas Pitt, his brother, was created Earl of Londonderry, in consequence of his marrying the heiress of Ridgeway, who had borne that distinction; this younger branch became extinct in 1764. Thomas Pitt, his son, engaged most extensively in the political speculation, for which Cornwall was then become an ample field. But, having supported the party of Frederick Prince of Wales, he failed of obtaining any of the objects to which most speculations are supposed to lead. He married Christiana, sister of George first Lord Lyttelton; by whom he left Thomas Pitt, who, on the elevation of his first cousin, William Pitt, to the chief office in the State, when under twenty-five years of age, was created Baron Camelford in Jan. 1784. He died in 1793, leaving a son Thomas Pitt, the second and last Lord Camelford, and a daughter married to William Wyndham Grenville, Lord Grenville, the present ​possessor of Boconnoc, having succeeded to her brother in 1804.
The personal history of this young man is curious and extraordinary. He became an object of attention in Cornwall almost from his birth. On the event of his christening, in 1775, Boconoc was thrown open for public and indiscriminate entertainment, accompanied by exhibitions of the peculiar athletic exercise in which the Cornish boast to excel all their contemporaries, and to rival the Palaestrae of ancient Greece. A silver bowl of fifteen guineas was the prize of the victor (the first who threw five falls), and about fifty pounds were distributed among the vanquished.
His education was conducted under a private tutor alone in the seclusion of Boconnoc; but having made an excursion to Plymouth at a time when naval preparations were in full activity, he acquired a passion for the sea so strong and rooted, as not to be overcome by all the efforts of authority or of advice.
He went on the perilous voyage of discovery conducted by Captain Vancouver, and in the course of it, he is said to have experienced some harsh treatment on the part of the commmander, which seems to have stamped a new impression on his mind, rendered permanent by the long period during which it was necessarily concealed.
On Lord Camelford's return to England, the effects burst forth in acts of violence against Captain Vancouver, and from that time,
On each adventure rash he roved, As danger for itself he loved.
It is impossible not be struck by a general resemblance between the two individuals who last possessed Boconnoc, of the families of Mohun and Pitt. Both seem to have been men of ability and of genius, of intrepid courage and of honour, fond of enterprise, and with vigour of body commensurate to their mental ener​gies; but each unfortunately, obeying the impulse of passion and of strong feelings rather than the dictates of reason, was hurried on to an untimely fate. The latter fell by the hand of a person born to the situation of a gentleman, but in other respects little entitled to that distinction.
The first Lord Camelford might not only claim a full share of the hereditary talent connected with the names of Lyttelton and of Pitt; but also literary acquirements and taste obtained under the guidance of his two uncles William Pitt Lord Chatham, and Lord Lyttelton. His gratitude to the latter is commemorated at Boconnoc by a lofty obelisk.
Lord Camelford introduced to the rectory of his parish the Reverend Benjamin Forster, a contemporary at Cambridge of congenial taste, and worthy of his friendship, the associate of Gray and of Mason; and with a mind like theirs suited for retirement and for literary leisure. In his hours of relaxation he adorned the woods and shades, the vales and the rivulets, of Boconnoc with descriptive and appropriate illustrations from ancient and from modern poetry. To the Glebe-house he applied,
A little lowly hermitage it was, Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side, Far from resort of people that did pass In travail to and fro.
Mr. Forster has been long since deceased, his rectory taken down, and most of his friends departed from this life. His memory is for the present preserved by a tablet (brevi et ipsa interitura) bearing the following inscription:
​Underneath rest the remains of Benjamin Forster, B.D. of C.C.C. Cambridge 1760; Lady Camden's Lecturer at Wakefield in Yorkshire 1766; Rector of St. Mary Abchurch in London 1772; from thence removed to the Rectories of Boconock with Braddock in Cornwall, and to Carshayes, St. Michael, St. Stephens, and St. Dennis, in the same county, 1773.
Born Aug. 7, O.S. 1736. Died Dec. 2, N.S. 1805.
Epitaph written in the 33d year of his age:
Here, hapless mortal! thy sure refuge find, Crost in each fond device, each hope of joy; Life's busy day was not for bliss design'd, Toils, struggles, sufferings, its sad hours employ. Yet meekly bow to Heaven's imperious sway, Nor deem thyself a prey to unmixt woes; The gentler virtues sooth the cares of day, And life's calm eve shall lead to long repose.
Finally, Boconnoc-house is distinguished by having been the head quarters of King Charles the First in August and September 1684, when the army commanded by General Lord Essex, capitulated at Fowey.
This parish contains 1772 statute acres.
| Annual value of the Real Property as returned to Parliament in 1815 | £. 1252 | s. 0 | d. 0 |
| Poor Rate in 1831 | 142 | 15 | 0 |
| Population, $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | in 1801, 212 | in 1811, 236 | in 1821, 253 | in 1831, 259. |
Or somewhat more than 22 per cent. in 30 years.
The Geology of this parish has nothing peculiar or characteristic. Dr. Boase remarks that the eastern part is a continuation of the barren downs which extend nearly to Lostwithiel, and that the southern, which is the fertile part, belongs to the calcarious series of the schistose group, but that the rocks are too much concealed under the alluvial soil to allow of their nature being very evidently manifest.
* ↑ The exact weight of the diamond is said to be 1363/4 carats. A carat is equal to 31/6 grains (see the Universal Cambist by Dr. Kelly, vol. i. p. 220, article London). It weighed therefore 433 grains, very nearly nine-tenths of an ounce troy of 480 grains. For these 433 grains of diamond, the Regent Duke of Orleans is stated to have given 135,000l. or two thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine pounds troy of standard gold, or nearly one ton one hundred and a quarter avoirdupoise; above thirty-eight thousand four hundred times its own weight, or seven thousand five hundred and eighty times its bulk. The Regent and his two successors in the government of France, used this diamond as an ornament to their hats on occasions of state. It was stolen during the license of the great Revolution, but recovered. Napoleon had it placed between the teeth of a crocodile, forming the handle of his sword, unaware perhaps of how much this gem had contributed towards raising up the most formidable opponent to his ambition and ultimate aggrandisement.
* ↑ A series of his letters to Mr. Justice Hardinge has been published in Nichols's Literary Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century, vol. vi. pp. 74—139.
* ↑ A large quantity of Mr. Forster's lively correspondence with Richard Gough, esq. Director S. A. and John Nichols, esq. F.S.A. has been printed in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. ix. pp. 648—650, and the Literary Illustrations, vol. vi. pp. 290—328, 860—864.