The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-08-18
LEFT REQUEST FOR DANCES
ODD WILL THAT CAUSED 4 QUAINT ENGLISH CEREMONY

John Knnl Ordered That Once in Five
 Years Ten Maldens Should Dance
 Around His Mausoleum and That the
 Village NotabIes Dine at His Ex-
 pense.
 'Ten masdens of 10 years old at most" accompanied by fiddler and two wid- ows, on the feast day of Sa. James the Apostle paid posthumous honor to the memory of John Knill on time treasurer of Gray's Inn. The Knill fes- tival, says the Pal Mall Gazette, Is one Of the quaintest of Cornish cele- brations, and hundreds of residents in the western part of the county travel to the town of St. Ives and accom- pany the curious procession through the streets and cross a gorse covered moor to the great granite obelisk which was built as a mausoleum more than 120 years ago.
 Every tourist who has tramped along the clics which frame St. Ives Bay and every stranger who has travelled over the most picturesque bit of railway line in the west countrywide five miles be- tween Firth Junction and St. Ives has probably asked the history of the pyramid which stands out boldly against the skyline on the crest of J,t vL,ta o34oo nGhinP town; and he has been told, with smile, that he had better come down again to see the fun on Knill's day His Interrogation may have elicited some further vague story of a dinner for the Mayor and the parson" and "a premium on children" but the true inwardness of the festival he will only get locally in vague terms and with some amour of supercillious unconcern. John Knill, lawyer, customs officer and renowned raider of smugglers, po- litical agent and Mayor, owned much to his devotion to the political interests of that Duke of Buckingham who, at the end of the eighteenth century, be- came Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but he seems to have had ideas and asplra- tions of his own, for after many years of public service he took up his resi- dence in London, became a bencher of Gray's Inn in 1894, filled the office of Treasurer two years later and signal ized his tenure of that office by pre- senting a silver coffee pot inscribed in Latin to the bench. Most of his active service was, however performed In the little Cornish town which at that time was merely fishing village, in a cuonty whose coves and bays afforded shelter to the "runne'r' of silks and spirits from the coast of France. At the age of 30 Knill accepted what was at that time the very responsible post and for twenty years he continued to keep a watchful eye on the revenues of the Crown. The twelve months suc- 1 ceeding his retirement from that post found him on an expedition to Jamaica, a special tour of inspection on behalf of the Government; then he returned to his post at St. Ives, and appears to have conceived during this latter res- | idence his quaint scheme for perpetu- | ating his memory. He had been elected l Mayor of the borough In the year be- | fore the mausoleum was built, had commanded company of volunteers and had, with the consent of the Gov ernment, equipped small vessels to act l as privateers against smugglers, and on l the outbreak of war between France and America he had fitted out fleet of privateers.
 | The erection of the mausoleum was a protest against the then prevailing 1 practice of interring the dead within | the body of the church whose walls are washed by the waves, for in letter to Mr. Praed--a name which has many associations with the Parliamentary that he "abhorred the practice and that ''the churchyard Is already too small for the people" The pyramid under which he meant to be buried was built in courses of hewn stone, and an arch constructed in the base gave 1 of sufficient size to admit of one body This archway yas vailed up, and from that time to this present year of grace this wall has never been broken. John Knill was buried in London.
 The quaint ceremony is the strlc carrying out of the terms of deed 0, trust which this strange man executed some years before his death, Johr Knill in this deed which was drawr by brother barrlster of Gray's Inn, 6 MT. Ritson, settled upon "the Mayor and capital burgesses of the borough I of St. Ives and their successors for. ever" an annuity of 91O to be paid ou of the manor of Gluvian, in the parish of Mawgan, near St. Columb in thu 1 Town Hall of St. Ives, 1t 12 o'clock al noon on the Feast of the Nativity ot St. John Midsummer Day), in every year, and in default to be levied by distress on the said manor. The sait 910 is to be paid to the Mayor, the T Collector of Customs and the clergy man of the parish, to be deposited by them in a chest secured by three locks of which each of them Is to have a key and the box left in the custody of the Mayor. Then these curious provisions
 continue:
 At the end of every five years on tn, feast day of St. James the Apostle 92i shall be expended as follows:
 Ten pounds in dinner for the Mayor