Part 32

We are able to supplement this scanty record from a memoir of him by Mr. John Jope Rogers, of Penrose, published in 1871 by Cunnack, of Helston.

John Knill was born at Callington on January 1st, 1733. His mother was a Pike of Plympton, and her mother was an Edgcumbe of Edgcumbe, it is stated in the memoir, but no entry of any such marriage is in the pedigree of the Edgcumbes in Vivian's Heralds' Visitations of Devon.

Mr. Knill was very desirous to trace a descent from the family of Knill of Knill, in Hereford, but entirely failed to do so.

John Knill's mother, one of the seven daughters of Mr. Pike, married secondly Mr. Jope, and it is thus that the portrait of the subject of this memoir came into the possession of Mr. John Jope Rogers, of Penrose, author of the memoir.

John Knill, according to Davies Gilbert, "served his clerkship as an attorney in Penzance, and from thence removed to the office of a London attorney, where, having distinguished himself by application and intelligence, he was recommended to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, who, at that time, held the political interests of S. Ives, to be his local agent." In the year 1762 he was appointed collector of customs at S. Ives, in Cornwall, and held it during twenty years, at the end of which time he wrote to Mr. William Praed, March 30th, 1782: "I purpose to be in London in May, in order to resign my office of collector, which I shall finally quit at the end of next midsummer quarter."

In November, 1767, he was chosen mayor of S. Ives, and lived in a red-brick house facing the beach, in Fore Street. Although mayor and collector of customs, it was strongly believed that he was in league with smugglers and wreckers.

One day, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, a strange vessel ran on the rocks on the Hayle side of Carrick Gladden, and the crew escaped to land and disappeared. The ship, now a derelict, had apparently no owner, and next day a number of people boarded her, and found her full of chinaware and other smuggled goods. The ship's papers could not be found; they had been carried off when the crew deserted her, and it was strongly supposed that they were destroyed, as implicating Knill and Praed, of Trevetho. The customs officer, Roger Wearne, went on board and stuffed his clothes full of china; having a pair of trousers on with a very ample and baggy seat, he thought he could not do better than stow away some of the choicest pieces of porcelain there. But as he was getting down the side of the ship into the boat, very leisurely, so as not to injure his spoils, a comrade, getting impatient, struck him on the posteriors with the blade of his oar, shouting to him, "Look out sharp, Wearne!" and was startled at the cracking noise that ensued, and the howl of Wearne when the broken splinters of china entered his flesh.

In 1773 the Government sent him to Jamaica to inspect the ports there; he remained in the West Indies one year, and used his eyes and ears, for in 1779 he wrote an account of the religion of the Coromandel negroes for Bryant Edwards' History of the West Indies, from information he then and there gathered. For his services he received from the Board of Customs the substantial sum of £1500. He returned to his duties at S. Ives in 1774. In 1777 he became private secretary to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, in Dublin, but he returned to S. Ives after six months in Ireland. In 1779 he speculated in a bootless search for treasure, which the notorious pirate, Captain John Avery, was supposed, on his return from Madagascar, to have secreted near the Lizard. But, as none of the Lives of that freebooter gave any hint of his having done so, the attempt was not the least likely to lead to satisfactory results. Davies Gilbert says that Knill equipped some small vessels to act as privateers against smugglers, but if local tradition may be relied on, these vessels were only nominally for this purpose, and were actually engaged in running contraband goods; but this is highly improbable.

From the Collection of Percy Bate, Esq. of Glasgow]

In 1782 he was employed in the service of the customs as inspector of some of the western ports, making occasional visits to London, where he settled for the rest of his days. In 1784 he purchased chambers in Gray's Inn Square, where he died on March 29th, 1811, at the age of seventy-seven. He was painted by Opie in 1779, dressed in a plain suit of blue, with frilled shirt and ruffles. He made his half-brother, the Rev. John Jope, of S. Cleer, his sole executor.

It was in the year 1782 that John Knill erected his mausoleum on Worral Hill, on land purchased from Henry, Lord Arundell, for five guineas. The total cost of the monument was £226 1s. 6d. Sixpence a year is paid to the owner of Tregenna for a right of way to the obelisk. By a deed dated May 29th, 1797, Knill settled upon the mayor and capital burgesses of S. Ives, and their successors for ever, an annuity of £10 as a rent-charge, to be paid out of the manor of Glivian, in Mawgan, which sum is annually to be put into a chest which is not to be opened except at the end of every five years. Then, out of the accumulated sum, a dinner was to be given to the mayor, collector of customs, and vicar of S. Ives, and two friends to be invited by each of them, and £15 to be equally divided among ten girls, natives of S. Ives, under ten years old, who should, between 10 a.m. and noon on S. James the Apostle's Day, dance and sing round the mausoleum, to the fiddling of a man who was to receive a pound for so doing and for fiddling as the procession of girls went to the obelisk and returned. One pound was to be laid out in white ribbons for the damsels and a cockade for the fiddler. Some of the money was to go to keep the mausoleum in repair, and there were certain benefactions also recorded.

The first Knillian celebration took place in July, 1801, when, according to the will of the founder, a band of little girls, all dressed in white, with two widows and a company of musicians, marched in procession to the top of the hill, where they danced about the monument, then, as Knill desired, sang the Hundredth Psalm to its old melody, and after that returned in the same order to S. Ives. The ceremony still takes place every fifth year.

In dancing the children sing the following in chorus:--

Shun the bustle of the bay, Hasten, virgins, come away; Hasten to the mountain's brow, Leave, O leave, S. Ives below. Haste to breathe a purer air, Virgins fair, and pure as fair; Fly S. Ives and all her treasures, Fly her soft voluptuous pleasures; Fly her sons and all their wiles, Lushing in their wanton smiles; Fly the splendid midnight halls; Fly the revels of her balls; Fly, O fly the chosen seat, Where vanity and fashion meet. Hither hasten from the ring, Round the tomb in chorus sing, And on the lofty mountain's brow, aptly dight, Just as we should be, all in white, Leave all our troubles and our cares below.

THOMAS TREGOSS

A certain Roscadden going on a pilgrimage in the days before the Reformation, and being absent some years, was surprised on his return to find that his wife had borne one if not more children. Very much and very naturally put out, he consulted with one John Tregoss, who advised him to settle his estate upon some friend whom he could trust, for the use and benefit of his children whom he would own, and for the wife not to be left absolutely destitute in the event of his death. Mr. Roscadden approved of this counsel, and constituted John Tregoss his heir absolutely, but always with the understanding that the said Tregoss should administer his estate according to the wishes and instructions of Roscadden. But this gentleman dying soon after, John Tregoss entered on possession of the estate, "turned the wife and children out of doors, who for some time were fain to lye in an hog-stye, and every morning went forth to the Dung-hill, and there upon their faces imprecated and prayed that the vengeance of God might fall upon Tregoss and his posterity for this so perfidious and merciless deed.

"And after this, God's severe but righteous judgments fell upon Tregoss's family. For his son Walter, one day riding upon a Horse in a fair way, the horse threw him, and broke his neck: and some of his issue came to untimely ends, and it is observed that a curse hath remained ever since: and this Mr. Tregoss of whom we write was so sensible of it, that it cost him many fervent prayers to God for the removal of that dreadful curse, as himself assured a bosom friend"--but it does not seem to have occurred to him to give up the heritage to the Roscaddens--that is, if he were the possessor.

The family of Tregose, or Tregosse, was one of the oldest in the neighbourhood of S. Ives. The names of Clement and John Tregose of S. Ives appear in the Subsidy Roll of 1327. In the list of circa 1520, Thomas Tregoos' lands in Towednack were assessed at the yearly value of 13s. 4d., and those of John Tregoz, in the parish of S. Ives, at 11s.; but Thomas also had lands at S. Ives, valued the same as those of John.

In 1641, William Tregose, gent., had at S. Ives goods to the annual value of £3.

Thomas Tregoss, the subject of this notice, was the son of William Tregoss of S. Ives. His parents were strong Puritans and very austere, and they hedged about their son with restrictions, not suffering him to partake in games or any childish relaxations from the strain of study or the contemplation of religious themes. At first he seemed to be of poor capacity, but at the age of seven years he began to show that he had a quick apprehension and a retentive memory. Cut off from all worldly distractions, he was allowed but one direction in which his faculties and his ambitions could stretch and expand. He had not the force of character and strength of will to revolt against the numbing restraints that bound him in. His only play as a boy was standing on a chair and preaching to his fellow pupils.

He was sent to Oxford and admitted into Exeter College, and after a few years spent there, returned to S. Ives; and as the Parliamentary Commissioners had ejected the vicar, he was thrust in as Puritan preacher in 1657, and he then married a Margaret Sparrow of the same way of thinking.

The life of Thomas Tregoss, as given by Samuel Clark in his Lives of Some Eminent Persons, 1683, is interspersed with Remarkable Providences and Extraordinary Judgments, but for the most part they are neither remarkable nor interesting.

The following is, perhaps, an exception:--

Shortly after his arrival at S. Ives, in the summer, the greater portion of the fishing season had passed without the pilchards appearing, and this to the great distress of the people. By the advice of Tregoss a day was set apart for humiliation and prayer, and next day a shoal of pilchards arrived.

In the ensuing summer the fishermen, having taken a great number of fishes on the Saturday, wanted to spread and dry their nets on the Sunday. Tregoss learning this, came forth and rebuked and denounced God's judgment on them if they should profane the "Sabbath" in this manner. They did not hearken to him, observing that their nets must be dried or would rot. From that day no more pilchards visited the bay during that season.

From S. Ives Tregoss was transferred to Mylor in October, 1659, but was ejected from the living on August 24th, 1660, as not ordained, and unwilling to receive ordination, and to subscribe to the articles and confirm to the liturgy. However, he continued to preach to a privately assembled number of puritanically minded people, and he was proceeded against and committed to the custody of the marshal in Launceston gaol, where he remained for three months, and was then released by order of the Deputy Lieutenant.

In September, 1663, he removed to Kigilliath, near Penryn. On October 1st, 1664, whilst he and his wife were lying awake in bed, they experienced an earthquake shock, and this he held to be "a symbolick image of that trembling Heartquake which he shortly felt in his conversion."

On January 1st ensuing, he fell into deep despondency and the spirit of bondage--his liver being probably out of order--till he fancied himself relieved by receiving the spirit of adoption. He had been converted half a dozen times before, but never before preceded by an earthquake, so that there could be no mistake about its reality this time.