Part 99

The Papal Bull of excommunication had encouraged the supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots, and plots were made on her behalf which were a constant source of alarm to Elizabeth. One of these plots was managed by an Italian named Ridolfi; the Duke of Norfolk had a share in it, and was executed in consequence in 1572. The great fear was lest France or Spain should take advantage of the situation to invade England, while Mary's friends raised insurrections at home. Mary's friends were active in all parts. Numbers of young Popish priests, trained to hostility towards Elizabeth, were pouring into the country, and conspiracies against her life were numerous, explaining, though in no degree justifying the stringent laws against seminary priests and recusants.

To return to Cuthbert Mayne.

"Wherefore, according to the judgment he had received, the next day he was uneasily laid on a hurdle, and so drawn, receiving some knocks on his face and his fingers with a girdle, unto the market-place of the said town, where of purpose there was a very high gibbet erected, and all things else, both fire and knives, set to the show and ready prepared.

"At which place of execution, when he came, he was first forced to mount the ladder backward, and after permitted to use very few words. Notwithstanding he briefly opened the cause of his condemnation, and protested, that his master (Mr. Tregian) was never privy with his having of these things whereupon he was condemned--the Jubilee and the Agnus Dei; then one of the justices, interrupting his talk, commanded the hangman to put the rope about his neck, and then, quoth he, let him preach afterward. Which done, another commanded the ladder to be overturned, so as he had not the leisure to recite In manus tuas Domine to the end. With speed he was cut down, and with the fall had almost ended his life, for the gibbet being very high, and he being yet in the swing when the rope was cut, he fell in such sort, as his head encountered the scaffold which was there prepared of purpose to divide the quarters, as the one side of his face was sorely bruised, and one of his eyes far driven out of his head.

"After he was cut down, the hangman first spoiled him of his clothes, and then in butcherly manner, opening his belly, he rent up his bowels, and after tore out his heart, which he held up aloft in his hand, showing it unto the people. Lastly, his head was cut off, and his body divided into four quarters, which afterwards were dispersed and set up on the Castle of Launceston; one quarter sent unto Bodmin; another to Barnstaple; the third to Tregony, not a mile distant from Mr. Tregian's house; the fourth to Wadebridge."

Not only was Francis Tregian adjudged to forfeit his goods, but he was also prosecuted by a goldsmith, who claimed a debt of £70.

Accordingly he was sent up to London to the King's Bench prison, "strongly guarded by a ruffianly sort of bloody blue-coats, with bows, bills, and guns"; and the arms of Tregian were pinioned behind his back with cords. With him were associated the other Papists; and they met with insult and harsh treatment all the way to London. There he was again tried and cast into prison.

We are gravely informed that before these calamities befell Francis Tregian, a premonition of coming woes had been given to his wife.

"Mr. Tregian, her husband, not many days after they were first married, enforced for ten months to follow the Lords of the Council, his wife always in the mean season lying with a very virtuous maid, a sister of her husband's, it chanced that one night looking for fleas, as the manner of women is, she espied in her smock sundry spots, the which she perceived to carry the shape of sundry crosses. Whereat she, much marvelling, besought her sister to behold the same; whereupon, when both had long looked and wondered, at length endeavouring to number them, they found contained in the same smock no less than one hundred and twenty-five crosses, and after, upon more curious search, they likewise found sundry other, both on her pillow and in her sheets."

This omen of coming evil was now verified, but not by flea-bites. Francis Tregian remained in prison cruelly treated, and when he attempted to make his escape, manacled and fettered in a loathsome dungeon. From his cell he wrote in verse to his wife, but did not display much brilliancy of poetic art.

My wont is not to write in verse, You know, good wife, I wis. Wherefore you well may bear with me, Though now I write amiss; For lack of ink the candle coal, For pen a pin I use, The which also I may allege In part of my excuse. For said it is of many men And such as are no fools, A workman is but little worth If he do want his tools; Though tools I have wherewith in sort My mind I may disclose, They are, in truth, more fit to paint A nettle than a rose.

And so on, never rising to a higher level.

But his wife was allowed to visit him, and indeed reside with him in prison. "And although through the rigour of authority they have been often separated, sometimes two months, sometimes seven, sometimes more, she hath borne him, notwithstanding, eleven children since he was first imprisoned. Some are dead, but the most part are alive."

Francis Tregian was first committed to prison in the twenty-eighth year of his age, and in the year 1595, when he had been about sixteen years in prison, some notes were drawn up concerning him, from which some quotations may be made.

In all the sixteen years' space he had never been permitted to enjoy the benefit of the open air otherwise than when being removed from one prison to another. He was first imprisoned at Launceston, then was removed to Windsor Castle; thence removed to the Marshalsea, and then again carried back to Launceston Castle. Then he was conveyed to the King's Bench prison, and lastly to the Fleet.

For seven or eight years together he enjoyed good health; "but in the end, through cares, studies, filthy diet, most stinking air, and want of exercise, he became very sickly, and so continued by the space of six or seven years; notwithstanding at this present the state of his body is much mended, and is like to recover his perfect health."

His mother was the eldest sister of Sir John Arundell, Knight, of Lanherne. His great-grandmother was one of the daughters of Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorchester, half-brother to Queen Elizabeth, the wife of King Henry VII, and daughter of Edward IV. He married the eldest sister of Lord Stourton. His wife's mother was eldest sister of the Earl of Derby. Francis Tregian remained in prison eighteen years, and was finally released by order of Queen Elizabeth in or about 1597, after which he lived in London on the bounty of his friends.

His son, Francis, managed to repossess himself, by the assistance of some of his friends and relatives, by purchase of some portion of the ancestral property, but in January, 1608, owing to the hostility provoked by the Gunpowder Plot against the Papists, the family was again plundered of the estates, and when the Heralds' Visitation of Cornwall was taken in 1620, the family had disappeared from the list of the landed and heraldic gentry.

Francis Tregian, the elder, at last retired to Lisbon, where he died on the 25th September, 1608. He was allowed by the King of Portugal sixty crowns a month. On his tombstone it was stated, falsely, that he had endured twenty-eight years of imprisonment in England. As a specimen of the malignant lies that were spread abroad relative to Queen Elizabeth, is this--given in a life of Francis Tregian by Francis Plunket, son of one of his daughters:--

"Aulam Elizabethæ adit ... Regina per pedissequam illum invitat ad cubiculum, intempesta nocte; recusantem adit, lectoque assistens ad impudica provocat; rennentem increpat. Castitati suæ cusam gerens ex Aula se proripuit, insalutata Regina; quæ idcirco furit, et in carcerem detrudi jubet."

Such words fill one with disgust and indignation against the pack from Rheims and Rome, who, unable to reach the Queen with their daggers, bespattered her with foul words.

The Life of Francis Tregian was published in Portuguese, at Lisbon, by Francis Plunket, in 1655. The narrative of his imprisonment, written in 1593, is published in extenso by J. Morris, The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 1st series, London, 1872, from the original MS. in S. Mary's College, Oscott.

A summary is in C. S. Gilbert's Historical Survey of Cornwall, 1817.

ANN GLANVILLE

Saltash was formerly a very much more important place than it is to-day. Now the tubular bridge of Brunel connects Cornwall and Devon, and railway trains slip along it, making communication with Plymouth from Cornwall easy and speedy. It was not so in former times. Then travellers from the West on their way to Plymouth or to London, if they did not go by coach by the great highway from Falmouth, by Bodmin and Launceston, were brought up by the strip of blue water that formed the estuary of the Tamar and Tavy, called the Hamoaze, and there, after halting at Saltash they were forced to cross in the ferry or by boat. Saltash signifies the Saltwater--ash = usk, and Hamoaze is the Border water, oaze = usk as well.

The Saltash boatmen plied a good trade, conveying over the passengers from Cornwall to Devon. Moreover, houses were cheap at Saltash, and old salts lived there, where they could smell the sea air, and every now and then crossed into Plymouth to do their shopping. From time immemorial there had been boat-races in the Hamoaze, and the women of Saltash were not behind the men at plying the oar.

Mr. Whitfeld in his Three Towns' History says:--

"The Saltash festival was by no means wholly intended for the encouragement of the males, for the 'ladies' feathered their oars with such dexterity that few of the opposite sex would enter the lists against them. Before the races for these damsels of uncertain age were started, blue favours were tied round their white caps by members of the committee. The fair rowers were attired in short white bedgowns and blue cap-guards, and their gigs shot around the course of five miles 'like so many birds.' From a sporting point of view the feature of the first regatta was a life or death competition between Jacky Gould and the Glanvilles. If Jacky's boat, Miller's Daughter, was the crack, Alarm was scarcely inferior, and Paul Pry was a first-class craft. Crash! went the starting-gun, and the competitors dashed away with a flood tide and a breeze from the northward. When they left on their ten-mile course one vast shout went up, the boats flew as instinct with life, every nerve on the stretch. The first five miles were covered in thirty minutes, and as the boats turned the committee vessel there were deafening shouts of 'Bravo, Jacky.' 'Well done, Glanville!' Then these hearts-of-oak flashed on their second round, and excitement intensified as the telescope reported progress. When the boats reappeared the suspense broke into a feverish roar, and calls to the rivals were tossed like corks on a sea of voices. Swiftly they drew near, the boats in a line, the interest increased to painful intensity as the race was neck-and-neck. The judge stood by, red-hot poker in hand, and as the bow of the Alarm, pulled by the Glanvilles, first touched the hawsers of the committee vessel, Bang! went the signal gun; 'See the Conquering Hero' burst from the band, and hundreds clustered round to congratulate the victors, and condole with Jacky Gould, who was only five seconds behind, though the boat was two feet shorter, and one of his crew had broken an oar."