Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales
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Language, historical culture and the gentry of later
Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales*
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James Harris
Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Abstract
This article considers how gentry antiquarian communities in later Stuart Cornwall and south-
west Wales constructed distinctive local identities. It focuses on four case studies: William
Scawen, the West Penwith coterie, Edward Lhuyd and the Teifi Valley group. These antiquaries
conceived of the Cornish and the Welsh as ‘ancient Britons’ and established them as historically
and culturally distinct from the English, usually through reference to their indigenous languages.
However, the reception of their work among wider landed society was shaped by the vitality of
each respective language (with still-ubiquitous Welsh contrasting with near-extinct Cornish).
By exploring the relationship between intellectual culture and identity formation, the article
contributes to a broader understanding of the various and overlapping identities that permeated
the British archipelago.
Historians of early modern antiquarianism have increasingly recognized the vital role
played by historical culture in the formation of national identity. As Daniel Woolf put
it, the English developed a ‘historical sense of a national past’ between the sixteenth
and early eighteenth centuries.1 Referring principally to the eighteenth century,
Rosemary Sweet agreed that ‘antiquarian activity was directed by the imperative of
establishing a national past’.2 It provided a means of understanding cultural differences
between groups of people, and of unravelling the historical and religious descent of
those people. Studies of these antiquarian activities have tended to focus on English,
and later British, national identity. In part, this has been a symptom of a prevailing
interest in England’s centres of learning – Oxford, Cambridge and London, each with
rich source bases on early modern learned culture – and a corresponding neglect of
peripheral regions such as Cornwall and Wales.3 More recently, however, there has
been a growing appreciation of the role that antiquarianism played in the formation
of a multiplicity of identities within the British Isles, which could be associated with
places of varying sizes: from civic identities, to county identities, to broader regional
* I would like to thank Grant Tapsell and Kathleen Keown for kindly reading and commenting on drafts of
this article.
1
D. Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture, 1500–1730 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 12–13.
2
R. Sweet, Antiquaries: the Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 2004), p. xxi; and
R. Sweet, ‘Antiquaries and antiquities in eighteenth-century England’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, xxxiv (2001),
181–206. See also G. Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1995), p. 2.
3
The major exception to this point is C. Kidd, British Identities Before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in
the Atlantic World, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 1999).
© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htac004 Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022)
Press on behalf of Institute of Historical Research.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.2 Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales
identities.4 As part of this movement, this article considers how local antiquarian
communities among the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales (the
counties of Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire) helped to construct
distinctive local identities through their activities.
It was widely acknowledged by contemporaries in the seventeenth century that the
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polyglot regions of Cornwall and south-west Wales were home to ‘ancient Britons’. In
1683 Britanniae Speculum (an anonymously authored history of the British Isles) described
the fate of the ‘Antient Britains’ after the fall of the Roman Empire:
In the Decay of the Roman Empire the Britains, deserted by the Romans … did in the Reign
of King Vortigern call in the Saxons to their Assistance, who by degrees possest themselves of all
the flourishing parts of the Island, driving the Britains into the mountainous Parts of Wales and
Cornwal.5
This story was well known and generally accepted in early modern Britain. The Welsh
and the Cornish were perceived as the descendants of the original inhabitants of the
British Isles, who had been driven to the island’s most peripheral reaches by rising ‘Saxon’
hegemony – a belief that was supported by the still-distinctive cultures of these regions
and, above all else, by the continued existence of their indigenous languages (Welsh and
Cornish), which derived from the same Brythonic family. By unravelling the historical
descent of these indigenous languages, the Welsh and Cornish antiquaries discussed in
this article sought to establish their origins as ancient Britons. At the same time, they
highlighted linguistic differences as the marker and promoter of cultural differences
between themselves and their contemporary English neighbours.6 For these antiquaries,
language constituted a crucial part of their regional identities: it was integral to their
‘imagined’ origins, but also a very ‘real’, contemporary marker of cultural division,
observable in daily life. Language allowed them to define the English as the ‘other’ against
which they self-identified, and simultaneously emphasize a shared historical relationship
between the Cornish and Welsh. To be an ancient Briton was an identity shared by
Anglicans and Nonconformists,Whigs and Tories, and could thus unite men of disparate
theological and political views.
This article defines antiquarianism broadly, incorporating natural history, philology,
translation and the copying of historical manuscripts – disciplinary fields that were not
clearly demarcated in the later Stuart period.7 It begins by establishing the contrasting
linguistic contexts of the two regions (Welsh was a thriving language, whereas Cornish
faced terminal decline) and unpacking the broader relationship that the Cornish and Welsh
gentry had with antiquarianism (from their fascination with tracing their lineage, to their
attachment to the myths associated with Geoffrey of Monmouth). It then focuses on four
4
J. Broadway, ‘No historie so meete’: Gentry Culture and the Development of Local History in Elizabethan and Early
Stuart England (Manchester, 2006), p. 3; J. Broadway, ‘A convenient fiction? The county community and county
history in the 1650s’, in The County Community in Seventeenth-Century England and Wales, ed. J. Eales and A. Hopper
(Hatfield, 2012), pp. 39–55, at p. 39; R. Cust and P. Lake, Gentry Culture and the Politics of Religion: Cheshire on the
Eve of Civil War (Manchester, 2020), pp. 74–86; R. Sweet, ‘History and identity in eighteenth-century York: Francis
Drake’s Eboracum (1736)’, in Eighteenth-Century York: Culture, Space and Society, ed. M. Hallett and J. Rendall (York,
2003), pp. 13–23; and R. Sweet, ‘“Truly historical ground”: antiquarianism in the North’, in Northumbria: History
and Identity 547–2000, ed. R. Colls (Chichester, 2007), pp. 104–25.
5
Britanniae Speculum, or, A Short View of the Ancient and Modern State of Great Britain, and the Adjacent Isles
(London, 1683), p. 23.
6
On this theme, see E. Yale, Sociable Knowledge: Natural History and the Nation in Early Modern Britain
(Philadelphia, 2016), pp. 31–2.
7
On the broad definition of antiquarianism, see Sweet, Antiquaries, p. 8; Parry, Trophies of Time, p. 9; and Woolf,
Social Circulation, p. 142.
© 2022 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022)Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales 3
successive case studies to consider how antiquarian work produced by gentry figures during
the later Stuart period contributed to the construction of regional identities: William
Scawen’s manuscript treatise Antiquities Cornu-Brittanic, on the history and language of
Cornwall; a small coterie of Cornish-speaking minor gentlemen based in west Cornwall,
who circulated translations and poems; the work of the Welsh naturalist Edward Lhuyd,
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who aimed to write a study of the geography, history and languages of the Celtic regions;
and, finally, the collective efforts of a group of squire-clergymen and Nonconformist
ministers centred in the Teifi Valley (on the Cardiganshire–Carmarthenshire border), who
were assiduous translators and copyists, and who had been inspired by Lhuyd.
By focusing on smaller geographic regions, it is possible to assess broader attitudes
towards antiquarian work among wider landed society. The disparate states of the two
Brythonic languages helped to shape the kind of antiquarian work being undertaken in
each region, and also influenced the gentry’s willingness to provide support and patronage.
Detailed philological studies of the Welsh language and translations of devotional texts can
be contrasted with mournful attempts to preserve and revive the Cornish language. The
south-west of Wales has been demarcated for study partly due to its comparability of scale
to Cornwall, but also because it possessed an interesting blend of both anglophone and
thoroughly Welsh-speaking areas, thereby allowing a consideration of the impact of language
on wider attitudes. Within the predominantly Welsh-speaking parts of south-west Wales,
the gentry’s deep-rooted fascination with the history, language and culture of their locality
could intersect with a range of other impulses – from evangelicalism to social aspiration.
Cornish antiquaries, on the other hand, were often left frustrated by those who could see
no logic in preserving a language that few could speak or understand. An attentiveness to
the complex relationship between intellectual culture and identity formation that occurred
across England and Wales allows us to develop a more nuanced understanding of the various
and overlapping identities that permeated the British archipelago.
*
Language was central to antiquarianism in both Wales and Cornwall.Welsh was a thriving
language spoken by the vast majority of the principality’s population, including many of
the elite. In 1700 around 90 per cent of the population of Wales were monoglot Welsh
speakers.8 Although some contemporaries lamented the ‘total disuse of the Brittish tongue’
(that is, Welsh) among the gentry, the reality was far less clear-cut.9 For a Welsh gentleman,
a working knowledge of the Welsh language was vital for dealing with servants, tenants and
other neighbours. Many incorporated Welsh Bibles into their private libraries.10 In 1695 Sir
Thomas Powell of Llechwedd-dyrys (Cardiganshire) – who professed a broad familiarity
with Welsh-language poetry – encouraged Edward Lhuyd to produce an English–Welsh
dictionary, believing it would ‘take as well in Wales as any of y[ou]r other Books’.11 In his
study of the eighteenth-century south-west Welsh gentry, David W. Howell has found
evidence of several landed families who could speak Welsh throughout the period.12
Within this society, therefore, antiquarian studies of the Welsh language could not be
8
A. Fox and D. Woolf, ‘Introduction’, in The Spoken Word: Oral Culture in Britain, 1500–1850, ed. A. Fox and
D. Woolf (Manchester, 2002), pp. 1–51, at p. 14.
9
T. Jones, Of the Heart, and its Right Soveraign, and Rome no Mother-Church to England, or, An Historical Account of
the Title of our British Church (London, 1678), p. 242. Original emphasis.
10
D. W. Howell, Patriarchs and Parasites: the Gentry of South-West Wales in the Eighteenth Century (Cardiff, 1986),
p. 197; Jesus College Archives, PP.ME/3/14, Thomas Watson to Edmund Meyrick, 3 Aug. 1689; and National
Library of Wales, MS. Picton Castle 1618, List of books, n.d.
11
Bodleian Library, MS. Ashmole 1817b, fo. 42r, Edward Thomas to Edward Lhuyd, 31 [?Dec.] 1695.
12
Howell, Patriarchs and Parasites, pp. 199–200.
Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022) © 2022 Institute of Historical Research4 Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales
easily dismissed as illogical or futile; it was very much a living language, and it made sense
for the gentry to patronize and encourage it (as Powell encouraged Lhuyd). Moreover,
once the general validity of supporting such work was established, the motivations behind
patronage could be multifaceted. The gentry were particularly likely to provide financial
support to antiquaries when their project aligned with another social impulse: chiefly,
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the social aspiration to become associated with other important patrons, or a desire to
evangelize the laity through the translation of devotional texts.
Yet Welsh-speaking mountainous Cardiganshire and upland Carmarthenshire should
be contrasted with the rolling hills of Pembrokeshire, where a linguistic gulf existed
between its northern and southern parts.The southern reaches of Pembrokeshire, which
had been settled by Normans and Flemings during the medieval period, contained
a largely English-speaking population (and was known as the ‘Englishry’), while the
remainder of the county was home to either bilingual or monoglot Welsh speakers.
Southern Pembrokeshire was often referred to as ‘Little England beyond Wales’, with one
travel writer describing the region’s inhabitants as ‘by their Manners and Language …
much like the English’.13 Significantly, this area was home to the county’s major towns
and the majority of its wealthy gentry families. As we shall see, the level of interest in
antiquarian studies focused on the Welsh language could vary considerably within these
predominantly English-speaking areas.
In contrast to that of Wales, Cornwall’s indigenous language was in terminal decline
by the late seventeenth century, increasingly confined to the elderly within a handful of
parishes in the far west of the county.14 The naturalist John Ray had recorded, during
a visit to Cornwall in the 1660s, that ‘few of the children could speak Cornish, so that
Language is like, in a short Time, to be quite lost’.15 It is therefore unsurprising that little
evidence survives of Cornish gentry who could speak their native tongue beyond the
small revivalist movement based in West Penwith, who will be discussed in more detail
below. For the vast majority of the landed elite, even a vague understanding of Cornish
was highly unlikely. The fact that it was predominantly the preserve of the ‘vulgar’ lower
orders led many to regard the language as ‘inferior and barbarous’ (as Alexandra Walsham
puts it).16 Of course, as we shall see, this attitude was by no means universal, and an
inability to speak Cornish did not preclude an interest in its preservation and study.
Yet an elegiac quality pervades the writing of Cornish antiquaries as they attempted to
safeguard its remaining fragments and fruitlessly provoke its revival. It was difficult to
co-opt the gentry into patronizing any revivalist project when, from their perspective,
the language was spoken only by the ‘vulgar’ in a handful of parishes, and was not an
immediately relevant cultural touchstone in their lives.
A recognition of the contrasting states of the Cornish and Welsh languages is vital for
understanding the wider reception of the antiquarian projects discussed in this article
among the gentry. Since any interest in the Cornish language inevitably raised issues
of preservation and revival, antiquarians needed to convince their audience that it was
worth saving – an unenviable task, considering the alienation of the landed class from
13
J. Brome, An Historical Account of Mr. Roger’s Three Years Travels Over England and Wales (London, 1694), p. 119.
Original emphasis. Brome was cribbing George Owen of Henllys’s 1603 description of the county (G. Owen, The
Description of Pembrokeshire, ed. D. Miles (Llandysul, 1994), pp. 42–3).
14
M. Spriggs, ‘Where Cornish was spoken and when: a provisional synthesis’, in Cornish Studies: Eleven, ed.
P. Payton (Exeter, 2003), pp. 228–69.
15
J. Ray, Select Remains of the Learned John Ray (London, 1760), p. 281. Original emphasis.
16
Camden’s Britannia Newly Translated Into English, ed. E. Gibson (London, 1695), p. 16; and A. Walsham,
‘Antiquities Cornu-Brittanick: language, memory and landscape in early modern Cornwall’, in Christianities in
the Early Modern Celtic World, ed. T. Ó hAnnracháin and R. Armstrong (Basingstoke, 2014), pp. 71–91, at pp. 75–6.
© 2022 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022)Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales 5
the remaining pockets of Cornish speakers. Conversely, scholarship on Wales and the
Welsh language could take place in the context of a flourishing language, and cater to an
audience who largely understood Welsh.
*
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Early modern antiquarianism was closely interwoven with gentry culture. Antiquarian
studies flourished across England and Wales following the work of John Leland in the
early sixteenth century and the later publication of William Camden’s Britannia in 1586.
Much antiquarian work was undertaken by the landed elite, for whom it became ‘a field
for recreation and a source of visible and tangible aesthetic pleasure’.17 Their education,
wealth and mobility facilitated access to primary sources, and their growing interaction
with the world beyond their localities revealed idiosyncrasies that sparked an interest in
local history.18 The gentry’s preoccupation with lineage and ancestry had long drawn
their attention to the past – a preoccupation that was felt intensely in Cornwall and
Wales. Often, gentry antiquarianism and heraldry went hand in hand: one Cornishman
conflated the two when he described his county as being ‘the most Fond of our
Ancest[o]rs & Antiquity’.19 Huge swathes of Richard Carew’s Survey of Cornwall (1602),
for example, discussed the ancestry and pedigree of his neighbours.20 For Carew, ‘most
Cornish Gentlemen can better vaunt their pedigree, then their livelyhood; for that, they
drive from great antiquitie’, and he believed their obsession with lineage surpassed that
in any other English county.21
However, while the gentry of England increasingly came to view wealth as the chief
marker of gentility rather than privileging lineage, and long spurious genealogical
accounts became rarer, a reputable lineage remained central to ideas of Welsh gentry
social status.22 The perennial poverty of the Welsh gentry meant that medieval notions
of gentility – which prioritized lineage, ties of kindred and acreage – survived well into
the eighteenth century. As a result, most Welsh gentlemen were intimately familiar with
their own descent and possessed a deeply historicized sense of their place in society.
Many families could trace their ancestors back to a chieftain of one of the twenty
ancient royal or noble tribes, and heraldry was a booming industry in south-west Wales.23
William Parry of Noyadd Trefawr (Cardiganshire), for instance, could recommend
Thomas Jenkins to a neighbour as ‘our best herauld in this part of the country’, and
Jenkin Jones of Coedmor as ‘another great herauld’.24 Other gentlemen collected
historical manuscripts and compiled their own genealogies – notably,William Griffith of
Penybenglog (Pembrokeshire) and William Lewes of Llwynderw (Carmarthenshire).The
latter was prodigious, informing deputy herald Hugh Thomas that ‘no person in S[outh]
Wales hath any collection of genealogies comparable to what I have’, and his accuracy
17
Woolf, Social Circulation, p. 15.
18
Broadway, ‘No historie so meete’, pp. 5–6, 240.
19
Bodl. Libr., MS. Ashmole 1815, fo. 192, John Hicks to Edward Lhuyd, 27 Sept. 1700.
20
R. Carew, The Survey of Cornwall, ed. J. Chynoweth, N. Orme and A. Walsham (Exeter, 2004), pp. 23–4.
21
Carew, Survey, fos. 63r–v. Original emphasis.
22
J. G. Jones, The Welsh Gentry, 1536–1640: Images of Status, Honour and Authority (Cardiff, 1998), pp. 234–5;
F. Heal and C. Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. 38–40; S. Ward Clavier,
Royalism, Religion and Revolution: Wales, 1640–1688 (Woodbridge, 2021), ch. 1–3; and J. Harris, ‘Politics and religion
in later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales: a comparative study’ (unpublished University of Oxford D.Phil.
thesis, 2018), pp. 29–30, 33–43.
23
F. Jones, ‘The old families of south-west Wales’, Ceredigion, iv (1960), 4–6; and F. Jones, ‘The old families of
Wales’, in Wales in the Eighteenth Century, ed. D. Moore (Swansea, 1976), pp. 27–46, at p. 30.
24
Bodl. Libr., MS. Ashmole 1817a, fo. 110, William Parry to David Parry, 9 Feb. 1703.
Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022) © 2022 Institute of Historical Research6 Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales
has impressed modern heralds.25 The popularity of heraldry among the Welsh gentry was
exemplified by the fact that genealogists like Griffith and Lewes industriously compiled
pedigrees or drew coats of arms for their neighbours.26 This deep-rooted interest in the
past meant that gentry society in south-west Wales was riddled with antiquaries.
Welsh pedigrees also served to reinforce notions of the Welsh as ‘ancient Britons’ by
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describing their descent from the original British kings. At the core of this belief was
the enduring legacy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae (c.1136) and
the numerous and diverse adaptations of the text that followed throughout the medieval
period. These works – supposedly based on the translation of an ‘ancient book’ in the
‘British language’ – charted the direct descent of the Welsh people from the Homeric
Trojans and through the succession of the kings of Britain.27 By the late seventeenth
century, however, English antiquaries had largely debunked these Galfridian myths,
privileging the empirical study of original sources and artefacts. Pioneers including
John Selden, William Dugdale and John Aubrey recognized the importance of early
medieval history and placed a high value on authentic documentation.28 Yet Galfridian
myths had entered the Welsh popular consciousness, becoming bound up with their
self-conception as ancient Britons, and it was impossible to expunge them completely.
Lewes complained of the ‘prodigious ignorance of most of the gentry’ in south-west
Wales, and one John Williams requested that Lhuyd write a natural history of Wales
that was ‘retrievd and purifid fro[m] the fabulous traditions of our own Countryman,
or the dry partial accounts of the English writers’.29 Nonetheless, writers in the Welsh
language, such as the squire-clergyman Theophilus Evans, continued to repeat the stories
associated with Geoffrey of Monmouth into the Hanoverian period.30
For Geraint H. Jenkins, this attachment to Galfridian myths among Welsh antiquaries
was partly due to their remoteness from archival sources, as well as their lack of formal
training.31 While this may have been the case for some, it is also true that these myths may
not have appeared entirely incompatible with the growing empiricism of antiquarianism.
Aubrey’s innovative focus on physical artefacts led him to argue that ancient stone
monuments such as Stonehenge had been erected by pre-Roman Britons (in contrast to
older orthodoxies, which contended that the ancient Britons had lacked the necessary
sophistication to create such structures). His work inspired Lhuyd, who also recognized
that the Cornish, Welsh and Breton languages shared a commonality and had ancient
origins.32 At the time, these fresh discoveries about pre-Roman Britons appeared to some
to confirm the Galfridian narrative that the Welsh were among the original inhabitants
25
F. Jones, ‘An approach to Welsh genealogy’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1948),
408–17.
26
Jones, ‘Welsh genealogy’, pp. 410, 416.
27
L. Bowen, ‘The battle of Britain: history and Reformation in early modern Wales’, in Christianities, ed. Ó
hAnnracháin and Armstrong, pp. 135–50, at p. 135; S. Roberts, ‘Religion, politics and Welshness, 1649–1660’, in
‘Into Another Mould’: Aspects of the Interregnum, ed. I. Roots (rev. edn., Exeter, 1998), pp. 30–46 at pp. 32–3; and B. F.
Roberts, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth and Welsh historical tradition’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, xx (1976), 29–40.
28
Parry, Trophies of Time, pp. 2–16; S. A. E. Mendyk, ‘Speculum Britanniae’: Regional Study, Antiquarianism, and
Science in Britain to 1700 (Toronto, 1989); and S. Piggott, Ancient Britons and the Antiquarian Imagination: Ideas From
the Renaissance to the Regency (London, 1989), pp. 59–60.
29
Jones,‘Welsh genealogy’, p. 412; and Bodl. Libr., MS. Ashmole 1817b, fo. 301, John Williams to Edward Lhuyd,
31 Dec. 1694.
30
G. H. Jenkins, Literature, Religion and Society in Wales, 1660–1730 (Cardiff, 1978), p. 219; and Theophilus Evans,
Drych y Prif Oesoedd [The Mirror of the Early Ages], (Shrewsbury, 1716).
31
Jenkins, Literature, Religion and Society, p. 219.
32
M. Hunter, John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning (London, 1975), pp. 159–61; Parry, Trophies of Time, p. 12;
and Yale, Sociable Knowledge, p. 35.
© 2022 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022)Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales 7
of the British Isles (even though, as we now know, the origins of Stonehenge predate the
Celtic Britons). Galfridian myths therefore enjoyed remarkable longevity and remained
important for the formation of local identities in early modern Wales (and, as we shall see,
in Cornwall). Indeed, Rosemary Sweet has shown that even outside of Wales, Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s account of British history appeared to offer a plausible and attractive
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origin narrative for places such as York and Colchester, and continued to be cited by
historians in the eighteenth century despite being widely discredited.33
*
The writings of William Scawen (1600–89) shed light on one Cornishman’s self-
conception as an ancient Briton. From 1678 until his death Scawen worked on Antiquities
Cornu-Brittanic, a deeply patriotic manuscript treatise on the history and language of
Cornwall.34 Scawen was head of an ancient, royalist Cornish family who had been
seated at Molenick in eastern Cornwall since the fourteenth century. Following the
Restoration, he was proposed as a Knight of the Royal Oak for his support of Charles II
in exile, and was later appointed Vice Warden of the Stannaries to assist the Lord Warden
with his judicial responsibilities.35 Despite being unable to speak or understand Cornish,
he was fascinated by the language, and possessed a fifteenth-century Cornish-language
poem, Pascon agan Arluth (also known as Passio Christo).36 Scawen claimed to have ‘long
had a proposal and a desire for the recovery of our pristine and primitive tongue, the
Cornish’, but it was an encounter during the 1678 Launceston Assizes that sparked him
into action. During a discussion of Cornish history in the judges’ chamber, the subject
turned to the ‘ancient Cornish Tongue’, with lord chief justice Francis North scolding
the attending gentry for the decline of the language and enquiring into whether any
Cornish writings survived.37 Scawen promised to provide North with a translation of
Pascon agan Arluth at the next circuit, but illness prevented him from doing so. Nonetheless,
he spent the remainder of his life working on Antiquities Cornu-Brittanic, an antiquarian
work comprising four sections: a history of the Cornish people; a list of reasons for the
decay of the Cornish language; a translation of Pascon agan Arluth; and ‘Observacouns
on the Tongue’, a miscellaneous discussion of language, history and folklore.38 One of
his self-proclaimed aims was to show that the loss of the language was ‘revocable in
some measure, att least to understanding’.39 The work highlights Scawen’s pride in his
33
Sweet, ‘History and identity in eighteenth-century York’, p. 16; and Sweet, Antiquaries, p. 122.
34
See M. Stoyle, West Britons: Cornish Identities and the Early Modern British State (Exeter, 2002), ch. 7; and
M. Spriggs, ‘William Scawen (1600–1689): a neglected Cornish patriot and father of the Cornish language revival’,
in Cornish Studies:Thirteen, ed. P. Payton (Exeter, 2005), pp. 98–125.
35
M. Spriggs, ‘Scawen,William (1600–1689)’, O.D.N.B. [accessed
25 Feb. 2022].
36
Now held at the British Library (British Library, Harley MS. 1782, ‘Pascon agan Arluth (The Passion of our
Lord)’, [? fifteenth century]).
37
Cornwall Record Office (hereafter C.R.O.), F/2/39, fos. 1–2,W. Scawen, Antiquities Cornu-Brittanic, [?1687–
9]. Francis North held a broad range of interests, including music, philosophy, mathematics and physics; he was
described by John Evelyn as ‘a most knowing, learned, ingenious gent’. His question to the Cornish gentry was
therefore probably prompted by straightforward curiosity (P. D. Halliday, ‘North, Francis, first Baron Guilford
(1637–1685)’, O.D.N.B. [accessed 25 Feb. 2022]).
38
Stoyle, West Britons, pp. 145–6. Several versions and copies survive: C.R.O., EN/1999, fos. 121–35, ‘Old
Cornish manuscript’, [?1678]; D. Gilbert, The Parochial History of Cornwall: Founded on the MS. Histories of Mr. Hals
and Mr. Tonkin (4 vols., London, 1838), iv. 190–221; Courtney Library, Royal Institute of Cornwall, ‘Scawen MSS’,
[?1684–7]; Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 33429, fos. 108r–25v, W. Scawen, ‘Antiquities Cornubrittanic’; and, the most com-
plete copy, C.R.O., F/2/39. On the different versions, see Spriggs, ‘William Scawen’, pp. 109–13.
39
C.R.O., F/2/39, fo. 3.
Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022) © 2022 Institute of Historical Research8 Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales
‘ancient British’ origins, and provides a plaintive account of the decline of the Cornish
tongue – but it also reveals his frustration at his fellow gentry for not sharing his views
or supporting the languishing language.
Utilizing lexis that would have been very familiar to a Welsh reader, Scawen considered
the Cornish to be members of the ‘Brittish Race’ – or ‘Aborigines’ – who were the
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original inhabitants of the British Isles, but had been forced ‘to fly into Wales & Cornwall’
due to the ‘oppression of the Saxons’.40 The manuscript presented a pristine ancient
Cornwall, a land inhabited by physically perfect and virtuous people, which had slowly
been eroded by intruders – most notably ‘the Saxons’. The Cornish were portrayed as
one of the earliest Christian peoples, embracing Christianity ‘eaven near the Apostles
time’.41 Scawen argued that the druids had been sent by God to foreshadow early
Christianity, and as a result, ‘our Ancest[o]rs here, and our brethren in Wales, retained in
a good measure Christianity when those then unchristianed nations oppressed it, and
us’.42 Here he was building upon a well-established Welsh narrative (popularized by
the preface to the 1567 Welsh translation of the New Testament) in which the Church
of England represented a return to a pure faith that had previously existed among the
British peoples.43
The work was also deeply political and patriotic. As Mark Stoyle noted, Scawen
demonstrated sincere pride in the exploits of Cornish royalists (especially at ‘our Battle
of Stratton’) and argued that the ‘Brittaines’ had never been guilty of murdering their
kings, unlike the ‘English’.44 He inextricably linked their British origins and their loyalty
to the Stuart monarchy. Given Cornwall’s size, Scawen did not think that it was realistic
for the county to secede from the rest of England, and presented the Cornish rebellion
of 1497 as ‘unfortunate and ridiculous’, while simultaneously defending the conduct
of the Cornishmen during their long march to Blackheath. Ultimately, he pointed to
Cornish royalism in the 1640s as a better example of their loyalty and commitment
to Charles I, ‘King of great Brittain’.45 The image of Cornish identity that emerges is
remarkably similar to the prevailing narrative in early modern Wales, rooted heavily in
their language as a source and marker of cultural difference. Indeed, Scawen explicitly
promoted the association, repeatedly drawing parallels between the histories of the two
regions. In doing so, he drew a dividing line between an ‘Ancient Brittish’ identity and
an encroaching English culture.
Antiquities Cornu-Brittanic mourned the ‘heavy, and sad’ loss of the Cornish language.46
Among Scawen’s sixteen reasons for this decline were the lack of a distinctive Cornish
alphabet, Cornwall’s break with Brittany, the destruction of records, and the cessation of
miracle plays. Stoyle also traced an underlying Anglo-Cornish tension within the work,
with allusions to an encroaching ‘Englishness’ (or ‘intermixion’) and complaints about
the failure of the government to publish Cornish-language Bibles or books of common
prayer (as they had in Welsh), and the ‘comeing of Strangers of all sorts’.47 However,
40
C.R.O., F/2/39, fos. 6–7, 10. For extended discussions of the manuscript’s content, see Stoyle, West Britons,
ch. 7; and Walsham, ‘Antiquities Cornu-Brittanick’.
41
C.R.O., F/2/39, fo. 14.
42
C.R.O., F/2/39, fos. 16–17, 20.
43
Bowen, ‘Battle of Britain’, pp. 135–50; Kidd, British Identities, pp. 32, 100–1; and P. Roberts, ‘Tudor Wales,
national identity and the British inheritance’, in British Consciousness and Identity: the Making of Britain, 1533–1707,
ed. B. Bradshaw and P. Roberts (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 8–42, at p. 20.
44
Stoyle, West Britons, pp. 152–4.
45
C.R.O., F/2/39, fos. 27–9.
46
C.R.O., F/2/39, fo. 3.
47
Stoyle, West Britons, pp. 150–2; and C.R.O., F/2/39, fos. 2, 47–8.
© 2022 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022)Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales 9
Scawen combined these comments with an emphasis on the failings of the Cornish
gentry – both past and present. An entire section was dedicated to discussing the ‘Want
of Help from the Gentry’.48 In particular, he criticized their tendency to abandon their
Cornish surnames and increasingly to marry outside of the county, and their failure
previously to encourage the Cornish language or leave behind a body of Cornish-
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language documents.49 The increasing propensity for the gentry to marry outside of the
county boundaries and reject their Celtic surnames is perhaps unsurprising during a
period in which they were becoming ever more integrated into a national culture, and
in which London was becoming an increasingly overwhelming cultural hub.50
Ultimately, it appears that the revival of the Cornish language, in particular, was not a
widespread concern among the gentry. Scawen lamented the fact that the language had
received ‘little or no help, rather discouragem[en]t’ from the gentry living in those areas
where pockets survived, and noted that when the ‘poorer sort’ of these regions travelled
further east and spoke Cornish, they ‘are laught att by the Rich that understand it not’.51
In an earlier version of the work, he claimed that he had received ‘discouragements
amongst ourselves at home’ and had been told ‘that, besides the difficulty of the attempt,
it would be thought ridiculous for one to go about the restoring of that tongue which
he himself could not speak or understand truly when spoken’.52 Evidently, a major
stumbling block to inspiring a wider revivalist impulse in Cornwall was the remoteness
of the language to the lives of the county’s gentry, who associated it only with the lower
orders, and who could not speak or understand the language themselves.
Although his criticisms were proposed ‘tenderly’, and Scawen hoped ‘they will not take
it amiss’, he nonetheless accused the Cornish elite of ‘[forsaking] the Antiquity of their
owne Cornish names, and thereby their Interests’.53 At a time when the Welsh gentry
were championing the notion that they were ancient Britons through their pedigrees,
he believed that the Cornish gentry were fabricating French or Norman lineage at the
expense of their ‘honored and genuine and true’ Cornish, or British, ancestry.54 This
was an especially sensitive subject, and he admitted that it was ‘a hard thing’ to convince
gentlemen of ‘old errors’ without appearing to call their lineage into question.55 One
of the central tensions between Scawen and his gentry neighbours, then, was that he
struggled to persuade them to acknowledge their claim to ‘Brittish blood’, and be proud
of it.56 He was frustrated that the majority of the Cornish gentry did not readily share
the distinct Cornish identity that Antiquities Cornu-Brittanic articulated.
*
48
Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 33429, fos. 124r–v.
49
C.R.O., F/2/39, fos. 2–3, 42–50.
50
It was the home of the kingdom’s government and legal institutions, and was an important site of social
gathering (C. Holmes, ‘The county community in Stuart historiography’, Journal of British Studies, xix (1980),
54–73, at pp. 56–9; and J. M. Rosenheim, The Emergence of a Ruling Order: English Landed Society, 1650–1750 (Harlow,
1998), pp. 89–90).
51
C.R.O., F/2/39, fo. 50.
52
Gilbert, Parochial History, iv. 218.
53
C.R.O., F/2/39, fos. 42, 44, 46.
54
C.R.O., F/2/39, fo. 42.
55
Gilbert, Parochial History, iv. 212.
56
C.R.O., F/2/39, fo. 43.
Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022) © 2022 Institute of Historical Research10 Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales
Yet it would be wrong to dismiss Scawen’s legacy completely. His activities helped to
inspire a Cornish-language revival among a small coterie of minor gentlemen in the
far west of the county, whose expertise attracted interest from expanding spheres of
antiquaries – both within Cornwall and farther afield in Oxford and London. Their
surviving writings reveal their experiments with Cornish literature, pride in their
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‘ancient British’ origins, and a keenly felt sadness at the decline of the language. One
of Scawen’s major inspirations for Antiquities Cornu-Brittanic was his brother-in-law,
Martyn Keigwin of Mousehole, a fluent Cornish speaker.57 Following Scawen’s death,
his Pascon agan Arluth was left to John Keigwin, Martyn’s son. John was considered both
locally and nationally to be ‘a great master of the Cornish-tongue’, and he went on
to undertake translations of three surviving Cornish-language manuscripts (the poem
Pascon agan Arluth, the mystery play Gwreans an bys, and the Ordinalia cycle of three
mystery plays).58 It was he who sat at the centre of a coterie of Cornish-language
enthusiasts during the 1690s and the reign of Anne: Nicholas Boson, Thomas Boson
(Nicholas’s cousin), John Boson (Nicholas’s son), John Tonkin, Captain James Jenkins,
Oliver Pendar, James Scholar and William Gwavas. The latter’s papers survive in the
British Library, and shed light on the activities of this small circle.59 The Gwavas family
owned the fishing tithes for the village of Paul, and in 1684 brought a court case against
merchants Nicholas Boson, Noell Tonkin and John Keigwin for non-payment.60 This
dispute does not appear to have had long-lasting consequences, but it does imply that
the Gwavases, Keigwins, Bosons and Tonkins were acquainted members of the minor
gentry in West Penwith. Together the coterie translated several short texts into Cornish
and composed a handful of original poems.Their translations were fairly simple projects
– for example, the Ten Commandments or Lord’s Prayer – and were not designed for
publication.61
Perhaps inspired by Scawen’s claim that ‘I never saw a Letter written … from one
Gent[le]man to another’ in Cornish, the West Penwith coterie often incorporated short
Cornish extracts into their letters – principally those written to William Gwavas, who
was resident at the Middle Temple by 1709.62 For the most part, their correspondence
dealt with quotidian issues such as estate or legal matters, but they would often include
a postscript of their latest translation.63 With the exception of Keigwin, the letter writers
typically framed these postscripts as ‘a little diversion’ from more important concerns.64
The Bosons had apparently taught the language to Gwavas, who in turn played a role
in encouraging the others to write in Cornish, as John Boson thanked him for ‘rubbing
57
Spriggs, ‘William Scawen’, p. 100. He may also have been exposed to Cornish speakers during the civil wars
(Stoyle, West Britons, pp. 144–5).
58
Bodl. Libr., MS. Ashmole 1814, fo. 101, John Aubrey to Edward Lhuyd, 1 Dec. 1692; MS. Ashmole 1814, fo.
20r, John Anstis to Edward Lhuyd, 10 Sept. 1700; and National Library of Wales, MS. Llanstephan 97, Keigwin’s
translation of Ordinalia, c.1702. Lhuyd later questioned Keigwin’s ability, believing his translations to be too lit-
eral (Bodl. Libr., MS. Ashmole 1816, fo. 377, John Moore to Edward Lhuyd, 20 June 1702; and Edward Lhuyd
to Thomas Tonkin, 16 March 1703, in W. Pryce, Archaeologia Cornu-Britannica, or, An Essay to Preserve the Ancient
Cornish Language (Sherborne, 1790), n.p.).
59
Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 28554, Papers of William Gwavas of Newlyn.
60
P. B. Ellis, The Cornish Language and Its Literature (London, 1974), pp. 95–6.
61
E.g., Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 28554, fos. 107–8, Thomas Tonkin’s Cornish version of ten commandments and
Lord’s Prayer, 1710.
62
C.R.O., F/2/39, fo. 50.
63
See e.g., the postscripts of Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 28554, fos. 2–3, John Boson to William Gwavas, 25 Dec. 1709;
William Gwavas to Oliver Pendar, 11 Aug. 1711.
64
Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 28554, fo. 6, John Boson to William Gwavas, 17 Feb. 1712.
© 2022 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022)Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales 11
up my old thoughts in Cornish I doe not know w[he]n I writt soe much as since you
have put me to it’.65 As with most eighteenth-century literary coteries, sociability was
a central motivation for the group: bound by friendship, they provided each other with
intellectual stimulation, and their meetings and letters provided a space where they could
experiment creatively with their shared literary pastimes.
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The group’s identity solidified around a shared love for the Cornish language, coupled
with sorrow over its decline. In the Latin preface to his translation of the Ordinalia,
John Keigwin wrote of his anxiety that ‘our language should fall into disuse and utterly
perish’ in the face of ‘the oncoming tide of the English language’.66 Similarly, in his
manuscript treatise on the Cornish language, Nebbaz Gerriau dro tho Carnoack (A Few
Words About Cornish), written between 1675 and 1708, Nicholas Boson lamented the
retreat of spoken Cornish: ‘for as the English confine it into this narrow country first,
so it presseth on still leaving it no place but about ye cliff and sea’.67 Both Keigwin and
Boson envisaged the language as being trapped in a hopeless struggle with English in
which there could be only one victor. This mournful tone was echoed by Nicholas’
son, John, when he wrote an epitaph in Cornish for Captain James Jenkins, a member
of the coterie:
Dadn an Mean, ma Deskes brose Dean Under this stone, A Mighty learned One
En Tavaz Kernooak Gelles. in our Cornish language gone
Termen vedn Toaz, Rag an Corf the thoras Att the Great Assize his body will Rise
Boz Tavaz Coth Kernow Kelles. Cornwall forgetts her Native Tongue.68
Although only fragments of their original material survive, the work of the coterie fed
into the conception of the Cornish as ‘ancient Britons’ that Scawen had propounded.
In an accompanying Cornish-language elegy for Jenkins, for example, Boson alleged
that the Biblical figure of Gomer (grandson of Noah) was the first Cornish speaker,
and later claimed that Gomer was the first Cornish man.69 This mythology was part of
what Colin Kidd has termed ‘ethnic theology’, in which scholars attempted to reconcile
scripture with the various human differences identified by travellers, traders and others.70
Particularly influential in establishing the notion of the Gomerian roots of the Celts was
the Breton Cistercian brother Paul-Yves Pezron. His patriotic L’antiquité de la nation et
de langue des celtes (1703, and translated into English in 1706) argued that the Bretons
and the Welsh were descendants of Gomer, and that these regions had ‘the honour to
preserve the language of the posterity of Gomer’.71 Although some of Pezron’s ideas were
controversial, Kidd has demonstrated how he had a lasting influence on ‘eighteenth-
century British ethnic discourses’, especially among Welsh scholars.72 Boson’s reference
to Gomer as the first Cornishman was an attempt to apply this glorious past to Cornwall.
65
Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 28554, fo. 10, John Boson to William Gwavas, [? Apr. 1712].
66
W. Ll. Davies, Cornish Manuscripts in the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth, 1939), p. 10.
67
Quoted in The Cornish Writings of the Boson Family, ed. O. J. Padel (Redruth, 1975), pp. 24–5.
68
Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 28554, fo. 7, John Boson to William Gwavas, 17 Feb. 1712. In his reply William Gwavas
offered an alternative translation: ‘Beneath this stone,The Remains lye of one / In the Cornish tongue skill’d above
all / The day shall arrive when the bones shall revive / But the Language is gone past recall’ (Brit. Libr., Add. MS.
28554, fos. 8–9, William Gwavas to John Boson, 28 Feb. 1712).
69
Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 28554, fos. 7, 10. For a translation, see Cornish Writings, ed. Padel, p. 49.
70
Kidd, British Identities, ch. 3.
71
Quoted in Kidd, British Identities, p. 67.
72
Kidd, British Identities, pp. 66–9.
Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022) © 2022 Institute of Historical Research12 Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales
Like Scawen, Boson recognized the connections between Cornwall and Wales, and used
them to draw a distinction between these two regions and England.73
Despite the associations between Cornish identity, royalism and Anglicanism identified
by Mark Stoyle, the members of the coterie reflected a range of religious and political
views.74 One Nicholas Boson, probably the father of the Nicholas Boson mentioned
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above, was repeatedly presented by the churchwardens of Paul in the 1670s as a ‘Reputed
Anabaptist’ who ‘seldome comes to the publiq service of the church’.75 Meanwhile, in
the mid 1690s John Tonkin of St. Just composed a Whiggish song in Cornish celebrating
the Glorious Revolution:
Ma tha ni Materne da We have a good King
ha maternes maga Ta and a fine Queen
Besca Rig dane Roul en Gwalaze ever did man rule in the land
buz nag ew an Pobel vaze but the people are not good
Eve Rig doaz thurt pow e whonnen He did come from his own land
Tiz da gunju Leeas wonnen Good people with him, many a one
Gorolyon da droaze e war dower Good ships brought him on water
Sowias E vownas kerra vel ow’r Saved his life more precious than gold.76
(ll. 9–16)
Such a celebration of William and Mary during the 1690s, combined with the alleged
anabaptism of the Boson family, complicates notions that Cornish identity was inherently
tied to Anglicanism and Toryism. An interest in the Cornish language and culture could
bridge political and theological divides, and was not necessarily linked to prevailing
political and religious affiliations in the county.
It is difficult to establish how widespread this interest in Cornish history, culture and
language was among the wider gentry community. It is perhaps telling that Nicholas
Boson learned Cornish only later in life, as his mother had forbidden the ‘house-
people and the neighbours to speak anything to me but English’ when he was a child.
He noted that ‘if there will be anything done to save Cornish, it must be by those that
are born here, and well learned’, but admitted that such people are ‘found but seldom,
for they are not but a few’.77 Yet, although these interests were never popular, they
were not totally confined to the county’s western extremities. Keigwin’s manuscripts
and translations were circulated among other gentlemen with antiquarian interests
– notably Thomas Tonkin of Trevaunance, John Anstis and Sir Jonathan Trelawny
(3rd Bt.) was successively the bishop of Bristol (1685–9), Exeter (1689–1707), and
73
On the importance of British origin myths, see F. Heal,‘What can King Lucius do for you? The Reformation
and the early British church’, English Historical Review, cxx (2005), 593–614.
74
Stoyle, West Britons, ch. 2–3; and M. Stoyle, Soldiers and Strangers: an Ethnic History of the English Civil War
(New Haven, Conn., 2005), ch. 2.
75
Devon Heritage Centre, Churchwardens’ Presentments, Box 41/5, Visitation returns, Paul, 15 Aug. 1671; 1
Sept. 1674.
76
Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 28554, fos. 130r–v, John Tonkin, ‘Menja Tiz Kernuak buz gasowas’, c.1695. For a trans-
lation, see Kernowlingo
[accessed 12 Mar. 2022].
77
Quoted in Cornish Writings, ed. Padel, p. 36.
© 2022 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. XX, no. XX (XXXX 2022)Language, historical culture and the gentry of later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales 13
Winchester (1707–21).78 Tonkin – who was said to be a fluent Cornish speaker – had
befriended the likes of Edward Lhuyd and Edmund Gibson while at The Queen’s
College, Oxford, and devoted most of his life to the study of Cornwall’s history and
topography. He later collaborated with Gwavas on a Cornish vocabulary in the 1730s,
which was never published.79 Similarly, Anstis conducted extensive research himself
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in London libraries, and was integrated into both local and national antiquarian
networks.80 Although with perhaps less conviction, Trelawny was also enthusiastic
about Cornish history, telling Lhuyd that he planned to pen ‘some kind of History
of Cornwall’, after he had already authored the additions to the Cornwall section of
Edmund Gibson’s 1695 edition of Camden’s Britannia.81
Through these prominent Cornish gentlemen, the West Penwith coterie was
connected to national antiquarian circles and figures – most prominently Lhuyd, who
was working on a history of the Celtic regions at the same time. Anstis and Tonkin
were regular correspondents with Lhuyd. The former put Lhuyd in contact with local
Cornish enthusiasts such as Lewis Stephens, vicar of Minhinnett, and John Moore of
Helston, who was anxious to hear of records in ‘my own mother tongue’.82 Lhuyd was
himself an industrious networker; he had already been in contact with Scawen in the
1680s, and travelled to Cornwall in the summer of 1700 to meet personally the likes
of Keigwin and Stephens, and to examine the county’s antiquities first-hand.83 Gentry
interest in Cornish culture can therefore be envisaged as a series of expanding and
overlapping spheres, radiating outwards from the West Penwith coterie of minor squires,
and incorporating major Cornish gentry figures and national antiquarian networks.
Cornish antiquaries like the West Penwith coterie therefore shared many connections
with wider national networks – but their work nonetheless simultaneously demonstrated
and reinforced a local identity, revealing their genuine pride in their locality.
*
The work of Edward Lhuyd (1660–1709) – the naturalist, philologist and keeper of the
Ashmolean Museum in Oxford – neatly bridges Cornwall and south-west Wales. Lhuyd
was fascinated by the natural history, antiquities, languages and human history of the
‘Celtic lands’. However, as we shall see, his ability to generate interest in these subjects
among the gentry of Cornwall and south-west Wales was closely tied to the degree to
which the Brythonic languages survived in each region, and the depth of his own social
and kinship networks.
Lhuyd’s academic reputation soared in 1693 after he was chosen to oversee the
additions to the Welsh counties in Edmund Gibson’s new edition of Camden’s Britannia,
which was subsequently published in 1695.84 The project incorporated numerous
78
Bodl. Libr., MS. Ashmole 1814, fo. 20r; MS. Eng.b.2042, fo. 150r, John Anstis to Sir Jonathan Trelawny, [? Dec.
1693–Jan. 1694]; and Edward Lhuyd to Thomas Tonkin, 3 Feb. 1703, in Pryce, Archaeologia Cornu-Britannica, n.p.
79
P. B. Ellis, ‘Tonkin, Thomas (bap. 1678, d. 1741/2)’, O.D.N.B.
[accessed 25 Feb. 2022].
80
Bodl. Libr., MS. Ashmole 1814, fos. 20r, 51r–v, John Anstis to Edward Lhuyd, 7 Apr. [?1702].
81
Edward Lhuyd to Thomas Tonkin, 16 March 1703, in Pryce, Archaeologia Cornu-Britannica, n.p.
82
Bodl. Libr., MS. Ashmole 1814, fos. 20r, 23r–v, John Anstis to Lewis Stephens, 19 Oct. 1700; MS. Ashmole
1816, fo. 373, John Moore to Edward Lhuyd, 20 Nov. 1701.
83
Spriggs, ‘William Scawen’, p. 106; and Bodl. Libr., MS. Ashmole 1814, fos. 20r, 22r–v, John Anstis to Edward
Lhuyd, 28 Sept. 1700.
84
On Edmund Gibson’s 1695 Britannia, see J. M. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the
Augustan Age (Ithaca, 1991), pp. 327–36; and T. Roebuck, ‘Edmund Gibson’s 1695 Britannia and late-seventeenth-
century British antiquarian scholarship’, Erudition and the Republic of Letters, v (2020), 427–81.
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