Who was Trelawny?

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Wander through any Cornish town–or village, for that matter–and you’ll find a house called Trelawny. Or Trelawney. We’re reaching far enough back in history that spelling was still a liquid.

Who was Trelawny? The bishop of Bristol when James II was king, that’s who. It doesn’t sound like he has an obvious connection to Cornwall, but stay with me: it’s a powerful one.

Before we get to that, though, yes, houses here have names. It’s romantic as hell and equally inconvenient. I don’t know how many times my partner and I have been walking the dogs and been stopped by a delivery driver asking where some named house is. We seldom remember, but that’s okay because with our accents (both, after 17 years here, still strongly American) no one believes us anyway. 

Cities and new housing developments have abandoned the for the easier-to-manage system of named streets and house numbers, but nobody’s been brave or crazy enough to reorganize the countryside.

Are we done with that? Good. Onward.

Irrelevant photo: a begonia flower

 

King James and Bishop Trelawny

Jonathan Trelawny was born in Cornwall–in 1650, which I mention so we’ll have some clue as to what century we’re wandering through. He was the younger son of an old Cornish family, although when you think about it, what family isn’t old? We all have ancestors stretching back to the beginning of time, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, but old old families are the ones who are impressed with themselves and expect the rest of us to be as well. Ideally, they have substantial amounts of money as well as portraits of their ancestors hanging disapprovingly on the walls.

In this particular old family, Papa Trelawny was a baronet–a commoner, but one with the right to be called “sir.”

Not by me, however. 

A baronet is below a baron but above a knight. Except knights of the Garter and–

Oh, come on, this is just too silly to go into. It’s a title. If they impress you, be impressed, please.

Jonathan became a minister in the Church of England, which is the kind of thing a good younger son would’ve done back then. I haven’t been able to find out what his role was in putting down Monmouth’s Rebellion, but he had one, and in gratitude for it King James (that’s James II, in case you’re counting) made him the bishop of Bristol. 

By this time, Trelawny’s older brother had died and the Trelawny we’re following inherited the title of baronet, and if anyone saw a conflict between being a baronet and a bishop, I haven’t found evidence of it.

We’ll stop here long enough to note that he and his family were royalists, having backed the king not only against Monmouth but (earlier king here but still a king) in the Civil Wars. 

 

And then it all went wrong

A royalist Trelawny may have been, but when, after Monmouth’s Rebellion, James misread the political tea leaves and thought they said “Hey, guess what, the country’s ready for political tolerance,” Trelawney parted ways with him. More specifically, the break came over the Declaration of Indulgence. To modern calorie counters that sounds like an announcement that not only was he going to eat a full English breakfast but that he’d have a slice of triple-layer chocolate cake for afternoon tea. 

Sorry, no such thing. Baking soda–or if you’re in Britain, bicarbonate of soda–and baking powder weren’t invented until the nineteenth century, and chocolate (I think–I haven’t double checked this) was still something to drink. You can, apparently, get a cake to rise using cream of tartar, but that only dates back to the eighteenth century. So no cakes for King Jimmy, and we’re not going to even discuss tea. 

What the Declaration of Indulgence did was suspend laws against religious nonconformists–a category that included those scary Catholics.  

Why were Catholics scary? Because England had spent a good bit of time seesawing back and forth between Protestantism and Catholicism, and every shift in the seesaw involved the two sides performing unspeakable acts on each other. Whichever side you were on, you had good reason to be afraid of the other one. So James granting a measure of religious freedom to Catholics? Especially when he’d appointed some to high offices and sent his Parliament home so they couldn’t stand in his way? If you were living back then, you might at this point let out a heartfelt, Protestant eeek. 

And if you’re living now–as I have to assume you are–you could argue either way about whether James was tippy-toeing (or stumbling) toward a Catholic takeover or toward a more tolerant country. He wasn’t around long enough for anyone to be certain.

But that’s getting ahead of the story. First, James demanded that the Declaration of Indulgence be read out in the churches, and seven bishops, including Trelawney, refused. They were arrested, tried for seditious libel, and (to popular acclaim) acquitted. According to the Cornwall Heritage Trust, the episode didn’t make much of an impact on Cornwall, although the Cornwall SEO Co. site says the acquittal sparked celebrations from Cornwall to London. Take your pick. My money’s on the Heritage Trust, but that’s strictly a hunch. 

 

And then?

And then James was overthrown by the Glorious Revolution, which brought in a pair of Protestants as joint monarchs, which is why we don’t get to know which way James was trying to nudge the country. Trelawny became the bishop of Exeter, which brought him closer to Cornwall but he was still on the wrong side of the Tamar River, and later of Winchester, moving him further away. He died in 1721.

Why, then, is his name on so many houses in Cornwall? As far as I can tell, it’s because in the nineteenth century Reverend Robert Steven Hawker wrote a song about him, “The Song of the Western Men,” better known as “Trelawny.”

 

Rev. Hawker, the mermaid, and the elusive truth

Hawker was nothing if not an eccentric. He built himself a hut on the cliffs, where he smoked opium and wrote poetry. He publicly excommunicated one of his cats (he had ten) for killing a mouse on a Sunday. You can pretty well count on the cat not being impressed.

He also put seaweed on his head, sat on a rock, and impersonated a mermaid. The shorter version runs like this:

“For several moonlit nights, he sat at the end of the long Bude breakwater draped in seaweed, combing his locks and singing mournful dirges, to the consternation of the local inhabitants. Finally a farmer loudly announced his intention of peppering the apparition with buckshot, whereupon it dived into the ocean and was never seen again.”

If you want the longer version, you’ll find it here.

Hawker’s song tells the story of 20,000 Cornishmen marching to London to demand Trelawny’s release. The problem is that they didn’t. One estimate puts the Cornish population in 1760 at around 124,000. Let’s say half of those were women, although I seem to remember that, left to herself, nature produces a slim majority of girl babies. I found some slim and pointless comfort in that back in the Dark Ages, when everything in (and out of) sight was engineered to promote more males than females. Never mind. We’re down to 62,000 people. Let’s say randomly that a third of those were either too young or too old to fight. After rounding out the numbers to make my life easier (have you ever wondered why I’m not a statistician?), we’re in the neighborhood of 40,000 men of fighting age. So that would be half the men of fighting age downing tools and taking off for London to wave their weapons and issue threats. 

No, I don’t think so either. And if you’re inclined to argue with my figures, you’ve got more than enough grounds. Even the original population number is an estimate. Britain’s first census (unless you count the Domesday Book) wasn’t taken until 1801 and it’s not considered a professional-quality census anyway.

But to return to our alleged point: there was no Cornish army marching on London. Cornwall Heritage speculates that Hawker mixed in an earlier rebellion, the An Gof rebellion of 1497. Call it poetic license if you like, or blame the opium. Or the seaweed.

In spite of that minor historical problem, Hawker’s song is still sung and it has great power. It taps into the well of anger you’re likely to find in any formerly independent nation that’s lost its language and been overwhelmed by incomers. A fair number of people count “Trelawny” as the Cornish national anthem. You’d be wise–and so (as an incomer) would I–not to run around debunking the man or the song. 

 

So how does the song go?

With a good sword and a trusty shield
A faithful heart and true
King James’s men shall understand
What Cornish men can do
And have they fixed the where and when?
And shall Trelawny die?
Here’s twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why.

Chorus
And shall Trelawny live?
Or shall Trelawny die?
Here’s twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why.

Out spake the captain brave and bold
A merry wight was he
Though London Tower were Michael’s hold
We’ll set Trelawny free
We’ll cross the Tamar, land to land
The Severn is no stay
Then one and all and hand in hand
And who shall bid us nay.

And when we came to London wall
A pleasant sight to view
Come forth, come forth, ye cowards all
Here are better men than you
Trelawny, he’s in keep in hold
Trelawny he may die
But twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why.

 

Want to hear it instead of reading it? Catch the Fisherman’s Friends–a Cornish group if there ever was one–singing it. 

I was going to tuck the An Gof rebellion in at the end of this but I’ve got on long enough. Next week if all goes well. Stick around. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a question for people whose British geography is better than mine: what route would take you from Cornwall to London that crosses the Severn?

35 thoughts on “Who was Trelawny?”

  1. Pingback: Who was Trelawny? – Prime Minister to the Literati, Slowjamastan

  2. I was going to mention the thing about crossing the Severn. I’ve crossed it a few times myself, but never on the way to Cornwall, not even when I drove from London to Penzance and back again a week later.

    20,000 is probably only there because it scans well. I have heard of Trelawney, but only because of this song.

    House names are a nuisance. In 2012 lots of plaques went up on houses round here commemorating non-surviving members of the crew of Titanic who had lived there. One lived in my road, but there’s no plaque because he gave the name of the house rather than its number, so no one knows which house it was.

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    • I remember twenty or more years ago seeing something that left me thinking London had once used house names but abandoned them, and the post office was no longer acknowledging them. I couldn’t say I blamed them. They leave outsiders no hope of finding their way. And I guess once that knowledge is lost, it can’t be reconstructed. There’s seldom any gain (as in a simpler system) without some loss, I guess.

      I expect you’re right abou the 20,000. The An Gof Rebellion is said to have gathered 15,000, but not all from Cornwall, and chroniclers of the time treated large numbers as a poetic way of saying, “Lots.” So why not pick one that scans? The Severn, though, strikes me as more of a problem.

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    • Isn’t that the way it works? You teach kids a poem, a song, something you think is going to shape their thinking, and they haven’t a clue what it’s about–and may be improvising the lyrics when they can’t make sense of them. My father remembered being taught a stirring, patriotic poem that he understood to say, “I titter tatter tenson down,” which he dutifully recited.

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  5. Goodness me! I found my drop of Cornish blood singing along.
    You’re right about giving or being given directions when so many places bear a common name especially in the western counties. Cross the Tamar and pop up to Westward Ho! and thereabouts and count how many houses bear the name “Amyas Leigh.”

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  7. Sad state of affairs when you can’t buy decent opium down at the corner … weed simply doesn’t cut the mustard.
    I had not known TRELAWNY and HAWKER before, thank you for bringing them to my attention. Another good example for how the 19th century created / formed our idea of history, how they invented out of their bloody romanticism the middle age. Or in this case something “heroic” of the Early Modern Age – “heroic” it must be (it’s the function), no matter whether it’s Felix DAHN’s nonsense about the Goths, something “Midlothian”, or other “Germanic” nonsense. The interesting thing is how that lived on, became self-referential, and in some cases even “factual”, e.g. when a teacher on the countryside in the 1920s invented “Germanic” “rites” (based on Romantic “science” of the 19th), and finally had these things played out : After one generation it is “tradition”. Talk about “Fund und Erfindung” – but that is “Volkskunde”, and it does not exist any more, the idiots won. (Yes, I am old. And a tad frustrated, possibly.)

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    • And with age (sometimes) comes wisdom. These are frustrating–not to mention frightening–times. You’re right, I think, about the invention of history and tradition. And now the far right is insisting we go back to it, at least in the US, because the more accurate version is just too upsetting.

      I really, really want to throw things at people. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at it.

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      • With age comes rage too, and frustration about the impotence to change things. I see topics and ideas in the local (German) discourse that are in my view absolutely outdated, things we discussed in the Eighties – and in my naivite I thought this stuff was settled. For example what was once called “women’s liberation” , today there are groups who believe in the oh so cool “traditional role” of woman as housewife etc – their choice of course, but what some old battle axes of my generation (and earlier) fought for, and finally achieved (!), is ridiculed, wiped away. And I am not talking about these unbelievable, Hitler citing “Mumpitz for liberty” or how they call themselves. Some of this nonsense is so backwards that even the official ns “Frauenfuehrerin” is modern in comparison. (Of course she is rooted absolutely in her ideology, so no high-five from me.) But it is all “women’s nature” isn’t it ?!
        What really frightens me is the “new” nationalism, democracy killing authoritarianism on the rise, mainly in former communist societies (but Italy too) like Hungary, Poland, the Balcans – places where Vlad the impaler happily plays around and influences (with the notable exception of Poland). It is all about “Volk”, “Nation”, unity – in-clusion & ex-clusion, and violence. Because it goes hand-in-hand with the image of the male “as hero” – hence my disgust towards these 19th century images where the “modern” “hero” was invented. Ad the slo-mo implosion of the US, it all will be better under Prez Trump, and the outlook becomes very bleak.
        I am ranting. I beg your pardon.
        Aufklärung ist ein Prozess, enlightenment is a process. And every generation needs to work on this, and every generation invents “history” anew – and all and everybody has seemingly the right to misuse, abuse, and plainly falsify historical facts, spit on humanistic values, and be happily deluded. But actually it is a bit much. And obviously I was fed “wisdom” with spoons. Sorry.

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  9. Got to tip your hat to the merman for coming up with the idea of burying the dead who washed up on shore. He may have been crazy, but apparently not stupid.

    I had to play the song and could understand the accent thanks to your giving us the words first. Of course, I am still embarrassed about wondering – at first – why they were playing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at the Queen’s funeral.

    Religious wars are very confusing.

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    • By his lights, burying them in the churchyard (I forgot to mention that part) was a matter of compassion, so let’s give him points for that–even if some of those dead might not have wanted, when they were alive, to be buried as Christians.

      Your comment about playing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at the queen’s funeral cracked me up. Yes, we’re a larcenous bunch and didn’t hesitate to steal a tune or three.

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    • I don’t know. Eccentric he was, and probably a real showman, but I’m not sure he had the level of–um, what’s the word I’m looking for here? I’m not sure he was anywhere near as low as the people you seem to have in mind. I really should see what more I can learn about him. It’d make an interesting post.

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  12. It’s a rollicking good tune, even if (like a lot of others) the words don’t bear much examination. The trouble comes when people start taking the words literally.

    As for chocolate, that was starting to come in as a drink when Trelawny was born: you might be interested to see how it was being advertised in that very year:
    https://www.uni-giessen.de/de/fbz/fb05/germanistik/absprache/sprachverwendung/gloning/tx/vertues.htm

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    • Well, of course chocolate did all that. So did tobacco. It’s strange that, having been so good for people’s health, tobacco turned on us later on. Chocolate, on the other hand, has held true to its promise: it makes people fat, healthy, happy, and if it no longer cures consumption, it does still manage to get itself consumed.

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