Introduction.
To people continuously resident in places that
boast centuries of history, the antiquities that
meet their eyes every day do not always appeal as
they appeal to persons who have long dwelt in newer
lands. Thus the average Londoner takes little
interest in the historical monuments of Westminster
Abbey, while our friends from the States positively
revel in them. The writer, though associated in his
early life with places of peculiar archaeological
interest had, up to the time that he went abroad,
no proper appreciation of their attractions nor any
particular desire to learn their several histories.
But after a sojourn of seventeen years in the newly
settled lands of Australia and New Zealand where
the convict settlements and the Maori wars of the
early nineteenth Century were matters of ancient
history, he returned to the 'old country'
to discover by contrast, a charm and fascination in
these objects which hitherto had failed to impress
him.
To a returned emigrant like himself, St. Keverne
was a place peculiarly calculated to stir up
interest in the past. As he entered the noble
Church with its beautiful arcades of vari-coloured
stones with its three curious rood-loft stairways;
with its frescoes and carvings and monuments; as he
examined the tomb stones, tablets and registers
with their pathetic records of shipping disasters;
as he came upon Menhir or Barrow or Cromlech in his
walks; as he listened to the old men recounting
their experiences of shipwreck or relating
smuggling stories that they had learnt from their
parents; as he came on occasions within the mystic
circle of old world superstitions or listened to
surviving fragments of folk-lore; he was seized
with the 'cacoethes srcibendi'. He longed
to write the history of the parish, as he felt with
an ever increasing conviction that the annals of a
place so rich in incident ought not to be lost in
the ruck of forgotten things. So, while acutely
conscious of his own lack of archaeological
knowledge, the author resolved to do his poor best,
to make some sort of record of St. Keverne.
As soon as he had arrived at this decision, he
found many who were glad to render him invaluable
assistance. The Rev. T. Taylor, Vicar of St. Just
and sub-editor of the Victoria History of Cornwall,
Mr. Thurston Peter, author of several historic
works, the Rev. W. Jago of Bodmin, Dr. Rowe of
Bradford, Mr. Howard Fox of Falmouth and other
antiquarians placed what materials and advice they
could at his disposal. Thus encouraged, he began
his work. First he consulted the divers works well
known on Cornwall from ........ downwards, and
which perhaps need not here be specified. In the
British Museum and different libraries he consulted
and made extracts from Rolls, Journals of Learned
Societies, Episcopal Registers and other works
likely to throw light upon the subject in mind. He
was greatly assisted in this work by his sisters,
who have been indefatigable in their searches for
materials out of which to fashion a parochial
history and whose patient labours cannot be too
gratefully acknowledged.
  Documents of rare value have been
freely lent by Parishioners and friends which have
enabled him to correct in one or two instances
mistakes made by writers who had not access to
these sources of information. One notable instance
is that of the involuntary voyage of Mr. John
Sandys and others to the coast of France. Hal's
romantic but very inaccurate version has been
incorporated into more than one history of
Cornwall.
The minutes of Parish meetings and Church wardens
and Overseers accounts for the past 150 years,
which the writer has carefully studied have not
apparently been hitherto exploited. From these much
information has been obtained as to Parochial
doings in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.
Upon some matters of supreme interest such as the
designing and building of the present Church he has
unfortunately been unsuccessful in discovering
records.
It would seem that none of the mediaeval Bishops
ever ventured so far off the beaten track as to
visit St. Keverne. Consequently there are few
references to the Church in their Registers.
It must be remembered that the Parish is not only
situated on a remote county, but in a part of that
county that is right away from the highways and
traffic. With its great sea frontage to the East,
with Crouza and Goonhilly Down to the South and
West with Gillan Creek, an estuary of the Helford
River to the North, it is so effectually cut off
from the surrounding world as to be civilly and
socially, if not geographically, practically an
island. For centuries it has been a little
'imperium in ineperio' a place in which the
inhabitants managed their own affairs and resented
anything in the nature of interference from the
outside. An ex-parishioner coming to St. Keverne
was, and indeed is today, termed a foreigner. The
people might quarrel amongst themselves but are
agreed in resisting the counsel of the intruder.
They mostly settled their differences at least in
later days, with a vote, taken by means of black
and white beans. But dictation from outsiders they
abhorred. Even the great St. Kearian himself, who
planted the Church in the parish, is traditionally
said to have been treated with such scant respect
that he laid the ban upon the plan to which further
reference will be made. When, in the days of Norman
Kings, the old Dean and Canons were abolished in
order that the Church might be affiliated to the
Abbey of Beaulieu, St. Keverne people appear to
have given the intruding Monks anything but a
welcome.
At the Reformation, in the days of Edward the
sixth, when an emissary was sent down to the
Helston district to destroy certain images in the
Churches, St Keverne men would not submit to such
an outrage upon their religious liberties, and took
the speediest way of giving effect to their
intentions. They went into Helston and killed the
Commissioner.
In the days of the Commonwealth they initiated an
armed rebellion in defence of their spiritual
privileges.
Coming to more modern times they offered strenuous
opposition to the Poor Law Amendments Act, stoutly
alleging that they could manage their own affairs
and look after their own poor. Exposed as they were
to 'perils of the sea', and in some
periods, to invasion of pirates and marauders,
driven by the stern force of circumstances to rely
upon their own resources, living in a little world
of their own, St. Keverne men naturally developed a
sturdy and independent spirit and became defiant of
outside authority. Any government officers who
ventured so far a field as to visit this isolated
parish, mostly came for the purpose of exacting
tribute and disturbing the even tenor of the
people's ways. So if the latter were unable to
resist them, then they tried to outsmart them and
this developed the smuggling instinct. All through
their history they have been, as compared with the
rest of the county, a people apart. The political
and religious movements which overwhelmed and
engulfed other people only remotely touched them.
But when that happened they were roused to the
bitterest and most vehement opposition.
If any proof were needed of the very unique and
isolated position of the parish in relation to the
rest of England, it may be found in the fact that,
possessing as it does one of the finest Churches in
the county and having, for an agricultural and
fishing district, a large population, yet not only
did none of the mediaeval Bishops of Exeter find
his way here, not even the Wesleys, who made so
many itineraries in West Cornwall, were seen to
have got sufficiently 'per pan' the main
thoroughfares as to visit St Keverne.
It is of this little world so far removed from the
crowded haunts of men, self-reliant, self centred
and self-governed, as it, almost alone of the
parishes of England, could be, that the author
presumes to give an account. Yet he is more an
editor than an author for his task mainly lies in
compiling and utilizing the considerable mass of
material that he has been able to collect.
The very isolation of the parish and its communal
entirety and independence lend to its history in
the writer's judgement, a freshness and charm
that are not always found in differently situated
localities.
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