A few miles from Liskeard, in another direction,
is Menheniot, where Bishop Trelawney
was christened. This was one of the seven
bishops whom James the Second was unwise
enough to commit to the Tower for refusing
to sanction the dangerous Act of Indulgence,
which, under pretext of tolerating dissenters,
was to open the flood-gates of Rome upon our
English Protestantism. It was this sturdy Sir
Jonathan, who, when the bishops took their
petition to Whitehall, and the angry king
exclaimed, " I tell you this is a standard of rebellion!"
fell on his knees and said:

"Rebellion! for God's sake, sir, do not say
so hard a thing of us. A Trelawney can be no
rebel. Remember that my family has fought
for the crown. Remember how I served your
majesty when Monmouth was in the West."

And good Bishop Ken, worthy Izaak Walton's
relation, and the writer of our noble Evening
Hymn, then said:

"We have two duties to perform, our duty
to God, and our duty to your majesty. We
honour you, but we fear God."

The king's face grew dark as he replied:

"Have I deserved this?—I who have been
such a friend to your church? I will be obeyed.
You are trumpeters of sedition. What do you
do here? Go to your dioceses, and see that I
am obeyed."

Then to himself he muttered:
"I will go on. I have been too indulgent
Indulgence ruined my father."

So the bigoted fool went on, and went on,
and never stopped till he got all the way to St.
Germains.

That one heroic act made Trelawney a demi-
god for ever in Cornwall. The miners came
swarming up from underground, singing the
grand defiant ballad still preserved, and so
charmingly rewritten by Mr. Hawker of
Morwinstow:

And shall Trelawney die?
Here's twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why.

Sir Jonathan's pastoral staff is still preserved
as a valued relic at Pelynt Church near East
Looe. It is of gilt wood; lightning fell on it
some years since, but it was as impotent as
James's anger, and only fused the copper
ornaments that adorned it.

North of Liskeard, the crow's black wings
fold upon that strong toppling column of
granite blocks—the Cheesewring (cheese press)
—a rock idol, says old credulous Borlase, who
believed anything and everything.

Near the Cheesewring there is a cave at the
foot of a hill, dangerously near the ruthless
granite quarries, where a strange hermit of the
later times took up his abode in 1735 (George
the Second) to study and to meditate. "The
Mountain Philosopher," as he was called, was
one Daniel Gumb, a poor stonecutter of
Lezant, who, as a mere boy, manifested a passion
for mathematics and astronomy, and being very
poor, resolved to reduce his expenses, so that
he might work less and study more. Finding
a huge sloping slab of granite near the Cheesewring,
Gumb dug a cavern underneath it,
built up the walls with cement, and scooped out
a chimney.

There this true philosopher lived with his
wife and children, rent and tax free. He never
left the moor even to visit the neighbouring
villages. After his death, when the roof of
the cavern fell in, his bedroom and a stone
carved with a geometric figure were shown to
visitors. They too were destroyed. Then the
traveller used to be pointed out the rock
where Gumb sat to watch his only friends the
stars. The quarrymen carted off that too, and
now only the name remains. It is strange
that a genius so strongly directed should have
left no discoveries, and existed only to waste
itself in useless reverie. Not far from the
Cheesewring and the Hurlers (ball-players
turned into stone for hurling on a Sunday),
and near St. Cleer's Church, stands that
curious fragment of half-lost British history,
the Other Half Stone, a Runic cross, to the
memory of Dungarth, a son of Caradoc, King
of Cornwall, who was drowned A.D. 872.
The well of St. Cleer was once, it is said,
used as a ducking pool for the cure of mad
people; a barbarous custom.

Bodmin (the monk's town) a crow of Cornish
ancestry can hardly pass. It is a long street
running between hills, once, antiquaries say,
the site of a Temple of Apollo, built by a
British king, 830 B.C., really, however, the
home of St. Guron, a Cornish anchorite, and
also of St. Petrock, a great man here, and
afterwards of Benedictine, in a monastery built
and favoured by King Athelstan.

In 1496, that impudent impostor Perkin
Warbeck, who pretended to be one of the princes
escaped from the Tower, and called himself
"Richard the Fourth," mustered his adherents
at Bodmin preparatory to marching on Exeter,
and proclaiming war on Henry the Seventh.

In 1550 (Edward the Sixth) Bodmin
effervesced again. The Cornish people were
discontented with the Protector. Wiltshire was up,
Oxford and Gloucestershire were taking down
their bows and bills, Norfolk was on fire, Ket
the tanner holding his court under Mousehold
Oak; Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent were
buzzing angrily. The rebels of Bodmin compelled
Boyer the frightened mayor to furnish them
with supplies. After the crushing defeat near
Exeter, Lord Russell sent Sir Anthony Kingston,
the king's provost-marshal general, to
look up Bodmin and purge it with fire and steel.
Sir Anthony hanged the portreeve of St. Ives in
the middle of the town. He also put to death
Mr. Mayow of St. Columb, upon a charge not
capital, nor even proved. Mr. Mayow's wife,
hearing that her husband was arrested, prepared
to set out to intercede for him, but she stayed
so long before the glass, rendering herself
irresistible, that before she reached the terrible
provost, Mr. Mayow was dangling from a sign
post. Boyer, the worthy mayor of Bodmin,
was delighted at the arrival of law and order—
still more pleased when he received a letter from
the great man naming a day on which he