The Cornish are the people of Cornwall, part of a peninsula about 75 miles long in extreme southwestern England. They are mostly descended from Celts and are grouped among Britons. The peninsula ends at the cape of Land’s End, the farthest southwestern point in Britain. The Scilly Islands, an archipelago of the Cornish peninsula, have been culturally part of Cornwall from early times.
ORIGINS
Cornwall was called by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus Belerion, meaning “shining land.” The final syllable of the name Cornwall is from the Old English walh, derived from the Anglo-Saxon wealas, “foreigner,” applied also to people of Wales. The first syllable seems to point to a connection of Cornwall with the Cornovii of Wales, also defined as Welsh. Members of the Cornovii are known to have joined the Roman army as auxiliaries and a Cornovian cohort was stationed for a time on Hadrian’s Wall. It is possible that some were also stationed in Cornwall and remained there after the Romans departed. On the other hand the word cornu, meaning “horn” in Brythonic, could refer to the horn shape of the Cornwall peninsula and thus could have been the derivation of the tribal name of people there, suggesting that a branch of the Cornovii tribe lived in the region. The Cornovii in Wales could have been originally from Cornwall, possibly during the Iron Age, when there was movement of tribes through Celtic Europe and Britain. Cornwall was referred to in written sources as Cornubia by the eighth century C. E.
Possible Early Visitors
The Roman writer Rufus Festus Avianus gives an account of a place named Oestrymnon with bays and isles and tin and lead and a trading people who built boats of skins and leather. it is thought to be Cornwall and the account may have been based on information from a voyage of Carthaginians led by Himilco in the mid-fifth century b. c.e. The Greek navigator Pytheas described visiting a region in Britain that is assumed to be Cornwall in the fourth century.
In 55-60 C. E. the Romans built a fort at Isca Dumnoniorum (modern Exeter), the civitas capital of the Dumnonii, on the river Exe in Devonshire. The wild moors of Dartmoor, Exmoor, and Bodmin Moor prevented the Romans from trying to incorporate much of Cornish territory into their villa system. As always Cornish tin most interested them. Very few Roman remains are known west of Exeter. Two substantial Roman buildings and a salt works are located near Bawdrip far inland, and an account in Geographia by the first-second-century Alexandrian writer Ptolemy mentions a town of the Dumnonii called Tamaris on the river Tamara, presumably the Tamar, which flows through both Cornwall and Devon and at whose mouth is the present-day city of Plymouth. Ptolemy’s knowledge of Tamaris implies that the Romans made some use of the town, probably as a port. Located on the southwestern edge of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, the Roman fort at Nanstallon overlooks the river Camel from the south. The fort is both the most southerly and farthest western of all Roman military works in Britain, and there are two tin mines near Nanstallon, the only Roman tin mines known in Britain.
Around 75 C. E. work on Isca Dumno-niorum’s forum and basilica had begun on the site of the former fortress, and by the late second century the town walls were built, 10 feet thick and 20 feet high, enclosing the same area as had the earlier fortress. Isca Dumnoniorum was in decline by the late fourth century. Soon afterward in 410 the Romans officially ended their occupation of Britain.
Anglo-Saxon Inroads
From the sixth to the eighth century the Anglo-Saxons pressed westward, attempting to annex territory from the Dumnonii. Dumnonian resistance kept them at bay, and the tribal capital of Exeter, the former Isca Dumnoniorum, held out until 710.
In subsequent encounters with the Dumnonii the Anglo-Saxons were mainly victorious, except in 722, when Roderic, king of the Britons in Wales and Cornwall, repelled Adelred, king of Wessex.
The Wessex Anglo-Saxons finally annexed Cornwall in the ninth century in the course of confronting the Vikings, who had begun raiding in their territory in North Devon and Somerset in 836. The Wessex king Ecgberht fought them at the Battle of Carhampton but was forced to withdraw. Two years later the threat to Wessex became even more serious when the Dumnonii joined forces with the Vikings. Ecgbehrt defeated the combined armies at Hingston Down in 838. According to early annals the last independent king of Dumnonia died by drowning in 875.
Cornish resistance continued for decades, however, and Exeter was retaken. In 927 Athelstan of Wessex expelled the Cornish forces from Exeter and in 936 fixed the east bank of the Tamar River as the boundary between Anglo-Saxon Wessex and Celtic Cornwall.
Advent of the Normans
Devon and Cornwall served as a staging area for Anglo-Saxon resistance against the initial successful campaign of the Normans under William the Conqueror in 1066. In 1068 the sons of the defeated Anglo-Saxon king Harold II raided the southwest coast of Britain. After they were defeated by William’s local commanders, William created an earldom for Cornwall, whose ruler, Robert of Mortain, swore fealty and undertook to guard the threatened frontiers and maintain internal security in return for land.
Later Centuries
In 1201 King John of England granted to the Cornish a charter for a regulatory body called the stannaries (see also Government and Society). In the 14th century Cornwall was given the status of a duchy, over which, by convention, the eldest son of the reigning king of England ruled as duke.
Michael Joseph An Gof was joint leader with Thomas Flamank of the Cornish rebellion of 1497, caused by the imposition of taxes by Henry VII to pay for a war against the Scots. The additional taxes were imposed at a time when the foundation of the Cornish economy, tin production, was in decline. Another grievance was that the council of the duke of Cornwall had sought to impose new regulations on the tin trade, angering the Cornishmen, who resented this interference in the workings of the stannaries. They ignored these regulations and as a result the king confiscated the stannary charters and suspended the stannary government, thus inflaming the population even further against the English. A popular army that at its largest numbered 15,000 began a march to London, hoping to gain recruits from other regions along the way. When this did not transpire, morale among the Cornish began to fall, causing desertions. Arriving at London, the depleted body of about 8,000 men, haphazardly armed and untrained, met a large English army of more than 25,000. In the ensuing fight 200 Cornish were killed and their leaders captured. on Tuesday, June 27, Michael Joseph An Gof and Thomas Flamank were taken from the Tower of London, where they had been tortured, to Tyburn, where they were hanged, drawn, and quartered.
During the English Civil War in the 17th century Cornwall was a stronghold of royalist forces. It was the surrender of Pendennis Castle by its commander to the parliamentary forces that brought the civil war to an end in 1646.
During the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain a prison near Princetown on Dartmoor was used to house American prisoners of war. The harsh conditions led the prisoners to stage an uprising, called the Dartmoor Rebellion, during which many Americans were killed or wounded.
CULTURE (see also Britons; Celts) Economy
Farming The proximity of Cornwall to the warm Gulf Stream gives its southwest coastal
Region a subtropical climate. The river valleys are highly productive; the uplands support sheep and cattle pastures. The moors of Cornwall and Devon are inhospitable and unsuited to agriculture.
Carn Brea Iron Age Hill Fort The large hill fort Carn Brea, perhaps dating to the early first century C. E., provides an example of early economic activity in Cornwall. Occupying a prominent granite ridge, its formidable ramparts were faced with large stone slabs. Several hut circles have been traced in the fort’s interior. Excavation of storage pits has revealed tin and copper ore caches, and one even contained a hoard of gold coins of the Cantiaci tribe in Kent. Evidently the community was focused on trade in the natural metal resources in the area, which may have been exploited for millennia. On the other hand the site of the hill fort was first occupied in the late Neolithic Age before mining began, around 3190-2687 b. c.e. (a time frame based on radiocarbon dating).
Expansion of the Tin Trade under the Romans The Roman villa at Magor Farm, Illogan, near Redruth is the only one known in Cornwall and is the only substantial Romano-British building in the entire peninsula west of isca Dumnoniorum, the civitas capital of the Dumnonii tribe, almost 90 Roman miles by road from illogan. its location near tin mines makes it likely to have been an administrative center for the substantial trade in tin from Cornwall during the later Romano-British period. The Romans in search of greater quantities of tin opened mines in the hills to the east of Trevelgue Head near Newquay.
Until the Middle Ages the Cornish had a tribal society similar to that of other Britons.
Starting in 1201 24 members or “stanna-tors” were elected to a stannary parliament, which was led by a speaker chosen from among the stannators and by an officer appointed by the duke of Cornwall or the Crown, who was lord warden of the stannaries. The stannary parliaments had no regular term but were assembled from time to time at the determination of the lord warden as needed, in order to revise old laws or to enact new ones.
The stannary courts held jurisdiction over tin mining and production (the name stannary derives from the Latin stanum, tin). They operated according to a body of customary law that must have had very ancient roots, in that tin mining in Cornwall dates from the Bronze Age.
In medieval Cornwall Cornish tin miners and smelters were exempt from the authority of any other court than the stannaries, except in cases involving land or homicide. Stannary laws concerned such matters as the percentage of their yield that tin workers had to pay the owner of the land they worked, called toll-tin, and matters of land ownership and usage.
The last Cornish stannary parliament was held at Truro in 1752. In the mid-19th century the various local stannary courts were consolidated.
Cornwall is known today for its many well-preserved Neolithic and later stone constructions, particularly on the high granitic plateau of Dartmoor, where lack of farmland or other resources has deterred subsequent settlement and destruction of prehistoric sites. The Grey Wethers, a stone circle reputed to have been used by Druids and partly reconstructed during the 19th-century revival of interest in prehistory, is among the most famous.
Roman Era A form of dwelling unique to Cornwall was first built on Land’s End during the Roman era. Called the courtyard house, it consisted of several small stone roundhouses arranged around a courtyard. They were constructed singly and also in villages. The best-known courtyard villages are at Chysauster and Carn Euny; that in Carn Euny represents the final phase of occupation of the site. One courtyard house is known in the Scilly Islands. Such houses ceased to be built after the first part of the first millennium c. e.
Settlement Patterns To a degree not found elsewhere in Britain the settlement patterns and location of farmsteads in Cornwall in the medieval period and beyond changed very little from what they were in the Iron Age. Archaeological surveys of the number and distribution of “rounds” (enclosed prehistoric farmsteads with a single ditch and bank) find a significant percentage of them adjacent to medieval settlements, suggesting that the medieval houses were built on top of prehistoric ones. Hamlets and churches were built within Iron Age earth enclosures that in some cases can still be seen; fogous, stone-lined underground chambers, have been found near farms still active today More rarely sites exist that have been continuously occupied since the Bronze Age. In general the basic farmland/heathland zones appear to date back into the second millennium b. c.e. The most significant change over time has been the increase in enclosure of heath-land, while use of arable farmland has remained unchanged, suggesting that already by the Iron Age at least people in Cornwall had arrived at an optimal use of their land and an environmental equilibrium sustainable for centuries.
Of more than 5,000 medieval settlements identified in Cornwall, archaeologists estimate that about 2,500 were built on top of Iron Age settlements. When the approximately 1,000 prehistoric settlements that were abandoned are taken into account, the number of settlements in Late Iron Age Cornwall approaches that of medieval times. Many of the prehistoric rounds had at least three roundhouses. If it is estimated that most of the 3,500 rounds were home to about 30 people, the Iron Age population of Cornwall was more than 100,000, close to the number of Cornish in 1801 c. e. (before the population increases of the Industrial Revolution had begun). Thus the environmental “steady state” mentioned was matched and made possible by population stability.
Pottery A particular type of large ceramic funerary urn, known as Trevisker Ware, had its origins in Cornwall but was traded all over southern England and northern France in the Bronze Age.
Cornish Tin Mining Cornish tin was mostly obtained by “streaming,” that is, collecting nuggets of almost chemically pure tin from the sandy beds of streams. To prepare the tin the Cornish became highly skilled at smelting.
Tin Mining in the 18th Century The mines of Cornwall, along with those elsewhere in Britain, attracted a number of 18th-century inventors, including the Scot James Watt, who hoped to use his improved steam engine to aid in mining operations. A Cornishman named John Edyvean invented the inclined plane system, to reduce the necessity for locks along canals used to transport ore. The world’s first steam-powered rock-boring machine was built by a Cornish firm in 1812. Mining operations expanded in Cornwall after the Cornishman Richard Trevithick’s invention of a high-pressure steam-powered engine in 1796. Trevithick, one of the pioneers of steam locomotion and considered by many to be its real inventor, constructed the first passenger-carrying steam engine, known locally as the “puffing devil,” at Penydaren in 1801. In 1829 the Cornishman Goldsworthy Gurney made the first long-distance journey in a steam-powered vehicle from
Bath to London at an average speed of 15 miles per hour.
At least by the 15th century monks began to write literature in the Cornish language, mostly on religious and biblical themes. Cornish literature was influenced by Breton and by English literature. The earliest known work is The Passion of Our Lord, or Mount Calgary, which treats its subject in a poeticized manner. The Ordinalia, a trilogy of mystery plays, is perhaps the masterpiece of the literature. The plays may have been performed annually as part of the festival of Corpus Christi, which inspired mystery cycles elsewhere in Britain. Many references in the plays to the locality of the Collegiate Church of Glasney in Penryn suggest they were written there. For centuries Glasney was one of the most important religious centers in the southwest of Britain, with an influence that stretched to Exeter, the royal court, and Canterbury, the ecclesiastical center of England.
Burial Practices During the Neolithic and Bronze Ages people in Cornwall made monumental stone mortuary buildings of the type found along the Atlantic seaboard of Europe from Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany to Spain. Local Cornish variants include entrance graves and mound-covered stone passageways, in Cornwall and the Scilly Isles; portal dolmens, large vertical stones holding up a horizontal stone dolmen, in Cornwall and West Wales; and Cotswold-Severn cairns on each side of the Bristol Channel.
Merry Maidens, the name of a Bronze Age stone circle near Penzance, is suggestive of the process of Christianization in Cornwall. The legend concerning the circle is that the stones were originally maidens who, because they danced on Sunday, were turned to stone. Two large standing stones (one fallen) to the northeast of the Merry Maidens are called the Pipers, who had provided music for the illicit dancing.
Conversion to Christianity An important missionary to the Cornish was St. Petroc in the sixth century Petroc went first from Ireland to Padstow and then to Bodmin, founding monasteries at both places. The church of St. Petroc in Bodmin, built in the 15th century, contains an elaborately carved Norman font and the 12th-century ivory casket said to have held the bones of Petroc. Bodmin was once noted for its holy wells; one of these can still be found in the churchyard of St. Petroc’s Church bearing the date 1700. The well water is thought to be a cure for eye troubles.
In the seventh century the Synod of Whitby reestablished England as an ecclesiastical province of Rome, with its formal structure of dioceses and parishes. Yet the Celtic Church in Cornwall was not party to the decision and the Cornish Church retained the monastery as its model.
While the Protestant Reformation was winning many converts in the rest of Britain, the Cornish remained loyal to the Roman Catholic Church. In 1549 thousands of Cornishmen marched to defend the Roman Catholic service. Protestantism entered Cornwall in the 18th century in the form of the Wesleyan movement, and Cornwall has remained a predominantly Methodist area since.
Another probably nonrelated group of the same name, who can be classified as Caledonians, Scots, or Picts, lived in present-day northern Scotland.
World History
