In the year 1463, in the reign of King
Edward IV, a London merchant, accompanied by his serving man,
was crossing the moors to the south of Wyke St. Mary, and,
seeking shelter for the night, met a maiden looking after a few
sheep. At the stranger’s request she took him to her father’s
humble home, and there the wayfarer stayed that night. Next
morning Richard Burnsby, for such was his name, having been
greatly impressed by their daughter’s wit and beauty, asked the
parents if he might take her to London to assist his wife. So
Thomasine Bonaventure set off, travelling pillion behind her
master’s servant, and in a fortnight’s time was riding through
the streets of London town, which one day were to ring with the
praises of this unknown village maid.
After Thomasine had spent a few years as a
capable and faithful serving maid, her mistress died, and she
consented to become the wife of her master. Three years
afterwards her husband died of the plague, leaving to his wife -
a young and beautiful widow - the whole of his property. In one
of her letters she announces her husband’s death and gives the
Reeve of Week St. Mary ten marks “to the intent that he shall
cause skilful masons to build a bridge at the Ford of
Green-a-more, yea, and with stout stonework well laid, and see
that they do no harm to that tree which standeth fast by the
brook, neither dispoyle they the rushes and plants that grow
thereby: for there did I pass many goodly hours when I was a
small mayde, and there did I first see the face of a faithful
friend.” An old chronicler says: “Her dower, together with her
youth and beauty, procured her to the cognizance of divers
well-deserving men, who thereupon made addresses of marriage to
her, but none of them obtained her affection, but only Henry
Gall of St. Lawrence, Milk Street, an eminent and wealthy
citizen, and a merchant adventurer.”
Soon after their marriage we find that
“twenty acres of woodland copse in the neighbourhood were bought
and conveyed by the gracious lady Dame Thomasine Gall to feofees
and trustmen, for the perpetual use of the poor of Week St.
Mary, for fewel to be hewn in pieces once a year and finally and
equally divided, for evermore on the vigil of St. Thomas the
Twin.”
After five years Henry Gall died, leaving
his wife a great fortune, and it is written, “The fame of the
virtue, wealth and beauty of the said Thomasine spread itself
over the City of London, so that persons of the greatest
magnitude of wealth and dignity there courted her, Among the
rest it was the fortune of John Percyval, Esquire, goldsmith and
userer (that is to say, banker) to prevail upon her to become
his wife.” He was very wealthy and of high repute, alderman of
his ward and of noble character. Their wedding, about the year
1480, was made a kind of public festival. As a wedding gift of
remembrance to her old home she directed that “a firm and
stedfast road should be laid down with stones, at her sole cost,
along the midst of Green-a moor, and fit for man and beast to
travel on with their lawful occasions from Lanstephadon (Launceston)
to the sea.”
At another time she gave forty marks
towards the building of a tower for St. Stephen’s Church, above
the causeway of Dunheved, and it was her wish “that they should
carry their pinnacles so high that they might be seen from
Swannacote Cross, by the moor, to the intent that they who do
behold it from the Burgage Mound may remember the poor mayde who
is now a wedded dame of London Citie.”
In 1486 John Percyval became Sheriff of
London, and in 1498 Lord Mayor, and was knighted by the King.
A letter written at this time to her mother
reads:
“Sweet mother, thy daughter hath seen the
face of the King. We were bydden to a banket at the royal
palace, and Sir John and I could not choose but go. There was
such a blaze of lords and ladies in silks and samite and jewels
of gold, that it was like the citie of New Jerusalem in the
Scriptures, and thy maid Thomasine was arrayed so fine that they
brought up the saying that I was dressed like an altar. When we
were led into the chamber where His Highness stood, the King did
kiss me on the cheek as the manner is, and he seemed gentle and
kind. But then he did turn to my good lord and husband, and say,
with a look stern and stark enow, ‘Ha, Sir John! See to it that
thy fair dame be liege and true, for she comes of the burly
Cornish stock, and they be ever rebels in blood and bone. Even
now they be one and all for that knave Warbeck, who is among
them in the West.’ You will guess, dear mother, how my heart did
beat. But withall the King did drink to me at the banket and
merrily did call ‘Health to our Lady Mayoress Dame Thomasine
Percyval, which now feedeth her flock in the Citie of London.’
And thereat they did laugh and fleer and shout, and there was
flashing of tankards and jingling of cups all down the Hall.”
After twenty-five years of married life,
Sir John died in 1504, and Thomasine, who lived for another
thirty-five years, “employed the residue of her life to works no
less bountiful than charitable - namely, repairing highways,
feeding and apparelling the poor, etc.” In her will, dated 1512,
she makes her cousin, John Dinham, residuary legatee and leaves
£20 to her brother, John Bonaventer.
She died in 1539 at the age of eighty-nine.
Stratton Church accounts show that on the day on which she was
to be “remembered” prayer was to be made for the repose of her
soul and two shillings and two pence paid to the priests for
bread and ale.
Both she and her husband were very loyal to
their native places. He, amidst many duties, endowed
Macclesfield, near which he was born, with a free grammar
school, “because there were few schoolmasters in that country,
and the children, for lack of teaching, fell to idleness and
consequently live dissolutely all their days.”
At Week St. Mary Dame Percyval founded a
chantry and a college, or grammar school, of which there are
some picturesque remains, notably a recessed doorway with carved
tympanum, a piece of battlemented wall, a well, and the steps
leading up to the top of the wall, where the college bell was
hung.
It has been thought that the chantry and
college were abolished under the Chantry Act of 1545, and that
the connection of the school with the Chantry of St. John in the
Church gave the pretext for this action. Carew says: “In
Thomasine Bonaventer’s grammar school divers of the best
gentlemen’s sons of Devon and Cornwall had been virtuously
trained up in both kinds of divine and humane learning under one
Cholwill, an honest and religious teacher; which caused the
neighbours so much the rather and the more to rewe that a petty
smacke only of popery opened the gap for the suppression of the
whole by the statute made in Edward Vi’s reign touching the
suppression of Chanterie.”
The fact however seems to be that when the
Commissioners came to Week St. Mary to inspect the chantry, the
school was already in decay. This is confirmed by the following
extract from the report of the Trustees of the Launceston
Charities in 1859: “Among the records at the Record Office,
London, are certain Certificates of the Commissioners appointed
in the reign of King Henry the Eighth and King Edward 6th to
take the surveys of all Chantries, Colleges, and Free Chapels in
the County of Cornwall, and that by a Certificate made in or
about the 27th year of the reign of King Henry 8th it appears
that a Chantry then existed in the parish of Week St. Mary in
the County of Cornwall on the foundation of Dame Thomazine
Percival, wife of Sir John Percival, Knight, to find a priest
for ever not only to pray for her soul within the Parish of Week
St. Mary, but also that the said priest should teach children
freely in a school founded by the said Dame Percival not far
from the said Parish Church, and he to receive for his yearly
stipend a salary of £12 and 6 shillings to be levied of the
lands given amongst other uses to that intent and purpose: to
find a manciple or usher also to instruct and teach children
under the said schoolmaster, and he to have for the maintenance
of his living yearly 26 shillings and 8 pence. To give to the
Laundress to wash the clothes of the Schoolmaster and Principal
for her reward yearly 13 shillings and 4 pence and the remainder
of the said lands and possessions belonging to the said Chantry
the Trustees willed should be expended in the keeping of an obit
yearly (18th April, see Tywardreath Obituary) for her within the
Parish Church aforesaid.”
“From a similar certificate of certain
other Commissioners appointed in the second year of King Edward
VI (1548) and by a memorandum thereto, it was noted that the
Borough of Launceston was a very meet place to establish a
learned man to preach and set forth the word of God to the
people and also to teach children in their grammar and other
necessary knowledge, and that whereas the said school at Week
St. Mary was then in decay, the said Borough of Launceston was a
very meet place to have the foundation of the said school
removed unto.
“By the ninth and tenth certificates of the
said Commissioners issued some time in the reign of King Edward
VI, it appears that the said Chantry of Week St. Mary was
removed to Launceston, and that the schoolmaster, usher and
laundress of the said school of Week St. Mary were to continue
their services at their accustomed wages (amounting together to
£17 13s 3d) at Launceston.”
It was Horwell Grammar School, as it is now
called, in Launceston, that benefited by the action of the
Commissioners, so that “Dame Percyval’s” Charity was not
misappropriated by the Crown, but passed from her beloved Week
St. Mary to Lanstephadon, which she also loved.
(Copyright Notice)
This extract has been taken from the book
"A ROMANCE IN WEEK ST. MARY" by M.V.H. & A.L.S. published by
Frederick Warne & Co Ltd 1930. "Every effort has been made to
trace the copyright holders and they will be duly acknowledged
if they come forward" |
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