 Appendix of Silly and its Legends by Henry John Whitfeld. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Timothy Ferguson. Appendix. A supplementary chapter is but a dull affair, after all. If anything good has gone before, this kind of parting word must always be full of melancholy. We are winding up a feast by languidly picking the bones. Yet, a supplementary chapter must be written, where it only to rid the main narrative of those dry details and common places which, when gathered together and set apart from the rest like an awkward squad, may be reviewed and dispatched at once. In this case, moreover, I have an additional reason for dreading the ponderous dullness of an Appendix. Almost every account of Silly has been written in a style so irracula and so heavy, with such a parade of learning and such an apparent inquisition into antiquities that as soon as one only touches on a point of classical or barbarian information, the shadowy hand of some sage Theban seems to start up and claim it for its own. Footnote. I may say here that Silly is as much an unknown land as the Tierra del Figo. In the City article of the Times of, I think, May 31st, it is contrasted with Lobos Ofuono, the guano rocks in the Pacific, and described as being inhabited by fishermen and pilots. I only wish the writer could see the Abbey Gardens. Footnote ends. Erudition appears to be the forte of the clerical historians of Silly, their strongest point in fact, except smuggling. Footnote. If credit is sometimes taken where there is no learning, credit is sometimes also denied where it exists. We know the old epigram. Sige de Voltaire, Quenetrein, Passemem academicien. But I remember a case more in point, there is a collage in Cambridge to which is accorded an easy and graceful preeminence in letters, yet a cantab wrote this of one of its members. Here lies a doctor of divinity, and a senior fellow of Trinity, and he knew as much about divinity as any other fellow of Trinity. Footnote ends. For my part, I suspect the scholarship of these learned men and go tired of their ancient pegasus, even as the worthy parisian whose wife, being in raptures with the statue of the gardens of the chularees, exclaimed, ah, antique, com se bu, to which the spouse replied, we, ma femme, en marbre. A friend of mine, who was ambassador to the sublime port, was once upon a time sailing down the waters with golden horn in a carc, having in his company a French traveller his temporary guest. My friend wrote a very illegible hand, the conversation happening to turn on the education of our diplomats he observed, partly ingest, partly also in reference to his own deficiencies to subscribe that England cared so little for the training of her ministers as to employ, in his own case, an envoy who could neither write nor spell. The gall bowed, shrugged his shoulders, and made a note of the remark. And in his travels produced with all that depth of observation and knowledge of other lands, which is characteristic of that thoughtful and sober nation, this little anecdote appeared in so many words as an instance of one among the many failings of England. Sometimes when we are told that the Greeks must have colonised these islands, because Priglas is evidently a corruption of Pericles, we are apt to feel such classical superiority rather overpowering, and to wish for an hour with an ambassador not yet in his ABC. Quick note, I suspect that the Solonians, when at a loss for a local designation, sometimes coin one, a very old man told me that Trabbeck engaged a guide to the different places and wrote down their names, as they were reported to him by his Ciceroan. On one occasion they came to a tall rock upon which the sun was shining, the man, not knowing what else to say, boldly affirmed that it was the sunrock, and so it stands in Trabbeck. At propo of him I saw at a farm called London a set of antique teaspoons and a sugar spoon that had belonged to the historian, marked with his initials J.T. So brightly thy brain with its classics is burning, with Greek and with Latin, with verb and with tense, we whisper, O give us a little less learning, and fill up the void with a little more sense. But still, however I may linger on its confines, the supplementary chapter must be written, and to use four-staff's metaphor, this borrowing only lengthens it out, so I may as well begin it once, as I have been writing a good deal about Silly by inquiring what the word Silly means. First, nearly all the variations of the name have the same root, with the exception of Aestrimindes, as they were called by Festus Avinius, a poet who wrote De Oris And not one word of whose works have I ever read, their appellation has always been pretty much the same. They were described as Insulae Sillenae, as Siglides or Suluris, as Sulla by the Britons, or Sulengae Insulae, Infaciolati, as Sully or Silly in ancient grants. I agree, therefore, with Mr Augustus Smith, who is most competent to form an opinion on the subject and with Davies Gilbert, that the derivation of all these names is to be found in the ancient British word Lilly, Silly, Anglis, Conga. Secondly, with regard to their physical changes and their successive inhabitants, there is a field for conjecture much wider and, unfortunately, much more difficult to get over. That the Phoenicians came here, there is little doubt that they traded here is not improbable, but I do not believe that they were the Cassaturides or the Hesperides, unless as being taken as part of that unknown Britain from which the ancients drew such vast mineral wealth. Footnote. Discoverers of a country bank very naturally mistakes of this nature. Columbus looked the island of Hispaniola, part of the mainland, and then afterwards believed the continent of America to be an island. This is exactly a case in point. Footnote ends. This is not unlikely to have been the case for the great distance of these coasts, naturally rendered all knowledge of them imperfect. The early merchants who came here were not colonists, and could know but little of the country beyond its shores and the spots at which they touched Tabata and to refit. The people dwelling here were probably Britons with a slight intermixery of strangers. There is not one single trace of any Greek or Phoenician custom building or name to be found. Footnote. I have, however, stumbled on a fragment of a Roman road or pavement on the old track across the hill from Holyvale to Hughtown. It passes by one of the most charming places on the islands now called Rocky Hill but formerly Brimstone Hill. It is just the overgrown cottage in which to spend a honeymoon, a very pleasant and intelligent dams all seeing a stranger passing before the house, asked me in with the usual courtesy and good breeding of every rank of silly. Footnote ends. Every vestige of religion that we see here, so-called Barrow and Cromlec, are all druidical and every burial place is British or Danish. The aboriginal doubtless was harried by the Saxon and the Saxon by the Dane and the Dane gave place to the Norman, but all these were kinsmen of the great Indo-Germanic race passing over and covering the land like successive waves of the same sea. Thirdly, as respects to the physical changes said to have taken place, there is a good deal of room for hesitation. The islands have certainly varied much even within the memory of man. Two fields at St Mary's that are now submerged are still remembered to have been cultivated between Briar and Samson and Briar and Tresco and around Teane and St Helens are seen the remains of hedges and of buildings. Hedges of the kind are said to be found in many places now covered by the sea. St Helens, which is uninhabited, had formerly a church. St Lyde, supposed, I know not why, to be Rat Island, is spoken of by Leyland as a place where was a great superstition. The same venerable authority calls Trescor or Innescor, the largest of the islands and mentions its circumference as being between 9 and 10 miles, and adds that wild boars roamed over it. This extent therefore must have been double what it is now. In fact, exactly what it would be, including Briar and Samson, and it must have had coverts for the wild animals that ranged through it, which it does not possess now. Fourthly, again, tradition says that Silews once united to lands and by attractive country called the Lioness are in Cornish. Lethoso, containing 140 churches and a vast population and this wide district, was sunk beneath the sea by some violent convulsion of nature. Whitaker supports this opinion and says that fishermen have bought up windows and fragments of building from the buried houses, which is simply absurd for windows were not used in the little cone-shaped hives like cots of those days. Footnote. Several persons tell me that, at Seven Stones, small diamond-shaped panes set in lead and forming root casements have been found. Footnote ends. But the family of Trevelyan have a very curious legend bearing on this point. They relate that one of their ancestors had great possessions on the Lioness or Lethoso and that at the time of the inundation he saved himself by swimming to shore on a white horse in memory whereof. The family bear a white horse as their crest to this hour. Some authors gravely fixed this deluge as anterior to the time of Trajan from internal evidence. In the present day we are too apt to disregard and hold to cheap tradition, yet tradition is often a sure guide when history is merely mute, and particularly in the case of any great calamity or shock such as, for example, the deluge, the memory of which is preserved where records are silent. This is found true especially in districts solitary or remote, as at Silly or in the Highlands of Scotland. Remember an instance of its accuracy, which is to the point here. Some men were boring for water in the north but failed to find it. An old shepherd who observed them told them to try a place which he pointed out, for there was a belief handed down from father to son that a well had formally existed there. The workmen tried the spot indicated and at some distance from the surface broke into an ancient well. Now it is beyond doubt that the local tradition asserts positively the partial or entire connection of Silly with the mainland. The fact is beyond dispute, it may well be without foundation, but right or wrong it is an article of faith. Hell most implicitly, person with whom I was conversing one evening told me that people could once go from hence to Pinzance without finding on their way more water than a horse could drink up. There is likewise a popular legend which relates that at Seven Stones, where there is now a light ship, a city formally stored, footnote, it is always reported by the natives to have been called the city of lions. Footnote ends. It is a very curious circumstance that the part of the rock which is pointed out by tradition as the site of this place is still called the town. In fact I could fill a volume with anecdotes relating to this subject and to the subsidence of the land followed by a proportionate advance of the waters. I heard from the grandson of a very aged man that his great-grandfather remembered a causeway from the Abbey Church at Tresco across the Downs and along what is now Sea to the Old Church of St. Helens. There was a bridge across the Abbey Pool exactly on the same spot where the Woodman one now stands. Now that there have been great changes in the outward confirmation of these islands is, I think, self-evident. People did not build under the Sea, that portion on which are seen works of man's raising must, at the time of their erection, have been above the level of the ocean. Probably many of these changes have been wrought gradually and insensibly as some of them must have taken place since the time of Leyland in the 16th century. A payment of seven quarters of wheat is mentioned. Temp Edward III, which proves that corn was then grown here far more extensively than now. The Sea is certainly encroaching slowly but steadily on all the western coasts. As well as here, for 70 years ago, people played cricket on green fields between Marasian and Penzance, where there is now nothing but sand under the level of the tides. But tradition, which often bears down in its current a sad memory of events that would otherwise have been forgotten as history deems them beneath her notice, speaks so positively and has always forespoken of great and mysterious changes wrought hereabouts by some shock or convulsion that I can hardly doubt that something of the kind must have occurred. In this case, we can but guess at truth. Crests have not existed more than about 600 years. Perhaps the white horse of the Trevelyans may enable us to fix the date of these vast changes. It is supposed that about the close of the 11th century, they recurred simultaneously all over the coast of England, a terrible invasion of the sea. It is known at least that in many places large tracts of land were entirely overflowed and lost. The great district now called Goodwin Sands was certainly swallowed up at that period. Of this, there can be no doubt, since it is an historical fact, it is equally capable of proof, I believe, that the whole of Mount's Bay was then submerged, the former line of coast having extended from Cudden Point to Mouse Hole. The inundation in Kent and Suffix is known to have taken place in autumn and in digging below the sands in Mount's Bay leaves and hazelnuts are constantly found, showing that the incursion of the sea must have been sudden and at a season of the year when leaves and ripe fruits were plentiful. St. Michael's Mount was called the Hall Rock in the Wood, which it then was, the same deluge that was so wide and so disastrous in its effects, may have proved equally fatal here. There might have been no lioness overwhelmed and the tale may, as it is said, be an invention of Florence of Rochester, but the deadly work of the waters not improbably left marks of its course on these islands. There was, at that time, a mighty flood. It submerged almost provinces, one portion of land and no inconsiderable one, so destroyed, was in this very neighborhood. Why may the effects of the deluge not have swept past this spot and covered what evidently was once dry and cultivated land? Tradition has sold them wrong in outlines, though it has sold them right in details. The white horse of the Trevalians may not have been a mere myth, after all. When the flood took place along the coasts, their ancestor may have saved himself by swimming, and his son or grandson have assumed the present crest of the family, in honor of an event which occurred within memory of living man. Gentlemen, said once a celebrated geologist, having started some novel theory before a crowded university lecture room and being afraid of his own boldness. Gentlemen, I never theorize, pray, tell nobody what I have now said. In venturing on the above hypothesis, I do not lay down a positive fact, like the worthy lecturer, I state no theory. I only throw out a suggestion, which, as I write it entirely for memory and without any aid from books, may be incorrect both as to facts and dates. Perhaps, however, the hint is worth giving, as it is the only practical way, at least the only one that has occurred to me of reconciling mythology with what is authentic and true. Fifthly, the greater extent of these islands at some form and uncertain time is, I think, proved as well by scanty historical records, as by the druidical remains and separical monuments, which are not only numerous, but in many cases large and of some pretension. As I said elsewhere, if there were temples there must have been priests and worshippers, if there were so many chiefs and men of rank, as we may suppose there were by the large tombs so frequently discovered, there must also have been common people in proportion. Now, tombs of all kinds are found everywhere. I saw by mere chance, at the abbey, two opened evidently Danish, in one of which the body had been doubled up perhaps from being neglected until cold, for the head was upon the chest. They both pointed east and west. Several layers of bones were found, a day or two after, in one of which was a curious round stone marked with a Greek cross, showing probably that the dead were Christians and proving a successive population on this spot. They might have been a memento of the conquest of Siddeley in 927 by Athelstan, the eighth Saxon king who, after offering up his Orisons at the ancient Church of St. Berrien, near the land's end came hither and found it a priory on this sunny slope. On his return to Cornwall he built also, in pursuance of his vow at College St. Berrien, there must have been some considerable number of inhabitants here or a king would not have thought it worth his while to conduct the invasion in person. As regards the graves, Pliny speaks of the fondness of our ancestors for insular internment, but the custom entailed an expense only to be incurred by the rich and could not at all events be applicable to close and crowded burial places. Another peculiarity of these islands, as I before said, is their want of all medieval remains. There are literally no separical relics. We find historical reminiscences of many families, some of considerable antiquity, but all are gone and vanished utterly. The noble Norman House of de Barrenton was seated here and we read of Rudolf de Blankminster and John de Allet and William de Poe and of others of no mean estate. Yet there is no sign nor token of their existence to be discovered. I do not think that, except in the buried cities of America, there is on record an instance of such an utter blank of such complete loss of all human memories. The physical changes that have taken place through the encroachments of the sea do not account for this perfect void, nor the fact that though this group has been peopled and thickly peopled even from times holy mythical, we find nothing more recent than druidical or Danish graves until we come to those constructed for the fathers of living men. This gap in the ordinary course of time could not fail to strike so careful and acute an observer as Boleys, though he was utterly unable to account for the phenomenon. Sixthly, the subsequent history of the islands may be comprised in a few words of their ecclesiastical annals little is known, their religious establishments were, it appears, many but a small extent. There was a priory at Tresco dedicated to St Nicholas and communicating by road over dry land with the church at St Helens. We find records of cells or chapels, bearing the names of St Theona, St Cumon or St Grumon, St Owound and St Mary. Footnote. I discovered the sight of one of these in Hughtown at the foot of the hill leading to the garrison within the memory of man that was standing a doorway with a fine pointed arch and some windows whose copings and mullions were carved stone. My informant told me that she lived in it and that her father remembered it as an old Roman church. Its remains were only pulled down 20 years ago for I spoke with the mason who did it. Some of the sculpted stones may still be seen on the spot at the burial ground was above it on the rising ground. Lying against the wall at the old pier may be seen the ancient moneybox of the church. It is identified by several persons and is still in tire. There are likewise traces of similar institutions in other parts as at Holy Vale, Church Ledge amongst Port and Khan Friars. Unsalicky down are two crosses built into a hedge but where we may ask are the relics of medieval Catholicism. They are gone even as it were a tale that is told. They exist only in a few gray stones at St Helens, in a solemn arch at Tresco, in the spirit that prudes over the heath at Saliki and clings around the neglected crosses that are mouldering there. All that we see is no more than this, all that we know is that Silly was granted according to one account by Athelston the Saxon to the Abbey of Tavistock and that according to another to the same Abbey by Henry I. The principal seat of spiritual government was at Tresco and the head of it was called the prior of Silly. At the Reformation it lapsed to the crown. As to its civil state, Sully or Silly was granted by Henry I to Reginald in Dumpsterville, Earl of Cornwall, his illegitimate son, and was governed in general by the coroner as his deputy. It seems to have been always attached to the elder of Cornwall as, for its sins, it is now to the duchy. Law, however, appears to have partaken of the character of those good old times. For example, by the Rolls, Placitia did Jurastus at Assisi's, Twelfth of Edward I, John de Allet and Isabella his wife hold the Isle of Silly and hold their all kind of pleas of the crown throughout their jurisdiction and make indictments of felonies. When anyone is attained of any felony he ought to be taken to a certain rock in the sea, and with two barley loaves and one pitcher of water upon the same rock they leave the same felon until, by the flowing of the sea, he is swallowed up. This John de Allet held lands of Ranolf de Blanqueminster, footnote called in the Old Rolls, Del Blanco Ministerio, Blanqueminster or Wittchurch, Constable of the Castle of Enner, footnote at Ante Ennor, Enemore, that is Great Islands and Marys, by night service. By the time of Henry III, Dru de Barrenton was the great man here. They were true sea kings, those old barrentons, keeping to the tastes of the Northmen they held the Channel Islands under the crown and were known to have stuck as long as they could to the seashore. At this time the Isles of Silly were diminished and brought very low by persecution and plague and trouble. In the time of Henry VI they were valued only at a rent of 50 puffins or six shillings, eight pence. In 1484, Temp King Richard III, they were estimated in the time of peace at 40 shillings in time of war nothing. At the Reformation they were said to have been forgotten. They did not go with the Abbey Church of Tavistock to which they obtained ecclesiastically nor were they placed under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Exeter until 1837. In fact it is a mystery how or when the civil and ecclesiastical power lapsed to the Duchy of Cornwall. In the grant of it to the King's Older Son there is no mention whatever made of the Isles of Silly. On the 20th of June, sixth year of Edward VI, the inner deed of releasing an annuity granted by Bochamp out of the lands of Trevennic and St Agnes Parish in Cornwall, the party releasing describes himself as Thomas Godolphin, a squire, captain of the Isles of Silly. Queen Elizabeth granted these islands to Sir Francis Godolphin on military tenure at a yearly rent of 10 pounds and they remained in his family till about 17 years ago when the Duke of Leeds refusing to renew William IV as Duke of Cornwall gave a lease of 99 years on three lives to the present proprietor, Mr Augustus Smith. Seventhly, in my motto prefix to this work, I have altered the Giara and Sefero of juvenile into names derived from this group and there is a propriety in doing so for these islands like those of Greece were used as places of confinement and of banishment. In St Tartus, a heterodox bishop from Spain was exiled hither by Emperor Maximus and so were many churchmen and many lay Romans of rank. Dr Bastwick, after his cruel treatment by the Star Chamber, was detained here a prisoner until 1640. He was kept in Stark Castle. The next person emured was a curiosity. Fifth report of the public records 1655, 1656, page 257. John Biddle, the celebrated Unitarian, a prisoner at Silly, allowed a pension of 10 chillings per week and imprisoned there by Oliver Cromwell to keep him out of the way of his persecuted. Footnote, we know well the violence of political hate. Only fancy an assembly of the representatives of the different sects who have found here a prison or a home only picture the Arian and Yuchien Heserach matched with the Unitarian and the Independent and the Fifth Monarchy Man and John Wesley as tough as any of them in spite of his long white hair. I could find but one similarly to express their meeting and that is a sermon I once heard by a worthy and learned canon. He was describing the resurrection. My brethren said the Reverend Demosthenes. Imagine a pile of bones past all imagination. Footnote ends. What a commentary on the success of the struggle for religious liberty. In 1645 Prince Charles came here for six weeks. Lady Fanshawe, in her memoirs, gives a delightful picture of the discomforts of an abode among the Wreckers and Smugglers of that day. Let it be remembered that Highborn Cavaliers and Ladies then adhering to the royal cause did so voluntarily. They might have submitted and enjoyed their own in peace but they preferred exile with honour and when Sir John Grenville might have surrendered these islands to Van Tromp, who came with a mighty armament and offered in exchange for them most advantageous terms, he utterly refused to treat with a stranger or to yield up any part of the soil of England to foreign rule. After gallant struggle he gave up the place into the hands of Blake and Aescoff, the rebel leaders in May 1651. Silly was the resort of many distressed Cavaliers who found here a temporary asylum. Among them was a gentleman of the family of the Lord Proprietor Francis Goodolphin, father probably of the famous Sydney Goodolphin. There are at Trisco Abbey some very interesting fragments of letters written by him during his residence. They give such a faithful picture of the state of affairs that existing in the islands that I cannot refrain from transcribing portions of them, which I am permitted to do by the kindness of their owner. They all bear the date 1643. From Francis Goodolphin to John Rogers. For you're coming over and making up your books, if it were not for displeasing somebody that I never will if I can help it, I should be very glad of seeing you. And the place is worth your seeing too. Indeed I like it much better than I did expect, though I must confess I came, the more willingly hither, because I was not well at ease where I was, ellipsis. There has no ship come in hither since Jack went, but a Falmouth warrior, which received a broadside from one of the pile ships the day before. I conceive there can be no possibility of peace, our God be merciful to us, your friend, Frog Goodolphin. I pray let there be one line in your next in another hand. Number two from Silly, ellipsis, to come hither considering how glad I am at all hours to have you by me, and the novelty of the place for a few days would entertain you contentedly enough, and more than a few would tire you ten times more than Compton did. There are also some things about this place. I do not mean the fortifications, but the grounds wherein your judgment, having viewed it, would be of use to me. I would also that you should see my patience for this place in respect of an absolute wonderful welcome company is a strange change to me. Yet a very honest man, born here, may live very happily, as many do, and would not change for twice so much a year in Cornwall. For all this I would by no means be guilty of drawing you hither if it did anyway dislike your best friend. We have seen no doubtful ship upon the coast, a great while. Yours, F.G. 13th June 1643. Number three. I have received a warrant from the king to carry over two hundred men, more for the safeguard of the fort at Silly for the summer, the estates of diverse delinquents, and the tithes of diverse parishes are directed towards the maintenance of the place. There are also the woods of some delinquents, as the Lord Roberts, both trebles, Boss Cowan, Saint Orban, and Eresy are pointed to be sold by Mr. Jane, Mr. Dryden, Mr. Sperman, out of which six hundred pounds is in the first place to be paid to me for provision of a magazine of victuals at Silly. In the margin is added, all the news at Oxford is of the great blow the Scots have had from my Lord of Newcastle, six thousand said to be slain and taken with all their ordinance and ammunition. This came to the king by many several ways, and I am confident is true in a great measure which God grant to his glory and our comfort, but there is no express come yet from the army. Number 4 Fragment The army goes on, the men from Cornwall are put over for one month more. I must be here at mid-summer, being then promised fairly money for Silly, without which I dare not go among them. If I speed well, I shall God willing be with you, so as that I may be returned from Silly by Mikkelmus, your friend, June 20th, Frager Dolphin. In Lady Fanciola's memoirs, London, 1831, pages 74 and 75, March 1645, after giving an account of her misfortunes, during the passage with Sir Nicholas Crisp, footnote, is this the good and loyal merchant so celebrated in the Civil Wars, footnote ends, she says, next day, after having been pillaged and extremely sick and big with child, I was set ashore almost dead in the island of Silly. We had got to our quarters near the castle where the Prince lay. I went to bed, which was so vile that my footmen ever lay any better, and we had but three in the whole house, which consisted of four rooms, or rather partitions, two low rooms and two little lofts, with a ladder to go up to. In one of these they kept dried fish, which was his trade, and in this my husband's two clerks lay, one there was for my sister and one for myself and one among the rest of the servants, but when I walked in the morning I was so cold I knew not what to do, but the daylight discovered that the bed was near swimming with the sea, which the owner told us afterwards, it never did so but had springtide. With this we were destitute of clothes and meat and fuel, and truly we begged our daily bread, for we thought every meal our last, quote ends. In 1669 the Grand Duke Cosmo, who was making a tour of Great Britain, came to Silly. He gives in his diary a view of Star Castle as it then existed, which corresponds pretty closely with its appearance at the present day. The Grand Duke speaks in terms of praise of the islands, and of the reception he met from the governor. After the Great Rebellion we find the islands declining gradually, the steward of the Godolphan family was the virtual master, and like all stewards fattened on the spoils of his lord. Footnote. I insert here an anecdote very honourable to the nobleman then proprietor. The common ancestor of the present families of the name of Cheris was drowned, and his vessel lost. He left a widow, a son who was quite a youth and six daughters, the boy, feeling his mother and sisters depended on him, and unable to pay his rent, boldly went to England and saw Lord Godolphan. He was fair and of a ready countenance, and when he told his sad tale he was dismissed with the simple words, well my flux and head boy, go back as fast as you can to Silly. There was, however, a generous eloquence in his lord's brevity. He received his house and land rent-free for his life, and was also appointed to a place in the customs. The five girls who survived were insular heiresses, for it is related that they had fortunes of six school guineas each. They too behaved very well. The uncle's will, under which they inherited this wealth, left it only to four by name. Those four nevertheless refused to profit, but what they said must have been a mistake. They made their sister's share equal to their own. Footnote ends. Old Troutbeck gives a lamentable picture of the treatment of all those who differed from this functionary and of the neglect of the Leeds family. A petition sent up by him as chaplain to the Duchess of Leeds was returned by her, and an answer read in church by the clerk to the intent that the Duchess supposed the signatures to the papers she had received forgeries, and that she never interfered in the Duke's business. Poor old Troutbeck, though he did run away to escape the consequences of a little smuggling, wrote a very amusing book, which is well worth the trouble of reading by anyone who wishes to compare the state of Silly in his time, with its position now. The next visitor to St Mary's was no cavalier. In 1743, in Wesley's journal, I find that he started from sedatives with three companions in a boat borrowed from the mayor. They diverted their attention from the dangers of the sea by singing an appropriate psalm. On landing at St Mary's, he called on the governor and presented him with a newspaper, just as one does at the Cape or at Calcutta now, not being allowed to preach in the church, he held forth twice in the street to a great crowd, among whom he distributed tracts and hymn books he then returned, and was in some peril that reached St Ives safely. Two rather naive and characteristic remarks added by the excellent missionary, first when the pilot from the heavy swell said that they should be lucky if they reached land, Mr Wesley remarked, that he knew not him whom the wind and seas obey. Secondly, when he saw the numbers of workmen and people employed by government, he marvelled that they're being collected on such a barren rock, which, whosoever would take, might have for his pains, but he soon discovered, as a reason, the opportunity of hearing the gospel from him. I learn, however, though the fact is suppressed by the worthy man, that he was pelted out a few town, and that this was the reason for his short stay. The now remains little to add, the state of Silly began to reach its lowest point of depressions, and Agnes was at one point entirely uninhabited. The wretched dwellers on the other islands used to come to St Mary's every Saturday for the purpose of systemic beggary, and the pittance thus gained with the trifle earn from burning kelp, and by fishing formed their sole resource. Their condition may be supposed by this fact. Footnote, it is much to the credit of the Solonians that in one respect their standard of morality is very high, they are extremely honest in all my dealings with them. I have never met with one attempt at fraud. A person, who had the reputation of being at all acts in this respect, is looked down upon and shunned, and is made a sort of pariah among his neighbours. The same feeling that leaves Dawes unbarred and linen exposed on the hills to bleach at night, is extended to personal immunity from danger. Not only a man, but a girl may walk about in safety at any hour, without the slightest fear of insult or of wrong. Their condition may be supposed by this fact. So it is no wonder that in 1774 court rolls showed the existence of great misery, which continued for many years to grow worse and worse until in 1818, a deputation from the magistrates at Penzance came over to investigate it. They did so to the best of their ability on the publication of their report, which excited a painful feeling, very similar to that now awakened for the suffering and starving people of sky, a subscription was begun throughout England on their behalf, and nearly £10,000 were raised for their relief. A collection of this kind generally starts with enthusiasm and ends in a job. It was so in this instance the money found its way into the wrong pockets. Corporations, said Lord Thurlow, are things that have neither noses to pull nor bodies to kick, and the same may be said of committees. Their amount thus liberally given disappeared in the apparent attempt to establish a filtered fishery, and the distress remained as deeply rooted and as hopeless as before. In 1810 Mr Tucker, Surveyor General of the Duchy of Cornwall, came to silly to consider and report on the practicability of making a roadstead and harbour. His pamphlet shows much ability and contains many valuable suggestions, but though he warmly advocated the construction of extensive works as a place of refuge for the shipping, his advice met with no attention from the government. The population in 1801 was 1813, 1838, 2618. In the census of 1851 the numbers were St Mary's, males 737, females 905, total 1642, houses 285, Tresco, males 177, females 237, total 416, houses 96, St Martin's, males 97, females 114, total 211, houses 46, Briar and Samson, males 68, females 60, total 128, houses 33, St Agnes, males 83, females 121, total 204, houses 51, total souls 2601, houses 511. The females appear more numerous than the males, but this is merely owing to the absence of the latter with their ships, both as pilots, and as being engaged in the foreign trade, and the seeming diminution of the population is caused by a stop having been put to the ruinous and demoralising subdivision of land, which was carried to such a frightful extent that sons and daughters were portioned off with a few square yards of ground. My long residence in France enables me to speak on this point sadly and decidedly that the law of major art, or of primogeniture, has been repealed in that country about 60 years. The effect anticipated from its evolution was the creation of an independent class of small proprietors, such as now exists in Italy, where the Coatesville has been a less time in operation, but France has passed through that stage and has gone a step lower in the scale. Land is there parceled out into portions so minute and so numerous as hardly to be imagined by us, but it is done to such an extent that even the roads and paths form a subject of enormous litigation and of vast importance, and as every Frenchman wishes to be a proprietor, the first thing to be done by a peasant when he gets a little money is to buy a patch of land, paying part of the purchase money and borrowing the remainder on mortgage, an idea of the growing ruin of this vast class may be formed from the fact that the lowest average rate of interest for capital raised on this species of security is 9%, while the whole debt on the landed property of France is not less than 450 million sterling, and I have heard it on good authority, computed at 500 million footnote ends. The whole group of silly consists of 145 rocks, but the inhabited portions at present are about six in number as will be seen by the statement above. Many islands formerly cultivated and peopled are now deserted. By the kindness of Mr. John Banfield, I have obtained correct returns of the shipping at three periods equidistant from each other, and sufficiently remote to give a good idea of the steady and increasing prosperity of the port. On the 31st of December 1825, there belonged to silly 11 vessels under 50 tons, four vessels above 50 tons, total 15 vessels of the berthand, 574 tons. On the 31st of December 1838, 20 vessels under 50 tons, 30 vessels above 50 tons, total 50 vessels of a berthand of 3,062 tons. On the 31st of September 1851, 13 vessels under 50 tons, 46 vessels above 50 tons, total 59 vessels of a berthand 6,843 tons. The largest vessel built out and belonging to the port is the Casuitorides, a 414 tons register belonging to the Messas Banfield. A great proportion of the Solonian merchantmen is A1 for 12 years at Lloyds. In a dozen years, the average measurement increased from 61 to 116 tons, a progress probably under our own in the annals of Marine Enterprise. If silly owed to the present proprietor no more than the abolition of this system, she would have entailed upon her a deep debt of gratitude, but her obligations are far more extensive and important, and she has forgotten the sufferings caused by her ancient misrule, and has thriven under a hand dispensing far more liberally than it receives. If the scene of more than Celtic misery, which 17 years ago characterized these islands has, like the magic of a dissolving view, been passed into a state of prosperity without a parallel. If there be no mendacity, no unions, and no paupers, if the land be cultivated like a garden and the port full of ships, if the churches be crowded with well dressed and devout congregations, if smuggling and wrecking be unknown, if all these things be true, and that they are so every resident can testify, it is wholly the work of one man, in spite of every obstacle and discouragement, and long-standing abuse, he may indeed well say, as did his namesake of Rome, lateritium invi manareum relinquo, footnote, I found it a brick, I leave it of marble, footnote hence, end of appendix, recording by Timothy Ferguson, Gold Coast, Australia, end of Silly and Its Legends by Henry John Whitfield.