CHRONICLES OF CORNISH SAINTS, II. — S. PETROCK. 3 



Petrock was a Cornishman, and the son of Clement, a prince or 

 chief. In a MS. Life, attributed to John of Tinmouth, and pub- 

 lished in the Ada Sanctorum,'^ we are further told that the people 

 wished him to become their chief, but that he resolved to abandon 

 an earthly, in order that he might the better seek after a heavenly 

 crown. Thereupon he withdrew from the world, and lived in the 

 seclusion of a monastery. We are not told precisely where this 

 monastery stood ; but as he is said t to have occupied a hermitage 

 in the valley at Bodmin, and as we know that a conventual estab- 

 lishment associated with his name existed in subsequent times 

 near the site of the present parish church, there we may conjecture 

 the scene of his retirement to have been. Beside the copious 

 fountain which still flows in that pleasant valley, we may picture 

 to ourselves the young recluse, deepening his religious ardour by 

 devotion, and acquiring day by day a firmer grasp of the faith of 

 Christ. After the lapse of some years he left his hermitage and 

 went to Ireland, to study theology under the eminent teachers 

 who flourished there in that early age. The most famous school 

 in the island at that time was at Clonard, in Meath. It was 

 founded by S. Finian, A.D. 520, and it soon became a kind of 

 University for the whole country. " The fame of his good works," 

 it is said, " drew many great men to him from divers parts of the 

 " land, as to an admirable sanctuary of all wisdom, to learn in his 

 " school the sacred scriptures and the ecclesiastical institutes." X 



» June, vol. I, p. 400. ^ 



j LelanrVs Coll: I, 75. 



+ Colgan, Feb. 23. 



It is by no means improbable that Finian spent part of his missionary 

 life in Cornwall. Though the conjecture may be somewhat hazardous, I 

 venture to suggest that he may be the same person as S. Gwythian, and the 

 foimder of the Church so called in the Hundred of Penwith. F and G are 

 sometimes convertible letters ; e.g., Fingar is called also Guigner (hence 

 Gwinear). De Frimordiis, cap. XVII. No one, I believe, has yet identified 

 the name of Gwythian with any historical personage. Even Whitaker, who 

 was gifted with no ordinary ingenuity and powers of research, passes it by in 

 silence. Dr. Oliver, it is true, informs us that the saint of Gwythian is 

 S. Gothianus ; but can any one tell us who S. Gothianus was ? Traces of the 

 same saint may be found in close contiguity to the hermitages of Petrock 

 and his friends Sampson and Constantine. There was discovered, about fifty 

 years since, in a sand-hill near the present little Church of S. Enodoc, an 

 old chapel, supposed to have been dedicated to S. Gwythian, corresponding 

 in general character and masonry with one found, also buried in the sand, 

 in the parish of Gwythian. Haslam's Perranzabuloe, p. 82. 



