148 NOTICE OF JOHN DE TREVISA. 



comparatively obscure a person as Trevisa may yet be brought to 

 light. 



John de Trevisa was born, according to our county historian, 

 Carew, at Crocadon, near Saltash,* a mansion which was the resi- 

 dence of his family for many generations afterwards, until it was 

 purchased of the last of the family, William Trevisa, about the 

 year 1690, by Sir Wm. Coryton.t Carew gives the arms of the 

 family of Trevisa as "gules, a garb or.".]: 



Born in the year 1342, John de Trevisa was educated at 

 Oxford — first at Exeter College and then at Queen's, where he 

 became a fellow, and afterwards a secular priest. He was appointed 

 domestic chaplain at Berkeley Castle by Thomas Lord Berkeley, 

 who subsequently presented him to the Vicarage of Berkeley, 

 where he is believed to have died, A.D. 141 2, || at the ripe age 

 of 70. 



If it be too much to say of Trevisa that he was a man in ad- 

 vance of his time, it may at least be truly said of him, that his 

 literary works which have come down to us are sufficiently numer- 

 ous and varied in character to stamp him as a man of no ordinary 

 attainments and industry. Bishop Tanner enumerates no less 

 than eleven separate Avorks of Trevisa, some of which were printed 

 after his death, though now of extrem.e rarity, and others remain 

 in MS. in the British Museum, Bodleian, and in private libraries. 

 Some of these works are composed in Latin, others are transla- 

 tions of Latin books into such English as prevailed at the time, 

 and which, according to Fuller, § he was instrumental in improving 

 and purifying. Trevisa did not confine his labours to subjects 

 connected with his sacred calling,^ for besides descriptions of 

 Britain and Ireland, he gave a genealogy of David II, King of 

 Scotland, and of our own King Arthur ; wrote on the virtues of 

 the Bath waters, comparing them with those of Aix la Chapelle ; 



• Careio's Cornwall, ed. 1811, p. 269. 



■j- Wallis's Cornwall Register, 1847. " Crocadon." 



+ This coat is confirmed by a MS. note book of the Herald's Visitation of 

 Corn'wall in Camden's time, in possession of Mr. Borlase, of Castle Horneck. 



II Bp. Tanner, BiUiotheca Britann. (folio), 1748, p. 720. 



§ Fuller's Worthies, i, 217. 



% See list of works at end. 



