180 CHURCH OF ST. JUST-IN-PENWITH. 



we learn that lie was once Mayor of Saltash, and at the end of 

 his year of office refused to deliver up the mace and the common 

 seal. G-orham is known by the celebrated trial brought by him 

 against the Bishop of Exeter, who would not institute him to a 

 vicarage in Devonshire on the ground that his views were unsound 

 on the subject of Baptismal regeneration; by his history of St. 

 Neot's and some other works; and by the tradition that his 

 protestant instincts were so offended by one of the church crosses 

 that he threw it down a well. 



Amongst other early records of this church we may notice 

 the Taxation of Pope Nicholas IV, which was completed in 1291. 

 I had hoped to find an earlier reference, as in the Eev. Mr. 

 Fagan's account of this church, published in the Penzance Society's 

 Transactions, is a reference to a visitation of 1252. I think from 

 his reference to the Church having been then valued at £8 that he 

 was really quoting the Taxation in 1291. At any rate there is 

 no record of any Visitation in 1252, or anywhere about that 

 time. In the 1291 Taxation the value of the benefice was 

 assessed at £8, a value which it maintained at the date of the 

 Inquisicio Nonarum in 1340. The parish registers are not of 

 very early date, or of particular interest, and I pass on to 

 a record relating to this parish of very exceptional interest, 

 namely the tithe account from 1588 to 1596, in the hand- writing 

 of the then vicar Drake. The collection of tithes has always 

 been a subject of strife. As early as 1410 we find the people of 

 St. Just refusing to pay their dues to Glasney College, and being 

 excommunicated accordingly ; indeed they do not seem to have 

 offered a merely passive resistance, but to have actively molested 

 the collectors, and no doubt merited their punishment. At 

 Towednack, Eedruth, St. Keverne, and indeed in almost every 

 Cornish parish there have been from time to time squabbles about 

 tithes, and highly amusing, as well as instructive, some of these 

 disputes have been. The St. Just tithe book was published a few 

 years since in that invaluable work the Diocesan Kalendar, and 

 it is from that I quote, as I have unfortunately not had the 

 opportunity of looking at the original. The most interesting part 

 of this record consists of the additions of the vicar, Mason, who 

 held the living during the Commonwealth and Eestoration, and 

 who, unlike most of those who were intruded into, or allowed to 



