278 ANTHONY PAYNE, CORNISH GIANT. 



of the Royal Institution of Cornwall. Respecting Anthony- 

 Payne there is little more to add. He remained at Plymouth till 

 Old Time pulled down the giant himself. On obtaining leave to 

 retire, he went back to Stratton, where he died in the same house 

 in which he was born. The floor* of the apartment had to be 

 taken up to remove his remains, which were interred in a vault 

 (according to Eawker) outside the southern wall of Stratton 

 Church, July 13th, 1691, at an age which was little short of 80 

 years. 



A few words respecting the picture. John (Grenville), Earl 

 of Bath, took down the famous house of Stowe soon after the 

 Restoration, and built on its site a magnificent edifice, which, 

 after flourishing about half- a-century, was demolished, and has 

 not since been rebuilt. In the great hall at Stowe this portrait 

 of Anthony Payne had found its first resting-place, and when 

 Stowe was dismantled, on the death of the Earl of Bath, it was 

 removed to Penheale, another Cornish manor house of the 

 Grenville family. But there the likeness of him who had done 

 so much for the House was not valued, and was soon forgotten. 

 Gilbert, the Cornish historian, in his peregrinations in search 

 of material for his work, as Hawkerf tells us, obtained^: from a 

 farmhouse on the estate, the portrait rolled up. The farmer's 

 wife described it as "a carpet with the effigy of a large man on 

 it ;" it had been a gift to her husband by the landlord's steward, 

 and she gladly sold it to him for £8. On the death of Gilbert, 

 his effects were sold at Devonport, and a stranger bought the 



* At the Tree Inn, Stratton (said to have been the head-quarters of the 

 Koyalists on the night preceding that battle) the hole in the ceiling is still shewn 

 through which the corpse of Anthony was removed from the room in which he 

 died. 



f " Foot-prints of former men in far Cornwall," p. 41. 



X On one of our rambles, while staying at an old inn at Launceston, Mr. 

 Gilbert was informed by one of his travellers that he had learnt of an old paint- 

 ing representing the great Anthony Payne (a celebrated giant of Cornwall) being 

 jn the neighbourhood ; Mr. Gilbert took me with him to see it, and on the dis- 

 covery of its having been in the Payne family and an undoubted original, — (it was 

 however, in a very dilapidated state, full of holes and thick with dirt), — Mr. 

 Gilbert consulted with me as to my ability to restore it for him. I undertook to 

 do so, which occupied me afterwards full two months, and it was engraved as a 

 frontispiece to his work. H. P. Parker, 



Journal E.I.C., No. 22, p. 348. 



