Famous Cornish People

Gerys-da Kernewek Pobel

Web: www.cornwallforever.co.uk/people

Cornwall has produced many famous people, some were born in Cornwall, some just lived there

Michael Joseph (An Gof) and Thomas Flamank
These were the two leaders of the 1497 rebellion against Henry VII against the taxes he imposed to finance his Scottish war. There was great poverty among the Cornish tin workers, and much local resentment against having to pay towards a war that they felt had little to do with them. At St. Keverne, near the Lizard, Michael Joseph, the local blacksmith roused the village into open rebellion. And in Bodmin, Thomas Flamank, a lawyer, also urged the populace to arms to protest. They led an ill-clad, ill-armed army to march to London. Supporters were collected along the way, and in Somerset Lord Audley took command of the army. By the time it reached Blackheath near London, there were several thousand men armed with staves, pitchforks and home-made weapons. On June 17th 1497 they were surrounded by the King's army of ten thousand men. The battle was brief, 200 Cornishmen died. Lord Audley and Flamank were captured on the battlefield, Joseph caught as he fled towards Greenwich. They were taken to the Tower of London, Flamank and Joseph being executed at Tyburn 10 days later, with Lord Audley being beheaded at Tower Hill a day later. Joseph became known as An Gof, Cornish for The Smith. The rebellion is indicative of the state of Cornwall at that time, and Perkin Warbeck's landing in Cornwall in September 1497 shows further how Cornwall was perceived as being ripe for rebellion. A statue of the two men was unveiled at St. Keverne, on the 500th anniversary. A commemorative plaque was unveiled at Blackheath Common at the same time.

Sir Nicholas Slanning
Sir Nicholas Slanning spent his early life at Maristow, near Plymouth. He left England, aged 23, "to learn the arts of war" in the Low Countries. He was knighted in 1632. Slanning's were one of five Cornish foot regiments formed in October 1641 by Sir Ralph Hopton during the Civil War. They were involved in the battles at Braddock Down, Modbury, Polston Bridge, Sourton Down, and Stratton. Thereafter, combined with Prince Maurice's men, they took Taunton, Bridgewater, Dunster Castle and Wells ending up, after the victory at Lansdown, taking Bath. He died in action in 1643.

Samuel Wallis
Born in 1728 at Lanteglos-by-Camelford, he is not well known, but was a Cornish navigator and a British naval officer who circumnavigated the world. He served under Admiral Boscawen as his flag lieutenant, and was given command of H.M.S. Dolphin in 1766 to explore the Pacific. It was believed that another continent existed to the south of South America, and Wallis spent 20 months sailing round the world looking for signs of it. He found the islands of Tahiti and Easter island, and his reports led to Captain Cook's later voyages. In 1780 Wallis was appointed Commissioner of the Admiralty. He died in 1795.

Captain William Bligh
Born in 1754 at St. Tudy between Bodmin and Camelford. The family moved to Plymouth and he joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman. In 1772 he went with Captain Cook on his second voyage round the world and proved himself to be a good navigator and mapmaker on the Resolution. In 1776, Bligh was selected by Captain James Cook for the position of sailing master of the Resolution and accompanied Captain Cook again. He returned to England in 1780 with news of the final voyage and the death of Captain Cook. In 1787 he was chosen to command The Bounty on a voyage to the Pacific to bring breadfruit to the Caribbean, where they were wanted to provide cheap food for the plantation workers. The Bounty expedition was a disaster, the ship was a converted merchant vessel and was too small. There was a large crew including scientists, and they needed storage space for the cargo of breadfruit that they had to carry. Some of the sailors were known trouble makers, and Bligh did not get on with some of the officers and petty officers. By the time they reached the Pacific attempts to maintain discipline had led to mutiny, and Bligh and those crew loyal to him were cast adrift in a a longboat. In spite of the fact that he had little food and only basic navigational instruments, Bligh sailed the longboat over 3500 miles of open sea to Timor. At the time it was the longest known voyage in an open boat. News of the mutiny was sent to London. Bligh was not blamed for the mutiny, and in 1794 was given the Society of Arts medal for the 42 day longboat voyage. in 1801 he was made a fellow of the Royal Society for services to navigation and botany. He fought in a number of sea battles including The Battle of Copenhagen, where he was personally thanked by Nelson for bravery. In 1805 he was appointed governor of the colony of New South Wales. In 1808 there was a small revolt against taxes imposed by England, and Bligh was deposed and imprisoned for two years until military reinforcements arrived from England to restore order. Again Bligh was not blamed, and was promoted to Admiral. He died in 1817 and is buried in Lambeth in London.

General Sir Walter Raleigh Gilbert
Born in Bodmin in 1785, a descendant of the Elizabethan seaman Sir Humphry Gilbert. At 15 he became a cadet in the Bengal Infantry. He rose to major-general and through his conquests in Northern India became a national hero. The army even issued a medal with his picture on it - only Wellington as an army officer has had the same honour. The citizens of Bodmin decided to erect a memorial to him on the hill overlooking the town known as Bodmin Beacon. A tall, slim granite obelisk was built in 1857 after his death in 1853. It is 144 feet high with the story of his Sikh and Afghan campaigns written on the four sides of the base. The Indian Empire has now gone, and those that fought there like Gilbert largely forgotten.

John Carter
Born 1770 at Breage near Helston, matured to become one of the biggest rogues on the coast, the self styled King of Prussia. Carter was a mixture of hard working fisherman, honest merchant and out and out rogue. He operated out of Bessies Cove, a rocky inlet near Perranuthnoe in Mount's Bay. It was an area notorious for lawless gangs of wreckers and smugglers. But it was a time when few local people thought smuggling to be a crime. John and his brother Henry were well known along the French coast, but during the French Wars they were arrested and imprisoned in St. Malo for a year on one occasion. He mounted guns on the cliffs guarding the approach to Bessies Cove and fired on revenue boats that came too close. On another occasion he raided Penzance Customs House and removed some barrels of wine that they had seized from his boat. In 1807 he disappeared from the area and was never heard of again! He left a journal relating his life and times. The nickname King of Prussia came from his fascination with Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. Bessie's Cove is now called Prussia Cove.

John Arnold
John Arnold, born in 1736 at Bodmin, perfected the ships chronometer. For a ship to navigate accurately it had to know both latitude and longitude. Latitude was calculated by using the sun and a sextant, but longitude had to be worked from an accurate knowledge of the time. Ships timepieces had been inaccurate because of changes in temperature and motion effecting their working. After making some experimental machines, he produced what could be regarded as a production model to the Board of Longitude in March 1771. He lived and worked in a narrow street off Fore Street in Bodmin, and eventually moved to London to produce his chronometers and in 1788 produced the first pocket chronometer. John Arnold made very accurate regulator clocks for the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. His marine chronometers were of such quality that Captain James Cook used them on his South Sea voyages. He is still remembered with a plaque over the entrance to the narrow passage where he once lived - Arnolds Passage. John Arnold died on 11th August 1799 at the age of 63 and is buried in Chislehurst, Kent.

William Bickford
Born in 1744 in Devon, he invented the safety fuse for igniting gunpowder. Cornish mines did not suffer from explosive gasses, but there were many miners killed by misuse of gunpowder. Early fuses were often tubes of reeds filled with powder and were extremely unreliable. Either they exploded too early not giving miners time to get away, or took too long to ignite and killed miners who assumed the fuse had gone out. William Bickford was a leather merchant in Illogan. One day watching a rope maker spinning his threads, he realised that a strand of yarn, impregnated with gunpowder could be included in the rope to make a reliable, predictable fuse. In 1831 he took out a patent on his "safety rods" and manufactured them in a factory at Tuckingmill near Camborne, now commemorated by a plaque. It took some time to get miners to use these safer fuses, as the older, unpredictable ones were cheaper. Eventually common sense prevailed and the mining industry moved over to the safety fuses. He died in 1834. His grandson, William Bickford-Smith, became MP for Truro. In 1974, the Bickford-Smith family bought the Trevarno estate near Helston.

Richard and John Lander
Two brothers born in the Fighting Cocks Inn in Truro in 1804 and 1807 who grew up to become explorers. They were sent in 1830 to explore the lower reaches of the River Niger, and later mounted two more expeditions to the Niger. They found the source, route and mouths of the then unmapped river. A nine hundred mile trek inland took them through hostile natives, tropical diseases and intense heat. Richard Lander was killed in 1834 by a bullet during a fight with natives. John died five years later from a disease he had contracted in Africa. A statue of Richard Lander sculpted by the Altarnun sculptor Neville Northey Burnard in 1852, stands on a tall column at the top of Lemon Street in Truro.

John Couch Adams
A great scientist born in Laneast parish, Bodmin Moor on 5th June 1819. From an early age he showed a bent for mathematics and astronomy in particular. He went to Cambridge University. Solely by the application of mathematics, he proved that there must be another planet circling the sun. A French astronomer came to the same conclusion, and they published their conclusions at the same time in 1846. The planet was called Neptune. He became Professor of Astronomy in Cambridge in 1858. He turned down a knighthood and also the post of Astronomer Royal. He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1866. The Adams Prize, presented by the University of Cambridge, commemorates his prediction of the position of Neptune. He died on 21st January 1892 in Cambridge.

Henry Trengrouse
Born in 1772 at Helston, he was the inventor of the rocket line apparatus that fired a rope to stricken ships on the rocks, and enabled the crew to be taken off. A Helston cabinet maker, he stood helplessly on the beach at Loe bar near Porthleven on 19th December 1807 when the frigate 'Anson' was driven onto the coast. Nearly a hundred men drowned because they could not bridge the short distance from the wreck to the shore because of the boiling surf. Trengrouse spent the rest of his life and saving in inventing an apparatus that would save men under such circumstances. Inspired by a firework display he tried for many years to perfect a rocket that would fire a light line to a boat, so that the sailors could haul in a heavier rope that would bear the weight of men. It took ten years to interest the government in it, and eventually they paid him the grand sum of £20 for the invention. He also invented a type of life jacket, and built a model of an unsinkable lifeboat. He died penniless in 1854.

John Opie
Born in 1761, the son of the village carpenter in Mithian near St. Agnes. From an early age he showed a great talent in drawing. An artist was not considered as employment for a poor boy, and he became an apprentice in his fathers business. Dr Walcot from Truro befriended him and encouraged his talents, and gave Opie an education in mathematics and science as well as drawing and painting. Dr Walcot took him to London and introduced him to Sir Joshua Reynolds, President of the Royal Academy. By 1782 his work was on display in the Royal Academy, and for the next 20 years he was the most fashionable portrait painter in London, painting some 700 portraits. However he died young, in 1807 after a short illness. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Henry Bone
Born in Truro in 1755. He was apprenticed to William Cookworthy at the Plymouth China Works where china was made from the china clay that Cookworthy had discovered at St. Austell. Bone developed into a skilled painter of pictures on porcelain buttons and broaches. In 1778 he painted in watercolours on ivory and enamel in London, and by 1800 was the official enamel painter to the Prince of Wales, followed by the appointment as enamelist to the King from 1801. Later he was made an associate of the Royal Academy and enamel painter to George III. He continued to hold the royal appointment during the reigns of both George IV and William IV. On 15th April 1811 he was elected a Royal Academician. In 1831 his eyesight failed and he reluctantly took the Royal Academy pension. His eldest son became enamelist to Queen Adelaide and Queen Victoria. He died in London on 17th December 1834.

Richard Lower
Richard Lower was born in 1631 on the family estate at Tremeer, St. Tudy. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He obtained his degree and remained at Oxford to study medicine. In 1666, he moved to London and started a medical practice. Before long, he became a member of the Royal Society and a successful court physician. Lower was involved in some of the earliest experiments with blood transfusions, following the similar investigations of Christopher Wren a few years earlier. His early subjects were dogs but he was also involved in the first experimental transfusions of blood into a human subject in 1666. Lower is particularly famous for his work on the brain and nerves, which he carried out as the assistant of Thomas Willis in Oxford during the course of his medical studies. His anatomical and physiological investigation of the structure and action of the heart is recognised as an early breakthrough and he was recognised as one of the most skilled vivisectionists of his time. Following the accession of James II, Lower fell into disrepute due to his anti-Catholic beliefs; he lost his court appointment and his medical practice suffered. He spent an increasing amount of his time in Cornwall until his death in 1691. He bequeathed money to St. Bartholomew's Hospital and to French and Irish Protestant refugees, making plain where his religious beliefs lay.

Sir William Lower
William Lower (1570–1615) born in Cornwall, was an English astronomer from the early telescopic period, and an MP. After studying at Exeter College, Oxford, he married and settled in South-West Wales. In 1607 he observed Halley's comet and took a number of careful measurements which he communicated to Thomas Harriot, by which it was determined that the comet was following a curved course.

William Murdoch
William Murdoch was born in 1754 at Bello Mill Farm, near Cumnock in Ayrshire. He was said to have carried out early experiments in a cave on the banks of the River Lugar. In his mid twenties he walked from Ayrshire to Birmingham to find work at famous Soho works of James Watt and Matthew Boulton. In 1779 Watt and Boulton sent Murdoch to Cornwall, where he made his home in Cross Street, Redruth from 1782 to 1798. All his spare time was spent in design and innovation, he improved the efficiency of steam engines used in the mines and he is believed to have been the first in Britain to construct and use a steam-powered road going vehicle. This was in 1785. In 1792 William Murdoch was the first person in the world to light his house and office by piped coal gas. This laid the foundation for the gas industry of today. Murdoch House in Cross Street, Redruth has been fully restored and now houses various local bodies including Redruth Old Cornwall Society. Among the other successes of William Murdoch include a working model of a low pressure steam locomotive. He also invented a process for clearing beer. Murdoch returned to Birmingham in 1799 to continue his work with Boulton and Watt. He died there in 1839.

Dolly Pentreath
The memorial stone of Dolly Pentreath set into the wall of Paul churchyard, near Mousehole reads

'Here lieth interred Dorothy Pentreath who died in 1777, said to have been the last person who conversed in the ancient Cornish. The regular language of this county from the earliest records till it expired in the 18th century in this Parish of Saint Paul. This stone is erected by the Prince Louise Bonaparte in Union with the Reverend John Garret Vicar of St. Paul. June 1860.'

Her main language was Cornish and she only learned a little English as an adult. She is considered by many people to be the last person to speak Cornish as a first language, although this is contested by some. Cornish persisted as part of the local dialect until the 20th century revival. The Cornish language was already believed to have died out when Daines Barrington visited Mousehole in 1768 and discovered Dolly and others conversing in the language. This aroused a great deal of interest over a long period. Eventually the monument in her memory was set into the churchyard wall in 1860 by Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's nephew. One story says it was originally placed over the wrong grave and had to be moved later.

Edmund, 2nd Earl of Cornwall
Edmund, the son of Richard Plantagenet (2nd Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans) was born on 26th December 1249 at Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. He was not invested with the title until the last days of Henry III's reign. After the death of Henry, Edmund helped finance the newly crowned Edward I military campaigns to the extent, that on one occasion he placed the whole of the revenue of Cornwall at his disposal. Edmund improved Restormel Castle by replacing the wooden buildings in the keep at with stone structures. He also lived for a period at Helston Castle. He made Lostwithiel the county capital and built the 'Duchy Palace' including the Shire Hall, Hall of Exchequer of the Earldom and the Coinage Hall. When he died 1st October 1300 at Ashbridge Abbey, Buckinghamshire of natural causes and his bones were buried at Hailes. He was the last Earl of Cornwall to reside in Cornwall.

Edward, 1st Duke of Cornwall (The Black Prince)
Edward of Woodstock born in 1330 and later called the Black Prince, was the eldest son of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault, and the father of King Richard II of England. He was the first Duke of Cornwall (from 1337), the Prince of Wales (from 1343) and the Prince of Aquitaine (1362–1372). Edward died one year before his father, becoming the first English Prince of Wales not to become King of England. The throne passed instead to his son Richard II, a minor, upon the death of Edward III. In 1348 he became the first Knight of the Garter, of whose Order he was one of the founders. Edward married his cousin, Joan, Countess of Kent on 10th October 1361. She was the daughter and heiress of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, the younger son of King Edward I by his second wife Margaret of France. They had two sons from this marriage. Both sons were born in France, where the Prince and Princess of Wales had taken up duties as Prince and Princess of Aquitaine. Trematon Castle became Edward's favourite castle and he stopped there at regular intervals on his way to and from the seemingly endless wars with France. Edward the Black Prince seemed to have good health until 1366. It was not until his campaign in Spain to restore Don Pedro the Cruel to the throne of Castille that he became ill. Edward contracted an illness on this expedition that would ail him up until his death in 1376. Edward died at Westminster Palace. He requested to be buried in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral rather than next to the shrine, and a chapel was prepared there as a chantry for him and his wife Joan.

Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall
Richard was born on 5th January 1209 at Winchester Castle, the second son of King John and Isabella of Angouleme. He was made High Sheriff of Berkshire at the age of only eight, was styled Count of Poitou from 1225 and in the same year, at the age of sixteen, his brother King Henry III gave him Cornwall as a birthday present, making him High Sheriff of Cornwall and the first Earl of Cornwall. Richard's revenues from Cornwall provided him with great wealth, and he became one of the wealthiest men in Europe. Though he campaigned on King Henry's behalf in Poitou and Brittany, and served as Regent three times, relations were often strained between the brothers in the early years of Henry's reign. Richard rebelled against him three times, and had to be bought off with lavish gifts. As the second son of King John, he had to wait to be crowned as King. In March 1231 he married Isabel Marshal, the wealthy widow of the Earl of Gloucester, much to the displeasure of his brother King Henry, who feared the Marshal family because they were rich, influential, and often opposed to him. Later that year Richard departed for the Holy Land. He fought no battles but managed to negotiate for the release of prisoners and the burials of Crusaders killed at a battle in Gaza in 1239. Later in life he built Liskeard Castle, Tintagel Castle and Restormel Castle but Launceston Castle was his Cornish base. On the 2nd April 1272, Richard died at Berkhamsted Castle in Hertfordshire.

William Borlase
Antiquary and naturalist, born at Pendeen in 1696, of an ancient family (originating at St. Wenn). He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford from 1713 and in 1719 he was ordained. In 1722 he was presented to the rectory of Ludgvan, and in 1732 he obtained in addition the vicarage of St. Just, his native parish. In the parish of Ludgvan were rich copper works, abounding with mineral and metallic fossils, of which he made a collection, and thus was led to study somewhat minutely the natural history of the county. He married Anne Smith in 1724: she died in 1769. In 1750 he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society; and, in 1754, he published, at Oxford, his Antiquities of Cornwall. His next publication was Observations on the Ancient and Present State of the Islands of Scilly. In 1758 appeared his Natural History of Cornwall. He presented to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, a variety of fossils and antiquities, which he had described in his works, and received the thanks of the university and the degree of Doctor of Civil Law Borlase was well acquainted with most of the leading literary men of the time. From 1722 he was Rector of Ludgvan and died there in 1772. William Borlase's great-great-grandson was William Copeland Borlase (1848–1899), an antiquarian who was influenced by his ancestor's archaeological work.

Silvanus Trevail
Silvanus Trevail (1851–1903) was a British architect, and the most prominent Cornish architect of the 19th century. Trevail was born at Carne Farm, Trethurgy near Luxulyan on 11th November 1851. Trevail rose to become Mayor of Truro and, nationally, President of the architects' professional body, the Society of Architects. Trevail rebuilt the derelict Temple Church on Bodmin Moor in 1883. He was Cornwall's most famous architect, certainly of the 19th century. Following the Education Act of 1870 which created Board Schools, Trevail designed around 50 such schools throughout the county. He also designed hotels including the Headland Hotel, Newquay, Carbis Bay Hotel in Carbis Bay. He was said to be a man ahead of his time, a campaigner for sanitation improvements and an entrepreneur. His success however, did not bring him happiness. Trevail had a history of depression and had been unwell for some time before committing suicide. On 7th November 1903 he shot himself in the lavatory of a train as it entered Brownqueen Tunnel a short distance from Bodmin Road railway station.

Dr Jonathan Couch
A British naturalist born in 1789, the only child of Richard and Philippa Couch, of a family long resident at Polperro, a small fishing village between Looe and Fowey. After receiving a sound classical education in Cornish schools, and some years' pupillage with two local medical men, he entered the united hospitals of Guy's and St. Thomas's in 1808, and in 1810 returned to Polperro, which he was rarely to leave, dying on 13th April 1870, aged 81. For 60 years he was the doctor and trusted adviser of the village and neighbourhood, and used with remarkable shrewdness and perseverance the great opportunities afforded to a naturalist at Polperro. He trained in succession a large number of fishermen to aid him in his pursuits, and the observations made at and near Polperro during his lifetime and since his death have not been equalled in value.

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