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Carew, Richard, 1555-1620

"The Survey of Cornwall And an epistle concerning the excellencies of the English tongue"

sayle. But the smoke
of those poore houses, calling in the country to the rescusse,
made the place ouer hote for the enemies any longer abode.
Mousehole, in Cornish, is named Porternis, and in Latin,
Portus Insulae, both importing one sense, to wit, the Iland hauen,
and so called, through a little Iland placed before it.
M. Holinshed telleth vs, that neere heereunto, not many
yeeres sithence, certayne Tynners, as they were working,
found Speare heads, Battel-axes, and swords of Copper, wrapped in
lynnen clouts, and little impayred through their long lying.
Pensans, by interpretation, The Saints head, is a market towne,
not so regardable for his substance, as memorable for his late
accident of the Spaniards firing, which fell out in this maner:
The three & twentieth of July, 1595. soone after the Sun was risen,
and had chased a fogge, which before kept the sea out of sight,
4. Gallies of the enemy presented themselues vpon the coast,
ouer-against Mousehole, [157] and there In a faire Bay, landed about
two hundred men, pikes and shot, who foorthwith sent their
forlorne hope, consisting of their basest people, vnto the stragled
houses of the countrie, about halfe a mile compasse or more, by whome
were burned, not onely the houses they went by, but also the
Parish Church of Paul, the force of the fire being such, as it vtterly
ruined all the great stonie pillers thereof: others of them in that
time, burned that fisher towne Mowsehole, the rest marched as a gard
for defence of these firers.


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