Adventure and adventurers > Black's guide to the counties of Dorset, Devon, & Cornwall

Itoute 1.
MARAZION.
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cast into ingots by the Britons, was carried in carts, “at low
tide, all being dry between them and the Island.” A formidable
—to us it appears an insuperable—objection to this theory may
here be briefly stated: that in the time of the Homans, the
tract between St. Michael’s and what is now the mainland was a
dense and vigorous forest, as already shewn, and the inroad of
the sea, which has insulated the solitary hill, did not take place
until 1099—{Saxon Chronicle).
During the absence of Richard I. in Palestine, one Henry de
Pomeroy having murdered a king’s messenger, fled hither, dis¬
possessed the monks, and held the hill on behalf of John Sans-
terre. But on Cceur de Lion’s return, he was compelled to sur¬
render, and to prevent himself from faUing into the enraged
monarch’s hands, opened his veins and bled to death, or, accord¬
ing to another account, leapt his horse off the rock into the sea.
The Earl of Oxford, flying from the battle of Barnet, temp. Henry
VI., obtained admission in the disguise of a pilgrim, and assisted
by several of his followers, raised the Lancasterian standard.
Forces were despatched against him, but so stout was his defence,
it was deemed advisable to bribe him with a pardon upon condi¬
tion that he yielded up the castle (a.d. 1471). Another refugee
was Lady Katherine Gordon, the “ Fair Rose of Scotland,” and
the beautiful wife of Perkin Warbeck; but she was soon torn
from her sanctuary by Lord Daubeny, and placed in the hands
of Henry VII. During the religious commotions which desolated
Cornwall and Devonshire in 1549, the insurgents crossed the
sands at low water, and sheltering themselves under trusses of
hay, clomb to the assault. They captured the castle, but it was
soon afterwards re-captured by the royalists, and Humphrey
Arundell, the rebel-leader, was beheaded. And, finally, its
royalist garrison, under Sir Francis Basset, was compelled, during
the Civil War to surrender to a body of Parliamentarian troopers
under Colonel Hammond. The Mount was visited on one occa¬
sion by Charles II., and in 1846 by Queen Victoria and H.R.H.
the Prince Consort. The print of the Queen’s foot upon the pier
is marked by an inlaid brass.
St. Michael’s is reached from Marazion at low water (8 hours
out of the 24) by a paved causeway, 1200 feet long. The
Mount is a pyramidical mass of granite, a mile in circuit, 231 feet
high, crowned by castellated buildings, and relieved by the
shadows of a few clumps of firs. On the right rises a pile of