The misrepresentation of Cornwall as being 'in England' and the decisions arising from that misrepresentation wilfully denies the Cornish their rightful place within the geographical map of European, and World, nationalities. This is not the fault of the Cornish people themselves - perhaps some of them! - but the fault of a people-controlled inertia of 'English' Imperialism whether at an individual, group or organisational level.
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The following 'milestones' illustrate a correct historical representation which has been denied to us and consequently perceptions of Cornwall vary dependent upon ones level of knowledge of 'Cornish' history.
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The Cornish people have existed throughout recorded history as one of the indigenous national groups of Britain, Europe and the World. They have an inalienable right to control and promote their own existence both within their national territory of Cornwall and wherever they live throughout the World.
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Because Cornish history has been repressed it has been necessary, at an individual level, to research what should have been placed before us within the process of formal 'Cornish' education? It is the responsibility, surely, of the State Government to respect these Rights and to provide the necessary protection to safeguard and promote these Rights. The Cornish, as one of the oldest - but unrecognised - European national groups should come within the scope of the Council of Europe's "Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities".
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577 AD |
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Saxons severed the North (later Welsh) Britons from the West (later Cornish) Britons at the battle of Dyrham, near Bath. |
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838 AD |
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Egbert, king of the West Saxons, defeated an alliance of Cornish and Danes at the battle of Hingston Down. Whilst this has been associated with Hingston Down, in what is now East Cornwall, there is an eminently more logical and logistical argument
 for correctly locating this at Hingston Down, Moretonhampstead in Devonshire. It was a battle, however, that has been erroneously presumed by some to have, somehow, established that Cornwall was from that moment to be construed as being 'in England'. A decree from Egbert himself is worthy of note in this respect: "Egbert enacted this severe law, that no Briton should pass the limits of his country, and set foot on the English ground upon pain of death".(Borlase) It was no more than the politics of domination by what would now be referred to as the 'neighbours from hell'! |
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936 AD |
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As if to prove it was the politics of dominion, Athelstan, acclaimed king of the English, drove the Cornish out of Exeter, misappropriated all Cornish lands East of the Tamar and established the East bank of the Tamar as the Boundary between the Cornish and the English. This was an aggressive act intended to establish ethnic segregation and the consolidation of English territory to the East of the Tamar - not one of Cornish assimilation (q.v. Celtic place-name distributions). |
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944 AD |
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Edmund of Wessex, reaffirmed this segregation by referring to himself in a charter as "….king of the English and ruler of this province of the Britons". This distinction continued throughout the mediaeval period with references to 'Anglia et Cornubia' and reaffirmed in 1337 with the creation of the Duchy of Cornwall. Prior to Athelstan, Cornwall was referred to as "gentes Cornubia" 'the Cornish nation' but the change to 'province' was a reflection of political domination and would not have affected Cornish perceptions of themselves. |
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1066 |
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The Domesday survey of 1086 showed that no English king held any land in Cornwall prior to the Norman Conquest and that the majority of non-ecclesiastical land was vested in the Earl of Cornwall. At the time of the Conquest, William deposed the existing Earl of Cornwall, called Cadoc and, supposedly, the last of the 'British' princes, and gave the Earldom of Cornwall to his half brother Robert count of Mortain. At this time the English king took possession of only the few estates which had formerly been held by Earl Harold of Wessex.
From the time of the Conquest, the Earls of Cornwall had always been family, or favourites, of the English kings and had held Cornwall with sometimes greater and sometimes fewer powers but Cornwall was always considered as a territorial possession and not, simply, an administrative county as is commonly meant by the use of that word. It was, in fact, the territory - Edmund's 'Province of the Britons' - presided over by an Earl. In Cornwall, unlike elsewhere, the sheriff was an officer of the Earl - NOT the King! When there was an Earl, all revenues ceased to be returned to the exchequer of the Crown. |
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1337 |
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The Earldom of Cornwall was augmented into a Duchy and the original Act of Creation, prior to the Duchy charter of 17th March 1337, states, amongst other things "…that the County of Cornwall should always remain as a Duchy to the eldest sons of the Kings of England… without being given elsewhere". |
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1351 |
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When the first Duke of Cornwall, the Black Prince, attained the age of twenty one, one of his first Acts of the Duchy of Cornwall was to initiate a survey of his property held in "Cornwall and England". This clearly established the fact - if there was ever any doubt? - that implicit within the creation of the Duchy was that Cornwall was not legally held to be part of England. Arrogant perception of the geographical extent of England then, as now, was inclusive of the whole island of Britain but this did not alter the legal and constitutional distinction of Cornwall as being distinct from both England and the Crown.
The creation of the Duchy to which all things pertained was a grant forever.
There has been no constitutional change to the Duchy, other than the alienation of some of the private estates, which can be construed as changing either the national identity of the Cornish people nor Cornwall's distinct segregation from England. There has certainly not been an open discussion to which the Cornish people themselves have been invited to vote themselves out of existence - only examples of Imperial English prescriptive arrogance. |
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1485 |
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An Italian cleric, Polydore Vergil, living in England and commissioned by the king, Henry VII, to write a history of England made the following distinction: "The whole country of Britain is divided into four parts, whereof the one is inhabited by Englishmen, the other of Scots, the third of Welshmen, the fourth of Cornish people … and which all differ among themselves either in tongue, either in manners, or else in laws and ordinances." At this time the concept of the 'Island of England' was rife as the incoming Tudor dynasty gave a new, and sinister, meaning to English imperial domination. |
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1650 |
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John Norden prepared "The General Historie of the Duchie of Cornwall" and gives us a brief view of the classical symptoms of external domination when he identifies the two factions of the Cornish population between the 'Gentlemen' who have "tasted ciuil education" and the 'baser sort' who have not. The latter described as "And as they are amonge themselues litigious, so seem they yet to retayne a kinde of conceyled enuye agaynste the Englishe, whom they yet effecte with a desire of reuenge for their fathers sakes, by whome their fathers recuyued the repulse." We still see this engendered stigma for all things which are intrinsically Cornish as we are manipulated by high level lies from the top down and a tutored ignorance from the bottom up. |
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1780 |
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Edmund Burke sought to curtail further the power of the Crown by removing the various principalities which existed. "… the five several distinct principalities besides the supreme …. If you travel beyond Mount Edgcumbe, you find him [the king] in his incognito, and he is duke of Cornwall …. Thus every one of these principalities has the apparatus of a kingdom …. Cornwall is the best of them…". Whilst he was compelled to withdraw his Bill, because the then Duke was under 21 years old, it is clear that there was a policy in the 19th century of destroying the integrity of the Duchy at the same time that there was a distancing of the Crown and Duchy from being seen to be significant land-holders. The rest, as they say is the repression of history with no consideration for the rights of the Cornish people to be seen as Cornish people. None of this external power politics, however, would have directly influenced the Cornish people's perception of themselves or of their 'neighbours from hell'. |
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1840 |
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A significant extract from A K Hamilton Jenkin's "Cornwall and its People (1933)" points to education, as did the inference drawn from Norden, as the source of our modern problem with the concept of a Cornish Identity and the corporate protection which has been wilfully denied to us. The extract gives an account of one Peggy Combellack in her dame-school, circa 1840:
The next lesson was in geography. This subject was regarded by Peggy as her masterpiece of learning. "Es Coornwall a naation, a hiland, or what es 'a?" she inquired on one of these occasions. This question completely baffled the whole school, putting the scholars into one continued hubbub. "Ef I aint got a hanser in five menutes, I'll give 'ee all the custis" (caning on the hands), Peggy exclaimed. "I will have horder, though the owld school do cost more in canes than 'tes worth. Now what es Coornwall, I say. Es 'a a naation, a hiland or a furrin country?"
"Boy Kit" was the first to hold up his hand.
"Please, he hedn't no naation, he hedn't no hiland, nor he hedn't no furrin country, but he's cigged (stuck) on to a furrin country from the top hand," came the bright reply, which was heard with approval by the whole school, Peggy herself included.
How would that question be approached today? Well! It wouldn't - would it? What sort of 'Cornish' education do we receive from our schools? I was never taught anything about Cornwall (1943-1953) and what I did eventually learn, after leaving, reinforces my use of the phrase 'neighbours from hell'! |
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1888 |
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The creation of a primary mechanism to divert and manipulate Cornish perceptions of themselves and to ensure the 'final solution' to the Cornish problem. The term 'county' became indelibly imprinted upon gullible Cornish minds by having the term engraved in enduring granite and the need to provide any political accommodation for the Cornish was then deemed to be a thing of the past. |
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