FORTY years ago there were few more picturesque spots in the west country than the old bridge at Lostwithiel. It has not even yet lost all its beauty; but one of its greatest charms, the drowsy quiet of the spot, has long passed away. The green banks, where the tall foxgloves and hemlock grew, and the cunning old water-rats peeped out of their holes, much pelted by wandering schoolboys on their frequent journeys to and fro over the old arches, have given place to hard stone walls and unlovely railway sheds. The little wool-staplery that nestled under the trees at the eastern foot of the bridge, not always odorous, but always rich in colour and worthy of any artist's pencil, has been swept away by the conventional railway station which so inconveniently blocks the entrance to the town, and is as unartistic as such edifices usually are. On the western side, the fine old elms which clustered in the Parade were most of them laid low by the great storm of 1876, and though these have been replaced by young trees it will be many years before the new comers will be able to compare with their predecessors. Still, on a summer's evening, when the tide is full, and the sunset is lingering on the ivy-clad buttresses, upon the graceful spire beyond, and the dark woods of Restormel and the distant keep of the castle that crowns them, one might seek far to find a fairer scene.
     The bridge itself is a most interesting monument. Of its foundation there is no actual record, and, singularly enough, neither the archives of the ancient corporation of Lostwithiel nor those of the county seem able to throw much light on its origin or history. To a certain extent, however, it tells its own tale. Its architecture plainly shows that it was built about the same date as the church, the old palace of the Dukes of Cornwall, and the later portions of Restormel Castle; it was therefore the work of Richard, King of the Romans, brother of Henry III., and Earl of Cornwall, in whose time these buildings were erected, who resided in the town, and was its greatest patron and benefactor. He probably at the same time constructed the smaller bridges on the Fowey, at Resprin and Lerrin. They may therefore be assigned to the middle of the I3th century, as Richard's charter granted to the burgesses of Lostwithiel is dated, "regni nostri anno duo decimo." He was crowned King of the Romans in 1256, and the twelfth year of his reign would be 1268—three years before his death. The style of all his buildings is the simplest Early English. The architect's name has been forgotten. Possibly the work was done by some of the freemasons whose companies wandered over all countries in the middle ages, and carried out most of the great architectural undertakings. When on a walking tour in Brittany a few years ago, I was struck by the singular resemblance of the old bridge at Launith to that at Lostwithiel. It might have been designed by the same hand, though on a somewhat larger scale. The pointed arches, the narrow roadway, and the angular niches over the buttresses were almost exactly the same. This interesting relic has, I hear, been since carried away by a great flood.
     Lostwithiel Bridge, as it stands at present, consists of two parts, the eastern half being of much more recent date than the western. The first five arches on the side of the town have apparently undergone little change since the days of King Richard, though probably a good deal choked by gravel; the sixth arch seems to have been enlarged, and is round instead of pointed; the seventh is very small, and abuts upon a little island which here divides the stream. On the further side of this island are two round-headed arches, of larger size and more modern date. The stream of the Fowey at its ordinary height flows through only five of the arches, and it is only at high tide, or when great freshets come down from the moors, that the others have water under them. The channel of the river appears to have completely changed since the bridge was built. The level of the valley was probably lower, and at an earlier date there is reason to suppose that the stream flowed nearer to the hills on the St. Winnow side—for the boundary line of that parish and the borough of Lostwithiel, which would naturally be the river, now extends some yards to the east of it. In the I3th century, as the position of the bridge shows, it was nearer to the town than at present. If the valley, as was probably the case, was then marshy, the channel may have been often changed by the violent floods of winter; and its present perfectly straight course, for several hundred yards above the bridge running directly to the two larger and newer arches, may possibly be artificial. On the town side, arched approaches to the bridge, buried in the course of centuries, have been from time to time exposed in digging foundations along the line.
     Thus much for the structure of the old bridge; but the memories, local and historical, connected with it are unusually varied and interesting, and would require ample space for their full recital. Many a quaint procession of mediaeval days, many a band of pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Michael's Mount, many a troop of stout Cornish insurgents on their march to cross the Tamar and do battle for their own rights or those of some favourite champion whose cause they had espoused, have thronged across it since the day when its royal founder completed his work. Kings and princes and men of note in the national story have passed over it. It has heard the din of battle and the tramp of men-at-arms.
     The King of the Romans and his son Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, must have often used it on their visits to the palace at Lostwithiel or their neighbouring castle of Restormel, with a stately train of retainers and attendants. Somewhat later, the handsome Gascon favourite, Piers Gaveston—made Earl of Cornwall by Edward II.—may have ridden across on a similar journey. Mr. Stokes, in his poem of "Restormel," assumes the fact, but gives no authority for it in the notes appended to it. So gay a courtier would not have come often or stayed long in the far west.
     About this date a curious ceremony is related to have taken place on the bridge which vividly illustrates the ecclesiastical life of the time. In the year 1312 there had been a desperate affray within the walls of the priory of St. Petrock at Bodmin. It was probably a result of the chronic feud between the regular and secular clergy. What the original cause of quarrel may have been, or which party had the best of the fight in the end, does not appear, but in the course of it one of the Bodmin canons, Odo Denisch by name, "wounded a secular clergyman even to the effusion of blood." The consequences were serious. The priory church and the adjoining cemetery were polluted by the blood-shedding, and by the law of the Church no holy rites could be performed in them till they had been re-consecrated. Bodmin, however, was a long way from Exeter in those days, and the affair might possibly never come to the bishop's ears. The consecration would no doubt involve heavy fees, and so the prior and his monks determined to run the risk and say nothing about the matter. They kept the secret for more than two years, " and the mass was sung, and the bells were rung," and the dead were laid in the no longer hallowed ground, as if nothing had happened. But detection came at last, and the murder was out. The bishop at that time was the good and learned Walter de Stapledon, sometime Lord High Treasurer and the pious founder of Exeter College in Oxford. On his visitation of his diocese in the year 1314, he came to Lostwithiel on the Saturday after the Feast of St. Leonard; and there Prior Roger de Kilkhampton, moved either by his own conscience or by an episcopal summons, met him on the bridge, and made full confession of his misdemeanours. The scene must have caused no small stir in the little town; and we may well picture the stately bishop with his brilliant retinue of chaplains and cross bearers and attendants, the anxious group of the prior and his monks, and the throng of burgesses and townsmen eager to witness the interview and learn its result. The bishop was merciful in his decision. He visited Bodmin at the end of the next week, and on Sunday, Nov. 16th, performed the ceremony of re-consecration, after having on the previous day held a solemn chapter in the priory and, no doubt after much serious admonition, fined the community £20, payable on demand.*
     A few years later (1353) and there comes riding over the bridge a still nobler personage than the good bishop. The first Duke of Cornwall, the Black Prince himself, comes with a gallant train of nobles and knights to receive at Restormel the homage of the vassals of his new duchy. Already, at the age of 23, the model of all that was chivalrous and the hero of Creçy, we may easily fancy the enthusiasm with which he was received. He spent some days in the neighbourhood, and ten years later, after adding the triumph of Poitiers to his fame, he renewed his visit to his Cornish castle and borough.
     Over the bridge, too, a century later, came probably the Earl of Oxford and his band of fugitives from the battle of Barnet, disguised as pilgrims to the Mount, which they seized by this stratagem a few days after. They would naturally take the road by Lostwithiel rather than the central route, in order to escape the notice of the sheriff, Sir John Arundel, who was living at Efford, on the northern side of the county, and who was shortly after killed on the sands at Marazion while attempting to retake St. Michael's.
     A little later, and all Cornwall was astir in the cause of Perkin Warbeck. Whether he ever crossed the bridge himself we have no record, but he found some of his warmest supporters close by at Bodmin, and at any rate we may be sure that many a poor fellow trooped across the old arches to join the cause of the white rose of York, only to meet death in the battlefield or on the gallows, at the hands of the followers of Henry Tudor.
     Similar scenes must have been witnessed in the following reign, when the Cornishmen rose in arms against the Reformation, and flocked across the Tamar to the siege of Exeter, only to suffer, after performing prodigies of valour, similar defeat and disaster. Many a troop of horse and many a company of pikemen and musketeers must have hurried over the bridge again when, in summer time of 1588, there was "mustering in hot haste" to meet the hated Spaniard and his Invincible Armada. The storm of war passed away, however, and did no harm, but two generations later it gathered again, and broke fiercely on Lostwithiel and all the country round it.
     When the great rebellion broke out in 1641, the Cornishmen took early and active part in the fray. The leading county families were, here, as elsewhere, divided in opinion, but far the larger number rallied to the king's side with the noble Sir Bevill Grenville of Kilkhampton at their head, and the good old names of Arundell, Basset, Trelawney, Slanning, Trevanion, St. Aubyn, Kendall, and Sawle, on the muster roll. In January, 1643, a sharp action was fought on Braddock Down between the Royalists under Sir Ralph Hopton and Sir Bevill, and the Roundheads, who had advanced from Plymouth under Ruthven, then Governor of that town. The latter was routed and fled. As the Royalist headquarters were at Bodmin, it is probable that the main advance would be made by Resprin Bridge, and this, from the letter of of Sir Bevill Grenville to his wife, describing the fight, appears to have been the case. But we may be sure that two such good soldiers as Hopton and Grenville did not leave so important a position as Lostwithiel Bridge, only two miles from the scene of action, without adequate protection, and that they had well reconnoitred the ground and arranged for its defence before they advanced to the attack. The routed enemy never halted till they reached Saltash.
     A year and a half later, and the din of battle rose yet more fiercely on either side of the old bridge. The brave band of Cornish leaders had meanwhile been sadly thinned in their brilliant victories at Bristol and Lansdown. Grenville, Trevanion, Slanning, Godolphin, Kendall had all been laid in soldiers' graves. And now the Parliament determined to make a strong effort to establish their power in the west, and the Earl of Essex crossed the Tamar on the 20th of July, 1644. Sir Richard Grenville, who commanded the Cornish forces, being greatly outnumbered, fell back, after a fierce skirmish at New Bridge, to Lostwithiel. Essex pushed forward to the same point by way of Bodmin. Grenville in vain attempted to hold the bridge, and after a second desperate skirmish with Lord Roberts's men could only succeed in making good his retreat to Truro. The victorious Roundheads poured into the little town, which they made their headquarters. The position was a strong one, having the line of the Fowey in front, high hills behind commanding the approaches, and easy access to supplies of every kind through the open port of Fowey on his right flank. The soldiery of Essex behaved with great brutality; stabled their horses in the church, baptized one of them in the font, and attempted to blow up the beautiful old spire in which some Royalist prisoners had taken refuge. But King Charles himself was on their track. He crossed the Tamar by Polston Bridge on the 1st of August, and a week after was on Braddock Down, the scene of Hopton's victory eighteen months before. Boconnoc House, then the seat of Lord Mohun, had been recovered a few days before from the rebels by a night surprise, cleverly carried out by Sir Bernard Gascoigne and Colonel Neville, and now became the king's headquarters for three weeks. Desultory countermarching and skirmishing, attempts at negotiation, and, occasionally, fierce fighting, went on from day to day, and the old bridge played a prominent part in all. Now the buff-coats of Essex come pouring across it, horse, foot, and artillery on a reconnaissance; now a solitary trumpeter bearing proposals of peace from the royal camp demands a passage to the lord general, only to return the next morning with a stern refusal to treat; now the round shot from the batteries on the Beacon Hill come plunging into the rebel lines, and that pleasant chronicler, Lieut. Richard Symonds, of his majesty's forces, notes with satisfaction that "one of our cannon shott luckily at a party of the enemy's horse killed two horses, and one horse leg shott off at once." Now they come to closer quarters, and "1000 men of Prince Maurice's army gett on a hill this side the river neare the towne where at bottom was a passe [the old bridge itself]. The small cottages [Bridgend] which were on this hill next the towne were all this forenoone a burning." Meanwhile, Sir R. Grenville had brought up his forces from the west, had occupied Bodmin and "Lord Roberts his house" (Lanhydrock), and come into camp on Sunday, August 11th. Joined by 2000 of the prince's foot, he began steadily pushing the enemy down the valley of the Fowey on the west bank. On the 21st he "pelted the rogues from their hedges between the Lord Roberts's house and Lestithiel," and surprised Restormel Castle, while the fighting was hot in Bridgend, taking "some thirty of the rebels, and divers barrels of beef." The king had been active at the other end of the line of attack, and we hear of "great peices that command the towne of Foye" planted under Hall Walk, and "beyond that a fort of ours that commands the entrance into the mouth of Foye haven."
     Provisions were falling short in the leaguer of Essex. Three thousand horse and foot of the king's had gone westward behind the enemy "to stopp their landing of provisions by sea, and to hinder their foraging by land." This was the beginning of the end. Essex had only now to devise a means of escape, and this he effected very cleverly. Two memorable marches over our bridge brought this interesting episode of the Civil War to a close. In the dead of night, between Friday and Saturday, the 30th and 31st of August, the whole of Essex's cavalry stole out of the town, crossed the bridge in good order, and boldly marched eastward through the king's lines. About one of the clock they came "up between the hills to the downe." A bad look-out had been kept, and though an alarm was hastily given nothing effective could be done to stop the fugitives. The Earl of Cleveland's brigade and the queen's regiment followed and charged their rear, but they made good their escape to the ferry at Saltash.
     Meanwhile, Essex had silently drawn off the rest of his forces to Fowey, leaving only a strong rearguard to hold the bridge and the hills on the line of his march. About seven in the morning, the advanced guard of the Cavaliers—"the King's forlorne," as Symonds quaintly calls them—1000 strong, marched upon the town and attacked the bridge, which they forced without much resistance. At eight, the king himself, with the main body of his army, entered Lostwithiel in triumph, capturing some arms and five cannon which had been abandoned by the enemy; but he made short halt in the town, and pushed on without loss of time in hot pursuit of the retreating Roundheads. We may judge of the rejoicings with which he was received by the townsmen by their treatment, a few days after, of the Roundhead prisoners, whom they set upon, reviled, and plundered, on their melancholy march out of the county.
     The last scene of this short but decisive campaign is by Symonds, who witnessed it, thus vividly described:—
     "They all except here and there an officer (and I saw not above three or four that looked like a gentleman) were stricken with such a dismal feare that as soon as their colour of the regiment was past (for every ensign had a horse and rid on him) the rout of soldiers of that regiment presst all of a heape like sheep, though not so innocent; so durty and so dejected as was rare to see. None of them, except some few of their officers that did looke any of us in the face. Our foot would flout at them, and bid them remember Reading, and other places, and then would pull their swords &c away, for all that our officers still slashed at them. This was a happy day for his Majestic, and his whole army, that this great army of rascalls that soe triumphed and vaunted over the poore inhabitants of Cornwall, as if they had bin invincible, and as if the King had not bin able to follow them, that 'tis conceived very few will get safe to London, for the country people, whom they have in all the march so much plundered and robd that they will have their pennyworths out of them."
     And so, in the rain and mud—for the weather was wretched and "it rayned extremely, as the varlets marched away"—the long train of some six thousand beaten and disheartened men straggled over our old bridge, and away across the bleak downs towards Plymouth. It does not appear certain whether the king passed through Lostwithiel and over the bridge on his return. The Iter Carolinum says merely: "Monday, the 2nd to Boconnock the Lord Mohun's again 5 miles," which rather favours the idea that he went by this way, as the distance would not have been so great if he had crossed the passage at Cliffe and gone through Lerryn.
     The storm of civil war passed away, and the old bridge has rested in the peace which Cornwall has for more than two centuries enjoyed. But in the peaceful tide of wayfarers which has flowed over it generation after generation we may safely say that every man of mark in the county, and many from beyond its borders, were borne along. County elections and quarter sessions drew all the local world to Lostwithiel, and the mail road from London to the great packet station of Falmouth brought many a notable stranger to the spot. The list would be a long one if it contained all the names deserving of mention. Cornwall's greatest seamen from Boscawen and Wager to Exmouth and Peard and Penrose; her soldiers from John, Earl of Bath, the son of the good Sir Bevill Grenville (whose visit to the town was long kept in memory by the chamber at Edgcombe House which bore his name), and Wills, who crushed the English portion of the Jacobite rising in 1715, to Vivian and Gilbert and Hamley, all three born or residing within six miles of the bridge; her representatives, St. Aubyn the incorruptible, the eloquent Vyvyan, the practical and popular Lemon, the philosophical Molesworth. The great Earl of Chatham, whose portrait till recently hung over the little inn in Bridgend, which still keeps his name, must often have ridden to and fro from "auld Boconnocs" to the town, as well as his equally great son, who in his early days went the western circuit, and Lord Grenville, who succeeded to the estate. It is doubtful whether Addison, who once represented the borough, ever visited it in person; but a name better known to readers of the present generation was curiously connected with the last election at which Lostwithiel returned a member. The borough was a close one, of stout Tory politics, and neither mayor nor corporation would have anything to do with reform; but suddenly, I think on the day of election, there came rattling over the bridge a "chaise and pair" containing a real live Liberal candidate, and one even then of some little name and weight. It was the popular young novelist, Mr. Bulwer, "the author of Pelham," as he was then best known, and he came to do battle with the borough-mongers of Lostwithiel. Though very young at the time, I distinctly remember hearing him speak from the box of the said chaise, in the middle of Fore Street, to an excited crowd. Whether he was actually nominated I am not sure, but at any rate Lostwithiel, by its magnates, rejected him, and lost the honour of having been represented by a great writer and orator, and a future Conservative statesman and minister, for in a few hours he rattled back over the old bridge as he came, and returned no more.
     This memory of days long gone by brings back others connected with our bridge and its surroundings which after the lapse of half a century may be worth preserving. At the same general election which brought Mr. Bulwer to Lostwithiel, there was a fierce contest for the county. It was then undivided, and every freeholder, from the Tamar to the Land's End, had to be conveyed to the poll at Lostwithiel. For more than a week the stream came pouring in. The free and independent electors were packed in every possible form of conveyance—private carriages of all kinds, smart coaches, waggons, and boats mounted on wheels decked with flags and green boughs—oak for Vyvyan and Valletort, laurel for Pendarves and Lemon—lumbering vans and donkey carts. All day long there were gay processions of bands and banners to and fro from the town to Bridgend. The excitement was at fever point, and I well remember seeing a gallant naval captain, very energetic on the Tory side, in Jack Tar costume, leading the Flora Dance across the bridge with the buxom landlady of the Earl of Chatham. There was life and colour about electioneering in those days.
     Another gay scene which the old bridge witnessed fifty years ago was the annual regatta; not the modern scramble of a few boats for pots and money, but, in the original Italian sense of the word, a bright water procession. Many of the neighbouring gentry kept boats on the river, and everything that could be made to swim was pressed into the service by the public. On a good spring tide in summer time all mustered early in the day about the bridge and Parade, decked with flags and pendants. The band of the Cornwall Regiment embarked in one of the large stone barges fitted for the occasion, and formed the centre of the pleasure fleet, which floated down the river to Fowey harbour; picnicked at Ready Money Cove or Polruan, and returned in the same merry procession in the evening, with music and singing, to a regatta ball at the Talbot.
     One other memory of a singular scene on the bridge—the leap of poor Sam Scott, the famous American diver, into the river. A high builder's ladder was fixed perpendicularly to the parapet on the south side of the bridge, steadied by strong stays, but still vibrating considerably as Scott mounted it, dressed in a pair of white canvas trousers and a sailor's blue striped shirt. He performed various gymnastic feats on the ladder, including that of pretending to hang himself, which not long after cost him his life on Waterloo Bridge. At last, running suddenly to the top of the ladder, and holding on by the two projecting ends, he placed both feet on the topmost stave, drew himself up to his full height, and dived off. The water below could not have been more than seven or eight feet deep, but he hardly seemed to go under at all. He fell on his left shoulder and back, splitting his shirt to the waistband, and turning quickly over was on shore in an instant. His only remuneration was a collection, composed principally of coppers, made from the immense crowd which lined the banks of the river.
     Such are a few of the personal memories of the old bridge, during the brief days of my boyhood, when I crossed it five or six times every day. What numberless scenes of interest then, now utterly forgotten, must have happened there in the six hundred years which have gone by since the King of the Romans first founded it.
     Changes are rapid in these changeful times, and a better approach to the pleasant little town is much needed; but if ever such a scheme is carried out, it is to be hoped that the destruction of our old friend will form no part of it, but that, like his relative in Brittany, he may be allowed to linger on in his quiet nook, and to recall to generations yet to come the memory of his imperial founder, of the Black Prince and the White King, and of the many men of renown who have gone over it in the days of old.

* See Sir J. Maclean's History of the Hundred of Trigg.

Extracted from The Western Antiquary, Volume VI, Part XII, May 1887, pp281-287.