bat Samson then retired to the Channel Islands,
where he enlisted soldiers and drilled them, and then
landed on the Brittany coast, and proclaimed Judual.
In the meantime Mewan had acted as his agent,
travelling through the country preparing for a
general revolt. Three bloody battles were fought,
and in the third Canno was killed by the hand of
Prince Judual, A.D. 560, whereupon Judual ascended
the throne, and rewarded Samson as liberally as
he could have desired, but the bishop died five years
later. Samson must have spent a good many years
in Cornwall if he left Wales in 548 to escape the
yellow plague which was then ravaging the land.
At Golant the saying is that there is to be seen "a tree above the tower, a well in the porch, and a chimney in the roof." The tree was probably once growing out of the stones on the top of the tower; the well is there still, close to the entrance to the church, under a rude arch. It is a holy well, and is said to have been a spring elicited by Samson with his staff.
The church is late Perpendicular.[1] The pulpit and reading-desk are made up of old bench-ends, representing apostles, the M of Mary, and the lily of the Annunciation, and instruments of the Passion.
On the tower of S. Austell under niches are representations of S. Samson habited as an archbishop—which he was not—and his disciple S. Austell. The
- ↑ I must caution the visitor against the blunders that crowd the pages of a little local guide to Golant. Amongst other misstatements is this, that the capitals are Norman and the arches of Moorish design. The four-centred arch is quite common in all third-pointed work.
