Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/68

62 THE CORNWALL COAST sailed thence across the British Channel and got sight of Fowey Harbour, where they lay off at sea till night, when they drew towards the shore and dropped anchor, and landed their marine soldiers and seamen, who at midnight approached the south- west end of Fowey town, where they killed all per- sons they met with, set fire to the houses and burnt one half thereof to the ground, to the consumption of a great part of the inhabitants' riches and trea- sures, a vast deal of which were gotten by their pyratical practices. In which massacre the women, children and weakest sort of people forsook the place and fled for safety into the hill country. But the stoutest men, under conduct of John Treffry Esquire, fortified themselves as well as they could in his then new built house of Place, where they stoutly opposed the assaults of the enemies, while the French soldiers plundered that part of the town which was unburnt without opposition in the dark." But the countryside was aroused, and men began to gather in such force that the French invaders found it prudent to depart with some haste, and with such of their spoil as they could hurriedly carry with them. They departed, says Hals, " with small honour and less profit." It was after this attack that the twin forts were built, at Polruan and Fowey, to protect the mouth of the river, and a chain was dropped at night between the two, as was the practice at Dartmouth. It must have been on another occasion that the wife of Thomas Treffry, as Leland tells us, " re- pelled the French out of her house in her husband's absence." But the great days of Fowey were nearing their end. When Edward IV. made peace with France the town declined to countenance this temiination of hostilities, and continued to