district of Treskeaw, that is to say the skeawe, or elder-tree town, a place, as I am informed, well known and still extant there.
In the pleas of the crown in the Exchequer, 12th Edward I., I found it thus written of Pengelly in this parish.
"Johannes de Treveally tenet in Pengelly, in comitatu Cornubiae, dimidium acram terræ Cornubiensem, (above a hundred English,) per sergiantiam recipiendi unam capam de grisando ad Pontem de Penleton, cum Rex fuerit inveniendus versus Cornubiam; et intrando Domino de Cabilla, qui eam in adventu domini Regis ibidem deferre debet, et earn tradere eidem Johanni, qui quidem Johannes eandem capam ferre debet cum domino Rege pro totam Cornubiam;" which Mr. Hals interprets, that the half acre Cornish is held by the duty of its owner receiving a great coat from some one in Devonshire at Penleton Bridge, and to carry it about for the King's use, so long as he remains in Cornwall.
In this parish stands the barton and manor of Good-ol-gan, also God-al-gan, synonymous words, only varied by the dialect, meaning a place that was altogether a wood down, a name anciently given and taken from the natural circumstances thereof. Otherwise, if the name consist of English-Cornish, God-ol-gan signifies a place that was altogether God's downs. As for the modern name Good-ol-phin, God-ol-fyn, it, in like manner as the former, admits of no other etymology or construction than that it was a place that was altogether a wood, fountain, well, or spring of water, or altogether God's fountain or spring of water. But because the words god, gud, good, in Cornish, Belgic, and British, are always taken and adopted in the first sense, to signify only a wood, and the words Du, Due, and Dyu, are the proper appellations of God, and no other in Cornish, I cannot apprehend how that sacred name is concerned in the initial part of this word, Godolphin, which refers,
