Thomas Peverell, of Park, a supposed descendant of the Conqueror's son, who was also of Ermington and Sandford, in Devon, was Sheriff of Cornwall 13 Richard II. He was also Sheriff of Devon 20 Richard II. Richard Peverell, his son, was Sheriff of Devon 14 Henry IV. who dying without issue male, his lands went in marriage with his daughter, married to Basset of Umberleigh, Botreaux, and others.
On this lordship of Park those gentlemen had their deer-park, some of the walls and fences being yet standing; their tower-house, and other buildings answerable, their gardens, walk, and fish-ponds beneath the same, the ruins whereof are yet extant. How those lands descended down from Peverell's heirs to the last age I know not; about which time it was in the possession of Opie and Hickes; from whom it passed by sale to the Hon. John Molesworth, temp. Queen Anne, as I take it.
The arms of Peverell were, Gules, a fess Argent between six crosses pattée Or.
Those Peverells are especially memorable here by two crosses of moorstone in the highway set up by them, still extant, and called Peverell's Crosses. Not far from them is another moorstone cross, near Mount-Charles, called the Prior's Cross, whereon is cut the figure of a hook and a crook, in memory of that privilege and freedom granted by him to the poor of Bodmin, for gathering, for fire-boote and house-boote, such boughs and branches of oak-trees in his contiguous wood of Dunmear, as they could reach to or come at with a hook and a crook, without further damage to the trees thereof. From whence arose the Cornish proverb, concerning filching, purloining, or taking another person's goods, overmuch or indirectly, beyond what is allowed them, &c. "that they will have it by hook or by crook."
Pen-carou, Pen-caro, alias Pen-carow, i.e. head-deer, or chief-deer, formerly part of the Peverell's deer-park; and from thence so denominated, as some think. But when I
