An examination of the Plympton charters showed that Henry I gave the church of Tohou to William Warelwast, bishop of Exeter, and that he gave the church to the priory of canons regular which he founded at Plympton in the year 1121. No one can doubt that Tohou and Docco are variants of the same word, which is found in Brittany as Tohou and Ohou. It is not difficult to follow the various acts of spoliation. King Edgar evidently reduced the patrimony of the Celtic monastery to the amount specified above while retaining the manor of Landoho, which until the Norman Conquest embraced the manors of Poundstock and St. Gennys. The three manors passed as an undivided whole to Earl Harold as demesne lands. By the Conqueror they were given to the Count of Mortain. Henry I claimed the remaining revenue of the monks and gave it to the bishop who transferred it to Plympton priory. Edgar’s gift to Plympton was a legal fiction which enabled the priory to evade responsibilities which were implied in the charter of Henry I and explicitly stated in that of Henry II when canons regular were substituted for secular canons.[94]
In brief, St. Kew was the site of an important Celtic monastery which, visited by St. Sampson in the days of St. Winniau, despoiled by King Edgar and stripped bare by Henry I, nevertheless retained some semblance of its ancient glory until the latter half of the thirteenth century.
As the result of the above examination it will be observed that of the twenty-six religious houses about one-half afford evidence of Celtic origin. In some cases the evidence is convincing; in some it is of itself insufficient to convince. Taken as a whole, it adds considerably to the weight of the argument which is here advanced, namely, that in Cornwall the Celtic form of Christianity had not wholly disappeared at the time of the Norman Conquest. Of its secure and comprehensive hold upon the religious life of the whole county at an earlier period there is abundant proof in the names of the parishes. Excluding those which have been considered, fifteen bear the prefix _Lan_, the mark of monastic settlement. Others, like St. Erth (Lanudno), St. Madron (Landithy), St. Just-in-Penwith (Lafrowda), Kea (Landegy), Gulval (Lanisley), Lelant (Lananta), Lezant (Lansant), retained the prefix for a time, in an _alias_, which in some cases suggests an earlier dedication; or, as in the case of Lanherne, Langunnet, Lanyhorne and Lanhadron still retain it in the name of the manor to which the advowson of the church was appendant; while a very large number bear, without prefix or affix, the names of Celtic saints, many of them unknown to the outside world. From one end of the county to the other the impress of Celtic Christianity can be clearly traced. It is monastic in character. But it is not a monasticism which has intruded within the confines of parishes already formed, but a monasticism which has occupied the whole territory from the very first. This it is which, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, either finds itself gradually superseded by the newer parochialism, or which ensures, in some sort, its survival in collegiate bodies or in recognised monastic orders by submitting to new conditions and new ideas.
