Talk:Cornwall/Archive 3

Refactored: Various commentators have made comments about the status of Cornwall. In summary, some see Cornwall as an integral part of England / United Kingdom; others don't. sjc

Peninsula(r) - sorry about that, English is rapidly becoming my third language.sjc

Are we sure about the ancient tin? I've seen claims that the ancient tin mines were actually in the Scilly Islands. Vicki Rosenzweig

Vicki, there is no real proof one way or the other, but certainly it would have been easier for the traders to have found Cornwall than the Scillies, given the uncertainties of navigation in those times... sjc

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GrahamN, Cornwall is NOT in England; we have brokered (after much debate) a coherent form of words which is acceptable to most of the players in this debate. This IS not negotiable and I do not propose to waste time going over this ground again. Changes to this page will be reverted with extreme prejudice. user:sjc

Hi, sjc.

I'm sorry if I trod on your toes.

You are absolutely right. Cornwall is not in England. And I never said it was. To say that Cornwall is "a county of England" is not to say that Cornwall is in England. Corsica is a département of France, but it is clearly not in France.

As it happens, I am quarter Cornish (my maternal grandfather came from the Lizard), and I have a good deal of sympathy with ambitions of the Cornish to gain independence from England. But in the interests of producing a good encyclopaedia article, I think we should amend the sentence Cornwall … is a duchy and (administratively speaking) the southernmost county of Great Britain, for two reasons.

Firstly, the Channel Islands are further south than Cornwall, and are arguably part of Great Britain.

Secondly, the phrase "County of Great Britain" is meaningless. The United Kingdom is a union of a variety of countries, principalities, bailiwicks, provinces and such, some within Great Britain and some outside it. Some of these territories are divided into counties. England has counties, Scotland has counties, Wales has counties, Northern Ireland has counties, but "Great Britain" does not have counties.

Please go to the site www.cornwall.gov.uk It is the web-site of Cornwall County Council. I believe this to be a real institution. It is not merely a front for a Cornish Government, designed to fool the English. You may wish that Cornwall was not administered as "a county of England" (and I would agree with you), but saying that it is not so doesn't change the fact that it is so. In fact it is likely to be counter-productive. Pretending that an injustice doesn't exist is not a particulary sharp way to proceed if you want to see the injustice remedied.

May I respectfully suggest the following revision:

Cornwall … is a region at the extreme South-West of Great Britain. Although technically a duchy and not part of England, currently it is administered exactly as if it were an English county.

GrahamN 22:54 Sep 6, 2002 (UCT)

GrahamN:

That would do if only it were true. However, it isn't administered exactly as if it were an English county. Close, but "English" Heritage no longer uses the word "English", for example; moreover there are certain pieces of legislature which are peculiar to Cornwall; Stannary law is still (technically if not de facto, since it has never been repealed) applicable within Cornwall. Try this and see what you think:

Cornwall [..] is a region at the extreme south-west of Great Britain. Although technically a duchy it is administered primarily as though it were an English county.

Excuse my cynicism but I get the distinct impression (again) that we are going to go through this whole lifecycle in about 6 months with someone else. We are now back to an earlier form of words of about 8 months ago. Here is the argument (all over again):

Cornwall as a contemporary geographical entity is entirely different from Cornwall (historico-geographical entity). Cornwall once stretched as far east as Bristol, with Cornish language prevalent in parts of Devon immediately anterior to the Prayer Book Rebellion. Cornwall.

The Cornish Stannaries form part of the Duchy of Cornwall and are at present vested exclusively in Prince Charles, in right of his Duchy of Cornwall. The constitutional position rests upon the Charters of 1337 whereby King Edward III created the Duchy of Cornwall and appointed his elder son, Prince Edward, known as "The Black Prince", as the first Duke of Cornwall. There is a Duchy Council which consists of high officials appointed by the Monarch or Duke of Cornwall for the time being. One such official, whose concern is supposed to be the administration of the Stannaries, is called the Lord Warden of the Stannaries. The Lord Warden of the Stannaries used to exercise judicial and military functions in Cornwall, and is still the official who, upon the commission of the Monarch or Duke of Cornwall for the time being, has the function of calling a Parliament or Convocation of Tinners in Cornwall. The last Stannary Parliament convened by a Lord Warden of the Stannaries sat in 1753. The first Lord Warden of the Stannaries of Cornwall (and Devon) was William de Wrotham who was appointed during the reign of King Richard I of England on 20th November 1197. During the year 1198 juries of miners were convened at Launceston in Cornwall before William de Wrotham to declare the Law and Practice of the tin mines, and the Royal Tax on the tin which was mined was known as the "coinage of tin". The Writ appointing William de Wrotham confirmed the "just and ancient customs and liberties" of miners, smelters and merchants of tin. It was from those sessions of jurymen sitting under a Royal official that the Parliaments or Convocations of Tinners of Cornwall (and Devon) originated.

Further Royal Charters affecting the administration of the Stannaries of Cornwall (and Devon) and the rights and privileges of tinners were those of King John in 1201, King Edward I in 1305, King Edward IV in 1466, and the Charter of Pardon of King Henry VII in 1508.

The Charters of King John and King Edward I granted privileges to tinners to be tried by their own Courts and substantial exemptions from taxation. The 1508 Charter of Pardon affected only Cornish tinners who paid the sum of £1,000.00, then a huge sum of money, to King Henry VII, and that sum was raised by a general levy on all tinners. In return for the payment the King included in the Charter provisions for the self-government of the Stannaries and a right for the tinners to veto statues and ordnances which affected them and the Stannaries.

Convocations or Parliaments of Tinners (now known as "Stannary Parliaments") were convened from time to time over several centuries in accordance with the procedures stipulated in the Charter of Pardon of 1508. Commissions were issued to Lord Wardens of the Stannaries for the time being, who by virtue of such commissions, required the Mayors and Councils of the four Boroughs of Truro, Lostwithiel, Launceston and Helston in Kerrier, to elect six Stannators for each such Borough, to serve as Members of such Parliaments and to determine the Laws affecting tinners and the Cornish Stannaries. Such Parliaments had great authority and their enactments passed into Law after receiving Royal or Ducal assent.

Unfortunately, since the decline of tin mining in Cornwall, and the abolition of the coinage duty, the Royal interest in and protection of the Cornish Stannaries has been withdrawn. The tin coinage was abolished in 1838 and Queen Victoria, and subsequent Monarchs and Dukes of Cornwall, have been compensated by a perpetual annuity. That annuity was charged to the Duchy of Cornwall. Customs duties were imposed on imported tin ore and refined tin to make good the loss of revenue.

The revenues and perquisites enjoyed by the present Duke of Cornwall in right of his Duchy are very substantial. Apart from occasional ceremonial functions, the present Duke of Cornwall appears to have abdicated from all his constitutional functions as Duke of Cornwall. It is currently suggested that the Duchy of Cornwall is a mere property agency which has to be run at a profit and has nothing to do with the constitutional position of Cornwall and its relationship to England. That is wholly false.

A number of attempts have been made to persuade the Duke of Cornwall to issue a commission to the Lord Warden of the Stannaries to convene a Stannary Parliament so that Stannary Law can be brought up to date and stated in modern terms. All approaches have been rejected without any explanation. Cornish tin miners have been affected to their detriment and have suffered the denial of their rights and privileges as provided by Law as a result of the withdrawal of any Royal interest. In Cornwall, tin miners have the right to pitch bounds in land belonging to other persons provided that strict conditions are observed. Stannary Law is supposed to be enforced in the Truro County Court. Attempts to register tin bounds have been largely frustrated.

This is just a sliver of the argument. It gets far more tendentious yet.

Interestingly Part VI, The Tamar Bridge Act 1998, Section 41, Crown Rights, contains the following provision for the Duke of Cornwall:

“Nothing in this Act affects prejudicially any estate, right, power, privilege, authority, exemption of the Crown including (without prejudice to the general law concerning the applicability of statutes to the Duchy of Cornwall) the Duchy of Cornwall…..”!

Something of an own goal from the mandarins in Whitehall. What is being inadvertently admitted here is that there are legal precedents for a discrete legislature pertaining in Cornwall. This is pre-emptive face saving legislation in the event of a later assembly in Cornwall questioning the validity of the Act.

The Cornish Stannary Royal Charter of Pardon of 1508 is also revealing. This Charter is still in force and effective according to the latest Butterworths reissue of Halsbury's Statutes, Vol.10, Constitutional Law, 1995, Royal Mines Act 1693, 5 Will & Mar, c.6, [HMSO Ed. 1978, ISBN011801661X], which made this guarantee just five years after the more generally known, Bill of Rights 1688:

"Provided always that nothing in this Act shall alter determine or make void the Charters granted to the Tinners of Devon and Cornwall by any of the Kings and Queens of this realme or any of the liberties, privileges or franchises of the said tinners or to alter determine or make void the laws, customs or constitutions of the Stannaries of Devon or Cornwall or any of them".

user:sjc

Might there be some virtue in treating this in the same sort of way as the debate over the nationality of Copernicus? ie, just briefly mention that the situation is complicated on the main Cornwall page with a link to a page that discusses all these things that sjc's just posted (which are actually quite interesting, I think). I think that all the people involved in this Cornwall debate are much more reasonable than some of those who were in on that one. Bth

The Copernicus nationality thing was a mere footnote to the bloodbath edit-war that at times has characterised this one, Bth. We however managed to hammer out a form of words which was neutral, i.e. which offended no-one whilst satisfying no-one, and restored a veneer of civilised debate to the subject. Every so often someone comes along and rocks the boat, and bang goes a number of other articles more in need of urgent attention. I think that your suggestion, however, has considerable merit and maybe we need a new type of subpage e.g. in this case Cornwall (jurisdictional and nationhood debate).

We also need a mechanism for flagging up where forms of words have been agreed so that this kind of foot-in-it editing is immediately apparent: perhaps an agreed typeface or font colour which shows where a compromise has been achieved. user:sjc

Once the text on this page is agreed on and clear, any future debates on Cornwall can just be resolved according to waht's here. -- Tarquin

Theoretically correct. In reality it will return. It is a pity we lost the original debate in the move because exactly that was said last time round and we agreed to refactor this page to excise the bloody dispute. user:sjc

Firstly, my apologies for underestimating how bad this had been in the past; I'm slightly surprised, but never mind. I don't think I like the idea of a special typeface or font colour marking "text that shouldn't be changed" because a) it could well look ugly and b) it probably wouldn't mean anything to a newbie, who would go ahead and change things anyway and quite possibly leave the formatting intact so that it looked like their new version was the "agreed" one. Perhaps an italicised comment at the top of a controversial paragraph along the lines of "(The following paragraph has been a source of considerable controversy and the form of words below is the result of a compromise acceptable to all parties. Please do not edit it without discussing your proposed changes on the talk page first)" would be clearer, and would give implicit authority to someone reverting a change that had been made without discussion.--Bth

That would certainly fit the bill, Bth. user:sjc

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SJC, how can you justify saying Cornwall is not in England:

Cambridge Encyclopedia:

County in SW England, divided in to eight districts and the Isles of Scilly...

Encylopedia.com:

County (1991 pop. 469,300), SW England. The county seat is Bodmin, although most administration eminates from Truro.

Encarta:

CORNWALL (ENGLAND), in full Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, county in southwestern England.

Brittanica:

Cornwall, administrative and historic county, southwestern England, occupying a peninsula jutting into the Atlantic Ocean. Truro is the seat of the county's administration

According to Brittanica, the duchy is a separate entity:

Cornwall, duchy of:

a private estate consisting of lands, honours, franchises, rights, profits, etc., held by the eldest living son of the British sovereign. The holdings and perquisites are found not only in the modern county of Cornwall but also in Devon, Somerset, and elsewhere in the southwest of England.

Heritage doesn't use the name because nationalist groups kept ripping up their signs, not because they believe it not to be a county. Jeremy

AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Heritage removed their signs because they were fighting a losing battle. I wonder why the Cornish people were removing them if they thought they were in England?

Please read thoroughly what is said in the block above. The (manifestly English) editors of these august publications can say what they like. It doesn't make it correct. These are gross oversimplifications for people who can't be bothered to ascertain the facts of a matter for themselves.

Cornwall is not, never has been, never will be in England, moreover it was a nation and state before England ever existed. The legal and administrative status of Cornwall is a matter of considerable debate; this is core/periphery stuff: "If we say it doesn't exist then perhaps it will go away?" It won't. Much like the English said that the Irish would never achieve Home Rule or the Scottish independence.

Some of the indicators as to the very nub of this debate are set out above. It is not acceptable to most Cornish people to say that Cornwall is in England. It might suit the overweaning arrogance of the English to think that it is. Please reread what is set out above and engage your brain before regurgitating facts. user:sjc

Or are you just another internet troll, Jeremy? user:sjc

Not a troll. I am sorry to cause you so much grief and I did read the paragraph above. My argument was that a consensus of respected publications seems to think that it is a county of England. A royal charter from 1508 is entirely irrelevant today. There are hundreds of obscure laws which have never been revised, that doesn't mean they are still in effect. Nor can you prove that it is "not acceptable to most Cornish people" to say so. We've had this with science articles - if it is debated, defer to what the consensus think. I don't know of any Cornish encylopedias so I looked at respected British and American ones.

Fundamentally I don't think it is a big point so I won't push it. Jeremy.

Ok, apology accepted and not really necessary. I just get rather tired of going over the same old ground time and time again. I accept that there are big question marks which is why we brokered a half-way house which neither says that it is or isn't in England.

Your assertion that "A royal charter from 1508 is entirely irrelevant today" is entirely incorrect in law. If it is a law it is a law. It either has to be revised or it is extant. If the law is not absolute, anarchy lies around the corner.

I further think that a signed petition of more than 50,000 Cornish people asking for an independent assembly for Cornwall is kind of indicative of the way the consensus of opinion in my corner of the world is going (it would be much bigger now, btw). user:sjc