The Cornish Timeline

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The following is the "Chronological Appendix" found in "A History of Cornwall," by F.E. Haliday

Published 1959 and 1975 (2nd Ed.) by Duckworth, the Garden City Press Limited

Letchworth, Hertfordshire SG6 IJS (ISBN # 0 7156 0162 8)


B.C.

c. 7000 Mesolithic Period

c. 2500 Neolithic Period

c. 1800 Beaker Folk invasions

c. 1600 Early Bronze Age

c. 1400 Middle Bronze Age

c. 900 Late Bronze Age, First Celtic immigrants

c. 400 Early Iron Age

c. 250 La Tene invasions

55-54 Julius Caesar's raids on south-east Britain

 

A.D.

Courtyard house culture.

43 Roman occupation of Britain

c. 250 Romans begin to exploit Cornish tin

c. 312 Constantine makes Christianity the Imperial religion

410 End of Roman occupation

c. 500 Ambrosius Aurelianus defeats Saxons at Badon Hill

Period of King Arthur and King Mark, of Irish raids and the coming of the Saints.

597 St. Augustine lands in Kent

710 Saxons take Exeter

814 Egbert conquers Cornwall

838 Battle of Hingston Down

931 Athelstan creates diocese of Cornwall, with see at St. Germans

c. 1050 Diocese of Cornwall combined with Devon, with see at Exeter

1066 Norman Conquest

Robert of Mortain , first Earl of Cornwall

1201 King John grants a charter to the Stannaries

c. 1280 Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, makes Lostwithiel the county capital

1337 Creation of the Duchy of Cornwall, with the Black Prince as the first Duke

1348-49 The Black Death

1473 Lancastrian attempt to seize St. Michael's Mount

1497 Cornish rebellion led by Joseph and Flamank, followed by rebellion led by Perkin Warbeck

1536-39 Dissolution of the monasteries

c. 1538 Leland's tour of Cornwall

1545 Loss of the Mary Rose and Roger Grenville

1549 Prayer Book Rebellion

1558 Accession of Queen Elizabeth

1577 Cuthbert Mayne executed and Francis Tregian imprisoned

1588 Spanish Armada

1591 Death of Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge

1595 Spanish raid on Penzance

1602 Richard Carew publishes his Survey of Cornwall

1603 Death of Queen Elizabeth

1619 John Killigrew's lighthouse at the Lizard

1629 Sir John Eliot imprisoned

1642 Civil War begins

1643 Battles of Bradock Down, Stratton, Lansdown (Sir Bevil Grenville killed) and Roundway Down

Royalists take Bristol.

1644 Royalists defeat Essex at Lostwithiel

1646 Parliamentary army under Fairfax invades Cornwall.

John Arundell surrenders Pendennis Castle.

End of Civil War.

1651 John Grenville and Royalists driven out of Scilly.

1660 Restoration of Charles II.

1688 Imprisonment and acquittal of Bishop Trelawny

1702-10 Earl of Godolphin's ministry

1707 Sir Cloudesley Shovel wrecked on the Scilly Isles

c. 1710 First steam pump in Cornwall, and capitalist development of tin and copper mining.

1743 John Wesley's first visit to Cornwall

1754 William Borlase publishes his Antiquities of Cornwall

1777 James Watt erects his first steam engine in Cornwall

1787 Riots at Poldice mine owing to copper depression

1789 Wesley's last visit to Cornwall

1800-40 Rapid development of mining after Richard Trevithick's high pressure engine

1818 Royal Institution of Cornwall founded

1832 Reform Act: Cornish M.P.s reduced from 42 to 12

1834 Bodmin-Wadebridge Railway

1837 Discovery of copper at Caradon

1838 Abolition of tin coinage

1842 Man engine installed at Tresavean mine

1847 Plymouth-Falmouth railway begun

1852 West Cornwall Railway (Penzance-Truro) completed

1856 Maximum copper production of 209,000 tons of ore

1859 Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash completed

1864 Mines Commission

1866 Financial crisis, collapse of copper mining, and emigration of miners

1876 Diocese of Cornwall revived with see at Truro

c. 1890 Decline in tin mining and fisheries, and expansion of china clay and tourist industries

1928 First Cornish Gorsedd

1970 Foundation of The Institute of Cornish Studies and of a Chair of

Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter


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