The next mention of Cornish hermits is found in the _Inquisitio post-mortem_ of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall.[102] Following the inventory of honours, lands and services held by him at the time of his death there is a list of the charges upon his estates and among them the entry: “alms to St. Philip of Restormel, hermit, and St. Robert of Penlyn, hermit.” The earldom and its possessions reverted to the King on Earl Edmund’s death, and we are therefore not surprised to find an entry in the Close Roll of the following year, 1301, which reads as follows: “To the sheriff of Cornwall. Order to deliver to brother Robert of Penlyn, hermit, the island surrounded (_inclusam_) by the water of Fawe with a rent of 56s. 2d. from certain tenants of the manor of Penkneth, to be held by him for life as he held them before the death of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, by reason of whose death the sheriff took them into the King’s hands; on the same terms as the earl granted them, together with the houses built on the island, to Robert by his charter which the King has inspected.”[103]
All attempts to identify the island have hitherto failed. The manors of Penlyn or Pelyn and Penkneth or Pennight are in the parish of Lanlivery, of which the river Fowey is, roughly speaking, the eastern boundary, but no island is now to be discovered in its course. The site of the hermitage of Restormel is also uncertain. It may have been that of the chapel of the Holy Trinity in the park, sometimes called the King’s free chapel, to which frequent reference is made in the Rolls, and from which, according to an inventory made in 1338, a bell weighing 100 lbs. had been removed to the chapel within the castle walls of Restormel. There is nothing to lead us to suppose that St. Philip and St. Robert had successors. It is not improbable that royal chaplains were substituted for them.
In 1339 the Patent Roll records the King’s protection granted to Roger Godman, hermit of the chapel of St. Mary by Liskeard (Liskerith), collecting about the realm the alms whereon he depends for subsistence.[104] It is probable that the chapel of St. Mary was the same as the King’s free chapel of St. Mary in the park of Liskeard to which Edward II appointed Roger de Aqua his chaplain in 1316.[105] It must be distinguished from that of the Hospital of St. Mary Magdalen. The former appears to have become a chantry, for, in 1378, a royal grant was made to Richard Lagge, chaplain, that he might celebrate service in it, and in the same year the bishop issued a licence to him in which it is stated that he is to celebrate for the welfare of the King.[106] The chantry was suppressed by Edward VI, and the “Chapel of our Laydye” granted to Thomas Pomray in 1549.[107] It is interesting to compare the fortunes of this chapel with that of the Holy Trinity in the park of Restormel. Both of them appear to have been served originally by hermits, to have been converted into royal chapels and to have shared the same fate.