Imagine the arrival at the buttery hatch of those three hundred puffins! We think them a leathery, fishy kind of food, and nowadays the servants would leave in a body if required to eat them. But those were the good old times, and in guardroom and kitchen no doubt they had puffin roasted and puffin boiled and puffins in their pasties until the lady of the castle said to her lord: "My love, in this weather, of course, you can't expect those puffins to keep; really the Scillies are most inconsiderate, one hundred at a time would have been sufficient!" and then they had puffins potted and variously preserved until the garrison groaned in chorus the old grace:
"_Puffins young and puffins old, Puffins hot and puffins cold, Puffins tender and puffins tough, I thank the Lord I've had enough._"
At the time of the Civil Wars the Castle, nodding in age-long sleep and slow decay, was restored and fortified. Charles I. and his troops passed through the town in August 1644; and Richard Grenville, new-made Lord of Lostwithiel, was imprisoned here, when his turbulence had exhausted the royal patience. Now the county gaol is at Bodmin; but in those days of dungeons and fetters the folk were incarcerated in the fortress--what is now a playground being the place of execution.
The ruins are certainly the most interesting part of Launceston, and it has ruins not only of the ivy-grown castle, but of a priory founded in 1126. Its faint remains, with the exception of a doorway built into the White Hart Hotel, lie in a valley between the town and St. Stephen's. When the privilege of sanctuary was abolished except in churches and churchyards, Launceston was one of the seven towns that were made sanctuaries for life, except for heinous crimes. The result, however, was not altogether pleasant for the aforesaid towns, which, much to their dismay, presently found themselves harbouring all the criminals and rapscallions of the country. Preferring the room of these would-be citizens to their company, the towns petitioned James I. for "desecration" and the right of sanctuary was finally abolished.
The Church of St. Mary Magdalene was built by Sir Henry Trecarrel in 1524 on the death of his only child. It is of granite, and has the peculiarity of being worked all over with picks instead of chisels. The ornamentation is florid and excessive. A granite carving of the Crucifixion, however, and other interesting monuments form part of the churchyard wall. The vestry was once a shop that separated the tower from the church, which though it seems strange to our modern notions was by no means unusual in olden days.