"_Keepe then the sea, about in special, Which of England is the towne wall, Keepe then the sea that is the wall of England, And then is England kept by Goddes hand...._"
In other words: "God helps those who help themselves."
Above Crafthole lies Sheviock, on one of the creeks of the Lynher, with a good fourteenth-century church. The Dawneys were lords of Sheviock, and we have it from Carew that while the husband was building the church, his more practical wife was erecting a barn. When they came to compare accounts it was found that the lady's expenditure had exceeded her lord's by three half-pence, "and so it might well fall, for it is a great barn and a very little church."
Henry VII., when Earl of Richmond, is said to have landed near Rame Head, and seeing that he had in his train such energetic Cornishmen as Sir Richard Edgcumbe and Sir Hugh Trevanion, men who could help him to a good few of their relatives and retainers, no doubt he was well advised. From the headland can be seen the Eddystone, which is nine miles south. This ridge of rocks is a mile long, but has only one small rock appearing above the water and has for ages been the terror of seamen. The first lighthouse was built in 1699, and four years later was swept away by a storm. A second, built in 1708, was burnt in 1755. The third, built by Smeaton in 1759, resisted the wind and weather for over a hundred years. The rocks on which it was built were then found to be giving way, and it was removed to Plymouth Hoe, and a new and higher lighthouse built on another part of the ridge.
The Rame forms the outer boundary of Plymouth Harbour; Penlee Point the western boundary of the sound; and a little to the north lies Mount Edgcumbe, which, though few people seem to know it, is in Cornwall. This interesting house was built in the time of Mary, but the park dates from Henry VIII., when the property came to the Edgcumbes by marriage. The grounds contain a great number of fortifications, from the battery and blockhouse built to oppose the Spanish Armada to more modern defences. The second Lord Edgcumbe, when a boy, was the friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds, a friendship which has resulted in the family portraits of three generations being painted by that artist. The house is as beautifully situated as the grounds are worth seeing and is on the end of a promontory several miles long and three wide.