William Scawen

William Scawen (1600-1689), was a seventeeth-century Cornish patriot and language revivalist and a Vice-Warden of the Stannaries. He was a member of Parliament for St Germans who left some valuable manuscripts, mostly in the Cornish language. He produced an epic manuscript on the declining Cornish language that continually evolved until he died in 1689, aged 89.

He was the first person to realise the language was dying out and wrote detailed manuscripts which he started working on when he was 78. The only version that was ever published was a short first draft, but the final version, which he worked on until his death, is hundreds of pages long - with small notes stuck in all through it in his increasingly illegible handwriting. Scawen was a major figure in the defence of Cornwall against the New Model Army in the English Civil War. For Cornish commanders like Scawen it was more like a war of national liberation against the English Parliament, which the Cornish ultimately lost.

William Scawen's main work included observations on the ancient manuscript, entitled, "Passio Christi", written in the Cornish language, and now preserved in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. [ [http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101074429/ William Scawen - Oxford Biography Index] ] It features an account of the language, manners, and customs of the Cornish people.

External links

* [http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/12255/ "West Britons" by Mark Stoyle]

References