Constitutional status of Cornwall

The flag of Cornwall.

Map showing the location of Cornwall (orange), within England (light orange), and the rest of the United Kingdom (pale orange).

The constitutional status of Cornwall has been a matter of debate and dispute. Cornwall (Cornish: Kernow) is currently an administrative county of England, with movements advocating for Cornwall to be regarded separately from being a county of England and either as a country of the United Kingdom or an independent country in its own right.

In ethnic and cultural terms, until around 1700, Cornwall and its inhabitants were regarded as a separate people by their English neighbours. One aspect of the distinct identity of Cornwall is the Cornish language, which survived into the early modern period (down to 5,000 speakers in the 18th century) but was then revived in the 20th Century.

History

Prior to the Norman Conquest

Roman Britannia showing those areas under Roman rule and the position of Dumnonia as a part of Roman Britain

The British Isles c. 600, showing Dumnonia as a Celtic kingdom, separate from Anglo-Saxon Wessex

The British Isles c. 802, showing "West Wales Cornwall" across the Tamar from Wessex

In pre-Roman times, Cornwall was part of the kingdom of Dumnonia. Later, it was known to the Anglo-Saxons as West Wales, to distinguish it from North Wales, that is, modern-day Wales. The name Cornwall is a combination of two elements. The second derives from the Anglo-Saxon word wealh, meaning "foreigner" "Celt", "Roman", "Briton", which also survives in the words Wales and Welsh. The first element "Corn", indicating the shape of the peninsula, is descended from Celtic kernou, an Indo-European word related to English horn and Latin cornu.

References in contemporary charters (for which there is either an original manuscript or an early copy regarded as authentic) show Egbert of Wessex (802–839) granting lands in Cornwall at Kilkhampton, Ros, Maker, Pawton (in St Breock, not far from Wadebridge, head manor of Pydar in Domesday Book), Caellwic (perhaps Celliwig or Kellywick in Egloshayle), and Lawhitton to Sherborne Abbey and to the Bishop of Sherborne. All of the identifiable locations except Pawton are in the far east of Cornwall, so these references show a degree of West Saxon control over its eastern fringes. Such control had certainly been established in places by the later ninth century, as indicated by the will of King Alfred the Great (871–899).

King Athelstan, who came to the throne of England in 924 CE, immediately began a campaign to consolidate his power, and by about 926 had taken control of the Kingdom of Northumbria, following which he established firm boundaries with other kingdoms such as Scotland and Cornwall. The latter agreement, according to 12th century West Country historian William of Malmesbury, ended rights of residence for Cornish subjects in Exeter, and fixed the Cornish boundary at the east bank of the River Tamar. At Easter 928, Athelstan held court at Exeter, with the Welsh and "West Welsh" subject rulers present, and by 931 he had appointed a bishop for Cornwall within the English church (i.e. subject to the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury). The Bodmin manumissions, two to three generations later, show that the ruling class of Cornwall quickly became "Anglicised", most owners of slaves having Anglo-Saxon names (not necessarily because they were of English descent; some at least were Cornish nobles who changed their names).

It is clear that at this time areas beyond the core of Anglo-Saxon settlement were recognised as different by the English kings. Athelstan's successor, Edmund, in a charter for an estate just north of Exeter, styled himself as "King of the English, and ruler of this province of Britons". Edmund's successor Edgar styled himself "King of the English and ruler of the adjacent nations".

Surviving charters issued by the Kings of England Edmund I (939–946), Edgar (959–975), Edward the Martyr (975–978), Aethelred II (978–1016), Edmund II (1016), Cnut (1016–1035) and Edward the Confessor (1042–1066) record grants of land in Cornwall made by these kings. In contrast to the easterly concentration of the estates held or granted by English kings in the ninth century, the tenth and eleventh-century grants were widely distributed across Cornwall. As is usual with charters of this period, the authenticity of some of these documents is open to question (though Della Hooke has established high reliability for the Cornish material), but that of others (e.g., Edgar's grant of estates at Tywarnhaile and Bosowsa to his thane Eanulf in 960, Edward the Confessor's grant of estates at Traboe, Trevallack, Grugwith and Trethewey to Bishop Ealdred in 1059) is not in any doubt. Some of these grants include exemptions from obligations to the crown which would otherwise accompany land ownership, while retaining others, including those regarding military service. Assuming that these documents are authentic, the attachment of these obligations to the King of England to ownership of land in Cornwall suggests that the area was under his direct rule and implies that the legal and administrative relationship between the king and his subjects was the same there as elsewhere in his kingdom.

In 1051, with the exile of Godwin, Earl of Wessex and his sons and the forfeiture of their earldoms, a man named Odda was appointed earl over a portion of the lands thus vacated: this comprised Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and "Wealas". As Wealas is Saxon for foreigners, this could mean "West Wales"—that is, Cornwall—or it could mean that he was overlord of the Cornish foreigners in Devon or elsewhere.

Elizabethan historian William Camden, in the Cornish section of his Britannia, notes that:

As for the Earles, none of British bloud are mentioned but onely Candorus (called by others Cadocus), who is accounted by the late writers the last Earle of Cornwall of British race.

Norman conquest and after

Cornwall was included in the survey, initiated by William the Conqueror, the first Norman king of England, which became known as the Domesday Book, where it is included as being part of the Norman king's new domain. Cornwall was unusual as Domesday records no Saxon burh; a burh (borough) was the Saxons' centre of legal and administrative power. Moreover, nearly all land was held by one person, William's half-brother Robert of Mortain, who may have been the first Norman to bear the title Earl of Cornwall. He held his Cornish lands not as a Tenant in Chief of the King, as was the case with other landowners, but as de facto viceroy.

F. M. Stenton tells us that the early Norman compilation known as "The Laws of William the Conqueror" records all regions under West Saxon law. These included Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and Devon. Cornwall is not recorded as being under West Saxon, or English, law.

Ingulf was secretary to William the Conqueror and after 1066 was appointed Abbot of Croyland. When his church burned down, he established a fund raising committee to rebuild it. Ingulf's Chronicle tells us:

Having obtained this indulgence, he now opened the foundation for the new church, and sent throughout the whole of England, and into lands adjoining and beyond the sea, letters testimonial. To the Northern parts and into Scotland he sent the brothers Fulk and Oger, and into Denmark and Norway the brothers Swetman and Wulsin; while to Wales, Cornwall and Ireland he sent the brothers Augustin and Osbert.

Henry of Huntingdon, writing about 1129, included Cornwall in his list of shires of England in his History of the English.

The Scrope v Grosvenor lawsuit of 1386–1389 upheld the rule that two claimants of the same nation may not bear the same arms. However, the same case allowed Thomas Carminow of Cornwall to continue to do so, as Cornwall was considered a separate country, being "a large land formerly bearing the name of a kingdom".

The phrase "England and Cornwall" (Anglia et Cornubia) has been used on occasion in post-Norman official documents referring to the Duchy of Cornwall:

25 Edw. III to John Dabernoun, our Steward and Sheriff of Cornwall greeting. On account of certain escheats we command you that you inquire by all the means in your power how much land and rents, goods and chattels, whom and in whom, and of what value they which those persons of Cornwall and England have, whose names we send in a schedule enclosed...

— Extracted from a commission of the first Duke of Cornwall, 1351

Tudor period

The Italian Polydore Vergil in his Anglica Historia, published in 1535 wrote that four peoples speaking four different languages inhabited Britain:

the whole Countrie of Britain... is divided into iiii partes; whereof the one is inhabited of Englishmen, the other of Scottes, the third of Wallshemen, [and] the fowerthe of Cornishe people, which all differ emonge them selves, either in tongue, ... in manners, or ells in lawes and ordinaunces.

During the Tudor period some travellers regarded the Cornish as a separate cultural group, from which some modern observers conclude that they were a separate ethnic group. For example, Lodovico Falier, an Italian diplomat at the court of Henry VIII said, "The language of the English, Welsh and Cornish men is so different that they do not understand each other." He went on to give the alleged 'national characteristics' of the three peoples, saying for example "the Cornishman is poor, rough and boorish".

Another example is Gaspard de Coligny Châtillon – the French Ambassador in London – who wrote saying that England was not a united whole as it "contains Wales and Cornwall, natural enemies of the rest of England, and speaking a different language". His use of the phrase "the rest of" implies that he believed Cornwall and Wales to be part of England in his sense of the word.

Some maps of the British Isles prior to the 17th century showed Cornwall (Cornubia/Cornwallia) as a territory on a par with Wales. However most post-date the incorporation of Wales as a principality of England. Examples include the maps of Sebastian Munster (1515), Abraham Ortelius, and Girolamo Ruscelli. Maps that depict Cornwall as a county of the Kingdom of England and Wales include Gerardus Mercator's 1564 atlas of Europe, and Christopher Saxton's 1579 map authorised by Queen Elizabeth I.

A miniature "epitome" of Ortelius' map of England and Wales, published in 1595, names Cornwall; the same map displays Kent in an equivalent manner. Maps of Britain which display Cornwall usually in their legends do not refer to Cornwall, e.g. Lily 1548.

17th and 18th centuries

Recognition that several peoples lived within Britain and Ireland continued through the 17th century. For example, after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the Venetian ambassador wrote that the late queen had ruled over five different 'peoples': "English, Welsh, Cornish, Scottish ... and Irish".

Writing in 1616, diplomat Arthur Hopton stated:

England is... divided into 3 great Provinces, or Countries... every of them speaking a several and different language, as English, Welsh and Cornish.

Wales was effectively annexed to the Kingdom of England in the 16th century by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, but references to 'England' in law were not presumed to include Wales (or indeed Berwick-upon-Tweed) until the Wales and Berwick Act 1746. By this time the use of "England and Cornwall" (Anglia et Cornubia) had ceased.

Because of the tendency of historians to trust the work of their predecessors, Geoffrey of Monmouth's semi-fictional 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae remained influential for centuries, often used by writers who were unaware that his work was the source. For example, in 1769 the antiquary William Borlase wrote the following, which is actually a summary of a passage from Geoffrey [Book iii:1]:

Of this time we are to understand what Edward I. says (Sheringham. [De Anglorum Gentis Origine] p. 129.) that Britain, Wales, and Cornwall, were the portion of Belinus, elder son of Dunwallo, and that that part of the Island, afterwards called England, was divided in three shares, viz. Britain, which reached from the Tweed, Westward, as far as the river Ex; Wales inclosed by the rivers Severn, and Dee; and Cornwall from the river Ex to the Land's-End.

Another 18th-century writer, Richard Gough, concentrated on a contemporary viewpoint, noting that "Cornwall seems to be another Kingdom", in his "Camden's Britannia", 2nd ed. (4 vols; London, 1806).

During the 18th century, Samuel Johnson created an ironic Cornish declaration of independence that he used in his essay Taxation no Tyranny His irony starts:

As political diseases are naturally contagious, let it be supposed, for a moment, that Cornwall, seized with the Philadelphian phrensy, may resolve to separate itself from the general system of the English constitution, and judge of its own rights in its own parliament. A congress might then meet at Truro, and address the other counties in a style not unlike the language of the American patriots. ... We are the acknowledged descendants of the earliest inhabitants of Britain, of men, who, before the time of history, took possession of the island desolate and waste, and, therefore, open to the first occupants. Of this descent, our language is a sufficient proof, which, not quite a century ago, was different from yours.

19th century

Popular Cornish sentiment during the 19th century appears to have been still strong. For example, A. K. Hamilton Jenkin records the reaction of a school pupil who was asked to describe Cornwall's situation replied: "he's kidged to a furren country from the top hand" – i.e., "it's joined to a foreign country from the upper part". This reply was "heard by the whole school with much approval, including old Peggy (the school-dame) herself."

The famous crime writer Wilkie Collins described Cornwall as:

a county where, it must be remembered, a stranger is doubly a stranger, in relation to his provincial sympathies; where the national feeling is almost entirely merged into the local feeling; where a man speaks of himself as Cornish in much the same way that a Welshman speaks of himself as Welsh.

Chambers' Journal in 1861 described Cornwall as "one of the most un-English of English counties" – a sentiment echoed by the naturalist W. H. Hudson who also referred to it as "un-English" and said there were

[few] Englishmen in Cornwall who do not experience that antipathy or sense of separation in mind from the people they live with, and are not looked upon as foreigners.

Until the Tin Duties Abolition Act 1838, the Cornish miner was charged twice the level of taxation compared to the English miner. The English practice of charging 'foreigners' double taxation had existed in Cornwall for over 600 years prior to the 1838 act and was first referenced in William de Wrotham's letter of 1198 AD, published in G. R. Lewis, The Stannaries [1908]. The campaigning West Briton newspaper called the racially applied tax "oppresive and vexatious" (19 January 1838). In 1856 the Westminster Parliament was still able to refer to the Cornish as aboriginals (Foreshore Case papers, Page 11, Section 25).

Cornish "shires"

Hundreds of Cornwall in the early 19th century (formerly known as Cornish Shires)

Additionally, Cornwall was also divided into "Hundreds", which often bore the name of "shire" in English. In Cornish, they were called kevrangow (sing. kevrang).

Although the name "shire", today implies some kind of county status, hundreds in some English counties often bore the suffix 'shire' as well (e.g., Salfordshire), but where English shires were split into hundreds each having their own constable, Cornish hundreds had constables at parish level.

The Kevrangow were not, however, English hundreds: Triggshire came from Tricori 'three warbands', suggesting a military muster area capable of supporting three hundred fighting men. However it must be said that this is an inference from name alone, and does not constitute historical evidence of any fighting force raised by a Cornish hundred.

The Cornish kevrang replicated England's shire system on a smaller scale. Although by the 15th century the shires of Cornwall had become hundreds, the administrative differences remained in place long after.

Constitutional status – arguments on each side

The argument for non-English constitutional status

One of the main arguments of Cornwall's non-English constitutional status is the extensive rights and powers given to the Duchy of Cornwall. In the Cornish Foreshore Case, the Duchy of Cornwall argued that it was "quasi sovereign within the Duchy" and that "the Duke of Cornwall was placed precisely in the position of the King." The Duchy of Cornwall itself argued in this case that Cornwall was "treated in many respects as distinct from England." The right to all minerals under the high-water mark in Cornwall was then granted to the Duchy in the Cornwall Submarine Mines Act 1858.

The Duchy of Cornwall retains the right to vet Westminster legislation which may affect the Duchy's land and portfolio, with at least 275 draft laws being reviewed in this way between 1970 and 2020. This directly contradicts the notion that the Duchy of Cornwall is merely a "real estate company" operating within Cornwall and other areas of the United Kingdom.

In 1328 the Earldom of Cornwall, extinct since the disgrace and execution of Piers Gaveston in 1312, was recreated and awarded to John, younger brother of King Edward III.

The constitution of the now-defunct Council for Racial Equality in Cornwall defined Cornwall as follows:

"Cornwall retains a unique and distinct constitutional relationship with the Crown, based on the Duchy of Cornwall and the stannaries. For other purposes it is recognised as a Celtic region or nation and enjoys its own national flag."

Cornwall's Stannary Parliament was chartered in 2001 by King John and granted substantial powers by the Grant of Pardon to the tinners of Cornwall, 1508, including, uniquely, the right to veto Westminster legislation, although this right was never directly invoked. Both the charter that established the Stannary Parliament and the Grant of Pardon 1508 remain in force.

On 14 July 2009, Dan Rogerson MP, of the Liberal Democrats, presented a Cornish 'breakaway' bill to the Parliament in Westminster – The Government of Cornwall Bill. The bill proposed a devolved assembly for Cornwall, similar to the Welsh and Scottish setup. The bill states that Cornwall should re-assert its rightful place within the United Kingdom. Rogerson argued that:

"there is a political and social will for Cornwall to be recognised as its own nation. Constitutionally, Cornwall has the right to a level of self-Government. If the Government is going to recognise the right of Scotland and Wales to greater self-determination because of their unique cultural and political positions, then they should recognise ours."

Unlike other counties of England, such as Lancashire, Kent, and Cheshire, Cornwall possesses a living Celtic language following its near extinction and following revival in the 20th century, with the existence of a living Celtic languages also being one of the key arguments made by pro-devolution campaigners in both Wales and Scotland. Wales was formally declared as part of England in the Wales and Berwick Act 1746, with this provision being repealed in the Welsh Language Act 1967. Cornwall, unlike Wales, was never formally integrated into England via an act of union.