St Neot

ST NEOT

THE following account of this celebrated saint, as given by Mr Davies Gilbert, will not be without interest :-- "Multitudes flocked to him from all parts. He founded a monastery, and repaired to Rome for a confirmation, and for blessing at the hands, of the Pope; these were readily obtained. He returned to his monastery, where frequent visits were made to him by King Alfred, on which occasions he admonished and instructed the great founder of English liberty, and finally quitted this mortal life on the 31st of July about the year 883, in the odour of sanctity so unequivocal that travellers all over Cornwall were solaced by its fragrance. Nor did the exertions of our saint terminate with his existence on earth; he frequently appeared to King Alfred, and sometimes led his armies in the field. But if the tales of these times are deserving of any confidence, the nation is really and truly indebted to St Neot for one of the greatest blessings ever bestowed on it. To his advice, and even to his personal assistance as a teacher, we owe the foundation by Alfred of the University at Oxford.

"The relics of St Neot remained at his monastery in Cornwall till about the year 974, when Earl Alric, and his wife Ethelfleda, having founded .a religious house at Eynesbury, in Huntingdonshire, and being at a loss for some patron saint, adopted the expedient of stealing the body of St Neot; which was accordingly done and the town retains his name, thus feloniously obtained, up to this time. The monastery in Cornwall continued feebly to exist after this disaster through the Saxon times; but having lost its palladium, it felt the ruiner's hand; and almost immediately after the Norman Conquest it was finally suppressed. Yet the memory of the local saint is still cherished by the inhabitants of the parish and of the neighbourhood--endeared, perhaps, by the tradition of his diminutive stature, reduced in their imagination to fifteen inches of height; and to these feelings we, in all probability, owe the preservation of the painted glass, the great decoration of this church, and one of the principal works of Art to be seen in Cornwall"--Gilbert's Hist, Corn., vol. iii. p. 262.