St Michael's Mount (Cornish: Carrack Looz en
Cooz) is a lofty pyramidal tidal island, exhibiting a curious
combination of slate and granite, rising 400 yards (366 m) from the shore of Mount's Bay, situated in Penwith in
west Cornwall, United Kingdom, in the extreme south western peninsula of the island of Great Britain. It is united with Marazion
by a man-made causeway comprising granite setts and is passable only at mid to low
tide.
Its Cornish language name - literally, "the grey rock in the wood" - may represent a folk memory of a time before Mount's Bay was flooded. Certainly, the Cornish name would be an accurate description of the Mount set in woodland. Remains of trees have been seen at low tides following storms on the beach at Perranuthnoe. The Cornish legend of Lyonesse, an ancient kingdom said to have extended from Penwith toward the Isles of Scilly, also talks of land being inundated by the sea.
Historically, St Michael's Mount was a Cornish counterpart of Mont Saint Michel in Normandy, France.
St Michael's Mount is known colloquially by locals as simply the Mount.
The Mount may be the Mictis of Timaeus, mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia (IV:XVI.104), and the Ictis of Diodorus Siculus.[citation needed] Both men had access to the now lost texts of the ancient Greek Geographer Pytheas, who visited the island in the fourth century BCE. If this is true, it is one of the earliest identified locations in the whole of western Europe and particularly on the island of Britain.
It may have been held by a religious body in the time of Edward the Confessor and given by Robert, Count of Mortain to the Norman abbey of Mont Saint Michel.[citation needed] It was a priory of that abbey until the dissolution of the alien houses by Henry V, when it was given to the abbess and Convent of Syon at Isleworth, Middlesex. It was a resort of pilgrims, whose devotions were encouraged by an indulgence granted by Pope Gregory in the 11th century.
Henry Pomeroy captured the Mount, on behalf of Prince John, in the reign of Richard I. John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, seized and held it during a siege of 23 weeks against 6,000 of Edward IV's troops in 1473. Perkin Warbeck occupied the Mount in 1497. Humphry Arundell, governor of St Michael's Mount, led the rebellion of 1549. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it was given to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, by whose son it was sold to Sir Francis Basset. During the Civil War, Sir Arthur Basset, brother of Sir Francis, held the Mount against the parliament until July 1646.
In 1755 the Lisbon earthquake caused a tsunami to strike the Cornish coast over 1,000 miles away. The sea rose six feet in 10 minutes at St Michael's Mount, ebbed at the same rate, and continued to rise and fall for five hours. The 19th-century French writer Arnold Boscowitz claimed that "great loss of life and property occurred upon the coasts of Cornwall." [1]
In the late 19th century, the skeleton of a royalist soldier was discovered when a secret chamber was found in the castle. The soldier had apparently
starved to death: a jug of stagnant water was found next to his remains. The Mount was sold in 1659 to Colonel John St Aubyn. His descendant, Lord St Levan,
continues to be the "tenant" of the Mount but has ceased to be resident there, his nephew, James St Aubyn, taking up residency and management of the
Mount in 2004.
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