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| December 3rd | Robert Stephen Hawker (Birth) |
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Cornwall – born Robert Stephen Hawker (1803 – 1888) was the son of the curate of Altarnun, the childhood village of Neville Northey Burnard (November 27th). Educated at Oxford, was ordained in 1831 and appointed to the living of Morwenstow where he served for over forty years. He often wrote about his love of the remote wild Cornish coast and became friends with smugglers, wreckers and dissenters. Hawker was the first resident Vicar of Morwenstow for a century and built himself his own vicarage with chimneys intended to resemble the towers of all the churches that had impacted on his life; Tamerton, where he had been curate; Morwenstow; Wellcombe and Magdalen College, Oxford. He also constructed his own, cliffside, writing hut which is now owned by the National Trust. Hawker wrote ‘Song of the Western Men’, effectively the National Anthem of Cornwall with the famous line ‘And Shall Trelawny Die?’, a reference to Bishop Trelawny who was one of the seven bishops imprisoned after the failed Monmouth rebellion. Regarded as an eccentric, as he dressed in bright colours, was often accompanied by his pet pig and took his nine cats to church he is also regarded as the deviser of the modern Harvest Festival (1843). On his deathbed, he converted to Roman Catholicism.
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