cumstantial account is given by Hals, as quoted by Gilbert
in his "Parochial History of Cornwall." Here we are told that King Henry
III., by proclamation, let out all Jews in his dominions at a certain rent
to such as would poll and rifle them, and amongst others to his brother
Richard, King of the Romans, who, after he had plundered their estates,
committed their bodies, as his slaves, to labor in the tin-mines of
Cornwall; the memory of whose workings is still preserved in the names of
several tin works, called _Towle Sarasin_, and corruptly _Attall Saracen_;
_i.e._ the refuse or outcast of Saracens; that is to say, of those Jews
descended from Sarah and Abraham. Other works were called _Whele Etherson_
(alias _Ethewon_), the Jews' Works, or Unbelievers' Works, in Cornish.

Here we see how history is made; and if our inquiries led to no other
result, they would still be useful as a warning against putting implicit
faith in the statements of writers who are separated by several centuries
from the events they are relating. Here we have men like Carew and Camden,
both highly cultivated, learned, and conscientious, and yet neither of
them hesitating, in a work of historical character, to assert as a fact,
what, after making every allowance, can only be called a very bold guess.
Have we any reason to suppose that Herodotus and Thucydides, when speaking
of the original abodes of the various races of Greece, of their
migrations, their wars and final settlements, had better evidence before
them, or were more cautious in using their evidence, than Camden and
Carew? And is it likely that modern scholars, however learned and however
careful, can ever arrive at really satisfactory results by sifting and
arranging and rearranging the ethnological statements of the ancients, as
to the original abodes or the later migrations of Pelasgians, Tyrrhenians,
Thracians, Macedonians, and Illyrians, or even of Dorians, AEolians, and
Ionians? What is Carew's evidence in support of his statement that the
Jews first worked the tin-mines of Cornwall? Simply the sayings of the
people in Cornwall, who support their sayings by the name given to
deserted mines, _Attall Sarazin_. Now admitting that _Attall Sarazin_ or
_Attall Sazarin_, meant the refuse of the Saracens, how is it possible, in
cold blood, to identify the Saracens with Jews, and where is there a
tittle of evidence to prove that the Jews were the first to work these
mines,--mines, be it re