fn 18 In the winter of 1831 for instance, a vicar’s agent who arrived in Mousehole to collect the fish tithe, had his
pistols thrown into the harbor and was driven out of the village in a hail of snowballs. When he arrived in
Newlyn the fishermen hurried him on his journey with the same weapons, and erected a sign complete with
skull and crossbones which declared "No Tithe, One and All, 1831." Annual Report, Volumes 46 to 48: Royal
Cornwall Polytechnic Society, (Falmouth: Lake and Co. and R.C. Richards, 1878) 89. Joseph Livesay and
William Cobbett both provide analysis of that incident. Cobbett’s is secular and reformist, Livesay quoting
The West Briton story in which the fisherman are reported to have condemned tithing as an ancient and
Catholic superstition. Cobbett, Selections from Cobbett’s Political Works, Volume VI, (London: Ann Cobbett,
1835) 594; Livesay The Moral Reformer and Protestor of the Vices, Abuses, and Corruptions, of the Age, Vol. I,
(London: Sherwood and Co., 1831), 123. ‚ This demand for the fish tithe it is said, arose of a free-will
offering made in the days of Catholic superstition, to purchase the prayers of monks, but it has been
tenaciously retained after Protestantism has banished the superstitions of the Church of Rome,‛ West Briton,
March 7, 1833.
[nb there wasn't a West Briton March 7, 1833 - published 1st and 8th... CSC]
https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/6150/Penne…