In Penzance, the eye is drawn across the bay to the rocky island of St. Michael's Mount and, inevitably, visual comparison is made to Mont St. Michel in Normandy. There is a closer connection. King Edward the Confessor granted the Mount to the Benedictine monks of Mont St. Michel and, by 1140, they had founded the church on the summit of the rock. Henry V confiscated the priory when England and France were at war, and it was later handed over to the nuns of the Abbey of Syon, near London. With Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1534, the Crown took it back, installed a governor and fortified the buildings to protect the Cornish coast.
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causeway visible, just below the surface  |
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boats to the island, when the tide is in  |
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