The area of Cornwall (marked as "County of Cornwall" for consistency; clearly not a county in the early years!) existed in the Paleolithic & had sporadic visits by groups of humans; continuous occupation started around 10,000 years ago, after the end of the last ice age In the first century, Cornwall was part of the territory of the tribe of the Dumnonii that included modern-day Devon and parts of Somerset Cornwall's Early Medieval history has references to a Cornish King named Arthur, featured in such legendary works as Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia Regum Britanniae", predating the Arthurian legends of the Matter of Britain After a period of Roman rule, Cornwall reverted to rule by independent Romano-British leaders and continued to have a close relationship with Brittany and Wales as well as southern Ireland, which neighbored across the Celtic Sea. After the collapse of Dumnonia, the remaining territory of Cornwall came into conflict with neighboring Wessex and in the middle of the ninth century, Cornwall fell under the control of Wessex, but it kept its own culture In 1337, the title Duke of Cornwall was created by the English monarchy, to be held by the king's eldest son and heir. Cornwall, along with the neighboring county of Devon, maintained Stannary institutions that granted some local control over its most important product, tin, but by the time of Henry VIII most vestiges of Cornish autonomy had been removed as England became an increasingly centralized state under the Tudor dynasty. Conflicts with the center took place with the Cornish Rebellion of 1497 and Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549 [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Cornwall ]