[5][6] The first written evidence for the habitation of Samson comes from the Interregnum Survey of 1651–1652, where it was recorded that:[7] "the Sampsons [sic] have been formerly occupied by one or two tenants and divers pieces of the same enclosed & improved as Arable ground.

But the houses and inclosures are now fallen downe & ruin'd since the taking of Scilley from the Enemy so that the whole Island of Sampson doth now lay wast & is a Mountainous Rocky & Rugged peece of pasture & Arable ground now used only for some Goates and Conies.

[3] During the 18th century, Samson was used as sort-of penal colony by the Council of Twelve, the local administration at the time.

By this point, the population was found to be suffering from severe deprivation—particularly due to a diet of limpets and potatoes—and consisted of only two families: the Woodcocks and the Webbers.

[18] In some medieval versions of the Tristan and Iseult story, Tristan defeats and kills the knight Morholt, uncle of Iseult and brother-in-law of the King of Ireland, at an island called St Samson which is now identified either with the Scilly Isles Samson or with an islet in the Fowey estuary.

[19] Dougie Blaxland's play Leaving Samson (1996) is about the last inhabitants and their removal from the island.