"Whereat the Mayor, quivering with fear, cried: 'Surely, good sir, thou dost not mean what thou speakest?'
"'In faith,' said the Provost, 'I speak what I mean, for thou hast been a busy rebel.'
"So he was hanged to death."
Near Bodmin lived a miller who had been active in this same rebellion, and he, getting wind of these proceedings, told a sturdy fellow, his servant, that he had occasion to go from home; and therefore bid him to take his place for a time, and if any did come to inquire for the miller he should say that he was the miller and had been so for three years. In course of time the Provost came and was met by the servant, who said with consequence: "I am the master and have been so these three years."
"Lay hold on him, my men," cried the Provost, "and hang him on this tree."
At this the fellow, sore amazed, cried out the truth. "Nay, nay, my good friend," said the Provost, "I'll take thee at thy word, and if thou be-est the miller thou knowest thou art a rebel and if thou be-est the miller's man, thou art a lying knave; and howsoever thou canst never do thy master better service than to hang for him."
And so, without more ado, he was despatched.
During the Civil War Bodmin suffered so greatly that Charles II., passing through, said it was "the politest town he had ever seen, as one half of the houses appeared to be bowing and the other half uncovered." Hardly the sort of comment that might have been expected, when it was owing to a kindness for him and his that the town was in so ruinous a condition, but if Charles's wit was in the right place the same can hardly have been said of his heart!
When Perkin Warbeck entrenched himself at Castle Kynock, an ancient camp on Bodmin Downs, his horse was said to have extended from Cardinham to Lanhydrock; and it was to Glynn, a place between those two, that Charles I. fled one night, when it had been borne in upon him that he and he alone stood between his people and peace; and that even the loyal and devoted were considering whether it would not be better to have him as a prisoner than as a leader. "Character is Fate" should have been the motto of the Stuarts, a family that acted foolishly because it was their nature so to act and to whom not the most terrible lesson of all could teach wisdom.
To the south of Bodmin is St. Lawrence, a place with gruesome associations. There were a fair number of leper hospitals in Cornwall, but it brings the fell disease near to us when we reflect that the last inmate of St. Lawrence only died (though not from leprosy) in 1800.