[The remainder of Mr. Tonkin’s narrative agrees so nearly with that of Mr. Hals as not to require its insertion.]
WHITAKER.
“The paroch chirch standith at the est end of the town, and is a fair large thyng,” says Leland, an author with whom Mr. Hals had no acquaintance (though the Itinerary of that author was published in 1710, and in some years immediately following; and the Collectanea in 1715); “there is a cantuarie chapel at th’est ende of it.” This is the present school, situated a few yards east of the eastern end, raised upon vaults, ascended by steps, entered by an arched door of stone peaked,
having a large arched window peaked; at the east two windows in the arch, two on the south, arched and peaked; with three stalls of stone on the south, near the eastern end. The space below, lately a bone-house to the church, now atttached to the school, must formerly have been a walk under the vault.
“Bodmyn hath a market on every Saturday, lyke a fair for the confluence of people.” (Itin. ii. 114.) Bodmin was then at the height of its glory: it began soon afterwards to sink. The many decayed houses, says Carew, 120 years afterwards, prove the town to have been once very populous. What occasioned this decay was the Reformation, probably, throwing the revenues of the priory, and of the house of friars, into the hands of men laical and distant.
“There was a good place of Gray Freres in the south syde of Bodmin town. One John of London, a merchaunt, was the beginner of this house. Edmund Erle of Cornewaul augmentid it. There lay buried in the Gray Freres Sir Hugh and Sir Thomas Peverel, Knightes, and benefactors to the house.”—(Leland.) The remains of this form the south side of an open space, which must have been the quadrangle or court of the Friars, and have been surrounded by its buildings, on the east, the north, and the west. On the west end, near the grand door in these remains, was the church-yard, or burying-place, which Mr. Hals says was made a fair for cattle; and here were very lately found, by sinking a saw-pit, bones in a considerable quantity.
The remains themselves are, a long and lofty room, once a church, but since used as Mr. Hals describes. It has a fine window at the east end, peaked in the arch; the only part of it that is not blocked up being very pleasingly broken into small parts by mullions of stone.
It has another arch for a window to the west, but not so fine; and four arches on the north and south sides, all peaked, but those most easterly more sharply
than the others. What Mr. Hals calls a font is still there; and a font it assuredly is, the Friars having just as much right to a font as to a burying-place; but the inscription upon it is on two or three squares of the hexagon in which the font is shaped, and is too modern to mean any thing.
“There is a chapel of St. —— at the west ende of the toune. There is another chapel in Bodmyn beside that at the west ende of the toune, and an almose house, but not endowid with landes.” (Leland, Itin. ii. 114, 115.) Query, says Tanner, respecting the latter, Whether this alms-house was St. Anthony’s or St. George’s? for the will of John Killigrew, proved A.D. 1500, gives legacies Pauperibus Sancti Antonii de Bodmyn, et Pauperibus Sancti Georgii de Bodmyn. Both these chapels had an almshouse. The latter is that chapel which stood on the summit of a hill north of Bodmin, called Berry, from some castle or fort upon it, I suppose, and giving name to the valley below it, Berrycoomb, or Bereum. The remains of this chapel are merely a tower, neat but slight, making a considerable object to the road from its elevation, yet small in its rise, or its pitch, and carrying a face of no great antiquity, being merely three hundred years old. The town, says tradition, stood formerly here, was burnt down, and then removed to its present site. That this is false as history we know for certain, as we know the town to have been where it now stands, but that the town in the days of its high prosperity had shot out hither.