Which may be thus translated:
“In the same year (1177), immediately after the Epiphany of our Lord, a certain Canon of the Abbey of Bodmin, in Cornwall, by name Martinus, secretly took away the body of St. Petroc. Flying with it, he passed beyond the seas, and carried the body to the Abbey of Saint Mevennus, in Lesser Britany.
“When this transaction became known to Roger the Prior of Bodmin, and to the Canons who served God in the same place, the aforesaid Prior, with the advice of his brethren, went to Henry King of England, son of the Empress Matilda, that by his powerful aid they might again get possession of the body of St. Petroc, of which they had been fraudulently deprived. The King granted his aid to their entreaty, and by his letters commanded Rollandus de Dinamnus, the Justiciary of Britanny, that, without any delay, he should cause the body to be restored. When, therefore, Rollandus had received the King’s command, he came with a powerful and armed band to the Abbey of St. Mevennus, and ordered that the body should be given up; and when the
Abbat and the Monks were unwilling to comply, he added threats, that, unless the body were yielded immediately, he would use force and take it; which when they heard, they feared to incur the displeasure of the King of England, and therefore restored that blessed body to the before-named Roger, Prior of Bodmin, on the Lord’s Day (Clausi Pentecostes), being the feast of St. Gervasius and of St. Prothasius, martyrs, the thirteenth before the calends of July (June the 19th). And that sacred body was restored in all its integrity, without the least diminution; the Abbat and Monks of St. Mevennus having sworn on the relics belonging to their church that they had not retained any part of the body, but had restored it wholly unaltered.
“When this was done, the before-named Prior of Bodmin, returning with joy into England, brought the body of the blessed Petroc, closed in an ivory case, to the City of Winchester. And when it was brought into the King’s presence, the King, having seen and adored it, permitted the Prior to return in peace with his Saint charge to the Abbey of Bodmin.”
It would appear that such depredations must have frequently occurred, since one precisely similar, but not followed by a restoration of the relics, took place in the neighbouring monastery of St. Neot. In this case, the stolen body of the Saint, having been enshrined at Eynesbury, in Huntingdonshire, bestowed his name as a new appellation to the place. See “A Description, accompanied by sixteen coloured plates, of the Church of St. Neot, in Cornwall,” by J. P. Hedgeland, 1 vol. 4to. 1830, with Illustrations by Davies Gilbert.
Mr. Wallis has collected a very great variety of curious and interesting particulars respecting this town and parish, and given them to the public in a work entitled, “The Bodmin Register; or, Collections relative to the past and present State of the Parish of Bodmin.” And, in doing so, he has proved that the antiquities of a
county cannot in any way be illustrated, except by the exertions of individuals locally residing in the district to which their attentions are directed, and that from zeal and ability in such persons every thing may be expected.
The following are extracts from this publication:
The benefice is a vicarage in the gift of Lord de Dunstanville, situated in the Deanery of Trigg Minor, and in the hundred of Trigg. The following are the dimensions of the church: length 151 feet, breadth 63 feet. The greater part was built in the reign of King Edward the Fourth. It was roofed in 1472, as appears by an inscription on the cornice on the northern side of the south aile of the chancel. The northern chancel and the tower appear to be of an earlier date. The walls of the tower are eight feet thick at the base, made for the support of a lofty spire, which was destroyed by lightning, between seven and eight o’clock on Saturday evening, December the 9th, 1699. The present awkward pinnacles were then erected: three of them are dangerous from the decay of the stone.