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.
At Lanivet Church the communion plate is kept in a rare antique pyx of "cuir bouilli," said to be of the fourteenth century. In the churchyard is a Saxon tomb and a yet older inscribed stone; also a remarkable wheel cross, a four-holed cross with interlaced and scroll work, and a curious stone slab. St. Benet's, once a seat of the Courtenays, is built on the site of a reputed Benedictine monastery, the greater part of the front having belonged to the original building. The walls are about 4 ft. thick. Unfortunately the stones of the cloisters, as well as the upper part of the tower, were used some years ago for building a farmhouse!