Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/134

92 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