Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/141

Rh 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, thy 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 H 2