BODMIN  , a

market town and municipal borough in the Bodmin parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, the county town, 302 M . W.N.W. of Plymouth, on branches of the Great Western and London & South-Western railways . Pop . (1901) 5353• It lies between two hills in a short valley opening westward upon that of the Camel, at the southern extremity of the high open Bodmin Moor . The large church of St Petrock, mainly Perpendicular, has earlier portions, and a late Norman font . East of it there is a ruined Decorated chapel of St Thomas of Canterbury, with a crypt . A tower of Tudor date, in the cemetery, marks the site of a chapel of the gild of the Holy Rood . Part of the buildings of a Franciscan friary, founded c . 1240, are incorporated in the market-house, and the gateway remains in an altered form . At Bodmin are a prison, with civil and naval departments, the county gaol and asylum, the head-quarters of the constabulary, and those of the duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry . Cattle, sheep and horse fairs are held, and there is a considerable agricultural trade . The borough is under a mayor, four aldermen and twelve councillors .

Area, 2797 acres . Traces of Roman occupation have been found in the western part of the parish, belonging to the first century A.D . Possibly tin-mining was carried on here at that period . The grant of a charter by King Edred to the prior and canons of Bodmin (Bomine, Bodman, Bodmyn) in respect of lands in Devonshire appears in an inspeximus of 1252 . To its ecclesiastical associations it owed its importance at the time of the Domesday survey, when St Petrock held the manor of Bodmin, wherein were sixty-eight houses and one market . To successive priors, as mesne lords, it also owed its earliest municipal privileges . King John's charter to the prior and convent, dated the 17th of July 1199, contained a clause (subsequently cancelled by Richard II.) by which burgesses were exempt from being impleaded, touching any tenements in their demesne, except before the king and his chief justice . Richard of Cornwall, king of the Romans, confirmed to the burgesses their gild merchant, Edward I. the pesage of tin, and Edward II. a market for tin and wool . Queen Elizabeth in 1563 constituted the town a free borough and the burgesses a body corporate, granting at the same time two fairs and a Saturday market . There are still held also three other fairs whose origin is uncertain . An amended charter granted in 1594 remained in force until 1789, when the corporation became extinct owing to the diminution of the burgesses . By virtue of a new charter of incorporation granted in 1798 and remodelled by the act of 1835, the corporation now consists of a mayor, four aldermen and twelve councillors .

The first members for Bodmin were summoned in 1295 . Retaining both its members in 1832, losing one in 1868 and the other in 1885, it has now become merged in the south-eastern division of the county . From 1715 to 1837 the assizes were generally held alternately at

Launceston and Bodmin; since 1837 they have been held at Bodmin only . A court of probate has also been held at Bodmin since 1773 . A festival known as " Bodmin Riding " was formerly celebrated here on the Sunday and Monday following St Thomas's day (July 7) . It is thought by some to have been instituted in 1177 to celebrate the recovery of the bones of St Petrock . See Victoria County History, Cornwall ; Sir John Maclean, Parochial and Family History of the Deanery of Trigg Minor, Cornwall (3 vols., 1873-1879) .