Woeful Moor, and Bodrigan's Leap

WOEFUL MOOR, AND BODRIGAN'S LEAP

 THE Bodrigans, from a very early period, were connected with the borough of Looe. Otto, or Otho de Bodrigan, was lord of the manor of Pendrim and Looe in the reign of 'Edward II. Another Otho de Bodrigan was sheriff of Cornwall in the third of Richard II., A.D. 1400.

Sir Henry Bodrigan was "attaynted for taking part with King Richard III. against Henry VII. ; and, after flying into Ireland, Sir Richard Egecombe, father of Sir Pears Egecombe, had Bodrigan, and other parcels of Bodrigari's lands; and Trevanion had part of Bodrigan's lands, as Restronget and Newham, both in Falmouth Haven."

On the Barton of Bodrigan there exists what are evidently the remains of ancient fortifications, and near them a piece of waste land known as the Woeful Moor.

Here Sir Henry Edgecombe and Trevanion defeated the great Bodrigan. He fled, and tradition preserves, on the side of the cliff, the spot known as Bodrigan's Leap, from which he leapt into the sea, and swam to a ship which kept near the shore. As he leapt the precipice, he bequeathed, with a curse, "his extravagance to the Trevanions, and his folly to the Edgecombes."

These families divided between them an estate said to be worth, in those days, £10,000 per annum.

"At that period in our history when the law of the strongest was the rule, three families in Cornwall were engaged in a series of domestic wars; these were Bodrigan, Trevanion, and Edgecumbe. And when Richard the Third obtained sovereign power, on the division which then took place in the York faction, Bodrigan endeavoured to seize the property of Edgecumbe, with little respect, as it would seem, for the life of the possessor; but in the final struggle at Bosworth Field, where Henry Tudor put an entire end to this contest for power under the guise of property, by seizing the whole to himself, Trevanion and Edgecumbe had the good fortune to appear on the winning side, and subsequently availed themselves to the utmost of belligerent rights against Bodrigan, as he had attempted to dQ before against them. The last of that family was driven from his home, and seems to have perished in exile. His property was divided between the two families opposed to him, and, after the lapse of three hundred and fifty years, continues to form a large portion of their respective possessions."--Gilbert, vol iii., p. 204.

William de Bodrigan was lord of the manor of Restronget, in the 12th of Henry IV. The family possessed it till the beginning of the reign of Henry VII., when, on the attainder of Bodrigan, it was given to William Trevanion. [a]

[a] See Gilbert, vol. iii., p. 193, and Bond's account of the Trelawnys in Bond's Looe