A very particular account of the expense of rebuilding the church, is preserved among the town records. The whole cost, exclusive of _presents_ of timber, amounted only to 194£. 3s. 6½d. The timber for St. John’s aisle cost 20£. 13s. 4d. Sir John Arundell gave several timber-trees for the building. The lead for roofing, came to 16£. 2s. 3½d. The rate of wages at this time appears to have been, for a labourer, four-pence by the day; for a mason, hewing stones, five-pence; for making the pillars, &c. sixpence; for a plasterer, five-pence half-penny. The following is a specimen of some of the charges:—“Forty-nine journeys (days work) for the windows above the Vyse, 24s. 6d.; fourteen journeys on the gabell window, 7s.” There was formerly a spire on the tower, said to have been built by Prior Vivian, and esteemed, as Tonkin tell us, the loftiest and finest in the West of England. It was destroyed by lightning in 1699.—Jasper Wood, 37 years vicar of Bodmin, who died in 1716, a man, it may be supposed, of deranged intellects, fancied himself bewitched, and that he was delivered from the witches’ power by his guardian-angel. Tonkin says there was a printed account of this man, and various traditions relating to him are still current in the town. The Corporation consists of a Mayor, 11 Aldermen, 24 Common Councilmen, and a Town Clerk. This town was regularly incorporated by charter of Elizabeth, which was lost, by lapse, previously to the year 1798, when a similar charter was granted by his late Majesty. The right of electing two representatives in Parliament is vested solely in the 37 members of the Corporation. Among the antient corporation accounts, are the following curious items, relating to the election of members of Parliament, and the payment of their wages, in the reign of Henry VII. “19, 20 Hen. VII, paide to Richard Watts and John Smyth, burgesses of the Parliament for the towne, 13s. 4d. “Paide for the endentes for the burgesses of the parliament, 20d. “Paide and yeven in malmesey to the under-sheryff, 4d. “Paide for the makyng a payr of endentes and an obligation, 12d. “It. Paide and yeven onto Thomas Trote in rewarde, 20d. “It. Paide to Sir Richard Downa, the wich was promysed by the maier and the worshipfull in a reward towardes his wagys, 13s. 4d. The town principally consists of one long street, running nearly a mile from east to west; the houses in general, are low, decayed, and irregular; but much improvement has been made within the last 20 years. Some centuries ago, Bodmin appears to have been of much greater extent, and more populous, than at present: it was probably largest, and contained the greatest number of inhabitants, about the fourteenth century. It is now smaller than either Helston, Liskeard, Megavissey, and Penryn; and considerably smaller than St. Austell, Truro, Redruth, Penzance, or Falmouth; yet in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it appears to have still taken precedence of all the other Cornish towns.