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| June 29th | Sir Henry Bodrugan (Thug, pirate, thief) |
Sir Henry Bodrugan (1426 – 1503) was the scion of an ancient Cornish family with family estates in Bodrugan near Gorran Haven and which included ancestors and relatives which had included Members of Parliament, Sheriffs of Cornwall and a Provost of Glasney Abbey. As well, Bodrugan’s grandfather was Sir John Arundell, then the richest man in Cornwall. Bodrugan himself was a thug, a pirate and a thief. Given his position in the county, Bodrugan was instructed to identify and apprehend pirates and thieves. This was at the same time that he, himself, owned two pirate ships, ‘Mary Bodrugan’ and ‘Barberye’ and was also running gangs of housebreakers stealing personal belongings, seizing animals and threatening the owners’ servants. In the Wars of the Roses, Bodrugan supported the House of York and, in 1483, was ordered to capture Richard Edgcumbe of Cothele who was a Lancastrian supporter. Edgcumbe was chased through his woods by Bodrugan’s men and threw his hat into the Tamar. This led to the assumption that he had drowned and the chase was called off, enabling Edgcumbe to escape to Brittany and join the forces of Henry Tudor. Following the Yorkists’ defeat, Edgcumbe and, his brother-in-law, William Trevanion of Caerhays were ordered to capture Bodrugan who, in the chase, jumped off a cliff near his home and escaped by a waiting ship. Even today, the cliff is known as ‘Bodrugan’s Leap’. Bodrugan was the last of his line and his estates and houses were given to the Edgcumbe and Trevanion families.
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