EARLY HISTORY OF THE MOUNT EDGCUMBE FAMILY. 137 



The union of the insurrectionary forces was frustrated by 

 the flooding of the Severn. The Duke of Buckingham was 

 taken and beheaded ; and of his followers, some were executed, 

 and the rest dispersed. It was then that Edgcumbe was pursued 

 into the woods at Cotehele by a party headed, according to 

 tradition, by Sir Henry Trenowth, of Bodrugan, and so 

 narrowly escaped, according to the quaint description of Richard 

 Carew, by throwing his cap, with a stone, from the rock where he 

 lay concealed, into the river, so that " the rangers who were fast 

 at his heels, on looking down after the noise, and seeing his cap 

 floating thereon, supposed that he had desperately drowned him- 

 self, gave over their farther hunting, and left him at liberty to 

 shift away, and ship o ver to Britanny. For a grateful remembrance 

 of which delivery he afterwards builded in the place of his 

 lurking a chapel, not yet entirely decayed." This little chapel 

 still exists ; but it was evidently much ruined in Carew's 

 time, and was probably new vamped (I can hardly say restored) 

 about a hundred years ago. 



In 1485 the Earl of Richmond returned in person from 

 Britanny to wrest the crown from the usurper, and was 

 accompanied by Richard Edgcumbe, who, on the field of 

 Bosworth, was made knight-banneret, and subsequently 

 comptroller of the King's household. He also received various 

 other offices and considerable grants of land ; among others, 

 all the confiscated estates of his old enemy, Henry of Bodrugan, 

 who, by a stroke of poetic justice, is said to have been hunted 

 down by Edgcumbe and Trevanion at his own manor-house, near 

 the Dodman Head, and to have barely escaped their clutches — 

 much as Sir Richard had previously saved himself — by dropping 

 from the cliff at the spot still called " Bodrugan's Leap." 



From this time Sir Richard Edgcumbe, whose estates had 

 before been very small, became a comparatively rich man ; and 

 it would be natural to suppose that the enlargement and 

 improvement of his house would date from this period, but he 

 only survived his accession of fortune about three years, and 

 they were busy ones. As an indication of this I may merely say, 

 without entering into any details, that he was almost imme- 

 diately sent to France to take the allegiance of officers and 

 others at Calais and many other places. Next year (1487), as 

 Sheriff of Devon, he is mentioned as bringing aid to the King at 



