  July 7.] ST. THOMAS À BECKET’S DAY. Cornwall.The festival called Bodmin Riding was kept on Sunday and Monday after St. Thomas À Becket’s Day (July 7th). A puncheon of beer having been brewed in the preceding October, and bottled in anticipation of the time, two or more young men who were entrusted with the chief management of the affair, and who represented the “wardens,” went round the town attended by a band of drums and fifes, or other instruments. The crier saluted each house with, “To the people of this house a prosperous morning, long life, and a merry riding!” The musicians then struck up the riding tune, and the householder was solicited to taste the riding ale, which was carried round in baskets. A bottle was usually taken in, and it was acknowledged by such a sum as the means or humour of the townsman permitted, to be spent on the public festivities of the season. Next morning a procession was formed: all who could afford to ride mounted on horse or ass, which proceeded first to the Priory, to receive two large garlands of flowers fixed on staves, and then through the principal streets to the Town End, where the games were formally opened. The sports, which lasted two days, consisted of wrestling, foot-racing, jumping in sacks, &c. It should be remarked that a second or inferior brewing, from the same wort, was drunk at a minor merry-making at Whitsuntide. In an order, dated November 15th, 1583, regulating the business of the shoemakers, a class of tradesmen which seems for ages to have been more than At this festival there was held a curious kind of mock trial. A Lord of Misrule was appointed, before whom any unpopular person, so unlucky as to be captured, was dragged to answer a charge of felony; the imputed crime being such as his appearance might suggest, a negligence in his attire, or a breach of manners. With ludicrous gravity a mock trial was then commenced, and judgment was gravely pronounced, when the culprit was hurried off to receive his punishment. In this his apparel was generally a greater sufferer than his person, as it commonly terminated in his being thrown into the water or the mire. [74] Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall (1811, p. 296), speaking of this custom, says: “The youthlier sort of Bodmin townsmen use sometimes to sport themselves by playing the box with strangers whom they summon to Halgaver. The name signifieth the goat’s moor, and such a place it is, lying a little without the town, and very full of quagmires. When these mates with any raw serving man, or other young master, who may serve and deserve to make pastime, they cause him to be solemnly arrested, for his appearance before the mayor of Halgaver, where he is charged with wearing one spur, in going untrussed or wanting a girdle, or some such like felony; and after he hath been arraigned and tried, with all requisite circumstances, judgment is given in formal terms, and executed in some ungracious prank or other, more to the scorn than hurt of the party condemned. Now and then they extend their merriment with the largest, to the prejudice of over-credulous people, persuading them to fight with a dragon lurking in Halgaver, or to see some strange matter there; which concludeth at least with a training them into the mire.” Kent.Becket’s Fair, says Hasted in his History of Canterbury (1801, vol. i. p. 104), was held on the feast of St. Thomas À Becket, and was so called from this day being the anniversary Northamptonshire.In some parts of this county the Sunday after St. Thomas À Becket’s Day goes by the name of Relic Sunday.—Time’s Telescope, 1822, p. 192. Ornamental line
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