About the year of our Lord 1496, when James IV. King of Scotland, upon a truce with King Henry VII. of England, had expulsed from Scotland that counterfeit sham Prince, Perkin Warbeck (the pretended Richard of Shrewsbury, youngest son of King Edward IV. who had before been murdered in the Tower), to whom he had given in marriage his near kinswoman the Lady Katherine Gordon; he, together with his wife and family, sailed from thence over into Ireland, to seek friendship there of the rebels and all others well affected to the House of York; where being arrived, and fortune favouring him according to his expectation, news was brought him there that the Cornish rebels were ready to renew their former hostility, and venture their lives in battle upon the title of the house of York against that of Lancaster, had they a valiant and able General to lead them, notwithstanding Flammock and his confederates under the same engagement were defeated and executed in 1495.
These tidings were very acceptable to Perkin; who thereupon consulted his privy councillors, Hearn, Astley, and Skelton, a mercer, a tailor, and a scrivener, all bankrupts; these all agree, nemine contradicente, that his four ships of war should forthwith be rigged and manned for an expedition into Cornwall; which accordingly being prepared, himself with his lady, and 120 soldiers, embarked thereon, and being favoured with a fair wind, took his leave of his Irish friends, and in the month of September, 1499, 15th Henry VII. (Carew’s Survey of Cornwall,
p. 98,) came safely to anchor in St. Michael’s Mount’s Bay; where soon after he landed, and went up to the Mount, and made himself known to the monks and other inhabitants, publishing himself to be the true and real Richard of Shrewsbury aforesaid, the true heir of the House of York; which the monks, greatly affected to that title, were so very ready to believe, that they yielded the Mount and garrison without resistance into his hands; who presently renewed the old fortifications, and put the same into a better posture of defence.
Which having done, himself with a band of soldiers marched from thence to Bodmin (where the rendezvous of Flammock’s rebels in those parts formerly was,) in which place, by false words and promises, he so prevailed with the discontented rebels of that town and contiguous country, that he soon got together, without money or reward, at least three thousand men that could bear arms; these he divided into companies, and bands, and regiments, under Captains, Majors, and Colonels expert in war to instruct them in military discipline, till at length his army grew to six thousand well-armed soldiers. Whereupon King Henry VII. having notice of Perkin’s landing and formidableness in these parts, ordered Sir Peter Edgecombe, Knight, then Sheriff of Cornwall (whose father, Sir Richard Edgecombe, Knight, was one of that King’s Privy Councillors, and had comparatively been raised to his great estate by his boon and favour), that he should forthwith, by virtue of his office, raise the country, and give battle to this counterfeit Richard of Shrewsbury and his confederate rebels. Whereupon, the Sheriff did as he was commanded, and raised an army of twenty thousand men, as tradition saith, and led them towards Bodmin; but when they approached near, and saw Perkin entrenched at Castle Keynock, on the east hill of Bodmin Downs, with the body of his army, and divers troops of horse and bands of foot placed towards Lanhydrock and the roads from Cardenham, in order to resist and oppose the Sheriff, his men resolved to
march no further, but to return from whence they came without giving battle. Which accordingly they did (notwithstanding the Sheriff’s threats and commands to the contrary), in great terror and confusion and astonishment; but whether this fear proceeded from the cowardice of the Sheriff and his men, or their disaffection to the Lancastrian dominion of King Henry, is uncertain, for the like fact was committed two years before by the posse comitatus of John Basset, of Tehidy, then Sheriff, which he had raised to suppress Flammock’s rebellion.
Upon news of this flight and disbanding of the Sheriff’s men, Perkin was saluted by his soldiers and confederates as King of England: and soon after, not only in his camp, but in divers places of Bodmin town, was proclaimed by a trumpeter and others, King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, with great shouts and acclamations of the people, and bonefires, by the name of Richard IV. And it is reported he assumed majesty with such a boon grace and affable deportment, that immediately he won the affections and admiration of all who made addresses unto him; in which art of kingship he had long before been educated and instructed by his pretended aunt, Margaret Duchess of Burgundy, sister to King Edward IV. which he had also acted to the good liking of all that saw him in Burgundian, Irish, Scots, and French courts. And, moreover, besides his magisterial port and mien, being an incomparable counterfeit, natural crafty, liar and dissembler, “Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare,” as the old proverb saith; so that in short time he grew to be so popular and formidable about Bodmin that no power durst oppose him there. But, alas! this Cornish regniculum gave him not content, for his pride and ambition put him upon further expedients, viz. to get possession of the whole kingdom of England, and reduce it also to his obedience; in order to which, with a well-prepared army of four thousand men and two thousand of other sorts, he marched out of Cornwall into Devon, where met him also great numbers
of volunteers of that county and Somerset, that joined with his forces; the dread whereof so terrified James Chudleigh, Esq. then Sheriff of Devon, and the power of his bailiwick raised to stop his march to Exeter, that they durst not give him battle or obstruct his passage till he came before that city, pitched his camp, and laid siege thereto.
Upon whose approaches the citizens shut their gates and prepared to defend themselves; when soon after he sent a message or summons to them in the name of Richard IV. King of England, commanding them to surrender the same to him upon their allegiance: but the citizens so ridiculed his pretended title, and slighted his summons, that by his own messenger they gave him defiance; at which time Dr. Richard Redman was Lord Bishop of Exeter; William Burgoigne, Esq. Recorder; William Frost, Mayor; Francis Gilbert, Sword-bearer; John Bucknam, William Wilkinson, John Doncaster, and Richard Howse, were Stewards, or Bailiffs; John Clodworthy, John Bonifant, Philip Bullock, John Wilkin, Nicholas Auburne, John Atwell, William York, Thomas Lanwordaby, Philip Binks, John Slugg, Thomas Andrews, Thomas Oliver, and others, Aldermen. See Isaack’s Memorials of Exeter, 1499.
Soon after this defiance given, Perkin and his soldiers surrounded the city walls, and attempted to scale the same in several places daily for some time, but always were repulsed with considerable loss by the valour of the citizens. During which siege they sent to King Henry for his aid and assistance in this great distress; whereupon the Lord Daubeny was ordered to raise forces and march towards Exeter therewith, in order to remove the siege thereof; but before he came, Edward Courtenay, sixteenth Earl of Devon, and the Lord William his son, accompanied with Sir Edmund Carew, Sir Thomas Fulford, Sir William Courtenay, Sir John Halwell, Sir John Croker, Walter Courtenay, Peter Edgecombe, William St. Maur, Richard Whiteleigh of Efford (Sheriff of Devon the year after),
Richard Hals of Kenedon, John Fortescue of Vallapit, James Chudleigh aforesaid, and other gentlemen of those parts, had raised a considerable army of soldiers, with which they marched towards the rebels. At the sight of whose approach Perkin and his host were as much dispirited then as they were elevated before; whereupon he called a council of war, in which it was unanimously agreed upon, that it was not advisable to give them battle, being at least ten thousand fighting men, but to dislodge from their trenches, and leave the siege of that place, and forthwith to march into Somersetshire, a country better affected to King Perkin, where he might raise more soldiers. Accordingly, this order of council was observed and put in practice, so that the night after Perkin and all his army marched towards Taunton; where he mustered his men as if he intended to give battle; but when, by the muster-roll, he saw what numbers of men had deserted him in his nightly march from Exeter, falling then much short of six thousand, and further, notice being brought him that King Henry was in pursuit of him with a much greater army, he foresaw the worst, and doubted that fortune would favour him no longer in his military and regal practices; and therefore contrived, for the preservation of himself, with sixty horse troopers, to forsake his army by night, and fly to the Abbey of Beauley, in Southampton, as resting upon the name and privilege of the place, where he took sanctuary. As soon as King Henry understood Perkin had deserted his soldiers and had taken sanctuary at Beauley, he forthwith ordered a band of soldiers to guard and surround that Abbey to prevent his escape beyond the seas (from whence it appears that at that time the privilege of sanctuary was allowed to traitors). So that Perkin, despairing of getting thence, submitted to the King’s mercy, and was committed prisoner to the Tower of London; from whence he made an escape, and fled to the Priory of Sheen, at Richmond; where, on condition of making a true confession who he was, in a pair of stocks set before Westminster Hall door, and true answer