There was much resentment in Cornwall, particularly amongst tin miners living in poverty, at Henry VII's taxes demanded in 1497 to raise revenue for his war against the Scots which the Cornish percieved as having very little to do with them. They were particuarly agrieved by the taxation which was a curtailment of their rights under the Stannary Law Charter of 1305 which provided that no tax of 10ths and 15ths may be raised in the county.
Micheal Joseph, the local blacksmith (later surnamed "an Gof", Cornish for "the Smith"), at St Keverne near the Lizard roused the village into open rebellion against the king while Thomas Flamank, a Bodmin lawyer, urged that town to take arms. The mottley ill-clad and ill-equiped army led by the two men made its way to London collecting suporters along the route.
Lord Audley took command of the rebels in Somerset and, by the time the rebels reached Blackheath outside the capital, it consisted of several thousand men armed withfarm implements and all manner of home-made weapons.
The rebels decided to march to Deptford thinking they could secure support from Kent which had given such strong support to the rebellions led by Wat Tyler and Jack Cade. So severe was the repression after the rebellion of 1450 that the support of Kent did not materialise.
The king's army led by Giles, Lord Daubeney , some 10,000-strong, surrounded the rebels on June 17th and, in the brief Battle of Blackheath (sometimes known as the battle of Deptford Bridge) which followed, 200 of the Cornish rebels were killed.
Lord Audley and Flamank were captured on the field of battle and Micheal Joseph was caught as he fled for Greenwich, all three incarcerated at the Tower of London. Flamank and Joseph were hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on June 27th and Lord Audley was beheaded on Tower Hill the following day.
Although the rebellion had been suppressed, feelings still ran hich in the county
where the pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck was warmly recieved when he took advantage of the ferment, landing in Cornwall in
September.
The remote Cornish had always been highly independent, like the Welsh and the Scots (Wales had only subdued by the English following the revolt of Owen Glendower in 1412). 1497 was the first of three Cornish uprisings between 1497 and 1549.
In June 1997, Cornish marchers gathered on Blackheath Common in London to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Cornish rebellion.
| CLICK HERE for the Cornish Time-Line on Cornwall Couty Council's web-site collated by the Cornish Studies Library, Redruth. |
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