MILITARY HISTORY.--From the time of King Edward the Confessor, to the middle of the reign of Richard the First, the Mount appears to have been exclusively the sacred nursery of religion; the earliest transaction of a military nature was during the captivity of Richard the First, in Germany, when Henry de la Pomeroy, of Berry Pomeroy in Devonshire, having stabbed a serjeant at arms who came to summon him to appear for a heavy crime, fled into Cornwall, and cast himself upon the protection of John, Earl of that province, who readily supplied him with an armed force, for he was then aspiring to his brother's throne; with this, Pomeroy went in disguise to the Mount, and under a pretence of visiting his sister, who was in the nunnery, gained admission, and treacherously reduced it to the service of the said John; upon the return however of the King from imprisonment, he surrendered the garrison on mercy, although, despairing himself of pardon, he soon died, or as some say, caused himself to be bled to death; after this event, the Prior and the Monks were restored to the full possession of their cells, revenues, and chapel; a small garrison however was still maintained, to defend it against the sudden invasion of enemies, and in this condition, "manned out with carnal and spiritual soldiers," did the Mount remain for a space of 275 years, when another military transaction occurred to disturb its repose. After the defeat of the Lancastrians at Barnet, in the eighteenth year of Edward the Fourth, John Vere, Earl of Oxford, one of the most zealous partisans, fled from the field, set sail for Saint Michael's Mount, and having disguised himself, together with a few attendants, in the habits of pilgrims, obtained entrance, massacred the unsuspecting garrison, and seized the fortress, which he valiantly defended for some time against the forces of Edward, but was at length compelled to surrender. Sir John Arundel de Trerice, Sheriff of Cornwall, at the command of the King, marched thither with _posse comitatus_ to besiege it, but he fell a victim on the sands, at its base, and lies buried in the chapel. In King Henry the Seventh's reign, the Lady Catherine Gordon, wife of Perkin Warbeck, the pretended son of Edward the Fourth, remained here for safety, but after the flight of her husband, she was taken prisoner by Giles, Lord Banbury, and carried before that King.