Compelled once more to resume his search for an asylum, the luckless pretender, accompanied by his beautiful wife and a few faithful followers, left Scotland; not, however, without bearing away with him some substantial proof of the Scottish King's regard. Again he sought shelter in Ireland, but the Irish appearing less disposed than before to espouse his cause, he departed for Cornwall, where much discontent prevailed on account of Henry's oppressive taxation. With only three vessels and seventy men the claimant landed at Whitsand Bay, near Land's End, on the 7th September, 1497. He sent his wife to St. Michael's Mount for safety; and then, at the head of an irregular body of three thousand men, whom he had got together by liberal promises, he marched on Exeter, to which city he laid siege, in compliance with the advice of his adherents that he should endeavour to make himself master of some walled town. He sent a demand to the citizens to surrender to him, but as he had no artillery to enforce his claims, his assumed title of Richard the Fourth, King of England, inspired little reverence, and after some unsuccessful assaults he was compelled to raise the siege and hastily retire to Taunton. Seeing clearly how utterly incompetent his undisciplined forces were to compete with the veteran troops Henry was sending against him, he forsook them in the night, and, accompanied by several of his principal followers, fled to the monastery of Beaulieu, in the New Forest, and there claimed sanctuary. His followers, left without a leader, surrendered without an effort; a number of them were hanged, and the rest heavily fined. Not daring to violate the privileges of a sanctuary, Henry had the Beaulieu Monastery securely guarded; the meanwhile he contrived to obtain possession of the Lady Catherine Gordon, mightily afraid that she might give birth to a child, in which case, as Bacon shrewdly remarks, "the business would not have ended in Perkin's person." The politic king received the royal lady kindly, and sent her to the queen; awarded her "honourable allowance for the support of her estate, which she enjoyed both during the king's life and many years after."