Fighting in Devonshire during the Wars of the Roses was confined to an unsuccessful and half-hearted siege of Exeter by the Yorkists, and to attacks on the fortified manor-houses of Shute and Upcott. But many men in the county took sides in the struggle, and some of the great families suffered severely. Sir William Bonville was beheaded after the second Battle of St Albans. Of the ancient house of Courtenay, Thomas, Earl of Devon, was executed at York, Sir Hugh was beheaded at Sarum, and Sir John was killed at Wakefield Green. The county as a whole was Lancastrian. Queen Margaret herself was there after her defeat at Barnet; and French gold coins found in Blackpool sands are believed to be relics of the landing there, in 1470, of Warwick and Clarence. But when in the same year Edward IV visited Exeter, he was so well satisfied with his reception that he presented the corporation with a sword of state, which is still carried in processions before the mayor. The peace of Devonshire in the fifteenth century was further disturbed by a rising, in 1483, against Richard III; by the march through the county, in 1497, of an army of Cornishmen who had risen in revolt against a heavy war-tax, and who were ultimately beaten at Blackheath; and by the insurrection, also in 1497, of Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be the Richard Duke of York usually said to have been murdered in the Tower, and who made a desperate although vain attack upon Exeter, when some of his men fought their way into the town, but were driven out again by the citizens. About fifty years later, in 1549, there was a widespread and determined and altogether much more serious rebellion called the "Commotion," caused partly by the suppression of the Monasteries, which was greatly objected to by the poor, and partly by the introduction of the Prayer Book. The insurgents, who had collected from all parts of the West Country, and who were led by such men of mark as Pomeroy, Arundel, and Coffin, laid siege to Exeter and Plymouth, and for a time held the king's troops helplessly at bay. In the end, however, Lord Russell, one of the newly-created Lords Lieutenant, aided by German cavalry and Italian arquebusiers, defeated the rebels with great slaughter in a series of hotly-contested battles. The vicar of St Thomas in Exeter, who had encouraged the rising and who was described as very skilled both with the long-bow and the hand-gun, was hanged "in his Popish apparel" on the tower of his own church, and his body was left there for four years.