One thing, however, appears certain, namely, that the Phœnicians in their trade with Cornwall for tin knew St Michael’s Mount when they lay off Marazion bartering with the inhabitants of that then important place. As was the case with the other Mount of St Michael across the Channel, the origin of the monastery was the vision of St Michael which appeared to a hermit. But there is no record of the foundation of a religious house on the rock until long after the visit of St Kyne on a pilgrimage from Ireland in 490. Then, by permission of King Edward the Confessor, a Benedictine Priory was established, which was afterwards taken over by monks of the Gilbertine order who owed allegiance to the Abbey on the Norman St Michael’s Mount. The religious foundation underwent various vicissitudes until its final passage into secular hands. Edward III dispossessed the alien monks of Normandy, and the property came into the possession of the Sion Nuns, passing into the possession of the Bassett family (probably on the dissolution of the monasteries), and two hundred years later was sold by them to the St Aubyn’s, whose descendant, Lord St Levan, still owns it. Like many another Abbey throughout the land, St Michael’s Mount has a history as a fortress as well as a sanctuary. Though far removed from the whirlpool of civil war, which engulfed middle England in the long struggle between the Houses of Lancaster and York, St Michael’s Mount was destined to catch an echo of the strife which was laying the chivalry of England in the dust on bloody battlefields and stricken heaths. It was to this fortress that the Earl of Oxford came after the loss by the Lancastrians of the Battle of Barnet in April, 1471. He gained admission to the castle in the disguise of a pilgrim, and once inside made a stout resistance to those of the triumphant Yorkist adherents who attacked it in their endeavour to capture him. Afterwards the Earl surrendered, on being assured of a pardon. The next notable person to claim sanctuary in St Michael’s Mount was Lady Catherine Gordon, the wife of Perkin Warbeck, who, on landing at St Ives in September, 1497, to claim the English throne as Richard IV, under the patronage of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Richard III, and the Scottish King, James IV, was received by the Cornish folk enthusiastically. Lady Catherine lay in sanctuary there while Warbeck and his adherents marched on London--only to take refuge in flight on the approach of Henry VII’s troops when he was engaged in besieging Exeter.