These tidings were very acceptable to Perkin; who thereupon consulted his privy councillors, Hearn, Astley, and Skelton, a mercer, a tailor, and a scrivener, all bankrupts; these all agree, nemine contradicente, that his four ships of war should forthwith be rigged and manned for an expedition into Cornwall; which accordingly being prepared, himself with his lady, and 120 soldiers, embarked thereon, and being favoured with a fair wind, took his leave of his Irish friends, and in the month of September, 1499, 15th Henry VII. (Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, p. 98,) came safely to anchor in St. Michael’s Mount’s Bay; where soon after he landed, and went up to the Mount, and made himself known to the monks and other inhabitants, publishing himself to be the true and real Richard of Shrewsbury aforesaid, the true heir of the House of York; which the monks, greatly affected to that title, were so very ready to believe, that they yielded the Mount and garrison without resistance into his hands; who presently renewed the old fortifications, and put the same into a better posture of defence. Which having done, himself with a band of soldiers marched from thence to Bodmin (where the rendezvous of Flammock’s rebels in those parts formerly was,) in which place, by false words and promises, he so prevailed with the discontented rebels of that town and contiguous country, that he soon got together, without money or reward, at least three thousand men that could bear arms; these he divided into companies, and bands, and regiments, under Captains, Majors, and Colonels expert in war to instruct them in military discipline, till at length his army grew to six thousand well-armed soldiers. Whereupon King Henry VII. having notice of Perkin’s landing and formidableness in these parts, ordered Sir Peter Edgecombe, Knight, then Sheriff of Cornwall (whose father, Sir Richard Edgecombe, Knight, was one of that King’s Privy Councillors, and had comparatively been raised to his great estate by his boon and favour), that he should forthwith, by virtue of his office, raise the country, and give battle to this counterfeit Richard of Shrewsbury and his confederate rebels. Whereupon, the Sheriff did as he was commanded, and raised an army of twenty thousand men, as tradition saith, and led them towards Bodmin; but when they approached near, and saw Perkin entrenched at Castle Keynock, on the east hill of Bodmin Downs, with the body of his army, and divers troops of horse and bands of foot placed towards Lanhydrock and the roads from Cardenham, in order to resist and oppose the Sheriff, his men resolved to march no further, but to return from whence they came without giving battle. Which accordingly they did (notwithstanding the Sheriff’s threats and commands to the contrary), in great terror and confusion and astonishment; but whether this fear proceeded from the cowardice of the Sheriff and his men, or their