A HISTORY OF SURREY 



ministers Bray and Morton, it may have been a personal grudge against 

 Bray which partly induced Lord Audley to throw in his lot with them. 

 The insurgents marched through Salisbury, Winchester and Farnham 

 to Guildford. The king's forces under Lord Daubeny, another of the 

 fugitives of 1483, were mustered in St. George's Fields, Southwark. 

 Probably they could not be gathered in time to crush the rising in its 

 birth, and Henry's advisers may have thought that the Cornishmen 

 could be dealt with more decisively away from home. If so it was a 

 dangerous experiment ; the Yorkist party was far from dead, and a 

 possible victory for the Cornishmen in the neighbourhood of London 

 would have been, like their actual defeat, more decisive than one far 

 away. On June 14 there was a skirmish near Guildford between them 

 and Daubeny's outposts, who then fell back on his main body. On 

 June 1 6 he had evidently lost touch of them, for he made a reconnaissance 

 towards Kingston, on the direct Guildford road, supposing that they 

 were coming straight towards him or seeking to cross the river. They 

 were marching however on the invulnerable side of London. The fame 

 of the rebellious character of Kent attracted them with the idea that they 

 were sure to find sympathizers there. They had marched thither follow- 

 ing no doubt the Pilgrims' Way, which must have been familiar to some 

 among them already as pilgrims, or as carriers of tin for shipment from 

 the Kentish ports to the staple at Calais. 1 Had they marched anywhere 

 further north Daubeny could hardly have lost sight of them. But Lord 

 Abergavenny and others kept Kent quiet, and the Cornishmen returned 

 towards London and encamped upon Blackheath. There the king's 

 artillery overcame their archery and they were completely defeated. Of 

 the competing dates for the battle, June 17 and 22, the former has rather 

 better authority behind it, but is incompatible with Daubeny's recon- 

 naissance south-westward on the i6th, when, if the battle was going to 

 be the next day, the rebels must have been encamped on Blackheath 

 and would not be looked for towards Kingston. De Montfort, with a 

 probably mounted force, took a day to march from Guildford to Reigate. 

 If the Cornishmen were skirmishing near Guildford on the I4th, they 

 would not be at Reigate before the evening of the 1 5th. They would 

 be on the borders of Surrey and Kent on the 1 6th. A few days would be 

 necessary to try the temper of the Kentishmen, and they were long 

 enough at Blackheath for their position to be surveyed and surrounded 

 before the battle. 2 



With the accession of the Tudors Surrey became again a county of 

 royal residence. Henry VII. rebuilt the palace of Sheen, after a fire in 

 1501, and again repaired it after a second fire in 1506, and usually lived 

 there. He named it Richmond, after the earldom which he held before 



1 It is said that pieces of tin have been found on the Pilgrims' Way. 



2 The Venetian correspondence, Calendar S. P. Venetian series, vol. i. 743, mentions advices from 

 London of June 1 3, that 20,000 insurgents were then 20 miles from London. The subordinate leaders 

 were executed on the 27th, Lord Audley on the 2 8th tardy justice for those days if the battle was on 

 the I yth. The Venetian correspondent calls Audley M. de Deber. Is it possible that he held not 

 Shiere-Vachery but Shiere-Eboracum ? 



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