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 informer, revealed his intrigues to the King. Stanley was beheaded on Tower Hill (February 16, 1495). This disconcerted for a time a plan for the invasion of England which had been formed in the Low Countries and was nearly ripe for execution. On July 3, however, Warbeck appeared with a little fleet off Deal, and some of his followers landed, but were presently taken, sent up to London and hanged. Perkin himself had wisely refrained from landing, and sailed to Ireland, where he attacked by sea the loyal town of Waterford, which Desmond's followers at the same time besieged by land. After eleven days, however, he was compelled to withdraw with loss, and later in the year he found a better asylum in Scotland, which had long been prepared to receive him.

Influenced, no doubt, by Maximilian and by Margaret of Burgundy, James IV of Scotland had committed himself to Perkin's cause before he came, and now not only acknowledged him as Duke of York, but gave him in marriage his cousin, Katharine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly. In September, 1496, when the young man had been nearly a year his guest in Scotland, James invaded England with Perkin in his company. But it was a mere brief border raid, from which the Scots returned in three days on hearing of a force sent from Newcastle to oppose them; and all that came of it was that a truce was broken, and that Henry now made preparations to punish a neighbour whom he had been anxious to conciliate. He assembled a great council which, anticipating the action of Parliament, promised him £120,000 for the War, and authorised the raising of ,£40,000 in loans. Parliament met in January, 1497. Two fifteenths and tenths were imposed, to be levied in May and November following. But the first attempt to collect the money in Cornwall met with serious opposition. A lawyer named Thomas Flammock told the people that they were not bound to pay, as the King had a right to the services of his feudal tenants for military purposes, without burdening his subjects generally. Flammock and a blacksmith named Michael Joseph became the leaders of an army of malcontents, which marched on towards London. They were joined at Wells by Lord Audeley, but were refused admittance into Bristol. At last they encamped upon Blackheath, and actually overlooked London. But here at length they were defeated with great slaughter (June 17), and the survivors delivered themselves up as prisoners.

This result was not obtained without the aid of a force under Lord Daubeney, which had been raised to proceed against Scotland, but was hastily recalled to meet the Cornishmen. Henry's troubles made him the more anxious to come to terms with James, if he could only be got to deliver up Perkin, or even to cease to countenance him. But just at the time when he despatched Bishop Fox to Scotland to make these demands (July, 1497), James was sending off' Warbeck by sea from Ayr with a view to his landing among the disaffected population in Cornwall