Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/128

86 that Mark Le Flemanc who was possessed of 16l. rents in lands and tenements in Cornwall, 40th Henry III. (Carew's Survey,) that were held by the tenure of knight's service, and was no knight; who was obliged by his tenure to send into the King's army a man and horse armed with lorica, capello ferri, gladio, et cultello, a breastplate, a brigandine, an iron headpiece, a sword and cuttler. As was also that Thomas Flammock, a lawyer, in the reign of King Henry VII. 1496, who, together with Michael Joseph, a smith of these parts, stirred up the Cornish people to a rebellion against that prince, under the pretence of the severity of a land tax, though it was but a subsidy of an hundred and twenty thousand pounds, charged by Act of Parliament for one year of the thirty-seven shires of England, towards the Scotch war; which, after the severest imposition, could not amount to above 2,500l. on this county. But really the ground and design of this insurrection was to depose King Henry from his crown and dignity, and in his stead to set up Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, the true heir male of the House of York, sister's son to King Edward the Fourth. Which being well understood by the inhabitants of Cornwall, gave Flammock and Joseph opportunity to raise such an army, as thereby to become so formidable that John Basset, of Tehidy, then Sheriff, with his posse comitatus, dared not encounter them. Whereupon they marched with their army, consisting of about six thousand men, from Bodmin to Launceston, and from thence into Devon; where also they appeared so tremendous that Sir William Carew, Knight, then Sheriff thereof, with his posse comitatus, would not venture a battle with them, but suffered them (either through fear or affection) to pass through his Bailiwick into Somersetshire, and so Taunton there; in which place they slew the Provost Perrin, a commissioner for the subsidy aforesaid, and then advanced to Wells; where James Touchet, Lord Audley, knowing the mystery of their