Page:Cornwall; Cambridge county geographies.djvu/118

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102 CORNWALL In 981, the Danish pirates plundered the monastery of St Petrock, and in 997 ravaged the territories of their old allies from one end of Cornwall to the other with fire and sword. Shortly before this, in 993, Olaf Tryggvason of Norway, with Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark, after having attacked London, devastated the east coast, burnt Sandwich and Ipswich, and stormed Bamborough, then harried the Scottish coast, the Western Isles, the Isle of Man, and Ireland, where u he burned far and wide, wherever inhabited." He then came to the Scilly Isles, where he put into Tresco harbour. There the monks of the abbey founded by Athelstan so impressed him, that he consented to be baptized. In 1068, the county was plundered by Godwin and Edmund, sons of Harold, after a battle in Somersetshire, and on their way back to Ireland. In 1322, the craze for going on pilgrimage took possession of Cornish men, women, and children, and they set off for the Holy Land, whence few returned. In 1497, in consequence of the dissatisfaction occa- sioned by the levy of a burdensome tax, the commoners of Cornwall, headed by Thomas Flamank, a gentleman, and Michael Joseph, a Bodmin blacksmith, rose in rebellion. Having prevailed on Lord Audley to be their general, they marched as far as to Blackheath in Kent, where they were defeated with much slaughter by Lord Daubeny. In the same year Perkin Warbeck landed, according to some at Whitesand Bay, near the Land's End, according to others in St Ives' Bay, and marching to Bodmin, found the Cornish ripe for a new rebellion. At the head of