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 ? 366
