[1] The rebellion was a response to hardship caused by the raising of war taxes by King Henry VII to finance a campaign against Scotland.

It may have led Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the English throne, to choose Cornwall as his base later in the year for another attempt to overthrow Henry VII: an episode known as the Second Cornish uprising of 1497.

Eleven years later, however, the king addressed the principal Cornish grievance by allowing tin production to resume legally, with a measure of autonomy.

[8] The first stirrings of protest arose in the parish of St Keverne on the Lizard peninsula, where there already was resentment against the actions of Sir John Oby, provost of Glasney College in Penryn, the tax collector for that area.

[9][10] In reaction to King Henry's tax levy, Michael Joseph (An Gof), a blacksmith from St. Keverne and Thomas Flamank, a lawyer of Bodmin, incited many of the people of Cornwall into armed revolt.

[13] In Devon, however, support for the rebellion was far lower than in Cornwall, probably because the stannaries there had accepted new regulations in 1494, and had avoided the penalties inflicted on their Cornish counterparts.

When he learned of the close approach of the West Country rebels to London, and of their strength, he diverted his main army of 8,000 men under Lord Daubeny to meet them, while a defensive force under the Earl of Surrey was sent to the Scottish border.

But many wanted to give themselves up: the original call to arms had not always been to commit the treason of direct warfare against the King, but to make him change his chief advisors and taxation policies.

After leaving the West Country and approaching London, the insurgency had failed to attract enough new support or to move quickly enough to catch the king unprepared.

His forces were composed of three battalions, deployed so as to surround the high ground of Blackheath where the rebel army had camped and where its greater part was still positioned.

The rebels were well enough prepared to have positioned guns and archers there, which inflicted severe casualties on the company of spearmen under Sir Humphrey Stanley tasked with securing the bridge.

Overwhelmingly outnumbered, surrounded, poorly trained and equipped and lacking cavalry, their fight was now hopeless and their concern was probably to minimise the reprisals that would follow the battle.

Michael Joseph (An Gof) fled, apparently to seek sanctuary in the Friars' Church (near the former palace where the Greenwich Old Royal Naval College now stands), but was intercepted before he could enter.

An Gof is recorded to have said before his death (while tied to a hurdle being dragged towards the place of execution) that he should have "a name perpetual and a fame permanent and immortal".

[30] Two other 16th-century sources (Hall and Polydore Vergil) report that although the king originally planned to have the quartered limbs exhibited in various parts of Cornwall, he was persuaded not to further antagonise the Cornish by doing this.