with till they encamped on Blackheath. Then, on June 17th, the royal forces
proceeded to envelop them. Some two thousand were slain on the field.
Audley, the lawyer, and the blacksmith, were put to death as traitors; the
rest were pardoned, as having been not so much rebels as victims of
demagogic arts.

[Sidenote: Warbeck's final failure (Sept.)]

The policy of leniency was not entirely successful, for the Cornishmen
imagined it merely meant that the King recognised the impossibility of
dealing sternly with every one who thought as they did. Warbeck, now in
Ireland, where he was not finding the sympathy for which he had hoped,
received messages to the effect that if he came to Cornwall he would find
plenty of supporters. He came promptly, with a scanty following enough; but
only a few thousand men joined him. He marched on Exeter, but that loyal
town stoutly refused to admit him, and his attempts to carry gates and
walls failed completely. Royal troops were on the march: the gentlemen of
Devon, headed by the Earl, were up for the King. Perkin marched to Taunton,
and then fled by night to take sanctuary at Beaulieu in Hampshire, where he
was surrounded, and very soon submitted himself to the King's clemency.

[Sidenote: The Scottish truce]

In the meantime the Scottish King, though his sentiments towards Perkin had
sensibly cooled, had no intention of leaving him in the lurch, and had
advanced on Norham Castle very shortly after his protege had sailed for
Ireland. The Earl of Surrey, however, who commanded in the north, was well
prepared, and very soon took the field with twenty thousand men. James was
obliged to withdraw, and though he challenged the Earl to single combat
with Berwick as the stake, Surrey replied that Berwick was not his property