A Name Perpetual

The Cornish Rebellion of 1497 wasn’t born in taverns or whispered in secret. It started openly, in the clear air of St. Keverne on the Lizard Peninsula, where a blacksmith named Michael Joseph spoke out against a tax that made no sense to his people. England was raising money to wage war against Scotland, supposedly to crush a Yorkist pretender named Perkin Warbeck. To the Cornish, it was lunacy. Scotland was hundreds of miles away, and Warbeck meant nothing to them. They saw it for what it was: a power play among kings and courtiers, and one they were being forced to bankroll.