Others were hung, one on Plymouth Hoe to act as a warning to Devonians against dissention. For this, William Kilter and Pasco Trevian, along with St Keverne priest Martin Geoffrey, were hung, drawn and quartered. On April 5th 1549, Body was enjoying himself by despoiling Helston church when a furious mob dragged him out into the street and knifed him to death. Body had got away with this in Ireland – the Cornish were not to be so lenient. It is often stated that the Uprising started in the Devon village of Sampford Courtney, but its true origins lay somewhat earlier when, before any Act had been passed, Cranmer sent in the odious William Body to destroy all Catholic idolatry in Cornish churches. After marching upon England twice in 1497, there was only one way that the Cornish were going to react to this. It took just four decades for London to trample all over these rights by forcibly imposing its new State Religion and the English language upon the Cornish people by way of the Act of Uniformity sculpted by the real powers in the realm – Thomas Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector to a sickly 10-year old king and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. The most significant of these was the right of veto over any Act or Statute of the London-based Parliament. Only 41 years earlier, King Henry VI’s Charter of Pardon restored the Cornish Stannary Parliament he had suspended in 1497 and granted it powerful rights that remain law to this day. It was nothing less than all-out war, instigated by injustice and fuelled by outrage, but most books say little about it and, sadly, our schoolchildren are told even less. 1549, the blackest year in Cornish history, should not be minimised as merely a “Prayer Book Rebellion”, as is the trend of mainstream histories. The Anglo-Cornish War of June-August 1549īy Craig Weatherhill The Cornish ‘Crossing the Tamar’ by artist Donald MacLeod

The Tinners' Way by Craig Weatherhill