For some mysterious reason it was not until
November 3rd, 1499, more than two years after the battle, that he was
hanged for treason, at Tyburn. Another strange incident was that when
King Henry VII came to Exeter after the battle, and the followers of
Perkin Warbeck were brought before him with halters round their necks
and bare-headed, to plead for mercy, he generously pardoned them and set
them at liberty.
The fighting in the district we had passed through last night occurred
in 1549, the second year of the reign of King Edward VI. A pleasing
story was related of this King, to the effect that when he was a boy and
wanted something from a shelf he could not quite reach, his little
playfellow, seeing the difficulty, carried him a big book to stand upon,
that would just have enabled him to get what he wanted; but when Edward
saw what book it was that he had brought he would not stand upon it
because it was the "Holy Bible."
The religious disturbances we have already recorded were not confined to
the neighbourhood of Exeter, but extended all over England, and were the
result of an Act of Parliament for which the people were not prepared,
and which was apparently of too sweeping a character, for by it all
private Masses were abolished, all images removed from churches, and the
Book of Common Prayer introduced.
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