On 17 June 1497, the massed forces of Henry VII charged into an army of Cornishmen that had marched in rebellion from the furthest south west of the realm to Blackheath, just outside London. Proving deadly effective, the king's troops were to break the Cornish line and rout those men who had taken up arms over the burden of royal taxation. Many died in the melee and ensuing chaos, with the government capturing the two Cornish rebelsin- chief, Thomas Flamank of Bodmin and Michael Joseph of St Keverne, later sentencing them both to be hung, drawn and quartered. They suffered their gruesome fate at Tyburn soon after. So it was that by force majeure the Crown put down the first Cornish Rebellion of 1497, and these events hold a potent place in Cornwall's collective memory to this day. While it cannot be doubted that the rebels were profoundly dissatisfied with the king, however, all was not as it seemed. For a start, the insurgents were actually by no means all Cornish, the rebels having garnered support from across southern England. Neither did the Cornish contingent of the rebellion seek to sever their county from the realm, as this was no war of liberation. On the contrary, after centuries of royal rulership Cornwall's residents believed so implicitly in the king's government that they were willing to march hundreds of miles to petition their sovereign for reform.

Indeed, a contradiction lies at the heart of Cornish history and identity. By some, this idiosyncratic peninsula is seen as a shire of England and an integral if distinctive part of the country at large. But to others, it exists – or deserves to exist – as a country unto itself: one rendered distinct by language, law, culture, genetics and even nature, by the whole length of the river Tamar. Celtic Cornwall, so this logic runs, was subjugated by a rapacious English state in the tenth century, inaugurating millennia of political and cultural domination. Despite some measure of ‘accommodation’ afforded by its English overlords, and despite its isolation, Cornwall formed a conquered and colonised land.