racle low or
lisping.'

The next siege of Exeter was when the followers of Perkin Warbeck surged
in thousands round the city. Their assault was vigorous and determined;
they tried to undermine the walls, burned the north gate, and, repulsed
at this point, broke through the defences at the east gate. After a
sharp struggle in the streets, the rebels were thrust back, and were
forced to march northwards, leaving Exeter triumphant. Three weeks later
Henry VII entered Exeter with Warbeck, as his prisoner. The King was
very gracious to the city that had just given such eminent proofs of its
loyalty, and bestowed on the citizens a second sword of honour and a cap
of maintenance, and ordered that a sword-bearer should be appointed to
carry the sword before the Mayor in civic procession.

Henry VIII gave Exeter 'the highest privilege,' says Professor Freeman,
'that can be given to an English city or borough.' He made it a county,
'with all the rights of a county under its own Sheriff.' An Act of
Parliament was also passed to undo the harm done by Isabel de Fortibus,
representative of the Earls of Devon, when she made a weir about the
year 1280--still called Countess Weir--that blocked the free waterway to
the sea. As the tide naturally comes up the river a little way beyond
Exeter, before the weir was made ships had been able to sail up to the
watergate of the city. The first attempts to improve matters after this
Act was passed failed, but a canal was constructed with tolerable
success in the reign of Elizabeth.

In 1549 came the siege of Exeter that followed the burning of Crediton
barns. The Devonshire rebels had been reinforced by a large number of
Cornishmen, who resented the new Prayer-Book, and the law obliging them
to hear the services in English instead of Latin, more bitterly and with
greater reason than the people of Sampford Courtenay. For to them it was
more than unwelcome change in the Liturgy; it meant also that their
services were read in an alien tongue. 'We,' the Cornish, 'whereof
certain of us _understand no English_, utterly refuse the new English,'
was their protest. It is curious to think that more than half a century
later English was a foreign language in Cornwall. In James I's reign,
'John Norden ... constructing his _Speculum_, his topographical
description of this kingdom,' writes: 'Of late the Cornishmen have muche
conformed themselves to the use of the English tongue;' and adds that
all but 'some