Few mysteries of history have fascinated us as much and
prompted so much speculation as the mystery of the disappearance of the Princes
in the Tower. Were the two young princes
really murdered in their beds, and if so who by and why? Or were they somehow
spirited away from the Tower of London in secret and taken to a safe place to
live out their lives in obscurity?
Against the chaos and political instability of that period of English
history known as the War of the Roses, it is perhaps not surprising then that
several figures came forward during the reign of King Henry VII claiming to be
one of the lost princes and becoming a focus for rebellion, and one of the most
famous of these royal pretenders was a young man know as Perkin Warbeck.
After Henry VII defeated King Richard III at the Battle of
Bosworth in 1485 and claimed the English throne by right of conquest, his main
tasks were to secure his kingdom and win the loyalty of his nobles and people. He married Elizabeth of York, the eldest
daughter King Edward IV, in an attempt to further legitimise his claim to the
English crown and unite the Lancastrian and Yorkist factions, even though to do
this he had to overturn the ruling that had declared that she and all her
siblings were illegitimate due to their father’s alleged pre-contract of
marriage with Lady Eleanor Talbot. But
if Elizabeth of York and her sisters were once again recognised as being the
legitimate children of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, then so too were her
two brothers, King Edward V and Richard, Duke of York. Many historians consider that to have
overturned this ruling, Henry VII must have believed that the two young princes
were indeed already dead, as if either of the two boys were still alive, they
had a much greater claim to the throne than Henry himself, and he knew that
there were still powerful forces both in England and across Europe who would
back a Yorkist claimant to the throne.
 |
| Perkin Warbeck |
One of these powerful forces was Margaret of Burgundy, the
sister of the two dead kings Edward IV and Richard III and the aunt of the
Princes in the Tower, and it was at her Court that Perkin Warbeck first came to
public attention and claimed the throne of England. It is not known whether Margaret
of Burgundy genuinely believed that Perkin Warbeck was her nephew or whether
she was fully aware that he was a fraud and groomed him in the ways of the
Yorkist Royal Family in order to create a focus of rebellion against Henry VII. The other major European player to get
involved was King Charles VIII of France, and both he and Margaret officially
recognised Perkin Warbeck as King Richard IV of England. For a while Perkin Warbeck was feted across
Europe, attending the funeral in Vienna of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick
III, and gaining the recognition of his successor Maximilian I, spending time
at the French Court in 1492 and then residing at the Court of Burgundy.
However, in 1492 Charles VIII signed the Treaty of Etaples with England to
prevent a threatened invasion of France and part of the treaty was an agreement
to expel Perkin Warbeck from French territory. Warbeck’s presence in Burgundy rattled Henry
VII so much that he imposed a trade embargo on Flanders in 1493, even though
this would lose England a great deal of revenue.
Perkin Warbeck’s first foray into rebellion against the
English crown had been in 1491 when he arrived in the Irish city of Cork, which
had long been a Yorkist stronghold. The good people of Cork thought that
Warbeck was actually the Earl of Warwick, the son of the hapless George, Duke
of Clarence, who had been attainted for treason and executed in the Tower of
London after trying the patience of his brother Edward IV one time too many,
who was currently being held captive by Henry VII. Warbeck’s English was apparently not very
good, but he managed to deny his being the Earl of Warwick and declare himself
as Richard, Duke of York. However, little became of this rebellion and he was forced
to return to Europe.
With the support of Margaret of Burgundy, he tried his hand
again in 1495 and landed with a small force in Deal on the Kent coast. His small force was effectively routed and
Warbeck was forced to sail on to Ireland without even disembarking onto English
soil. Once in Ireland, he gained the
support of the Earl of Desmond and laid siege to the town of Waterford, but was
once again unsuccessful. He fled to the
Court of King James IV of Scotland, where he was graciously received, given a
pension of £1200 a year and the hand of the Scottish King’s cousin, Lady
Catherine Gordon, in marriage. At that
time James IV was happy to use any means at his disposal to rile Henry VII, so
he encouraged Perkin Warbeck to use his pension for funding for attempting to
mount an attack across the English border.
However, Warbeck received no support whatsoever from the English and was
forced to retreat back into Scotland.
Henry VII may still at this point in his reign have felt insecure on his
throne, but he had set up an effective network of spies and had rooted out and
dealt with any English supporters of Perkin Warbeck. In 1495, Sir William Stanley was tried and
executed for treason due to his support of Warbeck and the Yorkist cause, which
is ironic in the light of the fact that he was the very same William Stanley
who switched sides at the Battle of Bosworth ensuring the defeat of the Yorkist
King Richard III. Henry VII’s steward Lord Fitzwalter was also attainted and executed
and it seems that they were being informed on by one of their co-conspirators
Sir Robert Clifford, who was secretly working for Henry. Clifford’s reward for his participation in
the conspiracy against the crown was not the more usual short trip to the
scaffold but a full pardon and a hefty reward.
After Warbeck’s failed attempt to enter England, James IV of
Scotland gave up on the idea of being a thorn in the side of the English King,
and signed the Treaty of Ayton that brought him peace with England and Henry’s
daughter Margaret Tudor as a bride. Warbeck was once more expelled and returned
again to Ireland to make another attempt at laying siege to the town of
Waterford. This attempt was swiftly
defeated and he was chased from Ireland by four English ships. Left with only a handful of supporters,
Perkin Warbeck sailed to Cornwall, where he hoped to capitalise on the
discontent still fomenting there after the uprising that had taken place only a
few months earlier. The Cornish people welcomed him and declared him King
Richard IV on Bodmin Moor. The support
of the Cornish swelled his army by 6000 and he marched on Exeter and then on to
Taunton. Henry sent an army to counter
Warbeck’s rebellion, and when Warbeck heard that this force had sighted he fled
to Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire, where he was captured. Henry VII was initially
merciful to Perkin Warbeck, allowing him to stay at Court under
supervision. However, he attempted to
run away, so was removed to the more secure environment of the Tower of
London. In 1499 he allegedly tried to
escape again, this time supposedly in the company of the real Earl of Warwick,
and was hanged at Tyburn.
So was Perkin Warbeck really Richard, Duke of York? It is popularly believed that he was actually
a Fleming born in Tournai in around 1474, the son of a French official called John
de Werbecque and his wife, Katherine de Faro, and that he had spent his boyhood
years working as a servant in several different households. He then became an
apprentice for a fleece merchant called Pregent Meno, and it was while he was
working for Meno that he first arrived in Ireland and declared himself to be
Richard, Duke of York. Perkin Warbeck
also supposedly bore a strong resemblance to the dead Yorkist monarch, Edward
IV, and it has been speculated that Warbeck could actually have been Edward’s
illegitimate son. But what of Margaret of Burgundy’s support of Perkin
Warbeck. Would she really have supported
an imposter as her nephew? Would she
really have wanted a non-royal foreigner on the throne of England, however much
she despised Henry VII’s regime? She
declared that she recognised Warbeck as Richard of York because of certain
birthmarks on his body and his supposedly detailed knowledge of what life had
been like living in the English Royal Household. In return for Margaret’s support, Warbeck had
to promise to return all her lands in England to her that had been confiscated
after the Battle of Bosworth when he gained the English crown. But was this
enough to make her support an imposter?
Moreover, if Perkin Warbeck really spoke such poor English
and was uneducated, would sophisticated monarchs like Maximilian I and Charles
VII even have deigned to let him into their presence, let alone backed him as a
pretender to the throne of England? In the 15th century class was
all important, and people rarely moved out of the milieu into which they had
been born. There was also a mystique and
a reverence surrounding royal blood, and preserving royal bloodlines and family
ties was regarded as all important, so encouraging someone who had worked as a
servant to make a bid for a crown would have been almost unthinkable. After all, the real Richard, Duke of York had
been excluded from the possibility of ever sitting on the throne of England
purely because his father might have made a pre-contract of marriage with
another woman before he married Richard’s mother Elizabeth Woodville.
Like
all great historical mysteries, we shall never probably really know the truth
about Perkin Warbeck. Perkin Warbeck made
a confession before his execution that gave his parentage and early history,
some of which has been backed up by documentary evidence. But was he forced into this confession by
Henry VII, who would have been very eager to ensure that there was no doubt in
anyone’s mind that that Perkin Warbeck was an imposter and not a Yorkist
prince? Most likely he was just an apprentice from Flanders, who by chance bore
an uncanny resemblance to a dead king and was in the right place at the right
time, but there is always the chance, however slight, that he really was Richard
of York and that he had been spirited away from his imprisonment in England and
brought to Europe for safety.
Image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
No comments:
Post a Comment