Gairdner J. History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third: To which is Added the Story of Perkin Warbeck from Original Documents

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270 PERKIN WARBECK.

Lord Bacon, she told him all about the death of his father

Edward IV., his own imprisonment with his brother in the

Tower, the murder of the latter, and his own escape; gave

him 'a smooth and likely tale of those matters, warning

him not to vary from it'; and finally taught him 'how to

avoid sundry captious and tempting questions which were

like to be asked of him.'

It is manifest that in all this Bacon has been building

a set of inferences on a passage in Bernard Andre, which,

even if it could be considered trustworthy in

itself,

would

hardly bear the weight of such a superstructure. For Andre

says nothing about such elaborate teaching, and least of all

does he say that such teaching had been given by Margaret;

in fact, his words imply that this was not so, for he says

that Perkin was brought up in England; and Andre attributes

his success very much to the fact (for so he regards it) that

he personally remembered the court of Edward IV. and the

court menials, and could tell a number of stories with circum-

stantial details of time, place and persons, which seemed very

convincing, first of all to the rude and barbarous people of

Ireland, and afterwards even to men of wisdom and high

nobility

. That he succeeded in imposing on persons who

themselves had known Edward IV.'s family Andre does not

say; and we may perhaps exercise our own judgment as to

how far the ' men of wisdom and high nobility' were really

imposed on at all.

But Bacon here falls into another error from misinterpreting

Andre's words. He does not quite go so far as to tell us—

what Horace Walpole assumes to be a fact—that Perkin's

likeness to Edward IV. could not be denied by his con-

temporaries. But he is certainly responsible for having given

Walpole this impression by the very curious surmise contained

in the following passage of his History of Henry VII. :

Memorials

of Henry VII., 66.

ERRORS OF LORD BACON. 271

' Lastly, there was a circumstance (which is mentioned by one

that writ in the same time) that is very likely to have made

somewhat to the matter; which is that King Edward the Fourth

was his godfather. Which, as it is somewhat suspicious for a

wanton prince to become gossip in so mean a house, and might

make a man think that he might indeed have in him some base

blood of the house of York; so at the least (though that were not)

it might give the occasion to the boy, in being called King Edward's

godson, or perhaps in sport King Edward's son, to entertain such

thoughts into his head

So,

a circumstance ' mentioned by one that writ in the

same time' is the foundation of a surmise that Edward IV.

was not merely the young man's godfather but his father also—

a fact, if it were so, which would make Walpole's assumption

extremely probable". Unfortunately, Bacon did not examine

the words of the contemporary writer. Speed had already

done that before him, and had given the result as follows:—

'This youth was born (they say) in the city of Torney and

called Peter Warbeck; the son of a converted Jew whose godfather

at baptism King Edward himself was.'

Of course Speed really meant that King Edward stood

godfather, not to Perkin himself but to his father, the Jew,

on his conversion; so Bacon's surmise arose first out of a

misunderstanding of Speed's words. But Speed again has

equally misunderstood the words of Bernard Andre

—the

author that ' writ in the same time'—who says only that

Perkin was brought up in England by the converted Jew in

Spedding's Bacon, vi. 133-4.

The statement which comes nearest to this in any contemporary

authority is that of the French writer Molinet, who, in relating how in

Ireland Perkin was first taken for the son of Clarence, adds ' car il le

ressembloit aulcunement' (Chroniques, vol. v. p. 79). But this statement

is clearly of very little authority. The Irish were no good judges of his

likeness to Clarence, and a foreigner like Molinet still less.

272 PERKIN WARBECK.

question, not that he was his son

. In fact in another passage

Andre" says he was the Jew's servant*.

Andre's view, therefore (which, though it is

itself,

I think,

untrustworthy, and certainly not in agreement with the con-

fession, must not be mixed up with the views of any other

writer, such as Polydore or Hall) is that Perkin was brought

up by his master, a converted Jew, at the court of Edward

IV., and though perhaps his words may be taken to indicate

that he received some instruction besides for the part he was

to play

, there is not a hint in them that he received that

instruction from Margaret. The statement that he was in-

structed by her comes from Polydore Vergil, a writer who

came to England in the days of Henry VII., though not till

some years after Warbeck's death. And it may be true that

he received some training from her; but certainly not until he

had already made his dibut as Duke of York in Ireland.

He probably remained a few months in Ireland. His

arrival at Cork may be dated with great probability in the

autumn of 1491 ; for it appears the mayor of Cork, named

John Le Wellen in the confession (but Lavallen in municipal

records), before whom he swore that he was not the son of

Clarence, did not assume office until Monday after Michaelmas

day (3d Oct.) in that year

. And it is not unlikely that even

before he landed the project of setting up another counterfeit

Earl of Warwick was already on foot, and that the Irishmen

who beset him with the request that he would assume that

character had received some prompting. What makes this

seem probable is as follows. One John Hayes, who to all

Memorials of Henry VII. 65, 66.

16. 72.

'Explicabat enim et ex prompta memoria repetebat omnia Eduardi

Quarti tempora, omnesque illius familiares ae domesticos, uti fuerat

instructus et a parvulo noverat, memoriter recitabat.' Memorials of

Henry VII., 66.

Smith's Ancient and Present State of Cork, i. 2nd ed., 415-6, 424.

The mayors of Cork were elected in August (Monday after St Bartholomew's

day),

but were not sworn in till Monday after Michaelmas.

FIRST APPEARANCE IN IRELAND. 273

appearance had been a servant of Clarence, and whom

Henry VII., just after his accession, had appointed receiver

of Clarence's lands in the West Country, during Warwick's

minority

, was attainted in the 7th year of Henry VII. for

treasonable correspondence with Warbeck's adherents. On the

26th November, 1491, he received a letter from John Taylor,

an exiled Yorkist, dated at Rouen on the 15 th September,

informing him that the King of France by advice of his

Council had determined to "aid and support your master's

son to his right," and that all his friends would be welcome in

France. This letter Hayes, after reading it, threw into the

fire, intending to conceal its contents, but apparently it was

rescued from the flames and a full copy of it was embodied in

the act of attainder, from which this information is derived*.

The King of France, therefore, had promised to aid the son of

Clarence to recover his right to the throne of England some

weeks at least before Warbeck in Ireland swore that he was

not the son of Clarence in question. But it is not likely that

the French king would have promised to aid a claimant to the

throne who was actually a prisoner in the Tower unless there

had been a project of getting some one to personate him until

the true Warwick could be released from confinement and

enabled to make good his right.

Warbeck, then, we may presume, landed in Ireland in the

autumn of 1491, and that he continued there during the

winter is shown by the fact that letters from him and Desmond

were received by James IV. of Scotland on the 2nd March,

1492

Matters were then tending to war between England

Campbell's Materials

for the

History

Henry

VII., i. to, 189;

ii.

93, 94.

Rotuli Parliamentorum,

vi. 454, 5.

' The

secund

day of

Merche, geviti

at the

Kingis command

til ane

Inglis

man

callit Edwart Ormond that brocht letteris furth

Irland

fra

King Eduartis

son and the

Erie

off

Desmond,

unicornis,

pundis.'

Extract from

the

Treasurer's Accounts

Scotland

A.D.

1491-2

Letters

and Papers,

&C., ii. 316, 7.

274 PERKIN WARBECK.

and France, and, of course, if it had actually broken out, or

rather, if it had become serious, the Scots would have acted as

allies of France, while the Irish would have given further

trouble. Charles VIII. doubtless knew that Henry himself

was disinclined to war and could probably be bought off, as

he actually was. But as a means of weakening his arm in case

it came to a fight he resolved to invite Perkin into France.

There arrived accordingly in Ireland, as Warbeck himself

states in his confession, a French envoy named Loyte Lucas,

with one Stephen Frion, who had been French Secretary to the

King of England, but had left his service and had entered that

of Charles

. By these agents he was persuaded to betake

himself to France, where Charles received him as a royal

prince and gave him a guard of honour commanded by the

Sieur de Concressault. He was immediately joined there by

Sir George Nevill and a number of disaffected Yorkists; but

the fact of his receiving French support could scarcely have

done much to advance his cause in England. His presence

with the French king had little influence on the result of

Henry's brief campaign in France, when, after the siege of

Boulogne, Charles was content to buy off the invader ; and on

peace being made between the two kings he had to leave the

country.

It was then that he betook himself to the Low Countries,

where he was received by the Duchess of Burgundy as her

That Frion had deserted Henry's service and

fled

abroad is stated by

Andre

Memorials

Henry

VII., 65. As late as December 1488 he

had been appointed as one of three Commissioners to treat of peace Or

truce with France. Rymer, xii. 347. He may have remained in France;

but from Andre's words he more probably escaped abroad a little later,

probably next year. On the 16th June, 1490, John Meautis was formally

appointed one of the king's French secretaries with a salary of 40 marks a

year to be reckoned from the preceding Michaelmas (1489) because he had

exercised the office ever since that date by the king's command. Patent

Roll, 5 Hen. VII. m. 25. Was it about Michaelmas 1489 that Frion

escaped ?

IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. 275

nephew; and it is from this time that he begins to be of any

political significance at all. That he received some education

from Margaret in the usages of courts is what we might pre-

sume without being informed of it; and whatever information

she was able to give him about Edward IV. and his court

was doubtless freely imparted. It could not, however, have

been very much, as she herself (although, as pointed out

by Nicolas

, she had paid her brother's court a visit in 1480)

had now been resident out of England for five-and-twenty

years,

and her nephew, even if he had been alive, was only

twenty-one. Still, under the protection of the Archduke Philip

and his father, Maximilian King of the Romans, she was able

not only to receive the young man with all the honour be-

coming a prince of England, but also to maintain at her court

a considerable number of the devoted adherents of the House

of York—of men who had either been outlawed in England,

or who had cause to dread or to dislike the government of

Henry.

It was not likely that a Tudor would view all this with

indifference. Least of all was Henry VII. the man to allow

such a combination to gather strength and take him by sur-

prise.

Accordingly, before the pretender had been many

months at the court of Margaret, Henry wrote the following

letter

to Sir Gilbert Talbot:—

Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you

well.

And not forgetting

the great malice that the Lady Margaret of Burgoigne beareth

continually against us, as she showed lately in sending hither of a

feigned boy

{i.e.,

Lambert Simnel), surmising him to have been the

son of the Duke of Clarence, and caused him to be accompanied

with the Earl of Lincoln, the Lord Lovel, and with a great

multitude of Irishmen and of Almains, whose end—blessed be

God!—was as ye know well. And foreseeing now the perseverance

Wardrobe

Accounts of Edward

IV.

Preface, p.

xi.

EUis's Letters, First Series,

i. 19.

18—2

276 PERKIN WARBECK.

of the same her malice by the untrue contriving eftsoons of another

feigned lad called Perkin Warbeck, born at Tournay, in Picardy,

which at his first [going] into Ireland called himself the bastard

son of King Richard; after that the son of the said Duke of

Clarence; and now the second son of our father, King Edward the

Fourth, whom God assoile. Wherethorough she intendeth, by

promising unto the Flemings, and other of the archduke's obeisance,

to whom she laboureth daily to take her way, and, by her promise

to certain aliens captains of estrange nations, to have duchies,

counties, baronies, and other lands, within this our realm, to induce

them thereby to land here, to the destruction and disinheritance of

the noblemen and other our subjects the inhabitants of the same,

and, finally, to the subversion of this our realm, in case she may

attain to her malicious purpose—that God defend! We, therefore,

and to the intent that we may be always purveyed and in areadiness

to resist her malice, write unto you at this time; and wol and desire

you that—preparing on horseback, defensibly arrayed, fourscore

persons, whereof we desire you to make as many spears, with their

custrels and demilances, well horsed, as ye can furnish, and the

remainder to be archers and bills—ye be thoroughly appointed and

ready to come, upon a day's warning, for to do us service of war in

this case. And ye shall have for every horseman well and defensibly

arrayed, that is to say, for a spear and his custrel, twelvepence, a

demilance, ninepence, and an archer or bill on horseback, eight-

pence, by the day, from the time of your coming out unto the time

of your return to your home again. And thus doing ye shall

deserve such thanks of us for your loving and true acquittal in that

behalf as shall be to your weal and honour for time to come. We

pray you herein ye wol make such diligence as that ye be ready,

with your said number, to come unto us upon any our sudden

warning. Given under our signet, at our castle of Kenilworth, the

20th day of July.'

It is commonly supposed that the king found considerable

difficulty in tracing out Warbeck's real name and origin; but

this letter shows that they had been discovered pretty early in

his career. For I have been at some pains to ascertain the

exact year in which it was written, and by an examination of

the wardrobe accounts of Henry VII. in the Record Office

HENRY'S ACCOUNT OF HIM. 277

I find that the king was at Kenilworth on Saturday, the

20th July, in the eighth year of his reign, that is to say, in

the year 1493. By the same evidence, joined with that of

his privy purse expenses, I am justified in saying that he was

not at Kenilworth on the 20th July, in 1494 or 1495, the

only other years when this letter could possibly have been

written; although, indeed, from the contents of the letter

itself,

we might imagine that it was not so late. Thus the

evidence is quite conclusive that Henry had ascertained War-

beck's name, origin, and history, as early as the year

1493—

or at least that he reported to Sir Gilbert Talbot in that year

substantially the same account of the pretender which the

latter gave of himself in his confession four years afterwards.

That the young man was really a native of Tournay, that his

true name was Perkin Warbeck or Osbeck (the latter, ap-

parently, a corruption such as Englishmen might easily make

of Flemish names), and that when he first appeared in Ireland

as a scion of York, he was fitted with two totally different

characters before he finally passed himself off for a son of

Edward IV.:—all this Henry declared from the first, and he

never varied from the tale.

About the same time as he wrote this letter to Sir Gilbert

Talbot, the king sent Sir Edward Poynings and Dr Warham

(who was afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury) in embassy

to the Archduke Philip, to remonstrate on the countenance

given to the pretender. The council of the young archduke,

who was then only fifteen years of age, made answer that

their master would preserve the peace with England, but

that he could not interfere with the Duchess Dowager of

Burgundy, who was free to do what she pleased within the

lands of her dowry. This answer was a mere subterfuge,

the council being evidently bent on supporting the adven-

turer underhand. The king did not conceal his displeasure,

and took his revenge by a prohibition of commercial inter-

course with Flanders, banishing all Flemings from England,

278 PERKIN WARBECK.

recalling the Merchants Adventurers from Antwerp, and

setting up a mart for English cloth (in which the trade with

Flanders chiefly consisted) at Calais, instead of in the Low

Countries.

It was the best policy that it seemed possible to adopt.

Henry's throne was never so secure that he could afford to

declare war, even if he had wished it, unless he was sure, as

in the case of France, of having the whole nation at his back.

Besides, the Low Countries, far more than any other State

in Europe, except, perhaps, Venice and Genoa, were governed

by the power of the purse. It was they who could keep

princes, dukes, and emperors submissive to their will by that

salutary device, so much admired in later times, of granting

or withholding the supplies; and the real way to act upon

Philip and Maximilian was to visit, if possible, upon the

pockets of the Flemings, the penalty of this attempt to disturb

the throne of Henry. There was one drawback, certainly, to

such a mode of procedure. In spite of the establishment of

a new mart at Calais, it punished merchants in England as

well as in the Low Countries; but even this, perhaps, did no

great harm to the king, as it taught his subjects that they

had an interest in preventing factious combinations. It was,

however, pretty sorely felt, especially as there was in the city

of London a body of foreign merchants, who, just because

they were not Englishmen, were at liberty still to carry on the

forbidden trade. This was the Easterlings, or merchants of

the Hanse. By charters, granted to them by several of our

kings,

they were possessed of various privileges; they had

been formed into a corporation, and had their own guildhall

and factory, called the Steelyard, on the banks of the Thames,

not far from the present Southwark Bridge. No wonder, then,

that at this time they drew upon themselves a great deal of

civic hatred, which was not long in showing itself in acts of

violence. The London apprentices, many of whom could no

longer find employment, attacked the Steelyard, and robbed

HE WRITES TO SPAIN. 279

the warehouses of the Easterlings

. With difficulty the mer-

chants succeeded in turning them out, and barring the gates

of the factory in their faces. The place was riotously be-

sieged

;

but those within obtained help from over the water.

A number of carpenters and smiths landed from boats, and

secured the gates of the stronghold; and shortly afterwards

the riot was quelled by the appearance of the Lord Mayor

and magistrates.

It was about this time that Warbeck wrote a letter to

Queen Isabella, desiring the support of Spain. Margaret of

Burgundy was doubtless well aware that Isabella had long ago

been anxious for an alliance with the House of York, and she

probably thought her

protig'e

would gain more from an appli-

cation to her than to her consort, Ferdinand of Arragon. In

this letter Perkin declares that he had already been counte-

nanced by the King of France, the Duchess of Burgundy,

the King of the Romans, and his son the Archduke of Austria,

the Duke of Saxony, and the Kings of Denmark and Scotland.

He also gives an account of his adventures, in the course of

which he says he was nearly nine years old when his brother,

Edward V., was murdered; and that the man appointe dto

do the same for him had had compassion on him, and sent

him abroad, after exacting from him a solemn oath not to

reveal his name or lineage for a certain number of years. He

adds that he had led a miserable, wandering life for about

eight years; that he had been in Portugal and in Ireland;

and that in the latter country he had been joyfully received

by his ' cousins,' the Earls of Desmond and Kildare; and he

promises the Spanish sovereigns that if ever restored to his

kingdom he will continue in closer alliance with them than

ever King Edward did.

This letter was endorsed by the Spanish Secretary Almazan,

According to the Hanserecesse (Dritte Abth.), iv. 20, this riot took

place on the 15th October, 1493. Hall says 'the Tuesday before St

Edward's day'; but the 15th October was the Tuesday after.